Good day. Here are the top stories of The Manila Times for Monday, Sept. 4, 2023.
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READ: Gilas drubs China, gets Olympic chance
GILAS Pilipinas' victory over China on Saturday assured the Philippines a spot in the 2024 FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament. After four straight losses in the 2023 FIBA World Cup in Manila, Gilas rode on Jordan Clarkson's torrid third-quarter shooting to mow down China in its final game in the classification round to finish 24th overall in the final FIBA ranking. The national team's 1-4 win-loss record was enough for the Philippines to secure a spot in the qualifying tournament for the Paris Olympics. The Philippines failed to gain the lone outright Olympic spot for an Asian team following its winless stint in the group stage and losing 87-68 to South Sudan in the classification round last Thursday. But Gilas' narrow losing margins in Group A, along with its huge 96-75 win over China, helped the country clinch the Olympic qualifying slot. The Philippines ended up tied with Angola and China with similar 1-4 records, but the host country took second place in Group M on a higher points differential. The Philippines had a -21 differential, compared to -42 for Angola and -94 for China. South Sudan took the top spot in Group M with its 3-2 win-loss record while, more importantly, securing the lone African ticket to the Paris Olympics.
READ: Over 1 million vie in village, youth council elections
MORE than 1 million individuals have filed certificates of candidacy (CoCs) for the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE) in October. The filing of CoCs ended last Saturday. There are 42,027 seats for barangay chairman, 294,189 for Sangguniang Barangay member, 42,027 for SK chairman and 294,189 for SK member. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) said that of the 1,181,404 candidates who filed CoCs, 776,781 are male and 404,623 are female. For the 42,001 positions for barangay chairman, 85,796 filed their COCs, with 78.47 percent (67,321) of the filers being male and 21.53 percent (18,475) being female. The Comelec said 638,209 are vying for the 294,007 seats for councilors. It said 69.77 percent (445,258) of the candidates were male and 30.23 percent (192,951) were female. The position of Sangguniang Kabataan chairman attracted 75,434 aspirants. Among them, 64.39 percent were male, with 48,572 individuals, while 35.61 percent were female, comprising 26,862 candidates. Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia said that the poll body expects a heated election in October due to the prolonged tenure of barangay and SK officials caused by multiple postponements of village and youth council polls.
READ: 'Gov't must improve services to end housing backlog'
THE government must streamline its services if it wants to end the country's 6.5 million housing backlog by 2028, officials of the Chamber of Real Estate and Builders' Associations (Creba) said. Guesting in SMNI's "Business and Politics" program hosted by The Manila Times Chairman and CEO Dante "Klink" Ang 2nd, Creba Vice President for Academic Affairs Techie Bautista and Creba Executive Vice President Melesa Chua stressed the need to speed the issuance of permits and licenses. Chua said some local government units (LGUs) do not comply with the maximum number of days to process applications for construction and development permits and clearances. Under Republic Act 11032, or the "Ease of Doing Business Law," LGUs are only given 45 working days to process the application or request for a license, clearance permit, certification, or authorization. The Philippines must "adapt and transform to a digital economy," Chua said, because it is the "easiest way" to streamline business transactions. Bautista agreed that land developers consider the long processing times of permits and clearances a sign of "inefficient" government services that could result in higher costs for end-users.
READ: Tech's carbon footprint: Can AI revolutionize responsibly?
Across the globe, data servers are humming, consuming both megawatts and precious natural resources to bring life to our digital world. The planet's 8,000 or so data centers are the foundation of our online existence, and will grow ever further with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) — so much so that research estimates that by 2025, the IT industry could use 20 percent of all electricity produced and emit up to 5.5 percent of the world's carbon emissions. This poses a real — and to some, increasingly urgent — question about the industry's carbon footprint as startups and companies fall behind Silicon Valley's latest forward march. "Pandora's box is open," said Arun Iyengar, CEO of Untether AI, a highly specialized chip-making company that strives to make AI more energy efficient. The transformation of the world's data servers to AI readiness is already well underway, in what one Google executive called a "once-in-a-generation inflection point in computing." But the scope of the mission is huge. The creation of generative AI tools such as GPT-4, which powers ChatGPT, or Google's Palm2, behind the bot Bard, can be broken into two key stages, the actual "training" and then the execution (or "inference").
Topping Business
READ: Analysts: Inflation likely higher at 4.9%
INFLATION could have snapped a six-month decline in August due to higher fuel prices and the impact of recent typhoons, analysts polled by The Manila Times said. The median forecast in a survey of 13 economists was 4.9 percent, within the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas' (BSP) 4.8- to 5.6-percent projection for the month and up from June's 4.7-percent result. Not all were of the view that inflation had gone higher, with six predicting a continued easing from January's 14-year high of 8.7 percent. Data for August will be released by the Philippine Statistics Authority on Tuesday, September 5.
In Sports
READ: Alcaraz romps into US Open last 16
World No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz surged into the last 16 of the US Open on Saturday (Sunday in Manila) as second-seeded Aryna Sabalenka advanced safely in the women's draw.Alcaraz, looking to become the first man to successfully defend the title since Roger Federer in 2008, polished off British 26th seed Dan Evans 6-2, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 in 3hr 11min. It was another stylish victory for the 20-year-old Spaniard, who will face Italy's Matteo Arnaldi in the fourth round on Monday.
READ: Chot steps down as Gilas coach
CHOT Reyes chose to step down from the Gilas Pilipinas head coaching post, just moments after helping the Philippines close its 2023 FIBA World Cup campaign on a winning note on Saturday night. With 11,080 fans courageously overcoming the heavy downpour to cheer for Gilas' final classification round game at the Smart Araneta Coliseum, the Filipinos played with amazing fervour, while riding on the red-hot shooting hands of naturalized player Jordan Clarkson. At the sound of the final buzzer, Gilas managed to cap its tumultuous FIBA World Cup campaign with a win after four heartbreaking losses in the tournament that cost the country to miss securing the automatic spot to the Paris Olympics in 2024. Reyes explained he hasn't heard anything from the SBP since the team formally bombed out of contention for the Olympics when Gilas suffered a deflating 87-68 loss in the classification round to South Sudan on Thursday night.
READ: Opinion/Editorial
The Times in today's editorial says Asean must show that it is no paper tiger. Read the full version on print or digital or listen to the Voice of the Times. Featured columnists on the front page are Rigoberto Tiglao, Fr. Ranhilio Aquino and Francisco Tatad. Tiglao says the country loses the Kalayaan Island Group under Congress bills; Aquino on apparitions, visions and the Church while Tatad asks whether a peaceful co-existence was still an option.
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