The San Juan Weekly #86

787-743-3346 / 787-743-6537

May 26 June 1, 2011

50¢

The

New Consortium to Run Arecibo Observatory P4

Unanimously Legislators Reinstate Collective Bargaining P3

Corruption in Paradise

P6

TV Steps Up Pitch to Hispanic Market P26

Campeche Rodríguez & Posada Snap Exhibit Yankee Loosing Streak

Hato Rey Rookies Top in East

P31

P31

Emilio Rodríguez Most Valuable Player

P31

P24

The San Juan Weekly available on internet at www.sanjuanweeklypr.com

2

The San Juan Weeekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Cannes International Film Festival

H E L LO !

Local News Mainland Pets Travel Wine Viewpoint Fashion & Beauty Kitchen Enigmatic

3 8 10 11 12 14 15 16 18

Portfolio Health & Science International Local Travel Modern love Business Games Horoscope Cartoons Sports

19 20 22 24 25 26 28 29 30 31

Fashion & Beauty P15

The Unreality of Being a Celebrity Portfolio P19

Chemical Suspected in Cancer Is in Baby Products

Fed Wants Rate Increases Before Asset Sales Mainland P9

Health & Science P20

Pakistan and NATO What to Know Trade Fire Near When Traveling Afghan Border With Your Pet International P23 Pets P10

36 Hours in San Francisco Travel P11

Eating the Forbidden Ham Sandwich Modern Love P25

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

3

Cowardly Legislators Reinstate Public Employee Collective Bargaining sult of the mobilizations, actions, debate and discussion of the last several years.

We will be back at the bargaining table in a matter of weeks and can address the economic hardship our members have faced.

After an admirable effort was begun to reduce the unbearable economic yoke around island businesses and tax payers,

our legislatures abandoned our future to renewed recession and fiscal crisis. The need for unions disapeared with laws protecting employees. Aggresive efforts seeking excessive benefits, payrolls and defending poor performance are today’s union duties.

Our legislators should be ashamed for what they have done!

Summers almost here! “ I l o s t 3 0 lbs. and I’m not done yet!”

8 weeks M

embers of the UAW Puerto Rico public sector Locals 2396 and 2373, Puerto Rico’s Servidores Públicos Unidos (SPU)/AFSCME Council 95 and other public employees celebrated when Gov. Luis Fortuño signed into law a bill (Law 73) reinstating collective bargaining for public employees.

Unlike legislatures in most states, in particular Wisconsin and Ohio, which are trying to take away the unbearable economic burden reprsented by unionization, Puerto Rico’s House and Senate passed this bill unanimously.

President Annette González of the SPU announced that this law allows us to attain two fundamental goals: Restore the acquired rights through the restitution of collective bargaining contracts [and] negotiate the economic aspects that will do justice to workers and their families.

Her comments translate to conti-

nued inefficient burdensome government draging on a fragile economy and tax base. The law ends a policy admirably initiated in March 2009 when the administration enacted a fiscal emergency law Law 7) that mandated a two-year freeze on the economic clauses of all collective bargaining agreements. The new law extends the non-economic clauses of the contracts until 2013 and allows workers to negotiate for salaries, benefits, bonuses and other economic aspects.

Carmen Daisy Rodrigues, president of Local 2396, said: Our members in Puerto Rico suffered greatly in 2009 as a result of Law 7, forcing the termination of tens of thousands of public workers and stripping away the economic gains our members had achieved through collective bargaining.

Our rights have been restored under the new Law 73. We believe the governor’s willingness to bargain now is a direct re-

Only

$

49 *

*Cost of food and shipping additional

“To look different you have to eat different and Jenny Craig is great because I don’t feel deprived. The biggest thing for me are the snacks that are awesome!”

Carrie Fisher

®

®

Enjoy our Executive Lunch Menu Monday to Friday from 12:00m to 3:00 pm

Clients on the program lose an average of 1-2 lbs. per week.

†

¿HAVE

609 San Jorge St, Santurce

Exquisite Cuisine in an Oppulent Setting

CALLED

JENNY

YET

?

1 - 8 0 0 - J E N N Y- 2 0 ***

787-727-2717

YOU

Home Delivery Progam in P.R. 787-773-0733 BAYAMON • CAGUAS • CAROLINA • CONDADO 786-9555

258-1579

757-0101

723-2300

HATILLO • MAYAGÜEZ • PONCE• RIO PIEDRAS 879-2028

834-1028

841-6015

763-6322

*Valid for first 100 new clients over 18 thru 5/28/2011. Restrictions apply. ***Delivery charges additional.

Monday- Thursday from 8:00AM - 9:00PM Frid. from 8:00AM - 7:00PM Saturday from 9:00AM - 5:00PM

4 May 26 - June 1, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Arecibo Set for Shake-up C ornell University has lost its long-term contract to run the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the world’s biggest radio dish. A decision this week by the US National Science Foundation means management of the National Atmospheric and Ionospheric Center (NAIC) that includes our observatory will move from Cornell to a consortium including SRI International, Universities Space Research Association (USRA), the Universidad Metropolitana. UPR is a partner through the joint support of two faculty positions at UPR Río Piedras and UPR Mayaguez.

Don Kniffen, vice-president for science at USRA, says that the budget for staff was lower in the consortium’s bid than in Cornell’s. Since 2006, the NSF has been looking to reduce costs at Arecibo with a view to eventually decommissioning it; a position that has been highly controversial among planetary scientists who say the facility’s radar capabilities provide for uniquely valuable observations of near-Earth asteroids. A 2010 call for bids by NSF says that agency funding for NAIC was $10.7 million in fiscal year 2010. It budgets around $8 million for the years 2012 through 2016.

Despite the lower staff budget, Kniffen says he doesn’t expect involuntary layoffs at the observatory as a result of the transition. “We have no plans to lay anybody off but we costed it with

a few less staff,” he says, adding that the consortium hopes to retain as many of the incumbent staff as possible aside from some natural attrition. “We very much want to continue and expand on the wonderful science Arecibo has done,” he says.

The NSF has asked partners in the successful bid to keep the news lowkey as details of the transition, scheduled to begin June 1st, are worked out, and a press spokeswoman for SRI was tight-lipped. But rumors of the shakeup leaked out publicly.

Cornell news office had not yet responded to requests for information, but the decision seems likely to be a blow to astronomers there. Cornell’s Arecibo website makes clear the association between Cornell and Arecibo goes back a long way, since the observatory’s conception in 1960 by former Cornell electrical engineer William Gordon.

Robert Kerr, an atmospheric scientist, says that because the bids are confidential, he does not know whether the consortium costed less than Cornell did for payroll, and doubts it because the NSF specified in advance what amount the contract would be worth. He insists that there will be no layoffs at the site.

The text was corrected to reflect that the third member of the consortium is the Universidad Metropolitana, not the University of Puerto Rico (UPR).

UPR is one of 13 supporting institutions on the successful bid.

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

Existe una pintura que detenga el agua y la humedad, que sea “primer” a la vez, y pueda usar en interior y exterior

¡YA NOSOTROS PENSAMOS EN ESO!

Visita www.iscan.it

® Disponible en: Hay una tienda cerca de tí a division of the

Blanco Group

BEYOND COLORS

Lunes a Sábados 8:00 am - 5:00 pm Escanea este código QR con tu “smartphone”

5

6

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

Corruption in Paradise P

laya Encuentro in Cabarete, Dominican Republic is a beautiful very natural resort area enjoying trendy restaurants, friendly laid back gorgeous islanders, and the best wind & surf beaches in the world.

Unfortunately, drug trafďŹ ckers and corrupt politicians, police and military go hand in hand in the Dominican Republic. The people supposedly entrusted with protecting the rule of

law and order are often the worst criminals or at least are their partners.

In Playa Encuentro a nest of rival gangs of extortionists, trafďŹ ckers and murderous thugs have bullied foreign developers and claimed their properties. A US real state investment group including local Puerto Rican capital invested millions and have encountered corrupt courts, fearful or biased police, and violence unleashed by drug gangs wanting to steal these beachfront properties from their legitimate owners.

One investor Sonny Bluesky was forced to transfer his brand new house at gunpoint, was put in the trunk of a car, and has never been seen again.

The US real state developers placed armed guards on the properties to prevent land grabbers and encountered assaults and even murder. Police refuse to investigate the obvious

culprits while the developers face a costly freeze in their investment program. The investors fear violence in their homes in New York, Conneticut and Puerto Rico based on threats from the local drug kingpin who has demanded the beachfront proper-

ty for his use and started a lobbying campaign.

Unless the central government intercedes in order to protect its foreign investment reputation, the mask is off the dark side of investing in the Dominican Republic.

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

7

Mainland 8

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

Senate Refuses to End Tax Breaks for Big Oil

By CARL HULSE

T

he Senate blocked a Democratic proposal to strip the five leading oil companies of tax breaks that backers of the measure said were unfairly padding industry profits while consumers were struggling with high gas prices.

Despite falling eight votes short of the 60 needed to move ahead with the bill, top Democrats said they would insist that eliminating the tax breaks to generate billions of dollars in revenue must be part of any future agreement to raise the federal debt limit.

“We have to stand up and say, ‘Enough is enough,’ ” said Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota. “While oil prices are gouging the pocketbooks of American families, these companies are on a pace for a record profit this year.”

The defeat on Tuesday was expected since most Republicans were dug in against what they saw as a politically motivated plan in advance of the 2012 elections. Democrats had hoped that directing the savings toward the deficit would make it harder for Republicans to reject it.

In the 52-to-48 vote, 3 Democrats joined 45 Republicans in opposing the bill,

which was supported by the Obama administration and fiscal watchdog groups that saw the tax help for the oil industry as wasteful. Forty-eight Democrats, two independents and two Republicans backed it.

Energy-state Democrats criticized the initiative, saying it was misdirected and would do nothing to ease gasoline prices and could cost American jobs.

“Why are we harming an industry — five large oil and gas companies that work internationally, that employ 9.2 million people in the United States directly?” asked Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana. “Why are we doing it?”

Republicans, who on Wednesday will push their own plan to open more areas to oil drilling and speed government permits, said the Democratic proposal would contribute to higher prices and increase dependence on foreign oil even though a recent Congressional Research Service report predicted any impact on prices would be negligible.

“Clearly, this is not a serious effort to address the price of gas at the pump,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.

Under the proposal, Democrats would

have eliminated five different tax breaks enjoyed by the multinational oil companies, producing an estimated $21 billion over 10 years.

More than $12 billion would have come from eliminating a domestic manufacturing tax deduction for the big oil companies, and $6 billion would have been generated by ending their deductions for taxes paid to foreign governments. Critics suggest that the companies have been able to disguise what should be foreign royalty payments as taxes to reduce their tax liability. The bill would also deny the companies the ability to deduct some intangible drilling and development costs.

The bill would have applied to BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.

The White House lent strong support to the effort though the president in the past has recommended applying revenue generated by ending the tax breaks to the development of alternative energy sources.

“The administration believes that, at a time when it is working with the Congress on proposals to reduce federal deficits, the nation cannot afford to maintain these wasteful subsidies,” the White House said.

Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, portrayed the vote as one that revealed the values of Republicans.

“Instead of defending oil companies, Republicans should be defending the American taxpayer,” Mr. Reid said. “We believe this is the kind of wasteful spending that will lead to an agreement on reducing the debt.”

While most Republicans have opposed eliminating the tax breaks as a back-door tax increase, some, including Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio and Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the Budget Committee chairman, have indicated a willingness to consider the idea.

Also on Tuesday, Senate Democrats wrote to the Federal Trade Commission seeking an inquiry into whether domestic oil refiners had reduced production to drive down the gasoline supply and drive up prices. “This is just another piece of the puzzle that we need to get at as we try to take away taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil and hold Big Oil accountable for whatever may be going on in the supply chain that is hurting the families that I work for,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri.

Senate Group on Debt Loses a Key Republican

By JACKIE CALMES

T

he already weak prospects for a bipartisan debt-reduction deal this year dimmed further on Tuesday when a Republican member of the Senate’s “Gang of Six,” Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, withdrew after months of private negotiations amid differences over changes to Medicare.

“He is disappointed the group has not been able to bridge the gap between what needs to happen and what senators will support,” said a Coburn spokesman, John Hart. “He has decided to take a break from the talks.”

While Mr. Hart’s statement said the talks were at “an impasse,” it left little doubt that Mr. Coburn did not expect to return.

“He still hopes the Senate will, on a bipartisan basis, pass a long-term deficit-reduction package this year,” Mr. Hart said. “He looks forward to working with anyone who is interested in putting forward a plan that is specific, balanced and comprehensive.”

The talks are separate from negotiations begun recently between the White House and Congressional leaders on reducing the debt. But the progress of the Gang of Six was seen as a harbinger of whether the two parties could come together and compromise on

spending and taxes.

Two other Republicans, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Michael D. Crapo of Idaho, for now remain in the group along with three Democrats, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the chairman of the Budget Committee; Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the assistant majority leader; and Mark Warner of Virginia, the organizer along with Mr. Chambliss, of the five-month-old effort. The five met for about four hours on Tuesday, and agreed to meet again on Wednesday.

“The group continues to meet,” said a Chambliss spokeswoman, Bronwyn Lance Chester.

Mr. Crapo, too, “continues to work toward a deal with the group and remains hopeful that a resolution can be reached,” said his spokeswoman, Susan Wheeler. “The group is facing tough issues, but it has faced tough issues before and continued to work on the issue.”

The six senators met for dinner on Monday and their discussion was described as impassioned at times after Mr. Coburn came with new demands for $130 billion in additional reductions in Medicare spending over the coming decade. The group agreed to meet all afternoon on Tuesday, but Mr. Co-

burn arrived at Mr. Warner’s office before the others and left before they arrived. Mr. Coburn has been considered by many to be the linchpin for the other Republicans as they faced pressures from the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky; the antitax activist Grover G. Norquist and various conservative groups to quit the group and not compromise with the Democrats on any plan that would raise revenues.

Yet Mr. Coburn’s involvement was always seen as fragile given his reputation as an independent thinker with little experience at compromise.

Colleagues in recent days had wondered whether he would withdraw after a report from the Senate Ethics Committee on the conduct of former Senator John Ensign of Nevada implicated Mr. Coburn, a friend of Mr. Ensign’s, for helping to arrange controversial payments to the husband of Mr. Ensign’s former mistress. One controversy was enough without inviting more by reaching a bipartisan budget deal, the thinking went.

The six senators have been trying since December to write into legislation the recommendations made that month by a majority of the members of President Obama’s bipartisan fiscal panel. The goal was a bill

that would save more than $4 trillion over 10 years, and more in the years beyond that, through a mix of caps on annual domestic and military spending, cost-saving changes to Medicare and Medicaid and an overhaul of the tax code.

That overhaul would end many tax breaks and loopholes and use the higher revenues to lower tax rates for individuals and corporations and to reduce annual deficits.

The plan would also overhaul Social Security to make it solvent for 75 years.

Mr. Coburn, along with Mr. Conrad, Mr. Durbin and Mr. Crapo, were members of the panel’s majority. After its report, they accepted the bipartisan invitation of Mr. Warner and Mr. Chambliss to try to write a bill that could be a model for bipartisan compromise between the White House and Republicans.

The Obama administration was wary of the effort, believing it started from a position too far to the right, but encouraged the show of bipartisanship. Both Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress, their eyes on the 2012 elections, were openly opposed — Democrats because they did not want to make changes to Social Security and Republicans because they did not want to raise taxes.

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

9 Mainland

Top Hispanic Name Loses Ground, Even as Birthrates Stay High

By SAM ROBERTS

N

o way, Jose!

The most popular Hispanic name for baby boys since the Social Security Administration began counting has fallen from the Top 50 list. Even in Texas, where Jose has been No. 1 among all newborns since 1996, it was bumped to second place last year by Jacob.

Because this happened when birthrates for Hispanic-Americans were among the highest of any ethnic or racial group, the rankings just might be a measure of assimilation, said Prof.

Cleveland Kent Evans, who teaches psychology at Bellevue University in Nebraska and wrote “The Great Big Book of Baby Names.”

“This is probably a combination of assimilation and the drop in immigration from Latin America as a result of the recession,” Professor Evans said. “However, it is probable that names are also becoming more varied in Latin American culture itself, as this is a phenomenon in most of the modern world.”

Jose has been in the Top 50 every year except one since 1972, though it has been declining in popularity (it ranked 28th in 2004, 43rd in 2009 and 51st in 2010). Nationwide, the most popular name for baby boys was Jacob, which has ranked first since 1999, and for girls, Isabella, which edged Emma for first place in 2009.

Two Hispanic names (Garcia

Most at Fed Want Rate Increases Before Asset Sales M ost Federal Reserve officials prefer to raise benchmark interest rates before selling assets when the time comes to tighten policy, minutes of their April meeting showed.

During an extensive discussion of how the central bank might pull back its massive support for the world’s largest eco-

nomy, officials agreed they would eventually shrink the Fed’s much expanded portfolio over the medium term, and that getting rid of mortgage-related debt would be a priority.

“A majority of participants preferred that sales of agency securities come after the first increase in the FOMC’s target for shortterm interest rates,” the Fed said, referring to the Federal Open Market Committee, its policy-making panel.

“And many of those participants also expressed a preference that the sales proceed relatively gradually,” returning Fed holdings to all Treasury securities “over perhaps five years,” the minutes said.

Discussion of the removal of monetary stimulus should not be seen as an indication the Fed is ready to start down that road any time soon, policy makers said.

and Rodriguez) made the Top 10 list of surnames in 2000 for the first time, and the popularity of Isabella this year might suggest that acculturation works both ways, changing “the nature of U.S. culture to a certain extent,” said Prof. Alberto Moreiras, head of the Department of Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University. “As it happens everywhere, name preference goes through cycles, and the name Jose has been overused over the last 20 years or so, and there are too many Joses.”

Fewer Joses were born last year,

though, (7,656 of them) than in th any year since 1978. an What are parents who in the past might have named their th sons Jose naming their sons toso day? da Not Angel, Juan, Luis, Diego or Jesus. They, too, remain among the 100 most popular am boys’ names, but collectively, bo the number of babies with those names also declined in 2010 compared with the year before. Not Fernando or Jorge, either. (Angel ranked 42nd last year compared with 37th the year before.)

Experts caution against assuming assimilation as a given. “Jonathan is a very popular name among the low-income groups in Argentina,” said Prof. Javier Auyero, a sociologist at the University of Texas, Austin.

“That doesn’t mean they are Americanized.”

10

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

What to Know When Traveling With Your Pet

By MICHELLE HIGGINS

S

UMMER vacation is no longer just for two-legged travelers. Room service menus for Fido, massages for overstressed terriers and tabbies, cushy beds for canines: many hotels have been ratcheting up the pet amenities. Best Western has even hired Cesar Millan of National Geographic Channel’s “Dog Whisperer” to be the chain’s pet travel expert.

The problem is getting your pet to the destination. In recent years, transporting pets on commercial flights has grown more complicated — and more expensive.

All major carriers have significantly raised the fees they charge for bringing pets onboard, matching, or in some cases, surpassing, the $100 surcharge each way they typically charge for children flying alone.

Fees vary depending on whether the pet flies under your seat, or as checked baggage or cargo, which involve extra handling.

American, Delta, United and Continental charge $125 each way for pets in the cabin.

United charges the most for pets traveling as checked baggage: $250 each way or $500 round trip.

Pet safety has also become a more pressing issue. Incidents of animals being lost, injured or dying have recently risen.

Thirty-nine animals died while flying aboard commercial jets in the United States last year, compared with 22 in 2009, according to the Department of Transportation. Thirteen were injured and five were lost. Delta was responsible for a significant portion of the increase, with 16 deaths and 6 injuries in 2010, compared with 3 deaths and no injuries the previous year.

While those numbers are a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of animals flown by the airlines each year, they expose the dangers that pets may face while traveling. Not that airlines don’t anticipate risks. Carriers typically will not accept pets as checked baggage or cargo when the temperature is forecast to exceed 85 degrees or fall below 20 degrees at any location on the animal’s itinerary.

Also, many airlines will not accept snubnosed pets, like bulldogs or Persian cats, as cargo since they are prone to breathing problems. Delta, for instance, which reported several bulldog fatalities last year, has changed its policy and now bans the breed from its planes.

Mixed breeds can also be turned away as Bruce Max Feldmann learned when he and his 70-pound mutt, Chicha, an American Staffordshire terrier cross, showed up at the American Airlines ticket counter for a flight from San Francisco to León, Guanajuato, Mexico, earlier this year. When he called the airline to confirm the reservation, he was told that the only requirements for his dog were that the carrier and animal meet a 100-pound weight limit and that the pet’s vaccinations be current. But the check-in agent said that not only was his dog on the list of restricted breeds, but that the pet carrier was also too big for the plane.

“I was shocked and angry,” said Mr. Feldmann, a retired veterinarian from Berkeley, Calif., who was rebooked the next day on a United flight to Los Angeles, where he transferred to an Alaska Airlines flight to Guadalajara, a three-hour drive from León. The ordeal ended up costing him an extra $978 ($528 for a last-minute, first-class ticket on Alaska, and $450 for a car from Guadalajara to Guanajuato).

American points out that it lists restricted breeds and carrier dimensions on its Web site under Traveling with Pets.

Despite such inconveniences, airlines say they are going out of their way to be pet friendly. Delta has climate-controlled holding areas for pets shipped as cargo that are connecting at its hubs in Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dallas and Salt Lake City. JetBlue has a frequent-flier program for pets

called JetPaws that allows customers to earn extra miles when flying with a pet.

And last year Frontier Airlines, in response to demand, began accepting small pets in the passenger cabin for the first time for a fee of $75 each way. Previously it had transported pets only as baggage.

If you are considering putting your pet on a plane, here are a few tips to smooth the process.

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT CARRIER Requirements vary by airlines and size of plane, so make sure you know what those requirements are before you arrive at the airport. Delta says maximum carry-on kennel dimensions are determined by your flight, so you must contact reservations to determine the appropriate size. The maximum size for cabin pet carriers on American is 19 inches long by 13 inches wide by 9 inches high.

Animals must be able to stand up, turn around and lie down in a natural position in the kennel. Sherpa Pet Group, known for its pet carriers (from $40 to $156) offers a program that guarantees that its carriers are compliant with airline rules and will refund the cost of your airline flight and your pet’s travel fee to those who sign up at Flygob.com.

BOOK EARLY Airlines limit the number of pets in the cabin, so don’t wait until the last minute to book.

PREPARE YOUR PET FOR TRAVEL Cesar Millan suggests taking the time to acclimate your pet to the carrier by placing

it on the floor of the car so the pet can feel the vibration as it will on a plane. Mr. Millan also recommends using lavender oil as an “association scent” to help the pet relax on the plane. At feeding times and before walks, place a drop of the oil on your hands and let your dog pick up the scent.

Once onboard, “the positive association will allow him to calm down and remain relaxed,” Mr. Millan explained. Finally, Mr. Millan said, take your dog for an extralong walk or run to help drain his energy before the flight. “The more tired he is,” Mr. Millan said, “the more likely he will be to sleep and relax during the flight.”

CHECK OUT PET AIRWAYS Based in Delray Beach, Fla., Pet Airways began offering pet-only flights in 2009 and currently serves nine destinations across the United States, including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Fort Lauderdale. The airline recently announced plans to fly to Orlando, Fla.; St. Louis; Houston; Austin, Tex.; and Dallas this summer. Pets fly in a climate-controlled passenger cabin, outfitted with individual crates instead of seats, where a flight attendant checks on the animals every 15 minutes. Fares begin at $99 each way from New York to Baltimore, $199 from New York to Chicago and $249 from New York to Fort Lauderdale. After landing, pets are given a potty break, and can be picked up by their owners at the airline’s Pet Lounge at the airport.

GIVE YOUR PET ITS OWN VACATION There are a growing number of kennels (including some near airports) with upscale pet amenities from bone-shaped wading pools to pet cams so that owners can log onto the Web and catch a glimpse of their cat or dog at play. Best Friends Pet Care Inc., a chain of 42 boarding centers in 19 states across the country, offers tiered accommodations from standard rooms (about $30 a night for dogs and $19 for cats) to V.I.P. suites ($60 to $70) complete with flat-screen TVs, webcams and a roster of add-ons like chewy treats for dogs ($2), cookies and milk for cats ($4) or cuddling ($8 for 10 minutes). Similarly, PetSmart, the pet-store chain, offers PetsHotels, equipped with Poochy Cots, TVs tuned to animal shows and special ventilation systems so the dogs and cats don’t smell one another. The average boarding rate is about $30 a night for dogs and $17 a night for cats.

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

11

36 Hours in San Francisco

By JESSE McKINLEY

S

AN FRANCISCO typically wows visitors with its heights or its sights. The hills sear themselves into memory after a few up-and-down-and-up-again cable car rides or punishing walks. Then there are the vistas: the sweeping views of the city, the postcard-ready Victorians below Alamo Square Park. But surrounding all of that is the waterfront: miles of Pacific Ocean coastline and the expansive natural harbor of San Francisco Bay. Once a working industrial area with pockets of outright blight, much of the city’s waterfront has been polished into another of its pleasures. Start exploring in the east, south of the Bay Bridge, and loop your way west to the Golden Gate and then south to Ocean Beach. In one weekend romp, you’ll join San Franciscans in many of the places they love best — and see what remains of their city’s maritime heart.

Friday 4 p.m.

1) A RIDE ALONG THE WATER China Basin, south of the Bay Bridge, is home to an entirely new neighborhood since big changes began around 2000. The University of California, San Francisco, has developed its Mission Bay Campus, adding handsome new buildings and public art, including two soaring steel towers by Richard Serra, a San Francisco native. And the opening of AT&T Park, the baseball field that’s home to the San Francisco Giants, World Series champs, brought new energy and new monuments, including tributes to greats like Willie Mays and Willie McCovey. Rent a bike at the Bike Hut, a nonprofit outlet at Pier 40 (415-543-4335; thebikehut.org), and

pedal the wide promenade along the water; there are also kayak rentals at City Kayak (800-725-0790; citykayak.com).

5:30 p.m.

2) EMBARCADERO IMBIBING Once home to a raised freeway — demolished after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake — and long before that a busy wharf area, the Embarcadero is now one of San Francisco’s most inviting Friday-night spots.

Two inviting places for a drink are Waterbar (399 Embarcadero; 415-284-9922; waterbarsf. com) and Epic Roasthouse (369 Embarcadero; 415-369-9955; epicroasthouse.com). Views of the Bay Bridge are unbeatable at either, but oysters at Waterbar ($1 before 6 p.m.) can really set the mood.

8 p.m.

3) BOAT TO A BISTRO Forbes Island (off Pier 39; 415-951-4900; forbesisland.com) is not an island, but it is an experience. Created from a 700-ton houseboat, it’s a floating restaurant with an underwater dining room (with portholes), a 40-foot lighthouse and an outdoor bar within barking distance of sea lions. Its creator and owner, Forbes Thor Kiddoo, pilots the pontoon boat that brings patrons from a nearby pier. The seafood chowder ($10) is briny and delicious, as is an assortment of turf (including steak in a Cognac cream sauce, $29) and surf (organic salmon, $34). Don’t miss the 360-degree view from the top of the lighthouse; it may be the best — and the most unusual — vantage point in the city.

Saturday 9 a.m.

4) OUTDOOR WORKOUT Yearning for a Saturday morning wor-

kout? Go for a run at Crissy Field, once a waterfront airfield and now San Francisco’s de facto outdoor gym, with joggers, walkers and cyclists cruising its paths. Activities run from the quirky (crabbing classes at the Civil War-era Fort Point, under the Golden Gate Bridge, 415-556-1693) to the caffeinated (outdoor coffee at the Beach Hut Cafe, 1199 East Beach; 415-561-7761). But the bounciest option is the House of Air (926 Mason Street; 415-345-9675; houseofairsf.com), a trampoline center in one of the repurposed buildings on the main Presidio post. Flanked by a kids’ swimming school and an indoor climbing center, the House of Air also features a dodge-ball court, a training center and an oldfashioned bouncy castle for tots.

Noon 5) CHOW TIME Dining at the Presidio has come a long

way since the days of reveille at dawn. Several restaurants now dot the northeastern corner, where much of the Presidio’s development has taken place since it was transferred to the National Park Service in the mid1990s. One spot that retains the old military feel is the Presidio Social Club (563 Ruger Street; 415-885-1888; presidiosocialclub.com).

As unpretentious as an Army grunt, the club offers old-time drinks (the rye-heavy Sazerac, $10, dates back to 1840) and a pleasantly affordable brunch (most items $10 to $15). A dessert of beignets with hot cocoa ($7) can fuel you up for your next offensive.

2 p.m.

6) UNION STREET STROLL Detour to Union Street, long a shoppers’ favorite for its locally owned boutiques and home furnishings stores. The owner of

Continues on page 12

12

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

Comes from page 11 Chloe Rose (1824 Union Street; 415-932-6089; chloeroseboutique.com), who lives upstairs, has a keen eye for silk dresses and gold jewelry. Nearby are Sprout San Francisco (1828 Union Street; 415-359-9205; sproutsanfrancisco.com), a children’s store with locally manufactured, and recycled, plastic toys, and more women’s wear at Ambiance (1864 and 1858 Union Street; 415-923-9797; ambiancesf.com) and Marmalade (2059 Union Street; 415-673-9544; marmaladesf.com). The San Francisco Surf Company (2181 Union Street; 415-440-7873; sfsurfcompany.com), run by a local wave rider, stocks surf wax candles and all sorts of aquatic accouterments.

4 p.m.

7) NATURE AND ART Take a walk through the hills and woods on the Pacific coast side of the Presidio, where miles of hiking trails lead to scenic overlooks (www.presidio.gov/experiences/trails). The Presidio doesn’t need much help being beautiful, but that hasn’t stopped artists who have placed installations and sculptures on the grounds. One is Andy Goldsworthy, the British environmental sculptor, whose ephemeral pieces in the park include Spire — a soaring wooden spike — and Wood Line, a forest-floor S made of eucalyptus. There’s also an ongoing exhibit called Presidio Habitats, which features an eclectic collection of site-based outdoor art. A map is available at www.presidio.gov/experiences/habitats, as well as at the exhibition’s pavilion in the park.

8 p.m.

8) DINNER AT THE EDGE The Cliff House (1090 Point Lobos; 415-386-3330; cliffhouse.com) has been a San Francisco institution since the Civil War. Still perched on the same overlook, facing the Seal Rocks and the crashing waves below, the Cliff House underwent a major renovation in 2004. The result was a vastly

improved dining experience on two levels, each with commanding Pacific views. The Bistro upstairs serves entrees and cocktails under the watchful eyes of celebrity headshots (Judy Garland, for one, in an autographed glamour shot, sending her “best wishes”). Downstairs is the higher-end Sutro’s, where specialties include a two-crab sandwich ($29) or grilled scallops ($27). Try a Ramos fizz ($5), a gin cocktail — and purported hangover cure — made with egg whites, half-and-half and orange juice.

10:30 p.m.

9) BEACH BONFIRE Few things say California more than beach bonfires, a proud tradition up and down the coast. In San Francisco, free spirits still flock to Ocean Beach, the wide sand expanse below the Cliff House where Burning Man, the now Nevada-based arts fest, was born. While the wind can be biting, the mood there is usually warm as groups congregate with guitars and good vibes. Take a blanket and a pullover and watch the stars, surf and sparks collide.

Sunday 9 a.m.

10) SUNRISE IN THE SUNSET Long the province of sleepy, almost suburban San Franciscans, the Sunset district, in the city’s southwestern corner, has become home to boutiques, cafes and arts spaces. For used boards and other surfing paraphernalia, there’s Mollusk Surf Shop (4500 Irving street, 415-564-6300; mollusksurfshop.com); the General Store (4035 Judah Street, 415-682-0600; visitgeneralstore. com), which stocks everything from jeans to slingshots; and the Woodshop (3725 Noriega Street, woodshopsf.com), a collective of four artisans whose works range from customized chairs to hand-painted signs.

The group, friendly and usually bearded, says their workspace is by appointment only, but most of the time, a knock on the door will do.

Noon 11) OTHER SIDE OF THE PARK

The western edge of Golden Gate Park, facing Ocean Beach, has a Rodney Dangerfield feel, less known and appreciated than the park’s cityside flanks. But its offerings are impressive, including a cheap and public nine-hole golf course, a bison enclave and serene fly-fishing ponds. A good place to convene for any park adventure is the Park Chalet (1000 Great Highway; 415-386-8439; parkchalet.com). Here, just off Ocean Beach, kids run free and parents enjoy a brunch buffet that advertises “bottomless champagne”($25).

IF YOU GO The Embarcadero has a cluster of nice lodgings, just south of the Ferry Building,

including the boutique-style Hotel Griffon (155 Steuart Street, 415-495-2100; hotelgriffon.com), from $209, and the sleeker Hotel Vitale (8 Mission Street; 415-278-3700; hotelvitale.com), from $279. And the Harbor Court (165 Steuart Street; 415-882-1300; harborcourthotel.com) blends style with a touch of luxury (and killer views of the bay); rates from $186.

The Marina District and Fisherman’s Wharf are also well stocked with basic hotels and motels, but the Union Street Inn (2229 Union Street, 415-346-0424, unionstreetinn.com) offers individualized rooms, from $199, and is nicely quiet in an area often teeming with tourists, and after-work and post-college revelers.

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

13

14

May 26 - June 1, 2011

The San Juan Weeekly

LETTERS Un-Christian Death in a Premier Hospital My father died a few months ago in one of San Juan’s premier hospitals.

I have struggled with whether or not I should share publicly what turned out to be an unnecessarily painful, incredibly traumatic and decidedly UN- Christian death in a Hospital whose purported mission is “…To provide quality health services and excellence… in the broader ethical, moral and Christian legacy bequeathed to us by our founders.” It was also in direct violation of Puerto Rican law # 160 enacted November 17, 2001: “Ley de Declaración previa de voluntad sobre tratamiento médico en caso de sufrir una condición de salud terminal o de estado vegetativo persistente.”

I am uniquely qualified to make this assessment having grown up on the island but then educated in the United States, including medical school, as well as subsequent training in three different specialties. I also coordinated from afar, with a great deal of frustration, my father’s medical care in Puerto Rico which grew increasingly complex as he aged.

I knew this last time when I saw him he would most likely die. Never once, in those first few moments when I realized the magnitude of this final illness, did I envision the slow, painful, medically harrowing process he would subsequently endure; prolonged not by the disease which took his life but by the artificial support insisted on by his physicians, contrary to my father’s express wishes and the medical futility of his condition. And only now do I realize, months later, after researching health care law in Puerto Rico, how different my father’s death could have been and how much suffering would have been spared.

I did not realize how difficult, impossible in fact, it would be to “withdraw support”; a concept widely understood and implemented in the United States when a patient has reached the point where our medical interventions are no longer helping but are instead prolonging the patient’s inevitable death.

These interventions are not benign; they are painful, invasive, traumatic for families to witness, futile and expensive.

My father, before he was too sick to participate in decision making, wrote very clearly on the pad of paper we held for him, “tube out, go home”. He knew this meant he would die and he most certainly wanted to exit this world surrounded by his family’s love and perhaps with the opportunity to say goodbye. Why could we not honor his final wish? “Oh no, if we take the endotracheal tube out, he will die, we cannot do this.” “We don’t do this in Puerto Rico.” Why not I ask! He will die anyway; why not help him navigate these final waters with respect, dignity and compassion. Later I would hear from others, “Oh you can’t

ever let them put the tube in!” Too late of course…but what if it had been reversible, like his two previous episodes?

But it was not, and that was crystal clear. So why could we not remove that cursed tube and let my father die as he had wished. Over and over I was told once a medical intervention began it could not be stopped, regardless of its effectiveness. “That is just the way it is done.”

Instead my father died seven days later, a slave to his ventilator and pacemaker, under medicated and in pain, almost unrecognizable from all the interventions, fluids and nutrition he received, all administered “in his best interest.” We were at his side but only through a heroic effort and special dispensation bestowed upon our family because of who my father was.

This is wrong.

I remain haunted by his final days and have replayed the scenario many times, thinking how could I have made it different. But I could not help him and this makes my grief nearly unbearable.

I know my elderly mother is terrified the same fate awaits her. Can I promise her it won’t? No, unless she moves away. And this is an unreasonable though ultimately necessary step my family will need to take.

My perspective is not unique. I leave you with the abstract from an article published over ten years ago in the Puerto Rico Medical Association’s bulletin

by Rivera J Ramirez MD and colleagues from the Department of Medicine, Ramón Ruiz Arnau Hospital, Center for Biomedical Humanities, Universidad Central del Caribe.

The withholding and withdrawal of medical treatment: moral principles and the law.

Abstract In most hospitals in Puerto Rico the dying process of terminally ill patients is inappropriately prolonged.

And this occurs often without the patient’s consent and in violation of basic ethical principles. Three erroneous beliefs are prevalent: 1--That withdrawing life support therapy is morally or legally different from not starting it. 2--That there is a moral and legal difference between appropriate acts and appropriate omissions. 3--That good medical practice is determined by the courts instead of the medical profession. Institutional policies are not in harmony with contemporary medical ethics. To avoid possible legal entanglements medical institutions permit their faculties to prolong the suffering of patients in violation of two basic moral principles: nonmaleficence and respect for autonomy.

An illustrative case provides a philosopher and a moral theologian the opportunity to analyze the applicable moral principles. A professor of jurisprudence reviews statutes evolved at the State and Federal level that support the rights of patients and their families to refuse unwanted treatments. Medical faculties must ensure that institutional policies do not violate their

professional ethics. The medical profession and the citizenry at large should lobby for the passage of statutes in Puerto Rico which clearly validate the necessary harmony between medical ethics and the law.

Victoria San Juan MD, Seattle, WA

Bicycles Deserve Their Own Path It appears that currently the use of bicycles and motorcycles on our streets and roads is much less than it should be, considering the enormous increase in automobile traffic which we have witnessed in the last few years.

This has been a blessing not only to car drivers who day to day have to face the antics of the cyclist who, I am sure would prefer to travel at a faster pace, but also for the cyclist who valiantly have to share the road not only with cars, but also with trucks, trailers and buses.

Clearly, the sharing of a road or highway by such different types of vehicles as bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, cars, trucks and trailers is incongruous and should not have to be, for the sake of safety and well being. In spite of this fact, very seldom do we ever hear of any legislator trying to endorse project to grant bicycles and motorcycles their own roads to improve traffic.

Fortunately, now we are at a time that possibly our government will have some suplus money of the construction of the risky “tube of death” is abandoned. This money could then be put to a better use by constructing open roads for bicycles and motorcycles. It sounds too easy though, beacause in our dear P.R. things are never that easy. Speak to your legislator. Let’s see what happens.

Gilberto Oliver Campos, Guaynabo

The San Juan Weekly Send your opinions and ideas to: The San Juan Weeekly PO BOX 6537 Caguas PR 00726 Or e-mail us at:

sanjuanweeklypr@gmail.com Telephones: (787) 743-3346 · (787) 743-6537 (787) 743-5606 · Fax (787) 743-5500

San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

15

FASHION & BEAUTY

Cannes International Film Festival

T

he Cannes Film Festival is the world’s most prestigious film festival, looming over all others, a privileged moment for celebrating past glories and great expectations. Established in 1946, it takes place each May at Cannes, a town along the French Riviera.

Every year Cannes appears, alluring and forbidding, a haunted palace that knows better than to open wide its doors, become democratic or user-friendly -- leave that to the North Americans. The competition choices obey a certain logic: the festival is faithful to those who have triumphed and those who have suffered.

The Marché du Film, where meetings, negotiations and deals take place in parallel to the Festival de Cannes, draws more than 10,000 buyers and sellers from around the world, according to the festival’s organizers.

Kitchen

16

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

By MARTHA ROSE SHULMAN

T

his is inspired by both the classic Greek soup avgolemono and Scottish cockaleekee. Start with a flavorful chicken or turkey broth, simmer leeks and rice or bulgur in the soup until tender, then enrich with

eggs and lemon. The trick here is to begin with a flavorful stock and not to allow the eggs to curdle when you combine the soup and the avgolemono sauce. You can make a vegetarian version of this using a garlic broth or by making a robust vegetable stock using the dark leafy parts of the leeks.

Chicken Soup With Leeks and Lemon 2 quarts chicken or turkey stock, preferably homemade 1 pound leeks, white and light green parts only, cleaned and sliced thin 2/3 cup rice or coarse bulgur (to taste) 4 large eggs, at room temperature Fresh juice of 2 lemons, strained, or about 6 to 8 tablespoons, to taste Salt to taste Freshly ground pepper Chopped fresh parsley or dill for garnish 1. Combine the stock and leeks, bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer 20 minutes. Add the rice or bulgur, and continue to simmer until the grain is cooked through, 15 to 30 minutes. Taste and adjust salt.

2. Beat together the eggs and lemon juice

until frothy in a medium bowl.

3. Just before serving, making sure that the broth isn’t boiling, gradually add 2 cups to the egg and lemon mixture while beating vigorously with a whisk to prevent the eggs from curdling. Turn off the heat under the soup, pour the egglemon mixture into the soup, stir well and serve, adding a bit of pepper to each bowl and garnishing with chopped fresh parsley or dill.

Yield: Serves six.

Advance preparation: You can make this soup through Step 1 several hours before serving, but the grain will continue to absorb liquid; if you do make it ahead, use 1/2 cup instead of 2/3 cup.

Nutritional information per serving: 193 calories; 1 gram saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 124 milligrams cholesterol; 31 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams dietary fiber; 110 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 10 grams protein

Roasted Leeks and Potatoes Vinaigrette

By MARTHA ROSE SHULMAN

I

prefer using tiny whole potatoes for this elegant potato and leek salad if I can find them. Firm red potatoes or fingerlings are good alternatives.

1 1/4 to 1 1/2 pounds (2 large) leeks, white and light green part only, cut in half lengthwise, cleaned and cut in 1 1/2-inch lengths 1 pound red potatoes or fingerlings, washed and cut in 1-inch dice, or very small potatoes left whole 1/2 cup dry white wine Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil 1 tablespoon Champagne vinegar or sherry vinegar (more to taste) 1 tablespoon lemon juice (more to taste) 1 to 2 hard-boiled eggs (to taste) 1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Combine the leeks and potatoes in a baking dish large enough for them to fit in a single layer. Toss with the white wine, salt, pepper and 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Cover the baking dish tightly, and place in the oven. Roast for 30 minutes. Uncover, raise the heat to 450 degrees, and return to the oven for another 10 to 15 minutes until the leeks and potatoes are tender but not mushy and just beginning to color. Remove from the heat, and add the remaining olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice and additional salt and pepper if desired. Toss together and allow to cool.

2. Put the hard-boiled eggs through a sieve, and season with salt and pepper. Arrange over the leeks and potatoes (I like to arrange the sieved egg in a wide stripe down the middle), sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Yield: Serves four.

Advance preparation: You can

make this several hours ahead of mealtime and serve at room temperature.

Nutritional information per serving: 332 calories; 2 grams saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 10

grams monounsaturated fat; 47 milligrams cholesterol; 41 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 55 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 6 grams protein

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

17

Kitchen

Fregola With Artichokes, Feta, Toasted Almonds and Herbs Time: 45 minutes 1 lemon, juiced 3 medium artichokes (about 1 1/2 pounds) 1/3 cup slivered almonds 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 tablespoon plus 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt 3 garlic cloves, crushed and peeled 1/8 teaspoon red pepper akes 1 1/4 cup fregola or Israeli couscous 3 tablespoons chopped fresh mint 3 tablespoons chopped fresh dill 1/4 teaspoon black pepper 1 cup crumbled feta cheese (4 ounces).

1. Put lemon juice and artichokes into a bowl of water.

Discard the outer leaves of each artichoke. As you do so, and as you continue cleaning the artichokes, dip them into the lemon water. Trim away the dark skin from the base, and the bottom of the stem.

Slice off the top third of each artichoke. Slice the artichokes in half lengthwise. Using a teaspoon or grapefruit spoon, scoop out the hairy chokes inside, pulling out any purple leaves. Cut the artichokes into 1/2-inch-wide pieces.

2. Put the almonds in a saucepan over medium heat.

Toss occasionally until golden.

Transfer to a bowl.

3. Add 6 cups water to

the saucepan with 1/4 cup oil, 1 tablespoon salt, the garlic and red pepper akes. Bring mixture to a boil. Add the artichokes; lower the heat, cover, and simmer until tender, 5 to 7 minutes. Remove artichokes with a slotted spoon to a large bowl.

4. Bring the cooking water to a boil, add the fregola or couscous, lower heat and simmer until tender, 8 to 12 minutes; drain. Add the fregola or couscous, almonds, mint, dill, 1/4 teaspoon salt and the pepper to the bowl of artichokes.

Sprinkle with cheese and drizzle with 2 tablespoons oil.

Toss gently.

Yield: 6 servings.

18

May 26- June 1, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

For Argentines a Saint / For the World a Legend E

va Perón was the second wife and political partner of President Juan Perón (1895–1974) of Argentina.

An important political figure in her own right, she was known for her campaign for female suffrage (the right to vote), her support of organized labor groups, and her organization of a vast social welfare program that benefited and gained the support of the lower classes.

Early Years The youngest of five children of Juan Duarte and Juana Ibarguren, María Eva Duarte was born on May 7, 1919, in the little village of Los Toldos in Buenos Aires province, Argentina. Following the death of her father, the family moved to the larger nearby town of Junín, where her mother ran a boarding house.

At the age of sixteen, Evita, as she was often called, left high school after two years and went to Buenos Aires with the dream of becoming an actress. Lacking any training in the theater, she obtained a few small parts in motion pictures and on the radio. She was finally employed on a regular basis with one of the largest radio stations in Buenos Aires making 150 pesos every month. Her pay had increased to five thousand pesos every month by 1943 and jumped to thirty-five thousand pesos per month in 1944.

Partners With Perón In 1943 Eva met Colonel Juan Perón, who had assumed the post of secretary of labor and social welfare in the military government that had recently come to power. Eva developed a close relationship with the widowed Perón, who was beginning to organize the Argentine workers in support of his own bid for the presidency. Becoming Perón’s loyal political confidante (one with whom secrets are trusted) and partner, she helped him increase his support among the masses. In October 1945, after Perón was arrested and put in prison by a group of military men who did not support him, she helped to organize a mass demonstration that led to his release. A few days later, on October 21, 1945, Eva and Juan Perón were married.

Now politically stronger than ever, Perón became the government candidate in the February 1946 presidential election. Señora de Perón participated

actively in the campaign, something no Argentine woman had ever done. She directed her appeal to the less privileged groups of Argentine society, whom she labeled “los descamisados” (the shirtless ones).

Influence in political affairs Following Perón’s election, Eva began to play an increasingly important role in the political affairs of the nation. During the early months of the Perón administration she launched an active campaign for national women’s n’s suffrage, which had been one of Perón’s n’s campaign promises. Due largely to her er efforts, suffrage for women became law w in 1947, and in 1951 women voted for or the first time in a national election.

Eva also assumed the task of gatheering the support of the working classes es and controlling organized labor groups. s.

Taking over a suite of offices in the Se-cretariate of Labor, Perón’s former cen-ter of power, she used her influence to o hire and fire ministers and top officials of the General Confederation of Labor, the chief labor organization in Argentina. Although not given the official title, she acted as the secretary of labor, supporting workers’ demands for higher wages and backing a number of social welfare measures.

Helped the lower classes Because Eva came from a lower-class background, she identi-

fied with the members of the working classes and was strongly committed to improving their lives. She devoted several hours every day to meeting with poor people and visiting hospitals, orphanages, and factories. She also supervised the newly created Ministry of Health, which built many new hospitals and established a successful program to fight different diseases.

A large part of Eva’s work with the poor was carried out by the María Eva Duarte de Perón Welfare Foundation, established in June 1947. Its funds came from contributions, often obtained with force, from trade unions, businesses, and industrial firms. The foundation grew into an enormous semiofficial welfare agency that distributed food, clothing, medicine, and money to needy people throughout Argentina and on occasion to those suffering from disasters in other Latin American countries.

Enjoying great popularity among the descamisados, Eva Perón helped greatly in maintaining the loyalty of the masses to the Perón administration. On the other hand, her program of social welfare and her campaign for female suffrage led to considerable opposition among the gente bien (upper class), to whom Eva was unacceptable because of her humble background and earlier activities. Eva was driven by the desire

to master those members of the government that had rejected her, and she could be cruel and spiteful with her enemies.

Death And Place in History In June 1951 it was announced that Eva would be the vice presidential candidate on the reelection ticket with Perón in the upcoming national election.

Eva’s candidacy was strongly supported by the General Confederation of Labor, but opposition within the military and her own failing health caused her to decline the nomination. Already suffering from cancer, Eva died on July 26, 1952, at the age of thirty-two. After Eva’s death, which produced a huge display of public grief, Perón’s political fortunes began to decline. He was finally removed from office by a military takeover in September 1955.

Eva Perón’s friends and enemies agreed that she was a woman of great personal charm. Her supporters have elevated her to popular sainthood as the champion of the lower classes. The favorable portrayal of her in the play Evita, first staged in 1978, and in the 1997 film of the same name, brought Eva to the forefront of the American public. By a large part of the officer corps of the military, however, she is greatly despised.

There is still considerable difference of opinion regarding her true role in the Perón administration and her true place in Argentine history.

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

19

The Unreality of Being a Celebrity

By CARINA CHOCANO B

S

omeday, someone will write a definitive phenomenological study of what it’s like now to be famous, although a simple infographic would probably just about cover it. “This Is Your Consciousness on Fame” would be the heading, just above arrows representing a positive feedback loop and captions reading: “Noncelebrities become convinced that celebrity dwells on a different plane of existence . . . which increases the magnitude of unreality, solipsism and alienation already being experienced by celebrity; celebrity succumbs to exponentially alienated and surreal view of reality and with behavior to match . . . which further increases the fascination exerted on noncelebrities; celebrity builds permanent residence on a different plane of existence, applies for passport.”

Granted, it’s possible that such philosophical investigations of experience are being written all the time, just not quite so concisely or abstractly, in soul-searching celebrity memoirs that strain to make sense of it all. Shirley MacLaine’s “I’m Over All That” and Rob Lowe’s “Stories I Only Tell My Friends” are both written in a chatty, intimate style, treating the rea-

der lik like a friend and confidant while at the same time making it clear that rea the reader can never really hope to understa what the celebrity life is like. derstand Both sstars look back nostalgically but also u uneasily on eras gone by. And both devote considerable space to trying to locate their true selves and m the meaning of it all.

Intentionally or not, each memoir offers its own meta-theory of mod modern-day celebrity by illustrating e its effects on its author. Lowe affably spil the beans without letting them spills spla splatter everywhere. But MacLaine ten tensely negotiates a sometimes tricky line between candor and total dis disinhibition, and occasionally the tal fall apart and the United Natalks tio has to be called in. tions “I’m Over All That,” which pu pushes MacLaine’s literary output fu further into the double digits, is subtitl subtitled “And Other Confessions,” d in i fact it does come across as a and jumble of uncensored blurts, some charmingly personal and unguarded, some worrying. The title refers to the things that preoccupied her earlier in life — she’s 77 now — but no longer do. The scope of MacLaine’s subjects is limited by neither time nor space nor literary convention. Her book jumps around among anecdotes about her long and eventful life and career; her past lives and past careers (movie star, author, harem girl in the home of a Turkish pasha, Muslim Gypsy girl living among Coptic Christians in the hills of Spain); her many encounters with heads of state, movie legends, shamans and chieftains, the Dalai Lama and other notables; and all manner of lively opinions on politics, Western medicine and the salesclerks at RadioShack. Given a platform, MacLaine will not hesitate to use it to dive off the deep end.

She writes from a place of hardwon, cranky entitlement, blithely strewing her path with observations while taking swipes at power brokers through the ages. Among the namechecked are George W. Bush (she claims his policies gave her asthma), the director Herb Ross (he was mean to Julia Roberts and Dolly Parton) and the Empress Theodora of Byzan-

tium (who MacLaine says arranged an ecumenical council in 553 A.D. to eradicate “the understanding of soul reembodiment in the Gospels”). Taken together, MacLaine’s chapters form an interesting collage — equal parts wistful thoughts, political rants, New Age musings and you-kids-get-off-mylawn crankiness. (She is completely over “Young People Who Are Rude.”)

“One thing about being a movie star,” MacLaine writes, “is that most people want to meet you,” and indeed there’s a remarkable “Zelig”-like quality to her life as she recounts it. She has been on the receiving end of saucy comments by Nikita Khrushchev, communed about the existence of U.F.O.’s with President Carlos Menem of Argentina, and had a love affair with Prime Minister Olof Palme of Sweden. In a chapter titled “I Am Over Fear Taught in the Name of Religion,” she learns to refrain from killing flies because they could be your grandmother — which of course everybody already knows — but she learns it directly from the great Indian statesman Jawaharlal Nehru, who once sat next to her on a plane. Shortly afterward, she contracted a parasite that might have been cholera, or perhaps a distant cousin on her father’s side, but the prime minister was not at hand to ponder the past-life origins of the inhe testinal bug, and she killed it with the heat of her own “inner sun.” ly Rob Lowe’s “Stories I Only ks Tell My Friends,” by contrast, sticks is mostly to the 1970s and ’80s and this re mortal coil, though he does share s. some of MacLaine’s preoccupations. d Lowe writes a cohesive, lively and engaging narrative that, despite oc-casional evasive maneuvering at cri-tical junctures, captures a particularr time in a surprisingly evocative way.

He recounts his childhood in Ohio; his parents’ divorce; his mother’s subsequent marriages, divorces and emotional troubles; and his unlikely origins as a musical theater nerd. The memoir gains steam when Lowe’s mother (a New Age seeker herself, who come to think of it would have gotten on like a house on fire with MacLaine) follows her third husband-to-be to

a “spartan” Malibu, taking her sons with her. There Lowe encounters a strange, enchanted world with a sinister undertow, as well as an entrée into the world of film.

“Stories I Only Tell My Friends” is full of fascinating chance encounters and accidents of timing, from the friendships Lowe forms with two pairs of brothers he sees making a movie in the Mayfair Market parking lot (they turn out to be Penns and Sheens) to the fact that at the point he started acting, most roles for young people involved playing the children of the stars. Lowe went from awkward outsider to figure at the center of a seismic shift in the culture. His observations on the predictable effects of this are often lucid, as is his perspective on this period of his life.

“There was a price to be paid for a culture that idealizes the relentless pursuit of ‘self,’ ” he writes of the world of his youth. “Malibu was a wellspring of counterculture group think. To be counter to the culture, you are by definition willfully and actively ignoring the culture, i.e., reality.” He could almost be responding to his fellow memoirist, who long ago “decided to explore the theater of inner truth,” and who, no matter where she went, as she writes, “was always looking for myself.”

HEALTH & SCIENCE

20

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

Chemical Suspected in Cancer Is in Baby Products

By ANDREW MARTIN

M

ore than 30 years after chemical flame retardants were removed from children’s pajamas because they were suspected of being carcinogens, new research into flame retardants shows that one of the chemicals is prevalent in baby’s products made with polyurethane foam, including nursing pillows, car seats and highchairs.

The research does not determine if children absorbed the chemical, chlorinated Tris, from the products. But in an article to be published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, the researchers suggest that infants who use the products have higher exposure to the chemical than the government recommends.

Earlier research by one of the article’s authors, Arlene Blum, a biophysical chemist, contributed to the elimination of Tris flame retardants, including chlorinated Tris, in children’s pajamas in the 1970s. Although the chemical was not banned at that time, the

Consumer Product Safety Commission now says that it “may pose a significant health risk to consumers.”

The new research found that foam samples from more than a third of the 101 baby products that were tested contained chlorinated Tris. Over all, 80 of the products contained chemical flame retardants of some kind, some of which are considered toxic, though legal to use. In one instance, flame retardants represented 12 percent of the weight of the foam in a changing pad; most products were closer to 3 to 5 percent.

Among the products examined were changing table pads, sleep positioners, portable mattresses, baby carriers, rocking chairs and highchairs.

Fourteen of the products contained the flame retardant TCEP, which the State of California describes as a cancer-causing agent.

Four of them contained Penta-BDE, a flame retardant that builds up in human tissue and that manufacturers voluntarily phased out in 2004; it is banned in many countries, but not

0 PRONTO INTERES

PREGUNTE

POR NUESTRO PLAN DE

LAY-AWAY † Mattress de Muelles manufacturados por Tech Product. * Financiamiento a través de GE Money Bank. Sujeto a aprobación de crédito, compra mínima de $499.00. Se requiere pago mínimo mensual. Si el balance de su compra no se paga en su totalidad dentro del periodo indicado en la oferta o si se hace un pago tardío, los intereses se cargarán a su cuenta desde la fecha de compra, el A.P.R. será de 29.99%. ** Sujeto a disponibilidad de modelo comprado. Garantía de entrega sólo de martes a sábado. Especiales no aplican con otras ofertas. Horario de lunes a sábado de 9:00 am a 6:00 pm. PLAZA ESCORIAL HORARIO EXTENDIDO (7:00 PM). Abierto domingo de 11:00 am a 4:00 pm solamente en Plaza Escorial y Puerto Nuevo. Oferta válida hasta el 31 de mayo de 2011.

†

the United States, and in some states, including New York.

“Why do you need fire retardant in a nursing pillow?” said Dr. Blum, who is the executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute, a nonprofit organization that brings scientific data about toxic chemicals to policy makers.

“The whole issue is, they are toxic chemicals that are in our homes at high levels; and right now, people don’t know much about it,” she said.

Asked about the new research, the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, an industry trade group, said all nursery products sold in the United States conform to “tough federal safety standards.”

“Not only do these safety standards contain flammability requirements, they also restrict the use of substances that are harmful or toxic and to which children might be exposed,” the association said in a statement.

The association also noted that chlorinated Tris was not banned by the government, but rather a related compound, brominated Tris, also found in the pajamas decades ago. “This study does not support allegations that the banned retardant Tris is in use,” the association said.

Gordon L. Nelson, a chemistry professor at Florida Institute of Technology, said the new research was interesting but hardly proof that the flame retardants were doing harm.

He noted that some children’s products that use foams have plastic covers around them, which would prevent flame retardants from leaching out.

“The question is, in actual use, does the flame retardant come out?” Dr. Nelson said.

He says he has done research on fire safety for decades and occasionally accepts research money or consulting fees from the industry.

In addition, Dr. Nelson maintained that fire retardants have vastly reduced the number of fire deaths caused by upholstered furniture, a point that critics of the chemicals dispute.

The new research is being released amid a broader, and often bitter, debate about flame retardants and a California flammability rule that has become the de facto national standard.

The California standard, passed in 1975, requires that polyurethane foam in

upholstered furniture be able to withstand an open flame for 12 seconds without catching fire. Because there is no other state or federal standard, many manufacturers comply with the California rule, usually by adding flame retardants with the foam, Dr. Blum said.

Last year, California exempted strollers, nursing pillows and baby carriers from the flammability standard. Dr. Blum characterized the exemption as a positive step, though she noted that many other baby products were not exempted and it was not yet clear if manufacturers had stopped using flame retardants in those products.

Dr. Blum is among a group of academics and environmentalists who argue that the California standard exposes people and their pets to toxic chemicals. The flame retardants can migrate from furniture to household dust, and can be ingested by people and pets.

Some of the chemicals used in flame retardants are suspected carcinogens, and studies have linked the chemicals to variety of health issues, including problems with fertility and neurological development, the authors of Wednesday’s journal article said.

Heather M. Stapleton, an assistant professor of environmental chemistry at Duke University and the lead author, complained that current federal oversight of chemicals is so weak that manufacturers are not required to label products with flame retardants nor are they required to list what chemicals are used.

Under current law, it is difficult for the federal Environmental Protection Agency to ban or restrict chemicals. Even now, the agency has yet to ban asbestos, widely known to cause cancer and other lung diseases.

“We can buy things that are BPA free, or phthalate free or lead free. We don’t have the choice to buy things that are flame-retardant free,” Dr. Stapleton said. “The laws protect the chemical industry, not the general public.”

In a statement, the American Chemistry Council, which represents manufacturers of flame retardants, said the products are “well studied and provide important safety benefits.”

“This study attempts to examine the existence of certain flame retardants in a small sampling of children’s products,” the council said, in a statement. “It does not address exposure or risk.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has been working on a federal flammability standard for upholstered furniture for 16 years. The current proposal would allow manufacturers to meet the flammability standard without fire retardants. An agency spokesman said that “additional research looking into consumer exposure and the impact of chemical alternatives is needed.”

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

21

HEALTH & SCIENCE

Billions of Lonely Planets, Adrift in Space

By DENNIS OVERBYE

I

s the galaxy full of orphans?

Astronomers said space is littered with hundreds of billions of planets that have been ejected from the planetary systems that gave them birth and either are going their own lonely ways or are only distantly bound to stars at least as 10 times as far away as the Sun is from the Earth.

There are two Jupiter-mass planets for each of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, according to measurements and calculations undertaken by an international group of astronomers led by Takahiro Sumi, of Osaka University in Japan.

“It’s a bit of a surprise,” said David Bennett, a Notre Dame astronomer, who was part of the team. Before this research, it was thought that only about 10 or 20 percent of stars harbored Jupiter-mass planets. Now it seems as if the planets outnumber the stars.

Planetary astronomers said the results would allow them to tap into a whole new unsuspected realm of exoplanets — as planets outside our own solar system are called — causing scientists to re-evaluate how

many there are, where they are and how they are created, even as astronomers immediately began to ponder whether the new planets in question are in fact floating free or just far from their stars, at distances comparable to those of Uranus and Neptune in our own solar system.

“Either there is a large population of Jupiter-mass planets far from their star, or, yes, there are a lot of lonely planets out there,” said Sara Seager, a planetary theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Astronomers have identified some 500 planets that are circling other stars, and this year scientists using NASA’s Kepler satellite announced another 1,235 candidates. These were found using methods that favored the detection of planets close to their stars.

The new work was done using a method known as gravitational microlensing, which is more sensitive to far-out planets. It relies on the ability of the gravitational field of a massive object — in this case a planet and its star — to bend light and act as a magnifying lens, as predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Astronomers from two groups — the Microlensing Observations in

Astrophysics, based in New Zealand and Japan, and the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, based in Poland and Chile — monitor the light from a vast field of background stars, looking for brief blips of increased brightness caused by a planet and its host star passing in the foreground.

The group recorded 10 such events consistent with being caused by planet-size objects but did not detect the corresponding blips from these planets’ host stars, suggesting either that they did not belong to any star, having been ejected by gravitational pinball games earlier in their lives, or that they were very distant.

Dr. Bennett said the results were consistent with these new planets’ being about the same mass as Jupiter. In that case, he said, the prospects for life on them would be dim.

In principle, microlensing could detect planets as small as Earth. Indeed, a microlensing experiment to look for planets was to be part of a new NASA spacecraft known as Wfirst, which was given the highest priority by a prestigious National Academy of Sciences panel. Now it will not fly until the 2020s, if it flies at all, because NASA will not have any

money for it until the troubled James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble’s successor, is finally launched, perhaps in 2018.

Why call these things planets rather than small failed stars, like the slightly more massive brown dwarfs? Dr. Bennett said there are simply too many of them, even when nature’s propensity to make more and more smaller objects is taken into account. “We suspect they formed like planets,” he said, explaining that they were once part of primordial protoplanetary disks.

Dr. Boss pointed out that most planetary systems would not have the gravitational oomph to eject so many massive objects.

Dr. Boss wrote, “these are distant gas giants, much like our own Jupiter and Saturn.

That makes our solar system’s outer reaches look a little more commonplace.”

22

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

Atop I.M.F., Contradiction and Energy

By LANDON THOMAS Jr. and STEVEN ERLANGER

A

rtful politician that he is, Dominique Strauss-Kahn has a keen sense for not just his strengths but also his potential weaknesses — though few would be quite as blunt in saying so.

Considered the Socialist party’s leading candidate for president of France, Mr. Strauss-Kahn identified three threats to his aspirations in an interview with the newspaper Libération, held on April 28 but published only this week. “Money, women and my Jewishness,” he said. “Yes, I like women,” he went on. “So what?”

Mr. Strauss-Kahn added, “For years they’ve been talking about photos of giant orgies, but I’ve never seen anything come out.”

Today, Mr. Strauss-Kahn, his reputation — and any political ambitions — perhaps irreparably tarnished by his arrest on charges of attempted rape of a hotel maid in Manhattan last weekend.

It is a humbling comedown for Mr. Strauss-Kahn, whose rise on the world stage has been marked by contradictions.

As managing director of the International Monetary Fund in Washington since late 2007, Mr. Strauss-Kahn has returned the agency to relevance by helping engineer a $1 trillion bailout for Europe — but only after an initial humiliation when he was reprimanded for a brief affair in 2008 with a subordinate.

A prominent Socialist, he has held powerful positions in previous French governments despite his wealth, lavish lifestyle and his reputation as a womanizer.

A man with an impressive intellect, great charm and restless energy, his flaws have been accepted because of his accomplishments. “Even the chatter about women was discounted enormously by everyone around him,” said Steven C. Clemons, director of the American Strategy program at the New America Foundation who first met Mr. Strauss-Kahn in 1998 and was impressed by his strong personality.

“I don’t think there was a conspiracy of silence,” Mr. Clemons said. “The discussion I always heard about him was he’s one of the titans, that he’s such an extraordinarily different person, that rules don’t apply to him in the same way.”

One former I.M.F. official said that, had Mr. Strauss-Kahn been a less senior person, he might been fired or at least “sent to Siberia” because of the affair with his underling.

He survived an investigation, in part, this person said, because the culture at the I.M.F. dictated “no rules” for the managing director and because there was little appetite to rid the agency of a charismatic and effective leader when an international financial crisis looming.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn arrived at the I.M.F. at what would be an opportune time for him and the agency, which had become an international organization with little clout since the Southeast Asia financial crisis in the mid 1990s. A former finance minister for France, he had a deep knowledge of international economics and was on a first-name basis with most of Europe’s top leadership.

He played a pivotal role as Europe’s debt crisis deepened last May, and leaders were deadlocked over what to do. In midnight phone calls, Mr. Strauss-Kahn pressed them to take action. Quickly, he urged, before things got worse. His insistence helped overcome their hesitance, and they agreed to a set up a $1 trillion rescue package to help Greece and other troubled countries, with the I.M.F. contributing to the bailout fund. And as countries like Germany pushed for harder austerity terms, he was vocal in saying that could backfire by slowing economic growth too much — which seems to be the case in Greece today.

“The only real strength of the I.M.F. is the ruthlessness of truth-telling,” Mr. StraussKahn said at the time.

“Early on, the Europeans were in complete denial. I think his main accomplishment will go down as persuading them that they had to deal with Greece before it was too late.

And he did that not by bullying them, not by banging the table, but much more by coaxing and persuading them,” said Simon Johnson, who was the I.M.F.’s chief economist from March 2007 to August 2008.

It was a seminal triumph for the I.M.F. and a moment to savor for Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who was already winning plaudits after the inauspicious start resulting from the affair.

He had a reputation as a skilled, handson and tough-minded manager who did not shy from making tough decisions. He cut the I.M.F.’s staff by 400 to reduce costs. But he still managed to command the loyalty of his staff, by engaging them on their own terms, and by delving into the details of their highly technical research, according to several current and former fund employees. Traveling constantly, Mr. Strauss-Kahn is known to carry two BlackBerrys with him — one encrypted and the other not — to stay in constant touch. Those on the receiving end say his messages often come adorned with two smiley faces.

“For a guy who was so flamboyant, he found a way to get things done, to save the institution by working behind the scenes,” said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He is effective at maneuvering in very, very high circles — which is really not at all an easy thing to do.”

Mr. Strauss-Kahn and his third wife, the American-born French journalist Anne Sinclair, have kept a surprisingly low profile in Washington, despite their prominence in

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, left, head of the I.M.F., with Jean-Claude Trichet, of the European Central Bank, last December.

France.

Ms. Sinclair, who inherited a fortune from her grandfather, an art merchant who had exclusive contracts with Matisse and Picasso, was a famous television interviewer in France, a kind of Barbara Walters, before moving to Washington with Mr. Strauss-Kahn.

They live in a 5-bedroom, 5-bath brick home in fashionable Georgetown; the house, bought in 2007 for $4 million, is in her name, real estate records show. They own two apartments in France, one that cost 4 million euros ($5.7 million) that was bought with cash, and a penthouse bought by Ms. Sinclair in 1990 for 2.5 million euros ($3.5 million), the year before they married. They also own a century riad, or private house, in Marrakesh, Morocco, bought for 500,000 euros ($706,000) in 2000.

The couple’s wealth enabled them to live well beyond his I.M.F. salary of about $442,000 — tax-free, as are salaries for many employees at international agencies — and an expense allowance of $79,120, according to the 2010 I.M.F. annual report. His marriage to Ms. Sinclair and their lifestyle have led to Mr. Strauss-Kahn being called a caviar socialist, a term used in France, an image that was reinforced recently with the publication of a photo of him stepping into a Porsche in Paris.

For all their connections, the couple does not often turn up at A-list parties in Washington or mingle with the city’s political elite. “I’ve never met them, I don’t know anything about them and I can’t find anybody who has met them,” said Sally Quinn, the Georgetown doyenne and wife of the former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee. “It’s weird; we’ve always known the head of the I.M.F. before.”

Mr. Strauss-Kahn has managed to rise to the corridors of power in France even though he did not graduate from the elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration — he failed the entrance examination — though he

later taught there after graduating from another French university. He met his first wife in high school in Monaco and married her when he was 18. They had three children before divorcing. In 1986, he married his second wife, who had given birth to their only child a year earlier. He and Ms. Sinclair have no children together.

Ms. Sinclair has supported Mr. StraussKahn through all his reported indiscretions since their marriage in 1991. Tristane Banon, a journalist and writer, publicly claimed in 2007 that Mr. Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her during an interview in 2002, when she was 22. Aurélie Filipetti, a respected Socialist parliamentarian in France, said in 2008 that she had been groped by Mr. Strauss-Kahn and would “forever make sure” she was never “alone in a room with him.”

In their 2006 book “Sexus Politicus” on the sexual behavior of politicians, the French journalists Christophe Deloire and Christophe Dubois devoted an entire chapter to Mr. Strauss-Kahn under the heading, “The DSK Affair.” They cite the case of a young journalist who tells the authors she had met Mr. Strauss-Kahn when she was researching a book on the professional failure of leaders. “He was so forward in his manner and inappropriate that she was on the point of lodging a complaint,” they wrote. They added that “his art of seduction which can reach obsessiveness has no equal besides his intellect.”

After Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s brief affair with a Hungarian economist at the I.M.F. in early 2008 came to light, he was allowed to stay after an investigation found that he had not abused the power of his office. Still, he was chastised for inappropriate behavior and apologized.

The I.M.F. maintains a more permissive stance toward sexual relationships between supervisors and subordinates than other multinational organizations. Its ethics policy states that such relationships “do not, in themselves, constitute harassment.” The World Bank, by contrast, says such a relationship is “a de facto conflict of interest.”

When — even if — Mr. Strauss-Kahn will ever return to his expansive high-ceilinged office on the 12th floor of the I.M.F. building in Washington is not clear. The office has a reception area, a comfortable couch in a sitting area, a conference room and a bathroom. “It exuded power,” said one former IMF official.

All of which is a far remove from his cell in Rikers Island, where Mr. StraussKahn has been ordered to stay pending trial. His lawyers are fighting for his release on the $1 million bail posted by his wife, arguing that he suffers from sleep apnea and that he should not be considered a flight risk.

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

23

Pakistan and NATO Trade Fire Near Afghan Border

By SALMAN MASOOD and ERIC SCHMITT

P

akistani soldiers exchanged fire with two NATO helicopters that crossed into Pakistan’s airspace from Afghanistan, the Pakistani Army said, as United States senators increased calls in Washington to suspend or put conditions on billions of dollars in American aid to Pakistan.

The firefight, in which Pakistan said two of its soldiers were wounded, was the latest episode in a rapidly deteriorating relationship between the United States and Pakistan after the Navy Seal raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2.

That Bin Laden was discovered at a compound not far from the capital has heightened American distrust of Pakistan, while the raid inflamed Pakistani sensitivities over sovereignty.

Since then, the Obama administration and its allies in Congress have scrambled to keep tensions from spinning out of control and provoking Pakistan to shut down transit routes into Afghanistan that supply United States troops there.

Those tensions were laid bare on Capitol Hill on Tuesday as Democrats and Republicans voiced anger and bewilderment at providing $3 billion a year in aid to Pakistan, only to have that nation’s leaders criticize the United States for violating Pakistan’s sovereignty during the raid on Bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad, a small city about 75 miles by road from the capital that is home to a major military academy.

“Americans are getting tired of it, as far as shoveling money in there to people who just flat don’t like us,” Senator Jim Risch, Republican of Idaho, said at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing to re-

view Pakistan policy.

The committee’s chairman, John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, fresh off the plane from a 24-hour visit to Islamabad to meet with senior Pakistani leaders, including President Asif Ali Zardari and Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the army chief of staff, reported on his efforts to smooth ties, including an agreement to return to the United States the tail of an American helicopter damaged in the raid.

But many senators were not in a conciliatory mood. Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, complained that Pakistan was playing a “double game” by accepting American aid and fighting terrorists that threatened Pakistani government targets, but also supporting proxy forces in Afghanistan that killed American troops. “They are both a fireman and arsonist in this regional ongoing conflagration,” he said.

Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, said it was time for Congress to put conditions on the military and economic aid, doling out assistance only if Pakistan met certain benchmarks in combating militants. “Most of us are wanting to call time out on aid until we can ascertain what is in our best interest,” he said.

Separately, five Senate Democrats, including Dianne Feinstein of California, chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday urging them to re-evaluate security aid to Pakistan.

Despite the anger on both sides, the Americans would like to maintain Pakistani cooperation as they try to wind down the war in Afghanistan, and Pakistan would like to keep aid flowing from

the United States, which has amounted to more than $20 billion in the past decade.

When asked at Tuesday’s hearing about the impact of suspending aid to Pakistan, Gen. James L. Jones, President Obama’s former national security adviser, warned, “I would counsel against what might be a very tempting thing to do, but it might have long-term consequences that we would then have to deal with.”

American officials fear the exchange of fire on Tuesday will provide yet another irritant for both sides. NATO officials could not immediately confirm whether the helicopters had indeed entered Pakistan’s airspace, but said they were looking into the episode, which took place at Admi Kot Post in the North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan.

An American military official said the Pakistanis were injured by a rock slide, not gunfire.

Pakistani military officials said the NATO helicopters came about 400 yards into Pakistani territory. The Pakistani Army “lodged a strong protest and demanded a flag meeting,” it said in a statement, referring to a meeting between officials from Pakistan and NATO on the border.

Last September, Pakistan shut down the land route through Pakistan that NATO uses to supply its forces in Afghanistan for more than a week after two Pakistani paramilitary soldiers were killed in a similar border clash.

However galling the current clash may be to Pakistani military officials, it was not clear that they would take similar action this time, as both sides may also be seeking to pull relations back

from the brink.

The administration’s special envoy to the region, Marc Grossman, who only recently returned from Pakistan, is expected to arrive in Islamabad later this week along with Michael Morell, the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in an effort to repair the badly strained relationship. They will be seeking to revive joint intelligence operations and increase the number of American military trainers, American officials said. Depending on the outcome of their meetings, Mrs. Clinton may also visit Pakistan.

The clash on the border came as Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, traveled to Beijing. Analysts said that visit was meant to signal to the United States that Pakistan saw China as an alternative source of security and economic aid.

In a possible sign that cooperation had not collapsed completely, the Pakistani Army announced on Tuesday that a senior operative of Al Qaeda, Muhammad Ali Qasim Yaqub, also known as Abu Sohaib al-Makki, had been arrested by Pakistani security agencies in the southern port city of Karachi. A Pakistani intelligence official said in Karachi Tuesday night that the Ali Qasim was arrested in the Gulshen-i-Iqbal area of the city on May 4 or May 5, just two days after the American raid that killed bin Laden in the city of Abbottabad.

In another development, about 100 militants attacked a security checkpoint near the city of Peshawar early on Wednesday. The police said the three-hour clash killed two police officers and 15 insurgents, The Associated Press reported.

24 May 26 - June 1, 2011

Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico “Campeche Exhibit” Great Success

T

he “Campeche: Myth or Reality” Exhibit at Santurce’s art museum will last until May 6, 2012. So far it has been a tremendous success and very much worth visit visiting.

Mu Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, Ave. De Diego 299, Pda 22, Santurce, Sa Puerto Rico (787-977-6277) / www.mapr.org Tuesday or Saturday 10am-5pm Wednesday 10am-8pm Sunday 11am-6pm.

The San Juan Weekly

San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

25

modern love

Eating the Forbidden Ham Sandwich

By ANDREW LIMBONG

A

T 8 in the morning, I expected some old woman to be working behind the counter of the pharmacy -- the kind of person who usually gets up at 6 a.m. anyway.

Instead, there was a young guy in tight jeans and one of those faux-ethnic kaffiyeh scarves.

I thought about how cold it wasn’t inside the pharmacy. When he asked me if I needed anything, I stepped aside to let my girlfriend, Sam, walk up to the counter. ‘’Yeah, a morning-after pill?’’ she said. ‘’We have Plan B and a generic,’’ he said. ‘’Which one do you want?’’

Sam looked at me as if I would know.

I made a face Sam knows all too well that said, ‘’Uh?’’ ‘’How much is the generic?’’ Sam asked. ‘’Ten dollars cheaper.’’

She looked at me again, then said, ‘’I’ll take the generic.’’ ‘’O.K., that’ll be $35.’’

I held out my debit card and he took it, looking as if he had done this a hundred times before.

I paid, we went home, Sam took the pill and I’m not a father: all good. But something felt off.

Had that proverbial old woman been behind the counter that morning, I think I would have been more comfortable.

Well, actually I would have been a lot less comfortable at the pharmacy, but I think that would have made me feel more comfortable about the situation as a whole, because we would have fulfilled the archetype that I thought our story was supposed to fulfill: young couple has sex, condom breaks, they feel ashamed buying a morning-after pill and no one speaks about it after.

But as it happened there was absolutely

no shame in it at all. Everything was fine, and I was joking about it later that day.

Yes, this was a good thing. But it still bothered me.

On my first day of college, my mother took me aside while my father carried my stuff from the car to my dorm room. She held my shoulders tightly and told me not to hug any girls because they’ll lie, say I raped them and then I’ll go to jail. Either that, or I’ll get them pregnant.

It wasn’t the first time I was hearing this. I nodded along, pretty certain that the chances of a girl accusing me of rape because I hugged her weren’t very high.

I knew a lot of my mother’s attitudes toward women and sex were wrong, but that didn’t keep me from absorbing some of it.

Persistence does count for something.

I met Sam when I was 20. She’s my first girlfriend, my first sexual partner and the first girl I’ve ever kissed twice. Luckily for me, she was very patient throughout this whole process.

And it really was a process.

Both of my parents are Indonesian immigrants. They grew up in a strict Christian household, and they did their best to impart all aspects of their home culture to me.

My father never spoke to me about sex.

We never sat down and had the ‘’talk’’ that seems to happen only on television. But I always knew we were a different kind of family from the ones I watched on a nightly basis, because nobody on ‘’Full House’’ ever got in trouble for kissing a boy, as my sister once did.

I never got that far when I was younger.

There was something about girls that scared me. This isn’t uncommon, but most people seem to get over it somewhere around high school. By the time I was 20, I still had this irrational fear of rape, jail, pregnancy, God and my mother. It led to feeling lonely a lot,

but at least I knew I wasn’t alone.

My friend Haroon calls this fear the ‘’ham sandwich’’ effect. Like me, he’s a first-generation American, born to a religious family. He’s Muslim. His parents would tell him not to eat pork because it’s evil and God will send you to hell. They had a similar attitude about sex.

But he was 16 and curious, so why not?

He sat down one day, bought a ham sandwich, ate it and then threw up.

He tried again, though, and was eventually able to eat ham sandwiches like any other American.

It was the same way with sex.

A lot of people suffer from the ham sandwich effect, especially first-generation Americans. You can reject the parent culture all you want, but the more serious the situation, the harder it is to get over. And sex is very serious.

Over the course of one semester, Sam and I went from being friends of friends to making out in my bed on a nightly basis. There was nakedness and there was touching, but it never went any further than that because I always felt my mother was there in my room, too.

Sometimes, she would be sitting in the chair across the room, holding a Bible. Sometimes she would just be casually standing by the wall next to my bed. Once I even saw a vision of her in my room with my imaginary teenage son, who started using heroin because I gave him up for adoption.

These characters, these figures, put pressure on my blood vessels, not allowing the blood to go where I oh so desperately wanted it to.

It was like this for a month. Sam was patient, but I didn’t want to wait for her patience to run out.

So I called Haroon. At this point, he had already had sex, or ‘’eaten the ham sandwich,’’ as we like to say.

He laughed when I called, but not condescendingly. He was expecting this call from me. He had become something of an expert in overcoming the ham sandwich effect. He ran off a list of people we both knew in similar situations whom he had coached through this sort of thing.

His advice? Breathe a lot, do some push-ups and don’t really think about it. ‘’Stop thinking about her as a person,’’ he told me. ‘’People are animals, and having sex is a natural thing that animals do all the time.’’

He probably could have worded it differently, but I was comforted by the simple fact that he got over it and was now eating ham sandwiches on a regular basis.

That kind of achievement wasn’t really my goal, but I did need to stop thinking about it so much. For my blood to go where I needed it to go, I needed to distance myself

from my fears, my religion, my mother, Sam and even myself.

So I did, and it happened.

I don’t blame my mother for how difficult it was for me to have sex, to have any sort of physical relationship with women at all. That’s how she was taught, and she was just trying to do her best with me.

Actually, unlike Haroon, I appreciated my mother’s old-school leanings for making sex so difficult. Getting over the mental block seemed like an achievement, an accomplishment, something worth doing.

I tried explaining all of this to her once. The semester before I met Sam, I was studying in London. My parents visited me, and my mother and I took a walk around my campus. She asked me a lot about women.

Apparently she thought I went to London to go on a wild sex romp. She seemed almost disappointed when I told her no.

There was a glassy, wet look in her eye, and she asked me if I was gay. And I said no, I was just messed up. She nodded.

A lot of times traditional families can display a certain degree of homophobia. My mother certainly wasn’t friendly with the idea of homosexuality, but on that walk, for the first time, I knew that if I were gay, she might actually be all right with it. It was nice to know. ‘’Haroon calls it the ‘ham sandwich,’ ‘’ I told her. And I told her about the religious pressure, and the constant clashing of Eastern and Western ideals when it came to sex. She stopped walking, so I put my arm around her. Then she apologized to me. She had never done that before, and she’s never done it since, but that bit of progress was nice.

SO when the kaffiyeh scarf guy in the pharmacy sold Sam that morning-after pill, I think what was missing for me was the ritual of seriousness, the sense of progress that I was doing something big. If the old woman had been behind that counter that morning, I’d like to think I would have asked quietly for the pill. I would have paid the extra $10 for the brand name. I probably would have also picked up some toothpaste and deodorant to act as if I was doing this casual thing that didn’t mean much to me.

But I would have known that she thought it was serious, and that would have been enough.

26

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

TV Steps Up Pitch to Hispanic Market on Tuesday for the Telemundo broadcast network and Mun2 cable channel on a concept that executives described as “The Shift,” as in shifting demographics.

“This is a new America,” said Don Browne, president at Telemundo, adding: “These numbers are not just numbers.

These numbers are transforming our communities.”

Perhaps the biggest news for Telemundo is its signing of Cristina Saralegui, a former star of its longtime competitor, Univision. Ms. Saralegui, a talk show host who has been called the Hispanic Oprah Winfrey, will be the executive producer and host of a weekend variety show.

Ramon Rodrigues will join the cast of ABC’s remake of “Charlie’s Angels.”

Top, Adriana Monsalve, left, and Jorge Ramos, the anchors of ESPN

By STUART ELLIOTT and TANZINA VEGA

A

S television executives peddle their coming programs to advertisers this week, before the start of the 2011-12 season, their sales spiels are taking on a decided Spanish accent.

Networks and channels with programming aimed at Hispanic viewers have been part of the annual “upfront” weeks for several years. But this time, there are as many presentations from Spanish-language programmers (five) as there are from English-language broadcasters.

There were two on Tuesday, from Fox Hispanic Media and Telemundo, and three scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, from Discovery U.S. Hispanic, Vme and Univision.

Another Hispanic channel, CNN en Español, threw a party for advertisers last Thursday at a hotel in Manhattan’s meatpacking district.

Also, networks that go to market predominantly in English are devoting significant sections of their glossy presentations to Hispanic properties. For instance, ESPN Deportes was featured prominently on Tuesday during the ESPN upfront presentation in Times Square.

Media and marketers are demonstrating increased interest in Hispanic consumers because of the results of the 2010 census, which showed strong continued growth among the Spanish-speaking population.

Another sign of that on Tuesday was an announcement from the J. M. Smucker Company — the purveyor of heartland

pantry staples like Smucker’s, Crisco and Folgers — that it would spent $360 million to buy Rowland Coffee Roasters, which specializes in Hispanic brands like Cafe Bustelo and Cafe Pilon.

“One out of every five sports fans is Hispanic,” Jorge Ramos, a host on the ESPN Deportes channel, said during the ESPN presentation.

Of the 28.5 million Hispanics who watch ESPN, he added, 5.4 million watch ESPN Deportes exclusively.

ESPN, part of the Walt Disney Company, said it would introduce the first original scripted series for ESPN Deportes, “El Diez,” or “Ten,” about a young soccer player who makes it big in Mexico City.

The star of the series is Alfonso Herrera, an actor who was a member of a popular Mexican pop band, RBD. The Telemundo Communications Group, a division of the NBCUniversal unit of Comcast, centered its presentation

Telemundo also announced a roster of new telenovelas — serialized dramas with themes of romance and betrayal — that it will produce for its own prime time.

Among them are “Amor de Película,” “or Love ... Just Like in the Movies,” about a pair of movie fans from different backgrounds who fall in love; “Caídas del Cielo,” or “Fallen from Heaven,” about three female bodyguards, with overtones of “Charlie’s Angels”; and “Físico o Química,” or “Physical or Chemical,” about teenagers, parents and teachers.

The presentation by Fox Hispanic Media, part of the News Corporation, was its first for an upfront. Executives introduced a theme for their three channels, “Latino entertainment, American attitude,” and compared their approach to cable TV to the Fox Broadcasting attitude toward broadcast TV. “Step out of the box and switch to Fox,” said Hernan Lopez, president and

chief executive at Fox International Channels.

Fox Hispanic Media is composed of Fox Deportes, formerly called Fox Sports en Español; Utilísima, a home and living channel aimed at women; and Nat Geo Mundo, which is to start programming on July 1.

The desire to appeal to Hispanic viewers was also evident in the new prime-time schedule released by the Englishlanguage broadcast network that made its presentation on Tuesday, ABC. ABC, also part of Disney, said that a remake of its vintage series “Charlie’s Angels,” planned for 8 p.m. Thursday, would feature an actor named Ramon Rodriguez as Bosley, Charlie’s assistant; the part was played in the original by David Doyle.

Also, the actor Héctor Elizondo, who has appeared in “Pretty Woman” and “Chicago Hope,” will be part of the cast of a new sitcom, “Last Man Standing,” which will star Tim Allen, one of the biggest stars of ABC’s past.

The Allen show, at 8 p.m. Tuesday, is to lead off a new comedy block from 8 to 9 that night; another new sitcom, “Man Up,” is scheduled for 8:30.

ABC has big ambitions for comedy, said Paul Lee, the network’s president for entertainment, with six new entries.

“The winds are blowing behind comedy,” Mr. Lee said.

The ABC comedy block from 8 to 10 p.m. on Wednesday will add one show, at 8:30, “Suburgatory,” about a single father and his 16-year-old daughter. The network is giving the plum slot at 9:30, after its big hit “Modern Family” — which features Sofía Vergara as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett — to “Happy Endings,” a sitcom introduced this spring.

ABC surprised many in the television business by renewing “Happy Endings,” which has barely been a blip in the ratings so far. Mr. Lee, however, called it “our new buzz show,” citing a passionate fan base.

Two new dramas being picked up

by ABC for 2011-12 will appear on Sunday: “Once Upon a Time,” at 8 p.m., about fairy-tale characters moved to modern-day Maine, and “Pan Am,” at 10 p.m., about employees of the airline in the 1960s. They will bracket a returning series, “Desperate Housewives.”

The ABC schedule, with 13 new series, is a “balance between comfort and escapism,” Mr. Lee said.

The upfront week continues on Wednesday with presentations from CBS, the Discovery U.S. Hispanic cable channels and two Turner cable channels, TBS and TNT.

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

27

New York Investigates Banks’ Role in Financial Crisis

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

T

he New York attorney general has requested information and documents in recent weeks from three major Wall Street banks about their mortgage securities operations during the credit boom, indicating the existence of a new investigation into practices that contributed to billions in mortgage losses.

Officials in Eric T. Schneiderman’s office have also requested meetings with representatives from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. The inquiry appears to be quite broad, with the attorney general’s requests for information covering many aspects of the banks’ loan pooling operations. They bundled thousands of home loans into securities that were then sold to investors such as pension funds, mutual funds and insurance companies.

It is unclear which parts of the byzantine securitization process Mr. Schneiderman is focusing on. His spokesman said the attor-

ney general would not comment on the investigation, which is in its early stages.

Several civil suits have been filed by federal and state regulators since the financial crisis erupted in 2008, some of which have generated settlements and fines, most prominently a $550 million deal between Goldman Sachs and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But even more questions have been raised in private lawsuits filed against the banks by investors and others who say they were victimized by questionable securitization practices. Some litigants have contended, for example, that the banks dumped loans they knew to be troubled into securities and then misled investors about the quality of those underlying mortgages when selling the investments.

The possibility has also been raised that the banks did not disclose to mortgage insurers the risks in the instruments they were agreeing to insure against default. Another potential area of inquiry — the billions of dollars in credit extended by Wall Street to aggressive mortgage lenders that allowed

them to continue making questionable loans far longer than they otherwise could have done.

“Part of what prosecutors have the advantage of doing right now, here as elsewhere, is watching the civil suits play out as different parties fight over who bears the loss,” said Daniel C. Richman, a professor of law at Columbia. “That’s a very productive source of information.”

Officials at Bank of America and Goldman Sachs declined to comment about the investigation; Morgan Stanley did not respond to a request for comment.

During the mortgage boom, Wall Street firms bundled hundreds of billions of dollars in home loans into securities that they sold profitably to investors. After the real estate bubble burst, the perception took hold that the securitization process as performed by the major investment banks contributed to the losses generated in the crisis.

Critics contend that Wall Street’s securitization machine masked the existence of risky home loans and encouraged reckless lending because pooling the loans and selling

them off allowed many participants to avoid responsibility for the losses that followed.

The requests for information by Mr. Schneiderman’s office also seem to confirm that the New York attorney general is operating independently of peers from other states who are negotiating a broad settlement with large banks over foreclosure practices.

By opening a new inquiry into bank practices, Mr. Schneiderman has indicated his unwillingness to accept one of the settlement’s terms proposed by financial institutions — that is, a broad agreement by regulators not to conduct additional investigations into the banks’ activities during the mortgage crisis. Mr. Schneiderman has said in recent weeks that signing such a release was unacceptable.

It is unclear whether Mr. Schneiderman’s investigation will be pursued as a criminal or civil matter. The office’s staff has been expanding. In March, Marc B. Minor, former head of the securities division for the New Jersey attorney general, was named bureau chief of the investor protection unit in the New York attorney general’s office.

Games

28

May 26 - June 1, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Sudoku How to Play: Fill in the empty fields with the numbers from 1 through 9 Click the “check sudoku” button to check your sudoku inputs Click the “new sudoku” button and select difficulty to play a new game

Sudoku Rules: Every row must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every column must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every 3x3 square must contain the numbers from 1 through 9

Crossword

Wordsearch

Answers on page 29

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

HOROSCOPE Aries

(Mar 21-April 20)

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Things get interesting and love will keep you on your toes. Keep your wits about you and be cool in stress situations. You need a new attitude. Positive vibes will turn things around.

Look out for yourself and tap into your innate creativity. If in doubt hold back on big decisions; wait for conditions to clarify.

Take the pressure off yourself, wherever possible.

It is timely to be canny concerning your decisions.

De-stress yourself and share the burdens you’re carrying, if you need to. Keep spirits bright and be assured that you are loved and cared for. There is no point in becoming desolate and morose.

Taurus

Scorpio

(April 21-May 21)

Do nothing if you have any doubts. This is a significant time; but there is no point in balking at the fences. If you get a golden opportunity in the week ahead, go for it. Equally, if conditions are not yet right, don’t force them.

This is a significant time; but it won’t help if you are half-hearted in your responses. Keep an eye out.

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Maintain good self-esteem. You need to be as positive as possible, in order to attract the best.

Be prepared to travel and move around more.

Has laziness set in? Get some fresh air. There is plenty to do and you need to stay energized to achieve every good thing. Get fit and enjoy the great outdoors. Tedious chores must be done, of course.

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Lose the sense of feeling hard-done-by.

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Look after yourself and attend to any health or dental niggles you have been experiencing.

Remember, this may well be an introspective time. Roll with it and think those deep thoughts. You may well find that things naturally improve, as you go about your business.

In fact, I am SURE they will. An early night makes sense.

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Stay busy and keep your cool re the love stuff. If there is competition for the object of your desires, hold fast. You have a lot more to offer; only believe it! Do not be intimidated by others. You are an equal in every respect. In work or study situations, do not do anything for the wrong reason. Be clear and well motivated.

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

Take the rest you need and prepare for what is ahead. Put the feet up and recharge your batteries. Make the most of love opportunities and be good. Pay attention to advice and be responsive to the clues you get. Now is not the time to be too proud. You have great chances to connect and reconnect; DO take them.

Reserve judgment amidst confusion. It is time to gather personal strength and prepare for change. Circumstances are beyond your control and you may have to accept what you cannot alter. Life is cool and you need to remember that ultimately, with Jupiter in your portion of the heavens, everything will pan out in your favour.

Leo

Aquarius

(July 24-Aug 23)

Don’t be afraid; never mind the current climate. You stand to benefit from maintaining a calm exterior and a level head. Plenty had been kicking off, which has been beyond your control. The good news is you CAN control your reaction to things. Therein lies your personal integrity and self-esteem. Prepare to play a blinder.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Continue to follow your hopes and dreams. You have so much to play for and so much to keep in place. It is important to protect your interests; perhaps without being seen to do so. You are skilled at the art of deflection. Be aware that you can easily divert the attention away from what you want or need to keep secret. Listen to your heart.

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Resist the temptation to get nasty. You do not usually allow folk to get away with anything. You are not about to change now; but do remember that what goes around comes around. Face up to things and appreciate someone else’s perspective. Empathy will take you further than resentment or judgment ever would.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

Listen to the advice of practical friends (if you have to). However there IS something to be said for not confiding in too many people just now. Keep your counsel and be canny. It is okay to dream; but make sure your head does not get lost in the clouds. You must make cute decisions now. Keep things to yourself.

29 Answers to the Zudoku and Crossword on page 28

30

May 26 - June 1, 2011

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

Two Cows And A Chicken

Cartoons

The San Juan Weekly

Ziggi

The San Juan Weekly

May 26 - June 1, 2011

31

Sports

Hato Rey Rookies Assured Top Spot in East T

he Rookies of the residential area of Hato Rey Roosevelt secured the first position in the national tournament this section of the Confederation of the Central League amateur baseball in the Youth category, becoming the first ranking ninth in ensuring their direct form Carnival of Champions.

The tournament organized by the

Superior and its president COLICEBA Sandrelly Cordova Santana, is divided into four sections with teams throughout Puerto Rico. In the eastern group and dominated the Rookies, who have the mark of 14 wins and just four losses, also competing sets of Canovanas, Ceiba and Roosevelt Marlins Gators.

Rounding out the other teams in

the Northwest representation of Aguada, Barceloneta, Cabo Rojo, Camuy, Isabela Mayaguez and Youth. In South Central novenas compete Barranquitas, Cayey, Ponce, Colts Santa Isabel Villalba Yauco and Avancinos. While in the North are Bayamón Parents, Corozal, San Juan,

Trujillo Alto Knights and Vega Alta.

The national championship is in its final part in the regular season, tournament director is the veteran athlete Ramiro Lopez Rodriguez, who spent more than a decade in that position.

Summers almost here! “ I l o s t 3 0 lbs. and I’m not done yet!”

8 weeks Only

$

49 *

*Cost of food and shipping additional

Emilio Rodríguez Most Valuable Player Mini League of Private Schools

F

or his outstanding contribution in various sports during the academic year, the promising athlete Emilio Rodríguez was recognized as the foremost of Parkville School, educational institution located in Guaynabo.

The perfect example of Rodríguez, a sixth grader, came in several sports, which demonstrates the qualities of youth. Among the disciplines they practice, highlights the football, track and field, and volleyball, among others.

In the sport of high mesh, Emilio involved with the sextet of college and was an important factor in the championship won. Likewise, its contribution was significant in basketball, which was an important figure in the performance of the quintet by averaging over 15 points per game and help his team to qualify for the playoffs.

Rodríguez also excelled in track and field to shatter the 60-meter freestyle mark with an excellent time of 7.92 seconds for the distance. He also won the 200 meters and was part of the relay 4 x 50 meters which won second place in the competition.

Thus was selected as the Most Valuable Athlete of the League of Private Schools Athletic Mini, Inc. (LAMEPI) in this sport. In addition Emilio is recognized as a good student, and just recently selected as Parkville School Student of the Year of the institution.

“To look different you have to eat different and Jenny Craig is great because I don’t feel deprived. The biggest thing for me are the snacks that are awesome!”

Carrie Fisher

®

®

Clients on the program lose an average of 1-2 lbs. per week.

†

¿HAVE

YOU

CALLED

JENNY

YET

?

1 - 8 0 0 - J E N N Y- 2 0 Home Delivery Progam in P.R. 787-773-0733

***

BAYAMON • CAGUAS • CAROLINA • CONDADO 786-9555

258-1579

757-0101

723-2300

HATILLO • MAYAGÜEZ • PONCE• RIO PIEDRAS 879-2028

834-1028

841-6015

763-6322

*Valid for first 100 new clients over 18 thru 5/28/2011. Restrictions apply. ***Delivery charges additional.

Monday- Thursday from 8:00AM - 9:00PM Frid. from 8:00AM - 7:00PM Saturday from 9:00AM - 5:00PM

32

May 26 - June 1, 2011

The San Juan Weekly