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A GATHERING STORM www.businessmirror.com.ph

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Saturday, July 11, 2020 Vol. 15 No. 275

P25.00 nationwide | 12 pages | 7 DAYS A WEEK

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Covid-19 upends the world order, but in the midst of so much upheaval and the debris of lost lives and dreams, the scary thing is, we don’t even know yet how the storm the pandemic unleashed will look like when it’s done its worst.

By Alan Crawford | Bloomberg

I

N July 1945, at the close of World War II, the leaders of the US, Great Britain and the Soviet Union gathered at a Prussian royal palace in Potsdam outside the conquered German capital to hammer out the new global order. The seeds were sown for the Cold War.

As visitors in face masks ponder the consequences of those decisions at a new exhibition to mark the 75th anniversary of the conference, the geopolitical map of the world is again being redrawn. This time, it’s a result of the coronavirus, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel has described as the biggest challenge of the postwar era.

Half-way into a year dominated by the pandemic, governments are confronting a health crisis, an economic crisis and a crisis of institutional legitimacy, all at a time of heightening geopolitical rivalry.

How those tectonic shifts crystallize over the next six months will go a long way to determining the post-virus era.

Trends that were already discernible pre-Covid-19 have intensified and accelerated. As a fast rising power, China is growing more assertive and jostling with countries from Canada to Australia. The US, the one superpower that has remained at the top table since Potsdam, is increasingly selfabsorbed as the virus rips through its population and economy ahead of November’s presidential

“A lot of structural problems in

the international order are becoming much more glaringly apparent,” said Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at the Australian National University.

With a convergence of multiple pressure points, from failures of leadership to a lack of trust in the veracity of information, “it does add up to a kind of perfect storm,” he said. “The big test is really whether we can get through let’s say the next six to 18 months without these crises coming to a head.”

In Potsdam, the key dynamic was the ideological struggle be-

tween the Communist and Capitalist systems as espoused by Moscow and Washington. The Soviet Union under Josef Stalin had emerged from the war as a superpower, while American President Harry Truman demonstrated US technological and military superiority by issuing the order from the conference to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Today’s standoff between the US under Donald Trump and Xi Jinping’s China was compared to the “foothills” of a new Cold War by former Secretary of State Henry Continued on A2

PHL’s banner fruit export is slowly but surely losing its global market foothold

By Manuel T. Cayon & Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas

D

AVAO CITY—Home-grown bananas, the country’s banner agricultural export crop, may be progressively losing their share in the world market due to a range of issues ranging from high tariffs, plant infections, rising competition and an aggressive, government-subsidized foray by Latin American producers into traditional Philippine markets.

For one, banana exporters have sounded the alarm over the looming threat of a shrinking share in the Chinese market due to rising competition with Asian neighbors like Vietnam and Cambodia, which have also started to “pirate” local industry experts to develop their plantations.

At a recent virtual briefing, the Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association (PBGEA) chair-

man Alberto Paterno F. Bacani said the rise in banana exports from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam to China is one of the “biggest threats” to the country’s top banana market.

Bacani explained that these three countries, which are close to China, enjoy logistical advantages as they can transport banana shipments via land through trucks.

They also have vast idle tracts of fields compared to the Philippines.

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 49.4440

SLIPPING, SLIPPING

Worse, Bacani disclosed that they discovered that Chinese banana companies in Vietnam and Cambodia were already “pirating” Filipino banana experts to develop their produce with high incentives such as better pay.

Losing export market share

THE Philippine Cavendish banana, according to Bacani, is gradually being eased out from the traditional market it used to monopolize, and may have lost as much as 65 percent of its original export market share within the last decade and falling.

This could be seen in the primary market of Japan and South Korea and in China, and also the Gulf states, he said.

In Iran, the Philippines now accounts for 70 percent of the banana supply. But previously, it was the only supplier of banana, especially in the heyday of 2009 and 2010, when the Philippines exported 40 million boxes there. This changed a few years after the United States imposed trade sanctions on the Middle Eastern country.

Continued on A2

n JAPAN 0.4612 n UK 62.3439 n HK 6.3798 n CHINA 7.0711 n SINGAPORE 35.5150 n AUSTRALIA 34.4081 n EU 55.7976 n SAUDI ARABIA 13.1833

Source: BSP (July 10, 2020)

NewsSaturday BusinessMirror

A2 Saturday, July 11, 2020

www.businessmirror.com.ph

A GATHERING STORM Continued from A1

Kissinger in November. Historian Niall Ferguson says we’re already there. Most agree that a Joe Biden presidency would be unlikely to reverse the deterioration of USChina relations.

For Medcalf, whose book Indo-Pacific Empire deals with the strategic rivalry in the region, the defining issue now is not just how the US responds to the challenge of China’s rise, but whether “middle players” including India, Australia, Japan and Europe are prepared to take risks to defend the international order—and to work together in doing so.

The problem is that there’s no obvious forum to debate the shape of the post-pandemic world.

The Group of Seven is in limbo while this year’s host, Trump, disputes who should be a member. A planned September summit of European Union leaders and Xi has been postponed indefinitely. The November G-20 meeting under the presidency of Saudi Arabia remains uncertain.

The United Nations, formed in 1945 to prevent further wars, is largely dysfunctional: Russia and China, two of five veto-wielding powers, blocked another resolution this week, this time on Syria.

The sources of conflict with Beijing, meanwhile, are suddenly and bewilderingly everywhere.

China, which elicited broad sympathy and medical support at the start of the year when it be-

came the first country to suffer the impact of coronavirus, has since frittered away that goodwill.

It’s locked in a tussle with Australia over the origins of the virus, with Canada over the detention of Huawei Technologies Co. executive Meng Wanzhou, and with India over a disputed border. Japan and the EU are moving to become less dependent on China as a result of supply-chain deficiencies exposed by the virus. Germany and Australia are two among many to enact or tighten legislation to protect against predatory investments from China.

Europe’s attitude to China is hardening inexorably, helped by a rapid shift in public opinion against Beijing, according to Agatha Kratz, a Paris-based associate director at Rhodium Group who leads research on EU-China relations.

“We are actually advancing faster than many of our colleagues and partner countries, the US included, on a number of fronts,” said Kratz. She cited steps including an EU policy paper on competition issues released in June that is “a huge deal” in terms of the bloc’s stance toward China.

China’s national security law imposed on Hong Kong has spurred global anger at Beijing’s interference in the former British territory’s independence and is causing severe strains with London.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is preparing to reverse an earlier decision and shut out Huawei from its 5G networks,

prompting a warning of “consequences” from China’s ambassador in London. Johnson’s government also offered 3 million Hong Kong residents a fast track to British citizenship.

Ulrich Speck, a senior visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund, compared the symbolism of China’s stance on Hong Kong to Berlin’s blockade by the Red Army in 1948-1949. That was the moment when reality struck that the US and Soviet Union had moved from wartime allies to deadly rivals.

Tensions are also high with Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea and the East China Sea amid a “hyper-power display”

by China, according to William Choong, senior fellow at the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

“In the Chinese mind, the US has lost its mantle of leadership in the Asia-Pacific, if not the world,” he said. “So China does see it as an opportunity to press the advantage on some of the hotspots in my part of the world.”

Choong worries that a confrontation between the US and China, or between Japan and China, could turn to open conflict as a result of some “trigger-happy commander on the ground who decides to press a point and push the button.”

History is littered with unintended consequences, and the Potsdam Conference had its share.

Over 16 days, Truman, Stalin and British Prime Minister Win-

HONG KONG Chief Executive Carrie Lam listens to reporters’ questions during a press conference in Hong Kong, July 7, 2020. China’s national security law imposed on Hong Kong has spurred global anger at Beijing’s interference in the former British territory’s independence and is causing severe strains with London. AP/VINCENT YU

ston Churchill decided Germany’s fate and debated Poland’s western border, while also taking positions that would have far-reaching consequences for the Middle East and for China, Japan and Korea.

Shifting Poland’s border west to compensate for territory carved out of the east—as well as the closing communiqué’s reference to the “removal” of ethnic Germans from eastern Europe— led to the mass displacement of some 20 million people.

Within less than a year, Churchill, who was replaced in Potsdam by Clement Attlee after losing the British election, referred to an Iron Curtain descending across Europe. By 1950, war broke out on the Korean peninsula between the Soviet-backed Communist north and the USbacked south.

Many of the fault lines established then can be traced today, overlaid and accentuated by the

coronavirus.

The pandemic hasn’t so much changed the world as “thrown a brutal spotlight on the flaws, deficiencies and the disrepair both for the international order and national order,” said Constanze Stelzenmueller, senior fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “And where there have been flaws and weaknesses, the pandemic has ripped through with particular brutality.”

That applies to the US and the UK, both of which have suffered a disproportionately high number of deaths to Covid-19. Stelzenmueller also sees China and Russia as having had bad crises: Beijing’s aggressive virus diplomacy contributed to the backlash it’s witnessing, while Vladimir Putin’s move to consolidate his grip on power underlines his domestic weakness rather than strength.

Populism and its scorn for

experts has been exposed. By contrast, Europe’s efforts to present a viable third way have been given a spur, and appear be on the verge of becoming credible. Stelzenmueller sees hope in the performance of her native Germany, which has proved that “one sane government” can get a grip on even incredibly complex problems. “Sometimes you really have to stare disaster in the face,” she said.

But the crisis is still very much with us, as renewed outbreaks from Florida to Melbourne show, with question marks over how frustrated populations will react to fresh government-imposed lockdowns and deepening economic hardship.

To Medcalf in Australia, a better analogy for what comes next is the prewar period of the 1930s.

“Whatever’s happening we’re on the edge of some kind of gathering storm,” he said. “It’s just that we don’t yet know what the storm will look like or how it will break.”

PHL’s banner fruit export is slowly but surely losing its global market foothold Continued from A1

Some years later, the supply picture again shifted dramatically when Ecuador, the world’s biggest producer, dumped its excess supply on the European Union to Iran and other Middle Eastern countries at very low prices, Bacani said.

“Now Ecuador accounts for half of all banana supply in the Gulf,” he lamented.

The same scenario is unfolding in the prime market of Japan and South Korea. The Philippines was also then enjoying the patronage of the Japanese market a decade earlier, especially at the height of the banana diet fad in 2009 and 2010.

Philippine Cavendish bananas in Japanese store shelves soon experienced a decline, not because there was a diminished Japanese consumption or a shift in fruit preference among Japanese consumers. On the contrary, Bacani said, consumption per capita has increased and banana remained far ahead of apple as a preferred fruit.

He said this transpired when Latin American countries, like Ecuador, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama, entered the scene.

A similar experience was observed in South Korea, where the share of Philippine Cavendish bananas in the market plunged to a low of 65 percent. “It’s pretty much the same as Japan, where consumption per capita is increasing and Latin American suppliers are eating away at our market share,” he pointed out.

Tariff issue

ALL these declines in supply and revenue from Philippine banana exporters were happening alongside “increasing consumption per capita in these markets,” Bacani said.

He said the country is losing much of its share in these markets on the issue of tariff preference, where the Philippines is eased out of preference despite being an old supplier.

For instance, South Korea, Bacani said, was granting as low as zero tariff, or no taxes at all, to Latin American supplies because they had struck bilateral trade agreements with Seoul.

“We are finding it difficult to compete with these countries when we have to start with a 30- percent tariff,” he said.

In Iran, Ecuador could afford to

trade its bananas in the Middle East “because these are excess volumes that the EU could not accept anymore.”

So, Ecuador and other Latin American producers just unload the excess produce in the port of Turkey and these are loaded on to boats for countries around the Persian Gulf, such as Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

“We are no match to their price,” Bacani said.

Another advantage of these South American producers is the full support of their respective governments “because banana is also their main income generators and because they are—literally and technically— banana republics.”

“They have also lower production cost due to the absence of, or undercontrol, banana pests, unlike in the Philippines which is battling the Black Sigatoka pest,” Bacani said.

China market

CHINA has somehow compensated for the loss of market share in traditional markets. However, the Philippines was also slowly feeling the crunch of competition posed not only by South American rival suppliers, but also by the Asian neighbors of China as well.

Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos are now exporting to China just a few years after China itself started to build plantations in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar a decade ago. “While these countries produce inferior quality bananas, it would not be far-fetched that they could catch up,” Bacani said.

“They are about five years behind our technology because we have been in this industry since the 1950s,” Bacani said. “But China and Vietnam have been reported to be pirating our very own experts here and giving them attractive compensation package, and it would be soon that they could catch up.”

Government help

OFFICIALS from the Departments of Agriculture, and Trade and other offices agreed with the points raised by

Bacani and Stephen Antig, executive director of PBGEA, on the need for government intervention in bilateral trade negotiations by seeking favorable tariff reductions and research works in combatting plant diseases like the Black Sigatoka and the dreaded Fusarium Wilt.

Some wanted to get a clearer picture on the extent of devastation wrought by the Fusarium Wilt on the plantations, which the PBGEA estimated has already laid waste to some 30,000 hectares.

The PBGEA official said its 24 member plantations have more than 80,000 hectares, accounting for half of all areas planted with banana of all kinds and varieties.

“We are outpricing ourselves out of the market,” Bacani warned.

Reversing the ‘brain drain’

PBGEA President Victor S. Mercado, however, said if the local banana industry could expand hectarage amid Panama disease challenges and other factors, then they can bring back the Filipino experts who went abroad.

“If we can expand to new lands then we can take back these people as we can afford to pay them the money they need,” Mercado said.

Bacani said their foreign counterparts are paying Filipino banana industry experts a salary of P100,000 per month, with additional incentives compared to their maximum salary in the Philippines of P25,000 per month.

“We talked to some of them and they are willing to come back here even with a smaller salary just to be with their family,” he said.

“Once you’re in the banana industry, especially for production and quality people, it is hard to move to other industries. These people lost their jobs and they moved somewhere—it is not entirely about the pay—but they are willing to come back here with their old salary to at least be at home,” he added.

PBGEA sees total banana exports this year to decline by 17 percent to 162.2 million boxes from 195.5 million boxes last year. Value of shipments is projected to fall by $300 million to $1.65 billion from $1.95 billion last year, according to PBGEA’s latest estimates.

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Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug

Economy starts to pick up after trade contraction in May–Neda

By Cai U. Ordinario

T

he country’s external trade performance continued to take a beating as data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed exports and imports growth continued to contract in May 2020.

Based on the preliminary data released by the PSA on Friday, exports contracted 35.6 percent while imports declined 40.6 percent in May 2020.

Total trade, meanwhile, contracted 38.7 percent and the country’s trade deficit contracted 48.9 percent in May 2020.

“The slower decline in trade performance is a welcome indication that economic activity has started to pick up with the relaxation of quarantine measures in certain areas, the gradual reopening of business, and the restarting of production in both the country and its trading partners,” Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick T. Chua said in an #AskNeda briefing on Friday.

Data showed that the contraction in exports was not as deep as the 49.9 percent posted in April 2020.

However, this remained lower than the 1.8-percent growth it posted in May 2019.

PSA data showed export earnings decreased to $3.99 billion from the $6.20 billion total export generated in May 2019. The year-on-year contraction in May 2020 was the third month that total exports was consecutively declined this year.

In the previous month, export value fell at an annual rate of 49.9 percent while in May 2019, it gained at a rate of 1.8 percent.

Chua said, however, that the country’s export performance will continue to improve as manufactured goods, which account for 80 percent of total exports, is expected to recover.

He said the latest results of the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for the Philippines rose from 40.1 in May to 49.7 in June.

“The Semiconductors and Electronics Industries in the Philippines Inc. [SEIPI] also indicated a gradual pick-up in semiconductor exports in the coming months and projected a flat growth in 2020, notwithstanding the on-going lockdown in Cebu

where some of the electronics firms are located,” Chua said.

In terms of imports, PSA data showed the country’s import bill declined to $5.85 billion in May 2020 and $9.85 billion in May 2019.

PSA said the contraction in May was the secondhighest annual drop since decreases were observed beginning May 2019.

In the previous month, the decline was higher at 65.3 percent while in May 2019, imports decreased by 1.2 percent annually.

“Although still negative compared to last year, this represents slight improvements compared to last month,” Chua said.

The PSA noted that the import value for personal protective equipment (PPE), and medical supplies in May 2020 amounted to $32 million, indicating an annual increase of 64.9 percent.

Slower annual growths of imported values for these medical items were lower in the previous month at 54.1 percent and in May 2019 at 39.1 percent.

Trade partners

PSA data showed the country’s top export markets was led by Japan which accounted for 18.3 percent of the total, or $731.89 million. However, this represented a 15.6-percent contraction from $867.05 million in May 2019.

Other top export destinations were Hong Kong with export value of $658.76 million, or 16.5 of the total; People’s Republic of China, $599.14 million, or 15; US, $484.25 million, or 12.1 percent; and Singapore, $295.55 million, or 7.4 percent.

In terms of import sources, China was the country’s biggest supplier of imported goods in May 2020 with a 21.5-percent share of total import receipts.

Import value from this country amounted to $1.26 billion during the month, a 42.99-percent decline from $2.21 billion in May 2019.

The other major import trading partners were Republic of Korea with an import value of $662.85 million or 11.3 percent of the total; US, $540.98 million or 9.2 percent; Japan, $481.48 million or 8.2 percent; and Singapore, $350.02 million or 6 percent.

Biz loans eyed to create jobs

By Butch Fernandez

S

enator Sherwin Gatchalian is moving for the early passage of remedial legislation providing for a business loan program to create more jobs in a bid to “curb unemployment.”

The senator suggested adoption of a subsidy program similar to the Paycheck Protection Program of the United States to prevent further lay-offs in the country as quarantine measures take a huge bite out of businesses’ bottom line.

Gatchalian, vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Economic Affairs, envisioned a Paycheck Protection Program as a loan program designed to provide incentive for small businesses to keep their workers on the payroll.

He proposed that business owners can get “full loan forgiveness” as an incentive as long as the funds are used for eligible expenses, adding that “this way, the company gets to retain its employees while maintaining its operations.”

“If we can include this in the Bayanihan 2, malaking bagay po ito sa ating mga employees, and also for our companies. Marami talagang kumpanya na nag da-downsize at sigurado akong mas marami pa ang mawawalan ng trabaho. Tiyak babalik din sila sa gobyerno, sa LGU [local government unit] o sa national government. Hindi na yan kakayanin ng gobyerno. Babalik at babalik sila sa gobyerno para humingi ng suporta,” Gatchalian said, adding that the Paycheck Protection Program-like subsidy will hit two birds with one stone as “you secure the tenure of employees and at the same time you generate the economic side.”

The senator noted that the government currently provides a wage subsidy of P5,000 to P8,000 to employees under the Small Business Wage Subsidy

(SBWS) through the Social Security System (SSS). He added that “this scheme lets employers complete the application on behalf of their employees.” But the lawmaker pointed out that “this one-time subsidy does not provide long-term support to employees.”

He recalled that many Filipinos were laid off as companies downsize their operations to trim their losses as they weather through the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Philippine Statistics Authority reported that 7.3 million Filipinos are unemployed as of April 2020, an all-time high unemployment rate.

In a news statement, Gatchalian warned of uncertain labor market recovery, citing the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) study that there was a 14-percent drop in global working hours during the second quarter of 2020, equivalent to the loss of 400 million full-time jobs, based on a 48-hour working week. The same study projects a decrease in working hours of 4.9 percent in the second half of the year which is equivalent to the loss of 140 million full-time jobs.

At the same time, Gatchalian reiterated his call to prioritize the preservation of jobs in the country. The senator said the government will need an estimated P301 billion to create direct and indirect jobs for those impacted by the Covid-19-induced economic crisis for the rest of the year.

“The government has been calling on Filipinos to help spur the economy by spending more and taking advantage of record-low interest rates. But how can Juan dela Cruz think of spending his hard-earned cash during this crisis when he isn’t sure whether he’d be able to keep his job the following day. That’s why I implore the government to prioritize the preservation of jobs of our kababayans so that they’ll be able to contribute in reviving our economy back,” Gatchalian said.

Demand prompts BPI to shorten period for Covid debt-paper offer

T

he Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) announced it shortened the offer period for its Covid bonds on the back of robust demand.

The Ayala-led bank said in a disclosure on Thursday that the offer period was concluded on July 8, more than a week earlier than planned.

The subscriptions for the Philippines’s maiden Covid response bonds surpassed the initially planned P3-billion issue size. However, BPI did not disclose the exact amount or the reason for not doing so.

Each bond has a tenor of 1.75 years and carries an interest rate of 3.05 percent per annum.

Proceeds from the transaction will be allocated to finance and refinance eligible micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) under BPI’s sustainable funding framework.

The said framework covers the issuance of green, social or sustainable bonds, or loans. It is part of its “Green Finance” framework—which was introduced in June last year to fund environmental initiatives—”and underscores the inclusion of projects that address social issues.”

“The bank values the significant contribution of MSMEs to the economy and aspires to help these

enterprises bounce back from the paralysis caused by the pandemic,” BPI said.

MSMEs comprise 63 percent of the total employment and 99.5 percent of total enterprises in the Philippines.

Issue and listing date of the bonds are set on August 7. BPI and the offering’s joint lead arrangers may change the schedule if needed.

The bank tapped BPI Capital Corp. and The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. Ltd. (HSBC) as the joint lead arrangers of the transaction.

BPI Capital was the sole selling agent while HSBC served as participating selling agent.

The Ayala-led bank saw its net profits in the first three months decline by 5 percent to P6.39 billion on the back of higher provisions for bad debts. The bank hiked its buffer for potential loan losses to P4.32 billion in the first quarter, which is more than double the amount it booked for the comparable period last year.

BPI shares fell 3.09 percent, or P2.30, to close at P72.20 each amid the 1.48-percent plunge for the benchmark index on Thursday.

Tyrone Jasper C. Piad

Saturday, July 11, 2020

A3

House panel votes 70-11 against ABS-CBN franchise application

A

By Jovee Marie N. Dela Cruz

FTER 12 hearings, the House Committee on Legislative Franchises on Friday rejected the franchise application of the ABSCBN Corporation.

This, after the House Committee on Legislative Franchises adopted a resolution—based on the work of a hastily formed technical working group—deny ing t he f ranc hise appl ication of ABS- CBN Cor poration to construct, install, establish, operate and maintain radio and broadcasting stations in t he Philippines.

The resolution to deny the ABSCBN franchise application was adopted with 70 committee members voting in favor of the resolution, 11 against, and with 1 abstention and 2 inhibitions.

Before approving the resolution, the committee adopted the recommendation of its technical working group’s resolution recommending the denial of the franchise.

However, authors of the measures granting ABS-CBN franchise may still ask the committee to reconsider its decision or refile bills granting the network a fresh legislative franchise.

The ABS-CBN Corp. went off air last May 5 after the National Telecommunication Commission issued a cease and desist order (CDO) against the network following the expiration of its legislative franchise last May 4.

The giant network’s saga has raised concern here and abroad that the “politicalization” of the process of granting franchises, which the Constitution reposes in Congress, could stymie investor confidence in the Philippines.

Citing several violations embodied in six segments of the TWG report, the House Committee on Legislative Franchises rejected the 25-year franchise application of the Lopez-led network, sparking protests that it was really a political decision arising from President Duterte’s publicly stated disdain for the media company.

The committee, however, said the network’s franchise application is not a press freedom issue.

“It is what it is—a denial of a privilege granted by the State because the applicant was seen as undeserving of the grant of a legislative franchise,” it said.

The 12 House hearings discussed: the citizenship of ABSCBN chair emeritus Gabby Lopez; possible violation of the constitutional prohibition against ownership and management of mass media by foreigners; use of Philippine Depositary Receipts; questionable and unjust, if not immoral, tax avoidance schemes; ABS-CBN’s apparent use of a dummy; and ABS-CBN’s less than exemplary labor practices.

Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano described the committee’s work as fair, impartial, thorough.

“Because of the highly partisan nature of this issue, we accepted from the start that there would be those who will vehemently disagree with the committee’s decision, no matter what they resolve,” he said.

He asked “that the people read the findings carefully in order to

Sad, grim homecoming: PHL retrieves remains of OFWs from Saudi arabia

By Recto Mercene

F

orty nine wooden caskets containing the remains of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who expired due to virus infection, including those who died of natural causes, were airlifted to Villamor Air Base (VAB) on Friday from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).

A Philippine Airlines (PAL) A330 aircraft with call sign RP-C8781, brought the mortal remains from Riyadh and Dammam in the Middle East.

The PAL plane flew from Manila to Riyadh on Thursday via PR 682 to fetch the remains of the OFWs. From Riyadh, the A330 flew to Dammam to fetch another batch before proceeding to Manila via PR 683.

“The flag carrier joins the nation in expressing its condolences and sympathies to the bereaved families of our OFWs. It is an honor for Philippine Airlines to fly our country’s modern-day heroes home to their motherland,” PAL said in a news statement.

“Our OFWs left the Philippines to seek greener pastures. They left the comforts of being with family in order to work in a foreign land, enabling them to provide sustenance for loved ones through sheer hard work.”

PAL thanked the Department of Labor and Employment, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Department of National Defense and the Armed Forces of the Philippines for working together to ensure the repatriation of our 49 modern-day heroes.

A blessing ceremony by the Air Force Chaplain was carried out at the VAB grounds. Defense

ABS-CBN supporters prepare for a motorcade to dramatize their call for the grant of a congressional franchise to the Lopez-owned broadcast network.

‘Violations’

Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who chairs the National Task Force against Covid-19 honored the dead and hailed them for their contributions to their families and their country.

Present during the ceremony were Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr., Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III, OWWA Administrator Hans Leo Cacdac, Health Secretary Francisco Duque, National Task Force Covid-19 Chief Implementer Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea and PAL Vice President for Security, Gen. Ceasar Ronnie Ordoyo, representing PAL President and Chief Operating Officer Gilbert Santa Maria.

The Philippine Air Force has been tasked to fly the remains to their respective home provinces.

The homecoming came nearly a week after the government missed its July 4 target of airlifting the deceased home due to logistical issues.

Riyadh gave a 72-hour ultimatum for the Philippine government to repatriate 301 OFWs who died in the kingdom weeks ago.

The remains of another 44 OFWs, also from Saudi Arabia, are scheduled to arrive on Monday.

Nonoy Lacza

appreciate the reasons for their decision. And for those who do not agree, at the least, understand why the decision had to be so.

A lbay R e p. E dce l L a g m a n noted the lightning speed w ith which the T WG finished a comprehensive repor t in less t ha n 24 hou rs.

“While reasonable dispatch in the accomplishment of the work of a TWG is laudable, inordinate alacrity is suspect like in the case of the TWG which recommended the denial of the application of ABS-CBN Corporation for a franchise renewal in less than 24 hours after it was formed and despite the fact that it had to review more than 100 hours of hearings, voluminous documents and records, as well as major contentious issues,” Lagman said.

“The pretense of the Speaker for a ‘conscience vote’ was unmasked by his own closing statement at the end of the hearings which was a virtual final summation for the ‘antis’ rooting for the denial of ABS-CBN’s franchise renewal,” he said.

Agusan del Norte Rep. Lawrence Fortun said the TWG findings are a complete departure from the official position and statements of the departments, agencies, offices and independent organizations invited to the joint

committee hearings.

“The TWG recommendation for a resolution denying the franchise is a departure from truth, justice and reason,” he said.

“History will judge the House on this,” he added.

Network executives

In a statement, ABS-CBN President and Chief Executive Officer Carlo Katigbak said the ABS-CBN will remain committed to public service, and it hopes to find other ways to achieve its mission.

“We are deeply hurt that the Committee on Legislative Franchises has denied the franchise application of ABS-CBN. We believe that we have been rendering service that is meaningful and valuable to the Filipino public. Nevertheless, we would like to thank the Committee for allowing us a chance to air our side on all the issues raised against us,” he said.

“ABS-CBN would like to thank all the congressmen who stood by their bills to renew our franchise, or who spoke out on our behalf during the hearings. We are forever grateful. We also thank everyone who expressed their support and offered their prayers for us. We could not have gotten to this point without you,” said Katigbak.

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Saturday, July 11, 2020

The World BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

risk breaching China Key nations agree to help bring Banks law by complying with US home seafarers stuck on ships G

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ore than a dozen countries with crucial global shipping hubs agreed to ease port and border restrictions for seafarers to help the more than 200,000 workers still stranded on vessels return home.

Nations including the US, Singapore, Greece and the United Arab Emirates said they would ease coronavirus-related restrictions for seafarers and boost commercial flights to help facilitate crew swaps. The pact comes after months of pressure on governments, ports and shippers to find ways to get workers off vessels after a rash of suicides and an uptick in expired contracts.

Seafarers will now get international recognition as “key workers” to enable freer movement and quicker repatriation, following a virtual International Maritime Summit hosted by the UK Thursday. Some crews have spent more than a year at sea, exceeding limits under maritime agreements, as border restrictions to halt the

spread of Covid-19 and canceled flights limited travel.

“It is time to act for seafarers,” said Kitack Lim, secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). “Safe ship operations and crew well-being should not be compromised. The humanitarian crisis seafarers face has implications for all of us, for the world economy and for the safety of life at sea and the environment.”

While cruise companies have been able to get most seafarers home by pooling thousands of workers and chartering flights, or in some cases taking them home on luxury liners empty of passengers, the majority of crews on merchant vessels have been stranded.

A nother 200,000 seafarers

haven’t been able to get back onto ships because of travel restrictions to relieve crew who have finished their contracts.

“What we need is for every country around the world to acknowledge seafarers and allow them to get home,” said Chirag Bahri, director of regions at International Seafarers’ Welfare and Assistance Network. “They’re not robots.

They need to get home.”

While a growing number of ports are now allowing crew changes, management companies say the restrictions have made it difficult to relieve substantial numbers.

Ship managing firm Wallem Group Ltd. says the company has only been able to execute about 20 percent of their usual crew changes, according to Chief Executive Officer Frank Coles. About 40 percent of their 4,000 seafarers on vessels have completed their contracts and 10 percent have been at sea for more than a year.

In the Philippines, the government on Friday designated Subic Bay north of Manila Bay as a hub for international crew change. The Philippines is among the top countries supplying workers in the shipping industry. Bloomberg News

Japan pushes ahead with reopening even as virus cases mount

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apan is forging ahead with further steps to reopen the economy even as daily coronavirus cases continue to climb, with local media reporting Tokyo posting a daily record of over 240 infections on Friday.

The country will begin allowing events of up to 5,000 people, including sporting events and musical concerts. It’s the latest easing of guidelines after businesses have almost fully reopened since a state of emergency ended in late May. Japan is also moving toward discussions with some countries on gradually lifting strict travel bans that remain in place, according to local media reports.

Countries around the globe are seeking to reopen their battered economies after an initial success with virus prevention efforts, only to wrestle with new clusters of infections. Japan’s flare-up is part of a resurgence in cases from Hong Kong to Melbourne. Rather than

resort to full-blown lockdowns, many are seeking targeted approaches allowing their economies to continue recovering.

Yasutoshi Nishimura, the minister in charge of Japan’s coronavirus response, said the country must continuously balance containing the virus and economic well-being. “Protecting lives are the most important. On the other hand to make a living, expanding economic activity is also a must.

We need to do both, it’s not a choice of one or the other.”

Tokyo reported over 240 cases on Friday, NHK reported, surpassing the daily record of 224 cases the previous day and is higher than any daily reported cases during the state of emergency. Cases in the capital have surged from only a handful several weeks ago, with infections recently topping 100 for six days in a row.

Despite the recent outbreak, officials have repeatedly emphasized

there will be no changes to Japan’s reopening plans. If weather allows, Japan’s national baseball league will open six games to spectators Friday evening, though none will be played in Tokyo. Soccer games with attendees are also planned to start Friday.

The famed coordinated cheering seen at Japan’s baseball games won’t be allowed, according to guidelines put out by Nippon Professional Baseball. Instead it asks for spectators to clap instead of loud cheering and use electronic whistles and avoid megaphones. Attendees will also be asked to wear masks, hold onto ticket stubs to remember where they sat, and avoid unnecessary movements within the stadiums during the games.

Government officials have reasoned that there is no need to introduce new restrictions as the surge in coronavirus cases is tied to increased testing, mainly around nightclubs that have become a

source of recent infections, and most infection routes are traceable.

Some nightclubs have been asked to close in Tokyo with support money offered. Nishimura and Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike will meet Friday to come out with more guidelines on the city’s nightlife.

A majority of the new cases have been younger patients in their 20s and 30s, who usually experience lighter symptoms and do not require hospitalization. The medical system is also not under any strain, though officials have said they are aiming to strengthen preparedness.

Officials are advising resident to be careful, and avoid crowded conditions and spaces that are not well ventilated.

Nishimura said the virus was also not spreading nationally, saying that about 20 out of the country’s 47 prefectures and areas had not reported any new cases in the last week. Bloomberg News

ECB may boost stimulus to aid fledgling recovery

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he Eu rop e a n Ce nt r a l Bank (ECB) isn’t done expanding its bond-buying program yet, according to economists, despite recent remarks by policy makers that the outlook has brightened slightly.

More than half of respondents in a Bloomberg sur vey predict an increase in the ECB’s 1.35 trillion-euro pandemic purchase program ($1.5 trillion) by December, with most expecting an extension and a top-up of 500 billion euros. The Governing Council is seen keeping its

policy unchanged when it meets next week.

Expectations that the ECB will need to do more highlight the extraordinary uncertainty surrounding the recovery from the crisis. While officials have said the latest data point to a relatively sharp bounceback, they also stressed the euro-zone economy is still on course for its biggest contraction ever—almost 9 percent this year—and the extent of damage to companies and labor markets is still hard to judge.

Only this week, the European

Commission came out with a bleak assessment, warning that the risks remain “exceptionally high and mainly to the downside.” It also argued that a widening gap between richer and poorer countries is a “powerful illustration” for why joint fiscal support is key.

“It is far too early to give any all-clear on the economy,” said Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at ING Germany. It will take more data “ before a better picture of the shape of the second stage of the recovery will emerge. This second stage of the recover y will determine any next steps for the ECB.” What Bloomberg’s economists say “The emergency aid seems to be working. With plenty of assets still to buy, there’s no need for a new policy announcement next week.

And with the fire-fighting over, the central bank can now turn to the recovery phase of the crisis.”

—Maeva Cousin, David Powell and Jamie Rush President Christine Lagarde

signaled in a Financial Times interview this week that she’s in no rush to ramp up stimulus again as the ECB allows current measures to unfold. Policy-makers added 500 billion euros to their crisis bondbuying plan in June and extended it by six months to the middle of next year.

Another such push would lift total holdings—including earlier purchases—to just under 5 trillion euros, equivalent to about 40 percentof 2019 output.

Wa it ing w it h any announce ment until December would give policy makers a chance to look at their first set of economic forecasts for 2023.

Investors the world over are questioning how deep central banks will need to dig into their toolbox. The Bank of England increased its asset-purchase program last month but slowed the pace of buying, while some Federal Reserve policy-makers are expressing concern that the resurgence in US virus cases will derail the recovery there. Bloomberg News

lobal banks risk being caught between Beijing-backed penalties and sanctions being debated in the US as Hong Kong’s autonomy becomes a volatile point of friction between the two superpowers.

The vast scope of the new security law imposed on the city has taken businesses by surprise, but perhaps no part is more worrying for global lenders than Article 29. It forbids sanctions, blockades or hostile activities against the financial hub and China at a time when the US is inching closer to enacting rules that would require banks to comply with sanctions against Chinese officials and entities.

Running afoul of the legislations put companies at risk of fines, or losing their license to do business.

There’s concern on the “risk of becoming a political football,” said Tamer Soliman, a Washington-based partner and global head of the Export Control & Sanctions practice at law firm Mayer Brown.

“We’re currently advising a number of clients who are concerned with how broadly certain aspects of the National Security Law could be construed, and how that may come into play in local implementation of the HKAA generally,” he said, referring to the US’s Hong Kong Autonomy Act. Article 29 is part of a package of legislation enforced by Beijing to reign in criticism of its rule. The law is upending how justice is administered in the financial hub and has further raised tension between the US and China.

Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997 on a “one country, two systems” framework to maintain its freedom of expression, capitalist financial system and independent judiciary for at least 50 years.

The crackdown in Hong Kong has drawn criticism from Washington, including the legislation that provides for sanctions against financial institutions working with Chinese officials who are determined by the US to be interfering with Hong Kong’s limited autonomy.

“This is designed to target officials in the government of China, or others who’re collaborating in undermining democracy in Hong Kong,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, who co-sponsored the bill, said in a Bloomberg Television interview.

The bill “will also then sanction any banks who do business with those individuals. The idea being that those individuals who are complicit, we want to cut off their financial lifeline,” he said.

Banks including Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are walking a tightrope between the two world powers given their operations in Hong Kong and ambitious plans for China this year. HSBC Holdings Plc. is especially under fire after it voiced support for China’s security law, under intense pressure because of its dominant role in Hong Kong.

Spokespeople at the banks all declined to comment on Article 29 and the sanctions.

Bankers and their lawyers from Hong Kong to Washington are poring over the legislation to reconcile how they can dodge major consequences, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to named discussing internal deliberations.

Banks are assessing ways to mitigate the risks of a potential breach of Hong Kong’s security law and how to implement potential US sanctions without exposing staff in the city, including having offshore entities rather than local units implement the sanctions, the people said. Still, that could bring little relief since the Hong Kong legislation also claims extraterritorial rights, which is likely to be one main point of legal contention.

State secrets Retail and corporate banks with a big presence in Hong Kong such as Citigroup and HSBC could be more exposed to the risks from the bills especially on sizable transactions done through local units, one of the people said.

Another issue causing concern among the banks is Article 29’s provision on state secrets, which they could breach if they provide information to a foreign government on high-level clients, two of the people said.

Global banks are reviewing their client base to identify people who may be exposed to sanctions under the US act and looking over agreements to make sure that they have clauses that allow them to ditch customers without penalty.

The US sanctions bill is currently awaiting the signature of the president, who hasn’t indicated whether he will sign it or not. The bill was passed with broad veto-proof support in the Senate and the House.

Still, the initial fallout may be limited to the most senior Chinese officials since the US is unlikely to take action that will significantly disrupt trade, or hurt the global economy, estimate bank executives, who asked not to be identified discussing internal analysis.

China’s response, on the other hand, will also be guided by its desire to maintain Hong Kong as a global financial center, a status that will be eroded if foreign companies are put in a bind by a heavy-handed implementation of the law. Article 29 also focuses on the country and territory level, so implementing sanctions against individuals may not constitute a breach, one of the people said.

Oil slides on IEA’s coronavirus warning, Libyan export restart

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il fell as the International Energy Agency said a jump in Covid-19 cases could derail the market recovery, while Libya signaled the potential restart of crude exports.

Futures slipped below $39 a barrel in New York, and are down 4.7 percent this week. The IEA said the demand recovery is at risk from a resurgence in virus cases across major economies, which has prompted tighter restrictions to curb the outbreaks. In Libya, the national oil company announced it would lift force majeure on all exports following months of near-zero shipments.

Crude dropped by more than a dollar on Thursday as the market weighed the impact of the spread of virus cases. California, Texas and Florida have recorded some of their biggest daily gains in cases and deaths this week, with the outbreak impeding efforts to reopen the economy at a time when companies are cutting costs wherever they can. That’s helped push some market gauges down to their weakest levels in almost a month.

“America is still in the throes of the pandemic

and this spells bad news for the oil demand outlook,” said Stephen Brenock, an analyst at brokerage PVM Oil Associates. “Against this backdrop, upside potential for oil prices will remain in short supply.”

With Libya’s National Oil Corp. lifting force majeure—a legal status protecting a party if it can’t fulfill a contract for reasons beyond its control—the African country may be able to resume shipments halted by a prolonged blockade of fields and ports. Nevertheless, the NOC warned that technical issues at oil deposits, pipelines and terminals would keep production at low levels.

In key locations outside Asia, where delays unloading shipments have complicated the picture, floating inventories have halved to about 35 million barrels since peaking in May, according to Vortexa Ltd., an analytics firm. In the vital North Sea market, the hoard has shriveled, with just a single ship now left on storage, tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Bloomberg News

The World BusinessMirror

Editor: Angel R. Calso

BIDEN OFFERS ‘BUILD BACK BETTER’ PLAN TO REVIVE AMERICAN ECONOMY

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oe Biden launched his plan on Thursday to revive the economy from the coronavirusrelated recession with a promise to “build back better” than what existed before the crisis.

Offering a contrast with President Donald Trump’s insistence that the economy is bouncing back, the Democratic nominee framed his economic agenda for the general election and sought to cut into the one policy area in which he lags Trump in public opinion polls.

A centerpiece of Biden’s plan is intended to foster manufacturing and encourage innovation, adopting some ideas from his progressive primary rivals, as well as a buy-American focus, but avoiding the big-ticket proposals like the Green New Deal.

He criticized Trump’s failures to fulfill the “America First” economic promises he made during his 2016 campaign. Trump, Biden said, never delivered an infrastructure plan, did not spur manufacturing jobs and allowed federal contractors to send jobs overseas after vowing to “buy American.”

“The challenges faced today are among the biggest in our history,” he said at a metalworks factory in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, a few miles away from his childhood home in Scranton, a place that’s been synonymous with the blue-collar workers who helped Trump win the state in 2016.

“I have no illusion how tough the road ahead is going to be for our country,” Biden added.

But he said he’s still “an optimist” because the American people are up to those challenges if they follow his lead.

“I see a different America than Trump. One that despite all our flaws and shortcomings and failures is still, after more than two centuries, dedicated to equality, liberty and human decency,” he said.

Biden also said the idea that US companies only bear responsibility to their shareholders is “an absolute farce” because corporations have a duty to workers and their country.

“It’s time corporate America pay their fair share of taxes,” Biden said, reiterating his plan to raise the current corporate tax rate back to the 28 percent it was during the Obama administration from the current 21 percent.

Biden’s speech in Pennsylvania came as Vice President Mike Pence was beginning a reelection campaign tour across the state. Trump narrowly won the swing state in 2016, and both Democrats and Republicans see it as crucial to winning the Electoral College in November.

Since Biden has resumed in-person campaigning, he has made frequent stops in Pennsylvania, delivering speeches and holding small roundtables across the state, adjacent to his home state of Delaware, where he has been based since the pandemic forced people into their

homes in March. After his speech on Thursday, he made a brief stop at his childhood home and church in Scranton.

The former vice president’s economic plan is divided into four areas, the first of which he addressed in some detail on Thursday: a push to buy American and create manufacturing jobs, costing at least $700 billion; building infrastructure and clean energy; advancing racial equity; and modernizing the “caring” economy such as child-care and eldercare workers and domestic aides.

He said he would roll out his plans to rebuild US infrastructure and emphasize clean energy next week.

Biden covered a wide range of issues, from what he called Trump’s lack of empathy for people suffering from the current crises to the removal of Confederate monuments. He took from his standard stump speech his admiration for the middle-class and unions, which he says “built this country.”

On Thursday, he proposed $400 billion in additional federal purchases of products made

by American workers over the course of his first term—based on a proposal that his primary opponent Senator Elizabeth Warren offered—as well as $300 billion for federally funded research and development. In all, the Biden campaign estimates that its proposals on manufacturing and buying American will create 5 million jobs.

He didn’t offer a plan to pay for these initiatives.

“When the federal government uses taxpayers’ money we should use it to buy American products and support American jobs,” he said of his buyAmerican plan.

Hogan Gidley, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, slammed Biden’s economic record, criticizing his support for Nafta and chastised him for adopting some of former rival Bernie Sanders’s proposals.

“President Trump’s policies created more jobs and prosperity for every American in three years than Joe Biden could muster in nearly half a century,” Gidley said in a news statement. “Biden’s willful attack on our jobs, our families, and the American way of life will reverse all the gains we’ve made together and plunge us into economic catastrophe.”

There was small progress toward recovery in the jobs numbers for June released last week.

Applications for unemployment benefits in the US declined last week by more than projected, easing concerns of a renewed downturn in the labor market after several large states reported an increase in coronavirus cases.

Trump has made buy-American policies and protecting the US steel and aluminum industry a centerpiece of his administration but some domestic manufacturers have complained his actions didn’t go far enough. AP

Japan keeps coal support with nod to long-term green goals

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apan tightened conditions for its support of overseas coal-power projects, but left the door open to new plants that use the dirtiest fossil fuel despite sustained criticism from environmentalists and dissent within its own government.

The new policy, announced Thursday, is a blow to efforts to halt Japan’s entrenched support for financing and developing coal plants, particularly in developing economies of Southeast Asia. Ending its use is considered a priority for nations to meet their climate commitments under the Paris Agreement, which is aimed at avoiding rising global temperatures by capping greenhouse-gas emissions.

In a concession to climatechange concerns, the new policy will include for the first time a requirement that recipient countries commit to long-term “decarbonization” plans to lower emissions, and focuses support on only the highest-efficiency plants, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the powerful government agency that sets much of the nation’s energy policy.

“It is extremely disappointing to see the government’s refusal to take the climate crisis seriously, and the lack of action towards genuinely honoring their commitment to the Paris Agreement,” Hanna Hakko, Greenpeace Japan’s senior energy campaigner, said in a news statement. “The announcement today shows no clear policy direction to rule out public financing of coal power, something that is urgently needed if we are to have any chance to curb the climate crisis.”

As investors and governments take up the fight against climate change, Japan has come under increasing scrutiny for encouraging its industrial and financial giants to back coal’s use. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged countries in December to stop building new coal plants after this year.

The four-month policy review was called by Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, a rising political star who has criticized the country’s support for coal power, and was coordinated by the office of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Koizumi has taken an optimistic tone on the outcome, saying he expects it to be positively received overseas and that it will show Japan is making progress on energy policy and climate change.

“We have made it a principle,” he told reporters in Tokyo on Friday, referring to the new requirement that partner countries must commit to long-term decarbonization plans. “I think that’s important.”

Under the new guidelines, Japan will provide support for coal stations that use ultra-supercritical technology with an efficiency of at least 43 percent, as well as integrated gasification combined cycle plants or facilities that emit even less than IGCC by using tech such as carbon capture, METI said in a document distributed to reporters Thursday in Tokyo.

The government will also only provide support for countries that have no other choice than coal-fired power, according to the document.

Saturday, July 11, 2020

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Seoul mayor left note saying ‘sorry’ as South Korea mourns

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EOUL, South Korea—Seoul’s mayor left a note saying he felt “sorry to all people” before he was found dead early Friday, officials in the South Korean capital said as people began mourning the liberal legal activist seen as a potential presidential candidate.

Mayor Park Won-soon had been found dead in wooded hills in northern Seoul hours after his daughter reported to police he had left her a “will-like” verbal message and disappeared. His body was found after hours of searching near the last location of his phone.

Police said there were no signs of foul play at the site but refused to disclose his cause of death.

A mourning station was set up at a hospital to receive mourners for five days. Some politicians and civic activists visited the hospital to pay respects to Park. His funeral is to be held next week.

Seoul government officials said Park canceled his scheduled appointments and did not come to work Thursday without explanation.

South Korean media, including

SBS television network reported Thursday night that one of Park’s secretaries had lodged a complaint with police on Wednesday night over alleged sexual harassment for an extended period.

Police later confirmed that a complaint against Park had been filed but cited privacy issues in refusing to elaborate, including on whether the complaint was about sexual behavior.

Seoul’s city government said a note left by Park was found at his residence.

“I feel sorry to all people. I thank everyone who has been with me in my life,” the note shown on TV said.

It continued with a request his remains be cremated and scattered around his parents’ graves.

The US Ambassador to South

In this June 5, 2014, file photo, Park Won-soon, then candidate for Seoul city mayor of the main opposition party New Politics Alliance for Democracy celebrates his victory in the Seoul mayoral election at his office in Seoul, South Korea. The police say on Thursday, July 9, 2020, Park, the current mayor of South Korean capital Seoul, has been reported missing and later found after a seven-hour search early Friday morning. AP

Korea, Harry Harris, expressed his sadness at Park’s death. “My condolences to his family and to the people of Seoul during this difficult time,” his tweet said.

Park, 64, was a longtime civic activist and human-rights lawyer before he was elected Seoul mayor in 2011. He became the city’s first mayor to be voted to a third term in June 2018. A member of President Moon Jae-in’s liberal Democratic Party, he had been considered a potential presidential candidate

in 2022 elections.

Park led an aggressive campaign to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the city of 10 million people, shutting down thousands of nightspots and banning rallies in major downtown streets.

But the capital has become a new center of the outbreak in South Korea since the country eased its rigid social distancing rules in early May. Authorities are struggling to trace contacts of infected people as clusters arise in a variety of places. AP

Singaporeans head to the polls as city grapples with the virus

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ingapore headed to the polls Friday as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s ruling party seeks to extend its 55-year rule with a fresh mandate to counter the citystate’s worst-ever recession amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Special precautions such as temperature screenings, the use of disposable gloves and safe distancing rules are being implemented at the polling booths, which close at 8:00 p.m. Vote counting will begin immediately afterward, with the final outcome likely to be clear either late Friday or early Saturday.

It could be Lee’s final election before he hands power to the so-called “fourth generation” of People’s Action Party (PAP) officials led by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, who have helped spearhead the government’s response to Covid-19. The next government will face the task of leading the country out of crisis after more than 45,000 people—mostly migrant workers— became infected, making Singapore one of the hardest hit places in Asia.

“This is a crisis environment,” said Bilveer Singh, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s department of political science. “Whether you buy it or not, I think the fear of Covid-19 is massive. Everyone is scared of jobs, jobs, jobs. That’s the overwhelming concern for most Singaporeans.”

While Singapore bans opinion polls during election campaigns, analysts and the opposition parties expect the PAP to easily win the most seats and form the next government. Still, any drop in support compared with the 2015 vote—or even a more extreme scenario where the PAP fails to win a two-thirds majority in Parliament for the first time—could potentially affect Lee’s succession plan, or prompt the government to adopt more populist measures like it did in 2011 following its worst-ever result.

Prime Minister Lee has called on voters to give the PAP a “strong mandate” to guide Singapore through the crisis. Officials project Singapore’s gross domestic product will contract

make things easier for the PAP. Among those contesting is the newcomer Progress Singapore Party (PSP), which is led by former PAP stalwart Tan Cheng Bock and backed by the prime minister’s estranged brother, Lee Hsien Yang, who became a member ahead of the election. PSP is fielding the most candidates of any opposition party with 24 in the running, while the Workers’ Party has put forward 21.

Campaigning has been vigorous despite one of the shortest election cycles in the world at just nine days. The PAP has sparred with the opposition on everything from housing issues to the standard of living and goods and services tax, to the use of non-elected members of parliament. Bloomberg News

A voter wearing a protective mask has her temperature checked at a polling station in Singapore, on July 10.

as much as 7 percent this year while employment fell in the first quarter by the most on record. That’s despite the government earmarking about S$93 billion in special budget support and dipping into its ample reserves to finance the spending.

This is an important election for a country in the midst of a leadership transition, said Eugene Tan, a political analyst and law professor at Singapore Management University, in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “It has significant consequences with regard to how Singapore is going to deal with the post Covid-19 world in terms of preparing itself and dealing with the existing challenges,” Tan said, noting the question of whether the next generation of political leaders “are equal to the task” is a key one for voters.

The PAP has never won less than 93 percent of seats in a general election, and took nearly 70 percent of popular votes during the last poll in 2015. Reaching that level “may be ambitious” even though voters tend to support the ruling party during times of crisis and there’s “a real chance the PAP could win all 93 seats on offer,” according to Leonard Lim, country director for regional consultancy firm Vriens & Partners. A dip closer to the 60-percent share it won in 2011 “would

prompt widespread introspection and a review of policies,” he said.

The opposition Workers’ Party, which garnered six seats in 2015, has also warned it may not win any in this election even though all constituencies are being contested for just the second time.

To stay competitive, parties have largely divvied up seats in an effort to avoid three-cornered fights that may

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ExportUnlimited BusinessMirror

IT-BPM sector delivers service to global clients amid contagion T

Taiwan’s export slump worsens as 2nd-wave fears sap demand

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RADE Undersecretary and Board of Investments (BOI) Managing Head, Dr. Ceferino Rodolfo, along with key officials of the Philippine IT and business-process management (IT-BPM) industry, reached out on Wednesday (July 1, 2020) to stakeholders in the Americas region to highlight the projected growth, expanded opportunities, and resilience of the industry amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

During the webinar organized by the Philippine Trade and Investment Centers in Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto and Mexico City, held jointly with the Manila-based Foreign Trade Service Corps, the Export Marketing Bureau (EMB) and the Board of Investments, Undersecretary Rodolfo and the private sector representatives tackled how the Philippine IT-BPM industry, capably continued supporting the IT-enabled back-office requirements of overseas businesses in North America.

During the imposition of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in the country, the IT-BPM sector provided virtually uninterrupted support

to global clients, especially those in the health-care sector, which operated at a 90 percent capacity.

Rodolfo credited the Philippines’s solid economic fundamentals for cushioning the impact of the pandemic on the country’s recovery efforts.

He shared that the Philippines recorded strong pre-Covid economic growth performance averaging at 6.6 percent and posted a relatively low average inflation rate of 3 percent from 2016 to 2019, and a strong fiscal position with a highest revenue-to-GDP ratio revenue (16.1 percent) and lowest debt-to-GDP ratio of (39.6 percent) since 1997 for 2019.

The prospects for Philippine growth

show a sharp V-shaped recovery by 2021, with a growth range of 7.1 to 8.1 percent and expanded opportunities for the IT-BPM sector.

“Our registered approved investments have actually risen. In the first half of 2020, our record shows that we are 112 percent higher in terms of approved investments compared to the same period last year. Most of these investments have gone to infrastructure, energy, and transport—very important sectors when you look at the modernization of the Philippine economy,” Rodolfo said.

He also cited the 60,000-kilometer nationwide fiber-optic network nationwide, manufacturing support facilities, a third telecom player, and satellite-based connectivity solutions with high-degree local manufactured content as strategic projects that will support the projected rebound in 2021.

IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) President and Chief Executive Officer Rey Untal highlighted that 2019 was a strong year for the IT-BPM industry, growing by 5.8 percent in full-time equivalent (FTE) headcount and 7.1 percent in revenues, despite the challenges brought about by geopolitical developments and disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence/intelligent automation.

“Growth in 2019 was driven, in part, by incumbent third-party operators that continued to expand. We saw

a bit of expansion in health care,” he added. “Likewise, we saw a number of multinational global in-house centers [GICs] investing and/or expanding in the Philippines. Lastly, if we look at the creative sectors, specifically animation and gaming, they’ve had their fair share of growth as well.”

Untal credited the government, including the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), BOI, and Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza), for including the BPO sector as among those recognized by the government’s Covid-19 Inter-Agency Task Force as essential businesses that were allowed exemptions during the ECQ period.

“That allowed us to operationalize two work streams: the on-site skeletal model, as well as the work-from-home capability,” he said.

Healthcare Information Management Association of the Philippines (HIMAP) President Rogelio Salazar Jr. shared that 80 percent of health information management system (HIMS) businesses achieved on-site productivity levels, with GICs achieving 80 percent to 90 percent productivity and quality levels within three to four weeks from the start of the ECQ period.

Salazar also said that the HIMS segment of the IT-BPM industry is expected to post the highest revenue and FTE headcount growth range for 2019 to 2022, showing its strength as a high-value contributor to the national economy.

AIWAN’S exports fell for a fourth straight month in June as officials warned global demand may struggle to recover in the face of a resurgent worldwide coronavirus outbreak and continuing trade tensions between the US and China.

Overseas shipments from Taiwan fell 3.8 percent last month, according to a news statement from Taiwan’s Ministry of Finance Tuesday. That compares to the median estimate for a 3.7-percent drop in a survey of economists.

Imports plunged 8.6 percent, leaving a trade surplus of $4.8 billion.

Exports to Southeast Asia, Japan and Europe fell, while shipments to China and the US continued to grow.

Key insights

TAIWAN’S exports will “come under pressure” in the second half of the year due to a possible second wave of the global coronavirus outbreak and uncertainty surrounding the ongoing trade war between the US and China, the Ministry of Finance said in a news statement.

Full-year shipments would likely contract compared to 2019 due to the impact of the coronavirus on worldwide demand for Taiwanese products and low raw material prices, the finance ministry’s statistics director Beatrice Tsai said at a briefing after the release of Tuesday’s data.

Exports rose 0.5 percent in the first half of the year, the biggest gain among Asia’s four “tiger economies,” according to Tsai.

The ministry forecasts exports to shrink between 1.5 percent and 4 percent in July.

For now, there are signs Asia’s major exporting economies are starting to recover from the impact of the coronavirus. While still contracting, the purchasing managers indexes for Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia improved in June. Factory output in Vietnam and Malaysia grew.

The finance ministry had previously forecast June exports would shrink between 2 percent and 5 percent, leading to a decline in shipments for the second quarter.

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BOND traders in Taiwan remain confident the island will be one of the few developed economies in the world to avoid a recession this year.

They see gross domestic product expanding between 1 percent and 2 percent this year, according to a recent Bloomberg survey.

The central bank delivered a bullish outlook for Taiwan’s economy, saying the worst of the coronavirus damage is over, after it decided to keep borrowing costs on hold at its quarterly board meeting last month. Bloomberg News

US company brings solution to help Entrepreneurs pressed anew to speed up PHL companies face new challenges digital transformation to hasten recovery

By Roderick L. Abad Contributor

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MERICAN company Maxava is set to deliver its high availability and disaster recovery solution to the domestic market— amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) health crisis—through an alliance it forged with the Philippine Telegraph and Telephone Co. (PT&T).

“Being prepared is half the battle won. Our partnership with Maxava solidifies our thrust to offer our clients with industry-leading business resiliency solutions especially now that companies have seen the importance of resilience and business continuity in the current Covid-19 crisis,” said Ella Mae Ortega, information technology (IT) services business unit head of PT&T. “A pandemic is just one type of a crisis that companies will have to face. We have to be prepared to thrive

and not merely survive whatever the conditions,” she added.

As much as it needs to be prepared for man-made risks, this nation of over 100 million people, like the rest of the world, has to be ready to recuperate from any catastrophe like this unprecedented health emergency, according to Maxava Senior Vice President Simon O’Sullivan.

“In the field of data and IT, Maxava is determined to offer Philippine companies the best of breed solutions for disaster recovery,” he said. “The Maxava High Availability Suite can open the door for organizations to have a secure disaster recovery plan, no matter what the size or scope of their operation.”

The strength of an organization’s data management and information policies are more critical than ever.

In these trying times, Maxava and PT&T are in a unique position to provide superior resiliency services.

Based in the US, the former

is a global maker of innovative monitoring, high availability and disaster recovery solutions for IBM Power Systems.

Maxava serves over 500 customers in more than 40 countries, providing 24x7x365 support directly via regional offices located in North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific.

The software and services of this IBM business partner are available from a worldwide network of allies and are integral to the cloud offerings of leading managed and cloud service providers. Its software is available via software-as-a-service, cloud (disasterrecovery-as-a-service and monitoringas-a-service), subscription and onpremise software licensing models.

Local telecommunications company PT&T has transformed into an IT services provider offering cloud, security, disaster recovery and other solutions in the past year under new management.

E

NTREPRENEURS are advised to develop business models and offerings that fit the needs of the market as they prepare for digital transformation amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic.

In a virtual training organized by the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (Ecop), e-commerce expert Janette Toral said transformation is not just about technology, but it is also the way one does business.

“Is our business model still viable? If you are making money from retail, if you are making money from people coming to your establishment to eat, if you are generating income from people coming in making reservations and you need to have an 80 percent capacity before you experience significant revenue, if that is not possible anymore, then that means you have to

review your business model, you have to reevaluate the business model,” she said.

Toral cited a business-process outsourcing (BPO) firm which at first was worried because it was losing clients amid the pandemic.

“All of sudden, they find themselves discovering new clients catering to the health sector. And now, even if 50 percent of their work force are working from home, they now have to open 300 new seats because of the new clients that they were able to attract,” she said.

Toral said a hotel in Cebu is not just relying anymore on guests coming, but is now delivering food. “Even the hotels changed the way they do business, deciding on new service components that they need to focus on and explore that as a revenue source,” she said.

“There is no way to go but transform but it would require rethink-

ing like maybe venturing into food, [and] not only food, we talk about novelty food, healthy food. You can also venture into e-commerce, sell goods that are not usually accessible to people and [cater to] new customers segments, customers that you never served before but because of the new normal. You might really need to look into them and see how you can serve them,” she added.

Toral also urged the need to “learn, unlearn and relearn” how business processes can be improved.

“We have to unlove whatever processes we may have to do because if we are so in love with the processes that we have today, it will be hard for us to adapt to digital transformation,” she said. “...See how can you change the way you do things right now so that you can serve your clients better and remain in business for a longer time.”

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Dr. Gar Eufemio: ‘Staying healthy even in one’s advanced years is certainly possible’

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By Rizal Raoul S. Reyes

GING is an inevitable human condition, but that doesn’t mean that one’s golden years should be marred by degenerative illnesses.

DR. EUFEMIO

Dr. Gar Eufemio, medical director at the Peak Form, said it’s quite different when one is in his or her 20s and 30s, as he or she feels like on top of the world. “We are in the full flush of health and are at the peak of our physical prowess. We feel, within that age range, that we are invincible and unstoppable,” Eugenio said.

However, as time flies, the human body begins to show signs of wear and tear. For example, our eyesight isn’t as sharp as it used to be and we end up needing glasses, contact lenses

or, for those who can afford it, laser surgery. Moreover, recovering from an injury or illness becomes slower and more tedious.

The challenge of aging becomes more formidable once you hit the 60s and 70s, when it can feel that everything is going downhill—and the amount of maintenance medicines prescribed to keep us from falling apart is one visible sign of that.

Nevertheless, if one lives a relatively healthy lifestyle, shouldn’t it follow that one can enjoy good health well into old age?

Eufemio, however, stressed that staying healthy even in one’s advanced years is certainly possible.

What conditions affect the elderly?

“Everything gradually falls apart,” Eufemio said when asked about how the state of one’s health changes as he or she grows older.

Degenerative conditions affecting the body’s vital systems are the primary source of concern for both doctors and patients. As the body ages, the tissues that would quickly recover and regenerate during one’s youth are no longer as resilient. As a result, there are significant changes to the nervous system and skeletal system, along with major organs such as the heart and lungs.

“Degeneration is a normal process as one matures,” Eufemio said. “This can be seen in issues like forgetfulness, irritability, osteoporosis and arthritis, hypertension and cholesterol issues, diabetes and digestive problems, blurred vision, and hearing loss. For doctors, the greatest challenge is how to slow it down.”

But if degeneration is already a given, would one say that it’s unavoidable?

Eufemio and many doctors are of the opinion that the answer to that is not that simple.

“The health issues of aging are impossible to escape, but we can delay their onset and retard the progression,” he said. “Genetics play the biggest part here: if you’ve been blessed with good genes, you can do all the wrong things and still live a long and healthy life.”

The smart way to stay healthy

FOR the most part, however, Eufemio said critical points to consider for staying healthy well into old age are proper nutrition, regular exercise, and getting a good night’s sleep. Likewise, he said keeping one’s stress levels down to a manageable minimum and living in a clean and healthful environment are also key.

In which case, he underlined several options by which one can stay healthy over time: Consider meditation and mindful living—Yoga and guided meditation are good for helping one destress, clearing the mind of negative thoughts while placing the body in a state of rejuvenating rest. More spiritual seniors have also experienced a sense of calm through regular devotions or attendance at religious services. Volunteer work for civic or religious organizations also goes a long way in making the elderly feel active and useful.

Eat a modified—but still balanced —diet—Old age brings a number of restrictions when it comes to one’s regular diet. But this should not be a reason for consuming meals that lack both nutrition and flavor or even lapsing into junk food binges. Consider healthy yet delicious meals featuring protein from green sources, natural sweeteners, and organically grown produce in season. Likewise, check with your health-care professional for the best possible supplements to keep

your body in good working order.

Keep moving—You may no longer be able to run marathons, but staying active is a great way to feel young and vital. Taking brisk walks in the morning with one’s pet can help, and so can regular sessions of dance-style routines such as aerobics or Zumba.

Using equipment such as treadmills and elliptical trainers at home or at a gym are also excellent ways to stay in shape.

Relax and keep inflammation at bay—One way to stay healthy is through the use of Far Infrared Ray (FIR) technology on a regular basis through equipment like the Vital Dome. Here, B-Carbon panels generate FIRs that penetrate the body to relax muscles, remove toxins, and reduce inflammation. As a result, one can feel relaxed and refreshed after a session. “Theoretically, every major organ can be rejuvenated,” Eufemio said of this unique treatment. “Wellperfused tissues perform optimally, effectively slowing down the course of aging. An added bonus is the release of endorphins, or the happy hormones, that help in stabilizing mood.”

Eufemio also recommends a scientific approach toward aging gracefully.

He said Vital Dome for athletic recovery and post-surgical healing is also good for a therapy program to rejuvenate the body.

Patients who undergo rigorous training for competitions or events are advised to get at least two sessions a month. Post-operative patients, on the other hand, get a session at intervals, usually when there are major changes in their therapy regimen.

Many patients expressed satisfaction with the results, as their soreness is lessened considerably and they feel more relaxed, flexible, and rejuvenated, according to Eufemio.

Keeping all these in mind, Eufemio said that age certainly becomes just a number and one can stay in the best of health—for now and for years to come.

Prisoners in US suffering dementia seen hitting 200,000 in next decade

By Rachel Lopez Drexel University

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RISON officials are bracing for a silver tsunami that will flood correctional facilities with elderly and often vulnerable prisoners.

Like the rest of the United States population, the prison population is aging fast. The US Census Bureau projects that by 2030, people over the age of 55 will account for almost one-third of all incarcerated people. That means that American prisons will house upward of 400,000 older prisoners, about the same population of New Orleans, representing a near doubling of the number of older prisoners currently behind bars.

Caring for these elderly prisoners suffering from physical and mental frailty will create significant challenges for prisons.

As an expert in human-rights law and a former commissioner on Pennsylvania’s Sentencing Commission, I am concerned about the burden this places on already overstretched prisons, but also the cost to human dignity. Furthermore, my research suggests that indefinitely detaining someone who does not understand why may violate the United States Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Dying behind bars

AMERICA’S large aging US prison population is the direct result of the “tough on crime” policies of the 1980s and 1990s, when three-strike laws and mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole condemned many to die behind bars.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons

spends approximately $881 million per year caring for the elderly in their custody. My home state of Pennsylvania spends $3.2 million on medication for this population each month.

Part of what is driving this cost is the expense of caring for those with serious medical conditions, especially those with dementia. Last year, the federal government opened its first unit dedicated solely to caring for prisoners with dementia. The unit is staffed by nurses, correctional officers and other prisoners who receive special training to help them care for those with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

The challenge of caring for this population will only compound as it grows. If researchers’ estimates are correct, by the end of this decade around 70,341 to 211,020 of the elderly prison population will have dementia. Most will be unable to perform the regular activities of daily life and will eventually require around-the-clock nursing care.

Unusual cruelty

FINANCES are not the only concern regarding this elderly incarcerated population. There is also the cost to human dignity.

The Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution upholds this principle by outlawing cruel and unusual punishment. To justify punishment, the Eighth Amendment requires that there be some penological purpose, such as retribution, rehabilitation or deterrence.

Recent US Supreme Court cases suggest there is no such justification for indefinitely incarcerating those with de-

mentia. In February 2019, the court in Madison v. Alabama—which centered on a prisoner who developed severe dementia after a series of strokes—held that it is unconstitutional to execute someone who cannot rationally understand their death sentence because it serves no retributive purpose.

The reasoning behind this ruling is centuries old. Dating back to the United States’s founding, those with limited mental capacity were entitled to special protections in the criminal context.

Sir William Blackstone, a renowned 18th-century English jurist whose commentaries on English common law deeply influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States, believed it was cruel and unusual to execute someone who lacked mental capacity.

As the US Supreme Court would later echo, Blackstone reasoned that “ furiosus solo furore punitur”— madness is its own punishment. Living with dementia can also feel like a punishment. People with dementia suffer gradual, irreversible loss of memory, judgment, daily functioning and health.

The effects of the disease are compounded by incarceration. Because of their profound impairments, people with dementia are sometimes unable to understand that they are in a prison, much less why. Elderly prisoners with dementia are also at an increased risk of victimization, sexual assault and bullying from other prisoners.

Additionally, because they struggle to understand and follow prison rules, they are also more likely to be subjected to harsh punishment while incarcerated. Some are punished with solitary

confinement, which further degrades their physical and mental health.

Life and death

WHILE Madison vs. Alabama addressed death sentences, a 2012 US Supreme Court case provides precedent for the conclusion that the justices’ holding could be extended to life without the possibility of parole. In Miller v. Alabama, the court compared a life sentence to a death sentence, as it “forswears altogether the rehabilitative ideal.”

In other words, both sentences result in the condemned person having no ability to redeem himself.

W hile the court had suggested in previous cases that the death penalty is in a category all its own, in Miller it suggested that life sentences “share some characteristics with death sentences that are shared by no other sentences.”

Furthermore, when it comes to prisoners with dementia, life sentences cannot be justified as deterrence. Simply put, how can someone adjust their behavior to avoid punishment, if they do not understand that the punishment is a consequence of their own bad acts?

Forcing those who cannot understand their punishment to live the remainder of their days behind bars appears to be exactly the type of excessive and cruel punishment that the Eighth Amendment was meant to protect against. As the elderly prison population balloons, society may need to reconsider the real world consequences of life without parole sentences.

In my view, the cost, both to taxpayers and to our basic human dignity, is too high. AP

Editor: Angel R. Calso • Saturday, July 11, 2020 A7

Choosing to be blind

By Nick Tayag

MY SIXTY-ZEN’S WORTH Part One

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HEN I was in college I witnessed a poignant scene: a line of blind people behind a funeral car, silently walking, holding on to each other’s shoulder like obedient schoolchildren. Most probably inside the coffin was a comrade of theirs.

The blind leading the blind is a common expression. But many times, it is the blind or visually impaired who carry the light for the rest of us who have full use of our eyes.

Homer who composed the Iliad and the Odyssey, two pillars of light of Western literature was said to be a blind poet. Likewise, John Milton was blind when he crafted two blank-verse epic poems Paradise Lost and its sequel Paradise Regained by the light of his mind alone, dictating the lofty lines to several aides.

Jose Feliciano and Stevie Wonder, two blind talented performers, have opened the hearts of millions through their music.

Still more on the subject of sight, there is this basket weaver in a remote mountain village somewhere in Northern Philippines who has captured the admiration of buyers with his fine quality rattan products, his colorful personality and a benevolent heart for sharing his weaving skills.

Though he is blind, he has been able to produce products which are remarkable for their intricate designs and patterns which only people with normal sight are expected to produce. He uses nothing but sheer imagination, his uncanny sense of touch. People are awed and some envy him for his weaving skills.

He works hard, oftentimes, late into the night. From his earnings, he has been able to buy a piece of land and build a concrete house. Out of school youths have learned from him to craft simple rattan items.

Here is someone who lets his hands and imagination do the working while we see idle hands and idle minds around us.

In one of his books, the famous neurologist Oliver Sacks writes about a man whose sight was restored by an operation.

For 25 years he had been blind and now that he could see, he couldn’t understand what he was seeing. He is characterized as “mentally blind.” He could only “see” when he was using his sense of touch.

In the end, he preferred not to use his eyes to see, he was more at home with the other senses. His visual processing was impaired. He had grown used to his blindness and the security of life as a partial invalid. He did not want to see and in the end, he again lost his sight, partly by his own choosing. Confronted with the “gift” of sight and with necessity of renouncing one world, he paradoxically chose to be blind again. It allowed him to escape from the glaring confusing world of sight and space and to return to his own true being.

Remember Galileo’s time when the churchmen of the 17th century refused to look through Galileo’s telescope? This is a problem of vision in institutions administered by people not famous for having a vision. In our day, too, many of us refuse to see what is daily becoming all too clear. Comfortable beliefs and systems and routines are a kind of blindness by which we choose to avoid larger and more demanding concerns.

The indelible memory of the funeral march of blind people I mentioned at the beginning now serves as an apt metaphor for what many in this pandemic are going through. Day after day, we see the number of positive infections going up, yet the numbers don’t make us any more enlightened as to where we are in the war against this virus. There is not enough testing and not enough contact tracing. Comparing our numbers with those of other countries serves as cold comfort to those who are leading the so-called war. So here we are, in the dark, as we ease up on restrictions and allow more and more people to go out.

But what makes it even worse is that we seem to have lost sight of our focus. There are so untimely and unnecessary distractions that our leaders choose to inflict on us at a time when we are all supposed to be single minded and united in our effort to contain the relentless onslaught of the infection and provide relief for millions stranded from their sources of livelihood.

Consider the times when we chose to close our eyes or look the other way when our friends and colleagues did deals under the table, or continued to go about their immoral ways.

Even in our workplace, think of the time when we choose to “not see” the anomalies and corrupt practices in our own company so as not to rock the boat, so to speak. We conveniently use pakikisama as an excuse and our brotherhood mantra of “protecting each other’s back.”

Many of us prefer to be blind when it comes to electing leaders who are bereft of vision about our nation’s future.

We are blinded by the glitter of their golden promises and the appeal of their familiar names. We choose to see only the favors that they can do for us. We elect them time and again and follow them blindly and fanatically.

Blind in small things, blind in big things that matter. We are so used to being blind about small transgressions that it is so easy for us to close our eyes to the injustices and inequalities around us. By the time we realize the destructive effects of our blind connivance and complicity, it would be too late to recover our lost sight as a people, like a line of blind people in a funeral march.

A8

Saturday, July 11, 2020

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Samsung projects 23-percent jump in 2Q profit on strong chip sales SEOUL, South Korea—Samsung Electronics Co. said Tuesday its operating profit for the last quarter likely rose 23 percent from the same period last year, helped by robust demand for memory chips used in personal computers and servers as the coronavirus pandemic has more people working from home. The South Korean technology giant will release more detailed information when it announces its finalized

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earnings later this month. It projected its operating profit during the April-June period will be 8.1 trillion won ($6.8 billion). The company’s revenue for the quarter is forecast to fall 7 percent to 52 trillion won ($43.6 billion).

After reporting a 3.4-percent increase in operating profit in the first three months of the year, Samsung said in April it expected its second-quarter

profit to decline with the pandemic pushing down sales of smartphones, TVs and other products.

Analysts say Samsung, which is the world’s largest provider of semiconductors, is continuing to benefit from robust chip demand generated by PCs and servers. It’s likely that the pandemic is also forcing the company to spend less on marketing due to traveling restrictions. AP

Learning at home in our current situation

THE Dynamic Learning Program web forum organized

by Smart had over 400,000 viewers throughout its three-day run on its Facebook page.

ROSANNA LLENADO, AHEAD chief executive officer

Distance learning a viable option in the new normal

BY RIZAL RAOUL S. REYES

‘W

E are now facing a big shift in how learning can be done, but we believe that learning beyond classrooms can produce results and even better results as long as the students have a strong support and supervisory system from their family and teachers. Most importantly, crisisresilient learning would be possible if we can gather communities, the government, and even the private sector to support every Filipino child’s education,” said Ramon Magsaysay Awardees and physicists Dr. Chris Bernido and Dr. M. Victoria Carpio-Bernido.

Online learning is part of everyone’s “new normal” but so many, educators and students alike, are lost. How do you make it work? Is it feasible in our country?

In 2002, the Bernidos created an innovative teaching strategy called the CVIF-Dynamic Learning Program (DLP) to help student become independent learners so they can continue their studies at home even with limited to no Internet connectivity, and with minimal teacher and parent intervention.

The program, recognized by the Department of Education as a Flexible Learning Option, helps students, including those in DepEd’s Alternative Learning System (ALS) Program, to hone their skills and develop competencies in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or STEM. Students under the program were recorded to achieve exemplary academic performance and passed entrance examinations for universities here and abroad. The CVIF-DLP staged a three-day, freefor-all Web forum titled “No Learner Left Behind: Education for All in the New Normal,” with the support from the Department of Education, and its lead implementers, PLDT-Smart Foundation and Smart Communications Inc. With over 400,000

views throughout its three-day run on Dynamic Learning Program’s Facebook page, the virtual event was made possible through the efforts of lead proponents and partner organizations such as Gabay Guro, AHA Learning Center, Save The Children Philippines, World Vision Philippines, and Yellow Boat of Hope Foundation.

“We understand how difficult it must be for our educators to adjust their strategies and look for an approach that can stand any situation, whether there is a pandemic or not. We believe that the CVIF-Dynamic Learning Program can help schools acclimatize to the new normal, and I am also proud to say that we believe in this learning method and that we have been supporting this program, along with other initiatives, for many years now,” said Ramon Isberto, PLDT-Smart Public Affairs Group head.

■ Day 1 saw the Dynamic Learning Program sharing concrete steps on how to implement this approach for the coming school opening. Present were Education Undersecretary for Legislative Affairs,

External Partnerships and Project Management Service Tonisito M.C. Umali, Esq. ■ Day 2 focused representatives from schools who have adapted DLP. They shared their experiences and best practices in implementing the program especially under the new normal. Present on that day was Education Undersecretary for Curriculum and Instruction Diosdado San Antonio.

■ Day 3 was in-depth look at the Learning Activity Sheets, a key component of the DLP in the new normal, and how to align it to DepEd’s Most Essential Learning Competencies. AHA Learning Center also presented the use of Facebook Messenger for Teacher Intervention.

“We’ve supported the CVIF-Dynamic Learning Program for over 10 years now because it provides concrete, tried-and-tested solutions to the problems faced by the education sector, to ensure that no learner will get left behind,” said Stephanie Orlino, assistant vice president for Community Partnerships, Smart Communications. ■

SINGAPORE HIGH COURT BLOCKS POPULAR PIRACY STREAMING WEB SITES, ILLICIT STREAMING DEVICE APPLICATIONS ON June 19, the Singapore High Court granted an order sought by BBC Studios, Discovery, the Premier League, La Liga and TVB for Singapore’s Internet service providers to block access to 17 domains associated with popular piracy streaming sites and 41 domains associated with popular illicit streaming device (ISD) applications.

These apps, which flagrantly infringe copyright by acting as gateways to web sites or content servers streaming pirated content, are preloaded on ISDs, which are overtly sold in retail outlets such as Sim Lim Square and on popular e-markets.

Piracy streaming web sites and the ISD ecosystem impacts all businesses involved in the production and distribution of legitimate content. Configuring ISDs with applications to stream content from illegal content servers allows consumers to access unauthorized premium TV channels, live sports channels and movies for the one-off price of the ISD and (often) a yearly subscription to access the content.

The retail sale of the ISD and the advertising revenue

from piracy web sites goes into the pockets of criminal syndicates and individuals who all benefit from the spoils of such a crime.

Neil Gane, general manager of AVIA’s Coalition Against Piracy (CAP), said: “The content industry will make every effort to prevent and disrupt the illegal feeds of live sports, TV channels and VOD content which are being monetized by crime syndicates.

Consumers who buy ISDs or access piracy streaming sites are not only funding crime groups but also wasting their time and money when the channels and web sites stop working. Piracy services do not come with a “service guarantee,” no matter what the ISD seller or web site operators may claim.”

A new study on the online content viewing behavior in Singapore found that 17 percent of Singapore consumers and nearly a third (32 percent) of 18- to 24-year-olds access streaming piracy web sites or torrent sites. The survey, commissioned by the Asia Video Industry Association’s Coalition Against Piracy (CAP) and conducted by YouGov, also found

that 10 percent of consumers use an ISD to stream pirated content.

Despite the unhealthy appetite for accessing piracy services, the YouGov survey also found that overwhelming majority (86 percent) of those surveyed recognized that online piracy had negative consequences.

Other results showed 53 percent of online consumers were of the view that online piracy increases the risk of malware infections on computers and devices, 52 percent recognized that crime groups financially benefit from the stolen content, and 42 percent were concerned that piracy puts the livelihood of those who work in the creative industry at risk.

When asked who should be responsible for preventing online piracy in Singapore, consumers were of the view that the individuals (by choosing not to buy/watch pirated content) were the most responsible with the Singapore government deemed the second most responsible.

DISTANCE learning is an effective alternative system that can address the current challenge in education and, at the same time, help the marginalized sector, according to the founder of a leading major educational provider.

In an e-mail interview with BUSINESSMIRROR, AHEAD Chief Executive Officer Rosanna Llenado said distance learning is a comprehensive learning platform that can provide students valuable knowledge on various subjects.

“Distance learning isn’t just about attending classes or lectures online. Neither is it restricted to logging on to Zoom on your laptop or tablet,” Llenado said. “It can also pertain to disseminating lectures or learning materials via other, more accessible mediums, such as through the radio, TV, or mail.

This is especially important when we consider the many provinces that remain geographically disadvantaged with poor to no Internet connectivity or mobile phone signals,” Llenado added.

In a developing country like the Philippines, Llenado pointed out that television and radio remain relevant learning platforms especially to families belonging to the lower income bracket. Aside from being more accessible and affordable, television and radio can broadcast lecture with each grade level having a time slot and designated schedule. “There could also be radio broadcasts with the same lectures and schedules for those who don’t have access to a television or a proper signal,” she explained.

Llenado said reruns of educational shows, such as Hiraya Manawari, Bayani and Sineskwela would be be a big boost to distance learning. “I’m not taking any sides in the debate over ABS-CBN’s fate, but perhaps the network and our government could come to an agreement over the free broadcasts of the aforementioned programs,” she said.

Llenado stressed the priority now should be to help underprivileged children because their parents don’t have the resources and access to quality education.

To make distance learning beneficial for the underprivileged, Llenado said the government needs to step in and step up. She said the following concerns need to be addressed to ensure distance learning will create an impact.

■ WIDESPREAD INTERNET ACCESS. Reliable Internet connections are now a necessity for all households. It’s high time for the government to get rid of all the red tape surrounding the infrastructure needed to make this happen.

Pasig Mayor Vico Sotto, for instance, is already looking into how the city can improve Internet accessibility for its constituents. Alternatively, LGUs can look into the other mediums for distance learning.

■ SUBSIDIZED BUDGETS FOR THE NECESSARY GADGETS AND EQUIPMENT. We have to accept that not everyone can afford the gear needed for distance learning, and that the government should exhaust all means to help provide them. They don’t need to provide everyone with laptops, but radio units would be a good start, especially for those in the more far-flung areas.

■ STANDARDIZED, FREE TRAINING FOR ALL TEACHERS WHO WILL TAKE PART IN THE DISTANCE LEARNING SCHEME. This includes how to use Zoom, how to record their own lectures and how to upload them, and perhaps even how to make suitable lesson plans.

■ FREE DISTANCE LEARNING ORIENTATION PROGRAMS FOR PARENTS AND STUDENTS IN DISADVANTAGED AREAS. Distance learning requires certain adjustments, and disadvantaged families need to be properly briefed on and guided through what they are.

Llenado nonetheless admitted distance learning is far from perfect. She said face-to-face interactions or the stimulating dynamics of a classroom is still the best method of learning. Moreover, she added distance learning will require more self-discipline than usual from everyone involved to be effective.

“However, it is the only option we have at the moment.

Should anyone out there have any better ideas, I would be more than happy to hear about it,” Llenado explained.

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Saturday, July 11, 2020

Civil rights groups denounce Facebook over hate speech F

BY BARBARA O�TUTAY & AMANDA SEITZ The Associated Press

ACEBOOK keeps telling critics that it is doing everything it can to rid its service of hate, abuse and misinformation. And the company’s detractors keep not buying it.

On Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg met with a group of civil rights leaders, including the organizers of a growing advertising boycott over hate speech on Facebook. One of those leaders, NAACP President Derrick Johnson, said Facebook’s executives offered little but cheap talk that skirted major commitments to new rules or actions that would curb racism and misinformation on its platform.

“We’ve watched the conversation blossom into nothingness,” Johnson said. “They lack the cultural sensitivity to understand that their platform is actually being used to cause harm. Or, they understand the harm their platform is causing and they’ve chosen to take the profit.”

The NAACP was one of several groups that sent Facebook a list of 10 demands for policy change. Those included hiring a civil rights executive; banning private groups that promote white supremacy, vaccine misinformation or violent conspiracy theories; and ending an exemption that allows politicians to post voting misinformation.

Such calls have the support of big-name companies like Coca-Cola and Unilever which have yanked their Facebook ads in recent days. But nothing concrete will change for Facebook’s 2.6 billion users.

In a statement following the meeting, Facebook largely reiterated its existing policies against voter and census interference, also noting the white supremacist groups it has banned and other recent changes. “This meeting was an opportunity for us to hear from the campaign organizers and reaffirm our commitment to combating hate on our platform,” the statement read.

“We know we will be judged by our actions not by our words and are grateful to these groups and many others for their continued engagement.”

Facebook did agree to install a civil rights vice president, but didn’t say how long that would take, Jessica J. González—the co-CEO of Free Press, a group behind the boycott—told The Associated Press.

President Donald J. Trump frequently skirts Facebook’s posting rules, yet faces no consequences, dismaying both civil rights leaders and some of Facebook’s own employees.

The president made several misleading claims about mail-in-voting in May and June posts, including one that pushed a far-fetched theory that foreign countries plan to print millions of bogus ballots.

Trump also used the platform to threaten violence against racial injustice protesters in Minneapolis when he wrote “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” in a May post.

The posts have gone unchecked on Facebook.

Twitter, meanwhile, has fact checked, removed or

GEARING UP FOR 5G: WHAT’S REAL AND WHAT’S NOT

FACEBOOK CEO Mark Zuckerberg (in photo) and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg met with civil rights leaders on July 7, including the organizers of a widespread advertising boycott of the social network over hate speech on its platform, in an effort to convince critics that it is doing everything it can to rid its service of hate, abuse and misinformation. AP

obscured some of Trump’s controversial tweets.

“When a politician, no matter who that politician is, when he makes a post that says ‘shoot the looters,’ it is not only racially insensitive, it could incite violence across the country,” Johnson said.

Last month, Facebook announced it would begin labeling rule-breaking posts—even from politicians—going forward. But it is not clear if Trump’s previous controversial posts would have gotten the label.

On Wednesday, Facebook will release the final results of its own “civil rights audit” of its US practices.

The audit was led by former American Civil Liberties Union executive Laura Murphy, who was hired by Facebook in May 2018 to assess its performance on vital social issues. More than 900 companies have joined the ad boycott, which runs

through the end of July, although some companies plan to withhold their ad dollars for longer.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Sandberg emphasized what she called the company’s years of effort to “minimize the presence of hate” on Facebook and the billions of dollars it has spent “to find and remove hate—as well as protect the integrity of our platform more generally.”

Facebook’s 2019 revenue was more than $70 billion, nearly all of it from advertising.

Facebook’s inaction will only encourage companies to continue their boycott of advertising on the site for longer, said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the AntiDefamation League. “The list is growing every day,” Greenblatt said of companies joining the boycott. “It’s unfortunate to go back to them and say we haven’t seen the progress we expected.” ■

Tesda kicks off web registration for returning OFWs

BY RODERICK L. ABAD Contributor TO speed up its delivery of service to overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) coming back to the country amid the novel coronavirus disease 2019 crisis, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) now allows them to register online to avail of the agency’s free skills training.

Through its mobile application, the reptriates’ virtual enlistment was first introduced during Tesda Secretary Isidro Lapeña’s recent consultation with the OFWs around the world early this month.

According to him, they are intensifying their reintegration program for returning and former OFWs. This latest development, dubbed “Tesda Abot Lahat Ang

OFWs,” will provide them with more accessibility to the services that the agency can provide.

“Through this online registration, we can determine the preferred skills training of our returning OFWs to match their employment or self-employment needs, and we can also extend the services to them while we are facing this pandemic,” he said.

OFWs can register online via the Tesda app which can be downloaded on both the Google Play Store and App Store for free.

They will just have to fill out an online form with their personal and professional information, location on their return to the country, and the skills training they need.

Lapeña, likewise, ordered the agency’s regional directors to ensure

that Tesda personnel are present and available in the Tesda Malasakit

Helpdesks located at the airports to attend to arriving OFWs.

ONE of the next big things in technology is finally starting to be implemented around the world, but as the mobile tech scene gears up for 5G, it’s unavoidable for some conspiracy theories to surface—from the simplest to the more peculiar ones. What’s the real deal about 5G? Telecom giant Globe debunks five myths that surround the latest wireless technology.

■ MYTH 1: 5G IS RELATED TO THE SPREAD OF CORONAVIRUS DISEASE 2019. The global health pandemic that is the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) and 5G are in no way related to each other. The theories that supported this were Covid-19 and 5G became a hot topic for the world almost at the same time, and that both are related to China.

However, these aren’t enough to prove such claims that 5G can be a method to spread the disease.

First, technology for 5G was initially introduced to the world in October 2018, while the highly contagious disease stemmed from Wuhan, China, in December 2019. China wasn’t the first country to implement 5G; South Korea and the US both did it earlier. For more obvious reasons, the coronavirus disease can’t spread through 5G as it is transmitted through saliva droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes.

■ MYTH 2: 5G CAN CAUSE CANCER. False beliefs about wireless technologies posing risks to people for developing cancer existed for quite some time. Time and again, authorities like the World Health Organization (WHO) have been refuting this.

According to the WHO, there hasn’t been any significant finding linking wireless technologies like 5G to possible causes of cancer. A health concern which can be related to these technologies is tissue heating, which naturally occurs since it is “the main mechanism of interaction between radiofrequency fields and the human body,” which is similar to how bodies respond when doing exercises.

Both the WHO and the International Commission on NonIonizing Radiation Protection explained that there will be no detrimental health concerns from 5G as long as overall radio frequency exposure doesn’t exceed 300GHz. ■ MYTH 3: ANYONE CAN HAVE ACCESS TO 5G. In an ideal world, yes. But in developing countries like the Philippines, this is something that might take a little longer.

Globe is ramping up its expansion efforts by adding more telecommunication infrastructures across the country to bring connectivity. The company is also set to unveil the 5G mobile experience in Makati and Bonifacio Global City in Taguig by the third quarter of this year.

Another concern on 5G access is that not all smartphones support 5G. Globe stores, however, have 5G-capable phones such as Huawei Mate 30 Pro 5G, Huawei P40 series, Huawei Nova 7SE, and Samsung S20 Ultra. The company is also looking to add more 5G-capable mobile devices in the coming months.

■ MYTH 4: 5G WILL REPLACE 4G. Unlike what happened during the transition from 3G to 4G when the latter was made to replace the former, 5G does not intend for 4G to be obsolete. What will happen is somehow a technology coexistence since 5G will build from 4G LTE. In a June 1 report by CNET, it stated that those using 4G LTE might experience faster speeds when 5G becomes available. The same article also cited a GSMA Intelligence report which noted that 15 percent of mobile connections around the world will utilize 5G by 2025, while 4G LTE usage will be about 59 percent.

■ MYTH 5: 5G CAN BE USED FOR MIND CONTROL. This is one of the weirdest and far-fetched theories about 5G. As mentioned, there hasn’t been any concrete study to prove that 5G has effects on the human body. However, once 5G is fully implemented, technologies that rely on connectivity for data processing like Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and robotics will surely get the needed boost to develop functions useful to the real world.

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BusinessMirror

A10 Saturday, July 11, 2020

Huawei ranks #6 among world’s most innovative companies in 2020 GLOBAL leading ICT infrastructure provider Huawei has ranked No. 6 in Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG) recent released list of the 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2020, moving up by 42 places. This is the highest ranking for the tech giant since it first made the list in 2012.

According to the report by BCG, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Huawei occupy the top 6 spots in the new ranking, followed by Alibaba, IBM, Sony and Facebook.

The ranking is based on a survey of 2,500 global innovation executives and assesses companies’ performance on four dimensions of Global “Mindshare,” Industry Disruption, Industry Peer View and Value Creation.

This year, BCG also added a new scoring dimension that captures each company’s variety and intensity of boundary-breaking by assessing its ability to breach established industry entry barriers and play in an array of markets outside its own.

As the world’s largest supplier of telecommunications equipment, Huawei has continuously invested over 10 percent of its annual revenue back into R&D. In 2019, the company’s R&D expenditure totaled CNY131,659 million, accounting for 15.3 percent of its total revenue.

In terms of 5G, Huawei invested $4 billion in the past decade, which makes it the global leader in this next-generation technology. To further commercial adoption and promote new innovation in 5G applications, the company has established 5G joint innovation centers together with carriers worldwide.

According to its annual report, the tech giant is shifting itself from an innovation 1.0 model to Innovation 2.0, which means breakthroughs in basic theory and developing new basic technologies, driven by shared vision for the future.

In the global fight against Covid-19, Huawei doubled down its innovation efforts and launched the Anti-Covid-19 Partner Program that focuses on AI, remote office, smart healthcare and online education, to support the fight against the pandemic.

Its AI-assisted diagnosis, for example, could output CT quantification results in seconds and help frontline medical staff detect Covid-19 cases.

“When we began the research for this 14th edition of BCG’s Most Innovative Companies report, Covid-19 had not yet emerged. As we explored the data and interacted with clients, however, it became clear that this year’s core findings—about the advantages of scale and the imperative for serial innovation—may be even more relevant today as innovation leaders need to adapt to rapidly shifting patterns of supply, demand, consumer behavior, and ways of doing business,” wrote the author of the BCG report.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

TIKTOK said on July 7 that it will stop operations in Hong Kong, joining other social-media companies in warily eyeing ramifications of a sweeping national security law that took effect last week. AP

TikTok to leave Hong Kong as security law raises questions

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BY ZEN SOO The Associated Press

ONG KONG—TikTok said on Tuesday it will stop operations in Hong Kong, joining other social-media companies in warily eyeing ramifications of a sweeping national security law that took effect last week.

The short-form video app’s planned departure from Hong Kong comes as various social-media platforms and messaging apps, including Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, Google and Twitter balk at the possibility of providing user data to Hong Kong authorities. The social-media companies say they are assessing implications of the security law, which prohibits what Beijing views as secessionist, subversive or terrorist activities or as foreign intervention in the city’s internal affairs. In the communist-ruled mainland, the foreign social-media platforms are blocked by China’s “Great Firewall.”

Critics see the law as Beijing’s boldest step yet to erase the legal divide between the former British colony and the mainland’s authoritarian Communist Party system.

TikTok said in a statement that it had decided to halt operations “in light of recent events.” The company would not comment on the size of its operations in Hong Kong or any other matters.

Operated by Chinese internet giant Bytedance, TikTok has sought to distance itself from its Chinese roots while striving for global appeal. It recently hired former Walt Disney executive Kevin Mayer to be its CEO. The company has said all its data is stored in servers in the US and insisted it would not remove content even if asked to do so by the Chinese government. Even so, TikTok has still been regarded as a national security risk, with US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo saying Monday that it was looking at banning certain social-media apps, including TikTok. Facebook and its messaging app WhatsApp said in separate statements on Monday that they would freeze the review of government requests for user

data in Hong Kong, “pending further assessment of the National Security Law, including formal human rights due diligence and consultations with international human rights experts.”

Hong Kong was convulsed with massive, sometimes violent anti-government protests for much of last year as the former British colony’s residents reacted to proposed extradition legislation, since withdrawn, that might have led to some suspects facing trial in mainland Chinese courts.

The new law criminalizes some pro-democracy slogans like the widely used “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time,” which the Hong Kong government says has separatist connotations.

The fear is that it erodes the special freedoms of the semi-autonomous city, which has operated under a “one country, two systems” framework since China took control in 1997. That arrangement has allowed Hong Kong’s people freedoms not permitted in mainland China, such as public dissent and unrestricted internet access.

Telegram’s platform has been used widely to spread pro-democracy messages and information about the protests. It understands “the importance of protecting the right to privacy of our Hong Kong users,” said Mike Ravdonikas, a spokesperson for the company. “Telegram has never shared any data with the Hong Kong authorities in the past and does not intend to process any data requests related to its Hong Kong users until an international consensus is reached in relation to the ongoing political changes in the city,” he said.

Twitter also paused all data and information requests from Hong Kong authorities after the security law went into effect last week, the company said, emphasizing that it was “committed to protecting the people using our service and their freedom of expression.”

“Like many public interest organizations, civil society leaders and entities, and industry peers, we have grave concerns regarding both the developing process and the full intention of this law,” the

company said in a statement.

Google likewise said it had “paused production on any new data requests from Hong Kong authorities.”

Though social platforms have yet to be blocked in Hong Kong, users have begun scrubbing their accounts and deleting pro-democracy posts out of fear of retribution. That retreat has extended to the streets: Many shops and stores that publicly stood in solidarity with protesters have removed the prodemocracy sticky notes and artwork that had adorned their walls.

Under implementation rules of Article 43 of the national security law, which give the city’s police force sweeping powers in enforcing the legislation, platforms, publishers and internet service providers may be ordered to take down any electronic message published that is “likely to constitute an offence endangering national security or is likely to cause the occurrence of an offence endangering national security.” Service providers who do not comply with such requests could face fines of up to 100,000 Hong Kong dollars ($12,903) and receive jail terms of up to six months.

Individuals who post such messages may also be asked to remove the message, or face similar fines and a jail term of one year.

Hong Kong authorities moved quickly to implement the law after it took effect on June 30, with police arresting about 370 people.

The rules allow Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam to authorize police to intercept communications and conduct surveillance to “prevent and detect offences endangering national security.”

Police can conduct searches for evidence without a warrant in “exceptional circumstances” and seek warrants requiring people suspected of violating the national security law to surrender their travel documents, preventing them from leaving Hong Kong. Written notices or restraining orders also may be issued to freeze or confiscate property if there are “reasonable grounds” to suspect that the property is related to an offense endangering national security. ■

Vivo packs latest phone with large-capacity battery NOWADAYS, with people spending most of their time online, some have become dependent on electronic devices, especially smartphones, to keep them connected with friends and loved ones, and to conveniently pursue and enjoy their lifestyles.

And with different activities keeping people busy on their smartphones wherever they may be, it would truly be disappointing to get a low battery warning, or the handset going “dead.”

Global smartphone brand Vivo’s latest V19 Neo is powered by a 4500mAh lithium-polymer (Li-Po) battery, one of the largest capacities in its price range, to keep the brand’s flagship midrange smartphone running in optimum performance longer.

With its long-lasting Li-Po power source, the V19 Neo can accommodate Google, Gmail, Facebook, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, and other heavily used applications that can typically drain a standard battery. The 4500mAh battery can also smoothly run the V19 Neo’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 AIE octa-core processor with 8GB RAM and 128GB ROM, making for fast app launches, better navigation and multitasking, and enabling users to play their favorite graphics-heavy mobile games for hours.

The handset is also equipped with AI Turbo, Center Turbo, Game Turbo, Net Turbo, Cooling Turbo, and ART++ Turbo to offer an elevated and exciting gaming experience, especially when

playing PUBG Mobile, NBA 2K, Mobile Legends, Fortnite, or other favorite RPGs, shooters, SIMS, puzzle, strategy, racing, sports and augmented reality games that will keep gamers up all night.

With a battery that powers up hours of game time, the V19 Neo also features an Ultra Game Mode which makes for totally undisturbed playing, blocking messages and alerts, so one can be fully immersed and engaged with the game.

And when the battery is about to be depleted, users can rely on the the phone’s 18W dualengine fast-charging technology to juice up the 4500mAh power source in a flash, so they can quickly get back to winning their game.

More information is available at www.vivo. com/ph/products/v19neo#.

BusinessMirror

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ABU DHABI AIMS TO ATTRACT SKILLED EXPATS BY MAKING LIFE CHEAPER

BY ZAINAB FATTAH Bloomberg News ABU DHABI will bet on attracting technology firms and skilled workers to help its economy rebound early next year, after the twin setbacks of cheaper oil and the coronavirus pandemic battered the United Arab Emirates and the wider Gulf.

Sitting on around 6 percent of global oil reserves, the emirate’s economy may shrink between 3 percent and 4 percent this year before returning to growth in 2021, said Mohammed Ali Al Shorafa, chairman of the Department of Economic Development.

Officials want to develop “the knowledge sector and innovation by attracting technology companies to put down roots in Abu Dhabi,” he said in an interview Wednesday. So they are spending on capital projects and investing in startups and strategic industries, especially agricultural science, and looking to lower the costs of entering and living in the emirate, said Al Shorafa, who’s also a member of the Executive Council, the top decision-making body.

The government won’t follow Saudi Arabia, which tripled its value-added tax to help boost state revenues during the virus slowdown.

“Being competitive is not only reducing fees but having the right livability aspects for people coming, living, educating and actually retiring in Abu Dhabi,” he said. Education, housing and even entertainment costs will be studied. Abu Dhabi is the 39th most expensive place for expatriates, according to New York-based consultant Mercer, more costly than Boston or Milan.

Viber cuts business ties with Facebook ONE of the world’s leading messaging apps for free and secure communication, Rakuten Viber has announced it will cut all business ties with Facebook.

The messaging app will remove Facebook Connect, Facebook SDK, and GIPHY, as well as cease all ad spending on the social networking platform, leveling up the growing #StopHateForProfit movement to boycott the tech goliath.

Amid the protests that broke out all over the US over the past few weeks, a group of six organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and NAACP, called on Facebook advertisers to pause their spending on the social networking site during the month of July over the company’s inability to protect users from hate speech.

On top of numerous instances of data misconduct, including the infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the political consulting firm improperly harvested data of up to 87 million Facebook users, Viber sees Facebook’s hate-speech stumble as the last straw. As such, the messaging app is taking the #StopHateForProfit movement a step further, cutting all business ties with Facebook.

According to Viber CEO Djamel Agaoua, “Facebook continues to demonstrate poor judgment in understanding its role in today’s world. From the company’s mishandling of data and lack of privacy in its apps, to its outrageous stand of avoiding the steps necessary to protect the public from violent and dangerous rhetoric, Facebook has gone too far. We are not the arbiters of truth, but the truth is some people are suffering from the proliferation of violent content and companies must take a clear stand.”

The actions to remove the relevant Facebook touchpoints from the Viber app are expected to be completed by the beginning of July 2020. Ad spending on Facebook will cease effective immediately.

Saturday, July 11, 2020 A11

Online teaching and dealing with the unemployment pandemic

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S I write this on a Tuesday afternoon, it’s been 113 days, 2,728 hours, 163,712 minutes and 9,822,720 seconds since the government implemented enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in Luzon on March 16 to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

But with 47,873 confirmed Covid-19 cases in the country and the possibility of reaching 100,000 cases by end of August, it seems that the only thing that’s going down are our chances of ever going back to our normal lives anytime soon.

More than a health pandemic, Covid-19 has also become a global pandemic of unemployment. A crisis within a crisis. The only thing that’s scarier than actually getting sick of the virus is not having a job to go back to.

According to the Department of Labor and Employment, around 10 million workers are in danger of losing their jobs this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

It was earlier reported that 2.6 million workers have already lost their jobs due to the temporary and permanent closure of businesses, while 321,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have also been affected by the crisis.

Most of these job losses are in the service and tourism sector including allied businesses like restaurants as well as in the transportation sector.

It’s a good thing that Pinoys have once again found ways to earn extra income through online selling, but not everyone can make “Geliciously Made” ubebelove cheese pandesal, Samgyup meals like Adambol’s Kitchen, or those wildly popular baked sushi.

So for those facing job uncertainty, considering a new career path may be your best option.

Recently, Microsoft and LinkedIn announced a new global skills initiative with the goal of bringing more digital skills to 25 million people worldwide by the end of the year.

FINDING A NEW LEARNING PATH

TOWARD this end, LinkedIn is launching 10 Learning paths available for free. These paths are aligned to 10 jobs that were identified as having the greatest number of job openings, have had steady growth over the past four years, pay a livable wage, and require skills that can be learned online.

These 10 role-based learning paths include software developer, sales representative, project manager, IT administrator, customer service specialist, digital marketer, IT support/help desk, data analyst, financial analyst and graphic designer.

These learning paths can be useful in the top hiring industries in the Philippines, which, as of April and May 2020, are led by Hardware and Networking, Construction, Consumer Goods and Finance.

LinkedIn has also seen a strong acceleration in the need for soft skills and is making 4 learning paths— focused on helping professionals come up to speed on these skills—available for free.

For the job seeker, there’s “Finding a Job DuringChallenging Economic Times.” “Digital Transformation in Practice: Virtual Collaboration Tools” (combination of digital fluency and remote work), “Allyship and Inclusive Conversations— Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging for All.” To get started, all you have to do is visit www. opportunity.linkedin.com to see current job opportunities and the different learning paths available.

BECOME AN ONLINE ENGLISH TEACHER

ANOTHER career option worth considering is becoming an online English teacher.

In recent years, online English teaching has become a very popular career choice, and has turned

out to be one of the least affected jobs amid the pandemic. Home-based online types of jobs and livelihood have gained massive popularity as it is considered the safest way to continue earning amid the Covid-19 pandemic. As most online teachers in the Philippines typically work from home, this insulated them from the quarantine measures that have devastated other businesses.

Being an online English teacher can be very rewarding. In 2019, the average monthly salary in the Philippines was P50,600 and online English teachers may earn more than this amount per month, depending on their number of classes.

Founded in 2011, the NYSE-listed 51Talk is the leading online English education platform that connects more than 20,000 online Filipino teachers to millions of foreign students through live and interactive lessons.

51Talk, even throughout the pandemic, has been hard at work in empowering Filipinos across the Philippines by spreading awareness about the advantages of being a home-based online English teacher through digital conferences and webinars, and social-media campaigns.

To further reach out to more Filipinos in search of more lucrative opportunities, 51talk has signed up Miss Universe 2015 Pia Wurtzbach to be its brand ambassador. During a live Facebook stream with Tim Yap, Pia said empowering Filipinos has been her top advocacy ,and she wanted to use her voice and influence to spread awareness about earning opportunities by becoming an online English teacher with 51Talk, especially nowadays when thousands have already lost their jobs and livelihood.

“It’s hard to imagine how some of our kababayans are going through right now because of the massive layoffs and closure of businesses due to Covid-19. We really have to rethink how we as a society conducts businesses while remaining safe and ensuring the health and well-being of everyone,” Pia said.

Pia urged Filipinos to consider online English teaching as a viable and sustainable source of income.

“If you think you are ready to embark on your new online career, then maybe this is the chance you’ve been waiting for. Who knows, perhaps 51Talk is your future at home.”

Besides being the brand ambassador, Pia will also be helping 51Talk in conducting interviews of potential candidates. These interview sessions will be streamed live in Facebook to encourage netizens to sign-up, and to give a glimpse on how the process of becoming an online teacher usually takes place.

51talk has been expanding their teacher base in the

Philippines, opening up 30,000 home-based online English positions to meet the ever-increasing demand for ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers primarily from China.

The Chinese market for foreign English teachers has grown massively over the past decade, and it shows no sign of slowing down. In China, all children from age seven are required by law to learn English and most parents enroll their children earlier than this, even as young as two years old because they want their children to gain an advantage in a highly competitive environment. This means there is a very bright future for the online ESL industry in the Philippines to meet this increasing demand from China.

In a video message posted on social media, 51Talk Founder and CEO Jack Huang encouraged Filipinos whose regular work was affected by the pandemic to join 51Talk. “If the pandemic affected your job, then 51Talk can offer you a new option. There has probably never been a better time than right now to teach English online.”

“Everyone has seen, especially in the past three months, that earning a livelihood from home is not just possible but also sustainable and profitable.

Business processes like meetings and interviews can all be carried out virtually with the aid of technology.

We have been doing this for 9 years now and as you can see, our teachers are able to earn and be safe as they continue to teach from home with 51Talk.” Huang added.

The 51Talk CEO believes that Filipinos are the best online English teachers because of their high English proficiency, passion and friendly nature, and familiarity with the Chinese culture.

Zeeryl Vivi, a licensed professional teacher from Bacolod City, has been teaching with 51Talk for two years now. Zeeryl said that her earnings have increased during the pandemic because her students are mostly staying at home. “I continued to earn from home despite the quarantine restrictions. I actually realized that I was earning more than usual and I was able to provide for my family’s needs. This homebased opportunity really helped us a lot.”

Teacher Xandra Hill found her career as a professional pilot in limbo as travel restrictions brought the travel industry at a standstill. “As a pilot, the world literally stopped for me because of the suspension of work, which was my main source of income. I had to look for alternative means to earn and sustain my family’s daily necessities. That’s how I found 51Talk,” said Xandra.

To know more about 51Talk, visit www.51talkph.com. ■

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Sports BusinessMirror

Saturday, July 11, 2020

Filipino riders join virtual race

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HE 7-Eleven Cliqq-Air 21 by Roadbike Philippines continental team will join the first Asian virtual—the Tour of Indonesia—in September.

Sports Director Ric Rodriguez told the BusinessMirror that four of its riders, led by skipper Marcelo Felipe, will compete in the virtual competition that will use digital platforms.

“We are very excited. This is the first time that we will compete in this kind of race. This is also a good development for the cycling community,” Rodriguez said.

The five-stage virtual race that lured 21 teams is set from September 23 to 27.

Felipe, 30, will be joined by young guns Rench Michael Bondoc, Nichol Pareja and Kenneth Krog, all aged 19. They will ride together in a studio in the race that will take

participants to virtual routes in Sumatra and Java in Indonesia.

The organizers require each rider to have two cameras, one for the race and one for the commissaire, to monitor the cyclists.

The event will be under controlled environments just like in an actual race.

“There will be a commentator, it will be shown live so fans would get the same feeling as watching an actual race,” Rodriguez said.

Ramon Rafael Bonilla

PSC 100% Covid-19 FREE

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LL 200-strong work force of the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) received a clean bill of health following a massive Covid-19 testing.

Besides the work force—including Chairman William Ramirez and his four commissioners and department heads and key officials, several national athletes and coaches underwent swab tests and also tested negative from the virus.

“We are thankful to the Lord that the PSC community is free from Covid-19. We hope and pray it stays that way,” said PSC OIC Ramon Fernandez, who underwent Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) or swab test upon his arrival from Cebu early this week.

Tested were 112 PSC personnel at the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex in Manila and 88 at the PhilSports Complex in Pasig City. The tests were conducted in three batches.

“We are proud to say that both PSC complexes, which is under a high-risk area since we have venues housing Covid-19 patients, could be declared virus free,” Dr. Randolph Molo, head of the PSC Medical Scientific Athletes Services Unit, said.

“We conducted the test to give the confidence back to the regular workforce, occupants, athletes, and coaches who frequently go to PhilSports and RMSC,” he added. “We opted for the RT-PCR/swab test over any form of rapid testing because this test is more reliable and reflective on one’s Covid-19 status.”

After the tests, the PSC enforced stricter health security protocols as advised by the Department of Health and the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) in all its facilities.

DR. FAUCI A WINNER!

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EXINGTON, Kentucky—A horse named for Dr. Anthony Fauci won his first race at Keeneland on Thursday.

The two-year-old colt won by one length as the heavy favorite against 11 rivals in the $70,000 race. Fauci ran 5 1/2 furlongs on turf in 58.65 seconds under jockey Tyler Gaffalione and paid $4.20 to win.

Fauci finished second in his career debut at New York’s Belmont Park on June 3 for trainer Wesley Ward. The colt is named for the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who is advising the White House on the coronavirus pandemic.

The victory, worth $42,000, increased Fauci’s career earnings to $54,800.

Fauci was purchased for $175,000 at the 2019 Keeneland September Yearling Sale. AP Dr. Anthony Fauci prevails by a length.

By Steve Douglas

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The Associated Press

OUR-TIME Tour de France champion Chris Froome will join fast-growing cycling team Israel Start-Up Nation for the start of next season after losing his status as the leader of Team Ineos.

Froome’s contract with Ineos expires in December and the team has decided not to renew it, ending their decade-long association.

“Given his achievements in the sport,” Ineos general manager Dave Brailsford said Thursday, “Chris is understandably keen to have sole team leadership in the next chapter of his career, which is not something we are able to guarantee him at this point.”

Without mentioning Team Ineos riders Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal—the winners of the last two Tours, respectively—by name, Brailsford said Froome’s departure gives “other members of our team the leadership opportunities they too have earned and are rightly seeking.”

Hours after the announcement by Ineos, Israel Start-Up Nation said Froome had joined on a multi-year deal, adding he will wear the team’s “blue and white until the end of his illustrious career.”

“This is an historic moment for ISN, Israel, Israeli sports, our many fans all around the

CHRIS FROOME’S contract with Ineos expires in December and the team has decided not to renew it, ending their decade-long association. AP

world and, of course, for me personally—a moment of enormous pride,” said the team’s co-owner, Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams.

Israel Start-Up Nation has grown rapidly since it was established in 2014, gaining access to the World Tour after merging with the nowdefunct Katusha-Alpecin team in October.

It will compete in its first Tour de France this year when the delayed edition begins in Nice on August 29.

The team said Froome would help it enter the next phase of its growth.

“With his impressive achievements, Chris Froome is the perfect leader to mark our arrival as a serious contender for these races, particularly the Tour de France,” Team Manager Kjell Carlstrom said.

Israel hosted the first three stages of the 2018 Giro d’Italia, the first time a Grand Tour race was ever held outside Europe. The race was eventually won by Froome.

The 35-year-old Froome has fought his way back from career-threatening injuries sustained in a high-speed crash last year, but tensions over team leadership has sparked weeks of speculation concerning his future at Ineos and suggestions he could leave mid-season.

Brailsford acknowledged the announcement about Froome was being made to put an end to the speculation.

FROOME LEAVES TEAM INEOS, JOINS ISRAELI SQUAD “I am excited about the talent we have right across the team at the current time,” Brailsford said.

Froome joined Team Ineos in 2010—when it was called Team Sky—for their inaugural season, developing from a somewhat awkward domestique into the finest Grand Tour rider of his generation.

He won the Tour de France in 2013, ’15, ’16 and ’17, has also won the Spanish Vuelta (in 2011 and ’17) and the Giro d’Italia (2018).

Froome will sign his deal with the Israeli team on August 1. He has been in contract negotiations with several teams throughout the summer, with Cyclingnews revealing in May that a mid-season move was discussed earlier in the year. Both Bahrain McLaren and Israel Start-Up Nation linked with a move for the 35-year-old.

A mid-season move was complicated by a number of factors, not least that Froome would have needed to have been bought out of his existing contract. CCC Team was also linked to Froome but Israel Start-Up Nation was always in the driver’s seat and was able

China cancels all international sports events for 2020

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EIJING—China says it will not stage any international sports for the rest of the year, apart from trials for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing and the neighboring city of Zhangjiakou.

The order from the General Administration of Sports affects at least six Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) events, including the WTA Finals in Shenzhen in November. China also has four Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) tournaments lined up.

Shanghai was also due to host two big golf events, the men’s HSBC Champions, a World Golf Championship event two weeks after the Ladies Professional Golf Association Shanghai.

Xiamen was to host the Asian sport climbing championships in October, and Guangzhou the badminton World Tour Finals in December.

The decision puts paid to any chance of reviving Formula One’s Shanghai Grand Prix postponed in April, and affects two cycling stage races in October, the men’s Tour of Guangxi, and the women’s Tour of Chongming Island.

China has largely contained local transmission of the coronavirus but remains on guard for imported cases.

The General Administration of Sports cited

“science and order” in issuing its plan to proceed on Thursday.

In the US, the Ivy League became the first Division I conference to suspend all fall sports, including football, leaving open the possibility of moving some seasons to the spring if the coronavirus pandemic is better controlled by then.

“We simply do not believe we can create and maintain an environment for intercollegiate athletic competition that meets our requirements for safety and acceptable levels of risk,” the Ivy League Council of Presidents said in a statement.

“We are entrusted to create and maintain an educational environment that is guided by health and safety considerations. There can be no greater responsibility—and that is the basis for this difficult decision.”

Though the coalition of eight academically elite schools does not grant athletic scholarships or compete for an NCAA football championship, the move could have ripple effects throughout the big business of college sports.

It was the Ivy League’s March 10 decision to scuttle its postseason basketball tournament that preceded a cascade of cancellations. All major college and professional sports were

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

halted within days.

Football players in the Power Five

conferences have already begun workouts for a season that starts on August 29, even as their schools weigh whether to open their campuses to students or continue classes remotely. More than a dozen prominent programs from Clemson to LSU to Oklahoma have reported positive tests among their athletes in the few weeks since voluntary workouts began. Some have temporarily shut down the workouts, incluidng Ohio State and North Carolina on Wednesday alone. AP

OVER THE TOP

Montreal Impact’s Zachary BraultGuillard (left) goes over the back of New England Revolution’s Adam Buksa while trying to get to the ball during the second half of their Major League Soccer match on Thursday in Kissimmee, Florida. AP

to offer the one thing Ineos couldn’t—complete leadership for the Tour de France.

Bahrain-McLaren’s interest faded due to its ongoing financial difficulties and Froome agreed to sign with the Israeli team after a training camp in France last month.

It’s unclear whether Froome will bring any backroom staff with him from Ineos to his new team but Israel Start-Up Nation is already considering several options in the transfer market as it looks to improve their stage-racing squad.

“It has been a phenomenal decade with the Team, we have achieved so much together and I will always treasure the memories.

I look forward to exciting new challenges as I move into the next phase of my career but in the meantime, my focus is on winning a fifth Tour de France with Team Ineos,” Froome said. With Cyclingnews

DAVE BRAILSFORD believe this is the right decision for the team and for Chris Froome

Brailsford: No room for Froome as team leader

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AVE BRAILSFORD said Chris Froome’s departure from Team Ineos at the end of this season has come about because the team is unable to guarantee him “sole team leadership” at this point in his career.

Ineos confirmed on Thursday morning that Froome will leave when his contract expires at the end of this season. The four-time Tour de France winner will join Israel Start-Up Nation in 2021, though he reiterated his intention to ride the 2020 Tour with Ineos, whose line-up will include defending champion Egan Bernal and 2018 winner Geraint Thomas.

“Chris’s current contract comes to an end in December and we have taken the decision now not to renew it. We are making this announcement earlier than would usually be the case to put an end to recent speculation and allow the team to focus on the season ahead,” Brailsford said in a statement released by Team Ineos.

Speaking to Eurosport in May, Bernal said that the road would decide the Ineos hierarchy at the Tour, rescheduled for August 29 to September 20, but he acknowledged that he would not “throw away another opportunity to win another Tour de France” by sacrificing himself in the service of Froome or Thomas from the outset.

Froome missed Bernal’s 2019 Tour victory after sustaining serious injury in a crash at the Critérium du Dauphiné. He returned to action at the UAE Tour in February.

Together with Thomas and Ian Stannard, Froome is one of three riders who have raced for Ineos (formerly Team Sky) every season since the squad’s inception in 2010. Froome made a dramatic emergence as a Grand Tour rider when he placed second to Juan José Cobo at the 2011 Vuelta a España, and he was awarded the overall victory last year after Cobo was belatedly sanctioned for doping offences.

Froome went on to place second behind Bradley Wiggins at the 2012 Tour before returning to win the race overall the following year. He won the Tour again in 2015, 2016 and 2017, and later added the 2017 Vuelta and 2018 Giro d’Italia to his palmarès.

He placed third overall behind Thomas at the 2018 Tour, which began just days after the UCI dropped anti-doping proceedings against Froome, who had returned elevated levels of salbutamol in a control on the 2017 Vuelta.

“Chris has been with us from the start,” Brailsford said. “He is a great champion and we have shared many memorable moments over the years, but I do believe this is the right decision for the team and for Chris.” Cyclingnews