Tuesday Jul 14, 2020

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

San Juan The

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Washington’s NFL Team Drops ‘Redskins’ Name After Decades of Criticism

Clock Is Ticking, But Governor Prefers to Wait

Vázquez Garced Holds Press Conference at Hospital to Announce She’s Going to Make an Announcement Scolds Citizens Who Don’t Wear Masks Says She Only Takes Her Mask Off When Everyone Around Her Has Them On; Photos on Social Media Show Otherwise

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Forceful Police Intervention Rationing Hours Reduced, Under Investigation After But PRASA Remains Vigilant Video Goes Viral P3 P5

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

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July 14, 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.

Forceful police intervention that went viral on social media under investigation

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uerto Rico Police Bureau Commissioner Henry Escalera Rivera said Monday that a police intervention that circulated on social media platforms in which Juan Murcia was arrested during gubernatorial hopeful Pedro Pierluisi’s political caravan in Fajardo is under investigation by the Use of Force Investigations Division.

As part of the investigation, Escalera Rivera said Murcia was under arrest for allegedly overrunning an intersection controlled by the Police and that the department had a previous work plan in place with the municipality’s police force. As the citizen was placed under arrest, the Police proceeded to consult the case with an attorney.

“Just like every case, both versions [of the intervention], that of the arrestee and that of the police agents who intervened in the incident, will be heard,” Escalera Rivera said. “In addition, the citizen has the right to request an administrative investigation, if it is believed that a right was violated during the event.”

Witness exposes incongruencies in police protocol Yvette Nuñez, a passenger in Murcia’s car who recorded the police intervention with her cell phone and posted it on Facebook, said in an interview with Radio Isla 1320 that Murcia was arrested for obstruction of justice, and that agents did not ask for Murcia’s driver’s license during the intervention. Instead, she said, as many as five agents tried to drag her, her daughter and Murcia out of the car after they screamed at Pedro Pierluisi’s political caravan.

“Not at any moment did the police stop us or anything else,” Nuñez said. “They intervened with us after we screamed at the caravan. There was no way that we could move as the car was turned off. We were not harming or threatening anyone.”

“They never asked for identification,” she added.

“If they alleged there was a traffic violation, they would have asked for his driver’s license and fined him. But that never happened, they just tried to drag us out of our car.”

Nuñez also said that in the agents’ efforts to detain Murcia, they hit her 12-year-old daughter multiple times and tried to pull her out of the vehicle from the window.

“One of the officers who opened our door, he tried to get in the back of the vehicle. … In that effort, he hit my daughter on various occasions as he also tried to get Juan David [Murcia] and myself out,” she said. “At that point, I had an officer close to my window, there was another on my daughter’s side and there were two or three on the driver’s side of the vehicle. All of them were trying to get inside the car and it was at that moment that my daughter

ended up being hit. It was completely unnecessary.”

At the same time, Murcia said what he and his passengers went through should have never happened. He also questioned the type of mental training the agents are receiving from the Police Bureau in order to serve the island’s citizens.

“It disappoints me because it harms the police force’s image. They are the ones who save citizens. We don’t want anything similar to what happened in the United States, where someone died due to them [police] lacking adequate training and psychological [preparation],” Murcia said. “I understand the pressure they’re under; they must have a stronger mental state than the average citizen, because they have an additional responsibility.

This is a direct violation as I even felt discriminated against when I asked if they were NPP [supporters], and they got more infuriated. I was scared for my life if they got me out of my car, because they were going to break my teeth.”

Murcia said that although he wants justice, he is not considering filing a civil lawsuit because he does not want to irritate or provoke anyone. He also said the coverage the incident has gotten on media outlets is more than enough for him.

“We don’t want to agitate. We don’t want to provoke.

We want justice,” Murcia said. “I’m not sure about putting any legal procedure into play. I hate them [lawsuits]; they waste so much time, money, it crumbles one’s patience.

I prefer leaving it like this, so it was not in vain. If this never happened -- if media outlets had not have given it any coverage -- then I would have taken it to the ultimate consequences. It was a lesson for everyone.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Governor has not decided what to do after COVID-19 case spikes

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

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hile confirmed cases of COVID-19 are rising dramatically in Puerto Rico, Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced has yet to decide which measurements she will consider in the next executive order to control the spread of the disease as she waits for more recommendations from her medical and economic task forces.

In a crammed lobby of the Cardiovascular Center of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, where there was little chance to practice social distancing, she said the decision is yet to be announced as Health Secretary Lorenzo González Feliciano will evaluate the suggestions and concerns from both task forces and other experts who participated in a meeting before the press conference.

Meanwhile, she scolded citizens for not using face masks or practicing any physical distancing, although members of the press called out the governor for being without her mask and not distancing herself from citizens during her primary campaign. Photos all over Facebook and Twitter prove it.

“In terms of my primary campaign, I told my campaign directors that, in the next two weeks, there would be no activity that promotes any spread [of the coronavirus],” Vázquez said. “The example might start at home, but it’s everyone’s responsibility, not mine only. The majority of my [campaign] staff had face masks on. I only took my mask off whenever everyone else had their masks on or when

The governor scolded citizens for not using face masks or practicing any physical distancing, although members of the press called out the governor for being without her mask, without distancing herself from citizens and during her primary campaign. Photos all over Facebook and Twitter prove it. (Photo: Facebook) I wanted to show my gratitude to citizens. But, even if I lose votes, I will make choices for the sake of the people.”

The governor said repeatedly that she will not hold back if she has to consider returning to rigorous measures for the sake of protecting the health and lives of Puerto Rico citizens. She also scolded people younger than 30 years of age as cases have spiked by 15.6 percent in this

population, with some engaging in civil protest activities without wearing a face mask.

“To this population, love your parents, your grandparents, your siblings; in order to protect them, please use your face masks; it’s the only way you can protect your family from COVID-19,” Vázquez said.

On one hand, González said, Monday’s meeting was positive as both the health and economic sectors shared interesting ideas and, although there is no proposal yet, both sectors called for additional analysis to make decisions based on scientific data, not opinions. Nevertheless, when concerns were raised regarding a shortage of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) reagents in private clinical laboratories, the Health chief said such shortages were expected not only in Puerto Rico, but also in the rest of the world.

“We asked each referred laboratory through the laboratory director of the Health Department to provide us [PCR] testing data from six weeks ago,” he said. “This means that we will go back to the initial phase of COVID-19, where we limit resources to hospitalized and elderly patients.”

Meanwhile, as The Star asked the Health secretary about concerns that travelers arriving in Puerto Rico spent two weeks waiting for COVID-19 molecular results from the airport’s screening test, giving tourists and residents a low-risk perception, González said only that the errors will be fixed on Wednesday.

“From July 15, travelers will have two options: arrive with a negative COVID-19 test result or be under quarantine,” he said. “There will be no testing at airports unless the traveler has symptoms of the disease.”

Union: Lax protocols at 9-1-1 System has led to spread of coronavirus among employees

By THE STAR STAFF

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ramis Cruz Domínguez, president of the Puerto Rico Communications Workers Union CWA Local 3010, an organization that represents 9-1-1 System Bureau workers, charged Monday that the head of the agency allegedly has put its employees at risk because health and safety protocol is not being fully followed.

The union leader also charged that several employees have already tested positive for COVID-19 and the response of the bureau has been insufficient.

“In recent days we have come to learn of employees who unfortunately have tested positive for COVID-19.

One of them was a telecommunication employee who

works the night shift in the main center in Guaynabo and for that reason the center was closed and all employees were sent to undergo testing,” Cruz Domínguez said in a written communication. “Unfortunately, there were additional employees who tested positive who had contact with personnel from both centers and the measures taken by the Bureau were insufficient.”

The 9-1-1 System Bureau has not taken into consideration the suggestions that the union has presented to minimize the risk of infection, Cruz Domínguez said.

“We have suggested that the Bureau activate a quartering plan. This way we can guarantee that we have enough employees within the facilities of 9-1-1, safe and ready to take calls from citizens,” she said. “We have also suggested that the Bureau send all employees for testing every 15-20 days. The Bureau simply tells us that it is not necessary.”

The union leader further noted that the Bureau has not done enough to enable its telecommunication employees to work remotely since the technology that allows it exists.

“If the 9-1-1 funds are used correctly, it may be possible,” she said.

Law 32-2020, legislation that was drafted by the union, recently went into effect, she said.

“This law allows 9-1-1 funds to be used solely and exclusively for the purpose of emergency calls, and once again the Bureau intends to divert $2.3 million to

the Public Safety Department, something that is totally prohibited by federal regulation, instead of using these funds to enable a remote system and to guarantee the continuity of the service in times of pandemic,” Cruz Domínguez said.

The union leader thanked all 9-1-1 System Bureau employees for their exemplary work and sacrifice during the pandemic.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

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PREPA workers protest anticipated bill hikes

By THE STAR STAFF

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ctive and retired employees of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) stationed themselves Monday morning at various bridges and highway overpasses in San Juan, Ponce, Mayagüez, Caguas, Yauco, Arecibo and Carolina, where they displayed banners condemning alleged rate hikes contemplated under the contract with the utility’s transmission and distribution operator, Luma Energy.

“We condemn the rate increase that will come from the disastrous Luma Energy contract with the Electric Power Authority, an increase that could come as soon as December of this year,” said Humberto Morales, president of the Antonio Lucchetti Autonomous District (DAAL by its Spanish initials), in written remarks. “Today, we show again our outrage at this and other bad terms that the contract has for the people of Puerto Rico.”

The Electrical Industry and Irrigation Workers Union (UTIER by its Spanish acronym), the Unsecured Creditors Committee and fuel line lenders last

week asked for a postponement until September of a request by PREPA to give payment priority status to some $136 million the authority will pay Luma in front-end transition costs. PREPA entered into a contract with Luma Energy on

June 22 to manage its transmission and distribution system as well as customer service and billing operations. Under the contract, Luma can request budget and rate adjustments. The first rate adjustment petition could come as early as

December but will have to go through the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau.

Luma Energy President Wayne Stensby said he does not foresee rate changes and that the company will do everything possible “to pay for ourselves.” He said UTIER is trying to misinform the public.

PREPA employees invited everyone to join them on Wednesday in front of PREPA headquarters in Santurce to condemn the Luma Energy contract and request its cancellation.

“This Wednesday we will meet in front of the PREPA building to, in a forceful way, reject this contract that, in addition to increasing power rates, violates various laws and public policies, costs the people of Puerto Rico $125 million annually and pays Luma executives up to $325 an hour,” said Johny Rodríguez, president of the PREPA Retirees Association.

The Alliance of Active Employees and Retirees of PREPA is made up of UTIER and its retirees chapter, the PREPA Management Employees Association, the PREPA Union of Independent Professional Employees, the PREPA Retirees Association and the DAAL.

Ration hours reduced thanks to rain, but PRASA remains vigilant

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

T

he rain that fell over the weekend in the Carraízo basin led the Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (PRASA) to reduce the water rationing hours for the 140,000 customers who are supplied from that reservoir, PRASA Executive President Doriel Pagán Crespo said Monday.

“We increased from yesterday to today by 82 centimeters. That is very good,” Pagán Crespo said in a radio interview. “So today we have made the decision, after also consulting yesterday [Sunday] with the National Weather Service, to begin extended periods of [drinking water] service. It will be extended to 28 hours.”

Pagán Crespo said zone A will open at 9 a.m. on Monday and zone B will continue to receive water service until 1 p.m., instead of it being suspaended at 9 a.m.

Regarding when water rationing can be suspended altogether for Carraízo clients, the PRASA chief said they have to “validate the sustained behavior of the reservoir.”

“Right now runoff is still high,” Pagán Crespo said. “Tomorrow we will most likely see another increase in the level” of the reservoir.

Currently, some 140,000 PRASA clients who receive water drawn from the Carraízo reservoir are under a planned outage regime that began July 2.

The move was due to the drought that has affected Puerto Rico and has dropped below normal the level of the reservoirs and rivers that supply PRASA with water for purification and distribution.

The water level at Carraízo reservoir is expected to continue increasing thanks to runoff from several rivers that received a lot of rain from the weekend’s tropical wave.

Besides urging the prudent use of water, PRASA, as a preventive measure to manage the water shortage at Carraízo, began a period of scheduled interruptions for the sectors supplied by the reservoir, which supplies the largest population in the metropolitan area.

The original planned outage consisted of suspending service in 24-hour periods -- one day on and another off -- starting at 9 a.m.

Clients were divided into two zones, A and B, with alternating periods of suspension and restoration of service every 24 hours. The areas affected in the first phase were some parts of San Juan, Trujillo Alto, Canóvanas and Carolina.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

House Ways and Means approves budget proposals to benefit island

By THE STAR STAFF

T

he Committee on Ways and Means of the U.S. House of Representatives has approved budget proposals for agencies working with agriculture, military construction, veterans and environmental issues in Puerto Rico, Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón said Monday.

The committee recognized the important role of the agricultural sector in the Puerto Rico economy and included language requested by the resident commissioner directing the federal Department of Agriculture (USDA) to present a report on the efforts and personnel of the National Agricultural Statistics Service and the Agricultural Marketing Service in Puerto Rico, which must be submitted no later than 60 days after the enactment of the budget law.

The aforementioned agencies administer programs that collect data for farmers and producers in U.S. jurisdictions and help create national and international marketing opportunities, González Colón said in a written statement.

The resident commissioner also included language directing the USDA Economic Research Service to publish data on agricultural

cash receipts, agricultural income and exports for Puerto Rico based on the five-year estimates provided through the Agriculture Census.

Language was also included directing the Agricultural Research Service to the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the U.S. Forest Service, and the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and Climate Hubs to work on research that helps Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the rest of the territories in the management of land and forest resources; improve the viability and

sustainability of local food production systems; biology and control of invasive insects, plant diseases, weedy plant species and the development of integrated pest management strategies to control them; advances in molecular biology and bioengineering in agricultural production and human and ecosystem health in tropical and subtropical areas; and the application of precision farming technologies, data and tools to increase profitability.

The Committee recognized the destructive effects caused by the infestation of the coffee berry borer insect, also known as the coffee drill, on coffee production, and the negative impact it has on the farming sector of Puerto Rico. The language required by the commissioner and which was included by the committee directs USDA to allocate the necessary funds for APHIS to design a Hierarchical Environment for Research Modeling of Ecological Systems, known as the Hermes model, to control the prevalence of this pest on the island.

Another of the Committee’s recommendations, and one that benefits Puerto Rico, is to direct the USDA Food and Nutrition Service to include all the territories, including those that receive block grants, in any study it conducts

on its Child Nutrition Programs.

The committee also appropriated funds for agriculture suggested by the Committee for fiscal year 2021, the resident commissioner said.

The committee also approved about $1.9 billion for the Nutritional Assistance Program (PAN) of Puerto Rico, which is $1,674,000 more than what was allocated to the island for fiscal year 2020.

During the process of allocations for fiscal year 2020, González Colón was able to include language that provided $6 million for a study on PAN, including an update of the feasibility study of a transition to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) carried out by the Food and Nutrition Service and published in 2010.

The study would indicate the percentage of households that would receive nutritional assistance and what would be the average monthly benefit per household if Puerto Rico participated in the SNAP program.

About $2 million was given to the NIFA Grants for Insular Areas Program, which provides funds to improve agricultural science education in the five territories of the United States and the partner republics of Micronesia, Marshall Islands and Palau.

Technical students to receive 2nd part of CARES Act incentive

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

G

ov. Wanda Vázquez Garced and Education (DE) Secretary Eligio Hernández Pérez announced on Monday that, starting this week, 1,293 students from post-secondary technical

institutes attached to the Puerto Rico Department of Education will receive in their bank account the second part of the $2,400 incentive as a result of federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) Act legislation.

“The newly disbursed funds belong to 100 percent of the allocation to the

technical education area of emergency legislation that totals $3.3 million,” the governor said. “The money, according to federal regulations, could be used for expenses for lodging, food, medical matters, childcare and any other expenses caused by the COVID-19 emergency. During the past month, the students saw reflected in their respective bank accounts the first $1,200 corresponding to 50 percent of the incentive payment.”

This $3.3 million is being distributed to technical education students who meet the following requirements: they are eligible for Title IV of the Higher Education Act, they comply with the distance education modality established by the DE and with federal assistance public policy, they have no debts with the U.S. Department of Education (outstanding student loans, for example), they have completed Verification Audit V4 and V5, and they are registered with the (military) Selective Service.

“This federal allocation serves almost the entire population of our five institutes that have already met the requirements,” the Education secretary said. “Aid may

be used at this time of emergency. This money is part of the million-dollar economic incentive destined for the public education system and, therefore, for all our students.”

Eligible students attend one of the Puerto Rico Technological Institute campuses in San Juan, Ponce, Manatí and Guayama, as well as the Escuela de Troquelería y Herramentaje in Bayamón.

The Education chief announced that in the coming weeks he will announce other incentives for teachers and staff assigned to public schools.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

7

Rich New Yorkers aren’t filling out the Census. Poor New Yorkers may suffer.

By DANA RUBINSTEIN

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hen city officials took on the herculean task of getting every New York City household to fill out the census, an eat-yourvegetables exercise that provides millions in federal aid to low-income residents, they did not expect the Upper East Side to pose much of a problem.

But the coronavirus has upended censustakers’ best-laid plans. And that may have serious financial implications for the city.

Only 46% of Upper East Side households have filled out their census forms, according to a June 25 report circulated by the Department of City Planning’s chief demographer, Joseph J. Salvo — well below the neighborhood’s final response rate in 2010, and short of the current citywide rate of almost 53%.

The reason?

“They’re not here,” said Liz Krueger, a Democratic state senator, referring to her constituents in midtown and the Upper East Side. “No one’s here.”

Many New Yorkers who had the wherewithal to leave the city did so, just as the census was getting under way this spring. Thinned-out neighborhoods stopped producing as much garbage.

Mail-forwarding requests shot through the roof.

And for census officials, wealthier neighborhoods in Manhattan are now unexpectedly proving some of the hardest to reach.

Only about 38% of households in midtown Manhattan have filled out their census forms — the second-worst response rate in all of New York City, after North Corona, Queens, which is at about 37%. The rate is only slightly better in the area encompassing SoHo, Tribeca, Civic Center and Little Italy, which is home to wealthy residents as well as many college students; those tracts have response rates of about 46%.

The noncompliance in these communities has stunned people like Melva M. Miller, who signed on in December 2018 to spearhead census outreach efforts for the Association for a Better New York, a real estate-backed civic group. Little in her decades of political experience led her to believe wealthy Manhattan neighborhoods would pose a problem.

Then COVID-19 hit.

“When we started to look at the numbers come in, at the every beginning of the pandemic, I think all of us working on census outreach were very shocked and stunned,” Miller said.

Some of these census tracts include the city’s most exclusive stretches of real estate, like the Fifth Avenue corridor between 70th and 35th streets,

In 2010, the Upper East Side of Manhattan had a nearly 80 percent self-response rate for the census; this year, less than half of that tract has responded. which the planning department said was “home to some of the lowest levels of self-response in the city.”

Even if New Yorkers have asked the Postal Service to forward mail to their second homes, census forms are addressed to the household, not the individual, which — unless New Yorkers pay for premium forwarding — prevents the post office from including them with the forwarded mail.

Officials hope that many of the coronavirus evacuees will return by the end of October, the new extended deadline for final responses to the census. But with Manhattan parents now enrolling children in schools outside the city, it is not clear that the evacuees will return to New York City in time.

“New Yorkers that have left the city and that then are not doing their civic duty and filling the census out are truly hurting our city — not just this year but for 10 years to come,” said Julie Menin, the director of NYC Census 2020.

“It is one of the single worst ways that you can act in New York’s greatest time of need,” she added.

The census is an esoteric exercise with real

world implications.

It is used to distribute more than $1.5 trillion in federal funding, according to a recent report by the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform and Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

“An incomplete count could cost the city its fair share of that funding,” the report found. “Missing just one person in the city could reduce education funding by $2,295, and job training by $281.”

By the city’s estimate, it receives some $1 billion a year in federal aid that is based in, or guided by, census data. That funding comes in the form of education funding for low-income students and children with disabilities, child care funding and rental aid for low-income families; any loss in federal funding would be critical at a time when the pandemic has caused the city’s revenues to plummet.

The census has electoral repercussions, too.

Officials fear a potential undercount, coupled with New York’s declining population, could cost the state two congressional seats.

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Tuesday, July 14, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Choke point for U.S. Coronavirus response: The fax machine

By SARAH KLIFF and MARGOT SANDER-KATZ

they are positive, since the tests take so long to come back.

“When we are receiving results back 14 days after ublic health officials in Houston are struggling to the individual became symptomatic, it’s not useful at all,” keep up with one of the nation’s largest coronavirus Escott said. outbreaks. They are desperate to trace cases and Before the pandemic, nearly 90% of laboratory test quarantine patients before they spread the virus to others. results for diseases tracked by public health departments But first, they must negotiate with the office fax machine. were transmitted digitally, according to the CDC. But the The machine at the Harris County Public Health need for widespread coronavirus testing has brought many department recently became overwhelmed when one more players into the public health arena, including companies that usually run tests only for employers, and small laboratory sent a large batch of test results, spraying hundreds of pages all over the floor. clinics that usually test for diseases like the flu and strep “Picture the image of hundreds of faxes coming throat. That has pushed up the share of lab tests coming through, and the machine just shooting out paper,” said to public health departments in other forms.

Dr. Umair Shah, executive director of the department. The “There are standards that exist out there, but with county has so far recorded more than 40,000 coronavirus the onslaught and the drastic increase in volume and the cases. increase in the number of tests, they’re struggling to keep Some doctors fax coronavirus tests to Shah’s personal up,” said Jason Hall, who is the lead for the CDC’s Laboratory Reporting Working Group. number, too. Those papers are put in an envelope marked Nationally, about 80% of coronavirus test results are “confidential” and walked to the epidemiology department. missing demographic information, and half As hard as the United States works to do not have addresses, according to Janet control coronavirus, it keeps running into Hamilton, executive director of the Council problems caused by its fragmented health of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. system, a jumble of old and new technology, “When things come in with missing and data standards that do not meet epidemiologists’ needs. Public health officials and information, we have to try to put the pieces private laboratories have managed to expand back together,” she said. “We call the provider back or look at other data sources. testing to more than half a million performed But that takes time.” daily, but they do not have a system that can The Trump administration issued smoothly handle that avalanche of results. guidelines in early June that required laboHealth departments track the virus’s ratories to report things like patients’ age, spread with a distinctly American patchwork: a reporting system in which some race and ethnicity, so public health officials test results arrive via smooth data feeds can better understand the demographics of but others come by phone, email, physical the coronavirus pandemic. The rules, which mail or fax, a technology retained because do not take effect until August, state that it complies with digital privacy standards laboratories “should” also provide patients’ for health information. These reports often addresses and phone numbers but do not come in duplicate, go to the wrong health mandate it.

This type of information often gets department, or are missing crucial information such as a patient’s phone number or lost, as the typical test data take a journey address. from doctor’s office to laboratory to public The absence of a standard digital prohealth authority and back to the original cess is hampering case reporting and contact doctor, not necessarily in that order. At tracing, crucial to slowing the spread of the each stage, technological failures can disease. Many labs joined the effort but had slow or disrupt the flow of vital information. Doctor’s offices do not always have limited public health experience, increasing digital systems capable of talking to the the confusion. lab that analyzes the result. Laboratory “From an operational standpoint, it software often omits information that makes things incredibly difficult,” Shah said. public health authorities will later need.

“The data is moving slower than the disease.”

And transmissions by fax or spreadsheet The torrent of paper data led at least can require workers to manually reenter one health department to request additional information into their computer systems, forces. Washington state recently brought increasing the risk of errors or duplicate in 25 members of the National Guard to entries. assist with manual data entry for results not The Harris County Public Health department’s overworked fax machine.

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reported electronically.

“The obsession with the number of tests obscures an important fundamental: What are we doing with all those tests?” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is legitimately difficult stuff that every state is struggling with.”

Dr. Mark Escott, the interim health authority for the city of Austin, Texas, and Travis County, said his office is receiving around 1,000 faxes a day, including duplicate results. Some faxes are meant for other jurisdictions, and many are missing crucial information needed for his office to investigate cases. Most such faxes in Austin are being sent to a computer, but they still need to be printed and manually entered into public health databases.

On average, his office is getting all the information it needs about a test result 11 days after the test is taken — far too late to make contact tracing worthwhile. He has been advising those in the area with virus symptoms to assume

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

9

Nation’s governors get tested for a virus that is testing them

By MANNY FERNANDEZ, RICK ROJAS, SHAWN HUBLER AND MIKE BAKER

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overnors have always been judged on their disaster responses, but the coronavirus wreaking havoc across the country these days does not recede like floodwaters and cannot be tamed by calling out the National Guard.

The states’ chief executives have been tested for the very virus that keeps testing them — politically, personally, logistically. And they have been forced onto the national and global stage in a way few governors have ever endured — an unending and very public test on a highly scientific and ever-shifting subject with the lives of their constituents, the economies of their states and their political careers at stake.

Tate Reeves has been the governor of Mississippi for just under six months. During that time, he has had a very full plate: deadly tornadoes, the flooding of the capital city of Jackson, violence in the state prisons, a vote to take down the flag with the Confederate battle emblem.

But the coronavirus has eclipsed all of that, and in recent days, the virus was threatening the statehouse and his own house a few blocks away.

Reeves, 46, was tested for the virus, as were his wife and three daughters. The tests came back negative, but many of his colleagues at the Mississippi State Capitol were not as lucky — the virus has infected 26 lawmakers, including the lieutenant governor and the House speaker. Cases have surged statewide — 674 new cases were announced Wednesday, 703 on Thursday — and intensive care units at many of the state’s largest hospitals are near capacity.

“I have taken to replacing sleeping with praying,” Reeves, an accountant before he got into politics, told reporters.

The pandemic has put Reeves, a Republican, and many of America’s governors of both parties under a spotlight for which none of their aides and consultants have a playbook.

Interviews with aides, advisers and others involved in the coronavirus response efforts of seven governors revealed just how much the crisis has upended their offices, their lives, and how they approach the job. For some, it has magnified their weaknesses and drawn out tensions even within their own parties — and their own kitchen cabinets.

The crisis reached a boiling point this month for some governors, as the virus spread and deaths increased in a swath of states that governors had reopened. Reversing course — a practice governors prefer not to be seen doing — has become routine in the age of coronavirus.

Reeves had been eager previously to lift the restrictions that had stalled Mississippi’s economy and had hoped to have the whole state open by July 1. Now, he has been warning residents of a “slow-moving disaster” and made masks mandatory in 13 of the hardest-hit counties.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, was adamant for weeks that government could not mandate masks. Just before the Fourth of July weekend, as cases and hospitalizations skyrocketed, he swiftly reversed, ordering all Texans to cover their faces in most situations.

Minutes before the announcement, he held a conference call with lawmakers, many of them irate Republicans who have grown weary of his mandates, flip-flops and rushed, behind-the-scenes calls.

“He is doing all this on his own, as far as I can tell, with little-to-no input,” said state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, a conservative from the Fort Worth suburbs who was on the call and said lawmakers weren’t permitted to ask any questions. “It’s a one-way conversation. The last time I checked, we didn’t elect a king in Texas.”

The seven governors whose crisis moments were reviewed by The New York Times — Reeves of Mississippi; Abbott of Texas; Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington state; Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida; Gov. Gavin Newsom of California; Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas; and Gov. David Ige of Hawaii — have been scrambling in ways large and small, in ways seen and unseen by the public.

Inslee, a Democrat, managed the crisis without the guidance of some members of his staff on various days last week, including his chief of staff. They had to take a day off for furloughs — a requirement as the state grapples with financial shortfalls caused by the pandemic.

Abbott has had his deputy chief of staff talk to the head of the Texas Restaurant Association to relay the latest developments, but DeSantis in Florida — whose wife, Casey, gave birth in late March to their third child — often gets on the line himself.

“I don’t get a heads-up from the governor that he’s going to call, he just calls,” said David M. Kerner, the mayor of Palm Beach County. “At first it caught me off guard.”

Kelly, the Democratic governor of Kansas, has kept her circle of pandemic advisers small, relying largely on the expertise of her top health official.

Hawaii’s Democratic governor, Ige, was criticized, according to local news reports, for keeping his inner circle too small by excluding the lieutenant governor, who happened to be a practicing emergency room physician. Early in the pandemic, Ige’s administration was reluctant to expand testing, but Lt. Gov. Josh Green wanted an aggressive expansion. In an interview, Ige attributed the tension to “misunderstanding and miscommunication,” and said the lieutenant governor has been continuously involved in the response.

DeSantis, who has been criticized for reopening Florida too fast and for not issuing a statewide mask mandate, was perhaps the most mobile of the seven governors, leaving home frequently to attend public events. He held three news conferences in three cities in a single week, often wearing a mask that he slipped off when he spoke at the microphone.

Inslee, by comparison, has taken to wearing his mask even during video news conferences, his voice muffled as a result.

Without a coordinated federal response, governors find themselves in an awkward role, appearing to wield much of the decision-making around managing the crisis, but also expected to hear out and satisfy the wishes of mayors, restaurant owners, emergency medical workers and everyone else. The result: all sorts of new coronavirus committees and

Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington State held a virtual meeting this week from the living room of the governor’s mansion in Olympia. task forces — and bureaucratic snarls.

Even with so much advice, governors seemed to be making it up as they go.

In California, Newsom awakens early with his children on most days and starts emailing his staff by 6 a.m. He dons a mask and works not out of the domed Capitol in Sacramento, but out of the California Office of Emergency Services command center, a complex in the suburb of Carmichael, where he and his family live.

Mornings are for meetings and prep for the noon livestream news conference that Newsom has done almost daily since the start of the pandemic. The Capitol press corps calls the news conferences “Newsom at Noon” and for a while some swapped bingo cards with his go-to phrases: “Bend the curve.” “Meet the moment.” “Localism is determinative.”

California acted early to impose a stay-at-home order but the virus, after appearing under control, is on the upswing. That is no surprise to Newsom, who says that the early shutdown helped the state prepare.

“It bought us time to build out our health care delivery system,” Newsom said in an interview this month.

For Reeves in Mississippi, who was sworn in Jan. 14, one of his challenges has been in publicly shifting his pandemic posture, from being eager to reopen the economy to urging caution and toughening restrictions.

He has spent much of his time in recent days ringing alarm bells he had ignored for weeks, telling reporters Wednesday that the “situation that we have feared is upon us” and urging people to wear a mask and stay home as much as possible.

“He’s dealt with more emergencies than most elected officials deal with in their entire time in office, and this has been like no other,” said Pat Fontaine, who is the executive director of the Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association and who has been in regular contact with the governor’s office.

10

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Florida records Nation’s one-day peak for new virus cases

By KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURA, RICK ROJAS and SHERI FINK

F

lorida on Sunday reported the highest single-day total of new coronavirus cases by any state since the start of the pandemic, with more than 15,000 new infections, eclipsing the previous high of 12,274 recorded in New York on April 4 amid the worst of its outbreak.

The number reflects both increased testing and a surge in transmission of the virus that has strained hospitals, led to shortages in a key antiviral drug and amplified fears about the pace at which the state lifted restrictions on movement and commerce.

And it is a new red mark on the nation’s foundering efforts to combat the virus.

“It has just been horrifically busy,” John Toney, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of South Florida, said of hospitals, where patients were flooding in and doctors and nurses were growing overwhelmed and exhausted.

“It’s reminiscent of what everyone dealt with in New York,” Toney said. “It’s certainly putting a strain on a lot of the systems, even though hospitals are trying to accommodate.”

The increase of 15,300 cases has come as Disney World has let tourists back onto its rides, the Republican National Convention is set to begin in Jacksonville in August, and Gov. Ron DeSantis has ordered that public schools reopen for five days a week when classes resume next month. “If you can do Home Depot, if you can do Walmart, if you can do these things,” the governor said, “we absolutely can do the schools.”

The surge in Florida reflects how the spread of the virus has escalated in much of the country, particularly in Southern states where governors following President Donald Trump’s lead have pushed aggressively to ease restrictions and encourage businesses to reopen. Now some states are trying to add mask mandates and other protective measures and seeing renewed tensions between governors and mayors as they disagree over how much to pull back on the reopening.

In some ways, the situation in Florida differs from the worst days of the pandemic in New York.

Some of the increase in cases reflects the dramatic increase in testing; Florida is testing several times the number of people that New York was at the height of its crisis. The spread of the di-

Paul Kennedy Hutchinson Former Citibanker and resident of Puerto Rico died recently in Tampa, Florida.

Paul will be missed by all who knew him.

May he rest in peace

A crowd of people explore the newly completed St. Petersburg Pier in St. Petersburg, Fla., Sunday, July 12, 2020. sease amid the Florida sun does not play out with the same dread as it did in crowded city streets in New York. Hospitals are better supplied and somewhat more prepared to treat patients than they were in March and April. And while the daily death toll in Florida climbed to a high last week, it remains far below the levels that New York suffered, at least for now.

On the other hand, there is something demoralizing, if sadly predictable, in seeing the virus make a comeback both in communities that had expected it to fade and began easing restrictions, and others that had tried to maintain safety measures only for residents to ignore them.

“We expected this to happen,” said Jay Wolfson, a professor of public health and medicine at the University of South Florida.

“The calculus for this disease is proximity, congestion and time,” he added. “You had people going to parties. You had restaurants open up. You had bars open up. You had beaches open up. You had graduation parties for students.”

Even with the dramatic spike in cases and sickness in the state, many Floridians remain blasé about the virus and averse to the simple act of wearing a mask to prevent its spread.

On Clearwater Beach, in Pinellas County on Florida’s western coast, Jason Dormois, 17, part of a crew handling sun lounges, said he was not worried. “I’m out in the sun; I’m a healthy young man,” he said. He said he had been out of his job for two months and stuck at home, and “people need the money.”

Others were appalled people were not taking the virus more seriously.

“It’s asinine, the way people are acting. Look at the beach — not one mask,” said Anthony Babcock, 47, who had worked in

music publishing. “And those who say it’s a free country — it’s not about being a free country. It’s about being smart. We’ll see what happens in two weeks.”

From the start, the response to the virus has been defined by a tug of war as officials have had to balance taking aggressive steps to inhibit its spread with limiting the array of economic and social consequences those measures unleashed.

Now that balance is being calibrated yet again as the outbreak is growing across 37 states, and eight states — all but one in the South or Southwest — set single-day death records over the last week: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Tennessee.

The states seeing the record increases were often among those where officials had delayed implementing stay-at-home orders in the spring and moved quickly to ease the restrictions they did put in place.

Florida has recorded more than 269,800 cases, with more than 4,200 total deaths, according to a New York Times database.

There were also single-day records Sunday in the counties that include Florida’s largest cities, including Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Fort Myers, West Palm Beach, Pensacola and Sarasota.

The latest data shows the increasing strains that Florida hospitals are under. Some 43 intensive care units in 21 Florida counties have hit capacity and have no beds available. Doctors are working longer hours and, faced with shortages of the key drug remdesivir, doctors and nurses are having to choose between patients and even to change the remdesivir criteria to use it later in the disease.

Still, many residents continued to flout health guidelines.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

11

The pandemic has accelerated demands for a more skilled workforce

By STEVE LOHR

E

conomists, business leaders and labor experts have warned for years that a coming wave of automation and digital technology would upend the workforce, destroying some jobs while altering how and where work is done for nearly everyone.

In the past four months, the coronavirus pandemic has transformed some of those predictions into reality. By May, half of Americans were working from home, tethered to their employers via laptops and Wi-Fi, up from 15% before the pandemic, according to a recent study.

The rapid change is leading to mounting demands — including from typically opposing groups, like Republicans and Democrats, and business executives and labor leaders — for training programs for millions of workers. On their own, some of the proposals are modest. But combined they could cost tens of billions of dollars, in what would be one of the most ambitious retraining efforts in generations.

“This is the moment when we should make a significant public investment,” said David Autor, a labor economist at MIT, “when we should have a Marshall Plan for ourselves.”

A group of mainly corporate executives and educators advising the Trump administration on workforce policy called for “immediate and unprecedented investments in American workers,” both for training and help in finding jobs. And even before the pandemic, former Vice President Joe Biden had proposed investing $50 billion in workforce training.

In Congress, there is bipartisan support for giving jobless workers a $4,000 training credit.

The Markle Foundation has proposed federally funded “opportunity accounts” of up to $15,000 for workers to spend on training. Union leaders have helped the administration in an effort to expand federal apprenticeship programs to a wide range of industries.

Past downturns have brought increased government aid for workers and training programs. But labor experts say they have tended to be policies that recede once the economy recovers, as happened after the 2008 financial crisis, rather than becoming national priorities.

“The Great Recession was a lost opportunity,” said Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard University. “Now, are we going to take this moment to help low-wage workers move into the middle class and give them skills to thrive?

Or are they just going to go back to low-wage jobs that are dead ends?”

In the coronavirus economy, companies are adopting more automation, as they seek to cut costs and increase efficiency. There is debate about which jobs are most at risk and how soon. But climbing up the skills ladder is the best way to stay ahead of the automation wave.

Middle-class jobs in today’s economy often require some digital skills but are not considered tech jobs. Data scientists at LinkedIn, a Microsoft subsidiary, recently mined

Sarah Williams graduated from Western Governors University, an online nonprofit university focused on working adults who want to learn new skills. millions of job listings to identify 10 occupations most in demand in recent years and likely to remain so. The list included project manager, sales representative, customer service specialist and graphic designer — nontech jobs that have been transformed by technology.

Researchers at the Markle Foundation, in a report published last year, studied the pace of digital tools moving into occupations during the previous decade. The fastest rates of digitization were in jobs in retail, warehouses and health care. So a training path might be to help a home health worker acquire the skills to become a medical technician.

Job training in America has often been ineffective, with programs shaped by local politics and money spent

according to the number of people in courses rather than hiring outcomes. The United States also spends less than other nations on government employment, training and other labor services. As a percentage of economic activity, Canada spends three times as much, Germany about six times more and Scandinavian countries up to more than 12 times as much, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

But there are encouraging pockets of success in America. Some are nonprofit programs like Year Up, Per Scholas and Project Quest, which prepare low-income adults for higher-paying careers in technology, health care, advanced manufacturing or business. In recent months, these programs have quickly changed to online teaching and coaching from in-person programming.

In addition, online training on learning networks like Coursera and Udacity and at digital-only institutions like the Western Governors University, experts say, can be engines for upgrading the skills of many workers in America.

Nearly 15% of people earning bachelor’s degrees in nursing in the United States last year graduated from Western Governors University, an online nonprofit university focused on working adults who want to learn new skills.

Sarah Williams was one of them.

For Williams, a 38-year-old working mother of three, the online program was the only realistic option.

Wrestling with college-level statistics and organic chemistry was daunting. But she made it through in eight months, with frequent encouragement and help from her mentor. “No way I could have done it alone,” Williams said.

The vital role of human assistance, delivered in person or online, by a mentor or coach is a common thread in skills-building success stories. Another essential element is employers being engaged as participants in worker training.

The Trump administration is an enthusiastic proponent of expanding the apprenticeship concept beyond the construction and building trades. In March, the Labor Department announced Industry Recognized Apprenticeship Programs to foster apprenticeships in sectors like technology and health care. As a first step, it has called on businesses to form standards-setting bodies for apprenticeships in their industries.

Ivanka Trump, a chair of the administration’s American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, is an advocate for broadening apprenticeship opportunities and making Pell grants, for low-income students, available for noncollege skills training and job certification programs.

The administration sees the government’s role as working with the business community and ensuring that the public system of state and local workforce boards, which receive federal funding, are attuned to hiring demands of the private sector.

“Re-skilling very much needs to come from business,” said John Pallasch, assistant secretary for employment and training at the Labor Department.

12

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Stocks

S&P 500 and Nasdaq end lower after sharp drop in tech titans

T

he S&P 500 and Nasdaq ended lower on Monday, pulled down by Amazon, Microsoft and other recent big-name leaders of Wall Street’s recent rally.

The S&P 500 dipped after briefly touching its highest level since Feb. 25. The index has rebounded over 40% since mid-March, even as COVID-19 infections rose rapidly in Arizona, California and Texas and about 35 other states.

Stocks that outperformed in recent months, including Amazon (AMZN.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O), Nvidia (NVDA.O) and Facebook (FB.O), ended down more than 2% after gaining earlier in the day.

Selling accelerated after California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered a massive retrenchment of the state’s reopening, shutting bars and banning indoor restaurant dining statewide and closing churches, gyms and hair salons in hardest-hit counties.

“The rally’s been driven by a handful of names. You’ve had headlines about COVID and layoffs and the economy.

It’s finally caught up with these names everybody’s been hiding in,” said Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading in Stamford, Connecticut.

Tesla (TSLA.O) dropped 3.1% after surging 16% earlier in the session. The electric car maker’s stock has been on a blistering rally over the past two weeks as investors bet the electric car maker could report a quarterly profit and potentially join the S&P 500.

Shares of German biotech firm BioNTech (BNTX.O) jumped over 10% and Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) climbed 4% as two of their experimental coronavirus vaccines received the U.S. FDA’s “fast track” designation.

Merger news also perked up investors as chipmaker Analog Devices Inc (ADI.O) announced a $21 billion deal to buy rival Maxim Integrated Products Inc (MXIM.O), sending its stock 8% higher. Analog shares fell 5.8%.

PepsiCo Inc (PEP.O) gained 0.3% after it said it benefited from a surge in at-home consumption of salty snacks such as Fritos and Cheetos during lockdowns.

The Cboe Volatility Index , Wall Street’s fear gauge, closed at its highest level since June 26. Its 4.9-point gain for the session was its largest since June 11.

Investors are bracing for what could be the sharpest drop in quarterly earnings for S&P 500 firms since the financial crisis, according to IBES Refinitiv data. Results from big banks will be in focus this week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 0.04% to end at 26,085.8 points, while the S&P 500 .SPX lost 0.94% to 3,155.22.

The Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 2.13%, to 10,390.84.

The S&P 500 technology index .SPLRCT fell 2.12%, leading declines.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

13

Bartering child’s dress for food: Life in Lebanon’s economic crisis

By BEN HUBBARD and HWAIDA SAAD

F

or three decades, chef Antoine El Hajj has appeared on television five days a week to help cooks across Lebanon improve their grasp of the culinary arts.

Two months ago, as an economic crisis caused Lebanon’s currency to collapse and prices to soar, he realized that many of his viewers could no longer afford staples he had long relied on in his recipes, like beef.

“There used to be a middle class in Lebanon, but now the rich are rich, the middle class has become poor and the poor have become destitute,” El Hajj, 65, said in an interview this past week before going on the air.

He has since cut beef from his menus and fills his segments with tips on how to keep dishes tasty with less oil, fewer eggs and cheaper vegetables.

Lebanon’s crisis, the result of years of government corruption and financial mismanagement, has caused unemployment and poverty rates to skyrocket, businesses to shutter and salaries to lose their value as inflation soars.

Mass protests against the political elite erupted across the country last fall and sometimes turned violent. The demonstrations tapered off when the country shut down because of the coronavirus but have recently picked up again as the lockdown has added to the economic distress.

The effects of the economic meltdown are increasingly infiltrating the daily lives of many Lebanese. Power cuts darken streets, banks refuse to hand over depositors’ cash and families struggle to buy imported essentials like diapers and laundry detergent.

The government has long failed to provide sufficient electricity. But blackouts have grown so long that the din of traffic in Beirut, where about one-third of Lebanon’s 5.4 million people live, has been replaced by the roar of overworked generators.

Their exhaust fouls the air, and many residential buildings are shutting them off to rest at night, depriving residents of airconditioning during the sweatiest stretch of the Mediterranean summer.

For two days recently, Rafik Hariri University Hospital, the main facility treating Beirut’s COVID-19 cases, suddenly went from one hour without power per day to 20 hours without power, according to its director, Dr. Firass Abiad.

So the hospital, which now lacks power six hours a day, has closed some operating rooms and delayed surgeries.

“It feels like you are continuously firefighting with no end in sight,” Abiad said.

After dark, Beirut’s once-raucous nightlife has given way to an eerie desolation. Bars have few patrons, main streets are dark and traffic lights at major intersections are out, leaving drivers to navigate on their own, flashing their high beams and hoping for the best as they plow through.

The swift collapse has struck a blow to the pride of many Lebanese, who often have claimed to have the Middle East’s best cuisine and have seen themselves as more sophisticated than others in the region. Now, many wonder how far their

Rising levels of hunger amid a major currency slide have brought protesters back onto the streets of Beirut after a tapering off during the coronavirus lockdown, July 11, 2020. standard of living will fall.

“Beirut is a survival city. People always find ways to eat and drink and make music and do activism. But now, the air is very thick,” said Carmen Geha, an assistant professor of public administration at the American University of Beirut. “Now, even upper-middle-class people can’t afford to eat outside the house. It’s like you take your salary and divide it by nine.”

The Lebanese pound, or lira, has lost about 85% of its value on the black market since last fall, getting its own satirical Twitter feed where it reacts to its own decline.

“I’m the cheapest but I’m not a piece of junk,” the account said early this month amid reports that it was trading at 9,500 to the U.S. dollar, far from the official bank rate of 1,500.

Much of the financial distress comes from chaos in the banking system. The central bank ran what critics have called a Ponzi scheme, enticing commercial banks to make large deposits of U.S. dollars with high interest rates that could be covered only by bringing in more large depositors with even higher interest rates.

But that system ground to a halt last year when new investors stopped coming, leaving the country’s banks far short of the dollars they owed their depositors.

The effects of the crisis on the country’s poor have been acute, as was made clear by four recent suicides in one twoday period, all linked to the economic crisis. A man who shot

himself on one of Beirut’s best-known boulevards left behind a handwritten sign reading “I am not an infidel,” a line from a well-known song whose next lyric is “but hunger is an infidel.”

Membership of a Facebook group called Lebanon Barters has swelled, its members offering everything from poker chips to hookahs in exchange for food. Their posts read like tragic poetry.

“New weights, never used, to trade for a package of diapers, size 6, and a bottle of oil,” read a post with a photo of dumbbells still in the box. “People need them.”

Another post featured a lime-green dress that Fatima alHussein, a mother of six from northern Lebanon, had bought as a gift for her daughter. She was looking to trade it for sugar, milk and detergent.

In a phone interview, al-Hussein said her husband makes 200,000 Lebanese pounds per week as a manual laborer, an amount that used to be worth $130.

Now it is worth less than $30, leaving her family struggling to afford essentials.

She said she decided to trade the dress after she had to start feeding her children bread dipped in water. But so far, she had found no takers.

When her neighbors cook, she closes her doors and windows.

“I don’t want my children to smell the food,” she said.

14

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Poland’s presidential election too close to call

Voting in Poland’s presidential election runoff on Sunday in Warsaw.

By MONIKA PRONCZUK and MARC SANTORA

P

oland’s presidential election, widely viewed as the most important since the end of communist rule in 1989, failed to produce a clear winner Sunday night, although final exit polls showed President Andrzej Duda leading the challenger, Rafal Trzaskowski.

Duda, a conservative nationalist, had 51% of the vote in the exit polls to 49% for Trzaskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw, according to the polls, but they are not considered official results, and neither candidate conceded the race. That set the stage for an extended fight over the results of Europe’s first presidential election since the coronavirus swept across the continent.

The pandemic forced the government to reluctantly move the date of the election from May, giving time for Trzaskowski to enter the race. In the first round in June, no candidate emerged with more than 50% of the vote, setting up a runoff between the top two finishers.

Over the last two weeks, an already bitter contest turned even darker, as Duda’s campaign leaned heavily on stoking fear of gay people and the free press, and began making arguments tinged with anti-Semitism.

The government has until Tuesday night to declare a winner. A close race will involve counting both inperson and mail-in votes, as well as record numbers of

voters registered abroad. The turnout appears to have been the highest since the first, partially free elections were held in the country in 1989.

Despite the uncertainty, Duda rushed to claim victory.

“It is a privilege to have won with a 70% turnout,” he said to supporters in the town of Pultusk, about 40 miles from Warsaw.

But even as he spoke, Polish television was showing people still in line to vote in several locations.

Trzaskowski sounded equally confident that he would emerge the winner.

“We said it would be close, and it is close,” he told supporters in Warsaw. “But I am absolutely convinced that we are going to win. It is just about counting the votes. I am sure that when we count the votes one by one, we will win for sure.”

Duda’s reelection would ensure that the governing Law and Justice party, which also controls parliament, would be able to continue to reshape the nation in ways that critics contend undermine open political debate and the rule of law. The government has corralled independent courts and media, clashing with the European Union, which has accused Poland of damaging democratic values and institutions.

Trzaskowski had cast the election as a fight for the soul of the nation, to end a government that uses

state media for propaganda, silences opposing voices, uses fear and division to build support and antagonizes Europe. He said he wanted to live in a country where “an open hand wins against a clenched fist.”

Last week, the government accused Germany of fomenting discord through media outlets widely viewed as independent but owned by German companies.

Duda’s allies even accused Trzaskowski of supporting pedophilia and suggested that Trzaskowski would be controlled by Jewish interests — a fraught topic in a country that was at the epicenter of the Holocaust.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, chairman of Law and Justice and the most powerful politician in Poland, accused Trzaskowski of not having a “Polish soul” or “Polish heart,” for saying that restitution of Jewish property lost during World War II was up for discussion.

“All of us in Poland have Polish hearts and Polish souls, and we will not allow ourselves to be divided,” Trzaskowski said in response, adding that Duda needed to divide Poles to secure support.

“We will not allow ourselves to be attacked, and we will say it loud and clear,” he said. “We’ve had enough of hatred.”

The main target of Duda’s campaign has been the LGBT community, the focus of attacks by leading government figures for more than a year. Last week, Duda signed a draft amendment to the constitution that would explicitly ban gay adoption, justifying it with the “well-being and security” of children.

Kaczynski has called the gay rights movement a foreign import that threatens the nation’s identity. In conservative areas, town councils have been declaring their municipalities “LGBT free.”

As mayor of Warsaw, Trzaskowski pushed back.

He issued a rights declaration setting out the city’s commitment to try to help find shelter for gay youths rejected by their parents. He also promised to incorporate World Health Organization guidelines on sex and tolerance education into Warsaw’s school system.

Last year, when Pride marchers faced violence from far-right groups across the country, he joined a parade in Warsaw.

Trzaskowski has vowed to keep generous social programs created by Law and Justice, making them a less potent campaign issue.

Instead, the contest was fought over cultural issues and Poland’s place both in Europe and the world.

Trzaskowski has promised to repair the rifts with the European Union, whereas Duda has touted his close relationship with the Trump administration while attacking the bloc.

The incumbent received a boost recently from President Donald Trump, who met with him at the White House and all but endorsed Duda, saying: “He’s doing a terrific job. The people of Poland think the world of him.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

15

As India struggles with Coronavirus, Bollywood’s biggest star tests positive

By JEFFREY GETTELEMAN

W

India’s biggest enemy is the density of its population. This country has dozens of cities with more than 1 million people.

Even in smaller towns and villages, many families live in cramped quarters, eight or even 10 people to a room, which makes a highly contagious illness like the coronavirus very hard to stop.

In many of these areas, it is impossible to maintain social distancing. In recent weeks, Mumbai, one of India’s most-packed cities and home to Bachchan, the movie star, has especially struggled.

The virus started out in Mumbai’s wealthier neighborhoods among the jet-setter crowd. Then it swept through the slums.

Now it is gnawing through the entire city, home to 20 million.

On Saturday night, Bachchan announced via Twitter — where he has 43.2 million followers — that he had tested positive. He was soon admitted to Nanavati Hospital, near the exclusive Juhu neighborhood in Mumbai where he lives, overlooking the Arabian Sea. It appears that several of his family members have fallen sick as well.

His son, Abhishek Bachchan, also an actor, disclosed that he had contracted the coronavirus. Abhishek’s wife, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, an actress and model, tested positive, as did their 8-year-old daughter, Aaradhya.

It is hard to overstate how big Big B really is. Walk through just about any city in India, and there is his handsome, graybearded face staring down from a billboard or a railway bridge, advertising a new phone app or chocolate bar or public health campaign.

The son of a renowned poet, Bachchan is celebrated for his mastery of language and diction. He has acted in more than 200 films over the past 50 years — and he is still working and drawing admirers. Until the coronavirus lockdown brought life to a screeching halt this spring, thousands of fans would camp out in front of his Mumbai mansion nearly every Sunday, hoping to get a glimpse of him. Bachchan would step out from his gates for a few minutes and stand on a stool and graciously wave.

“He’s like God,” said Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, a filmmaker who has worked with Bachchan. “I’ve never seen a star having such power, such credibility. He’s the biggest superstar this country has ever, ever seen.”

Part of Bachchan’s appeal, Dungarpur said, was that, for half a century, Bachchan has carefully chosen roles where he is fighting against all odds, taking on the system, getting justice for the common man. He is also very civically minded and has helped out with many real-life causes.

Dungarpur, who runs a film preservation foundation to save heritage films across South Asia, said Bachchan had helped him immensely, serving as the foundation’s brand ambassador.

His contracting of the coronavirus might create more fear across India. But it could also help take away some of the stigma that infected Indians have endured, evidenced by people kicked out of their neighborhoods and a few even driven to suicide.

Dungarpur predicted that a lot of Indians would find his struggle inspiring and say to themselves, “If Amitabh Bachchan can fight this, so can we.”

hen India’s biggest film star, Amitabh Bachchan, announced Saturday night that he had contracted the coronavirus, a loud alarm bell rang across India.

Bachchan, known as Big B, is not simply an enormously successful actor. He is one of India’s most revered figures.

His face and rich, avuncular voice, dripping with gravitas, are everywhere, deployed in ads for household products, voiceovers at museums and countless public service campaigns. He was recently roped into doing a campaign on — what else?

— the coronavirus.

The worry was that if Big B could catch the virus, anybody could, and with India getting walloped by COVID-19, Bachchan, 77, said on Twitter on Saturday, “All that have been in close proximity to me in the last 10 days are requested to please get themselves tested!”

India is now racking up more new reported infections each day — about 30,000 — than any other country except the United States and Brazil — and it is rapidly catching up to Brazil. India now has the third-highest total cases after the United States and Brazil.

Authorities in several big Indian cities and states are reinstating quarantines after attempting to loosen things up to stimulate a critically wounded economy. The borders between states are again being rigorously patrolled, with visitors shunted off to isolation centers.

International travel is still blocked. Hospitals are overflowing with the sick. Even emergencies are being turned away. One pregnant woman was left to die in the back of an ambulance a few weeks ago after being rejected from eight hospitals in 15 hours.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been trying to lift spirits by saying in televised speeches that India is still doing better than richer countries, especially when it comes to the death rate. India has reported about 16 coronavirus-related deaths per million people, while the United States, Brazil, Spain and Italy have all lost hundreds per million.

Experts think this might be for a few reasons. India’s average age, around 28, is younger than that of other countries. Obesity is less prevalent, too, and many doctors believe that obesity creates a greater vulnerability to the coronavirus. Some medical professionals also believe that Indians have strong immune systems because of their constant exposure to microbes, living in cities that are not as clean as cities in the West.

Another explanation, though, might simply be testing — or the lack of it. India has performed far fewer coronavirus tests per capita than many other countries have.

Either way, Indian authorities keep coming up with innovative ways to fight the virus. At airports, for instance, video cameras have been installed that enable security officers to check passengers’ boarding passes remotely to minimize face-to-face contact. The officers who use electromagnetic wands to screen passengers now use wands attached to 4-foot rubber poles to maintain distance. And many Indians, even the poorest, have The Bollywood actors Amitabh Bachchan, right, and his son, Abhishek, in Mumbai, India, in 2018. been wearing face masks for months.

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Tuesday, July 14, 2020

For 20 years, his firm called him Antoine. Now Mohamed is suing.

By AURELIEN BREEDEN

M

ohamed Amghar was a 40-year-old software salesman in the final stages of interviewing for a new job in November 1996 when, in his telling, his future boss made a request that left him speechless.

You’ll have to change your name to “Antoine,” the man said, even specifying, according to Amghar, not to use “Philippe” because there were already two in the office.

Amghar felt he had no choice. Still, he was ashamed — and angry.

“It’s a betrayal,” said Amghar, born in Paris to Algerian parents who arrived there in 1946, when Algeria was still part of France. “You are made to understand, at 40 years old, that ‘No, Mohamed, you aren’t truly French like everyone else.’”

And so, Mohamed became Antoine — on his email address, on his business card, on train and plane tickets, on name tags used at industry conferences, even on performance awards he collected over two decades at the company, Intergraph, an American software firm with French offices in Rungis, south of Paris.

Amghar, now 63 and retired, sued the company last year in a labor court in Créteil, south of Paris, accusing it of discrimination and moral harassment and asking for more than 440,000 euros, or nearly $500,000, in damages. The court held a hearing in March but won’t rule until next year.

The case has stood out because few racial discrimination suits reach French courts. And it resonates powerfully as France reckons with its colonial past, racism in the police and attitudes toward racial discrimination more generally in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis.

Jacques Toubon, France’s human rights ombudsman, noted this month in a landmark report that studies and official statistics were unequivocal on the extent and “systemic nature” of discrimination in France.

“People of a foreign origin or who are perceived as such are more exposed to unemployment, social insecurity, bad housing conditions and poorer health,” he wrote.

At the time Amghar says his boss requested that he use a different name, he had been assured of the position but had not yet signed a contract, and he had already quit his old job. He was divorced with three children — the oldest was 13 at the time.

“And I was not stupid,” Amghar said in an interview at his lawyer’s office in Paris. “I knew that being called Mohamed wasn’t the best passport, not only to get interviews but also a job.”

Amghar says that, relatively speaking, he was fortunate even to get the job given France’s record of discrimination. The sales

Mohamed Amghar shows his certificates and diplomas from his work with the name given to him, Antoine, in Paris, Feb. 7, 2020. manager position involved selling engineering software to energy or chemical companies like Total or Arkema and was well paid.

He also acknowledges that he never filed an official complaint over his time at Intergraph, from 1997 to 2017.

“I thought to myself: ‘You didn’t say anything in the beginning, what are you going to say now?’” he said.

Intergraph, based in Alabama and bought in 2010 by Hexagon AB, a Swedish firm, did not deny that Amghar used a different name at the office, but said it had found no proof that management had requested the change.

Hexagon’s PPM division, which includes Intergraph, said in an email that after receiving Amghar’s complaint in 2018, it had conducted an “internal investigation” that involved reviewing documents and speaking with current or former employees.

But the company said it had “found no evidence of discrimination or that Intergraph France management required Mr. Amghar to change his name, or otherwise required Mr. Amghar to use the name of ‘Antoine’ when representing the company.”

Amghar’s case is unusual because he was, in fact, hired — which Intergraph is eager to point out.

A lawyer representing the company in France declined to comment. But in 2018, responding to a letter from Amghar’s lawyer that threatened to file a suit barring “amicable reparation,” the firm called the accusations of discrimination “surprising” because Amghar had been “recruited by Intergraph and stayed there for 20 years.”

In the letter, a copy of which was seen by The New York

Times, the company said that Amghar’s former boss — who no longer works at Intergraph — did not remember asking him to change names, adding that “one cannot exclude the possibility” that Amghar himself had chosen “Antoine.”

Amghar, who is meticulously organized, has kept business cards, pay stubs, emails, contracts, security clearance documents, awards, and more, all featuring the name “Antoine.”

And while there is no record of the November 1996 interview, Amghar bristles at the suggestion that he would have intentionally put himself in the awkward position of using two different names.

He was once stopped at an airport because his passport didn’t match tickets booked by the company. In meetings or emails, senior managers sometimes used Antoine while colleagues used Mohamed. On pay slips, he was “Mohamed Antoine.” One award from 2010 even used “Antoine (Mohamed) Amghar.”

Amghar’s closest colleagues quickly learned the truth. But others said they were stunned to discover, months or even years after first meeting him, that Antoine was, in fact, Mohamed.

Amghar is cheerful and quick to joke, but some of his sarcasm hints at deep resentment. For his managers, a man of Arab origin in his position was “inconceivable,” he said.

“Mohamed can’t sign a 12 million euro contract and chat with the CEO of a company,” Amghar said in mock outrage. “It’s not possible!”

Frédéric Blas, a former colleague who was an in-house lawyer at Intergraph France from 2011 to 2016, said Amghar “felt humiliated. There was a real bitterness, a frustration.”

There were no explicit instructions from senior managers to use the name Antoine, Blas said, but that was the name heard and used by those who didn’t work very closely with Amghar. It was “unsettling,” Blas added, and sometimes difficult for him not to use Antoine by force of habit.

Galina Elbaz, Amghar’s lawyer, who also works for the International League Against Racism and anti-Semitism — a French civil rights group that has taken interest in his case — said that criminal discrimination cases are rarely prosecuted.

Still, Amghar said it was important for him to file the suit.

He recalled his father’s account of racism suffered in Algeria and then in France as a carpentry worker, and he remembered his parents’ faith that French meritocracy would give their children a different experience.

“If people like me, who did what was necessary to get good jobs, to get training, to live as citizens, are besmirched and denied our rights, where are we going?” Amghar said animatedly.

“I only have one name, I only have one nationality,” he added. “My name is Mohamed, and I am French.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

17

American Horror, starring Donald Trump

By CHARLES M. BLOW

I

think I echo many Americans, and people of the world in general, when I say that I’m having a hard time fully grappling with the gravity of this moment.

It is still hard to absorb that a virus has reshaped world behavior, halted or altered travel, strained the economy and completely reshaped the nature of public spaces and human interaction.

It is also hard to absorb that this may not be a quickly passing phase, an inconvenience for a season, but something that the world is forced to live with for years, even assuming that a vaccine is soon found.

There’s this notion that things could turn on a dime, not because of a human action, but rather because humans are under attack.

The idea that years of planning for graduations and weddings, home purchases and retirement, might all come to a screeching halt is humbling and disorienting. The confusion over how and when children can safely return to school and adults can safely return to work is frustrating because it leaves people’s lives in the lurch.

The idea that face coverings and elbow bumps may be the new normal is a shock to the system.

It seems that on multiple levels, society is being tested, and often failing.

People are rebelling against isolation, and against science and public health. They want the old world back, the pre-COVID-19 world back, but it cannot be had. The virus doesn’t feel frustration or react to it. It’s not aware of your children or your job or your vacation plans. It’s not aware of our politics.

The virus is a virus, mindless, and in this case, incredibly efficient and effective. It will pass from person to person for as long as that is possible.

The political debate over mask-wearing is a human concern, one that works to the virus’ benefit.

And it is these politics, particularly as articulated by Donald Trump, that are allowing the virus to ravage this nation and steal tens of thousands of lives that should not have been stolen.

It is Trump’s politicization of the virus that has resulted in a new surge of cases in this country when many other developed nations have been able to shrink the number of cases among their people.

It is because of Donald Trump that America has now reported 3.2 million cases and has tallied

drama of defiance — who refuse to wear masks inside stores.

Part of the issue is that the virus is not only being politicized, its effects are also racialized: Black and brown people are having worse outcomes. Some of the states now seeing the greatest surges in cases are those in the South and West with large Black or Hispanic populations.

The effects of the disease are also ageist: Older people are more likely to die from it. Florida not only has a large Hispanic population, it also has a large population of retirees.

I believe that these variances add to the political callousness America is seeing: if the disease is seen as disproportionately hurting others — a Boomer killer, or a Black “Brotha” killer, or an abuela killer — then some younger, healthier white people might believe that the threat to themselves is lower and the restrictions on them should be looser.

We have a situation in this country where a President Donald Trump during a visit to U.S. Southern disease is spiraling out of control, largely because Command in Doral, Fla., July 10, 2020. of the president himself, and there is little sign or hope that it will be constrained soon. nearly 135,000 deaths.

We are living in a horror film, one starring But, instead of centering on the sick, dying and Donald Trump. dead as the true victims of his malfeasance, Trump casts himself as the victim of circumstances. As The Washington Post reported last week, Trump has adopted a woe-is-me attitude with visitors. As the paper put it: “Trump often launches into a monologue placPO BOX 6537 Caguas PR 00726 ing himself at the center of the nation’s turmoil. The Telephones: (787) 743-3346 • (787) 743-6537 president has cast himself in the starring role of (787) 743-5606 • Fax (787) 743-5100 the blameless victim — of a deadly pandemic, of a stalled economy, of deep-seated racial unrest, all of which happened to him rather than the country.”

How are we supposed to comprehend this idea that the president is eschewing that responsibility for political purposes, and in the process, Publisher putting untold American lives in danger and actually costing some?

Manuel Sierra Ray Ruiz How did it come to such a pass that scientists General Manager Legal Notice Director and experts could be hamstrung, that governors María de L. Márquez Sharon Ramírez and mayors could be bullied, that millions of Business Director Legal Notices Graphics Manager Americans could risk their own well-being and the well-being of others to make a political point?

R. Mariani Elsa Velázquez This is the America we are all now navigating.

Circulation Director Reporter We’ve witnessed scene after scene of minimum-wage workers in conflict with customers — Lisette Martínez María Rivera Advertising Agency Director Graphic Artist Manager many no doubt who came in search of conflict, in search of a stage on which to perform their

Dr. Ricardo Angulo

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Tuesday, July 14, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

The Chinese decade

A pro-Chinese rally in Hong Kong in June.

By ROSS DOUTHAT

I

t is quite extraordinary that a pandemic originating in a Chinese province, a disease whose initial cover-up briefly seemed likely to deal a grave blow to the Communist regime, has instead given China a geopolitical opportunity unlike any enjoyed by an American rival since at least the Vietnam War. This opportunity has been a long time building.

Across the 2000s and early 2010s, China’s ruling party reaped the benefits of globalization without paying the cost, in political liberalization, that confident Westerners expected the economic opening to impose. This richer-but-notfreer China proved that it was possible for an authoritarian power to tame the internet, to make its citizens hardworking capitalists without granting them substantial political freedoms, to buy allies across the developing world, and to establish beachheads of influence — in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, American academia, the NBA, Washington, D.C. — in the power centers of its superpower rival.

Eventually, America responded to all this as you would expect a superpower to react: It elected a China hawk who promised to get tough on Beijing, to bring back

jobs lost to the China shock, and to shift foreign policy priorities from the Middle East to the Pacific. But there was one small difficulty: This hawk was no Truman or Reagan, but rather a reality-television mountebank whose real attitude toward China policy was, basically, whatever gets me reelected works. A mountebank, and also a world-historical incompetent, who was presented with exactly the challenge that his nationalism was supposed to answer — a dangerous disease carried by global trade routes from our leading rival — and managed to turn it into an American calamity instead.

So China has won twice over: First rising with the active collaboration of naive American centrists, and then consolidating its gains with the de facto collaboration of a feckless American populist. Four months into the coronavirus era, Xi Jinping’s government is throttling Hong Kong, taking tiny bites out of India, saber-rattling with its other neighbors, and perpetrating a near-genocide in its Muslim West. Meanwhile America is rudderless and leaderless, consumed by protests and elite psychodrama and a moral crusade whose zeal seems turned entirely inward, with no time to spare for a rival power’s crimes.

Furthermore, Donald Trump’s likely successor is a fi-

gure whose record and instincts and family connections all belong to the recent period of American illusions about China. Joe Biden speaks more hawkishly than he did five years ago, but the very thing that makes him effective as a foil to Trump — his promise of a return to Obama-era normalcy — also makes him an unlikely person to drastically reevaluate the choices that gave China its advantages today.

If you were scripting a historical moment when a rising power overtakes a fading hegemon, the cascade from establishment naiveté through Trumpian folly to the coronavirus disaster would be almost too on-the-nose. And foreign policy hands who fear a “Thucydides trap” — a scenario where a rising and an established power end up, like Athens and Sparta, in a war — have good reasons to be nervous about how the current combination of Chinese ambition and American decline might play out in, say, the Taiwan Strait.

But there is another way to look at things. It’s possible that we’re nearing a peak of U.S.-China tension not because China is poised to permanently overtake the United States as a global power, but because China itself is peaking — with a slowing growth rate that may leave it short of the prosperity achieved by its Pacific neighbors, a swiftly aging population, and a combination of self-limiting soft power and maxed-out hard power that’s likely to diminish, relative to the U.S. and India and others, in the 2040s and beyond.

Instead of a Chinese Century, in other words, the coronavirus might be ushering in a Chinese Decade, in which Xi Jinping’s government behaves with maximal aggression because it sees an opportunity that won’t come again.

That aggression has inward and outward manifestations. The inward form is the attempt to lock in Han preeminence in China by forcibly suppressing non-Han birthrates, so that population decline doesn’t lead to swings in ethnic power. The outward form is what you see in Hong Kong and might see with Taiwan soon — an attempt to reach greedily for Greater China goals because the odds of success look better now than in the further future.

If this is China’s true strategic calculus, it won’t make the 2020s any less dangerous. (History is thick with reckless decisions made because great powers felt that long-term trends had turned against them.) But it should condition the U.S. policy response, whether under a President Biden or a future Republican with more capabilities than Trump, toward a balance between resolve and caution, hawkishness and restraint.

If we show too much indecision and weakness, or just too obvious a desire for the pre-Trump status quo, then Beijing’s escalation will continue, and the risks of war will rise.

But if we find a way to contain China for a decade, the Chinese century could be permanently postponed.

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Tuesday, July 14, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Kelly Preston, actress in ‘Jerry Maguire,’ dies at 57

By AUSTIN RAMZY

K

elly Preston, an actress known for her role as a hardhearted fiancée of the Tom Cruise character in the 1996 film “Jerry Maguire,” died Sunday at 57.

The cause was breast cancer, her husband, the actor John Travolta, said in an Instagram post Monday.

“It is with a very heavy heart that I inform you that my beautiful wife Kelly has lost her two-year battle with breast cancer,” he wrote. “She fought a courageous fight with the love and support of so many.”

Preston, who was born Oct. 13, 1962, in Honolulu, appeared in the 1986 film “Space Camp.” But she had a breakthrough as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s love interest in “Twins,” the 1988 comedy that also starred Danny DeVito.

She met Travolta in 1988, while they worked on the film “The Experts.” She had a brief cameo with Travolta in the 2000 sci-fi flop “Battlefield Earth,” and the couple worked together in the 2018 film “Gotti,” in which Travolta played the

late Mafia boss John Gotti and Preston his wife, Victoria.

Preston said that to help prepare for the role, she met Victoria Gotti, and the two ended up forming a relationship.

“We sat there for hours, just talking and eating,” Preston said while meeting the news media during the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, Vanity Fair reported. “I spent the whole day with her family. I also had an email relationship with her, and she would tell me everything.”

Preston and Travolta were married in 1991. In addition to her husband, she is survived by their daughter, Ella Bleu; and a son, Benjamin. Their eldest son, Jett, 16, died in 2009 after having a seizure.

In “Jerry Maguire,” which featured Cruise as a fast-talking sports agent who gains a conscience, she played “a brief but memorable appearance as Jerry’s shark of a fiancée from his big-shot days,” New York Times critic Janet Maslin wrote in 1996.

When Jerry dumps her character, Avery, she flattens him with a flurry of blows.

“I won’t let you hurt me, Jerry,” Av- Kelly Preston, right, with her husband, John Travolta, at the Cannes Film Festival in France in 2018. ery says. “I’m too strong for you, loser.”

Metropolitan Opera will livestream its biggest stars

By ZACHARY WOOLFE

F

or months, the Metropolitan Opera has been streaming operas from its extensive video archive each night, a program that has helped it attract tens of thousands of new donors. The At-Home Gala the company broadcast in April, with live performances filmed on smartphones by singers around the world, was watched by 750,000 people.

All that has been free. But for its next major initiative during a lockdown of its theater that will last at least until the end of the year, the Met will test whether a broad audience will pay for digital content.

On Saturday, the company announced that over the coming months it will present some of its biggest stars in a series of recitals from idyllic locations, streamed live — but professionally, not with homespun production values. Tickets will cost $20 a concert, roughly

the same price as the Met’s popular Live in HD movie-theater broadcasts.

The company hopes the series will be a moneymaker in its own right, as well as a stimulus for donations.

“We had a lot of momentum, a big surge, which has slowed down at this point,” Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said of fundraising to mitigate what is projected to be close to $100 million in revenue lost because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“But fundraising ebbs and flows according to activities and events,” he added in an interview. “That’s why the Met has to keep pushing the envelope and continue to set new trends.”

The recitals will begin July 18, with the tenor Jonas Kaufmann performing from the Baroque library hall of Polling Abbey, near Munich, accompanied by the pianist Helmut Deutsch. Others scheduled for the 12-concert

series include Renée Fleming, Anna Netrebko, Joyce DiDonato, Bryn Terfel, Angel Blue and Lise Davidsen.

Gelb emphasized that the material would be popular; Kaufmann’s program, for example, includes selections from “Turandot,” “Tosca,” “Roméo et Juliette,” “Carmen” and other beloved works.

“These are not lieder programs,” Gelb said. “These are full-throated operatic arias.”

The soprano Christine Goerke will host the series and introduce brief documentary segments that will fill pauses in programs of roughly 75 minutes.

Participating singers will receive a fee, Gelb said, as well as a percentage of revenue from ticket sales. Asked about paying star performers while the Met’s orchestra and chorus, among other employees, have been furloughed, Gelb said the recital series was part of his plan to keep the company producing work during its

lockdown.

“If there’s no Met to come back to, the jobs of our furloughed artists will be lost,” he said. “I have to ensure that the Met can earn revenue. We have to be entrepreneurial.”

He added that Rolex, one of the sponsors of the series, would be making a six-figure donation to the emergency relief fund set up by the company’s chorus to help its furloughed members.

The final recital is scheduled for Dec. 19, soon before the Met is supposed to reopen with a gala on New Year’s Eve. But while the outbreak in New York has eased substantially, Gelb said that he has been watching with concern as the pandemic has intensified over large swaths of the country.

“Instead of getting better, things are getting worse,” he said, “which obviously has a sobering effect on those of us who run performing arts organizations.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

21

Eastward, Ho! Even art is leaving for the Hamptons

By TED LOOS

T

he art collectors were finally coming out of hiding here recently, albeit quietly and tentatively. The artists were, too.

The lure? All of a sudden, they have a lot more gallery options lining the immaculate streets of the famously upscale summer town of East Hampton, New York, a seemingly unexpected development in the middle of a pandemic.

Since the beginning of June, five major art galleries have opened here: Pace, Skarstedt, Van de Weghe, Michael Werner and Sotheby’s, all arms of New York art powerhouses.

And more are on the way soon, in Montauk (Amalia Dayan and Adam Lindemann’s new venture, South Etna Montauk) and Southampton (Hauser & Wirth).

“Selfishly, I’m totally into it,” artist Rashid Johnson, a Bridgehampton resident, said of the new spaces. “I miss seeing good art.” Johnson, like every civic-minded person I met, was wearing a mask.

New York’s top dealers, artists and collectors have long vacationed here. But now that they have been living here during the pandemic, some gallerists are for the first time seeing the Hamptons as “something more than a playground,” artist Clifford Ross, a longtime area denizen, said.

I drove out for the day to check out the newly burgeoning scene. When I stopped by Rental Gallery on Newtown Lane, which has been open for three years, I ran into Johnson, a close friend of Rental’s owner, Joel Mesler, his neighbor in Bridgehampton. In the front of the gallery, part of a July group show called “Friend of Ours,” hangs an untitled, blood-red drawing of Johnson’s born of pandemic anxiety.

Johnson wasn’t thrilled with the framing (too thick, he said), and as we were talking, he was recognized by two collectors, Erica Seidel and Tom Deighton, who are engaged.

“We own one of your pieces,” Deighton, a real estate developer, said to Johnson, referring to a mixed media work.

Deighton seemed energized to run into an artist whose work he collects. “A big part of what we do is not investing in art but getting to know the artists and riding the wave with them,” he said. A wave seemed like a good seaside metaphor for the sudden cresting of galleries here.

Varnette Honeywood’s “Family Time” (1984) in the window at Eric Firestone Gallery in East Hampton, N.Y., July 4, 2020.

Deighton and Seidel had just been to Pace’s new branch, which had opened that very day, to see the current show, of works

by Yoshitomo Nara, another artist they admire.

To them, more gallery options were an unalloyed good, though Deighton added that he hoped they would give a spotlight to emerging artists and not just famous names.

Traffic was getting bad as the Fourth of July approached, but I braved Montauk Highway to visit veteran collector Leonard Riggio, founder of Barnes & Noble, who keeps a museumworthy trove of outdoor sculptures at his estate, starting with a massive Richard Serra work on his front lawn.

Given that outdoor chats are preferred these days, we went out to his back patio and sat under an umbrella as it started to drizzle. He noted that though his collecting has slowed a bit, he was still buying, and he had unsuccessfully bid on a Donald Judd work the week before in a Sotheby’s sale.

“You could say they’re following one another,” said Riggio of the eastward gallery movement. “But perhaps better to say they have common wisdom.”

The development is a “big benefit” for him and his fellow collectors, said Riggio, a longtime friend and client of the Glimcher family, the owners of Pace. (He said he planned to check out the new branch soon.)

I stopped by Pace — where only 10

people are allowed in the gallery at a time and masks are required — to talk to Marc Glimcher, who was seated in the VIP area at the back of his new space, which used to be Vered Gallery. Behind him was an Agnes Martin painting, and in front of him was a glowing James Turrell work. There was a small Alexander Calder sculpture in a crate, too.

Glimcher had COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in March and has since recovered. “This gallery came out of our being sick,” Glimcher said, noting that his wife, Fairfax Dorn, who also had COVID-19, told him, “When we get better, we should open out here.” East Hampton is now the seventh city in which Pace has a branch.

Online exhibitions don’t quite cut it, Glimcher said, and being surrounded by affluent collectors in the Hamptons is helpful for a gallery in that it nurtures relationships.

“Our fuel comes from people being in front of art,” he said.

Glimcher’s father, Pace founder Arne Glimcher, has been coming to the area since the 1970s. “The big change is that the spaces out here weren’t run by the big New York galleries,” he said. “It was more local.” And that closer-to-home focus included the artists that were shown.

He added, “Coming to East Hampton was not about doing business. It was to get away from the gallery. It’s ironic that we

have a gallery now.”

He chuckled, adding, “But the collectors are here, and the work has to be seen.”

Pace’s lease is only until October, but other dealers in the new crowd have been more ready to commit for the long haul.

Both Christophe Van de Weghe and Per Skarstedt — whose galleries, along with a Sotheby’s space offering art, jewelry and watches, are all lined up near each other along Newtown Lane — have signed three-year leases.

Skarstedt, who has been living nearby for four months, said opening a branch was “definitely a pandemic decision.”

He added, “A lot of our clients moved out here too. And most people will stay till Labor Day or longer.”

I checked out the blue-chip art he had on display, which now includes a Willem de Kooning painting and works by Eric Fischl, Jeff Koons, Sue Williams and Christopher Wool.

Skarstedt noted that locals were just becoming aware of the gallery’s presence.

“We’re averaging 20 people a day, more on the weekend,” he said.

He said the visitors had mostly complied with pandemic safety, too, with a notable exception. “Only one guy came in without a mask,” Skarstedt said. “And he was 85.”

None of the dealers seemed fazed by a lack of crowds.

Eric Firestone — who has had a prime corner location in East Hampton for 10 years — said, “If it’s a great beach day, people aren’t coming in. And the newcomers will figure that out.”

Firestone also has a gallery in Manhattan and said he specializes in “postwar American artists, with strong emphasis on people who were missed or slighted, like Joe Overstreet and Mimi Gross.” He currently is showing work in East Hampton by African American painter Varnett Patricia Honeywood (1950-2010), whose works celebrating Black life were included in the set decoration for “The Cosby Show.”

What of the new competition for collector eyes and pocketbooks? Mesler of Rental Gallery said he welcomed the big gallery branches, given that all the dealers have different specialties. “The water’s warm,” he said, by way of invitation, adding, “I’m shocked it took a pandemic to get them to do this.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Young children who grow up with dogs are better behaved

By SANDRA E. GARCIA

Y

oung children who come from dog-owning households and regularly go on family dog walks, or actively play with their dogs, are better behaved than their peers who grew up without a dog, a new study has found.

The study, from the University of Western Australia and the Telethon Kids Institute, notes that kids aged 2 through 5 who had dogs “had a reduced likelihood of conduct and peer problems, as well as increased pro-social behaviors such as sharing and cooperating.”

Further, the positive effects of growing up with a dog increased the more the children walked or played with their family dog.

“We’re increasingly learning that pet ownership within families can have fantastic benefits for children’s physical and social development,” one of the researchers, Hayley Christian, said in a Telethon Kids release. “Our previous research showed that pets can be particularly helpful for school-aged children, but this latest research shows the benefits begin even sooner – right from early childhood.”

“While we expected that dog ownership would provide some benefits for young children’s wellbeing, we were surprised that the mere presence of a family dog was associated with many positive behaviors and emotions,” she added.

According to the study, which surveyed 1,646 parents, children from dog-owning households were

30 to 40 percent less likely to have conduct or peer problems. They also had 23 percent fewer total difficulties and were 34 percent more likely to have prosocial behaviors than children without dogs.

Walking the dog as a family at least once per week and actively playing with the family dog three or more times per week increased the likelihood of preschoolers’ prosocial behavior by up to 74 percent, and reduced total difficulties by 36 percent.

“Given how important physical activity is to a child’s health and social and emotional development, we really need to make the most of any opportunity to get kids moving,” Christian said. “Our research suggests family down ownership could be a valuable strategy in achieving this.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

23

Easing arm and shoulder pain from a rotator cuff injury

Rotator cuff injuries are extremely common, especially as we age.

By JANE E. BRODY

F

ew of us think about our joints until one starts to hurt when we try to use it in the way nature intended. Then the most frequent response seems to be the proverbial “take two aspirin and call me in the morning.”

We hope against hope that time will be the great healer, and only when that fails to happen do we consult an expert who knows better. In this regard, I’m no different from most people.

My general approach when a new ache or pain develops is to wait two weeks to see if it will go away on its own.

Which accounts for the fact that now, with summer heat mounting, I find myself still nursing arm and shoulder pain that in mid-January began to impede my ability to swim. At the time, I was preoccupied with work and preparing for a trip to Africa, so I put off seeing my doctor for when I returned in late February, at which point a notorious virus closed off the opportunity to do that safely.

So, given that the Y was closed and I couldn’t swim anyway, I spent the next couple of COVID-restricted months doing exercises a physical therapist had suggested by phone to ease the pain in my dominant right arm.

Finally in early May, on a telemedicine visit, my doctor said my right shoulder most likely had an injured rotator cuff, the complex of tendons and muscles that controls the mobility and strength of the arm. He ordered an MRI test, and although I could still perform most arm functions with little or no pain, the scan

revealed significant tears in the tissues of the rotator cuff that normally give the shoulder full range of motion without pain.

A healthy shoulder works like a well-lubricated ball-andsocket joint, enabling the arm to move up, down, forward, backward, across the body, extended out to the side and around in a circle without causing any discomfort.

Rotator cuff injuries are extremely common. They afflict millions of people worldwide and become more frequent with age, often as a result of misuse or overuse of the shoulder, the body’s most mobile joint. Athletes who spend many hours on activities like baseball, tennis or swimming, and workers with jobs like house painting that require repetitive overhead activity, are especially prone to rotator cuff injuries.

Rotator cuff injuries can also be acute, resulting from a fall or an accident. I had two such injuries many years ago when I fell forward while ice skating.

But you don’t have to be a super athlete or have a stressful occupation to injure the rotator cuff. It can happen to anyone through years of general wear and tear. People over 50 with degenerative tears in the rotator cuff often have no history of traumatic injuries.

At least one person in 10 over age 60 experiences pain, disability and a diminished quality of life because of damaged tissues in the rotator cuff. The pain typically localizes in the upper arm, so those affected may not even realize that the problem emanates from the shoulder.

Odd though it may seem, many people with significant ro-

tator cuff injuries experience no pain, studies have shown. Only about a third of rotator cuff tears cause pain.

But for those who do hurt, ordinary activities like throwing a ball, sweeping the walk, raking leaves, fastening a seatbelt, even slicing bread or meat can be a challenge. Pushing the arm forward or moving it backward, for example, when trying to put the arm in a sleeve or hook a bra can be especially painful. Likewise, in my case, lifting a heavy item out of the refrigerator or swimming freestyle — stroking with my right arm while turning my head to the left to breathe — can produce stabbing pain in my upper right arm.

Given that — as my doctor put it — I “don’t pitch for the Yankees,” physical therapy, not surgery, is the recommended route to relief for me and for most other people with painful rotator cuff injuries. So with the MRI revealing the extent of my injury, I consulted Marilyn Moffat, professor of physical therapy at New York University, a trusted source of advice who has often prescribed helpful conservative therapy for me and many others over the years.

Moffat’s first words were, “Don’t do anything that hurts” — lest it increase the inflammation and worsen the injury. Continuing to stress torn tissues in the rotator cuff will only increase the tears and delay recovery.

Moffat also cautioned me against blindly following rotator cuff exercises posted on the internet “that may not be appropriate at the point you’re at.” Although many suggested exercises can be helpful, she said, if some are attempted before the shoulder is prepared to handle the stress, they can make matters worse.

The therapeutic sequence she recommended starts with rest to calm inflammation while eliminating aggravating activities, to be followed by strengthening the muscles and then stretching to increase range of motion of the injured joint.

With the COVID-19 lockdown preventing my daily swim, I’d already done months of enforced rest and learned to avoid painful movements and am now doing exercises to strengthen the torn muscles in my rotator cuff. Moffat explained that the goal — to fill in the tears with scar tissue without causing further injury — is best accomplished at first through a series of isometric exercises that increase muscle strength but involve no movement that can cause further injury.

Isometrics are static exercises that help stabilize a joint.

They are done without changing the angle of the joint or length of muscles. One example among the dozen Moffat recommended is a front plank in which I lie face down and raise my body, supporting myself on my toes and forearms while staying parallel to the floor like a board.

I’ve already done many weeks of the recommended isometrics and am now nearly ready to begin training with hand weights and stretching exercises. Although Moffat said I could try different strokes in hopes of finding some that don’t hurt, I suspect this will be a summer with significant limitations on what I can do in the water. Still, some form of swimming is far better than none.

At the same time, I’m chalking up this experience as a lesson not to put off until tomorrow what should be done today.

Had I sought medical help before the trip to Africa, when swimming had first become a struggle, I might have been pain-free by now. Live and learn.

24

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

A black hole’s lunch provides a treat for astronomers

By DENNIS OVERBYE

A

stronomers announced late last month that they had discovered something out in the dark: a stellar corpse too heavy to be a neutron star — the remnant of a supernova explosion — but not heavy enough to be a black hole.

Whatever it once was, it is long gone. About 780 million years ago — and 780 million light-years away — it was eaten by a black hole 23 times more massive than the sun. That feast left behind an even heavier black hole — a vast, hungry nothing with the mass of 25 suns.

News of the event only recently reached Earth, in space-time ripples known as gravitational waves. These evanescent vibrations were felt on Aug. 14, 2019, by an array of antennas in Italy and the United States called the International LIGO-Virgo Collaboration; the results were published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

According to a theory that has been the backbone of decades of astrophysical excitement, a star can wind up in one of three final states, depending on its mass: a perpetually cooling cinder known as a white dwarf; a dense star, with the mass of a couple of suns compressed into a ball only 12 or so miles wide, known as a neutron star; or a black hole, a beast reluctantly predicted by Albert Einstein to be so dense that nothing, not even light,

can escape its gravity.

The victim in this collision weighed in at 2.6 solar masses, according to the LIGO-Virgo calculations. That is heavier than the accepted limit of 2.5 suns for a neutron star. But the lightest black hole ever measured was about five solar masses.

So the mystery object lies squarely in what astrophysicists call the “mass gap.” Astronomers have long wondered what, if anything, could occupy this astronomical no-man’s land.

“We’ve been waiting decades to solve this mystery” Vicky Kalogera of Northwestern University, one of the main authors of the paper, said in an interview. “We don’t know if this object is the heaviest known neutron star or the lightest known black hole, but either way it breaks a record.”

She added: “If it’s a neutron star, it’s an exciting neutron star. If it’s a black hole, it’s an exciting black hole.”

In a statement issued by the Science and Technology Facilities Council in Britain, Charlie Hoy, a graduate student at Cardiff University and Kalogera’s co-author, said, “I did not believe the alert when I first saw it come through.”

The LIGO observatory made history in 2016 when it detected gravitational waves from a pair of colliding black holes, proving the existence both of gravitational

An artist’s impression of the mysterious cosmic object, which weighs about 2.6 solar masses and lies 780 million light-years away — or did, until a black hole consumed it.

waves, a century after Einstein predicted them, and of black holes. The instrument consists of twin L-shaped antennas in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana.

Since then, LIGO has been joined in its exploration of the darkness by another antenna known as Virgo, in Cascina, Italy. The combined LIGO-Virgo Collaboration consists of about 2,000 scientists around the world. The alphabetical listing of their names and institutions takes up the first 5 1/2 pages of the new paper.

The puzzling collision recorded last August was one of 56 possible gravitational wave events — most of which appear to be black hole collisions — detected during the observatory’s third run, which went from April 2019 until March 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic shut down most scientific activities around the world. The collaboration is still reviewing the data in an effort to analyze and confirm them.

Kalogera said that the event was exciting for several reasons. The ratio of the two colliding masses was the most extreme — 9-to-1 — of the gravitational wave collisions that have been observed so far. Astronomers have difficulty imagining how such unmatched stars could get together in a binary double-star system to begin with.

“This is very hard for formation theories to explain,” she said.

The signal — a characteristic “chirp” caused by the colliding objects circling faster and faster as they approach their moment of ultimate doom — lasted about 10 seconds. “Due to the favorable circumstance of having observed such a loud signal with quite different component masses and for about 10 seconds, we achieved the most precise gravitational-wave measurement of a black hole spin to date,” Alessandra Buonanno, of the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam, Germany, said in a statement issued by the institute’s arm in Hannover, Germany.

Daniel Holz, an astronomy professor at the University of Chicago who is a member of the LIGO collaboration, but not one of the principal authors of this paper, mused that neutron stars and black holes were in some sense “polar opposites.”

“A neutron star is composed of the densest matter in the universe, and is in some sense the ultimate star,” he said in an email. “A black hole is just warped space and time. It doesn’t even have a physical surface! And the interior of a black hole is in some sense not even part of our universe, since nothing can come out of it.”

He added: “What is astounding is that, despite their profound differences, in this particular case we can’t tell which is which!” All the clues disappeared into the resultant black hole.

“So we’re not sure if this object is a neutron star or a black hole, and either way it’s exciting and we learn something new,” Holz said. “It’s a win-win! Lots of theorists are now sharpening their pencils to try to explain what we’ve seen.”

The San Juan Daily Star LEGAL NOTICE IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO.

FRANKLIN CREDIT MANAGEMENT CORPORATION, AS SERVICER OF DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST COMPANY, AS CERTIFICATE TRUSTEE ON BEHALF OF BOSCO CREDIT II TRUST SERIES 2017-1, Plaintiff, v.

NATIONAL PROMOTER AND SERVICES INC., EAGLE REALTY AND DEVELOPMENT CORP. Defendants

CIVIL NO. 18-01878-DRD. FO-

RECLOSURE OF MORTGAGE COLLECTION OF MONIES. NOTICE OF SALE.

TO: NATIONAL PROMOTER AND SERVICES INC., EAGLE REALTY AND DEVELOPMENT CORP; AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC

25

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

tros; Sur, con el solar número fees, as well as any other sum on the September 4th, 2020 de su contestación ante el Tri- (23) metros con sesenta y tres de la contestación a la Deman- den. NOTIFIQUESE: Dada en catorce (14), por donde mide contained in the loan agree- at 10:00 am, in the Office of bunal correspondiente y notifi- (63) centímetros. Enclava una da dentro de los treinta (30) San Juan, Puerto Rico, a 7 de

catorce (14.00) metros; Este, ment. This is the result of the the Clerk of the United States que con copia a los abogados estructura de hormigón y blo- días siguientes a la publicación julio de 2020. F/CRISTINA E. con el solar número setenta above annotation. Inscribed on District Court, Room 150 or de la parte demandante, Lcda. ques dedicada única y exclusi- de este edicto, que se publicará SUAU GONZALEZ, JUEZ SU(70), por donde mide veintiséis November 9, 2015 on folio 119 400, Federal Building, Chardon Marjaliisa

Colon

Villanueva, vamente a uso residencial. Ins- una vez en un periódico de cir- PERIOR.

(26.00) metros; Oeste, con el of volume 1256, annotation A. Avenue, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico al PO BOX 7970, Ponce, P.R. crita al folio doscientos setenta culación diaria general. Usted solar número sesenta y ocho Potential bidders are advised to in accordance with 28 U.S.C. 00732; (68), por donde mide veintiséis verify the extent of preferential Sec. 2001, will sell at public 4168.

Teléfono:

787-843- y cinco (275) del tomo doscien- deberá presentar su alegación

(26.00) metros. Existe en este liens with the holders thereof. It auction to the highest bidder, tramita un procedimiento de finca número ocho mil quinien- Unificado de Manejo y Adminis- DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU-

solar una casa residencia de shall be understood that each the property described herein, cobro de dinero y ejecución de tos dieciséis (8516). Registro tración de Casos (SUMAC), al NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA una sola planta construida de bidder accepts as sufficient the proceeds of said sale to be hipoteca bajo el número men- de la Propiedad de Guayama. cual puede acceder utilizando CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAhormigón reforzado, dividida the title and that prior and pre- applied in the manner and form cionado en el epígrafe. Se ale- SE LES APERCIBE que de la siguiente dirección electróni- MON. en sala-comedor, tres cuar- ferential liens to the one being provided by the Court’s Judg- ga en dicho procedimiento que no hacer sus alegaciones res- ca: https://unired.ramajudicial.

tos dormitorios, cocina, cuarto foreclosed upon, including, but ment. Should the first judicial la parte Demandada incurrió en ponsivas a la demanda dentro pr/sumac/, salvo que se represanitario, balcón y marquesi- not limited to any property tax, sale set hereinabove be un- el incumplimiento del Contrato del término aquí dispuesto, se sente por derecho propio. Se na. The property is recorded liens (express, tacit, implied or successful, the second judicial de Hipoteca, al no poder pagar les anotará la rebeldía y se le apercibe que si no contesta at page 181 of volume 243 of legal), shall continue in effect sale of the property described las

mensualidades

vencidas dictará Sentencia, concedién- la demanda dentro del término

Ponce, property number 12617, it being understood further that in this Notice will be held on the correspondientes a los meses dose el remedio solicitado en antes indicado, radicando el

Registry of the Property of the successful bidder accepts September 11th, 2020 at 10:00 de noviembre de 2018, hasta la Demanda, sin más citarle ni original de la contestación ante

Puerto Rico, Section II of Pon- them and is subrogated in the am, in the Office of the Clerk of el presente, más los cargos oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y el Tribunal correspondiente, y ce. WHEREAS: The property responsibility for the same and the United States District Court por demora correspondientes. sello del Tribunal en Guayama, notificando con copia a la parte

is subject to the following ju- that the price shall be applied located at the address indica- Además, adeuda a la parte de- Puerto Rico. A 24 de febrero de demandante, se le anotará la

nior liens described as follows: toward their cancellation. The ted above. Should the second mandante las costas, gastos y 2020. Marisol Rosado Rodri- rebeldía y se le dictará SentenMORTAGE: On behalf of or at present property will be acqui- judicial sale set hereinabove be honorarios de abogado en que guez, Secretaria. Brenda L. Ra- cia en su contra concediendo the order of National Promoter red free and clear of all junior unsuccessful, the third judicial incurra el tenedor del pagaré mos Pomales, SubSecretaria.

And Services Inc. in the amou- liens. WHEREAS: For the pur- sale of the property described en este litigio. De acuerdo con

nt of $49,500.00, with interest pose of the first judicial sale, in this Notice will be held on the dicho Contrato de Garantía Hi-

December 31, 2007, before the offers will be accepted. Should ted above. In San Juan, Puerto a razón del 6.842% anual, así

notary Elyvette Fuentes Bonilla. the firs judicial sale of the above Rico, this 16 day of June 2020. como todos aquellos créditos Registered on 20 May 2008 on described property be unsuc- Victor Encarnacion Pichardo, y sumas que surjan de la faz

ment in favor of Plaintiff, aga-

Court of First Instance, Ponce judicial sale will be two-thirds

LEGAL NOTICE

za, más la suma pactada para

2019, this Court entered Judg-

registration. LAWSUIT: In the for the property on the second

inst Defendants. On January 9,

2020, this Court entered Order

Chamber, a lawsuit was filed the amount of the minimum ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO costas, gastos y honorarios de on May 5, 2015, followed by bid for the first judicial sale, or DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- abogado. La parte Demandan-

suant to the Judgment, the De-

0438 on Collection of Money bid for the third judicial sale,

Plaintiff the principal amount

by the Ordinary Way, followed be one-half of the minimum

ble interest starting at 6.875%,

Plaintiff vs. National Promoter the aforementioned mortgage

full payment, plus mortgage

ty And Development Corpora- the Spanish language as: “Ley

late fees and any other amount

which it is requested to pay the Inmobiliaria del Estado Libre

mortgage deed, from the date

$168,000.00 for principal; plus Puerto Rico Laws Act 210 (H.B.

Civil Case number JCD2015- $112,000.00.

The

minimum

fendants were Ordered to pay

and Foreclosure of Mortgage if the same is necessary, will

of $153,280.01, accrued varia-

by Scotiabank of Puerto Rico, bid agreed upon the parties in

from December 1sr, 2014 until

And Services Inc, Eagle Real- deed, or $84,000.00. (Known in

and risk insurance premiums,

tion, Defendants, by means of del Registro de la Propiedad

expressly agreed-upon in the

secured debt in the amount of Asociado de Puerto Rico”, 2015

stated above until full payment

interest. Condemning the de- 2479), Articule 104, as amen-

amount of $16,800.00. WHE-

balance of the referred to pay Special Master is subject to

the aforementioned Judgment

of $6,875 principal balance of tes District Court for the District

Judgment thereof, the following

at the agreed rate of 6.875% conveyance and possession to

thereof, plus 10% for attorneys’’ fendant to pay the plaintiff the ded). WHEREAS: Said sale fees and legal costs in the sum of $153,280.01 principal to be made by the appointed REAS: Pursuant to the terms of

the interest at the agreed rate confirmation by the United Sta-

and the Order for Execution of

the referred to pay the interest of Puerto Rico and the deed of

property belonging to the De-

per year accrued on such sum the property will be executed

con el numero Sesenta y Nueve

del Bloque D del plano de inscripción de la Urbanización San

Antonio, radicada en el Barrio Canas del municipio de Ponce,

Puerto Rico, con una cabida de

Trescientos Sesenta y Cuatro

punto Cero Cero (364.00) metros cuadrados. En linderos: Norte, con la calle número ocho

(8) de la urbanización, por donde mide catorce (14.00) me-

@

citarle ni oírle.

EXTENDIDO

PR RECOVERY AND DEVELOPMENT JV, LLC DEMANDANTE VS.

DELINMARI RIVERA ROSADO, JOEL ORTIZ VAZQUEZ DEMANDADOS

CIVIL NÚM.: BY2019CV06135.

SALA: 503. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO ORDINARIO. EM-

PLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO.

A: Joel Ortiz Vázquez URB FLAMBOYAN GDNS K1O CALLE 13 BAYAMON, PUERTO RICO 00959-5810

is the result of deed number ger deed will be $168,000.00, the United States District Court la deuda ascendente a la suma NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA Rico, hoy día 3 de marzo de POR LA PRESENTE se le 177, granted in San Juan on for the property and no lower located at the address indica- de $26,943.07, más intereses SALA DE GUAYNABO. 2020. Lcda. Laura I Santa San- emplaza y requiere para que

de la obligación hipotecaria y

auction: Urbana: Solar marcado

la parte demandante sin mas

ring on January 1, 2038. This by the parties in the mortga- am, in the Office of the Clerk of declaró vencida la totalidad de DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- Tribunal, en Guaynabo, Puerto

folio 72 of volume 1096, 23rd cessful, then the minimum bid Appointed Special Master.

fendants will be sold at a public

LEGAL NOTICE

el remedio solicitado a favor de

at 6.875% annually and expi- the minimum bid agreed upon September 18th, 2020 at 10:00 potecaria la parte Demandante ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO BAJO MI FIRMA y el Sello del

WHEREAS: On August 20,

for Execution of Judgment. Pur-

LEGAL NOTICE

En dicha demanda se tos quince (215) de Salinas, responsiva a través del Sistema ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO

****

de la hipoteca que la garanti-

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante v.

PEDRO LUIS MALDONADO DIAZ EVELYN RIVERA PIZARRO

chez, Sec Regional.

Marilyn conteste la demanda dentro de Trinta Maldonado, Sec Auxiliar los treinta (30) días siguientes del Tribunal I. a la publicación de este Edicto.

LEGAL NOTICE

Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Sistema Unificado de Manejo y DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- Administración de Casos (SU-

Demandados MAC), la cual puede acceder CIVIL NÚM. GB2019CV01393. NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA te presentó para su inscripción SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO CENTRO JUDICIAL DE SAN utilizando la siguiente direcen el Registro de la Propiedad ción electrónica: https://unired.

SALA DE GUAYAMA. Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. JUAN SALA SUPERIOR. correspondiente, un AVISO ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se MTGLQ INVESTORS, L.P. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉ- CONSEJO DE TITULARES DE PLEITO PENDIENTE (“Lis represente por derecho propio, Parte Demandante Vs. RICA EL PRESIDENTE DE CONDOMINIO BALCONES Pendens”) sobre la propiedad en cuyo caso deberá presentar AIDA LUZ LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL DE SAN JUAN objeto de esta acción cuya su alegación responsiva en la ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO MENDOZA ROLON PARTE DEMANDANTE vs. propiedad es la siguiente: URsecretaría del tribunal. Si usted DE PUERTO RICO. SS. EMParte Demandada SUCN. DE FRANKLIN deja de presentar su alegación BANA: Solar marcado con el PLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. CASO CIVIL NUM: RIVERA VEGA número O guion trescientos seresponsiva dentro del referido SA2020CV00024.

SOBRE: A: PEDRO LUIS PARTE DEMANDADA tenta (O-370) del proyecto UM término, el tribunal podrá dicEJECUCION DE HIPOTECA MALDONADO DIAZ CIVIL NUM.: SJ2020CV01165. tar sentencia en rebeldía en guion seiscientos veinte (UMPOR LA VIA ORDINARIA Y SALA:803. SOBRE: COBRO su contra y conceder el remeY EVELYN RIVERA 620), denominado Extensión COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLADE DINERO. ORDEN. Vista la dio solicitado en la demanda o PIZARRO El Coquí, radicado en el barrio ZAMIENTO POR EDICTOS. Aguirre del término municipal – 118 Calle Ruiz Belvis, “Moción sobre Emplazamiento cualquier otro sin más citarle ni ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉde Salinas, Puerto Rico, con Barrio Amelia, Guaynabo, por Edicto” presentada por la oírle, si el tribunal en el ejerciRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE parte demandante el Tribunal cio de su sana discreción, lo enuna cabida superficial de dosPR 00969 LOS EE. UU. EL ESTADO LIdeclara la misma con lugar y cientos setenta punto sesenta – Residencial El Coquí 1, autoriza a la parte demandante tiende procedente. El sistema BRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO y uno (270.61) metros cuadraEdificio G Apartamento a emplazar a la parte deman- SUMAC notificará copia al aboRICO. SS. dos. En lindes por el NORTE, gado de la parte demandante,

A: AIDA LUZ MENDOZA ROLON:

con la Calle A distancia de once

(11) metros con cincuenta y uno

from December 1, 2014 and and delivered only after such POR LA PRESENTE se les em- (51) centímetros; por el SUR, those accruing to the full and confirmation. The records of the plaza y requiere para que con- con el proyecto CRUV guion complete payment of the prin- case and of these proceedings teste la demanda dentro de los UM guion seiscientos treinta

74, Cataño PR 00962 – Residencial Jardines de Cataño, Edificio 2 Apartamento 12 Cataño, PR 00962

cipal, late charges incurred up may be examined by interested treinta (30) días siguientes a la y uno (CRUV-UM-631) distan- Por la presente se le notifica a to this date and those accruing parties at the Office of the Clerk publicación de este Edicto. Us- cia de once (11) metros con usted que se ha radicado en to the full and complete pay- of the United States District ted deberá radicar su alegación cuarenta y ocho (48) centíme- esta Secretaría la demanda ment of the debt, any advan- Court, Room 150 or 400 Fede- responsiva a través del Sistema tros; por el ESTE, con el solar de epígrafe. Se le emplaza y ces made by the plaintiff for ral Office Building, 150 Chardon Unificado de Manejo y Administhe payment of insurance pre- Avenue, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico. tración de Casos (SUMAC), al THEREFORE, public cual puede acceder utilizando special contributions, any other notice is hereby given that the la siguiente dirección electróniexpenses paid by the plaintiffs Special Master, pursuant to ca: http://unired.ramajudicial.pr/ miums, property contributions, NOW

dada, Lizbeth Rivera y a Fulana el Lcdo. José F. Aguilar Vélez de Tal mediante edicto a ser cuya dirección es: P.O. Box publicado una sola vez en un 71418 San Juan, Puerto Rico periódico de circulación diaria 00936-8518, teléfono (787)

general en el Estado Libre Aso- 993-3731 ala dirección jose. ciado de Puerto Rico. La parte aguilar@orf-law.com ya la didemandante deber~ dirigir al rección notificaciones@orf-law. demandado

POR CORREO com. EXTENDIDO BAJO MI CERTIFICADO CON ACUSE FIRMA y el sello del Tribunal, , O guion trescientos sesenta requiere para que notifique al li- DE RECIBO una copia del em- en Bayamon, Puerto Rico, hoy y nueve (O-369) distancia de cenciado: Alberto De Diego Co- plazamiento y de la demanda día- 6 de marzo ‘ de 2020. En veintitrés (23) metros con cua- llar, DE DIEGO LAW OFFICES, presentada en el caso civil de Bayamón, Puerto Rico, el 6 de renta y seis (46) centímetros PSC, PO BOX 79552, Caroli- epígrafe a su última dirección marzo ‘ de 2020. Lcda. Laura I y por el OESTE, con el solar na, PR 00984-9552, Teléfono: residencial conocida, dentro Santa Sanchez, Secretaria Re-

and the sum of $16,800.00 for the provisions of the Judgment sumac/, salvo que se presente O trescientos setenta y uno (787)622-3939, abogado de la de los diez (10) días siguien- gional. Ivette Marrero Bracero, costs, expenses and attorneys’ herein before referred to, will, por derecho propio, en cuyo (O371) distancia de veintitrés parte demandante, con copia tes a la publicación del edicto Sec del Tribunal I. caso deberá radicar el original permitido en virtud de esta Or-

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26

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

ESPN employees say racism endures behind the camera

By KEVIN DRAPER

T

he nationwide conversation over systemic racism and equality has prompted a series of discussions and forums at ESPN, where Black employees, many of them behind the cameras, have begun speaking out about the everyday racism and barriers they face at the sports media giant.

In conference calls and meetings over the last month, they have detailed to their bosses and colleagues what they see as behavior and long-entrenched practices that have led to embarrassing missteps and kept many Black career employees from rising through the ranks at a company that devotes a significant amount of its coverage to Black athletes.

A key producer of some of ESPN’s signature shows said she watched others be promoted so often that she advised some fellow Black employees to leave the company to advance their careers.

ESPN has apologized twice in recent years for onair segments that were criticized by employees and viewers as racist, including one that looked uncomfortably like an auction of enslaved people.

And the story of one incident last month has ricocheted around ESPN, with several Black employees calling it emblematic of their experience at the company.

On a conference call of more than 200 people to discuss college football coverage, Black employees began sharing their personal experiences with discrimination. As Maria Taylor, a fast-rising star who has hosted several shows, spoke about her treatment at ESPN, she was interrupted by a white male play-by-play announcer who apparently did not realize that his microphone was not muted.

The announcer, Dave LaMont, could be heard complaining to someone that the call was just a griping session for Black employees. He declined to comment, and ESPN said it had “addressed it appropriately,” without elaborating.

“It was such a slap in the face,” Taylor said in an interview. “When I was in it, that was horrible. But now, looking back, it was an awakening moment. This is part of our culture. There are people that feel this way.”

Jimmy Pitaro, ESPN’s president, acknowledged that the company was not where it wanted to be on diversity, especially behind the camera, and said a frequent topic of conversation was how to make ESPN more “relevant” to people of color.

“We cannot have rooms full of just white decisionmakers,” he said. “Our execs and employees need to reflect the audience that we are trying to reach.”

In interviews, more than two dozen current and former ESPN employees, including many who spoke

on condition of anonymity because they feared punishment, described a company that projected a diverse outward face but did not have enough Black executives, especially ones with real decision-making power.

They said the company did not provide meaningful career paths for Black employees behind the camera and made decisions based on assumptions that its average viewer is an older white man, despite its audience trends.

ESPN acknowledges hiring shortfalls but points to corporate America.

As ESPN grew into a sports media powerhouse in the 1990s, its executives remained almost exclusively white and male.

John Skipper, who was ESPN’s president until 2017, recalled a meeting of the company’s senior staff around 2000, when he was in charge of ESPN the Magazine. Kerry Chandler, a Black woman who was then a senior human resources executive, led a vigorous discussion about diversity. Besides Chandler, Skipper could not remember another nonwhite person in the meeting.

“Twenty-two out of 25 were white men, including me, of course,” he said, making it clear he was speaking about his time at ESPN. Twenty years later, the company’s executive ranks look different, although the biggest difference is the elevation of white women. ESPN declined to provide figures on the racial composition of its executives but said 25 percent of the people who report directly to Pitaro are Black, all men.

Each of those Black executives had at least a 20year career before joining ESPN, while a number of senior white executives have only ever worked at ESPN,

suggesting to many Black employees a limited career path for them at ESPN. One former midlevel employee who is Black and spoke on condition of anonymity to not jeopardize relationships in the industry said she searched for a new position within ESPN and did not want to leave the company, but no executive made an effort to retain her.

After being contacted for this article, ESPN made four Black senior executives available for interviews: Rob King, Kevin Merida, Dave Roberts and Paul Richardson. A representative from ESPN’s communications department was present for each interview as well as every other on-the-record interview conducted with a current employee.

King, Merida and Roberts each oversee various content arms, while Richardson is head of human resources. In those interviews, all four executives said that ESPN’s executive ranks were not diverse enough but mostly attributed that to a larger problem in corporate America. They all said every one of the company’s senior leaders believes in diversity and inclusion.

“Like most media companies, including the one you write for, there was a time when you didn’t have African Americans in editorial positions that could grow from entry level to the highest potential levels of the company,” said Roberts, who joined ESPN in the mid-2000s as a coordinating producer. He believes ESPN’s Black senior vice presidents “can help continue to evolve and change and grow the process and progress of diversity.”

Black on-air employees were much more direct about what they believe are ESPN’s failings.

Continues on page 27

The San Juan Daily Star From page 26 “So many of the Black people we have at ESPN have been worthy of promotions and other opportunities long before this happened,” said Michael Eaves, a “SportsCenter” anchor, referring to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody, an event that is powering a movement against police brutality and racial injustice.

Even powerful employees who largely had good things to say about the company’s record on diversity believed there were areas where ESPN had fallen painfully behind.

“There are certain things that should have been done years ago,” said Stephen Smith, perhaps the network’s biggest star.

He said that for years he has pointed out to ESPN leaders that its executives overseeing NFL, NBA and MLB programming are all white.

“There are a plethora of people that have come through ESPN that I thought could do some very positive things for ESPN about that bottom line,” Smith said. “They happened to be Black, and I don’t believe they have been put in those positions.”

Other current and former Black ESPN employees described active discrimination.

Cari Champion worked at ESPN for eight years, including several hosting “SportsCenter,” before leaving this year. She said that while the company gave her an unrivaled platform, she left in part because of “constant dismissals and borderline harassment” from Jill Fredrickson, a senior executive she reported to.

Champion described hearing “microaggressions and dog whistle words,” saying such “subtleties are racism in corporate America.”

In an interview, Fredrickson declined to directly address her relationship with Champion. She said she thought Champion had been heard and that she “always wanted to have an open dialogue to her.” She continued, “I thought that she left amicably.”

‘There are white people that don’t have her resume.’

ESPN presents a fairly diverse face to the outside world across its slate of programming, and its news editors and reporters are more diverse than most of its competitors and sports departments in newsrooms nationwide. A 2018 report found that ESPN employed a significant percentage of the country’s Black, Latino and female assistant sports editors and columnists.

But current and former employees say that things are different behind the camera.

Richardson said that the retention rate for Black employees is high, but not as high as it is for white employees. He attributed the difference to some Black employees not wanting to live in Bristol, Conn., where ESPN has its headquarters, as well as ag-

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

gressive poaching by competitors.

There was no sign, he said, that Black employees found ESPN unwelcome. But that conflicts with how many employees described their own experiences.

In an NBA coverage meeting last month, an Ethiopian American coordinating producer named Amina Hussein pointed out that of more than 40 people on the call, including a top executive, she was the only Black employee.

According to two people on the call, Hussein told leaders that she had mentored many younger Black employees but lately had told some that their career advancement prospects would improve if they left the company. She declined to discuss the call for this article.

Hussein has overseen “Sunday NFL Countdown” and “NBA Countdown,” two high-profile programs on ESPN. Still, she was not offered a promotion in over a decade. She became a coordinating producer in 2008, the same year as Lee Fitting, a white man. Fitting has since risen several levels above Hussein to oversee all NFL and college football coverage.

“If Amina was a white person, she would be VP,” said Jemele Hill, who hosted a number of shows on ESPN before leaving in 2018. “There are white people that don’t have her resume.”

Hussein was promoted in July to senior coordinating producer.

Employees see the problems as enduring, not new.

Black ESPN employees repeatedly brought up the experience of Hill and Michael Smith, who were made “SportsCenter” hosts in 2017 and tried to bring an unapologetically Black spirit into the meat-and-potatoes highlight factory that is “SportsCenter.”

The show was quickly tagged as “too political” and met fierce resistance inside ESPN. “Pretty quickly, that was a show that people internally criticized,” Skipper said.

“We had plenty of times where we had shows that didn’t work, with nondiverse talent on them, and people never said, ‘You went too far with those two white guys.’”

Norby Williamson, a white senior executive, was put in charge of the show, which Hill said was a signal that its days were numbered. After Hill and Michael Smith left it and eventually ESPN, Williamson began remaking “SportsCenter” in a much more traditional direction, an effort The Washington Post reported on in 2018.

While executives inside ESPN saw the profile as a success, Black employees noticed a photograph of a staff meeting in the article that contained a sea of white faces.

They read his quotation — “Never forget: I’m the person you have to serve here” —

and wondered what that said about ESPN’s priorities.

ESPN said the photograph did not represent the diversity of the call, in which 180 people had been invited, many of them participating remotely.

“I’m proud of actually how exceptionally diverse it is,” Williamson said. “I am sorry people interpreted that and took that away.”

The network has changed its approach to covering unrest among athletes.

Over the last several months, as games have been largely suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic and as athletes have spoken about racism, ESPN’s television programs have been dominated by discussions of police brutality, racism and white privilege. Last week, the Walt Disney Co., which owns ESPN, signed a deal to produce shows with Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL quarterback, that included Hill as a producer.

Given how purposefully ESPN has sought to shed the label that it is “too liberal” and avoid the wrath of the president’s Twitter account after the bruising battles of 2017, the shift in tone has been stark.

ESPN’s position is that it has always sought to avoid “pure politics” while aggressively covering the intersection of sports, politics and culture. Executives pointed to The Undefeated, an ESPN site that covers race that has grown in importance over the years and is a part of the Kaepernick deal.

The recent programming, executives said, simply reflects the upheaval in the sports world.

Some employees are not buying that explanation.

“It is interesting, because I was on ‘Get Up’ when there were certain stories about Colin Kaepernick — would he have a workout or a tryout — and to be honest, it would be a voice-over and no discussion,” Taylor said. “Virtually every other question could

27

be discussed.”

A number of other employees described being told in various ways to tone down or skip their on-air coverage of sports and race.

“It was never explicit; it was just sort of us reading the room,” Elle Duncan, a “SportsCenter” anchor, said.

The company pledges changes and says it recognizes the urgency.

Pitaro, ESPN’s president, has laid out a series of changes. He said that ESPN would have more diverse meetings and ensure all voices were included, that interview and hiring practices would be improved, that leadership development would be strengthened and new employee programs reviewed, among other changes.

“We are going to speak through our actions here, and we are going to improve,” Pitaro said. “If we don’t, it is on me, I failed, because it does all start with me.”

Current and former employees expressed mixed opinions about the prospect for change. Many believe their concerns rank lower in his priorities compared with maintaining relationships with sports leagues and Disney, the corporate parent. Much of the day-to-day running of ESPN, they said, falls to senior executives and others below him who do not share his priorities.

“I am confident that, based on the conversations that I am having daily, that leaders across ESPN understand the importance of diversity and the urgency here,” Pitaro said.

Duncan has been part of a group of Black employees who have been meeting with a top executive since the beginning of the year about increasing the company’s diversity beyond on-air talent. She expects there will be pushback, but the executives she has spoken with are genuine in their desire to change the company.

“I truly, truly believe ESPN wants to be on the right side of history,” she said.

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Redskins drop name, yielding to pressure from sponsors and activists

By KEN BELSON and KEVIN DRAPER

T

he NFL team in Washington, D.C. announced Monday that it is dropping Redskins from its name, yielding to sponsors and Native American activists who have long criticized it as a racist slur.

The anticipated move, which also includes dropping the team’s Indian head logo, was first reported by Sports Business Journal on Sunday and followed by other news organizations.

The team, one of the oldest in the NFL, did not announce a new name Monday as it continues to evaluate possibilities.

A team spokesman had no comment.

The decision to abandon the name after nearly 90 years came just 10 days after the team said it would review the name. The team’s owner, Daniel Snyder, had stridently defended the name for years.

Snyder said the new name, when it was chosen, would “take into account not only the proud tradition and history of the franchise but also input from our alumni, the organization, sponsors, the National Football League and the local community it is proud to represent on and off the field.”

The name change by one of the country’s most valuable professional sports teams comes after hundreds of universities and schools have abandoned team names and mascots with Native American symbols. Professional teams like the Kansas City Chiefs of the NFL and the Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians of Major League Baseball have resisted changing their names and logos, although the Indians dropped the mascot Chief Wahoo last year and recently said they would review the team name.

Washington, though, has been in the spotlight, in part because of its long and checkered history. The team’s founder, George Preston Marshall, named the team the Redskins, which he considered a nod to bravery. Marshall was the last NFL owner to sign a Black player, and only under pressure from the federal government.

Last month, Washington removed Marshall’s name from inside its stadium and at its training facility. The city of Washington also removed a tribute to him that was in front of the team’s old home, Robert

FedEx, which pays about $8 million a year for the naming rights to the Washington team’s stadium in Landover, Md., said this month that it would back out of the deal if the team’s name was not changed.

F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.

Snyder’s shift from total resistance to grudging acceptance in just a few weeks has been remarkably swift in a league that often moves forward deliberately, if at all. But after the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody in late May, businesses of all kinds have come under pressure to increase diversity and change policies to emphasize anti-racism.

At the end of June, some of the team’s biggest sponsors, including FedEx, Nike and Pepsi, received letters from investors who called on the companies to cut their ties with the team. On July 2, FedEx, which pays about $8 million a year to have its name on the team’s stadium in Landover, Md., told the Redskins in a letter that if the team did not change its name it would ask that its name be taken off the stadium at the end of the coming season.

The next day, July 3, the team said a change was likely to be forthcoming, when it began a “thorough review of the team’s name,” after weeks of discussions with the NFL. Nike stopped selling the team’s gear, and Walmart, Target and Amazon — some of the country’s largest

retailers — said they would stop selling Washington’s merchandise on their websites.

The boycott came after decades of pressure on the team to change the name, which many people (and some dictionaries) consider to be offensive. In 1992, Native American activists began a campaign to compel the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to cancel the team’s “redskin” trademark, a legal battle that the Supreme Court ended in 2017, finding that even potentially disparaging trademarks are protected by the First Amendment.

In 2014, 50 U.S. senators sent a letter to the NFL urging the league to step in. And across the country, waves of universities and schools abandoned mascots and sports team names with Native American symbols.

But more than 2,200 high schools still use Native American imagery in their names or mascots, according to a database of mascot names.

All the while Snyder, who purchased the Washington team in 1999, remained steadfast.

“We will never change the name of the team,” he said in 2013, a stance he maintained even in the face of pushback

from activists, politicians and some fans.

What finally changed was, seemingly, wider American society around the team.

After the death of Floyd, there has been a widespread reconsideration of statues, flags, symbols and mascots considered to be racist or celebrating racist history.

Now that the team has let go of its current name, it will have to find a replacement, a process that requires navigating trademarks and the league’s many licensing deals with partners and can often take years. Teams also want to use the name, logo and even new colors to forge a new identity, a process that can include speaking with sponsors, fans and other constituents.

Ed O’Hara, who has designed team names and logos for more than 30 years, said that dropping the existing name first will buy time for Snyder to find a replacement. The team’s existing colors are unique and powerful, he said. A good name, though, should have an easy connection to a mascot, be easy to say and be connected to the market where the team plays.

“The name is always the hardest part,” he said. “You get one chance to make this right for the next 80 years.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

29

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

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

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

(Mar 21-April 20)

Apologise if you’ve said or done anything wrong. It’s never too late to say you are sorry.

Once you’ve admitted your mistake, move on from this incident. No one is perfect. Remind yourself of your past achievements then focus on doing the best job you can with whatever you’re working on now.

Taurus

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

(April 21-May 21)

Your views conflict with those of your partner’s. Joint decisions do not reflect your values. Don’t just go along with their suggestions to keep the peace. Looking after your inner-being is one of the most important things you can do for yourself. There may be a way to find a middle ground if you look hard enough.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Jobs you are working on jointly aren’t likely to proceed too well if there isn’t any respect in a working relationship. If you take different approaches to your work, arguments will slow you down. You can’t continue with a joint assignment when there is a big difference between your methods. Either go solo or take on a new partner.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

You could do with taking a break but this won’t get the job done. You may have to grit your teeth and get on with it as it isn’t in you to shirk your responsibilities. You will intend to perform your duties and everyday routines with your usual thoroughness even though your body cries out for some pampering.

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

New friends will be made through group and community activities. A fun idea will spark off some brilliant conversations. This will lead to you making plans that win everyone’s approval. Your intuition helps you sense a new social chapter is about to begin. This is your chance to expand your social circle.

There are just a few more things left to do and you will complete a project already begun. If you leave it any longer, someone else will finish this task for you. This would be annoying when so far, you’ve done it all yourself.

So be sure to complete the work today. Why let a workmate steal your thunder?

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

You’ve always been generous and warm hearted and there are some who will take advantage. A new friend will try to convince you they are in dire straits and will ask for a loan. Before falling for their sob story, check out what they are saying. You need to protect your own interests.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Your social life might seem dull compared with activities you were involved in this time last year. You long to go abroad but will have to wait until travel restrictions have been lifted. Technology has helped you stay in touch with family and friends abroad. You’re ready to make plans now to pay them a visit.

Take a friend up on their unusual ideas. You could do with a change and this is your chance to enjoy a day with a difference. Life promises to be lively and you wouldn’t have it any other way. You will have a lot of fun bouncing ideas off people who are just as open minded as you.

Anything that gives you the chance to share your thoughts openly is good for you. Forge ahead with a creative project. Enjoy using your imagination, whether this is through simple things like changing your style of outfits or a more complex artistic venture. Let your inner child come out to play.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Honest communication is the key to building stronger family relationships. Encourage any youngsters in the household to share their feelings. You want to help support them through their difficulties but unless they talk, you won’t know whether you’re getting it right. This is a good time for a heart to heart conversation.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

Stay on your toes as there are people watching for an opportunity to take over your life. They will make decisions and choices for you if you let them. Let others know you have a mind of your own. Be ready to make the most of a great financial opportunity coming your way.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Tuesday, July 14, 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

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

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