Wednesday Jul 1, 2020

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

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Jim Carrey, Unmasked P20

New Rules for Tourists and Residents Traveling to PR

Governor: All Travelers Must Hand in COVID-19 Negative Test When Entering the Island No Test? 14-Day Quarantine Then

UTIER Leader: Union Pacts Forgotten with Luma-PREPA Deal

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NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

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What’s on Eduardo Bhatia’s Agenda?

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

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July 1, 2020

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

Eduardo Bhatia bets on sustainability and creativity

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

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clean and honest government, investment in creative industries, a circular economy and building up women as the driving force for social mobility are some of the goals for a sustainable economy that Popular Democratic Party gubernatorial hopeful Eduardo Bhatia presented from his political agenda on Tuesday at the party’s headquarter in Puerta de Tierra.

During a press conference, Bhatia said Puerto Rico’s direction should be toward building a country that is focused more on production than consumption. In other words, he proposed that the local government must develop projects that create job opportunities and open doors for new ideas.

“We have generated a set of ideas to promote Puerto Rico’s sustainable development. Our main focus for economic development has to be simple,” Bhatia said. “The best government program is to create jobs. The best help from Puerto Rico’s government is not a check, it is employment growth; having a job is fundamental.”

The senator added that in order to build a land that can witness growth, it must be acknowledged that Puerto Rico is a jurisdiction with high rates of corruption. Likewise, he said there should be no tolerance for it.

“We must free ourselves from the chains of dependence, we must bridge the inequality gap. It is important for Puerto Rico,” Bhatia said. “There will not be any economic development in Puerto Rico if there is no investment. There will be no investment if corruption remains. Even federal funds have been detained due to corruption.”

The first point of Bhatia’s agenda is to build a “clean and honest” government, allowing zero impunity when it comes to corruption, guaranteeing digital transparency for public bids and providing access to public information.

Another focus of his agenda was cooperativism, which he refers to as building cooperative enterprises such as hardware stores, laboratories, local pharmacies and department stores that can compete against international corporations.

He also aimed to give the Cooperative Development and Investment Fund back to the community.

“This following point is a priority for what my government program proposes; cooperativism plays a fundamental role,” Bhatia said. “The local government must be dominated by cooperatives.”

Meanwhile, his government program also bets on women as the engine for social mobility. On this matter, Isabel Fernández, an entrepreneur and Bhatia’s wife, noted that the local government must provide for and invest in

women to not only build the local economy, but also to build society as a whole.

“When we talk about economic development, we cannot think about a limited view of common or foreign investments. When we conducted a real-time survey of Puerto Rico, we noticed that women who are the heads of their households live under poverty,” Fernández said.

“We noticed that women can be the driving force for social mobility. We cannot pretend to have a future or prosper if there are no chances for current and future generations.”

Regarding this matter, they want to build 20 pilot programs in 20 municipalities to help women finish high school, provide workshops and develop start-ups for microbusinesses and small businesses. Likewise, Bhatia proposes to provide easy access to the internet.

Meanwhile, Bhatia revealed that he wants to fund the “Orange Economy,” which is focused on investing in creative outlets and artistic professions. He considers it one of the defining ideas of his candidacy.

“Puerto Rico must have more creative people,” he said. “More artists, more people involved in culture, more performers. We must have more [creative talents] by the square mile, more than any other country.”

Other ideas on Bhatia’s agenda were: · Promote a circular and low-waste economy · Strengthen small and midsize businesses · Bring back pharmaceutical manufacturing · Modernize essential services, such as power, water and internet · Build federal resource offices · Finance small agriculture businesses, hostel providers, short-term rental owners and small healthcare providers · Promote a reliable public education system.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Vázquez Garced: ‘Air travelers must arrive in Puerto Rico with a negative test’

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

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ll air travelers who come to Puerto Rico without a negative polymerase chain reaction (better known as PCR) result administered no more than 72 hours before arrival and a travel declaration form must be under quarantine for 14 days, unless they get a COVID-19 negative result during their stay.

Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced on Tuesday announced Executive Order 2020-052, which will go into force on July 15. During a press conference at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport, Vázquez said that every traveler, whether they brought documents or not, will be monitored via Sara Alert, an automated system recommended by both the Health Department and the Puerto Rico Tourism Co. (CTPR by its Spanish initials) that sends a survey to check on common symptoms for COVID-19. Nonresponders will be in violation of the executive order and may expose themselves to a $5,000 penalty and a six-month jail sentence.

“As you all know, the Puerto Rico government cannot control air traffic; consequently, we cannot shut down or control the quantity

of flights or passengers that arrive,” Vázquez said. “Yet we have the authority and obligation to protect every citizen who lives here. That is why we are introducing these actions to prevent further infection.”

When asked by the press if there was any liability to the order, Vázquez said the Health Department has wide discretionary power in terms of protecting citizens’ lives. In addition, she said, other legal systems in the United States, even the Supreme Court, have established rules in order to protect their residents.

“Here, protecting the lives and health of Puerto Ricans has priority. And whoever comes to Puerto Rico, those are the rules,” the governor said. “Nobody wants a citizen to be infected and spread a virus to a population that has protected themselves and followed guidelines to save their lives.”

Meanwhile, CTPR Executive Director Carla Campos called on travel agencies to inform and guide future passengers about the pending measures. She also recommended that hosts should take action in order to prevent the coronavirus from spreading.

“In this case, we consider that the hosting system will help us all. When it comes to hosting, we are talking about anyone who will

receive an acquaintance or family member who arrives on our island,” Campos said. “If a traveler visits a friend or family member, the host should advise them to take care of their health, be responsible with government orders and, if they have not already done so, verify their COVID-19 status. In addition, hotels and short-term rentals must document passengers’ status and report to local authorities. This will boost our monitoring system.”

Face masks are a must around restaurants During the announcement, Vázquez said that both residents and tourists must wear face masks, scarves or a cloth around their nose and mouth at all times. As she noticed that some citizens have taken the use of masks for

granted, she urged local businesses to be strict and pay more attention.

“It is not fair for those who have been responsible to be affected by those what have not followed orders. We cannot take risks and let our efforts go to waste,” she said. “Puerto Ricans have been responsible by following health guidelines. Let people enjoy our island and help reactivate our economy. However, we must maintain safety measures at all times.”

Vázquez added that anyone who goes outside without wearing a mask will be detained by the police. She did not specify how officers would handle specific situations involving someone who does not follow the rule requiring a mask.

Governor updates US Senate committee on PR’s coronavirus response, urges ‘robust’ congressional action

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

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ov. Wanda Vázquez Garced sent a letter to the chairwoman of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Lisa Murkowski, and Ranking Member Joe Manchin III to provide an update on Puerto Rico’s efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The letter describes the island government’s response and urges congressional action as Puerto Rico continues to recover from hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 and the ongoing earthquakes that began on Dec. 28, 2019 and continue to impact the island, the governor said Tuesday in a press release.

“In the letter, Vázquez Garced provided a summary of Executive Order OE-2020-023, issued on March 15, 2020, that mandated an islandwide lockdown and imposed a curfew, highlighting that this was the first such measure taken by any jurisdiction in the Nation,” the press release said.

The governor added that among the many measures she has taken to control the influx of visitors to the island, the Federal Aviation Administration approved her request to redirect all commercial air traffic to Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan as well as close the island’s ports to all cruise ships.

Also, Puerto Rico was the first jurisdiction to activate

the National Guard to impose 100 percent passenger health screening at the airport.

Lastly, the governor provided a summary of the island’s comprehensive relief package of $787 million to mitigate the effects of COVID-19.

The letter also provided a timeline of the disbursement of federal emergency funding through the Coronavirus Relief Fund Disbursement Program and the government’s stewardship of federal COVID-19-related emergency funding, providing the committee with transparency and accountability.

“These measures combined facilitated the Government’s response to the threat of COVID-19 and have protected the physical, mental, and economic health of the people of Puerto Rico,” the press release said.

“As Governor of Puerto Rico, I have taken and will continue to take the necessary measures to ensure the health, safety, and well being of our people during this COVID-19 pandemic. Puerto Rico has led by example, and we are proud of our work,” Vázquez said. “However, there’s much more to be done. As Puerto Rico continues to recover from hurricanes Irma and Maria of 2017 amid the virus outbreak, we must not forget that the island continues to be impacted by ongoing earthquakes and that robust Congressional action is needed. We will continue to provide accountability for federal funding to ensure that elected officials in Congress have access to the necessary information as they work on additional legislation to provide relief amid the COVID-19

pandemic.”

Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration Executive Director Jennifer M. Storipan added that “[i]f we want to bolster the island’s economy and provide relief amid this pandemic, we need Congressional action.”

“Every day, Puerto Rico continues to be hit by earthquakes that affect the island’s infrastructure and impact the mental health of residents,” Storipan said. “Our priority is to secure resources that provide adequate response during this ongoing emergency and preparedness as we move [into] hurricane season 2020. We will continue to provide the Committee with the necessary information as they work on legislation amid this COVID-19 pandemic.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

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UTIER: PREPA-Luma deal omits union worker pacts

By THE STAR STAFF

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he contract that the administration of Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced awarded to LUMA Energy LLC to manage the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s transmission and distribution system recognizes neither the collective agreements of unionized workers nor the Electrical Industry and Irrigation Workers Union (UTIER by its Spanish acronym) as the sole union representative of the workers, nor does it assume any responsibility regarding the employees retirement system, warned UTIER President Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo.

The union leader urged workers to read the contract, which does not guarantee PREPA’s workers will have a job under the new management.

The contract reads that LUMA Energy will use commercially reasonable efforts to interview and evaluate as candidates for employment the “regular employees of Owner and its Affiliates (other than Owner’s generation employees, including certain administrative and plant operations personnel) who are currently and remain employed by Owner and its Affiliates (other than Owner or its Affiliates generation station employees).”

The contract further states that LUMA Energy will

not be liable for severance or other pay or benefits for owner employees who are not hired by the firm, including those to whom an offer of employment is made but who do not accept such offer.

“LUMA will not validate the collective agreements nor will it recognize either the UTIER or any other union as the exclusive representative of PREPA workers,” Figueroa Jaramillo said. “In the contract with Luma Energy, it says that they will not, but it is necessary to remind Luma and the governor that the only way to guarantee job stability, accident insurance, the retirement system and other acquired rights is through full acceptance of the Collective Agreement according to constitutional laws and rights.”

Luma Energy’s only obligation is to interview workers, but without the obligation to hire them and if the employee is left out, Luma Energy will not pay the corresponding compensation, the UTIER president said. Figueroa Jaramillo urged employees not to rush to accept the unsafe conditions of the labor proposals presented by LUMA. “The contract does not establish that all workers will be employed, it says that they will be interviewed and they will decide whether to keep them or not, under the classifications, requirements and conditions that LUMA decides,” he said. “But, again, the

UTIER president Angel Figueroa Jaramillo only thing that guarantees job stability or that the rights acquired as a result of PREPA transactions will not be lost, is the collective agreement and its union representation supported by constitutional laws and rights.”

The union leader alerted PREPA employees about what LUMA may offer. UTIER has said the contract is invalid because it violates current laws and was negotiated behind closed doors. The contract does not say what LUMA’s responsibilities would be with regard to PREPA’s retirement system.

Governor vows to review legal analysis that casts doubt on Luma contract

By THE STAR STAFF

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ov. Wanda Vázquez Garced has promised the Alliance of Active Employees and Retirees of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) to evaluate the legal analysis prepared by bankruptcy lawyer Rolando Emmanuelli Jiménez that concludes the contract with LUMA Energy to manage PREPA’s transmission and distribution system is invalid because it goes against local laws.

“At the meeting, we were listening to concerns having to do with collective agreements, acquired rights and, above all, the biggest concern that everyone has is the Retirement System,” the governor said at a press conference late Monday. “We are going to examine that opinion they [expressed on] the contract and we want to make sure that all rights are guaranteed.”

The contract states that LUMA Energy will interview PREPA workers and decide which to keep along with imposing its own labor conditions, even though the workers are represented by the Electrical Industry and Irrigation Workers Union (UTIER by its Spanish acronym).

Vázquez said that although the contract was already signed, it allows for amendments that must be discussed and accepted by the LUMA consortium.

However, that is not the case. While LUMA can seek amendments to the budget and to performance metrics, the contract says that “neither this agreement nor any provision hereof may be changed, modified, amended or waived, except by written agreement duly executed by the Parties.”

“Any such amendment shall not be effective until (i) to the extent required by Applicable Law, approved by PREB [the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau] and the FOMB [the Financial Oversight and Management Board] (if then in existence) and (ii) Administrator has obtained a Tax Opinion and a Reliance Letter, at the cost of Owner or Administrator, with respect to any such amendment,” the contract states.

UTIER President Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo said “[a]nd from the point of view of the people, this contract has many clauses that benefit the private company and that make it a leonine contract, as the lawyers say.”

In supporting the contention that the contract is illegal, Emmanuelli Jiménez established that it was submitted to the PREB under “a limitation of powers” and the public and the press were not notified.

“We found out that there was a technical conference where the contract was discussed and then it was given confidentiality,” the attorney said. “If they had allowed us to participate, we would have said, right from the start, that upon receiving that contract that it does not comply with Law 120 in terms of the labor rights of employees of the Electric Power Authority because there is a contradiction in

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Mayors meet with legislative leaders over Municipal Code

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

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he first vice president of the Puerto Rico Mayors Association and mayor of Villalba, Luis Javier Hernández, met earlier this week with his colleague from the Mayors Federation, Carlos Molina, and legislative leaders Thomas Rivera Schatz and Carlos “Johnny” Méndez Nuñez to address the issue of approval of the Municipal Code.

The measure was worked on for months with numerous specialists on the subject, along with legal and legislative advisers.

The second topic on the Monday afternoon meeting’s agenda was the alternatives available to deal with the economic crisis in the island’s towns.

“For the different instances in all our towns, the approval of the Municipal Code is important, because it updates the legal scaffolding that shelters us,” Hernández said in a written statement. “Like any legislative process, there are divergent

reviews and positions, but I confidently tell the Country that with this Code we agree on the vast majority of issues. We are going to continue the conversation tomorrow [Tuesday] in the Legislature through the executive directors of each group of mayors, to reach a consensus and obtain its approval.”

Of all the topics covered in the measure, which exceeds 1,000 pages, differences exist in relation to the tax obligations

of telecommunications companies and the remuneration of mayors.

“In both cases, we have established that the provisions must remain as they are in the current Autonomous Municipalities Law, without changes,” Hernández said.

“This will be seen in this session Tuesday without the need for the topic to be included in an extraordinary session.”

In relation to the economic crisis of the municipalities, the reality arising from

the elimination of Law 29 and everything related to the coronavirus pandemic was discussed in terms of additional expenses in the municipalities, added to the dramatic decrease in revenue.

“On that subject, both legislative [leaders] assured us that they will present a measure in an extraordinary session to resolve the situation,” the Villalba mayor said. “Let us remember that most of the municipalities had to adjust their budgets significantly in the midst of the pandemic and the hurricane season and it is urgent to achieve a solution.”

“We thank both legislative [leaders] for their attention and their commitment to the municipalities, as well as the work of fellow Mayor of Arecibo, Carlos Molina, president of the Mayors Federation,” Hernández added. “To the extent that the municipalities have a greater breadth, capacity and space to fulfill their obligations, citizens will be better served. Of course, these obligations are tied to adequate income to finance the work.”

ASSMCA chief says deficiencies not under her watch

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

S

uzanne Roig Fuertes, the administrator of the Mental Health and Anti-Addiction Services Administration (ASSMCA by its Spanish initials), said Tuesday that an audit that reveals deficiencies in the operations of the agency’s computerized information systems was not conducted during her administration since it occurred from Oct. 22, 2015 to June 30, 2016.

“It is worth clarifying that this audit includes three find-

ings that have been duly addressed and corrected by this administration,” Roig Fuertes said in a written statement.

“Without a doubt, our main interest will always be to offer optimal quality mental health services, at the same time that we make sure to comply with all the regulations that apply to us.”

The findings detailed in Comptroller Yesmín Valdivieso’s report include the development of an option in the system for the payment of fines and the renewal of licenses, which had not been useful, and deficiencies in the pre-intervention of the invoice for this service.

For these reasons, the administrator noted that “ASSMCA developed the website in accordance with the indications, carrying out coordination and testing work with the Treasury Department so that this site becomes operational as soon as possible.

“The tests carried out with the website have been satisfactory and we will be putting it into operation as soon as the Agency has approved the new Licensing Regulation,” Roig Fuertes said.

The second finding was the lack of validation controls related to the registration of fines in the Licensing and Quality System. For what was developed in the website, the process of fines is by defined field, and if there is a fine that is greater than those that are predefined, it can only be modified by the director of the office, in compliance with the indicated findings and based on the new regulation.

To address the third finding, which was the lack of a Business Continuity Plan, the official stated that “the agency for the first time has an Alternate Recovery Center, so we are currently working on developing the Business Continuity Plan, Contingency Plan and Risk Analysis.”

“We hope to complete them in December 2020,” Roig Fuertes said.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

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What a family that lost 5 to the virus wants you to know

By TRACEY TULLY

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ach morning they awake with fingers curled inward, stiffened like claws.

Their schedules are dictated by doctors’ appointments, physical therapy sessions and bouts of exhaustion. After weeks on ventilators, two siblings remain too weak to work even as their medical bills mount.

But at a table filled with several members of a tight-knit New Jersey family, the Fuscos, who lost five relatives to the coronavirus, the conversation repeatedly veers away from the chaos and pain of the past three months.

They do not avoid talk of their family’s devastating collective loss. But they also speak of a new focus: finding a remedy for the disease that killed their mother, three siblings and an aunt.

At least 19 other family members contracted the virus, and those who survived COVID-19 did not emerge unscathed.

Joe Fusco, 49, lost 55 pounds and spent 30 days on a ventilator. His sister, Maria Reid, 44, cannot shake the memory of the disjointed hallucinations that dogged her during the 19 or 20 days she was unconscious, or the terror of waking up convinced that her 10-year-old daughter was dead.

“This ain’t over,” Joe Fusco said of the pandemic on a recent afternoon in the backyard of his home in Freehold. “This ain’t over in the least bit.”

“I want to help somebody,” he added.

“I don’t want anyone else to have to lose five family members.”

The Fuscos were unwilling pioneers charting an early course through all that was unknown about a virus that has killed more than 126,000 people in the United States.

They are now trailblazers of another kind, subjects of at least three scientific studies.

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is conducting research that involves evaluating the DNA of the surviving and deceased members of the large Italian American family for genetic clues. DNA from those who died will be retrieved from hairbrushes, a toothbrush, a blood sample and tissue from an unrelated gallbladder surgery.

Each Thursday, Elizabeth Fusco, the youngest of the 11 children, donates antibody-rich blood plasma that is used to treat patients with the virus to determine if it can help boost their immune response.

“We know another wave is going to come,” Elizabeth Fusco said. “It’s inevitable.

Whatever will help this world is all I care about.”

Their help may prove useful well before the predicted second wave hits as states like Florida and Texas confront an alarming surge in new cases.

The Fusco family’s trauma began just before the state’s lockdown, as a slow cascade of closures marked the start of a new normal.

On March 13, Rita Fusco Jackson, 56, became the second person to die of COVID-19 in New Jersey, which has since recorded 14,992 deaths, making it No. 2 in the nation behind New York for virus-related fatalities.

Within a week, her mother, Grace Fusco, 73, and two brothers, Carmine, 55, and Vincent, 53, had also died. Grace Fusco’s sister on Staten Island died weeks later.

Their story became an urgent, cautionary tale about the potency of the disease and the importance of staying apart at a time when social distancing was still a novel concept.

During the first week of March, Carmine Fusco, the eldest son who was visiting from Pennsylvania, had described feeling chilled during a routine Tuesday dinner in Freehold that drew about 25 family members, his siblings said.

The precise source of the extended family’s infection is unclear, said Joe Fusco, a horse owner like his father and brothers who had spent time in the weeks beforehand with both brothers who died. He recalls waking up feeling “beat up” the morning after the dinner, which was held at the house where his mother lived with three of his siblings and their families.

He was admitted to the hospital days later, beginning a medical odyssey that would last 44 days. Much of the treatment was experimental, he said, and involved trial and error.

“When I was leaving the hospital, the doctor said, ‘You don’t realize the debt of gratitude the world owes your family,’ ” said Joe Fusco, the father of three children ages 10 to 18.

As news accounts of their story swept the globe, the family was cited by state health officials as a prime reason for staying apart.

Still, even as they were being held up as the family no one wanted to become, Elizabeth Fusco was stepping into the role of the little sister everyone might hope to have.

Elizabeth Fusco, 42, and her daughter were among those who contracted the virus; like many other family members, they never showed symptoms.

With four people already dead, two on ventilators and a sister hospitalized and receiving oxygen, Elizabeth Fusco emerged as a

The Fusco family lost five relatives to the coronavirus. ferocious advocate, even as she feared for her own daughter, Alexandra, who is 12 and was born with a serious health condition, congenital diaphragmatic hernia.

“They would tell me to calm down,” she said. “No. I’m not going to calm down. Tell someone who didn’t lose a mom, a sister and two brothers in a matter of less than seven days to calm down.

“Tell me how you’re going to save my brother and sister.”

The family held a four-person funeral April 1. They remain anguished that the two siblings who were on ventilators at the time were not there and are planning a memorial celebration and burial after a full Mass in early August.

Elizabeth Fusco said she temporarily shoved mourning aside. “I consumed my time with — I’m not going to lose another one,” she said.

Desperate, she and other relatives pushed doctors to try a variety of treatments: remdesivir, convalescent plasma, hydroxychloroquine.

“I don’t care if you were giving them rat poison — if you told me that that was going to fix them,” she said, her voice trailing off.

She called the governor on his cellphone.

She and her mother’s cousin, Roseann Paradiso Fodera, a family spokeswoman, were on a first-name basis with congressional aides. They lobbied anyone who would listen for access to experimental medicines, and, later, for autopsies that never happened.

In that mad flurry, they were buoyed by neighbors, acquaintances half a world away and lifelong friends.

“You’d open your door,” said Dana Fusco, Joe’s wife. “You’d have groceries at your door.

You’d have meals. The community was truly amazing.”

The nurses and the medical staff at CentraState Medical Center, the hospital in Freehold where Grace Fusco and five of her children were treated, served as the family’s eyes, ears and loving hands at a time when visitors were not allowed inside.

“For 44 days, every three to four hours, I was on the phone with them,” Dana Fusco said. The hospital declined to comment, citing privacy concerns.

When her husband awoke Easter Sunday, she asked that he not be immediately told of the deaths. Once he was stronger, she was allowed a visit to tell him in person.

To the Fuscos, the virus’s path showed little logic. An infected relative who is a heavy smoker showed no symptoms, and two older uncles with myriad underlying health problems rebounded in about a week. Several of the sickest family members had no serious underlying health problems, Joe Fusco said.

More than three months later, a numb calm has set in.

“Like it didn’t happen,” Reid said. “It’s just they’re not here.”

Dwelling on the past, she said, is a luxury she does not have. “I’ve got to move on,” said Reid, who, along with her husband and daughter, shares a house with Joe’s family. “I’ve got a young daughter.”

Doctors say patients who recover from COVID-19 frequently need to rebuild muscle strength, and some may struggle with a range of respiratory, cardiac and kidney problems or be at increased risk of blood clots and stroke. Some patients who experienced delirium while on ventilators may be at greater risk of depression.

And those placed in induced comas also may lose muscle tone in their hands, causing fingers to clamp shut.

Much about the recovery from COVID-19 is unknown, said Dr. Laurie G. Jacobs, chairwoman of the Department of Medicine at Hackensack University Medical Center, which is setting up a clinic for patients recovering from COVID-19 to better understand, track and treat their varied needs.

“There’s a desperation for answers,” Jacobs said.

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Wednesday, July 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NYC, facing fiscal crisis over virus, agrees on budget with big cuts

City officials were under intense pressure to reduce the Police Department budget.

By DANA RUBINSTEIN and JEFFREY C. MAYS

B

owing to political pressure and a bleak fiscal reality that evoked municipal crises of decades past, New York City officials Monday agreed to an austerity budget that includes drastic cuts to city services and a $1 billion shift of resources out of the New York Police Department.

New York, like the rest of the country, was forced to lock down its economy to limit the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which has taken 22,000 lives in the city. The shutdown helped control the spread of the virus, but it also created a $9 billion revenue shortfall that will have a sharp effect on New Yorkers’ lives.

Mayor Bill de Blasio had already shrunk estimated spending by $7.4 billion earlier this year, but needed to find another $1 billion in savings before the city’s Wednesday budget deadline for the coming fiscal year. The gloomy $87 billion budget is nearly $6 billion less than the one the city approved last year.

At the same time, another budgetary priority emerged from the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, as calls to defund the Police Department grew in New York.

That effort came to include de Blasio’s negotiating partner, the City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, who earlier this month embraced activists’ calls to cut $1 billion from the department’s $6 billion operating budget.

The mayor and the City Council agreed Monday to

reach that $1 billion in cuts by, among other things, canceling the planned hiring of 1,163 police officers.

But slightly less than half of the $1 billion in cuts will come from a budgetary sleight of hand: School safety officers, who are currently under the auspices of the Police Department, will be moved to the authority of the Department of Education, according to three council members familiar with the plan.

De Blasio still believes the city needs to find $1 billion in labor savings or face 22,000 layoffs, unless the federal government comes through with aid or the state grants the city borrowing authority, according to de Blasio’s spokeswoman, Freddi Goldstein.

The budget is expected to be passed Tuesday by the full 51-member City Council, although it is expected to garner more than a dozen “no” votes, split between council members who oppose cutting police funding at a time when crime is rising and council members who think the police cuts do not go far enough.

Councilman Ben Kallos, a Democrat who represents the Upper East Side, said he planned to vote no on the budget, in part because he said the police cuts were insufficient.

“It is worse than it was before,” Kallos said in an interview.

“We are not seeing a meaningful reduction in head count and the changes that people are literally marching in the streets for,” he said. “I don’t think anyone marching

for Black Lives Matter is doing it to see school safety agents moved from the NYPD budget to the schools budget.”

Councilman Brad Lander,D-Brooklyn, said he would also vote against the budget because he said the changes to Police Department funding were not “real meaningful cuts.” Among other things, he is skeptical that the Police Department will actually achieve $350 million in overtime reduction costs, as the city argued would happen.

The redistribution of Police Department resources to other departments achieves political and possibly policy ends, but will do little to close the city’s yawning budget gap.

To close that gap, the city will demand across-theboard savings from city agencies, and slash services that city residents have come to rely on, such as eliminating the residential composting program and closing city pools for the summer.

Trash pickups will be reduced, and overnight service on the Staten Island Ferry will be curtailed. Fewer police traffic agents will be deployed at intersections, and tree pruning and tree stump removal will be less frequent.

And for the first time in his tenure, the mayor drew down on the city’s reserves, tapping $4 billion in savings to help balance the budget, much of it from the retiree health benefits fund, a move that does not affect retiree benefits in the short term.

But the budget is expected to restore more than $100 million in funding for youth programs that had been cut under the mayor’s executive budget, according to a City Council member. Goldstein, the mayor’s spokeswoman, declined to confirm that number.

“The mayor had two goals for this budget: maintain safety and invest in youth and our hardest-hit communities — all while facing the toughest fiscal situation the city has seen in decades,” Goldstein said. “We believe we presented a plan that accomplishes that mission and look forward to working with the council to pass a budget that helps this city rebuild stronger.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state Legislature have declined to give New York City the authority to borrow money to pay for operating costs, even though the state has granted that authority to the state’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and to itself.

“The New York City bond ratings went up in the last 12 months, for God sakes, this is not the 1970s,” the mayor said Monday, shortly before Cuomo invoked the 1970s as a rationale for why he was reluctant to grant the borrowing authority to New York City.

De Blasio has not provided a detailed enough plan about how he would use the borrowed money, said Mike Murphy, a spokesman for the Democratic majority in the state Senate. After speaking with Senate Democrats on Monday, Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller and a 2021 mayoral candidate, agreed.

“The mayor has requested $7 billion and now $5 billion in borrowing authority without providing data or rationale,” Stringer said in a statement. “Our children do not owe the mayor a blank check.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

9

‘I can’t focus on abortion access if my people are dying’

By EMMA GOLDBERG

L

ike many young Americans, Brea Baker experienced her first moment of political outrage after the killing of a black man. She was 18 when Trayvon Martin was shot. When she saw his photo on the news, she thought of her younger brother, and the boundary between her politics and her sense of survival collapsed.

In college she volunteered for the NAACP and as a national organizer for the Women’s March. But when conversations among campus activists turned to abortion access, she did not feel the same sense of personal rage.

“A lot of the language I heard was about protecting Roe v. Wade,” Baker, 26, said. “It felt grounded in the ’70s feminist movement. And it felt like, I can’t focus on abortion access if my people are dying. The narrative around abortion access wasn’t made for people from the hood.”

Baker has attended protests against police brutality in Atlanta in recent weeks, but the looming Supreme Court decision on reproductive health, June Medical Services v. Russo, felt more distant. As she learned more about the case and other legal threats to abortion access, she wished that advocates would talk about the issue in a way that felt urgent to members of Generation Z and young millennials like her.

“It’s not that young people don’t care about abortion, it’s that they don’t think it applies to them,” she said. Language about “protecting Roe” feels “antiquated,” she added. “If I’m a high school student who got activated by March for Our Lives, I’m not hip to Supreme Court cases that happened before my time.”

Her question, as she kept her eyes on the court, was: “How can we reframe it so it feels like a young woman’s fight?”

On Monday the Supreme Court ruled on the case, striking down a Louisiana law that required abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at local hospitals, four years after deciding that an effectively identical Texas requirement was unconstitutional because it placed an “undue burden” on safe abortion access.

The Guttmacher Institute had estimated that 15 states could potentially put similarly restrictive laws on the books if the Supreme Court upheld the Louisiana law.

The leaders of reproductive rights organizations celebrated their victory with caution. At least 16 cases that would restrict access to legal abortion remain in lower courts, and 25 abortion bans have been enacted in more than a dozen states in the last year.

“The fight is far from over,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood. “Our vigilance continues, knowing the makeup of the court as well as the federal judiciary is not in our favor.”

But interviews with more than a dozen young women who have taken to the streets for racial justice reflected some ambivalence about their role in the movement for reproductive rights.

Some, raised in a post-Roe world, do not feel the same urgency toward abortion as they do for other social justice causes; others want to ensure that the fight is broadly defined, with an emphasis on racial disparities in reproductive health.

Members of Gen Z and millennials are more progressive than older generations. They have also been politically active, whether organizing a global climate strike or mass marches against gun violence in schools.

But Gen Z women do not identify abortion as one of the most important issues to them, according to a 2019 survey from Ignite, a nonpartisan group focused on young women’s political education. Mass shootings, climate change and education rank highest. On the right, meanwhile, researchers say that opposition to abortion has become more central to young people’s political beliefs.

Melissa Deckman, a professor of political science at Washington College who studies young women’s political beliefs, said that Gen Z women predominantly believe in reproductive freedom but that some believe it is less pressing because they see it as a “given,” having grown up in a world of legalized abortion.

“Myself and other activists in my community are focused on issues that feel like immediate life or death, like the environment,” said Kaitlin Ahern, 19, who was raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in a community where air quality was low because of proximity to a landfill. “It’s easier to disassociate from abortion rights.”

Fatimata Cham, 19, an ambassador for the antigun violence advocacy group Youth Over Guns, agreed that the fight for reproductive rights felt less personal.

“For many activists, we have a calling, a realm of work we want to pursue because of our own personal experiences,” Cham said. “Growing up, abortion never came to mind as an issue I needed to work on.”

These young women recognized that while some American women can now gain easy access to abortion, millions more cannot. At least five states have only one abortion clinic.

But some said that while they considered reproductive rights an important factor in determining how they vote, they struggled to see how their activism on the issue could have an effect.

When Baker helped coordinate local walkouts against gun violence, she sensed that young people no longer needed to wait for “permission” to demand change. With abortion advocacy, she said, organizers seem focused on waiting for decisions from the highest courts.

And even as those decisions move through the courts, the possibility of a future without legal abortion can feel implausible.

“I know we have a lot to lose, but it’s hard to imagine us going backward,” said Alliyah Logan, 18, a recent high school graduate from New York City. “Is it possible to go that far back?”

Then she added: “Of course in this administration, anything is possible.”

Some millennial women who can easily and safely get abortions do not connect the experience to their political activism. Cynthia Gutierrez, 30, a community organizer in California, got a medication abortion in 2013. Because she did not struggle with medical access or insurance, the experience did not immediately propel her toward advocacy.

“I had no idea about the political landscape around it,” she said. “I had no idea that other people had challenges with access or finding a clinic or being able to afford an abortion.”

Around that time, Gutierrez began working at a criminal justice reform organization.

“I wasn’t thinking, let me go to the next pro-choice rally,” she said. “The racial justice and criminal justice work I did felt more relevant because I had people in my life who had gone through the prison industrial complex, and I experienced discrimination.”

Other young women said they felt less drawn to reproductive rights messaging that is focused strictly on legal abortion access, and more drawn to messaging about racial and socioeconomic disparities in access to abortion, widely referred to as reproductive justice.

Brea Baker, an activist and organizer in Atlanta, has worked on racial justice issues, but she said the fight over abortion access could feel distant: “How can we reframe it so it feels like a young woman’s fight?”

10

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Trump got written briefing in February on possible Russian bounties, officials say

By CHARLIE SAVAGE, ERIC SCHMITT, NICHOLAS FANDOS and ADAM GOLDMAN

U

.S. officials provided a written briefing in late February to President Donald Trump laying out their conclusion that a Russian military intelligence unit offered and paid bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, two officials familiar with the matter said.

The investigation into the suspected Russian covert operation to incentivize such killings has focused in part on an April 2019 car bombing that killed three Marines as one such potential attack, according to multiple officials familiar with the matter.

The new information emerged as the White House tried Monday to play down the intelligence assessment that Russia sought to encourage and reward killings — including reiterating a claim that Trump was never briefed about the matter and portraying the conclusion as disputed and dubious.

But that stance clashed with the disclosure by two officials that the intelligence was included months ago in Trump’s President’s Daily Brief document — a compilation of the government’s latest secrets and best insights about foreign policy and national security that is prepared for him to read. One of the officials said the item appeared in Trump’s brief in late February; the other cited Feb. 27, specifically.

Moreover, a description of the intelligence assessment that the Russian unit had carried out the bounties plot was also seen as serious and solid enough to disseminate more broadly across the intelligence community in a May 4 article in

the CIA’s World Intelligence Review, a classified compendium commonly referred to as The Wire, two officials said.

A National Security Council spokesman declined to comment on any connection between the Marines’ deaths and the suspected Russian plot. The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, did not answer when pressed by reporters Monday whether the intelligence was included in the written President’s Daily Brief, and the security council spokesman pointed to her comments when asked later about the February written briefing.

Late Monday, John Ratcliffe, the recently confirmed director of national intelligence, issued a statement warning that leaks about the matter were a crime.

“We are still investigating the alleged intelligence referenced in recent media reporting, and we will brief the president and congressional leaders at the appropriate time,” he said. “This is the analytic process working the way it should. Unfortunately, unauthorized disclosures now jeopardize our ability to ever find out the full story with respect to these allegations.”

The disclosures came amid a growing furor in Washington over the revelations in recent days that the Trump administration had known for months about the intelligence conclusion but that the White House had authorized no response to Russia.

Top Democrats in the House and Senate demanded all members of Congress be briefed, and the White House summoned a small group of House Republicans friendly to the president to begin explaining its position.

The lawmakers emerged saying that they

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill on Friday, June 26, 2020.

were told the administration was reviewing reporting about the suspected Russian plot to assess its credibility. They also said the underlying intelligence was conflicting, echoing comments from McEnany that the information in the assessment had not been “verified” because, she said without detail, there were “dissenting opinions” among analysts or agencies.

“There was not a consensus among the intelligence community,” McEnany said. “And, in fact, there were dissenting opinions within the intelligence community, and it would not be elevated to the president until it was verified.”

Later Monday, Robert C. O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser, echoed McEnany’s insistence that the reports were unsubstantiated.

But in denying that Trump was briefed, administration officials have been coy about how it is defining that concept and whether it includes both oral briefings and the President’s Daily Brief.

“He was not personally briefed on the matter,” McEnany told reporters when asked specifically about the written briefing. “That is all I can share with you today.”

Trump is said to often neglect reading that document, preferring instead to receive an oral briefing summarizing highlights every few days.

Even in those face-to-face meetings, he is particularly difficult to brief on national security matters.

He often relies instead on conservative media and friends for information, current and former intelligence officials have said.

U.S. intelligence officers and Special Operations forces in Afghanistan began raising alarms as early as January, and the National Security Council convened an interagency meeting to discuss the problem and what to do about it in late March, The Times has previously reported. But despite being presented with options, including a diplomatic protest and sanctions, the White House authorized no response.

The administration’s explanations on Monday, in public and in private, appeared to be an attempt to placate lawmakers, particularly Trump’s fellow Republicans, alarmed by news reports in recent days revealing the existence of the intelligence assessment and Trump’s insistence he had not been warned of the suspected Russian plot.

The assessments pointing to a Russian scheme to offer bounties to Taliban-linked militants and criminals were based on information collected in raids and interrogations on the ground in Afghanistan, where U.S. military commanders came to believe Russia was behind the plot, as well as more sensitive and unspecified intelligence that came in over time, a U.S. official said.

Typically, the president is formally briefed when the information has been vetted and seen as sufficiently credible and important by the intelli-

gence professionals. Such information would most likely be included in the President’s Daily Brief.

Former officials said that in previous administrations, accusations of such profound importance — even if the evidence was not fully established — were conveyed to the president.

“We had two threshold questions: ‘Does the president need to know this’ and ‘why does he need to know it now,’” said Robert Cardillo, a former senior intelligence official who briefed President Barack Obama from 2010 to 2014.

Lawmakers demanded to see the underlying material for themselves.

“This is a time to focus on the two things Congress should be asking and looking at: No. 1 Who knew what, when, and did the commander in chief know? And if not, how the hell not?” said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, each requested that all lawmakers be briefed on the matter and for CIA and other intelligence officials to explain how Trump was informed of intelligence collected about the plot.

The White House began explaining its position directly to lawmakers in a carefully controlled setting. Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff; John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence; and Robert C. O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser, briefed a handful of invited House Republicans. A group of House Democrats was scheduled to go to the White House on Tuesday morning to receive a similar briefing.

There was no indication after the session with Republicans whether they had been told that the information was included in Trump’s written briefing four months ago. But afterward, two of the Republicans — Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Mac Thornberry of Texas — said that they “remain concerned about Russian activity in Afghanistan, including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces” and would need additional briefings.

“It has been clear for some time that Russia does not wish us well in Afghanistan,” they said in a joint statement. “We believe it is important to vigorously pursue any information related to Russia or any other country targeting our forces.”

Other Republicans who attended the briefing were more sanguine. In an interview, Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah said that he saw nothing unusual about the purported decision not to orally inform Trump, particularly when the situation did not require the president to take immediate action.

“It just didn’t reach the level of credibility to bring it to the president’s attention,” he said, adding that military and intelligence agencies should continue to scrutinize Russia’s activities.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

11

U.S. halts high-tech exports to Hong Kong over security concerns

By ANA SWANSON

T

he Trump administration placed new restrictions on U.S. exports of defense equipment and certain high-technology products to Hong Kong on Monday, in response to a new Chinese law aimed at tightening Beijing’s control over the territory.

The administration determined in late May that Hong Kong no longer had significant autonomy under Chinese rule, and promised to begin stripping away Hong Kong’s privileged status with the United States if Beijing continued to crack down on civil liberties in Hong Kong.

Chinese lawmakers are poised to approve a national security law as soon as this week that could drastically curb protests and other criticisms of the Chinese government, infringing on an arrangement that has made Hong Kong, which China ceded to Britain in 1842 and which ceased being a British colony in 1997, autonomous in many respects.

In separate statements on Monday, the State Department said that it would end exports of U.S. military equipment to Hong Kong, while the Commerce Department said that Hong Kong would now be subject to the same types of controls on certain technology exports that apply to China. Those controls block American companies from selling certain types of sensitive, high-technology products that could threaten national security to China, Russia and other countries deemed to be a security risk.

The effect of the new restrictions announced Monday appear to be relatively limited in scope, given the small volume of trade the United States does with Hong Kong. Hong Kong represented just 2.2% of American exports in 2018, with defense and high-technology items making up a sliver of that.

But the export limitations announced Monday could have larger implications for some multinational companies, including some semiconductor firms, that now will be barred from sending products or sharing certain high-tech in-

The Kwai Tsing Container Terminals in Hong Kong. formation with the territory. Some multinational companies that chose Hong Kong as a base for doing business with China have begun considering moves to other locations, including Singapore.

The Trump administration has said it would end an extradition treaty with Hong Kong and curtail some other commercial relations as a result of China’s new security law. It said it would cancel visas for thousands of Chinese graduate students and researchers with ties to the Chinese military, and threatened to place sanctions on Chinese government officials and financial institutions involved in promulgating the security law.

But the Trump administration has stopped short of broader financial sanctions, which could be crippling for Chinese companies and the U.S.-China economic relationship, including President Donald Trump’s Phase 1 trade

deal.

In a statement, Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, said that China’s new security law undermined the territory’s autonomy and increased the risk that delicate American technology would be diverted to China’s military or security forces.

Ross said that further actions to eliminate Hong Kong’s differential treatment were “also being evaluated.”

“We urge Beijing to immediately reverse course and fulfill the promises it has made to the people of Hong Kong and the world,” he added.

“It gives us no pleasure to take this action,” Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, said in a separate statement. “But given Beijing now treats Hong Kong as ‘One Country, One System,’ so must we.”

Halting American high-tech ex-

ports to Hong Kong is not a new idea, as some U.S. security experts have warned for years that China may be using purchases through Hong Kong to obtain products of military value that are prohibited for sale directly to mainland China. But Edward Yau, Hong Kong’s secretary of commerce and economic development, said in an interview in his office in Hong Kong last year that the city has very tight controls on any reexport of high-tech gear that is subject to export controls by the United States or any other country.

Yau said at the time that the Hong Kong government was strongly opposed to any U.S. move to apply export controls to Hong Kong, saying that Hong Kong retains a separate system in many ways from the mainland and has a history of close cooperation with the United States.

12

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Stocks

S&P 500 poised for best quarter since 1998; Boeing weighs on Dow

T

he S&P 500 on Tuesday was poised to close out its best quarter in more than two decades as improving economic data bolstered investor beliefs that a stimulus-backed rebound for the U.S. economy was on the horizon.

But gains were kept in check by comments from Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious diseases expert, who said there was no guarantee the United States will have an effective COVID-19 vaccine and warned the virus spread “could get very bad,” a reminder that a full economic recovery could be a long road.

The Dow slipped, pressured by a drop of more than 6% in Boeing Co (BA.N), as the airplane maker gave back some of Monday’s 14% surge after Norwegian Air (NWC.OL) canceled orders for 97 aircraft and said it would claim compensation.

“There is a huge game of musical chairs going on here and that is really favoring the Nasdaq and it is really punishing the indices that have the megacap and very familiar names like Boeing,” said Peter Kenny, founder, Kenny’s Commentary LLC and Strategic Board Solutions LLC in Denver.

“That will turn to some extent once we get this under control and kind of get this relatively all-clear signal from the authorities - the political figures and the health authorities.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 36.27 points, or 0.14%, to 25,559.53, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 20.8 points, or 0.68%, to 3,074.04 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 108.80 points, or 1.1%, to 9,982.95.

While coronavirus cases continue to surge in many states, the U.S. economy is showing signs of pickup, with data indicating consumer confidence increased much more than expected in June.

Analysts warned that portfolio rebalancing at the end of the quarter could lead to choppy trading in the session.

The benchmark S&P 500 has rebounded more than 37% from its March 23 closing low and is up nearly 19% for the quarter on unprecedented levels of fiscal and monetary stimulus and the easing of restrictions.

But it is still down about 5% on the year, and gains in June stood under 1% due to the flare-up in virus cases that has threatened to delay reopenings and derail a tentative economic recovery. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell reiterated in comments on Tuesday that the path of the economy is “highly uncertain.”

Simmering U.S.-China tensions also weighed on sentiment, with Washington beginning to eliminate Hong Kong’s special status under U.S. law in response to China’s national security law for the territory. China said it would retaliate.

Nine of the 11 major S&P 500 sectors were trading higher, with technology .SPLRCT stocks leading the pack with a 1% gain.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

13

Australia spending nearly $1 billion on cyberdefense as China tensions rise

By DAMIEN CAVE

C

onfronting a surge of cyberattacks attributed to the Chinese government, Australia moved to bolster its defenses Tuesday, promising to recruit at least 500 cyberspies and build on its ability to take the battle overseas.

The investment of 1.35 billion Australian dollars ($930 million) over the next decade is the largest the country has ever made in cyberweapons and defenses.

It follows what Prime Minister Scott Morrison has described as a sharp increase in the frequency, scale and sophistication of online attacks — and, more broadly, a steady deterioration in relations between Australia and China.

“The federal government’s top priority is protecting our nation’s economy, national security and sovereignty,” Morrison said Tuesday. “Malicious cyberactivity undermines that.”

The new initiative points to growing frustration in Australia with what current and former intelligence officials have described as a relentless, increasingly aggressive campaign by China to spy on, disrupt and threaten the country’s government, vital infrastructure and most important industries.

The full details of attacks that appear to have come from China are still mostly hidden — Australian officials remain wary of provoking Beijing by naming and shaming culprits — but the public record now includes several examples of elaborate hacking that has less to do with theft for profit than growing aggression against a rival government.

In January of last year, for example, hackers found their way into the computer systems of the Australian Parliament. A year before that, security experts said that tools commonly used by Chinese hackers had been deployed in attacks on Australia’s Defense Department and the Australian National University.

Two weeks ago, Australian officials said a wide range of political and private-sector organizations had come under attack by a “sophisticated state-based cyberactor” — a reference that most cybersecurity experts took to mean China.

And there are hints that the tools being deployed are increasingly ambitious and dangerous.

In one attack earlier this year, hackers used a compromised email account from the Indonesian Embassy in Australia to send a Word document to a staff member in the office of the top leader in the state of Western Australia.

The attachment contained an invisible cyberattack tool called Aria-body, which had never been detected before and had alarming new capabilities. It allowed hackers to remotely take over a computer, to

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, seen in May, said that malicious cyberactivity undermined Australia’s economy and security. copy, delete or create files, and to carry out extensive searches of the device.

A cybersecurity company in Israel later linked Aria-body to a group of hackers, called Naikon, that has been traced to the Chinese military.

Peter Jennings, a former defense and intelligence official who heads the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said Beijing had leapfrogged other countries in its cyberabilities and the frequency of its attacks.

“It’s just reaching unprecedented heights of activity,” he said. “Yes, it’s true countries do spy on each other; the problem here is the all-pervasive nature of what China is doing. In many ways, big and small, there are hints of bullying and coercion.”

The attacks, while constant, have become more troublesome since Australia angered China by calling for an international inquiry into the roots of the coronavirus outbreak. In Beijing, any questioning of the official narrative that China defeated the virus as quickly as possible is seen as an insult.

The rising tensions between the two countries have already affected trade — with China cutting imports of barley and beef — and neither country has made a public effort to reconcile. China has also tried to turn the cyberspying accusations back on Austra-

lia, with its state media claiming that Beijing disrupted an Australian operation two years ago.

The response on the cyberfront that Australia outlined Tuesday starts with personnel. Roughly a third of the funding will go toward hiring hundreds of cybersecurity experts to study and share information about the evolution of emerging threats, and to create countermeasures of their own.

The Australian Signals Directorate and the Australian Cyber Security Center will build up their capacity to defend against attacks and their connections with the companies that run the country’s digital networks.

The defense minister, Senator Linda Reynolds, said in a statement that the investment aimed to create a rapid-response process that would “prevent malicious cyberactivity from reaching millions of Australians by blocking known malicious websites and computer viruses at speed.”

Jennings said the investment was substantial and needed. He added that it would most likely be a down payment.

“The need for more investment in cybersecurity, both defense and offense, will keep growing,” he said. “This won’t be the last investment, I’m sure.”

14 Wednesday, July 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

China passes security law giving it sweeping powers over Hong Kong

By CHRIS BUCKLEY, KEITH BRADSHER AND TIFFANY MAY

C

hina passed a contentious new law for Hong Kong on Tuesday that would empower authorities to crack down on opposition to Beijing, risking deeper rifts with Western governments that have warned about the erosion of freedoms in the territory.

The law’s swift approval in Beijing signaled the urgency that the Communist Party leader, Xi Jinping, has given to expanding control in Hong Kong after the territory was convulsed by pro-democracy protests last year.

Details of the law had not been disclosed as of Tuesday evening, but Carrie Lam, the city’s leader, said it would come into effect later in the night.

The law underscores Beijing’s resolve to achieve a political sea change in Hong Kong, a former British colony with its own legal system and civil liberties unseen in mainland China. It could be used to stifle protests like those that last year evolved into an increasingly confrontational, and sometimes violent, challenge to Chinese rule.

The legislation dealt a blow to Hong Kong’s opposition forces Tuesday even before it went into effect. Several prominent young activists bowed out of politics, a few groups disbanded, and some businesses distanced themselves from the pro-democracy movement. Opposition politicians quickly criticized the law for its power to silence dissent.

“It’s meant to suppress and oppress, and to frighten and intimidate Hong Kongers,” Claudia Mo, a pro-democracy lawmaker, said.

“And they just might succeed in that.”

The Chinese legislature approved the law a day before July 1, the politically charged anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997, which regularly draws pro-democracy protests. On the anniversary last year, a huge peaceful demonstration gave way to violence when a small group of activists broke into the Hong Kong legislature, smashing glass walls and spray-painting slogans on walls.

Xi signed off on the legislation Tuesday, according to announcements carried by China’s official Xinhua News Agency. The vote by a top legislative body, taken less than two weeks after the lawmakers first formally considered the legislation, was unanimous, the agency said, and the law would take effect once issued publicly.

Tam Yiu-chung, Hong Kong’s representative to the legislative group in China that reviewed the law, said the tough measures were

A billboard promoting China’s national security law in Hong Kong on Monday evening, June 29, 2020. aimed at intimidating would-be offenders.

“Those who have stirred up trouble and broken this type of law in the past will hopefully watch themselves in the future,” Tam said in a television interview. “If they continue to defy the law, they will bear the consequences.”

The security law was approved by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, an elite arm of China’s party-controlled legislature, in a process that drew criticism for its unusual secrecy.

Breaking from normal procedure, the committee did not release a draft of the law for public comment. Hong Kong’s activists, legal scholars and officials were left to debate or defend the bill based on details released by China’s state news media earlier this month.

“The fact that the Chinese authorities have now passed this law without the people of Hong Kong being able to see it tells you a lot about their intentions,” said Joshua Rosenzweig, head of Amnesty International’s China team. “Their aim is to govern Hong Kong through fear from this point forward.”

The law calls for Hong Kong’s government to establish a new agency to oversee enforcement of the new rules. Beijing will create its own separate security arm in Hong Kong, empowered to investigate special cases and collect intelligence.

Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s top official, sought to defend the law in a recorded speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday, saying it would target

only a minority of people and make the territory safer for most residents. She said last year’s unrest had threatened China’s security and accused foreign governments critical of the legislation of holding double standards.

“No central government could turn a blind eye to such threats to sovereignty and national security as well as risks of subversion of state power,” Lam said.

On Tuesday, a few dozen pro-Beijing supporters wearing white shirts and blue caps gathered in a park to celebrate the passage of the law. They celebrated by waving large Chinese flags as they uncorked bottles of sparkling wine and drank from plastic cups.

Critics say that the new security agencies and politically shaded categories of crime, such as “inciting separatism,” could send a chill across Hong Kong society.

“Potentially, the security law penetrates a lot of activities that contribute to the vibrancy of Hong Kong’s civil society and the character of this international city and financial center,” said Cora Chan, an associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong who has studied China’s drive for security legislation.

At least two groups that have called for Hong Kong to become an independent state said they would stop operating in the city.

Such groups remain in the minority in Hong Kong but have drawn government scrutiny.

Activists are also worried that the law could target those who peacefully call for true autonomy for the territory, as opposed to inde-

pendence.

“They are doing whatever it takes to crack down on dissent and opposition here.

It’s just unthinkable in the year 2020,” said Mo, the pro-democracy lawmaker. “This is a huge departure from civilization.”

Four senior members of Demosisto, a political organization in Hong Kong that has drawn disaffected young people, announced that they were quitting the group. They included Joshua Wong, a leader of the 2014 pro-democracy demonstrations known as the Umbrella Movement. The group later said it would disband.

Police have denied applications from three groups to hold protest marches Wednesday, the anniversary of the handover, making it the first time authorities have refused to allow a demonstration on that date. Some opposition lawmakers and democracy advocates have urged people to take to the streets despite the ban.

“The July 1 march tomorrow will show that we will absolutely not accept this evil national security law,” Wu Chi-wai, a pro-democracy lawmaker, said Tuesday. “Even if they try to crush us, we will use all kinds of ways and methods to ensure that Hong Kong people’s voices and opinions can be expressed.”

Concerns have grown over reports that the law would introduce hefty prison sentences for vaguely defined political crimes.

In pushing through the legislation, Xi has asserted that Chinese central authorities have the power to prescribe security laws for the territory. That argument has been denounced by legal scholars in Hong Kong, who say that Beijing is overreaching.

China has also drawn criticism from other governments, including the Group of 7 leading industrialized democracies, who have called on China to abandon the law.

The Trump administration has said that the United States would put visa restrictions on Chinese officials deemed to have undermined Hong Kong’s relative autonomy, though it did not name any officials. On Monday, the United States also restricted exports of U.S. defense equipment and some high-technology products to Hong Kong.

In Beijing, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, has said China would impose tit-for-tat visa restrictions on Americans “with egregious conduct related to Hong Kong issues.” He denounced the Trump administration’s sanctions on Hong Kong on Tuesday, saying, “Intimidation will never work on China.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

15

Belgium’s king sends letter of regret over colonial past in Congo

By MONIKA PRONCZUK and MEGAN SPECIA

Jean Omasombo, a political scientist at the University of Kinshasa and a researcher at ing Philippe of Belgium on Tuesday the Africa Museum in Tervuren, Belgium, said expressed his “deepest regrets” for his that the Belgian state had never recognized its country’s brutal past in a letter to the responsibility for colonial atrocities. president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, “This letter is a first step,” Omasombo said. the first public acknowledgment from a member “But it is not sufficient.” Omasombo added that of the Belgian royal family of the devastating he welcomed the idea of the parliamentary commission but that it should not be “a distraction” human and financial toll during eight decades from accountability. of colonization.

Until 1908, Leopold ran the Congo Free State The king’s letter, issued on the 60th anniversary of Congo’s independence, acknowledged as a venture for personal profit. With an army the historical legacy and pointed out continuing that included Congolese orphans, the king and issues of racism and discrimination, though it his agents drained the land of resources and then stopped short of the apology that some, including forcibly moved, separated and enslaved families, the United Nations, had asked for. before being forced to turn control of the area “I want to express my deepest regrets for back over to the Belgian state. Congo achieved the wounds of the past, the pain of which is independence from Belgium in 1960, but the revived today by discriminations that are still following decades were scarred by civil war.

Almost 10,000 people demonstrated in too present in our societies,” the king wrote in Brussels against racism in June in the wake of the letter sent to President Félix Tshisekedi of the killing of Floyd. Some protesters climbed on the Democratic Republic of Congo. The king a statue of King Leopold II and flew a giant flag would, he added, “continue to fight against all of the Democratic Republic of Congo, chanting forms of racism.” “murderer” and “reparations,” repeating a deThe letter, which was followed by a statement from Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès of mand for the Belgian state to pay damages to Belgium urging her country to “look its past the Democratic Republic of Congo. in the face,” are part of the European nation’s Belgium’s grappling with its colonial heritage has long been fraught. For decades, Belgians newfound willingness to address its vicious were taught that the country had brought “cicolonial past. vilization” to the African continent, and some In an address Monday, Tshisekedi said that Removing a portrait of King Baudouin of Belgium from an airhave defended King Leopold II as a foundational King Philippe had planned to be at the Indepen- port in what was called Leopoldville in 1960. The capital of the dence Day celebrations in Kinshasa, the capital Democratic Republic of Congo is now called Kinshasa. figure. Streets and parks are named after him, of the Democratic Republic of Congo, but that and statues of the king can be found throughout the coronavirus pandemic had intervened. the country.

Tshisekedi said he was trying to foster a strong ancestor of King Philippe, extracted wealth from the As in so many European nations, racial discriresource-rich territory in central Africa while inflicting mination is an ongoing issue in Belgium. Recently, a relationship with the European country.

Black member of the European Parliament said she “I consider it necessary that our common history immense harm that led to the deaths of millions.

Jean-Luc Crucke, finance minister for Wallonia, had been mistreated by police in Brussels. with Belgium and its people be told to our children The member, Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana, 71, in the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as in one of Belgium’s three regions, said Tuesday that a Belgium on the basis of scientific work carried out by parliamentary commission would begin work in Sep- a Green party representative from Germany, filed a tember to scrutinize the country’s colonial past. The legal complaint in June against Belgian officers who historians of the two countries,” he said.

“But the most important thing for the future is to panel would allow Belgium to “continue this path” she said had pushed her against a wall and taken away build harmonious relations with Belgium,” he added, laid out by the king’s letter, which he called “heavy her purse and her mobile phone as she was trying to film what she described as police “harassing” young “because beyond the stigmas of history, the two with meaning and more than symbolic.”

Wilmès, speaking at a commemoration event in Black men at a Brussels train station. peoples have been able to build a strong relationship.”

According to Herzberger-Fofana, police officers Belgium has long grappled with its legacy in Brussels later in the day, acknowledged the troubled Africa, and protests in the United States against the history with the Democratic Republic of Congo, “a did not believe her when she said she was a member death of George Floyd at the hands of police have past imprinted with inequalities and violence against of the Parliament, despite her identification and a diplomatic passport. spurred a global conversation about racism that has the Congolese.”

Some activists said that the king’s letter did not “I consider this as a racist and discriminatory given a new intensity to the issue.

In addition to the remarks from the king and go far enough because it did not contain an apology act,” she said in a recent speech at the European prime minister, statues of King Leopold II, whose and, because he is not a member of the government, it Parliament. “We can’t ignore this police violence.”

Police claim she insulted officers and have filed violent personal rule of what was then the Congo did not formally reflect the views of the Belgian state, Free State, have been removed from city squares and which took control of the vast land after King Leopold their own complaint. The public prosecutor is investigating the episode. government buildings across Belgium. Leopold, an II and continued colonial exploitation.

K

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Wednesday, July 1, 2020

EU formalizes reopening, barring travelers from U.S.

By MATTINA STEVIS-GRIDNEFF

T

he European Union will open its borders to visitors from 15 countries as of Wednesday, but not to travelers from the United States, Brazil or Russia, putting into effect a complex policy that has sought to balance health concerns with politics, diplomacy and the desperate need for tourism revenue.

The list of nations that EU countries have approved includes Australia, Canada and New Zealand, while travelers from China will be permitted if China reciprocates.

The plan was drawn up based on health criteria, and EU officials went to great lengths to appear apolitical in their choices, but the decision to leave the United States off the list — lumping travelers from there in with those from Brazil and Russia — was a high-profile rebuke of the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Travelers’ country of residence, not their nationality, will be the determining factor for their ability to travel to countries in the EU, officials said, and while the policy will not be legally binding, all 27 member nations will be under pressure to comply. If not, they risk having their European peers close borders within the bloc, which would set back efforts to restart the free travel-and-trade zone that is fundamental to the club’s economic survival.

Still, some European countries, especially those in the south that see millions of visitors from all over the world throng to beaches and cultural sites during the summer, have been eager to permit more travelers in a bid to salvage their ravaged, and vital, tourism industries.

The United States was the first country to bar visitors from the EU in March as the pandemic devastated Italy and other European nations.

The bloc implemented its own travel ban in mid-March and has been gradually

Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport last month. The move by the European Union aims to balance health concerns with the need to bolster trade, not least the tourism industry.

extending it as the pandemic spreads to other parts of the world. It had set Wednesday as the date to begin allowing non-EU travelers to return, even as Portugal and Sweden, both members, and Britain, which is treated as a member until the end of the year, still grapple with serious outbreaks.

Others, such as Germany, are seeing new localized outbreaks drive up their national caseloads.

Britain was exempt from consideration for the list because of its current EU status, and countries like Spain and France are considering allowing direct flights from Britain to bring in crucial tourism revenue.

The list of safe countries will be reviewed every two weeks to reflect the changing realities of the coronavirus outbreaks in individual nations, officials said, and countries could be added or removed from the list. Experts say the approach is a sensible way to navigate the continent’s reopening as the spread of the virus shifts and ebbs. But it is also bound to create logistical problems for airlines trying to plan routes and could reap uncertainty for would-be travelers.

The full list of the first 15 countries that the EU will open up to consists of Algeria, Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia, Uruguay and China, provided that China also opens up to travelers from the bloc. It also includes four European microstates: Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican.

Exceptions are also being made for travelers from countries outside the safe list, including health care workers, diplomats, humanitarian workers, transit passengers, asylum-seekers and students, as well as “passengers traveling for imperative family reasons” and foreign workers whose employment in Europe is deemed essential.

Although travel between the United States and Europe has been severely limited by the earlier lockdown restrictions, exceptions have been made. A regular flight between Newark, New Jersey, and Amsterdam, for example, has shuttled essential travelers such as diplomats and health care professionals and repatriated Europeans from the United States.

The prolonged severance of travel ties between the bloc and the United States has disrupted a critical economic, cultural and diplomatic relationship. Business travelers on both sides of the Atlantic are desperate to resume their visits, couples and families have been split up for months, and the differences between the European and U.S. approaches to combating the pandemic have brought to the fore divergent views on science and policy.

While most European nations went into strict lockdowns early in their outbreaks and have been promoting the wearing of masks and other measures to try to control the resurgence of the illness, the United States has seen a patchwork response, and the number of new cases has continued to balloon.

The different policy approaches and their subsequent results became obvious to officials tasked with drafting the safe list.

The benchmark scientific metric used was new cases over the past two weeks per 100,000 people. The average among the 27 EU countries was 16 in mid-June; in the United States, it was 107.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week said that the United States and the EU were working together to reopen travel between the two areas.

“We’re working with our European counterparts to get that right,” he told a German Marshall Fund conference last week. “There’s enormous destruction of wealth.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

17

Is statue-toppling a monumental error?

Gail: Well, I’m pretty sure if I met him, I wouldn’t like him.

Ditto all those Founding Fathers from Virginia who fought for their liberty while owning slaves. They knew slavery was evil — as Thomas Jefferson said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” But Jefferson didn’t do anything about it either.

Bret: You’ll be happy to know I was a Hamilton guy long before “Hamilton.”

Gail: Wow, I can’t remember life before “Hamilton.”

But about Jefferson? We celebrate the Declaration of Independence, but does that mean we celebrate the author? Who wanted a nation that was free for white people but protected the right of slave owners to keep and control their property forever?

Great men are never perfect, but how do we decide if their good outweighs the bad?

The spray-painted base of the statue of Andrew Jackson Bret: I put a lot of weight in what Abraham Lincoln said of near the White House remained last week after protestthe third president: “All honor to Jefferson — to the man who, in ers tried to tear down the statue. the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast and capacity to introduce

By GAIL COLLINS and BRET STEPHENS into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that today, and ail Collins: Bret, long ago I wrote a trillion-part Fourth of July in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the series of interviews with New Yorkers who were involved very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.” in the celebration of the Statue of Liberty’s 100th birthday.

Gail: I know you’re right but I still hold a grudge. This is a The rule was that each piece had to be an interview with guy who warned his daughter not to go outside without a bonnet someone whose ancestors came through Ellis Island from a different “because it will make you very ugly and then we should not love country. That was pretty easy for the first 10 parts or so, but after you so much.” a while it was definitely a challenge.

Bret: Great public men are often horrid private men. I can So I have a long-standing interest in statue issues. You’ve just think of a few Kennedys who fit that description. written about the pulling-down-Andrew-Jackson controversy. Let’s Gail: Yeah and some of them got statues. But I do like the talk a bit about your conclusions. idea of having historic commissions that check into these things. Not Bret: My basic criterion when it comes to deciding whether just because some of the alleged heroes have enormous flaws, but a statue should stay or go is whether the person on the pedestal also because a lot of them have pretty much slipped out of history. worked for or against a more perfect union, to borrow that beautiful I pass a guy on horseback every time I walk my dog, and I never phrase from the preamble to the Constitution. Figures like Jefferson can remember his name. He seems to have gotten the monument Davis and Robert E. Lee should come down because they worked because sometime long ago, local German Americans wanted a for disunion, not union. On the other hand, I’m appalled by the statue to a German American. defacement of the magnificent Robert Gould Shaw memorial in Bret: I’m guessing you mean Franz Sigel, an incompetent Boston, which commemorates the bravery of one of the first all-black Union general who recruited a lot of German-speaking immigrants. regiments in the Union Army, just as I’m disgusted by the protesters He wound up getting what he deserved: a job in journalism. who pulled down the statue of Ulysses Grant in San Francisco.

Gail: Ouch.

Gail: I’ve always had a soft spot for Ulysses. He was ahead Bret: I’m happy with the idea of commissions, if only because of his time on racial issues, although that would still make him way they’re a much better way of doing things than having angry mobs behind our 21st-century understanding. vandalize public property with zero deliberation or debate. Too Bret: We need to find a way to balance present-day moral bad the Republican Party didn’t have a commission to pick its 2016 judgments with some appreciation that the past is another country. presidential nominee, as opposed to a different kind of angry mob As for Jackson, my view is that, on balance, he worked for a that also wanted to vandalize public property. more perfect union. This is in no way to deny the fact that he was Gail: Commissions rule. For the minute. a slaveholder or ignore his atrocious role in the ethnic cleansing of Bret: Speaking of which, I was much struck by my former Native Americans. But the modern Democratic Party, with its procolleague Peggy Noonan’s latest column in The Wall Street Journal, foundly egalitarian impulses, would have probably been impossible “The Week It Went South for Trump.” Peggy nailed the 2016 race, without Jackson. And the Union might have perished long before and I think she might have nailed the 2020 race with this line: “The Abraham Lincoln came to power if Jackson hadn’t opposed nulreal picture at the Tulsa rally was not the empty seats so much as lification and its champion, John C. Calhoun, as forcefully as he did. the empty faces — the bored looks, the yawning and phone checkWhat’s your take on Old Hickory? ing.” She’s right: The evil Trump spell is broken, even with many

G

of his rank-and-file. He’s gonna lose, unless Biden totally blows it.

Gail: I agree, but nervously. We’re all haunted by the specter of 2016.

One thing I worry about is all the Republicans who know Trump is an abomination but can’t bring themselves to say they’d vote for a Democrat. Even John Bolton — after all that traipsing around telling stories about how awful the president is — says he’s going to write in some other name. Ditto Mitt Romney.

I certainly don’t have any influence over those folks, but can’t you do something to turn them around?

Bret: If Bernie Sanders had been the nominee, I’d be writing in someone’s name, too. President Johannes Brahms has a nice ring to it. But the idea that a Biden presidency would be a threat to the Republic is laughable: It would be a return to politics as we used to know it before the proverbial sacking of Rome.

My pitch to the Romneys and Boltons of the world is simple: In order for their vision of sane conservatism to win, Trump’s insane vision must lose so decisively that it will be politically destroyed and morally repudiated by the broad majority of Republicans themselves. The bigger Biden’s margin of victory in November, the better it will be for normal conservatives in future Novembers.

A vote for Biden now is a vote for a GOP that has a future — in a country that has a future.

Gail: Bret, you’re the perfect Biden pitchman. Really, you deserve a statue.

Bret: Only if it is made of plastic and fits in a shoe box, Gail.

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Wednesday, July 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

John Roberts is no pro-choice hero

Chief Justice John Roberts arriving at the Capitol in January.

By THE NYT EDITORIAL BOARD

T

he Supreme Court upheld abortion rights on Monday, with Chief Justice John Roberts concurring with the liberals on the court to strike down a Louisiana antiabortion law.

That sentence might surprise a lot of people, given that the chief justice is a staunch conservative, and that the court now has a solid right-wing majority. President Donald Trump achieved that majority by appointing two justices with the express purpose of pushing a hard-right agenda, as determined by legal groups like the Federalist Society.

Obliterating abortion access in America is at the top of that priority list.

What’s more, Roberts dissented in a case just four years ago that struck down what was an effectively identical Texas anti-abortion law. So the central question ahead of Monday’s decision in June Medical Services v. Russo became: Would the chief justice’s disapproval of abortion outweigh his desire for the court to respect its own very recent precedent?

It turns out that it didn’t. In a concurring opinion that provided the fifth vote for a majority, the chief justice wrote that the court’s doctrine requires it to “treat like cases alike.”

Because the Louisiana law — which requires doctors who perform abortions to get admitting privileges at a hospital

near their clinic, supposedly in the interests of women’s health and safety — was more or less a carbon copy of the Texas law the court previously struck down, and because it burdened women in the same way, it “cannot stand,” he wrote.

That’s good as far as it goes, which is not very far. It would be a mistake to interpret this decision as a sign that the chief justice has had a change of heart about protecting the bodily autonomy of American women. Even in his concurring opinion, Roberts said that he still believes that the Texas case was “wrongly decided” and that he voted to strike down the Louisiana law solely out of respect for precedent. He appears to have decided that the circumstances of this case were not ideal for crippling reproductive rights — but he left the door open to doing so in the future.

Monday’s decision, with the plurality opinion written by Justice Stephen Breyer, isn’t so much good news for reproductive freedom as it is a temporary reprieve from all the bad.

Abortion access in many parts of the country is abysmal — five states have only one abortion clinic, for instance.

If the Louisiana law had been upheld, clinics in that state (which has only three such facilities) and across the country could have closed, forcing many women to travel longer distances at prohibitive expense to receive reproductive health care.

That would violate the constitutional right to have ac-

cess to an abortion without “undue burden,” the standard the Supreme Court has followed since the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. A U.S. District Court in Louisiana struck down the state’s law because it posed such an undue burden, just as the Texas law had. But the conservative federal 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, ruling that the lower court had gotten the facts wrong — that it was not clear that the new law would actually burden women’s ability to get an abortion.

Monday’s decision reversed the 5th Circuit ruling, holding that the district court had gotten it right the first time.

The Louisiana law, Breyer wrote, was “almost word-forword identical” to Texas’ unconstitutional law and imposed identical if not greater burdens on women, and therefore was invalid.

Roberts’ decision to concur with the four liberal justices may enrage cultural conservatives who thought that with the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, ending the right to an abortion was just a matter of time.

But the chief justice rarely takes the direct route, preferring incremental rulings that slowly chip away at the court’s long-standing precedents. So no one should be fooled this time around: The current court is as hostile to reproductive freedom as it ever was. And Roberts left himself plenty of room to vote differently in any of the many cases now speeding toward the court, involving challenges to other state laws that make it difficult if not impossible for most women to obtain an abortion.

Some of those challenges — like those to laws in Texas and Arkansas that ban a common second-trimester abortion procedure called dilation and evacuation — could give the chief justice an opening to make what he might consider a more reasonable argument for further undermining abortion rights.

No doubt anti-abortion forces behind these cases will continue to push hard; they have a knack for rejiggering their strategy after each big case, and they’ve been especially aggressive in their efforts recently.

Another factor that’s nearly certainly at play here is that the lawyer who argued for Louisiana during oral arguments in March, state Solicitor General Elizabeth Murrill, is widely believed to have bungled the job, answering questions so ineptly that she gave the chief justice little to work with, even if he had been inclined to side with the court’s other conservatives.

It’s concerning that this case made it to the high court at all, given its similarity to the Texas case. It’s even more concerning that the rights of millions of women hinged in part on someone having a bad day in court. But such is the state of reproductive rights in 2020: Members of the pro-choice side count their blessings over the narrowest of victories, while anti-choice crusaders continue to think big, strategic and long-term.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

19

Departamento de Educación estrena campamento de verano por WIPR Por THE STAR

L

os estudiantes de escuelas públicas y privadas, de todos los niveles, podrán reforzar sus destrezas académicas en verano con el estreno de En casa aprendo, una iniciativa televisiva del Departamento de Educación (DE), en alianza con WIPR, que comenzará su programación académica el miércoles 1 de julio desde las 9:00 de la mañana.

El secretario de Educación, Eligio Hernández Pérez, explicó este martes que este esfuerzo, financiado por la asignación federal de la Ley Cares destinada a educación, surge luego de las interrupciones, durante el segundo semestre del año escolar, provocadas por los sismos en el suroeste y por el COVID-19.

“Estamos muy entusiasmados con este proyecto porque repasaremos, y reforzaremos, las materias básicas tanto de los alumnos del sistema público como aquellos matriculados en colegios. Con la programación televisiva podemos llegar a todos los hogares; también habrá transmisión por el portal ciberné-

tico del WIPR y se repetirá por el canal 6.3 de Kids TV. Es un trabajo que se ha hecho con mucha pasión y el contenido académico fue desarrollado por maestros del sistema público”, aseguró Hernández Pérez en comunicación escrita.

En casa aprendo presentará, de forma dinámica y entretenida, un currículo de las materias de español, inglés, ciencias, matemáticas, estudios sociales, bellas artes y educación física. Catorce maestros de nivel primario, 12 de matemáticas y cinco de español llevarán a cada

hogar más de 30 horas semanales de programación académica dirigida a los distintos niveles.

Los programas, y sus horarios, del campamento de verano son: En casa aprendo (9:00 a.m.) – Programa de nivel primario con maestros del Departamento de Educación y el payaso Remi en que se repasarán diversas materias de forma divertida y con canciones.

Labsix (10:00 a.m.) – Programa bilingüe de nivel primario con enfoque creativo que combina el teatro y la música.

En forma (10:30 a.m.) – programa de nivel primario en el que una entrenadora y un estudiante realizan rutinas de ejercicios.

Matemática nivel primario (11:00 a.m.) – Maestros del Departamento de Educación repasarán conceptos básicos para estudiantes de 7mo y 8vo.

Matemática nivel secundario (12:00 p.m.) – Maestros del Departamento de Educación repasarán conceptos básicos para estudiantes de 9no y 10mo.

Matemática nivel secundario (1:00 p.m.) – Maestros del Departamento de Educación repasarán conceptos básicos para estudiantes de 11mo y 12mo.

Letra y Vida TV (2:00 p.m.) – Cinco maestros llevarán a los estudiantes a contextualizar clásicos literarios como Bienvenido Don Goyito, La charca, La llamarada, Los cuentos de Abelardo, entre otros.

La programación será de lunes a viernes de 9:00 de la mañana a 3:00 de la tarde y se repetirá a partir de las 3:00 por el 6.3. Además, habrá transmisión simultánea por www.wipr.pr

GNPR realiza pruebas de COVID-19 en Canóvanas Por THE STAR

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umpliendo con su compromiso de apoyo al pueblo de Puerto Rico, la Guardia Nacional de Puerto Rico realiza pruebas moleculares COVID-19 a residentes del barrio San Isidro en el municipio de Canóvanas, como parte del plan de mitigación ante el brote de infección identificado en esa comunidad.

“Seguimos en pie de lucha ante esta emergencia. La Guardia Nacional de Puerto Rico se mantiene fiel y firme en su compromiso con las comunidades para evitar la propagación del COVID-19”, afirmó el Ayudante General de Puerto Rico, General de División José J. Reyes. “Nuestra misión junto al Departamento de Salud ante esta emergencia es proteger la salud y el bienestar de todos los puertorriqueños como lo hemos hecho con el personal de primera respuesta y con las personas de la tercera edad en los hogares de envejecientes”.

La Guardia Nacional de Puerto Rico inició

pruebas moleculares COVID-19 en Canóvanas luego que se detectaran cinco casos de personas infectadas.

Por su parte, la Alcaldesa de Canóvanas Lornna Soto Villanueva agradeció el apoyo de la Guardia Nacional en esta batalla contra el COVID-19.

“Durante el día de ayer se iniciaron las pruebas moleculares en la comunidad San Isidro como parte de las iniciativas que estamos llevando a cabo para identificar los posibles casos positivos. Agradecemos al Departamento de Salud por el suministro de 1,500 pruebas y a la Guardia Nacional por el personal destacado que está administrando las mismas. Actualmente estamos trabajando con el monitoreo de las personas que han dado positivo con el propósito de que podamos mantener controlado los contagios en las comunidades. Como medida de prevención estamos ayudando a los residentes llevándole compra, medicamentos y colaborando con lo que necesiten para que no salgan de sus hogares

durante el periodo que dure la enfermedad”.

Desde que inició la emergencia del COVID-19 en Puerto Rico, la Guardia Nacional ha estado activa realizando pruebas serológicas en el aeropuerto internacional Luis Muñoz Marín.

De igual forma, se han realizado pruebas moleculares a más de 47,430 primeros respondedores y se han impactado 161 hogares de envejecientes donde se han realizado más de 6,710 pruebas rápidas y moleculares.

20

Jim Carrey,

unmasked

An undated photo provided by Linda Fields Hill and styled by Stacey Kalchman shows Jim Carrey, left, and the novelist Dana Vachon. The actor’s novel, “Memoirs and Misinformation,” written with Vachon, uses details from Carrey’s life and career to tell a fictional tale of apocalypse and rebirth in Hollywood.

By DAVE ITZKIFF

J

im Carrey is not doing well at all.

At the start of the novel “Memoirs and Misinformation,” we find Carrey, its protagonist, in the midst of an existential crisis, crushed by self-doubt and confined to his Los Angeles home, where he subsists on a diet of Netflix, YouTube and TMZ. His successes as an actor, in projects both comedic and dramatic, are distant objects in the rearview mirror, and now he is fixated on his own inevitable demise and the eventual end of the universe.

So begins a satirical adventure in which Carrey plumbs the chasms of Hollywood’s self-obsessed culture. While he searches for meaning in his life and career, this Carrey is also trying to choose among starring roles in a Mao Zedong biopic and studio movies based on children’s toys; contending with catastrophic wildfires, an all-female cadre of eco-terrorists and a UFO invasion; and rubbing elbows with the likes of Nicolas Cage, Gwyneth Paltrow and Anthony Hopkins.

The Jim Carrey of “Memoirs and Misinformation” also happens to share a name and several key biographical details with Jim Carrey, the ever-changing star of films like “The Mask,” “The Truman Show,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Sonic the Hedgehog,” who wrote the book with novelist Dana Vachon (“Mergers and Acquisitions”).

“Memoirs and Misinformation,” which Knopf will release July 7, is the result of a yearslong collaboration between these two unlikely partners. It is a fictional narrative that relies on facts from the life of its celebrity co-author — and on his access to a world of maximum privilege and alienation — to tell a story that its creators believe is especially timely.

As Carrey explained in an interview earlier this month, “It’s the end of the world, and we have the perfect book for it.”

“Not the end of civilization,” he continued. “Just the end of a world, the selfish world. We’re getting over the Ayn Rand, ‘you can be a jerk and we can all live in a para-

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

dise of jerks’ thing. That’s what we’re going through.”

For Vachon, working on the novel gave him a new perspective on the nature of stardom, as well as a greater appreciation for Carrey in all his complexities.

“It was a journey into forbidden realms of stardom and the wages of great artistry,” Vachon said. “He’s like an abalone diver — if he doesn’t go down to those depths, he doesn’t come back with anything. You can’t create great art, just living blissed out on the surface.”

Speaking together over Zoom, Carrey and Vachon talked about the making of “Memoirs and Misinformation,” the joys of playing on the boundary between fact and fiction, and how they expect Tom Cruise will react to it. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Q: How did the two of you first get connected?

JIM CARREY: We met about nine, 10 years ago, when Twitter first became a big thing and people were still experimenting with it.

DANA VACHON: It had been a really depressing winter. I was in Williamsburg, everything was closing and all the construction was arrested. And one morning I looked at Twitter and Jim had tweeted “BOING.” CARREY: I was just trying to create another version of the Force or chi. The energy that does everything positive in the world.

VACHON: So in our first communication, I replied, “BOING that (expletive).” I’m something of a Hitchensian skeptic and he’s very mystical. But I looked at it and I thought, it would be great to make something really true with an artist of that caliber. But that’ll never happen. And a year later, we were working on it.

Q: A Twitter exchange was all it took?

VACHON: We had a manager in common who said, “Maybe you guys should talk,” and nothing came quite of that. After our first meeting, I was like, “He’s a lovely person — I’ll definitely never talk to him again.” But we kept talking.

CARREY: This guy’s got an integrity that just doesn’t exist anymore. Immediately, we were friends, and the friendship got deeper as time went on.

Q: Did you ever consider writing a factual memoir of Jim’s life?

CARREY: There’s nothing, at this point in my artistic life, more boring than the idea of writing down the actual events of my life in some chronological order. Trying to expand my brand. This is not that. It’s a labor of love that we couldn’t stop. It started out as

The San Juan Daily Star a little volley back and forth, here and there, and in the last few years it was eight hours, 12 hours most days, just grinding together in a room. But even when we butted heads, we always came up with something more interesting than we had initially conceived.

Q: The protagonist of this novel is named Jim Carrey and he has lived a life very similar to yours. But who is he?

CARREY: Jim Carrey in this book is really a representative — he’s an avatar of anybody in my position. Of the artist, of the celebrity, of the star. That world and all its excesses and gluttony and self-focus and vanity. Some of it is very actual. You just won’t know which is which. But even the fictional qualities of the book reveal a truth.

Q: Dana, what was it like for you to get to know the real Jim, as opposed to the version of himself that he presents on screen?

VACHON: One of the first times he contacted me, he was watching the John Barrymore “Jekyll and Hyde,” which came to inform the story. He was telling me, “Watch Barrymore. Watch the economy of his face in this.” And I was like, oh, wow, Jim Carrey watches a lot of Netflix.

CARREY: There were times when I was so afraid. I see a dead John Lennon on a gurney on YouTube. And I’m completely out of my mind because I realize that there will be selfies taken when my body falls. Somebody’s going to be looking at it as a novelty.

That terror and mortal fear of wanting to make a good corpse drove me to the bathroom to make myself up before bed so that if I did die in the middle of the night, I would be presentable to an adoring public.

Q: Together you’ve devised some strangely affecting scenes, like when the fictional Jim finds himself working alongside a digitally rendered rhinoceros containing the essence of Rodney Dangerfield.

VACHON: Writing that was really intense. Jim’s like, “I don’t know what you thought we were doing, but we’re writing some Rodney Dangerfield bits for the next two or three days.” At the end of it, I’m pretty tired and Jim comes out with this turtle box and he opens the box.

CARREY: (His widow) Joan Dangerfield, after Rodney passed, gave me this beautiful leather-bound box with Rodney’s favorite shirt and his pot pipe. If you knew Rodney, you’d know that’s pretty much the Holy Grail for Rodney. (Dangerfield voice) “It keeps me creative, man.”

Q: Was there any point in your process that Jim said you’re taking things too far or we can’t go there?

VACHON: He’s the only person in

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

his position who would be like, “I’m OK having a climactic combat scene where I just load ammo. I don’t need any confirmed kills. In fact, I don’t even need a gun.”

CARREY: I was talking to Nic Cage a couple days ago. I hadn’t told him anything about the book and then one day I sprung it on him, and he just said, (Nicolas Cage voice) “Jim, I’m so honored, man. You have no idea.” I said, I gave you all the best lines. (Cage voice) “It’s unheard of!”

He’s so excited about it.

Q: Have you told the other celebrities you reference by name that they’re characters in the book?

CARREY: We’re sending everybody books with letters of explanation of what we’re doing.

VACHON: “Dear Gwyneth.”

CARREY: It’s satire and parody but also done with reverence. Most of the people in this book are people whom I admire greatly.

Q: Does that include the character you say for legal purposes will be referred to only as “Laser Jack Lightning”?

CARREY: That’s just us poking fun at the litigiousness of Hollywood. I know Tom Cruise. He may sock me, but hey, I’ll take the beating for a piece of art. I think he’s going to love it.

Q: Dana, were there ever times when this project felt like a real-life version of “Sunset Boulevard”?

VACHON: Totally.

CARREY: (eyes widening in delight) Who does that make me?

VACHON: “Barton Fink” was more what would come to mind. But by the point I had concerns, it was too late.

CARREY: This took a grip of us.

VACHON: And also, it wasn’t eight years of total work. We really worked hard, intensely, for the last two.

But we were always both working on other things.

Q: The book very vividly depicts its protagonist’s intense frustration with Hollywood and his estrangement from his own work and accomplishments. Jim, how much does that represent your own true feelings?

CARREY: “The Truman Show” was not a mistake. I’m a guy that suddenly looked up one day and started seeing

21 all the machinery and the lights falling from the sky. Every project is a little bit of me recreating myself, tearing the old self down and exploring something new. My whole career I’ve asked a lot of my audience, and they’ve allowed me to do these things. I think they expect that of me, in a certain way. They don’t expect convention.

An undated photo provided by Linda Fields Hill and styled by Stacey Kalchman shows Jim Carrey.

MTV to hold VMAs in Brooklyn with limits on audience

By SARAH BAHR

T

he 2020 MTV Video Music Awards will be staged in person at the Barclays Center on Aug. 30, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced at a news conference Monday.

Cuomo said the 36-year-old awards show would take place at the venue, in Brooklyn, albeit with a limited or no audience. Social distancing precautions and capacity limits will be in effect, MTV said in a release. The company said it will continue to “closely follow” the guidance of state and local government officials and its own team of medical experts.

New York City is set to enter Phase 3 of its four-stage reopening plan July 6. That phase includes indoor dining, nail salons and other personal-care services like tattoo parlors.

The Barclays Center, like the city’s other

event venues, has been shut down since March after the city canceled all cultural and sporting events to limit the spread of the coronavirus. The plaza in front of the venue has become a central gathering space for Black Lives Matter demonstrators in recent weeks.

New York City’s cases continue to decline, and the city has avoided the recent upticks that states like Arizona, Florida and Texas have experienced. On Monday, the governor also said that the state recorded seven deaths from the coronavirus Sunday, and that New York’s hospitalization rate Thursday was the lowest since March 18.

The last time the Barclays Center hosted the show was in 2013. The venue has a seating capacity of approximately 19,000.

Last year’s awards show was at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, and the 2018 The red carpet at the Video Music Awards last August, at the Prudential Center in Newark. This year’s will be at the Barclays Center on Aug. 30. event was at Radio City Music Hall.www

FASHION The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, March July 4, 2020 Wednesday, 1, 2020 20 22

The The San San Juan Juan Daily Daily Star Star

Is this the end for Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star?

By TAYLOR LORENZ

T

his weekend, the YouTube beauty world erupted into drama.

Shane Dawson, 31, and Jeffree Star, 34, two of the biggest stars on the platform, faced renewed backlash after allegations of racism, the sexualization of minors and back-stabbing swirled.

The public call-out has resulted in an unfollow campaign that has led to both losing hundreds of thousands of followers.

Dawson and Star have been two of the most powerful and influential YouTubers for nearly 10 years. Star is also the CEO of Jeffree Star Cosmetics, a popular makeup brand, which he started in 2014.

Until recently, Dawson was a beloved creator who has been called the “king of YouTube.” He’s been a regular on the platform since 2008 and is connected and friendly with many other top YouTubers. Last year, he produced a docuseries on Star, which has nearly 150 million views; the two also released a makeup palette together.

But offensive statements and videos that Star and Dawson posted in previous years are getting renewed attention.

Dawson has racked up billions of views on YouTube, often by engaging in offensive humor. He has posted several videos in blackface, mocked those with disabilities, joked about bestiality, sexualized minors, and once spoke about “figuratively murdering someone.” On June 26, Dawson posted a teary apology to his channel, in which he tried to make amends for his past, declaring that he deserved to “lose everything.”

No sooner had his apology video posted than a clip of him pretending to sexually gratify himself to a photo of Willow Smith, then 11 years old, resurfaced and began to get shared widely. Jaden and Jada Pinkett Smith spoke out against Dawson immediately. “To Shane Dawson … I’m done with the excuses,” Pinkett Smith, Willow’s mother, wrote on Twitter.

Jeffree Star, left, in 2018, and Shane Dawson in 2014.

Star, a close friend of Dawson’s, also faced cancellation last week.

Like Dawson, Star has been a fixture on YouTube since the early days. But while Dawson cultivated an image of a good-natured friend to all, Star has been called a YouTube “super villain” and is considered by many fans to be duplicitous.

Beauty insiders have speculated that both Dawson and Star played a large behind-the-scenes role in stoking backlash against James Charles, another beauty YouTuber, last year.

Star’s tight hold on the beauty community and broader relevance on YouTube has begun slipping, as has Dawson’s. In the past few months, several channels that document drama have released investigations into Star’s past, resurfacing old content in which Star posed for a brand he was set to start called Lipstick Nazi and supported a fellow music artist, Dahvie Vanity, who was accused of sexual misconduct.

Star also allegedly gathered damning information about fellow YouTube stars to wield over their heads as blackmail.

Neither Star nor Dawson responded to a request for comment.

While many of these incidents have surfaced before, the repeated accusations against the two YouTubers at a time when the broader culture is coming to grips with rampant racism and problematic behavior could lead to permanent changes in the beauty world.

Already, Dawson and Star are hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of followers and face a storm of criticism online. Target has removed Dawson’s books from its shelves, according to Insider.

“For the longest time Jeffree and Shane have been untouchable,” said Will Larkins, a 15-year-old who provides commentary on internet drama and has been documenting these events on his Twitter handle @OhMyGodExposeU. “They’ve gotten away with everything. I think people are finally fed up and realizing that we can’t just keep giving people like this a platform.”

Outside of Star and Dawson, fans have begun to look at an entire genera-

tion of millennial influencers in a new light. Jenna Marbles, another YouTuber who had been on the site for a decade, recently quit after backlash to an old video in which she appeared in blackface.

YouTubers David Dobrik and Liza Koshy have also faced sharp criticism for old videos, in which they imitated the Japanese language. “I hope one day people can learn and change and grow before they make millions of dollars doing black face,” Akilah Hughes, a YouTuber, wrote on Twitter on June 26.

“My tears are reserved for all the black people who will never even attempt to have a YouTube career because they don’t want to be subjected to racism all day every day as a living.”

As many older white millennial beauty influencers lose relevance, a newer, more diverse crop of creators is stepping in. “You have YouTubers like Raw Beauty Kristi, Jackie Aina, Nyma Tang, who are not problematic, and that’s just to name a few,” said Ashlye Kyle, 35, who runs a YouTube drama channel focused on the beauty world.

“I think that they’re going to gain more influence.”

Even if Dawson and Star battle their way through this backlash, Kyle and others in the YouTube beauty world believe they’ll never regain the influence they had. “Do I feel like Jeffree will always have his stans and his next makeup launch will sell out?” Kyle said. “Absolutely. And will Shane’s next docuseries still get millions of views?

Yes, I do. But the beauty community itself is finally seeing their true colors.”

Will Larkins said: “This pyramid system where Shane and Jeffree are kings and everyone else is below them is over.”

He added that “the next generation of beauty influencers, it’s going to be about artistry and not just drama.

People are realizing we need more representation of people of color, Asians and every minority. The beauty world is a place to express yourself. The younger generation understands that better than the older beauty gurus.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

23

Sitting all day may increase your risk of dying from cancer

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

S

itting for hours on end could heighten someone’s risk of later dying from cancer, according to a sobering new study of the relationship between inactivity and cancer mortality. The study was epidemiological, providing a snapshot of people’s lives, so it cannot prove cause and effect. But the findings suggest that extremely sedentary people can be as much as 80% more likely to die of cancer than those who sit the least.

Still, there is hope. The study also indicates that getting up and strolling, even if you do it slowly and for only a few additional minutes a day, may lower the risk of dying from cancer, potentially offering another appealing incentive to move.

We already have plenty of evidence that spending all day in a chair is not healthy. Past studies have linked prolonged sitting to higher risks for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, obesity and premature death. A few studies also have found associations between inactivity and cancer deaths. But most of those studies relied on people’s undependable recollections. The studies also rarely examined whether and how occasional spurts of exercise might alter the risk equation.

For the new study, which was published in June in JAMA Oncology, researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and other institutions around the country decided to reexamine data already collected as part of a large, nationwide study of risk factors for strokes.

That study had enrolled a multiracial group of more than 30,000 middle-aged and older men and women and, starting in 2002, gathered details about their health, lifestyle and medical conditions. Some of those volunteers also agreed to wear an activity tracker for about a week, to objectively record how often and vigorously they moved and how much they sat.

Now, the researchers gathered the records for about 8,000 of the volunteers who had worn a tracker at some point. These men and women were at least 45 years old when they joined the study, with health ranging from good to iffy. Some were overweight, smokers, diabetic or had high blood pressure or other conditions. Others were relatively lean, and some reported that they exercised regularly.

The researchers checked the data from these volunteers’ activity trackers, noting how many hours per day, on average, they objec-

Sitting for hours on end could heighten someone’s risk of later dying from cancer, according to a sobering new study of the relationship between inactivity and cancer mortality. tively had spent unmoving. Most were quite sedentary. As a group, they had spent about 13 of their 16 waking hours most days in a chair or otherwise inactive.

But there were differences. Some people had been up and moving rather often, either completing light-intensity activities like strolling, housecleaning and gardening or actively exercising, according to the readouts from their activity trackers (which measured how many — or few — steps they took every minute).

The researchers divided the volunteers into thirds, based on how much daily time they spent sitting. Then they checked death records for everyone, looking to see who might have passed away recently from any type of cancer.

Finally, they examined whether, statistically, sitting more increased the likelihood of dying from cancer. The men and women in the group that had spent the most hours sitting were 82% more likely to have died from cancer during the study’s follow-up period than those in the group that had sat the least. This

association held true when the researchers controlled for people’s ages, weight, gender, health, smoking status, education, geographic location and other factors.

But the scientists noted a more-encouraging finding when they statistically modeled how those risks might change if someone, theoretically, started moving more. In those models, for every 30 minutes that someone exercised instead of continuing to sit, the risk of later dying from cancer fell by 31%. Even if someone did not formally work out, but substituted at least 10 minutes of his or her usual sitting time with gentle strolling, housework, gardening or other light-intensity activities, the risk of dying from cancer fell by about 8%.

Taken as a whole, these data suggest that “even a small amount of extra physical activity, no matter how light it might be, can have benefits for cancer survival,” said Dr. Susan Gilchrist, a cardiologist at the MD Anderson Cancer Center who works with cancer patients and led the new study.

The study has many limitations, though.

It looked at cancer mortality, not the risk of developing the disease in the first place, and lumped all cancer types together. Perhaps most important, this kind of prospective study is not a randomized experiment and cannot tell us that sitting more causes increased cancer mortality, only that the two are linked. It also offers no clues about how sitting raises that risks, and whether inactivity directly changes our bodies or if other factors, including what we eat or drink while seated, influence how sitting raises our risk of dying from cancer.

Gilchrist said she and her colleagues hoped to examine some of those issues in future studies. But even with the caveats, she thinks that the data from this study should be rousing.

“The tangible takeaway is that we can tell people they do not have to go out and run a marathon” to potentially reduce their risk of dying from cancer, she said. “It looks like just getting up and walking around the living room for a few minutes every hour or so could make a meaningful difference.”

24 por correo certificado con acuse de recibo, una copia del emESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO plazamiento y de la demanda DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- presentada al lugar de su última NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA dirección conocida: Urb. Pseos SALA DE AGUADILLA. Reales, 74 Calle Atienza, AguaORIENTAL BANK, dilla, PR 00690-1410. EXPEDIDemandante, v., DO bajo mi firma y el sello del TAINA RAMOS Tribunal en Aguadilla, Puerto RODRIGUEZ, FULANO Rico, hoy día 20 de febrero de 2020. SARAHI REYES PEREZ, DE TAL y la Sociedad Secretaria Regional. ARLENE Legal de Gananciales compuesta por ambos, GUZMAN PABON, Secretaria Auxiliar del Tribunal I. Demandados.

CIVIL NUM.: AG2019CV01523.

LEGAL NOTICE SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. EMDE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL PLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMEBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE CIA SALA DE CAGUAS. LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIORIENTAL BANK. BRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO Demandante V. RICO. SS.

LEGAL NOTICE

A: TAINA RAMOS RODRIGUEZ, FULANO DE TAL y la Sociedad Legal de Gananciales compuesta por ambos

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

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

POR EL PRESENTE EDICTO se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva a la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra, y conceder el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente.

Se le advierte que dentro de los diez (10) días siguientes a la publicación del presente edicto, se le estará enviando a usted

@

ANGELA RONDÓN RIVERA, por sí y como miembro conocida de la sucesión Rafael Colón Carmona en cuanto a la cuota viudal usufructuaria; CARLOS RAFAEL COLÓN RONDÓN, BETHZAIDA COLÓN RONDÓN Y YADIRA COLÓN RONDÓN como miembros conocidos de la sucesión Rafael Colón Carmona; JOHN DOE Y JANE ROE como miembros desconocidos de la sucesión Rafael Colón Carmona; ANGELA RONDÓN RIVERA, por sí y como miembro conocida de la sucesión Çarlos Rafael Colón Rondón; FULANO DE TAL Y FULANA DE TAL como miembros desconocidos de la sucesión Carlos Rafael Colón Rondón.

Carmona. Urb. Jardines de Cayey I, D22 calle 8, Cayey, PR 00736.

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 60 días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día de! diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.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, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. Representa a la parte demandante el Lcdo.

Javier Montalvo Cintrón, Delgado & Fernández, LLC, PO Box 11750, Fernández Juncos Station, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00910-1750. Tel. [787J 2741414. DADA en Caguas, Puerto Rico, a 15 de JUNIO - de 2020.

CARMEN ANA PEREIRA ORTIZ, Sec Regional. TERESITA VEGA GONZALEZ, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal.

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

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante V.

ANGELA RONDÓN RIVERA, por sí y como miembro conocida Demandados de la sucesión Rafael DEPARTAMENTO DE Colón Carmona en HACIENDA; CENTRO DE cuanto a la cuota viudal RECAUDACIONES DE usufructuaria; INGRESOS MUNICIPALES CARLOS RAFAEL Partes Con Interés COLON RONDÓN, CIVIL NÚM.: CY2019CV00433.

BETHZAIDA COLÓN SALA: 801. SOBRE: COBRO RONDÓN Y YADIRA DE EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA, E INTERPELACIÓN. COLÓN RONDÓN como ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉmiembros conocidos RICA EL PRESIDENTE DE de la sucesión Rafael LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIColón Carmona; JOHN BRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS. DOE Y JANE ROE como EDICTO. miembros desconocidos A: John Doe y Jane de la sucesión Rafael Roe como miembros Colón Carmona; ANGELA desconocidos de la RONDÓN RIVERA, por Sucesión Rafael Colón sí y como miembro

staredictos1@outlook.com

conocida de la sucesión NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CACarlos Rafael Colón Rondón; FULANO DE TAL GUAS. TRIANGLE REO PR Y FULANA DE TAL como CORP.; miembros desconocidos Demandante, V. de la sucesión Carlos JUAN VEGA MERCADO, Rafael Colón Rondón.

SU ESPOSA FLOR DE Demandados MARIA HERNANDEZ DEPARTAMENTO DE VAZQUEZ, LA HACIENDA; CENTRO DE SOCIEDAD LEGAL RECAUDACIONES DE DE GANANCIALES INGRESOS MUNICIPALES COMPUESTA POR Partes Con Interés ELLOS, FULANO DE TAL CIVIL NÚM.: CY2019CV00433.

SOBRE: COBRO DE EJE- Y MENGANO DEL CUAL;

CUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA, E INTERPELACIÓN. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS, EDICTO,

A: FULANO DE TAL Y FULANA DE TAL como miembros desconocidos de la sucesión Carlos Rafael Colón Rondón.

Urb. Jardines de Cayey I, D22 calle 8, Cayey, PR 00736.

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 60 días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.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, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. Representa a la parte demandante el Lcdo.

Javier Montalvo Cintrón, Delgado & Fernández, LLC, PO Box 11750, Fernández Juncos Station, San Juan, Puerto Rico 009 10-1750. Tel. [787] 274-1414. DADA en Caguas, Puerto Rico, a 15 de junio de 2020. CARMEN ANA PEREIRA ORTIZ, Secretaria Regional.

TERESITA VEGA GONZALEZ, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal.

Demandados CIVIL NÚM. CG2020CV01209.

SOBRE: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. S.S.

A: FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DEL CUAL, o sea las personas desconocidas que puedan ser tenedores del pagare extraviado.

POR MEDIO del presente edicto se le notifica de la presentación de una Demanda en contra de usted por la parte demandante en la que se solicita la cancelación de un pagaré hipotecario pagadero a favor de RG Mortgage Corporation, o a su orden, por la suma principal de $34,000.00 con intereses a razón de! 4.75% anual, vencedero el 1 de enero de 2013, garantizado por hipoteca constituida por la escritura número 807 otorgada el 27 de diciembre de 2002, suscrito ante la Notario Público Corally Veguilla Torres, inscrita al folio 1 del tomo 1611 de Caguas, finca número 47,738, Registro de la Propiedad, Primera Sección de Caguas, séptima inscripción. La finca número 47,738 se describe como sigue: URBANA: Solar número 3358J de Levittown, Barrio Sabana Seca de Toa Baja compuesto de 538.98 metros cuadrados.

En Lindes por el NORTE, en un arco de 10.75 metros, con paseo Calma (según plano calle 419); por el SUR, en 29.46 metros, con Boulevard de Levittown (según plano calle 220); por e! ESTE, en 36.20 metros, con el solar 3359; y por el Oeste, en 24.18 metros, con el solar número 3357. Enclava una casa. Inscrita al folio ciento 201 del tomo 75 de Toa Baja, finca LEGAL NOTICE número 5,461, Registro de la ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Propiedad, Segunda Sección DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUde Bayamón. El original del

(787) 743-3346

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020 pagaré hipotecario antes mencionado se ha extraviado o la posesión la ostenta los demandados de epígrafe, por lo cual no lo tiene para la cancelación correspondiente en el Registro de la Propiedad y por ello comparece a este Honorable Tribunal solicitando su cancelación.

Que se incluye a Fulano De Tal y a Mengano Del Cual como posibles tenedores desconocidos del pagaré hipotecario extraviado. POR EL PRESENTE EDICTO, se le emplaza y requiere para que conteste la Demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días de la publicación de este edicto notificándole con copia de dicha contestación al Lcdo. Luis G. Parrilla Hernández, PO Box 195168 San Juan, PR 00919-5168 y/o 221 Avenida Ponce De León, Piso 5, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico 00917; sin más citarle ni oírle.

Expedido bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal de Caguas, Puerto Rico, hoy 24 de junio de 2020. Carmen Ana Pereira Ortiz, Sec del Tribunal. Ana H Lugo Muñoz, SubSecretaria.

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Demandante Vs.

HÉCTOR NEGRÓN BENEJAM

Demandado CIVIL NÚM.: IS2019CV00265.

SALÓN: SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A) HÉCTOR NEGRÓN BENEJAM

POR LA PRESENTE: Se le notifica que contra usted se ha presentado la Demanda sobre Cobro de Dinero de la cual se acompaña copia. Por la presente se le emplaza a usted y se le requiere para que dentro del término de TREINTA (30)

días desde la fecha de la Publicación por Edicto de este Emplazamiento presente su contestación a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Isabela, P. O. Box 868, Isabela, Puerto Rico 00662-0269 y notifique a la LCDA. GINA H. FERRER MEDINA, personalmente al Condominio Las Nereidas, Local 1-B, Calle Méndez Vigo esquina Amador Ramírez Silva, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00680; o por correo al Apartado 3779, Marina Station, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00681-3779, Teléfonos: (787) 832-9620 y (845) 345-3985, Abogada de la parte demandante, apercibiéndose que en caso de no hacerlo así podrá dictarse Sentencia en Rebeldía en contra suya, concediendo el remedio solicitado

LEGAL NOTICE OF AVAILABILITY The United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services (WS) program has issued a Decision and Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for an Environmental Assessment (EA) that evaluated potential impacts to the quality of the human environment from the implementation of a management program to address damage caused by several bird species in Puerto Rico. The EA was prepared to facilitate coordination between agencies, streamline program management, and clearly communicate with the public the analysis of individual and cumulative impacts of the proposed program. Based on the analyses contained in the EA, it was concluded that the proposed action would not have a significant impact upon the quality of the human environment.

Interested parties may obtain the Decision/ FONSI and the final EA by contacting USDA/ APHIS/WS, 6155 Heath Road, Auburn, Alabama 36830 or by visiting the website at https://www. regulations.gov/docket?D=APHIS-2020-0028.

The San Juan Daily Star en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el Sello del Tribunal hoy 5 de MARZO de 2020. SARAHI REYES PEREZ, Sec Regional.

Arlene Guzman Pabon, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal I.

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Demandante Vs.

JESÚS E. LÓPEZ DEL POZO, MARTA VENTOSA Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

da sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPI- TOA ALTA. DO BAJO MI FIRMA y el Sello SOCORRO del Tribunal hoy 3 de marzo de CANALES BERRIOS 2020. Luz Mayra Caraballo GarDemandante v. cia, Sec Regional. Loyda Torres EDDY Irizarry, Sec Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

Demandada Caso Núm.: BY2020RF00697.

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Sobro: DIVORCIO, RUPTURA DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUIRREPARABLE. EMPLAZANAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA MIENTO POR EDICTO. ESSALA DE SAN JUAN. TADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA CAPARRA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESCONSTRUCTION CORP. TADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO Demandante Vs. LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERDCK/BIRD GROUP, LLC.; TO RICO. SS.

BIRD GROUP, LLC.; DCK WORLDWIDE, LLC; TAUBMAN CENTERS, INC.; TAUBMAN PUERTO RICO LLC; THE TAUBMAN COMPANY LLC; PLAZA INTERNACIONAL PUERTO RICO LLC; NEW CENTURY DEVELOPMENT, INC.; A; B; C; D; E;F;G;H

Demandados CIVIL NÚM.: PO2019CV03767.

SALÓN: SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PREDemandados SIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE CIVIL NÚM. SJ2019CV12278.

ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RE: INCUMPLIMIENTO DE CONTRATO; COBRO DE DINERICO. A) JESÚS E. LÓPEZ DEL RO; DAÑOS. EMPLAZAMIENPOZO, MARTA VENTOSA TO POR EDICTO. Estados UniDe América El Presidente Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL dos De Los Estados Unidos El EsDE GANANCIALES tado Libre Asociado De Puerto COMPUESTA POR Rico.

AMBOS

POR LA PRESENTE: Se le notifica que contra usted se ha presentado la Demanda sobre Cobro de Dinero de la cual se acompaña copia. Por la presente se le emplaza a usted y se le requiere para que dentro del término de TREINTA (30) días desde la fecha de la Publicación por Edicto de este Emplazamiento presente su contestación a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:/// unired.ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Ponce, P. 0. Box 7185, Ponce, Puerto Rico 00732-7185 y notifique a la LCDA. GINA H. FERRER MEDINA, personalmente al Condominio Las Nereidas, Local 1-B, Calle Méndez Vigo esquina Amador Ramírez Silva, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00680; o por correo al Apartado 3779, Marina Station, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 0068 1-3779, Teléfonos: (787) 832-9620 y (845) 345-3985, Abogada de la parte demandante, apercibiéndose que en caso de no hacerlo así podrá dictarse Sentencia en Rebeldía en contra suya, concediendo el remedio solicitado en la Deman-

ADALBERTO REYES

A LA PARTE DEMANDADA: DCK/BIRD GROUP, LLC., Agustin Stahl Carr. 174 A- 10 Bayamón, PR 00956

A: EDDY ADALBERTO REYES Dirección: Calle Luis Tomens #10, Enriquillo, Sabana Perdida, República Domínicana

Por la presente se le notifica. que la parte demandante de epígrafe ha presentado ante este Tribunal Demanda de Divorcio por la causal de Ruptura Irreparable, en contra suya. La dirección postal, teléfono-y correo electrónico del abogado de la demandante se especifica a continuación: Lcdo. José l. Jiménez Rivera RUA 9262 Avenida Betances J8 Urb. Hermanas Dávila Bayamón, Puerta Rico 00959 Tel./ Fax. 787~798~2885 Email: jimenezjose1953@yahoo.com Se le apercibe que si usted no compareciere a contestar dicha Demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación de este edicto, excluyéndose el día de su publicación, presentando el original de la contestación ante este Tribunal 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, advirtiéndosele que, de no hacerlo así, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado, sin más citarle ni oírle, con copia al abogado demandante, 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. Expecibido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, hoy 24 de junio de 2020. LCDA LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria.

Gloribell Vazquez Maysonet, SubSecretaria.

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, radicando el original de su contestación ante el Tribunal correspondiente y notificando con copia al abogado de la demandante, Lcdo. Samuel F. Pamias Portalatín, a la dirección, 256 Eleanor Roosevelt, San Juan, P. R. 00918. Este caso trata sobre una acción por Incumplimiento de Contrato y Cobro de Dinero.

Se le apercibe que de no hacerlo, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado en la demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle.

EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el sello del Tribunal, en San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy día 23 de junio de 2020. Graciela RoLEGAL NOT ICE driguez Collado, Secretario del Tribunal. MJ Osorio Rosario, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Secretario (a) Auxiliar Sec Sala. DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA LEGAL NOTICE SALA DE BAYAMON. ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO ORIENTAL BANK, DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUDemandante, V. NAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA EDWIN A. MALDONADO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSQUIÑONES, FULANA TANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE

DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD COBRO DE DINERO LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA POR AMBOS,

Demandados CIVIL NUM.: BY2019CV04969.

SOBRE: EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: EDWIN A. MALDONADO QUIÑONES, FULANA DE TAL y la Sociedad Legal de Gananciales compuesta por ambos

POR MEDIO del presente edicto se le notifica de la radicación de una demanda en cobro de dinero por la vía ordinaria en la que se alega que usted adeuda a la parte demandante, Oriental Bank, ciertas sumas de dinero, y las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado de este litigio. El demandante, Oriental Bank, ha solicitado que se dicte sentencia en contra suya y que se le ordene pagar las cantidades reclamadas en la demanda. POR EL PRESENTE EDICTO se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva a la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra, y conceder el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. Se le advierte que dentro de los diez (10) días siguientes a la publicación del presente edicto, se le estará enviando a usted por correo certificado con acuse de recibo, una copia del emplazamiento y de la demanda presentada al lugar de su última dirección conocida: Cond. River Park Apto.

303, Bayamón, PR 00961. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal en Bayamon, Puerto Rico, hoy día 25 de febrero de 20220. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional.

IVETE M MARRERO BRACERO, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal I.

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Wednesday, July 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

In a season of challenges, the Mets see a unique opportunity, too

By TYLER KEPNER

I

n the final 60 games of last season, the New York Mets went 39-21 for a mighty .650 winning percentage.

“So if we can pick up where we left off and go through a 60-game sprint,” Brodie Van Wagenen, their general manager, said earlier this week, “I think we’re going to be in a position at the end that we’ll be happy with.”

It’s a fun little factoid, isn’t it? No other National League team, even the eventual World Series champion Washington Nationals, was better than the Mets in those final 60 games of 2019. (The Los Angeles Dodgers were also 39-21.) If the Mets simply do it again for Major League Baseball’s upcoming miniseason, they will be playing this October.

Of course, as you’ve noticed, the world has changed since those final 60 games last summer. The coronavirus pandemic shuttered spring training in mid-March, and as teams prepare to host three-week summer training camp at their home ballparks, uncertainty reigns.

Several players announced Monday that they would not be playing this season for personal safety reasons, including Brodie Van Wagnen during spring training in February.

Ryan Zimmerman and Joe Ross of the Nationals, and Mike Leake of the Arizo- each other, respect the rules, I’m optimis- some offensive force.” na Diamondbacks. The Minnesota Twins tic that we can make this happen.”

Van Wagenen said he was optimisinformed two coaches — Bob McClure, Van Wagenen sells optimism; his tic — there’s that word again — about 68, and Bill Evers, 66 — that they would win-now vision for the Mets convinced Yoenis Céspedes, who had surgeries on be sidelined for the season, citing health the Wilpons to hire him before last sea- both heels in 2018 and missed last seaconcerns. McClure and Evers will retain son after a successful career as an agent. son after fracturing his right ankle in an their salaries, but the players may not.

His biggest trade — two top prospects incident involving a boar at his ranch in For their part, all of the Mets are and three others to Seattle for second ba- Florida. By the time of the 2020 opener, planning to travel to New York in time seman Robinson Canó and closer Edwin on July 23 or 24, it will have been more for the first workout Friday at Citi Field, Díaz — was a flop, but now he has a re- than two years since Céspedes’ last maVan Wagenen said, adding that only one prieve in the designated hitter, which will jor league appearance. player on the 40-man roster, whom he be used in the National League this year.

Even so, Van Wagenen said, “His did not name, had tested positive for the Canó, 37, posted a meager .736 on- bat can be a real impact and be a little coronavirus. base plus slugging percentage last sea- bit of a separator for us as we compare To keep it that way, Van Wagenen son. It was his worst figure since 2008, ourselves to the rest of the teams in the emphasized repeatedly on a conference and injuries held him to only 107 games. league.” call with reporters, the players will have Now, with the introduction of the univerCéspedes, a two-time All-Star, has to act responsibly. Playing during a pan- sal DH, Canó can spend time there as lifted the Mets in late summer before, demic, while adhering to more than 100 one of several strong options for the new sparking their run to the World Series in pages of detailed safety protocols, will re- manager, Luis Rojas.

2015 and helping them to a wild-card apquire diligence and self-control.

“We feel like our lineup can be as pearance the next October. How much “We all want to play baseball; I know deep as anybody’s in baseball,” Van Wa- he has left, at 34 years old after so much that the fans want to watch as much ba- genen said. “We think we have punch. inactivity, will be a fascinating subplot. seball as they can,” Van Wagenen said. We think we have guys that can impact Starter Noah Syndergaard will miss “That’s what we’ve all got to work for. the game with the bat, so we’re looking the season after having Tommy John surProvided we can all work together to forward to utilizing the DH spot both to gery, but the Mets have five experienced comply with these protocols and respect protect our guys’ health and to put up starters: two-time reigning NL Cy Young

Award winner Jacob deGrom, Marcus Stroman, Steven Matz, Rick Porcello and Michael Wacha, plus Robert Gsellman and Seth Lugo as multi-inning options out of the bullpen who should play pivotal roles.

“We may see shorter starts from certain pitchers early on in the year,” Van Wagenen said. “We may see bullpen arms pitching in situations earlier than they otherwise have been accustomed to. But we’re going to use it with the mindset that every out counts, not just every inning.”

To be precise, every game counts 2.7 times more than usual in a 60-game season. It will be different and exciting, Van Wagenen said — but it will work only if the players and the staff take the perils of the pandemic seriously.

“We’re not going to create penalties or fines for players when they leave the ballpark,” Van Wagenen said. “But we trust them, they trust us, and we trust each other. That’s how we feel like we’re going to get through this in the best way possible.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

27

Spencer Dinwiddie and DeAndre Jordan of the Nets test positive for COVID-19

By MARC STEIN

S

pencer Dinwiddie and DeAndre Jordan, key members of the Brooklyn Nets, both said Monday night that they had tested positive for the coronavirus since returning to Brooklyn for individual workouts last week.

Jordan, who has asthma and has battled multiple cases of pneumonia in his 12-year career, announced on Twitter that he would not participate in the NBA restart, which is scheduled to begin soon at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla. Dinwiddie, who averaged 20.6 points and 6.8 assists per game in what had been a breakout season, followed up Jordan’s tweet with one of his own, saying he still hoped to play in Florida but adding that “unfortunately I have been one of the cases that has various symptoms.”

It was not immediately known if the Nets’ practice center would remain open, which teammates and team staff members Jordan and Dinwiddie had worked with, or if the club’s plans to participate in the NBA’s 22-team return

were in jeopardy because of the lost manpower. The Nets declined to comment Monday night.

As recently as Friday, both Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, and Michele Roberts, the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, had expressed relief that only 16 of a group of 302 NBA players had tested positive for the coronavirus on June 23.

Provided that the Nets’ outbreak is an isolated case that does not jeopardize the league’s comeback plans at large, what’s clear is that the Nets would not be close to full strength should they leave for Florida as scheduled July 7. In addition to Jordan, two more former All-Stars — Kevin Durant (Achilles’ tendon tear) and Kyrie Irving (shoulder surgery) — are still rehabilitating from injuries and have both said they will consider not playing even if they are healthy. The Nets also lost rookie forward Nicolas Claxton and veteran forward Wilson Chandler before losing Jordan and potentially Dinwiddie.

Claxton had a season-ending operation on his left shoulder last week. Chandler elected over the weekend not to

play, citing family reasons and concern about the virus. The Nets have already signed veteran guard Tyler Johnson and plan to sign Justin Anderson to replace Chandler today. The next to be signed is likely to be a big man who can step in for Jordan.

The Nets, at 30-34, were seventh in the Eastern Conference when the season was suspended March 11 in response to the coronavirus outbreak. They are a half-game up on No. 8 Orlando and six games up on 10th-seeded Washington. But the Wizards can force a play-

in round for a playoff spot if they finish within four games of the eventual eighth seed in the East after every team plays eight games.

A potential consolation for the Nets is the ability to retain their first-round pick in the Oct. 15 draft if they miss the postseason. The pick would go to the Minnesota Timberwolves if the Nets held onto a playoff spot under interim coach Jacque Vaughn, whose first move after replacing Kenny Atkinson on March 7 was moving Jordan into the starting lineup.

Athletes speak out against returning: ‘People are still dying’

By VICTOR MATHER

O

ne of the top soccer teams in Brazil came out to play its first game back carrying a banner objecting to playing the game.

“A good protocol is one that respects lives,” the banner read.

Before the game in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, most of the Botafogo players had posted a statement on social media protesting the return of soccer. “Football is our life, but we understand the moment is not ideal to put new lives at risk,” it said.

Brazil has become a hot spot for the coronavirus, passing the 1 million mark in cases, second to the United States.

President Jair Bolsonaro has declined to wear a mask and repeatedly played down any danger.

A second top team, Fluminense, also played Sunday despite misgivings.

“Thousands of people are still dying in

Brazil, and we’re forced to play football with no protection,” the team’s chairman, Mario Bittencourt, wrote before the game.

The two teams have been vocal opponents of returning to play, threatening earlier in the month to boycott the resumed season, before backing down.

Botafogo beat Cabofriense, 6-2, and Fluminense lost to Volta Redonda, 3-0.

Liverpool fans: Celebrate safely After Liverpool clinched its inevitable but long-delayed Premier League title, Manager Jürgen Klopp shared his delight with fans in a heartfelt letter published in The Liverpool Echo.

“I have never before written a letter to a newspaper,” he said. “The actions and achievements of the players speak for themselves. All of the tributes that they have received are so deserved, and as their manager I could not be more proud.”

But amid the joy, Klopp also felt

the need to admonish some Liverpool fans. A celebration Friday night included thousands of fans, despite the urging of authorities for them to stay home. A teenager was arrested, accused of throwing a firework and starting a small fire at the Royal Liver Building, a Liverpudlian landmark at the waterfront, possibly because it was lit up in blue, the colors of Liverpool’s rival, Everton, which has offices there.

“What I did not love — and I have to say this — was the scenes that took place at the Pier Head on Friday,” Klopp wrote. “I am a human being, and your passion is also my passion, but right now the most important thing is that we do not have these kind of public gatherings.

We owe it to the most vulnerable in our community, to the health workers who have given so much and whom we have applauded and to the police and local authorities who help us as a club not to do this. Please celebrate, but celebrate

in a safe way and in private settings, whereby we do not risk spreading this awful disease further in our community.”

(Carefully) Welcoming back fans in South Korea South Korea was one of the first places to bring back baseball. As soon as Friday, it may be one of the first places to bring back fans, too.

Fans will be required to buy tickets with credit cards online, so they can be tracked, if necessary. Their body temperatures will be checked at the entrances, and stadiums will be limited to about a quarter of capacity, with fans spread throughout the stands. The league expects to ban cheering as a precaution against coronavirus spread.

Until now, the games have been played in stadiums with banners featuring pictures of fans instead of the real thing.

Soccer in South Korea is expected to follow suit beginning July 10.

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Bill Belichick never tipped his post-Brady plan. Now it’s clear.

By BEN SHPIGEL

W

hen Derek Jeter retired after the 2014 season, the New York Yankees did not have an obvious internal candidate to replace him, and that was not a problem. They believed, and so did their fans, that the team’s next shortstop, no matter what, would be a good one, and he was: Didi Gregorius, acquired in a trade, blossomed into a dynamic all-around player during five seasons in pinstripes after an inauspicious start.

Some professional sports franchises, because of their prestige and success, tend to engender a certain faith when making decisions, especially big ones.

The Yankees are one of them. The New England Patriots are another.

For the past three months, the Patriots’ conspicuous quiet through the draft and free agency insinuated that Jarrett Stidham, a fourth-round pick in 2019, would replace Hall of Fame-bound Tom Brady at quarterback. That seemed ludicrous and totally believable all at once.

With eight Super Bowl victories — with six as New England’s coach — Bill Belichick has the organizational standing to say, and do, just about anything short of proclaiming his dog, a magnificent Alaskan Klee Kai named Nike, as specialteams coordinator. That includes not just moving on from perhaps the best quarterback in league history in Brady, who signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers earlier this offseason, but anointing as his successor a player who has attempted only four NFL passes.

“It could be misplaced, but your average Patriots fan looks at it and says, ‘Well, if Bill Belichick decides that Tom Brady shouldn’t be here anymore, he must have a better plan,’” said Michael Holley, a longtime sports reporter and columnist in Boston who is now a professor at Boston University’s College of Communication. Holley, who has written four books about the Patriots, including, “Belichick and Brady: Two Men, the Patriots, and How They Revolutionized Football,” added: “People are just so used to Bill Belichick figuring it out.”

Like the Yankees, who once pro-

With Tom Brady gone after 20 seasons in New England, Bill Belichick will try to squeeze a 12th consecutive division title from a team with Cam Newton as its quarterback. fessed they were comfortable with Bubba Crosby supplanting Bernie Williams in center field only to wind up snatching Johnny Damon from Boston, the Patriots did, indeed, appear to figure it out. They agreed to sign Cam Newton, the 2015 most valuable player who has been hampered in recent seasons by shoulder and foot injuries, to a one-year deal reportedly loaded with incentives.

If Newton, 31, is healthy, there is little reason to expect he wouldn’t start this season. The signing is a great value for the Patriots, who delight in making the rest of the league — or at least those who entered the offseason with unstable quarterback situations — look foolish.

Newton’s arrival teems with that potential.

Because it was unlikely that New England would unearth a pocket quarterback as reliable as Brady, the Patriots,

rather than replace him with a lesser version, pivoted. During Brady’s tenure, the offense certainly evolved, at various times prioritizing two pass-catching tight ends or an up-tempo pace or the runheavy system that propelled New England to its last championship, after the 2018 season.

How the team adapted in that time, and thus the roster, was governed as much by what Brady did well as what he did not. If healthy, Newton allows the offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels to scheme a way to capitalize on the threat of his mobility or keep defenses honest with his arm, using the run-pass option.

As other teams expended precious draft capital or lavished expensive contracts on quarterbacks, the Patriots waited. They stayed away from Marcus Mariota and Andy Dalton and Jameis Winston, all of whom signed short-term

deals as backups, and opted not to draft a quarterback — though, as Belichick indicated afterward, that was not necessarily by design.

The Patriots have long cultivated a reputation as a team that skirts the boundaries of fair play, from their involvement in the so-called Spygate and Deflategate scandals to their most recent controversy, in which they were fined $1.1 million and docked a 2021 thirdround draft pick for videotaping the Cincinnati Bengals’ sideline during a game last December in Cleveland. This move for Newton — leaked, as it happened, minutes before the videotaping punishment was levied — grants New England yet another edge.

For Newton, the appeal of the Patriots is simple: the opportunity to resurrect his career with a banner franchise, for a legendary coach, with a forgiving depth chart. If he wanted to remain a starter, New England presented his best option.

But while Newton upgrades the position, it is unclear how much he can help transform the rest of the roster.

Beyond Brady, the Patriots also lost, among others, star tight end Rob Gronkowski, who came out of retirement to play with his buddy in Tampa Bay; defensive stalwarts Kyle Van Noy and Jamie Collins; kicker Stephen Gostkowski; and offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia.

The Patriots are not rebuilding but rather reinventing themselves, with a coach who loves to tinker.

With Brady gone, the only person capable of cloaking the Patriots’ deficiencies is Belichick, who is entrusted with squeezing a 12th consecutive division title from a team that will resemble none that he has overseen during his time in New England.

After every coaching milestone, Belichick, who has won the third-most games in league history (273), deflects questions about his legacy and redirects praise onto his players. He has won with an array of stars, in different ways, but never without Brady, his tether for two decades. Given his choice, Belichick did not pick Bubba Crosby. He picked a former star, an electrifying and charismatic presence. He chose Cam Newton.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Sudoku

29

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

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

(Mar 21-April 20)

You’ll be asked to exercise your managerial skills in a virtual office environment. Being put in charge of an important division will fill you with pride. That’s because, unlike many leaders, you don’t try to suppress creativity. Instead, you encourage it, which leads to exciting breakthroughs.

Keep your thoughts to yourself, especially regarding family matters. The element of secrecy will work to your advantage.

While everyone else is doing the work expected of them, you’ll be busy with a new project that’s dear to your heart.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Expressing your dramatic side will be enjoyable. Instead of keeping your emotions bottled inside, you should pour them into a story, song or screenplay. Your creative juices are flowing like a mighty river. Even if you’re not an artist, you’ll enjoy working with ingredients, fabric or plants. Let instinct be your guide. In the past, you were reluctant to try things without a teacher. Now you’re more inclined to take an experimental approach to craftwork. You might even develop some original techniques.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Scorpio

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

A thirst for knowledge will prompt you to make some big changes. Scaling back your work hours and taking an online course will be incredibly rewarding. It will seem like you can see additional colours and taste more flavours, deepening your appreciation of life. Instead of pretending you have a firm handle on everything, admit your lack of know-how. This ability to ask for guidance will serve you well. There’s a good chance your studies will lead to an impressive career opportunity in the not too distant future.

Are you yearning for affection? Be kind and considerate to yourself. Spending time on your favourite hobbies is one of the best ways to practice self-care. This is a great time to read a classic novel or study a foreign language via your computer. Someone will invite you to take a professional risk. After studying all the different directions you can take, you’ll decide on following a conservative path, cutting back your hours and devoting more time to family matters.

Use your influence to draw attention to a matter that is close to your heart. Whether you want to raise money for a charity, challenge the public’s perception of an alternative healing therapy or defend a scapegoat, you have the power to change minds. Adopting a greater online presence will be gratifying. People take comfort in your caring, compassionate words. Don’t be surprised if you’re asked to make daily posts designed to uplift your followers.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

Organising facts, figures and information makes you much more efficient. In the past, you took a slapdash approach to your duties, preferring to take the lead while others trailed behind you. That is starting to change. Cultivating an organised online team will become an increasing priority.

Keep a business idea quiet for the time being. Mapping out a detailed proposal will increase your chances for funding in the future. After you get the funding or backing you need, you can make a big announcement.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Expressing your dramatic side will be enjoyable. Instead of keeping your emotions bottled inside, you should pour them into a story, song or screenplay. Your creative juices are flowing like a mighty river. Even if you’re not an artist, you’ll enjoy working with ingredients, fabric or plants. Let instinct be your guide. In the past, you were reluctant to try things without a teacher. Now you’re more inclined to take an experimental approach to craftwork. You might even develop some original techniques.

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Exchanging ideas by talking, writing and drawing excites your imagination. There’s never been a better time to join an online creative group. You’ll feel a special affinity for a professional artist with a long list of accomplishments.

Let them take you under their wing. Put your storytelling skills to use. Making a children’s book, writing a novel or recording a podcast will be lots of fun. You’ve got a way with words that enchants your audience. It will give you a big buzz to have a loyal following.

You seem to have the Midas touch. An ability to spot the moneymaking potential of any venture helps you make lots of money in these unusual times. For once, thinking outside of the box works to your advantage. A research project fills you with excitement. You’re good at finding hidden sources of information through extensive computer searches. After accessing an official document, you’ll shed light on a situation or event that was once shrouded in mystery. Don’t be surprised if you’re hailed as a hero.

Are you ready to undergo a big transformation? The time has come to abandon a lifestyle, relationship or job that no longer serves you. Trust your instinct to guide you to a more rewarding path. Building something of lasting beauty is a distinct possibility. Crafting a strategy for an online family gathering will require a great deal of ingenuity. After making sure everyone knows how to call in, you’ll be able to catch up with everyone. Expect lots of laughter.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Working remotely from home can be surprisingly empowering. It’s easy to add creative touches to work when you’re flying beneath the radar. In the past, your attitude has made people nervous. As a result, you adopted a subtler approach that’s very effective. Your memory is especially retentive, allowing you to absorb lots of information. There’s never been a better time to study for an exam. If you’re not being tested for anything, take this opportunity to learn a new skill or technique through online tutorials.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

In the past, you felt a little sensitive about being different from everyone else. Now you realise that being unique is an asset. Embracing your unusual style has caused doors to swing open for you. The chance to teach a virtual class could fall in your lap as a result. Demonstrating artistic techniques could put you in the path of love. Don’t be surprised if you strike up a correspondence with someone who not only admires your skill, but appreciates your kindness and compassion as well.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

The San Juan Daily Star

Ziggy

32

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

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