Monday Jan 3, 2022

Monday, January 3, 2022

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‘We Let Our Guard Down’ Island Faces a Staggering Explosion of COVID-19 Cases

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Monday, January 3, 2022

The San Juan Daily Star

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January 3, 2022

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.

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SCOTUS slated to review journalists’ challenge to island high court ruling on release of Ruiz Costas case recordings

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he U.S. Supreme Court has distributed for a Friday, Jan. 7 conference a petition by the Puerto Rico Journalists’ Association (ASPPRO by its Spanish initials) for a review of the commonwealth Supreme Court’s holding that all judicial proceedings involving allegations of domestic abuse must be closed to the press and public.

At the conference, the Supreme Court is slated to decide whether to grant the petition to review the case.

The top court could also postpone it for another distribution conference.

The decision ASPPRO wants to overturn is the one that rejected access to the sealed recordings of civil and criminal judicial proceedings in which island courts denied Andrea Cristina Ruiz Costas, a victim of domestic violence, protection from her abusive former boyfriend three times over the course of a single week. Ruiz Costas was murdered by her abuser soon thereafter.

On March 25, 2021, Ruiz Costas filed for protection in the Caguas Superior Court seeking a provisional restraining order against her ex-boyfriend, Miguel Ocasio Santiago. The court denied her request for immediate relief and scheduled a hearing for March 31, 2021, so that Ocasio Santiago could present a defense, according to the Supreme Court filing.

Fearful and desperate for protection, Ruiz Costas filed a criminal complaint against Ocasio Santiago the very next day and sought an order for his arrest. She appeared that day before a municipal judge, who took her statement but found no probable cause to arrest, the filing reads.

Ruiz Costas appeared in court a third time for the March 31, 2021 hearing on her request for a restraining order, at which the court granted no relief. Shortly thereafter, Ruiz Costas went missing. Her burned body was found a month later on April 29, 2021. Ocasio Santiago was arrested and confessed to her murder. He committed suicide on Aug. 1, 2021, while his murder prosecution was ongoing.

“Public reaction to the court’s denial of protection.

Immediate and intense public anger followed the news that Ms. Ruiz Costas had been murdered after the court’s repeated denial of her pleas for protection, resulting in large protests in San Juan on May 2,” the filing reads. “The public outrage intensified on May 4, when Telemundo published a voice message Ms. Ruiz Costas had left for a friend shortly after the court had declined to issue a warrant for Mr. Santiago’s arrest. In the message, she expressed fear for her safety and deep dismay about how badly the courts had treated her.”

Domestic abuse is at epidemic proportions in Puerto

Rico. In 2012, the American Civil Liberties Union determined that Puerto Rico “has the highest per capita rate in the world of women over 14 killed by their partners,” the filing reads.

“This rate doubled after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2018, worsening conditions for its alreadyvulnerable communities,” it reads. “The government promised reform in response, with the Governor campaigning on the issue and declaring a state of emergency on domestic violence shortly after he assumed office this past January.”

Efforts by several media outlets to obtain access to the recordings failed.

In May, a sharply divided Supreme Court denied an Overseas Press Club (OPC) motion for access to the recordings because it did not follow certain procedures. ASPPRO also sought access to the recordings after the Puerto Rico Supreme Court’s ruling criticizing the procedure followed

by OPC. After several procedural steps, a hearing was set for May 11, 2021, but shortly before the hearing was set to begin, the commonwealth Supreme Court took immediate jurisdiction over the ASPPRO motion and annulled the hearing. In that order, most justices of the Supreme Court denied the request for access on the merits, without affording an opportunity to brief or argue the case.

Several news organizations, the family of Ruiz Costas and the Puerto Rico Bar Association support access to the court records.

Andrea Ruiz Costas

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The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

Health Dept. establishes protocols for employees who test positive

By THE STAR STAFF

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iven the sharp increase in COVID-19 infections in Puerto Rico, the Department of Health (DS) on Sunday established the Protocol for the Management of Cases in the Work Environment to prevent and reduce virus transmission in the workplace.

“Both employers and employees must be in a safe place to avoid transmission of the virus,” Health Secretary Carlos Mellado López said in a written statement. “We are constantly monitoring the evolution of the coronavirus so that the population can protect themselves and their own. The purpose of the protocol is to establish specific guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”

The protocol establishes that if a case of COVID-19 arises in the workplace, the company must notify the DS to initiate an investigation of cases and contact tracing. The employee with a positive result must remain at home and

“Both employers and employees must be in a safe place to avoid transmission of the virus,” Health Secretary Carlos Mellado López said. undergo an isolation process for 10 days if they are vaccinated and 14 days if they do not have vaccination or while they have symptoms.Those

employees who have had direct contact with the positive case must remain in quarantine for seven days if they are fully vaccinated; if they are not vaccinated they must remain in quarantine for 10 days. On the fifth day, an antigen or molecular test should be performed.

Meanwhile, an employee who is in good health, but lives with a family member with a positive result for COVID-19, must also remain in quarantine. A viral test (antigen or molecular) should also be performed on the fifth day. If the result was negative and the employee does not present symptoms associated with COVID-19, he or she can begin his or her face-to-face work on the eighth day after the exposure.

“It is important that employers encourage employees to remain in their homes if they present symptoms associated with the coronavirus and in the same way those employees with symptoms must report them in order to avoid the spread,” Mellado López added, insisting that “people who have a positive result should not

be tested again since the virus can remain in the system for a longer period; the important thing is that people are more contagious during the first 10 days after their positive viral test or from the moment in which they present symptoms.”

“So in order to return to work, neither a negative test nor a medical certificate is necessary,” he added. “It is enough to comply with the isolation.”

The island’s main epidemiology officer, Dr. Melissa Marzán, added that both employees and employers must follow the measures to reduce the risk of exposure to COVID-19: booster dose vaccination, use of a mask, cleaning and disinfection of facilities, hand hygiene and improving ventilation of closed spaces.

“We are alert and reestablishing measures that help to reduce infections” she said. “The implementation of the quarantine and isolation orders of the Department of Health are critical to achieve that goal.”

UPR Carolina provost submits questionable appointment for UPR trustees’ approval

By THE STAR STAFF

D

espite questionable qualifications for the job and without consulting the university community as required by University of Puerto Rico regulations, UPR Carolina Campus Provost José Meza has submitted to the university presidency the appointment of interim academic dean José Luis Ayala for the position on a permanent basis.

In a document reviewed by the STAR, Ubaldo Córdova, executive vice president for academic affairs & research at the University of Puerto Rico and a member of UPR’s governing board of trustees, told UPR Interim President Mayra Olavarría Cruz that Meza was recommending Ayala and that

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the recommendation was made on Dec. 13. However, Meza made the recommendation without adequate consultation with the university community, a source close to the Carolina Campus Academic Senate told the STAR. “On December 13, we know for a fact that he was interviewing José Martínez, a faculty member of the Criminal Justice department for the position of academic dean,” the source said.

The sources said Meza did not follow the process established by UPR rules. Dec. 10 was the deadline for submitting candidates for the position. From there on, Meza is supposed to interview candidates and consult with the university community by making available the working plans of the different candidates.

“But he did not do that, he just went ahead and submitted Ayala’s confirmation without the consultation,” one of the sources said. “On top of that, all of this has been done while everyone is on vacation and no one is paying attention.”

The document recommending Ayala is supposed to go for approval before an academic affairs committee that is part of UPR’s governing board of trustees, “but they are going to trust [Meza’s] word that everything was done correctly and are not going to investigate,” the source added.

The appointment of Ayala has raised concerns because he allegedly does not have the “notable academic experience,” or discipline required for the job.

Ayala’s file, which was leaked publicly, shows he changed majors three times after entering college in 1997. He was first in interior design, then in graphic arts and then in commercial advertising before finally reclassifying in the area of professional improvement in 2005. The file shows 22 grade Cs, one D, eight F’s, at least six classes dropped and seven

repeated courses. The Fs were in some basic courses.

Ayala has a master’s degree from Atlantic University College and got the benefit of a presidential scholarship to study at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain despite his grades. The presidential scholarship, which he received while Antonio García Padilla was UPR president, was not subject to public scrutiny at the time. The presidential scholarship is to subsidize studies in areas that are difficult to recruit instructors for.

“His specialty was not in an area of difficult recruitment,” a source told the STAR. “The academic offer of his department did not require doctorate degrees.”

Ayala has also been criticized for appointing individuals for teaching positions for which they are not qualified and that do not have the support of departmental staff members.

Meza has also attracted criticism for appointing Gregory Bermúdez as administrative dean even though he does not have a college degree as required in the job description.

Sources said the UPR Carolina Campus provost did not follow the process established by university rules when submitting the appointment of interim academic dean José Luis Ayala for the position on a permanent basis.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

5

BDE: Most economic indicators show growth through first 10 months of 2021

By THE STAR STAFF

P

uerto Rico experienced economic growth despite the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy, Economic Development Bank (BDE by its Spanish initials) President Luis Alemañy González says.

In a report issued over the weekend, Alemañy González said although the commercial sector shows some signs of fragility due to the restrictions imposed to stop the spread of the coronavirus, the statistics compiled by the BDE reflect a 23.6 percent increase in retail sales during the first 10 months of 2021 for a total of $30.4 billion compared to the same period in 2020.

Sales tax reflected a similar growth pattern, showing an increase of 9.5 percent for the first 10 months of 2021 for a total of $2 billion, but this figure is 16.1 percent below the sales tax revenues from 2019.

Similarly, jobs in the retail sector increased 6.9 percent during the first 11 months of 2021 versus what was reported in 2020, but the sector has not recovered the level of employment it had prior to the pandemic.

“When analyzing the different sec-

Economic Development Bank President Luis Alemañy González tors, we see an economic improvement that shows the recovery process,” Alemañy González said. “Statistics in the construction and manufacturing industry are other variables that we can weigh in this analysis.”

For example, construction employment reflected an increase of 14.1 percent between January and November 2021, for a total of 30,100 jobs compared to the same period in 2020. The BDE’s Center for Economic Studies includes noted economists Gladys Medina and Juan Carlos González.

At the same time, within the first 11 months of 2021, there was a 16 percent rise in cement sales for a total of 14.4 million bags. In fact, the levels reached

during the current year are comparable to those reported in 2014.

Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector continued on an upward trajectory in the first 11 months of 2021, registering an increase of 5.5 percent in the number of employees, for a total of 77,900 salaried jobs. A fact that Alemañy González highlighted when analyzing this sector is that the total number of workers is 3.7 percent higher than that registered in 2019.

As presented in the economic summary carried out by the BDE, manufacturing has been growing for 15 consecutive months year-on-year, largely due to an increase in the production of medicines and medical equipment in areas close to the United States.

Another indicator that has gained importance is the sales of cars and trucks, which between January and November 2021 registered an increase of 23.5 percent compared to 2019, reaching the figure of 117,338 units. The report noted that this indicator has in three of the last four years closed with positive year-on-year changes, so it is expected to stabilize in the next year.

The BDE summary also shows that gasoline consumption remains relatively the same, reflecting a slight increase of 0.6

percent during the first 11 months of 2021 compared to the same period of 2020 due to the fact that working from home is becoming more and more common.

Another variable that will be revised in 2022 and shows an increase of 3.1 percent is non-agricultural salaried employment, which shows a total of 855,300 jobs in the first 11 months of 2021.

The variable is expected to continue to increase, according to a study by the Reserve Bank of New York that showed that salaried employment in Puerto Rico must exceed the number of registered jobs by 20,000 to 30,000 additional positions.

Meanwhile, the average of the BDE’s Economic Activity Index, although it suffered a decrease of 1.7 percent during fiscal year 2020, experienced an increase of 2.8 percent between January and November 2021.

“The economy of Puerto Rico faces many challenges, but within all the challenges we are registering encouraging indicators,” Alemañy González said.

“We began to work from day one at the Economic Development Bank to facilitate this economic growth and we will continue to fight with the same impetus in 2022 in favor of entrepreneurs in Puerto Rico.”

Hike in water bill could be seen later this year

By THE STAR STAFF

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uerto Rico residents should expect a possible water rate hike in 2022 on top of electricity and toll road hikes.

The information is contained in a letter Financial Oversight and Management Board Executive Director Natalie Jaresko sent to Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (PRASA) Executive President Doriel Pagán Crespo last week.

The letter was in response to PRASA’s submission of the monthly budget-to-actual and implementation results for November 2021 as required under the 2021 Certified Fiscal Plan for PRASA. Specifically, the oversight board highlighted the progress reported in the results with respect to the rate adjustment measure and reiterated “its significance to ensure adequate revenue levels over time and the delivery of reliable, affordable and safe water and wastewater services to the people of Puerto Rico.”

“The Oversight Board recognizes PRASA’s initial

efforts in conducting a review of its current rate struc- residents will see a rate hike in their power bill from ture through a rate redesign and cost-of-service study January to March after the Energy Bureau approved as an initial step in the process of redesigning PRASA’s an increase of 3.6 cents per kilowatt-hour. In January, islanders are slated to see the hike in highway tolls that current rate structure,” the board said.

The process, the oversight board said, is expected takes place every year. to culminate with a series of public hearings conducted by an independent examiner, and with a final assessment with recommendations on whether rates should be modified and by how much.

PRASA was supposed to hold the hearings in November but was unable to do so because of setbacks in finding an independent examiner.

According to the Fiscal Plan, PRASA is expected to implement a potentially revised rate structure by July 1, but may not be able to meet the deadline because of the delay.

Therefore, the oversight board asked PRASA to submit a detailed timeline for the execution of the public hearings and final written assessment that are compliant with the targets established in the Fiscal Plan by Jan. 15. Financial Oversight and Management Board Executive Late last week it was announced that Puerto Rico Director Natalie Jaresko

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Monday, January 3, 2022

The San Juan Daily Star

Puerto Rico faces staggering COVID case explosion

By FRANCES ROBLES

A

rmed with her vaccine passport and a giddy urge to celebrate the holiday season, Laura Delgado — and 60,000 other people in Puerto Rico — attended a Bad Bunny concert three weeks ago.

Three days later, she was sick with COVID-19, one of about 2,000 people who fell ill as a result of the two-day event.

“We did so well; we followed the rules,” said Delgado, a 53-year-old interior designer. “We followed the mask mandate. Our vaccination rate was so high that we let our guard down. The second Christmas came, we were like, ‘We’re going to party!’”

The superspreader concert helped usher in an explosion of COVID-19 cases in Puerto Rico, which until then had been celebrating one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in the United States. The concert was one of a series of business events, company holiday parties and family gatherings that fueled a 4,600% increase in cases on the At one point last week, the daily case count had surpassed 11,000, a very high figure for an island with just island, a surge that public health officials worry could linger 3.2 million inhabitants. (Photo by Gabriella N. Báez/The New York Times) into the new year; the Puerto Rican holiday season stretches to Three Kings Day on Thursday.

While the omicron variant has besieged the entire coun- the number of people who were hospitalized with the illness described it as “Fourth of July plus the Super Bowl.”

“Christmas is a week that Puerto Ricans celebrate their try, it is especially worrisome in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory at this time last year, before so many people were vaccinated. identity,” he said. “They celebrate their family. They celebrate But it is still proving to be a challenge for hospitals. already overwhelmed by government bankruptcy, an exodus their faith.

They celebrate their heritage.”

“The problem is, let’s suppose omicron is half as bad,” of health professionals and a fragile health care system. OffiThe average age of people who become infected on the Irizarry said.

“If you have eight times more cases, the math cials imposed a new wave of tough restrictions on travelers island is 33, health officials said. But experts worry that if young doesn’t work out in your favor.” and diners in hopes of staving off the new wave of cases.

Gov. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia has ordered lower capacity people who become infected while attending parties and other Rafael Irizarry, a Harvard University statistician who limits in restaurants. To attend large public events, people now events visit elders for New Year’s and Three Kings Day, the keeps a dashboard of Puerto Rico COVID-19 data, tweeted have to be vaccinated and present a negative COVID-19 test. number of sick older people is certain to rise. With so many the daunting facts: One-third of all coronavirus cases the Passengers arriving on domestic flights must show a negative of its young professionals moving in recent years to Florida, island has recorded since the start of the pandemic occurred test taken within 48 hours before arrival, regardless of their Texas and other states, Puerto Rico has a disproportionately in the past month. The number of cases per 100,000 residents vaccination status.

Similar rules were already in place for high percentage of older adults, many of whom suffer from jumped to 225, from three, in three weeks. diabetes, obesity and other ailments that put them at higher international flights.

In December, the number of hospitalizations doubled risk for coronavirus complications.

Mass public events, including an important celebration — twice.

“We have a health system that is — it’s not a secret — to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the island’s capiWithout the polarizing politics that have plagued the debate over vaccines in other parts of the country, nearly 85% tal, San Juan, have been canceled. “Dick Clark’s New Year’s fragile,” said Carlos R. Mellado López, the island’s secretary of of those in Puerto Rico have received at least one vaccine Rockin’ Eve,” which ABC had planned to broadcast live health. He urged people not to unnecessarily overwhelm testing from Puerto Rico in front of big crowds, was downgraded centers and insisted that Puerto Rico had the tools necessary, dose, and about 75% have gotten both shots. such as monoclonal antibody treatments, to combat the crisis.

But in the face of a highly contagious new variant, a to a virtual event.

But experts also caution that thousands of medical proAfter a few dozen Miss World contestants got sick, the high vaccination rate is not that meaningful anymore, Irizarry pageant finals in Puerto Rico were canceled. fessionals have left Puerto Rico in recent years in search of said. Most in Puerto Rico have passed the six-month limit On Thursday, the Scientific Coalition, a group of scientists higher salaries, which could complicate the island’s ability to beyond which the vaccine’s effectiveness begins to wane, yet at least 40% have yet to receive their booster shots, health and health professionals that has been advising the governor, attend to large numbers of sick people. The number of doctors recommended even stricter measures, such as limits on alco- on the island has dropped by 5,000 since 2006, and another officials said.

At one point last week, the daily case count had surpassed hol sales and shorter hours for bars and other establishments. exodus of primary care doctors is anticipated because they 11,000, a very high figure for an island with just 3.2 million On Friday, the governor followed the recommendation and were left out of recent tax incentives designed to keep speinhabitants. The exponential increases have begun to taper ordered businesses closed between midnight and 5 a.m. from cialists from leaving, said Víctor M. Ramos Otero, president Tuesday until Jan. 18. He also mandated booster shots for of the Puerto Rico doctors’ association. off, but case numbers are still climbing, Irizarry said.

“The problem we have is not the beds,” Ramos said. “The “I first noticed something going on on Dec. 13, and I restaurant employees and public safety workers.

“It’s a message that’s hard to digest when two weeks ago principal issue is the personnel.” alerted the Department of Health,” he said. “By the 14th and José R. López de Victoria, a public health researcher 15th, it was obvious. I called the guy who runs the database the case numbers here were among the lowest in the world,” said Daniel Colón-Ramos, a Yale University professor who who helped design coronavirus protections for Puerto Rican and said, ‘Is there some kind of glitch in the database?’” is president of the coalition. basketball teams, said the crisis was still stretching ahead.

There are currently 317 people hospitalized with The measures are particularly hard in Puerto Rico, he “From what we are seeing at testing sites, this is not over,” COVID-19, more than a quarter of whom are children, acsaid, where it is hard to overstate the importance of a holiday he said.

“It’s going to be two more weeks. The expectation is cording to the island’s Department of Health. That’s about half season that starts at Thanksgiving and lasts until Jan. 6. He that the case rate will go up.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

7

With omicron’s rise, Americans brace for returning to school and work

By AUDRA D.S. BURCH, STEPHANIE SAUL, EDGAR SANDOVAL and MITCH SMITH

I

n two short weeks, as the year closed out, the omicron variant drove coronavirus case counts to record levels, upended air travel and left gaping staffing holes at police departments, firehouses and hospitals.

And that was at a time many people were off for the holiday season. Now comes Monday, with millions of Americans having traveled back home to start school and work again, and no one is sure of what comes next.

Most of the nation’s largest school districts have decided to forge ahead and remain open, at least for the time being, citing the toll that remote learning has taken on students’ mental health and academic success. And the rising number of cases has not yet been followed by a proportionate increase in hospitalizations and deaths, though hospitalizations have increased in recent days — a sign that the omicron variant seems to cause fewer cases of severe illness.

But the highly contagious variant is still racing across the country, and teachers, parents and workplaces are bracing for the impact.

“I figured that over these two weeks of break, everyone has been everywhere visiting everybody,” said Teresa Morrison, 48, who plans to keep her 8-year-old daughter Tristan, who suffers from severe bronchitis, from attending in-person classes in San Antonio. “So I really just anticipate January to be a disaster.”

The rapid spread of the omicron variant has left companies across industries — from meatpacking to retail — with a thinning workforce, especially after months of record-high resignations.

Thousands of flights have been canceled, and National Guard troops have been activated to help staff hospitals.

The spiking case counts have also flummoxed the dozens of companies that sent their employees to work from home in March 2020 as COVID was first sweeping the country. Some offices that had reopened advised workers to stay home. Others, including major companies like Apple and Google, have extended their workfrom-home arrangements.

In schools, the spread of COVID-19 has been limited, but omicron has renewed some fears just as a sense of normalcy seemed within reach.

For many teachers, students and parents, the fall semester had seemed promising. By midDecember, Brayden Boren, a high school English teacher in San Antonio, had begun to feel as if an end to the long, exhausting battle against the

pandemic was within sight.

Then omicron arrived in Texas. By the week of Dec. 11, it accounted for about 25% of all new infections, according to state data. A week later, it spiked to 85%. In the past two weeks, the number of new cases being reported each day in Texas has increased by 240%.

Boren, 27, who has not had the virus, saw it all around him. “Even in my small, little friends group, they were popping up, one by one by one,” he said. “No one was really getting it until now.”

Now Boren is questioning whether a return to in-person learning makes any sense. “It’s a hard time to be a teacher. How far can we push ourselves?”

Health officials have warned that the unvaccinated remain most at risk of severe illness or death from omicron. More than 70% of people 12 and older in the United States are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About one-quarter of children between ages 5 and 11 have received at least one dose of a vaccine. Children younger than 5 are still not eligible for them.

For business leaders, the constant change in public health conditions and guidelines has meant acclimating to a new level of flexibility. “They don’t give you a playbook at Harvard Business School on the pandemic,” said Yancey Spruill, CEO of the tech company DigitalOcean, which told its staff it will allow remote work indefinitely.

Across the country, workers were steeling themselves for months of disruptions to come.

“I’ve been working through most of the pandemic, and I hadn’t tested positive before omicron,” said Amelia Smoak, 29, who works at a restaurant and bar in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood. She is fully vaccinated but recently recovered from a mild case of COVID. She added that business has gotten far slower as case counts rise: “Tips have been stable, but head count went down drastically.”

Scientists are projecting that the country’s sharp increase in cases will crest by the middle of January. But much about the new variant remains uncertain, and experts remain worried that hospitals might be overwhelmed.

The number of cases in NewYork continues to rise steeply, yet city school officials have vowed to keep schools open, embracing increased testing as an alternative to closing classrooms.

Schools in Chicago, Washington and most other major cities have announced they also plan to reopen this week, many with increased testing regimens. But some districts — including public schools in Cleveland; Prince George’s County,

COVID-19 testing at a fire station in Washington, Dec. 29, 2021. As businesses, schools, and families end the holiday break to face a new pandemic wave, some wonder whether life will ever be normal again.

Maryland, a suburb of Washington; Newark, New Jersey; Mt. Vernon, New York; and Jersey City, New Jersey — will transition to remote learning for one week or more in January.

In Chicago, where businesses have remained open as cases have spiked to their highest levels of the pandemic, public school leaders said they planned to return to class as scheduled Monday despite concerns from the city’s powerful teachers union about safety precautions.

“If they shut down the restaurants, they shut down all the events, every component of the city and state, then, hey, I’m not going to put my families at risk; I’m not going to force them to take their children to school,” said Pedro Martinez, CEO of Chicago Public Schools. “But short of that, what is the logic of thinking that somehow shutting down schools is going to help this pandemic? I don’t see the logic.”

Chicago Teachers Union officials have criticized the district’s testing, ventilation and staffing plans, and they expressed concern about the potential for breakthrough cases among vaccinated employees.

Several Chicago-area colleges announced either delayed starts or shifts to remote learning, including DePaul University, the University of Chicago and Northwestern University.

Similar announcements came from

a number of major universities across the country, from the University of California system to New York University, Syracuse, and Binghamton in NewYork, bringing the number of U.S. colleges and universities announcing a move to remote instruction for part or all of January to nearly 50.

In Cleveland, parents had been bracing for possible remote instruction since the day before the winter break, when the district closed 14 of its 90 schools because faculty and staff members were out sick.The announcement came midweek that the 35,000-student district would begin its spring semester remotely, with Eric Gordon, the district’s CEO, citing a “dramatic increase” in the infection rate in Cleveland.

Ohio set records in recent days for both COVID infections and hospitalizations, prompting the state’s governor, Mike DeWine, a Republican, to mobilize additional members of the Ohio National Guard to help at hospitals — one of several states to do so.

For some parents, returning to work was the least of their worries.

Kelli Gay’s holiday season was halted abruptly with two phone calls in mid-December.

Both her husband and oldest son had been exposed to COVID-19 at separate holiday parties in Florida. It would not be long before the entire household — two parents and three children — tested positive for the virus, stunning them back to the reality of the pandemic’s enduring presence.

All of them had been at least partly vaccinated.

“We were still wearing our masks, but we were reengaging with people and attended events,” said Gay, 45, a grants director at the Port of Miami who lost two relatives to COVID in 2020. “Then we got the phone calls.”

The test results precipitated a quiet Christmas, but Gay was faced with a bigger crisis: What to do with her three school-age children when school resumes Monday?

The school district where Gay lives in Miramar, Florida, where cases have shot up dramatically, is not offering virtual alternatives.

And the state passed a law authorizing parents, rather than school districts, to decide whether their children wear a mask to school. That means her children can possibly be in classes with maskless students during this latest wave.

“High anxiety would be how I would describe what I am feeling,” she said. “So now our hopes are riding on enforcing the home rules, on the kids staying masked at school, keeping their distance and a little bottle of hand sanitizer in their backpacks.”

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Monday, January 3, 2022

The San Juan Daily Star

Adams takes office as New York’s 110th mayor at a perilous moment

New York City Mayor Eric Adams on his first day in office, near where he has said he was beaten by officers when he was 15, Jan. 1, 2022.

By EMMA G. FITZSIMMONS

E

ric Leroy Adams was sworn in as the 110th mayor of New York City early Saturday in a festive but pared-down Times Square ceremony, a signal of the formidable task before him as he begins his term while coronavirus cases are surging anew.

Adams, 61, the son of a house cleaner who was a New York City police captain before entering politics, has called himself “the future of the Democratic Party” and pledged to address long-standing inequities as the city’s “first bluecollar mayor,” while simultaneously embracing the business community.

Yet not since 2002, when Mike Bloomberg took office shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, has an incoming mayor confronted such daunting challenges in New York City. Even before the latest omicron-fueled surge, the city’s economy was still struggling to recover, with the city’s 9.4% unemployment rate more than double the national average. Murders, shootings and some other categories of violent crimes rose early in the pandemic and have remained higher than before the virus began to spread.

Adams ran for mayor on a public safety message, using his working-class and police background to convey empathy for the parts of New York still struggling with the effects of crime.

Indeed, on his first day in office, Adams was confronted by an example of the violence he is trying to solve: He paid a hospital visit to a police officer who was struck by a bullet early Saturday in Harlem; the officer was sleeping in his personal car during a gap between two work shifts.

The new mayor also witnessed a street fight as he awaited a train to City Hall, and called 911. “I have an assault in progress — three males,” Adams told the dispatcher before providing his name: “Adams, Mayor Adams.”

Adams’ first task as mayor, however, will be to help New Yorkers navigate the omicron variant and a troubling spike in cases. The city has recorded over 40,000 cases per day in recent days, and the number of hospitalizations is growing. The city’s testing system, once the envy of the

nation, has struggled to meet demand and long lines form outside testing sites.

Concerns over the virus caused some rejiggering of inauguration plans: Alvin Bragg, the first Black person to hold the office of Manhattan district attorney, postponed his inauguration ceremony to March 6 because of COVID concerns; he took the oath in a private ceremony after midnight.

Adams canceled his inauguration ceremony indoors at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, which was meant to be a tribute to the voters outside Manhattan who elected him. Instead, Adams chose the backdrop of the ball-drop crowd, which itself had been limited for distancing purposes to one-quarter of the usual size.

Adams, the second Black mayor in the city’s history, was sworn in using a family Bible, held by his son, Jordan Coleman, and clasping a framed photograph of his mother, Dorothy, who died last spring.

As Adams left the stage, he proclaimed, “New York is back.”

Bill de Blasio also attended the Times Square celebration and danced with his wife onstage after leading the midnight countdown — his last official act as mayor after eight years in office.

Adams, who grew up poor in Queens, represents a center-left brand of Democratic politics. He could offer a blend of the past two mayors — de Blasio, who was known to quote Karl Marx, and Bloomberg, a billionaire and a former Republican like Adams.

Adams narrowly won a competitive Democratic primary last summer when coronavirus cases were low and millions of New Yorkers were getting vaccinated. The city had started to rebound slowly after the virus devastated the economy and left more than 35,000 New Yorkers dead. Now that cases are spiking again, companies in Manhattan have abandoned return to office plans, and many Broadway shows and restaurants have closed.

With schools set to reopen Monday, Adams must determine how to keep students and teachers safe while ensuring that schools remain open for in-person learning. Adams has insisted that the city cannot shut down again and must learn to live with the virus, and he has been supportive of de Blasio’s vaccine mandates.

On Thursday, Adams announced that he would retain New York City’s vaccine requirement for private-sector employers. The mandate, which was implemented by de Blasio and is the first of its kind in the nation.

Even so, Adams made it clear that his focus is on compliance, not aggressive enforcement; it remains unclear whether he will require teachers, police officers and other city workers to receive a booster shot.

Adams has also said that he wants to continue de Blasio’s focus on reducing inequality, even as he has sought to foster a better relationship with the city’s elites.

“I genuinely don’t think he’s going to be in the box of being a conservative or a progressive,” said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University.

“Adams is excited to keep people on their toes.”

When de Blasio took office in 2014, he and his allies

made it clear that his administration would offer a clean break from the Bloomberg era; he famously characterized New York as a “tale of two cities” and vowed to narrow the inequity gap that he said had widened under Bloomberg.

For the most part, Adams has signaled that his administration will not vary greatly from de Blasio’s. Several of his recent Cabinet appointments worked in the de Blasio administration.

There will be some differences: Adams said he does not plan to end the city’s gifted and talented program, as de Blasio had intended. Adams has also vowed to bring back a plainclothes police unit that was disbanded last year, in an effort to get more guns off the street.

Adams, who served four terms as a state senator before being elected as Brooklyn borough president in 2013, will have to build relationships with city and state lawmakers, some of whom want to push him to the left. He faced a setback last month when his pick to be the next City Council speaker lost to Adrienne Adams, a Democratic member from Queens who was supported by left-leaning members. Still, Eric Adams is close with Adrienne Adams, who endorsed him for mayor, and the pair recently posted a photo together on social media standing outside the high school they attended in a show of unity.

Adams has sought to establish a friendly relationship with Gov. Kathy Hochul, who appeared onstage with him at his election night victory rally in November. Working together — unlike their famously warring predecessors, de Blasio and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo — could have political benefits for both of them.

Adams, who has been guarded about his personal life, will reside in Gracie Mansion; his longtime partner, Tracey Collins, a high-ranking official at the city’s Department of Education, will not live there. Collins appeared by his side in Times Square — a rare public appearance together.

Stylistically, Adams could be the most flamboyant mayor New York City has seen in decades. Adams is an early riser, a vegan and a wellness enthusiast who keeps a frenetic schedule; he is a stylish dresser who campaigned shirtless at Orchard Beach in the Bronx; he socializes with Republican billionaires and celebrities; he wants to take his first paycheck in Bitcoin.

After his election-night victory speech, Adams partied at Zero Bond, a private club in NoHo, where that night’s guests included comedian Chris Rock, actor Forest Whitaker, rapper Ja Rule and business leaders like Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, and James Dolan, owner of the New York Knicks and Madison Square Garden.

“Yes, I like my Ferragamo, and yes, I do go to Zero Bond,” Adams said at a Democratic fundraiser in November.

“Yes, I do hang out with the boys at night, but I get up with the men in the morning.”

Adams has promised to make the city fun again. He visited “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” recently with a pretend bag of marijuana in tow — a nod to legalization efforts.

“We used to be the coolest place on the globe,” he said. “We’re so damn boring now.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

9

Trump appointee resigns after fight with Democratic bank regulators

By LANANH NGUYEN

T

he Republican chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, said late last week that she was cutting short her term after a clash with Democratic banking regulators. Jelena McWilliams, who started a five-year term as chair in June 2018, will resign effective Feb. 4, she wrote in a letter to President Joe Biden. She is also stepping down as a director of the FDIC’s board. McWilliams is the only Republican on the five-member board, and her departure will add a second vacancy.

“Throughout my tenure, the agency has focused on its fundamental mission to maintain and instill confidence in our banking system,” she wrote. “Today, banks continue to maintain robust capital and liquidity levels to support lending and protect against potential losses.”

Her exit comes after Rohit Chopra, a member of the FDIC board and the new director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, complained earlier this month that McWilliams had refused to recognize attempts by Democratic regulators to review rules about bank mergers. In an essay in The Wall Street Journal, McWilliams called the conflict a “hostile takeover” by other board members.

McWilliams has mostly adhered to Republican ideological lines during her tenure. That made her something of a barrier to Biden’s agenda, which involves shifting the federal government’s stance on big issues like climate change and income inequality. The Democrats on the board of the FDIC, which is chiefly

known for backing consumer deposits but has a hand in overseeing all of the nation’s banks, contended that McWilliams was stonewalling attempts by the majority to set policy. The partisan fight atop the sleepy bank regulator, believed by some experts to be part of an effort by Democrats to unseat McWilliams, spilled into public view in early December. Chopra and two other Democrats on the board — Martin J. Gruenberg, a longtime member, and Michael J. Hsu, the acting comptroller of the currency — voted over email to request public comment on the issue of bank mergers. A statement on the request was posted not on the FDIC’s site but on the site of the consumer bureau that Chopra leads. The FDIC soon released a statement saying it had not approved such a request for comment.

A week later, after a meeting on Dec. 14, Chopra said in a statement, “This approach to governance is unsafe and unsound.” In refusing to recognize the vote by other board members, he wrote, McWilliams had made “an attack on the rule of law.” She fired back the next day, accusing other board members of trying to “wrest control” from the head of an independent agency. Banking industry groups urged calm and transparency.

Pat Toomey, a Republican who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, issued a statement Friday criticizing the Democratic board members for ending the bipartisan cooperation that has endured during the FDIC’s 88-year history. “The recent, reckless effort by Director Chopra and Interim Director Gruenberg to take over the FDIC board leaves a dark mark on both the FDIC and their own personal records,” Toomey wrote. “I am deeply troubled to see the administration

Jelena McWilliams is cutting short her term as chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. support this extremist destruction of institutional norms and unprecedented action to undermine the independence and integrity of our financial regulators.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau did not immediately respond to a phone message and email requesting comment.

The Consumer Bankers Association, a trade group for banks, called for the FDIC board vacancies to be filled before new policies are put in place.

“The agency — whose board members have worked to balance the will of the majority and minority for nearly a century — will be without any ideological balance for the first time in recent memory,” the association’s CEO, Richard Hunt, said in a statement. “To preserve confidence in the FDIC, the board of directors should not pass any

new rules or regulations until a replacement board member representing the minority party is seated.”

10

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

Small-business owners confused by CDC’s changing guidelines on isolation

Shoppers on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on Dec. 24, 2021. Business owners are concerned for their workers as the omicron variant rips through the country, driving a surge in COVID cases.

By EMMA GOLDBERG

J

esus Caicedo-Diaz climbs into bed most nights by 9. He eats raw garlic and onions to give his dulled taste buds a jolt. Four months after getting COVID-19, he is still wading through an interminable recovery.

So when he thinks of his five employees at Skål, his restaurant in the Brooklyn borough

of New York City, he cannot imagine offering just five days off work when they get sick.

Some small business owners, including Caicedo-Diaz, are perplexed by shifting messaging on how long people should isolate after testing positive for the coronavirus. Last Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention halved to five days

the recommended isolation period for those without symptoms and those without fevers whose other symptoms are resolving. Those leaving isolation should wear masks around others for an additional five days under the new guidelines.

“Every few weeks there’s a new rule, a new mandate, a new thing,” Caicedo-Diaz, 36, said, adding that he plans to ask workers to continue taking at least 10 days when they get COVID. “It’s very confusing.”

Business owners are concerned for their workers as the omicron variant rips through the country, driving a surge in COVID cases. They are also struggling to keep their businesses staffed, with the new spate of cases adding to a worker shortage that they have been reckoning with for months.

While a briefer isolation period could help people get back on the job more quickly, some owners also worry about how to determine when someone is healthy enough to return.

“It does feel like a short amount of time given most people that I know still test positive at five days,” said Diana Mora, who owns Friends and Lovers, a bar in Brooklyn that is temporarily closed because of the omicron surge in New York City but will reopen for New Year’s Eve. But some hospitality workers said they are cautiously optimistic about the changing guidelines, having seen the new variant’s re-

latively mild effects in some cases.

“I’m a fan of the shortened quarantine, but I’m going to keep an eye on myself and try to make sure I’m as well as I think I am,” said Amelia Smoak, 29, who works at a restaurant and bar in Manhattan’s East Village and plans to return to work Wednesday after testing positive for the coronavirus Thursday.

Her symptoms have remained minimal.

“I sneezed more than I normally do,” she said.

The Main Street Alliance, a nonprofit business education group, is hopeful that the CDC’s new guidelines can “provide confidence” and support for businesses in rapidly bringing their employees back to work without risking their health and safety.

Still, with isolation guidelines evolving — and often left to individual discretion — employers said they remained focused on preventing workplace outbreaks.

“By maintaining vaccination and sanitization, we can hopefully keep it at bay,” said Marcia St. Hilaire-Finn, 55, who runs Bright Start Early Care in Washington, D.C., which requires its 30 staff members to get COVID vaccines.

Over the holidays, St. Hilaire-Finn pressed her workers to get the booster by offering a $100 incentive.

“It’s cheaper for me to do that than having to shut down for months,” she said.

“You have to think big picture.”

US flight cancellations hit a record level as COVID thins crews amid severe weather

By NIRAJ CHOKSHI

A

irlines canceled more than 2,700 flights across the United States by Saturday evening, by far the worst day in the industry’s weeklong struggle with bad weather and crew shortages.

The cancellations mounted amid reports of heavy snowfall across much of the nation’s midsection.

The industry canceled thousands of trips, about 5.7% of all scheduled flights, in the week ended Friday, according to FlightAware, an aviation data provider.

Every major U.S. carrier made deep cuts

Saturday, too. Nearly half the cancellations were concentrated at Chicago’s two airports, where heavy snow and strong winds were expected throughout the day into Sunday.

Southwest Airlines said it planned to suspend operations at those airports Saturday afternoon. The airline cut over 470 flights nationwide, more than any other U.S. carrier, accounting for about 13% of its schedule.

“As always, we have safety top-ofmind and, for us, that also means keeping people from driving to airports to wait on long-delayed flights whenever

we can avoid that,” Southwest said in a statement.

Delta Air Lines scrubbed 9% of scheduled trips, while American and United Airlines each cut 7%. In a statement, United, which has its headquarters in Chicago, said that the nationwide spike in coronavirus cases had affected its ability to staff flights, too.

The cancellations contribute to a disappointing time for the industry, both to the end of the holiday season and to a convulsive year characterized by revival and setbacks. Widespread vaccinations early in 2021 gave way to a summer tra-

vel boom that was then stifled somewhat by the delta virus variant. The industry recovery continued to build again in the fall, only to be slowed again by the omicron variant.

Millions of people have been flying daily within the United States this holiday season. But passenger traffic is still down 15% or more from 2019 on most days, according to Transportation Security Administration data. Despite the recent turmoil, U.S. carriers canceled 1.5% of scheduled flights in 2021 compared with 1.6% in 2019, according to FlightAware.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

11 Stocks

Global stocks close near record highs ahead of New Year, dollar and oil dip E

quities around the globe traded little changed on Thursday as oil prices fell and the U.S. dollar dipped against most major currencies although it has had its best year since 2015 with a 6.7% rise .

With several markets in Asia and Europe closed on Friday, trading volumes were thin and most markets directionless.

The MSCI World Index (.MIWD00000PUS) shed 0.07%.

The index has surged 17% in 2021, its third consecutive year of double-digit gains.

Analysts say the U.S. economy has proven resilient in the face of pandemic-related challenges, and many expect the global economy will still expand at a well-above-trend pace.

After initially tumbling in December, world stocks recovered over the holiday period as investors became reassured economies could handle the surge in Omicron coronavirus cases, and are heading back toward record highs.

“As far as COVID is concerned, for now, market participants may stay willing to add to their risk exposures, and perhaps push equity indices to new highs, as several nations around the globe held off from imposing fresh lockdowns, despite record infections around the globe the last few days,” said Charalambos Pissouros, head of research at Cyprusbased brokerage JFD Group.

The dollar index fell 0.418% on Friday.

On Wall Street, New Year’s Eve trading ended near record highs on Friday.

All three major U.S. stock indexes scored monthly, quarterly and annual gains, notching their biggest three-year advance since 1999.

Investors have held onto expectations for resilience in the global recovery into 2022 and the prospect of further gains if money remains cheap and corporate profitability high.

This year’s “everything rally” has seen a wall of cheap central bank cash, government stimulus and strong economic rebounds out of the pandemic make it hard not to profit from soaring asset prices.

U.S. stocks have powered the global rally as recordbreaking earnings figures from Big Tech companies excited investors. This week the S&P 500 hit another record high.

Commodity prices have enjoyed a strong year too, with supply often falling short of a jump in demand as economies reopened.

On the last day of the year however, Brent crude futures settled down $1.75, or 2.2%, at $77.78 a barrel while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures dropped $1.78, or 2.31%, to $75.21 a barrel.

But both Brent and WTI are up more than 50% in 2021, spurred by the global economic recovery and producer restraint.

Global oil prices are expected to rise further next year as jet fuel demand catches up.

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Monday, January 3, 2022

The San Juan Daily Star

US military focusing on ISIS cell behind attack at Kabul airport

Victims of a suicide attack at the airport arrive at a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 26, 2021.

By ERIC SCHMITT

F

our months after an Islamic State suicide bomber killed scores of people, including 13 American service members, outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, U.S. and foreign intelligence officials have pieced together a profile of the assailant.

Military commanders say they are using that information to focus on an Islamic State group cell that they believe was involved in the attack, including its leadership and foot soldiers. The cell members could be among the first insurgents struck by armed MQ-9 Reaper drones flying missions over Afghanistan from a base in the Persian Gulf. The United States has not carried out any airstrikes in the country since the last American troops left Aug. 30.

The attack at the airport’s Abbey Gate unfolded four days earlier, during the frenzied final days of the largest noncombatant evacuation ever conducted by the U.S. military. It was one of the deadliest attacks of the 20-year war in Afghanistan.

The Islamic State group identified the suicide bomber as Abdul Rahman alLogari. U.S. officials said he was a for-

mer engineering student who was one of several thousand militants freed from at least two high-security prisons after the Taliban seized control of Kabul Aug. 15.

The Taliban emptied the facilities indiscriminately, releasing not only their own imprisoned members but also fighters from Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, the group’s branch in Afghanistan and the Taliban’s nemesis.

“It’s hard to explain what the thinking was in letting out people who were a threat to the Taliban,” Edmund FittonBrown, a senior U.N. counterterrorism official, said at a recent security conference in Doha, Qatar.

Al-Logari was not unknown to the Americans. In 2017, the CIA tipped off Indian intelligence agents that he was plotting a suicide bombing in New Delhi, U.S. officials said. Indian authorities foiled the attack and turned al-Logari over to the CIA, which sent him to Afghanistan to serve time at the Parwan prison at Bagram Airfield. He remained there until he was freed amid the chaos after Kabul fell.

Eleven days later, on Aug. 26 at 5:48 p.m., the bomber, wearing a 25-pound explosive vest under his clothing, walked up to a group of U.S. troops who were

frisking those hoping to enter Hamid Karzai International Airport. He waited, military officials said, until just before he was about to be searched before detonating the bomb, which was unusually large for a suicide vest, killing himself and nearly 200 others.

The attack raised ISIS-K’s international profile and positioned it both as a major threat to the Taliban’s ability to govern the country and, according to American officials, as the most imminent terrorist risk to the United States coming out of Afghanistan.

“The group has gained some notoriety in a way that could be quite compelling for them on the transnational stage,” Christine Abizaid, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in October at a national security conference in Sea Island, Georgia. “At the same time, they’re fighting the Taliban.

How that force-on-force engagement in Afghanistan will go will have some defining characteristics about what the transnational threat looks like.”

In October, Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that ISIS-K could be able to attack the United States sometime in 2022. “We could see ISISK generate that capability in somewhere between six and 12 months,” he said.

The Parwan prison at Bagram and the Pul-e-Charkhi prison near Kabul were the Afghan government’s two main high-security prisons. The United States built Parwan in 2009 and transferred it to Afghan government control three years later.

On July 1, with little warning and no public ceremony, U.S. forces abandoned Bagram Airfield, the main hub for American military operations. Six weeks later, on Aug. 15, Taliban fighters swept into the base and threw open the prison gates.

The Taliban killed one prominent prisoner — a former top leader of the Islamic State group in Afghanistan, Omar Khalid Khorasani — and released more than 12,000 others, including roughly 6,000 Taliban, 1,800 ISIS-K and nearly three dozen al-Qaida fighters, according to U.S. officials.

“The fiasco in Afghanistan has put hundreds of terrorists back on the street,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former CIA officer who ran President Barack Obama’s first Afghanistan policy review.

One of them was al-Logari, the son of an Afghan merchant who frequently visited India and Pakistan for business.

Al-Logari moved to India in 2017 to study engineering at Manav Rachna University near New Delhi.

Recruited by ISIS-K, al-Logari was arrested in relation to the New Delhi plot and handed over to the CIA by India’s foreign spy service, the Research and Analysis Wing, in September 2017, according to Indian media reports that were confirmed by U.S. and Indian officials. A CIA spokesperson declined to comment.

Al-Logari spent time in both the Pul-e-Charki and Parwan prisons, U.S. officials said, but it is unclear how he linked up with the ISIS-K attack cell in Kabul, or why and how he came to be the Abbey Gate bomber.

Soon after the attack, however, American officials and U.S. media reports disclosed that the bomber had been released from prison just days earlier.

The Islamic State group seized on the spectacular nature of the bombing, boasting about its size, location and timing in social media posts, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi media.

In the months since the attack, U.S. intelligence analysts and military officials say they have focused on learning more about the ISIS-K strike cell, and any future attacks it may be plotting against the West.

President Joe Biden and his top commanders have said the United States would carry out “over-the-horizon” strikes from a base in the United Arab Emirates against ISIS and al-Qaida insurgents who threaten the United States.

Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of the U.S. Central Command, said in early December that the departure of the American military and intelligence assets from Afghanistan had made tracking the groups harder but “not impossible.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

13

In a simple funeral, as he wished, South Africa bids farewell to Tutu

By LYNSEY CHUTEL

I

n an almost empty cathedral, with an unvarnished, rope-handled coffin placed before the altar, South Africa said farewell Saturday to Archbishop Desmond Tutu with the simplicity that he had planned.

Tutu’s death last Sunday at age 90 was followed by a week of mourning as the world remembered his powerful role both in opposing apartheid and in promoting unity and reconciliation after its defeat.

But his funeral in a rain-soaked Cape Town, where pandemic regulations limited attendance to 100 and discouraged crowds outside, was far more subdued than the packed stadiums and parade of dignitaries that mourned South Africa’s other Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Nelson Mandela. It was exactly what the archbishop had wanted.

A hymn sung in his mother tongue, Setswana; Mozart’s “Laudate Dominum”; and a sermon delivered by an old friend were all part of what Tutu designed for his requiem Mass, celebrated at St. George’s Cathedral. There would be no official speeches beyond the eulogy, and the only military presence allowed at the funeral of a man who once said, “I am a man of peace, but not a pacifist,” came when an officer brought South Africa’s national flag to be handed to his widow, Nomalizo Leah Tutu.

The coronavirus pandemic further scaled down proceedings. With a limited guest list, the only international heads of state in attendance had a close relationship with the archbishop, like King Letsie III of Lesotho, who spent time with the Tutu family as a child at a boarding school in England.

A former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson, read one of the prayers during the requiem Mass. With singing discouraged in closed spaces to reduce the spread of the virus, the choir performed in an adjacent hall.

“Desmond was not on some crusade of personal aggrandizement or egotism,” said the friend who delivered the sermon, Michael Nuttall, who as bishop of Natal in the 1980s and 1990s became known as “Tutu’s No. 2.” He described their relationship, as the first Black archbishop of Cape Town and his white deputy, as a precursor “of what could be in our wayward, divided nation.”

Tutu “loved to be loved,” though, recalled Nuttall, and this was the enduring image of the diminutive man in flowing clerical robes: a dynamic leader who joked and scolded with equal gusto.

The activist archbishop was at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid. Outside South Africa, he campaigned for international sanctions as

he preached about the injustices that Black South Africans suffered under the segregationist regime.

At home, he presided over dozens of funerals of young activists killed as the country’s townships resembled a war zone in the final years of apartheid.

After the country’s first democratic election in 1994, he led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and christened the “new” South Africa the “rainbow nation” as he tried to shepherd its citizens toward national healing. In the nearly three decades since the end of apartheid, he continued to speak out against the corruption and inequality that sullied that ideal.

“When he first spoke about us as a ‘rainbow nation,’ South Africa was a different place,” and was going through a very difficult time, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in his eulogy. “He has left us at another difficult time in the life of our nation.”

In the week leading up to the funeral, those who were close with Tutu said that as he became increasingly frail, they saw a man distressed by South Africa’s enduring social and economic inequality. In the past two years, the coronavirus pandemic and resulting lockdowns have further exacerbated poverty, bringing unemployment to record levels.

Under COVID-19 restrictions, at a public viewing site erected in the Grand Parade, Cape Town’s main public square, barely 100 people gathered to watch the service on a big screen. Those who braved the rain said they wanted to say goodbye to a “great man,” like Laurence and Joslyn Vlotman, who brought an umbrella and small camp stool.

But many, like Meg Jordi, sat on the ground.

Michael Jatto, a British citizen on vacation in South Africa from England, took his two daughters to the square to learn about the archbishop — “for us as Africans, for our children to see a great man being shown in a positive light.”

For many South Africans who attended Christian and interfaith services in the days leading up to the funeral, there was a collective sense that South Africa had lost its moral compass. Some, though, found hope in the renewed focus on Tutu’s life and legacy.

“I feel we’ve gained in the way that the country, the government, the church has magnified him and held him up,” said Nikki Lomba, who watched from behind a barrier with her mother, Brita Lomba, as the archbishop’s coffin was driven away in a hearse. “I feel we’ve gained more hope, and at a very pivotal moment learned a lot in his passing.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa arrives at St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town for the funeral service of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jan. 1, 2022.

14

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

Kim Jong Un’s New Year resolution: More food for North Korea

Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, participates in a summit with President Donald Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam, Feb. 28, 2019.

By CHOE SANG-HUN

K

im Jong Un has begun his second decade as North Korea’s leader with a vow to alleviate the country’s chronic food shortages, state media reported on Saturday — a problem that he inherited from his late father 10 years ago and has yet to fix.

Kim, 37, presided over a five-day meeting of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, which drew more attention than usual because it came at the end of his first decade in power.

On Saturday, New Year’s Day, the North’s state media carried lengthy reports on the meeting. They mentioned no diplomatic overtures from Kim toward the United States or South Korea, and only a brief reiteration of his frequent promise to increase the North’s military power. But much space was devoted to the subject of food shortages, which many analysts see as the biggest shortcoming of Kim’s leadership.

One of the first promises that Kim made after inheriting power from his father, Kim Jong Il, a decade ago was that longsuffering North Koreans would “never have to tighten their belt again.” But that goal has remained elusive. Several months ago, Kim issued a rare warning that the North faced a “tense” food situation, brought about by

the coronavirus pandemic and international sanctions against his nuclear weapons program.

At the party meeting that ended on Friday, Kim pledged to “increase the agricultural production and completely solve the food problem,” specifying production goals “to be attained phase by phase in the coming 10 years,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency said.

But Kim did not appear to introduce any significant agricultural measures, except to forgive all cooperative farms’ debts to the government. He mainly repeated the party’s old exhortations to farmers to use more machines, greenhouses, fertilizers and pesticides. He also said they should “grasp the greatness and gratitude for the party, state and the social system” and make “collectivism dominate their thinking and life.”

Despite his ambitions to grow North Korea’s economy, Kim has never made the kind of bold, market-oriented changes that China and Vietnam put in place decades ago. Instead, he has kept the country isolated, cracking down on the influence of outside information and imposing tight control on the informal markets that many North Koreans have relied on for survival.

“Kim Jong Un was never going to be a reformer by Western standards,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of internation-

al studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. “He prioritizes his family interests above national security, prosperity and the rule of law, to say nothing of human rights.”

When Kim came to power a decade ago at 27, many outside analysts dismissed him as an inexperienced figurehead, and some predicted that he would not last. But he quickly established his grip on power through what South Korean officials called a “reign of terror,” executing scores of senior officials — including his uncle, Jang Song Thaek — who were seen an obstacles to establishing a monolithic dictatorship.

Under Kim’s rule, North Korea has become one of the very few countries that can threaten the United States with a nuclear missile. Of the six nuclear tests the North has carried out, four were under his watch.

Kim’s government has also tested three intercontinental ballistic missiles that it claims could deliver nuclear warheads to part or all of the United States. As the North’s nuclear threat grew in 2018 and 2019, President Donald Trump met three times with Kim, in the first summit talks between the two nations.

But North Koreans have paid a harsh price for Kim’s nuclear ambitions.

The United Nations imposed economic sanctions that banned all of the North’s major exports. The country’s economy shrank by 3.5% in 2017 and by 4.1% in 2018, according to estimates from South Korea’s central bank. It recovered slightly in 2019, but then the pandemic hit, forcing the North deeper into isolation. Its economy shrank again in 2020, by 4.5%.

Kim’s efforts to get the sanctions lifted collapsed in 2019, when his diplomacy with Trump ended with no agreement. At a Workers’ Party congress in January, Kim admitted that his efforts to rebuild the North’s moribund economy had failed.

There are no signs that North Korea is in danger of the kind of devastating famine that it suffered in the late 1990s.

But its grain production totaled only 4.69 million tons this year, leaving a shortage of 800,000 tons, according to estimates released by South Korea’s Rural Development Administration. In July, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that 16.3 million people in the North — 63.1% of the population — were “food insecure.”

In the past, North Korea has made up for its agricultural shortfalls with foreign aid and imports. But in response to the pandemic, it has rejected outside aid and shut its borders, making it harder to import fertilizers or farm equipment from neighboring China, the North’s only major trading partner and donor. Pandemic restrictions have also hurt the country’s unofficial markets, which helped circulate food.

Kim’s emphasis on bolstering food production indicates that North Korea will stick to his “self-reliant” economic policy while it copes with the pandemic, analysts say. The North has also braced for a prolonged diplomatic confrontation with Washington since Kim’s diplomacy with Trump collapsed.

North Korea has claimed that it had no COVID-19 cases, and it has rejected offers of millions of vaccine doses, leaving its population vulnerable to explosive outbreaks should its borders reopen. It has also rejected the Biden administration’s repeated offer to resume dialogue “without preconditions,” insisting that Washington must first end what the North calls its “hostile policy,” including the sanctions and its joint military exercises with South Korea.

At the same time, North Korea has resumed missile tests since 2019, showing that it continues to develop increasingly sophisticated, nuclear-capable weaponry — Kim’s most valuable leverage against Washington.

During the party meeting, Kim said conditions demanded that “bolstering the state defense capability be further powerfully propelled without a moment’s delay.”

He also called it a “top priority” to tighten loopholes in the North’s campaign against the pandemic.

“His extremely cursory mention of inter-Korean relations and foreign policy indicates that North Korea was not ready to come out for contacts with South Korea or the United States in the new year,” said Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Center for North Korean Studies at the Sejong Institute outside Seoul.

“Faced with the pandemic, North Korea is expected to continue to keep its borders shut, focusing on self-reliance and conducting only the minimum of essential trade with China,” Cheong said.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

15

Cars keep getting smarter. Do they have to look so boring?

By FARHAD MANJOO

A

product manager at Mercedes once told me that he expected to see more changes in cars and the car business in the next 20 years than we’ve seen in the past 75. That was 6 1/2 years ago, and so far, his prediction has been spot on; I struggle to think of a consumer business now undergoing a more total transformation than what’s happening in automobiles.

The first revolution is electrification. Encouraged by environmental regulations and accelerated by competition from Elon Musk’s electric car juggernaut, Tesla, much of the industry plans to abandon its defining technology, the gas-powered engine, in favor of electric motors and batteries.

Then there’s autonomous driving. While the fully self-driving car remains far off, many cars are beginning to pick up the routine drudgeries and avoid the sudden catastrophes of your daily commute. Cars can brake for pedestrians, change lanes and keep pace with other cars on the road, even in stop-and-go traffic. Some, like models bearing General Motors’ Super Cruise system, don’t even require you to keep a hand on the wheel.

And finally, in another trend shaped by Tesla, cars are turning into smartphones on wheels. They come packed with gigantic touch-screens and loads of cameras and can gain features

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through updates over the internet. The electric car startup Fisker recently unveiled a model, the Ocean SUV, that carries a monstrous 17.1-inch screen on its dash that can be rotated into “Hollywood mode” — horizontal orientation for watching movies and playing video games while the car is parked.

With so much change going on in the car business, I’d been looking forward to visiting the Los Angeles Auto Show, one of the world’s largest. But it wasn’t long after arriving on the show floor late last year that I began to feel — how to put this delicately? — bored out of my mind.

Cars may be undergoing huge changes on the inside, but you wouldn’t know it to look at them. Everywhere I turned at the show, I saw the same basic vehicle, a selection as bland and monotonous as a supermarket’s TV dinner aisle.

Car enthusiasts have been complaining about homogeneity for decades, but the problem seems to have grown dire. Most cars at the show looked like most others in their categories, and because Americans have converged on a very narrow range of auto categories, the sameness felt oppressive and, ultimately, quite sad. Cars were once a playground for aesthetic experimentation, a showcase for the world’s most inventive and daring industrial designers. Now they really are like smartphones; every new iPhone is only a slight evolution from the last one, and so is every new car.

“Compared to how crazy the stuff is that’s happening in the tech world of cars, it’s bizarre how much they all look the same,” said Doug DeMuro, who hosts an excellent car review YouTube channel.

The sameness may be a product of a trend that has roiled the industry since the 1990s: the steady sales growth in SUVs and crossovers, the smaller cousins of SUVs that are built more like cars than trucks, and the decline of passenger vehicles, including sedans, hatchbacks and wagons.

Today the majority of vehicles sold in America are crossovers or SUVs, and pickups have also long been popular. Aestheti-

cally, the pickups are nearly indistinguishable from one another. Even Ford’s new F-150 Lightning, the electric version of the longtime best-selling vehicle in America, looks pretty much like every other pickup on the road.

The SUVs, and crossovers, meanwhile, come in two basic shapes: boxes and bubbles. The boxes are the SUVs, which range from huge (Jeep Grand Cherokee, Ford Explorer) to really huge (Chevy Tahoe, Ford Expedition). The bubbles are the crossovers, whose sales have shot up over the past couple of decades.

Until a few years ago, the Toyota Camry sedan was the best-selling passenger car in the United States, a position it had held for nearly two decades. The Camry has since been dethroned by a bubble.

As of October, Toyota’s RAV-4 crossover was the nation’s best-selling nontruck passenger vehicle of the year. Honda’s similar-looking CR-V is just behind it. Automakers have been backing away from sedans.

In 2018, Ford said it would stop making sedans for the U.S. market.

Collectively, SUVs and crossovers will account for nearly 55% of vehicles sold in America in 2021, according to Stephanie Brinley, an automotive analyst at the market research firm IHS Markit. Pickups are projected to make up an additional 18.4% of the market. In other words, almost 3 out of every 4 passenger vehicles sold this year were trucks, crossovers or SUVs. There are many forces pushing for sameness. Constraints imposed by safety regulations and aerodynamics have left car companies little room for experimental designs. The bigger constraint is what customers want — vehicles with roomy interiors that ride high, with the feel of a living room, or perhaps a throne.

Brinley and others in the car industry expect consumer preferences to stick even as everything else about cars changes.

A very popular Tesla vehicle is the Model Y, a pretty traditionallooking crossover. When Ford decided to put up a strong rival to Tesla, it, too, went with a crossover: the new Mustang Mach-E, which looks much like the Model Y and nothing like any Mustang that Ford ever made before. By 2025, Brinley predicts, SUVs and crossovers will account for 59% of sales, and pickups almost 20% — meaning that 4 out of every 5 cars sold will be pickups, bubbles or boxes.

I have written often of my love-hate relationship with cars.

I love cars as products; I hate them as infrastructure. I love watching the car industry for its dynamism, its technological innovation and the way it has anticipated and altered the public’s aesthetic preferences; I hate the industry for the way it has dominated politics and urban planning, for the way it has billed its products as a necessary part of modern life.

But every year the product side of cars offers less to love.

The industry’s biggest innovations are now driven by Silicon Valley — by advances in batteries, cameras, networks and artificial intelligence. Cars are growing brains, and I’m glad for it. I just wish they weren’t also losing heart, soul and personality.

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Monday, January 3, 2022

The San Juan Daily Star

Gobernador convierte en ley 10 proyectos legislativos POR CYBERNEWS

L

A FORTALEZA – El gobernador Pedro Rafael Pierluisi Urrutia convirtió el domingo en ley 10 medidas legislativas.

Pierluisi Urrutia firmó el Proyecto del Senado 293, que crea la “Ley de Política Pública para Combatir la Pobreza Infantil y la Desigualdad Social”.

“La desigualdad y la pobreza es un mal social que nos toca combatir a todos, y es aún más latente cuando se trata de pobreza infantil. Ningún niño o niña debe sufrir necesidades físicas, sociales y emocionales como consecuencia de vivir bajo los estándares de pobreza. Siempre he procurado dar paso a medidas e iniciativas a nivel estatal y federal que aporten a nuestra niñez y sus familias, pues como gobierno debemos asegurarnos que nuestros menores tengan las herramientas necesarias que les permitan tener un crecimiento saludable y productivo”, dijo el gobernador en declaraciones escritas.

Con su firma, se estableció la política pública del gobierno para desarrollar e implantar las estrategias necesarias para reducir en un 50 por ciento la tasa de pobreza infantil y desigualdad social para el 2032.

La Comisión que crea la ley estará integrada por 17 personas, incluyendo varios secretarios y directores de las agencias del Ejecutivo, entidades sin fines de lucro y tres líderes comunitarios. Entre sus funciones están: desarrollar, diseñar

y ejecutar planes y estrategias a corto y largo plazo, así como asesorar al gobernador y a la Asamblea Legislativa sobre todos los aspectos relacionados a la pobreza infantil y la desigualdad social.

Al cumplirse 90 días a partir de la aprobación de esta ley, la Comisión tendrá que presentar al gobernador Pierluisi Urrutia, así como a la Asamblea Legislativa, un informe sobre los trabajos realizados hasta ese momento incluyendo un plan de trabajo detallado.

Otra de las piezas legislativas que el gobernador convirtió en ley es el Proyecto de la Cámara 612 que es una propuesta de Administración para fiscalizar a través de la Oficina del Procurador del Paciente (OPP) a las aseguradoras que sirven a los pacientes del Plan de Salud del Gobierno y de esta forma hacer valer fielmente la

Carta de Derechos del Paciente.

A través del Proyecto de la Cámara 612, se determinó que la Administración de Seguros de Salud (ASES) y la OPP desarrollarán, en el caso de las querellas con el Plan de Salud del Gobierno, un sistema de quejas-querellas y apelaciones de conformidad con la reglamentación federal.

De igual forma, dispone que toda aseguradora, plan de cuidado de salud, profesional de la salud, administrador, administrador de farmacia o proveedor de servicios de salud médico-hospitalarias o persona que incumpla con cualquiera de las disposiciones de ley incurrirá en una falta administrativa y será sancionada con hasta un máximo de 20 mil dólares por cada infracción. A esto se suma que toda persona que impida y obstruya las

labores del personal de la OPP o someta información falsa incurrirá en delito menos grave.

Otra medida de Administración es la Resolución Conjunta de la Cámara 64. Con esta ley, el Departamento de la Familia queda facultado de adquirir mediante compraventa de bienes inmuebles y el derecho real de usufructo para el Programa Head Start. Esto ya que existe la disponibilidad de millones de dólares en fondos de recuperación a través de ‘Disaster Recovery Funds’ que podrían ser solicitados por la Administración para el Cuidado y Desarrollo Integral de la Niñez (ACUDEN), como concesionario.

También, es ley el Proyecto de la Cámara 670 que al enmendar la ‘Ley de Condominios de Puerto Rico’ permitirá a los Consejos de Titulares adquirir pólizas “full value” contra riesgos para asegurar elementos privativos originales de los apartamentos y que los titulares adquieran pólizas individuales contra riesgos para asegurar su propiedad.

Otra medida relacionada a la salud y que ya es ley es el Proyecto del Senado 445 que incluye en el Código de Seguros de Puerto Rico al Centro Cardiovascular de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, así como a los profesionales de la salud que allí prestan sus servicios. También, Pierluisi Urrutia firmó el Proyecto del Senado 157 que iguala la definición de “psicólogo” en varias leyes.

Positividad de COVID-19 sube a 32.69 por ciento mientras se suman 2,473 casos confirmados, 5,753 casos probables y dos muertes POR CYBERNEWS

S

AN JUAN – El informe de COVID-19 del Departamento de Salud reportó el domingo sobre 2,473 casos positivos confirmados, 5,753 casos probables y dos muertes.

Las personas fallecidas son dos mujeres: una de 32 años de la Región de Arecibo y una de 71 años de la Región de Ponce.

El monitoreo cubre el periodo del 17 de diciembre al 31 de diciembre de 2021.

to.

La tasa de positividad subió a 32.69 por cien-

Hay 331 adultos hospitalizados, y de ellos, 32 están en ventiladores. Mientras, 85 menores están hospitalizados y dos están en ventiladores.

Con una dosis de vacunas hay al menos dos millones, 769 mil, 053 personas. Con las dosis completadas hay dos millones, 470 mil, 339 personas.

El total de muertes atribuidas es de 3,310.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

El Alcalde del Municipio Autónomo de Caguas, William E. Miranda Torres, te invita a la

LA GRAN FIESTA DE

Deben tener mascarilla.

Debe presentar identificación que evidencie que es residente de Caguas.

Debe estar presente el niño para la entrega del juguete.

Se entregarán juguetes mientras duren.

Auspiciadores:

c a i rro v r e s

Miércoles, 5 de enero de 2022 desde las 9:00 am Complejo Deportivo Ángel O. Berríos, Caguas

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18

Monday, January 3, 2022

The San Juan Daily Star

Betty White recalled as a trailblazer with a love for life

Ryan Reynolds and Betty White on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” in 2010.

By VIMAL PATEL

T

elevision stars, comedians, a president and seemingly the entire internet paid tribute late last week to Betty White, the actress whose trailblazing career spanned seven decades and who died Friday at her home in Los Angeles.

President Joe Biden said that White had “brought a smile to the lips of generations of Americans.”

“She’s a cultural icon who will be sorely missed,” he wrote on Twitter. “Jill and I are thinking of her family and all those who loved her this New Year’s Eve.” Actor Ryan Reynolds, who

co-starred with White in “The Proposal,” a 2009 romantic comedy, wrote on Instagram that “the world looks a little different now.”

He said White had excelled at defying expectations.

“She managed to grow very old and somehow, not old enough,” Reynolds wrote. “We’ll miss you, Betty. Now you know the secret.”

Seth Meyers wrote on Twitter: “RIP Betty White, the only SNL host I ever saw get a standing ovation at the after party. A party at which she ordered a vodka and a hotdog and stayed til the bitter end.”

Many paid tribute to White as a performer who had been ahead

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of her times, championing equity causes before they became popular.

In 1954, White was criticized for having Arthur Duncan, a Black tap dancer, on her variety show, the account for the Martin Luther King Jr. Center wrote.

“Her response: ‘I’m sorry. Live with it,’” the center wrote. “She then gave Duncan even more airtime. The show was canceled soon after. Rest well, Betty.”

Actress Lynda Carter wrote on Twitter: “I met Betty White several times over the years, in many green rooms. She was a vanguard who paved the way for women in TV. Now we say goodbye to her irrepressible presence, and like millions of others, I will miss her.

Thank you for all the joy and laughter, Betty.”

Journalist Dan Rather wrote that White had been beloved because she “embraced a life well lived.”

“Her smile,” he wrote. “Her sense of humor. Her basic decency.

Our world would be better if more followed her example. It is diminished with her passing.”

Comedian Bob Saget called White “a remarkable talent” who was witty, kind, funny and “full of

love,” especially for her husband.

“She always said the love of her life was her husband, Allen Ludden,” who died in 1981, Saget wrote on Facebook. “Well, if things work out by Betty’s design — in the afterlife, they are reunited. I don’t know what happens when we die, but if Betty says you get to be with the love of your life, then I happily defer to Betty on this.”

Paula Poundstone shared a different insight on Twitter: “You know what’s really great? We told Betty White that we loved her while she was still alive.”

Mel Brooks, the actor and filmmaker, wrote on Twitter that it was “too bad we couldn’t get another ten years of her always warm, gracious, and witty personality.”

Actor George Takei described White as a “national treasure,” adding, “A great loss to us all.”

“Our Sue Ann Nivens, our beloved Rose Nylund, has joined the heavens to delight the stars with her inimitable style, humor and charm,” Takei wrote, referring to White’s roles on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “The Golden Girls.”

He added in another tweet, “When midnight strikes tonight, let us all raise a toast to Betty.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

19

In a new series, ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ gets more worldly

By ROSLYN SULCAS

D

avid Tennant, sitting in a wicker chair in the large, empty garden of a grand hotel here, gestured at its pink pillared veranda. “An appropriate setting!” he said, alluding to the colonial era architecture and his role in “Around the World in 80 Days,” a new television series based on the 1872 novel by Jules Verne.

It was February 2021, and it was Tennant’s last day in Cape Town, where he and the rest of the cast of “Around the World” had gathered to complete filming, almost a year after the pandemic had put a stop to production. “I was packing my suitcase for Cape Town when South Africa announced a lockdown, and they said, ‘Stand down,’ ” Tennant recalled.

“It feels very special that we made it back and the finishing tape is in sight.”

Ten months later, the finishing tape is behind them.

The eight-part “Around the World,” a zippy take on the Verne story, was to premiere Sunday on PBS’s “Masterpiece.” (In Britain, it debuted on Dec. 26, on BBC 1.)

There have been many film and television productions inspired by Verne’s novel, most notably Michael Todd’s 1956 version starring David Niven, which won an Academy Award for best picture and included cameos by Noël Coward, Marlene Dietrich, Frank Sinatra and Buster Keaton, among others. A less faithful version, from 2004, featured Jackie Chan as the story’s (originally French) valet, Passepartout.

But this version is tailored to contemporary sensibilities, introducing a diverse cast of characters. An ambitious young journalist, Abigail Fortescue (Leonie Benesch), and an updated version of Passepartout (played by the Black French actor Ibrahim Koma) share the limelight with Phileas Fogg (Tennant), the buttoned-up Englishman whose initial ideas about the world are based on a colonial-era vision typified by our grand hotel surroundings.

“We are in the world of 1872; it’s very much of the time,” Tennant said. “But the show looks at the social mores and expectations of the era with a 21st-century lens.”

The series begins in a stodgy men’s social club in London, the Reform Club, where Fogg reads an article describing a recently finished Indian railway line that makes it theoretically possible to traverse the globe in 80 days. Goaded by a hostile fellow member, he bets a considerable sum (around $3 million today) that he can make it back to the club 80 days later, by 1 p.m. on Christmas Eve. “It’s a fabulous setup, the man taking a bet, then racing against obstacles and time,” the series’ lead writer, Ashley Pharoah (“Life on Mars”), said. “A screenwriter is always desperate for that kind of great premise.” But the new series is “more of a re-imagining than an adaptation,” he added. In this version, Abigail — whose byline is Abigail Fix, using her mother’s maiden name — writes the newspaper article that prompts the bet from Fogg. Despite opposition from Fogg and from her father (Jason Watkins), who owns the newspaper, she decides to chronicle Fogg’s journey; together with Fogg and Passepartout, who is given a more complex back story

David Tennant, center, during production of a new eight-part adaptation of “Around the World in 80 Days,” in which he plays the lead role of Phileas Fogg. and emotional trajectory than in the book, she forms part of an unlikely trio of adventurers.

“We wouldn’t have made a version with three white middle-aged men going around the world because we wanted it to resonate and connect with a modern audience,” said Simon Crawford-Collins, an executive producer of the show.

“It felt like a very natural thing to make the change to a more diverse setting that was still faithful to the era.”

The writers also added cameo characters from history like the legendary Bass Reeves (Gary Beadle), who escaped slavery and became a deputy U.S. marshal, and the famed English beauty Jane Digby (Lindsay Duncan).

“She was an aristocrat and fantastic personality who had scandalous affairs with all sorts of people and married a sheikh,” said Steve Barron, who directed five episodes and helped develop story lines. “She would have been about 54 at the time, on Fogg’s path, and he would have been appalled by her, so it felt like a great way to bring out more of his character.”

Viewers familiar with Verne’s novel will recognize the name Fix, which Abigail adopts as a way to distance herself from her father — the name a nod, as Pharoah described it, to the “rather boring” Detective Fix in the book. But the inspiration for Abigail Fix, he said, was the American writer Nellie Bly, who emulated Verne’s voyage in 1890. (She did it in 72 days.) Making Passepartout a Frenchman of color “felt natural,” he added. “As a writer, it gives you much more to play with when there are three of them, with such different personal histories.”

For Benesch, who is German, and Koma, who is French, these were their first major roles in English — and Benesch’s first role playing a native English speaker. “And Abigail talks and talks!” Benesch said with a laugh in a telephone interview. (Benesch’s British accent is cut-glass perfection.)

Fix, she said, is “outside of societal convention but with real precedents.”

“I think her motivation comes from a very deep need to prove to her father, to herself and to society that she is a good and worthy journalist,” she continued, “despite her sex

and age.”

Koma said that he was struck, when approached for the role, that Passepartout was a Black man who is a central character. “I thought it was audacious, and I was intrigued,” he said in a telephone interview.

“In the book, the characters don’t really evolve, but in our series there are real evolutions,” he added. “For Passepartout, the challenge is to deal with his life, to trust people, because when you are Black there are always presumptions.

As he goes through that journey, he becomes more able to take that risk.”

When directing the actors, Barron said he had tried to achieve a balance between the fantastical adventures of the story and striking a more realistic tone. “I felt there hadn’t been a definitive new version that said, ‘This is the spirit of Jules Verne’ and felt more contemporary without being too theatrical or broad,” he said. “You can get into a jokey kind of pantomime with the story, but I wanted to create something audiences could relate to.”

Tennant said that he hadn’t watched the 1956 movie.

“David Niven has such flair, and there was a danger I would try to emulate that, and it might not be relevant to this version,” he said. The Fogg of the book is “a rather unknowable, Zen-like character,” he added. “He is utterly inscrutable and unpanicked, and if he has an emotional life, it’s deeply hidden. Whereas my Fogg is full of insecurity and failure and is not heroic at all. The others are the heroes.”

Fogg’s emotional journey is, in fact, the heart of this new adaptation, Tennant said in a follow-up telephone interview in mid-December. “For the character, it’s a journey around the world and into the soul,” he said. “He is a man of privilege who is terribly frightened by life, and the whole thing is a white-knuckle ride into the unknown for him.”

And, Tennant added, “we worked hard on the thrills and spills.”

The narrative arc of the show was shaped by the route the travelers follow, Pharoah said, traveling east from Europe to Yemen, India, Hong Kong, the Pacific and to the West and East coasts of the United States before heading back to London. (Apart from brief scenes shot in London, filming took place in South Africa, which stood in for the “hot countries,” Pharoah explained, and Romania, which was used for Europe and North American scenes.)

When it was suggested that telling a story set in colonial Britain might be a sensitive issue today, Tennant said that from a 21st-century perspective, “you have to acknowledge it’s not something to celebrate.”

He added: “That’s part of Fogg’s journey I think — realizing that the world he lives in isn’t necessarily the world as it should be. And you have Passepartout looking at it all with a raised eyebrow, another lens on colonial history. I think people will go, this is a time in history we have mixed feelings about.”

Then he grinned, settled back in his chair and looked around the beautiful garden. “But everyone loves a period drama!”

20

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

The plane is boarding, where are your test results?

Cars lined up for well over a mile in Leesburg, Va., for a county-run, free COVID-19 testing site before Christmas.

By LAUREN SLOSS

C

hristine Yi held out hope that the test results would come through until the doors to her flight’s boarding gate closed.

Yi, 45, a content creator in New York, was attempting to fly to Grand Cayman in the Caribbean over the Christmas holiday weekend with her boyfriend, James Tracey, 47, the executive chef at Isabelle’s Osteria, a restaurant in New York’s Gramercy neighborhood.

The Cayman Islands requires proof of a negative COVID test taken within 24 hours of departure to enter. Yi and Tracey had booked PCR tests through NYU Langone medical center one day before their Dec. 24 departure. She received her negative test results on the evening of the 23rd. Tracey’s test also came back negative — after 34 hours, a missed flight, $150 in change fees, a two-hour wait for two rapid tests and a back-and-forth trip to John F. Kennedy International Airport.

“It was definitely a memorable start to our trip,” said Yi. Frequent testing, combined with vaccines and masking, has been repeatedly cited as the key to a holiday season closer to the “normal” of pre-pandemic times. But for international travelers

who need tests to enter their destinations, getting tested in time is easier said than done. Finding a test has become increasingly difficult — appointments are booked and walk-in sites often have hourslong waits. And even if you can get a test, it is far from guaranteed that your results will come back in time for you to board.

Making it even more difficult are the ever-changing requirements for international travel, with the testing deadlines often a moving target. In recent weeks, some places have shortened the window for valid test results, including the Cayman Islands — previously, a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours was sufficient for entry.

Testing has been a repeated pain point throughout the pandemic, from the limited availability and turnaround times that could stretch as long as a week in the spring of 2020 to the shortage of athome tests during the delta surge last summer. But the one-two punch of the highly contagious omicron variant and the holiday season has led to a huge demand for tests that the United States was, by and large, not prepared to meet. For some travelers, that means that the bestlaid plans, and even backup plans, may fall through.

“We have as much test volume now as we did in the large wave that we saw last holiday season,” said Alicia Zhou, the chief science officer of Color, a Burlingame, California, health technology company that has partnered with organizations across the country to provide large-scale testing and vaccination programs. Color guarantees that PCR results will be turned around within 48 hours or less; according to Zhou, the majority of results are returned in 24 hours or less.

The tests are free to the end user. They’ve been able to maintain that turnaround time in the latest surge, largely because they did not scale back operations when the demand for testing dropped in the middle of 2021, Zhou said.

“It felt like it wasn’t time for us to step off the gas yet,” Zhou said. “Omicron snuck up on us, but it also came on the tail end of delta.”

Demand for at-home tests approved by the Food and Drug Administration, like iHealth and BinaxNow, has skyrocketed, too, with pharmacies largely out of stock and shipping significantly delayed. Unless these tests are proctored by a medical professional, they are not sufficient for international travel, but they do offer peace of mind for family gatherings.

“We’re seeing unprecedented demand for BinaxNOW and we’re sending them out as fast as we can make them,” said a spokesperson for Abbott, the company that produces BinaxNow. The uncertainty has some people hedging their bets, setting up multiple tests in case one doesn’t come through in time. Alle Pierce, a Palm Springs, California-based travel adviser and the founder of Gals Abroad Getaways, recommended making an initial testing appointment through a primary care doctor and coming up with a backup plan, which could involve making a second appointment or scoping out a walk-in clinic, as Yi and Tracey were forced to do last-minute, in case those results don’t come back in time.

If you are able to find a site offering a quick turnaround, “expect to pay more,” said Pierce.

Zhou understood the need for that

strategy, but encouraged promptly canceling any additional testing appointments as soon as you’ve received your results.

“Try to make sure that you’re not overbooking and then not showing up to those appointments,” she said. “That leads to less availability for appointments for others.”

Percia Safar, 31, an investor in Los Angeles, ended up paying $670 for two rapid tests and a number of at-home tests in advance of an international trip. Her process was further complicated by a possible COVID exposure 10 days before she was meant to fly. In addition to self-testing at home daily and getting a rapid test five days after exposure, she needed to line up either a PCR test taken within 72 hours of her departure, or a rapid test within 24 hours. She said she found it nearly impossible to find a site offering PCR tests that guaranteed results within her window — her local CVS Pharmacy was quoting a two-to-four-day turnaround.

A CVS spokesperson said in a statement that the company is “continuing to meet the demand for COVID-19 testing, even with increasing numbers of patients seeking tests. He added that results are generally available within one to two days, but “may take longer due to local surges in COVID-19 cases.”

“I think I’m allowed to get some of that reimbursed by insurance,” said Safar.

“And obviously, it was a privilege that I was able to pay out-of-pocket. But it’s a lot. I can’t believe that cost falls on us.”

Indeed, the ability to pay more for a test can seem like the only way to avoid long waits and slow turnaround times.

Jack Ezon, the founder and managing partner of Embark Beyond, a travel advisory that caters to high-net-worth individuals, said that his clients hadn’t experienced delays or disruptions because of the current testing crush.

“Our clients will have a concierge doctor come to their home for a PCR or are going to an express lab,” he said.

“We’re not running into these issues so much, but our clients are willing to spend four or five times the price just to have the service.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

21

The year in fitness: Shorter workouts, greater clarity, longer lives

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

I

n a year filled with COVID-related hopes, setbacks, advances and losses, the most vital exercise science of 2021 provided a reminder that for many of us, our bodies and minds can strengthen, endure and flourish, no matter our circumstances. If we move our bodies in the right ways, a growing body of evidence suggests we might live with greater stamina, purpose and cognitive clarity for many years to come. And it may not take much movement.

In fact, some of the year’s biggest fitness news concerned how little exercise we might be able to get away with while maintaining or even improving our health. A study from January, for instance, showed that just five minutes of intense calisthenics substantially improved college students’ aerobic fitness and leg strength. Another series of studies from the University of Texas found that four seconds — yes, seconds — of ferocious bicycle pedaling, repeated several times, was enough to raise adults’ strength and endurance, whatever their age or health when they started.

Even people whose favorite workout is walking might need less than they think to reach an exercise sweet spot, other new research suggested. As I wrote in July, the familiar goal of 10,000 daily steps, deeply embedded in our activity trackers and collective consciousness, has little scientific validity. It is a myth that grew out of a marketing accident, and a study published this summer further debunked it, finding that people who took between 7,000 and 8,000 steps a day, or a little more than 3 miles, generally lived longer than those strolling less or accumulating more than 10,000 steps. So keep moving, but there’s no need to fret if your total doesn’t reach a five-figure step count.

Of course, exercise science weighed in on other resonant topics this year, too, including weight. And the news there was not all cheering. Multiple studies this year reinforced an emerging scientific consensus that our bodies compensate for some of the calories we expend during physical activity, by shunting energy away from certain cellular processes or prompting us unconsciously to move and fidget less. A study from July, for example, that examined the metabolisms of almost 2,000 people concluded that we probably compensate, on average, for about one-quarter of the calories we burn with exercise. As a result, on days we exercise, we wind up burning far fewer total calories than we might think, making weight loss that much more challenging.

On the other hand, exercise seems essential for weight maintenance, according to other research this year. A new scientific analysis of participants from TV weight-loss contest “The Biggest Loser” found that

those who exercised the most in the years after the program ended were the least likely to have regained all of the pounds they shed during the show.

Exercise also has a disproportionate effect on our odds of enjoying a long, healthy life. According to one of the most inspiring studies this year, overweight people who started working out lowered their risk of premature death by about 30% even if they remained overweight, with exercise providing about twice as much benefit as weight loss might.

Exercise enhances our brain power, too, according to other memorable experiments from this year.

They showed physical activity fortifying immune cells that help protect us against dementia; prompting the release of a hormone that improves neuron health and the ability to think (in mice); shoring up the fabric of our brains’ white matter, the stuff that connects and protects our working brain cells; and likely even adding to our creativity. In a nifty study from February, physically active people tended to dream up more inventive ways to use car tires and umbrellas, a standard test of creativity, than people who seldom moved around much.

Taken together, this year’s exercise neuroscience

research makes “a strong case for getting up and moving” if we hope to use our brains with ongoing clarity and in imaginative ways deep into our golden years, as one of the researchers said to me.

Still, the study that stuck with me most this year had less to do with the myriad ways exercise remodels our bodies and brains and more with how it might shape our sense of what matters. In the study, which I wrote about in May, active people reported a stronger sense of purpose in their lives than inactive people.

“A sense of purpose is the feeling you get from having goals and plans that give direction and meaning to life,” the study’s lead researcher told me. “It is about being engaged with life in productive ways.”

The study found that exercise amplified people’s purposefulness over time, while simultaneously, a sturdy sense of purpose fortified people’s willingness to exercise. In effect, the more people felt their lives had meaning, the more they wound up moving, and the more they moved, the more meaningful they found their lives.

It’s a result worth remembering as we look ahead with wary optimism. So stay healthy, active and in touch in 2022, everyone. Here’s to a happy new year!

In a year filled with COVID-related hopes, setbacks, advances and losses, the most vital exercise science of 2021 provided a reminder that for many of us, our bodies and minds can strengthen, endure and flourish, no matter our circumstances.

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

FELIPE PAGÁN PAGÁN; ROSA ELBA BERROCALES LEBRÓN Peticionarios

EX PARTE

Civil Núm.: SB2020CV00018.

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

A: LAS PERSONAS IGNORADAS Y DESCONOCIDAS A QUIENES PUDIERA PERJUDICAR LA INSCRIPCION DE LA PROPIEDAD OBJETO DE ESTE CASO EN EL REGISTRO DE LA PROPIEDAD A FAVOR DE LA PARTE PETICIONARIA, Y A TODA PERSONA QUE PUEDAN TENER ALGÚN DERECHO REAL O INTERÉS SOBRE DICHA PROPIEDAD DESCRITA EN ESTE EDICTO.

POR LA PRESENTE se les notifica a las personas citadas para que comparezcan, si lo creyeren pertinente, ante este Honorable Tribunal a exponer lo que a sus derechos convengan en cuanto a este expediente de dominio promovido por la parte peticionaria para justificar su dominio y lograr la inscripción a su favor de la siguiente finca: Descripción de la finca previa mensura: RÚSTICA: Porción de terreno sita en el barrio Tabonuco Bajo, del municipio de Sabana Grande, de una cabida de SEIS CUERDAS más o menos, equivalentes a dos hectáreas, treinta y cinco áreas y ochenta y dos centiáreas, colindante al NORTE, con José A. Busigó; al SUR, con terrenos de Francisco Cordero; al ESTE, con Petra García y al OESTE, con Francisco Cordero. Descripción de finca según mensura: RÚSTICA: Terreno localizado en el Barrio Tabonuco, del término Municipal de Sabana Grande, Puerto Rico; con una cabida de VEINTICUATRO MIL DOSCIENTOS VEINTIDÓS punto DOS DOS SEIS TRES METROS CUADRADOS (24,222.2263 m/c) equivalentes a SEIS punto UNO SEIS DOS OCHO CUERDAS (6.1628 cdas.); y en lindes: por el NOR-

@

TE, con terrenos de Confesor Vega Álvarez; por el SUR, con terrenos de la Sucesión Cosma; por el ESTE, con terrenos de la misma Sucesión Cosma y por el OESTE, con terrenos de Ángel Rivera Nazario, Alberto Morales Justiniano y Confesor Vega Álvarez. Ubican dentro de este terreno dos (2) estructuras, una dedicada a vivienda y otra dedicada a almacenamiento de utilerías domésticas.

Catastro número: 312-000-00128-901. Este edicto deberá ser publicado en 3 ocasiones dentro del término de 20 días, en un periódico de circulación general diaria, para que comparezcan los citados si quieren alegar su derecho. Se le apercibe que de no comparecer los interesados y/o partes citadas, o en su defecto los organismos públicos afectados en el término improrrogable de 20 días a contar de la fecha de la última publicación del edicto, el Tribunal podrá conceder el remedio solicitado por la parte peticionaria, sin más citarle ni oírle. El abogado de la parte peticionaria es el Lcdo. Elvin Noé Ojeda Bonilla, Apartado 288, Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, 00623; RUA 15583; teléfono: 787-851-4226; correo electrónico: lcdo.ojeda@gmail.com. Usted deberá presentar su posición a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación en la secretaría del Tribunal. Si usted deja de expresarse dentro del referido término, el Tribunal podrá dictar sentencia, previo a escuchar la prueba de valor de la parte peticionaria en su contra, sin más citarle ni oírle, y conceder el remedio solicitado en la petición, o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción lo entiende procedente.

En Mayagüez, P.R., a 16 de diciembre de 2021. LIC. NORMA G. SANTANA IRIZARRY, SECRETARIA REGIONAL II. MARITZA LEBRÓN ROSADO, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL.

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Demandante Vs.

SUCESION DE MARJORIE ARROYO TORRES COMPUESTA POR

VIOLETA ARROYO, OSVALDO ARROYO, RICARDO ARROYO, MANUEL ARROYO, CARLOS ARROYO, CARMEN MILAGROS ARROYO,FULANO DE TAL YZUTANO DE TAL COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS; CENTRO DE RECAUDACION DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES “CRIM”

Demandados Civil Núm.: FA2019CV00620.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO (Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria). EDICTO DE SUBASTA.

Al: Público en General A: SUCESION DE MARJORIE ARROYO TORRES COMPUESTA POR VIOLETA ARROYO, OSVALDO ARROYO, RICARDO ARROYO, MANUEL ARROYO, CARLOS ARROYO, CARMEN MILAGROS ARROYO,FULANO DE TAL YZUTANO DE TAL COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS; CENTRO DE RECAUDACION DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES “CRIM”.

Yo, SANDRALIZ MARTINEZ TORRES, Alguacil Auxiliar #737, Alguacil de este Tribunal, a la parte demandada y a los acreedores y personas con interés sobre la propiedad que más adelante se describe, y al público en general, HAGO SABER: Que el día 8 de marzo de 2022 a las 10:00 de la mañana en mi oficina, sita en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Fajardo, Fajardo, Puerto Rico, venderé en Pública Subasta la propiedad inmueble que más adelante se describe y cuya venta en pública subasta se ordenó por la vía ordinaria al mejor postor quien hará el pago en dinero en efectivo, giro postal o cheque certificado a nombre del o la Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado, estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal de Fajardo durante horas laborables. Que en caso de no producir remate ni adjudicación en la primera subasta a celebrarse, se celebrará una segunda subasta para la venta de la susodicha propiedad, el día 15 de marzo de 2022 a las 10:00 de la mañana y en

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

caso de no producir remate ni adjudicación, secelebrará una tercera subastael día 23 de marzo de 2022 a las 10:00 de la mañana en mi oficina sita en el lugar antes indicado. La propiedad a venderse en pública subasta se describe como sigue: URBANA: Solar marcado con el número Nueve (9) del Bloque “B” de la URBANIZACIÓN MÍNIMA CRUV guión Uno guión Tres (CRUV-1-3), radicado en el término municipal de Fajardo, Puerto Rico, con una cabida de DOSCIENTOS CINCUENTA Y DOS PUNTO CATORCE (252.14) METROS CUADRADOS. En linderos: NORTE, con solar número Diez (10); SUR, con solar número Ocho (8); ESTE, con la Calle número Dos (2); y por el OESTE, con solar número Veintitrés (23). En dicho solar enclava una casa de hormigón reforzado y bloques que constará de cuatro (4) dormitorios, sala, comedor, cocina, baño, balcón, cuarto de “laundry” y marquesina. La escritura de hipoteca se encuentra inscrita al folio 220 vuelto del tomo 418 de Fajardo, Registro de la Propiedad de Fajardo, finca 6,346, inscripción Quinta. La dirección física de la propiedad antes descrita es: 9 Bloque B, Calle 2 Urbanización Rafael Bermudez, Fajardo, Puerto Rico. La subasta se llevará a efecto para satisfacer a la parte demandante la suma de $28,192.92 de principal, intereses al 6.25% anual, desde el día 1ro. de septiembre de 2018, hasta su completo pago, más la cantidad de $3,900.00 estipulada para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado, más recargos acumulados, todas cuyas sumas están líquidas y exigibles. Que la cantidad mínima de licitación en la primera subasta para el inmueble será de $39,000.00.Si no produjere remate ni adjudicación la primera subasta, en la segunda subasta servirá de tipo mínimo las dos terceras partes del precio pactado, es decir la suma de $26,000.00. Si tampoco hubiere remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta, regirá como tipo mínimo de la tercera subasta la mitad del precio pactado, o sea la suma de $19,500.00. Si se declara desierta la tercera subasta se adjudicará la finca a favor del acreedor por la totalidad de la cantidad adeudada si esta es igual o menor que el monto del tipo de la tercera subasta, si el Tribunal lo estima conveniente.

Se abonará dicho monto a la cantidad adeudada si esta es mayor. La propiedad se adjudicará al mejor postor, quien deberá satisfacer el importe de su oferta en moneda legal y

(787) 743-3346

Monday, January 3, 2022 corriente de los Estados Unidos de América en el momento de la adjudicación y que todo licitador acepta como suficiente la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes preferentes, si los hubiese, continuarán subsistentes, entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. La propiedad a ser vendida en pública subasta se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. Podrán concurrir como postores a todas las subastas los titulares de créditos hipotecarios vigentes y posteriores a la hipoteca que se cobra o ejecuta, si alguno o que figuren como tales en la certificación registral y que podrán utilizar el montante de sus créditos o parte de alguno en sus ofertas. Si la oferta aceptada es por cantidad mayor a la suma del crédito o créditos preferentes al suyo, al obtener la buena pro del remate, deberá satisfacer en el mismo acto, en efectivo o en cheque de gerente, la totalidad del crédito hipotecario que se ejecuta y la de cualesquiera otro créditos posteriores al que se ejecuta pero preferente al suyo. El exceso constituirá abono total o parcial en su propio crédito. EN TESTIMONIO DE LO CUAL, expido el presente Edicto para conocimiento y comparecencia de los licitadores, bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, en Fajardo, Puerto Rico, a 18 de octubre de 2021.

SHIRLEY SANCHEZ MARTINEZ, Alguacil Regional #161.

SANDRALIZ MARTINEZ TORRES, Alguacil Auxiliar #737 ALGUACIL TRIBUNAL SALA SUPERIOR DEFAJARDO.

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Demandante Vs.

ADAMS SANCHEZ CORDERO, su esposa JANICE CASILLAS MIRANDA y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales compuesta por ambos; EFRAIN CRUZ MORALES, también conocido como EFRAIN C. MORALES PONS y como EFRAIN MORALES PONS, su esposa TILKY HERNANDEZ RODRIGUEZ, también conocida como TILKI

HERNANDEZ MORALES y como TILKY H. MORALES y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales compuesta por ambos; CARLOS R. DE JESUS

Demandados Civil Núm.: NSCI2016-0377.

(303). Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO (EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA). EDICTO DE SUBASTA.

Al: PÚBLICO EN GENERAL. A: ADAMS SANCHEZ CORDERO, SU ESPOSA JANICE CASILLAS MIRANDA Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS; EFRAIN CRUZ MORALES, TAMBIÉN CONOCIDO COMO EFRAIN C. MORALES PONS Y COMO EFRAIN MORALES PONS, SU ESPOSA TILKY HERNANDEZ RODRIGUEZ, TAMBIÉN CONOCIDA COMO TILKI HERNANDEZ MORALES Y COMO TILKY H. MORALES Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS; CARLOS R. DE JESUS.

Yo, SANDRALIZ MARTÍNEZ TORRES, ALGUACIL AUXILIAR #737, Alguacil de este Tribunal, a la parte demandada y a los acreedores y personas con interés sobre la propiedad que más adelante se describe, y al público en general, HAGO SABER: Que el día 8 DE MARZO DE 2022 A LAS 10:30 DE LA MAÑANA en mi oficina, sita en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Fajardo, Fajardo, Puerto Rico, venderé en Pública Subasta la propiedad inmueble que más adelante se describe y cuya venta en pública subasta se ordenó por la vía ordinaria al mejor postor quien hará el pago en dinero en efectivo, giro postal o cheque certificado a nombre del o la Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado, estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal de Fajardo durante horas laborables. Que en caso de no producir remate ni adjudicación en la primera subasta a celebrarse, se celebrará una SEGUNDA SUBASTA para la venta de la susodicha propiedad, el día

The San Juan Daily Star 15 DE MARZO DE 2022, A LAS 10:30 DE LA MAÑANA y en caso de no producir remate ni adjudicación, se celebrará una TERCERA SUBASTA el día 23 DE MARZO DE 2022, A LAS 10:30 DE LA MAÑANA en mi oficina sita en el lugar antes indicado. La propiedad a venderse en pública subasta se describe como sigue: URBANA: Solar marcado con el número Trece (13) de la Manzana “G” de la URBANIZACIÓN FAJARDO GARDENS de Fajardo, Puerto Rico, compuesto de TRESCIENTOS UNO PUNTO TREINTA (301.30) METROS CUADRADOS, en lindes por el NORTE, con el solar número Doce (12), distancia de VEINTITRÉS PUNTO CERO CERO (23.00) METROS; por el SUR, con el solar número Catorce (14), distancia de VEINTITRÉS PUNTO CERO CERO (23.00) METROS; por el ESTE, con la Calle número Tres (3), distancia de TRECE PUNTO DIEZ (13.10) METROS; y por el OESTE, con PR guión Ciento Noventa y Cuatro (PR-194), distancia de TRECE PUNTO DIEZ (13.10) METROS. Enclava una casa de concreto. La escritura de hipoteca se encuentra inscrita al folio 175 del tomo 144 de Fajardo, Registro de la Propiedad de Fajardo, finca número 4,712, inscripción octava. La dirección física de la propiedad antes descrita es: Urbanización Fajardo Gardens, 13G-121, Calle Robles, Fajardo, Puerto Rico. La subasta se llevará a efecto para satisfacer a la parte demandante la suma de $89,626.16 de principal, intereses al 6% anual, desde el día 1ro. de diciembre de 2015, hasta su completo pago, más la cantidad de $10,120.00 estipulada para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado, más recargos acumulados, todas cuyas sumas están líquidas y exigibles. Que la cantidad mínima de licitación en la primera subasta para el inmueble será de $101,200.00 y de ser necesaria una segunda subasta, la cantidad mínima será equivalente a 2/3 partes de aquella, o sea, la suma de $67,466.67 y de ser necesaria una tercera subasta, la cantidad mínima será la mitad del precio pactado, es decir, la suma de $50,600.00. Si se declara desierta la tercera subasta se adjudicará la finca a favor del acreedor por la totalidad de la cantidad adeudada si esta es igual o menor que el monto del tipo de la tercera subasta, si el Tribunal lo estima conveniente.

Se abonará dicho monto a la cantidad adeudada si esta es mayor. La propiedad se adjudicará al mejor postor, quien

deberá satisfacer el importe de su oferta en moneda legal y corriente de los Estados Unidos de América en el momento de la adjudicación y que todo licitador acepta como suficiente la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes preferentes, si los hubiese, continuarán subsistentes, entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. La propiedad a ser vendida en pública subasta se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. Podrán concurrir como postores a todas las subastas los titulares de créditos hipotecarios vigentes y posteriores a la hipoteca que se cobra o ejecuta, si alguno o que figuren como tales en la certificación registral y que podrán utilizar el montante de sus créditos o parte de alguno en sus ofertas. Si la oferta aceptada es por cantidad mayor a la suma del crédito o créditos preferentes al suyo, al obtener la buena pro del remate, deberá satisfacer en el mismo acto, en efectivo o en cheque de gerente, la totalidad del crédito hipotecario que se ejecuta y la de cualesquiera otro créditos posteriores al que se ejecuta pero preferente al suyo. El exceso constituirá abono total o parcial en su propio crédito. EN TESTIMONIO DE LO CUAL, expido el presente Edicto para conocimiento y comparecencia de los licitadores, bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, en Fajardo, Puerto Rico, a 18 de octubre de 2021.

SHIRLEY SÁNCHEZ MARTINEZ, ALGUACIL REGIONAL #161. SANDRALIZ MARTÍNEZ TORRES, ALGUACIL AUXILIAR #737, ALGUACIL DEL TRIBUNAL, SALA SUPERIOR DE FAJARDO. ****

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

JOAQUINA REBOLLO AYALA Peticionaria

EX PARTE

Civil Núm.: CG2021CV02383.

Sobre: PETICIÓN DE DOMINIO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU., EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS.

A: SR. JUAN REYES RODRÍGUEZ O SUS HEREDEROS.

La peticionaria ha radicado en este Tribunal una Solicitud para

The San Juan Daily Star que se declare a su favor, el dominio de la siguiente finca: RÚSTICA: Parcela Número 1 ubicada en el Barrio Bairoa, Comunidad Las Carolinas, municipio de Caguas, Puerto Rico, compuesto de Mil Seiscientos Ochenta y Ocho punto Veintisiete metros cuadrados (1,688.27 m.c.), equivalentes a Cero Punto Cuatro Mil Doscientos Noventa y Cinco cuerdas (0.4295 cdas.). En lindes por el Norte, con Carretera Municipal; por el Sur con Sucesión A. López Ramos; por el Este con Sucesión Juan Reyes Merced (Remanente B) y por el Oeste, con Parcela 2 a segregarse.

Representa a la peticionaria, la abogada cuyo nombre, dirección y teléfono es el siguiente: Lcda. Ivette Rossana García Cruz RUA 20231 PO BOX 373151 Cayey, PR 00737-3151 E-mail: garciacruzlaw@gmail.com Habiéndose dictado Orden por el Honorable Tribunal para que la solicitud de la peticionaria sea publicada por tres (3) veces en el término de veinte (20) días en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, para que el Sr. Juan Reyes Rodríguez o sus herederos comparezcan a alegar sus derechos dentro de los veinte (20) días de la última publicación del edicto. Se les apercibe que, si no comparecieren a contestar dicha petición dentro del término establecido, se dictará sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado. En Caguas, Puerto Rico, a 16 de diciembre de 2021. LISILDA MARTÍNEZ AGOSTO, SECRETARIA. GLORISSETTE RIVERA REYES, SUB-SECRETARIA.

tos y documentos del caso de epígrafe estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante horas laborables y que venderá en pública subasta al mejor postor, en moneda de curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América en efectivo, cheque certificado, o giro postal a nombre del Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, en mi oficina en este Tribunal el derecho que tenga la parte demandada en el inmueble que se relaciona más adelante para pagar la SENTENCIA por $37,365.20 de balance principal al 8.737% anual desde el 13 de enero de 2016 hasta su completo pago; el 5% computado sobre cada mensualidad de principal e interés por la suma de $645.10 por concepto de cargos por demora desde el día 13 de febrero de 2016 mensuales hasta su total pago, más la suma de $6,545.00 como cantidad estipulada para honorarios de abogado, pactada en la escritura de hipoteca; y cuales quiera otras sumas que por cualesquiera concepto legal se devenguen hasta el día de la subasta. La propiedad a venderse en pública subasta se describe como sigue: URBANA: Solar número tres del Bloque B de la Urbanización Villa Hilda, radicado en el Barrio Juan Martín del término municipal de Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, con un área superficial de Trescientos Dieciséis punto Cincuenta y Dos metros cuadrados. En lindes por el Norte, en una distancia de veinticuatro punto treinta y dos con el solar número dos del bloque B de la Urbanización; por el Sur, LEGAL NOTICE en una distancia de veintitrés ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO punto setenta y siete metros DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- con el solar número cuatro del NAL DE PRIMERA INSTAN- bloque B de la Urbanización; CIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE por el Este, en una distancia HUMACAO SALA SUPERIOR de doce punto cuarenta metros LIME HOMES, LTD. con el solar número veinte del Parte Demandante Vs. bloque B de la urbanización; y PORFIRIO GOMEZ por el Oeste, en una distancia RIVERA, LA SUCESION de trece punto noventa metros DE RUTH ELDY VAZQUEZ con la calle número dos de la RIVERA COMPUESTA Urbanización. En este solar enclava una casa de concreto rePOR HEIDSY ODALIS forzado, consiste principalmenGOMEZ VAZQUEZ, te de sala-comedor, cocina, tres SHEILA GOMEZ; LA cuartos de dormir, un cuarto de ADMINISTRACION baño, balcón y marquesina. La PARA EL SUSTENTO DE casa contiene nevera, estufa, MENORES Y CENTRO DE gabinetes de cocina y calenRECAUDACION SOBRE tador de agua. Inscrita al folio ciento cuarenta y cuatri (144) INGRESOS MUNICIPALES del tomo ciento siete (107) de Parte Demandada Yabucoa, finca número cuatro Civil Núm.: HSCI2017-00527. mil seiscientos treinta (4,630) Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOdel Registro de la Propiedad, TECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA Sección de Humacao. DirecY COBRO DE DINERO. ANUNción Física: Urb. Villa Hilda, B-3 CIO DE SUBASTA. El suscriCalle 2, Yabucoa, PR 00767. La biente, Alguacil del Tribunal de PRIMERA SUBASTA se llevará Primera Instancia de Puerto a cabo el día 16 DE MARZO Rico, Sala de Humacao, OficiDE 2022 A LAS 11:00 DE LA na de Subasta; a los demandaMAÑANA y servirá de tipo mídos de epígrafe y al público en nimo para la misma la suma general hace saber que los aude $65,450.00 sin admitirse

Monday, January 3, 2022 oferta inferior. En el caso de que el inmueble a ser subastado no fuera adjudicado en la primera subasta, se celebrará una SEGUNDA SUBASTA el día 23 DE MARZO DE 2022 A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA y el precio mínimo para esta segunda subasta será el de dos terceras partes del precio mínimo establecido para la primera subasta, o a sea la suma de $43,633.33. Si tampoco hubiera remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta, se celebrará una TERCERA SUBASTA el día 30 DE MARZO DE 2022 A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA y el tipo mínimo para esta tercera subasta será la mitad del precio establecido para la primera subasta, o sea, la suma de $37,725.00. El mejor postor deberá pagar el importe de su oferta en efecto, cheque certificado o giro postal a nombre del Alguacil del Tribunal. Si se declarase desierta la tercera subasta, se dará por terminado el procedimiento, pudiendo adjudicarse el inmueble al acreedor hipotecario dentro de los diez días siguientes a la fecha de la última subasta, si así lo estimase conveniente, por la totalidad de la cantidad adeudada conforme a la sentencia, si ésta fuera igual o menor que el monto del tipo de la tercera subasta y abonándose dicho monto a la cantidad adeudada si ésta fuera mayor. Se avisa a cualquier licitador que la propiedad queda sujeta al gravamen del Estado Libre Asociado y CRIM sobre la propiedad inmueble por contribuciones adeudadas y que el pago de dichas contribuciones es la responsabilidad del licitador. Que se entenderá por todo licitador acepte como suficiente la titulación y que los cargos y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes en entendiéndose que el rematador los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse su extinción al precio rematante. Todos los nombres de 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 hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito ejecutado, siempre que surgen 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, que-

dando entonces subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. Y para conocimiento de licitadores, del público en general y para su publicación en un periódico de circulación general diaria en Puerto Rico y en los sitios públicos de acuerdo a las disposiciones de la Regla 51.7 de las de Procedimiento Civil, así como para la publicación en un periódico de circulación general diaria y en el Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas con antelación a la fecha de la primera subasta y por lo menos una vez por semana. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento indicado estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante las horas laborables.

(Art. 102 (1) de la Ley núm.

210-2015). Expedido el presente en Humacao, Puerto Rico a 8 de noviembre de 2021. MARÍA DEL PILAR RIVERA RIVERA, Alguacil Del Tribunal De Primera Instancia, Sala De Humacao.

Wilnelia Rivera Delgado, Alguacil Auxiliar Placa #249.

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Parte Demandante Vs.

CARLOS RUBÉN RODRÍGUEZ MOLINA, NITZA ELENA RODRÍGUEZ CUEVAS Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: NSCI201600483.

(307). Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO, EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS. AVISO DE PÚBLICA SUBASTA. El Alguacil que suscribe por la presente anuncia y hace constar que en cumplimiento de la Sentencia dictada el 11 de agosto de 2021, la Orden de Ejecución de Sentencia del 1 de octubre de 2021 y el Mandamiento de Ejecución del 1 de octubre de 2021 en el caso de epígrafe, procederé a vender el día 6 DE ABRIL DE 2022, A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en mi oficina, localizada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Centro Judicial de Fajardo, Sala Superior, Ave. Marcelito Gotay esquina Barriada Jerusalén, Fajardo, Puerto Rico, al mejor postor en

pago de contado y en moneda de los Estados Unidos de América, cheque de gerente o giro postal a nombre del Alguacil del Tribunal; todo título, derecho o interés de la parte demandada sobre la siguiente propiedad: URBANA: PROPIEDAD HORIZONTAL: Edificio número 18 Apartamento 18-302 de hormigón armado y bloques para fines residenciales localizado en el Tercer Piso de edificio que a su vez forma parte del conjunto de edificios conocidos como “Condominio Costa Brava” radicado en el barrio Machos del término municipal de Ceiba, Puerto Rico. Consta de un área superficial de 1081.9514 pies cuadrados, equivalentes a 100.5166 metros cuadrados.

Colinda por el: NOROESTE: Con pared medianera que lo separa del apartamento número 301 del edificio número 17; SUROESTE: Con área exterior; NORESTE: Con área exterior; SURESTE: Con pared medianera que lo separada del apartamento número 301 del edificio del que forma parte.

Dicho apartamento consta de tres cuartos dormitorios con sus closets, dos cuartos de baño, sala-comedor, cocina-laundry, un pasillo o corredor que da acceso de la sala-comedor a las habitaciones donde ubica un “linen closet” y una terraza-patio.

Su puerta de entrada está localizada en el extremo Noreste, de su sala-comedor y la misma da acceso directo al exterior del edificio. Está equipado con un fregadero doble en la cocina, una pileta de lavado en el área de lavandería, un calentador de agua. Le corresponde en los elementos comunes generales una participación de 0.4594% y dos áreas o espacios tipo sencillo para el estacionamiento de vehículos de motor, identificados ambas con el número de apartamento. La propiedad y la escritura de hipoteca consta inscrita al Folio 214 del Tomo 170 de Ceiba, Finca #10,699.

Registro de la Propiedad de Fajardo. Inscripción segunda.

DIRECCIÓN FÍSICA: COND. COSTA BRAVA, APT. 302, BLDG 18, CEIBA, PR 00735.

SUBASTAS: FECHAS: PRIMERA: 6 DE ABRIL DE 2022 A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA. TIPO MÍNIMO: $104,000.00.

SEGUNDA: 13 DE ABRIL DE 2022 A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA. TIPO MÍNIMO: $69,333.33. TERCERA: 21 DE ABRIL DE 2022 A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA. TIPO MÍNIMO: $52,000.00. El tipo mínimo para la primera subasta será de $104,000.00. De no haber adjudicación en la primera subasta se celebrará una SEGUNDA SUBASTA, el día 13 DE ABRIL DE 2022, A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo lugar, en la cual el tipo mínimo será de dos terceras partes del tipo mínimo fijado en la primera su-

23

basta, o sea, $69,333.33. De no haber adjudicación en la segunda subasta, se celebrará una TERCERA SUBASTA el día 21 DE ABRIL DE 2022, A LAS 11:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo lugar, en la cual el tipo mínimo será la mitad del precio pactado, o sea, $52,000.00. Si se declarase desierta la tercera subasta, se adjudicará la finca a favor del acreedor por la totalidad de la cantidad adeudada si ésta es igual o menor que el monto del tipo de la tercera subasta, si el tribunal lo estima conveniente. Se abonará dicho monto a la cantidad adeudada si ésta es mayor. Dicho remate se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer a la demandante el importe de la Orden de Ejecución de Sentencia por la suma de $85,914.92 de principal, más intereses sobre dicha suma al 6.25% anual desde el 1 de diciembre de 2015 hasta su completo pago, más $192.12 por recargos adeudados desde el día 1 de enero de 2016 hasta su total pago, más la cantidad estipulada de $10,400.00 para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados, así como cualquier otra suma que contenga el contrato del préstamo. Surge del Estudio de Título Registral que sobre esta propiedad pesan los siguientes gravámenes posteriores a la hipoteca que por la presente ejecutar: a. Hipoteca: Constituida por Carlos Rubén Rodríguez Molina y su esposa, Nitza Elena Rodríguez Cuevas, en garantía de un pagaré a favor de Doral Bank, o a su orden, por la suma de $26,000.00, sus intereses al 6.25% anual y vencedero el 1 de marzo de 2035, según consta de la Escritura Número 158, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 22 de febrero de 2005, ante el Notario Juan Manuel Casanova Rivera.

Inscrita al folio 214 del tomo 170 de Ceiba, finca número 10699, Inscripción tercera y última. b. Aviso de Demanda: Pleito seguido por Banco Popular de Puerto Rico vs. Carlos Rubén Rodríguez Molina y su esposa, Nitza Elena Rodríguez Cuevas, ante el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Fajardo, en el caso civil número NSCI 2016-00483, sobre cobro de dinero y ejecución de hipoteca en la que se reclama el pago de hipoteca, con un balance de $85,914.923 y otras cantidades según Demanda de fecha 16 de agosto de 2016.

Anotada al Tomo Karibe de Ceiba. Anotación A. Se notifica al acreedor posterior o a su sucesor o cesionario en derecho para que comparezca a proteger su derecho si así lo desea.

Se le advierte a los interesados que todos los documentos relacionados con la presente acción de ejecución de hipoteca, así como los de Subasta, estarán disponibles para ser examinados, durante horas la-

borables, en el expediente del caso que obra en los archivos de la Secretaría del Tribunal, bajo el número de epígrafe y para su publicación en un periódico de circulación general en Puerto Rico por espacio de dos semanas y por lo menos una vez por semana; y para su fijación en los sitios públicos requeridos por ley. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante, continuarán subsistentes; entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate y que la propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores tal como lo expresa la Ley Núm.

210-2015. Y para el conocimiento de los demandados, de los acreedores posteriores, de los licitadores, partes interesadas y público en general, EXPIDO para su publicación en los lugares públicos correspondientes, el presente Aviso de Pública Subasta en Fajardo Puerto Rico, hoy 22 de noviembre de 2021. SHIRLEY SÁNCHEZ MARTÍNEZ, ALGUACIL REGIONAL #161. SANDRALIZ MARTÍNEZ TORRES, ALGUACIL AUXILIAR #737, ALGUACIL, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, CENTRO JUDICIAL DE FAJARDO, SALA SUPERIOR.

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

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante V.

ANGEL LUIS SANTIAGO DÁVILA; JENNIFER VALENTÍN SANTIAGO

Demandados Civil Núm.: BY2020CV03985.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y 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 Superior de Bayamón, hago saber a la parte demandada ANGEL LUIS SANTIAGO DÁVILA, JENNIFER VALENTÍN SANTIAGO y al PÚBLICO EN GENERAL; que en cumplimiento del Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia expedido el 22 de noviembre de 2021, por la Secretaría del Tribunal, procederé a vender y venderé en pública subasta por el precio mínimo de $77,500.00 y al mejor postor, pagadero en efectivo, cheque de gerente o giro postal, a

nombre del alguacil del tribunal, la propiedad que se describe a continuación: 214 4ST. SAN CARLOS, BO. HIGUILLAR, DORADO, PR 00646, y que se describe de la siguiente manera: RÚSTICA: Parcela marcada con el número 214 del proyecto UM-7-5 denominado Urbanización San Carlos, radicada en el Barrio Higuillar del término municipal de Dorado, Puerto Rico, con cabida de 264.00 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, con la calle número 4 de la comunidad; por el SUR, con el solar número 224 de la comunidad; por el ESTE, con el solar número 213 de la comunidad; y por el OESTE, con el solar número 215 de la comunidad. Finca 10096 inscrita al folio 31 del tomo 220 de Dorado, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección IV. Catastro #037-074-282-08-000.

La finca antes descrita se encuentra afecta a los siguientes gravámenes: (i) HIPOTECA en garantía de un pagaré a favor de Oriental Bank and Trust, o a su orden, por la suma de $77,500.00, con intereses al 7.25% anuales y vencimiento 1 de febrero de 2037. Constituida mediante la escritura 60 otorgada en San Juan el 31 de enero de 2007 ante el notario Javier A. Rivera Meléndez. Inscrita el 2 de marzo de 2007 al folio 159 del tomo 256 de Dorado, finca 1009, inscripción 3ª, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección IV. (ii) HIPOTECA en garantía de un pagaré a favor de Autoridad para el Financiamiento de la Vivienda de Puerto Rico, o a su orden, por la suma de $2,700.00, sin intereses anuales y vencimiento 31 de enero de 2013. Constituida mediante la escritura 61 otorgada en San Juan el 31 de enero de 2007 ante el notario Javier A. Rivera Meléndez. Inscrita el 2 de marzo de 2007 al folio 159 del tomo 256 de Dorado, finca 1009, inscripción 4ª, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección IV. Condiciones de la Hipoteca: Sujeta a las disposiciones del Programa gubernamental denominado “La Llave para tu Hogar”; no pudiendo ser transferida ni gravada por un término de 8 años, a partir de la concesión del subsidio, sin el previo consentimiento de la Autoridad so pena de la restitución del subsidio concedido.

La hipoteca objeto de esta ejecución es la que ha quedado descrita en el inciso (i). Será celebrada la subasta para con el importe de la misma satisfacer la sentencia dicta el 10 de julio de 2021, mediante la cual se condenó a la parte demandada pagar a la parte demandante la suma de $61,898.28 de principal, más interés que continuarán acumulándose hasta el saldo total al 7.25% anual, $434.68 de cargos por demora, $1,252.18 de otros gastos,

24 $7,750.00 de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado, más cualquier otro desembolso que haya efectuado o efectúe la parte demandante durante la tramitación de este caso para otros adelantos de conformidad con el Contrato Hipotecario, incluyendo primas de seguro de hipoteca, prima de seguro de siniestro y cargos por demora.

La PRIMERA SUBASTA será celebrada el día 3 DE FEBRERO DE 2022 A LAS 11:15 DE LA MAÑANA, en la oficina del Alguacil, sita en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Bayamón, Puerto Rico. Servirá de tipo mínimo para la misma la cantidad de $77,500.00, sin admitirse oferta inferior. De no haber remate ni adjudicación, celebraré SEGUNDA SUBASTA el día 10 DE FEBRERO DE 2022 A LAS 11:15 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, $51,666.67. Si no hubiese remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta, celebraré TERCERA SUBASTA el día 17 DE FEBRERO DE 2022 A LAS 11:15 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo lugar en la que regirá como tipo mínimo, la mitad del precio pactado para la primera subasta, o sea, $38,750.00. El Alguacil que suscribe hizo constar que toda licitación deberá hacerse para pagar su importe en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos de América, de acuerdo con la Ley y de acuerdo con lo anunciado en este Aviso de Subasta. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante horas laborables. Se entiende que todo licitador que comparezca a la subasta señalada en este caso acepta como bastante la titulación que da base a la misma. Se entiende que cualquier carga y/o gravamen anterior y/o preferente, si la hubiere al crédito que da base a esta ejecución continuará subsistente, entendiéndose, además, que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción cualquier parte del remanente del precio de licitación. La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. Por la presente se notifica a los acreedores que tengan inscritos o anotados sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante o acreedores de cargas o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca ejecutada y las personas interesadas en, o con derecho a exigir el cumplimiento de instrumentos negociables garantizados hipotecariamente con

posterioridad al crédito ejecutado, para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les convenga o satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, costas y honorarios de abogados asegurados, quedando subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante.

Vendida o adjudicada la finca o derecho hipotecado y consignado el precio correspondiente, en esa misma fecha o fecha posterior, el alguacil que celebró la subasta procederá a otorgar la correspondiente escritura pública de traspaso en representación del dueño o titular de los bienes hipotecados, ante el notario que elija el adjudicatario o comprador, quien deberá abonar el importe de tal escritura. El alguacil pondrá en posesión judicial al nuevo dueño, si así se lo solicita dentro del término de veinte (20) días a partir de la confirmación de la venta o adjudicación. Si transcurren los referidos veinte (20) días, el tribunal podrá ordenar, sin necesidad de ulterior procedimiento, que se lleve a efecto el desalojo o lanzamiento del ocupante u ocupantes de la finca o de todos los que por orden o tolerancia del deudor la ocupen. Y PARA CONOCIMIENTO DE LOS LICITADORES Y DEL PUBLICO EN GENERAL y para su publicación de acuerdo con la Ley, expido el presente Edicto bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal. En Bayamón, Puerto Rico, hoy 06 de diciembre de 2021. JOSÉ F. MARRERO ROBLES, ALGUACIL AUXILIAR PLACA #131, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA DE BAYAMÓN.

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

DLJ MORTGAGE CAPITAL, INC. Demandante V.

MARTA IRIS SOLER RODRIGUEZ

Demandados Civil Núm.: MZ2019CV00475.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. 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

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Mayagüez, en el caso de epígrafe procederá a vender en pública subasta al mejor postor en efectivo, cheque gerente, giro postal, cheque certificado en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos de América al nombre del Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, en mi oficina ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Mayagüez, el 9 DE MARZO DE 2022, A LAS 10:30 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: RUSTICA: Parcela de terreno radicada en el Barrio Juan Alonso del término municipal de Mayagüez, de una cabida superficial de 5.891 cuerdas equivalentes a 2 hectáreas 31 áreas y 55 centiáreas y en lindes por el NORTE, con la finca principal de que se segrega; por el SUR, con Judith García y finca principal; por el OESTE, con finca principal de que se segrega y por el ESTE, con el camino denominado Dos Lagos. Contiene estructura de un nivel de cemento que mide 50` de frente por 17` de ancho y por el lado, que consta de dos cuartos, sala, comedor, cocina, baño, un balcón con marquesina, tiene una estructura de cemento y zinc en la parte exterior, que mide 8` de frente por 6` de ancho, con valor de $45,000.00, según consta de la Escritura 11 otorgada en Mayagüez el 22 de marzo de 1999 ante el notario Héctor W. Ríos, e inscrita al folio móvil 1315 de Mayagüez, inscripción 6ª.

Consta inscrita al folio 265 de tomo 696 de Mayagüez, finca numero 19381, Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección de Mayagüez. Propiedad localizada en: KM 7.8 Int. PR. #105 Juan Alonso, Mayagüez, PR 00680. 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: a. AVISO DE DEMANDA con fecha 2 de abril de 2019 en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Mayagüez, en el caso civil número MZ2019CV00475, sobre cobro de dinero y ejecución de hipoteca; DLJ Mortgage Capital, Inc. Rico, demandante v. Marta Iris Soler Rodríguez, demandada. Por la misma se reclama el pago del préstamo hipotecario garantizado con la hipoteca por $80,826.57, más

otras sumas. Anotada el 2 de noviembre de 2021 al Tomo Karibe, finca 19381 de Mayagüez, anotación “A”. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad de la propiedad y que todas las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes al crédito ejecutante antes descritos, si los hubiere, continuarán subsistentes.

El rematante acepta dichas cargas y gravámenes anteriores, y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Se establece como tipo mínimo de subasta la suma de $81,134.82, 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 Mayagüez, el 16 DE MARZO DE 2022, A LAS 10:30 DE LA MAÑANA, y se establece como mínima para dicha segunda subasta la suma de $54,089.88, dos terceras (2/3) partes del tipo mínimo establecido originalmente. Si tampoco se produce remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta, se establece como mínima para la TERCERA SUBASTA, la suma de $40,567.41, la mitad (1/2) del precio pactado y dicha subasta se celebrará en mi oficina, ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Mayagüez, el 23 DE MARZO DE 2022, A LAS 10:30 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 $80,826.57 de principal, intereses al tipo del 3.85000% anual según ajustado desde el día 1 de noviembre de 2014 hasta el pago de la deuda en su totalidad, más la suma de $8,000.00 por concepto de honorarios de abogado y costas autorizadas por el Tribunal, más las cantidades que se adeudan mensualmente por concepto de seguro hipotecario, cargos por demora, y otros adeudados que se hagan en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca. La venta en pública subasta de la referida propiedad se verificará libre de toda carga o gravamen posterior que afecte la mencionada finca, a cuyo efecto se notifica y se hace saber la fecha, hora y sitio de la PRIMERA, SEGUNDA Y TERCERA SUBASTA, si esto fuera necesario, a los efectos de que cualquier persona o personas con algún interés puedan comparecer a la celebración de dicha subasta.

Se notifica a todos los interesados que las actas y demás constancias del expediente de este caso están disponibles

en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante horas laborables para ser examinadas por los (las) interesados (as). Y para su publicación en el periódico The San Juan Daily Star, que es un diario de circulación general en la isla de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas consecutivas con un intervalo de por lo menos siete (7) días entre ambas publicaciones, así como para su publicación en los sitios públicos de Puerto Rico. Expedido en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, hoy día 29 de noviembre de 2021. JOSÉ M. CRESPO NAZARIO, ALGUACIL PLACA #522, ALGUACIL DE SUBASTAS, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, CENTRO JUDICIAL DE MAYAGÜEZ, SALA SUPERIOR.

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

ROOSEVELT REO PR CORP. Demandante V.

VANESSA DE LOS ÁNGELES MULERO GONZÁLEZ

Demandada Civil Núm.: FCD2008-0395.

(407). Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. AVISO DE VENTA EN PÚBLICA SUBASTA. Yo, SAMUEL GONZÁLEZ ISAAC, Alguacil de la División de Subastas de la Sala Superior de Carolina, 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 27 de agosto de 2021 y para satisfacer la Sentencia por la cantidad de $129,038.66 de principal, dictada en el caso de autos el día 15 de junio de 2009, notificada y archivada en autos el día 29 de junio de 2009; 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 las propiedades localizadas en el: Municipio de Carolina, Puerto Rico, los bienes inmuebles que se describen a continuación: PROPIEDAD A: URBANA: PROPIEDAD HORIZONTAL: APARTAMENTO NÚMERO CIENTO SEIS (106) DEL CONDOMINIO LAS GAVIOTAS CON FRENTE A LA CARRETERA ESTATAL NÚMERO CIENTO OCHENTA Y SIETE (187) EN EL SECTOR

ISLA VERDE DEL MUNICIPIO DE CAROLINA, PUERTO RICO. ESTÁ DESTINADA A VIVIENDA Y SITUADA EN LA SECCIÓN SUROESTE DEL EDIFICIO CON UN ÁREA DE SETECIENTOS CUARENTA Y SIETE PUNTO CINCUENTA (747.50) PIES CUADRADOS, EQUIVALENTES A SESENTA Y NUEVE PUNTO CUARENTA Y SIETE (69.47) METROS CUADRADOS, INCLUYENDO MUROS. LINDA POR EL NORTE CON CAJA DE ELEVADORES, EL VESTIBULO, BAÑO Y HABITACIONES DEL APARTAMENTO CIENTO CINCO (105); POR EL SUR, FORMANDO PARTE DE LA FACHADA DEL EDIFICIO EN UNA LONGITUD DE TREINTA Y SEIS PIES UNA PULGADA (36’ 1”) LINEAL, EQUIVALENTE A UN (1.00) METRO LINEAL; POR EL ESTE, CON CAJA DE ELEVADORES, EL VESTIBULO Y COCINA DEL APARTAMENTO CIENTO UNO (101); Y POR EL OESTE, FORMANDO PARTE DE LA FACHADA LATERAL EN UNA LONGITUD DE TREINTA Y UN PIES DOS PULGADAS (31’ 2”) LINEALES, EQUIVALENTES A NUEVE PUNTO CINCUENTA (9.50) METROS LINEALES. CONSTA DE VESTIBULO, SALA-COMEDOR, UNA HABITACIÓN, COCINA, UN BAÑO, UN CUARTO, PASILLO Y TERRAZA QUE A SU VEZ CONDUCEN A LA VÍA PÚBLICA. LE CORRESPONDE UNA PARTICIPACIÓN EN LOS ELEMENTOS COMUNES GENERALES DEL CONDOMINIO DE CERO PUNTO SIETE MIL CIENTO VEINTISÉIS PORCIENTO (0.7126%). INSCRITO AL FOLIO 163 DEL TOMO 648 DE CAROLINA, FINCA 33,283 DEL REGISTRO DE LA PROPIEDAD DE CAROLINA, SECCIÓN I. PROPIEDAD B: URBANA: PROPIEDAD HORIZONTAL: UNIDAD DE ESTACIONAMIENTO NÚMERO G VIENTISÉIS (G-26) EN EL CONDOMINIO LAS GAVIOTAS CON FRENTE A LA CARRETERA NÚMERO CIENTO OCHENTA Y SIETE (187) EN EL SECTOR ISLA VERDE DEL MUNICIPIO DE CAROLINA, PUERTO RICO, SITUADO EN LA PLANTA BAJA DEL EDIFICIO CON UN ÁREA DE CIENTO TREINTA PUNTO CINCUENTA (130.50) PIES CUADRADOS EQUIVALENTE A DOCE PUNTO TRECE (12.13) METROS CUADRADOS. LINDA POR EL NORTE, EN UNA DISTANCIA DE APROXIMADAMENTE DIECIOCHO PIES CERO PULGADAS (18.00) LINEALES, EQUIVALENTES A CINCO PUNTO CUARENTA Y NUEVE (5.49) METROS LINEALES, CON UNA LINEA IMAGINARIA QUE LO SEPARA DEL ESTACIONAMIENTO G VEINTISIETE (G27); POR EL SUR, EN UNA LONGITUD IGUAL A LA DEL

NORTE, CON UNA LINEA IMAGINARIA QUE LO SEPARA DEL ESTACIONAMIENTO G VEINTICINCO (G-25); POR EL ESTE, EN UNA LONGITUD DE SIETE PIES TRES PULGADAS (7’ 3”) LINEALES, CON MURO DE CONCRETO COMUNAL; Y POR EL OESTE, CON UNA LINEA IMAGINARIA QUE LO SEPARA DEL ÁREA DE CIRCULACION. ESTA UNIDAD TIENE UN ACCESO POR SU COLINDANCIA OESTE, MEDIANTE EL ÁREA O ÁREAS DE CIRCULACIÓN QUE BORDEAN EL EDIFICIO Y QUE A SU VEZ CONDUCEN A LA VÍA PÚBLICA. LE CORRESPONDE UNA PARTICIPACION EN LOS ELEMENTOS COMUNES GENERALES DEL CONDOMINIO DE CERO PUNTO DOCE CUARENTA Y CINCO PORCIENTO (0.1245%). INSCRITA AL FOLIO 173 DEL TOMO 648 DE CAROLINA, FINCA 33,284, REGISTRO DE LA PROPIEDAD DE CAROLINA, SECCION I. Con el importe de dicha venta se habrá de satisfacer a la parte demandante las cantidades adeudadas, según la Sentencia dictada en el caso de epígrafe, por el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Carolina, cuyas cantidades son las siguientes: $129,038.66 de principal; 7.375% de intereses, los cuales continúan acumulándose hasta el saldo total de la deuda; $184.80 de gastos por mora, los cuales continúan acumulándose hasta el pago total de la deuda; $130.00 de otros gastos, y el 10% del principal del Pagaré ósea, por la cantidad de $13,350.00 para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado. El tipo mínimo para la subasta será la suma de tasación pactada, la cual es $125,000.00 para la Propiedad A y $8,500.00 para la Propiedad B, antes descritas. Si no produjere remate o adjudicación la primera subasta, se procederá a una segunda subasta y servirá de tipo mínimo la cantidad de $83,333.33 para la Propiedad A y $5,666.67 para la Propiedad B, antes descritas. Si tampoco hubiere remate ni adjudicación en esta segunda subasta, se procederá a una tercera subasta, en ésta el tipo mínimo será la cantidad de $62,500.00 para la Propiedad A y $4,250.00 para la Propiedad B, antes descritas. Si se declarase desierta la tercera subasta se dará por terminado el procedimiento, pudiendo adjudicarse a opción del demandante. Para el lote descrito bajo la LETRA A, la PRIMERA SUBASTA se llevará a cabo el día 3 DE FEBRERO DE 2022, A LAS 11:30 DE LA MAÑANA. De no comparecer postor alguno se llevará a efecto una SEGUNDA SUBASTA el día 10 DE FEBRERO DE 2022, A LAS 11:30 DE LA MAÑANA. De no comparecer postor alguno se llevará a cabo una TERCERA SUBASTA

el día 17 DE FEBRERO DE 2022, A LAS 11:30 DE LA MAÑANA. Para el lote descrito bajo la LETRA B, la PRIMERA SUBASTA se llevará a cabo el día 3 DE FEBRERO DE 2022, A LAS 11:40 DE LA MAÑANA. De no comparecer postor alguno se llevará a efecto una SEGUNDA SUBASTA el día 10 DE FEBRERO DE 2022, A LAS 11:40 DE LA MAÑANA. De no comparecer postor alguno se llevará a cabo una TERCERA SUBASTA el día 17 DE FEBRERO DE 2022, A LAS 11:40 DE LA MAÑANA. La subasta o subastas antes indicadas se llevarán a efecto en mi oficina, localizada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Carolina. 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. De Estudio de Título realizado surgen los siguientes gravámenes posteriores, los cuales podrán ser cancelados: HIPOTECA: Constituida por Vanessa De Los Angeles Mulero González, en garantía de pagaré a favor de Doral Bank, o a su orden, por $10,073.00, respondiendo la propiedad A del 99% del y la propiedad B, respondiendo del 1% % del principal, al 9.50% anual, vencedero el 1 de julio de 2016, según Esc. #285, en San Juan, el 26 de junio de 2001, ante Gloria B. Aquino Aponte, inscrita (bajo la Ley #216 del 2010) al Folio 136 del Tomo 1050 de Carolina, finca #33283, inscripción 10ma. AVISO DE DEMANDA: Dictado el 16 de agosto de 2006, en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Carolina, Caso Civil Num. FCD06-1882, sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca, seguido por Doral Financial Corporation vs. Vanessa De Los Angeles Mulero González, también conocida como Vanessa Mulero González, donde se solicita el pago de la

The San Juan Daily Star deuda garantizada con la hipoteca relacionada en la inscripción 9na. reducida a la suma de $131,345.28 o la venta en pública subasta, anotada al Folio 128 del Tomo 966 de Carolina, finca #33283, el 9 de abril de 2008, anotación “A”. SENTENCIA: Dictada el 22 de enero de 2008, en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Carolina, Caso Civil Núm. FCD20070648, sobre Cobro de Dinero seguido por Banco Popular de Puerto Rico vs. Vanessa Mulero González, por $15,139.02, presentada el 11 de marzo de 2008 y anotada al Folio 16 Asiento 47 del Tomo #2 de Sentencias. AVISO DE DEMANDA: Dictado el 12 de marzo de 2008, en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Carolina, Caso Civil Núm. FCD08-0395, sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria, seguido por Doral Bank vs. Vanessa De Los Angeles Mulero González, donde se solicita el pago de la deuda garantizada con la hipoteca de la inscripción 9na., reducida a $129,038.66 o la venta en pública subasta, anotada (bajo la Ley #216 del 2010) al Folio 137 del Tomo 1050 de Carolina, finca #33284 el 28 de mayo de 2015, inscripción 10ma. Las propiedades a ser ejecutadas se adquirirán libres 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 CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, a 16 de diciembre de 2021. SAMUEL GONZÁLEZ ISAAC, ALGUACIL. ***

Monday, January 3, 2022 BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Parte Demandante Vs.

JOSE L. DIAZ DIAZ, DALINA BARED Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: GB2021CV00454.

Sala: 201. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, S.S.

A: JOSE L. DIAZ DIAZ, DALINA BARED Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS.

Se les notifica a ustedes, JOSE L. DIAZ DIAZ, DALINA BARED y la sociedad legal de gananciales compuesta por ambos, que en la Demanda que originó este caso se alega que ustedes le adeudan a la parte demandante, BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO, las siguientes cantidades: a. $5,364.00 de principal, $279.07 de intereses hasta el 26 de abril de 2021, más los intereses que se devenguen a partir de la fecha de radicación de la Demanda al tipo legal, hasta el total y completo pago de la obligación, $30.60 de cargos por mora y la cuantía de $567.37 pactada para las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado.

La deuda es por concepto de un préstamo que les fue desembolsado por la demandante y cuyos últimos cuatro dígitos son 0102. b. 33,576.92 de principal e intereses devengados hasta el 26 de abril de 2021, más los intereses que se devenguen a partir de la fecha de radicación de la Demanda al tipo legal, hasta el total y completo pago de la obligación, y una suma razonable para las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado, por concepto de las sumas desembolsadas por el uso de la demandada de una tarjeta de crédito VISA cuyos últimos 4 dígitos son 8595. Se les emplaza y requiere que presenten al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto, a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de Casos (SUMAC), al cual pueden acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.

LEGAL NOTICE ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO represente por derecho propio, DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- en cuyo caso deberán presenNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA tar su alegación responsiva en SALA SUPERIOR DE GUAY- la secretaría del tribunal. DeNABO berán notificar a la licenciada:

María S. Jiménez Meléndez al PO BOX 9023632, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00902-3632; teléfono: (787) 723-2455; abogada de la parte demandante, con copia de la contestación a la demanda. Si ustedes dejan 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. Expedido en Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, a 16 de diciembre de 2021. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, SECRETARIA GENERAL. MAIRENI TRINTA MALDONADO, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA REGIÓN JUDICIAL DE SAN JUAN

ISLAND PORTFOLIO SERVICES, LLC., COMO AGENTE DE ACE ONE FUNDING, LLC Demandante Vs.

RAFAEL A. NAVARRO AQUINO

Demandado Civil Núm.: SJ2021CV04248.

Salón: 802. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO.

A: RAFAEL A. NAVARRO AQUINO. URB. LAS LOMAS 1664 CALLE 22 SW SAN JUAN, PR 00921-1238.

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

Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC); la cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda 0 cualquier otro sin más citarle ni oírle, si el tribunal en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. El sistema SUMAC notificará copia al abogado de la parte demandante, el Lcdo. Kenmuel J. Ruiz López cuya dirección es: P.O. Box 71418 San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936-8518, teléfono (787) 993-3731 a la dirección kenmuel.riuz@orf-law.com y a la dirección notificaciones@ orf-law.com.

EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el sello del

Tribunal, en San Juan, Puerto NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA Rico, hoy día 18 de noviembre SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROde 2021. En San Juan, Puerto LINA Rico, el 18 de noviembre de BANCO POPULAR DE 2021. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ PUERTO RICO COLLADO, SECRETARIA REDemandante V. GIONAL. ADELLE RIVERA JULIA ALLENDEAPONTE, SECRETARIA DE NAVARRO; ET AL. SERVICIOS A SALA. Demandados LEGAL NOTICE Civil Núm.: FCD2014-0428. SaESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO lón Núm.: 408. Sobre: EJECUDE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL CIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EDICTO DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA RE- DE SUBASTA. LOS ESTADOS GIÓN JUDICIAL DE BAYAMÓN UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL SALA MUNICIPAL DE GUAY- PRESIDENTE DE LOS E.E. U.U., EL ESTADO LIBRE ASONABO CIADO DE PUERTO RICO, CARIBE FEDERAL SS. Yo, MANUEL VILLFAÑE CREDIT UNION BLANCO, Alguacil del Tribunal Demandante Vs. Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala MINNETTE SERRANO de Carolina, al público HAGO SABER: Que en cumplimiento TORRES de un Mandamiento de EjecuDemandado(a) Civil Núm.: GB2021CV00257. ción de Sentencia que se me liSobre: COBRO DE DINERO bró con fecha de 13 de noviem(REGLA 60). ESTADOS UNI- bre de 2015, por la Secretaria DOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRE- de este Tribunal, en el caso de SIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS epígrafe, venderé en pública UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE subasta y al mejor postor con ASOCIADO DE PUERTO dinero en efectivo, cheque de gerente a nombre del Alguacil RICO, S.S. A: MINNETTE SERRANO del Tribunal o letra bancaria TORRES. DIRECCIÓN: con similar garantía, todo título, derecho o interés de la parte MURANO LUXURY demandada de epígrafe sobre APARTMENTS 1 AVE. la siguiente propiedad pertenePALMA REAL APTO. 415 ciente a la parte demandada, la GUAYNABO, PUERTO cual se describe a continuación: “URBANA: Solar marcado RICO 00969-7203.

POR LA PRESENTE, se le con el número trece (13) del emplaza y se le notifica que Bloque “MM”del Plano de Insuna Demanda sobre Cobro cripción de la Cuarta Extensión, de Dinero ha sido presentada Segunda Etapa de la Urbanizaen su contra y se le requiere ción Country Club, situada en el para que conteste la misma Barrio Sábana Abajo del munidentro de los treinta (30) días cipio de Carolina, Puerto Rico, siguientes a la publicación del con una cabida superficial de edicto, radicando el original de trescientos setenta y ocho mesu contestación en el Tribunal tros cuadrados (378.00 m.c). correspondiente y notificando En lindes por el NORTE, en dos con copia de la misma a la par- (2) alineaciones, una de doce te demandante a la siguiente metros cuarenta y dos centímetros (12.42 m) , y otra de seis dirección: metros ochenta y dos centímeBUFETE APONTE & CORTES LCDA. ERIKA MORALES MARENGO tros (8.82 m), con la calle núPO Box 195337 mero cuatrocientos veinte San Juan, Puerto Rico 00919 (420); por el SUR, en diecisiete Tel. (787) 302-0014 / (787) 239-5661 / metros noventa y nueve centíEmail: emarengo@apontecortes.com metros (17.99 m.), con una alaUsted deberá presentar su alemeda; por el ESTE, en quince gación responsiva a través del metros cuatro centímetros Sistema Unificado de Manejo y (15.04 m.), con pared medianeAdministración de Casos (SUra que separa esta propiedad MAC), al cual puede acceder del Solar y propiedad número utilizando la siguiente direcdoce (12); por el OESTE, en ción electrónica: https://unired. veintitrés metros (23.00 m.), ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo con el Solar número catorce que se presente por derecho (14). Sobre el Solar antes despropio. Se le apercibe que de crito enclava una casa de dos no hacerlo, el tribunal podrá (2) plantas de concreto y blodictar Sentencia en rebeldía ques de concreto para una resiconcediendo el remedio solicidencia de una sola familia.” tado en la demanda, sin citarle Consta inscrita al folio 81, tomo ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma 193 de Carolina, Registro de la y sello del Tribunal, hoy día 17 Propiedad, Sección de Primera de diciembre de 2021. LCDA. (I) de Carolina, finca número LAURA I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, 7062 (antes 13,342). Dirección SECRETARIA REGIONAL. Física: CALLE 420 MM-13 CADIAMAR T. GONZÁLEZ BAROLINA, PR 00983. La finca RRETO, SECRETARIA DEL 7062 está gravada con la siTRIBUNAL CONFIDENCIAL II. guiente hipoteca cuya ejecución se solicita en la subasta LEGAL NOTICE objeto de este edicto: Hipoteca ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO en garantía de un pagaré a faDE PUERTO RICO TRIBU-

25

vor de Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, o a su orden, por la suma principal de $87,000.00, con intereses al 8% anual, vencedero a la presentación, constituida mediante la escritura número 195, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 15 de mayo de 1997, ante el notario José David Medina Rivera y posteriormente sustituido por la notario Nicole Stowell Alonso bajo el testominio número 558, a razón del instrumento de sustitución de pagaré otorgado el 6 de marzo de 2020 en la cuidad de Carolina, Puerto Rico, e inscrita al folio 83 del tomo 193 de Carolina, finca número 7062, inscripción 3ra. La venta se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer a Banco Popular de Puerto Rico por la hipoteca de $87,000.00 total o parcialmente. La venta se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer a Banco Popular de Puerto Rico total o parcialmente el importe de la Sentencia emitida el 13 de noviembre de 2015. El importe de la Sentencia dictada en el caso de epígrafe, asciende a las siguientes cantidades: $194,128.58 de principal, más intereses al tipo pactado de 8% anual a partir del 30 de septiembre de 2014, los cuales continúan acumulándose hasta el pago total de la deuda, más una suma de $8,700.00 para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado, más la cantidad de $8,700.00 para cubrir cualquier otro adelanto que se haga en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca y una suma equivalente a $8,700.00 para cubrir intereses en adición a los garantizados por ley. El precio mínimo de licitación con relación a la antes descrita propiedad y la fecha y hora de cada subasta es como sigue: PRIMERA SUBASTA: Se celebrará el día 3 DE FEBRERO DE 2022, A LAS 9:45 DE LA MAÑANA. PRECIO MÍNIMO: $87,000.00. SEGUNDA SUBASTA: Se celebrará el día 10 DE FEBRERO DE 2022, A LAS 9:45 DE LA MAÑANA. PRECIO MÍNIMO: $58,000.00. TERCERA SUBASTA: Se celebrará el día 17 DE FEBRERO DE 2022, A LAS 9:45 DE LA MAÑANA. PRECIO MÍNIMO: $43,500.00.

Las subastas de dicha propiedad se llevarán a efecto en mi oficina situada en el local que ocupa este Tribunal en el Centro Judicial de Carolina, advirtiéndose que el que obtuviere la buena pro de dicha propiedad consignará en el acto del remate el importe de su oferta en moneda legal, en adición a los gastos de la subasta, siendo éste el mejor postor. En cualquier momento luego de haberse comenzado el acto de la subasta, el Alguacil podrá requerir de los licitadores que le evidencien la capacidad de pago de sus posturas. Del producto obtenido en dicha venta, el Algua-

cil pagará en primer término los gastos del Alguacil, en segundo término las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado hasta la suma convenida, en tercer término los intereses devengados hasta la fecha de la subasta, en cuarto término las sumas establecidas en la Sentencia para el pago de recargos por demora, contribuciones, seguros y en quinto término la suma principal adeudada conforme con la sentencia dictada. Disponiéndose que si quedara algún remanente luego de pagarse las sumas mencionadas, el mismo deberá ser depositado en la Secretaría del Tribunal para ser entregado a la parte demandada, previa solicitud y orden del Tribunal.

Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante el título del inmueble y las cargas o gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes al crédito del ejecutante, si los hubiere, continuarán subsistiendo, entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda responsable de los mismos sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Se le apercibe a los tenedores de gravámenes posteriores al que se ejecuta que, para proteger cualesquiera derechos que tengan sobre el inmueble, deberán comparecer a la subasta, pues de no hacerlo así y de no igualar el precio de venta del gravamen hipotecario que se ejecuta, el Tribunal ordenará la cancelación de todos los gravámenes posteriores. La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquiere libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. Si se declara 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 mínimo de la tercera subasta, si el Tribunal lo estima conveniente. Se abonará dicho monto a la cantidad adeudada si ésta es mayor. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento del caso de epígrafe están disponibles en la Secretaría del Tribunal Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala Superior de Carolina, durante horas laborables. Para conocimiento de la parte demandada y de toda persona que tenga interés inscrito con posterioridad a la inscripción del gravamen que se está ejecutando, si alguna, y para la concurrencia de licitadores y para el público en general el presente edicto se publicará en un diario de circulación general en el Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico una vez por semana por un término de dos (2) semanas con un intervalo de por lo menos siete (7) días entre cada publicación. Se fijará además, en tres (3) lugares públicos del Municipio donde ha de celebrarse la subasta, estos lugares serán la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la Colecturía de dicho Municipio. Se notificará a

la parte demandada copia del edicto de subasta mediante correo certificado con acuse de recibo a su dirección que obra en autos. Una vez efectuada la correspondiente venta judicial, otorgaré la escritura del traspaso al licitador victorioso, quien podrá ser la parte demandante, cuya oferta podrá aplicarse a la extinción parcial o total de la obligación reconocida por la Sentencia. Colocaré al licitador victorioso en posesión física de la Propiedad mediante el lanzamiento de los ocupantes en el término legal de veinte (20) días desde la fecha de la venta en pública subasta y para ello procederé a romper candados de ser necesario. 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 o ocupantes de la finca o de todos los que por orden o tolerancia del deudor la ocupen. El Registrador de la Propiedad cancelará, libre de derechos, todo gravamen posterior a la fecha en que se otorgó la hipoteca que ha sido ejecutada mediante esta acción, y procederá a la inscripción de la venta a favor del comprador en subasta libre de todo gravamen posterior a la fecha en que se otorgó la hipoteca que ha sido ejecutada mediante esta acción. Expido el presente edicto bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Carolina. En Carolina, Puerto Rico, a 15 de diciembre de 2021. MANUEL VILLFAÑE BLANCO, ALGUACIL #830, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA SUPERIOR CAROLINA.

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Parte Demandante Vs.

THATCHER LAMASTUS T/C/C THATCHER LAMASTUS BOUTET, ANA ANGÉLICA CANDAL VICENTE T/C/C ANA A. CANDAL VICENTE Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: FA2021CV00907.

Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA “IN REM”. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS E.E.U.U., EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A La Parte Demandada: THATCHER LAMASTUS

26 T/C/C THATCHER LAMASTUS BOUTET, ANA ANGÉLICA CANDAL VICENTE T/C/C ANA A. CANDAL VICENTE A SUS ÚLTIMAS DIRECCIONES CONOCIDAS: CONDOMINIO LAS CASITAS II, APTO. 106, EDIFICIO 1, FAJARDO, PR 00738 Y URB PASEO DE LA FUENTE, C1 CALLE TIVOLI, SAN JUAN, PR 00926-6458.

Queda usted notificado que en este Tribunal se ha radicado demanda sobre ejecución de hipoteca por la vía ordinaria en la que se alega que se adeuda las siguientes cantidades: $526,282.98 de principal, más intereses sobre dicha suma al 5.875% anual desde el 1 de noviembre de 2008 hasta su completo pago, más $21,035.01 de recargos acumulados, los cuales continuarán en aumento hasta el saldo total de la deuda, más la cantidad estipulada de $56,000.00 para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados, así como cualquier otra suma que contenga el contrato del préstamo. La propiedad que garantiza hipotecariamente el préstamo es la siguiente: URBANA: PROPIEDAD HORIZONTAL: Condominio Las Casitas II de Fajardo. Apartamento número 106. Edificio 1 Ground Level.

Cabida: 135.02 metros cuadrados. Forms part of Las Casitas II Resort Condominium and is located at Las Cabezas Ward, Municipality of Fajardo, Puerto Rico. This apartment is located at Ground Level of building number 1 of the Regime. It consists of a single level apartment with a total construction area of 1,453.039 square feet, equivalent to 135.02 square meters.

The maximum length of this apartment if 41 feet 1 inch and the maximum width is 40 feet 6 inches. Its boundaries area: By the NORTH: in a distance of 41 feet 1 inches with common area and apartment number 101; by the SOUTH: in a distance of 41 feet 1 inches with common area; by the EAST: in a distance of 40 feet 6 inch with common area; and by the WEST: in a distance of 40 feet 4 inch with common area. The main entrance to this apartment is located of its South side and leads to a limited common element, which provides access to public roads. This apartment contains a living and dining room, a kitchen with washer-dryer closet, two bedrooms with closets, two bathrooms, two air conditioning closets and the owner’s closet.

The undivided share appurtenant to the Property of the common elements described in the master deed is 1.5576484%.

Cada unidad tendrá el derecho al uso de un estacionamiento,

cuyo uso será primero en tiempo, primero en derecho (“firstcome-first-seved”). La propiedad y la escritura de hipoteca constan inscritas al tomo Karibe de Fajardo, Finca 20767. Registro de la Propiedad de Fajardo. La hipoteca es la inscripción segunda. La demandante es la tenedora por endoso en blanco, por valor recibido y de buena fe del referido pagaré objeto de la presente acción. La parte demandada deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal. Se le advierte que si no contesta la demanda, radicando el original de la contestación en este Tribunal y enviando copia de la contestación a la abogada de la Parte Demandante, Lcda.

Belma Alonso García, cuya dirección es: PO Box 3922, Guaynabo Puerto Rico 009703922, Teléfono y Fax: (787) 789-1826, (787) 708-0566 correo electrónico: oficinabelmaalonso@gmail.com, dentro del término de treinta (30) días de la publicación de este edicto, excluyéndose el día de la publicación, se le anotará la rebeldía y se le dictará Sentencia en su contra, concediendo el remedio solicitado sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal, hoy 21 de diciembre de 2021, en Fajardo, Puerto Rico. Wanda I. Seguí Reyes, Secretaria Regional.

Linda I. Medina Medina, Secretaria Auxiliar Del Tribunal I.

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Parte Demandante Vs.

YARITZA MARIE MARTÍNEZ ROSADO

Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: CA2021CV03150.

(401). Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO, EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS E.E.U.U., EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A La Parte Demandada: YARITZA MARIE MARTÍNEZ ROSADO A SUS ÚLTIMAS DIRECCIONES CONOCIDAS: URB. VILLA CAROLINA, 205-13 CALLE 510, CAROLINA,

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

PR 00985-3020 Y 69 KNOLLWOOD ST., SPRINGFIELD, MA 011041805.

Queda usted notificado que en este Tribunal se ha radicado demanda sobre ejecución de hipoteca por la vía ordinaria en la que se alega que se adeuda las siguientes cantidades: $101,450.46 de principal, más intereses sobre dicha suma al 4% anual desde el 1 de noviembre de 2018 hasta su completo pago, más $729.39 de recargos acumulados, los cuales continuarán en aumento hasta el saldo total de la deuda, más la cantidad estipulada de $11,586.20 para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados, así como cualquier otra suma que contenga el contrato del préstamo. La propiedad que garantiza hipotecariamente el préstamo es la siguiente: URBANA: Solar número 13 de la manzana 205 en la Urbanización Villa Carolina, Quinta Sección en el Barrio Hoyo Mulas de Carolina con una cabida superficial de 324.00 metros cuadrados.

En lindes por el NORTE: con la calle número 510, distancia 13.500 metros; por el SUR: con el solar número 6, distancia de 13.500 metros; por el ESTE: con el solar número 14, distancia de 24.00 metros; y por el OESTE: con el solar número 12, distancia de 24.00 metros.

El inmueble antes descrito contiene una casa de concreto, diseñada para una familia.

Inscrita al folio 271 del tomo 834 de Carolina, Finca 33565, Registro de la Propiedad de Carolina, Sección II. La escritura de hipoteca consta inscrita al folio 134 del tomo 1484 de Carolina, Finca 33565, Registro de la Propiedad de Carolina, Sección II. Inscripción undécima. La demandante es la tenedora por endoso en blanco, por valor recibido y de buena fe del referido pagaré objeto de la presente acción. La parte demandada deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal. Se le advierte que si no contesta la demanda, radicando el original de la contestación en este Tribunal y enviando copia de la contestación a la abogada de la Parte Demandante, Lcda.

Belma Alonso García, cuya dirección es: PO Box 3922, Guaynabo Puerto Rico 009703922, Teléfono y Fax: (787) 789-1826, (787) 708-0566 correo electrónico: oficinabelmaalonso@gmail.com, dentro del término de treinta (30) días de

la publicación de este edicto, excluyéndose el día de la publicación, se le anotará la rebeldía y se le dictará Sentencia en su contra, concediendo el remedio solicitado sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal, hoy 21 de diciembre de 2021, en Carolina, Puerto Rico. LCDA. MARILYN APONTE RODRÍGUEZ, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. KEILA GARCÍA SOLÍS, SUB-SECRETARIA.

fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 23 de diciembre de 2021. En Ponce, Puerto Rico, el 23 de noviembre de 2021. Luz Mayra Caraballo García, Secretaria Regional. Ereina Agront León, Secretaria Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA LEGAL NOTICE SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO LINA DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUFIRSTBANK NAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSParte Demandante Vs. TANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE LESLIE ANAYA PONCE

FIRSTBANK PUERTO RICO Demandante Vs.

EMMANUEL MILLAN FIGUEROA; WILMARIE ORTIZ PEREZ; SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandado Civil Núm.: PO2021CV01757.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: EMMANUEL MILLAN FIGUEROA; WILMARIE ORTIZ PEREZ Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS, PARA SER NOTIFICADOS POR EDICTO. P/C: LIC. ROBERTO CARLOS LATIMER VALENTIN. PO BOX 9022512 SAN JUAN PR 00902-2512.

(Nombre de las partes a las que se les notifica la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 20 de diciembre de 2021, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la

LAUREANO T.C.C LESLIE LAUREANO ANAYA

Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: CA2021CV01124.

Sala: 401. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EDICTO DE SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R., SS.

A: LESLIE ANAYA LAUREANO T/C/C LESLIE LAUREANO ANAYA; FIRSTBANK PUERTO RICO: Y AL PÚBLICO EN GENERAL:

El Alguacil que suscribe, certifica y hace constar que en cumplimiento de Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que me ha sido dirigido por la Secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Carolina, procederé a vender en pública subasta y al mejor postor, por separado, de contado y por moneda de curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América. Todo pago recibido por el (la) Alguacil por concepto de subastas será en efectivo, giro postal o cheque certificado a nombre del (de la) Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia. Todo derecho, título, participación e interés que le corresponda a la parte demandada o cualquiera de ellos en el inmueble hipotecado objeto de ejecución que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar dos de la manzana ciento noventa en la Urbanización Valle Carolina, Quinta Sección en el Barrio Hoyo Mulas de Carolina de trescientos ochenta y cuatro metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, con los solares treinta y cuatro, distancia de dieciséis metros; por el SUR, con la calle quinientos veintitrés, distancia de dieciséis metros; por el ESTE, con el solar tres, distancia de veinticuatro metros; y por el OESTE, con el solar uno, distancia de veinticuatro metros. Contiene una casa de concreto para la familia. Consta inscrita al folio 42 del tomo 843 de Carolina, Fin-

ca número 33,868. Registro de la Propiedad, Sección Segunda de Carolina. La propiedad objeto de ejecución está localizada en la siguiente dirección: 190-2 Calle 523, Villa Carolina, Puerto Rico 00985. Según figura en el Estudio de título, la propiedad objeto de ejecución está gravada al siguiente Gravamen posterior a la inscripción del crédito ejecutante: a. Hipoteca en garantía de un pagaré a favor de Firstbank of Puerto Rico, o a su orden, por la suma principal de $28,000.00, con intereses al 6 ¾ % anual, vencedero el día 1 de noviembre de 2020, constituida mediante la escritura número 1077, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 31 de octubre de 2005, ante el notario Jorge García Soto, e inscrita al folio 138 del tomo 1375 de Carolina, finca número 33,868, inscripción 7ma. Se le notifica a los acreedores posteriores anteriormente identificados para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les convenga o satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, costas y honorarios de abogados asegurados, quedando entonces subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. Se informa que la propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravamen posterior, una vez sea otorgada la escritura de venta judicial y obtenida la Orden y Mandamiento de cancelación de gravamen posterior. (Art. 51, Ley 210-2015). En relación a la finca a subastarse, se establece como tipo mínimo de licitación en la Primera Subasta la suma de $112,000.00, según acordado entre las partes en el precio pactado en la Escritura de Hipoteca ##1,076 otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 31 de octubre de 2005, ante el notario Jorge García Soto, inscrita al folio 171 del tomo 1350 de Carolina, finca número 33,868, inscripción 6ta. La PRIMERA SUBASTA, se llevará a cabo el día 9 DE FEBRERO DE 2022 A LAS 10:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en mis oficinas sitas en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Carolina, el tipo mínimo para la primera subasta es la suma de $112,000.00. Si la primera subasta del inmueble no produjere remate, ni adjudicación, se celebrará una SEGUNDA SUBASTA el día 16 DE FEBRERO DE 2022 A LAS 10:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo sitio y servirá de tipo mínimo las dos terceras partes del precio pactada para la primera subasta, o sea, la suma de $74,666.66. Si la segunda subasta no produjere remate, ni adjudicación, se celebrará una TERCERA SUBASTA el día 24 DE FEBRERO DE 2022 A LAS 10:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo lugar y regirá como tipo mínimo de la tercera subasta la mitad del

precio pactado para la primera, o sea, la suma de $56,000.00.

Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo, para con su producto satisfacer a la parte demandante el importe de la Sentencia dictada a su favor, a saber: Suma Principal: $89,697.40, la cual se desglosa a continuación: suma principal de $84,657.52 más intereses a razón del 6.75% anual, desde el 1ro de julio de 2020, hasta el presente y los que se continúen acumulando hasta su total y completo pago, la suma principal de $5,039.88 como balance diferido (piggyback) la cual no genera intereses, más los cargos por demora que se corresponden a los plazos atrasados desde la fecha anteriormente indicada a razón de la tasa pactada de 5% de cualquier pago que éste en mora por más de quince (15) días desde la fecha de su vencimiento, más adelantos para el pago de seguros y contribuciones, entre otros; más la suma equivalente a $11,200.00 por concepto de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado todo según pactado en la escritura de hipoteca. Para más información, a las personas interesadas se les notifica que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado, estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal, durante las horas laborables.

Este EDICTO DE SUBASTA, se publicará en los lugares públicos correspondientes y en un periódico de circulación general en la jurisdicción de Puerto Rico. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los referentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes. Se entenderá que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Se procederá a otorgar la correspondiente Escritura de Venta Judicial y el Alguacil pondrá en posesión judicial al nuevo dueño, si así se lo solicita dentro del término de veinte (20) días, de conformidad con las disposiciones de Ley. Si transcurren los referidos veinte (20) días, el tribunal podrá ordenar, sin necesidad de ulterior procedimiento, que se lleve a efecto el desalojo o lanzamiento del ocupante u ocupantes de la finca o de todos los que por orden o tolerancia del deudor la ocupen. Expedido en Carolina, Puerto Rico, a 14 de diciembre de 2021. MANUEL VILLAFAÑE BLANCO, ALGUACIL PLACA #830.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE TRUJILLO ALTO

EN CAROLINA

FEDERAL HOME LOAN MORTGAGE CORPORATION Vs

RODRIGUEZ LOPEZ, CYNTHIA ANN

Caso: FECI201500432. Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: CYNTHIA ANN RODRIGUEZ LOPEZ, FELIZ ANGEL MERCED REYES Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS A SU ULTIMA DIRECCION CONOCIDA FISICA: URB EL CONQUISTADOR PE3 CALLE 11 TRUJILLO ALTO PR 00976; POSTAL: URB EL CONQUISTADOR PE3 CALLE 11 TRUJILLO ALTO PR 00976.

EL SECRETARIO(A) QUE SUSCRIBE LE NOTIFICA A USTED QUE EL 17 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2021, ESTE TRIBUNAL HA DICTADO SENTENCIA, SENTENCIA PARCIAL O RESOLUCIÓN EN ESTE CASO, QUE HA SIDO DEBIDAMENTE REGISTRADA Y ARCHIVADA EN AUTOS DONDE PODRÁ USTED ENTERARSE DETALLADAMENTE DE LOS TÉRMINOS DE LA MISMA. ESTA NOTIFICACIÓN SE PUBLICARÁ UNA SOLA VEZ EN UN PERIÓDICO DE CIRCULACIÓN GENERAL EN LA ISLA DE PUERTO RICO, DENTRO DE LOS 10 DÍAS SIGUIENTES A SU NOTIFICACIÓN. Y, SIENDO O REPRESENTANDO USTED UNA PARTE EN EL PROCEDIMIENTO SUJETA A LOS TÉRMINOS DE LA SENTENCIA, SENTENCIA PARCIAL O RESOLUCIÓN, DE LA CUAL PUEDE ESTABLECERSE RECURSO DE REVISIÓN O APELACIÓN DENTRO DEL TÉRMINO DE 30 DÍAS CONTADOS A PARTIR DE LA PUBLICACIÓN POR EDICTO DE ESTA NOTIFICACIÓN, DIRIJO A USTED ESTA NOTIFICACIÓN QUE SE CONSIDERARÁ HECHA EN LA FECHA DE LA PUBLICACIÓN DE ESTE EDICTO. COPIA DE ESTA NOTIFICACIÓN HA SIDO ARCHIVADA EN LOS AUTOS DE ESTE CASO, CON FECHA DE 27 DE DICIEMBRE DE 2021. LIC. LATIMER VALENTÍN, ROBERTO CARLOS. LATIMERRC@LBRGLAW.COM. LIC. TABALES MALDONADO, MÓNICA. MTABALES@LBRGLAW.COM. EN CAROLINA, PUERTO RICO, EL 27 DE DICIEMBRE DE 2021. LCDA. MARILYN APONTE RODRÍGUEZ, SECRETARIA. MARICRUZ APONTE ALICEA, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

27

Dan Reeves, coach who reached (but lost) four Super Bowls, dies at 77

By RICHARD SANDOMIR

D

an Reeves, a former Dallas Cowboys running back who, as a coach, guided teams to four Super Bowls (although he lost them all), died Saturday at his home in Atlanta. He was 77.

The cause was complications of dementia, according to a family statement.

Reeves played and coached with the Dallas Cowboys during a stellar period when they won two Super Bowls, one when he was a player-coach and one when he was an offensive coordinator, working for coach Tom Landry. After several seasons as an assistant to Landry, he was hired as the Broncos’ head coach in 1981, replacing Red Miller.

Over 12 seasons in Denver, his teams had a record of 110-73-1 and were among the best in the AFC. Led by quarterback John Elway, they lost the Super Bowl in 1987, 1988 and 1990 by wide margins to the New York Giants, the Washington Redskins and the San Francisco 49ers.

Reeves clashed with Elway over the Broncos’ offensive scheme and disagreed with the team’s owner, Pat Bowlen, over control of the team. Reeves fired his offensive coordinator, Mike Shanahan, in early 1992 for insubordination, believing that Shanahan had driven a wedge between him and Elway, who would later say it was “hell” playing for Reeves.

Following an 8-8 season in 1992, Bowlen fired Reeves.

“When you own a football team,” Reeves said afterward, “you should be able to run the ball club the way you would like to.” Bowlen said that he could have renewed Reeves’ contract but that within a year “we both would have been miserable and at each other’s throat.”

Reeves was hired in early 1993 by the Giants, who had dismissed Ray Handley after a 6-10 season.

“When you’ve gone and lost three Super Bowls and that’s what people will remember the most about you, that’s what drives you,” Reeves said at the news conference where he was introduced.

He had a promising start, leading the Giants to an 11-5 record and beating the

Dan Reeves, the coach of the Atlanta Falcons, after beating the Giants at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., in 2003.

Minnesota Vikings 17-10 in the wild-card playoff game. But the Giants lost to the 49ers 44-3 in a divisional playoff game.

The Associated Press named him its coach of the year.

The Giants did not make the playoffs over Reeves’ next three seasons — his teams had a combined 20-28 record in that span — and he was fired in 1996.

He had grown displeased with the limited amount of input he had on personnel decisions, and he had a testy relationship with some members of the Giants’ front office.

“Everybody talks about a power struggle,” he said at a news conference after his firing. “It was more like a philosophy struggle.” He said that the team had lacked enough impact players and that some of the college players his staff suggested should have been drafted had been taken off the team’s list of potential draftees because they had not done well on psychological tests.

It was not long before the Atlanta Falcons hired him, to replace June Jones after finishing the 1996 season with a 3-13 record.

Daniel Edward Reeves was born Jan. 19, 1944, in Rome, Georgia, to Ann and Edward Reeves. The family moved to Americus, Georgia, where he played high school football, basketball and baseball. At the University of South Carolina, he played quarterback from 1962 to 1964.

Undrafted by any team in the NFL or the American Football League, he signed in 1965 with the Cowboys, who converted him to a running back. He played eight seasons and accumulated 1,990 rushing yards, 757 of them in 1966, his best year.

One of his career highlights occurred during the 1967 NFL championship game, better known as the Ice Bowl because of the arctic conditions at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where the Cowboys played the Packers in one of the league’s most epic contests.

At the start of the fourth quarter, with the Packers ahead 14-10, Reeves took a pitch from quarterback Don Meredith and threw a 50-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Lance Rentzel.

“When we pitched it out and I was running with the ball,” Reeves told NFL Films, “I noticed both the safety and corner coming up, which meant that Rentzel would be open.” He added, “When I threw it I thought I had a chance to overthrow it, but the wind was in our face and thank goodness it held it up.”

The Packers came back to win 21-17.

In 1970, Landry made Reeves a backfield coach. He was still an active player at the time.

“You think you’re pretty smart after a few years in the league as a player,” Reeves told the Associated Press before the 1970 season. “But you get into the coaching end and you realize how much

work is involved in learning the game.”

After coaching the Broncos and the Giants, Reeves took over the Falcons in 1997. Following a 7-9 first season, he quickly turned Atlanta into one of the best teams in the NFL. The team finished the following year with a 14-2 record; its star running back, Jamal Anderson, gained 1,846 yards.

But as the Falcons were en route to their 12th victory, against the Saints in New Orleans in mid-December, Reeves felt a burning sensation in his chest and throat; a day later, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery.

He missed the Falcons’ two final regular-season games, but he returned for a playoff run that led to the team’s appearance in the Super Bowl against the Broncos, a matchup between Reeves and Shanahan. The Broncos won 34-19.

Reeves was named AP coach of the year for a second time.

But the Falcons were not the same in the ensuing years. Anderson injured his knee early the next season. They had losing records in four of the next five seasons. With the team a dismal 3-10 in 2003, Reeves was fired with three games left in the season.

“I’m an eternal optimist, so yeah, it was a surprise,” he told reporters. “But I’m also realistic enough about coaching to understand this is how it is in the NFL.” Reeves’ survivors include his wife, Pam; his children, Lee, Laura and Dana, whose husband, Joe DeCamillis, is the special teams coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams; and six grandchildren.

John Elway, now the Broncos’ president of football operations, released a statement after Reeves’ death. His old resentments appeared to have softened.

“We may not have always seen eye to eye,” he said, “but the bottom line is we won a lot of games together. Looking back, what I appreciate about Dan is how he gradually brought me along to help me reach my potential.”

Elway said that Reeves deserved to be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame for taking two teams to the Super Bowl.

But the only Dan Reeves in the Hall is the one who once owned the Rams.

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

College football gets its inevitable Georgia-Alabama title rematch

Georgia routed Michigan in the Orange Bowl during the College Playoff semifinal. But it needs one more win — against Alabama — to be satisfied with this season.

By ALANIS THAMES

G

eorgia, the defensive mammoth, and Alabama, the perennial juggernaut, seemed to be on a collision course to the top of college football all season.

They got a shot at each other in the Southeastern Conference championship in December — a game in which the Bulldogs barely resembled the behemoth they’d been from their first game. On Friday, each team romped past its College Football Playoff semifinal opponent, earning the chance to meet again in the game for the national crown in Indianapolis on Jan. 10 — if the game is not disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Alabama (13-1), which has won six national titles under Nick Saban (he took over the team in 2007), advanced to its sixth national championship game since 2015.

Georgia (13-1), a program that has come close but has not won a national championship since 1980, advanced to its second national title game in five years (the Bulldogs lost to Alabama in overtime in 2018).

Alabama, after pummeling Ohio State in January to cap one of the most dominant seasons in college football history, entered the 2021 season with the rest of the nation in its wake.

Living up to last season’s output appeared unlikely, as the Crimson Tide — which lost a handful of players to the 2021

NFL draft, including their 2020 Heisman Trophy winner, DeVonta Smith — barely edged out Florida in their SEC opener and lost to Texas A&M less than a month later.

Georgia, which entered 2021 with the country’s top-rated recruiting class, according to 247Sports, took over the No. 1 spot as it rolled through its schedule and went unbeaten in conference play.

And Alabama, despite its inconsistencies, remained a top-five team heading into its regular-season finale against Auburn. Saban, stern as ever, admonished his fan base’s criticisms of his team’s imperfections before the Iron Bowl in late November.

“When I came here, everybody was happy to win a game,” Saban said on his radio show. “Now we’re not happy to win a game anymore.”

A week after their Iron Bowl win, though offensively stagnant in the game, the Crimson Tide smashed the nation’s best defense, amassing over 500 yards of total offense against a Georgia team that was only allowing about 250 yards per game. Before surrendering 41 points to Alabama, the Bulldogs had given up more than 13 points in a game only once this season.

The loss dropped Georgia coach Kirby Smart, once an assistant coach on Saban’s Alabama staff, to 0-4 against his former boss.

Afterward, Smart told reporters that the embarrassing loss after an undefeated season did little damage to the Bulldogs’

Adonai Mitchell was wide open for a touchdown for Georgia in the first quarter.

psyche.

“What it did was reinvigorated our energy,” Smart said. “It re-centers you.”

That was apparent in Georgia’s 34-11 thrashing of No. 2 Michigan in the Orange Bowl, a physical game in which the Bulldogs’ defensive unit was nearly perfect.

“We knew we were better than what we showed last game,” quarterback Stetson Bennett said during the Orange Bowl’s postgame trophy ceremony.

The Bulldogs will have a chance to avenge a poor performance at the line of scrimmage where, uncharacteristically, they were bullied in the SEC championship game. While Georgia had no trouble getting pressure on opposing quarterbacks all season, the team failed to record a sack against Alabama a few weeks ago.

But the Bulldogs’ athletic defense, as motivated as it will be at Lucas Oil Stadium, will face Alabama’s offensive line at its best.

When the Crimson Tide struggled offensively during the regular season, it was often because of inconsistencies in the performance of its offensive line. Against Auburn, multiple breakdowns in pass protection allowed rushers to have easy avenues to bring down quarterback Bryce Young (he was sacked seven times).

In the conference title game, though, Young had the time and protection he needed to find receivers downfield and to make plays with his feet. And against the Bearcats

in the Cotton Bowl, the Crimson Tide’s offensive line made way for running back Brian Robinson Jr. to rush for a career high as Alabama ran past Cincinnati to advance to the title game.

The championship matchup — if it is not derailed — will be the 72nd meeting between the teams. Alabama has won the last seven, and it will be the SEC’s seventh straight season sending at least one team to the national championship game.

College football, though certainly disrupted in numerous ways by the pandemic, made it through most of this season with few interruptions before bowl games started. But as the highly contagious omicron variant led to a nationwide surge in cases, leagues shuffled their schedules, several bowl games were canceled and the College Football Playoff changed its health protocols in hopes of preserving the most important games.

Late Friday night, with seconds remaining before their win over Michigan was finalized, the Bulldogs looked ready to dump a cooler of cold liquid on the winning coach’s head.

Instead of taking part in the playful celebratory gesture, Smart could be seen speaking emphatically to his players, waving off their attempts at an early shower.

After one of their best seasons in years, a familiar foe awaits. The job isn’t finished yet.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, January 3, 2022

29

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

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

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

(Mar 21-April 20)

A New Moon in a prominent sector, suggests you could be offered a job or opportunity that alters your course. You might want to amend key plans too, as you realize the potential that lies ahead of you. With restless Uranus in the mix, you’ll get satisfaction from showcasing unique skills and applying them to your current job or other important areas, where they’ll be noticed, Aries.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

A dynamic focus in your adventure zone can inspire a sense of excitement. If you felt dispirited in your search for something fresh and new, the coming days may encourage you to set a new agenda, that leaves you feeling pleasantly upbeat. Consider blazing your own trail, as even if it feels uncomfortable to explore new terrain, you’ll gain some valuable experience, Taurus.

New developments are afoot, as the New Moon in Capricorn encourages a fresh start that could positively impact your finances, business affairs and close relationships. If you’re tiring of the way things have been for too long, this lunar phase and its link to Uranus, can inspire you to shake things up. It might also encourage a different perspective that supports new solutions.

Cancer

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Monday, January 3, 2022

(June 22-July 23)

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Anything linked to the home, family and to your roots, can gain in importance now and over coming days. A decision to move, expand your family or even explore your ancestry in depth, may bring new possibilities and ideas into the open. Planning and organizing could lay the groundwork, so that whatever seeds are planted have the best chance of coming to fruition.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Words can have an impact, particularly with a New Moon in your sector of talk and thought. News may show up that relieves the tension of waiting, and brings relief. This could be a piece of information, some expert advice, or an opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Whatever it is, things may start to move after a time of delays. Have a bright idea? Now is the time to launch it.

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

What new money-making schemes will you come up with, Archer? A flash of inspiration could move you into action, and before you know it, you’ll have a promising side-hustle on the go. The New Moon in ambitious Capricorn suggests you’ll have big ideas, and you’ll be ready to put some effort into accomplishing them. It helps to have a strategy rather than jump in with no plan.

Have plans for you and your partner? Today’s New Moon will give them a boost, if you commit to taking those first few steps over coming days. This lunar phase might also coincide with a desire to take a relationship further by seeing more of each other.

Whether it’s a friendship or a developing romance, you could feel an emotional push to find out more about them, Cancer.

Today’s New Moon brings powerful opportunities and events into your life. If you’ve felt like a change, this lunar phase may well deliver. In addition, it’s a call to move forward along your path and to be true to your purpose. And you’ll be ready to put the past behind you. Although you can’t do it all overnight, tying up those loose ends and finding closure can bring more peace.

Leo

Aquarius

(July 24-Aug 23)

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Get ready for today’s New Moon in your lifestyle sector, as it means this is one of the best times for a new beginning. Whether you’re looking for another job, want to start a business, or develop a diet and exercise routine, this is the time to have a go. You can also use it in another way, by choosing to put your happiness higher up your list of priorities if you’ve neglected this lately.

Time spent reflecting on your life and how you might make key changes, can cause powerful ideas to surface. A realization over coming days could give much food for thought. One goal may lose its allure. Yet an idea might bubble to the surface or show itself in a dream, that fills you with a sense of purpose. A major coincidence can also push you to try a new path.

Virgo

Pisces

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

With expressive Mercury newly in your lifestyle sector and a potent influence bringing the chance of change, the coming days, and indeed weeks, can see fresh developments. If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to launch a project or even a side business, that time could be now. Want to take a new bond further? Today’s New Moon suggests this may happen naturally.

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

Friends or a social group, may be setting the pace regarding a plan or community project, and this is your chance to take part. Don’t be complacent about this though, Pisces. Let others know how much you’re willing to undertake, so that you don’t get overwhelmed with requests and responsibilities.

A new addition to your social circle could have a very positive influence on you.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Monday, January 3, 2022

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

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Ziggy

32

Monday, January 3, 2022

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