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‘TOTAL FORCE’ RELOADED A PHILIPPINE Marine sniper emerges from his position following a live-fire joint Philippines-US military exercise, May 11, 2014, at the Philippine Marine base in Ternate, Cavite. AP/BULLIT MARQUEZ

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By Rene Acosta

HE Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is now crafting the finer points of a plan for the creation and deployment of a sea-based militia force and/or tapping the services of maritime reservists to secure the country’s territorial sovereignty against any unauthorized foreign intrusion.

The formation of maritime militiamen, essentially the wouldbe counterparts of the military’s land-based paramilitary unit, the Citizen Armed Forces Geographical Unit (Cafgu), or its operationally administered Cafgu Active Auxiliaries (CAAs), could be the best option, given the current troop disposal of the military, amid vari-

ous internal and external security threats it has to face, according to AFP Chief Gen. Gilbert Gapay.

“The Armed Forces, only 150,000-strong, [is] confronting various security challenges. From the inside, New People’s Army and local terrorist groups, and from the outside, global terrorism. It’s really a very small force and we really

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Military seeks to boost PHLs maritime defense with the creation, deployment of sea-based militiamen, reservists

PHILIPPINE Marines from the Naval Special Operations Group storm the beach in an amphibious military exercise at the Philippine Marines training center in Ternate, Cavite, September 24, 2015. AP/BULLIT MARQUEZ

have to be backed up by a strong reserve force,” Gapay said.

Very long coastline, WPS

THE chief of staff admits that the formation of maritime CAAs has also been prompted by the need to secure the country’s vast maritime waters and a very long coastline, including the West Philippine Sea (WPS), which is the subject of an aggressive claim by China and where Chinese maritime militiamen maintain their presence.

“In the West Philippine Sea, we have been utilizing reservists, or even in external defense operations, particularly in coastal operations. It may not be in West Philippine Sea, but you know we are protecting 35,000 kilometers of coastline and that makes us the third, or fourth longest in the world,” he said.

“It is imperative for us to really tap our reservists to protect [our Continued on A2

n JAPAN 0.4635 n UK 63.5752 n HK 6.2697 n CHINA 7.2685 n SINGAPORE 35.8122 n AUSTRALIA 34.5669 n EU 57.4528 n SAUDI ARABIA 12.9563

Source: BSP (October 23, 2020)

NewsSunday BusinessMirror

A2 Sunday, October 25, 2020

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‘TOTAL FORCE’ RELOADED Continued from A1

coastline]. That’s why one of our efforts is to really develop the maritime reserve force units,” the chief of staff said, adding that in some coastal areas of the country, they called these groups “Bantay Dagat” and “maritime active auxiliaries.”

“In other areas, they call [them] maritime Cafgus, but these are all reserve units complementing the Armed Forces, our Navy, our Philippine National Police, in protecting our shorelines, and definitely, it would also be part of our strategy in protecting our territorial waters in the West Philippine Sea,” Gapay pointed out.

The strategy

THE chief of staff said the formation of Maritime CAAs, which, according to Navy chief Vice Admiral Giovanni Carlo Bacordo, has been in existence for years in the areas

of Eastern Mindanao and Western Mindanao, is part of the country’s national defense, or the military strategy dubbed the “Total Force Concept.”

The strategy involves tapping the services of reserve forces in all areas of security operations, especially covering land and water.

The creation of maritime militias has been prompted primarily by calls from groups—and even lawmakers—for the government to secure the WPS from China, which uses militiamen in establishing its presence there.

The Navy, which continues to procure modern and up-to-date platforms, has not been sending so-called gray ships to drive away the Chinese militiamen who use steel-hulled vessels built to harass and even ram at other vessels in the area, on concerns it might provoke a response from Chinese military ships.

Initial deployment

A COUPLE of days ago, Bacordo said the Navy, being a force provider to the military, sent an initial two companies, or about 120 maritime CAAs, to each of the Navy’s task groups deployed across the country, including the unit deployed and operating in Palawan, the province closest to the territory that is being disputed by China.

Going beyond just their purpose as civilian-based defenders and keepers of the WPS, Bacordo cited the importance of forming and deploying maritime CAAs even in waters and coastlines across the country.

“We cannot be at a specific area for long. So if we patrol, let’s say the Bajo de Masinloc area, after a while, that same ship will be recalled to patrol the West Philippine Sea or patrol the Benham Rise, whereas the maritime CAAs can stay longer in an area because that

A FLAG-RAISING ceremony on Pag-asa Island in the Spratly group of islands, May 11, 2015. RITCHIE B. TONGO/POOL PHOTO VIA AP

is their place of abode. That is within, close to their place of abode, so they fill in,” Bacordo said.

Force multipliers

“AGAIN, I would like to emphasize, this is a stop-gap measure. We don’t have the capability to be everywhere.

Our maritime CAAs, like our reserv-

ists, they are our force multipliers.

They can fill in our absence,” he added.

Bacordo said there is nothing new in the planned deployment of maritime militiamen as “you were just transferring the CAAs to the waters, to our territorial sea,” and in areas where there is no permanent presence by both the Navy

and the Philippine Coast Guard as they keep on moving.

“The relevance of the maritime CAAs is that if you were from Pangasinan, your concern is Pangasinan waters. If you are from La Union, your concern is La Union waters, you don’t have to keep on transferring,” he said.

‘Five Eyes’ spy alliance trains focus on Xi in echo of Cold War

FIVE Eyes home ministers, including US Attorney General William Barr, discussed the risks of online child sexual abuse and “hostile state activity.” BLOOMBERG

CHINA has praised New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s recent election victory and the two nations’ “mutual trust and cooperation.” BLOOMBERG

By Peter Martin, Kitty Donaldson & Kait Bolongaro

T

Bloomberg News

HE Western world’s premier spy alliance is finding its mission expanding as nations from the US to Australia clash with China and seek better intelligence on everything from Covid-19 to child trafficking.

The Five Eyes network, made up of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is also facing renewed requests to take on additional member nations as divisions between China and the West deepen.

The moves—emerging from interviews with a dozen current and former intelligence officials from across Five Eyes nations— comes despite US President Donald Trump’s repeated questioning of his own intelligence community’s findings and his persistent criticism of key allies.

The shared concern over China has overridden those worries as leaders from the five countries bristle at Beijing’s increasing assertiveness before and after the coronavirus outbreak. Once cautious in the face of threats—or potential threats—from Beijing, many Western politicians have now decided that pushing back against China is worth the cost.

Potential shift

EXPERTS say it may change spycraft for the long term.

“It means that intelligence collected around the world will always have a Chinese angle, will always look for Chinese threats just as we once saw events in Angola through

the prism of the Soviet Union,” said Jonathan Eyal, international director at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think tank in London. “In that respect it is a kind of return to the Cold War.”

Unlike the secret agents portrayed in Mission Impossible movies, Five Eyes has no formal staff.

Nor does it have a headquarters.

It’s a more informal network linking organizations, including the US National Security Agency, Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.

And while its existence wasn’t publicly acknowledged until the early 2000s, its meetings now occasionally appear in press releases.

According to the people familiar with the setup, the partnership of English-speaking allies is moving well past an earlier, narrower focus on sharing signals intelligence—electronic chatter from mobile phones and other communications systems, radars and weapons systems—and becoming more of a go-to forum for an array of emerging issues.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab signaled the shifting role for the alliance in June

when he appealed to the UK’s intelligence partners for “burden sharing” if Hong Kong residents flee the city in response to China’s sweeping national security law earlier this year.

In the following weeks, Five Eyes home ministers, including US Attorney General William Barr, discussed the risks of online child sexual abuse and “hostile state activity.” The pact’s finance ministers discussed the economic impact of Covid-19, while its defense ministers have pledged more regular consultations. In September, officials from the five countries pledged to strengthen coordination of their antitrust policies.

Rising tension

THE informal alliance’s broadening agenda shows the depth of Western concern about China.

While Trump’s trade war with China dominated much of his first two years as president, tensions between Beijing and the other Five Eyes nations were also rising in recent years.

In 2018, controversy over alleged Chinese political interference in Australia prompted then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government to pass new laws on foreign political influence. Taking on an initiative championed by Trump, Australia also blocked Huawei Technology Corp.’s access to its future 5G networks. In New Zealand, similar accusations of political interference helped prompt a move to block Huawei in November 2018.

Events in Canada were even more dramatic. After Canadian authorities arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in December 2018, China’s top spy agency, the Ministry of State Security, arrested two Canadian citizens

“China has provided the glue that we needed.

Chinese behavior since the beginning of the year, since the pandemic started, has been so egregious, so obviously hostile and so offensive to politicians that it has drawn everyone closer together.”

—JONATHAN EYAL, INTERNATIONAL DIRECTOR AT THE ROYAL UNITED SERVICES INSTITUTE

in apparent retaliation. China also halted purchases of Canadian canola seed and soybeans.

Britain’s reckoning came later. The UK’s initial decision to allow Huawei a role in its 5G networks prompted threats from the Trump administration that it would no longer entrust its most sensitive intelligence to Five Eyes partners that made use of the Chinese technology.

But the situation in Hong Kong tipped the UK over the edge after a groundswell of anger against China’s handling of the coronavirus. In July, Britain reversed its decision on Huawei, announcing that it would ban it from future 5G networks.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s revocation of term limits in 2018 also helped snuff out any hopes of liberalizing political reforms in the country.

The ‘threat’

CHINA is now “generally recognized as being a threat to all of the Five Eyes and to the West generally,” said Richard Fadden, former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and former national security adviser to the prime minister.

The network’s traditional role is being reinvigorated too. One current Five Eyes intelligence official said information-sharing and joint

work between the partners is the strongest it’s ever been on topics from hostile state activity to counterterrorism and organized crime.

The Pacific shift has enticed others. In October 2018, it was reported that Five Eyes countries had broadened the scope of their informal cooperation with nations such as Germany and Japan in a bid to push back against China.

In August, then-Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono told Nikkei that his country aspired to deepen ties with the grouping “even to the extent of it being called the ‘Six Eyes’,” arguing that the countries shared the same values and citing “grave concerns” about China’s military modernization.

That may still be a hard sell, some intelligence analysts say.

‘Very skeptical’

“THE bigger the pool, the more concerned agencies will become about protecting their own sources and methods,” said Randy Phillips, the CIA’s former chief representative in China, who now works for the consultancy Mintz Group.

Chris Johnson, a former CIA China analyst who now heads the consulting firm China Strategies Group, said that the Five Eyes structure is a convenient political tool for governments to use when they have common interests but questioned whether it’s really suited for more

traditional policy issues.

That was echoed by Hugh White, former deputy secretary for strategy and intelligence in the Australian Department of Defense.

“I’m very skeptical about the idea that the partnership which has nourished the signals intelligence business so well for so long can be repurposed in a new era to respond to China’s challenge,” White said.

Yet even as China’s actions draw scrutiny in Western capitals, challenges remain. Canada has yet to take a clear stance on the role Huawei will play in its 5G networks.

Australia has grown more assertive in its dealings with Beijing, but China remains its largest trading partner, accounting for more than a third of its total exports.

Post-Brexit Britain

IN New Zealand, where Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had a big election victory last weekend, the government has tended to step cautiously with China, which praised Ardern’s win and the two nations’ “mutual trust and cooperation.” And Britain will also need trading partners as it searches for a place in a post-Brexit world.

At a recent meeting with British diplomats, Raab warned the UK was wary of becoming trapped in a new Cold War between Beijing and Washington.

But China hawks say that may be unavoidable.

“China has provided the glue that we needed,” Eyal of the Royal United Services Institute said of the bolstered Five Eyes cooperation.

“Chinese behavior since the beginning of the year, since the pandemic started, has been so egregious, so obviously hostile and so offensive to politicians that it has drawn everyone closer together.”

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

The World BusinessMirror

Sunday, October 25, 2020

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UK to infect healthy volunteers in Covid vaccine research trial

By Danica Kirka

L

The Associated Press

ONDON—Danica Marcos wants to be infected with Covid-19.

While other people are wearing masks and staying home to avoid the disease, the 22-year-old Londoner has volunteered to contract the new coronavirus as part of a controversial study that hopes to speed development of a vaccine.

Marcos and other young volunteers say they want to take part to help bring an end to the pandemic after seeing the havoc it has wreaked. The grandparents of Marcos’s best friend died early in the crisis, and as a volunteer for a homeless charity she has seen the struggles of those who have lost their jobs.

“So many people [are] struggling right now, and I want this pandemic to be over,” Marcos told The Associated Press. “Every day that goes on, more cases are going on, more people are dying.

And if this vaccine trial could mean that this period of trauma for the whole world will be over sooner, I want to help. I want to be a part of that.”

Imperial College London and a group of researchers said Tuesday that they are preparing to infect 90 healthy young volunteers with the virus, becoming the first to announce plans to use the technique to study Covid-19 and potentially speed up development of a vaccine that could help end the pandemic.

This type of research, known as a human challenge study, is used infrequently because some question the ethics of infecting otherwise healthy individuals.

But the British researchers say that risk is warranted because such studies have the potential to quickly identify the most effective vaccines and help control a disease that has killed more than

1.1 million people worldwide.

“Deliberately infecting volunteers with a known human pathogen is never undertaken light ly,” said Professor Peter Openshaw, co-investigator on the study. “However, such studies are enormously informative about a disease, even one so well studied as Covid-19.”

Human challenge studies have been used to develop vaccines for diseases including typhoid, cholera and malaria.

Imperial College said the study, involving volunteers aged 18 to 30, would be conducted in partnership with the government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and hVIVO, a company that has experience conducting challenge studies. The government plans to invest 33.6 million pounds ($43.4 million) in the research.

Governments around the world are funding efforts to develop a vaccine in hopes of ending the pandemic that has pummeled the global economy, putting millions of people out of work. Forty-six potential vaccines are already in human testing, with 11 of them in late-stage trials—several are expected to report results later this year or in early 2021.

The Imperial College partnership plans to begin work in January, with results expected by May. Before any research begins, the

study must be approved by ethics committees and regulators.

While one or more vaccines are likely to be approved before then, the study is needed because the world may need multiple vaccines to protect different groups within the population, as well as treatments for those who continue to get sick, said Dr. Michael Jacobs, a consultant in infectious diseases at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust who will take part in the research.

“I don’t think many people think that what we’re doing as scientists is searching for a silver bullet,” Jacobs said. “We’re going to need a whole raft of interventions in order to control this pandemic.”

Cr it ics of c h a l lenge st udies question the need to expose healthy people to the virus when the disease remains widespread and vaccine development is moving quickly. Tens of thousands of volunteers around the world have already signed up to participate in more traditional vaccine trials.

Alastair Fraser-Urquhart, 18, of Stoke-on-Trent in northwestern England, said he wants to take part in the challenge study because he’s young and strong and can help move the vaccine research forward quickly. He is taking a year off school and working with 1Day Sooner, an organization created earlier this year to advocate on behalf of volunteers in Covid-19 challenge trials.

“I can’t let this opportunity to do something, to really do something, pass me by when I’m at such low risk,’’ he said. “The idea that I could have a part to play in ending, you know, millions of people’s misery and pain and I don’t—It just doesn’t sit well with me.”

In the first phase of the study, researchers will expose paid volunteers to the virus using nasal drops in an effort to determine the smallest level of exposure needed to cause Covid-19. Ultimately, the same model will be used to test the effectiveness of potential vaccines by exposing volunteers to the virus after they’ve received one of the candidate vaccines.

The research will be conducted at the Royal Free Hospital in London, which has a specially designed area to contain the disease. Volunteers will be monitored for at least a year to ensure they don’t suffer any long-term effects.

Challenge studies are typically used to test vaccines against mild infections to avoid exposing volunteers to a serious illness if the vaccine doesn’t work. While the coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms in most people and seems to be especially mild in young, healthy individuals, the long-term effects of the disease aren’t well understood, and there have been reports of lingering problems in the heart and other organs even in those who don’t ever feel sick.

In the US, the National Institutes of Health has downplayed the need for challenge studies given the speed with which vaccines are being developed, but it has taken preliminar y steps to prepare for such research in case the approach eventually is requ i red. T hose steps i nclude examining the ethics of a challenge study, and funding research to create lab-grow n virus strains that potentially could be used.

But even if they are needed, “human challenge trials would not replace Phase 3 trials” of Covid-19 vaccines, according to a September statement from NIH that said standard, rigorous studies were its priority.

Estefania Hidalgo, 31, a potential volunteer from Bristol in southern England, said she’s not worried about taking part because the study will be conducted in a controlled environment and the participants will be closely monitored.

Hidalgo, a student from Venezuela, wants to take part because of the toll Covid has taken on minority communities—and because she believes science is the way out of the pandemic.

“I am a person of color, a woman…” she said. “I also think it’s important that the trials have, like, representation from ever ybody. So I just figure, why not me?’’ AP

A4

The World BusinessMirror

Sunday, October 25, 2020

www.businessmirror.com.ph

US-China conflict over chips getting uglier

O

By Alan Crawford, Debby Wu, Colum Murphy & Ian King

n a scorching hot day in late August, representatives of Taiwan’s government and industry crowded into the clinical cool of a state-of-the-art semiconductor facility for a symbolic moment in the global tech conflict.

They were attending the opening ceremony for a training center built by Dutch company ASML Holding at a cost of about $16 million, small change for an industry used to spending $10 billion or more on a single advanced manufacturing plant.

The real value of the site in the southern city of Tainan is strategic: It’s one of just two such facilities outside the Netherlands capable of training semiconductor engineers to fabricate cutting-edge chips on ASML machines. Fellow US ally South Korea hosts the other—and Washington is working hard to ensure China never acquires the same technology.

As the US-China confrontation takes root, the ability to craft chips for everything from artificial intelligence and data centers to autonomous cars and smartphones has become an issue of national security, injecting government into business decisions over where to manufacture chips and to whom to sell them. Those tensions could kick into overdrive as Communist Party leaders set a five-year plan that includes developing China’s domestic technology industry, notably its chip capabilities.

Semiconductors made from silicon wafers mounted with billions of microscopic transistors are the basic component of modern digital life and the building blocks of innovation for the future. They are arguably one of the world’s most important industries, with sales of $412 billion last year; scale that up to the electronics industry that depends on chips, and it’s worth some $5.2 trillion globally, according to German manufacturers.

Politics is roiling that business model, sparking a drive for more autonomy from the US to China, Europe and Japan.

“We’re in a new world where governments are more concerned about the security of their digital infrastructure and the resiliency of their supply chains,” said Jimmy

Goodrich, vice president of global policy with the Washington-based Semiconductor Industr y Association. “The techno-nationalist trends gaining traction in multiple capitals around the world are a challenge to the semiconductor industry.”

At once highly globalized and yet concentrated in the hands of a few countries, the industry has choke points that the US under the presidency of Donald Trump has sought to exploit in order to thwart China’s plans to become a world leader in chip production.

Washington says Beijing can only achieve that goal through state subvention at the expense of US industry, while furthering Communist Party access to high-tech tools for surveillance and repression. China rejects the allegations, accusing the US of hypocrisy and acting out of political motivation.

For both sides, Taiwan, which is responsible for some 70 percent of chips manufactured to order, is the new front line.

Beijing is increasingly hostile toward Taiwan, a democratically governed island it regards as its territory. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s status as the world’s largest contract chipmaker—a trend taking over the industry—the go-to supplier for Apple Inc. and the focus of next-generation chipmaking, adds another dimension to China’s enmity, and to its standoff with the US. TSMC has become “turf that all geopolitical players want to secure,” founder Morris Chang said in November. Just a couple of kilometers from the new training center, cranes dot a massive construction site where TSMC is building “fabs” in which it will manufacture the most advanced chips in the world— chips that are no longer available to China’s Huawei Technologies due to US export controls. Huawei used to be TSMC’s second-largest customer, accounting for 14 percent of sales; those shipments stopped

in September.

T he W hite House has a lso imposed export restrictions on China’s largest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., having already squashed Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co., once among Beijing’s biggest hopes to climb the chip ladder. The US is also reaching out to key players at home and abroad to ask them to reconsider their relations with China.

China’s intentions are so alarming to America because chips can be dual-use items with military applications, according to a former official familiar with the US administration’s efforts. “They are the fundamental basis of our qualitative military advantage, from missiles to radars to submarines,” the official said.

After decades when the industry was encouraged to go global, Trump is attempting to reel it back home.

The CHIPS for America Act introduced to Congress in June aims to set up incentives to support semiconductor manufacturing and research in the US. One executive at a Chinese semiconductor company, asking not to be named due to commercial and political sensitivities, said three of its deals had been aborted because of concerns raised by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, or CFIUS, which reviews the national security implications of transactions. Germany has also been effectively cut off, making any deals very difficult, the person said.

China “firmly opposes the unjustified suppression” of its companies by the US “under the weakest pretext of national security,” and will continue to defend them, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters in late September.

China—the world ’s big gest semiconductor market, accounting for more than 50 percent of all chips sold—isn’t standing by as its hightech ambitions are kneecapped.

That outsized demand means many major deals need Beijing’s sign-off: Qualcomm gave up its pursuit of NXP Semiconductors in 2018 after failing to win approval from China. China’s five-year plan for the chip industry will lend it the same strategic importance Beijing gave to its atomic bomb program.

What’s more, a law passed October 17 may allow China to hit back at the US, with speculation that it could prompt export controls on rare earths used in chip production.

Still, the rolling restrictions imposed by Trump haven’t just hit China’s chip capabilities but are upending the entire industry. And

there’s scant sign of a climbdown, whoever wins the US election in November.

Citing the need to promote “digital sovereignty,” the European Commission is exploring a 30 billion-euro ($35 billion) drive to raise Europe’s share of the world chip market to 20 percent, from less than 10 percent now.

Japan is also looking to bolster its domestic capacity. At least one Japanese delegation traveled to Taiwan in May and June this year in the hope of convincing TSMC to invest in Japan, a person with knowledge of the visit said. But TSMC announced in May that it was building a $12-billion facility in Arizona, and the company declined to receive any foreign visitors seeking to woo it, said another person familiar with the company’s thinking. Both asked not to be named discussing corporate strategy.

Meanwhile South Korea, home to Samsung, the No. 1 memory chipmaker, is striving for more self-reliance after Japan imposed export curbs last year on chemicals used in semiconductor manufacture during a flare-up in the countries’ tensions over Japan’s wartime past.

While the US remains dominant with giants like Intel Corp. and Qualcomm and a virtual monopoly on the software essential to chip design, “there’s no region in the world that can proclaim strategic autonomy in semiconductors,” said Jan-Peter Kleinhans, director of the Technology and Geopolitics project at Berlin-based think tank Stiftung Neue Verantwortung.

“Take out any of these players and the value chain falls down.”

In January, days before Trump signed an initial trade deal with China, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo sat down for dinner with around 30 CEOs in Silicon Valley.

He was the guest of Keith Krach, a 30-year veteran of the tech scene who was appointed undersecretary for economic growth in June 2019.

Pompeo had a message for them: China’s Communist Party “is a threat to your companies because they don’t want to compete, they want to put you out of business,” Krach recalled him saying, he told a virtual conference of the German Marshall Fund of the United States on September 29.

Trump may have weaponized the semiconductor value chain, but it was the Obama administration that first acted on the threat posed by China, unveiling a semiconductor strategy in January 2017 as one of its last acts. Trump picked up the baton, but the nature of the supply

chain means that others are in the US line of sight.

Israel—a high-tech R&D hub where Intel is the largest private employer—ex por ted semiconductors worth about $2.1 billion last year, with about half going to China, data compiled by UN Comtrade shows.

That closeness to China risks becoming a liability. Zvika Orron, a partner at Israel’s Viola Ventures who leads semiconductor investing, said there’s a hesitancy on the Israeli side to look to China because of worry that Chinese funding could imperil future US deals. Carice Witte, founder of the SIGNAL nonprofit focused on Israel-China ties, said the US is bound to “start asking more questions.”

The UK is another pinch point thanks to Arm Ltd., whose instruction set—the basic code that allows chips to communicate with software—underlies everything from smartphones to the world’s fastest supercomputer. Arm currently sells to China, but the company’s takeover by Nvidia Corp. puts that business in doubt. If the $40-billion deal wins regulatory approval, Arm would fall under American jurisdiction and become even more subject to US export controls.

While the UK government has yet to show its hand, it allowed the sale of Arm to Softbank of Japan in 2016, so wouldn’t normally be expected to intervene now. But the newly strategic nature of the industry has prompted lawmakers to call for a review of the deal’s implications. Here too there are concerns at being caught between the US and China.

Losing a world-class technology company to the US for the Department of Justice to “weaponize” is not a good place to be, according to a person with knowledge of British national security considerations.

The risk, they said, is a UK strategic asset becomes “recognized as part of the US arsenal” in its campaign against China.

O ver t he Ta iwan Stra it on mainland China, the mood at the 2020 World Semiconductor Conference in Nanjing in late August was gloomy. Chinese executives worried what the Trump administration might do next to hobble Beijing’s progress.

“The conflict remains very fluid, which makes it impossible to predict what next moves both sides are going to take,” said Huang Yan, application and sales director at Senodia Technology, a Shanghai-based chip design company that develops sensor chips for smartphones.

China is on course to import $300 billion of semiconductors for the third straight year, underscoring its dependence on US technolog y. T hat’s something President Xi Jinping is determined to end.

Xi has pledged an estimated $1.4 trillion through 2025 for technolo gies from artificial intelligence to wireless networks. A focus of Beijing is to accelerate research into so-called third-generation semiconductors—circuits made of materials such as silicon carbide and gallium nitride, a fledgling technology where no country dominates.

Yet without silicon capabilities it will be difficult for China to build a proper semiconductor industry, said a senior TSMC official. Another person from a company involved in third-generation chip production said designing them is an art, and even poaching a team of designers won’t necessarily guarantee success.

The consensus is it won’t be easy for China to catch up, especially at the cutting-edge where TSMC and Samsung are producing chips whose circuits are measured in single-digit nanometers, or billionths of a meter. SMIC would have to double annual research spending in the next two-to-three years just to prevent its technology gap with those companies widening, says Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Charles Shum.

The tussle raises the prospect of a broader decoupling of the global industry with two distinct supply chains. As with 5G, the question then becomes one of the extent of each system: Does China’s high-tech gravity pull in Southeast Asia and parts of Europe, or is it confined to its immediate neighborhood? How many allies will side with the US? To be sure, the chip industry is still thriving, with the benchmark Philadelphia Semiconductor Index up about 30 percent this year. Geopolitics is now a feature of boardrooms, said the SIA’s Goodrich, but 5G and AI are likely to cause more market upheaval.

The direction of travel still worries key players. Shares of Micron Technology Inc., the largest US chipmaker, fell in September after it was forced to halt shipments to Huawei, its biggest customer.

Complete decoupling would harm US competitiveness and hurt China, raising the prospect of less money for R&D, slowing innovation, said Goodrich. “A world in which the US and China are independent from one another is a negative outcome for everyone.”

Bloomberg News

China recruits South Korean Europe vulnerable to Russian information-warfare attacks Kremlin ‘undeterred’ conglomerate to advise on ESG S

S

outh Korean conglomerate SK Group is accelerating efforts to help China develop ESG standards after a years-long push by Beijing to improve social governance disclosures at its companies stalled.

SK said it will team up with China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, or SASAC, to jointly establish a lab in Beijing to study and develop rating methods for environmental, social and governance practices at companies like China Mobile Ltd. and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. The conglomerate, South Korea’s third largest, has been working with SASAC, which oversees the country’s government-run companies, on social value efforts since 2019.

The Covid-19 pandemic saw a surge in inflows into ESG-related assets, driving companies to step up social value disclosures in order to access a share of the trillions of dollars invested in this area. Even before the outbreak, China had pledged to make its nearly 4,000 listed corporates publish ESG metrics by the end of this year, though those efforts have yet to come to fruition. The world’s second-largest economy has also been seeking to burnish its environmental and social credentials, with President Xi Jinping targeting to make the country carbon neutral by 2060.

“There are misconceptions that Asian companies are climate villains and they neglect ESG practices,” said Lee Hyung Hee, President of the Social Value Committee at SK Supex Council, the conglomerate’s

main decision-making committee. “It’s disdainful of the entire Asia and we’d like to fix and show that Asian companies are interested in ESG.” BASF SE, the world’s largest chemical maker, is leading a growing number of global firms including BMW AG, Novartis AG and SK in a collaboration to create an international accounting standard of evaluating social value by 2022. SK, which is actively advising South Korean government organizations and companies on evaluating social values, aims to have its affiliates from SK Hynix Inc. to SK Innovation Co. adopt an integrated accounting method including ESG practices within the next five to 10 years, Lee said in an interview in Seoul.

SK has so far channeled 74 billion won ($65 million) into impact funds investing in firms and start-ups that could address social and environmental problems and is planning to set up a new fund next year, Lee said. After successfully purchasing South Korea’s largest waste treatment company for more than 1 trillion won, SK is also considering more acquisitions in areas that can alleviate environmental problems through technology.

The conglomerate and China’s SASAC first collaborated on a research program into the social value of state-owned companies in both countries in February 2019. SK and the government body will hold equal stakes in the new lab, which is expected to be set up within this year, according to Lee.

Bloomberg News

ince news first broke that Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny had been poisoned with a nerve agent, some of the most popular coverage in Germany has come from Kremlinfunded outlets questioning Berlin’s efforts to blame Moscow for the attack.

RT Deutsch’s stories denouncing the accusations as shrill and hypocritical ranked among the top 10 most shared sources on German-language social media on the subject, registering more engagement than official government statements or coverage in mainstream outlets like Welt, Bild and broadcaster ZDF, according to analysis by the European Union covering the period since the August attack.

The popular Kremlin-backed posts were just a part of a flood of stories from Russian state media across Europe that sought to cast doubt on the official German account, pushing unsubstantiated alternatives ranging from allegations Navalny’s poisoning was a western intelligence plot to claims he did it to himself. Echoing Russian officials’ statements, the torrent was picked up by some German politicians, as well.

More than five years after Europe began trying to combat Russian disinformation in earnest, the Kremlin’s campaigns are still hitting their targets.

Alongside overt operations that take advantage of an information landscape that makes people distrustful and willing to buy into conspiracy theories, Moscow’s outlets have steadily adapted their tactics to evade efforts to combat them, often using local media and writers to avoid detection and reach receptive audiences. The EU’s focus on exposing Russian disinformation hasn’t succeeded in substantially limiting its reach.

“The Kremlin remains largely undeterred in using disinformation as a political weapon,” said Monika Richter, a senior director at Counter Action and former EU official at the East Stratcom Task Force.

“The EU still predominantly tackles disinformation as a tech governance challenge—but it is also a geopolitical security threat.”

German counterintelligence singled out RT Deutsch and the state-backed Sputnik in a report published this year, saying that both play a “central role” in Russian disinformation operations and influence campaigning. But both continue to operate freely in Germany. RT Deutsch has more than 520,000 followers on Facebook and 437,000 subscribers on YouTube. They are especially popular among immigrants from the former Soviet Union and supporters of far-right and left parties.

“The main appeal is they pretend to present the truth that other media hide,” said Susanne Spahn, an independent researcher on the issue. “This strategy to present themselves as independent and alternative is popular among special groups in Germany who have lost trust in mainstream media.”

The Kremlin’s counter-narratives in the Navalny case have been echoed by German politicians. Sevim Dagdelen, a lawmaker with the anti-capitalist Left party who sits on the foreign affairs committee on the Bundestag, said on a widely watched talk show that it wasn’t at all clear whether the Novichok came from Russia since western intelligence agencies also had the agent.

Pushed by Sputnik in Italy and Poland, as well, that account also showed up in local media

in Hungary and the Czech Republic, where several web sites citing another Russian source claimed the whole case was a US operation.

Political fringes

To be sure, the Russian narratives rarely break out of the political fringes. In Germany, support for extremist parties has dropped during the coronavirus pandemic while backing for the government has strengthened.

The EU study found that RT and Sputnik content about Navalny was far less successful when it came to English-language social media.

Still, Russian disinformation operations in recent years have expanded and become better, more targeted and sophisticated, which has in turn made it harder to trace.

“There is an increased focus in finding domestic local actors that will spread and amplify disinformation,” said Jakub Kalensky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and former head of the EU team countering Russian efforts. “The EU is moving slower than the information aggressors.”

In Finland and Lithuania, government programs in schools to teach students how to identify disinformation are credited with helping increase resilience to Russian efforts.

The US has forced Kremlin-backed media to register as “foreign agents,” an approach that European officials have so far avoided on civilliberties grounds.

Russian efforts have been detected beyond issues directly affecting Moscow. Two French web sites with ties to a news agency previously linked

to Russian military intelligence were found this summer to be spreading disinformation about Covid-19. A fake story about failed vaccine trials in Ukraine originally published on the web site of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic was picked up by several Russian-language media and fringe conspiracy outlets earlier this year.

Fake personas

Russian-controlled outlets have used fake personas, local web sites masquerading as independent outlets and forged documents to push claims that Covid-19 was manufactured in North Atlantic Treaty Organization country labs, according to analysis gathered by the military alliance.

The EU acknowledges that some memberstates could be doing more to combat and prevent disinformation from spreading in their own countries.

“Disinformation is usually sophisticated in the way that it is tailor-made for a specific market in the local language and in the local context of its history, relations with Russia, ethnic composition, political situation, presence of far right or far left political parties and local actors willing to be part of the disinformation activities,” said spokesman Peter Stano. “There is a big role for the memberstate to fight disinformation.”

But governments struggle to keep up.

“The toolbox of conventional government communications is insufficient to expose the covert strand of the Kremlin’s ongoing disinformation campaign,” said Stratcom’s Richter.

Bloomberg News

Science

BusinessMirror

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

Sunday

Sunday, October 25, 2020 A5

Do you need to learn a new technology for your livelihood or business?

TekNegoShow: Technologies for new normal

By Lyn Resurreccion

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as your livelihood affected by the pandemic?

Do you need an extra income? Are you planning to start a business? The TekNegoShow, which was launched virtually on October 22, may be the answer to your concern.

TekNegoShow, that supports the “Science for the People” advocacy of the DOST, is a project of Industrial Technology Development Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-ITDI).

DOST-ITDI Director Dr. Annabelle V. Briones said during the launching that “these technologies are timely for the new normal, but it could be used anytime, either under a normal situation or calamity or crisis,” Briones said partly in Filipino.

“With proper implementation, the local industry, businesses or businessinclined citizens will benefit [from the technologies it will offer],” she added.

Briones said the show aims to pave the way for the transfer and application of science, technology and innovation (STI) to the production sector, and help effect the desired change resulting from the use of research and development results, that R&D leads to job creation, sustainable growth and better lives.

To be broadcast via the digital platform, Facebook (@TekNegoShow) and YouTube (@DOST-ITDI), TekNegoShow is an off-the-cuff, fresh, real business type, talk show. It will run for 12 episodes every Thursday at 1:30 p.m. until January 2021.

Spread the ‘good news’ The first technology talk show of its kind by DOST, TekNegoShow will feature 13 technologies that were developed by ITDI experts and researchers, Briones said.

It will air narratives and insights of technology generators, business

and industry people.

Nelia Florendo, chief of DOST-ITDI Technical Resources Division, said, “Experts from industry will be providing their insights on the potential and opportunities for business, while the adopters will be telling you their stories and challenges in adopting our technologies.”

“Clients who had previously engaged with DOST-ITDI will be sharing their stories of change that might inspire others to follow their dreams,” Briones said.

The show hopes “to spread the good news” and “deliver STI concepts in a more understandable, entertaining and engaging manner without sacrificing accuracy and relevance of information,” Briones said.

Among the innovations and technologies that will be featured are the development of reference materials for food safety, virgin coconut oil processing, VCO-enriched personal-care products, packaging technology services, emergency food reserve, hand sanitizer, Isotonic coco-based drink, mungbean coconut milk beverage, instant powdered ginger, ready-to-eat chicken arroz caldo and many others.

On a lighter side, innovation is also introduced in the show through the raw, unscripted reactions through “TekTok” to elicit more active engagement with the audience, who have to like and share DOST-ITDI’s videos with prizes at stake.

‘Won’t surrender to Covid-19’ Florendo said the production of TekNegoShow is a component being highlighted in the DOST Grant-inAid funded project, titled “DOST-ITDI Strategic Communication Portfolio for Enhanced Technology Transfer and Promotion Delivery System.”

Florendo said that after more than a year of preparation, from conceptualization to approval of the project, when they are ready to produce the

The pilot episode of TekNegoShow on October 22 has DOST Undersecretary Dr. Rowena Cristina Guevara (center) as guest, with hosts ITDI’s Dr. Violy Conoza (left) and DOST-STII’s Jona Beltran. DOST-ITDI show’s episodes, the pandemic got in their way in first quarter of 2020.

“You know what it takes for us to produce 13 episodes in a pandemic situation, that we have to account all safety protocols and requirements, given that most of [the participants] are senior [citizens]. I told Violy [Conoza, DOST-ITDI’s supervising research specialist] we will not surrender. And now we are here in a virtual platform to launch our initial production,” Florendo said.

The first episode last Thursday discussed the technology transfer delivery system highlighting DOST’s efforts in responding to issues related to the pandemic and how it addresses the need of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

Likew ise, it also tack led how the institute translates generated technologies into products, process and services for the industry and stakeholders.

Financial support mechanisms DOST Undersecretary Rowena Guevara said: “At this time of crisis during the pandemic, many people lost their jobs and livelihood, the DOST-ITDI’s aim to provide knowledge which help

provide income or livelihood for the people is very timely.”

With the use of social media, the TekNegoShow program “will promote the technologies of experts and researchers of DOST-ITDI, broaden the knowledge of the people on science and technology which would help in the growth of the industry and people’s livelihood,” Guevara said.

With Guevara as guest in the pilot episode of TekNegoShow, she discussed the DOST services and programs and financial support with show hosts Conoza, the project leader, and Jona Beltran of DOST-Science and Technology Information Institute.

Guevara said that some technologies which the DOST has been assisting have adapted to create products and ser vices to answer some Covid-19 concerns.

Among them is the startup Futuristic Aviation and Maritime Enterprises Inc. (FAME), which originally develops small-scale vessel trackers and monitors that serve as communication devices for small-scale fishers.

Amid the pandemic, FAME made 132 spec imen- col lect ion boot hs needed by the Department of Health (DOH) that were “distributed all over

the country in less than a month.”

Taking pride of the Filipinos’ innovativeness, Guevara also mentioned the Covid-19 data analysis being done

by Feasibility Analysis of Syndromic Surveillance using Spatio-Temporal Epidemiological Modeler (FASSSTER) of Ateneo de Manila University.

Originally, FASSSTER was developed to visualize possible scenarios of outbreaks of dengue, measles and typhoid fever. During the pandemic, it turned to analysing data on Covid-19 cases.

Guevara said the Inter-agency Task Force on Covid-19 used FASSSTER dashboard to help it in deciding whether to lift the enhanced community quarantine and declare general community quarantine in areas in the country.

The local government units have been using FASSSTER in analysing their Covid-19 data. Recently, the DOST has turned over the FASSSTER Covid-19 monitoring platform to the DOH. Among the DOST-funded technologies that answer the current needs, Guevara cited the Far Eastern University Tech DWARM Technologies’s artificial intelligence-enabled drones that perform thermal scanning to get the temperature not just of individual but of groups of people.

She added that DOST agencies like the ITDI have been developing fortified food with good packaging.

To further assist projects in the new normal, the DOST created the Collaborative Research and Development to Leverage Philippine Economy (Cradle). It is a collaboration between industry and academe.

Guevara said that after its October 14 deadline, Cradle 123 proposals were received.

She added that the DOST supports the consortia of state universities and colleges and higher education institutions which link the technologies to companies.

She also cited the presence of DOST regional offices and Technology Business Incubators in universities so the researches could be adapted by the private sector.

In its news release, ITDI said the Small Enterprise Technology Upgrading Program that has helped hundreds of MSMEs prosper across the country.

There is also the Business Innovation through S&T (BIST) that facilitate the acquisition of strategic and relevant technologies by Filipino companies for immediate incorporation in their R&D activities.

Through BIST, the government assists Filipino companies in pursuing R&D and investing in new technologies to enhance competitiveness of local industries.

Commendation Also the show’s guest, Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña, who communicated via Zoom, commended DOST-ITDI for initiating the project on “transferring technology or knowhow to our fellow filipinos, who are at this time very interested in doing something new for various reasons, but mostly to generate livelihood and earn income.”

He said it is good that the people have access to technologies such as those offered by DOST-ITDI. He advised DOST-ITDI “to monitor the trainees” on the impact of the technologies they have learned on their lives.

Asked by Conoza on how the DOST is responding to the pandemic, de la Peña said the department has several projects under the Kalusugan, Kabuhayan, Kaayusan at Kinabukasan themes. All these involve technologies where projects are made in response to the needs during pandemic.

Are you ready to attend TekNegoShow? The technology it will present in its future episodes might be the answer to your business plan.

DOST’s Montoya named among Durable paper towels turned into disposable face masks 15 authors of 2023 UN SDG Report

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r. Jaime C. Montoya, executive director of the Department of Science and TechnologyPhilippine Council for Health Research and Development (DOST-PCHRD), was appointed recently by UN Secretary General António Guterres as one of the 15 eminent scientists to draft the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), said a UN official announcement in New York City.

“We are honored to be selected as part of the distinguished exper ts to author a very significant report on the global SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals],” Montoya said in a DOST-PCHRD news release.

“Being a health research scientist in the Philippines, a developing country, enables us to contribute unique and substantial information that is relevant to sustainable development. It is without a doubt that I assure our UN member states and our fellow Filipinos that our efforts will always be directed towards the benefit of all through science and technology,” he added.

Philippine Science Secretar y For tunato T. de la Peña, in a news release, said he is “ver y happy about the announcement” of the appointment of Montoya to be among the authors of GSDR. “The whole DOST family is very proud of this recognition given to Dr. Montoya,” de la Peña said in the news release posted on DOST’s Facebook account.

Produced once every four years, the SDG report aims to employ the scientific perspective in guiding policy-makers on the state of global sustainable development, and serve as a “strong evidence-based instrument” in eradicating poverty.

The report will also feed the “high-level global review” of the 2030 Agenda at the United Nations in September 2030.

The designation of the independent group followed an extensive consultation process that involved nominations from UN member states which concluded in December 2019.

The 15 scientists were selected by Guterres to author the GSDR and conduct a follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for SDGs.

Dr. Jaime C. Montoya DOST-PCHRD photo The “diverse group,” according to the UN, represents a wide range of disciplines and are composed of the following scientists: John Agard (Trinidad and Tobago), Kaltham Ali Al-Ghanim (Qatar), Sergey N. Bobylev (Russian Federation), Opha Pauline Dube, (Botswana), Ibrahima Hathie (Senegal), Norichika Kanie (Japan), Nyovani Janet Madise (Malawi), Shirin Malekpour (Australia), J. Jaime Miranda (Peru), Jaime C Montoya (Philippines), Jiahua Pan (China), Åsa Persson (Sweden), Ambuj D Sagar (India), Imme Scholz (Germany), Nancy Shackell (Canada).

Led by Agard and Scholz, the independent group will author the second report of its kind. The first GSDR has been released in September of 2019 titled, “The Future is Now: Science for Achieving Sustainable Development.”

PCHRD is at the forefront of the country’s fight against the current Covid-19 pandemic.

As the country’s lead coordinator for health research and development initiatives, PCHRD supports Filipino researchers in health research innovation, policy recommendations, and technology commercialization.

It provides scholarships to Filipino students in the field of health and medicine, and establishes information and communication systems to disseminate health research information both for local and international stakeholders.

re you in need of cheap, eco-friendly yet effective face mask?

The Forest Products Research and Development Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-FPRDI) has the answer to this concern as face masks are currently in big demand amid the coronavirus pandemic.

DOST-FPRDI is producing disposable face masks made from durable paper towels in partnership with Quanta Paper Marketing Inc. of Mandaluyong City.

The paper towels can also serve as inserts to cloth face masks for added filtration against air-borne contaminants, DOST-FPRDI said. “ T he F PR DI d i s p o s a bl e f a c e masks [FDFs] use paper towels from imported virgin pulp and are sterilized through UV light exposure,” explained DOST-FPRDI researcher

Made of 100-percent virgin pulp, the FPRDI face mask is durable and biodegradable.

Adela S. Torres.

According to Torres, paper products made from 100-percent virgin pulp are considered premium since they do not contain any recycled substance, and are biodegradable.

The FDFs are an improved version of the Do-It-Yourself, no-sew disposable paper towel face masks shown in the Internet.

Prior to sewing, the FDFs are folded downwards so that when stretched, the wearer’s nose down to the chin is totally covered.

Flexible wires are also attached at the mid-upper portion of the masks to maintain shape.

“We want to provide an option for those who cannot afford surgical and other more expensive face masks. Our masks only cost P6.50 a piece and can easily be sewn at home. Their production can even be a source of income for those who have lost their jobs during

the pandemic,” she explained.

Also, the FDFs are a greener option than single-use surgical face masks.

Scientists fear the gigantic amounts of surgical masks improperly disposed during this pandemic can result in a huge ecological disaster as these are made from plastic that can take hundreds of years to decompose.

To help address this problem, the DOST-FPRDI research team has prepared a research proposal on biodegradable medical face masks from abaca, bamboo and local fibrous materials, which is set to be conducted next year.

The first batch of FDFs have already been donated to some hospitals, cooperatives and local government units in Los Baños, Bay, Cabuyao, Lumban and Calauan in Laguna.

More shall be produced and distributed in the months to come. Apple

Jean C. Martin-de Leon, S&T Media Service

Searca: Integrate agricultural biotech in variety development up to marketing

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ntegr ating omics is important in crop breeding program from variety development up to commercialization.

This was discussed by Dr. Glenn B. Gregorio, director of the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca), at the recent Mindanao-wide webinar on “Omics Research, Moving Past Pandemics: Omics in Agriculture.”

Omics is an emerging field of scientific technology that involves the study of molecular interactions found in living organisms, Gregorio explained.

Organized by the Philippine Genome Center Mindanao, the webinar focused on potential applications, challenges and solutions of omics

technologies in mitigating impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, a Searca news release said.

Gregorio proposed a modern breeding program that includes laying out strategies in a crop-master plan that will also include crop market analysis or market intelligence, and strengthweakness-opportunity-threat analysis by market segment.

“The future for crop improvement in the tropics is incredibly bright, built on a strengthening collaboration between the academic community and commercial crop breeders,” he said.

Crop improvement seems slow in the view of business and other disciplines since developing commercially ready products takes a long process, he said.

“Many are impatient with this process and offer better techniques and tools to shorten it but still fail in the implementation of a new breeding program and much more in the commercialization stage,” Gregorio added.

The Searca director noted that omics research has been adversely affected by issues in agriculture, including increased productivity, product quality, resistance to pest and diseases, market of produce, climate change, and the Asean Economic integration, the news release said.

Moreover, he pointed out that “the recent levelling off in rice yields highlighted the need to introduce new sources of germplasm, genetic variation, and modern breeding techniques into existing rice breeding program.”

“Even with no change in harvested area, what needs to be done is to increase the rice production or cereal demand in the next 10 years. We need to mechanize our farmlands and adapt digital agriculture; use smart seeds which are high-quality, pest and disease resistant, and climate change ready,” Gregorio said.

He emphasized the innovative ways in conducting research and extension by considering the business component, value addition to produce, and market-driven and product-oriented research for development.

“The reality of genomics in agriculture is won or lost at the farmer and consumer level, where applicability and sustainability are tested,” Gregorio said.

Faith A6 Sunday, October 25, 2020

Sunday

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

All Souls’ Day in the time of pandemic

Why Catholics pray for and to the dead

By Edwin P. Galvez

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very year without fail, corporate consultant Juris UmaliSoliman, 68, travels before sunrise to San Jose in Batangas at least a day before All Saints’ Day to visit the graves of her brother, grandparents and relatives at the town cemetery.

She was six years old when her father Felicisimo first brought her to his hometown, which took them two hours by bus from Manila.

After lighting the candles and placing potted flowering plants on each tomb, she spends the entire morning praying for her deceased family members, silently, or saying the rosary.

This yearly tradition would later see her and her two children praying before her parents’ tombs at the Manila Memorial Park in Parañaque City.

Over the years, she had brought her own grandchildren, including now six-year-old Alfonso, to these holy grounds.

By her lonesome in most visits, Umali-Soliman cries her heart out after praying, especially to her parents whom she shares “what had happened” to her life, telling them of both her joys and pains or how she misses them, and then asks them for their guidance and prayers as well.

While the cemeteries, memorial parks and columbaria are closed from October 29 to November 4 this year due to Covid-19 pandemic, it will not hinder Umali-Soliman and millions of Filipino Catholics from doing what they have been accustomed and obliged to do to honor the dead on All Souls’ Day: Pray.

Praying for the deceased family members is a vibrant expression of faith and commitment of Catholics as the Catholic church itself prays for all the souls, particularly those in the purgatory, during the celebration of the Mass.

The church honors the memory of the dead with constant prayer, something aligned to what Pope Francis said in his last catechesis on the prayer of the Psalms during his general audience on October 21 at the Vatican: “Prayer is the center of life.”

struggle with our life here on earth.”

While All Souls’ Day (November 2) is not a “holy day of obligation,” Secillano said “it is still most fitting and essential that we hear Mass and offer intentions for our loved ones as a way of expressing our love and dutiful remembrance of them.”

He said offering Masses for the dead is non-negotiable.

“It is the most important thing one can do for those who have passed on to the next life,” he added.

Secillano said that visiting the cemeteries, bringing f lowers, and lighting candles satisfy the living more than the dead.

“They are for sure acts that honor the dead, but we basically do them to satisfy our longing for our loved ones, and perhaps to compensate for our failures to honor and love them more when they were still alive,” he explained.

Praying for and to the dead

Why pray unceasingly?

“The Church teaches us that our fundamental role with regard to the deceased is to pray for them and to them,” said Fr. Jerome R. Secillano, executive secretary of the Permanent Committee on Public Affairs of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).

He said praying for the dead means that “we invoke God’s mercy to grant eternal rest to our loved ones.”

Praying to them is to “ask for their help and intercession as we continue to

The Catholic church prays for everyone, both the faithful and those who do not believe, according to Fr. David T. Concepcion, parish priest of the Sta. Maria Goretti Parish in Paco, Manila.

“One of the characteristics of the Catholic Church is it is a church on a mission, a church who prays,” he said.

While prayers cannot bring souls already in hell to heaven, he said Catholics must continue praying for all the souls still in the purgatory.

In the parish Facebook page where

Like most Catholics, corporate consultant Juris Umali-Soliman never fails to visit and pray at the tombs of her parents at Manila Memorial Park in Parañaque City, and her brother, grandparents and relatives in San Jose, Batangas. he answered the question “Hanggang kailan mo gustong ipagdasal kita? [Until when would you like me to pray for you?] on October 10, Concepcion said we always pray for the dead based on our belief in the three states of the Church.

“The Church triumphant are the souls who are in heaven, the Church suffering are the souls undergoing purification in purgatory, and the Church militant are we who are still alive and fighting against sin,” he said.

He said there is “another world where life doesn’t end in death,” but we are not sure where the immortal souls would end up, whether in heaven or purgatory.

“How do we know kung nakatawid ka na [if you have reached the gate of Heaven]. It is good for you to pray for us kung ikaw ay nakaahon na [if you were able to get out of the purgatory],” he said.

Concepcion said that Catholics should continue praying for their dead, but they must be specific on who they are praying for.

Mass intentions, rosary Catholics offer Mass intentions and pray the rosary for their departed loved ones on All Souls’ Day or within November, the month of the holy souls.

Those who cannot visit the cemeteries offer their prayer intentions through online Masses or web sites, such as undasonline.com, where

visitors can even virtually light a candle or v isit the graves at the Manila North Cemeter y. The web site is also updated w ith prayers for the dead, liturgical features, and pastoral statements.

Far from their traditional family reunion at the cemetery, sales professional Martin R. Copon IV and his family will still visit their dead at the Loyola Memorial Park in Marikina City before the cemetery gates are shut.

“We have to be there early due to the limited number of visitors allowed at a time, but we also included prayers for the dead in online Masses aside from our own daily prayers,” Copon said.

Besides offering Mass intentions, former Makati barangay administrator Lilian G. Magno will also light candles and place flowers on the family altar while praying to the dead, a way for her to still “talk to them spiritually.”

“Maybe I will also ask them how they can help for the pandemic to go away,” Magno said.

Online content specialist Dolly L. Villanueva usually offers Masses before the end of October up to the middle of November. She also attends Masses to reflect about life after death or talks on the subject matter if these are available.

“This is my way of anticipating that I will be reunited with my loved ones someday,” she said Like in the previous years, Villanueva and her sister visit their parents in Holy Cross Cemetery in Quezon City and their brother in Forest Park in Caloocan City on lean days to avoid the heavy traffic.

Lawyer Josefina P. Paz has accepted that she and her family will not be able to visit the graves of her parents on November 1 and her maternal grandparents and aunt in Bulacan on November 2 due to the closure of the cemeteries.

“My family and I will pray and offer Masses starting October 29 up to the whole month of November,” Paz said.

She also proposes that after the restricted dates, the government may assign visitors on specific days, which could be based on their surnames or their number of family members, to avoid big crowds or heavy traffic.

St. Therese Columbarium, located at the Shrine of St. Therese of the Child Jesus in Villamor, Pasay City, for instance, limits its visitors based on their clients’ surnames. Those with surnames starting from A-J and K-Z are scheduled on separate days and can only visit between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Praying the rosary and lighting a candle outdoors, said food entrepreneur Gabriel C. Villadelgado, will continue their traditional family gathering to honor their dead “as long as there is no vaccine for the virus yet.”

Churchgoers thankful as Manila raises seating capacity to 30%

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h u rc hg oer s f rom d i f ferent religions expressed gratitude after the seating capacity inside churches, mosques and chapels in the city of Manila was raised to 30 percent from the previous 10 percent.

“Finally I can now attend the Mass properly inside the church instead of just standing outside with so many people,” churchgoer Leny de Guzman said in Filipino in an interview recently.

Manila Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso signed Executive Order 41 allow ing religious gathering up to 30 percent of the seat i ng c apac it y of t he c hu rc h, mosque or chapel.

“There is a need for the city to address the spiritual needs of its constituents, to promote not only the social and economic well-being but also their spiritual wellbeing,“ Domagoso said.

In the same order, Domagoso also allows individuals from 18 to 65 years old to leave their homes.

W it h t he a n nou ncement , se nior cit izens in t he cit y e x pressed g rat it ude.

“Thank you, Mayor, seniors can now attend the Mass,” said Violeta Samson in Filipino.

Manila residents who are frequent churchgoers said that despite the more relaxed guidelines, minimum public safety health protocols should not be disregarded.

They said people should already get used to the “new normal” of observing safe physical distancing, wearing face masks and face shields, and frequent hand washing.

Domagoso clarified that minimum health protocols should still be observed and that church officials and other religious leaders will help assure that these are followed.

He added that w ith the prev ious 10 -percent seating capacity, he noticed adequate space inside the church.

However, outside the churches, many were left crowding with many people attending the Mass.

“Thank you Mayor Isko Moreno for your strong leadership. The citizens can now freely worship and pray to the Father God inside the church solemnly. Father God is with us in the worst times,” Mila Elopre said in her Facebook post.

In a rad io i nter v iew, Bi shop Broderick Pabillo, administrator of the Manila Archdiocese, welcomed the city government’s order to accommodate more churchgoers.

“We call on those who can attend Mass, they can now go inside churches,” Pabillo told DzMM. Manila’s parishes will also increase the number of Masses each day to allow more people to attend church services.

Pabi l lo sa id pr iests w i l l a lso hold Masses in school gymnasiums to avoid crowding and maintain physical distancing during Undas (All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day) and Simbang Gabi (novena Dawn Masses leading to Christmas day).

Pabi l lo earl ier made t he appea l to a l low t he fa it h f u l to at tend

t he Daw n Ma sses by shor ten i ng c u r few hou rs. “ We a r e a s k i n g t h at t h e y a d just the end of the cur few to 3: 3 0 a . m . du r i n g t ho s e d a y s o f S i m b a n g G a b i a n d no c u r f e w o n D e c e m b e r 24 e v e n i n g ,” Pa b i l l o s a i d o v e r R a d io Ve r it a s .

Damagoso asked the Church to start preparing guidelines on the conduct of Simbang Gabi while adhering strictly to safety protocols.

Churches also hold anticipated Dawn Masses in the evening to accommodate the needs of the faithful on different work schedules.

Met ropol it a n Ma n i l a m ayors ag reed to shor ten c u r few hou rs to 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. f rom t he c u r rent 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., e xcept i n Navot a s C it y.

However, the mayors are open to shorten the curfew to until 3 a.m. to accommodate the Simbang Gabi.

The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority said it will settle the issue on the curfew by December 1. PNA and CBCP News

Pope Francis’ support for civil unions is a call to justice—and nothing new

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ope Francis signaled his support for members of the LGBT community to enter civil unions in a new documentary released on October 21. It wasn’t the first time.

Francis has spoken up for civil unions before, as he reminded the film’s interviewer.

“I stood up for that,” he said. And, he did—both when he mentioned civil unions in 2017 and before that in 2014.

He was supportive of civil unions prior to the papacy, too, when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires.

So in an important sense, there is nothing to see here—nothing new. Yet Francis’s message here does matter.

Justice for all The pope’s support for civil unions does not change Catholic doctrine about marriage or sexuality. The church still teaches—and will go on teaching—that any sexual relationship outside a marriage is sinful and that, in the Catholic view, marriage—different from civil unions—is between a man and a woman.

Really, Pope Francis’s call for civil unions is a way to express what Catholics believe about human dignity in response to new social and political conditions that have brought rapidly changed attitudes toward the LGBT community across the last two decades.

Pope Francis is calling on Catholics to take note that they have to be concerned about justice for all people, including those in the LGBT community.

Some Catholics already are voicing their displeasure, fearing the pope’s comments will sow confusion.

Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island, went so far as to criticize Pope Francis for “contradict[ing] what has been the long-standing teaching of the church.”

But as a scholar of the Catholic Church and society, I believe there is a firm foundation to say that what Pope Francis says on civil unions grows directly from church teaching.

The “law of love embraces the entire human family and knows no limits,” the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the Vatican office concerned with social issues, said in its 2005 compilation of the church’s social thought.

Equal rights Back in 2006, US Catholic bishops recognized that LGBT people “have been, and often continue to be, objects of scorn, hatred, and even violence.” And, those things that express our care for other human persons—“especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted” by the indifference or oppression of others—represent obligations that faithful Catholics embrace.

In these ways, Catholics owe a duty of justice to the LGBT community.

One way this duty of justice can be expressed is through the support of political and legal rights for all.

As much as Catholics believe that governments should recognize a right to private property, they can believe that people in committed relationships should enjoy a legally protected ability to transfer their property as they wish.

Because Catholics believe in being present with the sick or the dying— what the church calls a corporal work of mercy—it follows that people should not be kept from their loved ones’ bedsides because of legal barriers.

That can and does happen if someone’s partner is not recognized in law as next of kin.

Likewise, because someone is from the LGBT community, they should not be excluded from the human community or the love of another person.

LGBT people also have a right to be a part of families, as they have a right to be free from discrimination and prejudice.

As Pope Francis said in the new documentary, “Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable.”

Reacting to societal change The rapid change that has happened in prevailing social attitudes about the LGBT community in recent decades has been a hard thing to process for a church that has never reacted quickly.

This is especially because the questions those developments raise touch on a gray area where moral teaching meets social realities outside the church—such as arguments about the contraceptive mandate and the use of condoms.

This meeting between social issues or concerns and the church is often a meeting of ragged edges that can produce friction.

Yet, church leaders have been working on the problem of reconciling the church with the modern world, and Pope Francis is not stepping in places where other Catholic bishops have not already trod.

In 2018, German bishops reacting to the legalization of gay marriage acknowledged that acceptance of LGBT relationships is a new “political reality.”

“I’m not for ‘marriage for all,’” said Münster auxiliary Bishop Dieter Geerlings, “but if two homosexuals enter a same-sex relationship, if they want to take responsibility for each other, then I can bless this mutual responsibility.”

Osnabrück Bishop Franz-Josef Bode agreed, “We could think about giving them a blessing.”

The challenge the Vatican faces is to imagine the space that the church can occupy in this new reality, as it has had to do in the face of numerous social and political changes over the years.

But the imperative, as Francis suggests, is to serve justice and to seek justice for all people.

Catholics—including bishops, and even the pope—can think, and are thinking, imaginatively about that challenge.

Steven P. Millies/The Conversation

Religious leaders nix plan to rename QC’s Del Monte Avenue after FPJ

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h e countr y’s Catholic missionaries are opposing a proposal to rename a street named after a saint to honor a movie actor.

In Senate Bill 1822, Sen. Manuel “Lito” Lapid, also a movie actor, is seeking to rename San Francisco del Monte Avenue in Quezon City to Fernando Poe Jr. Avenue.

He said the measure aims to honor the late “King of Filipino Movies,” whose production company is located on Del Monte Avenue.

The Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines warned the plan will “totally obliterate” the significance of one of the city’s very first settlements established in 1590.

While they acknowledged the national artist’s achievements and legacy, the religious superiors said honoring him should not at the expense of the area’s historical significance.

“Renaming Del Monte Avenue, will negate the historical, cultural, religious and social importance of the first settlement in Quezon City, the San Francisco del Monte,” they said.

Saint Pedro Bautista, a Franciscan missionary and a known theologian, established the town settlement of San Francisco Del Monte, a place where he stayed for 10 years before he was sent

and martyred in Japan.

The road is also where the Franciscan-run Santuario de San Pedro Bautista, which is now a minor basilica and the oldest church in Quezon City, is located.

In 1639, the church was used as a camp by the Chinese rebels during the Limahong-led uprising.

In 1895, the Franciscan priests abandoned the church, when the Filipino revolutionary forces occupied the place of worship during the “Cry of Balintawak.”

The church was also occupied by the American soldiers during the Philippine-American War in 1898.

“To rename Del Monte Avenue is to start the process of denying 400 years of history that is San Francisco del Monte, from which Del Monte Avenue is derived,” the AMRSP said.

“We appeal to our esteemed senators and government officials to acknowledge the rich cultural, social and religious heritage of San Francisco Del Monte and retain the name Del Monte Avenue,” it added.

The Franciscan missionaries in the Philippines have earlier called on legislators to retain the road’s original name. CBCP News

Biodiversity Sunday BusinessMirror

Asean Champions of Biodiversity Media Category 2014

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Sunday, October 25, 2020

A7

Dead but not gone

‘Kalibasib:’ A symbol of hope, inspiration

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By Jonathan L. Mayuga

onsidered as the last captivebred Philippine tamaraw, “Kalibasib” breathed his last on October 10.

With one blind eye and a limp in one leg, Kalibasib, or “Kalikasan Bagong Sibol,” could have died of old age.

At his age, “Kali,” as he was fondly called, could very well be the longestliving and perhaps the oldest Philippine tamaraw until he died. Kalibasib’s death was discovered around 2:30 p.m.

Born on June 24, 1999, Kalibasib was 21 when he died. Normally, a Philippine tamaraw could live up to 20 to 25 years.

A heartbreaking loss Even though Kalibasib lived a full life at the Tamaraw Gene Pool Farm in Barangay Manoot in the municipality of Rizal in Occidental Mindoro, his heartbreaking demise was considered a big loss for the Tamaraw Conservation Program (TCP), officials of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said.

“It was unfortunate. Kalibasib has been with us since we started the captive-breeding program. He was the only progeny of our herd at the Tamaraw Gene Pool,” DENR Assistant Secretary Ricardo Calderon told the BusinessMirror in an interview on October 12.

Neil Anthony del Mundo, assistant protected area superintendent of the Mounts Iglit-Baco National Park (MIBNP) and TCP coordinator, said that over the years, forest rangers at the park, as well as communities around the protected area, have associated themselves with Kalibasib.

Cause of death Dr. Mikko Angelo Reyes, a wildlife veterinarian who performed the necropsy on Kalibasib on October 16, said the iconic land mammal died of cardiac failure.

“Apparently, Kalibasib was also suffering from chronic liver failure. We found evidence of liver cirrhosis. His liver is dark, indicating his lingering ailment for five years,” Reyes told the BusinessMirrror in an interview on October 21.

He said they will still conduct histopathology on Kalibasib’s heart, liver, kidney and lungs to thoroughly determine what caused the liver failure that

led to the tamaraw’s demise.

Symbol of hope, inspiration For many, Kalibasib was a symbol of hope and his very presence in the Tamaraw Gene Pool Farm for more than two decades has become an inspiration in the conservation of the species and the rest of Mindoro’s biodiversity.

Considered as the country’s most iconic land mammal, the Philippine tamaraw is endemic or known to exist only on the hinterlands of Mindoro Island, their last known habitat which is equally extremely vulnerable to various threats.

“Many people who don’t have the opportunity of seeing a live tamaraw has seen what the tamaraw looks like by simply visiting our gene pool because of Kalibasib,” del Mundo told the BusinessMirror in an interview on October 19.

Best legacy Asean Centre for Biodiversity Executive Director Theresa Mundita S. Lim said Kalibasib’s existence raised certain ethical questions on captive breeding, whether it is effective or not in contributing to the conservation of tamaraws.

“Having been born in captivity, Kalib has never seen his natural habitat and may not have survived if he were released. The best legacy he would have left is raising awareness on the plight of his wild relatives,” Lim, a former director of the DENR’s Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB), told the BusinessMirror via Messenger on October 20.

For those who are not as fortunate to see tamaraws in the wild, Kalib provided the opportunity to bring the tamaraw closer to more people, Lim said.

“In a sense, he became an ambassador for his kind. His death should send a strong message to step-up efforts to conserve the tamaraw, otherwise his sad fate would have been in vain,” she added.

Preserving Kalibasib Del Mundo said he has already contacted the National Museum of Natural History to preserve Kalibasib’s body.

“We are waiting for the National Museum experts to come to perform the taxidermy on Kalibasib. Because of

Mounts Iglit-Baco National Park, an Asean Heritage Park, is home to a wide variety of flora and fauna, including the critically endangered Philippine tamaraw, the country’s most iconic land mammal which can only be found on the island of Mindoro. ACB

The last captive-bred Philippine tamaraw, “Kalibasib” Gregg Yan the travel restrictions brought about by the pandemic, we are keeping Kalibasib in a storage facility until they [museum experts] arrive here in Mindoro,” he said.

Del Mundo said the National Museum has yet to respond to the official request of Occidental Mindoro Gov. Eduardo Gadiano to perform the taxidermy on Kalibasib.

The decision to preserve Kalibasib, he said, is logical so that even though he is dead, the memory of Mindoro’s famous tamaraw will remain.

“We are also planning to bring Kalibasib in every town in Mindoro upon the request of local officials, because the people would really want to see Kalibasib. For one week maybe, we will allow the LGU [local government unit] to keep Kalibasib so that the people in their town will be able to see him,” del Mundo said.

Public information, education Del Mundo said after making the rounds, Kalibasib will be secured and showcased for public viewing at a museum to be built in the vicinity of the Tamaraw Gene Pool Farm.

This way, the tamaraw will continue to serve a higher purpose of educating the public about the importance of protecting and conserving the tamaraws.

Calderon, the concurrent director of BMB, agreed.

“It is only fitting to put him [Kalib] at the Tamaraw Gene Pool Farm, instead of capturing live tamaraws to replace him,” said Calderon, who also nixed the idea of reviving the tamaraw captive-breeding program.

Call to action The Mindoro Biodiversity Conservation Foundation Inc. (MBCFI) said

the demise of Kalibasib should be considered a good reason for the government to strengthen the research on the species.

“We need to give the tamaraw the best chance of recovery because if our current efforts for the remaining 480 individuals in the wild are the same, [the species] will go extinct by 2050,” said MBCFI Executive Director Grace Diamante.

Regular funding for the TCP, she said, is needed to boost the ongoing conservation efforts for the tamaraw and their habitat in Mindoro. “ Through an administrative order, regular funding for the conservation of the tamaraw should be made available to hire more forest rangers,” she added.

The MBCFI is also pushing for the adoption of a management action plan for the conservation of the tamaraw, including the creation of a policymaking or governing body that will promote the welfare of the species and save them from extinction.

Extremely vulnerable Kalibasib belong to an extremely vulnerable species. Scientifically called bubalus Mindorensis, the Philippine tamaraw, which is also known as the Mindoro dwarf buffalo.

It was listed as critically endangered by the DENR and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as early as 2000.

Only around 480 tamaraws were counted in the last count the DENR made at the MIBNP in 2019, although del Mundo said he believes there are other population of the wild tamaraw outside the MIBNP.

EDC: Forging pathways for regenerative future

By Rizal Raoul S. Reyes

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fter championing sustainability, the Energy Development Corp. (EDC) recently said it is high time to be regenerative to ensure the survival of the planet.

“For us in the Lopez Group of Companies, which EDC is a part of, it is about aligning our business, our resources and our capabilities to fulfill a mission.

That is to elevate everything we touch,” EDC President Richard Tantoco said.

Tantoco gave his address at a recent virtual forum on the Global Catholic Climate Movement’s series in celebration of the “Season of Creation,” a monthlong prayerful observance that calls on the planet’s 2.2 billion Christians to pray and care for God’s creation.

Forging collaborative pathways

Tantoco said regeneration means “everything,” including the group’s employees, community, environment, co-creators (such as their customers, partners, contractors, suppliers) and shareholders.

He said that nobody should be left behind to benefit from the positive impact of their decisions and actions.

“While our investors are important, regenerative thinking demands that we look at our business from a wider lens than just profitability,” Tantoco explained.

“This year, we crystallized our mission among our group of companies, including EDC, and that is ‘to forge collaborative pathways for a decarbonized and regenerative future.’”

EDC deliberately set a high bar and and expect the

green company to use this short, 10-word phrase to be the beacon that guide them through this turbulent decade and beyond.

“We recognize that our planet’s life support systems and social institutions are now at a breaking point. Unbridled consumption and primacy of bottomline growth are at the root of the climate crisis. Our alienation from nature, and the profound social and economic divisions, have become existential threats to humanity today,” Tantoco explained.

Paradigm shift

To hurdle the challenges, he said, will require a paradigm shift in the ways the company thinks, lives and does business.

He said EDC has now realized that pursuing sustainability that seeks only to do less harm is no longer good enough.

Instead, EDC needs to create symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationships with nature and society that benefit more than just shareholders.

Tantoco urged to become a regenerative force that elevates everything that they touch—customers, employees, suppliers, contractors, the environment, communities and investors.

He said the transformation should be a collective undertaking because each stakeholder has a unique role to play.

He said the collective success will be measured by how quickly “we can decouple economic and social prosperity from the destruction of our planet’s life support systems.”

EDC selected this path because it believes this is

the only way to thrive and prosper on a healthy planet.

“We choose this path because we believe it is the only way to create lasting value for all stakeholders and not just shareholders,” he explained.

Tantoco said EDC and the rest in the Lopez Group still have a long way to go and they are a work in progress.

Litmus test

Nevertheless, he said EDC has always strived to foster a healthy and positive working environment.

The Covid-19 was the litmus test for the management to show its genuine familial care.

While most of the staff were required to work from home, EDC formed a skeletal force that expertly operates its power plants and they are provided with good sleeping quarters, appetizing food, and stable Internet ”so they can always get in touch with their loved ones while working on site.”

Even before the start of the lockdown, Tantoco said EDC has been conducting climate-change workshops, helping the stakeholders find ways to reduce their energy consumption and become more energy efficient to lower their businesses’ carbon footprint.

At the start of the pandemic, EDC also agreed to defer its customers’ payments on the orders of the Department of Energy and the Energy Regulatory Commission.

“At the same time, we decided to provide them with a prompt payment discount to help them cushion the blow from their nonpaying retail customers,” Tantoco said.

On top of this, EDC donated sacks of rice, face

masks, medicines, vitamins and conducted webinars on business continuity.

Miracle

He said the company was worried of huge drop in demand. In addition, it expected zero revenue in April 2020.

But EDC experienced a surprise when it achieved a 72-percent payment in April. He said it was nothing short of a miracle.

Through this wonderful gesture, Tantoco said, the stakeholders value their partnership with EDC. He emphasized that EDC could not do it alone because the issues are so daunting that it needs everyone’s help.

“We will only successfully fulfill our mission if we collaborate with others,” he said.

Tantoco said this is definitely not competitive beauty contest. It is not about which company won the most awards.

“As our Chairman [Federico] Piki Lopez keeps stressing, if we find ourselves ahead but alone at the finish line of this massive and humbling undertaking, we will then have failed in our mission.” he explained.

Tantoco stressed regenerative thinking is also not a light switch that you turn on when you’re at work and turn off in your personal life.

“Since EDC’s chosen path is anchored on the Lopez values, all of us employees are enjoined to walk the talk. Leaders need to lead by example in our company, and even in our private life, to have a truly regenerative company,” he pointed out.

Expanding territories

Captive-breeding part 2?

Attributed to the effort to expand the coverage of the annual tamaraw count, Calderon said the number of buffalos counted every year continues to increase.

While the count is not proof of an increasing population, the fact that more juveniles have been counted over the years means the tamaraws are breeding successfully on their own in the wild.

“From the 1990s, the population of the tamaraws is steadily increasing. We intend to expand our coverage [of the annual count] because we received reports of sightings outside MIBNP,” Calderon said.

Still, he said other areas within MIBNP have not yet been covered by the annual count, which means that there may be more tamaraws out there than what is currently believed to be.

Del Mundo confirmed the newly discovered population in Mount Calavite.

As coordinator of the TCP, he said he intends to include some areas in MCNP in the tamaraw count next year.

He also disclosed that they are in talks with experts from various international conservation advocacy groups and scientific bodies for a study of the tamaraw population on Mount Calavite and to determine the prospects of starting anew a captive-breeding program for Mindoro’s dwarf buffalo.

“The population there is small and may need a boost,” said del Mundo partly in Filipino.

He said a proposal from DENR partners for the study has been presented to the DENR-BMB prior to Kalibasib’s demise.

New population

For Calderon, however, the Tamaraw Conser vation Prog ram is a lready succeed i ng a nd a c apt ive bre e d i ng - prog r a m i s not l i k e ly going to happen for now.

He said strengthening the program means strengthening the conservation effort of the species and their natural habitats.

To better protect the Mounts Iglit-Baco National Park and other protected areas in general, he said the DENR-BMB is seeking for an additional P50-million budget for biodiversity conservation—including programs to combat illegal wildlife trade and protecting areas set aside for conservation “ T he tamaraws are better lef t breed ing on t heir ow n in t heir natura l habitat,” he said.

A forestry expert, Calderon said he believes there are more tamaraws deep in the forest of MIBNP and, possibly, in other mountainous areas nearby.

“We learned and verified from our people on the ground that there are tamaraws on nearby Mount Calavite, a protected area near MIBNP,” Calderon said.

The tamaraws are somewhere in the hinterlands of Mount Calavite within the Mount Calavite National Park, also on Mindoro Island.

“The tamaraw in nearby [Mount] Calavite are stocky and slightly bigger,” Calderon said. He said this could be because there are less tamaraw inhabiting the area, which means there is less competition for food among the herd.

Way forward

ACB chief: Consider biodiversity in food systems, gardening trends

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he Asean Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) recently called for creative and innovative ways to integrate nature considerations into agriculture, fisheries and even in urban gardening in order to simultaneously conserve nature and boost the resilience of food systems.

“Among the ecosystem services that humans derive from biodiversity are food and nourishment.

However, coupled with the further deterioration of food security at the global level, agriculture remains one of the drivers of biodiversity los...

Indeed, it is necessary to consider biodiversity when crafting and implementing food program,” ACB Executive Director Theresa Mundita Lim, said in her statement for the recent celebration of the World Food Day. The ACB joined the international community in celebrating the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, reiterating the vital role that healthy and rich biodiversity plays in the current food systems.

Efforts to mainstream biodiversity considerations into the agriculture and fisheries sector’s development processes in Southeast Asia are among the main thrusts of the ACB. On 28 August, the ACB, with the European Union, through the Biodiversity Conservation and Management of Protected Areas Project, suppor ted a forum on mainstreaming biodiversity in agriculture in Thailand.

The forum, organized by Thailand’s Office of the Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and

Planning, highlighted measures to strengthen efforts in the country’s agriculture sector to mainstream biodiversity through strengthening action plans and developing and implementing biodiversity responsive policies.

Citing the 2020 scoping study on biodiversity and health in the region, conducted by the United Nations University-International Institute of Global Health and supported by the ACB and the EU, Lim highlighted the need to enhance agricultural biodiversity, as well as to invest in germplasm conservation.

“This undertaking will ensure the conservation of identified climate-resilient crop varieties and the diversity of fish and livestock resources,” she said.

Lim noted that maximizing effec tive agrobiodiversity practices will help improve crop diversity and address micronutrient deficiencies affecting the population.

Meanwhile, Lim also suggested improving access to user-friendly national public databases on native and endemic plant species to guide plant enthusiasts and agricultural experts alike on which plants to grow.

The ACB’s Asean Clearing House Mechanism, which provides information on plant species, including their endemism and conservation status, may likewise be accessed by the public.

“With the right information and awarenessraising on propagating native plant species and its short- and long-term ecological and economic benefits, this growing trend on urban gardening may be guided to be more biodiversity-friendly, serving both the public and the environment,” Lim said.

Sports BusinessMirror

A8 Sunday, October 25, 2020

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THREE-YEAR World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) investigation into doping in weightlifting, based largely on evidence provided by whistle-blowers, revealed an astonishing level of corruption that in several instances is the subject of ongoing investigations by law-enforcement agencies.

If many of the revelations in the McLaren Independent Weightlifting Investigation, published in June, related to historic cases of doping corruption this new report suggests that the problem is still here and now—and that cheats have ways of not getting caught.

They include the use of “undetectable” growth hormones, of transfusions to clean an athlete’s system, of “doppelgangers” to provide clean urine samples for dopers and of synthetic urinary devices to swap clean urine for dirty urine.

A law-enforcement agency is currently investigating alleged anti-doping corruption in Romanian weightlifting, the report says.

An unidentified Romanian weightlifter was suspended for using a doppelganger—having another person provide a sample—based on evidence gathered in late 2018.

The report states, “As this sanction is currently under appeal, and to protect the ongoing results management process, [Wada] will not disclose the identity of this athlete and other relevant details in this report.”

The Wada intelligence and investigations department (I&I) also revealed that some national federations paid bribes to cover up doping violations and corrupt officials gave advance notice of testing plans.

While the more recent cases will be of greatest concern to the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF), the Wada report reveals that between 2012 and 2016 “Russian entities” paid $5 million to an unnamed high-ranking member of the IWF “to cover up allegations of doping by Russian weightlifters.”

That was during the reign of Tamás Aján, who resigned in April after 44 years at the IWF as general secretary and president, and who was castigated by the McLaren Report for

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

WEIGHTLIFTING DOPING SCANDAL

DIRTY. UGLY. EVIL.

Tamás Aján, who resigned in April after 44 years at the International Weightlifting Federation as general secretary and president, is castigated by the McLaren Report for widespread corruption in finance, anti-doping and rigged elections.

widespread corruption in finance, anti-doping and rigged elections.

McLaren revealed 40 doping cases had been deliberately covered up by Aján and his team during the period under investigation, and news later emerged of another 130 “hidden” doping samples.

The Wada report also states that in October last year a covert investigation discovered a discrepancy of $3 million between doping fines announced by the IWF and money actually received.

The IWF official who took the Russian bribes is under investigation for criminal activity.

Maxim Agapitov, president of the Russian Weightlifting Federation (FTAR), put the blame on Aján before and told the Russian news agency TASS: “For the last four years, our federation does not need any bribes, we have been training absolutely normally.”

Russia has had barely any doping violations since Agapitov took charge of the FTAR in November 2016, though 40 historic doping violations have been unearthed after information was provided by a whistle-blower.

Agapitov insisted he knew nothing of the Wada investigation.

“But if the investigation is going on, then this is good. Considering that I am not a part of this system, it is even difficult for me now to guess something about what kind of bribery we are talking about or who [paid the bribes to whom],” Agapitov said.

One of the biggest concerns to Wada will be the information, again from “confidential sources,” about “undetectable” growth hormones being used by weightlifters.

There have been rumors about the use of growth hormones in weightlifting for a while. They can be detected only by expensive blood tests, not in urine samples, and the window of detection is tiny compared to steroids.

Among the hundreds of sanctions imposed on dopers by the IWF, only six are for the use of growth hormones, with a seventh case ongoing.

The athletes concerned are from Turkey and Armenia in 2018, Poland in 2016, and three Beijing 2008 Olympic gold medalists from China. A 2018 violation by the Uzbekistan lifter Rustam Djangabaev is unclosed.

It may be significant that Australia features in the Wada report, which praises Sport Integrity Australia, the national anti-doping agency, for its help in investigating the sourcing and trafficking of prohibited substances.

There was a scandal involving the supply of growth hormones by a scientist to Australian rules footballers a few years ago, and Aussie rules was the first sport in Australia to test for growth hormones.

Wada was unable to confirm or deny if there is any link between Australia and the availability of growth hormones in weightlifting.

Australia is also mentioned in the section about Romania, whose federation president Nicu Vlad, an IWF board member, is a dual national who competed for both countries.

Intelligence collected through the part of Wada’s investigation called Operation Extra suggested “the existence of a pervasive culture of mismanagement and abuse within the sport of weightlifting.”

“More specifically,

athletes,” the report said.

It “identified over 30 current or former athletes suspected of doping, over 15 current or former coaches suspected of assisting their athletes in doping, and over 10 current or former officials suspected of knowingly facilitating the doping of athletes under their supervision.”

Coaches provided athletes with doping programs and one coach acted as a doping consultant to athletes from different nations.

Doping control officers gave “tip-offs” about planned testing, and officials would provide that information to coaches and athletes.

Wada stated, “Operation Extra has also identified numerous dealers of prohibited substances, new ‘doping’ substances, contemporary ‘doping’ methodologies, urine substitution techniques, and several examples of bribes in exchange for anti-doping protection.”

All intelligence “has been disseminated to all relevant Wada departments and external stakeholders.”

As the McLaren Report stated in June, investigators were thwarted by “the culture of fear and silence” within the sport.

Insidethegames

Operation Extra identified a number of national federations, whose officials were alleged to have engaged directly or indirectly in the doping activities of their

Becker in dire straits

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ONDON—Tennis great Boris Becker appeared in a London court on Thursday, accused of failing to surrender two of his Wimbledon trophies to be sold to settle his debts.

The 52-year-old Becker, who was declared bankrupt in 2017, has also failed to turn over his two Australian Open trophies, according to a new 28-count indictment that claims he hasn’t complied with orders to disclose information.

The German pleaded not guilty to all counts during his appearance at Southwark

Crown Court. Becker has allegedly concealed property holdings and more than 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) held in bank accounts.

The indictment lists Becker’s Wimbledon trophies from 1985, when at age 17 he became the youngest men’s singles champion at the All England Club, and 1989. Becker also won the tournament in 1986. He won the Australian Open in 1991 and 1996.

Becker, who lives in London, was told that his trial would begin in September 2021. He faces several years in jail if

Becker

convicted. He remains free on bail.

“He is determined to face and contest these charges and restore his reputation in relation to the allegations made against him,” said Jonathan Caplan, Becker’s attorney. AP

New Clippers coach Lue: It feels good to be wanted

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OS ANGELES—Tyronn Lue is stepping into his new job as coach of the Los Angeles Clippers fully aware of the pressure to bring the first National Basketball Association (NBA) championship to the long-suffering franchise. As if Lue needed a reminder, owner Steve Ballmer proclaimed, “My personality is all about winning.”

It’s been nearly two years since Lue worked as a head coach. He was fired in Cleveland after an 0-6 start to the 2018-2019 season and used the down time to work on himself before joining Doc Rivers’s staff in Los Angeles this past season.

“I lost 35 pounds, changed my diet. That was the main thing, focus on myself,” Lue said Wednesday via Zoom. “After Cleveland, I had the whole season to reflect on what I could have done better.”

Now it’s Lue’s turn to try to take the Clippers where the franchise has never been before—beyond the second round of the playoffs.

“I’m big on pressure,” he said. “If you don’t have pressure that means you don’t have a chance to win a championship. I want to be one of the greatest coaches.”

Ballmer said, “Ty is my kind of guy. He wants to move, move, move, learn, absorb, think new thoughts, which I think is essential to keep pushing yourself.”

Lue, 43, already has three NBA championships on his resume—two as a player with the rival Lakers and one as coach of Cleveland when LeBron James played for the Cavaliers. He also led the Cavs to the Finals in 2017 and 2018, but both times they lost to Golden State. Lue went 128-83 in parts of four seasons with them.

The Clippers—in the first season of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George playing together—went 49-23 this regular season, the fourth-best record in franchise history.

Leonard and George can both opt out and become free agents after next season.

It’ll be up to Lue to balance the personalities of his two Leonard and George, who by nature are quiet and reserved. He’s dealt with superstars before, having coached James and been a teammate of the late Kobe Bryant.

“Our two players, they lead by example.

Practicing hard and working hard every day individually on their game,” Lue said. “You’re not going to have the best players be your leaders all the time. It’s going to be collective.”

Lue believes keeping everyone healthy is the key for next season, whenever it starts.

Leonard was on a load management program last season because of a left knee injury and only played in 57 games. George missed all of training camp and the first several games while recovering from offseason shoulder surgery.

Lue said he wasn’t sure about Leonard’s load management for next season without first talking to

Lue

the team’s medical staff.

“They’re going to have to adjust to my system and my program, but I’m also going to have to adjust,” Lue said of Leonard and George.

“It starts on the defensive end with those two guys setting the tone every night.”

Rivers established a winning tradition, taking the Clippers to the playoffs in six of his seven seasons, by far the most successful stretch in franchise history. Playing in the NBA bubble in Florida, the Clippers wasted a 3-1 lead over Denver and lost in the Western Conference semifinals in mid-September.

Two weeks later, Rivers was fired.

“I definitely gave it time. It’s very important to me that we don’t do anything in the heat of the moment,” Ballmer said. “Doc and I needed to have some chats. After a few chats, we decided collectively that it was probably right to move in a different direction.”

Rivers wasn’t out of a job for long, getting hired the same week to coach the Philadelphia 76ers.

Ballmer was quick to address Rivers’s departure, bringing it up even before mentioning Lue. “I really want to thank Doc Rivers. Doc was obviously a fantastic championship coach,” Ballmer said, apparently referring to the 2008 NBA title Rivers won as coach of the Boston Celtics.

“He’s been a mentor since I first purchased the Clippers six years ago. I’m so grateful to Doc. Doc is a very special human being. He’s been a great ambassador and a great person. I wish him well in Philadelphia, except for the two days a year when we play him.”

Lue experienced a loss when Rivers was sent packing.

“It’s been tough,” he said. “Doc has been my mentor since I’ve been in the league. Without Doc, I wouldn’t be in this position today.”

Lue was a candidate for other head coaching jobs this offseason. Ballmer cited Lue’s accountability and his ability to connect with the players as factors that make “the best of the best is Ty Lue.” “They chose me,” Lue said. “It feels good to be wanted.” AP

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BusinessMirror OCTOBER 25, 2020 | soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com

YOUR MUSI

RENAISSANCE WOMAN Jannine Weigel on finding her niche through YouTube

By Stephanie Joy Ching

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HEN 10-year old Jannine Weigel first stepped on the stage to sing, she immediately knew this was the career she wanted to take. Now a solo artist under RedRecords, Jannine has emerged as a renaissance woman who is putting Thailand on the global music stage with her single “Passcode.”

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: T. Anthony C. Cabangon

Editor-In-Chief

: Lourdes M. Fernandez

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: Aldwin M. Tolosa

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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, Darwin Fernandez, Leony Garcia, Stephanie Joy Ching Pauline Joy M. Gutierrez : Kaye VillagomezLosorata Annie S. Alejo

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: Bernard P. Testa Nonie Reyes

Y2Z & SOUNDSTRIP are published and distributed free every Sunday by the Philippine Business Daily Mirror Publishing Inc. as a project of the

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competition and was quickly signed on to become an idol trainee.

Unlike K-Pop idol training, which is known for being extremely rigorous and requires almost 24/7 devotion to perfecting both singing and dancing, Jannine said her own training did not require her to live in her record company’s premises.

“In my experience, I would only go to the company about four to five times a week and have dance and vocal lessons. Sometimes we have performance or acting lessons as well,” she shared.

After six months of training, she wanted a new challenge. Given the immense popularity of YouTubers at the time, she decided to start her own YouTube channel, which

According to Jannine, “Passcode” is simply a song about “falling in love but still being scared.”

“You’re basically asking for the passcode to his heart but you end up telling them how you feel,” she said. Through a combination of its dance pop melody and Jannine’s effortless charm and vocals, “Passcode” is not only a delight to the ears, but shows that Southeast Asian music can stand toe to toe with other acts around the world.

Born in Germany and later moved to Thailand, Jannine was a born entertainer, having entered the entertainment industry at age 10 first as a model and later as a child actor.

“When I was eleven I wanted to take part in a singing competition.

And before that I loved music but I never really took any lessons so I didn’t really think that I was good at it. But I tried it anyway,” she shared.

“The moment I got onstage, I immediately knew I wanted to pursue music as more than just a hobby.”

As fate would have it, Jannine was able to catch the attention of a record label shortly after the JANNINE Weigel

featured mostly covers and vlogs.

“I felt really inspired by them so I thought, Why not try it too and see where it goes?,” she said.

Through YouTube, she was able to experiment with many different singing styles and was able to prove to her company that she was worthy of debut.

“Some would train for more than a year, maybe two to three years and some would maybe not debut at all,” she said “I think what got me to debut really fast was when I started gaining more recognition for what I’ve done in my YouTube channel.

It kinda made them (the record company) see that I was ready.”

Jannine also pointed out that doing YouTube helped her understand what her audience expects of her which went a long way in developing her own style and in finding her niche.

“I definitely learned a lot and through the process I was able to find myself and have a more clear image of who I am,” she concluded.

Instagram is the home of pretty pictures.

Why are people flocking to it for news?

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soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com | OCTOBER 25, 2020

BUSINESS

SoundSampler

by Tony M. Maghirang

Four albums to free your mind from the pandemic dread

DMA’s The Glow

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BRUCE Springsteen (Photo by Greg Allen/Invision/AP, File)

dilemma in the fiery “Rainmaker.” Then he also delivers a moving “The Power of Prayer” that makes one think Springsteen may be considering his future move, including probably how he wants his ride into the sunset.

Despite sounding like some throwback, “Letter To You” could be The Boss saying he’s back on the saddle reprising his best years in the ‘70s. Who knows, next time we hear from him, Bruce could be singing his ‘80s opus reclaimed titled “Born in the USA (Finally Free Again}”? That’ll be the day.

with ZZ Top by way of Van Halen. “Clash City Rockers” propels the punk-like swagger of “No One’s Type”.

Artemius will break out big once all these emergency measures get dismantled by the wayside.

RITPOP loving Aussies DMA’s start their third album with “Never Before,” a grand tribute to their heroes, then they move quickly to the show-stopping punch of the title track, a mid-tempo pop rocker that can make you dance around the room while singing along like stupid crazy.

The succeeding tracks are serious attempts to capture the brilliance of “The Glow” which actually rubs off on “Strangers” and “Hello Girlfriend” albeit in small doses of the original glimmer that can get feet shuffling and adrenaline pumping.

Just one major hit plus a couple of minor winners and “The Glow” has an inside track on Best Album of the Year honors.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Letter To You

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N his 20th and latest album. The Boss revisits his classic Born To Run recording first released in 1975. It’s also the first time in six years that most of the band members in the Born To Run sessions are back with Springsteen for 2020’s ‘Letter To You.’ There’s pianist Roy Bittan, guitarist Nils Lofgren, and bassist Gary Tallent, to name three. while the late great saxophonist Clarence “Big Man” Clemons has been replaced by his nephew Jake Clemons.

For all intents and purposes, the sound and ferocity of “Born To Run” inform the classic rock sonics of “Letter To You.” But instead of racing on the streets, 71-year old Bruce is acting his age, reflecting now about what has gone before minus the pent-up rage of youth almost five decades before.

Still, he’s got some beef to settle going by such titles as “Last Man Standing” and “Burnin’ Train” and some allusions to the climate change

I AM Z I Wanna Be Free

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ARTEMIUS Small Kcid Energy

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HE nonsensical album title hardly clues you in on what’s going on in Artemius’ musical world.

One thing sure is. The five tracks on his new album actually brim with enough oomph to rock you mind and body out of your lockdown blues.

Speaking of the blues, “Runaway Blues” is one tough thoroughbred that should be strutting soon at the Roadhouse. Follow up “Sin Again” plays footsie

NE man act I am Z counts among his influences The Eraserheads, The Beatles and Daft Punk.

The E-heads and The Beatles are pretty obvious in the melodies and hooks Z crams in his songs.

Rather than Daft Punk, he should also count Carlos Santana because Z’s guitar runs operate in the extended solo space inhabited by the likes of Santana and Jeff Beck.

The great thing is, Z’s first album roams freely outside of classic rock tradition. Tracks like “Baby, Let’s Go,” “Sa Bagong Mundo” and the opening titular cut are just as much pop heaven as rock dreamland. There’s even a hint of Alamid in “Sa Bagong Mundo” that should cross it over to alternative rock as well as mainstream pop fans.

WARNER Music Channel

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ELIVE Rico Blanco’s hits on Warner Music Philippines’ Youtube concert series at https://wmp.lnk.to/youtube.

You can now get the full concert experience right in your own home as well as “Antukin” and “Yugto” from Rico Blanco’s debut album “Your Universe”, “Balisong”, and extended feature of the multi-talented artist’s best Rivermaya songs, “Kung Ayaw Mo Huwag Mo” and “Panahon Na Naman”.

Live sets from balladeer Christian Bautista and bossa princess Sitti Navarro are also available. Just subscribe to the Warner YouTube channel.

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Instagram is the home of pretty pictures.

Why are people flocking to it for news?

By Laura Glitsos

users prefer “lighter” and “less-demanding” types of interaction with online news.

Edith Cowan University

W

e know Instagram is the most influential app when it comes to lifestyle and beauty trends. But recent research shows increasing numbers of people are also going to Instagram for their news.

A report by the Reuters Institute found the use of Instagram for news has doubled across all age groups since 2018.

The platform is now set to overtake Twitter as a news source in the coming year, with younger people in particular embracing Instagram for their news.

The Reuters report found Instagram reaches 11 percent of people of all ages for news, based on survey results for 12 countries, including Australia. But the embrace of the platform for news is particularly pronounced for young people. For example, in April, 24 percent of 18-24 year olds in the United Kingdom used Instagram to find out about Covid-19. This compares with 26 percent in the United States.

Australians were not polled for this particular question, but a 2020 Australian study of school students found 49 percent of teenagers surveyed got their news from Instagram.

Instagram is certainly viewed as a younger person’s platform, as opposed to Facebook, which is seen to be for older people. Those between 18 and 34 make up about 63 percent of Instagram users worldwide.

Instagram users can receive news stories and updates by following another user and then seeing what they post by scrolling

What does this mean for news consumption?

through their feed. Alternatively, users can search via a hashtag.

Why are young people choosing Instagram for news?

Those under about 35 have grown up with mobile and social media as the norm. So it follows they interact with news and current events in a radically different way from previous generations, or even news consumers a decade ago.

Recent research suggests young people think that rather than going to dedicated sources for their news—like a newspaper or TV bulletin—the news will come to them.

So, important information “finds them” anyway, through their general media use, peers and social connections.

Another key difference with older news consumers is that younger people are “prosumers.” Not only do they read the news, they can actually produce it and join in what’s trending. Sometimes, this may be by simply sharing a post with extra commentary and opinion. At other times, users might take an image or video and edit it in order to make and share a meme that relates to the content.

Order in a chaotic world Amid global chaos and uncertainty, Instagram offers up the world as a stable, structured, and highly stylized.

Instagram is less chaotic than other social-media platforms because of the actual interface design. That is, the focus is almost purely on aesthetics—on the beauty and impact of the image using filters and tools.

This type of media consumption soothes instead of provoking anxiety. In some senses, it simplifies and streamlines the chaos of the world.

Instagram’s ability to simplify and “organize” the world resonates with another finding of the Reuters report—Instagram has become even more important with younger groups for accessing news about Covid-19.

The power of influencers Instagram is home to “influencers”— high-profile users who are considered to be style and opinion leaders. While they can influence the products we buy, or the places we travel to, they can also influence the information we consume.

This becomes even more important in times of crisis. It is comforting to seek out narratives or perspectives from people we know and trust.

In the case of news media, Instagram gives young people what feels like a direct and personal line to their role models. In this respect, so does Twitter, but again, the interface of Instagram is simpler. On Instagram, what might be complex and confusing issues are condensed down to images.

Recent research also suggests Instagram

The implications of the move toward “Insta-news” are complex. One concern is the way people can curate their own reality, because they can shape their feed so they only see what they want. They can unfollow or block what they do not like.

In some senses, this can sense of control is positive. However, this also means people are essentially constructing what they want the world to look like. This leads to “filter bubbles,” where people become “cut off” from other, perhaps more challenging, ideas.

Western culture is essentially “ocularcentric.” In other words, we are obsessed with images. And we are more likely to believe things we can see. As a result, news consumers may be less inclined to challenge or critique what they see on Instagram.

Even though they need to be doing this online more than ever.

The dangers of fake followers, fake accounts and fake news are already wellknown on social media. Last year, Institut Polytechnique de Paris researchers found 4,000 fake accounts in a targeted sample on Instagram.

Good-looking news in a hostile world For young people seeking solace from the hostility and pressure of news events, Instagram provides a space filled with good-looking visual stimulation, often from people they like and trust.

And as the Reuters report noted—Instagram may not be everything. Social media are generally used “in combination” with other types of news information.

But as increasing numbers of people turn to Instagram for their news, the question remains: is this the news they need, or simply the news they want to see? The Conversation

Is the way we consume news detrimental to our health?

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he way we consume news has been profoundly altered by media developments. The increase of online news, particularly when presented via social-media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and even Instagram (see main story) has affected how we access and consume our news.

When news was delivered via traditional oneway outlets such as television and radio, we were passive receivers. But on social-media platforms, we’re active consumers. We sculpt and cultivate our news through immediate feedback, such as reacts or shares.

There’s evidence this might not be especially good for us.

Amid an unfolding crisis such as a pandemic, news presented via one-way outlets might be less

damaging than news consumed online. In early months of Covid-19, researchers found news consumed online and via social media was associated with increased depression, anxiety and stress. The effects weren’t as bad when news was consumed via traditional media such as television and newspapers.

This isn’t limited to the pandemic. After the September 11 attacks, young people who consumed news via online sources experienced more PTSD symptoms than those using traditional media. This effect was attributed to more graphic images online, and the possibility for extra exposure as people could watch the footage repeatedly. Multiple studies have found the more we consume news during or after a tragedy, crisis or natural disaster, the more likely we are to de-

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velop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

How then can we take control of our news consumption? First, it’s important to be aware your news consumption via different sources can look very different. Traditional media tends to focus on the facts, whereas stories, rumors, and human interest pieces

October 25, 2020

are prioritized on social media.

Empower yourself with the knowledge that, as humans, we are subject to bias. The media and those producing the news know this. These biases, which make us wonderfully human, also make us wonderfully biased to the information we receive.

Our biases mean we’re more likely to be impacted by negative news and more likely to believe what we see is more prevalent than it truly is.

That’s certainly not to say no news is good news.

News is powerful, and helps us stay connected and informed. But in a world where we’re surrounded by news 24/7, it is important we are aware of our cognitive biases and the distortions they create. Let’s take control of our news consumption rather than allowing it to control us. The Conversation