BusinessMirror July 25, 2021

Manga featured in opening ceremony for Tokyo Olympics

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OKYO—The athletes of the Tokyo Olympics stepped into the world of Japanese comics and graphic novels when manga was featured prominently in the opening ceremony on Friday.

The placards for the country names for the parade of athletes used manga speech bubbles, and the costumes for the placard bearers and assistants had manga touches in their design.

Manga roughly refers to comics and graphic novels from Japan,

KIYOMI WATANABE and Eumir Marcial carry the Philippine flag during the opening ceremony in the Olympic Stadium at the 2020 Summer Olympics, July 23, 2021. AP

while animé—another popular Japanese art form—covers animation from the country. Manga is a Japanese word meaning whimsical pictures.

Manga is read from right to left, and is almost always published in black and white. It has numerous genres and subgenres designed to appeal to people of all ages and backgrounds.

Manga traces its roots back to 12th-century Buddhist monks who created scrolls that ran continuous-

ly and depicted animals behaving like humans.

The artists who create manga are known as mangaka, and the most famous practitioners include Osamu Tezuka (“Astro Boy”), Akira Toriyama (“Dragon Ball”) and Naoko Takeuchi (“Sailor Moon”).

Tezuka, who died in 1989 at the age of 60, has been dubbed the “Father of manga” and compared to famed American animator Walt Disney.

The use of manga in the opening ceremony comes at a time when

Japanese comics and graphic novels have spread around the world, along with animé. Susan Napier, a professor of rhetoric and Japanese studies at Tufts University, told The Washington Post she thinks the Olympics could make them even more popular.

“People will be curious,” she said. “Animé style is a very distinctive style, and if you’re not used to it, you’re going to say: ‘Wow, what is this? This is cool.’” AP Olympics stories on page A8

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GOOD AT 90 PERCENT Lorenzana renders brief assessment on the performance of the Duterte administration in the defense and military sector

PRESIDENT Duterte (center) walks during arrival honors at the 119th anniversary of the Philippine Navy in Davao City, May 31, 2017. PRESIDENTIAL COMMUNICATIONS OPERATIONS OFFICE VIA AP

T

By Rene Acosta

“Although we still have a long way to go to achieve our desired level of defense posture, we can now probably say that the AFP is definitely stronger than it was before,” Lorenzana said.

HE administration of President Duterte has transformed the military into a better-equipped defense force, and has solidified the Philippines’s claim and possession of disputed islands and other features in the northern and western waters of the country, according to the country’s top security official.

Rendering his assessment on the defense and security sector ahead of the Chief Executive’s final State of the Nation Address on Monday, July 26, 2021, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana gave the President a 90-percent rating “because he was able to add the equipment of our soldiers, and his directive to us to end the insurgency is good.”

The modernization of the military was actually set into motion during the term of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III through the three phases—Horizon 1, 2 and 3—the first phase of which be-

gan during the middle part of the late former President’s term in office. Aquino passed away on June 24, 2021, due to kidney failure.

“Great milestones were reached by the Armed Forces of the Philippines in enhancing its capacity and capability. It has upgraded its systems, updated its doctrines and acquired capital assets and vital equipment. Among our new assets are two missile-capable frigates, airplanes, helicopters and others,” Lorenzana said.

The new assets are now being used in territorial defense, including patrol, counterinsurgency

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 50.2350

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U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim (third from left) and Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana (third from right) are briefed on the features of the ScanEagle Unmanned Aerial Vehicle during its turnover March 13, 2018, at Villamor Air Base in Pasay City. Six drones were acquired by the Philippine Air Force from the US for $13.76 million and will be used for counter-terrorism, security operations, maritime patrol and disaster response operations, especially in assessing extent of damage caused by disasters and calamities and locating victims and survivors. AP/BULLIT MARQUEZ

operations, peacekeeping efforts and humanitarian assistance and disaster response activities.

‘Hitches’

WHILE the military has kept on procuring new assets and equipment, Lorenzana, however, acknowledged that the effort was undertaken with hitches as shown by

the successive crashes of Air Force aircraft.

Early this year, a Huey helicopter crashed in Bukidnon, while last month, one of the delivered Black Hawk helicopters acquired from a Polish firm went down while on a night flight training in Tarlac. This month, a C-130 plane also crashed in Sulu, killing 49 soldiers.

STILL, the defense chief said they are looking to acquire more ships and aircraft under the Duterte administration.

According to Lorenzana, aside from the increased territorial patrol and military presence in the Kalayaan Island Group, West Philippine Sea and Batanes Group of Islands, the government has solidified its presence in most of these areas that were complemented by the construction and/or improvement of facilities.

“Emboldened by President Duterte’s order to defend what is rightfully ours without going to war and maintain the peace, we have consistently ascertained our sovereignty and sovereign rights,” Lorenzana said.

“The improvement of structures on Kalayaan and Mavulis Islands is continuing,” he added.

Markers and other projects

ON Mavulis in Itbayat, Batanes, a fishermen’s shelter complete with

a fish-drying facility has been improved and energized, while a water desalination plant was installed and activated.

In other parts of the maritime waters in the country’s northern portion, sovereign markers, including buoys, have been installed to mark the boundaries of the country in the high seas.

In Kalayaan Municipality, a beaching ramp and a seaport have been constructed by the military and the Department of Transportation, while the Department of Energy energized it more than three weeks ago.

“We also intensified our deterrence activities and deployed more personnel in our borders, especially in West Philippine Sea, Sulu and Celebes seas. We now have more littoral monitoring stations and detachments in these strategic locations to monitor vessels transiting within Philippine waters,” Lorenzana said.

“Our coordination and engagements with countries within and outside the region were also successful. Because of the trilateral cooperation arrangement with Indonesia and Malaysia, we hasten the decrease of incidents of kidnap for ransom and other crimes in the waters off Sulu,” he added.

n JAPAN 0.4562 n UK 69.1435 n HK 6.4647 n CHINA 7.7642 n SINGAPORE 36.9647 n AUSTRALIA 37.1739 n EU 59.1467 n SAUDI ARABIA 13.3935

Source: BSP (July 23, 2021)

NewsSunday A2 Sunday, July 25, 2021

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Death rates soar in Southeast Asia as virus wave spreads

By David Rising & Eileen Ng

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The Associated Press

UALA LUMPUR, Malaysia— Indonesia has converted nearly its entire oxygen production to medical use just to meet the demand from Covid-19 patients struggling to breathe.

Overflowing hospitals in Malaysia had to resort to treating patients on the floor.

And in Myanmar’s largest city, graveyard workers have been laboring day and night to keep up with the grim demand for new cremations and burials.

Images of bodies burning in open-air pyres during the peak of the pandemic in India horrified the world in May, but in the last two weeks the three Southeast Asian nations have now all surpassed India’s peak per capita death rate as a new coronavirus wave, fueled by the virulent delta variant, tightens its grip on the region.

The deaths have followed record numbers of new cases being reported in countries across the region, which have left health-care systems struggling to cope and governments scrambling to implement new restrictions to try to slow the spread.

When Eric Lam tested positive for Covid-19 and was hospitalized on June 17 in the Malaysian state of Selangor, the center of the country’s outbreak, the corridors of the government facility were already crowded with patients on beds with

no room left in the wards.

The situation was still better than in some other hospitals in Selangor, Malaysia’s richest and most populous state, where there were no free beds at all and patients were reportedly treated on floors or on stretchers. The government has since added more hospital beds and converted more wards for Covid-19 patients.

Lam, 38, recalled once during his three weeks in the hospital hearing a machine beeping continuously for two hours before a nurse came to turn it off; he later learned the patient had died.

Confluence

A VARIETY of factors have contributed to the recent surge in the region, including people growing weary of the pandemic and letting precautions slip, low vaccination rates and

IN this July 5, 2021, file photo, people queue up to refill their oxygen tanks at a filling station in Jakarta, Indonesia. Images of bodies burning in open-air pyres during the peak of the pandemic in India horrified the world in May, but in the last two weeks Indonesia and two other Southeast Asian nations have surpassed India’s peak per capita death rate as a new coronavirus wave tightens its grip on the region. AP

the emergence of the delta variant of the virus, which was first detected in India, said Abhishek Rimal, the AsiaPacific emergency health coordinator for the Red Cross, who is based in Malaysia.

“With the measures that countries are taking, if people follow the basics of washing the hands, wearing the masks, keeping distance and getting vaccinated, we will be seeing a decline in cases in the next couple of weeks from now,” he said.

So far, however, Malaysia’s national lockdown measures have not brought down the daily rate of infections. The country of some 32 million saw daily cases rise above 10,000 on July 13 for the first time and they have stayed there since.

The vaccination rate remains low but has been picking up, with nearly 15 percent of the population now fully inoculated and the government hoping to have a majority vaccinated by year’s end.

Doctors and nurses have been working tirelessly to try to keep up, and Lam was one of the fortunate ones.

After his condition initially deteriorated, he was put on a ventilator in an ICU unit filled to capacity and slowly recovered. He was discharged two weeks ago.

But he lost his father and brother-in-law to the virus, and another brother remains on a ventilator in the ICU.

“I feel I have been reborn and given a second chance to live,” he said.

Alarming rise in cases

WITH India’s massive population of nearly 1.4 billion people, its total number of Covid-19 fatalities remains higher than the countries in Southeast Asia. But India’s 7-day rolling average of Covid-19 deaths per million peaked at 3.04 in May, according to the online scientific publication Our World in Data, and continues to decline.

Indonesia, Myanmar and Malaysia have been showing sharp increases since late June and their seven-day averages hit 4.17, 4.02 and 3.18 per million, respectively, on Thursday. Cambodia and Thailand have also seen strong increases in both coronavirus cases and deaths, but have thus far held the seven-day rate per million people to a lower 1.29 and 1.74, respectively.

Individual countries elsewhere have higher rates, but the increases are particularly alarming for a region that widely kept numbers low early

in the pandemic.

With the Indian experience as a lesson, most countries have reacted relatively quickly with new restrictions to slow the virus, and to try to meet the needs of the burgeoning number of people hospitalized with severe illnesses, Rimal said.

“People in this region are cautious, because they have seen it right in front of them—400,000 cases a day in India—and they really don’t want it to repeat here,” he said in a telephone interview from Kuala Lumpur.

But those measures take time to achieve the desired effect, and right now countries are struggling to cope.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation with some 270 million people, reported 1,383 deaths on Wednesday, its deadliest day since the start of the pandemic.

Daily cases through about mid-June had been about 8,000, but then began to spike and peaked last week with more than 50,000 new infections each day. Because Indonesia’s testing rate is low, the actual number of new cases is thought to be much higher.

As hospitals there began to run out of oxygen, the government stepped in and ordered manufacturers to shift most production from industrial purposes and dedicate 90 percent to medical oxygen, up from 25 percent.

Before the current crisis, the country needed 400 tons of oxygen for medical use per day; with the sharp rise in Covid-19 cases, daily use has increased fivefold to more than 2,000 tons, according to Deputy Health Minister Dante Saksono.

Though the production of oxygen is now sufficient, Lia Partakusuma, secretary general of Indonesia’s Hospital Association, said there were problems with distribution so some hospitals are still facing shortages.

In Indonesia, about 14 percent of the population has had at least one vaccine dose, primarily China’s Sinovac.

Booster shots

THERE are growing concerns that Sinovac is less effective against the delta variant, however, and both Indonesia and Thailand are planning booster shots of other vaccines for their Sinovac-immunized health workers.

In Myanmar, the pandemic had taken a backseat to the military’s power seizure in February, which

set off a wave of protests and violent political conflict that devastated the public health system.

Only in recent weeks, as testing and reporting of Covid-19 cases has started recovering, has it become clear that a new wave of the virus beginning in mid-May is pushing cases and deaths rapidly higher.

Since the start of July its death rate has been climbing almost straight up, and both cases and fatalities are widely believed to be seriously underreported.

“With little testing capacity, low numbers in the country vaccinated, widespread shortages of oxygen and other medical supplies, and an already beleaguered health-care system under increasing strain, the situation is expected to get increasingly worse in the coming weeks and months,” said Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights, a regional advocacy group.

“Meanwhile, the junta’s confiscation of oxygen, attacks on healthcare workers and facilities since the coup, and the lack of trust in any services they provide by the majority of the population, risks turning a crisis into a disaster.”

On Tuesday, the government reported 5,860 new cases and 286 new deaths. There are no solid figures on vaccinations, but from the number of doses that have been available, it’s thought that about 3 percent of the population could have received two shots.

Officials this week pushed back at social media postings that cemeteries in Yangon were overwhelmed and could not keep up with the number of dead, inadvertently confirming claims that hospitals were swamped and many people were dying at home.

Cho Tun Aung, head of the department that oversees the cemeteries, told military-run Myawaddy TV news on Monday that 350 staff members had been working three shifts since July 8 to ensure proper cremations and burials of people at Yangon’s seven major cemeteries.

He said workers had cremated and buried more than 1,200 people on Sunday alone, including 1,065 who had died at home of Covid-19 and 169 who had died in hospitals.

“We are working in three shifts day and night to inter the dead,” he said. “It is clear that there is no problem like the posts on Facebook.”

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Sunday, July 25, 2021

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US-China goods trade booms as if Covid-19, tariff war never happened

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hina and the US are shipping goods to each other at the briskest pace in years, making the world’s largest bilateral trade relationship look as if the protracted tariff war and pandemic never happened.

Eighteen months after the Trump administration signed the trade deal, the agreement has turned out to be a truce at best. The US trade deficit hasn’t shrunk, most levies are still in place, and it hasn’t led to negotiations over other economic issues.

And yet, bilateral trade in goods is an area of stability in a relationship that has otherwise continued to deteriorate, with rising tension over Hong Kong, Taiwan, human rights, the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, accusations of computer hacking and many other flashpoints.

Monthly two-way trade, which tumbled to $19 billion in February of last year amid shutdowns in Chinese factories, rebounded over the past year to new records, according to official Chinese data. And that boom looks set to continue, with China purchasing millions of tons of US farm goods for this year and next and stuck-at-home US consumers still shopping and im-

porting in record amounts.

While the US government’s numbers differ somewhat, the bustling trade has defied all expectations that the tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of merchandise would force a decoupling of supply chains.

Instead, both sides have learned to live with the taxes, with Chinese firms buying more to fulfill the terms of the 2020 trade deal, and US companies purchasing goods they can’t get elsewhere to meet elevated household demand fueled in part by trillions of dollars in government stimulus. “ We’ve seen t he st rong consumer demand that’s been occurring throughout the pandemic, and we’ve seen the import levels just go through the roof,” said Jonathan Gold, vice president of supply-chains and customs policy at the National Retail Federation, which represents vendors from mom-and-pop stores through the big-box chain behe-

The Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd. (MOL) Charisma container ship sails near the Yangshan Deepwater Port in Shanghai, China, on April 9. Qilai Shen/Bloomberg moths. “That’s a strong sign that the economy continues to recover.”

Exports from South Korea and Taiwan to the US have also risen over the same period, underscoring the strength of US demand despite one of the worst outbreaks of Covid-19 of any nation.

Almost half of the $259 billion in cargo moving in and out of Los Angeles port—the US’s biggest—involves China and Hong Kong. US demand for goods continues unabated, with record inbound shipments to the port in May as companies start to restock ahead

of the Christmas shopping season.

“All signs point to a robust second half of the year,” Los Angeles port Executive Director Gene Seroka said during a recent press briefing, noting that fall fashion, back-to-school, Halloween and holiday goods were already arriving on the docks.

With tariffs in place on more than $300 billion in imports from China, from footwear and clothing to electronics and bicycles and even pet food, many US retailers are choosing to absorb the cost and squeezing their profit margins, the NRF’s Gold

Billionaire who missed out on TikTok is trying to beat it

By Zheping Huang

I

n 2017, Su Hua, the founder of a Chinese start-up called Kuaishou Technology, was on the verge of closing the biggest deal of his career— the acquisition of a fledgling video service that would become TikTok. But arch-rival ByteDance Ltd. swooped in with a better offer, and Su missed out on what has become a global sensation.

Now, the 38-year-old entrepreneur is getting some payback. In February, Kuaishou went public in Hong Kong, raising more than $5 billion on the strength of its booming video and commerce operations. ByteDance, meanwhile, tangled with the US government and then got ensnarled in China’s tech crackdown, likely delaying its own initial public offering.

Su isn’t wasting a moment. Flush with cash from the IPO, Kuaishou is cranking up spending to close the gap with ByteDance, more than four times its size. Kuaishou plans to expand in countries like Brazil and Indonesia, rather than TikTok’s stronghold in the US. The company intends to double its global squad to 2,000 by year’s end to accelerate the rollout of its international products.

Kuaishou could have an advantage over its rival in these markets. While TikTok tends to be stocked with photogenic, dancing teenagers, Su’s stars are a diverse, at times low-brow, crew of entertainers, often from rural regions. They include a binge-drinking farmer and a long-haul truck driver.

“TikTok is a big front runner ahead of us today globally, but there’s still huge room for growth,” Su said in his first interview in four years.

“Kuaishou’s philosophy is quite different from our peers, and that’s built upon my personal experiences and values.”

To drive Kuaishou’s expansion, the entrepreneur is deploy ing a tried-and-tested strategy of creating the commoner’s video forum, mixing artificial intelligence-driven recommendations with human curation to deliver a personalized experience. His company aims to reach 250 million monthly users outside China this year, after tripling that base in just the past six months. It has about 300 million daily users in China.

Kuaishou’s overseas apps span

Kwai to Snack Video and Zynn. Kwai, its most successful export and the international twin to its domestic platform, has been downloaded more than 76 million times in the first half of 2021 in countries such as Brazil and Mexico, while SnackVideo built a following in markets like Indonesia and Pakistan.

About half of its 150 million monthly overseas users now hail from Latin America, one of TikTok’s key markets. Earlier this year, Su’s company struck a deal to sponsor the 2021 Copa América tournament, a big draw in the region. It also pledged to spend $10 million to incentivize sports content creators over the next year.

Like all of China’s tech companies, Kuaishou has extra motivation to expand abroad as Beijing cracks down on its domestic industry. Chinese authorities have focused on leaders like Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., but uncertainties over future regulations have ignited a broad market rout. Kuaishou’s stock nearly quadrupled after its debut and has since dropped near its offering price.

Orchestrating the company’s overseas push is Su’s lieutenant Tony Qiu, a former Bain Capital investor and Didi executive who helped the Chinese ride-hailing giant build its presence in Brazil. Since joining Kuaishou last August, he’s been putting his knowledge of the local market to the test, leading a team with hires from Google, Netflix Inc. and TikTok. In April, Kuaishou also welcomed on board Wang Meihong, a former Facebook Inc. senior engineer, to oversee tech for its global products.

“It’s not only creative minds or young, trendy users doing lip-syncing and dancing who come to our platform,” said Qiu. “Kuaishou is more universal.”

Take João Paulo Venancios, a 22-year-old Kwai creator living in the Paraíba state of northeastern Brazil.

Since he started on Kwai in March 2020, Venancios has built a following of 2.6 million people with clips where he and his 70-year-old grandmother reenact daily life and movie scenes. Local merchants hire him to make appearances in their stores, earning him about 6,000 Brazilian reals ($1,149) every month—enough to rent a house and pursue his dream

to become a professional singer. It’s a fame he couldn’t have built on TikTok or Instagram, whose algorithms make it more difficult for little-known creators to go viral.

“My grandma is very funny, and we created a bond,” he said. “People on Kwai find my videos more relatable.”

That down-to-earth nature of Kuaishou’s platforms ref lects its founder’s humble beginnings. While Su now has a net worth of nearly $9 billion, he was born and raised in a small village in China’s central Hunan province. From there, Su aced the country’s grueling college entrance exam and won entry into the prestigious Tsinghua University, where he studied software programming, before working as a developer at Google and Baidu Inc. “As I grew up, I saw more people who didn’t have a chance like I did,” Su said. “So I hope Kuaishou will provide another way for them to interact with a world different from their own.”

His experience drove Su to entrepreneurship: before Kuaishou, he had dabbled in more than 30 projects in areas spanning video advertising to mobile search and e-commerce. All of them flopped. Ruby Lu, a venture investor who made an early bet in Kuaishou for DCM Ventures, spotted Su’s engineering talents then.

“He came across as a super geek,” she said. “In my book, that is a compliment.” In 2013, he met fellow software engineer Cheng Yixiao over a dinner that lasted till 2 a.m. Together, they transformed Kuaishou, which Cheng launched two years earlier as a GIF maker, into a video-sharing platform that featured all sorts of content, including vignettes of life in rural China.

By mid-2016, it had garnered 50 million monthly users, according to QuestMobile data. Larger rivals like Weibo Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. whipped up their own short-video offerings but couldn’t build a loyal community, until ByteDance came along with Douyin, which appealed to a younger—and potentially more lucrative—demographic.

Su almost landed TikTok. In 2017, Alex Zhu and Louis Yang, founders of the Musical.ly karaoke app, were shopping around their three-year-old outfit, which had amassed 10 million users in the US—mostly kids and teenagers. They met with Facebook

and YouTube executives, but it was Su who went the furthest in talks with them. Then ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming, flush with cash from his hit news app Toutiao, swooped in and offered to buy the startup for close to $1 billion, people familiar with the matter have said.

“We didn’t have much money,” Su recounted. “It’s an episode of significant impact, but not one that determines everything.”TikTok inherited Musical.ly’s user base, interface and licensing deals with record labels, becoming the first Chinese consumer app to go global. That success—it has about 100 million monthly users in the US alone—drew the hostility of the Trump administration, which argued that its Chinese parent posed a potential national security threat.

Today, Kuaishou has 1 billion monthly users across all products globally, versus ByteDance’s 1.9 billion. Online ads have surpassed virtual gifts to become Kuaishou’s biggest earnings driver, making up half of the 17 billion yuan ($2.6 billion) revenue for the March quarter. That contribution may reach 60 percent by year’s end, Su said, though the firm remains deep in the red as it adds new businesses like e-commerce and gaming.

Some analysts argue that at its size, Kuaishou should already be generating profits rather than burning cash for user growth. Its IPO sponsor, Morgan Stanley, recently downgraded its stock rating and slashed its target price by 57 percent to $130.

“If Kuaishou can’t grow organically and smooth out costs when competition deteriorates, that means its business model may face great challenges,” said Wang Guanran, a Shanghai-based analyst with Citic Securities Co. Back at home, both ByteDance and Kuaishou are grappling with Beijing’s crackdown on its tech giants. Kuaishou’s relatively unpolished vibe—which once featured everything from underage moms to rappers praising drugs—has drawn the censure of the Internet regulator over the years. It was among Internet firms fined this week for spreading sexually suggestive content involving children. Both short video pioneers were among 34 tech giants ordered to comply with Beijing’s anti-monopoly rules in April.

Bloomberg News

said. Some are passing these along to consumers.

Firms also are dealing with backlogs and bottlenecks at US ports and increased shipping costs.

“Between the cost of the tariffs and the increased cost of transportation that we’re seeing, that’s having an impact on companies’ bottom line,” Gold said. “They’ve seen significant cost increases as a result of both the trade war and the transportation crisis we’re facing.”

The Biden administration hasn’t said whether it plans to continue with

the deal and is reviewing US policy toward China, but with US Trade Representative Katherine Tai calling the trade relationship “unbalanced” and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saying the deal didn’t address the fundamental problems with China, the outlook is unfavorable.

On top of those tensions, China’s purchasing targets expire at the end of the year, and the nation is well behind where it promised it would be now. Those targets were initially seen as unrealistically high and problems like the Covid-19 pandemic or the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max jet put them even further out of reach.

Even if the deal is scrapped, the lesson from the past four or so years is that even if there is political will, it’s harder to stop or divert international trade than might have been thought.

With Beijing missing its purchase targets, China refraining from aircraft purchases and companies moving automotive production out of the US to avoid getting hit with tariffs from the trade war, the agreement between the world’s two biggest economies is “pretty irrelevant at this stage,” said Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, whose latest research has focused on the pact.

“China buys what China needs,” Bown said. “If it’s buying more of certain American products, it’s doing so probably out of its own interest.”

Bloomberg News

UK irritates EU with call to change negotiated post-Brexit trade rules

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ONDON—The British government said Wednesday that postBrexit trade rules it negotiated with the European Union “cannot go on” and need a major rewrite, straining already tense UK-EU relations and drawing a message of concern from the US government.

The government said Britain would be justified in unilaterally suspending the legally binding Brexit agreement but had decided not to do so just yet.

Since the UK left the EU’s economic embrace at the end of 2020, relations have soured over trade arrangements for Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK that has a land border with the 27-nation bloc. The divorce deal the two sides struck before Britain’s departure means customs and border checks must be conducted on some goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK The regulations are intended to keep an open border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland, a key pillar of Northern Ireland’s peace process. But they have angered Northern Ireland’s British unionists, who say they amount to a border in the Irish Sea and weaken ties with the rest of the UK. Britain accuses the EU of taking a “purist” approach to the rules that is causing unnecessary red tape for businesses, and has called for the bloc to show “pragmatism.”

Brexit minister David Frost said Britain had tried to implement the arrangements “in good faith” but that they were causing a severe burden on businesses and society in Northern Ireland.

“Put very simply, we cannot go on as we are,” he said Wednesday in Parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords.

Frost said “the circumstances exist to justify the use of Article 16,” an emergency brake in the agreement allowing for it to be suspended by one side in extreme circumstances.

“Nevertheless, we have concluded that this is not the right moment to do so,” he said.

Triggering Article 16 would likely send relations between the EU and its former member into a tailspin. The

bloc is already frustrated at what it sees as Britain’s failure to implement the agreement it signed up to.

The bloc’s lead Brexit official, Maros Sefcovic, said the EU is “ready to seek creative solutions” but “will not agree to a renegotiation of the Protocol,” as the Northern Ireland section of the Brexit deal is known.

The EU says Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government knew full well that there would be checks when it signed the Brexit deal.

“Britain decided itself to leave the single market of the European Union, to apply trade rules, to apply red tape to its goods that are leaving Britain, to goods that are coming into Britain,” Irish European affairs minister Thomas Byrne said.

Frost said Britain was seeking a “standstill period” in which grace periods delaying the imposition of some checks and goods restrictions would be maintained while a permanent solution is found. Ultimately, Britain is seeking to remove most checks, replacing them with a “light touch” system in which only goods at risk of entering the EU would be inspected. But the low level of trust between the two sides makes that difficult.

US President Joe Biden has even been drawn into the dispute, raising concerns about the potential threat to Northern Ireland’s peace accord.

State Department spokesman Ned Price on Wednesday stressed Biden’s “unequivocal” support for Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord and said the administration “encouraged all parties to prioritize political and economic stability in Northern Ireland’s in the context of these discussions.”

“We support a close relationship between the UK and the EU, and between all communities in Northern Ireland as well,” Price said. “And we continue to encourage the parties to negotiate within existing mechanisms and to avoid unilateral actions.”

Last month, Britain and the EU gave themselves breathing time by delaying until the end of September a ban on chilled meats such as sausages from England, Scotland and Wales from going to Northern Ireland. AP

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Sunday, July 25, 2021

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Room for 10,000 inmates: Inside China’s largest detention center

By Dake Kang

D

The Associated Press

ABANCHENG, China—The Uyghur inmates sat in uniform rows with their legs crossed in lotus position and their backs ramrod straight, numbered and tagged, gazing at a television playing grainy black-andwhite images of Chinese Communist Party history.

People stand in a guard tower on the perimeter wall of the Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center in Dabancheng in western China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on April 23. China’s largest detention center is twice the size of Vatican City and has room for at least 10,000 inmates.

AP/Mark Schiefelbein

This is one of an estimated 240 cells in just one section of Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center in Dabancheng, seen by Associated Press journalists granted extraordinary access during a state-led tour to China’s far west Xinjiang region.

The detention center is the largest in the country and possibly the world, with a complex that sprawls over 220 acres—making it twice as large as Vatican City. A sign at the front identified it as a “kanshousuo,” a pre-trial detention facility.

Chinese officials declined to say how many inmates were there, saying the number varied. But the AP estimated the center could hold roughly 10,000 people and many more if crowded, based on satellite imagery and the cells and benches seen during the tour. While the BBC and Reuters have in the past reported from the outside, the AP was the first Western media organization allowed in.

This site suggests that China still holds and plans to hold vast numbers of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in detention. Satellite imagery shows that new buildings stretching almost a mile long were added to the Dabancheng detention facility in 2019.

China has described its sweeping lockup of a million or more minorities over the past four years as a “war against terror,” after a series of knifings and bombings by a small number of extremist Uyghurs native to Xinjiang. Among its most controversial aspects were the so-called vocational “training centers”—described by former detainees as brutal internment camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.

C h ina at f irst denied t heir existence, and then, under heavy

international criticism, said in 2019 that all the occupants had “graduated.” But the AP’s visit to Dabancheng, satellite imagery and interviews with experts and former detainees suggest that while many “training centers” were indeed closed, some like this one were simply converted into prisons or pre-trial detention facilities. Many new facilities have also been built, including a new 85-acre detention center down the road from No. 3 in Dabancheng that went up over 2019, satellite imagery shows.

The changes seem to be an attempt to move from the makeshift and extrajudicial “training centers” into a more permanent system of prisons and pre-trial detention facilities justified under the law. While some Uyghurs have been released, others have simply been moved into this prison network.

However, researchers say many innocent people were often thrown in detention for things like going abroad or attending religious gatherings. Darren Byler, an anthropologist studying the Uyghurs at the University of Colorado, noted that many prisoners have not committed “real crimes by any standards,” and that they go through a “show” trial without due process.

“We’re moving from a police state to a mass incarceration state.

Hundreds of thousands of people have disappeared from the population,” Byler said. “It’s the criminalization of normal behavior.”

During the April tour of No. 3 in Dabancheng, officials repeatedly distanced it from the “training centers” that Beijing claims to have closed.

“There was no connection between our detention center and the

training centers,” insisted Urumqi Public Security Bureau director Zhao Zhongwei. “There’s never been one around here.”

They also said the No. 3 center was proof of China’s commitment to rehabilitation and the rule of law, with inmates provided hot meals, exercise, access to legal counsel and televised classes lecturing them on their crimes.

Rights are protected, officials say, and only lawbreakers need worry about detention.

“See, the BBC report said this was a re-education camp. It’s not— it’s a detention center,” said Liu Chang, an official with the foreign ministry.

However, despite the claims of officials, the evidence shows No. 3 was indeed an internment camp. A Reuters picture of the entrance in September 2018 shows that the facility used to be called the “Urumqi Vocational Skills Education and Training Center.”

Publicly available documents collected by Shawn Zhang, a law student in Canada, confirm that a center by the same name was commissioned to be built at the same location in 2017.

Records also show that Chinese conglomerate Hengfeng Information Technology won an $11-million contract for outfitting the Urumqi “training center.” A man who answered a number for Hengfeng confirmed the company had taken part in the construction of the “training center,” but Hengfeng did not respond to further requests for comment.

A former construction contractor who visited the Dabancheng facility in 2018 told the AP that it was the same as the “Urumqi Vocational Skills Education and

Training Center,” and had been converted to a detention facility in 2019, with the nameplate switched. He declined to be named for fear of retaliation against his family.

“All the former students inside became prisoners,” he said.

The vast complex is ringed by 25-feet-tall concrete walls painted blue, watchtowers, and humming electric wire. Officials led AP journalists through the main entrance, past face-scanning turnstiles and rifle-toting guards in military camouflage.

In one corner of the compound, masked inmates sat in rigid formation. Most appeared to be Uyghur.

Zhu Hongbin, the center’s director, rapped on one of the cell’s windows.

“They’re totally unbreakable,” he said, his voice muffled beneath head-to-toe medical gear.

At the control room, staff gazed at a wall-to-wall, God’s-eye display of some two-dozen screens streaming footage from each cell.

Another panel played programming from state broadcaster CCTV, which Zhu said was being shown to the inmates.

“We control what they watch,” Zhu said. “We can see if they’re breaking regulations, or if they might hurt or kill themselves.”

The center also screens video classes, Zhu said, to teach them about their crimes.

“They need to be taught why it’s bad to kill people, why it’s bad to steal,” Zhu said.

Twenty-two rooms with chairs and computers allow inmates to chat with lawyers, relatives, and police via video, as they are strapped to their seats. Down the corridor, an office houses a branch

What’s fueling Russia’s ‘unprecedented’ fires?

By Daria Litvinova & Vladimir Isachenkov The Associated Press

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OSCOW—Thousands of wildfires engulf broad ex panses of Russia each year, destroy ing forests and shrouding regions in acrid smoke.

Northeastern Siberia has had particularly massive fires this summer amid record-setting heat.

Many other regions across the vast country also have battled wildfires.

Some factors behind Russia’s endemic wildfires and their consequences:

Record heat

In recent years, Russia has recorded high temperatures that many scientists regard as a clear result of climate change. The hot weather has caused permafrost to melt and fueled a growing number of fires.

The vast Sakha-Yakutia region of Siberia has had a long spell of extremely hot and dry weather this summer, with temperatures

reaching 39 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit) and setting records for several days. The heat wave helped spark hundreds of fires, which so far have scorched more than 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of land, making it the worst affected region in Russia.

The fires have shrouded Yakutia’s cities, towns and villages in thick smoke, forcing authorities to briefly suspend flights at the regional capital ’s airport. The Defense Ministry deployed transport planes and helicopters to help douse the flames.

Fedot Tumusov, a member of the Russian parliament who represents the region, called the blazes “unprecedented” in their scope.

Monitoring difficulties

The forests that cover huge areas of Russia make monitoring and quickly spotting new fires a daunting task.

In 2007, a federal network to spot fires from aircraft was disbanded and had its assets turned over to regional authorities. The much-criticized change resulted in the program’s rapid deterioration.

In this June 16, file photo, firefighters work at the scene of forest fire near Andreyevsky village outside Tyumen, western Siberia, Russia. Wildfires in Siberia are releasing record amounts of greenhouse gases, scientists say, contributing to global warming. Each year, thousands of wildfires engulf wide swathes of Russia, destroying forests and shrouding broad territories in acrid smoke. This summer has seen particularly massive fires in Yakutia in northeastern Siberia following unprecedented heat. AP/Maksim Slutsky

The government later reversed the move and reestablished the federal agency in charge of monitoring forests from the air. However, its resources remain limited, making it hard to survey the massive forests of Siberia and the Far East.

Neglect of fire safety rules

While some wildfires are sparked by lightning, experts estimate that over 70 percent of them are caused by people, from carelessly discarding cigarettes to abandoned campfires, but there are other causes.

Authorities regularly conduct controlled burns, setting a fire to clear the way for new vegetation

or to deprive unplanned wildfires of fuel. Observers say such intentional burns often are poorly managed and sometimes trigger bigger blazes instead of containing them.

Farmers also use the same technique to burn grass and small trees on agricultural lands. Such burns regularly get out of control.

Arson

Activists and experts say that fires are often set deliberately to cover up evidence of illegal lumbering or to create new places for timber harvesting under the false pretext of clearing burned areas.

Activists in Siberia and the Far East allege such arson is driven by

of the Urumqi prosecutor’s office, in another sign of the switch to a formal prison system.

A nearby medical room contains a gurney, a tank of oxygen and a cabinet stocked with medicine.

Guidelines hanging on the wall instruct staff on the proper protocol to deal with sick inmates— and also to force-feed inmates on hunger strikes by inserting tubes up their noses.

Zhao, the other official, said inmates are held for 15 days to a year before trial depending on their suspected crime, and the legal process is the same as in the rest of China.

He said the center was built to house inmates away from the city because of safety concerns.

Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center is comparable in size to Rikers Island in New York City, but the region serves less than 4 million people compared to nearly 20 million for Rikers. At least three other detention centers are sprinkled across Urumqi, along with ten or more prisons.

The No. 3 center did not appear to be at full capacity; one section was closed, officials said, and six to 10 inmates sat in each cell, taking up only half the benches. But the latest official government statistics available, for 2019, show that there were about twice as many arrests in Xinjiang that year than before the crackdown started in 2017. Hundreds of thousands have been sentenced to prison, many to terms of five years or more.

Xu Guixiang, a Xinjiang spokesperson, called the higher incarceration rates “severe measures” in the “war against terror.”

“Of course, during this process, the number of people sentenced in accordance with the law will increase. This is a concrete indication of our work efficiency,” Xu said. “By taking these measures, terrorists are more likely to be brought to justice.”

But many relatives of those imprisoned say they were sentenced on spurious charges, and experts caution that the opacity of the Xinjiang legal system is a red flag. Although China makes legal records easily accessible otherwise, almost 90 percent of criminal records in Xinjiang are not public. The handful which have leaked show that some are charged with “terrorism” or “separatism” for acts few would consider criminal, such as warning colleagues against watching porn and swearing, or praying in prison.

Researcher Gene Bunin found that Uyghurs were made to sign confessions for what the authorities called “terrorist activities.”

Some were subsequently released, including one detained in the Dabancheng facility, a relative told The Associated Press, declining to be named to avoid retribution against the former detainee.

Others were not. Police reports obtained by the Intercept detail the case of eight Uyghurs in one Urumqi neighborhood detained in the “Dabancheng” facility in 2017 for reading religious texts, installing filesharing applications, or simply being an “untrustworthy person.” In late 2018, the reports show, prosecutors summoned them to makeshift meetings and sentenced them to two to five years of “study.”

AP journalists did not witness any signs of torture or beating at the facility, and were unable to speak directly to any former or current detainees. But an Uyghur who had fled Xinjiang, Zumret Dawut, said a now-deceased friend who worked at Dabancheng had witnessed treatment so brutal that she fainted. The friend, Paride Amati, said she had seen a pair of teens forced to sign confessions claiming they were involved in terrorism while studying in Egypt, and their skin had been beaten bloody and raw.

A teacher at the Dabancheng facility also called it “worse than hell,” according to a colleague at a different camp, Qelbinur Sedik. The teacher said that during classes she could hear the sounds of people being tortured with electric batons and iron chairs, according to Sedik.

Accounts of conditions in detention centers elsewhere in Xinjiang vary widely: some describe restrictive conditions but no physical abuse, while others say they were tortured. Such accounts are difficult to verify independently, and the Xinjiang authorities deny all allegations of abuse.

Chinese officials also continue to deny that they are holding Uyghurs on false charges. Down the road from the No. 3 center, high walls and guard towers were visible in the same location as the new detention facility shown in satellite imagery.

When asked what it was, officials pleaded ignorance.

“We don’t know what it is,” they said.

strong demand for timber in the colossal Chinese market, and they have called for a total ban on timber exports to China.

Officials have acknowledged the problem and pledged to tighten oversight, but Russia’s far-flung territory and regulatory loopholes make it hard to halt the illegal activity.

Critics blame the 2007 forest code that gave control over timberlands to regional authorities and businesses, eroding centralized monitoring, fueling corruption and contributing to illegal tree-cutting practices that help spawn fires.

wildfires also kill wildlife and pose a threat to human health by polluting the air.

Carbon emissions from fires and the destruction of forests, which are a major source of oxygen, also contribute to global wa r m i ng a nd its potent i a l ly catastrophic impact.

This year’s fires in Siberia already have emitted more carbon than those in some previous years, according to Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

He said the peat fires that a re com mon i n Si b e r i a a nd many other Russian regions are particularly harmful in terms of emissions because peat has been absorbing carbon for tens of thousands of years.

“Then it’s releasing all that carbon back into the atmosphere,” Parrington said.

While pledging adherence to the Paris agreement on climate change, Russian officials often underline the key role played by their forests in slowing down global warming. However, regular wildfires have the opposite effect, dramatically boosting carbon emissions.

“They emphasize that huge areas are covered by forests but neglect the effect of greenhouse gas emissions resulting from fires,” Greenpeace’s Kreindlin said.

Controversial regulations

Russian law allows authorities to let wildfires burn in certain areas if the potential damage is considered not worth the costs of containing them.

Critics have long assailed the provision, arguing it encourages inaction by authorities and slows firefighting efforts so a blaze that could have been extinguished at a relatively small cost is often allowed to burn uncontrolled.

“They eventually have to extinguish it anyway, but the damage and the costs are incomparable,” said Mikhail Kreindlin of Greenpeace Russia.

Long-term consequences

In addition to destroying trees,

Science

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Sunday

Sunday, July 25, 2021

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DOST-FNRI: Feeding practices for infants, children below standard Photo from https://radicorsolutions.com /

DOST partners with local inventor to treat medical waste in Davao

By Manuel T. Cayon

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Mindanao Bureau Chief

AVAO CITY—Nine years ago, local inventor Roderick S. Dayot presented his project Pyroclave, a low-cost thermal processor for the treatment of infectious medical waste, at a regional science and technology fair here.

In 2015, Pyroclave won the Most Outstanding Invention award at the Regional Invention Contest and Exhibit of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). A year later, it was adjudged the Second Most Outstanding Invention at the DOST’s National Invention Contest and Exhibit.

Pyroclave soon got the attention of the World Health Organization (WHO) and landed a slot for a competitive presentation in Silicon Valley, the world’s technology homeland. In 2018, the product received commercial break in Saudi Arabia to treat its medical waste on a national scale.

Today, Dayot’s innovative concept in treating infectious waste from hospitals has come full circle with his new design of a medical waste treatment and processor called Nitro-sterile.

Covid-related waste

MANUFACTURED by Bluelander Environmental Services, a company Dayot founded, Nitro-sterile has been given the green light by the DOST Davao Region to treat medical waste that had piled up due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

To address the problem on medical waste management and disposal, DOST said in a statement that it “[has] partnered with Bluelander Environmental Services, a private company in Davao City that provides affordable and environment-friendly services in medical waste management and treatment to meet the needs of hospitals and clinics.”

“As cases continue to rise, the national and local governments have [doubled their] efforts in promoting mass vaccination to achieve herd immunity against Covid-19. During the vaccination rollouts, tons of Covid-related waste are collected, [with] thousands of syringes and needles thrown away after,” the DOST said.

The company uses a technology called Nitro-sterile, wherein medical waste, such as used syringes and needles, undergo the thermal treatment process through sterilization.

US-patented machine

NITRO-STERILE is a US-patented machine that sterilizes medical waste in an oxygen-free chamber filled with pressurized high temperature nitrogen that

disinfects and shreds medical, clinical and pathological wastes into a very fine and unrecognizable material.

Following the sterilization process, the medical waste is disposed to a special waste cell, similar to a sanitary landfill.

“Our machines can reduce the volume of medical waste by 60 percent,” Dayot said.

“By regulation, medical waste is hazardous waste. Even if it is sterilized, you cannot dispose it in any sanitary landfill.

It should be [placed] in a special waste cell and cannot be recycled according to RA [Republic Act] 6969 [Toxic Substances and Hazardous and Nuclear Waste Control Act of 1990],” he said.

Managing medical waste

DAYOT, who is also president of Radicor Solutions, said that “if we manage the medical waste properly, we can prevent the spread of disease.”

Dayot told the BusinessMirror in an e-mail message that “medical waste from the waste generators, such as hospitals, clinics and Covid-19 vaccination centers, are collected by a registered hazardous-waste transporter, [which] goes to a waste treater for proper treatment and disposal.”

“For the present operation, we partnered with [Manila-based] Klad Environmental, a registered waste transporter, to collect the waste in Davao,” he said.

He said Bluelander Environmental Services “is still in the stage of completing the requirements for operation with the DENR-EMB [Department of Environment and Natural ResourcesEnvironmental Management Bureau]” as it targets to operate before the end of 2021.

Environment-friendly technology

“AS the manufacturer of Nitro-sterile, we have machines available for our operations in Davao, Cagayan de Oro, Zamboanga, Iloilo, Antique and Silay City in Negros Occidental,” he said.

Six machines are currently used to treat medical waste in different hospitals in Iloilo, Zamboanga and Cagayan de Oro, according to Dayot.

He said the absence of an environment-friendly technology in the medical waste industry inspired him to produce the Nitro-sterile, which has “no burning [involved] and does not produce any odor or emission.”

“This machine replaces other technologies, such as incinerators, autoclaves and microwaves, which are expensive, energy- and water-intensive and dangerous to operators who are near the machine,” Dayot said.

“It is also an affordable technology since it uses nitrogen, an inert gas that is cheap and readily available,” he said.

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ANY Filipino infants and young children between 6 months to 23 months old are not receiving adequate nutrients needed for their optimum growth and development.

The 2019 Expanded National Nutrition Survey (ENNS) of the Department of Science and Technology’s Food and Nutrition Research Institute (DOST-FNRI), that was released recently, revealed the “low adherence to infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practice recommendations for Filipino infants and young children” of this age group.

While seven out of 10 Filipino infants and young children in the same age group received timely introduction of complementary foods when they turn 6 months, eight out of 10 did not meet the minimum dietary diversity (MDD), the DOST-FNRI said in a news release.

MDD, a proxy or “substitute” indicator of micronutrient intake of infants and young children, is met when at least four of the following seven food groups are received: 1) grains, roots and tubers; 2) legumes and nuts; 3) dairy products; 4) flesh meat; 5) eggs; 6_ vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables; 7) other fruits and vegetables.

Moreover, nine out of 10 Filipino infants and young children 6 months to 23 months old are not receiving appropriate complementary feeding, suggesting poor quality and quantity of complementary foods.

In terms of types of complementary foods that most Filipino children of this age group are eating, the 2019 ENNS also showed that five out of 10 eat commercial baby food, while one out of five eats lugaw (porridge).

About 8 percent of them consume mashed vegetables, 7 percent boiled rice, 4 percent biscuits or breads and 2 percent fruits, the ENNS further revealed.

At 6 months old, complementary foods, together with continued breastfeeding, are needed to meet increasing nutritional requirements for the proper growth and development of an infant.

Complementary foods are meant to “complement” breastmilk in giving the nutrients that babies need.

Complementary foods given to infants and young children 6 months to 23 months old should be soft, mashed, well-cooked and safely prepared.

In addition, these foods should be given in gradually increasing consistency, texture and density until young children transition to food from the family pot or regular meals.

Between 6 months and 35 months, children undergo rapid growth and are more susceptible to malnutrition and infections.

The World Health Organization

This infant girl is being fed with her complementary food Elma Resurreccion declared this stage as the “window of opportunity,” or the First 1,000 Days, when nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive inter ventions should be properly implemented and coordinated across sectors.

L ac k of proper and adequate nutrition during this stage may result in stunting, or low length- or height-for-age.

St u nt i ng resu lts i n i mpa i red growth and development that infants and children experience due to suboptimal breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices, improper nutrition and environmental hygiene.

It has long-term effects, such as diminished cognitive and physical development, reduced productive capacity and poor health.

Moreover, intelligence scores of children after the age of three years can no longer be significantly improved even with a better diet.

T he DOST-FNR I Malnutrition Reduction Program (MRP) is an inte-

grated intervention strategy involving nutrition education and technology transfer of complementary food technologies of the Institute.

The MRP is in collaboration with the DOST regional and provincial offices, local government units, entrepreneurs, academe and other organizations involved in nutrition programs.

T hrough technolog y transfer, qualified beneficiaries are provided production equipment and license to produce and commercialize DOSTFNRI complementary food blends and snack foods in their communities.

Besides t he establ ishment of complementary food processing facilities, the Package for the Improvement of Nutrition of Young Children (DOST-Pinoy) will be implemented in these areas.

The DOST-Pinoy provides nutrition education to identified Barangay Health Workers and Barangay Nutrition Scholars on basic nutrition, breastfeeding, complementary feeding, meal planning, safe food handling and preparation and backyard vegetable gardening.

These trainings and seminars help in enhancing their knowledge and skills to effectively and efficiently implement the program in their localities.

Moreover, the 2021 Menu Guide Calendar (MGC) of DOST-FNRI focuses on recipes for complementary feeding of infants and young children 6 months to 23 months old to support their optimum growth and development.

The 2021 MGC features innovative kitchen-tested recipes that are sensory acceptable, utilizes locally available raw materials and provides adequate nutrient requirements for children 6 months to 23 months old.

‘Transfarm’ to be more resilient to climate change

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RANSFORMING rice farms to be more resilient to climate change needs more science and technology-enabling “transfarm” to produce climate change-ready crop varieties.

This was the message of Dr. Glenn B. Gregorio, director of the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca), in his speech on “Food on an Increasingly Hot Plate: Climate Change and Food Security,” a Searca news release said.

Gregorio spoke during the first of three webinars under the series, “Pagtugon sa mga Hamon sa Pagbabago sa Klima,” organized by the National Academy of Science and Technology, Philippines (NAST PHL) and The Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service (TOWNS) Foundation, Inc.

Dr. Glenn B. Gregorio

Searca.org photo

Gregorio, a NAST Academician, added that climate-resilient rice farms also need “quality seeds, mechanization and digitalized farming, nutritional revolution in farming through smart fertilization and water-saving technologies such as drip irrigation.”

With the changing weather patterns, rising sea levels and extreme weather events that have affected economies and lives around the globe, he said the “transformation in our food systems should start with our farmers—from a farmer as a produceronly to a transfarmer.”

Gregorio pointed out that “climate change in agriculture is not just a problem, but [also] a driver for research and business.”

He thus surmised that “agriculture must be treated as [a] business and industry, and our farmers must be transformed to become transfarmers.”

According to NAST Academician Aura G. Matias, the webinar series aims to “inform the general public, particularly the youth, about the changing climate situation in the Philippines and how this will affect the Filipino

way of life.”

Gregorio pointed out the strong potential of the youth to create possibilities and new innovations in agriculture. He shared that he developed a solar dryer and a refrigeration system when he was in high school.

“It is good that young people are increasingly aware of the challenges and risks presented by the climate crisis and of the opportunity to achieve sustainable development brought by solutions to climate change,” Gregorio said.

“However, young people are not just victims, but [they] also carry a lot of potentials in carrying out and accelerating climate action. They possess massive power to advocate for change and hold decision-makers accountable,” he said.

“Be the heroes we never were, and do it now,” Gregorio urged the youth.

BatStateU KIST Park to accelerate startups with DTI partnership, funding

DOST-TAPI showcases special projects, market-ready technologies in virtual event

EN Philippine startup companies will receive funding from the Global Acceleration Program (GAP) of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) through the Batangas State University’s (BatStateU) Knowledge, Innovation, Science and Technology (KIST) Park.

Key DTI and BatStateU officials met on July 17 at the KIST Park Center of BatStateU-Alangilan in Batangas City to discuss the plans and strategies to implement the program.

In a news release, BatStateU said DTI Assistant Secretary for Competitiveness and Innovation Dr. Napoleon K. Juanillo Jr. and Chief of Innovation and Collaboration Division of the Competitiveness and Innovation Group Karl Lyndon B. Pacolor attended the meeting.

BatStateU was represented by President Dr. Tirso A. Ronquillo and Vice President for Research, Development and Extension Services Engr. Albertson D. Amante.

The initiative is part of the implementation of Republci Act 11337, or the “Innovative Startup Act,” which provides benefits, incentives and other forms of

HE Department of Science and Technology’s Technology Application and Promotion Institute (DOST-TAPI) will unveil its soon-to-be completed special projects and market-ready technologies in a virtual celebration from July 26 to 30.

Dubbed “Week-long Accomplishment and Culminating Activity of Special Projects (Wacas),” DOST-TAPI will highlight the DOST 500 and the Technology Transfer Day projects.

The “Support to the Commercialization of 500 DOST-Generated Technologies and Strengthening the Country’s Intellectual Property [IP] and Technology Portfolios,” or DOST 500, has assisted the commercialization of technologies through the creation of IP database, IP portfolios, valuations and freedom to operate reports.

The project also assisted in creating the Fairness Opinion Board, and issuance of Fairness Opinion Report and Written Recommendation, which are crucial components of technology transfer.

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support to the startup ecosystem. “[The] government’s initiatives in forging partnerships, bridging gaps and enabling stakeholders [will] ensure a competitive, innovative and inclusive country,” BatStateU said.

DTI has allocated a seed funding of between P5 million to P25 million for five to 10 startups.

The partnership with DTI will boost the startup acceleration program of BatStateU through its KIST Park—the first in the Philippines.

BatStateU actively promotes a research culture, undertaking collaborative research to address the problems of the community and industry.

Its 15 development centers are recognized by the Regional Development Council of Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon) as the Regional Center for Technology Business Incubation and Development; the Regional Center for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Environment Research; and the Regional Inclusive Innovation Center.

The GAP aims to assist startups survive their early stages, scale up and globalize.

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DOST officials, led by Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña and Undersecretary Rowena Cristina Guevara, and Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines officials grace an event on IP partnership between the two age ncies. DOST-TAPI PHOTO Meanwhile, the Technology Transfer Day will show the DOST’s portfolio of market-ready technologies to possible adopters and investors.

“We are proud of the institute’s contribution to create an innovative ecosystem among inventors and technopreneurs through the propagation of a strong IP culture simultaneous with technology transfer initiatives,” said Atty. Marion Ivy D. Decena, officer in charge of DOST-TAPI. The week-long activity starts with knowledge-sharing webinars on IP rights, Freedom-to-Operate, IP valua-

tion and valuation methods on July 26.

A virtual media presser and launching of publications or print materials developed through the special projects will be held on July 27.

The beneficiaries of the special projects will share their commercialization journeys on July 28.

A Science Summit for the Youth will be held on July 29 to discuss invention and technology development, IP protection and technology commercialization.

The accomplishments and impact of the special projects and the winner

of Gawad Kintal: Best Commercialization Story will be known during the culminating activity on July 30.

“It is the first time for [TAPI] to celebrate such a crucial event because we want to [highlight] not only the importance of our work in the innovation system, but also [our] programs for inventors and researchers at the beg inning of their successful commercialization journey,” Decena said.

The Wacas will be livestreamed on the DOST-TAPI Facebook page.

Jund Rian A. Doringo/S&T Media Service

Faith A6 Sunday, July 25, 2021

Sunday

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion • www.businessmirror.com.ph

Nuncio to bring plight of drug war orphans, widows to Pope Francis N

Advincula eyes ‘mission stations’ for young priests of Manila

P

APAL Nuncio to the Philippines Archbishop Charles John Brown has assured the widows and orphans of the “drug war” victims that he will bring the matter of their plight to Pope Francis.

Brown, who recently met some of the widows and orphans, was “deeply moved ” hearing their stories and expressed the pope’s closeness to them.

“I am deeply sorry for everything that you have to go through,” Brown said after hearing the testimonies of eight individuals who are undergoing theater therapy at St. Arnold Janssen Kalinga Center in Tayuman, Manila.

“I assure you that Pope Francis is close to you. In fact, I would be going to see Pope Francis in October and I promise you I will tell him about this experience in person,” he said.

The nuncio, who visited the cen-

ter to grace the sixth anniversary celebration of its establishment, also listened to testimonies of some street dwellers.

The center was established by the Society of the Divine Word (SVD) in 2015 to provide services to the homeless.

In 2016, SVD missionar y Fr. Flaviano L. Villanueva founded the “Paghilom” program to reac h out to t hose who lost their loved ones due to killings under the government’s bloody war on drugs.

T he prog ram of fers suppor t to the bereaved families in five aspects: food, psychospir itua l inter vention, lega l assistance,

Papal Nuncio to the Philippines Archbishop Charles Brown prays for the “drug war” orphans and widows at the SVD-run Kalinga Center in Tayuman, Manila on July 16. ROY LAGARDE

educationa l assistance and l ivel i hood assist a nce.

Brown lauded the center’s initiative, “which is really a true gift from God for many families who are suffering the effects of this terrible violence.”

Such initiative is “close to the heart” of Pope Francis, he said.

“He wants us to take care of the marginalized and the people who are in the periphery, people

who are poor and overlooked,” Brown added.

Ref lecting on the theme of the fifth centenary celebration of Christianity in the country, he stressed that “all of us are gifted, so all of us must give,” especially to the poor.

“The poor are the sacramental image of who we are. We must love because we have been gifted to give,” he said. Roy Lagarde/CBCP News

Cardinal Bo: Myanmar under ‘excruciating period of anguish’

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YA NM A R’S Cardina l Charles Maung Bo has welcomed expressions of solidarity for his nation’s people who are struggling from the Covid-19 pandemic and the upheaval from the military coup.

These gestures, the Yangon archbishop said, “continue to hear our people” at these “very challenging times in our history.”

Over the last five months, he said, people have been facing threefold “existential threats to their dignity: coup, Covid-19 and collapse of the economy.” “ The tragic Way of the Cross our people tread for the last five months has been an excruciating period of anguish,” said Cardinal Bo, who heads the bishops’ conference of Myanmar.

“Hundreds died in the conflict, Covid waves carried away unknown numbers, to be buried unsung and unwept in their last moments,” he said.

Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Yangon, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Myanmar. YANGON ARCHDIOCESE PHOTO

The statement was contained in a letter sent to Davao Archbishop Romulo G. Valles, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).

The CBCP on Monday marked a “Day of Solidarity with Myanmar” where churches tolled their bells

and offered Masses for peace in that country.

July 19 was also designated as “Martyr’s Day” in Myanmar to honor its nationa l heroes who sacr if iced their lives in 1974 to regain the countr y’s independence.

“In these sorrowful moments, our sister Churches like yours stand by us, with intense prayer, campaign for peace and reconciliation and consistent support to our people,” Cardinal Bo said.

“We are deeply touched by your national bishops’ conference initiative to hold a nationwide prayer and obser ve a day of solidarity with the people of Myanmar,” he added.

The UN World Food Program has earlier warned that up to 3.4 million more people in Myanmar could go hungr y because of t he c r i ses i n t he com i ng months—on top of 2.8 million people considered food insecure before the coup.

Myanmar registered a record 281 Covid-19 deaths and 5,189 new infections on a single day on July 19. On Sunday, July 18, at least 231 also died of the disease, a bit lower from the record 233 on Saturday. CBCP News

EWLY installed Manila Archbishop Jose F. Cardinal Jr. is looking to establish “mission stations”—most likely to be led by young priests— to minister to the growing urban population.

Speaking at Radio Veritas on July 19, Cardinal Advincula laid out his initial pastoral plans for the archdiocese with nearly 3 million Catholics in 86 parishes.

“I don’t know if it’s possible to divide these big parishes into sm a l ler ones so t h at people w i l l be g iven more at tent ion,” Adv inc u l a sa id.

The prelate said he will consult the clergy and the archdiocese’s board of consultors on the matter.

He, however, admitted that he still needs to visit more parishes to see the deeper situation of the archdiocese.

There are 224 priests incarnated to the archdiocese, which covers the cities of Manila, Pasay, Makati, Mandaluyong and San Juan.

“We need to look at the whole situation so that we can determine how many parishes or

mission stations we can open, even gradually,” Advincula said.

Advincula added that more mission stations would also mean more priests, especially the younger ones, will be given the chance to lead a ministry.

He noted that many members of the clergy have been assigned to different parishes but remain assistant parish priests until now.

Adv inc u l a sa id t hat you ng pr iests w i l l most l i kely be g iven t he responsibi l it ies in t he new m ission st at ions because of t heir creat iv it y in ser v ing t he commu nit y.

“These young priests have very strong generativity, and they put their energy into creating programs in their parishes,” he said.

The 69-year-old prelate is known for establishing mission stations and mission schools in far-flung areas in his previous dioceses.

“I saw it a mong t he you ng priests in San Carlos and C api z. Life is ha rd at m ission stations, in the mountains, but t hey a re ver y creat ive in t heir m inist r ies a nd ser v ices to t he people,” he sa id. CBCP News

MANILA Archbishop Jose F. Cardinal Advincula Jr. is welcomed by residents of Maricaban in Pasay City on his first visit to the Mary Comforter of the Afflicted Parish on June 27. CARITAS MANILA PHOTO

Pabillo to be installed Taytay bishop on Aug. 19

By Samuel P. Medenilla

B

ISHOP Broderick S. Pabillo will assume his post as Vicar Apostolic of Taytay next month.

In an advisory, the Manila Cathedral said the canonical possession and rite of installation for the former Manila auxiliary bishop is scheduled on August 19, 9 a.m. at the St. Joseph the Worker Cathedral in Taytay, Palawan.

It will be broadcast live on the Facebook page and YouTube channel of the Manila Cathedral as well as in TV Maria cable channels.

Manila Archbishop Jose F. Cardinal Advincula Jr. will serve as Pabillo’s installing prelate.

The date of installation is considered significant since it will coincide with the feast day of St. Ezequiel Moreno, the Augustinian Recollect missionary and saint who served in Palawan.

It will also be the 15th episcopal anniversary of Bishop Pabillo.

Pabillo earlier said he welcomes his new appointment since it will give him the opportunity to reach out to the marginalized living in isolated communities in Palawan.

Muslims mark Eid al-Adha holiday in pandemic’s shadow C

AIRO—Muslims around the world were observing Tuesday yet another major Islamic holiday in the shadow of the pandemic and amid growing concerns about the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus.

Eid al-Adha, or the “Feast of Sacrifice,” is typically marked by communal prayers, large social gatherings, slaughtering of livestock and distributing meat to the needy.

This year, the holiday comes as many countries battle the Delta variant first identified in India, prompting some to impose new restrictions or appeal for people to avoid congregating and follow safety protocols.

T he pandemic has a lready taken a toll for the second year on a sacred mainstay of Islam, the hajj, whose last days coincide with Eid al-Adha.

Once drawing some 2.5 million Muslims from across the globe to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the pilgrimage has been dramatically scaled back due to the virus.

This year’s hajj has been limited to 60,000 vaccinated Saudi citizens or residents of Saudi Arabia.

On Tuesday, pilgrims wearing masks and maintaining social distancing performed the symbolic stoning of the devil in the valley area of Mina—using sterilized pebbles they received ahead of time.

“This is [a] very, very, very big moment for us, for me especially,” said pilgrim Arya Widyawan Yanto, an Indonesian living in Saudi Arabia. He added that he was happy he had the chance to perform the pilgrimage. “Everything was conducted under very strict precautions.”

Yanto said he hoped for the pandemic to end and for all Muslims to be able to perform the pilgrimage in a safe way.

Indonesia marked a grim Eid al-Adha amid a devastating new wave of coronavirus cases in the world’s most populous Muslimmajority nation. Vice President Ma’ruf Amin, also an influential Islamic cleric, appealed to people to perform holiday prayers at home with their families.

“Don’t do crowds,” Amin said in televised remarks ahead of the start of the holiday. “Protecting oneself from the Covid-19 pandemic is obligatory.”

MUSLIM women worshippers offer Eid al-Adha prayer in the mixed Arab Jewish city of Jaffa, near Tel Aviv, Israel, on July 20. AP/ODED BALILTY

T he surge in new cases is believed to have been fueled by travel during another holiday—the Eid al-Fitr festival in May—and by the rapid spread of the Delta variant.

In Malaysia, measures have been tightened after a sharp spike in infections, despite a national lockdown since June 1. People are banned from traveling back to their hometowns or crossing districts to celebrate. House visits and customary trips to graveyards are also banned.

Healthy worshippers are allowed to gather for prayers in mosques, with strict social distancing and no physical contact. Ritual animal sacrifice is limited to mosques and other approved areas.

Health Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah has urged Malaysians not to “repeat irresponsible behavior,” adding that travel and celebrations during Eid al-Fitr and another festival on the island of Borneo led to new clusters of cases.

“Let us not in the excitement of celebrating the Feast of Sacrifice

cause us all to perish because of Covid-19,” he said in a statement.

Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin urged Muslims to stay home. “I appeal to you all to be patient and abide by the rules because your sacrifice is a great jihad in Allah’s sight and in our effort to save lives,” he said in a televised speech on the eve of the festival.

The World Health Organization has reported that globally, Covid-19 cases and deaths had climbed after periods of decline, with the reversal spurred in part by the Delta variant.

Lockdowns will severely curtail Eid al-Adha festivities in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia’s two largest cities.

Sydney resident Jihad Dib, a New South Wales state government lawmaker, said the city’s Muslims were sad but understood why they would be confined to their homes with no visitors allowed.

“It’s going to be the first Eid in my life I don’t hug and kiss my mum and dad,” Dib told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Iran on Monday imposed a weeklong lockdown on the capital, Tehran, and the surrounding region as

the country struggles with another surge in the coronavirus pandemic, state media reported. The lockdown begins Tuesday.

Not everyone is imposing new restrictions. In Bangladesh, authorities have allowed an eight-day pause in the country’s strict lockdown for the holiday that health experts say could be dangerous.

British Muslims were celebrating in the wake of coronavirus restrictions being lifted in England this week, but against the backdrop of surging infections that are forecast to increase even further as the country opens up.

“Eid is about sacrifice, and Muslims, just like everyone else, have had to make huge sacrifices over the past 18 months, staying apart when normally you would come together,” said Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who recently tested positive for Cov id-19.

“There are brighter days ahead,” he said in a video message.

Eid al-Adha recalls the Quranic tale of Prophet Ibrahim’s test of faith and his willingness to sacrifice his son as an act of submission to God. AP

Biodiversity Sunday BusinessMirror

Asean Champions of Biodiversity Media Category 2014

Sunday, July 25, 2021

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

A7

Greening the city is the way to go

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

T

HE Covid-19 pandemic has given rise to the “plantitos/plantitas”—plant hobbyists, home gardeners and indoor farmers—who have found a more productive way to spend their quarantined lives.

And as the coronavirus continues to threaten communities with the highly transmissible and deadlier Delta variant, the trend will likely continue as both a pastime and a food source for plant lovers and nurturers in the Philippines.

A way to fight hunger

MER Layson, a journalist and urban farming practitioner, has been teaching how to raise vegetables using plastic bottles via Facebook and YouTube.

In a telephone interview on July 19, Layson, also known as “Magsasakang [Farmer] Reporter,” said urban farming has become a way to fight hunger and poverty.

“I taught urban farming face-toface at my house in Paco, Manila, but it stopped during the pandemic,” Layson said.

“Fortunately, my son taught me how to use YouTube so I started teaching again,” he said in Filipino.

Layson said that many people are interested in learning how to grow their own food when access to food became momentarily difficult at the height of the pandemic.

“Even government employees are becoming interested in learning how to plant and grow their own food,” he said.

Layson started appearing in a television program and writing a column

on urban farming for a local tabloid.

“I believe God has made me an instrument to help others become urban farmers. It has become my advocacy.

While I continue to work as a reporter, I still consider myself a farmer and I want to teach others how to farm,” he said.

Expanding green spaces

IN a statement last month, Environment Secretary Roy A. Cimatu called on Metro Manila residents to adopt vertical gardening techniques to maximize their limited space, help create more green spaces in the urban jungles and preserve urban biodiversity.

“We can derive so much benefits from these green spaces, which include green walls, green roofs, vertical gardens, urban forest parks, the linear forest along walkways, transport routes and river systems,” he said.

According to Cimatu, these networks of green spaces will improve air quality, reduce heat, increase energy efficiency, reduce noise pollution and provide habitats for wildlife.

Urban biodiversity program

THE Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Biodiversity Management Bureau (DENR-BMB) has been promoting the Urban Biodiversity Program among the local government units—which includes urban forest bathing and green infrastructures— to increase green spaces and enhance biodiversity in urban areas.

Urban forest bathing promotes the health benefits of forests and green spaces, while green infrastructures are buildings or infrastructures that support green energy and provide environmental benefits.

Green, leafy vegetables can be grown using plastic containers. MER LAYSON Urban biodiversity makes nat u re c l o s e r t o u r b a n d w e l l e r s , DENR Undersecretar y Benny D. A ntiporda said.

“We can only do so much based on our existing laws in preserving the green spaces in Metro Manila, but even an ordinary citizen can help in this endeavor,” Antiporda said.

He said the rise of plantitos and plantitas have helped reverse the impact of rapid infrastructure development in Metro Manila.

While this trend is helpful, Antiporda noted that the demand for ornamental plants also “invited the unwanted proliferation of plant poachers.”

He appealed to plant hobbyists not to patronize illegally traded plants, especially non-native plants, because of their possible adverse impacts to the environment.

This may result, he said, in “bringing pests and diseases that may infect other species of plants.”

greening the city with the gradual opening of the economy as 60 of its barangay chairmen recently completed a short course on urban farming.

The local leaders attended the “Pasay City Urban Farm Tourism” at the International School of Sustainable Tourism (ISST) in Barangay Biga II, Silang, Cavite, with the aim of cleaning and greening Pasay City through various urban farming techniques.

Initiated by Pasay City Mayor Emi Calixto-Rubiano, together with the Pasay City Tourism and Cultural Development Office and the ISST, the trainer’s training program held from July 7 to 9 was sponsored by the Philippine Exporters Confederation, Inc. (Philexport) in cooperation with the local government of Silang, Cavite.

Among the urban farming techniques taught during the training are vertical gardening, hydroponics and plastic container gardening.

PASAY City has seen an opportunity in

ISST chairman and president Dr. Mina

Greening the city

New ‘sexy’

ATFX, Panglao LGU team up for coastal cleanup, reef restoration

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ITH its pristine whitesand beaches, coral formations and reef fishes, Panglao Island has become one of the Philippines’s popular tourist destinations.

The diving haven has attracted thousands of tourists every year, boosting business and employment opportunities in the island.

This came w ith a heav y price, however, as Panglao suffered from severe env ironmental damage due to a burgeoning solid waste management problem and t he har m made to its coral reefs.

Inspired by its traders in the Visayas who are divers and ocean conservation advocates, ATFX, a global foreign exchange and contract-fordifference trading services broker, recently supported the municipality of Panglao’s coastal cleanup and reef restoration project led by Mayor Leonila P. Montero from June 16 to 21, an ATFX news release said.

Reef ranger Danilo Menorias (left) with an ATFX partner community volunteer. ATFX photo Through its corporate social responsibility arm ATFX Cares and local educational partner SmarTrade Philippines, ATFX traders joined more than 100 volunteers from different groups in picking up trash along the coast of Barangay Doljo in Panglao.

T hey collected over 541 kilos

of solid waste composed of residuals, hard plastics, bottles, cans and diapers.

ATFX also helped restore four coral beds and provided funds to maintain the reef restoration project.

“Healthy coral reefs translate to improved marine biodiversity. This in turn impacts the tourism industry

in Panglao and provides employment and opportunities to locals and fishermen here,” reef ranger and dive instructor Danilo Menorias said.

In support of sustainable eco-tourism and environmental protection in Panglao, ATFX is also a sponsor of the Bohol Dive Festival 2021.

“ATFX Cares is all about creating a positive impact in communities and people around the world,” said ATFX CEO Joe Li. “One of our priorities and advocacies is environmental protection and preservation, and we are deeply honored to participate in this project, which also helps the tourism industry in the Visayas, with our community partners,” Li said.

ATFX previously sponsored the A ray at t ree - pl a nt i ng projec t i n 2018, delivered goods and emergency packs to victims of the Davao earthquake in December 2019 and provided medical supplies and meals to frontliners in April 2020.

Solane shifts to safe, sustainable Bioseal

L

iquefied petroleum gas (LPG) brand Solane has started rolling out Bioseal, the “first of its kind biodegradable” LPG seal in the country, in responding to the challenge of reducing its carbon footprint.

In a statement, Solane said it has replaced its old plastic safety seals with the Bioseal—which is easier to recycle and takes a shorter time to decompose when discarded—as part of the company’s commitment to sustainability.

In its manufacturing process, Solane’s new seal also consumes less energy, contributing to reduced carbon emissions.

“Sustainability has always been at the core of our efforts as a company,” Isla LPG Corp. Marketing Manager Valeri Villano said.

“Through safe, sustainable and innovative LPG solutions like the Bioseal, we [take] further steps to provide excellent products and services to our consumers,” Villano said.

Using cutting-edge technology from a plastic solutions company to significantly speed up the decomposition process, the Bioseal will only take an estimated five to 10 years to biodegrade as opposed to

500 to 1,000 years that normal plastic wastes need to decompose.

Consumers can seg regate the Biosea l w ith biodeg rad able waste in a compost pit for d isposa l and let it decompose over time. T he Biosea l can a lso be easi ly rec yc led together w ith ord inar y plastics.

With this innovative move, Solane said that all the components of its LPG tank will soon be reusable, recyclable and compostable.

Besides the reduced environmental impact, Bioseal also reinforces the Solane’s commitment to consumer safety.

W hile Bioseal weighs lighter than the original plastic seal, it does not affect its strength and shelf life, according to Solane.

With an improved locking mechanism, the seal further protects its cylinders from potential leaks or when tampered with, and adjusts well in discharging clean fuel.

Complying with the European food stuff regulation and the US food contact notification, Bioseal adheres to food safety requirements, ensuring it is safe to use around food in the kitchen.

The Bioseal will allow customers to differentiate an authentic Solane LPG c ylinder f rom substandard LPGs and

counterfeit tanks, which may lead to gas leaks that can expose t he households to potentia l explosions and fire incidents.

Gabor said that with urban farm tourism agriculture is becoming “sexy” for the youth.

“Our far mers are ageing and the youth are not very interested in farming. Our school wants to change this, and right now we have started to generate awareness and the youth are becoming attracted to urban farming,” Gabor said.

Gabor, a former Tourism secretary, said urban farming is also an effective fighting tool in fighting hunger and poverty.

“Even in the pandemic, we experienced limited access to food. That is because all our food comes from outside Metro Manila. With urban farming, we can help every barangay to produce food,” she said.

Urban farm tourism

THE concept of urban farm tourism also aims to seize tourism opportunities by showcasing successful greening projects at the barangay level. Pasay City has a total of 201 barangays divided into 20 different zones.

The city has realized that among the benefits of urban farm tourism is creating green jobs and livelihood opportunities by maximizing the use of limited space.

Bringing the farm to the city is also encouraging the youth to venture into urban farming and empower them to be more engaged in agriculture for environmental sustainability and food security.

Beneficial endeavor

“FIRST and foremost, planting is beneficial to our health. Second, it boosts food security,” Teresita C. Robles,

founder of “Aasenso sa Green and Clean,” said in an interview with the BusinessMirror on July 9.

Robles, who also heads the Pasay City Heritage and Cultural Commission, said urban farming was initiated by Mayor Rubiano, her younger sister, when she organized “I Care for Mother Earth.”

“We as citizens have the duty and responsibility to take care of our environment and Mother Earth,” Robles said.

The way to go

GEORGE Tiopes, head of Pasay City Tourism Department, said urban farming is the way to go for Pasay City.

“Even with the concrete surroundings, it is not impossible to grow vegetables. We can do it vertically, by hydroponics or even grow vegetable in plastic containers,” he said.

Tiopes said he plans to encourage barangay officials to develop a space that can be part of a tourism package to be offered by the city’s tourism department.

Spicing up urban farming PHILEXPORT President and CEO Sergio Ortiz-Luis, who is also a convener and co-founder of Sulong Pasay, said that while urban farming is not an entirely new concept, integrating it with tourism somehow spices up the endeavor.

Pasay City-based Philexport supports urban farming as it maximizes the opportunity for food production within a very limited space.

“Pasay City is an asphalt jungle so the best way is to promote urban farming in every community. What’s more, the program is integrated with the opportunity of tourism,” he said.

Fisherfolk, CSOs give Duterte admin 1/10 rating on SDG 14 ‘Life Below Water’

O

N the eve of President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s last State of the Nation Address (Sona), fisherfolk and civil society organizations (CSOs) gave his administration 1/10 rating in implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14, or “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.”

The appraisal—based on the “ratio of the number of government targets compared to the UN’s”—was announced in a recent online forum on SDG-14 or “Life Below Water” organized by the Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya), Council for People’s Development and Governance (CPDG) and Agham Diliman. “ The Duterte [administration] grossly failed the SDG 14, even at the very appreciation of its essence, and of the whole 2030 Agenda,” said Pa m a l a k aya Nat iona l C ha ir m a n Fernando Hicap.

“It failed on the elementary stage of setting goals, targets and indicators, selectively highlighting items it favored and clearly abandoned its essence of benefiting the marginalized and vulnerable small fisherfolk sector,” Hicap said in his presentation on the Fisherfolk and People’s Agenda for SDG 14.

Hicap, a former Anakpawis Partylist representative, said that out of the 10 goals and 10 targets set by the UN for SDG 14 on its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Duterte administration through the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) only picked one goal as part of its national counterpart agenda.

Neda, he said, only included indicator “14.5.1 Coverage of protected areas in relation to marine areas,” on its 2030 Nationally Determined Numerical Targets for the SDGs. Jerwin Baure, Agham Diliman chairman and Pamalakaya’s resident fisheries expert, said that “small-scale fishing is actually the form of sustainable fisheries and should be promoted and protected.”

He said the sustainable yield curve and overfishing or surpassing the

maximum sustainable yield (MSY) happens “through the increased effort and cost predominantly of commercial fishing,” which ultimately leads to depletion as manifested by low catch.

He emphasized that the future of fishing lies in fleets of artisanal or small-scale fishing vessels.

The online forum was part of CPDG’s campaign called the “People’s rev iew of the SDGs in 2021: R ising above the health and economic crisis in the time of Cov id-19” involving people’s organizations and sectoral groups.

CPDG is promoting alternatives to the neoliberal Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022, such as People Economics based on the socio-economic and democratic rights of Filipinos and national sovereignty or freedom from dictates of foreign entities.

In the same forum, CPDG Coordinator Jen Guste talked about the SDGs and the concepts of People Economics where she “correlated the persisting economic crisis to dominant economic policies and programs that are detrimental to the welfare of basic and marginalized sectors.”

She said it is vital for the country to push the pillars of People Economics, which includes developing the countryside, building the industries, protecting the environment, upholding people’s rights and welfare, public finance development and attainment of economic independence.

Hicap added: “ We could even give [the Duterte administration] a negative rating as [its] very framework, predominantly based on the Fisheries Code, is totally anti-small fisherfolk and useless against Chinese imperialist plunder in the West Philippine Sea.” “The lip-service target of protecting marine areas is even demolished by the continuing destruction of the marine environment by China. The fulfillment of SDGs in the country apparently would only be possible if Duterte resigns from his post and a genuine economic policy based on the People Economics is realized in the country,” Hicap said.

Sports BusinessMirror

A8 | S

unday, July 25, 2021 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

BAL LOONS fly over Olympians and spectators during the opening ceremony of the 1964 Summer Olympics at the National Stadium in Tokyo. AP

JAPANESE RESILIENCY ON DISPLAY

By Stephen Wade The Associated Press

T

OKYO—Just 19 years after devastating defeat in World War II, the 1964 Tokyo Olympics showcased the reemergence of an innovative country that was showing off bullet trains, miniature transistor radios, and a restored reputation.

Japan’s resiliency is on display again, attempting to stage the postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympics in the midst of a once-in-a century pandemic. The challenge is different, and this time there is widespread public opposition that has divided the country over the health hazards with nagging questions about who benefits from staging the Games.

Roy Tomizawa, who documented the ’64 Olympics in a recent book, described those distant Games 57 years ago as the “Inclusion Games” in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

He called the attempt this time the “Exclusion Games.” But he offered some hope.

“Whether you agree or disagree with the Japanese government, the Games are going ahead in the face of significant risk,” Tomizawa said. But he said these

Games might also be turned into “Inclusion Games.”

“With a high degree of difficulty,” he added.

“Organizing an Olympics and Paralympics during this pandemic is like Simone Biles executing a Yurchenko Double Pike, a vault so difficult no other female gymnast wants to do it. Biles can. Maybe Japan can, too,” Tomizawa said.

Tomizawa’s book is titled: 1964—The Greatest Year in the History of Japan: How the Tokyo Olympics Symbolized Japan’s Miraculous Rise from the Ashes.

It came out last year, just months before the postponed Olympics were to open.

Tomizawa writes in the book about the massive effort to be

ready in ‘64: “Police were taking pickpockets off the streets and ensuring bars in Tokyo were complying with directives to close down early.... In fact, every man, woman, and child in Japan was getting ready to welcome the world to their country believing it was their civic duty to ensure that foreigners who came to town were not deprived of any necessity or assistance.”

This was the year that Cassius Clay won the heavyweight championship and became Muhammad Ali. It was when Roy Emerson of Australia and Maria Bueno of Brazil took the titles at Wimbledon, when Arnold Palmer claimed his fourth and final Masters, and when the Beatles arrived on a Pan Am flight from London to play their first concert in the United States.

And it was later that same year in Tokyo when Yoshinori Sakai—born on August 6, 1945, in Hiroshima, the day the atomic bomb was dropped on the city—ignited the cauldron in the national stadium to open the 18th Olympic Games.

Tomizawa grew up in New York, and his father, Tom, a second-generation JapaneseAmerican, was an editor who worked for the television

network NBC at the Olympics in Tokyo—the first to be shown internationally using communication satellites.

The family connection and curiosity got Tomizawa looking for a history in English of those 1964 Games. He couldn’t find one, so he wrote his own.

Tomizawa, who has worked for 20 years in Japan, interviewed 70 Olympians from 16 nations. Some were famous at the time: Australian swimmer Dawn Fraser or American 10,000-meter gold-medalist Billy Mills.

Some made other history, like Bulgarian teammates Nikolai Prodanov and Diana Yorgova, who were married in Tokyo during the Olympics. It was billed as the first Olympic wedding and featured a Shinto priest, sake, traditional Bulgarian dances, and an interpreter to explain what was going on.

He said his favorite interview was with Jerry Shipp, a shooting guard on the American goldmedal winning basketball team coached by Hank Iba. It lasted for several hours with Shipp recounting a tough childhood growing up in an Oklahoma orphanage.

Shipp led the Americans in scoring ahead of Bill Bradley on a team that also included Larry

Brown and Walt Hazzard. In addition to Shipp, Tomizawa also interviewed Jeff Mullins, Mel Counts and Luke Jackson.

“I think the Olympians tell more of the story of the Games themselves and their reaction to what they saw of Japan,” Tomizawa said. “Some had been to Japan in ’50s and ’60s.

I think everyone was surprised and shocked when they arrived in Japan thinking it would be a backward economy.”

They were also taken aback by the nature of the Japanese.

“For the Canadians, the Australians, the Americans, the Brits—it was the brutal enemy,” Tomizawa said. “When they came, they were welcomed and given such help and support and cheering. It was a surprise to all of them.”

They also found what Tomizawa called “operational excellence,” convincing doubters about the country’s capabilities.

The current Tokyo organizers will need that resiliency, although just getting through these Olympics is sure to be portrayed as a success no matter the details and the financial costs.

Japan is officially spending $15.4 billion on the Olympics, but government auditors say the costs are much higher. All but $6.7 billion is public money.

Olympic cycling road races studies in contrast

T

OKYO—The men’s and women’s Olympic road races that begin the cycling program at the Tokyo Games this weekend are similar only in their start amid the forests of Musashinonomori Park and their finish line at Fuji International Speedway.

After identical stretches through the outskirts of Tokyo, their courses differ with the men tackling the iconic climb of Mount Fuji twice and the women avoiding it entirely. The men also have the punchy climb of Mikuni Pass that the women avoid, and will end up riding 145 miles to the 85 for the women while nearly doubling the amount of climbing.

Yet the biggest difference between the men’s and women’s races is this: More than a dozen men have a chance to capture the gold medal in Saturday’s wide-open ride through the Tokyo countryside, while the women’s race Sunday amounts to a showdown between the four-woman Dutch team and

everyone else.

“Everybody in the world is trying to figure out how to beat the Dutch girls,” acknowledged Jim Miller, the high-performance director for USA Cycling, which will roll with Ruth Winder, Coryn Rivera, Amber Neben and Chloe Dygert on Saturday.

“It’s the Dutch’s race to win or lose and every other nation is going to race off how they control the race. I think we have a good team for that,” Miller added. “We have good tactics to at least have a crack at the Dutch women.”

So, who is on this so-called Dutch dream team?

It starts with Anna van der Breggen, the reigning Olympic gold medalist, fresh off a dominant victory in the Giro d’Italia Donne. Joining the world champ are Marianne Vos, who captured gold at the 2012 Games in London; La Course by Le Tour and Liege-Bastogne-Liege winner Demi Vollering; and Annemiek van Vleuten, who was leading the Rio Olympics road race before a

crash on a downhill section left her with a concussion and three spinal fractures.

Together, the four riders from the Netherlands have won nine world championships, three Olympic medals and just about every marquee race for professional women—Amstel Gold, La Fleche Wallonne and many others.

“We have a very strong crop of cyclists at our disposal from which we could select three fully-fledged Olympic teams.

That really is a luxury position,” Dutch national team coach Loes Gunnewijk said. “We’re one of the favorites but we are used to that.

And the riders can also do very well there. It’s still sport, there are no guarantees in advance. All the pieces of the puzzle have to come together that day. But we leave with one goal: that is gold and a third consecutive title.”

Before the women take to the course, though, the men will race for one of the first medals of the delayed Tokyo Games. AP

THE US’s Chloe Dygert pedals during the women elite race at the road world championships in Harrogate, England, in 2019. AP

NBC doesn’t plan on adding crowd noise in Tokyo

O

NE of Molly Solomon’s favorite memories from the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics was watching Lindsey Vonn in the start house. Cameras would focus on the skiing great, with microphones picking up her breathing while she listened to final instructions.

With no spectators in the stands during the Tokyo Games, Solomon is hoping to pick up on more of those moments.

The NBC Olympics executive producer said that the network will not add additional crowd noise to its coverage. The hope is that fans will hear the Games as they haven’t been able to before, whether it is the action in the pool during swimming or conversations between competitors and coaches during gymnastics.

“You look at gymnastics and think about the distinctive intricacies of each apparatus, and we really feel like we’ll be able to bring the viewer closer to the athlete’s experience here in Tokyo than ever before,” said Solomon, who is working her 11th Olympics for NBC. The only crowd noise that viewers may hear is ambient crowd noise that venues might use to generate atmosphere for the athletes.

With more than 300 events at the Olympics, it would be a logistical nightmare for NBC and Olympic Broadcasting Service, which provides the world feed, to layer in crowd noise, especially with each sport having its own cadence and pace.

Solomon noted that during breaststroke races in swimming, fans whistle during the races.

Layering that in would be over the top. Most venues will run some sort of sound tracks to simulate crowd murmur or presence, but only to prevent total silence and for competitive reasons.

“We’ve pivoted to know that we’ve got access to all of these fields-of-play microphones. So, we really feel like we can enhance the sounds of the Games. But you will also hear any crowd presence that is actually being injected into the venue. You’ll hear it as the athletes hear it,” she said.

Terry Gannon, who will be broadcasting gymnastics, said not having a crowd will also call for some changes into how announcers call events.

“There are certain things you do as an announcer because you play off and wait for the crowd.

Now you don’t have the crowd and you’re probably going to have to come in right away,” he said.

With friends and family unable to watch in the venues, NBC is deploying production teams throughout the country to catch their reactions. The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee has set up a base at Universal Resorts in Orlando, Florida.

Other broadcasters are taking a different approach. Australia’s Seven Network says it plans to layer in crowd noise because it gives fans a level of familiarity.

“We will be using crowd effects in our Olympic Games coverage purely to enhance the viewer experience,” said Lewis Martin, Seven’s head of network sport. “These effects have been successfully refined in our coverage of the AFL [Australian Rules Football] over the past 18 months, when we have worked tirelessly to meet the feedback of our viewers, whose primary expectation is simply that the contest they’re watching sounds and looks like the sport they know and love.” AP

BusinessMirror

July 25 2021

Here’s how fans can best support young athletes

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YOUR MUSI

BLUE IS THE MOST COMPLEX COLOR Alternative rockers Wolf Alice on spending a ‘Blue Weekend’

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By Stephanie Joy Ching

OLLOWING their 2017 album, Visions of A Life, British alternative rockers Wolf Alice returned to the music scene with their third studio album, Blue Weekend last June. Featuring hits such as “The Last Man On Earth”, “Smile”, “No Hard Feelings” and “How Can I Make It OK?,” the band explores the many different connotations of the color blue.

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: Aldwin M. Tolosa

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: Niggel Figueroa Anabelle O. Flores : Tony M. Maghirang, Rick Olivares, Darwin Fernandez, Leony Garcia, Stephanie Joy Ching

According to the band, though they spent almost two to three years writing the songs, they only came up with the album title while in a cab in Brussels.

“We got the name ‘Blue Weekend’ when me, Ellie and Joel were in an Uber in Belgium which was where we were recording the album.

And then Ellie said; ‘that’s a blue weekend’ because it was such a blue sky, and that name stuck around,” said bassist Theo Ellis during a recent online interview with SoundStrip and other Philippine media.

As blue has two contrasting connotations, the band elected to structure the album around a narrative of a blue weekend to explore its themes. As such, the album starts with a sombre, almost gothic atmosphere with songs like

Pauline Joy M. Gutierrez : Kaye VillagomezLosorata Annie S. Alejo

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“The Beach” and the single “Smile”, but gradually gets brighter and happier sounding, starting from “How Can I make it OK?” to the cathartic crescendo of “The Last Man on Earth.” This effectively allows the band to go through the spectrum of the connotations of blue with ease but still maintain the band’s seamless taste for creating a dreamy atmosphere.

“We liked the two sides of blueone being sad and one being happy and being full of lots of different emotions,” said Ellis.

In order to further drive the themes Blue Weekend explores home, the band also released music videos for each of the eleven songs.

Each video weaves a continuing narrative within the album, with lead vocalist Ellie Roswell serving as the protagonist.

“Through being in lockdown we were kind of looking for ways of conveying this album and presenting it to people. So what we did was to shoot music videos.

We ended up shooting one video for each song and they become a sequential story or loose narrative of a blue weekend, which was directed by an amazing artist called Jordan Hemingway,” added Ellis.

With Hemingway’s direction combined with the experimentations of drummer Joel Amey on the synth tracks, the aesthetics of the album take on a surrealist 80s vibe with a hint of gothic elements from the ethereal backing vocals on some songs. With those elements in place, the album is simultaneously daring and vulnerable amidst the hazy dreamscape it creates. With its individual elements seeming neatly connected to one another, it is hard to believe that all the band did to create this work of art is to just “chase the feeling.”

“We base most of our directions and decisions on chasing the feeling, which is why a lot of the songs sound different from one another unless you listen to it in the order we put it out on” said Ellie.

“Blue Weekend” is available for streaming on all major streaming platforms.

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BUSINESS

SoundSampler

by Tony M. Maghirang

MAJOR MUSIC HEADLINES THIS WEEK Barbie Almalbis releases challenging fourth album

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ITH the release of her fourth studio album titled “Scenes From Inside,” acclaimed Filipino artist Barbie Almalbis celebrates her 25th year in the music business.

Derived from her experiences as a musician, a mom, a friend, a wife, and a pet lover during the time of quarantine, the 9-track concept album marks a new chapter in Almalbis’ challenging but colorful adult life.

According to the awardwinning multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, the process of making an album can be tedious at times, but for Scenes From Inside, Almalbis was given a chance to record her new album at a more relaxed pace, in her most convenient time.

Flickering through recent memories with warm, conversational flair, Scenes From Inside gives listeners a reason to keep coming back.

Drawing from her introspective and engaging songwriting style and intricate production, Almalbis’ latest album’s carefully constructed compositions evoke everything that we love from the ‘90s while inhabiting a more expansive musical canvas to toy around with — jangly indie pop, electronic music, post-rock, alternative pop, Christian music, folk roc—plus a whole lot more.

Pianist Raul Sunico presents the influential music of Italy

ON the occasion of the 280th death anniversary of Antonio Vivaldi, world renowned Filipino pianist Raul Sunico will give a lecture recital headlined “The Music Of Italy Through The Centuries.”

A musical travelogue of Italy, the upcoming online event takes a brief overview of Italy’s music history spanning 2000 years of stylistic development and compositional trends. The country’s musical dominance especially during the Medieval Renaissance, and Baroque periods has produced the likes

of Palestrina, Monteverdi, Vivaldi, and Guido of Arezzo who have helped shaped the direction of future composers from the Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary periods. The operatic form that started with Peri and Monteverdi will see its golden age in the Romantic tradition of Rossini, Verdi, and Puccini while producing the vocal talents of Caruso and Pavarotti.

You can experience the various musical sounds of the different periods as they unfold over time and show how Italy’s music and musicians have become a most important contribution to world music.

Presented by the SSI Group, Dr. Sunico’s lecture recital is happening on July 28th, 6:308:00 PM, via Zoom.

promises to offer an alternative but viable platform that connects global music networks to Southeast Asia, primarily the seven co-organizing countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand; with Cambodia and Vietnam further expanding this year’s programming with additional participating delegates and more up-and-coming and established local artists to the regional lineup.

AMS co-founder and Director of Educational, Governmental, and Overseas Partnership of Bangkok-based music company Fungjai, Piyapong ‘Py’ Muenprasertdee, shares that the participating organizers of each country aim to help regional artists be proactive and put their music in front of potential talent buyers from all over the world.

AMS is co-organized by

ASEAN Music Showcase Festival 2021 this September

SOUTHEAST Asia’s first collaborative intraregional music showcase festival is slated to return on its second edition with an initiative to help regional artists stay connected with their fan base and introduce themselves to new audiences despite the setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ASEAN Music Showcase Festival (AMS) will have its online premiere from September 11-12, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) via YouTube. Virtual speed meetings aimed to provide one-on-one networking opportunities between emerging regional musicians and global music industry professionals will be held as a private event the following day, September 13, 2021 (Monday).

With the live music and entertainment industries being hit hard across the globe, AMS

BARBIE Almalbis

Fungjai, NYLON Thailand, and Bangkok Music City from Thailand; The Rest Is Noise PH from the Philippines; Steady State Records from Singapore; SRM from Indonesia; City Roars Festival from Malaysia; Baramey Production from Cambodia; and Monsoon Music Festival and Swan Zoo from Vietnam.

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Here’s how fans can best support young athletes

By Paul Gorczynski University of Portsmouth

A

fter withdrawing from the 2021 French Open to protect her mental health, tennis player Naomi Osaka called for privacy, empathy and that sportspeople be allowed to take time out for personal reasons. “Athletes are human,” she said.

Osaka’s statement was an important reminder that elite athletes are not immune from mental-health problems. They are just as likely as non-athletes to experience symptoms of depression or anxiety.

What is not highlighted enough, though, is how young many of these elite athletes are. Whether it’s 18-year-old Emma Raducanu pulling out of Wimbledon due to performance anxiety or the racist abuse leveled at, among others, 19-year-old footballer Bukayo Saka in the wake of England’s loss at the Euro 2020 final, they are still teenagers.

Meanwhile, Team GB, or the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic team, is prepping its youngest summer Olympian ever, skateboarder Sky Brown. Brown will be 13 years old when she competes in the Tokyo Olympics.

So what do fans need to bear in mind about these star athletes at the beginning

Skateboarder Sky Brown is set to become Team GB’s youngest Summer Olympian ever at 13 years old. REUTERS/ Alamy Stock Photo via The Conversation

of their international careers? How best can they support them?

What do fans need to remember?

Like their peers, young athletes are still developing physically, psychologically and socially. They are finding their way through the world, gaining experience, both personally, as young people, and professionally, as athletes.

From challenging training obligations and competition demands, to tiring travel schedules and fulfilling academic requirements, not to mention being away from family and friends, they have a lot on their minds. They might not yet have undertaken the training in psychological skills to deal with all these demands. It is no wonder that younger athletes are more likely to experience anxiety than older athletes.

On top of the stresses and pressures of performing at this level, elite athletes are

public figures. And as such, they often face harassment and abuse online.

Research shows that young athletes view social media both positively and negatively. It is a means to reach lots of fans quickly, advocate for important issues, and gain moral support from lots of people. But it also involves dealing with hostile, unwelcome, critical and toxic comments. Of the 537 sportswomen who responded to the 2020 BBC Elite British Sportswomen survey, 30 percent said they had been affected by social media trolling.

The level of media and social-media training young athletes receive depends on their sport, level of play, league affiliations and personal resources. Some will simply be better prepared than others to dealing with the pressures that social media may throw their way.

What can fans do?

A lot of responsibility for monitoring,

reporting and addressing abuse and harassment online comes down to the fans themselves. People on social media should remember that they can flag and report any abuse and harassment they see being thrown at the athletes they support. Some fans are also pushing for changes to the way people can open social-media accounts.

They are calling for verified identification to be made a requirement to prevent harmful anonymous activity online.

Outside of social media, other fans have taken action, too. The defacing of the Marcus Rashford mural in Withington has resulted in hundreds of fans covering the graffiti with messages of solidarity. Rashford has responded on Instagram saying that he is overwhelmed, thankful and lost for words for the support that he has received from his fans. Rashford’s response illustrates perhaps the most important thing for the audience to bear in mind. When fans engage with young athletes, they are effectively engaging in a relationship, only one that is mediated through social media.

Of course, athletes can have a huge effect on their fans through their behavior and action. But so, too, can fans. What we write and what we do affects the athletes we follow. Take, for instance, the gratitude expressed by Raducanu to her fans. She noted that it was their support that helped her learn to make sense of what happened in the tournament and helped her to continue to persevere in the future.

People need to be kind and mindful about what they post. They will need to ensure that what they post is not unsportsmanlike, derogatory, demeaning or threatening. No matter how big or how small the message of support is to young athletes, it matters to them. So put yourself in their shoes. The Conversation ON THE COVER: Photo by GETSLOWER on Unsplash

Secret’s out: Tokyo’s hidden Nintendo Café

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or years, a former Nintendo Co. employee ran a members-only diner at a secret location in Tokyo, frequented by movers and shakers in the video game industry. After closing its doors just before the pandemic last year, it has quietly reopened as a café and this time anyone can make a reservation. It’s a one-of-a-kind industry institution filled with classic game memorabilia that insists on keeping its location a mystery.

Tucked away at the back of a nondescript building in the hip Shibuya district, the establishment named 84 is the brainchild of Toru Hashimoto, who initially conceived it as a sanctuary for game developers to nerd out and relax. Entering the venue triggers a Legend of Zelda achievement jingle. On the walls are impromptu doodles by the creators of legendary franchises like Pokémon, Dragon Quest and Mega Man. And scattered around the place are precious ar-

tifacts from Hashimoto’s time in Nintendo, including an unused game cartridge sticker for Super Mario Bros. from 1985.

The name 84—pronounced “ha-shi” in Japanese—is a combination of the creator’s last name, the year he joined the Kyotobased games maker and the final stage in Super Mario Bros. Never expecting video games to become the cultural phenomenon they have grown into, the company wasn’t very careful about preserving its history, industry consultant Hisakazu Hirabayashi said. But Hashimoto, feeling sentimental about the products his colleagues created, made a habit of saving small items destined for the incinerator and bringing them home.

“I moved a fraction of them for display at the diner, hoping my friends would feel nostalgia by seeing them,” the 59-year-old Hashimoto, who left Nintendo in 1995, said in an interview at his café. “That made

4 BusinessMirror

my wife happy at least, as our house is more organized now.”

The modest diner opened in 2015. Having no experience in the food industry, Hashimoto decided to open a spot just for friends “because they would be forgiving even if I make mistakes,” he said. To patronize his venue, guests had to first a solve a puzzle to figure out 84’s exact location or find someone who already knew the address. The process of finding the gaming oasis was itself a game.

Serving draft beer and home-style cooking from onigiri and sauteed burdock to the occasional half-bowl of Kyoto ramen, 84 became a home away from home for creators.

They used it to play board games, develop product proposals or share common concerns with employees at rival companies.

Word of the diner’s existence started to emerge as its celebrity guests mentioned it in magazine interviews and TV talk shows.

July 25, 2021

Toru Hashimoto inside his cafe 84 in Tokyo, Japan. Bloomberg Yet despite the fame, Hashimoto shuttered it in January last year after losing his chef and struggling to find another. Pondering options such as returning to Kyoto to open a bar, he decided instead to revive 84 as a more basic café that anyone can visit.

“It all comes down to the experience only available here,” Hirabayashi said. “You can use the same chair that your favorite creator used and drink the same drink that the person you admire did.” Bloomberg