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Sunday, November 6, 2022 Vol. 18 No. 25

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Zambales harvest festival revives cultural traditions when rural life was simple

THE winning entry in the “Kuliglig Makeover” contest during the opening of the five-day Laruk-Laruk Festival in Candelaria, Zambales, depicted traditional farming and fishing.

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By Henry Empeño

ANDELARIA, Zambales—The clip-clip-clop of pestles hitting mortar and the aroma of newly harvested palay grain being unhusked under the rhythmic pounding are enough to mesmerize anyone watching the making of laruk-laruk, or rice crisps.

CANDELARIA Councilor Mac Eay shows one of the du’al or half-beak fish caught during the shore-casting fishing competition in the 2022 Laruk-Laruk Festival in Candelaria, Zambales.

A TRUCK climbs out of a mud pit during the 4x4 Challenge in the five-day Laruk-Laruk Festival in Candelaria, Zambales.

to release the sweet scent and glutinous taste, only then is the laruklaruk ready.

town in 1870.

The simple life in a once unsettled forest necessitated cooperation among residents. Thus, collaborative endeavors became a core of local culture.

“When I was a kid, we would watch and get fascinated by the three-man combo at the mortar and pestle turning out the laruklaruk,” recalls Eay, who is now 62.

“Nearly everybody in the neighborhood was there—because it would take a lot of manpower to turn out the crisps and the pounding continues until dawn,” Eay remembers. “And by then, they would also have produced tinupak, which is laruk-laruk combined with coconut meat and sugar and

Tradition

GOV. Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. examines a dressed-up hand tractor entry in the “Kuliglig Makeover” contest.

The process is culture, art and science combined: Two or three wooden pestles hitting just one mortar needs to be a cooperative venture of timing and precision. It exacts patience and vibes, a feeling for others, a sense of community.

But that’s not all. The newly

harvested grains are first threshed by foot on site, pounded, winnowed, and pounded again.

Only when the greenish grains are finally separated from husk after laborious pounding, when the chaff is blown into the wind, and when the grains are pressed again

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 58.6610

RESIDENTS in native costume pound palay grains to produce the sweet-smelling laruk-laruk rice crisps during the Laruk-Laruk Festival in Candelaria, Zambales.

MAKING laruk-laruk, which is pinipig in Filipino, brings back memories of simple barrio life, says town councilor Mac Eay, one of the organizers of events under the five-day 2022 Laruk-Laruk Festival that was held here from October 26 to 30.

Candelaria, which sits on an alluvial plain west of the Zambales mountains, has always been a farming and fishing community since Sambal settlers from nearby Masinloc town, one of the oldest in the province, founded a sitio here which later became Candelaria

Continued on A2

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Source: BSP (November 4, 2022)

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REDISCOVERING ‘LARUK-LARUK’ Continued from A1

pounded into fine, sticky brown balls the size of a fist.”

The folks back then easily endure the tedious work and long hours, Eay says, with free-flowing coffee and biscocho bread, guitaraccompanied songs, friendly banter, and some courtship among the younger people.

“This, sadly, has long been lost to our generation and those who came after us,” Eay adds.

Revival

TO bring back the long-lost tradition of making laruk-laruk as part of thanksgiving after the palay harvest season, residents here have organized an annual festival that highlighted local culture, indigenous games, homegrown produce, and the townsfolk’s traditional way of life.

The festival made a comeback here this year after some absence at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Governor Hermogenes Ebdane Jr., who kickstarted the LarukLaruk Festival in 2012 under the aegis of the municipal local government unit with the active participation of the Uacon Cove Resorts & Residents Association (UCRRA), said the event celebrates local customs that residents of Candelaria, his hometown, had practiced after settlers arrived here in mid-1800s.

“This is a rediscovery of the culture that defined us as Candelarians and Sambals, and we hope this would rekindle among the present generation an appreciation of local culture and ignite love of our town and people,” Ebdane said.

He said the tradition of making laruk-laruk best exemplified Candelaria’s close community ties and cooperative endeavors like pukot, wherein neighbors helped each other haul fishing nets along the shallows of the Uacon Cove.

“But you would notice that we have incorporated non-traditional elements to the festival formula so that we can engage more audience and also promote Zambales as a tourism attraction,” Ebdane also said.

The customary married the conventional to produce better results.

Festival highlights

THIS year’s Laruk-Laruk Festival became a five-day festivity that started on October 26 with a community fun run that began at the town hall. It was followed by “Kuliglig Makeover” contest, wherein the hand tractor, the local farming workhorse, is dressed up into magnificent floats.

At the same time an Agritrade Fair, which showcased local farm produce, opened at the town plaza, where “Obra Zambaleño,” an art contest for local talents, was also held. The evening was capped by “Sayawit,” a modern dance and singing competition.

Day 2 of the Laruk-Laruk Festival, meanwhile, featured “Larong Lahi,” which was a collection of traditional Filipino games like palosebo, or greased pole; beach volleyball competitions; Pride Night that featured a contest for the “Miss Gay Binayo Pangkalawakan” title; and the Senior Citizens Night.

Day 3, which fell on Friday, October 28, saw the “Padyak para

SCHOOLCHILDREN enact a palayplanting dance during the Laruk-Laruk Festival in Candelaria, Zambales.

sa Kalikasan,” which was a fun ride for bike enthusiasts that culminated in a tree-planting activity; a chess tournament for local aficionados; a Zumba fitness par-

RACERS run a dirt course during the Motocross event in the five-day LarukLaruk Festival in Candelaria, Zambales.

ty; basketball championship for inter-high-school teams; and the Cultural Dance Competition that showcased dances depicting the tradition of making laruk-laruk.

Day 4 brought the festival to the Uacon Cove, with sea-themed activities like a jigging competition and shore-casting tournament very early in the morning; a fluvial parade at 6 a.m.; sibit-sibit kayak flotilla at 9 a.m.; 4x4 truck challenge along the Dampay coastline at 9 a.m.; motocross challenge at the Dampay venue at 1 p.m.; and finally, the “Battle of the Bands” mardi gras at 7 p.m. The latter was moved from its bayside venue to the town plaza covered court, as severe tropical storm Paeng (international code name: Nalgae), which was then raging south of Luzon, brought unexpected showers.

Day 5 still saw a colorful street dancing competition at 10 a.m.; the “Salo-salo sa Bilao” food fiesta at 3 p.m.; and the “Binibining LarukLaruk 2022” beauty pageant at 7 p.m. to conclude the festival.

New attractions

THE traditional activities in the festival brought out the older set of Candelaria residents, as well as visitors from nearby communities.

Local participation was heavy in the trade fair that featured local agricultural products and delicacies, as well as in events like the “Sayawit” and Battle of the Bands.

But newer attractions drew most of the crowds. These include the fishing tournaments early Saturday, October 29, which were held

GOV. Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. views local agriculture and food products at the agri-trade fair during the opening of the five-day Laruk-Laruk Festival in Candelaria, Zambales.

for the first time in the decade-old festival, and the 4x4 Truck Challenge and Motocross events at the seaside venue in Dampay on the same day.

Eay, who helped organize the shore-casting tournament as a member of the Zambales Anglers Club, says the fishing event also attracted anglers from all around Zambales, even with a small champion’s prize of P8,000.

The shore-casting champion and two runners-up were determined by having the heaviest catch, but special awards were also given to the angler with the most catch and the greatest number of species.

“The participants had quite a catch at the Potipot Island venue—mostly du’al (big half-beak fish). The champion caught one

that weighed more than two kilos,” notes Eay. “It was the challenge that brought them here.”

Meanwhile, huge audiences were also recorded at the truck and motorcycle races, as locals marveled at how the four- and twowheeled machines came out of the muddy pits and sand obstacles set out for them in a grueling course.

Governor Ebdane says these races have always been a hit since he brought them here in Zambales 11 years ago during the First Gov. Jun Ebdane 4x4 Offroad Challenge held in Botolan town.

He adds that the 4x4 and motocross races would serve as a prelude to more adventure events in Zambales, which has recently launched its new tourism product package under the catchphrase “Dive, Glamp, Adventure.”

TheWorld

www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Angel R. Calso

BusinessMirror

Sunday, November 6, 2022

A3

BBC tries to understand politics by creating fake Americans

By David Bauder

CHINESE journalists work at a press center for the 20th Party Congress in Beijing on October 20, 2022. China’s ruling Communist Party has long relied on a critically important and secretive internal reference system to learn about issues considered too sensitive for the public to know.

But as Chinese leader Xi Jinping tightens censorship and consolidates his rule, Chinese academics and journalists say even this internal system is struggling to give frank assessments. AP/NG HAN GUAN

IN XI’S CHINA, EVEN INTERNAL REPORTS FALL PREY TO CENSORSHIP

By Dake Kang

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AP Media Writer

EW YORK—Larry, a 71-yearold retired insurance broker and Donald Trump fan from Alabama, wouldn’t be likely to run into the liberal Emma, a 25-year-old graphic designer from New York City, on social media—even if they were both real.

The Associated Press

B

EIJING—When the coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan in late 2019, reporter Liao Jun of China’s official Xinhua News Agency told conflicting stories to two very different audiences.

Liao’s news dispatches assured readers the disease didn’t spread from person to person.

But in a separate confidential report to senior officials, Liao struck a different tone, alerting Beijing that a mysterious, dangerous disease had surfaced.

Her reports to officials were part of a powerful internal reporting system long used by the ruling Communist Party to learn about issues considered too sensitive for the public to know. Chinese journalists and researchers file secret bulletins to top officials, ensuring they get the information needed to govern, even when it’s censored.

But this internal system is struggling to give frank assessments as Chinese leader Xi Jinping consolidates his power, making it risky for anyone to question the party line even in confidential reports, a dozen Chinese academics, businesspeople and state journalists said in interviews with The Associated Press.

It’s unclear what the impact has been, given the secretive nature of high-level Chinese politics.

But the risk is ill-informed decision-making with less feedback from below, on everything from China’s stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to its approach to the coronavirus.

“Powerful leaders become hostages,”said Dali Yang, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Chicago. “They actually are living in cocoons: protected, but also shielded from information that they should be open to.”

The reports are classified as state secrets and include what would be considered staples of journalism in many other countries: corruption, strikes, public criticism, and industrial accidents.

Newspapers, think tanks and universities across China each have their own classified reporting channel, sending intelligence to local and provincial officials.

But a few outlets, such as Xinhua and the state-controlled People’s Daily, supply intelligence directly to China’s rulers. Their confidential reports have toppled officials, changed policy, and launched government campaigns against poverty and waste.

The Communist Party calls internal reporting a secret weapon, acting as its “eyes and ears,” while propaganda acts as its “throat and tongue.”

Those who write internal reports are often thoughtful and critical, says Maria Repnikova, a Chinese media expert at Georgia State University.

They can face threats or intimidation, even when backed by the state, with officials taking extreme measures to block bad news from reaching their superiors.

Xi is intimately familiar with the power of this internal reporting system, said Alfred Wu, a former reporter who met Xi when he governed Fujian province. Xi cultivated ties with journalists from Xinhua and the People’s Daily, outlets with direct lines to Beijing—and the power to influence his career.

“He’d always mingle and socialize with journalists,”Wu said.“Xi’s street smarts helped him so much.”

After coming to power in 2012, Xi stifled dissent and launched an anti-corruption campaign that jailed rivals. The crackdown has made reporters more cautious about what they write in internal memos.

A Xinhua journalist famed for internal reports that helped take down a senior executive at a state company is now unable to publish, according to a close associate, because the risks are too big.

The internal reports system was also vulnerable to corruption. Officials and businesspeople manipulated it to lobby for their interests. In one incident, Shanxi province officials gave cash and gold ingots to reporters to cover up a mine accident that killed 38 people.

Xi’s crackdown has reined in corruption, but also sidelined many of Xi’s competitors and paralyzed low-level officials reluctant to act without clear permission from the top.

The government’s tightening grip on the Internet under Xi is also warping the internal reports.

Decades ago, there were few ways for officials to know what ordinary people thought, making the reports a valuable channel of insight. But the Internet “handed everyone their own microphone,” the People’s Daily wrote, resulting in an explosion of information that internal reports struggled to analyze.

The Internet also posed a threat: Critics bonded online, organizing to challenge the state.

Xi tackled both issues. Under him, China beefed up big data analysis to harness the vast tide of information.

He also launched a campaign against “online rumors” and put millions of censors to work. One of the first to be detained was an investigative journalist accusing an official of corruption.

So while internal reports now draw heavily on online information, the Internet itself has become strictly censored, which can distort the message sent to the top.

Electronic surveillance has also become pervasive under Xi, making it tougher for sensitive information to be shared, one current and one former state media journalist said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to foreign media.

As a result, people withhold critical information—sometimes, with catastrophic consequences.

In the early days of the virus outbreak in Wuhan, Xinhua’s Liao reported the arrest of eight “rumormongers” for spreading “false information.”

In fact, they were doctors warning each other about the emerging virus in online chats. Her story discouraged others from speaking up, leaving the central leadership blind to the virus’ spread.

The information department of the State Council, China’s Cabinet, declined to comment. Xinhua did not immediately respond to an AP request for comment.

The virus story illustrates a paradox of the internal reports: The tighter controls are, the more valuable the reports become. But tighter controls also make it harder to find reliable information.

Interviews with Chinese academics suggest when it comes to decisions made by the top, there’s now little room for discussion or course correction.

Beijing’s public stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is clear: Under Xi’s “no limits” partnership with Russia, officials voice sympathy with Moscow’s grievances with the West, portraying the US as a hypocritical bully and NATO as the aggressor.

But in private conversation, many Chinese foreign policy experts express views that diverge from the party line—a diversity of opinions that isn’t being conveyed to China’s leaders, they say.

Many experts worry China has alienated Europe by standing with Russia. A landmark investment deal with the European Union looks all but dead, and Europe is increasingly aligning its China policy with the latter’s biggest rival, the United States.

One scholar took a calculated risk to get his views heard. Government adviser Hu Wei published an online essay in March criticizing the war and arguing Beijing should side with Europe.

Hu wrote publicly because he worried his bosses wouldn’t approve an internal report, according to Zhao Tong, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Even if the piece was censored, he reasoned, it might get the attention of senior officials.

More than 100,000 people viewed Hu’s essay online. Within hours, it was blocked.

Each is a figment of BBC reporter Marianna Spring’s imagination.

She created five fake Americans and opened social media accounts for them, part of an attempt to illustrate how disinformation spreads on sites like Facebook, Twitter and TikTok despite efforts to stop it, and how that impacts American politics.

That’s also left Spring and the BBC vulnerable to charges that the project is ethically suspect in using false information to uncover false information.

“We’re doing it with very good intentions because it’s important to understand what is going on,” Spring said. In the world of disinformation, “the US is the key battleground,” she said.

Spr ing’s repor ting has ap peared on BBC’s newscasts and website, as well as the weekly podcast “Americast,” the British view of news from the United States.

She began the project in August with the midterm election campaign in mind but hopes to keep it going through 2024.

Spring worked with the Pew Research Center in the US to set up five archetypes. Besides the

very conservative Larry and very liberal Emma, there’s Britney, a more populist conservative from Texas; Gabriela, a largely apolitical independent from Miami; and Michael, a Black teacher from Milwau kee who’s a moderate Democrat.

With computer-generated photos, she set up accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok. The accounts are passive, meaning her “people” don’t have friends or make public comments.

Spring, who uses five different phones labeled with each name, tends to the accounts to fill out their “personalities.” For instance, Emma is a lesbian who follows LGBTQ groups, is an atheist, takes an active interest in women’s issues and abortion rights, supports the legalization of marijuana and follows The New York Times and NPR. These “traits” are the bait, essentially, to see how the social media companies’ algorithms kick in and what material is sent their way.

Through what she followed and liked, Britney was revealed as anti-vax and critical of big business,

so she has been sent into several rabbit holes, Spring said. The account has received material, some with violent rhetoric, from groups falsely claiming Donald Trump won the 2020 election. She’s also been invited to join in with people who claim the Mar-a-Lago raid was “proof ” Trump won and the state was out to get him, and groups that support conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Despite efforts by social media companies to combat disinformation, Spring said there’s still a considerable amount getting through, mostly from a far-right perspective.

Gabriela, the non-aligned Latina mom who’s mostly expressed interest in music, fashion and how to save money while shopping, doesn’t follow political groups. But it’s far more likely that Republican-aligned material will show up in her feed.

“The best thing you can do is understand how this works,” Spring said. “It makes us more aware of how we’re being targeted.”

Most major social media companies prohibit impersonator accounts. Violators can be kicked off for creating them, although many evade the rules.

Journalists have used several approaches to probe how the tech giants operate. For a story last year, the Wall Street Journal created more than 100 automated accounts to see how TikTok steered users in different directions. The nonprofit newsroom the Markup set up a panel of 1,200 people who agreed to have their web browsers studied for details on how Facebook and YouTube operated.

“My job is to investigate misinformation and I’m setting up fake accounts,” Spring said. “The irony is not lost on me.”

She’s obviously creative, said

Aly Colon, a journalism ethics professor at Washington & Lee University. But what Spring called ironic disturbs him and other experts who believe there are aboveboard ways to report on this issue.

“By creating these false identities, she violates what I believe is a fairly clear ethical standard in journalism,” said Bob Steele, retired ethics expert for the Poynter Institute. “We should not pretend that we are someone other than ourselves, with very few exceptions.”

Spring said she believes the level of public interest in how these social media companies operate outweighs the deception involved.

The BBC experiment can be valuable, but only shows part of how algorithms work, a mystery that largely evades people outside of the tech companies, said Samuel Woolley, director of the propaganda research lab in the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas.

Algorithms also take cues from comments that people make on social media or in their interactions with friends—both things that BBC’s fake Americans don’t do, he said.

“It’s like a journalist’s version of a field experiment,” Woolley said. “It’s running an experiment on a system but it’s pretty limited in its rigor.”

From Spring’s perspective, if you want to see how an influence operation works, “you need to be on the front lines.”

Since launching the five accounts, Spring said she logs on every few days to update each of them and see what they’re being fed.

“I try to make it as realistic as possible,” she said. “I have these five personalities that I have to inhabit at any given time.”

Antibody treatment tested as new tool against malaria

By Carla K. Johnson AP Medical Writer

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ESEARCH in Africa found a one-time dose of an experimental drug protected adults against malaria for at least six months, the latest approach in the fight against the mosquitoborne disease.

Malaria killed more than 620,000 people in 2020 and sickened 241 million, mainly children under 5 in Africa. The World Health Organization is rolling out the first authorized malaria vaccine for children, but it is about 30 percent effective and requires four doses.

The new study tested a very different approach—giving people a big dose of lab-made malariafighting antibodies instead of depending on the immune system to make enough of those same infection-blockers after vaccination.

“The available vaccine doesn’t protect enough people,” said Dr. Kassoum Kayentao of the University of Sciences, Techniques and Technologies in Bamako, Mali, who helped lead the study in the villages of Kalifabougou and Torodo.

In those villages during malaria season, other research has shown, people are bitten by infected mosquitoes on average twice a day.

The experimental antibody, developed by researchers at the US National Institutes of Health, was given by IV—difficult to deliver on a large scale. But the encouraging findings bode well for an

easier-to-administer shot version from the same scientists that’s in early testing in infants, children and adults.

The US government research was published Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at a medical meeting in Seattle.

The antibody works by breaking the life cycle of the parasite, which is spread through mosquito bites.

It targets immature parasites before they enter the liver where they can mature and multiply. It was developed from an antibody taken from a volunteer who received a malaria vaccine.

T he research involved 330 adults in Mali who got either one of two different antibody doses or a dummy infusion. All were tested for malaria infection every two weeks for 24 weeks. Anyone who got sick was treated.

Infections were detected by blood test in 20 people who got the higher dose, 39 people who got the lower dose and 86 who got the placebo.

The higher dose was 88 percent effective, compared to the placebo.

The lower dose was 75 percent effective.

Protection might last during the several months of a malaria season. The idea is to someday use it alongside other malaria prevention methods such as malaria pills, mosquito nets and vaccines. Cost is uncertain, but one estimate suggests lab-made antibodies could be given for as little as $5 per child

per malaria season.

Lab-made antibodies are used to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases and Covid-19, said Dr. Johanna Daily of A lbert Einstein College of Medicine in New

York, who was not involved in the study.

“The good news is now we have another, immune-based therapy to try to control malaria,” Daily said.

A4

Sunday, November 6, 2022

TheWorld BusinessMirror

Nuclear memories: Russia, war and childhood fears rekindled

By Gary Fields

T

The Associated Press

HOSE of us of a certain age remember the threat. The 1960s were a time of domestic turmoil, yes. But they came, too, with a darker, existential menace: atomic bombs, ICBMs, thermonuclear war, annihilation. The buzzwords of destruction, with the Soviet Union seen as the architect of it all.

Nuclear war was the shadow in our lives. Now, it feels, those shadows are back.

The war in Ukraine, especially Russian President Vladimir Putin’s references to Moscow’s nuclear arsenal—and global discussions about nuclear weapons—have awakened memories that I thought were buried. And each day that Russia’s conventional war effort seems stalled, the more vivid my recollections become.

Families could buy bomb shelters and students dutifully practiced “duck and cover”—hiding under school desks as if that could save us. Two 1964 movies, “Fail Safe” and “Dr. Strangelove,” had similar plots—a mistaken US order to bomb the USSR—but only the latter was played for laughs.

“Beneath the Planet of the Apes” in 1970 gave us the bleak aftermath of an atomic bomb.

The voiceover said it all: “In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe lies a mediumsize star. And one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead.”

Some of us in those years— “nuclear brats” w ith militar y family members who trained to intercept Russian bombers and who flew nuclear payloads—lived with the possibilities of nukes every day. We hoped that what was possible didn’t become probable.

My dad’s Air Force squadron, the 87th, flew the McDonnell F101B Voodoo out of Clinton County Air Force Base in Wilmington, Ohio.

The alert fighters carried two Genies. They were unguided air-to-air rockets. Nuclear ones.

The squadron’s job was to intercept Russian bombers loaded with nuclear bombs if they tried to attack the United States. The interceptors would fire the Genies into the incoming formations. At 1.5 kilotons, it wasn’t a big nuke, but we knew it was a nuke. Two of them had as much explosive power as one of the giant air raids during World War II with hundreds of bombers.

As a kid, I knew where the nukes on the base were, or thought I did.

It was not really a secret. There were raised mounds near the alert hangers. The amount of security was something you couldn’t miss.

The German shepherds that patrolled there with handlers, behind signs that said intruders would be shot, were clearly not family pets.

Somewhere in America, amid amber waves of grain, we knew there were missile silos as well that fired more terrifying payloads. We knew about the bombers of Strategic Air Command, too. I guess other kids at other airfields saw the same mounds and alert aircraft we did.

The command center that controlled the fighters was called the mole hole—think of a miniature Cheyenne Mountain from the movie “War Games,” the 1983 Cold War sci-fi movie. One of the massive rooms held a world map with lights on it. I know now that those were US installations and their counterparts in the then-Soviet Union. It was underground, and part of a larger complex that we did not get to explore.

And yes, there was a red phone.

Be it in movies or real life, many people have seen fighter planes take off on routine training missions.

Ground and aircrews check out the planes. Alert fighter launches was exactly that, but unfolding at hyper speed. Everyone was running. You only needed to see one scramble to know the difference.

All of that has come back to me in recent months with Putin’s saber rattling. I thought about missile silos, alert aircraft and the Looking Glass. Alert aircraft were a 24-hour thing in my youth, along with Looking Glass, the airborne command posts that were aloft 24 hours a day and could order a retaliatory response if the ground centers had been destroyed.

Just why we were at a small airbase in Ohio was part of the threat.

The base, about an hour north of Cincinnati, was a detachment from its headquarters at what was then Lockbourne Air Force Base near Columbus. Squadrons were dispersed. The thinking went like this: If an enemy hit the main base, its forces had been spread to other airfields that would survive and either continue defending the United States or retaliate.

There was, if I remember correctly, a Nike defense-missile site in the community too, providing air defense for the base. One of the

Extreme heat is stressing cows, imperiling global dairy supply

By Elizabeth Elkin & Pratik Parija

H

EAT and drought are inflicting perilous strain on dairy cows across the globe, drying up their milk production and threatening the long-term global supply of everything from butter to baby formula.

Volumes of dairy are forecast to sink by nearly half a million metric tons this year in

major exporter Australia as farmers exit the industry after years of pressure from heat waves.

In India, small-scale farmers are contemplating investing in cooling equipment they’d have to stretch to afford. And producers in France had to pause making one type of high-quality cheese when parched fields left grass-fed cows with nowhere to graze.

Some of the world’s biggest milk-making regions are becoming less hospitable to these

THE F101B Voodoo is displayed at the Air Mobility Command Museum at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Del., on October 22, 2022. The Voodoo was a two-crew member fighter. The airplane is the fighter used by the squadron in which Gary Fields’ father, Willie “Bill” Mount Jr., served in the 1960s. The F101B Voodoos could carry two Douglas Genie air-to-air missiles which were designed to be used against incoming enemy bomber formations. Each missile was armed with a 1.5-kiloton atomic warhead. AP/GARY FIELDS

Army officers stationed there and my dad played ping-pong regularly.

Our social group, in fact, was primarily the squadron members and their families. Over the years we heard that one of the wives, who was Japanese, had been a 12-year-old in one of the atomic bomb explosions in Japan. She did not talk about it, at least not with the kids. One night, as I eavesdropped before being chased to bed, I heard her say how bright the explosion was.

Because one of my favorite places was the Air Force Museum in Dayton, I saw a life-size model of the bombs that had fallen on her country. There were pictures of the aftermath, too. When I asked Dad about the destruction and how many bombs it took to make a city vanish, he said just one.

I asked him if the bombs that our enemies had were as big as Little Boy and Fat Man, the bombs that had destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He said their bombs and our bombs were much bigger now.

I guess he caught the look on my face, because he added reassuringly that it was his job and the job of men and women like him to make sure that no bombs fell on us.

I wanted to believe him. But the museum also had models of our long-range missiles, too, and I knew no Voodoo was shooting anything like that down. And if it did, wouldn’t we still get blown up?

I didn’t mention my fears to Dad. He wasn’t known for being reassuring; today, we would call it blunt and fatalistic.

He and Mom did plan for emergencies, though. They wanted a house with a basement, and they showed me where the safest place in the basement was away from the windows. We always had a rack or two of canned goods as well, and they kept a can opener and eating utensils down there as well.

Mom never talked about why she did that, but she kept a survivalist streak the rest of her life.

I am not sure if they were trying to convince me or themselves. After seeing Little Boy and Fat Man and the missiles at the museum, I always figured the only way we’d

stay alive was if nobody ever fired one of the missiles or dropped one of the bombs—again.

I don’t know if my friends then, especially the military kids, felt the same way. Yet I suspect they knew what I did—that we were one really bright light away from nothingness.

Eventually we moved to other bases. My dad retired and returned to his native Louisiana, away from mounds and launch sites. And as I grew into early adulthood, I knew enough nukes were floating around to destroy the world multiple times, so it didn’t matter if I couldn’t see where they were stored.

One film brought that home in a visceral way. “The Day After,” a 1983 TV movie, showed a fullscale missile exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union and depicted the aftermath.

Dad and I watched it together.

He smoked his ever-present Pall Malls and confirmed that yep, that seemed accurate.

By the 1980s, I was a reporter in Shreveport, Louisiana, close to I-20 and minutes from the end of the runway at Barksdale Air Force Base. We accepted that there were nuclear-armed bombers there on alert, and that the base undoubtedly had multiple ICBMs aimed at it. If a warning ever came, my plan was to stop at a store, get the best bottle of booze I could and go park near the base and wait. I had no intention of being around for the aftermath.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, George H.W. Bush took the bombers off the 24-hour alert status. With that, the idea of a planet-killing thermonuclear exchange slid to the back of my mind.

Until this year, until Ukraine, until Putin.

Now, as those images of childhood march through my mind once more, I wonder if my daughters and grandkids will live under the same lingering shadow that hovered over those in my generation. More important: Will the use of nuclear weapons remain only a possibility?

Or are we, once again, one really bright light away from oblivion?

animals due to extreme weather brought on by climate change: Cows don’t yield as much milk under the stress of scorching temperatures, and arid conditions and storms compound the problem by withering or destroying the grass and other crops they eat.

In the US alone, some scientists estimate climate change will cost the dairy industry $2.2 billion per year by the end of the century—a financial hit not easily shouldered by a sector that already struggles to make money. If greenhouse gas emissions remain high, one study estimates that the dairy and meat industries will lose $39.94 billion per year to heat stress by that same date.

At the same time, a swelling middle

class in many developing nations is adding to demand for dairy items, while policies aimed at helping the environment are discouraging farmers in some areas from expanding their production. That collision portends higher prices and potential shortages of grocery-list staples such as cream cheese or yogurt.

“Climate change adds to the volatility or the variation in your supply, and the knock-on effect to that can be increased food insecurity,” said Mary Ledman, global dairy strategist at Rabobank.

Cows under stress

DESPITE expensive efforts to keep their cattle cool, dairy farmers can’t escape the

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Does adversity make you stronger?

Scientists say not always

By Lindsey Tanner AP Medical Writer

T

HERE’S an old saying that adversity makes you stronger. Real life shows that’s not always true, but the adage highlights an evolving debate among scientists about resilience.

After traumatic events and crises such as child abuse, gun violence or a pandemic, what explains why some people bounce back, while others struggle to cope? Is it nature—genes and other inherent traits? Or nurture—life experiences and social interactions?

Decades of research suggest both play a role, but that neither seals a person’s fate.

Although scientists use different definitions, resilience generally refers to the ability to handle severe stress.

“It involves behaviors, thoughts and actions that can be learned and developed in anyone,’’ according to the American Psychological Association. That effort is harder for some people, because of genetics, biology and life circumstances, evidence suggests.

Landmark US research in the mid 1990s linked adverse childhood experiences with poor mental and physical health in adulthood. It found that every additional adversity added to higher risks later on.

Scientists have conducted numerous studies trying to answer why some kids are more vulnerable to those experiences than others.

California pediatrician and researcher Dr. Thomas Boyce decided to dig deeper into that question because of his own family history. He and his sister, who is two years younger, were extremely close amid sometimes turbulent family circumstances. As they grew into adulthood, Boyce’s life seemed blessed by good luck, while his sister sank into hardship and mental illness.

In laboratory tests, Boyce found that about 1 in 5 kids have elevated biological responses to stress. He found signs of hyperactivity in their brains’ fight-or-flight response and in their stress hormones. Real-world evidence showed kids like these have higher rates of physical and mental troubles when raised in stressful family situations. But evidence also shows these hyper-sensitive kids can thrive with nurturing, supportive parenting, Boyce says.

Ananda Amstadter, who studies traumatic stress and genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University, said her research suggests that stress resilience is roughly half influenced by genes and half by environmental factors. But she emphasized that many genes are likely involved; there is no single “resilience gene.’’

In other studies, Duke University researchers Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi have linked variations in genes that help regulate mood with increased risks for depression or antisocial behavior in kids who experienced child abuse or neglect.

But “genes are not destiny,” says Dr. Dennis Charney, academic affairs president at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, who has studied ways to overcome adversity.

Trauma can affect the development of key brain systems that regulate anxiety and fear. Psychotherapy and psychiatric medication can sometimes help people who’ve experienced severe trauma and hardship. And Charney said a loving family, a strong network of friends and positive experiences in school can help counterbalance the ill effects.

With an early childhood in Haiti marked by poverty and other trauma, 19-year-old Steeve Biondolillo seems to have beat long odds.

His desperate parents sent him at age 4 to an orphanage, where he lived for three years.

“I didn’t really understand what was happening,’’ he recalls.

“I just got thrown into a big house full of other kids.’’ He remembers feeling frightened and abandoned, certain he’d live there forever.

An American couple visited the orphanage and made plans to adopt him and a younger brother. But then came Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake, which killed more than 100,000 and decimated Haiti’s capital and nearby towns.

“All the hope that I had suddenly vanished,’’ Biondolillo said.

Ultimately, the adoption went through, and the family eventually moved to Idaho. Biondolillo’s new life gave him opportunities he never dreamed of, but he says he was still haunted by “the baggage and trauma that I had from Haiti.’’

His adoptive parents got him involved in a local Boys & Girls club, a place where he and his brother could go after school just to be kids and have fun. Biondolillo says supportive adults there gave him space to talk about his life, so different from the other kids,’ and helped him feel welcomed and loved.

Now a college sophomore majoring in social work, he envisions a career working with the needy, helping to give back and nurture others.

impact heat has on their herds.

Tom Barcellos, who has been raising and milking the animals for 45 years in Tipton, California, has a complex cooling system at his farm. Complete with fans and misting machines, it even plans around the direction of the wind. But he finds warm nights can sap production.

“If you have higher temperatures in the evening, and it’s a little more stressful on the cows, there’s a potential to lose 15 percent, or maybe even 20 percent, in the most extreme cases,” said Barcellos, who has 1,800 cows.

It’s a similar story on the other side of the world, where Sharad Bhai Harendra Bhai Pandya and his brother have more than 40 cows in the western Indian state of Gujarat.

Pandya houses his cattle in a shed with

a fogger system, which pumps in water and converts it to mist. But he still sees milk production at his farm decline more than 30 percentduring the sweltering heat of summer.

Rising temperatures are likely to make such conditions a reality for more farmers, for longer stretches of time. That makes for difficult investment decisions.

Ranu Bhai Bharvad, a dairy farmer in India, doesn’t even own a shelter for his herd of 35 animals. His cattle only have the shade of a neem tree to fend off heat stress.

With assistance from Sybilla Gross, Diego Lasarte, Andrea Bossi, Vivian Iroanya and Megan Durisin/Bloomberg.

Science

Sunday

BusinessMirror

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

Sunday, November 6, 2022

A5

Research: After 25 yrs, biotech continues to contribute to food security, farmers’ income B

IOTECH crops have continued to increase global food, feed and fiber production by nearly 1 billion tons for around 25 years, from 1996 to 2020 that they are being used, give farmers almost $4 income for every dollar invested, and reduce the environmental footprint linked to crop protection by over 17 percent, a new study disclosed.

The use of genetically modified (GM) crops reduced carbon emissions by 39.1 billion kilograms based on reduced fuel use of 14.7 billion liters— which is equivalent to removing 25.9 million cars from the roads, according to the United Kingdom-based PG Economics Ltd. research that was released on October 5, a copy of which was furnished to the BusinessMirror.

Graham Brookes, director of PG Economics and author of the research, said: “GM crop technology continues to make an important contribution to reducing the environmental footprint of agriculture and securing global food supplies in a sustainable way.”

A n ag r icu lt ura l economist, Brookes added: “ It h a s reduced pressure to bring new land into agriculture, which is vital if the world is to maintain and restore the natural habitats and vegetation that are best for many species of plants and animal life and for storing carbon.”

The peer reviewed research said crop biotechnology has contributed to global food security and reduced pressure to use new land in agriculture.

The study said GM crop technology has increased yields through improved control of pests and weeds.

It cited that the insect resistant (IR) crop technology used in cotton and maize has, between 1996 to 2020, increased yields by an average of 17.7 percent for IR maize and 14.5 percent for IR cotton compared to conventional production systems.

It added that farmers who grow IR soybeans commercially in South America have seen an average 9.3 percent increase in yields since 2013.

The study said that for over 25 years of widespread use, crop biotechnology has been responsible for the additional global production of 330 million tons of soybeans, 595 million tons of maize, 37 million tons of cotton lint, 15.8 million tons of canola and 1.9 million tons of sugar beet.

Biotech maize is being planted in the Philippines since 2003 after it was approved for commercial planting in 2002. In 2019, 875,000 hectares of biotech maize were planted in the country, an increase of 39 percent from the previous year, according to data from the International Service for the Acquisition of

A FILIPINO farmer harvests biotech corn. ISAAA.ORG PHOTO

Agri-biotech Applications. It is the only GM plant being planted in the Philippines.

Brookes said in the study that GM crops allow farmers to grow more without needing to use additional land.

The research cited as example that if biotechnology had not been available to farmers in 2020, maintaining global production levels that year would have required the planting of an additional 11.6 million hectares (ha) of soybeans, 8.5 million ha of maize, 2.8 million ha of cotton and 0.5 million ha of canola.

“This 23.4 million ha total is equivalent to the combined agricultural area of Philippines and Vietnam,” the study said.

On biotechnology reducing agriculture’s environmental impact, the UK-based research team said it has significantly reduced agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions by helping farmers adopt more sustainable practices, such as reduced tillage, which decreases the burning of fossil fuels and retains more carbon in the soil.

Brookes said that had GM crops not been grown in 2020, an additional 23.6 billion kilograms of carbon dioxide would have been emitted into the atmosphere, which is the equivalent of

adding 15.6 million cars to the roads.

“From 1996 to 2020, crop biotechnology reduced the application of crop protection products by 748.6 million kilograms, a global reduction of 7.2 percent on the area planted to GM crops. This is equal to 1.5 times China’s total annual crop protection product use. As a result, farmers who grow GM crops have reduced the environmental impact associated with their crop protection practices by 17.3 percent,” the study said.

On return on investment in using biotechnology during the 1996-2020 period, farmers in developing countries “received $5.22 as extra income for each extra dollar invested in GM crop seeds, whereas farmers in developed countries received $3 as extra income for each extra dollar invested in GM crop seeds,” the research said.

The average return represents $3.76 in extra income for each extra dollar invested by GM crop growers over the 1996-2020 period, it added.

The net farm level economic benefit was just under $18.8 billion in 2020, equal to an average increase in income of $103/hectare.

From 1996 to 2020, the net global farm income benefit was $261.3 billion, equal to an average increase in income of $112/hectare, the study said. Lyn Resurreccion

DOST-SEI, QUT sign pact for STEM teachers’ scholarships in Australia

S

THE first Filipino-made Mobile Biocontainment Laboratory that was turned over by its maker, the BioAssets Corp. to Central Mindanao University (CMU) in Bukidnon on October 28. DOST-BIST PROGRAM

17 more Mobile Biocontainment Labs to be deployed vs ASF, avian flu in PHL

T

HE fight against African swine fever (ASF) and avian flu in the Philippines may soon be won as 17 more units of the Filipino-made Mobile Biocontainment Laboratory (MBL) will be deployed in different parts of the country.

BioAssets Corp. CEO and Balik Scientist Dr. Homer Pantua made the announcement during the turnover ceremonies of the first unit of MBL to the Central Mindanao University (CMU) in Maramag, Bukidnon, last week.

The project is being funded by the Department of Science and TechnologyBusiness Innovation (DOST-BIST).

The DOST lauded CMU for accepting the challenge to lead Mindanao increase its capacity to deploy immediate response to potential outbreaks of ASF and bird flu, learn and apply preventive and control measures and train farmers into implementing mitigation strategies, the DOST-BIST said in a new release.

DOST Undersecretary for R&D Dr. Leah J. Buendia said during the event: “We recognize that the transfer of the Mobile Laboratory Unit to CMU will not just conduct research on biodefense and emerging infectious disease agents but will act as the hub which shall be available and prepared to assist national, regional, and local public health efforts in the event of a bioterrorism or infectious disease emergency.”

BioAssets Corp., a veterinary research and diagnostics company based in Sto. Tomas, Batangas, is one of the many agencies that helps the government in identifying the means to diagnose, treat and eventually control ASF in the country.

Through the DOST Science for Change (S4C)-BIST Program, BioAssets was able to avail itself of a total of P15.95-million financial assistance to establish a Mobile Laboratory Unit equipped with state-of-theart animal health diagnostic technologies

to be set-up in resource-limited areas of the Philippines.

According to Dr. Ann Villalobos, a DOST Balik Scientist hosted by the CMU, “The Animal Mobile Laboratory Unit is unique with state-of-the-art facilities: polymerase chain reaction, spectrophotometer and other instruments that make MLU a modern-day functional laboratory.”

Villalobos said the mobile lab “would address biosafety with actionable results since animals are treated on site and not taken to the laboratory, thus preventing the spread of infectious agents, and problems are addressed in situ.”

She added that “trainings and workshops in BioAssets laboratories, including the instrument support for a modern-day laborator y, will also strengthen the collaboration as well as research and capability building initiatives.”

Through the partnership between BioAssets and CMU and the development of MLU under the DOST S4C-BIST Program, not only the animals and farmers will benefit but the public in general as well, the DOST-BIST Program said.

First, the MLU will bring comfort to the sick animals as they will be treated on site by expert veterinarians with top-of-theline instruments of a modern functional laboratory.

Second, the cause of the animal diseases like viruses and microbes will be contained, preventing the spread to other animals and the public will be protected, with timely diagnosis and treatment, the program added.

Local companies may avail of the DOSTBIST Program in their R&D projects that entail acquisition of strategic and relevant technologies. The financial assistance, which may be used to purchase high-tech equipment or to secure technology licensing and/or patent rights, will be refunded to DOST at zero-percent interest.

CIENCE, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education in the Philippines gets a much-needed boost as 28 teachers obtained full scholarships for postgraduate studies in Australia.

The scholarship was the highlight of the recent International Cooperation Agreement (ICA) signed between the Department of Science and TechnologyScience Education Institute (DOST-SEI) and Queensland University of Technology (QUT), the DOST-SEI said in a news release.

Science Secretary Renato U. Solidum Jr. and DOST-SEI Director Josette Biyo signed the accord for the DOST-SEI, while QUT School of Teacher Education and Leadership Head Prof. Dann Mallet and QUT International Projects Unit Director Dr. Nelson Salangsang represented QUT. The ICA signing was witnessed by Australian Ambassador to the Philippines Hae Kyong Yu, who outlined the partnership’s significance.

“We all know that science, technology and research doesn’t happen by itself. It all starts in a classroom with students inspired by teachers who create a sense of fun and excitement around STEM. How exciting that we got excellent teachers going to QUT to become even better experts,” Hae said in a well-applauded speech at the ceremony.

An economist, Yu, reiterated how science

and technology leads to economic growth.

She also cited that the ICA is an opportunity to welcome Filipino STEM educators to the dynamic Australian alumni community, and a means to emphasize the remarkable ties of Australia and the Philippines.

Project Sase: From STEM teachers to education leaders

THE partnership will fuel DOST-SEI’s Scholarship for the Advancement of STEM Education (Project Sase).

The first batch of 28 scholars are from the Philippine Science High System (PSHS) System. Sixteen teachers will take Master of Education specializing in STEM Education, while 12 will pursue Doctor of Education at the QUT in Queensland, Australia, starting in January 2023.

“This is another milestone for the DOSTSEI, one that is so special to us because it is an outcome of our recent Executive Leadership Training in Australia,” Biyo said.

She credited SEI Scholarship Division Chief Peter Gerry Gavina for conceptualizing and leading the project. Biyo and Gavina led the DOST team who attended the training in May 2022.

They developed six re-entry plans for implementation in 2023, including the League of Developers Initiative (Project Lodi), which aims to engage DOST scholars in DOST’s digital

DOST-ITDI addressing iodized salt woes

O

NLY half of the Philippine households are adequately iodized, discounting a 2011 world report of 82.1 percent.

A May 2017 issue of The Journal of Nutrition published the results of a study on household coverage with adequately iodized salt in 10 countries, including the Philippines.

For salt with some added iodine, coverage swung from 52.4 percent in the Philippines to 99.5 percent in Uganda.

Focusing on the Philippines, it said that socioeconomic status (SES) is a risk factor, citing figures of 39.4 percent in high SES households compared with 17.3 percent in low SES households.

Correspondingly, consumption is higher in urban than rural households, or 31.5 percent compared with 20.2 percent.

Iodine deficiency disorder and mental impairment

IODINE deficiency disorder (IDD) is one of the most important causes of preventable mental impairment in older children and adults worldwide.

IDD poses a threat throughout one’s lifecycle and complications with pregnancy,

including stillbirth, congenital anomalies and irreversible fetal brain damage.

While iodine deficiency can be effectively and inexpensively prevented by iodizing all salt for human and animal consumption, efforts in the Philippines have not been enough to turn the tide.

The Philippine’s Eighth National Nutritional Survey showed a 5-percent decrease in IDD incidence, from 14 percent in 2008 to 9 percent in 2013 among children aged 6 years to 12 years.

However, the National Nutrition CouncilNational Capital Region believes that there is still a need to strengthen the implementation of the Act for Salt Iodization Nationwide (Asin) law, or Republic Act 8172.

The law aims to promote the use of iodized salt and requires all salt manufacturers to iodize salts they produce and distribute.

Dr. Amelia C. Medina of the Department of Health Disease Prevention and Control outlined, in a 2015 news report, the challenges of implementing Asin law even after 23 years.

Major challenges were the lack of

transformation; the DOST-National Youth Science, Technology, and Innovation Festival; and Project Sase.

Project Saseis a capacity building program under DOST-SEI’s Foreign Graduate Scholarships.

To date, the institute has 101 FGS scholars pursuing their graduate studies in 23 different countries, mostly in fields of study not yet offered in any higher-education institute in the Philippines.

The DOST-SEI spearheads the country’s science scholarship programs, including the S&T Undergraduate Scholarships which recently awarded more than 10,000 scholarship slots to incoming college students.

Scholars heed call to improve STEM education

PROJECT Sase scholars are challenged to develop innovative STEM teaching strategies and lead the transformation of STEM education in the country.

Ph.D. scholar Erika Eunice Salvador shared that in June 2022 she was among those nominated and shortlisted for the program. She then submitted her application, credentials and research proposal.

After a rigorous screening process conducted by PSHS Campus directors and executive director, she took the English Proficiency Test where she and many monitoring of supply and distribution of adequately iodized salt within Metro Manila and at the regional level, irregular supply of salt-testing kits, and the detection of the presence of iodine but not its quantity.

DOST-ITDI’s salt iodizing machine

S T I L L, not ever ything is lost. Local government units (LGUs) may opt to reorganize, or revitalize the Bantay Asin Task Forces (BATFs).

As a leader in managing their respective National Salt Iodization Programs (NSIP), the LGU’s chief task is to ensure that salt distributed and sold to the public has at least between 30 percent to 70 percent parts per million of iodine.

At the Department of Science and Technology ’s Industrial Technology Development Institute (DOST-ITDI), an improved technology was developed to maximize the production of high-quality, iodized salt in contrast to current traditional solar and cooking technologies.

DOST-ITDI’s re-introduction of its innovations in salt production is part of the core focus of the DOST’s support for revitalizing the salt industry.

With increased yield and quality, salt

fellow Sase scholars received the highest possible marks.

“This priceless experience comes with a high cost from the taxes of the Filipino people. We are determined to earn our keep as scholars and give back through our service to the Filipino learners,” Salvador said.

She vowed they will “come back better, brighter, bolder STEM educators and doctors,” affirming PSHS Executive Director Lilia Habacon’s call for them “to be a model of excellence and make the scholarship program a success.”

One DOST for you

FOR Science Secretary Renato Solidum Jr., the SEI-QUT partnership will strengthen the country’s S&T human capital and exemplify the department’s new slogan “One DOST for you.”

The DOST is refocusing some of its programs to align with the government’s economic agenda.

“We wanted science, technology, and innovation to address challenges faced by key sectors. But to accomplish that, we must build our human capital,” he said.

Solidum highlighted the importance of qualified STEM teachers in producing competent researchers, engineers and scientists, especially amid a pandemic and the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Lovely B. Aquino/S&T Media Services

farmers may soon have less industrial salt shortages, and local workers can also supply the quality products demanded by local industries.

The DOST-ITDI offers several ways to aid salt producers and local BATFs in complying with Universal Salt Intake and NSIP. These include: technical assistance for the improvement of salt farming; and brine management techniques for iodized salt production.

The DOST-ITDI also have designed/ fabricated complete Salt Iodizing Machine (SIM) set.

The SIM consists of the iodizing salt machine, either continuous or batch type (tumble mixer), a salt washer and a spin dryer.

The agency provides assistance in capacity building for internal quality control/ quality assurance; and calibration and training on using the WYD iodine checker, a device to measure salt iodine.

The institute is also engaged into conducting a salt micro-sizing study to support efforts on the salt-intake cutback.

Reduced salt size and structure result in maximum stimulation of the taste buds that can encourage a decrease in general salt use in commercially prepared foods and individual consumption. S&T Media Service

A6

Faith

Sunday

Sunday, November 6, 2022

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

Tagle to Asia’s Church leaders: Journey with ‘mercy, compassion’ A SIA’S Catholic Church leaders should follow the example of Jesus whose journey with the people was of “mercy and compassion, not of condemnation; of patience, not of destruction.”

Speaking at the recent end of the 18-day gathering of the region’s Church leaders in Thailand, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, papal legate, cited lessons from Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus in the day’s Gospel.

He said that when considered in light of the theme of the general conference of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC), the Gospel story suggests “three lessons” for the Church in Asia.

This year’s general conference, the first since the pandemic in 2020, marked the 50th anniversary of FABC and carried the theme “Journeying together as Peoples

of Asia.”

Cardinal Tagle represented Pope Francis in the concluding Mass of the conference at the Assumption Cathedral in Bangkok, Thailand, on October 31.

Citing the Gospel reading, the cardinal said Jesus initially intended to pass through Zacchaeus’s town during his journey, but after the encounter w ith the ta x collector, Jesus decided to stay.

Cardinal Tagle said the story suggests that “journeying together” needs to be “intended, chosen and willed” and cannot just be left to “chance.”

He said Jesus also chose as his

CARDINAL Luis Antonio Tagle (center) with the delegates of the FABC general conference at the Assumption Cathedral in Bangkok, Thailand, during the closing Mass of the meeting on October 30. ROY LAGARDE

travel companion “not the purest, not the most upright, not the blameless, not the one who will make him more acceptable to people, not the one who belonged to his circle,” but a tax collector, a sinner in the eyes of society.

“God wants us to journey with those who might differ from us,” said the cardinal in his homily.

“What type of journeying together will it be? Where is its destination?” he continued. “With

Jesus, it will be a journey of mercy and compassion, not of condemnation; of patience, not of destruction,” he said.

‘New pathways’ for renewal

ASIA’S Catholic Church leaders ended their historic meeting by laying down in a statement what they described as “new pathways” for renewing the Church in the region.

In its final document, which

aims to be a pastoral guideline for “a better Asia,” the FABC noted several “challenges,” to the region, including poverty, refugee crisis, climate change and violence.

“In prayer and in a spirit of collaboration, we desire to respond to these challenges by relying on the power of love, compassion, justice, and forgiveness,” the bishops said in their message.

“We believe that peace and reconciliation is the only way forward.

We have envisaged new pathways for our ministry based on mutual listening and genuine discernment,” they said.

Among these new “pathways,” the bishops vowed to pursue genuine dialogue aimed at finding fresh concrete and more creative ways to address the problems besetting the Church and society. “ We com m it ou r s e lve s to bridge-building not just among religions and traditions but also by principled engagement with governments, NGOs [nongover nment organi zat ions], and civ ic organizations on issues of human rights, eradication of

poverty, human trafficking, care of the earth, and other common concerns,” they said.

“By journeying together along these pathways, we will serve the world with greater commitment,” added the Church leaders.

“We assure our people of this continent that the Catholic Church in Asia will always work for a better Asia and the good of all our people,” read the statement.

Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Yangon, FABC president, said that “only when we walk together as one that we can serve more effectively.”

“What has been clear in this conference is the need to work together, to collaborate as one Church of Asia,” said the cardinal from Myanmar.

“We commit ourselves to work for a better Asia because the joys of others must be our joys; the pains of others must be our pains too,” he said.

“There can be no room for apathy and indifference. What we need is empathy and compassion,” added Cardinal Bo. Jose Torres Jr./LiCAS. news via CBCP News

Pope arrives in Bahrain, urges end to death penalty

POPE Francis is greeted by Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa as he arrives at the Sakhir Royal Palace, Bahrain, on November 3. Pope Francis is making the November 3 to 6 visit to participate in a government-sponsored conference on East-West dialogue and to minister to Bahrain’s tiny Catholic community, part of his effort to pursue dialogue with the Muslim world.

AP/ALESSANDRA TARANTINO

A

WA L I , B a h ra i n—Pope Francis urged Bahrain authorities on Thursday to renounce the death penalty and ensure basic human rights are guaranteed for all citizens as he arrived in the Sunni-led kingdom that has been accused by rights groups of systematic discrimination against its Shiite majority.

With King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa by his side, Francis, the first pope who set foot in Bahrain, also urged the Arab Gulf nation to ensure “safe and dignified” working conditions for its immigrant laborers, who have long faced abuse and exploitation in the island’s construction, oil extraction and domestic service industries.

W h i le d iplom at ic, Fra nc is didn’t shy from some of the contentious social issues in Bahrain at the start of his four-day visit to participate in a governmentsponsored interfaith conference on East-West dialogue and minister to the country’s small Catholic community.

The 85-year-old Francis, who

has been using a wheelchair for several months because of strained knee ligaments, said he was “in a lot of pain” as he flew to the Gulf.

For the first time, he greeted journalists travelling with him seated rather than walking through the plane’s aisle.

Human rights groups and relatives of Shiite activists on death row had urged Francis to use his Bahrain visit to call for an end to capital punishment and to advocate for political dissidents, hundreds of whom have been detained since Bahrain violently crushed the 2011 Arab Spring protests with the help of neighboring Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

In the years since, Bahrain has imprisoned Shiite activists, deported others, stripped hundreds of their citizenship, banned the largest Shiite opposition group and closed down its leading independent newspaper.

Bahrain’s government maintains it respects human rights and freedom of speech. Ahead of the trip, the government told The Associated Press that it has

a “zero-tolerance policy toward discrimination, persecution or the promotion of division based on ethnicity, culture or faith.”

Francis referred indirectly to the sectarian strife as he arrived in the desert town of Awali and met with Al Khalifa at the Sakhir royal palace in the first-ever papal visit to Bahrain.

Speaking to government authorities and diplomats from the palace’s glistening courtyard, Francis praised Bahrain’s tradition of tolerance and cited Bahrain’s constitution, which forbids discrimination on the basis of religion, as a stated commitment that needs to be put into practice.

Doing so, he said, would guarantee “that equal dignity and equal opportunities will be concretely recognized for each group and for every individual; that no forms of discrimination exist and that fundamental human rights are not violated but promoted.”

Referring to the death penalty, Francis said the government must guarantee first and foremost the right to life, and “the need to guarantee that right always, including for those being punished, whose lives should not be taken.”

According to the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, Bahrain in 2017 ended a de-facto moratorium on the death penalty and has executed six prisoners since.

The group and Human Rights Watch have documented a “dramatic increase” in the number of death sentences being handed down since 2011, with 26 people currently on death row, half for political activities.

The groups have said some were convicted after “manifestly unfair trials based solely or primarily on confession allegedly coerced through torture and illtreatment.”

‘PARADE OF SAINTS’ SANTISIMA TRINIDAD PARISH

THE Santisima Trinidad Parish in Malate, Manila, resumed its “Parade of Saints” in face-to-face format on October 30 after holding it online during the height of the pandemic in the past two years. The parish has been holding the activity annually in observance of All Saints’ Day with children dressed as saints instead of the traditional ghoulish-costumed characters during Halloween. FLORENCE SEVILLAGA

In the run-up to the visit, the Bahrain rights group released a letter from relatives of some of those death row inmates, begging Francis to raise the issue and to visit the Jau prison where many political detainees are held.

“Our family members remain behind bars and at risk of execution despite the clear injustice of their convictions,” read the letter.

Francis has changed Catholic Church teaching to declare the death penalty inadmissible in all cases. He has regularly visited inmates during his foreign trips, but no such prison visit is planned in Bahrain.

Francis has also repeatedly called for dignified wages and working conditions for laborers worldwide, and he repeated that call upon arrival in Bahrain.

Francis recalled that Bahrain had one of the highest levels of immigration in the world, with around half of the population foreign workers, but that much labor was “dehumanizing.”

“Let’s guarantee that working conditions everywhere are safe and dignified,” Francis said. He urged Bahrain to be a “beacon

through the region for the promotion of equal rights and improved conditions for workers, women and young people, while at the same time ensuring respect and concern for all those who feel most at the margins of society, such as immigrants and prisoners.”

Bahrain, like other Gulf Arab states, relies on laborers from Asian nations like India and Pakistan who can face dire conditions for little pay.

While Bahrain and others have made labor reforms after facing international pressure, some workers still find themselves mistreated by their employers or denied salaries due to them.

Al Khalifa, for his part, praised Francis’s efforts to promote interfaith fraternity and said Bahrain was committed to a similar goal of a world “where tolerance prevails while striving for peace and rejects whatever divides its unity.”

Francis is expected to address migrant workers directly when he meets with the country’s Catholic community, which numbers around 80,000 in a country of around 1.5 million. Most are workers hailing from the Philippines

and India, though trip organizers expected pilgrims from Saudi Arabia and other neighboring countries would attend Francis’s big Mass at the national stadium on Saturday.

Bahrain is home to the Gulf ’s oldest Catholic Church, the Sacred Heart parish, which opened in 1939, as well as its biggest one, Our Lady of Arabia Cathedral.

With a capacity of 2,300, the cathedral opened last year in Awali on land gifted to the church by the king.

Francis will visit both churches during his visit and is likely to thank the king for the tolerance the government has long shown Christians, particularly when compared to neighboring Saudi Arabia, where Christians cannot openly practice their faith.

“Religious liberty inside Bahrain is perhaps the best in the Arab world,” said Bishop Paul Hinder, the apostolic administrator for Bahrain and other Gulf countries.

“Even if everything isn’t ideal, there can be conversions [to Christianity], which aren’t at least officially punished like in other countries.” Nicole Winfield/Associated Press

Biodiversity Sunday BusinessMirror

Asean Champions of Biodiversity Media Category 2014

Sunday, November 6, 2022 A7

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Green spaces make urban areas livable

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

by 2030.

The United Nations Urban agenda proposes to work on smart cities and low carbon climate resilience with social inclusion.

According to the DENR-ER DB, to achieve urban sustainabilit y, efforts are done focusing on manmade and built-up components of urban development.

O

N October 11, more than a hundred participants from 12 countries took part in a hybrid Research and Development Conference on Urban Parks and Green Cities: A Sustainable Future in Southeast Asia.

The attendees were from Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore,Thailand, Timor Leste, Vietnam and United Arab Emirates.

Organized by the Department of Environment and Natural ResourcesEcosystems Research and Development Bureau (DENR-ERDB), the event aims to improve the livability in cities and effectively adapt them against the impact of climate change, one of the biggest challenges the humanity is facing today.

Urban parks and green spaces ACCORDING to the DENR R&D arm, urban parks and green spaces play a pivotal role in combating the impending increasing “urban heat-island effect” and pollution.

It sifts pollutants and maintains air and aesthetic quality to make urban scenery livable.

Urban parks and green spaces provide a range of ecosystem services in terms of human health, environment, social and economic.

Partnership, science-based information DENR Undersecretary Atty. Jonas R. Leones for Policy, Planning, and International Affairs, who delivered the keynote speech on behalf of the Environment Secretary Antonia YuloLoyzaga, urged the participants to work quickly and smartly in creating more partnerships in formulating science-based policies and implementing strategic work on the ground.

He also urged the participants not to merely conduct and release research results in a timely manner but also to communicate the scientific information generated more effectively to the target stakeholders.

Marcial C. Amaro, DENR assistant secretary for Policy, Planning, and International Affairs, emphasized the overarching goal to make cities green, livable and sustainable, which is one of the conference’s areas of discussion.

“Urban parks and green cities are integral to the health of people to build a sustainable future for all.

Strategies must focus on rethinking the development of cities, its parks, and their contribution to the protection of ecosystems, infrastructure, economy, and communities,” he said.

Information exchange A TOTAL of 39 papers and 35 poster

Striking a balance THOUGH not native to the Philippines, these giant acacia trees (Albizia saman) have shaded the students of the University of the Philippines Diliman for over 70 years. GREGG YAN PHOTO presenters under four major themes namely Green and Resilient Urban Communities, Urban Biodiversity, Ecosystems and Economics; Management and Impact of Urban Parks and Urban Governance and Policies for Greener Cities were shared during the three-day event. “ T he event was organized to prov ide a forum for the exchange of information on generated strategies,” Dr. Lynlei L. Pintor, OIC chief at the Urban Ecosystem Research Div ision of the DENR-ER DB and overall conference coordinator.

“Actually for a very long time, urban parks are taken for granted. We only realized their importance during the pandemic. The conference was very timely because we can learn from the best practices from other countries. At the same time, researchers can learn from advanced methodologies that we can apply in our own research,” Pintor told the BusinessMirror during an interview via Messenger.

“We are now moving forward to

COUNT RESULT: 191,000 USE BIKES NATIONWIDE

O

VER 600 volunteers around the Philippine recorded a total of 191,578 cyclists in major roads of 10 cities in the Philippines, providing urgency and basis for national agencies and local governments to accelerate the establishment of safer, more inclusive infrastructure and policies promoting active transport.

“The citizen count was our response and contribution to the continuing challenge over the lack of bike traffic data,”said Aldrin Pelicano, MNL Moves founder and Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC) inclusive mobility advisor, in a recent webinar.

Pelicano said investments in active transport infrastructure is best justified when anchored on regularly collected and analyzed data.

“We likewise need to ensure we use data generated to tell stories, set ridership and bike network infrastructure goals, monitor outcomes and build support for continuous improvements,”he said in an ICSC news release.

He explained: “The 191,578 bike traffic volume is still a significant undercount. We need permanent count programs that use appropriate technologies to ensure we capture up to date data focused on the growing population of cyclists and active transport users in the country.”

According to the bike count findings, the almost 200,000 cyclists on the road roughly translate to daily fuel cost savings ranging from P147,360.57 to P307,329.53 per kilometer, which are compelling figures given the continuing rise in fuel prices in the Philippines.

The report also found a huge gap between the number of male and female cyclists, with females accounting for only 3.83 percent of the total.

The number of helmet users (51.43 percent) and non-helmet users (48.57 percent), on the other hand, are almost equal.

The webinar titled “Bilang ang Kasama sa Bilang: Results of the 2022 Citizen’s Bike Count” launched the findings of this year’s bike count of the Mobility Awards.

In celebration of World Cities Day last October 31, the discussion highlighted the efforts of volunteers and mobility advocates from the cities of Quezon, Pasig, San Juan, Marikina, Naga, and Baguio in Luzon; Iloilo, Cebu, and Mandaue in Visayas, and Davao in Mindanao in doing their part to make cyclists and pedestrians visible through concrete data, ICSC said.

This year’s count is the second round done by the Mobility Awards, which was conducted in 99 different locations across 10 cities during peak hours in the morning and in the afternoon.

It was piloted in Metro Manila last 2021, where 168 volunteers recorded 38,932 people on bicycles, 1,658 personal mobility device users, and 12,787 pedestrians in Pasig, San Juan, Marikina, and Quezon City.

“What was great in doing this bike count is that it empowers people, and it ensures that people are accounted for. This bike count has provided the conclusion that there is power in people to exercise their right to quality travel.

What kind of quality? Pro-people, safe, and inclusive,” said Metro Naga Active Transport Community organizer Ramon Dominic Nobleza

have more green spaces [in the Philippines],” she said.

The DENR-ERDB urban Ecosystem Research Division has been conducting studies on urban parks.

Pintor has studied 16 researches on urban parks. Other DENR-ERDB researchers, she added, focused on urban parks in specific locations.

The conference aims to address research gaps on urban areas and green cities in the Philippines, namely the robust mechanisms on monitoring urban green space programs; mapping of urban green spaces; and ecosystems functioning and delivery of ecosystem services.

Learning the science RESEARCHERS, according to Pintor can learn a lot from various studies conducted in different countries.

This way, she said, highly urbanized cities, particularly in the Philippines, can learn and apply best practices in urban park development to make cities more sustainable.

partly in Filipino.

“Apart from local governments, many stakeholders can use the bike count data in improving their policies and programs, including the business sector and the academe. Bicol has one of the lowest minimum wages in the country, and in turn, laborers and construction workers cycle to save money. These are the stories that we see through numbers,” Nobleza added.

Nicole Trisha Panganiban, Gender and Development (GAD) specialist of the Philippine Commission on Women cited how the Commission’s Gender Equality and Women Empowerment Plan and the respective GAD plans of local governments can help address mobility issues experienced by women and girls.

“Making roads safe for women will make it safe for all. [The] no bike helmet use law will protect you unless they first fix the many problems in our transport infrastructure,” said Early Sol Gadong of Iloilo Bike Education for Road Safety.

The Department of Transportation (DOTr) announced in the webinar that part of their 2023 budget is allocated for the procurement and installation of automated traffic count instruments in Metro Manila, Cebu and Davao.

It aims to gather hourly, daily and monthly statistical data on the use of bike lanes. The department also targets to count people in personal utility devices and pedestrians, apart from cyclists.

“In DOTr, we always welcome and very much appreciate this bike counting initiative, especially focusing on sustainable modes of transport, which is very long overdue in the Philippines. The findings serve as an undebatable evidence for lawmakers and government officials on the urgent need to prioritize active transport projects and policies,” said Eldon Joshua Dionisio, project manager of the DOTr Active Transport Program Management Office.

“Before, LGUs [local government units] developed parks to beautify the surrounding. But there is more to urban park development,” she explained in Filipino.

Rapid development ACCORDING to the DENR-ERDB, more than 60 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas where there are better opportunities than in rural areas.

By 2050, rapid urbanization would be considered a risk as it is estimated that 70 percent of the world’s population will live in the cities, the ERDB said, citing a 2016 World Bank report.

Due to rapid development, urban dwellers need an inclusive, healthy, resilient, safe and sustainable living environment.

Urban sustainability ONE of the seven targets of Sustainable Development Goals 11 is to provide access to safe, inclusive, and accessible green and public spaces

ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) Executive Director Theresa Mundita S. Lim said the challenge for cities is how to strike the balance between land development and retaining and restoring green spaces and wetlands as corridors for biodiversity.

“Oftentimes, the temptation is great for city governments and developers to expand and use every inch of their land area for residential and commercial purposes because there is very little appreciation for the value of setting aside portions for well-connected nature parks in urban areas,” Lim, a former DENR Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB) director told the BusinessMirror via Messenger on November 3.

According to Lim, valuation studies that can help quantify the contribution of mainstreaming biodiversity into urban planning, in terms of disaster resilience, human well-being and food security, among others, will be useful in helping local decisionmakers determine the thresholds for commercial expansion and land conversion in urban development. “ T he Singapore Index on Cities’ Biodiversity, or the City Biodiversity Index, should also be a useful tool for cities to measure

t hei r prog ress i n i ncor porat i ng biodiversity in their master plans and improv ing the quality of life for our city dwellers,” she added.

Integral life systems FOR her part, Maria Golda Hilario, Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC) associate for Program Development, said urban parks and green spaces are integral life systems that make cities livable, besides its ecosystems service value of being flood sinks, providing lung support for cities’ residents and habitat of wildlife, among others.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has underscored the challenge of why it is important, especially for our well-being, and we see progress in the packets of green parks that have emerged, developed by local governments, including that in Marikina City,” she said via Messenger on November 3.

“At the same time, we see the challenge to different government agencies. Hardworking commuting Filipinos will benefit more if build, build, build is directed along building an interconnected bike and pedestrian lanes along tree lanes; if rather than cutting remaining trees to fix city’s drainage problem and expand roads, we find ways to preserve those trees knowing that they help address floods, and provide shades for motorists and commuters; if rather than build highways to traverse rivers, we work with communities that would create livelihood opportunities that reward them to save the river by attracting local tourism, just like in Iloilo City,” she said.

According to Hilario, in Southeast Asia, Bogor in Indonesia is an example of a forest in the middle of the city or can be a city in the middle of the forest. She said it further shows that nature and the built environment can actually co-exist.

“It takes coordination, collaboration among different agencies, and most important creative approaches to address urban development issues. Redesigning cities need not be a very costly process.

Sometimes, it is a matter of looking at the challenge from a new perspective, a perspective that respects and understands nature’s logic. Urban green parks and spaces serve as our daily reminders,” she pointed out.

Survey: Irrawaddy dolphins thriving in Bicol bay

T

HE Irrawaddy dolphins may have been thriving in San Miguel Bay area in Bicol for decades, fisherfolk indicated as scientists from the University of the Philippines Diliman College of Science are hot on the trail of a subpopulation of the rare and endangered dolphin species, UPD-CS said in a news release.

It should be noted that last August 16, an Irrawaddy dolphin (Orcaella brevirostris) was found accidentally entangled and drowned in a fisherman’s net in San Miguel Bay off Calabanga, Camarines Sur. It was the first time that the species, that is considered critically endangered by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, had been found in the eastern part (Pacific side) of the country.

The new discovery prompted Dr. Lemnuel Aragones, a professor at the UPD-CS Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology (IESM) and president of the Philippine Marine Mammals Stranding Network, to organize a reconnaissance trip and interviews with local fisherfolk in the hopes of finding more Irrawaddy dolphins in the area, UPD-CS said.

From October 21 to 24, a joint team of researchers from the IESM and Bureau of Fish and Aquatic Resources Regional Office 5 (BFAR-5) conducted boat surveys and key informant interviews with local fisherfolk in areas surrounding and beyond the location of the initial Irrawaddy dolphin sighting.

The team asked the interviewees to describe the features of the dolphins that they saw, or still see, in the areas.

The responses helped the researchers validate the species of the creature in the sightings.

UPD-CS said some of the informants noted features that point to Irrawaddy dolphins—such as their small size (2-2.5 meters long), the absence of a beak and a small rounded dorsal fin.

T he inter v iewees were show n pictures of the dolphin to help them confirm the actual appearance of the creatures they had seen.

Based on some local informants’ long-term recollections, a subpopulation of Irrawaddy dolphins may be thriving in San Miguel Bay and seasonally visiting specific areas for several decades now, UPD-CS said.

“Some preliminary but important information derived from this [reconnaissance] trip includes the possible seasonal movement of the dolphins in response to prey abundance, and some localities have confirmed sighting the animal in their areas,” Aragones said.

“Our key informant interviewees provided preliminary information which showed that the animals may have been in the area since the 1960s, and is usually sighted in small groups of three to seven individuals. There’s even an exceptional sighting in 2021 of a group of over 10 dolphins by a key informant from Tinambac, Camarines Sur,” he added.

Aragones said that “the locals just

referred to them as dolphins, and this might have been the reason why they all along thought that they were just the usual ordinary ones often sighted offshore.”

Moreover, measurements of the temperature, salinity and depth of the waters surrounding Tinambac point to an environment that is conducive to attracting Irrawaddy dolphins.

“The combination of the shallow depth of the Bay; nearby islands; isolated embayment; the wide range of available possible prey items, such as small fish and crustaceans; and the wide range of salinities in San Miguel Bay are some of the features that enable the Irrawaddy dolphins to thrive in this area,” Aragones explained.

Besides Irrawaddy dolphins populations scattered in South and Southeast Asia, all previous sightings in the Philippines were exclusively in the western part of the archipelago: in Malampaya Sound, Palawan, and in the Iloilo-Guimaras-Negros Occidental area.

The reconnaissance trip was part of the IESM’s Assessment and Mobilization of Research Initiatives on Philippine Marine Mammals Project funded by the Department of Science and Technology’s Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development.

A full-blown survey to possibly quantify the relative abundance and range of distribution of Irrawaddy dolphins in San Miguel Bay and adjacent areas is scheduled in early 2023.

Female tennis tour aims to lure female coaches

F

ORT WORTH, Texas—The women’s professional tennis tour is starting a program it hopes will lead to more female coaches in the sport.

The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Tour’s Coach Inclusion Program, which was unveiled Thursday, includes three phases: a week of offseason training with players in December, a 10-week online certification course and shadowing a coach and player during a tournament.

WTA CEO Steve Simon called this a step toward “diversifying and broadening” the coaching pool for women’s tennis.

There currently are five women who are private coaches employed by singles players ranked in the top 150, according to the WTA. That doesn’t include women employed by national federations who might work with multiple athletes and mainly oversee player development.

The Florida-based tour said the coaching program is open to North

America-based applicants.

Participants will be chosen by a committee.

The Davis Cup Finals and qualifying matches, meanwhile, will become an official part of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Tour calendar in 2023 as part of a partnership between the men’s circuit and the International Tennis Federation announced Monday.

The two governing bodies and promoter Kosmos Tennis will work together to try to raise the profile of the men’s team event that dates to 1900.

The ATP was given two of the six seats on a new committee overseeing the Davis Cup. The format will remain the same as it has been since Kosmos got involved in 2018 under a 25-year deal worth $3 billion. There will be $15 million in player prize money offered next year.

The 2022 Davis Cup Finals will be held in Malaga, Spain, from November 22 to 27.

WOMEN play with balls during the inauguration of a mural of Diego Maradona by artist Martin Ron in Buenos Aires, Argentina. AP

Giant Maradona mural emerges in Argentina before World Cup

B

UENOS AIRES, Argentina—In the middle of the concrete jungle that is Argentina’s bustling capital, a huge mural has emerged of Diego Maradona wearing a national team jersey, his right hand in a fist and a defiant expression on his face.

The massive artwork, 148 feet high and 131 feet wide (45 meters by 40 meters) and painted on the side of a 14-story building in Buenos Aires, is one of several tributes that Argentines have dedicated to their soccer “god” shortly before the start of this year’s World Cup in Qatar, the first since Maradona›s death on November 25, 2020.

Maradona’s feats and defeats as a player on the national team are being remembered, from the famous and infamous goals against England before the county won the 1986 World Cup to the failed final against West Germany four years later, and the doping test that got him expelled from the following World Cup in 1994.

Well-known street artist Martín Ron was behind the world’s largest mural, inspired by a photograph of the then-Argentina captain that captures his expression shortly before he sang the national anthem at the 1990 World Cup final against West Germany, which Argentina lost 1-0.

“It’s a photo of Diego when he was close to winning the country’s third star,” Ron told The Associated Press during a break from the work he began a month ago.

Argentina also won the World Cup in 1978, but Maradona didn’t make the team for that tournament.

“This photo summarizes everything Diego was,” Ron said. “Beyond the player, he was the guts, the motor, the heart.”

To one side of Maradona’s face, Ron painted a constellation of stars in the shape of a kite, a reference to his nickname “cosmic kite,” which is what one well-known radio commentator called the soccer star following his second goal against England in 1986.

“His absence will be felt, Diego was always a star. In all the World Cups he did his own thing, inside and outside the field,” Ron said. “And in Qatar, he will sadly not be there.”

Ron’s mural was officially unveiled on Sunday to coincide with the soccer great’s birthday.

Days earlier, the Argentine soccer association received the original jersey that Maradona wore in the 1986 World Cup. It was a gift from Germany great Lothar Matthäus, who exchanged jerseys with Maradona after the final that Argentina won 3-2 at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.

“One of the happiest moments with him was when [Brazilian referee] Arppi Filho blew the whistle during the final in Mexico. I just happened to be very close to Diego, I was lucky that he hugged me before anybody else,” former player Ricardo Giusti recalled during a recent event alongside other former World Cup champions outside Buenos Aires.

“We enjoyed it so much, everybody enjoyed Diego. That’s what’s sad. It makes us feel a lot of sadness, sorrow and disillusion,” the former midfielder said.

Matthäus’ donation was a sort of reparation for Argentina after it failed to win an auction for the jersey Maradona wore in the match against England in the quarterfinals of that World Cup tournament. An unknown bidder from outside the country bought the iconic item at auction for a record $9 million in May. In 1994, Maradona played his last World Cup match against Nigeria in the group stage. He was suspended for 15 months following the 2-1 victory after a positive doping test.

As Argentina coach, Maradona led the national team to the quarterfinals at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, but the team lost to Germany, 4-0.

One of the most disturbing images came eight years later at the 2018 World Cup in Russia when an overweight and somewhat disoriented Maradona collapsed at the stadium in St. Petersburg following a 2-1 victory over Nigeria.

Maradona died at the age of 60 while he was under hospital care in his home following brain surgery. Judicial authorities continue to investigate if medical negligence was involved.

“He is missed, Diego’s image has been, and is, very strong,” said Carlos Tapia, another member of the 1986 championship team. “He was our reference, captain, everything. He was always close to each one of us. Let’s hope he can be a guiding light from above in Qatar.” AP

A8 | Sunday, November 6, 2022 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

WOMEN SOCCER MAKES GAINS IN MIDDLE EAST PLAYERS of the Orthodox Club’s women’s team practice in Amman, Jordan. AP

A

MMAN, Jordan—Sarah Asimrin still hears it from her uncles sometimes: “You’re a girl, it’s not right.” But on a recent evening, the 13-yearold Jordanian was on her club’s soccer field practicing alongside other girls and boys.

“I fell in love with the game because it’s got action. I love it a lot, more than any other sport,” Asimrin said.

Her younger sister Aya plays soccer as well and, despite the reservations of a few uncles, their family supports them. In fact, their father is a soccer coach at a private academy in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

Women’s soccer has been long been neglected in the Middle East, a region that is mad for the men’s game and hosts the World Cup for the first time this month in Qatar. The women’s game has been held back by lack of financing and by conservative attitudes contending that girls aren’t made for sports or that uniforms like shorts are too revealing.

But some places show signs of momentum. The growth usually depends on active government promotion of women’s sports.

Where that happens, it taps into pent-up enthusiasm among girls and women and can shift public attitudes.

Jordan has been one of the leaders, with one of the region’s most successful national teams and a network of girls’ youth and school leagues.

Others are making new pushes. Last month, the first matches of a new women’s Premier League were held in Saudi Arabia, where women have only been allowed to attend soccer games since 2017. The Saudi national women’s team played against international teams for the first time this year.

Newly launched tournaments give women’s teams opportunities for international competition and, proponents hope, will encourage the creation of more teams.

The Asian and the much smaller West Asian football associations each held their first women’s club championships in 2019. The African federation inaugurated its women’s club championship last year in Cairo, and this year’s games began this week in Morocco, with a $400,000 prize for the winners— though that’s way below the $2.5 million that the winning men’s club gets.

The new venues fuel the dreams of young women hoping to reach professional levels.

Masar Athamneh, a 20-yearold on the women’s team at Amman’s Orthodox Club, said she’s been playing soccer since she was 12 or 13. She used to join her brother with the boys on the pitches in her neighborhood and watched European leagues on TV. Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo has been her idol “because he worked hard on himself.”

She’s hoping to one day play on Jordan’s national team in international matches.

“Sometimes we face some difficulties, of course.... Like, ‘This is a game only for boys or males’, ‘why do you wear shorts?’...and so on. This is a huge problem we face,” she said.

“But I think with the time, it’s getting better and better.”

Jordan’s Football Association provides financial support for clubs to form women’s teams, prompting even some

conservative clubs to jump in, sports analyst Owni Fraij said.

Still, money remains the biggest problem. Clubs treat women’s teams that don’t generate income “as a kind of luxury,” he said.

Qatar has lagged behind even other Gulf countries on the international level in women’s soccer. But since the tiny nation was named host of this year’s World Cup, it has been developing the game with women’s teams at many of its universities and holding soccer academies for girls.

Egypt perhaps shows the region’s starkest contrast. Its biggest men’s teams are wealthy powerhouses that win regional tournaments regularly, while women’s soccer languishes despite repeated efforts to end its neglect. A single team, Wadi Degla, wins most women’s competitions.

Egyptian women have faced public backlashes as well. In 2020, a victory by the under-20 national women’s team over Lebanon was met by a barrage of sexual harassment on social media, with obscene comments and sneers that girls shouldn’t be playing soccer.

Administrators’ response was even more disturbing. They suspended upcoming games and fired the team’s coaching staff, raising fears that the entire team would be disbanded. Players went on TV talk shows and spoke out on social media, and the squad survived.

Outside pressure may give Egyptian women a boost. The African Champions League will require clubs in its men’s tournament to also have women’s

teams, which should force the hands of top Egyptian clubs.

Where politics and powerful social opposition intersect, girls’ enthusiasm for the game never finds an outlet. For example, while women’s soccer is relatively active among Palestinians in the West Bank, it’s virtually nonexistent in the Gaza Strip.

Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are generally conservative. Its Islamist rulers, the militant Hamas group, grant little space for women’s freedoms. The economy has also been crippled by a 15-year Israeli-Egyptian blockade, leaving little to spend on what are considered leisure activities.

One of Gaza’s few female sports teams is that of the Beit Hanoun Al-Ahli Youth Club, with 20 girls playing soccer and basketball. They wear pants instead of shorts, and longsleeve shirts. Once they reach 17, they stop playing, often to get married, team manager Maha Shabat said.

“There is no support for women’s sports in the Gaza Strip...no support to be like girls in other parts of the world,” Shabat said.

Rama Ashour, a 14-year-old player on the soccer team, said she hopes to be able to keep going and even play on a national team.

“On the internet, I see many girls [elsewhere] playing normally,” she said. The largest obstacle in Gaza is society and tradition, but she said she wants to “think positively about the criticism. I will take it as a motive to proceed and challenge everyone.”

But others on the team are facing up to the limits. “My

ambition—to be a player—is something impossible in this society,” said 16-year-old Hala Qassem.

The most tragic setback came in Afghanistan, where the Taliban takeover just over a year ago crushed the nascent women’s sports scene.

Hundreds of female athletes fled. Australia evacuated the women’s national team, and Portugal took in the girl’s youth team, while members of the youth development team were flown to Britain.

Those left behind have had their lives suffocated by Taliban bans on women’s sports and on teen girls going to school and restrictions on women moving around in public.

Sabera Akberzada had been playing center on her high school’s girls soccer team.

Now the 17-year-old can’t play or attend school. She has lost contact with most of her teammates.

“Life has become hell for us, as a woman we can’t do anything by our choice,” Akberzada said. She had hoped one day to make it to Afghanistan’s national team.

“Unfortunately, my dream remained just a dream.”

A former captain of the women’s national team, Khalid Popal, is now in Denmark, trying to keep the sport alive. She’s working to get out members of the under-15 team still in Afghanistan.

“I feel so worried and so sorry for women, young women who wanted to be independent,” she said. “I don’t think women will play sports again in Afghanistan.” AP

REGISTRATION GOES FULL SWING FOR ARMY NAVY ENDURANCE RACE

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EGISTRATION for the Army Navy Club200 200/50 Endurance Race—the Philippines’ biggest motorsports spectacle in 2023—is now in full swing.

Each team in the novel motorcycle event, the first of its kind in the Philippines, will be composed of three riders sharing one transponder and riding duties in 50 adrenaline-pumping laps of approximately 200 kilometers.

The event blasts off at the Clark International Speedway on February 23, 2023, with a practice run slated on December 11 in order to allow participants to familiarize themselves with the rules and how the endurance race will play out.

The organizing Club 200 is planning to exclude competitive racers currently riding in the National Superbike Series to level the playing field among regular everyday riders and weekend enthusiasts.

“This means it’s a free-for-all out there,” said Bobby Unson, President of the Club 200.

Event is limited to 50 teams per race in order to avail themselves of the December 11 Free Trackday for Demo and Tips in the endurance race presented by SMAC BMW, Pirelli, KTM, Ducati, Angkas, Evo Helmets, APRILIA, Juan Life, Hotel 101 and Merry Mart, and powered by Wheeltek, Triumph, Harley Davidson of Manila and Motoworld.

A FESTIVAL of brands—(from left) Archie Garcia and Karen Kennedy of BMW Motorrad; Manu Sandejas of KTM; Bobby Orbe of Wheeltek; Joy and Toti Alberto of Ducati; and Mike Bondoc and Nicco Antonio of Aprilla—is expected in the Army Navy Club200 200/50 Endurance Race.

Interested riders can just do the following steps in order to register.

Step 1: Pay the entry fee (Individual P7,500 /Team P21,000) at the Club200 Riders Association Inc.’s Unionbank, Magallanes Paseo Branch’s account no. 001470007566.

Step 2: Send a message to the event’s Facebook page (Army Navy Club 200 Endurance Relay Race) https://www.facebook.com/ profile.php?id=100084886190715 the copy of proof of payment (screen shot or photo of deposit slip).

Step 3: Once organizer receives a copy of proof of payment, it will send participant an Online Registration Form.

Fill up the form, send back and receive confirmation.

Step 4: Finally, DM your photo with white background.

Morning schedule during raceday are the 50-Lap Endurance Relay Race for Adventure and Adventure Open Classes Open to 400cc1300cc Adventure Motorcycles with 21-19 inch Front Wheels and 2/3 Cylinder Engines for the Adventure Class; and 19-17 Front Wheels with 4 Cyl for the Adventure Open/Sport Touring Class.

Mid-day event is the 5-Lap Race for the First Ever Boxer Cup, featuring the BMW R Ninety Motorcycles, while the premiere Sportbike/Sport Naked 50 Lap Endurance Race will ensue after.

BusinessMirror

November 6, 2022

Political Participation: What does it mean for girls, young women?

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CREATIVE JUICES

Inspiration comes from everywhere for Zild Benitez

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By Patrick V. Miguel

NSPIRATION sometimes can come while in the most unexpected places. This is the case of Filipino artist Zild Benitez, who got the idea of his newest release “Duwag” while waiting for his order of sour cream and cheese-flavored french fries. It was the same time he was also waiting for his cat at the veterinary clinic.

Publisher

: T. Anthony C. Cabangon

Editor-In-Chief

: Lourdes M. Fernandez

Concept

: Aldwin M. Tolosa

Y2Z Editor

: Jt Nisay

SoundStrip Editor

: Edwin P. Sallan

Group Creative Director : Eduardo A. Davad Graphic Designers Contributing Writers

Columnists

: Niggel Figueroa Anabelle O. Flores : Tony M. Maghirang, Rick Olivares, Leony Garcia, Patrick Miguel : Kaye VillagomezLosorata Annie S. Alejo

Photographers

: Bernard P. Testa Nonie Reyes

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“Bumibili ako ng fries, naghihintay lang ako sa pila, tapos pumasok sa akin ‘yung melody bigla,” he recounts.

It was an unexpected song idea that came to mind, emerging at the most unexpected place. Even Zild admitted that he had no idea where it came from, rather it just did.

“Parang hindi ko rin alam kung saan siya nanggaling, minsan talaga stream of consciousness lang,” he reflects.

The 25-year-old artist said that the melody of “Duwag” first came to his mind, following the lyrics months after the idea sparked.

Asked how long it took him to finally come up with the lyrics, he added, “Siguro mga 6 months din syang pa iba-ibang version ganon, or 8 months or half a year halos.”

After all, for Zild, music comes first before the lyrics, which he shared has always been his creative process when producing new music. “Minsan nagsisimula sa instrumental peo madalas saken sa melody ganon bago yung lyrics,” he shared.

But for “Duwag,” it was different considering that most of his songs’ inspiration starts while brainstorming in his room.

Nonetheless, Zild is open to all as long as the music continues to play, saying “I keep my mind open.”

“Duwag” is a song that resonates the longing that comes with unrequited love. More so, it is about an unproclaimed love to someone specific, inspired by the Filipino term “torpe.”

However, Zild said that “Duwag” could be about something else too, depending on who is listening and

what being “torpe” means for them. “‘Yung ‘Duwag,’ pwede siya maging tungkol sa pagiging torpe or reflection of life kung paano— ano kaya ang mangyayari kung hindi ako nagpaka duwag before,” he said.

He added, “May nakita akong mga fans, ‘yung iba tungkol sa pangarap nila or life decisions, pero kung ako sinulat ko lang sya dahil parang ano kayang mangyayari kung hindi ako naging torpe.”

Eventually, Zild finished the song in his home studio which he calls the “Attic.”

“Duwag” is also Zild’s reflection to his past. “Duwag talaga ako noong High School mula elementary, so hindi naman specific sa isang tao, parang

ZILD Benitez

nagkaroon lang ako ng reflection na maraming beses ko pa lang missed opportunities whether tungkol sa career or sa love dahil hindi lang ako nagsalita.”

Overall as an artist, inspiration comes from everywhere for Zild.

He even shared that he was once influenced by Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “Annabel Lee” for a specific song.

But when the creative juices are sometimes not helping, Zild shares that he forces himself to brainstorm new ideas.

Thinking about the times he had a hard time coming up with new songs, he notes, “Minsan pipigain mo lang talaga ang sarili mo hanggang sa walang lumabas tapos makakalimutan mo na siya for ilang hours or days tapos biglang darating na lang siya bigla, basta ang mahalaga you’re just present there for the day trying to search for the unknown.”

“You know, sometimes you find it, sometimes you search for it, sometimes it just comes,” he said.

“Wala siyang steady formula so the inspiration is unpredictable.”

“Duwag” is available on all music-streaming platforms. The music video is already out on Zild’s official Youtube channel.

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soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com | NOVEMER 6, 2022

BUSINESS

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SoundSampler

by Tony M. Maghirang

Fuzz, powerpop, punk, post-hardcore and Betrayed

BETRAYED Betrayed LP

“What’s On Your Mind?” is pure mind-melting power pop.

“Drawing” draws from ‘60s garage rock to amped up its pop appeal while “Jay Muscis” entertains in its own fuzzy way until it concludes with a mild case of grunge. The tracks in this collection are handsomely produced, with gorgeous hooks placed on top of the cranky fuzz. It makes for, what they call nowadays, an encompassing listening experience.

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OU don’t need anyone else to tell you how Betrayed figures in the general scheme of things loud, fast and furious. Former Jingle Chordbook magazine editor Ces Rodriguez says it all in her liner notes to the latest rerelease in vinyl of Betrayed’s debut album. Ces wrote: “Betrayed’s debut album captured it all. The scent and the scene. Slash-and-burn nuggets and a sticky love song. Like the old days but better. Then and now, Because now more than ever, punk’s not dead.”. Damn nostalgia.

Pinoy punk’s always meant to be this way.

SPACE DOG SPACE CAT Fuzz Sounds

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HIS six-piece indie outfit got fuzz box and knows how to use it. They practically extract a veritable rainbow of sounds anchored on the fuzz.

THE BIG MOON Here Is Everything

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TNG GAD

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IVE-MAN TNG hails from Bulacan and they traffic in post-hardcore to be technically correct about it. The liner notes of their debut release describe their collective musicality to be “a celebration of life and pain,,.what hearts in synched sounds like.” What comes on surface is savage hardcore attack punk that’s somehow softened by pretty post-rock riffage and literary flair the lyrics. While the vocals tend towards howls and screams, the ‘horror’ gets tempered by lines that seem to seek solace in the din like “Your face is enchanting like reading my favorite book You can always catch me glimpsing for another look.” In TNG, emo has dropped its wimp disguise to unravel a caring, mature character.

HE London-based all-girl foursome The Big Moon takes on the pregnancy of chief songwriter Juliet Jackson during the pandemic to carve out passionate songs about friendship, relationships and survival. Great guitar strumming is all over the album, starting with the sinuous Velvet Underground-ish slither of opener “2 Times” to the chiming REM-ish mannerism of :This Love” to the pumping power-pop of “Daydreaming” and “Your Wild Eyes” rock and roll sprint.

Everything’s held together by steadfast backbeat that keeps up with the emotional zigzag of the music and the singing. The ladies really pull out all the stops on this one.

BROKEN BELLS Into the Blue

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T’S difficult to suspend disbelief that in Broken Bells, you may be listening to an

inventive rock band that’s revisiting the pantheon of classic pop and rock sounds.

Broken Bells are The Shins’ James Mercer and Danger Mouse aka Brian Burton, two of indie rock’s major prime movers. And yes, don’t let the ‘broken’ in the duo’s name dishearten you. There’s plenty to love in their latest album, essentially various shards of the influences of The Beatles, prog rock and ‘60s RnB,among others. Your ears will love: “We’re Back In Orbit,” “Love On The Run,” “Forgotten” and the supreme titular track.

ALVVAYS Blue Rev

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F initial impressions matter to you, the band name Alvvays should be an instant turn-off at first blush.

Your loss actually because the Canadian duo Alvvays has their fingers, pulse, and imagination together to craft one of the year’s best power pop records. Think dream power-pop and “Many Mirrors” will bring a smile. GoGo’s style punk-pop? There’s “Velveteen!” Synth power pop then. “Very Online Guy” is a cinch. The real deal here is the creative slash on guitars teetering to lush shoegaze territory and vocalist Molly Rankin’s shape-shifting prowess. They conspire for a revved-up pop fest from start to finish.

Political Participation: What does it mean for girls, young women?

By Pauline Joy M. Gutierrez

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hile girls and young women believe meaningful participation in politics is important, they continue to face various barriers to their political participation, including being afraid to speak out about their views and thinking that politicians would not listen to them.

The finding comes from a new research by development and humanitarian organization Plan International, which looks at the political participation and representation of girls and young women. The 2022 State of the World’s Girls Report, titled “Equal Power Now,” is based on a largescale survey of almost 29,000 girls and young women aged 15 to 24 from 29 countries spanning all regions, income levels and civic contexts.

The respondents include 1,000 girls and young women from the Philippines. The report also contains in-depth interviews with 94 girls and young women across 18 countries, including participants from a longitudinal study, Real Choices, Real Lives.

In the country, girls and young women see their political participation as important for emphasizing social justice, education and health in political decisions (65 percent) and improving the situation of girls and young women in society (57 percent).

It is noted that political participation in this context is defined as the voluntary

activities that girls and young women undertake, within formal political spaces or via established political institutions, to influence policy-making processes. It is also defined as taking an active role in identifying and addressing challenges in their communities and, in the broader context, participating in activities that are considered political, be it in workplaces, educational institutions and media.

Many are already engaged in some form of political activity that pursues change in the issues they care about, mostly in their local councils.

Voting but not running Globally, the most common way girls and young women participate is through voting. Locally, while voting was one of the more common participation activities (49 percent), it is only ranked third compared to following politics on social media (54 percent) and following politics in different media (50 percent). The lowest-ranked participation activity of girls in the Philippines is running for political office at any level (8 percent).

The research also found that while girls and young women care about politics and believe meaningful participation in politics is important, they continue to face various barriers to their political participation, such as: feeling like politics isn’t open to them (27 percent); being afraid to speak out about their views (26 percent); thinking that politicians would not listen to them (26 percent); and, not understanding enough about political issues (20 percent).

Insights from the qualitative interviews reveal how norms linked to both age and gender create barriers: not being listened to or taken seriously is the most common concern for girls across both the survey and the interviews and results in a diminished sense of political worth. “[No] matter what we say, they won’t listen,” said Reyna, 15. “For example, when someone came to complain, nothing

happens…”

The research likewise pointed out leadership is still configured in the male image.

Women leaders struggle to be taken seriously and, when in power, are judged more harshly than their male colleagues.

“Women leaders are underestimated,” said Darna, 16. “Many think they won’t be able to make it. That’s the challenge I see.”

Stigmatized A total of 907 respondents said that when trying to participate or engage in politics, they feel that female politicians are often judged by the way they look or dress (34 percent), and that female politicians suffer a lot of intimidation and abuse (19 percent). Meanwhile, global findings from the survey pointed out that regardless of their experience of political participation, respondents associated the word politics with the formal political sphere. For many, even, particularly among the activist group, it was a negative term.

With these realities in mind, the confidence of girls and young women to participate tends to be higher when they are following television broadcasts about a social, political or economic issue; discussing or debating an issue with a member of their community; or posting online content to take a stand on an issue they are passionate about. But they expressed the lowest confidence if they were to stand as candidates in an election.

The research makes clear that girls care about political issues. Yet, girls are underestimated, tokenized, and silenced when they try to intervene. Girls are discouraged from participating in politics because of their age and gender. As young people, they’re dismissed as being too immature; as girls, they are held back by gender stereotypes and inequalities.

The ‘critical role’ of girls in policy-making In light of the findings from Equal Power

Now, Plan International Philippines emphasizes its commitment to work with government, powerholders, and organizations to foster, champion, and support safe, inclusive and sustainable pathways to participation for girls and young women.

“The role of girls and young women in shaping the development of our local and global communities can no longer be denied,” said Plan Philippines Country Director Ana Maria Locsin. “With local and global issues surrounding politics, health, education, and social welfare becoming increasingly complex, we need now, more than ever, for girls’ voices to be duly recognized in formal decision-making spaces, as is their right.”

Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality Chairperson and Senator Risa Hontiveros stressed the importance of strengthening girls’ and young women’s political participation and decisionmaking power.

“For one, I am witness to the critical role girls play in our policy-making, from the strengthening of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act to the passage of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Law. It is our girl advocates, our girl witnesses, who’ve made our legislation stronger,” Hontiveros said. “We’ve been able to successfully craft campaigns and push for a wide range of measures simply by listening to what our girls have to say. [May] we all be reminded not only to listen to our girls just because we should, but also to recognize that our girls perspectives, their particular experiences, and their points of view are crucial elements in our pursuit of a more just more gender-equal world.” n Note: The names of the girls and young women in this report have been changed to ensure anonymity. All research findings can be found at plan-international.org/equalpower-now.

In support of the next generation of diverse storytellers

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he Walt Disney Company collaborates with global, non profit organization, Destination Imagination, to expand opportunities in the Asia Pacific region for underrepresented students including young women and girls, to explore future careers as Storytellers and Innovators in Asia’s creative industries.

In a first for the region, Destination Imagination will be rolling out the “Heroic Innovators Challenge,” giving students across Asia Pacific access to online resources in which they can gain foundational skills in Science, Technology and Storytelling.

After completing an online program on Destination Imagination’s STEM Learning Academy, students between the

ages of 16 and 24 will be invited to form teams to address a real-world challenge and present their solution using their new-found STEM skills and Creative Storytelling. The Challenge is open to students in high schools and universities across Asia Pacific including Greater China, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Korea.

Disney will work with Destination Imagination to help students gain skills that may aid future careers in media and entertainment. In addition, Disney guest speakers will introduce students to the breadth of careers open to them in Asia’s creative industry.

“At Disney, we know that powerful storytelling plays a huge role in creating

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Students participating in Destination Imagination’s recent STEM challenges. Images courtesy of Destination Imagination

unforgettable moments in entertainment.

We look forward to supporting greater access to careers in our industries to inspire November 6, 2022

future storytellers in Asia Pacific,” said Luke Kang, President, The Walt Disney Company Asia Pacific.

“The Heroic Innovators Challenge is an exciting initiative which will give students the training and tools needed to take on the creative process—from imagination to innovation—and learn idea generation, collaboration and creative thinking,” said Leroy Xiao, China Affiliate Director, Destination Imagination.

The Heroic Innovators Challenge is supported by Disney Future Storytellers, an initiative which aims to inspire the next generation of Storytellers and Innovators to dream about their future, build their talents and skills, and become who they imagine they can be.