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Rough sailing n

for Navy’s ‘grandest’ modernization project

President Duterte walks during arrival honors at the 119th anniversary of the Philippine Navy in Davao City on May 31, 2017. Presidential Communications Operations Office via AP

T

By Rene Acosta

he frigate-acquisition project, dubbed as the Philippine Navy’s (PN) most ambitious modernization project, is now perilously listing, as it sails and rams through a barrage of issues and controversies even while still in its initial phase.

The barrage of claims, allegations and counterclaims that were unleashed and rained like torpedoes on the Navy project—its biggest to date—have threatened to undermine the whole program, giving the military two choices: Either the establishment will accept an “inferior” naval asset or scuttle the contract.

An alternative option, however, exists and this is to rebid the project.

The second-biggest modernization project of the entire Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) after the acquisition of a squadron of South Korean FA-50 fighter jets, the frigate program was mapped

and charted to give the Navy two brand-new frigates, the first in its modern-day history, courtesy of Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), another South Korean firm.

The radar of controversy

The project, worth P18 billion, was smooth sailing, until its bottom was scraped through the unceremonious and controversial relief of former Navy Flag Officer in Command (FOIC) Vice Adm. Ronald Joseph Mercado early this month, unearthing rusty and nasty issues.

Defense Secretary Delfin N. Lorenzana fired Mercado for loss of trust and confidence arising from

Mercado’s alleged insubordination, and replaced him with Rear Adm. Robert Empedrad. Both the relief of Mercado and the assumption of Empedrad had the imprimatur of President Duterte.

Lorenzana said Mercado’s insubordination over the project, which is borne by his preference for another contractor to deliver the combat-management systems (CMS) for the frigates, had caused delay in its implementation.

He said part of the contract with HHI gave the South Korean builder the right to choose which contractor would deliver the CMS requirement for the ships that it

will be building for the Navy.

Hyundai preferred South Korea’s Hanwha Thales through its “Naval Shield.”

But former Marine Capt. and now Magdalo Party-list Rep. Gary Alejano claimed that the Hanwha Thales joint venture, which developed, had been dissolved even as early as August 2016, or way before the signing of the frigate contract.

“I questioned his intention behind his fixation with one specific company for the combat-management system of the frigate-acquisition project,” said Lorenzana earlier in relieving Mercado.

Continued on A2

DENR banks on R&D for enhanced environmental management

T

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

he Ecosystems Research Development Bureau (ERDB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) will launch this year more research and development (R&D) projects to enhance environmental management and natural-resource development.

PESO exchange rates n US 50.8190

ERDB Director Henry Adornado, chief of the DENR’s research and development arm, said these R&D initiatives will help the five other DENR bureaus—biodiversity management, environmental management, land management, forest management and the mines and geosciences—perform their respective mandates.

On top of pursuing R&D for clean air and clean water, studies lined up for 2018 will also focus on solid-waste management and the rehabilitation of mined-out areas.

“Aside from the usual implementation of unfinished studies

and researchers, we will launch new studies, cross-cutting the concerns of the other DENR bureaus,” Adornado said.

The ERDB is mandated to conduct R&D and develop protocols for the other bureaus of the DENR.

Since assuming the top DENR post, Environment Secretary Roy A. Cimatu has vowed to enhance environmental protection and work for clean air and clean water, as well as address the challenges of solid-waste management and the controversial issues hounding the minerals development sector, particularly the rehabilitation of

mines in the country.

Adornado said the DENRERDB’s activities, including the 35 ongoing studies, are in support of the thrusts and programs of the DENR chief.

He said the DENR-ERDB has already developed policy direction for 2018.

“For the policy direction, we are planning to develop and identify plant species for the rehabilitation of mined-out areas,” he said.

“We also plan to develop phytoremediation and bioremediation strategies to remove pollutants in both soil and water.”

Adornado added the ERDB is continuously developing the protocols on tissue culture, particularly micro-propagation of indigenous species of trees, including bamboo, to produce disease-free and quality planting materials.

The official bared that the DENR is now faced with the challenge of producing enough planting materials for its massive reforestation program, with the Forest Management Bureau (FMB) being the lead implementing agency of the Enhanced-National Greening Program (E-NGP).

See “DENR,” A2

n japan 0.4651 n UK 71.8784 n HK 6.5010 n CHINA 8.0264 n singapore 38.8287 n australia 40.8127 n EU 63.0562 n SAUDI arabia 13.5518

Source: BSP (26 January 2018 )

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BusinessMirror

A2 Saturday, January 27, 2018

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Rough sailing for Navy’s ‘grandest’ modernization project Continued from a1

“[In] our frigate [project], the contract says that the one who will choose the CMS requirement that satisfies our specification is the builder, which is Hyundai,” the defense chief added.

“Now, Admiral Mercado wants to bring in another company, another system that is not included in the contract,” Lorenzana said.

Mercado prefers Thales Tacticos of the Netherlands to deliver the CMS, a position that was supported by the Navy under his leadership and, specifically, by members of the Philippine Navy Frigate Acquisition Project Technical Working Group, the body that has set the parameters, requirement and specifications for the CMS and the entire project.

The body studied the whole aspect of the project for two years.

Lorenzana claimed he issued “directives, two directives, more than two directives,” which Mercado “disregarded as he continued to insist on his system.”

The ‘keel’ of contention

While defense and military officials worked steadily to man the rudder, apparently to steer the issue, and even the whole project out of further heeling, Alejano talked about the nitty-gritty of the contract and the Navy’s CMS requirement.

The CMS is considered as the “brain” of any military ship as it integrates its systems, including its weapons, sensors, communication and navigation, among others.

Alejano made a comparison of the CMS of Thales Tacticos and Hanwha Thales by using data and information provided by no less than the Navy at the project’s infancy.

The former military manturned-lawmaker said Thales Tacticos’ program is being used by 23 navies around the world and has been installed in around 172 ships.

Its latest model, Baseline 2, was also developed in 2012.

On the other hand, Hanwha Thales’s CMS, or the “Hanwha Systems,” is only being used by the South Korean Navy, although there is an ongoing contract with the Malaysian Navy for its use for training purposes. Its model, “Baseline 0,” was developed in the 1990s.

Tacticos’s system is compatible with TDL (tactical data link) 16, which is a C4ISTAR (command, control, communications, computers, information/intelligence, surveillance, targeting acquisition and reconnaissance) requirement of the AFP, and is in service support around the world, being the world’s largest systems integrator.

On the other hand, Hanwha’s TDL 16 is still being developed and is targeted to be available by next year, thus, its design is still “not proven.”

It has “no integration experience,” Alejano claimed.

The former Marine captain said Thales Tacticos is a company with 60 years of experience, while Hanwha has 15 up to 20 years in its former partnership with Thales.

Alejano recalled that when a workshop was held in September 2016 for the finalization of the frigate contract and the ships’ building specifications and arrangement, the PNTWG (the Navy’s tactical working group) and the HHI agreed to include in the technical specifications the provision that the CMS “shall be compatible to Tactical Data Link 16.”

“This provision became controversial. Before the contract was signed on October 24, 2016, the PNTWG presented to the FOIC, PN [Philippine Navy], who at that time is Vice Admiral [Caesar] Taccad, and to Secretary Delfin Lorenzana of the DND. The Navy is always saying that their CMS preference is Thales Tacticos,” Alejano said.

Alejano claimed that the contract contains provisions that the Navy leadership and Lorenzana were not apparently aware of, and it was a document called the “maker’s list,” which is attached to the contract.

“The provisions were written in fine print at the bottom of the document, which states that the final selection of the maker is to be the shipbuilder’s sole right, as long as the equipment/system shall fulfill the owner’s requirements in building specifications and other design and build aspects,” Alejano said.

The document, according to him, only bears the signatures of “two Koreans only,” and none on the part of the other party.

“Allowing the shipbuilder to dictate the configuration of a warship is gravely dangerous when it comes to national security and defending one’s sovereignty. The end user must dictate what missioncritical equipment they should choose while getting the best value for money,” Alejano said.

“Why did such a provision manage to get through the contract?” he asked.

Still, when Navy officials learned that the contractor managed to put one over them, they came up with the Navy’s version of the “maker’s list,” wherein it specified that as the end user, the Navy has the right to choose the maker of its operational requirement.

The maker’s list was signed by the PNTWG and hurriedly took it to the Koreans, who were already

at the airport at that time on their

tractor won over the national inter-

hand, the Navy insisted that Han-

Crew members of the Philippine Navy’s BRP Tarlac rush to board their vessel during the commissioning ceremony with three other vessels to coincide with the Philippine Navy’s 118th anniversary on June 1, 2016, at South Harbor in Manila. AP/Bullit Marquez

way back to Korea, but it was dismissed, with HHI officials reportedly claiming that the contract is already a done deal.

“The contract is done, which means the government has already paid the down payment of 15 percent, or P1.5 billion. We are pitiful, we have the money and yet we could do nothing,” Alejano said.

While these issues and controversies swirl, Mercado was in Palawan, being the commander of the Armed Forces Western Command.

Sinister ‘bait and switch’ scheme

Gleaning from the facts, Alejano declared that the HHI employed what he called a “bait and switch” strategy by luring the Navy into the project, only to modify it after it has been sealed.

“The contractor baits the buyer or client by offering superior systems or products, and once he bags the contract, he will find means to go around and eventually choose the lesser or inferior, and, thus, cheaper systems or products to maximize profits,” he said.

In this case, Alejano said, the HHI offered two options for the systems for which the Navy can choose from, and included in the options were top-of-the-line and superior products, which made it qualify for the project.

“The controversy is a case where the contractor won over the Navy.

The contractor, Hyundai Heavy Industries, or HHI, which will build the two frigates, prevailed against the wish of the Philippine Navy, which is the end user. Or we can put it this way, the business interest of the con-

DENR... continued from A1

“We now lack planting materials, that is why we are looking at tissue culture for mass

est of our country,” he said.

An unseen hand, courtesy of Special Assistant to the President Bong Go, was fingered behind the project’s sailing, but Lorenzana— and even Mercado—denied that Go ever intervened in the project.

Go’s association to the controversy prompted Presidential Spokesman Harry L. Roque Jr. to associate the simple case of “contract gone questionable” to a tale of an attempt to destabilize the government.

‘Floating’ assignment

Amid the surging torrents of controversies, Mercado was relieved for his insubordination. It is also the case with the head of the DND’s project-management team.

In the words of Alejano: “The way by which the Navy fights and stands up for its frigate project through the person of its FOIC was misconstrued as insubordination and disrespect.

This led to the removal of the head of the Project Management Team, [which is under the DND], who is Commo. Sean Villa. Since the design has to be accepted by the Navy through its TIAC [tactical inspection and acceptance committee], and the head of the Navy, who is the FOIC, continues to insist, he was also removed.”

The ensuing reliefs came as the project comes to a standstill, or— in the words of Lorenzana—a mere delay.

There were letter exchanges between the DND and the Navy about the frigate project, wherein the DND informed and maintained that the HHI will undertake the Navy’s project, but on the other

propagation for the National Greening Program,” he said.

The DENR-FMB, led by Director Nonito Tamayo, earlier told the BusinessMirror that this year’s E-NGP target is being cut down drastically because of the almost P2-billion budget slash of the DENR that will be charged against the program.

From the original 229,000-hectare target, the DENR is looking at covering only 125,000 hectares of open, degraded and denuded forest.

The bulk of the DENR’s budget in the last six years goes to the massive reforestation program under NGP, which seeks to expand the country’s forest cover by 1.5 million hectares.

From 2010 to 2016, over P25 billion was spent by the government, in effect, generating green jobs in upland areas, while increasing the country’s forest cover by 1.5 million hectares.

Despite the downsizing of the E-NGP target this year, there is an expected shortage of planting materials, including bamboo, as the agency plans to establish more plantations of the giant grass species to boost the income of upland farmers throughout the country.

Meanwhile, Adornado said the vulnerability assessment of

wha’s CMS is not compliant and will “put the Navy in a very disadvantageous position.”

A patriot

Mercado’s relief, although it has sent shockwaves to the four corners of the defense and military establishments, was seen by some military officers as the “highest and truest” form of service to the country by one in the uniformed service.

“For standing up to what is right, even at the cost of his military career, for upholding the best interest of not only the Armed Forces of the Philippines but the whole country, he is a patriot, the finest example of leadership,” one junior officer commented.

“I wonder how many Mercados we have in the AFP and even in our country’s present crop of leaders,” the officer, who requested not to be named, added, noting that the “floating” official could just have allowed the project to slip through as the government did since Mercado would be retiring in March this year.

The officer said the relief of Mercado gives the impression that it betrays the “love for soldiers and the love for country” that the Commander in Chief holds and often pronounced, more so that he became President on a strong anticorruption stand.

Mercado will never waiver in his position on the CMS issue, saying the sailors will not “look kindly” to him if he ever changes his stand.

Accepting Hanwha’s CMS, he said, is tantamount to abandoning the men and women of the Navy, who for the longest time have been

all critical watersheds nationwide will be pursued this year.

Almost half, or 68, of the 143 critical watersheds in the country have already been characterized and vulnerability-assessed by the ERDB, he added.

To fast-track the vulnerability assessment of the remaining critical watersheds, Adornado said they will tap the DENR’s field offices.

“With the help of the DENR’s field offices, we will capacitate and train DENR personnel and regional offices, the Penro [Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office] and the Cenro [Community Environment and Natural Resources Office], so that they can conduct the vulnerability assessment of the remaining watersheds themselves,” he said.

Adornado added this will hasten the process and achieve the target to complete the vulnerability assessment the soonest time possible.

He noted that the United Nations had warned of a looming water crisis, with the Philippines experiencing severe water shortage in 15 years.

“Following our mandate, which is also to develop the protocols or strategies and disseminate the protocols, we will roll it out to the field for them to under-

dreaming of a modern vessel, a frigate that can truly prowl and defend the country’s waters.

For years, the military has endured the tag of being a “laggard,” the least developed armed forces in the region, which is a far cry from its former status as a dominant and potent force in Asia.

Its assets even earned a wide variety of monikers, such as “widow makers” and “flying and sailing coffins,” metaphors that described their condition as rustic, old and nothing but vintage assets.

Before the Aquino administration jumped off its modernization, former Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin even described the Philippine Air Force as nothing but “full of air” but with “no force.”

The development of the Armed Forces was basically hindered by the lack of money, misplaced priorities and even by a perceived notion of corruption.

But with money allotted to the frigate project, Mercado said the Navy could not afford to squander the opportunity to modernize by going with the best assets and systems worth every cent.

Alejano said the frigate is very important and sentimental for the Navy because it will be its first ship that is modern, brand new, missilearmed and “on a par with the modern warships of other countries.”

“This can fill in the gap of our external defense capabilities. It is capable of conducting Anti-Air Warfare, Anti-Surface Warfare, AntiSubmarine Warfare and Electronic Warfare operations,” he said.

“It has extended maritime patrol range through an embarked naval helicopter and extended maritime surveillance capability through air and surface search radar, and Sound Navigation and Ranging [Sonar] for sub-surface search, among others. It can sustain 30 days operations at sea, which is what we needed to patrol our exclusive economic zone, especially our West Philippine Sea and the Philippine Rise,” Alejano added.

Mercado said the Navy having its first modern frigate was the fervent, but elusive, dream of previous FOICs, who called him up and congratulated him when they learned that a contract for the acquisition of such ship has been signed.

He said seeing and owning a frigate is a source of national pride.

“When foreign ships visits our country, we board with the President, and as we do, all I could do is look at the missile, while ours remains the same, and it is still manual, while everything today is already fully automatic, from loading, extraction to firing,” Mercado said.

take the assessment,” he said.

The vulnerability assessment of watersheds is supposed to be within the mandate of the FMB, but because of their lack of technical capability, the ERDB takes over.

“Watershed is part of the forestland, which means they are owned by the state. We have upland communities, with these, they will be part of the protection and management of damaged critical watersheds,” Adornado added.

Among the R&D projects, he said, the determination of appropriate plants that can extract pollutants from the soil and water is the top priority. This, he added, will be very useful in the rehabilitation of mined-out areas, particularly those that are found to be contaminated with toxic chemicals, and in treating polluted water bodies.

The DENR is currently studying the appeal of more than two dozen mining companies whose operations have been recommended for closure or suspension because of their proximity to watersheds.

Adornado said another important project deals with the plastic problem.

“We are developing a technology to degrade plastics. This is for the problem on solid waste,” he said.

News

BusinessMirror The 2018 national budget: Some particulars www.businessmirror.com.ph

L

et’s zero in on the budget’s aspects of providing quality, accessible and relevant education.

Did you know that the net enrollment rate for elementary was 91.05 percent (baseline 2015); and the completion rate was 83.43percent? The Duterte administration targets that enrollment rate to 95percent, and the completion rate to 90 percent by 2022. For junior high school, the net enrollment rate wa s 68.15 percent ( ba sel i ne 2015); and completion rate at 83.43 percent. The 2022 target is 75.44 percent for net enrollment rate and 78.48 percent for completion rate.

T hese are cold impersona l figures, but they represent real people, Filipino youth who deser ve a fair chance to live better lives, to be more employable and, indeed, to eventually support the economic growth of the countr y. As the Department of Budget and Management says, “Education is the ‘great equalizer.’ It can help fight poverty and even raise a person’s income for ever y additional year of schooling.”

So, what’s the budget going to do? In 2018, P19.4 billion will be applied to fund 21 million textbooks; 3,183 sets of science and mathematics equipment; 22,883 packages for the computerization program; and 4,600 sets of technical-vocational equipment.

FINEX FREE ENTERPRISE Santiago F. Dumlao Jr. T his year 81,100 additional teaching positions w ill be created, plus 140 more nonteaching positions. T his w ill take P23 billion to fund. A nd P126 billion is appropriated for the construction of 47,000 classrooms and 12,037 computer, technica l-vocationa l and science laboratories. The funding includes the repair/rehabilitation of 18,000 classrooms and the purchase of 84,781 sets of school seats.

Too many details for a readerin-a-hurry? Stay on, if you’ve read this far. The government also provides P5.3 billion to implement its school-based feeding program.

This will benefit 1,823,443 severely wasted and wasted students (those with low weights compared to their height), plus 631,334 kindergarten students in priority provinces.

Perhaps, unknown to many (me included), there is a financial-assistance program by the government extended to students and teachers in private

schools and non-Depar tment of Educat ion publ ic sc hools, “to foster the complementarity between public and private education.” This government assistance and subsidies w ill benefit 2,849,198 students and 35,945 teachers participating in the Teacher Salary Subsidy Program. A good sum of P39.3 billion is provided for this program. Yes, P39.3 billion. That’s larger t han t he 2018 appro pr iation for the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), which is P13.5 billion.

There is a reason for details.

For spend ing accountabi l it y, there is a need to be specific, matching money spent against deliverables. And identifying number of beneficiaries tells us that some serious studies have preceded the budget proposals.

(I do hope I’m correct.)

To end t h i s conversat ion, just a few add itiona l deta i ls.

T here are student f inancia lassistance prog rams for which P7.1 bi l lion have been appro p r i a t e d t o b e n e f it 5 5 0 , 6 9 6 students. A nd separately, t he D e p a r t me nt of S c ie nc e a nd Te c h no l o g y ( D O ST ) - S c i e n c e Educ at ion Inst it ute is g iven P3.6 bi l lion for scholarships to benefit 28,414 beneficiaries.

The government says it’s all about boosting productivity and competitiveness. I say it’s more than that. It’s about total human development.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

A3

Ash, lava spilling from Mayon coating land

M

ore lava was spilling from Mayon Volcano, which is also sending up columns of ash over farmland and towns already coated in gray after a nearly two-week eruption.

More than 74,000 people are staying in dozens of emergency shelters after fleeing the danger zone around Mount Mayon.

Officials are worried the eruption may last months, disrupting the lives and livelihoods of people in its shadow.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said on Friday lava eruptions have been intense but sporadic over the previous 24 hours. It measured ash plumes rising up to 5 kilometers (3 miles) high and detected 15 volcanic earthquakes, as well as emissions of sulfur dioxide.

GPS and other measurements f rom i n s t r u me nt s i n s t a l le d

around the volcano also continue to indicate a swelling of the mountain surface, which is consistent with magma rising and creating pressure. The episodes of lava fountaining may be relieving that pressure, scientists said.

“It just means that the pressure is being relieved for the moment and then it builds up again,” said Paul Alanis, research specialist at

the volcano institute. The alert level for Mayon remains four on a scale of five, indicating a violent eruption may be imminent.

No injuries have been reported, but law enforcers have struggled to keep people out of the danger zone, 8 kilometers from the crater.

Officials have said temporary learning centers will be set up in the schools being used as evacuation centers and farm animals will be moved closer so education and income will not be lost.

Farmers have had to leave their rice, vegetable and poultry farms within the danger zone. The initial damage to agriculture alone during the past two weeks exceeds $2 million, Albay provincial agricultural officer Cheryll Ribeta told a news conference on Thursday.

Mayon, in northeastern Albay province, has erupted about 50 times in the last 500 years. In 2013 an ash eruption killed five climbers who had ventured near the summit despite warnings.

The Philippines has about 22 active volcanoes. The explosion of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 was one of the biggest volcanic eruptions of the 20th century, killing hundreds. AP

A4

The World BusinessMirror

Saturday, January 27, 2018

Editor: Lyn Ressureccion | www.businessmirror.com.ph

Draghi clears path for euro economy as momentum builds M

ario Draghi says the euro region is firing on all cylinders, and he’s not about to get in the way.

After the International Monetary Fund (IMF) raised growth forecasts and the global elite in Davos heaped praise on the economy’s brighter prospects, t he Eu ro p e a n C e nt r a l B a n k (ECB) president gave his own vote of support by saying that an interest-rate increase this year is very unlikely. That’s a green light for an expansion that’s entered its fifth year.

“You could call it ‘Operation

Overheat,’” said Richard Barwell, an economist at BNP Paribas Asset Management in London.

“By the time Draghi walks out the front door, unemployment could be setting record eurozone lows.”

The economy probably grew the fastest in a decade last year, and GDP data due on Tuesday will probably show a 19th consecutive quarter of expansion at the end of 2017. The region

gathered momentum in January, with the Purchasing Managers’ Index suggesting quarterly growth of 1 percent and German business confidence at a record high.

The euro’s ascent to a threeyear high aga inst t he dol lar may yet become a thorn in the economy’s side if it curbs exports and damps prices. Much of the attention on Thursday was on

Draghi’s response to US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s remarks that appeared to welcome a weaker dollar.

Draghi hit back, say ing such comments may v iolate ag reeme nt s to avoid comp e t it ive cur renc y deva luations. Yet, he a lso sa id t he euro’s streng t h was in par t dow n to t he reg i o n ’s i m p r o v i n g o u t l o o k .

T he IMF t his week pred icted

Based on today’s data and projections, I see very few chances at all that interest rates could be raised this year.”—Draghi

a 2.2-percent g row t h in 2018, up f rom a prev ious estimate of 1.9 percent.

Crucially, Draghi declined to say that the euro had climbed too high. It rose further as he spoke and has added about 4 percent this year.

“His commentary on growth was relatively bullish,” said Nick Kounis, an economist at ABN Amro Bank NV in Amsterdam.

“If you’re trying to talk down the euro, those kinds of comments are extremely unhelpful.”

Even with the solid pace of growth, returning inflation to the ECB’s goal still depends on central bank stimulus, Draghi said. While he officially kept policy guidance unchanged, he added an important note on the timing

of withdrawing that stimulus.

“Based on today’s data and projections, I see very few chances at all that interest rates could be raised this year,” Draghi told reporters in Frankfurt. The ECB stuck by its plan to continue buying €30 billion ($37 billion) of assets a month until at least the end of September, and reiterated that rates would stay low well beyond that.

T he ECB w ill update its forecasts for growth and inf lation at it s ne x t monet a r y- pol ic y meeting in March. T hey may c hange t heir communicat ion on t he out look for polic y at the same time, according to a Bloomberg sur vey conducted before T hursday’s meeting.

Bloomberg News

Trump’s infrastructure plan comes with a huge hole

W

hen President Donald J. Trump unveils his plan to beef up the nation’s infrastructure plan next month, it will include a crater-sized hole.

The trust fund that pays for most federal highway and transit aid is forecast to go broke in about three years, unless

the government significantly scales back its transportation spending or comes up with more money. But Trump’s infrastructure plan is silent on the looming problem, an administration official familiar with the plan told The Associated Press. The official wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the plan and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Fu l f i l l i ng a c a mpa ig n prom ise, Trump’s plan proposes to generate $1 trillion in infrastructure spending over 10 years. But the plan seeks only $200 billion in federal dollars, relying instead on state and local governments and private investors to come up with most of the rest of the money.

The administration views the plan as a supplement to current infrastructure spending. The money would be distributed through new types of programs that are designed to generate greater state and local government and private-sector spending. Also, there’s no guarantee how much of the money will go to transportation projects, since the administration is broadly defining infrastructure as everything from building water-treatment plants to expanding high-speed Internet access to rural areas. The administration is open to working with Congress to

address the trust fund later, although those conversations haven’t yet begun, the official said.

Republican leaders have been waiting to see what the White House will propose.

There is wide, bipartisan support for continuing, and even increasing, transportation spending. But most lawmakers have been unwilling so far to back tax increases or spending cuts to pay for it.

The federal government is currently spending $15 billion a year more than the Highway Trust Fund takes in through gasoline and diesel taxes. Authorized trust-fund spending for the current federal budget year that ends on September 30 is about $56 billion.

“Addressing the solvency of the Highway Trust Fund is the most important infrastructure issue facing us today,” said Bud Wright, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, which represents state transportation departments.

“A failure to address the long-term solvency of the [trust fund] could mean a 40-percent drop in highway spending in 2021,” Wright said. “We’re hopeful the president will play a strong leadership role in addressing this challenge.”

The US Chamber of Commerce last

week called for a 25-cent, phased-in increase in the federal gas tax to shore up the trust fund. Congress hasn’t passed a gas tax increase since 1993, primarily because being associated with a highly visible tax hike felt by most Americans is viewed by many lawmakers as political poison. Asking lawmakers to vote for an increase in an election year seems a stretch. On the other hand, 26 states have raised their own fuel taxes since 2013 without significant political repercussions.

The American Trucking Associations has proposed increasing the wholesale transportation fuels tax by 5 cents a gallon a year over four years—a little less visible than an increase at the pump. That would generate about $340 billion over 10 years, the group estimated.

Passing the administration’s infrastructure plan without bolstering the trust fund would amount to “taking one step forward and two steps back,” said David Bauer, executive vice president at the American Road & Transportation Builders Association.

Michael Sargent, a transportation and infrastructure expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the administration appears to view the trust-fund shortfall as “Congress’s problem.” AP

Sports BusinessMirror

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

THE 2016 champion Angelique Kerber didn’t lose the match—she forced Halep to win it after a gritty comeback so nearly launched the German lefthander into another Saturday night final at Melbourne Park. AP

Saturday, January 27, 2018

A5

NO SHAME

North, South hockey players team up for Olympics

S

EOUL—Female hockey players from the rival Koreas were paired up with each other on Thursday to form their first-ever Olympic squad during next month’s Pyeongchang Winter Games, as their countries press ahead with rare reconciliation steps following a period of nuclear tensions.

A dozen North Korean hockey players wearing whiteand-red winter parkas crossed the heavily fortified border into South Korea earlier on Thursday, as about 30-40 conservative activists shouted anti-Pyongyang slogans at a nearby border area.

The North Koreans traveled on to a national athletes’ village in southern South Korea, where they were welcomed by their South Korean teammates and Canadian Coach Sarah Murray, who presented them flower bouquets in an outdoor welcoming ceremony.

“I sincerely welcome your arrival,” Lee Jae-kun, head of the athletes’ village, told the North Koreans after they got off a bus.

Park Chol Ho, a North Korean coach who arrived with the 12 athletes and two support staff, told reporters that he’s happy to team up with South Koreans. “I’m very pleased with the fact that North and South are united as one to participate in [the Olympics]. I expect we’ll see good results if we unite our efforts...though we don’t have much time,” he said.

The Korean players later shouted “We are one!” and posed for a group photo. North and South Korean players plan to practice separately for several days as Murray needs time to learn about the North Koreans. They plan to start a joint practice sometime next week, according to Yonhap news agency.

The Koreas fielded a single team to major sports events only twice, both in 1991. One event was the world table tennis championships and the other soccer’s World Youth

Championship.

But this is the first time they’ve assembled a single team for the Olympics.

The Koreas explored how to cooperate in the Olympics after the North’s leader Kim Jong Un abruptly said in his New Year’s address that he was willing to send an Olympic delegation. As part of the rapprochement deals, the Koreas also agreed for their athletes to march together under a single flag during the February 9 opening ceremony, while the North will send a large art troupe to perform in the South. Some experts say North Korea may want to use improved ties with the South as a way to weaken United States-led international sanctions.

The International Olympic Committee has allowed 22 North Korean athletes, including the 12 hockey players, to compete in Pyeongchang in exceptional entries given to the North, which initially had none for the games. The 10 others will compete in figure skating, shorttrack speed skating, Alpine skiing and cross-country skiing.

They will come to South Korea on February 1. AP

ELBOURNE—No shame. It’s the simple summary of Angelique Kerber’s bid for a second Australian Open women’s singles title.

Kerber’s competitive qualities almost compensated for that sinking feeling after succumbing, 6-3, 4-6, 9-7, to top-seeded Simona Halep in a gripping semifinal struggle.

The 2016 champion didn’t lose the match—she forced Halep to win it after a gritty comeback so nearly launched the German lefthander into another Saturday night final at Melbourne Park.

And this comeback after being down a set and a break wasn’t manufactured against some ranking underling. It was a sustained counteroffensive against the No. 1 player seemingly in total control of the contest.

“My heart was on the court, that’s the most important thing for me,” Kerber said. “Of course, I’m a little bit sad, but I’ll go with a good feeling back home.”

Even when Halep served for the match at 5-3 in the second set, Kerber refused to yield, and then saved two match points on serve in the 10th game to level the heavyhitting duel.

Such was Kerber’s zest to keep the match alive that she eventually saved 13 of 22 break points on serve. She took advantage of every one of her seven break point opportunities, including three in the third set, to maintain the pressure. And she made 16 fewer unforced errors. But the crushing weight of serving second in the tense third set just to stay alive eventually took its toll.

While Kerber rued the two squandered match points when serving for the match at 6-5, it seems she’s back on track after the 2017 form slump when she reached only one singles final and slid from No. 1 to a year-end No. 21 ranking.

Of those match points, Kerber said: “She played good, I could do nothing. I tried my best in the moment, and she won those points.”

It was Kerber’s first loss after a string of 14 singles victories in Australia this month—four at the Hopman Cup in Perth, five to sweep to the title at the Sydney International and five in the impressive run to the last four in Melbourne.

She was the last major winner still in contention in the women’s draw after she beat Maria Sharapova in the third round.

“Looking back, if someone told me I would win so many matches, win a title and get to the semifinals here, I will take all the positive things from the last few weeks and keep looking forward,” she said. “I can play big matches in front of big crowds, and my heart is there, and I’m enjoying every moment.”

P Cornet under investigation after missing three doping tests

ARIS—Alize Cornet is under investigation by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) after missing three out-of-competition doping tests in the past year.

The French Tennis Federation, in a statement late Wednesday night, said it was informed by the ITF on January 11 that an investigation was underway. Cornet was subsequently dropped from the French Fed Cup team to play Belgium next month.

She was playing at the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tournament of the season, when the French federation was notified.

Cornet reached the third round in Australia, beating Chinese wildcard entry Wang Xinyu and No. 12-seeded Julia Goerges before losing to Elise Mertens.

The French federation said Fed Cup captain Yannick Noah agreed to, “let Alize Cornet prepare her defense,” meaning that she is unavailable for selection against Belgium.

Cornet has defended her no-shows in a post on social media.

The 28-year-old Cornet says she missed three tests at home because of “valid reasons, which the ITF, for now, doesn’t want to hear,” and added that her case will be heard in March.

Furthermore, Cornet said she had around 20 anti-doping controls during 2017, which all came back negative. AP

Alize Cornet says she missed three tests at home because of “valid reasons.” AP

Prosecutor praises newspaper that exposed doctor’s abuse

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NDIANAPOLIS—Former sports doctor Larry Nassar likely still would be sexually assaulting girls if not for the work of an Indiana newspaper that helped to expose the abuse, a Michigan prosecutor said on Wednesday.

“We as a society need investigative journalists more than ever,” Assistant Attorney General Angela Povilaitis told the judge at Nassar’s sentencing hearing.

Nassar, 54, admitted sexually assaulting athletes under the guise of medical treatment when he was employed by Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics, which trains Olympians. Judge Rosemarie Aquilina sentenced him on Wednesday to 40 to 175 years in prison in a case involving seven victims, and he faces sentencing next week in a neighboring Michigan county where he abused girls at a gymnastics club. He already had been sentenced to 60 years

in prison for child pornography.

The case began with a 2016 Indianapolis Star investigation of how USA Gymnastics handled sexualabuse allegations against coaches. That prompted former gymnast Rachael Denhollander to alert the newspaper to Nassar’s abuse.

“After that article, I knew this was the time,” Denhollander told The Associated Press. “This is always what I knew had to be done...[and] I was 100-percent confident there were other victims speaking up and being silenced.”

After the Star investigation, the number of victims coming forward grew, getting another jolt with the sentencing that began last week. Originally, fewer than 90 women and girls were expected to give statements, but more than 150 ended up giving them.

ANOTHER ACCOLADE FOR TABORA

W THE South Korean women’s ice hockey team members salute during an inaugural ceremony for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in Seoul earlier this week. AP

M

By Bruce Matthews The Associated Press

ORLD Cup champion Krizziah Tabora was named Female Bowler of the Year, while Kenneth Chua grabbed his third consecutive men’s trophy in the recent Team Prima 25th Anniversary Celebration dubbed the Great Gatsby Party at the Blue Leaf Filipinos Event Place in Parañaque City.

The 26-year-old former Miriam College student was the runaway winner of the award for topping the prestigious

Bowling World Cup that put her alongside Filipino bowling legends Paeng Nepomuceno and Bong Coo. “This is another award that I will treasure and be proud of for the rest of my life. And 2017 turned out to be the best year of my life because after winning the World Cup, people recognized me here and abroad,” said Tabora, who already clinched her fifth Prima Pasta Athlete of the Year honor.

“The Filipinos abroad, they even threw party for me and

Povilaitis told the judge that, without Denhollander and the newspaper, Nassar “would still be practicing medicine, treating athletes and abusing kids.” Among the honors the newspaper received for its reporting was the top award for criminal justice reporting from the Investigative Reporters & Editors.

“We know federal law enforcement did not stop him, nor did trainers or coaches or dean or medical supervisors....

But thank God we have these journalists, and that they exposed this truth, and that they continued to cover the story,” Povilaitis said.

The praise comes as newspaper readership overall is declining and amid increased attacks on the credibility of news organizations by President Donald J. Trump, who often derides news he doesn’t like as “fake.” AP asked to have pictures with me. They kept saying that, they are so proud of me. It’s very fulfilling knowing that I brought pride to our country. Also, I gained more friends in social media and in person,” she added.

Chua, 26, captured last year the first Philippine Bowling Federation Philippine International Open, TBAM Open Masters and Philippine Seniors Open Championship titles, while settling for a silver medal in the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games.

Those achievements were enough for him to snare his fourth Bowler of the Year award during the annual event organized by Team Prima Chairman Alexander Lim. AP

BusinessMi

A6 Saturday, January 27, 2018 | Editor: Jun Lomibao

‘THERE’S A NEW R C

SIX Mavic mechanics spend four days at the World Cycling Centre, where they are brought up-to-date with the latest technologies, developments and tricks of the trade.

Course for neutral assistance mechanics up at Aigle facility

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YCLISTS who experience mechanical problems in a race know only too well the sense of relief when they see the neutral assistance vehicle draw up beside them.

Flat tire, dropped chain, wobbly seat post, problem with the derailleur—some problems are easily fixed while others require more time and expertise.

The International Cycling Union (UCI) World Cycling Centre (WCC) partner Mavic provides neutral assistance at some 120 cycling events a year, ranging from professional road and mountain-bike races to mass participation events.

Just recently, six of their mechanics spent four days at the UCI WCC in Aigle, Switzerland, where they were brought up-to-date with the latest technologies, developments and tricks of the trade. They worked on mountain bikes and road bikes at the UCI WCC

workshop under the instruction of UCI Mechanic Tutor Jean-Louis Guihard-Thébault.

“The advantage of coming to the UCI World Cycling Centre is that, we get to see all the different brands and components in one place. Technology evolves very quickly. We have done a lot of practical work, which helps us remember what we have learned more clearly,” said Jacques Corteggiani, manager service courses at Mavic, Amer Sports Group.

The Mavic mechanics—most of them former riders—work at professional races, including UCI WorldTour events, such as the Tour de France and UCI Mountain Bike World Cups, where they assist teams that they sponsor. But often their most challenging work is at mass participation events, where they man a stand the day before the race, as well as providing assistance during the event.

“Often it’s a case of ingenuity,” Corteggiani says. “You can get someone whose mate has suggested they enter the race and he’s just dug his old bike out of the garage.

We are confronted with all sorts of equipment.”

Corteggiani remembers one Dutch rider who flew to Paris for the Paris-Roubaix Challenge only to find that his bike had not been charged onto the plane.

“We lent him a bike for the race and when he cycled onto the velodrome in Roubaix, he was the happiest man in the world. The pleasure that we can provide participants is the most important.”

Apart from this latest course specifically directed at neutral assistance mechanics, the UCI WCC conducts training courses for mechanics of different levels throughout the year. More information about the mechanics training can be found on the UCI web site.

UCI News

ORYN RIVERA could hardly have set the bar much higher for herself during her opening season at Sunweb, but the American is determined to approach her sophomore year on the team in much the same frame of mind that carried her to victory at the Tour of Flanders, Trofeo Alfredo Binda and RideLondon Classique in 2017.

“We take all our positives from last year and we learn from all our mistakes last year, as well, and use that going into 2018 with a clean slate,” Rivera told Cyclingnews. “There’s always a new race. You can’t go in thinking, ‘We won it last year so we’ll win it again this year.’ It’s about going in with a clear mind and not being overconfident, but at the same time knowing everything we did last year and drawing confidence from that.

Confidence is something Rivera—winner of 70 national titles and counting—can hardly have lacked over the course of her cycling life, even if she endured quiet frustration at being pigeonholed as a sprinter during the early years of her senior career.

That misconception came about largely due to her slew of criterium success in the United States, as she combined her professional career with a business degree at Marian University, but Rivera began to showcase her full range once she was able to focus fully on racing in 2016.

Although Rivera suffered the disappointment of missing out on the Rio 2016 Olympics, she impressed in her final season at United Healthcare, winning the Joe Martin stage race and securing a contract with Sunweb for the 2017 campaign.

The expectation, both within the team and externally, was that Rivera’s first season on a European team would

Euro court says whereabouts system does not violate human rights

UCI to step up fight vs mechanical doping in March

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A

T an informal sit-down with the press at the Tour Down Under, International Cycling Union (UCI) President David Lappartient confirmed the governing body’s ongoing fight against mechanical doping.

An announcement regarding new initiatives and technologies was initially slated for the end of January but will now be made in March with a demonstration by the UCI. During his election campaign in the lead up to September’s presidential elections and following his victory, Lappartient has remained committed to stamping out mechanical doping from cycling. The UCI’s tablet scanning of bikes before and after races remains its No. 1 method for now but from March, sophisticated changes are coming as Lappartient explained.

“It has been a little bit delayed because we were supposed to probably make the announcement at the end of January,” Lappartient said of the developments.

“We can do this but I prefer to make the announcement with the demonstration with what we will do. This will probably be in the middle of March. What I can tell you is that, we are ready and we know what we will do. We will have five different ways to fight and, of course, we have been working very hard with Bob Stapleton, the chairman of the equipment material, plus Jean-Christophe Péraud who has been involved in this.

“We will be ready for this but nevertheless, in the meantime, I would say between now and mid-March, we will continue to use the current system we have. Plus, some other systems but we will be really ready after mid-March.”

The cost of the UCI’s investment in new technologies and testing methods is estimated at €500,000 per year by Lappartient. The methods are set to include tablets, x-rays, thermal cameras and the dismantling bikes to check for hidden motors.

Belgian rider Femke Van Driessche remains the only cyclist to have been caught with a motor in a professional race, at the 2016 ‘cross Worlds and was handed a six-year ban. Since then, there have been several incidents at amateur level, including a 53-year-old in a race near Brescia in Italy, and a 43-year-old French rider in a race in the Dordogne. Both in 2017.

The main focus of the UCI’s fight against mechanical doping will be professional cycling but for Lappartient, it is an issue that needs eradicating from the sport in general.

Although Lappartient has “no specific idea” if mechanical doping is currently taking place, he would rather be safe than sorry and witness the sport endure further scandal.

“To guarantee the credibility of the result and give the message to all the people that love cycling that, ‘ok, you can trust our sport. We are doing what we have to do’. And this is why I don’t want to be in a situation to ask myself do we have such a situation or not,” he said of the reasoning to further invest in controls for mechanical doping. “I don’t think so but I am not sure. I want to be sure and we also have to consider not only the top level but also national races, regional races, because we saw an example in Italy, in France.

Confidence is something Coryn Rivera—winner of 70 national titles and counting—can hardly have lacked over the course of her cycling life, even if she endured quiet frustration at being pigeonholed as a sprinter during the early years of her senior career.

International Cycling Union President David Lappartient will unveil five elements to battle cheating.

“Our idea on this will be to fight at the top level on the track and the road but also to deliver something very low cost but efficient to the national federations to fight at their level. To ensure in cyclo-sportif that we have no problem with this.”

Lappartient is hopeful the increased investment and new methods from the UCI can keep the UCI ahead of the issue. A “problem” he believes is “less difficult to solve than the doping situation.”

“With that technology we have, I think there is no way to go outside. But, of course, we must always be careful about the development of technologies because you can have systems of technology to cheat that is sometimes smaller and smaller so we have to be careful. The technology we will deliver...is also technology for the future, and we will develop this in 2018. I am confident we will solve this problem.” Cyclingnews

HE whereabouts system used in anti-doping was validated on Thursday in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) after Jeannie Longo and a number of other French athletes brought a case arguing that the system infringed on their freedoms.

Longo, a retired multiple world champion who was cleared of a whereabouts violation in 2011, was one of two applicants in the case, the other being a group of national sporting unions representing French footballers, basketball players and rugby players.

Together they claimed that the whereabouts system, the fulcrum of out-of-competition drugs testing, constituted a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which covers the “right to respect for private and family life.”

The whereabouts system (Adams) was introduced under the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) Code in 2004 and requires athletes to file information about their location so that they may be reached by testers. With the Wada code revised and adopted by all Olympic sports in 2009, the whereabouts system

was tightened and moved online, requiring athletes to keep it regularly updated and also indicate an hour-long slot each day when they are available for testing.

Longo and the others had previously appealed to the Conseil d’Etat, the supreme court in France, but saw their applications rejected, leading them to take their complaints to the ECHR. The group of unions lodged its application in 2011, while Longo did so in 2013, alleging that her inclusion in the French anti-doping agency’s target testing pool since 2008 constituted “a serious and repeated breach of privacy.”

The case was brought against the French state, but the potential consequences extended far beyond the country’s borders. A victory for Longo et al. would have heavily undermined the Wada code, triggering similar appeals elsewhere and posing a major headache to anti-doping authorities globally.

In Strasbourg on Thursday the ECHR rejected the case, ruling unanimously that there had been no violation of Article 8.

“Taking account of the impact of the whereabouts

TOUR HONORS ‘THE CANNIBAL’ UCI chief Lappartient on A I B

RUSSELS—The start of the 2019 Tour de France will be all about honoring Eddy Merckx in his hometown of Brussels.

Merckx, known as “The Cannibal” for his ferocious taste for victory, won the first of his five Tours in 1969. Half a century later, the Belgian great still sees it as one of the major accomplishments for a cyclist generally considered to be the greatest ever.

“I wore the yellow jersey 96 times. It is the best memory of my career. It still gives me goosebumps,” Merckx said during Tuesday’s presentation of the Grand Depart—the opening weekend of the three-week Tour.

Merckx also won a record 34 Tour stages and is among four riders who won the Tour a record five times. French riders Jacques Anquetil and Bernard Hinault, and Spanish great Miguel Indurain are the others.

Tour organizers said it will be the second time the race

will set off from the Belgian capital, which hosted the race’s Grand Depart in 1958.

The 2019 race will also mark 100 years since the race leader’s yellow jersey was created.

When it comes to the first two stages on July 6 and 7, the iconic Wall of Geraardsbergen climb should take center stage.

The 192-kilometer first stage of the Tour will have the Wall, for decades the toughest climb in the Ronde of Flanders classic. The Wall will come early but the stage, which makes a big loop south of Brussels, is still set up for a sprint finish close to the royal palace.

It will also have its stretch of famed Flemish cobblestones and will pass through the hometown of soccer player Eden Hazard.

The second stage will be a 28-kilometer team time trial through the Belgian capital along its wide-open boulevards. The riders will also pass by Saint Pieters-Woluwe in suburban Brussels, where Merckx lived as a child and where he got to pull on his first yellow jersey.

From Brussels, it is an easy trek south into nearby France for the rest of the race.

THE 2019 Tour de France will honor the first victory of five-time champion Eddy Merckx. AP

NTERNATIONAL Cycling Union (UCI) President David Lappartient has said that he will not attend the 2018 Tour of Flanders following the organization’s decision to extend an invitation to Lance Armstrong to participate in a conference linked to the race.

Lappartient previously wrote to Flanders Classics asking them to rescind their invitation to Armstrong, who is scheduled to appear at the “Tour of Flanders Business Academy” event on the Friday preceding the Ronde.

Armstrong will then be a guest of Tour of Flanders organizer Wouter Vandenhaut at the race on Sunday, although due to his life ban for doping, he will not travel in the race caravan and will instead watch at various points from the roadside.

“I can’t confiscate the American’s passport and prevent him from coming to Belgium,” Lappartient told Het Nieuwsblad. “I understand that he could be invited as a conference speaker, and he will obviously attract a lot of attention, but this is not the image that we want to send out from cycling. We want to promote a clean sport, and Armstrong is not the symbol of that.”

Armstrong was handed a life ban for doping and stripped of his seven Tour de France victories in 2012 by the US AntiDoping Agency after an investigation instigated by US federal agent Jeff Novitzky. The terms of Armstrong’s life ban prohibit him from taking part in or attending UCI-sanctioned events.

Last year the organizers of the Colorado Classic withdrew from an informal partnership with Armstrong’s new podcast venture.

“He’s not authorized to be in a race car since he is suspended for life,” Lappartient said. “I’m not happy with this situation and have made it known to Wouter

irror CYCLING

mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph | Saturday, January 27, 2018 A7

S ALWAYS RACE’ be largely a learning experience, but the Californian adapted quickly and stitched together a fine sequence of spring results.

As well as victories at the Trofeo Binda and Tour of Flanders, she placed third at Gent-Wevelgem, sixth at Amstel Gold Race and seventh at La Flèche Wallonne to take a temporary lead in the Women’s WorldTour standings. She would finish the seasonlong series in fourth place behind winner Anna van der Breggen.

“It was a lot more than I had expected,” Rivera said. “I went into last year more as a development rider, learning the ropes and really feeling what it’s like to race here full time. But I learned pretty quickly. I learned how the peloton moves and who the riders to watch are and how the team works. Everything just clicked really easily. But I think there’s always something to improve on and learn from, and that’s what I’ll look to do this year.”

Rivera certainly learned quickly in 2017, claiming the Tour of Flanders at the second attempt. A group sprint at the end of a Classic is very different to a regular bunch gallop, but Rivera showed impeccable instincts to tailor her effort accordingly in the finishing straight in Oudenaarde.

“I think it’s a lot about instinct, and then having a strong mind and the willpower to really want it and put in that extra effort,” Rivera said. “Because by that point in the race, everyone’s done, everyone’s tired. I don’t know what I did and where I got it from at Flanders, but that’s something that’s very important in races like that.”

If Rivera’s victory from an 18-rider group seemed to

reaffirm her talents as a sprinter, her effort on the Mur de Huy later that month demonstrated that the 25-year-old’s repertoire is a wide one.

“Personally, I see myself as a bike racer—whatever it takes for me to get to the line, I’m going to do, whether it’s climbs or sprinting or whatever it is,” Rivera said. “I’m working on my weaknesses now and really fine-tuning my strengths like sprinting, and I think I’ll only be a stronger rider in 2018.”

EYES ON TOKYO

CORYN RIVERA was speaking at the Team Sunweb presentation in Berlin at the beginning of January, shortly before she joined her family on a trip to see relatives in the Philippines. Her last visit was as an 11-year-old—just as her interest in cycling began to take hold—and this latest trip was the first opportunity to explore the Philippines by bike.

“I don’t know if the roads are hilly or flat, so I’m going into it a bit blind but at least I know the weather’s nice so I can’t complain about that,” Rivera said.

Rivera’s first competitive outing of the 2018 season will come at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on the last weekend in February, where the new finish in Ninove—over the old Tour of Flanders combination of the Muur van Geraardsbergen and Bosberg—will provide a most bracing first day of school for much of the peloton. With Ellen van Dijk and Lucinda Brand also on hand, Sunweb will not want for options in Flanders.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty and nervousness in the first

Coryn Rivera: There’s always something to improve on.

race of the season while you see what everyone’s at, but we’ll do our best,” Rivera said. “Lucinda [Brand] is racing cross and is already very fit. I’ve had a good winter at home in California so we’ll just kind of see how it goes.

The course has changed a little bit and is more similar to the old Flanders course, so it’s also a new race. There’ll be a lot of uncertainty as to what the race will be like, but obviously we’ll be going there aiming for the win.”

Speaking onstage during the Sunweb presentation, Rivera made no secret of her ambition to be in the mix at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. In the shorter term, the American will look to build upon her 2017 success, even if she notes that results alone will not be the sole measure of progress.

“It’s not necessarily a case of having boxes to tick or anything. I’m a pretty easy-going person and I like going into races just looking to do our best as a collective team, and we see what our best chance is in the moment and have a backup plan if things don’t go right,” Rivera said.

“I think the later spring classics between Gent-Wevelgem through to Amstel are races that really suit me, and typically I’m in really good form by then, too.”

Cyclingnews

T

unannounced testing as part of doping control.”

This is not the first time the whereabouts system has been challenged. In 2009 a group of 65 Belgian sportsmen and women cited Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights in bringing a case against the government of Flanders, the region in the north of the country.

In football, Fifa and UEFA, the global and European governing bodies, vehemently opposed the system in 2009, with Fifa President Sep Blatter reportedly likening it to a “witch hunt.” Cyclingnews

Armstrong: He is not the symbol of a clean sport Vandenhaute. I will not attend the Ronde. I’ll go to one race or another in Belgium at the start of the season, but I don’t know which one yet.”

Since announcing the news in mid-December, Vandenhaut has repeatedly defended his decision to invite Armstrong to the Tour of Flanders, and insisted last week that the American will

Planning for the new season

‘The moral responsibility lies with Sky and Froome’

Jeannie Longo is a retired multiple world champion who is cleared of a whereabouts violation in 2011.

requirement on the applicants’ private life, the court nevertheless took the view that the public interest grounds, which made it necessary, were of particular importance and justified the restrictions imposed on their Article 8 rights,” a summary of the verdict read.

“It found that the reduction or removal of the relevant obligations would lead to an increase in the dangers of doping for the health of sports professionals and of all those who practise sports, and would be at odds with the European and international consensus on the need for

Poels on Froome: It is best for everyone to get clarity quickly

be in Flanders on the first weekend in April.

“Lance said that he didn’t want to be a burden and allowed me to make other arrangements,” Vandenhaut told Het Nieuwsblad. “I did not want to go into that. He is the keynote speaker on Friday. I would find it rude and inhospitable not to invite him to the Ronde on Sunday.”

Lance Armstrong is scheduled to appear at the “Tour of Flanders Business Academy.”

OM VAN DAMME has voiced his opinion with regard to Chris Froome’s adverse analytical finding (AAF) for salbutamol, telling Belgian media outlet Sporza.be that Team Sky and Froome run the risk of making the sport of cycling worse should he compete during his ongoing investigation.

Team Sky and Chris Froome urgently need to stand in front of a mirror,” van Damme said. “Whether the UCI [International Cycling Union] has to act faster—the UCI is bound by rules—moral responsibility lies with Team Sky and Froome—they have to stand in front of the mirror, because the longer this takes, the worse for cycling.”

Van Damme has been the Belgian cycling president and UCI Road Commission president since 2010. He has also been a member of the UCI Management Committee and Professional Cycling Council from 2013. In 2017 he was also an early candidate to run against Brian Cookson for the position of UCI president.

Froome returned an AAF at the Vuelta a España for twice the permissible 1,000ng/ml level of the asthma medication salbutamol. The test took place last September 7, following stage 18, before Froome went on to win the overall title.

Salbutamol is a “specified substance” on the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) prohibited list and so Froome was not provisionally suspended. To avoid being hit with an anti-doping rule violation, Froome and his legal team must convince the authorities that he did not exceed permitted dosage and that his sample was skewed by other factors, such as dehydration.

Sky Team Principal Dave Brailsford has said, “There are complex medical and physiological issues which affect the metabolism and excretion of salbutamol. I have the utmost confidence that Chris followed the medical guidance in managing his asthma symptoms, staying within the permissible dose for salbutamol.”

While the investigation is ongoing, and Froome and his legal team prepare their case, he is within the rules to continue racing.

Van Damme, however, believes that Team Sky are making things worse for themselves and for the sport of cycling by allowing Froome to continue to compete during the ongoing case, even if they are within their rights to do so.

“Cycling has gained credibility in recent years,” van Damme said. “It is unfortunate that a problem in the gray zone is now being enlarged, unfortunately we have to follow the rules of Wada.

“It is a pity that Froome and his team are going to grow a small pimple into an abscess, it will only get worse.” Cyclingnews

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EAM Sky rider Wout Poels has said that it would be “best for everyone” if the investigation into Chris Froome’s salbutamol levels at last year’s Vuelta a España was resolved as soon as possible.

“I think that it is best for everyone to get clarity quickly so that we all know what will happen,” Poels told NUsport. “Not only for us as teammates, but also for Chris himself. The other riders from the peloton also want to know where they stand, I understand that.”

Froome is under investigation after he recorded twice the permitted dosage of salbutamol—1,000ng/ ml—in an anti-doping test conducted during the final week of last year’s Vuelta a España. He has denied taking more than the permitted dosage of salbutamol and now must prove that with relevant documentation and laboratory tests.

It can be an arduous process, and International Cycling Union (UCI) President David Lappartient said last week that Froome’s case could drag on for at least a year, given the Briton’s access to the best legal assistance.

Lappartient also added that it would simplify proceedings if Team Sky was to suspend Froome.

Poels, Froome’s right-hand man in the mountains at Grand Tours in recent years, said that he didn’t know much about the ongoing case. He, like many others, is eagerly awaiting the result of the investigation.

“I must honestly say that we do not hear very much about it,” Poels said. “Every once in a while we get a small update, and behind the scenes, Chris and his lawyers are working hard to solve the problem. For us, it is mainly about waiting. Hopefully, it will end well.”

Poels is currently in Mallorca with several of his teammates ahead of the Mallorca Challenge later this week, while Froome remains in South Africa. Poels said that he has not spoken to his teammate much over the winter, opting to leave him to it while the investigation continues.

“I have not seen Chris for a while,” Poels said. “I have very little contact with him. He has enough other things to do at the moment. I occasionally send him a message to ask how things are going, but not more. It’s a difficult situation for him, so I’ll leave him alone.”

Poels is on Team Sky’s long list for the Mallorca Challenge, but his season won’t properly start until the Volta a la Comunidad Valenciana next week, before he rides the Ruta del Sol in mid-February. There is then a decision still to be made about whether he will ride ParisNice or Tirreno-Adriatico, before heading to the Ardennes.

Last year Poels missed the defence of his LiegeBastogne-Liege title due to the lingering knee problems that kept him out of racing for four months. Now that his injuries are behind him, he hopes to be back on the top step of the podium soon. After La Doyenne, his schedule is up for debate with the result of the investigation leaving a lot of decision-making up in the air.

“I hope to take part in the Giro, but we have not made a final decision about that, and whether I will go there as a leader or super-domestique depends, of course, on the decision around Froome,” he said.

Poels’s participation at the Tour de France is also uncertain at the moment. The Dutchman has not been shy about his ambitions to head up a Grand Tour team and, at 30, he is aware that time is ticking by. He received a boost to morale by finishing sixth at the 2018 Vuelta a España, while riding in support of Froome, but says that competition for a leadership role is tough.

“I am now at an age that it is about time,” Poels explains. “I think I’m ready, and last season I finished sixth in the general standings of the Vuelta, which gave me a lot of confidence.

“With most teams, that would be a top performance, but with Team Sky, where you are riding a four-time Tour winner, the cards on the table are slightly different.”

Cyclingnews

IT can be an arduous process, and International Cycling Union President David Lappartient (abobe) says that Chris Froome’s case could drag on for at least a year, given the Briton’s access to the best legal assistance.

TEAM SKY’S BEHAVIOR DAMAGING CYCLING I

NTERNATIONAL Cycling Union (UCI) President David Lappartient has said that Team Sky’s behavior in relation to Chris Froome’s positive test for salbutamol at the 2017 Vuelta a España is damaging cycling.

The head of the UCI has already stated that Team Sky should have provisionally suspended its four-time Tour de France winner while the case is pending.

However, Froome and Team Sky have not made any move to do so. Despite knowledge of his positive test, Froome has announced publicly that he will aim to race the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France. The news of the positive test—which showed that Froome had double the legal limit for salbutamol in his system—only surfaced after the Guardian and Le Monde published a joint story last December.

With no date set in relation to a resolution in Froome’s case, the situation could rumble on for weeks, potentially months.

“I can’t force them,” Lappartient said in relation to Team Sky not benching their franchise rider.

“With the rules, they have the right to race him. It’s up to them to decide, but if he wins some races, then it could be bad if he’s sanctioned after. That’s why I think it would be better for them to decrease the pressure by having him not riding at the moment.”

Lapparient, elected last autumn, was speaking at the Tour Down Under and when asked specifically

by Cyclingnews if Sky’s behaviour was damaging the sport, the Frenchman paused, before stating: “What do you think?

Of course, yes. When this happened you could see the newspapers and the Internet, that cycling was going back to its past. I saw one newspaper from Brittany and the first page was Froome. And this wasn’t a sports newspaper and that was the same in many countries. It’s bad for cycling but as I’ve said, we also got be careful because Froome has the opportunity to defend his position. However, this is bad for the image of cycling.”

The UCI is not in a position to sanction Froome at

this point, but Lappartient—who said that he has not specifically talked to Team Sky about the matter—was clearly frustrated with the situation. One of his main policies when coming into office was to build on cycling’s fragile credibility. The uncertainty over Froome’s position threatens that.

“Chris Froome has the right to explain his point of view and defend his situation. This can take time but we have to follow this. We can’t be in a hurry and make a mistake.

I don’t know how long it will take but I hope that it will be solved as soon as possible, for him, us and cycling. I don’t know but with the appeals it could take a year. I hope that it’s less but it depends.

“It’s possible he could be riding the Tour. It’s possible he could be sanctioned after. That’s happened.”

When a journalist suggested that this would be a “crazy” situation, Lappartient agreed but added that he would support Giro and Tour organizers if they were to refuse Froome the opportunity to compete in those races while the case was still ongoing.

“It’s down to RCS and ASO [Amaury Sport Organization].

I know that some organizers, in their rules, in case that there are problems with the image of their race, they can propose to refuse. That could go to CAS [Court of Arbitration for Sport].”

“I think so,” he said when asked if he would support RCS and ASO. “I think that the best thing for him is not to ride. If RCS go in this direction, I can only agree. That’s why I hope it’s resolved and if he’s not guilty, then he will start in races. We have to respect the rules and it’s a heavy case. Of course, I want to accelerate it but it will take the time it takes.”

At the end of his news conference, Lappartient was asked if he believed that Dave Brailsford was an ethically good representative for clean cycling. Again, the Frenchman provided a long pause, before answering: “Dave Brailsford has said they [Team Sky] don’t need to be in the MPCC, because they are doing more. I hope so.” Cyclingnews

OurTime

A8 Saturday, January 27, 2018 • Editor: Efleda P. Campos

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Free movies for seniors cost Makati ₧38.5M in 2017

By Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco | Correspondent

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BOUT 80,000 senior citizens in Makati City enjoyed free movies last year, costing the city P38.5 million, the Makati City government said.

The city government paid the amount to five cinema-partners for movie tickets issued for free to the city’s senior citizens and persons with disability (PWDs) who availed themselves of the perk in 2017.

The number of registered PWDs was pegged at around 7,715 and, like senior citizens, watched the free movies at any of the cinema-partners of the Makati local government unit in Glorietta and Greenbelt, Century Mall, Power Plant Mall, Cash and Carry, and Waltermart.

Makati City Mayor Abigail S. Binay said her administration sustained the program because of its “priceless” benefits for the elderly and PWD Makatizens.

“We cannot put a price on the joys derived by the beneficiaries from this program. Many of our senior citizens have come to love their regular movie dates with their contemporaries. This gives them the chance to socialize and do some catching up,” Binay said.

The mayor noted that having

free access to movies is an “enriching experience” for the city’s PWD constituents.

“This program enriches their lives by giving them the freedom to learn more about places and other cultures around the world from every film they watch,” the mayor added.

The program was started in 1997 by then-Makati Mayor Jejomar C. Binay, the incumbent mayor’s father, for the benefit of the elderly.

The program was later expanded in 2006 to include the PWD sector.

In a report to the mayor, Accounting Department Officer In Charge William Dayrit said for the whole year, the city paid P35,353,925.19 for the movie tickets issued to senior citizens and P3,175,612.14 for PWDs. The amounts constitute the 25-percent share of the city government in the cost of movie tickets used under the program, which is being implemented in partnership with cinema owners in the city.

These are Adebe Realty Co. Inc.

(Cash and Carry); ALI Commercial Center Inc. (Glorietta and Greenbelt); Century City Development Corp. (Century City Mall); Rockwell Land Corp. (Power Plant); and Williamson Inc. (Waltermart).

For 2017, Makati paid Adebe Realty Co. Inc. P1,946,036.97 for senior citizens and P112,512.75 for PWDs; ALI Commercial Center Inc. P18,319,109.05 for senior citizens and P1,363,710.23 for PWDs; Century City Development Corp. P1,756,652.09 for the elderly and P326,626.59 for PWDs; Rockwell Land Corp.

P10,903,357.80 for senior citizens and P1,253,003.67 for PWDs; and Willimson Inc. P2,428,769.28 for senior citizens and P119,758.90 for PWDs. Beneficiaries need only present their senior citizen ID card or PWD card, together with their free movie booklet at the ticket booths whenever they go to any of the said movie houses.

Free movie booklets are issued by the Office of Senior Citizens

Hot-spring tour site to rise in Leyte

City Ordinance 2006-066.

For 2018, the city government has allocated P40 million for the movie tickets of senior citizens and P4 million for PWDs. In Makati senior citizens and PWDs also enjoy other benefits from the city government.

These include free birthday cakes and golden wedding anniversary cakes for the elderly, cash gifts twice a year and a P100,000 cash incentive for centenarians.

PWDs in Makati are also granted the Access Display Card, a special car sticker for private vehicles they use that entitles them to being given priority for a parking space anywhere within Makati, as mandated by City Ordinance 2006-036.

Free mobility aids, such as wheelchairs, walkers and crutches, are also given to the less-fortunate PWDs, while the deaf and mute are being assisted by the city Public Employment Services Office through its Job Placement Program.

Loyal Sam’s Club members lament store shutdowns

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URAUEN, Leyte—The local government here is eyeing a hot spring within a natural park as a new tourism destination in Eastern Visayas.

Burauen town tourism officer Carmela Corazon Crebillo said they had already drawn up plans to develop the Calor Hot Spring, but were awaiting further comments from concerned national government agencies.

The hot spring is inside the Mahagnao Volcano Natural Park, while the park is nestled on a 635-hectare forestland that surrounds the pristine Mahagnao Lake and has an elevation of 860 meters.

“We are ready to develop the destination with available funding and the recent hiring of consultants to supervise the site-development activities. We hope to complete the project within 2018,” Crebillo said.

The site development will use a P3-million budget for local ecotourism.

Among the proposed tourism activities are sightseeing, storytelling, educational tours and nature trek.

The local tourism office will train community-based tour guides who will share stories of Mahagnao’s volcanic eruption and natural wonders in the area.

“They will talk about the history of Mahagnao, like when did the volcano last erupt and so on and so forth, so that when people leave the place, they will not just be awed by nature’s beauty but will be full of information, as well,” she added.

Mahagnao Volcano reportedly erupted in 1895, but no further details are available, according to the Global Volcanism Program.

Crebillo assured the public the local government is concerned with preserving the hot spring’s natural beauty. Instead of putting concrete structures, the project will only use wood to build the view deck.

“No shed will be made to cover the view deck since the main goal of the site is for the tourists to appreciate the view of the place. In other words, it will be an open space with the hot spring and natural wonders around,” Crebillo said.

To make the site more touristfriendly, the local government will also improve the access pathway by piling up stones and wooden rails for more convenient climbing, not only for young hikers but for senior citizens, as well.

The development of the Calor hot spring is just the first step to fully develop the Mahagnao Volcano Natural Park into a top ecotourism site in Eastern Visayas. PNA

Affairs of Makati to senior citizens who can present their White Card (national ID card for senior citizens) and a valid Comelec Certificate showing that they are registered voters of Makati.

The Makati Social Welfare Department, through its PWD Section, issues free movie booklets to adult PWDs ID cardholders who are registered voters of Makati. For PWD of minor age, the guardian or parent must be a registered Makati voter.

The program started in 1997 with the passage of City Ordinance 97085 appropriating P500,000 as the 25-percent share of the city in cinema admission costs for senior citizens.

It was institutionalized almost three years later through City Ordinance 2001-035 granting the inclusion of appropriations in the annual City Executive Budget for its continuous implementation in succeeding years.

In 2006 the said perk was also granted to registered PWDs of Makati through the enactment of

GRANDMA’S RETAIL ENTERPRISE

Selling varieties of vegetables, spices and other goodies, 67-year-old Virgie Pajarilla has been in the retail enterprise for the past 30 years. Many senior citizens like her in Santiago City, Isabela, still manage to earn a living despite their age. LEONARDO PERANTE II

DANCING DOWN THE YEARS

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HE bravest thing a dancer can do is grow old.

Dancers exist in a world where youth is overly prized, and where the window for a body to maintain its flexibility and speed gradually closes—until the day it seems to slam shut. The body’s deterioration is real for everyone, but dancers, better than others, grasp how imperceptible shifts weaken the greater whole.

Growing old is not for the weak, but dancing old is grit incarnate.

“The reason I’ve been able to dance for so long,” Gus Solomons Jr., 79, said, “is absolute willpower.”

Solomons, Douglas Dunn, Eiko Otake and Brenda Bufalino are the subjects of this exploration of dancers and the aging body. All maintain a physical practice; all have naturally experienced a decline.

But as a dancer ages, there are gains as well as losses. Dance artists are deeply in tune with their bodies, and for that reason, each of our subjects has a distinctive perspective on aging.

“I am less concerned about what’s better,” said Eiko, who is 65 and known artistically by her first name.

“I only have what’s now.”

The allure of an older dancer comes down to the wonder of a livedin body and all the subtlety, grace and patience that it holds within tendons and bones that accomplish more with less.

Even when movement quality becomes less robust, what can emerge is a renewed sense of the heroic. And with any dancer who has put in decades of performing and training,

the ability to be still—to shift space and time through presence—is not to be overlooked. Older dancers are like magicians of stagecraft: What do they show, and what do they leave behind? How do they get to the essence?

Julie Kent, the former American Ballet Theatre principal and now artistic director of the Washington Ballet, said that for years she added layers and layers to the roles of Juliet and Giselle “to weave a very detailed, beautiful piece of fabric.”

Eventually, she began stripping away to reveal what was there. “In the end, you have this beautiful, gossamer, effortless, weightless piece of fabric.”

And that is the beauty of the aging dancer: feather-light yet full of power. Solomons, a former member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, has forged a second career in Europe, where younger dancemakers are eager to highlight his regal, singular beauty.

He’s much less vain about his dancing now.

“When I was younger, I remember wanting it to look like something it never was going to look like,” he said.

“I remember thinking, ‘I wish my body looked like Erik Bruhn,’” the Danish ballet star.

“You play the instrument you have and that makes the most eloquent music,” he said. “I think that that’s probably a big part of what makes it easier to relax and just be who you are.”

For Douglas Dunn, 75, another veteran of the Cunningham company, the first thing to go was his jump. (Not the takeoff, but the landing.) When he was in his 60s he went

through a couple of years of being extremely jealous of younger dancers.

“And then I realized that it was a tremendous waste of energy,” he said. “And so I just stopped being jealous and went about what I was already doing actually, which was to see what limits I had and what can I do within them.”

Eiko, the Japanese dancer who was known for years as one-half of the choreographic duo Eiko and Koma, has been working as a solo artist of late. Last November she performed for hours on end at each of the Metropolitan Museum’s three spaces.

“Now I do things and it’s how dare I do things?” she said. “Even though I’m not doing anything so different, there’s a sense of daring to it. I see it myself or people see it, which is another motif, another texture: ‘Oh my God, she’s still doing that? Oh my God, she’s not young.’”

As a solo artist, Eiko is realistic.

She said she never wanted to be an old performer, but the question “Why not now?” was a strong motive for her to start solo work. “I couldn’t wait another 10 years.”

In the aging dancer, there’s both an urgency and a letting go. The tap dancer Brenda Bufalino, 80, doesn’t particularly care about getting better; what’s more important to her is maintaining her physicality “as long as my feet will do what my ears hear, and I have something to say that matters.”

What makes her sad now, she said, is how quickly she loses her breath.

But the aging process has made her appreciate different parts of her physicality. New York Times News Service

HE conventional wisdom is consumers do not go to brickand-mortar stores anymore.

Tell that to the shoppers at Sam’s Club.

Walmart’s quiet shuttering of 63 Sam’s Club stores on January 11— hours after trumpeting its plans to raise wages—sent shock waves through the ardent customer base of the membership-only chain. Patrons protested with unusual passion not granted to the thousands of closings recently announced by other retailers.

On social media, some shoppers reminisced about sharing frozen yogurt with their great-grandmother at the local Sam’s Club, while others fretted about remote areas losing a primary source of supplies or a reliable place to pick up prescriptions.

Many criticized Walmart for leaving employees and low-income customers in the lurch, posting photos of closing notices taped to locked Sam’s Club doors.

Bethany Pope Hopp, a mother of five who works as an administrative assistant at a university, was momentarily frantic when she thought that her local Sam’s Club might be on the chopping block. (It was spared.)

Once a month, Hopp drives an hour and a half from her small Missouri town to the store to buy diapers, groceries, toilet paper and other household items in bulk.

“Having a store like Sam’s Club is absolutely a necessity for some of us rural, smaller communities,” she said. “That and Walmart are all we have—we don’t live in an area where there’s a Costco or a Target on every corner.”

Sam’s Club, which first opened in 1983 in Oklahoma but has since expanded across the country and abroad, is a chain of warehouses operated as clubs offering memberships.

Shoppers can buy huge quantities of merchandise, including products not found at Walmart, as well as fill up on gasoline.

The 63 store shutdowns will leave Walmart with 597 Sam’s Clubs. Out of necessity or protest, many customers quickly jumped ship to competitors like Costco.

BJ’s Wholesale Club, another rival, encouraged Sam’s Club customers to join its program, noting in a statement that there was “an immediate increase” in new memberships after the Sam’s Club closings. BJ’s, which has 215 clubs in 16 states, also said it has “had numerous inquiries from Sam’s Club employees” about obtaining jobs.

On the morning of January 11, Walmart said it would raise its minimum starting wage to $11 an

hour from $9, while also expanding maternity and family-leave benefits and offering bonuses of up to $1,000. But the glow of that announcement faded just hours later, when the Sam’s Club closings were revealed not by an announcement from Walmart but rather through social-media posts from confused and increasingly irate customers and employees.

Walmart was accused of using its pay announcement as a shield to cover up the shutdowns.

The abruptness of the closings contributed to consumer frustration. Typically, companies warn investors and shoppers—and employees—that they will be closing stores far in advance. In an interview, John Furner, chief executive of Sam’s Club, did not go into detail about the reasons for the unusually sudden move.

“There were a few locations where we felt there was no easy way to keep them open,” he said, adding some of the stores will remain open for a few weeks.

Furner said Sam’s Club wanted to inform its employees of the closures before notifying the public. But many of the thousands of workers who will be affected were unaware when they showed up to locked stores last Thursday.

Not all employees at the affected stores will be out of a job. Walmart hopes to find positions for displaced workers at other Sam’s Club locations. Up to a dozen stores will be retrofitted into e-commerce fulfillment centers.

“We made a deliberate decision to prioritize employees,” Furner said. “I am not going to second-guess and change my mind at this point.”

Despite the loyalty it engenders from members, Sam’s Club has “underperformed peers” financially, according to Oliver Chen, an analyst with Cowen.

Sam’s Club, he wrote in a note to investors last Friday, is “taking prudent steps to prepare for the next generation of retail warfare, one in which speed will be king and delivery will be judged by hours and not days.”

That’s small consolation to people like Dharmendra Singh, a software engineer who so liked the feeling of exclusivity he enjoyed while shopping at Sam’s Club that he never used his membership at BJ’s.

The Sam’s Club he shopped at in North Carolina, the closest one in a 25-mile radius, is closing. He and other members were shocked.

“It’s like a long-term girlfriend leaving you and not even giving you a call,” Singh said.

New York Times News Service

www.businessmirror.com.ph

The Millennials BusinessMirror

Saturday, January 27, 2018

A9

Free tertiary education: A blessing for U.P. students?

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By Janine Ballesteros

ETTING an academic degree is seen as opening doors to success of an individual in the Philippines.

However, many Filipinos do not have the key to the locked portal.

They are unable to access this door to success due to many reasons—lack of schools, teachers, faculty, etc.— but mainly due to poverty.

According to the 2013 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (Flemms), which covered around 36 million population aged 6 to 24 years, one in every 10, or about 4 million Filipino children and youth, was out of school in 2013.

The Flemms defined out-ofschool children “as persons aged 6 to 14 years who are not attending school, while out-of-school youth as persons aged 15 to 24 years who are not attending school, have not finished any college or postsecondary course and are not working.”

According to the Flemms, the secondary reason of out-of-school children and youth is that the family income is not sufficient to send the child to school: 19.2 percent, the majority of which affected more males (22.7 percent) than females (17.0 percent).

To avoid students dropping out of college and becoming out-of-school youths due to lack of financial support, the government enacted Republic Act (RA) 10931, or the “Uni-

versal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act.” The passage of RA 10931 in August last year received positive response. But as students celebrate this so-called achievement, many questions still remain: Is free tuition really beneficial for everyone? Does the government have enough funds for this policy?

Socialized tuition

THE University of the Philippines (UP) has its so-called bracketing system, wherein students are classified based on their annual income and their capacity to pay for their tuition.

Bracket A are those who are able to pay for the whole tuition. Bracket B, C and D are those who can pay the tuition fee in partial (80-percent, 60 percent, and 33-percent discount, respectively). Brackets E1 and E2 are those who have a full discount on the tuition, with E2 students having monthly stipends.

A sample undergraduate tuition and expenses of a UP Diliman student costs around P38,000. If multiplied with the current UP student population, it will cost around P900 million, which is for only one UP unit.

Meanwhile, the government’s budget for the Department of Education is

u.p. Diliman

P543.2 billion for the 112 State Univertisities and colleges (SUCs).

Some students, however, claim that the Socialized Tuition System is unreliable, flawed and only a scheme to bilk money from students who come from wealthier families.

Arboleda case

KATRINA Arboleda is a BS Statistics student bracketed under E2.

Stipends from the university were sent every month to the account of Arboleda and students like her.

According to Arboleda, before the free-tuition bill was passed, she receives approximately P2,400 per month and only pays the student fund, which amounts to P75 to P77.

She was part of the Bracket C, or those who pay 60 percent of the original tuition fee, when she still a freshman at UP. However, since

The U.S. fertility rate is down, yet more women are mothers

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ERE’S the upshot: A baby bust, the fertility rate at a record low, millennials deciding not to have children. There has been a lot of worry about the state of American fertility.

Yet today, 86 percent of women ages 40 to 44—near the end of their reproductive years—are mothers, up from 80 percent in 2006, reversing decades of declines, according to a new analysis of census data by Pew Research Center.

The increase has been especially steep among groups of women who hadn’t been having as many babies in the past: those with advanced degrees, and those who have never been married. Today, 55 percent of never-married women ages 40 to 44 have at least one child, up from 31 percent two decades ago, Pew found.

The share of women who have children could drop again if current trends continue. Women are planning to have children at later ages, when they are more likely to have trouble conceiving. And the fertility rate has not rebounded after the recession in the way that many economists expected: The number of babies born per 1,000 women of childbearing age in 2016, the last year for which we have official data, was a record low.

The data offer some optimism about the fertility picture. Demographic experts and some conservatives have been sounding alarms about falling fertility rates. If young women continue to decide not to have children, or if they struggle to do so after waiting too long, it could depress the economy and fray the safety net. There would be fewer workers to support retirees, and fewer family members to care for older people— problems faced by other countries with falling fertility, like Japan.

But by one retrospective measure, at least, women are more likely to have children today than they were a decade ago. The measure is called

completed fertility, or the share of women who are now 40 to 44 who have had a baby. It looks at the whole of women’s reproductive lives, not just one year, and reflects what they actually did, not what they were projected to do. (The vast majority of women do not have babies after age 44, so this is the age researchers commonly use.)

The biggest increases in motherhood since the 1990s were in groups of women with higher education.

While women without college degrees have always been highly likely to have a child, women with college or advanced degrees had been less so, until recent years.

Now, 80 percent of women with professional degrees or doctorates have a child by the time they are 44, compared with 65 percent two decades ago, perhaps indicating that fewer women see long educations or demanding careers as a bar to having a family. Meanwhile, motherhood among women who have never married has risen across racial and educational groups.

In the mid-1990s, it was almost unheard-of for a never-married woman in her early 40s with a postgraduate degree to have a child, according to the Pew report. Today, 25 percent of women who fit that profile do.

Women who are 40 to 44 also planned their families during a different atmosphere for childbearing, since many of them had children in the late-1990s and early 2000s. The economy was strong, and in vitro fertilization and other assisted reproductive technologies were becoming more accessible and successful.

Fertility data is more complicated than it might seem because there are many ways to measure fertility rates, and each gives a different snapshot.

The general fertility rate measures the number of births for every 1,000 women of childbearing age in a given year, and the total fertility rate estimates how many children women

will have based on current patterns.

Both have been declining. The general fertility rate in the US is at a record low, and the total fertility rate in the United States is down to 1.84 births per woman.

Completed fertility—the share of women who give birth by the time they are 44—peaked in the late1970s, when baby boomers were having children. It declined to a low in 2006 before rising again, and is now near the level of the late-1970s.

One thing complicating measurement is that people are delaying childbirth. Though the overall general fertility rate decreased in 2016, it increased for women 30 and older.

The median age at which women first give birth has risen to 26, and women are significantly less likely than they were two decades ago to give birth as teenagers or in their early 20s, and more likely to do so in their 40s, Pew reported.

There are lots of explanations for why people are waiting to have children: later marriage, student debt; stagnant wages; recovery from the recession; more education and improved job prospects for women; and a lack of support for families in which both parents work.

It might be that most of these women end up having children, and completed fertility continues to rise.

But the ability to conceive and have a baby decreases with age, and fertility treatments are expensive. There is some evidence that women say they want to have more children than they end up having.

Despite the Pew findings, Lyman Stone, an adviser at Demographic Intelligence who writes about demographics and economics, remains concerned about the national birthrate.

“The extent of the delay and decline in fertility for younger women is so vast that to recover it in later years sort of boggles the mind,” he said. New York Times News Service

she considered the tuition still unaffordable, she appealed to the university administration. Arboleda was given an E1 status, which she enjoyed for the past two academic years. But while becoming part of the lowest bracket, she said her wallet remained slim. “[There were no] special treatment, no perks [at the] dorm,” Arboleda said. “[I only felt the benefits] only [during] enrollment.”

Financial management

ARBOLEDA said her parents were giving her a small amount of cash when she was still receiving her stipend. Some of the money goes to lodging fees. A small amount, if there’s anything left, was her additional allowance for the month.

Arboleda seems to manage her finances well.

She takes a P28-meal for lunch and a meal for dinner that goes for P26. She spends for a cup of coffee when she needs to pull an all-nighter. Arboleda also attends campus-based activities for free coffee and food.

She worries that she would need to downgrade this already-simple lifestyle as Arboleda was entered into Bracket D for this school year.

This bracket doesn’t come with a stipend.

“I’m thinking of appealing but I’m afraid they wouldn’t allow me to get into bracket E2,” she said.

She opted to get the free tuition that came with Bracket D.

Daily challenges

THE law helps promote universal access to quality tertiary education by providing free tuition and

other school fees in SUCs, as well as strengthening the financial-assistance system through establishing a tertiary-education subsidy and student-loan program.

Students from 112 state universities in the country will no longer have to pay for their tuition upon the application of the law.

However, the law should also consider students like Arboleda who, after receiving free tuition, still struggles with the costs of lodging and daily expenses.

Some sectors suggest more subsidy rather than giving free tuition, arguing that there are students who can pay for their tuition, may it be by part or whole. The fund from these, they said, could be used to improve facilities in SUCs and increase salaries of employees and members of their respective faculties.

But is this not the same as the UP Socialized Tuition System?

Nonetheless, Arboleda remains hopeful the free-tuition system will have more benefits than repercussions and that the administration will be able to manage to provide the quality tertiary education to students as promised by RA 10931.

Janine Ballesteros is a student of journalism at the College of Mass Communications of the University of the Philippines. This edited version of Ballesteros’s story, originally titled “Is free tertiary education a blessing or a burden?,” was a requirement for the news-reporting class taught by BusinessMirror reporter Cai U. Ordinario. The BusinessMirror secured Ballesteros’s approval for publication of her story.

Can the #MeToo movement do harm? Aziz’s story raises question

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HE #MeToo movement has been embraced by legions of women as a vital step toward countering widespread sexual abuse and misconduct. This week, more so than at any point in the movement’s brief history, there’s visceral discussion about its potential for causing harm.

The catalyst was the publication by Babe. net of an account by a woman identified only as “Grace” detailing her 2017 encounter with comedian Aziz Ansari. The article intimated that Ansari deserved inclusion in the ranks of abusive perpetrators, yet many readers— women and men—concluded the encounter amounted to an all-too-common instance of bad sex during a date gone awry.

Ansari has said he apologized immediately after the woman told him about her discomfort during an encounter he believed to be consensual.

“Too many women have joined #MeToo too quickly and unthinkingly,” said Carole Lieberman, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist and author of the relationship books Bad Boys and Bad Girls.

“Though they may have wanted to be in solidarity with other women, the stories of dates gone wrong or women scorned have detracted from women who have added.

Not normal

A conservative analyst, Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women’s Forum, said Ansari “believed that everything that occurred with his accuser was consensual and welcomed.”

“His reputation is now in tatters,” Lukas wrote in an e-mail. “Is that really fair?”

Online and in person, many women are talking about experiences comparable to Grace’s account—encounters with men who initially seemed wonderful, but turned pushy, if not criminally abusive, when things became sexual.

Sarah Hosseini, who writes about sex for Bustle, Romper, Scary Mommy and Ravishly, said the #MeToo movement might actually benefit from the Grace/Ansari controversy, and that the movement is big enough to encompass another layer in the discussion.

“There is some really murky and confusing sexual territory here that we haven’t really talked about yet collectively as a society,” she wrote, adding that the woman’s account in Babe was “disgusting and cringe-worthy.”

“What she experienced with Ansari is not

OK. But do we have language yet for intimate encounters that teeter on the edge of absolute sexual assault/abuse?” she wondered.

“I don’t think we do. We’ve lived in a misogynistic world with misogynistic sex for so long. We thought this ‘bad sex’ was normal.

Until someone spoke up and said, this is not normal. This is not OK.”

“This moment absolutely calls for a changed approach to dating and courtship,” he said. “It means paying just as much attention to body language as we do to words, and stopping to check in if at any time you’re anything less than 100 percent certain the other participant is as enthusiastic as you about what’s going on.”

Acceptable deal

Actions of a few

MICHAEL Cunningham, a psychology professor at the University of Louisville, said the Grace/Ansari encounter reflected misunderstandings that may arise due to differences between conventional dating relationships and hook-ups.

“It appears that Grace wanted Ansari to treat her as a potential girlfriend to be courted over multiple dates, rather than a pickup from a party engaging in a mutually acceptable transaction,” Cunningham wrote in an e-mail.

“When he did not rise to her expectations, she converted her understandable disappointment into a false #MeToo.” Liz Wolfe, managing editor of Young Voices, a D.C.—based organization that distributes op-eds by millennials, said the Ansari story gets at the core of what men and women are taught regarding dating, sex and romance. Men should pursue, women should play hard to get.

“So many women have wondered in a situation, ‘Have I said “no” decisively enough?’“ Wolfe said. “They can’t quite figure out whether they want to go forward or leave. And from the male perspective, he can’t quite figure out what the woman wants.”

Generational divide

WOLFE has noticed a generational divide in their reactions. Older women tend to think Grace should have been more vocal and assertive, or simply left Ansari’s apartment. Younger women feel that Ansari should have read Grace’s body language and listened to her more closely, and he was at fault for pressuring her.

Among men, likewise, there are varying views.

Tahir Duckett of ReThink, a nonprofit seeking to deter boys and young men from committing sexual assault, says the #MeToo movement “is exactly where it needs to be” as it continues to embolden victims.

HOWEVER, Glenn Sacks, a commentator who writes often about men’s issues, said the Ansari case buttresses his belief that #MeToo “is lumping the trivial mistakes or misdeeds of the many in with the genuinely awful actions of a handful.”

Warren Farrell, an early member of the National Organization for Women who more recently has authored such books as Why Men Are the Way they Are and The Boy Crisis, suggested that women should bear more of the responsibility for initiating sexual interest.

And he recommended training in schools for each gender to view relationship issues from the other’s perspective.

“When #MeToo focuses only on women complaining and not both sexes hearing each other, it reinforces the feeling of women as fragile snowflakes rather than empowered to speak, and empowered to listen,” Farrell said.

“Boys and men, like girls and women, also grew up confused about what was expected of them sexually in a culture that did not make speaking about sex easy for either sex.”

‘Show and tell’

ALEXANDRA Allred, an author and self-defense instructor in Dallas, groaned when she read Grace’s account of her evening with Ansari.

“It really does sound like it was a mutual thing, but she thought about it later and she didn’t enjoy herself,” Allred said. “But this is the story of millions of young women everywhere, where you just made a mistake. This does not belong to the #MeToo movement. She should have just kept this to herself.”

As a supporter of the movement, Allred worries that this kind of story might generate a backlash and prompt skepticism when other women report abuses.

“This isn’t show and tell,” she said. “This is a movement to educate people and hopefully stop the violence.” AP

BusinessMirror

A10 Saturday, January 27, 2018

www.businessmirror.com.ph

LAUNCHED in 2014, ColourPop is probably the first beauty brand that was launched and sold exclusively on the Internet.

MORE SAVINGS ON LONG TRIPS AS travel necessities become more expensive the longer one spends abroad, so does the roaming service. This time, staying for longer can be more fun and worry-free, with a new and more value-formoney offer from Globe Roam Surf. Longer stays in the United States, South Korea and Australia gives customers more affordable roaming rates for as low as only P300 per day.

On the new Roam Surf for Globe Postpaid customers, the longer one spends in any of the three countries, the lower the price per day of data roaming gets. On Roam Surf for 30 days, customers will only be spending P300 per day for all-day data roaming. This is almost half of what one will spend on the regular daily roaming rate.

Filipinos can spend their holidays or vacation in the US, visit the scenic sites in South Korea or experience the fun in Australia without worrying too much on staying connected online 24/7. Customers can just choose from any of the new all-day data roaming options: Roam Surf 3D for P1,499, Roam Surf 5D for P2,299, Roam Surf 7D for P2,999, Roam Surf 15D for P4,999 and Roam Surf 30D for P8,999.

“Staying connected has become a priority of virtually everyone, and has become an absolute must when traveling abroad. This is why we are complementing our customers’ travels with options for their data-roaming needs. They can avail [themselves] of our daily rate of P599 simply by turning on their data roaming on, or they can enjoy substantial savings with our longer-day Roam Surf offers,” says Coco Domingo, vice president for Roaming International.

The longer-day offers of Roam Surf are currently available only for the US, South Korea and Australia.

Registration is necessary upon landing at country of destination, before turning on mobile data and data roaming. To register, customers just need to dial *143# choose Roaming & Int’l., Roaming Promos, Data Promos, then choose the preferred Roam Surf variant.

Customers need to ensure they are connected to T-Mobile or AT&T in the US, SK Telecom in South Korea or Optus in Australia to enjoy the discounted daily rates.

For details, visit goo.gl/QxeDR1.

How two beauty brands used the Internet to make it big PRIMETIME

DINNA CHAN VASQUEZ @dinnachanvasquez luckydinna@gmail.com

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HE Internet can make or break people and brands—that’s a fact. Beauty brands ColourPop and Glossier are two examples of brands that made it big on the Internet before they even went mainstream.

Maybe that sentence is wrong because Internet is the new mainstream, isn’t it? And the mainstream, as we know it, is really for middle-aged and seniors.

Anyway, ColourPop was launched in 2014. It’s probably the first beauty brand that was launched and sold exclusively on the Internet.

I tried to reach out to ColourPop in those early days and was politely turned down. I felt hurt and thought that they felt I was too insignificant to be granted an interview. Note: In my e-mail, I specifically said I didn’t want samples, just an interview.

Later on, I learned that ColourPop had turned down some of the world’s most famous editors.

Apparently, it was all part of their marketing plan.

Or maybe they just didn’t care at all. After that, I lost interest in buying ColourPop. I mean, I want to know who made my makeup. I’m interested in back stories, and I became interested in the company’s after buying six of their “Lippie Stix” and three of their liquid lipsticks. Their plan, whatever it was, worked.

A woman in her 50s with just over 1,000 Instagram followers is not their market, no matter how many products I purchase.

ColourPop’s lip products were well-pigmented and amazingly cheap ($5 for the Lippie Stix). The packaging was brilliant and you got the lip products in a box with a note.

Later on, ColourPop would release other products including eyeshadows, blushes, highlighters and concealers. Their makeup is still worn by influencers and YouTubers, and the owners (apparently a brotherand-sister duo) still don’t do interviews. Or at least they rarely do interviews. As far as I know, there is no ColourPop physical store but they have 5.5 million followers on Instagram. ColourPop President Laura Nelson has been quoted as saying that for them, “digital marketing is like breathing.”

In an interview, Nelson also said ColourPop isn’t personality driven—but it is. They collaborate heavily with influencers. But here is one thing I can say about ColourPop: Their products are good.

Another beauty brand that was launched on the Internet in Glossier. I would love to see the marketing plan for this company, which is the brainchild of Emily Weiss, a former fashion assistant at Vogue.

Weiss created the blog Into The Gloss, which became a beauty bible featuring cool girls and cool women. From this blog, Glossier was born in 2014.

Glossier has been described as beauty products for girls who hardly wear makeup.

Again, I’m not their market but I really love their packaging. I haven’t purchased anything except their balm because I need makeup that really covers, conceals and colors.

Having said that, I think Weiss is a genius who parlayed her coolness into an actual successful business. Weiss had $2 million in seed funding and she launched four products: Soothing Face Mist, Perfecting Skin Tint, Balm Dotcom and Priming Moisturizer. Instead of a grand launch, the products were introduced on Instagram and the blog Into The Gloss. Glossier now has almost 1 million followers on Instagram and has raised $34.4 million in venture capital to date.

What I like about Glossier and Weiss is the transparency involved in the business. I also appreciate how, despite the overwhelming millennialism of Glossier, older people don’t feel excluded. The brand talks to its customers and asks for feedback. If you go on their Instagram and ask questions, they will reply.

ColourPop and Glossier have basically removed the middleman and gone directly to the consumers via social media. They’ve both done it successfully and whether we buy their products or not, we’re always very excited about what they’re up to. ■

Apple poised to expand into speaker market with HomePod SAN FRANCISCO—Apple is finally ready to launch its attempt to compete with the Internet-connected speakers made by Amazon and Google with the release of its long-awaited HomePod. Preorders for the HomePod will begin on Friday in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, two weeks before the speaker goes on sale in stores for $349. Apple had intended to release the HomePod last month during the holiday shopping season, but delayed its debut to refine the product. Both Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home speakers have been

expanding their reach into people’s homes since Apple announced the HomePod last June. Amazon and Google also are selling their speakers for substantially less, with streamlined versions of their devices available for below $50.

Like its rivals, the HomePod includes a voiceactivated assistant to help people manage their homes and the rest of their lives.

Apple relies on Siri to process commands, while Amazon leans on Alexa and Google features the eponymous Assistant.

All three companies are trying to build digital command centers within homes in an attempt to sell some of their other products.

In Apple’s case, the company has designed the HomePod as a high-fidelity speaker tied to its musicstreaming service, which charges $10 per month for unlimited access to a library consisting of about 45 million songs.

The HomePod is supposed to be able to learn people’s musical tastes so it can automatically find and play songs that they will like. AP

Do e-cigarettes help or harm? Report says not clear yet

BY MATTHEW PERRONE The Associated Press WASHINGTON—Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) could be a boon to public health or a major liability, depending on whether they help Americans quit smoking or encourage more young people to try traditional cigarettes, a new report concludes.

The report issued on Tuesday wrestles with the potential benefits and harms of the vapor-emitting devices, which have been sold in the United States for more than a decade. But those effects may not be known for decades, in part, because of how slowly illnesses caused by smoking emerge.

“In some circumstances, such as their use by nonsmoking adolescents and young adults, their adverse effects clearly warrant concern,” said David Eaton of the University of Washington, who headed the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine committee that studied the issue. “In other cases, such as when adult smokers use them to quit smoking, they offer an opportunity to reduce

smoking-related illness.”

There are no long-term studies on the health consequences of e-cigarettes and little consensus on whether they are effective in helping smokers quit, according to the report requested by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The experts found “substantial” evidence that young people who use e-cigarettes are more likely to try cigarettes. On the other hand, experts found only “limited evidence” that cigarettes are effective tools to help adult smokers quit.

The committee’s review of more than 800 studies yielded many findings that were largely in line with prior assessments by other researchers. For instance, the panel found “conclusive evidence” that most e-cigarettes contain numerous chemicals that can be toxic. However, there was equally strong evidence that e-cigarettes contain fewer toxicants and at lower levels than regular cigarettes.

E-cigarettes have been sold in the US since at least 2007. Most devices heat a liquid nicotine solution into vapor and have been promoted to smokers as

a less-dangerous alternative since they don’t have all the chemicals, tar or smoke of regular cigarettes.

E-cigarettes and similar vaping devices have grown into a $4-billion US industry, with thousands of varieties of flavors and customizable products available in specialty shops and online.

The FDA gained authority to regulate the devices in 2016 after years of pushback from the industry. But last year the agency said it would delay the deadline for manufacturers to submit their devices for review until 2022.

The decision was blasted by anti-smoking advocates who say some e-cigarette manufacturers target kids with candy and fruit flavors.

The FDA has signaled its intention to begin pushing US consumers away from traditional cigarettes toward alternative products, such as e-cigarettes. The regulatory delay was intended, in part, to give companies more time to research their products.

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb called the link between e-cigarette use and trying smoking in young

people “troubling.”

“We need to put novel products like e-cigarettes through an appropriate series of regulatory gates to fully evaluate their risks and maximize their potential benefits,” he said in a statement.

Some other key takeaways and questions from the report: ■ Chemicals in e-cigarette vapor, such as formaldehyde, are capable of damaging DNA in humans. However, it's unclear if the chemicals exist at levels high enough to cause cancer.

■ Switching completely from traditional cigarettes to e-cigarettes significantly reduces exposure to numerous cancer-causing chemicals.

■ E-cigarettes can sometimes explode causing burns and injuries. The risk of such accidents is higher with devices that are stored improperly or contain low-quality batteries.

■ There is substantial evidence that e-cigarette vapor contains traces of metal, possibly due to the metallic coils used to heat liquid that the devices vaporize.

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

SMART BRINGS THE SINULOG CLOSER TO PINOYS HERE AND ABROAD PLDT wireless unit Smart Communications is providing Filipinos all over the world front-row seats to the Sinulog Festival, one of the Philippines’s biggest and most colorful celebrations, via livestreaming.

Those who cannot make it to Cebu City will still be able to participate in the annual religious festival and other events by watching the livestream, made possible by Smart’s supercharged LTE network, in partnership with PLDT Home Fibr.

Smart recently completed network-improvement initiatives on its LTE and 3G networks in Metro Cebu.

“With our improved LTE network in Cebu, Filipinos worldwide can join in the Sinulog festivities even in the comforts of their home, while enjoying a faster and better streaming experience,” Smart Public Affairs Head Ramon R. Isberto said. The schedule of the festival livestreams may be accessed at cebu.sunstar.com.ph/sinulog or the Smart Communities Facebook page.

People who will be in Cebu to celebrate Sinulog can plan their itinerary ahead of time by downloading the Sinulog Guide app, a comprehensive resource on Cebu’s premier festival. A project by Smart, InnoPub Media and the Cebu City Government, Sinulog Guide allows users to watch the festival livestreams; and lists the schedule of processions, novena Masses, street-dancing contingents and the lineup of parties and other activities.

These activities include events copresented by Smart, such as Life Dance and Plus63 music and arts festival. There will also be a Selfie City at Fuente Osmeña Circle, where festivalgoers can take photos and share them using the hashtags #MySinulogStory and #SmartSinulog; and a Smart Hub, which features must-see places and festival highlights, giving Sinulog guests a venue to plan their activities. They may also avail themselves of free Wi-Fi and charging services, free LTE SIM upgrade and book their Uber transport at the hub. The Sinulog Guide app also lists top things to do, places to visit and dine in and popular souvenir-shopping outlets. It also provides a list of tour guides and operators accredited by the Department of Tourism and a directory of city establishments, such as malls, consular offices, hospitals and police stations.

Enabling festivalgoers to share their Sinulog experience like never before, Smart is also offering its Giga Surf 99 data service, which provides 1.5GB of data plus 300MB for video streaming, valid for seven days, for only P99.

Subscribers may avail themselves of this package by texting GIGA99 to 9999. Sun users, on the other hand, may subscribe to Big Time Data 70, which offers 1GB of data, unlimited text to all networks and 30 minutes calls to Sun, also valid for seven days, for only P70. Subscribers only need to text BDATA70 to 247.

Saturday, January 27, 2018 A11

Q&A: Samsung’s Alex Hawkinson on smart-home evolution

BY ANICK JESDANUN The Associated Press

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EW YORK—Many everyday appliances are connecting to the Internet these days, allowing people to control them with apps and voice commands. More homes are embracing this, especially as people get comfortable using smart speakers, such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home.

For five years, SmartThings has been making smart-home products and a system for connecting similar products from other companies.

Samsung bought the company in 2014 to expand its portfolio of Internetconnected and automated services.

SmartThings’s founder and CEO Alex Hawkinson spoke with The Associated Press recently about how smart-home products are evolving. Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

WHAT’S THE MOST COMMON SMART-HOME PRODUCT, BASED ON WHAT YOU’RE SEEING CONNECTED TO SMARTTHINGS’S SYSTEMS? Eighty percent of our base has connected lighting. It’s really simple to get started with the bulbs. You can go really deep with the in-wall switches and things. People love that it doesn’t cross into the security and privacy concerns a lot of people have with connected speakers and cameras.

WAIT, ARE THESE PRODUCTS SAFE? We pride ourselves in being leaders. Past problems tend to be lowquality devices, but they scare people.

Obviously, adoption is accelerating, so it’s not the big holdback, but it would be wrong for me to say that’s not a question. Have a conversation about

connected locks with somebody, and you’ll probably get like, “But it could be hacked,” even though the reality is burglars are going to just break the door down.

HOW ARE SMARTPHONES HELPING EVERYDAY PEOPLE EMBRACE SMART HOMES? There’s more connected to your phones in your life. A lot of people a couple years ago hadn’t had the experience of pushing a button and seeing a car show up. Pushing a button and seeing some groceries, or

some food show up. The continued maturity of the smartphone has caused consumers to recognize that the world is totally hyper-connected. That psychology makes it ready for people to say, “Why not have this?”

HOW WILL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) IMPROVE THE EXPERIENCE? The No. 1 issue in security monitoring is false positives. You arm it, and you set it off when you come out to get a glass of water. AI’s going to solve this. We can see in the pattern of data what’s a false positive or not,

without the user having to program stuff. When your smartphone is upstairs, and you are asleep because it hasn’t been in use for a while, you can probably arm the security. But if you pick the phone up and there’s been no motion downstairs, it’s probably you coming downstairs.

Or take lighting. You’ll get to this point this year where, “Hey, make it look like I’m home when I’m going out of town.” It’s got enough data where it can emulate you being home. They can follow the pattern and vary it to make it look real. ■

Will in-display fingerprint sensors be the next big smartphone trend?

CONTINUED FROM A12 home-entertainment products with LG ThinQ AI, including the first TVs with the Google Assistant built-in, most notably the LG Signature AI OLED TV W8 featuring ThinQ, which won more than 10 awards at CES. The LG InstaView ThinQ Refrigerator followed in award wins, offering a streamlined foodmanagement system through LG’s webOS platform and Amazon Alexa integration that simplifies shopping for groceries, playing music, checking the weather, managing your calendar and more. LG also debuted the revolutionary new α (Alpha) 9 intelligent processor that further enhances performance of its flagship LG AI OLED TVs and revealed the outstanding LG V30 smartphone in a brilliant new Raspberry Rose color.

LG’s latest V30 smartphone also received the Consumer Technology Association 2018 CES Innovation Awards: Wireless Handsets and Accessories/Videomaker: Best Smartphone of CES.

EDITOR’S CHOICE WHILE Huawei has yet to unveil its 2018 lineup of smartphones, it was still a winner at the CES 2018, earning awards from global technology media titles following the Huawei Mate 10 Pro’s introduction to the US market and the unveiling of the Huawei WiFi Q2 Series.

The media presented Huawei four awards— including Smartphone of the Year from Android Authority, while the Huawei WiFi Q2 Series was recognized for its full-coverage wireless connectivity.

Android Authority awarded Huawei Mate 10 Pro the 2017 Smartphone of the Year award for having consistent quality across the board. According to the publication’s editor, it is a “pound-for-pound champion,” with the device progressing year over year. TechRadar also named the Huawei Mate 10 Pro the Best Smartphone at the show, acknowledging the device’s Kirin 970 AI chip, Huawei FullView Display,

the world’s largest dual f/1.6 aperture, and the world’s first end-to-end safety certified charging technology.

Android Police recognized the Huawei Mate 10 Pro as a Best of CES 2018 for its Kirin 970 processor, intelligent New Leica Dual Camera, and long-lasting battery power. The publication also called the device “sleek and downright beautiful.”

Finally, Android Central named the Huawei Mate 10 Pro a 2018 CES Top Pick, calling the device Huawei’s “best phone ever,” and concluded it is the best Android flagship for battery life. Meanwhile, T3 gave the Huawei WiFi Q2 Series one if its “Loves” award for being a true plug-and-play Wi-Fi system designed for the entire house.

EPSON’S AFFORDABLE PROJECTORS EPSON the world’s No. 1 name in projectors for 16 consecutive years, unveiled a series of new and feature-packed projectors for businesses and schools at affordable price points.

At the Projection Conference and Showcase, “Together, We Bring Imagination to Life,” held at the Shangri-La at the Fort, Epson Philippines Visual Imaging Product Manager Lyn Lizarondo pointed out how projector usage has expanded over the years, with Epson delivering innovations adapted to the fastchanging needs of multiple segments.

“This showcase highlights how Epson led innovations in visual-imaging technologies even beyond the boardroom. In the past few years, we have seen how projectors have become indispensable in the home, schools and even in big venues and the outdoors. Even as Epson took big steps in various sectors, we have continued to improve on the usage of projectors for businesses and in classrooms, by adding on features that are not available in the market at these price points.”

The new Epson projectors are equipped with an impressive 3,300 to 3,600 lumens, delivering both white and color brightness in the same high levels.

This feature is important to ensure better visibility

even in bright environments, like in offices or in classrooms. Resolutions range from SVGA, XGA, WXGA to WUXGA, and wide-ranging connectivity— HDMI/VGA/LAN—to provide convenient and hassle-free projections. The EB-U42 even comes with additional two HDMI ports, with one of it MHLenabled—ideal for greater digital compatibility.

Other features include wireless transmission, which enables end-users to easily share and transmit images, texts and files from smart devices like mobile phones, tablets and laptops with either EB-U42’s built-in wireless module or Epson’s ELPAP10 wireless LAN adaptor; split-screen features, which allow two separate image sources to be projected on a single screen, eliminating the need for a second projector.

This is useful during video conferences, allowing presentation images and remote participants to be shown together simultaneously. There’s also a multiPC projection moderator function, which allows connecting to up to 50 devices—PC, smartphones or others—and simultaneously project onto the screen up to four images; and screen mirroring, which allows users to wirelessly mirror their Android smart devices to the projector without the need of cables or installing any application.

Epson has pioneered in raising awareness on Color Brightness (Color Light Output) as an important requirement for life-like colors. Utilizing its own proprietary 3LCD technology, all Epson projectors deliver equal levels of White Light Output and Color Light Output—an important detail that significantly raises the quality of projected images.

Since 2015 Epson’s visual imaging development has remained focused on multisectoral usage and innovating in anticipation of the evolving functions of projectors as an ubiquitous digital imaging device for business, education or lifestyle requirements.

PHONES FOR OLYMPIANS WITH the Olympic Winter Games Pyeongchang 2018 just a couple of weeks away, Samsung recently

unveiled the Galaxy Note 8 Pyeongchang 2018 Olympic Games Limited Edition phone.

In collaboration with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Pyeongchang Organizing Committee for the 2018 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (Pocog), Samsung will deliver over 4,000 devices to all Olympians, as well as the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympic family, including IOC and Pocog staff, allowing them to lean on Samsung mobile technology to enhance their experiences and connect more conveniently. The Pyeongchang 2018 Olympic Games Limited Edition will include the bold new features of the Galaxy Note 8, such as the innovative bezel-less, 6.3-inch Infinity Display that fits comfortably in one hand, enhanced S Pen for efficient productivity and Samsung’s best-in-class Dual Camera. Exclusively for the Games, the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympic Games Limited Edition will showcase a shiny white back glass to celebrate the winter theme, and gold Olympic rings—inspired by the Olympic Torch, an expression of the Olympic Movement with the union of five continents and unity worldwide.

“Throughout our 20-year legacy as an Olympic partner, Samsung has showcased our support of the Olympic Movement by helping spread the Olympic Spirit and enhance connections through our latest technological innovations and immersive experiences,” said Younghee Lee, CMO and Executive Vice President of Samsung Electronics. “We’re proud to provide the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympic Games Limited Edition to all athletes in an effort to help them to stay connected, capture and share one of the most memorable moments of their lives.”

The Pyeongchang 2018 Olympic Games Limited Edition will feature celebratory preloaded Pyeongchang 2018 themed wallpapers, allowing recipients to stay connected in-style through Samsung’s most-advanced mobile technology. As an added element, useful apps will be preinstalled to help cultivate the utmost Olympic Games experience. ■

Apple poised to expand into speaker market with HomePod A10

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

BusinessMirror

Saturday, January 27, 2018 A12

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THE Huawei Mate 10 Pro is the top pick of Android Central

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THE Vivo in-display fingerprint scanning technology in detail

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VIVO showcases its product range at CES

❹ VIVO X20 Plus

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Will in-display fingerprint sensors be the next big smartphone trend?

THE TECHNIVORE ED UY

whereiseduy@gmail.com

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OR the past few years, Apple and Samsung have been teasing about integrating fingerprint sensors into their smartphone displays to give users that true full-screen experience.

As phone design continues to evolve in the direction of slimmer bezels and screens taking up almost all of the front of the device, both companies, however, decided to do things differently, with Samsung placing the fingerprint sensor on the rear of the phone (awkwardly and less conveniently, if I may add), while Apple ditched fingerprint authentication altogether and replaced it with the Face ID system.

But now in-screen fingerprint sensors have become a reality, as upstart brand Vivo unveiled the Vivo X20 Plus UD on its online store in China (shopact. vivo.com.cn/page/x20plusud).

Vivo has has partnered with Synaptics to create the Vivo X20 Plus UD, which features a huge 6.43inch Full HD (2160 x 1080), 18:9 OLED display; dual 12MP cameras; 4GB RAM; 128 GB storage; Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor; and a massive 3,905 mAh battery. The phone officially goes on sale on February 1 in China, with a price tag of CNY3,598 ($565, or roughly around P28,000).

Vivo initially unveiled the in-display fingerprintscanning technology at the recent CES 2018, and it quickly drew a lot of attention from the global tech media. This latest fingerprint-scanning technology delivers a whole new mobile experience by enabling users to unlock their smartphone through one-touch fingerprint scanning directly on the smartphone display, while solving the industry’s challenge of providing a better and more convenient fingerprintauthentication experience in future smartphones.

Fingerprint recognition has long been one of the most common and well-known biometrics used to

secure smartphones. As the industry moves into a new era of full-screen displays, it is natural that the fingerprint-scanning technology needs to evolve to accommodate new user habits and demands for bigger screens without sacrificing user experience.

According to statistics from global consultancy firm Canalys, smartphone vendors shipped 22 million full-screen smartphones worldwide in the second quarter in 2017, up from 700,000 in the first quarter of this year. UBI Research predicted that bezel-less displays will grow in market share from 20 percent in 2017 to over 50 percent by 2020.

Vivo said besides unlocking your phone, the fingerprint-scanning technology could also be used for mobile-payment authentication. Unlike the current fingerprint scanners which permanently occupy the bottom part of your phone, the graphical UI will only show up on the screen when locked or when fingerprint recognition is required and will be become invisible again once you begin using your phone so as not to disrupt your visual experience.

There is no news yet if Vivo plans to bring the X20 Plus UD to the Philippines, but if it does, it’ll probably be the brand’s new flagship phone at a more

premium price point.

So do you think in-display fingerprint sensors will be the next big thing, or will it just be another novelty feature?

C.E.S. 2018 BIG WINNER LG Electronics was a big winner at CES with more than 90 awards, led by the Official CES Best TV Product Award for the fourth consecutive year, this time for the new LG AI OLED TV (model C8).

LG also earned numerous best-of-show honors for the LG InstaView ThinQ Refrigerator and LG 4K UHD Projector. LG received top accolades from Engadget, The Verge, Digital Trends, Mashable, SlashGear, TechRadar, Pocket-lint, T3, Stu�f Magazine and others, in addition to 19 CES Innovation Awards from the Consumer Technology Association—including the Best of Innovation Award for the LG 4K UHD Projector—across home appliance, home entertainment and mobile communications categories. LG’s 2018 innovations unveiled at CES include home appliances and

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Facebook to emphasize ‘trustworthy’ news via user surveys

BY TALI ARBEL The Associated Press FACEBOOK is taking another step to try to make itself more socially beneficial, saying it will boost news sources that its users rate as trustworthy in surveys.

In a blog post and a Facebook post from CEO Mark Zuckerberg last Friday, the company said it is surveying users about their familiarity with and trust in news sources. That data will influence what others see in their news feeds.

It’s the second major tweak to Facebook’s algorithm announced this month. The social-media giant, a major source of news for users, has struggled to deal with an uproar over fake news and Russian-linked posts, meant to influence the 2016 US elections, on its

platform. The company has slowly acknowledged its role in that foreign interference.

Zuckerberg has said his goal for this year is to fix Facebook, whether by protecting against foreign interference and abuse or by making users feel better about how they spend time on Facebook.

Facebook announced last week that it would try to have users see fewer posts from publishers, businesses and celebrities, and more from friends and family. Zuckerberg said last Friday because of that, news posts will make up 4 percent of the news feed, down from 5 percent today.

Facebook says it will start prioritizing news sources deemed trustworthy in the US and then internationally. It says it has surveyed a “diverse and representative sample” of US users and next week

it will begin testing prioritizing the news sources deemed trustworthy. Publishers with lower scores may see a drop in their distribution across Facebook.

“There’s too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarization in the world today. Social media enables people to spread information faster than ever before, and if we don’t specifically tackle these problems, then we end up amplifying them. That’s why it’s important that News Feed promotes high quality news that helps build a sense of common ground,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Of course, there are worries that survey-takers will try to game the system, or that they just won’t be able to differentiate between high-quality and low-quality news sources—an issue made evident by the spread of many fake-news items in the past few years.

Zuckerberg says that some news organizations “are only broadly trusted by their readers or watchers, and others are broadly trusted across society even by those who don’t follow them directly.” But this is complicated.

In the US, there has been a growing partisan split in perceptions of the media. Roughly a third of Democrats in early 2017 said they trusted information from national news organizations a lot; only 11 percent of Republicans did, according to Pew Research Center; that gap had grown from early 2016.

Facebook’s move is a positive one, but that it’s not clear how effective this system will be in identifying trustworthy news sources, David Chavern, CEO of the news media trade group News Media Alliance, said in a statement last Friday.