Ms sect b 20170528 sunday

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SUNDAY, MAY 28, 2017 Adelle Chua, Editor

Opinion

Joyce Pangco Pañares, Issue Editor

mst.daydesk@gmail.com

EDITORIAL

POP GOES THE WORLD JENNY ORTUOSTE

WHAT IS WESTJACKING?

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OUT of the heated discourse about Alex Tizon’s article ‘My Family’s Slave’ that ran in The Atlantic some weeks ago, a spotlight shone on the issue of minority voices being drowned in the clamor of the majority.

Tizon’s article—part memoir, part confession, entirely emotionally wrenching and thought-provoking— ignited a firestorm on social media.

Many non-Filipinos, particularly Americans, expressed their disgust and indignation over the Tizon family’s treatment of Eudocia Pulido over the decades she worked for their family.

Some Filipinos took umbrage at the negative comments, saying the Tizon story had been taken out of context and that it must be understood in relation to the present katulong culture that goes back to the pre-colonial slave culture.

This reminded me of writer Dean Francis Alfar’s Facebook musings on the topic just before the article was published. He was seeking to define and understand ‘cultural appropriation’ as against ‘cultural appreciation’ and how these related to his writing and the creation of art in general.

“I was still negotiating my position and learning,” he said, “when the Tizon story came out, generating more heaviness, thought, and self-reflection.”

Then he came across an interesting concept by Marck Ronald Rimorim, who blogs at The Marocharim Experiment (marocharim.com).

Rimorim sees the conversation as having been hijacked by the West.

“Westjacking,” he says, “is to take Western cultural norms, lenses, and other points of view and fit in the nuances in that [Western] frame of mind. [Westjacking] distorts the nuances…[so] the experience ceases to be about katulong, but [lumps] them all into a narrative that anonymizes the struggle, making them just categories of the louder and more documented ones experienced in the West.”

Rimorim expands: “Westjacking is when you displace me from my narrative. It’s when you homogenize my struggle with yours. It’s when I look myself in the mirror and you insist on being part of the frame.

“It’s when I examine my own complicated relationship with my culture, and you tell me my grandmother’s name is a ‘slave name.’

It’s when you add salt and all sorts of things in my halo-halo and make it a huge viral sensation among Instagram foodies. It’s when you insist that we weren’t colonized, and invalidate that history in one swoop.

“It’s when you tell me to turn over the entire box while I’m unpacking my life. It’s when you somehow deny me the discomfort of closely and critically examining my life because you already have a framework and a template for it; all I have to do is cram things in, and discard what does not belong.

“It is to deny me the quiet of reflecting and atoning and finding a solution to my crises because your voice is louder than mine. It’s when you would rather talk over my story than to listen to it, and call it a gift.”

The concept is similar to Edward Said’s Orientalism, which has now come to mean the West’s patronizing attitude toward Asian, African, and Middle Eastern cultures, seeing itself as superior. What I like about Rimorim’s Westjacking is that it accurately encompasses cultural appropriation.

To this I would add the nuance of ‘Westsplaining,’ where Westerners explore others’ cultures from the point of view of the other—which is really the Western POV of the Other POV— and explain it to them, bypassing their own self-explorations.

Here’s an example: Mona Simpson’s

ON US

W

HEN President Rodrigo Duterte heard that the Maute group had attacked Marawi City, he cut short his trip to the Russian Federation to fly back home. He was lucky that he was able to still talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin before he boarded his plane.

we are sure she did not perform any act on behalf of the country.

Under the previous administration, when the country brought its case against China to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, the Netherlands, there were also accusations that the team was bigger than it was supposed to be. Just a few officials familiar with our territorial claims were needed, but some others went along for the ride under official cover.

Many years ago, under the Arroyo administration, we heard about the generals who brought along their wives to what was supposed to be an official trip. The downfall was that one of the wives actually broadcast her sense of entitlement—and revealed what had been the practice, all these years.

Mr. Duterte ran and won by a considerable plurality because he promised real change. We see how he relentlessly battles, rightly or wrongly, the ills he believes must be fought. We have also seen him remove from office some of his allies not beyond reproach for allegedly irregular acts. We need to see more of his talk against corruption fleshed out.

We know it is the Office of the President that knows better who is supposed to come along on official trips. But perhaps the public would be better assured Mr. Duterte is serious about his push for good governance and about proving he really is all about change if he would open up his list to scrutiny. The expenses—and the joke—are on us, after all.

Many admired the swiftness with which the President decided to come home to personally deal with the problem, even as the real effects of his decision was to declare martial law in Mindanao. What most of us overlooked, however, was the fact that it was only he who had returned. Many of the members of his delegation were left behind.

Understandably so, the team would carry on what Mr. Duterte had set out to do. They would meet their counterparts and discuss this or that issue. Their personal presence would not be needed in dealing with the Maute problem back home.

But was their personal presence needed in Russia, to begin with? Some more than others, we surmise.

We are actually no strangers to such bloated delegations. Remember that photo taken of lawmakers in a plane bound for Laos? No less than the speaker of the House of Representatives had his guest on board—and

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THE MAYOR FIRST, ALL OVER AGAIN LONG STORY SHORT ADELLE CHUA

WE WILL be harsh on the terrorists, President Rodrigo Duterte said upon arriving in Manila on Wednesday afternoon. He had cut short his trip to the Russian Federation and declared martial law in Mindanao in response to the Maute group’s attack

on Marawi City.

The Maute group had waved black flags, indicating they were supporters of the global terror group ISIS. The President’s decision to declare martial law brought varying degrees of comfort to different groups. Some

agreed with him and praised his swift, decisive stance to combat the terrorists. As he said, of what use would he be if he were so incompetent as to fail to prevent terrorists from achieving their ends?

Some were wary. Why the entire

Mindanao? The apprehension grew as the President spoke about maybe expanding martial law into Visayas and the entire country. Many relived their memories of how it was 45 years ago, when the late President Ferdinand Turn to B2

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WHAT...

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book My Hollywood (2010), which is told from the perspective of a wealthy and privileged white woman, Claire, and the nanny, Lola, a Filipina. (That name again.)

Claire is well imagined; Simpson could be talking about herself and the women of her class and socioeconomic background. It is when Simpson presumes to speak as Lola that the notes turn sour. The broken English she uses to approximate Filipino-English is inaccurate, and, coming from white privilege, smacks of racism.

In her acknowledgments, Simpson thanked two researchers who helped her dig up facts on “immigration and domestic work,” as well as two FilAmericans who “vetted and tweaked the Tagalog idioms and Filipina-American phrasings until they rang true in both vernaculars.” The character of Lola, she says in an LA Times interview with Susan Salter Reynolds, was based in part on a friend’s babysitter.

Simpson, then, seems to not have employed a Filipina nanny herself nor even interacted with any of them. Her characterization of Lola, while praised by non-Filipino critics, looks to be based on research and is an imagining of the Filipina domestic helper experience through Western eyes. There is nothing authentic about that.

Going back to Alfar’s concerns on cultural appropriation versus cultural inspiration, we might argue that a writer or an artist may be inspired to write about anything and everything that comes across their radar. Art is, after all, freedom of expression.

But to set the record straight, we must tell our own stories, we must keep telling them—more memoirs like Tizon’s, more short stories like Alfar’s—until our voices rise loud enough to drown out the Westjacking and Westplaining.

We must say, this is our story. This is our truth. This is our gift to you.

Dr. Ortuoste is a California-based writer. Follow her on Facebook: Jenny Ortuoste, Twitter: @jennyortuoste, Instagram: @jensdecember, @artuoste

THE MAYOR..

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Marcos placed the country under martial law because of threat from the communists.

If Mr. Duterte’s war against drugs were to be an indication, there would be cause for concern as well. How many instances of abuse have we heard about? Do we not hear about suspected drug users and pushers being shot just because they “resisted arrest?” How many more have we not heard about? Even now, the police’s manner of carrying out the anti-drug campaign remains questionable— and downright terrifying, especially since the President has told them he’s got their backs.

Now martial law gives its enforcers good cover to pretty much do as they please. Getting those terrorists primarily, and rightly so. But also arresting people without warrants.

And many other things in the name of the preservation of order. It’s prone to abuse because the power is just dizzying.

During his arrival speech, President Duterte assured the people that there would be no abuses. He would personally carry the responsibility for any abuses that might be committed.

“Just do your job and I will take care of the rest,” he told soldiers.

How much confidence does this inspire in us? Not a lot, especially when we get to hear what he says next.

“If you had raped three, I will admit it, that’s on me.” *** This brings us back to what Mr. Duterte said when he was still campaigning for the presidency.

He recalled an incident when an Australian missionary was raped by prisoners during a riot in Davao City.

The woman, whom Duterte described as beautiful like a movie star, was eventually killed.

But he should have been first in line in raping her, he said.

In that rally, many among those who heard him chuckled. They probably thought it was another endearing quality of the maverick mayor of Davao City. Better this foul-mouthed, politically incorrect man who gets things done rather than the well-bred, prim-and-proper members of the oligarchy who merely preserve the status quo.

Mr. Duterte later on said he was just joking, and he went on and won the presidency. His most vociferous supporters, after all, threatened to murder and rape anybody who had negative things to say about him online. He never called out these supporters to tell them to back down.

Over the next few months Mr. Duterte made similar statements that may be deemed offensive to women, but the public has learned to brush them off. “He’s always been that way.”

“He will not change anymore.” “It’s just how he talks.” “Focus instead on what he does”—these, and many other justifications, make those of us who feel offended wonder whether our

SCIENCE CAN BE A TOOL FOR PEACE

By Pecier Decierdo SCIENCE is a tool. Being a tool, science can be used for the benefit of humanity, to decrease the amount of pain and suffering in the world and move society to become more just, joyful, and prosperous. But science can also be used to satisfy greed and increase the profits of a few at the expense of the wellbeing of many people and the environment. Science can be wielded by ideologues and work in the service of deep-seated irrational prejudices.

Science can be used for peace.

But it can also be used for war and destruction. We need to realize this now more than ever. The more we understand this, the more effectively we will be able to use science as a tool to improve the human condition.

Science is a powerful tool. That is why there are 7 billion of us alive today, and that is why so many of us among this 7 billion live in relative comfort and prosperity, with access to electricity, clean water, food, and medicine.

As some scholars have pointed out, the lower middle class of today’s world, even those living in developing nations, are living in conditions better than what the royalties of centuries ago experienced. The

things many of us take for granted, such widely available public education, fast motorized vehicles, modern medicine, packaged foods, distilled water—the list goes on and on—all of those were beyond the wildest dreams of even the emperors and empresses of Europe and China.

That we live in a time of great prosperity is heard to believe. That is understandable. After all, we also live in a world of great poverty.

Thanks to obscene inequalities in the distribution of the world’s great wealth, we live in a world where the problem of widespread obesity and widespread hunger exist simultaneously.

But the numbers gathered by careful scientific methods paint a clear picture: we really do live in prosperous times, and more people than ever enjoy the fruits of this prosperity. Of course, it is not enough. That is why we should keep on fighting for a more just society.

Science will be one of our many tools in the struggle, but struggle we still must. We should still do the hard work.

Very similar things can be said about the role of science in peace.

It might be surprising to many—it sure was surprising to me—but we live in the most peaceful times in

the history of the world. The scholar and neuroscientist Stephen Pinker argues for this in his excellent and well-researched book ‘The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.’ In the book, Pinker uses carefully gathered data to convincingly show how we who are alive today are very unlikely to die a violent death, especially compared to the people of hundreds or even thousands of years ago who experienced life as a succession of conflicts.

Even in the momentary absence of open conflicts, such as during the so-called Pax Romana, there have been higher rates of violent crime compared today. Murder, assault, and theft were more rampant, and were more difficult to resolve because of the absence of forensic sciences to help find the criminals.

Law enforcers also did not have the tools they do now to prevent and fight crime, and to bring those who commit crime to justice.

Speaking of justice, we also now have a more humane, less violent view of justice. Crucifixions, stoning, beheadings, and hangings were fairly widespread even until very recently.

Now these inhumane practices are diminishing throughout the world.

When we watch the news on TV or

the news items shared on our social media feed, it doesn’t feel like it. In fact, it feels like the opposite is true: the world is going up in flames, and apocalypse is upon us. I understand that, too. After all, I tune in to the same TV stations and go to the same social media platforms as you do. But again the science is clear: the world is getting less violent.

But this trend will not persist on its own. We must aid it. Better yet, we must hasten it. Our brothers and sisters who daily suffer the cruelties of conflict, from Mindanao to Manchester and from Syria to South Sudan, are not going to be comforted by knowing that the world is less violent today compared to previous eras. They need peace yesterday.

For that, we must realize that we have, as part of our species’ heritage, the powerful tool that is science. Let us double down on finding ways to use science making the lives of more people better. Better yet, let’s use science to understand ourselves more, face and vanquish our inner demons, and let the better angles of our nature prevail to create a peaceful world.

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

‘BAD GERMANS’ AND OTHER TRUMP BLUNDERS

By Leonid Bershidsky DURING his first foreign trip since he was elected, President Donald Trump didn’t look too out of place in Saudi Arabia or even in the Vatican.

In Brussels, however, he was a befuddled elephant in a china shop, doing his best to convince European leaders that the US was clueless on key cooperation issues.

It was bad enough that he shoved aside Montenegro Prime Minister Dusko Markovic to be in the front row during a North Atlantic Treaty Organization photo opportunity; Markovic, whose country has just been welcomed into Nato, graciously said that the US president belonged out front.

It was awful enough that he used a memorial opening ceremony to make a politically contentious speech in which he railed against Nato members’ low defense spending and, unlike any of his predecessors, avoided explicitly affirming Nato‘s pledge of mutual defense—the very Article 5 of the treaty that the memorial was supposed to commemorate.

One would expect a novice political leader in his first six months since being elected to climb a steep learning curve; instead Trump appeared to demonstrate a persistent unwillingness to learn. Despite having been told repeatedly that Nato member states had pledged to spend 2 percent of economic

anger is misplaced.

It’s just talk, but that is exactly the point. The entire mindset about women being objects that can be violated—and, horrors, joked about—prevails because we allow it to prevail. We feel offended, but then worry whether we might be a bit too sensitive. Sometimes we are told we are too sensitive and make too much out of nothing.

But this is not nothing.

We look up to Mr. Duterte as a leader and as an example. He or his supporters may say he is too old to change his ways, but that demand comes with the position he sought.

Some things you can make light of; others you must hold sacred. If he continues to trivialize these issues, he sends a message that it is acceptable to adopt this attitude.

This is harshness all right, but not against the enemy. This is unacceptable, and protests must be registered until we drill this truth right into their macho heads.

Rape, an issue not so much of sex but of power, is not something you joke about. Ever.

output on defense individually, not to pay that amount into some common pool, Trump repeated the canard that under-spenders “owe massive amounts of money from past years and not paying in those past years.” There appears to be no way to explain to him that no Nato member is in arrears to the military bloc’s budget.

“I never once asked what the new Nato headquarters cost,” Trump said.

“I refuse to do that.” The number is published on Nato‘s website: 1.12 billion euros ($1.26 billion), an amount comparable with Nato‘s common budget for 2017 (1.5 billion euros) but contributed separately by the member states in proportion to the size of their economies. Besides, each country paid for the offices to be occupied by its mission.

At the meeting with top EU officials, Trump tore into Germany’s trade surplus, showing a similar disregard for facts. “The Germans are bad, very bad,” he said, according to Der Spiegel. “Look at the millions of cars they sell in the US. Horrible.

We’re going to stop that.”

German carmakers don’t sell millions of cars in the US. Last year, the total unit sales of Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler reached 1.3 million (not counting Lamborghinis).

At the same time, the German companies produce about a million vehicles in the US. For example, BMW made 32,659 sports utility vehicles in

Spartanburg, South Carolina in April 2017; it churns out 1,400 a day, most of them for export. The relatively few BMW X5s on German roads are made in Spartanburg, too: It makes sense for BMW to make the large cars closer to their main market.

Daimler made a total of 300,000 Mercedes cars in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 2016. The plant is the state’s biggest exporter. VW’s Chattanooga, Tennessee operation has a 150,000-vehicle production capacity and also is export-oriented.

Trump’s Brussels trip displayed a now familiar disregard for the facts.

The US does have an auto trade deficit with Germany. According to the US Census Bureau, it exported $2 billion worth of cars, trucks, buses and parts to Germany (including those BMW X5s) in the first three months of 2017, and imported $7 billion worth. But it’s with Mexico and Japan that the US has the biggest vehicle trade shortfalls.

If Trump is intent on making sure Americans buy more US-made cars, he should be the biggest lobbyist for German car manufacturers. They bring jobs to the US and work to reduce the country’s

trade deficit. The stocks of all three major carmakers fell following Trump’s remark— but the drops weren’t dramatic. Investors may be betting that someone will give Trump better information and he’ll change his tune. As his N Nato “debts” comments show, that is unlikely.

Trump refuses to understand things that go against his deep convictions. He wants to tailor reality to them, which may mean he’ll actually try to impose punitive taxes on German-made vehicles. That may bring the price of a Mini, not made in the US, close to that of an SUV made

by BMW, playing havoc with the firm’s North American sales structure—but the German Big Three will, of course, adapt to it, just as VW has absorbed the enormous costs of the USgenerated diesel scandal.

European Nato members, too, need to adapt. That will mean grim patience for the next few years, but also stepped-up at European military cooperation outside Nato.

Europe reluctantly rolled out the red carpet for Trump for his Brussels visit. He would have acquitted himself better had he rollerbladed down it in his birthday suit.

Europeans will be watching keenly for what comes next, fearing that the Trump presidency is becoming a menace to European trade and security interests. Maybe that threat will produce the cooperation from each other that is sorely lacking from Washington. Bloomberg

MEXICO’S MOST DANGEROUS PROFESSION

By Mac Margolis IN MOST countries, panic buttons are devices used by elderly folk who may need emergency care, or parents who want to keep tabs on wandering children and pets. But in Mexico, they’re part of the survival toolkit for journalists covering the drug war, corruption and other manmade miseries, enabling them to send a silent distress signal to authorities. Such is the state of news gathering in Latin America’s second largest nation, which has overtaken Colombia—now emerging from half a century of guerrilla insurgency— to become the Western Hemisphere’s deadliest place to be a journalist.

None of this was news to Javier Valdez, the prize-winning investigative journalist gunned down in his car on May 15 in Culiacan, a regional capital in Mexico’s wild northwest. Perhaps on the hunch that official caretakers and an electronic gadget were frail guarantees for his beat, Valdez was not among the 405 journalists and activists filing for federal protection in the last five years under

Mexico’s Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists.

At Riodoce, the independent magazine he co-founded in Sinaloa state, home to the county’s most notorious criminal cartel and its erstwhile crime kingpin, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, his job was reporting on Mexico’s underworld.

Valdez’s death has since prompted a national commotion, revolt among the country’s media, emergency meetings by federal and local authorities, plus heartfelt official pledges to overhaul the justice system and safeguard the free press. But unless public authorities can back up the encomiums with enforcement, and bring media predators to justice, the sanctimony will ring hollow.

Valdez was the sixth Mexican reporter gunned down this year and the 41st to die since 1992 while investigating nefarious activities; another 50 have reportedly died in murky circumstances, according to a recent report by the Committee to Project Journalists. And killing is only the most extreme form of payback doled out to media members, who routinely

face intimidation, death threats and kidnappings. Attacks on journalists have increased 29 percent since President Enrique Peña Nieto took office in 2012, and 163 percent since 2010, at the height of his predecessor Felipe Calderon’s heavyhanded campaign against drug cartels.

“This is one of the bloodiest times for journalism in Mexico,” Jan-Albert Hootsen, the CPJ’s Mexico correspondent, said.

Promiscuousness between bandits and authorities may be one reason why so many crimes against reporters go unpunished in Mexico, which rated as the sixth worst country on CPJ’s annual impunity index and 147th out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders ranking for world press freedom.

Valdez knew something about impunity and how few of the nominally democratic country’s institutions were untouched by crime and corruption— including the news media. Journalists learned to watch their words, quietly pocket hush money or “chayote,” or face the consequences. Valdez refused to watch his words. Bloomberg

World PALESTINIANS END MASS HUNGER STRIKE IN ISRAEL JAILS RAMALLAH—Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails on hunger strike since April 17 have ended their mass protest under a deal brokered by the Red Cross, Palestinian and Israeli sources said on Saturday.

Some 30 of the more than 800 hunger strikers had been hospitalized in recent days, raising fears of an escalation of clashes with Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian analysts hailed the deal as a victory for the hunger strikers after Israeli authorities repeatedly vowed not to negotiate with convicted “terrorists.”

Palestinian Authority prisoners’ affair chief Issa Qaraqe said it had come after some 20 hours of talks between Israeli officials and strike leader Marwan Barghouti, a figure revered among Palestinians but reviled by many Israelis.

An Israel Prisons Service spokeswoman confirmed the hunger strike was over but said the deal had been reached not with prisoners’ representatives but with the Palestinian Authority and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Israeli authorities conceded to one of the prisoners’ main demands – that they should have two family visits a month instead of the one they were entitled to before the strike, the spokeswoman said. AFP

CAR BOMBER KILLS 18 ON FIRST DAY OF RAMADAN KHOST, Afghanistan—A suicide car bomber killed 18 people in the eastern Afghan city of Khost on Saturday, the first day of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, the interior ministry said.

Ministry spokesman Najib Danish told AFP a public bus station was hit by the bombing, but local police said the target were Afghan security forces working with American troops in the province.

“A suicide car bomb in Khost province has killed 18 people and wounded six others, including two children,” Danish said.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the Kandahar attack, but it comes as Taliban insurgents step up their annual spring offensive.

The attack comes a day after at least 15 Afghan soldiers were killed when Taliban fighters attacked their base in Kandahar, in the third major insurgent assault this week on the military in the southern province.

The attacks mark another stinging blow for NATO-backed Afghan forces.

The battlefield losses have raised concerns about the capacity of Afghan forces, beset by unprecedented casualties and blamed for corruption, desertion and “ghost soldiers” who exist on the payroll but whose salaries are usurped by fraudulent commanders.

During another deadly Taliban attack on security outposts in southern Zabul province on Sunday, local officials made desperate calls to Afghan television stations to seek attention because they were unable to contact senior authorities for help. AFP

MONSOON KILLS 100; INDIA AIDS SRI LANKA C

OLOMBO, Sri Lanka—India joined Sri Lanka’s relief operation Saturday as 230,000 people were driven from their homes after an intense monsoon deluge killed at least 103 people.

Rainfall on Friday triggered the worst flooding and landslides in 14 years in the southern and western parts of the island, authorities said.

The Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said 103 people were confirmed killed while another 113 were missing.

The military conducted search operations in landslide-hit areas and the air force deployed five aircraft for rescue operations and another five to transport emergency supplies to villagers who could not be reached by road.

Home Affairs minister Vajira Abeywardena said that while the worst of the rain was over, there was a danger of fresh flooding

downstream. He urged people living in low-lying areas to move to higher ground.

“There are several remote places which are still inaccessible,” Abeywardena told reporters in Colombo.

“We have reports of places where neither helicopters nor boats can reach.”

He said the government was air dropping 10,000 life jackets for marooned people until they could be moved to safer ground.

The government has set up 104 temporary shelters in public buildings to accommodate those driven out of their homes by flooding and landslides, he added.

An Indian naval ship equipped

with medical supplies docked in Colombo Saturday.

Indian High Commissioner Taranjit Singh Sandhu said a second larger vessel was expected in Colombo on Monday with more aid.

“When you feel the pain, we also feel the pain,” the envoy said while formally handing over the Indian aid to Sri Lanka’s Foreign minister Ravi Karunanayake at the Colombo port.

The Indian aid included a medical team as well as inflatable boats and medicine. India has offered more aid, including helicopters, to boost the relief operations, government spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said.

President Maithripala Sirisena, who returned from a state visit to Australia, rushed to Kalutara, just south of the capital Colombo, to supervise relief operations.

At the village of Bulathsinhala, relatives were seen loading coffins of 10 victims onto army armored personnel carriers to transport

them across flooded streets to high ground for burial.

There were similar scenes in the adjoining Ratnapura district, the island’s gem capital, which was also flooded.

The meteorological department said they expected rains to subside, but the monsoon will remain active at a lower intensity.

“The monsoon has firmly established and we could have evening showers at a lesser intensity,” meteorological department chief S. R. Jayasekera said.

The flooding is the worst since May 2003 when 250 people were killed and 10,000 homes destroyed after a similarly powerful monsoon, officials said.

Monsoon rains last year caused flooding and landslides, killing just over 100 people.

The DMC said the latest monsoon ended a prolonged drought that had threatened agriculture as well as hydropower generation. AFP

NOW OPEN. Employees (bottom) welcome visitors at the Apple store in the Orchard shopping district on its opening day in Singapore on Saturday. Hundreds of people waited outside Apple’s first store in Southeast Asia in Singapore. AFP

APPLE OPENS FIRST OFFICIAL STORE IN SE ASIA

AUSSIE CORBY TO RETURN HOME AMID MEDIA STORM KUTA, Indonesia—Australian Schapelle Corby will on Saturday finally return home from Bali 12 years after she was convicted of drug trafficking, in a longawaited return that has triggered a media frenzy.

The beauty school dropout was arrested in 2004 at the Indonesian resort island’s airport with marijuana stashed in her surfing gear, and sentenced to 20 years in jail.

She was released early in 2014 but was required to remain on Bali another three years under the conditions of her parole. The 39-year-old has to leave the island now that period is over.

Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest anti-drugs laws, including a maximum penalty of death for traffickers.

The story of Corby has fascinated the public in her homeland like few others in recent times. AFP

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SECURITY CHECK. A member of the Royal Malaysian Police Special Task Force leaves after taking part in a security drill at the Bukit Jalil National Stadium in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday in preparation for the upcoming 2017 Southeast Asian Games. Malaysia will host the SEA Games from August 19 to 30. AFP

SINGAPORE—Apple opened its first Southeast Asia store in Singapore on Saturday, drawing hundreds of excited fans to the swanky two-storey site in the city’s upmarket shopping district.

Located on the affluent Orchard Road, the new shop – easily distinguished by its iconic glass facade – is expected to be one of the most popular Apple stores in the world, according to the US tech giant.

Merchandise such as the iPhone and MacBook were strategically placed on display across the spacious first floor, while the upper level acted as a classroom for customers to participate in hands-on sessions.

Hundreds of shoppers camped out in anticipation of the launch, while more than a thousand thronged the store soon after the doors opened, an AFP reporter observed.

First in the queue was Xiang Jiaxin, a 25-year-old Chinese national working in Macau who had queued for more than 12 hours overnight and planned a holiday to Singapore specially to coincide with the opening.

“I am very happy and excited to be part of this. I have participated in the official store openings in Macau, Guangzhou and Nanjing,” he told AFP. Apple, which has a staggering $256.8 billion cash stockpile, celebrated its 40th anniversary last year. The Silicon Valley legend sprang out of Steve Jobs’ garage to reshape modern life with trend-setting gadgets.

Most of its earnings come from the iPhone, which faces increasingly tough competition in a saturated market. AFP

B4

SUNDAY, MAY 28, 2017 Cesar Barrioquinto, Editor

World

/ Joyce Pangco-Pañares, Issue Editor

mst.daydesk@gmail.com

TRUMP PLAYS OTHER TUNE AT G7 MEET

T

AORMINA, Italy – Group of Seven nations risked unprecedented deadlock on Saturday after US President Donald Trump ditched the charm for snarls, resisting calls for concerted action on hot-button issues such as climate change.

After starting his first presidential trip abroad wreathed in smiles, Trump is ending it with rebukes, upbraiding America’s European partners over military spending, trade and global warming.

An enduring motif of the G7, which represents the lion’s share of global economic output, has been to champion free trade.

At last year’s summit in Japan, it issued a lengthy communique in support of resisting protectionism, as well as helping refugees and fighting climate change.

But that was then, when Barack Obama still occupied the White House. Today, his successor is defiant about stepping out of the G7 line.

“His basis for decision ultimately will be what’s best for the United States,” top economic advisor Gary Cohn said at the annual talks in Sicily.

Cohn was referring to whether Trump will execute his threat to walk away from the Paris accord on combatting climate change.

But his language also summarizes the “America First” platform that elevated the property tycoon to victory in last year’s presidential election.

That means the G7 is unlikely also to reprise its oft-used terminology against protectionism, after Trump in Brussels this week reportedly described the Germans as “bad, very bad” in their trade practices.

The club of leading democracies also looks set to fall short of last year’s declaration on refugees and migration – the sort of language that is anathema to a White House that wants to impose a ban on travelers from six Muslimmajority countries.

It is a measure of the gulf that this year’s Italian hosts say they expect the final statement to come in at just six pages when it is released on Saturday afternoon – down from 32 pages last year.

The summit did find common ground on Friday in endorsing a British call urging internet service providers and social media companies to crack down on jihadist content online, after 22 people were killed in a Manchester concert bombing in northwest England this week. AFP

‘LARGE PART’ OF MANCHESTER ATTACK NETWORK HELD BY POLICE MANCHESTER—Britain has arrested a “large part” of the network behind Manchester’s suicide bomb attack, police said Friday, while the government came under fire for cutting police budgets as election campaigning resumed.

Nine suspects are currently in detention on UK soil in connection with the blast, for which the Islamic State group has claimed responsibility. Police in Libya have detained the father and brother of 22-year-old bomber Salman Abedi.

Mark Rowley, head of Britain’s counter-terrorism police, said police had got hold of “a large part of the network” linked to the atrocity in which seven children aged under 18 were among the 22 dead.

“We are very happy we’ve got our hands around some of the key players that we are concerned about but there’s still a little bit more to do,” he said. AFP

‘TRUMP SON-IN-LAW SOUGHT SECRET LINE TO MOSCOW’

WONDER WOMEN. Actress Gal Gadot is flanked by director Patty Jenkins (left) and actress Lynda Carter (right) as they attend the premiere of Warner Bros. Pictures’‘Wonder Woman’ at the Pantages Theatre on Friday in Hollywood, California. AFP

PUTIN, MACRON TO AIR TOUGH ISSUES AT VERSAILLES

French President Emmanuel Macron (second from right) speaks to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (right) near Christine Lagarde (left), head of the International Monetary Fund, and Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni (second from left), as they attend an expanded session during the G7 Summit in Taormina, Sicily on Saturday. AFP

PARIS—France’s new President Emmanuel Macron will hold delicate talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Monday with the two countries harboring longstanding differences over Ukraine and Syria.

Coming just three weeks after an election in which the Kremlin was widely seen as backing centrist Macron’s far-right rival Marine Le Pen – with Putin hosting her during a surprise visit to Moscow – the encounter in Versailles, near Paris, has an added personal edge.

As a candidate, Macron, 39, had tough words for Russia, accusing it of following a “hybrid strategy combining military intimidation and an information war.”

Since the start of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, Russia has flexed its muscles with a series of war games involving tens of thousands of troops in areas bordering NATO Baltic states.

Macron criticized Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and “shows of force in Syria or alongside our coastlines and airspaces, (and) the use of social media or state-controlled media to destabilize public opinion.”

But he said it was essential to “keep dialogue open with Moscow” – while government spokesman Christophe Castaner said Friday that “dialogue does not mean agreement.”

Ahead of Monday’s meeting, the two

countries’ foreign ministers spoke by telephone on Friday, the Russian foreign ministry said.

Putin adviser Yuri Ushakov has described the visit as an “informal” occasion that will nevertheless touch on some tough issues.

“France is among the countries with a very severe stance towards the regime of (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad, so I think a discussion on this subject will be interesting and frank,” Ushakov told a Moscow news briefing.

The stakes are high for Russia, said Fyodor Lukyanov of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy. “It’s obvious that the Russian side wants to break the impasse,” he told AFP in Moscow.

“One shouldn’t expect anything from this visit,” he added, however. “It’s a matter of the two leaders getting to know each other and to create a positive ambiance – or not.”

Putin, 64, was quick to congratulate Macron on his election, urging him to “overcome mutual distrust” and “join forces to ensure international stability and security.”

The visit comes seven months after the Russian leader cancelled a trip to Paris for the opening of a Russian cathedral complex near the Eiffel Tower in a spat over Syria with then president Francois Hollande, who had said Russia’s bombing of Aleppo could amount to war crimes. AFP

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, made a pre-inauguration proposal to the Russian ambassador to set up a secret, bugproof communications line with the Kremlin, The Washington Post reported Friday evening.

Kushner, a close adviser to Trump, went so far as to suggest using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States to protect such a channel from being monitored, the Post said, quoting US officials briefed on intelligence reports.

The Post story is yet another sensational element in the deluge of allegations raising questions about team Trump’s relationship with the Russians, whom US intelligence agencies say tried to sway the November election in Trump’s favor and thus deny Hillary Clinton the presidency.

And it ensures that Trump will be thrust right back into the din of the Russia scandal upon his return to Washington this weekend, following his first foreign trip, a tour of the Middle East and Europe. AFP

BRZEZINSKI, EX-AIDE TO CARTER, DIES WA S H I N G TO N — Z b i g n i e w Brzezinski, a hawkish Cold War strategist and former top aide to US president Jimmy Carter, has died at 89, his family said Friday.

“My father passed away peacefully tonight,” MSNBC journalist Mika Brzezinski said on Instagram.

“He was known to his friends as Zbig, to his grandchildren as Chief and to his wife as the enduring love of her life. I just knew him as the most inspiring, loving and devoted father any girl could ever have,” she wrote.

The Polish-born academic was Carter’s national security adviser during the Iranian hostage crisis.

He was a leading force behind the failed US commando mission to rescue the hostages, after which he resigned. He thought that Soviet influence would sweep over Iran if US strength did not prevail in the drama.

Nominally a Democrat, he leaned conservative on security matters. He passed away in Falls Church, Virginia, family said.

Brzezinski was an active professor and author well into his 80s.

He did not support President Donald Trump’s election, and criticized his foreign policy as vague. AFP