Wednesday Aug 12, 2020 by The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

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‘Stanley Kubrick’: The Brisk New Biography of a Major Talent P20

Another Million for Failed Primary PREPA Seeking Private Managers for Half-Century-Old Power Plants P3

CVM Calls for ‘Clear’ Strategies for General Elections

Although Millions from General Budget, Not to Mention Thousands from COVID-19 Fund, Were Granted, Oversight Board Approves Another $1.2 Million to Complete Voting

NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

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GOOD MORNING

August 12, 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.

PREPA seeks private managers for aging power plants

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he Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) officially has launched the search for private managers for its power plants, many of which are over 50 years old. Together with the Puerto Rico Public-Private Partnerships Authority (P3), PREPA issued a request for qualifications (RFQ) to companies and consortia that may be interested in managing, operating, maintaining, and performing asset management and decommissioning one or more of the base-load generation plants and gas turbine peaking plants located throughout the island. The plants are known as “Legacy Generation Assets” and represent a total system-wide PREPA-owned dependable generation capacity of some 3,600 megawatts. Originally, PREPA had planned to sell the power plants but P3 head Fermín Fontanés said last September that officials had opted to put a stop to the idea because the valuation of the plants was likely to be too low. The utility recently put its transmission and distribution (T&D) system under a private operator, LUMA Energy. “This RFQ is a part of the Government’s mission to transform Puerto Rico’s electric system pursuant to Act 120. Following the successful completion of the

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(Transmission and Distribution) T&D RFP process, the next phase of PREPA’s transformation process contemplates tapping private operational expertise for the operation, maintenance and eventual decommissioning of PREPA’s Legacy Generation Assets,” Fontanés said in a statement. “To that effect, the P3 Authority and PREPA are looking to enter into a Public-Private Partnership with one or more persons, including private sector companies or consortia, electricity cooperatives or energy cooperatives. The Project will not involve the sale of any of the said Legacy Generation Assets.” Efran Paredes, acting executive director of PREPA, added that “Puerto Rico needs a modern electricity system to increase reliability and resiliency, reduce costs, facilitate distributed generation and allow for the economic recovery of the island.” “Any modernization efforts need to focus on short- and long-term solutions to, among other objectives, reduce Puerto Rico’s reliance on fuel oil, increase availability of renewable energy and natural gas, increase system resilience and efficiency, invest in facility repairs, improve dispatch through implementation of modern technology, and retire, replace and upgrade inefficient generation assets,” he said. Responses to the RFQ are due on Sept. 15 at 5 p.m. AST.

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Fiscal board grants another $1.2 million to SEC to finish primary elections By PEDRO CORREA HENRY Twitter: @PCorreaHenry Special to The Star

ven though the Financial Oversight and Management Board authorized a $42.6 million budget for the State Elections Commission (SEC) that included $9 million for this year, the board authorized the Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday to grant over $1.2 million to the SEC to complete the primary elections, which -- for now -- will resume this Sunday from 8 a.m to 4 p.m. Oversight Board Executive Director Natalie Jaresko said that as the board is committed to Puerto Rico’s electoral process and citizens’ rights, it has authorized the SEC the additional funds to finish the event that has been in process since Aug. 2. Furthermore, she said, the oversight board recognizes that effective spending is fundamental to guaranteeing the primary elections. “The resources can be diverted from other budget priorities only to guarantee an effective electoral process,” Jaresko said. Meanwhile, SEC Chairman Juan

Dávila Rivera said that in order to complete Sunday’s primary elections, the commission requested detailed reports from both New Progressive Party Electoral Commissioner María Dolores “Lolín” Santiago and Popular Democratic Party Electoral Commissioner Lind Merle Feliciano on Monday as part of its work plan. Nonetheless, those reports have not been revealed in their entirety. The SEC also released a letter on its official website which said that precincts from both parties that were unable to open last Sunday will do so this Sunday (Aug. 16) from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Likewise, both electoral commissioners said the packaging of ballots for next Sunday was finished. “All administrative measures will be used to conclude the primary elections that might happen on Sunday,” the SEC said in its letter. “It is up to the commissioners’ office to implement logistics for the next event.” For last Sunday’s primary elections, Dávila Rivera said in a Radio Isla interview that the SEC used $800,000 from a COVID-19 emergency fund to relieve a $2 million deficit.

Island Supreme Court to decide fate of primaries By THE STAR STAFF

s the commonwealth Supreme Court gets ready to decide the fate of the botched political primaries, a ruling that had not been issued at press time, the State Elections Commission (SEC) said Tuesday it does not have money to continue the vote and that it can’t resume primaries before this weekend. Later in the afternoon, the Financial Oversight and Management Board made public a letter to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) earmarking $1.2 million for the process but it was not immediately known if the funds will be enough to cover the remainder of the primary. The top court at press time had not decided on four challenges before it from different political candidates, including one from Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced, who wants to annul Sunday’s vote and hold it on another day.

She also asked for an order stopping the illegal leaks of voting results, most of which show her running behind her New Progressive Party (NPP) opponent Pedro Pierluisi in her bid to continue as governor of Puerto Rico. “We asked respectfully for the court to revoke an agreement of the electoral commissioners to alter the schedule of the August 9 primaries and to order a new round of votes in all voting places where the schedule was violated or was unable to take place,” Vázquez said through her lawyers. Puerto Rico was forced to partially suspend Sunday’s primaries because most voting centers had not received ballots. The primaries for voting centers that had not received ballots by early afternoon were scheduled for this Sunday (Aug. 16) but that could change depending on the high court’s ruling. The SEC also suspended vote counts. Pierluisi and Popular Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial hopeful Eduardo Bhatia objected to the decision and demanded that the SEC count the ballots cast during the primary. Isabela Mayor Carlos Delgado Altieri, who according to the leaked data was ahead in the polls for the PDP gubernatorial nod, wants the SEC to continue the primary within the next 72 hours, arguing that election laws call for primaries to be held as a single-day event. The SEC was also sued by: Edward O’Neill, a candidate running in the NPP primary for mayor of Guaynabo; Manuel Colón, who is running for San Juan mayor under the NPP; Toa Baja Mayor Bernardo Márquez; and Carmen Damaris Quiñones, a private citizen who alleged her voting rights were violated. SEC Chairman Juan E. Dávila Rivera in a written statement to the Supreme Court defended the decision to postpone the political primaries, arguing that it was made in conjunction with the electoral commissioners and the

presidents of the political parties. who objected to having voters stand in line for hours until late in the evening to vote. He blamed a shortage of funds and the coronavirus pandemic for the disastrous political primary. Dávila said the SEC has neither the money nor the resources to continue the primary on another day. In April 2019, the SEC submitted a budget for fiscal year 2020, which ended June 30. In the budget, the agency requested $13.7 million for the primaries and $5.4 million for pre-election expenses. The SEC said it was not until March that the Oversight Board said it was approving only $5.4 million. The SEC also had to close operations due to the coronavirus pandemic emergency and did not reopen until May, and since then it has been forced to shut down twice to disinfect offices. Because of the lack of funding for primaries that Dávila has mentioned publicly, he said suppliers are reluctant to work with the agency. He said the SEC was unable to complete the process of preparing briefcases to take them to voting places because of problems in its operational area. He also said the SEC is not ready to hold the primary before this Sunday. Bhatia asked the top court to order Dávila to certify when the political primaries could be held and to order Vázquez to certify when the OMB will deal with the request for additional funds. Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón said she objects to the governor’s petition to scrap last Sunday’s voting. “We have to finish the process. Count the votes we already have,” the resident commissioner said. “If they don’t want to divulge the results until they are all in, that’s fine, but at this juncture, they should divulge them.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

PDP House delegation demands special session to investigate primary elections failure By PEDRO CORREA HENRY Twitter: @PCorreaHenry Special to The Star

embers of the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) delegation in the Puerto Rico House of Representatives sent a letter Tuesday to House Speaker Carlos “Johnny” Méndez Nuñez and the New Progressive Party (NPP) majority calling for a special assembly in order to investigate Sunday’s failed primary elections and determine if the 2020 Electoral Code had anything to do with what went wrong. Rep. Rafael “Tatito” Hernández, the PDP spokesman in the House, said Méndez, as speaker, holds the power to grant Section 18.3(b) of Resolution 1-2017 in the House rulebook to swiftly investigate malfunctions that have violated citizens’ voting rights. Hernández said it is a duty of the Legislative Assembly to determine accountability. “What happened last Sunday with the primary [elections] was a national disaster that made thousands of voters wait until late evening to cast their votes and made others go back home without exercising their right to vote,” Hernández said. “It’s important to investigate the bidding process that took place to award a contract for ballot printing, its total cost and if the selected printing company was capable of complying with the contract signed by the State Elections Committee (SEC) for the management of the ballot in order to establish responsibility on the part of those who failed the country.”

PDP Rep. Luis Vega Ramos told the Star meanwhile that the request made in H.R. 1800, which demands that the House Government Committee conduct an “exhaustive investigation” related to the failure that occurred Sunday, if the Legislative Assembly approves it, is to determine the responsibility of SEC Chairman Juan Dávila Rivera, PDP and NPP electoral commissioners Lind Merle Feliciano and María Dolores “Lolín” Santiago, respectively, and prívate providers in the botched Sunday primary. Vega Ramos also demanded that Gov. Wanda Vázquez

Garced extend and amend the special session in order to repeal the current Electoral Code. “We again call on the governor to extend and amend the Special Session to repeal the ‘Electoral Fraud Code’ from [Senate President] Thomas Rivera Schatz as it is one of the main causes of the primary elections’ failure,” Vega Ramos said. “That code, in more than 30 days before the primaries, put all the procedural management in the hands of the [SEC] chairman and dismissed the commission’s vice presidents, one of them being Nicolas Gautier, who had the most experience when it came to electoral processes.” The minority lawmaker said the Electoral Code gave power to the SEC chairman to supervise contracting, payments and ballot distribution. Meanwhile, the House resolution also would refer the findings of the proposed investigation to both commonwealth and federal authorities. “If there was a mistake, that negligence would be criminal negligence,” Vega Ramos said. “That’s why another claim is for the [island] Department of Justice, the Special Independent Prosecutor Panel and the U.S. District Attorney’s Office to investigate if there was any negligence on the part of the SEC chairman and other officials in order to see if there is any cause.” Vega Ramos added that the House must not fail to act on its duty to supervise and provide oversight on an urgent matter, which is to complete the primary elections and ensure the proper execution of general elections on Nov. 3.

CVM calls for ‘clear and precise’ strategies for general elections By PEDRO CORREA HENRY Twitter: @PCorreaHenry Special to The Star

s Puerto Rico remained in suspended animation Tuesday waiting to learn when the primary elections will conclude, the Citizen Victory Movement (CVM) called on the State Elections Commission (SEC) and its chairman, Juan Dávila Rivera, to map out in detail how the commission will ensure the success of general elections on Nov. 3. In front of SEC headquarters in Hato Rey, CVM President Ana Irma Rivera Lassén and the party’s electoral commissioner, Olvin Valentín, spoke to the press as they raised concerns about the future electoral event given that both the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) and New Progressive Party (NPP) have paralyzed ongoing preparations for the November vote following the postponement of Sunday’s party primaries due to a ballot shortage. “This has been a drill for a possible disaster at the general elections. What happened last week should get every citizen’s attention, as has been [the case],” Rivera Lassén said. “The greatest concern has been that this [event] could represent and make people lose more faith toward [public] institutions and other electoral events, which is a way to discourage people from registering to vote, and [could] make the general elections suffer great consequences.” Rivera Lassén said further that the growing disdain for the electoral process that began Aug. 2 is a violation of the voter’s right to vote equally. She said such indifference would keep voters from learning which candidates to vote for or against, and as a solution she proposes ending longstanding PDP and NPP partisanship.

“The disaster from both the PDP and the NPP is practically a coup d’état against electoral procedures in Puerto Rico, even if they are just two of the parties [involved],” said the attorney and at-large Senate candidate. “This works like a chain: if we still end up not knowing the people who will be on the ballots from both parties, the following chain of events won’t begin as the SEC has to print the ballots for the general elections, where not only two, but five parties and independent candidates are participating. All of this has been seized.” When a member of the press asked about the recent Electoral Code proposed by Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz and Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced without any press conference, Rivera Lassen noted that, apart from being one of the first people to speak against it, she warned earlier that the code would bring “detrimental consequences.” “I heard the SEC chairman saying that the Electoral Code had nothing to do with the failures of the primary elections, but it did,” she said. “That code placed immense power [in the hands of] a person who has been incapable of performing.” As for other solutions, the CVM president said a change in government was necessary; however, some issues could remain unsolved because “irreparable harm” has been done. “What can be repaired is for Puerto Ricans to have control in their hands and demand that not only the PDP and NPP, but also the SEC, guarantee that we are going to vote in the elections with everything that is necessary so people can exercise their right to vote freely,” she said. Valentín said meanwhile that even though the CVM is not participating in the primary elections, as an observer and citizen he felt indignation and shame over what happened on Sunday. He described the SEC’s performance as “great incompetence” and insisted that people should go out and

vote when asked by the Star what citizens should do when they’ve lost trust in their right to vote after such a chaotic electoral event. “The people have to see the dynamics that have taken place, make their decisions and go out to vote,” Valentín said. “For that, as a movement, we developed a campaign called Defend Your Vote, where we will advise and recruit Puerto Ricans who are concerned about this process and wish to be part of a [solution] while helping as electoral officials.” At press time, Rivera Lassén said the CVM agreed that the SEC chairman should resign, while it was up to both the PDP and NPP whether to keep their electoral commissioners if “they represent their parties adequately yet knew that the primary elections were not ready and subjected Puerto Rico to such humiliation.”

CVM President Ana Irma Rivera Lassén

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Biden speaks out about PR primary election debacle By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

he presumed Democratic Party candidate for the presidency of the United States, former Vice President Joe Biden, spoke out Tuesday on the failed primaries held last Sunday in Puerto Rico. “For decades, elections in Puerto Rico were known for their high participation rates and transparency. It was a process that many took pride in,” Biden said in a written statement. “It is unacceptable that the people of Puerto Rico, who waited in line Sunday amid a global pandemic, were denied the right to vote. Their voices must be heard.” “Our democracy only works when each citizen has the ability to exercise their right to vote,” he added. “Every vote must count.” Meanwhile, Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón said Tuesday that once the primary vote is over, if State Elections Commission (SEC) Chairman Juan Ernesto Dávila does not resign, he should be charged with gross negligence in the line of duty.

“Ineptitude is not tolerated, it is removed,” the resident commissioner said in response to questions from the press. “The people of Puerto Rico have sufficient reason to be outraged at the role of [Dávila] and the electoral commissioners of the NPP [New Progressive Party], the PDP [Popular Democratic Party] and the PIP [Puerto Rican Independence Party], who knowingly allowed what was there [to happen]. Nobody is going to tell me -- because I was an electoral official -- that the process of packing the ballots is done the day before the election.” González Colón added that she is one of the people who has not been able to vote. She stated that she has tried to communicate with the SEC chairman and has not succeeded. “I believe that what the situation calls for is that the precincts that voted be counted, certified, and the results made public,” the resident commissioner said. “Remember that it is not only the primaries for governor -- here there are primaries for mayors, district representatives and district senators. There is no reason to have the exercise of the vote kidnapped from the voter who [is prepared to exercise that right].”

Man charged with illegal appropriation of PUA funds By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

cting Justice Secretary Inés Carrau Martínez and Economic Crimes Division Director Alexis Carlo Ríos announced Tuesday that charges were filed against Miguel A. Martínez Rivera, 45, for illegal ap-

propriation of unemployment funds from the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) Program. The investigation was led by prosecutors Ileana Agudo Calderón and Edmanuel Santiago Quiles, along with agent Kariana Lasalde Torrats from the Bank Robbery and Fraud Division of the Puerto Rico Police Bureau. On July 14, Martínez Rivera was arrested at the Condado Gallery Branch of Banco Popular as he was preparing to illegally cash a $10,460 check corresponding to unemployment beneficiaries and the PUA program. Martínez Rivera gained access to the check fraudulently using another person’s information and was detected at the branch when he presented false identification in order to cash the check. The case is one of a series of PUA-related cases that are under investigation by the island Justice Department. Martínez Rivera faces the following charges: one charge for violation of Article 182, attempted aggravated illegal appropriation of public funds; one charge for violation of Article 202 (B), attempted fraud; one charge for Section 202 (B), attempted fraud; one charge for Section 209, illegal identity appropriation; and a charge for Article 217, illegal appropriation of identity, of the Puerto Rico

Penal Code. San Juan Superior Court Judge Alfrida Tomey Imbert found cause in all the charges brought against Martínez Rivera and imposed a bond of $100,000. The preliminary hearing was scheduled for Aug. 21.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

In the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns, a troubling surge in homicides By JOHN ELIGON, SHAILA DEWAN and NICHOLAS BOGEL-BURROGHS

t started with an afternoon stop at a gas station. Two customers began exchanging angry stares near the pumps outside — and no one can explain exactly why. That led to an argument, and it escalated quickly as one of them pulled a gun and they struggled over it, according to police. “There’s too many shootings. Please don’t do this,” the wife of one of the men pleaded, stepping between them. But by the time the fight was over at the station on Kansas City’s East Side late last month, the all-too-familiar crackle of gunfire pierced the humid air, leaving another person dead in what has been an exceedingly bloody summer. The onset of warm weather nearly always brings with it a spike in violent crime, but with much of the country emerging from weeks of lockdown from the coronavirus, the increase this year has been much steeper than usual. Across 20 major cities, the murder rate at the end of June was on average 37% higher than it was at the end of May, according to Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The increase over the same period a year ago was just 6%. In few places has the bloodshed been more devastating than in Kansas City, where the city is on pace to shatter its record for homicides in a year. Much of it has involved incidents of random, angry violence like the conflict at the gas station — disputes between strangers that left someone dead, or killings that simply cannot be explained. They have claimed the lives of a pregnant woman pushing a stroller, a 4-year-old boy asleep in his grandmother’s home and a teenage girl sitting in a car. They have also prompted a much-debated intervention from the federal government, an operation named after the 4-year-old Kansas City boy, LeGend Taliferro, that has sent federal law enforcement agents to at least six cities in an attempt to intervene. “We’re surrounded by murder, and it’s almost like your number is up,” said Erica Mosby, whose niece, Diamon Eichelburger, 20, was the pregnant victim pushing the stroller in Kansas City. “It’s terrible.” Nationally, crime remains at or near a generational low, and experts caution against drawing conclusions from just a few months. But President Donald Trump has used the rising homicide numbers to paint Democratic-led cities as out of control and to blame protests against police brutality that broke out after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May. “Extreme politicians have joined this anti-police crusade and relentlessly vilified our law enforcement heroes,” Trump said during a White House news conference last month to announce Operation LeGend. He added that “the effort to shut down policing in their own

An undated family photo shows murder victim Diamon Eichelburger with her daughter, Belle. Kansas City is on pace for a record number of killings. communities has led to a shocking explosion of shootings, killings, murders.” Criminologists dispute the president’s suggestion that the increase is tied to any pullback by police in response to criticism or defunding efforts, and fluctuations in the crime rate are notoriously hard to explain. In many cities, the murder rate was on the rise before the pandemic, and a steep decline in arrests coincided with the start of social distancing, as measured by mobile phone records, according to a database compiled by David Abrams, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania law school. Some experts have pointed to the pandemic’s destabilization of community institutions, or theorized that people with a propensity for violence may have been less likely to heed stay-at-home orders. But in city after city, crime overall is down, including all types of major crime except murder, aggravated assault and in some places, car theft. In Kansas City, homicides have been on a swift upward trajectory from the time a 41-year-old man named Earl Finch III was gunned down in a driveway in broad daylight on Jan. 5, the first killing of the year. Even the coronavirus lockdown did not slow the violence, though as in other cities it has escalated even further in the wake of reopenings.

After six new deaths over the weekend, 122 people have been killed this year, compared with 90 through the same time last year. The city is well on its way to surpassing its grim record of 153 killings in 1993. And by the end of July the city had matched the number of nonfatal shootings — about 490 — that it had all of last year. Much of the violence in Kansas City has had little rhyme or reason, often stemming from petty arguments that boil over. The short fuses may indicate restlessness and anger, criminologists and law enforcement officials said. Police have attributed about 30 of the homicides this year to arguments, some involving people with no serious criminal history. Economic hardship also appeared to be a factor in some of the killings. Only 15 were deemed drug-related. In almost 50 cases, police have not yet determined a motive. Spontaneous, one-on-one beefs have replaced gang feuds as a driver of shootings, said Maj. Greg Volker of the Kansas City Police Department. “If people could settle an argument without having to resort to shooting, violence would reduce,” he said. Another atypical trend this year is that in several cases, the gunmen and victims were not otherwise involved in criminal activity, Volker said, pointing to the gas station shooting in July. The man now charged with murder in the case is a meatpacking worker, Isaac Knighten, 40, who devotes much of his time to mentoring Black men and boys, including teaching conflict resolution through Alpha Male Nation, a mentoring organization his brother started. His wife said he had turned his life around after serving time on drug charges from more than a decade ago. After Knighten had a brief, hostile exchange with the other man in the parking lot, the man, Jayvon McCray, 28, pulled a gun and the men began to fight, according to police. Knighten’s wife, Shaynan, said in an interview that she had their five children get out of the car and run to a relative’s house nearby. She and McCray’s girlfriend both got between the men and urged them to calm down, according to police. Knighten eventually retrieved a gun from his car and fatally shot McCray, whom police said appeared to no longer be holding a gun. Knighten’s lawyer, Dan Ross, said his client, who has been charged with second-degree murder, was defending himself. Surveillance footage shows that Knighten attempted to walk away from the dispute at least six times, but McCray kept coming after him, the lawyer said. Another contributing factor to this year’s violence, Volker said, was the impact of the coronavirus stay-athome order on the drug trade. Some dealers lost their regular buyers, so they sold to people they did not know — people who may have been intent on robbing them. The result has been an uptick in drug robberies and shootings, especially in late March and early April.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

With no power, 120,000 struggle in a ‘nightmare’ a week after storm

Urgent Care in Danbury, Conn., is open on Monday, Aug. 10, 2020,, but has not had power in seven days since the remnants of Tropical Storm Isaias battered the New York region. By MIHIR ZAVERU and NATE SCHWEBER

fter Darren Demeterio was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer last year, a scan in June detected a new cancerous spot on his liver. His doctor told him to eat healthily and stay positive. But right now it’s hard for him to do either: Since Tropical Storm Isaias battered the New York region, he has been without power for nearly a week at his suburban home. There is no electricity to refrigerate fruits, vegetables, fish or chicken, so his wife has taken trips to the grocery store every day. With temperatures rising, and no way to keep cool, Demeterio, 49, is scared. “The last week has been such a nightmare you can’t get away from,” said Demeterio, who lives in Tarrytown, about 25 miles north of Manhattan. “Normally for me, you keep yourself occupied so you’re not thinking negatively. Unfortunately, there’s no way around that now.” Though the storm that tore through the Northeast is long gone, the anger and anxiety endured for some 90,000 customers, mostly in New York and Connecticut, who remained without electricity, according to tallies from utility companies. Thousands of crews called in from around the country are scrambling to restore

power. But they are being stymied by trees blocking roads and damage to buildings that makes repair work unsafe. With temperatures expected to exceed 90 degrees in many parts of the region this week, the outages are now prompting fears about the safety of older people and other vulnerable residents, who are having trouble escaping the heat and keeping medication cool and medical devices running. “This is now a week out and we are still struggling with the same issues that we were dealing with last Wednesday,” said Mark D. Boughton, the mayor of Danbury, Connecticut, where some 30 streets were still blocked by downed wires and trees and about 15,000 people were without power, he said. “It’s incredibly frustrating.” In New Jersey, originally one of the states hit hardest by outages, power was mostly restored by Monday. But in New York and Connecticut, whole streets remained in the dark, and utility companies drew the ire of residents and elected officials. In Connecticut, where 65,000 customers of Eversource, the main power supplier, still had no power Monday, state officials said they would investigate utilities’ preparations and accused Eversource of dramatically underestimating the storm’s severity. In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has also called for an investigation into the

utilities, a move he has made in the past after natural disasters and blackouts. Cuomo said Monday that depending on the findings of the investigation, utilities could face a host of consequences, including the revocation of their ability to do business in the state. “They can require fines, penalties, restitution, and I want the utilities to know that we do not abide by the concept in New York that anything is too big to fail,” Cuomo said. “Your franchise can be revoked. I am not bluffing.” Some outages could continue into the middle of the week, utilities said. Mitch Gross, a spokesman for Eversource, said that the “vast majority” of Eversource customers in Connecticut should have their power restored before midnight Tuesday. He rejected the idea that Eversource was not ready for the storm, saying that the company had prepared based on weather forecasts and positioned repair crews and equipment around the state. He said the forecast for Isaias changed as the storm approached. “Storms change track, strength,” he said. “It changed, and you have to be flexible, you have to adapt, and that’s what we did. We immediately began securing additional help.” Con Edison reported more than 12,200 customers out of power in NewYork on Monday evening, including 9,700 in Westchester and 1,800 in Queens. The company said in a statement that it was “completely focused on restoring power as safely and quickly as possible to every customer.” “After every major event we perform a thorough analysis of what can be improved, and we’ll do the same following the second worst storm in the history of our service territory,” the statement said. East of the city, PSEG Long Island said that around 13,000 of its nearly 1.2 million customers were still without power as of just before 5 p.m. Monday. In Danbury, at Glen Apartments, a public housing complex where around 100 older and disabled residents live, Tim Hinckley sat in the shade in his wheelchair as he watched crews work on power lines on the street. Behind him were toppled trees. Power had been restored to about half of the complex Monday morning, but not for Hinckley.

“In my sweatbox, you can’t breathe, that’s how hot it is in there,” Hinckley, 54, said gesturing toward his apartment. “It’s been hell.” Hinckley finally got a few hours of rest Sunday night by moving to a community center in the apartment complex, where a generator was able to power his air mattress. But there was no power to save $200 worth of groceries in his refrigerator. “It’s ridiculous,” he said. His neighbor, Marilyn Andujar, said she had no way to plug in the medical devices she needed to care for her husband, Ramon Montero, who has throat cancer. One device lubricates his throat, making it possible for him to breathe; the other is a blender, which allows him to eat. “He’s suffocating,” Andujar, 64, said from her doorway while Montero, 74, sat in the shade holding a handkerchief over the hole in his trachea. “This is not so good.” Robin Murena, 44, of Bethel, a town next to Danbury, said she lost power last Tuesday. Because of the pandemic, she had been stocking up her refrigerator with vegetables from her garden, but everything spoiled. Murena, who works at a cosmetic store at a mall, has used power outlets there to keep her devices charged. Throughout the Danbury area, trees still littered roads, and some residents whose power had been restored left power strips in their driveways for others to use. Streetlights were out, making driving through intersections tricky. Murena said that even during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, she only lost power for three or four days. “I haven’t had to navigate a week without power,” she said. On Monday, as the temperature rose, she set out to the waterfront at Sherwood Island State Park to keep cool. “Right now, it’s just a waiting game,” she said. “Now that we’re hitting a heat wave, the big concern is no air conditioning.” She said the power is supposed to be restored by Tuesday evening, but she has not seen any utility crews near her house. Demeterio, in Tarrytown, said Con Edison has repeatedly told him over the past two days that his power would be back, but crews have come out and driven away again. “I don’t know what to do anymore,” he said.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Trump considers banning re-entry by citizens who may have Coronavirus By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and CAITLIN DICKERSON

resident Donald Trump is considering new immigration rules that would allow border officials to temporarily block an American citizen or legal permanent resident from returning to the United States from abroad if the authorities have reason to believe the person may be infected with the coronavirus. In recent months, Trump has imposed sweeping rules that ban entry by foreigners into the United States, citing the risk of allowing the virus to spread from hot spots abroad. But those rules have exempted two categories of people trying to return: U.S. citizens and foreigners who have already established legal residence. Now, a draft regulation would modify that effort by expanding the government’s power to prevent entry by citizens and legal residents in individual, limited circumstances. Federal agencies have been asked to submit feedback on the proposal to the White House by Tuesday, although it is unclear when it might be approved or announced. Under the proposal, which relies on existing legal authorities of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protect the country, the government could block a citizen or legal resident from crossing the border into the United States if an official “reasonably believes that the individual either may have been exposed to or is infected with the communicable disease.” The draft, parts of which were obtained by The New York Times, explicitly says that any order blocking citizens and legal permanent residents must “include appropriate protections to ensure that no constitutional rights are infringed.” And it says that citizens and legal residents cannot be blocked as an entire class of people. The documents appear not to detail how long a citizen or a legal resident would be required to remain outside the United States. “CDC expects that any prohibition on the introduction of U.S. citizens or

People waiting in line to cross the border from Mexicali, Mexico, to Calexico, Calif. In particular, the draft could affect the border with Mexico, where many American citizens and legal residents cross back and forth frequently. LPRs from abroad would apply only in the rarest of circumstances,” the draft says, referring to legal permanent residents, “when required in the interest of public health, and be limited in duration.” Still, if Trump approves the change, it would be an escalation of his administration’s long-standing attempts to seal the border against what he considers to be threats, using the existence of the coronavirus pandemic as a justification for taking actions that would have been seen as draconian in other contexts. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security declined to comment. A spokesman for the CDC said late Monday afternoon that he would seek to gather more information about the proposal. Officials said there were no current rules that would allow U.S. citizens and legal residents to be prohibited from returning to the United States for a period of time because of concerns about a communicable disease. Since January, Trump has repeatedly sought to bar foreigners from spreading the virus in the United States. He put limits on travel from China, most of Europe and other hot spots around the

world. But all of those efforts exempted U.S. citizens and those with permanent legal status to live in the United States, officials said. The government does already have the authority to conduct extra health screenings of U.S. citizens and potentially impose quarantines if a U.S. citizen returns from a hot zone. And immigration officials do have broad authority to deny entry to people based on national security issues. The new rule appears to apply to all points of entry into the United States, including at airports and along both the northern and the southern borders. In particular, the draft could affect the border with Mexico, where many U.S. citizens and legal residents cross back and forth frequently. The draft of the proposed regulation goes to great lengths to assert the legality of blocking citizens and legal residents based on concerns about the threat of disease entering the United States. But legal experts questioned the constitutionality of such a prohibition, even if temporary. “Barring American citizens from the United States is unconstitutional,” said Omar Jadwat, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Im-

migrants’ Rights Project. “The Trump administration has rolled out one border ban after another — most recently on children and asylum-seekers — using COVID-19 as an excuse, while failing abysmally to get the virus under control in the United States. The rumored order would be another grave error in a year that has already seen far too many.” A previous lawsuit challenged the government’s ability to use public health laws to seal the border. Carl J. Nichols, a judge recently appointed to the federal bench by Trump, ruled against the government in that case — in part because of the potential implications for U.S. citizens if the practice of blocking border crossings were allowed to continue. The possible change to the regulation is part of a pattern in recent months in which the Trump administration has sought to more vigorously clamp down on entry into the country — not only from immigrants living in the country without legal permission, but from legal ones as well. Stephen Miller, the architect of the president’s assault on immigration, has aggressively pushed for years to dial back the flow of migration. Some of his efforts have succeeded, including a program to return asylum-seekers to Mexico to await processing and new rules on those seeking green cards to live and work in the United States legally. But other efforts by Miller and the administration have been blocked by legal action. Since the pandemic began, they have moved aggressively to impose some of those same restrictions in the name of protecting Americans from the spread of the virus. In addition to citing health concerns to suspend the nation’s asylum program, the president ordered a temporary halt to the issuance of green cards and has suspended the issuance of many work visas aimed at allowing foreigners to work legally in the United States. Immigrant rights organizations have criticized the recent efforts, saying that they fear the Trump administration will not lift the severe restrictions on immigration once the threat from the pandemic is over.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Kamala Harris is Biden’s choice for vice president By ALEXANDER BURNS and KATIE GLUECK

oe Biden selected Sen. Kamala Harris of California as his vice-presidential running mate on Tuesday, embracing a former rival who sharply criticized him in the Democratic primaries but emerged after ending her campaign as a vocal supporter of Biden and a prominent advocate of racial-justice legislation after the death of George Floyd in late May. Harris, 55, is the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent to be nominated for national office by a major party, and only the fourth woman in history to be chosen for one of their presidential tickets. She brings to the race a far more vigorous campaign style than Biden’s, including a gift for capturing moments of raw political electricity on the debate stage and elsewhere, and a personal identity and family story that many find inspiring. Biden announced the selection over text message and in a follow-up email to supporters: “Joe Biden here. Big news: I’ve chosen Kamala Harris as my running mate. Together, with you, we’re going to beat Trump.” After her own presidential bid disintegrated last year, many Democrats regarded Harris as all but certain to attempt another run for the White House in the future. By choosing her as his political partner, Biden may well be anointing her as the de facto leader of the party in four or eight years. A pragmatic moderate who spent most of her career as a prosecutor, Harris was seen throughout the vice-presidential search as among the safest choices available to Biden. She has been a reliable ally of the Democratic establishment, with flexible policy priorities that largely

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has named Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. She is the first black woman to serve in the role. mirror Biden’s, and her supporters argued that she could reinforce Biden’s appeal to Black voters and women without stirring particularly vehement opposition on the right or left.

For all the complexity of Biden’s vicepresidential search, there is a certain foreordained quality to Harris’ nomination. She has been regarded as a rising figure in Democratic politics since around the

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris on September 12.

turn of the century, and as a confident representative of the country’s multiracial future. Harris sought to capture that sense of destiny in her own presidential campaign, announcing her candidacy on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2019 and paying frequent homage to Shirley Chisholm, the first Black candidate to seek a major party’s nomination. Throughout her rise, Harris has excited Democrats with a personal story that set her apart even in the diverse political melting pot that is California: She is the daughter of two immigrant academics, an Indian American mother and a father from Jamaica. Harris was raised in Oakland and Berkeley, attended Howard University and pursued a career in criminal justice before becoming only the second Black woman ever elected to the Senate. Still, Harris was far from a shoo-in for the role of Biden’s running mate, and some of Biden’s advisers harbored persistent reservations about her because of her unsteady performance as a presidential candidate and the finely staged ambush she mounted against Biden in the first debate of the primary season. Jill Biden, the former second lady, called Harris’ debate stage remarks a “punch to the gut” at a fundraiser in March. In the end, however, Biden may have come to see the panache Harris displayed in that debate — when she confronted him over his past opposition to busing as a means of integrating public schools — as more of a potential asset to his ticket than as a source of lingering grievance. Indeed, even in the bleaker periods of her presidential candidacy last year, Harris maintained an ability to excite Democratic voters with the imagined prospect of a debate-stage clash between her and President Donald Trump.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

McDonald’s sues former CEO, accusing him of lying and fraud By DAVID ENRICH and RACHEL ABRAMS

ight months had passed since McDonald’s fired its chief executive, Steve Easterbrook, for sexting with a subordinate. Easterbrook had apologized and walked away with tens of millions in compensation, and the fast food chain had moved on under a new chief executive. Then, last month, a McDonald’s employee made a fresh allegation: Easterbrook had a sexual relationship with another subordinate while he was running the company. That accusation has now ignited a rare public war between a major company and its former leader: McDonald’s filed a lawsuit on Monday against Easterbrook, accusing him of lying, concealing evidence and fraud. The lawsuit, filed in state court in Delaware, claims that Easterbrook carried on sexual relationships with three McDonald’s employees in the year before his ouster and that he awarded a lucrative batch of shares to one of those employees. McDonald’s said it was seeking to recoup stock options and other compensation that the company last fall allowed Easterbrook to keep — a package worth more than $40 million, according to Equilar, a compensation consulting firm. The lawsuit represents an extraordinary departure from the traditional disclose-it-and-move-on decorum that American corporations have often embraced when confronted with allegations of wrongdoing by senior executives. More than a few chief executives in recent years have lost their jobs following allegations of sexual or other misconduct, but for the most part they have departed quietly and the companies have not aired the ugly details. In the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter eras, however, more companies are striving to position themselves as good corporate citizens, responsible not only to shareholders but also to customers, employees and society at large. Easterbrook’s successor at McDonald’s, Chris Kempczinski, has called for a new corporate emphasis on integrity, inclusion and supporting local communities. “McDonald’s does not tolerate behavior from any employee that does not reflect our values,” Kempczinski wrote in an internal memo reviewed by The New York Times. He added, “As we recommit to our values, now, more than ever, is the time to lean in to what we stand for and act as a positive force for change.” A lawyer for Easterbrook didn’t respond to requests for comment on Monday. McDonald’s lawsuit also raises new questions, however, about how diligent it was in looking into Easterbrook’s conduct before dismissing him with a generous compensation package. It acknowledges, for instance, that the initial review did not include a thorough search of the executive’s email account. “One would think that it would be internal investigation 101 to look at all electronic records right away,” said Brandon L. Garrett, a professor who specializes in corporate criminal law at Duke University School of Law. “The concern, if an investigation doesn’t look at emails, is that it was a halfhearted investigation.” Until last fall, Easterbrook, a native of Watford, England, was regarded as something of a savior at McDonald’s. He had worked at the company for nearly two decades before taking its

Then McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, on Nov. 12, 2015, was fired in 2019. McDonald’s filed a lawsuit against Easterbrook, on Aug. 10, 2020, accusing him of lying, concealing evidence and fraud. helm in March 2015. The fast-food chain was in a financial slump. Easterbrook streamlined its businesses, introduced technological innovations like touch-screen ordering and delighted customers by offering all-day breakfasts. The company’s shares roughly doubled during his tenure. But in October 2019, a McDonald’s employee notified the company that she was engaged in an inappropriate relationship with Easterbrook, according to a person familiar with the company’s investigation. The employee told the company that she was worried that she would end up getting punished for the monthlong consensual relationship, which consisted of sexually explicit text messages, photographs and at least one FaceTime call with him, but was not physical. Outside lawyers for McDonald’s interviewed Easterbrook, who confirmed the employee’s account. He assured the investigators that he had never engaged in a sexual relationship with an employee. The lawyers examined Easterbrook’s company-issued iPhone 10 and his iCloud account, but did not find evidence of additional misconduct, according to the person familiar with the investigation. They did not review his electronic communications that were stored on McDonald’s computer servers. The board of directors decided to fire him. The question that the directors considered was whether he would be fired “for cause” — in other words, for an offense such as dishonesty or committing a crime. It was a crucial determination. If Easterbrook was fired for cause, he would have to relinquish previously awarded compensation, including stock options that he was not yet eligible to cash in. McDonald’s said in its lawsuit Monday that its board had

feared that trying to fire Easterbrook for cause would be “certain to embroil the company in a lengthy dispute with him.” Instead, the board opted to ease Easterbrook out “with as little disruption as possible.” The company allowed Easterbrook to keep his stock options and other compensation. But McDonald’s severance plan, which the company said applied to Easterbrook, contained an important clause: If, in the future, McDonald’s determined that an employee was dishonest and actually deserved to be fired for cause, the company had the right to recoup the severance payouts. Early last month, an employee told McDonald’s that another employee had been telling colleagues about her sexual relationship with Easterbrook when he was chief executive, according to the person familiar with the internal investigation. McDonald’s opened a new inquiry. This time, investigators for the company searched for the woman’s name in Easterbrook’s emails, which were backed up on corporate servers. They quickly found an email from October 2019, in which Easterbrook had sent pictures of the woman and two other McDonald’s employees to his personal Hotmail account in Britain, the person said. McDonald’s said it was taking action to prevent Easterbrook from cashing in his stock options or selling his shares. The person familiar with the investigation said that McDonald’s board of directors and Kempczinski quickly decided that the company needed to make public the new information about Easterbrook. Keeping it under wraps, the person said, would have run counter to the new chief executive’s emphasis on fostering a transparent and welcoming corporate culture.

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Delta Air Lines bought an oil refinery. It didn’t go as planned.

The Delta-owned Monroe Energy refinery, in Trainer, Pa., on Aug. 6, 2020. No other major U.S. airline has bought an oil refinery, a cyclical business known to produce modest profits. By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and NIRAJ CHOKSHI

et fuel is known as the Steady Eddie of the refinery business, a predictable profit-maker that balances the seasonal gyrations of gasoline and diesel sales. But for airlines, it is a headache — a big and unpredictable expense that confounds managers. So Delta Air Lines tried a bold experiment: It bought an oil refinery in 2012 outside Philadelphia, the first such purchase by a major U.S. airline. When jet fuel prices were high, as they were then, Delta figured the refinery, which turns crude oil into the stuff that planes, cars and trucks burn, could offset some of its expenses and perhaps even make money. “A lot of energy guys hate it, and I can understand why, because we’re taking money out of their pockets,” Ed Bastian, the airline’s current chief executive and then president, said at an industry conference in 2012. But the refinery made only modest profits some years and lost money in others. This year, as the coronavirus hammered demand for air travel, it has become a liability for Delta, widely considered by analysts as one of the best-run airlines in the country. The energy industry critics Bastian dismissed appear to have correctly identified the flaws in Delta’s strategy. Like airlines, oil refining is a cyclical enterprise that can be difficult in the best of times — refineries are expensive to run, prone to accidents, subject to environmental regulations and, yet, earn meager profits. Today, airlines and refineries face their biggest crises in

modern times. Tens of millions of people are working from home and the number of people flying is down about 75% from a year ago. Delta’s refinery, Monroe Energy, has been one of many casualties in an industry that is working well below capacity, idling plants and losing money. Monroe, in Trainer, Pennsylvania, lost $114 million in the second quarter and its future appears bleak. In 2018, Delta announced it was interested in finding a partner to jointly own and operate it, but it never found any takers. “The refinery may not even be a live albatross,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service. “We don’t see jet fuel becoming a marquee moneymaker for refiners again until the middle of the decade, if then.” The coronavirus cut off demand for all transportation fuels in April as the economy shut down. Consumption of gasoline and diesel has recovered somewhat, but American refiners have still had to cut their fuel production by roughly 15% in recent weeks compared with last year. Jet fuel has seen the most dramatic downturn by far, forcing refineries to slash output by nearly half, to an average of 1.1 million barrels a day for the four weeks ending July 24, compared with 1.9 million barrels a day for the same time period last year, according to the Energy Department. Air travel recovered a little in May and June, but it stalled in July as infections surged across the country and states imposed new quarantine restrictions on visitors. International travel remains very limited. And until a vaccine is widely available, the industry recovery will be choppy at best.

Refinery executives have many long-term worries, like stricter fuel economy standards and the growth of electric vehicles. But the pandemic is their most immediate concern. “It’s certainly not easy to see what’s coming,” said Karl Schmidt, vice president of supply and marketing for Citgo, which has three refineries in Texas, Louisiana and Illinois. “It will be interesting to see how long it takes for people to regain comfort about getting on a plane if and when we have a vaccine.” While it is a relatively small percentage of total output, jet fuel is crucial for most refineries. While gasoline is profitable during the summer driving season and diesel is profitable in the fall and winter, jet fuel is a high-margin product year-round. When jet fuel production is down, refineries earn a lot less and operate inefficiently. “It will be multiple years before jet fuel demand gets back to 2019 levels, probably five years,” said Kurt Barrow, a vice president at IHS Markits, an energy consulting firm. “It’s a serious issue among other serious issues.” Even before the virus spread, refinery profit margins were suffering. U.S. refineries made good money in recent years exporting gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. But that trend may be coming to an end because Chinese, Indian, Nigerian and Saudi Arabian energy companies are ramping up exports. In addition, demand for imported fuel in Latin America, a big market for many U.S. refiners, is declining sharply because of the pandemic. The situation is particularly dire for East Coast refineries like Monroe that tend to be less efficient than refiners along the Gulf Coast because they can process only certain grades of crude oil. Such issues apparently did not factor into Delta’s thinking when the airline paid $150 million for the struggling Trainer refinery, which ConocoPhillips had idled six months earlier, citing pressure from imports, weak demand and regulatory costs. The refinery, which started in 1912 as a wooden structure, has been rebuilt, shut down, restarted and expanded by a series of owners, including Sinclair, BP and Phillips Petroleum. When Delta took over, global air travel was growing, refiners were exporting to Africa and Latin America, and a shale drilling boom was suddenly producing cheap domestic oil for refiners to process. For roughly the list price of a widebody aircraft at the time, Richard Anderson, then Delta’s chief executive officer, asserted that the refinery would reduce the company’s fuel expenses by $300 million annually, allowing it to more than recoup its investment in just a year. That math suggested other airlines would be foolish not to make similar purchases. “Everybody was kind of content to watch what Delta did with it and if it made a whole lot of sense you might have seen others replicate it, but in this case that’s not what happened,” said Helane Becker, a managing director and senior airline analyst at Cowen, an investment bank.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

13 Stocks

Stocks advance toward record high on stimulus; gold crashes

gauge of global equity markets rose on Tuesday as a Wall Street benchmark neared its record high, lifted by hopes for fresh U.S. stimulus and signs of a growing American economy that spurred yields to climb and thrashed gold prices. Hopes of steady economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic boosted sentiment, helping European stocks hit a near three-week high as automakers gained on a surge in China sales numbers. The S&P 500 .SPX neared its Feb. 19 peak, when investors started dumping shares in anticipation of what proved to be the biggest U.S. economic slump since the Great Depression. The dollar resumed its weeks-long decline against a basket of peers and the euro topped $1.18 as investors flocked to currencies that benefit from an improving global market outlook, while gold prices dived as expectations of a U.S. stimulus deal boosted risk appetite. Spot gold prices fell over 5%, on track for the largest one-day drop in over seven years and silver XAG= plunged over 12.5%, also the largest drop since 2013. Spot gold XAU= last dropped 5.3% to $1,919.96 an ounce. U.S. producer prices increased by the most in more than 1-1/2 years in July, and the Labor Department’s producer price index for final demand rose 0.6%, driven by a surge in portfolio management fees and rising costs for gasoline. The market believes the economy will grow and that the pandemic will be overcome, said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment strategist at Inverness Counsel in New York. “Short term, we’re going to get stimulus,” Ghriskey said. “Longer term is that we’re going to get through this virus. We’re going to have a vaccine eventually.” MSCI’s benchmark for global equity markets .MIWD00000PUS rose 0.71% to 568.08, off just over 2% from its record, while Europe’s broad FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 closed up 1.64% at 1,436.83. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 0.93%, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 0.33% and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 0.45%. The S&P was less than half a percentage point from a fresh record. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement that Russia had become the first country to grant regulatory approval to a COVID-19 vaccine after less than two months of human testing aided sentiment, some analysts said.

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Wednesday, August 12, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Russia approves Coronavirus vaccine before completing tests

In this video screen grab made available by Moscow’s vaccine as part of clinical trials. By ANDREW E. KRAMER

Russian health care regulator has become the first in the world to approve a vaccine for the coronavirus, President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday, though the vaccine has yet to complete clinical trials. The Russian dash for a vaccine has already raised international concerns that Moscow is cutting corners on testing to score political and propaganda points. Putin’s announcement came despite a caution last week from the World Health Organization that Russia should not stray from the usual methods of testing a vaccine for safety and effectiveness. Putin’s announcement became essentially a claim of victory in the global race for a vaccine, something Russian officials have been telegraphing for several weeks despite the absence of published information about any late-phase testing. “It works effectively enough, forms a stable immunity and, I repeat, it has gone through all necessary tests,” Putin said at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday morning. He thanked the scientists who developed the vaccine for “this first, very important step for our country, and generally for the whole world.” Western regulators have said repeatedly that they do not expect a vaccine to become widely available before the end of the year at the earliest. Regulatory approval in Russia, well ahead of that timeline, could become a symbol of national pride and provide a much needed political lift for Putin. The Russian vaccine, along with many others under devel-

veloped by Oxford University and AstraZeneca that has shown promise in early testing and is now undergoing phase 3 tests in Britain, Brazil and South Africa. Russia’s minister of health, Mikhail Murashko, has said the country will begin a mass vaccination campaign in the fall, and said Tuesday that it would start with teachers and medical workers this month. The WHO maintains a comprehensive list of worldwide vaccine trials. In the latest version of the list, there is no Russian phase 3 trial. The organization is in close contact with Russian authorities and discussing its prequalification procedures, Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday, but he emphasized that to obtain this seal of approval would require “rigorous review of safety and efficacy data” derived from clinical trials. Last week, a spokesman for the organization, Christian Lindmeier, cautioned that all vaccines should go through full testing before being released to the public. “There are established practices and there are guidelines,” he said. Any vaccine, he added, “should be, of course, going through all the various trials.” The Russian Ministry of Health did not respond to detailed written questions sent last week about human trials and research into potentially harmful side effects. Russia has already used the vaccine race as a propaganda Sechenov Medical University, a volunteer receives the tool, even in the absence of published scientific evidence to support its claims as the front-runner. For the last several months, state television has promoted opment in a number of countries in the effort to alleviate a world- the idea that Russia is leading the competition. In May, it reportwide health crisis that has killed at least 734,900 people, sped ed that the first person in the world to be vaccinated against the virus was a Russian researcher who had injected himself even through early monkey and human trials with apparent success. Vaccines generally go through three stages of human test- before monkey trials had been completed. Russia tested the vaccine on soldiers, raising concerns ing before being approved for widespread use. The first two phases test the vaccine on relatively small groups of people to about consent, though the Ministry of Defense said that all the see if it causes harm and if it stimulates the immune system. soldiers had volunteered. The United States, Canadian and British governments The last phase, known as phase 3, compares the vaccine to a have all accused Russian state hackers of trying to steal vaccine placebo in thousands of people. This final phase is the only way to know with statistical research, casting a shadow over Russia’s claim to have achieved certainty whether a vaccine prevents an infection. And because a medical breakthrough. Russian officials have denied the accuit’s testing a much larger group of people, a phase 3 trial can sation and say their vaccine is based on a design developed by also pick up more subtle side effects of a vaccine that earlier Russian scientists to counter Ebola years ago. trials could not. Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a government-controlled fund The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said that a that invested in the vaccine, denied Russia had cut corners on new coronavirus vaccine would need to be 50% more effective testing or stolen intellectual property to get ahead. than a placebo to be approved. In an interview last month, Dmitriev said Russia relied on The Russian scientific body that developed the vaccine, a legacy of once formidable research into viruses and vaccines the Gamaleya Institute, has yet to conduct phase 3 tests on tens in the Soviet Union and focused on established technologies, of thousands of volunteers in highly controlled trials, a process like the approach already used for the Ebola vaccine. seen as the only method of ensuring a vaccine is actually safe He contrasted that history with Trump administration’s and effective. Around the world, more than 30 vaccines out of Operation Warp Speed program, which is financing research a total of more than 165 under development are now in various by Pfizer and Moderna for a genetic vaccine and supporting a stages of human trials. variety of other experimental technologies. The Russian vaccine uses two strains of adenovirus that If Russian scientists have taken an unorthodox route to the typically cause mild colds in humans. They are genetically mod- coronavirus vaccine, it would not be the first time. Back in the ified to cause infected cells to make proteins from the spike of 1950s, a team of researchers tested a promising, and ultimately the new coronavirus. The approach is similar to a vaccine de- successful, polio vaccine on their own children.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

England’s flawed virus contact tracing will be revamped By BENJAMIN MUELLER

ngland will overhaul its faltering coronavirus contacttracing system, the government said Monday, shifting some control from private contractors to local public health teams and cutting the jobs of thousands of call center workers who had complained of having no one to call. The changes were the clearest acknowledgment yet by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government that its centralized, privatized system for tracking down the patients’ contacts has come up short. Instead, the government has heeded some of the pleas of underfunded local public health directors, who have warned for months that a London-run contact tracing system would not deliver the local intelligence needed to squelch flare-ups of the virus. Under the reorganization announced Monday, 6,000 contact tracing jobs will be cut by late August, one-third of the total employed by two outsourcing companies. Some of the remaining 12,000 privately employed tracers will be redeployed to regional public health teams. In some areas, “the national Test and Trace system wasn’t picking up enough of the cases and contacts on the ground to make a difference,” Dr. Lincoln Sargeant, the director of public health in North Yorkshire, said in an interview Monday. “The knowledge and relationships we have in local government are certainly what you need to bridge that gap.” Contact tracing has long been envisioned as the bridge between lockdown and a vaccine, allowing the government to identify clusters of infections and stop people from passing on the virus. Without an effective system, scientists warned recently, schools could not safely reopen in September, as planned. But England’s centralized program has repeatedly stumbled since its rushed launch in late May — one of many missteps that have contributed to Britain’s having the worst outbreak in Europe. Only 51,500 of the 92,000 people identified as close contacts of positive cases were ever reached by call center contact tracers as of late July, according to government statistics. Many contact tracers had reached no more than a couple of people in two months of work. Contact tracers reported filling their days with Netflix and internet exercise classes. Local public health directors struggled to get access to testing data from their areas. Outbreaks sprouted in cities like Leicester, necessitating economically damaging local shutdowns. Part of the problem, analysts said, was that Johnson had entrusted England’s system largely to Serco, an outsourcing giant that had recently been obliged to pay the government a hefty fine for fraud on a previous, unrelated contract. Other nations within the United Kingdom, including Wales and Scotland, which are in charge of their own contact tracing, appointed public

health officials to run their programs. The callers employed by Serco and other outsourcing companies were paid barely above the minimum wage, and some said they started work with little or no training. Small teams of local public health workers employed by local authorities picked up the most complicated cases in settings like nursing homes, schools, homeless shelters and prisons. They traced more contacts than the privately employed workers, and reached a higher percentage of them: By late July, they had reached 148,000 of 151,000 contacts. In redeploying more contact tracers to those local teams, the government is hoping to replicate that success more broadly. Rather than stopping once they fail to reach people by phone, tracers will now work with public health officials to take further action, like knocking on people’s doors. “NHS Test and Trace is one of the largest contact tracing and testing systems anywhere in the world, and was built rapidly, drawing on the U.K.’s existing health protection networks, to stop the spread of coronavirus,” Dido Harding, the executive chair of the program, said in a statement Monday. “We have always been clear that NHS Test and Trace must be local by default and that we do not operate alone.” The government did not say how it would handle its 108 million-pound ($141 million) contract with Serco.

The government has until late August to decide whether to expand the contract to up to $535 million. Local public health directors said that bringing the London-run system under the umbrella of regional health authorities could create difficulties with merging records. They said it would be important to ensure that national and local systems do not replicate each other’s work. But public health officials said involving local authorities may make people more amenable to following official guidance. Several areas have already undergone trials with the new system. For one thing, they said, people seemed more likely to pick up calls that came from local area codes. Local authorities are also largely responsible for trying to secure help for people who lack the housing, income, savings or access to food that would allow them to isolate for two weeks. Still, England is offering less support than some countries with more successful contact tracing systems. In Germany, for instance, people who have to quarantine continue to be paid their regular wages for a period. In China, people asked to isolate at home have their rent and food paid for by the government. In England, many people in insecure employment may not be paid at all or risk being fired if they have to stay home from work. Others cannot afford to live on the allocated sick pay.

People in the line for a show at the London Palladium use their phones to sign up for Britain’s “test and trace” system, in London, July 23, 2020.

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

China refrains from ousting Hong Kong lawmakers By KEITH BRADSHER

fter a succession of recent moves to crack down on democracy in Hong Kong, Beijing on Tuesday appeared to show a little restraint and refrained from pushing out four of the city’s opposition lawmakers. The decision by a top legislative committee in Beijing means that the four pro-democracy lawmakers are likely to retain their seats in Hong Kong’s legislature for the rest of an extended term despite being barred from seeking reelection. Many had expected the National People’s Congress Standing Committee to rule that the elected lawmakers had to go, a decision that would have been in line with Beijing’s ongoing campaign to sideline the city’s pro-democracy camp. Tuesday’s vote indicated that officials in

Beijing may have wanted to avoid triggering widespread public outrage with such an expulsion. “From Beijing’s point of view, the intention is the prevention and control of conflict and controversy, so Hong Kong can concentrate on tackling the pandemic and dealing with livelihood issues,” said Lau Siu-kai, a former Hong Kong government official who is now a senior Beijing adviser on Hong Kong policy. The announcement came a day after police launched a dramatic move against critics of the government, arresting Jimmy Lai, a prominent pro-democracy media mogul, along with his two sons and four of his executives on national security charges, and raiding the offices of his newspaper. The sweep was the latest action demonstrating China’s determination to

Prominent activist and politician, Agnes Chow, center, with glasses, is escorted from her home by law enforcement officers in Hong Kong, Aug. 10 2020.

quash dissent with an expansive national security law it imposed on the city on June 30. Authorities have arrested young activists for posts on social media and dismissed a tenured law professor from his job at a university. In late July, they disqualified 12 pro-democracy candidates, including the four incumbent lawmakers, from running in the next legislative election. Officials cited grounds for disqualification that included objecting to the national security law. After the government announced it would delay by a year the election that was originally scheduled for September, questions arose about the fate of the four lawmakers and whether they would be able to remain in the legislature. The Hong Kong government turned the issue over to the standing committee of the legislature in Beijing. That committee met and voted Tuesday on a resolution that approved the extension of the Hong Kong legislature’s term without making any decision regarding the four opposition lawmakers. Beijing appeared to have decided that removing the lawmakers this month was not worth the trouble, said Michael C. Davis, a retired University of Hong Kong law professor who is now a senior research scholar at Columbia University. “They just didn’t want to alienate people more and will wait until next year,” Davis said. Beijing might also have wanted to avoid giving the United States another reason to attack China while relations are in a downward spiral, in part over Hong Kong. The Trump administration has sought to punish Hong Kong and mainland Chinese officials for quelling pro-democracy protests, including by imposing sanctions on them.

Even with the four pro-democracy lawmakers likely staying in the legislature for the coming year, the pro-Beijing camp maintains a sizable majority. Beijing wants democracy advocates to serve as a “loyal opposition” that keeps political debates within carefully circumscribed boundaries, Lau, the adviser, said. The new security law — which imposes severe limits on some forms of political speech — could help rein in the opposition, he said. “If they do not follow this path, they do not have any political careers in this system, they can only act as street fighters, which makes them vulnerable to punishment by the law,” Lau said. There is still one possible legal threat to the continued service of the four lawmakers in the coming year. The Hong Kong government could still try to unseat them, but that now seems less likely. Since the national security law was passed by Beijing, several countries have imposed sanctions and even suspended extradition agreements with Hong Kong. Chinese officials have expressed support for the Hong Kong police’s arrest of Lai, the media tycoon, and the raid of the offices of his newspaper, Apple Daily. But on Tuesday, the city’s residents rallied to express their support for the newspaper and Lai. The newspaper had sold out in many newsstands by early morning. Large lunch crowds formed outside a restaurant owned by one of Lai’s sons, who was also detained in the sweep. Within a day of the raid, shares of Lai’s media group, Next Digital, had soared more than tenfold, as residents bought stock to show their support for the company.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

U.S. contractor knew of explosive material in Beirut since at least 2016 By MARIA ABI-HABIB and BEN HUBBARD

n American contractor working with the U.S. Army warned at least four years ago about a large cache of potentially explosive chemicals that was stored in Beirut’s port in unsafe conditions, according to a United States diplomatic cable. The presence of the chemicals was spotted and reported by an American port security expert during a safety inspection of the port, the cable said. Current and former U.S. officials who have worked in the Mideast say the contractor would have been expected to report the finding to the U.S. Embassy or the Pentagon. The chemicals — 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate — exploded last Tuesday, Lebanese officials have said, shaking much of Lebanon, damaging buildings across a wide swath of central Beirut, killing more than 150 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. The blast fueled widespread anger at Lebanon’s political elite and led to the resignation of the government on Monday. The fact that the United States may have known about the chemicals and warned no one shocked and angered Western diplomats, who lost two colleagues in the blast and saw several others wounded. A senior State Department official denied that U.S. officials were aware of the contractor’s findings and said the cable cited by The Times “shows that they had not” been informed. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a cable that was not public, said the contractor “made an unofficial site visit to the port approximately four years ago, and was not at the time a U.S. government or State Department employee.” The official said the department had no record of the contractor communicating his findings until last week, after the deadly explosion. The blast, which registered as a minor earthquake, tore through a number of central Beirut neighborhoods, destroying homes, shutting down three hospitals and leaving streets strewn with shattered glass and downed trees. It also took a toll on Western diplomats, many of whom maintain missions in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, and live in highrise apartments with commanding views of the Mediterranean and of the port, putting them directly in the path of the explosion. When informed by The Times about the contents of the cable, some expressed surprise and outrage that if the United States had the information, it was not shared. “If confirmed, it would be very shocking to say the least,” said one Western diplomat whose apartment was damaged in the blast, speaking on the condition of anonymity in accordance with diplomatic protocol. The United States is one of the few Western powers that bases its embassy, consulate and diplomats well outside Beirut. The heavily guarded U.S. diplomatic compound in the mountain town of Awkar is about eight miles from the capital. While many European diplomats live in apartments in central Beirut, many of which were heavily damaged in the blast, the United States requires all its diplomats to live in the

A man sleeps outside in the devastated Karantina district near the port in Beirut, Aug. 7, 2020. In three ravaged neighborhoods — one middle class, one poor, and one upscale — the explosion at the port in Beirut has united everyone in rage against a government seen as corrupt, dysfunctional and ineffectual. embassy compound and follow strict security procedures when they leave. The U.S. Embassy was located in Beirut until it was moved after multiple attacks in the 1980s, including an explosion in 1983 caused by a suicide car bomb that blew off the embassy’s facade and killed 17 Americans and 46 others. The diplomatic cable, marked unclassified but sensitive, was issued by the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon on Friday. The cable first lists Lebanese officials who knew about ammonium nitrate, a compound commonly used to make fertilizer and bombs, which arrived in Beirut in 2013 and was unloaded into a port hangar the next year. The cable then says that an American security consultant hired by the U.S. military spotted the chemicals during a safety inspection. According to the cable, the consultant, under a contract with the U.S. Army, advised the Lebanese navy from 2013 to 2016. The cable said that the adviser “conveyed that he had conducted a port facility inspection on security measures during which he reported to port officials on the unsafe storage of the ammonium nitrate.” The ammonium nitrate had been stored at Beirut’s port since 2014. It is not clear when he conveyed the information; however, several current and former U.S. officials who have worked in the Middle East say that the consultant would normally have conveyed his findings immediately to the U.S. officials who oversaw the contract, in this case the embassy, State Department or Pentagon. Diplomats from countries affected by the blast said there was probably little that the United States could have done to force the Lebanese government to move the material. Lebanese port officials had also asked repeatedly that the chemical be moved, to no avail. Ammonium nitrate is a highly explosive material used for fertilizer and also highly valued by militants to make bombs. Bombs made with ammonium nitrate have caused some of the

worst casualties that U.S. forces have suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just 100 pounds of ammonium nitrate can rip through a military convoy, causing significant casualties. The cable also expressed doubt about the Lebanese government’s initial explanation about what ignited the ammonium nitrate: that a fire had started in a nearby hangar filled with fireworks and then spread, causing the more devastating ammonium nitrate blast that damaged much of Beirut. Instead, the cable raises the possibility that ammunition stored at the port may have created the force needed to set off the ammonium nitrate explosion. The cause of “the initial fire remains unclear — as does whether fireworks, ammunition or something else stored next to the ammonium nitrate might have been involved,” the cable states. U.S. officials floated the idea that an ammunition depot may have set off the explosion days after Lebanese officials pressed the fireworks theory and issued multiple denials that ammunition stored near the blast was to blame. Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said that the U.S. government was still unsure about what had caused the accident and that it might have been “a Hezbollah arms shipment that blew up.” Hezbollah’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, in a speech last week, denied that its arsenal had anything to do with the blast. “I categorically deny the claim that Hezbollah has an arms cache, ammunition or anything else in the port,” he said. Lebanon’s president, Michel Aoun, said Friday that the cause of the blast had not been determined, but cited the “possibility of external interference through a rocket or bomb or other act.” President Donald Trump raised the prospect last week that the blast had been caused by an attack, but multiple defense officials subsequently refuted the assertion. Lebanese citizens enraged by the blast staged huge protests and demanded an international investigation, an idea that Aoun dismissed. He called an international investigation “a waste of time.” Nasrallah appeared to back the president, demanding that the Lebanese army conduct the investigation. Analysts said that Lebanese officials might be blocking an international investigation to hide larger problems at the port, which is controlled by several political parties, including Hezbollah. “Why the Lebanese government may not want an international investigation is because perhaps they don’t want to expose the extent of their incompetence and corruption,” said Brian Katz, a former Middle East military and terrorism analyst for the CIA, who left his post last year. “Each party has a share of the port and uses it to smuggle all sorts of contraband, like weapons, automobiles and cash.” The U.S. Embassy notes that many Lebanese do not support an investigation by their own government because of their lack of faith in the system. The government “would essentially be investigating themselves,” the cable concluded.

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

How to foil Trump’s election night strategy By JAMELLE BOUIE

here’s no mystery about what President Donald Trump intends to do if he holds a lead on election night in November. He’s practically broadcasting it. First, he’ll claim victory. Then, having spent most of the year denouncing vote-by-mail as corrupt, fraudulent and prone to abuse, he’ll demand that authorities stop counting mail-in and absentee ballots. He’ll have teams of lawyers challenging counts and ballots across the country. He also seems to be counting on having the advantage of mail slowdowns, engineered by the recently installed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. Fewer pickups and deliveries could mean more late-arriving ballots and a better shot at dismissing votes before they’re even opened, especially if the campaign has successfully sued to block states from extending deadlines. We might even see a Brooks Brothers riot or two, where well-heeled Republican operatives stage angry and voluble protests against ballot counts and recounts. If Trump is leading on election night, in other words, there’s a good chance he’ll try to disrupt and delegitimize the counting process. That way, if Joe Biden pulls ahead in the days (or weeks) after voting ends — if we experience a “blue shift” like the one in 2018, in which the Democratic majority in the House grew as votes came in — the president will have given himself grounds to reject the outcome as “fake news.” The only way to prevent this scenario, or at least, rob it of

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A polling station in Flatbush, Brooklyn, during the New York presidential primary election in June. the oxygen it needs to burn, is to deliver an election night lead to Biden. This means voting in person. No, not everyone will be able to do that. But if you plan to vote against Trump and can take appropriate precautions, then some kind of hand delivery — going to the polls or bringing your mail-in ballot to a “drop box” — will be the best way to protect your vote from the president’s concerted attempt to undermine the election for his benefit. Trump is the underdog in this year’s race for president. He trails by 8.2 percentage points in the FiveThirtyEight average; by 6.9 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average and by 9 percentage points in the 270toWin average. He’s given up on expanding his coalition or winning a majority of voters (if he ever cared in the first place). And he’s botched the coronavirus pandemic, leaving the United States with an ever-climbing six-figure death toll and a severe economic downturn. Trump is desperate to hold on to power, but he probably can’t win a fair fight. His solution, then, is to do everything in his power to hinder the opposition and either win an Electoral College majority or claim victory before all the votes have been counted. A key element of Trump’s strategy is to undermine the Postal Service’s ability to deliver and collect mail. The president’s postmaster general has removed experienced officials, implemented cuts and raised postage rates for ballots mailed to voters, increasing the cost if states want the post office to prioritize election mail. And Politico reports that Trump’s aides and advisers in the White House have been searching for ways to curb mail-in voting through executive action, “from directing the Postal Service to not deliver certain ballots to stopping local officials from counting them after Election Day.” If vote-by-mail is the safest option in a pandemic, then the point of the White House’s effort is to create a dilemma for voters who place a premium on safety. Do they mail a ballot and run the

risk of a discarded vote, or do they go to the polls and run the risk of infection and illness? Consider the partisan split as well. Fiftyfour percent of Biden supporters prefer mail-in voting, according to a July poll from ABC News and The Washington Post, while only 17% of Trump supporters say the same. If in-person voters are disproportionately pro-Trump, and mail-in voters are disproportionately pro-Biden, then you have the ingredients for an election night standoff, where the president claims victory before all the votes have been counted and tries to secure his “win” by keeping mail-in ballots off the table. There are reforms that could keep the president from taking this tack. To account for postal delays, states can pledge to count ballots postmarked on or before Nov. 3, so that they’re included in the total even if they arrive late. To speed up the process, states could permit election officials to verify and count mail-in ballots even before Election Day. They could also decline to release results until all polls close and all votes are in. News organizations, similarly, could set expectations for viewers and bring as much transparency as possible to vote counts and other forms of election analysis. Nonetheless, there is a chance that the president takes this path regardless of state officials and the media. And there’s every reason to think that some portion of the Republican Party will back him. The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee are already challenging mail-in voting laws and suing to keep states like Nevada and Pennsylvania from enlarging their scope. It is easy to imagine a replay of Florida 2000, except on a national scale. The best defense for the president’s political opponents is, if possible, to vote in person. For some, this will mean going to the polls in November, in the middle of flu season, when the spread of COVID-19 may worsen. In most states, however, there are multiple ways to cast or hand in a ballot. Every state offers some form of early or absentee voting, and 33 states — including swing states like Arizona and Wisconsin — allow absentee voting without an excuse. Trump supports absentee voting — it’s how his older supporters in Florida vote — and his opponents should take advantage of the fact that those systems won’t be under the same kind of attack. Many vote-by-mail states also offer drop boxes so that voters can deliver ballots directly to the registrar. And if you must mail in your ballot, the best practice would be to post it as early as possible, to account for potential delays. Earlier this year, a group of more than 100 people — Republicans, Democrats, senior political operatives and members of the media — gathered to role play the November election, using predetermined rules and procedures. “In each scenario other than a Biden landslide,” writes Nils Gilman of the Berggruen Institute, who helped organize the exercise, “we ended up with a constitutional crisis that lasted until the inauguration, featuring violence in the streets and a severely disrupted administrative transition.” There you have it. To head off the worst outcomes, Trump must go down in a decisive defeat. He’s on that path already. The task for his opponents is to sustain that momentum and work to make his defeat as obvious as possible, as early as possible. The pandemic makes that a risk, but it’s a risk many of us may have to take.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Gobernadora asegura distribución de reactivos para procesamiento de pruebas moleculares para laboratorios privados Por THE STAR

a gobernadora Wanda Vázquez Garced informó el martes, que realizó gestiones con la empresa Roche Diagnostics para garantizar la priorización de Puerto Rico en la adquisición de reactivos para el procesamiento de pruebas moleculares en la isla. “Hoy sostuvimos conversaciones con los directivos de la empresa Roche Diagnostics para garantizar el suministro de reactivos para el procesamiento de pruebas moleculares en la isla. El compromiso es que nos garantizarán reactivos para procesar pruebas para 11,000 pacientes semanales, a razón de 44 mil mensuales, esto a través de los laboratorios de referencia privados. Agradezco la disponibilidad y el compromiso de Roche para priorizar la salud de Puerto Rico ante la pandemia del COVID-19”, dijo Vázquez Garced en comunicación escrita. Aseguró que, además de la distribución de reactivos, la empresa, con sede en Indianápolis, se comprometió a ofrecer ayuda en la implementación de la técnica de “pooling” para aumentar la capacidad

de procesamiento de pruebas y la maximización de recursos. Dicha técnica consiste en la combinación de muestras de varios pacientes y procesarlas como una sola. En el caso de que el resultado sea negativo se concluye que todos los pacientes dentro de esa muestra son negativos. En cambio, si el resultado fuese positivo, se repetiría la prueba de forma individual para cada uno de los pacientes dentro de ese grupo. Esto ayuda a procesar una mayor cantidad de pruebas con la menor cantidad de recursos. De igual modo, mencionó que su solicitud surge como alternativa ante la escasez de reactivos para el procesamiento de pruebas moleculares en Puerto Rico, Estados Unidos y el mundo, por la alta demanda generada por la pandemia. “Puerto Rico sostiene reuniones periódicas con el gobierno federal, tanto para la adquisición de reactivos como para otros recursos, tales como medios de transporte e isopos. A pesar de que estamos insertados en el plan federal de respuesta, sin duda, esta gestión de la gobernadora representa un paso al frente para priorizar la salud del pueblo de Puerto Rico y apoyar las gestiones que realizan los

laboratorios privados en medio de la pandemia”, explicó el secretario de Salud, Lorenzo González Feliciano.

Exigen a la CEE informe sobre cumplimiento con trámite para completar primarias Por THE STAR

l candidato al Senado en el Distrito de Ponce en la primaria Partido Popular Democrático (PPD), José Luis Galarza, exigió al Presidente de la Comisión Estatal de Elecciones (CEE), que rinda un informe a los puertorriqueños en el que detalle y certifique todos los trámites para que garantice se complete la primaria este próximo domingo. De igual forma, hizo un requerimiento a los comisionados electorales como garantía adicional de veracidad en la información solicitada. “Independientemente de lo que resuelva el Tribunal Supremo de Puerto Rico, y cuando lo haga, lo determinado a esta fecha es que el próximo domingo se complete el proceso de primarias en la isla. De igual forma, las peticiones ciudadanas sobre que se comienza un proceso nuevo o que se sostenga celebrar la primaria el domingo o se adelante dicha fecha, la responsabilidad ministerial del Presidente de la CEE es que se pueda completar la votación”, destacó Galarza. “La mediocridad y la incompetencia que llevaron a un proceso desastroso y caótico tiene que terminarse de inmediato. Es decir, es hora de que se informe, al detalle, lo que realmente está listo y lo que no lo está.

La infinidad de posibilidades o soluciones propuestas al caos democrático tienen que estar amparadas y fundamentadas en lo posible y en lo correcto. Sin información sobre lo que realmente está listo, lo que realmente está coordinado y lo que no se ha hecho, brilla

por su ausencia”, apuntó Galarza quien, además, es un experimentado asesor legislativo. “Exijo que en esta misma fecha, el presidente de la CEE y los comisionados electorales presenten informes, por separado, que garanticen y certifiquen las gestiones realizadas para que se complete el proceso de votaciones de primaria. El informe debería detallar cantidad de papeletas maletines preparados acuerdos de transporte entre tantas otras actividades necesarias que hasta el domingo habían garantizado procesos electorales justos, confiables y quedaban la garantía de certeza en los resultadodo la voluntad de los puertorriqueños”, reclamó Galarza. Sin dilación ese informe debe ser reclamado por todos los puertorriqueños, sin menoscabo de la determinación que en su momento haga el Tribunal Supremo de Puerto Rico. No olvidemos, que los tribunales, si bien tienen la facultad y obligación constitucional de interpretar la Constitución y las leyes, no dejan de ser la rama de gobierno menos representativa de los ciudadanos lo que impone a los que participamos del proceso político y electoral una responsabilidad mayor para devolverle la confianza y credibilidad a nuestros procesos electorales que son los que dan vida al derecho al voto”, concluyó Galarza.

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

‘Stanley Kubrick,’ a brisk new biography of a major talent By DWIGHT GARNER

auline Kael was no fan of Stanley Kubrick’s movies. She deplored his “arctic spirit.” She compared “A Clockwork Orange” to the work of a Teutonic professor. In her review of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” she wrote: “It’s a bad, bad sign when a movie director begins to think of himself as a mythmaker.” I’m not a member of the Kubrick cult, but Kael’s animus always surprised me. After all, she’s the critic who wrote, in a dismissal of the 1986 Rob Reiner film “Stand by Me,” “If there’s any test that can be applied to movies, it’s that the good ones never make you feel virtuous.” A person who feels virtuous after watching a Kubrick movie should be prohibited from owning sharp tools. David Mikics’ “Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker” is a cool, cerebral book about a cool, cerebral talent. This is not a fulldress biography — there have been several of Kubrick — but a brisk study of his films, with enough of the life tucked in to add context as well as brightness and bite. Mikics is an English professor at the University of Houston and a columnist for Tablet magazine. His book is part of the Jewish Lives series of short biographies, which has given us (to name but two) Vivian Gornick on Emma Goldman and Robert Gottlieb on Sarah Bernhardt. Kubrick (1928-99) was born in the West Bronx to first-generation immigrant Jewish parents. His father was a doctor. The family lived on the Grand Concourse near a vast faux-baroque movie palace called Loew’s Paradise, with projected clouds that drifted across the ceiling. This became Kubrick’s second home. Like Binx Bolling in Walker Percy’s novel “The Moviegoer,” he was happy at a movie, even a bad movie. He was bright but a poor stu-

dent. A natural malcontent, he resembled a grubby beatnik before there were grubby beatniks. Chess and photography were his things. Later, broke and in his 20s, he would survive by playing chess for quarters in Washington Square Park. Kubrick didn’t attend college. He married and became a photographer for Look magazine, a grittier alternative to Life. Kubrick sat in on classes at Columbia University and got to know the Partisan Review crowd. There were few if any film schools then. He told an interviewer: “For a period of four or five years I saw every film made. I sat there and I thought, well, I don’t know a goddamn thing about movies, but I know I can make a better film than that.” He borrowed money from his family to help finance his apprentice work as a director. He made two film noirs in the mid-1950s (“Killer’s Kiss” and “The Killing”) that attracted attention from critics. The movie that put him on the map as a mature talent was “Paths of Glory” (1957), a morally fraught World War I story starring Kirk Douglas.

The nine movies that followed are ones that anyone who cares about being alive in the public dark has seen, probably more than twice: “Spartacus” (1960); “Lolita” (1962); “Dr. Strangelove” (1964); “2001” (1968); “A Clockwork Orange” (1971); “Barry Lyndon” (1975); “The Shining” (1980); “Full Metal Jacket” (1987); and “Eyes Wide Shut,” which was released shortly after his death in 1999. Mikics is an adept student of Kubrick’s uncanny art. “His movies are about mastery that fails,” he writes. “Perfectly controlled schemes get botched through human error or freak accidents, or hijacked by masculine rage.” He unpeels the way that Kubrick’s movies, packed as they are with impieties, challenge, infuriate and entertain. Writing about Tom Cruise’s awkward performance in “Eyes Wide Shut,” he reminds us what clicks about it: “Inner torment is never glamorous or sexy in a Kubrick movie. Instead it feels like a malfunction.” He notes that Kubrick, while dreaming up a possible cast many years before actually filming, considered Bill Murray for

David Mikics, author of “Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker.”

the role. Mikics has a flair for nailing a performance. In a scene from “Lolita,” Sue Lyon is “a bratty virtuoso of gum-chewing, her eyes shooting darts of disdain.” Here he is on Malcolm McDowell in “A Clockwork Orange”: “He has killer style: jaunty and sharp in his Chaplinesque bowler, a buoyant boychik who will never realize how dumb he is.” This book’s subtitle notwithstanding, Kubrick was in many ways the least American of American directors. He spent much of his adult life in the English countryside, an hour outside of London. He found it was cheaper to make movies there, and he hated to fly. He stayed in touch with America. He liked gossip — “character analysis,” Elizabeth Hardwick called it — and was always on the telephone to Los Angeles. He had videotapes of pro football games sent to him. (He admired the editing of Michelob commercials.) He read The New York Times every morning. When bored during a movie, he was known to open a newspaper in a theater. This book captures his controlfreak side. It also captures why people wanted to work with him. He had a feel for every aspect of what made a film work. His voracious reading served him well. “I literally go into bookstores, close my eyes and take things off the shelf,” he told one interviewer. “If I don’t like the book after a bit, I don’t finish it. But I like to be surprised.” His movies may lower the temperature in a room, but Mikics pushes back against the notion that frosty is all they are. Kubrick created some of the most indelible images in cinema. Mikics quotes music critic Alex Ross, who wrote about Kubrick’s movies: “They make me happy, they make me laugh,” Ross said. “If this was cold, then so was Fred Astaire.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Holly Humberstone wants her songs to last a lifetime By JON CARAMANICA

hen singer and songwriter Holly Humberstone began working with writer and producer Rob Milton on her debut EP, they quickly arrived at a shorthand for the kinds of lyrics they were aiming for. “When we write together, we’re like, ‘We need to make these lyrics really very personal and heartbreaking,’” she said in an interview last month. “Like they have to be lyrics that someone would get tattooed on their skin for life. If they’re not tattoo lyrics, then they don’t make the record.” What they land on, in song after song, is a striking blend of offhand conversation and acutely detailed storytelling, verses that feel like whispers into the ear of an intimate. “You never smoked this much before we met/ Light up, light up another cigarette,” she laments at the beginning of the ethereal “Falling Asleep at the Wheel,” a song that begins as an indictment of a partner before the scrutiny turns inward: “I can tell you’re drinking only to forget/ Don’t know how I got you in such a mess.” Humberstone, 20, will release her debut EP, also called “Falling Asleep at the Wheel,” on Friday — it is an absorbing affair. Her lovely voice is fluttery and precise, and also oozy, hanging over her songs like low, enveloping fog. And while she sings with pop-soul swing, her music, full of haunted piano and parched indie rock guitar, has gravity and stickiness. “I’m still trying to figure out what kind of genre I am, to be honest,” she said, speaking over Zoom from her family’s home in the countryside outside Grantham, England, in the East Midlands. She had been holed up there since the beginning of the pandemic, right after she finished a tour opening for Scottish pop crooner Lewis Capaldi. Spiritually, she is in the tradition of recent stars like Lorde and Billie Eilish, who have extremely sturdy pop savvy but whose emotional interests are complicated and sometimes gloomy, and whose music blurs aesthetics borrowed from rock, dance music and beyond. What unites Humberstone’s songs, though, is a heavy emotional ballast, making for an almost physical warmth. That is true when she is writing about relationships, like on the title track, which even though it shifts from piano march to dance thump, is actually a “dance song for people who don’t bother going out,” Milton joked. On “Livewire,” about how nothing gold can stay, Humberstone sings with an almost hymnal reverence: “Maybe we took things just one little step too far/ Coming home late and waking your neighbors/ At least there’ll be no more destruction now we’re apart.” The cocoonlike “Deep End” is about a challenging stretch Humberstone’s younger sister was enduring. “I find it really hard to get words out, and some things get jumbled between my brain and coming out of my mouth,” Humberstone said. “For some reason, if I put something in a song, it’s such a simple format and I can just say what I really struggled to say.” Humberstone is the third youngest of four sisters. Her parents are doctors with Britain’s National Health Service, and both passed down creative passions: Her mother played cello in a youth orchestra, and her father kept a cabinet full of poetry books that Humberstone would peruse, and sometimes she

The young British singer, who writes conversationally intimate pop music, is about to release her debut EP. would play music to accompany the verses. As a teenager, Humberstone played violin, unhappily, in the Lincolnshire Youth Symphony Orchestra. When she was about 16, she uploaded demos she made with GarageBand on her father’s Mac to the BBC Music Introducing website, a talent discovery vehicle. That led to one of them — “Hit and Run,” inspired by the movie “Baby Driver” — being played on local radio, which led to meeting her manager. After high school, she spent a year at a performing arts college in Liverpool before dropping out to move back home. By that time, though, she was already beginning to work on her own music, commuting to London for her burgeoning career. Eventually, she crossed paths with Milton; she and her friends had been fans of his earlier indie-pop band, Dog Is Dead, which put out music around a decade ago. Rather than working in sleek London studios, they collaborated in the basement of his home in Nottingham, building her sound from the ground up. “She has this ability to write pop songs, but that’s not necessarily what she wants to make,” Milton said in a phone interview. “She just was desperate not to write obvious lyrics.” For songwriting, she is partial to the detailed approach of indie singer and songwriter Phoebe Bridgers; in quarantine, Humberstone said, the release of Bridgers’ latest album “Punisher” “literally saved me.” And Humberstone gravitates toward musicians like Bon Iver, Frank Ocean and James Blake, who slather their intuitive melodies under layers of abstraction. Milton said that they listened to a lot of Elliott Smith and Simon & Garfunkel, drawn to the thickness of the vocal layering — “a magical freaky element.”

“We detuned the guitars to fit with the melodies,” he added. “All the tunings of the guitars are just complete nonsense. It’s some kind of Slipknot heavy metal tuning.” Rather than signing to a label, Humberstone made a deal with Platoon, an artist services company that also placed early bets on Jorja Smith and Eilish. “I do think Holly is a lot like Billie,” said Denzyl Feigelson, Platoon’s founder, in a phone interview. “They have a sense about them as to their mood and their emotions and how they write their songs.” During the months that Humberstone has been back at home, she has been chipping away at promotional work — music videos, social media clips — sometimes with her family helping out behind the scenes. The result has been a do-it-yourself-feeling rollout, an unintended, fitting consequence of being stuck in your childhood home just as you are on the verge of outgrowing it for good. “From the start, I was just feeling sorry for myself for missing out on stuff,” Humberstone said, “but then I was like, ‘Let’s actually be creative and use it, use the time, usefully, because when am I going to get this time again with my whole family at home, back how it used to be?’” But still, bigger things call. Although she will film several virtual performances for her EP release, in an optimistic gesture, tickets were recently put on sale for a handful of headlining shows in November, and they sold out quickly. And she is hoping to inch back toward normalcy in the rest of her life, too. “I’m not having any experiences; I’m not getting to see my friends,” she said. “I’m so happy that I’m getting back to doing stuff again. I’ve been so restless.”

FASHION The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, MarchAugust 4, 2020 Wednesday, 12, 2020 20 22

The TheSan SanJuan JuanDaily DailyStar Star

White customers, black fabrics

The designer Yetunde Olukoya at her home office in Fulshear, Texas on July 29, 2020. Olukoya estimates that about 80 percent of her customer base is African-American. By SHIRA TELUSHKIN

he recent outpouring of support for Black-owned businesses has brought attention to fashion labels that work with African prints. The labels, many of them founded by West African designers living in the United States and Britain, are turning the traditional patterns of West African fabric into contemporary American silhouettes. “May was our biggest month ever, and June is going to be bigger than May,” said Addie Elabor, founder and designer of D’iyanu, an African print label introduced in 2014. Nicolette Orji, also known as Nikki Billie Jean, founder of the All Things Ankara blog and a designer herself, was similarly upbeat. “Anyone who is selling anything online right now is feeling that support, and it’s amazing — though kind of overdue.” While the largest market for most of these designers is Black people born and raised in America, success this year has also brought new buyers. “When I first released my masks, one of my white friends texted me to say, ‘Can I buy this, or would that be a bad idea?’” said Maya Lake, founder of Boxing Kitten, the label that is often credited as one of the first to put ankara print on the American fashion radar. “I said she should buy it. I mean, especially now if you want to support Black-owned businesses. I think it’s fine.” But, Lake said, there is an important distinction between non-Black buyers using their money to support Black designers

and non-Black designers using African-associated prints to make money for themselves. “As a Black American, I relate to the fabric in a different way,” she said. “If someone doesn’t have a personal connection, culturally, to the fabric, that’s not cool,” she said, referring to fashion houses like Stella McCartney, which got pushback for using ankara prints. “Just going to a place and studying a thing doesn’t mean you can co-opt it to make money.” The distinction between buyers and designers is an important one for many in the industry. “I would like to see African print everywhere,” said Yetunde Olukoya, a Nigerian-born designer who moved to the United States with her husband when she was 26. “As long as it’s made in Africa and puts value back into the people who actually made this fashion popular, then I would love to see it worn all over the world.” Ray Darten, the label she started in her living room in 2016 with 160 pieces she sewed by hand, now employs more than 100 workers in Nigeria. For Olukoya, ankara print clothing counters the narratives that too often associate much of Africa with poverty and disease. “Americans needed to learn that there are beautiful things that come out of here,” she said. Olukoya estimates that about 80% of her customer base is African American. For Elabor, who moved to the United States from Nigeria as a child, it is important that any designer who popularizes Af-

rican print be of African descent. “Otherwise, it would make it seem like we had to wait for another race to come and use this before the world could see it as popular,” she said. Orji, of All Things Ankara, has seen a sharp increase in white buyers on her site in the last month, a trend she welcomes. She does publish photographs of non-Black models in ankara print. “If we want these prints to go viral, then we need more people to use them,” she said. Part of what is driving the current conversation is that while African-born designers see African print as a way to spread their culture, they are selling it in a country that has its own separate history and relationship to these fabrics. Many people in America — of all colors — grew up associating African print clothing with expressions of Black pride, based on its popularity during the civil rights era and its use in the Black Power movement as a way to show solidarity and connection with one’s African heritage. They see the fashion not as a way to spread African culture but to reclaim it. “The first time a customer cried in one of my pop-up shops, I didn’t know what to do,” said Olukoya of Ray Darten. “But then as she began to explain to me how she felt, I started crying as well. I’m Nigerian, I know where I am from, and I can’t imagine what it would feel like if I didn’t know where I was from. It’s not just about the clothes on the racks. It’s about being confident in them and confident in the culture.” Other designers see their African heritage as a point of departure from which they can bring something new to the global fashion scene. “As I sat on vacation, looking basic because I had nothing else to wear, I decided to start pursuing swimsuits,” Buki Ade said about why she founded Bfyne, a swimwear company known for its innovative use of straps, sleeves and prints drawn from her Nigerian heritage. “In these designs, you can walk into the room, and you don’t have to say a word because your outfit has already introduced you,” she said. “It’s a vibe.” Recent months have brought more attention, including in Allure and Elle, magazines she believes would not have known about her label if not for a heightened awareness of Black designers. She is grateful for the attention but finds it hard to think about the reason so many Black designers are suddenly being given the spotlight. Scot Brown, an associate professor at UCLA and a historian of African American social movements and popular culture, is not worried about whether ankara print will lose its significance for the African American community if it goes mainstream. Although he loves his D’iyanu blazers, he sees the innovative use of this print for Western business clothes as another sign that African fashion will constantly evolve and adapt to changing conditions. “When something goes mainstream, there is always some new underground thing happening,” Brown said, adding that expressions of Black pride will simply evolve and take up new forms. “Africa style is such a vast, almost infinite body of creativity that you don’t ever have to worry about running out of creative gas.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

The many symptoms of COVID-19 By TARA PARKER-POPE

or a Texas nurse, the first sign something was wrong happened while brushing her teeth — she couldn’t taste her toothpaste. For a Georgia lawyer, it was hitting a wall of fatigue on a normally easy run. When a Wisconsin professor fell ill in June, he thought a bad meal had upset his stomach. But eventually, all of these people discovered that their manifold symptoms were signs of COVID-19. Some of the common symptoms — a dry cough, a headache — can start so mildly they are at first mistaken for allergies or a cold. In other cases, the symptoms are so unusual — strange leg pain, a rash or dizziness — that patients and even their doctors don’t think COVID-19 could be the culprit. With more than 18 million cases of the coronavirus worldwide, one thing is clear: The symptoms are varied and strange, they can be mild or debilitating, and the disease can progress in unpredictable ways. Despite hundreds of published studies on COVID-19 symptoms, just how common any given symptom is depends on the patient group studied. Patients in hospitals typically have more severe symptoms. Older patients are more likely to have cognitive problems. Younger patients are more likely to have mild disease and odd rashes. “The problem is that it depends on who you are and how healthy you are,” said Dr. Mark A. Perazella, a kidney specialist and professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine. “It’s so heterogeneous, it’s hard to say. If you’re healthy, most likely you’ll get fever, achiness, nasal symptoms, dry cough and you’ll feel crappy. But there are going to be the oddballs that are challenging and come in with some symptoms and nothing else, and you don’t suspect COVID.” The Texas nurse who couldn’t taste her toothpaste said she developed fever, “horrible” body aches and coughing the next day. Her symptoms lasted for five days. (She and many others interviewed asked that their names not be used to protect their medical privacy or to protect their families from the stigma of COVID-19.)

A temperature check outside a store in Brooklyn. Anosmia, the loss of sense of smell that is also often accompanied by a loss of taste, is viewed as a defining symptom. In a study of 961 health care workers who were tested for COVID-19, anosmia was the most predictive symptom, but it wasn’t foolproof. Only half the people who reported losing their sense of smell or taste tested positive, said Dr. Brian Clemency, the study’s lead author and an associate professor in the department of emergency medicine at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo. Even a symptom as common as fever can be tricky when trying to predict if a patient might have COVID-19. Although many businesses are doing fever checks, many COVID-19 patients never have a fever. In a European study of 2,000 COVID-19 patients with mild to moderate illness, 60% never had a fever. In the University at Buffalo study, fewer than 1 in 3 patients with fever also tested positive for COVID-19. Rob Gregson, 52, of South Orange, New Jersey, went to bed feeling under the weather and woke up with chest tightness, a “weird” cough, difficulty breathing and “crazy fatigue.” It was March 11, just before lockdowns were imposed, and he immediately suspected COVID-19. But

because he never had a fever, it took him more than a week to get a swab test. He tested positive. “It’s been the fatigue that is the most debilitating,” said Gregson, executive director of a faith-based nonprofit, adding that he’s still struggling to regain his stamina nearly five months later. “I’ve been on the coronavirus roller coaster, feeling better and thinking I’ll be OK, then it comes roaring back.” When Erin, a 30-year-old who works for a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., first developed a cough and headache in May, she wasn’t worried. “I did not have a fever, and I’d been very diligent about wearing a mask and washing my hands, so I figured it was allergies or a cold,” she said. About four days after the cough began, Erin was hit with severe fatigue, sore throat, congestion, chills, body aches and a slight loss of sense of smell — but still no fever. She also had one unusual symptom: severe pain in her hip muscles, which she described as “really weird.” Although body aches are a common symptom of COVID-19, some patients are reporting severe joint and body pain, particularly in large muscles. Although it’s rare, COVID-19 can cause painful inflammation in the joints or lead to rhabdomyolysis, a serious and potentially life-threat-

ening illness that can cause excruciating muscle pain in the shoulders, thighs or lower back. A New York cyclist who developed severe leg pain in May was initially found, via telemedicine, to have a bulging disk. She sought a second telemedicine opinion with Dr. Jordan Metzl, a sports medicine specialist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, who asked her to move around as he watched her on video. “Down to her calf she said, ‘Ouch, that really hurts,’” said Metzl, who grew worried. “I’m not an alarmist doctor in the least, but I looked for the closest emergency room to her, which was 16 miles away. I said, ‘I want you to get in the car and drive yourself to the ER right now.’” An ultrasound showed she had no pulse in her legs and severe clotting in both legs, putting her at risk of amputation. She was transferred to another hospital and underwent nine hours of emergency surgery. Metzl said it was fortunate that he had just had a conference call with colleagues about blood clots and COVID. “It’s a terrifying story, which is why we need awareness around these weird presentations,” Metzl said. “COVID infection can affect different body parts differently. Some people get this hypercoagulable state and end up getting blood clots. We don’t always know who those people are.” Thomas Ryan, 36, an Atlanta lawyer, said the first sign that something was wrong hit him during exercise. “I went for a run on a Thursday afternoon after work and felt awful,” he said. “I hit the wall like you do in a marathon on a very short run for me.” The next morning, he woke up with a light cough, sore throat and a feeling in his chest like heartburn, and later developed fatigue, lung pain and shortness of breath. Although his COVID test was negative, his doctor told him that it was a false negative, and that based on his symptoms, he clearly had COVID-19. “This is not great,” said Ryan, who was still coughing weeks after falling ill. He added: “It was two weeks of not being able to do anything. If this is a mild case, it makes me think people are taking a lot of risks they probably shouldn’t be.”

24 LEGAL NOTICE

GDX LOGISTICS LLC; Y ASEGURADORA XYZ

EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADemandados DO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CIVIL NÚM.: SJ2020CV00083 (901). SOBRE: INCUMPLISALA DE MAYAGUEZ. MIENTO DE CONTRATO; MARIBEL NULIDAD DE CONTRATO; RAMOS CRESPO ENRIQUECIMIENTO INJUSTO DEMANDANTE VS. Y COBRO DE DINERO. EMORIENTAL BANK & PLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE TRUST; YAMILETTE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE SAGARDIA INGLES; DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO ANA CELIA MAYO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. VALENTIN; FULANO S.S.

DE TAL & MENGANO MÁS CUAL, MAS TODO POSIBLE TENEDOR DESCONOCIDO

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NÚM:MZ2020CV00640. SOBRE: PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO Y CUMPLIMIENTO DE CONTRATO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO A LA PARTE CODEMANDADA FULANO DE TAL & MENGANO MÁS CUAL, MAS TODO POSIBLE TENEDOR DESCONOCIDO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: LUIS RAFAEL VALDÉS MEDINA Abogado demandante: Lcdo. Oscar Rivera Díaz, Urb. Roosevelt, 315 Calle Ing. Juan B. Rodríguez, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 00918, Email: oscarriveralaw@gmail. com, Tel: 787-469-4535.

Por la presente se le notifica que se ha radicado en su contra una Demanda por Incumplimiento de Contrato; Nulidad de Contrato; Enriquecimiento Injusto y Cobro de Dinero. Se le emplaza y se le requiere que conteste la demanda a través A: FULANO DE TAL del Sistema Unificado de Ma& MENGANO MÁS nejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceCUAL, MAS TODO der utilizando la siguiente direcPOSIBLE TENEDOR ción electrónica: https://unired. DESCONOCIDO ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se POR LA PRESENTE se le no- represente por derecho propio, tifica que la parte demandante, en cuyo caso deberá presentar por conducto de su abogado, su alegación responsiva en la LCDO. CARLOS L. SEGARRA secretaría del tribunal radicanMATOS, con oficina en 2510 do el original de la contestación Carretera 100, kilómetro 3.5 de en la Secretaría del Tribunal Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico 00623 de Primera Instancia, Sala Suy cuyo número de teléfono es perior de Fajardo y notificando el 787-851-3582, ha radicado copia de dicha contestación a ante este tribunal una demanda la parte demandante dentro del sobre Pagaré Extraviado. Se le término de treinta (30) días de apercibe que si no comparec haberse publicado este Edicto, iera usted a contestar dicha descontando la fecha de su pudemanda, dentro un término blicación. Si dejare de contestar de treinta (30) días a partir de la demanda dentro del plazo y la publicación de este edicto, la forma expresada, se podrá podrá dictarse sentencia en re- proceder a dictar Sentencia en beldía en su contra concedien- su contra concediendo el remedo el remedio solici tado en la dio solicitado sin más citarle ni demanda sin más citarle ni oír- oírle. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma le. En Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, y con el sello del Tribunal. En hoy día 28 de julio de 2020. San Juan, Puerto Rico, a 3 de LCDA NORMA G SANTANA agosto de 2020. Griselda RodriIRIZARRY, SECRETARIA RE- guez Collado, Secretaria. Luz GIONAL. F/ BETSY SANTIA- E. Fernadez Del Valle, SubSeGO GONZALEZ, SECRETARIA cretaria. AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUDE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA GENERAL DE JUSTICIA DE SALA SUPERIOR DE COAMO. PUERTO RICO SALA SUPEFINANCE OF AMERICA RIOR DE SAN JUAN.

ABRAHAM ROJAS RAMÍREZ Demandante V.

LUIS RAFAEL VALDÉS MEDINA; WALDEMAR MELÉNDEZ GARCÍA; @

REVERSE, LLC

Parte Demandante Vs.

SUCN. NYDIA ESTHER REYES MATEO; Y OTROS

Parte Demandada Caso Civil: CO2019CV00380. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO,

EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. ORDEN DE EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO E INTERPELACIÓN. Atendidos los hechos expuestos bajo juramento por la parte demandante y la solicitud de autorización para emplazar por edicto conforme la Regla 4.6 de las de Procedimiento Civil de 2009 e interpelar judicialmente a tenor con el Art. 959 del Código Civil de Puerto Rico, a Jaime de Tal, Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal como posibles herederos desconocidos de la sucesión de Nydia Esther Reyes Mateo t/c/c Nidia Esther Reyes Mateo, Nydia E. Reyes Mateo, Nidia E. Reyes Mateo, Nydia Reyes Mateo, Nidia Reyes Mateo, Nidia Esther Reyes, Nydia E. Reyes, Nidia E. Reyes, Nydia Reyes y Nidia Reyes. El Tribunal ordena emplazar e interpelar al(a los) referido(s) demandado(s) por medio de edicto a ser publicado una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en el Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, con las advertencias de ley pertinentes. Dentro de los 10 días siguientes a la publicación del edicto, la parte demandante dirigirá a la última dirección física o postal conocida de la parte demandada una copia del emplazamiento/interpelación y de la demanda presentada. Esto lo hará por correo certificado con acuse de recibo o cualquier otra forma de servicio de entrega de correspondencia con acuse de recibo, siempre y cuando dicha entidad no posea vínculo alguno con la parte demandante y no tenga interés en el pleito. Transcurridos los 30 días desde la publicación del edicto sin que la parte demandada haya presentado contestación a la demanda o informe si acepta o repudia la herencia, se le anotará la rebeldía o se celebrará la vista en su fondo, según sea el caso, y la herencia se tendrá por aceptada. Para dictar sentencia, la parte demandante, presentará la declaración jurada del periódico acreditativa de que se publicó el edicto y copia de este. La Secretaría de este Tribunal expedirá el edicto y lo notificará a la parte demandante para que esta proceda cuanto antes a su publicación en cumplimiento estricto con lo aquí ordenado. NOTIFÍQUESE. En Coamo, Puerto Rico, a 9 de diciembre de 2019. f/ GLORIANNE M. LOTTI RODRÍGUEZ, Jueza Superior.

Gutiérrez Silva, t/c/c Rubén Gutiérrez compuesta por Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal como posibles herederos desconocidos; Sucesión de Ana Cambiella Dieguez, t/c/c Ana Cambiella compuesta por María Cambiella, Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal como posibles herederos desconocidos; Centro de Recaudación de Ingresos Municipales; y a los Estados Unidos de América.

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: SJ2019CV08366. SOBRE: Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal como posibles herederos de nombres desconocidos de la Sucesión de Rubén Gutiérrez Silva, t/c/c Rubén Gutiérrez

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

(787) 743-3346

Wednesday, August 12, 2020 tos diez metros cuadrados con noventa y ocho centésimas de metros cuadrado, colindando por el frente, o sea al ESTE, en quince metros con la Calle número dos de la Urbanización; por el fondo, o sea el OESTE, en quince metros sesenta y ocho centímetros con terrenos de la Puerto Rico Homes, lncorporated; por la derecha entrando, o sea el NORTE, en veintiséis metros noventa y seis centímetros con el solar cincuenticuatro del Bloque C; y por la izquierda entrando, o sea el SUR, en veintiséis metros sesenticuatro centímetros con el solar cincuentidos del Bloque C. Contiene un edificio de concreto de una planta para vivienda .. “ Finca 3471 inscrita al tomo 231 folio 109 de Monacillos Este y El Cinco, Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección V de San Juan . Se apercibe y advierte a ustedes como personas desconocidas, que deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. jamajudicia l.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal. De no contestar la demanda radicando el original de la contestación ante la secretaria del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de San Juan , y notificar copia de la contestación de esta a la parte demandante por conducto de su abogada , GLS LEGAL SERVICES, LLC, Atención: Lcda . Charline Michelle Jiménez Echevarría, Dirección: P.O. Box 367308, San Juan , P.R. 009367308, Teléfono: 787-758-6550, dentro de los próximos 60 días a partir de la publicación de este emplazamiento por edicto, que será publicado una sola vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general en la isla de Puerto Rico, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia, concediendo el remedio solicitando en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal hoy 23 de julio de 2020. Griselda Rodriguez Collado, Secretaria. Luz E Fernandez Del Valle, SubSecretaria.

por su Hipoteca por la viuda Lydia María Díaz Mercado, t/c/c Lydia M. Díaz Mercado; Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal como herederos de nombres desconocidos; Lydia María Díaz Mercado, t/c/c Lydia M. Díaz Mercado; el Centro de Recaudación de Ingresos Municipales; y a los Estados Unidos de América.

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: CA2019CV01907. SALA: 402. SOBRE: Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Vía Ordinaria. MANDAMIENTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. Por Cuanto: Se ha dictado en el presente caso la siguiente Orden: ORDEN. Examinada la demanda radicada por la parte demandante, la solicitud de interpelación contenida en la misma y examinados los autos del caso, el Tribunal le imparte su aprobación y en su virtud acepta la Demanda en el caso de epígrafe, así como la interpelación judicial de la parte demandante a los herederos del codemandado conforme dispone el Artículo 959 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. sec. 2787. Se Ordena a los herederos del causante a saber, Lydia María Díaz Mercado, Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal, herederos de nombres desconocidos a que dentro del término legal de 30 días contados a partir de la fecha de la notificación de la presente Orden, acepten o repudien la participación que les corresponda en la herencia del causante Pedro Ángel Del Valle; t/c/c Pedro Del Valle Rosario. Se apercibe y advierte a ustedes corno herederos, que deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.jamajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal; y que: (a) Que de no expresarse dentro del término de 30 días en torno a su LEGAL NOTICE aceptación o repudiación de ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO herencia la misma se tendrá DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- por aceptada; (b) Que luego NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA del transcurso del termino de 30 días contados a partir de la SALA DE CAROLINA. fecha de la notificación de la Finance of America presente Orden, se presumirá Reverse, LLC que han aceptado la herencia DEMANDANTE vs. del causante y por consiguienSucesión de Pedro Ángel te, responden por la cargas de Del Valle; t/c/c Pedro Del dicha herencia conforme dispoValle Rosario, compuesta ne el Artículo 957 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. sec. 2785. Se

The San Juan Daily Star Ordena a la parte demandante a que, en vista de, que la sucesión del causante Pedro Ángel Del Valle; t/c/c Pedro Del Valle Rosario incluyen como herederos a su viuda Lydia María Díaz Mercado, Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal, como posibles herederos desconocidos, proceda a notificar la presente Orden mediante un edicto a esos efectos una sola vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general de la Isla de Puerto Rico. DADA en Carolina, Puerto Rico, hoy día 24 de febrero de 2020. Fdo/ Hon. Wilfredo L. Maldonado, JUEZ. Por Cuanto: Se le advierte a que dentro del término legal de 30 días contados a partir de la fecha de notificación de la presente Orden, acepten o repudien la participación que les corresponda en la herencia del causante Pedro Ángel Del Valle; t/c/c Pedro Del Valle Rosario. Por Orden del Honorable Juez de Primera Instancia de este Tribunal, expido el presente Mandamiento, bajo mi firma y sello oficial, en Carolina, Puerto Rico hoy día 24 de febrero de 2020. Lcda. Marilyn Aponte Rodriguez, Sec Regional. Denisse Torres, Sec Auxiliar.

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

Finance of America Reverse, LLC DEMANDANTE vs.

Sucesión de Pedro Ángel Del Valle; t/c/c Pedro Del Valle Rosario, compuesta por su viuda Lydia María Díaz Mercado, t/c/c Lydia M. Díaz Mercado; Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal como herederos de nombres desconocidos; Lydia María Díaz Mercado, t/c/c Lydia M. Díaz Mercado; el Centro de Recaudación de Ingresos Municipales ; y a los Estados Unidos de América.

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: CA2019CV01907. SALA: 402. SOBRE: Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS ELESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: Lydia María Díaz Mercado, t/c/c Lydia M. Díaz Mercado; Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal como posibles herederos de nombres desconocidos

de la Sucesión de Pedro Ángel Del Valle; t/c/c Pedro Del Valle Rosario

POR LA PRESENTE, se les emplaza y se les notifica que se ha presentado en la Secretaria de este Tribunal la Demanda del caso del epígrafe solicitando la ejecución de hipoteca y el cobro de dinero relacionado al pagaré suscrito a favor de Senior Mortgage Bankers, Inc., o a su orden, por la suma principal de $141,000.00, con intereses computados sobre la misma desde su fecha hasta su total y completo pago a razón de la tasa de interés de 4.990% anual, la cual será ajustada mensualmente, obligándose además al pago de costas, gastos y desembolsos del litigio, más honorarios de abogados en una suma de $14,100.00, equivalente al 10% de la suma principal original. Este pagaré fue suscrito bajo el affidávit número 7,852 ante el notario María Georgina Chévere Mouriño. Lo anterior surge de la hipoteca constituida mediante la escritura número 530 otorgada el 21 de agosto de 2012, ante el mismo notario público, inscrita al folio 208 del tomo 1501 de Carolina , finca número 46,361, Sección II de Carolina. La Hipoteca Revertida grava la propiedad que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Parcela de terreno, identificado como el Lote “G” 11 en el plano de inscripción localizado en la calle 37 de la Urbanización Parque Ecuestre, Barrio Canovanillas, Municipio de Carolina, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de 154 metros cuadrados con 138 milésimas de otro y según plano 154 metros cuadrados en lindes por el NORTE, en 14 metros lineales con 3 centímetros de otro con el lote G-12; por el SUR, en 13 metros lineales con 995 metros lineales con el lote G-1 O; por el ESTE, en 11 metros lineales con la calle numero 37; y por el OESTE, en 11 metros lineales con el lote G-6. Enclava en este solar una estructura de hormigón reforzado y bloques de concreto para fines residenciales con las facilidades usuales. Finca número 46,361, inscrita al folio 77 del tomo 1087 de Carolina. Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección II de Carolina. Se apercibe y advierte a ustedes como personas desconocidas, que deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. jamajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal. De no

The San Juan Daily Star

SUCESIÓN DE JOSÉ LUIS HERNÁNEZ FERRER Y COMO COMPONENTE DE LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES QUE FORMA CON SU ESPOSA JOAHADALIS SANTANA; CATHERINE ROSE HERNÁNDEZ COMO MIEMBRO DE LA SUCESIÓN DE JOSÉ LUIS HERNÁNDEZ FERRER; FULANO DE TAL Y SUTANA DE TAL COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS Y/O PARTES CON INTERÉS EN LA SUCESIÓN DE JOSÉ LUIS HERNÁNDEZ FERRER; JOAHADALIS SANTANA, POR SÍ, Y COMO COMPONENTE DE LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES QUE FORMA CON SU LEGAL NOTICE ESPOSO JOSÉ LUIS ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUHERNÁNDEZ SAN NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA MARTÍN SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYABARRIO PIÑAS MÓN. LA VEGA, LOTE 3 CARR. ORIENTAL BANK 827 KM 1.6 INT. DEMANDANTE VS. TOA ALTA PR 00953. SUCESIÓN DE JOSÉ LUIS RR-4 BOX 27132, TOA HERNÁNDEZ FERRER, ALTA PR 00953-8717. COMPUESTA POR SU CATHERINE ROSE VIUDA LYDIA ESTHER HERNÁNDEZ: 111 TORRES SANTIAGO, POR GREENBRIAR RD. SÍ; SUS HEREDEROS PARAMUS NJ, 07652CONOCIDOS JOSÉ 1905. LUIS HERNÁNDEZ SAN MARTÍN Y CATHERINE POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al triROSE HERNÁNDEZ; bunal su alegación responsiva FULANO DE TAL dentro de los 30 días a partir de la publicación de este edicto. Y SUTANA DE TAL Usted deberá presentar su aleCOMO HEREDEROS gación responsiva a través del DESCONOCIDOS Y/O Sistema Unificado de Manejo y PARTES CON INTERÉS Administración de Casos (SUEN DICHA SUCESIÓN; MAC), al cual puede acceder JOSÉ LUIS HERNÁNDEZ utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. SAN MARTÍN, SU ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se ESPOSA JOAHADALIS represente por derecho propio, SANTANA Y LA en cuyo caso deberá presentar SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE su alegación responsiva en la BIENES GANANCIALES secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación COMPUESTA POR responsiva dentro del referido AMBOS término, el tribunal podrá dic-

contestar la demanda radicando el original de la contestación ante la secretaria del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Carolina, y notificar copia de la contestación de esta a la parte demandante por conducto de su abogada, GLS LEGAL SERVICES, LLC, Atención: Leda. Nicole Marie Cobb Vélez, Dirección: P.O. Box 367308, San Juan, P.R. 00936-7308, Teléfono: 787-758-6550, dentro de los próximos 60 días a partir de la publicación de este emplazamiento por edicto, que será publicado una sola vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general en la isla de Puerto Rico, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia, concediendo el remedio solicitando en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal hoy 24 de febrero de 2020. Lcda. Marilyn Aponte Rodriguez, Sec Regional. Denisse Torres, Secretaria Auxiliar.

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NÚM.: BY2019CV07026. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. ss.

A: LYDIA ESTHER TORRES SANTIAGO, POR SÍ Y COMO MIEMBRO DE LA SUCESIÓN DE JOSÉ LUIS HERNÁNDEZ FERRER; JOSÉ LUIS HERNÁNDEZ SAN MARTÍN, POR SÍ, COMO MIEMBRO DE LA

tar 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. Además, se le apercibe que conforme al Artículo 959 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. § 2787, usted tiene derecho a aceptar o repudiar la herencia en un término de treinta (30) días. A esos efectos, de no rechazarla dentro de dicho término, se tendrá la herencia por aceptada pura y simplemente. Representa a la parte demandante, la representación legal cuyo nombre, dirección y teléfono se consigna de inmediato:

Wednesday, August 12, 2020 BUFETE FORTUÑO & FORTUÑO FAS, C.S.P. LCDO. JUAN C. FORTUÑO FAS RÚA NÚM.: 11416 PO BOX 13786, SAN JUAN, PR 00908 TEL: 787- 751-5290, FAX: 787-751-6155 E-MAIL: ejecuciones@fortuno-law.com En Toa Alta, Puerto Rico a 28 de abril de 2020. Lcda. Laura I Santa Sanchez, Sec Regional. Karla Rivera Roman, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal.

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

Reverse Mortgage Funding, LLC DEMANDANTE vs.

Sucesión de Pura Crespo Ocasio t/c/c Pura Crespo, compuesta por Roberto Del Valle Crespo, Nelson Del Valle Crespo, Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal como posibles herederos de nombres desconocidos de la sucesión de Pura Crespo Ocasio, Sucesión de Alma Del Valle Crespo compuesta por Emanuelle De Juan Del Valle, Peresejo de Tal y Mengano de Tal como miembros de nombre desconocidos de la Sucesión de Alma Del Valle Crespo, Centro de Recaudaciones Municipales; y a los Estados Unidos de América.

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: MZ2019CV00095. SOBRE: Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria. MANDAMIENTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. Por Cuanto: Se ha dictado en el presente caso la siguiente Orden: ORDEN. Examinada la demanda radicada por la parte demandante, la solicitud de interpelación contenida en la misma y examinados los autos del caso, el Tribunal le imparte su aprobación y en su virtud acepta la Demanda en el caso de epígrafe, así como la interpelación judicial de la parte demandante a los herederos del codemandado conforme dispone el Artículo 959 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. sec. 2787. Se Ordena a los herederos del causante a saber, Roberto Del Valle Crespo, Nelson Del Valie Crespo, Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal, herederos de nombres desconocidos; y a Emanuelle De Juan Del Valle, Perensejo de Tal y Mengano de Tal, herederos de nombres descono-

cidos de Alma Del Valle Crespo, heredera premuerta de la causante Pura Crespo Ocasio, a que dentro del término legal de 30 días contados a partir de la fecha de la notificación de la presente Orden, acepten o repudien la participación que les corresponda en la herencia del causante Pura Crespo Ocasio tic/e Pura Crespo. Se le Apercibe a los herederos antes mencionados: (a) Que de no expresarse dentro del término de 30 días en torno a su aceptación o repudiación de herencia la misma se tendrá por aceptada; (b) Que luego del transcurso del termino de 30 días contados a partir de la fecha de la notificación de la presente Orden, se presumirá que han aceptado la herencia del causante y por consiguiente , responden por la cargas de dicha herencia conforme dispone el Artículo 957 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. sec. 2785. Se Ordena a la parte demandante a que, en vista de que la sucesión del causante Pura Crespo Ocasio tic/e Pura Crespo, incluyen como herederos a Roberto Del Valle Crespo, Nelson Del Valle Crespo, Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal, como posibles herederos desconocidos, y a los miembros de la Sucesión de Alma Del Valle Crespo compuesta por Emanuelle De Juan Del Valle, Perensejo de Tal y Mengano de Tal, proceda a notificar la presente Orden mediante un edicto a esos efectos una sola vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general de la Isla de Puerto Rico. DADA en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, hoy día 15 de mayo de 2019. Fdo. Soraya Mendez Polanco, JUEZ SUPERIOR. Por Cuanto: Se le advierte a que dentro del término legal de 30 días contados a partir de la fecha de notificación de la presente Orden, acepten o repudien la participación que les corresponda en la herencia del causante Pura Crespo Ocasio t/c/c Pura Crespo . Por Orden del Honorable Juez de Primera Instancia de este Tribunal, expido el presente Mandamiento, bajo mi firma y sello oficial, en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico hoy día 30 de de mayo de 2019. Lcda. Norma G Santana Irizarry, Sec Regional. Gloria E. Acevedo Soto, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal I.

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

MTGLQ INVESTORS, L.P. Parte Demandante Vs.

LA SUCESION DE WILFREDO BATISTA MELENDEZ compuesta por Carlos J. Batista Fontan, Wilfredo Batista Fontan y Joel Batista Fontan; John Doe y Richard Roe como

miembros desconocidos; ADMINISTRACIÓN PARA EL SUSTENTO DE MENORES, Y CENTRO DE RECAUDACIÓN SOBRE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES; AUREA ESTHER FONTAN ARROYO

Parte Demandada CASO CIVIL NUM: AR2020CV00184. SOBRE: EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA Y COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO Y NOTIFICACIÓN DE INTERPELACIÓN POR EDICTO. Estados Unidos de América Presidente de los Estados Unidos de América Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico.

A: John Doe y Richard Roe como posibles herederos desconocidos de la Sucesión de Wilfredo Batista Meléndez

POR LA PRESENTE se les emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los sesenta (60) 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.ramaiudicial.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 agosto de 2016 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 $8,012.72, más intereses a razón del 6.996% anual, así como todos aquellos créditos y sumas que surjan de la faz de la obligación hipotecaria y de la hipoteca que la garantiza, incluyendo 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 A VISO

DE PLEITO PENDIENTE (“Lis Pendcns”) sobre la. propiedad objeto de esta acción cuya propiedad es la siguiente: RUSTICA: Lote numero uno (1): Parcela de terreno radicada en el barrio Morovis Norte, del termino municipal de Morovis, con una cabida superficial de mil cincuenta y nueve punto cuatro mil quinientos cuarenta y ocho (1,059.4548) metros cuadrados, equivalentes a cero punto dos mil seiscientos noventa y cinco (0.2695) cuerdas. En lindes por el NORTE, en veintinueve punto doscientos cuarenta y cinco (29.245) metros, con remanente de la finca principal de la cual se segrega; por el SUR, en treinta y uno punto trescientos diez (31.310) metros, con Sucesión Marcos Hernández; por el ESTE , en

treinta y dos punto novecientos cuarenta y seis (32.946) metros, con el lote numero dos (2) de esta segregación; por el OESTE, en cuarenta y cuatro punto cuatrocientos cincuenta y siete (44.457) metros, con la finca principal de la cual se segrega. Enclava casa. Inscrita al folio doscientos sesenta y cinco (265) del tomo ciento veintidós (122) de Morovis, finca número siete mil ochocientos catorce (7,814). Registro de la Propiedad de Manati. 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. Además, como miembro de la Sucesión

de Wilfredo Batista Meléndez, se ha presentado una solicitud de interpelación judicial para que sirva en el término de treinta (30) días aceptar o repudiar la herencia. Se le apercibe que si no compareciera usted a expresarse dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación de este edicto en torno a la aceptación o repudiación de la herencia, se presumirá que han aceptado la herencia del causante Wilfredo Batista Meléndez y por consiguiente, responderán por las cargas de dicha herencia conforme dispone el Art. 957 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. S2785. En Ciales, Puerto Rico, a 5 de agosto de 2020. Vivian Y Fresse Gonzalez, Sec Regional. Betzaida Laureano, Sec del Tribunal.

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Wednesday, August 12, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

What it’s like to be a virtual NBA fan By SCOTT CACCIOLA

2889

alenda Meacham usually watches the Memphis Grizzlies play their home games at FedEx Forum from her perch in Section 106. She stands. She cheers. She paces. And, of course, she pretends to pound on the cartoon bongos whenever they flash on the arena’s big screens. A part-time judge who moonlights as Bongo Lady, one of the team’s most easily recognizable superfans, Meacham, 51, was among those who labored through the NBA’s extended layoff this season, her cartoon bongos rendered silent by the coronavirus pandemic. But when the Grizzlies faced the San Antonio Spurs in a seeding game at the NBA’s restart at Walt Disney World in Florida, she seized the opportunity to make her presence felt again. Clad in her personalized powder-blue jersey, Meacham provided her ticket information — Section 2, Seat 1 — then spent the next two hours sweating through every possession. In the third quarter, she even broke out a pair of bongos (autographed by former defensive stopper Tony Allen) at the urging of the other fans in her section. “We should all do the air bongos!” Meacham said. The weird thing was that Meacham was nowhere near the arena. In fact, she was on her living room couch in Hernando, Miss., shouting at her laptop computer. As part of its expansive efforts to build atmosphere for games inside its fan-free bubble at Disney World, the NBA has been inviting spectators to attend — virtually. Select fans who are viewing the games from home are being livestreamed onto three video boards that extend along each baseline and one sideline. There are 10 sections in all, each with 32 seats, helping produce the vague appearance of bleachers — along with the all-too-familiar feel of a video conference call, which seems sadly appropriate these days. “We wanted to create something that would bring our fans to the players,” Sara Zuckert, the NBA’s head

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of Next Gen Telecast, said in a telephone interview. “It’s also a way to give fans the opportunity to feel like they’re interacting while enhancing the broadcast for everyone else at home.” As the coronavirus continues to upend sports, and the way that fans view them, leagues around the world have showcased varying levels of creativity when it comes to sprucing up their empty backdrops. MLB teams have deployed cardboard cutouts of fans. An inventive baseball club in South Korea enlisted stuffed animals to fill its stadium. At MLS’ tournament in Florida, digital video boards hum with activity. And then there are the tarps — so many tarps in so many countries sheltering so many vacant seats. In partnering with Microsoft, the NBA has harnessed the magic of 21st-century computer technology to beam fans like Bongo Lady straight into its three arenas at Disney World. (Imagine reading that sentence before the start of the season.) Most of the virtual seats for each game are allotted to the designated “home” team, with one section typically reserved for the players’ family members and friends. The rest largely go to season-ticket holders, sponsors and fans who apply online, though there have been celebrity cameos. Rapper Lil Wayne, for example, was recently spotted behind the Los Angeles Lakers’ bench. Former players like Paul Pierce, Chris Bosh and Manu Ginóbili have also made appearances — from the comfort of their own homes. Games now double as “Where’s Waldo?” searches: Was that really Shaquille O’Neal watching the Milwaukee Bucks play the Miami Heat? (Yes, it was.) Peggy Rounds, an account executive with the Grizzlies, reached out to Meacham to see if she would be a virtual fan for the team’s game against the Spurs. “Who wouldn’t want to try this?” Meacham asked. Meacham signed a three-page waiver that detailed various rules. Near the top of the list: no bad language, as audio of the virtual fans would be blended and piped into the arena. Meacham knew in advance that she was going to wrestle with that restriction. As the game wore on, she was grateful for the option to turn off her microphone. Yes, Bongo Lady muted herself. She did pick her spots, though, such as when the Spurs’ Lonnie Walker threw up an errant jumper. Meacham leaned into her laptop. “AIRBALLLLL!” she said. Meacham was looking at a split screen of the rest of the fans in her section, in the form of a video conference, and a live feed of the game itself. She also had the regional broadcast of the game on her television, which provided a much larger, more user-friendly viewing experience. But there was a delay, which was problematic: Her reactions as one of the virtual fans needed to come in real time, and that required her to pay attention to the pint-size feed on her laptop. Still, the TV broadcast was vivid and seductive, and Meacham wanted to see what was actually happening. She was both invested in the game — which the Grizzlies desperately needed to win to increase their odds

Malenda Meacham, a Grizzlies season-ticket holder, at her home in Hernando, Miss. She was a virtual fan for the team’s game against the Spurs on Sunday. of landing a playoff spot — and eager to fulfill her duties as a virtual fan. The tension was real. “I’m glad to do this for the players,” she said. “If there’s any chance that it gives them some extra oomph, then it’s worth it.” Rounds, the Grizzlies’ account executive, policed Meacham’s section as a moderator (no cursing; stay in your seat) while a member of the team’s dance crew pumped up the energy by starting chants. There was a semi-successful attempt at doing the wave. When Ja Morant, the team’s star guard, drained a jumper, several fans mimicked his “goggles” celebration. Meacham yelped with delight. “High-five! High-five?” Meacham said as she extended her arms. “Nobody’s high-fiving.” She experienced other minor inconveniences. She was unfamiliar with the Microsoft program. (“I’m a Zoom girl,” she said.) The virtual fan “sitting” in front of her was too close to the camera on his computer, which had the effect of partly blocking her out. (“I keep trying to get his attention,” said Meacham, who pretended to squeeze the offending fan’s head between her thumb and index finger like an overripe tomato.) But she also struggled to remain in her own seat as the game slipped away from Memphis. “I get too hyped up,” she said. “I’m usually standing.” The fourth quarter was excruciating for Meacham, who spent entire possessions with her head in her hands. She put her bongos away. “I think I may need a drink,” she said. Afterward, she digested the loss by reflecting on the experience. “I know the NBA is just trying to do the best they can under the circumstances,” Meacham said. “And I’m honored that the Grizzlies asked me to do it.” But she was still looking forward to the day when she could watch a game the old-fashioned way — in person.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Sure? No. But Rob Manfred is still optimistic about this season. By TYLER KEPNER

n ordinary times, a baseball fan might wake up in the wee hours of the morning and check the late-night scores. In the throes of a pandemic, the sport’s commissioner wakes up around the same time and checks the overnight coronavirus test results for the 30 major league teams. The news comes to Rob Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, in an email from the league’s drug, health and safety department. Its contents set the agenda for the day: calm or crisis? “The test results from today will come in about 2:30 in the morning tomorrow,” Manfred said in a phone interview Monday. “I wake up sometime between 2:30 and 4:30, and the most important email is what we had that day. “I love the days when there’s a little line that says: ‘We reported 1,247 tests and there were no new positives.’ That’s headed for a good day.” All things considered, most days are good for Manfred. After months of acrimonious negotiations with the players union, baseball is back. Charlie Blackmon is hitting over .400 for Colorado; Aaron Judge is on a home run tear for the New York Yankees; Fernando Tatis Jr. is breaking out as a superstar for San Diego. But Monday, for the 15th day in a row, the MLB schedule included at least one postponement because of the coronavirus. The Miami Marlins are back from their outbreak, but now the St. Louis Cardinals are shut down through Thursday, at least, and haven’t played since late July. The Marlins had 20 positive tests, including 18 players. The Cardinals have had 17 positives, including 10 players. The infections have limited St. Louis to just five games this season; other teams will have played as many as 18 through Monday. That has created a perplexing scheduling issue: If the Cardinals return as scheduled Friday, they will need to squeeze 55 games into 45 days to reach their originally scheduled 60 games. Baseball could be forced to accept that some teams may not play all their games, and award playoff berths based on winning percentage. But if the Cardinals cannot slow their outbreak, which first emerged July 30, how can they play enough games to have a legitimate season? While some of the infected Cardinals are asymptomatic, others have been treated in the emergency room. They have dealt with fevers, coughs, headaches and uncertainty. “It’s real,” John Mozeliak, the Cardinals’ president for baseball operations,

told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “People are sick. It’s scary because they just don’t know what the next day is going to bring for them.” How does Manfred know it is responsible to play, considering the travel involved in using 30 venues across the country? “Can I tell you I’m 100 percent sure? No,” Manfred acknowledged. “Do I think about it every day? Yes. But I’ll just give you a couple of things that are important.” The commissioner then listed three factors: “No. 1, throughout tens of thousands of tests, we have a positive rate that’s less than one-half of 1 percent. That’s way better than wandering around in the general population. No. 2, the bulk of our activity is outdoors. Just look at what’s going on in the rest of the world: outdoors is better than indoors, and our sport is generally distanced. And No. 3, we have not cross-contaminated. I think that’s a really important thing. Those three things give me some level of comfort that we can continue to do this in a way that’s safe.” The league has shown significant caution with the Marlins and the Cardinals. After Miami’s outbreak, MLB sidelined both the Marlins and the Phillies — the team they had played after learning of four positive tests — for a week. But there is no mandate for shutting teams down as soon as a player tests positive. “There are guidelines that we have, but they’re just guidelines,” Dr. Gary Green, MLB’s medical director, said in an interview Monday. “We have to look at the totality of the situation — where the cases are coming from, the number of cases. I don’t think you can say that this is going to be the way we approach everything. It’s so individual. What the contact tracing is like. What does the spread pattern look like? It’s going to be on a caseby-case basis going forward.” The Cleveland Indians’ weekend case illustrates how tempting it can be for players to violate pandemic protocols. On Sunday, they sent starter Zach Plesac back to Cleveland, via rental car, after learning that he had left the hotel to go out in Chicago. Another starter, Mike Clevinger, stayed with the team and flew home with his teammates but was found on Monday to have also violated the rules in Chicago. The Indians said in a statement that Clevinger — like Plesac — would be quarantined and undergo testing, and they named Adam Plutko to replace him as the starter Tuesday. From a business standpoint, baseball is essentially racing to the postseason, staging regular-season games without

Rob Manfred said Major League Baseball was “doing contingency planning” for its postseason in October. ticket revenue in hopes of reaping the lucrative rights fees from TV networks for playoff games in October. A large-scale outbreak would be especially chaotic and painful for the league then, so it could make sense for MLB to adopt a so-called bubble approach in the playoffs, with fewer teams and a shorter timeline. “All I’m going to say about that is we are doing contingency planning with respect to the postseason,” Manfred said. In MLB’s new playoff format, a 16team field will be whittled to eight teams — a much more manageable number — after a best-of-three first round. If the league staged the rest of the postseason at neutral sites, it would avoid the risks of travel and theoretically have a better chance of keeping the players safe. “We’d have to look at the logistics with baseball operations, but if you were able to get down to a point where you had a limited number of teams for a limited number of games, I think that type of thing could work better,” Green said. “I think that’s certainly a lot more feasible than playing a whole season in a bubble.” Then again, he added, it is impos-

sible to predict how and where the virus will spread by October. Players and teams must be disciplined, the league must be nimble — and the doctors must stay on high alert. “The majority of teams are doing a really good job with this, and I’m hopeful we’ll get through,” Green said. “But I don’t think I’ll relax until the end of the World Series.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Rangers score first pick in the NHL draft By ANDREW KNOLL

month and a half after the initial phase of the NHL draft lottery was held, the New York Rangers won the No. 1 selection and the opportunity to select consensus top prospect Alexis Lafreniere, a dazzling 18-year-old wing from Quebec. “It really is exciting, for sure,” Lafreniere said moments after the pick was announced. He cited potentially playing alongside Hart Trophy finalist Artemi Panarin and Rangers leading goal scorer Mika Zibanejad as reasons for his optimism. “I think they’re going to have a lot of success in the next couple years,” he said. After being swept by the Carolina Hurricanes in the play-in round, the Rangers won the second part of the draft lottery held Monday. The Rangers have not selected first overall since the universal draft was adopted, but took Andre Veilleux with the top pick in 1965’s amateur draft. Veilleux never played in an NHL game. The team has had six first-round picks in the past three years, including the No. 2 overall pick in 2019 that they used to select wing Kaapo Kakko. “We’re trying to do things the right way,” said Jeff Gorton, the Rangers’ general manager, referring to the team’s recent draft history. “Don’t want to get ahead of ourselves but I think it’s a good night for Ranger fans to be excited.” The second phase of the draft lottery was needed because none of the seven teams left out of the Edmonton and Toronto bubbles won the pick in the first phase held June 26. Monday’s draw consisted of the eight teams eliminated in the postseason qualifying round, with each having a 12.5 percent chance of landing the top pick. “If you look through some of the best players in this league, it’s not a huge secret where the teams are getting them,” Gorton said. “It’s lottery picks at the very high end of the draft.” In a year when little has been conventional, the NHL’s draft lottery was decided in two phases with more moving parts than a Swiss watch. The first draw revealed the teams that would se-

Alexis Lafreniere, left, and Quinton Byfield reach for the puck during a prospects game in January. Lafreniere is the consensus top prospect, while Byfield is another top forward prospect. lect in the second through eighth spots. Eight so-called “placeholder” selections represented the losing teams in the postseason’s qualifying round, and one of them won the top pick. “It was a pretty long process. I’ve been waiting for this day for a couple weeks now,” said Lafreniere, who will have his big day virtually instead of at the Bell Centre in Montreal as originally planned. “It was a big day and, for sure, it’s a relief just to know who’s going to pick first.” Lafreniere cemented his standing as the top prospect over the course of the past two seasons, dominating Canadian junior hockey and at international events like the Gretzky-Hlinka Cup and Under-20 World Junior Championships. Where Lafreniere skated, hardware followed in the form of nearly every “Player of the Year” trophy for which he was eligible. Lafreniere has eschewed compari-

sons to Sidney Crosby, the Pittsburgh Penguins star who was drafted first overall from the same junior team, Rimouski Oceanic. But Scotty Bowman — the nine-time Stanley Cup-winning coach — said he had little doubt as to Lafreniere’s place among the 2020 draft class. “He’s much better than anybody else. There’s nobody close to him,” Bowman said earlier this year. While Lafreniere may be a slightly less certain superstar than Crosby or the Edmonton Oilers’ Connor McDavid when they were prospects, he is widely regarded as a surefire first liner with prolevel poise. He is also a rare wing who can drive play in a manner usually reserved for centers, much like American wings Patrick Kane and Johnny Gaudreau. But, at 6-foot-1 and 192 pounds, Lafreniere has more formidable size than either of those players. For the teams that lost out Monday,

consolation prizes abound in a draft replete with talent, albeit without quite the same bankability as Lafreniere. The Los Angeles Kings will pick second. The Ottawa Senators own both the third and fifth selections. The New Jersey Devils will be up seventh. As for the Rangers, they also own the first-round selection of the team that eliminated them, the Hurricanes, who will fall to the bottom third of the round. Center Quinton Byfield and forward Tim Stutzle head up the rest of a talented group of forwards eligible to be drafted this year, while defensemen Jamie Drysdale and Jake Sanderson are generally considered the top rear guard prospects. Russian goalie Yaroslav Askarov seems a lock to be the first taken at his position. If Stutzle is selected second, he would become the highest selected German-trained player in league history, a distinction currently held by Edmonton center Leon Draisaitl. Byfield could surpass Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Seth Jones as the highest selected Black player in the NHL draft by going in the top three. Another highly rated forward prospect, Cole Perfetti, said that while this year’s draftees have faced distinct challenges and an extended wait to reach the NHL, he embraced the singular circumstances. “It’s kind of cool to be part of such a unique group,” Perfetti said. “People will look back on the 2020 draft class and think about how different we had it.” 2020 NHL entry draft order 1. New York Rangers 2. Los Angeles Kings 3. Ottawa Senators (from San Jose) 4. Detroit Red Wings 5. Ottawa Senators 6. Anaheim Ducks 7. New Jersey Devils 8. Buffalo Sabres 9. Minnesota Wild 10. Winnipeg Jets 11. Nashville Predators 12. Florida Panthers 13. Carolina Hurricanes (from Toronto) 14. Edmonton Oilers 15. Pittsburgh Penguins (optional to Minnesota)

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

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

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

(Mar 21-April 20)

You’re watching for new opportunities and you want to be in a position to grab the best ones before other people get to hear about them. There’s no harm in making enquiries. You need a challenge to bring you more fulfilment in the future. Routine tasks are starting to bore you.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Accepting a spontaneous offer might seem a great idea at the time but in doing so you could be leaving a friend in the lurch. If this is someone who you’ve always been able to rely on, it won’t be fair on them to let them down. You may have to quickly pull out of new arrangements.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Scorpio

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

Someone will imply you are working for a good cause because it makes you look good. This isn’t the reason at all. If you take up an offer to organise a charity event or fundraiser, it is because it means a lot to you to be able to help make a difference in other people’s lives.

A new relationship will soon become a vital part of your life, if you are single. Are you in a committed relationship? Love will grow because of the extra effort you are making to please your significant other. Pamper your partner. They’ve done a lot for you recently and now it is time for you to make them a priority.

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Listen more than you speak when mixing with new people. Online conversations will be interesting and the more time you spend with a new friend, the more you will start to appreciate their wisdom and intelligence. Are you single? Don’t go by first impressions. They could be unreliable.

Avoid making hasty financial decisions. Be sensible and take some time to think it over. A message from your other half suggests your love life is improving. If you recently disagreed, they will apologise and suggest that you plan something romantic. You will have a few good ideas in mind.

Your heart has a tendency to rule your head. Before making new financial or romantic commitments, sort out those muddled thoughts and emotions. If you’re working to a deadline, plan your time carefully. You don’t want to be left trying to squeeze as much as you can into the closing hours of the day.

Online communications will be a great source of happiness and excitement. Friends are talking about future plans and longing for the time when you will be more able to travel together, mix together and have fun with each other. You will reach a goal you have been aiming for, for some time now and this achievement should be celebrated even if it can only be with a small group of friends.

Leo

Aquarius

(July 24-Aug 23)

The moment you show an interest in the ideas and plans other people are discussing, they will expect your support. Don’t be too quick to back ideas until you’ve given this more thought. Whatever plans they might come up with, find out more as you need to know exactly what you are letting yourself in for.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Applying to a few funding foundations will increase your chances of success if you’re trying to raise money for a charity or community venture. Word your application carefully to make your approach worthwhile. It will take time to raise the money you need to make a difference. The effort will be worth it.

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Taking on a leadership role in a community project will be scary but exciting. You have a good idea of what everyone is capable of and you will know how to motivate every member of your team. People respond well to your low key leadership style. You’re putting a lot of thought into the panning.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

You sense a partner or close friend is drifting away from you. You can’t decide which way to go for the best. Arrange a heart to heart conversation and once you know where you stand, you can make a better decision. You need to feel you can make changes without feeling guilty or regretful.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

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Ziggy

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Wednesday, August 12, 2020

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