Millennium Global buys majority stake in Calata

August 18, 2017 | 12:06 am

By Arra B. Francia, Reporter

AGRIBUSINESS FIRM Calata Corp. said it will be welcoming new management that will oversee the company’s operations, amid steps taken by the local bourse to delist the firm following several violations of disclosure rules.

Millennium Global logo In a disclosure to the stock exchange on Thursday, Calata said Millennium Global Holdings, Inc. will be purchasing a total of 2.5 billion shares from the firm, effectively giving MGHI an 81% stake in Calata. This will be taken from the increase in authorized capital stock by up to 10 billion common shares with a par value of P1 apiece.

“Because it would appear that the company’s lack of experience in effectively complying with strict regulatory regulations might compromise public shareholders’ interest as a result of possible sanctions which may be imposed upon an erring listed entity, on Aug. 17, 2017, the board of directors decided that it would be in the best interest of the investing public to welcome new management which shall inject a new but related line of business into the Company,” Calata Chairman Joseph H. Calata said in a statement yesterday.

Last July, the Philippine Stock Exchange initiated involuntary delisting proceedings for Calata after the firm committed 29 violations of Section 13.1 of the PSE Disclosure Rules from Nov. 29, 2016 to June 20. It also incurred 26 violations of Section 13.2 of the same rules from Oct. 6, 2016 to March 16 and from April 26 to May 2.

The violations were related to the timely disclosure of the disposition of shares by a company’s directors and principal officers and disclosure of updates of previous disclosures on material information that may affect investor decision.

Calata was also found to have violated the so-called blackout rule which prohibits directors and principal officers who have obtained material non-public information to trade their company’s shares within a prescribed period.

Following the acquisition, Calata said it will be transferring all its assets and liabilities to Agriphil Corp. and/or a private firm.

“The transaction intends to transfer the existing agribusiness of Calata Corporation to Agriphil Corporation, a private entity or such other private entity,” the company said.

The board will also wait for shareholder approval in order to make amendments to the company’s articles of incorporation, which will see a change of name, primary purpose, principal place of office, as well as the capital stock increase.

In a separate disclosure, MGHI noted that after the acquisition, it will be using Calata to purchase the business of its subsidiary, Millennium Ocean Star Corp. (MOSC). Established in 1981, MOSC is an exporter and importer of seafood and aquaculture products in both the local and international market. The company began as an exporter of squid balls to Hong Kong until it eventually expanded to create a major plant in Cebu City.

MOSC now exports an average of 3,000 metric tons of various seafood items every year, which includes squid, cuttlefish, octopus, and coral reef fishes. The company further imports around 2000 metric tons of several seafood products per month for local distribution.

To date, MOSC has 11 plants in Luzon, seven in Visayas, three in Mindanao, and one in Hong Kong alongside several buying stations and processing and storage facilities in different parts of Metro Manila. For further growth, the company said it is currently fast tracking its expansion in Vietnam.

MGHI shares went up by 17.15% to 28 centavos each yesterday.

Disco bar of businessman linked to P6.4-B shabu shipment delinquent in tax payments

August 18, 2017 | 12:06 am

LIV SUPER Club, a popular disco bar in Mandaue City, where businessman Kenneth Dong is one of the directors and stockholders, has been found to be delinquent in paying local taxes. Lawyer Mae Elaine T. Bathan, chief of staff of Mandaue Mayor Gabriel Luis “Luigi” R. Quisumbing, said the luxury club has not paid its amusement tax in 2016 amounting to P361,000, excluding penalties. It also has not paid amusement tax this year. Ms. Bathan said the city treasurer’s office is now assessing the club’s total dues. “We expect that they will be assessed for more than half a million or to a million,” she said. The club’s business permit, which it secured last June 22, will expire on Dec. 31. It started operations in 2014. “In January, na-issue-han man sila ng temporary business permit that was set to expire on Aug. 9, 2017. However, on June 22, 2017, they have complied with their business permit, thus they were issued a business permit valid up to Dec. 31,” Ms. Bathan explained. It was also only this year that the club started complying with the SSS, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG requirements for its employees. Based on the general information sheet from the Securities and Exchange Commission, at least five people are behind the management of Liv Disco Club, Inc. — Brian Tan Del Solo, chairman and president; and Yi Shen Dong (Kenneth Dong), Henry Reyes Yu, Raymond T. Go, and Hua Zhou Ling, directors. “They will be issued with notices to pay these amusement taxes wherein they will be given 10 days to comply. If they do not pay these taxes, then they will be recommended for closure,” Ms. Bathan said. The mayor has also ordered the police to heighten monitoring and intelligence-gathering activities to determine if the bar, along with other establishments, are involved in illegal activities such as narcotics trading. — The Freeman

See related story on NBI files drug rap vs nine over P6.4-B shabu shipment https://goo.gl/221Wct

US teen wildcard Tiafoe stuns Zverev to end treble title bid

August 18, 2017 | 12:06 am

CINCINNATI — US teen wildcard Frances Tiafoe shocked seventh-ranked Alexander Zverev 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 on Wednesday, advancing to the third round at the WTA and ATP Cincinnati Masters.

US teen wildcard Tiafoe stuns Zverev to end treble title bid — Frances Tiafoe returns a shot to Alexander Zverev of Germany during Day 5 of the Western & Southern Open at the Linder Family Tennis Center on Aug. 16 in Mason, Ohio. — *AFP*

Riding a 10-match win streak after titles in Montreal and Washington, Zverev was a favorite to capture his seventh title of the year in the last major US Open hardcourt tuneup.

But 19-year-old Tiafoe, a second-round loser to the 20-year-old German at Wimbledon and the Australian Open in their only prior meetings, pulled off the greatest triumph of his young career.

“I’m happy it finally happened. I’ve lost a lot of tough matches,” Tiafoe said of his first win over a top-10 rival.

“We’re going to be playing a lot over the next 10 or 15 years. I didn’t want to start out 0-3 against him.”

Zverev said the toll of his extraordinary run caught up with him this week.

“I’m completely dead right now,” Zverev said. “I’ve been dead for the past two days. I finished the match. I could have easily pulled the plug in the second set.”

Zverev broke Tiafoe with a forehand winner to claim the first set, but Tiafoe broke three times to win the second set and again to stay level early in the third.

Tiafoe forced two break and match points in the last game. When Zverev sent a forehand long, Tiafoe screamed with delight.

Tiafoe will next face US 14^th seed John Isner, the lone remaining seed in his draw quarter.

Zverev could have matched Andre Agassi in 1995 with the only ATP Washington, Canada and Cincinnati title hat trick in a year.

Rafael Nadal, who returns to the world number one spot Monday for the first time since 2014, was set to later face France’s Richard Gasquet in a second-round match. The 31-year-old Spaniard has a 14-0 career ATP record against Gasquet.

VENUS, KERBER ELIMINATED
Top-ranked Czech defending champion Karolina Pliskova defeated Russian lucky loser Natalia Vikhlyantseva 6-2, 6-3, to drop Dane Caroline Wozniacki from the list of rivals who can overtake her for world number one this week.

Romania’s second-ranked Simona Halep and Ukraine’s fourth-ranked Elina Svitolina could still swipe the top spot for the first time in their careers.

Germany’s third-ranked Angelique Kerber, who lost the top ranking after Wimbledon, missed her chance to reclaim it by losing to Russia’s Ekaterina Makarova 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 (13/11).

Leg-cramping Makarova saved a match point in the tie-breaker but needed eight chances to finally subdue Kerber on a drop volley after two hours 38 minutes, lifting her to 5-0 this season against top-5 foes. She faces US wildcard Sloane Stephens next. — AFP

Handhell

August 18, 2017 | 12:05 am

MOVIE REVIEW
Salvage
Directed by Sherad Anthony Sanchez

By Noel Vera

Sherad Anthony Sanchez’s Salvage (2015) takes its title from the common Filipino slang word for summary execution, which Pete Lacaba in his Manila Times column Carabeef Lengua explains: “It was during martial rule that salvaging came to acquire its present Filipino meaning. To salvage is to save things from a wreckage, but the visual similarity of the word to the Tagalog salbahe (naughty, abusive), which is itself derived from the Spanish salvaje (savage), inevitably led to the present denotation of salvaging as extrajudicial or summary execution of both criminal and subversive elements.”

I remember a simpler explanation, though I can’t remember where I got it nor find any documentary basis online: that the military is “saving” or “salvaging” the victim’s soul from the evils of communism.

You can’t say the military doesn’t have its own perverse, not to mention blasphemous, sense of humor. Nowadays the shadowy folk that ride on motorbikes and do Duterte’s will by shooting people almost at random in the streets of Manila wrap their victims in duct tape, pin comments to the corpses: “Pusher huwag tularan!” ([Drug] pusher don’t imitate!), or draw the Batman insignia on their cardboard squares. The sophomoric comedy continues unabated.

Sanchez’s conceit takes its cue from Mario O’Hara’s great Pangarap ng Puso (Demons, 2000) in conflating the threat of military execution with the threat of a mythical creature in this case the aswang (ghoul or vampire), the difference being this is told through the lens of a handheld video camera, found-footage style.

A difficult genre to get right and Sanchez doesn’t, not completely: the newsmen still look silly running desperately with camcorder on one shoulder, even sillier when one member of the crew passes the camera to another — “You’re running for your life for f***’s sake!” you want to yell at them; “Drop the f***ing camera!”

At the same time you can’t completely dismiss the film for its flaws. Sanchez takes his cue from another not-quite-as-good horror movie, Leo Gabriadze’s Unfriended to use pixilation or distortion (as if from a damaged hard drive or faulty streaming service) in place of special effects — use the errors generated by the media itself as a means of generating disturbing imagery.

Sanchez goes much further than Gabriadze: sometimes the pixilation covers a man’s back like alligator scales, beautiful and fiendishly itch-inducing (you think of the monstrously scaled men in J.G. Ballard’s The Crystal World crawling to shore like primeval amphibians). At one point we have a man and woman being tormented in the middle of a small arena, women and children standing around watching in their finest town fiesta costumes (bright shiny pink and blue dresses). At one point the camera watches an anaconda wrap itself around a woman, the woman screaming in ecstasy as the film strays into Ken Russell territory (Altered States or The Devils anyone?) — by now handheld camera and nightmare have fused into one and you forget the conventions of the whole silly genre as it is being memorably, horrifically, transcended.

Not sure if Sanchez supports the mayor-turned-president of Davao — a significant portion of the Filipino filmmaking industry does and one fears the worst. But intended or not (this was made back in 2015 after all) he’s produced a powerful metaphor for the insidious nature of fanatical evil, the way it turns truth — reality itself — around, manipulates pixels and sound bytes till they mean the opposite of what they are. We are suitably freaked out.

MTRCB Rating: R-16

M:I6 shoot halted as Cruise breaks ankle in stunt

August 18, 2017 | 12:05 am

LOS ANGELES – Mission: Impossible 6 has halted filming after Tom Cruise broke his ankle in a botched stunt, the director confirmed Wednesday, while vowing not to push the release date back.

TOM CRUISE attends *The Mummy* New York Fan Event on June 6. – *AFP*

Cruise, known for performing his own death-defying stunts, was injured as he leapt between buildings while attached to cables, slamming into a concrete wall.

M:I6 director Christopher McQuarrie took to social media to assuage fears that the movie’s planned July 27, 2018 release date would have to be pushed back.

“Thank you all for your support and concern. Tom is on the mend and MI6 is on track for 07.27.2018,” he tweeted after visiting the 55-year-old A-lister.

McQuarrie – who directed Cruise in Mission: Impossible 5 (2015) and Jack Reacher (2012) – posted a link to an article with British film magazine Empire in which he said his star was “in very good spirits.”

He rejected reports that Cruise had fallen short on the jump, filmed in central London on Saturday, maintaining that the star was always supposed to slam into the side of the target building.

“What happened is a matter of coordinating what Tom is doing with what the camera is doing, which means you have to do it a number of times,” the director said.

“And on the fourth try, he hit the building at a slightly different angle and he broke his ankle. He knew the instant that he hit the building that his ankle was broken. You can see it on his face.”

HAIR-RAISING MOMENTS
Mission: Impossible 6 – co-starring Simon Pegg, Henry Cavill, Rebecca Ferguson, Angela Bassett and Alec Baldwin – has two more months of filming scheduled.

McQuarrie told Empire the length of the required hiatus had yet to be determined, but vowed he would “move heaven and earth” to ensure that the fateful fourth take got into the movie.

The director added that he was rearranging the order of the shoot and using any delay as an opportunity to “look at what we’ve shot and reassess the movie, which is a luxury you don’t normally have.”

Cruise is admired in the industry for his adventurous attitude to filmmaking, which over the years has involved some hair-raising moments on set.

Cruise’s co-stars in summer blockbuster The Mummy revealed earlier this year the actor is not just single-minded when it comes to do doing his own stunts, but cajoles his fellow cast members to get involved too.

“We jump off buildings and towns explode, and Tom really does it all, and he insists his cast do it too,” added Jake Johnson, 39, who plays Cruise’s sidekick in action thriller.

“Yes, I got hurt. My character dies, I almost died. We’d do a stunt and it would hurt, and I’m like, ‘I think something went wrong because it hurt’ and he’d go ‘Well yeah – we jumped off a building, dummy.’”

Paramount, the studio distributing M:I6, and Cruise’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment. – AFP

Air Juan targets higher capacity in next 5 years

August 18, 2017 | 12:05 am

AIR JUAN Aviation, Inc. (Air Juan) said it plans to increase by fivefold its passenger capacity in the next five years as it aims to double capacity and expand its network.

“[We want to increase the passenger capacity in five years to] times five,” Air Juan President John Anthony Gutierrez told reporters yesterday when asked by how much they want to increase passenger capacity during the company’s fifth anniversary event.

Paolo Misa, Air Juan marketing head, said the firm accommodates around 1,000-1,500 passengers per month, with 20% of the business serving chartered flights.

In line with its planned increase in capacity, the company plans to acquire about 10 new aircraft to add to its current fleet of 11. However, they have yet to identify the aircraft models based on demand. “Once we see the volume is there, we can decide,” Mr. Gutierrez said.

Mr. Misa added that they are also looking at acquiring fewer aircraft but with higher seating capacity, depending on the changes in demand for popular routes.

“Then again, we can’t say that we want 10 more aircraft, [maybe], if it’s a strong route, we can go 19 seats… there are very promising routes,” Mr. Misa told reporters.

Air Juan started its operations of chartered flights in 2012 and started scheduled chartered flights in Palawan in 2014. It now operates scheduled flights to 22 destinations in the country.

Its aircraft fleet is composed of Cessna Grand Caravan seaplanes and landplanes, as well as Bell helicopters used for chartered flights. It has three designated hubs: Manila, Puerto Princesa, and Cebu.

Mr. Gutierrez said they initially targeted their services to “time-sensitive clients,” many of whom are foreigners both on leisure and business travel, as they bring passengers directly to their destinations without going through the congestion of airports.

“For those areas without infrastructure to host big aircrafts, we can operate,” Mr. Gutierrez said in a mix of English and Filipino.

Mr. Gutierrez said Air Juan’s most popular route by far is the Manila-Puerto Galera route, which flies nine times a week via Cessna seaplanes, while the “most highlighted route” is the Busuanga, Coron route, which flies directly to popular resorts in the area, including Two Seasons, Busuanga Bay Lodge, and Sangat Island.

“That is pretty much the business model we want to follow in the Philippines,” Mr. Gutierrez said, referring to the model of landing at resorts in famous island destinations in the country.

Mr. Gutierrez also said that in places such as Cuyo in Palawan, a third-class municipality, they mainly serve locals who have urgent needs in more urbanized areas.

“The fulfillment for us is we are able to help the local populace,” Mr. Gutierrez said.

Mr. Misa said that they will be starting a seaplane service from the Mactan International Airport or the South Road Properties in Cebu to fly to island destinations in the province, such as Malapascua Island. They will be launching services to Kandaya Resort in Cebu in October.

Mr. Misa also said that while Air Juan plans to fly to Mindanao and cover many parts of the country in five years, they are treading with caution: “We are careful not to stretch ourselves too much, because safety is a priority of the company… We also want to be careful not just in terms of operations but even in terms of investing. We want to make sure everything we do is or has potential to make profit, eventually.”

Mr. Gutierrez said that they are still in the investment phase of the business. He added that they do not try to compete with large airline companies as they serve to “complement” the services of such firms by bringing passengers directly to specific destinations. — Patrizia Paola C. Marcelo

Harbor Star opens Iloilo branch

August 18, 2017 | 12:05 am

HARBOR STAR Shipping Services, Inc. (TUGS), an integrated marine services provider, inaugurated its Iloilo City branch on Aug. 11 as part of the listed company’s program to increase base ports around the country and expand operations. TUGS currently has two tugboats, MT Mira and MT Wezen, assigned at the Iloilo Port, providing service mainly to international vessels. — BW

PHL contingent gets SEA Games bid under way

August 18, 2017 | 12:05 am

THE 490-athlete Philippine contingent for the 29^th Southeast Asian Games begin their campaign as the two-week regional sporting meet officially kicks off tomorrow in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

PHL contingent gets SEA Games bid under way — Philippine Sports Commission Chairman William Ramirez led the send-off for Filipino athletes seeing action in the 29^th Southeast Asian Games which officially kicks off tomorrow in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. — *MIKE MURILLO*

Competing in 37 events out of a possible 38, Team Philippines aims to better its showing in the previous staging of the Games back in 2015, where it finished with a total medal haul of 29 gold medals, 26 silver and 66 bronze, good for sixth place.

Local sports officials said the target for this edition of the Games is to bring home at least 50 gold medals.

As the athletes went off to compete, top sports brass of the land were one in wishing them the best and reminding them to give their all and compete with integrity and respect, the way Philippine athletes always have.

Citing the great Filipino athletes that have represented the country in many international competitions, Philippine Sports Commission Chairman William Ramirez highlighted the need for the athletes to bring their A-game for flag and country come the Games.

“When you go there, don’t just go there for yourselves. Every single Filipino is cheering for you. You athletes are the heart and souls of this country. Fight with integrity and give your best,” said Mr. Ramirez during his speech at the athletes’ sendoff last week.

On the part of Philippine Olympic Committee President Jose Cojuangco, Jr., he brought to fore how Filipinos have fighting hearts and would not back down to challenges easily.

“Always remember you’re representing the Filipino people. The fighting heart and the fighting spirit are always there and the Filipino will never stop fighting. You are Filipinos, you are sportsmen, and you have the guts to compete with the best of them,” said Mr. Cojuangco in his own speech.

Serving as chef-de-mission of Team Philippines, which also includes some 200 coaches, is Cynthia Carrion, who expressed bullishness over the country’s chances in this latest edition of the Games.

EARLY MEDAL HAULS
Meanwhile, the Philippines bagged silver and bronze medals even before the SEA Games formally opened care of sepak takraw and archery.

The Philippine sepak takraw squad got the silver medal in the men’s chin lone linking event 3 at the Stadium Titiwangsa on Wednesday.

After months of training in the lead-up to the Games, the sepak takraw team saw its efforts pay off as it collected a score of 271 to finish behind host country Malaysia, which finished with a commanding 391 points.

“Chin lone is a subjective sport so it’s really difficult to beat the host country,” said Philippine Amateur Sepak Takraw Association president Karen Tanchanco-Caballero, whose wards made it to the finals after besting Brunei, 293-157.

Ms. Tanchanco-Caballero said they expect a couple of gold medals in regu events in the coming days, but they would rather keep it low key to avoid complacency.

After that, archer Paul dela Cruz followed suit as he nipped Zulfadhli Ruslan, 10-9, in a thrilling sudden-death, shoot-off to salvage the bronze medal in the men’s individual archery compound event at the Synthetic Turf Field inside the KL Sports City in Bukit Jalil. — Michael Angelo S. Murillo

Children of the mist

August 18, 2017 | 12:04 am

MOVIE REVIEW
Hamog
Directed by Ralston Jover

By Noel Vera

Ralston Jover’s Hamog (Haze, 2015) starts appropriately enough with just that: a thick cloud hovering low over humid Manila canals. The camera (presumably mounted on a drone) glides towards and rises over a huge sewer pipe lined with cardboard, on which the homeless young lie sleeping.

This is Jover straying into a genre (the urban underaged poor) that has produced a number of powerful films: Hector Babenco’s Pixote, Vittorio de Sica’s Shoeshine, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows, and, above all, Luis Bunuel’s savagely great Los Olvidados.

The Philippines has struggled to produce an equivalent and has not quite succeeded in my opinion, though Jover’s debut feature Bakal Boys (still to my mind his best work to date) is a fine attempt.

This film isn’t as good — it doesn’t have that first feature’s directness or simplicity or plainspoken poetry — but that may partly be because this is more inordinately ambitious hence doomed to experience failure; its courage should be recognized.

The plot proper starts out with the aforementioned boys’ attempt to steal from taxi driver Danny (OJ Mariano) then splits into two separate threads: the first follows Rashid (Zaijan Jaranilla) as he mourns one of their own: Moy (Bon Andrew Lentejas) who was hit by a speeding minivan while evading pursuit. Rashid feels he has to give his “brod” a proper burial, and finds out (much as the eponymous character did in Laszlo Nemes’s Son of Saul) that a burial isn’t an easy feat to accomplish, not in a concentration camp, not as a homeless kid in the streets of Manila.

Rashid hustles, begs, steals. At one point you have to ask: Why is he doing this? Jover doesn’t provide easy answers but two come to mind: Moy was a friend and a friend on streets where people turn on you more often than help you is gold; Moy’s death was an opportunity for Rashid to throw himself into a quest, any quest, and this is also gold — better than endless days of sniffing glue, hustling for money to buy glue. The second story’s more interesting and more problematic. Jinky (Therese Malvar) is caught by Danny; he drags her to the police, to social services, then to her home where he discovers a loud slatternly woman with a half dozen kids and zero interest in getting her daughter back. Now (slight implausible turn of events here) he reluctantly volunteers to take her home as a housemaid.

For every narrative development that appears outlandish (his wife enjoys an open relationship with another man), Jover adds one that lands surprisingly right (the wife’s boyfriend openly and continually prepositions Jinky); for every character trait that feels ill-prepared (the wife does a sudden about-turn, offers Jinky a home), we see one that strikes us as eerily honest (Danny refuses to have sex with Jinky or his wife; thanks to his odd domestic situation he seems to have given up sex altogether).

Perhaps Jover needed to do a few more drafts of the script, perhaps he needed a longer format to introduce each twisted detail properly, perhaps he needed to work on his tone (A black comedy?). All that said Hamog is not vaporous; there’s enough ideas here for two and a half films, maybe three. A handful of those ideas stay with you, like a troublesome girl who refuses to fit anywhere no matter how hard you try.

MTRCB Rating: R-16

The history of objects is what is important

August 18, 2017 | 12:04 am

THE PICKERS know what they’re doing: they go to America’s back roads and pick through junk in the hopes of finding treasure. The television show, on the History channel, may lend more screen time to the boys – antique traders Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz – but while the boys are on the road, Danielle Colby holds down the fort at the shop, Antique Archaeology. While dealing with customers, she also sometimes gives the boys leads on great picks.

Danielle-Colby — *THE PICKER*’s Danielle Colby

Covered in tattoos and sometimes sporting a look reminiscent of rockabilly fashions in the 1950s, Ms. Colby seems to be a tough chick with a touch of playfulness, but she takes her job seriously, and gives loving insight on the place of the objects she deals with in history. When is junk really just junk, and when is it treasure?

To her, it all boils down to a story.

“When you provide a history to that item, that becomes treasure. Otherwise, if it has no history to it, then it really decreases the value and people just look at it literally as junk,” she told BusinessWorld during the entertainment convention HISTORY Con 2017 at the World Trade Center Manila which ran from Aug. 10 to 13. The people behind The Pickers, after all, work with a lot of people like hoarders, and as they sort through the piles of stuff in their homes and garages, the boys find something worthy to collect or sell. “Anything can be of historical value.”

“Not only does it tell the story, and that’s great for history… but it also adds value to the item when you can actually know the story behind it, because it strikes an emotional chord with people.”

For example, she points to her obsession with costumes from Burlesque acts of the past. “You find a costume… it’s pretty. It has beads on it, it sparkles, and it’s great. But once you actually delve into it, you find a name on the costume… you find the dancer, you talk to her, you talk to her family – most likely she’s passed away – and get a good sense of who that actually was, then you start to create this whole entire history around this piece, that otherwise, it’s just a piece of textile.”

While weaving stories around your grandmother’s purses and such might provoke sentimental value, does it always translate to real financial value? “They’re the same. When it comes to historical items, that’s what adds to the financial value.”

While the hoarders and collectors they talk to on the show might feel lucky about getting hundreds to thousands of dollars from what just sat in their homes, it’s nice to think that around our homes, we’d have valuable treasure lying around as well. When asked then, what things we should hold on to when we collect, she simply said: “You should hold on to what you love. The things that you love, you’re going to know more history about them.

“In order for something to retain its value, it has to be an item that’s really highly prized.”

In a chapter from The Substance of Style by Virginia Postrel, the author cited an interview by Francine Maroukian with designer Karim Rashid in a 2002 Town and Country article titled “What’s Really Important,” which was published just a few months after the 9/11 attacks in New York. “What really endures are artifacts, effigies, things that speak about a time, place, or civilization. When people say to me that everything seems trivial or meaningless, I believe the opposite. Objects outlive us, and they are the symbols of our culture and history,” said Mr. Rashid.

Ms. Colby said: “I visited the museum in New York. They had this installation that was just 9/11. And it was literally just like, a shoe, and a scrap of metal from a building, and like, a water bottle.” Discarded detritus, and without knowing the story, the items seem just like random pieces of junk. “And then you read the story, and it pulls you in, and it made you understand what was happening at that time.” – Joseph L. Garcia

Iloilo-based truck drivers go on strike

August 18, 2017 | 12:04 am

TRUCK DRIVERS of ARR trucking services have gone on strike following management’s failure to grant them their minimum wage request and other benefits. Elmer D. Blancaflor, president of the Iloilo ARR Enterprises Labor Organization (IARRELO), said the group started their strike on Aug. 16 with 13 of the 18 members joining. “We proposed that the management grant us with the minimum wage which is part of the economic provision of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). But until now they have yet to respond to our request,” Mr. Blancaflor said. The group also filed charges against the management for illegal dismissal, unfair labor practice and union busting before the National Labor Relations Commission, an attached quasi-judicial agency of the Department of Labor and Employment. While the CBA negotiation is ongoing, Mr. Blancaflor said he and the union secretary were dismissed for supposed redundancy. Their respective assigned truck units were also transferred to another province where ARR Trucking also operates. The Partido Manggagawa has expressed support for the union. — Louine Hope U. Conserva

PetroEnergy books higher net income

August 18, 2017 | 12:04 am

PETROENERGY Resources Corp. reported a consolidated net income of $6.55 million in the first half, higher by 180% compared with $2.34 million in the same period last year, the company told the stock exchange on Thursday.

The figure translates to a 401% increase in net income attributable to the equity holders of the parent firm, it added.

The company said its strong performance was driven by higher income contribution from its renewable energy projects: 20-megawatt (MW) Maibarara geothermal power project in Batangas, 36-MW Nabas wind power project in Aklan, and the 50-MW Tarlac solar power project in Tarlac.

During the period, total exported electricity from the three plants rose to 174,810 megawatt-hour (MWh) compared with 152,898 MWh in same semester last year.

“Our renewable energy facilities are showing good results in terms of energy yield and operational efficiencies. We are optimistic that if we are able to sustain this performance, we will be on-track in achieving our full year targets,” said PetroEnergy Resources President Milagros V. Reyes in a statement.

Before the end of the year, PetroEnergy’s subsidiary Maibarara Geothermal, Inc. is expecting to start the commercial operations of its 12-MW Maibarara-2 expansion.

Earlier this month PetroEnergy said it had obtained the environmental clearance for its Puerto Princesa solar power project, which will be the first utility-scale green power project in Palawan province.

The company said slightly higher average crude oil prices also contributed to the profit increase, with average price reaching $50.38 per barrel for the first half of 2017 compared to $35.59 per barrel in the same period last year.

PetroEnergy’s petroleum asset in Gabon, West Africa produces about 16,000 barrels of oil per day from four producing fields. PetroEnergy reports its financial data in dollars for ease in accounting for its overseas oil revenues.

On Thursday, shares in PetroEnergy climbed 3.77% to close at P7.44 each. — Victor V. Saulon