Comm Builders and Technology Phils. Corp. (CB&T) President Roehl B. Bacar said his group filed a notice of protest before the Department of Transporta-tion and Communications (DOTC) last December 23. On this basis, the agency should refrain from awarding the contract until the dispute is resolved. Bacar, the authorized represen- tative of Schunk Bahn- und Industri-etechnik GmbH-Comm Builders and Technology Phils., cited Republic Act (RA) 9184, or the procurement law, in questioning the transport department’s decision to award the contract to Busan Transportation Corp., Edison Develop-ment & Construction, Tramat Mercantile Inc., TMI Corp Inc. and Castan Corp. on Christmas Eve.

“In accordance with Rule 57 of the Implementing Rules, the protests must first be resolved before any award is made,” Bacar pointed out. “Accord-ingly, please be notified that the joint venture intends to submit its position paper in accordance with Rule 17 of R A 9184.”

B L S. M

THE transportation department failed to observe the

terms of the law on procurement in awarding the P4.3-billion contract for the maintenance and rehabilitation of the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) Line 3, as it moved to grant the deal to a single bidder despite protests from parties interested in the project.

S “MRT,” A

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 47.1660 n JAPAN 0.3920 n UK 70.1783 n HK 6.0857 n CHINA 7.2697 n SINGAPORE 33.5176 n AUSTRALIA 34.2652 n EU 51.7411 n SAUDI ARABIA 12.5766 Source: BSP (29 December 2015)

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COLOMA: “President Aquino noted that the

number of overseas Filipino workers

declined by almost 500,000.”

HELLO 2016 The 66-meter Quezon mausoleum was illuminated by fireworks during the New Year’s Eve celebrations at the Quezon Memorial Circle in Quezon City. The country welcomed 2016 with fewer firecracker-related injuries, according to the Department of Health. ALYSA SALEN

SportsA8 | SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 2016mirror_sports@yahoo.com.phsports@businessmirror.com.phEditor: Jun Lomibao

BusinessMirror

T HE Philippine Volcanoes Under-19 squad bagged its first Pacific Cup crown after pummeling Hong Kong Junior

Warriors, 49-0. Hamish Roxas McWilliam provided a rousing hat trick of tries that sealed the victory, dimming the chances of HK Junior Rugby team to make a comeback. McWilliam made it with the help of national team captains Robert Villaluz McCafferty and Rhys Jacob Mackley, along with outside back Dan O’Rielly.  The Junior Volcanoes prevailed despite the drizzling weather, blanking the Hong Kong national team with six unanswered attempts in the opening half.  “The U19s national team is a platform for our next batch of future Volcanoes. This program helps develop and identify the next generation of elite athletes. It provides

a pathway so our men’s national team can continue to be successful on the world stage,” Assistant Coach and Volcano mainstay Jake Letts said. Letts added that he and his staff saw potential among the U19 players tand will most likely be added in the men’s program this year. “Robbie McCafferty had a great series, he showed real maturity at this level and is no doubt pushing for selection in the National Men’s Squad,” he said. However, the Philippine Development Team was dealt a final blow in their second match after winning the opening game just three days earlier.  The Hong Kong Senior Warriors took out the Transcom Shield in a close encounter, 13- 0, to hand the home team an even 1-1 record in the series. Lance Agcaoili

LONDON—Jockey Tony McCoy, former Manchester United striker Denis Law, two-time Tour de France winner

Chris Froome and five-time world snooker champion Ronnie O’Sullivan are among the United Kingdom sporting figures honored by Queen Elizabeth in her New Year list. McCoy, who retired this year after winning 20-straight British champion jockey titles and a record 4,358 races in a 23-year career, was knighted in recognition of his services to horse racing. He is only the second jockey to be made a Sir, after Gordon Richards in 1953. The 75-year-old Law, who played for United from 1962 to 1973 and was part of the club’s so-called Holy Trinity with George Best and Bobby Charlton, was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for

services to football and charity. Froome was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire(OBE) after becoming the first Briton to win a second Tour de France in July. O’Sullivan also was awarded an OBE in recognition for his services to snooker, having won the world championship five times—most recently in 2013—and become the sport’s box-office name. The success of the England women’s football team in finishing third at the World Cup in Canada this year was recognized as captain Steph Houghton and teammate Fara Williams were both made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). John Surtees, the only man to win world championships on two and four wheels, was made a CBE. The 81-year-old Surtees won seven world motorcycling championships

before switching to four wheels and winning the 1964 Formula One title. Heather Rabbatts, a director at England’s Football Association, who became the organization’s first female board member in 2012, was awarded a damehood for services to football and equality. As a campaigner on behalf of women in sport, she recently spoke out in support of former Chelsea doctor Eva Carneiro in her dispute with the club. Former Manchester City striker and chairman Francis Lee received a CBE, while ex-England rugby winger Mark Cueto and Intenational Boxing Federation super-bantamweight boxing champion Carl Frampton were awarded MBEs. Britain’s honors are bestowed by the monarch, but recipients are selected by committees of civil servants from nominations made by the government and the public. AP

FUN RUN Team Kramer, composed of pro cager Doug Kramer, actress Cheska Garcia and their children Kendra, Scarlett and Gavin, grace the 2015 Tempra Run Against Dengue Family Run at the Quirino Grandstand. Also backed by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, Deuter, Toby’s, Guard Insect Repellent, Maynilad and Malaya Business Insight, the fun run lured 2,893 dengue busters. This Fight Against Dengue project of Tempra returns later this year with a bigger staging, but with a different format.

B J L�e Associated Press

PARIS—For the past 12 months, scandals off the field of play eclipsed exploits on it. Beyond the usual cases of doping and cheating that are sadly common in modern sports,

shocking corruption in soccer and athletics begged the question of whether the vast riches and accompanying greed generated by professional sport are rotting the entire multibillion dollar industry to its core. On the upside, the stink got so bad that 2015 also saw the forces of law and order sit up and take action, opening criminal investigations, making high-profile arrests and recovering tens of millions of ill-gotten dollars. That legal pressure sped change, notably at soccer governing body International Football Federation (Fifa), forcing administrators to abandon some of their old-school, shoddy, backroom and amateur management practices and enact reforms that should make them behave more professionally. “What we’re going through now, it’s like a tectonic shift,” International Olympic Committee (IOC) veteran Dick Pound said. “Sports organizations are coming to realize—voluntarily or involuntarily—that they can no longer operate outside of the larger social and legal orders.” “In the old days, sport was well outside of anything that governments had focused on,” Pound said in an Associated Press interview. “They were all private organizations and they were kind of run informally like clubs and so on, and have tried to pretend that they can do that even in 2015—and they can’t.” In short, this was a year that left a sour taste for sports fans but also offered some hope of a brighter future. It was bookended by “deflategate,” which saw National Football League star quarterback Tom Brady accused of throwing deliberately under-inflated (and theoretically easier to grip) footballs in January’s American Football Conference title game on his way to winning the Super Bowl, and by the disgrace of Sepp Blatter, kicked out of soccer in December for unethical conduct, ending his 17 scandal-scarred years as president of Fifa. His heir-in-waiting, France’s former midfield

star Michel Platini, also was banned for a dubious $2-million payment that Blatter approved for the Fifa vice president in 2011. Their appeals of the eight-year bans that decapitated the leadership of the world’s most popular sport, as well as ongoing criminal probes in Switzerland and the United States of soccer bribery and corruption, promise to cloud Fifa’s ambitions for a fresh start with the election of a new president in February. In track and field, a cornerstone of the Olympic Games, a World Anti-Doping Agency-ordered investigation that Pound led concluded explosively in November that doping in Russia was not only widespread and deep-rooted, but also likely tacitly sanctioned by President Vladimir Putin’s government. A resulting blanket ban from competition could see Russian track and field athletes miss the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, unless the sporting powerhouse can convince the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) that it has made real changes. In March the IAAF’s ethics commission also started investigating alleged doping cover-ups in distance-running power Kenya, which topped the world championships medal table in August. Those probes were just the beginning of a scandal that threatened to sink the IAAF in 2015, gravely undermining not only the federation, but trust in the entire sport it oversees. In November three months after stepping down as IAAF chief, Lamine Diack, was taken into police custody in France, suspected of pocketing more than €1 million ($1.1 million) in an alleged scheme to blackmail athletes and hush up their doping cases. Diack, who presided at the IAAF for nearly 16 years, is under formal investigation for corruption and money laundering. If proven by France’s investigating magistrates, the allegations could be even graver than soccer’s massive scandal. The US Department of Justice’s sprawling soccer case alleges more than $200 million in bribes and kickbacks in the selling of media and marketing rights. Although grievous, the schemes seemingly didn’t affect the outcome of matches. The alleged wrongdoing at the IAAF, however, raised the possibility that on-track results were corrupted

SPORTSSCANDALS

McCoy, 3 others honored by Queen Elizabeth

2015: A YEAR WITHA SILVER LINING

by off-track criminality, and that dopers may have robbed competitors of medals by paying the sport’s guardians to look the other way. Contacted repeatedly by the Associated Press, Diack’s lawyer has refused to comment. Tasked with cleaning up the mess is British former middle-distance running great Sebastian Coe, elected in August as Diack’s successor. But just months into his new job, the credibility of the chief organizer of the 2012 London Olympics suffered a blow when the BBC uncovered in November that Coe had spoken privately to an executive at Nike, his long-time personal sponsor, about hosting the 2021 world championships in Eugene. The Oregon city, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of the sportswear giant’s headquarters outside Portland, was subsequently and controversially awarded the competition without an open bidding process. Coe denied that working for both the IAAF and Nike represented a conflict of interest and severed his ambassadorial role with the company. But the affair left doubts about Coe’s judgment and, more broadly, fed into a dominant theme of 2015, which was that sports administrators often appeared chronically out of touch with a shift in the public mood against their clubby ways and, in worst cases, their criminal habits. “It simply won’t work in this day and age,” Pound said. “You have to be more transparent, which doesn’t mean that you run around buck naked, but people have got to understand how a decision was reached, and by whom, and for what reasons, and that sort of thing that never used to happen. There was a code of silence.” “Sport has got to change...,” he added, “or it’s going to be changed.”

MCCOY

B S W�e Associated Press

 

LONDON—Sports organiza-tions must work harder than ever in 2016 to clean up their

act after a year of corrup-tion and doping

scandals that tarnished the Olympic movement, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach said on Wednesday in a New Year’s message. Bach said the entire Olympic world must live up to the public’s expectations of integrity and heed his call from a year ago to “change or be changed.” “One just needs to look at the events over the last 12 months to realize that this message is even more urgent today to safeguard the credibility of sports

organizations and to protect clean athletes,” Bach said. “Undoubtedly, recent developments in some sports cast a shadow across the whole world of sport.” While Bach didn’t cite any sports by name, he was clearly referring to the

corruption scandal that has enveloped soccer governing body International Football

Federation (Fifa), and the allegations of

bribery and doping cover-ups involving the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and Russia’s track and field program. Noting the public’s growing demand for ethical behavior by athletes and sports bodies, Bach said: “It is our shared responsibility in the Olympic movement to provide new answers to new questions.” Fifa is reeling from a corruption scandal that has led to the arrests of dozens of soccer and marketing officials and eight-year bans for outgoing Fifa President Sepp Blatter and Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) head Michel Platini. Blatter is a former member of the IOC. Russia’s athletics federation was suspended following a damning report by a World Anti-Doping Agency panel that alleged widespread, state-sponsored doping in the country. Russia’s track and field athletes could miss next year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The IAAF’s former president, Lamine

Diack, was arrested and charged by French authorities with corruption and money laundering, stemming from allegations that he took money to cover up positive tests in Russia. The IAAF’s former antidoping manager was also arrested. The IOC went through its own major corruption scandal in the late 1990s, with 10 members ousted for receiving cash and other favors during Salt Lake City’s winning bid for the 2002 Winter Games. Bach said sports federations and national Olympic committees must implement the IOC’s “Olympic Agenda 2020” reform program, approved last year, and apply rules of good governance. “We have called on and we expect all sports organizations to follow our lead,” Bach said. He noted that the IOC has proposed taking drug testing out of the hands of sports organizations to make the system more

independent and credible. The IOC wants an independent antidoping system in place ahead of the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. “We are convinced that all these changes are necessary to better protect the clean athletes and enhance the integrity of sport,” Bach said. Looking ahead to the Olympics in Rio, the first in South America, Bach said he expects Brazilians to welcome the world “with their joy of life and their passion for sport.” The buildup to the games is taking place amid Brazil’s worst recession in decades, an impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff and a vast corruption scandal centered on state-owned oil giant Petrobras. “We know the current economic and political situation in Brazil will make the next months of final preparations more challenging,” Bach said. The Olympics, he added, “will bring the world a message of hope and joy during difficult times.”

BACH: SPORTS BODIES MUST CLEAN UP FOR CREDIBILITY

U19 Volcanoes cop Pacific Cup

HOUSTON—Golden State’s Klay Thompson covered for the absence of star player Stephen Curry by scoring 38 points to

lead the Warriors to a 114-110 win at Houston on Thursday. Having suffered only their second defeat of the season on Wednesday when

Curry missed his first game due to a lower

leg injury, the Warriors found just enough to

compensate for the loss of the reigning league Most Valuable Player and edged

the Rockets. Among other results on New Year’s Eve, Oklahoma City hung on to send Phoenix to

a seventh successive loss, and the Los Angeles Clippers capped

a perfect five-game road trip by defeating New Orleans.

Golden State’s Thompson made six three-pointers, while Draymond Green had a triple-double of 16 assists—a career high—along with 10 points and 11 rebounds. James Harden had 30 points for Houston, which has dropped seven

straight regular-season games to Golden State.

Oklahoma City’s dynamic duo of Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant steered the Thunder to a 110-106 win against Phoenix. Westbrook had 36 points and 12 assists, while Durant scored 23 points for Oklahoma City, which has won 12-of-14 games. Westbrook also had five steals and blocked a shot. TJ Warren had 29 points and nine rebounds for the Suns, who had six players score in double figures but still lost. Scores were tied with 1:34 left when Durant scored on a fade-away jumper and got free for a dunk that made it 106-102 with 31.7 seconds remaining. Los Angeles’s Chris Paul made up for a poor shooting performance by pulling off some pivotal plays in the closing minutes to seal a 95-89 win for the Clippers at New Orleans. Paul missed 15 of his first 17 shots, but hit a 19-foot step-back jumper with a minute to go to give Los Angeles a 90-87 lead. Before and after that score, Paul assisted on baskets by Jamal Crawford. Paul, who finished with 12 assists, then added three free throws in the final 21 seconds. JJ Redick scored 26 points for the Clippers for a second straight night. Anthony Davis had 14 points and 15 rebounds for New Orleans. Milwaukee’s Khris Middleton scored 33 points as the Bucks stopped a three-game losing streak and edged Indiana 120-116. AP

Curry-less GSWdowns Houston

INTERNATIONAL Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach says sports organizations must do more than ever in 2016 to protect their credibility after a year of corruption and doping scandals that tarnished the Olympic movement. AP

SEPP BLATTER’S International Football Federation is at the heart of controversies and scandals in sports in 2015. AP

star Michel Platini, also was banned for a dubious $2-million payment that Blatter approved for the Fifa vice president in 2011. Their appeals of the eight-year bans that decapitated the leadership

SPORTSSCANDALS

WorldBusinessMirror

The

B2-1 | Saturday, January 2, 2016 • Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

FIREWORKS illuminate the Burj Khalifa as a tower burns behind it in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on New Year’s Eve. AP/JON GAMBRELL

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates—A 63-story luxury hotel was engulfed in �ames even as a massive New

Year’s �reworks display kicked o� at the world’s tallest skyscraper nearby, while tens of thousands of people whistled and cheered at early on Friday’s pyrotechnics.

Just minutes before the �reworks be-gan in the Gulf emirate of Dubai, large explosions could be heard from inside the burning building, which was cloaked in thick black smoke. Other blasts followed later during the night. It was not clear what caused them.

At least 14 people were slightly injured, and one person su�ered a heart attack from the smoke and overcrowding during an evacuation late on Thursday, according to the Dubai Media O�ce. The statement said another person was moderately in-jured, without elaborating further. No chil-dren were among those injured, it said.

Around 1 million people had been ex-pected to gather around the Burj Khalifa skyscraper to watch the �reworks. Dubai’s economy depends heavily on tourism, and New Year’s is one of the busiest seasons, drawing people from around the world to watch the �reworks that the emirate puts on at the world’s tallest tower, as well as the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab and over a man-made palm-shaped island.

Organizers had installed 400,000 light-emitting diode lights on the Burj Khalifa and used some 1.6 tons of �reworks for the seven-minute extravaganza. Two years ago on New Year’s, Dubai broke the world re-cord for the largest �reworks display.

The �re engulfed the Address Down-town, one of the most upscale hotels and residences in Dubai, which was likely to

have been packed with people because of its clear view of the 828-meter (905-yard) tall Burj Khalifa.

The hotel towers over the Souq Al Bahar, a popular shopping area with walkways that connect to the Burj Khalifa and the Middle East’s largest mall, the Dubai Mall.

It was not immediately clear what caused the �re, which ran up the 63-story building. The Address is a 991 foot-tall (302-meter) skyscraper that has 626 lux-ury apartments and 196 hotel rooms, ac-cording to Skyscraper Center, which tracks such buildings.

Dubai’s Media O�ce wrote on its o�cial Twitter account that four teams of �re�ght-ers were working to put out the blaze. They said the �re appears to have originated on a 20th �oor terrace, though witnesses who saw the blaze start said they believed it be-gan on the building’s ground �oor. No one o�ered a cause for the �re.

The �re broke out around 9:30 p.m., about two-and-a-half hours before the midnight �reworks display was set to be-gin. To manage the crowds, Dubai police had closed o� some roads and some metro stations before the �re broke out.

The Dubai Media O�ce said that Dubai’s tourism department would provide guests evacuated from the building with al-ternative hotel accommodation.

Nearly an hour after the �re began, some onlookers began to leave while others stood, pressed against crowd bar-ricades, watching the blaze. Among them was Chris Browne, a tourist from London, who watched with her husband, Stephen, standing behind her. They said they hoped no one was injured.

“It’s pretty scary stu�,” she said. AP

Dubai New Year fireworkskick off while tower blazes

In a New Year’s address devoted to the impact of the refugee cri-sis,  Merkel  said coping with migra-tion will cost Germany “time, e�ort and money,” according to prepared re-marks provided by her o�ce on �urs-day. If handled right, the challenges of today will be the opportunities of tomorrow, she said.

Merkel pressed home the point that she’s determined to treat the in�ux as a chance to modernize and rejuvenate Europe’s biggest economy, a stance that’s won her international accolades while eroding her poll ratings at home.

�e domestic fallout pushed other

crises, such as the unresolved con-�ict in eastern Ukraine and the threat of the UK leaving the Euro-pean Union into the background in her outlook for 2016.

“Next year is about one thing in particular: our cohesion,” Merkel said. “It is important not to follow those who, with coldness or even hate in their hearts, want to claim German-ness solely for themselves and ex-clude others.”

Merkel’s popularity among voters declined since last summer as she insist-ed “we will make it” through the refu-gee crisis, an assertion she repeated

in her speech, which was nationally televised later on �ursday and posted online subtitled in Arabic and English.

With Germany facing an in�ux of 1 million or more asylum seekers this year, about half of them �eeing civil war in Syria,  the chancellor has re-jected calls from within her Christian Democratic-led bloc to cap the num-ber of migrants.

Germany’s balanced budget, lowest unemployment since east-west reuni-�cation 25 years ago, rising real wages and “robust and innovative” economy mean the country is strong enough to master the challenge as it has others in history, said  Merkel, who marked 10 years in power in 2015.

�e chancellor’s warning to Ger-mans to stand up against anti-foreign-er sentiment reprised a line from last year’s New Year’s speech, underscor-ing concern in the chancellery about the risk of social con�ict.

Germany is the world’s top desti-nation for asylum seekers, the United Nations said in a report published on December 18.

Merkel’s poll ratings have stabilized in recent weeks. While 57 percent said

in a mid-December ARD poll they’re dissatis�ed with her stance on refu-gees, 42 percent expressed support, 3 percentage points more than when the broadcaster last asked the ques-tion in the �rst week of November.

Support  in the ARD poll for Merkel’s party bloc rose for the �rst time in almost �ve months, by 1 per-centage point  to 38 percent, after mostly holding at more than 40 per-cent since the September 2013 elec-tion. Alternative for Germany, a party that criticizes Merkel’s open-door policy and rejects the euro, held at 10 percent in the Infratest poll.

Germany’s 16 states plan to spend €17 billion ($18.5 billion) on the mi-grants next year as some struggle to balance their budgets, Die Welt re-ported, citing a survey.

Spending plans are based on 800,000 refugees arriving in Ger-many in 2015, a number that has already been exceeded, the newspa-per said. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has said the task of shel-tering refugees takes priority over other goals, such as taking on no new debt. Bloomberg News

WARNS GERMANS AGAINST REFUGEE HATE IN NEW YEAR’S SPEECH

Merkel to use refugees for nation’s advantage

THE US stock market took investors for a wild ride in 2015, but in the end it was a trip to nowhere.

Despite veering between record highs and the steepest dive in four years, the stock mar-ket ended the year essentially �at, delivering the weakest performance since 2008. That means if you invested in a fund that tracks the Standard and Poor’s (S&P) 500 index, you have little to show for the past 12 months.

“It’s been mildly disappointing,” said Mi-chael Baele, managing director at the Private Client Reserve at US Bank. “Any time that you come in toward the end of the year close to �at you always want a little bit more.”

Markets overseas had their own chal-lenges.

China’s market surged in the late spring and then fell sharply in the summer despite several e�orts by China’s government to stem the decline. The Shanghai Composite Index ended the year up 9.4 percent. Japan’s market �nished �at after that country’s government stepped up its economic stimulus program. In Europe Britain’s market ended the year

down about 5 percent, while indexes in Ger-many and France turned in healthy gains of 9.6 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively.

In the US the market got 2015 o� to a slow start as investors worried about falling crude oil prices, �at earnings growth and when and how quickly the Federal Reserve (the Fed) would begin raising interest rates.

By May the major indexes were hitting new highs. Even the Nasdaq bested its dot-com high-water mark set in March 2000.

The market didn’t stay in milestone terri-tory for long, though.

Worries about slowing growth in China and elsewhere gave reason for the Fed to pause and for investors to fret, even as the U.S. economy continued to create jobs and consumer con�dence improved. Weak com-pany earnings, largely due to the strong dol-lar and falling oil prices, didn’t do much for the market’s con�dence.

By August the anxiety had deepened and the market dropped sharply. The three major US indexes went into a correction, commonly de�ned as a loss of at least 10 percent from

a recent peak, for the �rst time in four years.That slide didn’t last long, either.Within several weeks, the market had

mostly bounced back. The Nasdaq com-posite returned to positive territory for the year, while the Dow average and S&P 500 remained slightly in the red until December.

In the weeks that followed, the S&P 500 inched back into positive territory, leaving the Dow as the only major market indicator negative for the year.

That held true until the last day of the year, when the S&P 500 index slipped back into the red.

The Dow ended down 178.84 points, or 1 percent, to 17,425.03 on Thursday. The S&P 500 index lost 19.42 points, or 0.9 percent, to 2,043.94. The Nasdaq composite fell 58.43 points, or 1.2 percent, to 5,007.41.

The S&P 500 ended the year with a slight loss of 0.7 percent. Once dividends are included, it had a total return of 1.4 percent. That’s its worst showing since 2008, when it slumped 37 percent in the midst of the �nancial crisis. That �gure also includes dividends.

“There was a lot of news that kept hitting the market and the market kept shrugging it all o� and hung in there,” said J.J. Kinahan, chief strategist at TD Ameritrade. “I’d say, given all that the market faced this year, it was pretty strong.”

These were some of the key factors driv-ing US markets in 2015:

Waiting for the fedWALL Street watched few things more closely this year than the Fed. Traders had been pre-dicting early on that the central bank would begin raising its benchmark interest rate as early as March. When that didn’t happen, in-vestors turned their focus to June, only to be disappointed again.

Eventually, in December, the Fed took action. It nudged its benchmark overnight borrow-ing rate higher, its �rst increase in interest rates in nearly a decade.

The Fed made it clear that it was express-ing a vote of con�dence in the US economy by doing so and that future increases would be gradual. That helped reassure investors

that the Fed wouldn’t raise rates too quickly and, thereby, stunt the economy’s growth.

“It really was central banks looming large over the market,” Baele said. “The market had a fair amount of fear that the Fed raising rates was a risk to the market. It’s turned around now.”

Correction arrivesTHE bull market had racked up six years of annual gains by the time the calendars turned to 2015. The last time it had a correc-tion was 2011. Historically, that’s an unusu-ally long time for the market to go without

a meaningful pullback. That plus a string of record highs in late

2014 led many to think the market was over-due a drop.

The long-awaited correction finally arrived in August. Late in the month indexes dropped sharply as investors worried that a slowdown in China’s huge economy could spread to other countries.

Yet, after an 11-percent plunge between August 17 and 25, and another, less steep drop in late September, the market began to strug-gle higher. By late November it had recouped all the losses from its late summer swoon. AP

A FERRARI SF15-T is parked in front of the New York Stock Exchange as part of the promotional activity around Ferrari’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange. While 2015 has proved to be a big year for mergers and acquisitions, the market for initial public o�erings has been less active with many analysts blaming volatility in �nancial markets for spooking investors. AP/MARK LENNIHAN

U.S. STOCKS END 2015 MOSTLY FLAT, CAPPING VOLATILE YEAR

CHANCELLOR Angela Merkel sig-naled she’ll use Germany’s eco-nomic power to turn a record

influx of refugees to the nation’s ad-vantage and urged citizens to reject so-cial conflict fomented by nationalists with “hate in their hearts.”

WORLD B21

SPORTS A8

B B C 

THE country’s status as a debtor-nation improved only slightly in the third quarter last year, based on latest data from the Bangko Sentral ng

Pilipinas (BSP).According to the central bank, the country’s so-

called net liability position hit $29.3 billion at end-September 2015. This was lower by $9.1 billion than the $38.5-billion net liability position recorded a quarter earlier. Any country with more external liabilities than assets is referred to as a net debtor rather than a cred-itor-nation. The Philippines reported more external liabilities than assets since 2006. According also to BSP data, the country’s net liability position as of the third quarter last year has been the lowest since 2011. “The decline in total external financial liabilities was mainly brought about by significant downward revaluation adjustments, particularly in nonresidents’ investments in equity securities amid the weak perfor-mance of the Philippine Stock Exchange index, which fell by 8.9 percent from end-June to end-September 2015,” the BSP said.

“In addition, expectations on the US Federal Reserve rate liftoff toward the end of the year led to nonresi-dents’ net withdrawal of their portfolio investments.  This was partly offset by an increase in loans extended by nonresidents to resident banks and borrowings by corporations from their affiliates abroad,” it added.

More than half (52.8 percent), or $80.6 billion, of residents’ total external financial assets continued to be in the form of reserve assets held by the BSP.  Di-rect investments in the form of debt instruments (or intercompany loans) and equity capital placements in foreign affiliates accounted for 15.5 percent and 10.7 percent of total external financial assets, respectively.  Residents also invested in debt securities issued by non- residents (8.5 percent) and placed deposits abroad (7.9 percent), the BSP reported.

Total outstanding external financial liabilities reached $181.8 billion as of end-September 2015, from the $151.7 billion in the previous quarter. “…the slight increase in total external financial as-sets was due to residents’ direct and portfolio invest-ments abroad, mostly in debt instruments and debt securities, respectively,” the BSP said. A country’s international investment position is the difference between its overseas assets and liabilities. Across sectors, only the BSP recorded a net exter-nal-asset position as of end-September 2015, due to reserve assets amounting to $80.6 billion.  Deposit-taking corporations, except the central bank (banks), general government and other sectors posted net external-liability positions.

B B F

THE stability of the economy, which allowed the Philippines to retain its investment-grade

rating, was one of the “biggest accom-plishments” of the Aquino adminis-tration in 2015, a senior government official said on Friday.

Asked to cite its major achieve-ments over the past 12 months, Com-

munications Secretary Herminio B. Coloma Jr. said the list also includes the “drastic” decline in the number of Filipinos seeking overseas jobs. “President Aquino noted that the number of overseas Filipi-no workers declined by almost 500,000,” Coloma said. The Palace official said Mr. Aquino also considers the reduction in the number of Filipino families classi-

fied as poor as one of the administra-tion’s achievements last year. “This was due to the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Pro-gram [4Ps], while the decline in the out-of-school youth was due to the K to 12 Program, as well as the 4Ps,” Coloma said. He said government programs, such as the 4Ps, have helped ensure the stability of the country’s economy.

Coloma said the glitch-free visit of Pope Francis last January and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting last November showed the world that the Philippines is capable of successfully hosting major inter-national events.

The administration-dominated Congress, however, failed to pass the proposed Bangsamoro basic law, a pet bill of President Aquino. The Aquino

administration had been hoping to pass the measure by the end of 2015. The bill, which calls for the creation of a new entity to replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, is part of a comprehen-sive agreement that the govern-ment and the Moro Islamic Libera-tion Front signed in March 2014 to end decades of armed conflict in Mindanao.

Gross gaming revenue fell 34.3 percent to 231 billion patacas ($29 billion) last year, according to data released by Macau’s Gaming Inspec-tion and Coordination Bureau. That compared with the median estimate of a 35-percent decline from nine analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. While casino takings dropped 21.2 percent last December—falling for the 19th straight month—that rep-resented the smallest year-on-year decline since last January. Macau’s six gambling houses have seen about $45 billion in mar-ket value wiped out this year, amid a free-fall in casino receipts, as Chi-na’s corruption crackdown scared off high-stake players and a slowing economy hurt mass-market gam-bling. Stricter government policies and key personnel changes, includ-ing a new regulator and adviser to oversee gambling, could further impact the hard-hit industry. “Macau has seen much greater pain in 2015 than everyone expected at the beginning of the year,” Aaron

Fischer, head of consumer and gam-ing research at CLSA Ltd., said before the data was released. “It would be difficult for the first half of the year for sure, because there’re not so many catalysts to drive a rebound.” 

Macau’s casino industry, which raked in gambling revenue about seven times more than the Las Ve-gas Strip in 2014, has seen its lead on the US casino district narrow to 4.6 times last year amid the slump.

The high-valued punters, known as VIPs, typically measured via their favorite card game baccarat, have led the downturn. VIP rev-enue, which accounted for more than half of Macau’s total gambling receipts, saw a 41-percent drop in the first nine months of 2015 com-pared with a year ago. Macau’s VIP gambling segment is set to fall another 13 percent in 2016, compared with a 6-percent rebound for the mass market, ac-cording to the median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. High-stakes gambling will only re-

cover in 2017, rising by 1 percent versus the 11-percent growth for the mass market the same year, the survey showed.

Junket operatorsANALYSTS are forecasting another 5-percent decline in 2016, before rebounding 7 percent in 2017. A continued liquidity squeeze in the junkets industry—middlemen operators who bring in high-rollers and lend them money to gamble with—is expected to cause further pain to the VIP segment.

The case of an alleged theft in September by an employee of junket operator Dore Entertain-ment prompted some investors to withdraw funds from the company and other junkets, causing a liquid-ity shortage and curbing high-roll-ers, according to Nomura Holdings Inc.’s Richard Huang. The analyst said he cut his 2016 revenue esti-mate to a 9-percent drop, from a 5-percent growth, as weakness in the VIP segment may persist. “Conversations with casino operators don’t give us confidence that junket volumes improve in the New Year,” Union Gaming Group Llc. analyst Christopher Jones said. “Most seem preparing for further moderation in junket VIP in 2016.”

Potential bright spots could come from new casino resorts by three Las Vegas-based operators due to start in 2016, after projects opened by

Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd. and Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd. last year. Wynn Macau Ltd. will have a new resort surrounded by cable cars and Sands China Ltd.’s features a half-size Eiffel Tower rep-lica, while MGM China Holdings Ltd. designed one to look like a stack of jewelry boxes.

While Melco’s October opening of the Hollywood-themed Studio City hasn’t translated into much of a boost for the industry, Fischer said he sees the addition of more new resorts helping improve customer traffic to Macau, with individual owners gaining market share when their projects start operations. Any recovery could still be ham-pered by stricter government poli-cies, such as tougher restrictions on smoking, junkets and gaming tables, as well as closer scrutiny on the use of China UnionPay Co. debit cards. The cards are commonly used by patrons to purchase luxury items in exchange for cash to gamble with.

There could be further shakeup in the industry next year. Macau is in the midst of reviewing operators’ performance and contributions to the city in the past decade, the result of which will be used to help the govern-ment map out the industry’s future development. The operators’ 20-year concession contracts will come up for renewal from 2020 to 2022, and Ma-cau may become stricter with gaming rules. Bloomberg News

BusinessMirror news@businessmirror.com.phSaturday, January 2, 2016 A2

NewsMacau casino fortunes hit 5-yearlow, lead on Vegas narrows

The position paper, however, will only be submitted this week, as government offices were closed due to the holidays in December.

“Additionally, we have yet to coordinate with the German partner of the joint venture in Wettenberg,” he added. Transportation officials were sought for comment, but none were available as of press time. The Filipino-German joint venture was disqualified from the emergency-procurement negotiations for submitting its offer 45-minute late from the deadline for submission of offers. It argued that as an emergency negotiated procurement, “deadlines should not be enforced strictly” compared to formal and official public biddings. This, according to Bacar, should have been considered as his team had rushed the processing of its offer documents, particularly the authentication documents of German firm Schunk since the DOTC negotiating team had not invited it to a “prenegotiation conference” in October. Separately, the group is seeking to place

the entire train system under a massive transformation program, augment its capacity and provide a safe and comfortable ride for commuters from the northern and southern corridors of Metro Manila.

The P4.64-billion proposal, submitted in February last year with Filipino partner Comm Builders, calls for the complete overhaul of the 73 light-rail vehicles of the MRT, the replacement of the rails, the upgrading of the line’s ancillary system, the upgrade of the track circuit and signaling systems, the modernization of the conveyance system, and a three-year maintenance contract. Under the amended build-and-operate transfer law, the government has to inform the proponent whether it accepts or rejects an unsolicited proposal within 120 days. The MRT is in a chronic state of decay, with the 16-year-old trains having already maxed out their rated capacities and the rails already experiencing difficulties in handling almost 560,000 passengers each day.

MACAU casino revenue sunk to the lowest level in five years, as Chinese high-rollers

stayed away in 2015, narrowing the world’s largest gambling hub’s lead on Las Vegas.

MRT 3. . . C A

FIREWORKS DISPLAY People gathered on Roxas Boulevard, where they were treated to a spectacular fireworks display that tradionally greets the new year. NONIE REYES

PhilHealth payment scheme raises patients’ hospital bills–PIDS study

By Cai U. Ordinario

THE current payment scheme being employed by the Philip-pine Health Insurance Corp.

(PhilHealth) has caused more Fili-pinos to spend more for inpatient medical needs, according to a study commissioned by the government’s think tank.

In the study commissioned by the Philippine Institute for Develop-ment Studies (PIDS), author Hilton Lam recommended that PhilHealth adopt the global budget payment (GBP) system instead of continuing the use of the case-based payment (CBP) scheme. 

“As CBP replaced the fee-for-service, it was found out that the amount reimbursed by PhilHealth from the case rates was not sufficient to cover hospital expenses. Majority of the admissions, in which patients shoulder the remaining expenses not covered by the CBP scheme, goes to balance billing,” Lam explained.

Lam pointed out that additional

drawbacks of the CBP scheme such as high administrative cost of screening cases and potential decrease in qual-ity of care due to providers avoiding complex cases or not giving the ap-propriate level of care.  

He said using the GBP as an al-ternative-payment mechanism will help improve efficiency and decrease transaction costs. This should be implemented together with an ef-ficient and improved CBP and strict implementation of the no-balance billing (NBB).

The GBP system, formulated in 2012, covers all PhilHealth mem-bers in nonprivate accommoda-tions. However, it has not been

implemented due to lack of hospital capacity particularly on informa-tion systems.  

However, Lam believes this scheme is a potential cost-contain-ment mechanism that can be used to support the Department of Health’s Kalusugan Pangkalahatan, or Uni-versal Health Care program. 

Under the GBP, government hos-pitals will submit their applications to be considered under the program with priority given to facilities that meet certain criteria. 

These criteria include those with at least 90-percent bed capacity dedicated to nonprivate accommoda-tions, centers of quality and referral hospitals, hospitals connected to the eClaims facility and local govern-ment unit hospitals implementing province-wide programs to ensure high PhilHealth enrollment.

“Unlike the CBP, GBP would be a prospective-payment mechanism in which hospitals would be given funds to cover future claims. This prospective mechanism could cut administrative costs and make pay-ment to providers more efficient by giving funds in advance to avoid reimbursement delays,” PIDS said.  

Apart from using the GBP, the study urged the PhilHealth to  up-date the costing of case rates. This can be done by determining the

approximate fair market price and monitoring indicators of hospital performance and quality of care.

Lam also proposed that Phil-Health look into the investment needs of hospitals to comply with global budget requirements.

He added that PhilHealth should monitor the indicators for efficiency and quality of care under the GBP. Possible indicators include bed occu-pancy rate, readmission rate, length of stay, frequency of complications and compliance to CPGs. 

Lam said the electronic database can be used for real-time monitor-ing aside from the planned biannual facility assessments.

“There should be an analysis of the investment needs of hospitals to comply with the global budget requirements. Based on the as-sessment of PhilHealth, hospitals cannot comply with the technology requirements of the GBP. If Phil-Health still plans to implement GBP, hospitals should be given adequate preparation time and resources to meet these requirements,” Lam said.

In 2011 PhilHealth started imple-menting the CBP system in lieu of the traditional fee-for-service in paying hospitals for a group of materials and services required for the treatment of a certain conditions.

Currently, the CBP covers 23 of

the most common conditions and procedures, which represent 50 per-cent of total claims to PhilHealth. The goal of the CBP is to increase cost efficiency and transparency in provider-payment mechanisms.

Out-of-pocket medical expense in the Philippines is still quite high. In 2013 Filipino households spent P296.5 billion for out-of-pocket health expenses. 

This was based on the Philippine National Health Accounts (PNHA) released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in 2015. 

PSA data showed that this rep-resented 56.3 percent of the total health expenditure worth P526.3 billion in 2013.

Data also showed that per capita health expenditure at current prices was registered at P5,360 in 2013, a 9.8-percent increase, from P4,881 in 2012. 

The PSA said that at constant 2006 prices, per capita health spending rose by 6.6 percent to P4,000 in 2013, from P3,752 in 2012. 

Due to this, the government missed its target of reducing out-of-pocket health expenditures to 45 percent in 2013. 

The government also missed its target of increasing spending on health as a percentage of total government spending.

SEASON OF THE BLACK NAZARENE Oblivious of an early morning drizzle, hundreds of devotees line up patiently to pray before, and kiss, the revered image of the Black Nazarene at the Quiapo Church on New Year’s Day. A million plus devotees are expected to join the Black Nazarene procession traditionally held every year on the 9th of January. PNA

news@businessmirror.com.ph Editor: Dionisio L. Pelayo • Saturday, January 2, 2016 A3BusinessMirrorNews

By Joel R. San Juan

HOSPITALS are built to save lives but for the Manila City government, one of its hospitals is the one that needs to be saved.

Thus, the city government is set to unveil this year a newly renovated and fully equipped five-story Ospital ng Maynila after 46 years of neglect. 

Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada said the move is intended to resuscitate the city’s original and flagship free health-care provider.

Dra. Regina Bagsic, consultant for Hospital Services and Ad-ministration, said that before Estrada’s election as city mayor in 2013, the hospital was in a dismal state and its accreditation as a Level 3 hospital was “hanging by a thread.” 

She illustrated the lack of equipment, as well as support to per-sonnel proficiency perpetrated by decades of mismanagement.

 “There is only one x-ray machine that is about to conk out. In fact, the training program in radiology, which they used to have, has been abolished,” she added.

Estrada said that the massive rehabilitation and upgrade plan of the city’s eponymous medical center is made possible with Ma-nila’s improved financial standing and resolution of its debt and bankruptcy woes. The city government, Estrada said, is determined to bring it back to its stature as the leading public hospital of the country’s capital city. He added that this is just one of the many infrastructure improvements underway under the comprehensive P500-million  modernization program for all its hospitals and 59 health centers. Dr. Edwin Perez, hospital director, said that the re-furbishment project, which started sometime in 2014, is expected to be completed by second quarter of 2016.

Ospital ng Maynila Medical Center in Malate, Manila, is a 300-bed general and training hospital and the only one with a Level 3 certification out of the City’s six public hospitals. Its construction was endorsed by former Manila Mayor Arsenio Lacson to provide the health-care needs of the indigent Manileños but was inaugu-rated during the term of Mayor Antonio Villegas in 1969.

Perez shared that, so far, the renovation is nearing its comple-tion with the emergency room, intensive care unit, out-patient department, lobby and administration offices.

The new Ospital ng Maynila will have a complete radiology and imaging section with a fully functioning digital x-ray machine, ul-trasound, fluoroscopy, a 32-slice computerized tomography scan and a magnetic resonance imaging, all of which are set to be installed as soon as their respective housing facility is built. “We’ll also have a complete clinical laboratory section with hematology, immunology, microbiology. We’ll have a complete anatomical pathology section. Then, we are shaping up for a blood bank. The blood bank I think is one of the important things we need to provide being a Level 3 hos-pital [such that] we [can] service the rest of our five other hospitals,” Bagsic said referring to Ospital ng Sampaloc, Gat Andres Bonifacio Memorial Medical Center, Ospital ng Tondo, Santa Ana Hospital and Justice Jose Abad Santos General Hospital.

“Hopefully we will be granted not only blood bank status but blood center status. In this way, the six hospitals of the city will be fully independent and we can supply each other. We have a need for a lot of blood, since we have our dialysis center, the biggest in the country,” she said.

A S the government steps up the distribution of remain-ing Comprehensive Agrarian

Reform Program, or CARP-covered lands, more focus will be on the provision of support services to em-power agrarian-reform beneficiaries (ARBs) and agrarian reform benefi-ciaries’ organizations (Arbos), an of-ficial of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) said.

The Land Acquisition and Dis-tribution (LAD) component of the CARP ended on June 30, 2014. DAR Undersecretary for Support Services Rosalina L. Bistoyong, who also chairs the National Task Force on ARC, said they are eyeing the creation or “confirmation” of more agrarian- reform communities (ARCs) in vari-ous parts of the country.

She said the DAR’s field offices evaluate and recommend the cre-ation of ARCs. The creation of ARCs paves the way for the formation of more Arbos, which now stands at 5,433 as of June last year. Arbos in-clude cooperatives or farmers’ orga-nizations, through which the DAR channels various support services.

ARBs, according to Bistoyong, are slowly transforming from mere farmers and food producers to agri-businessmen and businesswomen through their Arbos, joining the country’s pool of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

The DAR defines an ARC as a ba-rangay or cluster of contiguous ba-rangays within a municipality where majority of the CARP-covered lands have been awarded to a critical mass of ARBs. The minimum requirement is to have at least 300 ARBs in one barangay, or cluster of barangay, to qualify as an ARC, Bistoyong said.

There are currently 2,207 con-firmed ARCs nationwide. “As we cover more lands, more areas become qualified as ARCs. These are areas where farmers have been installed.  In order to create and to have a fo-cused area for development, we need to confirm them into ARCs,” she said.

The DAR will also help organize more Arbos through which the DAR provides or pours support, including training, seminars and provision of common service facilities, such as farm tractors, dump trucks, shred-ders, threshers and related farm equipment. 

The DAR also implement various infrastructure projects, such as irri-gation and farm-to-market roads in areas where there are existing Arbos, to maximize project impacts.

Since 2012 the DAR has facilitated credit financing to small farmers through the Agrarian Production Credit Program (APCP) in partner-ship with the Department of Agricul-ture (DA) and Land Bank of the Phil-ippines (LandBank). So far, around P1.6 billion has been released under the APCP.  Another P2 billion have been allocated this year. Bistoyong said next year, the DAR will also push for the clustering of ARCs to expand the support base of ARBs.

“We are building bigger sup-ply base for products and crops. By clustering ARCs, we are able to strengthen our number of Arbos. This is a big-brother, small-brother concept of empowering organiza-tions. We started this in 2010. Now, we are enhancing this strategy to empower our small farmers,” Bis-toying said.

Clustering, she added, will also benefit ARBs outside existing ARCs.

Meanwhile, Bistoyong said that the DAR has also been preparing ARCs to be more climate-resilient. “We are looking at the ARC devel-opment plans. We update and we put in the component on climate change. Before confirmation, ARCs come up with development plans. In the plans, the DAR will require them to integrate climate change mitiga-tion and adaptation plans,” she said. 

Jonathan L. Mayuga

City Hall: Ospital ng Maynila renovation done by Q2 2016

DAR eyeing to create more ARCs, boost ARB support

TO support the local film industry, an actor-politician has recently filed a measure mandating movie-

theater operators to run local films for a minimum span of seven consecutive days regardless of ticket revenues.

In House Bill (HB) 6300 or the pro-posed Local Movies Act,  Liberal Party Rep. Dan S. Fernandez of Laguna said that movie-theater owners should sup-port local movie producers to encourage and motivate them to make more films, which in turn create job opportunities.

HB 6300, which is now pending at the Committee on Public Information, mandates local movie-theater operators to run local movies, approved and rated by the Movie and Television Classifica-tion Review Board (MTRCB), to support local movie producers.

It also mandated movie-theater oper-ators to equally divide theaters screening slots between with 50 percent for local films and 50 percent for foreign films.

The bill said that movie-theater operators shall equally divide movie trailer slots with 50 percent for local film and 50 percent for foreign film prior to the actual film screening of a featured movie.

The measure also mandates mov-ie theater operators to make Fridays the start of movie play dates, instead

of Wednesdays, to give local movies a better chance in the box office.

The bill also proposes that the Film Academy Council of the Philippines (FACP), which was created through Re-public Act 9167, shall adopt a monitoring and reporting system, and impose a fine of P1,000 for the violation of the act; cause or initiate criminal or administrative pros-ecution with concerned government agen-cies against violators of the act; and cause the closure of any erring theater or cinema. The measure also mandates the FACP to issue the necessary rules and regulations to implement the provisions within 90 days after the approval of the act.

In filing the bill, Fernandez said that  more local movies produced and shown in theaters would entice the younger generation to watch original Filipino movies that will foster patrio-tism and nationalism in them. “Movie producers invest a lot of money to cre-ate a movie. Local movie producers are given the opportunity to get their return of investment. Unfortunately, local mov-ies tend to lose their avenue over major foreign films,” said the lawmaker.

Tax breakEARLIER, Party-list Rep. Jose Atienza Jr. of Buhay has also filed HB 3840 seeking a five-year tax holiday for the local film

industry to help it recover and be more competitive, especially with the entry of foreign players. Atienza said the coun-try’s film industry is moribund, citing that it used to produce an average of 300 films a year, which dropped to less than 50 films a year.

“The film industry used to be one of the fastest-growing [among the] indus-tries in the country and in the world, as well. We used to be recognized in the world in terms of creativity, originality and talent in our movies. [Today] the in-dustry is moribund,” Atienza said.

Present, he said only a few local films make a profit as many Filipinos are more aware of foreign films than the local ones, especially because the Internet age has allowed the download of the newest foreign movies in people’s computers and let the local movies run dry in the local movie houses.

HB 3840, or the proposed Philippine Film Industry Tax Holiday Act of 2014, which is now pending at the House of Representatives, provides that the im-portation of machinery and equipment, and accompanying spare parts directly related to the making of films shall be exempt to the extent of 100 percent of the customs duties and national internal revenue taxes payable hereon.

Jovee Marie N. de la Cruz 

Lawmaker urges movie theaters to widen support to local flicks

Saturday, January 2, 2016 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

OpinionBusinessMirrorA4

Press freedom: It’s your problem also

editorial

WE take it for granted, this cornerstone that separates and draws the line between a free people and the government.

Article III, Section 4 of the Philippine Con-stitution reads simply, “No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and peti-tion the government for redress of grievances.”

Those 33 words mean the difference between the rule of law and the tyranny of government, as all other rights of the people depend on the right to be able to speak freely. However, there are many who do not want the people to have the right of free speech and a free press. While the Philippine government itself may not directly stop the rights spelled out in Section 4, the government has failed at times to punish those that would take away the people’s right to free speech.

The New York-based press-freedom watchdog the Committee to Protect Journalists has taken the Philippines off its list of the “World’s Most Deadly Countries for Journalists” for the first time since 2007. That is the good news.

However, there is bad news for freedom of expression in the nation. The 2015 World Press Freedom Index, prepared by the Reporters Without Borders organization, places the Philippines at 141 out of 180 countries. This index measures “the degree of freedom that journalists, news media and netizens [Internet citizens] enjoy in each country, and the efforts made by the authorities to respect and ensure respect for this freedom.”

The Philippines is categorized as a country where the press faces a “difficult situation.” The Philippines ranked at 122 in 2009, and our best ranking came in 2002 at No. 89. Since 2010, we have stayed at above 150. But sadly, our “Abuses” score, measuring not only violence but abuses that journalists face, is comparable to Afghanistan and Egypt.

This situation is not acceptable.The freedom and protection of the press is a problem for everyone.

If the press and media is cautious about reporting the news and fears the consequences of revealing the truth, it is a very small step before ordinary citizens are afraid to express their views.

There is really no excuse for the Philippines not to have a better ranking and score. It is not that the Philippine government is doing a particularly bad job, but that it could do so much better. Protecting our rights to freedom of speech and the press needs to be a priority of the next administration.

THE campaign season brings out the best, the worst and the most ridiculous. Seeking votes, the candidates tell us they can all walk on water. After assuming office, sinking like a

rock is someone or something else’s fault.

PSE 2016

The “best” are honest ordinary people looking and hoping to vote for a better future for themselves and the nation. The “worst” are the self-serving, who are trying to sway opinion and votes to further their own agenda, which is usually financial.

Although probably not unethi-cal, there is something artificial about a politician claiming credit for a nation’s accomplishments. In truth, most advancement is due to many people. As in the words of Isaac Newton, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Former President Fidel V. Ramos’s establishment of the Phil-ippine Economic Zone Authority paved the way for foreign business process-outsourcing (BPO) com-panies to come to the Philippines.

The Accenture Global Resource Center was started by Frank Holz in Manila in 1992, the first to market Philippine outsourcing to the world. In 1997 Sykes Asia Inc. became the Philippines’s first

multinational BPO company. An-drew Tan and Megaworld Corp. built the first mixed-use development at Eastwood City in 1997, specifi-cally targeting foreign-owned BPO companies as a technology center. So, who should take the credit for establishing the outsourcing busi-ness in the Philippines?

Nonetheless, when the govern-ment and the politicians taking cred-it for the stock market going higher, I get annoyed. Major policy decisions do move stock prices. The Aquino administration policy of stopping new mining reduced foreign direct investment in that sector and was a primary cause of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) mining index dropping 60 percent since 2011. The US Federal Reserve keeping interest rates near-zero help the New York stock market double since 2009.

What local investors should have learned from 2015 is that the PSE 8,000 level was predicted to be a long-term top since 2010. Govern-ment had little to do with the market

going to that level, and little to do with the 15-percent fall since then. The PSE has been, and will continue, following its natural cycle.

Since the market is down about 15 percent from its historic high, PSE participants have gone full psychotic paranoid, combined with financial colonial mentality, about foreign stock investment. If the PSE was only about foreign investment, the market should be at about 5,000 or less. Further, if you look at money flows—which the stock market is all about—on the New York Stock Ex-change, institutional trading of the “big boys” has seen constant selling throughout 2015.

In other words, the investment world is holding, perhaps, the largest amount of free cash in history. Keep that thought in mind.

Find someone who is optimistic about the prospects for 2016, and you will probably see someone that has been celebrating the holidays by drinking too much Don Papa rum. There are no positive economic numbers from the West, Japan, or China that are anything more than the “dead cat bounce”. Global trade continues to fall. Commodity prices show no signs of recovering due to falling demand. 2015 was the first year since 2009 that the profits of S&P 500 companies declined for the year. The geopolitical situation has not been this fragile for decades.

It is a great time to be alive and be able to invest.

Another thing investors should have learned in 2015—like the

popular “Your Argument is Invalid” —your “expert” investment strategy will not work under all conditions.

Over the next months, 2016 will be the “Year of the Trap” on the PSE. Just when you are sure prices are going lower, “KaBoom!”. Just when you think the zombie apocalypse is finished, “KaDoom!”. Many local investors will not have a chance and will be seen scrambling away from the market, confused and trying to heal their financial wounds.

At a particular point on the PSE index, the market is going to rise between 14 percent and 30 percent. That, too, will cost investors a lot of money as, first, they will be late to the party and, then, will be left paying for the check.

The greatest problem for PSE investors in 2016 is that few were trading back in 1991 and 2016 is going to be like that long-ago time. This year will be the turning point that will separate the “Millennial” traders from the “Old Boys”.

Where is the stock market go-ing to close in 2016? I don’t have a clue. Go ask an “expert” or, better yet, a politician. My only focus and concern is how to make money on whatever path the market takes to get to wherever it is going in 2016.

 E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com.

Visit my web site at www.mangunon-markets.com. Follow me on Twitter@mangunonmarkets. PSE stock-mar-ket information and technical analysis tools provided by the COL Financial Group Inc.

OUTSIDE THE BOXJohn Mangun

B N S | Bloomberg View

IF you get involved in online debates about economic history, it won’t be long before someone tells you that the West is rich because it stole the resources of the regions it colonized. This

stolen-wealth theory is cited as the reason the United Kingdom and France are rich today, while Ethiopia and Burundi are poor. It also is sometimes used to argue that global capitalism is inherently unjust and that wealth must be radically redistributed between nations as compensation. 

Former colonies aren’t poor because of Western plunder

The problem is, the stolen-wealth theory is wrong. 

Oh, it’s absolutely true that colonial powers stole natural resources from the lands they conquered. No one disputes that. And, at the time, this definitely made the colonized regions a lot poorer. The UK, for example, caused repeat-ed famines in India by raising taxes on farmers and by encouraging the cultiva-tion of cash crops, instead of subsistence crops. That is a pretty stark example of destructive resource extraction. 

It’s also probably true that this stolen wealth helped much of the West get rich. Of course, Western countries didn’t simply consume the resources they plundered—the global economy isn’t just a lump of wealth that gets divvied up, but rather relies on the productive efforts of individuals, companies and governments. The UK, for example, was

able to industrialize not by consuming spices confiscated from India, but be-cause its citizens invented power looms and steam engines and other technolo-gies, and because its people worked very hard at factories and plants that used those technologies. 

But steam engines and power looms and other industrial machinery re-quired raw materials, like coal and rubber, as inputs. When those materi-als became less expensive, it became cheaper to substitute machines for human labor. That means that some of the resources stolen from colonies prob-ably did give Britain and France part of the boost they needed to jump-start the industrialization that eventually made them wealthy. 

So if the West did steal resources from colonized nations, and if this theft did help them get rich, why do I say that

the stolen-wealth theory is wrong? I say that because the theory doesn’t explain the global distribution of income today. It is no longer a significant reason why rich countries are rich and poor coun-tries are poor. 

The easiest way to see this is to ob-serve all the rich countries that never had the chance to plunder colonies. Germany, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and Japan had colonial empires for only the very briefest of moments, and their greatest eras of development came before and after those colonial episodes. Swit-zerland, Finland and Austria never had colonies. And South Korea, Taiwan, Sin-gapore and Hong Kong were themselves colonies of other powers. Yet, today they are very rich. They did it not by theft, but by working hard, being creative, and having good institutions. 

Meanwhile, poor countries have long since taken control of their natural re-sources. State-controlled oil companies in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Ven-ezuela, Iran and Russia own far more of the world’s oil than do giant Western corporations like Exxon or BP. African countries control their own mines, and Latin-American countries their own crop land. The era of resource theft by rich countries is over and done. 

Yet, still, somehow, these countries are not very rich. Only a small handful of tiny nations whose economies are based

on natural resources—Brunei, Kuwait and Qatar, among others—are actually rich. Most are poor, despite controlling all of their own wealth. This sad fact is known as the resource curse. 

So it’s unlikely that resource-rich countries would have become industri-alized but for the depredations of co-lonialism. And it seems quite possible that colonial nations, such as France and the UK, would have gotten rich without their resource plunder, as did Germany, South Korea, Switzerland and Taiwan. 

Does that mean colonialism was a benign institution? Definitely not. At a bare minimum, the tens of millions killed by colonial conquests and famines leave an indelible stain on the West. And while colonialism had benefits in some places, in many others it left a nasty legacy that is felt to this day. Many economic  studies  show that regions where colonizers focused on extract-ing resources were later cursed  with pernicious political institutions. Those regions, even today, exhibit poor eco-nomic performance. 

So colonializing nations did steal resources, and it did hurt colonies by doing it. But the real tragedy is how un-necessary  that all was. The UK and France would have gotten rich without plundering Africa, India and Southeast Asia. All of that violence and conquest was probably for nothing.

Saturday, January 2, 2016

OpinionA5BusinessMirroropinion@businessmirror.com.ph

‘Misericordiae Vultus’

Part 4

HAPPY New Year! Today we continue the reprint of some excerpts from Misericordiae Vultus—the Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Year of Mercy by His Holiness,

Pope Francis.

In this Holy Year, we look forward to the experience of opening our hearts to those living on the outer-most fringes of society: fringes which modern society itself creates. How many uncertain and painful situa-tions there are in the world today! How many are the wounds borne by the flesh of those who have no voice because their cry is muffled and drowned out by the indifference of the rich! During this Jubilee, the Church will be called even more to heal these wounds; to assuage them with the oil of consolation; to bind them with mercy; and cure them with solidarity and vigilant care. Let us not fall into humiliating indiffer-ence or a monotonous routine that prevents us from discovering what is new! Let us ward off destructive cyni-cism! Let us open our eyes and see the misery of the world, the wounds of our brothers and sisters who are denied their dignity, and let us rec-ognize that we are compelled to heed their cry for help! May we reach out to them and support them so they can feel the warmth of our presence, our friendship and our fraternity! May their cry become our own, and together may we break down the barriers of indifference that too often reign supreme and mask our hypocrisy and egoism!

It is my burning desire that, dur-ing this Jubilee, the Christian people may reflect on the corporal and spiri-tual works of mercy. It will be a way to reawaken our conscience, too of-ten grown dull in the face of poverty. And let us enter more deeply into the heart of the Gospel where the poor have a special experience of God’s mercy. Jesus introduces us to these works of mercy in his preaching so that we can know whether we are living as his disciples. Let us redis-cover these corporal works of mercy: to feed the hungry; give drink to the thirsty; clothe the naked; welcome the stranger; heal the sick; visit the imprisoned; and bury the dead. And let us not forget the spiritual works of mercy: to counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorant; admonish sinners; comfort the afflicted; for-give offences; bear patiently those who do us ill; and pray for the living and the dead.

We cannot escape the Lord’s words to us, and they will serve as the criteria upon which we will be judged: whether we have fed the hun-gry and given drink to the thirsty; welcomed the stranger and clothed the naked, or spent time with the sick and those in prison (cf.  Mat-thew  25:31-45). Moreover, we will be asked if we have helped others to

escape the doubt that causes them to fall into despair and which is often a source of loneliness; if we have helped to overcome the ignorance in which millions of people live, especially children deprived of the necessary means to free them from the bonds of poverty; if we have been close to the lonely and afflicted; if we have forgiven those who have offended us and have rejected all forms of anger and hate that lead to violence; if we have had the kind of patience God shows, who is so patient with us; and if we have commended our brothers and sisters to the Lord in prayer. In each of these “little ones,” Christ himself is present. His flesh becomes visible in the flesh of the tortured, the crushed, the scourged, the malnourished and the exiled… to be acknowledged, touched and cared for by us. Let us not forget the words of Saint John of the Cross: “As we prepare to leave this life, we will be judged on the basis of love.”

In the Gospel of Luke, we find another important element that will help us live the Jubilee with faith. Luke writes that Jesus, on the Sabbath, went back to Nazareth and, as was his custom, entered the synagogue. They called upon him to read the Scripture and to comment on it. The passage was from the Book of Isaiah where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the af-flicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim lib-erty to the captives, and freedom to those in captivity; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (16.Isaiah 61:1-2). A “year of the Lord’s favor” or “mercy”: this is what the Lord proclaimed and this is what we wish to live now. This Holy Year will bring to the fore the richness of Jesus’s mission echoed in the words of the prophet: to bring a word and gesture of consolation to the poor; to proclaim liberty to those bound by new forms of slavery in modern society, to restore sight to those who can see no more because they are caught up in themselves; to restore dignity to all those from whom it has been robbed. The preaching of Je-sus is made visible once more in the response of faith, which Christians are called to offer by their witness. May the words of the Apostle accom-pany us: he who does acts of mercy, let him do them with cheerfulness (cf. Romans 12:8).

The season of Lent during this Jubilee Year should also be lived more intensely as a privileged mo-ment to celebrate and experience

SERVANT LEADERRev. Fr. Antonio Cecilio T. Pascual

DATABASECecilio T. Arillo

Evil men at work

Part 1

FORCED into exile by the connivance of her own government with that of the most powerful country in the world; uprooted from her land of birth; divested of resources to

survive and the honor of a name; widowed and absolutely alone, the former First Lady and now Rep. Imelda Romualdez Marcos of Second District of Ilocos Norte recreated the mothering of the true, the good and the beautiful from the nothingness of that state into the spiritual strength of love, a love that surrendered itself completely to the wisdom of a mothering God.

“I believe in the words of God: “…into your hands I commend thy spirit. Thy will be done.”

“When your mothering reaches this level of transcendence,” she said, “you become the vessel of God’s humanity, and God’s humanity is His love made flesh.”

According to her, mothering is every human being’s capacity to be creative in godliness. “Not even the mightiest sword of justice could pierce the shield of its protective mantle because beyond the laws of men, which are used repeatedly to destroy, to exploit, to persecute, to avenge and to control, there is the law of nature which is mothering, constantly radiating in all that is true, good and beautiful.”

“My life, especially during the years of governmental and legal as-saults, is a testimony to this natural truth,” Mrs. Marcos said.

At first she did not want to fur-ther answer why they did that to her and former President Ferdinand E. Marcos, but then she relented when this writer pressed for an explanation.

“Let me just cite one reason they did this to us. I chose this one be-cause it is fraught with political, so-cial, economic and national security implications. During my trial in New York, a prosecution witness, Timo-thy Khan, revealed in court: “Mrs. [Corazon ‘Cory’] Aquino said, ‘No prosecution, no bases,’ referring, of course, to the American military bases in the Philippines.”

At that time, Mrs. Marcos said, the retention of the American mili-tary bases in the Philippines was under negotiation.

So what happened?“It’s not only ironic; it also

showed their motive: Mrs. Aquino got the prosecution; America did not get the bases; and the Marcoses were acquitted.”

What else happened in New York?“Since 1986 up to the time we

were exiled to US, I had been asking what happened to valuable prop-erties and assets belonging to the Republic, arbitrarily sequestered as ‘ill-gotten wealth’ by agents of the Aquino administration. The New York office of the Aquino regime put several interesting pieces of arts on the auction block on August 15 and 16, 1986 without court order. The sale was held at the Viscount Inter-national Hotel in Long Island, New York, through auctioneer Sunrise Galleries. The items were vandal-ized from the seven-story, 30-room townhouse on 66th Street in Man-hattan, New York.

“Let me give you some examples:n My photograph with Pope

John Paul II, listed at $150 to $250, sold for $450;

n An oil painting of former Pres-ident Marcos, which was expected to fetch $100 to $150, sold for $400;

n My picture with President and Mrs. Gerald R. Ford (priced at $150 to $250);

n My picture and former Presi-dent Marcos’s with Mao Tse-Tung (priced at $200 to $300);

n Our picture with Russian dignitaries (priced at $150 to $250);

n My picture with Lord Mount-batten ($150 to $250);

n A rare George III side table, circa 1780, valued at $40,000, sold for $42,500;

n A Steinway concert grand

piano, valued at $18,000, sold for $26,000;

n A George III gilt-wood mirror, circa 1770, valued at $10,000, sold for $35,000;

n A pair of George I walnut arm-chairs, circa 1730, priced at $5,000 to $7,000, sold for $22,000;

n A 4-foot-tall sculptured camel made from seashells, valued at $500 to $700, sold for $2,000.”

Were they not ill-gotten? “Definitely not!”“Can you call my pictures with

the Pope, with Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, with US President and Mrs. Ford, and with the Russian digni-taries, just to cite a few, ill-gotten?”

To drive home her point, Mrs. Marcos on October 13, 1997, stood before Congress and said:

“What theft of government are all these Cory usurpers talking about? It is they who should answer to the people and give an account-ing of all the documents and papers they stole from Malacañang, from our rented house in Honololu and from our private chambers. It is they who should give an accounting of all the assets and properties they sequestered, sold and appropriated for themselves in the name of PCGG [Presidential Commission on Good Government] and Cory Aquino’s ex-ecutive orders.

“Where are the paintings by world masters, worth millions of dollars, which were already on ex-hibit in our [Philippine] Museum? Why were they sold? Where were the thousand of pieces of silver and gold collection—gifts to Ferdinand and I on our silver wedding anniversary—also worth millions and millions of dollars? Where were the more than a thousand Russian icons? The suit-cases of jewelry taken out of Malaca-ñang Palace, our ancestral homes; my children’s houses and all our personal belongings in Malacañang which have not been returned to us, almost 30 years now since they ran-sacked our private chambers? And where were Ferdinand’s documents on the gold?

“I was asked to speak about the gold. What can I say? They have all been taken away from us. Some have surfaced in the New York trial. Most are still missing.”

Any reaction from the lawmakers?“They applauded me and many

promised to give an answer. Nothing came.”

Why did the Aquino administra-tion conclude that the priceless pic-tures with Pope John Paul II, Mao Tse-Tung and other dignitaries were ill-gotten?

“It’s obvious that the motive could not only be hatred and ven-geance. They also wanted to take away good memories we cherished and nurtured for our people. Or they wanted to make us scapegoats to hide their dubious intentions. They sold many more gifts and treasures we kept in our private chambers in Malacañang, including 82 Old Mas-ters and 81 boxes of valuables, and those that were already on display at the Metropolitan Museum in Manila had been taken out and sold to buyers. They were worth million of dollars.”

To be continued

To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com

God’s mercy. How many pages of Sacred Scripture are appropriate for meditation during the weeks of Lent to help us rediscover the merci-ful face of the Father! We can repeat the words of the prophet Micah and make them our own: You, O Lord, are a God who takes away iniquity and pardons sin, who does not hold your anger forever, but are pleased to show mercy. You, Lord, will return to us and have pity on Your people. You will trample down our sins and toss them into the depths of the sea (cf. 7:18-19).

The pages of the prophet Isaiah can also be meditated upon con-cretely during this season of prayer, fasting and works of charity: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, here I am. If you take away from the midst of you the yoke, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire with good things, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters fail not” (58:6-11).

The initiative of “24 Hours for the Lord,” to be celebrated on the Friday and Saturday preceding the Fourth Week of Lent, should be implemented in every diocese. So many people, in-cluding young people, are returning to the Sacrament of Reconciliation; through this experience they are re-discovering a path back to the Lord, living a moment of intense prayer and finding meaning in their lives. Let us place the Sacrament of Recon-ciliation at the center once more in such a way that it will enable people to touch the grandeur of God’s mer-cy with their own hands. For every penitent, it will be a source of true interior peace.

I will never tire of insisting that confessors be authentic signs of the Father’s mercy. We do not become good confessors automatically. We become good confessors when, above all, we allow ourselves to be penitents in search of his mercy. Let us never forget that to be confessors means to participate in the very mission of Jesus to be a concrete sign of the constancy of divine love that par-dons and saves. We, priests, have received the gift of the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of sins, and we are responsible for this. None of us wields power over this Sacrament; rather, we are faithful servants of God’s mercy through it. Every con-fessor must accept the faithful as the

father in the parable of the prodigal son: a father who runs out to meet his son despite the fact that he has squandered away his inheritance. Confessors are called to embrace the repentant son who comes back home and to express the joy of having him back again. Let us never tire of also going out to the other son who stands outside, incapable of rejoicing, in order to explain to him that his judgment is severe and unjust and meaningless in light of the father’s boundless mercy. May confessors not ask useless questions, but like the father in the parable, interrupt the speech prepared ahead of time by the prodigal son, so that confessors will learn to accept the plea for help and mercy pouring from the heart of every penitent. In short, confessors are called to be a sign of the primacy of mercy always, everywhere and in every situation, no matter what.

During Lent of this Holy Year, I in-tend to send out Missionaries of Mer-cy. They will be a sign of the Church’s maternal solicitude for the people of God, enabling them to enter the profound richness of this mystery so fundamental to the faith. There will be priests to whom I will grant the authority to pardon even those sins reserved to the Holy See, so that the breadth of their mandate as confessors will be even clearer. They will be, above all, living signs of the Father’s readiness to welcome those in search of his pardon. They will be missionaries of mercy because they will be facilitators of a truly human encounter, a source of liberation, rich with responsibility for overcoming obstacles and taking up the new life of Baptism again. They will be led in their mission by the words of the Apostle: “For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all” (Romans 11:32). Everyone, in fact, without exception, is called to embrace the call to mercy. May these Missionaries live this call with the assurance that they can fix their eyes on Jesus, “the merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God” (Hebrews 2:17).

I ask my brother Bishops to invite and welcome these Missionaries so that they can be, above all, persua-sive preachers of mercy. May indi-vidual dioceses organize “missions to the people” in such a way that these Missionaries may be heralds of joy and forgiveness. Bishops are asked to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation with their people so that the time of grace made possible by the Jubilee year makes it possible for many of God’s sons and daughters to take up once again the journey to the Father’s house. May pastors, es-pecially during the liturgical season of Lent, be diligent in calling back the faithful “to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace” (Hebrews 4:16).

To know more about the programs of Caritas Manila, visit www.caritas.org.ph. For donations, call 563-9311. For inquiries, call 563-9308 or 563-9298. Make it a habit to listen to Radio Veritas 846 in the AM band, or through live streaming at www.veritas846.ph. For comments, e-mail veritas846pr@gmail.com.

THERE is a grim connection between two worsening addic-tions in the US: to prescription

opioid painkillers and to heroin. Both can be partly traced to worthwhile public-health initiatives that deserve to be protected.

The first initiative was a 1990s campaign to get doctors to take people’s pain more seriously. This worked amazingly well—for some people, too well. The second effort was the recent response to the en-suing spike in opioid addiction: Le-gal controls on painkiller prescrip-tions were  tightened, and some of the drugs were reformulated to make them harder to overuse. Preventing painkiller abuse will require crack-ing down on doctors who may be unscrupulous, or merely careless, as well as patients. Enforcing the law is

no less important than alleviating pain or reducing addiction. A great many Americans are addicted, and lately some of them have turned to heroin as a cheap, accessible—and illegal—alternative. (Heroin is just another kind of opioid, after all.) Both substances are  increasingly abused: painkillers by nearly 2 mil-lion Americans and heroin by more than half a million. Last year nearly 19,000 people died from taking too many painkillers, 16 percent more than the year before, and more than 10,500 succumbed to heroin over-doses, a 28-percent rise.

Given the stubborn quality of ad-dictions, it will take persistence to bring this problem under control. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this month offered some ideas for reining in

opioid prescriptions. Draft guidelines  advise doctors to hold back on giv-ing patients drugs, such as Vicodin and Percocet, until after they’ve tried physical therapy and non-opioid pain-killers. If opioids are still needed, the CDC suggests they be prescribed only at low doses for a short time, and that extended-release formulations, which are easier to abuse, should be avoided. Doctors should talk with patients about their experience with the drugs and to monitor patients closely for signs of dependence, especially those who are taking higher doses. Too many doctors continue to prescribe opioids to patients who have already suffered an overdose. 

All of this makes sense, and the CDC’s imprimatur means the advice will be taken seriously. Yet, none of these strategies can help people who

are already hooked. The treatment of addiction needs to improve, too. 

Wider and more consistent use of so-called medication-assisted thera-pies can make it easier for addicts to recover, especially when paired with talk therapy and other behavioral strategies. Better training and infor-mation needs to be made available for family practice doctors, internists, nurse practitioners and physician assistants—the providers who  pre-scribe the most  opioid painkillers. And health insurers need to change their policies to make it easier for ad-dicts to get more effective treatment. 

Careful but effective use of pain-killers is not incompatible with the treatment of addiction. Preventing and prosecuting opioid abuse need not undermine efforts to ease pain and suffering. Bloomberg View

Kill pain and addiction

news@businessmirror.com.ph Saturday, January 2, 2016 • Editor: Dionisio L. Pelayo BusinessMirrorNews

Volunteers end protest vs Chinese incursions at WPSBy Rene Acosta

VOLUNTEERS belonging to the youth group Kalayaan Atin Ito are sailing back to

Palawan after spending at least six days in the country’s territory in the West Philippine Sea that is also being disputed by China.

The volunteers stayed in the area for almost a week in peace-ful protest of China’s incursions in the disputed islets on the West Philippine Sea that are claimed by the Philippines.

Lawyer Joy Vera, coconvener of Kalayaan, whose other group was left in Palawan to serve as base support for their colleagues, said the “freedom voyage” with 48 members led by the group’s an-other coconvener former Marine Capt. Nicanor Faeldon was sailing

back to Palawan after spending almost a week in the Kalayaan Is-land Group (KIG).

“The group will depart Pagasa at 10:30 a.m. today,” Vera said on Friday, adding they were having dif-ficulties in communicating with the group, headed by Faeldon, because the government has cut telecom-munication signals coming from the island.

Faeldon and his group went to Pagasa Island on December 24 and spent their Christmas in one of the

reefs in the country’s territory before sailing to the town of Kalayaan for a peaceful protest against China’s “creeping invasion” of the island.

The voyage elicited strong reac-tion from Beijing, which reiterated its sovereign rights over the island. It was, however, rejected by the volunteers.

“Our peaceful and legal patriotic voyage will never be dependent on what China will do. Our objective is to bring to the attention of the world the invasion and militariza-tion done by China inside our EEZ [exclusive economic zone] and ECS [extended continental shelf] at the Kalayan Island Group,” Vera said.

“If the world will see what we are seeing, surely China will lose all legal battle at the Itlos [Inter-national Tribunal on the Law of the Sea] and will face the world sanc-tions if it defies the results of the arbitration,” Vera added.

The government, particularly the military, bucked the voyage, but it was later forced to assist and monitor the grou,p after finding out it has left for the island and

was already in Kalayaan, using a rented motorized banca.

It also rejected protests from claimant countries, particularly China and Taiwan.

“Although we tried to persuade our youth from making this voy-age because of the rough sea con-ditions and risks entailed by such a journey, at this time of the year, they are determined to make this trip,” Armed Forces Spokesman Col. Restituto Padilla said.

“Our youth went to the munici-pality of our country last December 27. They did not disturb or harm anyone. We find no reasons for others to complain,” Padilla added.

He said the voyage did not vio-late any international law, other than the notice that the military issued against the sailing and for renting a boat that has no certifi-cate from the Coast Guard.

“They did not violate any in-ternational law,” the spokesman said, adding they believed that the voyage will have no negative bearing on the ongoing proceed-ings against China.

A6

By Claudeth Mocon-CiriacoCorrespondent

A DRUNKEN man died after he hugged a firecracker called “Good-bye Philippines” on

New Year’s Eve in Manila, the De-partment of Health (DOH) reported on Friday.

Health Secretary Janette Garin, however, noted that there is a “gen-eral reduction” in the number of New Year revelry injuries after 384 fire-work-related injuries were recorded by the DOH as of 6 a.m. on Friday

Garin said the victim hugged the firecracker after lighting it. He then was rushed to the Ospital ng Sam-paloc, but was later on transferred to the Ospital ng Maynila Medical Center where he expired.

“Ang unang sinabi sa amin,  las-ing iyong pasyente at sa kalasingan niya, sinindihan niya iyong Good-bye Philippines at niyakap niya ito,” Garin said in a media briefing.

Meanwhile, the health spokes-man, Lyndon Lee Suy, said that as of 6 a.m. on Friday, a total of 384 fireworks-related injuries were re-corded by the DOH sentinel sites. This is 506 cases (57 percent) lower than the five-year (2010 to 2014) average and 430 (53 percent) lower compared to the same period last year. Of the total 384 cases, 380 were from fireworks-firecrackers and four from stray bullets. No case of fireworks-firecrackers ingestion was reported.

Two hundred nineteen out of 380 injuries were caused by piccolo, a prohibited firecracker. Other fire-crackers that caused injuries were “5 Star” (4 percent); kwitis (9 percent); sparklers (4 percent), and other un-determined firecrackers (5 percent).

Most fireworks-related injuries came from Metro Manila with 243 cases (63 percent); followed by Bicol region with 31 cases (8 percent); and Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon) with 27 cases (7 percent). In Metro Manila, most cases were from Manila with 73 out of 243 cases (30 percent); 46 cases (19 percent) were from

Quezon City and 28 (12 percent) cases from Marikina. The majority of the firecracker victims are young than 14 (64 percent).

Garin also thanked some local governments for their cooperation in limiting the sale of pyrotech-nic devices in their areas and for organizing public firework displays.

“We would like to extend our gratitude for the support of other national agencies, the local govern-ment, non-governmental organi-zations, and the media during the antifirecracker campaigns. Every year, we see the things that we need to strengthen in order to achieve our goal, and eventually, we do hope that we will attain zero casualties from fireworks/firecrackers during the holiday,” Garin said.

Garin also appealed to the pub-lic not to pick up unexploded firecrackers in the streets.

“Lalo na at umulan kagabi,  nais naming pakiusapan lalo na ang mga bata na huwag mamulot ng paputok na

nagkalat sa kalsada. Siguraduhin din na pumunta sa ospital kung ikaw ay nagkasugat ng dahil sa paputok, maliit man o malaki ang sugat na iyong na-kuha, dapat pa rin itong lapatan ng tamang gamot.  Ang tetano ay naka-mamatay, at ito ay nakukuha sa sugat na nanggagaling mula sa paputok.” Garin explained. The health chief added that it is the responsibil-ity of adults, especially parents or guardians to make sure that after the festivities, their surroundings must be cleaned up immediately so that children will not be tempted to pick-up firecrackers in the streets.

“Ngayong  2016,  bigyan natin ng magandang simula ang ating pamilya.  Lahat tayo ay may papel na dapat gampanan upang huwag maging pasaway at maiwasan ang disgrasya. Hangad ng DOH na magka-roon tayo ng isang malusog at manigong bagong taon.” Garin also said.

On the number of injuries caused by stray bullets, the National Police reported that it recorded at least 18

incidents as of New Year’s day. No fatalities were reported.

Chief Supt. Wilben Mayor, Na-tional Police spokesman, said that the injuries were reported despite the government’s strict campaign against the firing of guns during holiday season.

He said that of the cases recorded, eight people, including a policeman, were identified as having illegally discharged their firearms. Seven of them were arrested.

Earlier, reports said that a 9-year-old girl died on Christmas day after she was hit by a stray bullet in Norza-garay, Bulacan.

However, this was corrected by the police based on the results of the investigation.

Mayor said that the Norzagaray police reported that accidental fir-ing and not a stray bullet caused the death of the minor. The victim was hit by a .22 caliber round fired from improvised rifle owned by her brother. With Rene Acosta

LAS NIEVES, Agusan del Norte —The New People’s A r my (NPA)  on T hurs-

day  turned over a captive Army soldier to Davao City Mayor Rodri-go R. Duterte in a town in Agusan del Norte province.

Cpl. Adriano de la Peña Bingil Jr. of the Army’s 26th Infantry Battalion was kidnapped by the communist guerrillas in the out-skirt of San Luis, Agusan del Sur, on September 19, 2015.

Bingil was on his way to the town of San Luis to send money to his family in Cagayan de Oro City, when seized and held cap-tive for over four months by the NPA rebels.

During the turnover rites in Las Nieves, the last town of Agu-san del Norte, Duterte said that one of the reasons of the birth of an insurgency in the country is the rampant corruption in the government.

“I can assure you that, if elected president, the weeding out of cor-ruption and corrupt public ser-vants is on top of the agenda of my administration,” Duterte said.

The Army soldier, clad in white shirt with a red POW (Prisoner of War) marking, looks good, but has obviously lost weight.

Bishop Felixberto Calang, of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI), who heads the Third Party Facilitator, has negotiated for the release of Bingil after the family sought the bishop’s assistance.

He said that had the govern-ment granted the request for a 10-day suspension of military and

police operations, Bingil could have been released earlier in December.

Calang said that the Third Party Facilitator and the NPA agreed to release Bingil during the duration of the cessation of hostilities imposed by the military and the NPA starting December 23, 2015, until January 3, 2016.

“There is no fitting gift as the family of Bingil and the rest of the Christendom celebrates the New Year’s Eve  midnight  Thursday,” Calang said.

On November 20, 2015, the Third Party Facilitator also worked in coordination with the local government crisis committee for the release of Pfc. Adonis Jess Lupiba who is also from Cagayan de Oro City.

Calang said that Lupiba, of the army’s 58IB, was snatched during a firefight with the NPA in the mountains of Gingoog City some-time in July 2015.

Lupiba was turned over to the Third Party Facilitator after being held for four months by the NPA rebels, Calang said. PNA

NPA turns over captiveArmy soldier to Duterte

By Joel R. San Juan

THE Department of Justice (DOJ) is supporting a bill in the House of Representa-

tives that amends the rules on appeal in cases decided by the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB).

In a two-page legal opinion, the DOJ said the House Bill (HB) 2951 does not violate any provi-sions of the Constitution.

HB 2951 provides that all deci-sions and resolutions of HLURB are directly appealable to the Court of Appeals (CA).

“It is definitely within the power of the legislature to make laws or alter or repeal the same,” the DOJ said in a legal position signed by Undersecretary Zabedin Azis.

However, the justice depart-ment suggested to the House Committee on Housing and Ur-ban Development to extend the prescribed period for filing of ap-peal with the CA from 10 days to 15 days, as proposed by lawyer Maria Luisa Pangan of the HLURB appeals review group during a con-gressional hearing last November.

HB 2951, which was filed by

Nationalist People’s Coalition Rep. Felix William Fuentebella of Camarines Sur, aims “to remove another administrative layer in which the litigants may explore all sorts of dilatory tactics that will hinder the speedy disposition of cases.”

The bill seeks to amend existing laws, which provide for appeal of HLURB decisions before the Office of President, where appeals have languished for years.

HLUR B is a nat iona l gov-ernment agency tasked as the planning, regulatory and quasi-judicial body for land use de-velopment and real estate and housing regulation.

DOJ supports amendmentsto HLURB’s appeals process

Drunken man hugs lighted giant firecracker, gets killed

DUTERTE

A LAWMAKER is pushing for a measure providing soldiers and

policemen wounded in combat full medical assistance.

Nationalist People’s Coalition Rep. Scott Davies S. Lanete of Masbate said that the hazard and combat pay being received by wounded policemen and soldiers is

pittance consider the danger they face in the line of duty.

Lanete filed House Bill 5933, or the “Medical Combat Pay Act,” that provides better assistance for soldiers and policemen wounded in battle.

Under the measure, the medical assistance shall cover all expenses necessary for the immediate care and recovery

of the wounded uniformed men, including their post-care and recovery.

All wounded policemen and soldiers shall be entitled to the medical combat pay the moment they are admitted in a hospital or medical clinic, the bill added.

Likewise, the measure also said policemen and

soldiers are entitled to continuing medical assistance until such time a qualified physician declares them fully recovered,both physically and psychologically.

In filing the bill, Lanete, vice chairman of the House Committee on Public Order and Safety, said soldiers and policemen who get

wounded in action or while in duty should get full medical assistance from the government.

Lanete said policemen stationed in dangerous areas only receive a hazard pay of P240 a month and a combat pay of P340 a month, while soldiers who are assigned to dangerous areas receive a combat of

only P240 per month.“Although laws are

already in place to provide financial assistance to wounded uniformed men while on duty, these laws are not adequate to help and al leviate their physical, mental, psychological and f inancial suffer ings,” he added. Jo vee Marie N. dela Cruz

Bill provides full medical assistance for soldiers, cops wounded in battle

AFTER THE REVELRY Garbage collectors remove heaps of garbage in front of the Zapote public market in Bacoor City, Cavite, on New Year’s Day. The New Year revelry geneated tons of garbage in all areas where people congregated. PNA

Now in the PhilippinesBusinessMirror

Turning Points: Global Agenda 2016 is a year-end package of opinion pieces and features, photos and cartoons covering events and trends in 2015 that will infl uence 2016 and beyond.

SportsA8 | SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 2016mirror_sports@yahoo.com.phsports@businessmirror.com.phEditor: Jun Lomibao

BusinessMirror

T HE Philippine Volcanoes Under-19 squad bagged its first Pacific Cup crown after pummeling Hong Kong Junior

Warriors, 49-0. Hamish Roxas McWilliam provided a rousing hat trick of tries that sealed the victory, dimming the chances of HK Junior Rugby team to make a comeback. McWilliam made it with the help of national team captains Robert Villaluz McCafferty and Rhys Jacob Mackley, along with outside back Dan O’Rielly.  The Junior Volcanoes prevailed despite the drizzling weather, blanking the Hong Kong national team with six unanswered attempts in the opening half.  “The U19s national team is a platform for our next batch of future Volcanoes. This program helps develop and identify the next generation of elite athletes. It provides

a pathway so our men’s national team can continue to be successful on the world stage,” Assistant Coach and Volcano mainstay Jake Letts said. Letts added that he and his staff saw potential among the U19 players tand will most likely be added in the men’s program this year. “Robbie McCafferty had a great series, he showed real maturity at this level and is no doubt pushing for selection in the National Men’s Squad,” he said. However, the Philippine Development Team was dealt a final blow in their second match after winning the opening game just three days earlier.  The Hong Kong Senior Warriors took out the Transcom Shield in a close encounter, 13- 0, to hand the home team an even 1-1 record in the series. Lance Agcaoili

LONDON—Jockey Tony McCoy, former Manchester United striker Denis Law, two-time Tour de France winner

Chris Froome and five-time world snooker champion Ronnie O’Sullivan are among the United Kingdom sporting figures honored by Queen Elizabeth in her New Year list. McCoy, who retired this year after winning 20-straight British champion jockey titles and a record 4,358 races in a 23-year career, was knighted in recognition of his services to horse racing. He is only the second jockey to be made a Sir, after Gordon Richards in 1953. The 75-year-old Law, who played for United from 1962 to 1973 and was part of the club’s so-called Holy Trinity with George Best and Bobby Charlton, was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for

services to football and charity. Froome was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire(OBE) after becoming the first Briton to win a second Tour de France in July. O’Sullivan also was awarded an OBE in recognition for his services to snooker, having won the world championship five times—most recently in 2013—and become the sport’s box-office name. The success of the England women’s football team in finishing third at the World Cup in Canada this year was recognized as captain Steph Houghton and teammate Fara Williams were both made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). John Surtees, the only man to win world championships on two and four wheels, was made a CBE. The 81-year-old Surtees won seven world motorcycling championships

before switching to four wheels and winning the 1964 Formula One title. Heather Rabbatts, a director at England’s Football Association, who became the organization’s first female board member in 2012, was awarded a damehood for services to football and equality. As a campaigner on behalf of women in sport, she recently spoke out in support of former Chelsea doctor Eva Carneiro in her dispute with the club. Former Manchester City striker and chairman Francis Lee received a CBE, while ex-England rugby winger Mark Cueto and Intenational Boxing Federation super-bantamweight boxing champion Carl Frampton were awarded MBEs. Britain’s honors are bestowed by the monarch, but recipients are selected by committees of civil servants from nominations made by the government and the public. AP

FUN RUN Team Kramer, composed of pro cager Doug Kramer, actress Cheska Garcia and their children Kendra, Scarlett and Gavin, grace the 2015 Tempra Run Against Dengue Family Run at the Quirino Grandstand. Also backed by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, Deuter, Toby’s, Guard Insect Repellent, Maynilad and Malaya Business Insight, the fun run lured 2,893 dengue busters. This Fight Against Dengue project of Tempra returns later this year with a bigger staging, but with a different format.

B J L�e Associated Press

PARIS—For the past 12 months, scandals off the field of play eclipsed exploits on it. Beyond the usual cases of doping and cheating that are sadly common in modern sports,

shocking corruption in soccer and athletics begged the question of whether the vast riches and accompanying greed generated by professional sport are rotting the entire multibillion dollar industry to its core. On the upside, the stink got so bad that 2015 also saw the forces of law and order sit up and take action, opening criminal investigations, making high-profile arrests and recovering tens of millions of ill-gotten dollars. That legal pressure sped change, notably at soccer governing body International Football Federation (Fifa), forcing administrators to abandon some of their old-school, shoddy, backroom and amateur management practices and enact reforms that should make them behave more professionally. “What we’re going through now, it’s like a tectonic shift,” International Olympic Committee (IOC) veteran Dick Pound said. “Sports organizations are coming to realize—voluntarily or involuntarily—that they can no longer operate outside of the larger social and legal orders.” “In the old days, sport was well outside of anything that governments had focused on,” Pound said in an Associated Press interview. “They were all private organizations and they were kind of run informally like clubs and so on, and have tried to pretend that they can do that even in 2015—and they can’t.” In short, this was a year that left a sour taste for sports fans but also offered some hope of a brighter future. It was bookended by “deflategate,” which saw National Football League star quarterback Tom Brady accused of throwing deliberately under-inflated (and theoretically easier to grip) footballs in January’s American Football Conference title game on his way to winning the Super Bowl, and by the disgrace of Sepp Blatter, kicked out of soccer in December for unethical conduct, ending his 17 scandal-scarred years as president of Fifa. His heir-in-waiting, France’s former midfield

star Michel Platini, also was banned for a dubious $2-million payment that Blatter approved for the Fifa vice president in 2011. Their appeals of the eight-year bans that decapitated the leadership of the world’s most popular sport, as well as ongoing criminal probes in Switzerland and the United States of soccer bribery and corruption, promise to cloud Fifa’s ambitions for a fresh start with the election of a new president in February. In track and field, a cornerstone of the Olympic Games, a World Anti-Doping Agency-ordered investigation that Pound led concluded explosively in November that doping in Russia was not only widespread and deep-rooted, but also likely tacitly sanctioned by President Vladimir Putin’s government. A resulting blanket ban from competition could see Russian track and field athletes miss the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, unless the sporting powerhouse can convince the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) that it has made real changes. In March the IAAF’s ethics commission also started investigating alleged doping cover-ups in distance-running power Kenya, which topped the world championships medal table in August. Those probes were just the beginning of a scandal that threatened to sink the IAAF in 2015, gravely undermining not only the federation, but trust in the entire sport it oversees. In November three months after stepping down as IAAF chief, Lamine Diack, was taken into police custody in France, suspected of pocketing more than €1 million ($1.1 million) in an alleged scheme to blackmail athletes and hush up their doping cases. Diack, who presided at the IAAF for nearly 16 years, is under formal investigation for corruption and money laundering. If proven by France’s investigating magistrates, the allegations could be even graver than soccer’s massive scandal. The US Department of Justice’s sprawling soccer case alleges more than $200 million in bribes and kickbacks in the selling of media and marketing rights. Although grievous, the schemes seemingly didn’t affect the outcome of matches. The alleged wrongdoing at the IAAF, however, raised the possibility that on-track results were corrupted

SPORTSSCANDALS

McCoy, 3 others honored by Queen Elizabeth

2015: A YEAR WITHA SILVER LINING

by off-track criminality, and that dopers may have robbed competitors of medals by paying the sport’s guardians to look the other way. Contacted repeatedly by the Associated Press, Diack’s lawyer has refused to comment. Tasked with cleaning up the mess is British former middle-distance running great Sebastian Coe, elected in August as Diack’s successor. But just months into his new job, the credibility of the chief organizer of the 2012 London Olympics suffered a blow when the BBC uncovered in November that Coe had spoken privately to an executive at Nike, his long-time personal sponsor, about hosting the 2021 world championships in Eugene. The Oregon city, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of the sportswear giant’s headquarters outside Portland, was subsequently and controversially awarded the competition without an open bidding process. Coe denied that working for both the IAAF and Nike represented a conflict of interest and severed his ambassadorial role with the company. But the affair left doubts about Coe’s judgment and, more broadly, fed into a dominant theme of 2015, which was that sports administrators often appeared chronically out of touch with a shift in the public mood against their clubby ways and, in worst cases, their criminal habits. “It simply won’t work in this day and age,” Pound said. “You have to be more transparent, which doesn’t mean that you run around buck naked, but people have got to understand how a decision was reached, and by whom, and for what reasons, and that sort of thing that never used to happen. There was a code of silence.” “Sport has got to change...,” he added, “or it’s going to be changed.”

MCCOY

B S W�e Associated Press

 

LONDON—Sports organiza-tions must work harder than ever in 2016 to clean up their

act after a year of corrup-tion and doping

scandals that tarnished the Olympic movement, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach said on Wednesday in a New Year’s message. Bach said the entire Olympic world must live up to the public’s expectations of integrity and heed his call from a year ago to “change or be changed.” “One just needs to look at the events over the last 12 months to realize that this message is even more urgent today to safeguard the credibility of sports

organizations and to protect clean athletes,” Bach said. “Undoubtedly, recent developments in some sports cast a shadow across the whole world of sport.” While Bach didn’t cite any sports by name, he was clearly referring to the

corruption scandal that has enveloped soccer governing body International Football

Federation (Fifa), and the allegations of

bribery and doping cover-ups involving the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and Russia’s track and field program. Noting the public’s growing demand for ethical behavior by athletes and sports bodies, Bach said: “It is our shared responsibility in the Olympic movement to provide new answers to new questions.” Fifa is reeling from a corruption scandal that has led to the arrests of dozens of soccer and marketing officials and eight-year bans for outgoing Fifa President Sepp Blatter and Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) head Michel Platini. Blatter is a former member of the IOC. Russia’s athletics federation was suspended following a damning report by a World Anti-Doping Agency panel that alleged widespread, state-sponsored doping in the country. Russia’s track and field athletes could miss next year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The IAAF’s former president, Lamine

Diack, was arrested and charged by French authorities with corruption and money laundering, stemming from allegations that he took money to cover up positive tests in Russia. The IAAF’s former antidoping manager was also arrested. The IOC went through its own major corruption scandal in the late 1990s, with 10 members ousted for receiving cash and other favors during Salt Lake City’s winning bid for the 2002 Winter Games. Bach said sports federations and national Olympic committees must implement the IOC’s “Olympic Agenda 2020” reform program, approved last year, and apply rules of good governance. “We have called on and we expect all sports organizations to follow our lead,” Bach said. He noted that the IOC has proposed taking drug testing out of the hands of sports organizations to make the system more

independent and credible. The IOC wants an independent antidoping system in place ahead of the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. “We are convinced that all these changes are necessary to better protect the clean athletes and enhance the integrity of sport,” Bach said. Looking ahead to the Olympics in Rio, the first in South America, Bach said he expects Brazilians to welcome the world “with their joy of life and their passion for sport.” The buildup to the games is taking place amid Brazil’s worst recession in decades, an impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff and a vast corruption scandal centered on state-owned oil giant Petrobras. “We know the current economic and political situation in Brazil will make the next months of final preparations more challenging,” Bach said. The Olympics, he added, “will bring the world a message of hope and joy during difficult times.”

BACH: SPORTS BODIES MUST CLEAN UP FOR CREDIBILITY

U19 Volcanoes cop Pacific Cup

HOUSTON—Golden State’s Klay Thompson covered for the absence of star player Stephen Curry by scoring 38 points to

lead the Warriors to a 114-110 win at Houston on Thursday. Having suffered only their second defeat of the season on Wednesday when

Curry missed his first game due to a lower

leg injury, the Warriors found just enough to

compensate for the loss of the reigning league Most Valuable Player and edged

the Rockets. Among other results on New Year’s Eve, Oklahoma City hung on to send Phoenix to

a seventh successive loss, and the Los Angeles Clippers capped

a perfect five-game road trip by defeating New Orleans.

Golden State’s Thompson made six three-pointers, while Draymond Green had a triple-double of 16 assists—a career high—along with 10 points and 11 rebounds. James Harden had 30 points for Houston, which has dropped seven

straight regular-season games to Golden State.

Oklahoma City’s dynamic duo of Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant steered the Thunder to a 110-106 win against Phoenix. Westbrook had 36 points and 12 assists, while Durant scored 23 points for Oklahoma City, which has won 12-of-14 games. Westbrook also had five steals and blocked a shot. TJ Warren had 29 points and nine rebounds for the Suns, who had six players score in double figures but still lost. Scores were tied with 1:34 left when Durant scored on a fade-away jumper and got free for a dunk that made it 106-102 with 31.7 seconds remaining. Los Angeles’s Chris Paul made up for a poor shooting performance by pulling off some pivotal plays in the closing minutes to seal a 95-89 win for the Clippers at New Orleans. Paul missed 15 of his first 17 shots, but hit a 19-foot step-back jumper with a minute to go to give Los Angeles a 90-87 lead. Before and after that score, Paul assisted on baskets by Jamal Crawford. Paul, who finished with 12 assists, then added three free throws in the final 21 seconds. JJ Redick scored 26 points for the Clippers for a second straight night. Anthony Davis had 14 points and 15 rebounds for New Orleans. Milwaukee’s Khris Middleton scored 33 points as the Bucks stopped a three-game losing streak and edged Indiana 120-116. AP

Curry-less GSWdowns Houston

INTERNATIONAL Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach says sports organizations must do more than ever in 2016 to protect their credibility after a year of corruption and doping scandals that tarnished the Olympic movement. AP

SEPP BLATTER’S International Football Federation is at the heart of controversies and scandals in sports in 2015. AP

star Michel Platini, also was banned for a dubious $2-million payment that Blatter approved for the Fifa vice president in 2011. Their appeals of the eight-year bans that decapitated the leadership

SPORTSSCANDALS