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Armored personnel carriers make their way through a queue of vehicles with fleeing residents, as Muslim militants lay siege in Marawi City in southern Philippines for the third day on Thursday. AP/Bullit Marquez

Maute taunts AFP’s 6-month deadline to end terror groups with Marawi siege

Far from over U

By Rene Acosta

nless the government neutralizes the Maute Group, the homegrown terror organization claiming affiliation with the Arab-based Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis), or just even reduce its fighters into an insignificant number, the campaign to eliminate the problem of terrorism is far from over.

At the least, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) may need another six months to accomplish the task.

Still, the additional six months do not foretell a definitive success, as this may depend on how the military would continue to steer its antiterrorism campaign, with AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Eduardo M. Año still at its helm.

Año’s term has been extended for six months, as he had been designated the administrator of the martial law declared by President Duterte for Mindanao in the thick of an attack in Marawi City, Lanao del Sur, mounted by the Maute Group. The chief of staff was supposed to take over the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) portfolio by June 2.

Whether Año could exercise

the same “deftness” in dealing with the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) would be reflected by the next six months, especially against the Maute Group, one of the three groups that have pledged their allegiance to the Isis.

‘Scarred’

Great maybe, but Año’s record—he would have been the first commander in the history of the military who had ended the reign of terror by groups in Mindanao—has been scarred by the Maute Group. And just like retired Gen. Ricardo R. Visaya, his predecessor, he has a major battle to lead.

Just days before Visaya retired

Continued on A2

Lorenzana: “It’s just [the] appreciation of the intelligence that was lacking there.

Maybe they just thought they could easily do it; but you know, there is intelligence there. It’s just the appreciation of what the intelligence means that they made a mistake.”

DIMINUTIVE RATES GRABS 2-SHOT LEAD D

ICTSI PHILIPPINE MASTERS

DIMINUTIVE Joenard Rates (left) turns in a tournamentbest six-under 66 for a two-stroke lead over two others, including Keanu Jahns, on Friday. Nonie Reyes

PESO exchange rates n US 49.8750

in December last year, the Maute Group attacked the town of Butig in Lanao del Sur, hoisting the emblem of the Isis in dwellings and in the town’s old municipal building before it was taken down following days of fighting with security forces.

The terrorist group, now under the banner of the Isis and headed by former Basilan-based ASG Commander Isnilon Hapilon, the recognized Isis leader in Southeast Asia, repeated this in the case of Año, just as when he was about to take the helm of the DILG. The Maute Group raised the terrorist flag, took church workers, including a priest, as

IMINUTIVE Joenard Rates traded length for accuracy and produced a tournament-best six-under 66, grabbing a two-stroke lead over Tony Lascuña and Keanu Jahns as the erstwhile front-runners faded in the third round of the International Containter Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI) Philippine Masters at the Villamor Golf Club on Friday.

Unable to obtain the desired result with his fairway-green approach in the first two days, Rates finally put it all together on Friday, coming away with eight birdies to negate a two-bogey mishap for a 32-34 that fueled his surge from joint 10th to the top of the heap at eight-under 208.

“I didn’t expect to lead but I focused on hitting it on the fair-

way, and then making the most of my approach shots and birdie chances,” said the 5-3 Rates, who moved 18 holes away from snapping a three-year title spell on the Philippine Golf Tour sponsored by ICTSI.

But the very player he beat by three at John Hay in 2014 is right behind, as Lascuña bucked poor putting to card a 70 and tie Jahns, who blew an impressive frontside 31 with a closing 39 for a third straight two-under card, at 210, ensuring another tight finish that has marked the last four staging of the circuit where the winner prevailed by just one, with Miguel Tabuena nipping South African Mathiam Keyser in a playoff at Luisita.

Continued on A2

n japan 0.4460 n UK 64.5432 n HK 6.4015 n CHINA 7.2593 n singapore 35.9771 n australia 37.1669 n EU 55.9199 n SAUDI arabia 13.3004

Source: BSP (26 May 2017 )

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A2 Saturday, May 27, 2017

Far from over Continued from a1

hostages, seized government vehicles, occupied establishments and burned down buildings, including a cathedral.

The terrorists also mowed down civilians and forced the exodus of residents.

The incident in Lanao del Sur, an offshoot of what the military said was a law-enforcement operation by soldiers and policemen against Hapilon in two barangays, happened just as the Armed Forces is in the homestretch of its sixmonth deadline to scratch out the terrorists based in the South. The Marawi “invasion” was carried out while the top echelons of the government were in Russia.

Lack of ‘appreciation’

The attack of Marawi City may have totally surprised local officials, as it happened in the middle of a continuing operation by the government against the Maute Group since Año took over the reins of the military leadership.

However, Defense Secretary Delfin N. Lorenzana dismissed any thought about the failure of intelligence, or even complacency on the part of the military.

“We know that they are there, and, in fact, there was this big firefight somewhere in Piagapo and in the mountainous areas surround-

ing Marawi City, and I don’t think there is a lapse of intelligence,” the defense secretary said, as the Marawi City incident unfolded.

“It’s just [the] appreciation of the intelligence that was lacking there. Maybe they just thought they could easily do it; but you know, there is intelligence there.

It’s just the appreciation of what the intelligence means that they made a mistake,” he added.

Lorenzana said about 100 terrorists carried out the carnage against the city, but the military, through Col. Edgard A. Arevalo, its public-affairs office chief, pegged it between 20 and 50 Maute Group fighters.

Arevalo said supporters and sympathizers of the group aided the terrorists by carrying out attacks in other areas of the city to distract the operating forces.

Local officials, however, have put the number of attackers from 200 to 300 fighters, as they wondered how the terrorists managed to enter and attack the city in the middle of a continuing antiterrorism operation.

They also noted that the military already knew that Hapilon is already in Lanao del Sur, along with his men, several months prior to the incident. The terrorist leader was even reported to have been wounded in one of the military’s previous operations.

Overshadowing gains

The attack in Lanao del Sur overshadowed the continuing antiterrorism gains by the military in other parts of Mindanao, such as Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi.

In fact, before the incident, both Año and Brig. Gen. Cirilito E. Sobejana, the commander of the military’s Joint Task Force (JTF) Sulu, said the antiterrorism efforts were on the right track, believing they could meet the deadline of “strategically” defeating the axis of terrorism by the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), the ASG and the Maute Group by the end of next month.

Their beliefs were bolstered by the continued neutralization of terrorist members and the unprecedented number of surrenderers, especially from the ranks of the ASG.

Año explained the strategic defeat of the terrorist groups meant that they could no longer carry out terrorism activities and challenge the government.

Armed Forces Western Mindanao Command Spokesman Capt.

Jo-Ann D. Petinglay said that, as of May 17, at least 81 ASG members have been killed, while 18 others were arrested. Another 50 terrorists have also yielded to the government.

Data do not even include the subsequent killings made

by soldiers in successive operations against the ASG, and even against the BIFF after the May 17 report.

“My standing order to JTF Sulu commander [Sobejana] is to flush out the Abu Sayyaf from their comfort zones and bring them to places where they are vulnerable,” said Western Mindanao Command commander Lt. Gen. Carlito G. Galvez Jr., adding, “this is exactly what is happening in Sulu and in other provinces confronting Abu Sayyaf threat.”

“Before the campaign started in January, we started going after more than 500 Abu Sayyaf members. With the support we are receiving from the local officials, and other stakeholders, including the MILF [Moro Islamic Liberation Front] and the MNLF [Moro National Liberation Front], we have strong reasons to believe that we are only confronting less than half the number of the bandits right now,” Galvez added.

In Sulu alone, Sobejana said they have already killed 49 ASG members and wounded 42 others from February 21 to May 17, while arresting 22 terrorists and forcing the surrender of 14 others.

They have also recovered 94 firearms, including a caliber .50 machine gun and a 60-mm mortar.

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DIMINUTIVE RATES GRABS 2-SHOT LEAD Continued from a1

Zanieboy Gialon also stayed in contention for the top $360,000 purse with a 69 as he tied American Nicolas Paez, who fired a 70, at 211, three shots adrift, while Mondilla dropped to sixth with a 73 but remained in the hunt at 212.

Aussie Nathan Park, who took charge by two halfway through the revival of one of the country’s four majors, held sway with a one-under card after 11 holes but tumbled with a bogey-double-bogey-double-bogey miscue from No. 14. He wound up with a 76 and fell to joint seventh with Jhonnel Ababa, who rallied with a 68, at 213.

First round leader Jobim Carlos continued to flounder after an opening 69 and a 72, hobbling with a 74 marred by a four-bogey mishap from No. 12, and slipped to a share of ninth with Ira Alido, who sizzled with a 67, at 214, six shots behind the new leader.

“If I can get the breaks tomorrow [today], I think I’ll have a chance,” said Rates, bracing for an uphill battle with the veteran Lascuña and the long-hitting Jahns.

He got most of them yesterday, rattling off three straight birdies from No. 2 and adding two more on Nos. 6 and 8 inside 4 feet to negate a bogey on No. 5 after an errant drive.

He missed four other fairways but came through with superb recovery shots in all but one of them as he salvaged pars that complemented with his three other birdies at the back, including a 4-footer on the 18th off a solid bunker shot.

Lascuña actually stood four shots behind with four holes left but the reigning Order of Merit champion birdied Nos. 15 and 18 to save a 70 and get another crack at the championship after vying for all but one in the first five legs of this year’s circuit organized by Pilipinas Golf Tournaments Inc.

“Putting will be the key tomorrow [today],” Lascuña said.

The young Jahns, meanwhile, will also lean on his power although he hopes to polish his short game and come up with good bailout shots to finally hit paydirt after falling short by one for a playoff at Luisita despite a bogey-free 65 in the final round.

The Filipino-German actually grabbed the lead with a 31 start but fumbled with a closing 39 marred by a double-bogey on the island par-3 17th, settling for a third straight 70 but still in the title hunt in the event backed by BDO, KZG, Custom Clubmakers, Meralco, Sharp, Champion, Summit Mineral Water and PLDT.

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Filipino troops, gunships fight militants in southern city

P

hilippine troops backed by armored vehicles and rocket-firing helicopters fought to retake control of a city that has been under attack by gunmen linked to the Islamic State (IS) group since a raid earlier this week failed to capture one of Asia’s most-wanted militants.

Rebels have torn through the streets of Marawi since Tuesday night, torching buildings, taking a priest and his worshippers hostage, and sealing off much of the city. The violence forced thousands to f lee and raised fears of growing extremism in the country.

At least 44 people have died in the fighting, including 31 militants and 11 soldiers, officials said on Thursday. It was not immediately clear whether civilians were among the dead.

In a sig n of t he conf usion over events inside t he cit y, a loca l police chief told T he A ssociated Press on Fr id ay t hat he w a s a l ive a nd we l l— t wo d ays af ter President Duter te told t he med i a he h ad been beheaded by mi litants.

Police Chief Romeo Enriquez said there may have been confusion because his predecessor in Malabang, a town near Marawi, was killed in the fighting on Tuesday, although he was not beheaded. As authorities worked to clear the city, residents spoke of their terror.

“At night we can hear the gunfire,” said Mohammad Usman, who watched from his home just outside Marawi as thousands of residents streamed out of the city on Thursday. “I’m just praying that the bullets will not find their way to my house and hit us.

I hope that the bombs will not land nearby and harm us.”

Duterte imposed 60 days of martial law on Tuesday on the island of Mindanao, a traditional homeland of minority Muslims that encompasses the southern third of the nation and is home to 22 million people. Marawi has a population of around 200,000.

Duterte warned he may expand martial law nationwide, an unnerving development for many in the Philippines who lived through the rule of late dictator Ferdinand

E. Marcos. Marcos declared martial law in 1972 and used it to maintain his grip on power for more than a decade.

T he ma n at t he center of the Maraw i v iolence is Isnilon Hapi lon, a n A rabic-spea k ing I s l a m ic pre ac her k now n for h i s e x p e r t i s e i n com m a nd o assaults. He is at the nexus of severa l mi l itant g roups t hat are tr y ing to merge into a more powerful force.

Hapilon, who is a commander of t he Abu Say yaf mi litant g roup, pledged a l leg ia nce to t he IS g roup in 2014. He a lso heads an alliance that includes at lea st 10 sm a l ler m i l it a nt g roups, inc lud ing t he Maute, which have a heav y presence in Marawi and were instrumenta l in f ighting of f gover nment forces in t his week ’s batt les.

A l l these g roups are inspi red by t he IS g roup, but, so fa r, t here i s no sig n of sign i f ic a nt, m ater i a l t ies. “ We have not seen any concrete ev idence of mater ia l s u p p o r t f r o m I S ,” m i l i t a r y Spokesman Br ig. Gen. Restituto Pad i l la sa id on T hursd ay.

But he added t hat t he sma l ler g roups “are work ing to rea l ly get that recognition and funds, of course.”

Washington has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to Hapilon’s capture, but he has proved elusive. The Philippines launched an air strike that wounded him in January, but he got away.

The army raided what it believed to be his hideout on Tuesday night in Marawi, but the operation quickly went wrong.

Militants called in reinforcements and were able to overpower government forces. Once again, Hapilon escaped. The military said it believes Hapilon was still in Marawi.

Much of Marawi was still a nogo zone. Automatic gunfire and explosions could be heard clearly and plumes of black smoke rose from the direction of the city center. A ir force hel icopters swooped overhead.

As authorities tried to gain more control over the city, disturbing details have emerged. AP

Saturday, May 27, 2017

A3

PHL not in a race to raise rates, incoming BSP governor says

T

he Philippine central bank isn’t in a race to raise interest rates, incoming governor Nestor A. Espenilla Jr. said, despite economists’ predictions the country will be the first in Southeast Asia to do so.

“It’s not a race to raise interest rates,” Espenilla, 58, deputy governor in charge of bank supervision, said in an interview on Thursday.

“Is it time to raise interest rates?

We are reviewing the situation right now. Are we behind the curve? I don’t think so,” he said.

Espenilla will take office in July for a six-year term.

E s p e n i l l a’s g o v e r n o r s h i p comes at a challenging time.

President Duterte has just placed the southern island of Mindanao under martial law, inflation pressure is rising as the economy grows more than 6 percent, and the peso is trading near a 10-year low. Economists predict the bank will raise rates from a record-low as early as next quarter, the first

in Southeast Asia.

Inflation is expected to ease after peaking in the third quarter and price gains will average within the target range this year, Espenilla said in his office in Manila.

Food prices and fuel and energy costs seem to be stabilizing while the impact of possible changes to tax laws will be short term, he said.

“Do we need to act based on that?” Espenilla said. “It would suggest we shouldn’t.”

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas will next meet on June 22 to decide on policy, the last under outgoing Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. The central bank targets price gains to average 2 percent to 4 percent f rom 2017 to 2020. Inf lation held at

Is it time to raise interest rates?

We are reviewing the situation right now. Are we behind the curve? I don’t think so.”—Espenilla 3.4 percent in April, matching the pace in March, which was the fastest since 2014.

Martial law

T h e P h i l i p p i n e e c o n o m y, among the world ’s fastest growi ng , h a s st rong bu f fers a nd

mar tia l law does not pose a big threat, Espenil la said.

“The government is clearly acting decisively to address a peaceand-order problem,” he said. “We hope it doesn’t get prolonged so we can be business as usual. The declaration of martial law, per se, doesn’t put much threat.”

Bank acquisitions

Authorities will keep an open banking sector with eight Asian lenders actively interested in coming in, Espenilla said.

“I believe we will see some combination of branching and acquisition,” he said. “There’s a chance that this will materialize this year.”

The incoming governor sees more opportunity to ease restrictions on foreign-exchange rules.

“If you have a foreign-exchange regime that isn’t so transparent, then it tends to reward those who have agility to navigate the system,” he said. “As you send out the message that it would be easy to both get in and out of foreignexchange positions, in my mind, that’s confidence-building.”

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Dealmaker who bet big on Duterte forges casino-to-oil empire

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RESIDENT Duterte’s ascent to power in the Philippines h a s mot iv ate d a l it t le known businessman from the president’s province to become one of the country’s most energetic dealmakers.

Dennis Uy, an oil trader from Davao City who counts Duterte as a family friend, has rapidly expanded into industries from shipping to casinos since last year’s election.

Once on the fringes of the Philippine business elite, Uy is now coinvesting with the nation’s richest family and is often seen socializing with billionaires. He says the spurt of activity reflects his confidence that Duterte will boost economic growth across the country.

“We’re aggressive in expanding our businesses because we believe in the President’s economic agenda,” Uy said in an interview in Cebu on the sidelines of the Asean finance ministers meeting in April. “When else is a better time to do that but now?

We just have to open our eyes to the opportunities.”

Duterte is embarking on an up to P9-trillion ($180-billion) infrastructure plan during his sixyear term to bring opportunities closer to poorer provinces like his own. If the president realizes his goal, Uy, 43, is well placed to reap the dividends.

Deal spree

Since the election a year ago, Uy

has bought a stake in logistics company 2GO Group Inc., where he is now president, and consolidated his shipping business into Chelsea Logistics Cor p., which will go public as early as next month. His Udenna Corp. announced on May 4 that it will bu i ld a $30 0 -m i l l ion c a si no in Mactan, Cebu, after being awarded the first license for such a resort under Duterte’s administration. He’s also in talks for opportunities in downstream oil and potential acquisitions in the maritime, logistics and other businesses.

Uy, who was a major donor to the President’s campaign, said he isn’t getting any special favors from his long-time family friend. He noted that he applied for the casino license before Duterte’s term, and won approval due to his own track record.

The Philippine casino regulator also said no favoritism was involved, explaining that Udenna was more aggressive in complying with its requirements.

“He’s at the right place at the right time,” said Gonzalo Bongolan, vice president at investment firm Philippine Commercial Capital Inc. “It’s not fair to say these opportunities are there because he and the president are from the same province. He’s been able to successfully grow his oil business, even before Duterte became president.”

Gas stations

UY

Udenna this week raised P4 billion with the sale of a 25-percent stake in another Uy company, Phoenix Petroleum Philippines Inc., to help fund its casino project. Shares in Phoenix Petroleum and 2GO, which have market caps of less than $1 billion, have taken off this year. 2GO is up 158 percent, while Phoenix has jumped 77 percent, out pacing a 15 -percent advance for the Philippines benchmark index.

Shares of Phoenix Petroleum climbed 2.8 percent as of 11:05

a.m. in Manila, while 2Go rose as much as 3.8 percent, poised for a record close.

After completing a business course at De La Salle University in Manila in 1993, Uy spent a decade helping his family in ventures including trading copra—dried coconut meat used to extract oil—and prawn farming in Davao. Uy said he would jump into any business that looked promising. A barbecue restaurant in Davao was one of his early projects, eventually growing to six outlets.

Oil retailing is where he made his name. Uy started Phoenix in 2005 after operating a 6-million-barrel oil depot in Davao.

His initial five gasoline stations grew to 30 by the time he listed in 2007. Phoenix now has more than 500 stations, accounting for 5.7 percent of the market last year, compared with Chevron Corp.’s 6.8 percent. Uy is hoping to leap from fifth place into third this year, dislodging Chevron, and an oil refinery may be in the cards eventually.

“We’re considering, we’re studying” if it makes sense for Phoenix to build a refinery that will allow it to offer “more competitive products and pricing”, he said. Uy retained control of Phoenix after selling the 25 percent stake to ES Consultancy Group Inc. A year after opening Phoenix, Uy found himself needing a vessel to distribute oil. That was the genesis of Chelsea Logistics and his entr y into the shipping business. Uy said he star ted buying into 2GO two years ago, building his stake in its parent company to 31 percent last year, betting that logistics would become a big business opportunity in the Philippines.

When Uy found himself short of funds for 2GO, he partnered with the family of billionaire Henry Sy, whose BDO Unibank I nc . t o ok a c h a nc e o n h i m

when no one else would as he was starting Phoenix, he said.

Bolstered confidence

“We saw that he was promising even then, and doing business w ith him was easy and straightfor ward,” said Teresita Sy- Coson, vice chairman at SM Investments Cor p., the Sy family’s holding company.

“He’s been ver y active this time,” said Sy- Coson, who Uy fondly calls his ate, or big sister. “We don’t talk about politics but since he’s from Mindanao like the president, maybe that bolstered his confidence and he probably feels that now the timing is right.”

Uy is often seen attending go v e r n me nt - s p on s ore d con ferences for i nvestors, hob no b b i n g w it h M a n i l a - b a s e d bil lionaires and meeting w ith businessmen in hotel lobbies and restaurants. W hile Uy declined to say how often he sees or spea ks w ith the president, he was par t of Duter te’s large pr iv ate - sec tor de legat ion to Russia this week.

“It’s actually more difficult when you know the president because there’s pressure to lead by example, to do good.” Uy said. Asked about his improved fortunes under Duterte, the tycoon said life, using his favorite expression, is determined by destiny. Bloomberg News

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Trump rolls into awkward first G-7 summit with echoes of Reagan

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onald J. Trump looks to have saved the worst for last in his lengthy first trip abroad as US president: a Group-of-Seven (G-7) summit that will involve debates on climate change and free trade with leaders who would probably rather be dealing with his predecessor.

From a red carpet visit to Saudi Arabia Trump described as “beyond anything anyone has seen”, the US president had a first encounter with America’s traditional European allies at a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) on Thursday, where he told them they’d undershot what they “owed” to the alliance by $119 billion and must pay more.

On Friday he was to sit down with a smaller group of rich democracies for a two-day encounter long on the multilateral policy debates Trump doesn’t like and short on the kinds of concrete arms-forinvestment deals struck in Saudi Arabia that can provide gratifying wins to take home. Yet the leaders are likely to do all they can to avoid a public confrontation.

Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, hosting the summit at the foot of Sicily’s Mount Etna, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, has focused the event on what everyone around the table can agree to: the need to fight terrorism. A special joint declaration on terror is being drafted in

response to this week’s bombing of a concert in the UK, according to an Italian official involved in the preparations.

Japan, meanwhile, hopes to secure language on the need to rein in North Korea’s missile tests, said an official with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s delegation. That’s another issue on which all seven nations can easily agree.

Security focus

The focus on security should push more contentious policy areas, such as trade and climate change into the background, said Jeremy Shapiro, a former US State Department official now at the Brussels-based European Council on Foreign Relations. According to a French official involved in the preparations, the other leaders will try hard to persuade the president not to follow up on his threat to pull the US out of the 2015 Paris accords to reduce global warming, but avoid any sixagainst-one face-off.

“They aren’t going to gang up on him,” Shapiro said. “Maybe in a year or two, but not now

when he has changed his mind on so many things and they think they may be able to turn him on climate change”.

On Wednesday US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump would make a decision on the Paris accords only after the summit in Sicily, a delay that would defuse a potentially explosive issue and create an opportunity for persuasion.

1981 precedent

This isn’t the first time the arrival of a radically different US president has tested the club’s unity,

according to John Kirton, director of the G-7 and G-8 Research Group, at the University of Toronto, recalling Ronald Reagan’s first such summit in 1981, in Canada.

Then, too, the other G-7 leaders saw the new US leader of the free world “as on the far right, with little experience in foreign affairs”, said Kirton—someone “who believed in the magic of the market place and that America would ride tall again in the saddle after the defeatism and weakness of his Democratic predecessor”.

In the event, the expected fireworks failed to ignite. Reagan

was in listening mode and against expectation agreed to attend a later United Nations event on the equivalent issue of the day to climate change: whether the rich north should aid poorer countries in the south.

Imposing sanctions

Yet this year’s meeting is unusual for the number of core issues on which the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US won’t just be rubber-stamping language settled beforehand by lower level officials. That’s largely because the

US either disagrees or hasn’t yet settled on a position, three European officials said. All asked not to be named so they could discuss the behind-the-scenes preparations.

An April meeting of G-7 energy ministers failed to produce any statement on climate change, due to US opposition. Earlier this month, the group’s finance ministers had to fudge language opposing protectionism in trade, again due to US objections. On both issues, the US has found itself in a minority of one within the club of economically developed democracies. That weakness may carry through into the summit conclusions.

If this week ’s summit passes as uneventfully as in 1981, that shouldn’t be too reassuring, according to Shapiro. That’s because like other presidents before him, Trump’s initial preoccupation with domestic issues is likely to move to foreign affairs, where the White House has more power to act. At that point, the switches Trump has made to more mainstream positions on questions, such as Nato’s continued relevance, Russian expansion, and declaring China a currency manipulator, could be as “whimsically’’ overturned again.

Reagan’s second summit is generally considered the least successful in G-7 history and could provide a cautionary tale.

It descended into acrimony over US opposition to proposals by the Soviet Union to build gas pipelines to Western Europe.

The US followed up by imposing sanctions that affected some of its G-7 allies. Bloomberg News

uk, in mourning, asks if it could have stopped Manchester bomber

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A NCHESTER , England—British authorities intensified their search on Thursday for possible accomplices of the Manchester bomber, as questions emerged about whether more could have been done to prevent the country’s deadliest terrorist attack since 2005.

As early as 2011, Salman Abedi, the 22-year-old Briton identified as the bomber, had raised such serious concerns among acquaintances that they called an antiterrorism hotline to report that he held extremist views.

The government has said MI5, the domestic intelligence agency, was aware of Abedi—but only as a peripheral figure, and not someone whose behavior would have warranted immediate action.

Abedi set off a bomb on Monday night as fans left a concert by pop singer Ariana Grande at Manchester Arena, killing 22 people and injuring 64, many of them critically.

As the police conducted a series of house raids on Thursday in the Manchester area, the chief investigator said they were making headway in the investigation into the plot and had amassed important evidence. A man was arrested in the Moss Side area early Friday, according to the police.

Eight suspects were in custody.

Two other people were released after being detained.

“I want to reassure people that the arrests that we have made are significant, and initial searches of premises have revealed items that we believe are very important to the investigation,” Manchester’s top police official, Chief Constable Ian Hopkins, said at a news conference. “These searches will take

several days to complete, as you would expect. Therefore, there will be some disruption. However, it is very important that we continue with these searches.”

Officials in Turkey and Germany said on Thursday Abedi had passed through airports in Istanbul and the German city of Duesseldorf this month on his way back to Britain from Libya.

It did not appear that he had stayed very long or even left the airports in Turkey and Germany, but German authorities were looking into a 2015 visit by Abedi to Frankfurt.

France’s interior minister said on Wednesday Abedi had “most likely” traveled to Syria, a stronghold of the Islamic State. But Turkish authorities said they had no evidence that Abedi had passed through their country to travel to Syria. Since the attack, Abedi’s older brother, Ismail, has been arrested in Britain, while his younger brother, Hashem, and father have been detained in Libya.

A friend of the Abedi family, Salem Ammar, said in an interview that Abedi ’s father, Ramadan, had been so worried about his son’s frame of mind in the months before the Manchester bombing that he pressured him to come to Libya, and brief ly confiscated his passport.

“We were all surprised that he managed to take his passport,” Ammar said by telephone from Tripoli, the Libyan capital.

Ammar said Salman Abedi was distraught after a friend, Abdul Wahab Hafidah, was killed in May 2016 in what authorities took to be an act of gang violence. Hafidah was close with Salman Abedi’s brother Hashem.

A vigil to the victims of the Manchester Arena bombing, at the nearby Saint Ann’s Square in Manchester, England, on May 24. A portrait of Salman Abedi, the 22-year-old who carried out Britain’s deadliest terrorist attack since 2005, began to come into focus on Wednesday, as the police raced to track down what they called his “network”. The New York Times

“I was told his radicalization started in England shortly after the murder of Hafidah,” Ammar said. “Some of the kids there were very upset about it, and that is how it started.”

Ammar said he was shocked because Abedi’s father, an employee of the interior minister in Tripoli, “is moderate and everyone knows that.” He added, “I still can’t believe that his son grew up to be this person.”

Ramadan Abedi, the father, fled Libya during the rule of Moammar Gadhafi in 1993—the year before Salman was born, in Britain—but returned after Gadhafi was overthrown in 2011.

In Manchester Abdullah Muhsin Norris, the imam at a mosque where members of the Abedi family worshipped, said Salman Abedi would sit around and read the Ko-

ran, avoiding other congregants.

He was so quiet and withdrawn that he would have escaped notice, Norris said, but for the fact that Abedi twice committed minor infractions: lingering in the mosque after dawn prayers and wearing shoes while on his way to the mosque’s lavatory.

On one occasion, the young man responded angrily when chast ised, tel l ing t he imam, “Don’t shout at me,” according to Norris. He was “acting like a child, and should know better”, the imam recalled.

Authorities are also looking into Abedi’s relationships with several known militants, including Raphael Hostey, an IS recruiter who was killed in a drone strike in Syria last year. Hostey’s younger brother insisted on Thursday his brother did not know Abedi,

and then sped off on a moped.

Hamed El-Said, a professor of international political economy at Manchester Metropolitan University and an acquaintance of the Abedi family, said he believed the young man had fallen under the sway of peers. “ This is obv iously another example of social radicalization with a small group of friends over the past two or three years—the question is where he met these people,” he said. “He is gullible, he is naïve, he is disconnected, he’s one of those individuals who, when you tell him something, might believe it. He would be the perfect mule for Isis,” he added, using an acronym for the IS. As authorities worked to piece together Abedi ’s past, Britain paused to grieve.

Queen Elizabeth II visited teen-

agers at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital who had been injured in the blast, and she described the attack as “very wicked”.

At 11 a.m., much of the nation, from the Scottish Highlands to the city of London, observed a moment of silence to honor the victims.

Mancunians, as Manchester’s residents are known, filled Saint Ann’s Square in the city center for a memorial service. They laid flowers, stuffed toys and cards of condolence on a flowing makeshift altar.

After the clock had tolled and the minute of silence had ended, someone in the back of the crowd began to sing “Don’t Look Back in Anger” by the band Oasis, which was formed in Manchester.

The group sing-along was followed by rounds of applause and shouts of “Manchester, we love Manchester!” People continued to stand together around the flowers for another 20 minutes or so after the vigil had ended.

As the country mourned, politics intervened: The campaigning in advance of the parliamentary election scheduled for June 8 resumed after a brief hiatus following the attack.

Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, went to Brussels for a Nato summit meeting, bearing a complaint for President Donald J. Trump that US intelligence officials had leaked details about the investigation into the attack. Trump, in turn, called for an inquiry into those leaks, as his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, prepared to visit London on Friday for what the British Foreign Office called “an expression of UK-US solidarity”.

New York Times News Service

Sports BusinessMirror

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

Saturday, May 27, 2017

A5

THE Olympic Park of the 2016 Olympics is seen from the air in Rio de Janeiro in June 2016. Almost one year after the games, Olympic Park in suburban Barra da Tijuca, which was the largest cluster of venues, is an expanse of empty arenas with clutter still remaining from the games. AP

KOBE PARAS is wearing the country’s colors in the Fiba 3x3 World Cup.

Paras, Quiñahan Ravena, Teng make Phl 3x3 team

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ORMER collegiate stars Kiefer Ravena and Jeron Teng, US-based standout Kobe Paras, and 10-year pro JR Quiñahan embark on a new journey as they represent the country in the Fiba 3x3 World Cup next month in Nantes, France.

The team playing under the colors of the ChooksPilipinas 3x3 team is banking on youth and experience in its effort to dominate the 20-country tournament set from June 17 to 21.

“3-on-3 basketball is one area that Filipinos can excel in well. I guess it will be a big thing for us to take home the title,” said Ravena, a two-time University Athletic Association of the Philippines Most Valuable Player (MVP) from Ateneo.

Ravena is teaming up with former foe Teng of De La Salle. He was the Finals MVP in Season 79, where the Green Archers swept the Blue Eagles in the finals.

What makes the crew a “dream team” of sorts is the addition of Paras, a 19-year-old star who is trying to be first Filipino-born player to suit up in a National Basketball Association team. He is based in the US playing for Middlebrooks in his junior days and now with Cal State Northridge after a brief one-year campaign at Creighton.

“I think our team is a perfect example of a 3-on-3 team. It’s going to be great and exciting,” Paras said.

Paras said his father, Philippine Basketball Association legend Benjie Paras, told him to make the most out of this opportunity to represent the country.

The younger Paras won the gold medal in the Southeast Asian Basketball Association Under-16 Championship in 2013 and was twice a part of the U18 3-on-3 national team.

“He just told me to play my game. I’m playing for the country and not for a school. So it’s totally different,” Paras said.

Quiñahan, a sweet-shooting big man who averages 6.9 points and 4.6 rebounds in the PBA, replaced former Far Eastern University star Reymar Jose, who has commitments with the Cignal Hawkeyes in the PBA D-League.

The Filipinos are bracketed with No. 2 Slovenia, No. 7 Romania, host France and El Salvador.

“It’s going to be tough. They will face tall and stronger players. But I am confident that they can adjust because they are all familiar with the tournament,” Head Coach Eric Altamirano said.

The country finished ninth last year in China, where Serbia took the gold, with the US and Slovenia completing the podium.

The team was composed of Mac Belo, Karl Dehesa, Glen Khobuntin and Russel Escoto.

Ramon Rafael Bonilla

LOOKS AREN’T EVERYTHING I

By Tim Dahlberg The Associated Press

T never figured to end well for Rio. Just hosting the Olympics took everything out of the city. Trying to recover from them may be impossible.

Nine months after hosting the world’s best athletes in a flawed—and mostly joyless—Olympics, Rio has little to show for the $12-billion effort. Arenas sit empty or boarded-up, the Olympic Park is vacant, and the city’s former mayor is being investigated for allegedly accepting $5 million in payments for construction projects tied to the games.

And now, even some of the medals presented to athletes are falling apart.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this when Rio won the first Olympics in South America in 2009, with a promise to showcase Brazil and its culture. Chicago was the odds-on favorite to get the games, but Rio organizers convinced International Olympic Committee (IOC) voters they could stage a historic Olympics.

“There was absolutely no flaw in the bid,” then-IOC president, Jacques Rogge, said at the time of the vote.

This was before Zika made an appearance, one problem Olympic officials couldn’t be expected to foresee. But they knew the waters where sailors and rowers would compete were filthy, and should have known

that promises to clean them up before the games wouldn’t be kept.

One look around Rio and they could have also figured out that $12 billion might have been better spent improving the conditions of the millions of impoverished Brazilians who crowd into the city’s infamous favelas.

That the Olympics are a bloated exercise in excess isn’t exactly a state secret. That they always cost more than originally estimated and are far more complicated by the time they go off is also well known to anyone who follows the Olympic movement even casually.

Those are issues that can be overcome in wealthy countries with unlimited resources. China and Russia proved that by staging Olympics that were successful on the surface, even if they lacked a little soul and—in Russia’s case—were marred by cheats both on the ice and in the doping lab.

But one thing Rio—and Athens before that in 2004—proved is that the Olympics are much too big now to dump on countries that have to struggle to handle them.

The lesson seems to be sinking in, judged from the lack of serious bidders for the 2024 summer games. Paris and Los Angeles are the only two contenders left for

those Olympics, after several other cities tested the waters and found them to be too rich for their tastes.

Even the two remaining bids—which will be voted on in September—envision games that will take place for the most part in existing facilities without huge costs for infrastructure. There’s no appetite anymore to build arenas and stadiums for 16 days of competition that have an uncertain future once the Olympic circus has folded up the tents and left town.

Actually, it’s hard to imagine any city wanting to host the Olympics at all. Yes, there’s a sense of civic pride to be able to host the world’s biggest sporting event, but as residents of Rio are finding out, there’s not much else.

A federal prosecutor in Brazil issued a report this week saying many of the Olympic venues are “white elephants” built with little regard for their future use.

The Olympic Park is an expanse of empty arenas, while another cluster of venues in a poor area is closed despite plans to open it as a public park.

“There was no planning,” prosecutor Leandro Mitidieri told a public hearing on the Olympics. “There was no planning when they put out the bid to host the Games. No planning.”

The Rio Olympics themselves reflected that.

They were chaotic and plagued by low attendance, dominated in the beginning by worries about Zika, dirty water and crime, and in the end by allegations of bribes and corruption.

The news hasn’t been good ever since, and now even the medals won by athletes are fading, too. More than 100 athletes from around the world have medals that are flaking and rusting, apparently because they weren’t coated properly.

Yes, Rio looked good on television during the Olympics.

That made NBC and other broadcasters happy, even if those actually at the games didn’t get such a great experience.

As usual with the Olympics, though, looks aren’t everything.

OZAMIS TENNIS BETS SHINE

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OUR local girls carried the fight for host Ozamis City in the recent Cebuana Lhuillier Age Group Tennis Championship Series leg in Misamis Occidental.

Carmeville Gervacio led the charge by beating Iligan City’s Annamae Mendoza, 6-0, 6-3, in the girls’ 18-under final. Jan Marie Anghag followed suit with a 6-0, 6-7, 10-3 win over Rovie Baulete in the 16-under championship.

Carmel Marie Padilla had an easy 6-1, 6-2 victory over fellow Ozamis City resident Zeaiha Toribio to rule the girls’ 14-under and Judy Ann Padilla completed the sweep by defeating Toribio, 6-2, 6-2, in the girls’ 12-under final.

“I am truly impressed with the level of play by these young players of Ozamis City and most of them have been campaigning regularly in our series, which has helped them develop their skills to reach this level,” said Jean Henri Lhuillier, president and CEO of Cebuana Lhuillier.

Cebu City’s Marc Nicole Suson continued his winning

ways in the boys’ 16-under after beating Tubod’s John Steven Sonsona, 6-1, 6-2, in the final.

John Renest Sonsona engaged Pagadian City’s Nilo Ledama in a close fight before prevailing, 6-4, 4-6, 11-9, to take the 18-under crown, while relatively unknown Eric Jay Tangub of Tukuran, Zamboanga del Sur, was a surprise winner in the 14-under class following his upset of Aaron Jacque Geromo, 6-1, 6-2.

Multititlied Nash Agustines of Oroquieta City edged Heinz Asian Carbonilla, 5-7, 6-4, 11-9, to win the boys’ 12-under category while Zamboanaga del Sur’s Abdel Qadzri Matarul posted a 5-3, 0-4, 4-0 triumph over Vince AJ Bering in the 10-under unisex final of the tournament supported by Dunlop.

Matarul and Garlandson Ardiante won the unisex doubles title after beating Bering and Kale Cyd Villamar, 5-4, 4-2, while Tangub partnered with Lex Estillore in defeating Brent Signmond Cortes and Ashton Benne Villanueva by retirerment in the boys’ 14-under class.

Blue Dragons, Maroons win TRAINING SESSION

Mixed martial arts fighter AJ Matthews trains with his coach, George Castro, at the Alphaland City Club in Makati City last Thursday. Matthews is an Under Armour brand ambassador. NONIE REYES

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ILIMAN College and University of the Philippines (UP) posted big wins in the recent 23rd Fr. Martin Cup Summer Basketball Tournament.

The Blue Dragons turned to African Adama Diakhite in the last period to repulse the La Salle Green Archers, 75-68, at the San Beda-Manila gymnasium in Mendiola.

Ibrahim Outtara, on the other hand, scored 20 points for the Fighting Maroons who scored an 82-78 victory over the San Beda Red Lions in the tournament supported by Armor On Sportswear.

Diakhite shot 16 of his 33-point output in the fourth quarter to help propel the Blue Dragons to their first

victory in three games in Group A of the senior division.

Brent Paraiso and Jollo Go finished with 16 and 13 points, respectively, for the Green Archers who took their first loss in five games. The win was UP’s second straight in Group B. In the juniors division, University of Santo Tomas turned back Manila Patriotic School, 94-77. Rhayjun Baquial and Timothy de la Cruz had 16 points apiece for the Tiger Cubs.

National University walloped Emilio Aguinaldo College, 102-76, to hack out win No. 3 also in highschool action.

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BusinessMi

Saturday, May 27, 2017 | Editor: Jun Lomibao

No plans for Australian to ride Tour de France

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ALEB EWAN would have been forgiven for resigning himself to the notion that this was going to be an ill-starred Giro d’Italia.

On the opening stage in Olbia, the Australian won the bunch sprint but was denied the first maglia rosa of the race by Lukas Pöstlberger’s almost accidental late breakaway.

A day later, Ewan pulled his foot out of its pedal when he was in the box seat to claim the spoils in Tortolì.

Those near misses were all the more maddening because such opportunities are rare on the modern Giro. Ten or 15 years ago, the sprinters usually had a chance to dream it up all over again the following day. At the 2004 Giro, for instance, some 11 of the race’s 19 road stages finished in bunch sprints, with Alessandro Petacchi carrying off nine of them.

Ewan and his fast-finishing contemporaries

CYCLISTS negotiate the circuit during the Singapore National Championships.

must survive on a more meager diet than Ale-Jet, but the youngster took the edge of his appetite when he claimed victory on Stage 7, fending off Fernando Gaviria (Quick-Step Floors) and Sam Bennett (Bora-Hansgrohe) in a breathless finish in Alberobello.

“When you win the sprint 1 meter behind the guy who broke away, or you get boxed in, or your foot comes out, you’d be lying if you said you weren’t frustrated,” Orica-Scott directeur sportif Matt White said afterward. “But he’s handled it well. If he hadn’t handled it well, he wouldn’t have won today.”

It was the second Grand Tour victory of Ewan’s career after his triumph at Alcala de Guadaira during his maiden three-week appearance at the 2015 Vuelta a España. That race, more than any other, showcased the youngster’s patience, and ability to seize the

rare opportunities that come his way. “In his first Vuelta, the only time he finished in the bunch was the time that he won,” White said.

With victories at both the Giro and the Vuelta now notched on his palmarès, it is only natural to wonder when Ewan will be thrust into the fray at the Tour de France. For now at least, however, he is unlikely to see action at this year’s Grande Boucle, where Orica-Scott is due to be led by Simon Yates and Esteban Chaves.

“At the moment there’s no plans on taking him to the Tour de France this year. We’ve got our plans and there’s no change in those,”White said. “The next logical step is to win another stage here. For sure, the Tour de France is a goal of his, but when it happens, we’ll see. He’s won at the Giro and the Vuelta, he’s won the Hamburg Classic. He’s won some big races at 22.” Cyclingnews

SUNSHINE JOY VALLEJOS MENDOZA (right photo) strikes a pose during the practical examinations. With her are Franklin Gonzales (with glasses) and New Zealand’s Kent McCallum, both of whom also passed the course. Mendoza is also shown doing the bike check.

W SUN

SHINES ON PHL CYCLING

By Jun Lomibao

ITH Sunshine Joy Vallejos Mendoza earning her title as International Cycling Union (UCI) National Commissaire For Road, Philippine cycling could be headed toward a new and potential route that would involve more women in the enduring sport not as athletes but as race officials.

Mendoza, along with Franklin Gonzales, hurdled the Level 2 National Commissaire Course conducted by the Singapore Cycling Federation (SCF) last week at the Sports Hub of the Singapore National Stadium.

With their acquisition of the National Commisaire’s license, they added up on the rather small pool of road commissaries the country has at present.

And Mendoza is aware of the expectations, her being the Philippines’s first female commissaire for the discipline.

“I feel that expectations would be that high, especially because I am a woman in the man’s world of cycling,” Mendoza told BM Cycling. “I am an organizer [road cycling event] and being a commissaire is an entirely different task. You have to always uphold the UCI regulations.”

Mendoza’s path to becoming a commissaire unconsciously began when she was tapped as a key staff by Dos 1, organizer of the Padyak Pinoy—the predecessor of the Le Tour de Filipinas annually presented by Air21—in 2009.

She was in every edition of the multistage road race after that in different capacities, until 2016 when Ube Media Inc., under its President Donna Lina, assigned her to be the project director of the race that serves as the kick off event of the UCI Asia Tour season.

“I was purely an organizer of the Le Tour de Filipinas, handling the nonrace nitty-gritty—from registration of teams to arranging for hotel assignments, vehicle requirements and even the payroll,” she said.

irror CYCLING

mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph | Saturday, May 27, 2017 A7

Tour de France, Giro d’Italia look headed in one direction

T “But I felt there was a calling and my enthusiasm for cycling has evolved into setting my goal as a commissaire.”

For Lina, Mendoza’s boss at Ube Media, the National Commissaire license is one precious achievement that could inspire other women to target the same goal.

“I am proud of Sunshine, she is very dedicated in whatever she does,” Lina told BM Cycling. “I’m sure she’ll maker an excellent commissaire.”

“With her completion of the course, I’m sure the Le Tour de Filipinas would only get better and better—not to mention the fact that she’ll now be a model for other women cycling enthusiasts,” Lina added.

A UCI Commissaires Course is no easy picking.

It squeezes the best out of a candidate. The UCI Road Regulations, Manual and all documents about the discipline alone are one long read— close to 300 pages of text, diagrams and visuals.

And one needs to have a close-to-excellent logic to understand all of them—not to mention memorizing regulations on a bicycle’s length and height, as well as the specification of vehicles in the race column, the width and length of the finish line, and so on and so forth.

“The course was difficult that you have to fully understand the regulations and procedures,” Mendoza said. “I did everything to prepare myself, devoting more than a hundred hours reading.”

The SCF only announced the result last Thursday, or four days after the candidates

had their taste of actual racing by acting as commissaries during the Singapore National Road Championships.

“I have become impatient waiting for the result, and I had jitters—butterflies in my stomach—nervous that I didn’t make it. But last Thursday morning, I was officially told of the good news and the first thing I said was: I’m a commissaire now!”

Mendoza and Gonzales’s participation in the Level 2 course was endorsed by PhilCycling President Tagaytay Rep. Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino and Chairman Alberto Lina and supported by Donna Lina.

UCI International Commissaire (IC) for Road Navaratnaraja Karunaratna of Sri Lanka supervised the course with SCF Commissaires Julien Peng Jun, Tan Say Hong, Lin Zuyi and Mervyn Liew helping evaluate the performance of the participants.

The two new commissaries joined the country’s pool of road commissaries that include IC Jose Adolfo Cruz, Elite National Commissaire Jun Lomibao and National Commissaire Carlos Gredonia.

“It’s a new but a major responsibility for me,” Mendoza said. “I will do my best to carry out that responsibility for the development of road cycling in the Philippines.”

Indeed, with a woman commissaire in the race column—particularly starting with the Le Tour de Filipinas’s ninth edition in February next year—the Philippine cycling landscape is bound to take a brighter complexion.

OUR de France Director Christian Prudhomme was a special guest at the Giro d’Italia on Thursday, spending time to talk to his Italian counterpart Mauro Vegni.

The two have often clashed as rival race organizers but their frustration at the way the International Cycling Union (UCI) is running the sport has helped rebuild their relationship and brought them closer together.

“We both represent the history of cycling, each in our own way,” Vegni told La Gazzetta dello Sport.

European Cycling Union President David Lappartient also attended the Grande Partenza of the Giro d’Italia in Sardinia with Italian Federation President Renato Di Rocco, as the political manoeuvring and election campaigning gets into gear.

Lappartient has yet to confirm he will run for the role of UCI president and so challenge the incumbent President Brian Cookson, but many traditional European federations and race organisers seem ready to back a change of leadership at the UCI elections in September.

“I really wanted to be at this year’s race, it’s special and you can feel it. Mauro and his team have done a great job and I can’t wait for the spectacular stages to happen,” Prudhomme told La Gazzetta dello Sport.

“The Tour, the Giro and the Vuelta are working in the same direction. We get on because we share the same passion, the same ‘Amore Infinito’ as they at the Giro.

“There’s a special feeling at the Giro this year, one of great cycling as when the likes of Fausto Coppi, Bartali and Merckx were racing. Whoever wants to follow them in the history of the sport has to win the Giro d’Italia.

Whoever wins this 100th edition will have a

special place in the history of our sport.”

This year the L’équipe sports channel on terrestrial French television has the right to broadcast the race. L’équipe is owned by ASO, just like the Tour de France.

“I’ve been watching the Giro every day from Paris. There’s a lot of interest in France for the 100th edition of the Giro d’Italia this year because it’s transmitted live on L’équipe TV. Everyone is naturally cheering for Pinot,” Prudhomme said, while also showing admiration for race leader Bob Jungels and Fernando Gaviria of Quick-Step Floors.

“Bob is talented, he’s young and talks lots of languages. He’s always kind, smiles and is good on television. Fernando Gaviria is the same. I saw him win Paris-Tours last year. Immediately after he won the stage in Cagliari, I got a message from the president of Colombia and Nobel Peace winner Juan Manuel Santos. He was really happy,” Prudhomme concluded.

For the first time in 25 years, the 2017 Tour de France will scale all five mountain ranges of continental France, a bumpy 3,516-kilometer, three-week slog that should suit the climbing strengths of defending champion Chris Froome and rival Nairo Quintana.

In their quest to keep the 113-yearold race young, organizers have again unearthed fresh racing challenges from the geography of France with new climbs and, on stage 18, an unprecedented mountaintop finish on the punishing Col d’Izoard high in the Alps—a rocky and lunar terrain that could be the final battleground for the winner’s check of $550,000.

Before that, on stage 12, the Tour scales the Peyragudes ski station where parts of the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies were filmed in 1997. Cyclingnews, AP

day, May 13, 2017 • Editor: Efleda P. Campos

Our Time OurTime BusinessMirror

news@businessmirror.com.ph

avite’s ‘Masa’ programs benefit nearly 8,000

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A8 Saturday, May 27, 2017 • Editor: Efleda P. Campos

BusinessMirror

news@businessmirror.com.ph

DSWD pays ₧100,000 each to nation’s centenarians

the highest, with more than RECE MARTIRES CITY, Cavite— garnered 2,500 persons.

PSWDO said under the social-proThe provincial government of

By Manuel T. Cayon | She saidfor the money would tection program displaced fami- be added if the centenarians could Cavite disbursed more than P28 lies, individuals in crisis are those ascertain their birth dates. living in hazardous places or victims The money assistance would be n for medical, burial and various of fire, delivery of once. “food to work” for AVAO CITY—The Department paid only disaster-related activities/events. ance that benefited 7,772 socially Habagat also begged off from of Social Welfare and This category alsothe includes other yet identifying beneficiaries antaged Kabitenyos, a first quardevelopment services or special cases tar“because they might become Development (DSWD) began like the abandoned women and chilgets of unscrupulous persons”. isbursement summary report distributing the P100,000 onetime dren, or children “If thewho money already behavehas problems come the source of fighting among with the law. sed on Monday. payment for Filipinos who breezed past it would not be Otherfamily “help”members, programs include Mindanao Bureau Chief @awimailbox

D

their 100 years and are still living.

farfetchedinthat outsiders would medical assistance the form of cash also take interest,” she said. or medicines and livelihood training in The giving of the onetime gift l Social Welfare DevelopCavite province, which ranks eighth the food or nonfood categories.

DSWD Regional Director for The region may have more than money was provided under a new PSWDO)Davao officerRegion in charge among the country’s top 10 high-perPSWDO provides business Mercedita Habagat 100 centenarians, Habagat said, law also enacted in July last year.

R. Servanez said the disforming provinces has embarked on start-up kits under its self-empowering said the government already paid but more than half of them could Another funding-assistance were in pursuit of Cavite its “6-17 Challenge” thrusts to put for thosepromised who wishlast to open the amount to 20 certified cennot get accredited orup certifiedassistance for program year by us Crispin Remulla’shere, vari-from out vitalofand social infrastruca sari-sariPresident store or Duterte a feasible business tenarians thenecessary lack of official documents ascerwas a P1-billion 52. the Onlives Monday moretocentaining their date of birth. in their barangay. fund for indigent patients nationms to uplift and some ture help meet and satisfy the needs would be receiving the The Davao region has wide.for Thechildren fund has Cavite’stenarians children, youth, and requirements of the prospective 6 submitAssistance arealready catego-been amount as DSWD personnel travel ted a list of more than 100 centeaccessed by patients. ns and persons with dismillion Caviteños by 2017. rized based on their rights. to Bansalan and MagsaysayBurial townsassistance narians be allocated As of March this year, Ds). for to senior citizensthe budget For the “survival” category, assis- the in Davao del Sur. in 2016, but the Department of DSWD’s crisis intervention vincial government protopped the list of disbursements, with tance is in the form of supplementalunit Twenty-four of the nation’s cenBudget and Management slashed disbursed P36,856,000 to 114,742 a sa masa-para sa masa’ P2.321 million that benefited 1,203 feeding, food for growth projects and tenarians are living in Davao City. the number to only 52 persons. patients. The money would be used

ople, for the people] are to he people the service they vincial Social Welfare Oflvy Avila said.

senior citizens.

For the highest number of people who were afforded help, the assistance for individuals in crisis

Antique’s oldest centenarian is a o prepares NegOcc ‘sacada’

nutritious-food training to parents.

The PSWDO first-quarter report said the development assistance includes access support to Alternative

Learning Training System, financial and capability development assistance for out-of-school youth, capability to buy medicines only.development development for child

Habagat said the regionfor workers and financial Davao assistance was allotted P115 million from child laborers. the P1-billion allocation. Of the Children whomillion are in was conflict with money, P100 allotted theto lawthe arepatients given protection assistance at the Southern andPhilippines various projects, such as thethe govMedical Center, ernor’s “give-a-gift”, children’s month country’s largest government hosevent andwhere the children’s congress that pital, patients as far as the Visayas seek treatment. is held annually.

The remaining P15 million was PWDs are extended educational alloted to Tagum City’s Davao Reor learning advancement “sulong-dugional Hospital. nong” and capability building trainings The Davao City government has and seminars, not only for students, but its own “Lingap para sa Mahirap” also,medical their teachers. care program for indigents, “Applicants maysheer walknumber in anytime but due to the of andresidents per the governor’s directive, availing themselves ofthese it, various of assistance open only forms as much as P3,000 are would beto all Kabitenyos,” Avila said. given per patient.

With the help of the Philippine Charityassistance SweepThe amount of financial Office,can a patient to thestakes applicants avail entitled themselves receive assistance would get a total of depends on the evaluation and recof P10,000, of shethe added. ommendation social worker as Habagat said the DSWD signed to the case, Avila said. could extend only as much as P75,000 The processing time takes one to per patient. two weeks, and all financial assistance is distributed en masse at the Provincial Gym every Tuesday, Avila added.

Gladys S. Pino/PNA

mbrace S of aging population

AN JOSE DE BUENAVISTA, Antique—The oldest centenarian in the province of Antique used to be a sacada or a sugar migrant worker who reached 107 years old.

Esteban O. Mediore, an indigenous person (IP) from Poblacion Norte, Tobias Fornier, supported his family by working as a sugar migrant in Negros Occidental and Tarlac, where there are vast AO—Macao’s statistic tracts of sugar land. partment on May 6 pub He was among hed the detailed resultsthe 22 centenarians who received their certificates and cash gifts from Social Welfare ulation by census carried and Development Regional Director Rebecca Geaecial administrative remala, Antique Gov. Rhodora J. Cadiao, Vice Gov. showingEdgar an accelerated Denosta, Board Member Fernando Corvera growthand coupled with Provincial Social Welfare and Development opulation aging in the Officer Lazaro Petinglay on Monday.

CELEBRATING 104 YEARS Emilia Viloria Cabotage (right) of Aquib village in Narvacan, Ilocos Sur, is celebrating her 104th rs. birthday on May 28. It will be a celebration with all her barangay-mates invited. Also promising to join her is Mayor Zuriel Zaragoza Mediore, although already having difficulty (center) who promised to bring a cake. Joining her will be her single daughters Emerencia, 72, and Rosalina, 75. MAU VICTA using only an improvised wooden cane stics andhearing Censusand Service when walking with the assistance of his daughter, ulation of Macao totaled a later up media interview, said in the local dialect August in2016, 17.8 he was m 552,503 in very the thankful 2011 for the cash gift.

He said histo secret Census, attributable a for long life was eating rice and vegetables. resident workers living Meanwhile, Consuelo H. Orcia, 101 years AN JOSE DE BUENAVISTA, Antique— cash grants and certificates to the 22 centenarians d a rebound in La birth rate. from Rioja, Patnongon, together with her Western Visayas has the highest number of in Antique out of the total 27 on Monday, they ge annual-growth rate oftheir children through workhusband, raised centenarians throughout the country with would proceed to Negros Occidental on Tuesday Despite his age, farmerWelfare Cornelio Sebastian still managesfor an aorganic tomato farm right at the border of the opulation 2011 ingbetween in the rice farms.

360, Department of Social and Developsimilar purpose.

OceanaGold Sustainable Agro-forestry Inc. central nursery in Tucod Village, Cabarroguis, Quirino.

He believes mining and agriculture coexist.distributed ched 3.3 percent, the high Pedro Orcia, youngest son of Consuelo who is ment Regional Director Rebecca Geamala said in She added that they hadcan already LEONARDO II st 20 years.

Local populataking care of her, said his parents, through their a media interview on Monday. the cash gifts to the five provinces in thePERANTE region hard work as farm tenants, were able to send their

Geamala added that Region 6 topped the on Monday, with Iloilo having the most centeng nonresident workers children to school. His older brother is already National Capital Region’s 155 centenarians and narians at 135. students four living in Macao, a retired military officer.

Eastern Visayas had the least number of senior She reminded the family members of the cen018, up by 10.7 percent

He said his mother used to eat only vegetables citizens reaching 100 years old with 58. tenarians to take good care of their elderly and th 2011. and does not like to eat meat.

She said after they distributed the P100,000 use the money to buy their needs. PNA also showed the SAR pop The niece of Rosario P. Brodit, 104 years old, nued to said age. they The are elderly very thankful for the cash assisged 65 and older increased tance, which is much needed by her aunt who is by 48.6 percent from five now bedridden.

ACOOR CITY, (Osca) Head Bayani de Leon. age and physical disability.

59,383, accounting 9.1 Brodit’s niece Glorybellfor Alonzo, who also gaveCavite—Bacoor Citysaid Mayor Lani MercadoThein Rev. FatherlifeErickson Shewith also reiterated support e total population, up bythe centenarians, a response from her aunt HERE’S a time everyone’s to save. Santos compared them those who diedher between 2010for is a veryled religious also a time when and 2012.them, Although later group had just lived the inaugurationThere’s of consecrated theyou’re newsupposed facilities as city whothe are provided funds by the ge points.used to read the Bible daily and Revilla woman. This, herbuilding aunt wasfor gifted to spend.officials, That timecouncilors is commonly through acity financial crisis and worldwide recession, a new senior citizens and andknown beneficiaries government for their free admis, the percentage shareshe of said, why with as retirement. their estate values were 130inpercent higher. in the persons with disabilities (PWDs) on toured the facilities. sion to movies all theaters population tolong thelife. youth

Cadiao, in handing the certificates and cash

Millions of Americans aren’t doing that, how “We have to get people comfortable withTuesday enjoyMonday at the Bacoor Government The two-story building has six ofcity every Sunday, Monday, nder 14 rose by 15.6 pergifts to the centenarians, wished them health and ever, which has put the US in a perverse situaing their retirement and spending their money,” Center, Bayanan. fices that will attend to various services and Thursday. ts to 76.3 percent. Populamore years to live. tion. Younger generations aren’t saving enough Fellowes said.

Mercado-Revilla officiated the for the city’s Osca and PWD group’s She said Bacoor City is the only to 64 took up 13.5 percent She said the provincial government was elated as their income slips further behind previous All of a sudden, they’re not getting a regular ribbon-cutting rites with the PWD 66,000 members. local government far to that prohe total. The pace of poputhe Antiqueño centenarians were able to receive generations. Older Americans, meanwhile, sit paycheck, and that makes themso scared spend. group President Jerwin Bautista, who The city mayor also thanked the vides free admission to movie houses is expected to accelerate assistance from the Department of Social Welfare atop unprecedented piles of assets built through Other studies have found affluent older Ameriis also thetoPanapaan chief, Osca and PWDs for the elderly anda study PWDs four days e next decade. and Development (DSWD) as a way show how village stock market and real-estate booms.who serve in their cans hoarding money.

Last year in the JourPNA and Office of Senior Citizens Affairs respective communities despite their a week. ensus found the female the national government values them.

Yet, these retirees, or at least the affluent ones, nal of Financial Planning found that the wealthioutnumbered She the said male the provincial government has dearen’t spending it. It turns out they’re afraid of est fifth of US retirees were spending 53 percent vised a similar program under her administrathe unknown. less than they could have. Meanwhile, the poorest Females and males totaled tionrespectively, because, while she was campaigning with the A new study finds many US retirees keep saving 40 percent generally spend more than they safely d 314,018, vice governor, they saw several elderly, although even after they’ve retired.

The average American should; the median retiree spent about 8 percent or 51.8 percent and 48.2 younger than last Monday’s awardees, who were over the age of 60 cuts spending 2.5 percent per less than the safe amount. e total. The gender ratio neglected by their family members. year, or about 20 percent over a 10-year period, Researchers looked at all the logical reasons why LMOST 3 million grandparents in responding to 93.2 males down a very high fever.” But ice baths can grandchild had negatively affected their She said in Antique, people who are 85 years according to an analysis of University of Michiaffluent retirees might be so tight-fisted, including the US are raising their grandchilles. As regarding the local cause hypothermia. spouse or relationship. and older were given an honorarium under the gan survey data by financial planning software the desire to leave an inheritance or worries about the gender ratio to dropped dren, but outdated practicesUnited Income.

The study also revealed oneMany of the interPSDWO buy milk, food and other needs.

This, healthcompany As a result, millionsnearly of future medical needs.

Thegrandparents big motivatorwere turned ve years ago to 90.2, and and myths may be putting some of those quarter of the grandparents didn’t know ested in receiving counseling (43 percent) she said, was part of the provincial government’s Americans are living too frugally, said Matt Felout to be some version of fear they would run out f femaleshuman over males was program. youngsters at risk, new research lowes, contends. that “infants should be and put adto sleep of oncash too orearly. joining a support group (61 percent), and development United Income CEO. On average nt.

“When grandparents to the their back, notare onentering their stomach thosethat without support system Geamala said those who were not able to receive step up justing for inflation, retirees their or side” “We found evenan inadequate a worst-case scenario, their cash grants could still submit their documentsfor grandchildren, 80s richer than to they werethe in their 60s and 70s. they couldwere haveless spent more,” said Texas Tech Uniber of households totaled plate, it can be wonderful reduce risk of sudden infant-death likely to report feeling generally givenpercent the monetarybut assistance.

Unsurprisingly, given the data, Americans are versity Professor Christopher Browning, one of the increasetoofbe10.5 can also pose challenges in terms of syndrome. happy (54 percent versus 86 percent). ago.

She added that families of people who reached dying with more money than they studies used to,surveying adding nearly study’s authors. have to be other five years The averlifestyle, finances and mental and physical In two related “In “There their questionnaires, a explanafairly large 100 years old, but died after the passage of the law to the increasing inequality that flows from inhertions,” he said—reasons that aren’t rational.

Onewere of d size was 3.07 persons, health to a somewhat older or elderly co800 grandparents, the same research team sample size of grandparents felt they might still be able to receive the grant. ited wealth.

United Income analyzed the estates those irrational reasons may be simple habit.

ase from 3.08 persons in hort,” senior investigator Dr. Andrew Adesfound that one in 10 grandparents raising doing a good job, but acknowledged they

Annabel J. Petinglay/PNA of people who died between 2000 and 2002, and

Bloomberg News ed by the household size, man said. He is chief of developmental and their grandchildren didn’t have any supdidn’t have the support they often needed households predominatbehavioral pediatrics at Cohen Children’s port systems, and another 12 percent said and that their role could be alienating in ng for 24.5 percent of the Medical Center in New Hyde Park, New York. their support system didn’t meet their most terms of their own peer group,” Adesman

Western Visayas has most centenarians in PHL

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GRANDPA’S CONTOUR FARM

Mayor inaugurates new building for senior citizens, PWDs in Bacoor Rich retirees hoarding cash outCity of fear

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Are grandkids safe when grandparents raise them?

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The ethical Dementia: Why itdilemma is still worth of agedtime care in PHL spending together Marc A. Daubenbuechel

The Age of Eldercare We are starting a column on Eldercare this week, authored by Marc N last week’s column “Demenit, anyway”.since This, 2006. in return, Daubenbuechel who has been based “forget in the Philippines He tia—Do not take it personal”, I creates more anxiety and depression, is an expert in elderly care and assists in developing the geriatric sector wrote about the history of decompleting the vicious circle. in the Philippines through international projects.

Let me challenge you. Remember mentia globally and in the PhilipMarc earned a bachelor of arts adegree in international business day when you woke up fulfilled and pines, and lined out the symptoms management from the Cologne Business School. worked for couldn’t 4 years happy from aHe dream, but you and how to not take it personal, as with the Sozial Betriebe Köln, an operator of nursing homes and homeremember exactly what you dreamed it is not your loved one talking, but care services in Germany, and has in-depth experience in running resabout. The dream was blurred and with the disease. taurants, hotels, spa and wellness institutions.

Today, let us get more personal. a bit of luck, you may remember bits 2009 to 2016happenMarc was theand executive ofplace the RetireLet us From look into situations pieces ofdirector what took in your ment and Healthcare Coalition, a project of the European Chamber of ing daily in thousands of homes of dream. What you remember, however, Commerce of the Philippines. dementia victims (in family homes is the feeling you woke up with. Joy and Since Marc has been an independent health-care consultant for or their care 2015 facility). happiness.

You felt fulfilled without companies interestedde-to get involved the Philippine geriatric various While everyone experiences knowing in exactly why. You cannot rementia differently and also reacts member your But the market and for Philippine institutions wanting todream learnanymore. more about gedifferently to each situation, there dream left traces of joy in your system, riatric care and education inare Germany.

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some patterns that can be observed in which will accompany you throughout dementia victims and their families. the entire day.

COMMON statement when I bring up the topic of nursing homes, Many dementia victims feel hope It is your task is as“We caregiver, asneed famhome-care services or geriatric-care services do not less. They any do not see sense in their ily, asOur a relative to beisthat dream to of these facilities or services. tradition to look after lives anymore.

“Why should I get up your loved one with dementia. While our own elderly.” today?IIhave am going tothe losecomment it, anyway”, theyways will not remember theyover exheard in different a few hundredhow times is a common response when asking a actly spend the day with you, they will the last 10 years in the Philippines. Almost every time, there is a fierce dementia victim to get out of bed to still feel the joy in their hearts. They reaction from some people in the crowd when I talk about the necessity take a bath or go out for shopping. will forget how much effort you put of nursing homes. This might be due to the fact that I am a foreigner, but Often, this can be linked to into making this day special (don’t the same reaction can be seen when fellow Filipinos bring up the same apathy and depression, which are take it personally), but your effort topic. conditions So what is leading to this common experienced bydenial? will change their world (and should it okay to havemany seniors forfulfill several in the most expeopleWhy with is dementia.

While you months in return). pensive hospitals of the country (which ruins families financially for What was their hobby?

What did elderly feel the loss of “drive” or years)?

But the moment you bring up the possibility of transferring they like doing when they were more “lose their spark” occasionally, it your parents to a nursing home, you are criticized for “giving your active?

Ballroom dance?

Fine, dance is an entirely different story with parents away”, or for “disposing those that loved you all your life”. together even if it is in a wheelchair. dementia victims.

This perception society is thenature, cause for About 50common percent to 70 percentand of judgment Goingofout to watch themany sunemotional conflicts among families and suffering for the elderly in need people with dementia have apathy or set or watch a movie, reading from of professional On one hand, are inhaving desperate need help, depression.

Apathy care. expresses itself in families the Bible, dinner in for their faa persistent of motivation do for help vorite restaurant.

Thinkcommunity of ways, be but on theloss other, they fear totoseek as family members, things, a lackmight of interest in them things. gotothe extra make and or society blame for notcreative, being able “love andmile taketocare of Sadness and hopelessness dominate them happy. their parents as they are supposed to do”.

Philippines You might headed? not be able toare create a person’s lifeiswith depression Where geriatric or agedand care in the What the memories for them anymore, so cremake it difficult for them to cope. measures taken to come up with services for local seniors? Have we ever ate moments ofagency joy, happiness andtoa People with depression also asked ourselves whymay there is aexnational government mandated sense of fulfillment instead.

These perience physical symptoms, such as attract foreign retirees to the Philippines, but there is no national agency moments much to your losslooking of energy andthe appetite changes. after welfare of Filipino seniors andwill theirmean families?

Due to the “hopelessness” of the loved one. They only have this moWe can argue the Department of Social Welfare and Development is situation and the difficulty in dealment and that is everything that mandated to do so. Yes, but only after the elderly who are “poor, vulnerable ing with dementia victims, their matters to them. You, in return, will and disadvantaged individuals”, leaving seniors and their families who families and care staff respond by have that moment to treasure, and a are not “poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged” without anyone to turn to. writing them off too fast. There is wonderful and, hopefully, long-lastTo show the urgent for action, us lookofatyour the being statistics from the wrong assumption thatneed people inglet memory together.

Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

The number of senior citizens is It might be tough, but go out of your with dementia are not capable of leiincreasing faster than the growth of the total population in the Philipcomfort zone and be that dream, that sure activities or they do not require In 2000 there were seniormoment citizens, percenttoday. of the to (6 someone thepines. stimulation of activities as 4.6 theymillionspecial total population). By 2010 this grew to 6.5 million seniors, or about 6.9 percent of the total population. The PSA projects that by 2030, older people will make up around 16 million, or 11.5 percent of the total population.

The issue of aging previously merited only little attention in the country. For example, it was only since 2014 that Philhealth was mandated to cover senior citizens. Prior to this, no health-care coverage was available.

Sadly, up until now, most of the private insurers do not cover senior citizens, putting families under tremendous financial pressure.

While improvements are happening, the speed in which the Philippines is aging demands faster action and more geriatric services to ensure dignity in growing old.

I visited places for abandoned seniors, and I saw the pressure on the system. Whatever the reasons—family conflicts, financial constraints, fear of judgement and “burned out syndromes” among the family members—seniors from all classes of society are being abandoned at a rate faster than new facilities can be established. Other families hide their “difficult” seniors at home because dementia is still a topic of shame, and families do not know who to turn to for help. Thankfully, this is still the exception, but if you visit or volunteer in a place for the abandoned, you can see it with your own eyes.

Today, nursing homes in the Philippines are associated with the negative perception that only seniors “given away” by their families are living there. Many people do not consider the possibility that nursing homes can be happy places. A home away from home. Places where specialized geriatric nurses, caregivers and dedicated doctors give their loving care to seniors. Some seniors are entirely alone at home as all members of the family are working. Others are stroke victims, have a form of dementia or just simply need assistance in performing the most basic activities of daily living. In some instances, it is simply not possible to age at home.

Some seniors also prefer to age in a nursing home to keep the “burden” off of their families.

Without a doubt, most of us prefer to grow old in our own homes together with our family. So do I. This is, however, not always possible. Rapid urbanization, increased cost of living, the fact that 10 million Filipinos GRANDMA’S FRUITFUL ENTERPRISE Selling homegrown pineapple along the are living abroad, are proofs of the burden the traditional family systems national highway in Bagabag, Nueva Vizcaya, keeps this grandmother busy despite her age. are under. To make matters worse, cardiovascular diseases, stroke and Just like many senior citizens, she claims keeping herself occupied keeps her healthy while dementia arePERANTE on the earning.

LEONARDO II rapid rise.

We should start to consider that aged-care services in their various forms are a much-needed service and a direct response to the rapid rise of aging of the Philippines.

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news.businessmirror@gmail.com

The Millennials BusinessMirror

Malaysian OTT operator eyes millennials market

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SEAN content and consumer company Astro Malaysia Holdings Berhad (Astro) is targeting millennials to grow its business in the Philippines.

Steve Santos, country manager for Astro’s Tribe over-the-top (OTT) platform, told the BusinessMirror that target was already there when the company started operations in the Philippines in

December last year.

“It was the way to go for us because Tribe has a lot of Korean content,” Santos said in an interview on May 19.

Santos added app’s combination

of linear and on-demand type of programming suits well with the local audience.

“Tribe users in the Philippines really love the app’s linear experience, specifically the Korean entertainment channels like K-PLUS, KBS and TvN as they can catch the latest K-drama and K-pop shows as these air in Korea,” Santos said.

“If they miss an episode, they can always catch-up via our video-ondemand library.”

“The funny thing is we knew that we have a lot of Korean content for the Philippine market. We never thought it would be a super

hit,” Santos added. “We knew that when we enter the market, Korean content would be a hit among the local users. But we never knew that this would be crazy.”

He said they are targeting one million would download the app this year.

“So far we’re on track. We are also growing the active user base, which is roughly 40 percent of that.”

Astro’s bullishness came after the International Data Corp. (IDC) forecast that OTT linear TV subscriber growth will start by 2018 to drive traditional pay TV overhaul via cloud migration. Rizal Raoul Reyes

Sharp targets PHL millennials

AUDIO TRIP This undated photo courtesy of MacPower shows an audio product hanging from a bag. Products of the UK-headquartered Boompods Pte was launched in the Philippines on May 22, by Macpower Marketing Corp. According to International Data Corp., the overall wearables market is expected to return to strong growth after a brief slowdown in 2016 that resulted from delayed launches of major platforms and notable vendors struggling to maintain pace.

How do we know the millennial generation exists? Look at the data

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ULTURES change, and new generations are born out of those changes. For many, this might sound obvious.

All you have to do is think about transporting a 25-year-old to 1965.

Even after she got over the shock of losing her smartphone, she’d probably still be baffled. Why are so many women of her age married with two kids already? Why is everyone wearing suits? And where did all of the gay and lesbian people go?

Nevertheless, it’s recently become fashionable to suggest that generations don’t exist at all. According to some, one generation in particular—millennials (those roughly between the ages of 23 and 37)—is a fabricated or arbitrary category.

A talk titled “Millennials Don’t Exist” has garnered two million views on YouTube. A recent USA Today article declared millennials are a “malignant myth”, with media studies professor Sida Vaidhyanathana declaring, “I don’t think generations exist.” And author Jessica Kriegel had argued that generational designations simply lead to stereotyping.

I’ve researched generational differences and cultural change for 20 years, summarizing findings on 11 million young people in books such as “Generation Me” and the forthcoming “iGen.” Although it’s true that some people peddle ideas about generations based on questionable data, advances in research methods now allow social scientists to

pinpoint generational and cultural changes with a surprising degree of accuracy.

Blurry dividing lines

CRITIQUES about generations often begin by noting the lack of agreement around birth years. For example, some place the beginning of the millennial generation with those born in 1980 or even 1977, while others argue for 1982. Vaidhyanathana calls the variation in the cutoffs “suspicious”. Some academic articles have argued this lack of precision calls the entire idea of generations into question.

It’s true that the dividing lines between generations are debated and somewhat arbitrary. However, saying generations don’t exist because the birth year cutoffs are arbitrary is like saying that teenagers don’t exist because the age cutoffs are arbitrary. Moving the cutoffs around doesn’t change the critical mass of data showing that millennials differ from previous generations in, for example, living situations, religious beliefs, sexual behaviors, attitudes toward worklife balance and support for samesex marriage.

Critics of generations also point out that generational differences are averages, and that considerable variation exists within each generation.

That’s true, but it’s also true of any comparison of groups of people.

Teenagers aren’t all the same, but everyone would agree that teenagers, as a whole, differ from older

adults. Americans vary, but Americans differ from Saudis. Millennials vary, but the average millennial differs from the average Gen X-er.

If someone overgeneralizes and assumes all millennials are the same, the issue is with his approach, not with the data.

An article about the “myth” of millennials quotes journalism professor Todd Gitlin, who says, “The notion that an 18-year-old in East Kentucky growing up in a coal-mining hollow has a great deal in common with somebody growing up on the Upper East Side of New York…is ridiculous.

It doesn’t pass the laugh test.”

Gitlin seems to be saying that because class differences exist, generational differences can’t exist. But that’s like saying because age differences exist, gender differences can’t exist. That definitely doesn’t pass the laugh test. Nor does the idea that a Kentucky 18-year-old in 1965 would be exactly the same as a Kentucky 18-year-old in 2017.

The real truth about generations

IT’S not completely surprising that the idea of generations has gotten a bad rap.

Many authors and consultants trot out one-time polls of young people that have no comparison group, making it impossible to draw any conclusions about generational differences. For example, one poll of millennials found that 67 percent want to start their own business. But older people might feel that way, too. Or perhaps they felt the same way when they were

younger (and in fact, they did).

Fortunately, research on generational differences has come a long way, and it’s no longer necessary to rely on such shaky data. Most peerreviewed studies now use data collected over several decades, eliminating the effect of age and zeroing in on the effects of cultural change.

A survey of US 18-year-olds every year since 1976 shows significant differences in workplace preferences, life goals, religious participation, alcohol and drug use and trust in institutions. The General Social Survey of the US adults, which began in 1972, has inspired a long tradition of research from sociologists and economists finding changes in attitudes toward work, gender roles and politics.

Data sets like these have another strength: They use samples representative of the nation as a whole.

That means the data on millennials are not, as Kriegel told USA Today, based on “a middle-income, white, American person”. They’re based on those of every race, income level and background. Nearly all of the generational trends appear across all groups, not just some.

Such data also negate the oftmade claim that generational differences are “stereotyping”, which seems to imply that notions of how millennials act and what they want are nothing more than guesses. Instead, these data reveal what young people say about themselves, compared to what previous generations said when they were young. That’s not stereotyping; that’s listening. AP

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19 and coming into his own, until a fatal night of hazing

James and Evelyn Piazza, and their son Mike, sharing memories of Timothy Piazza at their home in Lebanon, New Jersey, on May 17. Timothy Piazza, 19, died in February at Pennsylvania State University, after a fraternity hazing ritual in which he was instructed to drink large amounts of alcohol and fell numerous times, injuring his brain and rupturing his spleen. Bryan Anselm/The New York Times

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harp Philippines Corp. announced on May 19 it will develop appliances with the millennials segment of consumers in mind.

“Sharp is quite aware that Millennials want appliances that bring convenience to their fast-paced and comfort-seeking lifestyle,” Sharp Philippines Marketing Manager Rosemary Hao told the BusinessMirror. “In response, Sharp will out devices in this category”.

Hao spoke after launching the company’s latest television unit that boasts of the highest resolution.

According to Hao, the demand for consumer products like Sharp’s comes as the disposable income “of Filipinos is getting higher”.

She said more Filipinos are now buying fully-automatic machines as compared before when they preferred a twin-tub.

“The response of the local market is quite encouraging,” she added.

Sharp Philippines Corp. was established in 1982 as a joint venture between Pilipinas Development Corp. and Japan’s Sharp Corp.

Rizal Raoul Reyes

Saturday, May 27, 2017

EADINGTON, New Jersey— Timothy Piazza started out a shy high-school student in New Jersey who flushed so deeply scarlet when speaking to a girl that some called him Barney after the purple dinosaur. A growth spurt turned him into a gentle giant, keen to protect more vulnerable peers.

He fell in love, became gregarious.

By the time he enrolled at Pennsylvania State University two years ago, he was truly, friends and family said, coming into his own.

But all that ended in February, when Piazza died at Penn State after a fraternity hazing ritual in which he was instructed to drink large amounts of alcohol and fell numerous times, injuring his brain and rupturing his spleen. He was 19.

Eighteen young men involved with the fraternity, Beta Theta Pi, have been charged with a variety of crimes, eight of them with involuntary manslaughter, the most serious charge.

Prosecutors will seek to show that the conduct that night in February, when Timothy was induced to drink dangerous levels of alcohol and left unaided and injured, was not just fraternity high jinks gone terribly wrong, but rose to criminal behavior.

The episode reflects a new push to more stringently prosecute fraternity-linked deaths—there have been more than 60 in the past eight years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. In early May, four members of a fraternity at Baruch College in New York, Pi Delta Psi, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the death of a pledge during a hazing ritual in 2013.

More than 30 other people have been charged with lesser crimes in the case.

On a recent night in the Piazzas’ cream-carpeted home in Readington, a town where horse farms are interspersed with stately suburban homes, Timothy’s mother, Evelyn, scrolled through Facebook posts in which a national conversation rages about what transpired and whether the charges in the case of her son’s death were fair. Since Piazza’s death, the family has been outspoken about ending hazing, which is a crime in all but six states, according to Hazing Prevention, an organization that seeks to prevent the practice.

A grand jury report, released this month, relied on extensive closed circuit camera recordings of the night Piazza died. It captures in granular detail Piazza’s ordeal, lying injured for more than 12 hours while none of the many people around him sought help. One of them searched on his phone for what it meant when an intoxicated person’s limbs grew cold.

It hurt, Piazza said, “to know that my baby’s head hit the floor, and the iron railing, and the door, and he fell down steps and was there by

himself alone—suffering”.

“This was new grief on old grief,’’ she added. “I never imagined it to be as horrible as it was.”

Goofy

BUT lost in the swirling debate over what happened in the Beta Theta Pi house, a red brick mansion on Burrowes Street in State College, Pennsylvania, is something essential, said Piazza’s father, James, who also works in accounting: the boy at the center of it, the young man they loved.

He was devotedly goofy, said his brother, Mike, who is a 21-year-old rising senior at Penn State, his hands trembling as he recalled his brother.

At random Timothy would choose a foreign accent while playing a board game and never break character. As a tempestuous toddler, he insisted to anyone who would listen that his red hair was brown.

He embraced his flame-colored curls as he grew older and looked forward to when he might be old enough to grow his version of a salt-and-pepper beard: “Salt-andpaprika”, his brother said with a laugh. He stopped. “I’m never going to see it,” he said.

After rapidly growing several inches as a teenager, Timothy took on a role of protector of more vulnerable peers in high-school, said his friend Dan Prager, 20, perhaps recognizing in them the social awkwardness that he was growing out of. The boy who had once delighted in making Italian dressing-flavored Jell-O as a prank to dish up to unsuspecting friends stepped into leadership roles in school. He played football with developmentally disabled children and, as a high school senior, became an instructor in a peer-to-peer drug and safe-sex education program.

Promise

KAITLYN Tempalsky, Timothy’s girlfriend over the past three years, said he had sought to join Beta Theta Pi because he craved the camaraderie that fraternity life seemed to promise.

“He wasn’t in it for the partying,” said Tempalsky, 20, a student at Susquehanna University. “He didn’t realize how many people loved him.

He really wanted that brotherhood.”

Since Piazza’s death, his friends have begun writing down stories about him. On a recent morning they sat with his brother trading memories. There was the time Timothy caught them off guard with an Easter egg hunt of raw eggs. Or when he surprised Tempalsky with a red dress, in a move right out of a romantic film.

When he was particularly silly or pulling a practical joke, he had an impish smile, and a catch phrase— “I’m a delight!”—his brother said.

The friends nodded. He was.

The New York Times News Service

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BusinessMirror

Saturday, May 27, 2017

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AN FRANCISCO—Evan Williams is the guy who opened up Pandora’s box. Until he came along, people had few places to go with their overflowing emotions and wild opinions, other than writing a letter to the newspaper or haranguing the neighbors.

Williams—a Twitter founder, a cocreator of Blogger—set everyone free, providing tools to address the world. In the history of communications technology, it was, possibly, a development to rival Gutenberg.

And so here we are in 2017.

How’s it going, Mr. Williams?

“I think the Internet is broken,” he says. He has believed this for a few years, actually. But things are getting worse. “And it’s a lot more obvious to a lot of people that it’s broken.”

People are using Facebook to showcase suicides, beatings and murder, in real time. Twitter is a hive of trolling and abuse that it seems unable to stop. Fake news, whether created for ideology or profit, runs rampant. Four out of 10 adult Internet users said in a Pew survey that they had been harassed online. And that was before the presidential campaign heated up last year.

“I thought once ever ybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams says. “I was wrong about that.”

The Silicon Valley entrepreneur first drew notice during the dotcom boom, for developing software that allowed users to easily set up a web site for broadcasting their thoughts: blogging. By the time Google bought the company in 2003, more than 1 million people were using it.

T hen came Tw itter, which wasn’t his idea but was his company. He remains the largest shareholder and a board member.

After fame and fortune come regrets. Williams is trying to fix some things. So, in different ways, are Google and Facebook, and even Twitter. This is a moment for patches and promises.

The trouble with the Internet, Williams says, is that it rewards extremes. Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks.

The Internet interprets behavior like this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it tries to supply them.

His goal is to break this pattern. “If I learn that every time I drive down this road I’m going to see more and more car crashes,” he says, “I’m going to take a different road.”

But a new road may have other problems. It may, for instance, be a dead end.

Enthusiastic chatter

WILLIAMS isn’t the only one trying to fix this mess, of course. If he and others can’t find a path forward, if they can’t solve what he calls “the architecture of content creation, distribution and monetization on the Internet,” there are unsettling implications for the future of news and ideas. Maybe it will be all car crashes, all the time.

Twitter already feels like that.

For more than five years, Williams has been refining a communications platform called Medium.

Its ambition: define a new model for media in a world struggling un-

der the weight of fake or worthless content. Medium is supposed to be social and collaborative without rewarding the smashups. It is supposed to be a force for good.

“A beautiful space for reading and writing—and little else,” Williams called Medium at its public debut in 2012. “The words are central.”

Early chatter was enthusiastic, based on Williams’s track record and the site’s ease of use. But Medium, which began out of step with nearly all other media, now seems to inhabit a different universe.

At a moment when buzz can appear to be everything, Medium is not afraid to be dull. (“How to Expand Your Vocabulary” was featured on the “Popular on Medium” page.) As news becomes more visually oriented, the site stays focused on words. And it continues to strive for the broadest possible reach, welcoming all sorts of untested writers, although that may be changing.

Medium’s latest incarnation, unveiled in late March, included a $5 monthly subscription for premium writing. The reaction was underwhelming. “Ev Williams Has Lost His Goddamn Mind,” ran the headline in The Next Web, an online publication.

Critics say Medium is less a company than it is Williams’s 85-employee hobby. “The notion that you’re going to succeed as a writing site simply by putting quality first is not compatible with venture capital revenue expectations,” said Bill Rosenblatt, a media technology consultant.

“No one would have funded this if it weren’t by Ev Williams.”

Williams’s supporters say that it is a feature, not a bug, and that publishing needs all the experiments it can get. But they concede the road will be difficult.

Biz Stone was at Twitter with Williams from the beginning.

He joined his old friend at Medium as both a board member and an investor.

“Ev chose the hardest thing to do,” Stone says. “He said, ‘I want to make publishing profitable.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, so does everyone else.’

How far along are we? Somewhere between zero and half a percent.”

Farm to Silicon Valley

WILLIAMS is 45, bearded and stick-thin. He looks more like a Beatnik poet, staying up until dawn to debate existentialism, than the son of a Nebraska farmer, which he is. Growing up in a place where he felt new people and new ideas were in short supply, he was starved for someone to talk to. Living in a footballloving culture, and hating what he called “the stereotypical jock mentality, small brains thinking they’re superior because they’re surrounded by big muscles,” did not help, Williams said.

In 1993 a chance encounter with a new magazine in the Conestoga Mall in Grand Island, Nebraska, seemed to seal his destiny.

It was the second issue of Wired, a publication dedicated to the geek gospel that a new world was

pay for quality content.”

Medium declined to say how many subscribers it has, saying that its effort is still informal.

In any case, it’s not going to be an online magazine. Williams resists the notion that Medium should be seen as a traditional publisher, commissioning, editing and making stuff available.

He suggested instead the bookstore model. Bookstores don’t commission material, but they curate it and sell it. “Write whatever you want, and we’ll pay you based on certain terms,” Williams says now. “Does that mean I’m the publisher, or you?”

As Medium struggles to define itself, the older new communications platforms—Google, Facebook, Twitter—are trying to deal with their unexpected toxicity.

Facebook is hiring thousands of screeners to monitor its Facebook Live. Google has announced structural changes to make it easier for human raters to flag low-quality results, so that asking “Did the Holocaust happen,” for instance, no longer brings up a white supremacist site. And Twitter seems to have had fewer reported episodes of harassment recently, which may count as progress.

“I think we w i l l f i x these things,” Williams says. Just don’t hold your breath. The work has barely begun, he says. “Twenty years isn’t very long to change how society works.”

Already a Relic?

Evan Williams at the offices of Medium, a publishing site he created, in San Francisco, California, on May 2. “I think the Internet is broken,” Williams says. Jason Henry/The New York Times

dawning. One story was about a retired Army colonel named Dave Hughes who wanted to hook up all 5.5 billion brains on the planet. No farmer’s kid need ever be lonely again.

After a detour or two, Williams arrived in Silicon Valley. If his vision was clear—get rid of the gatekeepers and let people talk—the road was not. Both Blogger, the software he helped develop for blogging, and Twitter diverged from what their startups were actually supposed to be doing, and Twitter, in particular, involved a lot of well-chronicled drama among the four founders.

Williams is deliberate to a fault, and his stint as Twitter’s chief executive in 2008 was not a managerial success. “He’s not CEO material,” his former girlfriend and the codeveloper of Blogger, Meg Hourihan, said in 2010 when the Twitter board pushed him out.

A few years ago, Twitter was viewed as a tool of liberation. It enabled, some believed, the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East. Twitter, like the Internet itself, was putting tyranny on a short leash. Then the narrative turned darker, with the rise of trolling on the platform.

President Donald J. Trump has said he believes Twitter put him in the White House. Recently, Williams heard the claim for the first time. He mulled it over for a bit, sitting in his Medium office, which is noteworthy only for not having a desk.

“It’s a very bad thing, Twitter’s role in that,” he said finally. “If it’s true that he wouldn’t be president

if it weren’t for Twitter, then yeah, I’m sorry.”

Williams’ mistake was expecting the internet to resemble the person he saw in the mirror: serious, high-minded.

“I’ve come to realize Ev is extremely intellectual and introspective,” Stone says. “If he could wave a magic wand, he’d have everyone write the kind of things he likes, like, ‘Here are suggestions on climate change.’”

It was just another Utopian dream, Williams says. “The problem is that not everyone is going to be cool, because humans are humans,” he says. “There’s a lock on our office door and our homes at night. The Internet was started without the expectation that we’d have to do that online.”

Medium and Money

WRITERS want readers and, usually, money. Readers want to be entertained, instructed or outraged.

Publishers need revenues and profits. Yet, no one has come up with a satisfactory and sustainable way of harnessing the Internet to satisfy all these parties without descending into sleaze and clickbait.

“Now that we’ve made sharing information virtually effortless, how do we increase depth of understanding, while also creating a level playing field that encourages ideas that come from anywhere?”

Williams wrote in Medium’s 2012 manifesto.

Money, of course.

In the beginning, Medium had an editorial staff that sought out writers and rewarded them modestly for their contributions, just

like a traditional magazine. Abby Norman, then in her early 20s and working for the medical records department of a Maine hospital, was pulled in.

“Medium was a group of writers loping around at a somewhat sedentary pace, and you could get $50 for a bleeding-heart essay and forge relationships with writers and editors,” she says. “They seduced me into this idea, that I had stuff worth saying.”

Norman wrote 100 Medium pieces in a year, about her brother’s autism, her mother’s bulimia, her own health, and the enduring carnival that is popular culture.

Some of them she was even paid for. She gained a following. But as Medium grew more popular with writers, she competed to be heard above the din and struggled to find people that she herself wanted to read on the site.

“Now being here is work, and it’s not ‘digging for buried treasure’ fun work, either,” she wrote on Medium last September.

Abrupt pivot

MEDIUM was supposed to be developing its business around advertising, which would have paid for writers like Norman and made the site viable. Then it abruptly pivoted in January and laid off a third of the staff, or about 45 people. Advertising was suddenly no longer the solution but the villain.

“Ad-driven systems can only reward attention,” Williams says.

“They can’t reward the right answer. Consumer-paid systems can.

They can reward value. The inevitable solution: People will have to

JAMES Hong, best known for the popular rating-and-dating site Hot or Not? in the early 2000s, was an angel investor in Medium. He once told Williams that he had some new ideas about dating sites but feared that if he tackled them, “I’d be working on the same thing my whole entire life.”

Williams had pondered for a moment and replied, “I’ve been working on the same thing my whole life.”

Hong said: “It’s not a vanity project. It’s his calling. Other people calling it a vanity project actually tells me more about them than it does about Evan.”

That kind of determination may raise the odds but says little about long-term success. The darkest theory about the failure of Medium to catch on as an influential writing site comes from Cliff Watson, a 46-year-old advertising executive and onetime Medium contributor from Omaha, Nebraska. He thinks it is already a relic of an earlier era, kind of like communicating by carrier pigeon or telegraph.

“Medium feels like the perfect Obama-era platform: minimal, distinguished, self-important, elevated,” Watson says. “But as soon as the campaigns really ramped up their efforts in the primaries, we were living in a post-Obama world, metaphorically, and then literally.

And that post-Obama world holds no room for minimalist, distinguished, self-important, elevated thoughtfulness.”

Medium maintains it is doing well by the metrics it cares about.

The company says that the number of posts on the site quadrupled in 2016 and that it has 60 million unique monthly readers. After raising $130 million from investors, it had a valuation of $600 million last year.

Yet, the path to significant revenue seems as elusive as ever.

Williams is dismissive of those who say making Medium viable is not merely difficult but flat-out impossible. “That’s why I’m doing this, and they’re not,” he says. z

BusinessMirror

Mix Martinez

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EHICLE congestion, which resulted in hours-long traffic jams, has turned into an opportunity for real-estate companies, brokers and web sites like ours, Property24.com.ph, to position properties as a convenient way to avoid long journeys home—whether it’s to a nearby city or the suburbs.

Dema nd for condominium units has risen sharply over the past couple of years, with mixeduse developments sprouting in areas with a high concentration of transient workers, like Makati, Bonifacio Global City in Taguig and Quezon City.

Renting is now a more attractive option for many employees whose offices are in the National Capital Region. It is on our web site that we noticed this trend, which is also in line with the current rental boom in New York, London, Beijing and Tokyo.

Based on user behavior on our web site, users who search for condominiums are more likely to rent one. As for popular areas, they often look for spaces in business districts.

With the pace of business zooming with a click of a button, it is imperative for businesses to transform their models with digital platforms in mind. This allows them to become a more agile organization fit to compete with present demands.

For instance, moving into the digital space easily helps cast a wider net on the growing realestate market, garnering interest from buyers within the country, Filipinos working abroad and foreigners who are looking for attractive investments.

Online portals allow real-estate brokers, agencies and developers to get the attention of overseas Filipino workers, whose numbers have grown by leaps and bounds, looking to investments their earnings from abroad.

Just as most brands have brought their marketing tactics online, real-estate agents and brokers followed suit and started using social networks to generate more leads. For most, these social networks have served as an initial touchpoint, an avenue to generate interest that would drive to a realestate platform like Property24.

Despite earning the reputation as one of the world’s slowest and most expensive when it comes to

N

EW YORK—Microsoft is refreshing its Surface Pro tablet with longer battery life and faster processors.

The new, fifth- generation device — simply called Surface Pro—won’t look or feel drastically different from its predecessor. But Microsoft is hoping its under-the-hood improvements will help it compete with newer laptop-tablet hybrids from Samsung and others. Not to mention Apple’s iPad Pro. The Redmond, Washington, company made the announcement on Tuesday in Shanghai, China, in its first Surface launch outside New York. It’s a reflection of the company’s expectations of growth among a population that prizes premium gadgets from American brands.

Microsoft pioneered laptop-tablet hybrids, also known as 2-in-1s, with the original Surface in 2012. A keyboard cover turns the tablet into a laptop. But innovation has slowed down since 2014, when the Surface Pro 3 got a fully adjustable kickstand to give the screen a broader range of viewing angles, similar to real laptops. Before, the

data connectivity, Internet use in the Philippines has grown exponentially over the past two decades—paving the rise of online stores that rival the brick-andmortar shops.

Digital platforms allow buyers to acquire a lot of information first for big-ticket purchases, such as cars or real estate. Later on, they will talk to someone who can tell more about the property.

“Many who are look ing to buy or rent properties are very busy, and they heavily rely on the Internet to look for their desired space and online platforms easily and quickly shows what’s available,” real-estate broker Eddie Santos explained. “An online listing is able to fully describe the property so that when they go visit the place, their expectations are already managed.”

On every real-estate listing online, a buyer could easily reach an agent either by private message, e-mail or mobile phone. From the agent’s perspective, the access allows them to easily touch base with a prospective buyer and generate a sales lead.

“I’m able to reach a wide spectrum of buyers in just a click of a button. Our clients are readily able to appreciate the property they wish to buy or lease as the photos we upload show what kind of property they are getting,” Santos added. Since they are able to browse through pictures or view short clips, their interest can be sustained and later lead to a sale.

One thing is certain, as far as the real-estate industry is concerned: Digital platforms are crucial for businesses to continue thriving and for agents to reach more clients.

Mix Martinez is the category manager of real estate for OLX (Olx. ph) and Property24 Philippines (Propert y24.com.ph), an online portal for property listings. The views Martinez expressed in this column do not necessarily ref lect those of the BusinessMirror’s.

kickstand was limited to just two angles.

Meanwhile, other companies have made their own 2-in-1 devices running Microsoft’s Windows 10. That success contributed to a 26-percent revenue decline in the Surface business in the most recent quarter. And competition is growing; Samsung released new Galaxy Book models this week, while Huawei announced one on Tuesday in Berlin.

Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, expects the new Surface will help revive sales. “The external design isn’t dramatically different, but there are lots of changes inside,” Dawson said.

Microsoft promises about 13.5 hours of battery life, or about 50 percent more than the nine hours on the previous device, the Surface Pro 4. The processors inside will be faster, and lower-end models will ditch the fan. The Surface’s stylus will now mimic pencil shading when tilted, much like the Apple Pencil for iPad Pro tablets.

Along with this, Microsoft plans upgrades to its popular Office software with new pencil-like features. AP

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Saturday, May 27, 2017

A11

By Oliver Samson | Correspondent

OVERNMENT and private organizations in the Philippines and other Asia-Pacific countries are in the crosshairs of nation-state groups conducting cyber espionage for other states, FireEye Inc. executives said.

State-sponsored cyber espionage are targeting national security and diplomatic groups, the defense industry, banking, telecommunications, media and other critical industries in the region, said Bryce Boland, FireEye chief technology officer for Asia Pacific, in a media briefing in Manila on Thursday.

One of t hese nat ion-state groups is the “Conference Crew”, Boland pointed out. Based in China, this group undertook intrusions to public and private organizations in at least seven countries in the region, including the Philippines. The Conference Crew enters the computer systems of the target

by dispatching spear-phishing emails to plant the malware (malicious software), he said.

The APT32, another cyber-espionage group, was detected targeting technology infrastructure firm, a consumer product corporation and the Philippine government itself, Boland added.

Aligned with Vietnamese state interest, the 32 nation-state group also targeted journalists, he said.

“Philippine organizations face some of the most intense and daunting cyber-security threats we see in Asia, and we don’t expect them to recede in the near future,” Boland said in a statement. “The current geopolitical

By Isagani de la Paz, Correspondent

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HRIS Papa is part of that rare breed of Filipinos who opt to give his expertise within the country’s border.

He even accepted to step aside and allow his long-time friend Ronnie Latinazo to take the reins of Dell EMC’s Philippines office.

Papa, to note, was the country manager of Dell before the biggest merger in the technology industry occurred.

The BusinessMirror was given an opportunity to sit down with Papa and ask how things are going now with the technology giant.

What is the impact of the merger?

The transition was swift. We were able to keep our teams intact.

We are hiring more people. Some think this would impact the employees but, in this case, there is no impact at all.

Is the adjustment period after the transition long?

Not really. Since Day 1, when we were officially operating as Dell EMC, a lot of things have been done already—how to go about accounts, account alignment. A lot of preparations have been done already as early as that.

Since Day 1, we already knew what we were supposed to do, which new roles we would take, how the new synergies of the teams would be, and so on. We already knew what was going to happen. September was official Day 1 of Dell EMC, last year (2016). But officially, when we were working already as a team, it was the first week of February (2017) because that’s the start of our fiscal year. EMC adjusted their fiscal year to be on the same fiscal year as Dell. So Dell EMC is on the same fiscal year already.

By March because our strategy is under Dell Technologies (which is like our parent company), there are about seven brands/companies that you will hear about—Dell, when it comes to client products, Dell EMC for enterprise, hardware and infrastructure, VMWare, SecureWorks, Pivotal, Virtustream and RSA. Looking at it, the combined strategy under Dell Technologies is really go big, win big—everything in one place. That strategy is resonating well with our customers and our partners.

In a news briefing in Makati City, FireEye Inc. President Travis Reese answers questions from the media after the new details on nation-state cyberespionage groups targeting the Philippines were presented. ALYSA SALEN

climate in the region has generated significant uncertainty, and governments are turning to cyber espionage to glean more insights in order to alleviate this uncertainty.”

Most of the private firms, as well as public organizations in the Philippines, are vulnerable and not prepared for a prompt response to battle these nation-state groups, he added.

State-sponsored intelligence would continue and grow in the coming days, said Reese.

“Cyber espionage state by state” could be expected, Reese said, noting the growing threats are “a multinational problem”.

FireEye President Travis Reese said the intelligence these groups gather could be used for the economic gain of the nation-state that sponsors their cyber espionage.

market. Just to let you know how important this messaging is. We really thought of it. And the way we’re going to operate, and the way we’re working with our partners is within those tenets.

storage. But if they acquire storage also on that particular account, then we can also consider that as a new customer for us even if they’ve been an old customer. If they’re buying a new line of business or any new business from us, we consider that new business for Dell EMC, and we’re going to pay you more for that.

We’re also going to pay you more for growth. So you have your base target, you are given a rebate based on that and anything beyond that.

We’re going to put in accelerators to pay you more for overachieving your targets.

We’ll also pay you more for services. As you attach more services into your offerings to your customers, we’re going to pay you more, too.

We’ve also simplified the Market Development Fund (MDF) policies. You earn MDF automatically. Unlike before, there were a lot of terms and conditions.

Straightforward: you’ve sold this amount, the amount of businesses that you’ve done, and this is the percentage that you will get. And you can use that money to do MDF, such as regeneration events, certifications, so you can bring more into your business. That’s why it’s really profitable.

When we shared this briefing to partner owners, to team members, all of them were really excited about it. What Dell EMC has done is put in a hefty amount back into the channels business. Like this year, we have invested close to about $150 billion into the business. That is why we were able to do a lot of these incentives.

Please expound on this messaging?

PAPA

Specific to our partners, we’ve had an event to update our partners. We had a partner boot camp, a plenary discussion with partners and also a partners’ appreciation night last March. We’ve also formally shared with them the new Dell EMC Partner program. The one doing that right now is the channels.

Channels is a very important segment of the Dell EMC business. Globally, it’s a $35-billion business. This figure is relatively a huge business. It’s almost 50 percent of the combined Dell EMC company. Locally, our business in the Philippines is 99-point-something percent, which is through partners. That’s how important our partners are when it comes to the Dell EMC business.

What happened to the pointsomething percent?

There are some services that the customer can only place directly with EMC, so that’s what makes up the percentage. But it’s quite small.

Very minimal.

We’ve launched the Dell EMC Partner Program, combining what is working well for both Dell and EMC. Within this program, our key messaging is “Simple, Predictable and Profitable”.

This [message] is actually trademarked. You can only hear of this messaging from Dell EMC. It’s trademarked because this is our key messaging moving forward, not just for a year or two. There are people or companies who try to use the same messaging as well, but, unfortunately, it’s trademarked.

So they have to pull it out of the

Simple, because you only now have one partner program. We’ve also simplified a lot of the things that used to be a bit complicated.

For example, I can liken this with joining a contest, when there are so many terms and conditions.

In our case, we only have one partner program, one system—a single view for everything that you do together with Dell EMC. It’s predictable in such a way that we’ve established clear rules of engagement across our partners and our employees. This is going to be our guiding principle when we engage with our partners and customers.

We’ve also put more transparency when it comes to our dealregistration system. Working with partners would entail that.

It’s essential that there is a way for us to monitor, because that’s how it is working with partners— deal registration really requires monitoring. It’s a critical component of it.

It’s profitable our partners are working with us for several things. one is the end-to-end portfolio, second is the ease of doing business and last but not the least is of course, expect to earn something from doing business with Dell EMC, like selling opportunities.

We’re going to pay on the first dollar when you sell. Before, it wasn’t like this. Now, it’s so simple: if you sell, we’ll pay you on the first dollar. You don’t have to think about other things, other conditions you have to meet.

Is there still a quota system?

Yes we still do, there is still a target system, but we are just putting a base target. Likewise, there are benefits. You sell, and for example, for the $100,000, you get a rebate based on [that] $100,000 also.

On top of that, we’re going to pay you more for acquiring new customers. When you say new customer, this can be a customer buying a lot of our storage system but not necessarily buying our client solutions. It can be any customer for us.

It could also be that the customer is using server but not necessarily

Why and how is Dell EMC doing these?

This is the same question being thrown to us by our partners.

For one, we’re beginning to grow our team members. We hire more people and try to cover as much customers. We have a strong strategy when it comes to channels. Every organization that has a strong channel strategy tends to do better in terms of revenue and profitability.

Our strategy is this—we have a team directly covering a set of our customers, mostly large enterprise customers and our channel partners cover the rest of the market: from large enterprise, commercial, small and midsized business, to retail. It’s going to take the combination of the right set of channel partners to cover those segments.

BusinessMirror

A12 Saturday, May 27, 2017

GN Netcom launches new earwear in PHL N

EARLY a year after launching its first “Evolve” model in the Philippines, GN Netcom (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. recently launched another headset device targeting the corporate segment.

Ben Samman, managing director for Asean, said during the launch on May 22 that Evolve 75 has an Active Noise Cancellation feature and a “Do Not Disturb” busy light.

Samman said the company is confident of sales as the businessprocess outsourcing sector remains booming in the Philippines market.

According to industry data, the industry has nearly 800,000 total full-time employees.

The launch of the GN’s headset comes after the International Data Corp. (IDC) said in March it sees earworn devices as “poised for growth as new startups bring their inno-

vative technology to the table and traditional headphone companies incorporate additional capabilities beyond audio.”

However, IDC said while “growth is expected, volumes will remain somewhat modest as the primary features of health and fitness tracking ‘hearables’ overlap with the more popular wrist worn devices.”

IDC said worldwide shipments of earware hit 700,000 in 2016, with a 0.7-percent market share. IDC said it expects this figure to hit 4.2 million by 2021, with a 1.8-percent share in the overall wearable device market. Rizal Raoul Reyes

briefs

Managed Cloud demand increases in Asia Pacific

THE demand for managed cloud and professional services has increased, especially in countries like Japan, which have a mature cloud landscape, Frost & Sullivan said on May 18. This is due to complex Big Data and workloads, such as enterprise resource planning being increasingly migrated to cloud platforms. The expansion of open-source technologies and advances in application programming interfaceaccessible single-tenant cloud servers help promote acceptance toward managed private cloud providers. Immense monetization opportunities arise from competing in the managed cloud space, where service providers can differentiate themselves by offering a robust end-to-end portfolio of cloud services, network connectivity and security solutions. Rizal Raoul Reyes

Deputy cites adoption in food service sector

DEPUTY, the cloud-based mobile work-force management platform, announced on May 16 significant adoption in the food service industry, garnering 875 new restaurant and grocery store customers within the past 12 months. Large restaurant businesses use Deputy’s all-in-one mobile app for employee scheduling, timetracking, communication, tasking and performance management, the Atlanta, US-based headquartered company said. Over 35,000 workplaces globally use the Deputy solution and 17 percent are in the restaurant industry, one of the largest industries for hourly employment in the US, with over 11.5 million hourly employees, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Rizal Raoul Reyes

Twitter tweaks DM with cards

TWITTER announced the launch of the Direct Message (DM) card, which the company said is a product that businesses can use to promote and share bots along with other customer experiences built in DMs. “This new card will help businesses drive discovery of experiences both through Promoted Tweets and organic sharing,” the company said. “Using a DM card, businesses can capture people’s attention with engaging image or video creatives, and include up to four fully customizable call-toaction buttons. Each call-to-action button takes the user into a specific experience within DMs.” Rizal Raoul Reyes

Jet manufacturers select Inmarsat as linefit option

This May 22 photo shows Ben Samman, GN Netcom (S) Pte. Ltd. managing Director for Asean, wearing the latest product of the company under the Jabra brand.

INMARSAT Plc. announced on May 22 four private jet manufacturers chose its Jet ConneX to customers as a linefit option. The companies are connecting their aircraft to the Jet ConneX service using hardware produced by Inmarsat partner Honeywell. Rizal Raoul Reyes

Google’s not a bird: Bringing the Internet to rural India T ARADAND, India—Babulal Singh Neti was sitting with his uncle on a recent afternoon, trying to persuade him of the merits of the Internet.

It was 105 degrees outside, and the sun was beating down on the frazzled croplands. His uncle said he had no use for the Internet, since he had never learned to read; furthermore, he wanted to nap. This he made clear by periodically screwing up his face into a huge yawn.

Neti, 38, pressed on earnestly, suggesting that he could demonstrate the Internet’s potential by Googling the history of the Gond tribe, to which they both belonged.

Since acquiring a smartphone, Neti couldn’t stop Googling things: the gods, Hindu and tribal; the relative merits of the Yadav caste and the Gonds; the real story of how the Earth was made.

Access to this knowledge so elated him that he decided to give up farming for good, taking a job with a non-governmental organization whose goals include helping villagers produce and call up online content in their native languages. When he encountered Internet skeptics, he tried to impress them by looking up something they really cared about— like Gond history.

His uncle responded with halfclosed eyes, delivering a brief but comprehensive oral history of the Gond kings, with the clear implication that his nephew was a bit of a good-for-nothing. “What does it mean, Google?” his uncle said. “Is it a bird?”

And then, theatrically, he yawned.

lage needed emergency medical care, farmers tied the patient to a wooden cot and carried it 5 miles through the forest to the nearest hospital, a journey of four hours.

By comparison, India’s battling telecoms have wired Taradand with breathtaking speed. Two years ago, Neti counted 1,000 mobile phones in the village, which has a population of 2,500. This tracks with India as a whole; last year it surpassed the US to become the world’s secondlargest market for mobile phones behind only China, according to Groupe Speciale Mobile Association, an industry group known as GSMA.

Little sense

Little interest

WHILE India produces some of the world’s best coders and computer engineers, vast multitudes of its people are like Neti’s neighbors, entering the virtual world with little sense of what lies within it, or how it could be of use to them.

The arrival of the Internet in their lives is one of India’s most hopeful narratives.

In the 70 years since Independence, India’s government has done very little to connect Taradand, in Madhya Pradesh state, in central India, to the outside world: The first paved road appeared in 2006. There has never been a single telephone landline. Electricity is available to only half the houses. When Neti was growing up, if someone in the vil-

as a way to watch movies.

“The villagers do not yet understand,” he said “They don’t know that the whole world rests inside the mobile. The day people realize that, they will stop going out to study.”

Neti does spend a lot of time online. Walking around the village, he stops periodically to take selfies and post them on Facebook, and he scrolls through his feeds compulsively. He likes to describe his smartphone as his “best friend”, or his “guru”.

None of this makes much sense to his neighbors. A friend from childhood, Markandeya Yadav, said it was difficult for him to keep up with Neti’s Internet discoveries.

“I am a simple man,” Yadav said.

“He has changed, but I have not.”

Worst damage Babulal Singh Neti teaching trainees how to use Google on a laptop at the office of a non-governmental organization where he works in Anuppur, India, on April 25. Atul Loke/The New York Times

WITH the cost of both smartphones and data plummeting, it is fair to assume that Taradand’s next technological leap will be onto the Internet.

Those who work in development tend to speak of this moment as a civilizational breakthrough, of particular significance in a country aching to educate its children.

India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has made expanding Internet use a central goal, shifting government services onto digital platforms.

When Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, toured India in 2014, he told audiences that for every 10 people who get online, “one person gets lifted out of poverty and one new job gets created”.

So it is instructive to follow Neti

as he tries to drum up a little interest in Taradand. Young men use the internet here, but only young men, and almost exclusively to circulate Bollywood films. Older people view it as a conduit for pornography and other wastes of time.

Women are not allowed access even to simple mobile phones, for fear they will engage in illicit relationships; the Internet is out of the question. Illiterate people—almost everyone over 40—dismiss the Internet as not intended for them.

No idea

STILL, Neti persists with the zeal of the newly converted.

“You can call me the black sheep.

That’s what I am,” he said cheerfully.

“I don’t care. It’s the internet age. One day they’ll all come around.”

Neti is, in some ways, an unlikely harbinger of technological change. His parents pulled him out of school in fifth grade to marry— his wife was 10—and though he can read and write in Hindi, his school transcript brands him illiterate, foreclosing any opportunity to get a government job.

When he bought his first mobile phone, in 2001, he was so nervous he did not make a call for nearly a week. When he finally did, he blurted out: “Friend, I have bought this mobile. Is this your number and your name? I am Babulal!” The next day his phone stopped working and

he returned to the shop, telling the salesman that something was wrong with the phone.

“I had no idea what to do,” Neti said. “He said, ‘Your balance is over.’”

But this experience in no way prepared Neti for his first encounter with the smartphone, which he spotted about a decade ago in the hand of a computer operator in Taradand’s local administration building.

The official was an agreeable sort, and Neti began borrowing his phone for two- and three-hour stretches.

He went on Google, searching for the word “Gondwana”, the name for the Gond tribe’s traditional land.

“It was as if I had opened up history, the history of Gondwana,” he said. “It seemed fascinating. You didn’t have to buy a book. The earth map came up as round, and part of it was Gondwana. Ireland, Gondwanaland, Switzerland. I was fascinated.

No sooner would I see a mobile than I would run over.”

Only after some time, he recalled, did Neti realize it was possible to search for terms other than Gondwana.

“It seemed,” he said, “as if I was diving into a sea with no bottom to it.”

Simple man

NETI finds it maddening that, in a region whose farmers are desperate to educate their children, his neighbors still regard the Internet principally

THE worst damage has been to Neti’s relationship with his wife, Sitabai, who comes from a far more remote village and is completely illiterate.

She had taken to scrolling through images on her husband’s phone and, coming across a woman’s photograph, began calling numbers at random. She reached a senior district bureaucrat whose contacts he had programmed into the phone, and Neti had to beg the official’s forgiveness. After hanging up, he slapped her “four or five times”, he said.

“My wife’s mentality is such that she lives in yesteryear,” he said. “She will not tread my path. And if I tread her path, I will be left miles behind.”

This view is typical of India: Men are 36 percent more likely to use a bare-bones mobile phone than are Indian women. (The gap in China is 1 percent.) Where the Internet is concerned, the gap between male and female use is even greater, at 62 percent.

Neti said he had made little effort to explain the Internet to Sitabai.

“She doesn’t have the mental capability,” he said. “How would you explain a mobile to a dog?”

At moments of discouragement, Neti recalls that Taradand has already accepted a new technology.

Fifteen years ago, when people began using mobile phones, his neighbors were elated. They were more efficient in everything they did.

It was no longer necessary to make long overland journeys to inform relatives of family news.

Before going to market, farmers could call around to compare whole-

sale prices for vegetables. Migrant laborers could find out where the contractors were paying 400 rupees a day, or around $7.50, instead of the usual 150.

Even Neti’s uncle, Siya Ram Singh Gond, shook his head gravely at the thought of how long they had lived without these tools. “So much time was wasted,” he said.

Vivo launches new V5 as shipments up in Q1

C

HINESE multinationa l tec hnolog y f ir m Vivo Mobile Communications Co. Ltd. launched its follow up to its V5 as worldwide shipments in the first quarter increased.

According to International Data Corp. (IDC), the firstquarter shipments growth of 4.3 percent came from companies like Vivo.

“When breaking down precisely where the first quarter growth came from, IDC continues to see the largest catalysts being a handful of Chinese OEMs,” IDC said. “The clear leaders are Huawei, Oppo and Vivo, which have all well outpaced market growth for over a year now. And as these companies gain share in new territories the potential to continue this trend is high.”

IDC data revealed Vivo shipped 18.1 million units in the first quarter for a market share of 5.2 percent. The figure is higher than the 14.6 million units that Vivo shipped in the first quarter of last year.

IDC credits Vivo’s growth in Southeast Asia to “its own promoters aggressively pushing its phones in the market.”

Vivo, however, still trails Oppo in the worldwide shipment of smartphones in the first quarter, which shipped a whopping 25.6 million units for a 7.4-percent market share.

According to Andrew de Guzman, Vivo’s local marketing manager, the company is positioning its new V5S to consumers addicted to taking their portrait photos called “selfies”. Rizal Raoul Reyes