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Vázquez: ‘Do I Really Have to Respond to That Question?’

Governor Slams the Press for Doing Its Job Angrily Denies Having Anything to Do with Leak of PFEI Report Against Her

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Delgado Altieri Presents US House Natural Resources Committee Evaluates Islandwide Security Plan PREPA-Luma Deal as Part of Campaign

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The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

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July 24-26, 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.

US House Natural Resources Committee hears supporters and opponents of PREPA-LUMA deal

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he Natural Resources Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives heard arguments on Thursday in favor of and against the contract the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) signed with LUMA Energy to manage its transmission and distribution (T&D) system.

“There have been reports that PREPA has become a gold mine for U.S. contractors. … Questions have been raised about the LUMA contract and that it violated local law,” Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said.

“The residents of Puerto Rico deserve an efficient energy contract. It is our goal to help the island achieve a reliable and efficient energy system.”

PREPA Executive Director José Ortiz, however, spoke about the achievements of PREPA to become resilient.

Besides the contract with LUMA Energy, he mentioned the completion of work to convert PREPA’s San Juan Power Station Units 5 and 6 to dual fuel capability and the commissioning of the NFEnergía LLC (NFE) liquified natural gas (LNG) handling facility.

Regarding the question as to whether NFE was required to obtain Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) authorization to site, construct and operate its LNG handling facility, he said PREPA and NFE believe they do not need FERC approval.

“NFE concluded on the basis of its analysis of prior FERC decisions and informal discussions it held in 2017 and 2018 with FERC staff representatives that FERC authorization would not be required,” Ortiz said. “PREPA’s independent discussions with FERC staff on this subject in 2018 led PREPA to conclude that NFE’s position was correct. I have summarized the controversy and PREPA’s position concerning it in a letter PREPA filed with FERC on July 17, 2020.”

PREPA completed the renegotiation of the EcoEléctrica power purchase and operating agreement (PPOA) and a long-term natural gas supply agreement with Naturgy for the supply of natural gas both to EcoEléctrica and PREPA’s adjacent Costa Sur generating facility. PREPA estimates that the revised EcoEléctrica PPOA will generate average customer savings of $71 million annually. Ortiz said changes in the Naturgy agreement will result in average savings in the cost of gas consumed in the Costa Sur facility of approximately $29 million. Combined, the renegotiated EcoEléctrica and Naturgy contracts are expected to reduce PREPA’s net costs of power and fuel by some $100 million per year, he said.

Over the course of several years, PREPA entered into 64 PPOAs for over 1,000 megawatts (MW) of renewable generation with average year-one contract prices of 15-16 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and 1-2 percent annual price escalation. As of the beginning of fiscal year (FY) 2020, 11 of those projects were operational and currently provide energy at an average cost of 18 cents per kWh, after factoring in several years of price escalation, Ortiz said. Against the backdrop of the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability

Act (PROMESA), PREPA has been working to renegotiate or cancel agreements with the remaining non-operational renewable contract holders, he added.

Ortiz said repairs at Costa Sur Unit 5 are ongoing and expected to be completed by early August, at an estimated cost of $25.2 million.

He also asserted that PREPA intends, in conjunction with the commonwealth’s Public-Private Partnership (P3) Authority, to issue a solicitation for proposals for needed new generation resources, many of which the utility anticipates will be renewable, in compliance with Puerto Rico energy policy and law. The utility is also preparing to commence multiple grid reconstruction projects, Ortiz added.

PREPA is currently engaged with its insurers to adjust its Hurricane Maria claim and a claim arising out of the 2020 earthquake. To date, PREPA has received $100 million in advance funding, not including the $25 million deductible with respect to the Hurricane Maria claim, and has requested $25 million in advances related to the earthquake claim.

To date, a total of $20.2 billion in Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) and Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery Mitigation (CDBG-MIT) funding has been apportioned for Puerto Rico, including some $1.9 billion specifically designated for energy-related projects. PREPA is required to meet a 10 percent cost-sharing requirement for its Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)-funded permanent work projects, to which it plans to apply CDBG-DR and CDBG-MIT program funds as they become available, Ortiz said.

Access to CDBG funds, however, is subject to various U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) actions. The current Fiscal Plan for Puerto Rico assumes CDBG funds will cover the cost share required for federal funding. If these funds are not available, PREPA will need to find savings elsewhere or will have to seek to adjust rates to cover the cost share obligation. Through April 2020, PREPA had received $1.42 billion in FEMA public assistance funds. Additionally, Ortiz said, PREPA expects to receive a portion of the $20.2 billion in posthurricane assistance appropriated to Puerto Rico through HUD-approved CDBG-DR and CDBG-MIT grants to be used for matching or cost share purposes.

PREPA expects to reach an agreement with FEMA on a fixed cost estimate for all permanent repair and reconstruction work very soon, Ortiz said. A FEMA team has worked directly with PREPA’s Disaster Funding Management Office (DFMO) project formulation team to finalize all cost estimates. At FEMA’s request, PREPA’s DFMO prepared a two-year plan which presents an initial estimate addressing various individual projects, rolled up by asset classification, that may be prioritized by PREPA. The two-year cumulative cost included in the estimate totals $1.4 billion across five asset categories (T&D, distribution, distributed energy resources and microgrids, technology, and other).

Continues on page 4

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The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

Vázquez Garced: ‘Do I really have to respond to that question?’

Governor furiously denies ordering SIP panel report against her to be leaked

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

G

ov. Wanda Vázquez Garced denied repeatedly on Thursday giving instructions to anyone to leak the Special Independent Prosecutor (SIP) Panel report that holds a resolution to designate an SIP against her for violations to the Anticorruption Code related to the supply mismanagement case from the Family Socioeconomic Development Administration that was investigated by former Justice Secretary Dennise Longo Quiñones.

During a press conference in Ceiba, as a member of the press asked if she had any involvement with the recent leak of the document as it does not confirm that it was received by the panel and news outlet Metro sources said the leak was a defensive move on the part of the governor, Vázquez raised her voice and said she thought it was “disrespectful” to ask such a question.

“Do I have to respond to that question?

Do I really have to reply if I gave orders [to leak the SIP panel report]? I will answer the

question. Do I have to answer a question like that, that, at a certain point, I think is disrespectful?” Vázquez said. “It is disrespectful to say that I gave instructions so someone would leak a report. I will take it as not granted, and the answer that I will give to the people, to whom I owe [an answer], is to tell them I have absolutely nothing to do with this and whoever leaked it must be investigated by the agencies.

Here is my phone, to see if there is an e-mail, a text message, something that I could have sent.”

Meanwhile, the governor said she did not hinder the SIP investigation as she, in fact, let the investigation go along and that the panel would make its own determinations. However, she also said that the SIP report held no evidence against her, adding that there was a political agenda against her as the report was filed two weeks before the primary elections, where she is running against former Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi to be the gubernatorial candidate of the New Progressive Party.

“It’s a political agenda; why do I say that? Because today, we know that, after the report was leaked, there was no evidence to [justify] designating an SIP attorney,” Vázquez said. “First, it is a report where there was no evidence of any law violation; second, we do not have any knowledge as to where that third judge from the SIP [panel] was and if she had any access to evaluate the reports, as it is not mentioned in the resolution, and I tell them that, as an attorney with 23 years of service and

From page 3 Fermín Fontanés, head of the P3 Authority, addressed the specifics of the LUMA Energy contract at Thursday’s hearing.

He said the procurement process to select a partner for the T&D system was carefully designed to address a number of key considerations. It was carried out in coordination with the Financial Oversight and Management Board given the need to align the process with the efforts to address PREPA’s financial challenges and the Certified Fiscal Plan.

“Finally, given the importance of federal funding to support the transformation, the procurement process was designed to provide potential private partners with various opportunities to better understand the state of the recovery effort and the status of the various applications for federal funding,” Fontanés said.

The more than 18-month procurement process officially commenced with a market sounding in the summer of 2018 followed by the issuance of a request for qualification on Oct. 31, 2018. During the request for proposals (RFP) process, the P3 Authority provided proponents with extensive access to information related to PREPA and the T&D system – a data room with approximately 18,000 documents (totaling 149,181 megabytes of data), responses to over 700 diligence questions, and more 20 diligence calls and in-person meetings with bidders, Fontanés said. Proponents were given the opportunity to review and comment on seven successive drafts of transaction documents and to discuss their comments in person at eight meetings.

as [a] secretary of Justice, I saw a lot of reports and a lot of resolutions from SIP and each and every one of them said how many judges were involved and, if someone recused themself, it was consigned under the resolution, and -- what a coincidence -- that was not in my report. Third, the judge [Rubén Vélez Torres], along with attorney Nydia Cotto Vives, decide to assign a panel in a case without evidence. It’s an opponent that is involved in my opponent’s political campaign, where not only does he give a ‘like’ on Facebook, he also participates in fundraising events when an SIP judge cannot do that, as the law says. And his daughter also participates in my opponent’s events. I think that those three questions clearly were answered and prove an apparent political agenda to harm me two weeks before primary elections.”

The governor also said she authorizes the news outlet to reveal who the person was who provided the SIP panel report, as the one who led the aforementioned document “violated the law.” She insisted further that the outlet that had the original document should reveal who the source was.

“To that outlet, to that journalist who received the report, I authorize them to say who sent it, and there, we are even,” Vázquez said. “They should say who sent it, because it is very easy to make accusations against any official, because I have been a woman of law and order who always respects it. But if there is respect, let’s put the cards on the table and say that report

“The robustness of the process is evidenced by the fact that LUMA expended over $15 million of its own funds throughout the process to both diligence PREPA’s assets and prepare its proposal,” he said.

LUMA projects that it will be able to generate significant cost savings throughout the life of the contract based on its approach to operations and maintenance (O&M) services and the expertise and know-how that it will bring to bear in performing those services. LUMA estimates that it will be able to reduce operational costs by FY 2026 by approximately 30 percent, as compared to PREPA’s 2019 fiscal plan. This represents a net reduction in costs of some $100 million per year, Fontanés said. LUMA also intends to implement a plan to reduce technical and non-technical energy losses, which will result in a reduction of some $150 million in annual energy system costs. Between the reduction in O&M costs and the improvements in lost energy, LUMA estimates a savings of $293 million per year in 2027, as compared to an annual service fee under the contract of $141 million. LUMA officials contend that this results in significant annual and cumulative net savings for Puerto Rico – $323 million in cumulative savings by 2027 – and demonstrates that the contract will pay for itself. LUMA’s approach to the O&M services is also expected to result in federal disaster funding dollars being obligated for PREPA more effectively and rapidly.

Fontanés said the contract establishes clear obligations and performance metrics with which LUMA must comply,

was provided by this or that person. We will take measures against the person who violated the law.”

Meanwhile, although she said a week ago during a press conference that her political campaign staff had cancelled all activities that would draw a crowd in order to prevent coronavirus infection, according to El Nuevo Día newspaper, the governor participated in a fundraising event for her gubernatorial primary campaign with members of the Puerto Rico Hospitals Association. She said the recent event, where 25 people participated, complied with every safety measure and did not violate the executive order she signed. “[The news article] said it [the event] went by the rules of the executive order and did not promote the crowding of people,” Vázquez said. “That event was held as a part of a political process, but as I said before, they are the same activities that every other candidate is doing.

I am only seeing mine being put under the spotlight. I don’t have any problems with that because I will comply with law and order, but that kind of activity, that kind of information, that comes with the intention to harm, two weeks before the primary …, what are the intentions? Why does that information get released when I did everything correctly?” “Because there is a political agenda that wants to prevent and harm me two weeks before primary elections because I am interested in protecting the people of Puerto Rico against healthcare insurers,” the governor said.

and parent company guarantees backstop these obligations. Unlike a government entity, LUMA must perform in accordance with metrics designed specifically to improve safety, reliability and resiliency of the system or else is held accountable for its failure to do so. Thus, the P3 Authority executive director said, LUMA is contractually incentivized to deliver results for the people of Puerto Rico.

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The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

5

PDP gubernatorial hopeful Delgado Altieri presents his ‘coherent’ islandwide security plan

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

P

opular Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial hopeful Carlos “Charlie” Delgado Altieri announced Thursday his islandwide security plan proposal as he wants to wage a fight against crime, strengthen diverse social sectors, and reinforce the power of families, communities and their surroundings to improve Puerto Rico’s social development.

As a proposal to hold criminals accountable for their deeds against common citizens, Delgado Altieri said the government has to develop and put into effect a “coherent” islandwide security plan that reflects Puerto Rico’s actual reality. Likewise, he said one of his priorities as governor would be to update the public education system, as it serves children who belong in households that are under moderate to extreme poverty.

“According to a study from the Youth Institute, 58 percent of children in Puerto Rico live under some level of poverty, while 37 percent live in extreme poverty. These percentages are concerning as 50 percent of crimes in Puerto Rico are mostly influenced by child poverty,” Delgado Altieri said. “The education system, from the elementary to higher-education level, must update their curriculums into more attractive alternatives and be available to aid students who belong to this sector. Education is one of the keys to minimizing felonies in modern society and improving social mobility.”

The Isabela mayor said that in order to achieve the aforementioned goal, he

has proposed a long list of objectives that generally involve investing in technological advancement, improving in-house forensic programs to solve homicides, as only 23 percent of homicides in Puerto Rico have been cleared up according to a 2018 study, and developing strategies to involve communities in problem-solving initiatives.

Meanwhile, he also proposed employment programs for youth from poor communities and improved employment programs and services in the island’s correctional system as members of both these populations have a tendency to be involved in and relapse into criminal activities, respectively.

“We must develop effective strategies to minimize criminal activity and relapses significantly. I insist that the Department of Education, the Recreation and Sports Depart-

ment, municipalities and community-based organizations must be included in this strategy as they have a direct impact on both young people and adults and can develop projects that can help them,” Delgado Altieri said.

“We also want inmates to be more involved once they incorporate back to the general community; once they pay their dues, they do not deserve to be branded by their past.

We have to educate, certify their efforts, and make their transition easy enough to [enable them to] contribute to our country.”

‘It’s vital for police officers to be up to date’ The Star asked the PDP gubernatorial primary candidate about how his security plan will support the trans community, as the recent slayings of five trans people remain unsolved by the police, and one of those, the brutal Feb. 24 killing of Alexa Negrón

Luciano, was not classified as femicide in the Puerto Rico Police Bureau’s (NPPR by its Spanish initials) database. Delgado Altiero said it is vital for police to train themselves and handle felonies against the LGBTQIAP+ community fairly. He also said the island education system must educate students on how to respect this community.

“I believe that the Police [Bureau] must make efforts through federal initiatives [designed] to ensure each community’s welfare.

It is vital for the police to be up to date,” Delgado Altieri said. “If they don’t educate themselves or get any training on how to attend to matters [associated with] the community, there will be mishandlings of these cases. There must be insistence on not only studying [but also] practicing how to investigate crimes against the LGBTT community.”

The Star also asked Delgado Altieri how his government would make sure the NPPR was in compliance with federal police reform, as it has been a year since the protests that forced former Gov. Ricardo Rosselló out of office and various organizations called out police brutality against citizens and other violations during 12 days of demonstrations last summer. He said that it must be investigated because it seems to him that the island government has abandoned efforts to bring Puerto Rico’s police force into compliance with the provisions of the reform law.

“I don’t have knowledge that it is due to public policy, but the government has not implemented any advancements to follow the [federal] reform,” Delgado Altieri said. “It is essential that the police become aligned with the new social realities.”

PDP electoral commissioner: Governor must identify funds to guarantee voter safety

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

P

opular Democratic Party (PDP) Electoral Commissioner Lind Merle Feliciano called on State Elections Commission (SEC) President Juan Dávila Rivera on Thursday to exercise his power and demand that Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced identify funds to guarantee the safety of voters and officials who will participate in the August and November electoral events in Puerto Rico.

“I demand that the president of the Commission, in the same way that he defended the Electoral Code, defend the safety of the voters who will participate in the upcoming events,” Merle Feliciano said in a written statement. “The governor must be required to identify the funds to equip the voting centers with the necessary tools to guarantee the physical and emotional security of all.”

“Less than 20 days before the electoral event, the governor prefers to remain silent when it is imperative that she explain what the action plan is and answer the many

concerns about the process,” the PDP official added. “It is your [Dávila Rivera’s] responsibility to guarantee the safety of all participants and compliance with the laws that this government has overturned.”

The lack of a budget, the lack of hygiene and safety materials as well as the delay in printing ballots are some of the situations that the SEC faces two weeks before the Aug. 9 primaries. The electoral commissioners of all the island’s political parties have indicated in different instances their concerns and pointed out the absence of a plan to address them.

“We are dealing with an atypical situation in which the country is facing a pandemic. Voters must be assured that precautions are taken to prevent the spread of the coronavirus,” Merle Feliciano said. “The Popular Democratic Party is aware of this reality and has prepared those who will work on electoral and security aspects that day.”

“We are being proactive to get ready and receive our voters in a safe environment,” he added. “I reiterate that it is the Commission that has to provide the neces-

sary equipment to conduct an event that guarantees the physical and emotional security of the voters.”

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July 24-26, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Some insurers failing to follow billing guidelines for COVID-19 tests

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

T

he Association of Clinical Laboratories announced on Thursday that it has filed a formal complaint with Puerto Rico’s insurance commissioner over the failure of some insurers to follow the guidelines for billing, fees and payments for COVID-19 tests as established by the United States Department of Health and Human Services and the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS by its Spanish initials).

“The Normative Letter of the Office of the Insurance Commissioner [OCS by its Spanish initials] CN-2050-265-D, obliges all health service organizations and insurers that sign commercial medical plans to extend to their beneficiaries coverage that guarantees access to the medical and health services that are necessary in the context of the current pandemic,” Association President Juan Rexach said in a written statement. “This measure is undoubtedly a timely and necessary one. However, we believe that an additional directive is also necessary in accordance with the recent guidelines issued by the CMS.” On April 14, the CMS issued a regulatory letter (CMSRuling 2020-1-R) to promote a new rate incorporated into the Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule.

The new rate, which was increased for Medicare Part B patients, is payable for certain tests linked to COVID-19.

Among the reasons that motivated the fees revision are the

costs involved in administering the tests, the sophistication that specimen processing requires from clinical laboratories, and other factors of an operational nature.

However, most of the island’s private insurers chose to use the impositions of the Health Insurance Administration (ASES by its Spanish acronym) as a government guide to establish the billing codes and the rates payable to providers, in contravention of those established by CMS. On April 21, ASES established fee guidelines and billing codes in relation to the taking of samples and the different tests that are administered for the detection of COVID-19. That determination governs the Puerto Rico government health plan.

“The billing codes adopted by ASES, and the corresponding rates, were established in an improvised manner, without any cost study, and they are also significantly lower than those established by CMS for the Medicare and Medicaid programs,” reads the Association of Clinical Laboratories’ complaint sent

to the OCS. “Payments to providers under this rate scheme do not allow them to even meet the costs related to the administration of the tests and the costs associated with the provision of the service, such as compliance with the parameters dictated by the island Labor [and Human Resources] Department, its specialized PR OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] office, the [Puerto Rico] Department of Health, and many other challenges exacerbated by the pandemic.”

“We believe that both ASES and the OCS must locally adopt the same reasoning of the CMS,” Rexach said. “The challenges and complexities that motivated CMS to adopt a rate increase are the same faced by clinical laboratories in Puerto Rico, in all areas of their operation, regardless of the line of business in question.”

According to the complaint filed, the Association of Clinical Laboratories requests that the OCS order insurers to cease and desist from their practices of unilaterally amending the contracts signed with their suppliers and imposing nonnegotiated rates. In addition, it requests action to standardize the billing and payment process for all insurers.

The defendant parties, as established in the legal document, are: Triple-S Salud Inc., Triple-S Advantage Inc., MMM Health Care LLC, MSO of Puerto Rico LLC, MMM Multi Health LLC, MCS Life Insurance Co. Inc., MCS Advantage Inc., MAPFRE Life Insurance Co. of Puerto Rico, International Medical Card Inc., First Medical Health Plan Inc., and Humana Health Plans of Puerto Rico.

FEMA has approved mitigation plans for 17 towns so far this year

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

T

he Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), in coordination with the Puerto Rico Central Office for Recovery, Reconstruction and Resilience (COR3), has approved mitigation plans for 17 municipalities across the island in the past year.

Currently, a total of 30 municipalities have approved plans in place, while the remaining 48 municipalities are actively engaged in updating their plans to help minimize the impacts associated with future disasters.

As an important first step toward qualifying for federal project funding through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Planning Grant Program (HMGP), a local hazard mitigation plan must be in place. These plans incorporate input from communities to identify risks as part of the island’s recovery efforts after Hurricane Maria. Mitigation plans include proposed projects that may be developed once funding becomes available.

“We are committed to ensuring Puerto Rico’s recovery is effective, and mitigation plays an important role in achieving the shared goal of a resilient island,” said Alex Amparo, federal disaster recovery coordinator for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. “Emergency management is a cycle and mitigation actions taken by municipalities today lessen the impact of future disasters in our communities.”

Among the municipalities with approved plans is Toa Baja, whose mitigation strategy identifies as a funding priority the need for flood control measures at the La Plata River, which flows into a lake of the same name that provides water to roughly 131,000 residents across several municipalities.

“This is our most important mitigation project, which will not only have a great impact on Toa Baja but is also a regional project that will help with flood control in several municipalities,” said Toa Baja Mayor Bernardo “Betito” Márquez García. “It is fundamental for the future of Toa Baja, since it will achieve a reduction of more than 80 percent of the problems associated with flooding.”

In the neighboring municipality of Bayamón, community surveys led to a plan that prioritizes possible mitigation measures such as a permanent shelter at the Padre Rulfo Fernández School in Santa Juanita and the elevation of a bridge in Barrio Guaraguao’s Chorreras sector, which provides access to about 10,000 residents.

“When assessing risks, past events and the existing condition of communities are taken into consideration through different types of analyses and citizen participation strategies, such as community surveys,” said Bayamón Mayor Ramón Luis Rivera Jr. “Working with FEMA and COR3 staff on these projects has been a successful and collaborative experience.”

Toward the center of the island, the municipality of Comerío held a series of public participation meetings to determine prospective solutions for their unique challenges.

They include stormwater overflow systems for nine state roads, including main arteries used by the municipality’s nearly 21,000 residents such as PR-156, PR-167, PR-782 and PR-781. In addition, the town’s mitigation plan proposes installing hurricane shutters at City Hall, the Municipal Operations Center, and the Public Works and Services Pavilion.

“We had about eight community meetings with different sectors including nine neighborhoods and vulnerable areas of Comerío,” said Jaime García Mercado, Comerío’s director of emergency management. “Thanks to the com-

munication and collaboration with FEMA, we were one of the first 20 municipalities to have its mitigation plan approved and these projects are being used as models for other municipalities.”

COR3 Executive Director Ottmar Chávez highlighted the significance of mitigation plans as part of the island’s recovery process.

“As a result of the disasters we have experienced, various strategies have been outlined to work together with the federal government for the recovery of the island,” he said.

“Certainly, the municipalities have been key in this important effort. We are committed to the effective implementation of mitigation plans to lessen the effects of future emergencies and ensure the quality of life of all Puerto Ricans.”

By identifying local threats, each municipality can determine how best to locally reduce or mitigate hazards.

Studies have shown that every $1 spent on mitigation activities saves an average of $6 in future disaster costs.

Federal funding is available to assist all 78 municipalities in updating or developing mitigation plans as part of the island’s recovery efforts after Hurricane Maria.

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

7

Data shows where COVID-19 cases are spiking

By LAZARO GAMIO, SARAH MERVOSH and KEITH COLLINS

A

t overflowing hospitals in South Texas, patients wait hours in sweltering ambulances and on recliner beds set up in hallways.

The number of patients intubated in hospital beds in Tampa, Florida, is growing by the day. In Corpus Christi, Texas, a mobile morgue has arrived.

About as many people are now known to be hospitalized with the coronavirus in the United States as during any other time in the pandemic, matching the previous peak in April.

Public health experts say detailed local data on where people are hospitalized — a real-time measure that does not depend on levels of testing — is crucial to understanding the epidemic, but federal officials have not made this data public. The New York Times gathered data for nearly 50 metropolitan areas, including 15 of the 20 largest cities in the country, using state and local health department data to provide the first detailed national look at where people are falling seriously ill.

The data, as well as interviews across the country, show a widening crisis. The worst-hit areas in Texas and Florida have approached the peak rates of hospitalization that NewYork, New Orleans, Chicago and other cities hit in the spring. A wide and growing expanse of hot spots around the country — including LasVegas, Nashville,Tennessee, and Tulsa, Oklahoma — have worsened over the past two weeks.

Not every hospital system is overwhelmed, and new treatments have improved the chances of survival for seriously ill people. But experts say a small but significant proportion of those currently hospitalized will die, and those who survive may face serious long-term health issues.

Months ago, the endless wail of ambulances in New York City conveyed the urgency of the virus outbreak in a concentrated area.

Now, the scale of the crisis is dispersed and harder to grasp.

“There’s this pandemic fatigue,” said Thomas Tsai, an assistant professor of health policy at Harvard University. “All eyes were on New York. Houston is New York now. Miami is New York now. Phoenix is New York now. We need that shared collective urgency.”

EXPANDING CRISIS New York City, at peak: No place comes close to matching New York City’s sheer numbers: At its hospitalization peak in midApril, more than 12,000 New Yorkers were hospitalized at one time.

New Orleans, at peak: Some places today look more like New Orleans, an early epicenter that at one point had about 1,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients.

Rio Grande Valley, Texas: This region on the southern border of Texas most likely has the worst rate of hospitalizations in the country.

Hospitals are full. Moving from bed to bed, medical workers wrapped in protective layers yell over blaring alarms. Nurses softly soothe dying patients.There is little time to grieve. A new patient fills an emptied bed.

Corpus Christi, Texas: At least 87 people have died from the coronavirus in the past three weeks; as recently as the end of June, only eight people had. “The movie that you never wanted to be living in — that’s what it’s like,” said Annette Rodriguez, the county’s public health director.

Victoria, Texas: Of the top 10 places The Times found with the most severe coronavirus hospitalization rates, six are in Texas.

Miami: “Your hospitals are drowning,” Carlos Migoya, chief executive of Jackson Health System, the largest public hospital in Miami, wrote in an op-ed in The Miami Herald. “We are teetering on the edge of disaster.”

Fort Lauderdale, Florida: Several areas in Florida, including the Fort Lauderdale region, are under nightly curfews to slow spread of the virus.

Chicago, at peak:The number of coronavirus patients in Chicago is now less than a third of what it was at its peak.

Jacksonville, Florida: President Donald Trump is expected to formally accept his party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville next month. Of the top 20 metro regions The Times found with the most severe hospitalization rates, seven were in Florida.

Imperial County, California: Imperial County, home to many food-processing workers and farmworkers on the California-Mexico border, became the first county in California to revert to a stay-athome order this month as cases soared with positive test rates four times the state average.

Houston: The number of newly hospitalized patients in the Houston area is down slightly in recent days, but the county is still home to the most coronavirus patients in Texas. More than 2,200 people with the virus are in hospitals.

San Antonio: “Things are worse than they’ve ever been,” said Nelson Wolff, the county judge for San Antonio’s Bexar County, which had more COVID-19 patients die in 10 days this month than during the first three months of the pandemic. “I had two friends die within a week.”

Lafayette, Louisiana: At the beginning of the crisis, New Orleans was at the center of Louisiana’s coronavirus outbreak. Now, New Orleans is doing relatively well, while cities like Lafayette are seeing sharp increases.

Orlando, Florida: Inside hospitals in Orlando’s Orange County this week, the number of COVID-19 patients was the highest it has been during the pandemic. Outside, Disney World had reopened, and SeaWorld was splashing again. It is one of the jarring contrasts in a crisis that is now spread widely and sometimes hard to see.

Arizona: Arizona is one of several states with hot spots that did not provide local data, making it difficult to know the precise hospital situation in Phoenix, a center of the crisis. Statewide, COVID-19 hospitalizations have leveled off in recent days, offering hope that measures like mask mandates and the closure of gyms, bars and nightclubs are working.

Tampa, Florida:The number of patients who need to be intubated at Tampa General Hospital keeps growing. “We’ve gone from single digits to double digits, basically every day,” said Dr. Andrew Myers, an internist at the hospital.

Las Vegas: “We are really worried,” said Sara Kalaoram, whose mother, a guest room attendant at a Las Vegas hotel, is hospitalized with the virus and on oxygen. Kalaoram, her father and her teenage brother have also tested positive.

Mississippi: COVID-19 patients make up 33% of ICU beds in Mississippi, up from 18% in June.

Los Angeles: Los Angeles County has surpassed its previous peak of coronavirus patients from earlier this year, though fewer patients are in intensive care, a pattern experts say may reflect improvements in treatment.

Oklahoma City: “Every metric is heading in the wrong direction,” said Dr. George Monks, president of the Oklahoma State Medical Association. Hospitalizations have been on the rise across Oklahoma, but the situation is most pressing around Oklahoma City.

Tulsa, Oklahoma: The Tulsa City Council adopted a mask order last week, in part due to rising hospitalizations.

Chicago: The number of coronavirus patients in Chicago is now less than a third of what it was at its peak, though recent upticks led Mayor Lori Lightfoot to close bars for indoor use once again.

Philadelphia: “We are hoping we don’t see a huge spike again,” said Gregory Burrell, the funeral director at Terry Funeral Home, Inc., a funeral home in Philadelphia that handled dozens of funerals for people who died of the virus in April and May. So far this month, he said he had handled about five such funerals.

NewYork City: New admissions for the coronavirus in NewYork City have dropped to a few dozen a day, down from more than 1,000 people a day in late March and early April. Statewide, hospitalizations from the virus are at their lowest since March 18.

New Haven, Connecticut: Connecticut, like NewYork, has seen significant improvements since the spring, but there are still seriously ill people. Statewide, 62 people were hospitalized with the virus as of this week, down from a high of nearly 2,000 in April.

8

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

Blame spreads for nursing home deaths even as New York contains virus

By JESSE McKINLEY and LUIS FERRÉ-SADURNÍ

A

s New York moves from coronavirus crisis to sustained recovery, there remains a heartbreaking fact that some are trying to explore and others seem to be trying to exploit: Nearly 6,500 people have died of the virus in nursing homes and other long-term facilities in the state.

Republicans in Washington and elsewhere have attacked Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his role in, and response to, those deaths.

Cuomo has returned fire, accusing his foes of politicizing a human tragedy and arguing that the blame for the number of deaths lies with infected health care workers, not his own policies.

The death toll — a figure that surpasses that of many states — has also inspired questions from Cuomo’s fellow Democrats, who rule the state Legislature and have scheduled hearings on the issue next month.

The tension and pain surrounding the topic have bled into the debate over a related bill that is expected to be passed Thursday by the Legislature.

The initial goal of the bill’s supporters was to void a last-minute provision, buried in the state budget just before it was passed in early April, that gave nursing homes and hospitals broad immunity from lawsuits stemming from their failure to protect residents from death or sickness caused by the coronavirus.

But after considerable pushback from the hospital and nursing home industries, and legal questions about its scope, the legislation that is being advanced is far weaker, with the immunity merely narrowed.

“This is just a first step,” said the bill’s lead sponsor, Assemblyman Ron Kim, of Queens, where nearly 1,000 nursing homes residents died. “We’re coming back after the hearings to see how we can provide retroactive justice for anyone who feels like they’ve been wronged.”

The fight over the bill highlights how fraught the issue has become for Cuomo and other politicians, as well as nursing home executives, and how sensitive all involved have been to suggestions that they are to blame for the deaths.

Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, has pushed back aggressively on assertions that his administration’s directive of March 25,

Thousands of nursing home patients died of the coronavirus in New York, including 50 or so people at the Cobble Hill Heath Center in Brooklyn. which effectively ordered nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients from hospitals, led to more deaths.

In response to that criticism, the state Health Department released a report that essentially absolved the state of any blame.

The report concluded that “most patients admitted to nursing homes from hospitals were no longer contagious when admitted and therefore were not a source of infection.”

The report said that the disease was spread by “thousands of employees” who had the disease and did not know they were contagious.

Those conclusions did little to stem Republican criticism that the governor was to blame for thousands of deaths, allegations carried on Twitter and marked by hashtags like #KillerCuomo.

In a letter sent to Cuomo in July, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the Republican minority whip who is the ranking member of a House subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, said the state report was filled with “blame-shifting, name-calling and half-baked data manipulations.”

Cuomo said his political enemies were spreading lies and “ludicrous” accusations.

“It was cheap, it was ugly, it was political, it was Fox News, it was the haters, and it was a lie,” Cuomo said in a July 10 radio interview, a day after Scalise sent his letter.

“It’s just a pure lie, not based on any fact, but

they did it for political expediency.”

For the families of people who died in nursing homes and assisted living facilities in NewYork, the political friction overshadowed the importance of seeking accountability for deaths that they believe were preventable.

Many were outraged when the state included the immunity provision in the budget.

Advocates called it among the most restrictive protections against lawsuits in the country.

“Having liability can cause a facility to be more diligent and prevent incidents occurring that will cost them money,” said Susan Dooha, the executive director of the Center for Independence of the Disabled. “The preventive power of liability has been muted.”

Under the budget provision, health care facilities and their employees were protected from civil or criminal liability for the duration of the COVID-19 emergency, which Cuomo declared March 7 and is still in force.

The legal immunity did not cover gross negligence or intentional criminal misconduct but would most likely cover a variety of other scenarios, including harm that arose from a shortage in staffing or protective equipment.

The provision was fought for and celebrated by industry lobbyists like the Greater New York Hospital Association, which has close ties to Cuomo and has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic campaign committees in Albany in recent months

(as well as lesser amounts to committees for Republicans, who sit in the minority in both legislative chambers).

Under Kim’s bill, that immunity would be modified to allow legal action if it could be argued that a health care facility or health care professional had failed to prevent a patient from contracting the coronavirus or had not tried to safeguard them from infection.

“We now know how to prevent and arrange for COVID,” said Kim, who is a Democrat. “So we will be able to hold nursing homes accountable.”

The bill will also specify that the immunity clause will “only apply to COVID-19 related care and treatment.” That will restore a path for medical malpractice suits unrelated to COVID-19, said Richard Gottfried, the chairman of the Assembly Health Committee.

But opponents quickly pointed to what they consider shortcomings of the legislation, including a stipulation that the bill would affect only future cases and would not be applied retroactively — a clause that they said would hurt those most affected.

“The overreliance, the overacceptance of the industry’s lobbying efforts, and the credulity that we give to the arguments they make is what led to a large extent to tragedies for families across the state,” said Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition.

Industry groups argued that repealing immunity could pose constitutional issues and open the floodgates to a barrage of retroactive lawsuits against health care facilities.

They said the legislation did not take into account the broad impact a resurgence of the virus could have on the way hospitals and nursing homes care for all patients and residents, not just those ill with the coronavirus.

A surge in cases, for example, could lead to a shortage of health care workers and strain the supply of personal protective equipment, both of which could affect the care provided to those not infected with the virus, they said.

“If the pandemic comes back in full force like it was in April, the pressures that come up at nursing homes don’t affect only people with COVID. They affect all the residents that you’re serving,” said Jim Clyne, chief executive of LeadingAge New York, a group that represents nonprofit nursing homes.

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

9

Red vs. Red in Texas, with Republicans battling one another after mask order

By MANNY FERNÁNDEZ and J. DANNY GOODMAN

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exas Republicans have long sparred with one another, with feisty internal disputes in recent years over gun rights, bathroom bills and other culture-war issues. But since the spring, as the coronavirus began to take hold across the state, it has been an all-out battle of red vs. red.

This month, Republican groups in eight counties censured the Republican governor after he issued a statewide mask order, saying that it infringed on their rights and followed the lead of Houston, San Antonio and other Democratic-led cities and counties that already required masks in businesses.

And Monday, party activists ousted the chairman of the state party in favor of an outspoken firebrand conservative who called for President Barack Obama’s impeachment in 2014 and whose ascension to the top party post received a congratulatory tweet from President Donald Trump.

In Texas, the virus has heightened longsimmering friction in the largest Republican-led state in the country, and for the first time Gov. Greg Abbott has come under serious attack from within his own party. The conflict in many ways is not unique to Texas. The rifts in the party run along some of the same establishment-vs.insurgent fault lines that years ago defined the rise of the Tea Party and of Trump.

“This has been building for a long, long time,” said state Sen. Kel Seliger, a former mayor of Amarillo who is the second-most senior Republican in the Texas Senate and has served more than 16 years in office. “When a party dominates, it also becomes sort of arrogant and exclusive.

It used to be back in the ’80s and ’90s, let’s all get together in this big Republican tent and be a majority. Increasingly, we’ve been ushering people out of the tent.”

Indeed, the clash is about more than conservative anger over the governor’s mask order, and has its roots in the ideological divide between the right and the far-right in Texas. Some of that same energy and tension in 2012 helped a lawyer named Ted Cruz who had never held elected office defeat a powerful Republican lieutenant governor to win a seat in the U.S. Senate.

As Democrats continue to make gains statewide, archconservatives have tried pushing Texas further to the right, while more moderate Republicans try to steer it closer to the center.

More than 130 local Republican leaders in eight counties publicly rebelled against Abbott

and voted to formally censure him, a stunning rebuke for a politician who easily won reelection in 2018 and who until now has been the most popular Republican in the state. The censure votes were symbolic expressions of disapproval, largely over his statewide mask order. An effort to stiffen the punishment for being censured and to pass a statewide Republican resolution condemning the governor remains in the works.

Abbott, who faces reelection in 2022, was the first Republican governor of Texas in modern time to be officially reprimanded by a group of Republican county leaders.

“We feel that Abbott is going overboard in shutting down the economy,” said Lee Lester, chairman of the Harrison County Republican Party in East Texas, one of the eight counties that censured the governor.

Lester, a retired insurance salesman who lives near the Louisiana border in a county that has recorded more than 500 coronavirus cases and nearly 70 deaths, said Abbott needed to “start acting like we think he should act, and that is looking at the overall picture — following the facts, not fear tactics.”

The disarray was on full display last weekend at the Republican state convention, typically a time of unity, networking and chestthumping speeches for the dominant party in Texas. In a back-and-forth that lasted weeks, top Republican elected officials supported meeting virtually — as the Democrats did earlier this summer — while the party leadership voted to meet as planned in person in Houston, a Democrat-led city.

After losing a legal battle, the party gathered for a virtual convention that was delayed by technical problems. After it resumed, those who were fed up with the party’s chairman, James Dickey, helped push him out.

The party elected a new chairman, Allen B. West, a former Florida congressman who was chosen in part by appealing to the anti-Abbott sentiments over the statewide mask order. In a video message to delegates at the San Jacinto Monument outside Houston, a revered site commemorating the Texas battle for independence in 1836, he called the moment a “new battleground.”

“There’s a new battlefield,” he said in the video, “and it’s really not too much different from what they faced — the despotism, the tyranny, that we see in the great state of Texas, where we have executive orders and mandates, people telling us what we can and cannot do, who is essential and who is not essential. It is time for us to stand up, and it is time for us to fight.”

In his own video address to delegates, Ab-

People wait at a walk-up coronavirus testing site at Sam Tasby Middle School in Dallas, July 2, 2020. bott acknowledged the criticisms over his mask mandate, but defended his actions, his authority to issue executive orders in emergencies and his dedication to conservative principles.

“I know that many of you do not like the mask requirement,” Abbott said in his remarks.

“I don’t either. It is the last thing I wanted to do.

Actually, the next to last. The last thing that any of us want is to lock Texas back down again. We must do all that we can to prevent that.”

Abbott, who did not respond to a request for an interview, remains popular with a number of Republican lawmakers and business leaders, and his supporters say the criticisms are coming from a small but loud wing of the party and will not amount to a threat to his reelection.

Even so, a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday showed that his support among Republicans, while still strong, had slipped as the spread of the virus intensified: A quarter of respondents said they disapproved of Abbott’ handling of the virus, up from about 10% in early June.

At the same time, the governor has faced pressure from many public health officials and Democratic leaders to do more to stop the rising tide of infections, hospitalizations and deaths across the state.

“I told the governor’s people this: The virus will force you to take action, eventually,” said Clay Jenkins, a Democrat who is the top elected official in Dallas County and who has clashed with Abbott over the state response. “The challenge is when the doctors ask you to take

action, go ahead and do it then.” He urged the closure of indoor dining and a delay in opening schools for in-person instruction.

Texas has become one of the largest coronavirus hot spots in the country, and Abbott, who began opening the state for business May 1, has struggled to find the best approach to control it.

Some Republicans had urged him to go faster in reopening businesses and have pushed him to keep them open despite the spread of the virus.

“There’s just a division between what politically your base is wanting you to do, and what is the right thing to do,” said Mari Woodlief, a Republican political consultant in Dallas who worked on the Fort Worth mayor’s first campaign.

“He did the right thing, but it was not what his base wanted him to do.”

After cases related to bars began to spike, Abbott ordered them closed in late June. For weeks, he said the government should not mandate mask-wearing, and then he reversed course before the Fourth of July weekend and put in place an order for most Texans.

Among the 25 American counties with the most cases per capita over the past week, nine are in Texas. That includes not just the populous counties that include Houston and Dallas, but also smaller counties that include San Angelo and Corpus Christi. The average daily case total has exploded to more than 10,000 statewide.

In early July, Texas was averaging about 6,500 new cases daily. At the start of June, the figure hovered around 1,400.

10

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

Suspect in death of judge’s son is linked to California killing Apartado 907 Caguas, PR 00726 Tel. 787-653-8833 caguas.gov.pr

AVISO VISTA PĂšBLICA Para conocimiento del pĂşblico general y de conformidad con las disposiciones del Reglamento Conjunto para la EvaluaciĂłn y ExpediciĂłn de Permisos Relacionados al Desarrollo, Uso de Terrenos y OperaciĂłn de Negocios, vigente al 7 de junio de 2019, conocido como: "Reglamento Conjunto", la Ley 81 del 30 de agosto de 1991, conocida como: "Ley de Municipios AutĂłnomos del Estado Libre Asociado de PuerWR 5LFR \ FXDOTXLHU RWUD GLVSRVLFLyQ GH OH\ DSOLFDEOH VH LQIRUPD TXH OD 2ÂżFLQD GH Permisos (ODP) del Municipio AutĂłnomo de Caguas celebrarĂĄ Vista PĂşblica para evaluar la solicitud que se describe a continuaciĂłn:

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By NICOLE HONG, WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM, MIHIR ZAVERI and KATHERINE ROSMAN

T

Den Hollander’s connection to Salas and Angelucci revolved around the same case.

In 2015, Den Hollander brought a legal challenge to the male-only military draft that was assigned to Salas in Newark federal court. Two years earlier, Angelucci had filed a similar lawsuit in a different jurisdiction.

In February 2019, a federal court in Houston ruled in Angelucci’s favor, finding that the exclusion of women from the draft was unconstitutional. The case is now on appeal.

In his online writings, Den Hollander was well aware of Angelucci’s legal victory and complained that Salas was moving too slowly with his lawsuit. “The only difference in the Texas case was that two guys were the plaintiffs and a white 70-year-old man was the judge,� Den Hollander wrote. “Just unbelievable, by now we should have been knocking on the U.S. Supreme Court’s door, but lady unluck stuck us with an Obama appointee.�

Salas, 51, was nominated to the court by President Barack Obama in 2010. She is the first Hispanic woman to serve as a federal judge in New Jersey.

In 2018, she had allowed Den Hollander’s lawsuit to proceed, a ruling in his favor, but he still ranted about her in his online writings, insulting her and claiming that she was a beneficiary of affirmative action.

Angelucci was the vice president of the National Coalition for Men, a men’s rights group. About a decade ago, Den Hollander had approached the coalition and asked its support for his causes and lawsuits, but he was turned away, according to the group’s members.

In his online writings, Den Hollander criticized the men’s rights movement, suggesting its advocates did not go far enough. “I don’t belong to that group of wimps and whiners,� he wrote. “They’re trying to win back their rights by acting like girls instead of men.�

he two killings on opposite sides of the country were strikingly similar. A gunman showed up at the front door, posing as a delivery man, and opened fire.

One of the victims was Marc Angelucci, 52, a men’s rights lawyer who was killed July 11 outside his home in San Bernardino County, California. Eight days later, a shooter approached the New Jersey home of Esther Salas, a federal judge, killing the judge’s son and leaving her husband seriously injured.

On Wednesday, the FBI office in Newark, New Jersey, said in a statement that agents had uncovered evidence linking Angelucci’s killing to Roy Den Hollander, who is also the primary suspect in the New Jersey shooting.

It was the first time that authorities had publicly connected the two killings.

Den Hollander, 72, was found dead in the Catskills in New York on Monday in an apparent suicide, hours after the shooting at Salas’ home. He was a self-described anti-feminist lawyer who wrote thousands of pages in online screeds denouncing women, including female judges.

On Wednesday, the FBI did not publicly say what evidence had been uncovered. But authorities investigating Den Hollander’s apparent suicide found a semi-automatic Walther pistol that was of the same caliber as the weapon used in both the California shooting and the New Jersey shooting, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the matter.

Investigators were conducting ballistics tests to determine whether that weapon was used in both attacks, according to law enforcement officials.

Authorities are investigating whether Den Hollander was seeking revenge against his enemies after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, according to a different law enforcement official. In a self-published book last year, Den Hollander said he learned in late 2018 he had a rare form of melanoma.

Although Den Hollander detailed extensive grievances against judges and others in his online writings, it was not clear whether he was planning more violent attacks.

The FBI has contacted New York state’s chief judge, Janet DiFiore, to notify her that Den Hollander had her name and photo in his car, according to her spokesman, Lucian Chalfen.

The name of another female state judge who presided over a case that Den Hollander was involved in was also found in his car, Chalfen said. He declined to name A New York State trooper near the location where the lawyer Roy Den Hollander was found dead on Monday. the judge.

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

11

Tesla surprises analysts with $104 million quarterly profit

By NEAL E.BOURDETTE, PETER EAVIS and MATT PHILLIPS

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esla on Wednesday reported a profit of $104 million, a result that surprised analysts, who were expecting the electric carmaker to lose money as the coronavirus pandemic squeezed the company on two fronts.

Sales for the second quarter, which ended in June, slowed while much of the economy shut down and as millions of people lost their jobs and cut back on spending. And for nearly two months, the company was forced to halt production at its main plant in Fremont, California.

The profit was achieved “despite tremendous difficulties in the quarter,” the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, said in a conference call with analysts. “We were able to achieve a fourth consecutive profitable quarter. Although the auto industry was down about 30% yearover-year, we managed to grow deliveries in the first half of the year.”

Tesla said revenue in the second quarter fell 5%, to $6 billion. Total sales of automobiles declined 5%, to about 91,000 cars, an update to preliminary figures it released earlier this month.

Tesla appears to be weathering the pandemic better than some other automakers. In China, the world’s largest market for electric vehicles, the company has benefited from a new factory near Shanghai that began production late last year. The plant enables Tesla to avoid the tariffs China imposes on imported vehicles and has made its cars more affordable to Chinese consumers.

Tesla has started work on a fourth car factory at a site near Austin, Texas, Musk said.

The factory will produce Tesla’s new electric pickup truck, the Cybertruck, and a new

Tesla’s chief executive said on Wednesday that the company had started to build a fourth factory. semi truck, along with the Model 3 and Model Y, which it already makes at a factory in the San Francisco area. The new factory represents a substantial investment for Tesla.

The company’s profit was also made possible by the sales of $428 million in emissions credits to other automakers who need them to meet regulatory standards. That’s nearly four times as many credits as it sold in the same quarter a year earlier.

Tesla said it ended the quarter with $8.6 billion in cash, up $535 million from the end of March.

Musk Up for $2 Billion Reward Musk’s compensation is driven largely by the performance of Tesla’s stock. And as the carmaker’s share price has soared in recent

weeks, he stands to receive a stock award worth roughly $2 billion.

The awards are part of an unusual compensation package, set up in 2018, meant to release shares in 12 installments as certain milestones — market value and operational measures such as revenue or a measure of earnings — are met. The first payout under that plan occurred in May and now is also worth close to $2 billion.

Tesla’s market value recently exceeded $150 billion on average over the past six months and over the last 30 trading days, the threshold for the release of the second batch of shares. And it had already hit the lowest profit goal without considering the company’s second quarter results, in theory giving Musk the operational achievement he needs to get the shares,

though the board still has to release the award.

If Tesla’s share price stays close to current levels, Musk might even qualify for the third tranche of his stock awards this year.

Critics of the 2018 compensation package questioned why it was necessary. Before the award, Musk already owned a large chunk of Tesla — shares that today are worth around $60 billion. That’s more than twice the $25 billion worth of shares available to Musk through the 2018 package.

S&P 500 Eligibility Unlocked Tesla’s surprise profit set it up for another major milestone: potential inclusion in the S&P 500 index. The index is one the most widely followed measures of the performance of the U.S. stock market, with more than $11 trillion worth of mutual funds and other investments measured against it.

It’s unusual for companies with market values as large as Tesla not to be included in the S&P 500. But the company’s inability to consistently generate profits has made it ineligible so far. (Criteria for inclusion require the sum of the company’s fully audited profits in the four most recent quarters to be positive.)

If Tesla were to be included in the index, it could trigger an upward push of its share price by stimulating a surge in demand by institutional investors. Index-based funds — low-cost investment vehicles meant to mirror the performance of indexes like the S&P 500, rather than trying to “beat the market” — must buy any stock included in the index, creating a rush for the shares of companies that are newly added.

“When a company goes in that means there’s a lot of buying there,” said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices, the company that publishes the S&P 500.

12

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

In picking up work here and there, many miss out on unemployment check

By PATRICIA COHEN

A

nnie Frodeman often worked 40 hours a week or more — full time by most lights. She just worked them at two jobs.

Four or five mornings a week before the coronavirus outbreak, she worked as an airport ramp agent for Piedmont Airlines in Burlington, Vermont — hoisting bags on and off planes, refilling the water tanks, and sometimes emptying aircraft lavatories — for less than $15 an hour. The rest of the time she signed up for shifts in the emergency room at University of Vermont Medical Center, registering patients for $20 an hour.

While Burlington is expensive, Frodeman said, the two jobs together provided the income and flexibility that she needed to pay her bills while attending graduate school part time. But once the pandemic hit, shifts dried up.

The airline furloughed her. She hoped to make up the hours at the hospital, but soon her 35-45-hour weeks there were cut to a single eight- or four-hour shift. “Last week I didn’t get anything,” she said.

Having multiple jobs is business as usual for millions of Americans. But many cobbled-together employment arrangements that enabled people to get by when the jobless rate was skimming along at record lows collapsed once the pandemic curbed or closed large swaths of the economy.

The economic shock quickly exposed the mismatch between the reality of making a living in 2020 America and the systems built to protect workers. People who rely on

paychecks from different employers are already more likely to have shifting schedules and unpredictable weekly paychecks, low hourly wages and the absence of benefits like sick days and health insurance. They are also more likely to be Black, young and without a college degree.

And when hard times hit, they are excluded from regular state unemployment benefits.

“There’s a misfit between the enormous volatility and part-time jobs that make up the ways that people cobble together making money and the system that’s going to cut you a check,” said Susan J. Lambert, a professor at the University of Chicago who studies low-skilled hourly jobs. “The rules of the game have changed,” she said, but protections for workers, like jobless benefits or laws that require advance notice of schedule changes and extra compensation for last-minute switches, have not caught up.

Since the pandemic began, measures meant to kick in when things sour have strained to keep pace. Millions of Americans and their families have lost health insurance tied to their jobs. More than 1 in 4 households with children do not have enough to eat, according to the Hamilton Project, an economic policy arm of the Brookings Institution. Food pantries across the country have been swamped despite an enormous surge in food stamp enrollment.

When economic shutdowns began rolling through the country, Congress focused on the existing unemployment insurance system as the primary vehicle for assistance.

Lawmakers moved quickly to fill in some of the holes and created the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, a

A view of Burlington International Airport where Annie Frodeman worked shifts as a ramp agent for Piedmont Airlines, in Burlington, Vt., July 21, 2020.

temporary benefit for the ranks of freelancers and part-timers, as well as contract, self-employed and gig workers, who are ineligible for normal state benefits.

The emergency federal program, which expires at the end of the year, provided a lifeline for millions of people, but it has struggled with a slow rollout and complicated rules, as well as overburdened administrators and computers. Organized fraud has further bedeviled the process.

Just how many people juggle two or more part-time jobs or pick up a side gig like driving for Lyft in addition to a full-time job is fuzzy. Official figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that are based on surveys show that a tiny slice of workers — about 5% — fall into this group, but several economists say the measurement suffers from an outdated definition of what constitutes paid work and misleading assumptions about work schedules.

The bureau asks about work only in a specific reference week, for instance, which may not capture contract workers and freelancers with shifting schedules. Nor does it count self-employed individuals who do more than one job.

“What we have been discovering is that the BLS numbers are just not telling the full story,” said Hye Jin Rho, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning research group in Washington, who recently completed a study of multiple job holders. The researchers found that as much as 16% of the American workforce — more than 26 million people — depends on multiple jobs for income.

Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork, an online platform for hiring freelancers, who also studies people with multiple jobs, argues that the total is even higher — that 35% of workers do some sort of freelancing over the course of a year. “Self-employment has always been a feature of the modern American economy,” he said, it just has not been recognized by official measures or policies.

The difficulties facing these workers have multiplied during the pandemic.

The current political fight over whether to extend a $600 weekly jobless benefit supplement — which expires at the end of this month — overlooks the total financial toll that the pandemic has taken on households, some economists contend.

“What I think is lacking from the conversation about unemployment now is that you may not have lost your main job, but you have lost your secondary job and you can’t file an unemployment claim for it,” Rho said. “You’re suffering financially, but there’s no other way of making that up.”

Republicans in Congress have opposed extending the supplement because that extra money meant most recipients were getting more than they would have earned while working their regular job.

Several economists, though, have argued that the payments have kept the economy functioning by giving consumers money to spend. In most states, regular state benefits replace less than half of lost wages, and the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefit is half of that average state benefit. What’s more, there are at least 20 million people unemployed but only 5 million job openings.

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

13 Stocks

Gold rallies on U.S.-China row, Apple news slams stocks

T

he dollar slipped to an almost two-year low and gold rose further on Thursday as a gauge of global equities retreated on concerns about a potential probe of Apple Inc took the wind out of the high-flying tech sector.

Multiple U.S. states are investigating Apple for potentially deceiving consumers, according to a March document obtained by a tech watchdog group. Apple shares fell 4.3% and pulled the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500 lower.

Equity markets had been trading slightly lower before the Apple news on concerns about labor market weakness due to the coronavirus pandemic and deteriorating U.S.China relations.

The dollar hit four-month lows against a basket of peer currencies and gold rose for a fifth straight session to almost $1,900 an ounce, off about $25 from its all-time peak as rising U.S.-China tensions increased bullion’s safe-haven appeal.

Investors are selling the greenback on expectations the U.S. economy will likely underperform its peers in the developed world as the surge in new coronavirus infections pushed the overall number of cases in the United States over 4 million.

“There has been a turn in dollar sentiment,” said Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at Bannockburn Forex in New York.

The dollar index fell 0.33% at $94.6870, sliding to $94.587 at one point, a low last seen in September 2018.

Better-than-expected earnings in Europe initially lifted regional shares, with Germany’s Daimler AG forecasting a rise in operating profit at its Mercedes-Benz division and Unilever’s second-quarter sales falling far less than feared.

Europe’s broad FTSEurofirst 300 index closed up a bare 0.08%.

Wall Street struggled after four days of gains as investors awaited a new U.S. coronavirus relief package and the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week for the first time in nearly four months.

Along with Apple, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Facebook and Google parent Alphabet all tumbled. The five stocks account for 22% of the S&P 500’s market cap and have returned about 35% this year, compared to a 5% decline for the remaining stocks in the benchmark index.

MSCI’s benchmark for global equity markets fell 0.72%, pulled lower by Wall Street.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.33%, the S&P 500 lost 1.22% and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.17%.

A further slide in U.S. Treasury yields, with the benchmark 10-year note staying below 0.6%, damped financial stocks.

“Financials are just going to have a tough time participating if we stay this low, that being the second-largest sector in the S&P 500, said JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade in Chicago.

“It’s going t be hard to continue momentum,” he said.

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14

July 24-26, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

How the Cold War between China and U.S. is intensifying

In this photo provided by the U.S. Navy, an F/A-18E Super Hornet lands on the flight deck of the USS Ronald Reagan in the South China Sea, July 6, 2020.

By RICK GLADSTONE

T

ensions between China and the United States have reached the most acute levels since the countries normalized diplomatic relations more than four decades ago, with the U.S. government’s ordering that China close its Houston consulate being just the latest example.

In defense, trade, technology, human rights and other categories, actions and reprisals by one side or the other have escalated sharply under President Donald Trump’s administration, despite his repeated expressions of admiration for President Xi Jinping of China.

The administration is even weighing a blanket ban on travel to the United States by the 92 million members of China’s ruling Communist Party and the possible expulsion of any members currently in the country, an action that would likely invite retaliation against American travel and residency in China.

“I think we’re in a dangerous and precipitous spiral downward, not without cause, but without the proper diplomatic skills to arrest it,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society. The severity of the confrontation, he said, “has jumped the wall from specific and solvable challenges to a clash of systems and values.”

Craig Allen, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, said he was alarmed by the increasing invective from two superpowers that together represent 40% of global economic output. “If we are yelling at each other and slamming

doors, then the world is a very unstable place, and businesses are not able to plan,” he said.

Here is a look at what has happened in the past few years to exacerbate the tensions: The Coronavirus and Anti-Chinese Racism Trump and his subordinates have blamed China for spreading the coronavirus, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. They have repeatedly described the virus in racist and stigmatizing terms, calling it the Wuhan virus, China virus and Kung Flu. On July 4, Trump said China “must be held fully accountable.” The administration also has defunded and ordered a severing of ties with the World Health Organization, accusing it of having abetted shortcomings in China’s initial response to the outbreak. On Tuesday, the Justice Department accused Chinese hackers of attempting to steal information about American research on a virus vaccine.

For its part, China has rejected the administration’s attacks over the virus and has criticized the poor U.S. government response to the outbreak. Chinese propagandists also have promoted the countertheory, with no evidence, that U.S. soldiers may have been the original source of the virus during a visit to Wuhan last October.

A Severe Test on Trade Ties Trump won office in 2016 partly on his accusations that China was exploiting the country’s trade relationship with the United States by selling the country far more than it purchased. In office, he decreed a series of punitive tariffs on

Chinese goods, and China retaliated, in a trade war that has now lasted more than two years.

While a truce was effectively declared in January with the signing of what the administration called a ‘Phase 1’ trade deal, most tariffs were not eased.

Showdown in the South China Sea The Trump administration has increasingly challenged China’s assertions of sovereignty and control over much of the South China Sea, including vital maritime shipping lanes. Just last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has described China as a major security threat, decreed that most of China’s claims in the South China Sea are “completely unlawful,” setting up potential military confrontations between Chinese and U.S. naval forces in the Pacific.

A Widening Battle Over Technology China has long been accused by successive U.S. administrations of stealing American technology. The Trump White House has escalated the accusations by seeking an international blacklisting of Huawei, China’s largest technology company, calling it a front for China’s efforts to infiltrate the telecommunications infrastructure of other nations for strategic advantage.

The company’s chief technology officer, Meng Wanzhou, has been detained in Canada since December 2018 on an extradition warrant to the United States on fraud charges. Last week Britain declared it was siding with the United States in barring Huawei products from its highspeed wireless network.

Expulsions of Journalists and Other Media Workers Accusing China’s state-run media outlets of fomenting propaganda, the Trump administration sharply limited the number of Chinese citizens who could work for Chinese news organizations in the United States. China retaliated by ordering the expulsions of journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and took other steps that suggested further impediments to American press access in China were looming. The Times, concerned about the possibility of further limitations on journalists working in China, announced last week that it was relocating much of its major news hub in Hong Kong to Seoul, South Korea.

Expulsions of Students The Trump administration has taken steps to cancel the visas of thousands of Chinese graduate students and researchers in the United States who have direct ties to universities affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army, according to U.S. officials knowledgeable about the planning. Such expulsions portend possible further educational restrictions, and the Chinese

government could retaliate by imposing its own visa bans on Americans.

Suppression of Democratic Freedoms in Hong Kong Last November, Trump, with bipartisan support, signed legislation that could penalize Chinese and Hong Kong officials who suppress dissent by democracy advocates in Hong Kong, the former British colony and Asian financial center that was guaranteed some measure of autonomy by China.

In May, Trump said he was taking steps to end Hong Kong’s preferential trading status with the United States after China passed a sweeping security law that could be used to stifle any form of expression deemed seditious by China. Chinese authorities have denounced the measures and vowed to retaliate.

Repression of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang This month the Trump administration imposed sanctions on a number of Chinese officials, including a senior member of the Communist Party, over human rights abuses by China in the Xinjiang region against the country’s largely Muslim Uighur minority.

Beijing promised retaliation against American institutions and individuals it deemed guilty of “egregious” conduct in issues concerning Xinjiang, a vast Western expanse in China where the authorities have placed 1 million people in labor camps and imposed intrusive surveillance on others.

Other Long-Standing Grievances: Taiwan and Tibet For the Chinese government, U.S. actions taken in the name of defending people living anywhere in China constitutes blatant interference in its internal politics — a grievance with deep-seated roots going back to its struggles with imperialist powers in the 19th century.

In May the Trump administration approved a $180 million arms sale to Taiwan, part of a far bigger arms deal that has angered Chinese authorities, who regard the self-governing island as part of China. Another long-standing source of Chinese anger is the U.S. deference to the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader-in-exile of Tibet, the former Himalayan kingdom in China’s far west.

In 2018 Trump signed a bill that penalizes Chinese officials who restrict U.S. officials, journalists and other citizens from going freely to Tibetan areas. Last November the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, Samuel Brownback, warned that only Tibetans could choose the successor to the Dalai Lama, who turned 85 this month, setting up a new clash with Beijing, which contends it will choose his successor.

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

15

U.K. cuts immunity for some U.S. diplomats’ families

By ELIAN PELTIER

B

ritain and the United States have agreed to end a legal loophole that allowed an American woman to flee Britain after she was involved in a car accident that killed a teenager, the British authorities said Tuesday, almost a year after the crash started a diplomatic tug of war between the two countries and sparked widespread outrage in Britain.

The woman, Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a U.S. diplomat, fled Britain under diplomatic immunity weeks after her car collided with the motorcycle of Harry Dunn, 19, near Royal Air Force Croughton, a military base operated by the U.S. Air Force in central England.

For nearly a year, Dunn’s parents, Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn, have campaigned to have Sacoolas prosecuted in Britain, going to the White House in October, where President Donald Trump welcomed them and tried to arrange a meeting with Sacoolas, who he said was waiting in a room nearby. Dunn’s parents refused to meet her.

In January, the United States turned down an extradition request for Sacoolas, a decision that the British government called “a denial of justice.” The change in the law does not apply to her case, but only to future incidents.

The police in Britain have said that Sacoolas

was driving her car on the wrong side of the road in Brackley, a town near the base and about 60 miles northwest of London, at the time of the crash in August.

The case put a focus on special diplomatic arrangements affecting Americans who worked at the base and their families.

Under the United Nations’ Vienna convention on diplomatic relations, members of diplomatic staff and their families positioned in a foreign country are entitled to immunity. An arrangement between the United States and Britain recognized the Americans working at Croughton as embassy staff but waived this immunity.

However, that waiver did not cover the families of the employees. So, while U.S. personnel at the base could not claim immunity in the event of a crime committed outside their duties, their family members could.

That is no longer the case.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Wednesday that all U.S. staff members at the Croughton military base would now be subject to the same rules.

The changes, which came into effect Monday but were made public Wednesday, came a day after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Britain.

Johnson’s office said he had raised the issue of

Sacoolas with Pompeo.

The waiver arrangement had been restricted to the base, and the changes will not affect broader agreements on immunity for diplomatic staff. U.S. personnel and their families posted elsewhere in Britain will continue to enjoy diplomatic immunity.

“We have the deepest sympathy for Harry Dunn’s family,” Raab said in the statement. “No family should have to experience what they have gone through and I recognize that these changes will not bring Harry back.”

In a written statement to Parliament, Raab

said that the loophole “could not in future be used in the same way as in the tragic case of Harry Dunn.”

Dunn’s family welcomed the decision but said they would continue to press for Sacoolas to stand trial in Britain.

“We now need Dominic Raab to work with us to make sure that we get her back to the U.K. to face justice at some point soon,” Charles told the BBC. “We always live with hope that one day she might just decide of her own accord to put herself on a plane and come back over here. We definitely will keep the pressure up.”

Flowers left in memory of Harry Dunn, the 19-year-old motorcyclist killed in a crash near a military base in central England.

Canadian court says asylum treaty with U.S. is unconstitutional

By DAN BILEFSKY

A

Canadian court has ruled that a treaty with the United States that allows Canada to turn away asylum-seekers coming from the United States if they originally entered there from a third country violates Canada’s constitution.

Human-rights advocates have long criticized the pact, saying it tacitly encourages asylum-seekers to circumvent Canada’s official land borders because if they try to enter at an official crossing, they will be refused entry and returned to the United States, subject to some exceptions.

In a case brought by several refugee advocate groups as well as by individual asylum-seekers, the Federal Court of Canada in Ottawa ruled that the bilateral pact, the Safe Third Country Agreement, breached Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees the right to “liberty” and “security.”

In a more than 60-page ruling, Justice Ann Marie McDonald cited the conditions asylum-seekers said they had faced while in detention in the United States, including lack of access to adequate health care or legal counsel.

She cited the example of Nedira Jemal Mustefa, a Muslim woman from Ethiopia and a litigant in the case, who testified that she had been forced to eat pork in contravention of Muslim dietary laws. She also was held in solitary confinement for one week at the Clinton Correctional Facility in New York state, describing the facility as “freezing cold.”

She told the court her experience had been “terrifying, isolating and psychologically traumatic.”

In her ruling, the judge wrote that “Canada cannot turn a blind eye to the consequences that befell Ms. Mustefa in its efforts to adhere to” the treaty.

Among the groups bringing the court

challenge were Amnesty International and the Canadian Council for Refugees.

Mary-Liz Power, a spokeswoman for Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, said the ministry was reviewing the court’s decision, which does not become effective until Jan. 22.

The Canadian government has six months to respond to the ruling and can appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal. If the ruling is overturned, the litigants could potentially appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Canadian proponents of the treaty argue that it is an effective means to control the border and that the agreement was entered into on the basis that the asylum systems of both Canada and the United States meet the necessary level of protection for asylumseekers under international law.

Karen Musalo, a professor of law at the University of California, Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, who testified on behalf

of those making the legal challenge, called the decision an “indictment of the inhumanity of the American detention system for asylum-seekers.”

Justin Mohammed, a law and policy adviser at Amnesty International Canada, said the legal case was part of a long-standing effort to press Canada to recognize that the human rights of asylum-seekers were being violated in the United States, a situation, he said, that had worsened amid the anti-refugee ethos of the Trump administration.

He added that the decision was all the more important during a global pandemic when overcrowding in U.S. detention centers posed an even greater risk to the health and security of asylum-seekers.

“The court decision throws cold water on the idea that when Canada returned refugees to the United States that they will be treated with respect for their dignity and human rights,” Mohammed said.

16

July 24-26, 2020

Coalition brings pressure to end forced Uighur labor

By ELIZABETH PATRON and AUSTIN RAMZY

O

n Thursday, more than 190 organizations spanning 36 countries issued a call to action, seeking formal commitments from clothing brands to cut all ties with suppliers implicated in Uighur forced labor and to end all sourcing from the Xinjiang region of China in the next 12 months.

Roughly 1 in 5 cotton garments sold globally contain cotton or yarn from the Xinjiang region in northwestern China. There, authorities have used coercive labor programs and mass internment to remold as many as 1 million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other largely Muslim minorities into model workers obedient to the Communist Party. Camp inmates are forced to undergo job training, and some then take factory positions at little or no pay.

“Many brands have known for years about the growing body of evidence around

Uighur exploitation,” said Peter Irwin, a spokesman for the Uyghur Human Rights Project, an advocacy group based in Washington. “They won’t stop unethical sourcing practices unless they are faced with real reputational risk and the possibility that consumers will stop shopping from their stores.”

Recent investigations by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Axios and others have found evidence that connects China’s forced detention of Turkic-speaking Uighurs to the supply chains of many of the world’s best-known fashion retailers, including Adidas, Lacoste, H&M, Abercrombie & Fitch, Ralph Lauren and PVH Corp., which owns labels including Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein.

“Until now, there simply has not been enough pressure on big fashion industry names to completely cease ties with factories and suppliers in the Uighur region, an area on which many remain hugely dependent

A Uighur woman picking cotton in Xinjiang, China. Roughly one in five cotton garments sold globally contains cotton or yarn from the region.

and where there is a huge amount of money on the line,” Irwin said.

On Wednesday, hours before the call to action was formally announced, a PVH spokeswoman confirmed that the company had agreed to cease all business relationships with factories and mills that produce garments or fabric in Xinjiang, or that supply cotton from the region, within the next 12 months, bringing it line with the new call to action.

“Per our policies, forced labor is considered a zero-tolerance issue, and any confirmed instances of forced labor by our suppliers may result in termination of the business relationship,” the spokeswoman said, adding that the company was in the process of reducing its manufacturing, textile and cotton footprint in China.

Signatories to the call to action include the AFL-CIO, Human Rights Watch and AntiSlavery International. The unveiling of the coalition, calling itself End Uyghur Forced Labor, comes days after another Uighur rights campaign focused on the fashion industry, led by a European Parliament member, Raphaël Glucksmann, also made headlines.

That campaign prompted Adidas and then Lacoste to “agree to cease all activity with suppliers and subcontractors” in Xinjiang after they were implicated in a report published in March by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

That report said that local officials are often given targets for the number of people they must provide for state-sponsored labor programs. In Xinjiang, the threat of arbitrary detention in the camps weighs heavily on minority residents, so farmers, traders and idle workers often have little room to resist.

The organization also said it found evidence that, from 2017 to 2019, more than 80,000 Uighurs were sent outside Xinjiang to work in factories that produced goods for dozens of multinational companies. (A growing

number of Uighurs have been moved from one part of Xinjiang to another, or even out of the region to more industrialized areas in the east, as part of a system of organized labor transfers.)

Many Western fashion businesses have remained quiet when it comes to the Chinese government’s stance on local issues, fearful of losing favor in one of the world’s most powerful and fastest growing consumer markets or access to a critical manufacturing hub in their supply chains.

Fashion supply chain transparency has become a hot topic in recent years, with a particular focus on “tier one” factories where the final assembly of garments takes place.

But labor abuse and polluting practices are also rife in the raw production of materials and yarn, and are harder areas to audit for Western companies, including in China.

Outsourcing labor means a number of companies can be involved in the production of an item. Coerced labor could therefore happen at many points, including during the growing and picking of cotton, the production of thread and fabric, and the manufacturing of the finished item. According to some industry experts, even if more clothing retailers commit to the Xinjiang withdrawal pledge, many will struggle to track the degree to which the production of their goods may be tainted.

“Companies will need to drastically increase their ability to trace their supply chains to origin to understand the risk of Xinjianglinked forced labor,” said Amy Lehr, director of the human rights initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has researched labor in Xinjiang. “Most cannot do this now.”

“The other challenge for brands is that, until there is more access to Xinjiang, they can’t carry out their normal due diligence on the ground to know whether there’s forced labor there or not,” Lehr added.

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

17

Demolition of historic Vietnam Cathedral is underway

The historic Bui Chu Cathedral in Nam Dinh Province, Vietnam, is widely considered an architectural gem.

By RICHARD C. PADDOCK

T

he historic Bui Chu Cathedral in Vietnam, a 135-yearold church considered by many an architectural gem, is being demolished to make room for a bigger cathedral despite last-ditch efforts to save it.

By Wednesday, workers had removed tiles from the floor and dismantled much of the roof of the cathedral, which is in Nam Dinh province, about two hours south of Hanoi. A high fence has been erected around the building, and demolition will most likely be completed by early next month.

“This would amount to an irremediable loss of heritage for Vietnam, for the world and for the Catholic Church itself,” said Martin Rama, a top economist with the World Bank who has worked to save the building. “Indeed, the ancient Bui Chu Cathedral embodies an amazing intersection of culture, history and architecture.”

As Vietnam’s population and economy have grown in recent decades, the country has lost much of its cultural heritage with the destruction — or aggressive renovation — of numerous French colonial buildings, pagodas and temples.

The Communist government declined last year to declare Bui Chu a heritage site, which would have prevented its demolition. Nor has it intervened in plans to build a new cathedral.

In many parts of Vietnam, the Roman Catholic Church has been a leader in historic preservation, making the cathedral’s demolition unusual.

“You would rate the church as one of the most successful defenders of heritage around the country,” said Mark Bowyer, a longtime Vietnam resident and travel blogger who visited Bui Chu last year for his website, Rusty Compass. “In this case, the church is committing an act of self-harm.”

Bui Chu’s priests have said that the old structure must be razed because it is in dangerous condition. The electrical wiring is faulty and could start a fire, they say, and plaster occasionally falls from the high ceiling, endangering parishioners.

They say the new cathedral will be a replica of the old one but could hold more people.

Rama, who served for eight years as the World Bank’s lead economist in Vietnam, has long taken an interest in Bui Chu and came up with a plan this year to save it.

Acting in a personal capacity, he met with church leaders and proposed acquiring land next to the church’s property, which would expand the church’s holdings and provide room for both buildings.

Rama, now based in Washington as the World Bank’s chief economist for Latin America and the Caribbean, offered to pay for the land himself and to start a global fundraising campaign to raise the estimated $3 million to restore the old cathedral.

“Saving the ancient Bui Chu Cathedral in a way that allows building the new church and welcoming large numbers of parishioners is entirely feasible,” said Rama, who also is project director of a sustainable urban development center with the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences. “Future generations will be forever grateful to the fathers if they make an enlightened decision.”

To his disappointment, church leaders rejected his offer in favor of their original plan to build a new cathedral in place of the old one.

The cathedral’s bishop, Thomas Vu Dinh Hieu, declined Wednesday to discuss his rejection of Rama’s offer or comment on Bui Chu’s demolition, saying only, “We do not want to talk with the media.”

A local official in Xuan Ngoc, the site of the church, said the priests had permission to proceed with the demolition. He

refused to give his name and declined to comment further.

Among the hundreds of Catholic churches in Vietnam, Bui Chu stands out because of its unusual blend of Baroque and Vietnamese architecture.

The Bui Chu diocese is where Catholicism first took hold in Vietnam more than 400 years ago, long before French or Communist rule. The area draws few tourists but remains the heartland of Catholic Vietnam today.

“Bui Chu church is the birthplace of Vietnamese Catholicism,” said Nguyen Hanh Nguyen, an associate professor at the University of Architecture in Ho Chi Minh City. “It should be recognized as a heritage site and preserved in its original state.”

While the Communist government officially opposes organized religion, it has reached a state of détente with religious leaders, allowing them to hold services and to keep and maintain their facilities.

The reticence of Bui Chu’s priests to speak to the media is not surprising. When they sought to raze the cathedral last year, they were stung by public criticism and their plans were eventually derailed.

A group of 25 architects petitioned the prime minister and other government officials in May 2019 to declare the cathedral a heritage site and block the demolition. They said the cathedral’s blend of European and Vietnamese elements, details and materials, created a singular architectural work found nowhere else in Vietnam.

Around that time, a raging fire destroyed the NotreDame cathedral in Paris, devastating Catholics around the world and prompting many Vietnamese to oppose razing Bui Chu. Although Vietnam’s government did not intervene, the priests backed off.

On inspecting Bui Chu at the time, the architects found that it was only slightly damaged and was in good enough condition to last a long time if reinforced.

Photographs of the church as it is being demolished have only bolstered that view, said Nguyen, who was one of the 25 architects.

“Based on the image of the recent dismantlement,” she said, “the wooden structure of the church is still in good condition, not a serious degradation.”

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July 24-26, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

The Hagia Sophia is converted again

By THE NYT EDITORIAL BOARD

O

n Friday, after 86 years as a museum, the great Hagia Sophia in Istanbul will once again echo with Muslim prayers. To Turkish Islamists, the conversion marks the fulfillment of a long-held dream of restoring a symbol of Ottoman grandeur. For many others around the world, the change is a dismaying setback for one of the world’s greatest architectural and cultural landmarks.

Grandly arrayed on a hilltop over the Bosporus where it divides Europe and Asia, the Hagia Sophia’s 15-century history is suffused with events, myths and symbols important to both East and West. Built in the sixth century by a Byzantine emperor, Justinian I, as the premier cathedral of the Roman Empire and dedicated to “Holy Wisdom,” it was for almost 1,000 years the largest church in the world, a temple so majestic that upon its dedication the emperor is said to have proclaimed, “Solomon, I have surpassed thee!” Its influence on history and architecture and religion, Christian and Islamic, is profound.

When Constantinople fell to Ottoman forces in 1453, Mehmed II the Conqueror converted it to a mosque, the Great Mosque of Ayasofya, and with time the Byzantine mosaics were covered over or destroyed and four great minarets were raised around the structure. It remained a mosque until 1934, when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the secu-

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In 2019, the Hagia-Sophia was the most-visited museum in Turkey. lar, modern republic of Turkey, transformed the Hagia Sophia into a museum, exposing long-concealed mosaics and marble floor decorations, in what was seen as a bid to free the monument, and the nation, from myths of sacred conquest.

It became the most-visited museum in Turkey, attracting about 3.7 million visitors in 2019. It was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, identified as a landmark of exceptional cultural significance to all humanity, worthy of conservation.

Why President Recep Tayyip Erdogan chose to reverse Ataturk’s decision is a matter of some conjecture. A product of an Islamist political tradition, he said he was unable to sleep on the night he issued the presidential decree making the change. Only a year earlier he had argued against the conversion. What is clear is that despite the great powers Erdogan has seized over 17 years in power as prime minister and president, his current political standing is shaky, and he needs to feed his nationalist base.

In his address to the nation July 10 announcing the conversion, Erdogan made no mention of Ataturk. There was no need — his speech was preceded by a ruling of the Council of State, the highest administrative court of the country, nullifying Ataturk’s decree. And in his speech, Erdogan extensively quoted Sultan Mehmed’s will, calling down fright-

ful curses on anyone who would change the Hagia Sophia’s status.

Reversing Ataturk’s secular legacy plays well among Turkish nationalists, for whom the museum inside the Hagia Sophia long represented a humiliating foreign imposition and a blot on the Ottoman past they glorify. And evidently not only nationalists. The conversion of the museum has drawn little criticism within Turkey and among Muslims outside, and all political parties save one applauded the change.

The reaction from Christian leaders has been relatively muted, perhaps for fear of fomenting sectarian strife. Pope Francis said only that he was “pained,” while the Eastern Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, who as a resident of Turkey needs to be cautious in his pronouncements, expressed regret that the Hagia Sophia would cease being “a place and symbol of encounter, dialogue and peaceful coexistence of peoples and cultures.”

UNESCO was more direct. A statement from the organization said it “deeply regrets” that the decision was made without any prior discussion, adding: “Hagia Sophia is an architectural masterpiece and a unique testimony to interactions between Europe and Asia over the centuries. Its status as a museum reflects the universal nature of its heritage, and makes it a powerful symbol for dialogue.” The statement also warned that alterations to physical structures or changes to accessibility of the site could violate the 1972 World Heritage Convention, to which Turkey was a signatory.

Erdogan, for his part, has sought to reassure the world that when not being used for prayer, the Hagia Sophia would remain open to the public, and that Christian frescoes would remain on display, although covered with curtains during Muslim prayers.

It is critical that at least on these matters, he be held to his word. It is a sad reflection on the state of Turkey’s democracy that a monument of such global importance and value should become an authoritarian leader’s political tool. But what’s done is done; there is no chance that Erdogan would reverse his decree, even if he could, without firing the fury of his base.

But the Hagia Sophia remains a World Heritage Site in the most profound sense of the designation, a structure of surpassing beauty with a deep overlay of the histories of East and West, Christianity and Islam. That need not preclude prayer, nor should it preclude Turks from feeling a powerful connection to a monument that has been the pride of their nation for centuries. But like the damaged Notre Dame in Paris, or the Acropolis in Athens, that must not undermine its calling as a place of exceptional significance to all humanity.

In converting the Hagia Sophia to a mosque, Erdogan has assumed the weighty responsibility of a custodian of one of the world’s cultural landmarks. He ought not be allowed to forget that.

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

19

Organizaciones de pensionados solicitan que se enmiende sesión extraordinaria para la inclusión de legislación sobre retiro digno Por THE STAR

E

l Frente en Defensa de las Pensiones y Construyamos otro Acuerdo realizó el jueves, la entrega de carta solicitando a la gobernadora Wanda Vázquez que enmiende la convocatoria de la sesión extraordinaria para incluir el Proyecto de la Cámara 2434 (PC 2434), Ley por un Retiro Digno y el Proyecto de la Cámara 2572 (PC 2572), Ley para Sistema de Retiro de la UPR como mejor estrategia para poder asegurar que no se recorten las pensiones durante la quiebra.

El colectivo amplio de organizaciones de jubilados que representa a miles de pensionadas y pensionados expresaron que la propuesta, sometida por la gobernadora, de llamar a un referéndum para llevar a rango constitucional el pago de las pensiones, de aprobarse la enmienda, no es suficiente para evitar el recorte de las pensiones. En su lugar, mantienen es indispensable la aprobación de los dos proyectos sometidos por los grupos de pensionados en la pasada sesión legislativa.

“Luego de evaluar la propuesta presentada por la gobernadora de elevar a rango constitucional el pago de las pensiones, nos preocupa que dicha medida no evita el recorte de nuestras pensiones durante la quiebra en el Tribunal Federal. La experiencia de otras jurisdicciones nos enseña que la protección constitucional no es suficiente. Durante los pasados meses trabajamos muy de cerca con la Representante Lour-

des Ramos para presentar una solución legislativa que protegiera nuestras pensiones. La propuesta contenida en la Ley para un Retiro Digno (PC 2434), se diseñó al amparo de lo que PROMESA dispone para evitar el recorte de las pensiones y estabilizar los tres principales sistemas de retiro para el presente y el futuro”, expresó Pedro Pastrana, pensionado del Comité de Pensionados de la Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico en comunicación escrita.

Los portavoces presentes expresaron que han enviado solicitud de reunión al presidente del Senado, Thomas Rivera Schatz, quien ha indicado que aunque la medida fue aprobada en ambos cuerpos tiene diferencias con unas secciones de la ley. “El 2 de julio, sobre 15 organizaciones y sindicatos solicitamos una reunión a Rivera Schatz mediante carta, con el propósito de atender las diferencias sobre la medida y estamos convencidos que podemos llegar a un acuerdo con el señor Presidente con el propósito de lograr la aprobación de las medidas”, manifestó Eladio Neris, presidente de la Asociación de Veteranos de la Policía.

“La gobernadora expresó su apoyo a la Ley por Un Retiro Digno en su mensaje de estado del 18 de junio y hoy estamos enviando una carta solicitando que enmiende la convocatoria para la sesión extraordinaria para incluir ambas medidas. Hacemos un llamado a la gobernadora a que ahora mismo lo que

verdaderamente hace justicia a los pensionados y pensionadas es que incluya estas propuestas de legislación que fueron sometidas por las mismas organizaciones de pensionados que llevamos meses trabajando para evitar el recorte de las pensiones durante la quiebra. Como han expresado un sinnúmero de constitucionalistas, esta enmienda a la Constitución no es suficiente para proteger las pensiones presentes y futuras durante la quiebra y frente a PROMESA. Para qué gastar 3.5 millones en un referéndum cuando ya tenemos la mejor solución para evitar el recorte de las pensiones. La solución es la Ley Para Un Retiro Digno y no dejaremos que esta legislación, que fue aprobada por ambas cámaras, sea intercambiada por medidas con mucho brillo pero poca efectividad”, añadió María Teresa Rodríguez, pensionada y portavoz de la campaña Construyamos otro Acuerdo.

Sobre las pensiones de los trabajadores de la UPR, Javier Córdova de la APPU indicó que la propuesta de enmienda a la constitución no garantiza que el Sistema de Retiro de la UPR no sea alterado como intenta hacer la Junta de Control Fiscal, por eso también solicitamos que se incluya el Proyecto de la Cámara 2572 porque dispone claramente se mantenga el Plan de Retiro de Beneficios Definidos vigente, detener el aumento de edad para jubilarse y detener cualquier intención de congelar las aportaciones de los empleados al Fideicomiso de Retiro de la UPR.”

“No nos pueden mandar para las casas”, dice oficial de custodia de cárcel federal de Guaynabo Por ALEX FERNÁNDEZ RIVAS CyberNews

U

n oficial de custodia del Centro de Detención Metropolitano (MDC) en Guaynabo- cuya identidad se mantendrá anónima- rechazó el jueves que se haya puesto en cuarentena a los empleados, como consecuencia de los 12 detenidos con COVID-19 que se encuentran en las facilidades.

“Ninguno de nosotros estamos en cuarentena. A nosotros, por el mero hecho de estar en contacto con uno de esos presos, no nos mandan para la casa, porque no se puede”, dijo el oficial de custodia en entrevista con CyberNews.

Explicó que en el caso de los oficiales de custodia, como el de los enfermeros que laboran en el MDC se mantienen trabajando para atender las necesidades de los detenidos.

No obstante, mencionó que la administración del MDC ha sido rigurosa con el protocolo y ha mitigado las probabilidades de contagio.

“Nosotros no podemos entrar si no tenemos más-

caras. Nos han dado el equipo, las máscaras y el ‘hand sanitizer’. Todo se limpia constantemente. Los presos también tienen máscaras y constantemente se le dan máscaras. Cuando ellos salen de sus celdas, en su tiempo de recreación, tienen que estar con las máscaras puestas y seguir el protocolo”, sostuvo.

“Hay una unidad totalmente preparada para que todo preso que llega nuevo, tenga el virus o no, tiene que estar en cuarentena”, añadió.

En cuanto a empleados, expuso que hay personal suficiente para atender la situación. A su entender, hasta el momento no se han reportado contagios de preso a preso.

Finalmente, el oficial de custodia hizo un reclamo al gobierno de Puerto Rico, en cuanto a los incentivos que se le otorgaron a los primeros respondedores al declararse la pandemia del COVID-19.

“Nosotros pagamos planillas federales y estatales y no nos incluyeron en los incentivos que dio el gobierno estatal. Nosotros somos oficiales de primera respuesta (First Responders), tenemos personas contagiadas en la institución y a nosotros nunca se nos

diseñó un sistema para reclamar esas ayudas y entendemos que cualificamos”.

En la página del Negociado Federal de Prisiones se informa que hay 10 detenidos con resultado positivo a COVID-19. Estos 10 confinados forman parte de un grupo de 40 que llegó a Puerto Rico recientemente a pesar de las objeciones de los funcionarios de la Isla.

Además, el miércoles ingresaron a otras 8 personas, de las cuales dos arrojaron resultado positivo, lo que eleva la cifra a 12 detenidos con COVID-19.

20

July 24-26, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Clint Eastwood sues, says he has nothing to do with CBD products

By SARAH BAHR

C

lint Eastwood is not selling CBD products.

The Academy Award-winning actor, producer and director, 90, filed two lawsuits Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles against three CBD manufacturers and marketers that had posted online articles falsely claiming that he endorsed CBD products and 10 online retailers whom he alleged had manipulated search results to make it look as if he had done so. He is seeking millions of dollars in damages and a court order that the companies be forced to give up their profits.

“Mr. Eastwood has no connection of any kind whatsoever to any CBD products and never gave such an interview,” the court documents say. Cannabidiol, or CBD, comes from the Cannabis sativa plant.

The first lawsuit, claiming defamation, targets three CBD companies — Sera Labs Inc., Greendios and For Our Vets LLC — that produced fake news stories claim-

ing that Eastwood endorsed their products and that he was leaving filmmaking to focus on the CBD business. The second suit argues that 10 companies and individuals are using programming code to insert Eastwood’s name into online search results for CBD products, misleading consumers into thinking the filmmaker is manufacturing or endorsing them.

Eastwood’s lawyer, Jordan Susman, said that he believed that the first articles appeared last year and that they are still being posted. According to the first suit, the three companies sent spam emails with the subject line “Clint Eastwood Exposes Shocking Secret Today.” The body of the messages contained a fake interview with an outlet meant to look like the “Today” show, the lawsuit said, and had Eastwood claiming to endorse CBD products. The story included a photo of Eastwood from an actual appearance on the “Today” show, as well as links to buy items from a line of supposed Clint Eastwood CBD products, the suit said.

The companies that sent the emails

The actor-director in 2013. Articles posted online include fake endorsements from him.

were not able to be reached for comment.

Celebrities like Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey and former President George W. Bush have also been the target of false product endorsement claims by ingestible health supplement companies in recent years. Hanks shared an image on Instagram earlier this year of an ad that claimed that he endorsed a CBD product made by CannaPro. The actor called it an “intentional hoax.”

“I’ve never said this and would never make such an endorsement,” Hanks wrote.

“Come on, man!”

Eastwood’s lengthy Hollywood career ranges from starring in tough-guy roles (“Dirty Harry”) to directing dramas like the best picture winner “Million Dollar Baby” (2004). He last directed “Richard Jewell” (2019), which attracted a storm of media attention for showing journalist Kathy Scruggs trading sex for a scoop.

Eastwood has no opinion on CBD products or the legitimate CBD industry, his representative, Michael Sitrick, said.

‘Amulet’ review: A man in dark times and deep trouble

By MANOHLA DARGIS

W

hen Tomaz digs a small figurine out of the rich, dark earth in “Amulet,” he has no sense of the trouble it will bring. Students of the cinematic supernatural will know better, given the fantastic objects scattered throughout the horror genre, with its demonic dolls, cursed videotapes and enchanted fetishes.

The object here is worn and pale as bone, with breasts and a shell-like disc fanning above its head like a mantilla.

Tomaz (Alec Secareanu) enters, wreathed in mystery and isolated in deep woods. The storybook setting makes a curious fit with his rifle, uniform and the roadblock he guards (sometimes while reading Hannah Arendt’s “On Violence”).

My, what big eyes and brain you have, viewers may think, as they wonder where he is and what he’s doing there. Writerdirector Romola Garai, though, keeps his background and the larger picture blurred,

allowing your imagination to roam free as the trees rustle and the camera glides. That he’s a soldier without an obvious cause or country only adds to the spooky, anxious vibe.

A malevolent fairy tale about men and women, violence and power (and things that go eek in the night), “Amulet” frays your nerves beautifully for its first creepy hour. Working with a crack team both in front of the camera and behind it, Garai teases the story slowly, sprinkling in sharp, resonant details amid wails from a banshee chorus (courtesy of composer Sarah Angliss). When Tomaz takes out a straight razor to shave, the moment sets off Chekhovian-Hitchcockian alarms in one wittily economic image. The brandished blade also suggests, simply by association, that Tomaz has something to do with the abrupt edits and destabilizing narrative fragmentation.

The plot thickens after Tomaz unearths the figurine, which is followed by

a shot of him gasping awake as if from a nightmare. Now bearded and living in London, he seems to be a stray, though it’s initially unclear whether this is the present or another period. He flops at what looks like a squat, works in construction and seems wholly adrift, a meander that ends when he meets a solicitous nun, Sister Claire (Imelda Staunton, in a brief, delicious turn). In short order, she delivers him to one of those creaking, squeaking houses with peeling walls and alarming stains, an apparent damsel in distress, Magda (Carla Juri), and a shrieking enigma inhabiting the top floor.

As Tomaz settles into his odd new digs, Garai regularly cuts to his time in the woods. There, after digging up the amulet, he meets a stranger (Angeliki Papoulia), who takes refuge with him, an arrangement that seems to mirror his relationship with Magda. Garai shifts back and forth smoothly between these parallel stories, giving each a distinct look and

uneasy tone. She has invoked touchstones like Jennifer Kent’s claustrophobic freakout “The Babadook,” and, by extension, she’s also indebted to Roman Polanski and the diabolical Davids, Lynch and Cronenberg.

(She also tosses in an albino critter that seems to have flown out of Roberto Bolaño’s novel “Amulet.”)

This is Garai’s feature directing debut, and it is as satisfying as it is promising, despite an unfortunate wind down. She has a great eye — and a real feel for the power of silence and visual textures — but she stumbles when she explains too much. An actress-turned-filmmaker whose credits include “Atonement,” Garai is clearly invested in creating juicy, complex gender roles.

But her try at a gynocentric mythology falls lamentably short (and turns silly), even if her explorations of body horror and pulsating red walls have their perverse pleasures.

Like a lot of filmmakers, she works too hard to make sense of a mystery that would be better left to fester and throb.

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

21

At this museum, social distancing devices vibrate. So does the art. in Brooklyn, New York, talked about his 2020 piece “Untitled (Delta, Norwegian, COPA, Lufthansa, Thomas Cook Airlines, Hawaiian and Iberia),” which is an abstract assemblage of stretched airline blankets that looks from afar like a painting. He made it just before the pandemic hit.

“I buy them on eBay, or I steal them when I travel — or when I used to travel,” Teoldi said. I think his phrasing made us both a little wistful.

His commissioned works, a series of four reliefs called “Untitled (hug),” gets at an essential feature of the pandemic: the lack of physical intimacy. The four panels, cast in cement after starting out as a paper collage, all show people hugging.

The other artists in “Homemade” are Artwork at Magazzino Italian Art in the “Homemade” exhibit, which features Italian artists working in isolation in the U.S.

By TED LOOS

I

’ve been cheating, and it’s likely you have been, too: Six feet apart is a lot farther away than most people seem to hope it is.

I know this because at the recent reopening of Magazzino Italian Art, the museum of postwar and contemporary work here in the Hudson Valley, I wore a piece of socialdistancing hardware called an EGOpro Active Tag. It was attached to a lanyard around my neck.

The tag is required for all visitors, and it’s programmed to vibrate for a few seconds every time the wearer is closer than 6 feet to a tag worn by another person.

Mine buzzed a lot.

I misjudged my spacing quite a few times, and the incessant buzzing was annoying. But that’s the point, of course. It made me retreat, and quickly.

“The technology makes a lot of sense to me,” said Harry Wilks of Plattekill, New York, one of the visitors I encountered. “It would make even more sense on the weekend, when it’s more crowded.”

My interviews weren’t exactly helping the situation. Wilks added, “Mine didn’t go off until you came up to me to talk.”

Magazzino, founded in 2017 by collectors Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu, is the first museum in the United States to use the technology.

That Magazzino takes pandemic safety

seriously is clear from the beginning of a visit there. Temperature checks are now required for all visitors, administered in a little tent outside the entrance. “Nobody’s fussing about it so far,” said Jay Nicholas, a visitor services assistant, who took mine. Masks are required, too.

The museum, which was closed for four months, is admitting 10 people per halfhour who have reservations, and it assumes a 90-minute visit. It could have more visitors, according to state and county guidelines, but it decided to start cautiously.

“We wanted to find a way to have a new normal,” said Vittorio Calabrese, Magazzino’s director. “Art does not stop.”

It was roomy and very quiet inside the high-ceilinged white galleries, arranged in a ring. The 20,000-square-foot building was designed by Spanish architect Miguel Quismondo. In galleries four and five, of eight, there are several artworks that incorporate neon, and I could distinctly hear the neon humming.

Highlights from the collection assembled by Olnick and Spanu fill most of the galleries, part of an ongoing exhibition called “Arte Povera,” dedicated to the Italian movement of the same name from the 1960s and ’70s, when pioneering Italian artists voiced their dissent about the direction of society.

Works by the movement’s greatest names are on display, including Alighiero Boetti, Giuseppe Penone, Jannis Kounellis, Luciano Fabro, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz and

Michelangelo Pistoletto.

Now, there’s also a special show, “Homemade,” in the last gallery, featuring work made by eight Italian artists quarantined in New York during the pandemic. It began as an online and Instagram invitational and morphed into a real exhibition.

“Magazzino wanted to support artists making new work during this time,” Calabrese said.

He added, “Some of these artists had to deal with a lot of anxiety and stress. And the common sentiment was that this kept them going. We called our regular video meetings ‘Zoom apperitvi.’ ” One of the artists in “Homemade,” Alessandro Teoldi, was on-site when I visited. To keep our buzzers calm, we circled each other at a remove as we chatted.

Teoldi, who hails from Milan and lives

Visitors to Magazzino Italian Art are required to wear these social distancing devices, which buzz when you are too close to another person

A visitor’s temperature is checked at the reopened Magazzino Italian Art in Cold Spring, N.Y., July 11, 2020.

Andrea Mastrovito, Beatrice Scaccia, Danilo Correale, Davide Balliano, Francesco Simeti, Luisa Rabbia and Maria D. Rapicavoli.

The EGOpro Active Tag that was making my viewing of their works extra safe is an adaptation of technology that has been around for a while, using ultrawideband radio waves.

The tags were developed by an Italian company, Advanced Microwave Engineering, which then partnered with a U.S. company, Advanced Industrial Marketing, nicely mirroring the married union of the Sardinia-born Spanu and Olnick, who is from New York City.

The technology is currently in use at the Duomo in Florence, Italy, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

“Proximity detection was developed to keep people away from machines, for safety,” Rob Hruskoci, founder of Advanced Industrial Marketing in Indianapolis, told me. “Until March, no one cared about keeping people away from other people.”

Hruskoci said that two other U.S. museums had purchased the system.

22

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

From good wine, a direct path to the wonders of nature

For this city dweller, wine provided the opening to a greater understanding of food and agriculture, and their precarious balance.

By ELAINE GLUSAC

L

ast year a friend asked me a question I had never considered before: Over the many years I had been writing about wine, what was the greatest thing this job had given me?

I answered almost reflexively. As a New Yorker who has spent most of my life living in Manhattan, wine had provided me a connection to nature that I most likely would never have experienced otherwise.

I’ve thought about this a lot over the last few weeks, as the pandemic has now been with us for more than four months.

Most of that time, I’ve been in my apartment, far away from vineyards, much less anything that might reasonably be construed as wild and natural, like a forest or ocean. I feel the difference, physically and emotionally.

My friend professed surprise at my answer. He had assumed that I would cite the wonderful, otherwise inaccessible wines I had been able to drink, or maybe the many intriguing personalities in the wine world with whom I’ve spent time.

These have been wonderful benefits as well. If I were not representing readers of The New York Times, I would never

have had an opportunity to drink, say, great old wine made from grapes harvested in 1846, or to try 16 vintages of Château Lafite-Rothschild going all the way back to 1868.

I also know that my understanding of wine would not be nearly as rich without having had the opportunity to spend time with people as diverse as Jean-François Fillastre, a little-known Bordeaux vigneron; Paul Draper, the longtime guiding force of Ridge Vineyards; Bartolo Mascarello, a tireless defender of ancestral Barolo practices; María José López de Heredia, an equally stalwart proponent of traditional Rioja, and so many others.

But nothing in wine has affected me so profoundly as observing the intimate relationship that enlightened farmers have with the land that they tend. What I’ve learned from them has shaped my outlook in many important facets of my life, from the foods and wines I buy to the clothes I wear to how I think about climate change and political issues.

It’s also made clear to me how little we know about the natural world, particularly the complex and intricate links that govern the well-being of a healthy ecosystem, from the network of microbial life in the soil to the diversity of plant life to the importance of animal life all

the way up to the apex predator.

Taking away any one link in this complicated chain can have devastating consequences — to the soil, the air or even the flavor of the wine in your glass.

Even something as seemingly mundane as putting up a fence, which might impede animal pathways or divert the natural flow of water, can have ripple effects far beyond anything intended.

I would not have grasped any of these connections had I not spent time walking the land with people like Deirdre Heekin of La Garagista in Vermont; Mimi Casteel of Hope Well in Oregon; Andy Brennan, who makes ciders in the Catskills; Steve Matthiasson in Napa Valley or Arianna Occhipinti in the Vittoria region of Sicily.

Throughout the 20th century, the trend in agriculture — what we now call conventional agriculture — was isolation. Vast tracts of corn, soybeans, wheat and even grapes replaced the subsistence farms where a mixture of vegetables, fruits, grains and animals coexisted.

Such polycultures were threaded through with wild areas, where beneficial insects, birds and other animals lived.

This, theoretically at least, fostered a healthy biological diversity in which pests and diseases were kept in check naturally rather than through artificial means.

The isolated monocultures that have come to dominate modern agriculture lack the sort of symbiotic relationships between species that keep ecosystems healthy. These man-made constructs have disrupted the natural order, which must be replaced with insecticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers and other modern crutches. A sturdy environment becomes fragile and must be continually propped up.

The effect of modern agriculture is felt throughout the food chain. Millions of animals grow in an unhealthy industrial environment and must be preemptively plied with antibiotics and other drugs to replace natural defenses.

Contemporary orchards are another example, as Brennan, the cider maker, detailed in his 2019 book, “Uncultivated: Wild Apples, Real Cider and the Complicated Art of Making a Living.” In an effort to maximize yields and minimize labor,

humans have turned to dwarf trees and clonal rootstocks that cannot even stand up on their own, and survive only with intensive chemical spraying.

When you begin to examine the sources of your foods and wines, and you become aware of the compromises made almost entirely for commercial purposes, you begin to analyze more closely what exactly is in your glass and on your plate.

Many people understand with one bite the difference between a commercial tomato and one grown locally and sold at a farmers market. We can easily taste the depth of flavor in a farm egg that is absent from commercial supermarket eggs. Why would anybody doubt that a wine produced carefully from conscientiously grown grapes would be superior to bottles of processed wine made from industrially farmed grapes?

If you’ve walked a chemically farmed vineyard, no matter how neatly it is manicured or how pretty the bordering roses might be, you cannot help but be horrified by the gray, lifeless soil underfoot. Contrast that with the bountiful vineyards of Casteel or Heekin, which are part of healthy ecosystems.

They appeal to all the senses, from the sounds and sights of birds and insects to the smell of life to the soft give of the soil beneath your feet. You can certainly taste that sort of vineyard in the wine.

It is easy to write about wine without any sort of awareness of nature. You can sit at a table tasting hundreds of wines, without a thought to where they came from, beyond a bottle.

Many people have argued that lots of great wines have been made from chemically farmed grapes, and that is true. But at what cost? And how much better might those wines have been if the source material had more depth, purity and complexity?

A connection with nature fosters idealism, romance and hope. It puts many people in touch with God, if your mind goes that way. In the interconnectedness of all things including a glass of wine, one can see either the astounding beauty of nature or the hand of the creator.

When you lose that connection to nature, all you see is a glass.

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

23

The link between Parkinson’s disease and toxic chemicals

By JANE E. BRODY

M

ichael Richard Clifford, a 66-year-old retired astronaut living in Cary, North Carolina, learned before his third spaceflight that he had Parkinson’s disease. He was only 44 and in excellent health at the time, and he had no family history of this disabling neurological disorder.

What he did have was years of exposure to numerous toxic chemicals, several of which have since been shown in animal studies to cause the kind of brain damage and symptoms that afflict people with Parkinson’s.

As a youngster, Clifford said, he worked in a gas station using degreasers to clean car engines. He also worked on a farm where he used pesticides and in fields where DDT was sprayed. Then, as an aviator, he cleaned engines readying them for test flights. But at none of these jobs was he protected from exposure to hazardous chemicals that are readily inhaled or absorbed through the skin.

Now Clifford, a lifelong nonsmoker, believes that his close contact with such substances explains why he developed Parkinson’s disease at such a young age. Several of the chemicals have strong links to Parkinson’s, and a growing body of evidence suggests that exposure to them may account for the great rise in the diagnosis of Parkinson’s in recent decades.

To be sure, the medical literature is replete with associations between people’s habits and exposures and their subsequent risk of developing various ailments, from allergies to heart disease and cancer. Such linkages do not — and cannot by themselves — prove cause and effect.

But sometimes the links are so strong and the evidence so compelling that there can be little doubt that one causes the other.

The link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer is a classic example. Despite tobacco industry claims that there was no definitive proof, the accumulation of evidence, both experimental and epidemiological, eventually made it impossible to deny that years of smoking can cause cancer even long after a person has quit.

The criteria that supported a cause-and-effect relationship between smoking and lung cancer included strength and consistency of the association; whether the link made biological sense; whether it applied especially or specifically to those exposed to the putative agent; and whether it was supported by experimental evidence.

Likewise, based on extensive evidence presented by experts in a new book, “Ending Parkinson’s Disease,” it seems shortsighted to deny a causative link between some cases of Parkinson’s disease and prior exposure to various toxic chemicals.

The book was written by Dr. Ray Dorsey, neurologist at the University of Rochester; Todd Sherer, neuroscientist at the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research; Dr. Michael S. Okun, neurologist at the University of Florida; and Dr. Bastiaan R. Bloem, neurologist at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands.

A new book calls the increasing prominence of Parkinson’s “a man-made pandemic.” Its prevalence has closely tracked the growth of industrialization and has increased dramatically with the use of pesticides, industrial solvents and degreasing agents in countries throughout the world.

The authors called the increasing prominence of Parkinson’s “a man-made pandemic.” Its prevalence has closely tracked the growth of industrialization and has increased sharply with the use of pesticides, industrial solvents and degreasing agents in countries throughout the world.

As with smoking, which doesn’t cause cancer in all smokers, most cases of Parkinson’s are likely to reflect an interaction between environmental exposures and genetic predisposition. But also as with cancer and smoking, criteria that strongly suggest a cause-and-effect relationship apply as well to chemical exposure and the development of Parkinson’s. In fact, a study in California by Dr. Caroline Tanner and Dr. William Langston of more than 17,000 twin brothers, both fraternal and identical, suggested that environmental factors outranked genetics as a cause of Parkinson’s.

Thirty years ago, researchers at Emory University showed that rats developed classic features of Parkinson’s when given rotenone, then a popular household insecticide that is still used by fisheries to eliminate invasive species.

When the researchers examined the rats’ brains, they found a loss of nerve cells that produce dopamine, the same damage that afflicts people with Parkinson’s.

Langston and Tanner later showed that farmers who used rotenone and paraquat, among other pesticides, were

more than twice as likely to develop Parkinson’s as those who did not use these chemicals. In laboratory studies, the Parkinson-associated chemicals have been shown to injure nerve cells.

Although Parkinson’s is most likely to afflict older people, its rise has far exceeded the aging of the population.

In just 25 years, from 1990 to 2015, the number of people afflicted globally more than doubled, to 6.3 million from 2.6 million, and is projected to reach 12.9 million by 2040.

The disease is progressive, characterized by tremors, stiffness, slow movements, difficulty walking and balance problems. It can also cause loss of smell, constipation, sleep disorders and depression. While there are medications that can alleviate symptoms, there is as yet no cure. People can live with worsening symptoms for decades, resulting in a huge burden on caregivers.

And the economic burden of Parkinson’s is huge, said Tanner, now a neurologist and environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2017, it resulted in about $25 billion in direct medical costs and $26 billion more in indirect costs, she said.

Regular exercise, a healthy diet and efforts to prevent exposure to toxic chemicals can reduce the risk of Parkinson’s, even in people who must work with dangerous substances, Tanner said.

24

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

Scientists narrow their predictions for global warming

With Story: BC-GLOBAL-TEMPERATURES-NYT How much, exactly, will greenhouse gases heat the planet? A team of researchers has sharply narrowed the range of temperatures, tightening it to between 2.6 and 4.1 degrees Celsius.

-- 4.0 x 2.5 -- cat=i

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

H

ow much, exactly, will greenhouse gases heat the planet?

For more than 40 years, scientists have expressed the answer as a range of possible temperature increases, between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit), that will result from carbon dioxide levels doubling from preindustrial times. Now, a team of researchers has sharply narrowed the range of temperatures, tightening it to between 2.6 and 4.1 degrees Celsius.

Steven Sherwood, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and an author of the new report, said that the group’s research suggested that these temperature shifts, which are referred to as “climate sensitivity” because they reflect how sensitive the planet is to rising carbon dioxide levels, are now unlikely below the low end of the range. The research also suggests that the “alarmingly high sensitivities” of 5 degrees Celsius or higher are less likely, although they are “not impossible,” Sherwood said.

What remains, however, is still an array of effects that mean worldwide disaster if emissions are not sharply reduced in coming years.

Masahiro Watanabe, a professor in the atmosphere and ocean research institute at the University of Tokyo and an author of the report, said that determining an accurate range of temperatures was critically important for international efforts to address global warming, like the Paris climate agreement, and for mitigating the effects of climate change.

“Narrowing the uncertainty is relevant not only for climate science but also for society that is responsible for solid decision making,” he said.

The new paper, published Wednesday in the journal Reviews of Geophysics, narrowed the range of temperatures considerably and shifted it toward warmer outcomes. The researchers determined that there was less than a 5% chance of a temperature shift below 2 degrees, but a 6% to 18% chance of a higher temperature change than 4.5 degrees.

If the effects of carbon dioxide are at the low end of the range or even below it, then climate change will be affected less by emissions and the planet will warm more slowly. If the Earth’s climate is more highly sensitive to carbon dioxide levels, then the expected results are not only more imminent but also more catastrophic.

The scientists noted that the Earth’s

temperature is already about 1.2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, and that, if current emissions trends continue, the doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide could happen well before the end of this century.

Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, who was not an author of the report but who was one of its earlier outside reviewers, called the paper “a real tour de force,” adding that “this is probably the most important paper I’ve read in years.”

For many years, those who wished to underplay the threat of climate change have tried to say that the sensitivity is low, and so rising greenhouse gases would have little effect. And some recent climate models have suggested warming could be frighteningly worse.

The value of the paper, Dessler said, lies in the way that it narrows the probable range of temperatures the world can expect.

“There were a number of people who were arguing the climate sensitivity was much lower, and a smaller number claiming it was much higher,” he said, “and I think the case for either of those positions is a lot weaker now that this paper has been published.”

That means that those who undercut the seriousness of climate change and the need for action have a much harder case to make now, Dessler said.

“It would be great if the skeptics were right,” he said. “But it’s pretty clear that the data don’t support that contention.”

The paper, produced under an international science organization, the World Climate Research Program, brought together three broad fields of climate evidence: temperature records since the industrial revolution, records of prehistoric temperatures preserved in things like sediment samples and tree rings, as well as satellite observations and computer models of the climate system. None alone could determine the range, but the researchers found ways mathematically to reconcile the three disciplines to reach their conclusions.

“This paper is really the first to try and include all of those disparate sources of observational evidence in a coherent package that actually makes sense,” said Gavin A. Schmidt, director of the NASA

Goddard Institute for Space Studies and an author of the paper.

Another author on the paper, Gabriele Hegerl, a professor of climate system science at the University of Edinburgh, said that the way the threads of research came together was surprising.

“We don’t expect these three lines of evidence to agree completely,” she said, but hoped they would “overlap.” And they did, she said, so “our research is more robust than I initially expected.”

Not everyone is prepared to accept the new results. Nicholas Lewis, an independent scientist who has been critical of aspects of mainstream climate research and who has found flaws in the work of others that led to the retraction last year of a major study on ocean warming, questioned the new paper’s reliance on computer models to interpret the lines of evidence, as well as the group’s definition of climate sensitivity itself. He also suggested that the paper ignored some possible complications from changes in clouds and convection.

Schmidt said that the new paper made all of the data and methodology available.

“This is a real challenge to people who think the experts are wrong to go in, change the assumptions, run the code and show us their results,” he said.

Some degree of uncertainty about planetary warming is inevitable, said Zeke Hausfather, a scientist with The Breakthrough Institute and an author of the paper. But the current range is “not a good amount of warming at all,” he said, noting that eliminating the extremes still leaves a middle range that means climate disaster.

“You don’t need 5 degrees of warming to justify climate action,” he said.

“Three degrees is plenty bad.”

William Collins, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who was not involved with the study, praised the effort to tie together so much research into a single paper but said that further advances in computing and data gathering would continue to drive the quest for answers.

He compared climate sensitivity research to climbing Mount Everest and said: “This is an extremely important base camp. We are not at the pinnacle yet.”

24 NIEVES LÓPEZ, JUAN CARLOS ORTIZ NIEVES, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO CARLOS ABRAHAM DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUORTIZ NIEVES, JOSÉ NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CARLOS ORTIZ NIEVES SALA DE TOA ALTA. Y POR LA SUCESIÓN DE COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CRÉDITO DR. JOSÉ ANÍBAL NIEVES LÓPEZ COMPUESTA MANUEL ZENO GANDÍA POR JOSÉ ANÍBAL Demandante vs.

NIEVES MONSERRATE, ANGÉLICA LYDIA IVELISSE PADILLA ROBLES NIEVES MONSERRATE, Demandada SOCORRO IVELISSE CIVIL NUM.: FA2019CV01426.

SALA: 500. SOBRE: COBRO MONSERRATE ANSELMI, DE DINERO (REGLA 60). EMFERNANDO ABRAHAM PLAZAMIENTO POR EDICNIEVES MONSERRATE, TO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE ABRAHAM NIEVES AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE COMPANY, INC., DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO Y BIENES NIEVES LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS. INCORPORADO, A: SRA. ANGÉLICA Demandados PADILLA ROBLES CIVIL NÚM.: GM2020cv00174 RR 3 BOX 10446-4 (303). SOBRE: COBRO DE TOA ALTA, PUERTO RICO DINERO; EJECUCIÓN DE HI00953-8032 POTECA Y EJECUCIÓN DE LEGAL NOTICE

o sea, la parte demandada arriba mencionada .

POR LA PRESENTE se le em-

plaza y requiere para que notifique a la: LCDA. ANA M. CAMPOS GAVITO RUA 7710 EDIF. MANUEL ZENO GANDIA, 353 AVE. DOMENECH, SUITE 302 SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO 00918 TEL . & FAX: (787)751·5733 EMAIL: anamcampos1@yahoo.com

Derkes 4, Guayama, Puerto Rico 00784;

2 Calle Derkes Esq.

Calimano, Guayama, Puerto Rico 0074:

Urb. La Margarita II, 18 Calle F, Salinas,

Puerto Rico 00751;

Urb. La Vista, G2 Via Cordi-

lleras, San Juan Puerto Rico 00924-4473;

1 Raymond St. Apt. lE, Aliston, MA 02134-1100;

5700 Highlands Plaza DR, Apt. 20, St. Louis, MO 63 110-1324;

8 The Boulevard,

Saint Louis Unit 27,

St. Louis, MO 63117-1123; P.O. Box 1941, Guayama, Puerto Rico 00785-1941;

P.O. Box 2580, Guayama, Puerto Rico 00785;

Por la presente se le notifica

que se ha radicado en su contra una Demanda de Cobro Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca.

MOBILIARIO. Se le emplaza y requiere para EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDIC- que notifique a: Ferraiuoli LLC TO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE Looking Forward AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE Lcdo. Luis G. Parrilla Hernández P.O. Box 195168 DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS San Juan, PR 00919-5168 EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIATel.: 787-766-7000 / DO DE PUERTO RICO. Fax: 787-766-7001 A: Myrna Rosario Nieves lparrilla@ferraiuoli.com GRAVAMEN

Abogados de la parte deman-

to, excluyéndose el día del di-

Gutiérrez, Cándida Rosa Nieves López, Carlos Abraham Ortiz Nieves, José Carlos Ortiz Nieves, como miembros de la Sucesión de Abraham Nieves Negrón; Abraham Nieves Company Inc. y Bienes Nieves Incorporado

que en caso de no hacerlo así,

3013 Ave. Alejandrino

13 de julio de 2020. Marissa

rebeldía en contra suya, con-

Puerto Rico 00969-7077;

en la demanda. Extendido bajo

Guayama Puerto Rico 00784;

abogada de la parte demandante cuya dirección es la que

se deja indicada, con copia de su contestación a la demanda

, copia de la cual le es serv ida en este acto, dentro de los Treinta (30) días de haber sido

diligenciado este emplazamienligenciamiento , apercibiéndole

podrá dictarse sentencia en cediendo el remedio solicitado

mi firma y sello del Tribunal, hoy

20 de febrero de 2020.

Lcda. Laura I Santa Sanchez, Secretaria Regional. Mircienid

Fontianbleu Plaza,

Apt. 2501, Guaynabo,

Villa Rosa II, 4 Calle H,

Urb. Villa Rosa II, B-26 Calle C, Guayama, Puerto Rico 00785;

Urb. Villa Rosa II, B-26 Calle

Gonzalez Torres, Sec Auxiliar.

C, Guayama, Puerto Rico

LEGAL NOTICE

Villa Rosa I, A3 Calle 7,

00784;

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO

Guayama, Puerto Rico

NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA

Villa Rosa 1, A2 Calle 7,

DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU-

00784;

CENTRO JUDICIAL DE GUA-

Guayama, Puerto Rico

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO,

Urb. Costa Azul, 24 Calle A,

YAMA SALA SUPERIOR.

Demandante, V.

LA SUCESIÓN ABRAHAM NIEVES NEGRÓN COMPUESTA POR MYRNA ROSARIO NIEVES GUTIÉRREZ, CÁNDIDA ROSA @

00784;

Guayama Puerto Rico 00784; Guayama Pueblo,

2 Calle Derkes Este,

Guayama, Puerto Rico 00784:

Derkes 34, Guayama, Puerto Rico 00784;

I Calle Derkes Sur, Guayama, Puerto Rico 00784;

dante, con copia de respuesta a la Demanda dentro de los

treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto y

radicar el original de dicha contestación en este Tribunal en donde podrá enterarse de su contenido. Si dejare de hacerlo, podrá anotársele la rebeldía.

EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, hoy Guayama,

Rosado Rodriguez, Sec Regional.

LEGAL NOTICE

MENGANO DE TAL como posibles herederos de HÉCTOR LUIS NIEVES CUEVAS; y JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE como posibles herederos de HÉCTOR LUIS NIEVES ÁLAMO,

Looking Forward Lcda. Angélica S. Vázquez Lobada PO Box 195168 San Juan. PR 00919-5168 Tcl.: 787-766-7000 / Fax: 787-766-7001 avazquez@ferraiiioli.com

Abogados de la parte deman-

y radicar el original de dicha

Demándame v.

SUCESIÓN DE HÉCTOR LUIS NIEVES CUEVAS compuesta por SONIA NIEVES ÁLAMO y la SUCESIÓN DE HÉCTOR LUIS NIEVES ÁLAMO compuesta por ADRIANA MARIE NIEVES SUÁREZ y ALBERTO JOSÉ NIEVES SUÁREZ, representado por su madre, JEANNINE SUÁREZ QUIÑONES; FULANO DE TAL y

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

dentro del plazo correspondien- mera Instancia Sala Superior CIVIL NÚM. BY2020CV00929.

te, se tendrá la herencia por de ARECIBO.

vez en un periódico de circulaPor la presente se le notifica registrada y archivada en autos ción general en la Isla de Puerque se ha radicado en su con- donde podrá usted enterarse to Rico, dentro de los 10 días detalladamente de los términos tra una Demanda de Cobro de siguientes a su notificación. Y, Dinero y Ejecución de Hipote- de la misma. Esta notificación siendo o representando usted se publicará una sola vez en ca. Se le emplaza y requiere un periódico de circulación ge- una parte en el procedimiento para que notifique a: Ferraiuoli LLC neral en la Isla de Puerto Rico, sujeta a los términos de la Sen-

NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA treinta (30) días siguientes a SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN la publicación de este edicto

BAUTISTA CAYMAN ASSET COMPANY

The San Juan Daily Star

formed by MARISBEL SÁNCHEZ PIÑEIRO A/K/A aceptada. EXPEDIDO bajo mi BANCO POPULAR DE RO. EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIMARIBEL SÁNCHEZ firma y sello del Tribunal, hoy DOS DE AMERICA EL PREPUERTO RICO PIÑEIRO, CALUIN 15 de julio de 2020. Griselda SIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS Demandante v.

SÁNCHEZ PIÑEIRO, Rodriguez Collado, Secretaria.

UNIDOS. SS. YO, Diamar T. YANITZA SERRANO RAMÓN EDGARDO Fernandez Del Valle, Luz E., Gonzalez Barreto, Secretaria VIRUET POR SI Y EN SÁNCHEZ PIÑEIRO, SubSecretaria. del Tribunal de Primera InstanREPRESENTACION DE cia, Sala de Guaynabo, HAGO Demandados HÉCTOR MANUEL LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL SABER: LEGAL NOT ICE CIVIL NÚM.: SJ2020CV02058 SÁNCHEZ PIÑEIRO, DE GANANCIALES (506). SOBRE: COBRO DE Estado Libre Asociado de PuerA: TRUEBION, LLC, CARLOS EDGARDO DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL COMPUESTA POR ESTA PARTE DEMANDADA, se RAFAEL RIVERA HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIEN- DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de PriY FULANO DE TAL Y le notifica que la parte SÁNCHEZ, CARLOS TO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS mera Instancia Sala Superior OTROS Demandante de epígrafe AUGUSTO RIVERA UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL de MAYAGUEZ. Demandado(a) ha radicado en esta Sala SÁNCHEZ, CARLOS PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTACivil Núm. AR2019CV02110.

COOPERATIVA DE del Tribunal de Primera ERNESTO RIVERA DOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LISobre: COBRO DE DINERO AHORRO Y CREDITO Instancia, una Demanda SÁNCHEZ, AND CARLOS BRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO DE MEDICOS Y OTROS ORDINARIO. NOTIFICACIÓN RICO. SÁNCHEZ MATOS by DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. contra ustedes de çobro PROFESIONALES DE LA de dinero.

A: Sonia Nieves Álamo, himself and as member A. YANITZA SERRANO SALUD (MEDICOOP) Por la presente, SE LE EM- of the ESTATE OF NYDIA Adriana Marie Nieves VIRUET, FULANO DE DEMANDANTE Vs PLAZA para que presente ante Suárez y Alberto PIÑEIRO CARMONA; TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD JAPHET P. el TribunaI su alegación resDefendants.

José Nieves Suárez, DE GANANCIALES GAZTAMBIDE MONTES ponsiva dentro del término de Civil No. 3:20-cv-1062 (GAG). representado este último COMPUESTA POR DEMANDADO TREINTA (30) días a partir de COLLECTION OF MONIES por su madre. Jeannine CIVIL NÚM.: MZ2019CV00194 AMBOS la fecha de la publicación de Suárez Quiñones, como (206). SOBRE: COBRO DE (Nombre de las partes a las que se este EDICTO; notifcando copia AND FORECLOSURE OF miembros de la Sucesión DINERO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE le notifican la sentencia por edicto ) de la misma al abogado de la MORTGAGE. SUMMONS BY PUBLICATION. EL SECRETARIO(A) que susde Héctor Luis Nieves SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. cribe le notifica a usted que el parte Demandante a la siguien- TO: CARLOS AUGUSTO A: JAPHET P. Cuevas.

17 de julio de 2020, este Tri- te direción: RIVERA SÁNCHEZ by Lic. Manuel GAZTAMBIDE MONTES bunal ha dictado Sentencia, 1216 Ave. Americo himself and as member Fernández Mejias, (Nombre de las partes a las que se Miranda. Reparto PO BOX 725, les notifica la sentencia por edicto) Sentencia Parcial o Resolución of the Estate of Nydia Guaynabo, P.R. 00970-0725, Metropolitano.

EL SECRETARIO(A) que sus- en este caso, que ha sido debiPiñeiro Carmona 9935 teléfono 787-462-3502, San Juan. Puerto Rico 00921; cribe le notifica a usted que 14 damente registrada y archivada correo electrónico Warm Stove Street Urb. Reparto Metropolitano de abril de 2020, este Tribunal en autos donde podrá usted en- manueIqabrielfernandez@gmail.com Thonotosassa, FL 33592 terarse detalladamente de los Usted deberá presentar su aleSolar Núm. 1684. Bloque ha dictado Sentencia, SentenThe plaintiff, Abbey Cayman M-35, San Juan. Puerto cia Parcial o Resolución en este términos de la misma. Esta no- gación responsiva a través del Asset Company (“Abbey”) has tificación se publicará una sola Sistema Unificado de Manejo y caso, que ha sido debidamente Rico 00921. filed proceedings for the fore-

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO dante, con copia de respuesta DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- a la Demanda dentro de los

JUAN.

Friday, July 24, 2020

contestación en este Tribunal en donde podrá enterarse

de su contenido. Si dejare de hacerlo, podrá anotársele la

rebeldía. Se le apercibe a la

parte que. conforme al Art. 959 del Código Civil, 3 1 L.P.R.A. § 2787, los codemandados antes

mencionados, miembros de la

Sucesión Héctor Luis Nieves

Cuevas, tienen un termino de

treinta (30) días para informarle

al Tribunal si aceptan o repudian la herencia del causante.

En caso de que usted no manifieste su declaración sobre la aceptación de la herencia

(787) 743-3346

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINE-

Administración de Casos (SUMAC) aI cual puede acceder

utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudiicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio,

closure of mortgage executed by the Defendant on a property

situated at: Lot of land marked with number 221 of the Rural

Community of Sabana Seca

Ward, of the municipality of Toa en cuyo caso deberá presentar Baja, Puerto with a capacity of tencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resu alegación responsiva en la dentro de los 10 días siguientes 793.96 square meters recora su notificación. Y, siendo o solución, de la cual puede es- secreta la del tribunal. Si usted ded in the Registry of Property tablecerse recurso de revisión deja de presentar su alegación representado usted una parte of Bayamon, Second Section, en el procedimiento sujeta a o apelación dentro del término responsiva dentro del referido at page 180 of volume 369 of de 30 días contados a partir término, el tribunal podrá diclos términos de la Sentencia, Toa Baja, Registry of Property Sentencia Parcial o Resolu- de la publicación por edicto de tar sentencia en rebeldía en su of Bayamon, Second Section, esta notificación, dirijo a usted contra y conceder el remedio ción, de la cual puede estaproperty number 21,756. The blecerse recurso de revisión o esta notificación que se consi- solicitado en la demanda, o property is subject to a mortderará hecha en la fecha de la cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en apelación dentro del término gage which secures payment de 30 días contados a partir publicación de este edicto. Co- el ejercicio de su sana discreof the mortgage loan and the pia de esta notificación ha sido ción, Io entiende procedente. de la publicación por edicto de mortgage note payable to esta notificación, dirijo a usted archivada en los autos de este Se expide el presente Edicto Abbey Cayman Asset Comcaso, con fecha de 17 de julio bajo mi firma y el sello del Triesta notificación que se conpany, which mortgage appear siderará hecha en la fecha de de 2020. En ARECIBO, Puerto bunal, hoy día 22 de mayo de recorded in the Registry of Rico, el 17 de julio de 2020.

2020, en Guaynabo, Puerto la publicación de este edicto.

Property of Bayamon, Second Copia de esta notificación ha VIVIAN Y. FRESSE GONZA- Rico. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA Section, at page 85 of voluLEZ, Secretaria.

F/BRUNILDA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regiosido archivada en los autos de me 547 of Toa Baja, Registry este caso, con fecha de 20 de HERNANDEZ MENDEZ, Sec nal. Diamar T. Gonzalez Barreof Property of Bayamon, SeAuxiliar. to, Sec del Tribunal. julio de 2020. En MAYAGUEZ, cond Section, property number Puerto Rico, el 20 de julio de 21,756. As of December 31, LEGAL NOTICE LEGAL NOTICE 2020. LCDA. NORMA G SAN2019, the defendant(s) owe(s) TANA IRIZARRY, Secretaria. f/ ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO United States District Court for plaintiff the following amounts: REBECA MEDINA FIGUEROA, DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- the District of Puerto Rico. (a) $81,008.05 in principal; acSecretaria(a) Auxiliar.

NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA FORM H ABBEY CAYMAN crued interests in the amount SALA DE GUAYNABO. ASSET COMPANY; of $45,236.08 which continues LEGAL NOTICE DEL SOL FOODS, LLC Plaintiff, v. to accrue, even post-judgment Estado Libre Asociado de PuerDemandantes vs.

THE ESTATE OF NYDIA as per the agreement of the to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL TRUEBION, LLC PIÑEIRO CARMONA parties, until full payment of DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de PriDemandada

The San Juan Daily Star the debt at $17.89 per diem, accrued late charges in the

amount of $26.83; other expenses in the amount of $1,253.50,

plus any other advance, charge,

fee

or

disbursements

made by Abbey Cayman Asset

Friday, July 24, 2020 Nombre:

MARINA POR OPERATIONS LLC Parte Demandante vs

EL SECRETARIO(A) que sus- ción. Y, siendo o representando

cribe le notifica a usted que el usted una parte en el procedibunal ha dictado Sentencia, de la Sentencia, Sentencia Sentencia Parcial o Resolución Parcial o Resolución, de la cual

Parte Demandada

damente registrada y archivada revisión o apelación dentro del

the Mortgage Note and Mort- POR EDICTO DEL ESTADO los términos de la misma. Esta to de esta notificación, dirijo a gage, plus costs and agreed LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUER- notificación se publicará una usted esta notificación que se responsible and jointly liable for

the payment of the Obligations

in accordance with the Mortgage Note and Mortgage, as well

as under the other loan documents. Carlos Augusto Rivera

Sánchez as member of the Estate of Nydia Piñeiro Carmona

must express his acceptance or rejection of his participation in

the estate within thirty (30) days

of notification of the instant ac-

sola vez en un periódico de considerará hecha en la fecha

A: STEVEN ROSARIO

circulación general en la Isla de la publicación de este edic-

274 SW 159TH AVE SUNRISE, FL 33326-2267

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usted una parte en el procedi- julio de 2020 . En GUAYNABO,

arriba mencionada.

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puede establecerse recurso de DIAMAR GONZALEZ BARRE-

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26

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

The Yankees’ $324 million question: Can Gerrit Cole stay this good?

By JAMES WAGNER

S

oon after he signed the largest contract ever given to a pitcher, Gerrit Cole was in Hawaii with his wife, Amy, for the wedding of a former college teammate. Cole’s cellphone rang one day with a number he didn’t recognize. He answered it anyway.

After hearing, “Hey, this is Reggie Jackson,” Cole pulled the phone away from his ear for a second and uttered an expletive in delight. One of the biggest stars from the franchise he adored growing up — and now belonged to — was calling to congratulate him.

And when Cole arrived at the team’s spring training facility in Tampa, Fla., this year, he still couldn’t believe that Jackson, a Hall of Famer and a New York Yankees special adviser, was roaming the same grounds as he was.

“I try to act cool,” Cole, 29, said during a wide-ranging interview in March.

Since December, Cole, one of the best pitchers in baseball, has been, essentially, a kid in a candy store. He was not nervous about his first start in spring training in February, but he was in a casual game of catch with Andy Pettitte, the former Yankees pitcher who also serves as a special adviser. He called it “surreal” when Willie Randolph, the team’s former star player and coach, gave him a fist bump after a preseason appearance because Cole’s father, who was raised in Syracuse, N.Y., and passed on his Yankees fandom to his son, had long admired the second baseman.

“It’s all surreal,” Cole said.

When Cole stepped on the mound at Nationals Park on Thursday night to kick off this abbreviated 60-game season against the defending champion Washington Nationals, it was a debut a lifetime in the making, and one sealed by a lengthy courtship: General Manager Brian Cashman has referred to Cole as his “white whale” after two previous failed attempts to acquire him.

Reeled in last winter with a nineyear, $324 million contract that even he called “a ridiculous amount of money,” it is now time for Cole to prove his worth.

Although his Yankees career will begin with what is shaping up to be a bizarre season, nine years is an eternity given the physical demands of modern pitching.

So can Cole, who went from being a talented (but often injured) pitcher with the Pittsburgh Pirates to perhaps the best in the sport with the Houston Astros, sustain that excellence for the next decade?

“It’s like a stock,” relief pitcher Zack Britton said. “You’re hoping that it continues to thrive, but there’s no guarantee.

But he’s a good example of a guy that I’d want to be invested in.”

The ability was always there: Cole was listed at 6-foot-3, 200 pounds, and throwing in the high 90s at Orange Lutheran High School in Orange County, Calif. The Yankees were tantalized, and selected him in the first round of the 2008 draft.

But Cole passed up the chance to sign for millions because he and his father, who has a doctorate, believed it was more valuable to study at UCLA and develop into a better pitcher. They were right: The Pirates selected Cole first overall in the 2011 draft and signed him for a then-record $8 million.

Transforming into the $324 million ace of the Yankees has required constant tinkering and improvement at every stage — and Cole’s new club is banking on that ambition to justify its enormous financial commitment.

‘He’s going to age well’ Cole was good with the Pirates — a 3.50 ERA in five years and an All-Star selection in 2015 — but two significant injuries convinced him that he needed to work on his durability “first and foremost,” he said, if he was going to be traded or reach free agency. He changed his training, and his trainers.

Although the 2017 season was his worst, with a 4.26 ERA, Cole surpassed the 200-inning plateau again and his average fastball velocity inched back up to 96 mph.

Houston, though, is where he thrived, after the Astros beat out the Yankees to trade for Cole before the 2018 season.

With the help of the Astros’ analyticsdriven front office, he realized his fourseam fastball was more effective than the two-seamer he had been using — particularly high in the strike zone, where he could counteract the uppercut home run swings hitters were using more and more.

“I essentially learned a new pitch by prioritizing my four-seam,” said Cole,

“He’s very understanding of what the greats have done and how they have evolved,” the pitching coach Matt Blake, right, said of Gerrit Cole. who scrapped the two-seam fastball.

Always a sponge of baseball strategy, Cole picked his teammate Justin Verlander’s brain on harnessing his fastball and Dallas Keuchel’s to better understand how to fool opposing batters with perceived balls and strikes. Opponents hit .166 against Cole’s four-seam fastball, the lowest average in the major leagues among starting pitchers in 2019.

Signs of Cole’s rigorous attention to detail have been obvious since he signed with the Yankees. The day after a spring training game in March, he talked to catcher Gary Sánchez about pitching strategies, mimicking batters’ swings and plotting attacks on a hand-drawn strike zone.

When a teammate has been throwing a live batting practice, Cole is often watching nearby. And although he has no reason to bat this season, he has been in hitting coach Marcus Thames’ ear.

“Gerrit likes to talk hitting,” Thames said. “He’s so cerebral, so he’ll come ask me.”

‘They pay me for my work’ Cole knows people will question the wisdom of his nine-figure contract. In response, he rattled off a list of success stories of top starting pitchers on large contracts, including Max Scherzer (two Cy Young Awards and the 2019 World

Series title), Jon Lester (2016 World Series title) and Verlander (a Cy Young Award and the 2017 World Series title).

With his nine-year contract (which could extend to 10 years if the Yankees trigger a clause), Cole isn’t going anywhere for quite some time. This is home. And if he had signed this massive deal with a team other than the Yankees, Cole said he would have begged to wear the pinstripes when his contract ran out at 38.

“I would’ve been banging on the door: ‘Please give me a job,’” he said.

Back at his home in Southern California, Cole has three memorable possessions. One is a ball Derek Jeter, the Hall of Fame shortstop, tossed to then 11-year-old Cole in Arizona during the 2001 World Series between the Yankees and Diamondbacks. Another is the now famous “Yankee Fan Today Tomorrow Forever” sign Cole was spotted holding in the stands in that series — the same one he took to his introductory news conference in New York in December.

The third piece of memorabilia feels like a fitting bookend as Cole embarks on his own Yankees journey. During that World Series, Cole secured the autograph of a famous former Yankee on a ball at a coffee shop across the street from the team hotel: Jackson’s.

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

27

Betts arrives as a capstone to the Dodgers’ patient project

By TYLER KEPNER

T

he last time he played at Dodger Stadium, in 2018, Mookie Betts hit a home run in the clinching game of the World Series. The next time he was to play there, on opening night of the major league season Thursday, he would be the highest-paid player in the National League.

Betts won his championship with the Boston Red Sox, who decided in February to save money by trading the outfielder to the Los Angeles Dodgers along with starting pitcher David Price. The Red Sox knew Betts would cost a fortune when he became a free agent after the 2020 season, and he seemed determined to test the market.

So much for that assumption. The Dodgers locked up Betts on Wednesday with a 12-year, $365 million contract extension, a deal that stretches through 2032. The only player guaranteed more money than Betts is the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout, who signed a 12-year, $426.5 million contract before last season.

“The market wasn’t what I was worried about — just fair value,” Betts said in a news conference over Zoom.

“That’s been my No. 1 thing for my whole career: the value, and that’s it. Once we got to that point, being somewhere I loved being, the match was perfect.”

Betts, 27, was the American League’s most valuable player in 2018 and might have the best all-around talent in the majors. No other player can match his totals in both homers (134) and stolen bases (119) over the past five seasons, and he has four Gold Gloves in right field to go with a .301 career average.

While no fans would be in the stands to greet Betts on Thursday, there should be plenty in time. The Dodgers have led the majors in attendance in each of the past seven seasons, winning the NL West every year. But for all their popularity and profitability, they still have not won a championship since 1988. They lost the World Series in five games to Boston in 2018 and in seven to Houston in 2017, the year the Astros used an illegal sign-stealing scheme.

Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, acknowledged this spring that the revelations of the Astros’ cheating might have consumed him — if only he were not so busy.

“If there was something I could do to change the outcome, I would spend more time on it, but it’s just not productive energy,” Friedman said in an interview, adding that most days were already packed. “Spending time thinking about that just isn’t helpful in what we’re trying to accomplish looking forward. So that helps whenever my mind starts gravitating toward that.”

Friedman played the long game to get to a moment like Wednesday’s. He spent more than five years making careful, disciplined moves for the Dodgers, consistent with his pedigree as architect of the low-budget Tampa Bay Rays for more than a decade.

The Dodgers hired Friedman after the 2014 season, trusting him to find Rays-style bargains to complement

Mookie Betts is set to be a Dodger through 2032 with a new extension he signed on Wednesday. their big — but responsible — spending. Sticking to that plan made it easy for the Dodgers to spend so lavishly on Betts: The combined value of Friedman’s three most lucrative deals for the Dodgers before Wednesday — with Clayton Kershaw, Kenley Jansen and Justin Turner — was about $237 million, or less than two-thirds of what the Dodgers now owe Betts.

Friedman has made bad deals, too, but nothing that hamstrung the Dodgers from affording a contract like this.

Players like Max Muncy and Chris Taylor — afterthoughts for other teams — became cost-effective contributors. The farm system nurtured players that Friedman inherited, like Cody Bellinger, Corey Seager and Julio Urias, and developed more, like pitchers Walker Buehler and Dustin May and catcher Will Smith.

“We’ve done a really good job of identifying when players reach the point of being ready, and that last mile — what has allowed us to be as successful as we’ve been — has been our clubhouse culture at the major league level,” Friedman said, crediting Manager Dave Roberts and the coaches. “They do a tremendous job of instilling it, and then our players carry it out unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

When young players come up, our veteran players actively try to help them acclimate.”

Along the way, Friedman has sometimes frustrated

Dodgers fans by resisting splashy free-agent investments or refusing to deal prospects in trades. In-season deals to acquire Yu Darvish and Manny Machado helped, but only to a point; the Astros hammered Darvish in the 2017 World Series, and Machado hit .182 against the Red Sox in the 2018 World Series.

Darvish and Machado left as free agents, but the Dodgers decided they did not want to risk losing Betts after a 60-game cameo. Friedman was just waiting for the right investment to come around.

“Patience isn’t necessarily a virtue of mine, but we’ve had to kind of practice it throughout this — in that, if you’re going to make a bet like this, you want to feel as confident as you can about the human, about how much they care, about their work ethic, and I can’t imagine feeling more confident than we do about Mookie,” Friedman said.

“So that helps, but also us staying patient and doing things to help us in the short term — but not necessarily costing us in the long term — has provided us some flexibility to be able to do that. Obviously we’re really excited with how it turned out.”

So is Betts, who said he believed in the Dodgers’ longterm outlook and was “here to win some rings” — a realistic goal. The Dodgers have built a perpetual winner already, and now the Betts Era is here.

28

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

The NBA is back. This is what pandemic basketball looks like.

By MARC STEIN

K

awhi Leonard of the Los Angeles Clippers was the first player on the floor Wednesday afternoon, lining up for the NBA’s first jump ball in more than four months — without waiting for the public-address announcer to begin introducing the starting lineups.

The improvisation was one of many aspects of the NBA’s long-awaited return that could be classified as untraditional. With no fans to be found in the stands, hockey-style plexiglass encasing the scorer’s table and the Orlando Magic operating as the visiting team just 23 miles from their home arena, Leonard’s Clippers posted a 99-90 victory in a game that was predictably scruffy after such a long layoff. The game also did not count, but it was a significant occasion nonetheless.

It was the first time two NBA teams had shared the same floor since the abrupt suspension of the season March 11 after Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz tested positive for the coronavirus shortly before a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder.

After months of negotiations, preparations and debate about the feasibility of resuming and sustaining an indoor contact sport during a pandemic, the league took what it regards as a significant step in its comeback by holding four scrimmages, 15 days after teams began arriving at the Walt Disney World campus.

Twenty-two teams were invited to live, practice and play in a so-called bubble with greatly restricted access at Disney World near Orlando, Fla., to try to complete a season some within the league initially feared would not be salvaged. Each team will take part in three of these scrimmages before the New Orleans Pelicans face the Jazz on July 30 to begin an 88-game schedule leading into the playoffs. Wednesday, then, was a test run for the NBA as much as for the players in what many regard as the most ambitious undertaking in league history.

“Once you get in between the lines, you can make a case that that’s probably as comfortable as the players will ever be,” Clippers coach Doc Rivers said. “You can see the rust and all that, but for them, they were back in their natural habitat.”

Quirks were plentiful in the NBA’s return, with 10-minute quarters instead of the usual 12, extended bursts of quiet during free throws, and music and synthesized arena sounds piped in to fill the noise void. A vibe reminiscent of the NBA’s annual summer league in Las Vegas was unmistakable, but the first competitive basketball played in the bubble also appeared to play out without incident,

Before Wednesday’s scrimmage at Walt Disney World, Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers last played a game on March 10, shown here, against the Golden State Warriors. with Lou Williams (22 points) and Paul George (18) combining for 40 points to lead the Clippers.

Nikola Vucevic had 18 points and 10 rebounds for the Magic.

The NBA has leaned into its starting-over reality, judging by the numerous signs all over the building that display its #WholeNewGame slogan.

Without the clamor of fans, chatter among the players was frequently audible during lulls in the sounds playing over arena speakers and the occasional recorded chants of “de-fense, de-fense.”

“There’s no crowd energy, so the energy is going to have to come from the players,” said Joakim Noah, the Clippers’ starting center Wednesday.

(The Clippers were without big men Montrezl Harrell and Ivica Zubac and guards Patrick Beverley and Landry Shamet; Harrell and Beverley both left the team in recent days to attend to personal matters.)

About 200 people were in attendance, including both teams, game operations personnel, league

representatives, three human camera operators to complement an array of robotic cameras and the small contingent of reporters permitted to watch.

The main game venue of the three being used for the restart in the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex is an 8,000-capacity building known simply as the Arena. The bland name belies the varied safety measures and technological enhancements the league has installed in its attempt to protect the participants from the coronavirus and, with any luck, compensate for the atmosphere lost in the absence of fans.

Video boards are plentiful on the three sides of the arena visible to a television audience, most notably behind both baskets. Team benches have been replaced by three rows of socially distanced chairs on risers — with specific seating assignments for each player. Seats at the scorer’s table, between the two benches and inside the plexiglass, are also spaced out to encourage social distancing, as they are in the press section for reporters.

The Clippers arrived at noon for the 3 p.m. tipoff to get in some extra shooting and then hung around until game time. The Magic were about an hour behind them, choosing to first conduct a team walkthrough in the morning at their team hotel. Magic coach Steve Clifford said the conditions were “not that different than a regular game on the road.”

Players were instructed by the league to be “clean and neat in appearance” upon arriving at the arena, with postgame showers taking place back at team hotels.

Clifford and Rivers conferred multiple times before the game about some of the concepts they hoped to work on during the scrimmage; both agreed, for example, to play some zone defense.

Head coaches and their three front-row assistant coaches did not wear masks in this game, but all other team staff members behind them did.

A scrimmage between the Washington Wizards and the Denver Nuggets, at the smaller HP Field House nearby, began a half-hour after the Magic and the Clippers tipped off. Because of multiple injuries and player absences, Denver coach Mike Malone listed his All-Star center Nikola Jokic as a starting guard in a supersize lineup that featured only forwards (Paul Millsap) and centers (Mason Plumlee and Bol Bol).

In this small-ball era, Malone would likely never take “tall ball” to such an extreme in a game that counted, but players did find some normalcy amid all of Wednesday’s novelty.

“It feels like the season again,” Washington guard Ish Smith said. “I think guys are now getting into a flow and knowing this is the real thing.”

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 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)

Impulsive decisions add excitement to your days. Being spontaneous will attract new friends and new opportunities. If you’ve been longing for more fun, challenge or stimulation, meet up with a friend and try something new together. You’re always eager to experiment with new ideas and setting up a new online group will surround you with like-minded innovators.

Taurus

The San Juan Daily Star

July 24-26, 2020

(April 21-May 21)

If something goes against your moral code, speak up. Someone who thinks nothing of breaking rules is causing a morale problem for the team. Make it clear you won’t do anything that might harm others. Being released from an obligation will bring new opportunities and renew your faith in humanity. You’ll feel a kinship with a new colleague.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Focus on your present and not your past. Giving in to old feelings of anger or resentment will hold you back. You can’t change the past but you have control over your present. Choose activities that bring you joy. Happiness will return when you get into a more positive mind set. Don’t dwell on unhappy memories. Let the universe shower blessings upon you.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Keep calm when you confront someone who has hurt your feelings. Their thoughtless behaviour will make them appear selfish. They may not realise they’re being so offensive. Moving forward, coming to the aid of those who are less fortunate is strongly advised. Personal problems will become easier to solve when you feel capable and needed.

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Don’t keep telling yourself you aren’t good enough as this will limit the vista of your own aspirations. Resist the temptation to compare your achievements with other people whose situations are very different from yours.

Someone is pretending to be successful and self-sufficient when in fact they had a lot of financial and practical support along the way.

Be practical with money. Instead of splashing out on extravagant purchases, keep your cash in the bank. It’s always good to have some savings for rainy days. It may be necessary soon to replace furniture or a broken appliance.

A generous relative has always come to the rescue in such situations in the past but you would be happier to become more self-sufficient.

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

Set boundaries with a romantic partner or friend who continually talks down to you.

Make it clear that you will not be treated like a child. You deserve respect so prepare to move on if a relationship that makes you unhappy doesn’t change. Are you single? Hold out for a partner who doesn’t pride themselves on acting superior.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

Taking a break from your usual routine will help you realise your own worth. You are appreciated, respected and valued. Proof of this will be when, after taking a few days off, you discover people are eagerly waiting your return. They struggle without you. Even so, sharing your load will help you make time to indulge in creature comforts.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

People will make mistakes. Be patient with someone who is struggling so much with a task that they make the same blunder over and over. They aren’t giving up on this job and neither should you give up on them. With your support and a little more practice, they will eventually get it right.

Keeping a low profile will give you a better chance to add creative touches to projects that other people tend to rush through. You could be surprised by how operating behind the scenes allows you to exercise your creativity. You’re also able to steer clear of a manipulative person who is always trying to tell you what to do.

Virgo

Pisces

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

It is time to reconsider a friendship that is causing you some tension. You can’t remain in a situation where you are walking on eggshells all the time. Speaking your truth might offend someone but not being able to say what’s in your heart is taking a toll on you. You don’t want to create a kerfuffle but you do need inner peace.

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

A friend will give you the support you need during a challenging project. You will reach your dreams through your hard work and perseverance. Keep your eyes on your goal and the details will take care of themselves.

Try not to let your anxiety get to you. Stick with it and you will reach heights you never thought were possible.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

July 24-26, 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

July 24-26, 2020

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