Businessmirror august 26, 2016

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AUTONOMY TO MAKE STATES MORE CREATIVE IN GENERATING INCOME

Federal Philippines seen growing faster 40% T

INSIDE

By Cai U. Ordinario

Peugeot turns up the heat

@cuo_bm & David Cagahastian

@davecaga

here is growing optimism for a surge in economic growth when the country shifts to a federal system, with many experts believing that truly autonomous regions will allow communities in the countryside to be more creative in generating income.

Motoring

The share of LGUs in the BIR’s collection

Experts interviewed by the BusinessMirror during the forum on federalism earlier this week are upbeat over the shift to a federal system of government, which will grant political and economic autonomy to the Continued on A2

1

Scania launches first class buses and coaches

Motoring

history comes alive History Channel celebrities pose for a photograph at the first-ever History Con 2016 in Manila. HCon visitors are treated to an epic event that covers a broad range of genres and interests, with dedicated areas for the paranormal/ sci-fi, survival and adventure, motoring, history and culture. The event will run until August 28 at the World Trade Center in Pasay City. NONIE REYES

Motoring

E2-E3

PESO exchange rates n US 46.5810

dominance in the western Pacific, Xi’s behavior throws up an increasingly urgent dilemma for America in how to slow China’s military and economic expansionism.

The risk now is that troubles afflicting a signature Obama-backed trade deal embolden China to see how much further it can push the world’s biggest economy. Regardless of who wins the US presidential election in November, the mood among a vocal number of American voters is one of isolationism

@butchfBM

trict mining rules are needed, because the extraction of minerals can have adverse impacts on the surrounding environment, according to neophyte Sen. Ana Theresia Hontiveros, who filed a bill seeking to ensure the protection of communities by setting limits on mining operations.

Hontiveros filed the alternative minerals-management bill on Thursday, saying the remedial legislation seeks to ensure protection of communities and the environment “through taxes and heavy fines.”

She explained that the proposed remedial legislation also aims to “rectify the failure” of Republic Act 7942, also known as the mining law, passed in 1995 to govern mining ventures.

In a statement, the senator asserted the need to “overhaul our current mining policy to ensure the proper management and utilization of our mineral resources.”

Lamenting the “low return and high costs of mining,” Hontiveros cited the industry’s “0.7 percent contribution” to the Philippines’s GDP, even as it incurs “high costs in terms of environmental degradation, loss of livelihood and human-rights violations.”

The senator suggested that the government factor climate change in its mining-policy framework by imposing an “environmental tax” and establishing a so-called calamity and human-rights fund.

She asserted, “It is time for mining companies to ensure that their operations do not harm the environment and are a source of contribution to the community,” adding that the proposed remedial legislation should provide for “super-heavy fines and revocation of licenses to operate for mining companies that violate the law.”

Her proposal also seeks to limit the areas of operations of mining companies, and protect watersheds, key biodiverse areas, critical habitats and geohazard areas as “no-go zones” for mining companies.

D

By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas

@arteliterary

after more than a decade fighting wars thousands of miles away and amid concern about preserving US jobs.

That domestic climate is threatening the US ratification process for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a pact that would cover 40 percent of world commerce and does not include China. Republican Party nominee Donald Trump says the TPP will cost US jobs and Democrat Hillary Clinton has reversed her earlier support for it.

emand for meat products is increasing due to the improvement in the purchasing power of Filipinos, and this will spur the growth of other agricultural subsectors and boost total farm output, according to experts.

Economists told the BusinessMirror that the growth of the livestock and poultry subsectors in the previous two quarters will be sustained in the medium and long term.

“People’s income goes up, and so their diet leans toward more protein sources.

You’ll still continue to see that trend given the continuous improvement in the livestock and poultry subsectors due to the adoption The hike in livestock of new breeds, new feeding output in Q2 practices and continued reduction in conversion ratios,” Philippine Institute for Development Studies senior research fellow Roehlano Briones said.

Only the livestock and poultry subsectors posted production growth in the second quarter of the year. Livestock output grew 6.56 percent on the back of increased hog output, data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed.

Poultry production, according to the PSA, inched up by 1.25 percent and accounted for 15.72 percent of total agricultural

See “U.S.,” A12

See “Meat,” A2

US troubles over Trump, TPP risk emboldening China in Asia U nited States Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter warned a few months back that China risked a “great wall of self-isolation” for its actions in the disputed South China Sea. That hasn’t deterred Xi Jinping.

Beijing is boosting its military presence in the area unabated, in the face of stepped-up US. patrols and a recent arbitration court ruling that invalidated its claims to most of the waterway. After decades of US

S

By Butch Fernandez

MEAT PRODUCTS TO SEE SUSTAINED GROWTH

E3

car of the month: Mazda CX-5 AWD SKY-D

Mining bill seeks taxes, heavy fine for erring firms

6.5%

n japan 0.4638 n UK 61.6500 n HK 6.0078 n CHINA 6.9931 n singapore 34.3949 n australia 35.4575 n EU 52.4782 n SAUDI arabia 12.4213

Source: BSP (25 August 2016 )

BMReports BusinessMirror

A2 Friday, August 26, 2016

US. . .

Continued from A12

“China’s expansionist claims in the South China Sea, reiterated in its angry rebuff of the recent arbitral decision, make it clear that the US faces a crucial test of its reliability in Southeast Asia,” according to a recent article coauthored

by Patrick Cronin, director of the AsiaPacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. “The president should offer assurances to allies and partners that coercive moves that undermine the historic legal ruling risk a confrontation with the US.” China is also seeking to displace US economic influence amid questions over whether the second plank of the rebalance, the TPP, will get through the US Congress. Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke on his recent visit to Washington of the need for TPP to be ratified: “For America’s friends and partners, ratifying the TPP is a litmus test of your credibility and seriousness of purpose.”

“Failure to pass the TPP will have an impact,”said Catherine A. Novelli, undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment. “China is actively working in Asia and has strong relationships with its neighbors, and we expect this will continue. TPP provides balance in the region and sets a very high bar for transparent rules and open and fair trade.” China isn’t a member of the TPP, which is being sold as a kind of super trade deal that would not only slash tariffs on goods and services among its 12 members, but would establish shared standards in areas like labor and the environment. Participants include the US, Japan, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam.

Obama has vowed to keep pushing the TPP during the lame-duck session of Congress that follows the election.

His efforts to get the deal ratified received recent support from a group of senior former Republican officials who, exasperated by Trump, said they’d back Clinton’s presidential bid and that they hoped she’d reconsider her TPP position. “Failure to approve it would cede to China the role of defining regional trade rules,” they wrote in an open letter.

Beijing has established the $100-billion Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank to complement its “One Belt, One Road” initiative of building ports and transport links across Asia to Europe.

Xi has touted investment and trade in the region to offset concerns about China’s military ambitions, and pushed an alternate Asia trade pact to the TPP.

Bloomberg News

Federal Philippines seen growing faster Continued from A1

proposed regions in the Philippines.

“It is human nature that when a person is responsible for his own well-being, that he becomes more creative in generating income,” taxation lawyer Dina Lucenario of the law firm of Castillo Laman Tan Pantaleon and San Jose told the BusinessMirror.

“If there is more flexibility in how to run the local governments and share in the profits, then the regions would have more incentives in developing their respective strengths, whether these be in the areas of natural resources, human resources, tourism, manufacturing and other industries,” Lucenario added.

The income to be generated in the regions is deemed to be the crucial factor which will decide whether a federal system of government will succeed.

Former Finance Secretary Margarito B. Teves said the discussions on federalism should touch upon the issue of why the local government units (LGUs) have not been able to fully maximize the taxing powers given to them by the Local Government Code of 1991.

Teves said this discussion is important to find out how the tax administration in the proposed federalism will be structured.

“Before we craft the structure of the tax administration, we have to study the existing taxing powers of the LGUs and find out why some of these powers are not fully realized,” Teves said in a separate interview.

The shortfalls in revenue collection by the LGUs have been blamed in the past for the lack of the funds for capital expenditures in the regions, making LGUs dependent upon the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA), or their annual 40percent share from the income-tax collection of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).

Without the necessary income

Meat. . .

Continued from A1

output in the second quarter.

PSA data also showed that, from 2010 to 2015, only the livestock and poultry subsectors grew consistently. Livestock-production growth peaked at 3.83 percent in 2015.

Poultry production also posted the highest annual growth at 5.74 percent last year.

Earlier, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol said his department will prepare projects and programs to boost the livestock and poultry subsectors, such as the establishment of multiplier farms around the country.

“Yes. These subsectors [livestock and poultry] are really growing. We have to understand that the consumption of Filipinos of meat has increased. So we really have to prepare for the increase in demand for meat,” Piñol told the BusinessMirror.

Per-capita meat consumption of Filipinos expanded to nearly 29 kilograms in 2015,

in the regions and the adequate tax collection by the LGUs, there would be no effective federal system of government, since the political situation would be just like before, when the regions are dependent upon the national government for funding of critical infrastructure projects.

However, former Senate President Aquilino Q. Pimentel Jr., who was one of the keynote speakers at the European Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines and the BusinessMirror’s forum on federalism, offered a solution to the problem of low-income generation in the regions at the onset of the proposed federal government.

Pimentel said there has to be an “equalization fund,” which will subsidize the operations and capital expenditures of the poorer regions, while they build up their infrastructure and economy, which are required to attract foreign investors to create jobs in the regions.

As the regions develop their economy, more businesses can be enticed to set up shop in the regions and consequently allow the corresponding LGUs to collect more revenues in the form of taxes and business permits.

“The share of the LGUs in the revenues that they would collect should be 20 percent for the federal government and 80 percent for the corresponding LGU. Right now, it’s only that which is collected by the BIR is shared by the LGUs; they don’t have a share in all the other revenues, such as customs duties, excise taxes for gasoline and other kinds of income,” Pimentel said.

Hitting SDGs

A federal form of government may also allow the country to better monitor its performance in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).

The SDGs, or Global Goals, is a

from 27.71 kg in 2010, according to latest data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

OECD forecasts that the Philippines’s meat consumption per capita will grow to

set of 17 socioeconomic goals that 193 United Nations member-countries, including the Philippines, have committed to meet by 2030.

The goals are composed of around 169 targets and over 300 global indicators. The SDGs were adopted in September 2015.

“It [federalism] could [help] if the monitoring system would be configured correspondingly so that we don’t have it at a national level but we have it on a per state [basis],” Neda Deputy Director General Rosemarie G. Edillon recently told the BusinessMirror.

However, Edillon said agencies, like the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), which is tasked to gather data and monitor the country’s progress, will have to make adjustments. She said that, while there are provincial statisticians, adjustments have to be made in terms of “amalgamating” the data. Edillon also said the budget for monitoring the SDGs will also have to be adjusted.

Further, because of the nature of a federal form of government, federal states may have to come up with their own SDG progress report.

“It actually means there will be greater accountability, that’s for sure,” Edillon said. “It could actually promote more accountability.”

The Global Goals aim to end poverty and hunger; promote universal health, education for all and lifelong learning; achieve gender equality, sustainable water management; ensure sustainable energy for all, decent work for all, resilient infrastructure; and reduce income inequality between and among countries.

The goals also include to create sustainable cities; ensure sustainable consumption and production; take action against climate change; conserve and sustainably use oceans and marine resources; reduce biodiversity loss; achieve peaceful and inclusive societies; and revitalize global partnership for development.

almost 30 kg in 2020.

Economist Pablito M. Villegas, who is also spokesman of the Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Fisheries Inc., urged the Department of Agriculture to remove the

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PANELO TO ADDRESS AKLAN PRESS CLUB INDUCTION RITES

PANELO

K

QUIMPO

ALIBO, Aklan—Secretary Salvador S. Panelo, chief presidential legal counsel, will address and induct into office the officers of the of Aklan Press Club Inc. (APCI) here on Saturday, August 27.

The induction ceremonies and fellowship dinner will take place at the Gov. Corazon Legaspi Cabagnot Training Center at 7 p.m.

Panelo will also preside over a media forum, dubbed as “Kapihan sa Aklan,” at the NVC Carmen Hotel, with special guests that include broadcaster Allan Sison, president of the Federation of Provincial Press Clubs of the Philippines Inc.; publisher Nelson Santos, president of the Publishers Association of the Philippines Inc.; former Makati Vice Mayor Bobby Gomez Brillante, currently a brodcaster; former editor of Philippines Graphic Cesar Carpio; publishers Jaime C. Vistar, Joseph Punay of Alpha Times. Some Manilabased mediamen are also expected to attend the Aklan media affair.

Lawyers, judges and other leading citizens representing various sectors are attending the Aklan press event.

In its recent general membership meeting, attended by key leaders and Aklan media practitioners, the 59-yearold Aklan Press Club has adopted resolutions to be vigilant vanguard of press freedom, human rights, an educative outpost, and as a proactive partner of government in promoting public interest and welfare.

Newly elected officers, led by veteran journalist Odon S. Bandiola, are determined to squarely dwell on issues concerning freedom of information (FOI), federalism, human rights, drug menace, food security, constitutional reforms, including the

uncertainty over the propagation of genetically modified (GM) corn.

Last month the Supreme Court (SC) reversed its December 2015 ruling, which temporarily stopped the field testing of GM

controversial plan to build a 2-kilometer bridge connecting Boracay island and Panay mainland.

APCI officers, aside from Bandiola, are Ernesto Solidium, executive vice president; Recto Vidal, vice president for print; Arnel Vicente, vice president for radio; Gary Vargas, vice presidentfor cable; Richie Oloroso, secretary; Mary Joy Reyes, treasurer; Lynn AbitangArguilles, assistant secretary-treasurer; Megs Lunn, auditor; Jun Aguirre, Edwin Ramos, Aris Asucion, Joel Naingue, Delano Tefora, Prof. Jay Tejada, Roben Laserna and Frank Iturriaga, board members.

APCI board of advisers is headed by Dr. Allen Salas Quimpo, representing the School of Mass Communication of the Northwestern Visayan Colleges as an institutional member, chairman.

Its members are composed of former presidents, namely, lawyer Ronquillo C. Tolentino, Dr. Ambrosio Villorente, Edwin Pelayo, Boy Ryan Zabal, Megs Lunn and Gary Vargas.

Juan P. Dayang, surviving founding organizer of APCI, is chairman emeritus. Dayang, a veteran journalist, is a retired publisher of Philippines Graphic, former president of the Manila Overseas Press Club, Publishers Association of the Philippines and secretary-director of the National Press Club. At present, he is secretary and trustee of the Catholic Mass Media Awards (CMMA) Foundation and columnist of Manila daily publications.

Aklan Press Club, founded in 1957, after the separation of Aklan from Capiz, is an affiliate of the Federation of Provincial Press Clubs of the Philippines and Publishers Association of the Philippines Inc.

crops, as well as the issuance of permits for the commercialization of GMOs. “The Department of Agriculture should issue an administrative order so that the decision of the SC can be sustained and the industry can respond to it more favorably,” Villegas said.

The uncertainty caused by the December 2015 ruling, he said, could discourage farmers from planting GM corn. Yellow corn is a major ingredient used by feed millers in manufacturing animal feeds.

Aside from fluctuations in feed prices, Villegas said abrupt changes in weather conditions may expose hogs and chicken to diseases.

“If the weather situation is favorable throughout the remaining months of the year, then production growth will continue and will even be sustained,” he said.

Villegas and Briones said the government must continue to impose stricter measures against smuggling to protect the livestock and poultry subsectors. “Under the new DA leadership, it seems that the technical smuggling and actual smuggling is already controlled. This bodes well for the two subsectors,” Villegas said.

Dr. Rolando Dy, executive director of University of Asia and the Pacific’s Center for Food and Agri Business, said the crops subsector should not be neglected to sustain the increase in the income of Filipinos.

“Low farm productivity means low income and, in turn, high poverty. Low income means lower demand for livestock and poultry products. Therefore, the poor cannot afford meat. And 26 million of the 100 million Filipinos are poor,” Dy said.

“These subsectors [livestock and poultry] can boost the agricultural sector, but the government should address the country’s farm productivity across many crops, which is low compared to its peers in Asean,” he added.

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Friday, August 26, 2016 A3

DOT renews focus on Fil-Ams to boost arrivals

T

By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo Special to the BusinessMirror

HE Department of Tourism (DOT) is giving renewed focus to the 3.5 million Filipinos living in the United States to boost visitor arrivals in the Philippines.

Tou r i sm Sec ret a r y Wa nd a Corazon T. Teo made this evident as she spoke with various Filipino communities in New Jersey and San Francisco during her visit to the US from August 12 to 15.

In a news statement, Teo said these Filipino-Americans should take time to visit and rediscover their home country. At a community event, dubbed the People’s Ball, in New Jersey, the DOT chief encouraged some 500 Fil-Ams to

“invite your American friends and Facebook friends to come see our world-class tourist destinations and experience genuine Filipino hospitality. Remember, there’s no place like home.”

The US continues to be the second top source market for foreign visitors for the Philippines, accounting for some 15 percent of total arrivals in 2015. From January to May 2016, visitor arrivals from the US rose by 7.7

percent to 377,595.

Most of the visitors, however, are Filipinos who are now American passport holders, and come to the Philippines usually during the Christmas season. Teo said visitors from the US are projected to rise significantly in the next few years, as the agency works with the travel and tour operators to entice Fil-Ams, as well as the mainstream Americans, to visit the country. Mainstream Americans are those living in Southeastern and Southwestern US, like Tennessee and Oklahoma, and have no blood ties nor relations with the Philippines.

This year the DOT is targeting to attract some 867,742 visitors from the US and at least 968,395 in 2017, based on the total arrivals targets of 5.9 million this year, and 6.5 million in 2017, as proposed by the agency in its National Expenditure Program for 2017.

(See, “DBM cuts DOT’s budget

for 2017 despite higher arrivals goal,” in the BusinessMirror, August 23, 2016) New York and New Jersey are key areas where some 337,000 Fil-Ams reside. Teo was invited to their community events and fiesta-like gatherings, which also featured Philippine entertainment celebrities.

Teo also went to San Francisco for the Pistahan Parade and Festival 2016 at Yerba Buena Gardens, attended by some 15,000 Fil-Ams. “Many of our fellow Filipinos experience homesickness and long to visit our home country, as well as reunite with relatives and friends,” she said.

Dur ing her meetings w it h Filipino communities, Teo spoke more of her plans to speed up the growth of the tourism sector and give more jobs to Filipinos. She discussed a partnership with the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (Tieza)

to support local communities by building more infrastructure and developing more products to harness their unique attractions as tourism destinations. Tieza, formerly the Philippine Visitors Authority, is tasked to implement the DOT’s infrastructure projects and facilitate investments i n tou r ism enter pr ise zones nationwide.

She also spoke of her advocacy for the “one town, one product” concept and the Tourism Promotions Board’s (TPB) support to market the Philippines in the US, in the areas of medical, cultural and culinary tourism. Formerly the Philippine Conventions and Visitors Corp., the TPB is the marketing arm of the DOT. The DOT, in partnership with the the Department of Foreign Affairs, has an annual project to bring home some 300 FilAms and Fil-Canadians, called the Ambassadors, Consuls Gen-

eral and Tour Directors Tour to the Philippines. Usually held during the lean months between July and September, the tour usually includes a visit to Intramuros, investment forums and a tour of Malacañang, including an audience with the President. There is no word, however, if the project, begun by the Arroyo administration, will be continued under the Duterte administration.

Meanwhile, the DOT chief welcomed the offer of the Advancement for Rural Kids (ARK) Foundation to partner with the agency and provide new income opportunities for rural communities.

ARK Foundation volunteers are mostly young professionals and next-generation Fil-Ams. “To be able to give back to t he com mu n it y, pa r t ic u l a rly t he m a rg i n a l i z ed sec tor, i s, in fact, the bottom line of our i nc lu sive tou r i sm prog ra m,” Teo stressed.

Slump in electronics demand to dampen imports growth

By Cai U. Ordinario

@cuo_bm

T

he National Economic and Development Aut hor it y (Neda) is concerned that weak electronics demand could dampen the country’s external trade growth in the coming months.

Neda Director General and Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia said, however, strong construction activity and consumption spending in the second half of the year could boost trade.

“The trend of imports growth is expected to remain positive,

albeit at a slightly lower pace due to a relatively weak outlook for electronics exports, which will affect the importation of electrical equipment. However, strong construction activity will continue to boost spending on durable equipment and capital goods,” Pernia said.

In June imports slowed to 15.4 percent, from 39.3 percent in May this year and 23 percent in June 2015.

In the January-to-June period, imports grew 17.7 percent to $38.746 billion, from $32.917 bil-

lion in the same period of last year.

Pernia said this is one reason the government must continue to support growth-enhancing measures that will sustain consumption and investment. “ T hese include continuous government spending on infrastructure, such as modernization of seaports and airports, to ease the flow of goods into and within the country, and a comprehensive tax-reform package to boost consumer spending and investments,” Pernia said.

D e s pit e re cord i n g s lo we r

Cash seen to remain primary mode of payment in PHL for decades more

I

t will take a few more decades before the majority of the Filipinos would be comfortable with cashless transactions.

The expanding economy backed up by high consumer spending and the fast-paced evolution of technology has led MasterCard Vice President Judith Dayrit to project that a huge chunk of the Philippine population would be card-equipped by 2030.

“To answer the million-dollar question…technology is moving the milestones in business to move faster. I would think that maybe in 2030, maybe anywhere between 2020 to 2050,” Dayrit told the BusinessMirror.

During the launch of the Platinum MasterCard under Maybank, Dayrit said that, despite the broad spectrum of cardholders from the mass market to the more affluent segments and the strong purchasing power in the Philippine market, rich people continue to be the primary drivers for card usage, mostly driven by travel and overseas spending.

She added that, because of the leniency and ease of traveling around, it’s not only the upscale market that is noticeably using cards for travel but the upper mass market, as well.

Nevertheless, cash remains the primary mode of transaction in the country. Dayrit pointed out that consumers have yet to realize that there is minimal, if not zero, reward at all in the usage of cash and that it remains as the riskiest transaction method.

“We’re trying to move payment solutions so that payment becomes electronic and not manual cash. The main point is how to move from cash transactions to more convenient and easy and reward-filled products like cards,” she said.

Regardless of cash being their preferred mode of payment, Filipinos showed a strong consumer readiness and mobile commerce cluster score in the MasterCard Mobile Payments Readiness index, posting a 34.7 overall score and surpassing the average index score of 33.2.

According to MasterCard, consumers in the Philippines are ready and willing to use mobile payments, especially in the realms of peer to peer and mobile-commerce payments.

However, it also stated that unless laws that relate to business informa-

7.36M

The estimated number of credit cards in use in the country tion and communications technology are improved, and banks and mobile networks can cooperate to build mobile payments solutions, the Philippines could see mobile payments become mainstream.

Meanwhile, the Visa Consumer Payment Attitudes Study in 2015 revealed that three of 10 Filipinos have made contactless payments, compared to 21 percent in 2014. Contactless payments include the use of credit card, debit card or smartphone, sweeping aside the need for cash, personal identification number or signatures for transactions under P2,000.

“I can’t really say when majority of the Filipinos will be cardholders. As I’ve said, it’s a steady growth, but not as fast as we like. But we have a lot of room for opportunity with a 57-million possible market,” Visa Country Manager Stuart Tomlinson told the BusinessMirror.

Visa also stated that Filipinos’ awareness for contactless payments has risen from 62 percent in 2014 to 66 percent in 2015. More awareness led to usage, which has grown from 21 percent last year to 29 percent in the said year.

The same study concluded 41 percent of Filipinos recognize new benefits of contactless payments, such as being of less hassle to use, while 36 percent recognized it as being safer.

Data from Euromonitor International showed there are only 7.36 million credit cards in circulation in the Philippines, while there are 35.36 million debit cards.

Euromonitor also took note that Filipino consumers have increased their spending in line with the country’s solid economic performance.

Filipinos notably have more money in their pockets and consumers are buying higher-quality essentials—such as food and household products—as well as more big-ticket items, such as passenger vehicles.

“Greater demand for big-ticket items has also been boosted by a wider availability of consumer credit and greater use of financial cards by the growing middle class,” Euromonitor reports stated.

Data from the National Statistical Coordination Board and Maybank ATRKE show that private consumption accounted for 74 percent of the GDP in 2015, with 41 percent of the contribution coming in from food and nonalcoholic beverages, followed by housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels by a stretch at 11 percent and transport at 9 percent, among others.

Dayrit pointed out that as a card company, they try to work out the needs of the different sectors to be able to cater to more people and uncover their needs to come up with different solutions that will make consumers use the card.

“We have a lot of [partner] banks in the Philippines, but it also depends on the bank having the resources to issue a MasterCard. So in truth, because of the moving economy of the Philippines, the banks are moving to issue cards, as well,” Dayrit said.

She noted that cash is still the main mode of payment in the country, and that’s true for all developing markets around the world. The movement for payment solutions is to convert transactions to electronic and not manual cash.

“As there are many security risks in everything today just like cash is… actually, the riskiest is cash. But as you see that as we move to electronic payments, the technology is trying to move ahead to find advanced and greater security, just as we’ve mentioned moving to EMV [Europay, MasterCard and Visa] chip cards,” Dayrit said.

Last year the Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has mandated all the banks to comply with the upgrading of automated teller machines compatible with EMV chip-enabled cards.

These cards are the global standards for chip-based credit and debit transactions, and are considered more secure than the magnetic-stripe technology used in most bank-issued cards in the country.

“Definitely, the move everywhere else is to move away from cash,” Dayrit stated. Mia Rosienna Mallari

growth in June, however, the country still recorded the highest import growth in Asia in the first semester of the year.

Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data showed that in June the Philippines outperformed Vietnam (1.9 percent), Malaysia (-1 percent) and Indonesia (-6.8 percent).

The country also outperformed India (-7.3 percent), People’s Republic of China (-8.4 percent) and Thailand (-10.1 percent).

“This performance shows the strength of domestic demand in

the country, particularly in consumption and investment, as reflected by the latest real GDP growth of 7 percent in the second quarter,” Pernia said.

Meanwhile, total import payments to the top 10 imports sources for June 2016 amounted to $5.44 billion, or 79.4 percent of the total import bill.

The three biggest import sources of the Philippines in June were China, which accounted for 18.8 percent of total imports, followed

by Japan, with 12.4 percent; and Thailand, with 7.8 percent.

Imports from China were recorded at $1.287 billion. It represented an increase of 45.8 percent, from $882.92 million in June 2015.

Shipments from Japan amounted to $852.20 million to the total import bill in June 2016. It represented an increase of 86.1 percent, from its June 2015 value of $457.96 million.

The country’s imports from Thailand were valued at $531.89 million in June 2016. This was a 23.7-percent growth from $429.98 million in June 2015.

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Powerful quake hits Myanmar damaging 185 ancient pagodas

R

escue workers surveyed the damage on Thursday after a powerful earthquake shook Myanmar, killing at least four people and damaging 185 ancient Buddhist pagodas in the former capital of Bagan, a major tourist site.

The US Geological Survey said the 6.8-magnitude quake on Wednesday was centered about 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Chauk, a town south of Bagan. It was located fairly far below the Earth’s surface at a depth of about 84 km (52 miles), it said.

Deep earthquakes generally cause less surface damage.

At least 185 brick pagodas in Bagan were damaged, the state newspaper reported. Bagan, also known as Pagan, has more than 2,200 structures, including pagodas and temples constructed from the 10th to the 14th centuries. Many are in disrepair while others have been restored in recent years, aided by the UN cultural agency United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The vast site is the country’s premier attraction for tourists, who can view a panorama of temples stretching to the horizon flanked by the mighty Irrawaddy River, an especially impressive experience at sunset.

Dr. Myo Thant, general secretary of the Myanmar Earthquake Committee, said other areas apparently were not badly affected.

Police officer Htay Win in Pakokku, about 70 km (45 miles) from the epicenter, said one person there had been killed and one injured. “The person was killed by falling bricks from a building,” he said.

The Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement reported two other deaths in nearby Thitapwe village.

6.8

BusinessMirror

Editor: Max V. de Leon • Friday, August 26, 2016 A5

World’s first self-driving taxis debut in Singapore

The magnitude of the quake, according to the US Geological Survey

UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was “saddened” by the loss of life and damage from the earthquake and expressed his condolences to the “people and government” of Myanmar.

He said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs was in contact with authorities in Myanmar and along with its partners stands ready to support the government and local organizations.

Vincent Panzani, a staff member in Pakokku for the aid agency Save the Children, said several of his colleagues from the area described the earthquake as the strongest they have experienced.

“We felt quite heavy shaking for about 10 seconds and started to evacuate the building when there was another strong tremor,” he said in comments sent by e-mail. “Most of the reports of damage have been to the pagodas in the area with dozens impacted. There have also been reports of damage to smaller, more basic buildings, including a collapsed wall and a destroyed roof.”

Worried residents of Yangon, the country’s main city, rushed out of tall buildings, and objects toppled from tables and from Buddhist shrines in homes. However, there were no reports of serious damage in the city. AP

A man nails a stake to set up a security perimeter around earthquake-effected Sitanagyi Pagoda in Bagan, Myanmar, on Thursday. Workers surveyed the damage on Thursday, after a powerful earthquake shook Myanmar on Wednesday, damaging a number of ancient Buddhist pagodas in the former capital of Bagan, a major tourist site. AP

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An autonomous vehicle is parked for its test-drive in Singapore on Wednesday. AP

he world’s first self-driving taxis will be picking up passengers in Singapore starting Thursday.

Select members of the public will be able to hail a free ride through their smartphones in taxis operated by nuTonomy, an autonomous vehicle software start-up. While multiple companies, including Google and Volvo, have been testing self-driving cars on public roads for several years, nuTonomy says it will be the first to offer rides to the public. It will beat ride-hailing service Uber, which plans to offer rides in autonomous cars in Pittsburgh, by a few weeks.

The service will start small—six cars now, growing to a dozen by the end of the year. The ultimate goal, say nuTonomy officials, is to have a fully self-driving taxi fleet in Singapore by 2018, which will help sharply cut the number of cars on Singapore’s congested roads. Eventually, the model could be adopted in cities around the world, nuTonomy says.

For now, the taxis only will run in a 2.5-square-mile business and residential district called “one-north,” and pickups and dropoffs will be limited to specified locations. And riders must have an invitation from nuTonomy to use the service. The

nuTonomy The first company to offer self-driving taxis to the public company says dozens have signed up for the launch, and it plans to expand that list to thousands of people within a few months.

The cars—modified Renault Zoe and Mitsubishi i-MiEV electrics— have a driver in front who is prepared to take back the wheel and a researcher in back who watches the car’s computers. Each car is fitted with six sets of Lidar—a detection system that uses lasers to operate like radar—including one that constantly spins on the roof. There are also two cameras on the dashboard to scan for obstacles and detect changes in traffic lights.

The testing time-frame is openended, nuTonomy CEO Karl Iagnemma said. Eventually, riders may start

paying for the service, and more pickup and dropoff points will be added. NuTonomy also is working on testing similar taxi services in other Asian cities, as well as in the US and Europe, but he wouldn’t say when.

“I don’t expect there to be a time where we say, ‘We’ve learned enough,’” Iagnemma said.

Doug Parker, nuTonomy COO, said autonomous taxis could ultimately reduce the number of cars on Singapore’s roads from 900,000 to 300,000.

“When you are able to take that many cars off the road, it creates a lot of possibilities. You can create smaller roads, you can create much smaller car parks,” Parker said. “I think it will change how people interact with the city going forward.”

NuTonomy, a 50-person company with offices in Massachusetts and Singapore, was formed in 2013 by Iagnemma and Emilio Frazzoli, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers who were studying robotics and developing autonomous vehicles for the Defense Department. Earlier this year, the company was the first to win approval from Singapore’s government to test self-driving cars in one-north. NuTonomy announced a research partnership with Singapore’s Land Transport Authority earlier this month.

Singapore is ideal because it has good weather, great infrastructure

and drivers who tend to obey traffic rules, Iagnemma says. As a landlocked island, Singapore is looking for nontraditional ways to grow its economy, so it’s been supportive of autonomous vehicle research.

Auto supplier Delphi Corp., which is also working on autonomous vehicle software, was recently selected to test autonomous vehicles on the island and plans to start next year.

“We face constraints in land and manpower. We want to take advantage of self-driving technology to overcome such constraints, and in particular to introduce new mobility concepts which could bring about transformational improvements to public transport in Singapore,” said Pang Kin Keong, Singapore permanent secretary for transport and the chairman of its committee on autonomous driving.

Olivia Seow, 25, who does work in startup partnerships in one-north and is one of the riders nuTonomy selected, took a test ride of just less than a mile on Monday. She acknowledged she was nervous when she got into the car, and then surprised as she watched the steering wheel turn by itself.

“It felt like there was a ghost or something,” she said.

But she quickly grew more comfortable. The ride was smooth and controlled, she said, and she was relieved to see that the car recognized even small obstacles like birds and motorcycles parked in the distance.

“I couldn’t see them with my human eye, but the car could, so I knew that I could trust the car,” she said. She said she is excited because the technology could free up her time during commutes or help her father by driving him around as he grows older.

An Associated Press reporter taking a ride on Wednesday observed that the safety driver had to step on the brakes once, when a car was obstructing the test car’s lane and another vehicle, which appeared to be parked, suddenly began moving in the oncoming lane.

Iagnemma said the company is confident that its software can make good decisions. The company hopes its leadership in autonomous driving will eventually lead to partnerships with automakers, tech companies, logistics companies and others.

“What we’re finding is the number of interested parties is really overwhelming,” he said. AP

Thailand embarking on LNG shopping spree as glut cuts global prices

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angkok is about to become a very important destination for sellers of liquefied natural gas.

In an oversupplied market where prices have cratered and new longterm contracts are rare, Thailand’s national oil company is bucking the trend and planning to go on a shopping spree. PTT Pcl. CEO Tevin Vongvanich hopes to nearly quadruple import capacity and said he plans to sign long-term agreements with several suppliers by the end of the year that would more than double what the country currently imports.

“We’re taking the opportunity of the buyer’s market situation of the LNG at this stage to secure a few more long-term contracts,” he said in an interview at his office in Bangkok.

“It’s the sale time now for LNG, so we’re doing our shopping.”

The buying binge couldn’t come at a better time for LNG sellers. Spot LNG prices in Southeast Asia have fallen 62 percent since October 2014 as new export terminals have created a supply glut, while large buyers like Japan and South Korea have reduced demand. Thailand doubled LNG im-

We were a bit fortunate that we didn’t commit before the price collapsed, so we have that flexibility of shopping around.”—PTT

ports last year to 2.7 million tons, about 1.1 percent of global trade, according to the International Group of LNG Importers. The country will boost imports to 3 million tons this year, Tevin said.

Committed volume

PTT signed a long-term contract in 2012 to buy 2 million tons of LNG a year from Qatar. Tevin said he’s looking to diversify by seeking to add about 3 million tons a year

of committed volumes from other suppliers.

“We were a bit fortunate that we didn’t commit before the price collapsed, so we have that flexibility of shopping around,” Tevin said.

“Currently a lot of people have been knocking on our doors for the longterm contracts.”

PTT is doubling the annual capacity of its import facility to 10 million tons this year and will later increase it to 11.5 million tons. Further expansion plans, including adding a second terminal, with its size pending Cabinet approval, would further boost capacity to as much as 19 million tons a year. The terminal

upgrades alone could cost $1 billion to $2 billion, Tevin said. Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects Thailand’s imports to exceed 16 million tons a year by 2030.

Exploration unit

“For Thailand, we’re obviously the energy importing country,” he said.

“We’re also looking at not just the demand growth in the natural gas consumption, but also our natural resources declining because we have been producing for over 30 years. So, naturally the supplementary supply from LNG is negligible and it will grow more and more.”

PTT’s upstream unit, PTT Exploration & Production Pcl., is also playing a role in the company’s LNG strategy. The drilling arm of the company owns an 8.5-percent stake in a 5,000-square-mile patch in the Rovuma offshore area in Mozambique. Tevin sees Mozambique as the next Qatar as the country has found sizable gas resources, which is an opportunity for its LNG strategy.

“They have potential to become a large LNG exporter in the future which match very well with the situation of Thailand where we need to look for additional import volume of LNG,” he said. “LNG is a grand strategy for the PTT Group at the moment.”

PTT added as much as 1.2 percent to 351 baht at 10:36 a.m. in Bangkok.

Thailand’s SET Index gained 0.3 percent. Bloomberg News

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Friday, August 26, 2016

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Clinton’s gold rush: $18M raised on three-day swing

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Japan’s floating wind farm Bloomberg News

Japan expanding floating wind farm amid increasing global race

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apan’s ambition to lead in the development of floating wind turbines is facing stiff competition from rivals in Europe—most notably from France—as companies and governments press to lower costs and prove the technology can rival other sources of clean energy.

At the center of Japan’s effort is a demonstration project off the coast of Fukushima, north of Tokyo. The largest f loating turbine project of its kind at the moment consists of a 2-megawatt turbine, a 7-MW turbine, a substation and a 5-MW model, which was towed into place last month and is expected to begin generating power soon.

T he projec t , f u nded b y Japa n’s M i n i st r y of E conomy, Tr a d e a n d I n d u s t r y, i s b e i ng de ve loped b y a 10 - member consor tium, including M it subi sh i Heav y I ndu st r ies Ltd . a nd H it ac h i Ltd . O ne of t he goa l s i s to show whet her f loat i ng of fshore w i nd c a n be com merc i a l ly v i able.

“Japan is completely behind Europe” in the development of wind turbines, said Takafumi Shigemura, who’s overseeing the project for Marubeni Corp., the Japanese trading company that leads the consortium. “But we are ahead in making floaters to build up our expertise, and there are many docks for shipbuilding available. So we have an advantage.”

The Fukushima project’s 5-MW turbine, the last of the turbines to be installed, is made by Hitachi.

The turbine has been moored and testing will begin as early as next month before it becomes fully operational later this year.

$499M The amount Japan’s trade and industry ministry has so far set aside for the Fukushima floating windturbines project Seaborne construction

Given Japan’s relative lack of expertise in seaborne construction compared with European rivals experienced in offshore oil-andgas development, costs tend to be high, said Tsukasa Sato, a deputy director at the new and renewableenergy division for the trade and industry ministry. “The task is to study how to reduce cost,” Sato said.

That’s not easy for a project that’s testing various technologies for the first time. The 7-MW turbine supplied by Mitsubishi Heavy, which deploys a hydraulic drive train instead of mechanical gears, is expected to restart in January, after tests led to extra construction work, the company said by e-mail.

Globally, investment in floating offshore wind was a fraction of that for turbines fixed to the bottom of the sea. The floating offshore market is valued at $490 million to

date, including both demonstration projects and a commercial venture off the coast of Scotland that’s yet to produce power.

T hat compares w ith $113.4 bil lion invested in traditiona l offshore w ind far ms w ith concrete foundations on the bottom of the seabed, according to data compiled by Bloomberg New Energ y Finance (BNEF).

Floating offshore wind is likely to remain a bit player. By 2020, $530 million more is expected to be funneled into floating offshore globally, while $50 billion will be added to fixed-bottom, according to BNEF. Japan’s trade and industry ministry has so far set aside ¥50 billion ($499 million) for the Fukushima project, which is now in its fifth year.

Though costly, the payoff for Japan may be great. The resource-poor nation has 500 gigawatts of potential floating wind capacity, according to a June 2015 report by Carbon Trust, an environmental group.

Japan first plied the waters of offshore floating wind off Nagasaki in southwestern Japan, where a pilot project saw the installation of a 2-MW turbine in October 2013. In Europe two demonstration projects are under way with the 2-MW Hywind project 10 kilometers off the southwest coast of Norway and Portugal’s 2-MW WindFloat program.

France emerging

A few more projects are soon expected to come online that will exceed Fukushima’s 14 MW. Scotland ’s 30-MW Hywind project, now under construction, has secured financing and is expected to go online in 2017, accord ing to Tom Har r ies, a wind analyst for Bloomberg New Energ y Finance.

A 25-MW project in Portugal is in the process of securing backing, and may go online around 2018.

Meanwhile, France has the potential to be a big player. The country

has awarded financial support to two floating projects, each with 24 mw of capacity, which are to be commissioned by 2020, according to Harries.

“Besides a few demonstration turbines, Japan is yet to show any clear support for floating wind on a larger scale,” Harries said. “To grow and sustain a floating wind industry, Japan will have to demonstrate more transparency on support for future projects and on a longer time horizon,” he said, adding that France is planning another auction for floating projects.

In Japan operators of the Fukushima project have said installation of the first 2-MW turbine cost about ¥2 million a kilowatt.

Even with offshore wind operators winning more favorable tariffs compared with onshore projects, costs must still come down to at least ¥500,000 a kilowatt, Marubeni’s Shigemura said.

Getting permission to develop offshore wind is also a hurdle, with local fishermen and others potentially claiming a say in the matter, Shigemura said.

“For developers, this poses a risk,” he said.

Fukushima findings

Below are some of the findings from the Fukushima demonstration project so far: The world’s first floating substation, set up to increase transmission efficiency, has been trouble-free since its installation in 2013, said Takeshi Ishihara, a professor at the University of Tokyo who has been leading the project.

A V-shaped design has been shown to reduce the number of components needed for the floating structure on which a turbine is installed, allowing for a 40-percent reduction in cost a megawatt, according to Ishihara. A winch fixed to the floater to pull up mooring chains eliminates the need to deploy a crane, boosting work efficiency and safety, according to the professor. Bloomberg News

Kiwis’ another world-first: Pizza delivery by drone

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ew Zealand led the world when it gave women the vote and introduced inflation targeting. Now it’s claiming another world-first: pizza delivery by drone. Domino’s Pizza Enterprises Ltd. has joined forces with US-based self-proclaimed “flying robot” operator Flirtey for the world’s first commercial drone pizza delivery, the fast-food company said on Thursday.

Domino’s will start testing the service in New Zealand later this year and is also looking at using drones in Australia, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Japan and Germany.

“We’ve always said it doesn’t

make sense to have a 2-ton machine delivering a 2-kilogram order,” Domino’s Group CEO Don Meij said in a statement. “The reach that a drone offers is far greater than other current options, which are restricted by traffic, roads and sheer distance.”

Companies worldwide are increasingly looking to drones as a viable and more efficient delivery option, with Amazon announcing plans to use them for small packages once safety and regulatory hurdles have been cleared.

New Zealand last year introduced new aviation rules to regulate and enable the use of drones for commercial purposes.

The government has also reviewed laws for driverless vehicles and is “actively promoting New Zealand as a test bed for new transport technology,” Transport Minister Simon Bridges said in a separate statement welcoming the trial.

Out of the air

Domino’s said it envisages people ordering pizzas using an app on their smartphone and the drones zeroing in on the phone’s GPS signal. They will fly at an altitude of approximately 60 meters and the customer will be notified as the delivery approaches. The pizzas are then lowered out of the air, ensuring the drones remain a safe distance

from the public. “Customers will be excited by a drone delivering their pizzas from the store to their door,” Meij said. The initiative hasn’t been met with universal approval.

“What about the pizza delivery jobs?” Green Party transport Spokeman Julie Anne Genter said in a tweet. “The government is now teaming up with big corporates to replace your jobs with robots.”

While pizzas have reportedly already been delivered by drone, inc lud ing by a restaurant in Mumbai, Domino’s said its New Zealand trial would be “the first commercial drone-delivery service in the world” for any product.

Bloomberg News

EDWOOD CITY, California—Hillary Clinton mingled with Hall of Fame basketball player Magic Johnson and Apple CEO Tim Cook, vamped in a photo booth with actor Justin Timberlake and dined with some of California’s richest families on what was likely the most lucrative fund-raising swing of her presidential campaign.

The Democratic presidential candidate raised $18 million on a three-day trip through California, or roughly $270,000 an hour.

The visit to the West Coast comes amid a prosperous August for Clinton’s campaign, with the candidate and her surrogates hosting at least 54 events over the final two weeks of the month, according to a fund-raising schedule obtained

by The Associated Press.

A weekend trip to Cape Cod featured stops at seaside estates and a Sunday “summer celebration” with the pop star Cher.

Clinton is trying to use the relatively quiet month of August, when voters are more focused on vacation than politics, to fill her campaign war chest.

In the Golden State many of her events were at well-worn stops on the Democratic money trail. In Los Angeles she stopped

by Johnson’s Beverly Hills compound, where she spoke to the 500 supporters gathered outside.

Then she headed a few house down the street to entertainment

executive Haim Saban’s sprawling property, where she was feted at a 100-person dinner on grounds that included some of Saban’s lighted animal-shaped topiary. The price of admission: $50,000 a plate.

President Barack Obama had visited the same homes in 2013.

But unlike Obama, who allows reporters to obser ve some of his opening remarks to donors, Clinton leaves the press waiting outside in vans and guesthouses, giving no hints at what she might be telling some of the country’s most powerful people.

Behind closed doors, Clinton soothed the wor r ies and answered the questions of some of her most ardent backers.

At an intimate Bay Area dinner for 30, one donor asked about “healthers,” likening the unfounded rumors about Clinton’s health to the so-called birthers who questioned Obama’s birthplace.

Outside the Piedmont mansion, a crowd of children and their parents waited over two hours for Clinton, chanting her name in the chilly night air.

C linton emerged f rom the home and, for about a few brief moments, campaigned. She made her way down the hastily assembled police line, shaking hands, snapping selfies and admiring the homemade signs.

Then it was back in the motorcade to prepare for another busy day raising money. AP

No-recession generation brings complacency, Australia says

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ustralia’s 25-year run without a recession is fostering a complacent attitude toward the economy and preventing the prudent budget management needed to avert trouble, Treasurer Scott Morrison said.

In his first major economic speech since the government was returned with a razorthin majority, Morrison said on Thursday a generation has grown up not seeing unemployment above 10 percent, mortgage rates at 18 percent or inflation as a problem.

He warned the budget must be returned to the black to insulate against future shocks and private investment had to increase to boost the economy’s productive capacity.

“I recognize that in the absence of a ‘recession we have to have,’ or the threat of ‘becoming a banana republic,’ achieving necessary change will be more frustrating and more difficult,” Morrison said in a speech at a Bloomberg business breakfast in Sydney. “But it is no less necessary, and achieving it this way is far better than the alternative.”

The treasurer appeared to be channeling the central bank chief and urged Australians to ask themselves “a few hard questions.”

Gov. Glenn Stevens similarly suggested this month it was time for a “hard-nosed” discussion about reform. Morrison’s task is tough: he wants to fix the budget hole without raising taxes or cutting spending in an electorate that refuses to give up services.

Meanwhile, the political class has largely gone cold on making the case for economic reform to underpin growth.

Morrison is arguing the government’s 10-year program of steadily lowering the corporate-tax rate—which it took to the July election—will boost firms’ profits sufficiently to encourage higher wages and boost hiring.

S&P Global Ratings last month cut the outlook on Australia’s “AAA” credit score to negative from stable, saying the federal election result potentially dented the government’s prospects for reining in a deficit forecast to reach A$37.1 billion ($28.2 billion) next year. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last week said he was introducing an “Omnibus Bill” to parliament that bundles together more than A$6 billion of savings proposals.

Three scenarios

Morrison sketched out three scenarios on the budget. The first two involved the upper house passing different levels of savings measures and their impact on the bottom line and debt pile. In the third case—which he conceded isn’t likely—nothing is passed.

“The worst-case scenario will see our gross debt exceed A$1 trillion in a decade,” he warned. “In all three scenarios the budget does not return to balance, and over the medium term, we are moving away from that goal and not toward it, as major expenditure items” like a national disability support program, come into effect. In the speech, Morrison also called on Australia to avoid raising the “drawbridge” in relation to free trade, foreign investment and immigration, which have served the country well. He reiterated these policies generate jobs and drive growth.

Morrison himself is at the center of a debate on whether Australia is becoming less receptive to foreign investment— particularly from China. He vetoed a Chinese-led group’s bid for the iconic S. Kidman and Co. cattle ranches that span 1.3 percent of the country’s land mass; and this month he rejected Chinese offers to buy Ausgrid, a major electricity distributor.

Can’t hide

“We cannot pull the doona over our head by taking false comfort in renewed protectionism. Rather than secure our economic future, it will cost it dearly,” he said, using an Australian term for a bed covering.

Australia has more than A$3 trillion of foreign investment, with an annual inflow of around A$200 billion, Morrison added.

In 2015 Australia’s global expor t volumes, including tourism and international education, delivered around A$363 billion to the economy and accounted for around 19 percent of GDP and 1.3 percent of annual growth, he said.

Yet, political paralysis over budget repair and economic reform has largely left the burden of supporting the economy on the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), which this month cut interest rates to a record-low 1.5 percent. It’s trying to boost consumption at home and keep a lid on the currency to allow tourism and education firms to compete internationally.

December cut?

The Australian dollar has gained more than 10 percent since a mid-January trough and bought 76.20 US cents at 10:43 a.m. in Sydney.

Traders are pricing in a 47-percent chance of an interest-rate cut at the RBA’s final meeting of the year in December.

Morrison warned Australia could wind up heading down the path of many of its developed-world peers, whose rate ammunition is exhausted and who lack fiscal firepower because of excessive debt.

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Experts consider beds, Google to measure the economy

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or an example of the problems with the standard measure of economic growth, look at beds. Or media.

Beds account for a tiny share of GDP, even though sleep is tremendously useful to consumers, according to an academic paper presented at a conference this week in Dresden, Germany.

The authors made the point to illustrate their research into free online media and its impact, or lack of it, on official GDP figures.

The wide-ranging conference hosted by the German statistics office shines a spotlight on some of the weaknesses in the century-old measure of economic well-being, arguably bolstering the case for a hunt for better methods.

Another paper looks at divergences between GDP per head and median household income—one way of gauging inequality—and concludes there is currently no clear choice for assessing trends in living standards.

Take Facebook or Google. Those and other online services provide hundreds of millions of people with information and entertainment. Yet, because they’re free, the contribution to the economy isn’t currently captured in national accounts.

Noting that some economists believe GDP growth is “badly underestimated” by the failure to include free media, Leonard Nakamura of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and Jon Samuels and Rachel Soloveichik of the US Bureau of Economic Analysis tried to work out a number. They imputed production and consumption figures for advertising-supported media by treating the business model as a series of barter transactions—YouTube videos for ad views.

On the face of it, the results may disappoint critics of GDP. Including free media would have boosted real output in the US between 1998 and 2012 by just 0.009 percent a year.

Yet, the researchers also made a fundamental point: GDP is not synonymous with usefulness.

“There are many areas of the economy in which consumer spending on an activity is much lower than total utility for that same activity,” they said. “For example, sleeping occupies about one-third of total time and provides enormous utility. Yet, beds represent a very small fraction of consumer spending.”

Another paper presented at the conference, by the Institute for New Economic Thinking’s Brian Nolan, Max Roser and Stefan Thewissen, looks at GDP per capita.

The measure has outpaced median household income in recent decades in many developed nations, particularly in the US. The authors say that has prompted calls for the income of a “typical” household to receive more focus in assessing trends in economic well-being.

After analyzing data from 27 countries, they found that, in fact, shrinking household size often contributed more to the divergence than income inequality.

T hey ultimately concluded that there is currently no single best method to assess a country’s prosperity.

Only a careful case-by-case examination of individual indicators in each economy will allow researchers to judge whether efforts to promote real income growth have been a success or failure, they said.

In other words, GDP may have risen from humble beginnings during the Great Depression to become an essential gauge for governments and central banks across the world, but that shouldn’t be the end of the story. Bloomberg News

Friday, August 26, 2016

Rescuers search for survivors in Italy quake; death toll 247

Aerial view of Amatrice in central Italy on Wednesday, as it appears after a 6-magnitude quake struck at 3:36 a.m. (0136 GMT) and was felt across a broad swath of central Italy, including Rome, where residents of the capital felt a long swaying followed by aftershocks. AP

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MATRICE, Italy—Rescue crews using bulldozers and their bare hands raced to dig out survivors on Thursday from a strong earthquake that reduced three central Italian towns to rubble. The death toll rose to 247, but the number of dead and missing was uncertain given the thousands of vacationers in the area for summer’s final days.

Residents wakened before dawn by the temblor emerged from their crumbled homes to find what they described as apocalyptic scenes “like Dante’s Inferno,” with entire blocks of buildings turned into piles of sand and rock, thick dust choking the air and a putrid smell of gas.

“The town isn’t here anymore,” said Sergio Pirozzi, the mayor of the hardest-hit town, Amatrice. “I believe the toll will rise.”

The 6.2-magnitude quake struck at 3:36 a.m. on Wednesday and was felt across a broad swath of central Italy, including Rome, where residents woke to a long swaying followed by aftershocks. The temblor shook the Lazio region and Umbria and Le Marche on the Adriatic coast, a highly seismic area that has witnessed major quakes in the past and continued to shake early Thursday with aftershocks.

Dozens of people were pulled out alive by rescue teams and volunteers that poured in from around Italy.

In the evening, about 17 hours after the quake struck, firefighters pulled a 10-year-old girl alive from the rubble in Pescara del Tronto.

“You can hear something under here. Quiet, quiet,” one rescue worker said, before soon urging her on: “Come on, Giulia, come on, Giulia.”

Cheers broke out when she was pulled out. And there were wails when bodies emerged.

90%

The percentage of the dead among those who were pulled out

“Unfortunately, 90 percent we pull out are dead, but some make it, that’s why we are here,” said Christian Bianchetti, a volunteer from Rieti who was working in devastated Amatrice where flood lights were set up so the rescue could continue through the night.

Premier Matteo Renzi visited the zone on Wednesday, greeted rescue teams and survivors, and pledged that “No family, no city, no hamlet will be left behind.”

Italy’s civil-protection agency reported the death toll had risen to 247 early on Thursday; at least 368 others were injured.

Worst affected were the tiny towns of Amatrice and Accumoli near Rieti, 100 kilometers northeast of Rome, and Pescara del Tronto, 25 kilometers further east.

Italy’s civil-protection agency set up tent cities around each hamlet to accommodate the thousands of homeless. In Amatrice the elderly and children spent the night inside

A man is pulled out of the rubble following an earthquake in Amatrice, Italy. AP

a local sports facility.

Italy’s Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin, visiting the devastated area, said many of the victims were children: The quake zone is a popular spot for Romans with second homes, and the population swells in August when most Italians take their summer holiday before school resumes.

The medieval center of Amatrice was devastated, with rescue crews digging by hand to get to trapped residents.

The birthplace of the famed spaghetti all amatriciana bacon and tomato sauce, the city was full for this weekend’s planned festival honoring its native dish.

Guests filled its top Hotel Roma, famed for its amatriciana, where five bodies were pulled from the rubble before the operation was suspended when conditions became too dangerous late on Wednesday. Among those killed was an 11-year-old boy who had initially shown signs of life.

Officials initially said about 70 guests were staying at the hotel, but later lowered the number to about 35, many of whom got out in time.

Carlo Cardinali, a local fire official taking part in the search efforts at the hotel, told Sky TG24 that about 10 guests were still missing.

Amatrice is made up of 69 hamlets that teams from around Italy were working to reach with sniffer dogs, earth movers and other heavy equipment.

In the city center, rocks and metal

tumbled onto the streets and dazed residents huddled in piazzas as more than 200 aftershocks jolted the region throughout the day, some as strong as magnitude 5.1.

“The whole ceiling fell but did not hit me,” marveled resident Maria Gianni. “I just managed to put a pillow on my head and I wasn’t hit, luckily, just slightly injured my leg.”

Another woman, sitting in front of her destroyed home with a blanket over her shoulders, said she didn’t know what had become of her loved ones.

“It was one of the most beautiful towns of Italy and now there’s nothing left,” she said, too distraught to give her name. “I don’t know what we’ll do.”

Residents, civil-protection workers and even priests dug with shovels, bulldozers and their bare hands to reach survivors. A steady column of dump trucks brought tons of twisted metal, rock and cement down the hill and onto the highway toward Rome, along with a handful of ambulances bringing the injured to Rome hospitals.

Italy’s national blood drive association appealed for donations to Rieti’s hospital.

Despite a massive rescue and relief effort—with army, Alpine crews, carabineri, firefighters, Red Cross crews and volunteers, it wasn’t enough: A few kilometers north of Amatrice, in Illica, residents complained that rescue workers were slow to arrive and that loved ones were trapped.

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“We are waiting for the military,” resident Alessandra Cappellanti said. “There is a base in Ascoli, one in Rieti, and in L’Aquila. And we have not seen a single soldier. We pay! It’s disgusting!”

Agostino Severo, a Rome resident visiting Illica, said workers eventually arrived after an hour or so. “We came out to the piazza, and it looked like Dante’s Inferno,” he said. “People crying for help, help.”

The US Geological Survey reported the quake’s magnitude was 6.2, while the Italian geological service put it at 6 and the European Mediterranean Seismological Center at 6.1.

The quake had a shallow depth of between four and 10 km, the agencies said. Generally, shallow earthquakes pack a bigger punch and tend to be more damaging than deeper quakes.

“The Apennine mountains in central Italy have the highest seismic hazard in Western Europe and earthquakes of this magnitude are common,” noted Richard Walters, a lecturer in Earth sciences at Durham University in Britain.

The devastation harked back to the 2009 quake that killed more than 300 people in and around L’Aquila, about 90 km south of the latest quake. The town, which still hasn’t fully recovered, sent emergency teams on Wednesday to help with the rescue and set up tent camps for residents unwilling to stay indoors because of aftershocks.

“I don’t know what to say. We are living this immense tragedy,” said a tearful Rev. Savino D’Amelio, a parish priest in Amatrice. “We are only hoping there will be the least number of victims possible and that we all have the courage to move on.”

Another hard-hit town was Pescara del Tronto, in the Le Marche region, where the main road was covered in debris.

Residents were digging their neighbors out by hand before emergency crews arrived. Aerial photos taken by regional firefighters showed the town essentially flattened and under a thick gray coat of dust; Italy requested EU satellite images of the whole area to get the scope of the damage.

“There are broken liquor bottles all over the place,” said Gino Petrucci, owner of a bar in nearby Arquata del Tronto, where he was beginning the long cleanup.

The mayor of Accumoli, Stefano Petrucci, said a family of four had died there, one of the few young families who had decided to stay in the area. He wept as he noted that the tiny hamlet of 700 swells to 2,000 in the summer months, and that he feared for the future of the town.

“I hope they don’t forget us,” he told Sky TG24.

President Barack Obama, speaking by telephone to Italian President Sergio Mattarella, said the US sent its thoughts and prayers to the quake victims and saluted the “quick action” by first responders, White House Spokesman Josh Earnest said.

A 1997 quake killed a dozen people in central Italy and severely damaged one of the jewels of Umbria, the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi, filled with Giotto frescoes.

The Franciscan friars who are the custodians of the basilica reported no immediate damage from Wednesday’s temblor.

Pope Francis skipped his traditional catechism for his Wednesday general audience and instead invited the thousands of pilgrims in Saint Peter’s Square to recite the rosary with him. He also sent a six-man squad from the Vatican’s fire department to help with the rescue. AP

A8

Friday, August 26, 2016 • Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

The World BusinessMirror

Syria retains chemical weapons program, OPCW inspectors say

W

ASHINGTON—Inspectors working in Syria have detected the presence of previously undeclared chemical warfare agents, suggesting President Bashar al-Assad hasn’t given up his capabilities to wield such weapons and casting a shadow over an achievement claimed by the Obama administration.

Samples collected by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) at multiple sites in Syria revealed chemical agents that Syria never declared after it agreed in 2013 to turn over all its stockpiles for destruction and join the Chemical Weapons Convention, according to a two-page summary of a confidential OPCW report that was given to the United Nations Security Council.

“The Secretariat considers that many of the explanations provided by the Syrian Arab Republic are not scientifically or technically plausible,” OPCW Director

General Ahmet Uzumcu said in the report. “At present, Syria has not yet adequately explained the presence of indicators of four chemical-warfare agents.”

The report’s findings add to concerns that Syria lied about the size and extent of its chemical weapons program after the 2013 agreement.

That would pose a liability for President Barack Obama, who touted the deal, worked out with Russia’s help, as justification for his decision to back away from military action to enforce a “red line” he proclaimed after Assad used chemical weapons in his country’s civil war.

In January of this year, the

OPCW announced that it had verified the destruction of all the chemical stockpiles that Syria had declared as part of the USRussia deal. The new report from the group, which was founded in 1997 to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention, raises questions about the completeness of that declaration.

“We’ve been pleased that the Assad regime’s declared weapons stockpile has been rounded up” and destroyed, White House Spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Wednesday. However, the situation in Syria “has been murky for some time,” he said.

The report is the result of work done by the OPCW’s Declaration Assessment Team, which was sent to Syria to verify its submissions as part of its accession to the convention and its claim that it abandoned its stockpiles.

The new information “does not resolve outstanding issues,” according to the report, which said questions about Syria’s chemical weapons have “increased steadily over time.” The findings were reported earlier by Foreign Policy magazine.

The report describes a pattern of incomplete or contradictory accounts and a lack of access to high-level officials. As a result, it

said, the OPCW team “cannot fully verify” that Syria is meeting its commitments under the chemical weapons convention.

While the report’s contents hadn’t previously been announced, officials from the US and other countries who received it have discussed parts of it publicly. In a statement to an OPCW meeting on July 12, Kenneth Ward, the US ambassador to the organization, said the report indicated “Syria has never truly accepted the obligations or the ideals of the Chemical Weapons Convention.”

“The only constant in this process has been Syria’s refusal to be open and transparent about the full extent of its chemical weapons program,” Ward said. “Syria has engaged in a calculated campaign of intransigence and obfuscation, of deception and of defiance.”

Syria has faced repeated accusations that it used chemical weapons in violation of the treaty.

An OPCW team is expected to release a report in the coming days on its investigation into Syria’s alleged use of chlorine against its own people. While chlorine is a common chemical that isn’t banned, its use as a weapon is prohibited under the convention.

Bloomberg News/TNS

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Turkey launches major attack in Syria, targeting Kurds, IS

I

STANBUL—Turkey launched its biggest military operation in Syria on Wednesday in an effort to force Islamic State (IS) militants away from its border and to deter further advances by Syrian Kurds allied with Turkish separatists.

The air strikes against jihadist positions around the town of Jarablus, reported by the prime minister’s office, were backed by Turkish special-forces soldiers on the ground, according to CNNTurk. While the troops were working to help open a corridor for Syrian rebel forces on the border, Turkey hasn’t begun a ground operation, the network said, citing military officials it didn’t identify.

The operation marks a major escalation in Turkey’s involvement in Syria, just weeks after it defeated an attempt by sections of the military to topple the government.

At the weekend, a suicide bomber said to be linked to IS killed at least 54 people at a wedding in Turkey’s largely Kurdish city of Gaziantep, the latest in a series of attacks. Syrian Kurds have been seeking to link their enclaves by wresting control of major towns and villages along the frontier with Turkey from IS. That has alarmed Ankara, which fears it will embolden the nation’s own restive Kurds.

“Turkey is doing the right thing by shelling ISIS [Islamic State in Iraq and Syria] but for the wrong reason and that is purely to prevent the Kurds advancing,” Dlawer Ala’Aldeen, founding president of the Middle East Research Institute, said by phone from Erbil. The intervention could undermine the war against IS, he said, as “the Kurds have proven to be the most effective force on the ground.”

The operation’s launch coincides with US Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to Turkey to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Speaking in Ankara, Erdogan said the offensive targeted both the jihadists and Kurdish fighters, vowing Turkey would “never kneel down.” The US will provide air support to Turkey if it’s planning a major operation

54

The number of people killed by a suicide bomber at a wedding in Turkey over the weekend

against IS around Jarablus, said a senior administration official, who could not be named in line with government policy. The offensive, which the US had been discussing with Turkey, intended to push IS further inside Syria and create a buffer against Kurds if they move further north, the official said.

The United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war through activists on the ground, said Turkey has deployed tanks and minesweepers to cut the roads leading to Jarablus, a city of 30,000, to make way for Free Syria Army rebels.

Kurdish PYD leader Saleh Moslem said in comments via Twitter that Turkey is “in Syrian quagmire” and will be “defeated” along with Islamic State.

Moslem’s comments shows the group’s only aim is to carve out a separate homeland instead of fighting against IS, Turkey’s Foreig n Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said later in televised comments in Ankara. Jarablus is one of the last major towns that IS controls along the Syrian-Turkish border and has been a key staging area for transporting militants in and out of Turkey. Earlier this month, the USbacked Syria Democratic Forces seized Manbij, which is about 32 kilometers south of Jarablus, from IS. Bloomberg News/TNS

Soldier who killed 5 Dallas officers showed PTSD signs

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Protesters against United States military action in Syria shout during a demonstration in front of the White House in Washington in September 2013. AP/Carolyn Kaster

US in fresh bid of cooperation with Russia to solve Syria’s woes

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A S H I N G T O N —T h e Obama administration is launching a fresh bid to enlist Russia as a partner in Syria despite more than a month of dashed hopes, as the situation on the ground becomes more volatile and uncertain with the introduction of Turkish ground forces.

As the military picture grows more chaotic and complicated by the day, Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later this week to try to hammer out a diplomatic initiative that would see greater cooperation that could lead to a resumption in talks on a political transition.

Before talks can begin, though, US officials say it is imperative that Russia use its influence with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to halt attacks on moderate opposition forces, open humanitarian aid corridors, and concentrate any offensive action on the Islamic State group and other extremists not covered by what has

become a largely ignored truce.

Those goals are not new, but recent developments have made achieving them even more urgent and important, according to US officials. Developments include military operations around the city of Aleppo, the entry of Turkey into the ground war, Turkish hostility toward US-backed Kurdish rebel groups, and the presence of American military advisers in widening conflict zones Expectations are low, however, particularly given how efforts to forge a new US-Russia understanding have fallen short virtually every month for the past five years. At the same time, the administration is not of one mind regarding the Russians.

The Pentagon has publicly complained about getting drawn into greater cooperation with Russia even though it has been forced recently to expand communication with Moscow.

Just last week the US had to call for Russian help when Syrian

warplanes struck in an area not far from where US troops were operating on the ground.

As the administration continues to pursue a strateg y of partnering with a hodgepodge of local fighters against the Islamic State (IS) group without getting pulled deeper into Syria’s civil war or rupturing relations with Turkey, Kerr y will meet Lavrov in Geneva on Friday. He will press Russia for help on reestablishing the fractured nationwide truce with a focus on A leppo and bringing food, med icine and ot her suppl ies into besieged communities.

“We want to be very measured in our expectations as we go forward into this meeting, but we believe the meeting is worth having,” State Department Spokesman Elizabeth Trudeau said on Wednesday. Yet, the only tangible indication that the meeting is worth having seems to be that it has been scheduled. “The fact that we’ve scheduled a meeting is

a good sign,” Trudeau said. “We’ll see what happens.” Kerry and Lavrov will be meeting just days after Turkish forces allied with Syrian Arab rebels and backed by US air power pushed into Syria to retake Jarablus, a border town held by IS militants, which has the potential to further muddle an already confusing picture on the ground.

T his move is sig nificant as it marks Nor th At lantic Treat y Organization member Turkey’s most overt incursion into Syria.

But it also puts Turkey on a path toward potential confrontation w ith Kurdish fighters in Sy r ia who the United States is suppor ting in their fight against t he Isl a m ic St ate g roup a nd have been the most effective force batt ling IS militants in nor ther n Sy r ia.

The Turks are adamant that the Kurds not advance as they have a long-running fight with Kurdish insurgents on their side of the border. AP

he Army reservist who killed five Dallas police officers last month showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD) after returning home from Afghanistan in 2014, but doctors concluded that he presented no serious risk to himself or others, according to newly released documents from the Veterans Health Administration.

Micah Johnson had sought treatment for anxiety, depression and hallucinations, telling doc tors that he experienced nightmares after witnessing fellow soldiers getting blown in half. He also said he heard voices and mortars exploding, according to the documents obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act. “I try to block those out, but it is kinda hard to forget,” Johnson told his care provider, according to the documents.

Johnson, 25, was the sniper who targeted the officers at the conclusion of a peaceful march on July 7 in downtown Dallas, where demonstrators were protesting fatal police shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana.

Armed with an assault rifle, he took multiple positions as he fired. Hours later, authorities used a bomb-carrying robot to kill him. During his deployment, Johnson was largely confined to base in an area of Afghanistan that had seen heavy combat but that was relatively quiet when his unit arrived in November 2013, according to his former squad leader.

Upon his return to the US nine months later, Johnson told doctors he was experiencing panic attacks a few times a week, including once while at Wal-Mart, where there was an

unspecified conflict that required a police response, the records said. “ Ve te r a n s t ate s h e a r i n g a l l t h e noises, fights and police intervening caused him to have palpitations, ‘My heart felt like someone was pinching it while it was beating fast,’” the records state. Johnson said he began shaking, felt shor t of breath and got chills following the Wal-Mart incident.

The records do not show that Johnson was formally diagnosed with PTSD. The type of screening that he underwent is typically a first step to determine if the patient should be referred for further assessment to a mental health professional, said Joel Dvoskin, a clinical and forensic psychologist in Tucson, Arizona.

Doctors eventually decided that Johnson presented a low risk for suicide or for hurting anyone else.

Johnson was “not acutely at risk for harm to self or others,” according to a medical record from a visit on August 15, 2014. The patient was “not felt to be psychotic by presentation or by observation.”

The reservist who specialized in carpentry and masonry told health-care providers he had lower-back pain and was avoiding “crowds of people and when in the public, scanning the area for danger, noting all the exits, watching everyone’s actions.”

“I feel like I can’t trust all of these strangers around me,” Johnson told his doctor, who noted that he had taken to drinking since his return to Dallas, consuming three to four shots of vodka up to three times a week. “It’s hard for me to be around other people and I am so angry and irritable.” AP

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The World BusinessMirror

Friday, August 26, 2016

A9

Iran’s unique system allows payments for kidney donors

Doctors remove a kidney from a patient at Modarres Hospital in Tehran, Iran. In Iran a unique system allows those in need of a transplant to buy a kidney. The program, which has seen Iran’s wait list for kidneys effectively drop to zero, has been championed by some Western doctors as a way to cut time for lifesaving transplants. AP/Ebrahim Noroozi

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EHRAN, Iran—The whirling hum of a dialysis machine could have been the soundtrack to the rest of Zahra Hajikarimi’s life but for an unusual program in Iran that allows people to buy a kidney from a living donor.

Iran’s kidney program stands apart from other organ-donation systems around the world by openly allowing payments, typically of several thousand dollars. It has helped effectively eliminate the country’s kidney-transplant waiting list since 1999, the government says, in contrast to Western nations, like the United States, where tens of thousands hope for an organ and thousands die waiting each year.

Critics warn the system can prey on the poor in Iran’s long-sanctioned economy, with ads promising cash for kidneys. The World Health Organization and other groups oppose “commercializing” organ transplants. Some argue such a paid system in the US or elsewhere could put those who cannot afford to pay at a disadvantage in securing a kidney if they need one.

But as black-market organ sales continue in countries like India, the Philippines and Pakistan and many die each year waiting for kidneys, some doctors and other experts have urged America and other nations to consider adopting aspects of Iran’s system to save lives.

“Some donors have financial motivations. We can’t say they don’t. If [those donors] didn’t have financial motives, they wouldn’t... donate a kidney,” Hashem Ghasemi, the head of the patient-run Dialysis and Transplant Patients Association of Iran, told The Associated Press. “And some people just have charitable motivations.”

The AP gained rare access to Iran’s program, visiting patients on dialysis waiting for an organ, speaking to a man preparing to sell one of his kidneys and watching surgeons in Tehran perform a transplant.

A l l of t ho s e i nt e r v ie w e d stressed the altruistic nature of the program—even as graffiti scrawled on walls and trees near hospitals in Iran’s capital advertised people offering to sell a kidney for cash. As far as organ donations go, kidneys are unique.

While people are born with two, most can live a full, healthy life with just one filtering waste from their blood. And although a donor and recipient must have a compatible blood type, transplants from unrelated donors are as successful as those from a close relative.

In addition, kidneys from a living donor have a significantly better long-term survival rate than those from a deceased donor.

Iran started kidney transplants in 1967 but surger ies slowed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran, in part due to sanctions. Iran allowed patients to travel abroad through much of the 1980s for transplants—including to America.

But high costs, an ever-growing waiting list of patients and Iran’s grinding eight-year war with Iraq forced the country to abandon the travel-abroad program. In 1988 Iran created the program it

has today. A person needing a kidney is referred to the Dialysis and Transplant Patients Association, which matches those needing a kidney with a potential healthy adult donor. The government pays for the surgeries, while the donor gets health coverage for at least a year and reduced rates on health insurance for years after that from government hospitals.

Those who broker the connection receive no payment. They help negotiate whatever financial compensation the donor receives, usually the equivalent of $4,500. They also help determine when Iranian charities or wealthy individuals cover the costs for those who cannot afford to pay for a kidney.

Today, more than 1,480 people receive a kidney transplant from a living donor in Iran each year, about 55 percent of the total of 2,700 transplants annually, according to government figures. Some 25,000 people undergo dialysis each year, but most don’t seek transplants because they suffer other major health problems or are too old.

Some 8 percent to 10 percent of those who do apply are rejected due to poor health and other concerns.

The average survival rate of those receiving a new kidney is between seven to 10 years, though some live longer, according to Iranian reports.

In the United States about a third of kidney donations come from living donors. The average kidney from a deceased donor lasts 10 years, while one from a living donor averages about 15 years, according to Dr. David Klassen of the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the US transplant system.

Recipients of living-donor kidneys in the US fare better in part because they haven’t been on dialysis as long before their transplant.

For Hajikarimi, a 52-year-old Iranian mother of two, a transplant can’t come soon enough. Her kidneys failed, with doctors finding higher-than-normal protein levels in her urine, and she has been on dialysis for four months. In that time, physicians determined Hajikarimi can undergo a transplant and the nonprofit group managing her case began looking for a donor, a process that typically takes up to six months. Then the recipient and the donor meet to agree to the financial arrangements before the surgery.

Iran says its system safe guards against black-market organ sales by having the nonprofit groups handle all arrangements and hold money in escrow until after the surgery. The government’s Health Department also mu st approve t he su rger ies, which take place in licensed and monitored hospitals. Foreigners are now largely banned from taking part, squelching the possibility of medical tourism.

However, it’s clear that some donors are motivated by the cash payout. Inflation and unemployment remain high in Iran even after last year’s nuclear deal with world powers that saw some sanctions lifted. One man said he applied to sell one of his kidneys to pay off his debts. Debtors can be imprisoned in Iran. AP

This artist’s impression shows a view of the surface of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the solar system. Proxima b is a little more massive than the Earth and orbits in the habitable zone around Proxima Centauri, where the temperature is suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. M. Kornmesser/ESO

Scientists spot a rocky, Earth-like planet that could have liquid water

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ale blue dot, meet pale red dot.

Astronomers have spent decades scouring the skies looking for Earth-sized planets around distant stars. And now they’ve found one, sitting smack in the habitable zone of our nearest stellar neighbor.

The planet Proxima b, described in the journal Nature, could be one of the first planets outside our solar system where humans could go searching for life.

“It’s the closest star, it has a potentially habitable world—I just think it’s amazing,” said Cornell astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger, director of Carl Sagan Institute, who was not involved in the study.

“This is just such a great exciting time to live in, because we’ll figure out how we fit into all of this—and hopefully, also, if we’re alone in the universe.”

The discovery comes months after the announcement of Breakthrough Starshot, an initiative to build and send tiny spacecraft to the nearest star system within the coming decades.

“The technology today is sufficient to begin thinking about these things,” Pete Worden, the initiative’s executive director and former head of National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Ames Research Center, said at a news briefing. The finding now gives the project a tantalizing planetary target.

“We are really excited, and, to use the US term, pumped, about this discover y,” Worden said.

“We’re on our way.”

Proxima b circles Proxima Centauri, the stellar third wheel to the binary pair of stars known as Alpha Centauri AB. It’s the closest star to our solar system, sitting just 4.2 light-years away, but as an Mdwarf—a dim, red, low-mass star— it can’t be seen with the naked eye.

The newly discovered planet

11.2 The number of Earth days Proxima b needs to complete a revolution around its star

is estimated to hold at least 1.3 Earth masses, which means it’s probably a rocky world like our own. And while it circles roughly 4.3 million miles from the surface of its star (taking just 11.2 Earth days to complete a revolution) Proxima Centauri is small and dim, with just 12 percent of the sun’s mass and 0.15 percent of its luminosity. At that distance, it’s still temperate enough for water, theoretically, to remain stable on the surface, assuming there’s a protective atmosphere.

Scientists discovered Proxima b, thanks to what’s known as the radial velocity method, which takes advantage of the Doppler effect.

As a planet moves around its star, it tugs on the star just a little bit, causing it to wobble back and forth. When the wobble brings the star closer to us, the light reaching us is squeezed, making it bluer. When the star is pulled slightly away from us, the light is stretched, making it redder. By using that color shift to track that wobble, astronomers can determine the mass of the planet tugging on it.

In some ways, this is simpler to do with M dwarfs; because they’re much smaller than stars like our sun, they’re also more easily pulled this way and that by their planets.

And since Proxima b is so close to the star, it circles very frequently and should be easy to pick out.

That’s not to mention that Proxima Centauri, as the closest star to us, is arguably the best-studied red dwarf to date.

And yet, it took years to find the planet. That’s in large part because M dwarfs are very noisy, variable stars, whose stellar activity can drown out that telltale Doppler signal. Earlier observations made years before revealed hints of the planet, but could not decisively prove its existence.

Earlier this year, a team of astronomers, known as the Pale Red Dot campaign, studied Proxima Centauri using the European Southern Observatory’s Harps instrument, a spectrograph installed on the 3.8-meter telescope at La Silla in Chile.

Using other telescopes, including the ASH2 telescope at the San Pedro de Atacama Celestial Explorations Observatory and the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, they monitored the star’s brightness to make sure that its variability wasn’t producing the tantalizing exoplanetary signal.

They found that, at times, Proxima Centauri was moving toward and away from Earth at about 3 miles per hour—a typical human walking pace. An unseen planet, they realized, must be tugging on this star.

“All the pieces together is what allows us to be very, very sure that we have it right this time,” Guillem Anglada-Escude of the Queen Mary University of London said at a news briefing on his team’s findings.

As it turns out, there was also another signal mixed into the data—one that might potentially hint at the existence of a larger, more distant planet circling Proxima Centauri.

Could life exist on Proxima b?

There are several unknowns that make it impossible to say right now, scientists said. The planet is tidally locked to Proxima Centauri; one side of the planet may permanently face the star while the other half remains shrouded in darkness. But that shouldn’t be a deal-breaker for the existence of life: If there is an atmosphere, it should redistribute heat across the surface, the researchers said.

But as an M dwarf, Proxima Centauri is also far more mercurial a star than our own, prone to frequent flares and bursts of x-rays that would send down 400 times the x-ray flux that Earth receives from the Sun. (In the news briefing, the study authors said they’d been conservative and overstated the risk; it was more likely on the order of 100 times.) And x-rays could eat away at the atmosphere, even if it does exist.

And it’s also not clear whether water could have truly survived on the planet over the eons; it depends on how violent the star was in the past, and where the planet actually originated—both of which remain a mystery.

“This is the biggest question mark for the question of whether it’s an Earth-like planet,” said study coauthor Ansgar Reiners of the University of Gottingen.

“Whether there’s water, we do not know; that entirely depends on the formation, on the history of the planet. And this will be subject to further studies.”

The good news: Proxima Centauri is so close that it should be relatively easier to start probing these questions. Some teams have already started.

If life were on this planet, it probably survived either underground or deep within its hypothetical oceans, Kaltenegger said.

But perhaps, it could have eventually evolved to handle the extreme radiation that may reach the surface, she added, perhaps by using biofluorescence (an idea she and a colleague flesh out in a paper posted to arXiv). Los Angeles Times/TNS

A10 Friday, August 26, 2016 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

editorial

Adopt Portugal’s ‘legal drug’ policy?

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he easiest solution to a crime problem is to make legal whatever is currently a criminal activity. Of course, that sort of defeats the whole purpose of criminalizing an activity that society would like to stop. However, the idea of what constitutes a “criminal activity” is fluid not only over time but from place to place.

Iran executes homosexuals caught in acts of sodomy, while other nations enshrine “gay marriage” as a human right. You would think that after 5,000 years of relatively civilized society, humans would have a reasonable standard of acceptable and nonacceptable behavior. No such luck.

Morality aside, even the relatively simple “Thou Shalt Nots” of the JudeoChristian principles are subject to vast interpretation, explanation and discussion. However, if you look at it closely enough, there seem to be a general pattern of pragmatism behind most rules and laws. Traffic flows better if everyone keeps to his or her own side of the road. It is probably better for society if men are held financially responsible for the children they sire rather than making the group pay for the results of every guy’s one-night fling. But the drug issue is more complicated, since this is a so-called victimless crime until it isn’t victimless. There have been many recent calls for a change in the Philippines to make drugs—if not legal—at least for possession and personal use to be “decriminalized” with only civil penalties and requirements. Instead of putting people in jail, the government and society should pay for drug users to be rehabilitated from using dangerous drugs.

That sound all well and good, but memories are short. In the United States 100 years ago, drugs like marijuana, cocaine and heroin were totally legal. In fact, “Heroin” is not a scientific name but a legally registered brand name for a cough syrup patented by German pharmaceutical company Bayer.

The only reason heroin was made illegal was when New York City found out in 1906 that almost 10 percent of the adult population was addicted.

Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001, and is used as the shining example of what all nations should do. It has the lowest percentage of drug-overdose deaths in Europe. But here again, it is all a trade-off.

In 1995 8 percent of Portuguese teenagers had tried recreational drugs. By 2011 that percentage had gone to 16 percent and with children under 13, it was the highest in Europe. Even while touting the benefits of decriminalization, the Portuguese government says the 40-percent increase in homicides since 2001 is related to drug use and HIV transmission related to intravenous drug use is among Europe’s highest. Even Dr. Joao Goulao, the chief architect of Portugal’s decriminalization policy, has said, “It’s very difficult to identify a causal link between decriminalization by itself and the positive tendencies we have seen.”

There is no simple or easy solution to the rampant drug-abuse problem. And looking for “simple and easy” solution may cause greater harm.

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A sort of requiem for barangay elections

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After the sea change wrought by the national and local elections in May, it would have been nice to see if our electorate could sustain its zeal for change at the level of their communities where, if we’re being honest, such changes would have been felt most acutely. Instead, our barangays will be left largely untouched.

Having said that, I have to add that I listened to the arguments for the postponement of the elections and—as a citizen, a voter and a taxpayer—I wasn’t convinced.

Two arguments essentially led the charge: first, the need to extend the term of barangay officials to five years; and, second, the desire for the war on drugs and criminality not to lose momentum. In my opinion, neither cuts the cheese.

I recall no statistical or empirical evidence being presented to prove that a five-year term would be better than a three-year term, other than the vague generalization that a longer term would give

drugs doesn’t appear to fare much better. It might sound commonsensical to say that the cops have better things to do than secure the elections, until you realize that the elections take all of one day—counting perhaps another—and that cops are, by and large, really asked only to provide police presence to keep the peace. I don’t believe that the Philippine National Police is such a one-trick pony that it cannot pursue its war and maintain order in some schools on election day. After all, both activities are ultimately in the service of the Filipino people.

And then there were the other arguments.

The ban on public works, they say, lasts too long and will be detrimental to public service. This

James Jimenez

spox

f course, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) will adopt a neutral posture on the question of whether the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections should be postponed. Its duty is to conduct such elections as are provided for in the laws, and it is merely appropriate for it to leave the question of the wisdom of those laws to Congress. officials more time to get their acts together. But if that were the main argument, then why wouldn’t a six-year term be even better than a five-year term? Or, indeed, why wouldn’t a four-year term suffice?

In the end, it would seem that five years is nothing more than the sweet spot right in the middle of a second three-year term. A goldilocks compromise, if you will, to satisfy the hankering for more power without prickling the sensitivities of the electorate.

The argument about diverting police attention from the vastly more important business of pursuing the war on criminality and

argument conveniently forgets that, apart from the gun ban, most of the bans in effect for the barangay elections won’t last much longer than about two weeks. I’ve seen public works languish for three times that long even without the benefit of a ban, so what are they talking about?

And besides, all bans are subject to exemptions that can—and are often—granted by the Comelec upon proper application.

We could go on in this vein, but sadly, it seems like the question is moot. It looks like the barangay elections—and the SK elections with it—is destined to be shelved.

Too bad.

After the sea change wrought by the national and local elections in May, it would have been nice to see if our electorate could sustain its zeal for change at the level of their communities where, if we’re being honest, such changes would have been felt most acutely. Instead, our barangays will be left largely untouched, and citizens wanting change out corrupt and inefficient barangay officials will simply be cavalierly told “eh, di kasuhan nyo.”

James Arthur B. Jimenez is director of the Commission on Elections’s Education and Information Department.

Opinion BusinessMirror

opinion@businessmirror.com.ph

Friday, August 26, 2016 A11

The drug war and the immiseration of communities Leonardo A. Lanzona Jr.

EAGLE WATCH

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he Duterte administration proudly cited a report from the Philippine National Police (PNP) public information office that crime incidence posted in July 2016 was only 50,817, compared to 56,339 in the same month last year. As a result, a 31percent decrease in index crimes in July 2016, recorded at 11,800, compared to 17,105 in July 2015, was achieved.

With this evidence, the government, as well as Sen. Alan Peter S. Cayetano, would want us to believe that the promised change of the government has already arrived. This decrease in crime index comes at the heels of the unrelenting war on drugs that had been imposed even before the inauguration of the President. Reminiscent of the martial-law era, the administration, in effect, is presenting the observed decline in criminality and the consequent peace and order as a justification for the alleged violations of human rights caused by this drug war. How sound is this justification?

Crime in this case is defined beyond illegal-drug trafficking. The PNP identifies index crime as those that are serious and occur with sufficient frequency. Last month the number of crimes against persons declined to 11,800 from 17,105.

Incidents involving physical injury also decreased to 2,847 from 4,168 last year.

Furthermore, the number of property-related crimes went down by 40.30 percent to 6,630 from 11,106. The number of robbery incidents plunged to 6,630 from 11,106, while that of theft decreased to 4,230 from 7,168. Car-theft incidents went down to 705 from 1,109, while that of cattle rustling decreased to 47 from 72. Murder incidents, nevertheless, increased by 68 percent to 1,271 in July from 755 last year. Homicide incidents also increased to 214 from 197.

Rape incidents, meanwhile, only slightly dipped to 838 from 879. It would appear then that much of the reduction in crimes is really from less street crimes. Indeed, heinous crimes, such as murder, are increasing during this administration.

What has not been thoroughly established is how all of these crimes can be linked to drug use and, eventually, to the PNP drug operations.

The economic theory of crime posits that would-be criminals rationally weigh in the expected costs and benefits of breaking the rules. If the probability of being caught or the level of fine is too low, then the expected costs might be outweighed by the benefits. In this case, crime does pay and crime can be rational.

By this logic, small street crimes, including drug abuse, are committed more in poor areas, where even seemingly low gains of such crimes are perceived to be substantial enough to justify their commission.

Because of their poverty, these people perceive the benefits of crime as far exceeding its costs.

What is clear is that the PNP drug-war operations have focused mainly in many poor areas where such small crimes are rampant.

Known as “Oplan Tokhang”, police station commanders instruct barangay captains to submit a list of residents who are into illegal drugs, whether as pushers, dealers, users or couriers. The police intelligence unit will then verify the report and check if these persons are, indeed, involved in drugs because barangay captains, who themselves may be behind the illegal-drug trade, can list down the names of their rivals. Upon verification, the operations begin.

The problem with this approach is that the poorer communities are made vulnerable to the abuses that

What has not been thoroughly established is how all of these crimes can be linked to drug use and, eventually, to the PNP drug operations. The economic theory of crime posits that would-be criminals rationally weigh in the expected costs and benefits of breaking the rules. If the probability of being caught or the level of fine is too low, then the expected costs might be outweighed by the benefits. result from such a procedure. Having no legal means of protecting themselves, poor households are more accessible to the visits and raids adopted by the police. Criminals living in higher income residences have various options, both legal and illegal, to escape the police. According to President Duterte himself, “Mahirap ang marami [na nahuhuli] kasi they are an easy target.”

Thus, street crimes are down because the police have cracked down fundamentally on poor communities. This invokes the so-called broken windows theory. The theory is based on an observation made in the early 1980s by social scientists that, when a building window is broken and left unrepaired, the rest of the windows will soon be broken, too.

An unrepaired broken window is a signal that greater crimes can be committed. More profoundly, in environments where unruly behavior goes unchecked—where prostitutes visibly ply their trade or the homeless accost passersby—more serious street crime flourishes.

Oplan Tokhang succeeds in reducing crime because the drug trade is correlated to the whole crime problem through poverty. As economic theory suggests, drug use does not cause or precede criminality; instead, they are caused simultaneously by poverty.

President Duterte once claimed that poverty is not an excuse for committing crime. But, broken windows-style policing has a decidedly antipoor bias and initiates from class discrimination. Poorer neighborhoods receive a disproportionate amount of police attention. In the process, rampant lawlessness is encouraged in poor communities, as friction between the police and the residents is created in these areas.

Evidence shows that drug arrests can also spillover to vigilante attacks and other forms of violence, leaving behind poorer, more violent and more damaged communities.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no widespread uproar against this turn of events. Despite varied calls for respecting human rights and ending this drug war, many still say they want their broken windows fixed. While we may trust the PNP that they are doing what they can to solve criminality, trust should neither be blind nor total. Surely, as a decent and civilized nation, we should be able to find a more effective, humane and just way in dealing with this problem.

Leonardo Lanzona Jr. is professor of Economics at the Ateneo de Manila University and a senior fellow of Eagle Watch, the school’s macroeconomic research and forecasting unit.

Can there be spirituality without religion?

Tito Genova Valiente

annotations

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he spirit has always been tied to a belief system. The notion of an act that is beyond the physical—the so-called transcendental—has always pushed us to reach for religion. An institution that contains belief in gods, goddesses and divinities contain, as well, the great contradictions of devils and damnations.

Talk of religion and you bring in a cosmos of amazing range and contents. The universe of Virgin Mothers, mediators, prophets and saints inspires awe. Religion, thus, becomes anything that inspires awe.

Religion thus becomes, most of the time, a source of questions rather than answers. When the confusion happens within a religion, there is little problem. When the confusion is brought about by religions that contradict each other, then the awesome and enchanting return to its puzzling point.

An international conference is coming to the city of Naga from September 6 to 9. It asks the same question: Can there be spirituality without religion.

The question is not academic. It is more of a plea and a practical query.

If all religions teach spirituality, can there be a spirituality that is not closeted in religion. It appears that as a lesson to humanity and civilization, religion has united and broken apart communities. Can we, therefore, extract the spirituality in that religion and, like in a complex, pull out the

6 stars Siegfred Bueno Mison, Esq.

THE PATRIOT

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hen people find out that I am a Mison, most of them would ask if I am related to General Salvador Mison.

A few would ask me how I am related to NBI Director Mariano Mison. On rare occasions, they would ask if I am related to UE Prof. Ione Mison.

The event where I was invited to speak last Friday, organized by the Good Governance Advocates and Practitioners of the Philippines, was one of those rare occasions.

The speaker before me, Security Exchange Commission Director Justina Callangan, happened to be a member of the UE faculty during her younger years. When I told her that I, too, was part of UE faculty, she happily remarked, “Like mother, like son.” Another rarity since the more common adage would be, “Like father, like son” or “like mother, like daughter.” I guess, in my case, friends can say that I am both like mother and father. After all, I was in the Army like my father and I enjoy teaching like my mother.

By the time this article will be published, my brother Salvador Jr. would have taken his oath as a threestar general in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), equaling the accomplishment of my father. Combined, the Misons now have contributed six stars to the Republic. (Some

would say it should be 10 stars instead of six, since my rank as commissioner of the bureau was equivalent to four stars in the military). Salvador Sr. was a vice chief of staff of the AFP; Salvador Jr. is currently the deputy chief of staff of the AFP. I share these milestones to highlight the accomplishments, not of Salvador or Salvador Jr., but of Ione, the six-star general in the house.

During peacetime, the highest rank in the AFP is a four-star general.

During wartime, five-star generals may be appointed by the Commander in Chief. I refer to my mother Ione as a six-star general. After all, she managed to raise six children to rise as “stars” in their chosen profession.

My jovial and forever jolly mother may also be the six-star general in the Mison household since she holds the highest rank both in peacetime and wartime, so to speak.

Ione will always publicly declare that “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” Since my father was assigned in the hinterlands of Basi-

said notion of the spiritual with the other notions of the spiritual contained in other religions?

The premise in this advocacy is that, if all religions bear with them spirituality, can it be possible that where religions diverge from each other, spirituality finds a new manner of interacting or fusing with other “spirituality.”

The history of humankind has been through wars of religions.

The insistence of the primacy of spirituality over names of religions is really built on the fact that religions outside of religions had created more conflicts than other conflicts. Religion can push people to battle for the sake of their kin or neighbors, whereas spirituality can convince people that they are similar under the skin.

There had been forums on Christianity and Islam. The listeners during these assemblies always leave the hall pleasantly shocked that the two religions have really many things in common more than we could imagine and accept.

Was it Salvador de Madariaga, Spanish writer, historian and peace advocate, who said: “Religion is the

relatively modest dogma that God is not mad?”

If that is an acceptable definition of religion, it is, indeed, propitious to explore a world where we can find spirituality without religion.

Whichever religion do we belong to, we pray to a God, or gods, or serpents, or stone images that we believe to be good and not insane.

The conference is titled “Asian Conference on Justice, Knowledge, and Spirituality.” The speakers come from different countries. They will explore ways to develop materials on the religious diversity in Asia. Fr. Wilmer S. Tria, parish priest of Saint Jude Parish in Naga City, writer and academic, is the convenor in the Philippines for the conference.

The conference will culminate with the participants observing the Traslacion, a land procession that will bring the centuries-old image of the Nuestra Señora de Peñafrancia from its shrine in Basilica Minore to the Naga Metropolitan Cathedral. Only men are allowed to carry or escort the Virgin on the carrosa.

lan, Jolo, Cotabato and Samar during my childhood years, my mother practically singlehandedly managed to raise all her six children as professionals and responsible members of society. I remember the times when my mother would give family updates to my father, who was based in Mindanao at that time, via UHF press-to-talk radio...”Roger, buddy, everything is ok here, over!”. Acting like a single parent, my mother attended most, if not all, of her children’s school activities on her own, from graduation to recognition ceremonies. She would make us do chores, take afternoon naps and observe evening study hours.

She would impose her “no TV rule” during school days and ensure we eat a balanced diet despite meager finances from my father’s income from the Army. She literally “rocked our cradle” as she was the good cop, bad cop at the same time.

But the greatest virtue I learned from my mother is patience. Until now, she teaches me how to patiently wait for things to unfold in His time and to patiently wait for the opportunity to take action. When I encountered frustration as I tried to reform the bureau, my mother will always tell me one word, Serenity.

Over Sunday lunch, as she serves me my favorite dinuguan (chocolate meat for my American friends) she would tell me that there are just some things I cannot change. Ione always taught her children to be optimistic, especially when things don’t go their way. We should appreciate all trials that come our way as they make us better persons

in the process, my mom tells me.

Joyce Mayer said: “Patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting.” I encountered a lot of trials in life, both personal and professional, these past few years. I left public service with my integrity and personal dignity intact, regardless of what others may say. And now, I learned to patiently wait. “Yet, those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run and not get tired. They will walk and not become weary” (Isaiah 40:31).

In his book Great Days with the Great Lives, Charles Swindoll said four things happen to people who wait: 1.

They gain new strength as whenever they turn to the Lord in their period of weakness, they actually exchange weakness for His strength; 2. They get better perspective like soaring eagles that can spot a prey from a distance; 3. They store up extra energy as they will run and not get tired; 4.

They will deepen their determination to persevere, as they will never become weary. I guess my mom’s style of rocking the cradle is close to how Harper Lee puts it in her best-selling book To Kill a Mockingbird, when she said, “Things are always better in the morning.” While much praise has been given to my father Salvador (who turns 84 in a few weeks) and my brother Salvador Jr. (who is currently the youngest three-star general in the AFP), a few friends and family can adamantly say that both may not have gotten their respective three stars in the AFP were it not for the six-star general in the house!

E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com.

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Friday, August 26, 2016

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Fisherman finds world’s ‘biggest’ pearl

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US . . .

Continued from A1

“Right at the heart of China’s conduct in the East China Sea and the South China Sea over the last few years has been a conviction that the US doesn’t have the resolve to push back hard against China’s prodding,” said Hugh White, a professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University in Canberra and author of The China Choice. If TPP fails, “it will encourage them to think that America is not willing to pay the costs and risks required to push back against it and that will encourage China to test it.”

Trump has raised the prospect of cutting military assistance to allies like Japan and South Korea, and starting a trade war with China. Whether he would or could make good on that is unclear— the checks and balances of Congress might rein him in. But he has found a strong populist rump in the electorate for his views. While Clinton would probably seek to preserve ties with the region, she would need to manage the political noise at home.

U n d e r Pre s i d e n t B a r a c k Obama, the US embarked on a military and economic rebalance to Asia, with the policy articulated by then-Secretary of State Clinton in 2011. Aimed at assuring Asia of America’s commitment to the region, China has painted it as a bid to contain it. The policy has had two main pillars —a military buildup in the western Pacific, and US advocacy for the TPP. While the arbitration court’s July ruling in favor of the Philippines’s challenge to China’s South China Sea claims was a diplomatic setback for Xi, it hasn’t stopped China from militarizing reclaimed reefs, according to Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative photographs that show reinforced hangers that seem designed to house jet fighters. It has also flown bombers over the disputed waters, announced joint naval exercises with Russia and Defense Minister Chang Wanquan has called for preparation for a “ people’s war at sea.”

See “U.S.,” A2

Filipino fisherman on western Palawan island found possibly the world’s biggest pearl, which he had hidden under a bed for more than 10 years as a lucky charm, a tourism official said on Thursday.

Aileen Amurao, Puerto Princesa City tourism officer and the fisherman’s relative, said on Thursday the man gave her the 34-kilogram (75-pound) pearl that’s 2.2 feet (67 centimeters) long and 1 foot (30 centimeters) wide last month for safekeeping, because he was moving to a new place.

Amurao said the pearl was sitting on a bench in her home for weeks until she found time to check the Internet, and she was shocked to learn that it could be the world’s biggest.

The fisherman, his father and brothers found the irregular-shaped pearl inside a giant clam that stuck to their boat’s anchor when they sought refuge from a squall on a reef, Amurao said.

The family hid the pearl in a bag under a bed, rubbing it with their hands before going out to sea in the belief it would bring them luck, she said.

this photo provided by the Puerto Princesa Tourism Office shows residents looking at the giant pearl, measuring 30 centimeters wide (1 feet), 67 centimeters long (2.2 feet) and weighing 34 kilograms (75 pounds), on display in the lobby of the Puerto Princesa City Hall in Puerto Princesa City, Palawan. AP

The fisherman did not want to be identified, she said.

Amurao said that she, the fisherman and his family decided to turn over the pearl to the city mayor, who had it displayed in a glass case in Puerto Princesa City Hall to attract tourists. The fisherman will receive a still-unspecified reward from the local government, Amurao said, adding that he never

intended to sell it.

Experts from the University of the Philippines have expressed interest in inspecting the pearl, but she said no date has been set for their visit.

It would not be the first time giant pearls have been found off Palawan.

A 9-kg (20-pound) pearl, called Pearl of the King, was found in Palawan in 1939, and is on display in a hotel at the central island-resort of

Boracay. Local media have reported that fishermen had recovered other huge pearls in the province, including one reportedly weighing 24.75 kg (54 pounds).

The Guinness World Records lists a 718.50-carat Baroque abalone pearl as the biggest of its kind, measuring 14 cm (5.5 inches) in length, 8 cm (3.1 inches) wide and 4 cm (1.6 inches) thick. AP