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#NotForSale

The billion-peso cyber-pedophilia industry

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By Roderick L. Abad | Contributor

ITH the advent of information communications technology (ICT), children are now easy prey to predators in the borderless sex trade that is continuously expanding via the World Wide Web, thereby necessitating a multisectoral cooperation to resolve this social menace, revealed the study commissioned by Plan International Philippines (PIP).

Dubbed “Children and the Sex Trade in the Digital Age: Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) in Metro Manila”, the research highlighted that social

media, Internet accessibility and cheaper technology are providing new pathways to the sex trade.

“As the nature of sex industry shifts from being primarily estab-

lishment-bound to a virtual online network, this leaves children in countries like the Philippines—one of the world leaders in social-media use—increasingly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse,” said Dennis O’Brien, country director of PIP. The presence of the Internet has really redefined the nature of sexual abuse of children at present.

It now cuts across continents; it’s a borderless crime.

“Child abuse is not new. But the progress and greater access to ICT and the early introduction of this to children make them more vulnerable, thereby aggravating the problem. The absence of the physical contact does not remove it from the definition of abuse,” noted Sheila Estabillo, project manager of PIP. CSEC is defined as “the use of a child in sexual activities for remuneration or any other form of consideration.” Its three primary

and interrelated forms are exploitation of children for prostitution, pornography and trafficking for sexual objectives.

Prostitution, which flourished in the 1970s, continues to be a serious problem in the Philippines, as there is a high incidence of youngsters being exploited, particularly in tourism-related sectors.

“It’s the oldest profession.

And so I think elimination is probably our biggest challenge and the most difficult,” said Dr. Elizabeth de Castro, lead researcher and executive director of Psychological Support and Children’s Rights Resource Center.

Overtime, the flesh trade has evolved. From the filthy streets of Ermita and dark alleys of other red-light districts of past decades, selling quickie pleasures has gone virtual nowadays. And this proves to be a growing business, as online sexual exploitation of children

(OSEC) alone is reported to be a P1billion industry today.

“I remember reading about it and then thinking that it’s just only sort of like a peek into the severity and the kind of the gravity of the situation here in the Philippines and the urgency of actions needed for its resolution,” PIP Campaigns and Advocacy Specialist Paulene Santos told the BusinessMirror.

“What’s more intriguing is that in this industry, children are sort of seen as a reusable good. With children, you can abuse them over and over again. That’s why it’s such a lucrative industry,” she added.

Virtual

SINCE CSEC has become a perennial global problem, the entire research community agrees that available data and information had to be updated. The often-quoted estimate of 60,000 to 100,000 children in prostitution, for instance,

lacks the support of solid research to generate reliable statistics.

“The earlier surveys which we still know are in the 1990s. That is how important this Plan [International Philippines] study is, because it is really a kickoff for a more indepth kind of such,” De Castro said.

Conceding that the small number of respondents and participants in their research is not significant enough to convince the executive and legislative bodies to support whatever causes to protect the children from any form of sexual exploitation, she’s confident, though, that it’s providing the public a deeper understanding of this social problem and a broader perspective on the plight of the victims themselves.

“What we did was really just to show you cases. Thirty-two is not a number in statistics, it’s a sampling size that’s so small. But what Continued on A2

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t is prime time, where are your kids?

They are all over the city, watching your favorite show. Not on tv but on a smartphone you once gave them as a present. They are watching Netflix, NBA, the World Cup, UEFA Euro, America’s Next Top Model, BBC, or enjoying Bruno Mars on Youtube.

PESO exchange rates n US 51.7410

The smartphone has become everyone’s portable tv set. Wherever, whenever. You get what’s on your local tv and experience much more. Naturally, advertisers are making the most of it, hunting and wanting to be as close to the smartphone-savvy market as they can get—with online videos for their latest brand pitch.

Over the last two years, there is a significant rise of Philippine advertisers opting to do online videos rather than TV commercials. Millennials, who are wired round-theclock, are the primary target.

Sabelskaya | Dreamstime.com

Online video or TV ad? Be interesting in both

By Roger Pe

In the world’s most prestigious advertising award shows, Cannes, Clio, One Show, Epica, New York and London Ad Festivals, online video has also been made as a separate category, amplifying its growing strength and strategic importance as the new normal.

Recently, media giant Zenith Optimedia boldly announced its prediction: “Television’s dominance of the media mix will end in 2018, as it will be usurped by the Internet.” The sad truth is echoed

by Advertising Age, which also said that television, which grew only

Yupachingping | Dreamstime.com

CHILDREN BECOME ‘REUSABLE GOODS’ IN FLOURISHING ONLINE FLESH TRADE

at a slower pace over the last three years, is expected to drop to 34.8 percent on the same year.

Worldwide, online videos are beginning to be the biggest media channel for advertisers. In his article “How Teenage Behavior Predicts the Future of Technology,” author Derek Thompson paid tribute to Mark Zuckerberg, who has said that the behavior of the young is predictive of the future.

“They were on Facebook, Youtube, Tumblr, Snapchat, Whats­ App, Instagram, and later, spread Continued on A2

n japan 0.4540 n UK 68.1015 n HK 6.6314 n CHINA 7.7882 n singapore 37.8556 n australia 39.6336 n EU 60.2834 n SAUDI arabia 13.7968

Source: BSP (27 October 2017 )

NewsSunday BusinessMirror

A2 Sunday, October 29, 2017

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The billion-peso cyber-pedophilia industry Continued from A1

we did was really go deep into the nature and scope of the problem, not in figures, but in depth,” she explained.

The study engaged children and adolescents involved in the sex trade, service providers, contact facilitators, and pimps or handlers—all of them entering the industry between the ages 13 and 18.

Per the results, 66 percent have either used their own socialmedia accounts or joined closed groups, where their services and contact details are advertised through promotional photos.

Some were engaged in cyber pornography performed inside sex dens, where they performed in front of webcams in various states of undress for paying viewers.

As expected, poverty mainly drove the participants into the flesh trade. At least a third of them, or 38 percent, cited that supporting their family’s needs is the very reason they remained offering sex for a fee.

Lack of education, likewise, forced most of the respondents to think they could not find an alternative source of income. In fact, almost two-thirds of them, or 65.6 percent, did not graduate from high school, if they at all attended secondary school.

PIP believes that it’s important that gathering and analyzing such information—the lives and experiences of children in the sex industry, the analyses of the information and the recommendations regarding how best to address the problem of CSEC—involve the children themselves.

Relevant, child-centered and up-to-date evidence on CSEC is vi-

tal in lobbying and advocating for the protection of children to the government so, at the very least, child-protection mechanisms at all levels are functional.

“It’s very dangerous to make ‘guesstimates’ just to convince lawmakers. We have to convince them in terms of the facts that are at hand, and it’s already scary as it is.

The potential victim is everyone and every all. The potential victims of this kind of phenomenon because it’s Internet-mediated are your children, my children, or other people’s children. This is because the base is no longer in brothels or freelancing on the street. The base is the home, the school, Internet cafés or wherever young people are congregated,” the lead researcher said.

One voice vs sexual exploitation

COINCIDING with the recent release of the study, PIP launched the #NotForSale campaign aimed at unifying all sectors to address the sex trade involving minors.

This initiative, which is part of the Girls Advocacy Alliance, is an opportunity to improve existing programs that combat the CSEC and raise public awareness so as to help lessen the alarmingly high incidence of such cases, according to Santos.

As indicated in the research, some of the participants are still not aware of most, if not all, of the government policies and programs available to provide them assistance.

In addition, about half of them don’t know which specific intervention they would need. Some victims had to deal with specific issues, such as the effectiveness and impartiality of law-enforcement agencies when handling cases of sexual exploitation.

“We are working with partners and supporters to create systematic change that can be felt on the ground so that victims are not retraumatized in the process of seeking justice, so that more incidents are reported to the authorities and so that there are less children that fall prey to commercial sexual exploitation because they and their guardians are aware of what commercial sexual exploitation is and how it can damage children for life,” she said.

Protection

WHILE condemning illicit acts that abuse the nation’s young populace, PIP is actively lobbying for proposed measures to prevent the children from engaging in any sexual activity.

Santos bared that they are pushing to raise the minimum of age for sexual consent in the country. At present, children as young as 12 years old in the Philippines can consent to sex.

“The low age of the sexual consent makes children more vulnerable to being exploited,” she said.

This age, likewise, applies to the case of statutory rape in the country, according to lawyer Naomi Abarientos, deputy director of Children’s Legal Bureau Inc. “So below 12 [years old], that’s absolutely prohibited [for everyone] to engage in sex with the child even if there is consent. That’s still rape,” she said.

Above 12, if the child consents or there’s no force, etc., that’s not necessarily rape. It could be other crimes—qualified seduction or other types of sexual exploitation under Republic Act 7610, but not necessarily rape.

“That’s what we are trying to say, that this age of giving consent should be raised to 15, not 12. Because 13-, 14-year-old children are also being victimized and you cannot charge those people with rape if these children actually consented, sort of,” she said.

As far as protecting the children from any sexual abuse, Santos noted there are “a lot of inconsistencies with other laws that have been passed”.

For instance, she cited a law for antihuman trafficking, wherein regardless of consent, a crime against trafficking, or CSEC, involving a child under 18 can be penalized.

“We want consistency in the law because we see that it’s an added layer of protection for children,” the campaigns and advocacy specialist of PIP pointed out.

Another cause that the group is pushing is the establishment of Preventive Education Act Against Human Trafficking, Santos added.

“Those are our two priority pieces of legislation [that we promote].

We see that there actually needs to be a support from the public, like public clamor, public demand, and this can only happen when we have the youth driving the information campaign and support from the different sectors,” she said.

In doing so, she said they are tapping partners from different sectors to help them push both the legislative agenda and also the mechanisms that they are trying to establish on ground in terms of

responding to, as well as detection and prevention of CSEC.

Raising funds for child protection

WHILE efforts to confront the alarming CSEC cases in the country continue, Akbayan Partylist Rep. Tom Villarin said there’s not enough resources to put an end to this problem.

He told the BusinessMirror that government funding needs to be raised to further intensify the national initiatives to combat such social malady.

This year’s budget of P94 million for the Anti-Human Trafficking Act, which remains insufficient since the law was implemented in 2013, must be raised in the coming years.

“We’re alarmed given that the scope of the issue on human trafficking, specifically child trafficking, is so vague. The problem is really community-based and it also involves, of course, the families and communities. With such minuscule budget, that’s mainly for personnel salary and operational expenses. It’s not really enough,” he said.

The legislator, likewise, noted that the Department of Justice, which handles the appropriation, has other programs to initiate. “[So] in terms of really doing the monitoring and having intervention and prosecution of child sexual abuses, I think they need an allocation from P300 million to P500 million,” he revealed. “It should be focused, basically, on cyber patrolling.”

Villarin suggested that collaboration will also be of big help with the Bureau of Immigration and interagency committee on antihuman trafficking to look at the database of foreign nationals who will enter the country.

Forging partnerships with international police and other global agencies involved in addressing CSEC, OSEC and human trafficking must be considered by the government.

Seeing the rise in Internetbased child sexual exploitation nationwide, he mentioned proposed laws that are still pending in Congress—such as the gender-based Internet violence that includes child sexual exploitation—must be given priority for enactment.

“Perhaps with this new law, we could regulate online activities of those involved in online child pornography and sexual exploitation,” he recommended.

Regarding community-based interventions, the lawmaker pushed for mandatory budget in the share of the internal revenue allotment of local government units.

The Akbayan party-list representative, likewise, cited that the 10-percent budget of the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) and the special education fund of LGUs be tapped in promoting awareness on child sexual exploitation.

“So these are the existing sources of funds that we can tap for these campaigns,” Villarin said of their proposals to address sexual abuse of children in the Philippines.

Online video or TV ad? Be interesting in both Continued from A1

to older age groups. They spend more time online. That’s the reason online videos are the best way to reach them,” he said.

Mike Palacios, digital strategy consultant for Publicis Manila, shares his valuable perspective:

“There are several factors for the migration to online video, and I don’t think that price is the main driver. First, it starts with a viable audience, with well past 50 million users on Facebook, driven mainly by mobile users.”

“Then there’s the ability to target that audience,” Palacios adds.

“Both our main local video platforms have amazing capabilities for ad targeting, not just by age, gender, location and interest, but in terms of behavior as well.

Just visited our website? Just engaged with us on Facebook? Just read a piece of content? We can deploy a video campaign based on those triggers,” Palacios says.

Palacios punctuates the importance of creativity and mentions that there are no creative boundaries when it comes to producing online videos.

“Do you want to publish a long-form Mother’s Day video that showcases your brand story?

Do you want to do a hundred oneminute recipes that inspire young chefs? Everything’s on the table.

All that, before price,” he emphasizes.

Online videos are infinitely scalable, according to Palacios.

They can be broadly targeted at P5 million or hyper-targeted at P50,000, he says. Moreover, online videos allow you “to create and deliver content if you have a laser-focused video strategy or just targeting certain brand or product segments,” he says.

Rise of online videos

A local production house owner whose company has produced a number of one- to three- minuter videos over the last three months gives advertisers who are planning to do online videos a reason to smile.

“Producing high-quality video content today does not cost big money anymore. It can be edited and reedited to unlimited versions, from 10-second teasers, all the way

to half-hour shows,” he says. “Because of the varied ways one can do with a very good mother material, video marketing can actually work out less expensive in the long run,” he reasons out.

“There is truth to it,” a veteran Philippine advertising observer says. “You don’t need much money to produce high-quality online videos. They are roughly 20 percent less than what it costs to do a normal 30-second tv commercial.

And they enjoy unprecedented media highway expanse because they are readily uploadable,” she says.

In an important research conducted by Pricewaterhouse­ Coopers, it concluded that by 2018, digital advertising would account for a third of advertising spend in the US. This means that advertisers would have to start adopting a “digital mindset” if they are to make the most of their future in effectively marketing their brands.

It also stated that online advertising would grow from $133 billion to $295 billion by 2018. The money would come from budgets previously allotted to television advertising.

According to the report, the shift in budgets toward online advertising was due to two key factors: Better consumer reach on consumers who are on portable devices and excellent opportunities to display high-quality video.

Notable research company Nielsen, on the other hand, puts it succinctly: “Online videos are actually more effective than TV ads because they cannot be skipped.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re better than traditional TV ads. In fact, more often than not, they’re exactly the same.”

Online video ads have 65-percent general recall compared to 46 percent for TV ads. Brand recall online is also higher, 50 percent compared to TV’s 28 percent. Message online recall is 39 percent compared to TV’s 21 percent, the report further said.

Though TV may still dominate the advertising market, does that make online video a better advertising medium? Nielsen says it is like comparing apples to oranges and gives out this answer:

“Television offers unparalleled capacity to build reach,

while online video offers pinpoint targeting and the potential for personalization of marketing messages. Both are powerful tools for establishing brand awareness and associations. It may not be apples to apples, but they are growing and TV is not.”

“TV’s status as the numberone channel for brand awareness means that it will continue to pull in big budgets, with more direct online channels used to complement that reach. As a traditional medium, TV is still important,” said Rich Lehrfeld, senior VP-global brand marketing and communication for American Express.

“When we run a heavy TV schedule, we see a lift in sales and product awareness. We need to run two weeks of digital to get the reach of one day of broadcast.”

Adam Harter, Pepsi VP for cultural connections, says: “It’s no longer a debate between TV and digital. It is how we bring these two things together.” He said that ads on TV have been reported to deliver not only the greatest reach, but also outperformed online videos when the objective is lead generation or increasing sales. Further studies made by Nielsen also revealed that the impression TV advertising left on consumers was “more trusted” and “lasts longer in the minds of potential customers”.

In today’s environment, television advertising is still the heavyweight and the undisputed king. People tend to unconsciously accept that “if it’s on TV, someone has paid a lot of money to put it there, so it must be of some value.”

For this reason, “as seen on TV” has many positive associations for brands. People trust the familiar and brands they know, and the effectiveness of “as seen on TV” is a testament to TV’s ability to build brand awareness.

All things said, it’s not a case of online video versus TV ads. But rather, it is a challenge for marketers to combine the best of both worlds to harness the power of their strengths in the overall marketing mix. So whether it’s online video or TV ad that you will be doing, creativity should be at the core of your execution, the common denominator that must shine in the medium.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

The World BusinessMirror

In Britain, a Brexit spat reveals ‘deep’ divisions L

ONDON—The letter is as British as it gets: polite, polished and understated.

Written by a senior Conservative Party lawmaker, Christopher Heaton-Harris, and sent to British universities, it asked officials to reveal the names of professors involved in teaching students about Europe, including Britain’s decision last year to leave the European Union, a process known as Brexit.

“Furthermore,” the missive read, “if I could be provided with a copy of the syllabus and links to the online lectures which relate to this area I would be much obliged.”

Despite its apparently mild tone, the letter has provoked a national debate on freedom of speech in universities and whether the country is being subjected to political censorship in a British version of McCarthyism. The uproar increased on Thursday after The Daily Mail, a popular tabloid that has vociferously supported Brexit, and which carries an anti-immigrant slant, published a frontpage article citing instances in which it said university professors had encouraged students to oppose a Brexit. On another page, more than a dozen headshots of academic leaders were assembled around a headline that read: “Just why is every new Oxbridge head a leftie?” (“Oxbridge” is shorthand for the two leading universities in Britain: Oxford and Cambridge.)

While the letter itself is the work of a single politician, the backlash underscores the toxic climate and the searing divisions that dominate Britain more than a year after its referendum on Brexit.

There is deep uncertainty and little

consensus over what Britain’s future should look like. Negotiations with the European Union over divorce terms have all but stalled. Even the ruling Conservative Party, which called for the referendum in the first place, is divided over what kind of a break it wants. Resentment against elites remains as acerbic as ever.

“It’s got that smell of something McCarthyite, and people are in a paranoid frame of mind,” Peter York, a prominent commentator, said of the letter. “So it doesn’t take much.” Just like the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between supporters and opponents of President Donald J. Trump in the United States, Britain is facing a“tremendously emotive” moment, he said in an interview.

Since the letter was made public, a British minister who oversees universities, Jo Johnson, has defended Heaton-Harris, though only halfheartedly, saying he was simply doing research for a book. Still, Johnson said, “a letter that could have been misinterpreted should probably not have been sent this way.”

Heaton-Harris wrote on Twitter that he “believes in free speech and in having an open and vigorous debate on Brexit.”

He could not immediately be reached for comment.

David G reen, vice chancellor of University of Worcester who was among those receiving Heaton-Harris’s letter, said he had never seen anything like it in his nearly four decades in academia. “It’s a very British McCarthyism,” he said by telephone. New York Times News Service

Sunday, October 29, 2017

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Young Muslims have caught $100-B travel bug, report says

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ountries will need Muslimfriendly tourist industries if they want a slice of one of the world’s fastest-growing traveler markets.

So - c a l led m i l lenn i a l Mu s lims—those aged between 18 and 36—are projected to spend more than $100 billion annually on traveling by 2025, almost double last year’s figure, according to a report from MasterCard and Muslim travel web site HalalTrip.

All age groups belonging to the religion are expected to spend around three times that much.

“It’s definitely an overlooked segment the broader travel industry should look at and be prepared to cater to,” said Douglas Quinby, an Atlanta-based travel analyst at research firm Phocuswright Inc. “There are some countries, whose populations are predominantly Muslim, that are growing very fast, where the population is increasingly becoming middle-class and the demand for travel, both leisure tourism and pilgrimage travel, is growing quite significantly.”

For now, the top destinations for millennial Muslims are Malaysia and Indonesia, nations where the religion’s followers make up a majority of the population. However, the next popular holiday spots are Japan, Thailand and Australia, non-Muslim countries where tourism is a key engine of economic growth. Some are starting to recognize the opportunities. In Japan’s Okayama prefecture, the local tourism industry has started certifying Muslim-f r iend ly restaurants, hotels and other facilities with a special logo. Local businesses around the country are starting to reach out to mosques to learn about Islam and better cater to Muslim tourists, according to Halal Media Japan Co. Ltd, an online information portal for Muslim visitors.

South Korea has organized a

Tourists pose for photographs at Merlion Park in Singapore, on Thursday on February 18, 2016. SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg

halal-themed restaurant festival in an effort to boost tourism receipts after a decline in Chinese visitors due to tensions over missile deployments. In Australia, however, challenges remain. A survey of more than 2,000 people this week found that nearly half supported a partial ban on Muslim immigrants.

The number of Muslim international travelers is expected to grow to 156 million by 2020, partly due to the growth of the religion’s population: it’s ex-

pected to reach nearly 3 billion worldwide by 2060, a 70-percent jump from 2015, according to the report. Come 2030, almost a third of the world’s population aged 15 to 29 is forecast to be Muslims.

“The Muslim traveler market is growing rapidly as a highly lucrative segment in contemporary tourism and will be entering their peak earning, spending and traveling life stage within the next five to 10 years,” said Fazal Bahardeen, chief executive of HalalTrip. Bloomberg News

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The World BusinessMirror

Sunday, October 29, 2017

www.businessmirror.com.ph

North Korea’s elusive UN envoys hard to track down in Manhattan

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People celebrate after Catalonia’s separatist leader, Carles Puigdemont, announced he would place a decision on independence from Spain before the region’s parliament, in Barcelona, on October 26. The move by Puigdemont virtually ensures that the central government in Madrid will take control of the restive region, using its emergency constitutional powers. New York Times

Catalan leader will let region’s parliament decide on secession

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ARCELONA, Spain—After a chaotic day of wavering, Catalonia’s separatist leader, Carles Puigdemont, announced on Thursday that he would place a decision on independence from Spain before the region’s parliament.

The move by Puigdemont virtually ensures that the central government in Madrid will take control of the restive region, using its emergency constitutional powers following an expected approval vote on Friday in the Spanish Senate, where the conservative party of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy holds a majority.

Pu igdemont made t he a nnouncement before a scheduled appearance before the Catalan parliament on Thursday evening.

He said he had made the decision after failing to secure a commitment from the central government that it would not take control of the region if he called early elections.

“There are none of the guarantees that justify convening elections today [Thursday],” Puigdemont said during a brief televised address from his government headquarters. “I tried to obtain the guarantees,” he said, but “I didn’t get a responsible answer from the Spanish government, which has instead used this option to add to the tension.”

He added: “It is now for parliament to decide its answer to the application” of Article 155 of the national constitution.

The Catalan parliament met later Thursday, and might vote on a declaration of independence on Friday, shortly after the Spanish Senate approves emergency measures to impose Madrid’s direct rule on Catalonia.

On Saturday Rajoy announced that, using Article 155, he was preparing to take full control over Catalonia’s administration and to replace Puigdemont, along with Catalonia’s entire separatist leadership, in order to stop the region’s secessionism in its tracks.

An alliance of separatist parties has controlled the regional parliament since 2015, after winning elections, but with only 48 percent of the votes. Puigdemont’s fragile coalition has 72 of the 135 seats in the Catalan parliament.

The mounting pressures on both men were evident throughout a day of confusion in a crisis that has presented Spain with one of its gravest tests since embracing

democracy in 1978. Puigdemont clearly hoped that a preemptive call for elections would hold off Madrid ’s intervention. Earlier Thursday, the separatist leader scheduled, delayed and then finally canceled a televised address in which he had been expected to take such a move.

His delay was apparently designed to secure a firm pledge from Rajoy that Madrid would not impose the emergency measures, in return for Puigdemont’s calling off a unilateral declaration of independence.

But in the time leading up to Puigdemont’s scheduled lunchtime news conference, with word leaking out of his expected move, separatists started gathering outside the Catalan government building to protest the prospect of a U-turn.

Without a guarantee from Madrid, Puigdemont faced instead broadening dissent in his own ranks, with some members of his conservative party announcing that they would quit if the Catalan leader opted for new elections rather than secession. That raised the prospect of an internal revolt that could tear apart Puigdemont’s independence movement.

While Puigdemont was withdrawing his election offer, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, the deputy prime minister, told senators in Madrid on Thursday afternoon, “We’ve got to rescue Catalonia” under the emergency measures of Article 155. She defended it as the only way to force separatists to respect the rule of law.

The deputy prime minister accused Puigdemont of prolonging

the conflict unnecessarily. “Since last Saturday, nothing has happened, only noise and more noise,” she said.

For more than two weeks, Puigdemont and Rajoy had engaged in a game of chicken over whether the Catalan leader was ready to secede unilaterally, after a confusing address to the Catalan parliament on October 10 in which Puigdemont appeared to declare independence—only to suspend it a moment later.

The pressures on both leaders have by now become formidable.

Puigdemont risks decades in prison for rebellion should he push ahead with his secessionist plan.

In Madrid Rajoy has been under severe pressure from hard-liners in his conservative party not to relent in the effort to snuff out the Catalan rebellion.

On Thursday Puigdemont did not address lawmakers at the start of the parliamentary session. Instead, he listened as politicians from both sides highlighted the deep divisions that surround secessionism in Catalonia.

A nna Gabr iel, a law ma ker from the far-left Popular Unity Candidacy, told Catalan lawmakers that the government of Madrid was preparing “a tsunami” to take charge of Catalonia under Article 155, “without democratic controls and legitimacy.”

Inés Arrimadas, the leader in Catalonia of the Ciudadanos party, which is fiercely opposed to secession, accused Puigdemont of extending an illegal and futile situation of uncertainty for Catalonia, while raising the expectations of separatists without any legitimacy.

“Even the trial of Kafka wasn’t as Kafkaesque” as Puigdemont’s drive for independence, she told lawmakers. Addressing Puigdemont, she added: “If you had any legitimacy left to continue as president, you’ve lost it today. You’ve got nothing else to offer Catalans, not even to those who have been betting on independence.”

A r r imad as a lso attac ked Puigdemont for his change of mind about holding early elec-

If you had any legitimacy left to continue as president, you’ve lost it today. You’ve got nothing else to offer Catalans, not even to those who have been betting on independence.”—Arrimadas

tions. Still, she added, “Sooner or later the ballot boxes will reach Catalonia, and we w ill win, because there is a majority of Catalans who is fed up” with the independence drive.

Miquel Iceta, the Socialist leader in Catalonia, told lawmakers that separatism “hasn’t made us go forward even 1 millimeter, either as a country or as a society.”

Even before Puigdemont’s news conference, some were calling him a traitor.

Gabriel Rufián, a Catalan separatist member of the Spanish parliament, wrote “155 pieces of silver” in a tweet, a reference to Judas’ payment for betraying Jesus in the Bible.

Puigdemont’s government has been flouting Spain’s Constitution since early September, when separatist lawmakers voted on legislation to hold a binding referendum on independence on October 1 as a key step toward statehood.

Last week, Puigdemont warned in a letter to Rajoy that Catalan lawmakers would vote for a declaration of independence if Rajoy imposed direct rule on their region.

Rajoy’s call for Article 155 measures—never used before— would allow him to impose direct rule and to take control of the autonomous region’s police force and broadcaster. Last weekend, R ajoy pledged that Catalonia would hold new elections within six months of the introduction of his emergency measures.

After the October 1 referendum, Puigdemont was under intense pressure to declare independence, since Catalans voted for secession in the highly controversial referendum, which was marred by clashes between the Spanish police and Catalan citizens.

T h e v o t e , h o w e v e r, t o o k place w ithout lega l g uarantees and w ith most Cata lan opponents of independence st aying away in protest. T he referendum was declared il lega l by Spain’s government and courts.

T his mont h, a judge f rom Spain’s nationa l cour t ordered pr i son w it hout ba i l for t wo leaders of t he Cata lan inde pendence movement, pending a tr ia l for sedition.

Last weekend, Rajoy insisted that using Article 155 “was neither our desire nor our intention,” but instead the only way to to return Catalonia to legality and normality and to maintain a Spanish economic recover y “which is now under clear danger because of the capricious and unilateral decisions” of the Catalan separatist government.

New York Times News Service

hey’ve warned of impending nuclear war and charged the US with usurping the United Nations (UN) Security Council in order to persecute their country. But apart from their occasional public jeremiads, North Korea’s United Nations envoys are often as isolated as the regime they represent.

From the drab hallways of their official offices to the UN’s cocktail party circuit, Ambassador Ja Song Nam and Deputy Ambassador Kim In Ryong can be hard to track down for diplomats and journalists alike. “I’ve not met any North Koreans,” said Koro Bessho, the UN ambassador from Japan, which has a keen interest in halting Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

“They are a secretive bunch.”

The UN may seem like hostile territory to North Korean diplomats. The organization’s Manhattan headquarters is in a country generations of North Koreans have been taught wants to annihilate them, a nation now led by a president that their leader Kim Jong Un called a “mentally deranged US dotard.”

Moreover, defectors say North Korean diplomats are often required to leave family members, including children, behind to ensure they don’t defect or criticize the regime. That leaves little incentive to talk, even off-the-record, unless ordered to do so by officials in Pyongyang. The country’s UN mission has no official web site, and the envoys seldom participate on UN panels.

“The folks at the UN mission are there to pass along messages and act on behalf of the leader rather than engage in some diplomatic give-and-take,” said Scott Seaman, a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group in New York.

Shared restroom

North Korea’s UN mission is located on the 13th floor of a nondescript Manhattan office building above a Hallmark Cards store. The diplomatic outpost of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as it’s formally called, shares the floor with the “Delegation of the Basque Country in the US” and Cahn Capital Corp., an investment bank. A solid brown door, next to a fire escape, with a tiny spyhole is the gateway to the mission.

On repeated visits, no one answered the door and phone calls went unreturned. The mission’s lack of a bathroom is its most visible shortcoming: North Korean diplomats have to tread down the narrow corridor to the other end of the f loor to a shared toilet facility.

On a recent trip, after repeated unanswered ringing of the mission’s doorbell, the door inched open and a man in casual clothes holding a toothbrush in one hand edged out, closing the door behind him. The man shook his head when asked about meeting the ambassador.

Tensions between the US and North Korea are raising the envoys’ profiles. Ambassador Ja made headlines in September at the annual General Assembly of world leaders when he left his front-row seat in the main UN chamber and walked out just moments before President Donald J. Trump took to the podium.

The limited information on Ja—63 years old, married, with children—comes from an official UN statement made when he arrived to take his post in 2014, briefly meeting in front of cameras with then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Ja’s office didn’t respond to repeated e-mails and phone calls seeking an interview.

Ja, a former ambassador to the UK, came to his current post after serving as director general of the Department for National Reunification Affairs, according to the UN statement. It said he graduated from the University of International Relations, Pyongyang in

1983. Before that he served in the Korean People’s Army, according to a separate biography from the UK-based Royal United Services Institute, where Ja spoke in 2009.

At the UN, Ja’s subordinate, Deputy Ambassador Kim, is better known by diplomats and the press corps for his more frequent public comments about tensions between Pyongyang and Washington.

Sampling vodka

At a reception for more than 100 UN diplomats and officials at the Russian mission in early October, Kim, in a brown suit, cut a lonely figure. While diplomats of different nations traded gossip and talked about strategy, Kim nibbled on Russian delicacies, sampled vodka and sipped white wine in the company of another North Korean envoy.

T he deput y ambassador at times shows a penchant for charm.

At the start of a rare news conference in April, Kim welcomed the gathered reporters and said he assumed they “enjoyed very much the weekend,” referring to the long Good Friday holiday break.

Like North Korea’s leader, the deputy ambassador is skilled at rhetorical brinkmanship. On October 16 he warned that a nuclear war between his country and the US “may break out any moment.”

In March, he blamed the US and South Korea for killing Kim Jong Un’s estranged half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, who died after assailants wiped VX nerve agent across his face at Kuala Lumpur’s international airport.

‘Bombastic threats’

“Bombastic threats are one of the DPRK’s [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] standard diplomatic tactics,” said Joseph DeThomas, a former US ambassador and State Department official who dealt with North Korea and is now a professor at the Pennsylvania State University.

The regime’s official KCNA media outlet regularly spews invective against the US, South Korea and other perceived enemies. That category now more frequently includes the UN. The Security Council has repeatedly tightened sanctions on the nation over its weapons programs, winning the support of China—North Korea’s top trading partner—in the process. And Kim’s regime has been denounced at the UN for everything from its prison camps to the state-sponsored kidnapping of foreigners.

Tensions between the US and North Korea heightened in July, when Pyongyang launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile, as the regime vows to develop a nuclear-armed weapon that can hit the US mainland. On September 3 North Korea said it successfully tested its first hydrogen bomb.

Secret channel

Although the US has no diplomatic relations w ith North Korea, diplomats from the countr y’s mission informally interact with US officials and American citizens, a process referred to as the “New York channel,” said Keith Luse, executive director of the National Committee on North Korea, a nonprofit group that researches relations between the two countries.

“When active, the New York channel provides opportunities for US and North Korean officials to engage in quiet dialogue aside from whatever tone of discourse may emanate from Pyongyang or Washington,” Luse said.

That back channel may have been what US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was referring to in late September, when he said that the US can talk with North Korea “directly, through our own channels,” though officials have said that the focus of direct talks is to address the issue of US detainees.

Bloomberg News

Science

BusinessMirror

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

Technology helps Pangasinan firm in bamboo-charcoal making

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n a bid to boost their town’s economy, a company based in Bayambang, Pangasinan, is set to go into large-scale charcoal making using bamboo.

CS First Green Agri-Industrial Development made the decision after one year of piloting various machines from the Department of Science and Technology-Forest Products Research and Development Institute (DOST-FPRDI).

“We pilot-tested four kinds of equipment: the DOST-FPRDI bamboo charcoaling kiln, hydraulic briquettor, crusher and drum kiln,” said Levin Uy, company president. “Using bamboo waste from our own plantations, we found that these technologies truly help create jobs and can help Bayambang build a thriving bamboo industry.”

Uy added that their sister organization, the Kasama Kita sa Barangay Foundation, has found the drum kiln especially useful for making charcoal using solid waste collected from the barangays.

According to DOST-FPRDI’s Engr. Amando Allan Bondad, “The bamboo charcoaling kiln is a special kind of oven that turns out high-quality charcoal for industrial uses. The drum kiln, hydraulic briquettor and crusher, on the other hand, are used for creating charcoal briquettes—solid charcoal that is easier to ignite, burns slower and emits more steady heat than the ordinary kind.”

The charcoaling kiln generates two products: high-quality bamboo charcoal and industrial vinegar or pyroligneous liquor.

A powerful cleaning agent, bamboo charcoal is widely used in industries to purify many kinds of substances—water, air, precious metals and alcoholic beverages,

among others. It is also widely tapped in agriculture, and in pharmaceutics and cosmetics manufacturing.

Industr ia l v inegar, on the other hand, is a high-end product that comes from the kiln’s collected and condensed smoke.

In demand abroad, especially in Japan, it serves as a disinfectant, bathroom deodorizer and organic pesticide. It is commonly used in the medicine, cosmetics and foodprocessing industries.

Engr. Belen B. Bisana, chief of DOST-FPRDI’s Bio-Energy and Equipment Development Section, said, “We are happy to work with a company that has its own bamboo plantation. Bamboo is not yet popularly used for charcoal in the Philippines, but it is an ideal material since it grows fast and can be reharvested without harming the environment. The part of the plant that is used is the stem base, which is usually left behind after the poles are harvested.”

According to Uy, “One year of field testing with the DOSTFPRDI was encouraging to us.

We saw the institute’s capacity to give good technical assistance, as well as the potential of bamboo in boosting the progress of our community. We look forward to getting to know other bambooprocessing technologies which may prove useful to us.”

The piloting of the bamboo charcoaling kiln was part of the recently concluded project “High Qua l it y Charcoa l f rom Bamboo for Industrial Uses.” It was funded by the DOST-Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development.

Rizalina K. Araral/S&T Media Service

Waaah: Crying babies push same ‘buttons’ in mothers’ brains In this November 12, 2008, photo, a baby cries in its bed in a hospital in Bremen, northern Germany. According to as study released on October 23 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the way a mother responds to her crying baby seems to be programmed into her brain circuits. Researchers found that mothers across many cultures tend to react the same way to an infant’s cry, and brain scans showed that this distressing sound activates circuitry associated with such responses.

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Sunday, October 29, 2017 A5

For Women in Science fellowship

Ex-PHL science scholar wins 2017 L’Oreal-Unesco award

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r. Jacquiline Romero, a former science scholar and University of the Philippines (UP) alumna, bagged the prestigious L’Oréal Australia For Women in Science fellowship for her exceptional research in quantum physics.

Romero was a Merit Scholar of the Department of Science and Technology-Sience Education Institute (DOST-SEI) for her bachelor’s degree in Physics. Now a researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia, she was chosen for her work on quantum alphabets where she unraveled key information in quantum science.

With still so much to explore in the field, her work is anticipated to make a huge contribution in its further development and utilization.

Romero rose to prominence in 2015 for her breakthrough experiments and researches in quantum physics. She was part of a research team at the University of Glasgow that discovered a method to slow down light particles in free space.

Not resting on her laurels, she dug deeper into quantum physics and brought the public closer to understanding the theory of entanglement. This fascinating theory explains that particles share infor mation regard less of distance.

A scientist and a mother of three children, she proves that the two roles can go together.

For Romero, winning the L’Oreal United Nations Educations, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) for Women in Science Australian fellowship gives her the opportunity to “bring this story that mothers can also succeed in science.”

She joins four other women researchers from Australia and New Zealand who were awarded a $25,000 fellowship to help further their research.

“This award will help me accelerate my research. By exploring high dimensional quantum physics, I believe that I will be able to unlock a new physics information that is currently unknown to us,” she said.

The fellowship is part of the For Women in Science program that L’Oréal and Unesco started in 1998 to highlight and encourage women’s participation in science.

SEI Director Dr. Josette Biyo

A Philippine women’s pride, Dr. Jacqueline Romero, a former Merit Scholar (Batch 2000) of the Department of Science and Technology-Science Education Institute, is conferred the 2017 L’Oreal Australia-Unesco for Women in Science fellowship for her outstanding work in quantum physics.

lauded Romero’s feat and urged current DOST scholars to follow her footsteps.

“Quantum physics may still be an enigma to most, but its inf luence is not isolated from the knowledge and technology-driven world we have today. Thanks to the efforts of scientists like Dr. Jacquiline Romero, we may soon utilize the untapped potential of the quantum world,” Biyo said.

The quantum world is relatively unknown, but holds a lot of potential for the future, in terms of increased capacity to transmit data, increased security, but more important, unlocking a new science not yet fully understood, forwomeninscience.com.au web site said.

“Jacq creates large quantum alphabets using a less well-known property of light, known as the orbital angular momentum [OAM].

By creating an alphabet where the different OAMs, which are the different helical twist formations of a beam of light, serve as the different letters, Jacq is able to create a unique quantum encoding system of a much larger capacity [theoretically infinite!],” the web site said.

By creating quantum alphabets, Romero is able to unlock some of the mysteries of the very puzzling properties of higher dimension quantum information, it added.

Romero will provide the first experimental evidence to an existing theory to verify the fundamental differences in the way information works for larger quantum alphabets, compared to the classical encoding system used today.

Her findings will provide critical knowledge as we start to access more of the benefits of the quantum world, the web site added.

The participants to the recent seminar-workshop “Sharing of Best Practices on Establishment and Operation of Food Innovation Center for the Development of Asean Member-States” in Alabang, Muntinlupa City.

AP/Joerg Sarbach

EW YORK—Crying babies push the same “buttons” in their mothers’ brains no matter what their culture, a new study suggests.

The research found that mothers in 11 countries tend to react the same way to their bawling child—by picking up and talking to the baby—and that the way mothers respond seems to be programmed into their brain circuits.

An author of the study said he hopes the results will spur others to study brain responses in women who mistreat their children. Crying is a common trigger for abuse, said Marc Bornstein of the government’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Maryland.

The new results were released last Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers analyzed videotapes of 684 mothers in 11 countries as they interacted with their infants, who were around 5 months old. The observations were done in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, France, Kenya, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea and the United States.

Analysis showed that the mothers were likely to respond to crying by picking up and talking to the infant. But they were not likely to use other responses, such as kissing, distracting, feeding or burping the child. Results were similar across the various countries.

Next, researchers thought about what parts of the brain would likely be involved in the responses they saw.

Sunday

They focused on circuitr y that ’s activated when a person plans to do or say something, other circuitry that could be involved in figuring out the meaning of a cry and on brain parts known to play critical roles in maternal caregiving.

With brain scans, they found those brain areas were activated when 43 first-time mothers in the US listened to recordings of their infants crying.

Fifty mothers in China and Italy showed a similar result, with the Chinese moms showing different brain responses when they heard other sounds like infants laughing or babbling.

But brains of six Italian women who were not mothers reacted differently to crying, Bornstein said in an e-mail.

“Mothers, based on their personal experience, could easily have their brains shaped in a matter of a few months to be especially sensitive” to an infant’s cry, perhaps because of hormonal changes that occur with parenting, he wrote.

In fact, one contribution of Bornstein’s work is that suggestion that brain development can continue beyond young adulthood, with motherhood as a key stimulus, commented Yale University researcher Linda Mayes, who did not participate in the study.

He l e n a R u t h e r f o rd o f Ya l e, w h o also did not participate in the study, said the brain findings make sense, and that the study was significant for showing consistency across cultures in those responses and the behavior of the mothers. AP

Asean shares best practices on food-innovation centers

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he Department of Science and Technology-Industrial Technology Development Institute (DOST-ITDI) hosted the seminar-workshop “Sharing of Best Practices on Establishment and Operation of Food Innovation Center [FIC] for the Development of Asean Member-States [AMS]” at a hotel in Filinvest Corporate City, Alabang, Muntinlupa City, last week.

The event formed part of the activities lined up for the Philippines’ chairmanship of Asean 2017. Conducted under the auspices of the Asean Sub-committee on Food Science and Technology (ASCFST), it was spearheaded by the SCFST-Philippine Focal Point and ITDI Director Dr. Maria Patricia V. Azanza.

D O S T Unde r s e c re t a r y for Reasearch and Development Dr. Rowena Cristina L. Guevara welcomed the delegates and participants, while Science Secretary Fortunato de la Peña delivered the keynote address.

The seminar-workshop provided a venue for the delegates from the AMS to exchange knowledge about the best practices on the establishment and operation of FIC.

It also envisioned to help intensify efforts in realizing a people-oriented and people-centered Asean, as well as in creating an innovation-driven economy with deep science, technology and innovation enculturation.

Resource persons from Asean w it h e x ist ing FICs—l i ke Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam—shared their experiences on the establishment and operation of FIC to participants from other AMS that have yet to establish their FICs, namely, Cambodia, Myanmar, Lao PDR and Brunei Darussalam.

Dur ing t he work shop, t he delegates were able to discuss matters pertaining to the following areas/concerns: modes of interfacing of government, industr y and academia under the FIC environment; information on intellectual protection of FIC products, equipment and services in Asean; protocols on food product development, and design and fabrication of process equipment; technology marketing and transfer schemes practiced by successful FICs; sustainability strategies of AMS-FICs;

De la Peña

and identified metrics to gauge performance of FICs in terms of development and operation. The exchanges were consolidated and presented to the plenary.

A study tour to the Philippines’s main FIC at DOST-ITDI completed the learning experience of the participants.

S&T Media Service

Faith A6 Sunday, October 29, 2017

Sunday

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

Many people lack real religious freedom—United Nations exec

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People light candles as they offer prayers at the start of a novena for the victims of drug-related killings at the San Roque Cathedral in Caloocan City on October 24. Vincent Go/CBCPNews

Diocese sets novena for drug-war victims D

evout Catholics in the Calookan diocese have started holding a novena for the victims of drug-war killings and for the “healing” of their families.

The novena was launched with a Mass presided over by Bishop Pablo Virgilio David and a candlelighting ritual at the San Roque Cathedral on Tuesday.

In his homily, the bishop called everyone in the diocese to join

in the nine days of prayer that will last until All Souls’ Day, on November 2.

He said the novena is also for those who perished in the conflict in Marawi City.

“Inc luded a mong t hose we

l ight ca nd le for a re t hose who d id not d ie but were k i l led, d id not lose t hei r l ives bec au se G od took t hem but bec au se t hey were t a ken by t hose who a re pretend ing t hey a re god,” Dav id sa id in Fi l ipino.

“We included among those who we light candles the crime victims, those killed in Marawi and, most of all, those killed in the cruel war against drugs,” he added.

In the Catholic tradition, novenas are held to pray for the faithful departed. Among those who attended the candle-lighting ceremony were family members of

the victims of drug-related killings and human-rights advocates.

The bishop also called on the faithful to pray for people who are “alive but dead” to all consciousness of moral values, especially those who favor and are behind the summary killings of drug suspects.

“Let us also light candles for the people who believe and agree that each drug addict has no right to live, that it is better to kill them like chickens that are affected by a disease,” David said.

“Let us light candles for them, not to give them peace but in order to cause them distress,” he added. CBCPNews

10 Commandments monument in New Mexico moving off city land

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LOOMFIELD, New Mexico—A group that erected a monument honoring the Ten Commandments six years ago on city-owned property in a small New Mexico city will remove the monument and put it on private property within 30 days.

K ev i n Mau z y, t he g roup’s founder, said it would be placed at a prominent location after the United States Supreme Court last week sided with a lower court order for the monument’s removal from the city hall lawn in the northwestern small city of Bloomfield.

The group called the Four Corners Historical Monument Project has several possible sites, but has not selected one, Mauzy told the Daily Times of Farmington, New Mexico, in a story published on Tuesday. Civil-liberties advocates have called the court decision a victory for the separation of church and state, but Mauzy was disappointed with the outcome.

“It’s kind of sad when it seems like our histor y, facts and truth don’t seem to matter anymore,” he said. The Supreme Court decision came after city attorneys argued that the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals ignored previous rulings by the Supreme Court that simply being offended by such a monument did not

The Bloomfield Ten Commandments memorial in a photo on February13 at Bloomfield City Hall in Bloomfield, New Mexico. Jon Austria/The Daily Times via AP

give someone a legal basis to challenge the monument.

In other cases, a Ten Commandments poster in a Kentucky courthouse was found constitutional and a monument on the grounds of a public building in Arkansas was determined to be unconstitutional.

In Bloomfield the concrete

block that displays the Ten Commandments sits alongside other monuments related to the Declaration of Independence, Gettysburg Address and Bill of Rights.

The city claims it avoided endorsing a particular religion by placing disclaimers on the lawn stating the area was a public forum for citizens and that the pri-

vately funded monuments did not necessarily reflect the opinions of the city.

The Ten Commandments monument was erected in 2011 and challenged a year later by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Lower courts concluded it violated the US Constitution’s ban on government endorsing a religion. AP

NITED NATIONS—Threequarters of the world ’s people live in countries that either restrict the right to religion or belief or have “a high level of social hostility involving religion or belief,” the United Nations special investigator on religious rights said on Tuesday.

Ahmed Shaheed told the General Assembly’s human-rights committee that religious intolerance is prevalent globally—and rising around the world.

He said over 70 countries currently have antiblasphemy laws that can be used to suppress dissenting views, in violation of international human-rights standards.

Shaheed, a former politician and human-rights expert from the Maldives, urged those countries to repeal the blasphemy laws.

He also called for the repeal of all laws that undermine the exercise of the right to freedom of religion or belief—or discriminate against that right.

Shaheed urged countries to adopt and enforce “adequate criminal sanctions penalizing violent and particularly egregious discriminatory acts perpetrated by state or nonstate actors against

persons based on their religion or belief.”

He said governments must also pay “particular attention” to uphold the obligation to protect religious minorities.

“Increases in unlawful government restrictions against religious groups remain one of the primary and most fundamental factors resulting in higher levels of religious intolerance in any given society,” Shaheed said.

Some forms of discrimination are direct, such as prohibiting some or all religions or beliefs, he said. But others may be indirect, like zoning laws that prevent construction of certain houses of worship or bans on refugees or immigrants, “ostensibly for national security reasons, from countries where majority populations belong to particular faith communities,” he said.

The special investigator, or rapporteur, on freedom of religion or belief is an independent expert appointed by the Genevabased UN Human Rights Council. Shaheed previously served for almost six years as special rapporteur on the human-rights situation in Iran. AP

Saints Jude Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot: Apostles and martyrs

By Corazon Damo-Santiago

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eemingly, the togetherness of Saints Simon the Zealot and Jude Thaddeus had been destined. Both apostles preached the words of God in Persia.

They, too, must have listened to the teachings of Jesus, side by side, so in the listing of apostles in the New Testament, their names always followed each other.

In Matthew 10:3 and Mark 3:18 Jude Thaddeus was listed as the 10th apostle and Simon the Zealot was 11th. However, in Luke 6:15 and Acts 1:13, Simon the Patriot was 10th and Jude, called James, son of Alphaeus, is 11th.

Both were honored by the Eastern Church and Western Christianity and were martyred in Persia. Not even death separated them; their remains were both in Saint Peter’s Basilica under the main altar of Saint Joseph.

Saint Jude: Saint of impossible cases

Jude (Yehodhad), whose name means “God be praised,” is the son of Alphaeus and Clopas, the cousin of the Blessed Mother.

Saint James, the Less, another apostle of Jesus, is his brother. His original name was Judas, but it was changed to Jude by the early writers who translated the New Testament from Greek to English to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot.

Matthew and Mark preferred to call him Thaddeus, which means courageous in Aramaic.

Jude preached in Syria, Libya, Judea, Samaria and also evangelized in Egypt and Mauritania.

The image of Jesus on a cloth carried by Jude on his hand was alleged to have been given by Jesus to him after the Savior has pressed his face on the cloth.

King Abagar of Edessa, desiring to be cured of his leprosy, sent an artist to draw Jesus for him with the hope that the portrait can make him well. Cured he was, and this was one of Saint Jude’s miracles to spread God’s word.

Jesus, likewise, inspired devotion to Saint Jude when He appeared in a vision to Saint Bridget of Sweden and said: “His surname, Thaddeus, means ‘amiable’ or ‘loving,’ He will show himself most willing to give help.” The web site saintsandangels.org. also cited how Saint Bernard had visions from God to accept Jude as Saint of Impossible.

Jude Thaddeus wrote a letter to the universal church against “false teachers who claim to be believers and...cause divisions” among the people of God.

Bearer of Turin shroud

Malcolm Day in Treasury of Saints attributed, but with uncertainty, the discovery of the Shroud of Turin to Saint Jude, who took it from the empty tomb and brought it to Edessa, whose modern name is Urfa, in Turkey.

The founder of the church in Edessa, he was beaten to death while preaching to a pagan priest while other Christian literatures state he was crucified.

The shroud bearing the image of Christ called Mandylion was discovered in the sixth century and brought to Constantinople. After the crusaders ravaged the city in 1204, the Mandylion was lost and believed to have been smuggled to France, guarded and later enshrined in Turin cathedral.

Simon the Zealot

Simon was born in Cana, Galilee. Saint Luke refered to him as the Cananean Zealot. Simon belongs to a secret religious and political group that deplored Roman occupation in Judea.

In their desire for a free and independent Jewish state, Zealots refused to pay taxes. They also exerted violence against fellow Jews who collaborated with foreign rulers in the administration of government. Thus, Luke called Simon the Patriot.

Fr. Paul O’Donnell, MCCJ, in his book, The Lord’s Dreamteam, commented that Simon was honored to be called Zealot, for it “meant God’s special possession, an instrument of his vengeance.”

But after Simon heard Jesus’ preach in Galilee, his attitudes changed. He was won over to Jesus side by His “calmness, poise, inexplicable composure and assurance.”

Simon preached the Gospel in Egypt and later joined Jude Thaddeus in Persia, where he was crucified. Simon is the patron saint of couriers, tanners and sawyers.

Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of EducationNational Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and of Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.

Tourism&Entertainment BusinessMirror

Editor: Carla Mortel-Baricaua

Sunday, October 29, 2017

When ecotourism leaders meet Dr. Mina T. Gabor

THE bm traveler

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Part One

ome 15 countries, including Philippine representatives, spoke during the 2017 Ecotourism Leaders Conference and Festival held recently at the Subic Bay Exhibition and Convention Center.

Surprisingly, out of the more than 350 delegates to this event, we spotted Gov. Sol Matugas of Surigao del Norte; Gov. Alfonso Umali Jr. of Occidental Mindoro; Vice Gov. Angel Magsaysay of Zambales: Mayor William Angos of Poblacion Cortes, Surigao del Sur; Mayor Antonio Chavez of San Jose, Camarines Sur; Mayor Renante Inocando of Cabanglasan, Bukidnon; Mayor Honey Lumayag-Matti of Polomolok, South Cotabato; Mayor Rolen Paulino of

Olongapo; Mayor Vicente Pimentel III of Carascal, Surigao del Sur; Mayor Luciano Rama Jr. of Poro, Cebu; Mayor Salem Tancingco of San Fernando, La Union; Mayor Marlon Ferdinand Sales of Pagudpud, Ilocos Norte; Mayor Rachel Ubana of Lopez, Quezon; Vice Mayor Daniel Laño Jr. of Sugpon, Ilocos Sur; and Vice Mayor Zoilo Bernardo Tubianosa of Sibalom, Antique. I am singling them out because every time the local leader of a place attends one of these im-

portant educational gatherings, we can be sure something somewhere a new and positive development is bound to happen in that area.

I am reprinting here with permission from the writer, Imtiaz Muqbil, one of Asia-Pacific region’s longest-serving travel trade journalists who was one of the speakers, his piece that would best describe the event.

From a Vietnamese farm to Forbes: The start-up that wowed Subic Ecotourism Fest

By Imtiaz Muqbil Of the many erudite presentations at the Subic Ecotourism Festival held from May 28 to June 2, the most inspiring was the story of how a young Vietnamese girl overcame poverty, illiteracy, an alcoholic father and single motherhood to land up on the cover of Forbes Asia magazine as a risingstar millennial. In doing so, Shu Tan, now 31, founder and director of the social enterprise-cum-tour operator Sapa O’Chau, epitomized all the values and principles advocated by both the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economic and sociocultural integration process, as well as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Organized by the International School of Sustainable Tourism, headed by former Philippine Tourism Secretary Dr. Mina T. Gabor, the festival was designed to commemorate the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development declared by UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). With seven board members of the Global Ecotourism Network (GEN) and Asian Ecotourism Network (AEN)

For a fabulous Filipino finger-food feast

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Story & photos

by Charlene Sy

oreign travelers or tourists who are willing to open their eyes and their taste buds to a whole new range of authentic, flavorful Pinoy pulutan, food or snacks provided as an accompaniment to alcoholic drinks, and cocktails should not miss this.

Romulo Café, a restaurant-cum-museum that features the late Gen. Carlos Romulo’s slice of history and memorabilia and his first wife Virginia’s heirloom recipes that she used to serve to foreign diplomats in the 1950s, recently came up with special Filipino tapas and cocktails that pay homage to their grandparents.

Most notable from their new menu items is the chicharon-like appetizer Sweet Crispy Squid. Primarily made from thinly sliced squid dipped in chili-honey-garlic glaze and deep fried to a perfect crisp, every bit is delicious with a slight hint of sweet and salty goodness. Also worth the mention is the Camaron Rebosado with shrimps bathe in scrambled eggs, rolled in a bed of flour and deep fried in butter. It becomes more exciting to the palate when dipped in chili mayo. One of the inspiring tapas presented was everybody’s favorite Pinoy nachos made from camote and taro chips drizzled with kesong puti, keso de bola sauce and sliced tomatoes.

Definitely a notch higher than what is currently sold in the streets, fish and squid balls were served in a martini glass with a special dipping sauce and vinegar. This is one of my personal favorite snacks, so I really appreciate its quality in terms of taste and its unique presentation.

Their version of the kilawin tastes great!

There is no hint of any smell of fish, since they used fresh fish marinated in cane vinegar. The Tinapa Roll—smoked fish, tomato and salted egg in lumpia wrapper—is a complete meal that was filling to the tummy. Another tapas that caught my attention is their Lechon Kawali Sisig, a unique fusion of Pinoy dishes that consists of chopped lechon kawali bits in a tortilla wrap served with plum sauce, or lechon sauce. The Cheese and Vigan Longganisa Dumplings were served in a lumpia wrapper that was made extra special by sourcing the ingredients from the northern part of Luzon.

Another crowd favorite is their Relleno Empanaditas. I used to make empanada using tuna and I could not help but love Romulo’s version. It is pure genius to stuff their relleno stuffing and special chorizo inside those breads. I finished off two empanaditas in no time because it was really very tasty.

It is interesting to note that this is my first

Sweet Crispy Squid is memorable with every bite and crunch.

For a happy tummy, the Lechon Kawali Sisig is a must-try.

encounter to a special pate made from smoked bangus with pan de sal chips served in small, bite-sized toasted bread and then topped with sauce, and I was very impressed with the concept. Those who love Chinese buns should also try their slow-cooked duck in a steamed bun called “Pato Tim.” On the cocktail side, innovative fusion like Imelda’s High Heels, in the form of strawberry purée, lime and tequila, connotes the love affair between the former first lady and her shoes. It is basically a ladies drink, served in a ceramic shoe container with a straw.

Aesthetically elegant and a class on its own, the Old General is made by mixing Woodford Reserve with Kentucky bourbon whiskey and San Germaine in a flask, strained out with wood chips then finished off with a little rind of orange. This particular cocktail symbolizes the life of Carlos P. Romulo as a diplomat and soldier.

A Foreign Affair cocktail is concocted by mixing Don Papa Rum, apple, cinnamon and lemon.

This name refers to an inside joke, as President Marcos had strongly advised his secretary of foreign Affairs against having a “foreign” affair.

Romulo used to date American Beth Day, whom he eventually married in 1979, while serving as a foreign affairs secretary in the early 1970s.

He is also well known for his love of family, thus they called another cocktail Amore De Familia, a mix of Don Papa Rum and Agustura Bitters. Wine connoisseurs would instantly recognize the special mix of Mancino Vermouth Bianco Ambrato and Campari in Spritzer Pultizer., a reminiscent of Romulo’s having won a Pulitzer Prize for Peace in 1941.

The late Carlos P. Romulo’s special affection for his pets, a pair of white doves, and how he patronized the “Sign of the Dove” restaurant in New York City paved to the cocktail’s name Dirty White Dove, which consists of Stoli Vodka, or Martin Miller Gin mixed with Mancino Vermouth Secco and olives.

For the uninitiated and those who are apprehensive about tasting Filipino finger food from street stalls, I think this is the safest and most exciting way to try them. So, ask your food buddy to come with you and experience for yourselves Pinoy pulutan at its best at any of the four branches of Romulo Café.

as speakers, a turnout of 335 delegates from all over the Philippines heard some outstanding stories from Africa and Costa Rica, from Japan to Jordan, from Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia and the Philippines, covering topics from architecture to ecotourism site development to media and communication.

In her welcoming remarks, Wilma Eisma, administrator of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority, said that this year was the 25th anniversary of the United States military’s departure from Subic Bay following the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo, an act of God against which the formidable US military didn’t stand a chance.

The giant military base was wiped out, leaving 8,000 people jobless.

It took two years to clean up the devastation, mostly by unpaid volunteers, including herself, then just a young teenager. Today, she said, the base is being reinvented into a giant economic and tourism entity, with its great beaches and forests pretty much restored to what they were before.

Adding to that, Dr. Gabor said, it also marked 15 years since the Philippines was supposed to have held the 2002 World Expo under the theme of Global Ecotourism— Growing with Nature, the first time that ecotourism was chosen as a World Expo theme. The Philippines eventually opted out of hosting the expo, due to economic difficulties.

Nevertheless, the dream has been fulfilled exactly 15 years later. “We

have gathered here with the best minds in the field of ecotourism.

We finally did it,” said Dr. Gabor.

It was also a welcome introduction for an upcoming event. In addition to chairing Asean in its 50th anniversary, the Philippines will soon host one of the most important conferences in the field of sustainable tourism—a UNWTO event that will, for the first time, set up statistical indicators for measuring the ecological impact of global tourism.

Of the many learned planners, policy-makers and practitioners who spoke on foreign and Filipino best-practices, the most outstanding was by the youngest and leasteducated speaker.

In her presentation, Shu (a.k.a.

Tan Thi Su) said that as a 12-yearold child street seller, her curiosity was aroused by the tourists coming to visit her Lao Chai village, belonging to the Hmong ethnic community. Why did they come?

What did they want? Simply by talking to them over the years, her English became good enough to start guiding them herself. In 2007 she developed the concept of Sapa O’Chau with four Australian friends, and then grew it into the only not-for-profit tour operator in Sapa. After covering costs, all the tourist income goes to support the community. Tours are the main income, not donations.

Her own income helps support her three sisters and her mother. She does not give any money to her fa-

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ther because “he will only take it and drink, drink, drink.”

She only finished high school in 2010 and began attending university in 2011. In an interview, she said she had become a single mother at 19. Her boyfriend fled before her daughter was born, as they were denied parental permission to marry. She is now happily married to a Singaporean mathematician whom she met on one of the tours. In 2016 she landed up on the cover of Forbes Vietnam under 30 list. The same year she helped Sapa O’Chau obtain international accreditation from World Responsible Tourism Awards 2016 (Silver) and World Tourism for Tomorrow Awards 2016 (Finalist).

The Sapa O’Chau web site, www. sapaochau.org, hails all visitors, “You and our high-profile international partners are helping to change tourism into a more ethical, responsible and sustainable industry.”

The Philippines is also unique in that its Department of Tourism has an undersecretary for “Faith, Farm and Ecotourism,” probably the only country in the world with such a unique combination. The said undersecretary, Silvino O. Tejada, said it was the government’s objective to develop ecotourism into a global standard as an engine of inclusive and sustainable growth. He hailed the potential for ecotourism as a catalyst for a climate-resilient, robust and vibrant tourism industry in the Philippines.

Sports BusinessMirror

A8 Sunday, October 29, 2017

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

Joshua sets goal high next year

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BRITAIN HATCHES EVACuation PLAN

ACTRESS Katerina Lehou (right), as high priestess, lights the torch during the lighting ceremony of the Olympic flame in Ancient Olympia, Greece. The flame will be transported by torch relay to Pyeongchang. AP

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ONDON—British Olympic leaders have plans in place to evacuate athletes from the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, amid heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula.

While the British Olympic Association (BOA) is not expecting to have to implement those emergency procedures in South Korea, it is preparing for the worstcase scenario.

Tensions have risen in the region as North Korea has built up its nuclear weapons program, and has accelerated weapons tests in recent months. Dire threats traded by President Donald J. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have further stoked fears of war, just as South Korea prepares to host its first Olympics since the 1988 Seoul Games.

“The South Koreans have lived with this for 60 years and tensions have gone up and down. There seems a higher level this time obviously,” British Olympic Association Chief Executive Bill Sweeney said on Wednesday. “We are working on all possible contingency plans. The only one you have in the situation of the extreme event you mentioned [about a potential North Korean attack] is evacuation.

“We will go there with a clearly laid out evacuation plan if it is necessary. I don’t think it will be necessary. The health and welfare of the delegation is our No. 1 priority.”

Thousands of athletes will be descending in February on Pyeongchang, a ski resort town only 80 kilometers south of the heavily armed North Korean border.

“Clearly, there is an issue around the escalation of tensions between North and South Korea and the Americans,” Sweeney said at BOA headquarters in London. “We talk to the Foreign Office and the embassy in South Korea on a weekly basis. We had conversations with them last week.”

The threat is not deterring families from cheering on the British team at the February 9 to 25 Winter Games, according to the BOA. “That security question has come up,” British chef de mission Mike Hay said, “and I think we have explained the situation, and they are happy to register their interest in going.”

The BOA had similar evacuation plans in place for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, given the concerns about violence in the Brazilian city.

“I lost a lot more sleep going to Rio than Pyeongchang,” Sweeney added. “The security threat in Rio was a lot more personal, a lot more unpredictable. We were prepared against any opportunity around mugging and crime and the violent nature of Rio. They are things that are difficult to manage.

South Korea, as a country, is really safe and secure, probably one of the safest you can go into.”

Former Olympic champion skier Carlo Janka, meanwhile, is likely to miss the upcoming World Cup season and the Winter Olympics after severely injuring a knee in training.

The Swiss Alpine ski team says Janka tore the ACL in his right knee when crashing Tuesday in a giant slalom training run. The World Cup season-opening giant slalom is on Sunday in Soelden, Austria, while the Winter Games are set in February 2018.

The Swiss team did not indicate how long the 31-year-old Janka will be sidelined.

Janka won giant slalom gold at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, and also won the overall World Cup title that season.

He got the last of his 11 World Cup wins on the 2018

PVL CLOSES SEASON T WITH ALL-STAR GAMES

HE Premier Volleyball League (PVL) closes its successful season in style with the All-Star games today at the Filoil Flying V Center in San Juan.

The All-Star fires off at 1:30 p.m. with fans sitting at ringside or lower box getting a chance to catch autographs and photos with their volleyball idols.

The women’s match will be shown live on ABS-CBN S+A Channel 23, ABS-CBN S+A HD Channel 166 and via livestream on www.sports.abs-cbn.com/livestream/pvl.

The activities serve as the PVL’s way of thanking its fans and supporters for a successful year. The event will also raise funds for the Hero Foundation, a non-stock and not-for-profit organization that provides educational stipends to military orphans.

All eyes is on the women’s All-Star game at 6:30 p.m., with the White Team—under Open Conference champion Pocari Sweat Head Coach Rico De Guzman—facing the Red squad of Roger Gorayeb, who steered BaliPure to the Reinforced Conference crown.

De Guzman’s White Team will be bannered by Pocari Sweat’s franchise player and Most Valuable Player Myla Pablo and Creamline’s ace setter Jia Morado.

The Red Team, on the other hand, reunites with BaliPure cornerstone players led by Reinforced Conference Finals Most Valuable Player Grethcel Soltones, as well as Jasmine Nabor, Risa

Pyeongchang Olympics speed races course, in a super-G at Jeongseon in February 2016.

Short-track speedskater Arianna Fontana, on the other hand, was named on Tuesday as Italy’s flag-bearer for the opening ceremony at the Pyeongchang Olympics in February 2018.

The 27-year-old Fontana has won five Olympic medals, 14 world championship medals and 34 European championship medals over her standout career.

“The flag will serve as motivation,” Fontana said. “It won’t weigh me down.”

Fontana was selected ahead of Alpine skier Christof Innerhofer.

“We didn’t have doubts about Arianna. It’s her and it had to be her,” Italian Olympic Committee President Giovanni Malago said. “She’s got a strong personality.”

Pyeongchang will be Fontana’s fourth Olympics. At the 2006 Turin Games, her first, she helped Italy to bronze in the 3,000-meter relay at the age of 15—making her the youngest Italian to win a medal at the Winter Games.

She has also won Olympic medals in the 500 and 1,500 individual events. AP Sato and Aiko Urdas, who also helped National University to a rare “three-peat” in the Collegiate Conference.

White team is also composed of Creamline’s Pau Soriano and Pocari’s Jeanette Panaga, Gyzelle Sy, Elaine Kasilag and Melissa Gohing, as well as Bea De Leon of Ateneo, Isa Molde of University of the Philippines (UP), Nicole Tiamzon and Sue Roces of Perlas Banko and Air Force’s Joy Cases.

Backing up the Red squad are BaliPure’s Jerilli Malabanan and Alyssa Eroa, UP’s Diana Carlos, Creamline’s Cesca Racraquin, Perlas Banko’s Kathy Bersola, Amy Ahomiro and Jem Ferrer.

Meanwhile, the men’s All-Star game raises the curtains at 4 p.m. with the Blue Team bannered by the season’s Grand Slam champion Cignal facing the Air Force-laden Yellow Team.

The Blue Team will be led by HD Spikers Mark Alfafara, Lorenzo Capate, Rex Intal, Ysay Marasigan and Peter Torres and their coach Oliver Almadro, while Air Force’s Edwin Tolentino, Fauzi Ismail, Ranran Abdilla, Kim Malabungan and Rodolfo Labrador represent the Yellow squad of coach Rhovyl Verayo. Lance Agcaoili

US poker star loses case, won’t get $10.2-M prize

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GRETCHEN SOLTONES will be at the forefront of the Red Team’s campaign.

ONDON—He’s long been a winner at cards, but American poker star Phil Ivey’s good fortune does not extend to Britain’s Supreme Court—he lost a major case on Wednesday that will keep him from cashing in.

The British Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that Ivey had used illegitimate means to amass £7.7 million ($10.2 million) in winnings during a stint at the baccarat table in 2012.

He and a colleague were found to have used a technique known as “edge sorting” to gain an unfair advantage, while gambling at the Crockfords casino in London’s posh Mayfair district.

They did not actually touch the cards being dealt, but convinced the croupier to arrange the cards a certain way that allowed them to determine, in some cases, which cards were being dealt, allowing them to bet accordingly.

Crockfords cried foul and refused to pay his winnings,

leading Ivey to pursue his claim in court.

Supreme Court Judge Anthony Hughes said the integrity of Punto Banco baccarat depends on the cards being dealt at random without gamblers knowing their face value.

“What Mr. Ivey did was to stage a carefully planned and executed sting,” he said.

Hughes added that Ivey took “positive steps to fix the deck” by tricking the croupier. He said that “is inevitably cheating.”

Ivey, long recognized as one of the top players in international poker, said his winnings were honestly obtained.

“At the time I played at Crockfords, I believed that edgesorting was a legitimate Advantage Play technique, and I believe that more passionately than ever today,” he said after the ruling.

He said he pursued the case to Britain’s highest court out of a sense of honor. AP

NTHONY JOSHUA has big plans for 2018 now that he is the biggest draw in heavyweight boxing.

A unification fight against Deontay Wilder or Joseph Parker. A first fight in the United States, or maybe Africa or the Middle East. Even an all-British superfight against Tyson Fury, if the former champion regains his license.

Before that, though, Joshua must deal with more routine matters: a mandatory defense of his World Boxing Association and International Boxing Federation belts against an opponent few outside the boxing fraternity will have heard of.

Saturday’s fight in Cardiff against Carlos Takam—a late replacement for the injured Kubrat Pulev—is hardly getting the pulse racing. Joshua’s status is in a new stratosphere after his dramatic victory over Wladimir Klitschko in April in one of the best heavyweight contests this century, so fighting a French journeyman like Takam is something of an anticlimax.

No wonder much of the buildup has been about who Joshua will be fighting next.

“The plan is for AJ to unify the belts in 2018,” said Eddie Hearn, Joshua’s promoter, “and we really would like to create three massive fights next year.”

Losing to Takam would obviously derail all the best-laid plans, but it is highly unlikely. The unbeaten Joshua is disciplined and professional, and says he isn’t getting carried away by his elevation to the top of the division. He has also only been taken beyond the third round in three of 19 professional fights, including to the 11th round by Klitschko at Wembley Stadium.

Still—and maybe it is for PR reasons, given that 70,000 people are expected to watch the fight at the Principality Stadium—Joshua is trying not to look beyond the 36-yearold Takam, and has been building him up as an awkward opponent.

“People have said, ‘Josh, what round? What round?’”

Joshua said. “I think we’re going for a 10- to-12-round fight because this guy’s head is like a block of cement.”

Joshua has had only two weeks to adapt to a change of opponent, following Pulev’s withdrawal because of a shoulder injury. Takam, who has been stopped only once in 39 fights and has 35 wins, gets in closer to his opponents than Pulev, and does more work on the body.

“I need to work on my inside game and stand in a phone box,” said Joshua, who described Takam as “durable.”

“He disheartens you. Imagine throwing your best shots and they are still in front of you. It’s disheartening. To do that for 12 rounds takes a lot of energy, so sometimes I’ll have to stand in front of him, trade with him, and go to war.”

Takam had been on standby since the Joshua-Pulev fight was announced in early September. Still, it came as a shock to Takam when a friend from New Zealand texted him to say Pulev was injured and he’d be replacing him.

“I don’t know whether I’m excited, stressed, confused, but I’m definitely ready for the fight,” he said. “It will be a proper fight.”

The rugby-mad nation of Wales has hosted big boxing bouts in the past, including a fight for the World Boxing Council heavyweight title between Lennox Lewis and Frank Bruno in 1993. In front of 20,000 fans at Cardiff Arms Park, Lewis stopped Bruno in the seventh round.

“Prince” Naseem Hamed beat Steve Robinson in a world featherweight title fight at the same venue in 1995, while in 2007, the Principality Stadium—then called the Millennium Stadium—staged Joe Calzaghe’s points win over Mikkel Kessler in a high-profile super-middleweight fight.

That was in front of 50,000 spectators, so the JoshuaTakam fight will be the most-watched yet in Wales, another signal of Joshua’s popularity.

It is for that reason that Hearn says Joshua will only do stadium fights on British soil, so this is another chance for the champion to get used to the big occasion before potential showdowns against Wilder or Parker.

Wilder, the WBC champion, appears to be the biggest pull for Joshua.

“I think it could be built to be something just like the Klitschko fight. It should be better,” Joshua said. “I’m fine staying in the UK, but America’s definitely at the top of the pyramid. Before I wanted to go out there for the experience.

Now I want to go out there and make me some money.” AP

WORLD heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua will make the most out of the coming year. AP