Wednesday Aug 26, 2020

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

San Juan The

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COVID-19 Testing Delays Could Get Worse Thanks to Flu Season in US

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PDP Legislator Sues DDEC Secretary Over Transfer of Tourism Personnel P5

DAILY

Star

Lifestyle, Meds Changes Could Lower Breast Cancer Risk

Labor Dept. at Risk of Being Sued by Citizens Unemployment Insurance Delays Separate Families, Leave Others in Fear of Losing Everything P4

NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

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August 26, 2020

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

Energy Bureau approves PREPA’s Integrated Resource Plan with amendments

Today’s

Weather

By THE STAR STAFF

Day

Night

High

Low

91ºF

79ºF

Precip 20%

Precip 10%

Partly Cloudy

Partly Cloudy

Wind: Humidity: UV Index: Sunrise: Sunset:

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From E 14 mph 69% 10 of 10 6:08 AM Local Time 6:42 PM Local Time

INDEX

Local 3 Mainland 7 Business 11 International 14 Viewpoint 18 Noticias en Español 19 Entertainment 20

Fashion Health Legals Sports Games Horoscope Cartoons

22 23 24 26 29 30 31

he Puerto Rico Energy Bureau (PREB) approved in part the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and an amended five-year action plan, according to a press release issued this week.

The IRP is a blueprint of the island’s energy needs, protecting customers and ensuring workforce safety for the next 20 years.

“We just received the PREB’s resolution on the IRP. At this time, we are evaluating it to determine our next steps,” PREPA Executive Director Efran Paredes said.

As part of the portion of the IRP that was approved, the PREB gave the green light to a $2 billion investment in the utility’s transmission and distribution system, and $5.9 billion for the development of a mini-grid program, the release said.

The PREB also approved the development through 2025 of a minimum solar generation capacity of 3,500 megawatts (MW) and a maximum of 3,900 MW. By that same year, PREPA should have developed a storage system with a minimum capacity of 1,360 MW and a maximum of 1,480 MW, the item indicated.

The regulator authorized the power purchase operating agreement that was renegotiated with

EcoEléctrica and the natural gas supply agreement with Naturgy through 2032. The approved IRP includes putting the AES Puerto Rico generation plant out of operation by the end of 2027 because it is a coal-power plant, the press release said. AES plans to switch to renewable energy sources.

The PREB also approved the conversion of two units of the San Juan power plant from oil to natural gas. However, the possible extension of a fuel purchase contract with New Fortress Energy, which expires in 2025, will be evaluated during the discussion of the next IRP, according to the document.

In June, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asked New Fortress Energy to explain why they didn’t seek permission to build and operate a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal to fuel a $1.5 billion deal converting a pair of coal-fired San Juan power stations.

Meanwhile, the regulator rejected the preliminary activities for the future development of liquified natural gas terminals in Yabucoa and Mayagüez, and the development of 18 new gas terminals to replace some existing units, the press release said.

PREPA had been hoping to use natural gas as an intermediate alternative to reduce costs for energy consumers.

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The IRP is a blueprint of the island’s energy needs, protecting customers and ensuring workforce safety for the next 20 years.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Can citizens take legal action against the Labor Dept. for unemployment insurance payment delays? Here’s what you need to know

By PEDRO CORREA HENRY Twitter: @PCorreaHenry Special to The Star

M

ore than six months have gone by since the COVID-19 pandemic began in Puerto Rico and, even though the Legislature appointed former Deputy Justice Secretary Carlos Rivera Santiago as the new Labor and Human Resources (DTRH by its Spanish initials) secretary after former Secretary Briseida Torres resigned amid thousands of unemployed workers not receiving any financial aid, many citizens were still complaining Tuesday that they have not yet received any compensation from the agency.

Coran Li Morales, a former Commonwealth of Puerto Rico Employees Association worker, told the Star that she is still waiting for the agency to either confirm or reject her case. The 39-year-old said she received two phone calls in March from a DTRH official who told her that her case was being reconsidered even after she had resigned, and the agency was requesting documents that her employer already provided so as to remove points of controversy from her case and send her an eligibility letter.

“I am still waiting! There’s still an unsolved point of controversy according to the website and they have yet to reply, even if it is to reject my case. They called, they requested documents, even a pay stub from my earlier job to take into account,” Morales said. “If it wasn’t for me pushing a family business in the midst of this mess, I would be dressing up and complaining at their offices. It is very frustrating.”

Natalia Vázquez, who works part-time as a barista for a local coffee shop in Caguas, said she has yet to receive a response from DTRH on her unemployment case after she submitted it in June at a drive-thru station the agency installed at Héctor Solá Bezárez Coliseum in the aforementioned municipality. The 25-year-old freelance video producer added that she has been able to survive the pandemic with little money as she still lives with her parents and gets support from them.

She also said that she is capable of giving her work hours to other colleagues as she is aware that many are struggling to make ends meet.

“The enterprise that I work for has been fortunate enough, as there are many others that

Dept. of Labor Secretary Carlos Rivera have not been able to reponen. However, as essential employees, we have to spend more money while going to work; you have to spend money on food and gas,” Vázquez said. “At the beginning of the pandemic, I had to drive to work for six to eight hours a week. I spent more than I earn, but I couldn’t resign because, if you resign, you lose the right to [receive] unemployment assistance.”

Unemployment in Puerto Rico has also separated families when members need to provide for their loved ones. Henry Berríos, who is married to a radio producer and has a soon to be three-year-old son, told the Star that he had to move to Texas in order to provide for his family because he was laid off in March from his job as a barista in the San Juan metropolitan area. Although the 31-year-old said things have been going well enough for him in Texas, the unemployment aid would come in handy.

“I received three letters from DTHR confirming that I was eligible to claim unemployment, but as I submitted information, the website told me to continue the process via email, which I couldn’t complete because the agency’s email inbox was full to its capacity.

No one was able to help me, and to this day I have been unable to claim one single dollar,” Berríos said. “I even got a letter from them saying that I was eligible for PUA [Pandemic Unemployment Assistance], even though I

didn’t have an independent contractor letter or anything like that.”

Meanwhile, a citizen who will remain nameless and genderless to conceal their identity said he/she has been requesting unemployment assistance since March. The former college professor resigned out of fear for his/her own safety living in the southeastern town of Juana Díaz due to the earthquakes that began in late 2019. He/she told the Star that he/she was eligible for financial aid, but the case had a point of controversy given that he/she had resigned from the job.

“I sent a form in which I explained why I had to resign, and I said it was because of the earlier tremors that affected my residence and I didn’t feel safe living in the city -- I was scared that the apartment would collapse on top of me. Henceforth, I had to move in with my daughter in Missouri,” he/she said. “They later asked for pictures as evidence, which I never knew was a requirement because others who I know of were able to get unemployment assistance even after they resigned from their jobs. Although I live with my daughter, I expect an answer from them because I have to cover my bills for the medicine [I need] to address my health conditions.”

Citizens can file a writ of mandamus against DTRH for institutional negligence Regarding if citizens were able to take legal action against the DTRH for institutional

negligence, private practice attorney Javier Ramos Rodríguez said a writ of mandamus would be the way to go as this extraordinary petition has the purpose of requesting that a court of law demand a public entity to comply with a ministerial duty; according to the University of Puerto Rico-Humacao student attorney, a ministerial duty refers to an official duty in which a government agency has no room for discretion.

“If you could establish that paying for the [unemployment] insurance is a ministerial duty that is not being fulfilled, a court of law could issue a mandamus and order a contempt penalty against the agency so they fulfill their duty,” Ramos Rodríguez said. “Now, this could bring up a defense as to what is possible and what is not; we know that the Puerto Rican government has plenty of difficulties and to fulfill requires that you can fulfill. The overarching question, which is more of a pragmatic matter than a legal matter, is if the department is capable of managing all of this with their information system and their actual resources.”

Labor attorney Jaime Sanabria also said that citizens can file a writ of mandamus because the Labor secretary and his associates, who are public servants of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, have the ministerial duty to safeguard workers’ interests, such as paying unemployment benefits to citizens recognized by the law. Likewise, Sanabria said citizens who have not received their unemployment benefits could file a legal claim for damages against the agency.

“As long as an official’s measures, whether direct or indirect, affect the person’s rights to have a livelihood, to maintain their families, to have food to eat, to have money available to take care of their health and that of their loved ones, those citizens have the right to claim damages because one of the most basic rights is being violated, the right to have their human dignity and personal integrity respected,, Sanabria said.

When the Star asked if the reason such an action has not been taken against the agency is a lack of information, Sanabria said that more than that it was a lack of trust in the public institutions of the commonwealth, a lack of income, and that attorneys have yet to show interest in a situation of this sort, as it would require for them to work pro bono or on a contingency basis.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

5

Lawmaker sues DDEC secretary over ‘illegal’ transfer of Tourism personnel

By THE STAR STAFF

P

opular Democratic Party Rep. Ángel Matos García has sued Economic Development and Commerce (DDEC by its Spanish acronym) Secretary Manuel Laboy Rivera to stop what the legislator called “the illegal movement” of personnel to DDEC from the Puerto Rico Tourism Co. “On Monday, we were able to subpoena Secretary Laboy and we hope in the preliminary hearing to obtain a permanent injunction to stop the destruction of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company,” Matos García said. “We hope that the court will paralyze this illegal movement of

Telecommunications Bureau President Sandra Torres López

executive personnel from Tourism to the DDEC, an action undertaken Friday by Secretary Laboy.”

The representative had initially complained last week about the merger of Tourism career employees into the DDEC. While the merger is justified under the provisions of Law 141, he said the action was carried out contrary to that law because DDEC could not unilaterally begin a movement of personnel to repeal the Tourism Company without first notifying the Legislature as well as the island State Department through a certification.

Under Article 2.2 of Reorganization Plan No. 7 in Law 141 of 2018, the DDEC secretary must first certify

to the Legislature that financially, as well as at the level of physical capacity, the DDEC is ready to accept the Tourism employees. At no time did the Legislature receive a certification, which violates the law, the minority legislator said.

“DDEC’s fiscal situation is not the best and it is not ready to receive the Tourism Company [personnel] and the fiscal responsibilities of this agency,” Matos García said last week. “It is a shame to see that yesterday [Aug. 18] officials celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company, created by Don Luis A. Ferré while they were actually celebrating the last day of its existence.”

SIP to investigate Telecommunications Bureau president

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

T

he Special Independent Prosecutor Panel (PFEI by its Spanish initials) announced on Tuesday that it accepted the Puerto Rico Justice Department’s recommendation to assign a special independent prosecutor to investigate Telecommunications Bureau President Sandra Torres López and her adviser, Katherine Erazo García, for allegedly using Torres López’s office to assist in the re-election campaign of former Gov. Ricardo Rosselló Nevares.

The PFEI’s determination arises after evaluating the preliminary investigation report submitted by Interim Justice Secretary Inés del C. Carrau Martínez, and signed

by Phoebe Isales Forsythe, director of the Division of Public Integrity and Comptroller Affairs, and Assistant Prosecutor Teresita del Rosario Morales Arteaga, both officials of the Justice Department.

The PFEI indicated that it appears from the preliminary investigation report that during working hours Torres López asked Telecommunications Bureau employee Exel López Vélez to organize a fundraising activity for the re-election campaign of the then-governor Rosselló Nevares.

In addition, the Justice Department alleged that Torres López instructed López Vélez to seek donations for the fundraising activity among the trust employees of the Telecommunications Bureau, the telecommunications companies regulated by the Telecommunications Bureau and the contractors of the governmental entity.

López Vélez allegedly communicated with the employees and contractors for the aforementioned purpose. As a result of the Justice Department’s investigation, evidence was provided to demonstrate the facts alleged, as well as a statement under oath that López Vélez gave before the Justice Department, the PFEI said.

López Vélez also told the Justice Department that he had filed several complaints against Torres López, the first with the Puerto Rico Supreme Court, another with the La Fortaleza Chief of Staff’s Office, a third with the Government Ethics Office and yet another with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

López Vélez said that at the Telecommunications Bureau facilities and during working hours, Erazo García informed him and Torres López that then-Gov. Rosselló Nevares had ordered each of the executive branch’s agencies to raise funds for his re-election campaign.

At that time, Torres López allegedly

said the Bureau was going to cooperate, Government Ethics Law, in the criminal the Justice Department report said. In sphere of that law. addition, according to the report, other The PFEI appointed Ramón Meninterventions related to partisan political doza Rosario as the special independent issues, both by Torres López and Erazo prosecutor and Miguel Colón Ortiz as the García, occurred during working hours. delegate prosecutor in the investigation.

In its resolution on the case, the PFEI They were granted a period of 90 days, states that López Vélez could be entitled provided in Law 2-1988, starting from the to some protection as a whistleblower notification date of the aforementioned on acts of corruption. That is not neces- resolution. sarily the case, however. Therefore, the determination on the extension of the investigation and the possible filing of complaints against him is a matter for the PFEI to decide.

According to the PFEI, other irregularities are attributable to Torres López that, if true, could constitute serious violations of the law. These include the use of an official vehicle and driver to attend meetings of a partisan political nature, as well as other actions related to the purchase of and payment for services.

The PFEI concluded that based on the fact that the record submitted by the Justice Department contains evidence that proves that the allegations set forth therein could be the subject of criminal charges, it orders that a thorough investigation be conducted. The infractions of the law are Telecommunications Bureau President both of the Penal Code of Puerto Rico of 2012, as well as various provisions of the Sandra Torres López

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Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Health secretary tests positive for COVID-19

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

P

uerto Rico Health Secretary Lorenzo GonzĂĄlez Feliciano said Tuesday he tested positive for COVID-19.

Earlier he said that he will place himself in quarantine after being identified as having had contact with a person who tested positive for COVID-19. “I was notified that I am a direct contact for a person who tested positive for COVID-19.

This person identified me as a contact, so the

Health Sec. Lorenzo GonzĂĄlez Feliciano

The San Juan Daily Star Department of Health and its contact tracing division informed me about the situation. This situation forces me to remain in quarantine for the next few days,� the Health secretary said early Tuesday in a written statement. “Because the exposure was in recent days, and given that I am considered a first-line response worker, I will soon be tested for COVID-19, according to the protocols.

However, I must clarify that I will continue to attend to all the affairs of the Department of Health remotely.�

GonzĂĄlez Feliciano reiterated that COVID-19 does not discriminate, so everyone in one way or another can be exposed to the virus. “This is why the use of masks at all times, physical distancing and hand washing as tools to prevent infection becomes relevant,â€? the official said. “Likewise, any person who was exposed to the virus must be responsible and take the established measures not to spread the virus. The call is to follow the rules and not put the lives of others at risk.â€?

On Monday, Resident Commissioner Jenniffer GonzĂĄlez ColĂłn announced that she had tested positive for COVID-19. In addition, several island lawmakers are in quarantine after testing positive for the coronavirus.

Labs: Health Dept. doesn’t need pharmacists to test for COVID-19

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

I

n Puerto Rico enough clinical laboratories and staff exist to meet the demand for tests to detect COVID-19, said the director of Los Robles Clinical Laboratory, BĂĄrbara Surillo, in a radio interview Tuesday.

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“The honorable secretary of Health [Lorenzo GonzĂĄlez Feliciano] is trying to get pharmacists to do the tests [to detect COVID-19],â€? Surillo said. “When all the COVID started in March and we were ready to do the laboratory tests, he signed an order so that pharmacists with a three-hour course could also do them.â€? “At that time, a meeting was held [with the Health secretary] through the Medical Technologists and Laboratory Owners associations in which the different

entities told him that there was no need [for pharmacists to do the tests] because in Puerto Rico there are 809 licensed laboratories and [more than] 2,000 licensed medical technologists to do our job,� Surillo added.

All the same, the Health secretary has authorized pharmacists to test for COVID-19.

GonzĂĄlez Feliciano said in a radio interview that it is “a provision of the federal Department of Healthâ€? that allows pharmacists to test for COVID-19.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

7

Flu season could make Coronavirus testing delays even worse

By KATHERINE J. WU

C

ome fall, the rise of influenza and other seasonal respiratory infections could exacerbate already staggering delays in coronavirus testing, making it easier for the virus to spread unnoticed, experts said.

In typical years, doctors often do not test for flu, simply assuming that patients with coughs, fevers and fatigue during the winter months are probably carrying the highly infectious virus.

But this year, with the coronavirus bringing similar symptoms, doctors will need to test for both viruses to diagnose their patients — further straining supply shortages in an already overwhelmed testing system.

A handful of manufacturers have begun making tests that can screen for several pathogens at once. But these combo tests are expensive and will likely make up only a fraction of the market.

Some researchers are trying to make their own multi-virus tests as well, but they almost certainly will not fill in the gaps.

“The flu season is a bit of a ticking time bomb,” said Amanda Harrington, medical director of microbiology at Loyola University Medical Center. “We are all waiting and trying to prepare as best we can.”

Flu viruses and coronaviruses differ in many ways, including how they spread, how long they linger in the body and the groups they affect most severely. Food and Drug Administration-approved antivirals and vaccines exist for the flu, but no such treatments yet exist for the coronavirus, which has killed about 800,000 people worldwide in less than a year.

Being infected with one virus does not preclude contracting the other. And researchers also do not yet know how risky it is for a person to harbor both viruses at the same time.

Those differences make it essential to tease the two pathogens apart, as well as rule out other common wintry infections like respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, which hits the very young and very old especially hard.

But testing for individual viruses poses many challenges for doctors and laboratory workers already fighting their way through supply shortages. Several of these tests use similar machines and chemicals, and require handling and processing by trained personnel.

What’s more, many flu and RSV tests vanished from the market this spring as the companies that make them rapidly pivoted to address the coronavirus.

Late summer is typically when laboratories start stockpiling flu tests, RSV tests, and flu-RSV combo tests in anticipation of the fall surge, said Susan Butler-Wu, director of medical microbiology at LAC+USC Medical Center, which purchases thousands of these tests every winter. But the supply chain shake-up has left shelves empty just weeks before one of the busiest times of the year.

“Many people are legitimately concerned about the winter because we’re not able to squirrel away our nuts right now,” Butler-Wu said. “Every lab is fighting to get what they need for their system.”

A few test manufacturers are trying to maximize efficiency by developing tests that can spot several pathogens at once. BioFire and Qiagen, for instance, have already made tests that can

Doctors won’t be able to diagnose patients on a hunch. “The flu season is a bit of a ticking time bomb,” said one expert.

“We are all waiting and trying to prepare as best we can.” simultaneously screen for more than 20 bacterial and viral pathogens, including influenza viruses, RSV and the new coronavirus.

“The beauty of these panels is: it’s everything,” said Esther Babady, director of the clinical microbiology service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

But the bigger the panel, the bigger the price tag — and “those costs can add up really quickly,” Babady said. These ultracomprehensive tests will probably only be used in the sickest patients, which means health workers cannot rely exclusively on them. And while coronavirus testing in the United States has largely been comped, federal funding sources like the coronavirus relief law have not explicitly addressed the issue of combo diagnostics, leaving ambiguous how much patients might have to pay.

Cheaper options do exist, including some that can screen patient samples for only the most likely microbial culprits.

Dozens of public health laboratories run at the state and county level — which process hundreds of thousands of samples from hospital patients, health workers and nursing homes every week — will soon be using a new test for three viruses, coronavirus, influenza A and influenza B. The combo test was designed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and cleared for use by the FDA in July.

The CDC’s test is a boon for efficiency, said William Glover, assistant director of infectious diseases at North Carolina’s state public health lab. It will also help labs search for flu cases

by sampling large swaths of the general population, a process called surveillance. But in order to meet local testing demand, Glover’s team will likely need to supplement that test with a combination of commercial panels. Given the supply shortages that have thwarted testing thus far, he said, “my plan is to have as much diversity in platforms as we possibly can.”

Some labs are trying DIY combo tests, including some loosely based on the CDC’s original three-virus recipe.

“That’s always an option for us,” said Dr. Laurel Glaser, director of the clinical microbiology lab at the University of Pennsylvania. “It could loosen up the supply chain.”

These laboratory-developed tests can now be deployed without seeking FDA review, theTrump administration announced Aug. 19. That could make it easier for big testing companies like Quest Diagnostics to make a proprietary combo panel, which is in the works, according to a company representative.

Still, most labs do not have the time or resources to tinker with new tests, and the DIY versions often end up being more labor-intensive than their industry counterparts, said Jennifer Dien Bard, director of the clinical microbiology and virology laboratory at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Preparing for this year’s flu season has become an onerous process of layering contingency plans atop contingency plans, Babady said. “Figuring out all those pieces before November is what’s keeping us up at night.”

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Wednesday, August 26, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Blake shooting prompts tense protests and fires in several cities

By JULIE BOSMAN

P

eaceful marches in protest of a police shooting gave way to fires, destruction and looting in Kenosha as a strip of businesses in a central residential neighborhood was

consumed in flames early Tuesday.

Residents emerged from their houses overnight to gape at billowing smoke that could be seen for miles. Lost in the blaze, neighbors said, was a mattress store, a storefront church, a Mexican restaurant, and a cellphone store. Less than a mile away, a probation and parole office was also on fire.

A line of National Guard members, called to Kenosha amid rising tension over the shooting Sunday of Jacob Blake, a Black resident who was shot by a white police officer, prevented anyone from getting close as firefighters worked to douse the flames.

“This is our town,” said Mike Mehlan, 33, a chef, as he stared at the buildings, stunned.

Mehlan said that just a half-hour before, he saw at least 20 cars pull up to a nearby gas station, break in and then head to the stores one block away. They entered the mattress store and set it on fire, he said.

In several other cities around the country overnight, there were demonstrations and, in some cases, flashes of destruction in protests that cited the shooting of Blake as the nation’s latest example of police violence.

In Kenosha, the worst destruction was limited to a relatively small area of the city, which is home to about 100,000 people, and some neighborhoods of Kenosha were quiet. At least one sheriff’s deputy was injured in the neck by a firework that was set off. It was uncertain whether there were arrests.

One resident said he had little problem with burning businesses to spur social change and reform to policing.

“It’s unfortunate, but it has to be done,” said Wayne Gardner, who lives around the corner.

Police offered little detail about what had happened in the shooting, saying only that an officer had shot Blake while responding to a domestic incident. Local and state officials have declined to provide information about the officers who responded.

Blake, 29, was in stable condition at a hospital. Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for the family, said he had been told that Blake was attempting to intervene in an argument between two women when police arrived.

In a video taken from an apartment window across the street, several officers can be seen standing on a sidewalk next to a four-door SUV. The man identified as Blake, wearing a white tank top and black shorts, is seen walking along the passenger side of the vehicle, away from the officers, who are yelling. At least one of them points a gun at him.

Blake walks around the front of the vehicle and opens the driver’s side door. Several people can be heard yelling, and one officer is seen grabbing Blake’s shirt. As Blake opens the vehicle door, at least half a dozen shots are heard, while at least two officers can be seen with their guns pointed at him. The video, which is about 20 seconds long, ends shortly after the shooting.

The video spread quickly on social media, and demonstrators beyond Kenosha spoke of Blake in marches overnight. In Madison, Wisconsin, about 4,000 people gathered near the state Capitol and marched downtown, some smashing glass storefronts and setting dumpsters ablaze. A liquor store was looted.

In Portland, Oregon, where nightly protests have continued for nearly three months, a few hundred demonstrators

People gathered on Monday, Aug. 24, 2020, near the scene where Jacob Blake was shot by police officers in Kenosha, Wis. began a march by chanting about Blake. The crowd later gathered outside a building for the Portland Police Association, and some demonstrators lit fires on the exterior of the building before police moved in, using tear gas, shoving protesters to the ground and making arrests.

In Seattle, some 200 people marched in solidarity with Kenosha. The group was led by a line of protesters holding shields, and occasionally a small group of musicians. Some protesters threw trash and then fireworks at the East Precinct police station, igniting a fire in front of the building. Some also broke windows at a Starbucks.

In Minneapolis, at least 11 people were arrested downtown, outside the Hennepin County Adult Detention Center, after authorities said protesters grew destructive during protests.

Sheriff Dave Hutchinson of Hennepin County said protesters broke windows at a detention center and “threatened to breach the security of the jail.” One police officer suffered a broken hand during a confrontation with demonstrators, he said.

“We fully support peaceful protests, but we cannot — and will not — allow demonstrators to destroy property or jeopardize the safety and security of our inmates, our deputies and our jail,” the sheriff said.

In Kenosha, Chauncey Body, 44, watched the flames from the sidewalk.

“This hurts,” he said.

He said that if the fires were set in the name of protest, he believed in the conviction behind them.

“But this is a neighborhood. They’re putting lives in danger,” he said.

Kenosha, which has been engulfed in protests, unrest and destruction for two days, is under a curfew at night. Police officers attempted to disperse people who were standing outside, with little success. They used tear gas to try to clear people away.

Sheriff David Beth of Kenosha County said police were outnumbered.

“We’ve got 200 officers, I don’t know how many armored vehicles,” he said. “It’s not enough. It’s a battle we aren’t able to keep up with.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

California fires: Why this year is different

By JILL COWAN

T

he wildfires raging in Northern California have been blamed for seven deaths and the destruction of at least 1,200 buildings.

As the state has learned over and again in years past, every death is devastating, and with every lost home or leveled neighborhood, people’s work and memories are incinerated.

What’s different this year, officials and experts said Monday, isn’t just that we are also grappling with a pandemic. It’s the staggering scale of the many fires sprawling across California.

Gov. Gavin Newsom assured residents that “we’ve deployed every resource at our disposal” as the number of active fires grew to 625 across the vast state.

And even though a new front of lightning storms was less severe than expected, Newsom emphasized that almost 300 lightning strikes had sparked 10 new fires — every one of which could have become a new threat.

So far this year, more than 7,000 fires have chewed through 1.4 million acres, making this fire season one of the most active ever. For context, Newsom said, by this point in 2019, 4,292 fires had burned 56,000 acres across the state.

Tens of thousands of firefighters from across California and from states as far away as Kansas have been enlisted to help contain the blazes and keep them from destroying homes and businesses.

Hundreds of fire engines have been sent out across a huge swath of the state — including to towering forests that are being charred by fires “the likes of which haven’t been seen in modern recorded history,” Newsom said.

But climate experts warned that the activity so early in the year and across such varied landscapes offers a preview of a fire and flood cycle that is likely to keep getting worse before it gets better.

“I’m running out of superlatives,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Swain said that he expected this year to see the greatest number of acres burned under California’s modern fire suppression regimen.

More troubling, he said, is the fact that fires have burned ecosystems where there are not typically wildfires. Flames are common in expanses of dry grass and chaparral, particularly following a dry winter like the one this year.

But burning Joshua trees, or redwoods and coniferous forests? That’s alarming.

“I actually don’t know of any vegetation type that is not on fire in California,” Swain said.

A Brief Update on the Pandemic

For the second week in a row, the governor’s Monday update on the state of the pandemic in California was encouraging.

Over the past week, the state’s testing positivity rate was down to an average of 5.6%, Newsom said. According to The New York Times’ database, there was an average of 5,892 cases per day over the past week, a decrease of 21% from the average two weeks earlier.

Orange County joined San Diego County on the list of counties no longer being monitored by the state, which the governor said could pave the way for schools to reopen for in-person instruction sooner than expected.

And Newsom said he would release new reopening guidelines this week.

But the last time the state took significant steps to reopen indoor businesses, cases surged, prompting concerns that officials moved too quickly. And last month, the state reinstated restrictions.

Newsom did not elaborate on what the new guidelines would look like, other than to say that officials and stakeholders were finishing them up after a weekend of discussions.

Here’s What Else to Know The Republican National Convention kicked off Monday, and there are set to be fewer California speakers than there were at the Democratic convention last week. (According to LAist, Rep. Kevin McCarthy is the only elected official from the Golden State on the schedule.)

There was, however, one clear California connection: Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top Trump fundraiser and the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., gave a fervent speech painting a dark picture of California as a kind of dystopia.

But she has not always felt that way: Guilfoyle grew up in San Francisco and was once its first lady; she was married to Newsom while he was mayor. They were once described as “the new Kennedys.”

The L.N.U. Lightning Complex Fire has forced evacuations in and around Vacaville.

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Wednesday, August 26, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

DeJoy defends postal changes as Trump continues to attack voting by mail

By CATIE EDMONDSON

P

ostmaster General Louis DeJoy told Congress on Monday that the Postal Service could be trusted to carry out the largest vote-by-mail program in American history without political bias, even as President Donald Trump repeated baseless accusations that mail-in voting would be used by his rivals to rig the November election against him.

Under tough questioning by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, DeJoy, a major donor to Trump and other Republicans, mounted an outraged defense of the modifications he has made at the Postal Service that have thrust the agency into a political firestorm, denying that they were motivated by partisanship. He refused to commit to reversing the changes, which he characterized as vital cost-cutting measures for a cash-strapped agency badly in need of an overhaul, and scolded Congress for failing for years to attend to the post office’s financial woes.

While he conceded that some of the changes he had put in place, such as reducing overtime and limiting trips, had caused service delays, DeJoy maintained that the issues were being rectified and hotly denounced suggestions from Democratic lawmakers that he was working to help Trump politically.

“I am not engaged in sabotaging the election,” DeJoy told lawmakers.

But even as he spoke, Trump was delivering an extraordinary diatribe against voting by mail in a surprise appearance at the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he sought to sow mistrust in the process and claimed without evidence that Democrats were “using COVID to steal the election.”

The performance made for an awkward contrast with DeJoy, who spent the day trying to reassure Congress about the Postal Service’s role in helping to administer an election without political influence. Reiterating comments he made last week before a Senate panel, DeJoy criticized the “false narrative” that he said was being promoted about both his intentions and the changes at the agency, which he described as necessary to address the Postal Service’s financial challenges. Civil rights groups, state attorneys general and Democrats have asserted instead that they are part of a concerted attempt, directed by Trump, to disenfranchise voters.

“First, I did not direct the removal of blue collection boxes or the removal of mail processing equipment,” DeJoy said in his opening statement. “Second, I did not direct the cutback on hours at any of our post offices. And finally, I did not direct the elimination or any cutback in overtime. I did, however, suspend these practices, to remove any misperceptions about our commitment to delivering the nation’s election mail.”

Trump has worked to stoke concerns about Americans’ ability to reliably cast their ballots by mail during the coronavirus pandemic, criticizing the Postal Service as a “joke.”

“All the Radical Left Democrats are trying to do with the Post Office hearings is blame the Republicans for the FRAUD that will occur because of the 51 Million Ballots that are being sent to people who have not even requested them,” he said on Twitter as the session got underway. “They are setting the table for a BIG MESS!” DeJoy conceded Monday that the president’s disparagement of mail-in voting was “not helpful.” But he said that while he was “very concerned with the deterioration in service,” the agency was “seeing a big recovery this week.” Pressed by Rep.

John Sarbanes, D-Md., to put his assurances in writing, DeJoy committed to giving the panel “an update on the improvement of the service” by next Monday.

But Democrats were not satisfied with DeJoy’s explanation for the delays, and the hearing turned testy when Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., accused DeJoy of “incompetence” and asked “how can one person screw this up” in just a few weeks. He repeatedly asked whether DeJoy, who began the job in June, would return the mail-sorting machines that had been removed from post offices.

“I will not,” DeJoy barked in response, adding that Lynch had spread “misinformation” during his questioning. DeJoy has previously argued that the machines are “not needed.”

Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., asserted that DeJoy’s operational changes at the Postal Service amounted to an in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign because of the delays they had caused in the run-up to the November election. The postmaster general bristled, calling the claim “outrageous” and telling Cooper that he resented it.

“I’m not answering these types of questions,” DeJoy said.

“I’m here to represent the Postal Service. All my actions have to do with improvements to the Postal Service. Am I the only one in this room who understands that we have a $10-billion-a-year loss?”

Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the top Republican on the Oversight Committee, chastised Democrats in his opening remarks for spreading a “baseless conspiracy theory about the Postal Service” and hastily moving over the weekend to pass the legislation.

He said DeJoy was taking good-faith steps to cut costs and noted that he took responsibility for the delays, which Comer called “temporary growing pains.” And he pointed out that the recent removal of blue mailboxes and mail sorting machines was long planned and consistent with actions taken under DeJoy’s predecessor.

“I am disappointed at the hysterical frenzy whipped up around this issue by my colleagues on the left and their friends in the media,” Comer said.

But Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, D-Va., told DeJoy that there was ample reason for lawmakers — and voters — to be skeptical of his motives.

“Six weeks into the complex and awe-inspiring new job in the midst of a global pandemic and just weeks before a consequential national election where the Postal Service will play an unprecedented role,” he said, DeJoy “decides to announce a sweeping reorganization that he admits could slow down mail and will undoubtedly infuse uncertainty and confusion throughout the Postal Service and into our neighborhoods all across America.”

DeJoy said his decision to cut down on late and extra shipments of mail was based on a “fundamental, basic principle: Run your trucks on time.”

“I would not know how to reverse that now,” he said. “Am I to say, ‘Do not run the trucks on time?’ Is that the answer that we are trying to get me to say here today?”

“You can blame me for this,” he concluded, “but these conditions have been around long before my time, and they need to be addressed.”

Postmaster General Louis Dejoy, center, departs after testifying about changes to the Postal Service, at a hearing of the House Oversight and Reform Committee in Washington, on Aug. 24, 2020.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

11

To fight Apple’s and Google’s grip, Fortnite creator mounts a crusade

By ERIN GRIFFITH

T

im Sweeney, chief executive and founder of video game maker Epic Games, has antagonized the world’s most powerful technology giants since at least 2016.

That year, Sweeney, a self-described computer nerd with a slightly nervous energy, lashed out in an op-ed against Microsoft, saying it was attempting “sneaky maneuvers” to dominate personal computer games.

He also knocked Facebook’s Oculus Rift app store as “disappointing” for not being as “open” as it claimed.

In 2018, Sweeney went at it again.

He launched Fortnite, Epic’s popular video game, outside Google’s Play Store to bypass its app store fees, which he called a “tax” and “disproportionate.” And in January at an industry conference, he declared that “undue power has accrued to many of the participants who are not at the core of the industry.”

His mission to rein in the power of the tech companies has now reached a fever pitch. Sweeney is preparing for a protracted legal battle after Apple and Google banned Fortnite, which is played by more than 350 million people, from their stores this month for trying to get around its payment systems.

In response, Epic sued both companies, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by forcing developers to use those payment systems.

Sweeney’s yearslong public crusade against the tech Goliaths suggests that the issue is not something he will easily drop.

People close to him said the fight was not about money or ego. Instead, they said, it is firmly about principle.

“He sees a vision of the world that is fair and open,” said Bradley Twohig, a venture capitalist at Lightspeed Venture Partners, which has invested in Epic.

Bruce Stein, chief executive of esports startup aXiomatic and an investor in Epic, said, “He was principled before he had the money to not be principled.”

How deeply Sweeney feels about tech power will be key as the fight with Apple and Google escalates. On Monday, a judge in the U.S. District Court of Northern California heard arguments about whether to grant Epic a restraining order against Apple. Epic sought the order last week after Apple cut off its support for an Epic software development

Epic’s lawsuits accuse Apple and Google of violating antitrust laws by forcing app makers to use their payment systems. tool, Unreal Engine, an action that Sweeney called an “existential threat” to Epic’s $17 billion business.

In an interview last month, Sweeney, 49, said the stakes of the antitrust investigations into tech giants like Apple and Google were no smaller than the future of humanity. “Otherwise you have these corporations who control all commerce and all speech,” he said. He declined to be interviewed for this article, citing the active lawsuits, but has written on Twitter that he is “fighting for open platforms and policy changes equally benefiting all developers.”

“I don’t think we are going to be swayed unless we get what we think is right,” Adam Sussman, Epic’s president, said in an interview Monday. “We will always sacrifice short term for long term.”

Other developers have embraced Epic’s cause. Spotify, the music streaming app, and Match Group, the maker of dating apps like Tinder, have released statements applauding Epic’s moves. In a legal brief Sunday, Epic also outlined Microsoft’s support for it.

But to many others, Sweeney faces an uphill battle. In conversations with a dozen of Epic’s investors and former executives, as well as with deal-makers and analysts in the gaming industry, many said that while they supported Sweeney’s stance, few expected him to prevail in all of his demands against

Apple and Google.

“It’s a herculean uphill battle for them to beat Apple in court,” said Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, because Epic violated the terms of the App Store.

Asked for comment, Apple referred Monday to its latest legal filing, in which it said Epic’s “‘emergency’ is entirely of Epic’s own making.” Google said it would “welcome the opportunity to continue our discussions with Epic and bring Fortnite back to Google Play.”

Sweeney, who grew up in Potomac, Maryland, and whose father worked for the Defense Mapping Agency, got into technology as a child. At age 9, he learned to code on an Apple II computer. In 1991, as a college student, he started Potomac Computer Systems, selling games on floppy disks via mail from his parents’ basement.

He eventually dropped out of the University of Maryland, where he had studied mechanical engineering. In 1992, he changed his company’s name to Epic MegaGames, then later dropped “Mega” and moved the startup to North Carolina.

Epic, now based in Cary, North Carolina, began licensing its tools for graphics and game development — such as Unreal Engine — to other companies. That became a steady source of income, smoothing out the hits-or-bust nature of the games business.

Over the years, Sweeney also worked diligently to keep control of Epic, which is privately held. In 2012, when Epic considered selling itself, it found two options: It could sell a majority stake in its operations to Warner Bros. for roughly $800 million, or sell a minority stake for the same valuation to Tencent, the Chinese internet company, a person with knowledge of the discussions said.

Even though the Warner plan had more potential business advantages, Epic went with Tencent, which kept Sweeney in control.

His antagonism toward the Big Tech platforms began a few years later when Epic started building Fortnite, a battle royalestyle fighting game that later expanded into a more creative mode where players could build their own games and challenges.

“We wanted to build online games and have a direct relationship with our customers,” Sweeney said in the July interview.

He added that he had discovered that the fees from the app stores meant that Apple and Google could sometimes make more money on a game than its creators.

“That’s totally unjust,” he said. “That shows the market is out of control.”

Sweeney has backed down once from a fight with a tech giant. In April, two years after releasing Fortnite outside the Google Play Store, Epic agreed to offer the game through the store. It said it was doing so because users were encountering “scary, repetitive security pop-ups” to download and update the app outside the Play Store.

Even so, Sweeney was not afraid to thumb his nose at the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. This month, Epic started encouraging Fortnite’s mobile-app users to pay it directly, rather than through Apple or Google. That violated Apple’s and Google’s rules that they handle all such app payments so they can collect their 30% commission.

In response, Apple banned Fortnite from its store; Google later did the same. Epic was ready. It rallied its fans around the hashtag #FreeFortnite and published a video satirizing Apple’s famous “1984” ad, which had portrayed Apple as the underdog. The parody included a villain wearing the same sunglasses as Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook.

On Sunday, Epic hosted a #FreeFortnite gaming contest offering anti-Apple hats and digital avatars as prizes. And Sweeney?

He also played along.

12

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

With hacks and cameras, Beijing’s electronic dragnet closes on Hong Kong

Tony Chung in the Hong Kong stairwell where, he said, the police pinned his head in front of his phone in an attempt to trigger the facial recognition system.

By PAUL MOZUR

T

o get onto his Facebook account, police used Tony Chung’s body.

When officers swarmed him at a Hong Kong shopping mall last month, they pulled him into a stairwell and pinned his head in front of his phone — an attempt to trigger the facial recognition system. Later, at his home, officers forced his finger onto a separate phone. Then they demanded passwords.

“They said, ‘Do you know with the national security law, we have all the rights to unlock your phones and get your passwords?’” Chung recalled.

Emboldened by that new law, Hong Kong security forces are turning to harsher tactics as they close a digital dragnet on activists, pro-democracy politicians and media leaders.

Their approaches — which in the

past month have included installing a camera outside the home of a prominent politician and breaking into the Facebook account of another — bear marked similarities to those long used by the fearsome domestic security forces in mainland China.

Not accustomed to such pressures, Hong Kong lawmakers and activists, and the U.S. companies that own the most popular internet services there, have struggled to respond.

Pro-democracy politicians have issued instructions to supporters on how to secure digital devices. Many have flocked to encrypted chat apps like Signal and changed their names on social media.

Dogged by the global reach of the law, even people from Hong Kong living far away from the city worry.

One Facebook discussion group of Hong Kongers living in Australia closed off public access after a user claimed to have reported discussions to

Hong Kong authorities for potentially violating the law.

Major internet companies like Facebook and Twitter have temporarily cut off data sharing with local police. Others have gone further, devising more permanent solutions. In July, Yahoo changed its terms of service so that users in Hong Kong are protected under U.S. law, not local rules. It also cut access for employees in Hong Kong to user data to protect them from the law, according to two people familiar with the matter.

A Google spokeswoman said in a statement that the company had not produced data for Hong Kong authorities since the national security law was enacted, and that authorities could seek information for criminal investigations through U.S. diplomatic channels. That means the company is effectively treating data requests in the city the way it does those from mainland China.

Long known as a financial hub, Hong Kong is now emerging as a land of internet fault lines, a place where China’s harsh techno-authoritarian rule collides with the open internet in a society and economy governed by rules that protect digital rights.

“With China’s rising influence and power, it’s not safe for technology companies to put their servers in China or Hong Kong now,” said a prominent activist, Joshua Wong.

“It’s important for them to help support Hong Kong’s citizens and society with digital security.”

The first coordinated sting under the new security law made Chung an example of an offense new to Hong Kong but common in mainland China: an internet crime. Police accused him of writing a post calling for Hong Kong independence on the Facebook page of a newly formed political party and demanded he delete it. He denied writing it.

Enforcing internet laws meant gathering digital evidence, and police pushed hard to gain access to Chung’s accounts. Though less than fully prepared for the arrest, Chung said, he was able to foil officers at

each turn. In the stairwell when police forced his head in front of his phone, he closed his eyes and scrunched his face, rendering useless his iPhone’s facial recognition software.

He had long since disabled the fingerprint unlock on his other phone.

For passwords, he told police that he had forgotten them.

Even so, a few hours after he was detained, his friends noticed that his Facebook account was active, appearing as if he were online and using it.

Chung believes that the security forces broke in, although he said he was not sure how. When he was released and tried to sign back in, Facebook had frozen his account over a suspicious login.

Hong Kong police declined to comment on recent tactics and cases.

A Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Verizon Media, which owns Yahoo, said it was “assessing potential impacts” of the law on its operations in Hong Kong.

Other police tactics have been more subtle and more challenging to address.

Hours after media mogul Jimmy Lai was arrested, an employee at his company, Next Digital, received a message from someone posing as a part of tech support. Using the names of his employees, the message asked for login details to Lai’s Twitter account in order to set up a new iPhone for Lai. Schooled from years of cyberattacks, the recipient of the message flagged it as suspicious. Mark Simon, an executive at Next Digital, said the company believed it was an attempt

by Hong Kong police to get the login information for Lai’s account.

The tactic has added to a new level of paranoia that has made day-to-day operations more difficult, according to Simon.

“The problem is this slows everything down, because now everyone is double checking: ‘Did you send this message? Did you send that?’ It never stops; it just never, ever stops,” he said.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

13

Stocks

Stocks rise as U.S.-China phone call boosts optimism, euro gains

T

he euro rose on better-than-expected German business morale data on Tuesday while global equity markets gained, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq setting new closing highs, after a phone call cooled a recent flare-up in U.S.-China trade tensions.

Gold prices fell as the call, the first formal dialogue between top U.S. and Chinese trade officials since early May, bolstered risk sentiment and offset support for bullion from a weaker dollar.

The officials reaffirmed their commitment to a trade deal that had appeared on shaky ground because of a slew of issues rattling bilateral ties, including Beijing’s new national security law imposed on Hong Kong.

Trading volume was low - typical for a late August session - but also as investors await a speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Thursday, when he is expected to address the U.S. central bank’s view on inflation and monetary policy.

Powell may signal a shift in the Fed’s inflation target to an average, which would allow inflation to rise more quickly than in the past.

A lack of news or single-stock catalyst to drive markets kept the session quiet, said Yousef Abbasi, global market strategist at StoneX Group Inc in New York.

“The market’s on cruise control until Thursday morning when Fed Chairman Powell is expected to outline the new monetary policy and maybe forward guidance framework,” he said.

A survey from the Conference Board showed U.S. consumer confidence unexpectedly fell in August to hit a six-year low.

Stocks retreated to close lower, while Wall Street meandered. The S&P500 set a new intraday high early in the session, retreated to trade lower, and then closed at a new high along with the Nasdaq. [.N] Europe’s broad FTSEurofirst 300 index fell 0.32% to 1,434.94, while MSCI’s all-country world index rose 0.34% to close at 579.20 - less than 2 points from an all-time peak for the global benchmark reached in February.

Wall Street was mixed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.21%, the S&P 500 gained 0.36% and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.76%.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq also logged closing highs on Monday, boosted by signs of progress in developing treatments and vaccines for COVID-19.

A slide of 0.82% in Apple Inc., whose market capitalization of $2.15 trillion is greater than all the components in the benchmark FTSE 100 index in London, initially kept stocks from rising.

German business morale improved more than expected in August as both manufacturing and services picked up steam, a survey by the Ifo institute showed. The survey raised hopes for a strong recovering from the coronavirus in Europe’s largest economy.

The dollar index fell 0.29%, with the euro up 0.41% to $1.1835.

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Wednesday, August 26, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Facebook plans legal action after Thailand tells it to mute critics

At a university north of Bangkok this month, a protester held up a photo of Pavin Chachavalpongpun. Mr. Pavin started Royalist Marketplace, a popular Facebook group critical of Thailand’s monarchy.

By HANNAH BEECH

F

acebook is planning legal action against the government of Thailand for ordering the social media platform to partially shut down access to a group critical of the Thai monarchy, the company said Tuesday.

On Monday, Facebook began preventing users in Thailand from accessing Royalist Marketplace, a Facebook group with more than 1 million members that was set up by a selfexiled Thai academic living in Japan.

Thailand has some of the world’s strictest lèse-majesté laws, which make it a crime to criticize members of the royal family. Other legislation, including a sedition law and a computer crimes act, have also been used to target critics of the royal family, even as protesters have taken to the streets in recent weeks to call for the monarchy’s power to be curbed.

Buddhipongse Punnakanta, Thailand’s digital economy and society minister, warned this month that Facebook would be breaking the computer crimes act if it allowed Royalist Marketplace, which was founded in April, to continue operating in Thailand. The minister gave Facebook until Tuesday to restrict access to the group or pay a relatively small fine.

Facebook condemned the government’s request Tuesday and said it would ask a Thai court to revoke the order filed against the company’s Thailand operations.

“Requests like this are severe, contravene international

human rights law and have a chilling effect on people’s ability to express themselves,” Facebook said in a statement. “We work to protect and defend the rights of all internet users and are preparing to legally challenge this request.”

Facebook has come under criticism for allowing hate speech and misinformation to circulate worldwide, as well as for handing authoritarian governments a tool with which to target their critics.

The company has acknowledged the role that its platform has played in the incitement of deadly mob violence in countries such as Sri Lanka, and it has promised to do more to combat misinformation. This month, it removed false claims about the coronavirus posted on President Donald Trump’s Facebook page.

A tense political atmosphere has coalesced in Thailand, with weeks of student-led protests calling for democratic reforms and more oversight over King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun. Members of the urban middle class have been drawn to the demonstrations, with more than 10,000 people gathering at Democracy Monument earlier this month.

The protesters have criticized the government and called for reforms to the monarchy. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former general, came to power in 2014, after orchestrating a military coup that he said was necessary to protect the palace from naysayers.

“The actions we took,” Prayuth said Tuesday in reference

to Facebook, “are in accordance with Thai law, not using dictatorship powers.”

“If they sue us, we have to use the Thai law to fight,” he added. “We don’t go against other countries’ laws.”

But others accused Thailand of going against international norms on freedom of speech.

“Thailand’s government is again abusing its overbroad and rights-abusing laws to force Facebook to restrict content that is protected by the human right to free speech,” said John Sifton, the Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement. “It is Thailand that is breaking the law here, international law protecting freedom of expression.”

The king, whose father was the world’s longest-reigning monarch when he died in 2016, spends most of his time outside Thailand. Critics have asked why he is rarely in the country, especially at a time when Thailand is facing its worst economic contraction in decades amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The king’s fourth wife, Queen Suthida Vajiralongkorn Na Ayudhya, a former flight attendant, lives mostly in Europe, too, as does the presumed heir, Prince Dipangkorn Rasmijoti. The king’s noble consort, an official position that the king brought back for the first time since before Thailand abandoned absolute monarchy in 1932, also spent most of her time in Europe before she was dramatically purged last year.

The king’s third wife, mother to the heir apparent, was the subject of an earlier purge, and members of her immediate family were charged with lèse-majesté.

Even as he has stayed away from home, King Maha Vajiralongkorn has increased his personal authority over the crown’s billions of dollars in holdings and over army units that have been instrumental in Thailand’s coup-making. A dozen putsches have cast aside civilian governments since the country became a constitutional monarchy.

Previous Thai governments have periodically blocked online content deemed critical of the monarchy. Critics of the palace and the military-aligned government have been jailed.

Hundreds of others have been forced to undergo indoctrination sessions run out of military bases.

A number of protest leaders have been arrested on charges of sedition and other crimes, with the latest round of arrests coming Tuesday. Other dissidents have disappeared entirely.

Last week, the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society filed a cybercrime complaint against Pavin Chachavalpongpun, the academic who is the administrator of the Royalist Marketplace group. For years, Pavin had been a rare Thai voice calling for frank discussions of the monarchy’s role in modern Thai society.

On Monday evening, after access to Royalist Marketplace was restricted by Facebook, Pavin created a new group with a similar name. That Facebook group, which is still accessible in Thailand, now has nearly half a million members.

“I never thought that I would be the founder of the fastestgrowing social group in Thailand,” Pavin said in an interview.

“Going through the membership, I realize this is not just young people, but laypeople, middle-aged people, so many people in Thailand who just want the right to speak about the monarchy openly.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

15

Alexei Navalny, Putin critic in a coma, was poisoned, German doctors say

By MELISSA EDDY and ANDREW E. KRAMER

A

lexei Navalny, the outspoken Russian dissident who fell into a coma last week, was a victim of poisoning, German doctors said Monday, adding him to the ranks of Russians stricken by mystery illness after drawing the wrath of Moscow.

Navalny, who became ill on a domestic flight in Russia, was under round-the-clock guard at the Berlin hospital where his family transferred him Saturday after what now appears to be yet another attack signaling Russia’s status as an outlaw nation.

While not able to pinpoint the exact poison, German doctors said tests showed it came from a group of chemicals known as cholinesterase inhibitors, which interfere with the nervous system. While they are used medically to treat Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, in some forms they are also found in chemical weapons and pesticides.

A Russian health ministry issued a statement challenging the German findings, saying Navalny’s symptoms were not consistent with cholinesterase inhibitors. But a doctor at the Siberian hospital where the dissident was initially taken said after the German announcement that the patient had been given an antidote often used against nerve agents.

A state news agency, RIA, carried a statement from a pro-Kremlin group that took the opportunity to invoke World War II. The group, Strong Russia, criticized the German government for providing treatment for Navalny but not for elderly Russians who suffered as children during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

“Of course, as with any sick person, we wish Navalny a quick recovery,” the statement said. “Has Berlin ever sent an air ambulance for a former detainee in the concentration camps?”

German doctors said that they expected Navalny to survive, but that it was too early to gauge the long-term effects of the attack.

Navalny, who has challenged President Vladimir Putin politically for nearly a decade, and has waged a long battle to publicize rampant official corruption, has been attacked at least twice before. One assault left him mostly blind in one eye.

This time, he fell ill while returning from a trip to Siberia, where he was organizing opposition candidates and strategy for regional and local elections. His plane made an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk, where he was taken to a local hospital.

Navalny’s family and supporters organized an air ambulance to take him to Germany, but Russian doctors delayed for nearly 48 hours, saying his medical condition was too unstable for him to be moved. That drew bitter criticism from the Navalny camp, which accused the doctors of stalling to give the toxins enough time to drain from his system.

Navalny was flown to Germany at the invitation of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Though Germany enjoys strong economic and cultural ties to Russia, it has not shied from criticizing Putin’s policies, and even before Navalny arrived in Berlin, the German government appeared to be taking extra precautions to ensure his safety.

After the doctors declared the case a poisoning, Merkel and her foreign minister, Heiko Maas, called on Russia to launch an immediate investigation but did not offer any

harsher criticism.

“Given Mr. Navalny’s prominent role in Russia’s political opposition, the authorities there are now urgently called upon to investigate this crime to the last detail — and to do so in full transparency,” they said in a statement. “Those responsible must be identified and held accountable.”

Minutes before landing, his plane was rerouted from Schönefeld Airport to Tegel Airport, and the ambulance that brought him from the tarmac to the Charité hospital was escorted by the police. A police van and several officers have been stationed outside the hospital’s main entrance since Saturday.

“It was clear that after he arrived here, security measures had to be put in place,” Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told reporters Monday, before the hospital released its statement. “We are dealing with a patient who appears, with a certain level of probability, to have been the target of a poisoning attack.”

“Unfortunately,” Seibert noted, “there are one or more examples of such poisonings in recent Russian history.”

The Russian security services are suspected of having used a range of poisons in attempts to eliminate opponents, although Russian officials have consistently denied it.

Many of those victims have been stricken after drinking tea.

Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist, fell ill after taking a cup of tea on a domestic flight. She survived, but was shot and killed in her apartment elevator two years later.

A former Russian agent turned Kremlin critic Alexander

Litvinenko, succumbed after ingesting a radioactive isotope, polonium-210, while having tea with two Russian agents.

British investigators later determined that the killing had most likely been ordered by Putin.

Navalny, too, drank a cup of tea before falling ill, at an airport cafe before departure.

While miscellaneous hit men have been charged in some of the killings, those giving the orders have never been identified.

For the last decade, Navalny has been Putin’s most unflinching critic, leading opposition rallies and publishing reports on high-level corruption among Putin and his cronies — most memorably a lengthy video showing the multiple mega-properties, yachts and other luxuries amassed up by former prime minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Having persevered despite numerous arrests, he likes to call Putin’s political party the party of “scoundrels and thieves” and has accused the president of trying to turn Russia into a “feudal state.”

Navalny’s needling criticism of Putin has never posed a serious electoral threat to the Russian leader, and Putin remains popular with many Russians. But Navalny has dominated Russian opposition politics since he led large anti-government street protests in 2011.

And Navalny cannily used social media to build a tenacious movement even after much of the independent news media had been squelched and other critics were driven into exile or killed.

Alexei Navalny, a lawyer-turned-blogger and political opponent of Vladimir Putin, speaks during his election campaign to become the mayor of Moscow, Aug. 1, 2013.

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Wednesday, August 26, 2020

For refusing a drink with the boss, he was slapped in the face

By TIFFANY MAY The new guy did not drink.

D

uring a company dinner in Beijing on Thursday, his boss at Xiamen International Bank demanded that he order an alcoholic beverage. When he refused, he said, another executive slapped him.

It was the slap heard around the country, prompting broad reflection on a professional drinking culture in China that rewards excessive drinking and alienates those who do not imbibe.

The employee recounted his experience on WeChat, a Chinese messaging app. But the episode really took off on social media when the bank apologized Monday to the employee, whom it identified only by his last name, Yang.

Screenshots of Yang’s account, alongside the bank’s response, went viral, generating thousands of comments on Weibo, the Chinese microblogging platform.

“If certain ‘cultures’ or ‘rituals’ come at the expense of health and mortality, can you still call it ‘culture?’ ” Xu Chao, a medical doctor based in Shandong Province, wrote in a widely shared blog post after the episode

went public.

In a statement that verified the broad strokes of Yang’s account, the bank said that two directors had engaged in verbal and physical acts of misconduct while intoxicated at a private dinner, causing disturbance and harm to Yang.

The bank said it had deducted some of the pay of the two directors, from its Beijing branch, and had issued warnings to both for “drunken misconduct.” Yang’s boss, identified only by his surname, Dong, will not receive a performance-based bonus for six months, the bank added, and the branch manager will not receive a bonus for three months.

Around the globe, alcohol has long been seen as a way for workers to bond, as a catalyst for business deals and as a vital lubricant for professional connections. In South Korea, a younger generation of professionals has pushed back against late-night project discussions in bars, and the government has led a campaign against overtime culture.

Since the 1990s, alcohol consumption has increased by 70% in China, according to a study published in The Lancet in 2019. On average, Chinese residents drank 7 liters of alcohol, the study found, while Americans drank

A restaurant in Beijing. Around the globe, alcohol has long been seen as a catalyst for business deals and a vital lubricant for professional connections.

10 liters. But the study predicted that China’s per capita alcohol consumption would surpass American consumption by 2030.

To clamp down on opulent banquets paid for with taxpayer money, China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, banned alcohol at military functions after he came to power in 2012. In 2013, he also introduced a national guideline prohibiting expensive liquors at events held by local governments and state enterprises.

Though the bans resulted in a drop in liquor sales, some officials kept drinking together in secret. State news media reported that 20 officials were punished in Yunnan Province after binge-drinking at a government function in September 2017. A county official in Guangxi Province died of alcohol poisoning in April 2017 after celebrating his first day on the job with colleagues. Seven officials who had drunk with him were fired.

Efforts to contact Yang were not successful. But he wrote that the dinner banquet, held at a luxury hotel in the capital, had destroyed his illusions about the finance industry.

In the message he posted in a group chat Friday, he said he had sensed that his abstinence would become an issue. He had alerted his boss before the banquet that he did not drink for personal reasons. But the boss still pressed him to swap his beverage for an alcoholic one.

Yang wrote that he apologized, but did not give in.

Then, he said, another director approached him with an expletive-laden rant for rejecting an offer of alcohol from a superior and smacked him on the cheek. As he left the banquet hall, he said, his new colleagues erupted in jeers.

Some internet users in China praised his firm stance and warned against the risks of succumbing to pressure. But the pressure to drink, and the slap, sent him in search of answers.

On the morning after the dinner, in a

114-person group chat for new hires, Yang asked recruiters whether alcohol was part of the job. “If I don’t drink alcohol, is that not in keeping with the company’s requirements?” he asked. “Does my experience exceed the pressure I should have borne professionally?”

Yang Wenzhan, a lawyer in Beijing who is not related to the bank employee, wrote in a blog post Monday: “If you say you don’t want to drink, that can provoke some people. But if you give in and say you’ll drink a little, then you’ve surrendered your line of defense. Afterward, when you say you’ve had enough, that will offend people.”

But the lawyer, who is abstinent, said he had never been coerced into drinking against his will. Many social crowds are formed based on drinking habits, he noted, and dinner banquets can be divided into two tables: one for those who love to drink and another for those who do so moderately or not at all.

“If you can drink and make professional connections, that will help,” he wrote. “But if you don’t have this ability, you can still make a good lawyer.”

Banquets can be an especially intimidating environment for young working women in China, who are often seated next to older executives and are expected to laugh at their jokes while being plied with alcohol, experts say.

Some employees have dealt with the pressure to drink by resorting to discreet tricks, like pouring one’s drink on the floor.

For better or worse, drunkenness is the aim of dinner banquets in China, novelist Yan Ge wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed article in November. “When it goes wrong, it can be ugly: Fights can break out; women might be abused for sport,” she wrote.

“But when it goes right, mistakes are forgiven; the diners perspire, devour, quaff and sing together, and then, only then, will business be done.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

17

Africa celebrates the end of the wild poliovirus (but not the end of all polio)

By RUTH MACLEAN

A

frica is set to announce that it has stamped out wild poliovirus after a three-decade campaign against a disease that once paralyzed 75,000 children on the continent every year.

The achievement is a major step toward ridding the globe of the virus that causes the disabling — and sometimes deadly — disease of polio: Only Afghanistan and Pakistan are still reporting cases.

“Future generations of African children can live free of wild poliovirus,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s director for Africa, said in a briefing Monday.

He said 1.8 million cases of polio-related paralysis had been prevented over the past 24 years.

But the victory has a hollow note.

Every year, hundreds of people across Africa are still being infected with circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus, which can infect people in areas where there is only partial vaccination. African cases of the vaccine-derived strain, which results in the same symptoms as the wild kind, increased to 320 last year from 68 in 2018, and could rise again in 2020 because many vaccination campaigns were paused during coronavirus lockdowns.

The polio-free certification applies to what the World Health Organization calls the Africa region — one of its six global zones of operation — and it excludes North Africa.

But no North African country has recorded a case of wild poliovirus since 2004, so the whole continent is now considered free of it.

The 46 presidents of the region (there would have been 47, but the president of Mali was recently deposed in a coup) will celebrate along with supporters of polio eradication efforts, among them Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, on a video conference call Tuesday.

The United States has been free of wild polio since 1979.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative started in 1988, with the aim of eradicating polio worldwide by the year 2000.

Nigeria was a major sticking point on the African continent. After northern Nigeria boycotted the vaccine in 2003 because of rumors about its safety, an outbreak there spread to 20 countries in five years.

A huge effort was initiated to change minds about the vaccine, and by 2015, it seemed that the situation was under control and rumors sufficiently squashed. But then, in 2016, four new cases of wild poliovirus were reported.

The state they came from, Borno, in northeastern Nigeria, was the site of a vicious insurgency by the extremist group Boko Haram, and getting to the people living there was extremely difficult, both because of the danger and because the Nigerian authorities frequently denied access for aid workers.

But after the four cases surfaced, the global health infrastructure swung into action. Nigeria’s president instructed the military to work with the vaccination teams. A mammoth effort began, using satellite imagery, data analysis and daring methods of getting to seemingly impossible-toreach children.

Dr. Pascal Mkanda, the World Health Organization’s po-

lio eradication coordinator for the Africa region, said: “There’s no program like the global eradication program. There’s no program which uses so much data, so much innovation.”

Vaccinators in Borno adopted a “hit and run” strategy.

When the military told them an area was safe, they would start a campaign there within 48 hours. More than 800,000 children were vaccinated this way in 2016. Others were vaccinated at markets on the edge of Boko Haram-occupied territory, when they came to buy provisions. When they went back to their communities, Mkanda said, the vaccine went through their digestive systems and out into the environment, and other children, who had not been inoculated, could then pick it up and also become immune.

Circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus spreads in the same way, except that the virus mutates over time and causes polio.

For example, say vaccinators go to a village to inoculate children.

The children line up by the church or market and get some drops squeezed into their mouths. The drops include a live but weakened version of the virus, which attaches to receptors in the intestines and is absorbed. The weakened virus cannot cause paralysis but teaches the child’s immune system to create antibodies that will fight the real thing if it were to come along.

If some children do not get the message that day, or their parents distrust the vaccine and keep them home, or the vaccinators have to leave early, they may still benefit. If any stool from vaccinated children contaminates local drinking

water — or even a puddle that a child might splash in and then ingest — the virus can immunize other children, too.

Very rarely, however, the vaccine virus can mutate back into something resembling the wild kind. If that vaccinederived mutation keeps spreading because nearby villages are not fully vaccinated, it can, in a few cases — about one infection in 200 — paralyze people.

The name of the polio strain may give the impression that people contract it from vaccinations, but that is not the case.

“It’s not very well-named,” said Heidi Larson, director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. There has been talk of altering the name to something less misleading, she said, but any change would probably take too long.

While there has been success in Africa, there has been an increase in cases of wild poliovirus since 2018 in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where vaccinators are threatened with violence, and often killed.

“We need to look immediately at the most difficult circumstances, the most disadvantaged people, the most vulnerable people, the hardest to reach people — because that’s where we end up with the struggles at the end,” said Moeti, the WHO director for Africa.

There is a parallel to be drawn with the coronavirus pandemic, she said.

“Those people who have the hardest life circumstances for one reason or another are the worst affected in terms of the mortality due to COVID-19,” she said, “and we are learning this lesson repeatedly.”

Administering a polio vaccine in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2010.

18

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Four more years of what exactly?

By JAMELLE BOUIE

R

epublicans chose not to produce a platform for their convention, no statement of values or declaration of principle. Instead, the party has approved a resolution to “enthusiastically support” President Donald Trump’s “America-first agenda,” whatever that may be. And while the White House has produced a bullet-point outline of its secondterm agenda, this week’s convention itself has little content planned other than cultural grievance and worshipful praise for the president. As one veteran congressional aide told Politico, the only thing Republicans believe now is “Owning the libs and pissing off the media.”

It’s easy, observing all of this, to say that the Republican Party has fallen fully into a cult of personality around Trump and his family, a shocking number of whom have featured speaking roles at the convention. It’s also easy to say the party has no ideas or plans for the future. But that would be a mistake.

For the Republican Party, the situation now isn’t too different from what it was in 2016. Trump lacked a serious agenda then just as he lacks one now. Rather than bring a new program to bear on the party, he

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has made the equivalent of a trade: total support for his personal and political concerns in exchange for almost total pursuit of conservative ideological interests.

The last 3 1/2 years have only shown the wisdom of this pact. Republican indifference to the president’s corruption, criminality (yet another former campaign adviser was arrested last week) and prejudice — which freed him to profit from the office and turn the bureaucracy into an instrument of his will — has been rewarded with deregulation, cuts to the social safety net and the installation in the federal judiciary of a large new cohort of reliably conservative judges.

In which case, why fix what isn’t broken? If there’s no platform for the Republican National Convention, if the party has agreed to simply support the president’s second-term agenda, it is because the basic arrangement between Trump and the Republican Party is still intact. Should he win a second term, we’ll see more of the same: an administration that pursues as much of the party’s agenda — redistribution to the wealthy, deep reductions in the state’s ability to solve problems for the general welfare — as possible, and a Republican Party that looks the other way as Trump turns the federal government into a patronage machine for himself, his family and his allies.

It is noteworthy that under Trump the Republican Party has abandoned the rhetoric of limited government and natural rights. But this has less to do with the party’s agenda than it does its public image. Gone is the militarism and evangelical piety of George W. Bush’s Republican Party or the libertarian-inflected outrage of the Tea Party. Instead, predictably, we have

the Fox News aesthetics of a president who rose to political power via the cable news channel and who exists in a codependent relationship with the network.

He relies on its coverage for ideas, messaging and even personnel, and Fox, in turn, tailors its coverage and commentary to his preferences. It is not for nothing that when Fox breaks with Trump, it’s a story.

You can see the Fox Newsification of the Republicans in their choice of speakers for this year’s convention. Whereas the 2012 convention saw speeches from a wide range of Republican lawmakers and officials, Trump’s event is a glorified cable news panel, with appearances from figures like Charlie Kirk — the pugilistic founder of Turning Point USA, an activist group for young conservatives, who let the convention know that “Trump is the bodyguard of Western civilization” — and Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a couple filmed pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in St. Louis.

We will see more of this over the next few days, as subsequent speakers include frequent Fox News guests like Rudy Giuliani, Franklin Graham, Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas, and of course, the president’s children, Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump. (Donald Trump Jr. spoke Monday: “Joe Biden,” he said, channeling Fox, “is basically the Loch Ness monster of the swamp”). There will be traditional Republican lawmakers in speaking roles, like Sens. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, but they aren’t part of the core message.

It is not news that the Republican Party has a stagnant governing agenda cobbled together from the long-discredited dogmas and shibboleths of the conservative movement.

“The current iteration of the GOP is indifferent to the substance of government,” Steve Benen, a political writer and producer for The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, writes in “The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics”: “It is disdainful of expertise and analysis. It is hostile toward evidence and arithmetic. It is tethered to few, if any, meaningful policy preferences. It does not know, and does not care, about how competing proposals should be crafted, scrutinized or implemented.”

What is news is the extent to which the Republican Party has embraced the trappings of its leader, which is to say, the trappings of a right-wing cable news network: a nonstop parade of conspiracy, demagoguery and grievance, in service to a cult of personality, all for the sake of a politics of plunder, theft and extraction.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

19

Depto. de Agricultura reporta pérdidas de $5.5 millones en cultivos tras el paso de la tormenta Laura Por THE STAR

E

l secretario del Departamento de Agricultura de Puerto Rico (DA), Carlos Flores Ortega, anunció el martes que el sector agrícola presentó pérdidas de $5.5 millones tras el paso de la tormenta tropical Laura.

“Necesitamos restablecer la producción agrícola. Siendo una de las industrias más afectadas tras el evento climatológico, sobre todo en la región sureste. Exhortamos a todos los agricultores que sufrieron daños hacer sus reclamaciones a través de la ayuda federal Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP) de Farm Service Agency (FSA). De igual forma, deben realizar el debido proceso para solicitar a través de los Programas de Incentivos Regulares; maquinaria agrícola, abono o semillas” expresó el Secretario.

Flores Ortega sostuvo que la agricultura es un sector altamente vulnerable ante los eventos atmosféricos, siendo prioridad para el Departamento y la gobernadora, Wanda Vázquez Garced, responder rápidamente a los agroempresarios que sufren pérdidas asociadas con estos eventos.

“De ese modo, atendiendo y entendiendo la preocupación de los agricultores debemos aclarar que nunca ha existido algún seguro dirigido a compensar pérdidas por eventos atmosféricos como; turbonadas, sequías, incendios y tormentas. La Corporación de Seguros Agrícolas (CSA), oficina adscrita al DA, ofrece seguros de huracán e inundaciones. Sin embargo, no recibe presupuesto del

Fondo General y su función como única aseguradora en la agricultura es posible gracias a la venta de seguros de la Federal Crop Insurance Corp del Departamento de Agricultura de Estados Unidos (USDA, por sus siglas en inglés), quien es la responsable de asumir el riesgo y pagar las pérdidas”, añadió.

El Departamento como iniciativa para mejorar la oferta de seguros agrícolas, en junio del 2019 enmendó la Ley de “Seguros Agrícolas” con la aprobación de la Ley Número 76, ofreciendo la oportunidad al sector de seguros privados que pudieran ofrecer sus seguros a los agricultores.

Hasta el momento no se ha recibido respuesta de ninguna compañía aseguradora con interés.

Los sectores de mayor impacto fueron plátanos y papayas con un 71 y 20 por ciento, respectivamente. Siguen los sectores de leche y café con un 3 por ciento. Mientras que la infraestructura se afectó 1 por ciento.

El DA detalló las pérdidas por Regiones Agrícolas siendo Ponce la más afectada con pérdidas de $ 4 millones, Naranjito $684 mil, Utuado $324 mil, Caguas $186 mil, Arecibo $110 mil, Lares y Mayagüez con $12 mil y San Germán siendo el menos afectado con $3 mil.

El personal del Departamento y los agrónomos de campo iniciaron las visitas desde el domingo por los municipios de Guayama, Salinas, Santa Isabel y Coamo que recibieron el impacto directo de Laura donde se registraron fuertes vientos y lluvias.

De acuerdo a una comunicación escrita del departamento, los datos de las pérdidas se obtienen a través de un proceso científico y metódico para saber hacia dónde se van a dirigir los esfuerzos y ayudas para la recuperación.

Ante la preocupación de varios ciudadanos sobre la escasez de estos productos locales, “sobre todo con los plátanos, es importante mencionar, que no se permitirá la importación de otros lugares del producto. Se espera que ya para dos meses, tengamos listo el cultivo para seguir con su consumo” puntualizó el titular de Agricultura.

Los agricultores deberán hacer sus reclamaciones en las Oficinas Regionales Agrícolas, en la Oficina de Farm Agency Service, comunicarse al 787- 721-2120 | 787-294-1613 o a través del correo electrónico info@agricultura.pr.

Tribunal Supremo resuelve que los testigos podrán mantener su mascarilla todo el proceso Por THE STAR

E

l Tribunal Supremo de Puerto Rico determinó el martes, que los testigos podrán declarar en los procesos judiciales con mascarilla sin que se afecte el derecho constitucional a la confrontación.

Esta orden revierte así una determinación que emitió el Tribunal Apelativo, que estableció que el uso de las mascarillas impedía la debida confrontación de abogados y fiscales en el proceso de interrogación.

“El Tribunal Supremo determinó que ante la situación de la pandemia que vive Puerto Rico, la Cláusula de Confrontación, contenida en la Sexta Enmienda de la Constitución de los Estados Unidos y en la Sección 11 de la Carta de Derechos de la Constitución de Puerto Rico, no prohíbe que un testigo declare en el juicio usando una mascarilla como medida de prevención de la propagación del COVID-19”, reza la opinión del Tribunal Supremo.

Según se estableció mediante Opinión, el Derecho a la Confrontación no es absoluto y puede limitarse ante la necesidad de adelantar un interés público importante. Específicamente, se resolvió que bajo los parámetros constitucionales que impone el Derecho de la Confrontación, en el contexto actual de la pandemia, el uso de la mascarilla protectora no

violenta ese derecho. Esto, basado en los criterios y la excepción a la norma que provee el caso normativo del Tribunal Supremo de los Estados Unidos, Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836 (1990).

Se sostuvo que declarar con una mascarilla que cubra solo la boca y la parte inferior de la nariz no incide sobre la confiabilidad del testimonio ofrecido por un testigo si se cumplen con los demás elementos del derecho al careo. El acusado podrá hacer preguntas y el testigo contestarlas, de manera que se estaría garantizando su derecho a contrainterrogar, que es la piedra angular del Derecho a la Confrontación.

Además, el Tribunal se expresó en torno a las medidas cautelares de prevención que pueden establecer los tribunales para lograr un balance entre el derecho del acusado a confrontar a los testigos de cargo y el interés de proteger a los testigos y demás participantes de los procesos judiciales de un potencial contagio del virus.

La jueza asociada Mildred Pabón Charneco emitió la Opinión del Tribunal. Por su parte, la jueza presidenta, Maite Oronoz Rodríguez emitió una Opinión de Conformidad en la que resaltó que el mecanismo de la videoconferencia, en conjunto con ciertas garantías, ofrece un medio seguro que se debe implementar ante pandemia producto del COVID-19. La Juez Asociada Anabelle Rodríguez Rodríguez

emitió una Opinión de Conformidad en la que destacó que ante la pandemia y los estudios que demuestran el poco valor probatorio del lenguaje no verbal de un testigo, exigir que un testigo declare sin mascarilla es improcedente. Por otro lado, el juez asociado Rafael Martínez Torres emitió una Opinión Disidente en la que expresó que el Tribunal no hizo un balance justo y razonable que atienda todos los intereses involucrados al implantar una regla absoluta sobre el uso de las mascarillas por los testigos. El juez asociado Erick V. Kolthoff Caraballo, disintió mediante una expresión por entender que la utilización de una careta plástica transparente durante el testimonio de los testigos de cargo, unido a otras medidas de salubridad asegura el derecho la confrontación y evita la contaminación durante la pandemia. El juez asociado Luis Estrella Martínez emitió una Opinión Disidente al entender que el Tribunal debió auscultar medios menos onerosos como la videoconferencia para salvaguardar el derecho a la confrontación. El juez asociado Ángel Colón Pérez emitió una Opinión Disidente al concluir que el uso de mascarillas por parte de los testigos de cargo lesiona el derecho al careo de todo acusado y destacó que mientras dure la emergencia estos derechos pueden salvaguardarse mediante el uso obligatorio de la videoconferencia en el proceso judicial.

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Wednesday, August 26, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Plot twist! Why 2004 was a surprising year for movies

Jamie Foxx, right, plays a cabdriver with a contract killer (Tom Cruise) as his passenger in Michael Mann’s “Collateral.”

By WESLEY MORRIS

N

o one else is going to say it, so allow me: 2004 was a good movie year. So good that this month’s edition of The Box is a sequel to last month’s. That one was set the late June weekend that “Fahrenheit 9/11” opened up top and “The Notebook” was still a sleeper. This one finds us in the first full weekend of August, when “Collateral” knocked “The Village” to second place.

That year is appealing because it’s among the last to feature a strong mix of original ideas, major directors and stars we still wanted to see. This particular weekend drew me because that endangered mix includes a couple of grubby comedies (“Little Black Book,” with Brittany Murphy, and “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle,” with John Cho and Kal Penn) and at least one star in something people went to see with their noses pinched. Time has been no kinder to “Catwoman.” It’s still a turkey whose meaning for Halle Berry is obvious. She’d recently made Oscar history; here she was, making superhero history — as “the first Black woman to …” The movie, though, which had sunk to No. 9 in its third week, doesn’t know what to do with the cats, let alone the Black woman hired to slink from screen saver to screen saver on their behalf.

The superhero franchise was still just an element of our diet as opposed to the whole enchilada. The people who

made “Catwoman” — the director was Pitof, a one-named French visual effects specialist who should not be trusted with stars — must have known superheroes were hypnotic: “Spider-Man 2” was a couple rungs above it, massively popular in its sixth week. But this was an era when you could still treat a superhero like she was going to White Castle, too.

The movies in 2004 were alert to the wars the country had recently started without feeling beholden to depict them.

Rue and fury had suffused the cinematic mood. So had paranoia. We were into it. Conspiracy and suspicion drives more than half this week’s movies. Matt Damon tries to solve the mystery of his memory in “The Bourne Supremacy.”

Has the government programmed him to kill? Denzel Washington digs at the matter of Liev Schreiber’s sudden appearance on a presidential ticket in another version of “The Manchurian Candidate.”

Who, in that movie, hasn’t the government programmed to kill? And in “I, Robot,” poor Will Smith zooms around an unconvincing future Chicago in even less convincing leathers, trying to figure out whether a fleet of mechanical helpers has also been … Programmed to Kill.

“The Village” is what really brought me back to this week. It’s M. Night Shyamalan’s sixth movie and his fourth as superstar filmmaker. And it, too, seems paranoid, as worried in its storytelling as the action movies. I remember finding the absurdity of it outrageous even for him.

But Shyamalan doesn’t leaven the stress with chase sequences and top-drawer, whole-dresser fist fights. He’d become the last filmmaker of the pre-streaming era to make himself the draw.

This was another of his plot-twist puzzles; and, after “The Sixth Sense,” “Unbreakable” and “Signs,” people had arrived at “The Village” ready to solve it.

I don’t watch movies that way. A director gives me a story, and I’ll do my best to go wherever he or she takes me. And where this one is going — ostensibly, anyway — is a New England-esque hamlet in the 1890s. The place runs on forbidding rules that all but begin, “Thou shall not.”

Red has been banned. And crossing the village boundary into the woods will upset the creatures the village elders have ponderously named “Those We Don’t Speak Of.” But animals are being skinned and strewn about the land, and red paint slashes front doors. Seems like the creatures are already upset. But Shyamalan is smart. Fear of invaders provides the atmosphere; people are the problem.

Hearts get broken, somebody’s almost murdered. At some point, a sightless member of the community has to journey beyond it for medicine.

“The Village” was a hit. You can tell, though, that the plot twist infuriated more people than it intrigued. Its numbers were down a staggering 67% from its enormous opening weekend. No one seemed to have the urge to protect the ending from being ruined the way they did for “The Sixth Sense,” a movie that inspired people to scream “I haven’t

seen it yet!” when even strangers were overheard yammering about it and practically mandated the spoiler alert. Crossword fanatics turn to Rex Parker’s blog for comfort and commiseration. In 2004, frustrated Shyamaniacs had nowhere comparable to go. The ending was too — what? — insulting, pretentious, illogical to spoil. In the last month, I’ve encountered enough people who haven’t seen “The Village” that I’m compelled to preserve the surprise. There’s more to it than Shyamalan’s trap door, anyway.

The movie has a visual richness that rehooked me when I watched it again recently. Knowing the story’s conceit little diminishes Shyamalan’s skill in telling it. Roger Deakins’ cinematography frames shots through doors and windows; in one particularly deft move, through both. Christopher Tellefsen’s editing dances gracefully between excess and concision, between dream pacing and a nightmare’s rush. Shyamalan remains an underrated director of actors. Here, it’s William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Cherry Jones, Celia Weston, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, Judy Greer, Brendan Gleeson, Michael Pitt, a barely there Jesse Eisenberg, lots of children and Bryce Dallas Howard, whose way with confidence and vulnerability should’ve made her a bigger star than she became. (I blame her central spots in Lars von Trier’s American slavery screed, “Manderlay,” and Shyamalan’s follow-up and first stinker, “The Lady in the Water” — which I like! — plus the arrival of the somehow gutsier Jessica Chastain.)

“The Village” is a strange movie. It works as a yarn that’s no bigger or grander than it needs to be. It’s got some of “The Twilight Zone”— Shirley Jackson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, too. The film’s characters have given up on an America they say no longer feels safe and wind up becoming a danger to themselves all the same. We’d call them privileged now.

Assessments of Shyamalan don’t tend to wade into his Indian American identity because the films don’t insist upon it.

But with this movie, he’s built a world in which his own appearance would create suspicion in the dramatization of the

The San Juan Daily Star conceit. The movie, therefore, becomes a tragedy about whiteness and its desperate preservation. The world beyond the village borders threaten its sanctity.

One thing that remains so satisfying about the movie now is the director’s confidence. He believed he could get away with this thing, and, largely, he does.

You can see why Shyamalan was such a draw. The great pop directors know how to give us what we want without pandering to do it; and getting exactly what we want still manages to arouse surprise. Hitchcock, Spielberg, Tarantino; it’s early but Jordan Peele.

Shyamalan was in good box-office company that week. That “Manchurian Candidate” remake, doing so-so in its second week, was Jonathan Demme’s.

It’s all over the place and strangely dull in parts. The action and politics never congeal in the script, so Demme has to force them together. You don’t know what compelled him to take the movie on, aside from the chance to work with Washington again and with Meryl Streep, who plays the scheming, gorgon mother. Demme guided one of Washington’s most sophisticated performance (in 1993’s “Philadelphia”) but his star barely comes through here.

Watchful passivity is something a star like Damon can do (he’s used to having to find other ways to get noticed in a scene). But Washington can’t do small because he’s not. And so when he sits around, so does the movie.

Demme was coming off pouring a lot of his soul into an impossible adaptation of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” from 1998, with Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Kimberly Elise and Thandie Newton, and throwing a lot of confetti around “The Truth About Charlie,” a terrific, tremendously alive remake of Stanley Donen’s “Charade” with Newton and Mark Wahlberg. Both movies were received as misbegotten even though each has its considerable strengths, namely Elise and especially Newton, who was beguilingly weird in one and incandescent in the other. It’s possible that, by the time of this other, higher-stakes remake, Demme was just out of gas.

You wonder what Paul Greengrass’ hyperkinetic, docu-realist style would have made of the same material had he not been tied up with the “Bourne”

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

films. Instead, Greengrass was leading franchise violence into headier, more breakneck territory. He and Sam Raimi, who brought some love of B-movie splatter to the “Spider-Man” series, were trying to point Hollywood toward a harmonious bond between “visionary” and “pop,” to prove that the so-called auteurs could make assembly-line smashes with a signature. Early that summer, Alfonso Cuarón had helped underscore that point with his installment of the “Harry Potter” saga. But at some point, the franchises became the auteurs just as the superheroes and villains became the stars. It would’ve been impossible to assert a trademark style upon worlds that come preassembled without one. Shyamalan could sense as much. He used “Unbreakable,” “Split” and “Glass” to build his own superhero trilogy.

The lasting cautionary lesson might not be Greengrass’ or Raimi’s. It’s probably that of Pitof. “Catwoman” was bungled from start to finish because all the vision was in the wrong places. The movie seemed to know it was an allegory for prematurely discarded female stars (Sharon Stone — casually invested, secretly campy — torments Halle Berry) but couldn’t conjure the outrage or concern for their plight the way Tim Burton did for Catwoman in his second “Batman” movie. Pitof evidently cared about the look, and even then his vision was impaired. The movie’s failure encouraged Hollywood to conclude that women make lousy subjects for superhero adaptations and that Berry should be hung out to dry. I left a second helping wondering why nobody could find a less lousy director.

I won’t suggest that Michael Mann might have been such a person. But even just a touch of his rigor with action sequences, atmosphere and, yes, comedy could have saved the day for Berry. That rigor is all over “Collateral,” a shoot-’em-up that Stuart Beattie wrote in which a taxi driver (Jamie Foxx) chauffeurs an assassin (Tom Cruise) around Los Angeles as he crosses names off his hit list.

Foxx does the driving under smoldering duress. Cruise does the killing under a block of ashen hair. They’re fantastic, and so is every sequence, nearly each shot and song selection. Mann was working with high-definition video, by Dion Beebe and Paul Cameron, that lent

21

Denzel Washington in Jonathan Demme’s 2004 remake of “The Manchurian Candidate.” a matte painterliness to the images. The movie is set between dusk and dawn, and the light on Foxx’s dark brown skin and Cruise’s hair and matching suit turn them spectral.

“Collateral” opens with a borderline romance between the cabbie and one of those high-powered attorneys (Jada Pinkett Smith). She exits his cab for a late work night until the movie finds a plausible excuse to revisit her.

The hitman-protagonist conventions are here: Cruise is heartless (and unkillable) except for the occasional cloud breaks of camaraderie and humor. He’s operating at a grave extreme of the narcissistic rectitude of his other roles. He’s as sharply dialed in as the photography.

Foxx is also in a zone — this is

a star who can play small and gather strength as he shrinks. He was Academy Award-nominated for his work here. His performance as Ray Charles was about to win him an Oscar. Nonetheless, can a well-decorated actor be underrated?

He should have four more.

Mann had made a summer movie that felt like winter. It’s sexy, tense, handsome, off-kilter, suspenseful, soulful yet chilly, a prelude to his sweltering, erotic feature-length re-imagination of “Miami Vice,” with Foxx and Colin Farrell.

“Collateral” follows “Ali,” a hefty biopic ultimately focused on the Rumble in the Jungle. That film might have been too besotted to work. But there’s something poignantly fantastical about Mann’s assertions of Black humanity. Has any Black man in an American movie had as many close calls with the police as Foxx in “Collateral” and still be alive and free by the end? And the final shot, of two people seeing day break, feels perversely decadent. Of course, Cruise’s contract killer loves jazz. So this is also a movie in which he blows out the brains of a Black trumpeter and club owner (Barry Shabaka Henley) for failing his lethally subjective Miles Davis trivia night.

The movie might have been less than what audiences were looking for. Two hours of nasty Tom Cruise? It opened just under $25 million. Great for a Jamie Foxx movie back then, underwhelming for Cruise. I might have been part of the problem. At the end of that year, I made a Top 10 list and put 22 movies on it. None was “The Village” or “Collateral.” That was 2004 for you: treasure just left sunk.

Bryce Dallas Howard as Ivy, hiding from a cloaked creature in “The Village.”

FASHION The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, March 4, 202026, 2020 Wednesday, August 20 22

The TheSan SanJuan JuanDaily DailyStar Star

Behold, ‘Workleisure’

By VANESSA FRIEDMAN

L

et us consider, for a moment, the Zoom sweater.

Or rather, the ideal Zoom sweater. Will it be thick and reassuring, or thin and wrappable? Pullover or cardigan? Round neck, V-neck or high-neck? These are not immaterial questions.

The Zoom sweater is, after all, the seasonal next wardrobe step after the Zoom shirt: the garment that stays draped on a chair and tossed on for meetings as the long, hot, summer of the pandemic segues into cooler, more unpredictable months.

For some, this may seem liberating: A final declaration of independence from the suit, and proof that after months of dressing for ourselves — and our perch in the corner of the couch — we have been freed from the constrictive suiting of white collar yesteryear (and all the antediluvian fashion rules they represent).

And yet my heart sinks at the prospect.

Here’s the problem: How will we know how we want to dress if we’ve got no colleagues around from whom to take our cues? No role models to emulate? If a tree falls in the woods, and all that.

The other day, I got a text from Virgil Abloh, the designer of Off-White and Louis Vuitton menswear.

He had just finished a presentation to company executives, and was sure he’d spent more time choosing between “the million hoodies I own” than most businessmen do on their suits. “It’s an extremely interesting tango: suits vs. quarantine hoodie,” he wrote me.

He was trying to figure out how his choices would be read through the tiny boxes on a computer screen, given they weren’t the same choices his far away executive colleagues were making. Would they be jarring? Or a statement of independence of mind? Maybe a bit of both.

In any case, he’s not the only one wrestling with this question.

Lyst, the global fashion search platform, recently noted in its quarterly ranking of the hottest brands that, for the very first time, Nike had come out on top rather than a luxury fashion brand — propelled by a 106% increase in demand for loungewear and activewear as consumers went all-in on comfortable clothes to wear at home.

What the Pandemic Did for Work Wear Workplace dressing has been moving toward casualization for some time — from the gold-buttoned power suits of the 1980s to the T-shirts and Tevas of the early digital age and — ultimately — the mix and match suits-’n-floral-dresses-n-sneakers of pre-coronavirus time.

Now the pandemic has accelerated that shift.

But while the charms of all-day snuggle shirts

and make-the-best-of-a-bad-situation leggings may have been appealing at first, the joy of secretly breaking dress code rules (no pants!) and tossing on a workappropriate top at the last minute is beginning to lose its charm.

While it once seemed alluring — and potentially salubrious — for one’s mental health to wear the garb that signaled relaxation to do daily battle with the grim news of the day, it has also lessened the enjoyment of slipping into them afterward.

In the same way that smartphones have made it possible to work at all places and all times, just because you can wear your stretchy old workout gear in front of the computer, doesn’t always make it a good idea.

Or so I increasingly think, sitting in my track pants and slippers instead of the shirtdresses and sari silk blazers I used to wear. I am beginning to believe I can feel my mind getting flabby and fraying around the edges — along with the frayed edges of my T-shirts.

It’s been fun, wallowing in workout gear. But it was a short-term solution. Now we have to figure out what comes next.

Dress for the Mindset You Want There is something to be said for putting on the costume of work: for that slight bit of discomfort that can keep you alert, that tailoring of the mind.

When I was a freelancer and worked at home by choice, I made sure to dress and put on shoes each morning before I sat down at my desk — as a signal from body to brain that it was work time.

We all have rituals that serve as psychological cues; we don not just different clothes, but with them, different versions of ourselves.

And so these days, I have found myself staring nostalgically at my old jackets — the ones that sharpened my shoulders just enough to convince me I could batter down whatever barricade life might throw at me, or wrestle an idea or assignment into shape.

There is a reason the suit has survived as long as it has: as Anne Hollander, an art and dress historian, wrote in her 1994 book, “Sex and Suits,” it both idealizes and abstracts the body — smoothing it into a modern simulacrum of Greek statuary and making us all feel garbed in a version of our best selves (the kind that can project across even the most cavernous conference room).

And yet, those broad shoulders may read well in a meeting room or podium, but on a small screen they just look desperate, as if you are trying to hard to dominate — the living room? (Well, that, or auditioning to be an anchor/talk show host.)

Enter ‘Workleisure’ A few years ago there was an attempt to introduce the term “workleisure” to our dressing vernacu-

Heels are stored at a desk in New York, July 14, 2020. In the same way that smartphones have made it possible to work at all places and all times, just because you can wear your stretchy old workout gear in front of the computer, doesn’t always make it a good idea. lar. It did not take off, perhaps for obvious linguistic reasons.

However, as a concept, its time may have come.

Free of the saccharine preachiness of “athleisure,” but with the same implications of comfort, workleisure (a reward to whomever can come up with a better term) is more creative than “business casual,” which was really just a suit with a mismatched jacket and pants.

What are its hallmarks?

First, start with what it is not: anything that might be confused with sleepwear or that you might once have worn to the gym and which was created to wick away sweat. Similarly, it is not anything with too giant a shoulder pad or too corseted a waist; those kind of restricted silhouette-shapers call to mind another, more air-brushed and power-sheathed, time.

Then acknowledge, a new era — which this will be — requires its own signifiers.

For me, workleisure begins with the basics of the off-duty wardrobe (T-shirts, pullovers, track pants) translated in the materials and details of the office.

That means elastic waistbands are acceptable, but only if attached to the type of fabric — silk, linen, wool, pinstripes — that suggests a different kind of effort. That, when you catch them out of the corner of your eye, suggest you sit up just a little bit straighter.

It means T-shirts fancied-up with embroidery. It means jackets with the structure taken out, so they are more like shirts, but still jackets, and shirts with a bit of slink.

Ultimately, it means the Zoom sweater, but blanket-striped, perhaps with one of the stripes glinting with sequins. And with it, promise.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

23

Medication and lifestyle may lower breast cancer risk

By JANE E. BRODY

M

ammography is a valuable tool for finding breast cancer when it is still confined to the breast and highly amenable to cure. But no matter how good the odds for survival may be with early detection, I’m quite certain women would rather not develop breast cancer in the first place.

Yet, even though 1 woman in 8 will eventually receive a breast cancer diagnosis, only a minority currently take advantage of the well-established lifestyle measures for reducing chances of developing the disease, and far fewer take medications that can help prevent it in women at higher than average risk.

Part of the problem may well be the confusion wrought by periodic reports of conflicting evidence for what raises — or lowers — a woman’s chances of developing breast cancer, ranging from the drugs she uses to the foods and beverages she consumes. Another inhibiting factor is the limited amount of time doctors can devote to assessing a woman’s risk of breast cancer and explaining the complex trade-offs involved in breast cancer prevention.

In the latest report published in JAMA, experts at the University of California, San Francisco, reviewed compelling evidence for two classes of drugs normally prescribed following breast cancer treatment that can also help prevent cancer in some women not yet affected by this disease. One class consists of two drugs, tamoxifen and raloxifene, that inhibit the action of estrogen in selective tissues. The other consists of three aromatase inhibitors, anastrozole, exemestane and letrozole, that reduce the levels of circulating estrogen that could stimulate the growth of estrogen-sensitive breast cancers.

Whether a woman might consider such drugs depends in part on lifestyle measures and medical history. Although some women may choose to ignore existing evidence and continue to do what they enjoy regardless of the associated risk, experts say women should at least be able to weigh their chosen behaviors against a raised breast cancer risk. Their decisions should also consider their personal health history and the ailments that run in their families to which they too may be susceptible.

Consumption of alcohol is a classic

Experts at the University of California, San Francisco, reviewed compelling evidence for two classes of drugs normally prescribed following breast cancer treatment that can also help prevent cancer in some women not yet affected by this disease, a new study in JAMA suggests. example. Even a small amount of alcohol — less than one drink a day — can raise breast cancer risk, and the more a woman drinks, the greater her chances of developing this disease. A friend recently treated for an early-stage breast cancer quit drinking wine, which resulted in weight loss that may also reduce her risk of a new or recurring breast cancer.

On the other hand, moderate consumption of alcohol, and wine in particular, is associated with a reduced cardiovascular risk, so if heart disease figures more prominently than cancer in your family, you may decide to have that daily glass of wine. With smoking, however, there is no health benefit, only risk — to your breasts as well as every major organ and your life.

Another modifiable breast cancer hazard is being overweight, especially after menopause, when body fat becomes the major source of cancer-promoting hormones. The good news here is that the two measures that can help you lose excess weight — a healthy diet and regular physical activity — also protect against breast cancer and reduce the risk of heart disease.

Strive for a mostly plant-based diet of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans and nuts; healthy sources of fats like olive and canola oil; and fish in lieu of red meat. And

include a weekly minimum of 2 1/2 hours of moderate physical activity, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, plus strength training twice a week.

Alas, two long-known protective factors — early childbearing (in the teens and 20s) and prolonged breastfeeding — run headlong into the life goals of many modern women who seek graduate degrees and professional advancement, as well as young women financially unable to support a family.

Many older women run into another confusing and controversial decision: whether and for how long to take hormone therapy to counter life-disrupting symptoms of menopause. Barring an earlier history of breast cancer, current advice for women who have not had a hysterectomy is to take combination hormone therapy (that is, estrogen and a progestin) for as short a time as needed to control symptoms but no longer than a few years.

A recent study, published July 28 in JAMA, described the long-term effects on breast cancer risk among 27,347 postmenopausal women randomly assigned to take hormone replacement or not. The authors, led by Dr. Rowan T. Chlebowski at UCLA Medical Center, reviewed the health status of the participating women more than two

decades later.

Among the 10,739 women who had no uterus and could safely take estrogen alone (progestin is typically added to prevent uterine cancer), menopausal hormone therapy significantly reduced their risk of developing and dying from breast cancer.

However, among the 16,608 women with a uterus who took the combination hormone therapy, breast cancer incidence was significantly higher, although there was no increased risk of death from the disease.

In commenting on these results, Dr. Christina A. Minami, a breast cancer surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Dr. Rachel A. Freedman, an oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Center, wrote that the new findings “are unlikely to lead to the use of hormone therapy for the sole purpose of breast cancer risk reduction.”

But Freedman said, “If I’m counseling a patient who’s really miserable with menopausal symptoms and is a candidate for estrogen only, these findings are reassuring that her breast cancer risk will not be any higher over time.”

Then there’s the possibility of taking a daily drug to suppress a potential breast cancer in high-risk women who have not yet had the disease. Dr. Jeffrey A. Tice, an internist at the University of California, San Francisco, suggested that women’s doctors use one of the several risk assessment calculators to determine how likely the patient might be to develop breast cancer within the next five or 10 years.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force concluded that the benefits of medication outweigh the risks for postmenopausal women with a 3% or greater chance of receiving a breast cancer diagnosis within five years.

Starting at age 40, younger women with a strong family history of breast cancer and those who have had precancerous findings on a breast biopsy should consider preventive drug therapy, Tice and Yiwey Shieh suggested in JAMA. Tice said women in the top 5% of breast cancer risk for their age might also evaluate the benefit of preventive therapy and its possible risks, which can include blood clots or bone loss, depending on which drug is used.

“Five years of therapy can reduce their breast cancer risk for up to 20 years,” he reported.

24 ALBERTO JOSÉ NIEVES SUÁREZ, representado ESTA DO LIBR E ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- por su madre, JEANNINE NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SUÁREZ QUIÑONES; SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN FULANO DE TAL y JUAN. MENGANO DE TAL como CONSEJO DE TITULARES posibles herederos de DEL CONDOMINIO HÉCTOR LUIS NIEVES DA VINCI CUEVAS; y JOHN DOE Y DEMANDANTE VS. JANE DOE como posibles PAUL HARGROW DEMANDADOS herederos de HÉCTOR CIVIL NÚM.: SJ2020CV04166.

LUIS NIEVES ÁLAMO LEGAL NOTICE

tación de la herencia dentro del plazo correspondiente, se tendrá la herencia por aceptada.

EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y con el sello del Tribunal. DADO hoy en San Juan, Puerto Rico, 18 de agosto de 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIO(A). Marlyn Ann Espinosa Rivera, Secretaria Servicios a Sala.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUSOBRE : ACCIÓN PARA HANAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA Demandados CER CUMPLIR LA LEY DE CIVIL NÚM.: SJ2020CV02058. SALA SUPERIOR DE ARECICONDOMINIOS. EMPLAZAM SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO BO. IENTO POR EDICTO. ESTA- Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. MAGDA CUEVAS MOLINA DOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICDemandante V. EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ES- TO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE BANCO SANTANDER DE TADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUER- DE LOS EE.UU. ESTADO LI- PUERTO RICO; JUAN DEL TO RICO. SS. PUEBLO Y JUANA DEL BRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO A: Paul Hargrow. 788 RICO. ss.

PUEBLO y cualesquier

Riverside Drive: Apt. 9E. New York. NY 10032 o sea, la parte demandada arriba mencionada.

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro ele los 30 días ele haber sido 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.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 a legación responsiva dentro del referido término el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda , o cualquier otro, si el tribunal en el ejercicio de su sana discreción lo entiende procedente. Esta acción civil es para hacer cumplir la Ley de Condominios EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el sello del Tribunal, en San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy día 12 de agosto de 2020. Griselda Rodriguez Collado, Sec del Tribunal. Waleska Rivera, Subsecretaria.

A: Fulano De Tal y persona desconocida Mengano De Tal como con posible interés posibles Herederos en la obligación cuya de Héctor Luis Nieves cancelación por decreto Cuevas. judicial se solicita.

Demandados Dirección: 1216 Ave. NÚM. AR2020CV00770.

Américo Miranda, Reparto CIVIL SOBRE: CANCELACION DE Metropolitano, San Juan, PAGARE EXTRAVIADO. EMPuerto Rico 00921; Urb. PLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. Reparto Metropolitano ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉEL PRESIDENTE DE Solar Núm. 1684, Bloque RICA, LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL M-35, San Juan, Puerto ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS. Rico 00921.

Por la presentó se le notifica4 A: JUAN DEL PUEBLO que se ha radicado en su conY JUANA DEL PUEBLO tra una Demanda de Cobro de COMO POSIBLES Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca TENEDORES Y a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de CUALESQUIER PERSONA Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede DESCONOCIDA CON acceder utilizando la siguiente POSIBLE INTERÉS EN dirección electrónica: https:// unired.ramaiudicial.pr . Se le LA OBLIGACIÓN CUYA emplaza y requiere para que CANCELACIÓN POR notifique a: DECRETO JUDICIAL SE Ferraiuoli LLC Looking Forward SOLICITA.

Lcda. Ansélica S. Vázquez Lazada PO Box 195168 San Juan, PR 00919-5168 Tel.: 787-766-7000 / Fax: 787-766-7001 avazquez@ferraiuoli.com Abogada de la parte demandante, con copia de respuesta a la Demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto y LEGAL NOTICE radicar el original de dicha conESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO testación en este Tribunal en DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- donde podrá enterarse de su NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA contenido. Si dejare de hacerlo, SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN podrá anotársele la rebeldía y se le dictará sentencia conceJUAN. diendo el remedio solicitado sin BAUTISTA CAYMAN más citarle ni oírle. Se le aperASSET COMPANY, cibe a la parte que, conforme Demandante v. al Art. 959 del Código Civil, 31 SUCESIÓN DE HÉCTOR L.P.R.A. § 2787, los codemanLUIS NIEVES CUEVAS dados antes mencionados, de la Sucesión de compuesta por SONIA miembros Héctor Luis Nieves Cuevas, NIEVES ÁLAMO y la que tienen un término de treinSUCESIÓN DE HÉCTOR ta (30) días para informarle al Tribunal si acepta o repudia la LUIS NIEVES ÁLAMO herencia de los causantes. En compuesta por ADRIANA caso de que usted no manifiesMARIE NIEVES SUÁREZ y te su declaración sobre la acep-

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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 BANCO SANTANDER DE PUERTO RICO, o a su orden, por la suma principal de $60,000.00. Dicho pagaré fue suscrito el día el día 9 de enero del 2002, ante el notario Mario Rivera Toll, garantizado por hipoteca constituida mediante la Escritura número 1, sobre la siguiente propiedad: HORIZONTAL PROPERTY REGIME: Apartment #105 in Condominio Manati Gardens, located at kilometer one point two of State Road number 686 in the Tierras Nuevas Ward of the municipality of Manati, Puerto Rico. The apartment is constructed of reinforced concrete and concrete blocks and has a total floor area of 972.00 square feet, equiva-

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

lent to 90.30 square meters. more or less. The apartment is located in building #1 of Condominio Manati Gardens on the second floor of said building.

The apartment has an irregular shaped. This apartment is to be used for residential purpose and contains the following facilities: living dining room, kitchen, two bathroom and two bedrooms. The boundaries of this apartment are as follows: on the NORTH, in two linear distances totaling 27’ with apartment 104 and with the lobby, on the SOUTH, in a linear distance of 27’, with the south exterior wall of building #1; on the EAST, in two linear distances totaling 50’2” with apartment 104 and on the WEST, in a linear distance of 50’2” with apartment 106 a parking space #105 has been assigned to this apartment as an annex thereto. PORCENTAJE: Elementos Comunes Generates: 6.514%. Finca 9320 inscrita al folio 15 del tomo 211 de Manati. Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección de Manatí. La parte demandante alega que dicho pagaré ha sido saldado según más detalladamente consta en la Demanda radicada que puede examinarse en la Secretaría 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 y se le requiere para que radique en este Tribunal su contestación y notifique con copia de ella al abogado de la parte demandante la LCDA. LIZBET AVILES VEGA, RUA: 12536, Urb. Los Sauces, Calle Pomarrosa #222, Humacao, PR 00791, Tel: 787-354-0061, Email: lizbet_aviles@yahoo. com y lcdalizbetaviles@gmail. com; 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 Arecibo, Puerto Rico, hoy día 8 de julio de 2020. VIVIAN Y. FRESSE GONZÁLEZ, Secretario. f/ MICHELINE REYES TORRES, Sub-Secretario.

Wednesday, August 26, 2020 compuesta porVANESSA NOEMI Y LUISELL de apellidos MALDONADO RIVERA; a JOHN OOE y RICHARD ROE como herederos desconocidos

Parte Demandada CIVIL NUM. CG2020CV00330.

SOBRE: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA Y COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO Y NOTIFICACION DE INTERPELACION POR EDICTO. Estados Unidos de América Presidente de los Estados Unidos de América Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico.

A: John Doe y Richard Roe como posibles herederos desconocidos de la Sucesión de Luis Alberto Maldonado Rivera.

POR LA PRESENTE se les emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda y que se exprese en torno a su aceptación o repudiación de la herencia de Luis Alberto Maldonado Rivera, entro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto. Usted deberá radicar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: http:// unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se presente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá radicar el original de su contestación ante el Tribunal correspondiente y notifique con copia a los abogados de la parte demandante, Lcda. Marjaliisa Colón Villanueva, al PO BOX 7970, Ponce, P.R. 00732; Teléfono: 787-843-4168. En dicha demanda se tramita un procedimiento de cobro de dinero y ejecución de hipoteca bajo el número mencionado en el epígrafe. Se alega en dicho procedimiento que la parte Demandada incurrió en el incumplimiento del Contrato de Hipoteca, al no poder pagar las mensualidades vencidas correspondientes a los meses de diciembre de 2016, hasta el presente, más los cargos por demora correspondientes.

Además, adeuda a la parte demandante las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado en que incurra el tenedor del pagaré en este litigio. De acuerdo con dicho Contrato de Garantía HiLEGAL NOTICE potecaria la parte Demandante ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO declaró vencida la totalidad de DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- la deuda ascendente a la suma NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA de $113,154.99 de balance de SALA DE CAGUAS. principal, más intereses a razón MTGLQ INVESTORS, L.P. de 2.004% anual, así como toParte Demandante Vs. dos aquellos créditos y sumas que surjan de la faz de la obliANA ELBA RIVERA hipotecaria y de la hipoRIVERA; LA SUCESION gación teca que la garantiza, incluyenDE LUIS ALBERTO do $13,900.000 estipulada para MALDONADO RIVERA costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado. La parte Demandan-

(787) 743-3346

te presentó para su inscripción en el Registro de la Propiedad correspondiente, un AVISO DE PLEITO PENDIENTE (“Lis Pendens”) sobre la propiedad objeto de esta acción cuya propiedad es la siguiente: RUSTICA: Predio de terreno de forma rectangular ubicado en el Barrio Sud del término municipal de Cidra, Puerto Rico, denominado lote veinticinco (25) con una cabida superficial de MIL QUINIENTOS (1500.00) METROS CUADRADOS, equivalentes a tres mil ochocientos dieciséis {3816) milésimas de cuerda, en lindes por el NORTE, en treinta metros con doscientos veintiruatro milésimas de metro con el solar número veintinueve (29); por el SUR, en treinta metros con doscientos diecisiete milésimas de metro con la calle existente; por el ESTE, en cuarenta y nueve metros con trescientos veintiuna milésimas de metro con el solar número veinticuatro (24) y por el OESTE, en veinticuatro metros con seiscientos veinte milésimas de metro con el solar número veintiséis (26) y en veinticinco metros con seiscientos veinte milésimas de metro con el solar número veintisiete (27). Finca 12,329, Inscrita al folio 57 del tomo 316 de Cidra, Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección Segunda de Caguas.

SE LES APERCIBE que de no hacer sus alegaciones responsivas a la demanda dentro del término aqui dispuesto, se les anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, sin más citarle ni oirle, además se presumirá que usted ha aceptado la herencia de Luis Alberto Maldonado Rivera y por consiguiente, responden por las cargas de dicha herencia conforme dispone el Art. 957 del Código Civil, 31 L.P .R.A. 52785 el término de treinta (30) días antes señalado, Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Caguas, Puerto Rico. A 17 de agosto de 2020.

CARMEN ANA PEREIRA ORTIZ, Sec Regional. Carmen R. Diaz Caceres, Sec Serv a Sala.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE SAN JUAN SALA SUPERIOR.

DLJ MORTGAGE CAPITAL, INC.

Parte Demandante Vs.

RAFAEL ANTONIO RODRÍGUEZ ROSADO su esposa GLORIA ESTHER VILA RIVERA, LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANACIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS y los Estados Unidos de América por conducto del Fiscal

The San Juan Daily Star Federal de la Corte de Distrito de Estados Unidos para el Distrito de Puerto Rico

Parte Demandada CASO CIVIL NUM: SJ2020CV00588.

SOBRE: EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA Y COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTOS. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCJADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: RAFAEL ANTONIO RODRfGUEZ ROSADO SU ESPOSA GLORIA ESTHER VILA RIVERA Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS:

POR LA PRESENTE se les emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto. Usted deberá radicar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: http://unired.ramajudicial.pr/ sumac/, salvo que se presente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá radicar el original de su contestación ante el Tribunal correspondiente y notifique con copia a los abogados de la parte demandante, Lcda.

Marjaliisa Colon Villanueva, al PO BOX 7970, Ponce, P.R. 00732; Teléfono: 787-8434168. En dicha demanda se tramita un procedimiento de cobro de dinero y ejecución de hipoteca bajo el número mencionado en el epígrafe. Se alega en dicho procedimiento que la parte Demandada incurrió en el incumplimiento del Contrato de Hipoteca. al no poder pagar las mensualidades vencidas correspondientes a los meses de diciembre de 2015, hasta el presente, más los cargos por demora correspondientes.

Además, adeuda a la parte demandante las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado en que incurra el tenedor del pagaré en este litigio. De acuerdo con dicho Contrato de Garantía Hipotecaria la parte Demandante declaró vencida la totalidad de la deuda ascendente a la suma de $46,914.62, más intereses a razón del 9.99% anual, así como todos aquellos créditos y sumas que surjan de la faz de la obligación hipotecaria y de la hipoteca que la garantiza más la suma pactada para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado. La parte Demandante presentó para’ su inscripción en el Registro de la Propiedad correspondiente, un A VISO DE ~LEITO PENDIENTE (“Lis Pendens”) sobre la propiedad

objeto de esta acción cuya propiedad es la siguiente: URBANA: Parcela marcada con el número cientos cincuenta guion A (150-A), en el plano de parcelación de la comunidad rural Hill Brother del barrio sabana Llana del término municipal de san Juan, con una cabida superficial de doscientos cincuenta y cuatro punto cuarenta y uno (254.41) metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, con parcela número ciento cincuenta (150) de la comunidad; por el SUR, con la parcela número ciento cincuenta guion C (150C) de la comunidad; por el ESTE, con la parcela número ciento cincuenta y uno guion B (151-B) de la comunidad y por el OESTE, con la calle número treinta y siete (37) de la comunidad. Inscrita al tomo móvil novecientos setenta y siete (977) de sabana Llana. finca número treinta y dos mil doscientos ochenta y uno (32,281) del registro de la Propiedad de San Juan, Sección V. SE LES APERCIBE que de no hacer sus alegaciones responsivas a la demanda dentro del término aquí dispuesto, se les anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia. concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, sin más citarle ni oirle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en San Juan, Puerto Rico.

A 18 de agosto de 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA(O). Marlyn Ann Espinosa Rivera, Secretaria Servicios.

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

JOSÉ FERNANDO ROVIRA RULLAN, SU ESPOSA CAROLINA LUISA MARTÍNEZ GODAS, Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA ENTRE ELLOS Demandante, V.

BANCO SANTANDER DE PUERTO RICO, FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DEL CUAL

Demandados CIVIL NIJM. SJ2020cv02739 (504). SOBRE: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ HIPOTECARIO EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. S.S.

A: FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DEL CUAL, o sea las personas desconocidas que

The San Juan Daily Star

puedan ser tenedores del pagare extraviado.

POR MEDIO del presente edicto se le notifica de la presentación de una Demanda en su contra. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través de Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramaiudiciaLpr , salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaria del Tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el Tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. La parte demandante alega que la Escritura Número 16, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico el día 16 de diciembre de 1998, ante la Notario Público Yasmin M. Santiago Zayas. La Hipoteca consta inscrita al folio 99 del tomo 426 de Guaynabo, Finca Número 3,440, inscripción 9na del Registro de la Propiedad, garantiza un pagaré hipotecario suscrito a favor de The Bank and Trust of Puerto Rico, o a su orden, por la cantidad de $246,600.00, devengando intereses a razón de una tasa de interés de 1 1/8% anual, vencedero el I de enero de 2014, cuya mencionada hipoteca grava la finca que se describe a continuación: “URBANA: Solar marcado con el número cinco (5) de la Manzana V del Plano de la Urbanización Garden Hills, Sección Tercera (3ra), sita en el Barrio Pueblo Viejo de Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, con cabida superficial de mil cuatrocientos treinta y ocho (1,438) metros cincuenta y cinco (55) centímetros cuadrados, en lindes al NORTE, en treinta y nueve (39) metros cincuenta y tres (53) centímetros, con solar “V”-cuatro (V-4); al SUR, en cuarenta y un (41) metros veinticuatro (24) centímetros, con la calle Park Lane; al SUROESTE, en cinco (5) metros, en forma de arco, con la intersección de las Calle G y Parklane; al ESTE, en treinta y cinco (35) metros sesenta y seis (66) centímetros, según el documento, según el Plano, en treinta (30) metros ochenta y un (81) centímetros, con Villa Caparra Development Corporation; y al OESTE, en treinta y Un (31) metros setenta y un (71) centímetros, con la calle G. NOTA: Hoy colinda por el Suroeste con las Calles Court y Park Lane. Enclava una casa.

Inscrita al folio veinticuatro (24) del tomo setenta y siete (77) de Guaynabo, finca número tres mi! cuatrocientos cuarenta (3,440) del Registro de la Propiedad. La deuda objeto del mencionado pagaré hipotecario está salda. El original del hipotecario por la suma principal de $246,600.00 antes mencionado se ha extraviado o la posesión

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

la ostenta los demandados de epígrafe, sin que la parte demandante lo haya podido localizar a pesar de las gestiones realizadas, por lo cual no lo tiene para la cancelación correspondiente en el Registro de la Propiedad y por ello comparece a este Honorable Tribuna! solicitando su cancelación. Que se incluye a Fulano De Ta! y a Mengano Del Cual como posibles tenedores desconocidos del pagaré hipotecario extraviado. POR EL PRESENTE EDICTO, se le emplaza y requiere para que conteste la dentro del término de treinta (30) días de la publicación de este edicto notificándole con copia de dicha contestación al Lcdo. Luis G. Parrilla Hernández, PO Box 195168 San Juan, PR 00919516 y/o 221 Avenida Ponce De León, Piso 5, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico 00917; sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal de San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy 17 de agosto de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, Secretaria Regional. Sandra I. Cruz Vazquez, Secretaria Servicios a Sala.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMÓN SALA SUPERIOR.

TRIANGLE REO PR CORP., Demandante, V.

ÁNGEL OCTAVIO PIETRI PADILLA, SU ESPOSA VIOLETA CAMACHO RODRÍGUEZ, Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA ENTRE ELLOS; CARLOS HUMBERTO MERCADER DELGADO, SU ESPOSA NORMA MARIA PÉREZ PIETRI T/C/C NORMA MARIE PÉREZ PIETRI, Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA ENTRE ELLOS; ROBERTO ANDRÉS LEÓN LLOPIZ, SU ESPOSA IRIS MINERVA REYES DÍAZ, Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA ENTRE ELLOS

Gananciales compuesta por estos. Urb. Torrimar Calle Alhambra 821, Guaynabo, P.R. 00969; 1560 Manchester Blvd.

Fort Myers, Florida 33919; 3949 Evans Ave. Suite 300, Fort Myers, Florida 33901; 12645 New Brittany Blvd. Bldg 15, Fort Myers, Florida 33907; Carretera 102, Tnt. Sector Flor Millán, El Húcar #2, Sabana Grande, P.R.; Urb. El Húcar B-2, Carretera 102, Km. 108.8 mt., Sabana Grande, P.R. 00637; HC-10 Box 7793, Sabana Grande, P.R. 00637; Carr. 20 Km. 81 Sector Mangotin Barrio Camarones, Guaynabo, PR; 2500 PO Box, Toa Baja, PR; Lots G, H & I, PR 819 Km. 0.7 Interior, Bucarabones Ward, Toa Alta, PR 00953.

Por la presente se le notifica que se ha radicado en su contra una Demanda de Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Prenda e Hipoteca. Se le emplaza y requiere para que notifique a: Ferraiuoli LLC Looking Forward Lcda. Angélica S. Vázquez Lozada PO Box 195168 San Juan, PR 00919-5 168 Tel.: 787-766-7000 / Fax: 787-766-7001 avazguez@ferraiuoli.com Abogados de la parte demandante, con copia de respuesta a la Demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto y radicar el original de dicha contestación en este Tribunal en donde podrá enterarse de su contenido. Si dejare de hacerlo, podrá anotársele la rebeldía.

EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, hoy 12 de agosto de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, Secrataria Regional. Samari Diaz Collazo, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIA DO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE CIALES.

MARISOL RIVERA PAGAN, JESUS FERNANDO SINGH, y la Sociedad Legal de Gananciales Compuesta por ambos

Demandados CIVIL NÚM.: BY2020CV00840.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Demandantes Vs. Y EJECUCIÓN DE PRENDA E NORTHSTAR MORTGAGE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENCORPORATION, JOHN TO POR EDICTO. ‘ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL DOE, RICHARD ROE PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADemandados DOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LI- CIVIL NUMERO: BRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO CL2020CV00035.

SOBRE: RICO. CANCELACION DE PAGARE A: Roberto Andrés León HIPOTECARIO EXTRAVIAEMPLAZAMIENTO POR Llopiz, su esposa Iris DO. EDICTO.

Minerva Reyes Díaz y la Sociedad Legal de

A: NORTHSTAR

MORTGAGE CORPORATION; JOHN DOE, RICHARD ROE

Por la presente se les notifica que la parte demandante en este caso, ha presentado ante este Tribunal una Demanda solicitando la cancelación de un pagaré extraviado e hipoteca en garantía del mismo. Dicho pagaré hipotecario fue constituido por Pedro Antonio Rivera Rodríguez y Bienvenida Pagán Rodríguez, dueños anteriores de dicha propiedad, a favor de Northstar Mortage Corporation o a su orden, por la suma principal de $96,000.00, intereses al 7.125% anual. vencimiento el día 1 de enero de 2019, autenticado con el affidávit número 979 ante el notario Arsenio Comas Radón, según surge de la escritura número 348, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 7 de diciembre de 1998, inscripción 7ma .. del Registro de la Propiedad, Sección de Manatí, sobre la propiedad inmueble que se describe a continuación: - -RUSTICA: Solar marcado con la letra H del Plano de Inscripción y Segregación. localizado en el Barrio Jaguas de Ciales, con una cabida superficial de mil cero noventa punto doscientos treinta y seis metros cuadrados (1.090.236 me). o sea, cero punto doscientos setenta y siete cuerdas (0.277 cdas), en lindes, por el Norte, en veinte metros (20.00) con camino municipal, por el Sur, en una alineación de veintidós metros (22.00) con el remanente de la finca principal. por el Este, en cincuenta y cuatro punto cero noventa y nueve metros (54.099) con el solar G, propiedad de Antonio Colón Fernández y por el Oeste, en cincuenta punto doscientos sesenta y siete metros (50.267) con el solar marcado con la letra l. - -Dicha propiedad consta inscrita al folio número ciento veinticinco (125) del tomo número ciento treinta y nueve ( 139) de Ciales, finca número seis mil seiscientos ochenta y tres (6,683) del Registro de la Propiedad, Sección de Manatí. - -Sin que se tome razón en el Registro de la Propiedad, se hace constar que sobre dicho predio de terreno enclava una estructura para fines residenciales. 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, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaria del Tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el Tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal.en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entendiere procedente. Abogado de la par-

25

te demandante el Lcdo. José DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Pri- Superior de CAGUAS. Osea r San Miguel, PO Box 27, mera Instancia Sala ( Superior ORIENTAL BANK Ciales, PR 00638, Tel. (787) de) SAN JUAN. como agente de servicios 871-2810, Fax (787) 871-1061.

BANCO POPULAR DE de Money, lnc.

E-mail: sanoscar201@hotmail.

PUERTO RICO Demandante v. com - Número ante el Tribunal Demandante v.

Supremo: 4486. Expedido bajo LA SUCESIÓN DE LUIS mi firma y sello del Tribunal hoy PREFERRED MORTGAGE ANGEL RODRIGUEZ 27 de febrero de 2020. VIVIAN BANKERS; SCOTIABANK SANTANA COMPUESTA Y. FRESSE GONZÁLEZ, SE- DE PUERTO RICO como POR EILEEN RODRIGUEZ CRETARIA REG!ONAL. Caradquirente y sucesor men Burgos Ortiz, Sec Auxiliar.

MARRERO Y LUIS

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 24 de agosto de 2020. En CAGUAS, Puerto Rico, el 24 de agosto de 2020. CARMEN ANA PEREIRA ORTIZ, Secretario{a). YAMAIRA M. RIOS CARRASCO, Secretaria Auxiliar.

en derecho de PAN ANGEL RODRIGUEZ AMERICAN FINANCIAL MARRERO; FULANO Y Estado Libre Asociado de PuerCORPORATION; TIM FULANA DE TAL COMO to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL LEGAL NOT ICE ALAN LANE GALVAN; DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de PriPOSIBLES MIEMBROS ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO MILEDY CÁCERES mera Instancia Sala ( Superior DESCONOCIDOS DE LA DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUde) TOA ALTA. BRETON; JOHANNIE SUCESIÓN Y EL CENTRO NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA BANCO POPULAR DE PR ROQUE T/C/C DE RECAUDACIONES DE SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN Demandante v.

JOHANNIE ROQUE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES JUAN. THE LINCOLN FINANCIAL CÁCERES; FULANO WENDEL YNN GONZALEZ (CRIM) MORTGAGEES INC Y Y MENGANO DE TAL, DIAZ; ANGELY MARIE Demandado(a) OTROS POSIBLES TENEDORES Civil: CG2019CV03781. Sobre: DE JESUS GONZALEZ; Demandado(a) DESCONOCIDOS DEL COBRO DE DINERO y EJEMARJE ANGELY DE Civil: Núm. TA2020CV00023.

CUCION DE HIPOTECA (VIA Sobre: CANCELACION DE PAPAGARÉ JESUS GONZALEZ ORDINARIA). NOTIFICACIÓN LEGAL NOTICE

GARE EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFIDemandado(a) DEMANDANTES VS. DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. CACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR Civil: Núm. SJ2019CV12513 (Nombre de las partes a las que se WILFREDO EDICTO. (908). Sobre: CANCELACION le notifican la sentencia por edicto) RÍOS MALDONADO A: FRANCISCO RAMIREZ DE PAGARE EXTRAVIADO A: LA PARTEC CODEMANDADO POR LA VÍA JUDICIAL. NODOUBON, SUSAN CIVIL NUM. SJ2019CV10391.

DEMANDADA: A) TIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA SOBRE: LIQUIDACION DE NEWMAN DE RAMIREZ POR EDICTO POR SUMAC. EILEEN RODRIGUEZ COMUNIDAD DE BIENES. Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL A: TIM ALAN LANE MARRERO Y LUIS ANGEL EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICDE GANANCIALES GALVAN, JOHANNIE RODRIGUEZ MARRERO, TO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE COMPUESTA POR ROQUE T/C/C COMO MIEMBROS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS AMBOS; FULANO Y JOHANNIE ROQUE LA SUCESIÓN DE LUIS DE EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIAMENGANO DE TAL, CÁCERES, FULANO ANGEL RODRIGUEZ DO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARE

(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 31 de JULIO de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 20 de agosto de 2020. En TOA ALTA, Puerto Rico, el 20 de agosto de 2020.

CC: LCDA. BELMA ALONSO GARCIA - PO BOX 3922 GUAYNABO Puerto Rico 00970-3922. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional. LIRIAM M. HERNANDEZ OTERO, Sec Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

Y MENGANO DE TAL, POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARÉ

(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 20 de AGOSTO de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los (10) días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 20 de agosto de 2020. En SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, el 20 de agosto de 2020.

GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria Regional. F/ DENISE M. AMARO MACHUCA, Sec Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL Estado Libre Asociado de PuerGENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tributo Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL nal de Primera Instancia Sala

SANTANA, A LA SIGUIENTE DIRECCIÓN: FÍSICA Y POSTAL: 13481 SW 272ND TERRACE HOMESTEAD FL 33032. B ) FULANO Y FULANA DE TAL COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESIÓN DE LUIS ANGEL RODRIGUEZ SANTANA, A LA SIGUIENTE DIRECCIÓN: FISICA: ES-27 CALLE 25 URB. MIRADOR DE BAIROA CAGUAS, PR 00725: Y POSTAL: 2S-27 CALLE 25 URB. MIRADOR DE BAIROA CAGUAS, PR 00727; 13481 SW 27ND TERRACE HOMESTEAD FL 33032

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 11 de AGOSTO de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del

A: WILFREDO RIOS MALDONADO

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 30 días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a· través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramaiudicial. pr, salvo que se represente· por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. f/LCDO. HÉCTOR CORA SANTIAGO RUA NUM.: 9087 717 CALLE RECTOR URDANETA SAN JUAN; PUERTO RICO 00915 TEL. (787) 313-4807 E-MAIL: hcoralegal@hotmail.com; f/LCDO. JOSE R. REYES HERNANDEZ RUA NUM. 16176 PO BOX 362100 SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO 00936 TEL. (787) 209-7947 EMAIL: rua16176@gmail.com; Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, hoy 19 de febrero del 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria.

LOYDA M COUVERTIER REYES, Sec Serv a Sala.

26

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Baseball’s most unusual season is halfway over

Mookie Betts has led the Dodgers to the best record in baseball through the first 30 games of a 60-game season.

By TYLER KEPNER

T

he logo of the 2020 All-Star Game looms over the action at Dodger Stadium from a billboard above the right-field pavilion.

The game was supposed to be held last month in Los Angeles, for the first time in 40 years, but the coronavirus pandemic canceled it.

The Dodgers will get their turn in two years, after Atlanta next summer. In the meantime, they are playing like All-Stars almost every day. The Dodgers were one of four teams to reach the halfway point of this 60-game season Sunday, doing so with the majors’ best record, at 22-8.

The problem for the Dodgers, who are seeking their first championship since 1988, could be the expanded playoff format. In an effort to maximize postseason revenue, Major League Baseball will welcome 16 teams to the playoffs this year, up from 10, eliminating the wild-card games in favor of eight best-of-three series.

An extra playoff series, especially one so brief, adds another impediment to every team’s title hopes. The eight that survive the new round will then play the traditional division series, championship series and World Series — possibly at a so-called bubble venue, to limit travel and reduce the risk of a COVID-19 outbreak.

In the regular season, the most radical

changes to the sport have been timesaving measures that will not be used in October: a seveninning format for games played as part of doubleheaders and a runner on second base at the start of all extra innings. Both had been used in the minors.

“The one that people have been surprisingly positive about is the extra-innings rule,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said recently. “I’ve been quoted as saying I didn’t think it was going to be used in the big leagues. But I think people have really liked it. It’s exciting; that’s a good thing. Whether it becomes permanent or not, that remains to be seen.”

He added: “The one thing I want to be clear on: All these changes were health-driven.

Every single one of them we made for one reason only. We weren’t looking to experiment, we weren’t looking to get something in the back door. We did them because our health experts said they were a good idea to do.”

New rules mean new wrinkles for keepers of MLB records. A pitcher will not be credited with an official no-hitter or a perfect game if it comes in a seven-inning game; those achievements must last at least nine innings.

But the phantom runner on second base raises the fascinating possibility of a pitcher throwing a perfect game but still allowing a run.

Here’s the situation: A pitcher works nine perfect innings of a scoreless game, then starts the 10th

with a runner on second. A ground ball moves the runner to third, a sacrifice fly scores him, the next batter makes an out.

In that case, the pitcher retired all 30 hitters he faced but would still be charged with an unearned run and, possibly, a loss. But he would also get credit for a perfect game.

“Yes, because the perfect game definition is ‘no batters reach safely,’ and that player did not reach safely as a batter,” said John Labombarda, senior editor and baseball researcher for the Elias Sports Bureau. “But when I was first asked this question, my reaction was: What are the chances that this is going to happen? In baseball history, there’s been only two pitchers to take a perfect game into the 10th inning. The likelihood of it happening is so slim.”

In each of those instances, the pitcher lost his perfect game in extra innings: Pittsburgh’s Harvey Haddix in the 13th inning in Milwaukee in 1959 and Montreal’s Pedro Martínez in the 10th inning in San Diego in 1995.

Seattle’s Félix Hernández threw the majors’ last perfect game, on Aug. 15, 2012, against the Tampa Bay Rays. This is now the longest stretch in the majors without a perfect game since the 13-year gap between Catfish Hunter’s for Oakland in 1968 and Len Barker’s for Cleveland in 1981.

Here are a few more interesting tidbits from the first half of a most unusual season: Debuts for Tigers Prospects Two top pitching prospects for the Detroit Tigers, Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize, made their major league debuts on consecutive nights last week against the Chicago White Sox. De-

Astros right fielder Josh Reddick could not haul in Jake Cronenworth’s grand slam on Saturday. Cronenworth can pitch, too.

troit took both pitchers in the 2018 draft, 254 picks apart. Mize, a right-hander from Auburn, was chosen first overall, and Skubal, a lefty from Seattle University, was taken in the ninth round.

Mize became the first No. 1 overall pick in more than five years to debut for the team that drafted him. The last was Houston shortstop Carlos Correa, who went first overall in 2012 and arrived with the Astros three years later. Braves shortstop Dansby Swanson, the first pick in 2015, was traded from Arizona to Atlanta before he reached the majors.

Mize was the 18th pitcher chosen first overall in the draft, which began in 1965. Only six have reached 100 victories in the majors: Mike Moore, Andy Benes, David Price, Tim Belcher, Floyd Bannister and Stephen Strasburg.

Another, the New York Yankees’ Gerrit Cole — the first overall pick in 2011, by Pittsburgh — has 98 career wins.

Were Two-Way Players a Fad? Jake Cronenworth, a rookie, belted the San Diego Padres’ fifth grand slam in six games Saturday. He has become a valuable and versatile contributor, with starts at second base, shortstop and first base — but no appearances on the mound.

Cronenworth was a two-way player at the University of Michigan and pitched in seven Class AAA games last year for the Tampa Bay Rays organization, which traded him and Tommy Pham in December. He also threw bullpen sessions for the Padres this spring. But as enticing as the idea of a two-way player has been in baseball lately, the concept has been tough to pull off.

Two of the top four picks in the 2017 draft — the Cincinnati Reds’ Hunter Greene and the Rays’ Brendan McKay — were selected as twoway players. But McKay appeared as a hitter only four times last season (once as a designated hitter, three times off the bench) and will miss the 2020 season after shoulder surgery. Greene had 30 at-bats in rookie league, then focused on pitching and had Tommy John surgery in 2018.

The Los Angeles Angels’ Shohei Ohtani also had the procedure that year, and he has pitched only twice since. Ohtani was shut down with a forearm strain after two starts this summer and was hitting just .181 as the designated hitter in 83 at-bats through Sunday. Without him, the Angels have continued their recent tradition of ineffective starting pitching; their starters’ ERA was 5.96 through Saturday, worse than every team but the Tigers.

Continues on page 27

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

27

Cleared to play, Mets have a busy week ahead

By TYLER KEPNER

T

he New York Mets returned to work Monday, practicing at Citi Field and preparing for a busy stretch of games after four postponements in a row. A player and a staff member tested positive last week for the coronavirus, but the team said Monday that no other staff members or players had tested positive since then.

General manager Brodie Van Wagenen said the two people who tested positive had remained in Miami, where the team played the Marlins last week.

“Both ultimately did become symptomatic, but their symptoms have for the most part resolved, and the peak of their challenges existed more in a 36-hour period of time,” Van Wagenen said Monday. “We’re feeling much more comfortable about their safety.”

The Mets have not identified the player and the staff member who tested positive.

Four others who stayed behind, because they had been in close contact with the infected people, have been cleared to return to New York.

The positive tests forced a postponement in Miami last Thursday, and that game will be made up as part of a doubleheader at Citi Field on Tuesday. The Mets had been scheduled to host the New York Yankees for three games last weekend, and those games will be made up as parts of doubleheaders in the Bronx on Friday and Sunday and as a single game in Flushing on Sept. 3.

Van Wagenen said the team had been unable to trace the source of the positive

tests, but he seemed confident that the Mets had contained the spread of the virus. The Miami Marlins (20 positive tests) and the St. Louis Cardinals (18) had wider outbreaks and missed more games.

“I think what we’re all learning is that this virus continues to have a lot more questions for us than answers,” Van Wagenen said. “We do feel comfortable that the spread has not come from player to player or coach to coach. At this point, our best guess is that it came from some outside spot, but that is simply that — it’s a guess. We just don’t know, and we may never know.”

He added: “I know that our players take it seriously, and we have a high degree of confidence that this exposure that we received is not as a result of anyone misbehaving or failing to be responsible with their own safety.”

However the positive tests came about, the Mets (12-14) must now play 34 games in the season’s final 34 days to reach the full 60. Tuesday’s twin bill will be the Mets’ first under the 2020 rule in which doubleheader games last only seven innings. With nine games to play in the next six days, the Mets are glad to have fewer innings to fill.

“It seemed to make sense,” Van Wagenen said. “Now, as we look at it from a personal standpoint, I think it’s a necessity, trying to cover so many games in so few days.”

The Mets’ rotation has been unsteady, with two former All-Stars who will not pitch this season (Noah Syndergaard, who had Tommy John surgery, and Marcus Stroman, who opted out) and two others, David Peter-

son and Michael Wacha, out with shoulder injuries. Another starter, Steven Matz, is 0-4 with a 9.00 ERA and a .313 opponents’ average.

Reliever Robert Gsellman has joined the rotation, and closer Seth Lugo was scheduled to do so last week. Van Wagenen would not commit to using Matz as a starter but said the Mets would still count on him and others in various roles.

“We have to be creative at this point,” he said. “Call it openers, call it bulk-inning pitchers — I have a feeling that we’re probably going to be going through a number of

different scenarios, not only this week with the number of games that we have, but also as we head toward the rest of the regular season, because we have to treat each game as much of a must-win game as possible.”

Van Wagenen said that while he had started exploring trade possibilities before Monday’s deadline, “we don’t have anything on the horizon at this point.” He added that the types of players the Mets need — starters like Peterson and Wacha and an outfielder like Jake Marisnick, who has a hamstring strain — could soon be activated from the injured list.

Brodie Van Wagenen, right, the Mets’ general manager, spoke with a player after Thursday’s game at the Miami Marlins was postponed because a member of the Mets tested positive for the coronavirus.

Baseball’s most unusual season is halfway over From page 26 No. 93 Comes Off the Hanger When reliever Pat Neshek signed with the Philadelphia Phillies before the 2018 season, he chose No. 93. Neshek, a student of baseball history, had searched the uniform number database at Baseball Reference to find a number that would be unique in the annals of the game.

“People were like, ‘Why?’” Neshek said.

“Nobody had it before — pretty simple explanation.”

Another reliever, Adam Cimber, became the first to wear No. 90 that season, first for San Diego and then for Cleveland. After Neshek took 93, only four numbers were still unused:

80, 86, 89 and 92.

No. 80 came off the board last year, when pitcher Ryan Eades wore it for Minnesota. Two more numbers fell this month, with St. Louis reliever Genesis Cabrera donning No. 92 on Aug. 15 and another Cardinals reliever, Jesús Cruz, using No. 86 three days later.

Now, the final frontier has arrived: No. 89, issued to New York Yankees pitcher Miguel Yajure, who was promoted to the majors last week.

Yajure, a 22-year-old right-hander from Venezuela, is awaiting his quirkily groundbreaking debut.

Ray Chapman’s Other Distinction Last Monday was the 100th anniversary of the death of Ray Chapman, the only major league player to be killed by a pitched ball. Cha-

pman, the Cleveland Indians’ shortstop, was struck in the head by the Yankees’ Carl Mays at the Polo Grounds the day before. Mays, a submariner, had noticed Chapman moving his back foot, perhaps to bunt, as he delivered the fatal fastball up and in.

Chapman holds a lesser known distinction in baseball: He remains the single-season leader in sacrifice bunts, with 67 in 1917, a record that may stand forever. Without pitchers batting this season, teams were averaging 0.07 sacrifices per game through Saturday, the lowest percentage ever. Nine teams have zero sacrifice bunts all season.

Reds Pitcher Likes the ‘Higher Stakes’ Before opening day last month, the Reds’

Trevor Bauer pointed out that every start would feel more like a series than a single game. One game in a 60-game season is the equivalent of 2.7 games in the usual 162-game schedule.

“Higher stakes,” he wrote in a text message. “My favorite.”

It sure seems that way. Through the weekend, Bauer was 3-0 with a major-league-best 0.68 ERA in four starts, including two seveninning shutouts. He also led the majors in walks plus hits per inning pitched (0.57) and fewest hits per nine innings (2.7).

Bauer could become the first Cincinnati pitcher to win the Cy Young Award, which has been given out since 1956. Every other franchise that was active then has had at least two winners.

28

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Soccer played through the pandemic. Now it has to do it all again.

Bayern Munich’s Thomas Müller adjusting a mask that is now mandatory equipment for top players.

By RORY SMITH and TARIQ PANJA

J

onathan Van-Tam made no attempt to sugarcoat it. Amid soccer’s coronavirus hiatus, as sports leagues around the world tried to figure out a way to return to the field as a pandemic raged, Van-Tam, deputy chief medical officer of Britain, had been invited to join a Zoom call with the captains of the Premier League’s 20 clubs.

Van-Tam was there to explain the measures that would be needed to make it possible for soccer to return. He reeled through the many sacrifices players would have to make. It would not be easy, he told the captains: They and their teammates would be subjected to more oversight than anyone except British special forces troops on high-alert status.

In those long, bleak days of spring, as soccer authorities tried to conjure a road map back to the field, the idea that the overwhelming majority of domestic leagues in Europe might be able to finish their seasons — and that a new European champion might be crowned — seemed a distant, fanciful one. The risk appeared too great. Too much could go wrong.

On Sunday night in Lisbon, Portugal, though, Bayern Munich won the Champions League, bringing the curtain down on the 2019-20 campaign. European soccer made it through.

That it did is not only testament to the progress their countries made against the virus; to the detailed, forensic planning of the leagues and federations; and to the spirit of “unity,” as the Serie A president, Paolo Dal Pino, put it, that the continent’s clubs managed to foster in an extremely difficult situation. But none of it could have happened without the willingness of thousands of

players to observe some of the toughest controls imposed on any individuals in any industry.

The Bundesliga — the first major sports league to return — blazed the trail. Before resuming play in May, it issued each of its players a handbook containing precise instructions on “private hygiene,” guidance that in some cases went above and beyond the advice issued by the government to the public.

The rules were as stringent, and comprehensive, as possible, and governed almost every aspect of how players lived.

Hand towels were to be used once only and to be washed at 140 degrees Fahrenheit as soon as they were damp. Rooms were to be kept well-ventilated. Toothbrushes were to be cleaned with hot, soapy water.

Some bordered on the intimate: Players were ordered to ensure they took vitamins, drank plenty of water and kept their airways warm. A few took a hard line: Any player who suspected his bubble might have been breached by a person infected with the coronavirus was told that he might, depending on the view of his club, need to change residence.

The rules applied not only to the players but to their families, too: no visitors, no public transportation, no conversations with neighbors. No chances were to be taken.

Authorities elsewhere took much the same approach, adopting what Víctor Manuel Ortega, a vice president at the Spanish league, called “a cascade of strictness.” In each country, the rules emphasized the importance of players taking individual responsibility.

Ortega, who was charged with overseeing the return of Spanish soccer, remembered the fear well: the nerves when he

would wake every morning waiting for the newest batch of test results and then the relief that would wash over him — at least for 24 hours.

The moment Ortega was dreading never arrived. The same was true elsewhere. Most leagues reported only a few dozen positive tests, at most, as they finished their schedules. Aside from Dynamo Dresden, a German second division team that reported an outbreak immediately before the return of the Bundesliga, no team had to go into quarantine or see a string of matches postponed or rescheduled.

Most found that players followed the rules to the letter, doing little more than cloister in their homes — except for training sessions and games — during the two months it took to finish the season.

“We expected them outside of the training grounds to follow the government advice in relation to social distancing at the time, in relation to hygiene, in relation to where they would visit,” Richard Garlick, the Premier League’s director of football, said.

“They were doing that with the mindset of, ‘We want to get restarted; we have got these protocols in place.’ They did all the right things.”

There were occasional “aberrations,” as Garlick called them: a handful of Premier League players caught holding lockdown parties, or visiting friends, or inviting acquaintances to their homes. In Germany, the coach of Augsburg, Heiko Herrlich, missed his team’s restart after he broke quarantine to buy toothpaste. In Spain, La Liga officials scoured social media for potential violations after some Sevilla players were pictured enjoying a barbecue together.

“We quickly contacted the clubs and reminded them very strongly what responsibility they had,” Ortega said.

The Premier League posted a permanent delegate at each club’s training facility to ensure compliance and to prevent any team from bending the rules to gain any advantage over its opponents at a time when the type of training that was permitted was governed by social distancing.

“It was just making sure there was a level playing field and no one was secretly doing anything,” Garlick said. “And they weren’t, because they realized the risks.”

Like his colleagues across Europe, though, Garlick knows that a greater challenge lies ahead. As the seasons finished in each country, players were allowed out of their bubbles. The strict protocols that had governed their lives since March were loosened, and social media feeds have since filled with images of players on beaches, at parties, reunited with their extended families.

That freedom brings with it, of course, an increased risk of exposure. There have been a number of positive tests in Spain as teams not involved in European competition return to preseason training. Sides contesting the early rounds of the forthcoming Champions League and Europa League have seen games canceled because of outbreaks.

For months, all European soccer focused on was not ending its season with a question mark, an asterisk. It has, to the credit of both its authorities and its participants, succeeded. What comes next, though, may well be more difficult. Finishing in the middle of a pandemic was one thing. Now, with the virus an ever-present threat, Europe’s leagues have to find a way to start again.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

29

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

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

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

(Mar 21-April 20)

A neighbourhood event or community fundraiser will introduce you to new people. Get involved in activities that feel meaningful.

Someone close would appreciate some moral support. If they’re going through a difficult time, find ways to help them. Kind gestures and thoughtful words is all it takes to make someone feel loved.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Even if you aren’t going out of your way to make new friends, you will want to meet up again with someone you get talking to today. A new neighbour or colleague will share your interests, views and outlook on life.

Both online and off, cultivate an optimistic outlook when talking to others. Networking is the best way forward.

Gemini

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

(May 22-June 21)

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

You’re noticing some big changes compared with how you used to work. A lot of money has been spent and is waiting to be spent by customers and clients. At home, take a fresh look at accounts or financial arrangements with an eye on how to exploit resources or talents. Be honest when a loved one asks about your feelings.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Contention in a group situation can be resolved. If you assess a team effort with care and consideration, you will be able to make some practical changes without these causing too much discomfort for everyone. People are looking to you for guidance and will be grateful for your sensible suggestions.

Be firm with people who are trying to persuade you into joining an event or activity you aren’t keen on. It will benefit them more than you if you were to take part. Besides, if the boot were on the other foot, they wouldn’t think twice about turning down your suggestions if they weren’t interested.

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Cancer

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

(June 22-July 23)

It might not seem likely at the moment but changes in your life will broaden your outlook and widen your social circle. If you’re about to take up a challenge that seems daunting, you can rely on the promises friends and colleagues’ are making to help you. All you have to do is ask when you need some assistance.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

Take a safe and discreet approach if you want to succeed. Progress is slow due to restrictive rules and regulations. You’re tempted to push your luck by attempting to get around them.

This is not a good idea. Rules and guidelines will not be changed even if they are causing frustration in the workplace.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

It’s important for your relationships to consult your family and loved ones before making future plans. You might be keen to take up an offer but if it will affect their lives too, talk it over. Take time to think about it and if you sense a loved one opposes your ideas, is there a way to compromise?

Try not to begrudge it if a youngster demands more of your time, and affection than usual.

It isn’t simply a question of their need for attention. With everything they are going through they are more likely to be confused and anxious and they need some calm advice and meaningful emotional connections.

If you suffer from an allergy, steering clear of a hobby or interest you enjoy may be a necessity. This would be better than suffering from an allergic reaction. Take care of your health. A job offer will be challenging but enormously rewarding. Without a challenge the reward would be meaningless.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Let a partner have their own way when they make it obvious they’d appreciate your support. You will understand why something means a lot to them and you would feel cruel not to encourage this interest. You’ve been holding back of late because your mind has been on other things and not because you don’t support them.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

Actions speak louder than words. Your sweetheart is wondering whether they do mean anything to you. If you care for them, don’t just say it as you walk out the door to yet another appointment or meeting. Arrange to spend more quality time together. Show interest in their hopes and dreams. They need to know they can rely on you when they need you.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

The San Juan Daily Star

Ziggy

32

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

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$49.00 Abanico recargable

Water Dispenser .00

Licuadora OSTER

$69.00

$169.00

Nevera Haier

$899.00

Desde

Industrial Stand Fan

$589.00 ¡Disfruta el mejor Perfortmance!

$39.00

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