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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2016

Opinion

Adelle Chua, Editor mst.daydesk@gmail.com

EDITORIAL

POP GOES THE WORLD JENNY ORTUOSTE

FOOD COMMA: A WRITER DESCRIBES HOW TO MAKE LOVE OUT OF FOOD

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A WRITER cannot live by words alone, so I’ve heard, but cookbooks are almost as good as eating, all the more if the book has good photographs or interesting illustrations, or ties to memory and the past.

My mother has a Betty Crocker cookbook from 1958 that we still treasure. It has nearly fallen apart from my reading it as a child and fantasizing about each colorful cake and pie oozing with caramel and cooked frosting in the brightly colored pictures.

Growing up in the 1970s, most of the cookbooks my mother owned were published in the United States.

She cooked some of the recipes in them—roast crown of pork, the fat dripping onto tender and juicy meat; cheese fondue, a molten blend of cheddar and Edam (queso de bola) left over from the holidays, into which we’d dip cubes of toasted Tasty bread; and beef stew with carrots and potatoes that she flavored with Wyler’s beef bouillon cubes wrapped in blue foil.

But the recipes she came back to time and again were the recipes passed among the women of the family, each home cook adding her own special fillip to the dish. There was some cousin’s roast chicken, stuffed with whole onions and baked in the oven, its drippings hissing as it dropped sizzling into the pan beneath, being saved to make gravy with.

There was Tita Nana’s apple pie, made with green Chinese apples bought in Divisoria during the holiday season, liberally flavored with cinnamon and nutmeg, dotted with Golden Crown butter, and topped with grated cheddar cheese for a salty offset to the sweetness.

Tita Mori had a good leche flan that my mom upgraded with 12 egg yolks from eight and a longer baking time for a deep golden brown skin that was almost a crust and so delicious we would scrape its last bits from the llanera.

During my childhood I remember few Filipino cookbooks of note but I do know that our kitchen bible was a Nora Daza cookbook that contained a great many basic and useful recipes.

When I married, I took with my mother’s copy (and her Betty Crocker cookbook) with her annotations and notes in blue ink, her handwriting sprawled colegiala-style across the newsprint.

Daza’s book had everything— from rellenong bangus to Brazo de Mercedes, it was all there. I believe it’s never gone out of print. Such tomes, with their wisdom on the fundamentals of cooking, should be given to all new brides and folks setting up house. No more punch

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COLORFUL CONVERSATIONS

HE conversation took all of seven minutes, but President Rodrigo Duterte is said to have snagged an invitation to visit Washington from no less than the next president of the United States, Donald Trump.

To be sure, relations between the Philippines and the US have been testy since Mr. Duterte cursed President Barack Obama and said he would renew ties with China and Russia, Washington’s main rivals.

Our President also said he did not like the sight of American soldiers in our territory as he referred to the atrocities they committed during the PhilippineAmerican war—what gall they had, he believed, to lecture us about respect for

towards the US. He has acknowledged they were alike—superficially or no. Both leaders speak their minds, have no compunctions about uttering expletives and expressing their, ugh, appreciation of the female form, and seem to believe they are the protagonists in this scheme of things, out on some mission to defeat the “enemies.”

True enough, the conversation was described by a Duterte aide as engaging and animated.

Mr. Duterte, however, must ensure that his talks with Mr. Trump go beyond pleasantries and lockerroom talk. The Philippines may be just one of the many partners of the United

human rights.

Trump, on the other hand, does not seem to be fond of assuming any high ground: Not on human rights, not on women, not on immigration. The billionaire businessman has never held any public office before he won last month’s elections when nearly everybody believed Hillary Clinton would win.

This early, it is apparent that Trump’s personality may bring forth a change in Mr. Duterte’s attitude

States, still the biggest economy in the world, but the US is a crucial ally for the Philippines however much Mr. Duterte hates the uneven relationship.

Ultimately, managing foreign relations well springs from an acknowledgment that the community of nations does not consist of “good guys” and “bad guys.” Nor is it an us-versusthem world. Real interests in trade, in immigration, in defense are at stake. These should not be trivialized into catchy phrased uttered with braggadocio.

Dealings between countries should transcend the characters that lead them, no matter what colorful mavericks they might be.

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YOUR BODY IS A MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

By Pecier Decierdo HISTORY is not just about past events.

History is about the threads that connect the events of the past to the realities of today. Thus, the claim that past events can only be understood by those who have lived through them is

as absurd as it is demonstrably false.

Consider your body. Although it exists in the present, it is nonetheless intimately connected to all the bodies of your ancestors that came before it. Their histories leave traces in your skin, in your bones, in the blood that runs through your veins. Your body is a

museum of natural history curated by natural selection.

Let’s look at one exhibit in this museum. Rest your arm on a flat surface, palm up. Now press your pinky against your thumb. Some of you will see a raised strip that runs through your wrist. That raised strip is a tendon

connected to a muscle called the palmaris longus. It is a muscle we don’t need anymore, which is why many people, like myself, are missing it.

While it is a muscle used for gripping, studies have shown that people who lack it don’t have less grip strength.

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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2016 mst.daydesk@gmail.com

EVERYMAN

NO GORILLAS PLEASE!

By Robert Harland APART from chronic traffic congestion, motorists in the Philippines have little to complain about when it comes to being fined for motoring offenses.

I don’t know anyone here who has been fined for anything connected with driving. Yet in the UK, most of my friends—including one 90-year-old lady—have been fined at one time or another, mostly for speeding.

In July, I was caught by UK police radar for driving at 35mph (56.3 km/ hr) in a 30 mph (48.2 km/hr) area. As a result, next week when I’m back in England, I have to attend a driving “reeducation” seminar at a cost of P6,000.

Speeding is only one of many laws in the UK motorists face every day and laws there are strictly enforced.

Drive too close to a horse or a cyclist or splash a pedestrian by driving through a puddle and you’ll get a ticket.

But compared to some of the strange driving laws that exist around the world, these seem eminently sensible.

The US has some of the weirdest driving laws. For example, it’s illegal to spit from a car or bus in Marietta, Georgia. It is, however, okay to spit from a truck. In Alaska you’ll be fined if you drive with a dog tethered to your roof.

In Illinois you are not allowed to drive a car without a steering wheel, a law which must date to the early days of motoring when there were several different types of steering devices. In certain parts of Kansas it’s illegal to transport dead poultry—better not risk it with a bucket of KFC! Here’s another leftover from a bygone area that’s still on the books: in Louisiana, a woman’s husband is required by law to walk in front of the car waving a flag as she drives it.

Massachusetts has probably the wackiest driving law anywhere in the world—you cannot drive with a gorilla in your back seat. Apparently they’re okay in the front!

Here’s one to please the young ‘uns.

In South Dakota you only need to be 14 years old to get a driving license.

The US is not alone when it comes to strange driving laws. In Russia, you’ll get a ticket if your car is dirty.

You’ll also get a ticket in Sweden if you turn your headlights off—they have to be switched on all the time you are driving.

In Thailand, it’s mandatory to wear a shirt while driving. Going topless will attract a large fine.

Germany’s autobahns are famous for their unrestricted speed limits on certain routes, but motorists should make sure they top up at a gas station before joining one. It’s illegal to stop unnecessarily on an autobahn, and because running out of fuel is preventable, anyone who comes to a standstill with an empty tank is breaking the law.

Is there anywhere on earth where there are no driving laws? Yes. Cars are banned on the small Channel Island of Sark. Home to around 600 people, they are able to get around by horsedrawn carriages and the occasional tractor.

Robert Harland is a British national based in Bacolod and Makati.

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In fact, the tendon connected to the palmaris longus is one of the first surgeons chose to remove to replace other tendons in the body of a patient.

Why do most of us have the palmaris longus then? Well, because our ancestors had it. They had it because they climbed trees and used their forelimbs to move around. Among primates today, the ones that climb the most are the ones with the most developed palmaris longus. For example, in lemurs and monkeys this muscle is thick and long. Meanwhile, it is less developed among chimps, gorillas, and humans.

We don’t climb much anymore, but the climbing habits of our ancestors leave more than just traces in our bodies. The palmaris longus is an example of a vestigial organ. It is a vestige, or better yet a legacy, of the past.

Here’s another exhibit in that museum, another vestigial organ.

Connected to your earlobes are three muscles. Many other animals, like dogs and cats, have these same muscles. In dogs and cats, these muscles move the earlobes to face

DUTERTE’S US RANTS ROOTED IN BATTLE AGAINST MANILA ELITE

By Norman Aquino and Chris Blake DECADES before Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte began ranting about US imperialism, he routinely blasted another conquering power closer to home: Manila.

Duterte’s disdain for entrenched elites can be traced to his upbringing in Davao, the biggest city on the southern island of Mindanao, where insurgents have fought for more than 100 years against outside dominance by the Spanish, Americans, Japanese or governments in Manila. He felt that leaders in the faraway capital never did enough to atone for past atrocities and help develop Mindanao, home to 11 of the country’s 20 poorest provinces.

“Years of Mindanao’s neglect is in Duterte’s consciousness,” Danilo Dayanghirang, a Davao City councilor who has known the president for three decades, said in an interview last month. “People in Manila have a low regard for people in Mindanao because their drivers and maids are from here. You can see the discrimination, and Duterte hates that.”

That sense of injustice, impressed on his psyche after decades of public life in Davao, now threatens to upend US strategy in Asia. Since taking office at the end of June, Duterte has spooked markets with repeated outbursts aimed at the US—everything from scrapping joint patrols in the South China Sea to insulting President Barack Obama.

International investors have pulled $366.58 million from Philippine stocks since Duterte was sworn in, and the peso has fallen 3.5 percent.

The American Chamber of Commerce and other business groups in Manila have also warned that Duterte’s comments are creating unease.

While Duterte said he would try to curb his tirades now that Donald

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Trump has been elected, the realestate mogul was unlikely to have given the relationship much thought, said Gregory Poling, a Southeast Asia specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“I worry that their similar personalities but very different political leanings are a recipe for greater tension, not less,” Poling said.

Duterte has made clear he intends to continue to push for his country to be less economically and militarily reliant on the US, which he accuses of hypocrisy in its criticism of his war on drugs. For now, China and Russia appear to be the beneficiaries.

Duterte stated that it could be the three of them “against the world” on an October trip to Beijing in which he took home investment promises worth $24 billion.

“Historically, I have been identified with the Western world,” Duterte said during a November 20 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It was good until it lasted. And of late, I see a lot of these Western nations bullying small nations.”

In the Philippines, Duterte, the first president to hail from Mindanao, uses similar language to describe elites in the capital.

“Imperial Manila controls everything,” Duterte said in an August speech. He lambasted central government policies that had “allowed oligarchs to take control of mines” near his home in Davao City, adding: “I am fighting a monster.”

Duterte said Wednesday that Mindanao, especially its Muslim regions, would be a priority for government assistance.

Duterte was drawn into leftist politics during the late 1960s during his time at university—where one of his teachers was the founder of the Philippine communist party. After graduating with a degree in law, he became a prosecutor in Davao City.

panful of spicy chicken curry golden with turmeric and ginger, or creamy honey ham and pea pasta, or yes, the legendary lasagna that I had not made for 15 years, once again made tangible just a few days ago, and that my youngest daughter, who had never tasted it, declared the best she’s ever had.

The internet now puts within our reach countless recipes from around the world. I read those, and cookbooks still. Although that 1958 Betty Crocker was left behind in Manila, I just ordered the latest edition released last October.

And so it goes. A recipe is a story of a dish. The words you read guide your hands as they move in the dance of chop-stir-shake to create food that is bubbling and fragrant and delicious and all that you need right this moment.

What have you done? You have created a tasty new story for your family and beloveds, which will become a shared memory repeated over dinner tables into the future, with laughter and fondness.

This is what love tastes like.

bowls, please—I received three at my wedding and never used them. Better to have a book that teaches one how to make an omelette properly, how to gut and clean fresh fish, and how to cook rice so the grains are fluffy and separated and not a homogenous mush.

I love to cook when I can, when circumstances permit. For the last 10 years I was engaged in a struggle to support my two younger daughters on my own, and I didn’t have time to cook the way I did as a newly-wed—the pink angel cake with cooked cherry frosting from scratch, the lasagna with three cheeses (cottage, cheddar, and parmesan make the sauce creamy and packed with flavor, a secret shared by my stepfather).

Now I am starting over in another land, and I am cooking again. While it takes time away from writing, cooking is another form of creating, an art that delivers immediate results that can be touched, tasted, and savored.

Preparing my mise-en-place, getting Dr. Ortuoste is a California-based the skillet heat just so, pouring olive oil in a joyous swirl—the simple steps of writer. Follow her on Facebook: Jenny cooking can put me in a trance, from Ortuoste, Twitter: @jennyortuoste, which I emerge triumphant with a Instagram: @jensdecember the source of a sound. In humans, the same muscles try to do the same, but of course they fail. Some people can move their ears more than others, but never to the degree that many other mammals can. We don’t use these muscles anymore.

To make our ears face the source of sound, we move our heads using our necks. But our ancestors had and used these muscles, and so we still have them.

It’s not just the useless parts of our bodies that show our connections to the past. Just look at your arms and feet. Your arms and feet reveal your inner fish. (Take that, Ariel!)

Feet and arms are not the only ways to move on land. You can move using pseudopods like snails. You can slither through the ground like a snake. You can lift yourself off the ground using wings. And feet and arms don’t have be to constructed in the way our feet and arms are constructed, with bones on the inside and bits of flesh attached outside. The legs of insects have bones on the outside and flesh in the inside.

Our feet and arms are the way they are because we got them from our fish ancestors. We don’t share those same ancestors with snails, which is why snails don’t have legs. We don’t share those same ancestors with insects,

which is why their legs are different from ours. We share those ancestors with snakes, which is why snakes actually have vestigial legs, with bones to match, tucked inside their bodies.

We share those fishy ancestors with birds, which is why the wings of birds are constructed like our arms, down to every last bone (except the bones have different shapes, hence arms versus wings).

In fact, every bit of your body is an exhibit in this museum of natural history: your eyes with their blind spots, the bones in your middle ear that came from the bones in the jaws of our fishy ancestors, and so many more.

The museum that is our body is not just a reminder of the past; it is a living legacy of that past. In the same token, there is no running away from any kind of history, no “moving on.”

There is only learning from it in order to move forward. In this act of moving forward, the threads that connect us to the past never get severed, they only get stretched. Misunderstanding or underestimating them can only hold us back. We ignore these threads at our peril.

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

He eventually became mayor, serving seven terms that spanned 22 years in office. Duterte earned the nicknames “Duterte Harry” and “The Punisher” with a no-nonsense approach to crime that foreshadowed the bloody tactics that would be used in his nationwide drug war, which has killed thousands of people.

Duterte has always shown that he is willing to get nasty if he believes it is for the greater good, said Jesus Dureza, a member of Duterte’s inner circle who has been friends with him since high school. Dureza recalled a time when a gang leader from a rival school was disturbing neighbors. The young Duterte scaled the school wall, warned the gang leader to stay away and then punched him in the face.

“He’s a very naughty soul,” Dureza said. “It’s only now that I look back and see that he had a tendency to be a punisher even in the early days.”

Dureza said Duterte’s anti-US rhetoric is part of his push for an independent foreign policy and shouldn’t be taken literally. Despite his repeated attacks on the US, Duterte is yet to cancel any key agreements with the Americans.

To illustrate his point, Dureza recalled how Duterte used to flirt with the canteen lady when they were high school students. One day he told her: “Did you hear that plane circling on top of the school earlier?

That was me practicing. If you don’t accept me as your boyfriend I will crash that plane toward the school.”

As mayor, Duterte’s tactics also created controversy—including accusations from groups such as Human Rights Watch that his advocacy of extrajudicial killings had led to the deaths of more than 1,000 suspected criminals since the late 1990s. Duterte denies ordering any killings, though while campaigning for president he said that he had helped kill at least three suspected rapist-kidnappers during a rescue

operation in Davao in 1988: “I said ‘Put your hands up.’ No one did, so I attacked,” he told a radio station.

“His anti-elite attitude can be traced to hailing from the province and he may have had a difficult time navigating an elite-driven Manila,” said Earl Parreno, an independent political analyst who sits on the board of Institute for Political and Electoral Reform. As an undergraduate at the San Beda College of Law in Manila, Parreno said, Duterte would often take on anyone who bullied other southerners like him.

That sympathy for the disadvantaged was later reflected in some of his polices as mayor of Davao, and helps underpin a high popularity rating.

In the 1980s, Duterte dismantled the city’s anti-vice squad so sex workers could ply their trade without being harassed by policemen, as long as they submitted themselves to regular free health check-ups, according to Dayanghirang, the Davao city official. Under Duterte’s leadership the city passed an antidiscrimination ordinance and mandated that minorities make up at least 30 percent of the police force, he said.

Duterte frequently joined government drives to distribute Christmas goodies to Davao residents in remote towns, handing out gifts to everyone including communist rebels. Stories abound of him driving a taxi cab, even picking up passengers, as he checked whether police were doing their job at night. He treated other drivers to hamburgers and coffee.

“If you’re not a problem to society, he’ll respect you and you don’t have to worry about anything,” said Rene Lumawag, who has known Duterte since the 1980s and now serves as an official photographer for the president. “If you’re treated badly, it’s because you deserve it.” Bloomberg

TRUMP WILL BRING HIS WAR ON THE PRESS TO THE WHITE HOUSE

By Albert R. Hunt

innumerable studies.

Some news outlets played the assertion ONE of the biggest conflicts in straight, as if it were a real story. Others, Washington next year will be the one including the Washington Post and New between the mainstream media and the York Times treated it as a falsehood.

That is also the approach taken by Jeff most anti-press president since at least Zeleny, a respected reporter for Cable Richard Nixon.

The relations between presidents and News Network, and earlier the New York the press always are adversarial (each has Times. He called Trump “a sore winner” different objectives) and symbiotic (each who offered “no hard evidence” for a charge that appeared “baseless.” Trump side needs the other).

Donald Trump not only has shown then accused CNN of continuing bias contempt for much of the media, equating against him and said Zeleny was a “bad fairness with favorable coverage, but also reporter.” How will CNN executives react?

Trump uses his personal Twitter feed he’s vowed to “open up our libel laws.”

So “when The New York Times writes a and some sycophantic news media, hit piece which is a total disgrace,” he said, including Brietbart News, whose former “we can sue them and win money instead executive chair, Steve Bannon, is now of having no chance of winning because his top counselor. The president-elect they’re totally protected. You see, with calculates that he can bypass some of the mainstream media, if he doesn’t me, they’re not protected.”

He also has threatened Jeff Bezos, intimidate them first, and can capitalize Amazon’s chief executive, who owns the on the public’s mistrust of the press.

A daunting challenge for the media is Washington Post, which has published stories that have infuriated him. Bezos, he that more than any other major figure in said, has “a huge anti-trust problem” and recent memory—there is no polite way to put this—Trump has lied repeatedly. ought to be paying more taxes.

The president-elect has frequently He has done so about opposing the war whipped up his followers by labeling in Iraq before it started; about mocking a specific reporters liars. In at least one reporter with severe physical disabilities, instance, the Secret Service had to escort and about his rationale for withholding a reporter to her car at a rally where she his tax returns as a candidate. Schooled years ago by Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy’s was threatened by people in the crowd.

This is more worrisome than his rants unsavory counsel, Trump shrewdly grasps about left-wing media bias and the “scum” that if he repeats untruths, much of the in the press. He is not nearly as creative media will lose interest in holding his feet as former Vice President Spiro Agnew to the fire.

Yet the responsibility of the press is who, before he was driven from office for accepting bribes, called the media to hold a president accountable for his actions, integrity and ethics. It is not new “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

“Trump wants 100 percent stories or unusual for presidents—or presidentsthat love him,” says Stephen Hess, the elect—to be angry about news coverage.

Brookings Institution scholar who has Bill Clinton used to fly into a rage about studied relations between Washington his, and was certain the New York Times politicians and the press for decades. “At had it out for him. Barack Obama has the moment, he can play games. But if his been contemptuous of what he considers ignorance and ego try to change basic the shallowness of much of the media.

These presidents, like most politicians, laws, he will be rolled over.”

It’s not clear, however, how much of the provide the most access to journalists media will stand up to bullying in a highly they favor. But few seriously worried competitive and financially challenging that Presidents Clinton, Obama, Ronald environment. During the primaries, too Reagan or George H.W. Bush would seek many, especially among cable-news revenge, legally or otherwise, upon media and TV-interview shows, offered special critics. That same comfort doesn’t exist arrangements for Trump, who drew with Trump.

And Trump is not surrounded by people audiences, and offered little examination of his superficial policy pronouncements. likely to dissuade him. President John F. He has shown no signs of changing Kennedy, who understood and basically in the three weeks since winning the appreciated the role of the press in a presidential election; the press response democratic society, once intemperately told his Federal Communications has been inconsistent.

Trump recently asserted that there Commission chairman, Newton Minow, had been “millions of people who voted to complain to NBC News about a story. illegally” on November 8, and suggested A short while later, Minow called a White that this fraud prevented him from House aide and said Kennedy was “lucky winning the popular vote, which he to have an FCC chairman who doesn’t do lost by more than two million. There is what the president tells him.”

There don’t appear to be any Newton no evidence to substantiate this phony charge, and the notion of widespread Minows in the Trump entourage.

Bloomberg voter fraud has been refuted by

World SUSPECT IN PAKISTAN FACTORY FIRE ARRESTED BANGKOK, Thailand—A Pakistani man suspected of starting a devastating factory fire in Karachi four years ago that killed 255 people has been arrested in Bangkok, Thai police said Saturday.

Abdul Rehman, 46, was detained at a hotel in the red light district Nana area of the capital on Friday evening, said Thailand’s Interpol chief.

“Thai Interpol tracked this suspect following an arrest warrant sought by the Pakistani authorities,” Major General Apichart Suriboonya told AFP. “He will be repatriated as soon as Pakistan is ready,” he added.

Apichart said Rehman was suspected of being part of a criminal gang that was extorting the owners of a Karachi garment factory.

The gang burned down the factory when the owners refused to pay seven million baht ($200,000), he said.

The fire at the Ali Enterprises factory in September 2012 was one of Pakistan’s worst industrial disasters.

A judicial probe into the blaze was damning, pointing to a lack of emergency exits, poor safety training for workers, the packing in of machinery and the failure of government inspectors to spot any of these faults.

Initially the fire was believed to be an accident. A murder case was registered against the factory owners, but it never came to trial. AFP

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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2016 mst.daydesk@gmail.com

COLOMBIA PLANE CRASH VICTIMS FLOWN HOME

FUND TO PROTECT HERITAGE SITES UP FOR APPROVAL ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates— Representatives of some 40 countries are expected to approve on Saturday establishing a fund to protect heritage sites in conflict-ravaged areas and a network of safe havens for endangered artworks.

These two elements will be included in the declaration adopted at the end of a UNESCO-backed Abu Dhabi conference initiated by France and the United Arab Emirates, said French ex-culture minister and co-organiser Jack Lang, who heads the Paris-based Institut du Monde Arabe.

The two-day conference reflects growing international alarm over the destruction of ancient artefacts by Islamic State group jihadists.

Among these was Syria’s Palmyra, which IS seized in May 2015. The world watched in dismay as the jihadists systematically destroyed monuments that once attracted scores of tourists before the Syria conflict erupted in 2011.

In Iraq, videos released in 2015 showed IS using bulldozers and explosives to destroy Nimrud, a jewel of the Assyrian empire south of Mosul, and ransacking pre-Islamic treasures in Mosul’s museum.

Extremists have also targeted other priceless cultural heritage sites in Afghanistan and Mali after denouncing them as un-Islamic. AFP

MALAYSIA SCORES ROHINGYA ‘ETHNIC CLEANSING’ MAUNGDAW, Myanmar—Malaysia accused Myanmar of engaging in the “ethnic cleansing” of its Rohingya minority Saturday, as former UN chief Kofi Annan visited a burned out village in strife-torn Rakhine state.

Tens of thousands of Muslim Rohingya have fled their homes since a bloody crackdown by the Myanmar army in the western state of Rakhine sparked by a string of deadly attacks on police border posts in early October.

“The fact that only one particular ethnicity is being driven out is by definition ethnic cleansing,” Malaysia’s foreign ministry said in an unusually stronglyworded statement.

Myanmar has balked at such criticism, saying the Rakhine crisis is an internal issue, but international pressure on the country is mounting.

Malaysia’s statement noted that hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to neighboring countries in recent years – including some 56,000 to Muslim-majority Malaysia.

That, the statement said, “makes this matter no longer an internal matter but an international matter.”

On Saturday morning, a convoy carrying the former UN chief arrived outside the Rohingya village of Wapeik, which has seen signficant damage from fire. AFP

MASSIVE FUNERAL. Members of the Colombian Air Force get ready to load onto a plane in Rionegro the coffins with the remains of the members of the Brazilian football team Chapecoense Real who died in a plane crash in the Colombian mountains earlier this week, to be repatriated to Brazil. AFP

M

EDELLÍN, Colombia—The bodies of the 71 victims killed in a plane crash in Colombia that wiped out a Brazilian football team have returned home over the weekend, as mourners prepared a massive funeral.

Along the road to the airport, hundreds of people brandished flowers, white balloons and Colombian flags to pay a final farewell to the victims of Monday’s tragedy.

The remains of the first victim, Paraguayan crew member Gustavo Encina, were handed over to his family early Friday in a coffin draped in his country’s flag.

The other victims – 64 Brazilians, five Bolivians and a Venezuelan – were flown home on a series of flights throughout the day.

“What we want now more than anything else is to go home, to take our friends and brothers home. The wait is the worst,” said Roberto Di Marche, a cousin of football team Chapecoense Real’s late director Nilson Folle Junior.

In the club’s hometown, the southern Brazilian city of Chapeco, more than 100,000 people – about half the city’s population – are expected to attend a memorial service Saturday in honor of the team, whose fairytale season

was tragically cut short.

FIFA chief Gianni Infantino canceled a trip to Australia to attend the funeral. Officials said Brazilian President Michel Temer would likely travel to Chapeco as well.

“The #Chapecoense will remain in our memory for their perseverance and tenacity. I reiterate my deepest solidarity with relatives of the victims,” Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos wrote on Twitter as the last plane departed.

The bodies will be carried during a funeral procession through the city, ending with a ceremony at the team’s stadium.

Authorities are still investigating what caused the charter flight to smash into the mountains outside Medellin, where Chapecoense was due to play the

HALF OF REBEL ALEPPO FALLS TO SYRIAN FORCES

SLAIN HONDURAN ACTIVIST GETS TOP UN PRIZE CANCUN, Mexico—Berta Caceres, a Honduran activist murdered early this year, was posthumously awarded one of the UN’s top prizes for the inspiration she gave in standing up to powerful interests.

The UN Environment Programme made Caceres one its “Champions of the Earth,” which honors figures who fight for sustainable development.

The award was among six given by the UN agency’s executive director Erik Solheim at the world body’s conference on biodiversity in Cancun, Mexico.

Caceres, who led an indigenous association fighting the construction of a hydroelectric dam in Honduras, was killed on March 3 by two gunmen who burst into her home.

Six people are in custody in relation to the crime, including an employee of the company building the dam.

Caceres’s death brought international at-

biggest match in its history – the finals of the Copa Sudamericana, South America’s second-largest cup tournament.

A harrowing recording has emerged of the panicked pilot asking the control tower for priority to land because he was out of fuel, which would make the crash tragically avoidable.

Colombia’s civil aviation safety chief, Freddy Bonilla, said the plane disregarded international rules on fuel reserves.

The Bolivia-based charter company, LAMIA, had its permit suspended Thursday, and the government there ordered an investigation into its operations.

Bolivia has also suspended the executive staff of its civil aviation authority and the airports administrator for the duration of the probe. AFP

CHAMPION OF THE EARTH. This file photo taken on August 17 shows peasants holding an image of indigenous environementalist Berta Caceres, during a march in Tegucigalpa demanding justice for her murder. AFP tention to bear on the threats and intimidation faced by environmentalists and rights activists in the Central American nation.

“Our family hopes this award will make sure that Berta’s wonderful life, and that of the Lenca people’s struggle, will not be forgotten and will inspire all those who fight for environmental rights in the world,” her brother Roberto Caceres said upon accepting the UN award on her behalf. AFP

ALEPPO, Syria—Syrian government forces have recaptured half the former rebel stronghold of east Aleppo, a monitor said, with the UN now facing a “race against time” to aid children forced out by the bloody offensive.

President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have made swift gains since their offensive against Aleppo—once Syria’s commercial powerhouse—began on November 15.

Tens of thousands of civilians have streamed out of the city’s east, and Russia has renewed calls for humanitarian corridors so aid can enter and desperate residents can leave.

Regime forces on Friday “consolidated their control” over two eastern districts and were pushing further to squeeze the shrinking rebel enclave, said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head Rami Abdel Rahman.

“After the recent advances, the regime is comfortably in control of half of former rebel territory in the city’s east,” he said.

Dozens of families have trickled out, adding to the more than 50,000 people who have poured from east Aleppo into territory controlled by government forces or local Kurdish authorities, the Observatory said.

Among those fleeing are nearly 20,000 children, according to estimates by the UN’s children’s agency.

“What is critical now is that we provide the immediate and sustained assistance that these children and their families desperately need,” UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac said.

“It’s a race against time, as winter is here and conditions are basic.”

The loss of east Aleppo – a rebel stronghold since 2012 – would be the biggest blow to Syria’s opposition in more than five years. AFP

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World

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2016 mst.daydesk@gmail.com Joyce Pangco-Pañares, Issue Editor

NEW BIRD FLU OUTBREAK HITS FRENCH FOIE GRAS EXPORTS

UNSILENT NIGHT. Mariah Carey performs onstage during 2016 VH1’s Divas Holiday at Kings Theatre on December 2 in New York City. AFP

TRUMP RISKS CHINA RIFT WITH TAIWAN CALL N

ew York—President-elect Donald Trump broke with decades of cautious US diplomacy Friday to speak with the president of Taiwan, at the risk of provoking a serious rift with China.

It was not immediately clear whether Trump’s telephone call with President Tsai Ing-wen marked a deliberate pivot away from Washington’s official “One China” stance.

But the call itself will incense Beijing – the target of much bombastic rhetoric during Trump’s election campaign – and fuel fears that he is improvising an ad hoc foreign policy.

China regards self-ruling Taiwan as part of its own territory awaiting reunification under Beijing’s rule, and any US move that would imply support for independence would trigger fury.

Trump and Tsai noted “the close economic, political and security ties” between Taiwan and the United States, according to the presi-

dent-elect’s office.

“President-elect Trump also congratulated President Tsai on becoming President of Taiwan earlier this year,” it said.

As he came under fire for the move, Trump later took the unusual step of defending directly on Twitter the highly sensitive diplomatic subject of his decision to speak with Tsai.

He first tweeted that Tsai initiated the call, one of several he has had with world leaders in recent days, and brushed off criticism for speaking directly with the leader.

“Interesting how the U.S. sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call,” Trump wrote

in a second tweet sent an hour after the first one.

Tsai told Trump she “hopes the US can continue to support Taiwan in opportunities to participate and contribute to international issues,” and called his hard-fought election victory “admirable,” her office said in a statement.

China—the target of much bombastic rhetoric during Trump’s election campaign – labeled the call a “ploy by the Taiwan side that simply cannot change... the One China framework.”

“I do not think it will change the one-China policy that the US government has insisted on applying over the years,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV, in a muted response.

“The One China principle is the cornerstone of the healthy development of Sino-US relations, and we do not want any interference or disappearance of this political foundation.”

President Barack Obama’s White House said the outgoing US admin-

istration had not changed its stance.

“There is no change to our longstanding policy on cross-Strait issues,” National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne told reporters after news of the call broke.

“We remain firmly committed to our ‘One China’ policy,” she added.

“Our fundamental interest is in peaceful and stable cross-Strait relations.”

Washington cut formal diplomatic relations with the island in 1979 and recognizes Beijing as the sole government of China—while keeping friendly non-official ties with Taipei.

But since coming to office this year, Tsai has refused to accept the “One China” concept, prompting Beijing to cut off all official communication with the island’s new government.

Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party government (DPP) defeated the Kuomintang (KMT), which had much friendlier ties with Beijing, in a landslide election victory in January. AFP

CASTRO’S ASHES RETURN TO CRADLE OF REVOLUTION SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba—The convoy carrying the ashes of Cuba’s late communist leader Fidel Castro ends an island-wide journey on Saturday in the cradle of his revolution for a big ceremony before his burial.

The flag-draped cedar urn left Havana on Wednesday, passing roads lined with people chanting “I am Fidel!” and making daily stops on the way to Santiago de Cuba in the eastern end of the country.

President Raul Castro, who took over when his brother fell ill in 2006, will deliver a much-awaited speech during a massive tribute with foreign dignitaries on Saturday evening.

Capping a nine-day mourning period, the remains will be interred during a private ceremony on Sunday at the Santa Ifigenia cemetery, where 19th century independence hero Jose Marti is buried.

Fidel Castro’s death on November 25 at age 90 has fueled discussions

about his divisive legacy and the direction that the country may take without the omnipresent leader who ruled for almost half a century.

Tearful supporters have cheered Fidel Castro for the free education and health care he spread in the island, while detractors call him a brutal dictator who imprisoned dissidents and ran the economy to the ground.

People put up posters of Castro as Santiago prepared to greet the convoy.

“He has been the father of all Cubans and all the people in need in the world,” said Margarita Aguilera, the 54-year-old director of a state tobacco company who painted the words “farewell, comandante” on stone.

Enediel Rodriguez, 50, was helping to make preparations Friday in a public hall where people will be able to watch the arrival of the jeep with the ashes before they go out on the street. AFP

IMPEACHMENT FILED AGAINST SOKOR’S PARK

DEATH OF A LEGEND. The remains of Cuba’s late communist leader Fidel Castro has returned to Santiago de Cuba on Saturday.

AFP

SEOUL—South Korea’s opposition parties filed an impeachment motion against scandal-hit President Park Geun-Hye on Saturday as a fresh weekly protest was expected to draw a million protesters, organisers said.

The motion, backed by 171 lawmakers in the 300-seat legislature, will be put to a vote in the National Assembly on Friday, lawmakers said.

The joint opposition commands the most seats in the legislature, but will need the support of nearly 30 members of Park’s Saenuri Party to secure the two-thirds majority needed to impeach the president.

“If the impeachment motion fails to get passed because of the lack of cooperation from the ruling party, it must take responsibility for all consequences,” the main opposition Democratic Party’s floor leader Woo Sang-Ho was quoted as saying by the Yonhap news agency. AFP

PARIS—A new outbreak of bird flu hit France’s foie gras producers on Friday just as a ban on exports outside Europe was about to be lifted in time for the crucial holiday period.

The agriculture ministry said the outbreak of the “highly pathogenic” H5N8 strain of the virus was detected Thursday on a duck farm in the southwestern Tarn region, the heart of the lucrative, though controversial, foie gras industry.

Exports outside the European Union had been suspended after an outbreak a year ago, and producers were waiting for the green light – which had been set for Saturday – to resume shipments just in time for the Christmas holidays, when the delicacy is especially popular.

Japan, a top export market for foie gras, banned imports from France last December after the H5N1 strain was detected on 69 farms in southwestern France.

As a result of the fresh outbreak, France will be unable to “recover, as anticipated, its status as (a country) free of bird flu” on Saturday, the ministry said in a statement. Sales within the EU can continue, however, the ministry said.

It said migratory birds were the likely source of the outbreak.

Some 7,000 ducks were slaughtered while a further 4,500 had died from illness in the region, officials said.

Authorities later announced a number of confirmed or suspected cases of bird flu in the southwestern regions of Gers, Hautes-Pyrenees and Lot-etGaronne—where ducks from the supplier of the Tarn farm had been transported—eading to around 7,000 further birds being culled. AFP

EU BANKS AT RISK FROM BAD LOANS - EBA LONDON—The greatest risks facing European Union banks are high levels of bad loans and lower profitability, the bloc’s financial regulator said in a report over the weekend.

The European Banking Authority said that while EU-wide lenders had strengthened their capital buffers, technology-related risks were increasing amid lingering litigation concerns.

Presenting its ninth report on “risks and vulnerabilities in the EU banking sector,” the EBA pointed to “high levels of nonperforming loans (NPLs) and sustained low profitability” as being the main risks.

But it said that overall, the 131 banks had “further strengthened their capital position, allowing them to continue the process of repair” against a backdrop of high volatility in funding markets.

The regulator noted that the NPL ratio for the assessed banks as set against total loans had decreased overall to 5.4 percent in the second half of 2016 from 6.5 percent at the end of 2014.

“While there are signs of potential improvements, asset quality is still weak compared to historical figures and other regions,” the EBA said.

“Material differences persist in asset quality across countries, with more than one third of EU jurisdictions showing NPL ratios above 10 percent.”

The EBA recommended tackling the problem of bad debts by mobilizing the regulators, implementing structural reforms and developing a secondary market that could ease the sale of particular loan portfolios. AFP