Businessmirror December 15, 2018

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BRINGING BACK THE

BALANGIGA BELLS Used by Filipino fighters to toll the start of an attack on American invaders, historic ‘war booty’ back home in Eastern Samar after 117 years.

AN American flag flutters as three church bells seized by American troops as war trophies more than a century ago arrive on December 11, 2018, in Pasay City. American occupation troops took the bells in 1901 from a Catholic church following an attack by machete-wielding Filipino villagers, who killed 48 US troops in the town of Balangiga on Samar island in one of the US Army’s worst single-battle losses of that era. The bells are revered by Filipinos as symbols of national pride. AP/BULLIT MARQUEZ

W

By Rene Acosta

HEN the bells of Balangiga in Eastern Samar toll anew this weekend, after being muted by distance more than a century ago, their clanging sound would not be simply to signal the start of the midnight Mass in the nine-day run-up to Christmas, but to relive the glorious sound of victory, something that the local parishioners last heard some 117 years ago.

“It’s a victory,” exclaimed Nemesio Duran, 81, who is from the town of Balangiga. For him, it’s a triumph for two reasons: one, because the bells are back to where they originally belong, and second, the aspirations of their forefathers to break free from American colonial rule have been fulfilled.

“But we are not mad at the Americans, we are happy,” said Duran, a direct descendant of two of the key people who organized and led a ragtag group of bolo-wielding men who attacked American troops in Balangiga on September 28, 1901. The attack killed dozens of Americans, prompting a bloody retaliation that razed the town as a US officer ordered

the targeting of all Filipino males above the age of 10. In the end, the bells were seized as war booty by the vengeful Americans.

“A dark page in the history of Filipino-American war has been closed,” Duran said on Tuesday, as the bells were flown home by a US military plane.

Thursday.

“Long live the Philippines!” He shouted as the second of the three bells was being pulled out from its wooden case exactly an hour after a US C-130 Hercules plane bearing the historical relics in two cases touched down at the Villamor Air Base in Pasay City.

Hurray!

Breakfast with a ‘cut’

DURAN, head of the Balangiga Historical and Cultural Foundation, led a few residents from the town who traveled all the way to Manila to witness the return and turnover of the stolen bells to officials, led by Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea and Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, on

RECOUNTING snippets of what happened during the fateful morning of September 28, 1901, Duran said his grandfather, police Sgt. Pedro Duran, and Capt. Valeriano Abanador, who was the chief of the Balangiga Police, led the 500 bolo-wielding men in attacking the Americans inside the church’s

compound in Balangiga.

“They struck at the Americans who were at the mess hall for their 7 a.m. breakfast, and they were only armed with bolos,” he said.

The mess hall was located in front of the church’s convent.

The slaughter pushed on up to the convent, where inside, more Americans were killed by the revolting locals led by Abanador and Duran’s grandfather.

Duran said the attackers were assembled from the villages of Giporlos and Quinapondan and from the Balangiga town proper, and from Laoang in what is now Northern Samar, which is about 36 minutes away from Balangiga.

Continued on A2

‘Big brother’ may be keeping tabs on you through that cell phone

By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Natasha Singer, Michael H. Keller & Aaron Krolik | New York Times News Service

T

HE millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails—each one following the path of an anonymous cellphone user.

One path tracks someone from a home outside Newark, New Jersey, to a nearby Planned Parenthood. Another represents a person who travels with New York’s mayor during the day and returns to Long Island at night.

Yet another leaves a house in upstate New York at 7 a.m. and travels to a middle school 14 miles away, staying until late afternoon

each school day. Only one person makes that trip: Lisa Magrin, 46, a math teacher. Her smartphone goes with her.

An app on the device gathered her location information, which was then sold without her knowledge. It recorded her whereabouts as often as every two seconds, according to a database of more than See “Big Brother,” A2

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AT least 75 companies receive anonymous, precise location data from apps whose users enable location services to get local news and weather or other information, The New York Times found. THE NEW YORK TIMES

Source: BSP (December 14, 2018 )

News

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‘Big brother’ may be keeping tabs on you through that cell phone Continued from a1

1 million phones in the New York area that was reviewed by The New York Times. While Magrin’s identity was not disclosed in those records, The Times was able to easily connect her to that dot.

The app tracked her as she went to a Weight Watchers meeting and to her dermatologist’s office. It followed her hiking and staying at her ex-boyfriend’s home, information she found disturbing.

“It’s the thought of people finding out those intimate details that you don’t want people to know,” said Magrin, who allowed The Times to review her location data.

Like many consumers, Magrin knew apps could track people’s movements. But as smartphones have become ubiquitous and technology more accurate, an industry of snooping on people’s daily habits has spread and grown more intrusive.

The biz

AT least 75 companies receive anonymous, precise location data from apps whose users enable location services to get local news and weather or other information, The Times found. The database reviewed by The Times—a sample of information gathered in 2017 and held by one company—reveals people’s travels in startling detail, accurate to within a few yards and in some cases updated more than 14,000 times a day.

These companies sell, use or analyze the data to cater to advertisers, retail outlets and even hedge funds. It is a hot market, with sales of location-targeted advertising reaching an estimated $21 billion this year. IBM has gotten into the industry, with its purchase of the Weather Channel’s apps.

Businesses say their interest is in the patterns, not the identities, that the data reveals about consumers. They note that the information apps collect is tied not to someone’s name or phone number but to a unique ID. But those with access to the raw data—including

employees or clients—could still identify a person without consent.

They could follow someone they knew, by pinpointing a phone that regularly spent time at that person’s home address. Or, working in reverse, they could attach a name to an anonymous dot, by seeing where the device spent nights and using public records to figure out who lived there.

Many location companies say that when phone users enable location services, their data is fair game. But, The Times found, the explanations people see when prompted to give permission are often incomplete or misleading. An app may tell users that granting access to their location will help them get traffic information, but not mention that the data will be shared and sold. That disclosure is often buried in a vague privacy policy.

‘Scary’

AFTER Elise Lee, a nurse in Manhattan, saw that her device had been tracked to the main operating room at the hospital where she works, she expressed concern about her privacy and that of her patients.

“It’s very scary,” said Lee, who allowed The Times to examine her location history in the data set it reviewed.

Retailers look to tracking companies to tell them about their own customers and their competitors’.

For a web seminar last year, Elina Greenstein, an executive at the location company GroundTruth, mapped out the path of a hypothetical consumer from home to work to show potential clients how tracking could reveal a person’s preferences.

“We look to understand who a person is, based on where they’ve been and where they’re going, in order to influence what they’re going to do next,” Greenstein said.

Health care facilities are among the more enticing but troubling areas for tracking, as Lee’s reaction demonstrated. Tell All Digital, a Long Island advertising firm that is

a client of a location company, says it runs ad campaigns for personal injury lawyers targeting people anonymously in emergency rooms.

To evaluate location-sharing practices, The Times tested 20 apps, most of which had been flagged by researchers and industry insiders as potentially sharing the data.

Together, 17 of the apps sent exact latitude and longitude to about 70 businesses. Precise location data from one app, WeatherBug on iOS, was received by 40 companies. When contacted by The Times, some of the companies that received that data described it as “unsolicited” or “inappropriate.”

Consenting

COMPANIES that use location data say people agree to share their information in exchange for customized services, rewards and discounts. Magrin, the teacher, noted that she liked that tracking technology let her record her jogging routes.

Brian Wong, chief executive of Kiip, a mobile ad firm that has also sold anonymous data from some of the apps it works with, says users give apps permission to use and share their data. “You are receiving these services for free because advertisers are helping monetize and pay for it,” he said, adding, “You would have to be pretty oblivious if you are not aware that this is going on.”

But Lee, the nurse, had a different view. “I guess that’s what they have to tell themselves,” she said of the companies. “But come on.”

Lee had given apps on her iPhone access to her location only for certain purposes and only if they did not indicate that the information would be used for anything else, she said. Magrin had allowed about a dozen apps on her Android phone access to her whereabouts for services like traffic notifications.

But it is easy to share information without realizing it. Of the 17 apps The Times saw sending precise location data, just three on iOS and one on Android told users in a prompt during the permission process that the information could be

used for advertising.

Moneymaker

THE app developers can make money by directly selling their data, or by sharing it for location-based ads, which command a premium. Location data companies pay half a cent to 2 cents per user per month, according to offer letters to app makers reviewed by The Times.

Google and Facebook, which dominate the mobile ad market, also lead in location-based advertising. Both companies collect the data from their own apps. They say they do not sell it but keep it

for themselves to personalize their services, sell targeted ads across the internet and track whether the ads lead to sales at brick-and-mortar stores.

Apple and Google have a financial interest in keeping developers happy, but both have taken steps to limit location data collection. In the most recent version of Android, apps that are not in use can collect locations “a few times an hour,” instead of continuously.

Apple has been stricter, for example requiring apps to justify collecting location details in pop-up messages. But Apple’s instructions

for writing these pop-ups do not mention advertising or data sale.

Apple recently shelved plans that industry insiders say would have significantly curtailed location collection. Last year, the company said an upcoming version of iOS would show a blue bar on screen whenever an app not in use was gaining access to location data.

The discussion served as a “warning shot” to people in the location industry, David Shim, chief executive of the location company Placed, said at an industry event last year.

Bringing back the Balangiga bells

ROMAN Catholic priest Monsignor Pepe Quitorio (second from left) poses with other priests and officials before one of three church bells seized by American troops as war trophies more than a century ago, following handover ceremony on December 11, 2018 in Pasay City. American occupation troops took the bells in 1901 from a Catholic church following an attack by machete-wielding Filipino villagers, who killed 48 US troops in the town of Balangiga on Samar island in one of the US Army’s worst single-battle losses of that era. The bells are revered by Filipinos as symbols of national pride.

AP/BULLIT MARQUEZ

Continued from a1

The bell ringer

THE start of the attack was signaled by the ringing of the bells by Vicente Candeluces, a church acolyte and Duran’s grandfather from his mother’s side.

“My grandfather also played a great role in the attack, it was he who rang the bells,” Duran said.

The assault resulted in the death of 48 Americans, including two of their officers—Capt. Thomas Connell and 1st Lt. Edward Bumpus—and the wounding of at least 22 others.

The attack prompted the avenging Americans on orders of Gen. Jacob Smith to kill anybody who could carry arms and razed communities to the ground. The bells were also seized as war trophies.

Starved into submission

ACCORDING to Duran, the insurrection was carried out by the locals after they were starved by the Americans who seized their food stocks that included supplies of

rice and local potatoes. Rice and corn fields were also burned.

“They were starved; they said they will starve, and this prompted them to revolt,” he said.

In denying supplies to the residents, the US troops wanted the locals to be dependent on their “conquerors” for their food through rations, and submit to their wishes.

“They wanted them to go [to the US troops] for the rations,” Duran said, adding that instead of submitting to whims of the Americans, the locals revolted and staged the attack.

Healing

DEFENSE Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the bells, which symbolize a painful episode in the history of both countries during the Philippine-American war, are home and the healing should start.

Asked why the three church bells evoke so much emotion among the Filipinos and Americans, Lorenzana said they have become a symbol of unity and identity.

“These bells came to symbolize something precious and important to both sides. They symbolize the courage and patriotism of their soldiers whose acts they would like to perpetuate with these bells,” he said.

Duran said the return of the bells now signifies the friendship between the Philippines and America.

Moves to have the bells returned officially began in 1958 and there have been persistent efforts to take them back, with the move being spearheaded then by Eugenio Daza, whom Lorenzana described as the “leader of the band at the camp of the Americans” in Balangiga.

“He wrote a paper urging our government to request the return of the bells,” Lorenzana said.

Daza’s great grandnephew, Rep. Raul Daza, witnessed the turnover of the bells.

Lorenzana said a number of Americans also worked for the return of the Balangiga bells, and one of them is Henry Howard, who strongly lobbied under the US National Defense and Authorization Act of 2018, which was signed by President Donald Trump.

The act authorized Defense Secretary James Mattis to decide on the matter of returning the bells to Balangiga.

The pressure by Manila to have the bells was further boosted in 2017, when the then-US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, asked her counterpart, Philippine Permanent Representative to the UN Teodoro L. Locsin Jr., whether or not President Duterte would ever visit America. Locsin recalled asking the President, who said the return of the bells was his precondition for visiting. Locsin said he conveyed this message to his US counterpart.

The rest of the bells’ long journey is history—a stirring story that will surely strike a chord in the hearts of both peoples.

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

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Saturday, December 15, 2018

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Canada caught between two superpowers

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ORONTO—First United States President Donald J. Trump attacked Canada on trade. Then Saudi Arabia punished it for speaking up for human rights.

Now China has the country in its cross hairs, detaining two Canadians in apparent retaliation for the arrest of a top Chinese tech executive on behalf of the US. Canada is caught between two superpowers and taking the punishment— and its ally to the south has been conspicuously absent in coming to its aid.

“We’ve never been this alone,” historian Robert Bothwell said. “We don’t have any serious allies. And I think that’s another factor in what the Chinese are doing.... Our means of retaliation are very few. China is a hostile power.”

The two Canadians, Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat in China, and Michael Spavor, an entrepreneur who lived in northeastern China near the North Korean border, were taken into custody on Monday on suspicion of “engaging in activities that endanger the national security” of China, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Lu Kang said. Canadian consular officials have had no access to them.

Their detentions ratchet up pressure on Canada, which arrested Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of telecommunications giant Huawei, on

December 1 at the request of the United States. The US wants her extradited to face charges that she and her company misled banks about the company’s business dealings in Iran. A Canadian judge released Meng on bail on Tuesday.

The case has set off a diplomatic furor among the three nations in which Canada has been stuck in the middle.

Until now, Canada had a largely good relationship with China, forged

by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s father, late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who helped establish the one-China formula that enabled many other countries to recognize China in the 1970s. Canada acknowledged there is one government of China and does not officially recognize Taiwan.

China has since become Canada’s second-largest trading partner, after the United States. Chinese investment has powered real-estate booms in Vancouver and Toronto. And one-third of foreign

HUAWEI Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou arrives at a parole office with a security guard in Vancouver, British Columbia, Wednesday. DARRYL DYCK/THE CANADIAN PRESS VIA AP

students in Canada are Chinese. Justin Trudeau has even talked about a possible free-trade agreement with China in a bid to diversify Canada’s trade, which relies on the US for 75 percent of its exports.

But the Canadian prime minister has said little since news of this week’s arrests became public. Opposition Conservative leader Andrew Scheer said Trudeau isn’t being forceful enough with the Chinese.

“This situation demonstrates that Justin Trudeau’s naive approach to relations with China isn’t working,” Scheer said.

It’s Canada’s second dispute with a major power this year. In June, Trump vowed to make Canada pay after Trudeau said he wouldn’t be pushed around in talks to hammer out a new North American trade agreement, an unprecedented attack on America’s closest ally. Trump called Trudeau weak and dishonest, words that shocked Canadians.

Then Trump said this week that he might intervene in the Huawei case if it would help clinch a trade agreement with China, upending US efforts to separate the court proceeding from US-China trade talks and contradicting Canadian officials who said the arrest was not political.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland took a swipe at Trump, saying it was “quite obvious” any foreign country requesting extradition should ensure “the process is not politicized.”

“Normally, Canada can count on the United States to back them up on such an issue,” said Laura Dawson, a former economic adviser at the US Embassy in Ottawa and director of the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington. Dawson said it’s unusual for Washington to “leave Canada hanging high and dry.”

“President Trump has made it clear that old alliances don’t matter so much anymore,” she said. “He has made no secret of his preference for a go-it-alone approach and his lack of regard for traditional alliances.”

In years past the US might have defended Canada when it came under attack and other countries would know the US had Canada’s back. Not now. In August the Saudi government expelled Canada’s ambassador to the kingdom and withdrew its own ambassador

after Canada’s foreign ministry tweeted support for an arrested Saudi activist. The Saudis also sold Canadian investments and ordered their citizens studying in Canada to leave. No country, including the US, spoke out publicly in support of Canada.

And now the stakes are much higher. Canada is one of the few countries in the world unabashedly speaking out in defense of human rights and the international rule of law.

And Chinese trade with Canada is increasingly key as Canada looks to boost its exports in Asia as its trade with the US is threatened by Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods.

“At the beginning of Trump there was this idea that maybe the Chinese would replace the Americans” as Canada’s preeminent trade partner “but that’s just nuts,” said historian Bothwell, a University of Toronto professor.

“Relations for any smaller country with China are really grave.”

Derek Scissors, a China specialist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, called China’s actions toward Canada “thuggish.”

“You detain a Canadian because the Canadians can’t do anything. It’s bullying behavior,” he said.

Noting Canada was just following a routine extradition process with the United States, Scissors said America should be saying: ‘’’Why are you picking up Canadians?

You have a problem with us.’”

David Mulroney, a former Canadian ambassador to China, said not only the US but other Western nations should be standing up for Canada.

“It would be nice if publicly and also behind the scenes if countries like the United States, the UK, Australia and France would put in a word on our behalf and let the Chinese know how damaging this is to their reputation and to the notion that China is a safe place to work and pursue a career,” Mulroney said.

“I think a lot of foreigners in China are looking over their shoulder right now,” he added. Christopher Sands of the School of Advanced International Studies in Washington said the world took note of how Trump treated Canada during trade negotiations and how the US stayed silent when Saudi Arabia overreacted to Canada’s expression of human-rights concerns over treatment of the Saudi dissident.

“In normal times, the US sends a signal, usually discreetly, to allies to cut it out and play nice,” Sands said.

“What makes this worse is that China is lashing out at Canada not for Canada’s initiative, but for Canada’s honoring of a US warrant. The damage done by our silence in terms of alliance relations is truly awful,” he said. AP

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Manufacturing Summit 2018 tackles industry concerns

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HE Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and its attached agency for investment promotion and industry development, the Board of Investments (BOI), in partnership with the Federation of Philippine Industries (FPI), the “voice of Philippine industry,” successfully conducted the Manufacturing Summit 2018 at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) on November 22 and 23.

In what was a well-attended and insightful summit, participants from the government, academe and industry engaged in active discussion on domestic issues affecting industry growth—such as pending reforms in the Philippine incentives regime and the efforts to improve the ease of doing business in the country—as well as global concerns impacting the future of manufacturing, particularly the ongoing trade tensions between the US and China and the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez, in his keynote address, emphasized that “Holding the yearly summit is part of the DTI’s continuing commitment to sustain the resurgence of the manufacturing sector as a major pillar in our pursuit to become an industrialized nation and achieve inclusive growth in the country.”

FPI Chairman Dr. Jesus Lim Arranza underscored the importance of a thriving manufacturing sector as he mentioned that “companies can only be competitive in the world market if they have a strong domestic base.”

The first day of the summit kicked off with a fruitful discussion on fiscal incentives reforms. The Tax Reform for Attracting Better and High-Quality Opportunities (Trabaho) bill, sponsored by Quirino Rep. Dakila E. Cua, targets more job opportunities across the country by lowering corporate income-tax rates from 30 percent to 20 percent by 2029, while expanding the tax base.

Department of Finance Undersecretary Karl Kendrick Chua highlighted the uniqueness of this tax reform as it is the first time that such reform is being proposed neither as a response to external forces nor due to an economic crisis, but as investing for the country’s future.

DTI Assistant Secretary Rafaelita M. Aldaba presented how the Strategic Investments Priorities Plan is being crafted to ensure that incentives will be performance-based, targeted, time-bound and transparent. Economic activities to be included in the SIPP should, among others, bring forth a substantial amount of in-

vestments; considerably generate employment; adopt inclusive business activities and value-added production; use modern or new technology; adopt adequate environmental protection systems; address missing gaps in the supply/value chain or move up the value chain or product ladder; or promote market competitiveness. Through Trabaho and the SIPP, the government aims to make the country’s corporate tax and fiscal incentives system simple, equitable, and efficient, while at the same time ensuring support for the development of local industries and enhancing Philippine competitiveness.

The impact on the Philippines of the trade tensions between the United States and China, the country’s major trading partners, was the topic for the second session. Dr. Abdul Abiad of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) talked about the implications of the trade war, sharing there is opportunity for some manufacturing subsectors to upscale operations as a result of trade redirection.

DTI Undersecretary Ceferino S. Rodolfo discussed the crucial importance of a robust national industrial strategy to guide Philippine trade policy. He emphasized that the country’s industrial policy—one that deepens and expands local value chains—drives its trade strategy at the multilateral, regional and bilateral levels. With a growing domestic market, the country’s major challenge is addressing the expanding trade deficit by building the economy’s industrial capability.

Capping off the first day, the third session saw DTI Assistant Secretary Mary Jean T. Pacheco enlighten participants on recent government efforts to reduce red tape and improve the ease of doing business in the country. She imparted that while there is still a long way to go to be at par with model nations in the region, the Philippines is definitely making strides in improving its ranking in various competitiveness and ease of doing business indices, with the continuous support of other national government agencies.

On the second day of the summit, the fourth and fifth sessions covered innova-

tion, Industry 4.0, and industrial upgrading in the Philippines. Dr. Olga Memedovic of the United Nations International Development Organization (Unido) talked about the implications of Industry 4.0 to businesses operations and the current role being played by the government, while Henry Ling of The Dow Chemical Co. presented the view from a multinational company.

Dr. Satish Lele of Frost & Sullivan (F&S) discussed how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can adopt and benefit from Industry 4.0 technologies, while Arthur Tan of AC Industrials told the story of how a Filipino company, Integrated Micro-electronics Inc. (IMI), innovated their firm operations and seized opportunities under the Fourth Industrial Revolution in order to become a successful global Filipino company. Also, potentials and challenges for engineering services outsourcing and manufacturing electric vehicles in the country were also covered, as well as the impact of Industry 4.0 on jobs and the labor market.

The final session sought to present the prospects for the Philippine manufacturing industry in 2019 and the coming years.

It was shown that the country’s economy would sustain its growth (6 percent to 8 percent in 2019) and maintain its stable macroeconomic fundamentals. Deputy Director Dennis D. Lapid of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) stressed that a continuous and healthy policy environment should be present to help solidify sound macroeconomic fundamentals.

Dr. Alvin Ang of Ateneo’s Center for Economic Research and Development (ACERD) stressed the critical importance of the agricultural and services sectors, which can significantly affect the performance of the manufacturing sector and the Philippine economy.

Dr. Jesus Felipe of ADB shared that the country has entered a phase of rapid growth in recent years, despite a less than 10-percent share in employment of the manufacturing sector, and proposed that government policy focus on productivity growth at the level of the firm, within each sector and across the country’s regions.

In closing the summit, FPI President George S. Chua reiterated the industry’s continued support to build a strong manufacturing sector in the country.

For her part, DTI Assistant Secretary Aldaba emphasized that “Though the future is hard to predict, we need to act and innovate than to wait and do nothing.”

Now on its third year, the Manufacturing Summit is the annual gathering of stakeholders from the government, industry, and academe to discuss the state of the manufacturing sector and consider ways to maximize opportunities and address current challenges faced by the country’s industries. It is held as part of implementing the government’s Inclusive Innovation Industrial Strategy.

UNDERSECRETARY Nora K. Terrado (second from left) of the Department of Trade and Industry’s Trade and Investments Promotions Group (TIPG) turned over the 2018 Philippine Export Guidebook (PEG) Special Edition for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to DTI-ROG Undersecretary Zenaida Cuison-Maglaya (fourth from left) during the National Export Congress 2018 on December 7 at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City. They are joined by Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez (center), DTI Export Management Director Senen M. Perlada, and DTI-ROG Director and Program Manager-Negosyo Center Program Management Unit Emma C. Asusano (right).

DTI-EMB launches PHL Export Guidebook 2018 for MSMEs

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HE Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)-Export Marketing Bureau (EMB) launched the Philippine Export Guidebook (PEG) special edition for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), during the National Export Congress held on December 7 at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City.

Printed copies of the guidebook will be provided to all 1000 plus Negosyo Centers nationwide, partner commodity agencies and government agencies that regulate export and exporters organizations, among others.

Present during the ceremonial turnover of the PEG 2018 for the Negosyo Centers, were Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez, Undersecretary Nora K. Terrado of the Trade and Investments Promotions Group, Undersecretary Zenaida C. Maglaya of the Regional Operations Group, and Director Emma C. Asusano, program manager of the Negosyo Center Program Management Unit. The DTI-EMB was represented

by Director Senen M. Perlada and Assistant Directors Agnes

Perpetua R. Legaspi and Anthony B. Rivera.

The PEG 2018 is a simplified and updated reference on export business. It covers business basics from setting up companies to actual exporting. It contained export-related law and issuances, as well as procedures, documentation requirements and processes of government agencies regulating export.

In 2015 the DTI-EMB launched the first-ever PEG, a general guide on exporting from the Philippines. This year, in support to the government’s commitment of helping MSMEs, the PEG was updated and rewritten for members of said sector, which are currently into export business and to all those that may be interested to venture into exporting.

The public can also access and download an electronic copy of the Philippine Export Guidebook (PEG) 2018 edition at www.dti.gov.ph and www.tradelinephilippines.dti. gov.ph, an interactive online platform for exporters and foreign buyers alike.

DTI brings Trabaho, Negosyo, Kabuhayan Seminar to Australia

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HE Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), through the Philippine Trade and Investment Center (PTIC) in Sydney, Australia, held the first Trabaho, Negosyo, Kabuhayan (TNK) Entrepreneurship Seminar on December 8 at the Property Investors Alliance Office in Sydney Olympic Park.

An initiative of the DTI, in partnership with the private sector, academe, civil society organizations, and other government agencies, the seminar aims to generate more jobs and promote entrepreneurship among overseas Filipinos.

Through the TNK seminar, the DTI hopes to provide them with necessary information, contacts, and other resources that can help them succeed as entrepreneurs.

Alma Argayoso, Philippine Commercial consul to Australia, said the TNK seminar was part of a series of entrepreneurship seminars planned for Australia.

“We aim to instil the values of saving and investing so that our kababayan [countrymen] and their families back home would have the means to improve their quality of life, while contributing to the development of the economy by investing in viable economic activities in the Philippines,” she said during the opening of the seminar.

“We hope to demystify entrepreneurship success and popularize entrepreneurship as an alternative to unemployment, job-seeking or migration,” she added.

Among the viable economic activities and business opportunities discussed during the seminar were franchising, property investment and agribusiness.

Meanwhile, Consul Emmanuel Guzman of the Philippine Consulate General in Sydney assured Filipinos in Australia of

full support for their business ventures. He also urged them to apply for dual citizenship and avail themselves of their full rights and privileges as Filipino investors.

The PTIC in Sydney invited other distinguished speakers to mentor aspiring Filipino entrepreneurs at the seminar.

Eric Maliwat, a freelance broadcaster, spoke about the importance of embracing the right mindset and attitude.

He said it was essential to identify a marketplace need or problem in starting a business and to seek inspiration from successful entrepreneurs.

Justin Wang, managing director and founder of The Property Investors Alliance (PIA), shared his successful story as a Chinese migrant to Australia in the 1990s. Back then, Wang came to Australia with limited skills and very poor English and took on a variety of odd jobs.

He later decided to invest in property to secure a better future for himself and his family. Wang eventually created a platform offering an integrated solution for the property industry while helping average individuals to access property for investment purposes. This unique platform is delivered by his company to great success. From a humble company with one table and one employee, the PIA now generates more than $1-billion sales annually, with over 500 employees who are also business owners.

“Filipinos have better skills than I. They speak English well and are educated. I have no doubt that they can succeed but a change in mindset is important. They have to decide for themselves and not depend too much on the government,” said Wang during his talk.

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Editor: Jun Lomibao • mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph

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EFENDING champion Tanauan begins its quest for a back-to-back crown when the Philippine Junior Women’s (18-under) Softball Championship opens on Saturday at the Sto. Niño Softball Field in Marikina City.

The weeklong tournament, supported

by Cebuana Lhuillier, drew 20 teams from all over the Philippines and is part of the Amateur Softball Association of the Philippines (Asaphil) program in women’s softball, which the country has been dominating in this part of the world.

Asaphil will also use the event as basis in

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SKY is a €12.5-billion turnover company, so €30 million a year for the team is pocket change.

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HE CEO of the Chinese Global Cycling Project, Tim Kay, said that he would be open to taking over Team Sky when the broadcaster pulls out at the end of 2019.

Kay is currently in the process of setting up what would be the first Chinese WorldTour team for the 2020 season.

Kay hopes to create a selffunding team by developing a number of businesses, in which the riders and investors could also be shareholders. It would require a collaboration with the Chinese cycling federation, but Kay believes the project could work with the current Team Sky structure.

“Nothing has been spoken about, but I would look at the opportunity with some seriousness,” Kay told Cyclingnews. “[The project] could be done with the current Sky setup.”

Team Sky announced on Wednesday morning that it is looking for a new sponsor after Sky decided it would pull its sponsorship at the end of the 2019 season. Kay, a businessman, called Brailsford an “idol” and said that he felt sorry for him following the news.

“I feel sorry for Dave Brailsford with everything that he’s done for cycling. I’ve never met him but I’ve

got a lot of respect for him. He’s a bit of an idol, he looks like a decent guy,” Kay said. “I’m good friends with Shane Sutton, and I know what they’ve done and how they’ve done things. For me, I feel for him, he’s done everything right, he set everything up right.”

Team Sky currently operates by far the biggest budget in cycling, with as many as 10 riders believed to be on salaries of over €1 million a year. With several other teams struggling to find backers, it could prove a tough time as they look to secure their finances for

Team Sky currently operates by far the biggest budget in cycling, with as many as 10 riders believed to be on salaries of over €1 million a year. With several other teams struggling to find backers, it could prove a tough time as they look to secure their finances for the 2020 season ahead of next year’s Tour de France.

RUSSIA’S Kirill Prigoda breaks the world record in the men’s 200-meter breaststroke at the 14th FIna World Swimming Championships in Hangzhou. AP

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AUSANNE, Switzerland—Under pressure from a privately run rival competition and a class action suit by Olympic and world champion swimmers, Fina has pledged

the 2020 season ahead of next year’s Tour de France.

Kay has had plenty of experience in the field over the last year as he works to provide the financial basis of his own team, though he believes that James Murdoch, who played a major role in Team Sky’s funding, will help the team secure their future.

“These deals don’t get written overnight. I’m 14/15 months into mine, it takes ages. That kind of money doesn’t get signed off and people don’t just sign these checks off,” Kay told Cyclingnews.

“Sky is a €12.5-billion turnover company, so €30 million a year is pocket change.

So, to find another €30 million you would need to go big again and find something like Amazon.

Why would Amazon advertise into a market that they already control? They don’t need cycling to promote them, that’s the problem. That’s why China is a

to start a new elite race series.

The three meetings next March to May will invite Olympic and world champs, world record-holders, and top-ranked swimmers in

four-lane races, Fina said on Thursday.

The “Fina Champions Swim Series” will pay $3.9 million in total prize money— almost double the prize fund for the 25-meter pool world championships currently being staged in China.

“By creating this additional elite competition, Fina will generate a true swimming show, where sport presentation and stars’ promotion are key concepts for a successful meet,” its president, Julio Maglione, said in a statement.

Fina announced the plan days after three top swimmers filed an antitrust suit in a Californian court against the Switzerlandbased swim body’s alleged anticompetitive practices.

It was filed on behalf of Hungarian great Katinka Hosszu and two Americans, Olympic gold medalist Tom Shields and world champion Michael Andrew after Fina threatened to ban swimmers who compete in events linked to the proposed International Swimming League.

The privately owned league, backed by Moscow-based businessman Konstantin Grigorishin, aims to operate outside Fina’s

great opportunity, because these guys want to break into these markets. Amazon has never broken into the Chinese market, and my platform gives them this opportunity to break those barriers down.

“They have a lot of doors, James Murdoch loves the team.

There were rumors of him going to Tesla. Would Tesla support them, possibly? To a billionaire, €30 million is nothing, but would they sell more cars?”

While Kay hopes that his team will eventually fund itself, Kay needs to look for the initial investment to get things off the ground. He hopes to operate on a similar level to Team Sky, but it is hard work to part investors with their money.

“I want to be a self-funding team by 2029, and my figures allow me to do it with a budget of 40 million,” he said. “I’m looking for close to the Sky funding, €320 [million] to €400 million over 10 years, but the only way that I’ve been able to speak about this kind of money is on the fact that I can limit their risk by giving their money back. It will be a return on investment that I’ve produced, so if cycling did go wrong then I could still give them their money back.”

On what it would mean if Team Sky were to leave the sport, Kay says: “It would be the biggest thing ever.”

HE usual contenders topped their groups.

Nearly all of the top teams advanced.

Lionel Messi and Robert Lewandowski are the leading scorers.

Is it a case of business as usual in this Champions League?

Maybe not.

While there seems to be an ever-widening gap between the biggest, richest clubs and the rest, there also appears to be more potential winners than ever in a last-16 lineup that sets up what could be a thrilling knockout stage.

A look at some things that stood out in group play:

MADRID ON THE WANE

THE most dominant team in the 27-season Champions League era might be on the wane.

Real Madrid advanced as a group winner but lost home and away to CSKA Moscow and doesn’t have the same aura without Cristiano Ronaldo, who left for Juventus. The team is on its second coach of the season—a rookie in Santiago Solari—and is fourth in La Liga.

Madrid’s players have won four of the last five Champions Leagues and usually come into their own in the knockout stage in terms of game management and handling the pressure. That was when they had Ronaldo to rescue them, though.

It would be the 13-time European champion’s biggest achievement yet if it can pull through again.

ENGLISH REVIVAL

ALL four of England’s representatives have advanced for the second straight season, even if two of them—Liverpool and Tottenham—left it to their final matches.

They have deep squads, increasingly the best and most sought-after coaches, and a sheer force of numbers—25 percent of the remaining field.

Manchester City and Liverpool, in particular, should be among the favorites for the title.

Can City Manager Pep

Cyclingnews

control, involve athletes in decision making, and pay higher prize money.

“ISL takes swimmers seriously, not like Fina,” Hosszu said last Friday.

In a Fina statement on Thursday, another Olympic gold medalist who chairs its athletes commission praised the new competition.

“We will present swimming under a new perspective,” said Penny Heyns, a double Olympic champion for South Africa at the 1996 Atlanta Games. “Finally, with this unprecedented level of prize money, our swimming stars will definitively be attracted by this circuit.” AP

REAL Madrid’s Vinicius Junior reacts during his team’s Champions League Group G match against CSKA Moscow at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium in Madrid. AP

Guardiola, the outstanding coach of his generation, end what will be an eightyear personal wait to win Europe’s top prize, and for the first time away from Barcelona?

Can Liverpool Manager Juergen Klopp juggle contending in the Premier League with trying to reach a second straight Champions League final?

MIND THE GAP

THE most successful leagues in (western) Europe are becoming more successful in the Champions League.

The big four leagues— England, Spain, Italy and Germany—have 12 representatives, or 75 percent of the total. Two more come

selecting the members of the junior women’s (19-under) team for the next world women’s junior championship.

“We have shown that in women’s softball, we can compete at the world level. But for us to maintain this, we should have a good grassroots program to ensure a base of future national players—and this under-18 tournament for women serves the purpose,” Asaphil President and sportsman-businessman Jean Henri Lhuillier said.

The final will be held on December 22 in the same venue.

from fifth-ranked Ligue 1 in France, plus there is Porto from the seventh-ranked Portuguese league. Ajax is a relative outlier from the 11thranked Eredivisie in Netherlands.

No eastern European team advanced. The most eastern team in Monday’s draw? Bayern Munich. Even the final is being played in Madrid, rather than Kiev last season.

The Champions League seems truly a western affair. Teams not challenging for their national title, like Manchester United and Schalke, advanced with a game to spare. Russia is the sixth-ranked league by club performances in UEFA competitions yet for the third straight year its topseeded champion—Lokomotiv Moscow—failed to advance.

The round-of-16 lineup looks ever more like a Super League in waiting.

PRIZE MONEY SKEW

THE on-field domination of the richest teams comes in the first year of a near-40 percent hike in UEFA prize money, with more designed to go to them.

UEFA and the European Club Association designed a format to distribute €1.95 billion ($2.22 billion) among 32 teams with a new element rewarding teams for past titles.

It ensured preventing what happened two seasons ago when Leicester, a newcomer banking lucrative British television money, earned more than eventual winner Real Madrid.

This season, Madrid was sure to earn €50 million ($57 million) from UEFA before kicking a ball.

UNLUCKIEST TEAMS

NAPOLI is due a lucky break, and Shakhtar Donetsk is long overdue a home game.

Napoli had the most points—nine—of any team failing to advance after getting drawn in a group with Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool.

Napoli kicked off at Anfield on top of its group on Tuesday. After a 1-0 loss, Napoli had fallen to third, edged by Liverpool on a head-to-head tiebreaker of goals scored.

Five seasons ago, Napoli had 12 points yet didn’t advance because Borussia Dortmund and Arsenal also had 12 and better tiebreaker statistics.

With 30 minutes to play on Wednesday, Shakhtar was on course for the round of 16. Lyon tied the game and advanced instead.

The game was moved to Kiev, after Shakhtar’s previous two home games were in Kharkiv, due to martial law being imposed during the latest Russian aggression affecting Ukraine.

Shakhtar has also played in Lviv since last hosting a Champions League in its modern Donbass Arena in November 2013. Weeks later, Russian annexed Crimea and the Donbass region was affected by conflict between government forces and pro-Russia separatists that continues.

SURPRISE TEAM

THEY are young. They are fearless. They have a point to prove. It would be some story if Borussia Dortmund manages to go all the way.

Like Liverpool last season and Monaco the year before, the Champions League likes to throw up a surprise story and Dortmund might be the new darling of Europe this time round.

Top of the German league by seven points, Dortmund also won its Champions League group and conceded a competition-low two goals in six matches.

Yet, Lucien Favre’s side is better known for its attacking flair, with players like Paco Alcacer and Jadon Sancho—bought from Barcelona and Man City—particularly standing out.

Dortmund has had to rebuild after selling star players such as Ousmane Dembele and PierreEmerick Aubameyang, and it has been done wisely and boldly.

Five years after last reaching the final, Dortmund is a team to fear in the Champions League once again. AP

A6 Saturday, December 15, 2018 | Editor: Mike Besa

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By Mike Besa

INCE the ’90s, Filipino golfers have become even more spoiled than usual. Not only are we attended to by caddies and umbrella girls, but we have become accustomed to immaculately manicured sandcapped fairways and lightning quick microbermuda greens. All well and good but, the great majority of golf courses in our country use carabao grass on the fairways and zoysia matrella (commonly called Manila grass) on the greens and fairways.

Sta. Elena Golf and Country Club and the Manila Southwoods Golf and Country Club led the development of the new breed of golf courses. Sta. Elena is a favorite of golfers that live in the metropolis. Its pristine fairways are famous for draining very quickly after a heavy downpour and its tifeagle greens roll like glass.

Manila Southwoods twin Nicklaus signature courses are always in wonderful condition. Interestingly, they skipped sandcapping their fairways but use Tifton on the tee boxes, fairways and primary rough. The Master’s Course’s greens are being converted over to tifeagle to mirror the more consistent greens of the Legends Course. Between the two clubs, these are the best, most consistent greens in the country.

The traditionally built courses are championed by Wack Wack Golf and Country Club’s East Course. To this day, the East Course uses carabao grass on the fairways and zoysia on its tee boxes and greens. This construction is shared by the older golf courses in the Visayas and Mindanao. Fairways tend to get muddy during wet season and rock-hard during summer, presenting a variety of playing conditions with which the golfer must contend.

It’s interesting to note that most golfers adapt their games to one style of golf course or the other and have difficulty adapting when they play a course of the other style.

In this article, we’ll endeavor to discuss the similarities and differences between the two and what is required to play effectively on either style of golf course.

First, we need to examine how the ball lies on either course. This is what determines the type of shot you can play. Sandcapped Bermuda fairways are lush. Walking on them feels like walking on a well-padded carpet. On the fairways, the turf is tight, the blades of grass, small and the ball sits evenly on the surface.

You might find it sitting down in a sandy divot on occasion, but for the most part, the ball is in a position from which you can play a variety of shots. You can pick the ball cleanly off the turf, or you can hit down on it to get a bit more spin. Since the fairways drain so well, there isn’t much difference to playing them in the rain.

On carabao grass it’s a different story. The blades are large and loosely arranged. Many, Wack Wack among them, sit on adobe-based soil, meaning they retain a lot of water and may get muddy during the wet season. During the dry season, the fairways turn rock hard.

The ball will sit down in the turf since carabao grass blades are loosely packed. You need to be very specific with your shot selection. When the fairways are damp, hitting down on the ball will only cost you distance. It is necessary to shallow the bottom of the arc of your golf swing to pick the ball neatly off the turf. Think about hitting the ball on the third groove and leave a small shallow divot.

You have more options in summer when conditions are dry. The adobe-based soil turns rock hard where water is scarce but, again, because the blades of grass are loosely packed, the ball will be sitting down slightly. In some areas, you might even find yourself on a bare lie. Because the sun-baked turf is hard enough to offer resistance, hitting down on the ball is now an option. Picking the ball clean is always an option as the condition of the lie has less

EQUIPMENT REVIEW

HOW TO PLAY OUR TRADITIONAL GOLF COURSES THE 4th green at Wack Wack Golf and Country Club’s East course.

effect on the shot. Many old-course specialists still carry a 3-iron in their bag. In the height of summer, they take this club off the tee and hit stingers with it; the ball just runs and runs and it’s easier to keep between the trees than a driver. It’s immensely effective.

This holds true for full shots and touch shots around the green. The Visayan golfers have a particularly clever technique. They’ll take a lofted wedge and make a shallow swing that collects the ball low on the clubface, right on the second groove. The ball comes out low and

Callaway Rogue Hybrid

loaded with spin; it’s the only way to get the ball to check on a zoysia green from carabao fairways.

On the greens, the differences are less subtle. Zoysia’s blades are significantly larger than those of a modern micro-Bermuda. The effect is that the grass tends to slow the ball down and turn it into the direction of the grain. This means that besides allowing for the amount of visible break, you’ll need to allow for the effects of the grain on your golf ball.

It’s tough for those unaccustomed to grainy

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HE driver is the most technologically gifted golf club made today. Ultra-precise CG placement, variable face thickness, adjustable hosels, graphite shafts all got their start in drivers and tricked down to the rest of the clubs in the bag.

Callaway’s tech star these last two years has been Jailbreak—two titanium rods placed behind the clubface. The rods tied the crown and the sole together to help keep the clubhead’s integrity during the strike to return more energy to the golf ball than conventionally designed drivers.

Golfers were impressed by the added ballspeed and distance it provided when combined with the company’s face cup design.

It was introduced in the Epic drivers of last year and it was a runaway hit in the Epic driver and with the 2018 Rogue line, the fairway woods and hybrids now employ Jailbreak also. The challenge of applying jailbreak to smaller clubheads is weight management and CG location. The two bars, although light enough, do move some weight close to the clubface; not ideal for someone who has difficulty getting the ball airborne.

greens but if you have a good caddy and pay attention to the amount of break that he allows for your putts, it won’t be long before you pick it up yourself.

Recognizing the shots you need to play are just the start of the process, now you’re going to have to go to the range and your club’s practice green to try some of these shots out.

To hit those stingers with a long iron, just put the ball back in your stance a ball-and-a-half and finish low. This keeps the ball down. There are many videos on shallowing out your golf

swing but fundamentally, you’ll need to move the ball a bit to the left (right for lefties) so the club contacts the ball closer to the bottom of the arc.

The near-thin chip will require a lot of your attention. With the ball slightly back in your stance, make a shallow swing at the ball.

Visualize hitting it on the second groove of your wedge. Once you have feel for the hit, focus on distance control. You’ll need it to get used to the amount of spin a well-played shot generates.

Thus, endeth today’s lesson. The

differences in condition, the way the ball sits and the shots you have to play on our older courses are what makes games there so interesting. I’m not demeaning the pristine conditions of the new courses here. There’s a very prominent place in our game for them but the old courses demand different skills and create increased awareness of your golf swing. Play them regularly and you’ll see gains in your golf game. Put it the work, do the reps and you’re on your way to lower scores and a ton more fun on the golf course.

To get around this problem, the Rogue hybrid does away with the adjustable hosel that was found on its predecessor, the Epic hybrid. This could compromise fitting the club into your bag if the lofts aren’t ideal relative to your irons and fairway woods.

But for many, this won’t be a problem.

The standard Rogue hybrid is aimed at players of all types, not only features the aforementioned distance and launch enhancing technologies, it’s also built with an extremely thin Carpenter 455 steel face that flexes more across the entire face for enhanced forgiveness on off center hits. In addition, an Internal Standing Wave design locates the CG lower and forward in the clubhead for less spin, faster ballspeed, and even more distance. Available in 17 °, 19°, 21 °, 24°, 27° lofts, the Rogue comes standard with Aldila Synergy graphite shafts.

Also available are the Rogue X hybrids, which are aimed at players seeking the ultimate in distance and forgiveness. Combining all the same design features and technologies as the standard Rogue, the X hybrids also have a larger clubheads, lighter overall weights, and stronger lofts, making them the longest and most aggressive hybrids

Callaway has ever produced. And for those who think the stronger lofts might yield lower launch and flight, an ultra-low CG location ensures just the opposite. Rogue X hybrids are available in 18°, 20°, 23 °, 26°, 29°, 32° lofts and come standard with Aldila Synergy graphite shafts.

The jury is still out on the concept of an ultimate hybrid that hits the ball as far as possible. Hybrids bridge the yardage gap between your longest iron and shortest fairway wood. But that might be the ideal solution for distance challenged golfers.

At address, the Rogue hybrid sets up more like an iron than a fairway wood. For many this is a good thing. Most golfers hit their irons more consistently than their fairway woods anyway.

The relatively high toe mimics the face of an iron.

The offset while noticeable, isn’t excessive and is functional. If you like to hit down on the golf ball with your irons, you’ll be able to do the same with the Rogue. The height of the toe seems to have pushed more weight to that side of the clubface.

The Rogue doesn’t share the tendency that many hybrids have favoring the left side of the golf course. That turns into a hook for some golfers, so

a straighter trajectory is a Godsend.

The Rogue will pretty much do what you ask of it. Draws and fades are there, if you have the capability. It’s very easy to hit and its natural trajectory is on the high side. It plays wonderfully out of the junk; a huge benefit that will save strokes if you get into trouble from off the tee and on longer par 3s.

The Synergy shaft by Aldila is weighted progressively from 69-75-grams through its flex range. It’s a solid shaft and flexes progressively through the flexes, making it the ideal shaft for a broad population of golfers.

All told, Callaway has another winner in the Rogue hybrid. It ticks all the boxes; it’s good looking, has cool tech and flat out works. It fits a huge population of golfers. The one minus is the lack of an adjustable hosel, but when the club is so effective, that should be easily overlooked.

The Callaway Rogue hybrid is available at all three Transview concept stores; Podium, Solaire and the proshop at Wack Wack Golf and Country Club. It’ll make a great stocking stuffer for the golfer in your family this Christmas. Mike Besa

www.pinoygolfer.com | Saturday, December 15, 2018 A7

THE 18th green of the Negros Occidental Golf and Country Club

THE 10th hole of Manila Southwoods’s Masters course

Els charms as captain of the Internationals for the 2019 President’s Cup

By Chuah Choo Chiang

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RNIE ELS came, he saw and he put on a charm offensive that captivated the people of Melbourne, host city of the 2019 Presidents Cup. Entrusted with the captaincy of the International Team for the biennial showdown against the United States at Royal Melbourne Golf Club from December 9 to 15, 2019, the World Golf Hall of Fame member rallied his prospective team members and the people of Australia in a full-frontal media blitz during a two-day flying visit to the capital city of the state of Victoria recently.

From the moment he stepped off the plane in Melbourne, the South African star was in his element as he eased from one engagement to another with full aplomb and spoke passionately about his love for the city, his captaincy and the highly anticipated match against a Tiger Woodsled US team.

Els’s first order of business was to announce Australia’s Geoff Ogilvy as the first of his captain’s assistants in a press conference during the final day of the ISPS HANDA Melbourne World Cup of Golf. He then spent time speaking to Channel Nine, the official Australian broadcaster of the 2019 Presidents Cup. He later hung out and sang songs with The Fanatics—the boisterous and patriotic group of sports fans from Australia whom he hopes will spearhead the vociferous home support for his men.

That evening, at a members’ function at

Royal Melbourne, the golf legend unveiled the International Team’s new logo with a goal to give the team a more unified focus while also allowing members from different countries to have the flags of their home countries represented.

“To have this logo to bond us together and still represent our countries and our flags, is something we can all be a part of and all get behind. The players here represent the future of this team with traditional countries like Australia and Korea mixed together with some new, emerging countries where golf is growing like Mexico, Thailand, India and China.”

In a massive show of support not only for the Presidents Cup, but for Els as their captain, Thailand’s Kiradech Aphibarnrat, Australia’s Marc Leishman and Cameron Smith, China’s Haotong Li and Ashun Wu, India’s Anirban Lahiri, Korea’s Si Woo Kim, Venezuela’s Jhonattan Vegas and Mexico’s Abraham Ancer, who all featured in the World Cup of Golf, participated in the logo unveiling which Els took pride and delight with their presence.

“It’s a special group of guys from all over the world that make up the Presidents Cup International Team,” Els said. “Being from across the globe, we don’t all play for the same flag.

This special group of people needed something to identify with. To lift the spirit of the team, we felt like we needed a logo for ourselves.

“It meant a great deal to me that these young, talented future stars would make the effort to come out to this event, embrace our new team logo and be here in support of what

ERNIE ELS with his prospective International team members.

we are trying to do with this International side.”

On day two, Els hit the radio airwaves in the morning, speaking on four different breakfast talk shows en route to a site visit at Royal Melbourne, where he holds the course record of 60 established in 2004.

At every media stop, he reiterated the importance of the Australian fans rallying behind his International squad.

“We really want the crowd, the Aussie crowd, behind us this time. I know our play will dictate the noise of the crowd, but if we can get them from that first shot, I know how intimidating it can be when you’re playing in front of the team that you’re playing against home crowd. It can be very intimidating, and I want the crowd behind us,” said Els. “I think it’s going to be a feeling of when or if we lift the trophy, it’s for the Australian people. The Australian people are not just pulling for Adam [Scott] or Jason [Day] or Leish [Marc Leishman], but they are adopting guys like Kiradech and Hideki and Jhonattan as their team to help get us over the line. It’s in Australia, that’s the last time we’ve won it. We would like to do that again, and it’s in front of them that we want to showcase our talents.

“You look at these young guys and it’s easy to think that we might have 10 or even 11 countries represented on our team. Golf is growing, especially in places like Asia and Latin America, and it’s only going to make the International Team that much stronger.”

A return to the Alistair MacKenziedesigned Royal Melbourne brought back happy memories as he has won tournaments at the famous venue. Given Els’s knowledge of the course, he was excited to meet with course superintendent Richard Forsyth to tour the course and discuss course conditions and ideas for the tournament week.

More important, Royal Melbourne was also the site of the International Team’s lone victory to date in the Presidents Cup, achieved in 1998, and Els believes his course knowledge can provide his 12 players with an added advantage against the Americans.

“We’ve got the home-course advantage, we can do something with the golf course,” said Els. “You know, it felt like my own golf course to be honest with you. I really want to guide them through Royal Melbourne. It’s not a golf course which you’re going to overpower too much.

There’s some par 5s and so forth, but for the most part it’s a positional golf course.

“I think my job is to get them to buy into my kind of system of how to play the golf course. I think that’s more important for me.”

Note: Chuah Choo Chiang is senior director, communications for the PGA TOUR and is based at TPC Kuala Lumpur.

OurTime

A8 Saturday, December 15, 2018 • Editor: Efleda P. Campos

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Ilocos Norte sets holiday gift-giving caravan for poor residents at capitol

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AOAG CITY—In the spirit of Christmas and gift giving, workers at the provincial capitol will again spearhead a weeklong Christmas caravan to benefit less fortunate families in the province.

From December 15 to 20, some provincial government officials and employees will be going around the province to distribute Noche Buena packages, food packs, educational toys and even farm inputs to selected beneficiaries.

Kiddie parties at the village halls will also be organized to let young boys and girls have fun while the gifts are being distributed.

The annual Christmas caravan has become a tradition for capitol personnel, as a way of giving back during the yuletide season.

Covering the 21 towns and two cities of the province, beneficiaries were identified by the Provincial Social Welfare and Development Office.

Included in the list are the socalled Millennium Development Goals (MDG) families.

The MDG master list of the province is apart from the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) of the national government.

Most of the selected caravan beneficiaries come from the highly vulnerable areas of the province, who were badly hit by typhoons and other natural calamities.

Edwin Cariño, head of the Sustainable Development Center of the Ilocos Norte government, said this year’s gift-giving program is “needbased,” meaning various commodity items will be given to different groups of individuals.

“MDG families will be given medicines and grocery items, while our indigent families will be given food packs. Some day-care pupils will receive educational toys, and senior citizens who are celebrating their birthdays in December will be treated with birthday cakes, food packs and the traditional singing of Ilocano birthday songs,” Cariño said.

Meanwhile, selected farmerbeneficiaries hard-hit by previous typhoons will receive corn seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, farm machinery, sprayers and calcium nitrate for their plants.

Also, the Ilocos Norte provincial government is again hiring tourism ambassadors, including senior citizens, in preparation for the expected influx of tourists this Christmas season.

Ilocos Norte Provincial Tourism Officer Aianree Raquel said on December 8 that there were more than 200 slots available for tourism ambassadors, who will serve as tourist aides and story tellers in various museums, churches and other major destinations in the province.

Of the more than 200 slots, at least 22 senior citizens interested

to avail themselves of the special employment for senior citizens are encouraged to apply. Their main job is to become storytellers in museums and heritage structures being frequented by tourists.

“We are again accepting applicants and the basic qualification is they should be at least 18 years old and show interest in tourism work,” Raquel said.

Regardless of age or status, Raquel said anybody is welcome to apply for the tourism job.

Under the tourism employment program of the Ilocos Norte government, Raquel said Gov. Ma. Imelda Josefa “Imee” Marcos has initiated the employment of retirees and senior citizens to help promote “culture tourism” in the province.

The governor said elders have rich knowledge and experience in history, which they can share with the younger generation.

For six years now, the Ilocos Norte government has been employing out-of-school youth, students and senior citizens during long holiday breaks. These new tourism ambassadors are to be deployed starting December 14. PNA

Selma Engel, 96, dies; escaped Sobibor and revealed camp’s horror

SELMA ENGEL

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ELMA WYNBERG ENGEL, who escaped a Nazi extermination camp after a prisoner uprising and was among the first to tell the world about the camp’s existence, died on Tuesday in East Haven, Connecticut. She was 96.

Her daughter, Alida Engel, confirmed the death, at an assisted living facility.

A Dutch Jew, Engel was among 58 prisoners who escaped from the secret Sobibor extermination camp in Eastern Poland and lived to see the end of the war. Only one other former Sobibor prisoner, Semyon Rozenfeld, of Israel, is believed to be alive today.

When the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Engel was forced into hiding. In 1942, they seized her during a roundup of Jews and sent her to two concentration camps in succession before shipping her to Sobibor in April 1943. It was one of the Nazis’ camps used solely for exterminating Jews.

Most prisoners sent to Sobibor were instantly gassed or shot to death, but Engel, who was 20, was selected to sort the clothing of the dead and thus was spared.

Knowing that all the prisoners would be killed sooner or later, a group of them staged a revolt. At 4 p.m. on October14, 1943, they lured guards to remote locations

and killed 11 of them with knives and axes.

About 600 prisoners broke free and fled under machine-gun fire.

With the grounds dotted with land mines, only about half made it to the fences. Search squads recaptured most of the rest.

One prisoner, Chaim Engel, who would become her husband, had also survived as a clothes sorter.

He grabbed Selma’s hand and fled with her. They were among only a few to escape.

The couple went on the run for at least two weeks before finding refuge with a Polish peasant family who, for a fee, hid them in a hayloft in their barn. They remained there for nine months, until it was safe for them to set off on a long journey back to the Netherlands.

Within days of the uprising, with escapees on the loose and fearing that Sobibor would be discovered, the Germans liquidated the camp, plowing it under and planting crops to disguise it as a farm.

But they could not stop Selma Engel. Well before arriving in the Netherlands, she began telling the world what she had witnessed and, along with her husband, would continue to do so for the rest of her life.

In July 1944, shortly after the Red Army had crossed the Polish border, she and two other Sobibor escapees told Russian reporters

about the camp, according to Sobibor Extermination Camp 19421943, a 2015 book by Marek Bem. Their account was published on September 2, 1944, in the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda under the headline “The Death Factory in Sobibor.” It was the first public description of the camp. All told, at least 167,000 people and possibly as many as 350,000 were killed at Sobibor from March 1942 to October 1943.

“Selma and Chaim and others told the world about what happened in Sobibor,” Ad Van Liempt, a Dutch historian and author, said in a telephone interview. “They let the secret out.”

They went on to testify at the trials of German officers, provided written and oral accounts of their ordeal and were interviewed for books and other publications over the decades.

Engel was born Saartje Wijnberg (pronounced SAR-cha WINE-berg) on May 15, 1922, in Groningen, Netherlands. She and her three brothers grew up in the city of Zwolle, where their parents, Samuel and Alida, ran a kosher hotel.

She Anglicized her name when she moved to the United States in 1957.

She finished high school just as the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940. Her father died of a heart attack in 1941, unrelated to the war. She lost most of the rest of her family in the Holocaust.

After the war, the couple, who formally married in 1945, settled in Zwolle, Selma Engel’s hometown, where they established a textile store and had two children. Their first child, a boy, had died in 1944 as they were making their way back to the Netherlands.

But they encountered deep resentment toward Chaim Engel, a Polish Jew. Despite the massive losses that Poles themselves suffered in World War II, many viewed Poland as complicit in the Holocaust; more than 100,000 Dutch citizens had been deported to camps in Poland, and more than 34,000 Dutch Jews had been killed at Sobibor. Selma Engel was the only woman from the Netherlands to survive the camp.

The prejudice against them made the couple feel trapped. The authorities threatened them with deportation, Chaim Engel because

he was from Poland and Selma Engel because she had married him, making her, in their eyes, a Polish citizen, too.

Poland, however, was no longer accepting the return of Polish citizens expelled from other countries, and the Engels had little interest in going there anyway.

They moved to Israel in 1951 and to the United States in 1957, yearning to live in a peaceful country after the Sinai War of 1956.

Chaim Engel eventually became a jeweler in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. They lived in Branford, Connecticut, for almost 50 years.

Although they had told their story many times, it was largely unknown in the postwar Netherlands until the last decade, when a team of Dutch historians, including Van Liempt, visited Engel in Connecticut to research a book about her.

It was published in 2010 as Selma, the Woman Who Survived Sobibor and led to a documentary film of the same name.

In addition to her daughter, Engel is survived by a son, Ferdinand, as well as four granddaughters and eight great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 2003.

On April 12, 2010, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands knighted Engel in recognition of her historical witness. On the same day, the Dutch minister of health care, Ab Klink, issued a formal apology.

“I apologize for the way the Dutch government treated you and your husband almost 65 years ago,” he said. “It is almost unthinkable. I say to you: We are very, very sorry.”

Engel said she was honored to receive the knighthood, but she rejected the apology, telling family and friends that it was too little, too late.

Asked to explain how Engel could accept one but not the other, her granddaughter, Tagan Engel, who accompanied Engel to the ceremonies in 2010, said in an e-mail that her grandmother had seen them as two different things.

With the knighthood, Tagan Engel wrote, her grandmother had “accepted the acknowledgment and attention to her story after so many years, but that was not the same as accepting an apology for the killing of all, but a handful of her family and hundreds of thousands of other Jews.” New York Times News Service

SANTA IN BAGUIO Journalist Narciso Padilla at 84 continues to walk the streets of Baguio City wearing a Santa Claus costume every December to bring holiday cheer to children and adults alike. He is behind the annual Silahis ng Pasko where the lucky Christmas baby and a foreign visitor are chosen as part of the holiday festivities in the summer capital. LAILA AUSTRIA

The new 50s: Far from retirement

A

FTER Chip Conley sold Joie de Vivre, the boutique hotel company he created and ran for about 24 years, his life took an unexpected turn. At 52, he was sought out by Brian Chesky, the then-31-year-old chief executive of Airbnb, for advice on how to turn the fledgling home-sharing start-up into a major player in the hospitality field.

For the next four years, Conley worked at Airbnb, toggling between being a mentor and an intern in a sometimes baffling new role— a “modern elder,” as he put it. As a veteran hospitality executive, he was used to being the “sage on the stage.” But as a newbie in the tech sector, he was often the oldest person in the room, learning from colleagues who were young enough to be his children.

In a new book, Wisdom at Work, Conley writes that everyone working past middle age today needs to become a modern elder, simultaneously sharing wisdom while embracing fresh ideas and ways of thinking.

Conley’s on to something. It used to be 50 was a time to begin thinking about retirement.

But today, many people in their 50s plan to work two or even three more decades. To become modern elders, older people have to find new ways to stay relevant and keep their minds open, skills fresh and humility intact.

While some people are determined to become a modern elder, it won’t be easy. After all, most older people won’t be getting a phone call from a tech chief executive seeking counsel. So people started looking for approachable role models to learn from, and there are plenty.

Some did their homework and went back to school for jobs where there are known shortages—like nursing or teaching in STEM fields.

Some found their way through volunteering or attending specialized fellowships or boot camps.

Others teamed up with younger partners to lead new ventures. Most, it seems, did a combination of all these things.

Sharon Lewis, an independent consultant on consumer habits, was doing scouting work for the cultural forecasting firm sparks & honey when she heard about the company’s new cultural apprentice program. The apprenticeship was designed to bring together millennials and people with 30 years of professional experience to work on, among other projects, a report on the future of work. Lewis decided to sign up for the 16-week program, which offered only a modest stipend, as a 60th birthday present to herself.

“The idea of working around so many younger people was exciting and invigorating,” she said. “I feel wiser, more well-rounded and updated, and I’m almost in withdrawal now.”

She especially appreciated the mutual mentoring. “We’re just not competing with one another because we’re at different life stages.”

Kevin Walker, 55, made several big changes after being laid off from a 24-year career in utilities in New York. He moved to Denver and started TurtleWise, a technology platform matching people seeking answers to life and career questions with mentors willing to provide advice.

Walker met Kevin Freund, 31, at a conference hosted by Mentor Colorado. The two are passionate about the role of mentors and brainstormed ways to build Walker’s company.

“Being around Kevin is analogous to the kind

of mentoring we’re doing with the platform,” Freund said. “I get little bits of wisdom dripped on me.” Within six months of their first meeting, Walker asked Freund to join the company as chief operating officer.

Shortly after that, Walker had to return to a full-time job to bolster his finances, so he turned over the daily management of the company to Freund. Walker says he is still committed to the ideals that led him to start the company and remains only a phone call or video chat away should his younger friend need his counsel.

But with two young children at home, Walker has turned the company into a “side hustle,” something he said he learned from millennials. The two stay in close touch now that Walker lives in Los Angeles and Freund is still in Denver.

Kimberly Strong, 52, kick-started a career pivot by giving back. After retiring as head of diversity and inclusion at Target in 2016, she wanted to become an angel investor, supporting women-led initiatives and serving as a mentor to younger women, especially women of color.

She discovered Pipeline Angels, which offers boot camps for people interested in supporting ventures led by women and nonbinary femmes, and she joined one of their cohorts this summer.

Strong says the program has provided speaking opportunities, judging roles at pitch summits, and the chance to hone her investing skills.

“My endgame is to eventually be on a Fortune 1000 corporate board, and Pipeline gave me the opportunity to serve on start-up boards and gain experience,” she said. And she has been able to mentor young female founders.

“Basically, I’m the auntie to the startups,” she said, and the beneficiary of “reverse mentoring.”

Despite these promising stories, a lot from people over 50, even over 45, are doing all the right things, but still not finding successful midlife transitions. Ageism is rampant—and internalized, with midlifers questioning our own ability to succeed in a world where youth is prized. And while there are many new offerings to help people make late-career transitions, moving into an encore career still requires an immense amount of creativity and persistence.

Two learnings emerged from interviews about making these transitions easier. First, and most obviously, it helps to have a financial safety net. So volunteering or refreshing skills while still employed, collecting severance or a pension, or having a partner who provides an income or health insurance can make a big difference. It is far more daunting without that kind of cushion. Second, the attitudes of younger colleagues are just as important as our own when we think about finding new roles in a rapidly transforming workplace.

Shortly after reading Conley’s book, I met Charlotte Japp, a 28-year-old with an infectious passion for bringing older and younger people together.

Japp was so desperate for older mentors in her first job at Vice Media that she started an intergenerational networking event series called Cirkel. “My colleagues and I had this joke about what would happen to us when we turned 34, because Vice’s target market was 18 to 34,” she said, adding “no one in the office, not even my bosses’ bosses, was over 40.”

New York Times News Service

Editor: Gerard S. Ramos • lifestylebusinessmirror@gmail.com

BusinessMirror

Saturday, December 15, 2018 A9

The possibilities of unplugging PRIMETIME

DINNA CHAN VASQUEZ @dinnachanvasquez jtnisay@gmail.com

S

O what’s the first thing you do when you wake up? It’s likely that you reach for your phone and check your messages on Facebook, Viber, WhatsApp and other messaging apps. Honestly, text messages are the last things we check these days.

It’s so easy to get lost in messages. Before you know it, almost an hour of your day has been consumed by this.

That’s even before you check Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. If you allow it, you can spend another hour on this.

According to the 2017 Digital Future Report by the Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg, the average American spends 24 hours a week online. That’s one full day a week. I’m not saying that day has gone to waste but it’s still a day.

The study showed that since 2000, time spent online every week by an average American has risen from 9.4 hours to 23.6. Time spent on the Internet at home has also risen from 3.3 to 17.6 hours a week over the same period.

According to a new report by London, United Kingdom-based consultancy We Are Social, the Philippines again topped the world in terms of social-media usage as the number of Internet users in the country hit 67 million people.

We Are Social said Filipinos spent an average of three hours and 57 minutes a day on social-media sites. Most of this time was spent on Facebook.

The Philippines, by the way, was also No. 1 in the world in terms of social-media usage in 2017. But that’s hardly surprising.

I’ve always thought Facebook was a black hole you could get lost in because there’s so much content to go through. Not everything is entertaining but most of it is riveting.

But have you ever wondered how it is to unplug, even for just a few hours? Unplugging, in my opinion, includes watching movies and television. I’ve actually always wondered though how some people can watch a movie and scroll through their Facebook timeline at the same time. I’m a person who can’t live without my mobile phone but that’s a bit extreme.

My friends are surprised when they learn that I turn off my phone on my personal travels. Work-related travel is a different story but on vacation, my phone is usually turned off except at night before bed when I check messages.

I have, however, never unplugged fully for a day or two but it is refreshing thought.

Here are some things that I think I—and maybe even other people— would enjoy more without a camera phone and the Internet:

n Lunch or dinner with friends

I am not comfortable with people whipping out their phones at the end of every get-together and you having to pose for photos for 10 minutes. All this time, you’re wondering whether you have food bits between your teeth and/or you look pregnant after everything you ate.

n Traveling

I know that “if it’s not on Instagram, it didn’t happen” but surely, a few photos would suffice. I mean, isn’t traveling all about the experience?

I know so many of my friends do it (I can forgive younger people) but does every trip really need a hashtag?

n Watching concerts

I’ve been guilty of snapping a photo or two or three and taking some videos but seriously, I don’t understand how some people would pay over $200 to video a full concert. If I had that money to pay for a ticket, I would just hire someone to take that video while I enjoy the concert.

n Meeting celebrities

Life, for me, is all about experiences and I believe that one doesn’t need to document every experience. Meeting and/or seeing celebrities in person is one of those experiences. Not everything is about a selfie. I honestly would rather remember how a celebrity has been nice to me and to other fans than capture that moment in a photograph.

A10 Saturday, December 15, 2018

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Google’s robotic spinoff launches ride-hailing service

By Michael Liedtke WAYMO shows its self-driving minivan.

Google’s self-driving car spinoff is finally ready to try to profit from its nearly decade-old technology.

Waymo introduced a small-scale ride-hailing service in the Phoenix area on December 4, which will include a human behind the wheel in case the robotic vehicles malfunction.

AP

S

The Associated Press

AN FRANCISCO—Google’s self-driving car spinoff is finally ready to try to profit from its nearly decade-old technology.

Waymo is introducing a small-scale ride-hailing service in the Phoenix area that will include a human behind the wheel in case the robotic vehicles malfunction.

The service debuting on Wednesday marks a significant milestone for Waymo, a company that began as a secretive project within Google in 2009.

Since then, its cars have robotically logged more 10 million miles on public roads in 25 cities in California, Arizona, Washington, Michigan and Georgia while getting into only a few accidents—mostly fender benders.

The company is initially operating the new service cautiously, underscoring the challenges still facing its autonomous vehicles as they navigate around vehicles with human drivers that don’t always follow the same rules as robots.

The service, dubbed Waymo One, at first will only be available to a couple hundred riders, all of whom had already been participating in a free pilot program that began in April 2017. It will be confined to a roughly 100-square-mile area in and around Phoenix, including the neighboring cities of Chandler, Tempe, Mesa and Gilbert.

Although Waymo has been driving passengers without any humans behind the wheel in its free pilot program, it decided to be less daring with the new commercial service.

“Self-driving technology is new to many, so we’re proceeding carefully with the comfort and convenience of our riders in mind,” Waymo CEO John Krafcik wrote in a Wednesday blog post heralding the arrival of the new service.

The ride-hailing service is launching in the same area where a car using robotic technology from ride-hailing service Uber hit and killed a pedestrian crossing a darkened street in Tempe, Arizona, seven months ago.

That fatal collision attracted worldwide attention that cast a pall over the entire self-driving car industry as more people began to publicly question the safety of the vehicles.

“I suspect the Uber fatality has caused Waymo to slow down its pace a bit” and use human safety drivers in its ride-hailing service,” said Navigant Research analyst Sam Abuelsamid. “If people keep dying, there will be a bigger backlash against these vehicles.”

The Uber robotic car had a human safety driver behind the wheel, but that wasn’t enough to prevent its lethal accident in March.

Waymo’s self-driving vehicles are still susceptible to glitches, as an Associated Press reporter experienced during a mid-October ride in an autonomous minivan alongside Krafcik near company’s Mountain View, California, headquarters.

The minivan performed smoothly, even stopping for a jaywalker, before abruptly pulling to the right side of the road. Ahead was a leftturning FedEx delivery truck. In a digital message to the two human backup drivers, the van said it “detected an issue” and it would connect to a rider support agent. Rider support didn’t respond due to what the company blamed on a dead spot in cellular phone coverage. The human drivers

switched to manual mode and returned to Waymo headquarters.

At that time, Krafcik conceded to the Associated Press that Waymo’s self-driving vehicles were still encountering occasional problems negotiating left-hand turns at complicated intersections.

“I think the things that humans have challenges with, we’re challenged with as well,” Krafcik said. “So sometimes unprotected lefts are super challenging for a human, sometimes they’re super challenging for us.”

Waymo eventually plans to open its new ride-hailing app to all comers in the Phoenix area, although it won’t say when. It also wants to expand its service to other cities, but isn’t saying where. When that happens, it could

pose a threat to Uber and the second-most popular US ride-hailing service, Lyft, especially since it should be able charge lower prices without the need to share revenue with a human driver in control at all times.

General Motors also is gearing up to begin offering a ride-hailing service through its Cruise subsidiary under the management of a new CEO, Dan Ammann, who has been the Detroit automaker’s No. 2 executive. Cruise plans to start its ride-hailing service at some point next year in at least one US city. Another self-driving car company, Drive.ai, has been giving shortdistance rides to all comers within Frisco, Texas and Arlington, Texas, since the summer.

Biggest holiday sale from PLDT, Smart LEADING digital services provider PLDT Inc. and its mobile arm Smart Communications Inc. mark in the Christmas season with the first-ever “Holideals,” their biggest holiday blowout yet for current and new customers.

PLDT and Smart’s Holideals (bit.ly/2rF8kK1) features huge discounts and irresistible offers that suit your Christmas gift list— whether you’re looking for the perfect present for your loved ones, or simply thinking of a well-deserved treat for yourself to celebrate the season.

“Christmas has always been the happiest season for Filipinos, and as our gift for everyone, we brought together our best deals that make it a lot easier to enjoy the most amazing digital experiences powered by the country’s fastest fixed and mobile networks,” said Andrew L. Santos, PLDT and Smart FVP for Consumer Marketing. “There’s no better time to be a PLDT Home and Smart customer than now.”

With Holideals, you can enjoy fast and reliable connectivity at home with the whole family with these special PLDT Home offers: n New PLDT Home Fibr customers can save up to P3,600 on Unli Fibr and enjoy waived activation and installation fees, free speedboost and zero cash-out. n Current PLDT Home customers can enjoy one month for free by signing on to a new add-on service, such as a Telpad, FamCam or TVolution Roku Powered. n New PLDT Home Prepaid WiFi subscribers get a P200 discount and a free six-month subscription to iflix. n PLDT Online Gadget Sale brings up to 50-percent discount on gadgets including the First Generation TVolution stick, Telpad and Smart Watch, among others, on the PLDT Online Store.

Leveling up your digital lifestyle with the latest smartphones and data-packed offers is also a lot easier with Holideals offers from Smart, including discounted Smart Prepaid Gift Card; exclusive discounts and deals for postpaid subscribers renewing or signing up for a new GigaX Plan with the latest flagship devices, including Samsung Note 9, Huawei Mate 20 and Huawei Mate 20 Pro, as well as subscribing to a new Smart Bro Pocket WiFi Plan or iPad Plan, plus a chance to win exciting raffle prizes with the new plans; and exciting deals including LTE smartphones at a steal of a price when applying for a Smart Postpaid Plan on the Smart Online Store.

RESIDENTS pass by an advertisement for the iPhone X in Beijing, China. AP

Chinese court bans some iPhones over Qualcomm dispute NEW YORK—United States chipmaker Qualcomm says it’s won an order in a Chinese court banning some Apple phones in China as part of a longrunning dispute over patents.

Qualcomm said on Monday that the Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court in China has granted preliminary injunctions ordering four Chinese subsidiaries of Apple to stop selling and importing iPhones.

It’s not immediately clear what the full scope of the ruling is. While Qualcomm says the ban covers iPhones 6S through X, Apple says all iPhone models remain available for customers in China.

The dispute is over two Qualcomm patents enabling consumers to format photos and manage phone apps using a touch screen. Apple called it a “desperate move” by Qualcomm and promised to fight it in the courts.

Apple said it filed a request on Monday for the court to reconsider its ruling.

Qualcomm’s general counsel, Don Rosenberg, said in a statement on Monday that if Apple doesn’t heed the orders, it will seek enforcement of them through tribunals that are part of the Chinese court system.

Although its name isn’t widely known outside the technology industry, San Diego-based Qualcomm is one of the world’s leading makers of the processors that power many smartphones and other mobile devices.

Qualcomm also owns patents on key pieces of mobile technology that Apple and other manufacturers use in their products.

Qualcomm’s case against Apple is part of a broader legal strategy it has waged against the iPhone maker around the world, with cases also pending in the United States and Europe.

The two companies have also battled over how much Apple owes in licensing fees to Qualcomm. AP

SAP supports digital journey of local, regional companies

By Roderick L. Abad Contributor

VARIOUS companies here and in other parts of Asia have embarked on digitization toward becoming an intelligent enterprise with network security provider SAP. According to SAP Southeast Asia President and Managing Director Claus Andresen, the digital ecosystem in the region constantly grows and matures, presenting huge opportunities for organizations to harness the power of data.

“We are glad that companies continue to choose SAP as their trusted partner on their journey to become intelligent enterprises.”

Smart businesses operate with visibility, focus and agility to gain game-changing outcomes. They do more with less and empower employees through process automation.

Also, intelligent enterprises deliver a best-in-class experience to customers by proactively responding to their expectations. These entities invent new business models and revenue streams.

In the Philippines, internationally awarded diversified beverage company Tanduay Distillers Inc. has kicked-off its journey of revitalizing business processes with SAP S/4HANA. JG Summit, likewise, uses this solution to help achieve its goal to become the leading digital conglomerate in the country.

With SAP S/4HANA, the Gokongwei-led company aims to spur new growth areas for its main corporate arm, subsidiaries and affiliates in the country and across Southeast Asia.

Globe Telecom recently closed a three-year deal with SAP for business suite platform and service solutions to digitalize its financial processes, support real-time decision-making and back up the agile environment.

Singapore-based CrowdFarmX, on the other hand, will be deploying SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud to speed up the on-boarding of 10 million Southeast Asian farmers onto its platform in the next 22 years.

Meanwhile, The Body Shop Indonesia is using SAP SuccessFactors to digitize its human resource and employee processes.

Japan’s Mitsui & Co. Ltd. is standardizing the organization’s travel and expense process through SAP Concur.

For 29 years, SAP has enabled over 10,000 companies in the region to adopt digital innovations, said Andresen.

“Today, we continue to expand our innovation portfolio in new ways, allowing our customers and partners to innovate with purpose and confidence,” he stressed.

SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software, helping companies of all sizes and in all industries operate at their best.

In fact, 77 percent of the world’s transaction revenue touches a SAP system that includes machine-learning Internet of Things.

Its end-to-end suite of applications and services enable more than 413,000 business and public customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously and make a difference.

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Discovery takes the digital lead with chatbot ALREADY the leading homegrown luxury hotel group in the Philippines, The Discovery Leisure Company Inc. (TDLCI) is again taking a step further in digital transformation and customer service, with the introduction of the revolutionary auto-agent chatbot. This makes TDLCI the first homegrown hotel group in the country to utilize on-page AI technology as part of its award-winning customer service program.

Auto-Agent, an automated web site chatbot created to help hoteliers provide an elevated quality service 24/7, is already being utilized in hotels abroad. It is powered by Triptease, a UK-based tech solutions company that empowers hotels to recapture guest relationships from Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) and increase direct bookings. Guests can therefore expect immediate, high-quality responses when chatting online, even when the hotel staff are engaged or not immediately available.

“Here at the Discovery Leisure Co., we’ve always believed that complementary to our superb, personalized service is the utilization of the latest technologies available,” says Blessy Townes, group director for Digital Marketing, TDLCI. “As such, we always keep abreast of the latest trends in the global hotel and hospitality industry.”

TDLCI is a proud pioneer among local hotels in the digital marketing space with its successful Independence Day Sale, Black Friday and 11.11 online promotional initiatives. In recognition of this, Townes has been invited as speaker at the Digital Travel Asia-Pacific and Direct Booking Summit Asia-Pacific in Singapore next year. Both events will gather various hoteliers from the region to share their expertise and learn from other experts in the industry.

“The rollout of the Auto-Agent chatbot service as part of our progressive digital transformation will truly take our already superior brand of service to a whole new level, providing for a great Customer Experience [CX] like never before,” says Townes.

The Auto-Agent chatbot will be available on the Discovery Shores Boracay, Club Paradise Palawan, Discovery Suites, and Discovery Primea web sites.

WeSellIT.ph taps online platform for SMEs software purchase

By Rizal Raoul S. Reyes PHILIPPINE e-commerce web site WeSellIT.ph recently announced that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can now purchase and download the latest Microsoft Office and Windows products through a specifically serving section for that segment.

“When entrepreneurs buy laptops or PCs from e-commerce sites, they still need to buy a retail box to install Microsoft Office, which can be a hassle. With ESD, when you purchase a laptop or PC online, the site will send you an e-mail with the product key for your chosen Microsoft product.

You don’t have to go to a store personally, you simply click and buy,” said Oliver Co, project manager for WeSellIT.ph, in a press statement.

Co said WeSellIT.ph also offers Electronic Software Delivery (ESD) for perpetual licensing and premium memberships for SMEs that want fast and convenient delivery of popular IT tools.

The four featured Microsoft products on WeSellIT.ph include Office Professional 2019, Office Home and Business 2019, Office 365 Business Premium and Windows 10 Professional.

Office Professional 2019 for Windows is a one-time-purchase-for-onedevice package that features premium versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access and Publisher. Office Home & Business 2019 also includes these baseline apps, and is good for use for one PC or Mac device.

Co said the Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium membership offers special business services apps, such as Exchange, Skype for Business, Teams and SharePoint. He pointed out that the package is ideal for agile businesses that run daily operations on multiple devices. Both Office home and business 2019 and Office 365 Business Premium come with 1TB OneDrive cloud storage, and chat and phone support from Microsofttrained experts.

For high-end applications, Co said the Windows 10 Professional offers enterprise-grade security, powerful management tools such as single sign on, and enhanced productivity with remote desktop and Cortana. To enable enterprise users faster work, Co said Windows Professional 10 has the InstantGo1 that enables a user to boot up and resume work quickly, and Microsoft Edge, the all-new browser that lets you type directly on Web pages and share your markups with others.

He said the latest Microsoft Office suites delivers versatility complemented with Inking technology, which allows users to take notes, navigate, draw, doodle and edit with a digital pen. Inking is very useful when editing Word docs, designing PowerPoint slides, or doing computations on the go and lets users work efficiently without a keyboard.

The PowerPoint Designer, another helpful upgrade for entrepreneurs, accelerates the time to develop new presentations. When users can insert an image, they are presented with multiple layout options that incorporate the image. This new feature also works with charts and graphs, as well.

“We at WeSellIT.ph are proud to have been chosen by Microsoft to deliver this novel technology solution to SMEs in the country and, with these technologies, help push their productivity and business growth,” Co declared.

Saturday, December 15, 2018 A11

Tumblr fans abandon ship as platform bans porn ILLUSTRATION

BY MICHAEL APPLETON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

By Jonah Engel Bromwich & Katie Van Syckle

E

New York Times News Service

LLE CHASE, 49, has run Lady Cheeky, one of the most celebrated pornographic blogs on Tumblr, for eight years.

It features short video clips, often focused on female pleasure, that she sources from around the Internet.

Celebrated by Glamour and Cosmopolitan as a great sex blog for women (Cosmo lauded its GIFs as “classy and smart”), Lady Cheeky has more than 200,000 followers and gets 2 million page views a month.

But Chase will soon have to take her classy GIFs elsewhere.

Tumblr announced on Monday that, starting on December 17, what it calls “adult content” will no longer be allowed on the web site. The company, which is owned by Yahoo, is defining adult content primarily as photos, videos or GIFs that “show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts.” (Tumblr will continue to allow images of breastfeeding and nudity in art.)

The reaction from users was swift. A Change.org petition started by someone who identified as a NSFW (short for “not safe for work”) Tumblr artist drew hundreds of thousands of signatures in just two days, with many commenters decrying the decision. But critics applauded the move, citing the site’s lax policing of piracy and arguing that Tumblr does not do enough to keep minors from having access to pornography.

In interviews, creators and proponents of pornography on Tumblr expressed a mix of outrage and resignation. Many said that they planned to leave Tumblr for other platforms but were not sure where they would go.

Sera Smith, 24, of Los Angeles, said she has visited the Lady Cheeky Tumblr for three years and is drawn to the blog because it feels like a tasteful departure from sites like PornHub. “I don’t have to worry about seeing something objectifying and terribly jarring,” Smith said. “It just feels like a safe space where things were curated for a variety of different social backgrounds and ethnic backgrounds.”

Founded in 2007, Tumblr reached its heyday around 2012, and hosted 108 million blogs the following year, when it was acquired

by Yahoo. It wilted under the company’s leadership and is broadly acknowledged to be on the decline.

Still, some of its most faithful users have remained loyal to the platform for the pornography. According to a 2017 study that analyzed Yahoo data from 2015, approximately 100,000 producers on Tumblr generated sexually explicit content and 30 million people engaged with it.

The study found that 82 percent of the producers of that content were male and 68 percent of the consumers were female. (The study found that 72 percent of Tumblr users were female more broadly.) The average age of consumers of pornographic content was 26 years old. A little more than 10 percent of those viewers were younger than 18.

“Most of the popular content was coming from professional producers,” said Luca Maria Aiello, one of the authors of the study and a former researcher at Yahoo Labs.

That content often appeared as GIFs—looping, seconds-long videos pulled from pornography produced by others—and were shared across the platform on blogs like Lady Cheeky.

“This is how porn started on the Internet, with these little thumbnail galleries back in the late ‘90s,” said Chauntelle Tibbals, the author of Exposure: A Sociologist Explores Sex, Society, and Adult Entertainment. What set Tumblr apart, in this Internet era, was the range of content available, and as Brett L., a 28-year-old New Yorker who runs one of the most popular adult Tumblr accounts, put it: “Tumblr always was a place for all.”

Jorge España, 24, of Mexico City who hosts a Tumblr page called Stunner Pone, which featured what he calls “naughty furry art” (sexualized drawings of cartoon animals), said that outsiders could not understand how much work went into sites like his, and how much of a niche it filled.

“It may not be to their taste, and that’s fine, but trying to pretend that there isn’t a user base that craves this kind of content and goes to Tumblr specifically for it is misguided at best,” España said.

Tumblr was also a home for many LGBT pornography blogs, including that of Steven Toushin, 72, whose Tumblr, Bijou World, was an extension of the film and merchandise empire he has run since the late 1960s.

Toushin said that Tumblr’s ban was a story that was familiar to him from his decades in the pornographic film industry. Any time a small, unregulated platform was acquired by a bigger one, he said, the new company would invoke a “morality clause” and attempt to shake people like him from using it.

“We try to find platforms to sell our product,” he said. “That’s all you can do is look for distribution platforms.”

But loosely regulated distribution platforms can also harbor illegal content—in this case child pornography, which Tumblr said caused Apple to remove its app from the App Store in November.

A source familiar with Tumblr’s decision to ban pornography, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that the decision had been in the works long before that.

There have also been reports of nonconsensual pornography, or revenge porn, on the site. In 2017, a 27-year-old Bronx woman sued Tumblr after a tape emerged of her having sex with her boyfriend when she was 17.

Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law and the legislative and tech policy director at the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, said she has asked Tumblr to address nonconsensual pornography on the site for years.

“If five years ago they had gotten a handle on nonconsensual pornography or the child pornography issues, maybe they wouldn’t have to resort to something so extreme,” Franks said.

Stoya, a pornographic film performer who maintains a Tumblr, said she has been contacted by underage users on the site.

“I got a message from a 16-year-old Irish girl,” she said, adding that she asked her to “come back in two years.”

Stoya thinks Tumblr’s ban ignores a larger problem. “Let’s think about what can actually be done here that would result in a world where people have better tools to navigate sexuality,” she said.

Few expect Tumblr’s decision to decrease the amount of pornography online. Many users predict the content will just migrate elsewhere.

Carlyn M., a grandmother in her 60s who works as a lawyer in the Netherlands and runs a Tumblr page dedicated to female masturbation in her spare time, said that she was “looking for a good alternative, just like many people.”

But none were “as good as Tumblr at the moment.”

AdMov revolutionizes advertising with facial-detection technology ADMOVPH Technologies Inc., a Philippine-based tech start-up, uses face-detection technology and location to deliver more meaningful ads and content to consumers.

Filipinos spend a taxing two to three hours in traffic every day, enduring idleness and boredom while being bombarded with a sea of billboards and ads that don’t always match their personal interests. The first of its kind in the country, AdMov seeks to redefine the way people perceive outdoor advertising by creating an entertaining and more personalized experience for consumers.

Using tablets placed inside transport network vehicle service (TNVS) vehicles, AdMov’s technology first determines a rider’s age and gender, then uses that information to show them ads that matter more to them. Ads from beauty and makeup brands may only be shown to women, for example.

AdMov also aims to relieve stress and boredom by serving riders entertaining content. Using GPS, riders will be shown must-try restaurants, upcoming events and nearby sales whenever they enter a specific city or location. The tablet may also show riders interesting trivia about a city, or photos of how a city looked like to to three decades ago.

The company’s technology can even guess a rider’s emotional state based on their facial expressions, or whether they are bored based on eye contact with the screen. The system then revises and presents the appropriate kind of content to recapture the rider’s attention, further tailoring their experience.

This allows brands to reach a much more specific audience, unlike traditional roadside advertising, which can only target a general audience and may leave viewers feeling overwhelmed with too much irrelevant advertising. Specifically, the platform allows brands to target an affluent market that frequently makes use of ride-hailing services, such as Grab, OWTO and Hype.

Launched just one year ago, AdMov has been continuously working with big brands like Unilever, CocaCola, and FWD, and prominent advertising companies like Mindshare, Posterscope, and McCann, to develop its

MarTech platform to give consumers more meaningful advertising. Alongside the growing demand to improve Metro Manila’s transportation systems, the company intends to expand the applications of its services, possibly to buses and regular taxi services.

BusinessMirror

A12 Saturday, December 15, 2018

www.businessmirror.com.ph

A techie gift guide: Part 1 THE TECHNIVORE ED UY

wherelseduy@gmail.com

“People making lists, buying special gifts/Taking time to be kind to one and all/It’s that time of year when good friends are dear/And you wish you could give more than just presents from a store.... Why don’t you give love on Christmas Day...”

U

HM, yeah, love is good and we all need a little loving this holiday season, but let’s be honest, receiving a gift and having something to unwrap come Christmas Day gives you that extra warm, fuzzy feeling inside. Think of it like having hot cocoa, but with those little marshmallows on top.

As has been tradition here at Technivore, we have put together a list of devices and accessories that are guaranteed to put a smile on any techie.

You might even want to get some of these yourself!

FOR THE TRAVELING TECHIE

TRAVELPACK: Smartphone, camera, laptop, action camera, selfie stick, chargers, powerbank—these are just some of a geek’s travel essentials, and even though they’ve promised not to work during their vacation, they’d feel naked without bringing some or all of these.

Gone are the days of traveling with a bag full of loose charging cables, messy headphone cords, and small electronics getting mixed with your clothes.

The TravelPack versatile electronics accessory organizer will keep your accessories under control in the most stylish and durable way possible. Made from nylon, this travel bag comes with more than plenty loops and zippered pouch that can hold various items like cables, headphones, memory cards, hard drive, adapters, pens—and with enough space for a handful of small electronics.

The Promate TravelPack is available in small and large sizes.

POWERHUB: One of the more frustrating things when traveling and sharing a room with friends is when there’s only one or two power outlets and everyone needs to recharge their devices. The PowerHub fixes that problem. It has one USB charging port, one Qualcomm 3.0 quick charging port and a USB Type-C charging port, which means you can charge four devices at the same time. Its 30W fast-charging functionality allows you to quickly charge your devices and save ample amount of time instead of leaving them for hours together. It also protects your devices from overcharging and short-circuit. With Smart IC functionality, it recognizes the attached gadget and automatically delivers the correct amount of power.

MORE POWER TO YOU

IT’S not a question of how many powerbanks you have but rather how many are actually usable.

Powerbanks have become the new fruitcake of the holiday season and while you probably have enough of them to power your own home, do you actually have one that still works well after a few weeks and keeps your device safe?

AURA WATCH-1: If you are a solid Apple user, there are just a few powerbanks that can charge both your Apple watch and iPhone at the same time. AuraWatch-1 is not just a 6700mAh portable powerbank; the built-in wireless charger provides a boost of power to your Apple Watch when on the go, while you can charge your iPhone via the built-in cable with Lightning Connector.

Its 6700mAh of power translates into enough energy to recharge your Apple Watch 23 times over without refuelling the power bank; or recharge your iPhone X up to three times. Fast-charging functionality only requires about 2.5 hours to charge your devices completely.

To ensure the safety of your devices, AuraWatch-1 adopts an Apple MFi-certified watch charging module and lightning cable, passing the safety and quality test of Apple, and adopts exclusive multi-protect systems such as over-heating, short-circuit protection and overcharging Protection.

POWERPEAK-10: Never miss an important call or message and enjoy up to 8 hours of additional talk time for your important calls with the PowerPeak-10.

Utilizing Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 technology, the backup battery minimizes your time plugged into the wall or your device and gives you the power you need. PowerPeak-10 also features an ultra-fast 2.4A USB Port to charge other devices up to 80 percent faster than traditional chargers. The PowerPeak-10 also features Automatic Voltage Regulation, i.e. it provides an optimum output based on the device connected.

Its 10,000mAh battery capacity is ideal for those who carry multiple

devices such as smartphones and tablets. It’s capable of charging your Apple iPhone X, 8, 8 Plus, 7 Plus or Samsung Note 8, S8, S8+ up to three times. And thanks to a compact and slim size, it’s the perfect mobile accessory for a night on the town, a long road trip, or a weekend break.

Other features include a built-in 4 LED Power indicator to keep you informed of remaining capacity; ultra-reliable A+ Lithium-ion battery cell with over 200 battery charge life cycles; and Intelligent Safety Protection that supports over-charged, over-discharged, over-voltage- over-current and short circuit protection, making it safer to use.

QUANTUM-20: If you are looking for even more power, the Promate Quantum 20 is probably the one you need. This 20,000mAh lithium-polymer power bank features two ultra-fast USB charging ports to charge any USB chargeable device. It also includes includes Automatic Voltage Regulation, i.e. it provides an optimum output based on the device connected.

Quantum-20 is compatible with all smartphones and tablets.

The Quantum-20 can charge an iPhone X over four times, an iPhone 8 over five times, Samsung Galaxy S9 5 times, tablets at least two times and any other USB device multiple times. Two high-output ports get your drained devices up and running quickly. Moreover, the powerful 2A input means you can recharge twice as fast, so you can spend less time charging and more time getting things done.

With its sleek design and convenient travel-friendly size, the Quantum-20 is ideal for travel as well as everyday use. Its lightweight design will fit neatly into any backpack with no trouble.

It also has an innovative circuit protection chip to ensure complete safety, supporting overcharging, over-voltage, over current, short-circuits and temperature protection.

AURADOCK-5: If you have a device that supports wireless charging, you might want to check out the wireless charging pad AuraDock-5. This dock is compatible with all Qi-compatible devices and fits most smartphone cases.

No need to plug in when it’s time to power up: just lay your phone or other Qienabled device onto the charging pad. The dock’s small size makes it extremely versatile—perfect for the office, bedroom, kitchen or wherever you need it.

With a built-in coil that offers you a much wider charging area, it can help reduce the time needed to fully charge your device. It’s also equipped with a power-efficient idle mode that never overcharges your battery or wastes energy.

WHEN MUSIC IS LIFE

MELODY-BT: Experience a remarkable musical fiesta with the MelodyBT from Promate. Connect Melody-BT to your devices wirelessly or through traditional wires. This premium over-ear headphones is embedded with passive noise-cancellation technology along with advanced protein leather ear cushion to provide optimum comfort fit. It has a music play time of up to five hours, and then you can switch to wired mode when the battery is low, so you can practically take it everywhere and listen to nonstop music.

Experience superb music and voice clarity with the Melody-BT’s builtin bass boost feature that lets you tailor your audio experience for TV, music or gaming on your PlayStation, Xbox or PC, with rich lows and clear treble.

CLAVIER: If you prefer something small but powerful, there’s the Promate Clavier wired earphones with an optimally tuned acoustic design to deliver an exceptional listening experience. Just put them on, and what you hear is a detailed and authentic sound, articulate mids and sparkling highs, with everything else is so placid and soothing that every note sounds clearly significant.

The Clavier is equipped with smart technology and professionally tuned drivers to minimize effort and maximize both sound quality and user experience.

The earphones offer rich sound with defined equalization, so you can hear every instrument in your favorite song, or every word of your favorite podcast. Enjoy

superior sound quality and true convenience with these elegant earbuds.

Featuring with noise-cancellation technology, the earphone intelligently filters out background noise for perfect speech transmission in busy and noisy environments, and reduces background noise such as car road noise and air-conditioning fans for clearer sound. The noise-cancelling microphone further guarantees clear sound for hands-free calls.

ONYX: The Onyx is engineered to deliver crystal-clear sound with acoustically balanced 8mm dynamic drivers to produce a high-quality surround sound experience. Put them on and experience detailed and authentic sound, articulate mids and sparkling highs. Lightweight, comfortable with rich construction, it gives an unruffled and undisturbed sound trip.

Plus, it has a specially designed cable to resist tangling, so you can store them however you want and pull them straight out, ready for use when you need them.

BOOM: The Promate Boom is equipped with high-end open circumaural headphones for outstanding bass and vocal projection. This headset’s lightweight design is built tough to ensure that it never loses its shape.

The soft headband and sweat-resistant ear cups ensure premium comfort without the bulkiness. Passive noise cancellation ensures that you enjoy your favorite tracks minus the disturbance.

The headphones has a soft and adjustable headband covered with thick foam for a pillow-soft and burden-free feeling even after those long listening sessions. It is deliberately tough and durable: no amount of grabbing, squishing and bending is going to damage it easily. With a unique noise-isolating technology, it can produce distortion-free bass, clear mids and super-crisp highs for a truly unique audio experience.

SYMPHONY: It includes all the must-have specs needed for an excellent pair of headphones, passive noise-cancellation technology, advanced protein leather ear cushion to provide optimum comfort fit, and music play time of up to five hours. Promate Symphony also supports in-line music functionality and built-in mic function, giving the user the ability to pick up calls while listening to music.

VOGUE-3: For those who live for music and love style, this is the earphones for you. It’s designed in such a way that you can listen to music or wear these trendy earphones like an accessory around your wrist. It’s made of leather cable strings with Pandora beads crafted using zinc alloy and zinc alloy plating so the color will never fade.

MARVEL MICE

WITH the release of the first trailer of Avengers: Endgame, everyone is again hyped about the upcoming superhero movie. And for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you might want to check out Logitech’s new Marvel Collection.

The Logitech Marvel Collection features the Logitech M238 Wireless Mouse in four Marvel designs: Captain America, Iron Man, Black Panther and Spider-Man. The M238 Wireless Mouse is compatible with Microsoft Windows, Mac, Chrome OS and Linux, and the nano USB receiver lets you roam from up to 33 feet away. The M238 Wireless Mouse lasts 12 months on a single, pre-installed battery, which means you never have to worry about cutting out on your craft or job. Moreover, it’s light and portable, so you can easily bring it wherever you go.

‘High-tech’ robot on Russian TV was man in suit MOSCOW—Russian media say a contraption presented by Russian state television as a high-tech robot was, in fact, a man in a commercially available robot costume.

The footage was shot at a high-tech show in the city of Yaroslavl that opened on Tuesday, featuring “Boris the Robot.”

Forum organizers used Boris to enliven the event, having him dance to a pop song.

But a crew for Russian state television apparently thought Boris was real, and used footage of him dancing and speaking as an example of Russian technological prowess.

Online TJournal noted the lack of sensors, human-like movements and other discrepancies, and revealed that Boris was in fact a human clad in a costume sold under the name Alyosha by the Russian company Show Robots. AP

Globe brings favorite local music this weekend GET ready for a weekend filled with the best original Pinoy music. After yesterday’s “Live Street: Make Snow Possible,” leading telecommunications company Globe features more popular music acts for “Sundown Sessions,”

Together with Spotify, Globe (globe.com.ph) presents “Sundown Sessions” at Bonifacio High Street Activity Center. On December 15, starting at 5 pm, Globe customers can eat, drink, and chill out with family and friends while they enjoy live performances from BP Valenzuela, She’s Only Sixteen, Oh Flamingo, Bea Lorenzo and Unique.

Special treats are in store for Globe Postpaid customers on Spotify Premium as they get front-row seats and exciting perks when they register. Plus, select Postpaid customers on Spotify Premium get a chance to win a meet-and-greet

with their favorite artists during the event.

Want to further fuel your love for local music? For only P129 per month, listen to your favorite OPM tracks anytime, anywhere uninterrupted with Spotify Premium.

Register to Spotify 129 by visiting bit.ly/2ErJ41Z and entering your contact details.

Globe continues to lead the pack when it comes to the Filipino digital lifestyle by providing world-class entertainment experiences for customers, both online and onground. Just this year, Globe brought powerhouse artists like Harry Styles, Chance the Rapper, EXO, and Super Junior to the country, and launched upgraded promos such as GoWATCH and PLAY which has free data for videos and games.

DECEMBER 15, 2018

WHAT’S INSIDE:

Saturday Edition

COOK CONNECTING FOODIES

PUBLISHER T. ANTHONY C. CABANGON BUSINESSMIRROR EDITOR IN CHIEF LOURDES M. FERNANDEZ COOK MAGAZINE EDITOR IN CHIEF DINO H. DATU MANAGING EDITOR MAGNOLIA S. SILVESTRE GROUP CREATIVE DIRECTOR EDUARDO A. DAVAD GRAPHIC ARTIST SHAIRA MAE B. BARNUEVO ONLINE EDITOR RUBEN M. CRUZ JR. PRESIDENT BENJAMIN V. RAMOS VP FINANCE ADEBELO D. GASMIN VP ADVERTISING SALES MARVIN N. ESTIGOY ADVERTISING SALES MANAGER MARLON A. ALDENESE ACCOUNT MANAGERS MARIBEL C. AVELIS LEAH CALING-BONOTAN MICHAEL N. PITUC EVENTS & MARKETING OFFICER CARLO M. ABALOS CIRCULATION MANAGER ROLANDO MANANGAN PRODUCTION MANAGER JOMAR ESCALICAS PRE-PRESS SUPERVISOR RODANTE B. INGLES Contact us: Editorial: Tel. no. 814-0134 to 37 local 108; Website: www.cookmagazine.ph; e-mail us at editor@cookmagazine.ph.

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2 BusinessMirror Cook December 15, 2018

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BY CHEF DINO H. DATU

SERVES: 15-20 PREP TIME: 30 MINS. COOKING TIME: 1.5 HOURS

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SCALLOPS with Hazelnut Foam

PIGEON en Croute with Chestnut puree PRAWN Bouillabaisse with Sea Urchin Flan

OYSTERS in Sauterne Aspic

KOUIGN Amann

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THE FEED

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