We take our hat off beer brewing giant San Miguel Brewery with plant in Sta. Cruz, Davao del Sur for immediately taking the initiative in replanting mangroves along the coastlines of Tuban in the same municipality.
The company, according to a news report, mobilized its employees and collaborated with the local officials of Sta. Cruz and barangay Tuban and planted some 3,000 mangrove propagules only recently. The more than half a kilometer of mangrove growth along the Tuban coastline was devastated by the huge waves brought about by the strong monsoon winds.
Frankly, it is nice to hear stories of large corporations undertaking efforts to help deter the effect of climate change. So we look forward to the beer brewing giant’s success in maintaining its planting site and hope that there will be a good percentage in the survival rate of the planted mangroves.
Of course, the participation of the people in Tuban and the support of the local government officials are important ingredients for the success of the company’s mangrove site rehabilitation.
And talking of companies locating in Sta. Cruz that are now perking up the economy of the municipality two more are also engaged in efforts to help the local communities. These are the Aboitiz-led Hedcor, Inc. with plants in Sibulan, and Therma South, Inc. (TSI) which is having its plant sharing boundaries with Binugao in Davao City.
In terms of taxes, permits and other regulatory fees, Hedcor alone paid for 2019 a total of close to a million pesos. And the firm still has to pay its annual real property taxes. For now we have no idea how much is TSI pouring into the municipality’s coffer. But we are certain the amount could be enormous.
We would not really be surprised if one day soon Sta. Cruz would be aspiring to become a city. And this soon could even be “sooner.”
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For the first time we were able to read report of Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, a member of a Luzon family immigrant to Davao City, saying some kind of conciliatory words for President Rodrigo Duterte. Carpio was quoted in news report saying, PRRD ‘might be the President who will find the solution to the South China Sea dispute.”
The statement is a far cry from the justice’s usual tirades on the position, as well as the strategy of Duterte in dealing with the Philippines’ territorial dispute with China.
From the tone of Carpio’s speech during the “Civil Society Conversations on Democracy and Disinformation” last Friday at the Ateneo de Davao University, it seems the Davaoeno Supreme Court member may have realized that his fellow Davaoeno President, after all, could have applied a more calculated scheme in dealing with the very contentious issue.
If Carpio has been right in everything he said about the way the administration is handling the South China Sea conflict, then it is not a remote possibility that he could also be correct in his statement that Duterte “might be the President who will find the solution to the South China Sea dispute.”
For us, too, Carpio could have been “the best Supreme Court Chief Justice the country never had.”
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These days more and more Filipinos including those in the margins are having eggs on their table usually in their morning meal. But we have yet to hear of fresh eggs being frozen to make its lifetime as edible fare longer. This has never been news and will never be since when eggs are the subject of any conversation it is immediately related to the reproduction of fowls and some other crawling or slithering animals and insects.
But this only recently-reported medical procedure in the Philippines as a process of delaying motherhood is definitely earth-shaking news. And we see this development as a potential yet expensive family planning method.
We are referring to reports that more Filipino women are now freezing their eggs. The eggs being frozen are not those found in meal tables but those inside a woman’s body that are the other components of human reproduction, the other being the ones coming from the man.
According to the report women freeze the eggs in their reproductive system to delay pregnancy as fertilization is not likely to happen when their eggs are frozen. Others are applied the procedure due to health reasons.
For now women egg-freezing is not one of the family planning methods recommended by health authorities. But considering the reported effectiveness of the procedure in delaying pregnancy it is likely that in the near future authorities may recommend egg-freezing scientifically called as mature oocyte cryopreservation would be introduced as an accepted way of controlling population growth rate.
Maybe the Catholic Church will have no strong opposition on the egg-freezing method as compared to the already existing ways. After all, no egg union will occur in the process so no life is curtailed.
This could be another spirited debate. Let us all wait.
