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ACatholic-run drop-in center in Quezon City is providing people living on the streets access to basic hygiene facilities while encouraging them to help maintain the space.

Bishop Elias Ayuban Jr., CMF, of Cubao blessed ‘Silong Palau’ on October 12 at the Carmelite Missionaries Pastoral Center in the Tatalon area, launching the congregation’s initiative to serve vulnerable communities.

The center serves organized communities of people living on the streets who receive support and pastoral accompaniment from the missionaries.

Beneficiaries are also expected to help clean and maintain the facility, promoting shared responsibility and care for the space.

‘Silong Palau is part of the Church’s continuing efforts to respond to the needs of people in vulnerable situations through concrete acts of service and pastoral accompaniment,’ Ayuban said on Facebook.

The Department of Agriculture (DA) has thrown its support behind the call of hog raisers to raise tariffs on cheaper pork imports, which have caused farmgate prices to decline sharply.

The agency made the pronouncement after the Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (Sinag) pushed to reinstate original tariffs on pork imports at 30 percent in-quota and 40 percent out-quota, as well as temporarily suspend shipments for 120 days.

‘I’m on the side of Filipino hog raisers. We will do whatever is in our power to provide the swine industry immediate relief,’ Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said.

Earlier, the DA chief said that ‘once we are legally allowed,’ the DA would suspend the issuance of sanitary and phytosanitary import clearances (SPSICs), likely by mid-November, to halt imports of selected pork cuts through January next year.

The agency plans to bar the entry of pork belly, pork cuts, whole pig, as well as pork jowls into the country.

The DA chief said his agency would assess meat processors’ requirements and consider import exemptions where warranted.

‘While the DA and SINAG differ on the proposed duration of import restrictions, both are pressing for stronger measures to shield local hog producers from import competition.’

The agency noted that it does not have the power to adjust tariffs. Any tweaks would require action from the Tariff Commission (TC) and other government agencies, thus limiting its ability to deliver immediate relief through higher import duties.

Lower pork tariffs were introduced in 2021 under the administration of former President Rodrigo Duterte to address supply shortages after African swine fever (ASF) crimped output.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. later extended the reduced rates through Executive Order (EO) 62, which set tariffs at 15 percent for in-quota shipments and 25 percent for out-of-quota imports through 2028.

Meanwhile, the DA said it is also pursuing a general safeguard measures investigation into rising pork imports that may result in a longer import ban.

‘The push for tighter import controls comes as declining farmgate prices threaten the viability of backyard and commercial hog operations.’

KIRYAT SHMONA, Israel-Kiryat Shmona has long been a bastion of support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. But that loyalty is no longer ironclad.

Once a bustling commercial center, Israel’s northernmost city was temporarily evacuated three years ago after being battered by rockets from nearby Lebanon, and it still feels half-empty even though the attacks have mostly subsided. Although the town remains staunchly conservative, there are rumblings of displeasure with Netanyahu’s handling of the latest war against the militant group Hezbollah, and that could bode poorly for him in Israel’s election Tuesday.

Vowing to stop Hezbollah’s attacks, Netanyahu led a bombing campaign in Lebanon and invaded the country twice since 2023. More than 4,000 Lebanese have been killed, and Israeli troops have occupied a swath of southern Lebanon, leveling multiple towns and displacing an estimated 1 million people.

Still, Hezbollah remains active. Some in Kiryat Shmona say Israel should have been even tougher; others say they no longer trust that Netanyahu cares about them.

Eti Ben Shabat, 64, says in previous elections she had always followed her family in voting for Likud, almost without thinking. But in recent years, she said, something snapped. She pointed in part to Netanyahu’s broken promises to bring security to the north and dismantle Hezbollah.

‘I don’t want the lies to continue,’ she said.

In previous elections, support went heavy for Netanyahu

Netanyahu is unlikely to lose Kiryat Shmona entirely. But even a small dip in its support-and that of other traditional strongholds-could spell trouble for him.

It could tip a very tight election to the man aiming to replace him, Gadi Eisenkot. Or it could strengthen far-right parties, which would likely back Netanyahu to remain prime minister but would then have even greater power in a ruling coalition.

Kiryat Shmona has always supported right-wing parties, particularly Likud. In the last elections held in 2021 and 2022, around 50% of voters there chose Likud, compared to a quarter of voters nationwide, according to the Central Elections Committee.

‘Kiryat Shmona, the way the city is socioeconomically and religion-wise, it is made for the right and specifically Likud,’ said Sami Malul, 72, a retired Likud city councilor who served as the town’s acting mayor in 2008.

But the town is reeling from the war. The government evacuated Kiryat Shmona and dozens of other towns and villages along the Lebanese border for more than a year – from the time Hezbollah began firing on Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel until a ceasefire with Hezbollah was reached in late 2024.

Netanyahu claimed to have subdued Hezbollah. So trust in him shattered among some in Kiryat Shmona when Hezbollah missiles again started hitting in March after Israel and the US launched their war on Iran.

Israel’s subsequent occupation of southern Lebanon has reduced but not stopped Hezbollah fire. Efforts by the Lebanese army to remove Hezbollah from southern Lebanon have made little progress.

Kiryat Shmona claims that nearly 80% of its 22,000 residents have returned, but locals say the real figure is closer to 50%. Streets feel empty and abandoned. On the main commercial drags, several shops remain shuttered. Others are open but devoid of customers.

Malul insists the government handled the war and the evacuation well, prioritizing residents’ safety. He argued Kiryat Shmona has faced attacks since its founding and Netanyahu isn’t to blame for the current situation.

Many others feel the same.

‘We really love Bibi, and we can’t choose anyone else, but he should see the needs of his people,’ said Maimon Amsalem, using Netanyahu’s nickname. ‘Keeping our security is the most important thing, we don’t want anything else.’

For some, three years of war triggers a dramatic shift

Nissan Zeevi, a third-generation resident of northern Israel who lives in a town adjacent to Kiryat Shmona, has voted for Likud as long as he can remember. But this year he is running for a seat in parliament with the Beyachad opposition party, furious over what he calls Netanyahu’s ‘abandonment of the north.’

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During the most recent war with Hezbollah, Zeevi founded Lobby 1701, an activist group advocating for better security in the north. He wants the Israeli military to increase its attacks against Hezbollah and maintain its buffer zone in southern Lebanon until the Lebanese government identifies Hezbollah as a terror organization.

‘Residents in the north have been in a war for three years that hasn’t ended,’ said Zeevi. ‘You can see the people’s great frustration and great disappointment in Netanyahu.’

‘Netanyahu still has his base here, who will go with him through fire and water. But people have much more political awareness now,’ said Zeevi. ‘After 20 years, he needs to make way for new leadership.’

In a small town, voting along family lines

Around town, there’s little evidence that elections are just days away, and little outward excitement for Likud or Netanyahu. A few scattered campaign posters for the smaller right-wing parties flutter at intersections or are glued onto mobile bomb shelters. Few residents wanted to speak about politics, citing a general feeling of hopelessness and frustration.

No candidates have offered a concrete plan for the conflict with Hezbollah, beyond offering vague promises of ‘strong defense.’

In northern Israel as a whole, support for Netanyahu dropped from around 29% just before the last election in 2022 to around 17% in a poll conducted earlier this month for Agam Labs at Hebrew University.

Nimrod Nir, the director of Agam Labs, said most Likud voters frustrated with Netanyahu will likely support hardline parties like Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) and the Religious Zionist Party, which advocate tough military action against Israel’s enemies.

Waiting outside a downtown hairdresser in Kiryat Shmona, Ben Shabat talked about her decision to support Eisenkot, a former military chief who ordered disproportionate force in response to Hezbollah attacks when he was a general during a 2006 war.

Ben Shabat said she trusts Eisenkot as a more honest leader than Netanyahu, who she feels made little effort to connect with residents in the north and sent soldiers to fight while his own son was in a luxury apartment in Miami. She also pointed to his ongoing corruption trial.

Netanyahu made a brief campaign stop in the town on Tuesday. He visited a high school and university, events that were closed to the public, but did not walk around downtown to mingle with residents, as other candidates have done.

Her decision to vote for Eisenkot wasn’t easy in a place where Likud support is a matter of identity more than ideology. The town is overwhelmingly made up of Mizrahi Jews, who arrived from Arabic-speaking countries in the Middle East and North Africa in the 1950s.

Mizrahi Jews often identify with the right and especially Likud, having faced discrimination by the European-descended elites that traditionally dominate Israeli government, military and business institutions.

‘Kiryat Shmona is like a small family, we’re always helping each other, it’s one of the things I love about it,’ Ben Shabat said. But that close-knit support also comes with social pressure to vote a certain way.

At a recent meetup for Eisenkot supporters, the room was packed, but people did not want photos taken of the audience, worrying what their family or neighbors would think, Ben Shabat said.

‘It’s a small place, so people aren’t speaking about it openly,’ she said. ‘But inside, people really want a change.’

WASHINGTON-Blistering record heat in Europe this summer helped kill more than 50,000 people, with nearly two-thirds of that death toll blamed on human-caused climate change, a new study found.

Researchers modeled heat-related deaths for different age groups in 854 European cities during repeated heat waves in June, July and August and found that 50,391 people died from warmer temperatures, and of those, 32,619 died because of the extra heat caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas, according to a study in an upcoming issue of Nature Health.

That’s 71% higher than the previous deadliest summer, which was 29,480 in 2022, according to the same researchers, who produced a study earlier this month tracking yearly summer heat-related deaths in those European cities.

And this summer’s death figures are underestimates because they don’t count a deadly heat wave in May and they only look at deaths in those 854 cities, which are about 40% of Europe’s population, study authors said.

About one-third of the deaths were from June 17 to July 1, a particularly intense heat wave when temperatures were 9.5 degrees Fahrenheit (5.3 degrees Celsius) above normal, said study co-author Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, a biostatistician at Imperial College London.

‘Much of Western and Northern Europe, our infrastructure is just not designed to cope with the sort of temperatures that we are seeing now because of the effects of human-caused warming,’ said lead author Clair Barnes, a climate scientist at Imperial College London. She said some European cities this summer had temperatures 21.6 F (12 C) warmer than normal.

Of those 50,000, more than 32,000 died from the added heat of human-caused climate change, the study also found. Italy, France, Spain and Germany had the highest death tolls, the study said.

Of all the European capitals, Rome had the highest heat death total from 2000 to 2025, according to the team’s study earlier this month.

An extra dose of heat from fossil fuel burning

This would’ve already been an abnormal natural hot spell on top of a huge amount of climate change, Barnes said. She said Europe is the fastest-warming continent-although the Arctic, which is not a continent, is warming even faster-and is 4.5 F (2.5 C) hotter than pre-industrial times.

‘Just the underlying warming from human activity, from mostly the burning of fossil fuels, it’s increasing all of our temperatures by what sounds like quite a small amount,’ Barnes said. ‘For many people, it’s certainly the case that that extra two-and-a-half degrees (Celsius) of warming is what’s going to tip those temperatures from uncomfortable to dangerous and potentially deadly.’

More than half of the people who died in Europe’s heat were age 85 or older, but the stifling temperatures also killed more than 800 people between the ages of 20 and 44, Konstantinoudis said.

How the death numbers are calculated

The team used an established and accepted scientific method to figure out how many of the 50,000 heat deaths were from natural high summer heat and how many were due to what heat-trapping gases have done to the climate. They ran computer simulations of a world without climate change and compared it to the deaths that happened this summer. The difference is what was caused by global warming.

The percentage of heat deaths attributable to global warming has grown from about 45% in the early 2000s to 65% now, Barnes said.

‘Summers are getting hotter, and the analytical tools for attributing deaths to heat are getting more accurate,’ said Dr. Howard Frumkin, former director of the National Center for Environmental Health in the US, who wasn’t part of the study. ‘Together, these two trends yield increasingly high and increasingly accurate counts of heat-related deaths.’

The scientific team also had to use statistical modeling to come up with the base count of 50,000 heat deaths because those deaths are underreported and often not listed in death certificates, despite being a major factor, Konstantinoudis said. Several outside experts agreed with him, calling the methods state-of-the-art.

The researchers ran a complex mathematical equation that has been used in several previously peer-reviewed studies, Barnes said, which factors in specific age and temperatures for each of the 854 cities based on a localized optimal temperature that coincides with the fewest deaths. When it’s warmer or colder, the equation calculates excess deaths above lowest-death conditions.

Researchers then checked their calculations against real-time estimates from government agencies. Mostly-but not always-they matched fairly well, Konstantinoudis said. The team’s methods for May and June British heat waves calculated 2,700 excess deaths and the United Kingdom health statistics agency said it was 2,800, he said.

Cooling and adapting are needed, but they’re not enough

‘We need to prepare for the heat we cannot now avoid, with urgent investments in heat early-warning systems, equitable access to low-carbon cooling, and neighborhood buddy systems that check on and support people most at risk-while rapidly reducing the fossil fuel use driving the crisis,’ said Canadian emergency room physician Dr. Courtney Howard, president-elect of the Canadian Medical Association, who wasn’t part of the research.

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Adapting is only part of the answer, said Dr. Jonathan Patz of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who wasn’t part of the research but also praised it.

‘We can’t just be mopping up the mess on the floor without thinking about turning the faucet off,’ said Patz, a professor of health and the environment. ‘So we need prevention at different levels. We need better cooling and protecting vulnerable populations from inevitable increased frequency and extreme heat waves. But we also need to go to the root of the problem and absolutely address the burning of fossil fuels.’

Creamlines’ Bernadeth Pons try to outwit Zus Coffee’s Chai Troncoso at the net in the Cool Smashers’ 25- 19, 16-25, 26-24, 25-17 victory that kept them unbeaten in the Premier Volleyball League All-Filipino Conference before a packed Saturday crowd at the FilOil Centre last Saturday.

Creamline gets to a 3-0 start while dealing Zus Coffee its third consecutive loss.

NAGOYA-Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) chairman Patrick Gregorio and Philippine Paralympic Committee (PPC) president Mike Barredo hailed the Filipino athletes for responding to the challenge and finishing 17th overall with two golds, two silvers and three bronzes in the 5th Asian Para Games which drew to a close Saturday at the Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium.

After more than a week of grueling action, swimmers Ernie Gawilan and Arjay Alegarbes bagged gold medals, with Gawilan and table tennis mixed doubles pair of Wilfred Redulla and Lhey Manginsay contributing silvers and swimmer Raemond Adefuin, runner King James Reyes and shot putter Ma. Ravinia Carpena adding bronzes to the coffers.

The haul surpassed the Philippines’s performance in the last edition in Hangzhou three years ago when chess, which the Japanese hosts excluded from this year’s program, is taken out of the tally.

In Hangzhou, the Filipinos collected 10 golds, four silvers and five bronzes, with chess accounting for eight golds, three silvers and two bronzes.

‘It was a very successful performance, congratulations,’ said Gregorio, who flew in for the final two days of the event to cheer for the Filipinos.

‘More or less, with what we did last Para minus chess, of course, we did well,’ Barredo said.

The Philippine squad is now looking forward to the next edition in 2031 in Doha, where it hopes to make the country proud again.

‘What’s important is that we’ll continue supporting our athletes,’ Gregorio said.

Gregorio and Barredo also met with Asian Paralympic Committee (APC) president Majid Rashed to discuss plans to collaborate on building the Philippines’s first training center exclusively for para athletes.

‘One of the reasons I’m here, I met with the APC president and asked them to help develop a game center pareho ng ginawa natin sa taekwondo, football and baseball,’ Gregorio said.’

Some prayers enter our lives before we understand them. Their words arrive in childhood, borne by familiar voices. Years later, when those voices have fallen silent, the prayers remain.

I was brought up reciting the Rosary. I still pray it daily, with varying degrees of attention: sometimes absorbed, sometimes distracted, sometimes sustained by the simple fidelity of doing it again. The fingers move; the mind wanders; a familiar phrase brings it home.

October, the month of the Holy Rosary, invites that homecoming.

In Hagonoy, Bulacan, home has a particular face: the old image of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in our Santo Rosario parish, embracing Mercado, Santo Rosario, Santa Cruz, San Roque, and San Pascual.

Established as a parish in 1952, it gathers communities whose devotion reaches further back. Before that image, generations have brought what no parish register can fully record: a child’s illness, a livelihood threatened, gratitude too deep for speech.

The Rosary itself grew across generations. Medieval Christians used counted prayers as a counterpart to the monks’ 150 biblical psalms. In time, the Marian Psalter of 150 Hail Marys developed.

Dominican preaching helped spread the devotion; its familiar form emerged gradually. The cherished tradition linking it to Saint Dominic belongs within that longer history.

Its name evokes a garden of roses. Yet its mysteries lead through more than gardens: a birth in poverty, a mother searching for her child, betrayal, execution, resurrection.

In 2002, John Paul II proposed the luminous mysteries, bringing Christ’s public ministry more fully into the meditation. Marian in its voice, the Rosary is centered on Jesus.

For a people acquainted with separation, bereavement, and stubborn hope, these mysteries offer places to rest our own lives. A mother awaiting news of a child abroad needs little explanation of anxious love.

The feast on October 7 recalls Lepanto in 1571, when the Holy League defeated the Ottoman fleet. Pope Pius V had called for the Rosary; Catholics attributed victory to Mary’s intercession.

Philippine devotion carries another naval memory. In 1646, Spanish and Filipino defenders repelled Dutch attacks in five battles. Their deliverance was attributed to Our Lady of the Rosary, remembered in La Naval de Manila.

There is a remarkable human detail behind the splendor. The La Naval image, dated 1593, was carved by a non-Christian Chinese artisan. Hands outside the faith helped fashion the face before which generations would pray. Today, at Santo Domingo Church in Quezon City, that image binds sacred art, public memory, and devotion.

In Manaoag, Pangasinan, pilgrims come to Our Lady of the Rosary, affectionately called Apo Baket. The basilica’s history records that her image survived the church fire of 1898. Whatever burdens pilgrims carry, the journey gives them somewhere to bring them.

Beyond our shores, Lourdes and Fatima have made the beads familiar across languages. At Lourdes in 1858, Bernadette’s account describes the Lady passing Rosary beads through her fingers while Bernadette prayed. At Fatima, the children reported that, on October 13, 1917, she identified herself as Our Lady of the Rosary.

These are distinct histories and testimonies. Together, they reveal the extraordinary reach of a prayer small enough to carry in a pocket.

Other faiths know the intimacy of counted prayer. Hindu devotees use ‘mala’ (a Sanskrit word that translates directly to ‘garland’ or ‘string of beads’) for ‘japa,’ the repetition of sacred names or mantras; Buddhist traditions also use prayer beads.

Muslims use strings commonly numbering 33 or 99 beads in remembrance of God. Orthodox Christians repeat the Jesus Prayer with knotted prayer ropes.

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Their beliefs and purposes differ. The resemblance nevertheless invites respect: across religious boundaries, people enlist the hand to steady attention and return the mind to what they hold sacred. A bead can mark the place where distraction ends and remembrance begins.

John Paul II understood repetition through the language of love. Familiar expressions can be spoken again because affection renews their meaning. Anyone who has heard a child call repeatedly for a mother can understand.

Still, attention matters. Habit can preserve prayer through dry seasons; it can also become an invitation to listen more deeply. Perhaps, when my mind strays, the next bead offers another beginning.

Our history gives that beginning a public meaning. In February 1986, Filipinos at EDSA faced armed troops with prayers, flowers, and rosaries. Religious faith stood alongside courage, military defections, and civic resolve. The beads belonged to people who had stepped into danger for their country.

A devotion once associated with naval victory had become part of a memorable witness to peaceful resistance. Prayer found expression in a refusal to harm.

The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins addressed Mary with words of extraordinary tenderness: ‘Be thou then, thou dear Mother, my atmosphere.’

An atmosphere surrounds and sustains us before we notice it. So, perhaps, does the faith learned in childhood: the remembered cadence, the patient return, the hope that survives our imperfect attention.

In Hagonoy, our old Santo Rosario image remains a meeting place for generations. Those who prayed before us have left their names, their descendants, their unfinished hopes. We bring our own, and someday others will stand where we stood.

I think of the beads moving through those many hands. Each life has held its portion of joy and sorrow; each has needed light; each has hoped that death would not have the final word.

The Rosary gathers these longings into prayer. And when the last bead has passed through our fingers, may something of its tenderness remain in our hands: enough to comfort the grieving, lift the fallen, and help another find the way home.

Dr. Pablo Trillana III is a lawyer, author, former Chairman of the National Historical Institue (now the National Historical Commission of the Philippines), and a lifelong student of Philippine history and Rizal studies.

NAGOYA Asian Games silver medalists Kurt Barbosa and Tachiana Mangin lead a six-athlete team that will see action in taekwondo’s kyorugi events in the Sixth Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games (AIMAG) set December 11 to 21 in Riyadh, Saudia, Arabia.

Joining the Paris 2024 Olympian Barbosa (men -54 kgs) and former Asian junior champion Mangin (women -51 kgs) are Angelous Lustado (-60 kgs) and Aljen Anyaga (-67 kgs) in the men’s division and Clarence Sarza (-46 kgs) and veteran campaigner Baby Jessica Canabal (-57 kgs) in the women’s class.

The composition of the poomsae team, Philippine Taekwondo Association secretary-general Rocky Samson said, will be announced later.

‘This is going to be the same level and intensity with the last Asian Games. We must prepare seriously,’ Samson said. ‘So after our recent evaluation, the same athletes will represent us in AIMAG.’

The Virtual Mixed Taekwondo event where Jesus Gabriel Derick Yape won a gold medal for the Philippines in Nagoya, is not in the Riyadh program.

Samson said that the AIMAG is an integral part of PTA’s qualification campaign for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.

‘We can gauge our athletes in AIMAG if they can compete in next year’s Olympic qualification,’ he said.

There will be eight kyorugi events at the LA 2028 Olympics–58, -68, -80 and +80 kgs in men and -49, -57, -67, and +67 kgs in women.