Ms sect b 20161225 sunday

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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2016

Adelle Chua, Editor mst.daydesk@gmail.com

Opinion

EDITORIAL

POP GOES THE WORLD JENNY ORTUOSTE

YOUR UNWANTED BOOK COULD BECOME ANOTHER’S LIFE-LONG INSPIRATION MY PIECE last Sunday was about the charming Icelandic tradition of giving each other books on Christmas Eve and then spending the night reading, and how we would do well to adopt this custom.

In line with this thought is today’s topic—books we began reading but haven’t finished for one reason or another.

I started David Foster Williams’ telephonedirectory-thick Infinite Jest, but my mistake was reading a physical book. I read in bed, so after that 1,079 page tome fell on my face one night, I gave up. It hurt my nose, and the denseness of DFW’s prose and the endless footnotes hurt my brain.

I did better with Murakami’s voluminous IQ84—I learned my lesson and read that as an e-book.

I’ve also begun and halted the Russian writers—Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy— midstream; too depressing, with the snow, cold, guilt, coarse black bread, and cruel winters.

But one man’s junk is another man’s collectible item, so if there are books in your shelf that you don’t intend to read, why not pass them along as part of your holiday booksgiving?

Here are some books that might be ‘tl:dr’ (too long, didn’t read) or unwieldy for some, but could bring inspiration or an epiphany to others: • Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: Rand’s philosophy of objectivism explained in a fictional framework over a great many pages. It’s her longest work, and is what made capitalism, reason, and individualism dirty words. Read to uncover the mindset that brought about the present Western model of society. Pro tip: Try the Cliff ’s Notes version.

• Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love: Gilbert’s a good writer, but this is an entitled, privileged account of how she deals with relationship problems. Travel to Italy and India and wherever to soothe a broken heart? It’s nice to be rich! ‘Kaw na, bes. Pro tip: Don’t give it a critical read, and you’ll find it enjoyable as a travelogue and memoir—and as an illustration of individualism at work.

• Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See: I flipped through a few pages and it didn’t draw me in. It was a bestseller this year, and might be of interest to those who like stories set in wartime. Pro tip: Treat it as an ‘alternative universe’ historical.

• David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas: This is six nested stories, half of it told in a certain order, and the rest told in reverse order. The prose is dense, thick, and full of European cultural and historical references. I lost my way sometime into the third story. Pro tip: Study it for its form and structure. Some readers say it moves faster in the second half.

• Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo: I know a lot of us still don’t know what the heck happened in those two novels even if we spent a year studying each. For some, the heavy Filipino translations used in schools could have been mentally cumbersome. Pro tip: Read the English translations by Leon Ma. Guerrero or Harold Augenbraum (Penguin Classics). The food scenes are rendered so realistically, you’ll get hungry while reading. “Ang biya para sa escabeche!”

• Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time: The eminent physicist’s attempt at bringing the wonders of the universe to the layman’s mind. It’s about, uh, science.

And, er, science pa more. Pro tip: Read it slowly. No need to rush. The universe has been there for billions of years, after all, and will continue to exist whether or not we understand how it works.

• James Joyce’s Ulysses: One of those books you’d like to be able to say you’ve read because of the street cred you’ll get among bibliophiles. But if you don’t want to wade through a storm surge of alliterative made-up words, don’t bother. Pro tip: Skim through a few chapters to get a feel of the Turn to B2

REDEEMING VALUES

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HESE days it is difficult to be inspired by what is happening around us.

At the home front, there remain challenges to governance that we thought would be gone by now. The change that we envisioned seems to be slow in coming. Whatever change is happening—and we certainly did not imagine these drastic ones— seems to challenge our long-held beliefs that human life is sacred and that everybody, rich or poor, is entitled to sufficient process before judgment.

Those who govern and those who are governed are also wracked by a continuing fascination with scandal.

It is one that has prevented us from seeing what the real issues are. It has kept us from following these issues to their logical end, once their entertainment value wanes.

And then, we fall trap to the convenience of binary thinking. One is either a loyal, unquestioning supporter or a virulent critic. There appears to be no middle ground, no room for criticism of the constructive kind, and no opportunity to collaborate on issues we agree on while enjoying the freedom to protest when needed.

Looking out into the world does not bring much comfort, either. Everywhere there is a trail of hatred and violence, one that threatens to be at our doorstep at the slightest provocation. Christmas markets, where ordinary citizens can experience the simple joys of the holidays, are attacked. Killings are carried out with impunity, even in highly public events. In other countries, displacement is the main theme, and the word “normal” does not carry the same reassuring meaning it does for the rest of us.

Elsewhere, governments and global organizations are in a deadlock,

arguing over events and questioning each other’s ascendancy.

Finally, the threat of accelerated global warming looms, bringing with it the specter of more frequent and more erratic weather patterns that threaten to wipe out households and entire communities.

Despite all these, why still wish each other a Merry Christmas?

To be sure, being merry may be a tad too extravagant these days. It might be enough that we acknowledge what we already have and are thankful that we are not in any worse place. For example, whatever we can say about our current events, there is no denying all this is a consequence of a functioning, albeit imperfect, democracy—something we must guard with zeal.

We continue to be happy today because we are hopeful of better times ahead. Filipinos after all are famous for seeing the good, even the hilarious, in the worst situations. This is not a ridiculous penchant to find perverse happiness, per se. It is rather the rare ability to believe better times are ahead and that they are worth waiting it out for.

In the meantime, we go back to the spirit of solidarity that has held this nation together, in varying degrees of success, over the years. Troubled or stable, weak or strong, Filipinos have a common aspiration that stems from the shared experience over decades—nay, centuries.

It is difficult to hope, yes but not impossible. Without a contemplation of the good that may come tomorrow as a result of what we do today, and without the acknowledgment that we are essentially the same despite our variances, there would be no meaning in existing from day to day.

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THE GIFT OF TAKING CONTROL LONG STORY SHORT ADELLE CHUA

YESTERDAY morning, Christmas Eve, I sent a Word attachment in the group chat I share with my kids, ages 22, 21, 16 and 14. It is a template of some sort of planning exercise, a step-by-step guide to charting one’s path in the new year and beyond.

“Good morning, children. [This is something] I hope you will consider as we all look forward to the next year. I hope this

will help you clearly define what you want and what direction you want to take. It’s ok if you find this corny or refuse to even read the file. You will realize its value in about 20 years.”

True enough, I got no overwhelming response to what I sent. I imagine there must have been snickers and shaking of heads.

As I said, however, that is fine with me—

although I still believe we must impart to our children the notion that we should seize control of our lives at the earliest instance.

What I sent is more than the usual list for New Year’s resolutions—which everybody seems keen on doing until he or she slides back to the usual habits. Here, there is no danger of that, because the plan is thorough Turn to B2

We live the life we think we deserve.

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Opinion

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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2016 mst.daydesk@gmail.com

YOUR...

NEWTON IS WITH THE FORCE, THE FORCE IS WITH NEWTON

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language, then Google the synopsis.

• Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude: Magic realism is hard to wrap your head around. And the latinisms are unfamiliar to most. Reading this book is like diving into a Jello shot swimming pool: it’s dense, thick, and difficult to get through.

Pro tip: A Jello shot might be hard to swallow at first, but then it goes down sweet and makes you tipsy, just like this book makes you intoxicated with its lush, heady, tropical language.

• JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: Why read the book when you’ve already watched the movie trilogy? And the archaic, pseudomythical language is hard to follow. Pro tip: Start with The Hobbit—it’s written in an easier-to-follow style, like for young adults.

Then enter LOTR and savor it; it’s another world, another time. Worth it!

• JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy: Released not long after the last Harry Potter book, a lot of readers dissed this one because it was not Harry Potter. It was Rowling’s first attempt to write about the real world. I found its start rather confusing, and put it down when the imagery became littered with cigarette butts, waste paper in dank puddles, and characters mouthing the F word. Not that I have any objection to those, but let’s just say JKR didn’t handle this material as deftly as she did her subsequent Cormoran Strike detective novels. Pro tip: You’re on your own with this one, man.

So for last-minute gifts, look through your shelves for books you’re minded to toss— or, dust them off, give them another skim, and just maybe, you’ll sit with them this Christmas and give them another chance to entertain and inform you.

A very happy Christmas to you and your families, and may the next year be good for us all!

Dr. Ortuoste is a California-based writer.

Follow her on Facebook: Jenny Ortuoste, Twitter: @jennyortuoste, Instagram: @ jensdecember

By Pecier Decierdo

BY THE reckoning of the calendar used in Britain at the time, Isaac Newton, one of the most influential scientists of all time, was born on Christmas Day of 1642. Using the calendar we use today, Newton was actually born on Jan. 4, 1643. At any rate, now seems as good a time as any to celebrate, along with the holidays, one of the greatest minds in history.

In a letter to his then friend (but later enemy) Robert Hook, Newton wrote, “If I can see further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

We in the modern world see further because we stand on the shoulders of many giants; Newton is certainly one of the biggest of those giants.

Newton practically invented (or discovered) the mathematical field we now call calculus. But while most mathematicians at the time, including Gottfried Wilhelm Lebniz who independently discovered calculus, were more focused on using it to solve abstract mathematical puzzles, Newton was quick to find its use to describe the world around us.

Newton used calculus to formulate laws describing the way objects move. We use these laws of motion, which bear Newton’s name,

adellechua@gmail.com

rest or to keep on moving the way it already does is called inertia. For this reason, the First Law is also called the Law of Inertia.

The Second Law of Motion relates the following things: mass, acceleration, and resultant force.

Mass (m) is a measure of how much stuff is in the object. Acceleration (a) is a measure of how fast it is changing its motion. Force (F) is a measure of the push or pull that’s accelerating the object.

Written as an equation, the Second Law is F = ma.

Using this equation, we see that more force leads to more acceleration.

We also find that things with more mass are harder to move around.

In the equation above, (F) is not just a single force. Instead, it is the sum of all the forces acting on the object. If all forces balance each other out, then (F) is zero, which means acceleration is also zero and the object does not change the way it is moving. If there were an imbalance in the force, then (F) is not zero. In turn, (a) will have some value. The object in question will accelerate.

There are forces all around us, but they rarely move us because they usually balance each other out.

Meanwhile, the Third Law tells

us that when A exerts a force on B, then B will exert a force on A that is just a strong, except that it’s going in the opposite direction. The first force is the action, the second is the reaction. The Third Law is also called the Law of Action and Reaction.

Newton combined these three laws with his other great law, a law that describes one particular force.

That force is gravity. By thinking about the moon and falling apples, Newton figured that the force that makes apples fall to the ground is the same force that makes the moon go around the Earth. That’s a crazy suggestion, but Newton tried that out and he got a crazy answer—yes.

In fact, that very force that makes apples fall and anchors you to the ground, holds the Solar System together and dictates the dance of the planets around the Sun. It is the tune to which binary stars dance around each other. It is the music of the spheres. It is universal, holding true even in galaxies far, far away.

So this holiday season and for the next year, be one with the force. Let that force be science.

Pecier Decierdo is resident physicist and astronomer of The Mind Museum.

ISLANDS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

THE...

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and deliberate.

First, one must list the major categories or areas in one’s life. Common headings are family, career, relationships, finances, domestics, health, intellectual growth, etc.

Next, list accomplishments and failures in the current year. This forces a person to look and look hard at the good and bad things that happened this year—and, more than that, the key factors that played a role in the successes and the lessons that may be learned from the failures.

The task includes a visioning exercise— at this time, next year, how does one see oneself? At the end of three? At the end of five? The more specific the visual image, the better. How do I look, what am I wearing, where am I and where am I going? Am I busy, relaxed, optimistic, resigned to my fate? What is the nature of the smile on my face?

The core values come next. These are the non-negotiables that will define what one can and cannot compromise in pursuit of one’s objectives. Next, one is asked to look inward—identify strengths and weaknesses—and outward—opportunities and threats—in relation to the life categories earlier listed.

With all these laid out, one can now proceed to setting objectives for the coming year—and, more importantly, listing specific action points that would help achieve these objectives per category. If possible, the objectives should be measurable, and the action plans time bound. The three- and five-year goals however may be a bit less specific, and for so long as one has a general idea where he or she wants to be, and how the shorter-term objectives are aligned with these one should do just fine.

I have been doing this exercise for at least 12 years and so far it has done me wonders, enabling me to track where, and how much, I have progressed, and where I still need to do some more work.

In fact, during this break, I unearthed printouts of my old plans and I was quite amazed that, for the most part, I am now exactly where I just dreamed I would be. It’s gratifying as it is exciting. Just imagine—in three, five, even ten years, who will I have become? What blissful outcomes and surprises might there be?

One cannot, of course, plan everything.

There are many things outside of our control, and we may not even be able to imagine what they could be right now. For the most part, however, the quality of our life is a summation of the big and small choices we make every day. We are responsible for our actions, and if our life is not as ideal as we would like it to be, we cannot blame anybody else and say we had no choice.

Because we always, always do.

At the same time, planning improves our resilience to life’s blows. We may not be able to say when they would strike, and in what form, but we can always plan our disposition when they do. It does not guarantee we will cope better, but it increases the likelihood that we will come off our crises, not unscathed but stronger and with a clearer purpose.

At the risk of sounding like a prophet, I say this again—any plan is better than no plan. Life is too short. Time is too precious to spend staring into nothing figuring out what to do next. Perhaps the greatest disservice there is to our being human is to allow ourselves to be tossed into any and all directions. We have to claim responsibility and seize control of our destiny.

We live the life that we think we deserve: This is the best shoutout we can make to the Universe.

Merry Christmas, dear readers.

to this very day. The world over, engineers build things from bridges to airplanes all on the confidence that Newton’s laws will hold. We use these same bridges and ride these airplanes on the same confidence.

The infrastructure of the modern built environment is a testament to power of Newton’s laws of motion.

More appropriately, they are a testament to their force.

The First Law establishes that there are preferred viewpoints from which to make observations. These viewpoints are called “inertial frames of reference” or IFRs. Viewed from IFRs, objects that are not moving will stay still until something pushes or pulls them. A vehicle that is speeding up, slowing down, or rounding a curve is not an IFR because things inside the vehicle can look like they are moving even when nothing is pushing or pulling them.

When viewed from IFRs, objects that move also tend to keep on moving in the same way (same speed, same direction). Objects just don’t change course or speed up without being pushed or pulled. Although not an exact IFR, the Earth is a good enough example for the purposes of building almost all bridges and airplanes.

An object’s tendency to stay at

By Dune Lawrence and Wenxin Fan ON A map of the world, the South China Sea appears as a scrap of blue amid the tangle of islands and peninsulas that make up Southeast Asia between the Indian and Pacific oceans. Its 1.4 million-square-mile expanse, so modest next to its aquatic neighbors, is nonetheless economically vital to the countries that border it and to the rest of us: More than $5 trillion in goods are shipped through it every year, and its waters produce roughly 12 percent of the world’s fish catch.

Zoom in, and irregular specks skitter between the Philippines and Vietnam.

These are the Spratly Islands, a series of reefs and shoals that hardly deserved the name “islands” until recently. In the past three years, China, more than 500 miles from the closest of the Spratly reefs, has transformed seven of them into artificial land masses; as it reshaped coral and water into runways, hangars sized for military jets, lighthouses, running tracks, and basketball courts, its claim to sovereignty over the watery domain has hardened into an unsubtle threat of armed force.

Mobile signal towers on the newly cemented islands now beam the message, in Chinese and English, “Welcome to China” to cellphones on any ships passing within reach. But its latest moves, in the long-running dispute with its neighbors over the sea, the fish in it, and the oil beneath it, are anything but welcoming: China appears to have deployed weapons systems on all seven islands, and last week seized a US Navy underwater drone.

In the runup to all this, as most international observers watched the islands bloom in time-lapse on satellite photos, John McManus arrived with a film crew in February 2016, to document a less visible crisis under the water. To McManus, a professor of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami, the Spratlys aren’t just tiny chips out of a blue background on Google Maps; from dives there in the early 1990s, he remembers seeing schools of hammerhead sharks so dense they eclipsed the light. This time, he swam through miles of deserted dead coral—of the few fish he saw, the largest barely reached 4 inches.

“I’ve never seen a reef where you could swim for a kilometer without seeing a single fish,” he says.

When we met in early November, McManus had just moved offices at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, on Virginia Key next to the Miami “Seaquarium.”

McManus rummaged through a box to find an extension cord before opening a laptop to pull up slides.

The first signs of what was to come appeared in late 2012. Satellite photos of reefs in the Spratlys showed mysterious arcs, like puffs of cartoon smoke, obscuring the darker areas of coral and rock. A colleague forwarded them to McManus, wondering if the

shapes might be signs of muro-ami fishing, where fishermen pound large rocks into a reef, tearing up the coral to scare their prey out of hiding and up into a net above. Another theory, floated first in an article on the Asia Pacific Defense Forum, a military affairs website, explained the arcs as scars left by fishermen harvesting giant clams.

Giant clams are an important species in the rich reef systems of the IndoPacific waters; they anchor seaweed and sponges, shelter young fish, and help accumulate the calcium deposits that grow reefs over time. Underwater, the elegantly undulating shells part to reveal a mantle of flesh in rainbow hues: blue, turquoise, yellow, and orange— mottled and spotted with yet more colors. The largest can reach almost 5 feet across and weigh more than 600 pounds. Long hunted for their meat, they’re also prized in the aquarium market, though they’re protected by international law.

McManus found both theories implausible, particularly the giant clam one; the only method he’d ever heard of for fishing the hefty bivalves involved wrestling them by hand into the boat.

As McManus pondered this mystery, tensions in the South China Sea were flaring, with the Chinese fishermen of Tanmen as the tinder. Tanmen is a pinhead of a place on the coast of Hainan Island, China’s equivalent of Hawaii. Temperatures rarely drop below 60F, and blue skies contrast with the smoggy haze over much of the mainland.

Although China listed giant clams as a protected species, Tanmen fishermen found a loophole, going after the large shells of long dead clams, buried within reefs. By 2012, the shells from giant clams, dead or alive, had become the

most valuable harvest for the vessels sailing from Tanmen into the South China Sea. Boats regularly came home with 200-ton hauls, which could sell for 2,000 yuan ($290) a ton—big money in a place where the annual income for a fisherman was 6,000 yuan.

In April 2012 a Philippine navy ship encountered 12 Chinese boats fishing around Scarborough Shoal, a 58-squaremile ring of barely submerged reefs encompassing a lagoon with just one narrow entrance. Shells from the shoal fetched a premium for their purplish color, some as much as 30,000 yuan apiece. Both countries—and Taiwan— claim Scarborough, which sits more than 140 miles off the coast of Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines, and roughly three and a half times that distance from Tanmen. Filipino soldiers boarded the boats and found them loaded with hundreds of clamshells.

Within hours, Chinese government ships arrived to face off with the Filipinos, who eventually withdrew.

China has remained in control of Scarborough ever since. The Chinese fishermen returned to Tanmen to be feted by state media as patriots and photographed grinning in front of heaps of creamy-gray shells.

The Philippines and China are both signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea; the Philippines initiated proceedings against China for violations of the law in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in January 2013.

That spring, Tanmen received the ultimate honor: a visit from China’s newly minted president, Xi Jinping.

He shook hands with men wearing traditional basket hats, urging them to build bigger boats to catch more fish in support of China’s sovereignty over the

South China Sea and pledging financial support. He made good on his word: Government funds went to adding new 500-ton boats to the local fishing fleet and subsidized voyages.

Xi made no mention of giant clams, but the local shell industry became the biggest, and most obvious, beneficiary of the government’s largesse: The number of clam-processing factories ballooned to more than 100. There were Buddhas reclining among clouds; the many-armed Guanyin, goddess of mercy; intricate landscapes of mountains and trees; there were even, ironically, clamshells shaped to look like ivory tusks.

China refused to participate in the process in The Hague, leaving the tribunal to piece together possible motivations for its apparent support of the clam harvesting. In public statements and a report in 2015, China claimed the island-building wasn’t damaging to the environment and took place in areas of coral that were already dead. The tribunal came to a more sinister conclusion, based on the evidence, that China was fully aware of and even tolerated and protected the practice, creating the conditions necessary to claim that the construction of Chinese bases itself wasn’t harming the reefs.

The local government of Tanmen held public meetings about the damage from clam fishing as early as July 2013, and more than a year before the ruling it imposed a ban on harvest and sale; the ban put some factories out of business as supply shrank. Locals like Li Xuanru, a shop owner who’s still operating, undercut the tribunal’s theory. “Xi would be furious had we told him the bigger boats were out for giant clams,” he says. Bloomberg

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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2016 mst.daydesk@gmail.com

BRITISH PM URGES POST-BREXIT VOTE UNITY IN 2017 LONDON—British Prime Minister Theresa May urged the country to come together in 2017 after a year of bitter divisions exposed by the Brexit referendum, in her first Christmas message released Saturday.

She said Britain needed to unite and seize the opportunity to forge a new role in the world as it leaves the European Union.

In the June referendum, 52 percent voted for Britain to leave the EU and wrangling over the issue dominated the rest of the year.

May says she wants to begin the formal process of withdrawing from the EU, which can take up to two years, by the end of March.

As families gathered for Christmas, May said “coming together is also important for us as a country.”

“As we leave the European Union we must seize an historic opportunity to forge a bold new role for ourselves in the world and to unite our country as we move forward into the future.”

May said on Tuesday that she was planning to negotiate both Brexit and Britain’s future relationship with the EU by 2019 but a transition period may be required after that.

Britain’s Supreme Court is set to rule in January on whether parliament’s approval is required for May to trigger the exit process. AFP

GERMANY HUNTS BERLIN ATTACKER ACCOMPLICES BERLIN—Germany was hunting for possible accomplices of the suspected Berlin truck attacker on Saturday, a day after he was killed in a shoot-out with Italian police in Milan.

As most of the country was preparing to celebrate Christmas Eve, Germany’s under-pressure authorities said hundreds of investigators would be working on the probe throughout the holiday season.

Tunisian Anis Amri, 24, is believed to have hijacked a truck and used it to mow down holiday revellers at a Berlin Christmas market on Monday, killing 12 people in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.

The rejected asylum seeker was the focus of a frantic four-day manhunt after the rampage, but his time on the run was cut short by Italian police.

Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday thanked Italy and expressed relief that the fugitive no longer posed a threat, but warned that “the danger of terrorism in general endures.”

She pledged a “comprehensive” analysis of how the known jihadist was able to slip through the net in the first place.

“The Amri case raises questions,” she said. “We will now intensively examine to what extent official procedures need to be changed.”

Amri was shot dead after pulling out a pistol and firing at two officers who had stopped him for a routine identity check in the early hours of Friday near Milan’s Sesto San Giovanni railway station. AFP

CHRISTMAS IS FOR ANIMALS, TOO. A picture taken on December 23 shows a Sumatran tiger trying to open a wrapped package filled with food as a Christmas gift at the zoo of La Fleche, western France. AFP

SCANS UNVEIL SECRETS OF OLDEST MUMMIES

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antiago, Chile— The world’s oldest mummies have just had an unusual check-up.

More than 7,000 years after they were embalmed by the Chinchorro people, an ancient civilization in modern-day Chile and Peru, 15 mummies were taken to a Santiago clinic last week to undergo DNA analysis and computerized tomography scans.

The Chinchorro were a hunting and fishing people who lived from

10,000 to 3,400 BC on the Pacific coast of South America, at the edge of the Atacama desert.

They were among the first people in the world to mummify their dead. Their mummies date back some 7,400 years – at least 2,000 years older than Egypt’s.

Now, researchers are hoping to use modern medical technology to reconstruct what they looked like in life, decode their genes and better understand the mysteries of this ancient civilization.

The 15 Chinchorro mummies, mostly children and unborn babies, were put through a CT scanner at the Los Condes clinic in the Chilean

capital.

“We collected thousands of images with a precision of less than one millimeter,” said chief radiologist Marcelo Galvez.

“The next phase is to try to dissect these bodies virtually, without touching them, which will help us preserve them for another 500,000 years.”

Using high-tech computer processing, researchers are busy reconstructing the mummies’ muscles and facial features.

“We want to see what they physically looked like, to reconstruct them and bring to life someone who died thousands of years ago,”

UN DEMANDS END TO ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS AFTER US ABSTAINS

PINOCHET AGENTS APOLOGIZE FOR CHILE CRIMES SANTIAGO, Chile—Nine former agents of late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s regime asked forgiveness for their crimes Friday – a first for Chile – but victims’ families rejected the gesture as a ploy.

The apology came in the form of a private religious ceremony at the Punta Peuco prison, where some 100 former regime agents are serving sentences for the kidnappings, killings and torture perpetrated during Pinochet’s rule from 1973 to 1990.

The nine convicts included Raul Iturriaga, a high-ranking official in Pinochet’s political police.

“God is doing something extraordinary in this country. This would not have been possible until recently,” Anglican priest Pablo Alvarez told journalists after the ceremony, which was closed to the press.

But dozens of victims’ family members protested outside the prison, rejecting the ceremony as a hollow bid to obtain a pardon or early release.

“We have the right and the moral duty to be here to prevent this media show,” said Alicia Lira, head of a rights group for victims’ families. AFP

said Galvez.

Researchers are also hoping to learn more about how the Chinchorro mummified their dead.

The Chinchorro, who apparently had a complex understanding of human anatomy, would carefully remove the skin and muscles of the deceased.

Using wood, plants and clay, they reconstructed the body around the remaining skeleton, then sewed the original skin back on, adding a mouth, eyes and hair. A mask was then placed over the face. The result looks like something in between a statue and a person – eerily lifelike even after thousands of years. AFP

TERROR ALERT. Members of the Indonesian bomb squad conduct a final search at the Jakarta Cathedral on December 24. Indonesian authorities said they plan to deploy some 155,000 personnel to secure the country during Christmas and New Year holidays. AFP

UNITED Nations—The UN Security Council on Friday demanded that Israel halt settlements in Palestinian territory, after the United States refrained from vetoing a resolution condemning its closest Middle East ally.

In a rare and momentous step, the United States instead abstained, enabling the adoption of the first UN resolution since 1979 to condemn Israel over its settlement policy.

Applause broke out in the chamber after the text was passed with support from all remaining members of the 15-member council.

The landmark move by the Security Council came despite an effort led by Israel and backed by US President-elect Donald Trump to block the text.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately rejected the UN resolution and slammed the outgoing administration of President Barack Obama for refusing to veto it.

“Israel rejects this shameful anti-Israel resolution at the UN and will not abide by its terms,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said.

“The Obama administration not only failed to protect Israel against this gang-up at the UN, it colluded with it behind the scenes,” it said.

“Israel looks forward to working with Presidentelect Trump and with all our friends in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, to negate the harmful effects of this absurd resolution.”

Trump reacted after the vote by promising change at the world body after he takes office next month.

“As to the UN, things will be different after Jan. 20th,” he tweeted. AFP

B4

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2016 mst.daydesk@gmail.com Joyce Pangco-Pañares, Issue Editor

World

‘EBOLA VACCINE HIGHLY PROTECTIVE IN TRIAL’ U

nited Nations—The World Health Organization has published the results of a major trial of an experimental Ebola vaccine in Guinea, one of the three West African countries hardest hit by the Ebola outbreak, showing this vaccine to be highly protective against the deadly virus, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

“It is the first vaccine to prevent infection from one of the most lethal known pathogens, and the findings add weight to early trial results published last year,” Dujarric said.

“The vaccine is the first to prevent infection from one of the most lethal known pathogens, and the findings add weight to early trial results published last year,” WHO said in a news release, noting the results of the latest trial published in the medical journal The Lancet.

According to WHO, the vaccine, rVSV-ZEBOV was studied in a trial involving 11,841 people in Guinea during 2015.

Among the 5,837 people who received the vaccine, no Ebola cases were recorded 10 days or more after vaccination.

In comparison, there were 23 cases 10 days or more after vaccination among those who did not receive the vaccine.

The Ebola virus was first identified in 1976 and caused sporadic outbreaks in Africa. However, the 2013-2016 outbreak in west Africa that killed more than 11,300 people underlined the urgent need of a vaccine.

Guinea was the only one of the three worst affected countries that had not had a reemergence of the virus after the outbreak was officially declared over in December 2015. PNA/ Xinhua

14 DEAD IN ‘HORRIFIC’ MALAYSIAN BUS CRASH KUALA LUMPUR—An interstate bus in Malaysia carrying passengers from Singapore and Myanmar careered off a highway early Saturday, killing 14 people and injuring 16 others, officials said.

The bus, heading from southern Johor state to the capital Kuala Lumpur, went off the road in the wet before rolling over and ending up in a deep ditch, said Mohammad Yusof Mohammad Gunnos, deputy director of the fire and rescue department.

The incident happened in the early hours in Johor state. Details of those killed were not immediately known, he said, adding that the injured were being treated in the Muar district public hospital.

“This pre-Christmas tragedy is so far the most horrific accident in Johor state for 2016,” he told AFP. Deadly road accidents are common in Malaysia despite efforts to crack down on poor driving, especially during festive seasons when people return to their home towns. AFP

CHINA FINES GM UNIT $29M FOR ‘PRICE-FIXING’ BEIJING—Beijing has fined the Chinese unit of General Motors nearly $29 million for “infringing on the rights of consumers and its competitors” via price-fixing, Shanghai authorities said.

SAIC-GM – a joint venture between the American company and the state-owned SAIC Motor Corporation, China’s biggest automaker by production volume – has been ordered to cough up 201 million yuan ($28.9 million), approximately four percent of its mainland sales last year, Shanghai’s top development and economic reform body said.

“The fine is fair. We just aim to improve market order,” the stateowned China Daily newspaper cited Xu Xinyu, the official in charge of the GM investigation, as saying.

“SAIC-GM will respect the views of the National Development and Reform Commission,” a spokesperson from the company said, according to Chinese website Today’s Economic News. AFP JOY TO THE WORLD. A Palestinian man wears a Santa Claus costume as he walks atop Jerusalem’s Old City walls as Christians around the world prepare to celebrate the holy day. AFP

BABY ORANGUTANS RESCUED IN THAI POLICE STING

SCANDAL. Choi Soon-sil, the jailed confidante of South Korean President Park Geun-hye, arrives for questioning into her suspected role in a political scandal at the office of the independent counsel in Seoul on December 24. Park is accused of colluding Choi to coerce large companies like Samsung into handing over tens of millions of dollars to two dubious foundations which Choi allegedly plundered. AFP

BANGKOK—Thai police rescued two baby orangutans in a sting operation after undercover officers arranged to buy the primates over a mobile phone messaging app from wildlife traffickers for nearly $20,000, officials said.

An anonymous tip alerted police to an online advertisement for the endangered animals, who are less than one year old and the size of infants.

Police then posed as interested buyers and contacted the seller over WhatsApp, according to deputy national park director Adisorn Noochdumrong.

“They agreed to buy the two orangutans for 700,000 baht ($19,400) and transferred a 100,000 baht down payment to a bank account that belongs to a Thai man,” he told AFP. The undercover officers arranged to pick up the baby apes outside a Bangkok supermarket on December 21, where the orange-furred creatures were delivered by a city taxi driver.

The driver was arrested but

cleared after authorities determined he was not part of the smuggling gang, according to wildlife police officer Anothorn Srithongbai.

“As far as the real trafficker goes, that’s still under investigation,” he added.

Orangutans are native to Malaysia and Indonesia but they are often illegally smuggled throughout Southeast Asia, either for private zoos or as pets.

Thailand has long served as a transit hub for contraband wildlife products bound for major markets like Vietnam and China.

Counter-trafficking organisation Freeland, which assisted with the orangutan rescue, said the attempted sale was linked to a “major regional criminal syndicate” involved in the lucrative illegal wildlife trade.

Social media has become an integral tool for such gangs to set up sales, said Matthew Pritchett from Freeland. “This case is one link in a much larger chain,” he added. AFP

PANAMA PRESIDENT FREES DUTCH JOURNALIST

PANAMA CITY—Panama’s president has ordered the release of a Dutch journalist who had been jailed on criminal defamation charges, saying that “freedom of expression is fundamental for democracy.”

Okke Ornstein was freed shortly after President Juan Carlos Varela signed a decree cutting his sentence and those of 310 other detainees, and granting conditional release to 65 others, his lawyer told AFP. Ornstein was arrested on arrival in Panama, where he lives, a month ago. He was serving a 20-month sentence for defamation cases lodged in 2011 and 2012 over articles he had written on his blog.

In a statement, the Panamanian government acknowledged that the journalist’s detention was singled out for concern by rights groups and media watchdogs.

Immigration authorities will decide whether Ornstein can remain in the country. AFP