Tuesday Aug 11, 2020

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

San Juan The

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5-Minute COVID-19 Stress Relief Resets

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Primary Crossroads

Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Gubernatorial Hopefuls’ Petition to Have Ballots Counted Meanwhile, PDP Governing Board Asks That Voting Be Resumed Thursday

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Organizations Want Governor to Printing Company: ‘We Did the Job Despite Take ‘Extraordinary Measures’ No Payment from SEC’ and Shut Down Airport

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

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August 11, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star, the only paper with News Service in English in Puerto Rico, publishes 7 days a week, with a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday edition, along with a Weekend Edition to cover Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Grassroots organizations demand gov’t take ‘extraordinary measures’ to shut down LMM airport

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rassroots organizations rallied at the intersection of Fortaleza and Del Cristo streets in Old San Juan on Monday to continue their demand that Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced and government officials shut down Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in Carolina to non-essential trips and take proactive action against the spread of the coronavirus as positive cases are still on the rise.

While Puerto Rico was still reeling from a chaotic primary election day on Sunday, a convoy of organizations such as the Socialist Workers Movement (MST by its Spanish initials), Se Acabaron Las Promesas, Comuna Antilla, Bayamón Town Assembly and the Southeast Environmental Community Alliance at the same time was blocking entrances and exits from the airport and demanding that citizens’ lives come before profits. MST spokesperson Ricardo Santos Ortiz told the Star that although protesters found themselves face to face with “hundreds of police officers” who used excessive force against them, they will still protest until the government takes control over the spread of the coronavirus and the related risk posed by tourism activity.

“Independent of the police repression that was witnessed yesterday [Sunday] as they responded with excessive force, given that hundreds of of-

ficers were deployed before the protest started, despite that repression, as our fight is a life or death matter and, maybe, people don’t see it that way as hospitals are not overflowing [with patients], but public health workers are pointing out and insisting that hospitals are reaching their maximum capacity,” Santos Ortiz said. “We are not only calling for the U.S government to take measures, we are also calling for the Puerto Rico government to be emphatic, firm and exert all their capabilities to respect our rights to control arrivals and departures for touristic activities, which our government sees as its main source of income. Many other countries have been capable of doing so, but, as a colony of the United States, we can’t control our borders.”

Santos Ortiz also called out the island Health Department for being “missing in action” as Puerto Rico is seeing a high demand for testing due to positive and suspicious COVID-19 cases and there are not enough reagents available for molecular testing. Meanwhile, he said both the agency and the government have made decisions based on a “political estimate” and not based on science.

“Even if we see an upturn in COVID-19 cases, the data from the Department of Health won’t reflect it except in the amount of people that will be bedridden or intubated at hospitals because we are not carrying out molecular tests,” he said.

“If we look at it, we are as unprepared, or worse, than when the crisis began because then we were asking ourselves ‘When will the tests arrive?’ and right now, we are asking the same question.”

“Time has revealed that the government has taken measures based on a political estimate, based on what the government finds more convenient,” Santos Ortiz added. “From the curfew, which no one has been able to explain why people have to get back home by 10 p.m., to the beaches, which no one has explained why we can’t go to them, all of these measures are repressive. And other measures, which are healthbased, like shutting down malls, shutting down indoor restaurants that could affect employees that work for less than $7.25 an hour, these other measures, the governor and whoever else is administering don’t have enough sensitivity to attend the matter.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Commonwealth Supreme Court agrees to hear Bhatia & Pierluisi petitions to count ballots

By PEDRO CORREA HENRY and THE STAR STAFF

T

he Puerto Rico Supreme Court has agreed to hear petitions from New Progressive Party gubernatorial hopeful Pedro Pierluisi and Popular Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial hopeful Eduardo Bhatia demanding that the State Elections Commission (SEC) count the ballots cast Sunday before voting in the party primaries was suspended due to a lack of ballots.

The resolution gives the SEC and the electoral commissioners until 2 p.m. today to provide a response to the lawsuits.

The suits originally began in San Juan Superior Court, where Judge Anthony Cuevas Ramos had begun a hearing to hear the parties and in which he said he had consolidated the cases. He could not continue the hearings because Pierluisi had anticipated that he was going to file a petition to have the case remanded to the Supreme Court.

Late in the afternoon, Isabela Mayor Carlos Delgado Altieri, who is also running for governor in the PDP primary, sought an order in Superior Court requiring the SEC to resume the primary within the next 72 hours because the law says the primary has to be held as a single-day event. It was not immediately known if the Supreme Court would take over the case.

The SEC and the presidents of the main political parties on Sunday had agreed to suspend the primaries for voting centers that had not received ballots by early afternoon Sunday. Those units were expected to conduct voting next Sunday.

However, earlier in the day, Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced said she was willing to issue an executive order to hold the primary before Sunday. The PDP’s governing board also appeared to be in agreement.

Regarding a Supreme Court decision, justices said that after examining the urgent appeal filed for intrajurisdictional certification, they determined it was best to stop the proceedings before the Superior Court.

“It is good news that the Supreme Court has accepted our appeal to give legal certainty to what happened,” Pierluisi said in a written statement. “What will give the people peace of mind is the certainty that the votes cast yesterday [Sunday] will be officially counted and the results of all the contests that have already ended are published.”

Pierluisi’s lawyers slammed the agreement between the political party presidents and the SEC.

“The suspension or paralysis of the count and transmission of the results of the electoral process, without authority to do so, and in prejudice [against] the voters, constitutes an illegal and undemocratic act whose effects this honorable court is obliged to avoid without any delay,” read the document drafted by attorneys Vanessa Santo Domingo Cruz and Walter S. Pierluisi González.

Associate Justice Luis Estrella Martínez said that while he was satisfied with the certification issued by the Supreme Court, he regretted that the case did not include other aspects beyond the vote count.

“That is, it does not contest the date of the continuation of the primaries and other extremes of the SEC agreements,” Estrella Martínez said.

He noted that the suits should be consolidated with the one filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Carmen Damaris Quiñones, who alleged her voting rights were violated.

“This way we address all the aspects of the controversies surrounding these primaries and provide an adequate, complete and timely remedy,” he said.

Estrella Martínez added that the court should also be given the chance to discuss the leak of electoral results and “stop the illicit practice of leaking electoral results in

the middle of a voting process, diluting the secrecy of the vote and the equal weight that the voters should have.”

Justice Ángel Colón Pérez said that while he agreed with the ruling, he would have ordered the immediate seizure of all the electoral briefcases in the SEC’s possession that contain the primary ballots.

Bhatia, meanwhile, complained about the leak of polling results online even though the primary process has not finished. The leaked results, most of which gave a victory to Delgado Altieri, could influence voters into casting ballots for the Isabela mayor.

“I want to know the truth. I don’t trust the SEC. I don’t trust that the numbers released yesterday will be the same ones next Sunday. I can’t trust a commission that can’t offer the minimal guarantee to have ballots printed. [Someone] who can’t deal with what is basic certainly can’t deal with what’s more complex,” Bhatia said at a news conference earlier in the day. “My petition is the following: finish the primary elections as soon as possible, [and] that all votes from yesterday [Sunday] are taken into account, to respect the 35 percent of voters who already cast their vote. We, and our legal team, will respect that.”

With regard to the leaked ballot numbers from Sunday’s electoral event, Bhatia said it was a “modality” that he wants to get rid

of as it is used as a “continuous method to speak to Puerto Rico with lies.”

“It’s a practice to go running out to tell who’s winning and losing in this primary [election] … this constant method of resorting to media manipulation, of resorting to manipulating citizens, which is far from the best traditions of the PDP, and far from what should be the ethical principles and moral values that should guide every Puerto Rican,” he said. “There are people who have dedicated the last 15 hours to sending false numbers, to divert attention, to create an impression, for that matter, there are people who are already awarding the primary elections. How is that possible when almost 70 percent of voters were unable to cast their vote?”

While his petition was being compared to the one Pierluisi filed, Bhatia said that both determinations are legal strategies that could have similarities, but his objective was for his legal team to reach the Puerto Rico Supreme Court as it did in order to have their request addressed as soon as possible.

“We’re in the middle of primary elections; it’s not [just] a primary event that was stopped,” Bhatia said. “What we wish for is to finish it soon as long as we have the guarantees from the SEC that this mess will not happen ever again.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

5

PDP governing board wants to resume primary on Thursday

By THE STAR STAFF

T

he members of the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) governing board on Monday approved several determinations on the primaries that were paralyzed Sunday.

“The first, to demand that the governor [Wanda Vázquez Garced] call an extraordinary assembly to repeal the Electoral Code and offer the guarantees of the previous codes,” said PDP President Aníbal José Torres at the end of the governing board meeting. “Second, a motion was approved with the following determinations: to require of the State Elections Commission that the votes cast yesterday [Sunday] be validated and counted and that said results be disclosed. We cannot allow speculation to continue.”

Gubernatorial hopeful Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto, the mayor of San Juan, said “[i]f the decision of the governing board is to disclose the results of those [votes] that already [have been cast], do not let yourself be intimidated; there is no trend.”

“Thirty-eight precincts voted, 72 precincts are missing votes in all of Puerto Rico,” she said. “The die is not cast.”

Eduardo Bhatia and Carlos Delgado Altieri, the other two PDP gubernatorial hopefuls, also gave statements at party headquarters in the Puerta de Tierra sector of San Juan.

“I believe that what has come out [of the meet-

Popular Democratic Party president Anibal José Torres ing] is the will of the governing board and of all the candidates that we agreed with,” said Delgado Altieri, the mayor of Isabela.

Bhatia added that “[w]e must now put an end to the ‘fake news,’ with telling lies out there.”

“Puerto Rico deserves to be told the truth,” the former Senate president said. “It is better for the truth to be known, to break away from lies and gossip.”

At press time, Torres said the counting of the votes already cast and their disclosure was set to start Monday and continue today until the island Supreme Court issues a contrary determination against the cases filed

by Bhatia and New Progressive Party gubernatorial hopeful Pedro Pierluisi, the former island resident commissioner, for the votes to be counted and disclosed.

The PDP president stated that the party’s governing board also approved a date to resume voting.

“The other thing is to demand that the governor declare this Thursday the 13th a holiday and that on that day the process of voting for the primaries is completed in the precincts where the vote was not made yesterday,” he said.

Torres gave assurances that if the request that the primary be resumed on Thursday is accepted, the PDP has the ballot briefcases ready to be delivered to the polling stations.

“What is the [State Elections] Commission going to do with the truckers to demand that they have to be there on Thursday or the day that is determined?” he said. “How are these routes going to be coordinated so that what happened yesterday [Sunday] does not happen again? This determination is up to the State Elections Commission.”

Torres noted that the determination remains that the people who left the voting centers that opened late will not be able to vote when the process is resumed.

Meanwhile, Cruz Soto’s request to start the primary all over again was rejected.

Earlier on Monday, Vázquez Garced said she is willing to sign an executive order to grant the day off and that the primary can be resumed.

Printing company washes its hands of election debacle

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

T

he printing company in charge of printing the ballots for Sunday’s primary elections said delays in the printing process occurred because no electoral officials were present to supervise the process as mandated by law.

The excuses given by State Elections Commission (SEC)

According to the legal adviser of Printec, José A. Fusté the printing work was done despite the fact that no payment has been made by the SEC as previously established.

Chairman Juan Ernesto Dávila Rivera for Sunday’s primary elections debacle revolve around the delay in the printing of the ballots, which caused the partial suspension of the primaries on Sunday.

“The ballot printing process is carried out under the strict presence and supervision of the representatives designated by the SEC and all the parties at the printing facilities,” said José Antonio Fusté, legal adviser of Printech, the company contracted to print the primary election ballots. “This is by regulatory requirement of the electoral process itself. Without the presence of these officials, the ballots cannot be printed.”

Since the establishment of the new electronic ballot processing system in the 2016 general election, the printing company has been supplying ballots uninterruptedly and in full compliance with the standards established by the SEC, Fusté said.

“This occasion was no exception,” he said. “For this primary process, our work was carried out in accordance with the requests and purchase orders made by the SEC.” The printing work was done despite the fact that no payment has been made by the SEC as previously established, Fusté added.

The Dominion company, which is responsible for the electronic scrutiny, and the printing company have no commercial relationship, the legal adviser noted. Printech is a security printing company, while Dominion is dedicated to providing the electronic system that tabulates ballots in local election processes, he said.

“Because of this being a process that the State Elections

Commission is in charge of, we refer any other request for detailed information to its officials,” Printech said in a written communication.

“Our printing company has handled the printing of materials for processes that require high security for the past 25 years for the United States, Central and South America, and Puerto Rico,” Fusté said. “Seventy-five percent of our print production is exported to the world.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Manufacturers Association demands resignation of election officials

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

P

uerto Rico Manufacturers Association President Carlos M. Rodríguez demanded on Monday that the chairman of the State Elections Commission and all the electoral officials who gave assurances on Saturday that they were ready to carry out Puerto Rico’s primary elections Sunday be immediately removed from their positions and publicly assume responsibility for the debacle they caused.

“We are just over 100 days away from the general elections and this chaos generated in a smaller-scale electoral event leaves much to be desired and puts us in the world public arena as a

country with a lack of capacity, a lack of credibility, and corruption,” Rodríguez said. “Given the efforts being made to reactivate manufacturing in Puerto Rico, this situation hurts the possibilities of attracting investment and answering those who criticize our institutions.”

“For the first time in our history, thousands of people were deprived of their right to vote, at a time when we are facing the crisis of the [coronavirus] pandemic that has made the process more difficult than normal,” he added.

“We call on the governor to call an urgent extraordinary session [of the island Legislature] to facilitate the process being carried out within the due process of law and there is no room for future challenges,” Rodríguez said.

State Elections Commission chairman, Juan E. Dávila Rivera

Gov’t, Labor Dept. unsure how to comply with $400 weekly jobless aid order

By THE STAR STAFF

T

he Puerto Rico government could not say Monday how it will comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order that would pay up to $400 in weekly unemployment benefits, 25 percent of which the states and Puerto Rico are being asked to cover.

La Fortaleza referred questions on the subject to the Labor and Human Resources Department, which said it had yet to receive an official notification. Labor Secretary Carlos Rivera was not in a position to comment.

“The Secretary can’t comment at this time because he has not received an official notification,” the department said through its spokesman Enrique O’Neill. “The executive order also does not establish how the process will be run.”

Puerto Rico is currently negotiating various restructuring agreements to overhaul over $70 billion in debt.

After Democrats and the White House

were unable to reach an agreement on a stimulus bill, Trump signed four executive orders Saturday directed at coronavirus relief.

Besides the order granting the unemployment benefits, Trump issued a memorandum on a payroll tax holiday for Americans earning less than $100,000 a year, an executive order on assistance to renters and homeowners, and a memorandum on deferring student loan payments until Dec. 31.

According to the order on unemployment benefits, states must agree to enter into a financial arrangement with the federal government for any unemployed person living there to receive any of the additional benefits. States must pick up the tab for 25 percent of the $400 additional benefit each person may be able to receive weekly in additional aid.

The president expects to use part of some $44 billion in disaster funds and money from the coronavirus relief fund to pay for the additional jobless aid.

“I am calling on States to use amounts allocated to them out of the CRF (Coronavirus Relief Fund), or other State funding, to provide temporary enhanced financial support to those whose jobs or wages have been adversely affected by COVID-19.

These funds, including those currently used to support State unemployment insurance programs, may be applied as the

State’s cost share with Federal DRF funds,” the order says. “To ensure that those affected by a loss in wages due to COVID-19 continue to receive supplemental benefits for weeks of unemployment ending no later than December 27, 2020, States should also identify funds to be spent without a Federal match should the total DRF balance deplete to $25 billion.”

Puerto Rico’s economy has been hurt by the coronavirus pandemic. In the week that ended Aug. 1, Puerto Rico received 24,115 requests for unemployment benefits. Labor and Human Resources Department numbers show that Puerto Rico had 973,000 employed individuals as of June of this year compared to 1 million in June 2019.

The island Treasury Department also did not provide a response as to whether it has the funds to cover the unemployment benefits.

Puerto Rico’s government bank accounts totaled $20.4 billion as of June 30, a 0.4 percent decrease over the balance on May 29.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

7

Who opposes defunding the NYPD? These black lawmakers.

NewYork City Councilman Alicka Ampry-Samuel of Brooklyn in her office on July 3, 2020.

By JEFFERYC. MAYS

W

ith New York City on the cusp of cutting $1 billion from the Police Department, a city councilwoman, Vanessa L. Gibson, told her colleagues that enough was enough.

She acknowledged that some council members, spurred by the movement to defund the police, were seeking to slash even more from the department’s budget. But she pointed out that her constituents did not agree.

They “want to see cops in the community,” Gibson said.

“They don’t want to see excessive force. They don’t want to see cops putting their knees in our necks,” she said. “But they want to be safe as they go to the store.”

Gibson is not a conservative politician speaking on behalf of an affluent district. She is a liberal Black Democrat who represents the West Bronx, and her stance reflects a growing ideological rift over policing in one of the country’s liberal bastions.

It is a clash across racial, ideological and generational lines that is dividing Black and Latino Council members in New York City. The discord illustrates how complicated the nation’s struggle with its legacy of racial oppression and discriminatory policing has become after the killing of George Floyd and the coronavirus crisis magnified long-standing and widespread racial disparities.

The debate helps explain why the movement in the Council to carry out major cuts to the Police Department has not succeeded.

Laurie Cumbo, a Black councilwoman from Brooklyn who is majority leader, compared calls to defund the police to “colonization” pushed by white progressives. Robert Cornegy Jr., a Black councilman also from Brooklyn, called the movement “political gentrification.”

This divide has widened in big cities across the United States, including in Minneapolis after Floyd was killed at the hands of the police.

Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, New Jersey, called defunding the police a “bourgeois liberal” solution for addressing systemic racism.

At the heart of the dispute in New York City is the effect of police officers in neighborhoods that have higher rates of

discriminatory policing. The issue came into focus in the weeks leading to the July 1 deadline to pass the city’s budget, as Council leaders pledged to cut police funding by $1 billion in response to the wave of protests after Floyd’s death.

But a fissure opened when it became clear during negotiations that passing a budget with the $1 billion in cuts meant reducing police presence on the streets and eliminating school safety agents.

During the debate, Black and Latino council members representing poor and middle-class communities of color, including Brownsville, Brooklyn, and Jamaica, Queens, wanted to take a measured approach to cutting the police budget. White progressives, allied with some Latino council members from gentrifying and racially mixed neighborhoods and two Black council members, called for more aggressive reductions and reforms.

Gibson was among a handful of Black and Latino council members who said cutting the size of the police force would exacerbate conditions in neighborhoods already struggling with a rise in shootings and homicides, and with the health and economic disparities that were intensified by the coronavirus crisis.

Yet several progressive Black and Latino council members, like Antonio Reynoso of Brooklyn, who represents Williamsburg and Bushwick, were willing to reduce the number of law enforcement personnel and funnel the savings into other programs, such as mental health services.

“We have wrongly been told our whole lives that police keep us safe,” Reynoso said.

He and other progressive council members said that even during a pandemic, police enforcement of social-distancing rules showed racial disparities. Bringing more alternative resources to poorer communities, they said, was the best way to increase safety.

Cutting the Police Department’s budget also made sense in the context of an economic crisis, said Councilman Carlos Menchaca, who represents Sunset Park and other areas of Brooklyn. It could have enabled the Council to save other services that Mayor Bill de Blasio suspended or reduced, he said.

“You can’t just say, imagine if half the police force was gone,” Menchaca said. “You have to think about the things you get because of that.”

Figuring out how to handle violence is one of the most complicated parts of the effort to defund the police. Overall, serious crime in New York City has not jumped this year, but murders and shootings have: The city is on pace to surpass 800 shootings for the first time in three years.

There were 793 shootings as of Aug. 2, compared with 450 over the same period last year. The shootings have fueled a 31% increase in homicides: As of Aug. 2, 237 people had been killed, compared with 181 people by the same time in 2019.

The Center for Policing Equity, a think tank at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, released a road map last month to rethink how to allocate money for public safety. It suggested that law enforcement agencies focus on chronic offenders and that a deluge of nonpolice resources be sent to areas with high crime rates and high police interactions.

“You have to care about the violence of poverty and the violence of policing, which usually coincide,” said Phillip Atiba Goff, a founder and chief executive of the center.

By a 32-17 vote, the Council, with de Blasio’s support, eventually passed an $88.2 billion budget that included the

reduction in police funding. But the $1 billion cut was mostly cosmetic, moving responsibilities from the Police Department to other agencies. The size of the police force will barely change.

Nearly all the no votes were cast by white conservatives opposed to any reductions or white and Latino council members who wanted deeper cuts.

Corey Johnson, the Council speaker, said he would have preferred to cut more, but wanted to defer to his Black and Latino colleagues who raised concerns about the safety of their neighborhoods.

Gibson said she had seen the effect of what she described as overpolicing in her district in the West Bronx, adding that she knew how interactions between officers and young Black men influenced how the police are viewed.

She said she supported the Black Lives Matter movement and, as a councilwoman, had sponsored legislation to force the Police Department to disclose how it uses surveillance technology.

But her district has also had an uptick in violent crime, like the fatal shooting of Brandon Hendricks, a 17-year-old basketball star expected to attend St. John’s University. A week later, on July 5, Anthony Robinson was fatally shot while crossing the street with his 6-year-old daughter.

“I hate to say that’s our everyday reality, but it is,” Gibson said. “Many residents equate public safety with more policing.

If I go to them and tell them there would be less police, they would not be happy.”

The rift between those who want to slash the police budget versus those who want to take a more cautious approach has grown in cities around the country, but seems pronounced in New York.

Some Council members accused Reynoso and others on his side of “being the product of gentrified” communities and being a part of a “white-led movement” to defund the police.

“The real message is we are not going to compromise the safety of our communites. There are a number of ways to achieve reform,” said I. Daneek Miller, co-chairman of the Council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus.

Councilman Brad Lander, a white progressive from Brooklyn who voted no on the budget because he favored more cuts to police, said his views had been shaped by listening to people who have most directly experienced discriminatory policing.

“It is the responsibility of white people, progressive or not, to push yourself to listen carefully to Black voices,” said Lander.

Still, Lander said he respected the views of his Black and Latino colleagues who were concerned that cutting the police budget would hurt their community.

About a week after the Council’s vote, Councilwoman Diana Ayala, who represents East Harlem and the South Bronx, reflected on the movement to defund the police.

She said that she had received thousands of emails in favor of it, but that most came from people who lived outside her district or in another state. She also said she had heard from about 60 callers from East Harlem who had voiced their support, and “half were white or new to the community.”

Speaking at a memorial for Kenneth Brown, 35, who was shot and killed across from the Wagner Houses, a public housing complex in East Harlem, last month, Ayala recalled how her own son had been in the crossfire of a shooting.

“In communities like mine,” Ayala said, “we are not safe yet.”

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Tuesday, August 11, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Will cars rule the roads in post-pandemic New York?

Restaurants have taken over Dyckman Street in northern Manhattan, which has been temporarily closed to cars.

By WINNIE HU and NATE SCHWEBER

W

hen New York went into lockdown five months ago to contain the virus, traffic virtually disappeared, and the mostly deserted streets suddenly became a vast trove of open space in one of the world’s most crowded cities.

But now as New York slowly recovers and cars have started to return, a battle for the 6,000 miles of city streets is just beginning.

Desperate restaurant owners have put out tables and chairs and want to keep them there. Anxious parents see the streets as a solution to crowded indoor classrooms. Cyclists and pedestrians are demanding more safe corridors as their numbers soar. And some virus-wary commuters are avoiding public transit and climbing into cars to protect their health.

Competition for New York’s streets is nothing new — there have been growing calls in recent years to push cars aside — but the pandemic has emboldened more people than ever to stake their claim to a piece of asphalt and force a sweeping reimagining of the urban grid.

Under pressure from advocates for open spaces and the restaurant industry, the city has temporarily excluded cars from more than 70 miles of open streets for social distancing, biking and outdoor dining.

“The long-standing tension between those who see cars as evil and those who see cars as essential has been heightened by the pandemic because usable outdoor space is more crucial than ever,” said Jerold S. Kayden, a Harvard

University professor of urban planning and design.

City officials have not presented any overall vision or comprehensive plan for redesigning the streets to accommodate more uses and have said they are waiting to see emerging traffic patterns as more people return to work and schools open for some in-person learning.

For now, they have taken a more piecemeal approach, including adding batches of open streets every few weeks and announcing five new busways to speed up service by taking cars off busy arteries. They have also expanded temporary outdoor dining to help restaurants, and Mayor Bill de Blasio said the dining setups would return after the winter.

“I think the fact is we want to keep expanding every conceivable option and alternative, and we’ve seen how effective things like open streets have been,” de Blasio told reporters recently. “We keep expanding that, we keep expanding bike lanes. We want to see how far we can take both of them.”

But critics — many of whom have viewed de Blasio as a pro-driver mayor — have faulted what some describe as the city’s reactionary approach and contend that the moment is ripe for an ambitious blueprint, much like other cities are adopting to permanently redraw the streetscape.

“I think we’re missing a huge opportunity,” said Bruce Schaller, a consultant and former city transportation official.

“This is the time to reconfigure the streets. Traffic will fill however much — or however little — street space it’s allotted. Now is the time to literally redraw the lines.”

Other cities have taken bolder steps. London has em-

barked on a plan to accommodate a surge in pedestrians and cyclists by creating new walking and biking routes, widening sidewalks and limiting traffic on residential streets — some of which could become permanent. And in Paris, officials are moving to add more than 400 miles of new bike lanes across the metro region.

In New York, the growing conflict over the use of the streets will not simply end with the pandemic, Kayden said, since elected leaders, community activists, transportation experts and others who have long sought to repurpose roads for uses other than cars “will not want to give up their newly captured territory.”

Roberto Perez Rosado, 72, and his neighbors in parkstarved Jackson Heights, Queens, are vowing to fight to keep a promenade that was opened on 34th Avenue during the pandemic.

“If they take it away we will be petitioning, we will be going to meetings, we will be active on the streets,” he said.

Drivers are pushing back, too. Kenny Otano, an ironworker, said that dividing up the streets has made traffic worse.

“One lane is thrown out for buses, half a lane is thrown out for bikes, and the worst thing is the restaurants,” said Otano, 50. “It creates more traffic. Five lanes becomes three.”

Leslie Andre Howard, 35, a contractor from Queens, has a kidney condition and has been driving to work because he does not want to take the subway during the outbreak. His blue minivan, he said, “feels safer and you’re more in control.”

Some cyclists and transportation advocates have criticized the city for creating a series of disconnected open streets instead of building a comprehensive network of continuous routes and public spaces. The result has been confusion and conflict at times among groups trying to use the same space, including bike lanes blocked by outdoor restaurant seating.

City officials said they have moved more quickly than they have been given credit for to make significant changes, including expanding outdoor dining to every corner of the city.

“We’ve used this crisis to make sweeping and popular changes to the urban landscape,” said Mitch Schwartz, a spokesman for de Blasio. “There’s always more to do. But we’ve responded to New Yorkers’ calls for more public space, and we’re excited to keep going.”

City officials said they were also monitoring traffic and were prepared to take strict measures if the gridlock becomes acute, including restricting vehicles entering the city by their license plate numbers or requiring cars to have at least two occupants. Vehicle occupancy restrictions were imposed after the 9/11 terror attack in lower Manhattan.

At Roof Top Republica, there is outdoor seating for 100 customers under twinkling lights, three times more than inside the small Dominican restaurant. The owner, Victor Sanchez, 52, said he is selling more meals than before the pandemic.

“I think it should be a permanent thing,” he said.

“There’s going be a fight for the streets, definitely.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

9

Ohio’s governor says his flawed virus test shouldn’t undercut new, rapid methods

By KATHERINE J. WU

G

ov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, who last week tested positive for the coronavirus, then negative and then negative again, said on CNN on Sunday that his roller-coaster ride should not be reason for people to think “that testing is not reliable or doesn’t work.”

His first test result was positive, when he was screened with a rapid testing method Thursday before President Donald Trump arrived in Ohio for campaign appearances.

DeWine was given an antigen test made by Quidel, one of two companies that have received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for coronavirus antigen tests.

These tests, while fast and convenient, are known to be less accurate than PCR tests, which were used to retest DeWine twice Thursday and once more Saturday.

All three PCR tests turned up negative, confirming that DeWine was not infected with the virus.

“I don’t think that DeWine’s results were surprising, per se,” said Andrea Prinzi, a clinical microbiologist and diagnostics researcher at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Colorado. “We know that the performance of antigen testing is not as accurate as PCR testing.”

The Ohio governor’s experience, however, may raise concerns about how much states will rely on antigen tests as they seek to augment the forms of testing, like PCR, that are in short supply or that are mired in laboratory backlogs, unable to generate results in a timely fashion to help assess caseloads and dole out treatments.

DeWine, a Republican, is one of seven governors who announced last week that they were banding together to buy 3.5 million rapid coronavirus tests, including antigen tests, to ramp up production.

Daniel Tierney, the press secretary for DeWine, noted in an email that the states involved were considering “multiple companies and multiple testing types,” but did not specify further.

On Sunday, DeWine said he had already been in touch with Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican, to talk about the states’ agreement to use their

collective “purchasing power” for testing and other supplies.

“If anyone needed a wake-up call with antigens, how careful you have to be, we certainly saw that with my test,” DeWine said. “And we’re going to be very careful in how we use it.”

A spokesman for Hogan, Michael Ricci, echoed that sentiment: “We are taking this one step at a time.”

Accurate test results are crucial for curbing the spread of disease. False positives, like the one DeWine received, can set off an unnecessary period of self-isolation, depriving people of access to their workplaces or their own families. False negatives, on the other hand, can hasten the spread of disease from unwittingly infected people.

PCR tests like the ones used to determine DeWine’s health status are often the best bet for avoiding incorrect results. But these tests are in short supply nationwide as manufacturers and laboratories struggle to meet the increase in demand that has accompanied recent surges in infections.

Turnaround times for results have stretched past two weeks in some parts of the country, rendering the information useless for anxious people who need to know their status immediately so they can selfisolate as needed and stop the virus from spreading further.

“Honestly, PCR tests were not designed for this type of mass screening/testing,” Prinzi said. PCR tests, she added, function best in laboratory environments that are well-stocked with chemicals, high-tech machines and specially trained personnel.

Their high-maintenance ingredient lists and relatively hefty price tags are not terribly compatible with quickly getting answers to large numbers of people.

Rapid tests, on the other hand, could catch a majority of active infections if administered frequently, even if they’re less accurate, many experts have argued.

Compared with PCR tests, antigen tests are more likely to return a false negative result, mistaking an infected person as virusfree. Quidel’s test, for instance, can miss up to 20% of the cases that PCR detects.

Notably, DeWine’s antigen test produced the opposite error: a false positive that incorrectly indicated he had been infected.

But DeWine might not have been the ideal candidate for an antigen test, said Karissa Culbreath, scientific director of infectious disease, research and development at TriCore Reference Laboratories in New Mexico. Such tests usually perform better on samples that contain high levels of virus, which tend to come from sicker patients and people at higher risk of transmitting the infection. When given within the first five days after coronavirus symptoms start, Quidel’s false negative rate may drop below 5%, according to the company’s intended use statement.

DeWine, however, had not experienced symptoms, aside from a headache.

“If we’re testing outside of that intended use, we might expect false positives or false negatives,” Culbreath said, referring to the five-day window that follows the onset of symptoms.

Allocating tests to people who fit that criteria, she added, will also eliminate the need for scores of follow-up tests, especially while many suspected cases across the nation remain undiagnosed.

“Tests are not interchangeable in their usefulness,” Culbreath said. “We need to look at this as a tool belt and identify the right tool for the job.”

On Sunday, DeWine did note that antigen tests function especially well as “screening” tests, expediently delivering

information to people while their results are confirmed — if necessary — by the more accurate PCR tests.

He added that it was incumbent upon the companies developing the tests to demonstrate their accuracy, and that the experience would not deter him from expanding testing in his state.

“We could use additional money for testing,” said DeWine. “We have doubled our testing the last four weeks. We need to double it, and then double it again.”

Ohio was among the first states to reopen in May, but as cases ticked up in mid-June and July, DeWine signed a statewide mandatory mask mandate and asked several counties to limit gatherings of any size. There have been at least 99,969 cases and 3,668 deaths in Ohio since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a New York Times database.

The status of testing in the United States is far from ideal, Prinzi said. But for now, it is time to make do with the materials we have, she said. “We can argue about diagnostic accuracy all day, but this is a huge public health crisis right now,” she added.

Flaws and all, antigen tests are “a necessary part of our management of the pandemic,” Culbreath said. “But we have to be very intentional about how we use these tests.”

Health care worker Jessie Coffey with a testing kit for the coronavirus at an appointment-based drive-thru tent in Gardendale, Ala. on Aug. 6, 2020.

10

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

A rare economic bright spot in the U.S. health system: the vet’s office

Lex Taylor, a veterinarian assistant, checking in a Yorkshire Terrier named Gabby in Roanoke, Va. Most veterinarians now do curbside service — owners drop their pet at the door, and wait outside during the appointment.

By SARAH KLIFF

T

he human health care system has struggled financially through the coronavirus pandemic, losing billions from the cancellations of lucrative elective operations as patients were first told to stay away from hospitals and then were leery of setting foot in one.

The canine and feline health system, though, is booming.

“It’s crazy, in a good way,” said Dr. Margot Vahrenwald, a veterinarian who co-owns Park Hill Veterinary Medical Center in Denver. “We’re probably seeing 25% more new pets than what we would normally. It feels busier, and we’re seeing increased revenue.”

While hospitals were furloughing workers, Vahrenwald added five employees, and still has job listings for more. Her clinic has had to buy two phone lines to handle a deluge of calls from pet owners.

“The phone lines were so busy that, if we were occupying them making calls out to clients, we would end up with 60 voicemail messages in a half-hour,” she said.

Animal hospitals appear to have pulled off something human hospitals have struggled to do: make patients feel comfortable seeking routine care.

Most veterinarians are now requiring curbside service — owners drop their pet at the door, and wait outside during the appointment — lessening the risk of catching coronavirus.

Their animal patients tend to be less susceptible to coronavirus, although not completely immune. Some pets have become infected, and last month the first dog in the United States to test positive for the virus died.

Pet owners have, collectively, decided there is enough value in maintaining the health of their cats and dogs to brave the outside world at least a little more. Much of the increase in veterinary care seems to be for wellness visits and vaccinations.

By contrast, primary care spending for humans is estimated to have dropped by $15 billion over the course of the pandemic.

The veterinary industry provides something else important that the human health system doesn’t: transparent prices.

Veterinarians can typically provide reliable price estimates, in part because they have standard charges that don’t vary by type of insurance.

Patients may be reluctant to return to the human health system in part because they’ve lost coverage, or have less income, and are worried about the possibility of a surprise bill.

Demand for veterinary services is typically cyclical: Pet owners spend more on medical care for dogs and cats when the economy is strong and they have more disposable income.

This economic downturn is different. Volume and revenue are up at animal hospitals and primary care offices. VetSuccess, which tracks financial data from 2,800 clinics, estimates that revenue last month was up 18% over last July.

Trupanion, a pet health insurer, announced in an ear-

nings call this week that its second-quarter revenue was up 28% over last year. It has 14% more cat and dog members than it did at the start of the year (at a moment when 5.4 million American humans are estimated to have lost coverage). Some of those newly insured pets have names that fit the moment: Corona, Rona and Covid.

“We were impacted by the 2008 recession,” said Dr. Heather Loenser, senior veterinary officer for the American Animal Hospital Association. “In March, if you’d asked veterinarians where we thought we’d be in the summer, we would not have thought we’d have this surplus of pets and revenue.”

Veterinarians attribute the increase in demand to one key factor that makes this recession different from others: It has forced millions more Americans to work from home.

Some are taking the opportunity to bring home new pets, with some shelters reportedly emptied out thanks to high demand. The national data, however, is a bit mixed: Shelter Animals Count, which tracks adoption data from nearly 1,500 animal shelters and rescue organizations, estimates that there have been fewer pet adoptions this year, largely because of fewer strays coming into their care.

Multiple veterinarians say they are seeing more puppies than normal, to the point they can no longer take on new clients.

“We’re having to limit who we are taking on as new clients because we’ve become overrun with requests,” said Dr. Dirk Yelinek, president of the California Veterinary Medical Association, who practices at Redondo Shores Veterinary Center.

“Initially we tried to offer slots a week or two weeks out. Now they’re already full.”

Americans who already had pets seem to have become more watchful of their animal companions during the long pandemic days at home together. Sometimes they notice important changes in the health of their cats and dogs. One emergency veterinarian reported a rise in cases of urinary obstructions among cats, which may be a sign of feline stress (possibly a result of humans hanging around more than the cat would like).

Other times veterinarians may see a case of, as Loenser describes it, “staring at your pet” syndrome: subtle differences that don’t require medical care but catch the attention of a quarantined pet owner.

“It’s been really surprising, like what the heck? Why are we all so swamped?” said Dr. Monica Mansfield, a veterinarian in Medway, Massachusetts. “In general, I’m wondering if this might be related to an uptick in anxiety and people wanting to take care of health issues they can control.”

Some veterinarians say they are also seeing slightly sicker dogs, which may be a result of owners putting off care at the beginning of the pandemic. A few serious conditions may also be on the rise: BluePearl, which operates 90 pet hospitals across the country, has seen a 70% increase in hospitalizations for parvovirus, a potentially deadly ailment that most commonly strikes unvaccinated puppies.

“We think owners earlier in the pandemic maybe didn’t want to go out and see a veterinarian or maybe couldn’t afford to,” said Dr. James Barr, BluePearl’s chief medical officer. “We think that probably resulted in fewer dogs getting vaccinated.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

11

Startups braced for the worst. The worst never came.

By ERIN GRIFFITH

G

etaround, a car sharing startup, started the year by laying off 150 employees and scaling back some operations after it spent too much on a rapid expansion.

Two months later, with the spread of the coronavirus, business got even worse. The company laid off another 100 employees, asked those who remained to volunteer for pay cuts, obtained a government loan of $5 million to $10 million and battled bankruptcy rumors.

But in May, something unexpected happened: Business bounced back when people began using the startup’s cars to get on the road again. Getaround’s revenue in the United States for the year is now 40% above where it was a year ago. Last month, it brought back all of its furloughed employees and started hiring again.

“We have seen a very, very fast recovery,” said Sam Zaid, Getaround’s chief executive, adding that he was now raising more cash. “It’s been a bit of a wild ride.”

When the coronavirus pandemic first hit in March, many technology startups braced themselves for the end, as business dried up, venture capitalists warned of dark times ahead and restructuring experts predicted the beginning of a “great unwinding” after a decadelong boom. Five months later, those doomsday warnings have not translated into the drastic shakeout that many had expected.

Funding for young companies has stayed robust, particularly for the larger startups. Some of them, like the stock trading app Robinhood and Discord, the social media site, have pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars in new capital in recent months, boosting their valuations.

And initial public offerings of tech companies have come roaring back, alongside a surging stock market.

“Things generally are substantially better than our worst fears 90 days ago,” said Rich Wong, an investor at Accel, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

The stabilization has created a surreal disconnect between tech startups and the broader economy. While retailers, restaurant chains and many other companies are filing for bankruptcy and are dealing with one of the worst downturns on record, the tech industry has largely sidestepped the worst of the destruction.

Demand has surged for startups that offer virtual learning, telehealth, e-commerce, video games and streaming, and software for remote workers. Startups in areas like fitness or children’s activities also quickly adapted their offerings to go virtual.

That doesn’t mean tech startups have escaped unscathed. Some — like those providing travel services, restaurant software or tickets to events — watched revenue disappear. Stay Alfred, a luxury hospitality startup

“It’s been a bit of a wild ride,” said Sam Zaid, chief executive of the car sharing start-up Getaround. in Washington, recently began winding down its operations, blaming the virus. ScaleFactor, an accounting startup in Texas, and Stockwell, an office vending machine startup that was previously known as Bodega, did the same.

But overall, the money has continued flowing.

Startups in the United States raised $34.3 billion in the second quarter, down slightly from $36 billion a year earlier, according to PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association. Much of the financing went to the largest companies, with the number of “mega-rounds” (deals larger than $100 million) on a pace to top last year’s total.

“People are trying to focus on who they believe the winners are, on companies that have pivoted successfully to meet the new norm,” said Heather Gates, a managing director at Deloitte who advises startups.

Across Silicon Valley, the startup panic began dis-

sipating around May. That was when layoffs slowed to a trickle, according to Layoffs.fyi, a site that tracks startup layoffs. Just 5% of the hundreds of companies that did layoffs went out of business, according to the site.

Hiring is now picking back up. Job openings posted to a network run by Drafted, a recruiting company, increased 30% in the last month, said Vinayak Ranade, its chief executive.

Startup expenditures also began rising again. Brex, which provides corporate credit cards to roughly 10,000 startups in the United States, said spending on items like software, servers and ads is now more than a third above February levels — though spending on business travel and office snacks remain depressed.

“Everyone woke up and thought, ‘Wait a second, people are still going to do business,’” said Steve Sloane, an investor at Menlo Ventures. “They’re just going to do it online.”

Some of the shift was fueled by startups adapting their businesses to the pandemic. One of those was ActivityHero, an online marketplace for children’s activities.

In April, the San Francisco startup’s bookings dropped 88% as summer camps around the country canceled their programs, said Peggy Chang, its chief executive.

She worried the company wouldn’t survive the year.

So ActivityHero encouraged its providers to offer virtual activities, promoting them to parents with free classes and small discounts. By the summer, bookings were back — just online. Now, Chang said, she sees online activities as a springboard to expand faster when in-person activities return.

Some larger startups have seized the opportunity to raise even more cash from investors. DoorDash and Instacart, two delivery services that have become more popular in the pandemic, collectively raised more than $600 million in funding in June, lifting their valuations to $16 billion for DoorDash and $13.7 billion for Instacart.

Robinhood, the online trading startup, raised $280 million in May and added $320 million in July as day trading surged while people were quarantined. Canva, an online design software provider, saw its growth accelerate as more people worked remotely, and it doubled its valuation to $6 billion in June. Discord, a social media chat service whose use increased roughly 50% in the pandemic, raised $100 million in June in a matter of weeks.

Ruben Flores-Martinez, founder of Cashdrop, an ecommerce startup, said he had struck out trying to raise funding for his company in January. But the virus pushed local merchants to move online, leading hundreds of them to try Cashdrop’s software.

“COVID just came and accelerated stuff exponentially,” said Flores-Martinez, who ultimately raised $2.7 million in funding for his startup in July.

12

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Boycotted. Criticized. But Fox News leads the pack in prime time.

Led by Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, the channel’s pro-Trump lineup outranked every network from 8 to 11 p.m. in June and July.

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

I

n one sense, this has been a difficult period for Fox News: a star anchor fired after being accused of sexual harassment, a lawsuit depicting a misogynist workplace, a top writer exposed as a racist internet troll, advertiser boycotts and outrage after Tucker Carlson called protesters “criminal mobs” and questioned the patriotism of a senator who lost her legs in Iraq.

In another sense, business has never been better.

In June and July, Fox News was the highest-rated television channel in the prime-time hours of 8 to 11 p.m. Not just on cable. Not just among news networks.

All of television. The average live Fox News viewership in those hours outstripped cable rivals like CNN, MSNBC and ESPN as well as broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC, according to Nielsen.

That three-hour slot is a narrow but significant slice of TV real estate, and it is exceedingly rare for a basic cable channel to outrank the Big Three broadcasters, which are available in more households and offer a wider variety of programming.

Even the return of live sports did little to stop the momentum: The Fox News programs hosted by Carlson and Sean Hannity drew more live viewers than competing baseball and basketball games, including

a New York Yankees and Washington Nationals matchup on opening day.

Fox News’ big summer has been boosted by a rise in audience for news programming in general, an increase driven by interest in the pandemic, civil rights protests and the presidential election. ABC, CBS and NBC, meanwhile, have more reruns on the summer schedule; the coronavirus has suspended most TV productions; and viewers are being lured away by streaming services and on-demand Hollywood movies.

But the Fox News ratings also demonstrate the size and resilience of America’s audience for pro-Donald Trump opinion and the loyalty of Fox News viewers who shrug off the controversies that routinely swirl around the network.

“Massive news events that conservatives view through a highly partisan lens are driving the ratings, and none of the controversies really land with loyal Fox News viewers,” said Nicole Hemmer, a scholar at Columbia University and a historian of U.S. conservative media.

Lachlan Murdoch, executive chair of Fox News’ parent company, bragged on an earnings call last week about the network’s “astronomical” ratings. He also said its ad revenue was up from a year ago — a reminder that Fox News, for all the flak it takes from critics, politicians and the ad-

vertisers that fled Carlson, remains an unrivaled profit engine for the Murdoch empire.

Complaints that Fox News primetime hosts downplayed the coronavirus — and, in the case of Laura Ingraham, encouraged the use of hydroxychloroquine, a drug shown to be useless and even dangerous for COVID-19 patients — made little difference.

“The belief that hydroxychloroquine is something between a therapeutic and a miracle cure is wildly popular in conservative media, especially talk radio,” Hemmer said. “Tucker Carlson’s controversies have never really hurt his ratings, though they have cost him advertisers.”

Two days stood out when Fox News ratings fell significantly: the funerals of George Floyd, the Minnesota man who died after a police officer pinned him to the ground during a routine stop, and Rep. John Lewis, the towering civil rights figure.

Like its rivals CNN and MSNBC, Fox News carried the memorial services live.

During Floyd’s funeral, viewership on all three networks dipped. On both occasions, the drop in Fox News’ audience was stark, down to numbers more typically seen during overnight hours. (CNN and Mediaite previously reported on the ratings dips.)

Cable channels define prime time as 8 to 11 p.m., but the Big Three broadcasters include the 7 p.m. Sunday slot in their average prime-time audience counts. That is when “60 Minutes” airs on CBS — another news show that is hugely popular with viewers — and the broadcast networks’ definition of prime time allowed CBS to eke out a win against Fox News in June and July.

But Fox News was the king of 8 to 11 p.m., in part because conservative viewers have few options for right-wing political commentary. Smaller networks like Newsmax and One America News have tried to siphon off viewers but lag far behind.

MSNBC, whose liberal prime time is an ideological inverse to Fox News, has increased its audience from a year ago. But Rachel Maddow, once neck and neck with Hannity at 9 p.m., has fallen behind all three of Fox News’ prime-time stars in total viewers. Ingraham, who appears in the less desirable 10 p.m. slot, has drawn more viewers than Maddow for many months.

Fox News won praise this summer

thanks to several newsmaking interviews with Trump, including Chris Wallace’s grilling on “Fox News Sunday” and an interview with Harris Faulkner in which Trump struggled to address racial grievances. Even Trump’s June forum with Hannity yielded headlines when the president could not name a policy priority for a second term.

But the network’s critics said the language of its prime-time hosts can be reckless. Carlson has faced a particular backlash since Floyd’s death in Minneapolis in late May sparked nationwide demonstrations for civil rights.

Major advertisers, including the Walt Disney Co., T-Mobile and Poshmark, boycotted his program as Carlson denounced the protesters as violent anarchists. Later, the host called Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a wounded veteran, a “moron” and questioned her patriotism. In recent days, Carlson called former President Barack Obama a “greasy politician” and wondered if Floyd’s death had been caused by drug use rather than being pinned to the ground by a police officer.

Carlson’s ratings have never been higher. And based on Murdoch’s telling, the boycott had little effect on Fox News’ bottom line. Carlson’s show has virtually no major sponsors, but many ads were redistributed to other programs on the network.

Fox News also continues to make a fortune in so-called carriage fees, the money paid by cable and satellite providers to keep the network in their lineups.

Fox News vigorously defends itself from critics who say its news coverage is biased or its commentators are extreme.

When a writer for Carlson, Blake Neff, resigned in July because of racist and sexist messages he had posted in an online forum, Fox News’ chief executive, Suzanne Scott, publicly denounced his conduct as “abhorrent.” Carlson issued a halfhearted mea culpa, saying Neff’s posts were “wrong” but also warning that his critics would be “punished.”

Murdoch was made aware of Carlson’s on-air remarks before the broadcast, according to two people with knowledge of the exchange, which was reported earlier by The Daily Beast.

CBS remains neck-and-neck with Fox News in the 8 to 11 p.m. slot and could still take the summer crown.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

13 Stocks

World stocks tick up as China industrial data offsets trade woes; oil rises

S

tocks across the globe were little changed on Monday as upbeat industrial data out of China and hopes for more stimulus in the United States were offset by jitters over tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Technology stocks fell after a run of recent gains, while crude oil prices jumped.

Industrial output in China is returning to levels recorded before the coronavirus pandemic halted huge swathes of the economy, driven by pent-up demand, government stimulus and surprisingly resilient exports.

On Wall Street, the Dow industrials .DJI touched a more than five-month high but the Nasdaq .IXIC fell as much as 1.5%, after hitting a record high last week.

Tension between the United States and China ahead of scheduled trade talks at the weekend to review an agreement signed in January was blamed for the lack of market direction.

Talks in Washington over a U.S. fiscal stimulus package for pandemic-stricken businesses and workers caused further investor uncertainty. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday said they were open to resuming negotiations.

President Donald Trump has sought to take matters into his own hands by signing executive orders and memorandums aimed, among other things, at continuing unemployment benefits. The figure he put forward is less than the benefit passed earlier in the health crisis, however.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 357.96 points, or 1.3%, to 27,791.44, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 9.19 points, or 0.27%, to 3,360.47 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 42.63 points, or 0.39%, to 10,968.36.

“Part of the reason the S&P 500 has been held back is we’re starting to see yet another rotation to value and away from growth,” said Paul Nolte, portfolio manager at Kingsview Investment Management in Chicago. “That tends to hold back the S&P because it’s so dominated by big tech.”

The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.30% and MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD00000PUS gained 0.15%.

Emerging market stocks lost 0.26%. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS closed 0.08% lower, while Japan’s Nikkei .N225 lost 0.39%.

Oil rose, supported by the Chinese factory data, rising energy demand and hopes for an agreement in the United States on more coronavirus-related economic stimulus.

“The oil complex is heavily reliant on that aid. We need people to be able to boost economic activity to spur demand,” said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital in New York.

U.S. crude CLc1 recently rose 2.06% to $42.07 per barrel and Brent LCOc1 was at $45.01, up 1.37% on the day.

Brent settled at $44.99 a barrel and WTI at $41.94.

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14

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

‘I’d rather stay home and die’

Family of Victor Bailón gather at his grave at a cemetery in Tonanitla, Mexico on July 31, 2020. A fear of hospitals is leading many Mexicans to delay treatment for coronavirus until it is too late for doctors to help them.

By NATALIE KITROEFF and PAULINA VILLEGAS

A

gray Suzuki stopped outside the General Hospital of Mexico and deposited a heaving Victor Bailón at the entrance. He had refused to come to the hospital for days, convinced that doctors were killing coronavirus patients. By the time he hobbled into the triage area and collapsed on the floor, it was too late.

“Papito, breathe!” his wife screamed.

“Please breathe.”

Within an hour, Bailón was dead.

Mexico is battling one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world, with more than 52,000 confirmed deaths, the third-highest toll of the pandemic. And its struggle has been made even harder by a pervasive phenomenon: a deeply rooted fear of hospitals.

The problem has long plagued nations overwhelmed by unfamiliar diseases. During the Ebola epidemic in 2014, many in Sierra Leone believed that hospitals had become hopeless death traps, leading sick people to stay home and inadvertently spread the disease to their families and neighbors.

Here in Mexico, a similar vicious cycle is taking place. As the pandemic crushes an already weak health care system, with bodies

piling up in refrigerated trucks, many Mexicans see the COVID ward as a place where only death awaits — to be avoided at all cost.

The consequences, doctors, nurses and health ministers say, are severe. Mexicans are waiting to seek medical care until their cases are so bad that doctors can do little to help them. Thousands are dying before ever seeing the inside of a hospital, government data show, succumbing to the virus in taxis on the way there or in sickbeds at home.

Fighting infections at home may not only spread the disease more widely, epidemiologists say, but it also hides the true toll of the epidemic because an untold number of people die without ever being tested — and officially counted — as coronavirus victims.

Many Mexicans say they have good reason to be wary of hospitals: Nearly 40% of people hospitalized with confirmed cases of the virus in Mexico City, the epicenter of the nation’s outbreak, end up dying, government data show, a high mortality rate even when compared with some of the worst coronavirus hot spots worldwide. During the peak of the pandemic in New York City, less than 25% of coronavirus patients died in hospitals, studies have estimated.

While the statistic may be imprecise because of limited testing, doctors and re-

searchers confirmed that a startling number of people are dying in Mexico’s hospitals.

During a surge of cases in May, almost half of all COVID-19 deaths in Mexico City hospitals occurred within 12 hours of the patient’s being admitted, said Dr. Oliva López Arellano, Mexico City’s health minister.

In the United States, people who died typically made it five days in the hospital.

Doctors say more patients would survive if they sought help earlier. Delaying treatment, they argue, simply leads to more deaths in hospitals — which then generates even more fear of hospitals.

The distrust is so pronounced that relatives of patients in Ecatepec, a municipality outside of Mexico City, stormed a hospital in May, attacking its employees, filming themselves next to bags of corpses and telling reporters that the institution was killing their loved ones.

“After seeing videos of what happens to people inside hospitals, screw that,” said Bailón’s brother, José Eduardo, who had recently spent 60 days at home recovering from his own bout with what he believes was the coronavirus. “I’d rather stay home and die there.”

But many people who die at home in Mexico — or even on the way to the hospital — are never tested for the virus, so they are not counted as coronavirus victims. Instead, they fall into a statistical black hole of fatalities that are not officially tied to the pandemic.

Even by the official count, Mexico has already suffered more coronavirus deaths than any other nation but the United States and Brazil. And the government said recently that during a period of over three months this spring, there were 71,000 more deaths than expected, compared with previous years — an indication that the virus has claimed many more lives than the official tally suggests.

Adding to the confusion, political leaders here, as in many countries, have sown doubts about the virus and the need to seek medical care. The hugely popular president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said he uses religious amulets and his clean conscience to protect against the coronavirus, and he has advocated fighting the pandemic at home, with the help of families, rather than in hospitals.

Nearly 70% of Mexicans said they

would feel “unsafe” taking their loved ones to the hospital during the pandemic, in a survey published last month. A third said they would prefer to care for their relatives themselves.

Now the nation’s top health officials have begun pleading with Mexicans to stop resisting medical care.

“It’s very important that late care doesn’t contribute to death,” Hugo López-Gatell, the health official leading the country’s response to the virus, said at a news conference last month. “Please, go to hospitals early, especially people who are most at risk.”

Many are wary of the costs that come with a hospital stay. And in a country plagued by rampant government corruption, the fundamental distrust of authorities often extends to doctors and nurses in public hospitals.

At the General Hospital in Mexico City, where Bailón died, suspicion was running high. No one had wanted to come to the hospital, a place that seemed to swallow their loved ones and leave them outside, with few updates to calm the nerves. Everyone had a theory about the real cause of the virus and the destruction it had unleashed.

Modesto Gómez, whose wife was inside, heard the government was letting elderly people die of the virus because they had expensive pensions. Héctor Mauricio Ortega, whose father was intubated there with a COVID infection, said he believed doctors were purposely infecting people with the virus “because countries have a quota of people who need to die every year.”

Two days before Bailón was wheeled into the General Hospital’s intensive care unit, he visited a doctor in his tiny hometown an hour outside of the capital. His oxygen levels were low, but he begged his wife, Fabiola Palma Rodríguez, not to drive him to the hospital.

“Please don’t take me there, I don’t want to die,” she recalled him telling her. By the time Bailón relented, he was already ravaged by the disease.

After a local hospital turned him away, he made the trip to Mexico City. He died on a stretcher in the General Hospital, Palma said, before doctors could intubate him.

“I would have taken him earlier, but we were both too scared,” Palma said. “It is so unfair. I took him there alive and brought him back home dead the same day.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

15

Key to pandemic recovery? Put women in decision-making roles, leader says

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Undersecretary-General and Executive Director, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN WOMEN).

By FRANCESCA DONNER

P

humzile Mlambo-Ngcuka pounds the table for women and girls.

As she speaks, it’s like a drumbeat — how girls need to complete their education, how they need access to technology, how child marriage and pregnancy will set a girl on a path of economic hardship. You can hear it as she points to girls who are trafficked, and you can hear it as she speaks of the cycles of violence, abuse and poverty that trap women and girls for life.

Mlambo-Ngcuka has been the executive director of U.N. Women for seven years. Earlier in her career, she held several positions in the South African government, including deputy president of South Africa — the first woman to hold that role.

Certainly there are reasons to be hopeful — among them movements against violence and demonstrations for inclusivity — but COVID-19 has put those gains at risk.

So Mlambo-Ngcuka’s pounding beats on: We had better use this crisis to make decisions that can be enforced and enshrined in laws, she says, adding, “We want to go back to the new normal, which is not going back to the status quo that we had before COVID.” Mlambo-Ngcuka sat down with In Her Words to talk about the risks the global crisis poses to women and girls in particular and how the entire world has homework to do on an inclusive recovery.

The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q: How do you see the pandemic playing out long term for women?

A: As you probably know, every pandemic has a gender dimension. There’s no gender-neutral pandemic, and this one is no different. Women are affected not just by the virus or the disease but by the circumstances surrounding it.

Women are the majority of nurses, so they are the ones who are on the front lines. Women are also affected by the unpaid care responsibility. If there’s a spillover of sick people who can’t go to hospital, it is the women at home who are looking after those people. We are very concerned about girls not going back to school after the schools have closed for this long time. If they become pregnant at this time, that is the beginning of a journey of poverty for most girls. If at this time they are trafficked, you know they are lost to society and their rights will be violated in unimaginable ways. All of this shrinks the woman’s economic potential in society for the long term. So the circumstances, not just the disease, are a worry.

And of course, they are in low-paying jobs, they are in the informal sector, they are not in jobs where they can enforce a contract. In that way, even when there’s a stimulus given to their employers, they are not in a strong position to demand that they are also counted.

Q: Parental leave, remuneration, child care. When it comes to societal safety nets, what do you think is most critical?

A: I really cannot choose which rights we need to sacrifice, so it just starts with legislation that covers all women so that women have recourse. Countries may not live up to the obligations to all the rights they say women have, but it’s

important that those rights are there in law.

Q: Domestic violence is the “surprise” public health crisis. Lockdown to slow the spread of the virus creates ample opportunity for abusers, and the situation is made worse by stress and loss of control. How can it have been a surprise?

A: Well, it certainly should not be a surprise because every time there is a crisis, this is what happens. With Ebola, it was the same. You cannot limit access to services at a time like this. The services that women need to prevent violence, as well as to protect themselves from it, must be declared essential in every country.

We actually need our responses to COVID-19 to address this issue for the long term. We are flattening the curve of the pandemic; we must flatten the curve of gender-based violence at the same time as well, and stay with it until we’ve been able to see a difference.

Q: In the course of our reporting on COVID-19 and gender, we’ve heard many argue that now is not the time to worry about women’s issues, when we have a “real” crisis on our hands. Assuming that as head of U.N. Women you disagree with this view, how do you counter it?

A: Well, I think you have to break it down for them.

One of the essential ways of fending off the virus, for instance, is washing hands in clean water. There are many countries where women are the people who actually have to walk looking for water, in many cases bringing back home dirty water. That takes a lot of their time and it takes them away from engaging in other economic activities. If you address this issue of water, which is good for everyone’s health, it frees up her time for some other things, and that is good. We need that now.

If you’re talking about gender-based violence, there’s never a good time to beat up a woman, I’m sorry. Whether we are in a crisis or not, we have to use every opportunity to address this issue and to intervene in a way that will make our intervention permanent.

If you’re thinking about access to a digital infrastructure that would enable more women to have a meaningful future in their work life, that will enable all children to go back to school, that would give girl children access to technology (because there is still a gender divide when it comes to access to technology), why must we say the girls must be left behind?

We’ve worked so hard for girls’ education, for goodness’ sake.

We cannot give up, even now.

Q: It’s very hard culturally and socially to get women to the table. We don’t have a historical precedent for it. So how do we make it happen?

A: We actually need to engage men. And as much as we do not have enough men who stand up for women’s rights, we have seen a critical mass of men who are willing to use their power and authority to make decisions that promote gender equality. This is the time for them now to do everything they can to bring about change.

Q: What is most critical when it comes to building a better world, post-COVID? A: I will go with the leadership. Let us try and position women in strategic leadership so they’re inside the rooms where decisions are being made, and trust them to make the right decisions for all of us. Let’s just get them inside that door.

16

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Macron urges world leaders to speed aid to Lebanon after explosions

By LIZ ALDERMAN

P

resident Emmanuel Macron of France called on world leaders to fast-track financial and humanitarian aid to Lebanon on Sunday after explosions last week decimated parts of Beirut and left more than 150 people dead.

A day after furious demonstrations against the Lebanese government threatened to spill into chaos, more than 30 international leaders and government officials agreed to accelerate support in a video conference organized by Macron and the United Nations.

“The objective today is to act quickly and effectively to coordinate our aid on the ground so that it goes as efficiently President Emmanuel Macron of France, center left with as possible to the Lebanese people,” Macron told those gath- raised hand, toured Beirut on Thursday, just days after ered for the video call, including President Donald Trump, King disaster struck.

Abdullah II of Jordan, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt as well as representatives of the World Bank, the Red Cross, the enveloping much of the city in dust and smoke. About 6,000 International Monetary Fund, the European Union, China and people were wounded, and an estimated 300,000 were left homeless. the Arab League.

Shock and disbelief have given way to fury among resiMichel Aoun, Lebanon’s president and a target of protests against the government’s handling of the crisis, also par- dents in recent days, prompting demonstrations against what they see as extreme government negligence and corruption that ticipated.

Macron has repeatedly called for immediate aid to Leba- set the stage for the tragedy. Officials in Lebanon say that more non. He visited the rubble-ridden capital, Beirut, less than 48 than 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used in fertilhours after two explosions Tuesday devastated a wide area izer and bombs, exploded after being stored in a port warethere, overturning cars, shattering windows and buildings and house since 2014, when it was confiscated from a cargo ship.

On Saturday, the protests led to violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces, transforming much of central Beirut into a battle zone.

Macron, who spoke on the video call from his summer retreat on the French Riviera, urged world leaders to “work together to ensure that neither violence nor chaos prevails.” He also implored Lebanese authorities to act “so that the country does not sink, and to respond to the aspirations that the Lebanese people are expressing right now, legitimately, in the streets of Beirut.”

“Everyone wants to help!” Trump said Saturday on Twitter before the conference call.

He added that he had spoken with Aoun to inform him that the United States was sending three aircraft with medical assistance and other supplies.

Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said Sunday that Berlin would provide an additional 10 million euros, or about $11.8 million, in emergency aid, on top of the more than 1.2 billion euros in development aid it has given Lebanon since 2012.

Britain said Sunday that it would provide 20 million pounds (about $26 million) to help feed people in Lebanon through the World Food Program, on top of 5 million pounds in financial assistance.

France, a former colonial power in the region, is sending 18 tons of medical aid, including medicines, vaccines and hygiene kits, and 663 tons of food aid, the foreign ministry said.

Belarus’ leader vows to crush protests, claiming a landslide election victory

By IVAN NECHEPURENKO and ANTON TROIANOVSKI

T

he embattled president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, on Monday claimed a landslide victory in elections over the weekend and vowed to crush protests that have presented the biggest popular challenge he has faced in his 26 years of authoritarian rule.

Police clashed with largely peaceful protesters across the Eastern European country Sunday night, hours after the national vote, which the opposition dismissed as blatantly rigged.

Lukashenko appeared determined to cling to power and ignore protesters’ demands that he resign. On Monday, he boasted of a record turnout in the election, and official preliminary counts gave him more than 80% of the vote.

He insisted that the protests were being directed from abroad by people seeking to replicate the 2014 Ukraine uprising that began at Kyiv’s central Maidan square.

“We will not allow the country to be torn apart,” Lukashenko said in comments carried by Belarus’ state news agency, Belta. “As I have warned, there will be no Maidan, no matter how much anyone wants one. People need to quiet down and calm down.”

His comments came in the wake of a violent crackdown on protesters after the polls closed. Stun grenades and rubber bullets were directed at the crowd in the capital, Minsk, on Sunday night. A police truck drove into a group of demonstrators

and left people bloodied on the streets. And masked riot police officers roamed the city and could be seen making arrests that appeared to be arbitrary.

Authorities said that 1,000 people had been detained in Minsk and another 2,000 elsewhere in the country. More than 50 citizens, as well as 39 police officers, were injured in the clashes, officials said.

A Belarus human-rights group, Vesna, said one protester had died after being run over by the police truck, according to Russia’s Tass state news agency, though Belarus’ Health Ministry said that there had been no deaths.

On the Telegram messaging network, the protesters’ prime means of communication, one of the most popular accounts in Belarus called for renewed demonstrations Monday evening and for a nationwide strike Tuesday. The internet, which was largely shut down in Belarus on Sunday, appeared to remain down in much of the country Monday.

“The dictator has started a war,” read the message on the Telegram account, Nexta, urging people to go to hardware stores to stock up on protective equipment and to prepare first-aid kits.

In recent weeks, Belarus — a former Soviet republic between Russia and Poland — has experienced its biggest surge in public discontent since Lukashenko, a former collective farm manager, first won the presidency in 1994.

The coronavirus pandemic — the seriousness of which Lukashenko consistently played down — exacerbated popular

anger over years of political and economic stagnation. A rift between Lukashenko and President Vladimir Putin of Russia, a key ally for Belarus, has threatened the economy, with Russia increasingly reluctant to bankroll Belarus through cut-price oil deals.

“I am just tired of all the lies. Every word he says is a lie,” Galina M. Remizova, 68, a retiree, said of Lukashenko in an interview near the protests Sunday night while masked riot police officers patrolled nearby. “He is just like a husband who is not loved anymore.”

Lukashenko’s principal challenger in Sunday’s election, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, said at a news conference Monday that she believed the official results were false and that she had in fact won, according to Tass.

“We are for peaceful change,” Tikhanovskaya said. “The measures that the authorities used were disproportionate.”

Putin appeared prepared to continue his support for Lukashenko, despite the rift between the two, which widened late last month when Belarus arrested 33 Russians whom it accused of being mercenaries sent to disrupt the election. The Russian president issued a terse statement Monday congratulating Lukashenko on his reelection.

“I expect that your official duties will foster the further development of mutually beneficial Russian-Belarusian relations in all spheres,” Putin said, which he said were in the “fundamental interests of the brotherly peoples of Russia and Belarus.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

17

Belarus says longtime leader is reelected in vote critics call rigged

By IVAN NEREPUCHENKO and ANDREW HIGGINS

H

e bungled the coronavirus pandemic, alienated his long-standing foreign ally and last week faced the biggest anti-government protests in decades, but on Sunday, President Alexander G. Lukashenko of Belarus was on course to win his sixth term in office, in an election his critics dismissed as rigged.

According to a government-sponsored exit poll released after voting ended, Lukashenko won just under 80% of the vote against four rivals, avoiding a runoff.

A heavy cloak of security descended over the capital, Minsk, where internet service was cut off, phones worked only sporadically and soldiers and riot police cordoned off the central square and the main public buildings. Long before the results were announced, the opposition, predicting that the count would be illegitimate, had called for protests Sunday night.

Tension escalated sharply Sunday evening after a police truck rammed into a crowd of protesters blocking a major avenue in the center of the capital, injuring several people. The protesters had barricaded the avenue with metal dumpsters but were eventually dispersed by squads of riot police officers.

The downtown area vibrated with the din of stun grenades as security forces, backed by water cannons, moved in to break up crowds of opposition supporters who gathered throughout the evening in locations across the city.

“I don’t know who voted for him, how could he get 80%?” said Dmitri, 25. Like many people here, he refused to give his last name for fear of repercussions.

The result of the vote, as in previous elections, was never in any real doubt: Lukashenko controls vote counting, a vast security apparatus and a noisy state media machine unwavering in its support for him and contempt for his rivals.

Facing the biggest outpouring of dissent during his 26 years of autocratic rule, he hoped to return his restive country to the predictable political rhythms that have kept him in power.

“Nothing will get out of control. This I guarantee,” Lukashenko said Sunday, warning that anyone seeking to upset stability “will receive an immediate response from me.”

Security services arrested hundreds of protesters and many journalists in recent days, and on the eve of voting, the principal challenger, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, went into hiding in Minsk after security agents detained at least eight members of her campaign staff. The exit poll showed her in second place, with less than 7% of the vote.

Thousands of opposition supporters also gathered Sunday night near a war museum in Minsk to contest the apparent election results, and security officers detained dozens of them. Protesters blocked a nearby avenue, with police officers firing stun grenades in an effort to dislodge them.

Tikhanovskaya had entered the race after her husband, Sergey Tikhanovsky, a popular blogger and would-be presidential candidate, was arrested and thrown in jail on

Sunday’s vote has brought the greatest election challenge to President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, center, since he came into power in 1994. At left is Mr Lukashenko’s son Nikolai. what were widely viewed as trumped-up financial charges.

Lukashenko, unfazed by criticism of widespread preelection repression, radiated confidence as he cast his vote at a university in Minsk on Sunday morning.

“They aren’t even worth repressing,” he said of his opponents. “To be honest, we have been soft so far. I can tell you honestly, we have always restrained the law enforcement.”

The opposition, energized by weeks of protests but unable to break Lukashenko’s tight grip on the electoral system, dismissed the election as blatantly rigged.

Despite the foregone nature of the election outcome, Lukashenko had been challenged like never before this year, amid the biggest surge of public discontent since he won the presidency for a first time in 1994, the last election in Belarus that outside observers judged to be reasonably free and fair.

He has struggled with a faltering economy, anger over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which he denied posed any threat to health, defections by members of the country’s economic and political elite and an open rift with his longtime ally and benefactor, President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

A former collective farm manager, Lukashenko enjoyed genuine support at the start of his rule, appealing to voters by preserving many aspects of the Soviet-era economy, including a large but inefficient state-owned industrial sec-

tor. This allowed Belarus, a country of about 9.5 million people, to avoid the chaos endured by former Soviet states like Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s, when a few, aided by cronyism and corruption, built vast fortunes, and millions of others were plunged into poverty.

But his policies have grown increasingly unpopular as the Belarusian economy failed to grow and modernize.

(Valery Tsepkalo, the architect of the country’s only significant economic success, a high-tech development zone in Minsk, broke with Lukashenko and had planned to run against him in Sunday’s election. But Tsepkalo, warned that he, too, would soon be arrested, fled to Russia last month.)

With Russia increasingly reluctant to bankroll Belarus through cut-price oil deals, the economy has gone into steep decline and with it Lukashenko’s popularity.

His already souring relations with Moscow took a bizarre new turn for the worse last week when his security services arrested 33 Russians, accusing them of being part of a team of mercenaries sent to Belarus to disrupt the election. A few days later, authorities also took a swipe at the United States, saying that several suspicious Americans had been arrested, too.

For outside observers, there was little question about the election’s legitimacy. More than 41% of voters cast their ballots before Sunday. The only international observers in the country were from Russia, Azerbaijan and a few other countries with questionable democratic records.

18

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Beirut’s blast is a warning for America

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

W

hen I first heard the news of the terrible explosion in Beirut, and then the rampant speculation about who might have set it off, my mind drifted back some 40 years to a dinner party I attended at the residence of Malcolm Kerr, then president of the American University of Beirut.

During the course of the dinner, someone mentioned the unusual hailstorms that had pelted Beirut the previous two nights.

Everyone offered their explanations for this extreme weather event, before Malcolm, tongue in cheek, asked his guests, “Do you think the Syrians did it?”

Malcolm — a charming man and brilliant scholar, who was tragically murdered a few months later by unidentified assassins — was being both humorous and profound. He was poking fun at the Lebanese tendency to explain everything as a conspiracy, and, in particular, a conspiracy perpetrated by Syria, which is why we all laughed.

But he was also saying something profound about Lebanese society that, alas, also applies to today’s America: the fact that in Lebanon then, and even more so today, everything, even the weather, had become political.

Because of the sectarian nature of Lebanese society, where all the powers of governing and the spoils of the state had been constitutionally or informally divided in a very careful balance between different Christian and Muslim sects, everything was indeed political.

Every job appointment, every investigation into malfeasance, every government decision to fund this and not that was seen as advantaging one group and disadvantaging another.

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It was a system that bought stability in a highly diverse society (between spasms of civil war) — but at the price of a constant lack of accountability, corruption, misgovernance and mistrust.

That is why the first question so many Lebanese asked after the recent explosion was not what happened, but who did it and for what advantage?

The United States is becoming like Lebanon and other Middle East countries in two respects. First, our political differences are becoming so deep that our two parties now resemble religious sects in a zero-sum contest for power. They call theirs “Shiites and Sunnis and Maronites” or “Israelis and Palestinians.” We call ours “Democrats and Republicans,” but ours now behave just like rival tribes who believe they must rule or die.

And second, as in the Middle East, so increasingly in America: Everything is now politics — even the climate, even energy, even face masks in a pandemic.

Indeed, we in America are becoming so much like a Middle Eastern country that, while the Lebanese were concluding that the explosion was truly an accident, President Donald Trump was talking like a Beirut militia leader, declaring that it must have been a conspiracy.

“It was an attack,” he said his generals had told him. “It was a bomb of some kind.”

But a society, and certainly a democracy, eventually dies when everything becomes politics. Governance gets strangled by it. Indeed, it was reportedly the failure of the corrupt Lebanese courts to act as guardians of the common good and order the removal of the explosives from the port — as the port authorities had requested years ago — that paved the way for the explosion.

“For a healthy politics to flourish, it needs reference points outside itself — reference points of truth and a conception of the common good,” explained Hebrew University religious philosopher Moshe Halbertal. “When everything becomes political, that is the end of politics.”

To put it differently, when everything is politics, it means that everything is just about power. There is no center, there are only sides; there’s no truth, there are only versions; there are no facts, there’s only a contest of wills.

If you believe that climate change is real, it must be because someone paid you off with a research grant. If you believe the president committed an impeachable offense trying to enlist the president of Ukraine to undermine Joe Biden, it’s only because you want power for your party.

Illiberal populists like Trump — or Bibi Netanyahu in Israel, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and Vladimir Putin in Russia — deliberately try to undermine the guardians of facts and the common good. Their message to their people is, “Don’t believe the courts, the independent civil servants or the fake news generators; only trust me, my words and my decisions. It’s a jungle out there. My critics are killers (which is what Trump called his press corps Friday), and only I can protect our tribe from theirs. It’s rule or die.”

This trend is not only hurting us, it’s literally killing us. The reason Trump has utterly failed to manage the COVID-19 pandemic is that he finally met a force he could not discredit and deflect by turning it into politics: Mother Nature. She is impenetrable to politics because

all she consists of is chemistry, biology and physics. And she will do whatever they dictate — in this case, spread a coronavirus — whether Trump affirms it or not.

The leaders of Germany, Sweden and South Korea asserted just the opposite, saying, “No, there are scientific facts independent of politics, and there is the common good, and we will bow to those facts, and we will serve the common good with a public health strategy.”

The other day Trump told a GOP audience in Cleveland that, if Biden won, he would “hurt the Bible, hurt God. He’s against God. He’s against guns. He’s against energy — our kind of energy.”

Our kind of energy?

Yup, it turns out there is now Republican energy — oil, gas and coal — and Democratic energy — wind, solar and hydro. And if you believe in oil, gas and coal, you are also supposed to oppose abortion and face masks. And if you believe in solar, wind and hydro, you are presumed to be pro-abortion rights and pro-face mask. This kind of thinking, in the extreme, is what destroyed Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen and is increasingly eating away at Israel.

But if you listen to the street demonstrators in Beirut, you can hear how so many Lebanese are starved for a government that represents the common good. Here in America, too. Who are the leaders many of us still respect and yearn for — even when we disagree with them? asked Halbertal.

“They are the leaders,” he answered, “who believe that there is a realm of the sacred — of the common good — that is outside of politics and who make big decisions based on their best judgment of the common good, not their naked power interests.”

These leaders will do a lot for their parties; they are not averse to politics. They engage in it intensely — but they recognize where it has to stop and start. They won’t subvert the Constitution or start a war or play down a public health hazard to save their own power.

In the Middle East, those people are rare and usually get assassinated — but we remember their names: Yitzhak Rabin, Anwar Sadat, Rafik Hariri and courageous Lebanese journalists like my colleagues Gibran Tueni and Samir Kassir.

It is why many of us admire Justice John Roberts when he occasionally sides with the liberals on Supreme Court decisions. It is not because the decision is liberal but because he seems to be acting on behalf of the common good, not his political tribe.

It is also why we still admire our military, the guardians of our common good, and are appalled and alarmed when we see Trump dragging them into “politics.”

Think of the dignity of Al Gore gracefully submitting to a highly politicized Supreme Court decision giving the 2000 election to George W. Bush. Gore put the common good first. He took a bullet for America.

Trump would have torn America apart over that, and trust me, if he loses in November, there is no way he will put the common good ahead of his own and go quietly into this good night.

“When you lose the realm of the sacred, that realm of the common good outside of politics, that is when societies collapse,” Halbertal said.

That is what happened to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq. And that is what is slowly happening to Israel and America.

Reversing this trend is the most important project of our generation.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

19

Restituyen millonaria cifra en cheques devueltos al Departamento del Trabajo Por THE STAR l Secretario del Departamento del Trabajo y ReEformó cursos Humanos, Carlos J. Rivera Santiago inque hasta el pasado viernes, 7 de agosto de

2020 se ha contabilizado la devolución de cheques del DTRH y cheques de gerente restituyendo fondos ascendentes a $2,691,413, de los cuales 64,434.00 son de empleados públicos que entendían les correspondía la compensación a pesar de que no les aplicaba.

“Luego de que se divulgara y aclarara en varios medios de comunicación quienes les correspondía recibir la compensación, y se comenzara a investigar posibles comisiones de delitos en conjunto con las autoridades, tanto estales como federales, cientos de ciudadanos iniciaron la restitución de dinero al Departamento del Trabajo”, señaló Rivera Santiago.

Por otro lado, el Secretario del Trabajo añadió que producto de las intervenciones policiales de la División de Robo a Bancos se han realizado hasta el pasado viernes cerca de 38 arrestos que han logrado recuperar cerca de $199.009.50 en cheques.

Estos casos corresponden a personas que hicieron

uso de tarjetas de indentificación falsas con el propósito de cambiar los cheques de la compensación en el seguro por desempleo y Asistencia de Desempleo Pandémico (PUA, por sus siglas en inglés).

Todo ciudadano que interese devolver un pago que no le corresponde, puede hacerlo de las siguientes maneras; 1. Puede entregarlo en la oficina local más cercana o depositarlo en el buzón de la oficina indicando en una breve carta la naturaleza de la devolución.

2. Puede enviarlo devuelta a la siguiente dirección: Departamento del Trabajo y Recursos Humanos, Unidad de Pagos, PO Box 195540, San Juan P.R. 00919-5540.

3. Si la persona ya cambio el cheque, pero interesa restituir el monto cobrado, podrá hacerlo mediante giro postal o cheque de gerente y devolver con cualquiera de los dos métodos anteriores.

4. Todo giro o cheque de gerente deberá estar a nombre de SECRETARIO DE HACIENDA. “La comunicación efectiva y correcta de lo que deben ser los requisitos de elegibilidad ha logrado en gran manera la restitución del dinero”, puntualizó el secretario del Trabajo.

Edición virtual del Mega Viernes Civil 2020 sobrepasa expectativas de ingenieros Por THE STAR días recientes, se llevó a cabo el Mega Viernes Ede nCivil Virtual Tour 2020, evento cumbre del Instituto Ingenieros Civiles de Puerto Rico (IIC), del Colegio

de Ingenieros y Agrimensores de Puerto Rico (CIAPR).

El mismo, por primera vez en sus 21 años, ofreció de forma virtual, tres días educativos dirigidos a los profesionales de ingeniería y disciplinas afines, impactando a un total de 4,807 colegiados con sobre 7,210 horas contacto de educación continua. Este hito sentó un nuevo precedente en el quehacer del Instituto y en la ejecución del Mega Viernes Civil, liderando con innovación y flexibilidad para adaptarse a los tiempos históricos que atraviesa Puerto Rico.

“El Mega Viernes 2020 fue uno de muchos retos para el IIC, ya que por motivos de la pandemia que se vive en la Isla, tuvimos que reprogramar el evento de presencial y transformarlo en uno virtual para poder cumplir con la oferta académica. Por esta razón, el evento se llamó Mega Viernes Civil Virtual Tour 2020, que por primera vez fue libre de costo. El formato no fue obstáculo para que los conferenciantes presentaran charlas técnicas con casos y aprendizajes de tecnología, innovación y mejores prácticas para continuar mejorando el diseño y desarrollo de proyectos, continuar elevando la consciencia del impacto ambiental y la urgencia de lograr construcciones sostenibles en Puerto Rico”, expresó el presidente del IIC, ingeniero José Luis Flores.

Esta edición virtual del Mega Viernes Civil, catalogado como un éxito rotundo por los organizadores y

participantes, constó de seis (6) módulos principales: Transportación, Estructuras, Terremotos, Recursos de Agua y Ambientales, Gerencia de Proyectos y Geotécnia.

“Los ingenieros civiles estamos listos y a pesar de los retos que los fenómenos naturales y la reciente pandemia nos presentan, estamos de frente al cambio y preparándonos cada día más para contribuir a la reconstrucción del país”, añadió el ingeniero Flores.

Por su parte, el Ing. Doel F. Muñiz, director ejecutivo del Mega Viernes Civil puntualizó que “nos sentimos sumamente complacidos con los resultados del evento virtual, la calidad de las charlas técnicas fue excelente, la asistencia de los ingenieros en cada día promedió los 1,600 ingenieros y profesionales de la industria, y logramos la meta de ofrecer las horas

contacto de educación continua que tanto aportan al crecimiento profesional de nuestros colegas.”

Los organizadores del Mega Viernes Civil informaron que en el 2021 retomarán la edición presencial del Mega Viernes Civil y no descartan trabajar un híbrido entre la edición presencial y la virtual. “El éxito de este año nos ha hecho repensar el modelo del Mega Viernes Civil y estamos contemplando a futuro, integrar una versión de módulos virtual para llegar más efectivamente a nuestra comunidad de ingenieros que no viven en Puerto Rico pero quieren mantener sus licencias vigentes y su conocimiento actualizado. Esto, en adición a nuestro evento cumbre presencial el cual todos extrañamos este año y que la industria apoya tan contundentemente” añadió el ingeniero Muñiz.

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Tuesday, August 11, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion take control, and 10 more new songs

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

P

op critics for The New York Times weigh in on notable new songs and videos.

Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion, ‘WAP’ An event record that transcends the event itself, the first collaboration between Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion is a meeting of the (dirty) minds. Riding on a sample of Frank Ski’s proto-Baltimore club classic “Whores in This House,” “WAP” luxuriates in raunch. In their verses, both Cardi and Megan are exuberant, sharp and extremely, extremely detailed. And the David LaChappelle-esque video matches the excess of the rhymes, including cameos from Normani, Rosalía and Kylie Jenner.

— JON CARAMANICA Troye Sivan, ‘Rager Teenager!’

The latest single off “In a Dream,” the upcoming EP from 25-year-old Australian pop crooner Troye Sivan, is a sparse, sweetly yearning ode to days semirecently gone by.

“Hey, my lil rager teenager, tryna figure it out,” he sings atop a gently warping synth track. But the mood evoked by the music video — low-concept but somehow arresting, anchored by Sivan’s ex-YouTuber charisma — rings particularly true right now: Sivan lounging by himself, looking bored in a dingy bathtub, wishing he were somewhere better lit and more densely populated. “I just wanna sing loud,” he pines.

“I just wanna lose myself in a crowd.” Who can relate?

— LINDSAY ZOLADZ 645AR featuring FKA twigs, ‘Sum Bout U’ Finally, the trap surrealists and the art-soul eccentrics have come to a territory-sharing treaty. They’ve been moving toward each other for years now, and this chirp-off is perhaps their first proper collision. 645AR squeals about devotion, and FKA twigs coolly peeps back over an unerringly pretty 1990s-soul-esque arrangement that makes them sound like lovebirds lost in a reverie, not just wild experimenters landing a neat trick.

— JON CARAMANICA Chika, ‘U Should’ Chika’s “U Should” is balmy and light, an adult-contemporary love song full of careful guitar and salutary horns that also happens to include some of her signature nimble deep-in-the-pocket rapping: “I’m in the market for somebody I can talk with/got pictures inside of lockets and care less about my pockets.”

— JON CARAMANICA Jamila Woods, ‘Sula (Paperback)’ Each song on “Legacy! Legacy!,” Chicago singer-songwriter Jamila Woods’ excellent 2019 album, was named for an artist of color who had inspired Woods’ creative development: “Zora,” “Eartha,” “Baldwin.” On Aug. 5, the first anniversary of Toni Morrison’s death, Woods released “Sula (Paperback),” named for the first Morrison novel she ever read. (“It reminded me to embrace my tenderness, my sen-

Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion join forces on the raunchy song “WAP.” sitivities, my ways of being in my body,” Woods wrote in a statement.) The song itself is luminous, its quiet power emanating from guitarist Justin Canavan’s nimble arpeggios and Woods’ melodic incantation, “I’m better, I’m better, I’m better, I’m better.” Its beauty unfurls slowly, like a time-lapse glimpse of a blooming lily.

— LINDSAY ZOLADZ Mary Chapin Carpenter, ‘Between the Dirt and the Stars’ Mary Chapin Carpenter recorded her new album, “The Dirt and the Stars,” live in the studio with her band, capturing pristine performances that mirror the pensive intimacy of her mature, weathered but still hopeful songs. “Years will pass before we learn what time denies to everyone,” she sings in the title song, contemplating memories and the enduring resonance of a song on the radio: “Wild, wild horses/ Everything we’ll ever know is in the choruses.” The band takes over for the last three minutes, cresting and easing off, proving the power of music alone.

— JON PARELES beabadoobee, ‘Sorry’ Filipino-born British musician Beatrice Laus, who records as beabadoobee, manages to find a fresh, earnest perspective on ’90s nostalgia, simply because — brace yourself — she was born in the year 2000. (Last year’s ode to the patron saint of ’90s slackerdom, “I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus,” prompted him to declare, “we stan.”) “Sorry,” the second single from her forthcoming full-length debut, “Fake It Flowers,” begins as a brooding, string-assisted ballad that, midway through, cracks open into something more epic. “It hurts me,” Laus sings over her signature waves of guitar fuzz, “that you could be the one that deserved this even more.”

— LINDSAY ZOLADZ Popcaan featuring Drake and PartyNextDoor, ‘Twist & Turn’ Jamaican Drake is back! Or had he ever left? He makes

two appearances on dance hall star Popcaan’s new release, “Fixtape,” his second mixtape for Drake’s OVO Sound label. The slow, smeary “All I Need” finds Popcaan working in Drake’s brooding register; better still is the up-tempo “Twist & Turn,” which makes obvious the influence Popcaan has had on some of Drake’s later hits. “Listen, you’ve been missing since 2016,” Drake croons at the top of the track. Could he be talking about the fabled Popcaan verse that didn’t make the album cut of the “Views” song “Controlla”? Probably not, but I will pretend anyway.

— LINDSAY ZOLADZ Immanuel Wilkins, ‘Ferguson — An American Tradition’ Anyone trying to tune in to the current moment in jazz could do a lot worse than starting with Immanuel Wilkins, an alto saxophonist whose playing is at once dazzlingly solid and perfectly lithe. “Omega,” the debut album by Wilkins and his quartet, arrives as one of the more anticipated jazz releases of this year, thanks to the quietly ubiquitous presence he has established on the New York scene, despite only being in his early 20s. (It also helps that Jason Moran, MacArthur-winning pianist, produced it.) As an improviser, Wilkins bores in constantly, interrogating his options, sounding his way toward a maximum emotional outcome. That’s especially clear on “Ferguson — An American Tradition,” a devastating lament of the country’s legacy of anti-Black violence, with a neatly stitched lead melody that feeds into a tone-curdling saxophone solo.

— GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO David Virelles, ‘Cause and Effect’ There’s a spirit of wily misdirection guiding “Transformación del Arcoiris,” a short but spellbinding new album that Cuban-born pianist and composer David Virelles created during quarantine. Nominally, Virelles is joined by a percussion ensemble called Los Seres (“The Beings”), but in reality it’s all just him, doubling and tripling and quadrupling himself on hand drums, piano, analog synthesizer and sampler. Sometimes Virelles veers toward musique concrete: The instrumentals mingle with the sound of birds chirping, or a tape deck being loaded. Elsewhere, all you hear is the wraithlike swirl of a Juno-6 synth. Throughout, there is a feeling of lines evaporating — between musical performance and everyday life, between conceptualism and folklore, between togetherness and solitude.

— GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO Spires That in the Sunset Rise, ‘Sax Solfa’ Drones aren’t always soothing. “Sax Solfa” is from “Psychic Oscillations,” the 12th album (due Oct. 9) by the duo Spires That in the Sunset Rise, who multiply themselves in the studio. The drone tones in “Sax Solfa” underlie saxophone lines and loops, darting and rippling keyboards and bursts of gibberish vocal syllables, surfacing like anxieties no meditation can dispel.

— JON PARELES

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

21

Comfort viewing: 3 Reasons I love ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’

By NICHOLAS RAPOLD

L

ike everyone, I lose track of time these days.

Some people react to that kind of limbo with comfort viewing that creates a familiar routine, like detective series or cooking shows. But I turn to a George H.W. Bush-era blockbuster about time travel and killer robots so I can feel a bit better about the world.

The movie is “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” and I know what you’re thinking. What is so comforting about Arnold Schwarzenegger exchanging endless rounds of gunfire with a relentless liquid-metal android? Why don’t I just catch up on prestige television, say, or bask in the complete works of the Criterion Channel? (Which, full disclosure, I also do.)

First let’s make sure we’re on the same page, since I’m hearing reports that this franchise may have several sequels. “Terminator 2” (1991) is the one where Arnold’s Terminator is sent from the future to protect the eventual savior of humanity, a 10-year-old named John Connor (Edward Furlong). Skynet, the AI computer that will nuke civilization, dispatches a shape-shifting assassin called the T-1000 (Robert Patrick) to kill John and look really cool.

What follows is essentially a feature-length chase scene, like a bad dream. After taking the form of a police officer, the T-1000 pursues John and his mother, Sarah (Linda Hamilton), who’s sprung from a mental asylum. Explosions, fusillades and eye-popping special effects ensue. I never said this was a quiet, meditative gem. But I watch all of it compulsively, as if I didn’t already know the plot’s future.

In all honesty, I’m a bit surprised to be mooning over “Terminator 2” in public. As the top-grossing movie release of 1991 and part of the pop culture vocabulary, it’s no discovery. Many admirers of James Cameron’s 1984 original, “The Terminator,” look askance at his sequel’s catchphrases and sheer size.

Not to mention that much of my career as a critic and as editor at Film Comment has involved spotlighting much lesser-known movies — often small-budget or foreign, very few starring Schwarzenegger.

But if I may gratuitously quote Jean Renoir from “The Rules of the Game”: “Everyone has his reasons.”

Here are mine.

The Doom It’s reassuring to watch a movie where the stakes are apocalyptic at all times. After a day’s hassles and ongoing catastrophes, I like to settle into my couch and watch a seemingly invincible quicksilver angel of death hold the fate of humanity in the balance.

The appeal is simple. I look at imminent nuclear Armageddon and the subsequent hopeless war with unfeeling, self-replicating machines who possess murderous capabilities that might as well be necromantic

Arnold Schwarzenegger in “T2.” The stakes are always apocalyptic, and that’s a good thing. magic. And I think to myself, “Eh, I guess things could be worse.”

You know where you stand in “T2” — namely, on the brink of global annihilation and entirely dependent on the survival of a moody, erratic preteen whose hobbies include arcade games and credit card fraud. Some might object that the real world also faces ample mortal threats, pandemic and otherwise.

Why subject oneself to this robotic unpleasantness to relax? Chamomile tea is reliably soothing, and, prepared correctly, does not involve mass casualties.

I think the difference with the world’s horrors is that every single time I watch “T2,” it comes to an end. The nightmares remain in the realm of fiction.

(So far.)

Better Living Through FX “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” is a breathtaking peak during a pivotal moment in blockbuster filmmaking: a dazzling combination of highly expressive digital effects and thrilling analog effects — stunt work, chases, and action set pieces whose influence can be seen to this day.

These visual wonders still dazzle. I love the peculiar unnerving heft of the T-1000’s liquid metal: You feel as if you could reach out and touch it, a physicality that’s rare in digital effects.

The mind-bending metamorphoses serve as the shimmering physical embodiment of the story’s coldsweat paranoia: the enemy inspires awe and fear and

could be anyone, anything, anywhere.

For its technical accomplishments, the movie went on to win four Academy Awards, out of six total nominations. It’s a rare sequel with all pistons firing, when so many franchise installments today feel belabored and airless (including later “Terminator” visits).

The Personal Touch Enough about liquid metal. I love the energy and detail brought by the actors who populate “T2.”

Patrick gives us one of cinema’s finest androids, a model of patient menace. Hamilton is a ferocious action hero, in a movie starring Schwarzenegger. (Some quibble over her character’s voiceover, but if I went through all that Sarah Connor does, I’d want to talk, too.) Furlong makes for a credibly awkward kid. And as tech guru Miles Dyson, Joe Morton conveys the wholesome curiosity that unwittingly hastens doomsday.

Finally, there are the note-perfect walk-ons — hapless people who cross paths with the unthinkable while getting coffee or answering the door. In my mind, they all get their own friendly Terminators who come back and save them (and give a cornball thumbs-up while lowering into molten steel). I don’t think too much about the possibility of time-travel paradoxes. I’m just getting through the day.

How to watch Stream on Fubo; rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes and Vudu.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

She fell in love, and the dog approved

By JENNY BLOCK

I

n June 2018, when Tara Harper told Frederick Rahr that she was going to drive eight hours round trip, from Dallas to Pasadena, Texas, to pick up an elderly and neglected German shepherd, she never imagined the man she had been seeing for just a few months would volunteer to join her. When he did, she figured he was just trying to score a few points with her.

But after both had spent time in the car with the rescued animal, Harper knew that having Rahr, 53, who goes by Fritz, with her at that time was so much more. “It didn’t matter to Fritz that our new friend was dirty and smelled,” she said.

When they returned to Harper’s Dallas home, Rahr jumped in the shower with the old dog and gave him what was probably his first bath. “After the shower, Fritz and I were sitting on the kitchen floor exhausted,” Harper said. “The rescue came over to Fritz and put his foot on his arm, thanking him. I started bawling.”

It was then that Harper, 45, realized that his love of animals and rescuing them was real. “But more than that,” she said. “I knew he was kind. I knew in that moment that I was going to spend the rest of my life with this man.”

The pair had first met at a Rahr & Sons Brewing Co. event in Fort Worth, Texas, where Harper was holding a dog adoption for the charity she co-founded, Paws in the City.

Though Harper teases that she’s surprised Rahr remembers as she was in sunglasses and a ball cap all day. Even the date is a little fuzzy now, she says. “We think it was about nine years ago.”

In September 2017, Rahr messaged Harper on Facebook. “I reached out to her after I saw her comment on a mutual topic of interest.” Rahr says he couldn’t help himself.

“I had to ask Tara out on a date,” Rahr said, “There was something captivating about Tara.

Her love and passion for dog rescue really hit home for me. I would do anything for my dogs and from what I could tell Tara would do that and a lot more.”

Harper didn’t say yes at first. In fact, Rahr, who lived in Fort Worth, asked several more times before she finally agreed. It wasn’t that she wasn’t intrigued. “I immediately thought he was incredibly good-looking, very nice and funny,” she said. “The truth is I needed to do

my research. Dallas and Fort Worth are two completely different worlds. I couldn’t simply make one call and know everything about him like I could if he lived in Dallas.”

Their first date was in October 2017 at Del Frisco’s Grill in Dallas, and it turned out to be more of a first meeting. When Rahr arrived at the restaurant, he spotted Harper at a table with a half dozen or so of her friends. “I thought she was just hanging out with some friends and we would move to another table for the evening,” Rahr said. But that was not the case. She simply asked him to have a seat.

“My friends are very important to me,” said Harper, explaining why she was with her friends at the restaurant. “In order for a relationship to work everyone has to get along and enjoy each other. He passed the test with flying colors.”

In July 2019, she moved into Rahr’s Fort Worth home. This past February, they purchased a home together, also in Fort Worth.

Rahr had planned to propose to Harper during a trip he organized to New York in July 2019. “New York City is a very special place for both of us,” he explained. “It’s the city Tara grew up in, and she still has family there.”

But their flight was canceled because of bad weather. Two month later, he planned another New York getaway. “I contacted everyone again, spun the trip to New York with Tara as a family outing this time with her family and my sister and boyfriend and her brother and husband,” Rahr said. “I wanted to ask Tara to marry me at Rockefeller Center.

That was the first place I told Tara I loved her.”

On the trip were Harper’s parents, Suzanne and John Harper of Ennis, Texas, and her brother, Brad Harper, and his husband, Pedja Arandjelovic, as well as Rahr’s sister, Heidi Rahr, and a handful of close friends.

They all met at the planned proposal spot and Rahr popped the question. “She was confused at first, but soon realized what was going on and that everyone else was in on it,” he said.

“She bent over, placed her hands around my face, and said, ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’ ” The couple originally planned to marry July 23 at Villa Balbianello on the western shore of Lake Como, Italy, with family and close friends, but they had to pull back those plans because of the coronavirus. (They are planning a vow-renewal ceremony at Villa Balbianello in July 2021.)

Instead, they married at home on July 11. They dressed their house in a bounty of

Tara Harper pets her dog, Security, at her wedding, Fort Worth, Texas, July 11, 2020. Harper knew Rahr was “the one” after he volunteered to join her on a trip to rescue a German shepherd — and then gave it a bath. pink roses, set up a Zoom call with 45 guests, and invited a small group to attend in person.

Among those present were Harper’s parents and brother and Rahr’s two sons from a previous marriage, Will and Hayden Rahr. A friend of the couple, Ron Corning, officiated, having been ordained by the Universal Life Church.

And the couple’s dog, Shep (that forlorn German shepherd they rescued), acted as ring security during the ceremony.

With a recording of “Here Comes the Bride” playing, Harper, wearing a Monique Lhuillier gown, glided down the stairs of their home and down an aisle created in the dining room, which had been set up with chairs and a lush wall of pink roses. Rahr waited at the end of the aisle wearing a classic custom tuxedo and vest from Sean Marshall of Marshall & Metcalf.

The ceremony was a mixture of prayers and readings, and the vows included some personal jokes. Rahr vowed “to assist in rescuing dogs,” and Harper promised “to share in long drives to the Duck Camp,” a reference to Rahr being an avid hunter.

“After all the changes in plans, as upsetting as it was, we pulled together an amazingly, beautiful wedding in our home with our family and friends,” Rahr said.

After the ceremony, the newlyweds greeted friends and family on Zoom. Guests

wished them well.

“We love you!”

“Congratulations!”

“See you in New York!”

On This Day Tara Harper and Fritz Rahr When: July 11, 2020 Where: Home of Tara Harper and Fritz Rahr, Fort Worth, Texas Tears and Laughter: When it came time for the vows, Rahr began to cry. That, in turn, caused the officiant, Corning, to cry. And when Harper saw his tears she teased, “You too?” Everyone began to laugh, and Harper said she could feel the mood in the room lighten instantly.

Preparing Together: Like most wedding couples, Rahr and Harper had expected to spend their wedding day apart up until the ceremony. But the two spent it together helping each other get ready. “If we were in Italy or any other location we would not have done it that way,” said Harper.

Words From the Groom: “Love is my heart racing every time I see Tara — at any given moment. Love is when my problems fall from my shoulders when Tara holds me tight.

Love is when Tara understands my faults, accepts my apologies and tells me she loves me, even when I don’t deserve it. Love is her and I love her for that.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

23

Five-minute coronavirus stress resets

By JENNY TAITZ

I

n this emotional equivalent to an ultramarathon, it’s key to have some stress-reducing strategies available that work quickly and efficiently to help you hit the reset button.

Here’s why: Struggling with chronic worry gets in the way of effectively managing your emotions. Unfortunately, many people who experience distress try to escape their unpleasant emotions by distracting themselves in ways that ultimately backfire.

If you suspect you might be one of them, ask yourself whether you have a tendency to judge your emotions — it’s a common thing to do. But it can fuel a vicious loop of feeling, then avoiding the feelings and feeling even worse. Pushing away feelings is like trying to force a beach ball underwater: They will pop back up. Instead, notice and normalize difficult emotions; ideally, negative feelings, including fear, can motivate us to solve problems.

So rather than dealing with anxiety and uncertainty by getting lost worrying, then chasing short-term fixes with longer-term consequences, like procrastinating, using food or marijuana to cope or relying on benzodiazepines — the anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax — it’s helpful to experiment with quick strategies that will empower you. These strategies are not necessarily a cure, but can help lower the intensity of overwhelming emotions, allowing you to recalibrate to better deal with challenges you face.

My patients often reflect that an additional perk of strategic coping is boosting your sense of mastery — the hope that arises when you stretch yourself and accomplish something difficult, like coping with your anxiety in a productive way.

TRY MUSIC MEDICINE Focusing on relaxing sounds reduces stress. In research spearheaded by Dr. Veena Graff, an assistant professor in the department of anesthesiology and critical care at the University of Pennsylvania, preoperative patients were assigned either to music medicine — listening to Marconi Union’s “Weightless” — or prescribed a benzodiazepine. Remarkably, serene music proved nearly as effective in easing patients’ jitters as the medication option, with no side effects.

To honor your unique taste, explore different options and create a playlist that you find comforting when you need a break. Keep in mind that although it can seem cathartic to hear

songs that validate your emotions (for example, listening to lyrics about heartache while feeling lonely), research on inducing varying mood states concludes that we can improve our experience with a more uplifting soundtrack. “Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears — it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear,” as Dr. Oliver Sacks wrote in “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.”

COOL OFF Marsha Linehan, a professor emeritus in psychology at the University of Washington, popularized an exercise in dialectical behavior therapy to regulate intense emotions that involves immediately lowering your body temperature by creating a mini plunge pool for your face. This sounds odd, but it activates your body’s dive response, a reflex that happens when you cool your nostrils while holding your breath, dampening your physiological and emotional intensity.

To do it, fill a large bowl with ice water, set a timer for 15 to 30 seconds, take a deep breath and hold your breath while dipping your face into the water. While this isn’t conventionally relaxing, it will slow your heart rate, allowing blood to flow more easily to your brain. I love watching my clients try this over our telehealth calls and seeing firsthand how quickly this shifts their perspective. Just being willing to do this, I tell my clients as they prepare to submerge, is a way to practice being flexible.

PACE YOUR BREATHING One of my favorite ideas that never fails to fill me with gratitude, no matter what else is happening, comes from the mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn, who likes to say, “As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you.” In “The Healing Power of the Breath,” Drs. Richard Brown and Patricia Gerbarg offer a range of exercises to promote resilience. One of my favorites: Slow your breathing down to six breaths a minute by consciously inhaling and exhaling (to practice this timing, you can use a secondhand and inhale for five seconds, exhale for five seconds, and repeat four times, or try a guided recording).

Paced breathing offers a host of physiological benefits, like reducing your blood pressure, which helps promote a sense of tranquility.

When people tell me it feels challenging to breathe in a certain way when they feel panicked, I tell them to start with alternative soothing activities, like music, and work their way up to paced breathing.

PRACTICE ‘ANCHORING’ Another way to stay present rather than spin into a crisis is to notice if you are engaged in thinking that isn’t helping you. Our interpretations of events supercharge the intensity of our emotions. After all, anticipating, “This will go on for years!” in a moment of anguish will only inspire more hopelessness. But mindfulness, or learning to see more clearly as opposed to jumping to conclusions, is a nice remedy for anxiety. One brief way to enter the moment is known as “anchoring,” a popular strategy.

Start by physically centering yourself by digging your heels into the floor — this evokes a feeling of being grounded in reality. Then take a moment to observe: What am I thinking?

Feeling in my body? Doing? Then ask yourself: Is my response: A) Helpful? B) Aligned with my values now? Or C) Related to future worries or a past problem? While we can get stuck in specific thoughts, stepping back to more generally decide if those thoughts are helpful can get us out of rumination mode. It may also help to tape a list of these prompts on your computer to remember to take a step back and refocus when your thoughts are only making things worse.

HYPERVENTILATE If you struggle with physical sensations of anxiety, like muscle tension and feeling like you can’t get enough air, a counterintuitive yet important way to manage is to practice bringing on those sensations in more quiet moments to improve how you tolerate stressful ones.

Learning to repeatedly welcome physical symptoms allows you to stop seeing them as catastrophic. In a recent therapy group I led on Zoom, my clients prepared to try this by ordering thin coffee straws. I set my timer for a minute as they pinched their noses and tried to breathe only through the straw.

We also worked on replicating the other sensations they associated with fear, like muscle tension, dizziness and shortness of breath. We held a plank, spun in circles and ran in place. Some people were surprised that the practice experience was worse than the anxiety they normally felt. Others found it was similar, which felt liberating — they didn’t have to wait for the feelings to catch them off guard — and instead could purposefully habituate themselves to them.

Recently, at the end of a long day of video calls with patients, my 5-year-old daughter asked, “When will the germs go away?” After removing my 3-year-old’s sneaker from my 1-year-old’s mouth, I saw a request from a client about an urgent check-in. I practiced paced breathing and pulled up our nightly dance party playlist (by request: Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling”) before discussing my daughter’s feelings and returning to work.

Now I hope you create your own plan with the strategies above. By practicing managing your emotions, you’ll experience a sense of freedom in your life. I don’t know about you, but I’d chase that over any mindless short-term alternative.

24 en 15 metros, con la Calle San Agustín de dicha urbanización.

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Se alega, además, que dicho DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- pagaré se encuentra extraviaNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA do . Se les apercibe y notifica SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN que, si no contestan la demanJUAN. da radicada en su contra, radiLORENZO IRIZARRY cando el original de la misma y COLON; MAGDALENA enviando copia de su contestación a la abogada de la parte ARANA COLON demandante: Ledo. Raúl RiveDEMANDANTES Vs. ra Burgos, Estancias de San MERRILL LYNCH Calle 4, Número 4, CREDIT CORPORATION Fernando, A-35, Carolina, P.R. 00985, Tel. CANCELACION DE (787) 238-7665, Email: raulrPAGARE EXTRAVIADO; blaw@gmail.com.; dentro del JOHN DOE Y término de treinta (30) días de la publicación de este edicto, RICHARD ROE se les anotará la rebeldía en su DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: SJ2020CV03722. contra y se dictará sentencia en SALA: 903. EMPLAZAMIEN- su contra, conforme se solicita TO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS en la Demanda, sin más citar, ni UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL oír. Expedido bajo mi firma y sePRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. llo del Tribunal, a 29 de JULIO ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO de 2020. Griselda Rodriguez Collado, Sec Regional.

DE P.R. SS.

LEGAL NOTICE

A: MERRILL L YNCH CREDIT CORPORA TION, JOHN DOE y RICHARD ROE COMO POSIBLES TENEDORES DEL PAGARE EXTRAVIADO.

Quedan emplazados y notificados de que en este Tribunal se ha radicado una demanda en su contra. Se les notifica para que comparezca ante el Tribunal dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación de este edicto y exponer lo que a su derecho convenga, en el presente caso. · En la Demanda se alega que la propiedad objeto de esta cancelación judicial está afecta a una hipoteca en garantía de un pagaré favor de Merrill Lynch Credit Corporation, o a su orden, por la suma de $125,000.00, intereses al 6.750% anual, vencedera el 1 de noviembre de 2008; escritura número 189, otorgada en San Juan el 22 de octubre de 1993, ante la notaria Maritza Silva Cofresi; inscrito al folio 176 vuelto del tomo 509 de Monacillos, finca 2730, inscripción 15a , y que grava la propiedad que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar designado con el número 35 en el plano de inscripción de la Urbanización Antonsanti que radica en el barrio Monacillos de Rio Piedras, con Lina cabida superficial de 450.00 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el Norte, en 30 metros, con el solar número 34 de dicha Urbanización; por el Este, o sea su fondo, en 15 metros, con un canal construido en dicha propiedad, que lo separa del solar número 46 de dicha Urbanización; por el Sur, en 30 metros, con el solar número 36 de dicha Urbanización; y por el Oeste, o sea su frente,

@

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR BAYAMON.

AMALIE APONTE VERA Parte Demandante Vs.

POPULAR MORTGAGE INC., JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE,

Parte Demandada CASO NÚM. BY2020CV02176.

SOBRE; CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE o sea, las personas ignoradas que puedan ser tenedores del pagaré extraviado.

Por la presente se les notifica que se ha presentada ante este tribunal una Demanda, en el caso de epígrafe, en la cual se solicita la cancelación de un pagaré a favor de Popular Mortgage, Inc., o a su orden, por la suma de $70,500.00, intereses al 6.750% anual, vencedero el 1 de diciembre de 2020; otorgado en San Juan, el 30 de noviembre de 2005, testimonio 1975, y garantido por escritura de hipoteca número 494, otorgada ante la notaria Elba I. Cruz Rodríguez; extendido el asiento abreviado al folio 1572 del tomo 270, finca # 4, 766 de Bayamón Norte; inscripción tercera, y que grava la propiedad que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar marcado con el número 19 de la manzana

“AW” en el plano de inscripción de la Urbanización Valle Verde, radicada en el barrio Hato Tejas del término municipal de Bayamón, Puerto Rico, con un área superficial de 740.526 metros cuadrados; en lindes por el NORTE, en 56.179 metros, con Canal; por el SUR, en 29.970 metros, con el solar número 18; por el ESTE, en 22.638 metros, con Central Channel; y por el OESTE, en 27.638 metros, con la calle número 37 de dicha urbanización. Enclava una casa de concreto para fines residenciales. Se le advierte que este edicto se publicará en un periódico de circulación general una sola vez y que si no comparece a contestar dicha Demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días, contados a partir de la publicación de este edicto, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su discreción, lo entiende procedente. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), el cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio. El abogado de la parte demandante es: Ledo.

Raúl Rivera Burgos, RUA 8879, Estancias de San Fernando, Calle 4, Número 4, A-35, Carolina, P.R. 00985, Tel. (787) 238-7665, Email: raulrblaw@ gmail.com. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal de Bayamón, Puerto Rico, hoy 29 de julio de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Sec Regional. Meralis De Jesus Ojeda, Sec Serv a Sala.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA.

WlLMINGTON SAVINGS FUND SOCIETY FSB, AS TRUSTEE OF UPLAND MORTGAGE LOAN TRUST A Demandante vs.

MARIO RODRI GUEZ COLOME, HILDA AURORA RODRIGUEZ también conocida como HILDA AURORA MENDOZA SANCHEZ Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

AMBOS, DAMARIS CLAUDIO MARCANO

y sello de este Tribunal, hoy 5 de diciembre de 2019. Lcda.

Marilyn Aponte Rodriguez, Sec Demandados Regional. Rosa M Viera VelazCIVIL NUM. CA2019CV03213. quez, Sec Auxiliar.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA LEGAL NOTICE POR LA VIA ORDINARIA. EMESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO PLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUEstados Unidos de América NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA Presidente de los Estados UniSALA SUPERIOR DE BAYAdos Estado Libre Asociado de MÓN. Puerto Rico. SS.

A la parte demandada: THE MONEY HOUSE, INC. Demandante Vs. Mario Rodriguez Colome, FULANO DE TAL Y Hilda Aurora Rodriguez, MENGANO DE TAL también conocida como Demandados Hilda Aurora Mendoza CIVIL NUM. BY2020CV02146.

Sanchez, la Sociedad SOBRE: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVlADO. EMLegal de Bienes Gananciales compuesta PLAZNIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉpor ambos

Queden emplazados y notificados que en este Tribunal se ha radicado Demanda sobre Ejecución de Hipoteca in rem, en la que se alega que usted (es) le adeuda (n) a la demandante lo siguiente: La suma de $178,345.12 de principal más los intereses sobre dichas sumas devengados desde el día 1ro. de diciembre de 2015, más aquellos a devengarse hasta el pago total de la deuda a razón 5.12500% anual, más las primas de seguro hipotecario y riesgo, recargos por demora y cualesquier a otras cantidades pactadas en la escritura de hipoteca desde la fecha antes mencionada y hasta la fecha del total pago de las mismas, más la suma estipulada de $21,680. 00 por concepto de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado incurridos por concepto de un préstamo hipotecario.

Se advierte que si no contesta (n) la demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días de la publicación de este Edicto, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia en su contra, concediendo el remedio solicitado, sin más citarle ni oírle.

Deberá radicar el original de la contestación a la demanda a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: http://ramajudici.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaria del tribunal y sala que se menciona en el epígrafe de este edicto con copia a la parte aqui demandante a través del Lcdo. Andres Saez Marrero, Tromberg Law Group, P.A..

1515 South Federal Highway, Suite 100, Boca Ratón, FL 33432, teléfono 561-228-4101.

Expido este edicto bajo mi firma

(787) 743-3346

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

RICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DE TAL

Quedan ustedes notificados que el demandante de epígrafe ha presentado en este Tribunal una Demanda contra ustedes como codemandados, en la que se solícita la cancelación judicial de un Pagaré Extraviado a favor del Portador, o a su orden, por la suma principal de $56,269.50, con intereses al 10% y con fecha de vencimiento el día 5 de abril de 2004, suscrito el día 5 de julio de 1989. Para garantizar el referido Pagaré, el mismo día y ante la Notaría Rosa Idalia Ríos Sánchez, se otorgó la Escritura #70, otorgada en Dorado, Puerto Rico, mediante la cual se constituyó Hipoteca sobre la siguiente propiedad: URBANA: Solar marcado en la Urbanización Riverview del barrio Hato Tejas de Bayamón, Puerto Rico, el número Ocho (8) del bloque “F”, con un área de TRESCIENTOS PUNTO QUINCE METROS CUADRADOS (300.15 mc), colindando por el NORTE, en veintitrés punto cero cero metros (23.00 m) con el solar número Nueve (9) del bloque “F”; por el SUR, en veintitrés punto cero cero metros (23.00 m) con el solar número Siete (7) del bloque “F”; por el ESTE, en trece punto cero cinco metros (13.05 m) con los solares Dieciocho (18) y Diecinueve (19) del bloque “F”; y por el OESTE, en trece punto cero cinco metros (13.05 m) con la calle número Siete (7) . Enclava casa. Consta inscrita al folio ciento cuarenta y seis (146) del tomo ciento setenta y cinco (175) de Bayamón Norte, finca número ocho mil trescientos setenta y cuatro (8,374), Regis-

tro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección Primera (I) de Bayamón. Se le emplaza y se le notifica que debe contestar la demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación del presente edicto. Deberá presentar la contestación a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajucial.pr/ sumac, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentarla ante el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de San Juan, con copia a la abogada de la parte demandante a la siguiente dirección: Lcda. Magaly Rodríguez Batista PO Box 9024082 San Juan, PR 00902 4082 Tels: (787) 504-4801 Fax: 1 (888) 224-3201 Se le apercibe que, de no contestar la demanda en el término establecido, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado, sin más citarle ni oírle.

Expedido este edicto bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, hoy 20 de julio de 2020. LODA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional. Amalyn Figueroa Nieves, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE HUMACAO.

LEGACY MORTGAGE ASSET TRUST 2019-PR1 DEMANDANTE Vs.

CITIFINANCIAL SERVICES OF PUERTO RICO hin/e CITIFINANCIAL PLUS; JOHN DDE y RICHARD ROE como posibles tenedores desconocidos

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM. HU2020CV00682.

SOBRE: CANCELACION DE PAGARE EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO SS.

A: JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE como posibles tenedores desconocidos

POR LA PRESENTE se les emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto. Usted deberá radicar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema

Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: http://unired.ramajudicial.pr/ sumac/, salvo que se presente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá radicar el original de su contestación ante el Tribunal correspondiente y notifique con copia a los abogados de la parte demandante, LCDA. MARJALIISA COLÓN VILLANUEVA A su dirección: PO. Box 7970 Ponce, PR. 00732. Tel: 787-843-4168.

En dicha demanda se tramita un procedimiento de cancelación de pagare extraviado. Se alega en dicho procedimiento que se extravió un pagaré hipotecario a favor Citifinancial Services of Puerto Rico h/n/c Citifinancial Plus.• o a su orden, por la suma de $33,000.00, con intereses al 9.463% anual. vencedero el 23 de febrero de 2023, según escritura47 otorgada en Caguas, Puerto Rico, el día 18 de enero de 2008, ante el notario Félix R. Figueroa Cabán. inscrita al folio dos (2) del tomo seiscientos veintiocho (628) de Humacao, finca número catorce mil novecientos noventa y cil}co (14995). Registro de la Propiedad Sección de Humacao, inscripción cuarta (4da). Que grava la propiedad que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar marcado con el número veinte (20) del bloque D de la Urbanización Quintas de Humacao, antes Costa Este, radicado en los Barrios Río Abajo y Cataño del término municipal de Humacao, Puerto rico, con una cabida de ciento cincuenta y seis punto cero cero (156.00) metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, en seis punto cincuenta (6.50) metros, con el solar seis (6) del bloque D de la Urbanización; por el SUR, en seis punto cincuenta (6.50) metros, con la calle e de la urbanización; por el ESTE, en veinticuatro punto cero cero (24.00) metros, con el solar veintiuno (21) del bloque D de la urbanización, y por el OESTE, en veinticuatro punto cero cero (24.00) metros, con el solar número diecinueve (19) del bloque O de la urbanización. Enclava una casa. Inscrita al folio doscientos setenta y cinco (275) del tomo trescientos cuarenta y nueve (349) de Humacao, finca número catorce mil novecientos noventa y cinco (14995). Registro de la Propiedad Sección de Humacao. SE LES APERCIBE que, de no hacer sus alegaciones responsivas a la demanda dentro del término aquí dispuesto, se les anotará la rebeldía y se

dictará Sentencia, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Humacao, Puerto Rico, a 3 de agosto de 2020. Dominga Gomez Fuster, Sec Regional. Dalissa Reyes de Leon, Sec Aux..

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE COROZAL.

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante V.

JOSÉ ANTONIO RIVERA RODRÍGUEZ, EVELYN TORRES RIVERA Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES POR ESTOS COMPUESTA; JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE; ASOCIACIÓN DE EMPLEADOS DEL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO

Demandados CIVIL NÚM. CZ2020CV00069.

SOBRE: SUSTITUCIÓN DE PAGARÉ HIPOTECARIO. EMPLAZAMIENTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS.

A: JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE, personas desconocidas que se designan con estos nombres ficticios, que puedan ser tenedor o tenedores, o puedan tener algún interés en el pagaré hipotecario a que se hace referencia más adelante en el presente edicto, que se publicará una sola vez.

Se les notifica que en la Demanda radicada en el caso de epígrafe se alega que un pagaré hipotecario otorgado el 6 de agosto de 2004, José Antonio Rivera Rodríguez y Evelyn Torres Rivera otorgó en San Juan, Puerto Rico un pagaré hipotecario por la suma principal de $67,900.00, con intereses a razón del 6.6250% anual, a favor de la Asociación de Empleados del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, con vencimiento el I de agosto de 2034, ante el Notario Antonio Adrover Robles, mediante el afidávit número 3584, se extravió, sin embargo la deuda evidenciada y garantizada por dicho pagaré hipotecario no ha sido salda, por lo que la parte demandante so-

The San Juan Daily Star licita que se ordene la sustitución del mismo. En garantía de dicho pagaré el 6 de agosto de 2004, José Antonio Rivera Rodríguez y Evelyn Torres Rivera constituyó hipoteca número 57 ante el Notario Antonio Adrover Robles en garantía del pago del pagaré antes descrito, inscrita al folio 78 del tomo 293 de Corozal, finca 14686, inscripción 3, Registro de la Propiedad de Barranquitas. Modifica la anterior hipoteca de $67,900.00 en cuanto al interés, el cual queda reducido al 6.50% anual, pagos de $429.17, según consta de la escritura #111, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 29 de noviembre de 2004, ante el Notario Público Antonio Adrover Robles, inscrito al folio #78vto del tomo #293 de Coroza!, finca #14686, nota marginal.

La hipoteca que garantiza dicho pagaré grava la propiedad inmueble que se describe a continuación: RUSTICA: Solar #2 sito en el Barrio Mana del término municipal de Corozal, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de 630.764 metros cuadrados. En linderos por el NORTE, con camino dedicado a uso público y con el área de viraje; por el SUR, con la Sucesión de José Bruno Rivera; por el ESTE; con el solar #1; y por el OESTE, con el Sr. José R. Rivera y con el Sr. José A. Cintrón en otra parte. Finca 14686 inscrita al folio 78 del tomo 293 de Corozal, Registro de la Propiedad de Barranquitas. POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 30 días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente.

LCDO. JAVIER MONTALVO CINTRÓN RUA NÚM. 17682 DELGADO & FERNÁNDEZ, LLC PO Box 11750, Fernández Juncos Station San Juan, Puerto Rico 00910-1750, Tel. (787) 274-1414 Fax (787) 764-8241 E-mail: jmontalvodelgadofernandez.com Expedido bajo mi firma y sello

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

del Tribunal, hoy 3 de agosSOCIEDAD LEGAL DE to de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I. GANANCIALES ENTRE SANTA SANCHEZ. Secretaria AMBOS Regional. Magali Rodriguez Demandado(a) Collazo, Secretaria Auxiliar del Civil: Núm. FA2018CV00424.

Tribunal I. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENLEGAL NOTICE CIA POR EDICTO. Estado Libre Asociado de PuerA: LAURA RIVERA to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL RIVERA Y SU ESPOSO DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior FULANO DE TAL Y LA de CAROLINA. SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE

FIRSTBANK PUERTO RICO Demandante v.

CELIA CINTRON MELENDEZ

Demandado(a) Civil: Núm. CA2020CV00324.

SALA 403. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO E INCUMPLIMIENTO DE CONTRATO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: CELIA CINTRON MELENDEZ, HC 1 BOX 12986 CAROLINA, PUERTO RICO 00987

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 6 de agosto de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 6 de agosto de 2020. En Carolina, Puerto Rico, el 6 de agosto de 2020. Lcda. Marilyn Aponte Rodriguez, Secretaria. Maricruz Aponte Alicea, Sec Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

GANANCIALES ENTRE AMBOS *QDA FAJARDO, CARR. 940 KM 3 HM9, FAJARDO, PR 00738-0000 *PO BOX 1554, FAJARDO, PR 00738-1554 *COND. TORRES DE MAR APT 801, SAN JUAN PR 00936

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 22 de mayo de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 07 de agosto de 2020. En FAJARDO, Puerto Rico , el 07 de agosto de 2020. Wanda I Segui Reyes, Sec Regional. F/ Sheila Robles Hernandez, Sec Auxiliar..

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE CAGUAS.

MTGLQ INVESTORS, L.P. Parte Demandante Vs.

MARIA VIRGINIA SIERRA SANTOS, NELSON GARCIA SOTO, su esposa ANNETTE MELENDEZ OTERO y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales compuesta por estos

Parte Demandada CASO CIVIL NUM: CG2020CV00168.

SOBRE: EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA Y COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTOS. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LEGAL NOT ICE LOS EE. UU EL ESTADO LIEstado Libre Asociado de Puer- BRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL RICO. SS. DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de PriA: MARIA VIRGINIA mera Instancia Sala Superior SIERRA SANTOS: de San Juan.

POR LA PRESENTE se les em-

THE MONEY HOUSE, INC.

VS Estado Libre Asociado de PuerFULANO DE TAL Y to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL MENGANO DE TAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior CIVIL NUM. SJ2020CV01578 (802). SOBRE: CANCELAde FAJARDO. BANCO POPULAR DE CIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENPUERTO RICO TENCIA POR EDICTO POR Demandante v.

SUMAC.

LAURA RIVERA RIVERA Y SU ESPOSO FULANO DE TAL Y LA

EL SECRETARIO (A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 5 de AGOSTO de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de esta. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los diez (10) días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 5 de agosto de 2020. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 5 de agosto de 2020. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria Regional. f/ DENISE M. AMARO MACHUCA, Secretario (a) Auxiliar.

A: FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DE TAL

plaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto. Usted deberá radicar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: http://unired.ramajudicial.pr/ sumac/, salvo que se presente por derecho propio, en cuyo

caso deberá radicar el original de su contestación ante el Tribunal correspondiente y notifique con copia a los abogados de la parte demandante, Lcda.

Marjaliisa Colon Villanueva, al PO BOX 7970, Ponce, P.R. 00732; Teléfono: 787-8434168. En dicha demanda se tramita un procedimiento de cobro de dinero y ejecución de hipoteca bajo el número mencionado en el epígrafe. Se alega en dicho procedimiento que la parte Demandada incurrió en el incumplimiento del Contrato de Hipoteca, al no poder pagar las mensualidades vencidas correspondientes a los meses de enero de 2017, hasta el presente, más los cargos por demora correspondientes.

Además, adeuda a la parte demandante las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado en que incurra el tenedor del pagaré en este litigio. De acuerdo con dicho Contrato de Garantía Hipotecaria la parte Demandante declaró vencida la totalidad de la deuda ascendente a la suma de $90,265.34, más intereses a razón del 10.620% anual, así como todos aquellos créditos y sumas que surjan de la faz de la obligación hipotecaria y de la hipoteca que la garantiza más la suma pactada para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado. La parte Demandante presentó para su inscripción en el Registro de la Propiedad correspondiente, un AVISO DE PLEITO PENDIENTE (“Lis Pendens”) sobre la propiedad objeto de esta acción cuya propiedad es la siguiente: RUSTICA: Predio de terreno radicado en el Barrio Mulas de Aguas Buenas Puerto Rico, identificado en el piano de inscripción con el número 1, con una cabida superficial de 1,420.8953 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, con camino municipal; SUR, con el predio número 3 del piano de inscripción y el remanente de la finca principal; ESTE, con Federico Ramos y Ramona Rivera; y por el OESTE, con el predio número 2 del piano de inscripción.

Inscrita al folio ciento tres (103) del tomo doscientos cuarenta y dos (242) de Aguas Buenas, finca número diez mil novecientos sesenta y seis (10,966), Registro de la Propiedad, Sección Caguas II, inscripción tercera (3ra). SE LES APERCIBE que de no hacer sus alegaciones responsivas a la demanda dentro del término aquí dispuesto, se les anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Caguas, Puerto Rico. A 25 de junio de 2020. Carmen Ana Pereira Ortiz, Secretaria. Dharma Torres Bruno, SubSecretaria.

25

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Tuesday, August 11, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

In NBA’s suite life, the ‘Yacht Club Six’ seek respect and a lifeline

By MARC STEIN

O

nly one of the 22 teams invited to Walt Disney World for the NBA restart arrived with a worse record than the Phoenix Suns. Then Phoenix won its first five seeding games here, including a buzzerbeating upset of the Los Angeles Clippers, and completely changed the tenor of interactions with the other teams at its hotel.

“Stares are getting colder getting on and off the elevator,” Suns coach Monty Williams said.

What Williams described stems from a unique tension inside the Yacht Club Resort, which was already considered the least desirable among the three high-end Disney properties that are housing teams in the NBA’s so-called bubble. The teams were assigned to the three properties based on the NBA standings in March, but something more acute than lingering hotel envy now afflicts the Suns and the five other teams that took up residence at the Yacht Club starting July 7.

New Orleans, Portland, Sacramento, San Antonio and Washington have felt it, too, because they all share such a narrow path to the playoffs. Once games began, on July 30, the competition injected a reality-show, “Survivor”style desperation that has intruded upon strolls through the Yacht Club lobby, hallway encounters and community pool time among this sub-.500 sextet.

“You’re rooting against everybody you see,” Frank Kaminsky of the Suns said. “At the end of the day, this is big for us. We need people to lose, and we want them to lose so we can get into position.”

“Every day you see guys battling for the same spot as you,” Kent Bazemore of the Sacramento Kings said. “It’s cool, but when you play that same night, it’s kind of an awkward interaction.”

The palpable anxiety that comes with playing to survive has only added to the Yacht Club’s less-than-glamorous reputation — at least when the resort is compared to its fancier counterparts. The league’s top eight teams as of March 11 were booked into the Gran Destino, Disney’s newest luxury tower. The next eight teams, all of which held playoff spots when the coronavirus pandemic brought the season to an abrupt halt, were sent to the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, Disney’s flagship resort.

Nothing in terms of amenities offered at the more remote, five-story Yacht Club quite compares to the Gran Destino’s 123-foot water slide recently tested by the Los Angeles Lakers’ Kyle Kuzma and JaVale McGee or the Grand Floridian’s lakefront dining and clear view of the Magic Kingdom’s Cinderella Castle.

A trying trip for Sacramento and coach Luke Walton has been marred by injuries, late arrivals for players recovering from the coronavirus and Richaun Holmes’ being ordered back to quarantine for an extra 10 days after he strayed beyond a campus border outside the Yacht Club without authorization to meet a food delivery driver.

Winning is naturally the best antidote: While the Kings started 1-4 and were eliminated before they finished their

game Sunday against Houston, San Antonio opened at a surprising 4-2 despite playing without three injured starters, including the seven-time All-Star LaMarcus Aldridge.

The Spurs’ win Sunday over New Orleans eliminated the Pelicans from the playoffs and essentially ended their prized rookie Zion Williamson’s first pro season.

“We can’t worry about our setup,” Rudy Gay of the Spurs said. “We’re here, we decided to come and we’re going to fight, no matter where we’re staying.”

A scrap is required because there’s a strong likelihood that just one of the “Yacht Club Six,” all of whom but Phoenix were scheduled to play Sunday, will advance to the NBA’s new playoff play-in round. The format calls for up to four additional play-in games to be played, but only if the West or East’s No. 9 seed finishes the regular season Friday within four games of the No. 8 seed.

Washington was the only nonplayoff team from the East invited to the NBA restart, but the Wizards were quickly dumped from playoff consideration after an 0-5 start (before losing again to Oklahoma City on Sunday) without their top three players: Bradley Beal, John Wall and Davis Bertans. In the West, Memphis’ 0-4 start briefly filled the bubble air with hope that two Yacht Club teams could advance to the play-in round — but it now appears unlikely that the eighth-seeded Grizzlies, whose Sunday loss to Toronto guaranteed a play-in round in the West, will slip all the way to 10th.

Yet even if the worst has passed for the Grizzlies and they overcome the injuries sustained by Jaren Jackson Jr. (knee) and Justise Winslow (hip) to hang on to the eighth seed, this race to unseat Memphis has been widely billed as the most exciting aspect of Bubble Ball to date. That’s mostly because of the Suns’ unforeseen 5-0 start and the potential flashed by the 4-2 Trail Blazers, as well as the corresponding woes that have engulfed the disappointing (and soon-to-be-departing) Pelicans and Kings.

Damian Lillard’s 11 3-pointers in a victory over Denver on Thursday enhanced the Blazers’ rising reputation as a possible first-round opponent that could trouble the Lakers, who have clinched the West’s No. 1 seed and, like other top teams, have prioritized rest for their stars as much as rhythm as the playoffs approach. Lillard followed that outburst in problematic fashion, with two late missed free throws in a damaging loss to the Kawhi Leonard-less Clippers, then atoned with 51 points Sunday in a

must-win game against short-handed Philadelphia.

Just having this first-of-its-kind opportunity, with the frontcourt duo of Jusuf Nurkic and Zach Collins back from injury, is why the Blazers’ CJ McCollum insisted he would not lament the Yacht Club’s supposed inferiority compared to the Gran Destino and Grand Floridian.

“We don’t need any more motivation, man,” McCollum said. “You know what needs to be done as a professional. The Yacht Club is not that bad anyway.”

The Suns adopted a similarly stubborn outlook and have emerged as the early darlings of the bubble. Phoenix arrived in Florida with a record of 26-39 — and the league’s second-longest playoff drought, behind Sacramento, at nine seasons and counting — but then assembled the first five-game winning streak of All-Star guard Devin Booker’s NBA career. Like McCollum, Booker scoffed when it was suggested that the Suns’ address was some sort of slight.

“Some would take it that way, but it’s all how you deal with it,” Booker said.

The NBA initially absorbed considerable criticism for not capping its field at 16 teams and keeping its bubble population as small as possible as it tries to ward off the coronavirus. Cynics readily concluded that the 22-team format, beyond the financial benefits from additional games to televise, was a measure conceived purely to give New Orleans and its rookie sensation, Zion Williamson, every chance to bump Memphis out of the postseason.

Undaunted by such critiques, his team’s losing or the accommodations, Washington’s Ian Mahinmi insisted he would head home feeling sorry for the eight teams that were not invited.

“It is such a unique experience,” Mahinmi said.

“Honestly, if you want to reflect on it, it would have been tough to be back home and be like, ‘Man, I wasn’t part of this.’”

Yet it can be a grind even when things are going well — even at a high-priced, nautical-theme resort that features a restaurant, the Ale & Compass, that is enticing enough to routinely attract players from teams that are staying at the other two hotels. Spurs coach Gregg Popovich made that clear after a victory Friday over Utah, saying: “Would you like to go be sequestered someplace for weeks on end? The answer to that is no.”

Williams brought two fishing poles from home to give himself a relaxation outlet, but the Suns’ coach has noticed that the crowds at the lake adjacent to the Yacht Club have steadily dwindled as the stakes have risen. With the resort scheduled to reopen to the public later this month, after the NBA playoffs begin, a move to the more lavish surroundings at the Grand Floridian awaits Phoenix, Portland or San Antonio — if one of them can snatch the West’s final playoff berth away from the Grizzlies.

“It’s different,” Williams said, “when you have all these teams in one hotel and you pretty much know only one or two of us can make it.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

27

A unique postseason has drama, meaning, and a little humor

By ANDREW KNOLL

T

he Stanley Cup playoffs began as an experiment.

After the onset of the coronavirus pandemic ended its regular season, the NHL adapted its postseason format — players in enclosed environments competing in a March Madness-style daily lineup of games that mattered. With the league returning to best-of-five series for the first time since 1987, only one matchup went the distance — the Columbus Blue Jackets beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-0, in Sunday’s Game 5 — and only one was a sweep, as the Carolina Hurricanes summarily dispatched the New York Rangers.

But the play-in and round-robin tournaments, hosted in Toronto and Edmonton, Alberta, unfolded with upsets, overtimes and thrilling finishes throughout, proof that even these expanded 24-team playoffs have all the unpredictability and momentum swings that define an NHL postseason.

Play-In Top Seeds Upset in Both Conferences In the Western Conference, the No. 5-seeded Edmonton Oilers, playing in their home arena and toting this year’s scoring champion and runner-up, were outgunned by the No. 12 Chicago Blackhawks in a qualifying-round series where betting the over in three of the four games would have been lucrative.

Chicago pushed the pace behind its decorated captain, Jonathan Toews, and wing Dominik Kubalik, a 24-year-old rookie who notched five points in his postseason debut.

Goalie Corey Crawford, who recently recovered from COVID-19, turned in a 43-save performance in Game 4. Edmonton’s Connor McDavid led all players in the series in goals and points, and Hart Trophy finalist Leon Draisaitl was productive, but the Oilers still went away, or rather stayed home, frustrated.

“At the end of the day, you play this game to win a Stanley Cup. And we’re sitting here after a qualifier not even in the playoffs, not even in the top 16,” Edmonton defenseman Darnell Nurse said. “So you can talk about strides all you want. I don’t think anyone’s happy.”

Perhaps more startlingly, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the East’s top seed in elimination play, were jostled around by the Montreal Canadiens, and also lost in four games.

Montreal (31-31-9) had the worst record of any team in the tournament, but received a tenacious boost from its blue liners Shea Weber, who set the tone with domineering physical play, and Jeff Petry, who scored two game-winning goals in the series. Goalie Carey Price posted a .947 save percentage, and a shutout in Game 4.

Pittsburgh’s window could open wide again if they win Monday’s draft lottery for the top overall pick, as they did the last time there was an unconventional drawing. It won the 30-team lottery in 2005 that followed the lockout, and used the pick to select Sidney Crosby.

Boston and St. Louis Cede Top Standing The St. Louis Blues (42-19-10) and the Boston Bruins (4414-12) were their respective conferences’ top regular-season finishers after meeting in last year’s Stanley Cup finals. Neither was able to secure top seeds. In fact, neither won a game and they finished last in the round-robin tournaments.

Boston will face a rested Carolina and St. Louis will clash with a young Vancouver squad after falling to fourth follow-

Chicago’s Dominik Kubalik helped power the Blackhawk’s upset over the Edmonton Oilers in their play-in series. ing a shootout loss to Dallas on Sunday.

St. Louis lost its first game after the most memorable goal of the postseason so far, when Colorado Avalanche center Nazem Kadri put his team up, 2-1, with one-tenth of a second remaining in their game. It was the latest goal ever scored and the second ever in the final second of an NHL postseason game.

The round-robin winners? The Vegas Golden Knights, who entered the postseason third in the Western Conference standings, and Philadelphia Flyers, who were fourth in the East.

Vegas twice rallied from multigoal deficits during the round robin and faces Chicago next. Philadelphia’s depth helped the Flyers to early leads that they defended in each of their three round-robin games, a trend that carried over from a regular season in which they went 32-0-2 in games when they held a two-goal lead. They will take on the Canadiens.

‘Please Exit Your Couch Safely’ Teams in Toronto and in Edmonton made an effort to replicate the atmospheres in their home arenas despite the absence of fans.

Nashville played its usual goal celebration song, Tim McGraw’s “I Like It, I Love It,” though Arizona’s Brad Richardson scored the series winner in overtime to upset the favored Predators. Chicago piped in their fans’ raucous cheering during the U.S. national anthem and there were nightly nods to the viewers watching from home during all games, with scoreboards that read, “Tonight’s attendance: 0” and “At the conclusion of tonight’s game,

please exit your couch safely.”

Montreal and Toronto Nail-Biters In Game 3 of their series against Pittsburgh, the Canadiens joined the teams to surmount multigoal deficits, and their archrival Maple Leafs staged a stunning comeback to push their series against Columbus to the brink.

Toronto became the first team to rally from three goals down in the final five minutes of a game in which they faced elimination. Their surge forced overtime against Columbus in Game 4, where they got a power-play winner from center Auston Matthews to force a decisive Game 5 on Sunday. But the scoring slowed, as Joonas Korpisalo made 33 saves in a shutout win for Columbus.

Toronto’s Game 4 comeback had returned the favor to Columbus, which had overcome a three-goal deficit to win Game 3 behind center Pierre-Luc Dubois, who scored the franchise’s first postseason hat trick, including the gamewinner in overtime.

The Blue Jackets now face Tampa Bay in a rematch of last year’s first-round series. Columbus swept the Lightning after they had won a record-tying 62 regular-season games.

This time around, Tampa Bay’s sniping center Steven Stamkos and the hulking defenseman Victor Hedman are both recovering from injuries and their status for the series is uncertain.

Goalie Tandems Make a Comeback Goalie tandems fell out of favor after successful runs by Carolina in 2002 and Minnesota in 2003. But so far in this postseason, nine of the 24 participating teams have used two goalies.

It was a development that Bruins netminder Tuukka Rask predicted two weeks before the playoffs began, noting that goalies were particularly vulnerable to groin and hip injuries, especially given the suspension and resumption of play.

“I’d be surprised if you see goalies play every minute of every game in these playoffs,” Rask said.

Matt Dumba Set the Tone The round’s best player may have been McDavid or Carolina’s Sebastian Aho, who turned in a magnificent twoway, three-point performance in the Hurricanes’ Game 3 win over the Rangers.

But Minnesota defenseman Matt Dumba, who managed just one point in a four-game series his team lost, garnered attention in another way.

Before the first game played in the West, Dumba knelt at center ice during the U.S. national anthem as Nurse and Chicago goalie Malcolm Subban, both Black Canadians, placed a hand on his shoulders.

Dumba, a Canadian of Filipino heritage with a diverse family, had just delivered a speech on behalf of the newly formed Hockey Diversity Alliance. His remarks addressed the need to battle bigotry and systemic racism, in hockey and beyond.

“I hope this inspires a new generation of hockey players and hockey fans. Because Black Lives Matter. Breonna Taylor’s life matters,” Dumba said, referring to an AfricanAmerican medical worker who in March was killed by the police in Louisville, Ky. “Hockey is a great game. But it could be a whole lot greater. And it starts with all of us.”

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Collin Morikawa wins PGA Championship, delivering moments of magic

By BRIAN MURPHY

I

n a sports year upended by the coronavirus pandemic, championship moments have been long awaited, and Collin Morikawa created an extraordinary one Sunday at the 102nd PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco.

A 23-year-old native Californian, Morikawa etched his name on the Wanamaker Trophy with a final-round 6-underpar 64 in only his second appearance at a major championship. He became the third-youngest winner of the PGA Championship since it became a stroke-play event in 1958. Only Jack Nicklaus in 1963 and Rory McIlroy in 2012 were younger.

“I’m so excited, but it feels like this is where I’m supposed to be,” said Morikawa, who was a four-time All-American at the nearby University of California, Berkeley. He turned professional just last year.

Morikawa’s play down the stretch Sunday suggested a maturity that could not be measured in years.

This PGA Championship will be remembered for many things — its status as the first major to be played after the pandemic shut down the sport for almost three months, the absence of fans, the quiet on the course.

But from a purely golf perspective, it will be remembered as the place where Morikawa hit the shot of dreams — driving his ball from the tee to 7 feet from the hole at the 294-yard, par-4 16th. Then he converted an eagle putt to break a tie with Paul Casey. One could only imagine how a Sunday gallery would have reacted.

Morikawa later recounted the conversation at the 16th tee box, where his caddie, J.J. Jakovac, asked what club he wanted. “I said: ‘Let’s hit driver. This is perfect.’”

“That’s when you have to capitalize,” he added.

The tournament at Harding, an unpretentious municipal course on the foggy southwestern edge of San Francisco, was supposed to be held in early May, four weeks after the Masters, the traditional opening major for the men’s tour. The Masters is now scheduled for mid-November at Augusta National, and the U.S. Open at Winged Foot has been moved from June to mid-September. The British Open, the only men’s major held outside the United States, has been canceled for

“I’m so excited, but it feels like this is where I’m supposed to be,” Morikawa said. the first time since World War II. Morikawa went into the final round two shots off the lead, then finished at 13 under, two shots ahead of the runners-up, Casey and Dustin Johnson. He now has three victories overall in his brief time on the PGA Tour.

“It’s amazing,” Morikawa said after receiving the trophy on the 18th green.

“To close it out in San Francisco,” he added, “which is pretty much my second home, where I spent the last four years, is pretty special.”

Morikawa broke out of a tangled pack on the back nine, which at one point featured a seven-way tie at 10 under.

The mass of contenders included a blend of veterans like Casey, 43, and Johnson, 36, and a blast of the sport’s new wave. Matthew Wolff, 21, posted a 65 in the final round, and Scottie Scheffler, 24, was in the hunt until the end. They finished tied for fourth.

Surprisingly, the two-time defending champion, Brooks Koepka, who made confident proclamations Saturday night, tumbled off the leaderboard with a 4-over 74 Sunday.

It was Morikawa’s time.

First, though, there was adversity.

His approach on the par-4 No. 14, from the fairway, came up a disappointing 15 yards short. It was then that Morikawa displayed the sang-froid and the soft hands that have characterized the brilliant start to his career.

He coolly lofted a clean chip from the fairway that rolled into the cup for a birdie.

A nearby pack of volunteers cheered, apparently feeling obliged to punctuate the silence for such a moment.

Morikawa had the lead.

The drivable No. 16 loomed in the fog as the possible tipping point for the packed leaderboard. A handful of eagles by players earlier in the day loaded the hole with portent, and Casey made birdie there to tie Morikawa at 11 under.

It all set up Morikawa’s swing on the 16th tee box. He eyed the line and remembered a similar drive he hit at Muirfield Village in Ohio in his victory at the Workday Charity Open last month.

“It fit my eye,” he said.

He unleashed the driver on an aggressive line. There would be no layup.

Morikawa’s bold play cut slightly toward the target, cleared a dangerous pack of cypress trees guarding the green and

landed softly, rolling to a stop 7 feet away.

The shot instantly had the sheen of legend.

“We were hoping for a good bounce, and we got one,” Morikawa said.

Practicing on the range in case of a playoff, Casey could only marvel.

“What a shot he hit on 16,” said Casey, who shot a final-round 66. “Just awesome golf. There’s nothing you can do except tip your cap. Collin took on the challenge.

That’s what champions do.”

To complete the script, Morikawa calmly rolled in the eagle putt for a two-stroke lead. Pars on Nos. 17 and 18 closed the deal.

A smiling Morikawa walked through a rope line of tournament volunteers, who cheered the new champion.

Part of Harding Park’s appeal has been its illustrious roster of champions. Tiger Woods, who finished tied for 37th over the weekend at 1 under for the tournament, won the 2005 World Golf Championships-America Express Championship at Harding, and McIlroy won the WGC-Match Play in 2015.

Also in the 20th century, the PGA Tour stop at Harding produced titles for the Hall of Famers Byron Nelson, Gary Player and Ken Venturi.

Add Morikawa to the list.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

29

Sudoku How to Play: Fill in the empty fields with the numbers from 1 through 9.

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

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

(Mar 21-April 20)

Start looking at alternatives if it feels like the path you are on isn’t the right one for you.

With so many recent changes, you have been forced to take a direction you never intended.

You’ve strayed off course and instead of continuing on this path, look for a way out.

Taurus

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

(April 21-May 21)

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

You aren’t enjoying the time you and a partner spend together because you keep noticing their faults. You’re so focused on their weaknesses that you’re losing sight of their strengths. The fact is no one is perfect. If you can’t accept them, warts and all, you may need to end this relationship.

There’s so much noise around you that you can’t hear yourself think. Someone is urging you to make an important decision. You can only do this if you are able to take yourself away somewhere quiet to think their proposal through. It’s impossible to concentrate when there’s so much going on.

Scorpio

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

If you can’t find a group in which to share your interests, start up one of your own. Get together with some online friends and before you know it word will have got out and you will be inviting new people into your circle.

Someone close is about to make you an offer you’ve been longing to hear.

Voluntary work for a charity or community venture is proving complicated yet very rewarding. Funding applications need careful thought. Be clear about how much you are applying for, what the money will be used for and how many people will benefit. You also need to make sure your organisation’s needs fit the funder’s criteria.

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

Love is all around you now. Someone who finds your warmth and charisma attractive will ask you out on a date. If you’re interested, go for it. Are you already in a relationship? Something your partner does for you will remind you exactly why you love them.

Find a romantic way to show your appreciation.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

Work at it if you are in disagreement with a partner. They feel equally as strongly about this issue and arguing is getting you nowhere.

Calm down and be willing to talk quietly. Listening to each other is important too. There is a way to reach a compromise. With determination you will find it.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

A proposal you put to senior colleagues will receive good feedback. You get the impression you will get the green light for a project that’s important to you. Finishing a job earlier than expected will give your confidence a boost.

You glow with happiness and have it within you now to realise a cherished goal.

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

You’re wondering about the feasibility of going away with a small group of friends. Look into the pros and cons. With you at the helm everyone will know that whatever is arranged, it will be safe and also very enjoyable. You’re finding it easy to get along with everyone you meet.

A partner or close friend is ignoring your text messages and phone calls. You can’t understand why they have suddenly gone cold on you. Think back to your recent conversations.

They are secretly envious of your accomplishments. Don’t let their jealousy stop you taking steps to better yourself.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Take a cautious approach towards a new relationship until you are certain of your position.

A new friend or partner may not be the person you first thought them to be. Help from behind the scenes will mean you can get ahead in a personal plan. You will be grateful for a senior colleague’s support.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

You will find a solution if you’ve been searching for a way to make life more meaningful. You’re tired of every day being the same: going to work, coming home from work and back again. You’re ready now to devote your time and energy to a charity or community scheme where you can serve vulnerable members of the community.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

The San Juan Daily Star

Ziggy

32

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

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$169.00

Sony. CDF-S70

Incluye kit de bocina, pendrive y tweeter

$129

$89.00

TOPE de Gas .00

$489

$79.00 .00

Super Bass 2MH 3000

$25

Estufa de gas .00

$15

Led Solar Emergency Bulp

$5.00

¡Disfruta el mejor Perfortmance!

Licuadora OSTER

$49.00 Abanico recargable

$69.00

Lasko 18” Elegance Performance

$69

.00

Nevera Haier

$899.00

Abanico Industrial

$59.00

DEALER AUTORIZADO EN PIEZAS Y SERVICIO