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THE SHADOW & THE SWARM
Why Filipino workers adopt AI faster than their employers Structural Barriers
INCE the energy crisis started in March, fuel, shipping, and electricity costs have spiraled, and Philippine companies are scrambling for any margin they can find. Increasingly, many are finding it in artificial intelligence—specifically, in tools their own employees started using long before management signed off.
The Obstacles Between Pilots and Scale The survey data reveals a consistent set of barriers preventing AI from scaling beyond pilot
Bring Your Own AI
THE numbers describe a workforce that stopped waiting for permission. At least 86 percent of individual AI users at Philippine companies now bring their own tools to work, and 42
alignment, confirming that successful AI adoption depends as much on organizational readiness as on technology capabilities. Understanding these barriers matters for two reasons. First, they explain why momentum has stalled for many organizations despite genuine enthusiasm and executive commitment. Second, they reveal where intervention can accelerate progress. Organizations that address
Exhibit 8
What challenges has your company faced in adopting AI?
Source: Swarm, Philippine AI Report 2025 Executive Report
strictly accountable for any per‑ sonal data processed by AI systems under their control—whether the deployment was officially autho‑ rized or not. Simultaneously, under the current energy emergency, run‑ ning unmonitored AI pricing mod‑ els that lack a transparent, audit‑
Philippine AI Report Executiveretailers Brief 17 able decision trail2025 leaves defenseless against Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) profi‑ teering audits, which penalize price hikes exceeding 10 percent without explicit justification. “Traditional [IT] security is no longer enough,” Swarm CEO Dexter Ligot‑Gordon warns in an
In Their Honor: 25 Years of 9/11 By Troi Santos
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EW YORK CITY—Twentyfive years after September 11, the 9/11 Memorial & Museum is preparing to mark the anniversary with a new exhibition and a nationwide educational push aimed at Americans who have no memory of the attacks. One name on the South Pool I have followed for 18 of the 25 years. On Monday afternoon the Muse‑ um described the exhibition it is about to open on the 25th anniversary of the attacks. It is called In Their Honor: 25 Years of 9/11-Inspired Service.
Beth Hillman, the Museum’s pres‑ ident and chief executive, stood before a bank of cameras at a press briefing convened with the New York Foreign Press Center—the State Department’s Manhattan outpost for foreign me‑ dia—and offered a figure that has come to define the anniversary. It felt, she joked at the top of her remarks, as though there were more cameras than people in the room. About 100 mil‑ lion Americans, she said, were either unborn on September 11, 2001, or too young to have registered what was hap‑ pening. Each year, she said, the annual promise to never forget becomes both Continued on A2
MINIRHENYX | DREAMSTIME.COM
percent pay for premium accounts— such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude—out of pocket rather than charging a corporate card. It is a resounding vote of confi‑ dence in the technology, but a mas‑ sive compliance warning sign for the organizations around them. When staff copy and paste sen‑ sitive customer lists, proprietary pricing spreadsheets, or critical supply chain plans into consumergrade tools that retain inputs for AI model training, they quietly expose their employers to massive liabilities those companies may not even know they are carrying. Feeding a customer database into a public chatbot is a direct Data Privacy Act breach, regardless of who typed the prompt. Under National Privacy Com‑ mission Advisory No. 2024-04, organizations acting as Personal Information Controllers are held
The proof‑of‑concept graveyard
stages. These challenges span human capital, technical infrastructure, and organizational
these issues proactively will move from pilots to scaled deployments faster.
That bottom‑up rush is now documented in one of the country’s first nationwide benchmark of cor‑ porate AI adoption—The Philippine AI Report. Based on a survey of 175 orga‑ nizations by Manila‑based global AI consultancy firm Swarm with contributions from the Analytics and AI Association of the Philip‑ pines (AAP), the report found that 92 percent of Philippine companies have used AI in some capacity. But adoption has been almost en‑ tirely improvised: employees teaching themselves, paying out of pocket, and outrunning the governance structures meant to manage them.
exclusive interview with BusinessMirror. “IT departments must treat AI governance as table stakes, im‑ plementing secure enterprise tools that block data leakage to external model developers.”
PART THREE
THE title wall of In Their Honor: 25 Years of 9/11-Inspired Service, opening at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum on September 12. TROI SANTOS
VADIMRYSEV | DREAMSTIME.COM
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By Malou Talosig-Bartolome
IF the risk is obvious, so is the rea‑ son boards have not moved faster to contain it: money. Ligot‑Gordon said Western companies typically invest in AI in‑ frastructure first and work out the use cases later. Philippine boards want it the other way around. “Western markets invest first and figure out how to use AI later,” he said. “In the Philippines, corpo‑ rate boards expect an ROI on the very first use case.” That expectation has pro‑ duced what the report calls a “proof‑of‑concept graveyard”: 65 percent of local AI initiatives never make it past the pilot stage. Production‑grade AI requires real investment in data and secu‑ rity infrastructure up front, and loading all of that cost onto a single pilot makes the first use case look far more expensive than it should. “If you’re trying to load all of the ROI onto the first-use case, it’s going to look very expensive,” Ligot-Gordon concedes. “What’s also making [AI adoption] slow is that you have to put a lot of infra‑ structure for your first implemen‑ tation.”
Breaking the logjam
TO break this corporate stalemate, Ligot-Gordon suggests a simple, collaborative approach—cluster‑ ing strategy. Instead of forcing a single department to carry the heavy cost of building the compa‑ ny’s first AI foundation, businesses can bundle three to five related projects together. For instance, marketing, fi‑ nance, and supply chain teams can collaborate a project that requires an AI solution. Sharing the same tools and splitting the massive setup bill would make the AI in‑ vestment instantly affordable for everyone. “If you get three or four de‑ partments to share the cost, you split the bill across multiple bud‑ gets and get immediate traction,” he suggested.
Where AI-investment ROI is immediate: Demand forecasting
SINCE the energy crisis began, domestic transport and logistics costs have repriced overnight, with trucking rates surging by 50 per‑ cent, inter-island shipping rates caps climbing 25 percent, and whole electricity spot prices nearly doubling to exceed P9 per kilowatthour. In this high-pressure environ‑ ment, the immediate corporate line of defense is inevitably costcutting. Continued on A2
A CROSS-SECTION of the Survivor Tree, the callery pear that lived through the collapse at Ground Zero, displayed near a commemorative quilt in the exhibition. TROI SANTOS
A FIREFIGHTER’S turnout coat, signed by responders, on display in the exhibition. TROI SANTOS
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 62.4940 n JAPAN 0.4010 n UK 84.5731 n HK 7.9712 n CHINA 9.3027 n SINGAPORE 49.3439 n AUSTRALIA 44.9832 n EU 72.6680 n KOREA 0.0461 n SAUDI ARABIA 16.6433 Source: BSP (September 4, 2026)
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In Their Honor: 25 Years of 9/11 Continued from A1
harder to keep and more necessary to renew. “As time moves forward,” she said, “that battle becomes even more important.” The Museum’s mission, Hillman said, is to commemorate the nearly 3,000 people killed that day, to edu‑ cate a next generation of Americans about what happened and what has happened since, and to inspire all who visit with stories of courage and sac‑ rifice. In a few weeks, she noted, that mission would return to the Memo‑ rial Plaza for the 25th time. That mission takes physical form on September 12, when the Museum opens In Their Honor. Reporters on Monday were the first to walk its rooms. The exhibition, Hillman said, occupies a gallery inside the Museum and turns from the events of the day itself toward what followed: the vol‑ unteer surge, the enlistments, the nonprofits built around loss, the arts and educational institutions revived in the wake of the attacks. Logan Miller, a 9/11 family mem‑ ber and a member of the Museum’s Visionary Leadership Council, spoke next. In 2001, he said, he was a sec‑ ond grader in Bayside, Queens, more concerned with snack time than with the news drifting down the hallway outside his classroom. His teacher stepped into the hallway to talk with the other teachers, he recalled, and, one by one, his classmates were picked up by their parents. By late morning, a class of 25 had shrunk to two or three. Around one o’clock, his father arrived and told him there had been a terrible attack in the city, and that the World Trade Center had fallen. At eight years old, he fixated on one question: how does a building fall?
His uncle, an EMT and a senior court officer at the New York State Supreme Court, working just blocks from the World Trade Center, had got‑ ten off the subway at Canal Street that morning and reached the courthouse before the first plane struck. He and more than two dozen fellow court of‑ ficers made the decision to leave the courthouse and walk toward the tow‑ ers. A photographer for the New York Post captured him at a makeshift tri‑ age on Church Street, bandaging the arm of a woman with severe burns before she was loaded into an ambu‑ lance. Then he and several other offi‑ cers went back into the tower to look for survivors. They found another woman. One of the officers took her to safety; walking out, he saw Miller’s uncle and two other court officers for the last time. Moments later, the South Tower fell. The man Miller called his grand‑ father—his father’s uncle—worked near Ground Zero in the weeks after the towers came down, after residents were told it was safe to return to Low‑ er Manhattan. He breathed the dust and the toxic air that continued to lin‑ ger there. Years later, Miller said, he developed leukemia and died in 2016, exactly 15 years after the attacks. “The consequences of 9/11 did not end on September 11, 2001,” Mill‑ er told the room. They kept unfolding, he said—through the first respond‑ ers, the ordinary New Yorkers who ran toward danger when everyone else was running away, and the people who, years later, became sick because of what they had breathed. He also thought, he said, about the countless people who looked at what happened that day and decided to do something because of it: to serve, to rebuild, to help people they had never met. Many
of them, he said, had spent the last 25 years doing exactly that. Twenty-five years later, Miller said, there is an entire generation with no memory of what happened. The responsibility now, he said, is no longer only about remembering what happened, but about remembering that there is a generation that does not know what happened. Remember‑ ing them, he said, in their honor. For the first time this year, the annual ceremony on the Memorial Plaza will include a seventh moment of silence, Hillman said, in tribute to those who have since died from illness and injury caused by exposure to the toxic aftermath of the attacks. A live prime-time special with ABC News, featuring musical performances, will air on the evening of September 11. Throughout the season, she added, the Museum will run a nationwide educational effort centered on a digi‑ tal learning experience that class‑ rooms across the country can access. The Museum has also invited journal‑ ists from around the world—many of whom, she noted, are themselves part of the 9/11 story—to share their own accounts with the institution. Three of the Filipino victims I have come to know in the years since are on the parapets of the same Me‑ morial. Cesar Amoranto Alviar, 60, an accountant at Marsh & McLennan, worked on the 94th floor of the North Tower; his name is inscribed on panel N-16. Grace Alegre Cua, 40, a native of Infanta, Quezon, had been at Chuo Mitsui Trust for fourteen years; her name is on panel S-39. Benilda Pas‑ cua Domingo, 37, from Barangay Sta. Maria in Laoag City, had come to the United States the year before the at‑ tacks—her visa finally through after a 14-year wait to bring her family—
and had just begun planning her wed‑ ding. Her name is on panel S-37. Noah Rauch, the Museum’s se‑ nior vice president for education and public programs, has spent more than a decade watching a line move across American classrooms—the line, he said, between memory and history. He described it as a widen‑ ing gap between those who remem‑ ber the attacks and those who do not. For roughly 100 million Americans, he said, September 11 is no longer a lived event; it is a subject. That, he said, gives the 25th anniversary par‑ ticular weight—a chance to make sure the stories, the lessons, and the legacy captured in In Their Honor are preserved not just for this generation but for those that follow. The Museum’s programs, Rauch said, have reached nearly 20 million students since the institution opened. Its Anniversary Digital Learning Ex‑ perience—a 35-minute film paired with a live chat that lets students ask staff questions in real time through‑ out September 11—has drawn more than 5 million student participants over the years, underwritten, he noted, by the New York Life Founda‑ tion. On-site and virtual field trips for grades 3 through 12 remain free to all tri-state schools, funded, he said, by the Will Family Foundation, Barbara and H. Rajan Cohen, and the New York City Council. Professional-develop‑ ment seminars help teachers—many of them now part of that 100 million with no memory of their own—teach a subject that, Rauch acknowledged, is not easy to teach. The job, he said, is to give educators the content and the strategies to help students connect to what happened, whom it happened to, and how people responded in extraor‑ dinary ways. Hillman closed by returning to what she called the spirit of Sep‑ tember 12, when people of differ‑ ent backgrounds and ideologies, she said, came together in patriotism and unity. That spirit, she said, is what the Museum hopes to carry into its next quarter-century—alongside a sol‑ emn commemoration that honors the
LOWER Manhattan from the Queensboro Bridge, afternoon of September 11, 2001. TROI SANTOS
dead, pays tribute to the heroes of the day, and provides comfort to families and survivors. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was on my way to work in Manhattan, riding a cab down Lex‑ ington after getting off the 6 train at 51st Street. By the time I reached the hospital where I work, the first plane had already struck the North Tower. By the time I got to my office on the 16th floor, the second plane had hit the South Tower. The secre‑ taries were already crying. One of our administrators had a fiancé at Cantor Fitzgerald. That afternoon, I walked home to Queens across the 59th Street Bridge. Cell service was down across the city; only text messages went through, and only sometimes. I was carrying a Nikon Coolpix 995. From the bridge, I took a photograph of Lower Manhattan. Seven years after the attacks, I saw Rudy Abad in a YouTube video, describing what he had done in his wife’s memory in the Philippines. I have been following the story since. One of the names on the Memo‑ rial is inscribed on panel S-34 of the South Pool. The Memorial arranges its names not alphabetically but by what it calls “meaningful adjacency”—the people who were standing next to whom that morning. Close to 3,000 names have been cut into bronze around the two
pools; each can be located by a panel number, N or S, followed by a number from 1 to 76. S-34 belongs to Marie Rose Abad. She was 49, a senior executive at the investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. She was born in New York, the daughter of an Italian immigrant family. She had survived the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center— walked down 110 stories then. She did not survive the second attempt. She was in her 89th-floor office when the second plane struck below her. In her final phone call to her home on Long Island, she told her husband, Rudy Abad, that it was too hot, that this might be the last time she spoke to him. Her last words to him, he later recalled, were: “Ru, pray, pray.” Rudy Abad was born in Manila. He left the Philippines in 1963 to study in the United States and even‑ tually became an American citizen. His wife had told him she wanted, one day, to help the poor in his country of origin. In 2004, three years after her death, he funded the construction of about 50 one-story houses on the site of a slum in Manila’s Tondo district. It is named Marie Rose Abad GK Village. I have followed the village since—the children on its alleys, the brightly col‑ ored homes, the street sign at the en‑ trance bearing the name of a woman who never lived to see it. “In Their Honor” opens on Sep‑ tember 12.
The Shadow & the Swarm Continued from A1
However, forward-looking enter‑ prises are discovering that the most effective margin shield is actually an offensive AI strategy. Swarm’s national research high‑ lights three clear tiers of near-term AI payoffs for companies attempting to absorb these crisis-driven losses and secure operational growth. For retail giants like SM and Pure‑ gold, demand forecasting has emerged as the highest‑value application. Traditionally, forecasting has been a slow, defensive exercise—re‑ lying on manual reviews of historical sales data over rigid weekly or monthly cycles. AI-driven (agentic) forecasting takes an offensive posture by dynami‑ cally predicting future shopper behav‑ ior; it integrates live, external signals such as payday cycles, weather fore‑ casts, competitor pricing, social media activity and mobile location data. By sensing demand changes be‑ fore they hit the cash register or click the buy button, this technology is actively cutting stockout-related rev‑ enue losses by 35 to 65 percent. Also in physical supermarkets, where refrigeration alone can consume up to 40 percent of a store’s energy bill, deploying AI‑driven optimization has become a margin lever in its own right.
Accelerating customer acquisition
BEYOND immediate inventory gains, Ligot-Gordon cites new customer acquisi‑ tion and marketing personalization as the next major priorities for enterprises adopt‑ ing AI. Using hyper-personalized mar‑ keting automation and conversational AI tools, retailers are addressing the perennial business challenge of secur‑ ing new shoppers while keeping their existing customer base loyal and en‑ gaged. This strategic focus directly aligns with a dramatic shift in consumer be‑ havior across the region. Platform data reveals that 88 per‑ cent of regional consumers already rely on AI recommendations to guide their purchases, prompting local retailers to bring personalization capabilities
in-house to leverage their proprietary loyalty databases. To capture this demand, chatbot and virtual assistant adoption is pro‑ jected to jump from 42 to 57 percent year-on-year. SM Supermalls has moved fast‑ est here, partnering with Meta to use anonymized in-mall Wi-Fi signals to measure exactly how its digital ad campaigns translate into physical mall foot traffic.
Guarding margins through operational efficiency
WHILE retail focuses on demand and acquisition, banks and logistics com‑ panies are prioritizing operational ef‑ ficiency as their preferred AI solution. In these sectors, AI serves as a low-risk, back-office operational en‑ gine that protects corporate margins amidst severe macroeconomic shocks. In the financial sector, banks are deploying AI to automate document extraction and compliance checks, dra‑ matically accelerating credit and loan onboarding to issue credit decisions ahead of competitors. Meanwhile, back offices across multiple industries are streamlining administrative bottlenecks, cutting invoice-processing cycles from a slug‑ gish four weeks down to just two days. For transport-heavy opera‑ tions, these efficiencies are a matter of survival: logistics giants like FAST Logistics Group are deploying routeoptimization and co-loading models to absorb some of the severe 30 percent transport-cost surge triggered by the ongoing energy emergency.
Closing the skills gap
THE last obstacle to AI adoption is people. Fifty‑seven percent of Philippine firms cite a lack of AI skills as their top barrier to scaling—the same shortage that is arguably fueling the shadow‑AI trend in the first place. Employees are teaching them‑ selves because, in most companies, no one else is. DTI, the Philippine Retailers Association, and the Supply Chain Management Association of the Phil‑
ippines have pointed to the Section G Job Blueprint, a wholesale‑and‑retail workforce initiative launched in 2025, as one vehicle for closing that gap through role‑specific upskilling. “Traditional tech curriculums are not aligned with modern AI engineer‑ ing needs,” Swarm’s marketing head Pia Besmonte, lead writer of the Phil‑ ippine AI Report, told BusinessMirror. “But the workforce is eager; 80 percent of surveyed employees want to help build internal AI tools.” The report notes that national ini‑ tiatives are beginning to respond. The Philippine Skills Framework for Analytics and AI, developed by AAP and DICT, provides a shared stan‑ dard for employers, educators, and government. CHED’s micro‑credentials, DICT’s SPARK program, and Tesda’s online courses are aligned to this framework, offering stackable certifications and industry‑aligned training. These instruments give enterpris‑ es a pathway to build the specialized roles—strategy leads, project manag‑ ers, compliance officers—that are crit‑ ical for scaling pilots into production. The workforce itself is showing early benefits. Seventy‑six percent of respon‑ dents reported more time for strategic thinking, 68 percent less time writing, and 66 percent quicker decisions. Importantly, 84 percent of or‑ ganizations reported zero AI‑related layoffs, reinforcing Besmonte’s point that the current challenge is skills and governance, not displacement.
Outlook
AS the Philippines works through a 2026 defined by an energy crisis and a widening AI divide, the companies that pull ahead and the ones that stall at the pilot stage will likely be sepa‑ rated less by how much they spend than by how quickly they turn what their employees are already doing into something the company actually owns. By moving past pilots through clustered investments, strict gover‑ nance, and targeted upskilling, enter‑ prises can transform a risky employee trend into a core corporate asset.
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A3
A rough year to be chairing Asean
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By Malou Talosig-Bartolome
HE Philippines took over Asean’s rotating chairmanship in January, and it didn’t take long to see what kind of year this would be. Myanmar’s civil war was still grinding on, still testing whatever credibility the bloc had left. The South China Sea kept generating friction. Thailand and Cambodia were squabbling again over their shared border. Global trade was getting harder to predict. Then the Middle East blew up—fighting between the US and Iran rattled energy markets and put shipping through the Strait of Hormuz at risk. Manila had planned a chairmanship built around a tidy slogan, “Navigating Our Future, Together,” and three pillars: “Peace and Security Anchors,” “Prosperity Corridors” and “People Empowerment.” The idea was to blend Asean’s old staples—dialogue, consensus, stability—with newer priorities like AI, digital transformation, supply chains, disaster response and social protection. What the Philippines actually got was a live test of whether that framework could survive multiple crises at once. And Asean’s members don’t even agree on what a good chairmanship looks like, let alone how to pull one off.
Myanmar still splits the room
FIVE years after the coup, Myanmar remains the crisis Asean can’t resolve and can’t ignore. The bloc’s response—the Five-Point Consensus, adopted in 2021—called for an end to the violence, inclusive dialogue, humanitarian access and a special envoy to shepherd the process. None of that has really happened. The fighting continues. So does the humanitarian emergency. Manila has stuck with the Five-Point Consensus as Asean’s official line. At the July foreign ministers’ meetings in Manila, it pushed for ways to actually track progress against the plan, including a proposal for a multiyear special envoy who could stay on the job long enough to
build relationships instead of starting over every rotation. That’s the official position. Underneath it, the bloc is split. Thailand wants what it calls “calibrated re-engagement”— talking to the junta directly, on the theory that access beats isolation. Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow put it bluntly: “In the end, we have to engage, we have to have dialogue, and we are not abandoning our position.” It’s not hard to see why Bangkok feels this way. Thailand shares a long, porous border with Myanmar, and it’s the one absorbing the refugees, the trafficking networks, the armed groups drifting across the line, the black-market economies that thrive in a vacuum. Isolation is an easy position to hold from Jakarta or Manila. It’s harder when the fallout is landing in your own border provinces. By May, Sihasak was floating something more concrete: inviting Myanmar’s foreign minister to sit down with senior Asean diplomats. Not everyone agrees that “action” means talking to the junta on its own terms. Singapore has argued that engagement without preconditions just hands the generals legitimacy they haven’t earned—and that any real reengagement needs to be tied to results that can actually be measured: violence stopping, humanitarian access expanding, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners being released. The Philippines has tried to thread the needle—keep a line of communication open, but insist that Myanmar’s full return to the table still depends on results. The July meeting with Myanmar’s top diplomat suggests the bloc’s old exclusion policy is starting to crack.
PRESIDENT Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. led the formal launching of the Philippines’ Chairship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) 2026. PHOTO SOURCED FROM THE PRESIDENTIAL COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE.
What’s not clear is how far Asean actually wants that crack to go. The risk is obvious: if Thailand keeps building its own bilateral relationship with the junta. At the same time, the rest of the bloc waits for conditions to be met, Asean ends up running two Myanmar policies instead of one.
The South China Sea problem
A SIMILAR bind is playing out over the South China Sea. The Philippines wants to get the long-stalled Code of Conduct talks between Asean and China moving again, and clearly, any deal has to be grounded in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Here’s the complication: the Philippines isn’t a neutral chair on this one. It’s a claimant state with its own maritime disputes with Beijing, which gives it every reason to push hard for a rulesbased outcome—and makes it awkward to ask other Asean members, some with far less at stake and far deeper economic ties to China, to fall in line behind Manila’s priorities. Most analysts don’t expect a binding, finalized Code of Conduct this year. The gaps are too fundamental—over how much territory the code should cover, whether it should carry real legal weight, and how it relates to Unclos in the first place. What’s realistic is smaller than that: confidence-building measures, better communication at sea, mechanisms for managing incidents before they escalate. Manila can steer the agenda and shape the language on the table. It can’t manufacture an agreement where the underlying interests—Asean’s and China’s, and Asean members’— don’t line up.
A war thousands of miles away FOREIGN Affairs Secretary Ma. Theresa Lazaro and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met on the sidelines of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting on July 22, 2026 for “candid discussions on Philippines-China relations,” according to Secretary Lazaro's post on X. PHOTO SOURCED FROM SEC. MA. THERESA LAZARO/X.
IF anyone doubted how exposed Southeast Asia is to conflicts it has nothing to do with, the Middle East settled it. Fighting between the US
and Iran rattled global energy markets and put the Strait of Hormuz—the route a huge share of Asia’s oil and LNG passes through—at real risk. Asean’s economic ministers warned the conflict could knock down regional growth and put energy security in jeopardy. The Philippines felt this one more than most. It imports the bulk of its energy and a large share of its food. Fuel prices ripple straight into transport and electricity bills; pricier fertilizer ripples into food costs, and eventually into every household budget. At the 48th Asean Summit in Cebu in May, leaders started discussing things that would have sounded abstract a year earlier—a regional framework for sharing fuel supplies, a standby arrangement for food security. The subtext was clear: nobody wanted to find out the hard way what happens to fertilizer markets and food production if the disruption dragged on. Suddenly “Prosperity Corridors,” one of the Philippines’ three chairmanship pillars, meant something bigger than cutting trade barriers between Asean members. It meant figuring out whether the bloc could keep energy, food and basic goods moving at all if a shock hit from outside the region. The July foreign ministers’ meetings in Manila leaned into this. Asean called for hostilities to stop immediately and for “safe, unimpeded and continuous transit passage” through Hormuz to be restored— language that captures both what Asean believes in and what it can actually do about it. The bloc can issue statements, coordinate economically, and appeal to international law. What it can’t do is make the US, Iran or anyone else listen, or guarantee that a chokepoint thousands of kilometers away reopens. It didn’t take long for people to connect this back to the South China Sea. Freedom
of navigation is freedom of navigation, whether the water in question is the Persian Gulf or waters closer to home— and Asean members wanted to defend that principle without turning the bloc into a proxy battleground for Washington, Beijing and Tehran.
Quietly, Asean tried to become less of a talk shop
BURIED under the headlines about Myanmar and the Middle East was arguably the most consequential outcome from the Manila meetings: the adoption of the ARF Manila Plan of Action 2026–2036. The Asean Regional Forum brings together Asean states and their security partners from across the Asia-Pacific, and for years it’s had a reputation—fair or not—as a place where people talk rather than act. This new 10-year plan aims to change that. It reaffirms the ARF as “a central pillar in the evolving regional security architecture,” committing everyone at the table to dialogue, confidence-building, preventive diplomacy, respect for international law, and, notably, “specific, actionable and measurable” steps rather than just more statements. Vietnamese Foreign Minister Le Hoai Trung, speaking at the 33rd ARF ministerial meeting in Manila, framed it as a shift from “reactive dialogue” toward “proactive risk management”— building the forum’s ability to spot trouble before it turns into a crisis. Indonesia’s Sugiono made a similar case, pushing for the ARF to get ahead of tensions before they hardened into conflict, while staying anchored to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia. None of this touches the ARF’s founding logic—it’s still consensus-driven, still voluntary. What’s changing is the plumbing underneath: more information-sharing, more capacity-building, early-warning mechanisms, structures for crisis prevention that exist
before anyone needs them rather than being improvised in the middle of one. The plan’s cooperation areas read like a list of everything currently keeping Asean foreign ministries up at night—disaster relief, counter-terrorism, transnational crime, maritime security, non-proliferation, cybersecurity, defense cooperation, peacekeeping. Some of the specifics map directly onto this year’s headaches. On the maritime side, participants committed to backing Unclos, freedom of navigation and overflight, maritime domain awareness, search and rescue capacity, action against piracy, trafficking and illegal fishing, and protection for underwater infrastructure. On cybersecurity, the plan leans on confidence-building and information-sharing to cut the risk of a digital miscalculation spiraling into something worse, naming AIrelated threats, online scams, cybercrime and attacks on critical infrastructure as specific concerns. It also stretches the definition of “security” further than Asean traditionally has— folding disaster response, humanitarian assistance, environmental resilience, digital crime and maritime safety together as connected problems rather than separate portfolios. The plan pushes civilian and military officials to train together on disaster relief and calls for closer coordination with the Asean Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance. Lazaro described the pace of emerging threats as “unprecedented,” arguing the region needed more innovative, collaborative responses— and that the Manila Plan was meant to give the ARF an actual roadmap for the next decade rather than another set of aspirations. Nobody is pretending this is a revolution. The ARF isn’t giving up consensus or voluntary Continued on A4
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Sunday, September 6, 2026
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A rough year to be chairing Asean Continued from A3
participation, and the plan is non-binding—no government has to sign onto anything that cuts against its own interests. That keeps the forum inclusive, but it also means the plan’s ambitions could easily outrun what governments are actually willing to do. Even so, it says something about what Asean and its partners think the region needs right now. Between Myanmar, the South China Sea, cyber threats, natural disasters, crossborder crime and rising tension among bigger powers, just talking to each other clearly isn’t cutting it anymore.
What chairing Asean actually gets you
MANILA has leaned into its role as host this year, turning itself into the region’s meeting point. The 59th Asean Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and the cluster of related meetings around it brought Southeast Asian foreign ministers and their external partners together in July, working through Myanmar, maritime security, economic integration, regional connectivity and the Middle East in the same stretch of days. The gathering produced a Joint Communiqué and moved cooperation with Asean’s dialogue partners forward. But it’s worth being honest about what a chairmanship
THE 33rd ASEAN Regional Forum on July 23, 2026, attended by Foreign Ministers and representatives of the ARF Participants, discussed the efforts on how to further strengthen the Forum and exchanged views on regional and international developments. PHOTO VIA THE ASEAN OFFICIAL WEBSITE.
actually is. It’s not a command. The chair convenes the meetings, manages the negotiating table, drafts the communiqué language, and hunts for phrasing that governments with wildly different interests can all live
with. That’s a real influence— just not the kind that produces breakthroughs on its own. One assessment of the July meetings put it plainly: plenty of procedural movement, but no collective response that actually changed anything about
the Iran-US conflict, the South China Sea, or Myanmar’s war.
So, what does success even look like here? REALISTICALLY, nobody is going to look back at 2026 and say that’s the year the
Philippines solved Asean. That’s not how this works. What Manila can actually claim credit for is something less dramatic: keeping three or four crises from tearing the bloc’s agenda apart at the same time. That means holding the
line with Myanmar without legitimizing the junta for free, pushing maritime rules without turning Asean into an anti-China bloc in everyone else’s eyes, and building economic resilience while a war on the other side of the world messes with everyone’s fuel and food prices. None of that is glamorous. All of it is necessary. It also means proving Asean is still worth something even when it can’t fix the thing that’s actually on fire. The Philippines doesn’t get to steer this organization wherever it wants—it’s negotiating with a dozen governments that all want different things, in a year when very little is under anyone’s control. What the chairmanship does leave behind is the ARF’s new 10-year plan—a genuine attempt to turn Asean’s habit of talking into something closer to actual crisis prevention. Given everything else going on this year—Myanmar’s war, the South China Sea, cyber threats, natural disasters, crime that crosses borders, bigger powers jostling for position— dialogue by itself was never going to cut it. If anything gets remembered from this chairmanship, it probably won’t be a single dramatic win. It’ll be a region slightly better equipped to catch the next crisis before it turns into a war.
UN: Global warming will cross 1.5°C soon, hit at least 1.8°C By Eric Roston Bloomberg News
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INCE countries signed onto the 2015 Paris Agreement, the United Nations has regularly reported on the world’s progress at limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C) above pre-industrial levels. A landmark UN report published on September 2 brings an end to that era—and the beginning of a new one. The world will likely surpass 1.5°C in the next few years, it says, and warming will peak at around 1.8°C in the bestcase scenario, or at roughly 2.6°C under current policies. (Currently, long-term warming stands at 1.4°C with occasional short-term spikes above that.) Since so-called “overshoot” is virtually guaranteed, the goal must become “overshoot, peak
and decline”—that is, putting climate change in reverse, ideally by the end of this century. “We are at a really critical point,” said Debra Roberts, honorary professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and a coauthor of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report, titled Limiting Overshoot. “The level of ambition [of countries] will really determine whether overshoot lasts for decades or lasts for millennia,” Roberts said. Lowering the planet’s temperature will require quickly cutting greenhouse gas pollution from fossil fuels as well as drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, via natural means (such as reforestation) and technological ones like direct air capture.
For warming to drop back under 1.5°C, countries will not only have to cancel out their emissions but push them into a net negative range. At the same time, they’ll need to ensure that communities and economies can adapt to climate impacts that are becoming more severe. The report notes that while reducing the temperature would curtail dangers, some impacts, such as sea-level rise or biodiversity loss, may be irreversible. Every fraction of a degree of warming brings higher risks and more intense impacts. Rescuers in Nepal and China are still searching for about 4,000 missing people—with more than 1,000 known dead— after a glacial collapse caused devastating flooding. Five heat waves descended on Europe this summer, leaving
PEDESTRIANS walk through a water mister to keep cool during a heat wave in Dover, UK, on August 11. CHRIS J. RATCLIFFE/BLOOMBERG
rivers parched and crops withered; they have been linked to tens of thousands of excess deaths. Wildfires filled the air with soot across North America and Southeast Asia. In coming decades, the report warns, island nations face potential submersion, critical ocean currents may weaken and health risks will rise. Limiting Overshoot is the first major UN climate review to assume the breaching of 1.5°C and offer a pathway for how to return to it. Countries have made some progress on slowing climate change, the authors note. Emissions have nearly plateaued in recent years. But they would need to nearly halve by 2030 and effectively hit zero by midcentury to keep the world below 1.5C. Overshoot will make it
impossible to avoid reliance on carbon dioxide removal (CDR): The world will now need to lower the CO2 level in the atmosphere rather than just keep it from rising. But experts stress that it’s not a silver bullet and cutting fossil-fuel use is still imperative. “We cannot rely on CDR as a get-out-of-jail-free card, if you like,” said Richard Betts, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter and the UK Met Office and a report co-author. “We have to reduce emissions with even more urgency than before.” Cutting and halting emissions—or mitigating— climate change and adapting to it are both essential and are mutually reinforcing, the authors write. Adaptation will go more smoothly, and there will be more resources available for
it, if communities are not fighting ever-worsening and more frequent disasters because emissions remain high. The authors are clear where the burden of leadership falls. “Countries with a greater historical responsibility for climate change should do the most work,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP. The US is the biggest cumulative emitter. Absent from the report is significant discussion of a role for unproven geoengineering techniques, such as seeding the upper atmosphere with sunlight-reflecting chemicals or brightening clouds above oceans by spraying seawater into the air. “The science around this is only just beginning,” Andersen said. “So this is not a place where we can hang our hat, as solutions.”
www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Lyn Resurreccion
Sunday, September 6, 2026 A5
Now, it’s vinegar fortified with iron–DOST
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By Manuel T. Cayon
AVAO CITY—Vitamin fortification just gets interesting in the Philippines. Now it is vinegar that has been fortified with iron—to increase the chance of more Filipinos getting the needed daily iron mineral requirement.
The aim to fight the prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies in the country has led to adding fortification in vinegar, the Department of Science and Technology-Food and Nutrition Research Institute (DOST-FNRI).
According to Maricar D. Albao, a science research specialist from DOST-FNRI, researchers have been developing various technologies such as Iron-Fortified R ice (IFR), Micronutrient Growth Mix (MGM), Tubig
Talino, and Rice-Mongo Curls. Despite efforts, the prevalence of anemia persists, particularly among vulnerable groups, and so the fortification went also into condiments in partnership with a nongovernment organization, New Pathways Enterprise. Albao said this vinegar contains 30 percent of the recommended iron intake for adults aged 19 to 29 years old. “ It s i ron content rem a i ns stable until the end of its shelf life, which is at least 12 months. Even when used to cook favorite Filipino dishes like adobo, kinilaw [fish ceviche], or paksiw na bangus [milkfish stewed in vinegar], the iron content remains at 30 percent. We also do not need to worry about iron overdose or reaching toxicity levels, even if we frequently consume dishes prepared with vinegar,” she said. The formulation underwent rigorous study to strike a balance
between taste and consumer safety. It is also free from aflatoxin (a group of poisonous chemicals produced by certain molds that grow on food crops) and heavy metal contaminants. Albao said each 15-gram serving, which is equivalent to one tablespoon, provides 35 percent of an adult’s daily iron requirement. For iron content in various dishes, a 100-gram serving of chicken adobo provides 37 percent of the daily requirement for adults, while paksiw na bangus provides 38 percent. Vinegar not only helps address iron deficiency, she said, but also offers a solution to food waste since it is made from coconut water. Albao cited that an estimated 9.3 billion liters of coconut water are wasted annually during copra processing. This number can be compared to 3.5 times the size of the Philippine Arena.
Based on the 2023 National Nutrition Survey of the DOST-FNRI, iron deficiency anemia affects 21.8 percent or one in every five pregnant women, while 11.4 percent, or one in every 10 children under the age of 5, also suffer from this condition; thus, the need to provide healthier food alternatives for Filipinos. “From then until now, the DOST-FNRI has been your partner in the fight against malnutrition. One of our agency’s primary responses to micronutrient deficiencies is the food fortification strategy,” she said. She further explained that these health and food waste issues can be turned into business opportunities through the development of iron-fortified vinegar. In fact, this food technology is waiting for its potential adopters. “Based on our feasibility study, which factors in research and documentation, costs and a pro-
duction volume of 5,500 units per month, each 300 ml bottle can be sold for P62.60. We could further lower the price by sourcing raw materials and packaging from various suppliers at a lower cost without compromising quality,” Albao said. In terms of production, the primary requirements are the DOSTITDI-developed Acetator Kit, a 200-liter fermentation vessel, an air compressor, and other auxiliary tools that a production company may already have. The total equipment cost is only P47,000, and at least two production personnel are required. The FeNRI Suka iron-fortified spiced coconut water vinegar is among the new food technologies launched during the NOURISH program, or the Nurturing Opportunities for Upscaling Research and Innovation in Support for Healthier Filipinos virtual presentation.
Seminar highlights PHL ‘ube’ varieties to boost farmer income, climate resilience
L FORMER Science secretary and current Academician William G. Padolina (seated, sixth from left) is among the attendees of the Annual General Assembly of 1,001 Rice Genome Program held at a resort in Los Baños, Laguna. UPLB-PGC AGRICULTURE
Key updates highlight at 1,001 Rice Genome Program assembly
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DVANCES in rice genomics, phenotyping, and bioinformatics for climate-resilient and nutritious rice varieties. These were highlight during the Annual General Assembly of the “Philippine Rice Genomics and Bioinformatics for HighYielding, Nutritious, and Climate-Resilient Rice” program, reinforcing collaborative research efforts toward strengthening the country’s rice research and food security agenda. Co-organized by the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) and the Department of Agriculture-Philippine Rice Research Institute (DA-PhilRice), the assembly gathered researchers and partner institutions under the 1,001 Rice Genome Program (1k1RGP) to assess the project accomplishments. It also served as a platform to align ongoing initiatives with program targets, and strengthen collaborative directions in rice genomics and bioinformatics research. Representing the Philippine Council
for Agriculture, Aquatic, Natural Resources Research and Development of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-PCAARRD), the Crops Research Division (CRD) participated in the discussions on advancing genomics-enabled rice breeding and capacity development opportunities. Dr. Loida M. Perez of DA-PhilRice reported the progress in phenotyping the 1,001 Philippine Traditional Rice Varieties, including evaluation of traits associated with early maturing, herbicide tolerance, anaerobic germination tolerance, and nutrition-related traits including iron and zinc content on milled rice, low phytic acid levels, protein content and essential amino acids. Results of the study will contribute to the genome-wide association studies (GWAS) aimed at identifying genomic regions linked to important agronomic and nutritional traits for rice breeding. Meanwhile, Dr. Maria Genaleen Q. Diaz of UPLB presented key developments in the genomics and bioinformatics component of
the program. Notable milestones include initial sequencing activities, protocol optimization, molecular evaluation, and database portal development for genomic information management. Members of the Philippine-American Academy of Science and Engineering (PAASE) Scientific Advisory Board also shared exper t insights and technical recommendations to strengthen program implementation. Discussions emphasized harmonization of key technical terminologies, accessibility of digital sequence information, timely delivery of research outputs to stakeholders, particularly rice farmers, and continued investment in human resource development and talent retention. Attending PAASE members include former DOST Secretary and Academician William G. Padolina, Dr. Giselle P. Concepcion of the University of the Philippines Diliman, Dr. Michael D. Purugganan of the New York University, Dr. Rod A. Wing of the University of Arizona, Dr. Rigoberto C. Advincula of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Dr.
Maria Marjorette O. Peña of the University of South Carolina, and Dr. Gladys Cherisse J. Completo of UPLB. CRD Director Leilani D. Pelegrina commended UPLB, DA-PhilRice, and partner agencies for their valuable contribution to advancing rice research in the country. She also reaffirmed the commitment of DOST-PCAARRD to extend its support in capacitating and providing opportunities to the talented researchers through the Graduate Research and Education Assistantship for Technology program. The activity was also attended by the representatives from various partner institutions, including the International Rice Research Institute, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, National Rice Program of the Department of Agriculture, and several UPLB and UP Diliman research institutes. Also in attendance from DOST-PCAARRD were Industry Strategic S&T Program Manager for Rice Alvin Quiel C. Sabanal and Technical Support Staff for Rice Thrina A. Lanip. Thrina A. Lanip/S&T Media Services
Scicomm workshop equips Palawan youth to tell impactful scientific stories
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TUDENTS and teachers gathered at Palawan State University (PalSU) for the Science Communication Workshop to empower the next generation to translate complex research into accessible narratives using visual media and storytelling. The initiative, held on August 18, was part of the Department of Sci-ence and Technology-Mimaropa Regional Science, Technology, and In-novation Week. PalSU President Dr. Venzon L. Limpiada set an encouraging tone for the participants in his welcome remarks. Dr. Aimee Lynn Barrion-Dupo, an entomologist, spider expert, and Professor 12 at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, highlighted on human-centered science storytelling in her lecture. Barrion-Dupo emphasized the crucial distinction between simply communicating academic data and engaging in science communication, showing how humanizing complex concepts makes them relatable and easier to digest.
DR. Aimee Lynn Barrion-Dupo (left photo), an entomologist, spider expert, and professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, and Seymour Sanchez, advocacy filmmaker and communication lecturer, discuss how to convey human-centered scientific topics to a broader audience at the Science Communication Workshop at Palawan State University on August 18.
An avid science communicator, she is a member of the Science Communicators Philippines Inc. and is its treasurer. Meanwhile, advocacy filmmaker and communication lecturer Sey-mour Sanchez talked about practical ways for aspiring filmmakers to con-vey scientific topics to broader audiences through documentary
filmmak-ing, exploring diverse cinematic styles and narrative structures tailored to their message. Both resource speakers are members of the 10th Indie-Siyensya Board of Judges. Following the interactive talks, Juan Antonio Tuazon, DOST-Science Education Institute Supervising Science Research Specialist,
presented the details of the Indie-Siyensya Film Festival, the Philippines’ premier science filmmaking competition designed to promote a culture of science among youth and filmmakers through visual media. The workshop has inspired the youth to become future science communicators through filmmaking and storytelling.
OS BAÑOS, Laguna—Strengthening climate resilience and improving smallholder farm profitability require stronger support for high-value crops—including ube, or purple yam—diversified production systems, and science-based crop improvement, were emphasized during the recent Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca) Agriculture and Development Seminar Series. The seminar, themed “Resilient and Profitable Crops under Climate Change: What Works for Smallholder Farmers?” highlighted practical ways to help farmers respond to stronger typhoons, prolonged droughts, floods, El Niño, pest outbreaks, and rising production uncertainty. Director Joseph Manicad of the High Value Crops Development Program (HVCDP) of the Philippine Department of Agriculture (DA), said high-value crops contribute not only to farm productivity but also to household nutrition, rural employment, enterprise development, and export competitiveness.
Potential of Philippine ‘ube’
THE seminar also highlighted the potential of Philippine ube to support farmer income, agro-enterprise development, and export growth. Dr. Antonio Lalusin, professor at the Institute of Crop Science, College of Agriculture and Food Science at University of the Philippines-Los Baños, presented his team’s research on using genetic diversity and genomics to accelerate the development of superior Philippine ube varieties. Lalusin said demand for ube remains strong, with exports reaching $3.06 million in 2025. Processed products—such as powder, puree, and halaya—continue to drive export demand. However, he noted that the industry faces a major supply-demand gap, with domestic production estimated at 13,535 metric tons in 2022 against a demand of 49,000 metric tons. Low yield, seasonality, dormancy, and limited planting materials continue to constrain production. To help address these gaps, Lalusin’s team collected 188 greater yam accessions from various locations in the Philippines and conducted morphological and molecular characterization, genetic diversity analysis, field performance evaluation, sensory evaluation, and anthocyanin profiling. Field trials of 30 selected purplefleshed greater yam accessions at the International Rice Research Institute Central Experiment Station showed that Villasis 2 was the highest-yielding accession, producing an average yield of 60.32 tons per hectare. Sensory evaluation of 10 selected purple-fleshed ube genotypes identified Kinampay as the most aromatic and
genetically conserved, while Mabitac 2 received consistent ratings across appearance, aroma, taste, texture, and general acceptability. Lalusin identified eight promising Dioscorea alata accessions based on agromorphological, sensory, and pigment attributes: Villasis 2, Villasis 1, San Felipe, Carigar (Leyte), LA63, Mabitac 2, Batangas, and Kinampay. He also showed the profitability potential of ube production. During the regular season, a yield of 30 tons per hectare at P60 per kilogram could generate a net income of approximately P1.432 million over 10 months to 12 months. During the off-season, a yield of 20 tons per hectare at the same price could generate about P832,000 in net income.
Effects of climate-related hazards
MANICAD noted that climate-related hazards reduce yields, increase production costs, and threaten rural livelihoods. To address these challenges, he presented the HVCDP framework anchored on productive, resilient, and profitable agriculture. Manicad emphasized circular agriculture and diversification as practical strategies for smallholder farmers. Circular agriculture returns agricultural byproducts to the production cycle, reducing waste and environmental impact, while diversification lowers risk by creating multiple sources of food, income, and value within the same farming system. He also presented DA initiatives that support climate-resilient and profitable farming, including the Gulayan sa Bayan Program, Project SAFE, or Sustainable Agroforestr y Farm Enterprise, postharvest innovations, and processed and value-added agri-products. These programs promote food security, improved nutrition, climate-smart technologies, environmental conservation, diversified livelihoods, and stronger multisectoral partnerships. Manicad said farmers can capture greater value by processing crops into higher-value products—such as mung bean noodles, instant munggo mix, jackfruit chips, tomato chewies, ube powder, and bignay juice concentrate. He discussed the DA’s response to prolonged El Niño conditions, which includes drought-tolerant planting materials, improved water management, climatesmart technologies, access to credit and crop insurance, and stronger extension and climate advisory services. “By integrating production support, risk management, financing, and climate information, the DA aims not only to reduce the impacts of El Niño on agricultural production but also to strengthen the long-term resilience of farming communities across the country,” he said.
Faith
Sunday
A6 Sunday, September 6, 2026
Editor: Lyn Resurreccion • www.businessmirror.com.ph
Bishop: Church needs prophets, not status quo defenders
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AMBOANGA City—A Catholic bishop challenged religious superiors Wednesday to put defending marginalized communities ahead of maintaining church institutions, urging them to become “prophets” willing to confront poverty, violence and injustice. Bishop Broderick Pabillo of Taytay, Palawan, said religious life must be measured not only by how it proclaims the faith but by how it stands with people whose dignity and livelihoods are threatened. “ The Philippine Church does not need religious who merely manage institutions or maintain the status quo. The Church needs prophets,” Pabillo told 233 religious superiors at the second national convention of
the Conference of Major Superiors in the Philippines. “You are called to be the conscience of the Church—to prick its complacency, disrupt its comfort, and keep it ready for mission,” he said. He urged religious communities to stay close to the poor, Indigenous peoples, migrants, elderly people and other marginalized sectors rather than ret reat i ng i nto i nst it ut ion a l security.
BISHOP Broderick Pabillo of Taytay, Palawan, addresses participants at the second national convention of the Conference of Major Superiors in the Philippines in Zamboanga City on September 2. NORMAN DEQUIA
“Where marginalization exists, religious must be found — remaining with the vulnerable, defending their dignity, and empowering their voice,” said Pabillo, who also chairs the CBCP Office on Stewardship. T he bishop a lso ca l led on
relig ious leaders to confront conf licts over land and natural resources without resorting to violence, saying justice must be at the heart of any lasting peace. “Arms cannot manufacture justice. As religious, we must proclaim that peace is the fruit of justice,” he said. He cited destructive mining and large-scale reclamation projects as issues requiring the Church to defend affected communities and creation. Pabillo also recognized religious communities that sheltered whistleblowers, victims of the previous administration’s drug war and their families. Their support helped preserve testimonies used in cases involving alleged abuses, he said. He challenged religious superiors to ask where their communities are most needed, whom they should help reconcile and which threatened communities and parts of creation require their prophetic voice. Norman Dequia/CBCP News
Pope: ‘It is not yet too late’ to turn destruction into life By Linda Bordoni Vatican News
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T is not yet too late” to change course and redirect what has been used for destruction towards life, Pope Leo XIV said on Tuesday, urging Christians to make care for creation an expression of ecological conversion and universal fraternity. The Pope was celebrating Mass at the Laudato Si’ Village in Castel Gandolfo on 1 September, marking the annual World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation and the beginning of the five-week Season of Creation. Reflecting on the biblical readings, Pope Leo invited the faithful to contemplate the beauty of the natural world and, through it, to recognize the Creator. In the gardens of the Laudato Si’ Village, he said, this invitation to contemplate creation is particularly fitting. “It would be superficial to marvel at fire, wind, rushing waters or the stars of heaven, without allowing our gaze to rise to the Creator of such wonders,” he noted.
God, the Author of all things, speaks to us.” The pope explained that this “task” of contemplation is more than an appreciation of the natural world and noted that it is the beginning of an encounter with God that can lead to a transformation in the way human beings relate to creation. It is the first step, he said, toward an “authentic ecological conversion”, in which the effects of an encounter with Jesus Christ become visible in humanity’s relationship with the world.
A responsibility shared by all
CONTEMPLATING creation and encountering its Creator, Pope Leo said, leads to a deeper awareness of humanity’s place within God’s plan—and of the responsibility that follows from it. That responsibility is both personal and collective, he said. “As we become conscious of
our shortcomings and failures,” he continued, “we can renew our commitment to restoring the relationships among all creatures according to the will of their Creator.” The pope then turned to one of the central themes of this year’s World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation: the transformation of instruments of destruction into instruments that sustain life. Referring to the biblical prophecy to “beat swords into ploughshares” which is also the theme for his message for the World Day, he said the call is to “transform harm into life”. “It is not yet too late,” Pope Leo insisted. “ W h at h a s b e e n u s e d for destruction can be redirected toward life,” he said, “toward the care of the poor, the nourishment of the hungry, and the safeguarding of creation.”
Following the example of Saint Francis
THE Season of Creation will conclude on October 4, when the Church commemorates the eighth centenary of the death of Saint Francis of Assisi. Pope Leo recalled that Pope Francis drew particular inspiration from the saint when writing Laudato Si’ and in establishing the Laudato Si’ Village, where the Mass was celebrated. Inviting the faithful to unite themselves spiritually with the “Little poor man of Assisi,” Pope Leo turned to the Canticle of the Creatures, in which Saint Francis praises God through the sun, moon and stars, wind, water, fire and the earth. “With Saint Francis,” he said, “let us renew our commitment to living and promoting that universal fraternity which is inseparably bound to the task of caring for creation.”
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By Vincent Thian & María Teresa Hernández The Associated Press
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UKIT MERTAJAM, Malaysia—It’s that time of year when the living make room for the dead. Malaysia’s Hungry Ghost Festival is held during the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar, which this year began in mid-August. “It is centered around the worship of Da Shi Ye, also known as the Guardian God of Ghosts, and has become one of the major traditional Chinese religious celebrations in Bukit Mertajam,” said Lee Kim Fong, general affairs coordinator for the event. The city is in Malaysia’s northern state of Penang, about 320 kilometers (200 miles) north of Kuala Lumpur. “It dates back to 1888, when there was a serious plague in Bukit Mertajam,” Lee said. “After that, our ancestors began worshipping Da Shi Ye.” For 15 days, devotees pray and make offerings before a towering paper-andbamboo effigy of Da Shi Ye. The celebration culminates in the ceremonial burning of the effigy, symbolically sending the deity back to the spirit world. Lee estimated that more than 10,000 people attended the burning ceremony this year, with crowds sometimes reaching 20,000. “The main purpose is to look after wandering spirits, especially spirits who have no one to worship or make offerings to them,” Lee said. “Some may have died in accidents or may have no family members to pray for them.” Similar celebrations are held in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Devotees travel to Bukit Mertajam from across Malaysia as well as Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand.
A towering effigy stands at the center of the celebration
THE Da Shi Ye effigy in Bukit Mertajam is traditionally made about five centimeters (two inches) taller each year. In 2026, it reached 8.9 meters (about 29 feet). Ng Chi Wong, 69, has spent more than four decades crafting the figures. He said completing the towering effigy takes about a month and a half, with a team of seven or eight people working on it. “We have the measurements and a general idea of the structure, but there are no formal drawings,” Ng said. “Most of the design and construction details are already in our minds.” The artisans begin with the head, the part that requires the most work, before building the main frame and shaping the body. The outer layers are then added and painted. Ng said that the process has undergone some small improvements over time. Yet the craft requires more than technical skill. “You also need to understand the tradition and the beliefs behind it,” he said. LIM HAN CONG, a University of Malaya master’s graduate in Chinese studies, described the Hungry Ghost Festival as a counterpart to another traditional Chinese observance: Qingming, or Tomb-Sweeping Day, when families honor their ancestors at their graves. While Qingming focuses primarily on one’s own ancestors, the Hungry Ghost Festival extends offerings to wandering spirits and the unclaimed dead. “This tradition reflects a synthesis of Buddhist, Taoist and Chinese folk religious beliefs,” Lim said. In Taoist ceremonies during the festival, priests recite sacred scriptures and perform rites to help the deceased find peace and salvation. Such practices are intended to provide comfort, nourishment and liberation to those who have no descendants to care for them. “At its core, the Ghost Festival expresses the belief that the living and the dead remain connected through enduring moral and emotional bonds,” Lim said. “The living, therefore, have a responsibility to honor, support and help the deceased attain peace.”
An old tradition finds new roles in Malaysia
POPE Leo XIV celebrates Holy Mass for Care of Creation at the Laudato Sì Village in Castel Gandolfo, Italy. VATICAN MEDIA
‘Church must confront failures to build safe communities for kids’
AMBOANGA Cit y—A Catholic bishop urged religious leaders Thursday to confront the Church’s failures in protecting minors and vulnerable people, saying safeguarding systems alone cannot create truly safe communities. Bishop Dennis Villarojo of Malolos, chairman of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines Office for the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Persons, said that “to create safe communities within the Church, we must first acknowledge our failures in this regard.” Addressing 233 religious superiors
The living care for ancestors, wandering spirits at Malaysia’s Hungry Ghost Festival
The festival honors spirits with no one to remember them
Listen to the ‘melodious voice’ of creation
THE pope asked those present to step back from the pace and noise of everyday life and rediscover their place within the harmony of creation noting that the Season of Creation provides an opportunity to “pause from the frenzy of our daily lives” and to recognize that humanity itself is part of the profound harmony found in God’s creation. “Let us place in ‘silent mode’ the many noises generated by human activity,” Pope Leo said, “so that we may hear the melodious voice of creation, through which
PARTICIPANTS carry a figure representing a Chinese deity during the Hungry Ghost Festival in Bukit Metajam, Malaysia, on August 29. AP/VINCENT THIAN
at their national convention, he warned Church leaders against complacency as safeguarding systems are strengthened, saying even one abuse case remains unacceptable. “The fact that action is being taken to deal with sex abuse cases should not, however, give us a spirit of complacency, because one case is more than what we can tolerate,” Villarojo said. The bishop said safety must go beyond policies and procedures and involve the culture and relationships within Church communities.
“‘Safe’ does not only mean having all the systems in place to prevent any form of abuse,” he said. “That community may be safe, but it may also be antiseptic, and even toxic.” He said safeguarding is the responsibility of the entire Church community and warned that cover-ups or negligence by those responsible could lead to separate investigations and removal from office. “Any form of cover-up or negligence can make the point person liable to a separate investigation which may lead to removal from office,” he said.
Vi l l a ro j o s a i d h e a l t hy re l i g i o u s communities should foster authentic faith, joy in service, discipline and zeal for mission — qualities that can also attract young people to consecrated life. “It is logical to postulate that a safe community is more attractive to young people than those that are perceived not to be,” he said. The CBCP protection office assists dioceses in establishing safeguarding structures and measures to prevent, investigate and respond to abuse cases. Norman Dequia/CBCP News
OFFERINGS and rituals like those held in Bukit Mertajam eventually took on a broader community role. Starting in the 1970s, Malaysian Chinese celebrations incorporated charitable activities, such as auctions of blessed offerings and fundraising campaigns for schools. “As a result, the Ghost Festival in Malaysia has evolved beyond a festival devoted solely to honoring the dead,” Lim said. “It has also become an important platform for strengthening community solidarity.” That broader role is also evident in Bukit Mertajam. Money raised through fundraising efforts helps the organizing committee provide assistance to people with medical needs and support Chinese-language education. Alongside that community work, organizers are looking for new ways to broaden access to the tradition. Participation is no longer limited to those who can make it to Bukit Mertajam. “We introduced online worship for devotees who are overseas or unable to return,” Lee said. “So they can still take part in the prayers and make offerings.” A professional team documented the celebration from August 14 through August 29. Organizers plan to upload the footage to Facebook so people around the world can see the Da Shi Ye festival in Penang. “This is a Chinese tradition that has been passed down for more than a hundred years,” Lee said. “As descendants of the Chinese community, we have a responsibility to preserve it.”
Biodiversity Sunday BusinessMirror
Asean Champions of Biodiversity Media Category 2014
Sunday, September 6, 2026 A7
Editor: Lyn Resurreccion
PANAON ISLAND PROTECTED SEASCAPE 1ST ANNIVERSARY:
Why whale sharks choose Panaon Island waters as haven
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By Jonathan L. Mayuga
According to Lim, a former DENRBiodiversity Management Bureau director, and executive director of the Asean Centre for Biodiversity, that at a time when many protected areas face increasing pressures from competing development interests and changing priorities, continued vigilance is essential. “Panaon should demonstrate that conservation and development need not at the expense of one another, and that decisions recognize the true ecological, social, and economic value of healthy ecosystems,” she said. She added that the goal is for PIPS to remain protected well beyond its first birthday and to become a model of a sustainably and effectively managed protected area—one that can endure through leadership changes and withstand the many pressures and threats confronting our natural ecosystems today.
ARINE conservation group Oceana Philippines, local governments and island communities have marked the first anniversary of Republic Act (RA) 12238 on International Whale Sharks Day on August 30. RA 12238 created the Panaon Island Protected Seascape (PIPS), which safeguards over 60,000 hectares of some of the world’s most climate-resilient coral reefs and critical feeding grounds for the iconic whale shark, locally known as “tiki-tiki.” “One year down, a lifetime to go! The [PIPS] law has come to life, through the incredible teamwork of local governments, national agencies and stakeholders. Their passion and stewardship are the tide that will lift our fisheries, biodiversity and the coastal livelihoods for generations,” Von Hernandez, Oceana vice president, said in a statement.
Management board, plan
WITHIN a year of the PIPS declaration, the seascape’s governance and management structures have been put in place. The multi-stakeholder Protected Area Management Board (PAMB) has been established, and its executive committee has already approved the Protected Area Management Plan (PAMP), a science-based, community-grounded blueprint for coordinated enforcement, ecosystem resilience, and sustainable ecotourism. The PAMP was developed through the collaboration of Oceana, Southern Leyte State University-Bontoc Campus, the Environment department, the local governments of Liloan, San Francisco, Pintuyan, and San Ricardo on Panaon Island, and the provincial government of Southern Leyte. The planning process involved consultations with local communities and stakeholders and gathered the commitment of national government agencies and nongovernment organizations to ensure the plan’s grounding in both science and real situations.
Resilient reefs, whale shark haven
THE PIPS is part of the world’s 50 priority reefs—classified as likely to withstand the impacts of climate change. According to Oceana, its surrounding waters are rich feeding grounds not only for tiki-tiki but also for other large marine vertebrates—such as green sea turtles and hawksbill sea turtles. The rare and endangered blue whale has also been sighted inside the seascape, a testimony to its health. The surrounding waters of Panaon Island are basically a known interaction site of whale sharks.
Pintuyan Mayor Ricarte Estrella, whose municipality is known to have a large concentration of whale sharks, affirms the commitment of the LGU to ethical tourism and marine conservation. “As Pintuyan is known for its whale shark interactions, having Panaon Island as a protected seascape has helped protect and maintain our marine ecosystem. A healthier ecosystem supports more plankton, which is the primary food source of whale sharks. When the marine environment thrives, whale sharks are more likely to stay in our municipal waters, which in turn supports our community livelihoods,” Estrella explained.
REEF fishes and whale sharks thrive in Panaon Island Protected Seascape PHOTOS CREDIT TO OCEANA PHILIPPINES
She said they are partnering with educational institutions to craft policies, like the University of Michigan.
Protecting important habitats
All hands on deck
THE Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is set to establish a Protected Area Management Office on the island to support the daily management of the seascape. The Department of Science and Technology and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, through its Fisheries and Coastal Resiliency Project, have begun supporting initiatives on sustainable livelihoods and coastal resource management, while opportunities for support from the Department of Trade and Industry and Department of Labor and Employment are being explored. A landmark provision of RA 12238 mandates speed limits for vessels traversing PIPS waters—designed to protect whale sharks and other marine megafauna from injury, disturbance and death, particularly along migratory pathways and critical feeding zones. Section 8 of the law directs the DENR, Philippine Coast Guard and other enforcement agencies to adopt appropriate speed regulation policies. “The implementation of the Panaon Seascape plan is a testament to what happens when national agencies, local leaders and island communities paddle in the same direction to turn our vision of a living and breathing sanctuary into reality. Together, we are building a legacy of abundance and coastal resilience,” Hernandez said.
Financing biodiversity
INTERVIEWED via Zoom, Atty. Liza EismaOsorio, senior director for Campaigns, Legal and Policy at Oceana Philippines, said that with PIPS being a protected area under the Expanded National Integrated Protected
Areas System Act of 2018, protectors of Panaon Island are assured of funding for its sustainable management. “There’s already a PAMB. There will be funding, for sure, because this is in the National Expenditure Program,” Eisma Osorio said. “Right after the law was [signed] last year, we worked on finalizing the management plan. The next step is to identify measures that can be implemented,” she said. The executive committee has already approved the plan that manages PIPS and is now awaiting for DENR’s approval. “We are looking at the mega-fauna. The importance is to manage it. There are many whale sharks in those areas,” she said, referring to the seasonal visits of whale sharks in the seascape from October to end of June.
‘Go-Slow Zones’
AS part of the management plan, protectors of Panaon Island are recommending to declare a “Go-Slow Zones” measure for vessels in areas where whale sharks congregate to feed and play. “We are looking at limiting the speed to 10 knots or 18 km/h during this period,” Eisma-Osorio said. Since whale sharks are sure to attract tourists, she said they are also planning to create whale shark sighting protocols, together with stakeholders, including the Philippine Coast Guard and the DENR. They will be enforced in the waters of
Pintuyan and San Francisco towns, two of the four municipalities where whale shark congregations are high. There are also sightings in Liluan and San Ricardo, but since they are facing the Dinagat Island, they have high vessel traffic, she explained.
Mining threat
LIKE other protected areas, PIPS is not oblivious to threats, particularly from mining. “There were reports of gold mining on Panaon Island,” she said. “Even though its only small-scale mining, the use of mercury, of course, is a threat to the environment,” she said. Moreover, she said that Oceana Philippines also learned that Panaon is being promoted by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau as a potential mining exploration site. “This is something we need to look into,” she said.
Responsible tourism
ACCO R D I N G to Eisma-Osorio, Oceana Philippines and its partners will push for responsible tourism practices on Panaon, nixing the idea of whale shark feeding being practiced in other sites. “We are doing capacity-building, training, risk assessment, and would soon be pushing to have deputized park rangers to protect the island and its surrounding waters,” she said, making the community co-owners of the tourism industry.
INTERNATIONAL biodiversity expert Theresa Mundita S. Lim, executive director of the Environment Science Institute at Miriam College, said a year after its declaration, Panaon Island Protected Seascape continues to be a reminder why protecting important habitats matters. “It is encouraging to see that the governance mechanisms for the protected area are already taking shape, with the establishment of the [PAMB] and the approval of the [PAMP]. These are important early steps toward translating the protection provided by law into meaningful and sustained action on the ground,” Lim told the BusinessMirror via Messenger on September 2. “With the progress is already being made in PIPS—including efforts to regulate vessel speeds, protect critical habitats, and promote responsible tourism, I am hopeful that its charismatic and threatened marine species—foremost among them, the whale shark or tiki-tiki, as well as sea turtles and even the endangered blue whale—will continue to thrive in this rich marine ecosystem,” Lim added.
Sustaining healthy, productive fisheries
ACCORDING to Lim, protecting these species and their habitats means sustaining healthy and productive fisheries, supporting the livelihoods of coastal communities and contributing to the country’s food security. “The first anniversary of PIPS is therefore worth celebrating. But the honor of being entrusted with such an extraordinary natural heritage carries with it substantial responsibility,” she said. “The challenge now is to ensure that the protection provided by law is sustained through effective governance, adequate resources, sound science, community stewardship, and the continuing commitment of all stakeholders,” Lim pointed out.
Charismatic keystone species
“THE presence of both the world’s largest fish and the world’s largest living animals— the whale shark and the blue whale—is no fluke. It is the total validation for the importance of the [PIPS],” said Gregg Yan, a fellow of The Explorers Club, a society whose ranks include Buzz Aldrin, Jane Goodall and James Cameron. “Charismatic keystone species don’t just camp out in ecological deserts. They’re patrons of the ‘Samgyupsal Centers’ of our oceans— areas with almost unlimited amounts of food,” Yan said. According to Yan, the presence of whale sharks, blue whales, and other amazing creatures of the sea in the waters of Panaon Island is living proof that the area is healthy and productive. “Places like Pintuyan are fully embracing sustainable wildlife ecotourism, advocating for low-impact whale shark tourism, driven by local community members,” Yan said.
Collective leadership, stewardship
“THE success of Panaon Island’s first year as a protected seascape is a testament to the collective leadership and stewardship of its local governments, communities and fisherfolk, Oceana Philippines, national government agencies, academic institutions, and other partners working together to turn protection into meaningful action,” said Kristine Kate Lim, country director of Wildlife Conservation Society Philippines Program. She said that as populations of sharks and other threatened marine species continue to decline globally, protected areas, such as Panaon, provide critical refuges that not only conserve wildlife and their habitats, but also support healthy fisheries, sustainable livelihoods, responsible tourism, and resilient coastal communities. “Beyond its local significance, Panaon contributes to the Philippines’ and the global community’s shared commitment to expand and strengthen the effective protection and conservation of biodiversity by 2030,” she said.
IPs tapped for ancestral knowledge to protect Philippine Eagle By Manuel T. Cayon
D
AVAO CITY—The Indigenous people’s deep sense of the forests and their ancestral knowledge of managing the environment may be the better key to improve the protection of the endangered Philippine Eagle from trapping and shooting activities of wildlife and fun hunters. Between now and the next 10 months, the Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF) and the Depar tment of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) will pilot seven tribes in the Davao Region and seven tribes in the Caraga Region, the two eastern regions of Mindanao which are known to host several nesting sites of the eagle. “We have 14 partners in the pilot program to have the Indigenous peoples
articulate their plans crafted by ancestral knowledge which can be positioned alongside scientific tools like global positioning system [GPS] geographic information system [GIS], and the use of camera traps and sensors,” Jason C. Ibañez, PEF director for operations, told a regular Wednesday news briefing at the Abreeza Mall here. He said this will be a project to tap the ancestral knowledge of the Indigenous communities to properly design the ancestral domain in managing a protection program for the Philippine eagle, he added. The tribes have effectively managed and protected the forest ecosystems for generations so “they hold the key to designing a good management program to prevent the recurrence of hunting, trapping and shooting of the eagles, even using pellet and ‘jolen,’ or marble, guns,”
ENVIRONMENT Sec. Juan Miguel Cuna visits the Philippine Eagle Foundation conservation camp in northern Davao City and sign agreements with tribal leaders to pilot an Indigenous peoplesbased eagle protection and forest management design plan. The move is aimed at stopping the trapping and shooting of eagles inside protected areas. PHOTO COURTESY OF PEF
Ibañez pointed out. The Indigenous peoples’ design of the management and protection plans may be
intertwined or combined with the policies and protocols of the local governments, and may be used to tap funds from local
government units, private organizations and other donors. “They may have their own design to finally prevent hunters from carrying or bringing pellet and jolen guns to hunt or prey on the Philippine eagle just for fun,” he said. The PEF and the DENR launched the program with the 14 tribes on Tuesday at the PEF conservation camp in Malagos, some 35 kilometers northwest of downtown Davao. The program will involve two teams to help each tribe articulate the plans, beginning with the tribes in the Davao de Oro towns of Compostela; the Davao Oriental town of Baganga, Cateel; and back to the Davao de Oro towns of New Bataan, Monkayo and Mabini. Then the team will swing to the Surigao del Norte town of Gigaquit to the Agusan
towns off San Francisco, the Agusan Marsh and to five other areas in the Caraga. The program will reach out to the Mamanwas of northeastern Mindanao, the Manobos and Dibabawons of Davao Region and the 11 other Indigenous groups in the two regions. “Upon completing the plan, it will find a way to mainstream the fund,” he said. Some of the tribes people will be compensated with minimum wages, with Ibañez saying that the tribes “bringing their ancestral skills and services to the table are like having the experts from the academe.” “We hope that through these plans, we can help prevent what happened to one of the eagles which died in Davao de Oro in 2024 due to trapping and shooting. Now, we will have a higher chance of really protecting the eagles,” Ibañez said.
Sports BusinessMirror
A8 Sunday, September 6, 2026
mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph | Editor: Jun Lomibao
WHAT’S NEXT FOR GOLF IN ’26?!
Even if Scottie Scheffler won $100 million this year, without a major, it would still be just a detail, a number that means little for those who are already past getting motivated by the money to be made.
season became even shorter. W hat used to end in August now ends in July—w ith half the year still in front of us! For commercial reasons, for reasons like golf money is concentrated mostly in the US, and to avoid conflicts with popular American sporting events, the golf season has been effectively limited to just half a year. Sounds crazy but sadly, it’s the way it is. After the Open Championship every July, and with the exception of Ryder Cups every other September, there is hardly any golf tournament worth losing sleep over. It’s a shame that as the summer months bring golf weather and packed courses, the professional season fizzles out. Not even the humongous money being dangled by FedEx has created buzz that equals major weeks. The FedEx Cup is still way below the PGA Championship when it comes to interest. But why is that?
S
O, Scottie Scheffler just won his second FedEx Cup. While winning the season-long race is no small feat, and the accompanying prize money is a literal fortune at a staggering $40 million, the win doesn’t feel like a “real” accomplishment, golf-wise. I am sure not a few will disagree with me, but please hear me out. In golf, success is measured by majors—that’s it. You can win every tournament during the year, win record prize money year in, year out, but if you’re not getting it done at the majors, it doesn’t mean much. Sure, Scheffler has had his share of major victories, with the last coming just last at the Open
Glory, heritage, history
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER has the crowd behind him as he chips to the first green during the final round of the PGA Tour Championship in Atlanta. AP
Two birds suddenly appear and Medvedev isn’t happy
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EW YORK—Daniil Medvedev thought the chair umpire’s call was for the birds. Medvedev protested a decision Wednesday during his second-round victory at the US Open after the umpire ordered a point to be replayed because two birds sat on top of the net during multiple shots of a rally. Medvedev led 4-1 in the second set with Sebastian Gorzny serving then two small birds sat atop the net in Louis Armstrong Stadium during the middle of a point and play continued, with both players hitting multiple shots before Medvedev angled a forehand toward the corner that caused one of the birds to fly up. Umpire Timo Janzen quickly signaled for play to stop as Gorzny began to hit a shot that would not have gotten back into play. “This is the most ridiculous decisions I’ve seen in my life,” Medvedev said. “This is very bad.” Medvedev, no stranger to chaotic moments in Armstrong, was asked following his 6-1, 6-3, 7-5 victory where that one ranked. “This would be definitely in the top five,” he said. “But the thing is that when they came in, I thought, OK, the referee is going to stop the point, and he let it play, like, ‘OK, let’s play.’ And the moment I hit the winner, he was, like, ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’” Medvedev lost his first-round match in Armstrong last year, when his meltdown after the umpire allowed Benjamin Bonzi a second serve because a photographer mistakenly entered the court too soon led to a delay of more than six minutes. His antics on the same court in 2019, followed by a postmatch interview in which he encouraged fans to continue raining down boos on him, led to a $9,000 fine. He quickly let go of Wednesday’s incident. “It’s OK,” the 2021 champion said. “It happens.”
Kyrgios accepts suspension
IN London Nick Kyrgios accepted a one-month suspension from the International Tennis Integrity Association (ITIA) for testing positive for cocaine at a tournament in Spain in June, the organization announced Thursday. The 31-year-old from Australia had been provisionally suspended since August 4, which was revealed just over two weeks later. The ITIA in its announcement said Kyrgios told investigators that he socially used cocaine during a night out before he was due to play in Mallorca, and after consulting with an expert from the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA), accepted that it was outside of competition. WADA’s default three-month ban can be reduced to one by completing a treatment program. The ITIA said Kyrgios’ suspension is over Thursday pending the completing of that program. Kyrgios’ prize money and rankings points from the Mallorca event are forfeited. He lost his only match to countryman Adam Walton. A finalist at Wimbledon in 2022 when he lost to Novak Djokovic, Kyrgios has played only four Association of Tennis Professionals singles matches this year and is ranked 918th in the world. AP
DANIIL MEDVEDEV protests to the umpire about birds landing on the net during his second round match against Sebastian Gorzny. AP AND YAHOO SPORTS PHOTOS
Championship. He actually won two majors last year, with a PGA Championship in the spring of 2025. So there is no argument that 2025 was a great year for the world No. 1. But this year is different. Zero majors for someone so consistent and so good down the stretch feels like a slump. “But Scottie has won record-shattering money this year!” some may argue. True, but prizes increase yearly and $10 million in earnings for a season 10 years ago is not the same as $10 million in earnings in 2026. Even if Scheffler won $100 million this year, without a major, it would still be just a detail, a number that means little for those who are already past getting motivated by the money to be made. If money was the end goal, LIV might still be
you decide to add another 18 in the hopes of your players gaining ranking points to qualify for majors. In the professional game where money should be the goal, evidently, it is not enough.
The year ends in August around, or even thriving. Chasing the money gets old once you have enough of it. That is exactly why the Jon Rahms, the Brysons, the Cam Smiths, the Brooks Koepkas of the golf world never really stopped joining majors. That is also why LIV was fighting to get world ranking points even if they looked foolish changing their 54-hole format to the standard 72. Imagine, your league is named LIV (54 in Roman Numerals), and
ANOTHER problem with golf is that after the majors, there isn’t much to really look forward to. For the past three decades, I have proudly lost weeks of sleep, four times a year, every year to watch majors. Waking up at 2 a.m. to follow the last flight was something my late dad and I bonded over. One week in April, one week in June, a week in July, and a week in August, every year, we lost sleep. With the PGA Championship getting moved to May, the major
Team USA FIBA World Cup title defense tougher
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ERLIN—The US has dominated the women’s FIBA World Cup for nearly two decades, winning the last four titles. A young American roster led by the trio of Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers and Angel Reese now complement US stalwart Breanna Stewart as the team looks to win its fifth straight championship. The Americans will be missing four-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson, who the team announced Monday would miss the World Cup along with Kelsey Plum. They were replaced by newcomers Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen. The world has been catching up to the Americans with France coming within a point the US in the gold medal game at the 2024 Paris Olympics. That’s the closest any team has come to beating the US in either the Olympics or World Cup since the Americans last lost in the semifinals of the 2006 World Cup to Russia. “I think there’s no question that the world is improving at a rapid rate. It’s so exciting to see, and I see it at every level,” US coach Kara Lawson said. “There’s more depth to the teams at the World Cup. Now when you look at rosters, there’s a number of just highquality players....I think it’s going to be the most difficult World Cup to win that we’ve had because of that.” The Olympic loss is still on the mind of the French team, which has more than a half-dozen WNBA players on its roster, including Gabby Williams, Marine Johannes and Dominique Malonga. “We sure still do think about it,”
BREANNA STEWART (10) and Chelsea Gray (8) of the US attend a training session ahead of their match against China during the Women’s Basketball World Cup in Berlin. AP Malonga said. “We know we were right there against the best team in the world.” Other top teams that could reach the podium are Australia, Spain and China. The next World Cup, which will be held in Japan, will move to November 26 to December 8 in 2030 and won’t potentially conflict with the WNBA schedule. “I would I would call it one of the most significant decisions by the central boards in this decade,” FIBA Secretary General Andreas Zagklis told The Associated Press. “We understood that, the women’s game needs its own dedicated spot in the world calendar and in particular in the basketball calendar.” The women’s World Cup used to be the same year as the men’s tournament
until 2014. Now the tournaments are held in different years with the men’s championship a year before the Olympics and the women’s tourney two years before the Games. “It’s a major decision because it creates a big window for essentially every league in the world,” Zagklis said. With no major men’s tournaments this year, Zagklis said that FIBA sponsors could focus more on the women this time. It will also help with ease the challenges for the WNBA, which this has suspended play in the league during the tournament. Play in the WNBA will resume on September 17 after stopping on August
IN my humble opinion, events and tournaments that carry prestige, history—not more money—is what the professional tours ought to develop after the majors. The Ryder Cup is the perfect example of this. Even without money, the Europeans battle it out with the Americans over pride and bragging rights. Only in recent years has the issue of money been mentioned at the Ryder Cup and that money goes to players’ charities and not to their pockets (in theory). But my point is, the focus on more, more, more isn’t effective if you ask the viewing public. What we want is to see our idols battle it out with the very best fields for more than a paycheck. Events like the World Cup of golf, the Presidents Cup, events which stake pride of country should be the way to go. Matchplay events, celebrated in the amateur game, seems to have become an afterthought in the pros. I’d love to see more matchplay events on the calendar. There is a whole six months in the golfing calendar that has to somehow create interest. The FedEx Cup cannot be the highlight of the golfing year, because it sure doesn’t fit the bill, no matter the money. And please, there is more to golf than the US of A. Let’s take it and grow it in all corners of the globe! 31. There are over 50 current WNBA players competing in the World Cup. The format of the tournament has changed for the betterment of the players, with the addition of four teams in Germany. The 16-team format is not new—it was used from 1990-2018. Now teams will play three pool games in four days as opposed to the five games in six days— which they did in the 2022 World Cup when only 12 teams went to Australia. The top teams will then earn a break before the quarterfinals begin while the second and third-place teams in each group will play to reach the elimination round. Instead of playing eight games, teams will potentially only need six to win the title. Zagklis said this could be an extremely competitive tournament. “Within the top 10, virtually everyone can beat anyone,” he said. “We saw that in 2022 where Nigeria beat in the group Australia and then Australia got the bronze medal. We saw it in the qualifier, where USA was trailing Belgium for 39 minutes.” Many current and former WNBA coaches are heading up teams in the World Cup. Mike Thibault is in charge of Belgium while Sandy Brondello is heading up Australia again. Her husband, Olaf Lange, took over Germany and will lead the host nation. Former Phoenix Mercury coach Corey Gaines is leading Japan and Chicago Sky assistant Rena Wakama is once again in charge of Nigeria. The Americans are led by Lawson with WNBA head coaches Nate Tibbetts, Natalie Nakase and Stephanie White serving as assistants. Jose Fernandez is a scout for the team. AP
BusinessMirror
Jason Gildore:
SLAP, DEEP BASS, AND BARE YOUR SOUL
September 6, 2026
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BusinessMirror SEPTEMBER 6, 2026 | soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com
ANGER AS A LOVE LANGUAGE
YOUR MUSI
How an old ego problem became SunKissed Lola’s new single
Y
Story by Bless Aubrey Ogerio
OU’RE angry. You still love them. And now you have to decide which feeling wins.
That tension sits at the center of “Edi Magalit Ka,” the latest single from Filipino band SunKissed Lola, released on August 7 after more than a year since its last Extended Play (EP). The song takes a familiar Filipino phrase—one that can easily sound like a challenge in the middle of an argument—and turns it into something more vulnerable: an acknowledgment that anger is part of relationships, but so is the decision to understand the person on the other side of it. It was not always written that way, though. In an exclusive interview with SoundStrip, “Edi Magalit Ka” began in 2021 with what the band described as a more prideful tone. Vocalists and guitarists Dan Ombao and Alvin
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Serito worked on the song, with Ombao starting it in 2021 before Serito helped develop it. The melody stayed largely intact when they revisited it, but the lyrics changed as the song took on a different understanding of love. Instead of doubling down on ego, the new version leans into patience. And perhaps that makes sense for a band that is itself growing into a more deliberate phase.
Road to empathy
THE original version of “Edi Magalit Ka” came from a simpler place: being upset and standing one's ground. But as they worked on the song, its emotional center shifted toward what happens after the anger—when the argument is no longer about who was right, but whether the relationship is worth more than the fight. For SunKissed Lola, the answer is yes. “Conflicts and arguments are part of a healthy relationship, and part of being mature is always approaching these situations with a lot of patience, and understanding, and sometimes, or maybe a lot of times, choosing the relationship over the argument,” the band told SoundStrip in an email. “Edi magalit ka” can be dismissive, but in the context of the song, it becomes less about pushing someone away and more about refusing to let one bad moment define the relationship. The band's own evolution helped shape that interpretation.
Less on showing off
AFTER more than a year since its last EP, SunKissed Lola is also approaching its fifth year as a band with a clearer idea of what it wants its music to sound like. The previous EP was partly an exploration of the genres the members were drawn to and an opportunity to show what they could do musically. Now, the approach is more intentional. Still, that does not necessarily mean adding more layers, bigger arrangements or more complicated musicianship. In fact, the band said part of its growth has been learning when not to show everything it can do. “Part of being an artist is wanting to showcase the wide arsenal of our musical abilities,” SunKissed Lola told this newspaper. “Right now, we're approaching our music differently as we become more intentional when we nitpick our parts and most of the
SunKissed Lola
time, it's choosing a simpler riff over a flashy one, because we believe that it will genuinely serve the song better,” they added. That restraint is part of what the band now considers its growth. Its members have different musical instincts, but nearly five years of making music together has taught them how those instincts can coexist. “One of our biggest strengths is that we've learned how to make our individual strengths work together,” the band explained.
No second “Pasilyo”
THEN there is the elephant in the room: “Pasilyo.” The band's breakout hit has become so closely tied to its identity that every new release risks being measured against it. However, SunKissed Lola said it is not interested in chasing another version of what already worked. Instead, the band is trying to let each song determine what it needs to be. “It’s putting the needs of the song first before our preconceived notion of what song it can be compared to,” the band said. For a group coming off a defining hit, there is an obvious temptation to replicate the formula. But “Edi Magalit Ka” is not written as an attempt to recreate “Pasilyo.” Its appeal lies elsewhere, in a smaller and more recognizable kind of emotional mess.
What now?
“EDI Magalit Ka” also marks the beginning of
a busier stretch for SunKissed Lola. The band plans to release more new music, hold more live shows and tour around Metro Manila through the rest of the year, with more projects planned into 2027. It is also preparing to release its first fullblown music video, giving the group another way to introduce itself beyond the songs that listeners already know. For now, however, “Edi Magalit Ka” offers a snapshot of where SunKissed Lola is: nearly five years in, more confident in its collective instincts and less interested in making every musical decision loud.
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SEPTEMBER 6, 2026 | soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com
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IN FULL SOUND
BUSINESS
Fitterkarma takes its debut album from record to stage Story and photos by Justine Xyrah Garcia
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hat do you get when a band raised on Filipino horror stories, folklore, emo-era song titles and a love for musical experimentation takes over one of Manila’s most historic theaters? For fitterkarma, the answer comes on September 19 at The Metropolitan Theatre. The four-piece alternative band, composed of Joao de Leon, Sophia Miranda, Sanders Bayas, and Mikee “Lory” Mendoza, will stage its first major solo concert, “kung tayo’y nasa isang horror na pelikula, tiyak ako ang una mong papatayin,” where it will perform its debut full-length album in its entirety. The show will also feature expanded stage design, concert-only arrangements and a live collaboration with the Manila String Machine. For fitterkarma, it is a chance to present the album as it was meant to be heard: not as a collection of singles, but as one long, evolving experience. Where the songs become a world For Joao, there is a certain magic to listening to an album from beginning to end. “I personally find the magic in listening to an album as a whole. It’s like a movie—it has a beginning, a climactic part, and an ending,” he said during a recent roundtable with BusinessMirror’ SoundStrip and other media organizations. That was the mindset fitterkarma brought into making its debut full-length record. Rather than focusing on which songs could become hits, the band paid attention to how each track would sound and feel as part of the whole. “Perhaps we focused less on the storyline and more on the sonic feelings of each track,” Lory said. “Usually, albums now are structured around songs that could potentially become hits. But that wasn’t our focus. We were more concerned with the overall progression of how the album would sound and feel.” The band said the album gave them more time and space to explore a wider range of sounds than they could within individual singles. That wider musical palette will be heard live at the Metropolitan Theatre, with Manila String Machine joining the band onstage for the first time. The strings were already part of the album’s recordings, but having them performed live changes how fitterkarma imagines the songs in concert. “Having them live gives the songs more life when we perform them,” Joao said. “That’s the power of an orchestra. It’s so dynamic, so expressive.”
Shaped by horror, folklore
The horror at the heart of fitterkarma’s identity did not begin with the concert.
For Joao, it goes back to growing up with stories, movies and television programs that scared him as a child. Filipino horror and folklore, in particular, became a recurring influence on his writing. “Most of them are somewhat inspired by horror and folklore drawn from Filipino culture. I believe horror and folklore are rich parts of our culture,” he said. Growing up, Joao said he heard plenty of stories from relatives and watched programs and documentaries known for their horror themes. His interest in horror films also started early. Those influences eventually found their way into fitterkarma’s music and visual identity. The concert title itself reflects that fascination while also paying homage to a particular era of alternative music. Joao said its long, dramatic construction was inspired by the elaborate song and album titles associated with mid-2000s bands such as Fall Out Boy, Panic! At the Disco, and Mayday Parade. But the band does not want its listeners to approach its songs with a single prescribed interpretation. “I’m hoping the experience will be special for them. We also made it with room for listeners to have their own interpretations,” Joao said. He does not want to tell listeners exactly what a song means and leave no room for them to find their own meaning, he added.
A room for the unexpected
Fitterkarma has already experienced the kind of success that can create pressure for a young band. “Pag-ibig ay Kanibalismo II,” which began as part of Joao’s thesis project, became one of the band's breakthrough songs. Other songs from that batch also eventually became part of its catalog. But the attention did not fundamentally change how the members approach songwriting. “It didn’t affect the flow or our creativity,” Joao said. “Because if we were going to think about what people would think while making those two songs, we might as well not have worked on them at all if they weren’t true to who we are.” Rather than recreate the formula behind their earlier successes, fitterkarma continues to explore. The members said the new album contains different sounds, textures, genres and combinations, while older songs remain part of the record. Some of the material was
written years apart, giving the album a way to trace the band’s growth. The band is also holding on to something it considers essential to its music: human expression. For Joao, that is something AI cannot replace.
Fitterkarma
“Human expression and emotion in songs—I don’t think those will ever disappear,” he said. “Because no matter the generation, the art that was created before will always have human expression in it.”
Jason Gildore:
SLAP, DEEP BASS, AND BARE YOUR SOUL
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By Bernard Testa
HE vibrant motif in this unique Quezon City shop offers guests another level of awakening. Motherland PH is branded as a collective store that sells world ethnic instruments, brands, crafts & workshops. Here, a sharp slap on the hand-drum by store owner Jason Gildore cuts through the room. It’s followed by a low and resonant bass that seems to settle somewhere beneath the surface of the “dyandi’” percussion, Gildore’s own instrument creation that’s an ingenious modification of the djembe, a West African rope-tuned, skin-covered drum. The beat comes from the heart and the soul—measured, like a prayer. Gildore’s hands move masterfully, sharpened by years of repetition, as he leads a basic percussion session. He strikes the drum, pauses, then listens, before striking again, gently pressing the skin surface with his fingers, as if asking whether the instrument is ready to speak again. Then, it was my turn. “Kindly hold it downward a bit, and try to follow me,” Gildore, our instructor, said. “Slap it with your hands to produce a beat.” My offbeat rhythm only made us laugh.
Life played a different beat
LONG before there was a shop filled with instruments and training sessions, there was only a curious teenager from Davao. “At 17, I was just a normal kid,” Gildore said. There was basketball and the ordinary distractions of adolescence. Music was not part of his formal education, and he never imagined himself becoming a professional percussionist. Everything changed when he became active in the Redemptorist church in Davao City. Through youth gatherings and theater productions, he encountered the music of the legendary singer-songwriter/ cultural advocate Joey Ayala, along with the distinctive sounds of ethnic instruments. Instead of guitars, which he admitted never interested him, it was the kubing, bamboo flutes, rain sticks and other indigenous instruments woven into theatrical performances that caught his fancy. “I was looking for something meaningful and artistic in my life, probably something deeper,” he said. Gildore was particularly fascinated by people who could create music without formal schooling— those who didn’t study, but were able to mimic sounds, even those by rain or wind, through instruments. Gildore studied electrical technology for two years and considered pursuing engineering. Although he eventually abandoned that direction, the discipline of measuring, experimenting and solving problems stuck with him into instrument
THE interior of Motherland PH store located in Z Compound along Malingap St., Teachers’ Village, Quezon City. making. From Davao, he went to Manila, where his unusual combination of skills as a performer, arranger, craftsman and percussionist harmonized and crescendoed. Then came the incident that changed everything.
R&D
A FRIEND allowed him to borrow a djembe, the African hand-drum, for a church rally. He knew the instrument’s value and took good care of it, only to be met by heavy rains, soaking the drumhead made of animal skin. The surface got drenched. Not long after, it began to smell. Eventually, it rotted. Gildore could not afford to replace the drum outright, so he decided to repair it himself. “There was no YouTube yet,” he said, laughing. “I really had to figure it out by myself.” What followed was nearly a year of frustration, trying to fix the instrument on his own. He dismantled it, studied its construction, experimented with tension and repeatedly hurt his hands, while learning how to weave and stretch the drumhead. Instead of calling attempts “failures,” Gildore described those years with an engineer’s vocabulary: “Research and development.” He kept going. The workshop became his laboratory, and music the experiment. Gildore’s persuasion paid off, as he learned how to work with animal skin, how to stretch it, how to balance tension, how to tune a drum, and how to make it strong enough to survive the hands of a professional performer. Gildore found a part of himself in that tedious, painstaking process. He dedicated
4 BusinessMirror
MUSICIAN Eugene Alcantare (center), along with this story’s writer/photographer Beranard Testa (left), attends a basic Djembe workshop led by Motherland Ph owner and professional percussionist Jason Gildore.
himself to creating more drums and learning more about music. In 2006, he joined Prof. Edru Abraham and Kontra-Gapi, a musical ensemble connected with the University of the Philippines community, where he advanced as a professional performer. He realized it was not enough to know how to play. He had to learn the entire process, from the discipline to the timing to the responsibility of performing with other musicians. His biggest takeaway from that intense training: “You have to have skills. You have to be professional.”
Birth of Motherland PH and a community that continues to grow
GILDORE’S path would eventually cross with his musical hero, Joey Ayala, working with him as a percussionist. The opportunity also led him to meet more masters of indigenous instruments. Aside from being a performer, Gildore became whatever the work demanded him to be, from arranger to stage manager and more. He was learning not only how to play an instrument, but how instruments could speak with one another and tell stories on their own. They were on a roll. But when the pandemic hit, much like the rest of the world, the beat stopped. There were no gigs, no projects, nothing. He felt lost and wanted to come home to Davao. Things turned when a friend advised him to market his expertise in drummaking on social media; to create a brand. He would post videos of himself making drums from scratch and play afterwards. He found the exercise therapeutic, as his
SEPTEMBER 6, 2026
following grew steadily. Before long, Gildore was teaching basic drum lessons, which led to the creation of a local djembe community called AdingKra. He also started his own band, Anima Tierra. Their music can involve numerous instruments, sometimes as many as 11 in a piece. They already recorded three songs and have more in the wings. The band used to have eight regular members, and now they have four, as the rest come and go. Together with some of his bandmates, friends, and new business partners, Gildore opened Motherland PH inside Z Compound in Malingap St., Teachers Village in Quezon City. The space represents nearly everything that has shaped Gildore’s life. There are handcrafted percussion instruments and musical accessories alongside tribal and ethnic ornaments, jewelry, stones, cards, clothing, coffee and merchandise connected with his band, Anima Tierra. Walking into the space, it’s difficult to call Motherland PH merely a store. It feels more like a gathering place for people drawn to peace, soul, music and alternative creative energy. Visitors come not only to buy, but also to listen and learn. Back to our basic percussion session, Gildore reflects that after 20 years of experience, creating and playing drums has become second nature. “Dati matagal ang paggawa, ngayon kahit nakapikit pa,” he said, laughing, before shifting to a more serious tone. “Para bang bawat isang dyandi, may kaluluwa ni Jason.” After finishing his thought, he slapped the drums, baring his soul once more. n Cover and inside photos by Bernard Testa