Tuesday Jan 2, 2024

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

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‘Now We Are Going for More’

Travel in 2023: 12 Months That ‘Took Chaos to a New Level’ Gov. Pedro Pierluisi/Facebook

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Governor Highlights His Administration’s Achievements Over the Past 3 Years

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Judge Says No to Extending Confirmation Schedule for New Debt Deal Filed by PREPA P4

2 Tuesday, January 2, 2024

The San Juan Daily Star

GOOD MORNING 3

January 2, 2024

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

Governor highlights 3 years of his administration’s achievements

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ov. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia reviewed his administration’s achievements of the past three years over the weekend, highlighting the reduction in crime, the transformation of the energy sector, salary justice for the workforce, the renovation of school buildings, and reconstruction works.

The governor highlighted sustained growth in the island economy during the past three years, a positive 10-year outlook, and the strategic and timely investment of federal and state funds to promote economic development, record-setting tourism numbers, construction, manufacturing, and the technology sector.

“Today, we have 110,000 additional jobs and the largest workforce in 14 years, when there were 500,000 more people in Puerto Rico,” Pierluisi said. “Additionally, unemployment is at 5.7 percent, the lowest rate in our history. We promoted economic growth and ended government bankruptcy. We fought federal bureaucracy and released reconstruction funds. We improved the salaries of our public servants and our workforce, and we increased aid to our families by improving the Vital [health care] plan, increasing the credit for work, and granting credit for dependent minors for over 300,000 families.”

“Now, we are going for more because we want to ensure that this progress impacts each of our citizens,” stated Pierluisi, highlighting the collaboration of citizens, public servants and the private sector.

In education, the governor highlighted the renovation of school buildings, the implementation of extended hours in the public system, and the increase in funds for childcare centers. Regarding security, he noted that since 2021, the homicide rate has dropped almost 30 percent.

Regarding the island’s reconstruction, Pierluisi noted that before his administration took office, only 81 projects had been completed. Over the past three years, however, nearly 2,400 projects have been completed and more than 2,600 are under construction with funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he said.

Meanwhile, of $90 million disbursed from the Community Development Block Grant for Disaster Recovery program when his administration began, more than $2.6 billion has already been used. Some 6,000 homes have been rebuilt or rehabilitated, around 8,500 families have received assistance in buying their homes, and more than 4,700 social interest homes have been built in many municipalities on the island.

Regarding road infrastructure, Pierluisi asserted that

178 state roads have already been impacted by the Department of Transportation and Public Works’ Changing Lanes program. There are more than 600 road and bridge repairs or construction projects. The Aqueduct and Sewer Authority is equally active, with 600 works underway around the island.

The governor also emphasized that the transformation of the electrical energy system is underway with 230 improvement projects to the electrical grid and power plants, as well as renewable energy projects at the industrial level, which will produce 1,500 megawatts of generation and will add 500 megawatts of battery storage capacity by 2025. Furthermore, Pierluisi said, Puerto Rico ranks sixth in United States jurisdictions in residential and commercial solar systems, which already exceed 100,000 on the island.

“We must continue the work of reconstruction and energy transformation, give tax relief to our people and continue facilitating economic development,” Pierluisi said. “We are going to expand services to our seniors.

We must redouble our efforts to retain and attract doctors in Puerto Rico, strengthen our health system and continue increasing mental health services. Likewise, we are developing a comprehensive plan to combat violence at its roots, in which we must unite as a people.”

The governor added that the fight for the equality that Puerto Ricans deserve as U.S. citizens was redoubled and highlighted the filing in the U.S. Senate of the Puerto Rico Status Act with non-colonial and non-territorial options.

“I am focused on continuing to work for you,” he said. “I know that you want a stable government that continues to improve its services, that helps you achieve your goals and that meets the needs of our people.”

Gov. Pedro Pierluisi (Gov. Pierluisi/Facebook)

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

PREPA files new debt deal as judge denies extending schedule for confirmation

By THE STAR STAFF

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he federal judge overseeing the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s (PREPA) bankruptcy, Laura Taylor Swain, has denied a bondholders’ motion to extend deadlines leading to the confirmation of PREPA’s debt deal, whose new version was filed last week.

The Financial Oversight and Management Board, which represents PREPA in its bankruptcy, filed yet another Fourth Amended Plan of Adjustment to include the debt settlement reached with the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors on Dec. 18. As before, the debt deal contains 18 classes of debtors.

The plan of adjustment included provisions creating a GUC Trust Board comprising three members to be appointed to manage all matters related to unsecured creditors, including a GUC Trust created to distribute proceeds of the settlement.

The Unsecured Creditors Committee (UCC) and the oversight board reached a settlement on PREPA payments that would give the UCC a fixed payment of $335 million, the avoidance action proceeds, up to another $300 million if bondholder claims are reduced by the court, as well as other considerations. In exchange, the UCC agreed to support the plan and drop an adversary proceeding arguing that its claims were superior to those of bondholders, which Swain

U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain ruled have only a $2.4 billion unsecured claim on their $8.3 billion in outstanding debt.

Last Thursday, Swain denied bondholders’ motion to

extend deadlines to allow additional discovery after PREPA reached a deal with general unsecured creditors.

Some of the bondholders, such as Assured Guaranty, GoldenTree Asset Management, Syncora Guarantee, the PREPA ad hoc group and the PREPA bond trustee had asked for an extension to conduct discovery into the UCC settlement.

Swain ruled that the issues that bondholders say require resolicitation of votes are not ripe for adjudication on the current record because the oversight board could be correct in its assertions that no creditors are adversely affected by the deal.

Stakeholders have 28 days to object to the changes after the newest plan was filed, which is sufficient time ahead of the March 4 hearing, she said. Additional fact discovery can also be accomplished without a delay of the hearing date, the judge said. She also noted that additional expert discovery may not be needed.

“With respect to fact discovery, the general kinds of information sought by movants do not appear, based upon the limited arguments presented by movants, to require wholesale reconsideration of the current litigation schedule,” she said.

At the same time, the general objections to additional discovery proffered by the oversight board are not sufficient to demonstrate that no additional discovery is warranted, Swain added.

In Loíza, communities lead annual call for no more stray bullets

By THE STAR STAFF

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day before bidding farewell to 2023, the community board of Parcelas Suárez in Loíza on Saturday held the now traditional “No More Bullets in the Air Caravan,” a joint initiative with the Municipality of Loíza, as an active way to promote citizen safety.

Mayor Julia Nazario Fuentes noted that initiatives that originate from the communities “always have an additional strength because

they are born from the same needs that people live daily, and we in the municipality collaborate with great commitment.”

Community leader Alexis Correa, the organizer of the event, said the best way to handle situations involving bullets in the air is with constant education.

“This is a reality that we are dealing with with neighbors of all ages and conditions,” he said. “We all count on that mission. We hope for Puerto Rico’s prudence to help us

in this. There is no need to celebrate the start no fatalities were reported due to stray bullets of 2024 with gunfire in the air.” during the festivities bidding farewell to 2022.

All of Puerto Rico remembers that Dec. There were, however, cases of burns sustained 31, 2003, when nine-year-old Jessica Pache- from fireworks, he noted. co Calvente went out to buy some candy at “Between 1999 and 2011, doctors at the a nearby apartment where she lived in the Medical Center treated more than 60 peoCésar Cordero Dávila (Quintana) residential ple for stray bullet injuries and five of them area in San Juan, and on the way back home unfortunately died,” Osorio Chiclana said. she was hit by a stray bullet that caused her “Fortunately, those numbers have been going down, and we want to keep them at zero. We death two days later.

“The welcome of that New Year was tar- ask everyone to speak up; together we can nished and the people were dressed in mourn- achieve more.” ing,” Nazario Fuentes said.

“We also remember the case of Karla Michelle in Santurce, who was also killed by a stray bullet. Today we have her father, don Carlos Negrón, who is very active throughout Puerto Rico supporting these anti-violence initiatives. Like any educational process, we have to be constant.”

Joel Osorio Chiclana, who presides over the Loíza municipal assembly, said Loíza Mayor Julia Nazario Fuentes, center, said initiatives that press reports on Jan. 1, like the annual “No More Bullets in the Air Caravan” in the 2023 indicated that at least northeastern coastal town “always have an additional strength in the emergency room of the because they are born from the same needs that people live Puerto Rico Medical Center, daily ...”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

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Villafañe’s resident commissioner candidacy surpasses 8,000 endorsements

By THE STAR STAFF

Villafañe, a member of the New Progressive Party delegation in the island Senate, stressed his appreciation “for everyone’s effort and support.”

“Let’s keep up the momentum to demonstrate our strength and capability en route to Washington, D.C., to work for the benefit of my beloved Puerto Rico,” he said Saturday.

The current Electoral Law establishes that in the cases of primary candidates for governor, as well as for the position of resident commissioner, the number of requests for endorsements must be 3% of the total number of full ballots validly cast for the candidate of their party for that position in the previous general election. In the case of political parties with demonstrated electoral support, that number will never be more than 8,000 petitions.

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milio Díaz Colón, executive president of William Villafañe Ramos’ campaign for resident commissioner announced over the weekend that to date the campaign had already officially exceeded 8,000 endorsements presented to the State Elections Commission, of which 7,000 have already been validated, as part of the requirements established by the Regulations for the Evaluation of Candidates for Elective Public Office.

“Now, we enter the final phase,” Díaz Colón said. “If we maintain the pace of submissions, we will be able to complete the goal of 9,000 submissions and the 8,000 validated and required by the beginning of [this] week.”

Sen. William Villafañe Ramos

Leveled W Resort at center of dispute between Act 60 beneficiaries

By THE STAR STAFF

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rypto entrepreneur and former “Mighty Ducks” actor Brock Pierce has sued a trucking tycoon over the ownership of a leveled W resort in Vieques, claiming the former family friend fabricated a fictitious default to “steal” his property, according to a report from the New York Post.

Local courts are expected to hear the case this month.

In 2021, Pierce paid $18.3 million through his holding company for an 80% stake of the Vieques resort that was destroyed by Hurricane Maria in 2017, according to the Post.

But Joseph Lipsey III gained control of the property last month after claiming Pierce defaulted on a $10 million loan from Lipsey’s company VRRRF, according to the complaint filed Dec. 19.

Pierce, the chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, is suing to get the court to reverse the

transfer, he told The Post.

Pierce said he believes Lipsey has conned him and is seeking $80 million in damages.

Lipsey, the CEO of VRRRF, told Bloomberg the transfer was legal and called Pierce’s allegations “baseless.”

Lipsey allegedly tricked Pierce to get his hands on the former W Hotel property worth about $50 million, the Post reported.

Pierce, 43, moved to Puerto Rico in 2017, where he built a real estate portfolio worth about $35 million, according to Bloomberg.

The 60-year-old Lipsey, who runs a trucking and a logistics company, relocated to Puerto Rico with his wife, Shira, and son in 2021 after reportedly running into legal hot water in Colorado amid drug-related charges.

They came to Puerto Rico to benefit from tax incentives under the former Act 20/22 bills, now Act 60.

The two men forged a friendship in Puerto

Rico, where Pierce’s mother also lived. He reportedly also bonded with Lipsey’s son, Joseph Lipsey IV, who is in his early 20s Pierce took a $10 million line of credit Lipsey’s company extended to him in October as he sought to buy out the minority partners in the resort, according to his Dec. 19 complaint.

However, Lipsey seized the property as collateral just a month later after claiming that Pierce missed a deadline to complete the transaction — a claim Pierce denies, according to the Post.

Pierce alleges the loan agreement gave Lipsey the right to manage the holding company that controls the hotel if he defaulted, but Lipsey needed to go through a legal process that would take at least 30 days in order to transfer the hotel to himself, a step that Pierce says was ignored.

Pierce is planning to open the former W under a new nationally recognized hotel banner as early as 2025 and said he has about 30 workers engaged in renovations.

Brock Pierce

Lawmaker warns public about Netflix deactivation scam

By THE STAR STAFF

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ew Progressive Party Rep. José Aponte Hernández called attention over the weekend to a new fraud scheme using as “bait” the alleged deactivation of accounts on Netflix’s video streaming service.

“In the past few days we have received information about a new wire fraud scheme involving the streaming platform Netflix,” the veteran lawmaker said. “This new attempt to defraud the citizen focuses on sending an email, with the official logo of this platform (Netflix) in order to make it as

realistic as possible. The email asks the citizen to update their payment information, essentially their credit and/or debit card number, to avoid suspension of service.”

“Next to the request for data review, there is a link where the person is asked to ‘click,’ which takes the citizen to a website, with the graphic material of Netflix, so that they can enter their personal data, including their credit card information and postal address,” Aponte Hernández said. “This is an attempt to obtain that data and then defraud the citizen by using the card to acquire products illegally.”

He cautioned that the new scheme seems legitimate due

to the use of graphic material very similar to that of Netflix.

“Don’t be fooled by these schemes; this one in particular is a very sophisticated one,” Aponte Hernández said. “The best way to assess the veracity of the email you receive is if it ends with ‘@netflix.com’; If not, discard it. In addition, we suggest that you log in to your Netflix accounts before clicking on any link that the email provides. That’s another safety mechanism.

Do not answer these emails because what they are looking for is to defraud people.”

He also urged citizens to contact the Department of Consumer Affairs, DACO, if they receive this type of email.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

What to know about the efforts to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot

By NICHOLAS BOGEL-BURROUGHS and MITCH SMITH

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he campaign to have former President Donald Trump removed from the ballot over his efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election has kicked into high gear, with decisions in two states, Maine and Colorado, barring him from the primary ballots.

Challenges are still underway in many more states, based on an obscure clause of a constitutional amendment enacted after the Civil War that disqualifies government officials who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.

Over the years, the courts and Congress have done little to clarify how that criterion should apply, adding urgency to the calls for the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the politically explosive dispute before the upcoming election.

Here’s what to know about the challenges.

Which states have already ruled on the matter?

The Maine secretary of state said last Thursday that Trump did not qualify for the Republican primary ballot there because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. She agreed with a handful of citizens who claimed that he had incited an insurrection and was thus barred from seeking the presidency again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

In a written decision, the secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said that while no one in her position had ever barred a candidate from the ballot based on Section 3

Former President Donald Trump appears during a campaign rally in Durham, N.H. on Dec. 16, 2023. The campaign to have Trump removed from the ballot over his efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election has kicked into high gear, with decisions in two states, Maine and Colorado, barring him from the primary ballots. (Doug Mills/The New York Times) of the amendment, “no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”

Hours later, the secretary of state in California announced that Trump would remain on the ballot in the nation’s most populous state, where election officials have limited power to remove candidates.

In Colorado, the state Supreme Court decided in a 4-3 ruling Dec. 19 that the former president should not be allowed to appear on the primary ballot there because he engaged

in insurrection. The ruling did not address the general election.

The justices in Colorado said that if their ruling were to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, then Trump would be allowed to remain on the ballot until the high court decided the matter. The Colorado secretary of state has said that she will follow whatever order is in place on Jan. 5, when the state must certify ballots for the election.

On Wednesday, the Colorado Republican Party said it had asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of the Colorado decision.

In Michigan and Minnesota, the courts have ruled that election officials cannot prevent the Republican Party from including Trump on their primary ballots. But both decisions left the door open for new challenges to bar him from the general election ballot.

Where else are there challenges to Donald Trump’s appearing on the ballot?

Lawsuits seeking to remove Trump from the ballot were filed in about 30 states, but many have been dismissed. As of Saturday, there were active lawsuits in at least 17 states.

Those states are: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina,

Texas, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

This list of states includes some cases in which a judge has dismissed a lawsuit but the dismissal has been appealed. In Colorado, the state’s top court has decided the matter but the U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to hear an appeal. Local media outlets have also reported that a lawsuit has been filed in an 18th state, Wyoming.

There have also been requests made directly to state election officials to remove Trump from the ballot.

What are the challenges about?

At the heart of the disqualification efforts is the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which was adopted in 1868 and has a section that disqualifies former government officials who have betrayed their oaths by engaging in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office. The provision, Section 3, was intended to bar Confederate officials from serving in the U.S. government.

The provision specifically says that anyone who served as “an officer of the United States,” took an oath to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” shall not hold any government office. It includes a provision that Congress can waive the prohibition with a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate.

With the legal challenges mounting, the U.S. Supreme Court is widely expected to take up the issue, and experts say the scope of the decision would determine if the challenges are quickly handled or play out for months.

Ashraf Ahmed, a professor at Columbia Law School who studies election law, said that if the Supreme Court heard the case, it could avoid delving into the weightiest matters, like defining Section 3. Instead, he said, the justices might issue a ruling largely on procedural grounds.

What states might rule on the matter next?

A decision could come soon in Oregon, where the same group that filed the Michigan lawsuit, Free Speech for People, is seeking to have the state Supreme Court remove Trump from the primary ballot there. In that case, the secretary of state has asked the court to expedite its consideration of the case because she must finalize the primary ballot by March 21.

John C. Bonifaz, the president of Free Speech for People, said the group planned to file new challenges in other states soon, though he declined to share which states.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

7

Prosecutors ask appeals court to reject Trump’s immunity claims in election case

By ALAN FEUER

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ederal prosecutors asked an appeals court over the weekend to reject former President Donald Trump’s claims that he is immune from criminal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election and said the indictment should remain in place even though it arose from actions he took while in the White House.

The government’s filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was part of an ongoing struggle between Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith over whether former presidents can be criminally liable for things they did in office.

The fight over immunity is arguably the most important aspect of the election interference case, involving both new questions of law and consequential issues of timing. The case is set to go to trial in U.S. District Court in Washington in early March but has been put on hold until Trump’s attempts to dismiss the charges on grounds of immunity are resolved.

The appeal is legally significant because it centers on a question that has never before been asked or fully answered.

That is because Trump is both the first former president to have been charged with crimes and because he has chosen to defend himself in this case with a novel claim: that the office he held at the time should shield him entirely from prosecution.

But the fight has revolved around more than the technical issue of whether the indictment should survive and Trump should eventually stand trial. The defense and prosecution have been waging a separate, but no less crucial, battle about when the trial will happen — specifically about whether it will take place before or after the 2024 election. If the trial is held after the election and Trump wins, he would have the power to order the charges he is facing to be dropped.

In their 82-page filing to the appeals court on Saturday, prosecutors focused on legal arguments and said that nothing in the Constitution or the country’s other founding documents supported the idea that a former president should not be subject to federal criminal law.

“The presidency plays a vital role in our constitutional system, but so does the principle of accountability for criminal acts — particularly those that strike at the heart of the democratic process,” wrote James Pearce, one of Smith’s deputies. “Rather than vindicating our constitutional framework, the defendant’s sweeping immunity claim threatens to license presidents to commit crimes to remain in office. The founders did not intend and would never have countenanced such a result.”

When Trump’s lawyers filed their appellate brief the previous week, they argued, among other things, that if absolute immunity was denied in this case, future presidents would have to fear facing criminal charges for an array of acts they undertook in office — including firing Cabinet members or using lethal force overseas.

But Pearce scoffed at that argument, telling the appeals court that if presidents faced the possibility of being prosecuted for crimes committed in office, it could have “a salutary, not a chilling, effect” on their behavior. He also noted, as Trump’s own cases have shown, that it is not easy to indict a former president given that “rigorous standards” must be met before defendants are charged, let alone convicted.

Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the Justice Department’s prosecution of former President Donald Trump, at a news conference in Washington, D.C., Aug. 1, 2023. Federal prosecutors asked an appeals court on Saturday to reject Trump’s claims that he is immune from criminal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election and said the indictment should remain in place even though it arose from actions he took while in the White House. (Doug Mills/The New York Times) Moreover, Pearce said, Trump’s argument had “sobering” implications. Under such a broad theory of immunity, he wrote, a president who took bribes or who instructed the FBI to plant incriminating evidence on a political enemy would also be immune from criminal prosecution.

There should be no immunity, Pearce told the appeals court, for the accusations Trump is facing — that he sought to stay in power despite the will of the voters.

“A scheme to thwart the peaceful transfer of power contradicts the most basic constitutional check on executive abuses,” he wrote. “A president comes to power by winning an election, not by subverting the results of the vote.”

Judge Tanya Chutkan, who has been handling the case since it was filed this summer, rejected Trump’s immunity claims in early December. In her decision , she acknowledged that the Justice Department has long pursued a policy of not indicting presidents while they are in office but said that as Trump was no longer in the White House, he should face prosecution.

“Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” she wrote. “Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability.”

Trump appealed the decision to the first court above Chutkan’s — the court now hearing the case.

But fearing that a protracted challenge could delay the case from going to trial as scheduled, Smith made an unusual request to the Supreme Court: He asked the justices to step in front of the appeals court and consider the case first, to speed up the process and preserve the current trial date.

The Supreme Court turned down Smith’s request on Dec. 22, sending the case back to the appeals court.

A three-judge panel of that court is now considering the question of immunity on a highly accelerated schedule.

All written briefs in the case are set to be filed by today. Oral arguments have been scheduled for Jan. 9.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

After rise in murders during the pandemic, a sharp decline in 2023

The decrease in gun violence in 2023 has been a welcome trend for communities around the country, although even as the number of homicides and the number of shootings have fallen nationwide, they remain higher than on the eve of the pandemic.

By TIM ARANGO and CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

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etroit is on track to record the fewest murders since the 1960s. In Philadelphia, where there were more murders in 2021 than in any year on record, the number of homicides this year has fallen more than 20% from last year. And in Los Angeles, the number of shooting victims this year is down more than 200 from two years ago.

The decrease in gun violence in 2023 has been a welcome trend for communities around the country, although even as the number of homicides and the number of shootings have fallen nationwide, they remain higher than on the eve of the pandemic.

In 2020, as the pandemic took hold and protests convulsed the nation after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, the United States saw the largest increase in murders ever recorded. Now, as 2023 comes

to a close, the country is likely to see one of the largest — if not the largest — yearly declines in homicides, according to recent FBI data and statistics collected by independent criminologists and researchers.

The rapid decline in homicides isn’t the only story. Among nine violent and property crime categories tracked by the FBI, the only figure that is up over the first three quarters of this year is motor vehicle theft. The data, which covers about 80% of the U.S. population, is the first quarterly report in three years from the FBI, which typically takes many months to release crime data.

The decline in crime contrasts with perceptions, driven in part by social media videos of flash-mob-style shoplifting incidents, that urban downtowns are out of control. While figures in some categories of crime are still higher than they were before the pandemic, crime overall is falling nationwide, including in cities often singled out by politicians as plagued by danger

and violence. Homicides are down by 13% in Chicago and by 11% in New York, where shootings are down by 25% — two cities that former President Donald Trump called “crime dens” in a campaign speech this year.

Just as criminologists attributed the surge in murders in 2020 and 2021 to the disruptions of the pandemic and protests — including the isolation, the closing of schools and social programs, and the deepening distrust of the police — they attribute the recent drop in crime to the pandemic’s sliding into the rearview mirror.

“Murder didn’t go up because of things that happened in individual neighborhoods or individual streets,” said Jeff Asher, a crime analyst based in New Orleans who tracks homicides in nearly 180 U.S. cities. “It went up because of these big national factors, and I think the big national factors are probably driving it down.

The biggest of which is probably COVID going to the background.”

In a country awash in guns, the normal that many cities are returning to is still a violent one, with the biggest still enduring hundreds of fatal shootings a year. And some cities are bucking the positive trend, including Washington, D.C., where the murder toll continues a grim multiyear climb. The homicide tally this year is the highest in two decades, and there have been more than 900 carjacking incidents.

Washington is an exception this year even in the mid-Atlantic region. Baltimore is on track to report the fewest murders in nearly a decade and Philadelphia to post a homicide count more than 25% below its 2021 record of 562.

Several community activists in Philadelphia attributed the surge of violence in recent years to the sudden vacuum of civic resources at the onset of the pandemic. “We got to see what happens when there are no programs available,” said

Jonathan Wilson, who runs the Fathership Foundation, a nonprofit in southwest Philadelphia.

Schools, recreation centers and libraries were closed, and grassroots groups like his were not equipped to fill the gaps. But the city’s budget last year included more than $150 million for anti-violence efforts, some of it in the form of grants to organizations that could match teenagers with jobs or provide safe places for students after school.

Detroit is on track to record the lowest number of homicides since 1966, a remarkable milestone even given its substantially smaller population today. Local officials credited an aggressive effort to jump-start the criminal justice system, which had largely stalled in the pandemic.

“We know why violent crime soared in America,” Mayor Mike Duggan said at a news conference this month. “The criminal courts shut down. You couldn’t put 12 jurors in a room.”

Chief Michel Moore of the Los Angeles Police Department said that while he was encouraged to see such steady declines in violent crime — murder and rape are down markedly, and robbery is down slightly this year — the city was struggling with property crime. Burglaries, car thefts and personal theft are all up substantially.

In Los Angeles, much of the decline in murders comes from a drop in the number of killings of homeless people; in both 2021 and 2022, more than 90 homeless people were killed, according to Crosstown, a nonprofit news outlet. So far this year, 35 fewer homeless people have been killed, a 55% reduction, according to Moore. While the trend is encouraging, he said, violence in LA, like in many cities, is still up compared with just before the pandemic.

“We still have far too much violence, and we have more work to do when we look at the pre-COVID period,” he said.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

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Strawberry case study: What if farmers had to pay for water?

By CORAL DAVENPORT

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he strawberry, blackberry and raspberry fields of the Pajaro Valley stretch for 10 miles along the coast of California’s Monterey Bay, jeweled with fruit from April through early December. The valley’s 30,000 acres of farmland are also ruffled with emerald lettuces, Brussels sprouts and varieties of kale, bringing in roughly $1 billion in revenue to the region each year.

All that abundance doesn’t come cheap.

While American farmers elsewhere have watered their crops by freely pumping the groundwater beneath their land, growers in Pajaro must pay hefty fees for irrigation water — making it one of the most expensive places to grow food in the country, if not the world. The cost: up to $400 per acre-foot, a standard measurement equal to water covering 1 acre, 1 foot deep. The fees bring in $12 million a year, which is used to recycle, restore and conserve the region’s groundwater.

The Pajaro Valley’s unusual system — essentially a tax on water — was born of a berry-growing disaster some 40 years ago that forced farmers to act. Today, as the nation faces a spreading crisis of dwindling groundwater, stemming from a combination of climate change, agricultural overpumping and other issues, some experts say the Pajaro Valley is a case study in how to save the vital resource.

“What they are doing is cutting-edge,” said Felicia Marcus, a former chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board and now a fellow at Stanford University’s Water in the West Program. While a few other regions have imposed fees on groundwater for farming, Pajaro Valley has been one of the most aggressive and effective. “They are way ahead of the curve,” she said.

Experts from as far away as China and Egypt are traveling to the valley to study the system. But replicating it elsewhere could face major challenges. For one thing, “people don’t like taxes,” said Nicholas Brozovic, an agricultural economist at the University of Nebraska. “There’s nothing mysterious about that.”

New research on the program revealed a direct connection between paying for the groundwater and conserving it: A 20% increase in the price of groundwater has resulted in a 20% decrease in the extraction of groundwater.

One reason experts see Pajaro as a model: Despite the high price of water, agriculture in the region is thriving. It is the headquarters of major brands, including Driscoll’s, the world’s largest berry supplier, and Martinelli’s, which grows most of the apples for its sparkling cider in the Pajaro Valley.

Soren Bjorn, a senior executive at Driscoll’s who in January will become the CEO, said in an interview that he “absolutely” sees the region as a model of water pricing that could be replicated in water-stressed regions from Texas to Portugal. “Water can’t be free anywhere, because you can’t run a sustainable water supply without pricing it,” he said. “That would apply to the globe.”

Yet if the Pajaro Valley experiment were to be replicated across the country, it could trigger changes across the economy that affect both farmers and shoppers, resulting in higher prices at the grocery store while forcing farmers to abandon low-cost commodity crops that are needed for animal feed and other purposes, such as textiles.

Soren Bjorn, a senior executive at Driscoll’s, the berry giant, at a greenhouse in Watsonville, Calif. on Dec. 22, 2023. With aquifers nationwide in dangerous decline, one part of California has tried essentially taxing groundwater. New research shows it’s working. (Nathan Weyland/The New York Times) While corporate growers of premium products like berries, which are shipped to the shelves of major chains like Whole Foods, Safeway and Trader Joe’s, can absorb the price of Pajaro’s water, there is no way farmers of commodity crops like cotton, alfalfa and soybeans can make the economics work, said David Sanford, the agricultural commissioner of Santa Cruz County, which includes the Pajaro Valley.

In the years since the price on water was imposed, growers of those crops either shifted to high-priced berries and lettuces or simply left the region for cheaper pastures.

“There’s a big public policy argument for pricing groundwater,” said Louis Preonas, an agricultural economist at the University of Maryland. But if you were to try something like this across the country, he added, “it would mean farmers would shift away from growing crops like corn or leave agriculture altogether. Any way you cut it, it would likely raise food prices.

But the alternative is running out of water.”

A New York Times investigation this year found that many of the aquifers that supply 90% of the nation’s drinking water systems are being severely depleted by a combination of climate change and overpumping by farmers, industrial users, cities and others.

For many of the nation’s farming regions, the day of reckoning with the loss of groundwater is fast approaching. In the Pajaro Valley, it came 40 years ago.

With its loamy, sandy soil and cool nighttime breezes, the Monterey coast is an ideal climate for strawberries. But in the 1980s, disaster struck. Growers overpumped the coastal groundwater, allowing saltwater from the Pacific Ocean to seep in below their fields, up through the roots of the berry crop.

“You could see the yellow leaves, the discoloration, the stunted growth,” recalled Dick Peixoto, whose family has farmed here since 1920.

Faced with an economic disaster, Peixoto and other growers formed a local water agency with two goals: preserve the groundwater and prevent the state from taking control.

The Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency, still locally

run today, got to work. Its first project was installing meters to measure how much groundwater growers were using. In 1993, it started charging farmers a modest fee of $30 per acre-foot to cover the cost of managing and reading the meters.

The water agency hired hydrologists and other consultants, who concluded that the aquifer was severely overdrawn and could be lost entirely to saltwater. In response, the agency built a $6 million project to capture and divert excess rainwater from a creek near the ocean and pump it into a storage basin, where it percolates into underground wells and is eventually used for irrigation.

Next came a $20 million water recycling plant, which cleans approximately 5 million gallons of sewage each day and sends it through a network of purple pipes to farm fields. The purple signals that the water inside is recycled.

Now the agency is building an $80 million system to capture and store more rainwater to be used for irrigation. Some of the cost of the agency’s projects has been covered by federal grants and loans, with the rest from the groundwater pricing system, said Brian Lockwood, who has been the general manager of the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency for 18 years.

“These projects are millions of dollars, and without this source of revenue, they could never come to be,” he said.

As the ambitions of the water agency increased, so did the price of the water. It is scheduled to reach $500 per acrefoot by 2025.

In the early years, farmers chafed under the rate increases.

“The pricing was really difficult, when the water used to be, you know, free,” said Thomas Broz, who has farmed about 75 acres in Pajaro since 1996.

Eventually, a group of growers challenged the water agency in court and were able to drive down the prices for a few years, and even forced the agency to refund about $12 million to farmers between 2008 and 2011.

But then, from 2012 to 2017, California was struck by its worst drought in recorded history, parching farmland and devastating the rural economy. Growers across the state, particularly in the Central Valley, reached a deal with the state to sharply restrict their water use and fallow their fields.

In the Pajaro Valley, water became more expensive, but at least it was still flowing. To save money, many Pajaro farmers invested in precision irrigation technology to distribute carefully measured water exactly where it was needed. Gone were the days of sprinklers that drenched fields indiscriminately.

In the midst of the drought, the then-governor of California, Jerry Brown, signed a law requiring every part of the state to devise a plan to conserve groundwater. Miles Reiter, the outgoing CEO of Driscoll’s, spoke in support of the law.

Suddenly, Pajaro was a model.

Broz, who paid $20,000 last year for water, said he has come around to accepting the system.

“The farmer has very little flexibility to build in the cost of water, so it means we have to price it into our product. It means we basically can’t be as competitive,” said Broz, who grows lettuces, berries, apples and other vegetables. “But the pricing has allowed us to put in place the kind of measures that will help us have a sustainable system for the long term, if we want to keep the resource.”

10 Tuesday, January 2, 2024

The San Juan Daily Star

What your favorite streaming services will cost you in 2024

By CLAIRE MOSES

I

f you were planning on watching the final season of “Jack Ryan” or eight seasons of “House” without commercials on Amazon Prime this year, get ready to dig a little deeper into your pockets.

In September, Amazon announced it would soon add advertisements to Prime Video, its streaming service, and last week announced when that change would go into effect: Jan 29. Customers wanting to avoid the ads would have to pay an extra $2.99 a month.

Less than a decade ago, the streaming era took off on the promise of letting users cut the cord from expensive cable bills and enjoy a blissful ad-free viewing experience. But as we enter 2024, Amazon isn’t the only service bringing back ads or driving prices higher.

Studios and streaming companies that make all this entertainment say that they are struggling and that it’s getting increasingly hard to attract new customers. The result is higher prices, or plans that are cheaper but include ads.

There are also other measures. This fall, Netflix announced a price hike and said it would start clamping down on users who share their passwords with people outside their households for free.

To help you make a choice for the new year, here’s what some of the main streaming services will cost and what they

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will offer. (All prices are in U.S. dollars and apply to U.S. accounts.)

Amazon Prime Video Amazon executives have said that including the video service helped keep people subscribed to its Prime memberships, which include free shipping.

In 2022, the company completed its purchase of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer — and, crucially, its extensive catalog of movies and television shows, including titles including James Bond, which is available on Prime Video.

The current price for an Amazon Prime membership is $14.99 a month (or $139 per year). Prime Video by itself is $8.99 a month. For ad-free viewing, Amazon will add $2.99 per month to your bill starting Jan. 29. And take note: If you opt into a free trial, Amazon will automatically start charging you after it ends.

Apple TV+ In 2019, Apple announced that it would start creating its own television shows and movies at an extremely star-studded event in California. The streaming service offers Apple originals — “Severance” and “Ted Lasso” — and a subscription can be shared with up to five people. There are no ads.

A monthly subscription for the streaming service costs $9.99. Apple also offers three free months when you buy one of its devices.

Disney+ For $7.99 a month, subscribers get content with ads. For $13.99 a month (or $139.99 a year) you can stream Disney+ without ads and download content for when you’re offline.

Its offerings include Pixar and Disney movies as well as “Star Wars” and Marvel movies and TV shows, 34 seasons of “The Simpsons” and about 7,500 episodes of old Disneybranded shows.

Max Warner Bros. Discovery unveiled this combined strea-

ming service in April, rebranding the former HBO Max. An ad-free experience will cost you $15.99 a month. An “Ultimate ad-free” version for $19.99 allows users to add more devices to the account as well as up to 100 downloads. For a $9.99 add-on per month, you can also watch live sports.

Max offers the “Harry Potter” movies, classic HBO shows such as “The Wire,” “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City,” as well as newer releases, such as “Barbie.” The streamer has also ordered a “Harry Potter” TV series.

Hulu For $17.99 a month you can watch Hulu’s vast catalog — titles include “New Girl,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Fargo” — without ads. If you’re willing to sit through commercials, it’s $7.99 a month.

Hulu also offers the option of adding live television to your plan, as well as content from other streaming services such as Disney+ and ESPN+, although the latter does come with ads. Those options range from $75.99 to $89.99 a month.

Netflix Raise your hand if you remember getting DVDs from Netflix in the mail in the early 2000s. In 2010, Netflix started selling its streaming service for $8 a month and offering one DVD at a time for an additional $2.

Netflix now offers a $6.99 per month subscription that is ad-supported, which the company says “allows you to enjoy movies and TV shows at a lower price.” A standard plan (without ads) is $15.49 a month. For access to more devices, the cost goes up to $22.99 a month. Adding people who aren’t included in your subscription will cost you an additional $7.99 per person per month. Netflix mailed its last DVD in September.

Among its offerings: “Gilmore Girls,” “La La Land” and international series such as “Squid Game.”

Paramount+ In 2021, CBS rebranded its streaming platform, which it heralded as “a big day, a new day, a new beginning.” That announcement came with promises of a “Frasier” reboot and a revival of the animated series “Rugrats.”

A lot of other Paramount content can be found elsewhere. The company sold the rights to the “South Park” library to HBO Max, and series such as “Jack Ryan,” produced by Paramount, have gone to Amazon.

Paramount+ Essential will cost you $5.99 a month (or $59.99 a year) and includes “limited commercial interruptions.” The service also offers a bundle together with Showtime in a plan that costs $11.99 a month (or $119.99 a year).

Peacock The premium subscription for NBC Universal’s streaming service will cost you $5.99 a month and includes original content, films, live sporting events and more. A Premium Plus subscription is $11.99 a month and offers — mostly — no ads as well as the ability to download content.

Some of the programs you can watch include “Parks and Recreation,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “Downton Abbey” and “Everybody Loves Raymond,” as well as Bravo content including the “Real Housewives” franchise.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

11 Stocks

A quiet start to 2024? No way T

here’s not much time to get over the New Year’s partying: the most closely watched U.S. economic release and key euro area inflation data are on the calendar in the week ahead, suggesting a busy start to 2024.

With hopes high for big central banks to start cutting interest rates soon, euphoric financial markets could soon be tested, while the timing of a Bank of Japan rate increase remains in focus.

Here’s your look ahead to the first trading week of the new year with Kevin Buckland in Tokyo, Yoruk Bahceli in Amsterdam, Ira Iosebashvili in New York and Dhara Ranasinghe in London.

The health of the U.S. jobs market is crucial to gauging whether a Goldilocks scenario continues into 2024, putting Friday’s December non-farm payrolls report in the spotlight.

Economic growth has cooled and inflation has eased, fueling a massive cross-asset rally and allowing the Federal Reserve to pencil in more rate cuts for 2024. At the same time, the economy has shown little evidence that months of tighter monetary policy are spawning a severe downturn.

Signs of deviation from that scenario - in the form of exceedingly strong jobs growth or a sudden drop in employment - could shake investors’ confidence in a soft landing.

Economists polled by Reuters expect the U.S. economy added 158,000 jobs in December versus 199,000 in November.

For all the joy in markets, data also out on Friday is expected to show euro zone inflation rose in December for the first time since April.

A Reuters poll sees it jumping to 3% from 2.4% in November, snapping a sharp drop which saw inflation undershoot expectations for three straight months.

Economists reckon the rise will largely result from energy support measures a year ago, particularly in Germany, where the government had covered household gas bills, meaning a lower “base” to which December 2023 prices are compared.

So, investors will have to sift through the data to assess how current price pressures are evolving. Any surprise higher would unnerve traders expecting over six, quarter-point ECB rate cuts in 2024.

The good news: core inflation, excluding volatile food and energy prices, should continue dropping. The narrowest measure is seen falling to 3.4%, which would be the lowest since March 2022.

What goes up, must come down.

Rate-cut exuberance means markets start the new year on a high - stocks are at their highest in over a year, government bond yields are at multi-month lows.

Perhaps complacency is too strong given elevated geopolitical risks, the prospects for corporate defaults to rise and key elections starting with Taiwan on Jan 13.

Well-known market fear gauge, the VIX index, hit over

MOST ASSERTIVE STOCKS

PUERTO RICO STOCKS

COMMODITIES

CURRENCY

three-year lows in December, and the MOVE Treasury market volatility indicator is well below a March peak.

The coming days will put investor confidence to the test.

And if a new year is a moment to reflect on a year gone by, don’t forget the curve balls (banking crisis, Hamas-Israel war, Argentine election result) that caught many by surprise.

Building bets for an imminent end to the Bank of Japan’s negative rates policy were batted back in December, when it stuck to a resolutely dovish stance.

Yet Governor Kazuo Ueda, with a penchant for the unexpected, offered a tantalizing morsel to hawks, saying that “generally speaking” a stimulus exit could include an element of surprise.

So, while the surface message continues to be one of patience, borne out by data showing inflationary pressures waning, comments from the BOJ ahead of its Jan. 23 meeting are in focus.

In fact, in a Dec. 27 interview, Ueda hinted again that the results of spring wage negotiations are not essential to a hawkish shift, and that “quite a lot of information” could be gleaned from the BOJ’s regional branch manager meeting in mid-January.

12 Tuesday, January 2, 2024

The San Juan Daily Star

‘Screams without words’: How Hamas weaponized sexual violence on Oct. 7

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, ANAT SCHWARTZ and ADAM SELLA

A

t first, she was known simply as “the woman in the black dress.”

In a grainy video, you can see her, lying on her back, dress torn, legs spread, vagina exposed. Her face is burned beyond recognition, and her right hand covers her eyes.

The video was shot in the early hours of Oct. 8 by a woman searching for a missing friend at the site of the rave in southern Israel where, the day before, Hamas terrorists massacred hundreds of young Israelis.

The video went viral, with thousands of people responding, desperate to know if the woman in the black dress was their missing friend, sister or daughter.

One family knew exactly who she was: Gal Abdush, mother of two from a working-class town in central Israel, who disappeared from the rave that night with her husband.

As the terrorists closed in on her, trapped on a highway in a line of cars of people trying to flee the party, she sent one final WhatsApp message to her family: “You don’t understand.”

Based largely on the video evidence — which was verified by The New York Times — Israeli police officials said they believed that Abdush was raped, and she has become a symbol of the horrors visited upon Israeli women and girls during the Oct. 7 attacks.

Israeli officials say that everywhere Hamas terrorists struck — the rave, the military bases along the Gaza Strip border and the kibbutzim — they brutalized women.

A two-month investigation by the Times uncovered painful new details, establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7.

Relying on video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews with more than 150 people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape counselors, the Times identified at least seven locations where Israeli women and girls appear to have been sexually assaulted or mutilated.

Four witnesses described in graphic detail seeing wom-

A camp area on Oct. 11 at the rave site in southern Israel.

(Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times) en raped and killed at two different places along Route 232, the same highway where Abdush’s half-naked body was found sprawled on the road at a third location.

And the Times interviewed several soldiers and volunteer medics who together described finding more than 30 bodies of women and girls in and around the rave site and in two kibbutzim in a similar state as Abdush’s — legs spread, clothes torn off, signs of abuse in their genital areas.

Hamas has denied Israel’s accusations of sexual violence. Israeli activists have been outraged that U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and the agency U.N. Women did not acknowledge the many accusations until weeks after the attacks.

Investigators with Israel’s top national police unit, Lahav 433, have been steadily gathering evidence, but they have not put a number on how many women were raped, saying that most are dead — and buried — and that they will never know. No survivors have spoken publicly.

Israeli police have acknowledged that during the shock and confusion of Oct. 7, the deadliest day in Israeli history, they were not focused on collecting semen samples from women’s bodies, requesting autopsies or closely examining crime scenes. At that moment, authorities said, they were intent on repelling Hamas and identifying the dead.

A combination of chaos, enormous grief and Jewish religious duties meant that many bodies were buried as quickly as possible. Most were never examined, and in some cases, like at the rave scene, where more than 360 people were slaughtered in a few hours, the bodies were hauled away by the truckload.

That has left Israeli authorities at a loss to fully explain to families what happened to their loved ones in their final moments. Abdush’s relatives, for instance, never received a death certificate. They are still searching for answers.

‘Screams without words’ Sapir, a 24-year-old accountant, has become one of the Israeli police’s key witnesses. She does not want to be fully identified, saying she would be hounded for the rest of her life if her last name were revealed.

She attended the rave with several friends. In a two-hour interview outside a cafe in southern Israel, she recounted seeing groups of heavily armed gunmen rape and kill at least five women.

She said that at 8 a.m. on Oct. 7, she was hiding under the low branches of a bushy tamarisk tree, just off Route 232, about 4 miles southwest of the party. She had been shot in the back. She felt faint. She covered herself in dry grass and lay as still as she could.

About 50 feet from her hiding place, she said, she saw motorcycles, cars and trucks pulling up. She said that she saw “about 100 men,” most of them dressed in military fatigues and combat boots, a few in dark sweatsuits, getting in and out of the vehicles. She said the men congregated along the road and passed among them assault rifles, grenades, small missiles — and badly wounded women.

The first victim she said she saw was a young woman with copper-color hair, blood running down her back, pants pushed down to her knees. One man pulled her by the hair and made her bend over. Another penetrated her, Sapir said, and every time she flinched, he plunged a knife into her back.

She said she then watched another woman “shredded into pieces.” While one terrorist raped her, she said, another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off her breast.

“One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road,” Sapir said.

She said the men sliced her face, and then the woman fell out of view. Around the same time, she said, she saw three other women raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads of three more women.

Sapir provided photographs of her hiding place and her wounds, and police officials have stood by her testimony and released a video of her, with her face blurred, recounting some of what she saw.

That same morning, along Route 232 but in a different location about 1 mile southwest of the party area, Raz Cohen — a young Israeli who had also attended the rave — said that he was hiding in a dried-up streambed. It provided some cover from the assailants combing the area and shooting anyone they found, he said in a 1 1/2-hour interview.

Maybe 40 yards in front of him, he recalled, a white van pulled up, and its doors flew open.

He said he then saw five men, wearing civilian clothes, all carrying knives and one carrying a hammer, dragging a woman across the ground. She was young, naked and screaming.

“They all gather around her,” Cohen said. “She’s standing up. They start raping her. I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words.

“Then one of them raises a knife,” he said, “and they just slaughtered her.”

Hours later, the first wave of volunteer emergency medical technicians arrived at the rave site. In interviews, four of them said they discovered bodies of dead women with their legs spread and underwear missing — some with their hands tied by rope and zip ties — in the party area, along the road, in the parking area and in the open fields around the rave site.

Similar discoveries were made in two kibbutzim, Be’eri and Kfar Aza. Eight volunteer medics and two Israeli soldiers told the Times that in at least six different houses, they

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

had come across a total of at least 24 bodies of women and girls naked or half naked, some mutilated, others tied up, and often alone.

The woman in the black dress One of the last images of Abdush alive — captured by a security camera mounted on her front door — shows her leaving home with her husband, Nagi, at 2:30 a.m. Oct. 7 for the rave.

At daybreak, hundreds of terrorists closed in on the party from several directions, blocking the highways leading out. The couple jumped into their Audi, dashing off a string of messages as they moved.

“We’re on the border,” Abdush wrote to her family.

“We’re leaving.

“Explosions.”

Her husband made his own calls to his family, leaving a final audio message for his brother, Nissim, at 7:44 a.m.

“Take care of the kids,” he said. “I love you.”

Gunshots rang out, and the message stopped.

A week after Gal Abdush’s body was found, three government social workers appeared at the gate of the family’s home in Kiryat Ekron, a small town in central Israel. They broke the news that Abdush, 34, had been found dead.

But the only document the family received was a one-page form letter from Israeli President Isaac Herzog expressing his condolences and sending a hug. The body of Abdush’s husband, 35, was identified two days after his wife’s. It was badly burned, and investigators determined who he was based on a DNA sample and his wedding ring.

The couple had been together since they were teenag-

13

ers. To the family, it seems only yesterday that Nagi Abdush was heading off to work to fix water heaters, a bag of tools slung over his shoulder, and Gal Abdush was cooking up mashed potatoes and schnitzel for their two sons, Eliav, 10, and Refael, 7.

The boys are now orphans. They were sleeping over at an aunt’s the night their parents were killed. Gal Abdush’s mother and father have applied for permanent custody.

Night after night, Gal Abdush’s mother, Eti Bracha, lies in bed with the boys until they drift off. A few weeks ago, she said she tried to quietly leave their bedroom when the younger boy stopped her.

“Grandma,” he said, “I want to ask you a question.”

“Honey,” she said, “you can ask anything.”

“Grandma, how did mom die?”

Rusted or mended with love, Beetles are part of the family

By ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS

R

usted and stripped of their right seat, the cars parked in queues rounding street corners serve as the unofficial taxi in the hillside neighborhoods in Cuautepec in Mexico’s capital. The curvy symbol of the 1960s hippie era is admired — even decorated and named — by residents who say the car represents their resilience and work ethic.

They can be spotted throughout Mexico City, but they swarm the vibrant streets in Cuautepec, where Beetles can be heard climbing steep hills past residents relaxing on their roofs and dogs standing guard on balconies.

One of Cuautepec’s many mechanics is usually just a couple blocks away. The smell of car exhaust fumes fills the streets as yellow, green, red and purple Beetles buzz by one another at intersections.

“It is not a standard car like any other,” said Yolanda Ocampo, 45, as she admired her graying 1982 Beetle parked outside the pharmacy where she works. The brake pedal can be stiff, but owning the Beetle means “your car is tough.”

“We love the Vochos so much,” she added.

There are competing theories for the car’s beloved nickname, “Vocho.” Some say it is derived from the Spanish word for bug, “bicho,” and combined the first two letters of Volkswagen. Others say it is just a shortened slang version of Volkswagen.

Though the German Classic Beetle was officially discontinued in 2003, the classic Beetle has long been a source of pride for Mexico, and specifically Cuautepec. Originally designed for Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, Volkswagen sold hundreds of thousands of Beetles in the 1960s as the car became an emblem of anti-establishment countercul-

Mario Gamboa at his shop, which specializes in repairing Beetles, in the Cuautepec neighborhood of Mexico City, Nov. 28, 2023. A northern community in Mexico City cannot give up on the famous 1960s hippie-favorite Volkswagen. (Marian Carrasquero/The New York Times) ture.

Eventually, Volkswagen stopped imports to the United States when it could not keep pace with crash test and emission standards. The company began to farm out production to other countries. In 1964, it opened a factory in Puebla, Mexico, where it produced Beetles until 2003, and continued to build the sleeker New Beetles until 2019, when Volkswagen ended the bug’s reign entirely.

In Cuautepec, most of the cars on the road are still the classic models.

“The good ones are the old ones,” said Eduardo Jiménez León, whose son gifted him a Beetle previously used as a taxi.

For residents like Jiménez León, 73, the Vocho’s popularity is a matter of practicality. The Beetle’s engine is in the back rather than the front, making it easier to drive up Cuautepec’s steep hills. The cars marked with green and white paint are still used as unofficial taxis in the neighborhood. Many visitors who take a gondola lift to the top of the city’s northern hills elect to ride back

down in a Vocho for a more retro transport.

“They say that it drives even just on the pure smell of gasoline,” said Uriel Mondragón, a local mechanic who said 40% of his customers own a Beetle. “It is not like a new car. This car does not run out of gas.”

For others, owning a Beetle is more about what the car represents.

In Cuautepec, the car has tied generations of families together, often passed down from parent to child.

“Our beloved Vocho has become part of the Mexican folklore thanks to its unique personality, quality and reliability,” Álea M. Lozada, a spokesperson for Volkswagen in Mexico, said in a statement. “It is a honor to be the last plant in which this iconic model was assembled.”

Each Beetle in the neighborhood has its own personality and name; owners post their car’s moniker at the top of windshields or on its side. On a recent trip to Cuautepec, one Beetle was named Ashley. Miranda chugged along a couple blocks away.

Another had “New York” spray-painted along its side.

Custom designs and decorations are also coveted in the Vocho community.

A taxi driver drove a Vocho with fake 100,000-dollar bills pasted on one side.

Another had a Scooby-Doo doll installed on his trunk. Stars adorned the windshield of another Beetle.

Ocampo said she prefers driving her Beetle more than her brand-new SEAT Ibiza car, a supermini. For her, owning a Vocho is a way to push back on gender stereotypes that were

prevalent in her home when she was growing up. She often heard men in Cuautepec questioning whether women could handle the Beetle.

“How is it possible for a woman to drive a Volkswagen because of the heavy steering wheel?” Ocampo recalled people asking. But now, “if there is a Volkswagen they are not astonished, right? So the truth is that I am proud to drive a Volkswagen.”

But since the Beetle is no longer in production, it can be hard to find the right parts when repairs are needed.

As a result, the cars are often made up of mismatched parts. One Beetle might have a green hood, a blue passenger door and a yellow trunk — signs of past repair jobs and an effort to match the vibrant houses in the neighborhood.

Beetlemania is not limited to the Vocholandia neighborhood.

Berenzain Amaya, a tattoo artist at Octattoo Studio in another part of Mexico City, says he has inked the car on at least 10 die-hard Vocho fans.

“It’s hard to explain because if you’re from another country and see this German car, it’s kind of weird, but I think Mexico is a weird place,” Amaya said. “There’s a lot of things that aren’t too common to see in other countries. This is part of the culture.”

14

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

In a British town, a new way of caring for older people is bringing hope

By MEGAN SPECIA

F

or 12 years after her husband died, Norma Fitzgerald tried to maintain her independence, living alone in an apartment on the outskirts of Hull, in northern England, despite her mobility worsening as she reached her mid-80s.

Then one day in the spring of 2022, she suddenly grew dizzy. Her legs gave out, and she collapsed on her apartment floor, unable to find the strength to get up.

She lay there for two days.

Eventually, a neighbor realized she hadn’t seen her for some time and called an ambulance.

“They had to force the door open,” Fitzgerald, who is now 87, recalled. She was severely dehydrated and spent the next five days in a hospital.

As Britain’s population ages, with almost 19% of the population older than 65, according to the 2021 census, up from 16% a decade before, the needs of an increasingly frail older population are weighing on the country’s health care system.

Along with the National Health Service, many older people also rely on what is known as social care, a mosaic of private and public support that is plagued by chronic staffing shortages, a lack of nursing-home beds and slashed local budgets.

The lack of easily accessible social care, which encompasses everything from home health aides who help with washing and dressing to full-time residential care, means that falls or treatable health conditions can lead to extended hospital stays. That is piling pressure on the NHS, when earlier intervention or home support would have been more appropriate.

But what happened to Fitzgerald after she was discharged from the hospital is an example of an approach that could transform the way that older adults living with complex health conditions are cared for, experts say.

In the past, she would probably have been sent home with little continuing care aside

A home care worker, Linda Ryan, from Age UK, visits Mavis Ireland’s home to help with tasks such as ironing and making the bed, which Mavis finds difficult, in Hull, England on June 6, 2023. (Mary Turner/The New York Times)

from her family doctor. Or she might have had to move into full-time residential care, losing her independence.

Instead, she was referred to the Jean Bishop Integrated Care Center in Hull, a facility that opened five years ago as a one-stop shop for frail older people. The first of its kind in Britain, it brings together doctors, physical therapists, social workers and other professionals under one roof. In the course of a few hours, a patient can see a number of clinicians and have diagnostic tests if needed, including Xrays and blood tests, and receive a personalized care plan — all free of charge.

On a sunny morning in June, Fitzgerald sat knitting a red-and-gray blanket in the center’s bright and cheerful waiting room. She had been brought by ambulance — all patients are offered transportation if needed — from her assisted-living apartment, to see a doctor specializing in geriatric care, a pharmacist, an occupational therapist and a social worker.

Many geriatric health experts believe this kind of “integrated care,” with a multidisciplinary team addressing all the issues that can affect well-being, from loneliness to immobility, is the future for older people with complex health needs in Britain.

Dr. Dan Harman, a geriatrician and one of the center’s clinical leads, sees his job as trying to prevent crisis rather than simply reacting to it, as Dr. José B. Morales Claudio in Fitzgerald’s case. The center contributed to a 13.6% Médico Generalista reduction in emergency room visits and hospital admissions Niños, adultos y envejecientes among people older than 80 Se acepta la mayoría de los planes médicos and a 17.6% drop in ER visits 787.672.8209 by patients in care homes in the area between 2019 and mdjmora579@gmail.com 2022, according to NHS data.

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the health service and local government, while allowing patients more control over their care.

“Older people were sort of lodged in the wrong places in the health and care system, particularly in emergency departments,” Harman said. “A lot of people are getting stuck there unnecessarily because we weren’t providing the support in the community.”

Integrated services such as this are still rare in Britain, where the social care system is under extraordinary strain. After the 2008 financial crisis, the Conservative-led government oversaw a period of prolonged austerity in which local governments cut spending on social care sharply, leading to a rise in hospital admissions of people older than 65. The pandemic, and recent high inflation, intensified the pressure.

Unlike the NHS, social care in England, Northern Ireland and Wales is not free for most people and is often hard to navigate (in Scotland it is free for all.) Anyone in England with assets over 23,250 pounds, or about $29,000, must pay for social care themselves or rely on help from family or charities. Many older people say they worry about steep outof-pocket costs.

The crisis in the sector is not new. In 2011, a government-commissioned independent review, led by economist Andrew Dilnot, declared the system was “not fit for purpose” and urgently in need an overhaul. More than a decade on, the report’s recommendations have gone unheeded, Dilnot said in a recent interview with The New York Times.

For now, charities such as Age UK, a British organization for older adults that has local affiliates across the country, often step in to fill the gaps. The charity offers services from advice phone lines to home cleaning to community meetups. It also has a befriending service that matches older people with volunteers who visit them weekly.

Alan Walker, 96, was referred into the befriending program to combat the loneliness he experienced while caring for his wife, who suffered from dementia and could no longer speak.

“It’s very hard going sometimes,” he said.

Through the program, Lucy Henn, 28, came every Friday afternoon to spend time with Walker. It was a simple thing, but it significantly increased his quality of life, he said.

On a summer afternoon, she stopped over to make a cup of tea, which she set next to Walker in the living room where he spent most of his days. “We talk about all sorts of things, don’t we?” Henn said with a laugh.

The cost of care workers, who visited four times a day to help, was steep, Walker said, but he and Jean had done a great deal of financial planning to ensure their savings would last.

“You think to say to people, ‘Look, you see what’s happening to me. It could happen to you,’” he said.

A few weeks later, he was moved into residential care as his needs grew. His wife, Jean, died in late August, and Walker died in October.

The expectation that people would be able to save excessive amounts of money to cover the cost of long-term care, including residential care, was unfeasible, Dilnot said.

“Most people couldn’t possibly have savings that will be enough if they and their spouse ended up needing 10 years of residential social care,” he said. “It’s not a savings problem; it’s a risk-pooling problem,” he added, referring to the concept of spreading the cost of care across the population so no individual faces the risk of unaffordable bills alone.

In October, the lawmaker responsible for social care, Helen Whately, praised the Jean Bishop center and said that the NHS and Age UK were looking at ways to roll out its integrated care model more broadly.

“The future of health care is as much about what happens out of the hospital, as what happens in it,” Whately said.

For many seeking care, and for their loved ones, including Emma Gawthorpe, 46, the priority is the present. Her father, Alan Gawthorpe, 72, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s two years ago. As they waited for his appointments at the Jean Bishop center, she told the Times that the service had made a significant difference after they had struggled to get help in the early months after his diagnosis.

“It was a lot of jumping through a lot of hoops, and you need to be really firm sometimes,” Emma Gawthorpe said. “And unless it’s happening to you, you don’t know anything about it.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

15

2023 was a terrible year, and also maybe the best one yet for humanity

By NICHOLAS KRISTOF

A

s the year ends, civilians are dying at a staggering pace in the Gaza Strip and the genocide in Darfur may be resuming. A man charged with 91 felonies is leading in American presidential polls, and our carbon emissions risk cooking our planet.

But something else is also true: In some ways, 2023 may still have been the best year in the history of humanity.

How can that possibly be?

Just about the worst calamity that can befall a human is to lose a child, and historically, almost half of children worldwide died before they reached the age of 15. That share has declined steadily since the 19th century, and the United Nations Population Division projects that in 2023 a record low was reached in global child mortality, with just 3.6% of newborns dying by the age of 5.

That’s the lowest such figure in human history. It still means that about 4.9 million children died this year — but that’s 1 million fewer than died as recently as 2016.

Or consider extreme poverty. It too has reached a record low, affecting a bit more than 8% of humans worldwide, according to United Nations projections.

All these figures are rough, but it seems that about

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100,000 people are now emerging from extreme poverty each day — so they are better able to access clean water, to feed and educate their children, to buy medicines.

None of this eases the pain of those who have lost their children in 2023, nor is it a balm for those caught in war or climate catastrophes. Yet, at year’s end, it’s worth acknowledging this backdrop of progress — not to distract anyone from all that is going wrong, but to offer a reminder that when we try hard enough, we can accomplish amazing things. Right now, looking at the anguish worldwide, I’d say we’re not trying hard enough.

I write a version of this column each year at around this time, and it upsets many readers. They believe it is offensive to hail progress when so many are dying unnecessarily from wars and disease, when the future seems so bleak to so many. I understand their point; my career has been dedicated to covering genocide, war and poverty. But one thing I learned long ago as a journalist is that when our coverage is unremittingly negative, people tune out and give up. If we want to tackle problems — from the Israel-Hamas war to climate change — then it helps to know that progress is possible.

Other health news is also encouraging, a reflection of the way public health tools are behind many of the advances in well-being. Two horrifying diseases are close to eradication: polio and Guinea worm disease.

Only 12 cases of wild poliovirus have been reported worldwide in 2023 (there were also small numbers of vaccine-derived polio, a secondary problem), and 2024 may be the last year in which wild polio is transmitted.

(Shoutout to Rotary International for its heroic work against this disease.) Meanwhile, only 11 cases of Guinea worm disease were reported in humans in the first nine months of 2023. (The hat-tip here goes to former President Jimmy Carter for his extraordinary work against the parasite.)

Likewise, the United States government recently approved new CRISPR gene-editing techniques to treat sickle cell disease — and the hope is that similar approaches can transform the treatment of cancer and other ailments. Another landmark: New vaccines have been approved for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and malaria, and both are expected to save children’s lives.

Blinding trachoma is also on its way out in several countries. A woman suffering from trachoma in Mali once told me that the worst part of the disease wasn’t the blindness but, rather, the excruciating pain, which she said was as bad as childbirth but lasted for years.

So, I’m thrilled that Mali and 16 other countries have eliminated trachoma.

A newborn in mother’s arms at a maternity clinic in the Sofala Province of Mozambique. Aug. 5, 2023. In some ways, 2023 may still have been the best year in the history of humanity, Nicholas Kristof writes. (Hannah Reyes Morales/The New York Times) Those who see 2023 as a notably grim year are also right, of course. My reporting in the Middle East late this year was personally depressing, and climate change threatens the gains in poor nations such as Bangladesh and Madagascar. Yet, despair is paralyzing, not empowering. It seems contradictory in a world brimming with pain, but the most important trend in the world in my lifetime may be the revolution in child mortality, the enormous decline in global poverty and the vast increase in literacy that many people seem unaware of.

I highlight this backdrop of progress so that it may fortify us in 2024 to tackle all the other suffering that persists.

A reminder: The deadline is approaching to apply for the 2024 contest to accompany me on a reporting trip; the details are at nytimes.com/winatrip. And in keeping with the spirit of this column, thanks to readers for donating more than $4.4 million so far to the nonprofits in my latest annual holiday giving guide. As a result of reader contributions so far, 8,000 girls in sub-Saharan African countries will be able to attend a year of high school through Camfed, 1,000 American students can join a yearlong OneGoal program and 2,750 Americans will get technical training for a new career with Per Scholas. All of that is grounds for hope, and you can join in the giving at KristofImpact.org.

— Contact Kristof at Facebook.com/Kristof, Twitter. com/NickKristof or by mail at The New York Times, 620 Eighth Ave., New York, NY 10018.

16 Tuesday, January 2, 2024

The San Juan Daily Star

ACUDEN cierra el 2023 con logros significativos en bienestar de la niñez temprana POR EL STAR STAFF

S

AN JUAN – La inversión de sobre $400 millones en varios esfuerzos dirigidas a servicios directos para la población de cero a cinco años y la firma de la Orden Ejecutiva 2023-028 por parte del gobernador, Pedro R.

Pierluisi, que decreta a Puerto Rico Amigo de la Niñez, fueron dos de los logros más significativos por parte de la Administración para el Cuidado y Desarrollo Integral de la Niñez Temprana (ACUDEN) durante el 2023. Así lo dio a conocer el administrador de la agencia, Roberto Carlos Pagán.

“Tenemos un compromiso con nuestros menores en Puerto Rico por su bienestar y su desarrollo óptimo, por lo que, nuestro enfoque ha sido acceder los recursos disponibles para atender sus necesidades. El que nuestros niños y niñas de edad temprana cuenten con los mejores servicios desde la infraestructura, la salud, sus cuidados y los nuevos modelos de educación, es una prioridad de la administración para brindarles una mejor calidad de vida”, indicó Pagan.

El Administrador sostuvo que la ACUDEN, ha trabajado enfáticamente en la creación de programas educativos innovadores, nutrición y salud, empoderamiento e integración de las familias, alianzas estratégicas, ca-

pacitación del ecosistema de la niñez y otras iniciativas que apoyan su visión de ofrecerles un entorno seguro y propicio para su niñez.

En ese contexto, bajo esa inversión de $400 millones se trabajaron 4 pilares que para el Administrador fueron fundamentales para así ofrecer servicios de calidad. En el Proyecto de Bienestar y Salud tuvo una inversión de $16,909,566, para el Proyecto Innovación se destinó $4,023,386, mientras que sobre $14 millones estuvieron dirigidos al Proyecto de Infraestructura y esfuerzos bajo el Proyecto de Recuperación $366 millones.

“Dentro de cada proyecto se atienden necesidades específicas de nuestras familias, invertir en estos servicios es un acto de responsabilidad y visión hacia delante en el Puerto Rico que queremos mañana. Es necesario que todo el componente que trabaja con la niñez cuente con estos recursos, lo que beneficiará el desarrollo integral de la población infantil”, agregó el Administrador.

Comisión Calificadora de Aspirantes no da paso a aspiración de José Guillermo Rodríguez POR CYBERNEWS

S

AN JUAN – El secretario general del Partido Popular Democrático (PPD), Gerardo “Toñito” Cruz, informó finales de la semana pasada que la Comisión Calificadora de Aspirantes determinó no darle paso a la aspiración de José Guillermo Rodríguez para aspirar al Senado por el Distrito de Mayagüez bajo la insignia de la Pava.

“Cobijados bajo el Artículo 244 del Reglamento del PPD, la Comisión Calificadora de Aspirantes, compuesta por siete miembros, determinó en reunión ordinaria, no recomendar la certificación de José Guillermo Rodríguez para aspirar al Senado por el Distrito de Mayagüez” señaló en declaracio-

nes escritas.

Según lee la Resolución del Organismo “la Co-

misión concluye que el aspirante no reúne todos los requisitos para la posición a la cual aspira y recomienda que no debe ser certificado por el secretario general”, dejando hasta el momento solo dos aspirantes certificados para el Senado Distrito de Mayagüez por el PPD. El también Comisionado Electoral Alterno informó que acogió la recomendación del ente y no dará paso a la certificación de Rodríguez Rodríguez.

Cruz Maldonado, finalizó diciendo que tal y como lo establece el Reglamento del PPD, luego de este proceso, el aspirante, puede solicitar una revisión ante la Junta de Gobierno del PPD dentro de los cinco (5) días de haber sido notificado.

Cumple con su promesa a los bomberos el senador Ramoncito Ruiz Nieves POR EL STAR STAFF

P

ONCE – El presidente de la Comisión de Gobierno del Senado, Ramoncito Ruiz Nieves, celebró finales de la semana pasada que la Junta de Control Fiscal haya concedido la aprobación de su iniciativa legislativa para aumentar el salario base de los miembros del Negociado de Bomberos de Puerto Rico.

Ley Especial de Salario Base para los Bomberos, una medida generada por Ruiz Nieves, fue aprobada a los fines de disponer que el salario base de los bomberos pertenecientes al Negociado del Cuerpo de Bomberos comenzará a partir de los dos mil quinientos ($2,500) dólares mensuales; y otorgar un aumento de trescientos

setenta y cinco ($375.00) dólares mensuales a todos los bomberos adscritos al Negociado del Cuerpo de Bomberos.

La aprobación se produjo luego de conversaciones con la dirección de la Oficina de Gerencia y Presupuesto, la Autoridad de Asesoría Financiera y Agencia Fiscal y el Departamento de Seguridad Pública del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico. Los $8.037 millones provienen de la Ley del Plan de Rescate Americano (ARPA) y de lo que se recauda por las primas de inspección establecidas por la Ley 181 de 2019.

Ruiz Nieves señaló que “la labor legislativa es una muy meticulosa y requiere de mucha paciencia y persuasión para que todas las partes accedan. El haberle

hecho justicia a los bomberos de Puerto Rico me llena de mucha satisfacción”, finalizó el senador por Ponce.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

17

2023 box office lessons: Audiences sought comfort, skipped spectacle

By BROOKS BARNES

H

ollywood’s movie factories run on conventional wisdom — entrenched notions, based on experience, about what types of films are likely to pop at the global box office.

Last year, audiences turned many of those so-called rules on their heads.

Superheroes have long been seen as the most reliable way to fill seats. But characters like Captain Marvel, the Flash, Ant-Man, Shazam and Blue Beetle failed to excite moviegoers.

Over the weekend, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” which cost more than $200 million to make and tens of millions more to market, arrived to a disastrous $28 million in ticket sales in the United States and Canada. Overseas moviegoers chipped in another $80 million.

In the meantime, the biggest movie of the year at the box office, “Barbie,” with $1.44 billion in worldwide ticket sales, was directed by a woman, based on a very female toy and spraypainted pink — ingredients that most studios have long seen as limiting audience appeal. An old movie-industry maxim holds that women will go to a “guy” movie but not vice versa.

“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” collected $1.36 billion, a second-place result that also stunned Hollywood; studios have a troubled history with game adaptations. “Oppenheimer,” a three-hour period drama about a physicist, rounded out the top three, taking in $952 million and contradicting the prevailing belief that, in the streaming era, films for grown-ups are not viable in theaters.

“Without question, change is afoot — audiences are in a different mood,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers. “The country and the world are not in the same place. We’ve had seven years of divisive politics, a severe pandemic, two serious wars, climate change and inflation. Moviegoers seem less interested in being overwhelmed with spectacle and saving the universe than being spoken to, entertained and inspired.”

Comscore, which compiles box office data, projected Sunday that North American ticket sales for the year would reach about $9 billion, a 20% increase from 2022. (Before the pandemic, North American theaters reliably sold about $11 billion in tickets annually.) The average price for an adult general admission ticket in the United States was $12.14, up from $11.75, according to EntTelligence, a research firm.

Worldwide ticket sales are expected to exceed $33 billion, an increase of 27%, partly because of a surge in Latin America.

(Before the pandemic, worldwide ticket sales easily exceeded $40 billion annually.)

Hollywood’s climb back from the pandemic is expected to stall in 2024. With fewer movies scheduled for release — studio pipelines were disrupted by the recent strikes — ticket sales will decline 5% to 11% next year, depending on the market, according to projections from Gower Street Analytics, a box office research firm.

Reading box-office tea leaves is like pontificating about

Movie audiences flocked to Taylor Swift, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” but were cooler toward returning superheroes like the Flash, Captain Marvel and Aquaman. (Cristiana Couceiro/The New York Times) symbolism in works of fiction: Any halfway plausible theory works. But studio bosses need something, anything, to guide them as they make billion-dollar judgment calls for the seasons ahead.

Here are five takeaways from last year: Moviegoers want comfort.

People reach for nostalgia in times of stress, and movies that reminded audiences of the past — while also managing to feel fresh — have been succeeding. “Barbie,” “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Wonka” and the retro-feeling “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” allowed people to revisit their childhoods. “Insidious: The Red Door” hit pay dirt by bringing back the franchise’s original stars.

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” could have tapped into nostalgia to become a hit. Instead, a huffing and puffing Harrison Ford, 81, simply reminded Indy fans that they, too, are getting old. “Dial of Destiny” cost Disney $295 million to make and took in a flaccid $384 million. (Theaters keep roughly 50% of ticket sales.)

Art film has a pulse.

Sophisticated dramas with modest budgets and aimed at older audiences have been showing signs of life after two years in the box office intensive care unit.

The streaming era has forever shifted the bulk of prestige film viewing to the home, analysts say. But theaters found a modicum of success in 2023 with offerings like “Past Lives,” a wistful drama with some Korean dialogue, and Hayao Miyazaki’s animated “The Boy and the Heron.” The bespoke “Asteroid City” managed $54 million.

Early box office results have also been promising for Oscar-oriented films like “Poor Things,” a surreal science-fiction romance, and “American Fiction,” a satire about a writer who puts together a fake memoir that turns on racial stereotypes.

Bigger is not better.

For the past decade, Hollywood has kept audiences interested in sequels by making each installment more bloated and often nonsensical than the last. Bigger! Faster! More!

That strategy may need rethinking — it’s just too expensive, analysts say, especially with Chinese moviegoers souring on American blockbusters. “Fast X,” the 10th movie in the “Fast and Furious” series, cost an estimated $340 million and took in $705 million worldwide, including $140 million in China. By comparison, “Furious 7” in 2015 cost $190 million and collected $1.5 billion, including $391 million in China.

Tom Cruise’s seventh “Mission: Impossible” spectacle, released in July in the wake of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” cost roughly $290 million to make and collected $568 million, including $49 million in China. The sixth “Mission: Impossible” in 2018 cost $178 million and generated $792 million, with Chinese ticket buyers chipping in $181 million.

Increasingly, franchise sequels and spinoffs need to feel fresh to succeed. Lionsgate, for instance, delved deeper into the High Table underground crime organization in “John Wick: Chapter 4” and introduced “Hunger Games” fans to a new storyline (and cast) in the prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.” Both movies were hits. Lionsgate even revived its “Saw” horror franchise by shifting the narrative back in time.

“Each of those movies did something different than the prior,” said Adam Fogelson, vice chair of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group. “It wasn’t just ‘spend more, make it bigger, make it louder and cram in more action.’”

Some audience patterns remain intact.

Horror continued to be a reliable performer, with “Five Nights at Freddy’s” and “M3gan” starting new franchises for Universal and its Blumhouse affiliate. Together, the two films cost $32 million. They collected a combined $469 million. Also notable was “The Nun II,” which cost Warner Bros. about $38 million and took in $268 million.

Superheroes may be down, but they’re not out. Marvel’s rollicking, well-established “Guardians of the Galaxy” series returned for a third chapter and generated $846 million against a $250 million budget. Sony’s bold, anime-influenced “SpiderMan: Across the Spider-Verse” cost an estimated $150 million and collected $691 million.

Stars matter.

The conventional wisdom in Hollywood has been that movie stars are essentially part of the past. A celebrity name above the title no longer carries that much weight with ticket buyers. The underlying “intellectual property” is what fills seats.

People pay to see Barbie, not Margot Robbie.

Except that Mattel and various studios tried for at least 20 years to turn the toy into a live-action movie star. It took Robbie in the role (and Ryan Gosling as Ken) to finally make it happen.

Other movies that benefited from star power in 2023 included “Wonka,” with Timothée Chalamet, and “Creed III,” anchored

by Michael B. Jordan.

Stars don’t have heft? Try telling that to the producers of “Gran Turismo,” “Haunted Mansion,” “Dumb Money” and “Strays,” all of which disappointed at the box office and arrived when their casts were barred from promoting their work because of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists strike.

18

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Stream these 9 movies before they leave Netflix in January

By JASON BAILEY

I

n January, several big movies from an impressive coterie of marquee directors — including Sofia Coppola, Luca Guadagnino, Yorgos Lanthimos, Spike Lee, Jordan Peele and Robert Rodriguez — leave Netflix in the United States, along with a zippy comedy, an entertaining animated sequel and what may be the most famous runner-up in Oscars history. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)

‘BlacKkKlansman’ (Jan. 5) Better late than never: Lee won his first competitive Oscar for co-writing the screenplay to this deft combination of social satire and police procedural, which he also directed. It details the true story of how Colorado police Detective Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, despite the fact that Stallworth is Black. Lee plays Stallworth’s ruse, achieved with a clever combination of phone calls and undercover work by his white, Jewish partner (Adam Driver), for laughs. But the danger of the operation is ever-present, building considerable tension to a conclusion that ingeniously and gut-wrenchingly ties the past to the present.

‘Get Out’ (Jan. 5) When Peele’s crossover to feature filmmaking was announced in the mid-2010s, most audiences — familiar only with his work as half of the sketch comedy team Key & Peele — presumed he would continue to work in that wild comic style. No one could have predicted that he would turn the entire horror genre upside down, but that’s exactly what he did with this nail-biting combination of social commentary and scary movie.

What begins as a “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” riff — a wealthy young white woman (Allison Williams) bringing her Black boyfriend (Daniel Kaluuya) home to meet her parents — turns into something far more sinister and unpredictable. Peele’s insights

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as a screenwriter are pointed and even profound, and his directorial instincts are striking from Frame 1.

‘Spy Kids’ (Jan. 12) Just as it’s hard to remember that Peele wasn’t always associated with horror, recall that there was once a time when the idea of Rodriguez — known then for his hyperkinetic action movies — making a family film was shocking. But he changed all of that with this 2001 smash, in which two average kids (the charismatic duo of Daryl Sabara and Alexa Vega) discover that their seemingly boring parents (Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino, both delightfully game) are in fact globe-trotting superspies. A mission has gone awry, and the kids have to save them.

Rodriguez’s imaginative scenario plugs right in to childhood play, and his handmade style is a smooth fit for kid-friendly cinema.

(The second and third chapters in the franchise leave Netflix the same day.)

‘The Killing of a Sacred Deer’ (Jan. 22) Director Lanthimos and actor Barry Keoghan have two of the most talked-about movies of the fall in “Poor Things” and “Saltburn”; back in 2017, they collaborated on a film that makes both of those efforts seem comparatively tame. Colin Farrell stars as a seemingly normal heart surgeon whose peculiar interactions with Keoghan, the son of a former patient, escalate into deeply troubling territory. Farrell strikes a perfect key of revealing nothing without hiding anything, Nicole Kidman is excellent as his wife (with secrets of her own) and Keoghan’s mere presence is effortlessly disturbing.

‘Baby Mama’ (Jan. 31) Tina Fey and Amy Poehler took their considerable chemistry from “Saturday Night Live” to the big screen in this charming 2008 buddy comedy. Fey stars as Kate, an uptight executive who hears the ticking of her biological clock and seeks out a surrogate. Poehler is Angie, wildly immature

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‘La La Land’ and worrisomely irresponsible. It’s a classic opposites-attract story, and the story beats contain few surprises. But Fey and Poehler are so easily entertaining and tuned in to each other’s wavelengths that even the throwaway lines land big laughs, and the stacked supporting cast (including Greg Kinnear, Romany Malco, Steve Martin, Dax Shepard, Holland Taylor, Maura Tierney and Sigourney Weaver) more than pulls its weight.

‘The Bling Ring’ (Jan. 31) Last year’s Netflix original docuseries “The Real Bling Ring: Hollywood Heist” dived into the true story of the crew of Los Angeles teenagers busted in 2009 for burglarizing the homes of several boldfaced names. That may satisfy true-crime aficionados, but Coppola’s 2013 dramatization offers more than mere stargazing and rubbernecking. Her textured and experiential aesthetic is a perfect fit for this tale of shiny surfaces and conspicuous consumption; it isn’t exactly sympathetic to the teen criminals at its center, but it is empathetic to the feeling of being surrounded by unimaginable wealth and the thrill of having it (literally) in your grasp.

‘Call Me by Your Name’ (Jan. 31) Sometimes a movie can seem to mosey and meander, running on vibes and nostalgia, and then snap itself together with full emotional force in its closing passages.

That’s what happens in Guadagnino’s adaptation of the novel by André Aciman (with a screenplay by the great James Ivory, of Merchant-Ivory productions). Timothée Chalamet is remarkable in the leading role of 17-year-old Elio, a withdrawn young man

who falls in love for the first time with a visiting graduate student (Armie Hammer). The rural Italian locations are gorgeous, and the supporting players are charming (particularly Michael Stuhlbarg as Elio’s understanding father). But most important, and impressive, is Guadagnino’s skill at capturing the sheer intoxication of one’s first flush of love and playful lust.

‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2’ (Jan. 31) Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who adapted the beloved children’s book for the original “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” in 2009, did not return for this 2013 sequel, and their absence is felt; the new team can’t quite replicate the gonzo energy and wild wit of the first picture. But it maintains that film’s considerable charm, thanks primarily to the winning vocal work of Bill Hader as perpetually nervous inventor Flint Lockwood and Anna Faris as Sam Sparks, a brainy meteorologist (and Flint’s best girl).

‘La La Land’ (Jan. 31) This 2016 romance from Damien Chazelle was a critical and commercial smash (and, notoriously, almost the Oscar winner for best picture) — not always the fate of big-screen musicals in the modern era. But Chazelle’s creation is irresistible, from the sheer spectacular enthusiasm of its song-and-dance numbers to the heartfelt lead performances of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone to Chazelle’s undeniable and infectious affection for the great musicals of yesteryear.

Also leaving: “Ma” (Jan. 5), “Begin Again” (Jan. 24), “Eat Pray Love” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” (Jan. 31).

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

19

Get that champagne feeling on a sparkling wine budget

By ERIC ASIMOV

T

he holidays require sparkling wine, there’s no getting around that. But does it need to be Champagne?

That’s a particularly good question this year, as Champagne is more expensive than ever. You may be able to find a bottle for under $40 somewhere, but decent bottles now begin around $45, and very good nonvintage bottles from producers like Pierre Péters or Louis Roederer are $70 to $75.

Fortunately, great sparkling wines are now made everywhere that makes wine. This year I decided to seek out distinctive sparkling wines that provided satisfying alternatives to Champagne. I found 12 that were exceptional, at different price levels, in New York retail shops.

Notice I called them alternatives, not replacements. No other sparkling wine tastes just like a good Champagne, which is the product of its place and culture. But other regions make sparkling wine that can be just as distinctive in myriad ways.

Sekt, the sparkling wine of Germany, and cava, the sparkling wine of Spain, are both undergoing rejuvenations with a growing number of producers putting far more care and effort into making terrific examples of what used to be cheap afterthoughts.

The best producers in these regions use local grapes, like riesling in Germany and xarello, parellada and macabeu in Spain.

Sparkling Vouvray and Montlouis are made of chenin blanc. These all can be wonderful, but they don’t taste like Champagne.

Other places prefer to use traditional Champagne grapes like chardonnay and pinot noir. These don’t taste like Champagne, either, as they come from different terroirs.

They are not necessarily better or worse, just different.

I chose only sparklers that are made by the same method as Champagne, in which a finished wine is refermented with a sweet solution and yeast in a sealed bottle. This second fermentation produces carbon dioxide, which, with nowhere to escape, carbonates the wine.

I’m not at all suggesting you don’t drink Champagne for the holidays. Good Champagnes are singular, and I have many producers whom I recommend. But if you are looking for excellent sparklers that mostly won’t cost as much as Champagne, here are 12 options, from least to most expensive.

Parés Baltà Cava Brut Nature NV,

11.5%, $20 This might have been a classic cava, if all cavas were farmed organically and made with as much care. Instead, it stands out. Parés Baltà uses only the traditional grapes, xarello, parellada and macabeu, with the emphasis on xarello. It’s fresh, lively and dry. Other good Spanish sparklers to seek out include Gramona, AT Roca, Recaredo and Raventós I Blanc. (U.S.A. Wine Imports, New York) Ferrari Trento Brut Metodo Classico NV, 12.5%, $27 I’m not sure any country drinks more sparkling wine than Italy. Ferrari’s wines, from the Trentino-Alto Adige region of Italy, are generally superb. This entry-level bottle, made entirely from chardonnay, is sleek and graceful, impeccably balanced and a great value. (Taub Family Selections, Boca Raton, Florida) Clotilde Davenne Crémant de Bourgogne Brut Extra NV, 12.5%, $27 Clotilde Davenne makes small amounts of Chablis and Burgundy as well as Crémant de Bourgogne, the sparkling wine of Burgundy. This bone-dry blend of chardonnay and pinot noir, farmed organically near the town of Chablis, is ultrafresh, lacy and elegant.

(Bonhomie Wine Imports, South Orange, New Jersey) Jo Landron Atmosphères Méthode Traditionelle Extra Brut NV, 11.5%, $28 Jo Landron, a scrupulous biodynamic farmer and careful winemaker, has long been one of my favorite Muscadet producers. He also makes this terrific sparkling wine. It’s made roughly of a third chardonnay, a third pinot noir — two Champagne grapes — and a third, folle blanche, a local grape known for its high acidity. The combination is certainly lively, but also airy and elegant. (Polaner Selections, Mount Kisco, New York) Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut NV, 12.5%, $33 Roederer Estate, the Mendocino County outpost of the excellent Champagne house Louis Roederer, has long been not only one of California’s biggest sparkling wine producers, but one of the best. This is, not surprisingly, made with Champagne grapes, pinot noir and chardonnay, but grown in Anderson Valley terroir. It doesn’t taste like Champagne. It’s more herbal, less mineral, but it’s got a good Champagne’s freshness and elegance.

François Chidaine Montlouis-sur-Loire Brut Nature Méthode Traditionelle 2020, 12%, $33

A sparkling wine. The price of Champagne has risen, but good alternatives are made all over the wine-producing world — they might taste different but they are superb.

Styling by Jenna Tedesco. (Adam Friedlander/The New York Times) Chenin blanc is the most unusual grape.

It has the uncanny ability to be graceful and bone dry yet taste sweet, courtesy of its characteristic honeysuckle flavors. That combination works beautifully in this sparkling chenin blanc. It’s lacy, light and floral with that gorgeous hint of honey. François Chidaine farms biodynamically and regeneratively, and he also makes excellent still chenin blancs. (Polaner Selections) Domaine de Montbourgeau Crémant du Jura Brut Zero NV, 12%, $36 Domaine de Montbourgeau is one of the Jura’s most undersung producers. Its wines are almost always precise and expressive. That’s especially true of this sparkling wine, made entirely of chardonnay. It’s dry, focused, racy and elegant, subtly herbal and deliciously refreshing. (Rosenthal Wine Merchant, New York) Bénédicte et Stéphane Tissot Crémant du Jura Extra Brut NV, 12.5%, $38 Unlike Montbourgeau, Domaine Tissot is a celebrated Jura estate. Stéphane Tissot farms biodynamically and is a thoughtful, conscientious winemaker. This Crémant differs considerably from the Montbourgeau. It’s half chardonnay, with the remainder mostly

pinot noir with some trousseau and poulsard.

It’s bigger and more voluminous, with pronounced citrus and herbal flavors. If imagining a Crémant du Jura evening, serve the Montbourgeau as an aperitif and the Tissot following. (Camille Rivière Selection/Fruit of the Vines, Long Island City, New York) Peter Lauer Saar Riesling Brut 2020, 12.5%, $40 Florian Lauer, the current proprietor of this excellent German estate, makes wonderful sparkling rieslings. They are what the Europeans like to call gastronomic wines, bottles that are best served with food. I’ve had numerous Lauer sparklers, but this is one of the more unusual bottles. It’s profoundly herbal, with an aftertaste of anise. It’s also paradoxical, austere yet generous, light yet rich and intense. Altogether, a thrill. (Vom Boden, Brooklyn, New York) Schramsberg North Coast Blanc de Blancs Brut 2020, 12.6%, $40 Schramsberg was one of California’s modern pioneers of sparkling wine, with 1965 as its first vintage. A lot has changed in California’s sparkling wine world since then, with many small producers now making excellent wines. But Schramsberg is still going strong.

This blanc de blancs, made entirely from chardonnay, is creamy, toasty, crisp and fresh.

Corte Bianca Franciacorta Essente Dossagio Zero NV, 12%, $48 Franciacorta in Lombardy has long been an area dominated by big companies making expensive but not particularly interesting sparkling wine. That has changed, with many smaller, distinctive producers like Corte Bianca making outstanding bottles. This is made from chardonnay, pinot noir, pinot blanc and erbamat, a rare local grape, all farmed organically. It’s lively yet creamy and elegant, lightly floral and savory. Other Franciacorta producers I especially like include Divella, Arcari e Danesi and Cà del Vént. (Artisanal Cellars, White River Junction, Vermont) Racines Santa Rita Hills Chardonnay Grand Reserve Sparkling Wine NV, 12.5%, $82 Racines is a new collaboration between Étienne de Montille and Brian Sieve of Domaine de Montille in Burgundy and Rodolphe Péters of the excellent small Champagne producer Pierre Péters. This is the first bottle I’ve tried and it’s superb. It’s yeasty, creamy and supremely elegant, made from organically farmed chardonnay. It’s delicious now but will age well for 10 years.

20 Tuesday, January 2, 2024

The San Juan Daily Star

Travel in 2023: 12 months that ‘took chaos to a new level’ the western and northern United States, hun- the top tourist destinations.

France and England experienced fredreds of thousands of people went without electricity. (In Michigan, outages lasted for quent and extensive disruptions to air and days.) Thousands of flights were disrupted. train travel, and airports in Italy, Spain, PortuRoads were shut down by freezing rain and gal, Germany and the Netherlands also saw heavy snowfall, especially in areas unaccus- regular strikes, many of them at short notice tomed to snow — Portland, Oregon, received — making it challenging for travelers to plan or make changes to their itineraries. nearly 11 inches of snow in one day.

June In the Los Angeles area, heavy flooding Summer travel in 2023 saw the ill-fated washed out roads and put most of the San Fernando Valley under a warning. A dangerous combination of bad weather, strong passenger combination of hazards — heavy wind, rain demand and an ongoing shortage of air traffic and snow — prompted LA County to issue a controllers. In the days before the July 4 holirare blizzard warning, the first in more than day period in the United States, travel at airthree decades. ports in the Northeast was disrupted by violent Serious damage was widespread along thunderstorms, causing thousands of delays the California coast. and cancellations across airlines. Carriers such “This was really a threefold disaster,” as JetBlue Airways and United Airlines shifted said Chad Nelsen, CEO of the Surfrider Foun- blame to the FAA, citing chronic air traffic condation. “There were sewage treatment plants troller issues, but United’s woes lingered well Flooding on Main Street in Barre, Vt., on July 11, 2023. In the United States, as of Dec. 8, failing from San Diego to San Mateo. There past that of other airlines and emphasized opthe National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded 25 weather disasters with was an incredible amount of debris and plas- erational shortfalls. Passengers were subjected tic pollution washed up on the beaches. And to days of uncertainty and rescheduling fruslosses of $1 billion or more for 2023 so far. (Hilary Swift/The New York Times) there was a ton of coastal erosion and flood- trations, in what seemed like an unwelcome

By CEYLAN YEGINSU and CHRISTINE everywhere.” repeat of Southwest’s meltdown in December. ing.”

“The take-home lesson is you can’t just CHUNG Canada experienced its worst-ever wildMay book a trip and forget about it until you are In Europe, strikes organized by transport fire season, with fires burning through the largt was a year that was to mark the post- ready to go,” Harteveldt said. “You have to be workers throughout the year peaked in May. est area of land since official recordings began pandemic recovery of travel, bringing eco- an informed traveler.”

The prolonged demonstrations over pay dis- in 1983. The fires were so severe and wideHere are some of the year’s most disrup- putes and labor conditions wreaked havoc at spread that they brought hazy, smoky skies to nomic relief to local communities that had been hit hard by the prolonged loss of tourism tive and devastating events for travelers and airports, train stations and other transit hubs, New York City and parts of Europe and caused revenue. Borders fully reopened, pandemic local residents. particularly during holiday periods, at some of unhealthy air quality in many regions in Canarestrictions were lifted and traveler bookings January surged, sparking a social media trend called Technological trouble — at least in the “revenge travel.”

United States — seemed to seep over from But even as demand in 2023 reached 2022 into the new year. Just weeks after Southnear 2019 levels — with an estimated 975 west Airlines upended holiday vacations for million tourists traveling internationally be- as many as 2 million passengers by canceling tween January and September, according to thousands of flights in late December 2022, the World Tourism Organization — a series of another air travel meltdown struck in early Jandisasters, upheavals and unparalleled weath- uary. This time, a technology system failure at er events devastated destinations across the the Federal Aviation Administration temporarglobe. ily grounded domestic departures nationwide, Flooding. Wildfires. Heat waves. Bliz- causing thousands of flights across major airzards. In the United States alone, the National lines to be delayed or canceled. The trouble Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration des- highlighted the fragile airspace system and ignated 25 separate weather disasters, the larg- renewed calls for greater funding for the FAA. The breadth of the outage shocked some est number of billion-dollar disasters ever recorded. The year also brought prolonged labor passengers traveling that day. Jaime Vallejo strikes, technology glitches, civil unrest and a was flying from Newark, New Jersey, to Ecuarecord number of complaints lodged against dor with his wife and three children when he U.S. airlines. learned that his flight was delayed because of Last year “took chaos to a new level,” the FAA outage. “That’s the computer system A firefighter battles the hot spots of a wildfire north of the Obedjiwan First Nation comsaid Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry ana- for the whole country, and that’s something munity in Canada on June 13, 2023. For many travelers and residents who rely on tourism lyst for Atmosphere Research. “It seems that that should make you a little nervous,” he said. dollars, last year was an ‘annus horribilis,’ with disasters, upheavals, and unparalleled weather events devastating top travel destinations across the globe. (Renaud Philippe/The February the world is on fire and the travel industry and As powerful winter storms swept across New York Times) travelers are affected by all of these disruptions

I

The San Juan Daily Star da down to the United States’ mid-Atlantic and the South regions. In New York City, air quality was briefly recorded as the worst of an any city in the world.

While a large portion of Canada’s forested areas are sparsely populated, thousands of residents were displaced and travel was restricted across areas in British Columbia and Northwest Territories, slowing down a postpandemic tourism recovery at the height of the summer season.

“I’ve never seen that level of evacuation in Cree Nation, simultaneous communities all at once,” said Mandy Gull-Masty, grand chief of the Cree Nation in Quebec.

July July, Earth’s hottest month on record, saw dramatic weather events in both the United States and Europe, from oppressive heat and warming oceans to an onslaught of flooding and terrifying wildfires.

The soaring and seemingly unrelenting temperatures in southern Europe coincided with the peak summer travel season. It did not deter most international tourists, who, after three years of pandemic restrictions, flocked to popular historical sites despite the hot weather. At the peak of a heat wave in July, several tourists in Athens, Greece, collapsed while waiting in line to enter the Acropolis, prompting the city’s most popular attraction to limit visitor hours to the cooler evening hours. Other sights such as the Colosseum in Rome limited the number of visitors allowed to enter each day to prevent overcrowding.

Multiple wildfires also struck seaside resorts south of Athens and the Greek islands of Corfu, Rhodes and Evia.

“It was like going to sleep in paradise and waking up in hell, and all you could see was flames and black plumes of smoke,” said Gemma Thomson, a 42-year-old sports teacher from London who was evacuated from a resort in Rhodes.

August In Sicily, the heat reached 119.8 de-

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

The wreckage of a neighborhood destroyed by a wildfire in Lahaina, on the Hawaiian island of Maui, on Monday, Aug. 14, 2023. (Max Whittaker/The New York Times) grees Fahrenheit, a record high according to the World Meteorological Organization. August was also marred by widespread wildfires and floods across the European continent, with Greece experiencing the largest outbreak of wildfires recorded in the history of the European Union.

Devastating wildfires also hit the United States. On Aug. 8, wildfires raged across the Hawaiian island of Maui, growing rapidly into a fast-moving inferno that leveled the historic town of Lahaina and killed at least 100 people. It was the deadliest blaze to occur in the United States in more than a century. Tourism, which powers the island’s economy, came to an abrupt halt as many locals discouraged visitors to any part of Maui in the wake of the disaster. The state of Hawaii ended all travel restrictions to Maui by early October, but visitors have been slow to return.

Marilyn Clark is a travel agent who specializes in trips to Hawaii and said she had a

handful of clients cancel vacations to Maui or rebook to other islands in the immediate aftermath of the fires. And bookings for the December holiday season — typically Maui’s busiest and the period those in the industry have pinned their hopes on — are down.

“The major concern for most potential visitors is that they will not be welcome,” Clark said.

September In September, as Morocco was preparing for a post-pandemic tourism boom during its high travel season, it was struck by a powerful 6.8-magnitude earthquake southwest of Marrakech. The quake killed thousands of people, destroyed hundreds of villages and left many travelers in a conundrum over how to respond.

With most of the destruction concentrated in rural areas far from tourism spots, many locals encouraged travelers to visit, arguing that their tourism revenue would help efforts to rebuild areas that were hit

21

TRAVEL

the hardest.

“We were extremely worried about mass cancellations and if that happened, it would have added to our wounds from the earthquake,” said Aimad Kamal, a local tour guide. “We are so grateful to everyone who recognized everything our beautiful country has to offer even during a time of tragedy.”

October Since war broke out between Israel and Hamas in early October, tensions have spilled over to many parts of the world with demonstrations and other civic unrest.

On Oct. 19, the U.S. State Department issued a rare worldwide travel advisory urging citizens to “exercise increased caution” because of heightened global tensions and the potential for terrorist attacks, demonstrations and violence “against U.S. citizens and interests.” Travel advisories for Israel and Lebanon were also raised to the highest levels, warning citizens not to travel to Lebanon and the Gaza Strip and to reconsider travel to Israel and the West Bank.

The war has led to a steep decline in tourism in the Middle East. Tel Aviv International Airport is in operation, but many airlines have canceled or reduced flights to Israel. Major international airlines, including Lufthansa, had also suspended flights to neighboring countries such as Lebanon. Several major cruise lines canceled all port calls in Israel through next year and pulled their ships out of the region.

Uncertainty for tour operators and other industry professionals in the Middle East is now the norm, with cancellations for existing bookings rampant and future bookings simply not coming in.

Hussein Abdallah, general manager of Lebanon Tours and Travels in Beirut, expressed worries that economic concerns will continue even if the conflict resolves soon.

“I have a team of 30 people that I have to pay them every month without generating any income,” he said.

22 Tuesday, January 2, 2024

The San Juan Daily Star

10 nutrition tips for a healthy new year

By ALICE CALLAHAN

A

s a health reporter who has been following nutrition news for decades, I’ve seen a lot of trends that made a splash — and then sank.

Remember olestra, the Paleo diet and celery juice?

Watch enough food fads come and go, and you realize that the most valuable nutrition guidance is built on decades of research, in which scientists have looked at a question from multiple perspectives and arrived at something like a consensus.

Here are 10 science-backed pearls to carry you into the new year.

1. The Mediterranean diet really is that good for you.

Decades of research support the Mediterranean diet — which is centered on fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, olive oil, nuts, herbs and spices — as one of the healthiest ways you can eat. Its heart-health benefits are numerous, and it has been linked to a lower risk of Type 2 diabetes, cognitive decline and certain types of cancer.

2. It’s OK to drink coffee on an empty stomach.

Some people may experience heartburn, but there’s no evidence that drinking coffee on an empty stomach can damage your gastric lining or otherwise harm your digestive system, experts say. And there are reasons to feel good about your morning brew: Drinking coffee has been linked to a longer life and a lower risk of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

3. Start your day with a healthy breakfast.

We’ve learned plenty about eating well. Here’s the advice we’ll carry with us into 2024. (Monica Garwood/The New York Times) Mornings can be hectic, and it may be tempting to grab a quick muffin or skip breakfast altogether. But nutrition experts say it’s worth prioritizing that morning meal — especially if it contains a balanced mix of protein, fiber and healthy fats. It will fuel your day, and studies have found that those who eat breakfast tend to enjoy a range of health benefits, including a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and obesity.

4. Take good care of your gut.

Keeping your digestive system healthy and running smoothly can protect you from life’s discomforts — such as heartburn, bloating and constipation — as well as lead to better overall health. Unsurprisingly, the best way to care for your gut is to feed yourself (and

by extension, your gut microbes) well, by prioritizing fiber and consuming a variety of plant-based and fermented foods.

5. You probably don’t need protein bars.

They’re often marketed as a health food or as essential fuel for athletic performance, but most protein bars are loaded with sugar. You’re better off meeting your protein needs with whole foods such as yogurt, nuts, beans or eggs, experts say.

6. Go easy on the dark chocolate.

File this as one of the saddest nutrition news stories of 2023. Dark chocolate has some of the highest levels of lead and cadmium (heavy metals that can harm the body) when compared with other foods. Fortunately, you don’t

have to give up your dark chocolate habit entirely. Enjoying it in moderation — no more than about 1 ounce per day, experts say — will keep your risk low.

7. Blending fruits and veggies won’t destroy their nutrients.

Pureeing fruits and vegetables in a blender won’t strip them of their vitamins, minerals or fiber. And, somewhat surprisingly, several small studies suggest that sipping your fruit in blended form won’t spike your blood sugar any more than when you eat it whole. So go ahead and enjoy your smoothie.

8. Cottage cheese is back.

You might associate cottage cheese with fad diets from the 1970s, but it’s a food that has stood the test of time. Cottage cheese was a breakout hit on TikTok last summer, and for good reason.

You can eat it plain or use it as a versatile ingredient in both sweet and savory snacks, and it offers an impressive array of nutrients including protein, calcium, selenium and more.

9. Tofu really is good for you, too.

In past decades, people have worried that tofu and other soy foods might be linked with cancer or fertility problems because they contain estrogenlike compounds. But studies have put those fears to bed, scientists say. In fact, research suggests that eating soy-based foods may reduce your risk of heart disease and even some types of cancer.

10. It’s challenging to separate nutrition myths from facts.

Myths about nutrition tend to linger in American culture and in our minds, leaving us confused and sometimes even anxious about our eating decisions.

22 LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE SAN JUAN

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Demandante V.

CARLOS RIVERA MALDONADO; ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA

Demandados Civil Núm.: SJ2019CV06528.

Sala: 604. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS. AVISO DE SUBASTA. El que suscribe, Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de San Juan, San Juan, Puerto Rico, hago saber, a la parte demandada y al PÚBLICO EN GENERAL: Que en cumplimiento del Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia expedido el día 6 de julio de 2022, por la Secretaría del Tribunal, procederé a vender y venderé en pública subasta y al mejor postor la propiedad que ubica y se describe a continuación: URBANA: PROPIEDAD HORIZONTAL: Apartamento residencial de forma irregular localizado en la tercera planta del Edificio “F” del Condominio Vista Verde, localizado en la Carretera ochocientos cuarenta y nueve (849), del Barrio Sabana Llana del término Municipal de Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, el cual se describe en la finca matriz de dedicación al Régimen de Propiedad Horizontal, con el número, área y colindancias que se relacionan a continuación: Apartamento número trescientos veintiseis (326). Área del Apartamento: mil setecientos quince pies cuadrados con treinta centésimas partes de otro (1,715.30 p.c), equivalentes a ciento cincuenta y nueve metros cuadrados con cuarenta y una centésimas parte de otro (159.41 m.c). En lindes por el NORTE, en veintinueve pies tres pulgadas y media (29’3 ½”), con espacio abierto; por el SUR, en veintinueve pies con tres pulgadas y media (29’3 ½”), con espacio abierto; por el ESTE, en veintinueve pies con ocho pulgadas (29’8”), con la pared medianera que lo separa del Apartamento identificado con el número trescientos veinticinco (325); y por el OESTE, en cuarenta y dos pies con once pulgadas (42’11”), con la pared medianera que lo separa del Apartamento identificado con el número trescientos vein-

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tisiete (327). Tiene su puerta de entrada y salida por su lado Este, que da al área del pasillo que conduce a las escaleras que le brindan acceso al Edificio y además tiene dos (2) puertas de salida por su lado Sur, ubicadas en el área del comedor (sliding door) y la otra en la cocina, las cuales le proveen acceso al área del balcón. En el área del balcón se encuentra ubicada una escalera en forma de espiral, la cual provee acceso a un área de terraza semitechada en el techo de esta unidad de vivienda. Consta de sala-comedor, balcón, cocina, un área de lavandería, por el área de la sala se accesa a un pasillo que le brinda acceso a las siguientes areas, un closet pequeño, un (1) baño completo de uso general, dos (2) habitaciones dormitorios, cada una con un closets en su interior y una habitación dormitorio principal (master room), en la cual ubican un área de closet y un (1) baño completo. Esta unidad de vivienda tiene el uso y disfrute exclusivo y le corresponde la limpieza, conservación y mantenimiento de un área de terraza (azotea) semi-techada en zinc galvanizado, con piso en cemento pulido. Dicha terraza tiene facilidades de agua y desagüe para la instalación de un gabinete de cocina y/o kitchenette. Tiene además, alumbrado y un receptáculo eléctrico para uso misceláneo. Le corresponden a este Apartamento dos (2) espacios de estacionamiento identificados con los números ciento sesenta y tres (163) y ciento sesenta y cuatro (164). A este Apartamento le corresponde una participación en los elementos comunes del Condominio de cero punto cinco nueve cero cuatro dos cinco por ciento (0.590425%). Inscrita al folio 152 del tomo 1108 de Sabana Llana, finca #35,217.

Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección V de San Juan. La propiedad ubica según pagaré: Apt. 326 Cond. Vista Verde Río Piedras PR; Apt. 326 3er piso Edif F Cond. Vista Verde Carr 849 Bo. Sabana Llana, Río Piedras, PR. Además, el Alguacil que suscribe, hago saber a todos los acreedores que tengan inscritos o anotados sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante, o de los acreedores de cargas o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca ejecutada y las personas interesadas en, o con derecho a exigir el cumplimiento de instrumentos negociables garantizados hipo-

tecariamente con posterioridad al crédito ejecutado, siempre que surjan de la certificación registral, para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les convenga o satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, costas y honorarios de abogados asegurados, quedando entonces subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante: Secretario del Departamento de Desarrollo Urbano y Vivienda de los Estados Unidos de América: A cuyo favor aparece un pagaré a su orden, por la suma principal de $8,128.87, sin intereses, vencedero el día 1 de septiembre de 2039, constituida mediante la escritura número 57, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 29 de abril de 2011, ante el notario Carlos José Mangual Santiago, e inscrita al folio 153 del tomo 1108 de Sabana Llana, finca número 35,217, inscripción 4ta. Secretario del Departamento de Desarrollo Urbano y Vivienda de los Estados Unidos de América: A cuyo favor aparece un pagaré a su orden, por la suma principal de $1,623.04, sin intereses, vencedero el día 1ro. de octubre de 2046, constituida mediante la escritura número 861, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 31 de octubre de 2016, ante el notario Roberto Luis Varela Ríos, e inscrita al tomo Karibe de Sabana Llana, finca número 35,217, inscripción 6ta. El producto de la subasta se destinará a satisfacer al demandante hasta donde alcance, la SENTENCIA dictada a su favor el día 31 de enero de 2020, notificada el 11 de febrero de 2020 y publicada en un periódico de circulación general, The San Juan Daily Star el 17 de febrero de 2020 en el presente caso civil, a saber la suma de $103,702.26 por concepto de principal; generando intereses a razón de 3.75% desde el 1ro de julio de 2017; cargos por demora los cuales al igual que los intereses continúan acumulándose hasta el saldo total de la deuda reclamada en este pleito, y la suma de $10,514.55 para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado; y demás créditos accesorios garantizados hipotecariamente. La adjudicación se hará al mejor postor, quien deberá consignar el importe de su oferta en el acto mismo de la adjudicación, en efectivo (moneda del curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América), giro postal o cheque certificado a nombre del alguacil del Tribunal. La PRIMERA SUBASTA se llevará a efecto el día 17 DE ENERO DE 2024 A

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

LAS 11:30 DE LA MAÑANA, en el Centro Judicial de San Juan, San Juan, Puerto Rico. Que el precio mínimo fijado para la PRIMERA SUBASTA es de $105,145.54. Que de ser necesaria la celebración de una SEGUNDA SUBASTA la misma se llevará a efecto el día 24 DE ENERO DE 2024 A LAS 11:30 DE LA MAÑANA, en la oficina antes mencionada del Alguacil que suscribe. El precio mínimo para la EGUNDA SUBASTA será de $70,097.02, equivalentes a dos terceras (2/3) partes del tipo mínimo estipulado para la PRIMERA subasta. Que de ser necesaria la celebración de una TERCERA SUBASTA la misma se llevará a efecto el día 31 DE ENERO DE 2024 A LAS 11:30 DE LA MAÑANA, en la oficina antes mencionada del Alguacil que suscribe. El precio mínimo para la TERCERA SUBASTA será de $52,572.77, equivalentes a la mitad (1/2) del tipo mínimo estipulado para la PRIMERA subasta. 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 esta es mayor, todo ello a tenor con lo dispone el Articulo 104 de la Ley Núm. 210 del 8 de diciembre de 2015 conocida como “Ley del Registro de la Propiedad Inmueble del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico”. La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquiere libre de toda carga y gravamen que afecte la mencionada finca según el Artículo 102, inciso 6. Una vez confirmada la venta judicial por el Honorable Tribunal, se procederá a otorgar la correspondiente escritura de venta judicial y se pondrá al comprador en posesión física del inmueble de conformidad con las disposiciones de Ley. Para conocimiento de la parte demandada y de toda aquella persona o personas que tengan interés inscrito con posterioridad a la inscripción del gravamen que se está ejecutando, y para conocimiento de todos los licitadores y el público en general, el presente Edicto se publicará por espacio de dos (2) semanas consecutivas, con un intervalo de por lo menos siete días entre ambas publicaciones, en un diario de circulación general en el Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico y se fijará además en tres (3) lugares públicos del Municipio en que ha de celebrarse dicha venta, tales como

(787) 743-3346

Tuesday, January 2, 2024 la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la Colecturía. Se les informa, por último, que: a. Que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la secretaría del tribunal durante las horas laborables. b. Que se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes. Se entenderá, que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. EXPIDO, el presente EDICTO, en San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy día 8 de diciembre de 2023. PEDRO HIEYE GONZÁLEZ, ALGUACIL DE LA DIVISIÓN DE SUBASTAS, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN.

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

LEGACY MORTGAGE ASSET TRUST 2019-PR1 Demandante V.

RAFAEL RODRIGUEZ BERNIER POR SI Y EN LA CUOTA VIUDAL USUFRUCTUARIA DE LA SUCESIÓN DE MARTA SKERRET VELÁZQUEZ; FULANO DE TAL, FULANA DE TAL, ZUTANO DE TAL, ZUTANA DE TAL, A, B Y C COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESIÓN; SECRETARIO DE HACIENDA Y SECRETARIO DE JUSTICIA

Demandada Civil Núm.: FA2022CV00338.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. AVISO DE VENTA EN PÚBLICA SUBASTA. Yo, SANDRALIZ MARTÍNEZ TORRES, ALGUACIL AUXILIAR #737, Alguacil Supervisor de la División de Subastas del Tribunal de Primera Instancia de FAJARDO, a los demandados y al público en general les notifico que, cumpliendo con un Mandamiento que se ha librado en el presente caso por el Secretario del Tribunal de epígrafe con fecha 8 de junio de 2023 y para satisfacer la cantidad adeudada de

$31,333.41 de primer balance principal mediante Sentencia dictada en el caso de autos el 17 de abril de 2023, notificada y archivada en autos el de 18 de abril de 2023 y publicada en el periódico “The San Juan Daily Star” el 24 de abril de 2023 y notificada el 25 de abril de 2023, procederé a vender en pública subasta, al mejor postor en pago de contado y en moneda del curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América, mediante efectivo, giro o cheque certificado a nombre del Alguacil de este Tribunal todo derecho, título e interés que hayan tenido tengan o puedan tener los deudores demandados en cuanto a la propiedad localizada en el Municipio de Fajardo, Puerto Rico, el bien inmueble se describe a continuación: 559 Calle Higuerillo, Urb. Fajardo Gardens, Fajardo, PR 00738.

URBANA: Solar veinticinco (25) del bloque “GG” de la Urbanización Extensión Fajardo Gardens en el barrio Quebrada Fajardo, del término municipal de Fajardo, Puerto Rico, con cabida de 301.99 metros cuadrados, en lindes: al Norte, con el solar #32, en 13.00 metros; al Sur, con calle #17, en 13.13 metros; al Este, con solar #24, en 23.00 metros y al Oeste, con solar #26, en 23.00 metros. Enclava una casa. Finca #6665 inscrita al folio 120 del tomo 192 de Fajardo, Registro de la Propiedad de Fajardo. Con el importe de dicha venta se habrá de satisfacer a la parte demandante las cantidades adeudadas, en el caso de epígrafe, que se desglosan de la siguiente forma: $31,333.41, de primer balance principal y $ 1,878.84 de segundo balance principal para un total de $33,212.25, intereses al 6.50%, los cuales continúan acumulándose hasta el saldo total de la deuda, recargos a razón tres centavos por cada dólar de cada pago vencido no recibido dentro de los quince (15) días después de la fecha de vencimiento, más 10 % del principal del pagaré, equivalente a $6,300.00, para cubrir costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados. El tipo mínimo para la subasta será la suma de tasación pactada, la cual es $63,000.00 según la escritura de hipoteca para la propiedad descrita. De declararse la subasta desierta, se procederá a una segunda subasta y servirá de tipo mínimo la cantidad de 2/3 del precio mínimo antes mencionado: $42,000.00.

Si tampoco hubiere remate ni adjudicación en esta segunda subasta, se procederá a una tercera subasta, en la cual regirá como tipo mínimo para esta,

The San Juan Daily Star la mitad (1/2) del precio mínimo antes mencionado: $31,500.00.

La PRIMERA SUBASTA se llevará a cabo el 9 DE ENERO DE 2024 A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA. De no comparecer postor alguno se llevará a efecto una SEGUNDA SUBASTA el 17 DE ENERO DE 2024 A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA. De no comparecer postor alguno se llevará a cabo una TERCERA SUBASTA el 24 DE ENERO DE 2023 A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA. La subasta o subastas antes indicadas se llevarán a efecto en mi oficina, localizada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia de Fajardo. De Estudio de Título realizado no surgen gravámenes preferentes y/o posteriores. Se advierte a los licitadores que la adjudicación se hará al mejor postor, quien deberá consignar el importe de su oferta en el mismo acto de la adjudicación en moneda de curso legal de los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica y para conocimiento de la parte demandada y de toda(s) aquella(s) persona(s) que tengan interés inscrito con posterioridad a la inscripción del gravamen que se está ejecutando, y para conocimiento de los licitadores y el público en general y para su publicación en un periódico de circulación general, una vez por semana durante el término de dos (2) semanas consecutivas con un intervalo de por lo menos siete (7) días entre ambas publicaciones, y para su fijación en tres (3) lugares públicos del municipio en que ha de celebrarse la venta, tales como, la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la Colecturía y se le notificará además a la parte demandada vía correo certificado con acuse de recibo a la última dirección conocida.

La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores, previa orden judicial dirigida al Registrador de la Propiedad de la sección correspondiente para la cancelación de aquellos posteriores. Se les advierte a todos los interesados que todos los documentos relacionados con la presente acción de ejecución de hipoteca, así como la de la subasta, estarán disponibles para ser examinados, durante horas laborables, en la Secretaría del Tribunal. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante, continuarán subsistentes; entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate.

Y para conocimiento de los demandados, de los acreedores posteriores, de los licitadores, partes interesadas y público en general, expido el presente Aviso para su publicación en los lugares públicos correspondientes. Librado en Fajardo, Puerto Rico, a 20 de diciembre de 2023. SANDRALIZ MARTÍNEZ TORRES, ALGUACIL AUXILIAR #737.

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO DEMANDANTE, V.

JOSÉ ORTIZ TORRES, MADELINE BURGOS CARDONA y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales por ambos compuesta; JUAN JOSÉ VARONA GONZÁLEZ

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NÚM. n3ci201300573 (303). SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. AVISO DE VENTA EN PÚBLICA SUBASTA. Yo, SANDRALIZ MARTINEZ TORRES, Alguacil Supervisor de la División de Subastas del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Fajardo, a los demandados y al público en general les notifico que, cumpliendo con un Mandamiento que se ha librado en el presente caso por el Secretario del Tribunal de epígrafe con fecha 14 de diciembre de 2023 y para satisfacer la cantidad adeudada de $114,280.03 de principal mediante Sentencia dictada en el caso de autos el 8 de abril de 2015, notificada y archivada en autos, procederé a vender en pública subasta, al mejor postor en pago de contado y en moneda del curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América, mediante efectivo, giro o cheque certificado a nombre del Alguacil de este Tribunal todo derecho, título e interés que hayan tenido tengan o puedan tener los deudores demandados en cuanto a la propiedad localizada en el Municipio de Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, el bien inmueble se describe a continuación: 958 KM 6.2, Bo. Ciénaga, Río Grande, PR 00745.

RÚSTICA: Parcela de terreno radicada en el barrio Ciénaga Alta del término municipal de Río Grande, Puerto Rico, con un área de 3,009.8992 metros cuadrados; en lindes al Norte, en 55.16 metros con la Carretera #958; al Sur, en 55.16 metros, con la finca principal; al

The San Juan Daily Star Este, en 65.33 metros con Pedro Díaz y al Oeste, en 65.33 metros, con la finca principal (según inscripción 5ta, con Guillermo Bleck). Consta inscrita al folio 169 del tomo 334 de Río Grande, Finca número 34,046, Registro de la Propiedad de Carolina, Sección Tercera. Con el importe de dicha venta se habrá de satisfacer a la parte demandante las cantidades adeudadas, en el caso de epígrafe, que se desglosan de la siguiente forma: $114,280.03 de principal, más intereses al tipo pactado de 6.250% desde el 1 de enero de 2013 hasta el completo pago, mas la suma pactada de $13,000.00 en concepto de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado. El tipo mínimo para la subasta será la suma de tasación pactada, la cual es $130,000.00 para la propiedad antes descrita. De declarase la subasta desierta y tener que celebrarse una segunda subasta el tipo mínimo serán dos terceras partes (2/3) del precio mínimo antes mencionado: $86,666.67. Si tampoco hubiere remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta, regirá como tipo de la tercera subasta la mitad (1/2) del precio pactado; $65,000.00.

La primera subasta se llevará a cabo el 10 de enero de 2024, a las 11:00 am de la mañana. De no comparecer postor alguno se llevará a efecto una segunda subasta el 18 de enero de 2024, a las 11:00 de la mañana.

De no comparecer postor alguno se llevará a cabo una tercera subasta el 25 de enero de 2024, a las 11:00 de la mañana.

La subasta o subastas antes indicadas se llevarán a efecto en mi oficina, localizada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Fajardo. Del Estudio de Título realizado surgen los siguientes gravámenes: Por su procedencia: Libre de cargas y gravámenes. POR SI: Embargo Estatal a favor del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico por $37,192.94 como propiedad de Juan José Varona González, soltero, en concepto de Contribución sobre Ingresos, según Certificación expedida por el Departamento de Hacienda el 19 de junio de 1992, anotado el 23 de marzo de 1993 al folio 169 del tomo 334 de Río Grande, finca #2970, anotación “B”.

Se advierte a los licitadores que la adjudicación se hará al mejor postor, quien deberá consignar el importe de su oferta en el mismo acto de la adjudicación en moneda de curso legal de los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica y para conocimiento de la parte demandada y de toda(s) aquella(s) persona(s) que tengan interés inscrito con posterioridad a la inscripción del gravamen que se está ejecutando, y para conocimiento de los licitadores y el público en

general y para su publicación en un periódico de circulación general, una vez por semana durante el término de dos (2) semanas consecutivas con un intervalo de por lo menos siete (7) días entre ambas publicaciones, y para su fijación en tres (3) lugares públicos del municipio en que ha de celebrarse la venta, tales como, la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la Colecturía y se le notificará además a la parte demandada vía correo certificado con acuse de recibo a la última dirección conocida.

La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores, previa orden judicial dirigida al Registrador de la Propiedad de la sección correspondiente para la cancelación de aquellos posteriores. Se les advierte a todos los interesados que todos los documentos relacionados con la presente acción de ejecución de hipoteca, así como la de la subasta, estarán disponibles para ser examinados, durante horas laborables, en la Secretaría del Tribunal. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante, continuarán subsistentes; entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate.

Y para conocimiento de los demandados, de los acreedores posteriores, de los licitadores, partes interesadas y público en general, expido el presente Aviso para su publicación en los lugares públicos correspondientes. Librado en la Sala de Fajardo, Puerto Rico, a 21 de diciembre de 2023. Sandalia Martinez Torres, Alguacil Auxiliar. Jorge A Ortiz Estrada, Alguacil Regional Interino.

Tuesday, January 2, 2024 TORRES MONLLOR

Demandados Civil Núm.: JAC2012-0087.

(602). Sobre: SENTENCIA POR CONSENTIMIENTO EN COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. AVISO DE SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PUEBLO DE PUERTO RICO, S.S. YO, el(la) Alguacil que suscribe, por la presente anuncia y hace constar, que en cumplimiento del Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia, expedido el 15 de septiembre de 2020 por la Secretaría de este Tribunal, procederé a vender en pública subasta y al mejor postor, quien pagará el importe de la venta en dinero efectivo o en cheque certificado o de gerente, a la orden del Alguacil suscribiente, en moneda del curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América, el día 31 DE ENERO DE 2024, A LA(S) 9:30 DE LA MAÑANA para la Finca Número 51,612; para la Finca Número 11,743, A LAS 9:45 DE LA MAÑANA; y para la Finca Número 62,886, A LAS 10:00 DE LA MAÑANA., en mi oficina localizada en el Tribunal de Ponce, todo título, derecho o interés que corresponda a la parte demandada sobre los inmuebles que se describen a continuación: Finca Número 51,612: URBANA: Solar radicado en el Barrio Primero del término municipal de Ponce, Puerto Rico, marcado con el número veintinueve guión A (29-A) en el plano de inscripción expedido en el caso 86-63-E-284-PPL con una cabida superficial de quinientos treinta y uno punto tres mil ciento cuatro (531.3104) metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE en una alineación de quince punto ochocientos diez metros (15.810) con la Calle Roosevelt; por el SUR, en una LEGAL NOTICE alineación de dieciséis punto ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO cero treinta (16.030) metros liDE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- neales con el solar número NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA veintinueve (29); por el ESTE, SALA SUPERIOR DE PONCE en una alineación de quince TRIANGLE REO PR 2 punto doscientos quince (15.215) metros lineales con el CORP. solar número veinticinco (25), Demandante V. otra de dos punto trescientos F.H.T. RENTAL, INC., diez (2.310) metros lineales, FÉLIX ALBERTO otra de siete punto trescientos TORRES GARCÍA Y SU trece (7.313) metros con el soESPOSA FRANCES lar número veintitrés (23) y otra MONLLOR ZAMBRANA de ocho punto cuatrocientos Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL treinta y cuatro (8.434) metros lineales con el solar número DE GANANCIALES veintinueve (29) y otra de treinCOMPUESTA POR ta punto ciento veintiocho AMBOS, FÉLIX (30.128) metros lineales con el FRANCISCO TORRES solar número treinta y uno (31).

MONLLOR Y SU ESPOSA En este solar se haya enclavaENID ROCHE NEGRÓN do un edificio para oficina de Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL dos plantas de hormigón armado, techado de acero galvaniDE GANANCIALES zado, con frente de doce punto COMPUESTA POR setenta y dos (12.72) metros a AMBOS, Y JUAN CARLOS la calle del Jobo, hoy Roose-

velt, y fondo de doce punto setenta y tres (12.73) metros. Finca número 51,612, inscrita al folio 15 del tomo 1683 de Ponce, Registro de la Propiedad, Sección Primera de Ponce. Dirección Física: #2832 Calle Roosevelt, Barrio Primero, Solar 29-A, Ponce, Puerto Rico.

Afecta por su procedencia a condiciones restrictivas. Por sí: HIPOTECA: En garantía de un pagaré a favor del Portador, o a su orden, por la suma de $150,000.00, con interés al 10% vencedero a la presentación, según consta de la escritura # 30, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 15 de diciembre de 1986, ante el Notario Público Hernán E. Jorge, inscrita al folio 15vto del tomo 1683 de Ponce, inscripción 2da. MODIFICACION DE HIPOTECA: Es objeto de esta modificación la hipoteca que surge de la inscripción 2da. por $150,000.00, según consta de la Escritura #362, otorgada en Ponce, Puerto Rico, el 30 de septiembre de 2015, ante la Notario Público Lourdes Alicea Soto, inscrita al margen del folio 15vto del tomo 1683 de Ponce, Nota Marginal. HIPOTECA: En garantía de un pagaré a favor de Westernbank de Puerto Rico, o a su orden, por la suma de $10,860.00, con intereses al 7.25% anual y vencimiento a la presentación, constituida por la Escritura #363, otorgada en Ponce, Puerto Rico, el 30 de septiembre de 2005, ante el Notario Público Esther Rebeca Luzón Colón y acta de subsanación #4, otorgada en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, el 6 de febrero de 2006 ante la misma notario, inscrita al folio 83 del tomo 2044 de Ponce, inscripción 3. Al asiento 2023-033452PO01, el día 22 de marzo de 2023, se presentó Sentencia por Consentimiento de Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca en el caso Civil #JAC20120087 en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Centro Judicial de Ponce. Demandante: Banco Popular de Puerto Rico; Demandados: Félix A. Torres Junior t/c/c Félix Alberto Torres García y su esposa Frances Monllor Zambrana. Cantidad adeudada: $977,941.75. Finca Número 11,743: URBANA: Solar señalado con el número cuarenta y nueve (49) del actual plano de Urbanización, radicado en el barrio Primera de esta ciudad de Ponce, en el Parque Residencial Baldorioty, que se describe así: Partiendo de un punto A, en el borde Oeste, a la Calle Molina, se miden veintidós metros cincuenta centímetros a lo largo de dicho borde de calle en dirección Norte hasta llegar a un punto B, situado en el primer ángulo del chaflán de la esquina suroeste de la intersección de las Calles Molina y Wilson; de este punto

se sigue dicho chaflán por todo su largo de siete metros hasta llegar al punto C; o sea el segundo ángulo del chaflán situado en el borde Sur, de la calle Wilson, de allí se miden nueve metros a lo largo de dicho borde de la calle y en dirección Oeste, hasta llegar a un punto D; de este punto se tira una recta de veintisiete metros cincuenta centímetros de largo en dirección Sur y que forma con la anterior un ángulo de noventa grados hasta llegar a un punto E; de allí se tira una última recta de catorce metros de largo en dirección Este y que forma con la anterior un último ángulo de noventa grados, hasta volver en A, que sirvió de punto de partida, quedando así cerrado el perímetro que comprende una extensión de trescientos setenta y dos metros con cincuenta centímetros cuadrados (372.50 M.C.), correspondiendo al área de la parcela que se acaba de describir. Los límites a la redonda son: Por el Norte, la Calle Wilson; por el Sur, el solar número cincuenta y cinco; por el Este, la Calle Molina y por el Oeste, el solar número cincuenta. Contiene actualmente un edificio de dos plantas, de concrete armada, para uso residencial, constando la primera planta de tres dormitorios, sala-comedor, cocina, baño y dos marquesinas, y la segunda planta de dos dormitorios, dos baños, sala-comedor, cocina y terraza. Inscrita al folio 44vto. del tomo 712 de Ponce, finca número 11,743, Registro de la Propiedad, Sección Primera de Ponce. Dirección Física: #15 Calle Wilson, Urbanización Mariani, Solar #49, Ponce, Puerto Rico. Afecta por su procedencia: Libre de cargas. Por sí: HIPOTECA: En garantía de un pagaré a favor de Westernbank de Puerto Rico, o a su orden, por la suma de $105,140.00, con interés al 2% sobre el prime rate fluctuante de tiempo en tiempo y vencedero a la presentación, según consta de la escritura #364, otorgada en Ponce, Puerto Rico, el día 30 de septiembre de 2002, ante la Notario Público Lourdes Alicea Soto, inscrita al folio 125 del tomo 1981 de Ponce, inscripción 15ta. Al asiento 2023-033452-PO01, el día 22 de marzo de 2023, se presentó Sentencia por Consentimiento de Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca en el caso Civil #JAC2012-0087 en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Centro Judicial de Ponce.

Demandante: Banco Popular de Puerto Rico; Demandados: Félix A. Torres Junior t/c/c Félix Alberto Torres García y su esposa Frances Monllor Zambrana.

Cantidad adeudada: $977,941.75. Finca Número 62,886: SOLAR URBANO marcado con el número ciento cua-

23

tro (104) del Bloque “F” del plano de la Urbanización Cuarta Extensión El Monte sita en el Barrio Coto Laurel de Ponce, Puerto Rico, con un área superficial de dos mil setecientos ochenta y nueve punto tres mil ciento cincuenta (2,789.3150) metros cuadrados. Colinda por el NORESTE en dos distancias distintas e irregulares que suman noventa y uno punto dos mil doscientos cuarenta y dos (91.2242) metros lineales con el solar ciento cinco (105) y ciento diecinueve (119), Bloque ‘T’ de la misma urbanización; por el SUROESTE en una distancia de ochenta y tres punto nueve mil cuatrocientos seis (83.9406) metros lineales con el solar ciento tres (103) del Bloque “J” de la misma urbanización; por el SURESTE en una distancia de treinta y tres punto tres mil ochocientos cuarenta y nueve (33.3849) metros lineales con la calle número siete (7) de la misma urbanización; y por el NOROESTE en una distancia de veintisiete punto cero ciento veinticinco (27.0125) metros lineales con el solar noventa y nueve (99) y cien (100) del Bloque “J” de la misma urbanización. Afectado por una servidumbre pluvial de uno punto cincuenta (1.50) metros a favor del Municipio Autónomo de Ponce a lo largo de su colindancia Noroeste. Finca número 62,886, inscrita al folio 175 del tomo 2033 de Ponce, Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección Primera de Ponce. Dirección Física: #104 Calle Sevilla, Ponce, Puerto Rico. Afecta por su procedencia: Se halla afecta a servidumbre a favor de la Autoridad de Fuentes Fluviales de Puerto Rico y a favor de Pipelines of Puerto Rico, Inc. Por sí: HIPOTECA: En garantía de un pagaré a favor de Westernbank Puerto Rico, o a su orden, por la suma de $108,000.00, con intereses al 6.50% anual y vencimiento a la presentación, constituida por la escritura #885, otorgada en Ponce, Puerto Rico, el 17 de septiembre de 2003, ante el Notario Público Francisco J. Biaggi Landrón, inscrita al folio 175 del tomo 2033 de Ponce, inscripción 2. Al asiento 2023-033452PO01, el día 22 de marzo de 2023, se presentó Sentencia por Consentimiento de Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca en el caso Civil #JAC20120087 en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Centro Judicial de Ponce. Demandante: Banco Popular de Puerto Rico; Demandados: Félix A. Torres Junior t/c/c Félix Alberto Torres García y su esposa Frances Monllor Zambrana. Cantidad adeudada: $977,941.75. Servirá como tipo mínimo para la primera subasta en ejecución de la Finca Número 51,612 an-

tes descrita la suma de cargos por mora, más la suma $150,000.00, conforme a lo es- de $11,290.50 por concepto de tipulado en la escritura de Hipo- otros gastos, más la suma teca número 30, otorgada el 15 agregada de $85,000.00 por de diciembre de 1986 ante el concepto de costas, gastos y Notario Público Hernán E. Jor- honorarios de abogado exprege. Servirá como tipo mínimo samente pactados. b. Préstamo para la primera subasta en eje- Comercial número cución de la Finca Número 11009002732351-9003 (ahora 11,743 antes descrita la suma número 4360021-10212): la de $105,140.00, conforme a lo suma de $34,639.94 de princiestipulado en la escritura de Hi- pal. c. Préstamo Comercial núpoteca número 364, otorgada mero 11009002732351-9004 el 30 de septiembre de 2002 (ahora número 4360021ante la Notario Público Lourdes 10213): la suma de $134,551.75 Alicea Soto. Servirá como tipo de principal; más $80,845.79 mínimo para la primera subasta de intereses acumulados los en ejecución de la Finca Núme- cuales se continúan acumulanro 62,886 antes descrita la do diariamente a razón de suma de $108,000.00, confor- $22.98; más la suma de me a lo estipulado en la escritu- $312.00 por concepto de otros ra de Hipoteca número 885, gastos. Las ventas en públicas otorgada el 17 de septiembre subastas de las propiedades de 2003 ante la Notario Público descritas anteriormente se veriFrancisco J. Biaggi Landrón. ficarán libres de toda carga o De no adjudicarse las propieda- gravamen posterior que afecten des en las primeras subastas, dichas propiedades. Se entiense celebrarán SEGUNDAS SU- de que cualquier carga y/o graBASTAS en las mismas ofici- vamen anterior y/o preferente, nas de este Alguacil, el día 7 si lo hubiera, al crédito que da DE FEBRERO DE 2024, A LAS base a esta ejecución, conti9:30 DE LA MAÑANA para la nuará subsistente, entendiénFinca Número 51,612; para la dose además, que el rematante Finca Número 11,743, A LAS los acepta y queda subrogado 9:45 DE LA MAÑANA; y para la en la responsabilidad de los Finca Número 62,886, A LAS mismos, sin destinarse a su ex10:00 DE LA MAÑANA. Los ti- tinción el precio del remate. pos mínimos para las segundas Que los autos y todos los docusubastas serán dos terceras mentos correspondientes al partes (2/3) de los tipos míni- procedimiento incoado estarán mos de las primeras subastas, de manifiesto en la Secretaría o sea, la suma de $100,000.00 de este Tribunal durante horas para la Finca Número 51,612; laborables. El Alguacil procedepara la Finca Número 11,743, la rá a otorgar la correspondiente suma de $70,093.33; y para la escritura de venta judicial y se Finca Número 62,886, la suma pondrá al comprador en posede $72,000.00. De no adjudi- sión física de los inmuebles, de carse las propiedades en las conformidad con las disposiciosegundas subastas, se celebra- nes de Ley. POR LA PRESENrán TERCERAS SUBASTAS en TE, se les notifica a los titulares las mismas oficinas de este Al- de créditos y/o cargas registraguacil, el día 14 DE FEBRERO les posteriores, si alguno, que DE 2024, A LAS 9:30 DE LA se celebrarán las SUBASTAS MAÑANA. para la Finca Núme- en la fecha, horas y sitio antero 51,612; para la Finca Núme- riormente señalados, y se les ro 11,743, A LAS 9:45 DE LA invita a que concurran a dichas MAÑANA; y para la Finca Nú- subastas, si les conviniere, o se mero 62,886, A LAS 10:00 DE les invita a satisfacer, antes del LA MAÑANA. Los tipos míni- remate, el importe del crédito, mos para las terceras subastas sus intereses, otros cargos y serán las mitades (1/2) de los las costas y honorarios de abotipos mínimos que se pactaran gado asegurados, quedando para las primeras subastas, o entonces subrogados en los sea, la suma de $75,000.00 derechos del Acreedor ejecupara la Finca Número 51,612; tante, siempre y cuando reúnan para la Finca Número 11,743, la los requisitos y cualificaciones suma de $52,570.00; y para la de Ley para que se pueda efecFinca Número 62,886, la suma tuar tal subrogación. Y PARA de $54,000.00. Estas subastas SU PUBLICACIÓN en el tablón se harán para satisfacer a la de edictos de este Tribunal y en parte demandante, hasta don- tres (3) lugares públicos del de alcance, el importe adeuda- Municipio donde se celebrarán do a TRIANGLE REO PR 2 las subastas señaladas. AdeCORP. ascendente al 30 de más, en un periódico de circulaabril de 2020 a las siguientes ción general en dos (2) ocasiosumas: a. Préstamo Comercial nes y mediante correo número 11009002732351-9002 certificado a la última dirección (ahora número 4360021- conocida de la parte demanda10211): la suma de $607,251.54 da. EXPEDIDO el presente de principal; más $189,897.99 EDICTO DE SUBASTA en Ponde intereses acumulados los ce, Puerto Rico, a 7 de diciemcuales se continúan acumulan bre de 2023. MIGUEL A. TOdiariamente a razón de RRES AYALA, ALGUACIL, $103.70; más $1,267.31 de TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INS-

24 TANCIA, SALA DE PONCE. ***

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE AGUADILLA

LIME HOMES, LTD. Parte demandante Vs.

IVÁN FUENTES ARVELO Y ENEIDA CRUZ MÉNDEZ

Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: ACD2014-0002.

Sala Núm.: (604). Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO. EDICTO DE SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS.

A: IVÁN FUENTES ARVELO y ENEIDA CRUZ MÉNDEZ: Y AL PÚBLICO EN GENERAL:

El Alguacil que suscribe, certifica y hace constar que en cumplimiento de Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que me ha sido dirigido por la Secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Aguadilla, procederé a vender en pública subasta y al mejor postor, por separado, de contado y por moneda de curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América. Todo pago recibido por el (la) Alguacil por concepto de subastas será en efectivo, giro postal o cheque certificado a nombre del (de la) Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia. Todo derecho, título, participación e interés que le corresponda a la parte demandada o cualquiera de ellos en el inmueble hipotecado objeto de ejecución que se describe a continuación: RUSTICA: Parcela marcada con el número ciento cuarenta (140) en el plano de parcelación de la Comunidad Rural Planas del Barrio Planas del término municipal de Isabela, con una cabida superficial de trescientos ochenta y siete punto treinta y seis metros cuadrados (387.36 mc), en lindespor el NORTE, con calle número nueve (9) de la comunidad; por el SUR, con parcela número ciento cuarenta y tres (143) de la comunidad; por el ESTE, con parcela número ciento cuarenta y uno (141) de la comunidad; y por el OESTE, con parcela número ciento treinta y nueve (139) de la comunidad. Enclava una residencia de hormigón y bloques destinada a vivienda, con dos (2) dormitorios, salacomedor, cocina, baño y marquesina. Consta inscrita al folio 203 del tomo 345 de Isabela, finca número #18,722, Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección de Aguadilla. La propiedad está localizada en la siguiente dirección: Carretera 457KM 2.2 Int., Bo. Planas,

Isabela, Puerto Rico 00662. Por ser este caso en cobro de dinero, no tiene tipo mínimo. Según figura en el Estudio de título, la propiedad objeto de embargo está gravada al siguiente Gravamen posterior a la inscripción del crédito ejecutante: La SUBASTA, se llevará a cabo el día 23 DE ENERO DE 2024 A LAS 9:30 DE LA MAÑANA, en mis oficinas sitas en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Aguadilla, en área del sótano al final del pasillo, cuya venta en pública subasta se ordenó mediante la Orden de Ejecución de Embargo de fecha 21 de noviembre de 2023. Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo, para con su producto satisfacer a la parte demandante los términos de la Sentencia dictada a su favor dictada el día 18 de septiembre de 2012, a saber: Suma Principal de $100,377.06, más los intereses acumulados sobre dicha suma a razón de la tasa de 7.00% anual desde el 1ro de junio de 2008, hasta su total y completo pago, más la suma de $10,880.00, para el pago de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados, más los cargos por demora por concepto de mensualidades impagadas, y teniendo ésta el efecto de un auto posesorio, pondrá al comprador en la subasta, si así se lo solicita, en posesión material de la propiedad vendida dentro de veinte (20) días, según establece la Regla 51.3 de Procedimiento Civil de Puerto Rico.

Para más información, a las personas interesadas se les notifica que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado, estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal, durante las horas laborables. Este EDICTO DE SUBASTA, se publicará en los lugares públicos correspondientes y en un periódico de circulación general en la jurisdicción de Puerto Rico. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes.

Se entenderá, que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate.

Una vez confirmada la Venta Judicial por el Honorable Tribunal, se procederá a otorgar la correspondiente Escritura de Venta Judicial y se pondrá al comprador en posesión física del inmueble, de conformidad con las disposiciones de Ley. Se informa que la propiedad objeto de ejecución se adquiere libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. Expedido en Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, a 14 de diciembre de 2023. CAROL CHALMERS SOTO, ALGUACIL REGIONAL PLACA #526.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024 LEGAL NOTICE

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Demandante v.

ANTHONY ROMERO MAISONET; SANDRA LEE CARRIÓN OSORIO

Demandados CIVIL NÚM: FA2021CV00998 (307). SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE GARANTÍAS. EDICTO DE SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: PUBLICO EN GENERAL

El Alguacil del Tribunal que suscribe anuncia y hace constar: A. Que en cumplimiento del Mandamiento que me ha sido dirigido por la Secretaria del Tribunal de Primera Instancia de Puerto Rico, Sala de Fajardo, en el caso de epígrafe, venderé en pública subasta y al mejor postor de contado y en moneda de curso legal y corriente de los Estados Unidos de América y cuyo pago se efectuará en efectivo, giro postal o cheque certificado a nombre del Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, todo derecho, título o interés que tenga la Parte Demandada en el bien inmueble que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar de forma regular marcado con el número treinta y seis (36) del Bloque “M”, con cabida de trescientos treinta y cinco punto cuarenta (235.40) metros cuadrados de la Urbanización Extensión Alamar, radicada en el Barrio Sabana del término municipal de Luquillo, Puerto Rico. En lindes por el NORTE, en once punto setenta y siete (11.77) metros, con la Calle “M”; por el SUR, en once punto setenta y siete (11.77) metros, con Río Sabana; por el ESTE, en veinte (20.00) metros, con el solar “M” treinta y siete; y por el OESTE, en veinte (20.00) metros, con el solar “M” treinta y cinco y servidumbre de paso del sistema pluvial a nombre del Municipio de Luquillo, Puerto Rico. En dicho solar enclava una estructura de hormigón y bloques de una sola planta para vivienda de una familia. Dirección Física: Urb. Extensión Alamar, M-36 Calle M, Luquillo, Puerto Rico 00773. Finca 10,258, inscrita al folio 280 del tomo 187 de Luquillo, Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección de Fajardo. B. Que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado están de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal

durante las horas laborables bajo el epígrafe de este caso.

C. Que 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 ejecutante, continuarán subsistentes, entendiéndose que el rematente los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. D. Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo para satisfacer a la parte demandante el importe de la sentencia que ha obtenido ascendente a la suma principal de $61,853.14, la suma de $25,923.56, que incluye intereses según pactados, cargos por demora y otros cargos, que se acumulan diariamente hasta su total y completo pago, más la suma de 10% del principal, por concepto de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado. La primera subasta se celebrará el día 7 de febrero de 2024 a las 3:00 PM en la Oficina del Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia de Fajardo, por el tipo mínimo de $72,522.00. De declararse desierta dicha subasta se celebrará una segunda subasta el día 14 de febrero de 2024 a las 3:00 PM, en el mismo lugar antes mencionado. El precio para la segunda subasta lo será 2/3 partes del precio mínimo de la primera, o sea, $48,348.00. De declararse desierta dicha segunda subasta, se celebrará una tercera subasta el día 22 de febrero de 2024 a las 3:00 PM en el mismo lugar antes mencionado. El precio para la tercera subasta lo será 1/2 del precio mínimo de la primera, o sea, $36,261.00.

Y PARA QUE ASÍ CONSTE, y para su publicación en un periódico de circulación general y por un término de catorce (14) días en los sitios públicos conforme a la ley, expido la presente bajo mi firma y sello de este tribunal, hoy 28 de diciembre de 2023 en Fajardo, Puerto Rico. DENISE BRUNO ORTIZ, Alguacil Auxilar #266. JORGE A. ORTIZ ESTRADA, Alguacil Regional Interino #622.

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

FIRSTBANK PUERTO RICO Demandante v.

LUIS A. VIERA PEREZ

Demandado CIVIL NÚM. SJ2023CV03689 (908). Sobre: INCUMPLIMIENTO DE CONTRATO; COBRO DE DINERO Y REPOSESIÓN. EDICTO DE SUBASTA.

AL PUBLICO EN GENERAL; A LA PARTE DEMANDADA Y A LOS TENEDORES DE GRAVÁMENES POSTERIORES

YO: ANGEL GÓMEZ GÓMEZ, Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Caguas, al público en general: CERTIFICO Y HAGO SABER. Cumpliendo con un Mandamiento de Venta de Ejecución de Sentencia del Secretario del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Bayamón, venderé en pública subasta al mejor postor en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos, el cual se encuentra en el Lote de Firstbank localizado en: Centro Industrial Rio Cañas, Calle North, Lote 1516, Carr. 175, Entrada Carrraízo, Caguas, Puerto Rico, el día 2 de febrero de 2024 a las 11:00 de la mañana el siguiente bien mueble:

Marca: TOYOTA Modelo: YARIS Número de Serie: 3MYDLBYV8KY508098 Año: 2019

La venta se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer hasta donde sea posible, para responder por las siguientes cantidades a la parte demandante al 19 de abril de 2023, acumulaba como deuda las siguientes cantidades: $23,413.00 de principal, más $2,319.61 por concepto de intereses acumulados a razón del 18.45% anual los cuales se continúan acumulando hasta el total y completo pago de la deuda; más $142.28 de cargos por mora los cuales se continúan acumulando hasta el total y completo pago de la deuda; más $106.50 de cargos; más una suma equivalente a 5% del total adeudado para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado según pactado. Por tal razón dicho producto será consignado judicialmente para que su desembolso esté condicionado a la ulterior resolución por el Tribunal con competencia sobre el caso de epígrafe.

Se apercibe a todos los interesados que el vehículo objeto de la subasta se encuentra localizada en el Centro Industrial Rio Cañas, Calle North, Lote 1516, Carr. 175, Entrada Carrraízo, Caguas, Puerto Rico, por lo que todo aquel que quiera participar de su subasta podrá pasar por dicha localización, en horas laborables, previo a su celebración, para inspeccionarlo físicamente. La subasta se llevará a cabo el día y a la hora señalada habiendo las personas interesadas inspeccionado o no el mencionado bien. En adición, por la presente se informa que siendo la propiedad a subastarse un bien mueble no habrá tipo mínimo en la misma, por lo que el vehículo será adjudicado

al mejor postor en ese momento. La forma de pago deberá ser en efectivo, giro o cheque de gerente a nombre del Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia. Si se declarase desierta la subasta, se dará por terminado este procedimiento pudiendo adjudicarse el acreedor el vehículo dentro de los diez (10) días siguientes, si así lo estimare conveniente, por la totalidad de la cantidad adeudada, si ésta fuera igual o menor que el monto del tipo de la subasta, y abonándose dicho monto a la cantidad adeudada si ésta fuere mayor. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado estarán manifiestos en la Secretaría del Tribunal con competencia sobre el caso de epígrafe durante horas laborables. De acuerdo con el mejor conocimiento de la parte demandante, la propiedad antes descrita que ha de venderse en subasta no tiene gravámenes anteriores, ni posteriores. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titulación y que las cargas preferentes, si alguna continuará subsistente; entendiéndose que el remanente los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad del mismo, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Para la publicación de este Edicto en un periódico de circulación general una vez por semana durante dos (2) semanas consecutivas, y para la colocación del mismo en tres (3) sitios públicos visibles del municipio en que se celebre la subasta, al igual que en el municipio en que reside la parte demandada, libro el presente en Caguas, Puerto Rico, hoy 27 de diciembre de 2023.

EDGARDO ALDEBOL MIRANDA, ALGUAXIL AUXILIAR, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA SUPERIOR DE CAGUAS.

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

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante V.

SUCESIÓN DE JAIME RIVERA CRUZ COMPUESTA POR FULANA Y FULANO DE TAL Demandados

CENTRO DE RECAUDACIONES DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES

Parte con Interés Civil Núm.: BY2023CV00942.

Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU., EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R., SS. AVISO DE PÚBLICA SUBASTA. El que suscribe,

Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Bayamón, hago saber a la parte demandada, SUCESIÓN DE JAIME RIVERA CRUZ compuesta por FULANA DE TAL Y FULANO DE TAL; CENTRO DE RECAUDACIONES DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES, como Parte con Interés y al PÚBLICO EN GENERAL; que en cumplimiento del Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia expedido el 14 de septiembre de 2023, por la Secretaría del Tribunal, procederé a vender y venderé en pública subasta y al mejor postor pagadero en efectivo, cheque de gerente o giro postal, a nombre del Alguacil del Tribunal, la siguiente propiedad con dirección física: 661 Calle 5, Urb. Campanilla, Toa Baja, 00949-3670 y que se describe como sigue: RÚSTICA: Parcela marcada con el número 661 en el plano de parcelación de la comunidad rural Campanilla del barrio Media Luna del término municipal de Toa Baja, con una cabida superficial de 465.02 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, con calle número 5 de la comunidad; por el SUR, con carretera estatal número 865 y pozo profundo de la comunidad; por el ESTE, con parcela número 660 de la comunidad; por el OESTE, con pozo profundo y la calle de la comunidad. Finca #21,513, inscrita al folio 225 del tomo 364 de Toa Baja, Registro de la propiedad de Bayamón, Sección II. La finca antes descrita se encuentra afecta a los siguientes gravámenes: (i) HIPOTECA constituida por Jaime Rivera Cruz en garantía de pagaré a favor de RG Premier Bank of P.R. o a su orden, por $112,000.00 al 7 ¼% vencedero el 1 de agosto de 2036, según Escritura #445 en Bayamón a 29 de julio de 2006 ante Hector Moyano Noriega, inscrita al folio 149 del tomo 609 de Toa Baja, finca #21,513 inscripción 7ma. Sujeta a condiciones de aceleración. (ii) DEMANDA radicada en el Tribunal Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala de Bayamón, en el caso civil BY2019CV04826, seguido por Banco Cooperativo versus Jaime Rivera Cruz, donde se solicita el pago de la deuda garantizada con la hipoteca relacionada en la inscripción 7ma., reducida a $90,550.28 anotada al Sistema Karibe de Toa Baja, finca #21513, anotación A y Ultima, el 4 de noviembre de 2019. La hipoteca objeto de esta ejecución es la que ha quedado descrita en el inciso (i). Será celebrada la subasta para con el importe de la misma satisfacer la sentencia dictada el 1 de agosto de 2023, mediante la cual se condenó a la parte demandada pagar a la parte demandante la cantidad adeudada y vencida el 1 de marzo de 2019 ascendiente a

$90,550.28 de principal, más $25,165.22 de intereses que continuarán acumulándose al 7.1/4% anual hasta el saldo total de la deuda, $4,096.20 a cargos por atrasos, más $3,694.23 a otros cargos, mas $14,928.00 de escrow, más costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado, según pactado, más cualquier otro desembolso que haya efectuado o efectúe la parte demandante durante la tramitación de este caso para otros adelantos de conformidad con el Contrato Hipotecario.

La PRIMERA SUBASTA será celebrada el día 31 DE ENERO DE 2024, A LAS 10:30 DE LA MAÑANA, en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de BAYAMÓN, Puerto Rico. Servirá de tipo mínimo para la misma, la cantidad de $112,000.00 sin admitirse oferta inferior. De no haber remate ni adjudicación, celebraré SEGUNDA SUBASTA el día 7 DE FEBRERO DE 2024, A LAS 10:30 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo lugar, en la que servirá como tipo mínimo, dos terceras (2/3) partes del precio pactado para la primera subasta, o sea, $74,666.67. Si no hubiese remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta, celebraré TERCERA SUBASTA el día 14 DE FEBRERO DE 2024, A LAS 10:30 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo lugar en la que regirá como tipo mínimo, la mitad (1/2) del precio pactado para la primera subasta, o sea, $56,000.00. El Alguacil que suscribe hizo constar que toda licitación deberá hacerse para pagar su importe en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos de América, de acuerdo con la Ley y de acuerdo con lo anunciado en este Aviso de Subasta. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante horas laborables.

Se entiende que todo licitador que comparezca a la subasta señalada en este caso acepta como bastante la titulación que da base a la misma. Se entiende que cualquier carga y/o gravamen anterior y/o preferente, si la hubiere al crédito que da base a esta ejecución continuará subsistente, entendiéndose, además, que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de estos, sin destinarse a su extinción cualquier parte del remanente del precio de licitación. La propiedad para ejecutar será adquirida libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. Por la presente se notifica a los acreedores que tengan inscritos o anotados sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante o acreedores de cargas o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca ejecutada y las personas

The San Juan Daily Star interesadas en, o con derecho a exigir el cumplimiento de instrumentos negociables garantizados hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito ejecutado, para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les convenga o satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, costas y honorarios de abogados asegurados, quedando subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante.

Vendida o adjudicada la finca o derecho hipotecado y consignado el precio correspondiente, en esa misma fecha o fecha posterior, el alguacil que celebró la subasta procederá a otorgar la correspondiente escritura pública de traspaso en representación del dueño o titular de los bienes hipotecados, ante el notario que elija el adjudicatario o comprador, quien deberá abonar el importe de tal escritura. El alguacil pondrá en posesión judicial al nuevo dueño, si así se lo solicita dentro del término de veinte (20) días a partir de la confirmación de la venta o adjudicación. Si transcurren los referidos veinte (20) días, el tribunal podrá ordenar, sin necesidad de ulterior procedimiento, que se lleve a efecto el desalojo o lanzamiento del ocupante u ocupantes de la finca o de todos los que por orden o tolerancia del deudor la ocupen. Y PARA CONOCIMIENTO DE LOS LICITADORES Y DEL PUBLICO EN GENERAL y para su publicación de acuerdo con la Ley, expido el presente Edicto bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal. En BAYAMÓN, Puerto Rico, hoy 04 de diciembre de 2023. EDGARDO ELÍAS VARGAS SANTANA, ALGUACIL AUXILIAR PLACA #193, ALGUACIL DEL TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA DE BAYAMÓN.

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

MIDLAND CREDIT MANAGEMENT PUERTO RICO, LLC COMO AGENTE DE MIDLAND FUNDING, LLC Parte Demandante Vs.

AURA M. BRUNO RODRIGUEZ

Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: DO2023CV00077.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS.

A: AURA M. BRUNO RODRIGUEZ - PARC SAN ANTONIO 219 CALLE 2, DORADO PR 00646-5753.

POR LA PRESENTE se le

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), la cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// www.poderjudicial.pr/index. php/tribunal-electronico, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda o cualquier otro sin más citarle ni oírle, si el tribunal en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. El sistema SUMAC notificará copia a los abogados de la parte demandante, Natalia Bonaparte cuya dirección es: P.O. Box 71418 San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936-8518, teléfono (787) 993-3731 a la dirección natalie.bonaparte@orf-law.com, y a la dirección notificaciones@ orf-law.com.

EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el sello del Tribunal, en Bayamón, Puerto Rico, hoy día 23 de octubre de 2023. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, SECRETARIA. KATHERINE SANTIAGO RODRÍGUEZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE TOA BAJA

del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), la cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// www.poderjudicial.pr/index. php/tribunal-electronico, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda o cualquier otro sin más citarle ni oírle, si el tribunal en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. El sistema SUMAC notificará copia a los abogados de la parte demandante, Kenmuel J. Ruiz Lopez cuya dirección es: P.O. Box 71418 San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936-8518, teléfono (787) 993-3731 a la dirección kenmuel.ruiz@orf-law.com, y a la dirección notificaciones@orflaw.com. EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el sello del Tribunal, en Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, hoy día 24 de octubre de 2023.

LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, SECRETARIA. IVETTE M. MARRERO BRACERO, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

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

KARY GERARDO NEGRÓN LÓPEZ Demandante Vs.

THE MONEY HOUSE, INC; JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE COMO POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS

Demandados Civil Núm.: PO2023CV03700.

602. Sobre: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE LEGAL NOTICE DE LOS EE. UU., EL ESTADO ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERDE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- TO RICO, SS. NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA A: JOHN DOE Y SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN RICHARD ROE COMO JUAN

MONYEHIEDRA WEST COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION, INC. Demandante Vs.

JORGE HERNANDEZ MILLER, FULANA DE TAL ISLAND PORTFOLIO Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL SERVICES, LLC DE GANANCIALES COMO AGENTE DE COMPUESTA POR FAIRWAY ACQUISITIONS AMBOS FUND, LLC Demandados Parte Demandante Vs.

Civil Núm.: SJ2023CV08118.

Sala: 803. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO. EDICTO. ESTAParte Demandada DOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, Civil Núm.: TB2023CV00227. EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS Sala: 401. Sobre: COBRO DE EE.UU., EL ESTADO LIBRE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO ASOCIADO DE PR, SS. POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNI- A: JORGE HERNANDEZ DOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PREMILLER, FULANA DE TAL SIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES ASOCIADO DE PUERTO COMPUESTA POR RICO, SS.

GIL A FERNANDEZ CABRERA

AMBOS. A: GIL A FERNANDEZ CABRERA - VILLA HOSTO Por la presente se le notifica 427 CALLE 3, TOA BAJA que la parte demandante, ha ante este TribuPR 00949 / PO BOX 1178, presentado nal demanda contra usted TOA BAJA PR 00951. solicitando la concesión del POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través

léfono: 787-409-1586. Correo electrónico: rsrestlaw@gmail. com. Se le apercibe que si no compareciere usted a contestar dicha demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación del último edicto, podrá dictarse sentencia en rebeldía en su contra concediendo el remedio solicitado en la demanda. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, a 15 de diciembre de 2023. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA. MARÍA I. RÍOS LÓPEZ, SECRETARIA DE SERVICIOS A SALA.

siguiente remedio: Cobro de Dinero. Representa a la parte demandante el abogado cuyo nombre y dirección se consigna de inmediato: Rafael E. Santos Toledo, HC - 45 Box 13698, Cayey, Puerto Rico 00736. Te-

POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS.

POR LA PRESENTE se les emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto.

Usted deberá radicar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: http://unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se presente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá radicar el original de su contestación ante el Tribunal correspondiente y notifique con copia a los abogados de la parte demandante, LCDO. WENDEL W. COLON MUÑOZ., a su dirección: FO. Box 7970 Ponce, PR. 00732.

Tel: 787-843-4168. En dicha demanda se tramita un procedimiento de cancelación de pagaré extraviado. Se alega en dicho procedimiento que se extravió un pagaré hipotecario a favor The Money House, Inc., o a su orden, por la suma principal de cuatrocientos diecisiete mil dólares 417,000.00), con intereses al tres punto sesenta por ciento (3.60%) anual, vencedero el dieciocho (18) de noviembre de dos mil ochenta y cinco (2085), según surge

de la escritura número ciento setenta y cinco (175) otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día veinte (20) de febrero de dos mil nueve (2009), ante el notario Raúl Rivera Burgos, y cuya obligación está Inscrita al folio ciento trece (113) deI tomo mil novecientos trece (1913) de Ponce, finca número cincuenta y un mil quinientos cincuenta y cinco (51,555), inscripción l6ta.

“REVERSE MORTGAGE”. Que la propiedad sobre la cual se constituyó dicha hipoteca es la siguiente: URBANA: Solar marcado con el número cuarenta y dos (42) del Plano de Inscripción de la Urbanización El Monte, radicado en el Barrio Coto Laurel de término municipal de Ponce, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de dos mil quinientos cincuenta y seis punto cuatro cuatro cero siete (2,556.4407) metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, en un arco de cincuenta y uno punto cincuenta y cinco (51.55) metros, con la calle C de la misma Urbanización; por el SUR, en treinta y cuatro punto cuarenta y ocho (34.48) metros, terrenos de la Sucesión J. Serralles, Inc., Poe el ESTE, en cincuenta y tres cero cero (53.00) metros con el solar cuarenta y tres (43) de la Urbanización; y por el OESTE, en treinta y tres punto treinta y uno (33.31) metros ,con el solar cuarenta y uno (41) y en dos alineaciones distintas de dieciocho punto ochenta y tres (18.83) metros, y de nueve punto treinta y tres (9.33) metros, con el solar cuarenta (40) de la misma urbanización. Inscrita al folio ciento once (111) del tomo mil novecientos trece (1913) de Ponce, finca número cincuenta y un mil quinientos cincuenta y cinco (51,555). Registro de la Propiedad Sección Primera (1ra) de Ponce. SE LES APERCIBE que, de no hacer sus alegaciones responsivas a la demanda dentro del término aquí dispuesto, se les anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Ponce, Puerto Rico, a 19 día de diciembre de 2023. CARMEN G. TIRÚ QUIÑONES, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. LOYDA TORRES IRIZARRY, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

25

ASEGURADORAS X, Y, Z; FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DE TAL

Demandados Civil Núm.: HU2023CV01459.

Sobre: INCUMPLIMIENTO DE CONTRATO DE SEGUROS Y DAÑOS Y PREJUICIOS. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO.

A: COMPAÑÍAS ASEGURADORAS X, Y Y Z; FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DE TAL.

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva a la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento , excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://www.poderjudicial. pr/index.php/tribunal-electronico/, salvo que el caso sea de un expediente físico o que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal y notificar copia de la misma al ( a la) abogado(a) de la parte demandante o a esta, de no tener representación legal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente.

Ademas, se le apercibe que, en los casos al amparo de la Ley Núm. 57-2023, titulada Ley para la Prevención del Maltrato, Preservación de la Unidad Familiar y para la Seguridad, Bienestar y Protección de los Menores, entre los remedios que el Tribunal podrá conceder se incluyen la ubicación permanente de un (una) menor fuera de su hogar, el inicio de procesos para la privación de patria potestad, y cualquier otra medida en el mejor interés del (de la) menor. (Articulo 33, incisos LEGAL NOTICE b y f de la ley Núm. 57-2023).

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Se le advierte de su derecho a DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- comparecer acompañado(a) de NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA abogado(a) en los casos que proceda. EXTENDIDO BAJO SALA DE HUMACAO SOLAREA RESORT, LLC; MI FIRMA y el Sello del Tribuen Humacao, Puerto Rico, THE YACHT CLUB, LLC; nal, hoy día 16 de octubre 2023.

ENCANTO GROUP, LLC. IVELISSE FONSECA RODRÍDemandantes V. GUEZ, SECRETARIA. LAURA MULTINATIONAL DE JESÚS GONZÁLEZ, SUBINSURANCE COMPANY; SECRETARIA.

COMPAÑÍAS

390.00 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, en 30.00 ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO metros con el solar número 749 DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- del bloque “T”; por el SUR, en NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA 30.00 metros con el solar núSALA SUPERIOR DE CARO- mero 747 del Bloque “T; por LINA el ESTE, en 13.00 metros con REVERSE MORTGAGE los solares números 778 y 779 pero según plano es con el soFUNDING LLC lar número 778 del bloque “T”; Demandante Vs. SUCESION GENOVEVA y por el OESTE, en 30.00 meNIEVES MONTES T/C/C tros con la calle María número 28. Enclava una casa de una GENOVEVA NIEVES- planta y construida de concreto MONTE COMPUESTA reforzado y bloques de conPOR MARIA ARLENE creto para fines residenciales.”

HERNANDEZ NIEVES; Consta inscrita al folio 293 del tomo 33 de Canóvanas, finca JOHN ROE Y JANE 2277, Registro de la ROE COMO POSIBLES número Propiedad de Carolina, Sección HEREDEROS III. La Hipoteca Revertida consDESCONOCIDOS; ta inscrita al Tomo Karibe, finca SUCESION ELISA NIEVES número 2277 de Canóvanas, MONTES T/C/C ELISA N. Registro de Carolina, Sección ROSADO T/C/C ELISA III, inscripción 6ª. Propiedad en: URB. LOIZA NIEVES COMPUESTA localizada VALLEY, T-748 CALLE MARIA, POR ANGEL MANUEL CANOVANAS, PR 00729. SeROSADO NIEVES; JOHN gún figuran en la certificación DOE Y JANE DOE COMO registral, la propiedad objeto POSIBLES HEREDEROS de ejecución está gravada por las siguientes cargas anterioDESCONOCIDOS; o preferentes: Nombre del ESTADOS UNIDOS DE res Titular: N/A. Suma de la Carga: AMERICA; CENTRO N/A. Fecha de Vencimiento: DE RECAUDACION DE N/A. Según figuran en la certiINGRESOS MUNICIPALES ficación registral, la propiedad objeto de ejecución está graDemandados Civil Núm.: CA2022CV01733. vada por las siguientes cargas Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPO- posteriores a la inscripción del TECA. EDICTO DE SUBASTA. crédito ejecutante: Nombre del ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉ- Titular: Secretario de la VivienRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE da y Desarrollo Urbano. Suma LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL de la Carga: $184,500.00.

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Fecha de Vencimiento: 3 de enero de 2084. Se entenderá DE PUERTO RICO, SS. que todo licitador acepta como A: LA PARTE DEMANDADA, AL (A bastante la titularidad de la propiedad y que todas las cargas LA) SECRETARIO(A) DE y gravámenes anteriores y los HACIENDA DE PUERTO preferentes al crédito ejecutanRICO Y AL PÚBLICO te antes descritos, si los hubiere, continuarán subsistentes.

GENERAL: Certifico y Hago Constar: Que El rematante acepta dichas en cumplimiento con el Manda- cargas y gravámenes anteriomiento de Ejecución de Senten- res, y queda subrogado en la cia que me ha sido dirigido por responsabilidad de los mismos, el (la) Secretario(a) del Tribunal sin destinarse a su extinción el de Primera Instancia, Sala Su- precio del remate. Se establece perior de Carolina, en el caso como tipo de mínima subasta la de epígrafe, venderé en públi- suma de $184,500.00, según ca subasta y al mejor postor, acordado entre las partes en el por separado, de contado y precio pactado en la escritura por moneda de curso legal de de hipoteca. De ser necesaria los Estados Unidos de América una SEGUNDA SUBASTA por y/o Giro Postal y Cheque Cer- declararse desierta la primera, tificado, en mi oficina ubicada la misma se celebrará en mi en el Tribunal de Primera Ins- oficina, ubicada en el Tribunal tancia, Sala de Carolina, el 29 de Primera Instancia, Sala de DE ENERO DE 2024, A LAS Carolina, el 5 DE FEBRERO 11:15 DE LA MAÑANA, todo DE 2024, A LAS 11:15 DE derecho título, participación LA MAÑANA, y se estableo interés que le corresponda ce como mínima para dicha a la parte demandada o cual- segunda subasta la suma de quiera de ellos en el inmueble $123,000.00, 2/3 partes del tipo hipotecado objeto de ejecución mínima establecido originalque se describe a continuación: mente. Si tampoco se produce URBANA: Solar radicado en el remate ni adjudicación en la barrio Canóvanas del término segunda subasta, se establemunicipal de Loíza, marcado ce como mínima para la TERcon el número 748 el bloque CERA SUBASTA, la suma de “T” del plano de inscripción de $92,250.00, la mitad (1/2) del la Urbanización Loíza Valley, precio pactado y dicha subasta con una cabida superficial de se celebrará en mi oficina, ubi-

LEGAL NOTICE

26 cada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Carolina, el 12 DE FEBRERO DE 2024, A LAS 11:15 DE LA MAÑANA. Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo para, con su producto satisfacer a la parte demandante, el importe de la Sentencia dictada a su favor ascendente la suma de $83,847.56 por concepto de principal, más la suma de $22,476.40 en intereses acumulados al 2 de septiembre de 2022 y los cuales continúan acumulándose a razón de 4.724% anual hasta su total y completo pago; más la sumas de $6,690.86 en seguro hipotecario; $528.15 en seguro; $550.00 de tasaciones; $195.00 de inspecciones; $370.00 en preservación; más la cantidad de 10% del pagare original en la suma de $18,450.00, para gastos, costas y honorarios de abogado, esta última habrá de devengar intereses al máximo del tipo legal fijado por la oficina del Comisionado de Instituciones Financieras aplicable a esta fecha, desde este mismo día hasta su total y completo saldo. La venta en pública subasta de la referida propiedad se verificará libre de toda carga o gravamen posterior que afecte la mencionada finca, a cuyo efecto se notifica y se hace saber la fecha, hora y sitio de la PRIMERA, SEGUNDA Y TERCERA SUBASTA, si esto fuera necesario, a los efectos de que cualquier persona o personas con algún interés puedan comparecer a la celebración de dicha subasta.

Se notifica a todos los interesados que las actas y demás constancias del expediente de este caso están disponibles en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante horas laborables para ser examinadas por los (las) interesados (as). Y para su publicación en el periódico The San Juan Daily Star, que es un diario de circulación general en la isla de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas consecutivas con un intervalo de por lo menos siete (7) días entre ambas publicaciones, así como para su publicación en los sitios públicos de Puerto Rico. Expedido en Carolina, Puerto Rico, hoy 7 de diciembre de 2023. José R. Cristóbal, Alguacil Regional.

Héctor L. Peña Rodríguez, Alguacil Placa #278.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL de primera INSTANCIA sala de carolina

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante V.

LITTON LOAN SERVICING LP; JOHN DOE & RICHARD ROE

Demandados Civil Núm.: CA2023CV03581.

Sobre: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU., EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R., SS.

A: LITTON LOAN SERVICING LP, acreedor del pagaré o la hipoteca objeto de este pleito que surge del Registro de la Propiedad, que pueda ser tenedor o puedan tener algún interés en el pagaré hipotecario a que se hace referencia más adelante en el presente edicto, que se publicará una sola vez.

Se les notifica que en la Demanda radicada en el caso de epígrafe se alega que el 16 de octubre de 1984, se otorgó un pagaré a favor de RG Mortgage Corporation, o a su orden, por la suma de $32,333.00 de principal, con intereses al 10% anual, con vencimiento el 1 de noviembre de 2014, ante el notario Carlos M. Colón mediante afidávit 5259. En garantía del pagaré antes descrito se otorgó la escritura de hipoteca número 259, en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 16 de octubre de 1984, ante el notario H Carlos M. Colón, inscrito al folio 92 del tomo 207 de Canóvanas, finca 9832, inscripción 1; Registro de la Propiedad de Carolina, Sección III. El inmueble gravado mediante la hipoteca antes descrita es la finca 9832 inscrita al folio 92 del tomo 207 de Canóvanas, Registro de la Propiedad de Carolina, Sección III. La obligación evidenciada por el pagaré antes descrito fue saldada en su totalidad. Dicho gravamen no ha podido ser cancelado por haberse extraviado el original del pagaré. El original del pagaré antes descrito no ha podido ser localizado, a pesar de las gestiones realizadas. RG Mortgage Corporation es el acreedor que consta en el Registro de la Propiedad. Litton Loan Servicing LP fue último tenedor conocido del pagaré antes descrito. POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 30 días de haber sido publicado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://www.poderjudicial. pr/index.php/tribunal-electronico/, salvo que el caso sea de un expediente físico o que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal y notificar copia de la mismas al (a

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

la) abogado(a) de la parte demandante o a ésta, de no tener representación legal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente.

Además, se la apercibe que, en los casos al amparo de la Ley Núm. 57-2029, titulada Ley para la Prevención del Maltrato, Preservación de la Unidad Familiar y para la Seguridad, Bienestar y Protección de los Menores, entre los remedios que el Tribunal podrá conceder se incluyen la ubicación permanente de un (una) menos fuera de su hogar, el inicio de procesos para la privación de patria potestad, y cualquier otra medida en el mejor interés del (de la) menor. (Artículo 33, incisos b y f de la Ley Núm. 57-2023).

Se le advierte de su derecho a comparecer acompañado(a) de abogado(a) en los casos que proceda. Representa a la parte demandante el Lcdo.

Javier Montalvo Cintrón, RUA #18,682, Delgado Fernández, LLC, PO Box 11750, Fernández Juncos Station, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00910-1750. Tel. [787] 274-1414, jmontalvo@ delgadofernandez.com. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, hoy 15 de diciembre de 2023. Lcda. Kanelly Zayas Robles, Secretaria Regional.

Rosa M. Viera Velázquez, SubSecretaria.

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

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante V.

HECTOR SANTIAGO TORRES, FULANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

de una demanda en cobro de dinero por la vía ordinaria en la que se alega que usted adeuda a la parte demandante, Oriental Bank, ciertas sumas de dinero, y las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado de este litigio.

El demandante, Oriental Bank, ha solicitado que se dicte sentencia en contra suya y que se le ordene pagar las cantidades reclamadas en la demanda.

POR EL PRESENTE EDICTO se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva a la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento.

Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// www.poderjudicial.pr/index/ php/tribunal-electronico/, salvo que represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía ensuciando contra, y conceder el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, Io entiende procedente, sin más citarle ni oírle. El abogado de la parte demandante es: Jaime Ruiz Saldaña, RUA número 11673; Dirección: PO Box 366276, San Juan, PR 00936-6276; Teléfono: (787) 759-6897; Correo electrónico: legal@jrslawpr. com. Se le advierte que dentro de los diez (10) días siguientes a la publicación del presente edicto, se le estará enviando a usted por correo certificado con acuse de recibo, una copia del emplazamiento y de la demanda presentada al lugar de su última dirección conocida: Urb. Hacienda San José, 190 Calle Villa Caribe, Caguas, PR 00727; PO BOX 1923, Beltsville, Maryland 20704-1923. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal, en Caguas, Puerto Rico, hoy día 11 de diciembre de 2023. LISILDA MARTÍNEZ AGOSTO, SECRETARIA. MARTA E. DONATE RESTO, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

Demandados Civil Núm.: CG2023CV03530.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU., EL ESTADO LILEGAL NOTICE BRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO RICO, SS. DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUA: HECTOR SANTIAGO NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA TORRES, FULANA SALA SUPERIOR DE GUAYDE TAL Y LA NABO

SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS.

POR MEDIO del presente edicto se le notifica de la radicación

WILMINGTON SAVINGS FUND SOCIETY, FSB, NOT INDIVIDUALLY BUT SOLELY AS TRUSTEE FOR FINANCE OF AMERICA STRUCTURED

SECURITIES ACQUISITION TRUST 2018-HB1 Demandante Vs.

SUCESION HECTOR EMILIO SORRENTINI MENDEZ T/C/C HECTOR E. SORRENTINI MENDEZ T/C/C HECTOR SORRENTINI MENDEZ T/C/C HECTOR EMILIO SORRENTINI T/C/C HECTOR E. SORRENTINI T/C/C HECTOR SORRENTINI COMPUESTA POR MIRIAM SORRENTINI CARLO, SANDRA SORRENTINI CARLO; JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS; MYRNA CARLO SEDA T/C/C MYRNA CARLO POR SI Y EN LA CUOTA VIUDAL USUFRUCTUARIA; ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA; CENTRO DE RECAUDACIONES DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES

Demandados Civil Núm.: GB2021CV00715.

Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EDICTO DE SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS.

A: LA PARTE DEMANDADA, AL (A LA) SECRETARIO(A) DE HACIENDA DE PUERTO RICO Y AL PÚBLICO GENERAL:

Certifico y Hago Constar: Que en cumplimiento con el Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que me ha sido dirigido por el (la) Secretario(a) del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Guaynabo, en el caso de epígrafe, venderé en pública subasta y al mejor postor, por separado, de contado y por moneda de curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América y/o Giro Postal y Cheque Certificado, en mi oficina ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Guaynabo, el 6 DE FEBRERO DE 2024, A LAS 9:20 DE LA MAÑANA, todo derecho título, participación o interés que le corresponda a la parte demandada o cualquiera de ellos en el inmueble hipotecado objeto de ejecución que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar marcado con el número doscientos setenta y cuatro (274), en el Bloque “P” guion diez (P-10) del Plano de inscripción de la Urbanización “Juan Ponce de Leon”, radicado en el Barrio Frailes del término municipal de Guaynabo, Puerto Rico

con área superficial de trecientos noventa y nueve punto cincuenta y tres (399.53) metros cuadrados, y en colindancia por el NORTE de veinticinco (25) metros, con el solar numero doscientos setenta y cinco (27); del Bloque “P” guion diez (P-10) del mencionado Plano; por el SUR, en veinticinco (25) metros con el solar numero doscientos setenta y tres (273) del Bloque “P” guion diez (P-10) del mencionado plano; por el ESTE, en quince (15) metros con el solar numero doscientos setenta y seis del Bloque “P” guion diez (P-10) del mencionado plano; y por el OESTE, en diecisiete (17) metros, con la calle denominada “Street numero veinticinco (25)” del mencionado plano. Inscrita al folio 11 del tomo 157 de Guaynabo, finca 11431, Registro de la Propiedad de Guaynabo. La Hipoteca Revertida consta inscrita al folio 109 del tomo 1500 de Guaynabo, finca 11431, Registro de la Propiedad de Guaynabo, inscripción 11ª. Propiedad localizada en: URB. PONCE DE LEON, #274 CALLE 25, GUAYNABO, PR 00969. Según figuran en la certificación registral, la propiedad objeto de ejecución está gravada por las siguientes cargas anteriores o preferentes: Nombre del Titular: N/A. Suma de la Carga: N/A. Fecha de Vencimiento: N/A. Según figuran en la certificación registral, la propiedad objeto de ejecución está gravada por las siguientes cargas posteriores a la inscripción del crédito ejecutante: Nombre del Titular: Secretario de la Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano. Suma de la Carga: $300,000.00.

Fecha de Vencimiento: 17 de marzo de 2090. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad de la propiedad y que todas las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes al crédito ejecutante antes descritos, si los hubiere, continuarán subsistentes.

El rematante acepta dichas cargas y gravámenes anteriores, y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Se establece como tipo de mínima subasta la suma de $300,000.00, 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 Guaynabo, el 13 DE FEBRERO DE 2024, A LAS 9:20 DE LA MAÑANA, y se establece como mínima para dicha segunda subasta la suma de $200,000.00, 2/3 partes del tipo mínima establecido originalmente. Si tampoco se produce remate ni adjudicación en la segunda su-

basta, se establece como mínima para la TERCERA SUBASTA, la suma de $150,000.00, la mitad (1/2) del precio pactado y dicha subasta se celebrará en mi oficina, ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Guaynabo, el 20 DE FEBRERO DE 2024, A LAS 9:20 DE LA MAÑANA. Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo para, con su producto satisfacer a la parte demandante, el importe de la Sentencia dictada a su favor ascendente a la suma de $132,200.00 por concepto de principal, más la suma de $86,251.06 en intereses acumulados al 1 de junio de 2022 y los cuales continúan acumulándose a razón de 5.060% anual hasta su total y completo pago; más la sumas de $25,307.08 en seguro hipotecario; $1,164.23 de impuestos; $4,234.34 en seguro; $800.00 de tasaciones; $760.00 de inspecciones; $1,610.00 de adelantos pendientes; más la cantidad de 10% del pagare original en la suma de $30,000.00, para gastos, costas y honorarios de abogado. A tenor con la Regla 44.3 de Procedimiento Civil se condena a la parte demandada a pagar intereses aplicables sobre el importe de la presente sentencia incluyendo costas y honorarios de abogado, desde esta fecha y hasta que sea satisfecha. 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 Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, hoy 12 de diciembre de 2023. FRANCES TORRES CONTRERAS, ALGUACIL REGIONAL.

ANGEL LOPEZ RAMOS

Demandado Civil Núm.: FA2023CV00831.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU., EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS.

A: ANGEL LOPEZ RAMOS.

POR MEDIO del presente edicto se le notifica de la radicación de una demanda en cobro de dinero por la vega ordinaria en la que se alega que usted adeuda a la parte demandante, Oriental Bank, ciertas sumas de dinero, y las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado de este litigio. El demandante, Oriental Bank, ha solicitado que se dicte sentencia en contra suya y que se le ordene pagar las cantidades reclamadas en la demanda. POR EL PRESENTE EDICTO se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva a la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://www.poderjudicial.pr/ index/php/tribunal-electronico/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra, y conceder el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, el el ejercicio de su sana discreción, entiende procedente, sin más citarle ni oírle. El abogado de la parte demandante es: Jaime Ruiz Saldaña, RUA número 11673; Dirección; PO Box 366276, San Juan, PR 00936-6276; Teléfono: (787) 759-6897; Correo electrónico: legal@jrslawpr. com. Se le advierte que dentro de los diez (10) días siguientes a la publicación del presente edicto, se le estará enviando a usted por correo certificado con acuse de recibo, una copia del emplazamiento y de la demanda presentada al lugar de su última dirección conocida: Cond.

Monte Sol, 400 Ave. Monte Sol Apto. 5, Fajardo, PR 007385104. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma LEGAL NOTICE y el sello del Tribunal en FajarESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO do, Puerto Rico, hoy día 14 de DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUdiciembre de 2023. Wanda I. NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA Seguí Reyes, Secretaria RegioSALA DE FAJARDO nal. Sheila Robles Hernández, ORIENTAL BANK Sub-Secretaria.

Demandante V.

28 Tuesday, January 2, 2024

The San Juan Daily Star

Chess federation fines player over her ‘sports shoes’

By CLAIRE MOSES

48-minute video, in which she recapped the day and her he International Chess Federation games. fined a 23-year-old chess player The first rule of FIDE’s dress from the Netherlands at its World code for the tournament is Rapid and Blitz Championships in Sa- “dress to impress,” the federamarkand, Uzbekistan, for wearing “sports tion’s website states. The dress shoes.” code is supposed to promote FIDE, as the federation is known, fined a “good and positive image of Anna-Maja Kazarian 100 euros ($111) for chess” and “shall be strictly wearing what the organization’s arbiters enforced,” according to the deemed “sports shoes” during the tour- website. nament last week. It also required KazarGenerally, sneakers are alian, who streams her games to more than lowed, but “sports sneakers” 34,000 followers on Twitch, to change are not. The difference between the two is not clearly into more formal shoes between games.

Failing to change into other shoes, stated in the dress code.

For women in particular, which she needed to retrieve from her hotel room across the river from the tourna- the following is not allowed: ment’s venue, would “result in not being “sport’s sneakers, clacking invited in the pairings for the next round,” shoes, any kind of jeans, any according to the official warning, which kind of inappropriate cloth (e.g. she received on a yellow laminated card. torn cloth or cloth with holes, The shoes in question are plaid, can- unclean cloth), sport caps, sun vas Burberry sneakers with white rubber glasses, revealing attire.” soles. She held them up in a YouTube The rules for men are simiAnna-Maja Kazarian (X photo) video that she recorded after the incident lar. “Sports sneakers, T-shirts, and said that the shoes had been a gift any kind of jeans, any kind Tregoubov said, adding that all of them of inappropriate cloth (e.g. torn cloth or were issued because of sports shoes. The from her sister.

“I barely ever wear them because cloth with holes, unclean cloth), sport arbiters gave out the cards only in cases they’re fancy,” Kazarian said in the caps, sun glasses” are not accepted. in which they were 100% sure that the The ambiguity of shoes were too sporty for the tournathe definition of “sports ment, he said. shoes” is tricky for players The yellow cards that were given out deciding what to wear, at this year’s tournament, which has 330 said Pavel Tregoubov, participants, were a new feature to make FIDE’s technical delegate sure that more people followed the dress at the tournament and code, Tregoubov said. a chess player. “I underKazarian was the only player who obstand her point of view,” jected, Tregoubov said, adding that “all he said of Kazarian. FIDE other players accepted it.” will work on a clearer Critics on the internet were quick definition of sports shoes to condemn the strict dress code, with for future dress codes, some people arguing that the chess orgaJonatan Ramos Director Funerario Tregoubov said. nization has the wrong priorities.

“Tus sentimientos en las mejores manos” Kazarian wasn’t the Others questioned why a male player only one who received was allowed to wear white sneakers at Aceptamos la Mayoría de los Planes Funerales a yellow card with a the tournament, as seen in a picture postPre-Arreglos sin Interes warning during the tour- ed by FIDE itself, while Kazarian’s were •Cómodas Facilidades •Amplio Estacionamiento nament last week. Arbi- deemed inappropriate.

DIRECTOR FUNERAL AUTORIZADO ters gave out two yellow In a phone interview late last week, cards in the open section Kazarian expressed her disappointment for all players and three with how FIDE had handled the situaBairoa la 25, Caguas (antiguo JF Montalvo) in the women’s section, tion and said that being rushed from the

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Tels. 787.258.2664 •939.639.2533

venue and driven to the hotel had been stressful and unpleasant. In the YouTube video, Kazarian also said that she felt she had been treated as if she were a criminal.

“If she felt like a criminal, I’m very sorry for that,” Tregoubov said. “Usually, the arbiters are shy,” he added. “It’s not like in football.”

Kazarian said the experience left her stressed and unfocused during her rounds of chess games last Thursday, a day after the incident. On Thursday, she wore heels, she said.

“They should adjust the rule so it’ll be clearer,” Kazarian said, adding that a blanket ban of all sneakers would have been easier to follow.

After Kazarian took a car to her hotel last Wednesday and changed out of her sneakers, she returned to the venue to finish the day of games. But she was preoccupied by the situation, she said, which reverberated into the next day.

“They acted as if I didn’t read the dress code,” she said. “Their attitude toward me just was not friendly.”

The San Juan Daily Star

GAMES

29

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Sudoku

How to Play:

Fill in the empty fields with the numbers from 1 through 9.

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

Crossword

Wordsearch

Word Search Puzzle #B429JX

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Answers on page 30

Damage Edged Fails

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Grottoes Guilty

Looser Mains

Oared Rankled Rasps

Regent

Sanctify Spleen Stair

Taller Tarts

Thinly

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Unlawful Warrant

Winging Wobble Zebras

HOROSCOPE 30 Aries

(Mar 21-April 20)

Outside responsibilities might temporarily interfere with your love life, Aries. You may feel a strong desire to get together with a love partner early in the evening, but circumstances may necessitate your working odd hours.

This can be frustrating, as you’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, but you could meet your friend later in the evening. Don’t be afraid to ask. Most people understand when situations like this crop up.

Taurus

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

(April 21-May 21)

Today you’re likely to find your routine too boring for words, Taurus, and may have a sudden powerful urge to cut loose and play some serious hooky. Still, you may feel the pull of obligation. This conflicted feeling should pass. If it persists beyond today, however, you might need to reevaluate certain areas of your life. There are lots of opportunities out there, and life is too short to be stuck in a situation that doesn’t allow you to grow.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

A goal that you’ve been trying to reach may be temporarily stalled, Libra, and you could be tempted to slip into despair, wondering if it will ever really happen. Remember that the keyword for today is “temporary.” Whatever obstacles are in your way will eventually be overcome and your goal should be to continue to advance in the direction you want. In the meantime, take care of your chores. They may be boring, but they’re necessary!

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Today you might realize that you need to make a certain purchase, Scorpio. Perhaps your home or car requires some important repairs, or maybe some new equipment is necessary for your work. This could prove rather disheartening, as it might involve spending money that you’d rather use for something more exciting. Think of the trouble this expenditure should save you, however, and you’ll see the value of it all.

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

You could be feeling especially sensual and passionate today, Gemini, and you’ll want to get together with a love interest. However, other responsibilities could get in your way. This could provide you with the perfect excuse to sink into gloom, but don’t fall into this trap. Get whatever business you’re facing handled and out of the way. Or perhaps you can arrange to finish it tomorrow.

Then set up that hot date!

The weight of too many responsibilities, perhaps involving family, a job, or group affiliation, could be very much on your mind today, Sagittarius. You may feel like Atlas, carrying the world on your shoulders! You’re tired. Perhaps you need to reevaluate your commitments - your innate kindness may have caused you to make too many. Fulfill the ones you have, but think twice before making any new ones. You’re important too, after all.

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

You may feel a bit of disappointment today, Cancer. You might tend to view whatever snags you’ve hit on the path to accomplishing your goals as personal failures, and if you let it, this idea could persist with you throughout the day. Try to remain objective, and don’t lose sight of the big picture. You haven’t even lost a battle - at worst, it’s a minor conflict! Chances are that if you continue working hard you’ll still win the war!

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

You may feel a bit of disappointment today, Cancer. You might tend to view whatever snags you’ve hit on the path to accomplishing your goals as personal failures, and if you let it, this idea could persist with you throughout the day. Try to remain objective, and don’t lose sight of the big picture. You haven’t even lost a battle - at worst, it’s a minor conflict! Chances are that if you continue working hard you’ll still win the war!

Virgo (Aug 24-Sep 23)

After the rush of energy over the past few days, Virgo, today you may feel a powerful letdown. Not every day can be filled with adventure and excitement. For now, you just need to take care of the routine matters that are a byproduct of life on Earth. However, keep in mind that there are many weekends coming up, and with the right kind of planning you can get excitement back into your life.

You may have your ups and downs today, Capricorn. You could get at least one phone call of the “good news, bad news” variety, and this could have your moods swinging back and forth like a pendulum. Try to stay centered.

Take the good news as encouragement, and as for the bad news, try to consider it objectively and figure out ways to turn it to your advantage. There’s always a way.

Hang in there!

Aquarius (Jan 21-Feb 19)

Normally you tend to be a very spiritually oriented person, Aquarius, but today you might find metaphysical concepts of all kinds rather baffling. Whether these are ideas you’ve embraced for a long time or new ones you’ve just discovered, you may find nagging little doubts creeping in, temporarily causing your faith to waver.

This is a healthy development, however. A little doubt now and then can weed out concepts that don’t work for you and reaffirm your belief in others.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

With lovely Venus entering your sign from today, your charms might be very much on show and can prove so attractive to others. Your compassionate and caring side is already on display, but this influence just adds to it. Just be sure to direct some of that sweetness and kindness to yourself. There may be times when you give so much, that you forget to look after number one.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

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Ziggy

32 Tuesday, January 2, 2024

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