Habagat downpour didn’t deter members of groups opposed to Pax Silica, an international initiative to secure supply chains for advanced technologies such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence and rare earth elements.

For two days, Aug. 11 and 12, Commission on Audit supervising auditor Xylene Mae del Campo returned to a deceptively simple point: Acknowledgment receipts may show that someone received money, but they do not, by themselves, establish why the money was paid, whether the expense was authorized or whether a claimed confidential operation actually succeeded.

The accumulated garbage was actually a stark warning to us that if we continue with our lack of proper garbage disposal system and bad habit of throwing trash wherever we want, we would be buried under the smelly pile just like what happened in Payatas in Quezon City many years ago and in Rizal landfill early this year.