Friday to Sunday Aug 4-6, 2023

The San Juan Star

‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’ Has Its Charms & Nails the Nostalgia

A Call to Stop ‘Normalizing’ a Preventable Problem

Many Older Adults in Island Nursing Homes Suffer from Untreated Dental Conditions, Study Finds P3

ASES Director Steps Down, Citing Personal & Professional Reasons

Trump Pleads Not Guilty to Charges That He Plotted to Overturn Election

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.

Many older adults in island nursing homes suffer from untreated dental conditions

By THE STAR STAFF

Astudy from the Dental Surgeons Association of Puerto Rico (CCDPR by its Spanish initials) has found that older adults living in nursing homes have poor oral and dental hygiene and their conditions often go undetected.

The study found that these older adults suffered from oral diseases of a serious nature without being detected or treated, showing the need to educate caregivers in this area.

CCDPR President Raúl Dámaso Ortiz Escalera said nearly 50 members of the association voluntarily carried out an education and evaluation session focused on studying oral health conditions in people over 55 years of age to propose solutions. The initiative began in March and will end this month. The members visited the towns of Fajardo, Trujillo Alto, Río Piedras in San Juan, Vega Baja, Caguas, Aguas Buenas, Arecibo, Mayagüez and Ponce.

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being able to identify and attend to their oral hygiene and prevent serious conditions.”

“Older adults are currently the fastest-growing population in Puerto Rico. But at the same time it is a vulnerable and disadvantaged group, due to the mental and physical conditions many suffer from,” Ortiz Escalera said. “The personnel of the entities in charge are unaware of the conditions and whether they have prostheses, partial dentures, or removable teeth. Also, family members or guardians are often unaware of the treatments the people in their custody have received or should receive, or assume that they are being treated.”

“We have to stop normalizing the lack of teeth in our older adults, as if it were a condition of this stage of a person’s life,” he added. “There is no need to lose dental pieces if we establish a prevention routine and take care of our oral health as we do with other components of our body.”

The effort is being undertaken within the framework of Oral Health Month and, Ortiz Escalera said, the CCDPR will focus its efforts on education and prevention to protect the elderly population and create awareness and training among family members and caregivers.

Ortiz Escalera noted that the dentists participating in the initiative evaluated 332 older adults in some 11 care centers and at two health fairs. Of those, 19 were diagnosed with potential oral cancer lesions, while another 13 were referred for various treatments. This equates to a rate of near 10%. As the study is still ongoing, doctors estimate that the percentage could rise.

The initiative’s director and CCDPR vice president of community service, Ivette Rodríguez Vicens, said the most serious condition among patients is oral cavity cancer, detected by the most advanced oral examination device, the Velscope, purchased by the CCDPR. In addition, dentists frequently encounter older adults who have been wearing partial or complete dentures for months and years without having removed them for daily cleaning, as is directed. This leads to the accumulation of bacterial plaque, inflammation of the gums, oral infections and tooth decay.

Among the findings of the study, which will end in August, they identified the need to increase the training and education of caregivers in the field of oral care, particularly in centers that house older adults.

“We find cases of older adults who hide, even from their relatives, the use of dentures out of modesty,” Rodríguez Vicens said. “Consequently, we see patients diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer’s who arrive at a care center without being evaluated by a dentist, and remain with their dentures without anyone around them

Ortiz Escalera added that the final findings of the study will be presented in a report to the CCDPR membership during the peak activity of Oral Health Month, on Aug. 25, Dentist Day.

Rodríguez Vicens stated that as a result of the evaluations, the CCDPR has concluded that legislation is needed to address the situations that contribute to poor oral health among the elderly.

“For this reason, the association will recommend that the problem be addressed by law on multiple fronts, from individual caregivers and care centers to the elderly themselves and their relatives or guardians,” said Miguel Alvarado López, president-elect of the CCDPR.

Dental Surgeons Association of Puerto Rico President Raúl Dámaso Ortiz Escalera

ASES director resigns, citing personal & professional reasons

By THE STAR STAFF

Gov. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia announced on Thursday the resignation of Puerto Rico Health Insurance Administration (ASES) Executive Director Edna Marín Ramos, effective Aug. 15.

The official resigned for personal and professional reasons, the governor said.

“Edna Marín Ramos’ commitment to the health of the most vulnerable people is unquestionable,” Pierluisi said. “Under her leadership, the highest Medicaid budget was achieved for a period of five years, including an 85 percent increase in the federal poverty level for beneficiaries in

Puerto Rico, responding to the need for a health insurance system that responds to our citizens. I appreciate the time and dedication to public service and I wish you success in your future plans.”

The resignation comes a month after ASES and the Department of Health cleared the way for the imposition of a fine of over $300 million on the MMM (Medicare y Mucho Más) insurers Multihealth, Triple S, Mennonita Health Plan and First Medical, which were contracted under the government Vital Plan, for noncompliance with the plan and later suspended. It also comes after news that many municipalities do not have round-the-clock medical services and complaints about insufficient resources at

hospitals.

During Marín Ramos’ tenure at ASES, however, a new Plan Vital MCO contract was approved to increase the reimbursement to doctors and hospitals, which entered into force on Jan. 1. Likewise, she implemented measures to increase the control, monitoring and compliance of the Vital Plan. In addition, in administrative terms, the organizational structure of the public corporation was reassessed, in order to adjust salary scales, which had not been reviewed for the past 20 years.

ASES Assistant Director Roxana Rosario will be running the public corporation on an interim basis starting on Aug. 16.

38 members of ‘Burro’ gang in Caguas accused of drug and weapons trafficking

By THE STAR STAFF

On July 17, a federal grand jury in the District of Puerto Rico indicted 38 members of a violent gang in Caguas with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute, possession and distribution of controlled substances, and firearms violations, W. Stephen Muldrow, United States Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, announced Thursday.

“We came close to bringing justice to the family of the victim MRM, who was senselessly killed while she was caught in the crossfire during a gang shootout in May 2022,” Muldrow said at a press conference.

Joseph González, the special agent in charge of the FBI San Juan Field Office, added his perspective: “The gang members arrested today were holding the Caguas region hostage through violence and intimidation. Puerto Rico belongs to the people, and the FBI will continue to disrupt and dismantle these criminal organizations to ensure that this remains the case.”

The indictment alleges that from 2017 to date, the drug trafficking organization distributed heroin, cocaine base (known as “crack”), cocaine, marijuana, fentanyl, oxycodone (Percocet), and alprazolam (Xanax) in specific

areas of Caguas and other areas of Puerto Rico, obtaining significant financial gains. Nelson Torres Delgado “El Burro,” leader of the organization and a fugitive since 2017,

has maintained control through violence and sophisticated methods of evasion, according to the indictment.

In addition to the federal prosecution, local authorities are also working in collaboration with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Puerto Rico Police Bureau Special Arrest Unit, and the Guaynabo Municipal Special Response Team, Muldrow said. The joint actions aim not only to address gang violence but also their drug trafficking and distribution networks.

Sheila Luyando Fuentes, an employee in the healthcare industry, was also charged with improper disclosure of individually identifiable health information. She acted as a facilitator and shared protected information with gang members, representing an unusual and alarming case of criminal collaboration, according to the indictment.

The penalties for the crimes vary. If convicted on the drug charges, the defendants face a minimum sentence of 10 years and up to life in prison. Those charged with possession of automatic weapons face a consecutive mandatory sentence of 30 years in prison. Those charged in the firearms-related murder of MRM face possible life in prison and, if authorized by the U.S. attorney general, the death penalty.

Resolution filed to prevent retired racehorses from

By THE STAR STAFF

Seeking to prevent hundreds of horses from roaming the streets after ending their competitive life in racing, Sen. Keren Riquelme Cabrera announced the filing of a resolution Thursday to investigate the feasibility of providing recurring funds to non-profit entities that care for the animals in their old age.

“We do not want to see more horses roaming our roads, so in order to prevent a crisis in the management of thoroughbred horses withdrawn from competition due to lack

of resources, it is imperative that the Senate of Puerto Rico initiate an investigation aimed at identifying platforms for allocating recurring funds to tackle this growing problem,” the at-large senator said.

“Although horse riding is highly known in our society, this is not what happens after these specimens complete their time in competition,” Riquelme Cabrera added. “Several studies highlight that the competitive life of a thoroughbred horse, on average, extends to a period of just five years, at most. After that stage, many of these equines do not have a viable path to complete their lives, which can be extended

roaming the streets

up to 25 years.”

The New Progressive Party senator noted that Puerto Rico has no institutionalized program to care for horses after their competitive retirement.

“We emphasize that the Third Sector, non-profit organizations, are active in the care of these equines,” Riquelme Cabrera said. “However, they do not have the economic capacity to meet the increase in the number of horses that finish their racing career each year. If no action is taken, we will see an increasing number of unattended horses in many areas of Puerto Rico. We can take action now to prevent that.”

U.S. Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico W. Stephen Muldrow, at lectern

‘These executive orders are taking away human rights!’

Parents & professionals join forces to protest mandatory child vaccinations in schools

By RICHARD GUTIERREZ richardsanjuanstar@gmail.com

The COVID-19 pandemic brought with it a lot of trouble in many areas of society: closure of small businesses, countless lockdowns, increased rates of depression, social distancing preventing social contact and the cancellation of countless events, including family vacations, conventions and church gatherings, among many other public and personal activities.

One of the biggest discussions that is still ongoing almost four years after the global pandemic was officially declared is related to vaccinations. People in the mainland United States have been discussing vaccination for decades, including whether or not they are the right choice. Whether or not somebody believes in vaccines is up to every individual, but what happened Thursday in front of the island Department of Education’s central offices shows that hundreds of Puerto Ricans don’t believe in vaccines and are not willing to have the government force them on their children, just so they can go to school.

Parents and others, including health professionals, marched and protested under the scorching sun, holding up signs while spokespeople and professionals used the microphones to make their voices be heard.

“Since 1983, they have been pushing Bill 25, which supports compulsory vaccination for children in schools,”

Tatiana Zeda Santiago, a spokesperson for activist organization Families For Truth PR told the STAR. “What we are seeing for the first time regarding this law is a new regulation that manifests all types unconstitutionality from Bill 25 itself; this has released all of the wrath and rage of the people toward the government because they are trying to determine family beliefs; they are trying to determine whether or not affidavits should be done yearly and they are trying to declare that affidavits that are not provided by the schools are not valid. We want to tell the people to not be fooled. An affidavit does not have a yearly term! You made an oath in front of a lawyer; you have your own personal and religious beliefs! They are trying to condition these affidavits not just in schools but in colleges as well.”

The regulation in question was signed, settled and approved as the “Regulation for Compulsory Immunization for Preschoolers and Students of Puerto Rico” by the Department of Education on June 29 of this year for both the public and private school systems. The regulation imposes vaccination upon every minor who attends public school, private school, a university or a daycare center. Violation of the regulation carries a $500 fine and even six months in prison for parents who don’t comply, and $5,000 in fines to educational institutions.

According to many parents, activists and professionals, the regulation goes against the U.S. and Puerto Rico constitutions because the right to receive an education is being

conditioned on vaccination status.

The press conference in front of the Department of Education included more than 10 professionals, eight of whom are experienced medical professionals, who all went to support the protest and express their thoughts on the matter.

“Being a psychologist, things that were never seen at a psychologist’s office are now being seen,” Dr. Angie Gonzales said. “The amount of anxiety and panic attacks that are being reported by psychologists on the island, to see children who are around 7 and 8 years old suffering from these psychological traumas, the lack of proper management of the COVID infection has created a state of panic and terror that doesn’t allow our children and adults to live happy and relaxed on our island, because every month the government continues to fabricate crazy things, aberrations which have increasingly damaged the mental health of people on this island!”

Gonzales is also a pastor, which led her to add some points out of certain concerns she has about Bill 25 in terms of religious rights.

“I am concerned because of the violation of our rights of religious beliefs, which are protected by the United States Constitution,” she said. “We have a freedom of religion that doesn’t depend on any government regulations.”

Gonzales insisted that the regulation doesn’t only affect people with religious beliefs, but also affects those who are teachers and school directors.

Dr. Lionel Ramírez, meanwhile, directed criticism at politicians during the press conference.

“This fight is not necessarily against the Department of Education. We are not fighting against responsible teachers, social workers and directors who are being oppressed,” he said. “They are not only being oppressed by the Department of Education, but also by the government of Pedro Pierluisi … alongside his secretary of health, who has been the absolute

arm of power that has put a chokehold on and oppressed the people for over three years.”

Ramírez also pointed a finger at the Family secretary.

One of the protesters holding a sign that said, “No more forced vaccination,” who also happens to be a health professional, told the STAR “I am a graduated nurse and when the pandemic occurred every nurse who didn’t get vaccinated was fired!”

“I think human rights have advanced so much that it’s ridiculous to go against people who are simply looking for these rights,” the demonstrator said. “We are against forced vaccination and that is a constitutional right that every person has, to accept or reject any treatment. For example, as a nurse if I have a patient that doesn’t want to receive medical treatment for Demerol, I cannot go against the patient’s desire to not take the medication. I cannot question them either. These executive orders are taking away human rights.”

“I think human rights have advanced so much that it’s ridiculous to go against people who are simply looking for these rights,” one protester said. (Photos by Richard Gutiérrez/The San Juan Daily Star)

Parents and others, including health professionals, marched and protested under the scorching sun, holding up signs while spokespeople and professionals used the microphones to make their voices be heard.

By THE STAR STAFF

Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón has secured federal funding for community programs, agencies and projects in Puerto Rico for fiscal year 2023, including over $7.4 million for the construction of the Aerospace Research Institute (AIR) at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) in Mayagüez, the resident commissioner said in a press release.

On Thursday, the congresswoman announced the official transfer of the funds, with $7.4 million going to UPR and the rest, $75,000, to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) under the U.S. Department

of Commerce as part of the administration of the funds.

“I congratulate the UPR at Mayagüez, first for presenting me with this proposal and, after we ensured its inclusion for federal funding, duly requesting the funds,” the resident commissioner said. “For this past fiscal year 2023 we secured a total of $19.4 million for 10 community projects, including this one for UPR Mayagüez. “Space exploration and the aerospace industry is now assuming a greater role globally. In Puerto Rico we have highly trained professionals in this field and through this institute we will be able to advance even more in the research and teaching of this field.”

González Colón said the federal Department of Com-

Over $7.4 million secured for Aerospace Research Institute at UPR Mayagüez Senator, Education secretary-designate meet over Guayama school needs

merce notified her office about the disbursement of funds by the NIST for the construction of the AIR, which will be focused on aerospace industry research and development through new technologies; forming academic partnerships to enhance the study of propulsion technologies, materials science, navigation and atmospheric sciences, among other things; serving as a headquarters or liaison between academia, island-based industry, small businesses, government agencies and non-governmental organizations; and becoming a landing site for foreign companies interested in establishing operations in Puerto Rico.

The project includes the planned construction of an annex of between 9,000 and 12,000 square feet.

By THE STAR STAFF

Looking ahead to the start of the new 2023-2024 school year, which begins on Aug. 11, Guayama District

Sen. Héctor Santiago Torres met with Education secretary-designate Yanira Raíces Vega this week to address first-hand several issues that afflict the school community of the district he serves.

“During this first meeting, I had the opportunity to express to the secretary-designate the concerns that the mayors, parents and teachers of the 15 municipalities that make up our senatorial district of Guayama have sent me about the preparations prior to the start of the school semester,” Santiago Torres said.

The meeting covered issues such as the lack of janitors, the lack of school counselors, the loss of school security guards and the refurbishing of schools, among other issues.

Among the issues that Santiago Torres emphasized and that he said must be addressed as soon as possible are the Residential Centers of Educational Opportunities (CROEV by its Spanish initials) schools and the Óscar Porrata Doria Specialized School for Languages. The CROEV school in Villalba faces problems of low enrollment and a lack of communication between the director, the faculty and the parents of that community. The Óscar Porrata Doria School in the Río Hondo neighborhood of Comerío, meanwhile, has requested the construction of four classrooms, since when young people reach eighth grade they have to move to a regular school because the specialized school does not have space to offer grades 9-12.

The latter school offers courses in Spanish, English and French, is among the top 10 schools on the island and has full enrollment.

Cataño diagnosis & treatment center to receive $5.4 million upgrade

By THE STAR STAFF

Cataño Mayor Julio Alicea Vasallo announced Thursday the reconstruction of the Diagnosis and Treatment Center (CDT) Job Andújar at a cost of $5.4 million. The funds, allocated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), will create 50 jobs and improve a structure that serves more than 3,500 residents, the mayor said.

“With this reconstruction work at the CDT Job Andújar we reaffirm the commitment of the municipality to have quality facilities, essential for the health of the Catañeses,” Alicea Vasallo said at a press conference where he was joined by Office for Recovery, Reconstruction and Resilience (COR3) Executive Director Manuel Laboy Rivera. “At the same time, this reconstruction marks

the beginning of other projects subsidized with federal funds allocated for the damages caused by Hurricane Maria.”

The commissioned reconstruction, which will take 18 months, was awarded in a public bid to Optimun Professional Services. Among the main improvements is the replacement of: windows and doors, the air conditioning system and the roof waterproofing system. In addition, the reconstruction includes exterior and interior painting, and extensive improvements to the lighting, ceilings, walls and ceilings of the building’s interior.

The mayor also highlighted the expanded list of services provided by the CDT, which include: emergency room 24 hours a day, seven days, with laboratory, X-rays and minor surgery; external clinics, general medicine, pediatrics, gynecology and

obstetrics, pediatric vaccination and adult patients sonography, laboratories, internal medicine, psychologists, health education, and nutritionist, among other services.

“In January of this year … new sonog-

raphy and X-ray equipment was acquired from our own funds, and a chemistry and hematology machine had been purchased for the clinical laboratory,” Alicea Vasallo said.

“In addition, new salary scales were estab-

Sen. Héctor Santiago Torres

The project, using funds allocated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will create 50 jobs and improve a structure that serves more than 3,500 residents, Cataño Mayor Julio Alicea Vasallo said.

Trump pleads not guilty to charges that he plotted to overturn election

Reagan National Airport, saying it was “a very sad day for America.”

Trump said he was a victim of “persecution” by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department. “This was never supposed to happen in America,” he said before boarding his private plane to return to Bedminster, New Jersey.

The courthouse where Trump appeared has hosted a stream of trials for Trump supporters accused of attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Security was heavy, with officers on foot and on horseback and barricades erected on the sidewalk. The crowd — made up of Trump’s critics and his supporters — clogged the area outside the courthouse, with some carrying pro-Trump signs and others shouting anti-Trump slogans, including “Lock him up!”

Here’s what to know:

— Trump’s appearance came about six weeks after his arraignment in Miami on federal charges of mishandling government documents after he left the White House and seeking to block investigators. As in that case, he did not have a mug shot taken.

— The hearing before Upadhyaya, who was appointed to the bench last year, lived up to the expectations that it would be relatively straightforward. Trump entered his plea of not guilty and the government presented its conditions for his release. As in the Florida case, prosecutors requested no bail and no restrictions on his travel.

— Three members of the small team of veteran prosecutors overseen by special counsel Jack Smith will be at the forefront of the election case. Trump’s legal team has added a new member specifically for this latest indictment.

By GLENN THRUSH

Former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges that he conspired to remain in office despite his 2020 election loss, appearing before a judge in a Washington courthouse in the shadow of the Capitol, where his supporters had rampaged in an effort to undermine the peaceful transfer of power.

Trump, who is running in the hopes of being sworn in again on the steps of the Capitol, stood before a federal magistrate judge who asked for his plea to the four counts he faced. He replied, “Not guilty.”

It was the third time in four months that Trump had stood before a judge on criminal charges. But it was the most momentous, the beginning of what prosecutors say should be a reckoning for his multipronged efforts to undermine one of the core tenets of democracy.

Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya, who oversaw

the roughly half-hour hearing, ordered Trump not to communicate about the case with any witnesses except through counsel or in the presence of counsel. At the request of Trump’s lawyers, she set the date for the first hearing before the trial judge, Tanya Chutkan, for Aug. 28 — the latest option she provided.

Delaying the proceedings as much as possible is widely expected to be part of Trump’s legal strategy, given that he could effectively call off federal cases against him if he wins the 2024 election.

The jockeying began on Thursday. After Upadhyaya gave prosecutors a week to propose a trial date, one of Trump’s lawyers, John Lauro, complained that the government had had years to investigate and that he and his colleagues were going to need time to fairly defend their client. She directed him to bring it up with the trial judge, and for prosecutors to respond within five days of his filing.

Following the hearing, Trump spoke briefly at

— Trump is under indictment in two other cases. He is charged with 40 counts in the documents case and 34 felony counts in a New York state case in the spring in connection with a hush money payment to a pornographic actress before the 2016 election. Trump could face a fourth criminal case before the month is over: The district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, is investigating Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election.

Former President Donald Trump, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, arrives at Reagan National Airport in Washington en route to his arraignment in federal court on Thursday, Aug. 3, 2023. Trump is facing charges of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

787.737.7868

Federal appeals court further limits abortion access on Guam

left the island in 2018.

Central to the case decided Tuesday before the appellate court, which is based in San Francisco, was whether Guam residents could continue receiving that care via telemedicine, or whether they would have little choice but to leave the island — something that is prohibitively expensive for most residents.

Especial de Gomas Nuevas

Background

Abortion has long been a taboo topic on the culturally conservative island where about 80% of the inhabitants are Catholic.

By DAVID W. CHEN

Afederal appeals court ruled late Tuesday that women on the American territory of Guam who are seeking medication abortion must first have an in-person consultation with a doctor, which is likely to make access to the procedure on the remote island even more difficult.

Abortion-rights supporters said that since there were no doctors on Guam who provided abortions, the ruling created a significant obstacle for women seeking the procedure. The only two doctors licensed to provide abortions on the U.S. territory are based in Hawaii, an eight-hour flight away. Until now, those doctors have been prescribing pills over video calls.

But in a unanimous ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said other doctors on the island could provide in-person consultations, even if those physicians did not want to provide abortions themselves.

“Guam has legitimate interests in requiring an in-person consultation,” the judges said. “The consultation can underscore the medical and moral gravity of an abortion and encourage a robust exchange of information.”

Why it matters

There are at least 15 states where most abortions are now banned, requiring women who seek to terminate pregnancies to travel elsewhere, sometimes at great cost and risk to their health.

But none are as isolated as the territory of Guam — making the island of 154,000 people a “litmus test” of what life would be like under a near-total ban, its attorney general, Douglas Moylan, a Republican who opposes abortion, told The New York Times this year.

Although abortion is legal in Guam up to 13 weeks of pregnancy, and later in certain cases, the last doctor who performed abortions

In 1990, Guam passed what was then described as among the most draconian abortion bans in the country, making it a crime to perform, undergo or seek an abortion — except in some medical emergencies — or to encourage women to have abortions. A federal court ruled that the ban was unconstitutional and blocked the territorial government from enforcing it, but the attorney general is fighting to try to revive the ban.

With the 1990 law still blocked, Guam’s Legislature has since passed additional restrictions. One such measure was the in-person consultation law, which was challenged in January 2021 by a local lawyer, Vanessa L. Williams, in conjunction with the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of the two doctors based in Hawaii. That law was then blocked by a federal judge, allowing the doctors to send abortion pills.

But with the momentum of the Supreme Court decision last year that overturned the national right to abortion, the Guam attorney general’s office said the injunction should be lifted. Oral arguments were heard in February in Honolulu before a three-judge panel — two appointed by President Donald Trump and the third by President George W. Bush.

What’s next

The court’s ruling takes effect in 21 days.

Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said the plaintiffs were considering their options. But she said that she was “deeply disappointed” by the ruling, and that it “imposes unnecessary obstacles on people seeking abortion in Guam.”

In a WhatsApp message, Moylan applauded the decision, saying it reflected the island’s “rich cultural values.”

“Over the past 50 years since Roe v. Wade, Guam’s People have shown a clear desire to prohibit and restrict abortions,” he said.

An aerial view of Guam’s coast, April 27, 2023.

Judge sentences Pittsburgh synagogue gunman to death

By NICHOLAS BOGEL-BURROUGHS and CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

Awidow spoke of how her husband went to the Tree of Life synagogue to praise God and was instead riddled with bullets. A police officer described racing to the scene and finding his wounded colleague near other victims’ bodies. A woman who was shot recalled finding a fading pulse on her 97-year-old mother as they cowered together in the chapel.

Survivors of the massacre and relatives of the 11 worshippers who were killed on Oct. 27, 2018, in that Pittsburgh synagogue confronted the gunman in court Thursday with stories of grief, anger and perseverance. Then, U.S. District Judge Robert Colville sentenced the gunman, Robert Bowers, to death, carrying out the decision of the jury in the case.

One by one, the members of a grieving club formed against their will stepped up to a microphone in a fifth-floor courtroom and described the holes left in their lives by the gunman. All the while, Bowers, 50, who had raged against Jewish people during the attack and has shown no remorse since, looked the other way and flipped through a stack of papers.

“He murdered a 97-year-old great-grandmother, but he did not get us all,” said Andrea Wedner, who had hidden under the chapel’s pews with her mother, Rose Mallinger, where they were both shot. Wedner said that as she waited 40 long minutes there for help, she wondered whether her husband and children thought she was dead. When help finally came, she recalled, she had to step over the bodies of people she knew.

“I am haunted and forever chilled as I think about what I saw as I was being rescued that day,” Wedner said.

Peg Durachko, whose husband, Richard Gottfried, was killed in the kitchen of the synagogue, said the attack had left her alone.

“Rich was the most important person in my life — my whole family,” she said. “Your hateful act took my soul mate from me, left me totally alone.”

Daniel Leger, a member of Dor Hadash, one of three congregations in the synagogue that day, was shot in the chest in the attack. He spoke directly to the gunman on Thursday, telling Bowers that he wished he would look up from his papers “long enough to look at me, the Jew he tried to kill.” Bowers did not react.

During the sentencing portion of the trial, Bowers’ lawyers described his troubled childhood: His parents fought, and each threatened to kill him when he was a baby, and his father killed himself when Bowers was 7. The jury had to weigh more than 100 mitigating and aggravating factors asserted by the government and the defense, and accepted many of the assertions about the defendant’s difficult life — including that he was committed to a psychiatric unit at 13. But they did not agree with the defense on some key points, rejecting the argument that Bowers had schizophrenia and had carried out the shooting “under mental or emotional disturbance.”

Many relatives and survivors who spoke in the wake of the verdict said they were grateful that Bowers would be sentenced to death, although some people who were connected to the shooting had previously said they opposed it.

Rabbi Doris Dyen, who arrived at the synagogue with her

husband during the attack and heard gunshots inside, said Bowers had forfeited his right to live by carrying out the attack, and that executing him would keep him from sharing his harmful ideas.

“He must never again be allowed to spread his hateful, antisemitic views to others, whether in person, in print, through the media, and especially online,” Dyen told the court.

Alan Mallinger, the son of Mallinger, quoted a biblical passage, Leviticus 24:21, saying, “One who kills a beast shall make restitution for it, but one who kills a human being shall be put to death.”

The judge also handed down a series of consecutive life sentences on many of the other charges that Bowers faced. The jury’s recommendation of death concerned the 22 hate crimes and civil rights offenses connected to the killings that Bowers carried out in the synagogue. But he was convicted on 41 other federal counts, too, including firearms charges.

“Those are counts on which he was found guilty, and therefore he must receive a sentence, and the sentence has to be in accordance with the law,” said David Harris, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

In the unlikely event that the death sentence is overturned on appeal, Harris said, Bowers would still be incarcerated on those other sentences.

“He didn’t only murder these people, he did other things, too,” he said. “And so we recognize the whole of the case, even though carrying out the death sentence would take care of any other sentence that he faces.”

What happens after Thursday’s sentencing is less clear. Like all people sentenced to death, Bowers was automatically granted an appeal, and his lawyers have indicated that they intend to pursue it.

He was also charged with 36 counts in state court, including

11 counts of murder. The district attorney of Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, agreed to pause the state prosecution while the federal process unfolded.

In a statement Wednesday, the district attorney’s office said that because of the “emotional strain” of the federal trial for victims, relatives and the community, “it would be inappropriate for us to comment on our charges until we have had a chance to meet with the families.”

A police officers outside the Jewish Community Center where families of the Tree of Life shooting victims were going to hold a news conference in Pittsburgh, Aug. 2, 2023.

Debt downgrade, driven by partisanship, is unlikely to deter borrowing

By JOE RENNISON and ALAN RAPPEPORT

The downgrade of the United States’ debt by a major ratings firm is a damning indictment of the country’s fractious politics and a blot on its financial record that is unlikely to be quickly erased. But many investors and analysts say it won’t affect the government’s ability to keep borrowing money.

On Tuesday, Fitch Ratings lowered the credit rating of the United States one notch to AA+ from a pristine AAA. The firm, citing a “deterioration in governance” along with America’s mounting debt load, suggested that it could be a long time before that decision was reversed.

“Our base case is that deficits will remain high and the debt burden will continue to rise,” said Richard Francis, cohead of the Americas sovereign group at Fitch and its primary analyst for the United States, in an interview on Wednesday. “I think it is unlikely that there will be any meaningful changes.”

The move — like the drop to AA+ in 2011 by S&P Global, which has kept its U.S. rating there — followed partisan brinkmanship over America’s debt ceiling, which caps how much money the government can borrow. The United States came within days of defaulting on its debt this spring as Republican lawmakers refused to lift the cap unless President Joe Biden made concessions on spending. The two sides ultimately reached an agreement on May 27, just days before the Treasury Department projected that the government could run out of cash.

With both Fitch and S&P now carrying a lower assessment, the United States’ credit rating, at least for most investors, will no longer be considered among the top tier, which includes Germany, Australia and Singapore.

While the move is something of a black eye, market watchers expect the practical impact to be small. Analysts at Wells Fargo noted that the early feedback from their clients was that their appetite to keep lending to the government

wasn’t likely to change much.

That’s because the U.S. Treasury market is the largest sovereign debt market in the world, underpinning borrowing costs across the globe, with Treasurys owned by investors of all stripes. The U.S. rating remains among the highest in the world, backed by a strong and diverse economy and aided by the central global role of the country’s currency.

“This is largely a symbolic move,” said Peter Tchir, head of macro strategy at Academy Securities.

Stock markets slumped on Wednesday, and the yield on Treasurys — which indicates how much investors are demanding to be paid in exchange for lending to the government — rose. But analysts suggested that had more to do with rising government borrowing forecasts, resulting in higher interest rates and pointing to increased costs for companies, too.

Fitch downgraded America’s debt on the day that former President Donald Trump was indicted on charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which culmi-

nated in an attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The attack showcased deep distrust in the government and the rule of law.

Despite the suspension of the debt limit in June, future fiscal fights — including a possible government shutdown this fall — are looming. The lack of comity between the political parties means the cap is likely to remain a political tool, with no guarantee that a compromise will always be reached.

That increased polarization was central to Fitch’s decision. Francis said intense partisanship had inhibited decisions on better budgeting and the debt ceiling, with both Democrats and Republicans unmovable on policies that could improve the country’s fiscal position. These include, he added, changes to taxes, military spending, and Social Security and Medicare, which are expected to face ballooning costs as more baby boomers retire.

“There is no willingness on any side to really tackle the underlying challenges,” Francis said.

The ratings agency also cited the Jan. 6 attack as a concern that fed into the downgrade.

“There’s the debt ceiling standoff, there is this painful budgeting process, there is political polarization that is ongoing and probably deteriorating — and then there is the Jan. 6 insurrection, but that is one factor among many,” Francis said.

The Federal Reserve’s rapid interest rate increases have compounded some of those factors by raising borrowing costs, forcing the government to borrow even more money to account for higher interest and other payments to bondholders.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen continued to criticize the Fitch decision on Wednesday, describing it as “puzzling” and “entirely unwarranted.”

“Its flawed assessment is based on outdated data and fails to reflect improvements across a range of indicators, including those related to governance, that we’ve seen over the past 2 1/2 years,” Yellen said during an event in Virginia.

The U.S. Capitol in Washington, July 27, 2023. The downgrade by Fitch Ratings was viewed as a condemnation of partisan U.S. politics, including the recent debt ceiling standoff and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Wall Street ends down, investors step back after Fitch US rating cut

Wall Street closed down on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite lower for a second straight day, with investors taking profits on five months of gains a day after rating agency Fitch cut the U.S. government’s credit rating.

Fitch downgraded the United States to AA+ from AAA late on Tuesday, citing expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years as well as growing government debt. Fitch was the second major agency to cut the country’s rating. In 2011 Standard & Poor’s stripped the country of its triple-A grade.

Several major brokerages said the downgrade was unlikely to result in a sustained drag on U.S. financial markets, noting that the economy was now stronger than it was in 2011.

July was the fifth straight month of gains for the benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX) and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC), driven by better-than-expected earnings and hopes of a soft landing for the U.S. economy.

However, with markets entering a seasonally slow August, the Fitch downgrade offered an opportunity for investors to take a breather.

“Sometimes it’s healthy to have this digestion in the market, as it brings down valuations a bit and it allows for dip-buying,” said Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist for LPL Financial in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Rate-sensitive megacap stocks, including Tesla (TSLA.O), Nvidia (NVDA.O), Meta Platforms (META.O) and Apple (AAPL.O), tumbled, as the yield on U.S. 10year Treasury notes rose to its highest in nearly nine months.

The technology index (.SPLRCT) was also the worst performer of the 11 major S&P sectors.

Yields being above 4% is “not what the market wants to see”, according to LPL’s Krosby, who also predicted investors will soon look beyond Fitch’s downgrade and turn their focus to big tech company earnings due after the close on Thursday.

“The market is now going to focus on Amazon. com Inc (AMZN.O) and Apple tomorrow afternoon, and then on the payroll report on Friday, and we’ll say goodbye to Fitch,” Krosby said.

Meanwhile, the ADP National Employment report showed private payrolls increased more than expected in July, pointing to continued labor market resilience that could shield the economy from a recession.

Despite lingering fears of a recession, corporate America has continued to perform well. With around two-thirds of the S&P 500 having already reported, 79.9% have posted earnings above analysts’ expectations, per Refinitiv I/B/E/S.

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This puts the quarter on track for the highest earnings beat rate since the third quarter of 2021, per the data provider.

On the earnings front, CVS Health Corp (CVS.N) gained after beating Wall Street estimates for quarterly profit, boosted by strength in its pharmacy benefit management unit and lower-than-expected medical costs in its health insurance business.

Emerson (EMR.N) climbed after the industrial soft-

ware firm raised its annual profit outlook as companies increase spending on automation in response to a tight labor market.

Elsewhere, Wells Fargo (WFC.N) said it expects to pay as much as $1.8 billion to help replenish a government deposit insurance fund that was drained of $16 billion this year after three banks collapsed, sending its shares lower.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) slipped over concerns that the chip designer’s targets for an artificial intelligence (AI) ramp-up may be too ambitious. The worries overshadows the company forecasting an upbeat finish to the year.

Colombia and rebel group begin cease-fire after decades of comba t

By GENEVIEVE GLATSKY

Acease-fire between the Colombian government and the country’s largest remaining rebel group took effect Thursday, the longest halt to hostilities the group has agreed to and a milestone in efforts to end the country’s 60-year internal conflict, which has killed roughly 450,000 people.

While the cease-fire is supposed to last six months, it could pave the way for a permanent truce with the leftist group, the National Liberation Army, a guerrilla organization known as the ELN that operates in the countryside and has helped fuel the violence that plagues parts of rural Colombia.

The agreement with the insurgent group was a top priority for President Gustavo Petro, who took office last year promising to deliver what he called “total peace’’ with all of the country’s armed groups. Petro, himself a former member of a rebel group, is the country’s first leftist president.

The cease-fire applies to combat between the ELN and the state, but allows the group to defend itself if it is attacked.

Government officials hope the agreement will protect the “civilian population that has been so affected by the actions of the illegal armed organizations,” Iván Velásquez, Colombia’s defense minister, said Wednesday.

The group’s lack of a unified command has made it difficult to negotiate with in the past. Individual factions often act autonomously — at times over the objections of high commanders.

Previous discussions between the ELN and the government have collapsed several times since the Marxist-Leninist group was founded in 1964. The most recent negotiations were suspended in 2019 after the group bombed a police academy in Bogotá, the capital, an attack that killed 22 po -

lice cadets.

A newly created entity made up of the officials from the Colombian military and government, the United Nations and religious groups will monitor the enforcement of the new agreement.

The cease-fire was announced in June following three rounds of private negotiations in Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela.

“Hopefully it will bear fruit,” Petro said of the agreement in a speech Tuesday. “It will depend more on them than on us.”

The ELN’s top commander, Eliécer Herlinto Chamorro, known by his nom de guerre Antonio García, called on combatants to comply with the cease-fire in a video Monday and said that further discussions with the “participation of society” would move forward “to make Colombia a fairer, more democratic and inclusive country.”

Colombia’s internal conflict erupted in the late 1950s as a battle between the government and a leftist insurgency

group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, but eventually grew more complex and involved other left-wing rebels, right-wing paramilitary groups and drug cartels.

The government reached a landmark peace accord with the FARC, the largest rebel group, in 2016 following an arduous five-year process.

But the ELN, which has around 5,800 members, according to Colombia’s defense ministry, is considered more ideological than the FARC and less hierarchical. The FARC’s disarmament left a power vacuum for other armed groups to fill, including the ELN, which has nearly doubled in size since 2016.

The different groups often compete for control of territory and the country’s drug trade, trapping innocent civilians in the middle.

The ELN has carried out kidnappings for ransom, extortion and assassinations, and is known for bombing oil pipelines and targeting government and military infrastructure. In many regions with little government presence along the Pacific coast, as well as the border with Venezuela, they effectively act as the state.

If the cease-fire holds, it would be a major victory for Petro, who is facing a political crisis after his son was accused of laundering money from drug traffickers.

It could also potentially lead to other agreements with the ELN that would specifically call for a halt in violence toward civilians, said Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombia-based senior analyst for International Crisis Group.

“The hope is that the negotiations will have advanced far enough that we can think about other steps,” Dickinson said. “The priority for our communities and really the general population would be a cessation of hostilities.”

Hundreds fall ill from heat at scout gathering in South Korea

By JOHN YOON

As thousands of teenagers sat in a sweltering grass field in rural South Korea on Wednesday for the opening ceremony of a global scout gathering, hundreds of attendees began falling ill from the blistering heat.

At least 125 people were hospitalized with heat exhaustion, and hundreds more have exhibited heat-related symptoms in the five days since the scouts and scout leaders from around the world began arriving in South Korea for the giant camp, officials said Thursday.

The World Scout Jamboree, for which scouts congregate in a different host country every four years, has drawn more than 43,000 teenagers from 158 countries to the western coast of South Korea this year. The event coincides with the worst heat wave that the country has experienced in years, with temperatures soaring to a high of 100 on Wednesday.

“It’s like a sauna,” said Leona Azhar, 21, a volunteer from Malaysia who has been a scout for seven years. “It’s really hard to find shade,” she added. “I’m dripping with sweat.”

Hwang Seon-gyeong, a spokesperson for the Jeonbuk Fire Service, said that hospitalizations had surged during the opening ceremony, which was attended by Bear Grylls, a British TV personality who was a chief scout, and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea, both of whom gave speeches.

Hwang said that the fire authorities had asked the jamboree’s executive committee to pause the ceremony because officials were overwhelmed by the number of people falling ill. The gathering’s organizers said that they had allowed the ceremony to continue out of concern that a sudden cancellation might lead to greater panic.

“There were people fainting everywhere,” Azhar said.

Lee Sang-min, the South Korean interior minister and a member of the jamboree’s organizing committee, issued an emergency directive on Thursday to send more ambulances, mobile hospitals and air-conditioning units to the camp.

As temperatures remained in the 90s, attendees continued to struggle with the heat on Thursday, with some collapsing and needing treatment at an on-site hospital. None of those cases were severe, however, and all the patients were later discharged, Hwang said.

Graffiti indicating the presence of National Liberation Army guerrillas in Anorí, a town in the Antioquia region of Colombia, in November 2016.

Tens of thousands of Scouts came to the gathering. More than 100 were hospitalized with heat-related symptoms.

‘Not another coup as usual’: What to know about Niger’s crisis

By DECLAN WALSH

At first, the coup in Niger resembled others that have roiled West Africa in recent years. On July 26, soldiers detained Niger’s president at his home in the capital, Niamey. Hours later, they declared they had seized power. Foreign powers condemned the putsch but did nothing.

Then the coup took a different course.

The United States and France threatened to cut ties with Niger, endangering hundreds of millions of dollars in aid. The deposed president, Mohamed Bazoum, though detained, was able to speak with world leaders, receive visitors and post defiant messages on social media.

Neighboring countries threatened to go to war — some to scuttle the coup, and others to ensure its success.

The Economic Community of West African States, a regional bloc of countries known as ECOWAS, issued an ultimatum to the junta July 30: Restore Bazoum to power within one week or face the consequences, including possible military action.

Soon after, the neighboring countries of Mali and Burkina Faso leaped to the junta’s defense, declaring that they would consider any foreign move against Niger as a “declaration of war” against them, too. (Guinea also supported Niger’s military, but without the threat of force.)

What set off last week’s coup remains unclear. But in contrast with other recent takeovers in West Africa, which were largely greeted with shrugs, Niger’s coup has become a red line for many — including Western allies.

Thousands of American and French troops are stationed in Niger to help fight a surge in Islamist attacks across the region. That military cooperation is now suspended, as the United States and France exert pressure on the junta to restore democracy. European countries began evacuating their citizens on Tuesday; a day later, the United States ordered a partial evacuation of its embassy.

Britain advised “against all travel to the whole country.”

The turmoil and saber-rattling has exposed deep divisions in West Africa. The coup leaders insist they are going nowhere. With worries that the crisis could spill over into a regional war, the stakes are rapidly rising.

Why does Niger matter?

If the coup succeeds, Niger will be the last domino to fall in an unbroken line of countries stretching across Africa, from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, that are ruled by military juntas.

Democratically elected leaders are falling like bowling pins: Since 2020, three of Niger’s neighbors — Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea — have experienced five coups.

Niger, though, seemed to be different.

Despite a long history of coups, the election of Bazoum as president in 2021 raised hopes that Niger was on a democratic path. An avowed modernizer, Bazoum promoted girls’ education, sought to reduce Niger’s birthrate, the highest in the world, and oversaw an impressive economic revival: After years of stagnation, Niger’s economy had been forecast to grow 7% this year.

Western countries saw Bazoum as a friendly figure in a rough neighborhood. Since mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner private military company, the spearhead of the Kremlin’s recent push into parts of Africa, were deployed to Mali last year, the United States and France have relied more heavily on Bazoum.

About 1,100 U.S. troops and 1,500 French troops are based in Niger, as well as several drone bases. Foreign aid worth $2.2 billion makes up 40% of Niger’s national budget.

The alliance with the West helped Bazoum make Niger safer — fatalities from Islamist violence fell sharply last year. But it may also have stoked tensions inside the military, contributing to last week’s coup.

What is ECOWAS, and can it stop a coup?

West Africa’s most powerful regional grouping, ECOWAS represents 15 countries with a combined population of about 400 million people. Although founded to bolster economies, ECOWAS has regularly waded into regional conflicts.

Since 1990, its peacekeepers have intervened to help quell rebellions, uphold cease-

fires and force out dictators. The most recent mission was in Gambia in 2017, where its soldiers helped stop former President Yahya Jammeh from overturning an election he had lost.

Some want ECOWAS to emulate that example in Niger. The bloc’s head, President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria, says that West Africa cannot afford more coups and that ECOWAS needs to stop being a “toothless bulldog.”

Still, many doubt that ECOWAS really wants to go to war over Niger. Gambia, where the bloc last deployed, is the smallest country on mainland Africa, with a weak army. Niger is twice the size of France, and its battle-tested army has been trained by American and European special forces.

“We will see if ECOWAS can ratchet up pressure any longer,” said Cameron Hudson, an Africa analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But I suspect that their bluff has been called.”

Where is the president?

Bazoum appears to be trapped in limbo.

Typically, during coups, ousted leaders are forced to flee or sign a formal resignation. Bazoum has done neither, instead staying at home to work the phones. On Wednesday, he spoke again with the U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and has also talked to President Emmanuel Macron of France.

President Mahamat Idriss Déby of Chad visited him on Sunday and later posted a photograph of the imprisoned president on social media.

Senior Nigerien diplomats still call Bazoum their boss.

“If this coup succeeds, it

will be a disaster,” Kiari Liman-Tinguiri, Niger’s ambassador to the United States, said in an interview in which he called for international support to reverse the takeover. “A disaster for Niger, for the region and for the world.”

Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, the self-declared coup leader, has said he will not bow to the pressure.

As the head of Niger’s Presidential Guard for 12 years, Tchiani has gone from being Bazoum’s protector to being his jailer.

Why he took that step is unclear. But in a television address on Wednesday night, Tchiani sounded a defiant note, railing against “illegal, unjust and inhuman” sanctions imposed by ECOWAS on Niger since the coup.

And he reiterated that he would never reinstate Bazoum.

Who benefits from the chaos?

The sight of coup supporters brandishing Russian flags in central Niamey, some chanting slogans in favor of President Vladimir Putin, stoked suspicions that the Kremlin had a hand in the coup.

In fact, there is little evidence to support that idea, experts say. But that hasn’t prevented Russian officials from seeing Niger’s crisis as a major opportunity.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian oligarch whose Wagner mercenary paramilitaries have been deployed to Mali, has pitched his services to Niger’s coup leaders. On Wednesday, one traveled to Mali’s capital, Bamako, where he met with Malian leaders and Wagner officials.

The other potential beneficiaries are the region’s Islamist militants. Since the coups in Mali and Burkina Faso, militants’ attacks on civilians in those countries have soared. But in Niger, they have dropped — a trend that many fear could now be reversed.

If the coup succeeds, “it could provide a large base, a sanctuary, to Wagner and the jihadists in the heart of West Africa,” Liman-Tinguiri, the diplomat, said. “This is not another coup as usual.”

Protesters cheering Nigerien troops in front of the French Embassy in Niamey during a demonstration that followed a rally in support of the junta on Sunday.

Mexico’s ‘monster’ trucks show cartels taking drug war to next level

By SIMON ROMERO and EMILIANO RODRÍGUEZ MEGA

In the United States, some truck owners delight in modifying their rigs with oversized wheels, heavy-duty suspension kits and soot-spewing exhaust systems, turning them into the monster trucks that stalk organized events such as demolition derbies and mud bogs.

How quaint.

In Mexico, drug cartels are taking the monster truck concept to another terrifying level, retrofitting popular pickups with battering rams, 4-inch-thick steel plates welded onto their chassis and turrets for firing machine guns.

Some of Mexico’s most feared criminal groups, including the Jalisco New Generation cartel, are using the vehicles in pitched gunbattles with police. Other organizations, such as the Gulf cartel and the Northeast cartel, use the armored trucks to fight each other.

Mexican security forces call these vehicles monstruos (monsters), but they are also known as rinocerontes (rhinos) and narcotanques (narco-tanks). Cartels emblazon the exteriors with their initials or the latest in camouflage patterns, at times making them hard to distinguish from official military vehicles.

Flashy interiors of larger trucks feature front seats with a cockpit-like array of buttons and lights, metal seats from where people can lean their rifles through holes and, in the

middle, a hatch similar to that of a tank.

As more trucks roll onto the streets of Mexico’s violent towns and cities, the vehicles serve as a prism to view the evolution of the country’s blood-soaked drug wars — whether with dread over the cartels’ capacity to outmaneuver efforts by authorities to impose order or a grim recognition of the vehicles’ postapocalyptic “Mad Max” vibe.

The spread of the behemoths is more evidence that cartels will go to any length “to try to enforce by violent means their dominance against adversary gangs and against authority,” said Jorge Septién, a Mexico City-based expert on ballistics and armaments.

They also highlight the country’s sputtering efforts against brutal criminal groups that operate with seeming impunity in many parts of Mexico.

The armored trucks are among the more visible and intimidating enhancements to the lethal arsenal at the disposal of Mexico’s most powerful cartels, according to Romain Le Cour, a security analyst.

Other weapons and arms include steel-penetrating Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifles, rocket launchers and

rocket-propelled grenades capable of shooting down military helicopters, drones fitted with remote-detonated explosives and roadside anti-vehicle mines, used in an attack last month in Jalisco that killed six people.

“The monsters are the way to send the message ‘I’m in charge, and I want everyone to see I’m in charge,’” said Le Cour, senior expert at the Switzerland-based Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. “These are commando-style groups looking to replicate special forces in how they’re armed, how they’re trained, how they look.”

Although the trucks are thought to have emerged in Mexico a little more than a decade ago, they seem to be multiplying and growing more sophisticated, much in the way that narco-submarines built by criminal groups to transport drugs have adapted to elude capture.

The progression of the armored trucks has followed the flow of elite soldiers into cartels, starting with the recruitment in the 1990s of Mexican army’s special forces into a paramilitary operation that became the Zetas cartel.

From the weapons they use to the vehicles they drive, the involvement of members of specialized military units in criminal organizations has led these groups to emulate and compete with the country’s elite forces.

The seizure of armored trucks helps shed light on regions where cartel operations are flourishing or resurgent, like in the states of Michoacán and Jalisco, on Mexico’s Pacific

coast or along the U.S. border.

In June, the federal attorney general’s office in the state of Tamaulipas, across the border from Texas, announced that it had captured and destroyed 14 monster trucks, following the destruction of 11 other similar vehicles in February.

The state prosecutor’s office in Tamaulipas, in a statement last year, cited the “danger to the safety of the community” posed by the modified vehicles, which criminal groups often use to guard their illegal activities, particularly near the border.

In Tamaulipas alone, more than 260 armored trucks were destroyed by authorities since 2019. Providing a national figure is difficult because various federal and state agencies confiscate and demolish them.

The assembling of the vehicles, often in rural workshops, draws on the well-known skills of cartel mechanics who have long focused on modifying cars to smuggle hidden cargoes of drugs across borders.

Armoring a truck with the basics, such as steel plates, takes 60 to 70 days, the work of five to six welders and mechanics, and costs roughly 2 million pesos (about $117,000), according to security experts. (Extra features such as turrets, bulletproof tires and battering rams will run up the bill.)

Despite their terrifying reputation, the trucks do have drawbacks. Unlike the fastmoving and nimble Toyota Hilux pickups mounted with machine guns used by armed groups in many parts of the world, monster trucks laden with steel plates can be sluggish and hard to maneuver, especially in urban settings.

“They’re too slow, too heavy,” said Alexei Chévez, a security analyst based in Cuernavaca, Mexico. And the retrofitting of the vehicles means that some of their parts malfunction. “We see them constantly breaking down and being abandoned,” Chévez said.

Still, their strategic and symbolic importance resonates in a country that has witnessed years of horrific violence perpetrated by criminal groups. The trucks often appear on TikTok and other social media, accompanied by narco rap songs or folk ballads extolling cartel

“It has to do with a status symbol,” Septién said. “The first ones we saw were practically blow-torched and welded in a very shoddy way.”

These days, he added, when approaching from a distance, “they look like a military vehicle.”

exploits.

An undated photo provided by Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office showing armored trucks used by criminal groups being destroyed last year at an agency facility in Reynosa, a city along the border with Texas. In June 2023, the office announced that it had captured and destroyed 14 monster trucks, following the destruction of 11 such vehicles in February.

Jonatan Ramos Director Funerario

A president accused of betraying his country

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Of all the ways that Donald Trump desecrated his office as president, the gravest — as outlined in extraordinary detail in the criminal indictment issued against him Tuesday — was his attempt to undermine the Constitution and overturn the results of the 2020 election, hoping to stay in office.

Special counsel Jack Smith got right to the point at the top of the four-count federal indictment, saying that Trump had knowingly “targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.” Bedrock. It’s an apt word for a sacred responsibility of every president: to honor the peaceful transfer of power through the free and fair elections that distinguish the United States. Counting and certifying the vote, Smith said, “is foundational to the United States democratic process, and until 2021, had operated in a peaceful and orderly manner for more than 130 years,” since electoral counting rules were codified. Until Trump lost, at which point, the indictment makes clear, he used “dishonesty, fraud and deceit to impair, obstruct and defeat” that cornerstone of democracy.

The criminal justice system of the United States had never seen an indictment of this magnitude. It’s the first time that a former president has been explicitly accused by the federal government of defrauding the country. It’s the first time a former president has been accused of obstructing an official

proceeding, the congressional count of the electoral votes. Trump also stands accused of engaging in a conspiracy to deprive millions of citizens of the right to have their votes counted. This fraud, the indictment said, led directly to a deadly attack by Trump’s supporters on the seat of American government.

It’s the third criminal indictment of Trump, and it demonstrates, yet again, that the rule of law in America applies to everyone, even when the defendant was the country’s highest-ranking official. The crimes alleged in this indictment are, by far, the most serious because they undermine the country’s basic principles.

The prosecution’s list of false voter fraud claims made by Trump and his associates is extensive: that 10,000 dead people voted in Georgia, that there were tens of thousands of double votes in Nevada, 30,000 noncitizens voting in Arizona and 200,000 mystery votes in Pennsylvania, as well as suspicious vote dumps and malfunctioning voting machines elsewhere.

After presenting this list, the indictment makes its case with 12 simple but searing words: “These claims were false, and the defendant knew that they were false.” Smith points out how many people told Trump that he was repeating lies. He was told by Vice President Mike Pence that there was no evidence of fraud. He was told the same thing by the Justice Department leaders he appointed, by the director of national intelligence, by the Department of Homeland Security, by senior White House attorneys, by leaders of his campaign, by state officials and, most significantly, by dozens of federal and state courts. The indictment emphasizes that every lawsuit filed by Trump and his allies to change the outcome was rejected, “providing the defendant real-time notice that his allegations were meritless.”

Demonstrating Trump’s knowledge that he was lying will be central to the prosecution’s case when it comes to trial, because Smith wants to make clear that Trump wasn’t genuinely trying to root out credible instances of voter fraud. The indictment doesn’t charge him with lying or speaking his mind about the outcome of the election, and it notes that he had the right to challenge the results through legal means. But the charges show in detail how, after all those methods failed, his “pervasive and destabilizing lies” set the table for the criminal activity that followed, specifically fraud, obstruction and deprivation of rights. As much as defense lawyers are trying to frame the case as an attack on Trump’s free speech, the indictment makes clear that it was his actions after Election Day that were criminal.

That “criminal scheme” began, the indictment says, on Nov. 14, 2020, when Trump turned to Rudy Giuliani (acknowledged by his lawyer to be “co-conspirator 1”) to challenge the results in the swing state of Arizona, which Trump had lost. “From that point on,” the charges state, “the defendant and his co-conspirators executed a strategy to use knowing deceit in the targeted states,” which also included Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In an example cited in the charges, Giuliani sent a text to the Senate majority leader in Michigan on Dec. 7 demanding that the

legislature pass a resolution saying the election was in dispute and that the state’s electors were not official. That demand was refused, but Trump continued to claim that more than 100,000 ballots in Detroit were fraudulent.

The scope of Trump’s plot touched every level of American political life. While the four federal crimes charged by Smith all relate to the same set of facts, three of those crimes, one for fraud and two related to obstruction of a proceeding, are crimes against the U.S. government. The fourth crime is against the American people, millions of whom Trump sought to deprive of their right to have their vote counted. This crime carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

It appears increasingly likely that Trump will soon face charges for crimes against yet another level of American government — the states — as the district attorney in Atlanta reaches the final stages of a grand jury investigation into his pressure campaign to get Georgia to reverse its certified vote count and award its 16 electors to him instead of Joe Biden.

The former president responded to this latest and most serious indictment in his customary style, denouncing it as “corrupt” and invoking, among other things, the “Biden Crime Family” and Nazi Germany. Smith, a veteran prosecutor on the International Criminal Court who has prosecuted far more brutal and popular leaders than Trump, has surely heard it all before. But that does not excuse the support Trump is receiving from his Republican allies in Congress, who insist that this prosecution is political and have helped damage the respect for the criminal justice system in the minds of so many voters. Yes, some in Trump’s party, including his former vice president, have stood up for democratic norms in the wake of these indictments, and yet it is impossible to ignore those who have not. These attacks are dangerous and have led to death threats against prosecutors, judges and other civil servants for doing their jobs.

In many ways, the indictment continues the work of the House Jan. 6 committee, which uncovered many of the same allegations. Several of the committee’s members had urged this prosecution, particularly after the Senate failed to convict Trump after he was impeached for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. After he voted to acquit Trump, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, said there were other ways to bring Trump to account. “We have a criminal justice system in this country,” he said. “We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one.”

In that, at least, McConnell was right. A former president is now being charged with extreme abuse of office and will eventually be judged by a jury. Trump tried to overturn the nation’s constitutional system and the rule of law. That system survived his attacks and will now hold him to account for that damage.

Celebrarán XXII Día Despertar Holístico

POR EL STAR STAFF

SAN JUAN – Cutting Edge Well Being Academy invita al XXII Día Despertar Holístico el domingo 13 de agosto, de 2023 en el Jardín Botánico de Río Piedras (área del merendero), de 10:00 a.m. a 4:00 p.m.

La actividad constará de conferencias, talleres, exhibiciones, música y comida vegetariana.

Se discutirán tópicos como la prevención y reversión de enfermedades. Además habrán talleres de sonidos, danzas, bailes, terapias de pulsación y vibraciones eléctricas. Tambien habra taller de Reiki.

La entrada es gratis. Para más información comunicarse con José Orlando Ramos al teléfono (939) 355-1201 o el correo electrónico orlando. josepr01@gmail.com

Proceso de subastas desiertas provoca lentitud en obras de reconstrucción, reconoce director COR3

POR CYBERNEWS

CATAÑO – El director de la Oficina de Recuperación, Reconstrucción y Resiliencia (COR3), ingeniero Manuel Laboy Rivera reconoció el jueves la lentitud que provoca los procesos de reconstrucción por la adjudicación de contratos en los procesos de subastas desiertas que pueden duplicar el tiempo de espera para ese proceso para los municipios y agencias del gobierno.

“Hoy por hoy, el problema que tenemos en Puerto Rico o el reto, antes quizás con una sola subasta pudiesen tener la participación necesaria para adjudicar un contrato, ahora lo estoy viendo en los municipios y otras agencias del gobierno es que, ahora tal vez hace falta dos o tres subastas para asegurar una participación y que se pueda hacer un contrato y movernos con la obra”, dijo Laboy Rivera en conferencia de prensa.

“El reto es que lo que se tardaba tres meses, ahora se tarda seis meses y así sucesivamente porque cuando tú le preguntas a los contratistas, a la Asociación de Contratistas Generales y la Asociación de constructores, no dan abasto”, afirmó.

Por su parte, y a preguntas de la prensa, el alcalde de Cataño, Julio Alicea Vasallo afirmó que el proceso de subasta para reconstrucción del Centro de Diagnóstico y Tratamiento (CDT), Job Andújar.

“Esta es la tercera subasta donde no hubo una adjudicación porque no vino, pero aquí la tenacidad y el deseo de que se hagan las cosas no nos va a detener”, dijo Alicea Vassallo en una conferencia de prensa.

“Es la única subasta en donde hemos tenido problemas”, añadió.

Las expresiones se dieron durante una ceremonia de reconstrucción para el CDT de Cataño, a un costo de 5 millones 376 mil 475 dólares.

Departamento de Justicia presenta cargos contra mujer que dejó bebé solo en automóvil

PONCE – El secretario del Departamento de Justicia, Domingo Emanuelli Hernández, informó que la Fiscalía de Ponce formuló cargos el jueves contra una mujer que dejó a su hijo, de un año, solo en el interior de un automóvil mientras esta hacía compras en una megatienda, cerca del mediodía del pasado 21 de julio.

La fiscal Tasha Cruz Rodríguez, adscrita a la Unidad Especializada de Violencia Doméstica, Delitos Sexuales y Maltrato de Menores del Departamento de Justicia, formuló un cargo contra Haydee Zambrana Quiñones por haber incurrido en conducta constitutiva de maltrato, en violación del artículo 53 de la Ley 57-2023, conocida como Ley para la Prevención del Maltrato, Preservación de la Unidad Familiar y para la Seguridad, Bienestar y Protección de los Menores.

Dicha disposición establece que “todo padre, madre, persona responsable del menor, o cualquier otra

persona que por acción u omisión intencional incurra en un acto que cause daño o ponga en riesgo a un menor de sufrir daño a su salud e integridad física, mental o emocional, será sancionado con pena de reclusión por un término fijo de (5) cinco años o multa que no será menor de cinco mil (5,000) dólares ni mayor de diez mil (10,000) dólares, o ambas penas, a discreción del tribunal”. La pena podría ser mayor de mediar circunstancias agravantes.

El día de los hechos, el infante fue hallado por una fiscal que se percató de que el niño se encontraba en su asiento protector dentro del vehículo encendido y con las puertas cerradas. Esta llamó a Emergencias Médicas y comunicó el suceso de inmediato al personal de seguridad del centro comercial para lograr abrir el auto y sacar al bebé. Mientras intentaban romper el cristal del vehículo, la madre del niño llegó y admitió tener conocimiento de que el menor se encontraba solo en el auto.

El juez, Ángel Candelario Cáliz, del Tribunal de Pri-

mera Instancia de Ponce, determinó causa para arresto contra la madre del infante, a quien le impuso una fianza de $10, 000 y supervisión electrónica. La vista preliminar fue señalada para el 17 de agosto.

POR EL STAR STAFF

August 4-6, 2023 17

‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’ review: Superfly’s revenge

By MAYA PHILLIPS

There’s a refreshing sense of nostalgia in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Madness” — and it doesn’t just have to do with the fact that the eternally youthful ninja turtles have been around since the 1980s, in the form of the original comic book series, as well as TV adaptations, films, toys and video games.

It’s in the very look of the movie: meticulous computergenerated animation remixed with lively doodles and scribbles, splotches of color and unclean lines — the kind of art that would come from the combination of a free period, a pack of Sharpies and a composition notebook. After all, what’s more adolescent than that?

You probably already know the back story: Four cute little turtles get transformed by radioactive ooze and are adopted and raised underground, in the sewers of New York, by a rat named Splinter (voiced by Jackie Chan) who’s a master of martial arts. They’re all big fans of pizza.

Now, as teenagers, the turtles — pugnacious Raphael (Brady Noon), doofy Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.), nerdy Donatello (Micah Abbey) and their ever-earnest leader, Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu) — dream of having a normal life with humans. But the aboveground masses face their own threat: Another mutated creature, Superfly (Ice Cube), aims to overtake the human world, Magneto-style. The turtles team up with a student journalist named April (Ayo Edebiri) to try to save the day and hopefully be accepted into human society.

This is certainly a Ninja Turtles for the Internet Age — which, like the web itself, is fun and vast, but ultimately tiring. The dialogue is stacked with pop culture references to show that the four kung-fu-fighting old masters of the sewers definitely have YouTube and Netflix (and, one assumes, surprisingly good Wi-Fi). So they reminisce about sneaking off to an Adele concert and catch Ferris Bueller at a Brooklyn movie drive-in, and Donatello waxes poetic about anime.

The movie shows the most heart when the group gets hyped up together, going into long, digressive riffs punctuated with jokes and dance moves, channeling the wholesome playfulness that has kept the franchise so popular.

“Mutant Mayhem” pulls off its zany cartoon humor mainly in its fight scenes, where Jeff Rowe’s direction, full of frenzied angles and high-flying action, perfectly replicates the chaos. There’s a bit of body humor that, though not always as effective (with the noted exception of a vomiting scene, ironically paired with a chipper Natasha Bedingfield song), feels appropriate given

its depiction of the roach-and-sewer experience that’s New York living.

To top it off, “Mutant Mayhem” is sprinkled with self-referential jokes that poke fun at its own logic, like the inconsistent science behind the magical radioactive gunk. Even its villains troll the turtle-heroes, calling the green siblings “Geico geckos” and “Shreks.”

With its far-reaching references, “Mutant Mayhem” is similar to the new wave of animated films, like “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” and the Spider-Verse films (and perhaps even going back a few years, with “Ralph Breaks the Internet” and the Lego movies), that revel in a pop culture pastiche of emojis, gifs, viral videos and chatspeak.

And the music is always on-point; Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross produce a killer score in their signature wild, industrial rock mixed with a few softer piano-heavy interludes. Other sequences jump off the screen thanks to the addition of quintessentially New York hip-hop, such as DMX and Blackstreet.

The casting is a thing of beauty, with more comedic talent than I have the space to call out here. Hearing Paul Rudd, Rose Byrne, Seth Rogen, John Cena, Hannibal Buress and Post Malone (as a reluctant bad guy who just wants to sing) as various colorful — and I mean that literally and figuratively — mutants is like, say, getting a free order of breadsticks with your pizza.

In fact, the cast of side characters almost outshines the turtles themselves in the comedy department, with Chan’s endearing Splinter and Ice Cube’s 1970s Blaxploitation-style funky-fresh villain, Superfly, being the prime examples.

But in the end, there’s little complexity to the characters and no surprise to the plot. And even the messaging, about tolerance, good intentions and outsiders finding their brood, is so unimaginatively expressed that it feels cliché.

A film unintentionally stuck in its own kind of adolescence, “Mutant Mayhem” has plenty of charms but tries so hard to be cool, funny and relevant — so totally online — that it forgets to kick back with a slice, some buds and just, you know, vibe.

‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters.

Municipio San Lorenzo AVISO PÚBLICO

A TENOR CON EL ARTICULO 2.026 DE LA LEY NÚM. 107 DE 2020, SEGÚN ENMENDADA, se le notifica a cualquier persona con interés sobre cualquiera de las propiedades aquí descritas de la intención del Municipio de revocar la concesión de usufructo a estas propiedades. Se le informa a toda persona con interés que tienen derecho a una vista administrativa informal para exponer su derecho y las causas por las cuales no deba revocarse el usufructo, la cual se celebrará en la fecha que se indica a continuación:

Día: 22 de septiembre de 2023; Hora: 10:00 am.

Lugar: Oficina de Secretaría Municipal, Casa Alcaldía, 3 Luis Muñoz Rivera San Lorenzo PR 00754.

Casos:

Formato: Caso / Dirección o Descripción / Catastro / Dueño / Posible dueño desconocido

• 008 / 5 Dr. Veve Calzada / 252-087-054-11-000 / Ramón Galarza Reyes / John Doe • 013 / 100 Dr. Veve Calzada/ 252-087033-31-001 / José Mulero Quiñonez / John Doe • 016 / 7 Tomas Delgado / 252-087-039-04-001 / Sunc. Trinidad Santa Reyes / John Doe • 017 / 56 Varona Suarez / 252-087-043-16-001 / William Caraballo Alemañy / John Doe • 018 / 108 Tous Soto / 252087-043-23-000 / Octavio Homs Rivera / John Doe • 020 / 55 Tomas Delgado / 252-087-043-03-001 / Ismael Gómez Maisonet / John Doe • 022 / 73 Dr. Veve Calzada / 252-087-043-08-000 / Justino Figueroa Orozco / John Doe • 023 / 106 Dr. Veve Calzada / 252-087-033-28-000 / Herminio Martínez Alverio / John Doe

• 032 / 63 Sánchez López / 252-087-037-02-001 / Ángel L. Massa Serrano / John Doe • 033 / 302(304) Calle 2 Urb. Roosevelt/ 252066-020-06-001 / Joaquín Hernández Del Valle / John Doe • 035 / 27 Delicias / 252-077-032-02-000 / John Doe / Joe Doe • 036 /

29 Delicias / 252-077-032-02-000 / Abigail Montañez / Joe Doe

• 037 / 112 Luis Muñoz Rivera / 252-087-040-17-802 / Juan Cruz

Rodríguez / John Doe • 038 / 105 Sánchez López / 252-087027-13-001 / Luisa Gómez Cruz / John Doe • 039 / 109 Sánchez López / 252-087-027-04-000 / John Doe / Joe Doe • 040 / 111

Sánchez López / 252-077-027-03-000 / John Doe / Joe Doe • 042 / 16 Tomas Delgado / 252-087-040-10-000 / John Doe / Joe Doe

De no comparecer a la vista administrativa en la fecha antes indicada a oponerse a la intensión del municipio, EL MUNICIPIO PROCEDERÁ A REVOCAR EL USUFRUCTO DE LAS PROPIEDADES ANTES INDICADAS, SIN MÁS CITARLE NI OÍRLE.

A scene from “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” directed by Jeff Rowe.

San Juan Daily Star

Hon. Jaime Alverio Ramos Alcalde

Tony Bennett’s 10 essential songs

By ROB TANNENBAUM

When Anthony Dominick Benedetto was growing up in New York’s Queens borough during the Depression, his parents couldn’t afford to pay for the singing lessons he wanted. But he had a good teacher close to home: his father, John Benedetto, an immigrant from southern Italy who loved the songs of the old country and sang them to his two sons on their front stoop.

Anthony Benedetto later took the advice of comedian Bob Hope and adopted the more Americanized stage name Tony Bennett. He enjoyed a long, prolific career until his death on July 21 at 96, with plenty of ups and downs, 20 Grammys and an Emmy, in addition to being a Kennedy Center honoree and the first interpretive singer to receive the Gershwin Prize from the Library of Congress.

Voice lessons, however long delayed, were important to his development. After he served in World War II, Bennett studied, thanks to the GI Bill, at the American Theater Wing school in New York’s Manhattan borough. When he was still singing in his 90s, he credited his bel canto training — an Italian vocal style that dates to the 18th century and that emphasizes a light tone — for maintaining his instrument.

Bennett was equally at home with romantic ballads and jazzy saloon songs, and whether he was singing Cole Porter or Stevie Wonder, he brought a huge range, dramatic flair, rhythmic agility and an inquisitive approach to interpreting lyrics. In 1965, Frank Sinatra told Life magazine, “For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business.” He held on to that distinction for decades to follow.

Here are 10 of his greatest songs.

“The Boulevard of Broken Dreams” (1950)

Bennett had been singing in Hope’s live revue when he was signed to a contract by Mitch Miller, the pop-minded A&R chief at the venerable Columbia Records. In his first single for the label, it’s easy to hear what impressed Miller: Bennett cuts through the Spanish-inflected arrangement of this kitschy 1930s tango with an untethered expression of postwar bravado.

“Strike Up the Band” (1959)

Bennett was a big Count Basie fan, and he especially admired the Basie band’s surging use of dynamics, so he was well prepared for this session. His version of George

and Ira Gershwin’s characteristically tricky “Strike Up the Band” lasts just over a minute and a half, but Billy Mitchell’s tenor sax solo is dazzling, and it’s hard to name another singer who could navigate the band’s hard, swinging tempo with such elan.

“I’m Thru With Love” (1961)

Like Sinatra before him, Bennett pushed back when Miller tried to steer him toward greater commerciality. Miller was “furious” and stormed out of the recording studio, Bennett later wrote, when the singer insisted on moving away from grand orchestral arrangements to record an album with only a pianist, his simpatico collaborator Ralph Sharon. The jazz standard “I’m Thru With Love” had previously been recorded by Bing Crosby, Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, but Bennett optimized the song’s melancholy tone in this streamlined version.

“The Best Is Yet to Come” (1962)

The album-opening title song from “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” became Bennett’s signature hit, but it’s the jaunty closer that sounds fresher now. He snagged “The Best Is Yet to Come” from a flop Broadway musical called “All American” and turned it into a standard: Sinatra covered it two years later, and Fitzgerald and Bob Dylan, among others, eventually followed. It remained a concert staple for years, and no song better exemplifies what critic Mark Rowland once called Bennett’s “radiance of spirit.”

“Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” (1967)

Bennett considered Basie and Duke Ellington the two greatest bandleaders he’d ever heard, and with the great Milt Hinton on bass and Basie regular Joe Newman on trumpet, he swings effortlessly and joyfully on this Ellington jazz standard. Bennett had something close to awe for great jazz musicians, which may be why he never claimed to be part of that tradition. “I’m not a jazz singer,” he often said. “I’m a singer who likes jazz.”

“Something” (1971)

Between 1951 and 1963, Bennett released 19 songs that reached the Top 20 of the Billboard singles chart. Then the Beatles came along and the hits stopped. Columbia Records honcho Clive Davis pushed Bennett to cover modern pop hits, and on the day he began a new record that included Beatles and Stevie Wonder songs, Bennett vomited, Davis recalled. The singer was a trouper, though; the “woo!” he interjects in the middle of George Harrison’s “Something” is almost convincing.

“Some Other Time” (1975)

Bennett had an affinity for pianists: Art Tatum was an enduring influence, he had a long partnership with Ralph Sharon, and he made one of his best albums with Bill Evans. Although he wasn’t a master of urban ennui on the level of Sinatra, Bennett does wring all the bittersweet rue out of this song, written by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green for the musical “On the Town,” by singing in parallel with Evans’ lyrical, prudent piano.

“I Got Lost in Her Arms” (1986)

For much of the ’70s, the toll of drugs, divorce, tax problems and depression wore Bennett down. Then his son Danny took over as his manager and engineered a return to Columbia Records. Maybe more significantly, Bennett reunited with Sharon and recorded his acclaimed comeback with just piano, bass, drums and an orchestra. His voice was now rougher, but especially on his version of Irving Berlin’s “I Got Lost in Her Arms,” he adjusted by infusing his lower register with savvy understatement.

“When Do the Bells Ring for Me” (1990)

Bennett loved the Great American Songbook, but eventually, a prolific singer runs out of pre-rock standards and needs to find slightly younger material. So Bennett was delighted when, in a restaurant one night, he heard piano bar stalwart Charles DeForest perform a song he’d written, “When Do the Bells Ring for Me.” It became a concert showcase for Bennett, thanks to its climactic high notes, and when he sang it at the Grammys in 1991, he got a standing ovation.

“I Get a Kick Out of You” (2021)

Biographically, Bennett couldn’t have had less in common with Porter, a Midwesterner born to substantial privilege. But Porter’s giddy use of double and triple rhymes was perfect for Bennett’s rubato trickery, so his second album with Lady Gaga was a Porter-only affair, released five years after Bennett was given a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. And let’s be honest, it’s a kick to hear a 95-year-old master sing, “Some, they may go for cocaine.”

Tony Bennett onstage in 1976. When he was still singing in his 90s, he credited his bel canto training for maintaining his voice.

Amid signs of a COVID uptick, researchers brace for the ‘new normal’

By APOORVA MANDAVILLI

Echoing patterns in prior years, coronavirus infections are slowly ticking up in parts of the country, the harbinger of a possible fall and winter wave. But the numbers remain low for now, and are unlikely to reach the horrific highs seen in previous winters, experts said in interviews.

Infections have been trending upward for about four weeks now, according to data gathered from wastewater monitoring, test positivity rates and hospitalizations and emergency room visits. Taken together, the figures offer researchers and public health officials the first glimpse of the coronavirus as a post-pandemic, seasonal threat, a permanent fixture of the infectious disease landscape.

Wastewater analyses point to the highest increases in the Northeast and the South, followed by the West and Midwest. After hitting a trough at the end of June, hospitalizations are inching upward again, but fortunately very slowly.

Test positivity has risen to 7.6%, a level last seen in November 2021, and that summer, just before the delta variant swept the nation.

“This is the fourth summer now that we see a wave beginning around July, often starting in the South,” said Caitlin Rivers, a public health researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Nearly all Americans have built up multiple layers of immunity following repeated infections, immunizations or both, so the virus is unlikely to cause the harm this winter that was seen in previous seasons.

Still, for older adults, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems or certain chronic conditions, the virus may yet pose a serious threat.

The number of deaths is the lowest since the pandemic began, and roughly one-tenth of the levels in January. Most virus fatalities now occur in adults older than 75. But the real toll will be apparent only at the end of the year, after the fall and winter’s respiratory blitz, experts said.

“We are in a very different place, but COVID is still a thing,” said Katelyn Jetelina, a public health expert and author of the

widely read newsletter, “Your Local Epidemiologist.”

“I think we do the public a disservice by saying that it’s over and let’s move on, because it is going to be disruptive this winter, and it will cause a number of people to die,” she added. “That’s just not acceptable to the public health world, especially since it’s preventable.”

Researchers have been trying to assess how updated COVID vaccines and emerging variants might change the course of the pandemic. By the most pessimistic estimates, if no vaccine were available and the circulating variant dodged most immune defenses, COVID might lead to about 839,000 hospitalizations and around 87,000 deaths nationwide between September and April.

In the best-case scenario, with people of all ages opting for an updated vaccine and a variant that is susceptible to that vaccine, COVID might cause 484,000 hospitalizations and 45,000 deaths — about the toll of a bad influenza season.

“Based on these projections, COVID is likely to remain in the leading causes of death in the United States for the foreseeable future,” said Justin Lessler, a public health researcher at the UNC Gillings School of

Global Public Health who coordinated the research effort.

The range of estimated deaths would place COVID somewhere between liver disease and diabetes for causes of death. “Even in that most optimistic scenario, we’re getting into the range of mortality that we see for top 10 causes of death in the United States,” Lessler said.

Experts worry in particular about the confluence of COVID with respiratory syncytial virus, influenza and other pathogens. Many hospitals buckled under the weight of the so-called tripledemic of COVID, flu and RSV last year, even though waves of the three infections appeared to be slightly staggered.

RSV peaked in November and caused about twice as many hospitalizations, including among children, as in pre-pandemic years. The flu peaked in December and may have led to as many as 58,000 deaths.

COVID led to an estimated 50,000 deaths between November and March. It’s unclear whether the viruses will behave similarly this winter or will drift into a new seasonal pattern.

“This fall is something that us epidemiologists are watching with much curios-

ity,” said Jetelina. “I think a lot of us are cautiously optimistic that we may start getting a new normal respiratory season.”

Even if the peaks of each viral wave are further apart than they were last year, the health care system may struggle.

“Even before COVID, it was very difficult for health care systems to keep up with the surge of patients,” Rivers said. “If this is, in fact, what we can expect year over year going forward, I think we’re going to have to adjust the health care system to accommodate that increased load.”

The coronavirus is still a more formidable threat than the other two respiratory infections, Rivers said.

Unlike flu and RSV, which tend to disappear in warmer months, coronavirus infections start to pick up in July and remain high through February. “That’s a good chunk of the year where you’ve got to be on alert,” Rivers added.

One striking change from previous years is that instead of a single dominant coronavirus variant, there now appear to be a cluster of viral types, all derived from the omicron branch. The virus is mutating now at a more constant rate, akin to the pace of evolution of the flu virus, Lessler said.

The vaccine expected this fall is designed to target a variant called XBB.1.5, which was dominant this spring. Even if the vaccine is not a perfect match for the variants circulating in the coming months, it is still likely to prevent severe illnesses and death, if not infections.

Lessler and his colleagues estimated that vaccinating Americans of all ages could reduce the number of hospitalizations and deaths by about 20%.

No researchers foresee a return to the worst days of the pandemic. But some recommend that when the number of cases go up, people consider wearing masks again in crowded indoor spaces, testing when they have symptoms and being mindful of those around them who may be at high risk should they become infected.

“Whether we’re completely out of the pandemic and settled into our seasonal routine, I am going to pencil in the yes,” Rivers said. “But I’m also prepared to be surprised, because this virus has surprised me before.”

A woman receives a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot in San Juan, P.R., on May 20, 2022. Infections remain very low, despite signs of a slight increase and now, experts are looking for clues to what living with the coronavirus will be like this winter and beyond.

In sherry country, wines of the future that look to the past

By ERIC ASIMOV

Good wine offers history in every glass. Through the vintage and vineyard, it tells a story of a time and a place. But it can speak of far more, of distant practices and traditions reclaimed. In the best of examples, it can look to the future as well.

In sherry country, a flat, dusty swath of southwestern Spain framed by the towns of Jerez de la Frontera, Sanlúcar de Barrameda and El Puerto de Santa María, history was ignored for decades as the sherry business grew and consolidated, focusing on inexpensive, mass-market bottles primarily for foreign markets.

But in the past decade or so, a small group of winemakers have focused intently on the region’s past. They have reexamined the terroirs, rediscovered long-lost grapes that were nearly extinct and resurrected unfortified styles that had largely disappeared. In short: They are producing some of the

most exciting wines in the world.

Sherry is famous the world over as a fortified wine. But the industry has been declining since the 1980s as consumers in Britain, the biggest market for inexpensive sherry, began to lose interest in those mediocre sweet wines. Many producers went out of business, and the land planted to vines dwindled from roughly 70,000 acres to around 15,000.

In response, over the past 20 years, labels such as Equipo Navazos began bottling small amounts of extraordinary sherries that had been used in blends with nondescript wines to create mass-market sherries. By identifying wines and bottling them separately, producers were able to show a new generation sherry’s potential while charging much higher prices.

These superb wines also proved that sherry is not only capable of aging and becoming more complex over time, but that it is very much a vineyard expression and not simply dependent on the skill of the winemaker.

Alberto Orte, who is researching grapes that long ago disappeared from the region, in Jerez de la Frontea, Spain, June 20, 2023. Using older methods and sometimes forgotten grapes, these producers hope to reveal the magic of the terroir to a new generation of consumers.

One of the key myths about sherry is that the palomino, its primary grape, is neutral and required fortification, intricate blending in the cellar and exposure to air, as with oloroso sherries, or aging under flor, a yeast that gives personality to fino and manzanilla sherries.

But in recent years, numerous producers have shown that palomino, planted in the best plots, farmed conscientiously and made into wine with care, can make wines of depth and nuance that express with uncanny precision the place in which the grapes were grown.

They are also examining dozens of other local grapes that largely disappeared after phylloxera, a ravenous aphid that devours the roots of vines, devastated European vineyards in the late 19th century.

“At the beginning of the 19th century, we had 50 local varieties,” said Alberto Orte, who makes wine across Spain but in recent years has focused on finding and recovering these lost grapes. He has traveled to other parts of Spain, including the Canary Islands and Galicia, as well as to Portugal for cuttings and has planted them in experimental vineyards in Añina and other pagos, the local word for a vineyard area defined by a specific identity, somewhat akin to the term lieu dit in French.

He is now making wines in Jerez from grapes including tintilla, which is genetically identical to graciano, a grape grown in Rioja, as well as vijiriega, which comes in red and white varieties.

His 2021 Atlántida Blanco, made of vijiriega, is herbal, spicy and refreshing, while his 2021 Vara y Pulgar, a red named for a traditional pruning technique and made of tintilla, is juicy, spicy and saline.

What makes these wines so good? Orte believes it’s what many local farmers and winemakers have long known. “The soil is very strong,” he said.

The best vineyards in the sherry region have always been planted on albariza, a chalky white calcareous soil related to limestone.

No producers have made a greater study of albariza than Ramiro Ibáñez and Willy Pérez, who between them are responsible for much of the renewed interest in the history of viticulture and wine in the region.

Pérez now runs a label, Luis Pérez, started by his father, which makes sherries and other wines from the Jerez region. Ibáñez started a label, Cota 45, which explores the terroirs of the pagos in the Sanlúcar region. And together they have revived an old sherry label, M. Antonio de la Riva, which is exploring the history of sherry through a series of new releases.

They cite 13 different sorts of albariza in a sort of hierarchy, with two at the top: lentejuelas, which is granular like lentils, and barajuelas, which forms in slabs like a deck of cards.

Ibáñez said that lentejuelas produces wines of freshness and delicacy, characteristic of the coastal area of Sanlúcar, while barajuelas gives wines of power and concentration, more typical of Jerez inland.

The producers were inspired in their work by tasting wines made in the region before the midcentury sherry boom and back into the 19th century. They make the argument that the widespread fortification of sherries is a recent development.

“Until the 1970s, they never added alcohol to albariza wines,” Ibáñez said. “Only cheap wines were fortified.”

In the past, he said, fino sherry achieved 15% alcohol naturally by drying grapes on grass mats in the sun before fermentation.

Some in sherry country may take issue with these assertions, but the beautiful wines made by the two men offer powerful support. The Cota 45 wines are gorgeous expressions of Sanlúcar, all unfortified, some aged under flor like a manzanilla, some not, but all fresh, saline, delicate but intense. A 2016 Miraflores is savory and expressive but delicate, particularly compared with a 2016 Maina, a pago farther from the coast than Miraflores, which is smoky, saline and tangy but decidedly richer.

Perhaps the most fascinating Cota 45 wine is the Agostado, made of long-forgotten grapes such as perruno and uve rey, with only 10% palomino, in the style, Ibáñez said, of a baby oloroso sherry of the 19th century. It was fresh yet smoky and full of mineral and umami flavors. He calls it a “cortado,” an old term for unfortified sherry wines.

Pérez, under the Luis Pérez label, is making unfortified sherries from Jerez. His 2013 Tres Palmas, a fino from the inland Carrascal pago, is intense, concentrated, salty and complex, but remarkably fresh at 16% alcohol.

The de la Riva wines are spectacular, both vinos de pastos, as unfortified whites are called, and sherries, which were fortified when they were produced by others. A 2019 vino de

pasto made from the Macharnudo pago in Jerez was gorgeous, powerful and concentrated like a fino but unfortified. A manzanilla pasada from the Balbaina pago was intense, delicate like a manzanilla but pointing toward a fuller, complex amontillado.

Many other producers have been inspired by these wines, particularly the unfortified examples, simply because, with prices so cheap, anybody could buy grapes and make a wine. Making sherry, on the other hand, requires aging wine over a prolonged period before selling it.

These producers include Raúl Moreno, a former chef who went into wine as a second career; Alejandro Narváez and Rocío Áspera, a husband-and-wife team who began as farmers and then decided to go into wine after the 2008 financial meltdown, establishing Bodega de Forlong; Rafael Rodríguez, who would have liked to get a job in sherry but instead established Barrialto, named after his neighborhood in Sanlúcar; and Alejandro Muchada, a former architect who, during a trip to France, worked the harvest at David Léclapart, an excellent Champagne house. Muchada caught the wine bug and, with Léclapart as a partner, established Muchada-Léclapart.

Moreno is thoroughly experimental and seemingly never shirks a challenge. He makes an excellent perruno, from an old red grape, aged in traditional chestnut barrels; a refreshing, saline claireté, a dark rosé of red and white grapes; and a fresh, juicy tintilla. But he also makes a pinot noir and a chardonnay that both taste like Jerez wines.

Muchada, like Pérez and Ibáñez, is concerned that the old knowledge is preserved for a new generation. He has worked with old farmers to learn traditional methods of pruning and is learning the intricacies of the terroirs in the roughly 10 acres he farms in four different plots.

“It’s the heritage, the beauty of the knowledge,” he said. “It’s a beautiful métier. It’s a pity if we lose it.”

Narváez casts some of the blame on the European Union, which gives generous loans and grants for vineyards, but in return requires following simple international practices intended for mechanically farming for quantity rather than quality.

He and Muchada both avoid aging their wines under flor. Nonetheless, the wines bear the unmistakable stamp of the region.

One night, at a restaurant with Ibáñez and Pérez, they pulled out two beautiful midcentury oloroso sherries. One was made from a coastal vineyard, they said, and the other from inland. They left it to me to guess which was which.

I didn’t need to guess; the differences were obvious. One was intense and powerful, with a rich texture. It clearly was from Jerez. The other one, fine, light and elegant, was from Sanlúcar.

Pérez was delighted with my success.

Grapes at a vineyard in Pago Miraflores in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain.

Willy Pérez, left, and Ramiro Ibáñez taste wine in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain, June 20, 2023. They assert the best wines have always shown the power of the terroir rather than the hand of the winemaker, but that the emphasis had shifted in recent decades.

There’s a pesto miracle waiting in your freezer

ting them sear until they’re darkly golden. Try not to move the vegetables too much as they cook, as that can impede browning. The darker they get, the more flavor they’ll impart to the dish, with the bronzed bits left stuck to the bottom of the pan forming the foundation of the sauce.

Then, instead of cooking the orzo in water, I use broth, which infuses the pasta with flavor as the liquid reduces to a silky sauce, spiked with lemon zest for brightness.

The pesto doesn’t make its appearance until late in the game, to preserve its freshness. Heating it too long would tame the pungent, garlicky bite and dull the basil’s verdant sharpness. Start with a half cup, which is just enough to give the orzo a gentle pesto character. Pesto stans might want to drizzle in a little more, but taste as you go.

At the very end, I stir in a caprese-like mix of marinated mozzarella, juicy, sweet cherry tomatoes and fresh mint. The cheese softens but doesn’t quite melt, forming milky pockets to complement the pungent pesto. That perfect balance, created so effortlessly by pesto and cheese, is the real miracle on your plate.

with zucchini and onions that have been sautéed together until golden brown. Cooking the orzo in vegetable or chicken stock bolsters the pasta’s flavor as the broth reduces into a silky sauce. Then, pesto is added at the very end to preserve its brightness. Finally, just before serving, a caprese-like mix of marinated mozzarella, cherry tomatoes and fresh mint is stirred into the pan. Filled with vegetables and milky cheese, this dish is especially satisfying and very easy to make.

Yield: 4 servings

Total time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

2 medium zucchini (about 6 ounces each), diced (about 2 1/2 cups)

1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, more for drizzling

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, to taste, more as needed

1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt, more to taste

1 3/4 cups vegetable or chicken stock

1 cup orzo

By MELISSA CLARK

Sometimes a kitchen needs a last-minute miracle, and mine is always frozen pesto. At a moment’s notice, I can stir a spoonful of herby, garlicky zip into any dish that needs it, lifting it to a whole new level.

In a perfect pesto world, that frozen sauce is homemade — a mix of tiny-leafed Genovese basil, Italian pine nuts and good olive oil that you’ve pounded by hand with a mortar and pestle.

In my world, though, I usually reach for the food processor. I whirl regular floppy-leafed basil with olive oil and sliced almonds (instead of pricier pine nuts) until I get a purée thick enough to spoon into an ice cube tray for fast access when dinner is nigh. (And if your frozen stash runs out, good store-bought pesto is a reliably herby Plan B.)

Pesto is typically destined for a plate of al dente pasta, but it actually works wonderfully as an ingredient, adding color and garlicky verve to soups, stews, or, in this case, a one-pan orzo dish loaded with summer zucchini and onions.

The key to bringing out the most flavor in a one-pan dish is to cook it in stages. First, I sauté zucchini and onions, let-

One-pan zucchini-pesto orzo

Keeping pesto on hand (store-bought or homemade and frozen) is one of the greatest kitchen timesavers, since stirring just a spoonful into a dish can add so much herby, garlicky flavor. Here, pesto builds on a pan of orzo loaded

1 lemon, zested and halved

1 cup halved cherry or grape tomatoes

5 ounces fresh mozzarella, cut into cubes (1 cup)

1/2 cup grated Parmesan (3 ounces), more for serving

1/4 cup finely chopped mint, more for serving 1/2 cup pesto, store-bought or homemade, more to taste

Preparation:

1. In a large nonstick or well-seasoned cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat, combine the zucchini and onion with olive oil, the red-pepper flakes and 1 teaspoon salt. Cook the mixture, stirring once or twice, until the zucchini and onion turn golden brown, 10 to 12 minutes. Don’t stir too often, as it can impede browning.

2. Stir in stock and bring to a simmer. Stir in orzo, lemon zest and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cover and simmer over medium-low heat until orzo is nearly cooked through and most of the liquid is absorbed, 10 to 14 minutes, stirring once or twice.

3. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, toss together the tomatoes, mozzarella, a pinch of salt, a pinch of red pepper flakes and a drizzle of olive oil, and let marinate while the orzo cooks.

4. Once the orzo is ready, stir in juice of 1/2 lemon, Parmesan, mint and pesto. Cover the pan, and cook for 1 minute, to finish cooking. Taste for seasoning and add more lemon juice or pesto, if needed. To serve, top with tomato-mozzarella mixture and sprinkle with more cheese and mint.

One-pan zucchini-pesto orzo on July 10, 2023. Prepared pesto gives a one-pan orzo and zucchini dish its herby, garlicky bite.

Ingredients for a one-pan zucchini-pesto orzo on July 10, 2023. It’s important not to move the zucchini and onions around in the early stage of cooking, allowing them to brown and impart flavor to the final product.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO

DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN ALEJANDRINA

BONILLA CANDELARIA

Parte Peticionaria

EX - PARTE

Civil Núm.: SJ2023CV04527.

Sala: 606. Sobre: EXPEDIENTE DE DOMINIO BAJO EL ART. 13 DE LA LEY 118, PROCEDIMIENTO EXPEDITO Y/O USUCAPIÓN. EDICTO ENMENDADO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS E.E.U.U., EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PR, SS.

A: INMEDIATOS

ANTERIORES DUEÑOS, HEREDEROS, DENOMINADOS FULANO DE TAL Y SUTANO DE TAL., Y LAS PERSONAS IGNORADAS Y DESCONOCIDAS A QUIENES PUDIERA PERJUDICAR LA INSCRIPCIÓN DEL DOMINIO A FAVOR DE LA PARTE PETICIONARIA EN EL REGISTRO DE LA PROPIEDAD DE LA FINCA QUE MÁS ADELANTE SE DESCRIBIRÁ Y A TODA

PERSONA EN GENERAL QUE CON DERECHO PARA ELLO DESEE OPONERSE A ESTE EXPEDIENTE.

POR LA PRESENTE se les notifica para que comparezcan, si lo creyeren pertinente, ante este Honorable Tribunal dentro de los veinte (20) días contados a partir de la última publicación de este edicto a exponer lo que a sus derechos convenga en el expediente promovido por la parte peticionaria para adquirir su dominio sobre la finca que se describe más adelante. Usted deberá presentar su posición 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 en la secretaría del Tribunal. Si usted deja de expresarse dentro del referido término, el Tribunal podrá dictar sentencia, previo a escuchar la prueba de valor de la parte peticionaria en su contra, sin más citarle ni oírle, y conceder el remedio solicitado en la petición, o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal, en el ejercicio de

su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. “Solar con residencia construida en madera en la Comunidad Buen Consejo del término municipal de San Juan, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de 243.884 metros cuadrados equivalentes a 0.0621 Cuerdas. En lindes por el Norte en varias alineaciones de 15.292 y 4.540 con acceso público; por el Sur en varias alineaciones de 16.413 y 5.137 metros con Julia Márquez; por el Este en una alineación de 11.920 con acceso público y por el Oeste en una alineación de 11.297 con solar de la comunidad Buen Consejo.” El abogado de la parte peticionaria es la Lcdo. Ernesto Rovira Gándara, PMB 767, 1353 Ave. Luis Vigoreaux, Guaynabo, PR 00966; Tel. (787)-758-3277; Email: erovira@partnerslegalservicespr.com. Se le informa, además, que el Tribunal ha señalado vista en este caso para el 30 DE AGOSTO DEL 2023 A LAS 2:30 DE LA TARDE, mediante videoconferencia, a la cual usted puede comparecer asistido por abogado y presentar oposición a la petición. Este edicto deberá ser publicado en tres (3) ocasiones dentro del término de veinte (20) días, en un periódico de circulación general diaria, para que comparezcan si quieren alegar su derecho. Toda primera mención de persona natural y/o jurídica que se mencione en el mismo, se identificará en letra tamaño 10 puntos y negrillas, conforme a lo dispuesto en las Reglas de Procedimiento Civil, 2009. Se le apercibe que de no comparecer los interesados y/o partes citadas, o en su defecto los organismos públicos afectados en el término improrrogable de veinte (20) días a contar de la fecha de la última publicación del edicto, el Tribunal podrá conceder el remedio solicitado por la parte peticionaria, sin más citarle ni oírle. En SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, a 29 de junio de 2023. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. ORTIZ SILVA, MELBA, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL.

LEGAL NOTICE

AVISO

CAUSANTE SANTOS

ALONSO MALDONADO

POR LA PRESENTE se les notifica que se ha iniciado la preparación del inventario en sede notarial del caudal relicto de los causantes Santos Alonso Maldonado. Se les requiere para que toda reclamación con los correspondientes comprobantes bajo juramento sea presentada y dirigida al peticionario por conducto de sus abogados a las siguientes direcciones y dentro del plazo de treinta (30) días contados desde la publicación del presente edicto:

Sucesión Santos Alonso Maldonado

Lcdo. Omar Sánchez Pagán PO Box 195055 San Juan Puerto, Rico, 00919

Se le advierte que de no responder a este Aviso, los procedimientos para la formación y liquidación del caudal d ela causante continuarán sin más citarle ni oirle.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA

SALA SUPERIOR DE MAYAGÜEZ

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO

Demandante Vs. SUCESION DE JOSE

EDWIN AVILES RIVERA, COMPUESTA POR SU

VIUDA NILDA MEDINA

LEGRAND Y SUS HIJOS

EDWIN AVILES MEDINA, EDUARDO AVILES MEDINA Y MONICA

AVILES MEDINA; FULANO DE TAL Y ZUTANO DE TAL, COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS CON POSIBLE INTERÉS; NILDA MEDINA

LEGRAND; CENTRO DE RECAUDACION DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES (CRIM)

Demandados

Civil Núm.: MZ2022CV00946.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO (EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA

POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA). EDICTO DE SUBASTA.

Al: PÚBLICO EN GENERAL.

A: SUCESION DE JOSE

EDWIN AVILES RIVERA, COMPUESTA POR SU VIUDA NILDA MEDINA

LEGRAND Y SUS HIJOS

TAL, COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS CON POSIBLE INTERÉS; NILDA MEDINA

LEGRAND; CENTRO DE RECAUDACION DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES (CRIM).

Yo, JOSÉ M. CRESPO NAZARIO, Alguacil de este Tribunal, a la parte demandada y a los acreedores y personas con interés sobre la propiedad que más adelante se describe, y al público en general, HAGO SABER: Que el día 26 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2023, A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA en mi oficina, sita en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Mayagüez, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, venderé en Pública Subasta la propiedad inmueble que más adelante se describe y cuya venta en pública subasta se ordenó por la vía ordinaria al mejor postor quien hará el pago en dinero en efectivo, giro postal o cheque certificado a nombre del o la Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado, estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal de Mayagüez durante horas laborables. Que en caso de no producir remate ni adjudicación en la primera subasta a celebrarse, se celebrará una SEGUNDA SUBASTA para la venta de la susodicha propiedad, el día 3 DE OCTUBRE DE 2023, A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA y en caso de no producir remate ni adjudicación, se celebrará una TERCERA SUBASTA el 10 DE OCTUBRE DE 2023, A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA en mi oficina sita en el lugar antes indicado. La propiedad a venderse en pública subasta se describe como sigue: URBANA PROPIEDAD HORIZONTAL: Apartamento residencial número DIEZ CERO UNO (1001) de dos plantas y forma irregular, localizado en la primera y segunda planta del Edificio diez (10) del CONDOMINIO VILLA CAMPOMAR, situado en el Sector Combate del Barrio Boquerón del término municipal de Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, teniendo un área total aproximada de CIENTO OCHENTA PUNTO

DOCE CERO SEIS (180.1206)

METROS CUADRADOS, equivalentes a MIL NOVECIENTOS

ESTADOS

A: ACREEDORES DEL

EDWIN AVILES MEDINA, EDUARDO AVILES MEDINA Y MONICA AVILES MEDINA; FULANO DE TAL Y ZUTANO DE

TREINTA Y OCHO PUNTO OCHO CERO DOS (1,938.802) PIES CUADRADOS. La marquesina en la primera planta, colinda por el NORTE, en una distancia de doce (12) pies lineales, equivalentes a tres punto sesenta y cinco (3.65) metros lineales, con espacio

exterior; SUR en una distancia de doce (12) pies lineales, equivalentes a tres punto sesenta y cinco (3.65) metros lineales, espacio exterior; ESTE, en una distancia de treinta y cuatro (34) pies lineales, equivalentes a diez punto treinta y seis (10.36) metros lineales, con la marquesina del apartamento Diez Cero Tres (1003) y OESTE, en una distancia de treinta y cuatro (34) pies lineales, equivalentes a diez punto treinta y seis (10.36) metros lineales, con espacio exterior. El apartamento en la segunda planta, colinda por el NORTE, en una distancia de cuarenta y ocho punto seis (48.6) pies lineales, equivalentes a catorce punto setenta y ocho (14.78) metros lineales, con espacio exterior; SUR, en una distancia de cuarenta y ocho punto seis (48.6) pies lineales, equivalentes a catorce punto setenta y ocho (14.78) metros lineales, con espacio exterior; ESTE, en una distancia de cuarenta y tres (43) pies lineales, equivalentes a trece punto diez (13.10) metros lineales, con escaleras comunes; y OESTE, en una distancia de cuarenta y tres (43) pies lineales, equivalentes a trece punto diez (13.10) metros lineales, con espacio exterior. La puerta de entrada de este apartamento está situada en su lindero Este, a través de la cual se llega a las escaleras comunes y al exterior del Edificio. En la primera planta tiene una marquesina para dos automóviles. En la segunda planta el área de vivienda consta de sala-comedor, cocina, tres cuartos dormitorios de los cuales el dormitorio principal tiene vestidor y baño, un baño adicional, lavandería, almacén y dos terrazas o balcones. Tiene una participación de un punto ciento once por ciento (1.111%) en los elementos comunes generales del Condominio. La escritura de hipoteca se encuentra inscrita al folio 34 del tomo 884 de Cabo Rojo, Registro de la Propiedad de San Germán, finca número 29,996, inscripción segunda. La dirección física de la propiedad antes descrita es: Condominio Villa Campomar, Apartamento 1001, Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico 00623. La Subasta se llevará a efecto para satisfacer a la parte demandante la suma de $99,995.93 de principal, intereses al 5.25% anual, desde el día 1ro. de marzo de 2020, hasta su completo pago, más la cantidad de $14,400.00 estipulada para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado más recargos acumulados, todas cuyas sumas están líquidas y exigibles. Que la cantidad mínima de licitación en la primera

subasta para el inmueble será de $144,000.00 y de ser necesaria una segunda subasta, la cantidad mínima será equivalente a 2/3 partes de aquella, o sea, la suma de $96,000.00 y de ser necesaria una tercera subasta, la cantidad mínima será la mitad del precio pactado, es decir, la suma de $72,000.00. De declararse desierta la tercera subasta se adjudicará la finca a favor del acreedor por la totalidad de la cantidad adeudada si esta es igual o menor que el monto del tipo de la tercera subasta, si el Tribunal lo estima conveniente. Se abonará dicho monto a la cantidad adeudada si esta es mayor. La propiedad se adjudicará al mejor postor, quien deberá satisfacer el importe de su oferta en moneda legal y corriente de los Estados Unidos de América en el momento de la adjudicación y que las cargas y gravámenes preferentes, si los hubiese, continuarán subsistentes, entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. La propiedad a ser vendida en pública subasta se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. Podrán concurrir como postores a todas las subastas los titulares de créditos hipotecarios vigentes y posteriores a la hipoteca que se cobra o ejecuta, si alguno o que figuren como tales en la certificación registral y que podrán utilizar el montante de sus créditos o parte de alguno en sus ofertas. Si la oferta aceptada es por cantidad mayor a la suma del crédito o créditos preferentes al suyo, al obtener la buena pro del remate, deberá satisfacer en el mismo acto, en efectivo o en cheque de gerente, la totalidad del crédito hipotecario que se ejecuta y la de cualesquiera otro créditos posteriores al que se ejecuta pero preferente al suyo. El exceso constituirá abono total o parcial en su propio crédito. EN TESTIMONIO DE LO CUAL, expido el presente Edicto para conocimiento y comparecencia de los licitadores, bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, a 10 de julio de 2023. JOSÉ M. CRESPO NAZARIO, ALGUACIL DE LA DIVISIÓN DE EJECUCIÓN DE SENTENCIAS, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA SUPERIOR DE MAYAGÜEZ.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO

Parte Demandante Vs.

AISHE GARCÍA RAMOS, ROBERTO ROCHE CASANOVA Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR

AMBOS

Parte Demandada Civl Núm.: DCD2014-1565. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS. AVISO DE PÚBLICA SUBASTA. El Alguacil que suscribe por la presente anuncia y hace constar que en cumplimiento de la Sentencia en Rebeldía dictada el 10 de noviembre de 2014 y notificada el 11 de diciembre de 2014, la Orden de Ejecución de Sentencia del 14 de junio de 2023 y el Mandamiento de Ejecución del 20 de junio de 2023 en el caso de epígrafe, procederé a vender el día 24 DE AGOSTO DE 2023, A LAS 10:15 DE LA MAÑANA, en el Cuarto Piso de la Oficina del Alguacil de Subastas, localizada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Centro Judicial de Bayamón, Sala Superior, ubicado en la Carretera Número Dos (#2), Kilómetro 10.4, Esquina Calle Esteban Padilla, Bayamón, Puerto Rico, al mejor postor en pago de contado y en moneda de los Estados Unidos de América, cheque de gerente o giro postal a nombre del Alguacil del Tribunal; todo título, derecho o interés de la parte demandada sobre la siguiente propiedad:

URBANA: PROPIEDAD HO-

RIZONTAL: Condominio Palacios de Versalles de Toa Alta. Apartamento Número D guion cuatrocientos uno (D-401). Cabida: con un área superficial de 1589.36 pies cuadrados, equivalentes a 147.71 metros cuadrados. Apartamento localizado en el primer piso del edificio “D” del Condominio Palacios de Versalles, cuyo condominio está localizado en los Barrios Ortiz y Piñas de Toa Alta, Puerto Rico. Consiste de una vivienda residencial de un piso. Colinda por el NORTE, con elemento común general exterior y las escaleras del Edificio “D”, en una distancia de 15.42 metros; en el SUR, con patio que es un elemento común limitado de los apartamentos ubicados en el primer piso del Edificio “D” y elemento común general exterior, las escaleras y vestíbulo del edificio “D” en una distancia de 15.42 metros; por el ESTE,

con el Apartamento Número D guion trescientos uno (D-301), las escaleras y vestíbulo del Edificio “D” en una distancia de 11.66 metros; y por el OESTE, con elemento común general exterior, en una distancia de 11.66 metros. El Apartamento Número D guion cuatrocientos uno (D-401) está compuesto de recibidor, sala, área familiar “family room”, cocina, comedor, terraza cubierta, pasillo interior, un baño en el área del pasillo interior, closet para calentador “water heater closet”, closet de lavandería (laundry), closet de pasillo interior, dos dormitorios con un closet cada uno y un dormitorio principal (master bedroom) con closet, closet con pasillo (walk-in-closet), baño y área de tocador “power room” y baño. La entrada principal de este apartamento está localizada en su lindero Este, la cual conecta el apartamento con el vestíbulo del primer piso del Edificio “D” del Condominio Palacios de Versalles, el cual es un elemento común general del Condominio Palacios de Versalles. Le corresponde como elemento común limitado del Condominio Palacios de Versalles dos estacionamientos sencillos identificados con los Números sesenta y siete (67) y sesenta y ocho (68) y los patios adyacentes a los apartamentos ubicados en el primer piso del Edificio “D”. Este apartamento tiene una participación de 0.7004% en los elementos comunes generales del Condominio Palacio de Versalles y una participación de 0.5881% en los elementos comunes limitados del Condominio Palacios de Versalles. La propiedad consta inscrita al tomo Karibe de Toa Alta, finca 28770, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección III. La escritura de hipoteca consta inscrita al tomo Karibe de Toa Alta, finca 28770, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección III. Inscripción segunda (2da). Dirección Física: Cond. Palacios de Versalles Apto. D-401, Toa Alta PR 00953. El tipo mínimo para la primera subasta será de $172,550.00. De no haber adjudicación en la primera subasta se celebrará una SEGUNDA SUBASTA, el día 31 DE AGOSTO DE 2023, A LAS 10:15 DE LA MAÑANA en el mismo lugar, en la cual el tipo mínimo será de dos terceras partes del tipo mínimo fijado en la primera subasta, o sea, $115,033.33. De no haber adjudicación en la segunda subasta, se celebrará una TERCERA SUBASTA 7 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2023, A LAS 10:15 DE LA MAÑANA en el mismo lugar, en la cual el tipo mínimo será la mitad del precio pactado, o sea, $86,275.00. Si se declara-

se desierta la tercera subasta, se adjudicará la finca a favor del acreedor por la totalidad de la cantidad adeudada si ésta es igual o menor que el monto del tipo de la tercera subasta, si el tribunal lo estima conveniente. Se abonará dicho monto a la cantidad adeudada si esta es mayor. Dicho remate se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer a la demandante el importe de la Sentencia por la suma de $159,158.01 de principal, más intereses sobre dicha suma al 6% anual desde el 1 de diciembre de 2013 hasta su completo pago, más $102.08 mensual por seguros contra riesgos, más el pago mensual por contribuciones territoriales, mas $34.11 mensual por concepto de recargos por demora adeudados desde el día 1 de enero de 2014 hasta su total pago, y hasta la cantidad estipulada de $17,255.00 para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado, mas $309.36 por concepto de recargos acumulados, así como cualquier otra suma que contenga el contrato del préstamo. Surge del Estudio de Título Registral que sobre esta propiedad pesan los siguientes gravámenes posteriores a la hipoteca que por la presente se pretende ejecutar: a. Bitácora: Al Asiento 2023082353-BY03, el 6 de julio de 2023, Demanda de fecha 9 de junio de 2014, ante el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Bayamón, en el Caso Civil Número D CD2014-1565, seguido por Banco Popular de Puerto Rico Vs. Aishe García Ramos y Roberto Roche Casanova (casados entre sí), sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca, en la que se reclama el pago de hipoteca con un balance de $159,158.01 y otras cantidades o la venta en pública Subasta de la propiedad. Pendiente de anotación. Se les advierte a los interesados que todos los documentos relacionados con la presente acción de ejecución de hipoteca, así como los de Subasta, estarán disponibles para ser examinados, durante horas laborables, en el expediente del caso que obra en los archivos de la Secretaría del Tribunal, bajo el número de epígrafe y para su publicación en un periódico de circulación general en Puerto Rico por espacio de dos semanas y por lo menos una vez por semana; y para su fijación en los sitios públicos requeridos por ley. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante, continuarán subsistentes; entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate y que la propiedad a ser ejecutada se

adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores, tal como lo expresa la Ley Núm. 2102015. Y para el conocimiento de los demandados, de los acreedores posteriores, de los licitadores, partes interesadas y público en general, EXPIDO para su publicación en los lugares públicos correspondientes, el presente Aviso de Pública Subasta en Bayamón, Puerto Rico, hoy 11 de julio de 2023.

EDGARDO ELÍAS VARGAS SANTANA, ALGUACIL AUXILIAR PLACA #193, ALGUACIL DEL TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMÓN, SALA SUPERIOR.

LEGAL NOTICE

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

LEGACY MORTGAGE

ASSET TRUST 2019-PR1

Plaintiff V.

AMPARO RIVERA

FIGUEROA AND THE ESTATE OF CARLOS

LUCAS MARTINEZ SANTANA COMPOSED BY AMPARO RIVERA

FIGUEROA IN THE WIDOW’S RIGHT OF USUFRUCT AND JOHN DOE AND JANE DOE AS

UNKNOWN HEIRS OF THE ESTATE

Defendant

Civil Num.: 16-cv-02972. (FAB).

Re: COLLECTION OF MONIES, FORECLOSURE OF MORTGAGE. NOTICE OF SALE.

To: AMPARO RIVERA FIGUEROA AND THE ESTATE OF CARLOS LUCAS MARTINEZ SANTANA COMPOSED BY AMPARO RIVERA FIGUEROA IN THE WIDOW’S RIGHT OF USUFRUCT AND JOHN DOE AND JANE DOE AS UNKNOWN HEIRS OF THE ESTATE, ANY OTHER PARTY WITH INTEREST OVER THE PROPERTY MENTIONED BELOW; GENERAL PUBLIC.

WHEREAS: Judgment was entered on March 7, 2023, to pay plaintiff the sum of of $127,087.08, plus interest over the unpaid principal balance at the rate of 5.016% per annum since March 10, 2017. Such interest will continue to accrue until the debt is paid in full. In addition, an additional deferred balance of $4, 032.52 does not accrue interest at this time. In addition, the Defendant(s) owes the Plaintiff late charges amounting to 5.00% of any and all monthly payments or installments in arrears over fifteen (15) days after the install-

ment is due. The Defendant(s) also owe the Plaintiff all of the advances made pursuant to the provisions and/or dispositions of the Mortgage Note and the Mortgage Deed. The Defendant(s) also owes an amount equivalent to 10.00% of the original principal balance, or $14,350.00 as a liquidated amount to cover the costs, expenses, and attorney’s fees. The records of the case and of these proceedings may be examined by interested parties at the Office of the Clerk of the United States District Court, Room 150, Federal Office Building, 150 Chardon Avenue, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico. WHEREAS: Pursuant to the terms of the aforementioned Judgment, Order of Execution, and the Writ of Execution thereof, the undersigned Special Master was ordered to sell at public auction for U.S. currency in cash or certified check without appraisement or right of redemption to the highest bidder and at the office of the Clerk of the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, Room 150 – Federal Office Building, 150 Carlos Chardón Avenue, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, to cover the sums adjudged to be paid to the plaintiff, the following property (as described in the Property Registry in Spanish language):

URBANA: Solar marcado con el número S guion dieciséis (S16) del plano de inscripción de la Urbanización Santa Mónica, radicada en el barrio Pájaros del término municipal de Bayamón, con una cabida superficial de 330.294 metros cuadrados.

Colinda al NORTE, con el solar #15, en una distancia de 24.00 metros lineales; al SUR, con el solar #17, en igual distancia; al ESTE, con la calle #12, en una distancia de 12.397 metros lineales y al OESTE, con el solar #35, en una distancia de 9.44 metros lineales y con el solar #34, en una distancia de 5.687 metros, con distancia de 15.127 metros. Enclava edificación. La propiedad consta inscrita al folio 41 del tomo 499 de Bayamón Sur, finca número 22,696 del Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección

I. The property is recorded at page 41 of Bayamon South, volume 499, property number 22696 on Puerto Rico Property Registry at Bayamon, Section

I. The mortgage is recorded at page 117 of volume 1755 of Bayamon South, 3rd inscription, property #67129 of the Property Registry of Property of Bayamon. Section I. The modification is recorded of Bayamon South volume Karibe, property #67129, fourth inscription in the Property Registry of Bayamon, Section I. WHEREAS: This property is subject to the following liens: Senior Liens: None. Ju-

nior Liens: None. Other Liens: None. Potential bidders are advised to verify the extent of

preferential liens with the holders thereof. It shall be understood that each bidder accepts as sufficient the title and that prior and preferential liens to the one being foreclosed upon, including but not limited to any property tax, liens, (express, tacit, implied or legal) shall continue in effect it being understood further that the successful bidder accepts them and is subrogated in the responsibility for the same and that the bid price shall not be applied toward their cancellation. THEREFORE, the FIRST PUBLIC SALE shall be held on the 12TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER OF 2023, AT: 9:35 AM. The minimum bid that will be accepted is the sum of $143,500.00. In the event said first auction does not produce a bidder and the property is not adjudicated, a SECOND PUBLIC AUCTION shall be held on the 19TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER OF 2023, AT: 9:35 AM, and the minimum bid that will be accepted is the sum $95,666.67, which is two-thirds of the amount of the minimum bid for the first public sale. If a second auction does not result in the adjudication and sale of the property, a THIRD PUBLIC AUCTION will be held on the 26TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER OF 2023, AT: 9:35 AM, and the minimum bid that will be accepted is the sum of $71,750.00, which is one-half of the minimum bid in the first public sale. Should there be no award or adjudication at the third public sale, the property may be awarded to the creditor for the entire amount of its debt if it is equal to or less than the amount of the minimum bid of the third public sale, crediting this amount to the amount owed if it is greater. The Special Master shall not accept in payment of the property to be sold anything but United States currency or certified checks, except in case the property is sold and adjudicated to the plaintiff, in which case the amount of the bid made by said plaintiff shall be credited and deducted from its credit; said plaintiff being bound to pay in cash or certified check only any excess of its bid over the secured indebtedness that remains unsatisfied. WHEREAS: Said sale to be made by the Special Master subject to confirmation by the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico and the deed of conveyance and possession to the property will be executed and delivered only after such confirmation. Upon confirmation of the sale, an order shall be issued cancelling all junior liens. For further particulars, reference is made to the judgment entered by the Court in this case, which can be examined in the Office of Clerk of the United States District Court, District of Puerto Rico. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, this 13th day of July of

2023. Pedro A. Vélez-Baerga, Special Master, specialmasterpr@gmail.com, 787-672-8269.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMÓN SALA SUPERIOR BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO

Demandante V. FRANCISCO GUZMAN ROSADO, GRETCHEN MAILLIL RIVERA

GARCIA T/C/C

GRETCHEN MAILLIL RIVERA GARCIA Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR

AMBOS

Demandados Civil Núm.: DCD2012-3309. (503). Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. AVISO DE VENTA EN PÚBLICA SUBASTA. Yo, EDGARDO ELÍAS VARGAS SANTANA, ALGUACIL AUXILIAR PLACA #193, Alguacil de la División de Subastas del Centro Judicial de Bayamón, a los demandados y al público en general les notifico que, cumpliendo con un Mandamiento que se ha librado en el presente caso por el Secretario del Tribunal de epígrafe con fecha de 27 de enero de 2023 y para satisfacer la Sentencia por las cantidad de $54,110.05 de principal, dictada en el caso de autos el día 4 de junio de 2015, notificada y archivada en autos el 12 de junio de 2015, la misma fue publicada mediante edicto publicado a través del periódico “El Vocero”, el día 18 de junio de 2015. Procederé a vender en pública subasta, al mejor postor en pago de contado y en moneda del curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América, mediante efectivo, giro o cheque certificado a nombre del Alguacil de este Tribunal todo derecho, título e interés que hayan tenido tengan o puedan tener los deudores demandados en cuanto a la propiedad localizada en el Municipio de Dorado, Puerto Rico, el bien inmueble se describe a continuación: RÚSTICA: Parcela marcada con el número cuarenta y ocho guión E (48-E) en el plano de parcelación de la comunidad rural Mameyal del Barrio Higuillar del término municipal de Dorado, con una cabida superficial de cero cuerdas con mil treinta y tres diez milésimas de metros cuadrados (0.1033C), equivalentes a cuatrocientos cinco punto noventa y cinco (405.95) metros cuadrados. En lindes por el Norte, con la parcela cuarenta y ocho guión D (48-D) de la comunidad; por el Sur, con la calle seis (6) de la comunidad; por el Este con la parcela número cuaren-

ta y ocho guión C (48-C) de la comunidad; y por el Oeste, con la calle Central. Finca 4,786 inscrita al folio 182 del tomo

108 de Dorado, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección Cuarta. Con el importe de dicha venta se habrá de satisfacer a la parte demandante las cantidades adeudadas, según la Sentencia dictada en el caso de epígrafe, por el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Bayamón, cuyas cantidades son las siguientes: $54,110.05 de principal, intereses equivalentes al 7.50% de interés anual, los cuales continúan acumulándose hasta el saldo total de la deuda; $41.30 de reserva “escrow”; $814.07 de gastos por mora, los cuales continúan acumulándose hasta el pago total de la deuda; $885.00 de otros gastos más costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados pactados en 10% del principal del pagaré. El tipo mínimo para la subasta será la suma de tasación pactada, la cual es $59,500.00 para la propiedad descrita. Si no produjere remate o adjudicación la primera subasta, se procederá a una segunda subasta y servirá de tipo mínimo de 2/3 partes del valor de la tasación, $39,666.66 Si tampoco hubiere remate ni adjudicación en esta segunda subasta, se procederá a una tercera subasta, en ésta el tipo mínimo será de la 1/2 del valor de la tasación, $29,750.00. Para el lote descrito, la PRIMERA SUBASTA se llevará a cabo el día 28 DE AGOSTO DE 2023, A LAS 9:45 DE LA MAÑANA. De no comparecer postor alguno se llevará a efecto una SEGUNDA SUBASTA el día 11 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2023, A LAS 9:45 DE LA MAÑANA. De no comparecer postor alguno se llevará a cabo una TERCERA SUBASTA el día 18 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2023, A LAS 9:45 DE LA MAÑANA. La subasta o subastas antes indicadas se llevarán a efecto en mi oficina, localizada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Bayamón. Del Estudio de Titulo realizado surge el siguiente gravamen posterior, el cual será objeto de ejecución por esta subasta:

HIPOTECA: Constituída por los esposos Guzmán-Rivera a favor de la Autoridad para el Financiamiento de la Vivienda de Puerto Rico, por $10,000.00 sin intereses, vencedero el día 27 de febrero de 2012, según Esc. #165, otorgada en San Juan, el día 27 de febrero de 2004, ante Félix Javier Santiago García, inscrita al Folio 67 del Tomo 245 de Dorado, finca #4786, inscripción 5ta. Contiene condiciones de venta por 8 años. Se le advierte a los licitadores que la adjudicación se hará al mejor postor, quien deberá consignar el importe de su oferta en el mismo acto de la adjudicación en moneda de curso legal de los Estados Uni-

dos de Norteamérica y para conocimiento de la parte demandada y de toda(s) aquella(s) persona(s) que tengan interés inscrito con posterioridad a la inscripción del gravamen que se está ejecutando, y para conocimiento de los licitadores y el público en general y para su publicación en un periódico de circulación general, una vez por semana durante el término de dos (2) semanas consecutivas con un intervalo de por lo menos siete (7) días entre ambas publicaciones, y para su fijación en tres (3) lugares públicos del municipio en que ha de celebrarse la venta, tales como, la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la Colecturía y se le notificará además a la parte demandada vía correo certificado con acuse de recibo a la última dirección conocida. La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores, previa orden judicial dirigida al Registrador de la Propiedad de la sección correspondiente para la cancelación de aquellos posteriores. Se les advierte a todos los interesados que todos los documentos relacionados con la presente acción de ejecución de hipoteca, así como la de la subasta, estarán disponibles para ser examinados, durante horas laborables, en la Secretaría del Tribunal. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito de ejecutante, continuarán subsiguientes; entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Y para conocimiento de los demandados, de los acreedores posteriores, de los licitadores, partes interesadas y público en general, expido el presente Aviso para su publicación en los lugares públicos correspondientes. Librado en Bayamón, Puerto Rico, a 24 de julio de 2023. EDGARDO ELÍAS VARGAS SANTANA, ALGUACIL AUXILIAR PLACA #193. ***

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE JUANA DÍAZ

ISLAND PORTFOLIO SERVICES, LLC COMO

AGENTE DE ACE ONE FUNDING, LLC

Demandante V.

ERIKA K. TORRES NÚÑEZ

Demandado(a)

Civil: SI2022CV00061. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: ERIKA K. TORRES NUÑEZ PARA SER

NOTIFICADA POR EDICTO POR CONDUCTO DE LA LCDA. NATALIE BONAPARTE SERVERA, NATALIE.BONAPARTE@ ORF-LAW.COM. (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 27 de julio de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o 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 31 de julio de 2023. En Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico, el 31 de julio de 2023.

CARMEN G. TIRÚ QUIÑONEZ, SECRETARIA. VANESSA RODRÍGUEZ MALDONADO, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN ISLAND PORTFOLIO SERVICES, LLC

COMO AGENTE DE FAIRWAY ACQUISITIONS FUND, LLC

Demandante V. CIARA SANTOS RODRIGUEZ Demandado(a)

Civil: SJ2022CV09149. 903.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: CIARA SANTOS RODRIGUEZ - BAYSIDE COVE, 105 AVE.

ARTERIAL HOSTOS

APT 163, SAN JUAN, PR 00918-2983. (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 29 de junio de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de

una distancia de 16.00 metros, con la calle West Rose de dicha Urbanización; y por el OESTE, en una distancia de 16.00 metros con los #329 y 330, todos estos solares pertenecientes al referido desarrollo urbano. Contiene una casa de concreto diseñada para una familia. Finca 49958 inscrita al folio 189 del tomo 1154 de Carolina II, Registro de la Propiedad de Carolina, Sección II. La finca antes descrita se encuentra afecta a los siguientes gravámenes: (i) Hipoteca constituida por Santos Asdrubal Ortiz Santiago, soltero, en garantía de un pagaré, aff#.3013, a favor de Scotiabank de P.R., o a su orden, por $149,148.00, al 3.25%, vencedero el 1 de noviembre de 2045, según Esc. #163, (no expresa lugar de otorgamiento), el 31 de octubre de 2015, ante Julio E. Pijem Berrios, inscrita al folio 77 del tomo 1543 de Carolina, finca #49,958 inscripción 9na., Registro de la Propiedad de Carolina, Sección II. La hipoteca objeto de esta ejecución es la que ha quedado descrita en el inciso (i). Será celebrada la subasta para con el importe de la misma satisfacer la sentencia dicta el 4 de abril de 2023, mediante la cual se condenó a la parte demandada pagar a la parte demandante la suma de $136,599.40 de principal, más $9,717.38 de interés al 3.25% acumulados hasta el 1 de febrero de 2022 que continuarán acumulándose a razón de $11.6268 diario hasta el saldo total, $724.17 de otros gastos, más $4,913.76 de cuenta de reserva, más $14,914.80 de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado, más cualquier otro desembolso que haya efectuado o efectúe la parte demandante durante la tramitación de este caso para otros adelantos de conformidad con el Contrato Hipotecario, incluyendo primas de seguro de hipoteca, prima de seguro de siniestro y cargos por demora. La PRIMERA SUBASTA será celebrada el día 7 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2023 A

LAS 9:45 DE LA MAÑANA, en la oficina del Alguacil, sita en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Carolina, Puerto Rico. Servirá de tipo mínimo para la misma la cantidad de $149,148.00, sin admitirse oferta inferior. De no haber remate ni adjudicación, celebraré SE-

GUNDA SUBASTA el día 14 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2023 A LAS

9:45 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo lugar, en la que servirá como tipo mínimo, dos terceras (2/3) partes del precio pactado para la primera subasta, o sea, $99,432.00. Si no hubiese remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta, celebraré

TERCERA SUBASTA el día 21 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2023 A

LAS 9:45 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo lugar en la que regirá como tipo mínimo, la mitad del precio pactado para la primera

subasta, o sea, $74,574.00. El Alguacil que suscribe hizo constar que toda licitación deberá hacerse para pagar su importe en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos de América, de acuerdo con la Ley y de acuerdo con lo anunciado en este Aviso de Subasta. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante horas laborables. Se entiende que todo licitador que comparezca a la subasta señalada en este caso acepta como bastante la titulación que da base a la misma. Se entiende que cualquier carga y/o gravamen anterior y/o preferente, si la hubiere al crédito que da base a esta ejecución continuará subsistente, entendiéndose, además, que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción cualquier parte del remanente del precio de licitación. La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. Por la presente se notifica a los acreedores que tengan inscritos o anotados sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante o acreedores de cargas o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca ejecutada y las personas interesadas en, o con derecho a exigir el cumplimiento de instrumentos negociables garantizados hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito ejecutado, para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les convenga o satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, costas y honorarios de abogados asegurados, quedando subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. Vendida o adjudicada la finca o derecho hipotecado y consignado el precio correspondiente, en esa misma fecha o fecha posterior, el alguacil que celebró la subasta procederá a otorgar la correspondiente escritura pública de traspaso en representación del dueño o titular de los bienes hipotecados, ante el notario que elija el adjudicatario o comprador, quien deberá abonar el importe de tal escritura. El alguacil pondrá en posesión judicial al nuevo dueño, si así se lo solicita dentro del término de veinte (20) días a partir de la confirmación de la venta o adjudicación. Si transcurren los referidos veinte (20) días, el tribunal podrá ordenar, sin necesidad de ulterior procedimiento, que se lleve a efecto el desalojo o lanzamiento del ocupante u ocupantes de la finca o de todos los que por orden o tolerancia del deudor la ocupen. Y PARA CONOCIMIENTO DE LOS LICITADORES Y DEL PUBLICO EN GENERAL y para

su publicación de acuerdo con la Ley, expido el presente Edicto bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal. En Carolina, Puerto Rico, hoy 18 de julio de 2023.

HÉCTOR L. PEÑA RODRÍGUEZ, ALGUACIL, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA DE CAROLINA.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

LYDIA MARGARITA ROLÓN MELÉNDEZ PETICIONARIA EX-PARTE

CIVIL NUM. CG2023CV01388.

SOBRE: EXPEDIENTE DE DOMINIO. EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: CUALQUIER PERSONA

QUE PUDIESE TENER INTERES Y TODA

PERSONA A QUIEN PUDIERA PERJUDICAR LA INSCRIPCIÓN SOLICITADA.

POR LA PRESENTE se le notifica que ha sido presentada en este Tribunal por la parte peticionaria, una petición de expediente de dominio solicitando la inscripción del inmueble que se describe en dicha petición a nombre de dicha peticionaria.

El Sr. Rafael Rolón García, padre de la parte peticionaria, estuvo ocupando el referido bien inmueble hasta el momento de su fallecimiento. El causante Rafael Rolón García obtuvo la posesión de dicho terreno por cesión o donación de su madre, Isabel García García, quien lo adquirió desde hace muchos años pero no cuenta con documento alguno que acredite dicha cesión. Antes de éste fallecer, el Sr. Rolón le cedió en vida a la peticionaria todo derecho sobre la propiedad inmueble antes descrita. Sin embargo, desde que ocurrió dicha cesión la peticionaria ha estado poseyendo el inmueble como dueña por más de 30 años. La descripción exacta del bien inmueble objeto del procedimiento es el siguiente: - RUSTICA: Solar radicado en la Carretera #734 KM 4.0, sito en el barrio Arenas del término municipal de Cidra, Puerto Rico, identificado en el plano de mensura con el número Lote lE con una cabida superficial de 392.6300 metros cuadrados, equivalentes a 0.0999 cuerdas. En lindes al Norte, en 14.2081 metros con terrenos de Aida M. Rolón Meléndez y en 8.3113 metros con un Camino Existente; al Sur en 22.82 10 metros con Carretera Estatal #734; al Este en 12.6443 metros con Rafaela Rolón Meléndez y al Oeste, en 16.4298 metros con Antulio

Aponte. Se le notifica que 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 Secretaria del Tribunal Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala de Cidra y enviando copia a la representación legal de la parte peticionaria: LCDO.

VICTOR M. RIVERA TORRES, con dirección en la Avenida Fernández Juncos 1420, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00909, teléfono 787-727-5710, fax: 787268-1835. Se le advierte que este edicto se publicará en un periódico de circulación diaria general en tres (3) ocasiones dentro del término de veinte (20) días, a fin de que cualquier persona interesada pueda comparecer ante el Tribunal, dentro del término de veinte (20) días a contar de la fecha del la ultima publicación del edicto, a fin de alegar lo que el derecho de estos convenga. LISILDA MARTINEZ AGOSTO, Secretaria. Arleen Hernandez Peluyera, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal I.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO de puerto RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA sUPERIOR DE GUAYNABO

MARIA EUGENIA

GONZALEZ REVILLAS, POR SI MISMA Y EN REPRESENTACIÓN DE LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA ENTRE MARIA EUGENIA GONZALEZ REVILLAS Y JOSE ELiAS LOPEZ DIAZ Demandante V DORAL MORTGAGE CORP., BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO, COMO SUCESOR DE DORAL BANK; JOSE ELIAS LOPEZ DIAZ Y FULANO DE TAL Demandado(a)

Civil: GB2022CV00948. Sala: 202. Sobre: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: JOSÉ ELÍAS LÓPEZ DÍAZ, 2724 HEATHER COURT, DELAND, FL 32724, JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE COMO POSIBLES TENEDORES DEL PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. (Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 22 de febrero de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia,

Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha 31 de julio de 2023. En Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, el 31 de julio de 2023. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, SECRETARIA REGIONAL II. SARA ROSA VILLEGAS, SECRETARIA DEL TRIBUNAL CONFIDENCIAL I.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYAMÓN FIRSTBANK

PUERTO RICO

Demandante V. LUIS MARIO MILLAN JIMÉNEZ; JANILU SOBRADO FIGUEROA Y LA SOCIEDAD DE BIENES GANANCIALES POR AMBOS COMPUESTA

Demandado(a)

Civil: BY2022CV04373. Sala: 401. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: LUIS MARIO MILLAN JIMENEZ POR SI Y EN REPRESENTACIÓN DE LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES MILIANSOBRADO.

JANILU SOBRADO FIGUEROA POR SI Y EN REPRESENTACIÓN DE LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES MILIANSOBRADO.

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto)

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 14 de julio de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta no-

tificación 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 1 de agosto de 2023. En Bayamón, Puerto Rico, el 1 de agosto de 2023. LIC. LAURA I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, SECRETARIA. CARMEN M. PINTADO, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYAMÓN.

CARLOS LAUREANO FIGUEROA; CARMEN

LAUREANO LÓPEZ; JOVITA LAUREANO LÓPEZ; MARCIANA

LAUREANO LÓPEZ; HERMA LAUREANO LÓPEZ; ANGELINA

LAUREANO LÓPEZ; EFRÉN LAUREANO LÓPEZ; ÁNGEL LUIS

LAUREANO LÓPEZ; LUZ

SELENIA LAUREANO LÓPEZ; JOSÉ RENÉ

LAUREANO LÓPEZ; TERESA LAUREANO LÓPEZ; ELBA IRIS

LAUREANO LÓPEZ; CARLOS LAUREANO LÓPEZ; LUIS ALFREDO

LAUREANO LÓPEZ; JOSÉ JARIEL LAUREANO RIVERA; JOSÉ JOEL

LAUREANO RIVERA; JOSELINE LAUREANO LOZADA E ITSIA

MARGARET LAUREANO LOZADA.

Parte Demandante Vs. JOSÉ JAVIER

LAUREANO RIVERA

Parte Demandada

CIVIL NUM. BY2023CV03732.

SALA: SOBRE: PARTICIÓN Y LIQUIDACION DE HERENCIA PARCIAL. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO.

A: JOSÉ JAVIER

LAUREANO RIVERA DE:

CARLOS LAUREANO

FIGUEROA; CARMEN

LAUREANO LÓPEZ; JOVITA LAUREANO LÓPEZ; MARCIANA

LAUREANO LÓPEZ;

HERMA LAUREANO LÓPEZ; ANGELINA

LAUREANO LÓPEZ; EFRÉN LAUREANO

LÓPEZ; ÁNGEL LUIS

LAUREANO LÓPEZ; LUZ

SELENIA LAUREANO

LÓPEZ; JOSÉ RENÉ

LAUREANO LÓPEZ; TERESA LAUREANO

LÓPEZ; ELBA IRIS

LAUREANO LÓPEZ; CARLOS LAUREANO

LÓPEZ; LUIS ALFREDO

LAUREANO LÓPEZ; JOSÉ JARIEL

LAUREANO RIVERA; JOSÉ JOEL LAUREANO

RIVERA; JOSELINE

LAUREANO LOZADA

E ITSIA MARGARET

LAUREANO LOZADA, REPRESENTADOS POR

LA LCDA. MARIAM

BERRIOS SÁNCHEZ CON DIRECCIÓN 101 CALLE

ESTEBAN PADILLA, OFICINA 4, BAYAMÓN, P.R. 00959.

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza, se le notifica que una demanda ha sido presentada en su contra y se le requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto, radicando el original de su contestación ante el Tribunal correspondiente y notificando con copia de la misma a la parte demandante a la dirección antes indicada. “Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal.” Se le apercibe que, de no hacerlo, se podrá dictar Sentencia en rebeldía concediendo el remedio solicitado en la demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle.

Se excusa a los demandantes de enviar al demandado, por correo certificado con acuse de recibo, copia de la demanda y del emplazamiento a su última dirección conocida, por ser ellos personas desconocidas cuyas identidades y residencias se ignoran. EXTENDIDO

BAJO MI FIRMA Y EL SELLO DEL TRIBUNAL, en Bayamón, Puerto Rico, hoy día 12 de julio de 2023. LCDA. LAURA I.

SANTA SÁNCHEZ, Secretria

Regional. Lureimy Alicea Gonzalez, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU-

NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYA-

MÓN COMPU- LINK CORPORATION, D/B/A CELINK Demandante Vs. SUCESION DE LEONOR FIGUEROA CARRILLO T/C/C LEONOR

FIGUEROA T/C/C

LEONOR FIGUEROA DE VILLANUEVA

COMPUESTA POR JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS; ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA; CENTRO DE RECAUDACION DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES Demandados Civil Núm.: BY2023CV03128. (703). Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS.

A: JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE COMO POSIBLES MIEMBROS DESCONOCIDOS DE SUCESION DE LEONOR

FIGUEROA CARRILLO T/C/C LEONOR

FIGUEROA T/C/C LEONOR FIGUEROA DE VILLANUEVA. POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al Tribunal su alegación responsiva a la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días a partir de 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: http://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberé 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.

Greenspoon Marder, LLP

Lcda. Frances L. Asencio-Guido

R.U.A. 15,622

TRADE CENTRE SOUTH, SUITE 700 100 WEST CYPRESS CREEK ROAD

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL 33309

Telephone: (954) 343 6273

Frances.Asencio@gmlaw.com

Expedido bajo mi firma, y sello del Tribunal, en Bayamón, Puerto Rico, hoy día 21 de julio de 2023. LCDA. LAURA

I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, SECRETARIA REIOGNAL. CARMEN

M. PINTADO, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL I.

Spain’s team went to war. Now it has to win the peace.

By RORY SMITH

Acouple of days before Spain’s first genuine test of this World Cup — an encounter with Japan in Wellington, New Zealand — team officials became aware of an issue. The players, it turned out, were bored. Their families and friends, who had traveled halfway around the globe to watch their games, were bored. Some of the squad had young children in tow. They were bored, too.

Spain had chosen the town of Palmerston North as its base for the tournament. It made perfect sense. The team was guaranteed to play all of its games until the semifinal on New Zealand’s North Island. Palmerston, a university town a couple of hours north of Wellington, and a short flight from Auckland, fit the bill.

But three weeks into their stay — Spain arrived in New Zealand well in advance of its first game, hoping to draw the sting from the jet lag — the place had started to pall. New Zealand’s second-largest noncoastal city boasted precious little to do, particularly in the evenings. The players, and their families, wanted to move.

Even with the game with Japan looming, the Spanish federation acceded to the players’ request. Officials began the laborious task of moving an entire elite sports team — 23 players, 31 coaches and support staff, piles of equipment and mounds of accouterments — to the James Cook Hotel in Wellington in the middle of a tournament.

And as if that was not enough, the federation did what it could to help the dozens of family members who formed the team’s traveling caravan with their arrangements, too. Logistically, it was a considerable heave. The kind that is hardly ideal from a sporting perspective. In Spain’s case, though, it was worth it, just to keep the peace.

Few teams arrived in Australia and New Zealand with more pedigree than Spain.

Jorge Vilda’s team, after all, boasts not only Alexia Putellas, the two-time Ballon d’Or winner, but also Aitana Bonmati, the midfielder regarded as her heir apparent. They are two of nine members of the squad drawn from Barcelona, European club soccer’s unquestioned powerhouse.

No team, though, landed in quite such a fragile state. Last September, in the aftermath of Spain’s elimination from the European Championship a month or so earlier,

15 players sent the country’s federation a boilerplate email withdrawing themselves from consideration for the national team.

The signatories included not just Bonmati, but Patri Guijarro, Mariona Caldentey and Mapi León, central figures in the great Barcelona side, as well as Ona Batlle, Laia Aleixandri and Leila Ouahabi, some of the country’s most high-profile exports. Three players — Putellas, forward Jenni Hermoso and Irene Paredes, then the national team’s captain — did not send the email but were seen as giving it their tacit support.

Spain had, in an instant, lost the core of its golden generation.

The precise nature of the grievances that had forced the players’ hand remained oblique in public — the email referred only to “the latest events that have occurred in the national team, and the situation they have created” — but, privately, the list of complaints was both long and, in the context of women’s soccer, distinctly familiar.

The players, now ensconced in professional environments at their clubs, felt the national team program was outmoded, not up to the standard they had come to expect. The facilities the federation provided for them were subpar, the players believed. They traveled to some games by bus, rather than plane, as many of their rivals did, or as they would at club level.

Vilda, the coach, was said to have fostered an oppressive workplace environ-

ment, one in which the players’ every move was monitored by his staff. Nobody ever confirmed as much, but it was widely assumed that his removal would be required if the players were to contemplate returning.

The federation, though, decided on a less conciliatory approach. Vilda was, in the words of Luis Rubiales, the federation president, “untouchable.” If the group of “15 plus three,” as it had come to be seen, did not want to play for Spain, that was fine: Spain would go and find some people who did. Vilda called up a scratch squad, and immediately embarked on a run of 16 games in which his team drew once, lost once, and won the rest. Among the teams it defeated was the mighty United States, but also Japan, Jamaica and Norway.

As the World Cup drew closer, though, the hard-line stance started to soften. Hermoso and Paredes, only informally associated with the strike, were called back into the team, forging a path for the others. The Spanish players’ union volunteered to mediate a meeting between the holdouts and Ana Álvarez, the federation’s director of women’s soccer.

The federation refused, but made an alternative suggestion: Álvarez would meet with every player individually, giving them an opportunity to lodge their complaints. Through May and June, she held more than a dozen meetings with the disaffected players, inviting some to Madrid and traveling to Barcelona to see others.

At the end, though, there was an awkward coda. The players had removed themselves from international contention by email. They had to make themselves available again in the same way. The federation would not risk calling up anyone who might reject the olive branch.

Conscious of not only their own professional ambitions but various commercial agreements, the majority of the players acquiesced.

When Vilda named his World Cup squad, though, only three of the players to have signed the original email — Bonmati, Batlle and Caldentey — were included. The others had all been omitted. The coach had decided, instead, to prioritize those players who had helped Spain prepare for the tournament.

Spain now boasts a vastly expanded coaching staff, including for the first time both a nutritionist and a podiatrist in the

traveling party. The standard of accommodation and transport has improved, too.

The players have been allowed to spend considerable amounts of down time with family members and friends. Even after the game with Japan ended in a deflating 4-0 loss, they were given a morning off to see their loved ones. The atmosphere, according to those on the squad, is much more relaxed and “flexible” than it has been at previous tournaments.

“Things are not forgotten,” Paredes said in an interview with El País. “But we must put them aside knowing that we have a common goal and that we are going for it.”

The sense of purpose is such that Bonmati, one of the signatories of the original email, even cast the defeat to Japan as a bonding experience. “This is going to unite us more than ever,” she said.

Whether that is how it plays out, of course, remains to be seen. Should Spain lose to Switzerland on Saturday in the round of 16, it is not difficult to imagine the uneasy truce breaking.

FIFA Women’s World Cup Group Stage

Thursday’s Result s

Morocco 1, Colombia 0 South Korea 1, Germany 1

Wednesday’s Results

Sweden 2, Argentina 0

South Africa 3, Italy 2 France 6, Panama 3 Jamaica 0, Brazil 0

Round of 16

Saturday’s Games (all times Eastern Standard Time)

Switzerland vs. Spain (1 a.m., FS1)

Japan vs. Norway (4 a.m., FS1)

Netherlands vs. South Africa (10 p.m., FOX)

Sunday’s Game

Sweden vs. United States (5 a.m., FOX)

Monday’s Games

England vs. Nigeria (3:30 a.m., FS1)

Australia vs. Denmark (6:30 a.m., FS1)

Tuesday’s Games

Colombia vs. Jamaica (4 a.m., FS1)

France vs. Morocco (7 a.m., FS1)

Spain’s federation backed its coach, Jorge Vilda, in black jacket, in a dispute with its players.

The Rays plan to keep calm and carry on

By MATT MARTELL

The Tampa Bay Rays were the best team in Major League Baseball over the first three months of the season. In July, they were the second worst.

With 16 losses in 24 games, it was their worst month since 2007, the year before they dropped the “Devil” from their moniker. During this monthlong aboutface, they went from leading the American League East by 6.5 games to trailing the upstart Baltimore Orioles by a game and a half.

Yet, in the final hours before Tuesday’s trading deadline, there was no panic in the visiting clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, where Tampa Bay was getting ready to play the second of three games against the last-place New York Yankees. The Rays understood they were never going to keep up the fast pace they carried through April, just as they recognized they would not continue to play as poorly as they did in July.

The Rays had just withstood the nadir of their season, and they still had the third best record in the majors and held a four-game lead over the Houston Astros for the top spot in the AL wild-card standings. As they saw it, they were in fairly good shape.

“We believe that this group is a championship-caliber group. We believe that they’ve shown that to be the case this season, over the course of the entire season,” Rays general manager Peter Bendix said Tuesday night. “And we believe that that’s the group moving forward that can take us where we want to go.”

Tampa Bay has outscored its oppo -

nents by 142 runs this season, resulting in an expected record of 69-41, three games better than the team’s actual record. Baltimore’s run differential — plus-60 — indicates that team would typically be 59-48. So some of the gap between the teams could be attributed to luck.

The biggest problem for the Rays during their July swoon was their offense going cold. After scoring 5.64 runs a game over the first three months, they averaged 3.63 in July.

“We had eight or nine guys all raking at the same time to start the year,” manager Kevin Cash said. “And then eight of the nine stopped at the same time.”

The bats appear to be waking up again. Over the past week, the Rays have averaged 4.43 runs a game. Second base -

man Brandon Lowe is batting .423 with four home runs in his last seven games. Third baseman Isaac Paredes has hit three of his team-leading 21 home runs within the last four games. And Randy Arozarena, the team’s All-Star outfielder, broke an 0-for-26 slide with a two-run homer on Tuesday.

After Monday’s 5-1 win over the Yankees, outfielder Josh Lowe said he felt the team was getting its confidence and energy back.

“It’s a 162-game season — guys get tired,” he said. “We all kind of just got tired at the same time. But it’s time to pick it up again. I think we all realized that we’re getting down to the wire a little bit. It’s time to put it into gear and get playing some good baseball.”

That faith explains the approach Tampa Bay took in the weeks leading up to the deadline. Instead of going all-in for the biggest stars on the block, the Rays made several smaller moves to add depth to the higher levels of their farm system and reinforce their injury-depleted pitching staff.

“When you have a team like we do, that we think of as a championship-level team, you feel a lot of urgency to make that team better — and you also have maybe fewer areas that are obvious in which you can improve,” Bendix said. “We really do believe in the quality of this team to this point.”

Starters Jeffrey Springs and Drew Rasmussen both went down with seasonending injuries earlier this year, as did reliever Garrett Cleavinger. Josh Fleming

has been out since early June with elbow inflammation and isn’t particularly close to returning. Neither Andrew Kittredge, a reliever, nor Shane Baz, a young starter, have pitched at all this season after having Tommy John surgery last year. An oblique strain cost Tyler Glasnow nearly two months at the start of the season, and the team’s ace left-hander, Shane McClanahan, missed the first half of July with back tightness.

With all that in mind, the Rays made their most notable deadline deal on Monday when they acquired right-handed starter Aaron Civale from the Cleveland Guardians for Kyle Manzardo, a 23-yearold first baseman who is a consensus top100 prospect in the minors.

Civale, 28, has quietly become one of the better starting pitchers in baseball over the past year and a half. Across 13 starts this season, he is 5-2 with a 2.34 ERA. He does not have overwhelming stuff — his fastball velocity sits in the low 90s — but he makes up for it by pounding the zone with a combination of cutters and curveballs and inducing weak contact. Importantly, he is under club control through the 2025 season. Having him around for more than just the next few months made the Rays more willing to part with a prospect of Manzardo’s talent.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had our top five starters all healthy at the same time,” Erik Neader, Tampa Bay’s president of baseball operations, said on a conference call on Monday. “This was the most obvious need we had.”

As the frenzy of deadline day picked up in the afternoon, the Rays’ players followed along eagerly, though their excitement had little to do with moves they expected their front office to make. They knew some of the other top teams in the AL had traded for All-Stars and future Hall of Famers, but they were not concerned.

“We’re watching, but not in a competitive way,” Brandon Lowe said. “We follow because we all love baseball and it’s fun to see what moves teams make.”

He added: “We don’t need wholesale changes.”

A few hours later, the Rays beat the Yankees, 5-2, for their third straight win and fifth in seven games. On Wednesday, the Rays managed just three hits -- including a two-run homer by Wander Franco in the first inning -- as the Yankees, getting seven solid innings from starter Gerrit Cole, avoided a sweep with a 7-2 win.

After a difficult July, Wander Franco, Jose Siri and the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Yankees on Tuesday for their fifth win in seven games.

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

Aries (Mar 21-April 20)

Physically, Aries, you should feel strong and energetic and ready to take on just about anything that comes your way today. This is good, as some powerful challenges may come up that bring new purpose to your life. Enthusiasm permeates your being right now. You’re likely to face with determination anything that comes your way, undeterred by the enormity of the task.

Taurus (April 21-May 21)

Romantic desire tempers spiritual passion today, and you may want to pursue both, Taurus. Perhaps your romantic partner is as spiritually inclined as you, and you aspire toward the same ends. Much of the passion you feel wells from deep within. So if you’re creatively inclined in any way, you may want to memorialize these feelings through writing, painting, or music.

Gemini (May 22-June 21)

If you’re currently romantically involved, your relationship could move to the next level of commitment. You and your partner could agree to be monogamous, get engaged, or set a wedding date. If you’re already married, you might decide to have a child. If you aren’t currently involved, Gemini, expect to attract someone soon. You’re ready and signaling your availability loud and clear to potential partners!

Cancer (June 22-July 23)

An invitation to an important social event could come today, Cancer. This may be a chance to meet important people who could advance your career in some way or who might be involved in a field that interests you. Your own energy and enthusiasm won’t be lost on them. You will obviously be speaking from the heart when you discuss what’s on your mind.

Leo (July 24-Aug 23)

A previously untapped talent may emerge today, Leo. You could decide to train this talent and create a new skill that can help you with just about any type of work you’d be doing. This is the day to do this. You should be full of energy and enthusiasm, capable of assuming any formidable task. You should be feeling physically strong and well. This is a day of challenges and new enterprises.

Virgo (Aug 24-Sep 23)

Romantic passion might motivate you to improve your physical appearance, Virgo. You might decide to exercise, change your diet, and experiment with new clothes or haircut. You’re likely to produce the results you want. With the vast amounts of energy and enthusiasm churning within you today, you might surprise yourself - with this task or anything else you decide to do.

Libra (Sep 24-Oct 23)

You might take on the world, Libra. Excitement, enthusiasm, and purpose could fill your soul, yet you may wonder where it comes from, as nothing has really changed since yesterday. Don’t waste time wondering - just harness it! Tackle a class or exercise program. Start a project. This energy comes from deep in the unconscious. It should be channeled into the conscious world!

Scorpio (Oct 24-Nov 22)

Information gleaned from friends could find you focusing on a new goal, Scorpio. You may have a lot of ideas about projects you want to take care of, and today you may realize which one has top priority. Start moving! Whatever you do, find out what you need before you start. There’s a chance you might waste time running from place to place looking for necessary materials.

Sagittarius (Nov 23-Dec 21)

A possible change in direction might arise today. You could meet someone new or run into someone you haven’t seen in a while who offers you a chance to change careers. Or it could become clear that you need to pursue your art or hobby full time. Whichever it is, Sagittarius, this is a great day to pursue it, even if you have doubts. Your past accomplishments afford you an advantage.

Capricorn (Dec 22-Jan 20)

A possible change in direction might arise today. You could meet someone new or run into someone you haven’t seen in a while who offers you a chance to change careers. Or it could become clear that you need to pursue your art or hobby full time. Whichever it is, Sagittarius, this is a great day to pursue it, even if you have doubts. Your past accomplishments afford you an advantage.

Aquarius (Jan 21-Feb 19)

Dreams and visions might come and go today, Aquarius, as unconscious images surface. Some of these impressions could represent old traumas and phobias that have outlived their usefulness and need to be released. You could draw creative inspiration from these perceptions and use them as a basis for artistic projects. By day’s end you may feel emotionally lighter.

Pisces (Feb 20-Mar 20)

Dreams and visions might come and go today, Aquarius, as unconscious images surface. Some of these impressions could represent old traumas and phobias that have outlived their usefulness and need to be released. You could draw creative inspiration from these perceptions and use them as a basis for artistic projects. By day’s end you may feel emotionally lighter.

Speed Bump