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.
By THE STAR STAFF
While Tropical Storm Franklin threatened the southern coasts of the Dominican Republic and Haiti on Wednesday and into today, in Puerto Rico as of Wednesday afternoon heavy rains were reported only on the offshore island municipality of Vieques.
But according to the National Hurricane Service (NHS), Puerto Rico is still not off the hook as heavy rains from the storm system are expected on the island through today.
The storm is expected to dump one to two inches of rain, with heavier rain being forecast for the southern part of the island.
Isolated areas may receive up to six inches of rain.
The heavy rain may produce areas of flash flooding and urban flooding.
On Tuesday, the storm had maximum sustained winds of 89 miles per hour (mph) and was stalled at a drift of 7 mph.
Puerto Rico will be spared tropical storm-force winds, according to the NHS.
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Harold made landfall on Padre Island, Texas, on Tuesday morning after forming in the Gulf of Mexico overnight, capping an extraordinarily busy 48 hours for an Atlantic hurricane season that saw three other storms -- Emily, Franklin and Gert -- form in quick succession.
Harold was the first storm of the Atlantic Hurricane season to make landfall.
More than 1.2 million people along the eastern
coast of Texas were under a tropical storm warning as of around 1:30 p.m. local time Tuesday, according to the weather service. Close to 35,000 people in the state were without power, according to poweroutage.us.
By 1 p.m., the core of the storm had moved inland, forecasters said. Harold was moving west-northwest at around 21 mph toward southern Texas and northern Mexico, they said.
By THE STAR STAFFThe Financial Oversight and Management Board spent $1.5 billion on consultancies from 2017 to 2023, exceeding congressional estimates in 2016, a report by Espacios Abiertos revealed on Tuesday.
“The people of Puerto Rico have paid the consultants and advisors of the Board,” Espacios Abiertos Executive Director Cecille Blondet said in a written statement, while reiterating the demand that the requested information be published.
“In its most recent annual report, the Board does not detail who has paid 40 percent of almost $300 million that it has disbursed to consultants,” said Wilmarí de Jesús Álvarez, who authored the report.
While Puerto Rico will be spared tropical storm-force winds, the island is still not off the hook as heavy rains from Tropical Storm Franklin are expected on the island through today, according to the National Weather Service.
The investigation, entitled “Their Advisers, Your Money,” seeks to make transparent the expenses in professional advice required by the oversight board and the federal court. The report highlights a total expense as of June 18 of this year of $1,500,353,160.07.
The data obtained from the court detail disbursements to consultants, advisers and lawyers by case, with the central government being the one that spends the most, at 72.98%. The highest expense among the categories corresponds to legal services, at 44.2%.
In addition, the investigation highlights invoices submitted by the consultants to the court for a total of $1,220,029,476. However, the Official Examiner recommended the disbursement of $1,192,798,602; that is, 2.2% less than what was invoiced.
Gov. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia on Tuesday urged Popular Democratic Party (PDP) legislative leaders to lay off protagonistic posturing and be pragmatic about improvements in the Electoral Code after the recent approval of amendments in the island House of Representatives.
“I would like us to leave the limelight aside and be pragmatic and realistic,” Pierluisi said in response to questions from the press. “Those [amendments to the code] were finished and unfortunately it occurred when the amendments that had a consensus of the two main parties were about to be approved. So [PDP President Jesús Manuel Ortiz González] wanted to insert himself into the process, and the problem was that he reached agreements with other parties.”
The debate over amendments to the Electoral Code has generated discussions among the island’s main political parties, with concerns raised about the prominence and interest of different political factions.
“The president of the PDP has to sit down with the president of the Senate [José Luis Dalmau Santiago] and decide if any changes should be made, and present them to the spokesman of my party, the NPP [New Progressive Party],” the governor said.
Dalmau Santiago said Tuesday that before addressing, or not, the amendments to the Electoral Code, he will meet with Ortiz González and Speaker of the House of Representatives Rafael Hernández Montañez.
“I’m not going to go into that much detail. The House of Representatives approved a bill of amendments to the Electoral Code that now goes to the Senate. I would like to see the complete document, although it has been said that it is part of a document, of a bill of my authorship, [No.] 909, but it underwent amendments that I have not seen at this time,” Dalmau Santiago
said in response to questions from the press. “Meanwhile, there is a separation between what the legislative intention is when filing a bill and the decision of a party to look after its electoral interests. I prefer to have a conversation with the president of the party, who is currently outside Puerto Rico, and with the speaker of the House -- at this time I have not spoken with either of them -- before making a judgment about something that we can work on, dialogue and discuss.”
“Well, like every measure that comes from the House, I have to take it up in the Senate,” the leader of the upper chamber said. “... But I don’t want to get into that because the legislative chambers are made up of people from many parties. And legislative initiatives are presented here, apart from whether there are guidelines in legislative conferences or guidelines from the parties as an institution.”
In response to a question about the previous exclusion of Ortiz González from the discussions, the governor said: “We are not excluding him. It is an internal matter between the president
of the PDP and his delegations.”
The governor confirmed that NPP stalwart Edwin Mundo studied in detail the amendments approved by the House, and that they have the green light of his administration, demonstrating a flexible position toward possible changes.
When asked about the criticism voiced by the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) regarding the exclusion of minority parties in the crafting of an amended Electoral Code, the governor said his administration does not support certain proposals, such as one involving the “pivazos,” or so-called “triple-cross” votes, which have been rejected by the Puerto Rico Supreme Court.
Pierluisi also stressed that they are willing to work with the PDP, considering that the approval of the measures is mainly between that party and the NPP, and that any reasonable proposal from other parties will be considered.
Hernández Montañez weighed in later on Tuesday, saying that the PDP president knew that the draft amendments to the Electoral Code were going to be approved on the first day of the regular session, and maintained that the amendments are those that Ortiz González himself proposed, not “those of the demonic coalition … of the PIP and the Citizen Victory Movement who are in general opposed, of course, because what they called for is not in the bill.”
“The bill was discussed in the caucus,” the House speaker said. “The bill has been tested three times, a version by the … president of the Senate was approved, a version by [Deputy House Speaker José Manuel] Conny Varela was approved, the last version of comrade Jesús Manuel Ortiz was approved. It is the same bill, so it has been discussed. On August 11, at the beginning of every session, we had a caucus. In the caucus, the agenda was presented and everyone knew, including the party president and members of the Popular Party delegation who participated, … that the proposal was what we can achieve.”
The island House of Representatives has approved amendments to the 2007 law regulating the Net Metering Measurement Program that would allow consumers to keep all of the savings from energy put into the power grid, Popular Democratic Party Rep. Gretchen Marie Hau Irizarry (Cidra-Cayey) said Tuesday.
The legislation, approved unanimously during Monday’s session, is now before the Senate.
“Our goal is to do justice to the consumer,” said Hau, referring to the measure that she initially drafted, when she was a member of the Senate, with fellow Sen. William Villafañe Ramos of the New Progressive Party.
“We seek that 100% of the credit resulting from the surplus of unused energy generated by renewable systems goes to the owner of these alternative systems,” Hau said.
Net metering is a system in which solar panels or other renewable energy generators are connected to the power grid and surplus power is transferred onto the grid, allowing customers to offset the cost of power drawn from the main energy utility.
House Bill 1810 calls for the consumer’s energy production to be compensated at 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). However, currently the cost of that energy, when sold to consumers by LUMA, is around 25 cents per kWh.
“This measure is necessary, after in recent weeks what is called ‘prosumers’ (citizens who generate energy in solar systems) received letters from LUMA Energy in which they indicated that 25% of the money to which [prosumers] were entitled for their annual production of kilowatt-hours would be set aside for the Department of Education for the payment of energy bills in the schools, distribution is contained in Law 114-2007,” Hau said.
“My primary call is to the senators so that, by virtue of the importance of consumer protection for everyone, they give
way to this measure,” she added. “To prosumers and society in general, I urge you to orient yourself on the subject. The production of energy is vital for economic development, and we will continue in this work.”
For most of us, it takes a long time to rightfully call yourself retired; getting there is an extended journey with many ups and downs.
Receiving that retirement money every month is important for pensioned workers, and teachers are no exception. Being a teacher takes a lot of patience and kindness, lots of work and time in general, so getting a retirement check to live out the golden years is not only important but also fair. Thankfully there are people who are working to take care of these matters and watch over that retirement money, making sure that it is deposited every month into pensioned teachers’ bank accounts.
Retired teachers Félix Figueroa Escobar and Steven Díaz Escobales, alongside active teacher Ángel Javier Pérez Hernández, work tirelessly to prevent pensions for teachers and public workers from being put at risk or disappearing inexplicably, as has happened before with previous pension systems.
“I’ve been retired for 10 years, participating in the retirement pension system for teachers,” Figueroa Escobar told the STAR on Tuesday. “My commitment is to fight for the money the government deposits in the Trust being used properly, and so that nobody who doesn’t want to benefit the future of this money’s growth gets their hands on that money.”
Teachers who count on the backup of the Puerto Rico Teachers Association (AMPR by its Spanish initials) will participate in the upcoming election that will choose the representatives of the Teachers’ Retirement System (SRM by its Spanish initials) and the retirement system of the Pension Benefits Council, a nonprofit entity created after the approval of the adjustment plan for Puerto Rico’s commonwealth debt to help pay the pensions of retired teachers in later years.
“As a result of the Debt Adjustment Plan, a reserve fund was created for the administration of future pensions for public servants, including teachers. This fund will be financial support for the government when it does not have sufficient income to pay the pensions,” noted AMPR President Víctor M. Bonilla Sánchez. “The members of this council will have the function of monitoring the efficient use of the funds that have been set aside for this and their growth so that, in the future, we do not experience again what happened with the retirement [system] of public employees.”
The Pension Benefits Council will be made up of nine members, six of whom will be chosen by election: two from the Central Retirement System, two from the SRM, one from the Judiciary Retirement System, and one active government employee. The election to choose the members of the Pension Benefits Council board began last Friday and will run until Sept. 15.
“The Association recognizes the importance that current and future pensioners have participation and an active voice in the future of their pensions and that decision-making be monitored.” Bonilla Sánchez said. “For this reason, we are supporting these three educators who, for years, have shown that they are committed to the rights of teachers and the defense of their pensions and that they are willing to fight to defend our workers’ retirement money.”
Díaz Escobales, a retired teacher who belonged to both the Teachers’ Federation and the AMPR, as well as the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, said his aim as member of the Pension Benefits Council will be to “defend and protect the money for the pensions that, with a lot of sweat and sacrifice, the teachers earned and that will serve them in having a decent life after the years of dedication they gave to the educational system.”
Figueroa Escobar also stated that “[i]t is very important that teachers in general participate in the election, because for the first time ever in history, retired teachers of Puerto Rico, active and future teachers with benefits and defined retirements, have a reserve fund that will help pay and secure their pensions, in case the government can’t pay those pensions due to some emergency, or in case the results don’t meet their projections.”
Pérez Hernández, active secretary of the AMPR Local Union, noted that he is the only teachers’ representative who is currently trying to become the spokesperson in the Pension Benefits Council for all active government employees. Pérez Hernández is currently an elementary school gym teacher and has been in the education system for more than 23 years. Apart from that, he was president of the Physical Education and Recreation Association of Puerto Rico as well as general coordinator of the Physical Activity Network of Puerto Rico, and is also an ex-president of the Student Council of the Administration of Regional Schools at the University of Puerto Rico.
“Throughout my career I have dedicated myself to defending the rights of the teaching class from various positions, and in recent years among the battles I have fought is, specifically, defending the right of teachers to have a dignified retirement after dedicating their lives to public service and education in the country,” Pérez Hernández said. “I am committed to performing the same representation for all government workers that I have for the teaching profession.”
Bonilla Sánchez pointed out that the AMPR decided to support the intention of these candidates to belong to the Pension Benefits Council because as an institution, since its foundation, it has been a promoter of legislation and initiatives whose purpose is to expand the rights of teachers and ensure their tranquility.
“What today constitutes the Teachers Retirement System was the first great public victory of our Association,” Bonilla Sánchez said. “The AMPR’s unwavering commitment to the retirement of active and retired teachers has been evidenced in all the battles carried out against all government attempts to oppress teachers in the public system and decapitate their retirement. Now we can do nothing but make sure that our
The Pension Benefits Council will be responsible for monitoring a pension reserve fund that will provide “financial support for the government when it does not have sufficient income to pay the pensions,” noted Puerto Rico Teachers Association President Víctor M. Bonilla Sánchez, at center. (Richard Gutiérrez/The San Juan Daily Star)
teachers and all workers are well represented in this council and have the necessary guarantees that their pensions will be safe.”
To choose the council representatives of the Teachers Retirement System, pensioners under Law 218 and Law 91 and active teachers appointed under Law 91 who as of March 14, 2022 had at least 10 years of service, may vote. To select the representative of active workers, active employees who participate in a defined benefit retirement system of the central government, teachers or the judiciary are eligible.
Anew 23andMe genetic study has identified a rare variant among people of Puerto Rican ancestry that confers a more than 12-fold increase in the risk of cataracts. The rare variant is also associated with a 13-year earlier onset of the condition that leads to clouding of the eye’s lens and vision loss.
The information was provided by 23andMe, a biotechnology company that compiles genetic information from people, citing a study published in the preprint server MedRxiv that highlights the importance of genetic research in historically underrepresented populations.
The study offered hope for leveraging this data for insights into other underrepresented populations, said Veera M. Rajagopal, Ph.D., a scientist who specializes in genetics and drug target discovery in neuroscience and psychiatry.
“Thanks to the diversity of the 23andMe research participants, the researchers were able to make this discovery without even having to fly to the Caribbean island and genotype its inhabitants,” Rajagopal said in the 23andMe report. “With the rapidly growing genomic biobanks, more such discoveries will unfold in the coming years.”
The 23andMe scientists Jingchunzi Shi and Suyash Shringarpure led the study. They identified a variant in the gene ITGA6 associated with cataracts. The ITGA6 gene is expressed in eye tissue.
For the study, the researchers gathered data from about 45,000 23andMe customers of Puerto Rican ancestry. All of these individuals had consented to participate in research. 23andMe’s cohort is among the world’s largest Puerto Rican genetic research cohorts, the company said.
“Before beginning their genome-wide association study, the scientists conducted whole genome sequencing of 500 individuals from the cohort,” the 23andMe report said. “They then used that data to create an imputation reference panel. This consists of
genome-wide variation discovered through the whole-genome sequencing of these 500 individuals.”
“Researchers often use such reference panels to perform genotype imputation. Genotype imputation is the process of inferring genotypes at many of the areas in the genome not captured on genotyping arrays,” the 23andMe report noted. “Like a code breaker filling in missing letters in a message, scientists use algorithms and data from a whole-genome sequenced reference panel to predict or ‘impute’ the
missing letters of genetic data. This allows large-scale genetic studies to expand the number of genetic variants that can be analyzed.”
Data from the remainder of the more than 45,000 23andMe research participants in the study comes from genotyping. But the scientists were able to use an imputation reference panel to improve the power of their research, imputing areas in the genome not captured through genotyping alone. The approach is both a cost-effective and efficient way to increase the power of genomic coverage for populations not currently well-represented in research, the report said.
The researchers looked at the global distribution of the variant. They found it exceedingly rare except among Puerto Rican and North African populations. The paper tracks a possible pathway for the variant. The researchers describe the migration of North African people to the Canary Islands and migration from the Canary Islands to Puerto Rico.
In addition, because a small population initially reached the island, and then that population was isolated over several generations. it may have led to what geneticists call a population bottleneck. The isolation and a sudden decline in the population limit genetic diversity within a group. Over several generations, in the case of Puerto Rico, 8-12 generations, it can lead to distinct genetic differences. This in turn can increase incidences of genetic conditions.
Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón on Tuesday announced the disbursement of $932,580 in federal funds for the Center for Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture at Inter-American University of Puerto Rico’s Institute of Sustainable Biotechnology (ISBiot).
The resident commissioner welcomed the proposal made by Inter-American University to contribute to food security, which was among the community projects for which she obtained funds within the budget bill, or omnibus, for fiscal year 2023 that was converted into federal law last December.
The funds are being allocated under the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Research Facilities Construction account, which funds the construction and renovation of research facilities. NIST informed González Colón’s office that the funds were ready to be
transferred to the university. Some $942,000 was approved for the project, of which the aforementioned sum will go to SBiot and the remaining 1% will be used for administrative expenses.
The allocation will be used to supply equipment for the recently built Center for Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture, which the resident commissioner visited in June 2022 along with Barranquitas Mayor Elliot Colón, the then-interim president and now president of Inter-American University; and Dr. Rafael Ramírez, chancellor of Inter American’s Barranquitas Campus, Dr. Juan Negrón; as well as scientists, professors and students.
The Center for Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture will provide support for the development of modern agriculture in the mountain region and will consist of a building with a total construction area of 3,224 square feet, with seven laboratories representing the basic stages of bioprocessing for in vitro plant production and laboratory analysis.
In early 2020, with state health officials downplaying signs of the coming pandemic, Josh Green, who was then Hawaii’s lieutenant governor, went outside the political pecking order and called the White House himself to ask for a temporary ban on cruise ships, a linchpin of Hawaii’s economy.
The move by Green, an emergencyroom physician, infuriated his colleagues and the governor’s office, but “no one would listen to me here,” he said in his Capitol office overlooking Honolulu last week.
Now the 53-year-old governor, a Democrat less than a year into his first term, is confronting the horrific wildfires on Maui that have killed at least 114 people and perhaps many more.
Thousands have been displaced. One of the world’s most scenic beach towns is now a toxic ruin. President Joe Biden arrived Monday to view the devastated landscape and hear from residents.
And after two mega-emergencies in fewer than four years in a state with a population smaller than Philadelphia’s, Green has some urgent thoughts about the range of catastrophes that are sweeping the globe and overwhelming institutions.
“I want the world to know that we have to prepare for this,” the governor said last week, his voice tense, his eyes red from exhaustion. “We absolutely have to solve these problems before they become crises.”
The firestorms in Hawaii are just the latest climate-fueled horror to challenge leaders around the country. Last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida confronted the most destructive Atlantic hurricane season on record. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California was only two days past his election when 85 people died in the Camp fire in 2018.
Violent floods have slammed New York and Vermont this summer. Blistering heat has plagued Arizona and Texas. The trauma and grief, followed by costly recoveries and lawsuits, have become staples of governance as climate change has amplified weather extremes.
“This will be the biggest crisis Hawaii has had to face since Pearl Harbor,” said Colin D. Moore, a political scientist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Already fault lines have
emerged in the Democrat-dominated power structure.
In a state where political decisions are often a balancing act among factions — from progressives to pro-development Democrats to powerful labor unions — some worry that the rush to rebuild will shred hard-won environmental and cultural protections. Others fear that the devastation will gut the economy, drive up already sky-high housing prices and supercharge a middle-class exodus of pricedout teachers, firefighters, nurses and other essential workers.
“The fear is that this will become a land grab by wealthy investors from outside of Hawaii,” Moore said.
That concern also reflects the inherent tensions in Hawaiian politics between the state’s breathtaking natural beauty and the tourist-dependent economy that supports its 1.4 million inhabitants.
Wayne Tanaka, the executive director of the Sierra Club of Hawaii, said the governor’s own nascent policies seemed to undercut his calls for more rigorous planning. Tanaka criticized an emergency measure that Green signed shortly before the fire; the move suspended some development restrictions as a way to fast-track the supply of affordable housing.
“This is a big test of whether he’s going to challenge and reverse the trend of allowing
corporations to dictate land use policies and monopolize water resources,” Tanaka said.
Still others fear the pull of politics as usual, noting that the governor’s chief of staff — who came with him from the lieutenant governor’s office — is a former lobbyist for the pro-development Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters.
“I’m very much willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I’m very concerned,” said Matthew S. LoPresti, a progressive who served with Green for six years in the state Legislature. “This will be the test of his leadership.”
Even Green says that bringing a state back from a climate-age disaster in a way that might fend off the next one calls for political skills far beyond what he has been asked to muster in the past.
“This is the first time for me as an executive that I’ve been tasked with something outside my absolute comfort zone,” he said. “COVID was not difficult for me to deal with because I was a health care provider practicing public health.”
When COVID hit in 2020, David Ige, who was then the governor, informally made Green the administration’s pandemic point man. But their relationship was not always harmonious, and the early call on the cruise lines fed perceptions that Green was prema-
turely campaigning to succeed Ige, who was prevented by term limits from running for reelection in 2022.
Eventually, the governor formalized Green’s role as COVID liaison. Armed with a whiteboard and raw data, he reestablished himself as the face of Hawaii’s response to the pandemic, pushing mandatory vaccines for public sector employees, indoor masking for businesses, and quarantines or proof of vaccination for travel among the islands. Aside from a few small protests outside his home, there was little of the public unrest that roiled other states.
In the spring of 2021, as infection rates dropped, a poll conducted by two local news organizations found that the lieutenant governor had a 63% approval rating, nearly three times that of Ige. A year later, Green defeated six other Democrats in the primary and won the general election easily.
As governor, he has stopped practicing medicine except as a volunteer; a state law that took effect in 2022 forbids governors from holding second jobs while in office. But he has made headlines several times for rendering care in emergencies. In July, Morning Consult reported that only two other governors had higher approval ratings from their constituents.
Then disaster hit Maui. As the firestorm barreled into the historic town of Lahaina, the governor was more than 5,000 miles away at a family reunion in Massachusetts.
He flew home immediately and helped secure billions of dollars in federal aid through a federal disaster declaration. He also opened motel rooms and rentals to displaced survivors, vowed to crack down on land speculators and to include locals on recovery work crews. He also instructed the attorney general to conduct a “comprehensive review” of the fire’s causes and the emergency response.
Green said that the past four years have taught him that communities no longer have a margin of error.
“I’m mad that we didn’t do some of the things that we could have done three, five, seven years ago to make an incident like this relatively impossible,” he said, the old COVID whiteboard in his office now covered with wildfire statistics.
“Because this kind of thing doesn’t need to happen. We’ll rise up but with great cost.”
many more buildings with multiple stories, making search and rescue operations difficult. Criswell said officials were estimating that the search could take another two weeks.
FEMA is working on standing up temporary schools in Maui. “Four or five schools have been destroyed as a result of this fire,” Criswell said.
Biden added Monday that FEMA had distributed 55,000 meals, 75,000 liters of water, 5,000 beds and 10,000 blankets.
The agency has encouraged survivors to register with the government to receive assistance, including an immediate payment of $700 to cover food and water. By the end of last week, more than 5,000 people had registered.
But lawmakers, including Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, warned that long-term federal assistance would be needed for Maui’s recovery.
“The people of Maui want to know that everybody has fully internalized what a long road this is going to be — we get it,” he said. “But we want the country to know this isn’t a matter of sending an online contribution and throwing up a hashtag. We’re going to need an enormous amount of resources for the foreseeable future.”
Biden made the trip after arriving in Lake Tahoe on Friday evening. He is staying on the Nevada side of the lake, at a house owned by Tom Steyer, the billionaire climate investor who lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Biden in 2020. White House officials said the president was renting the house for “fair market value” but did not disclose details.
By ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS and ERICA L. GREENPresident Joe Biden toured the scorched remains of Lahaina, a coastal town on the Hawaiian island of Maui, on Monday in his first visit since devastating wildfires killed more than 100 people and left behind scenes of twisted metal and hollowed-out homes.
Biden, who broke away from his summer vacation on Lake Tahoe in Nevada, met with survivors of the fires and with emergency workers and state and local officials. The president hugged Gov. Josh Green, a Democrat, and walked arm in arm with him to Marine One for a 20-minute aerial tour of the wreckage. Sporting a green and yellow lei, he told community members, “the entire country is here for you.”
“The devastation is overwhelming,” Biden said as he stood near a 150-year-old banyan tree, a cherished landmark in Lahaina. He said the tree symbolized the resilience of the Maui community.
The president, who was joined by first lady Jill Biden, also sought to assure residents of Maui that they would be involved in the recovery process. “We will be respectful of the sacred grounds and the traditions, and rebuild the way the people of Maui want to build, not the way others want to build,” he said.
With several hundred people in the area still unaccounted for, Biden said federal officials were also committed to search-andrescue operations. Officials have searched about 87% of the area affected by the fire for victims, said Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Biden’s homeland security adviser. As dogs combed through the last of the damaged homes and cars, officials told Biden that they might not be able to identify all of the dead.
The president has come under criticism from Republicans for not saying enough publicly in their view about the fires that turned Lahaina into an inferno on Aug. 8. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser warned that “a warm welcome may not be assured for Biden in some circles on Maui” because of frustrations over applying for aid and cultural sensitivities involving Native Hawaiians.
Local congressional leaders have said billions of dollars are needed to help Maui recover.
White House officials have rejected the criticism, saying that the president has kept in close touch with the governor and Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Criswell told reporters Monday that the disaster relief agency had distributed more than $8.5 million to Maui, including $3.6 million for direct rental assistance. More than 1,000 federal officials were on the ground, and close to 2,000 victims had been moved into hotel rooms on Maui.
The portion of the island that has not been searched includes
The Maui wildfires were not the only natural disaster that the White House was monitoring. Tropical Storm Hilary made landfall on the Baja California Peninsula of Mexico and began dumping rain on Southern California on Sunday, just hours after a 5.1-magnitude earthquake struck northwest of Los Angeles. Biden spoke Sunday with Gov. Gavin Newsom of California about the tropical storm, aides said.
As he has when visiting other sites of natural disasters, Biden related the pain of grieving families to his own. He described the death of his first wife and infant daughter in an automobile accident and the “hollow feeling you have in your chest like you’re being sucked into a black hole.”
“I also want all of you to know the country grieves with you, stands with you and will do everything possible to help you recover,” Biden said.
Despite Biden’s pledges, some volunteers and residents in Hawaii dismissed the president’s trip as a public relations ploy.
As Biden made his way through Lahaina, his motorcade passed residents with signs, many pleading for more relief. One said, “Relief for Maui Now”; another said, “Lahaina needs relief now.”
“They failed us on every level,” said Eddy Garcia, who barely looked up as a trio of military helicopters whirled past the roadside farm where he was handing out papayas, oranges and burritos to people left homeless by the fire. “Their red tape, their bureaucracy.”
Others rushed to get a peek at the president as he visited, including a few dozen who gathered near the small airport in West Maui for his arrival.
“He really needs to look at this rubble and see this was no ordinary fire,” said Pearl Patterson. “So many lives were lost. This is sacred ground.”
Former President Donald Trump won’t be there. But eight other Republicans hoping to catch him are now set for the first debate of the 2024 presidential primary tonight in Milwaukee, the Republican National Committee announced Monday night.
Those eight include Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has been Trump’s leading rival in most polling, and Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Trump ally turned antagonist, has secured a spot, as has another vocal Trump opponent, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas.
Two prominent South Carolina Republicans have also earned places onstage, Sen. Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, a former United Nations ambassador. They will be joined by political newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota.
The candidates will give Republicans a diverse field attempting to take on President Joe Biden: six past or present governors, one Black candidate, two candidates born to Indian immigrants, one woman and one former vice president.
A handful of others had been on the bubble heading into Monday evening. The Republican National Committee had imposed a 9 p.m. deadline for candidates to accumulate at least 40,000 donors and hit 1% in a certain number of qualifying national and state polls.
But two officials familiar with the RNC’s decision said that three candidates all fell short: Perry Johnson, a businessman who previously tried to run for governor of Michigan; Francis X. Suarez, the mayor of Miami; and Larry Elder, a talk-show host who made a failed run for governor of California. Those three campaigns, already all long-shots, had claimed to have met the donor and polling threshold. But they now face an even more uncertain future.
Johnson, in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, said the debate process “has been corrupted” and that his campaign hit all the metrics and qualified for the debate. “We’ll be in Milwaukee Wednesday and will have more to say tomorrow,” he added.
The RNC had also required candi-
dates to sign a pledge to support whomever the party nominates. At least one candidate has said publicly he would refuse to sign it: Will Hurd, a former congressman from Texas who has said he opposes Trump.
With Trump opting to skip the debate entirely and citing his significant lead in the polls, much of the attention is expected to fall on DeSantis, who has steadily polled in second place despite some early struggles.
The debate will be broadcast on Fox News at 9 p.m. Eastern time today, with Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum serving as moderators.
Despite the candidates’ months of campaigning across the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina already, the debate represents the first moment that many voters will tune into the contest — or even learn about many of the candidates.
“Most of what you do in this process is filtered through media,” DeSantis said while campaigning in Georgia last week. “Seldom do you get the opportunity to speak directly to this many people.”
Yet, it remains unclear how much the debate will transform a race where Trump remains the prohibitive front-runner, leading the field by large double-digit margins. The hosts have said they plan to turn Trump into a presence, with quotes and clips from the former president, even though he will not be on the stage. Much of the race has revolved around Trump, with the candidates repeatedly questioned on his denial of the 2020 election results, his four indictments and his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The other candidates have prepared for weeks. DeSantis brought on a wellknown debate coach, Pence has been holding practice sessions with mock lecterns in Indiana and Ramaswamy has been holding sessions with advisers on his private plane. (Ramaswamy also posted a shirtless video of himself smashing tennis balls Monday, calling it “three hours of solid debate prep.”) Only Christie and Pence have previously participated in presidential-level debates, giving those two an advantage over less-experienced rivals.
Some of those onstage are nationally known, including Pence, who participated in two vice-presidential debates that were widely watched. But for Burgum
and others, the event will be their national introduction and a chance to sell their biographies or bona fides, such as Hutchinson, a former congressman who has emerged as one of the party’s most vocal Trump critics.
Breaking through the media attention surrounding the former president will require a viral moment — a surprise attack or notable defense — and the candidates have been reluctant to publicly signal their strategy. The release of memos from DeSantis’ super PAC last week was viewed as a significant tactical error that heightened the pressure on the Florida governor while limiting his avenues of attack.
Some of Trump’s rivals have mocked him for skipping the debate, with Christie calling him a “coward.” Those taunts were unsuccessful in luring Trump in, although Christie has signaled his eagerness to swing at him in absentia.
It is far from clear how much fire the rest of the field will focus on the missing front-runner, or whether they will skirmish among themselves in a bid to claim second place as his leading challenger.
DeSantis’ aides have said they expect him to bear the brunt of attacks tonight because he will be the leading candidate on the stage.
Scott and his allies have aired a heavy rotation of advertising in Iowa, and
he has risen there to third place in some polling, including a Des Moines Register/ NBC News survey this week. But those ads have not helped him catch DeSantis yet, let alone Trump.
Haley, a former governor of South Carolina before she served as ambassador under Trump, has sought to find middle ground, arguing that the party needs to move past the former president yet doing so without being overly critical of an administration in which she served.
Pence has searched for traction in a race where he has been typecast as a betrayer to Trump by some voters, for standing up to his bid to block certification of Biden’s victory. That confrontation has established Pence as a critical witness in one federal indictment against Trump.
Trump, of course, is not giving up the spotlight entirely. He has recorded an interview with Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News host, as counterprogramming to the network’s debate. And Monday, his lawyers agreed to a $200,000 bail before his expected surrender to authorities in Georgia this week after he was charged as part of a criminal conspiracy to overturn the election result there in 2020.
The criminal indictment was Trump’s fourth of the year, although the accumulation of charges has done little to slow or stop his consolidation of support in polls.
Vattenfall, a Swedish energy company, has for years been doing preliminary work for what would be one of the world’s largest offshore wind complexes, in the North Sea off eastern England.
Now, there are questions about whether this project will ever be built. Last month, Vattenfall said it would halt the first of three phases of the wind farm complex, the Norfolk Offshore Wind Zone, which is projected to provide power for about 4 million homes in Britain.
Vattenfall blamed rapidly escalating costs for equipment and construction expenses, which they said had climbed as much as 40% over the past few quarters. The estimated price tag for the three phases has risen to 13 billion pounds, or about $16.6 billion, from 10 billion pounds.
“With the new market conditions, it simply doesn’t make sense to continue the project,” Helene Bistrom, head of business area wind at Vattenfall, said during a video presentation. The decision led Vattenfall, which is owned by the Swedish government, to writedown more than $500 million.
Vattenfall’s pullback added to the widespread alarm unfolding across the offshore industry about rapidly increasing costs, due partly to supply chain issues and rising demand.
In recent months, several developers in the United States have sought to renegotiate power supply contracts, scrapping them in at least one case, and Orsted, a Danish company that is the world’s largest offshore wind developer, warned that a major project, Hornsea 3, in Britain could be “at risk” without more government support.
With interest rates shooting up, financing the billions of dollars in investment that go into these installations has also become far more expensive.
On Auig. 7, turbine maker Siemens Energy reported a net loss of 2.9 billion euros ($3.2 billion) for the April-June quarter, largely because of problems tied to “increased product costs and ramp-up challenges” in its offshore energy business.
“There’s very few projects that are immune to the inflationary impact,” said Finlay Clark, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a consulting firm.
Rising costs for wind developers are a problem for governments in Europe, the Uni-
ted States and elsewhere. Many countries are counting on an enormous and rapid expansion of offshore wind to achieve a significant portion of their renewable energy goals.
“We are wasting time here,” Morten Dyrholm, group senior vice president for corporate affairs at Vestas Wind Systems, the Danish turbine maker, said of the industry’s problems. “We need to grow the sector quite dramatically.”
Dyrholm and others in the industry say the inflation problems are a warning sign that governments need to change their system of awarding offshore wind licenses.
The procedures for obtaining the rights to build wind farms vary in different countries but often involve an auction of seabed leases followed, sometimes years later, by agreements that set the price paid by power companies for the electricity generated.
These arrangements, designed to drive down power prices for consumers and, often, to maximize revenues from lease sales, should be broadened to take into account other factors, some industry leaders say. An auction for seabed rights awarded by Scotland in 2022 is cited as a model because it put greater emphasis on factors such as the ability of wind companies to develop suppliers, and the experience of the companies.
The debate could open the way for
more power deals with corporations such as Amazon and Microsoft, whose data centers are hungry consumers of electricity. Large businesses might be more flexible partners for wind developers than government officials who tend to say “this is the rule,” said Deepa Venkateswaran, a utilities analyst at Bernstein, a research firm.
Renewable energy programs such as Britain’s — which is designed to encourage financial backing by providing a guaranteed price to wind developers, and also to gradually drive down charges paid by consumers — attracted billions in investment when inflation was low. Now, in a very different world, after the disruptions of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Britain is taking fire for policies that could make wind projects uneconomical.
“I am afraid the U.K. has gone from being one of the best governments in Europe on offshore wind to one of the worst,” said Giles Dickson, CEO of WindEurope, a trade body.
A British government spokesperson responded: “We understand there are supply chain pressures for the sector globally, not just in the U.K., and we are listening to companies’ concerns.”
The inflation problems are mainly hitting offshore wind farms in late stages of development rather than those already generating
power.
Offshore projects can require a decade to progress from planning stages to generating power. That means agreements on issues such as the power price may be years old before the turbines are in place and generating electricity. That system worked when inflation was negligible and demand for turbines and other equipment was relatively subdued. Now, as a growing number of developers look to secure everything necessary to undertake the projects — from wind turbines, which cost millions of dollars, to the services of specialized construction ships, to bank financing — they discover that the price tags have suddenly soared. Dyrholm estimates that prices of wind turbines alone have increased 30% in the past year.
“The costs have risen, and you have a mismatch,” said Bernard Looney, CEO of BP, which is an investor, with Equinor, a Norwegian company, in three offshore wind projects in the Atlantic that would supply power to around 2 million households in New York state. Equinor and BP have petitioned state authorities to renegotiate their power contracts.
Despite the soured deals, interest in offshore wind remains strong. In a recent auction in Germany, BP and TotalEnergies in France agreed to pay around $14 billion over three decades for offshore tracts.
The German deals differ from others because the companies are simply paying for the rights to develop sea bottom, and they will negotiate what they get paid for the electricity at a later day.
Such deals are attractive to a corporate giant such as BP, which has the financial firepower to make them happen and would be freer to do what it wants with the power. Looney said he hoped to steer away from the long-term power contracts, preferring instead to try to squeeze more value from wind-generated electricity by using it to make green hydrogen, a still scarce clean fuel, or charge electric vehicles.
“We’d like to do something with those electrons; take them and put them to use,” he said.
But there are only a handful of companies with the heft of BP and TotalEnergies. Whether nations can achieve their offshore ambitions through such commercial deals remains to be seen. Critics say that charging high prices for leases will lead to higher power prices for consumers.
Asian stock markets snapped an eight-day losing streak on Tuesday, helped by a rebound in beatendown Chinese shares, while benchmark Treasury yields scaled 16-year highs on concerns that interest rates will stay high for quite a while.
Benchmark 10-year yields US10YT=RR climbed 2.5 basis points (bps) in early Tokyo trade to touch 4.366%, their highest level since 2007 and are up almost 40 bps for the month so far. US/
Yields go up when bond prices go down, and the rout comes in the wake of surprisingly upbeat U.S. economic news that has led investors to scale back expectations for policy easing next year.
Those higher-for-longer-interest rate fears as well as worries about China’s faltering economy have recently sapped investor appetite hunger for stocks but Tuesday brought a bit of a rebound.
S&P 500 futures ESc1 turned positive late in the Asia day to rise 0.1%. European futures STXEc1 were last up 0.6% and FTSE futures FFIc1 rose 0.3%.
Treasury futures now imply 98 basis points of rate cuts in 2024, compared to 130 basis points a couple of weeks ago. FEDWATCH
At the same time, however, inflation expectations have hardly budged - meaning that “real” yields, which discount inflation expectations, have surged - a development likely to prompt investors to re-evaluate taking risks.
“That being the case, it is not outlandish to expect significant impact on credit and capital flows,” said Vishnu Varathan, head of economics at Mizuho Bank in Singapore.
The near 300 bps added to 10-year U.S. real yields US10YTIP=RR since September 2021 is the most acute tightening of real rates in 25 years, he said, adding that a speech on Friday by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell could drive them higher still.
The 10-year real rate breached 2% on Monday.
Sovereign yields in Australia, Korea, New Zealand and Japan all rose on Tuesday, with 10-year Japanese yields JP10YTN=JBTC hitting their highest since 2014 at 0.66%. JP/
The Hang Seng .HSI was doing its best to snap a seven-day losing streak and was up 1.3% in the afternoon after a volatile session of swinging between gains and small losses.
Shares in giant Australian miner BHP GroupBHP.AX fell 1.3% after it posted its weakest annual profit in three years - though it said it expected Chinese demand to stabilise and growth momentum to pick up again later in the year.
The moves in yields have shovelled pressure on currencies offering low returns.
The yuan CNY=CFXS stabilised around 7.2845 to the dollar after state banks had earlier used the offshore forwards market to defend it.
The yen JPY= was also on intervention watch and caught a small boost from a meeting between Bank of Japan chief Kazuo Ueda and the Prime Minister. It was last about 0.2% higher at 145.95 per dollar.
The euro EUR=EBS, which rose slightly on Monday, was firm at $1.0912, while the Antipodean currencies
came off nine-month lows as Hong Kong stocks gained. The New Zealand dollar NZD=D3 was up 0.5% to $0.5957.
Oil has been stepping down from August peaks and Brent crude futures LCOc1 were last at $84.42. O/R
European gas prices have been rising as strikes loom at Australian liquefied natural gas facilities. Benchmark Dutch gas TRNLTTFMc1 is up nearly 50% for August. NG/EU
China’s benchmark Dalian iron ore price DCIOcv1 jumped 4.1% to a two-year high. IRONORE/
The data calendar is fairly bare on Tuesday, but investors are already positioning for good news when chip designer Nvidia NVDA.O reports on Wednesday, with the stock surging on Monday.
In a dramatic rescue, Pakistani security forces on Tuesday said they had plucked eight people including several schoolchildren from a stranded cable car left hanging hundreds of feet above a mountain valley.
Video posted on social media showed one person scrambling out of the car and being lifted to safety by a rope attached to a helicopter hovering overhead. As darkness fell, however, helicopter operations had to be suspended, and officials instead employed a zip line to rescue those still trapped, according to the Pakistani military.
The accident occurred around 8:30 a.m. in Allai, in the Battagram district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, when two of the car’s wires broke. The cable car, which travels above a stream, is a regular mode of transport for residents of the mountainous northern region, and the students, including children ages 10 to 15, were headed to a nearby school. The car stopped about 900 feet above the ground, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.
As panic gripped the passengers and their families, they issued urgent pleas for assistance. Authorities sent an army helicopter to the site, and video on local television showed it hovering above the cable car at some distance as a commando slid down a rope and delivered food and water.
But as the helicopter tried to get closer to the cable car, the car seemed to begin shaking heavily, which appeared to make an air rescue difficult.
Before the commando delivered the supplies, one of the passengers told a local TV news network that he and the others had
been stuck for more than six hours without food or water. He said that one child with a heart condition had fainted after panicking.
“My mobile phone battery is depleting fast,” he said.
The cause of the breakage, which appeared to leave only one cable intact, was unclear. Anwaar-ul Haq Kakar, Pakistan’s interim prime minister, called the accident “alarming” as he ordered the rescue operation.
Kakar instructed the authorities to carry out safety inspections on all private mountain lifts to ensure their safety, according to a statement from his office.
“It is a delicate rescue operation,” Mufti Ghulamullah, the mayor of Allai borough, said in a telephone interview. “With each attempt to bring the rescuer closer to the cable car using the helicopter, the gusts of wind from the rotor would jolt and unsettle the chairlift, causing the children to cry out in fear.”
A remote community watched helplessly.
The incident rattled residents in Pashto, a village of some 30,000 people in the remote Allai valley in northwestern Pakistan.
“They are in front of us but we are helpless — observing them and unable to provide any help,” Mufti Hasan Zaib, a religious scholar whose relative was trapped in the cable car, said in a phone interview Tuesday afternoon as he watched the rescue efforts from a nearby hillside.
Around 400 to 500 people use the cable car for commuting every day, residents say. Such locally built lifts, often improvised, are typically powered by petrol or diesel engines and are privately owned.
Maulana Qasim Mehmood, a local religious leader, said the incident was just a small glimpse of the daily vulnerability faced by people in the area. In the valley, home to tens of thousands of people, fundamental necessities like health care, education, transportation and other essential elements of life were absent, he said.
Allai was also badly affected by an earthquake in 2005 that killed more than 80,000 people and injured more than 100,000.
“As beautiful as this valley is, it holds many times more hidden sorrows,” Mehmood said. “The villages in Allai are several decades behind the global development standards.”
In the remote village, the cable car “made people’s lives much easier.”
Pashto is nestled along the mountains of one of the most remote corners of northwestern Pakistan. Little more than a collection of mud-brick homes, the village itself is carved
into the top of a hillside overlooking the Allai valley. It is one of the poorest districts in this stretch of Pakistan and for decades was all but cut off from the towns surrounding it.
The nearest functioning hospital is around 90 miles away, residents said. Getting there typically requires tying a sick person or woman in labor onto a traditional bed, carrying them three hours to the closest road and hiring a four-wheel drive vehicle to take them another three hours to the hospital.
“In many cases, people died or women gave birth along the way,” Mehmood said.
The nearest high school is around 4 miles away and, until recently, the journey there was similarly difficult. Students spent two or three hours descending a steep mountainside from the village, crossing a small river and climbing up the side of the opposite mountain. Then they had to walk another 2 miles. Even when they arrived, actually being taught in a classroom was far from certain: Teachers rarely show up to work, if at all.
Around five years ago, engineers from a nearby city agreed to build a cable car in Pashto to help students and others cross the valley, according to Mehmood. Its construction changed village life drastically, he added. The once hourslong journey across the valley took just 10 minutes — and cost around only 10 cents — on the cable car.
“People were desperate to use such services,” Mehmood said. “It made people’s lives much easier.”
Cable cars in the area tend to be relatively ad hoc constructions.
While the design of cable car networks varies by location, making them difficult to compare, many major ones are designed with strict safety regulations in mind, according to Simon Ho, a structural engineer in Britain. On a big cable car network, Ho said rescuers could try to gain access to a gondola along the cables and lower people via ropes, or failing that, send a helicopter.
But access along the cables did not appear to be an option in the Pakistan accident, since it appeared one of the wires had broken. Although the provenance of the cable car is unclear, such transport in the northwestern part of the country tends toward relatively ad hoc construction.
“It’s precarious to say the least,” Ho said, adding that it was unclear to him what safety features were on the cable car. “I don’t know how much load it can stand,” he said, of the rope, adding that a helicopter rescue in heavy winds was a tricky operation. “It’s a delicate situation.”
China’s stock market was plunging and its currency was teetering. The head of the central bank, fielding questions at a rare news conference, said China would make it easier to get home mortgages.
It was February 2016 and Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s longtime governor at the time, announced what proved to be the start of an extraordinary blitz of lending by China’s immense banking system.
Minimum down payments for buying apartments were reduced, triggering a surge in construction. Vast sums were also lent to local governments, allowing them to splurge on new roads and rail lines. For China, it was a familiar response to economic trouble. Within months, growth started to pick up and financial markets stabilized.
Today, as China faces another period of deep economic uncertainty, policymakers are drawing on elements of its crisis playbook, but with little sign of the same results. It has become considerably harder for China to borrow and invest its way back to economic strength.
On Friday, China’s top financial regulators summoned the leaders of the country’s leading banks and securities firms and urged them to provide more loans and other financial support for the economy — the latest in a series of similar admonitions.
But demand for more borrowing has wilted in recent months, blunting the effectiveness of looser lending policies by the banks.
The construction and sale of new homes has stalled. More than 50 real estate developers have run out of money and defaulted or stopped payment on bonds. The companies have left behind hundreds of thousands of unfinished apartments that many predominantly middle-class families had already purchased, taking out mortgages to do so.
At the same time, companies are wary of borrowing money for expansion as their sales tumble and the economy faces deflation. Local governments across much of China are deeply indebted and struggling even to pay their civil servants. Years of heavy infrastructure investments, followed by huge amounts of spending for mass testing and quarantines during the pandemic, have left China less willing to employ fiscal firepower
to jolt demand.
“The traditional way of stimulating the economy, through a credit boom and leveraging, has reached an end,” said Zhu Ning, a deputy dean of the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance.
Western economists have long contended that the answer to China’s economic troubles lies in reducing the country’s high rate of savings and investment and encouraging more consumer spending. The World Bank adopted that position in 2005, after China ran into banking troubles in 2003 and 2004 from a previous round of heavy lending.
But China has done little to strengthen its social safety net since then, so that households would not feel a need to save so much money. Government payments to seniors are tiny. Education is increasingly costly. Health care insurance is mostly a municipal government responsibility in China, and high costs for the strict “-zero-COVID” measures the country employed have nearly bankrupted many local government plans.
During the pandemic, some countries issued coupons for free or discounted restaurant meals and other services to stimulate spending. But while a few Chinese city governments experimented with such steps, the scale was tiny — offering individuals a handful of coupons worth a few dollars apiece.
The idea of using that kind of direct spending on a national scale is opposed within the top reaches of the Chinese government. China relied heavily on food ration
coupons starting under former Communist Chairman Mao Zedong and continuing through the early 1990s, but today lacks the reliable administrative systems that would be necessary.
China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has a well-known aversion to any social spending, which he has derided as “welfarism,” that he believes might erode the work ethic of the Chinese people.
“Even in the future, when we have reached a higher level of development and are equipped with more substantial financial resources, we still must not aim too high or go overboard with social security, and steer clear of the idleness-breeding trap of welfarism,” Xi said in a speech two years ago.
At the core of China’s current economic trouble is real estate, which represents a quarter of the country’s economic output and at least three-fifths of household savings.
When Zhou, the former central bank chief, unleashed a surge of borrowing in 2016, he triggered a frenzy of apartment construction even in remote cities like Qiqihar, a fading, frozen center of artillery manufacturing near the Siberian frontier. As easy credit sent apartment prices skyward, people in Qiqihar and throughout the country felt richer and flocked to car dealerships and other businesses to spend more money.
Apartments were bought as investments to rent out, including by many Chinese families who saw an opportunity to accumulate wealth. But as more and more apartments were built, their value as rentals declined. Investors were left with apartments whose rent wouldn’t pay for their mortgages. In many cities, annual rent has been 1.5% or less of an apartment’s purchase price, while mortgage interest costs have been 5% or 6%.
Apartments in China are commonly delivered by builders without amenities such as sinks and washing machines, or even basics like closets or flooring. Because rents are so low, many investors have not bothered to finish apartments over the past decade, holding newly built but hollow shells in the expectation of flipping them for ever-higher prices. By some estimates, Chinese cities now have 65 million to 80 million empty apartments.
Demand for new apart-
ments has now plummeted, leaving little expectation that a repeat of Zhou’s measures in 2016 would quickly revive the market. The annual number of births and marriages has almost halved since 2016, eroding much of the need for people to buy new apartments.
Prices for existing homes have fallen 14% in the past 24 months. Prices of new homes have not fallen as much, but only because local governments have told developers not to cut prices drastically. Sales of new homes have plunged as a result.
Many economists in China now suggest that the country needs to go beyond reductions in down payments and also cut interest rates sharply, going far beyond a tiny interest rate reduction Monday. Deep cuts in interest rates would make it much cheaper to borrow money for a new home, car or other big purchases. It could also spur more exports, long a driver of the Chinese economy.
A risk of cutting interest rates is that Chinese companies and families would be able to earn much higher interest rates on bank deposits in other countries, and would try to transfer large sums of money out of China. That would cause China’s currency, the yuan, to sink against the dollar, which would also make Chinese exports more competitive in foreign markets.
China cannot export its way out of economic trouble without incurring considerable hostility from governments in Europe, the United States and developing countries, which have become increasingly reluctant to accept job losses associated with a dependence on imports. But that may be a risk China is willing to take as pressure increases for further interest rate cuts.
“Cutting interest rates is necessary,” said Xu Sitao, the chief economist in the Beijing office of Deloitte. “It is about stabilizing the property sector and offering calibrated relief to companies and local governments that are experiencing financing woes.”
At least 50 buildings were consumed by wildfires in and around Kelowna, British Columbia, over the past few days, officials said Monday, warning that the final tally will be higher as their survey of the damage continues.
“We’re not done yet, and the most damaged neighborhoods are still to come,” Jason Brolund, the chief of the fire service in West Kelowna, the suburban community most ravaged by fire, said at a news conference Monday.
Attempts by crews to assess the extent of the destruction have been slowed by melted street signs, destroyed address markers on houses and impassable roads, as well as by felled power lines and trees, Brolund said.
But since Saturday, he said, a variety of factors have lessened the intensity of the fire, making it easier for fire crews to keep the flames away from buildings. None have been destroyed by the fire for the past 24 hours.
“What’s happening out there is the dayto-day grind of firefighting,” Brolund said.
British Columbia remained under a provincewide state of emergency, with 380 fires reported burning as of Monday. About 30,000 people have been ordered out of their homes, about one-third of them from the area around Kelowna, a popular summer vacation spot
with a metropolitan population of 200,000.
About 500 municipal firefighters from about 30 communities were fighting the fire Monday, in addition to the province’s wildfire crews.
Among the buildings burned down was a landmark resort on the shore of Okanagan Lake, the area’s biggest tourist draw. Last week, the province banned travel by tourists to the affected region in an effort to free up hotel rooms and other accommodations for evacuees and fire crews. The city’s airport has been closed during daylight hours to leave the surrounding airspace empty except for waterbombing aircraft and firefighting helicopters.
One factor aiding firefighters, the province’s wildfire service said Monday, is the reduction in the sun’s intensity — a result of all the smoke in the sky. Much of the province is now blanketed by smoke from the hundreds of active fires, and air quality warnings have been widely issued.
An unknown number of buildings have
also been destroyed by a separate fire about 100 miles north of Kelowna near Shuswap Lake.
On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau criticized Facebook’s parent company, Meta, for continuing to block news on feeds viewed by Canadians, saying it has made it difficult for people affected by the fires to find reliable information. Meta took the step after Canada passed legislation that requires it to compensate Canadian news outlets.
“Facebook is putting corporate profits ahead of people’s safety,” Trudeau told reporters in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. “It’s time for us to expect more from corporations like Facebook that are making billions of dollars off of Canadians.”
Last week, Facebook did not directly address earlier criticism of its action but noted that it has activated an emergency service for areas affected by the wildfires, including making available official government announcements.
Lucy Letby, a nurse who became the most prolific serial killer of children in modern British history, was sentenced on Monday to life in prison without parole, the culmination of a yearslong case that has horrified the country and raised questions over the management culture that allowed her to evade detection for so long.
Judge James Goss handed Letby a “whole life order,” meaning she will spend the rest of her life in prison, a sentence reserved for the country’s worst offenses. She is only the fourth woman to have ever received the sentence.
Goss told the courtroom that Letby, who was convicted last week of killing seven newborns and trying to kill six others, “acted completely contrary to the normal human instincts of nurturing and caring for babies” and that her actions caused a majority of her victims to suffer “acute pain.”
“There was premeditation, calculation and cunning in your actions,” the judge said, later describing “a deep malevolence bordering on sadism” in Letby’s crimes.
The murders and attempted killings took place between June 2015 and June 2016, when Letby was a nurse in the neonatal ward of the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwestern England, tasked with caring for premature and vulnerable babies. She refused to appear during her sentencing on Monday, but the court heard heart-wrenching testimony from the parents of babies who were killed.
The mother of a baby boy killed by Letby addressed the absent former nurse in court on Monday, saying, “There is no sentence that will ever compare to the excruciating agony
that we have suffered as a consequence of your actions,” according to the BBC.
The mother described how she had a memory box of mementos of her son and had treasured the prints of his hand and foot. But she now felt conflicted over these, she said, because Letby had made the prints when her son was born.
A father of triplets, two of whom Letby was convicted of killing, said in a prerecorded video statement that “everyday life was difficult, just getting up and living was a struggle,” after the death of his children.
“Lucy Letby has destroyed our lives,” he said, adding, “even after the trial has ended, it will continue to haunt us and will always have an impact on our lives.”
The lawyer for the prosecution, Philip Astbury, read out a statement from the parents of twins who were attacked in June 2015. One survived while the other died, and Letby was convicted of their murder and attempted murder, respectively.
After the death of the child, a family member was always present with their surviving daughter, the parents said — but Letby had been waiting for the relatives to leave so she could “attack.”
“You thought it was your right to play God with our children’s lives,” the statement said. “You thought you could enter our lives and turn it upside down, but you will never win. We hope you live a very long life and spend every day suffering for what you’ve done.”
While some of the parents delivered their statements through lawyers, others spoke directly to the courtroom,
through tears. One mother of two victims said that Letby’s absence from court showed the “disrespect” she had for the court and the families.
“We have attended court day in and day out, yet she decides she has had enough, and stays in her cell, just one final act of wickedness from a coward,” the mother said. The identities of the babies in the case and their families were protected throughout the trial.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, speaking on Monday morning, said that he had been shocked by the harrowing details of the case.
“I think it is cowardly that people that commit such horrendous crimes do not face their victims and hear firsthand the impact that their crimes have had on them and their families and loved ones,” he said, adding that the government was looking at changing the law to ensure convicted criminals attended their sentencings.
Over the course of the 10-month trial in Manchester Crown Court, which began in October, jurors heard that Letby had harmed babies by overfeeding them with milk, injecting them with air and insulin and inflicting “impacttype” trauma.
Letby, 33, maintained her innocence throughout the trial, where she faced 22 counts related to the killing and harming of babies. In addition to the murder convictions, Letby was found guilty of seven counts of attempted murder related to six newborns, meaning she tried to kill one of them twice, prosecutors said. The jury did not reach verdicts on six counts of attempted murder and Letby was found not guilty on two counts of attempted murder.
The economic travails of the post-pandemic years have led to intense intellectual and policy debates. One thing almost everyone agrees on, however, is that the post-COVID crisis bears very little resemblance to the global financial crisis of 2008.
So, sure enough, China — the world’s biggest or second-biggest economy, depending on how you measure it — seems to be teetering on the edge of a crisis that looks a lot like what the rest of the world went through in 2008.
I’m not confident enough in my understanding of China to judge whether it will manage to contain its Minsky moment, the point at which everyone suddenly realizes that unsustainable debt is, in fact, unsustainable. In fact, I’m not sure if anyone — including Chinese officials — knows the answer to that question.
But I think we can answer a more conditional question: If China does have a 2008-style crisis, will it spill over in a major way to the rest of the world, the United States in particular? And there the answer is pretty clearly no. Big as China’s economy is, America has remarkably little financial or trade exposure to
Before I get there, let’s talk about why China in 2023 resembles the North Atlantic economies, both America and Europe, in 2008.
The 2008 crisis was brought on by the bursting of a huge, trans-Atlantic housing bubble. The effects of the burst bubble were magnified by financial disruption, especially the collapse of “shadow banks” — institutions that acted like banks, created the risk of what amounted to bank runs, but were both largely unregulated and lacking the safety net provided to conventional banks.
Now comes China, with a real estate sector even more swollen than those of Western nations before 2008. China also has a large, highly troubled shadowbanking sector. And it has some unique problems, notably huge debts owed by local governments.
The good news is that China isn’t like Argentina or Greece, nations that owed large sums to foreign creditors. The debt in question here is, in essence, money China owes to itself. And it should in principle be possible for the national government to resolve the crisis through some combination of bailouts of debtors and haircuts for creditors.
But is China’s government competent enough to manage the kind of financial restructuring its economy needs? Do officials have sufficient resolve or intellectual clarity to do what needs to be done?
I worry especially about that last point. China needs to replace unsustainable real estate investment with higher consumer demand. But some reporting suggests that top officials remain suspicious of “wasteful” consumer spending and balk at the idea of “empowering individuals to make more decisions over how they spend their money.” And it’s not reassuring that Chinese officials are responding to the potential crisis by pushing banks to lend more, basically continuing along the path that got China where it is.
So China may have a crisis. If it does, how will it affect us?
The answer, as far as I can tell, is that America’s exposure to a potential China crisis is surprisingly small.
How much has the United States invested in China? Direct investment — investment that involves control — in China and Hong Kong is about $215 billion. Portfolio investment — basically stocks and bonds — is a bit more than $300 billion. So we’re talking around $515 billion in total.
That may not sound like a small number, but for an economy as big as ours, it is. Here’s one comparison. Right now, there are many concerns about U.S. commercial real estate, especially office buildings,
which probably face a permanent reduction in demand because of the rise in remote work. Well, U.S. office buildings are worth about $2.6 trillion, or around five times our total investment in China.
Why has a huge economy attracted so little U.S. investment? Basically, I’d argue, because given the arbitrariness of Chinese policy, many potential investors fear that the nation may be a kind of Roach Motel: You can get in, but you may not be able to get out.
What about China as a market? China is a huge player in world trade, but it doesn’t buy much from the United States — only about $150 billion in 2022, less than 1% of our gross domestic product. So a Chinese slump wouldn’t have much direct effect on demand for U.S. products. The effect would be larger for countries that sell more to China, including Germany and Japan, and there would be some ricochet effect on America via sales to these countries. But the overall effect would still be small.
A Chinese economic crisis might even have a small positive effect on the United States, because it would reduce demand for raw materials, especially oil, and as a result possibly reduce inflation.
None of this means that we should welcome the possibility of a Chinese slump or gloat over another nation’s troubles. Even on purely selfish grounds, we should worry about what the Chinese regime might do to distract its citizens from domestic problems.
But in economic terms, we seem to be looking at a potential crisis within China, not a 2008-style global event.
Durante los primeros siete meses de 2023, Puerto Rico registró un aumento del 24 por ciento en ingresos hoteleros comparado con 2021-2022, reveló el
martes el gobernador Pedro Rafael Pierluisi urrutia en el evento ‘Power Solutions’ del Consorcio de Agencias de Viajes de Estados Unidos.
“Mi confianza se basa en hechos y el desempeño de nuestra economía turística es un gran ejemplo. Demostramos al mundo el potencial turístico de Puerto Rico”, mencionó Pierluisi Urrutia ante más de 150 agentes de viaje.
En relación con la industria de cruceros, Pierluisi Urrutia informó que en el año fiscal pasado, arribaron 450 mil pasajeros, y se estima que este año alcanzará 1.3 millones de pasajeros. También se destacó la llegada de 11 barcos por primera vez y que ya existen 10 líneas de cruceros con puerto base en San Juan.
Ayer, Pierluisi Urrutia anunció que la aerolínea Avianca incrementará su operación con 14 vuelos semanales durante la temporada de invierno, incluyendo
una nueva ruta desde Medellín a San Juan. Este aumento se estima en un impacto económico de 30 millones de dólares.
“Estamos orgullosos de liderar la recuperación turística. En Puerto Rico, este sector apoya a más de cinco mil empresas y provee casi 94 mil puestos de trabajo”, expresó el gobernador.
Durante su discurso en el hotel El Conquistador, destacó la existencia de más de 160 opciones hoteleras con cerca de 15 mil habitaciones. También mencionó que hay más de 18 mil propiedades en alquiler a corto plazo con más de 30 mil habitaciones adicionales.
“Mi Administración está comprometida en apoyar iniciativas para desarrollar nuestra industria turística. En 2021 iniciamos una estrategia de inversiones en el sector turístico para elevar su competitividad”, concluyó Pierluisi Urrutia.
EL CAPITOLIO – Tras comenzar en 2021, la restauración de la rotonda y cúpula del Capitolio de Puerto Rico fue completada durante el verano.
“Hoy estamos ante la obra arquitectónica más importante de Puerto Rico. La Constitución tenemos que defenderla y protegerla con una gran cúpula y responsabilidad de la Asamblea Legislativa en beneficio de todos los puertorriqueños”, expresó el presidente de la Cámara de Representantes, Rafael Hernández Monta-
ñez en declaraciones escritas.
“El proyecto de restauración de la cúpula del Capitolio es una de las obras más ambiciosas en la historia de la Asamblea Legislativa. Se completó en tiempo récord gracias a un excelente plan de trabajo y selección de personal”, añadió.
Por su parte, el superintendente del Capitolio, César Hernández Alfonzo destacó que, tras casi 100 años, la cúpula ha recibido una merecida restauración, siendo esta una pieza clave de la historia y democracia del país.
La cúpula interior destaca relieves y mosaicos de diferentes periodos históricos de Puerto Rico, creados por artistas como Gino Garibaldi y Rafael Ríos Rey. El trabajo incluyó limpieza, restauración de concreto, mejoras de iluminación y un nuevo sistema de control de humedad.
La participación en el proyecto involucró a presidentes de la Cámara y el Senado, al superintendente del Capitolio, legisladores y diversos profesionales, incluyendo ingenieros, arquitectos y artistas que contribuyeron en distintas etapas.
POR EL STAR STAFF
SAN JUAN – El Senado aprobó a principios de esta semana, por unanimidad, una medida de la autoría de la senadora del Distrito de Humacao, Wanda “Wandy” Soto Tolentino, que procura fortalecer la agricultura comercial sostenible en la región este.
La Resolución Conjunta del Senado 84 busca fomentar el desarrollo económico, la permanencia de los agricultores y la seguridad alimentaria en los municipios de Caguas, Gurabo, Humacao, Juncos, Las Piedras, Maunabo, Naguabo, Patillas, San Lorenzo y Yabucoa.
“La aprobación de esta medida representa un paso importante hacia un futuro más prometedor para la agricultura en el Distrito de Humacao y los municipios que comprenden el área este de Puerto Rico. Esta medida reafirma mi compromiso con el desarrollo económico y la sostenibilidad de nuestros
constituyentes”, mencionó la legisladora novoprogresista. Durante la discusión de la medida, Soto Tolentino enfatizó que la medida establece unas directrices bajo los objetivos trazados en la Ley 73 de 2018, conocida como la “Ley de Planificación, Programación y Desarrollo Agrícola”.
Entre las iniciativas, se destaca la reorganización de los núcleos de producción que facilitará el procesamiento y mercadeo de productos agrícolas, el impulso de cooperativas agrícolas que potenciará la productividad y el ofrecimiento de campañas educativas, incentivos, subsidios, préstamos agrícolas y asesoramiento técnico que empoderará a los agricultores.
“Seguiremos trabajando para fortalecer este sector vital de nuestra economía y obligatorio para nuestro desarrollo como pueblo. Continuaremos avanzando y cumpliendo el compromiso inquebrantable que contraje con mi gente”, añadió Soto Tolentino.
When fans and critics speak about Italian soprano Renata Scotto, who died last Wednesday at 89, they immediately seize upon her dramatic acumen — her ability to spin character insights into vocal magic. Her combination of style, beauty and meticulousness as a singer made her one of the most original opera stars of the second half of the 20th century.
If she sometimes pushed her voice to harsh extremes in roles that challenged her resources, that only burnished her reputation as a serious artist. And her well-publicized quarrels with general managers and co-stars — including Luciano Pavarotti and Metropolitan Opera impresario Rudolf Bing — likewise fueled the idea that she had an irrepressible temperament that destined her for the stage.
But what really made her special was her specificity — her ability to connect personal insight to vocal inflection in a way that made that insight legible for audiences.
James Levine, the Met’s longtime music director, championed her early in his career there and helped introduce her artistry to a wide audience in the first “Live From the Met” telecast, a “La Bohème” in 1977, alongside Pavarotti. Levine shaped the delicate inner world of Scotto’s cripplingly insecure Mimì. Too often, the tenor’s and the soprano’s back-to-back arias in Act I feel like a gift exchange of rhapsodic melodies from one vainly beautiful voice to another.
Scotto, though, turned Mimì, a reclusive seamstress, into a foil for Pavarotti’s extroverted, carefree Rodolfo. Her soft tone curled back into itself as she retreated from the light of Pavarotti’s sunny tenor. In Act III, dressed in funereal black, she reasserted the inevitability of Mimì’s lonely life as she broke off their love affair, her voice suffused with self-inflicted pain and feelings of unworthiness.
Scotto enjoyed a long, fruitful collaboration with Levine, who gave her the artistic challenges (not always successful) and splashy new productions she craved. He led her in a season-opening “Norma” in 1981; Verdi’s “Macbeth” in 1982; Zandonai’s “Francesca da Rimini” in 1984; and the company premiere of Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito,” also in 1984.
Inhabiting repertoire across a breadth of periods and styles, Scotto had decisive thoughts about what constituted good taste. In a 1978 interview with The New York Times, she praised Maria Callas because she “cleaned things up” and popularized a move away from generalized pathos. (She cited Beniamino Gigli and his tear-stained tone as a prime offender). Veristic growling also came in for a scolding (“It’s ridiculous. Vulgar!”). She made bel canto feel more real and verismo, more beautiful.
She took these apparent contradictions and reconciled them in singing of indisputable accomplishment. In touchstone bel canto roles like Adina and Lucia, her singing was light and facile without indulgence — she didn’t fuss with the fireworks. In Verdi and Puccini, she was emotionally engaged without sliding around the pitches or gasping in the middle of phrases. Musetta’s and Desdemona’s prayers had a spoken quality; Violetta’s letter reading, a sung one.
Scotto contained multitudes, and that extended to her vocal categorization, too. Was she a leggiero, a lyric, a spinto? She was all and none. Some have described her as a lyric by fach and a spinto by temperament, attributing her vocal decline — inevitable for any singer — to the irreconcilability of the two. Her astonishing piano high notes in dramatic music, the unforced warmth of her middle register, the plangency of her tone, the controlled force at the top of the staff, nonetheless speak to a formidable technique.
Her Cio-Cio-San in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” preserved on two studio recordings, exploits the permeable boundary among those voice types. “Puccini gives to Butterfly everything possible to do for a singer,” she once told an interviewer. “She has to have a beautiful lyric voice, she has to have a huge dramatic voice.” The 1978 recording with Lorin Maazel bears that out: Her Cio-Cio-San, steeped in a romantic fantasy that turns increasingly bleak, alternates among a ravishing head voice, lacerating outbursts and a radiantly balanced middle register. The progress is not linear; her voice responds to hopes and doubts that the heroine continually surfaces and suppresses.
Scotto’s morbidezza — her ability to inflect her middle voice with captivating softness — was arguably her most impressive quality. It’s hardly the flashiest weapon in the arsenal of a singing actress, but it represents its own kind of daring — the courage to lower the volume and expose one’s tenderness. Violetta’s “Ah! dite alla giovine” in “La Traviata” was written for it. But, Scotto reveals, so was much of Desdemona’s music in Verdi’s “Otello”: Her vocal lightness imbued the Act I love duet with the unguarded charm of an open heart and then turned fragile, even fateful, in the Act IV “Willow Song.”
Scotto was aware that her singing wasn’t perfect. At full volume, her top notes rarely cooperated with her. At her best,
she could harness and focus their power, but too often they careened in hair-raising ways. In florid music, her pitch wasn’t always true, but when a musical phrase was repeated, you could hear her correct herself and tune those pesky staccatos. She was an alert listener to others — her expressive face registering subtle reactions to her co-stars onstage — but also to herself.
It’s also fascinating to hear her respond to Riccardo Muti’s conducting in their 1980 recording of “La Traviata.” His simmering drinking song elicits from Scotto a sense of the danger that could engulf the defiant Violetta. The Act I finale, pensive yet propulsive, is full of haunted, pale-gold tone, and Alfredo’s dramatically implausible offstage cries suddenly make sense: This Violetta is tormented by her lover’s ghostly presence in much the same way Lucia is in her mad scene.
This is the kind of work Scotto did. She deployed a malleable voice and a sense of taste that could transcend styles to find a through line for heroines like Mimì, Desdemona, CioCio-San and Violetta. She connected the dots to reveal something beautiful, yes, but also somehow new and true.
That advantage may be why EG.5 has become the dominant strain worldwide, and it could be one reason COVID cases have started to rise again.
That mutation “may mean that more people are susceptible because the virus can escape a little bit more of that immunity,” Pekosz said.
But EG.5, which has also been called Eris, does not appear to have any new capacities when it comes to its contagiousness, its symptoms or its likelihood of causing severe illness. Diagnostic tests and treatments such as Paxlovid continue to be effective against it, Pekosz said.
Dr. Eric Topol, executive vice president of Scripps Research in San Diego, said he wasn’t overly worried about the variant; however, he added, he would feel better if the new vaccine formulation, which is expected to be rolled out in the fall, was available. The updated booster was developed based on another variant that is genetically similar to EG.5. It is expected to provide better protection against EG.5 than last year’s shot, which targeted the original coronavirus strain and a much earlier omicron variant that is only distantly related.
“My main concern is for the people at high risk,” Topol said. “The vaccines that they’ve had are too far removed from where the virus is right now and where it’s going.”
By DANA G. SMITHConcern is rising about the COVID-19 variant EG.5. This month, it became the dominant variant in the United States, and the World Health Organization classified EG.5 as a “variant of interest,” meaning it has genetic changes that give it an advantage and its prevalence is growing. So how worried should people be about it?
While severe illness in older adults and people with existing health conditions is always a concern, as is long COVID in anyone who gets infected, experts say EG.5 does not pose a substantial threat — or at least no more of one than any other major variants currently circulating.
“It’s a concern that it’s increasing, but it doesn’t look
like something that’s vastly different from what’s already been circulating in the U.S. for the past three to four months,” said Andrew Pekosz, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. “So I think that’s what tempers my concern about this variant, at this point in time.”
Even the WHO stated in its announcement that, based on the available evidence, “the public health risk posed by EG.5 is evaluated as low at the global level.”
The variant was identified in China in February and was first detected in the United States in April. It is a descendant of the omicron variant XBB.1.9.2 and has one notable mutation that helps it to evade antibodies developed by the immune system in response to earlier variants and vaccines.
Experts are more apprehensive about other emerging variants that carry the same immune evading mutation as EG.5, plus another mutation that makes the virus more transmissible. Scientists have nicknamed the combination of these mutations “FLip,” because they both flip the positions of two amino acids, labeled F and L. While these FLip variants make up only a small proportion of COVID cases currently, they could trigger a greater increase in infections in the coming months.
“I’m generally very concerned about the overall rate of evolution for SARS-CoV-2,” said Trevor Bedford, a professor in the vaccine and infectious disease division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. “No single variant has been that impactful, but the overall accumulation of these mutations is having significant impact.”
Despite the growing number of mutations, it is highly unlikely these new variants will cause a surge akin to the one that occurred in the winter of 2022 with the first omicron variant, Topol said. “It’s nothing like what we’ve been through with omicron in terms of how much more transmissible” these variants are, he said. “But there will be more reinfections.”
Some 50,000 to 10,000 years ago as ice sheets melted and the planet warmed, around 100 species of gigantic animals started to disappear without a trace.
Paleontologists have sought to understand exactly how these animals died off, including iconic predators like the saber-tooth cat and the dire wolf. Some hypotheses suggest stiff competition for limited food aggravated by the arrival of humans and gray wolves. But new evidence suggests a bone disease that can debilitate modern cats and dogs, and even some of their humans, may have also played a role.
In a paper published last month in the journal PLoS One, researchers report that as the climate shifted, the bones of saber-tooth cats and dire wolves became riddled with defects associated with osteochondrosis dissecans, or OCD, a severe developmental disease in which holes form in bone caused by developing tissue that never hardened. In a live animal, the hole is filled with a cartilage flap that can lead to painful inflammation. It is commonly referred to as osteochondritis dissecans.
These findings reveal a fossilized snapshot of how the physiologies of prominent Pleistocene epoch predators most likely faltered under environmental pressures, said Mairin Balisi, curator of the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, California, and an author of the paper.
OCD is a common orthopedic disease affecting the joints of rapidly growing dogs. While it’s less common among cats, cases have been reported among snow leopards, which could mean OCD is underreported in wild animals, said Dr. Hugo Schmökel, a veterinary orthopedic surgeon based in Strömsholm, Sweden, and an author of the paper.
Schmökel visited the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles in 2022 to study whether saber-tooth cats and dire wolves suffered from cruciate ligament disease. Instead, something else caught
his eye: divots of varying sizes furrowing these ancient carnivores’ knee and shoulder joints.
While paleontologists had noticed these defects, “no one had realized that maybe these were premortem damages to the bone and not postmortem,” Schmökel said.
With the help of Balisi, then a postdoctoral fellow at the La Brea Tar Pits, and Aisling Farrell, a senior collections manager, Schmökel inspected more than 1,000 saber-tooth cat and dire wolf limb bones.
The team discovered that around 6% of the limb bones of young adult and juvenile saber-tooth cats, specifically knee joints, had divots measuring less than 7 millimeters.
Nearly 3% of young adult and juvenile dire wolves also had defects in the knee joint that tended to be larger, measuring more than 12 millimeters. Small shoulder joint defects were more common in the wolves, the same as in dogs, totaling almost 5%. A few adult limbs, but no juvenile limbs, showed signs of osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease that can result from OCD.
Prevalence of the disease among the animals appeared to be more than
among modern animals and humans, Schmökel said.
Just from bones, it’s unclear why OCD struck the way it did. Nor can the researchers say for sure how it affected the animals’ quality of life or mobility. In modern domestic animals, the disease can cause varying levels of pain and lameness. In early life, these bone defects can heal on their own;
it may not have been much of an impairment, at least for some individuals. The animals’ social behavior also may have mitigated the worst of the disease, said Larisa DeSantis, a paleontologist at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the study.
In an email, she said other specimens from the La Brea Tar Pits had signs of “hip dysplasia and severe arthritis, revealing the ability of these ice age predators to live for an extended period of time with such injuries.”
But to the researchers, the higher prevalence of OCD offers grounds for speculation that there was an inbreeding problem among saber-tooth cats and dire wolves as a result of dwindling, isolated populations. Schmökel points to modern-day animals like Isle Royale wolves and Florida panthers that have experienced the same.
While DeSantis is skeptical that OCD was solely involved in the extinction of these apex predators, Balisi says the findings are a prompt for further research.
Signs of the disease, Balisi said, “could be a morphological manifestation of something deeper that we can’t get to just yet, but I think it’s only a matter of time.”
AVISO A ACREEDORES DE LAS SUCESIONES SANTOS ALONSO MALDONADxO SOBRE FORMACIÓN DE INVENTARIO EN SEDE NOTARIAL
ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS
E.E.U.U. ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.
A: ACREEDORES DEL CAUSANTE SANTOS ALONSO MALDONADO
POR LA PRESENTE se les notifica que se ha iniciado la preparación del inventario en sede notarial del caudal relicto de los causantes Santos Alonso Maldonado. Se les requiere para que toda reclamación con los correspondientes comprobantes bajo juramento sea presentada y dirigida al peticionario por conducto de sus abogados a las siguientes direcciones y dentro del plazo de treinta (30) días contados desde la publicación del presente edicto:
Sucesión Santos Alonso Maldonado
Lcdo. Omar Sánchez Pagán PO Box 195055
San Juan Puerto, Rico, 00919
Se le advierte que de no responder a este Aviso, los procedimientos para la formación y liquidación del caudal d ela causante continuarán sin más citarle ni oirle.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU-
NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA
SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN SEBASTIÁN
BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO
Parte Demandante Vs. LA SUCESIÓN DE OVIDIO
LÓPEZ DOMÍNGUEZ
T/C/C OBIDIO
LÓPEZ DOMÍNGUEZ COMPUESTA POR
FULANO Y MENGANO DE TAL, POSIBLES
HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS; GRACIELA PADUA
VÉLEZ POR SÍ Y COMO
VIUDA DE OVIDIO LÓPEZ
DOMINGUEZ; OVIDIO
LÓPEZ PADUA POR SÍ
Y COMO HEREDERO DE OVIDIO LÓPEZ DOMINGUEZ
Parte Demandada
Civil Núm.: SS2022CV00670.
(0002). Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO, EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINA-
RIA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS. AVISO DE PÚBLICA SUBASTA. El Alguacil que suscribe por la presente anuncia y hace constar que en cumplimiento de la Sentencia dictada el 23 de enero de 2023 y notificada el 31 de enero de 2023, la Orden de Ejecución de Sentencia del 12 de julio de 2023 y el Mandamiento de Ejecución del 21 de julio de 2023 en el caso de epígrafe, procederé a vender el día 4 DE OCTUBRE DE 2023, A LAS 10:30 DE LA MAÑANA, en mi oficina, localizada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de San Sebastián, en la Calle Severo Arana (al lado del Cuartel de la Policía), San Sebastián, Puerto Rico, al mejor postor en pago de contado y en moneda de los Estados Unidos de América, cheque de gerente o giro postal, todo título, derecho o interés de la parte demandada sobre la siguiente propiedad:
RÚSTICA: Sita en el Barrio Culebrinas de San Sebastián compuesta de 1442.9751 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE: con parcela de uso público que lo separa de camino municipal; SUR y ESTE: con remanente de la finca principal; y por el OESTE: con Luis Rosa González. Contiene una casa de vivienda descrita en la finca principal. Inscrita al folio 79 del tomo 247 de San Sebastián, Finca 11650. Registro de la Propiedad de San Sebastián. La escritura de hipoteca por la suma de $25,000.00 consta inscrita al folio 125 del tomo 487 de San Sebastián, Finca 11650. Registro de la Propiedad de San Sebastián. Inscripción quinta (5ta). La escritura que modifica esta hipoteca consta inscrita al folio 126 del tomo 487 de San Sebastián, Finca 11650. Registro de la Propiedad de San Sebastián. Inscripción novena (9na). La escritura de hipoteca por la suma de $24,000.00 consta inscrita al folio 125 del tomo 487 de San Sebastián, Finca 11650. Registro de la Propiedad de San Sebastián. Inscripción séptima (7ma). La escritura que modifica esta hipoteca consta inscrita al folio 126 del tomo 487 de San Sebastián, Finca 11650. Registro de la Propiedad de San Sebastián. Inscripción décima (10ma). La escritura de hipoteca por la suma de $17,000.00 consta inscrita al folio 125 vuelto del tomo 487 de San Sebastián, Finca 11650. Registro de la Propiedad de San Sebastián.
Inscripción octava (8va). Dirección Física: PR 109 Culebrinas Wd, San Sebastián, PR 00685. Número de Catastro: 30-129071-477-16-000. El tipo mínimo para la primera subasta será de $66,000.00. De no haber adjudicación en la primera subasta se celebrará una SEGUNDA SUBASTA, el día 11 DE OCTUBRE DE 2023, A LAS 10:30 DE LA MAÑANA en el mismo lugar, en la cual el tipo mínimo será de dos terceras partes del tipo mínimo fijado en la primera subasta, o sea, $44,000.00. De no haber adjudicación en la segunda subasta, se celebrará una TERCERA SUBASTA el día 18 DE OCTUBRE DE 2023, A LAS 10:30 DE LA MAÑANA en el mismo lugar, en la cual el tipo mínimo será la mitad del precio pactado, o sea, $33,000.00. Si se declarase desierta la tercera subasta, se adjudicará la finca a favor del acreedor por la totalidad de la cantidad adeudada si ésta es igual o menor que el monto del tipo de la tercera subasta, si el tribunal lo estima conveniente. Se abonará dicho monto a la cantidad adeudada si ésta es mayor. Dicho remate se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer a la demandante el importe de la Sentencia por la suma de $52,813.63 de principal, más intereses sobre dicha suma al 6.99% anual desde el 3 de septiembre de 2020 hasta su completo pago, más $1,191.00 de recargos acumulados, los cuales continuarán en aumento hasta el saldo total de la deuda, más la cantidad estipulada de $6,600.00 para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados, así como cualquier otra suma que contenga el contrato del préstamo. Surge del Estudio de Título Registral que sobre esta propiedad pesan los siguientes gravámenes posteriores a la hipoteca que por la presente se pretende ejecutar: a) Aviso de Demanda: Pleito seguido por Banco Popular de Puerto Rico Vs. Ovidio López Padua (soltero), Ovidio López Domínguez t/c/c Obidio López Domínguez y su esposa Graciela Padua Vélez, ante el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de San Sebastián, en el Caso Civil Número SS2022CV00670, sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca, en la que se reclama el pago de la hipoteca, con un balance de $52,813.63 y otras cantidades, según Demanda de fecha 14 de octubre de 2022. Anotada al Tomo Karibe de San Sebastián. Anotación A. Se notifica al acreedor posterior o a su sucesor o cesionario en derecho para que comparezca a proteger su derecho si así
Wednesday, August 23, 2023 20
lo desea. Se les advierte a los interesados que todos los documentos relacionados con la presente acción de ejecución de hipoteca, así como los de Subasta, estarán disponibles para ser examinados, durante horas laborables, en el expediente del caso que obra en los archivos de la Secretaría del Tribunal, bajo el número de epígrafe y para su publicación en un periódico de circulación general en Puerto Rico por espacio de dos semanas y por lo menos una vez por semana; y para su fijación en los sitios públicos requeridos por ley. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante, continuarán subsistentes; entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate y que la propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores tal como lo expresa la Ley Núm. 210-2015. Y para el conocimiento de los demandados, de los acreedores posteriores, de los licitadores, partes interesadas y público en general, EXPIDO para su publicación en los lugares públicos correspondientes, el presente Aviso de Pública Subasta en San Sebastián, Puerto Rico, hoy 1 de agosto de 2023. LUIS A. NIEVES RIVERA, ALGUACIL DEL TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN SEBASTIÁN.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CAGUAS
REVERSE MORTGAGE FUNDING LLC
Demandante Vs. SUCESION FREDERICK HENRY BARREDA MONGE COMPUESTA POR JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE COMO
POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS; ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA; CENTRO DE RECAUDACION DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES
Demandados
Civil Núm.: CG2021CV02346.
Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EDICTO DE SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS.
A: LA PARTE DEMANDADA, AL (A LA) SECRETARIO(A) DE HACIENDA DE PUERTO RICO Y AL PÚBLICO
GENERAL:
Certifico y Hago Constar: Que en cumplimiento con el Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que me ha sido dirigido por el (la) Secretario(a) del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Caguas, en el caso de epígrafe, venderé en pública subasta y al mejor postor, por separado, de contado y por moneda de curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América y/o Giro Postal y Cheque Certificado, en mi oficina ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Caguas, el 25 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2023, A LAS 9:00 DE LA MAÑANA, todo derecho título, participación o interés que le corresponda a la parte demandada o cualquiera de ellos en el inmueble hipotecado objeto de ejecución que se describe a continuación: RÚSTICA: Predio de terreno radicado en el Barrio Borinquén de Caguas, Puerto Rico, con un área de tres punto cero treinta y seis cuerdas, equivalentes a ONCE MIL NOVECIENTOS TREINTA Y DOS PUNTO SESENTA Y NUEVE METROS CUADRADOS (11,932.69 M.C.). En lindes por el Norte, con el solar que le fuera segregado; por el Sur, con el solar que le fuera segregado; por el Este, con una faja de terreno destinada a uso público; y por el Oeste, con la parcela “E” del plano de inscripción. Enclava edificación para fines residenciales. Finca número 22,367 inscrita al folio móvil del tomo 1600, inscripción octava, Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección I. La Hipoteca Revertida consta inscrita al folio 256 del tomo 1750, Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección I, inscripción 9ª. Propiedad localizada en: PR 763 KM. 4.7 INT., BO. BORINQUEN, CAGUAS PR 00725. Según figuran en la certificación registral, la propiedad objeto de ejecución está gravada por las siguientes cargas anteriores o preferentes: Nombre del Titular: N/A. Suma de la Carga: N/A. Fecha de Vencimiento: N/A. Según figuran en la certificación registral, la propiedad objeto de ejecución está gravada por las siguientes cargas posteriores a la inscripción del crédito ejecutante: Nombre del Titular: Secretario de la Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano. Suma de la Carga: $382,500.00. Fecha de Vencimiento: 12 de
mayo de 2088. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad de la propiedad y que todas las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes al crédito ejecutante antes descritos, si los hubiere, continuarán subsistentes. El rematante acepta dichas cargas y gravámenes anteriores, y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Se establece como tipo de mínima subasta la suma de $382,500.00, según acordado entre las partes en el precio pactado en la escritura de hipoteca. De ser necesaria una SEGUNDA SUBASTA por declararse desierta la primera, la misma se celebrará en mi oficina, ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Caguas, el 2 DE OCTUBRE DE 2023, A LAS 9:00 DE LA MAÑANA, y se establece como mínima para dicha segunda subasta la suma de $255,000.00, 2/3 partes del tipo mínima establecido originalmente. Si tampoco se produce remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta, se establece como mínima para la TERCERA SUBASTA, la suma de $191,250.00, la mitad (1/2) del precio pactado y dicha subasta se celebrará en mi oficina, ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Caguas, el 10 DE OCTUBRE DE 2023, A LAS 9:00 DE LA MAÑANA. Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo para, con su producto satisfacer a la parte demandante, el importe de la Sentencia dictada a su favor ascendente a la suma de $220,819.14 por concepto de principal, más la suma de $36,257.95 en intereses acumulados al 1 de marzo de 2022 y los cuales continúan acumulándose a razón de 3.317% anual hasta su total y completo pago; más la sumas de $9,544.37 en seguro hipotecario; $5,355.00 en tarifas de servicio; $2,016.00 en seguro; $555.00 de tasaciones; $480.00 de inspecciones; $615.00 en adelantos pendientes; más la cantidad de 10% del pagare original en la suma de $38,250.00, para gastos, costas y honorarios de abogado, esta última habrá de devengar intereses al máximo del tipo legal fijado por la oficina del Comisionado de Instituciones Financieras aplicable a esta fecha, desde este mismo día hasta su total y completo saldo. La venta en pública subasta de la referida propiedad se verificará libre de toda carga o gravamen posterior que afecte la mencionada finca, a cuyo efecto se notifica y se hace saber la fecha, hora y sitio de la PRIMERA,
SEGUNDA Y TERCERA SUBASTA, si esto fuera necesario, a los efectos de que cualquier persona o personas con algún interés puedan comparecer a la celebración de dicha subasta. Se notifica a todos los interesados que las actas y demás constancias del expediente de este caso están disponibles en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante horas laborables para ser examinadas por los (las) interesados (as). Y para su publicación en el periódico The San Juan Daily Star, que es un diario de circulación general en la isla de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas consecutivas con un intervalo de por lo menos siete (7) días entre ambas publicaciones, así como para su publicación en los sitios públicos de Puerto Rico. Expedido en Caguas, Puerto Rico, hoy 8 de agosto de 2023. CARLOS
DELGADO CRUZ, ALGUACIL REGIONAL. ÁNGEL GÓMEZ GÓMEZ, ALGUACIL PLACA #593.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE FAJARDO
LEGACY MORTGAGE
ASSET TRUST 2019-GS5
Parte Demandante Vs. NOLGIE RODRÍGUEZ
FIGUEROA; CARMEN AMARILYS
SANTIAGO NORAT; SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES
RODRÍGUEZ-SANTIAGO
Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: LU2019CV00263. Salón Núm.: (307). Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA - IN REM. EDICTO DE SUBASTA.
ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R., SS.
A: NOLGIE RODRÍGUEZ
FIGUEROA; CARMEN AMARILYS SANTIAGO NORAT; SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES
RODRÍGUEZ-SANTIAGO:
FIRSTBANK PUERTO
RICO: Y AL PÚBLICO EN
GENERAL:
El Alguacil que suscribe, certifica y hace constar que en cumplimiento de Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que me ha sido dirigido por la Secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Fajardo, procederé
a vender en pública subasta y al mejor postor, por separado, de contado y por moneda de curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América. Todo pago recibido por el (la) Alguacil por concepto de subastas será en efectivo, giro postal o cheque certificado a nombre del (de la) Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia. Todo derecho, título, participación e interés que le corresponda a la parte demandada o cualquiera de ellos en el inmueble hipotecado objeto de ejecución que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar número once (11) del bloque B de la Urbanización Alamar, ubicada en el Barrio Sabana del término municipal de Luquillo, Puerto Rico, con un área superficial de doscientos sesenta y ocho metros cuadrados y ochenta centímetros cuadrados (268.80). En lindes por el NORTE, en veintiún (21.00) metros, con el solar número doce (12) del bloque B; por el SUR, en veintiún (21.00) metros, con el solar número diez (10) del bloque B; por el ESTE, en doce metros ochenta centímetros (12.80), con la calle B de la urbanización y por el OESTE, en doce metros ochenta centímetros (12.80), con terrenos para un futuro desarrollo. Enclava edificación. Inscrita al folio 220 del tomo 140 de Luquillo, finca número #7,839. Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección de Fajardo. La propiedad objeto de ejecución está localizada en la siguiente dirección: Urbanización Alamar, B-11 Calle B, Luquillo, P.R. 00773. Según figura en el Estudio de título, la propiedad objeto de ejecución está gravada al siguiente Gravamen posterior a la inscripción del crédito ejecutante: a) Aviso de Demanda de fecha 1 de mayo de 2011, expedida en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Fajardo, en el caso civil número NSCI2011733, sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca, seguido por Firstbank Puerto Rico versus Carmen Amarilis Santiago Norat casada con Nolgie Rodríguez Figueroa, por la suma de $98,016.03 más intereses y otras sumas, anotado el día 3 de abril de 2012, al folio 175 del tomo 278 de Luquillo, finca número 7,839, Anotación A. Se le notifica a los acreedores posteriores anteriormente identificados para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les convenga o satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, costas y honorarios de abogados asegurados, quedando entonces subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. Se informa que la
TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYAMÓN NELSON ALVARADO COLÓN, JUDITH PÉREZ VÁZQUEZ Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR
AMBOS
Parte Demandante V. TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DE PAGARÉ
Parte Demandada
Civil Núm.: TA2023CV00809.
Sala: 502. Sobre: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS. A: TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DE PAGARÉ.
POR LA PRESENTE, se le notifica a usted que ha sido demandada en el presente caso sobre liquidación de comunidad de bienes. La información de la representación legal de la parte demandante es:
Lcdo. Santos Manuel Rivera Estrella PO BOX 1118, COMERlO, PR 00782
Lcda. Damarie Rosario González
721 Hernández Miramar Towers 3-1, San Juan, PR 00907
Se le apercibe que si no compareciere usted a contestar dicha demanda dentro del término de 30 días a partir de la publicación de este edicto, se le podrá anotar la rebeldía y se podrá dictar sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado, sin más citarle ni oírle. También se le apercibe que todo escrito deberá ser presentado electrónicamente a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo de Casos (SUMAC). En Bayamón, Puerto Rico, a 11 de agosto de 2023. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. SANDRA BÁEZ
HERNÁNDEZ, SECRETARIA
AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL I.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU-
NAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA
TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INS-
TANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN COMPU-LINK CORPORATION, D/B/A CELINK
Demandante Vs. SUCESION MAX
ALFREDO TORO MATTEI
COMPUESTA POR JOHN
DOE Y JANE DOE COMO
POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS; ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA; CENTRO
Demandado (a)
Civil Núm.: SJ2022CV06929. Sala: 508. Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTOS.
A: JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESION DE MAX ALFREDO TORO MATTEI.
EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 14 de agosto de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha 15 de agosto de 2023. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 15 de agosto de 2023. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. MARTHA ALMODÓVAR CABRERA, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.
GOBIERNO DE PUERTO RICO. DEPARTAMENTO DE ESTADO. NOMBRE COMERCIAL PARA REGISTRAR. AVISO. A QUIEN PUEDA INTERESAR: De acuerdo con las disposiciones de la Ley Núm. 75 del 23 de septiembre de 1992, según enmendada, mejor conocida como la Ley de Nombres Comerciales del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico y la Sección 24 del Reglamento promulgado bajo la ley citada anteriormente, el siguiente nombre comercial ha sido presentado en el Departamento de Estado de Puerto Rico para su archivo y registro.
Número de Expediente:
251795-99-1. Propietario: SHEILA M. VÁZQUEZ FONTÁNEZ. Dirección: HACIENDA
BORINQUEN 1109, CALLE REINA DE LAS FLORES, CAGUAS, PR 00725-7562. Activi-
dad Empresarial: “VENTA DE ROPA Y ACCESORIOS DE MODA”. Renuncia a elementos no registrables: “GINGER”.
NOTIFICACIÓN: Cualquier oposición a este registro deberá presentarse en el Departamento de Estado de Puerto Rico dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este aviso.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN
BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO
Demandante V. MARÍA TERESA
SÁNCHEZ ACOSTA
Demandado(a)
Civil: SJ2023CV04745. (604).
Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA (IN REM). NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.
A: MARÍA TERESA
SÁNCHEZ ACOSTA. (Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 14 de agosto de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 18 de agosto de 2023. En SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, el 18 de agosto de 2023. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA.MARILY LÓPEZ MARTÍNEZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL
GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE BAYAMÓN ORIENTAL BANK
DEMANDANTE V. SUCESIÓN DE ROBERTO ORTIZ
ORTEGA Y SUCESIÓN
DE ANGELITA FEBUS TAÑON COMPUESTAS POR SUS HEREDEROS CONOCIDOS ARELIS ORTIZ FEBUS, ROBERTO ORTIZ FEBUS Y MORAIMA ORTIZ FEBUS; SUCESION DE VIVIANA MORALES FEBUS COMPUESTA POR SUS HEREDEROS CONOCIDOS LUIS RAUL ORTEGA MORALES, YULIANA ORTEGA MORALES T/C/C JULIANA ORTEGA MORALES, ANTONIO ORTEGA MORALES E IRIS BETHZAIDA ORTEGA MORALES; FULANO DE TAL Y SUTANA DE TAL COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS Y/O MIEMBROS CON INTERES DE DICHAS SUCESIONES DEMANDADO(A)
CIVIL: BY2022CV00669.
SALA: 502. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.
A: ARELIS ORTIZ FEBUS, ROBERTO ORTIZ FEBUS Y MORAIMA ORTIZ FEBUS COMO HEREDEROS CONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESIÓN DE ROBERTO ORTIZ ORTEGA Y LA SUCESIÓN DE ANGELITA FEBUS TAÑÓN; ANTONIO ORTEGA MORALES E IRIS BETHZAIDA ORTEGA MORALES COMO HEREDEROS CONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESIÓN DE VIVIANA MORALES FEBUS; FULANO DE TAL Y SUTANA DE TAL COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE TODAS LAS SUCESIONES COMUNIDAD GUADIANA LOTE 154 NARANJITO, PR 00719 DIRECCIÓN POSTAL: CORN.
GUADIANA HC-74 BOX 5506 NARANJITO, PR 00719; ANTONIO ORTEGA MORALES E IRIS BETHZAIDA ORTEGA
MORALES A: 2545 E 37TH ST. TULSA, OK 74110
ARELIS ORTIZ FEBUS
A: 1339 FILLMORE CIR.
LORAINE, OH 44052.
(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que sus-
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
cribe le notifica a usted que el 11 de agosto de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha 18 de agosto de 2023. En Bayamón, Puerto Rico, el 18 de agosto de 2023. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, SECRETARIA. SANDRA I. BÁEZ HERNÁNDEZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN
LEYDA IVELISSE
MOLINA FIGUEROA
Demandante V. DAVID EMMANUEL
DIAZ CASTILLO
Demandado(a)
Civil: SJ2023RF00848. (708). Sobre: DIVORCIO (RUPTURA IRREPARABLE). NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.
A: DAVID EMMANUEL
DIAZ CASTILLO.
(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 1 de agosto de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted
esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 1 de agosto de 2023. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 1 de agosto de 2023.
GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA. NYDIA IVETTE BARRETO LASSALLE, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE GUAYNABO BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO
Demandante V. JUAN ANGEL SOSTRE COLON T/C/C JUAN A. SOSTRE COLON
Demandado
Civil Núm.: D2CD2016-0286. (201). Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. AVISO DE VENTA EN PÚBLICA SUBASTA. Yo, HUGO BASCÓ MEDINA, Alguacil Supervisor de la División de Subastas del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Guaynabo a los demandados y al público en general les notifico que, cumpliendo con un Mandamiento que se ha librado en el presente caso por el Secretario del Tribunal de epígrafe con fecha 20 de diciembre de 2021 y para satisfacer la cantidad adeudada de $126,111.95 de principal mediante Sentencia dictada en el caso de autos el 31 de julio de 2017, notificada y archivada en autos el 9 de agosto de 2017 y publicada mediante edicto en el periódico “The San Juan Daily Star” el 14 de agosto de 2017, procederé a vender en pública subasta, al mejor postor en pago de contado y en moneda del curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América, mediante efectivo, giro o cheque certificado a nombre del Alguacil de este Tribunal todo derecho, título e interés que hayan tenido tengan o puedan tener los deudores demandados en cuanto a la propiedad localizada en el Municipio de Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, el bien inmueble se describe a continuación: Condominio Boulevard del Río II, Apt. M -330 Bo. Frailes, Guaynabo, PR. URBANA: PROPIEDAD
HORIZONTAL: Apartamento número M guión trescientos treinta (M-330) del Condominio Boulevard del Río II, localizado en el barrio Frailes del municipio de Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. Esta unidad está constituida en hormigón armado y bloque de cemento y se encuentra ubicado en la Tercera Planta del Edificio denominado “M” del Condominio. Consta de una
planta y tiene su entrada por su lindero Noroeste, la cual sale a un pasillo de entrada común del Tercer Nivel del edificio que da acceso al exterior del edificio. Sus linderos son los siguientes: al Suroeste, en una distancia lineal de 29’6” equivalentes a 8.99 metros lineales con pared del edificio que mira hacia área exterior común; Al Noroeste, en una distancia lineal de 29”6”, equivalentes a 8.99 metros lineales con pasillo de entrada, escalera y pared del edificio que mira hacia área exterior común; al Noroeste, en una distancia lineal de 43’4” equivalente a 13.21 metros lineales con pared medianera que lo separa del Apartamento M-329, pasillo, escalera y pared del edificio que mira hacia área común exterior; y al Sureste, en una distancia lineal de 43’4” equivalentes a 13.21 metros con pared del edificio que mira hacia área común exterior; y al Sureste, en una distancia lineal de 43’ 4” equivalentes a 13.21 metros con pared del edificio que mira hacia área común. Esta unidad tiene un área de construcción de 1.156.72 pies cuadrados, equivalentes a 107.46 metros cuadrados. Consta de un dormitorio principal de un closet y baño, dos dormitorios con sus closets, un baño en el área de pasillo, un linen closet, salacomedor, cocina, área de lavandería, vestíbulo y balcón. A esta unidad le ha sido asignado como elemento común limitado el uso de dos espacios de estacionamientos sencillo regular marcado con los números 164 y 165 en los planos del condominio. Le ha sido asignado, además, una participación en los gastos e ingresos del condominio y en la titularidad en sus elementos comunes equivalentes al .74657702% y una participación de .4843% en los elementos comunes limitados del condominio. Le corresponde el estacionamiento 330 que hubo adquirido por cesion de que hiciera Boulevard del Río Corporation, S. E., con valor de $3,000.00 aumentado el por ciento de participación en los elementos comunes limitados del apartamento en 0.2421% según Esc. #15 en San Juan el 6 de marzo de 2001 ante Gilberto Oliver Vázquez, inscrito al folio 146 del tomo 1364 de Guaynabo, finca #39144 inscripción 4ta. Consta inscrita al folio 120 del tomo 1112 de Guaynabo, Finca #39144, Registro de la Propiedad de Guaynabo. Con el importe de dicha venta se habrá de satisfacer a la parte demandante las cantidades adeudadas, en el caso de epígrafe, que se desglosan de la siguiente forma: $126,111.95 de principal, intereses vencidos al tipo pactado del 4.50% anual, que a dicha fecha ascienden a la suma de
$5,675.04 y los que se continúen acumulando al tipo pactado hasta el pago total y completo de la obligación, la suma de $402.40 por concepto de cargos por demora, más la suma de $13,736.00 por concepto de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado, según pactados. El tipo mínimo para la subasta será la suma de tasación pactada, la cual es $137,360.00 según la escritura de hipoteca para la propiedad descrita. De declararse la subasta desierta, se procederá a una segunda subasta y servirá de tipo mínimo de 2/3 del precio mínimo antes mencionado; $91,573.33. Si tampoco hubiere remate ni adjudicación en esta segunda subasta, se procederá a una tercera subasta, en la cual regirá como tipo mínimo ésta la 1/2 del precio mínimo antes mencionado; $68,680.00. La PRIMERA SUBASTA se llevará a cabo el 12 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2023, A LAS 10:40 DE LA MAÑANA. De no comparecer postor alguno se llevará a efecto una SEGUNDA SUBASTA el 19 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2023, A LAS 10:40 DE LA MAÑANA. De no comparecer postor alguno se llevará a cabo una TERCERA SUBASTA el 26 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2023, A LAS 10:40 DE LA MAÑANA. La subasta o subastas antes indicadas se llevarán a efecto en mi oficina, localizada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Guaynabo. Del Estudio de Título realizado surgen los siguientes gravámenes: Servidumbres a favor de la Autoridad de Acueductos y Alcantarillados de Puerto Rico; Servidumbre a favor de la Autoridad de Energía Eléctrica de Puerto Rico Servidumbre de favor de la Puerto Rico Telephone Company. Se advierte a los licitadores que la adjudicación se hará al mejor postor, quien deberá consignar el importe de su oferta en el mismo acto de la adjudicación en moneda de curso legal de los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica y para conocimiento de la parte demandada y de toda(s) aquella(s) persona(s) que tengan interés inscrito con posterioridad a la inscripción del gravamen que se está ejecutando, y para conocimiento de los licitadores y el público en general y para su publicación en un periódico de circulación general, una vez por semana durante el término de dos (2) semanas consecutivas con un intervalo de por lo menos siete (7) días entre ambas publicaciones, y para su fijación en tres (3) lugares públicos del municipio en que ha de celebrarse la venta, tales como, la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la Colecturía y se le notificará además a la parte demandada vía correo certificado con acuse de recibo a la última dirección conocida.
La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores, previa orden judicial dirigida al Registrador de la Propiedad de la sección correspondiente para la cancelación de aquellos posteriores. Se les advierte a todos los interesados que todos los documentos relacionados con la presente acción de ejecución de hipoteca, así como la de la subasta, estarán disponibles para ser examinados, durante horas laborables, en la Secretaría del Tribunal. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante, continuarán subsistentes; entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Y para conocimiento de los demandados, de los acreedores posteriores, de los licitadores, partes interesadas y público en general, expido el presente Aviso para su publicación en los lugares públicos correspondientes. Librado en la Sala de Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, a 14 de agosto de 2023. HUGO BASCÓ MEDINA, ALGUACIL PLACA #807.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU-
NAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA
TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN
BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO
DEMANDANTE VS. LA SUCESIÓN DE ANDRÉS MANUEL
GONZÁLEZ FAGET COMPUESTA POR
PAULETTE M. GONZALEZ CRUZ, FULANO Y FULANA DE TAL COMO
POSIBLES MIEMBROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESIÓN; DEPARTAMENTO DE HACIENDA; CENTRO DE RECAUDACIÓN DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES (CRIM)
DEMANDADO (A)
CIVIL NÚM.: SJ2018CV10034.
SALA: 508. SOBRE: EJECU-
CIÓN DE HIPOTECA - IN REM.
NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTOS.
A: PAULELTE M.
GONZALEZ CRUZ
COMO MIEMBRO DE LA SUCESION; FULANO Y FULANA DE TAL COMO
POSIBLES MIEMBROS
DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESIÓN.
EL SECRETARIO(A) que sus-
cribe le notifica a usted que el 18 de agosto de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha 18 de agosto de 2023. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 18 de agosto de 2023. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ
COLLADO, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. MARTHA ALMODÓVAR CABRERA, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA
SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA
FIRSTBANK
PUERTO RICO
Demandante V. SYLVIA ENID FARINA
RAMOS T/C/C SYLVIA E. FARIÑA RAMOS T/C/C
SYLVIA FARIÑA RAMOS
Demandada
CIVIL NÚM: CA2023CV02243. (403). SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE GARANTÍAS. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS
UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO,SS.
A: SYLVIA ENID FARINA
RAMOS T/C/C SYLVIA E. FARIÑA RAMOS
T/C/C SYLVIA FARIÑA
RAMOS. PMB 189 PO
BOX 6017, CAROLINA, PUERTO RICO 00984; C-320 MIRAFLORES DEL YUNQUE, RIO GRANDE, PUERTO RICO 00745.
De: FIRSTBANK PUERTO RICO.
Se le emplaza y requiere que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y
Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramaiudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Este caso trata sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Garantías en que la parte demandante solicita que se condene a la parte demandada a pagar: la suma principal de $103,712.29, que incluye intereses según pactados, cargos por demora y otros cargos, que se acumulan diariamente hasta su total y completo pago, más la suma de 10% del principal, por concepto de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado hipotecariamente asegurados. Se le apercibe que, si dejare de hacerlo, se dictará contra usted sentencia en rebeldía, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle.
Lcdo. José Antonio Lamas Burgos Número del Tribunal Supremo 15693 PO Box 194089, San Juan, PR 00917 Teléfono: (787) 296-9500
Correo Electrónico: jlamas@lvprlaw.com
EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y Sello del Tribunal, hoy 18 de agosto de 2023. WANDA SEGUÍ REYES, SECRETARIA.
IVELISSE SERRANO GARCÍA, SUB-SECRETARIA.
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE PONCE
BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO
Demandante Vs SUCESION DE JUAN
ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ
HERNANDEZ T/C/C
ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ
HERNANDEZ T/C/C
ANTONIO JUAN
RODRIGUEZ COLON, COMPUESTA POR
CARMEN MARIA
PORRATA OCASIO
T/C/C CARMEN MARIA
PORRATA, POR SI; JUAN
ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ
MUÑIZ Y MARIA DE LOS
ANGELES RODRIGUEZ
MUÑIZ; FULANO DE TAL Y SUTANA DE TAL COMO HEREDEROS
DESCONOCIDOS Y/O
PARTES CON INTERES EN LA SUCESION
Demandado
Civil Núm.: PO2022CV02289.
Salón: 406. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.
A: JUAN ANTONIO RODRÍGUEZ MUÑIZ
Y FULANO DE TAL Y SUTANA DE TAL COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESIÓN DE JUAN ANTONIO RODRÍGUEZ HERNÁNDEZ PARA SER NOTIFICADOS
POR EDICTO. #26 Calle Salmón Ponce, PR 00731.
Dirección postal: Urb. Río Canas 2755 Calle Bravo, Ponce, PR 00731. Bo. Galicia #15 calle 2, JUANA DIAZ PR 00795.
LIC. JUAN C. FORTUÑO FAS. PO BOX 3908, GUAYNABO PR 00970.
(Nombre de las partes a las que se les notifica la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 31 de julio de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representado usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 18 de agosto de 2023. En Ponce, Puerto Rico, el 18 de agosto de 2023. CARMEN G. TIRU QUIÑONES, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. EREINA AGRONT LEÓN, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN
BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO
Parte Demandante Vs. DORAL MORTGAGE CORPORATION T/C/C DORAL MORTGAGE, LLC,, FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION (FDIC) COMO SINDICO DE RG MORTGAGE CORPORATION Y DE DORAL BANK, DORAL
FINANCIAL
CORPORATION, ORIENTAL BANK COMO
SUCESOR EN DERECHO
DE RG PREMIER BANK OF PUERTO RICO, LA SUCESIÓN DE CARMEN
VÁZQUEZ ORTIZ T/C/C
CARMEN ANA LUISA
VÁZQUEZ ORTIZ T/C/C
CARMEN A. L. VÁZQUEZ
ORTIZ T/C/C CARMEN ANA L VÁZQUEZ
T/C/C CARMEN ANA
LUISA VÁZQUEZ T/C/C
CARMEN A. L. VÁZQUEZ
COMPUESTA POR: LIZETTE MILAGROS
LÓPEZ VÁZQUEZ, EDGARD JOSÉ REYES
VÁZQUEZ, JOHANNA MILAGROS REYES
VÁZQUEZ, SUTANO Y PERENCEJO DE TAL, POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS, FULANO Y MENGANO DE TAL, POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARÉ Demandada
CIVIL NUM. SJ2023CV01011. (908). Sobre: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO POR LA VÍA JUDICIAL. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO POR SUMAC.
A: JOHANNA MILAGROS REYES VÁZQUEZ Y EDGARD JOSÉ REYES
VÁZQUEZ HEREDEROS DE CARMEN VÁZQUEZ
ORTIZ TIC/C CARMEN
ANA LUISA VÁZQUEZ
ORTIZ T/C/C CARMEN
A.L. VÁZQUEZ ORTIZ
T/C/C CARMEN ANA
L. VÁZQUEZ T/C/C
CARMEN ANA LUISA
VÁZQUEZ T/C/C
CARMEN A. L. VAZQUEZ
A LAS SIGUIENTES
DIRECCIONES: URB
PARK GARDENS, D12 CALLE 7A, SAN JUAN, PR, 00926-2151, URB ROOSEVELT, 303 CALLE HECTOR SALAMÁN, SAN JUAN, PR 00918-2314, COND. BOSQUE REAL, 840 CARR. 877, APT. 1019, SAN JUAN, PR 009268242, 19076 NW 229TH ST., HIGH SPRINGS FL 32643-0667.
SUTANO Y PERENCEJO DE TAL, POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA CAUSANTE CARMEN
VÁZQUEZ ORTIZ
CARMEN ANA LUISA
VÁZQUEZ ORTIZ T/C/C
CARMEN A. L. VÁZQUEZ
ORTIZ T/C/C CARMEN
ANA L. VÁZQUEZ T/C/C
EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 4 de agosto de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha 17 de agosto de 2023. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 17 de agosto de 2023. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. LUCRECIA PAGÁN, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA ISLAND PORTFOLIO SERVICES, LLC
Demandante V. YNOCENCIA M
VALERIO DE ZAPATA
Demandado(a)
Civil: CA2022CV03659. SALA: 406. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO ORDINARIO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.
A: YNOCENCIA M VALERIO DE ZAPATAVILLA FONTANA 2AL110 VIA 6 CAROLINA PR 00983-3803. (Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto)
EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 15 de agosto de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días
siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 15 de agosto de 2023. En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 15 de agosto de 2023. LCDA. MARILYN APONTE RODRÍGUEZ, SECRETARIA. MARICRUZ APONTE ALICEA, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA
TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYAMÓN
ISLAND PORTFOLIO
SERVICES, LLC, COMO AGENTE DE FAIRWAY ACQUISITIONS FUND, LLC
DEMANDANTE V. JAREL
SANTIAGO RIVERA DEMANDADO(A)
CIVIL: BY2022CV06602.
SALA: 502. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO ORDINARIO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.
A: JAREL
SANTIAGO RIVERAREPTO. TERESITA E-14 CALLE 10, BAYAMÓN, PR 00961.
(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 14 de agosto de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos
de este caso, con fecha 15 de agosto de 2023. En Bayamón, Puerto Rico, el 15 de agosto de 2023. LIC. LAURA I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, SECRETARIA. CARMEN M. PINTADO, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR. LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE CAROLINA REVERSE MORTGAGE FUNDING, LLC Demadnatne Vs. SUCESIÓN DE EPIFANÍA MÉNDEZ CALDERÓN; COMPUESTA POR ESTEBAN SANTIAGO MÉNDEZ, SULMA IRIS SANTIAGO MÉNDEZ Y VICENTE SANTIAGO MÉNDEZ; FULANO DE TAL Y SUTANO DE TAL COMO MIEMBROS DE NOMBRES DESCONOCIDOS; CENTRO DE RECAUDACIÓN DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES Y LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA
Demandados
Civil Núm.: CG2022CV01550. Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA - IN REM. MANDAMIENTO DE INTERPELACIÓN. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. POR CUANTO: En el presente caso se ha dictado la siguiente Orden: “ORDEN DE INTERPELACIÓN”: Vista la Demanda presentada por la parte demandante solicitando la interpelación judicial y examinados los autos del caso, el Tribunal le imparte su aprobación y en su virtud acepta la interpelación judicial de la Parte Demandante a los herederos de la Sucesión de Epifanía Méndez Calderón, conforme al Artículo 1578 del Código Civil de Puerto Rico edición de 2020. Se Ordena a los herederos de la Causante a saber, Esteban Santiago Méndez, Sulma Iris Santiago Méndez y Vicente Santiago Méndez; Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal como miembros de nombres desconocidos, a que dentro del término legal de treinta (30) días contados a partir de la notificación de esta Orden, acepten o repudien la participación que les corresponda en la herencia del causante Epifanía Méndez Calderón. Se le Apercibe a los herederos antes mencionados que: (a) de no expresarse dentro del término de treinta (30) días en torno a su aceptación o repudiación de la herencia; o (b) de no solicitar término adicional para ello dentro del término de treinta (30) días; la herencia se
presumirá por aceptada, respondiendo con ello por las obligaciones, por los legados y por las cargas hereditarias hasta el valor de los bienes hereditarios que recibe, según dispone el Artículo 1587 del Código Civil de Puerto Rico de 2020. Se Ordena a la Parte Demandante a que, en vista de que la Sucesión de Epifanía Méndez Calderón, incluye como herederos a Esteban Santiago Méndez, Sulma Iris Santiago Méndez y Vicente Santiago Méndez como miembros de la Sucesión que se encuentran fuera de Puerto Rico; y a Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal, como posibles herederos desconocidos, proceda a notificar la presente Orden mediante edicto a esos efectos una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general de la Isla de Puerto Rico. NOTIFÍQUESE. Dada en Caguas, Puerto Rico, a 14 de agosto de 2023. FDO. BENICIO G. SÁNCHEZ, JUEZ. POR TANTO, en vista de la Orden dictada, se libra este Mandamiento de Interpelación a ser diligenciado por la parte demandante sobre los herederos que componen la Sucesión de Epifanía Méndez Calderón. En Caguas, Puerto Rico, a 17 de agosto de 2023.
LISILDA MARTÍNEZ AGOSTO, SECRETARIA GENERAL.
ENEIDA ARROYO VÉLEZ, SUB-SECRETARIA.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA
TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CAGUAS
ISLAND PORTFOLIO SERVICES, LLC
COMO AGTE DE FAIRWAY ACQUISITIONS FUND, LLC
DEMANDANTE VS. PAOLA N.
COITO FIGUEROA DEMANDADOS
CIVIL: HU2022CV01724. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO ORDINARIO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS.
A: PAOLA N. COTTO FIGUEROA - URB
BAIROA PARK I, CALLE NAPOLEON, CAGUAS, PUERTO RICO 007271134 / HC 3 BOX 5809
HUMACAO, PUERTO RICO 00791.
(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 10 de agosto de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución
en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha 17 de agosto de 2023. En Caguas, Puerto Rico, el 17 de agosto de 2023. LISILDA MARTÍNEZ AGOSTO, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. SANDRA J. TRINIDAD CAÑUELAS, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE CAGUAS ISLAND PORTFOLIO SERVICES, LLC, COMO AGENTE DE FAIRWAY ACQUISITIONS FUND, LLC
Demandante Vs. ISAAC COLÓN RODRÍGUEZ
Demandado
Civil Núm.: CY2022CV00533. Salón: 701. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO ORDINARIO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS.
A: ISAAC COLÓN RODRÍGUEZBO. SAVARONA 15
CALLE DEMETRIO
AGUAYO, CAYEY, PR 00736 / PO BOX 373007
CAYEY, PR 00737.
POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), la cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal.
Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro
del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda o cualquier otro sin más citarle ni oírle, si el tribunal en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente.
El sistema SUMAC notificará copia a los abogados de la parte demandante, el Lcdo. Kevin Sánchez Campanero cuyas direcciones son: P.O. Box 71418 San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936 8518, teléfono (787) 993 3731 a la dirección kevin.sanchez@ orf-law.com, y a la dirección notificaciones@orf-law.com. EX-
TENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el sello del Tribunal, en Caguas, Puerto Rico, hoy día 13 de junio de 2023. En Caguas, Puerto Rico, del 13 de junio de 2023.
LISILDA MARTÍNEZ AGOSTO, SECRETARIA. VIONNETTE ESPINOSA CASTILLO, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA
SALA DE CAROLINA ISLAND PORTFOLIO SERVICES, LLC, COMO AGENTE DE FAIRWAY ACQUISITIONS FUND, LLC
Demandante Vs. FERNANDO M. RAMOS RODRÍGUEZ
Demandado Civil Núm.: CA2023CV00208. Salón: 406. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO ORDINARIO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS.
A: FERNANDO M. RAMOS RODRIGUEZ - URB. JARDINES DE CAROLINA J4 CALLE K, CAROLINA, PR 00987 / BDA. CANTERA 123 AVE. ROBERTO DÍAZ CAYEY, PR 00736-5110.
POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto.
Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), la cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal.
Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la de-
manda o cualquier otro sin más citarle ni oírle, si el tribunal en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. El sistema SUMAC notificará copia a los abogados de la parte demandante, el Ledo. Kevin Sánchez Campanero cuyas direcciones son: P.O. Box 71418 San Juan, Puerto Rico 009368518, teléfono (787) 993-3731 a la dirección kevin.sanchez@ orf-law.com, y a la dirección notificaciones@orf-law.com.
EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el sello del Tribunal, en Carolina, Puerto Rico, hoy día 14 de junio de 2023. En Carolina, Puerto Rico, el 14 de junio de 2023. LCDA. KANELLY M. ZAYAS ROBLES, SECRETARIA. MARICRUZ APONTE ALICEA, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE SAN SEBASTIÁN ISLAND PORTFOLIO SERVICES, LLC COMO AGENTE DE ACE ONE FUNDING, LLC
Parte Demandante Vs. JANET GONZALEZ Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: MO2022CV00112.
Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO.
A: JANET GONZALEZPO BOX 1785, MOCA, PR 00676-1785.
POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), la cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda o cualquier otro sin más citarle ni oírle, si el tribunal en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. El sistema SUMAC notificará copia al abogado de la parte demandante, el Lcdo. José F. Aguilar Vélez cuya dirección es: P.O. Box 71418 San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936-8518, teléfono (787) 993-3731 a la dirección jose.aguilar@orf-law.com y a la dirección notificaciones@ orf-law.com. EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el sello del Tribunal, en SAN SEBASTIÁN, Puerto Rico, hoy día 12 de julio
de 2023. En SAN SEBASTIÁN, Puerto Rico el 12 de julio de 2023. SARAHÍ REYES PÉREZ, SECRETARIA. LAURA LUGO CRESPO, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE HATILLO REVERSE MORTGAGE FUNDING LLC. Demandante Vs. SUCESION CARMELO ANDRES HERRERA
DORTA T/C/C CARMELO
A. HERRERA DORTA T/C/C CARMELO
ANDRES HERRERA T/C/C
CARMELO HERRERA
DORTA T/C/C CARMELO
A. HERRERA T/C/C
CARMEL HERRERA
COMPUESTA POR JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE COMO
POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS;
SUCESION CARMEN
ANTONIA HERRERA ROSA T/C/C CARMEN
HERRERA ROSA T/C/C
CARMEN ANTONIA
HERRERA T/C/C CARMEN
HERRERA ROSA T/C/C
CARMEN A. HERRERA
T/C/C CARMEN HERRERA COMPUESTA POR JOHN ROE Y JANE ROE COMO
POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS; ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA; CENTRO DE RECAUDACION DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES
Demandados
Civil Núm.: AR2021CV01363.
Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EDICTO DE SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS.
A: LA PARTE DEMANDADA, AL (A LA) SECRETARIO(A) DE HACIENDA DE PUERTO RICO Y AL PÚBLICO
GENERAL:
Certifico y Hago Constar: Que en cumplimiento con el Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que me ha sido dirigido por el (la) Secretario(a) del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de ARECIBO, en el caso de epígrafe, venderé en pública subasta y al mejor postor, por separado, de contado y por moneda de curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América y/o Giro Postal y Cheque Certificado, en mi oficina ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Camuy, el 11
DE OCTUBRE DE 2023, A LAS 10:15 DE LA MAÑANA, todo derecho título, participación o interés que le corresponda a la parte demandada o cualquiera de ellos en el inmueble hipotecado objeto de ejecución que se describe a continuación:
RÚSTICA: Solar radicado en el barrio Capaez del término municipal de Hatillo, Puerto Rico, marcado en al plano de inscripción con el numero dos (2), con una cabida superficial de seiscientos ochenta y tres punto trescientos cincuenta y uno (683.351) metros cuadrados. En lindes por el Norte, en veintiuno punto trescientos noventa (21.390) metros, con solares segregados en el caso número ochenta y cuatro guion cero cinco F guion cuatrocientos siete APL (#84-05F-407APL) y en una curva de cuatro punto siete mil novecientos noventa y dos (4.7992) metros, con solares segregados en el antes referido caso; por el Sur, en veintiséis punto ciento treinta y cuatro (26.134) metros, con solar marcado en el plano de inscripción con el número tres (#3); por el Este, en veintisiete punto noventa (27.090) metros; por el Este, en veintisiete punto noventa (27.090) metros, con solar marcado en el plano de inscripción con el numero uno (#1); por el Oeste, en veinticuatro punto doce (24.012) metros, con calle a dedicarse a uso público. Enclava una casa. Inscrita al folio 125 del tomo 283 de Hatillo, finca 18,345, Registro de la Propiedad de Arecibo, Sección II. La Hipoteca Revertida consta inscrita al Tomo Karibe, finca 18,345 de Hatillo, Registro de la Propiedad de Arecibo, Sección II, inscripción 5ª. Propiedad localizada en: SOLAR #2 PR 130, KM 4.3 INT., SECTOR VALLE VERDE, HATILLO, P.R. 00659. Según figuran en la certificación registral, la propiedad objeto de ejecución está gravada por las siguientes cargas anteriores o preferentes: Nombre del Titular: N/A. Suma de la Carga: N/A. Fecha de Vencimiento: N/A. Según figuran en la certificación registral, la propiedad objeto de ejecución está gravada por las siguientes cargas posteriores a la inscripción del crédito ejecutante: Nombre del Titular: Secretario de la Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano. Suma de la Carga: $138,000.00. Fecha de Vencimiento: 23 de septiembre de 2091. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad de la propiedad y que todas las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes al crédito ejecutante antes descritos, si los hubiere, continuarán subsistentes. El rematante acepta dichas cargas y gravámenes anteriores, y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos,
sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Se establece como tipo de mínima subasta la suma de $138,000.00, según acordado entre las partes en el precio pactado en la escritura de hipoteca. De ser necesaria una SEGUNDA SUBASTA por declararse desierta la primera, la misma se celebrará en mi oficina, ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Camuy, 18 DE OCTUBRE DE 2023, A LAS 10:15 DE LA MAÑANA, y se establece como mínima para dicha segunda subasta la suma de $92,000.00, 2/3 partes del tipo mínima establecido originalmente. Si tampoco se produce remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta, se establece como mínima para la TERCERA SUBASTA, la suma de $69,000.00, la mitad (1/2) del precio pactado y dicha subasta se celebrará en mi oficina, ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Camuy, el 25 DE OCTUBRE DE 2023, A LAS 10:15 DE LA MAÑANA. Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo para, con su producto satisfacer a la parte demandante, el importe de la Sentencia dictada a su favor ascendente a la suma de $43,726.08 por concepto de principal, más la suma de $8,063.06 en intereses acumulados al 25 de marzo de 2022 y los cuales continúan acumulándose a razón de 4.978% anual hasta su total y completo pago; más la sumas de $2,744.74 en seguro hipotecario; $320.00 de inspecciones; $3,240.00 en honorarios de abogado; más la cantidad de 10% del pagare original en la suma de $13,800.00, para gastos, costas y honorarios de abogado, esta última habrá de devengar intereses al máximo del tipo legal fijado por la oficina del Comisionado de Instituciones Financieras aplicable a esta fecha, desde este mismo día hasta su total y completo saldo. La venta en pública subasta de la referida propiedad se verificará libre de toda carga o gravamen posterior que afecte la mencionada finca, a cuyo efecto se notifica y se hace saber la fecha, hora y sitio de la PRIMERA, SEGUNDA Y TERCERA SUBASTA, si esto fuera necesario, a los efectos de que cualquier persona o personas con algún interés puedan comparecer a la celebración de dicha subasta. Se notifica a todos los interesados que las actas y demás constancias del expediente de este caso están disponibles en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante horas laborables para ser examinadas por los (las) interesados (as). Y para su publicación en el periódico The San Juan Daily Star, que es un diario de circulación general en la isla de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas consecutivas
con un intervalo de por lo menos siete (7) días entre ambas publicaciones, así como para su publicación en los sitios públicos de Puerto Rico. Expedido en Hatillo, Puerto Rico, hoy 14 de agosto de 2023. WILFREDO OLMO SALAZAR, ALGUACIL REGIONAL. LUIS E. ROMÁN CARRERO, ALGUACIL PLACA #657.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE MAYAGÜEZ
LIME HOMES, LTD. Parte Demandante Vs. SUCESIÓN DE RUBÉN RODRÍGUEZ SÁNCHEZ COMPUESTA POR: MADELINE RODRÍGUEZ OLÁN, CARLOS RUBÉN RODRIGUEZ OLÁN, FULANO Y SUTANO DE TAL COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS; IVETTE MERCED VEGA POR SI Y COMO CONYUGE SUPERSTITE; CRIM
Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: MZ2022CV00797. Salón Núm.: (207). Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA “IN REM”. EDICTO DE SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R., SS.
A: SUCESIÓN DE RUBÉN RODRÍGUEZ SÁNCHEZ COMPUESTA POR: MADELINE RODRÍGUEZ OLÁN, CARLOS RUBÉN RODRIGUEZ OLÁN, FULANO Y SUTANO DE TAL COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS; IVETTE MERCED VEGA POR SI Y COMO CONYUGE SUPERSTITE; CENTRO DE RECAUDACION DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES (CRIM): DEPARTAMENTO DE HACIENDA: ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA ACTUANDO POR CONDUCTO DE LA ADMINISTRACION DE HOGARES DE AGRICULTORES O A SU ORDEN: Y AL PÚBLICO EN GENERAL:
El Alguacil que suscribe, certifica y hace constar que en cumplimiento de Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que me ha sido dirigido por la Secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Mayagüez, procederé a vender en pública subasta
y al mejor postor, por separado, de contado y por moneda de curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América. Todo pago recibido por el (la) Alguacil por concepto de subastas será en efectivo, giro postal o cheque certificado a nombre del (de la)
Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia. Todo derecho, título, participación e interés que le corresponda a la parte demandada o cualquiera de ellos en el inmueble hipotecado objeto de ejecución que se describe a continuación: RÚSTICA: Parcela número 4 radicada en el Barrio Montoso del municipio de Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de trescientos sesenta y siete metros trentiun centímetros cuadrados.
En lindes por el NORTE, en una alineación de 14.02 metros con el solar número 3 a segregarse y en otra alineación de 11.03 metros con el remanente de la finca principal de la cual se segrega; por el SUR, en 21.49 metros con camino público; por el ESTE, en 21.64 metros con el remanente de la finca principal de la cual se segrega; y por el OESTE, en 18.85 metros con el solar número 3 a segregarse. Consta inscrita al folio 89 del tomo 975 de Mayagüez, finca #29,113. Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección de Mayagüez. La propiedad objeto de ejecución está localizada en la siguiente dirección:
105 RD KM 164, Las Vegas, Mayagüez, P.R. 00680. Según figura en el Estudio de título, la propiedad objeto de ejecución está gravada al siguiente Gravamen preferente a la inscripción del crédito ejecutante:
a. Hipoteca en garantía de un pagaré a favor de Estados Unidos de América actuando por conducto de la Administración de Hogares de Agricultores, o a su orden, por la suma principal de $31,600.00, con intereses al 8.25% anual, vencedero en 33 años, constituida mediante la escritura número 7, otorgada en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, el día 3 de febrero de 1992, ante el notario Enrique Alcaraz Casablanca, e inscrita al folio 91 del tomo 975 de Mayagüez, finca número 29,113, inscripción 4ta. Se le notifica al acreedor preferente anteriormente identificado para que pueda concurrir a la subasta si les convenga o satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, costas y honorarios de abogados asegurados. Se informa que la propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravamen posterior, una vez sea otorgada la escritura de venta judicial y obtenida la Orden y Mandamiento de cancelación de gravamen posterior. (Art. 51, Ley 210-2015). En relación a la finca a subastarse, se establece como tipo mínimo de licitación en la Primera Subasta
la suma de $66,600.00, según acordado entre las partes en el precio pactado en la Escritura de Hipoteca #1, otorgada en (no expresa), Puerto Rico, el día 31 de enero de 2007, ante el notario Cynthia Battle Quidgley, e inscrita al folio 5,280 del tomo 1,536 de Mayagüez, finca número 29,113, inscripción
9na, como Asiento Abreviado extendida las líneas el día 31 de octubre de 2017, en virtud de la Ley número 216 del día 27 de diciembre de 2010. (Fue presentado el día 7 de febrero de 2007 al Asiento 550 del Diario 732). La PRIMERA SUBASTA, se llevará a cabo el día 2 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2023 A
LAS 2:00 DE LA TARDE, en mis oficinas sitas en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Mayagüez, el tipo mínimo para la primera subasta es la suma de $66,600.00. Si la primera subasta del inmueble no produjere remate, ni adjudicación, se celebrará una
SEGUNDA SUBASTA el día
9 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2023
A LAS 2:00 DE LA TARDE, en el mismo sitio y servirá de tipo mínimo las dos terceras partes del precio pactada para la primera subasta, o sea, la suma de $44,400.00. Si la segunda subasta no produjere remate, ni adjudicación, se celebrará una TERCERA SUBASTA el día 16 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2023 A LAS 2:00 DE LA TARDE, en el mismo lugar y regirá como tipo mínimo de la tercera subasta la mitad del precio pactado para la primera, o sea, la suma de $33,300.00. Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo, para con su producto satisfacer a la parte demandante el importe de la Sentencia dictada a su favor, a saber: Suma Principal de $62,616.74, con intereses a 6.628% anual, desde el 1ro de marzo de 20129, hasta el presente y los que se continúen acumulando hasta su total y completo pago, más los cargos por demora que se corresponden a los plazos atrasados desde la fecha anteriormente indicada a razón de la tasa pactada de 5% de cualquier pago que éste en mora por más de quince (15) días desde la fecha de su vencimiento, más una suma equivalente a $6,660.00, por concepto de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado, más cualquier otra suma que resulte por cualesquiera otros adelantos que se hayan hecho la demandante, en virtud de las disposiciones de la escritura de hipoteca y del Pagaré hipotecario. Para más información, a las personas interesadas se les notifica que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado, estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal, durante las horas laborables. Este EDICTO DE SUBASTA, se publicará en
los lugares públicos correspondientes y en un periódico de circulación general en la jurisdicción de Puerto Rico. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los referentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes. Se entenderá, que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Se procederá a otorgar la correspondiente Escritura de Venta Judicial y el Alguacil pondrá en posesión judicial al nuevo dueño, si así se lo solicita dentro del término de veinte (20) días, de conformidad con las disposiciones de Ley. Si transcurren los referidos veinte (20) días, el tribunal podrá ordenar, sin necesidad de ulterior procedimiento, que se lleve a efecto el desalojo o lanzamiento del ocupante u ocupantes de la finca o de todos los que por orden o tolerancia del deudor la ocupen. Se informa que la propiedad objeto de ejecución se adquiere libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. Expedido en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, a 01 de agosto de 2023. NATALIA P. ALTIERI ACEVEDO, ALGUACIL AUXILIAR PLACA #218.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA
CENTRO JUDICIAL DE VEGA
BAJA SALA SUPERIOR BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO
Demandante V. SUCESION DE CRISTOBAL PABON ECHEVARRIA
COMPUESTA POR
CANDIDA RIVERA
TORRES POR SI Y EN LA CUOTA VIUDAL USUFRUCTUARIA, REYES PABON, LISIE PABON, MAGDALENA PABON, ANDREA PABON Y FULANO DE TAL, FULANA DE TAL, SUTANO DE TAL, SUTANA DE TAL, A, B Y C COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESION; HONORABLE SECRETARIO DEL DEPARTAMENTO DE HACIENDA DEL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO; HONORABLE SECRETARIO DEL DEPARTAMENTO DE JUSTICIA DEL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO
Demandado
Civil Núm.: VB2023CV00247.
Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO, EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, S.S.
A: SUCESION DE CRISTOBAL PABON ECHEVARRIA COMPUESTA POR CANDIDA RIVERA TORRES POR SI Y EN LA CUOTA VIUDAL USUFRUCTUARIA, REYES PABON, LISIE PABON, MAGDALENA PABON, ANDREA PABON Y FULANO DE TAL, FULANA DE TAL, SUTANO DE TAL, SUTANA DE TAL, A, B Y C COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS.
Por la presente se le emplaza y notifica que debe contestar la demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación del presente edicto, radicando el original de la contestación ante el Tribunal y sala que se menciona en el epígrafe de este edicto con copia a la parte aquí demandante. Se le apercibe que, de no contestar la demanda dentro del término aquí estipulado, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia sin más citarle ni oírle.
Por la presente el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, conforme al caso de Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria vs. Latinoamericana de Exportación, Inc., 164 DPR 689 (2005), le ordena que en el término de treinta (30) días, haga declaración aceptando o repudiando las herencias de la Sucesión de CRISTÓBAL PABÓN ECHEVARRÍA. Se le apercibe que de no expresar su intención de aceptar o repudiar la herencia dentro del término que se le fijó, las herencias se tendrán por aceptadas. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Se le apercibe que de no contestar la demanda dentro del término aquí estipulado, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia sin más citarle ni oírle. El abogado de la parte demandante es: Leda. Melisa Figueroa Castro, 1606 Ave. Ponce de León, Edif. VIG Tower, Suite 706, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 00907, Tel. (787) 919-0073, Fax (787) 722-1932. Expido este edicto bajo mi fir-
ma y sello de este Tribunal, hoy 4 de agosto de 2023. LCDA LAURA L. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, SECRETARIA GENERAL. MARITZA ROSARIO ROSARIO, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CAGUAS BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO
Parte Demandante Vs. LA SUCESIÓN DE IRAIDA HORNEDO CAMACHO COMPUESTA POR KARLA MICHELLE RODRÍGUEZ HORNEDO y MIRAIDY RODRÍGUEZ HORNEDO, FULANO y MENGANO DE TAL, POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS, ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA REPRESENTADO
POR EL SECRETARIO DE LA VIVIENDA Y DESARROLLO URBANO (HUD)
Parte Demandada
Civil Núm.: CG2023CV02160. (705). Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO, EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO E INTERPELACIÓN. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS E.E.U.U., EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.
A: FULANO y a MENGANO DE TAL, POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE IRAIDA HORNEDO CAMACHO. Queda usted notificado que en este Tribunal se ha radicado demanda sobre ejecución de hipoteca por la vía ordinaria en la que se alega se adeuda las siguientes cantidades: $116,461.71 de principal, más intereses sobre dicha suma al 4.375% anual desde el 1 de octubre de 2022 hasta su completo pago, más $128.60 de recargos acumulados, los cuales continuarán en aumento hasta el saldo total de la deuda, más la cantidad estipulada de $13,890.20 para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados, así como cualquier otra suma que contenga el contrato del préstamo, incluyendo pero sin limitarse a gastos de mantenimiento, inspecciones y otros adelantos “corporate advances”. La propiedad que garantiza hipotecariamente el préstamo es la siguiente:
URBANA: PROPIEDAD HORIZONTAL: Apartamento número 2806. Apartamento residencial
de forma irregular localizado en la tercera y cuarta planta del Condominio Parque San Antonio II, situado en el Barrio Cañaboncito del término municipal de Caguas. El área superficial de la tercera planta es de 1102.01 pies cuadrados, equivalentes a 102.38 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE: en una distancia de 40’ 8” con área exterior; por el SUR: en una distancia de 35’
4” con el apartamento número 2805 y con área de escalera común; por el ESTE: en una distancia de 30’ 11” con área exterior; y por el OESTE: en una distancia de 30’ 11” con área exterior. El área superficial de la cuarta planta (penthouse) es de 1055.32 pies cuadrados, equivalentes a 98.08 metros cuadrados, el área sin techar más un área techada de aproximadamente 142.58 pies cuadrados, equivalentes a 13.25 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el: NORTE: en una distancia de 40’ 8” con área exterior; por el SUR: en una distancia de 35’ 4” con el apartamento numero 2805; por el ESTE: en una distancia de 30’
11” con área exterior; y por el OESTE: en una distancia de 30’
11” con área exterior. La puerta de entrada del apartamento está situada en su lindero Sur. Consta de sala-comedor, cocina, laundry, balcón, tres (3) dormitorios, pasillo y dos baños y con acceso y uso del cuarto nivel denominado “penthouse”. Le corresponde dos espacios de estacionamiento identificados con el mismo número del apartamento. Este apartamento tiene una participación de 1.22518% de los elementos comunes del condominio. Inscrita al folio 245 del tomo 1625 de Caguas, Finca 54042. Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección I. La escritura de hipoteca consta inscrita al folio 189 del tomo 1693 de Caguas, Finca 54042. Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección I. Inscripción cuarta. La escritura de modificación de hipoteca consta inscrita al tomo Karibe de Caguas, Finca 54042. Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección I. inscripción séptima. La demandante es la tenedora por endoso, por valor recibido y de buena fe del referido pagaré objeto de la presente acción. Se interpela a los demandados para que acepten o renuncien a la herencia de la causante dentro de los 30 días subsiguientes a la fecha que fuesen emplazados o requeridos que contesten, para darle cumplimiento el Artículo 1578 del nuevo Código Civil de Puerto Rico, 31 L.P.R.A. § 11021, entendiéndose que, si no se expresan dentro de dicho término, aceptan el caudal relicto; la renuncia se hará por instrumento público o por escri-
to judicial. La parte demandada 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.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal. Se le advierte que si no contesta la demanda, radicando el original de la contestación en este Tribunal y enviando copia de la contestación a la abogada de la parte demandante, Lcda. Belma Alonso García, cuya dirección es: PO Box 3922, Guaynabo PR 00970-3922, Teléfonos: (787) 789-1826 y (787) 708-0566, correo electrónico: oficinabelmaalonso@gmail.com, dentro del término de treinta (30) días de la publicación de este edicto, excluyéndose el día de la publicación, se le anotará la rebeldía y se le dictará Sentencia en su contra, concediendo el remedio solicitado sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal, hoy 11 de agosto de 2023 en Caguas, Puerto Rico. LISILDA MARTÍNEZ AGOSTO, SECRETARIA. MARTA E. DONATE RESTO, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE CAGUAS SYLVIA
MEDINA ALMARANTE
Demandante V. PREFERRED MORTGAGE CORPORATION; JUAN DEL PUEBLO Y JUANA DEL PUEBLO Y CUALESQUIER PERSONA DESCONOCIDA CON POSIBLE INTERÉS EN LA OBLIGACIÓN CUYA CANCELACIÓN POR
DECRETO JUDICIAL SE SOLICITA
Demandados
Civil Núm.: CG2023CV02292. Sobre: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS.
A: JUAN DEL PUEBLO Y JUANA DEL PUEBLO COMO POSIBLES TENEDORES Y
CUALESQUIER PERSONA
DESCONOCIDA CON POSIBLE INTERÉS EN LA OBLIGACIÓN CUYA CANCELACIÓN POR DECRETO JUDICIAL SE SOLICITA.
Por la presente se le notifica que ha sido presentada en este Tribunal una Demanda en su contra en el pleito de epígrafe. En este caso la parte demandante ha radicado una Demanda para que se decrete judicialmente el saldo de un (1) pagaré hipotecario a favor de Preferred Mortgage Corporation, por la suma de $170,000.00. El pagaré por fue suscrito el día 22 de febrero de 2005, ante el notario Rosendo E. Miranda Lopez, garantizado por hipoteca constituida mediante la Escritura número 99, otorgada en Caguas, Puerto Rico, inscrita al folio 206 vuelto del tomo 1,715 de Caguas, inscripción 6ta, sobre la siguiente propiedad: URBANA: URBANIZACIÓN VALLE SAN LUIS de Caguas. Solar: H-3. Cabida: 352 Metros Cuadrados. LINDEROS: NORTE, en una distancia de 22.00 metros, con el solar H-2. SUR, en una distancia de 22.00 metros, con el solar H-4, ESTE, en una distancia de 16.00 metros, con la calle número ocho (8). OESTE, en una distancia de 16.00 metros, con el solar H-14. El solar antes descrito radica en los Barrios Río Cañas y Bairoa. FINCA: #50461 inscrita al folio 150 del tomo 1440 de Caguas. Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección I de Caguas. La parte demandante alega que dicho pagaré ha sido saldado según más detalladamente consta en la Demanda radicada que puede examinarse en la Secretaria de este Tribunal. Por tratarse de una obligación hipotecaria y pudiendo usted tener interés en este caso o quedar afectado por el remedio solicitado, se le emplaza por este edicto que se publicará una vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general de Puerto Rico. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, y notifique con copia de ella a la abogada de la parte demandante la Lcda. Zilmarie Delgado Pieras, 33 Calle Resolución, Suite 302, San Juan, PR 00920-2727; Tel. (787) 782-6500, dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto, apercibiéndole que de no hacerlo así dentro del término indicado, el Tribunal podrá anotar su rebeldía y dictar sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, en Caguas, Puerto Rico, hoy día 9 de agosto de 2023. LISILDA MARTÍNEZ AGOSTO, SECRETARIA.
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, which is always how it should be at Oriole Park, in the shadow of the B&O Warehouse at Camden Yards in Baltimore. This is the setting, after all, that transformed professional sports as few other forces ever have, synergizing team and town and making the venue the star attraction.
That happened in 1992, the year before Peter Angelos, a prominent trial lawyer, bought his hometown Orioles. The team has risen (though never to the World Series) and fallen (often quite far) in the decades since, and now it is cresting again. Peter, 94, is retired, and his son John, 56, is the team’s managing partner. John took a seat in the home dugout one recent afternoon while the visiting New York Mets took batting practice, pausing now and then to greet people by name.
The clubhouse manager, Fred Tyler, whose family has worked for the team since it moved from St. Louis in 1954, got a hearty hello. So did star rookie Grayson Rodriguez, who has helped pitch the Orioles to the top of the American League East. Angelos had already chatted with Buck Showalter — the former Baltimore manager who now guides the wealthy but woeful Mets — and would soon entertain members of the Orioles’ last championship team, from 1983, in a suite overlooking the empire.
“Remember the context,” Kurt Schmoke, the mayor of Baltimore from 1987 to 1999, said in the suite during the game, a runaway win for the Orioles. “We had lost the Colts and there was some concern about the economics of professional sports and whether the Orioles might be attracted. So the governor and the Stadium Authority made the commitment to build down here, and it just boosted the morale of people and made everyone in the community very proud that we were kind of leaders of the new generation of ballparks, the new generation of sports.”
The model has changed, and this is why the often reclusive Angelos is eager to talk. Unlike the NFL’s Ravens, who play across the parking lot and signed a lease agreement in January that runs through 2037, the Orioles have not officially committed to their longterm future here. Simply signing an extension would unlock $600 million in state-funded ballpark improvements, but Angelos has
grander ambitions.
That might make some fans nervous, considering the frustrations of the last three decades.
Peter Angelos was often heavily involved in baseball operations, and the on-field product suffered; the Orioles had the sport’s thirdworst winning percentage from 1998 through 2011. John Angelos has delegated baseball decisions to a forward-thinking general manager, Mike Elias, but the recent suspension of a broadcaster on the Orioles’ cable network highlighted at least some level of organizational dysfunction.
The broadcasting flap took some attention from the team, and Angelos said he regretted that, too. He generally keeps his distance from the field and clubhouse, focusing on the business of the organization. His priority for now is not a lease extension — Angelos does not like the word lease — but a “publicprivate partnership” that would reinvent the Camden Yards campus.
The plans, naturally, would include the usual live-work-play stuff — residences, hotels, shops, restaurants, bars — that modern owners covet.
But Angelos mentioned several other possibilities: an elementary school located in the warehouse, a health and wellness clinic, internship and mentorship programs for local youth.
“People will speak about Baltimore like, ‘Wow, Baltimore is cutting-edge,’ which is what they said about Camden Yards,” An-
gelos said. “If we develop it right, and we include that impactful community program module, we can change the whole brand of Baltimore.”
While Camden Yards inspired a building wave of stadiums and arenas designed to lift surrounding local businesses (at least in theory), the Atlanta Braves’ complex in suburban Cobb County, Georgia, is the new standard. Instead of only profiting from in-ballpark sales, the Braves essentially built their own city — known as the Battery and opened in 2017 — to give them a stake in adjacent properties, too.
You see it all over: The San Francisco Giants developed the area on the other side of McCovey Cove; the Boston Red Sox built a 5,000-seat music venue at Fenway Park; the Chicago Cubs bought several buildings that border Wrigley Field. But Atlanta is the ideal, and Angelos has visited the Braves’ complex with Maryland’s governor, Wes Moore, and stadium authority officials.
“The Braves have a couple of things going for them,” Angelos said. “They’ve done very well on the baseball side. They have a really big market, which helps a lot. And then they’ve developed this whole other revenue stream, this whole other business.
“And if big markets like Boston and Atlanta are doing it, it becomes existential — how are we going to compete and keep pace? Everybody won’t be able to do it. But I think because of what’s here — the brand of this ballpark, this piece of property of 60-odd
acres with other land around it that could be accessed, maybe bolted on, with the mass transit you don’t even have in Atlanta, with the great highway systems — we think it’s existential.”
He said that the shared passion of government officials had helped fuel his enthusiasm for the project. But remember that word, existential — that is, pivotal to the franchise’s very existence. And remember this, too: While the Braves have nine players signed beyond 2024, the Orioles have none. They will not spend more without making more.
“I don’t think you should run losses,” Angelos said. “I think you should live within your means and within your market.”
The Orioles’ $70 million payroll this season ranks 28th of the 30 teams. It is largely a function of the players’ lack of service time, which limits their earning power in the peculiar economy of baseball. Angelos has a lot of qualms with that system: “The hardest thing to do in sports is be a small-market team in baseball and be competitive, because everything is stacked against you — everything,” he said. And he conceded that it might not be feasible for his popular young core to be career Orioles like Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer and Cal Ripken Jr.
Without major changes, he sees only one way the team could retain all of its young stars.
“We’re going to have to raise the prices here — dramatically,” he said.
Angelos offered wide-ranging theories on baseball’s economics — talking points, perhaps, for future labor negotiations with the union. But the current collective bargaining agreement runs through 2026, and it’s reasonable to wonder whether these Orioles will be building a dynasty by then or breaking up.
To Angelos, the answer is tied to the fate of the ballpark deal. The future of Camden Yards, quite clearly, is a legacy play for Angelos — but, he insisted, it is also something more.
“It’s really about taking a brand-new Baltimore and pushing it higher,” Angelos said. “But you need that leadership, you need government and private coming together. I think we can really do something amazing. We’re so well located. The community is diverse and robust and growing. We can do it. We just need to think big. We did it before.”
Sha’Carri Richardson has been repeating a mantra since returning to the track this season: She’s not back, she’s better.
Richardson, who missed the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for marijuana a month before the Games, delivered the ultimate “I told you so” earlier this week in Budapest, Hungary by winning her first title at a world track and field championships, running 10.65 seconds to win the 100 meters. Shericka Jackson of Jamaica was second, in 10.72, and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, also of Jamaica, was third, in 10.77.
With her victory, Richardson, 23, both softened and amplified the noise that has surrounded her since she burst on the professional running scene.
“Honestly I don’t even know what to say,” Richardson said Monday, an hour after she had crossed the finish line and stared up at the results with a look of equal parts disbelief and nirvana. “It’s surreal. I think in the morning I’ll probably feel it.”
She got to this place by finding her peace, she said at a news conference at the Los Angeles Grand Prix in May.
“These last three years, I’ve shown you what I can do,” Richardson said. “It just was me that was standing in my way. Now I’m with myself.”
That has resulted in some of her fastest times.
She opened her outdoor season in April, running a wind-aided 10.57. (The time would have been considered her personal best, but the tail wind was above what is allowable for records.)
The next month, she won the 100 meters at a Diamond League meet in Doha, Qatar, defeating Jackson, an Olympic and world championship podium mainstay. She defeated Jackson again in July at a Diamond League meet in Poland. The national championships in Eu-
gene, Oregon, where she could qualify for her first world championships after failing to do so in 2022, were finally on the horizon.
It was there, at Hayward Field, in June 2021, that Richardson had first become a sensation. She had run 10.72 — what was then the sixth-fastest women’s 100 meters in history — a few months prior, and stepped into stardom when she won the 100 meters at the national championships with a dominant performance, finishing in 10.86.
She was quickly pegged as America’s next great sprinter and a favorite heading into the Tokyo Olympics.
But on July 1, 2021, the U.S. AntiDoping Agency announced she had tested positive for marijuana, automatically wiping out her result. Her 30-day suspension meant she would not be able to compete in the marquee event at the Olympics. The suspension fueled debates over whether marijuana should be on the list of banned substances.
This year’s national championships — a qualifying meet for the world championships — would be different. She made sure to prove that as soon as she stepped onto the track for the first round of competition on July 6.
Richardson ran a remarkable 10.71, her personal best at the time. She seemed to even pump the brakes before the finish line, holding her hands down as if she needed gravity to keep her spikes on the track. She cruised through the semifinals, advancing to the final round with a time of 10.75. The
next-fastest seed time heading into the final was 10.96.
Richardson had been wearing an orange wig through the first rounds, which is what she wore for much of her 2021 season. She wore the same wig as she ran through the qualifying heats and the semifinals, and added a green headband when she walked into the stadium for the 100-meter final last month. When her name was announced, she pulled on her headband to take the wig off. She threw it behind her and looked forward. The crowd roared. She won in 10.82.
“Last time I was really here in a big stadium I had my orange hair and I wanted to show you guys that I’m still that girl but I’m better. I’m still that girl but I’m stronger. I’m still that girl but I’m wiser,” she said to Tiara Williams in an interview posted on Instagram after she secured her spot in Budapest.
Her debut on the world championships stage Sunday could not have gone better. Richardson cruised to a win, slowing in the final few meters as she mimicked wiping sweat from her brow. She won her heat with a time of 10.92, and once again led the field into the semifinals. Only three of the 54 sprinters in the opening heat went below 11 seconds.
In her semifinals, a slow reaction time had Richardson off to an unpromising start. She was able to finish in 10.84, but unable to secure one of the two automatic qualifying slots after finishing third behind Jackson and MarieJosée Ta Lou. It was quickly clear that her time would move her to the final.
She said her goal for this year was “to do what I should have done in these last two years already.”
She was assigned Lane 9 in the final, the furthest outside lane on the track. It’s not a desirable position as it’s nearly impossible to get a sense of the field as the race progresses, and medals are determined by milliseconds.
That is, unless the person in Lane 9 is leading and has no one in her periphery. It was the position Richardson found herself in after catching up to Jackson, Fraser-Pryce and Ta Lou, then passing them, with just a few strides to go.
At the start of the race, the opportunity was right in front of her. Then, 10.65 seconds later, she grabbed it.
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
Answers on page 30
Aries (Mar 21-April 20)
Things should go quite well in the department of love today, Aries. Pursue creative projects in social environments. The more time you spend with others, the more fulfilled you’ll be by sundown. You’re fueled by others’ energy. Spend time with the people you love and you’ll feel a solid sense of self-worth.
Taurus (April 21-May 21)
Things should go quite well in the department of love today, Aries. Pursue creative projects in social environments. The more time you spend with others, the more fulfilled you’ll be by sundown. You’re fueled by others’ energy. Spend time with the people you love and you’ll feel a solid sense of self-worth.
Gemini (May 22-June 21)
You’re at an emotional climax now, Gemini. Things are coming to a critical point. Little issues in your relationships that you’ve ignored are coming back to haunt you. Someone could be trying to cross you at this time, or maybe it just feels that way. Don’t get overly paranoid. The whole world isn’t out to get you.
Cancer (June 22-July 23)
You may feel confused, Cancer. If so, take a breath You may feel confused, Cancer. If so, take a breath and slow down. Being frantic will only run you in circles. Your heart and mind are buzzing in all directions, so try to settle down. Don’t feel like you need to come up with any particular solutions. Trying to pin things down will only frustrate you and waste your time.
Leo (July 24-Aug 23)
Embrace your loved ones, Leo. Let your heart lead the way. Things will flow your way if you let them. Don’t try to fight the good fortune that comes. If you try to force the door open, it won’t budge. Knock gently and it will open by itself. You mind is quick today. Get things moving in a positive direction. Jump on the uphill spiral to success.
Listen to the birds today, Virgo. They have a song for you, telling you to be happy. Take time to do things that make you feel good. Connect with creative people and projects that get your artistic juices flowing. Keep things light and uplifting. It may be hard to make a decision about anything right now, but don’t let that keep you from being productive.
You might feel like your heart requires a bit more attention than usual, Scorpio. There could be a close loved one who is even needier than you. Either way, this situation is going to cause tension in an important relationship. If you’re not currently involved with someone, this is probably for the better. Things aren’t always as they seem.
Scorpio (Oct 24-Nov 22)
You might feel like your heart requires a bit more attention than usual, Scorpio. There could be a close loved one who is even needier than you. Either way, this situation is going to cause tension in an important relationship. If you’re not currently involved with someone, this is probably for the better. Things aren’t always as they seem.
Sagittarius (Nov 23-Dec 21)
Things go well in your love life today, Sagittarius, but only if you let them happen. You must first open your arms to give and receive. If your arms are full of laundry, it will be harder for people to hug you. Take your clothes to the cleaners and keep your arms free to receive the love you need. Remember that giving is as important as receiving.
Capricorn (Dec 22-Jan 20)
Things go well in your love life today, Sagittarius, but only if you let them happen. You must first open your arms to give and receive. If your arms are full of laundry, it will be harder for people to hug you. Take your clothes to the cleaners and keep your arms free to receive the love you need. Remember that giving is as important as receiving.
Aquarius (Jan 21-Feb 19)
Things go well in your love life today, Sagittarius, but only if you let them happen. You must first open your arms to give and receive. If your arms are full of laundry, it will be harder for people to hug you. Take your clothes to the cleaners and keep your arms free to receive the love you need. Remember that giving is as important as receiving.
Pisces (Feb 20-Mar 20)
Things go well in your love life today, Sagittarius, but only if you let them happen. You must first open your arms to give and receive. If your arms are full of laundry, it will be harder for people to hug you. Take your clothes to the cleaners and keep your arms free to receive the love you need. Remember that giving is as important as receiving.
