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President Duterte’s statement on Chinese ‘incursion’ in Benham Rise
Faux pas or policy statement?
E
By Elijah Felice E. Rosales
veryone knows President Duterte has forged closer ties with the Chinese government. But nobody must have measured the degree of his closeness to the leaders in Beijing, not until he made pronouncements on the state of play in Benham Rise.
In a news briefing in Malacañang, Duterte revealed he had “cursory knowledge” of the recent activities of China in Benham Rise, an undersea region 250 kilometers off Aurora and Isabela provinces. His statement sprang a surprise, not only to the public, but even to some of the administration’s key officials, including Defense Secretary Delfin N. Lorenzana. “There’s no incursion [in Benham], because Beijing and I had
LORENZANA: “Huh? Sinabi niya ’yun? AP
an agreement. I invited them to the shores of the Philippines for a visit,” Duterte told the media with resounding confidence. He also revealed “[the Philippines was] advised ahead of time” of the research ships that navigated the Philippine waters late last week. Duterte said there’s no need to press the panic button, noting he is definite China is unlikely to turn to aggression this time. “We do not want to pick a fight. Things are getting great our way, so why spoil it?” Duterte concluded. See “Benham,” A2
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DUTERTE: “There’s no incursion [in Benham], because Beijing and I had an agreement. I invited them to the shores of the Philippines for a visit.” AP
AFP: War with communists continues
T
By Rene Acosta
he government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) have embarked on yet another attempt at forging peace by agreeing to begin a new round of talks, along with a cease-fire. But until both parties begin meeting on the negotiating table, there is no certainty that even a temporary amity between them
will come—not just yet. In fact, a prelude to the meeting is already characterized by posturing and innuendos by “angels”
PESO exchange rates n US 50.1910
and “guardians” from both sides, one from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the other from the New People’s Army. Rather than building confidence, the demeanor does not give credence, or augurs well for the resumption of peace negotiations.
Continuing operations
Until the official start of the talks and the issuance of an accompanying cease-fire, the military said it will continue its “focused” combat and intelligence operations against the rebels. The chief of the military’s public affairs office, Col. Edgard A. See “AFP,” A2
In this November 23, 2016, file photo, New People’s Army new regional rebel commander and spokesman Jaime Padilla, who uses the nom de guerre Comrade Diego, poses beside Comrade Katryn, who had her face painted to conceal her identity, at their rebel encampment tucked in the harsh wilderness of the Sierra Madre mountains southeast of Manila. Young Filipino rebels represent a new generation of Maoist fighters, who reflect the resiliency and constraints of an insurgency that has dragged on for nearly half a century through six Philippine presidencies. Crushing poverty, despair, government misrule and the abysmal inequality that has long plagued Philippine society were their best recruiter, according to the guerrillas. AP/Aaron Favila
n japan 0.4430 n UK 62.0461 n HK 6.4649 n CHINA 7.2737 n singapore 35.8328 n australia 38.5316 n EU 54.0457 n SAUDI arabia 13.3882
Source: BSP (17 March 2017 )
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A2 Saturday, March 18, 2017
Benham…
AFP…
Continued from a1
pressed, and so are the people who remember history very well. To them, the “research ships” would later be replaced by war ships.
Reactions
Chinese President Xi Jinping shows the way to President Duterte during a welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on October 20, 2016. AP/Ng Han Guan
However, it seems the communication systems failed again for the administration, as Lorenzana was apparently caught off guard by Duterte’s pronouncements. In an interview with reporters on Tuesday, the secretary of defense was quoted saying: “Huh? Sinabi niya ’yun? [He did say that?]”
Resources at stake
Whatever internal arrangement—or miscommunication—is taking place inside the Palace, China’s latest navigation in Benham Rise is surely a national concern. History shows Beijing, with its military, technological and financial might, is capable of occupying a territory once it sets its eyes on it. Benham Rise, a 13-million hectare undersea region east of Luzon, is a recent addition to the Philippine territory, following the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea’s (Unclos) decision to approve the country’s claim over the area in April 2012. The undersea region, bigger than Luzon, Samar and Leyte combined, is believed to be rich in oil, natural gas and other minerals, such as manganese. It also features a diverse coral-reef ecosystem that shelters a healthy marine life, as documented by marine scientists from the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, Oceana Philippines and the University of the Philippines during their oceanographic explo-
ration in Benham Rise last April. The water bank is home to the bluefin tuna and other in-demand fish species, which could make it a potential fishing ground for Filipino fishermen. The whole site is yet to be explored, but what has been reached, so far, by marine scientists has impressed the human eye. This is a reason compelling enough for any country interested in territorial expansion, like China, to study potential opportunities on what Benham Rise has to offer and provide.
No strings attached
It was not so long ago when Beijing made aggressive advances in the West Philippine Sea, in spite of legal a contention not just from Manila, but also from Bandar Seri Begawan, Ho Chi Minh, Kuala Lumpur and Taipei. Duterte, however, chose to sway to the other side, and has since then reversed his predecessor’s approach toward China. For reasons not impressive enough for some diplomatic experts, the Commander in Chief decided to talk soft to the leaders in Beijing in exchange for billions of dollars worth of funding and investment pledges. Duterte, for his part, clarified there are no strings attached in all the deals with China, adding it’s just immature to pick a fight with a superpower. But the opposition is unim-
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In a news statement released on Tuesday, the militant group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) said “[they] oppose, in no uncertain terms, the incursions of China in Benham Rise.” They are further angered by Beijing’s assertion that the Philippines cannot claim ownership of the undersea region, in spite of the Unclos decision way back in 2012. Bayan urged Duterte to “assert Philippine sovereignty against the incursions of China, instead of being overly concerned with upsetting [the superpower].” It added he must send a firm and clear message to Beijing that Benham Rise is part of Philippine territory. And then there’s Sen. Antonio F. Trillanes IV, who is accusing Duterte of supposed crime against public trust. Trillanes, a staunch critic of the present administration, said Duterte may have committed an impeachable offense if he allowed any foreign firm or government to study or fish out resources within Benham Rise. In a news report, the senator said Duterte could be liable of treason if he is proven guilty of compromising the country’s sovereign claims without mandate from lawmakers. Economic rights over resources in Benham, according to Trillanes, belong to the Philippines only.
Clarification
So is Duterte selling Benham to China? One of the most intriguing questions during the news briefing in Malacañang on Monday was raised by a television broadcast reporter. He asked: “Mr. President, does the $24 billion in trade investments you got from your first trip in China comes with strings and islands attached?” Duterte gave a curt “no” for an
answer, and went on to defend his decision to allow the navigation. “Why should I pick a fight [with China]?” he said. It was on Tuesday when Presidential Spokesman Ernesto C. Abella saved the day—once again—for this administration. He delivered a short statement clarifying the government’s stand on the Benham Rise issue. “First and foremost, Benham Rise belongs to the Filipino people. The Philippine government is dutybound to defend and protect our sovereign and territorial right over this region. Other countries can exercise innocent passage and territorial navigation, but they are disallowed to stay and establish any structure in the area. The [country’s] claim on the region is supported by Article 77 of the Unclos. The Philippines has the responsibility to oversee and regulate the sailing ships of other countries that pass through the waters of Benham,” Abella said in his usual low, calm and modulated voice. “Having said that thing about Benham, we will continue to pursue diplomatic talks with the other party [China],” he continued.
In the dark?
Then came Thursday, which was a pretty bad day for Abella. As if a boxer cornered on the ropes of the ring, he was caught on the wrong fighting stance, while Malacañang reporters threw consecutive jabs of questions, which dumbfounded the spokesman. Abella cannot give a straight answer as to why the foreign affairs and defense departments were left behind the decision-making in allowing Beijing to conduct research in the undersea region. The Palace spokesman reiterated there was no incursion to begin with, then advised reporters to refer to Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique A. Manalo’s news briefing on Thursday. He also claimed the situation was being framed differently by the media, insisting there was no conflict at all.
Continued from a1 Protesters hold slogans during a rally outside Camp Aguinaldo, headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), in Quezon City to protest the alleged “all-out war” being waged by the military and the police against communist rebels following the collapse of the peace talks on March 10. AP/Aaron Favila
Arevalo, said this was due to the fact that there has been no word yet for the AFP to suspend its antiinsurgency operations. Arevalo banked on the Palace position that the Commander in Chief has only acknowledged the joint statement of both panels of their “intent” to resume formal talks. Before the negotiations were stopped by President Duterte on February 4, both parties have already agreed to continue the formal talks the following month, with a bilateral cease-fire among the subjects of discussions. With a mere intent, Arevalo said negotiations are not enough. The effectivity could even be the subject to an agreement by both the government and the NDFP. Even if there would be talks, there must be a cease-fire before the military could stop its ongoing operations against NPA members around the country. For a cease-fire to be issued and become effective, the military, taking a cue from Malacañang, said both parties should also come up with parameters. “Until a unilateral cease-fire is issued, we will continue our operations,” said Arevalo, adding the military cannot be insensitive to the “sufferings of Filipinos” as a result of the “atrocities” committed by the rebels. Until Wednesday, at least 61 “atrocities”, including firefights, have
been committed by members of the NPA, as recorded by the military. Out of these incidents, Arevalo said they have neutralized 120 rebels.
Countering AFP operations
As the military stuck to its guns, the NPA, through its spokesman, Jorge Madlos, alias Ka Oris, said it stands ready to confront the offensive and “defend the people” from the reported abuses of soldiers. “Since [the] GRP [government of the Republic of the Philippines] [represented by] President Duterte’s order on March 9 [decided] to ‘flatten the hills’, the AFP has become even more frenzied in its crazed war against the people,” Madlos said in the same statement. The rebel spokesman went on to enumerate the reported excesses of the military. According to him, on March 11, the military carried out aerial strikes in Barangay Cabuyuan in Mabini, Compostela Valley, using at least three MG-520 attack helicopters that dropped 10 bombs. The bombing took place as ground troops fired their machine guns. At least 75 families, composed of 200 individuals, were reportedly forced to flee their homes. “For two days now, the AFP has conducted aerial bombing runs in Barangays Gawang, Tee and Andavit in Datu Salibo, Maguindanao, using FA-50 jet fighters and MG-520 helicopter gunships,” Madlos claimed. The operation, he added, forced the evacuation of at least 3,000 families. Madlos said that since last month, the military has been conducting aerial bombings against “peasant communities” in Laak, Compostela Valley; in Bansalan, Davao del Sur; Asuncion in Davao del Norte; Fatima in Davao City; and Alabel in Sarangani. He also claimed that over the past weeks, at least 15 peasants have been killed by the military and other agents of the government in Rizal, Quezon, Capiz, Compostela Valley, North Cotabato, Davao City and other places.
Options
Rather than trading barbs and painting animosity toward each other, both forces should diligently work for an environment that is conducive to the holding of the talks and its success. After all, peace is the only option, observers noted. However, in the event that the second attempt for the negotiations follows the path of the initial talks, what would be left for the rebels and the military? As previously declared by the rebels, they would have to continue fighting the government. After all, the insurgency has survived previous administrations, and there is no reason it could not survive the Duterte administration.
Localized peace talks
On the other hand, the military will continue its operations against the NPA. It may follow also its track before the negotiations were sidelined, and this is to push through with localized peace talks. Ground commanders have earlier reported that local officials in areas where the NPA operates have agreed, and even endorsed, the holding of localized talks. This idea has been espoused by the military even in previous administrations.
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Royal Caribbean to homeport in Aklan By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo
‘T
@akosistellaBM Special to the BusinessMirror
HE Philippines is the future Caribbean of Asia.” This was the statement made by John Tercek, vice president for New Commercial Development of the Royal Caribbean Cruise Ltd. (RCCL), as it celebrated the cruise firm’s business expansion in the region. He stressed the Philippines has a great potential to become a cruise hub in the region.
On Tuesday RCCL signed an agreement with the Department of Tourism (DOT) and the province of Aklan that would create a homeport and terminal for the international cruise line either in Caticlan or Boracay, Aklan, according to a news statement from the DOT. DOT Undersecretary for Tourism Development Benito Bengzon, Jr. who represented Tourism Secretary Wanda Corazon T. Teo at the signing ceremony, said the important business deal “would further open the Western Visayas region to the global cruising market.” Aklan Gov. Florencio Miraflores signed the agreement on his province’s behalf. The signing ceremony was held on the sidelines of the Seatrade Cruise Conference 2017 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The said agreement commits the Miami-based cruise company to providing all the necessar y technical and financial support toward the building of a purpose-built terminal either
in Caticlan or Boracay. Bengzon, however, said they are still negotiating if the expected Royal Caribbean homeport would be open to other commercial vessels and cruise lines, as well. “We are excited over the prospects of the Royal Carribean Lines getting more involved in the development and promotion of Caticlan/Boracay for cruise tourism,” Bengzon said. “We are confident that the strategic partnership will result in more ships calling on Boracay, and pave the way for eventual home port operations.” The DOT, however, did not give a timetable or target when the port and passenger terminal would open. This is the second international cruise line that will be homeporting in the Philippines, following in the footsteps of Superstar Virgo, of Singapore’s Star Cruises. The latter will be launching a 15-week cruise from Manila to Laoag and Kaohsiung (Taiwan)Hong Kong and back to Manila
Undersecretary Benito Bengzon Jr. (right) leads the signing of an agreement between the province of Aklan, as represented by Gov. Florencio Miraflores (left), and Royal Caribbean Cruise Ltd. Vice President for New Development John Tercek, held on Tuesday at the sidelines of the Seatrade Cruise Conference 2017 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
on March 19. The 2,000-capacity vessel is projected to bring in some 50,000 international visitors to the Philippines. Star Cruises is owned by Genting Hong Kong, a leading global leisure, entertainment and hospitality corporation. (See “Government to spend P6 billion to improve ports” in the BusinessMirror, March 7, 2017.)
“The big news for us this week is that we will finally have the major cruise ship, the Superstar Virgo of Singapore’s Star Cr u ises, homepor ting in t he Philippines. And we are hoping this will be the start of other homeporting of cruise vessels in the region,” Bengzon enthused. T he DOT officia l is in For t
The big news for us this week is that we will finally have the major cruise ship, the Superstar Virgo of Singapore’s Star Cruises, homeporting in the Philippines. And we are hoping this will be the start of other homeporting of cruise vessels in the region.”—Bengzon
Lauderda le as head of the Philippine delegation to the Seatrade Cr uise Globa l, which was held from March 13 to 16 at the Broward Count y Convent ion Center. Seat rade is t he leading annual global businessto-business event in the cr uise industr y, which provides a platfor m to discuss topics and issues in cr uising led by top executives, industr y ex per ts and thought-leaders. Featured in this year’s Seatrade are a mix of old and new cruise destinations in the Philippines, such as Hundred Islands in Pangasinan, Kalanggaman Island in Leyte, Coron in Northern Palawan, Romblon and the Bicol region, for expedition cruises that carry less than 300 passengers. This is the ninth year the Philippines has attended Seatrade. “We are seeing a major shift in the major cruise market,” Bengzon
said. “There will be more ships to be deployed in Southeast Asia, and we are hoping that the Philippines will get more than its fair share of the market.” He stressed that the extended deployment of a number of large cruise ships in the country is a crucial factor in positioning the Philippines as a compelling and attractive valuefor-money transit port. The Caribbean is an extremely popular cruise destination for RCCL. In 2015 alone, there were 239 ships with a total of 378,256 beds from various cruise companies that arrived in the region, according to data from the Cruise Line International Association. For h i s pa r t , M i r a f lore s shared that residents of A klan were quick to approve the planned homeporting of RCCL, as they stand to benefit from the new economic opportunities it would generate in terms of employment and business ventures. Boracay is the Philippines’s third-largest cruise destination with 29 calls in the last four years. It was topped by Puerto Princesa, which had the most aggregate visits at 39 transits and 16 overnight calls. Manila came in second with 48 transits but only five overnights. Data from the DOT showed that international cruise calls to the Philippines have been growing at an average of some 28 percent since 2014. There were 72 cruise ships that made port calls in the country in 2016, with an estimated 72,350 passengers, from only 56 cruise ships with 60,183 passengers in 2014. The DOT projects 105 port calls by cruise ships carrying an estimated 117,000 passengers in 2017. (See “DOT bats for better port facilities to attract more cruise passengers” in the BusinessMirror, January 1, 2017.)
China plans station on disputed South China Sea shoal Sustained growth seen for franchising sector
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hina plans to build an environmental monitoring station on a S outh China Sea shoal at the heart of a territorial dispute with the Philippines, potentially raising new concerns over Beijing’s actions to assert its claims in the strategically crucial water body. The top official in Sansha City that administers China’s island claims was quoted by the official Hainan Daily newspaper as saying such stations were being built on six islands and reefs, including Scarborough Shoal off the northwestern Philippines. Sansha Communist Par ty Secretar y Xiao Jie told the paper that preparatory work on the stations was among the government’s priorities for 2017, but gave no other details. Beijing seized t i n y, u n i n h a b i t e d S c a r b o r o u g h i n 2012 after a prolonged standoff with
Philippine vessels. Taiwan also includes the island in its South China Sea claims. The other stations mentioned by Xiao would be situated on features in the Paracel island group that China has controlled since seizing parts away from Vietnam in 1974. Also this week, the commander in chief of China’s navy, Vice Adm. Shen Jinlong, noted improving relations in a meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart, Rear Adm. Pham Hoai Nam, in Beijing. China and Vietnam have had longrunning territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Tensions spiked in 2014 after China parked an oil rig near Vietnam’s central coast, sparking mass protests in Vietnam. The two navies and their countries should “together play a positive role in maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea,” Shen was quoted as saying by China’s defense ministry.
South China Sea tensions have eased somewhat since Beijing erupted in fury last year after a Hague-based arbitration tribunal ruled on a case filed by the Philippines, invalidating China’s sweeping territorial claims and determining that China violated the rights of Filipinos to fish at Scarborough Shoal. China has since allowed Filipino fishermen to return to the shoal following President Duterte’s calls for closer ties between the countries, but it does not recognize the tribunal’s ruling as valid and insists it has historical claims to almost the entire South China Sea, through which an estimated $5 trillion in global trade passes each year. China’s creation of seven man-made islands in the disputed Spratly group, complete with airstrips and militar y installations, has drawn criticism from the
US and others and focused attention on Beijing’s long-term plans for Scarborough. US diplomats have said privately that reclamation work on the shoal would be seen as crossing a red line because of its proximity to the main Philippine islands. During his Senate confirmation hearing for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson compared China’s island-building and deployment of military assets to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, and suggesting China’s access to the island should not be allowed. The topic is likely to be high on the agenda when Tillerson visits Beijing for talks with top officials on Saturday and Sunday. China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam have long contested ownership of the South China Sea, which straddles one of the world’s busiest sea lanes and is believed to sit atop vast deposits of oil and gas. AP
Ayala Land wins four golds in 52nd Anvil Awards A
yala Land Inc. (ALI) and its subsidiaries won four Gold Awards and three Silver Awards for outstanding communications programs at the 52nd Anvil Awards of the Public Relations Society of the Philippines (PRSP). ALI was awarded the Gold Anvil Award for its official internal magazine Groundbreakers 2016: What connects us all, which is released annually. The particular issue was created to highlight company milestones and inspire employees to incorporate its core values of excellence and integrity in everyday operations. Ayala Malls also received Gold Awards for its Little Free Library, Blooms and World Street Congress 2016 programs. The malls group furthered its literacy and reading advocacies by partnering with US-based organization, Little Free Library, to create libraries inside various Ayala Malls and refocus the public’s attention back to the joys of reading. Its Blooms project, on the other hand, filled the malls’ open spaces with colorful
Ayala Land’s Marketing and Communications Team, composed of Cathy Bengzon (sixth from left), head of Corporate Marketing; Marissa Ramos (from left), Jessica Santos, Sandy Espinosa, Sharon Vital, Tess Tatco, Suzette Naval, Kay Rivera, Anne Baylon-Jara and Patty Oh-Abacan.
flowers and native plants, not only for aesthetic purposes but to help promote sustainable green living in the country. In addition to these, the World Street Food Congress was an international five-day street food festival held in the
Philippines for the first time. ALI won Silver Anvil Awards, as well, for Avida Land’s Tunog Natin program and Tunog Natin CD, which promoted original Pilipino music, and the Ayala Land Corporate Video entitled “Every Day”.
Meanwhile, the Bonifacio Art Foundation Inc. (Bafi) was awarded a Gold Anvil for its ArtBGC Mural Festival, which featured mural paintings that livened up the streets of Bonifacio Global City and promoted a sense of community through public ar t. Bafi implements the art programs of ALI’s affiliate, Fort Bonifacio Development Corp. Presented annually by the PRSP, the Anvil is the symbol of excellence in public relations and is awarded to outstanding public-relations (PR) programs, tools and practitioners after careful screening by select PR professionals and judging by a distinguished multisectoral jury. Ayala Land is the Philippines’s leading developer of sustainable estates, offering a diverse mix of proper ties, such as residential, retail, office, hotels and leisure developments, which supports local economic growth and nationbuilding.Today, Ayala Land has a total of 20 sustainable estates and is present in 55 growth areas nationwide.
LIM
P
hilippine Franchise Association (PFA) Chairman Emeritus Samie Lim has expressed optimism over sustained growth in the country’s franchising industry on the back of strong economy even amid foreign-chain competition. He said the growth would also be driven by the robust business-process outsourcing industry and remittances of overseas Filipinos. “As long as Philippine franchises aim for global competitiveness, they need not worry about the continued entry of foreign franchises. That is why the PFA has always advocated for a globally competitive franchise sector. We have to be global in our outlook, aspiration and practices,” said Lim, widely acknowledged as the Father of Philippine Franchising. Lim, who is also chairman of the AsiaPacific Franchise Confederation, and PFA Vice Chairman Ma. Alegria Sibal-Limjoco are representing the Philippines in the ongoing World Franchise Council International Franchising Week, hosted by the British Franchise Association slated from March 14 until 19 in Kensington, London. The accompanying International Franchising Symposium was set on March 16 and 17. Lim was to speak during the international franchising symposium in the afternoon of March 17 on the topic “Franchising in Asia Pacific” at a session titled “The Changing Face of Franchising from Around the World”. Some of the leading franchise associations worldwide will share their experiences and some of the challenges and opportunities facing their countries today. Lim noted that the Philippines’s main strategy is to go to countries with a significant number of Filipino expatriates.
Sibal-Limjoco
Overseas Filipinos number about 10 million with high concentration in the United States and the Middle East. “But the objective is not just to serve overseas Filipinos but to use the support of this market to eventually go mainstream. That is why, Philippine franchises are willing to localize their product offerings,” he added. Meanwhile, Sibal-Limjoco was set to conduct a Philippine franchise opportunities briefing for the Filipino community also on Friday night. The briefing is in partnership with the Philippine Trade and Investment Center London, the commercial section of the Philippine embassy in London. Prior to the briefing, the Philippine delegation will pay a courtesy call on H.E. Antonio Lagdameo, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the Republic of the Philippines to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Sibal-Limjoco said there are various reasons the world is investing in the Philippines. “[It is] one of the fastest-growing economies in the world [with] huge market of over 100 million,” she said, also noting the country’s No. 1 ranking in the world for business English proficiency, the rising middle class and advanced retail infrastructure. Sibal-Limjoco noted that franchising is being used by micro, small and medium enterprises as a strategy for expansion. She identified key emerging franchise trends as travel and tourism-related businesses, retirement-related businesses, neighborhood restaurant rows as seed beds for future franchise concepts, regional culinary specialties going mainstream, food parks and businesses that cater to convenience, like self-service laundry and housekeeping service. PNA
A4
The World BusinessMirror
Saturday, March 18, 2017
This movie-tax lawyer might have found a way to stop Brexit
J
olyon Maugham is hurrying through the streets of west London on his way to a meeting about Britain’s impending departure from the European Union (EU). Even as he sidesteps dawdling tourists and dodges black cabs, Maugham is arguing about Brexit.
“ That’s a terrible point and I’m going to demolish it in a blog post later,” he says, when it’s suggested his latest legal action in Dublin might be counterproductive. He then explains, in three stages, exactly why the point is so terrible. “If you don’t like the answer, don’t ask the question,” he shrugs. A p r o m i n e nt t a x l aw y e r, Maugham has emerged as one of the most potent voices against t he U K ’s lo om i n g Eu ro p e a n exit. Last year he raised £10,000 ($12,160) in a crowdf unding campaign for a legal challenge over Pr ime Minister T heresa May’s plan to start the formal process for Brexit, an Article 50 notice, without first holding a vote in Parliament. That campaign became the People’s Challenge, one of the groups supporting Gina Miller in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court—and won. May still plans to trigger Article 50 as soon as this month, after a vote in Parliament went her way earlier this week. Now Maugham has filed a new lega l cha l lenge in Dublin, which he wants to be refer red to the European Cour t of Justice in Lu xembourg. He’s seeking a r u ling that an A r ticle 50 notice can be revoked if an EU member changes its mind about leav ing. A n initia l hear ing is
schedu led for as soon as June.
Terrible mistake
“I think we have made a terrible mistake,” he says a few days later, over dinner at an Indian restaurant in Westminster. “If the electorate comes to think it has made a terrible mistake, it should have the right to reverse it.” T he 45 -yea r - old , who h a s a large head covered in silver hair, wears stylish black-rimmed glasses and carr ies a leather satchel that, combined with his impish sense of humor, can give the impression of a student at after-school debating club. After dinner, he’s due to speak to a left-wing political group, The Young Fabians, at a nearby government building. He allows himself a single beer with his curried octopus starter. Maugham’s day job is helping clients, mostly wealthy individuals or companies, in their legal disputes with the government. But these days, his real ambitions are elsewhere—specifically a building a few hundred yards away in Parliament Square. “If you want to shape the society you live in, ultimately, you have to want to be in Parliament,” he says. “That’s where I want to be.”
Unconventional
In many ways, Maugham is a con-
tradictory figure. “People don’t know quite how to place me,” he says. Having reached the top of the legal profession in London with all the wealth and prestige that entails, he’s self-consciously a member of the Metropolitan elite. At the same time, his background is unconventional, at least for a top lawyer or a potential member of Parliament. He was raised in New Zealand by a English mother, left home at 16, worked as a cleaner and moved to London at age 17 to find his estranged father, David Benedictus, a playwright and author. Maugham’s left-wing, an on/ off member of the Labour Party, while making a living defending tax practices that some liberals find abhorrent. He has spent years representing investors in Eclipse Film Partners No. 35, one of a number of controversial partnerships set up to exploit tax breaks on British movies that were later challenged by the government and found to be artificial—legal but more about reducing taxes than boosting the film industry.
Taxes
Tax specialists are some of the best-paid lawyers in London— Maugham describes himself as “middle-class prosperous.” Tim Lev y, whose company created Eclipse, says he found Maugham to be “open, engaging, nonjudgmental and intellectually curious”. Levy says Maugham never shared his political views with him. Maugham started a tax blog that expressed opinions that many lawyers and accountants would never put their names to. “I argued repeatedly in the tax world that there was morality in tax,” he says. Legal colleagues called it career suicide, he recalls. His blog d id n’t e x act ly condemn a l l t a x st r uct u r ing. But it d id point out t hat t he sub jec t w a s comple x . I nvestors had of ten been encou raged to
pa r t ic ipate by t heir f ina nc i a l adv isers a nd accou nt a nts, as we l l a s b y t he gover n me nt , wh ic h w a s keen to promote invest ment in f i l ms, he w rote in one post. W hile his writing may have lost him clients, it got the attent ion of Ed Mi l iba nd , t he then-leader of the Labour Party. Maugham became an informal adv iser on ta x pol ic y before Miliband ’s 2015 election defeat.
Tilting at windmills
Maugham says being a lawyer in a controversial field requires a thick skin, which is useful for anyone willing to speak out on the subject of Brexit. Online critics have ridiculed him for being undemocratic, out-of-touch, unpatriotic and living in a converted windmill (he doesn’t, although he has a holiday home in one). Even his name isn’t a proper one, in the view of one Twitter user. “Someone was threatening to string me from a lamppost the other day,” Maugham says. Mostly, he takes it in good humor. “I much more enjoy a hostile audience than I do a friendly audience,” he explains. “If you have been booted in the head repeatedly arguing an ugly tax case, other forums hold few fears.” Miller, as the public face of the legal opposition, has endured far worse, he says. “He seems to be arguing against the falling of the night,” says Gunnar Beck, an attorney and academic at the University of London who campaigned for Britain to leave the EU. While he doesn’t deny Maugham’s right to explore valid legal questions, “lawyers who don’t like the referendum result would probably do better to engage constructively with the process,” Beck says. He doubts the Dublin case will succeed.
Change of heart
By saying openly that Brexit w il l be a disaster, Maugham
The outlook is no less bullish. Bringing oil inventories down is a messy process, but the Opec cuts are real, demand in Asia is decent and ultimately the market is tightening.” —Kleinman
is positioning himself against the majority of voters in the June 2016 referendum, which is a place occupied by few office holders. Theresa May continues to push for a so-called Hard Brexit. Labour campaigned ineffectively to keep Britain in the EU and has been indecisive on the issue since. Once a supporter, Maugham now questions the Labour Party’s future. T here i s con f u sion wh ic h Maugham is seeking to clarify. Justice Secretary Liz Truss said in Febr uar y she understands Article 50 to be irrevocable. But John Kerr, the diplomat who helped to write it, said last November it could be reversed. “You can change your mind while the process is going on,” he said.
At what cost
If Maugham is right, and British voters come to see the cost of leaving the EU as too great, he will be on a very short list of high-prof i le opponents of Brexit. In the age of Trump and populist anger, perhaps even an unpatriotic tax lawyer and sometime windmill resident called Jolyon can find a place in the political firmament. He’s also started the Good Law Project, which will raise money to fight lawsuits that advance a progressive agenda. The web site’s homepage declares: “This isn’t us. This isn’t who we are.” One of its first cases will be to challenge the amount of tax paid by Uber Technologies Inc. in the UK. At the Young Fabians event in Portcullis House, Maugham sits at the head of a long table. It’s a friendly audience of about 15 young people who are, like Maugham, left-leaning, politically active and pro-Europe. The building also houses the offices of British MPs and staff. Outside in the hall, two armed police officers stand next to a painting of the Queen.
Changing world
One of Fabians asks, politely, whether the Dublin lawsuit is a purely hypothetical question, since there isn’t much evidence of Britain backing away from its decision. “The world has changed a lot since June 2016,” Maugham replies. “Times are very, very uncertain. We don’t yet know what that means. It’s bold to assume it will have no impact on people’s perceptions of the desirability of Brexit.” Bloomberg News
China, Saudi Arabia sign $65B in cooperation deals S
audi Arabia’s King Salman met with China’s premier on Friday, a day after the t wo nations sig ned a memorandum of understanding on investment cooperation valued at $65 billion. The landmark agreement aims to boost joint efforts in fields including energy, investment, finance, culture and aerospace, part of Saudi Arabia’s drive to develop a growth strategy less dependent on oil. Beijing, meanwhile, is rolling out a massive trade and investment initiative across Central Asia and the Middle East, called “One Belt, One Road”, which sees the desert kingdom as a regional linchpin. Despite the eye-catching sum
noted in the memo, the actual value of such commitments is usually much smaller once projects begin. Saud i A rabi a is C h ina’s biggest suppl ier of cr ude oi l a nd t he k ingdom’s state- ow ned oi l producer, A ra mco, is a pa r tner w it h st ate - ow ned C h i n a Pet roleu m & C hem ica l Cor p. T he t wo operate a ref iner y in Fu j i a n p r o v i n c e a l o n g w it h ot her C h inese projects. T he sig ning of t he ag ree ment, which involves 35 separate projects, fol lowed ta l k s on Thursday between Salman and President X i Jinping, during which the Chinese leader said results of their burgeoni ng cooperat ion h ad a l ready “sur passed our expectations”.
Security ties between the two have also grown significantly, with the Saudi air force deploying Chinese unmanned attack drones and the two militaries holding joint counterterrorism exercises in western China. Chinese navy vessels have also v isited the Saudi port of Jeddah as part of increasingly active maneuvers in the Gulf of Aden. The 81-year-old Salman’s visit is part of a monthlong swing through Asia. Accompanied by a 1,500-strong retinue of businessmen, princes and support staff in close to a dozen aircraft, he has already visited Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam, and travels next to the Indian Ocean island nation of the Maldives. AP
www.businessmirror.com.ph
Asia’s emerging market stocks gain
A
n equities rally spurred by the Federal Reserve’s (the Fed) outlook found some life in Asian emerging markets, even amid a slump in Japanese and US shares. The dollar was steady after a twoday decline. Stocks in Indonesia reached a record and markets from Malaysia to South Korea climbed, helped by the weaker United States currency, with the Bloomberg Dollar index heading for its biggest weekly loss since early February. Shares in Tokyo slumped, weighing down the MSCI Asia Pacific Index after it posted its biggest gain on Thursday since November. The S&P 500 Index’s post-Fed rally ran out of steam as the gauge climbed to within 0.5 percent of an all-time high. Treasuries recovered some of Thursday’s declines. Global stocks are on course for the best week since January after the Fed raised its benchmark lending rate a quarter point without accelerating the timetable for future hikes. Investors largely anticipated the tightening and Treasury yields had climbed with the dollar on speculation the central bank might signal a faster pace of tightening. “A less hawkish monetary policy in the US is more likely to push assets outside of the US into higher-risk, higher-return markets,” James Woods, a Sydney-based investment analyst at Rivkin Securities, said in a phone interview. “A weaker dollar is supportive of those emerging markets generally. I’m not sure whether its going to be long-lived, though. People are going to get back to focusing on the next Fed hike, and also Trump’s policies which would be dollar supportive.” China’s central bank also raised borrowing costs this week and the Bank of Japan left its monetary-policy setting unchanged. The pound gained on Thursday, as some Bank of England policy-makers said they may not be far behind Kristin Forbes, who’s leaning toward raising interest rates. Volatility is retreating across the globe after the central bank policy decisions. At the same time, the defeat in this week’s Dutch elections of anti-immigration candidate Geert Wilders is being seen as a blow to populist political leaders, easing concerns ahead of French elections. A gauge of volatility on the Euro Stoxx 50 Index plunged 26 percent on Thursday, the most on record. “Volatility is scarily low and there’s just a lot of complacency out there,” James Audiss, a senior wealth manager at Shaw and Partners in Sydney, said in a phone interview. “After we get through the big macro events with governments and elections, we have to start to look to corporate earnings. That’s where it becomes not so much a systemic stock market move as stock selection.” What investors will be watching: The focus on Friday will be a meeting between Donald J. Trump and Angela Merkel, while Steve Mnuchin attends his first Group of 20 finance chiefs gathering in Germany as US Treasury secretary. He repeated his view on Thursday in Berlin that the long-term strengthening of the dollar is in the best interest of the US economy and that it reflects confidence in the world’s reserve currency. Rex Tillerson continues his first trip through Asia as US secretary of state, stopping in South Korea before heading to Beijing. At a joint briefing in Tokyo with Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, he called for a strong alliance between the US, Japan and South Korea to counter Kim Jong Un’s regime. Economic data on Friday include US industrial production for February, while Tiffany & Co. is scheduled to release earnings. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index retreated 0.1 percent as of 3:04 p.m. in Tokyo, after closing on Thursday at the highest level since June 2015. Japan’s Topix fell 0.4 percent, heading for its biggest weekly decline in more than a month. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index rose 0.2 percent. The Jakarta Composite Index gained as much as 0.7 percent to a record, after a 1.6-percent surge on Thursday. India’s Sensex Index climbed 0.4 percent, taking its gains for a holiday-shortened week to 2.6 percent, the most since the end of January. New Zealand’s S&P/NZX 50 Index increased 0.1 percent. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index rose 0.2 percent. South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.6 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index added at least 0.3 percent, after soaring the most since May on Thursday. The S&P 500 slipped 0.2 percent on Thursday, while the Stoxx Europe 600 Index rose 0.7 percent. Bloomberg News
Editor: Jun Lomibao | mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph
Sports
BusinessMirror
Saturday, March 18, 2017 A5
BOYCOTT OVER WAGES
MEMBERS of the US women’s hockey team say they will not report to training camp next week or play in the tournament that begins March 31 in Plymouth, Michigan, without clear steps toward what they hope is a four-year contract.
By Stephen Whyno The Associated Press
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EMBERS of the US women’s hockey team are willing to give up the chance to defend their world championship gold medal on home ice unless there is significant progress in settling a wage dispute that has dragged on for months. Players informed USA Hockey on Wednesday that they will not report to training camp next week or play in the tournament that begins on March 31 in Plymouth, Michigan, without clear steps toward what they hope is a four-year contract. “To voluntarily take ourselves out of the
running to [repeat] is not easy, but it’s what’s right and we’re asking for what’s right and fair,” forward Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson said by phone. “I’m proud to do this with my teammates and to stand arm in arm with them and to say enough is enough.” USA Hockey said the organization and the US Olympic Committee provide national team players with financial support, training opportunities, camps and strength and conditioning programs. “We acknowledge the players’ concerns and have proactively increased our level of direct support to the Women’s National Team as we prepare for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games,” USA Hockey Executive Director Dave Ogrean said. “We have communicated that increased level of
support to the players’ representatives and look forward to continuing our discussions.” USA Hockey said each player participating in the Olympics in South Korea next February could receive up to $85,000, which also includes medal incentives. Team captain Meghan Duggan called the statement “completely misleading and dishonest”, and the law firm representing the players said no $85,000 offer was made. “It’s an example of them kind of disregarding anything that we’re asking and basically disregarding our request to be under contract for a four-year period and any of that,” Duggan said, adding that players are also asking for insurance and travel expenses they don’t feel are provided on an equal level as men’s players.
Neither USA Hockey nor the players would reveal details of the wages in dispute or how the men’s team is compensated. The US men’s team is comprised of highly paid National Hockey League players, as are most established national teams. “You can’t really say, ‘Well, what do they get?’ Because the NHL guys get paid millions of dollars,” Lamoureux-Davidson said. “That’s why we bring up equitable support. How they get treated when they go to their world championship or their World Cup, it should be equal to that about how we get treated when we go to our world championship.” Players pointed to the $3.5 million USA Hockey spends annually on its National Team Development Program with no comparable
ATENEO SEEKS VICTORY NO. 8
‘Superheroes’ join benefit run
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UNNERS in superhero costumes filled the Mall of Asia grounds in Pasay City recently for the TV5 Superheroes Run: Manila. The event was staged for the benefit of the Alagang Kapatid Foundation Inc., the social-development arm of TV5 that aims to help families during times of disaster and calamity. Participants from kids, teens to adults filled up the area early morning, which made it look like a massive heroes’ assembly. They were all geared up in their running wear, wristbands and superhero attire. Runners in the 16-km event wore Supergirl capes, 10-km runners showed off their Arrowlike hood and 5-km runners flashed their The Flash-inspired headgear. Some participants stood out more with their colorful tutus, vibrant wigs, printed socks and some other things that are not normally seen in running events. TV5 President and CEO Chot Reyes led the event. He was joined by Sports5 Head Patricia Bermudez Hizon. Proceeds of the run were turned over to the Alagang Kapatid Foundation Inc., represented by its Executive Director Menchie Silvestre. Rizza Diaz hosted the program while Takbo.ph coaches led the warm-up exercises. Jinoe Gavan also of Takbo.ph flagged off the participants. TV5 celebriaties Derek Ramsay, Alwyn Uytingco, Shaira Mae de la Cruz and Mark Neumann, and Philippine Superliga players Jov Gonzaga (RC Cola Army), Jeck Dionela (Cignal HD) and Royse Tubino (RC Cola Army) also took part in the event.
setup for women’s development and the fact that those men’s under-17 and under-18 teams play 60 games a season compared to just nine for the women’s national team in a non-Olympic year. Canada, the world’s other women’s hockey powerhouse, puts more money into the sport in part because of government funding. Hockey Canada General Manager of Women’s Programs Melody Davidson said development players receive $900 a month and senior-level players $1,500 a month even outside Olympic years and that players are supported full-time for nine months around the Olympics. “We get paid for six months out of a fouryear span,” said Lamoureux-Davidson, who recently received a check for December Series
games against Canada. USA Hockey said it planned to “field a competitive team” for the IIHF tournament. How that team would be put together wasn’t immediately clear, but USA Hockey President Jim Smith declared that “USA Hockey’s role is not to employ athletes and we will not do so.” “Good luck getting a suitable No. 1 competition to represent our country on a world stage,” forward Hilary Knight said. “I kind of dare them.” Matt DelDuca, a lawyer with expertise in labor and employment issues said, “Who’s going to win is going to depend on how strong their leverage really is in the eyes of the organization.” USA Hockey said it is committed to growing women’s hockey and that more than 73,000 women play hockey in the US now compared with 23,000 in 1998, when the Americans won gold at the first Olympics with a women’s tournament. But women’s players have had contracts only in Olympic years and are seeking a deal that covers them in off years. Several players said USA Hockey has paid players $1,000 a month during their six-month Olympic residency period and nothing the rest of the time. “They’re looking for support for every year so that they don’t have to have second and third jobs and don’t have to have family supporting them,” said John Langel, an attorney for the players. He characterized the negotiating gap with USA Hockey as a chasm. The wage dispute follows one by US women’s soccer players, who last March filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that alleged wage discrimination by the US Soccer Federation. Lamoureux-Davidson said the hockey players have been in touch with soccer players about their dispute, which is ongoing; Langel represented US women’s soccer players from 1998 to 2014. Cammi Granato, one of the first women in the Hockey Hall of Fame after being inducted in 2010, dealt with wage disputes during her career and appreciates current players taking such a difficult stand. “It says a lot for what they’re fighting for,” Granato said. “It says a lot for the fact that there needs to be change. This takes a lot of courage.” Lamoureux-Davidson said players are hopeful that taking a stand will force the issue. “We all want to go play,” she said. “But it’s been 14 months and we haven’t seen progress, so if there’s progress within the next week and a half, we’ll see.”
F Women’s aquathlon unwraps at PhilSports
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ORE than 320 women and girls from all over the country will vie in the Atleta Ako Women’s Aquathlon on Sunday at the PhilSports Complex in Pasig City. Girls aged 7 to 8 years old will race for 50 meters in swimming and 600 meters in running while those in the nine to 10 bracket will compete in a 10-meter swim and 600-meter run event. The 11-12 group will swim 200 meters and run 1.8 kilometers, the 13-14 group will swim 300 meters and run 2.2 km run and the 15-17 division will cover 400 meters in the pool and 4.2 km on the track. Adult participants (18 and older) will swim 500 meters and run 5 km on the standard course while those who signed for the petite course will swim 300 meters and run 3 km. Relay participants will race in the standard
ATHLETICS MEET IN ILAGAN
Philippine Athletics Track and Field Association President Dr. Philip Ella Juico expounds on the 12th Southeast Asia Youth Athletics Championships to be staged in Ilagan City on March 27 and 28, as well as on the National Open from March 30 to April 2. With Juico are Ricky Laggui (left), general services officer of Ilagan City; and former Ilagan City Mayor Jay Diaz, chairman of the organizing committee. ROY DOMINGO
course of the event organized by Bike King and presented by AtletaAko.com and Philippine Sports Commission. “We are happy that for the third consecutive year, our aquathlon attracted another large field of women and girls who strive to challenge themselves and also aim to achieve something in the spirit of the International Women’s Month,” AtletaAko.com founder Cecile Narvaez-Hufana said. At stake are trophies and gift packs for the top 3 of 17 categories, including the relay open. The awarding ceremony will be held at 10 a.m. at the track oval. Participants can start claiming their race kits at 5:30 a.m. at the track oval, check in their run gear at the swimming pool area starting 6 a.m. and attend a race briefing at 6:30 a.m. The first wave of participants will be flagged off at 7 a.m.
RONT-RUNNING Ateneo de Manila guns for its eighth victory that guarantees at least a playoff for a Final Four slot when it takes on Far Eastern University (FEU) today in Season 79 University Athletic Association of the Philipppines (UAAP) women’s volleyball tournament at the Filoil Flying V Centre in San Juan City. The Lady Eagles, who strung eighth after a season-opening loss to National University, face the Lady Tamaraws at 4 p.m. At 2 p.m., University of Santo Tomas (UST), which lost to the Lady Eagles last Wednesday, tries to regain solo third place when it faces winless Adamson University. UST and FEU are locked with idle National University and University of the Philippines from third to sixth places on identical 5-4 winloss cards. The Lady Tamaraws will be out to avenge their first-round loss to Ateneo last February
12 when they squandered a two-set lead only to melt in the event, 25-19, 24-26, 19-25, 25-16, 15-11. FEU Head Coach Shaq de los Santos hopes his wards led by skipper Remy Palma, Toni Basas, Bernadeth Pons, Angelica Cayuna and Jerrilli Malabanan learned their lessons from that setback and will be in harness against an Ateneo team riding a winning momentum. “We managed to put up a good fight in our first-round match with them but we collapsed,” de los Santos said. “We saw that we have a lot of things to work on—more on our communication and more heart for the players.” In the men’s competition, unscathed leader Ateneo seeks its 10th consecutive victory against joint-fourth placer UST (4-5) at 10 a.m. University of the Philippines (4-5) takes on University of the East (1-8) at 8 a.m.
Lance Agcaoili
Team Orchard wins Capati crown
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EAM Orchard pooled 64 points to edge Villamor I to snare the 50th Dominga Capati Memorial Golf Tournament crown at the North course of the Canlubang Golf and Country Club in Laguna recently. Composed of Myrna Sutherland, Tonette Tee, Marissa Romano, Amy Dy, Jo Barredo and Alex Etter, the Dasmariñas, Cavite-based golfers emerged with the lowest gross score of eight-under par in the six-player Modified Team Scramble scoring format to bag the overall championship.
Villamor I, made up of Marie Guerrero, Helen Ambrose, Nora de los Santos, Kristine Torralba, Mary Jane Hernandez and top amateur Harmie Constantino settled for runner-up honors with a 65, while Sta. Elena I, led by Techie Leonio, Misako Ogihara, Alice Jose, Lily Chan, Rio Co and Mina Attwood, placed third with a 66. Alabang 2 assembled a 67 for fourth followed by Tagaytay I (68), which nipped Villamor 2 (68) in the countback for fifth in the golden staging of the annual event hosted by
Cangolf and held to foster camaraderie among the teams from the Women’s Golf Association of the Philippines. Sta. Elena 2 made a 69 for seventh followed by Manila Golf (70), Canlubang (70), Camp Aguinaldo (71), Valley Golf (72), Eagle Ridge (72), Orchard B (73), Forest Hills I (74), Forest Hills 2 (75), Aguinaldo Red (75), Aguinaldo Yellow (76), Tagaytay 2 (76), Canlubang (77), Alabang 3 (80) and Forest Hills 3 (83) in that order.
A6 Saturday, March 18, 2017
BAGUIO COUNTRY CLUB
The first course in the City of Pines T
Text & photos by Mike Besa
he history of Baguio Country Club is inextricably linked to the history of the city in the clouds. When William Howard Taft was tasked with governing the Philippine Islands, he directed his friend William Cameron Forbes to look for a cool place in the Sierra Madre Mountains of which he had heard rumors. You see, Taft was a large man who found the heat and humidity of the tropics too much for his corpulence. He longed for the cool temperate climes of the Northeastern United States and was determined to find such a place on the Islands. It was this determination that oversaw the building of the Benguet Road and the subsequent establishment of the City of Baguio. Of course, once there, there had to be something to do for those that made the trek up the winding mountain road. To that end, Forbes tapped his associate Dallas McGrew to start a club. The founding members, including Forbes and McGrew, established Baguio Country Club in 1905 and circulated the prospectus for membership the next year. For a P50 initiation fee and a twenty Peso annual fee, one could avail of membership, provided, of course, they met the social criteria. The club wasted no time and purchased 32 hectares of suitable land from Mateo Cariño, an Igorot chief who also owed the land on which Club John Hay now sits, for the princely sum of P2,400. The first clubhouse was little more than a large hut with a thatched roof; it was built in one day for P400. The club’s first facilities were two tennis courts, croquet grounds and a three-hole golf course. In 1907 Major Gallagher of the US Army, Mr. Marshall of International Bank and Mang Dangal, from the Manila Club, were retained by Forbes
to relayout the golf course. And on March 25, 1908, the club began serving food to its patrons; a tradition that extends to this day. Much, of course, has transpired between then and now; the course has been rerouted a couple of times since then and the clubhouse was destroyed by a fire on July 16, 1990. The board, under late chairman Potenciano Illusorio, rebuilt the clubhouse in 1990 and finally inaugurated it on February 18, 1995. Besides the golf course, the new club boasts a 215-room hotel, guest cottages, a salon, fitness center, a heated indoor pool, recreation center, library, bar, three restaurants and one of, if not, the best pastry shops in the City of Pines. Baguio Country Club (BCC) is a resort course in what some consider classic old construction, i.e., a short course with smallish, elevated Bermuda greens with carabao grass fairways. The course was redesigned in the mid-1970s by Luis “Golem” Silverio, arguably the best amateur golfer the country has ever produced. In BCC’s case, it’s a confluence of grasses that presents the challenge. Maintenance has been less-than-ideal and the once Bermuda and carabao fairways have been invaded by clover. While attractive ground cover, clover is less than ideal to play golf on and detracts from the overall experience. A shortcoming made more glaring by the superb conditions of neighboring Club John Hay. Nevertheless, golf in Baguio remains pleasurable because of the temperate climate and the scent of pine wafting in the wind. Golf at BCC is a journey into Baguio’s past; a walk back into a more genteel time when the City of Pines was in its infancy. It’s a walk back in history. Holes No. 1 and 10 are both par threes and share a large, common green fronting the club’s veranda. The tee shots crisscross each other making the experience even more entertaining. The tee shot on either tee during the club’s busiest season must rank
as the most nerve-racking in Philippine golf. Imagine having to tee off without a proper session at the range in front of a veranda full of people having breakfast in the crisp, cold mountain air...the mere thought sends shudders up a golfer’s spine. BCC manages to entertain because of the accuracy and elevation changes of the shots required. The course plays to a par of 61 at 4,038 yards in length with nines of 33-28; the back nine has one par four with eight par threes. The greens are hard; high soft approach shots to the front of the greens to avoid rolling the ball off the back. Once on, they can be agonizingly slow or lightning fast depending on which side of the slope you’re putting from. As with all mountain courses, you need to be playing uphill to play aggressively. Numbers three and four are two of our favorite holes on the golf course. Three is a short walk across Country Club Drive; the 386yard par four is one of the few places where long hitters can take the driver off the tee. A well-placed drive will be rewarded by an even lie to another elevated green that sits by the club’s perimeter fence on Leonard Wood Road. No. 4, a 311-yard par four+, takes you back down the hill. The fairway is narrow but the landing area fairly generous and sloped from left to right. A gentle fade with a fairway wood or hybrid will put you in the best position to attack one of the greens. This hole is unique in that it has two greens which are rotated depending on the conditions. The original green is nestled in a stand of pine with shallow bunkers and OB behind it. Unfortunately, this arrangement doesn’t allow much sunlight to hit the green and it’s been plagued by fungus during heavy wet seasons. Also, the front of this green is often quite muddy and problematic to play from. So the club built another green, short and to the left of the original. This green is guarded by two bunkers and a small pond on the left and a
bunker short right. No. 11, the only par four on the inward nine, is universally regarded as the most difficult hole on the golf course. The tee shot is played out of a narrow chute of ancient Benguet pine; the fairway starts fifty feet or so below the tees and climbs another eighty back up the hill. A tall pine straddles the middle of the fairway and a water hazard lurks unseen to the right. The fairway slopes toward the hazard making this perhaps the most demanding tee shot on the course. Finding the fairway is just half the battle. The severely elevated green has two short tiers and is sloped radically from left to right. You’ll need to aim at the left front section of the green, no matter where the pin is. Distance control is crucial; a narrow bunker behind the green is all that separates you from the OB directly beyond and far below. The 166-yard 18th is a welcome sight for the now weary golfer. Playing just slightly uphill, it holds the promise of a welcome libation with the bar strategically located just behind the green. Time to pay up and to plan the next foray on the course. The golf course at Baguio Country Club might be a bit of a throwback but the club and the position it holds in the City of Baguio is one steeped in history and dates back to the origins of the city in the clouds. It was the first golf course in Baguio and as such it occupies a hallowed place in the annals of golf in the country.
Golf destinatons: Baguio City
Few cities embrace golf like the City of Pines
Memories of old Baguio are abundant at Camp John Hay.
The Saturday dinner buffet at the Manor
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s Philippine golf destinations go, few can match the inherent appeal of Baguio City. At just under 5,700 feet above sea level, the climate is crisp and cool for most of the year; a God-send in an equatorial country. The city has grown into a university town for the Cordilleras and as such is a beehive of activity year-round. The golf is a mixed bag. There is the granddaddy of them all—Baguio Country Club, or BCC, (featured elsewhere in this issue); the current king of the hill, Club John Hay; and the new kid on the block, Pinewoods Golf Club. The three combined offer a great variety of golf. Baguio Country Club offers a glimpse into Philippine golf’s past. A club that values its privacy, BCC is a tee time that will be elusive to some but it’s an experience that’s worth the trouble to get it. The pregame breakfast is quite an event on the weekends and most especially during the Fil-Am. The opening tee shot is, perhaps, the most nerveracking in golf. Picture a veranda full of guests and dozens of you waiting to get their competitive rounds started. Then the starter calls your name,
c s B F e f s w a c a c p B P l O t o w d
calling out your flight to the assembled masses. It’s sheer terror for the uninitiated. Camp John Hay is the golfing destination in Baguio. The golf course, clubhouse, the Manor and Forest Lodge set the gold standard for the Baguio experience. The accommodations are top-shelf, the food exquisite and the golf sublime. Camp John Hay sought their inspiration at Augusta National and has worked long and hard to deliver a golf experience above all others in the country. The course isn’t a championship layout but doesn’t aspire to be. It’s a very pleasurable place to play and those greens carpeted with cool season bent grass provide the best putting surface East of Augusta, Georgia. Pinewoods Golf Club is the golf destination of Baguio’s future. For a golf course in the mountains, Pinewoods’s terrain is moderate; it resembles a lowland course and presents similar challenges. Only nine holes are playable at the moment but that should change soon. Work in going full blast on the other nine and when it’s done, Baguio will have a trifecta of golf courses, each distinctly different from the other.
www.pinoygolfer.com
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Saturday, March 18, 2017 A7
The 9th green at Baguio Country Club with the clubhouse in the background.
Odyssey O-Works 7
Odyssey O-Works putters their best ever? T
here are two schools of thought when it comes to putters; the first is that they must be beautiful. The putter is the one club that will never see violent impact with anything except if inflicted by the golfer in anger, so it’s the club that can stand a bit of bling. upside down L shaped stainless steel hinges on the face that are embedded into the Thermoplastic Elastomer Feel Layer of the insert. And bling it we have; witness the Barth & Son Golden Putter First Lady Special Edition— This German-made flatstick features a five-micrometer thick coating of 24-carat gold on the shaft. The head is made of cherry wood, encrusted with diamonds, thus accounting for its $150,000 price tag. Extreme, yes. But more to the point, this is the niche that Scotty Cameron, Bettinardi, Piretti, Byron Nelson and every other designer putter maker mines to perfection. Then there’s the school of thought of putters as tools, implements for getting the ball into the hole. This is the realm of Odyssey, the number one putter on the world’s tours and the best-selling putter today. Their putters aren’t works of art but they do help you get down. Odyssey’s line is rife with technology that will help make you a better putter from face inserts that help you put the perfect roll on the golf ball to high-contrast clubheads
that facilitate alignment. Synthetic inserts are great for putters as they enable designers to save weight in the center of the club and move it to the heel, toe or further back to make the club less resistant to twisting on off-center strikes. Their latest products, named O-Works, is being touted as their best, ever. The O-Works range features Odyssey’s most popular head shapes with a combination of its most effective technologies; an enhanced Versa paint job for infallible alignment and an insert unique to the O-Works range that is supposed to get the ball rolling more quickly than ever before. Odyssey named their new insert Microhinge. The Microhinge insert employs upside down L shaped stainless steel hinges on the face that are embedded into the Thermoplastic Elastomer Feel Layer of the insert. These flex a little at impact to impart 70 rpm of top spin on to the ball to get it rolling more quickly and stop it jumping which is a major cause of it starting off line. What it also does is give the insert of the Odyssey O-Works 17 the closest feel to a steel face putter as you can get. It gives you back a
A closeup of the O-Works insert
lot of the sound and feel you will have been missing if you prefer a steel faced putter, but with the benefits of an insert design and a better rolling face. People gravitate to Odyssey putters because of how easy they are to line up to the target. The 2-Ball broke the boundaries of the traditional sightline with the now ubiquitous 2-Ball alignment aid. Their Marksman technology followed and was quite successful but in this writer’s opinion, it was Odyssey’s Versa series that really set them apart. The addition of red accent lines to the Versa paint scheme on O-Works putters is genius. It might seem a subtle change but it works wonders as you stand over the ball. The red adds emphasis to an already stellar alignment aid. The number 7 leaves no doubt as to where the putter face is pointing. You can set up to the ball with complete confidence that you’re pointed in the right direction. But it is the insert that defines O-Works. The Microhinge has already proved itself in battle, but you wouldn’t know it, as Phil Mickelson used a blacked-out version during the 2016 Ryder Cup and holed almost everything he looked at. Pundits are already calling the Microhinge the best insert Odyssey has ever put on a putter and one that is destined to go down as one of Odyssey’s best inserts of all time; right up there with the Stronomic and White Hot. Whether O-Works will eventually be remembered as one of Odyssey’s greatest putters ever is something for speculation. It’s perhaps a bit premature for that. What is clear is that Odyssey seems to have a real winner with O-Works and that you need to try one. Soon. Mike Besa
The 18th green at Baguio Country Club.
THE JOURNEY TO BECOMING A HAPPIER,
MORE SUCCESSFUL GOLFER ‘ By David MacKenzie
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Camp John Hay remains the ideal base for a golf safari in the cordilleras. Although thoroughly modern, it still reeks of that old Baguio charm. It’s the one place left in the city that seems almost untouched by the rabid pace of development. If you yearn for quiet moments amid tall stands of Benguet pines, there are few places in the city to go other than Camp John Hay. No hotel represents the city like the Manor at Camp John Hay. The service is irreproachable. It is the equal of any hospitality establishment in the country today. The food...what more can I say about the food? Billy King is a culinary wizard but his true genius is getting a hundred percent out of the people on his staff. The food is fantastic but it is the service that will truly win you over. If buffets are your thing, you’ll never leave the Manor. The hotel has breakfast, lunch and dinner buffets all day Saturday and the food is superb. Chef King was quick to remind us that guests are not limited to the buffet and may order from and off the menu as they desire. We had occasion to dine with the Manor’s
general manager, Ramon Cabrerra. We complemented the standard of service at the hotel and the quality of the staff but Ramon was quick to wave off the compliments. “Standard of service is a moving target,” he told us. “You cannot let your guard down for one moment. The moment you do spells disaster for guest.” Safe to say, with Cabrerra at the helm of the Manor, there’s little danger of this happening any time soon. More good news for golfers looking to vacation in the city in the sky; guests at the Manor will soon be able to play all three golf courses in the city. Arrangements are still being made but this is a golf experience not to be missed. Yes, there is a Baguio outside of the walls of the Camp. The Baguio City Market is a destination unto itself and there is a plethora of dining options with every conceivable cuisine on offer but none can match the complete package that Camp John Hay brings to bear. In the end, if you’re going North for golf, Camp John Hay is your dream destination and it’s working hard to stay that way. Mike Besa
an, know thyself, and you are going to know the gods”—Ancient Greek Proverb When I start work with a new student, I ask them a series of questions to try to get an understanding of what makes them perform. Good coaching is focused on the player and the individual student, instead of trying to fit them into a process for all. I like to think of my coaching more as “guided self-discovery”, where the students (through being asked quality questions) arrive at the answers themselves. I ask them about their habits, thoughts and what they are focusing on when they are playing well, and playing badly (this is also part of the post-round review process). What is it that they feel in different situations and what could trigger different emotions and different levels of performance on the course? With most players (because they are not used to it), this takes a bit of coaxing, but increasing their self-awareness in golf is key to accelerate and deepen a player’s ability to perform, especially under pressure. Developing self-awareness in golf is a key part of becoming a happier and more successful golfer and in this lesson, I’d like to explain what it is, how you can practice it, and how it will ultimately benefit you.
WHAT IS SELF-AWARENESS IN GOLF?
A dictionary definition is: conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires. Harvard Business Journal writer, Anthony Tjan says: “In my experience—and in the research... there is one quality that trumps all, evident in virtually every great entrepreneur, manager, and leader. That quality is self-awareness. The best thing leaders can [do] to improve their effectiveness is to become more aware of what motivates them and their decision-making.” The stoic Greek philosophers Plato and Socrates, used the ancient Greek proverb “Know thyself”. Seneca said “You have to catch yourself doing it (the habit) before you can reform.”
WHY IS SELF-AWARENESS IN GOLF IMPORTANT?
Being self-aware is knowing yourself in depth,
and getting to the bottom of what is causing certain behaviors and habits. The more you know this, the more you are able to adapt and shift yourself towards those behaviors that will lead to more happiness and success. In other words, you are able to notice, but not react upon instinct. You are more accepting of yourself and more patient. On the golf course, this means that instead of paying attention to the things that get you upset and cause a poor performance, you are able to ignore and shift your focus to where it needs to be for you to access your best skills. Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.—Victor Frankl The human brain is pre-dispositioned to want to form habits, as it requires less mental energy. But the problem with habits, is that they cause you to react without thinking. Contrarily, when you are self-aware, you have more time to choose your responses, instead of reacting uncontrollably. Some define emotional intelligence as “The power of the pause” that time between the stimulus and response. Self-awareness gives you a little more time between the stimulus and response. You can’t control thoughts, but you can control your responses to them.
WHAT WORKS FOR YOU?
Through the process of self-awareness, you’ll discover what it is that makes YOU perform your best and what helps YOU get the most out of your performances. We can use this to define process goals and include triggers and better responses to the variability and uncertainty on the course. During sessions with my students, I don’t tell them what to do on the course. E.g. if when they are playing their best golf, they don’t visualize a single shot, why would I try to get them to visualize like other players do? There’s no one best way to get better access to your optimal performance state. This is why the post-round review process is important. What may have caused you to hit certain shots well and others not so well? What were you thinking and what were your emotions before, during and after those shots and what were you thinking about in between shots? Noticing negative/destructive thoughts pattern is key for you being able to redirect them to positive.
What is your intensity level when you are playing your best? If I asked you how pumped up you are when you’re playing well, what would you say? Some players play better when they are feeling aggressive and fired up, and others do not. It’s about each player as an individual. When you tense up on the course, where on your body does this tension come from?
HOW TO IMPROVE SELF-AWARENESS IN GOLF n
Keeping a performance journal— Writing about your experiences (thoughts/ feelings/emotions/results) is a good way to figure out what may be causing success and failure. Write down your goals and plans. n Post-round Review—Asking yourself critical questions about your performance is a good way to understand your mental process in different situations on the course. Are you being self-compassionate or self-critical? What might be triggering good and bad performances? Noticing these patterns is key to learning how to change it for the better. n Meditation—I meditate for at least 10 mins per day and I know first-hand how it’s reduced my stress levels and helped me stay more present daily, and during my rounds of golf. The more able you are to access the present, the better able you are to be self-aware (noticing your thoughts and feelings), but be accepting of them and choose your responses. The practice of focusing on breathing also helps regulate heart rate and lower stress levels n David MacKenzie is a Performance Coach
and the founder of Golf State of Mind. Throughout David’s playing career, he learned quickly how attitude, self-belief and mental toughness affect performance in golf. He knew that was the difference between his average and great rounds. But the question was how did one improve these valuable skills and feel more confident more often? While studying at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, David began in depth research into sport psychology and how elite performers apply their minds to practice and play. He interviewed hundreds of elite golfers and sport psychologists. He shared what he discovered via his website, Golf State of Mind and it quickly resonated with golfers of all levels.
OurTime BusinessMirror
A8 Saturday, March 18, 2017 • Editor: Efleda P. Campos
news@businessmirror.com.ph
Cebu Osca head instills pride and skills among city’s older citizens
DOMINGO O. Chaves (second from left), head of the Office of Senior Citizens Affairs, with the presidents of the different senior citizens’ organizations in Cebu City. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
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By Felix U. Basadre Jr. | Correspondent
HE senior citizens in Cebu City cannot trade places with the young, but in this city they become assets to team-playing,” said Domingo O. Chaves Jr., the head of the city’s Office of Senior Citizens Affairs (Osca) in a talk with the BusinessMirror.
Right now, the Osca head said, “we are not doing different things, but we are doing things differently.” Most older people are so focused on complaining about the things they don’t have that they lose sight of the things they have, Chaves said. Under his tutelage, senior citizens are now working together as a
team, whether they have or do not have a formal education. This is so because, Chaves said, most of the senior citizens in Cebu City have the 3 Cs: Commitment, Conviction, and Courage. As of today, there are 105,000 ID card-bearing senior citizens in the city, with 67,300 qualified to
avail themselves of the city’s annual P12,000 financial assistance. The Cebu City government sets aside P807.6 million as financial assistance to the elderly. During the city’s past two administrations, Chaves said, senior citizens “have been working for a good leader”—referring to the city mayor—and a belief. “My objective is to share the fact that when senior citizens believe that working as part of a team makes their outlook toward teamplaying become realistic, they are able to help others have better lives and behavior.” Chaves whose term will expire in November this year said he is going to leave many good things behind for the city’s senior citizens. He said his efforts have paid off: Harmony reigns in the workplace and senior citizens now believe they can be technologically savvy. Currently Osca is streamlining the operation of senior citizens associations in the different barangays of Cebu City through computerization, resulting in efficiency gains and professional presentation and awareness on the additional benefits of Republic Act 9994—the Expanded Senior Citizens Act, Chaves said. The city’s elderly, he said, are also being assisted in their material needs through social pension funds and financial assistance accorded by the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the city government. Cursorily, Chaves said, he did institute immediate changes when he started his work as Osca head by getting rid of corrupt employees, including gossip mongers and those employees who have humiliated senior citizens doing at the city hall.
Report: Diabetes kills 12 people daily in Portugal in 2015
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ISBON, Portugal—Diabetes killed 12 people a day in Portugal in 2015, a report released on Wednesday said. The report, titled “Diabetes: Facts and Numbers” from the National Observatory for Diabetes, revealed the number of newly reported diagnosis grew in 2015, with around 168 new cases of diabetes identified every day. The illness is more prevalent in men than in women, and there is higher incidence among the elderly population.
Over a quarter of people aged between 60 and 79 suffer from the disease, the report said. Rui Duarte, president of the Portuguese Diabetology Society, highlighted the numbers registered are “surprising” and confirm a growing trend in recent years. The cost of medicines for diabetic people for the national health system more than tripled in the past 10 years, the figures from the report showed. The rise in costs is explained through an increase of the prevalence
of the condition, but also due to the number of people treated rising, as well as the doses used in treatments. The World Health Organization said around 422 million people around the world have diabetes, and 1.5 million deaths are attributed to the disease each year. Diabetes is a chronic disease characterized by high levels of blood sugar, which leads to serious damage to the heart, blood vessels, kidneys, eyes and nerves. PNA/xinhua
MANOBO MUSIC An elderly Ubo-Manobo brass musician (center) plays tribal music with gongs. The city always plays homage to the six tribal groups inhabiting its western and northern hinterlands during special occasions and at Christmas, when the city opens its public buildings for their temporary sojourn as they go caroling around the city. MANUEL CAYON
Millennial movers breathe new life into Japanese mountain towns Warm life at a Tibetan nursing home
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IGH-SPEED broadband. An awardwinning brew pub built with recycled materials as part of a “zero waste” mission. An artist-in-residence program. Organic pizza from a wood-fired oven. There is new life in the mountains of Tokushima prefecture, in the neighboring towns of Kamiyama and Kamikatsu, even as depopulation afflicts most of rural Japan with rot. In Kamiyama young people work remotely for tech companies or as artists in cooperative spaces. In Kamikatsu the elderly test drones as part of their work harvesting leaves and flowers for use as garnishes in restaurants as far away as Europe. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has stressed the need to revitalize rural areas as the country struggles with demographic decline. The stakes are high. Depopulation may wipe out nearly half of its towns in coming decades. Calling it “creative depopulation,” some see what is happening in Tokushima as a way forward. They can’t stop the demographic decline, they say, but they can work with it. “We want to create a system or a model that can sustain the community, even if the population is halved,” said Shinya Ominami, 64, chairman of the private nonprofit organization Green Valley, one of the driving forces behind the changes in Kamiyama. Japan’s population, among the world’s most rapidly aging, is forecast to shrink from 127 million to about 100 million over the next
three decades, adding pressure on a government already burdened with the world’s biggest debt as a share of the economy. A stroke of luck brought software engineer Yoichi Dan to Kamiyama, a town of about 6,000 people where more than a dozen companies, most in the tech sector, have opened satellite offices or permitted employees to work remotely. Tired of big-city life, Dan and his wife were eager to get out of Tokyo. So he told his boss at Sansan Inc., which offers cloud-based business card management services, that he planned to quit and had begun searching for jobs elsewhere. His boss suggested he consider Kamiyama, where Sansan has a satellite office it used for seminars and training. Dan and his wife moved there in 2013, and have since had a baby girl. “In terms of raising a kid, it’s a really good environment here,” Dan said. “I don’t see the downside of living here, surprisingly.” Efforts to attract creative types to Kamiyama date to at least 1999, when Green Valley’s Ominami and others first started inviting artists to live there. Tokushima prefecture later installed a fiber-optic network throughout the region, and Green Valley started a program to attract young people who wanted to open needed shops and businesses. With Kamiyama as a model, 43 companies have opened satellite offices in nine towns in Tokushima, according to the prefectural government.
The economic impact of such measures is difficult to quantify, but any inflow of younger people to rural areas will help keep communities alive, said Satoshi Shirato, director of research at the Mitsubishi Research Institute in Tokyo. “Wherever you go to rural towns in Japan, there are only elderly people there,” Shirato said. “So young people coming into those towns will increase the vitality of the communities and will make it easier for the towns to take on new challenges. Such an impact is huge.” One recent transplant to Kamiyama is Tetsu Sumita, chairman of Tokyo-based Plat-Ease Corp., which develops computer programs to manage and monitor TV broadcasts and video distribution. He opened a satellite office in the town in 2013 as part of a plan to diversify disaster-related risks for the company. He has lived there ever since. Sumita said he was attracted by Kamiyama’s IT infrastructure and its welcoming, laid-back atmosphere, which he cited as a reason for its recent success in attracting new people. Another reason, he said, was the grassroots nature of its revitalization efforts. “Private sector-led initiatives and projects are much more stable and sustainable once a self-reliant model is established,” he said. In Kamikatsu 79-year-old Yukiyo Nishikage gets up at 5:30 every morning, looking forward to harvesting the leaves and flower petals destined for restaurant dishes in Tokyo and beyond. Bloomberg News
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HASA, Tibet—Cering Yangzom, 71, begins her day at 6 a.m. with a kettle of strong buttered tea, despite her carer’s frequent advice against it. “Drink more pure tea. Too much oil is bad for you,” Lhaba often told Cering Yangzom. Cering easily dismisses the advice. “You kids have no idea about what I have been through. For my whole life, I had to drink my tea without yak butter, and now, I feel happy just at the smell of it.” The nursing home where Cering Yangzom now resides is located in Dagze County, southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. The hardship of which she speaks were in the days before the peaceful liberation of Tibet in 1951. Born into slavery in the county where she now lives in comparative luxury, her family got by on nothing but the few handfuls of tsampa—roasted barley flour and still a Tibetan staple—they were given every two days or three days. In order to take care of her mother, Cering Yangzom never married and had been prepared to spend her twilight years alone. She is now a part of a free program in Tibet for those who have no relatives to look after them. She is one of 11,400 beneficiaries, previously scattered across rural Tibet, who have been provided with places in nursing homes since 2013. China is gravely concerned with taking care of its old folks, given the size of coun-
try’s rapidly graying population. China has more than 40 million senior citizens who need help in taking care of themselves. That’s more than the entire population of Canada. Another 100 elderly people share Cering Yangzom’s rest home with her, all living in Tibetan-style bungalows. Each house is shared by two and has its own kitchen and bathroom. In addition, doctors are on call. A special room in the rest home is used to hold religious rites for the deceased. Residents are often seen turning the prayer wheels set up outside the room. Cering Yangzom sees Lhaba, who helps with all her chores, as a kind of daughter. “She often brings us snacks she has made at home. We all like her so much,” she said. Lhaba lost her mother as a child. Had she lived, she would have been around the same age as Cering Yangzom, Lhaba said. “I try my best to take care of the elderly. It’s a good job, but it is also a way to make up for what I couldn’t do for my mum.” Toinzhub is a senior-care worker in the rest home. He has seen the organization hire more workers and improve its facilities in the past couple of years. He has taken a course in massage to do more to make the residents enjoy their lives, but he believes the work he has done is far from enough. “They need more than just basic care in their daily lives. They also need psychological support, and I’m not very good at that,” he said. PNA/Xinhua
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The Millennials BusinessMirror
Young thespian dispels some myths on millenNials
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Story & photo by Rizal Raoul Reyes
HE’S not a geek. Still, FilipinaBritish stage actress Rebecca Faith Coates is serious at securing a premedical degree speech and language pathology at the De La Salle UniversityHealth Sciences Institute (DLSU-HIS). “Basically, I want to help people who can no longer be able to speak properly or even children who have developmental disorders,” Coates, 19, said. “I want to teach how to use their voices correctly. Funnily, enough, I don’t love science. But I love helping people.” The latter’s the reason she’s at the DLSU-HIS, she said in a recent interview with the BusinessMirror. Helping people, Coates said, “is my end goal and motivation.” “My paternal grandmother is my inspiration,” the bubbly college freshman said. “As she got older she had difficulty to speak.” Fondly called Becca by her friends, Coates plans to establish a school for people with disabilities in confidence and speaking, where she can combine music and theater or a more enjoyable and affective learning experience.
Motherhood
COATES’S love of theater was developed by her mother. Her mother also became the mentor in their home school and she and her younger sister enjoyed it because their mother was a very theatrical person. “All of our lessons were done in verses,” she said, recalling her homeschooling days. Her professional role in theater was with Resort’s World Manila’s Sound of Music. At 15, she appeared as Alice in Repertory Philippines’s Children Theater presentation of Alice in Wonderland. Coates was also seen in the Sandbox Collective’s production of Dani Girl and played Snow White in Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs. She also recently appeared in Repertory Philippines’s production of The Secret Garden. Coates worked as an intern writer at the wedding blog “Bride and Breakfast”. She is a passionate writer and has been writing and keeping track of her life and experiences since she was 12. She has attended summer workshops by Repertory Philippines, Trumpets and 9Works Theatrical. Coates is also a gold medalist at the National Student Convention, where she performed solos and monologues.
Group eyes millennials in first literacy summit
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group of advocates mostly using online social media is targeting millennials on its maiden summit in the country to expands its audience on financial literacy. The Global Filipino Investors Inc. (TGFI), a group that started as an online forum of Filipinos working abroad, will hold its first “Financial Literacy Summit” in the country. TGFI CEO Floi Wycoco said he expects some 2,000 to 3,000 attendees in the event that will be held at SMX Convention Center at the Mall of Asia Complex in Pasay City on April 1 to 2. He said the summit is targeting millennials aside from overseas Filipino workers and their immediate family. Wycoco added they also target regular workers. These market segments have the necessary disposable income for investment, he added. “We are doing this because there’s no group that has done a summit on financial literacy,” Wycoco said. “Everybody needs to have financial education from handling
your personal needs and if you will start a business, you’ll also need some financial know-how.” The summit will touch on different types of handling one’s finances from investing, earning online, real estate and entrepreneurship, he explained. Wycoco said the summit will try to convince millennials to instead consider investing rather than purchasing electronic gadgets and brands. The TGFI first started its financial literacy summit in Singapore in 2015, gathering around 600 overseas Filipinos. The group, which seeks to call itself as a social enterprise as it teaches mostly overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) how to handle its finances, also conducts regular seminars for OFWs. Wycoco said they aim to reach 1 million Filipinos in five years or at least help them learn financial literacy through TGFI social-media channels. Currently, the group has reached between 91,000 to 130,000, he said. VG Cabuag
Honored
COATES, who plays Agnes in Repertory’s second production Agnes of God, said she feels “so honored” that she’s “still around”. “I’m glad Rep has kept me.” She considers every show memorable because she is given the opportunity to meet different types of people. “If I do Alice in Wonderland, it is for children,” she said. “If I do Agnes of God, I am facing the regular theater crowd.” Although Coates has mestiza features, she considers herself more Filipina in her outlook. “As for the British part, I love to drink tea. Filipino-wise, I am fun,” she said. “Filipinos are fun. I hope that I am also fun. And I love sinigang na baboy and love music.” According to her, she is “more Filipino inside”. “I also love and appreciate the arts,” she adds. “Filipinos put their hearts into a show.”
By Beth J. Harpaz
with The Associated Press during a recent stop in New York.
EW YORK—Daniel Houghton was just 24 years old when he became CEO of Lonely Planet in 2013. Since then, he’s restructured the company, expanded its digital presence and, to the surprise of many who feared he’d kill off Lonely Planet guidebooks, he’s grown the print side of the business. The company now has 33 percent of the guidebook market, its largest share ever. Houghton, now 28, starts his fourth year with the company in April. Houghton’s roots are in the South—he grew up outside Atlanta and holds a photojournalism degree from Western Kentucky University. But you could say travel is a family tradition: His parents worked for airlines and his grandparents toured the lower 48 states in an Airstream camper in the 1970s. Houghton is based in Nashville, Tennessee, now, but last year he traveled some 150,000 miles for Lonely Planet, and the year before that, 300,000 miles. This year his job has taken him to Colombia to speak at an event honoring that country’s president for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. For fun, he recently vacationed in North Dakota with his dogs, a pair of German shorthaired pointers named Jackson and Moose. Houghton spoke
What are some of the changes at Lonely Planet since you took over?
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Let’s all get small: Tiny houses for short stays
As far as her fellow millennials are concerned, Coates urges them to come to the theater because they need to absorb art. “There’s nothing like [being] in the theater. You can’t recreate the feeling in the theater.” She urges millennials to come to the theater “if they want something real”. “Our job as actresses is to make them feel the situation is real.”
Erasure
COATES said it is unfair to accuse all millennials of having a short at-
tention span, of being self-indulgent and gadget addicts. “I don’t believe that’s true for everyone,” Coates said. Why don’t we break the stigma and go to the theater and show people that we do have a capacity to watch art and get off our phones and can listen and can be present.” Going more to the theater is one way to erase the stigma that all millennials cannot appreciate art, she said. “I think millennials should not be scared of watching plays that have been written a long time ago because they are still relevant today.”
A chat with the man who took over ‘Lonely Planet’ at age 24 The Associated Press
Saturday, March 18, 2017
We’ve completely rebuilt the entire digital platform along with a suite of mobile products. We’ve just really tried to expand our content coverage as much as possible: food, adventure travel, we’ve launched a whole line of kids’ content. Travel is really much more than ‘I’m about to go get on a very longhaul flight and take my guidebook’. That’s obviously a very large part of our audience. But we’ve set the business up to reach people on as many platforms as we can. Whether they find something that we put on Instagram, or they see our magazine in the airport, or they visit our web site because they Googled where to go in Italy and we’re the No. 1 or 2 organic search result, we want to get that content in front of as many people as possible. If we’re doing a Facebook Instant Article, that’s very different from opening up Periscope or Facebook Live and watching a Livestream by one of our authors at Diwali. We’re also a launch partner for Google Home. If you talk to them and say, ‘I want to talk to Lonely Planet’, we’ll jump in.
You were hired to run Lonely Planet by
We’re certainly moving in the right direction. We’re proud of what we’ve achieved and we don’t really comment on the rest of it.
Had you traveled the world before Lonely Planet?
Houghton
Brad Kelley, the billionaire who bought the company from the BBC. How did that come about?
We got to meet pretty randomly a couple years before Lonely Planet. I was in the right place at the right time and very fortunate to have that opportunity. We met a few times and he offered me a job. But every time I tell this story, someone comes up with some new twist on what they imagined must have happened.
What were you doing before Lonely Planet ? At the time I was frustrated with the newspaper industry. I had started my own one-man band, a multimedia company doing everything from shooting pilots of TV shows to commercial work.
Kelley bought the company from the BBC at a fraction of what it had sold for a few years earlier. Is Lonely Planet profitable now?
I’d been a lot of places but I hadn’t been to Asia and I’ve never been to Antarctica. Every other continent I had been to a couple of times—a lot of vacations and both my parents worked for the airlines. Until I turned 21, I had a free ticket. I grew up traveling with the family. My mom’s idea of a really fun vacation was, ‘Let’s go to New Hampshire to see all of the covered bridges in the whole state’. As a 10- or 12-year-old, that’s not radically exciting. But it is when you get given a camera: ‘Maybe I’ll take a picture of every one of them.’
Are there places you haven’t been that you want to go?
Last year we had a book called The Ultimate Travel List. We had Angkor Wat at No. 1. I’ve never been there. I’d love to see that. I’d love to go to Myanmar and Vietnam.
How many countries have you been to? I’m somewhere north of 35 but not more than 45.
How many states?
I’ve got one state left. I have not been to Hawaii. Of all the ones, right?
the Scarlett, one of a few designs for short-stay rentals at a campground in Oregon New York Times News Service
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MALL rooms are in the DNA of a number of new hotel brands, including Moxy Hotels from Marriott and Vib from Best Western, that are chasing millennial travelers. Now house rentals are shrinking too with the rise of the tiny-house hotel. Proponents of shrunken living spaces champion environmental and economic efficiencies. And while there is no standard definition of a tiny house, the Small House Society, a group that encourages simpler living, identifies those under 500 square feet as tiny, although many are less than half that size. “There’s a kitschy-ness to them that people love,” said Jenna Spesard, a blogger who writes about tiny houses. Spesard lives in a 160-square-foot dwelling and acts as the host at the new Mount Hood Tiny House Village, a collection of five small houses to rent on a campground in northern Oregon. This spring and summer, eight new tiny-home hotels will open across the country colonized by Colorado-built Tumbleweed tiny houses, cute mini-RVs that look like cottages or cabins. The innate charm of the designs, coupled with the social experiment of sharing close quarters, has fueled an entire category of reality television shows and documentaries that has helped drive the growth of tinyhouse inns where travelers can try out the lifestyle. Weissmann cites the 2013 film Tiny, which chronicled the building of one such home, as “the big reveal on tiny houses—our web-site traffic doubled after that debut on Netflix.” The downside to tiny-house living is, of course, the cramped quarters, as lampooned on the television show Portlandia. But fans say the houses offer amenities, including kitchens,
that are missing from standard hotel rooms and that hotels equally challenge couples and families to live together in small spaces. Many new tiny-house locales offer breathing room in park settings furnished with outdoor amenities, like picnic tables and fire pits. Mount Hood Tiny House Village installed five house designs of “tinies”, as they are called, in May at a campground that also welcomes RVs and rents cabins. The 178-squarefoot Atticus, with a bedroom, bath, kitchen and sleeping loft, is wood-sided and -paneled in classic, unadorned style. With a similar layout, and an extra 18 square feet, the more playful Zoe has pale blue siding and bright green curtains. Rates start at $129. This year the village’s owner, Equity Lifestyle Properties, is installing tiny-house rentals at three more campgrounds. Two units recently opened in the Verde Valley near Sedona, Arizona. In May another five each will open in Leavenworth, a Bavarian-theme town in central Washington state, and in Tuxbury in southern New Hampshire. Other, independently operated tiny-house hotels include Getaway, which opened seven tiny houses in upstate New York last summer. The proprietors keep the location secret until travelers book but admit to being on 20 acres in the Catskills with hiking trails nearby. With names like Isidore and Columbia, the boxy Scandinavian-influenced houses with knotty pine or plywood walls have two-burner stoves, minirefrigerators, queen beds and electric toilets (from $89). The company’s original location, in southern New Hampshire, opened in 2015 with three houses, and both sites are poised to expand this year. Elaine Glusac
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By Rizal Raoul Reyes brownindio
of i mplement i ng bloc kc h a i n is the lack of tr ust w ithin the i n for m at ion-tec h nolog y ( I T ) systems. A s an option, he said inter med i a r y systems w i l l hand le the transfer of f unds or products of any transaction. Within the blockchain, the companies and the banks will be in the ledger for the transaction, according to Pattabhiraman. Nevertheless, the Philippines is still not a user of blockchain.
Among the countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Singapore is one of the most pervasive users of using the system. IBM Chief Technologist Lope Doromal said there are customers interested to try blockchain and bring it to production. However, he said they don’t have the technical knowhow. “Certain entities are not comfortable to share information in the cloud. Business is the target of blockchain,” Doromal said. “Ideally, it is for businesses that deal with industries, like dealing with letters of credit.” Me a nw h i le, I BM a l so a n nounced a collaborative crossindustry effort created to advance blockchain technology got new 11 members to help create an open standard for distributed ledgers for a new generation of transactional applications. “Growth and interest in [the
project] remain high in 2017,” an IBM partner was quoted as saying. “We’re now at 122 members and seeing even more diverse organizations across industry sectors invest their energy and resources in understanding how blockchain technology can strengthen their own business processes.” According to documents provided by IBM, the new set of members’ combined backgrounds and experiences will be invaluable to the community, “as we strive to increase production deployments through this year.” The project called Hyperledger aims to enable organizations to build industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support individual business transactions. It is a global collaboration including leaders in finance, banking, information of technology, supply chain, manufacturing and technology.
other markets, including India, Indonesia, Myanmar and Vietnam. The Dongguan, Guangdong, China-headquartered firm said the F3 Plus sports a 16-megapixel (MP) main camera and an 8MP subcamera. The launch comes a month after the International Data Corp. (IDC) said
Oppo has become one of the leading vendors in the emerging Southeast Asia smartphone market in 2016. IDC said in February that Oppo, being half a decade old in Southeast Asia, accomplished this “by investing heavily in its marketing activities and incentivizing its resellers”.
Oppo “standardized its marketing a p p ro a c h a c ro s s c o u n t r i e s, m a i n l y relying on local celebrities as brand ambassadors to promote itself as a n ‘a s p i r at i o n a l / t re n d y ’ b r a n d a n d targeting mainly the millennial crowd,” IDC said. Rizal Raoul Reyes
HE bid to boost transparency in business operations in the country got a big lift when IBM recently introduced the so-called blockchain technology in the country. Blockchain has been for a long time; around eight or nine years, according to IBM Corp. Asia Pacific Open Source Solutions Arch. Manoj Pattabhiraman. In a news briefing on February 28, Pattabhiraman said enter pr ise -level business in t he Ph i l ippi nes a nd ot her cou nt r ies i n t he A si a-Pac i f ic re g ion a re just wa r m ing up to t h e b l o c k c h a i n t e c h n o l o g y. However, he said the cha llenge
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PPO Electronics Corp. announced this week the launch of its line of dual selfie camera phones: the F3 series. In a statement, the Chinese electronics manufacturer said the series’ flagship phone called F3 Plus will debut on March 23 in the Philippines simultaneously in four
AN FR ANCISCO—Verizon initially thought the biggest data breaches in Internet history merited a $925-Million discount on its acquisition of Yahoo!’s online services, nearly three times more than the two companies finally agreed upon. Yahoo! disclosed new details about its negotiations with Verizon in a regulatory filing on Monday. The filing doesn’t say why Verizon relented on its original demand, issued on February 1. Verizon ultimately accepted Yahoo!’s offer to trim the sale price by $350 million instead. T he companies str uck a $4.83-billion deal last July, but re-opened talks after Yahoo! revealed that personal information had been stolen from more than 1 billion of its users in two separate hacking attacks in 2013 and 2014. The discount reflect concerns that people might decrease their use of Yahoo! e-mail and other digital services that Verizon is buying, reducing opportunities to show ads. Verizon Communications is now aiming to complete the revised $4.48-billion purchase by the end of June. After that, Yahoo!’s e-mail and other digital services will become part of Verizon, which is planning to meld the operations with its AOL division in an effort to become a bigger player the growing market for digital ads. Y a h o o ! ’s m o s t v a l u a b l e
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ENOVO Corp. launched recently in the local market latest devices in the firm’s ThinkPad lineup powered by Intel’s latest seventh Generation Kaby Lake processor. Lenovo Philippines Country General Manager Michael Ngan said the company targets buyers from “the working class of today who are always on the go”. “Our work methods are faster than ever. Workplaces are being reconfigured to encourage greater collaboration as more and more employees become mobile,” Ngan said. “To strive in this ever-growing digitized world, we need to be both flexible and agile.” A tot a l of fou r T h i n k Pad products were launched t his week: the E470, T470, X270 and ThinkStation P410. According to Ngan, some of the new features added to the latest lineup include a cleaner, premium TouchPad that supports Microsoft Precision TouchPad. New security features were also included to support Windows He l lo for f ac i a l re cog n it ion login. There is also a biometric fingerprinting sensor.
parts—investments in China’s e - c om me rc e l e a d e r, A l i b a b a Group, and in Yahoo! Japan— will be left in a new company called Altaba. That company will be run by a Yahoo! board member, Thomas McInerney, instead of Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer. Although she hasn’t divulged her plans, Mayer isn’t expected to work for Verizon. If she leaves, Mayer will receive a $23-million severance package, according to Monday’s filing. The amount is lower than a $44-million valuation disclosed last September because $21 million in stock options and other awards have vested in Mayer’s account since then. Besides her severance package, Mayer will gain control of stock options valued at $56.8 million, according to the filing. The stock will help ease the sting of a penalty that Mayer is paying for the big data breaches that occurred on her watch. Yahoo!’s board is withholding Mayer’s annual bonus of up to $2 million and a potentially lucrative stock award to punish her. Besides naming McInerney as Altaba’s CEO, Yahoo! also filled several other key positions at the new holding company. Arthur Chong will serve as general counsel and secretary and Alexi Wellman as chief financial and accounting officer. DeAnn Fairfield Work was named chief compliance officer.
According to the International Data Corp. (IDC), Lenovo topped the list of vendors in Asia Pacific (including Japan) in terms of shipments last year. Lenovo “out-shipped” Dell and HP, second and third, respectively, with a 27.5-percent share of the market last year. However, in terms of unit growth year-on-year, Lenovo saw a 6.9-percent decline, while Dell and HP saw unit year over year growth rates of 3 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively. “Year 2017 is expected to remain challenging. However, the market is likely to see stabilization, especially in the commercial space,” IDC has said in February. “A lthough sma ller economies are likely to remain impacted by weak currencies and adverse economic conditions, China and Japan are expected to see more corporate renewals in the coming year, while India is expected to see another wave of big roll outs in the education sector.” IDC said it expects consumer PC shipments to decline by 3 percent and commercial PC market to see a 1 percent growth in 2017 in Asia-Pacific region. Rizal Raoul Reyes
BusinessMirror
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AN FRANCISCO—Russian hackers working with Russian spies didn’t crack Yahoo! security all at once.
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G E l e c t ron i c s I nc . a nd Sa msu ng Cor p. proud ly showcased their respective high-technology television in separate events.
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IN a separate statement, LG Electronics said it presented its OLED TV series, as well as SUPER UHD TVs with Nano Cell technology, at the InnoFest Asia. According to LG Electronics, each pixel on an OLED display can be individually switched on and off, resulting in the highest quality image rendering with the purest black and lifelike colors. LG said it has combined this cutting-edge display technology with its product. Meanwhile, LG Electronic’s third-generation SUPER UHD TV lineup features Nano Cell technology, which utilizes nanometersized particles to offer incredibly accurate color reproduction. “The Nano Cell display achieves impressive picture quality by absorbing excess wavelengths of light, resulting in purer, cleaner colors,” LG said. “This light-absorbing capability allows LG’s new LCD displays to filter out specific
By Vernon Velasco
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VEN before “PokémonGo” had yet to happen, I had thought of, well, a card that you could use to purchase everything. Everything. Think of it as something a kiss shy of a magic card emblazoned with the number of God’s bank account, a piece of plastic less bulky than a bottomless billfold. You can also think of it as a credit card, albeit sans the credit. I would travel with it, buy shoes with it and, with what would seem to be a divine privilege, I would just have to swipe away to taste all luxuries in life without all the worries and fear in the world. But there is no such thing (awwww). The closest I have discovered is a system that allows you to use an automated teller machine (ATM) card like you have never used it before, if it means you can use it as you would a credit card. The unprecedented technolog y is Solb!, a brainchild by financial technolog y start-up iBayad Online Ventures Inc., which delves into the field of electronic-transaction management, mobile payments and ecommerce. solb! is the Philippines’s first Bancnet-approved, app-based mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) pay ment faci l itating solution, which enables any merchant to accept bank ATM cards, credit cards, debit cards, loyalty cards or any other type of card payment, anytime, anywhere. “In the Philippines only bigtime establishments and merchants accept card payments. Which is unfortunate because it is exclusive, so that medium to
colors with much greater precision, rendering each color exactly as it was intended.” The company cited as example, the color red on conventional TVs that can blend with other color wavelengths, such as yellow or orange, causing the color to fade and take on yellowish hues. “LG Nano Cell dramatically reduces color fading, image instability and other color-degradation issues.”
Samsung
Samsung Electronics Corp., on the other hand, unveiled on March 14 the new details surrounding its premium lineup of QLED TVs at a global event held at the iconic Louvre Museum in Paris. Samsung unveiled the “TV of Light”, a name given to the QLED TV for its delivery of optimal brightness levels and visual experience. According to Samsung, its latest QLED TVs offer advancements in light efficiency, stability and a wider color spectrum. “ With new metal quantum dots, the QLED T V addresses all the major aspects of picture quality, including viewing angle, color volume, brightness and bold contrast.”
microenterprises don’t have the necessities to accept card payment,” iBayad CEO Paulo Saycon said. “This is the reason that, in the Philippines, cash is still king.” With the mission to accelerate the adoption and transformation of every consumer’s traditional spending behavior from cashcentric transactions to card and mobile payments as the standard payment format in the increasingly evolving information economy, iBayad connects people financially by transforming the way they pay. Thus solb! The system is composed of a universal card reader (which accepts all ATM cards registered u nder Ba nc net) a nd pr inter, together with a smart phone and a mobile app. Within three business d ays, pay ments are deposited into your own bank accounts. Each transaction can be e-mailed, printed or sent as an SMS. You input the amount you used to purchase, you would swipe or insert the customer’s ATM card, you would hand over the reader to your customer to input his pin. Solb! w a s s pec i f ic a l ly de signed and developed primarily for the benefit of microentrepreneurs and small and medium enter pr ise’s, w ith the pur pose of empower ing their businesses w ith technolog y, which w il l a l low them to remain relevant and competitive in t heir re s pe c t ive i ndu st r ies. It a i m s to deliver beneficia l financia l ser v ices to the unbanked and underbanked sector of societ y, who remains unreached and unser ved by traditiona l financia l institutions.
Instead, according to an account offered by US officials, they methodically made their way deeper into Yahoo!’s network over the space of months—maybe years. That allowed them to forge technological skeleton keys that would unlock many Yahoo! accounts, steal personal information and then use that data to break into other email services used by their targets, US officials said in announcing charges against four Russians. That Department of Justice indictment fills in some of the blanks surrounding a massive security breach that occurred in 2014, but Yahoo! didn’t reveal until six months ago. But it doesn’t answer why it took Yahoo! so long to grasp its seriousness or why it waited so long to tell its users—or Verizon, which is paying $4.5 billion for Yahoo! operations now tainted by the biggest security lapses in internet history. Yahoo! declined to comment beyond a statement thanking law enforcement for its efforts. It’s also not clear whether the Russian hackers and spies involved in the Yahoo! break-in were also involved in other recent hacking attacks, such as the leak of embarrassing e-mails from the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election. US intelligence agencies have previously said they believe that Russian hackers were involved in those breaches, too.
Second-biggest breach
“WE are in a cyber war and our government hasn’t woken up and
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OBU R a i lw ay Co. Ltd . recently announced the launch of its special web site to help Filipinos planning trips to Japan this spring. In a statement, Tobu Railways said the website seeks to introduce
done anything about it,” security analyst Avivah Litan of Gartner Inc said. Although the Yahoo! attack compromised more than 500 million user accounts, the hackers appeared mainly interested in sifting through the e-mail of Russian and US government officials, Russian journalists and employees of financial firms and other businesses, according to the indictment. When they weren’t spying, the hackers also tried to make money on the side with petty scams. In one ruse detailed in the indictment, the hackers are accused of manipulating Yahoo!’s search results to drive traffic to a company selling erectile dysfunction drugs in exchange for commissions. The severity of that breach, the second worst in Internet history, was most likely magnified by the fact that it took some two years for Yahoo! to disclose the initial attack. Had Yahoo! taken more aggressive steps—for instance, asking users to change their passwords, or even expiring the passwords and forcing users to enter new ones—it might have prevented some of the damage.
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tained a lot of information that could be used to reset passwords and gain entry to Yahoo! accounts, such as phone numbers, answers to security questions and recovery e-mail addresses used to reset forgotten passwords. The database also contained cryptographically scrambled data Yahoo! normally uses to authorize users as they log in. The second was an internal tool for editing information in the user database. By December 2014, Yahoo! executives and lawyers knew hackers tied to a foreign government had gained access to some of its users’ personal information, but didn’t dig deeper into the incident, according to a report released earlier this month by the company’s board. Yahoo! merely notified 26 users that they there information may have been taken and also consulted with law enforcement.
Fool me once, fool me twice
HACKERS got their initial access to Yahoo!’s network around early 2014, although it’s not clear exactly how. By the end of the year, according to the indictment, they had made two valuable finds. The first was a backup copy of Yahoo!’s user database, current as of early November 2014. It con-
HACKERS accessed user accounts by fooling Yahoo! into thinking they had already signed in. Companies like Yahoo! typically use bits of data called cookies to let you stay signed into an account via a Web browser. This is how you keep Gmail, for instance, open even if you close your browser and restart it. Hackers used malware and information from the user database to manufacture fake cookies. To Yahoo!, it then appeared that a hacker was the authorized user. That method worked so long as users didn’t change their passwords after early November 2014. Hackers used this technique to target more than 6,500 user accounts. There was nothing particularly fancy about what the Russian hackers did, said Shuman Ghosemajumder, who used to fight fraud at Google and is now chief technology officer for Shape Security. But it still doesn’t look as bad
recommended cherr y-blossom viewing spots, the best times for seeing them bloom and facilities offering cherry-blossom sweets. “ T he site w ill a lso release 360-degree videos of three of the leading cherry-blossom spots in
the Kanto area, Sumida Park, Satte Gongendo’s bank of cherry trees and the sakura trees lining Kawagoe Shingashi River,” Tobu Railways said. “Viewers can even see the blossoms after they have fully bloomed, allowing viewers to have
User accounts
Photo courtesy of Tobu Railway Co. Ltd. shows the sakura trees lining the Shingashi River.
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as it might have had the heist been engineered by a clever teenager or another digital burglar working without the backing of a foreign government, experts said. “The CIA can’t even protect against some of these guys, so my sympathies are with Yahoo!,” Litan said. “I don’t know how good Yahoo!’s security was, but it is really hard to detect these nation-state hackers.” Yahoo! has already paid a steep price. Verizon extracted a $350-million discount on the initial purchase price for Yahoo!’s online services after initially demanding a $925-million reduction for the damage done. Yahoo! still faces dozens of lawsuits.
Making money
WHILE Russian intelligence officials were interested only in a limited number of accounts, hackers used access to Yahoo!’s network for their own financial gain. Besides the erectile dysfunction scheme, the hackers also searched e-mail accounts for credit-card information and electronic gift cards. The hackers even combed through e-mail accounts looking for gift cards a few week after Yahoo! announced the breach. Attackers also searched emails for contact information of friends and colleagues; such data enabled spam that appeared to originate from those friends and colleagues, making it more likely for the recipient to open the message.
The other breach
THE 2014 breach was the second of two major breaches at Yahoo! and involved at least 500 million user accounts. Yahoo! later revealed that it had uncovered a separate hack in 2013 affecting about 1 billion accounts, including some that were also hit in 2014. Wednesday’s indictment didn’t address the 2013 breach. AP
a realistic cherry-blossom viewing experience, as if they’re actually visiting these famous spots.” The special site URL is http:// w w w.tobu.co.jp/foreig n /en /c p/ sakura. It will be available until April 30. Oliver Samson
BusinessMirror
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Twitter sees online social networking as marketplace
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NLINE social-networking platforms (OSNPs) are the next marketplace, a Twitter executive said. Expect this trend to get bigger in 2017, as social-media platforms “will not be bound just to company-consumer conversations or attracting new prospects,” Twitter Managing Director for Southeast Asia and India Maya Hari said. Hari said such development prompted Twitter, which is also an OSNP, to “provide opportunities to improve conversion rates.” “[OSNPs] will work as new conversion channels and offer tools to convert prospects directly into buyers,” Hari said in a statement. “The challenge for established brands is responding to these new models with digital transformation.” Citing Global Web Index (GWI) data, Twitter said more people
would be more active in the mobile platform this year. At present, GWI data revealed 50 percent of Internet users today spend more than three hours a day connected; more than 90 percent of these own a smartphone. In Asia-Pacific, GWI said 51 percent of Internet users found mobile phones the most important, against 26 percent who chose laptop. The GWI also revealed the top mobile activities are viewing web-
sites, reading email and perusing OSNPs on mobile devices. “In 2017 if you’re not catering your content, ads and online experience to a mobile user, then you are missing a massive opportunity,” Hari said. “Everything from your business website to email campaigns needs to be mobile-friendly.” With this development, Hari said businesses have to face the challenge of real-time information and distractions over what’s real and what’s not, “to reach, engage and win over customers.” “The ability to capture and retain a customer’s shortening attention span is now more important than ever.” Hari added that while use of mobile technology is already pervasive, the brands are not ready. Personalization of brands will also be a key element of businesses to get the attention of consumers. Hari defined personalization as involving the “segmentation” of the content to reach different types of audience members based on their preferences, interests, habits, etc. “The most common form of this strategy is through lists, where cer-
tain content gets sent to certain types of users based on which lists they’ve opted into.” Hari said live video shows signs of the next-level opportunity. Exclusive social video, she claims, is experiencing massive popularity as a content marketing creative, and this growth is expected to continue this year. “Platforms are making it easier to broadcast live through any smartphone,” Hari said. “In 2017 be associated with the trendsetting brands experimenting with live video.” Although many brands and businesses have adopted OSNPs as part of their marketing strategy, Hari claims majority of these organizations have failed to leverage realtime social data analytics. She said brands should this year step up in leveraging the full archive of public Twitter data, which has 10 years of conversations around almost any topic. “By analyzing the substantial data, businesses can discover newer insights to give them [customers] more details in developing better decisions.” Rizal Raoul Reyes
HK ship manager taps Inmarsat FX
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NMARSAT Plc. announced on March 15 its Fleet Xpress has been specified by Hong Kongbased Fleet Management Ltd. (FML), one of global shipping’s largest independent third-party ship managers. In a statement, Inmarsat said FML manages a large fleet of over 400 vessels, consisting of bulk carriers, container vessels, general cargo ships, oil tankers, gas carriers and chemical tankers. FML, which has more than 14,000 crew, has successfully upgraded all vessels to FX. These vessels, according to Inmarsat, were previously equipped with the firm’s old Ku-band service. Inmarsat said FML expects to roll out the FX to the majority of its fleet globally by 2018. The service will use a Cobham 1m GX antenna for Ka-band connectivity, combined with a FleetBroadband terminal for L-Band back-up. Launched in 2016, FX sets a new standard in maritime communications. The ser v ice enhances vessel efficiency, crew welfare and safety, and facilitates “connected-ship” applications by delivering high-speed broadband connectivity available from a single supplier on a global scale. According to Inmarsat Maritime Chief Sales Officer Gerbrand Schalkwijk, ship managers are ideally placed to exploit high-speed, ultra-reliable connectivity that puts big data at the heart of operating decisions, and cost-controlled connectivity in the hands of seafarers. Rizal Raoul Reyes
Fortinet exec bares journey to secure IoT in health care
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CCORDING to IBM Corp.’s 2016 Cyber Security Intelligence Index report, cyber criminals attacked health care more than any other industry last year, with more than 100 million healthcare records being compromised. Fortinet Inc. Sales Engineer Roger Bailey bares his views on this development.
How is Internet of Things growing in the world of health care?
There are two sides to IoT in hospitals—the customer experience side and the administration/clinical side. It has truly become a consumer market for hospitals and other health care institutions. Organizations are being expected to provide new and improved patient care capabilities across the board, including hotel-like amenities. Patients are demanding the same comfort level they have when they’re at home. That includes high-speed wireless for devices and access to Hulu and Netflix while sitting in bed. If you’re going to spend any amount of time in a hospital, you want to be comfortable. People can choose what hospital they go to, and they are choosing based not just on the quality of the care, but the quality of the services provided.
What about IoT on the administrative and clinical side of the house?
Health care has been on the bleeding edge of IoT before IoT was a household word. Doctors have had pagers, then cell phones, long before most people had them. They have had PCs at every breaking edge, now it’s smart phones and tablets. Doctors don’t even carry medical documentation with them anymore. They get pharmacology reports, lab results, even medical and diagnostic images, sent directly to their devices. Then there are the medical devices. The next time you go into an ER, look around and count how many electronic devices are there. One issue is that the Food and Drug Administration regulates all medical devices that plug into the network (infusion pumps, EKGs, MRIs), so they are painful to update. They cannot put the latest and greatest software on there, and they don’t have encryption. So, for these institutions, one of the major pain points right now is securing those devices.
What are the dangers of IoT in hospitals?
The first draw for cybercriminals is the data, and there is a lot of it. The longer someone stays in the hospital using their wireless devices, the more data is generated. And the medical devices themselves are constantly feeding information back-and-forth, so there is a ton of metadata. What makes it even more challenging is the fact that this data is the most expensive and most coveted on the dark Web. Health-care client records [in the United States] go for between $400 and $500 per record, versus a creditcard record at just $4, so you can see why the attacks continue to mount. Then there is the danger of medical devices being hacked. Imagine an infusion pump in the ICU. A nurse sets the prescribed infusion rate of a medication, but someone hacks the device and starts pumping four times
Bailey
that rate into the patient. This can cause damage, paralysis, even death. All the while, the pump reads the original dosage. This is, of course, what happened with Stuxnet in Iran. Stuxnet took control of centrifuges that were separating nuclear material, and ran them at a much higher speed than was safe until the centrifuges tore themselves apart. Then Stuxnet got out into the wild and opened the door to a whole array of industrial and manufacturing compromises. And just recently, there was a major IoT-based hack on the East Coast that took out huge sections of the Internet. Hospitals are acutely aware that all the connected medical devices they have deployed are similar to the types of devices that are being compromised, so they need to devise different ways to separate things, and lock the data down at an application level.
What do health-care organizations need to be thinking about from a security architecture standpoint as they move more into the world of IoT?
IoT takes your attack plane and flattens it. It makes everything accessible, it makes everything suspect, and there should be zero trust with regards to anything that needs to be Payment Card Industry (PCI) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (Hipaa) compliant. Integrating your infrastructure together enables application awareness, so you can always identify what applications are running within the medical practice and synchronization, so deployed security resources can automatically coordinate a response to a detected security event. And internal segmentation allows you to lock up all your devices for PCI and Hipaa compliance, so they can do their job and traverse the network safely. Another piece of the puzzle is analytics. It’s not good enough anymore to be a reactionary IT department. You need to be proactive. You have to have a sandbox proactively scanning all the servers on the network, looking for advanced threats that might’ve slipped through. Finally, as far as the healthcare industry goes, security information and event management technology should be required. When a breach could put hundreds or thousands of patients sensitive information at risk, and cost your organization millions, you need real-time monitoring across your network and the ability to respond immediately to an event. Some of the recent mega-breaches we’ve seen in retail and other areas could have been avoided, or at least mitigated, if they have been monitoring and questioning unusual traffic within their networks. If you do not have a system that is proactively monitoring sensitive areas so you can respond to threats quickly, then you’re doing your organization, and your patients an injustice.
A look at some Israeli high-tech successes
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ERUSALEM—Intel announced on Monday it will spend more than $15 billion to acquire Mobileye, an Israeli company that develops technology that essentially gives computers a sense of their physical surroundings— the largest high-tech acquisition in the history of the Jewish state. Faced with limited natural resources, Israel has fostered a vibrant high-tech culture in recent decades. Mobileye joined a long list of high-tech
companies that have earned Israel the nickname “Startup Nation”. The country is a popular destination for global venture-capital funds seeking to capitalize on Israel’s entrepreneurial spirit, as well as expertise honed in universities and advanced technology units of the Israeli military. According to the World Economic Forum, of a total $373 billion in venture capital invested globally from 2006 to 2013,
$13.1 billion was invested in Israeli companies—one of the highest in the world and more than both India and Canada. Prominent multinational technology companies, including IBM, Microsoft and Cisco Systems, have chosen Israel for research and development centers, employing tens of thousands of workers. Israeli research was instrumental in developing computing, mobile phone and other technologies.