The U.S. Armed Forces has awarded the Legion of Merit (LOM) to former Health Secretary Rafael Rodríguez Mercado for his meritorious conduct in the performance of services and achievements.
The Legion of Merit is one of only two United States military decorations, the other being the Medal of Honor, that is given as a neck order.
Rodríguez Mercado, who has been in the armed forces since 1988, is currently a colonel and an adjunct professor in the Department of Surgery and Neurosciences of the Uniformed Services University. He is also a professor at the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus, where he was previously a chancellor, and also teaches at the Ponce Health Sciences University. Rodríguez Mercado has also conducted evaluations of students at Mt. Sinai, Cornell University and New York Medical College.
In an interview with the STAR, Rodríguez Mercado, who joined the armed forces as a captain, said the award was given for his contributions to the field and excellent performance over the past 10 years in the military.
Joining the armed forces allowed him to be able to study neurosurgery. He had to work two years for the armed forces for every year he was paid. While he could have left the military after 18 years, “I ended up staying for 35.”
Rodríguez Mercado was instrumental in helping avoid infections after a natural disaster. He noted that Puerto Rico was used as a model after Hurricane Maria.
He was the only Health secretary who did not receive a salary in the post. He was granted permission to use 20% of his time as secretary to perform operations because of the severe shortage of neurosurgeons in Puerto Rico and he has performed work for free.
“In December 2019, I only got $1,400 as income, which was tough,” he said.
He resigned as Health secretary in 2020.
While it has not been widely publicized, Rodríguez Mercado played a key role in the UPR Medical Sciences campus getting its accreditation back. He is a member of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and was consulted on the matter.
The magazine Galenus notes that Rodríguez Mercado has performed some 2,000 endovascular corrections in people with intracranial congenital vascular
malformations, it being one of the largest series with one of the lowest postoperative mortality rates in the world.
He is active in 15 prestigious international medical societies and has participated in multiple scientific research projects. He has made more than 140 oral presentations in Puerto Rico as well as in more than 20 countries: South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Korea, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Spain, United States, Italy, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Portugal, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Rodríguez Mercado has been a speaker outside of Puerto Rico on more than 100 occasions. He is the author or co-author of 25 scientific articles in prestigious journals, such as Neurosurgery, Stroke, American Journal of Neuroradiology, and has written three chapters for medical books.
Guánica Mayor Ismael “Titi” Rodríguez Ramos announced Thursday that his municipal team is already working on the last logistical details to receive the Three Kings of Juana Díaz as soon as they return from Rome, where they met with Pope Francis.
“We have on the agenda to receive a large number of families from Guaniqueña and other neighboring towns on Monday, January 2, 2023 in our Manuel Jiménez Mesa public square, starting at 6:00 in the afternoon,” the mayor said. “It’s definitely going to be a magical sunset for all of our children.”
The celebration of the Three Holy Kings is a unique Puerto Rican tradition in the world, and particularly in Juana Díaz, where they have their museum dedicated to all those who have been part of this anniversary.
“Just yesterday [Wednesday] the Juanadina dele-
gation went to the Vatican, where they were received by Pope Francis,” the mayor said. “There, Comrade Mayor Ramón Hernández delivered a letter to the Holy Father asking for intercession on the situation in Puerto Rico.”
As arranged by the organizers, the delegation accompanying the Kings will return to Puerto Rico on Friday, Dec. 30 after completing a journey that includes the participation of the Juanadino Kings in several events in Spain, where they were slated to commemorate Christmas Day.
After the visit to Guánica, on Jan. 6 the Three Kings will be received in the public square of Juana Díaz.
“We invite everyone to be part of this centennial celebration, where we receive the great pastoral and folkloric richness of the Feast of Kings,” Rodríguez Ramos said. “As Guaniqueños we promote the preservation and continuous development of the Kings tradition in Puerto Rico.”
(COR3); and the director of the Office of Planning and Infrastructure at UPR, Julio Collazo.
University of Puerto Rico (UPR) President Dr. Luis A. Ferrao conducted an onsite visit at the UPR’s Río Piedras campus late last week with federal and local officials with a focus on the reconstruction process underway at the Old Registrar’s building, a structure that was damaged by Hurricane Maria and which is expected to be occupied by the Faculty of Communication and Information.
Ferrao toured the site with Andrés García Martinó, the alternate federal coordinator of disaster recovery in Puerto Rico; María Cruz, the associate director of project development for agencies and private nonprofits at the Central Office of Recovery, Reconstruction and Resilience
“Since we assumed the presidency, we have been dedicated to working [closely with] the processes for the approval of priority projects and allocation of funds by the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] to direct the reconstruction of the structures that were devastated by Hurricane Maria,” Ferrao said. “At the moment, 206 permanent repair projects have been identified whose investment could amount to $831 million. The Office of Planning and Infrastructure has worked with COR3 and FEMA to expedite the disbursement of the necessary funds.”
The UPR president stressed that among the priority projects of his administration are the dormitories on the Río Piedras campus, permanent repairs on the Bayamón campus and the Guillermo Arbona Irizarry building on the Medical Sciences campus, among others.
COR3 Executive Director Manuel A. Laboy Rivera said “this permanent work that is under construction is an example of all the projects led by the UPR that are transforming the infrastructure of its campuses into a resilient one in the face of a new natural disaster.”
“The UPR has the availability of the ‘Working Capital Advance’ pilot program that will advance up to 50% of the total required by FEMA to projects that have not begun their development due to lack of capital, and this initiative will be key to the progress of the reconstruction of UPR’s 11 campuses,” he added. “At COR3 we will continue the collaboration with the administration of the first educational center in Puerto Rico to continue directing
its major projects.”
José G. Baquero, the federal coordinator of disaster recovery in Puerto Rico, noted “the importance of carrying out the reconstruction projects of the UPR system for the benefit of the entire university community.”
Fatty liver disease is becoming more common in Puerto Rico, affecting one in five adults on the island.
José F. Rodríguez Orengo, executive director of FDI Clinical Research, warned that if fatty liver disease is not controlled, it can become more prevalent than severe liver disease and a major cause of death.
FDI Clinical Research has a group of scientists researching new treatments for Puerto Rican patients. Rodríguez Orengo noted that nonalcoholic fatty liver disease refers to a group of conditions where fat accumulates in the liver, in people who do not necessarily ingest alcohol. “From FDI Clinical Research we carry out daily critical studies of drugs used to find aid for fatty liver conditions and prevent complications that trigger the development of cirrhosis, cancer or the death of people who suffer from this disease,” the medical scientist said.
In their most recent contribution to the worldwide clinical study, researchers found data demonstrating the efficacy of the study drug efruxifermin (EFX) in patients
with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
The researchers found that groups treated with a 50-milligram (mg) dose of EFX had 76% improvement in their fatty liver condition. Meanwhile, in patients who did not receive the product (placebo), an improvement of 15% was recorded.
Even more important, liver fibrosis improved by 41% in those patients with EFX (50 mg) versus 5% in placebo patients. Also, EFX-treated patients experienced statistically significant improvements in glycemic control, lipoproteins, and body weight.
“The study results are an achievement and represent hope for patients diagnosed with nonalcoholic fatty liver in Puerto Rico and patients with risk factors, who suffer from obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes,” Rodríguez Orengo said. “Although we do not have an approved treatment, these results bring us closer to the goal of offering health and quality of life alternatives to our patients.”
The doctor noted that FDI Clinical Research continues to offer the FibroScan study free of charge to patients with risk factors for developing nonalcoholic
In their most recent contribution to the worldwide clinical study, scientists at FDI Clinical Research found data demonstrating the efficacy of the study drug efruxifermin, or EFX, in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
fatty liver to assess liver function in an accurate and non-invasive way, whose procedure lasts between 15 and 25 minutes.
Engineer Javier Ocasio Pérez, who graduated from the Department of Computer Engineering at the Mayagüez Campus (RUM) of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), received double recognition by the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the space agency said last week.
The alumnus won the Robert H. Goddard Award for Exceptional Leadership for the Successful Launch of the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration Mission (LCRD), and also the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Medal for his work in recruitment and entrepreneurship development with Hispanics and minorities.
“I cannot express how happy and honored I feel to receive these awards. Both are very special to me, because they recognize my work as a leader,” said the native of Camuy, who serves as integration manager and in LCRD Mission Testing. “It fills my heart to see that all the sleepless nights, the long days, the challenges faced and resolved are profoundly valued and recognized by NASA. It has been a real privilege to lead a great multidisciplinary team, solving complex challenges as you integrate and prepare to launch a mission to space. After years of hard work and dedication, when
fi
nally the mission is launched and everything works, you know that the effort and sacrifice of the team were worth the effort.”
Ocasio Pérez was in charge of integration and testing (I&T) of the LCRD and led a large multidisciplinary team of engineers, scientists and technologists in the construction, integration and testing of the successful LCRD mission culminating in the successful launch
of the mission into space on Dec. 7, 2021.
In addition to the technical work, Ocasio Pérez contributed for many years to the development of a diverse and inclusive workforce at NASA. As chair of the Hispanic Advisory Committee for Employees (HACE), he served as a speaker at schools, universities, job fairs and conferences, and also as a mentor to several boarding school employees and students.
He showed a sustained level of exceptional leadership and made significant achievements in support of NASA’s fundamental values.
“I hope this recognition will inspire and encourage children and young people who may doubt whether they can have a positive impact in areas such as science, technology and the aerospace industry,” Ocasio Pérez said. “I always dreamed of being where I am, but I saw it as a very difficult goal to achieve. Even so, I worked very hard, I threw myself into the challenges and I reached these wonderful achievements that today I receive.”
A proud disciple of doctors Nayda Santiago, José Fernando Vega Riveros and Pedro Rivera, Ocasio Pérez said that his beginnings at NASA were during a summer experience of 2007, when he worked creating software for a specialized thermal oven for a flight team. In 2008, he became a federal employee, and has worked at NASA for 15 years.
The malicious cyberattack that forced Suffolk County government offline for weeks this fall, plunging it back to the pen and paper and fax machines of the 1990s as it fought to stem the threat, began more than a year ago, county officials revealed last week.
A forensic digital investigation into the cause of the attack, in which hackers stole sensitive data, forcing officials on Long Island to disable email for all 10,000 civil service workers as the New York county scrubbed software to stave off the intrusion, revealed that hackers first penetrated Suffolk’s computer system on Dec. 19, 2021. They entered via the county clerk’s office, exploiting a flaw in an obscure but commonplace piece of software.
Hackers spent much of the next year at large in the clerk’s system, the investigation found, ultimately managing to breach the wider county network in late summer, before they revealed themselves in September, posting ransom notes on the dark web. In response, the county took itself offline. Officials have declined to say how much money the hackers demanded.
The investigation, which began immediately after the discovery of the attack and is still incomplete, examines the how and when of the hacking, which county officials have said was carried out by BlackCat, a professional hacking outfit also known as ALPHV. Today the county’s system is largely back online, but several workarounds remain in place.
Questions remain, including, most
pressingly, how much sensitive data was stolen. A separate criminal investigation by the FBI is ongoing.
In late 2021, the United States Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency issued an urgent advisory that organizations were vulnerable to the flaw that allowed Suffolk’s hackers in, warning that “sophisticated cyber threat actors are actively scanning networks” to exploit the weakness, and urging them to update their systems.
In Suffolk County, several departments created a cyber patch in response to the warning, essentially blocking hackers from entering their systems. But the county has
no centralized cybersecurity protocol across departments, and information technology teams operate in separate fiefs, a vulnerability the hack has since exposed: The office of the county clerk, Judith A. Pascale, did not make the fix, said Lisa Black, the chief deputy county executive.
Since 2017, more than 3,600 local, state and tribal governments across the country have been targeted by ransomware hackers, according to the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an organization that seeks to improve the United States’ cybersecurity position. A November report from Tenable, a company that seeks to mitigate organizations’ exposure to hackings, found that in the months since the government warning, nearly three-quarters of organizations still remained vulnerable.
After penetrating the Suffolk County clerk’s system in December, the hackers appeared to spend months nosing through its nooks and crannies, according to investigators, who followed the “digital breadcrumbs” the hackers left behind. The next month, several Bitcoin mining programs were installed in the clerk’s system, the investigators found, establishing what is known in cybercrime as “persistence” in the clerk’s network; the hackers, in other words, were testing the limits of the system’s penetrability.
In Suffolk, the hackers found a porous system, which they broached and explored
for months undetected. According to the investigation:
— By March 2022, the hackers had installed remote-management tools that enabled them to run county clerk’s office computers from afar.
— By April, they had created their own account in the clerk’s system, “John,” the first of several fictional rogue users empowered with administrative permissions.
— By July they were lifting whole files from computers, including on July 13, when they found and made off with one bearing the label “Passwords.”
— By August they had installed scripts that collected login credentials, allowing them to capture every clerk employee’s password.
— By the end of the month, they had begun to jump from the clerk’s computer network to other, separate systems in the county, including the traffic and parking agency and the health department. There, the hackers encrypted files to make them inaccessible and hold them hostage.
Pascale’s office is no stranger to unlawful use of its computer systems. In September 2021, a few months before the cyberattacks, police arrested one of her IT supervisors, Christopher Naples, who prosecutors say had hidden 46 specialized cryptocurrency mining devices in the Riverhead building where his office was located. He was charged with public corruption and grand larceny among other charges. If convicted of the top charge against him, Naples faces up to 15 years in prison.
Indeed, one of the rogue accounts that hackers created over the summer seemed to hint at knowledge of this incident; it is a play on Naples’ name.
Naples is on administrative leave, awaiting trial. He still draws a salary, according to the county spokesperson, Marykate Guilfoyle. She said the county had no knowledge of any connection between Naples and the cyberattack.
Although hackers slipped into Suffolk computers right before Christmas last year, it was only on Sept. 8 when the county’s antivirus software — the systems that alert it to hackers — began pinging.
Within hours, the county had pulled itself offline, scrambling to stop an incursion it had just learned of, eight months and 21 days after the cyberattack had actually begun.
Lisa Black, the chief deputy county executive, works with other Suffolk County officials to bring services and record retention back online at a mobile command post with secure internet in Yaphank, New York, on Nov. 22, 2022.
The San Juan Daily Star Monday, December 26, 2022 6
The IRS subjected President Donald Trump’s predecessor and his successor to annual audits of their tax returns once they took office, spokespeople for Barack Obama and President Joe Biden said last week, intensifying questions about how Trump escaped such scrutiny until Democrats in the House started inquiring.
Late Tuesday, a House committee revealed that the IRS failed to audit Trump during his first two years in office despite a rule that states that “the individual tax returns for the president and the vice president are subject to mandatory review.” But its report left unclear whether that lapse reflected general dysfunction or whether Trump received special treatment.
The disclosure of routine audits of Obama and Biden during their time in office suggested that the agency’s treatment of Trump was an aberration.
“I’m absolutely flabbergasted,” said Nina E. Olson, the national taxpayer advocate from 2001 to 2019. “It’s disturbing. You have a process where you’re auditing the president, you better be auditing the president.”
Reports issued by the House Ways and Means Committee, which obtained Trump’s tax data last month after a yearslong legal battle, said the IRS initiated its first audit of one of his filings as president in April 2019, the same day that Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the committee’s chair, had inquired about the matter.
The IRS has yet to complete that audit, the report added, and the agency started auditing filings covering Trump’s income while president only after he left office. Even after the agency belatedly started looking, it assigned only a single agent to examine Trump’s returns, going up against a large team of lawyers and accountants who objected when the IRS added two more people to help.
The committee’s discovery that the IRS flouted its rules is bringing new scrutiny to concerns about potential politicization at the IRS during the Trump administration and spurring calls for the inspector general who oversees the agency to investigate what went wrong. It has also raised questions about why the IRS devoted so few resources to auditing Trump, who, as a business mogul, had far more complicated tax filings than any previous president.
Under Trump, the IRS was run for most of 2017 by a commissioner appointed by Obama, John Koskinen, and — after about 11 months
being overseen by an acting head, David J. Kautter — a successor appointed by Trump, Charles P. Rettig. None ensured that the agency followed its rules requiring presidential audits.
Neither Kautter nor Rettig, who left in October, responded to a request for comment. Koskinen said that his only involvement in Trump’s tax returns was working to ensure that they were kept in a secure location.
“The good thing about being commissioner is that you never know who is being audited,” Koskinen said, adding that it would have been inappropriate to ask about the status of any examination.
The committee’s reports left many questions unanswered given that it had little time to act: While Neal had sought Trump’s tax records since 2019, Trump fought that request for nearly four years. The Ways and Means Committee only received access to the information last month, with Republicans set to take control of the House in January.
Spokespeople and associates of several other former presidents over the past three decades either did not respond Wednesday to queries about whether those presidents had been audited every year they were in office or said they did not recall.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, on Wednesday called the House panel’s findings a “blockbus-
ter” that required further attention.
“The IRS was asleep at the wheel, and the presidential audit program is broken,” he said. “There is no justification for the failure to conduct the required presidential audits until a congressional inquiry was made.”
The IRS has already been the subject of repeated controversy.
The New York Times reported this year that the IRS had initiated particularly invasive audits of two of Trump’s perceived enemies, former FBI Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe. Trump also repeatedly told his chief of staff that he wanted his perceived rivals, including those two, to face tax investigations.
Despite the low odds of both being singled out, an inspector general’s report concluded that both had been randomly selected for the initial pools from which the agency drew to carry out the examinations. But it is unclear how the IRS made final selections from those pools.
In 2019, Trump raised eyebrows by telling Sen. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, to prioritize a confirmation vote for a longtime associate, Michael J. Desmond, as general counsel of the IRS over the nomination of William Barr as attorney general. Desmond had advised a subsidiary of the Trump Organization and worked with two of its tax lawyers.
And in 2018, Trump appointed as commissioner Rettig, who had written a Forbes column in 2016 defending Trump’s refusal to release his taxes as a candidate and portrayed the IRS as fully engaged in auditing very wealthy people.
“Teams of sophisticated tax advisers were likely engaged throughout Trump’s career to assure the absence of any ‘bombshell’ within the returns,” Rettig wrote. “His returns might actually be somewhat unremarkable but for the fact they are the returns of Donald Trump.”
In fact, the few glimpses of Trump’s taxes have shown much to talk about. The Trump Organization was convicted of a tax fraud scheme this month. The New York attorney general has sued Trump and three of his children, accusing them of fraudulently overvaluing his assets.
The Times gained access to years of his tax information and published a report in September 2020 that raised numerous questions about the legality of write-offs and deductions he had used to avoid paying any taxes most years. The article prompted the IRS to consider looking at Trump’s 2017 tax returns, the committee report said.
The IRS has had scant resources for years because Republicans have sought to cut its funding. The report highlighted the agency’s broader struggles in dealing with complicated tax returns filed by wealthy people and criticized its willingness to trust that returns filed by big accounting firms contained accurate information.
Congress has approved an $80 billion overhaul of the IRS intended in part to hire more specialists capable of auditing highincome filers.
to a plan to put forward false slates of proTrump electors.
After doing so, Brown sent a photo of himself wearing a suit and a mask with the U.S. Capitol over his shoulder. “Mission accomplished,” he wrote.
Investigators also asked Kelli Ward, the chair of the Arizona Republican Party, who sued to try to block the committee’s subpoena, about a text she sent to a member of the Maricopa County board of supervisors that said: “We need you to stop the counting.”
And investigators revealed how disputes broke out among organizers over the financing of the rally that preceded the violence on Jan. 6, including a payment of $60,000 to Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., for her brief speech.
pected to be released before the end of the year, including those in which witnesses provided extensive testimony used by the committee in reaching its decision to make criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Trump, Eastman and others involved in the effort to keep Trump in power after his 2020 election loss.
In an attempt to rebut the committee’s final report, five House Republicans led by Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana released their own report into the attack on the Capitol. That 141-page document criticizes law enforcement failures, accuses Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her senior team of bungling Capitol security and tries to recast Trump’s role in the events of Jan. 6 as a voice for peace and calm.
By LUKE BROADWATER, MAGGIE HABERMAN and ALAN FEUERThe House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol released a batch of 34 transcripts last week that showed witnesses repeatedly stymying parts of the panel’s inquiry by invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Conservative lawyer John Eastman, who advised former President Donald Trump on how to try to overturn the 2020 election, cited his Fifth Amendment right 155 times.
Political operative Roger Stone did so in response to more than 70 questions, including ones regarding his communications with Trump and his role in the events of Jan. 6. Activist Charlie Kirk took a similar stance, citing the potential for selfincrimination in response to most of the committee’s questions, even about his age and education (he was willing to divulge the city in which he resides).
Time and again, the panel ran into roadblocks as it tried to investigate the effort to overturn the election, the transcripts show.
“Trump lawyers and supporters Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Phil Waldron and Michael Flynn all invoked their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when asked by the select committee what supposed proof they uncovered that the election was stolen,” the committee wrote in an executive summary of its final report. “Not a single witness — nor any combination of witnesses — provided the select committee with evidence demonstrating that fraud occurred on a scale even remotely close to changing the outcome in any state.”
The transcripts released Wednesday do shine some light on previously unknown aspects of the committee’s investigation. As part of their questioning, the committee’s lawyers referred to emails or text messages they had obtained through subpoenas, quoting aloud in hopes of eliciting more information from the recalcitrant witnesses.
During the questioning of Mike Roman, director of Election Day operations for Trump’s campaign, a committee lawyer revealed communications that investigators said showed that Roman sent Gary Michael Brown, who served as the deputy director, to deliver documents to the Capitol related
“You’re done for life with me because I won’t pay you a $60,000 speaking fee for an event you aren’t speaking at?” Caroline Wren, a Trump fundraiser, wrote, as she implored Guilfoyle to call and thank Julie Jenkins Fancelli, an heir to the Publix supermarket fortune who had donated millions to put on the rally. “This poor woman has donated $1 million to Don’s Senate PAC and $3 million to this rally and you’ll can’t take five minutes out of your day to thank her. It’s so humiliating. And then you have the audacity to ask me why I won’t have her pay you $60,000?”
The transcripts also show the combative stance some witnesses and their lawyers took during questioning. For instance, a lawyer for white nationalist Nick Fuentes repeatedly challenged the committee’s investigators and accused them of grandstanding.
“I will note the irony of an accusation of grandstanding in a deposition of Mr. Fuentes,” a lawyer for the committee shot back.
Another time, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., asked Stone if he believed “coups are allowed in our constitutional system.”
Stone replied: “I most definitely decline to respond to your question.”
The release of the transcripts came a day before the committee’s planned release of its more than 800-page final report, likely the final act of an 18-month investigation during which the lawmakers interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses.
Hundreds more transcripts are ex-
“Leadership and law enforcement failures within the U.S. Capitol left the complex vulnerable on Jan. 6, 2021,” the Republican report stated. “The Democratled investigation in the House of Representatives, however, has disregarded those institutional failings that exposed the Capitol to violence that day.”
A bipartisan Senate report last year also detailed Capitol security failures but did not find any blame in the actions of Pelosi or her staff, who fled from a mob of Trump supporters chanting her name as the speaker tried to get the National Guard to respond to the violence.
The Senate report found top federal intelligence agencies failed to adequately warn law enforcement officials before the Jan. 6 riot that pro-Trump extremists were threatening violence, including plans to “storm the Capitol,” infiltrate its tunnel system and “bring guns.”
An FBI memo on Jan. 5 warning of people traveling to Washington for “war” at the Capitol never made its way to top law enforcement officials.
The Capitol Police failed to widely circulate information its own intelligence unit had collected as early as mid-December about the threat of violence on Jan. 6, including a report that said right-wing extremist groups and supporters of Trump had been posting online and in far-right chat groups about gathering at the Capitol, armed with weapons, to pressure lawmakers to overturn his election loss.
A spokesperson for the House Jan. 6 committee declined to comment.
Benjamin Reynaga used power tools to hack his way into a beat-up hybrid Honda Fit at an auto dismantling plant at the edge of the Mojave Desert until he reached the most important part of the car: its lithium-ion battery.
The vehicle itself was set to be crushed, but the battery would be treated with care. It would be disassembled nearby and then sent to Nevada, where another company, Redwood Materials, would recover some of the valuable metals inside.
The plant where Reynaga works, in Adelanto, California, is at the front lines of what auto industry experts, environmentalists and the Biden administration believe could be an important part of a global shift to electric vehicles: recycling and reusing metals like cobalt, lithium and nickel. If batteries past their prime supply the ingredients for new ones, electric cars, trucks and vans would become more affordable and environmentally sustainable.
“We’re just getting ready,” said Nick Castillo, who manages the plant for LKQ Corp. The facility mostly dismantles gasoline vehicles but is preparing to take apart more hybrid and electric vehicles. “We know it’s eventually going to take over. It’s going to be the future.”
Sales of electric cars and trucks are taking off, and the auto and battery industries are investing billions of dollars to upgrade and build factories. These cars could help address climate change, but batteries pose their own problems. Raw materials can be hard to mine, are often found in countries with poor human rights records and require processing that leaves behind noxious waste.
Fortunately, those battery ingredients are also highly reusable. And now a race is on to collect and recycle used lithium-ion batteries. Venture capitalists, automakers and energy companies are pouring money into dozens of startup recycling companies in North America and Europe.
“We’re weaning our entire society off of fossil and carbon-intensive fuels; we can’t underestimate the scale of that challenge,” said Gavin Harper, a research fellow at the University of Birmingham in England, who studies battery recycling. “The demand is going to be so enormous.”
Cars and trucks, either at the end of their functional lives or damaged from accidents, at LKQ Corporation’s plant before being recycled for parts in Adelanto, Calif., April 25, 2022. Many companies and investors are eager to recycle batteries but it could take a decade or more before enough used lithium-ion batteries become available.
But for all the optimism, this new business faces a daunting challenge: Few batteries will be available to recycle for a decade or more. Tesla, which dominates the electric vehicle business, began selling cars in 2008 and until 2017 sold fewer than 100,000 cars a year. There are other sources to recycle today, including hybrids and consumer electronics, but the supply is limited and collection can be challenging.
That has left recycling companies in a difficult position. They need to invest in factories, machinery and workers or risk losing ground to competitors. But if they invest too quickly, they could run out of money before lots of aging batteries arrive at their loading docks.
“You have people that are just burning through money, because you don’t have the feedstock to be able to make the material to sell,” said Eric Frederickson, the managing director of operations for Call2Recycle, a nonprofit program that helps recyclers find old batteries.
The companies also have to figure out how to find, collect and dismantle batteries. They have to work with many dismantlers, scrap yards and nonprofit groups. And because batteries are prone to fires and packaged and built differently from model to model, taking them apart can be complicated and dangerous.
Among companies recycling batteries, Redwood stands out. The company was founded by JB Straubel, a former top Tesla executive, and has raised more than $1 billion from investors, it said. Redwood sees itself primarily as a producer of battery materials — made from recovered or mined metals — and has established recycling partnerships with Ford Motor, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo. Redwood also recycles scrap from a battery plant run by Panasonic and Tesla, near Reno, Nevada.
On a flat, dusty tract of land near that plant, Redwood is building out a 175-acre campus. There, the company recovers metal from old batteries and produces materials for new ones. Redwood announced last week that it would spend at least $3.5 billion on another campus in South Carolina, in a region of the country that is fast becoming a hub for battery and electric vehicle production.
Batteries have an anode and a cathode, which contains most of a battery’s valuable metal. When a battery is used, lithium ions move from the anode to the cathode. The flow is reversed while charging.
Most anodes and cathodes come from China, but Redwood hopes to change that. At the Nevada facility, the company is making thin anode foil using recycled copper. Redwood also plans to make cathode mate-
rials there using recycled cobalt and a mix of recycled and mined lithium and nickel. Panasonic recently said that it planned to use Redwood’s products in its batteries at two U.S. factories.
Redwood regularly receives used batteries and scrap from suppliers like LKQ and partners like Panasonic. Some of that material is first heated at low temperatures in a proprietary process. All batteries go through chemical baths and other processes to isolate and extract specific metals.
Redwood buys virgin metal because there aren’t enough old batteries and scrap. But mining and transporting can be carbonintensive and subject to supply chain problems, so the company’s executives said they were eager to use more recovered metals.
“We want to take in as much recycled content as we can because it’s an available feedstock that’s local,” said Kevin Kassekert, Redwood’s chief operating officer. “But we will have to augment that.”
Other businesses are focused solely on recycling. Li-Cycle, a Canadian company founded in 2016 by two former engineering consultants — Ajay Kochhar and Tim Johnston — is building several plants.
At collection centers in Alabama, Arizona, New York and Ontario, the company breaks down batteries and manufacturing scrap. In its plant in Rochester, New York, a conveyor belt ferries materials up one story before dropping them into a vat where they are shredded while submerged in a proprietary chemical solution to prevent fires.
The resulting pieces are separated, and Li-Cycle then harvests a granular substance, known as black mass, which is processed into its component metals elsewhere. But Li-Cycle plans a total capital investment of about $485 million to build a facility, also in Rochester, to turn the substance into batterygrade lithium, cobalt and nickel.
Li-Cycle, which became a publicly traded company in 2021, said it has more than 100 battery suppliers, including a partnership with Ultium Cells, a joint venture between General Motors and South Korean battery company LG Energy Solution. Li-Cycle also has strategic partnerships with mining giant Glencore and Koch Industries, a privately held conglomerate with extensive fossil fuel operations. Together, those two businesses have invested $300 million in Li-Cycle.
“We were fortunate that we took the path that we did, when we did,” Kochhar said. “This is an industry that does require, just like battery making, a good amount of capital.”
Battery recycling is still relatively new in North America, but more mature companies abroad could provide a hint of what’s to come. In China, for example, there are many recyclers but a shortage of material.
“They have too much capacity and too few batteries to recycle,” said Hans Eric Melin, who founded Circular Energy Storage, a consulting firm that specializes in the market for old lithium-ion batteries. “I think that’s exactly the situation that we will face in both Europe and North America.”
It could take many years for recycling to become a thriving industry in the United States. Relatively few electric vehicles are on the road and most are new. Smartphones, laptops and other electronics also contain lithium-ion batteries, but they are difficult to collect and there are not enough to meet the growing needs of the auto industry.
But lawmakers and environmental groups want recycling to take off quickly to cut carbon emissions, protect the nation from an overreliance on foreign producers and promote the safe disposal of batteries.
The Inflation Reduction Act signed by President Joe Biden over the summer, for example, requires a growing share of a battery’s valuable minerals to be sourced domestically or from a trade ally before vehicles qualify for tax credits. And the European Union appears close to requiring a minimum amount of recycled content in all electric vehicle batteries.
For now, recyclers are focused on collecting factory floor scrap.
Massive battery plants are being spun up around the world, including many in the United States. Those factories could provide the recyclers with a great deal of defective or excess battery material, particularly in their early years.
“There are always inevitable losses along the process of creating a cell for a lithium-ion battery,” said Sarah Colbourn, a research analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. “Because of that, there’s really an opportunity to recycle that waste.”
Such scrap will account for about 78% of recyclable materials globally in 2025 and remain the main source for recyclers until the
mid-2030s, when used batteries take over, according to a recent report by Colbourn.
But recycling those dead batteries won’t be easy. Collecting scrap is relatively simple. Similar materials from factories are processed in batches. Used batteries come in different shapes and sizes.
Standardized designs and construction methods could help, but most auto and battery companies have shown little interest in that. Instead, they are working on different approaches as they compete to make cars that can travel farther on a charge.
In March, as Redwood prepared to move into the larger campus near Reno, workers at a smaller plant in nearby Carson City, Nevada, were busy processing used consumer electronics. Some sorted through large bins of batteries from power tools, laptops and other devices, while others oversaw conveyor belts dumping batteries into rotating bins to be heated and broken down.
“There’s an opportunity for us to revolutionize how material is recovered and sent back into the supply chain on the EV side,” said Kassekert, the Redwood executive. “A metal atom can be recycled an infinite amount of times — it’s just a matter of how do you get it efficiently.”
After years of losing ground to China, U.S. and European executives and lawmakers are optimistic that battery recycling can quickly help establish a domestic battery industry. But they may be in for a rude awakening, said Melin, the consultant.
Electric vehicle batteries can last 15 to 20 years. Even then, many batteries will find second lives — to store wind and solar energy for use when it’s not windy or sunny, for example — before they are recycled.
“There won’t be a lot of material to recycle for a long time,” Melin said. “And that is obviously a positive thing because the main reason is that the batteries are in the cars.”
Its fortunes lifted by a huge German-owned auto plant, the largest city in northwestern Hungary has unusually high wages, virtually no unemployment and a deep pool of voters who, grateful for their relative prosperity and well-funded municipal services, support Viktor Orban, the country’s long-serving nationalist prime minister.
So it came as a shock at the start of Advent in late November — only seven months after national elections in which the city, Gyor, gave Orban’s governing Fidesz party a thumping majority — that the city’s annual Christmas market, usually dazzling with festive lights and laser shows, opened in near darkness.
And that is not all that has changed. In October, Gyor shuttered museums, libraries, art galleries and an aquatic center, saying that high energy prices made them too expensive to operate. Schools and kindergartens have been ordered to keep their thermostats turned down.
The city, despite its relative wealth, is running low on money, as are municipal authorities in many other parts of Hungary.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, countries across Europe and beyond have been jolted by soaring energy costs. But the shock has been particularly acute in Hungary, whose right-wing government has often balked at supporting Ukraine, has cozied up to Moscow in pursuit of what it hoped would be cheap and reliable supplies of natural gas and has told its people that any problems they faced were the fault of the European Union, despite being a member of the bloc.
Now, with inflation soaring at 22%, the economy tipping toward recession and even relatively rich areas like Gyor running short of money, economic reality has hit Hungary hard. The governor of the country’s central bank, usually a stalwart Fidesz ally, warned this month that “we have to face the fact that the Hungarian economy is in a near-critical situation,” largely as a result, he said, of the government’s own inflationary policies, not just the war in Ukraine.
At his annual year-end news conference in Budapest on Wednesday, Orban conceded that his country faced problems, describing 2022 as “probably the most difficult year in Hungary since the fall of communism.”
But, echoing Russia’s refrain that it is a
victim of “Russophobia,” Orban accused his critics of “Hungarophobia” and said “Brussels and international liberals” were ganging up against his government.
The dimming of Hungary’s once bright economic fortunes, symbolized for years by the giant and ever expanding Audi engine plant in Gyor, has left Orban desperate for cash from the EU, forcing him to curb his truculent attacks on the bloc, abandon efforts to derail European aid to Ukraine and scrap central parts of his economic policy, like price caps on gasoline.
Last week, European finance ministers meeting in Brussels decided to release a portion of billions of dollars in frozen funding for Hungary after Orban’s government agreed to stop trying to block European aid to Ukraine.
But it will not help cash-strapped cities like Gyor much in the short term. Most of the funds, about $6 billion in previously stalled pandemic relief grants and possibly billions more to follow, will go to Budapest to help fill a hole in the national budget and save the government from having to borrow.
Hungarian news outlets, most of which are controlled directly or indirectly by Fidesz, hailed the deal as a “big Hungarian victory.” But independent observers viewed it more as a long-overdue truce between Budapest and Brussels, the seat of the EU’s executive arm and its Parliament, which in September passed a resolution condemning Hungary as a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy” that should not get any more money.
Reality has also dawned in Gyor.
Tibor Lorincz, a forklift operator at a subsidiary of the German plant and a former Fidesz voter, said he was appalled by the decision to cut the festive lighting. “We all need some light in our lives at Christmas,” he said. Using social media, he rallied hundreds of fellow residents behind a plan to string up their own lights in the center of the city.
Embarrassed, the city government, run by Fidesz, suddenly announced it had found extra money and began decorating — not much, but enough to lift the darkness. “We won a small battle,” Lorincz said, “but not the war.”
Gyor’s mayor, Csaba Andras Dezsi, declined to be interviewed but, in response to written questions, said that “the armed conflict taking place in our neighborhood and the related energy crisis” had put “a heavy burden on all of us” and forced “more modest
decorations.”
Roland Kosa, who runs a film company in Gyor, said the city’s scrimping on festive lighting was a “tipping point.”
“The core of our identity is that we are a rich city, and this hit our core,” Kosa said. “Everyone was asking: ‘Can we really not even afford to have even Christmas lights anymore?’”
Skeptical that the reason for this was a Europe-wide energy crisis, he blamed Fidesz and the city’s mayor, Dezsi, an eccentric, parrot-loving cardiologist who took over after the previous mayor, Zsolt Borkai, also from Fidesz, became entangled in a sex scandal and resigned in 2019.
The scandal did little to dent the city’s overwhelming support for Fidesz, partly because it was largely ignored by Hungarian media outlets loyal to Orban. Bad economic news has been similarly obscured, presented as “fake news” ginned up by political opponents, or blamed on European sanctions on Russia.
To rally the public behind its narrative, not dissimilar from that of the Kremlin, Orban’s government is now holding what it calls a “national consultation” — a vote on a series of leading questions intended to show that “sanctions are destroying the economies of Europe.”
The EU Union has imposed no sanc-
tions on Russian natural gas, and Russia’s energy giant, Gazprom, has itself driven up the price by cutting supplies to many customers. Hungary, which sent its foreign minister to Moscow this summer to beg Russia to keep gas flowing, has not been hit by these cuts, but still has to pay more because the price Gazprom charges is largely set by market rates.
Amid severe shortages of gasoline and diesel because of technical problems at Hungary’s biggest refinery and price caps that made it unprofitable to sell, a surge early this month in panic-buying at gas stations across the country forced Orban to abandon his signature policy of setting pump prices by administrative fiat.
Visitors at the Christmas market in Gyor, Hungary, Dec. 13, 2022. Dimmed festive lighting at an annual market in the city of Gyor underscores the economic pain being felt across Hungary as energy costs and inflation soar.as they ate lunch, some rubbing their hands together as temperatures outside plunged to just above freezing. In the cafe, it was barely any warmer.
Bacon sizzled on the griddle in the narrow kitchen as Shelley Quinn, one of the cafe’s owners, took a customer’s order at the counter.
“What scares me, especially with the older ones, is they are deciding between heating or eating,” Quinn said of her customers. “And we can’t even give them that — a warm place.”
In Easterhouse, made up of planned social housing built in the 1950s, times had already been tough before the cost-of-living crisis. Efforts at a revival began in the early 2000s but have been criticized as superficial and failing to address deep-rooted poverty and social decline made worse by hollowedout social programs.
“You feel like everyone is struggling,” Quinn said. “The people in Easterhouse have so much to give, but you have to give them something.”
were a result of aging equipment and that replacement parts were no longer available. But it added that the service charge for tenants did not include heating, and that it planned to meet with tenants to address their concerns.
The council pointed to programs to support the residents of Glasgow this winter, including gift cards of 105 pounds, or about $128, that were given to low-income households, vouchers to help people heat their homes and warming centers around the city.
By January, an estimated 61.5% of Scottish households will be living in fuel poverty, meaning they will spend more than 10% of their net income on fuel, according to a study by the Child Poverty Action group. The burden of the high cost of living will not be evenly distributed, and those from lowerincome households will bear the brunt, an analysis from the Scottish government shows.
By MEGAN SPECIAAs temperatures dropped and a cold winter approached, a community center in the Easterhouse neighborhood of Glasgow did what it could to help ease the hardship: It began offering a warming space for people struggling with the costs of heating their homes.
In the adjacent shopping center, Christmas decorations twinkled overhead, but every second shop lay vacant, a sign of the area’s hard times. Upstairs, the Easterhouse Community Church has resorted to using gas space heaters to keep its congregants warm.
“You can see the hardship on people’s faces,” Stuart Patterson, the church’s pastor, said of the difficulties many are face. “But we love this community.”
Patterson, who grew up in Easterhouse, is among a group of local faith leaders, volunteers, community workers and business owners who have dedicated their lives to supporting this long-neglected area, one of the most economically deprived in Scotland. But with inflation and energy costs soaring, they are finding it harder than ever.
This month, as temperatures plunged below freezing across Britain during a rare cold snap, the church was a frigid 3 degrees Celsius, or around 37 degrees Fahrenheit, when Patterson was opening its doors.
Easterhouse, considered one of the most deprived areas in Scotland, is only one of a number of places across Britain where the cost-of-living crisis is compounding preexisting strains. Some residents have very real fears that they may not be able to provide for their most basic needs this winter.
The Lochs, an aging shopping center dating to the late 1960s that has fallen into disrepair, offers a snapshot of the deterioration in lower-income communities. The center is full of community spaces and essential businesses that many say are needed now more than ever.
At the moment, though, they are finding it difficult to keep their doors open, with supply prices through the roof. They are not alone — a recent report from a British faithbased research group noted that community hubs, volunteers and faith groups, considered a “last line of defense” for the most needy, are under growing economic pressure.
It does not help that the heat in the center, owned by the Glasgow City Council, is not working. Shop owners have protested, saying they cannot keep up with the rent and rising supply costs while getting so little in return, but so far there has been no remediation.
Most of the customers seated in Wee Betty’s Cafe, tucked into a corner of the shopping center, still had their winter coats on
The cafe has avoided raising prices despite the increase in supply costs, said Quinn, 47, who owns the cafe with her two sisters and their sister-in-law. They all grew up in Easterhouse, and their father still lives in the area. They said that volunteer work is an important part of their business mission, and has been since they opened the cafe five years ago.
“I mean, of course we have to pay our bills, but it’s all about the community,” she said. “We just want to help everybody.”
The sisters check in on regulars, help them run errands and serve food to the homeless at Christmas, among other efforts. The cafe has a designated “Chatter and Natter” table — part of a nationwide initiative intended to combat loneliness — where customers looking to connect with others can sit for some company.
Betty Connelly, 75, one of the people at the table, visits the cafe three days a week. She was sitting with Nan Harrington, 82, and Anna Devlin, 70. The women, who call themselves “the Mermaids” because they met at swimming lessons a few years ago, said their visits were a bright spot in their week.
“If this closes, we would have nowhere to go,” Connelly said. “But the heat hasn’t been good for a while, and there are a lot of elderly who come in here.”
City Properties Glasgow, which manages the shopping center for the City Council, said in a statement that the heating issues
Richard McShane, the volunteer director of the Phoenix Community Center, has spent years trying to establish a place for locals to come together, converting a oncevacant shop into a thriving multiuse space equipped with a sports club, boxing gym and snooker table. Several community groups organize activities in the space.
Since the unit has a separate heating system, it is significantly warmer than the rest of the shopping center, and this month it opened as a warming center two days a week for local residents that McShane expects will be popular. The center is part of a national grassroots scheme called Warm Welcome.
But he said he was most worried about the social isolation some residents faced and the effect on their mental health.
“It can be doom and gloom for a lot of people here,” McShane said. “The school is consistently in the bottom of the ranks. But what does that tell people that live here? That sort of mindset you get stuck in — you accept less in life because of where you live.”
A study from the Mental Health Foundation of Scotland found that stress, anxiety and hopelessness over personal finances were widespread across the nation.
Many of the programs at the center are geared toward combating that sense of hopelessness, and McShane said he had tried to provide a positive focus for people and activities that gave a purpose.
“The need was to have a place of belonging,” he said. “My biggest concern here is sustainability.” If the center is unable to keep up with costs, McShane said, “where are people going to go?”
Outside the Lochs, a shopping center that has fallen into disrepair in Easterhouse, a suburb of Glasgow, Scotland, on Nov. 22, 2022. In a Glasgow neighborhood, the cost-ofliving crisis is exacerbating energy problems and financial worries, and vital community hubs are struggling to stay afloat.When demand for fever-reducing drugs more than quadrupled the price of ibuprofen, a city in eastern China began rationing sales by selling the pills individually.
When a popular Chinese online pharmacy offered the antiviral drug Paxlovid, it sold out within hours.
And when word of the medicine shortages in China reached friends and relatives in Hong Kong and Taiwan, they quickly bought vast quantities of drugs from local sellers to ship to the mainland.
As COVID-19 rips through parts of China, millions of Chinese are struggling to find treatment — from the most basic cold remedies to take at home to more powerful antivirals for patients in hospitals. The dearth of supplies highlights how swiftly — and haphazardly — China reversed course by abandoning its strict “zero-COVID” policies about two weeks ago.
The whiplash of change has caught the nation’s hospitals, clinics and pharmacies off guard. Across many cities, pharmacies have sold out of the most common fever and cold medicines. Many health facilities were unprepared for the onslaught of demand from patients after they were given little to no notice about needing to stockpile drugs. The shortages are fueling anger and anxiety among Chinese who until recently had been warned by the government that an uncontrolled spread of COVID would be devastating.
“The doctor told me there was no fever medicine,” said Diane Ye, 28, a COVID patient in Beijing who lined up outside a hospital for hours with a fever only to be sent home with a bottle of sore throat medicine.
For nearly three years, the country maintained some of the toughest pandemic controls in the world, mandating mass testing and locking down cities such as Shanghai for months. Then, with little warning, the government announced a broad easing of restrictions on Dec. 7, seemingly bowing to economic pressure and rising social discontent following widespread protests in late November.
In many cities, signs of outbreaks have emerged. China reported only seven deaths from COVID so far this week, but reports of crowded crematories and funeral homes have raised concerns about the accuracy
of government data. Lines of people have formed at hospitals, and medication has flown off drugstore shelves.
“Opening up is great, but it happened too fast and without preparation. People don’t have these common medicines stocked up at home,” said a pharmacist working at a public hospital in Beijing who only provided his last name, Zhang, given the political sensitivity of the issue.
Even before the policy pivot, stocks of fever medicines had already been low, he said, because the government had strictly controlled the sale of cold and flu medication under “zero-COVID.” The policy had required buyers to register their names, a rule aimed at preventing residents from using over-the-counter drugs to reduce fevers and avoid detection by the country’s pervasive health tracking system.
“If you ease these restrictions first, say for two months, and open up once people have stuff prepared, then this rush wouldn’t have happened,” Zhang said.
Many Chinese are now confronting the specter of a massive COVID outbreak that could stretch through the winter, and have been forced to improvise to fill in the gaps. Some are turning to folk remedies like canned peaches, believing they can ward off illness. One group of volunteers organized a social media campaign to deliver aid to older adults in rural areas. The group received plenty of cash donations, but little medicine because of shortages.
In recent days, some Chinese have ventured across the border to Macao to receive the one thing they have less chance of finding than ibuprofen: a foreign-made mRNA vaccine. China has failed to approve such vaccines despite their availability, in an apparent effort to protect the domestic industry. (This month, Beijing said China would allow German vaccines — but only for German nationals in the country.)
A data analyst in southern Shenzhen, who asked to be identified only by her last name, Fan, traveled to the nearby gambling destination last week to receive an mRNA booster. She believed that the mixture of the booster plus two doses of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine she received at home would strengthen her immunity.
She said she began stocking up on cold medicine, saline nasal sprays and masks as early as mid-November, when cases were climbing in Guangzhou, a neighboring city. When regions across China saw shortages
this month, she mailed packages with supplies to dozens of relatives in Shanghai, the northern city of Xi’an and the eastern province of Fujian.
Social media users have resorted to dark humor to cope with crisis, twisting a government slogan under “zero-COVID” that reminds people that “Anyone who should be transferred for quarantine will be transferred for quarantine.” The new version? “Anyone who can have COVID will have COVID.”
The government has tried to reassure the public, saying it is prioritizing efforts to increase the nation’s medicine stocks.
State media reports called the shortages temporary and highlighted a recent push by Chinese drugmakers, under the direction of the central government, to increase supplies. China is one of the world’s largest producers of pharmaceuticals, making roughly one-third of the world’s supply of ibuprofen, a painkiller and fever reducer.
Local governments are also pledging to procure more drugs and distribute them to pharmacies. In the eastern city of Nanjing, of ficials announced they would add 2 million tablets of fever-reducing medicine to the market each day, starting Dec. 18. To stretch out supplies, pharmacies were instructed to unseal packages to sell the tablets individually and to limit purchases to six pills per person.
In the central city of Wuhan, the Hubei
provincial government said it would supply 3 million ibuprofen tablets a week mostly to medical facilities. And in the northeastern city of Jinan, more than 1 million tablets of ibuprofen were distributed to clinics and pharmacies, state media reported.
China’s rush to address the shortfalls in medicine mirrors the flurry of last-minute deals to bring more vaccines and foreignmade treatments onto the market.
Authorities have approved four domestic vaccines in the past two weeks alone, and the state-owned pharmaceutical company China Meheco Group announced last week it had struck a deal to import and distribute P fizer’s Paxlovid, an oral treatment found to significantly cut the risk of hospitalization and death. (In April, P fizer had also signed a separate deal with another Chinese pharmaceutical company, Zhejiang Huahai, to manufacture Paxlovid for the China market.)
The approval of Paxlovid contrasts with China’s treatment of foreign COVID vaccines. The difference in this case is that China has several domestically produced alternatives for COVID jabs, but no antiviral substitute as effective as Paxlovid.
“Paxlovid fills a large gap for China to treat COVID patients with severe conditions,” said Xi Chen, a health economist at the Yale School of Public Health. “There is no clear competitor among China’s domestic antiviral drug producers.”
The Dec 13 inflation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was incredibly good — that is, it was too good to be credible. On their face, the numbers seemed to show that inflation has stopped dead in its tracks or, more accurately, that it is back down to more or less the Federal Reserve’s long-run target of 2%. However, few analysts believe that the fight against inflation has already been won; hey, even I don’t believe that.
But how do we come to that conclusion? How do we extract the signal from the noise? Part of the answer is to smooth out the data by looking at changes over several months. Much reporting in the media focuses on changes over the past year, but that seems like too long a window in a rapidly changing economy. Like many other economists, I’ve been focusing mainly on three-month changes.
Even that, however, isn’t enough to correct for wild price swings that clearly shouldn’t be driving economic policy. Back in 1975, Robert Gordon of Northwestern University suggested focusing on inflation excluding volatile food and energy prices; this so-called core measure has become a standard way to assess “underlying” inflation. Since then, other measures have also been proposed, and until recently, they all tended to tell more or less similar stories.
At this point, however, various measures of core inflation are all over the map.
Depending on which measure you choose, underlying inflation is anywhere from almost 7% — way above the Fed’s target — to less than 1%, well below the target. That’s not helpful!
I don’t think this is mainly a data problem. What we have, instead, is a conceptual problem: What do we mean by “underlying” inflation, anyway? The answer, I’d argue, is that we mean two different things, which have been fairly well aligned in the past but aren’t at all the same thing now.
But first, about those measures:
— Median inflation, calculated by the Cleveland Fed, tries to smooth out volatility by looking at the rate of inflation of goods in the middle of the overall distribution, with half of other goods experiencing higher inflation, half lower.
— Trimmed mean inflation is conceptually similar but throws out less information, excluding only the biggest and smallest 8% of price changes.
— Traditional core is the original measure, excluding only food and energy prices.
— “Supercore” is traditional core, further excluding shelter inflation — I’ll talk in a second about why you might want to do that.
— Superdupercore (my phrase) is supercore with the further exclusion of used-car prices, which have fluctuated wildly in recent months.
— Furman core (also my term) is a measure calculated by Harvard’s Jason Furman (following up on a suggestion by yours truly). It goes back to traditional core but replaces shelter inflation as calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics with market rents as estimated by private companies such as Zillow.
Why are these measures looking so different? A lot of it has to do with housing. Of ficial statistics estimate the average amount paid by renters; Americans who own their homes are assumed to pay an “Owners Equivalent Rent,” which is an
estimate of what they would be paying if renting their houses to themselves, an estimate mainly based on actual apartment rents.
These rents, actual and imputed, make up almost 40% of traditional core inflation; in practice, they play an even more dominant role in median and trimmed-mean inflation. But here’s the thing: Most renters are on long-term leases, so of ficial rent estimates, which are based on what people actually pay, mostly reflect what new tenants were paying many months ago.
Ordinarily, that’s not a big issue. But wild things have been happening in rental markets lately. There was a huge surge in demand for more space in 2021, probably driven by the rise in working from home, which has now petered out. As a result, new-tenant rents had soared but are now falling. And of ficial rent measures are therefore basically reflecting what was happening a long time ago rather than what’s happening now.
Measures that use of ficial housing costs are highly elevated because they’re still reflecting a rent surge that is now basically behind us, while measures that either exclude housing or use current market rents are much lower.
In that case, however, what’s the right measure? Now comes the conceptual problem I mentioned earlier: What does “underlying” inflation mean, anyway?
One possible answer is that it means inflation driven by generally excessive spending rather than issues specific to particular sectors of the economy. If that’s what we’re worried about, we should probably be looking at measures that, one way or another, take lagged market rents out of the picture.
What many economists probably have in mind, however, is something else: They’re worried about inflation getting “entrenched” in the economy. Textbook models of inflation say that once businesses and workers have come to expect persistent inflation, that inflation becomes self-perpetuating, because people set prices and wages based on the belief that everyone else will be raising prices and wages in the future. And once inflation has become entrenched, the story goes, getting it down again requires a nasty economic slump.
So which of these various core measures tells us whether inflation is getting entrenched? As best as I can tell, none of them.
People do expect elevated inflation over the next year, probably because they’re extrapolating from elevated gas prices earlier this year. But medium-term inflation expectations are quite low. There’s just no sign of inflation getting entrenched.
So where are we on the inflation fight? Until recently, it was clear that overall spending was rising too fast to be consistent with low inflation, and my superdupercore measure suggests that this may still be true. I certainly understand why the Fed isn’t ready to declare victory yet.
But given the absence of evidence that inflation is getting entrenched, victory may be a lot closer than many people imagine.
EL VATICANO – El alcalde de Juana Díaz, Ramón Hernández Torres quien recientemente acompañó a los Reyes Magos a la audiencia ante el Papa Francisco en el Vaticano hizo entrega de una carta al sumo Pontífice pidiendo intersección sobre la situación de Puerto Rico.
En la carta el primer ejecutivo juanadino planteó que la presente condición colonial del País, ha acarreado una seria crisis social y económica que agobia a los puertorriqueños y que urge poder traer a la atención internacional la solución a dicho problema.
“Respetuosamente tomo como referencia el trasfondo que le precede como líder a nivel internacional para plantearle nuestra profunda preocupación en relación con la situación política que aqueja a nuestro País. Como fervoroso admirador de su gesta como cabeza de la Iglesia Católica y luz que alumbra y denuncia la injusticia, le suplico que ore y se pronuncie a favor de una atención al problema colonial del pueblo de Puerto Rico entendiendo que ello no implica un respaldo a ninguna propuesta particular sobre cuál habrá de ser la solución final a dicho estatus” indicó el alcalde juanadino en su carta dirigida al Papa Francisco.
Hernández Torres aseguró que su intención es la de
traer a la atención de una figura como la del Papa Francisco el tema de Puerto Rico y lograr una expresión que genere un frente adicional de discusión sobre el tema.
“El Papa Francisco se ha caracterizado por ser un líder espiritual de vasta conciencia política y social a nivel global. Quizás pedir su atención e incluso aspirar a que pudiese visitar el País puede ser una variante que genere una acción productiva para mover el tema de Puerto Rico a nivel internacional. Cuando menos pedimos por su oración y aliento para nuestro País que tanto lo necesita” manifestó el primer ejecutivo juanadino.
ELCAPITOLIO – Residentes de la comunidad de Puerta de Tierra, junto a la Senadora del Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño, María de Lourdes Santiago Negrón,denunciaron la semana pasada la complicidad del gobierno, a través de la Administración para el Financiamiento de la Vivienda (AFV) en los proyectos de desplazamiento de dicha comunidad.
La denuncia surge luego de que los residentes alertaran sobre ciertas publicaciones en las redes sociales de la entidad “San Juan 901”, que anunciaban, junto a fotos de trabajos de construcción en edificios propiedad de la AFV el lema publicitario “lo mejor todavía está por venir”. Según la investigación realizada por la oficina de la senadora, los registros del CRIM reflejan que se trata de cinco propiedades cuyo titular es la Autoridad para el Financiamiento de la Vivienda.
Mediante escrituras públicas otorgadas recientemente, esas propiedades fueron liberadas de las condiciones restrictivas que estipulaban que sólo podían ser destinadas a vivienda de bajo costo. A pesar de que a estas fechas no constan en el Registro de la Oficina de la Contralora contratos entre la AFV y las compañías de inversión, se están realizando trabajos de remozamiento a gran escala y se están anunciando los proyectos en las redes sociales.
Los edificios que rodean a esas cinco estructuras propiedad del Pueblo de Puerto Rico fueron todos adquiridos por compañías de uno de los inversionistas extranjeros que se beneficia de los privilegios de la Ley 22. Igual ha ocurrido con muchos otros edificios en Puerta de Tierra, adquiridos con el fin de dedicarlos a alquileres a corto plazo. Como resultado, esta comunidad tradicional- la primera en establecerse fuera de las murallas del Viejo San Juan- se está convirtiendo en un
AN JUAN – La Federación de Béisbol de Puerto Rico (FBPR) anunció el nombramiento de Juan ‘Igor’ González como uno de los integrantes del cuerpo técnico del Equipo Nacional, con miras al World Baseball Classic (WBC) del 2023.
González, dos veces Jugador Más Valioso de la Liga Americana en las Mayores, se ha destacado como dirigente en Puerto Rico y a nivel internacional.
“Juan ‘Igor’ González es un ganador probado, siempre comprometido con la Federación de Béisbol y con Puerto Rico. Goza del respeto y admiración de los jugadores
y del país. Junto al dirigente Yadier Molina y el resto del cuerpo técnico, presentaremos un grupo de trabajo de primer orden en busca del campeonato”, expresó el doctor José Quiles Rosas, presidente de la FBPR.
A nivel internacional, González tiene medallas de oro como dirigente en los Juegos Centroamericanos y del Caribe de Barranquilla 2018, Juegos Panamericanos de Lima 2019 y la Copa del Caribe de Bahamas 2022. Además, ha sido campeón del Béisbol Superior Doble A en Puerto Rico como dirigente de los Grises de Humacao en 2021 y los Toritos de Cayey en 2022.
“Es un privilegio y un honor representar con orgullo a mi país en el cuerpo técnico, llevando mis conocimien-
tos a los muchachos para darle el mejor espectáculo a nuestro país, que se lo merece”, dijo el exjugador de las Grandes Ligas.
Será su segunda presentación en el cuerpo técnico de Puerto Rico en un WBC. En esta ocasión, estará junto al dirigente, Yadier Molina.
“Mi respeto y admiración para Yadier Molina. Siempre hemos tenido respeto mutuo. Es el momento de ayudarlo. Esto es Puerto Rico. Hay que dejarse cosas, esto es Puerto Rico y hay que dar el máximo por el país”, resaltó González.
El gerente general, Joey Solá, informó que González estará como asistente de coach de bateo del equipo.
At the end of the seventh album on this list (no spoilers), the poet and philosopher Thomas Stanley’s voice rises up over a clatter of drums and saxophone, offering a darkly optimistic take on the state of jazz. “Ultimately, perhaps it is good that the people abandoned jazz, replaced it with musical products better suited to capitalism’s designs,” he muses. “Now jazz jumps up like Lazarus, if we allow it, to rediscover itself as a living music.”
Jazz is jumping up, for sure — though not always where you expect it to, and certainly not in any predictable form. Some of the artists below wouldn’t call the music they make jazz at all. Maybe we don’t need to either. Let’s just call these albums what they were, each in their own way: breakthroughs, bold experiments and — despite everything around us — reasons for hope.
1. Cécile McLorin Salvant, ‘Ghost Song’ Known mostly as a brilliant interpreter of 20thcentury songs, Cécile McLorin Salvant has never made
an album as heavy on original tunes, nor as stylistically adventurous, as this one. Her voice soars over Andrew Lloyd Webber-level pipe organ in one moment, and settles warmly into a combo featuring banjo, flute and percussion in the next.
tion, pianist David Virelles pays attention to detail at every level. He clearly listens to peers: Matt Mitchell, Jason Moran, Kris Davis. He draws from modernism and its malcontents: Morton Feldman, Olivier Messaien, Thelonious Monk. He pulls heavily from Cuban folk traditions: Changüi, Abakuá, danzón. And on “Nuna,” his first solo-piano record, he spreads that across all 88 keys.
6. Samara Joy, ‘Linger Awhile’
“Linger Awhile” is a rite of passage: a by-the-book, here’s-what-I-can-do major-label debut. Fortunately, Samara Joy’s harmonic ideas are riveting enough and her voice so infectious that it doesn’t feel like an exercise. On “Nostalgia,” just try not to crack a smile at the lyrics she wrote to the melody of Fats Navarro’s 1947 trumpet solo while you simply shake your head at her command.
7. Moor Mother, ‘Jazz Codes’
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2. Immanuel Wilkins, ‘The 7th Hand’ With his quartet, Wilkins shows that tilted rhythms, extended harmony and acoustic instruments — the “blending of idea, tone and imagination” that, for Ralph Ellison, defined jazz more than 50 years ago — can still speak to listeners in the present tense.
3. Fred Moten, Brandon López and Gerald Cleaver, ‘Moten/López/Cleaver’
With “Jazz Codes,” poet and electronic artist Camae Ayewa declares her love for the jazz lineage, and registers some concerns. On “Woody Shaw,” over Melanie Charles’ hypnotizing vocals, Ayewa laments the entrapment of this music in white institutions; on “Barely Woke,” she turns her attention to the culture at large: “If only we could wake up with a little more urgency/State of emergency/But I feel barely woke.”
8. Angelica Sanchez Trio, ‘Sparkle Beings’
Stalwart avant-garde pianist Angelica Sanchez steers a new all-star trio here, with bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Billy Hart, letting melodies explode in her hand and locking in — closely but not too tightly — with Hart’s drums.
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It’s a shame that hearing poet and theorist Fred Moten’s voice on record is such a rare thrill. On “Moten/ López/Cleaver,” his first LP accompanied by the quiet, rolling drums of Gerald Cleaver and Brandon López’s ink-dark bass, Moten is after nothing less than a full interrogation of the ways Black systems of knowledge have been strip-mined and cast aside, and yet have regrown.
The creative-music world is still recovering from the loss of Jaimie Branch, the game-changing trumpeter who died in August at 39. “Pink Dolphins” is the second album from Anteloper, her electroacoustic duo with drummer Jason Nazary, and it shows what Branch was all about: unpurified, salt-of-the-earth sound, packed with a generous spirit.
Whether foraging into dark crannies of dissonance on the lower end of the keyboard or lacing a courtly dance rhythm into an otherwise scattered improvisa-
9. Makaya McCraven, ‘In These Times’ Makaya McCraven, the Chicago-based drummer and producer, spent years recording, stitching together and plumping up the tracks that appear on “In These Times.” Mixing crisply plucked harp, springy guitar, snaky bass lines, horns, drums and more, he’s drawn up an enveloping sound picture that’s often not far-off from a classic David Axelrod production, or a 1970s Curtis Mayfield album without the vocal track.
One piece of a larger multimedia work, the original songs on “Grief” grew out of more than 100 interviews that pianist, vocalist and activist Samora Pinderhughes conducted with people whose lives had been impacted by the criminal justice system. Mixing gospel harmonies, simmering post-hip-hop instrumentals and wounded balladry, the music shudders with outrage and vision.
Immanuel Wilkins, center, performs with bandmates Rashaan Carter, left, and Nasheet Waits at Zinc Bar in Manhattan on Jan. 10, 2020. His album “The 7th Hand” is a showcase for classic ideas about jazz that still speak to audiences today.At 24, two years into a degree in physics, Daniel Giménez Cacho received a casual invitation to attend a singing class. To the initial dismay of his engineer father, that unexpected offer derailed a planned career in science and ignited a lifelong zeal for performance.
“It was a physical discovery, a rebirth for my body,” Giménez Cacho said in Spanish during a recent interview at a Mexican restaurant on historic Olvera Street in Los Angeles.
Born in Madrid but raised in the heart of Mexico City, the acclaimed actor, now 61, has amassed an eclectic list of credits displaying both his gravitas and comedic chops over nearly four decades.
Beginning last Friday on Netflix, he can be seen as director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s alter ego, Silverio Gama, in “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,” a dreamlike fantasia of personal and political ruminations.
After starting in theater, Giménez Cacho found broader exposure via television in 1989 with the popular soap opera “Teresa,” opposite a young Salma Hayek in the title role.
At the time, only a handful of films were being produced in Mexico each year. But slowly, a young cohort of filmmakers started making waves with audacious narratives on screens big and small. The actor found himself running in the same artistic circles and growing his career parallel to those behind the camera.
Testament to his crucial role in laying the foundation for the emergence of the new Mexican cinema, Giménez Cacho is the rare actor to have collaborated with each of the Mexican Oscar-winning directors collectively known as the Three Amigos: first Alfonso Cuarón, then Guillermo del Toro and now Iñárritu. Iñárritu said with a boisterous laugh, “We should erect a statue of him because he is the only survivor of the Three Amigos.”
Outside of Mexico, he has been summoned by titans of cinema like Pedro Almodóvar (“Bad Education”), Lucrecia Martel (“Zama”) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (“Memoria”).
I asked Cuarón, del Toro and Iñárritu to recall their first meetings with the actor and experiences working with him.
Alfonso Cuarón: ‘Not only a collaborator, but a co-creator.’
The actor and the director first met on
the set of Luis Estrada’s “Camino Largo a Tijuana” (1988), where Cuarón was a producer and camera assistant.
Cuarón said he regretted that even though he was impressed with the actor’s precise, dancerlike body language, he didn’t immediately consider him to star in his first feature, the 1991 screwball comedy “Sólo Con Tu Pareja.”
“I was afraid that I hadn’t seen all the options, when in reality that was really dumb because the best option was in front of me,” Cuarón said by phone.
Giménez Cacho wound up starring in the film, and Cuarón considers himself lucky. Recalling a dinner guest once likening the actor to Marcello Mastroianni in that he could inject levity into rather emotional dramas, the director explained that his debut feature “hinged on the performer; he had to carry the movie with humor and lightness.”
Cuarón added, “Daniel became not only a collaborator, but a co-creator of what the movie ended up being.”
Giménez Cacho remembers being hesitant. It was his first lead role in a film.
“I always had a lot of doubts” about the role of a philanderer whose antics catch up with him, Giménez Cacho said. “I still have them, but now I’m 61. I had a lot of insecurity, so it was really nice to discover my comedic vein.”
For his poignant road trip movie “Y Tu Mamá También” a decade later, Cuarón
wanted a male narrator to evoke those in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Masculin Féminin” and “Band of Outsiders.”
As he searched for an objective voice to add ironic context, he considered someone with a Spanish accent and asked director Fernando Trueba to try.
Eventually, Cuarón enlisted Giménez Cacho — even though he thought the actor’s tone might be too warm for the task — and was surprised by the organic match between voice and images. The actor recorded the text before ever seeing any footage.
“Daniel hadn’t come to mind because I was searching for voices, I wasn’t thinking of actors, and, again, that was a silly mistake,” Cuarón admitted. “He knew perfectly that he had to have a certain Brechtian distance but at the same time not make it dry.”
The actor said with a smirk: “I’ve never been his first choice. But once he doesn’t like anyone else, he has no choice but to say, ‘OK, let this cabrón do it.’”
Guillermo del Toro: ‘The best actor of our generation.’
A special effects makeup artist long before becoming a director, Del Toro first met Giménez Cacho in 1990 while applying fake dirt and an artificial beard during the shooting of Nicolás Echevarría’s desert period piece, “Cabeza de Vaca.”
With incisive curiosity, Giménez Cacho asked del Toro detailed questions about the transformation process. The future auteur realized the actor had an obsessive commitment to every aspect of his work, something he could relate to. The two became instant friends.
Del Toro nicknamed him el Niño Sapo (the Toad Kid), recognizing a kindred otherness in Giménez Cacho. “We would say we were a pair of freaks,” the filmmaker recalled via video call. Not long after, del Toro would craft a replica of the actor’s arm for a scene in Cuarón’s “Sólo Con Tu Pareja.”
Early on in the actor’s career, del Toro said, he and filmmaking peers like Estrada, Cuarón and Carlos Marcovich “all agreed that he was the best actor of our generation — and I still think that.”
Based on their relationship, and the actor’s work with the vanguard theater group El Milagro, del Toro offered him the now emblematic role of Tito, a foul-mouthed yet dedicated mortician in his debut feature, “Cronos” (1994).
“I’m so grateful he invited me to do this small role in ‘Cronos,’ because even if it’s a
bit part, it was a really shiny, memorable one,” Giménez Cacho said.
Alejandro G. Iñárritu: ‘I knew he’d make my job easy.’
It was at a party after the Los Angeles premiere of Cuarón’s “Great Expectations” in 1998 that Giménez Cacho and Iñárritu first intersected. But it would take a long time before a film partnership would emerge.
Iñárritu described their first meeting about “Bardo” as a “cosmic connection.” A shared affinity for meditation and a mutual understanding of their similar inner journeys became the unconventional foundation of their work together.
While Iñárritu hadn’t written the role of Silverio Gama with a particular actor in mind, he knew Giménez Cacho would nail it even before he had read a single page of the screenplay.
“I realized he was in the same place as me on a personal level, philosophically, spiritually and intellectually,” Iñárritu said during a video call. “Beyond his artistic gifts, which are plenty, I knew he’d make my job easy because he shared the sensibility of what I was looking for.”
Although Iñárritu poured intimate details from his own recollections into Silverio, a documentary filmmaker navigating both his mortality and his Mexican identity in fanciful vignettes, he saw the character as a fictional entity, not an exact reflection of himself.
That search for identity resonated with Giménez Cacho, who in the early 2000s tried to establish a career in Spain only to discover he couldn’t see himself as anything other than Mexican. Inhabiting Silverio, he didn’t impersonate Iñárritu but channeled his own concerns and questions.
“What I do with every character is bring to it what I am, my experiences and my memories, but even more so here,” Giménez Cacho said. “Since the character wasn’t designed, I had to try to find him within me.”
Iñárritu likens Giménez Cacho to British actor Peter Sellers for the flexibility of his range, and describes him as a haiku incarnate because with minimal modulation he can achieve maximum emotion.
“In ‘Bardo’ he does what few actors are capable of doing, which is to erase the artifice of acting to reach the essence and the presence of something honest and truthful,” Iñárritu said. “You need a lot of inner confidence for that. That’s the highest peak in acting.”
By ELISABETH MALKIN
Few places conjure Mexico City’s mix of vibrant style, outstanding gastronomy, rich history and bustling street life.
Post-pandemic, that blend has gone into overdrive, with new museums featuring the sweep of Mexican art, a panoply of restaurants and bars, and an expanding fashion scene that embraces traditional craft. You can shop for leather bags and ponchos, sample local craft beers and join jazz fans for a concert in a cozy club. Amid the buzz, it’s also worth seeking out the secrets of the Historic Center, where travelers can discover hidden murals, explore an ancient market’s warrens and immerse themselves in the city’s layers and incongruities.
Friday
3 p.m. | Go back in time
Guillermo Tovar de Teresa was a self-taught historian and eccentric who wrote prodigiously about Mexican art of the colonial period and the 19th century. Now his house, a 1911 mansion in Colonia Roma that he meticulously restored, has been turned into a museum, featuring pieces from his collections of art, furniture, ceramics and books. Many of the rooms remain as he decorated them before his death in 2013, crammed with portraits of the emerging bourgeoisie of newly independent Mexico, devotional paintings illustrating the exuberant religiosity of New Spain and elaborate marquetry furniture. A magnificent crystal mirror reflects the entry hall, antique ironwork adorns the bedroom and
Mexican landscapes by the 19th-century British painter Daniel Thomas Egerton line the patio hallway. Entry is free.
4:30 p.m. | Shop local
Emerging Mexico-based designers are drawing their inspiration from the country’s imagery and architectural forms, while emphasizing sustainability and fair prices for craftspeople. Boutiques showcasing local fashion are clustered in Colonia Juárez along the quiet Marsella and Havre streets. Two designers, Francisco Cancino and Cynthia Buttenklepper, share a flagship store and adapt traditional silhouettes and textiles in deep Mexican colors (Cancino’s linen dresses from 4,300 pesos, or about $222, Buttenklepper’s leather ponchos from 11,000 pesos). Mr Fox sells elegant leather bags (large totes, 3,700 pesos) and accessories. At Vera, classic Mexican weaving techniques and embroidery are updated into a joyful collection of tops, dresses and bags. Nothing is sacred in JPEG’s irreverent designs, not even the Virgin of Guadalupe, whose image is stamped on its shirts.
7 p.m. | Taste craft beer and then do dinner, Roma style Craft beers have taken off in Mexico. One local brewery, Monstruo de Agua, has opened a bright, plant-filled new taproom in Colonia Condesa. Order a small tasting glass (from 45 pesos) of stout flavored with fig and sugar cane, or maybe a white I.P.A. produced with agave syrup. Accompany your beer with esquite criollo (100 pesos), a sophisticated take on a classic corn street snack. In nearby Roma, Meroma’s intimate dining room offers local ingredients accented with unexpected touches, like quail marinated with harissa (dinner for two without wine, about 2,000 pesos). And for a taste of the city’s new wine scene, try Vigneron, a Roma bar and restaurant that spotlights small producers in France, Spain, Mexico and Italy (glasses from 185 pesos).
10 p.m. | Step to a salsa beat
Mama Rumba is an unassuming salsa club in Roma that has been around for three decades and remained loyal to its winning formula. Expert and aspiring dancers are all welcome to sway and spin to the Cuban house band, Charanga One. A DJ gets the rhythm going before the musicians take the stage at 11 p.m. Arrive early to practice your moves and snag a table where you can nurse a mojito or a margarita (110 pesos) between sets. If you’re feeling shy, sit upstairs and watch the musicians and dancers from the balcony. Cover charge is 120 pesos.
Saturday 9:30 a.m. | Visit Mexico’s oldest market
Spend the day in and around the Historic Center beginning with La Merced, the market that dates back to the Aztecs. It’s intimidating, both for its size and insularity. Street crime is a problem, so approach it with a guide who knows its passageways and vendors. Eat Mexico offers a 3-1/2-hour food tour in English ($99). At Señora Edith’s stall, try pre-Hispanic delicacies of toasted grasshoppers (chapulines) and ants (chicatanas), along with tiny freshwater fish and shrimp. Señora Balbina offers her sophisticated poblano and pipián moles on a blue corn tamal. The tour ends at Roldán 37, a traditional Mexican restaurant converted from an old chile-drying warehouse. Other tours in English: photojournalist Keith Dannemiller leads photography tours of various neighborhoods ($130 for a half-day); writer David Lida designs custom tours ($135 to $300).
2 p.m. | Seek out hidden murals
The murals in the Abelardo L. Rodríguez market, a few
minutes’ walk northeast of the giant Zócalo, the main square, were painted by students of Diego Rivera, among them Marion and Grace Greenwood, sisters from New York. Suffused with passion for social justice, the sisters’ murals, depicting the exploitation of farmworkers and miners, are alongside the stairway and first-floor landing at the market’s northeast corner. On the same landing is Isamu Noguchi’s 72-foot-long cement and brick mural, “History as Seen from Mexico in 1936.” At the nearby Baroque Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso are early examples of the century-old Mexican muralist movement. José Clemente Orozco’s frescoes cover three stories on the main patio’s north side and capture the anguish and hope of post-Revolutionary Mexico (entry 50 pesos).
4 p.m. | Explore Mexican art
Two more 18th-century landmarks recently opened with collections of Mexican art in and around the Historic Center. The works at the Foro Museo Valparaíso, in a former palace now owned by a bank, encompass colonial portraits, including one of the writer Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz that was painted after her death in 1695, 19th-century landscapes and images of iconic Mexican figures. The 20th-century galleries feature Diego Rivera’s 1942 “Calla Lily Vendor” and paintings by the surrealists Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington (free entry). A short car ride away is the Kaluz Museum, which showcases a private collection within the renovated Antiguo Hospicio de Tomás de Villanueva. Organized thematically, the display sets up a dialogue between earlier Mexican paintings and 20th-century interpretations. (Entry 60 pesos for Mexicans, 90 pesos for foreigners.)
6 p.m. | Sample pulque or mezcal
Explore a trio of nearby bars south of Alameda Park. At Pulquería Las Duelistas, tourists and locals squeeze in together to drink pulque, the pre-Hispanic fermented agave sap (beware its viscous consistency) that has become an acquired taste of the hipster crowd (plain blanco pulque, 15 pesos a glass; curado is flavored with oat, celery or guava, 30 pesos a glass). A short walk away is Tío Pepe, an old-fashioned cantina at the edge of Chinatown where the red vinyl booths, low hum of conversation and old photographs beckon you to stay and work through the voluminous drinks list. Bósforo is a mezcalería tucked behind red curtains and steel doors that doesn’t advertise — but everyone seems to find it anyway after its 7 p.m. opening time.
8:30 p.m. | Head to Juárez
After the commotion of the Historic Center, go to Juárez for a quiet dinner at Amaya. Unlike some of the buzzier stalwarts of the city’s creative dining scene in Roma, Amaya is where locals linger over wine and conversation. It is chef Jair Téllez’s second restaurant in the city (his first is Merotoro), and his idiosyncratic take on Baja-Med cuisine is consistently excellent. The varied share-style menu, which emphasizes local and seasonal ingredients, includes a fish ceviche tostada topped with fried squid, gnocchi with beef ragout, and braised lamb with roasted vegetables. The high-ceilinged dining room is accented with a colorful mural and vivid floor tiles. The restaurant serves natural wines, which Téllez imports himself. Dinner for two without wine, about 1,700 pesos.
10:30 p.m. | Listen to live jazz
In a city that seems to resound with the beat of Latin music, live jazz was once hard to find. Not any more. At the spacious Parker & Lenox bar in Juárez, which has low lighting, lounge seating and original cocktails (from 170 to 240 pesos), immerse yourself in the music up front or simply appreciate the vibe from farther back (cover charge up to 200 pesos, reservations recom-
mended). The smaller space at Jazzatlán Capital in Roma attracts a dedicated crowd for an evening that’s all about the music in an intimate setting (cover up to 400 pesos, reservations required).
Sunday
10 a.m. | Enjoy breakfast with Barragán
Head south for breakfast at the Tetetlán cultural center in the Pedregal neighborhood. It opened five years ago to complement the restoration of a private home, Casa Pedregal, designed by the great Mexican architect Luis Barragán at the end of the 1940s. Constructed around the volcanic stone walls of the house’s original stables, Tetetlán is a library of art and architecture books, an exhibition space, a shop and a restaurant. Breakfast options include chilaquiles (fried corn tortillas in salsa), and scrambled eggs with escamoles, or crunchy ant larvae (295 pesos). Much of the produce comes from the floating gardens along the vestiges of Aztec canals in the far-south Xochimilco district. Tours of Casa Pedregal in English must be booked ahead by email (500 pesos for Mexicans, 800 pesos for foreigners).
Noon | See a museum that pushes artistic boundaries
A short car ride away, the University Museum of Contemporary Art, known as the MUAC, hosts exhibitions from around the world, curates its own shows and collects the work of Mexican contemporary artists. Works by the French avant-garde artist Ben Vautier are on display through April and a survey of Latin American activist art and interventions opens Nov. 26 and runs through May 2023 (entry 40 pesos). The museum is housed in a striking glass building with a sloping facade designed by Mexican architect Teodoro González de Leon, who died in 2016, on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The giant university complex is itself a UNESCO World Heritage site, recognized for its mid-20th-century combination of modernist architecture and pre-Hispanic iconography, particularly its central library.
La Merced market is the city’s oldest and an introduction to traditional foods, including toasted insects.
Mama Rumba is a salsa club for experts and novices alike to dance late into the night.
Museo Foro Valparaíso is in a magnificent 18th-century palace with a sweeping collection of Mexican art.
Tetetlán, a cultural center that includes a restaurant, exhibition space, art library and shop, is a place where you could spend hours.
Almacén Monstruo de Agua is a taproom for a Mexico City craft brewery that makes creative use of local ingredients.
Meroma is a small restaurant in Roma that offers fresh Mexican ingredients with a twist.
Vigneron offers a curated wine selection from vineyards in France, Spain, Mexico and Italy.
Tío Pepe is a 150-year-old cantina where the pace slows to a crawl.
Amaya serves Baja-Med cuisine and natural wines.
Casa Goliana is an eight-room boutique bed-and-breakfast in an elegantly restored mansion in Roma Norte. Each room is furnished with local designs. Weekend rates for a double room start at 6,495 pesos, or $333.50.
Casa de la Luz Hotel Boutique is in a restored colonial palace on a square in the heart of the Historic Center. The 18 rooms feature tiled floors and remnants of the structure’s ancient walls. Doubles from 2,590 pesos.
Hotel Casa González, in a former grand house opposite the British Embassy in Colonia Cuauhtémoc, has rooms centered around leafy patios. Doubles from about 1,300 pesos.
Search for a short-term rental in Colonia Roma. Although it’s the city’s trendiest neighborhood, its back streets still evoke the 1970s world captured by the Oscar-winning movie “Roma,” particularly in Roma Sur.
This year, influenza arrived early in the United States, and it is already proving to be more severe than previous years’ flu. So far, an estimated 8.7 million people have become ill with the virus, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly the same number as those who got sick all season last year. The CDC estimates that 78,000 people have been hospitalized so far because of the flu and 4,500 have died — including 14 children.
“Last year, we saw almost no flu. There were very, very low rates of flu and only one pediatric death that whole year,” said Dr. Katie Lockwood, a primary care pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Experts worry that influenza cases are going to continue increasing until at least January, when the virus typically peaks. And children have generally been particularly vulnerable because of their immature immune systems. That is why it is important for parents to take measures to protect young children and recognize symptoms of illness when they do occur.
“The vaccine this year is a very good match for the circulating strains we have in the United States,” said Dr. James Antoon, an assistant professor of pediatrics and pediatric hospitalist at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Getting vaccinated can reduce the chances of an infection and lessen the severity of illness, including the possibility of complications such as ear infections and bacterial pneumonias that may occur with or after the fl u, Antoon said.
Even if you suspect your child has had the flu already, it is not too late to get vaccinated, he added. In fluenza type A is the dominant strain making people sick right now, but viral strains sometimes switch later in the season. Here’s what parents need to know about the flu.
What are some symptoms to look out for?
It can be difficult to distinguish the flu from other childhood illnesses such as the common cold or respiratory syncytial virus, which are also circulating right now. The flu often causes a combination of a fever, cough,
sore throat, runny nose, chills, muscle aches, headaches and a general feeling of malaise, which may make your child unusually tired and cranky.
“It’s rare that patients come in with just a sore throat,” Lockwood said. “The hallmark of the flu for me is when symptoms are all over.”
Symptoms of the flu also tend to come on abruptly, she said. “Sometimes parents will tell me that their child was fine when they dropped them off at school, and when they picked them up, the child had a fever and all of these other symptoms.”
Some gastrointestinal symptoms, such as diarrhea or vomiting, are also more common with the fl u than other viral illnesses.
“Most kids are going to be sick anywhere from three to five days,” Lockwood said. Some symptoms, however, can linger for an average of seven to 10 days, she said. A cough is typically the last thing to clear up.
How should you treat the flu?
In most cases, the best prescription for the flu is to rest and recover at home with plenty of fluids, said Dr. Priya Soni, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at CedarsSinai Guerin Children’s in Los Angeles. Research has shown that keeping your house at a humidity level of 40% to 60% can also ease congestion and reduce virus transmis-
sion to others. And using a nasal aspirator to help younger children clear out excess mucus may allow them to sleep better at night, she said.
Doctors generally don’t recommend over-the-counter medicines to help with cough and cold symptoms in children younger than 6, except for fever reducers such as acetaminophen (often sold under the brand name Tylenol) and ibuprofen (found in Children’s Motrin). But a few small studies of children between ages 1 and 5 have found that honey at bedtime may be just as effective in reducing nighttime coughs as overthe-counter cough syrups.
When should you go to a doctor or hospital?
If your child is running a fever higher than 104 or falls in a high-risk group such as those younger than 2, doctors may sometimes prescribe antiviral medication such as Tamiflu to help reduce the severity and duration of the fl u. However, high in fl uenza rates are sparking concern among health officials that Tamiflu may become hard to find in some places.
There are three other alternative antiviral medicines that can be used to treat the flu: Relenza, Rapivab and Xo fluza. All of these, including Tamiflu, work best when taken early in the course of illness, although
their side effects can sometimes exacerbate symptoms such as nausea and vomiting.
Children with chronic medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, heart conditions or seizures are also at a higher risk for influenza-related complications. And because the flu may exacerbate their medical condition, these children may receive antiviral treatment at any point in their illness, regardless of how long they’ve had symptoms, Antoon said.
If your pediatrician’s office is closed and your child shows any signs of fast or troubled breathing, blue lips or a heaving chest, you may want to head straight to an urgent care or emergency room.
Other emergency signs include refusing to eat or drink, having difficulty staying alert, experiencing muscle pain so strong that it becomes hard to walk, and a fever or cough that returns after your child has seemingly been on the mend.
Children who are hospitalized are generally treated with antivirals such as Tamiflu, and some may need additional oxygen supplementation or intravenous fluids, Soni said.
When is it safe to send your child back to school or day care?
In general, the CDC recommends waiting until children are fever-free (below 100 degrees without the use of any fever-reducing medications) for at least 24 hours before sending them back to school or day care. Since this can take a day or two, and because viral infectiousness also drops significantly after about the third day of experiencing symptoms, going back to school around this time also reduces the likelihood of getting others sick.
But parents may also want to consider if appetite and hydration levels are improving. Will the child be able to eat and drink enough without your constant supervision? Will the child have enough energy to do all the activities they need to do in school?
And it may be a good idea to note how actively your child is coughing. “It is a little bit of a subjective decision that parents have to make,” Lockwood said, adding that a child’s cough and other symptoms should at least be improving, even if they have not completely cleared up. “If they’re still coughing a lot, you may want to wait a little longer before they go back to school,” she said.
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE CAGUAS.
CIVIL NUM. CG2022CV03432.
SOBRE: EXPEDIENTE DE DOMINIO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.
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 algun 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 em argo, 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 1B, con una cabida superficial de 407.3511 metros cuadrados, equivalentes a 0.1036 cuerdas. En linde al Norte, en 22.1902 metros con terrenos de Luis A. Rolón Meléndez; al Sur en 13.6118 metros con Rosa M. Rolón Meléndez y en 6.2535 con un camino existente; al Este en 19.1102 metros con Iglesia Católica y al Oeste, en 19.0657 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 de la última publicación del edicto, a fin de alegar lo que al derecho de estos convenga. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, en Caguas, Puerto Rico, a 29 de noviembre de 2022.
LISILDA MARTINEZ AGOSTO, SECRETARIA. GLORISSETTE RIVERA REYES, Sub-Secretaria.
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIAD DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMFRA INSTANCIA SALA DE CAGUAS.
CIVIL NUM. CG2022CV03467. SOBRE: EXPEDlENTE DE DOMINIO. EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. S.S.
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. Guillermo Rolón García, esposo de la parte peticionaria, estuvo ocupando el referido bien inmueble hasta el momento de su fallecimiento. El causante Guillermo 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 algun 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 6A, con una cabida superficial de 939.2416 metros cuadrados, equivalentes a 0.2390 cuerdas. En lindes al Norte, en 25.7300 metros con terrenos de Suzette A. Rolón Cruz; al Sur en 18.3229 metros con un camino existente; al Este en 30.26 18 metros con la Sucn. De Luis Rolón y al Oeste, en 29.0134 metros con un camino existente y en 15.4907 metros con la Iglesia Católica. 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 de la última publicación del edicto, a fin de alegar lo que al derecho de estos convenga. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, en Caguas, Puerto Rico a 29 de noviembre de 2022. Lisilda Martinez Agosto, Secretaria. Glorissette Rivera Reyes, SubSecretaria.
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE CAGUAS.
CIVIL NUM. CG2022CV03431.
SOBRE: EXPEDIENTE DE DOMINIO. EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. S.S.
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 1D con una cabida superficial de 325.4791 metros cuadrados, equivalentes a 0.0828 cuerdas. En lindes al Norte, en 24.9626 metros con terrenos de Rosa M. Rolón Meléndez; al Sur en 14.2081 metros con Lydia M. Rolón Meléndez; al Este en 8.0 139 metros con un camino existente y al Oeste, en 14.0737 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://unirecl.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 de la última publicación del edicto, a fin de alegar lo que al derecho de estos convenga. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, en Caguas, Puerto Rico, a 29 de noviembre de 2022. Lisilda Martinez Agosto, Secretaria. Glorissette Rivera Reyes, SubSecretaria.
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIAD DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMRA INSTANCIA SALA DE CAGUAS.
ROSA MARIA ROLÓN MELÉNDEZ
PETICIONARIA EX-PARTE CIVIL NUM. CG202203433. SOBRE: EXPEDIENTE DE DOMINIO. EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. S.S.
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 de! 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 Garcia García, quien lo adquirió desde hace muchos años pero no cuenta con documento alguien 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 1C con una cabida superficial de 417.5927 metros cuadrados, equivalentes a 0.1062 cuerdas. En lindes al Norte, en 13.6918 metros con terrenos de Rosa M. Rolón Meléndez; al Sur en 24.9626 metros con Ana M. Rolón Meléndez; al Este en 24.7980 metros con un camino existente y al Oeste, en 23.877 1 metros con Antulio Aponte. Se le notifica que deberá presentar u 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 e 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 de la última publicación del edicto, a fin de alegar lo que al derecho de estos convenga. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, en Caguas, Puerto Rico, a 28 de noviembre de 2022. Lisilda Martinez Agosto, Secretaria. Glorissette Rivera Reyes, SubSecretaria.
GENERAL PUBLIC.
WHEREAS: Judgment was entered in favor of plaintiff to recover from defendants the principal sum of $138,060.89, plus the annual interest rate convened of 5.060% per annum until the debt is paid in full. The defendant Carmen María Suárez Aristud a/k/a Carmen M. Suárez Aristud a/k/a Carmen María Suárez to pay Finance of America Reverse, LLC., all advances made under the mortgage note including but not limited to insurance premiums, taxes and inspections as well as 10% ($22,200.00) of the original principal amount to cover costs, expenses, and attorney’s fees guaranteed under the mortgage obligation. 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
URBANA: Solar marcado con el número FF veintidós del Plano de Inscripción del Proyecto de Viviendas a Bajo Costo denominado B.V.C. cincuenta y dos, radicado en el Barrio Martín González y Hoyo Mulas del término municipal de Carolina, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de doscientos noventa y ocho metros cuadrados con cincuenta y siete centésimas de otro, en lindes: por el NORTE, con el solar FF veintiuno; por el SUR, con el solar FF veintitrés; por el ESTE, con terrenos propiedad de la Corporación de Renovación Urbana y Vivienda de Puerto Rico; y por el OESTE, con la Calle número doce.”
Property Number 31,199 filed at page 203 of volume 776 of Carolina, Registry of the Property of Puerto Rico, Section II of Carolina. The mortgage deed is recorded at page 132 of volu-
me 1,508 of Carolina, Registry of the Property of Puerto Rico, Section II of Carolina. WHEREAS: This property is subject to the following liens: Senior Liens: None. Junior Liens: Reverse mortgage securing a note in favor of Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, or its order, in the original principal amount of $222,000.00, due on August 1, 2087 pursuant to deed number 50, issued in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on March 27, 2013, before notary David Garcia Medina, and recorded, at page 134 of volume 1,508 of Carolina, property number 31,199, 5th inscription. 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 17TH DAY JANUARY OF 2023, AT: 9:30 AM. The minimum bid that will be accepted is the sum of $222,000.00. 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 the 24TH
DAY JANUARY OF 2023, AT: 9:30 AM, and the minimum bid that will be accepted is the sum $148,000.00, 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 the 31ST DAY JANUARY OF 2023, AT: 9:30 AM, and the minimum bid that will be accepted is the sum of $111,000.00, which is one-half of the minimum bid in the first public sale. 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 19th day of October 2022. PEDRO A. VÉLEZ-BAERGA, SPECIAL MASTER.
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE PONCE SALA SUPERIOR BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO
Parte Demandante Vs. AUGUSTO ORENGO RUIZ, SYLVIA ROMÁN COLÓN Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS
Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: PO2022CV01039.
Sala: 406. 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 dictada el 2 de septiembre de 2022, la Orden de Ejecución de Sentencia del 31 de octubre de 2022 y el Mandamiento de Ejecución del 10 de noviembre de 2022 en el caso de epígrafe, procederé a vender el día 1 DE FEBRERO DE 2023, A LAS 3:15
DE LA TARDE, en mi oficina, localizada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Centro Judicial de Ponce, Sala Superior, en 2150 Ave. Santiago de los Caballeros, Ponce, Puerto Rico, al mejor postor en pago de contado y en moneda de los Estados Unidos de América, cheque de gerente o giro postal, todo título, derecho o interés de la parte demandada sobre la siguiente propiedad: URBANA: PROPIE-
DAD HORIZONTAL: Apartamento residencial número 702 del Condominio Torre de Playa Santa, localizado en el Sector
Salinas Providencia del Barrio Montalva del Municipio de Guánica, Puerto Rico. Con forma de abanico, está construido en hormigón armado y bloques de concreto y se encuentra ubica-
do en el octavo nivel o quinto piso residencial del edificio.
Consta de una planta y tiene su entrada por su lindero Sureste, de donde sale a un pasillo común que da acceso a los elevadores y escaleras comunes del edificio y de ahí a la vía pública. Sus linderos son los siguientes: por el NORESTE, en 29’ lineales equivalentes a 8.84 metros lineales con pared común medianera que lo separa de apartamento número 703; por el SUR, en 29’ lineales equivalentes a 8.84 metros lineales con pared común medianera que lo separa de apartamento número 701; por el SURESTE, por donde tiene su puerta de entrada en dos alineaciones que suman 19’ 2” lineales equivalentes a 5.89 metros lineales con pared medianera que lo separa del pasillo comunal que sirve este piso; y por el OESTE, en dos alineaciones que suman 43’ 6” pulgadas lineales, equivalentes a 13.26 metros lineales, con pared exterior común del edificio y con el parapeto de su balcón que miran hacia la Urbanización Playa del Caribe. Este apartamento tiene un área superficial de 861.96 pies cuadrados, equivalentes a 80.08 metros cuadrados y consta de un dormitorio principal con walk-in-closet y baño, otro dormitorio con su closet, un baño adicional en el área del pasillo, sala-comedor, cocina, área de lavandería y balcón. A este apartamento le ha sido asignado como elemento común limitado al mismo el uso del espacio o área de estacionamiento marcado con el número 56 en el plano de Condominio.
Le ha sido asignado además una participación en los gastos e ingresos del condominio y en la titularidad de sus elementos comunes equivalentes al 1.8573% y una participación de 1.3156% en los elementos comunes limitados del Condominio. Inscrita al folio 202 del tomo 199 de Guánica, Finca Número 6745, Registro de la Propiedad de San Germán. La escritura de hipoteca consta inscrita al folio 202 vuelto del tomo 199 de Guánica, Finca Número 6745, Registro de la Propiedad de San Germán. Inscripción cuarta. Dirección Física: TORRES DE PLAYA SANTA, APT. 702, GUÁNICA, PR 00653. Número de Catastro: 59-428-087-134-01-027. El tipo mínimo para la primera subasta será de $252,000.00. De no haber adjudicación en la primera subasta se celebrará una SEGUNDA SUBASTA, el día 8 DE FEBRERO DE 2023, A LAS 3:15 DE LA TARDE 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, $168,000.00. De no haber adjudicación en la
segunda subasta, se celebrará una TERCERA SUBASTA, el día 15 DE FEBRERO DE 2023, A LAS 3:15 DE LA TARDE en el mismo lugar, en la cual el tipo mínimo será la mitad del precio pactado, o sea, $126,000.00. Si se declarase desierta la tercera subasta, se adjudicará la finca a favor del acreedor por la totalidad de la cantidad adeudada si ésta es igual o menor que el monto del tipo de la tercera subasta, si el tribunal lo estima conveniente. Se abonará dicho monto a la cantidad adeudada si ésta es mayor. Dicho remate se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer a la demandante el importe de la Sentencia por la suma de $196,025.99 de principal, más intereses sobre dicha suma al 7% anual desde el 1 de diciembre de 2019 hasta su completo pago, más $1,844.26 de recargos acumulados, los cuales continuarán en aumento hasta el saldo total de la deuda, más la cantidad estipulada de $25,200.00 para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados, así como cualquier otra suma que contenga el contrato del préstamo. Surge del Estudio de Título Registra! que sobre esta propiedad pesa el siguiente gravamen posterior a la hipoteca que por la presente se pretende ejecutar: Bitácora: Asiento 2022-063683SG01, el 15 de mayo de 2022, Demanda de fecha 26 de abril de 2022, Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Ponce, en el Caso Civil Número PO2022CV01039, seguido por Banco Popular de Puerto Rico Vs. Augusto Orenga Ruiz y su esposa, Sylvia Román Colón, sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca, en la que se reclama el pago de hipoteca con un balance de $196,025.99 y otras cantidades, o la venta en pública subasta de la propiedad. Pendiente de anotación. Se notifica al acreedor posterior o a su sucesor o cesionario en derecho para que comparezca a proteger su derecho si así lo desea. Se les advierte a los interesados que todos los documentos relacionados con la presente acción de ejecución de hipoteca, así como los de Subasta, estarán disponibles para ser examinados, durante horas laborables, en el expediente del caso que obra en los archivos de la Secretaría del Tribunal, bajo el número de epígrafe y para su publicación en un periódico de circulación general en Puerto Rico por espacio de dos semanas y por lo menos una vez por semana; y para su fijación en los sitios públicos requeridos por ley. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del eje-
cutante, continuarán subsistentes; entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate y que la propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores tal como lo expresa la Ley Núm. 210-2015. Y para el conocimiento de los demandados, de los acreedores posteriores, de los licitadores, partes interesadas y público en general, EXPIDO para su publicación en los lugares públicos correspondientes, el presente Aviso de Pública Subasta en Ponce, Puerto Rico, hoy 17 de noviembre de 2022. MANUEL MALDONADO, ALGUACIL, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, CENTRO JUDICIAL DE PONCE, SALA SUPERIOR.
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA.
NEWREZ LLC D/B/A SHELLPOINT MORTGAGE SERVICING
Demandante vs. DENNIS NARVAEZ SANCHEZ Demandados
CIVIL NUM. CA2020CV02741. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA. EDICTO DE SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.
A: La Parte Demandada, al (a la) Secretario(a) de Hacienda de Puerto Rico y al Público General: Certifico y Hago Constar: Que en cumplimiento con el Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que me ha sido dirigido por el (la) Secretario(a) del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Carolina, en el caso de epígrafe procederá a vender en pública subasta al mejor postor en efectivo, cheque gerente, giro postal, cheque certificado en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos de América al nombre del Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, en mi oficina ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Carolina, el 6 de marzo de 2023, a las 1:30 de la tarde, todo derecho título, participación o interés que le corresponda a la parte demandada o cualquiera de ellos en el inmueble hipotecado objeto de ejecución que se describe a continuación: URBANA: PROPIEDAD HORIZONTAL: Apartment number 1508. Efficiency apartment consisting of one main dependency where living-dining and sleeping activities are conducted, bath,
kitchen, balcony and closets. It bounds: on the NORTH, on a distance of thirty one point fifty nine feet, equivalent to nine point sixty four meter with a common wall which separates it from apartment one thousand five hundred seven and the common element of the building and the lot on which it is erected; on the SOUTH, on a distance of thirty one point forty two feet, equivalent to nine point fifty nine meters with the common elements of the building and the lot on which it is erected; on the EAST, on a distance of twenty three point seventeen feet, equivalent to seven point zero seven meters with a wall which separates it from a common hallway through which access to the public street may be gained; and on the WEST, on a distance of twenty three point seventeen feet, equivalent to seven point zero seven meters with a common elements of the building and the lot on which it is erected. This apartment has an area of six hundred sixty four point seventy two square feet, equivalent to sixty one point seventy five square meters. A balcony with an area of sixty one point sixty five square feet, equivalent to five point seventy three square meters is included. Consta inscrita al folio 197 del tomo 411 de Carolina, finca número 15774, Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección Primera de Carolina. Esta propiedad está gravada por HIPOTECA en garantía de pagaré a favor de Bankers Mortgage Services LLC, o a su orden, por la suma de $240,000.00, respondiendo esta finca en un 95%, con intereses al 6% anual y vencimiento 1 de junio de 2037. Constituida por la Escritura 3 otorgada en San Juan el 29 de mayo de 2007 ante el notario Antoan Figueroa Hernández, e inscrita al folio 19 del tomo 997 de Carolina Norte, finca 15774, inscripción 6ª. URBANA: PROPIEDAD HORIZONTAL. Parking space number 16-A uncovered parking space, located on the ground level of Waldorf Tower Condominium, Loiza Street, Carolina, with a total floor area of one hundred forty-eight-point one square meters. Bounding on the NORTH, on a distance of eighteen feet, with an imaginary line that separated it from parking space number 17-A; on the SOUTH, on the same distance, with an imaginary line that separates it from parking space number 15A, on the EAST, on a distance of eight point twenty five feet with an imaginary line that separates it from the circulation area; and on the WEST, on the same distance with the common elements of the building. This unit has its access on its easterly boundary. Consta inscrita al folio 204 del tomo 46 de Carolina, finca número 15775, Registro de la Propie-
dad de Puerto Rico, Sección I de Carolina. Esta propiedad esta gravada por HIPOTECA en garantía de pagaré a favor de Bankers Mortgage Services LLC, o a su orden, por la suma de $240,000.00, respondiendo esta finca en un 5%, con intereses al 6% anual y vencimiento 1 de junio de 2037. Constituida por la Escritura 3 otorgada en San Juan el 29 de mayo de 2007 ante el notario Antoan Figueroa Hernández, subsanada mediante la escritura 5 otorgada en San Juan el 18 de junio de 2007 ante el mismo notario, e inscrita al folio 20 del tomo 997 de Carolina Norte, finca 15775, inscripción 5ª. La Propiedad objeto de ejecución está localizada en: Waldorf Towers, Unit #1508, Carolina, PR 00979. Según figuran en la certificación registral, la propiedad objeto de ejecución no está gravada por cargas anteriores o posteriores a la inscripción del crédito ejecutante. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad de la propiedad y que todas las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes al crédito ejecutante antes descritos, si los hubiere, continuarán subsistentes. El rematante acepta dichas cargas y gravámenes anteriores, y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Se establece como tipo mínimo de subasta la suma de $240,000.00, según acordado entre las partes en el precio pactado en la escritura de hipoteca. De ser necesaria una segunda subasta por declararse desierta la primera, la misma se celebrará en mi oficina, ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Carolina, el 13 de marzo de 2023, a las 1:30 de la tarde, y se establece como mínima para dicha segunda subasta la suma de $160,000.00, 2/3 partes del tipo mínimo establecido originalmente. Si tampoco se produce remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta, se establece como mínima para la tercera subasta, la suma de $120,000.00, la mitad (1/2) del precio pactado y dicha subasta se celebrará en mi oficina, ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Carolina, el 20 de marzo de 2023, a las 1:30 de la tarde. Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo para, con su producto satisfacer a la parte demandante, el importe de la Sentencia dictada a su favor ascendente a la suma de $230,534.54 de principal, intereses al tipo del 6.00000% anual según ajustado desde el día 1ro. de noviembre de 2009 hasta el pago de la deuda en su totalidad, más la suma de $24,000.00 por concepto de honorarios de abogado y costas autorizadas por el Tribunal, más las cantidades que se
adeudan mensualmente por concepto de seguro hipotecario, cargos por demora, y otros adeudados que se hagan en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca. La venta en pública subasta de la referida propiedad se verificará libre de toda carga o gravamen posterior que afecte la mencionada finca, a cuyo efecto se notifica y se hace saber la fecha, hora y sitio de la PRIMERA, SEGUNDA Y TERCERA SUBASTA, si esto fuera necesario, a los efectos de que cualquier persona o personas con algún interés puedan comparecer a la celebración de dicha subasta. Se notifica a todos los interesados que las actas y demás constancias del expediente de este caso están disponibles en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante horas laborables para ser examinadas por los (las) interesados (as). Y para su publicación en el periódico The San Juan Daily Star, que es un diario de circulación general en la isla de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas consecutivas con un intervalo de por lo menos siete (7) días entre ambas publicaciones, así como para su publicación en los sitios públicos de Puerto Rico. Expedido en Carolina, Puerto Rico, hoy día 6 de diciembre de 2022. Manuel Villafañe Blanco, ALGUACIL DE SUBASTAS TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAROLINA SALA SUPERIOR.
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE CAGUAS
Civil Núm.: CG2022CV03437.
Sobre: EXPEDIENTE DE DOMINIO. EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, S.S.
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 al peticionario todo derecho sobre la propiedad inmueble antes descrita. Sin embargo, desde que ocurrió dicha cesión el peticionario ha estado poseyendo el inmueble como dueño por más de 30 años. La descripción exacta del bien inmueble objeto del procedimiento es el siguiente: RÚSTICA: 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 1A con una cabida superficial de 1127.4047 metros cuadrados, equivalentes a 0.2868 cuerdas. En lindes al Norte, en 6.3137 metros con terrenos de Nicanor Izona; al Sur en 22.1902 metros con Rosa M. Rolón Meléndez; al Este en 27.2632 metros con Marisol Rolón González y en 27.2632 metros con Luis Antonio Rolón González y al Oeste, en 70.0016 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 de la última publicación del edicto, a fin de alegar lo que al derecho de estos convenga. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, en Caguas, Puerto Rico, a 30 de noviembre de 2022.
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
LISILDA MARTÍNEZAGOSTO, SECRETARIA. GLORISSETTE RIVERA REYES, SUB-SECRETARIA.
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE CAGUAS LUIS ANTONIO
ROLÓN GONZÁLEZA: CUALQUIER PERSONA
QUE PUDIESE TENER INTERÉS Y TODA PERSONA A QUIEN PUDIERA PERJUDICAR LA INSCRIPCIÓN SOLICITADA.
Several years ago, Kevin Porter Jr., then a high school basketball star in Seattle, made a profound decision, one that would affect his life. He was creating his own team for the video game NBA 2K, and he decided to outfit one of the players in super long, over-the-calf socks.
“I really liked it,” Porter said, “so I tried it in real life. And I was like, ‘Yeah, this is my new look.’ ”
Porter has remained loyal to the style. Now a fourth-year guard with the Houston Rockets, he often complements his high socks by covering his knees with compression sleeves that are designed for his arms.
“So my legs can stay warm,” he said. “A lot of people make fun of having high socks. But honestly, it’s kind of like a ’70s or ’80s look. I’m different, and I like expressing that.”
Clad in their oversize sweaters, avantgarde scarves and bespoke suits, NBA players have long moonlighted as style-conscious trendsetters. Before games, arena corridors double as fashion runways. And once fans find their seats, the league’s stars function as billboards for the hottest sneakers on the market.
The NBA, though, has seldom allowed players much wiggle room when it comes to an undervalued component of their in-game attire: socks. Players, after all, are required to wear those manufactured by Nike, which has been the league’s sock partner for six seasons.
But even within that relatively confined world, players are constantly finding ways to tailor their approaches. Some pull their socks high, while others scrunch them low. Some want a brand-new pair every game, while others are fine cycling through the same laundered pairs for weeks.
There are even a few players who purposely take their Nike socks, which are labeled left and right, and wear them on the wrong feet — a practice that has always puzzled Pat Connaughton of the Milwaukee Bucks.
“I’ve asked, and nobody’s given me a good answer,” he said.
And while it seems most players prioritize function, some favor fashion — perhaps illustrative of a generational divide.
“I think there’s a culture change with the younger guys,” said Tony Nila, who has spent 30 seasons with the Rockets, including the past 16 as the team’s equipment manager. “I don’t know if they have so many sock routines or pet peeves. I think they’re more about looking good.”
For decades, most players simply wore the socks that teams gave them — sometimes lots of them. Mel Davis, a forward for the New York Knicks and the New York Nets (now Brooklyn Nets) in the 1970s, was known to throw on six pairs — six! — before lacing up his sneakers, which was a source of intrigue for opponents and teammates alike.
Sock protocols became more formalized in 1986, when the league created a line of products that included socks, replica jerseys, shorts and warm-ups. It did not take long for the league to mandate that its players wear socks that were produced by its sock licensee, a company called Ridgeview.
In the late ’80s and early ’90s, the socks were basic. Some had a couple of stripes around the ankle. Others had the team name running up the side. In 1999, the league began using an Indiana-based company called For Bare Feet, which made socks that were easily identifiable: plush and white with a small NBA logo.
“Great sock,” said Eric Housen, the Golden State Warriors’ vice president of team operations. “Guys loved those.”
Before the 2015-16 season, the NBA dropped For Bare Feet in favor of Stance. The Stance socks, though more playful and vivid, were not nearly as popular.
“Stiff,” Marcus Smart of the Boston Celtics said. “Hurt your feet. Wasn’t too big on them.”
The Stance experiment lasted just two seasons. Philadelphia 76ers forward P.J. Tuck-
er was not enamored with the brand. So, he procured several dozen pairs of thick, padded socks from his favorite sock purveyor, Thorlos — “Most comfortable socks ever,” he said — along with several dozen pairs from Stance, and had them delivered to a tailor for surgery: She cut them all in half, then stitched the tops of the Stance socks to the bottoms of the Thorlos socks.
The result was that the Stance design and the NBA logo were still visible while affording Tucker the comfort of his Thorlos down low, where it mattered. It was an ingenious way of skirting league rules.
“Socks are super important, bro,” Tucker said.
Nike, which did not respond to repeated requests for comment, does offer some selection within the margins of its game-sock cosmos. Its socks, which are a polyester, nylon, cotton and spandex blend, come in four lengths: no-show, quarter, crew and tall. (Housen could not think of a current player who wears the no-show socks; the last player who did, he said, may have been Luke Ridnour, a journeyman guard who announced his retirement in 2016.) Players can opt for a type of sock called “Quick,” which is thinner, or “Power,” which has more padding.
And there are different sizes. When Boban Marjanovic, a 7-foot-4 center, joined the Rockets in an offseason trade, Nila, the team’s equipment manager, was grateful that he had
some size XXXL socks on hand.
But while there is flexibility in terms of the style and fit of the socks from game to game, teammates must wear the same color. As they rotate through different uniforms, some franchises mix it up: purple socks one game, black the next. Others keep it simple. Keen observers of foot fashion may have noticed, for example, that the New Orleans Pelicans strictly wear white socks, which forward Brandon Ingram prefers. Zion Williamson, Ingram’s teammate, adds pizazz by flipping down the sock tops to expose a colorful thread that runs along an inside seam.
“I like the orange stripe,” he said.
Lest anyone think the NBA is lax about its sock policies, consider Smart’s experience at the start of the 2017-18 season, when Nike was the league’s new partner. For the season opener, he folded the tops of his socks down because they felt more comfortable that way, he said. The problem was that he wound up hiding the Nike swoosh.
“I got a call from the league, and they said that Nike said I did it on purpose,” said Smart, who was sponsored by Adidas at the time. “So they were like, ‘You’ve got to wear your socks the right way or you’ll be fined.’ ”
How much? “I didn’t want to find out,” said Smart, who now has a deal with Puma.
Teams typically order their socks from Nike about a year in advance. Last month, Housen ordered about 2,500 pairs of socks for Golden State — about 150 per player — for next season. Each team gets an annual stipend for Nike gear.
A decent segment of the league wears two pairs. But within that subset are variations. Connaughton said he began doubling up when he was in high school because he believed it helped prevent blisters. Jabari Smith Jr., a firstyear forward with the Rockets, wears a pair of Adidas socks underneath his Nike ones.
Sometimes, it depends on the sneaker. Larry Nance Jr., a forward with the Pelicans, said one pair of socks typically sufficed when he wore LeBron James’ signature Nike shoes. But he wears two pairs whenever he reaches for his Air Jordan 10s, which are “a little flimsier,” he said.
Tucker, who has an enormous sneaker collection, gets why all of this may sound so strange. Most people can get away with wearing crummy socks, he said. But professional athletes are different.
“Your feet got to feel right,” he said. “If your feet don’t feel right, forget it.”
Even within the relatively confined world of in-game socks, NBA players are constantly finding ways to tailor their approaches.scan revealed lingering damage to his frontal lobe, and the doctor asked him a question: Did you ever hit your head?
It is impossible to know if the brain injuries Adkins suffered during those hurdling crashes led to the problems he was experiencing. All he knows for certain is how different he feels since he changed his medication in order to address the damage that the scans revealed.
“I’m a lot closer to the person I was,” Adkins said recently over juice and tea in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York.
Adkins, who coaches at the Central Park Track Club in New York and is a roving lecturer for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, said the last thing he wanted anyone to take away from his story was that hurdling was a dangerous activity that should be avoided.
tention given to traumatic brain injuries in contact sports.
“Concussions became much more of an issue,” Hurt said. “The chance for a concussion is low in track, and it would be a rare occurrence, but anytime a kid would fall and hit his head, it’s something you want to be concerned about.”
Runners at St. John’s and other colleges and high schools take a cognitive test before the season so that if they experience a head injury, there is a baseline to compare their brain function with when coaches are determining if they are ready to compete again.
By MATTHEW FUTTERMAN
When the crashes were happening in the early 1990s, when Derrick Adkins was emerging as one of the world’s top hurdlers, he never thought that the most damaging and lasting injuries he experienced would be the ones he could not see.
Adkins focused on the cuts and bruises his body endured as it banged and skidded across the track or, in one case, a broken collarbone that had cracked all the way through. Each time, he had been dazed and jarred from banging his head, but over time, those symptoms subsided.
Or maybe they just shifted. By 1996, when Adkins was preparing for the Atlanta
Olympics, where he would win the gold medal in the 400-meter hurdles, he was battling depression. He stopped taking the psychiatric medication doctors had prescribed because they made him feel slower. Winning the gold medal made him feel nervous and uneasy rather than jubilant. He did not make the U.S. Olympic team in 2000.
For more than two decades after his triumph, he struggled with mental illness and alcoholism, even as he held down coaching jobs at Columbia and Nyack College and a position at New York Road Runners. He held a mechanical engineering degree from Georgia Tech but could not put it to use.
He never understood why his life had veered so far off course. Then, in 2020, a brain
Track-and-field events — even the riskier ones, such as pole vaulting and high jumping — bear little resemblance to contact sports such as football, hockey or lacrosse. Studies have shown that just 1% to 3% percent of track-and-field injuries affect the head and neck; close to 80% affect the lower limbs.
Adkins’ story is a cautionary tale, however, especially as the indoor track season starts and runners of all ages and speeds start going over hurdles again. Hurdlers run so fast these days that they can lose their coordination as they prepare to jump, leading to painful, high-speed crashes.
Jim Hurt, who recently retired after 39 years coaching track and field at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, said running coaches had started paying attention to the possibility of brain injuries only in the past decade or so, in large part because of the at-
Some runners are being more careful about hurdling in wet or windy conditions. Grant Holloway, silver medalist in the 110-meter hurdles at the Tokyo Olympics, was criticized for pulling out of a race in Bermuda in April because of high winds. Adkins said Holloway had made the right decision.
And yet, as Adkins has begun speaking publicly about his experiences, he still finds that plenty of runners and coaches rarely think about head injuries and the lasting damage they can cause. Track athletes, he said, will spend months nursing a muscle strain but think nothing of racing or pole vaulting with a foggy head or dizziness. Your brain is more important than your hamstring; treat it that way.
“My message is, if an athlete hits their head, even once, they should get their head checked out, preferably through a brain scan,” Adkins said. “Don’t examine and treat the bodily injuries only like my trainers did with me. Examine the head as well, and be vigilant about the fact that emotional difficulties may result, not just head pain.”
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
Your transmission may be stuck in reverse today, Aries. This doesn’t mean you can’t be productive. You may need to change your approach. Carefully assess a situation before you proceed. Someone may be trying to cross you. Be smart about your rebuttal. Head-on combat isn’t the best approach. Try reasoning. You may discover that there are pieces of the puzzle you didn’t know about.
Things should go well for you today, Taurus. There’s an added serenity in the air that will help calm your nerves. There’s no need to make things more complicated than necessary. The answers to things are actually quite simple. Everything you want is probably right at your fingertips. You don’t need to go far to find what you seek.
It might seem like someone has dumped a bucket of water on your head today, Gemini. It seems like your fire is out. Keep in mind that this is only temporary and that your internal flame will be rekindled soon. For now, you may want to take this time to slow down and relax. Use this as an opportunity to reflect and tune in to your sensitive, caring nature. Let someone else take the reins.
Tension may run high today as things come to a great emotional climax. It might seem as if everyone is out to get you, Cancer, but more than likely this paranoia is a figment of your imagination. Don’t get carried away with crazy scenarios that have no basis in reality. People may be acting irrationally, so don’t be surprised if reason and logic are nowhere to be found.
More than likely you will be caught up in a wildly intense emotional drama if you aren’t careful, Leo. Try to stay calm and collected. Find a quiet, solitary place where you can relax. Your energy is there, but it may be more reserved and subtle on a day like this. Be the stable oasis in the raging turmoil. Make peace with the people around you.
You will find strength in your inner reserves today, Virgo. Don’t hesitate to let your deepest thoughts shine through. Keep your antenna up. You will find that there’s an electricity in the air that keeps people’s emotions at peak level. Follow your instincts and keep in mind that this is probably your best defense against the challenges of the day. Rational thinking is overrated.
You may feel a bit sluggish today, Libra. Your warrior spirit would rather stay home on the couch than get up and fight. This is fine. You may simply need a break from your quest for world domination. Remember that a good leader also takes the time to sit back and reflect on recent events in order to make better plans for the future.
Your sensitivity is strong today, Scorpio. You will find that your perception of situations is right on target with the truth of the matter. Keep in mind that in order to be successful, you won’t need to strong-arm anyone into doing what you want. More than likely you will be able to accomplish more just by tuning in to your receptive, gentle nature.
You may feel a bit confused today. It might seem as if the wind has suddenly been taken out of your sails. Don’t get discouraged by the slow weightiness of the day. Take the opportunity to relax and recharge your batteries. Do a bit of inward reflection as opposed to outer-directed movement. The most valuable lesson to learn is patience. Remind yourself of this throughout the day.
Today is an excellent day for you, Capricorn. You will be a welcome addition to any crowd. Your delightful nature is at its most active. You have the unique capability to be aggressive about getting what you want without disturbing the flow of the energy around you. People respect and honor your sensitive, nurturing qualities. This will win the game for you.
The world probably isn’t going to revolve around you today, Aquarius, so get used to it. Even though this may not be the news you want to hear, it’s probably the news you most need to hear. Use your incredible passion to nurture others. Think less about yourself and more about the people around you, especially your family. Stick close to home and take care of chores.
Initiate a deep, meaningful conversation with someone you’ve lost touch with, Pisces. It could be that a long and ugly point of contention is on the brink of resolution. All you need to do is make the first move. There’s a great deal of heartfelt, loving energy in the air that will help you foster a sensitive, tender approach. Find a connection with someone that you didn’t know was there.
