Tuesday Jul 28, 2020

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

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Taylor Swift: A Pop Star Done with Pop

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The Sound of Silence

Non-Elected Governor Declines to Comment After PFEI Declines to Dismiss Probe Against Her Vázquez: ‘I Will Not Pay Attention to That’

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PRASA Another NPP Legislator Gets a Customer Service in Visit from the Feds Private Hands Soon?

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

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July 28, 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.

Governor: $20 million grant to help low-income families pay electric bill is under evaluation

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By THE STAR STAFF

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INDEX Local 3 Mainland 7 Business 11 International 14 Viewpoint 18 Noticias en Español 19 Entertainment 20

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ov. Wanda Vázquez Garced announced Monday that a $20 million grant award to help low-income families in Puerto Rico pay their electric power bills during the COVID-19 public health emergency is being evaluated.

Participants in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Nutritional Assistance Program (PAN by its Spanish acronym) will be eligible for the aid if they document their recent electricity bills and their needs, and provide an ID. The aid will be provided through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

“These resources help low-income families have the necessary support to cover their basic needs given the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought,” Vázquez Garced said. “It’s our priority to continue offering all aid available to our families in this public health emergency.”

Family Secretary Orlando López Belmonte said that to ease the requests for the power subsidy, any Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) client who is interested must call 311 or log into pr.gov. Likewise, candidates can also make a request via e-mail to ayudaenergia@familia.pr.gov,

in no more than 15 days, along with the most recent electric power bill and a valid ID. “The assigned funds will be awarded through the Energy Crisis and Energy Subsidiary category to families that live under the 150 percent poverty level established by the federal government and that meet the requirements for the service in demand,” López Belmonte said.

Through the aforementioned category, the program offers economic aid to low-income families with high energy consumption that comply with initial requirements for gross income and family composition, and have a suspension or disconnection warning on their electric power account. Each family could get up to $900 in benefits, depending on the extent to which the account is in arrears. Meanwhile, any family that is not under the TANF or PAN programs, but are eligible due to their gross income, can request the aid.

“In case any of the [family] members is not an American citizen, the petitioner must submit a status declaration from this member,” the press release said. “Family members must have an active account with PREPA at the moment the aid is released.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Governor has no comment on SIP panel declining to dismiss probe against her

By THE STAR STAFF

T

he Special Independent Prosecutor (FEI by its Spanish initials) Panel on Monday declined Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced’s petition to dismiss an investigation against her after the governor missed a deadline for turning over evidence of possible bias against her on the part of an FEI Panel official.

The FEI Panel’s decision not only applies to Vázquez, but also to La Fortaleza Chief of Staff Antonio Pabón Batlle, former Family Socioeconomic Development (ADSEF by its Spanish acronym) Administrator Surima Quiñones Suárez, former ADSEF Deputy Administrator José Galarza Vargas, María Zayas Gierbolini and New Progressive Party (NPP) Sen. Evelyn Vázquez Nieves.

“On July 20, 2020, we issued a Resolution appointing two special independent prosecutors (FEI) to the task of thoroughly investigating the conduct attributed to the persons mentioned (in the preceding paragraph),” the resolution states. “In the preliminary investigation report sent by the Puerto Rico Department of Justice (DJPR), there are arguments backing criminal offenses. After a rigorous analysis, the members of the Panel concur with the legal evaluation of the DJPR.” The investigation is related to the alleged mishandling of a warehouse facility in Ponce that contained emergency supplies for victims of earthquakes that severely damaged the

southwestern region of the island in January. Special Prosecutor Leticia Pabón Ortiz and Deputy Prosecutor Miguel Colón Ortiz will be in charge of the investigation.

The governor, through her lawyer Edgar Pabón, requested the dismissal of the probe, arguing that one of the FEI Panel members who voted to investigate her, Rubén Vélez Torres, was a supporter of her opponent in the NPP primary, Pedro Pierluisi, and had participated in events with him. She also said Vélez Torres’ daughter is actively participating in Pierluisi’s campaign. Pabón also questioned the reasons why one of the FEI Panel members, Ygri Rivera, did not participate in the vote. The SIP asked Vázquez to submit the evidence she had against Vélez Torres, who denied the governor’s claims,

by Monday.

According to the FEI Panel’s resolution, Rivera abstained from the vote because her daughter is up for a promotion and the decision is on the governor’s desk.

The document then criticizes the governor for defaming Vélez Torres’s reputation with “unfounded allegations” after she failed to file the evidence against him.

“We can’t let pass by that this type of allegation against a public servant of many years is very disrespectful,” the document says.

At a news conference aired through Facebook, the governor declined to comment on the investigation.

“I will not pay any attention to the FEI probe,” she said.

“I will pay attention to issues that concern the people of Puerto Rico, such as the spread of COVID-19 through the airport and a possible storm. I am going to focus on what the people of Puerto Rico are truly interested in.”

The investigation comes two weeks before electoral primaries. Vázquez is running against Pierluisi, a former two-term island resident commissioner, to become the NPP’s gubernatorial candidate.

FBI raids another NPP lawmaker’s home

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

F

ederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents raided the residence of New Progressive Party (NPP) Rep. Nelson del Valle Colón on Monday, a source confirmed to CyberNews.

“Our agents are today conducting investigative activity at a residence in Toa Alta,” an FBI spokesperson said in a radio interview Monday. “As you know, our policy is not to confirm or deny the existence of investigations, so we have no [further] comment.”

On July 15, the FBI raided the Río Grande home of NPP Rep. María Milagros “Tata” Charbonier. The agents seized Charbonier’s cell phone and that of the legislator’s husband.

It is unknown if there is a relationship between the investigations of Charbonier and del Valle Colón, or if either

or both is connected with the issue of “ghost employees.”

Speaker of the House of Representatives Carlos “Johnny’” Méndez Núñez said he is cooperating with federal and commonwealth investigative agencies in del Valle Colón’s case.

“The House of Representatives that I am honored to preside over has a commitment to transparency and good management of government resources,” Méndez Núñez in a written statement. “We have cooperated at all times with federal and state authorities; we will continue doing so. My call today, as it has been in the past, is for total and absolute cooperation with entities of law and order.”

“I reiterate my position that all members of this House of Representatives have a duty to the people to assume conduct based on law and regulations,” the House speaker added. “I will never depart from that principle, taking actions proactively to guarantee the confidence of the people in their public servants.”

A source confirmed to CyberNews that the FBI seized a cellular telephone from del Valle Colón, who was elected to a House seat in 2004, which he held until 2008, according to his biography. He returned to the Legislature in 2016 as the representative of District 9, which includes the municipalities of Toa Alta and Bayamón.

Del Valle Colón currently chairs the Small and Midsize Business and Commerce Committee. In addition, he’s a member of the Municipal Affairs, Cooperativism, Transportation and Infrastructure, Recreation and Sports, and Housing committees.

Popular Democratic Party Minority Leader Rep. Rafael

“Tatito” Hernández called on Méndez Núñez to make public the relationship between representatives, House advisers and contractors.

“Your honor is the administrator of the House of Representatives and as speaker, you must, without delay, give satisfactory explanations of processes and contracts,” Hernández said. “I ask you in the name of the Popular Democratic Party delegation, of which I am the leader, to immediately [make public the circumstances of the investigation] with the goal of safeguarding before the eyes of the Puerto Rican people the good name of the House of Representatives.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

5

PRASA customer service appears heading into private hands

By THE STAR STAFF

P

uerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (PRASA) President Doriel Pagán Crespo confirmed on Monday that a public-private partnership agreement with a Spanish consortium comprising IBT and MIYA is being evaluated to take over customer service operations of the water utility for the next 20 years.

“I can assume that there is an evaluation process, but there is still no final decision,” Pagán Crespo said in a radio interview (Radio Isla 1320 AM).

Published reports indicate that the island’s Public Private Partnership (P3) Authority is slated to announce -- possibly before the

end of August -- the consortium’s selection.

A document from the consortium states that “Puerto Rico has become one of MIYA’s markets, thanks to the recently granted concession,” and indicates that “the contract is expected to be finalized and receive approval from the government of Puerto Rico in the short term (August 2020).”

Pagán Crespo said the P3 will be for the customer service area. Only the Spanish consortium is being evaluated. She said privatization is necessary to guarantee the investment in infrastructure that the corporation needs.

P3 Authority Director Fermín Arraiza reportedly said the negotiations are continuing and that he could not anticipate whether the announcement will be made in August.

PDP gubernatorial hopeful Cruz Soto wants to fight corruption without fear

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

P

opular Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial hopeful Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto presented on Monday her proposal to fight against corruption and bring back the main values of the party: bread, soil and freedom.

Cruz Soto, along with members of the National Popular Youth, said that after watching the events that took place during the summer of 2019, she thought it was fundamental to develop a governance plan that would promote transparency and bring democracy back to Puerto Rico. Her plan, titled “A New Moral Compass: A Clean Government and a Leader Without Political Strings,” proposes to deliver public policies that will hold accountability against impunity and ineptitude from recent governments like those of former Gov. Ricardo Rosselló Nevares and the non-elected current governor, Wanda Vázquez Garced.

“If there has been consistency in Ricky, [New Progressive Party gubernatorial hopeful Pedro] Pierluisi and Wanda’s government, it has been with corruption,” Cruz said. “If the youth ever wanted something and even occupied the streets of Old San Juan and other places in Puerto Rico, it is because they wanted to get rid of corruption and every politician having strings attached to someone.”

Some of Cruz Soto’s recommendations are creating a Transparency Commission in a period of 100 days to six months where members of the press,

“To the Financial Oversight and although I do not want the Puerto Rico lawyers and investigative organizations will collaborate to rewrite the Puerto Management Board lobbyist and to Electric Power Authority to be privaRico Open Data Law, as the aforemen- the people who hide BMWs at [their] tized, I want things to work well,” she tioned has been heavily criticized for home, show your tax returns to all Puerto said. “Usually, when there’s no power, its lack of clarity and bureaucracy in Ricans and demonstrate to whom you there’s no water at our homes, and have strings attached,” Cruz Soto said. that’s concerning under the COVID-19 accessing public information.

Another suggestion in Cruz Soto’s “I have nothing to hide because I know pandemic.” anti-corruption plan is to repeal Article the youth need a government that does As for shelters during the pandemic, 3.7 of the Government Ethics Law, not work for private interests.” she said it has been a challenge as caCruz: ‘Our fragile electrical system pacity for refugees will be more limited which gives public servants a chance for a waiver from the governor and his concerns me’ and the capital city is still investigating Meanwhile, Cruz Soto told the press how to relocate vulnerable citizens while or her constitutional cabinet and come back a year after not serving in an entity that as the National Weather Service maintaining safety measures against the that was hired for professional services keeps its eye on a climatic event that spread of the coronavirus. or investigated by any gubernatorial is approaching the Lesser Antilles and “I can’t put 685 people in Roberto Puerto Rico this week, islanders have Clemente Coliseum now,” she said. “I institution.

“Every elected official, from mu- supplied themselves with sufficient have to probably reduce it to 400 as we nicipal legislators to the governor, and medicine and nourishment. However, take advantage of the center stage and public servants, under the law, must she is concerned about the vulnerability its second floor. Same goes for Pedrín file their tax returns on a government of the electric power grid.

Zorrilla Coliseum -- from 400 people, it “I’m concerned about the electric must be reduced to 200 to keep people website that is accessible. And every government candidate must submit at power shutting down, as it is fragile; safe from the disease.” least five tax returns, including one from the year before the general elections,” said Cruz Soto, the mayor of San Juan.

“You can say what you would like about me, but you can never point at me and say I have strings attached to anyone.

As proof, from today, you can go to sinmiedo.pr in order to see my tax returns from 2008 to 2019 and draw your own conclusions.”

Likewise, she said that people might learn from her tax returns that she has a debt with the Treasury Department, which she still owes around $30,000; however, she said, in order to become a candidate for the PDP, she had to prove she has an up-to-date payment plan, and she demanded similar transparency from Pierluisi and Vázquez.

PDP gubernatorial hopeful Carmen Yulín Cruz

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

PDP electoral commissioner urges party faithful to vote

has a button that reads “Check Here” and which must be selected. Once voters click on that button, they will reach another page where they will find, in the upper left, the space to enter their electoral card number.

Upon entering the number and pressing the button that reads “Search,” the voter will immediately be able to see his/her date of birth, electoral status, the precinct

where he/she votes, the electoral unit and the municipality. He/she will also find the name of the polling place and the address where it is located.

The system also allows voters to see the ballots for which they will have the right to vote by simply clicking on the buttons identified with: governor, at-large, district and mayor. Once the voter presses those buttons, only those model ballots and candidacies will appear for which she will have the right to vote.

Merle Feliciano called on voters to get out and vote in the primaries.

“It is important that all the PDP voters go out to vote in the primaries so that they can choose the best candidates who will become the official candidates of the PDP in the general elections,” he said. “It is the PDP voters who have the power in their hands to create a robust ballot that will allow the most corrupt NPP [New Progressive Party] administration in the history of our country to be removed from the government.”

The PDP has primaries for mayorships in 17 municipalities. In the case of the districts, there will be primaries in 20 of 40 House of Representatives districts and in seven of eight Senate districts.

that has moved us to reinvent ourselves as never before. Amid this uncertainty, the opportunity to think and rethink a new university and a new society was born.”

Among the assistance offered by the UPR-P to students is the delivery of food to more than 680 students in collaboration with the Central Administration Quality of Life Office and the Mesón de Amor Home in San Juan. Also, through the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, 98 percent of eligible students received financial aid. Likewise, 82 scholarships of $500 were awarded to students who qualified, according to

their financial need, from the Hurricane Maria recovery funds granted by the U.S. Department of Education.

For more information on academic offerings, transfers from other universities and admissions to UPR-P, those interested can communicate through admi.ponce@upr. edu or transfers.uprp@upr.edu by sending name, school or university of origin, date they took the PAA or SAT and their program of interest. They can also communicate through the campus’ social networks on Facebook: @UPR Ponce - University of Puerto Rico in Ponce, and on Twitter: @ Ponce UPR.

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

P

opular Democratic Party (PDP) voters who want to know their electoral status as well as where they will vote in the Aug. 9 primaries will be able to do so quickly, easily and safely, PDP Electoral Commissioner Lind Merle Feliciano announced Monday.

Through the party’s website -- www. ppdpr.net -- PDP voters will be able to access an electronic system where entering their electoral card number will provide the described information. Merle Feliciano announced that the new technological initiative also allows voters to see the ballot models for the various elective positions that have primaries in the electoral precincts.

“This platform was designed so that people just by entering their electoral card number have the basic information they need to know to exercise their vote and that they can view in advance the ballots of the candidates who have primaries in their electoral precinct. This will facilitate the process when exercising their vote because the person will have a clearer idea about the candidates to select from,” Merle Feliciano said. “We want to make it easier for PDP

PDP Electoral Commissioner Lind Merle Feliciano voters to access information related to the primaries on August 9 and, eventually, to the general elections. For this, the use of technology plays a fundamental role, even more so in the midst of the pandemic.”

To know where they should vote and their electoral status, voters must enter the PDP website at www.ppdpr.net. They will find a box in the center of the page that

UPR Ponce to offer online courses

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

U

niversity of Puerto Rico-Ponce Campus (UPR-P) Chancellor Tessie Cruz Rivera reminded the university community on Monday that for the upcoming semester, which begins on Aug. 10, classes will be taught through online technologies and, to the extent that the government authorizes it, laboratories and some activities will be offered on site.

“This means that the tasks that can be done remotely will be able to continue like this and only some classes of a clinical nature, such as physical therapy courses, can be carried out under strict health and safety measures for employees and students, as has been prevented at the central level by the University of Puerto Rico,” Cruz Rivera said in a written statement.

UPR President Jorge Haddock, meanwhile, stressed that “the priority of our administration is and will continue to be the health and safety of the entire university community.”

“Now the institution has more than 11,500 courses adapted to online technologies, thanks to the commitment of

our teaching and non-teaching staff, who supported my plan to ensure the continuity of operations during this emergency,” he said. “Taking into consideration that COVID-19 continues to be a threat to our population, we will continue with distanced [learning], but we are ready to resume classes in laboratories with strict safety measures as soon as the central government allows it.”

Cruz Rivera noted that 628 students managed to complete their admission for first-time enrollment in August 2020, and 1,874 students have completed their enrollment or selection of courses for the next semester. She also highlighted that 425 students completed their academic degrees in early June. Meanwhile, 22 summer courses, which were offered online, were successfully concluded.

“Despite the situation due to COVID-19 and the earthquakes, during the second semester 2019-2020 that ended [in June], the UPR-P administration continued its administrative work, but above all it successfully served the students,” Cruz Rivera said. “Definitely, the culmination of this semester initiates greater challenges in a new and unprecedented landscape

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

7

Hoping to understand the virus, everyone is parsing a mountain of data

By JULIE BOSMAN

T

he latest count of new coronavirus cases was jarring: Some 1,500 virus cases were identified three consecutive days last week in Illinois, and fears of a resurgence in the state even led the mayor of Chicago to shut down bars all over town Friday.

But at the same moment, there were other, hopeful data points that seemed to tell a different story entirely. Deaths from the virus statewide are one-tenth what they were at their peak in May. And the positivity rate of new coronavirus tests in Illinois is about half that of neighboring states.

“There are so many numbers flying around,” said Dr. Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago health department.

“It’s hard for people to know what’s the most important thing to follow.”

This is a pandemic that has been told in harrowing stories from hospitals, factories, nursing homes and meatpacking plants. But as the crisis stretches on, it is also unfolding in an increasingly complex spread of numbers.

Six months since the first cases were detected in the United States, more people have been infected by far than in any other country, and the daily rundown of national numbers Friday was a reminder of a mounting emergency: more than 73,500 new cases, 1,100 deaths and 939,838 tests, as well as 59,670 people currently hospitalized for the virus.

Americans now have access to an expanding set of data to help them interpret the coronavirus pandemic. They are closely tracking the number of sick and dead. They can read daily case counts in their cities and states, the percentage of positive tests, the number of people hospitalized and the weekly change in cases. It is possible to look on the Illinois Department of Public Health website and learn how many hospital beds exist statewide, how many ventilators are available in Peoria and how many intensivecare unit beds are free in Champaign.

Sophisticated data-gathering operations by newspapers, research universities and volunteers have sprung up in response to the pandemic, monitoring and collecting coronavirus metrics around the clock.

Elected officials who were not particularly well-versed in public health or infectious disease when 2020 began now sound a

A California National Guard medic tested Debbie Strickland for Covid-19 in Galt, Calif., on Thursday. little like epidemiologists, spending their days steeped in data and making policy decisions based on the figures before them.

For many Americans, the numbers are a way to make sense of the pandemic — which is spreading in the South, West and much of the Midwest but calming in the Northeast — and to gauge whether things are better or worse in their own cities.

They often begin with the case count.

That is the daily tally of individuals whose coronavirus infections were confirmed by laboratory tests, a data point that is frequently quoted, misused and debated.

“If I’m sitting at home and saying, ‘How is my community doing?’ I’d want to look at daily case counts,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, an infectious disease specialist and a clinical professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health.

Those numbers are jaw-dropping. In the U.S., the cumulative count of people infected with the coronavirus has surpassed 4 million. New daily records tied to the case count have been alarmingly frequent in recent weeks: At least 16 states have posted single-day case records this past week. On Friday, more than 73,000 new cases were identified across the country, the second highest day of the pandemic.

There are several ways to parse the case count number.

President Donald Trump and other officials have frequently questioned the legitimacy of coronavirus case counts, falsely suggesting that a rise in testing availability is solely responsible for the increase in confirmed infections. More testing can cause an uptick in new reports of infections, but data shows that the rise in cases far outpaces the growth in testing.

Experts suggested that the daily case count is better viewed as a rough measure of whether an outbreak is slowing, expanding or stabilizing. A decrease in new confirmed cases could also indicate that testing is not available widely enough or that there is a backlog of tests that have not yet been processed and delivered to the local health department.

Time period matters, too. Comparing case counts in July to case counts in April is misleading, because many people were sick but few people were tested early in the epidemic. But comparing case count to a more recent period, when testing was relatively constant, is a useful measure.

Another frequently cited number is the positivity rate: the percentage of coronavirus tests that have returned with a positive result.

“The positivity number is one of the first places I go to,” said Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, who wakes up each morning to a fresh PowerPoint presentation from his staff, which he reads on his iPad before 8

a.m. “That’s what I zero in on.”

A rising positivity rate can point to an uncontrolled outbreak; it can also indicate that not enough testing is occurring.

DeWine is an avid reader of the daily PowerPoint presentation, which he calls the Situation Update. It started small in the early days of the pandemic. It has grown to at least 31 slides of numbers, charts and graphs — every day.

He said he also focuses closely on the number of Ohioans who have been hospitalized for the coronavirus, a data point that is difficult to spin or misinterpret.

Last week, the pandemic approached an alarming milestone: About as many people in the U.S. are now hospitalized with the coronavirus as at any other time in the pandemic, including during an earlier surge in the New York region in the spring.

“Hospitalization is a hard number,” DeWine said. “There’s no fudge on it.”

Yet even that measure has caveats.

Hospitalizations do not reflect how many people are sick at home and experiencing mild symptoms — particularly younger people — but who could still be infecting others.

Dr. Tara C. Smith, a professor of epidemiology at Kent State University who studies infectious diseases, said that viewed individually, much of the available coronavirus data can only offer a glimpse of the state of the pandemic.

“I think people tend to cherry-pick what they want to see, to confirm their biases,” she said.

She has been hesitant to place much stock in statistics on deaths caused by coronavirus, for instance. “I see a lot of use of the fatality statistics, which are incomplete,” Smith said. “You do have deaths from coronavirus, but we know those are undercounted. For me, at least, that is not a particularly useful metric. But those are the type of statistics that some people grab onto.”

Perhaps the most telling numbers are trend data — examining which direction a community or state seems to be heading, said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

“There’s no magic number for any of this,” Osterholm said. “This is more like a windshield where you’re looking at everything in front of you. It’s not one piece of data. It’s all of it coming together.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Cities in bind as turmoil spreads far beyond Portland

Federal officers work to clear protesters in downtown Portland, Ore., July 25, 2020.

By MIKE BAKER, THOMAS FULLER and SHANE GOLDMACHER

A

series of strident new protests over police misconduct rattled cities across the country over the weekend, creating a new dilemma for state and local leaders who had succeeded in easing some of the turbulence in their streets until a showdown over the use of federal agents in Oregon stirred fresh outrage.

With some demonstrators embracing destructive protest methods and police often using aggressive tactics to subdue both them and others who are demonstrating peacefully, the scenes on Saturday night in places like Seattle, Oakland, California, and Los Angeles recalled the volatile early days of the protests after the death of George Floyd at the end of May. The latest catalyst was the deployment of federal law enforcement agents in Portland, Oregon, whose militarized efforts to subdue protests around the federal courthouse have sparked mass demonstrations and nightly clashes there. They have also inspired new protests of solidarity in other cities, where people have expressed deep concern about the federal government exercising such extensive authority in a city that has made it clear it opposes the presence of federal agents.

President Donald Trump has seized on the scenes of national unrest — statues toppled and windows smashed — to build a law-and-order message for his reelection campaign, spending more than $26 million on television ads depict-

ing a lawless dystopia of empty police stations and 911 answering services that he argues might be left in a nation headed by his Democratic rival, Joe Biden.

Biden insisted last week that the president’s pledge to inject a federal law-and-order presence into the already volatile issue of policing shows that he is “determined to sow chaos and division. To make matters worse instead of better.”

The situation has left city leaders, now watching the backlash unfold on their streets, outraged and caught in the middle. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said in an interview Sunday that the city is in the middle of a self-fulfilling prophecy, with protesters infuriated by the federal presence in Portland smashing windows and setting fires, the very images of “anarchy” that the president has warned about.

“There is no question that the actions in Portland have escalated things, not just in Seattle, but nationwide,” Durkan said.

At the same time, a new round of street unrest could intensify differences among local officials over how best to address the complaints of demonstrators and respond to vandalism and violence.

In June, amid a wide-ranging police reform movement, the Seattle City Council banned the use of tear gas and other crowd control tactics, including pepper spray. The police chief has objected, and the U.S. Department of Justice intervened with a lawsuit, winning a temporary restraining order Friday blocking implementation of that ban. Over the weekend, Seattle

officers used pepper spray and flash-grenades to disperse protesters.

Over the weekend, dozens of people were arrested in Seattle. Protesters in Los Angeles clashed with officers in front of the city’s federal courthouse downtown. Police also made arrests at protests in smaller cities, such as Omaha, Nebraska, and Richmond, Virginia.

In Oakland, what had been a peaceful protest led in part by a group of mothers proclaiming “Cops And Feds Off Our Streets” devolved after dark as another set of protesters smashed windows at the county courthouse and lit a fire inside.

An armed protester was shot and killed in Austin, Texas, by a motorist whose car, according to witnesses and police, had been aimed toward a group of demonstrators also protesting the federal presence in Portland.

The protests continued in Portland on Sunday as the city neared its 60th straight day of demonstrations. As crowds gathered once again near the federal courthouse, the Portland Police Bureau said that a shooting had occurred about a block away. Officers took two people into custody, and one person showed up at a hospital with an apparent gunshot wound that was not life-threatening, the bureau said in a statement.

In Seattle on Sunday night, hundreds of protesters returned to the area around a police station in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. The gathering remained peaceful.

Some cities had welcomed Trump’s offer to send additional law federal law enforcement agents in to help combat escalating gang violence and drug crime, but insisted they would brook no federal agents on their streets arresting and tear gassing protesters.

Democratic city and state leaders pushed back against the new federal presence, but also expressed frustration that some on the streets were going too far and playing into the president’s gambit.

“I’m furious that Oakland may have played right into Donald Trump’s twisted campaign strategy,” Oakland’s mayor, Libby Schaaf, said in an interview on Sunday. “Images of a vandalized downtown is exactly what he wants to whip up his base and to potentially justify sending in federal troops that will only incite more unrest.”

In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat who has repeatedly clashed withTrump, had said she welcomed the president’s intervention on enacting gun control and investing in community programs.

“Any other form of militarized assistance

within our borders that would not be within our control or within the direct command of the Chicago Police Department would spell disaster,” she said in a letter to the president last week.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Sunday called the administration’s decision to send law enforcement agents to the state — a measure the administration has sought to distinguish from the agents sent to guard federal property in Portland — as “a bit suspect.”

“They have not provided the federal funding that was promised to Albuquerque for police and crime interventions,” she said in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week.” She said that the state would work with federal agents if they folded into existing efforts to address violent crime. But, she said, “If we’re going to incentivize unrest, then that’s something altogether different.”

Portland has been the epicenter of the most recent protests. After the initial mass demonstrations in the aftermath of Floyd’s death, protests in the city continued each night, although in smaller numbers. Police have said there was persistent vandalism, people pointing lasers at law enforcement agents, and protesters who threw objects such as commercial-grade fireworks at officers, including those protecting the federal courthouse.

Trump’s campaign has sought to capitalize on the unrest to reassure voters that he will bring an end to the turbulence. “If there is a danger for Democrats generically, it is if the Republicans are able to define them as being on the side of the anarchists in Portland,” said Scott Jennings, a veteran Republican strategist. But he said that Trump’s heated and broad-brush rhetoric has made the Republican cause harder. “The bottom line is it’s a situation that requires nuance and it’s a presidency that has not engaged in a lot of nuance.”

Democratic strategists and Biden officials expressed confidence thatTrump’s attacks posed little immediate political risk even as street protests escalated. For one, they said, the president’s warning of a dark Democratic-run future is in stark dissonance with the reality that the unrest is happening under his own administration.

They said the police issue was being treated by many voters as a distraction by Trump from his faltering coronavirus pandemic response and the struggling economy.

“No matter how many troops Donald Trump sends into American cities, it’s not going to distract them from their primary concern which is the coronavirus and their health,” said Jared Leopold, a Democratic strategist.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

9

Education Department’s civil rights chief steps down amid controversy

By ERICA L. GREEN

T

he Education Department’s civil rights chief has for 40 years labored to enforce civil rights protections in the nation’s schools and universities, but few have attracted as much attention as Kenneth L. Marcus, who will leave the post this week after two years marked by dissension, disputes — and significant accomplishments.

Marcus, who came to the job as a fierce champion for Israel and a critic of anti-Zionist movements on college campuses, is credited with overseeing the completion of sexual misconduct rules and expanding civil rights for Jewish students amid rising anti-Semitism. In announcing his departure, he said he had restored the office’s status “as a neutral, impartial civil rights law enforcement agency that faithfully executes the laws as written and in full, no more and no less.”

But in recent months, two separate complaints that have been filed accuse Marcus of abusing his authority by forcing through cases that furthered his personal and political agenda. In January, a former lawyer in the Office for Civil Rights said Marcus forced employees to investigate a policy that allowed transgender athletes in Connecticut to compete on female sports teams, even though the lawyers questioned the merits of the case.

In another complaint filed in May with the department’s inspector general, nine civil rights groups said Marcus gave preferential treatment to a conservative Zionist group with close personal ties to him when he reopened a settled anti-Semitism case against Rutgers University.

More broadly, Marcus was accused of using the office to fulfill a long-standing goal of recognizing Jewish students as a protected class under civil rights laws, while undermining policies that shielded other minority populations from discrimination. He publicly boasted that one of his first acts in office was rescinding Obama-era guidelines on how schools could use affirmative action to increase diversity in their programs.

And last fall, he moved to eliminate critical categories of civil rights data that the federal government collects from schools, like preschool enrollment by race, while proposing to broaden categories that he has long held interest in, like religious harassment.

“What we saw with Ken Marcus was a misuse of the office to further marginalize marginalized people,” said Liz King, program director for education at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which joined dozens of groups in opposing Marcus’ confirmation.

“It is clear that he was never neutral,” King added.

“Ken Marcus’ civil rights agenda was always his own, and students paid dearly for his time in office.”

Marcus, who was confirmed to lead the office in June 2018, is perhaps best known for resurrecting a complaint against Rutgers University, in which he unilaterally adopted a disputed definition of anti-Semitism that includes oppo-

sition to the state of Israel and asserted the department’s right to treat Judaism as a national origin. His decision to reopen the complaint, which had been dismissed by the Obama administration, caused an uproar among Palestinian rights and higher education groups, which had long fought Marcus’ efforts to squelch student calls for boycotting, divesting from and imposing sanctions on Israel.

The Rutgers case emboldened Marcus to push similar investigations into national origin at other high-profile universities, including whether Jewish students were discriminated against in admissions processes. His efforts were widely seen as the groundwork for an executive order to combat anti-Semitism on college campuses.

Kenneth L. Marcus, a critic of most anti-Zionist movements on college campuses, is credited with overseeing the completion of campus sexual misconduct rules and expanding civil rights for Jewish students amid rising anti-Semitism.

Marcus was applauded by some civil liberties groups for the completion of rules for how schools and colleges should respond to sexual misconduct under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination. Those rules bolstered the rights of accused students and narrowed liability for schools.

“Ken Marcus has been one of the only bright spots for me in this administration, as a conservative,” said Linda Chavez, who oversees the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative research group.

But a former lawyer in the civil rights office said Marcus also used the civil rights law to further the Trump administration’s rollback of transgender rights.

The lawyer, Dwayne Bensing, filed a whistleblower

complaint with the Office of Special Counsel outlining how Marcus pressured his employees to rush a complaint filed last June by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian conservative group. The group claimed that a Connecticut policy allowing transgender athletes to compete on female sports teams amounted to sex discrimination against women.

In August, when the alliance announced that the Education Department had opened the complaint, Bensing said he investigated how such a complex case had been established so quickly.

Bensing said lawyers questioned whether the department had jurisdiction because Title IX protected students from being treated differently on the basis of their sex, while transgender athletes and other girls were being treated the same. He said when he saw an email trail with Marcus’ name in it, he was alarmed.

“The entire case processing manual went out the window, and Ken Marcus’ fingerprints were all over it,” Bensing said in an interview.

That August, two days before the department notified the Alliance Defending Freedom that its complaint would be investigated, a civil rights enforcement director told staff members they “must have a draft for Ken’s review tomorrow,” according to emails reviewed by The New York Times.

A staff lawyer complied with an order to send a letter to the group Aug. 7 notifying it the case had been opened but said her team would “appreciate a discussion about the legal theory and, much simpler, the time frame/scope of the investigation.” On Aug. 8, after the letter was issued, the enforcement director ordered members of the team to start drafting a request for data, saying they would “talk in the future about the precise legal framework to apply.”

After Bensing revealed the correspondence to The Washington Blade, Marcus ordered an investigation of the disclosures. Bensing confessed and said he faced retaliation and left the department in January. His whistleblower complaint, first reported by HuffPost, was dismissed. In May, the department ruled that policies in Connecticut that allow transgender students to participate in athletics based on gender identity violate federal civil rights law.

“They just interpreted the law the way they wanted to, and more than that, they used those interpretations to attack people,” Bensing said. “As a former civil servant, my fear is that this administration, and Ken Marcus in particular, has tarnished the reputation of our government so much that no one is ever going to have any faith in how our federal government interprets our civil rights protections ever again.”

Marcus declined to discuss the complaints against him, but Education Department officials defended his handling of the Rutgers and Connecticut cases against what they called “recycled claims” by organizations opposed to Marcus’ “long-standing work to fight anti-Semitism.”

10

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Why Montana is a test case for Democrats’ winning the Senate

By JONATHAN MARTIN

I

n the deeply polarized election of 2016, every state that supported President Donald Trump backed Republican senators — and each state that Hillary Clinton carried voted for a Democratic Senate candidate.

But four years later, Democratic hopes for gaining a clear Senate majority depend in part on winning in conservative-leaning states where Trump may also prevail, even as he sags in the polls. In states like Alaska, Iowa, Georgia and here in Montana, Democrats are hoping their Senate candidates can outperform Joe Biden, their presumptive nominee.

That’s the dynamic Gov. Steve Bullock is counting on in Montana, where ticket-splitting is as much a way of life as fly-fishing. Montanans have supported Republican presidential candidates, with one exception, for more than a half-century. In that same period, though, they have elected a series of Democratic governors and senators. Sen. Steve Daines, whom Bullock is challenging, was the first Republican elected to the Senate seat that he holds in more than a century.

Yet as he faces off against Bullock, whose popularity has risen as he leads the state’s coronavirus response, Daines is counting on Montanans to act a little more like voters everywhere else and stick with one party as they make their way down the ballot.

The race here will measure the political effect of the pandemic — many governors have

grown in stature for their handling of the virus, and Bullock is the only sitting governor running for the Senate. It will also test Montana’s iconoclastic identity in a time of encroaching red-and-blue homogeneity. But for Democrats, going on the offensive in a red-leaning state in an age of polarization is no easy task.

By nominating the more moderate Biden, they hope they can at least lose more closely, if not win outright, in states where Clinton was thrashed and her party’s Senate candidates went down with her.

“The reason he was so strong in ’16 is because you could go up and down here — Democrats and Republicans would both tell you they hate Hillary,” Jon Tester, a Democrat who is Montana’s senior senator, said of Trump over an afternoon beer in Great Falls.

Even as Clinton lost Montana overwhelmingly, though, Bullock still managed to get reelected as governor.

A Helena-reared lawyer who made a foray for president last year, Bullock has won statewide office three times, first as attorney general before he became governor.

“Montanans know me,” he said in an interview, explaining how he’d overcome Republican claims that he’d abet liberal voices in Washington. “I’ve worked with Republicans to get things done.”

Winning a federal race, in which the issues are more national in scope, is difficult enough for a Democrat in a red state. But Bullock made that task harder by leaving Montana

Gov. Steve Bullock met with volunteers at a food bank in Columbia Falls, Mont., this month.

for half of 2019 to run for president, drifting to the left on some issues and repeatedly insisting he would not fall back to seek the Senate seat.

Without prompting last week, though, he noted that he had stood up to President Barack Obama’s administration on environmental policies he thought were harmful to Montana’s agriculture and energy sectors.

Navigating Trump is a delicate issue for Montana Democrats, who must energize their liberal base without alienating the state’s ticketsplitters. Tester aired ads in his 2018 reelection campaign trumpeting his work with the president, which helped blunt the effect of Trump’s four trips to the state that year.

Few GOP senators have so happily linked themselves to Trump as Daines, a chemical engineer by training who represented Montana as its lone congressman before winning his Senate seat in 2014.

In an interview in his Bozeman campaign office, he said he was eager for the president to return to the state and revealed that Trump had “asked to come, too.”

However, just as Bullock’s ill-fated bid for president has complicated his attempt to run again in Montana, the coronavirus has created headwinds for Daines.

Trump’s standing here has fallen, as it has elsewhere, because of his ineffective response to the outbreak. Some Republican polling this summer suggests he is leading Biden only by single digits in Montana.

Asked to assess the president’s performance on the pandemic, Daines largely sidestepped the question, stating that he supported letting states and localities “have primacy.”

Further muddling matters for Daines: Any effort by him to embrace the national Republican strategy of pinning the blame on China for the virus’s spread in America is complicated by his years of work for Procter & Gamble in China. Democrats are already airing commercials highlighting the senator’s work in the country.

More than anything, though, the health crisis has created challenges for Daines by delaying the parry-and-thrust of the campaign, allowing Bullock to enjoy what his opponent called a “rally around the flag” bounce.

Daines acknowledged that his role was more of constituent service specialist than candidate — and that the virus was foremost on the minds of voters.

“These are third-generation business owners that are crying on the phone to me, saying: ‘Steve, I’m losing everything,’” he recalled. “And so in that moment you’re not thinking so much about, ‘Well, Steve Bullock got

an F on guns and I got an A+.’ It’s not the discussion.”

Few places have as strong a sense of place as Montana, where politicians routinely invoke how many generations their families go back in the state. This focus on rootedness and the state’s sparse population have helped perpetuate its independent streak as races remain more about the individual.

“We have six people per square mile and three times as many cows as people, so that makes for a lot of reliance,” said Marc Racicot, a former Republican governor. “The social connection is a little richer and not so contaminated with only electronic communications.”

Yet even as it treasures its status as “The Last, Best Place,” one of its slogans, Montana, which has about 1 million people, is being reshaped by transplants. And nowhere more so than Bozeman, a community cherished for its proximity to Yellowstone Park that locals now call “Bozeangeles.”

Traditionally, Democrats won statewide by winning or breaking even in the county surrounding Billings, the population center of Montana’s Republican-dominated east. That’s changing, though, because of the rising population in Gallatin County, which includes Bozeman and is the fastest-growing jurisdiction in the state.

Tester’s trajectory in Gallatin County tells the story of Montana’s transformation: Over three elections, Tester has gone from winning 49% to 51.5% to 59.4% there.

Once rooted in labor, the Democratic coalition here increasingly reflects the national party, with its twin pillars of upscale whites and working-class minorities (Native Americans in the case of Montana).

“These urban spaces are growing dramatically, and these spaces are becoming the heart of the Democratic base here,” said David Parker, a Montana State University professor who wrote a book on the 2012 Senate race.

At the same time, though, Republicans are winning their heavily rural base by even larger margins today: Even Tester, a descendant of homesteaders who is the only farmer in the Senate, has seen his support sag in sparsely populated counties since he first ran in 2006.

It adds up to a shrinking pool of persuadable voters.

“It’s not quite like what it was,” Racicot acknowledged, before hinting at why so many people want to move to Montana. “But it’s a lot closer to that ideal than the rest of the nation.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

11

How remote work will create economic winners and losers

By NOAM SCHEIBER

W

hen the pandemic hit and tens of millions of U.S. workers suddenly redeployed to their basements and living rooms, it was easy to imagine that their workdays would unfold roughly as before, with communication tools like Slack and Zoom substituting for face-to-face interactions (and maybe with slightly greater multitasking opportunities).

But the shift to a heavily remote workforce — companies like Facebook and Twitter have announced that they will allow many employees to work from home permanently — has the potential to change people’s work lives in much more profound ways. It could significantly affect their wages, alter career prospects and restructure organizations. And as with many economic shocks, workers are likely to be affected unevenly.

The changes that remote work is accelerating “are a disaster for low-skilled labor and could be a good thing for high-skilled labor,” said Gerald Davis, a professor of management and sociology at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business who has written extensively about shifting work arrangements. “I anticipate it having this centrifugal effect.”

Many workers could see an increase in disposable income and flexibility, but others could be pushed into contracting arrangements that lower their wages and make their livelihoods more precarious.

Even highly skilled workers may find it harder to band together to improve their pay and working conditions.

So-called fully distributed companies, where everyone works remotely, often pay employees somewhat less than they might earn in the most expensive metropolitan areas but more than they would make elsewhere.

DuckDuckGo, an internet privacy company with a well-regarded search engine, formally bases its compensation on salaries at a group of technology companies across the United States, excluding the San Francisco Bay Area. Automattic, maker of the website-building tool WordPress, pays employees based on job responsibilities and qualifications regardless of location.

(By contrast, tech companies with physical headquarters often pay workers less if they

Jason Caldwell, a marketing manager at WordPress on a video call from Billings, Mont., in Edison, N.J., July 25, 2020. live in a less expensive area.)

This benefits skilled workers living outside the most expensive markets, and especially where jobs with generous pay are scarce. Jason Caldwell, a marketing manager at WordPress, makes safely into the six figures working from Billings, Montana. He is hoping to buy a 100-plus-acre plot where members of his family can build homes.

And while wages for high-skilled workers in the Bay Area could increase less quickly as a more remote world reduces local competition for talent, even they could come out ahead in the end. Reduced hiring of affluent workers in the Bay Area would also mean fewer bidders for real estate, slowing the rise in housing prices, said Adam Ozimek, chief economist of Upwork, an online freelancing marketplace.

The deeper change is organizational.

At a typical company, small chunks of information relevant to one’s work tend to be scattered throughout the organization — with the woman on the other side of your desk pod, the guy three cubicles over, the manager at the end of the hall. This forces workers into a series of person-to-person interactions throughout the day, making it necessary for them to keep similar hours even when that’s not convenient.

By contrast, distributed organizations like DuckDuckGo and Automattic seek

to “separate individuals from the information they possess” and create a centralized “knowledge repository,” Stanford business scholar Jen Rhymer has written. This makes it possible for employees to complete their assignments from anywhere, at almost any time of day, without having to check in frequently with colleagues.

Several academics and industry experts said the changes might go even further. For example, remote companies, because they are set up to allow people to work efficiently on their own, are also well positioned to use contractors and other workers who are not employees.

“If you know how to have remote fulltime employees, it’s much easier to have remote on-demand people from a freelancing platform,” said Stephane Kasriel, who until recently was chief executive of Upwork, which counts Automattic, the Wikimedia Foundation and other fully or heavily distributed organizations as clients.

He added that much of what made this possible was sound management that companies with physical offices didn’t adopt simply because they could afford to be sloppy.

The ease of working as a freelancer can be a boon to many skilled workers, who can command high hourly rates through Upwork and other freelancing marketplaces.

But for lower-skilled workers, such as those in customer service or data entry, working as a contractor tends to reduce wages and increase insecurity. Companies often pay low-skilled employees abovemarket wages because they have internal pay scales but pay only the market price for a contractor or freelancer.

Ozimek of Upwork acknowledged that outsourcing work could reduce wages for low-skilled workers but said this didn’t take into account the lower cost of living for remote workers outside expensive cities and the job creation that platforms like Upwork made possible by allowing new businesses to form and scale quickly. Both he and Kasriel said freelancers on Upwork tended to be relatively skilled and well paid, as a new study from the company shows.

Even highly skilled workers could find less leverage at a distributed company than at one where they work in offices, however. Laurence Berland, a longtime Google engineer who was active in organizing workers there before he was fired last fall, said that digital tools made it easy to coordinate remotely among workers already involved in an organizing effort but that it was often difficult to recruit new workers who were not in the same physical space.

“Some people maybe correctly consider it a big red flag to say to someone on a corporate chat, ‘Hey, can we talk on a noncorporate device?’” Berland said.

One typical way of enlisting co-workers, he said, is to start a conversation after overhearing them complain about a company practice — something less likely to happen remotely.

Sandy Pope, bargaining director for the Office and Professional Employees International Union, which represents workers at the crowdfunding site Kickstarter as well as university and clerical staff members elsewhere, said remote work could create inequality among workers performing the same job because it was harder for them to share information discreetly outside an office.

“There’s a lack of transparency,” Pope said, “the lack of ability to even track what’s going on.”

She said this lack of transparency could also make it easier for companies to outsource work without employees’ knowledge.

12

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Don’t ban TikTok. Make an example of it.

A student sets up her phone to record a TikTok video during TikTok club at West Orange High School in Winter Garden, Fla., Oct. 14, 2019.

By KEVIN ROOSE

F

or a while, it seemed that TikTok might dodge the techlash. After all, what could be problematic about a short-form video app featuring a bunch of teenagers and 20-somethings doing choreographed dances, roller skating, hanging out in influencer mansions and cutting into photorealistic cakes?

The answer turns out to be: plenty.

In the past year, as it has become one of the most popular apps in the world, TikTok has accumulated many of the same problems that other large-scale social networks have. In addition to all the harmless Gen Z fun, there are TikTok conspiracy theories, TikTok misinformation and TikTok extremism. There are even activists using TikTok to influence our elections, including a network of teenagers and K-pop fans who claimed they used the app to sabotage President Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last month by registering for tickets under false identities.

All of this might have been overlooked or forgiven, except for one fact: TikTok is owned by ByteDance, one of the largest tech companies in China.

TikTok’s Chinese ownership has become a subject of intense scrutiny by lawmakers, regulators and privacy activists in recent weeks. Trump is considering taking steps to ban the app in the United States.

Companies including Wells Fargo and gov-

ernment agencies including the Transportation Security Administration have instructed their employees to delete TikTok from their work phones because of concerns that it could be used for surveillance or espionage.

In response to the mounting pressures, TikTok is wrapping itself in the American flag. The company has hired a small army of lobbyists in Washington, has brought in an American chief executive (former Disney executive Kevin Mayer) and is reportedly exploring selling a majority stake in the company to U.S. investors.

Jamie Favazza, a TikTok spokeswoman, said in a statement that in addition to the chief executive, the social network had an American as its chief information security officer and another as its head of safety.

“We’ve tripled the number of employees in the U.S. since the start of 2020,” she said, “with plans to hire 10,000 more people over the next three years in places like Texas, New York and Florida.”

There are legitimate concerns about a Chinese-owned company capturing the attention and data of millions of Americans — especially one like ByteDance, which has a history of bending the knee to the country’s ruling regime. Like all Chinese tech companies, ByteDance is required to abide by Chinese censorship laws, and it could be forced to give user data to the Chinese government under the country’s national security law.

Lawmakers have also raised concerns that

TikTok could be used to promote pro-China propaganda to young Americans or censor politically sensitive content.

Favazza said TikTok stored U.S. user data in Virginia and Singapore. She added that the company’s content moderation efforts were led by U.S.-based teams and not influenced by any foreign government, and that TikTok had not and would not give data to the Chinese government.

There are also reasons to be skeptical of the motives of TikTok’s biggest critics.

Many conservative politicians, including Trump, appear to care more about appearing tough on China than preventing potential harm to TikTok users. And Silicon Valley tech companies like Facebook, whose executives have warned of the dangers of a Chinese tech takeover, would surely like to see regulators kneecap one of their major competitors.

I’ll be honest: I don’t buy the argument that TikTok is an urgent threat to America’s national security. Or, to put it more precisely, I am not convinced that TikTok is inherently more threatening to Americans than any other Chinese-owned app that collects data from Americans. If TikTok is a threat, so are WeChat, Alibaba and League of Legends, the popular video game, whose maker, Riot Games, is owned by China’s Tencent.

And since banning every Chineseowned tech company from operating in America wouldn’t be possible without erecting our own version of China’s Great Wall — a drastic step that would raise concerns about censorship and authoritarian control — we need to figure out a way for Chinese apps and U.S. democracy to coexist.

Here’s an idea: Instead of banning TikTok or forcing ByteDance to sell it to Americans, why not make an example of it by turning it into the most transparent, privacyprotecting, ethically governed tech platform in existence?

As a foreign-owned app, TikTok is, in some ways, easier to regulate than a U.S. tech platform would be. (One way of regulating it, a national security review by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment of ByteDance’s 2017 acquisition of Musical.ly, TikTok’s predecessor app, is already reportedly underway.) And there is plenty more the U.S. government could do to ensure that TikTok plays a responsible role in our information ecosystem without getting rid of it altogether. It could require the company

to open-source key parts of its software, including the machine-learning algorithms that determine which posts users are shown.

It could pressure TikTok to submit to regular audits of its data-collection practices and open up its internal content moderation guidelines for public comment.

As Kevin Xu, the author of Interconnected, a blog about U.S.-China relations, points out, ByteDance could impose strict internal controls to prevent its Chinese employees from accessing any of TikTok’s systems and open-source those controls so that outsiders could verify the separation.

Forcing TikTok to operate in a radically transparent way would go a long way toward assuaging Americans’ fears. And it could become a test case for a new model of tech regulation that could improve the accountability and responsibility of not just Chinese-owned tech companies but American ones, too.

At its core, a lot of the TikTok fear factor comes down to a lack of information. In March, TikTok announced that it would open “transparency centers” where independent auditors could examine its content moderation practices. The company has also begun releasing “transparency reports,” similar to those issued by Facebook and Twitter, outlining the various takedown requests it gets from governments around the world.

But we still don’t know how TikTok’s algorithms are programmed or why they’re showing which videos to which users. We don’t know how it’s using the data it’s collecting or how it makes and enforces its rules. We should know these things — not just about TikTok but about U.S. social media apps, too.

After all, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Snapchat are playing a huge role in the lives of millions of Americans, and for years, they have operated with a degree of secrecy that few other companies of their importance have been allowed.

What little we understand about these platforms’ inner workings is often learned years after the fact, gleaned from insider leaks or repentant former employees.

If we can figure out how to handle TikTok — an app with a genuinely creative culture, and millions of American young people who love it — we’ll have done a lot more than preserving a world-class time-waster.

We’ll have figured out a model for getting big tech platforms under control, after years of letting them run amok.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

13 Stocks

Wall Street advances on stimulus bets ahead of busy earnings week

W

all Street’s main indexes gained on Monday as investors looked past surging U.S. COVID-19 cases, betting instead on more stimulus to revive a battered domestic economy ahead of a week packed with quarterly earnings reports.

Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Facebook Inc (FB.O) and Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) rose between 0.5% and 0.9%, and were among the top boosts to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. The four FAANG companies are among the 189 S&P 500 companies expected to report results this week.

About 80% of the 130 S&P 500 firms that have reported so far have beaten a low bar of earnings estimates, according to IBES Refinitiv data.

“It’s probably going to be the biggest week of the year in terms of what people are expecting due to the impact from the coronavirus outbreak,” said Brian Pirri, principal at New England Investment and Retirement Group in Boston.

“I don’t think we’re going to see a slowdown in technology stocks. There was some profit taking due to high valuations, but I don’t see them going away anytime soon.”

Safe haven assets were in demand with gold prices at record levels amid concerns over a diplomatic row between the United States and China, escalating COVID-19 cases in southern and western U.S. states and an unexpected rise in U.S. jobless claims last week. [GOL/] Trillions of dollars in fiscal and monetary stimulus have been pivotal in bringing the S&P 500 to within 5% of its February record high.

Later in the day, U.S. Senate Republicans are likely to unveil their $1 trillion coronavirus aid package, which would be negotiated with Democrats, ahead of the expiry of enhanced unemployment benefits on Friday.

“The market is factoring in the fact that there’s going to be some kind of extension of around one-and-a-half to 2 trillion dollars of total aid, and if that does not occur it would be a near-term negative catalyst,” said Mike Mussio, president at FBB Capital Partners in Bethesda, Maryland.

Expectations are running low for any major announcement at a two-day Federal Reserve meeting, but policymakers are likely to lay the groundwork for more action later this year, analysts said.

At 12:48 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was up 92.63 points, or 0.35%, at 26,562.52, the S&P 500 .SPX was up 14.70 points, or 0.46%, at 3,230.33. The Nasdaq Composite .IXIC was up 97.49 points, or 0.94%, at 10,460.67.

Materials stocks .SPLRCM rose 1.1%, more than any other S&P sector, boosted by the shares of gold miners.

Financials .SPSY, utilities .SPLRCU and energy .SPNY were the only sectors in the red.

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14

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Quarantine order blindsides Britons returning from Spain

A lone traveler at Heathrow Airport in London on Sunday. A spike in Spanish Covid-19 cases prompted the British government to abruptly impose a quarantine for anyone arriving from Spain.

By STEPHEN CASTLE and RAPHAEL MINDER

O

ften criticized for a slow response to the coronavirus, the British government moved quickly this weekend to impose a quarantine on anyone arriving from Spain, after a spike in COVID-19 cases there.

But this time speed brought disarray to thousands of Britons, blindsiding those who have already gone to Spain and embarrassing Britain’s transportation secretary, Grant Shapps. He is responsible for aviation policy but learned of the quarantine while on his own vacation.

In Spain.

The abrupt decision means that Shapps and others who left Britain assuming that they could return without restrictions will be required to isolate themselves for 14 days.

Many who were about to depart Britain have been forced to rethink their plans. Some flights to Spain were canceled. And even those planning to head elsewhere were reminded that quarantine rules can change overnight.

Britain’s foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said the decision had been made after a review of data received Friday that showed a large jump in Spanish cases.

“We took the decision as swiftly as we could,” Raab told Sky News.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government moved only recently to lift restrictions on those hoping for summer vacations abroad. Now the Foreign Office urges Britons to avoid all nonessential travel to mainland Spain, although it says it is “not advising those already traveling in Spain to leave at this time.”

The Scottish government, which had lifted its quarantine rules for Spain just a few days ago, said it would reimpose them too.

As a result, Britain’s biggest tour operator, Tui, said it was canceling all its vacations to mainland Spain until Aug. 9, although several airlines, including British Airways, were still offering flights. Airline officials expressed the frustration of a devastated sector, however. “​This is, sadly, yet another blow for British holidaymakers and cannot fail to have an impact on an already troubled aviation industry,” British Airways said in a statement, adding that the change was “throwing thousands of Britons’ travel plans into chaos.”

For some of those still hoping to enjoy some Spanish sun, the viability of their vacations could depend on their employers’ willingness to let them stay at home for 14 days after their return.

“The government’s policy regarding travel restrictions

has lacked grip and coherence from the outset,” said Nick Thomas-Symonds, who speaks on home affairs issues for the opposition Labour Party. “This latest decision-making process regarding Spain and the short notice for travelers has created a sense of panic and loss of control.”

Britons normally make up around one-fifth of foreign visitors to Spain, and the Spanish foreign minister called Sunday for Britain to exclude at least Spain’s two archipelagoes — the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands — from its quarantine order. Both are major British tourist destinations and have had low COVID-19 caseloads throughout the epidemic.

The foreign minister, Arancha González Laya, said Sunday that Spain had brought its three major mainland outbreaks under control.

From a high of about 8,000 confirmed new infections per day in early April, Spain dropped below 300 early this month. But in the past week, the daily average has topped 1,700 — as many as Britain, France and Italy combined — and, as in many places, experts say the real figure is higher, with many cases going undetected.

On Friday, Norway also reimposed a quarantine for people arriving from Spain, while Belgium recommended the same for six of Spain’s 17 regions, as well as forbidding its citizens from traveling to two specific Spanish provinces, Huesca and Lleida.

On Friday, France advised against travel to Catalonia, Spain’s northeastern region bordering France, where hundreds of thousands of residents were put back under temporary lockdown this month.

Since Spain ended its state of emergency June 21, new outbreaks have underlined continued shortfalls in testing and contact tracing, making it harder to monitor and control the spread of the virus.

Britain, too, has had problems with its track and trace system, and Johnson has been criticized for his handling of the crisis. Britain was slow to impose lockdowns or quarantine travelers; it eventually did both, but by late April it had the worst outbreak in Western Europe.

Earlier this month, with infections down sharply across the continent, Britain eased its rules, allowing people in dozens of countries, including Spain, to travel to England with no restrictions, although U.S. travelers are still required to observe the quarantine.

That let thousands of Britons salvage summer vacation plans — or so they thought. According to British news media reports, Shapps had only recently arrived in Spain when he learned about the decision to reimpose a quarantine.

According to Raab, who said he spoke to Shapps on Saturday, the transport secretary reacted philosophically to the move and agreed on the need for measures to protect the country.

“I think it shows you that there are risks for everyone,” Raab said.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

15

For French Algerian families, virus disrupts cherished summer ritual

By CONSTANT MÉHEUT

S

itting around a table strewed with steaming cups of mint tea, a dozen women were sharing memories of their summer holidays in their homeland, Algeria.

Malika Haï recalled sweltering days spent with her cousins near the beaches. Samia Tran described the cheerful family dinners around traditional dishes.

And Zohra Benkebane, almost an hour into the conversation, was the first to burst into tears.

“We all have a lump in our throats,” Tran said as she hugged her sobbing friend. “It’s too hard. We need to go home.”

For many French citizens of Algerian descent whose families migrated across the Mediterranean in the second half of the 20th century, summer holidays in Algeria are a deep-rooted tradition. Every year thousands of people venture off toward what they commonly call the “bled” — a word derived from Arabic that refers to the countryside.

“Leaving for the bled is a form of holiday routine,” said Jennifer Bidet, a sociologist at the Paris Descartes University who estimated, based on official statistics, that 82% of French people of Algerian origin had spent at least one holiday in Algeria during childhood, while 34% returned every year.

But with the COVID-19 pandemic still raging, Algeria is keeping its borders tightly closed until further notice.

That effectively forbids vacations that had become a cornerstone of the cross-cultural identity of many French Algerian families, much to their dismay.

“Holidays in the bled are a cultural bridge,” said Mustapha Benzitouni, a 45-year-old French Algerian. “It allows people to rediscover an identity through their parents, through their belonging to a people, through their belonging to a culture.”

Perhaps nowhere has the Algerian travel ban been felt more acutely than in Toulouse, a city of about 500,000 people in southwestern France that was shaped by waves of immigration.

Hundreds of Toulouse families of Algerian descent are now stranded at home, unable to afford or simply unwilling to spend summer vacations anywhere but Algeria.

“It’s sacred for us to leave,” said Haï, 58, who, like many Algerians of her generation, mixed Arabic and French when speaking. “During a normal summer, in July and August, the neighborhood goes completely empty.”

The neighborhood to which Haï referred is Le Mirail, an impoverished area outside the city center that is plagued by drug trafficking and where about 30,000 people live in dreary apartment blocks. A large majority of the residents come from Algeria, with other families from Morocco and Tunisia, who also often visit their homelands in France’s former North African colonies in July and August.

Unlike Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia have recently reopened their borders to tourists and their citizens living abroad, meaning some of Le Mirail’s residents can go

ahead with their summer plans.

For Algerians, though, the travel ban means parents need to come up with alternative plans for idle children.

Worried that bored teenagers could lead to trouble, local community groups and authorities have tried to alleviate the doldrums by organizing activities in Le Mirail.

On a recent afternoon, dozens of families, mostly of Algerian heritage, gathered on large plots of grass bordering a small lake in the neighborhood to take part in painting workshops, water games and dance classes.

But Soraya Amalou, a volunteer, had no illusions that these activities could make up for the loss of a genuine summer escape.

“Spending holidays here means no holidays. In this neighborhood, you suffer from tiny apartments, from insecurity. You suffer from everything,” she said.

By contrast, summer vacations in Algeria, which Haï likened to a “breath of fresh air,” are much anticipated all year long, and the rituals leading up to the trip — from the tickets booked well in advance to the suitcases filled with presents for the cousins — have shaped several migrant generations.

The French colonization of Algeria, which lasted from 1830 to 1962, forged lasting yet complex ties between the two nations, which Benjamin Stora, a historian of Algeria, described as a “very special relationship of both hatred and fascination.”

Stora said that “returning to the bled” was a way for

French Algerians to “reconnect with a national filiation.”

But while French Algerians can be made to feel like they don’t fully fit in with France, they also “are badly regarded in Algeria,” Stora said, where they are seen as French citizens whose Algerian heritage is but a detail.

“They treat us like French bourgeois and raise prices as soon as we arrive,” said Ahmed Adjelout, 72, who was waiting in a travel agency in downtown Toulouse in the hope of rescheduling his July 22 flight to Oran, which had just been canceled.

Adjelout, a retiree with a beret thrust upon his head, recalled how he would be called “an emigrant, a stranger” by Algerians whenever he returned to the country he left in 1967.

“The paradox,” Adjelout added, “is that in Algeria, we’re seen as French, and in France, we’re seen as Algerians.”

This ambiguous situation — straddling two cultures and belonging to neither — can make building an identity a challenge for the estimated 2.5 million people of Algerian descent in France, especially for second- and third-generation immigrants for whom Algeria is merely a summer getaway.

“It’s tricky to deal with both sides, the French and the Algerian. No culture really welcomes us,” said Fatiha Zelmat, whose mother, Naouel Matti, has taken her to the ancient stone alleys of Algiers, the Algerian capital, every summer since she was born — except this year.

From left: Zohra Benkebane, Samia Tran Nadia Tchadaev share emotional memories of trips to their homeland in Toulouse, France July 15, 2020.

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Tuesday, July 28, 2020

As the world gets tougher on China, Japan tries to thread a needle

Beijing has cracked down on protests in Hong Kong by imposing a sweeping national security law.

By MOTOKO RICH and MAKIKO INOUE

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arlier this year, as it became clear that the coronavirus pandemic was not going to pass quickly, the Japanese government delayed plans for what would be the first state visit by a Chinese leader to Tokyo since 2008.

Now, with Chinese military aggression rising in the region and Beijing cracking down on Hong Kong, Japan is considering canceling Xi Jinping’s visit altogether — but very gingerly.

“We are not in the phase of arranging a concrete schedule now” was how Toshimitsu Motegi, the foreign minister, put it this month.

While its top allies have taken a harder line on China — especially the United States, which dramatically escalated tensions this past week by closing the Chinese Consulate in Houston — Japan has pursued a delicate balancing act, mindful of the economic might of its largest trading partner and its own limited military options.

So as Chinese ships have engaged in the longest series of incursions in or near Japanese waters in several years, Japan has offered a restrained response, vowing to be firm but “calm.” It did not join several Western nations in an initial statement criticizing the draconian security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong.

It has abandoned plans to purchase an

American missile defense system, which in part had been considered a shield against China. And the government has continued to tiptoe around the issue of the state visit

by Xi, even as polls show that most Japanese believe it should be scrapped.

“Certainly Japan is in a dilemma,” said Narushige Michishita, director of the Security and International Studies Program at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. “We understand the fact that Japan is basically competing with China while cooperating with it. We are playing those two games at the same time.”

For other world powers, this kind of middle ground on China, in the face of its growing authoritarianism and heightened bellicosity, has become less and less tenable.

The United States has approved sanctions against Chinese companies and officials and pushed back on China’s broad territorial claims in the region’s seas. Australia led the call for a global inquiry into the origins of the pandemic, which began in China, and announced an investment of nearly $1 billion in cyberweapons and defenses to counter Beijing. Britain and Canada, along with Australia, have suspended extradition agreements with Hong Kong because of the national security law.

China has responded by curbing Australian imports and threatening an array of retaliatory actions against any countries

that move to punish it. On Friday, China responded to the closure of its Houston consulate by ordering the United States to shut its consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu.

To some extent, Japan’s mild-mannered response to China echoes its broader approach to foreign policy, in which it tends to avoid direct conflict or public rebukes of other nations. It has also sometimes sought a mediating role, as when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met last December with Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, to try to ease tensions in the Middle East.

Not so long ago, China and Japan — the world’s second- and third-largest economies — were engaged in a diplomatic thaw as a hedge against an unpredictable Trump administration. In 2018, Abe became the first Japanese leader to visit China in seven years, and the two leaders pledged deeper economic and political cooperation. The invitation to Xi to visit Japan followed soon afterward.

Now, given China’s muscle-flexing as the world is preoccupied with the pandemic, some have expressed disappointment that Japan has not rebuffed its neighbor more vigorously, such as by definitively canceling Xi’s visit. In recent weeks, China has engaged in deadly clashes on its border with India in the Himalayas, and it has sent ships for 100 straight days — the longest period in years of such incursions — to patrol waters around the Senkakus, islands administered

by Japan but contested by China.

Japan “should just say ‘We cannot have him if China continues with this sort of behavior,’” said Jeffrey Hornung, an analyst at the RAND Corp., referring to Xi. But Hornung acknowledged that Tokyo would not want to draw China’s full ire, either.

“If you look at what China is doing with India or Hong Kong, Japan doesn’t want to be at the tip of China’s spear right now,” Hornung said. “They know what they could do around the Senkakus in terms of swarming it with ships.”

Yoshihide Suga, chief cabinet secretary to Abe, told reporters that the Japanese government had “strongly requested” that Chinese ships “stop approaching Japanese fishing boats and quickly leave Japanese territory.” He added, “We would like to continue responding firmly in a calm manner.”

Parts of the Japanese government have highlighted China’s growing hostility. Earlier

this month, the defense ministry warned that China was trying to “alter the status quo in the East China Sea and the South China Sea,” and it ranked China as a more serious long-term threat than North Korea.

Yet Japan’s recent decision to abandon its plan to buy an American missile defense system, known as Aegis Ashore, led some to wonder if it would now be more exposed to potential attacks from both North Korea and China.

“While the cancellation of Aegis Ashore might put Japan in a more vulnerable position, if Japan uses this opportunity to pivot to acquisition of other capabilities, then the result could be even more worrying for China,” said Kristi Govella, an assistant professor in the department of Asian studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

One area where Japan has taken steps against China is the economy. Earlier this year, it passed a law restricting foreign investment in industries that the government designates as important to national security, a move that many viewed as targeting China. It has also offered financial incentives to companies — especially those in crucial sectors — to move operations out of China and into Japan or Southeast Asia.

“The Chinese economy is recovering while other countries are still deteriorating,” said Takahide Kiuchi, an economist at Nomura Research Institute, a think tank. “Now China is in a good position to purchase companies in other countries, so the government is cautious about critical industries related to the military and national security.”

Still, Japan does not want to push too hard.

In addition to being Japan’s largest trading partner, China sent more tourists to Japan than any other nation before the pandemic shut borders. Last year, close to 115,000 Chinese students were studying at Japanese universities. The government, which has imposed entry bans on nearly 150 countries during the pandemic, is now discussing admitting travelers from several Asian countries, including China.

“A couple of years ago, it seemed like there was space for Japan to be seen as a mediator because relations between the U.S. and China had become so bad,” Govella said. But with China’s increasing aggression, it “really is an actor that has different values and dubious intentions in the region,” she said.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

17

Fighting false news in Ukraine, Facebook fact-checkers tread a blurry line

By ANTON TROIANOVSKI

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o understand the complexity of policing online disinformation, consider the small Ukrainian fact-checking group StopFake.

Earlier this year, Facebook hired StopFake to help curb the flow of Russian propaganda and other false news across its platform in Ukraine.

StopFake, like all of Facebook’s outside fact-checkers, signed a pledge to be nonpartisan and not to focus its checks “on any one side.” But in recent weeks, StopFake has been battling accusations of ties to the Ukrainian far-right and of bias in its fact-checking.

The episode has raised thorny questions for Facebook over whom it allows to separate truth from lies — and who is considered a neutral fact-checker in a country at war.

“They are empowering these organizations and these people to be making calls about what kind of information, what kind of opinions, what kind of communications are illegitimate or legitimate,” Matthew Schaaf, who leads the Ukraine office of the U.S. human rights group Freedom House, said of Facebook and its fact-checkers. “The question that needs to be asked is, do these people deserve our trust?”

A Ukrainian news outlet, Zaborona, published an article this month citing photographs of a prominent StopFake member meeting with nationalist figures, including a white-power rock musician whose lyrics deny the Holocaust. StopFake denied having any farright ties or bias, calling the Zaborona article part of a campaign of slanderous “information attacks.”

Zaborona’s editor, Katerina Sergatskova, said she fled Ukraine on Wednesday after receiving death threats. (StopFake has condemned the threats.) On Facebook, some of her critics had claimed, without evidence, that she was a Kremlin agent.

The episode underlines the high stakes facing U.S. social media companies as they try to respond to disinformation in the world’s geopolitical hot spots. After being criticized for failing to stop the spread of disinformation during the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States, Facebook sought to avoid becoming an arbiter of truth by creating a third-party fact-checking program.

The program now includes more than 50 organizations that check facts in more than 40 languages, including global news agencies such as Agence France-Presse and Reuters alongside smaller groups like StopFake.

Yevhen Fedchenko, StopFake’s editor-in-chief, declined to comment for this article. He has told other media outlets that he plans to file a lawsuit to defend StopFake’s reputation, and he wrote in an email that “our legal team advised us against talking to media until the hearing in the court.”

Facebook said in a written statement that all its factcheckers followed a “Code of Principles to promote fairness and nonpartisanship in fact-checking.” Baybars Örsek, director of the group that administers that code of principles, said it was conducting an “interim assessment” of StopFake in light of the Zaborona report.

He said his organization, the International Fact-Checking Network, which was set up by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida, takes reports of far-right ties seriously. He acknowledged that nonpartisanship had long been a particularly difficult thing to ascertain during an armed conflict like Ukraine’s.

“They are working in a country where they are still practically

in war with Russia,” Örsek said of StopFake. “This is a question we also struggle with as fact-checkers: How do you do nonpartisan fact-checking when you have tanks on the street?”

The debate over treatment of the far-right came to a head after Zaborona published its article describing what it said was evidence of StopFake’s bias. The evidence included social media photographs showing Marko Suprun, who hosts StopFake’s English-language video program about Russian disinformation, meeting with two Ukrainian nationalist musicians at a gathering in 2017.

The songs of one of the musicians, Arseniy Bilodub, include “Heroes of the White Race” and, referring to the Holocaust, “Six Million Words of Lies.” Anton Shekhovtsov, an external lecturer at the University of Vienna who studies far-right movements in Europe, said in an interview that he did not see StopFake itself as a far-right organization, “but I don’t think that they are nonpartisan.”

StopFake countered that Zaborona was employing “the fallacy of guilt by association” in presenting the photographs as evidence of far-right connections on the part of Suprun. Suprun did not respond to requests for comment.

“He has also been photographed alongside Rabbi Yakov Bleich, but this does not make him a member of his synagogue,” StopFake said in a lengthy response to the Zaborona article posted online. Suprun, the statement added, “is not involved in the joint fact-checking project StopFake has with Facebook.”

Sergatskova, Zaborona’s editor, is originally from Russia and received Ukrainian citizenship in 2015. A prominent Ukrainian journalist on Facebook called her a “lefty FSB mold” — referring to the Russian spy agency — and other commenters posted her Kyiv home address before she went into hiding.

Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists urged Ukrainian authorities to investigate the threats against Sergatskova. Ukrainian media organizations, including StopFake, signed an open letter condemning the threats. Ukrainian police did not respond to a request for comment.

Sergatskova said in a telephone interview after she went into hiding that her record as an independent journalist has been distorted by critics who saw her as playing into the Kremlin’s hands.

“Truth is a lie, freedom is slavery — it’s an Orwell kind of story,” Sergatskova said. “By all appearances we really, really touched a nerve.”

Ukrainian journalism students and faculty members launched StopFake in 2014 to counter Russian disinformation, drawing praise from Kyiv civil society and Western supporters of Ukraine. StopFake’s agreement this year to sign on as one of Facebook’s two fact-checking partners in Ukraine gave it newfound clout.

Facebook said it reduces a post’s distribution in users’ news feeds if a third-party fact-checker marks a post as false, but it does not take it down. Maksym Skubenko, who heads Facebook’s other Ukrainian fact-checking partner, VoxCheck, said users typically saw posts and articles marked as false within seconds of when his team enters a fact check into Facebook’s system.

StopFake’s website shows that the organization has carried out some 200 fact checks of posts and articles for Facebook in Russian and Ukrainian since the group started working for the social network in April. Many of the fact checks are apolitical and related to the coronavirus pandemic. A smaller number address issues of Ukrainian national identity, generally when the item being fact-checked fits into a pro-Russian narrative.

StopFake, like all of Facebook’s outside fact checkers, signed a pledge to be nonpartisan and not to focus its checks “on any one side.”

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Tuesday, July 28, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Trump’s nakedly political pandemic pivot In 2016, when the “Access Hollywood” tape on which Trump is heard bragging about sexually assaulting women was made public, he fter mocking people for wearing masks, issued a rare half-apology, saying, “I’ve said and refusing to publicly wear one himself and done things I regret, and the words released toholding rallies and gatherings where soday on this more than a decade-old video are cial distancing was not required, President Doone of them.” He would later deem his assault nald Trump has shifted his tone. claims “locker room talk.”

He has canceled his convention activities But shortly after winning the election he in Jacksonville, Florida, after moving the events started suggesting that the voice on the tape from North Carolina when that state’s governor wasn’t his, and after his inauguration, according raised public health concerns about such a large to The New York Times, he told a Republican indoor gathering. senator that “he wanted to investigate the reHe has resumed briefings, ostensibly about cording that had him boasting about grabbing the coronavirus, after canceling them and trying women’s genitals.” to move on to other matters, as if the virus would In 2016, Trump finally admitted that Barack simply vanish if he sufficiently ignored it.

Obama was born in the United States. It is imTrump is in real trouble. With the election passing the 100-day-away milestone, he is down President Donald Trump makes remarks during a news conference at the portant to note that he didn’t in fact apologize for years of racist birtherism during which he inin the polls, people don’t trust or approve of his White House in Washington, July 23, 2020. sisted otherwise. Instead, he once again attemphandling of the pandemic and he faces a real ted to shift blame, saying: “Hillary Clinton and uphill battle to reelection.

But Trump is a political chameleon: He can alter her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I Apparently, the reality of his dire straits has begun himself to suit his environment, to reflect it. He may not finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean.” to pierce his inner circle of perpetual affirmation. There be fond of apologies, but he is open to course reversal, But after Trump was elected he revived his questiois a reality lurking that can’t be lied away. If the election for survival. ning of Obama’s place of birth and the authenticity of his were held today, he wouldn’t win.

Indeed, that is the maleficent marvel of it all: He birth certificate. has changed his position to the opposite of what it once Trump is an incendiary figure. He uses fear and diwas and argued that the new direction is the one he’s vision as his devices. He believes they work ... until they always embraced. Only a person with an utter contempt don’t. When forced — by shifts in sentiment by his core for the truth could repeatedly take this tact. supporters, or those on the margins he needs, or in the We need look no further than 2016 to see how face of possible loss and defeat — he will say and do Trump operates when he is desperate and in trouble, PO BOX 6537 Caguas PR 00726 whatever it takes to get back in the good. trying to woo the votes he needs, and how hollow and But none of the change is ever real. This man Telephones: (787) 743-3346 • (787) 743-6537 nakedly political his efforts can be. doesn’t evolve. He doesn’t grow. He doesn’t grow up.

(787) 743-5606 • Fax (787) 743-5100 In 2016, after calling Mexican immigrants drug deaHe is stuck and stunted. He is a creature of inslers and rapists and promising to build a wall between tinct and that instinct is base and animalistic, survivalthe United States and Mexico — one that he would socentered, without core conviction of a prevailing chamehow force the Mexican government to finance — he racter. posed with taco bowls on Cinco De Mayo and wrote on The way Trump handled — and failed to handle Twitter: “I love Hispanics!”

— the pandemic in its early months no doubt led to the Publisher He got over a quarter of the Hispanic vote, yet once deaths of people who should not have died. He was thinelected, he continued to demonize immigrants and tried Manuel Sierra Ray Ruiz king of himself, his political prospects, and nothing else. to dismantle the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals General Manager Legal Notice Director American lives were collateral damage. program for young immigrants known as “Dreamers.”

Now, his calculus has finally shifted: It’s hurting María de L. Márquez Sharon Ramírez His administration’s negligence and lack of prepahim more to ignore the virus than to engage it. So he has Business Director Legal Notices Graphics Manager redness in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria undoubdone a 180 and now wants to pretend to be in charge, tedly led to more deaths than there would have been mature and not completely dismissive of the science that R. Mariani Elsa Velázquez under a competent president.

Circulation Director Reporter could save us.

And the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” But even now, this is not about the American policy, under which thousands of migrant children, soLisette Martínez María Rivera people but about politics. Should he prevail in NovemAdvertising Agency Director Graphic Artist Manager metimes infants, were taken from their parents, flourisber, the true Trump will no doubt reemerge. hed.

By CHARLES M. BLOW

A

Dr. Ricardo Angulo

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

19

NMEAD hace llamado a la preparación familiar de cara al pico de la temporada de huracanes Por THE STAR

E

l comisionado interino del Negociado para el Manejo de Emergencias y Administración de Desastres (NMEAD), Nino Correa Filomeno, exhortó el lunes, a la ciudadanía a prepararse y mantenerse atento al desarrollo del sistema denominado Invest 92L y la cercanía de la parte más activa de la temporada de huracanes.

“Aunque es muy prematuro anticipar la intensidad y trayectoria de este sistema, debemos recordar que Puerto Rico se encuentra en el camino de tormentas y huracanes. Estamos en comunicación constante con el personal del Servicio Nacional de Meteorología, así como con la gobernadora Wanda Vázquez Garced y las agencias de primera respuesta, para discutir las decisiones a tomar. Debemos recordar que anualmente estamos vulnerables a que un fenómeno atmosférico nos afecte. La preparación familiar es fundamental para la seguridad de nuestros seres amados en momentos de emergencia. En esta temporada de huracanes es importante tomar las medidas necesarias para atemperar el Plan de Emergencia Familiar a la situación del COVID-19”, señaló el funcionario en comunicación escrita.

Correa Filomeno explicó que la ciudadanía debe estar preparada para un mínimo de diez días con suministros, medicamentos y otros artículos de primera necesidad.

“Las agencias de respuesta han realizado la planificación necesaria para para preparar a Puerto Rico y ofrecer una respuesta ágil, eficaz y coordinada en caso de una emergencia o desastre. Es importante recordar que cada ciudadano debe tener su preparación individual y familiar considerando las necesidades alimentarias y médicas de cada persona que compone su hogar, así como los requerimientos de la estructura donde residen”, destacó.

El comisionado interino recomendó que en cada hogar tengan un kit básico de suministros. Estos artículos deben guardarse en cajas plásticas o envases que impidan sean dañados por el agua. El kit básico de suministros debe contener lo siguiente: • 1 galón de agua por persona por día para 10 días • Alimentos no perecederos para por lo menos 10 días por persona • Mascarillas • Desinfectante en gel • Medicamentos recetados y sin receta • Dinero en efectivo (billetes de $1, $5, $10 y $20) • Baterías • Linternas o lámparas de batería y solares • Radio de batería o de dínamo (cuerda) • Velas, fósforos o encendedores (fuera del alcance de

los niños) • Cargador y batería externa para el celular • Copias de documentos importantes (impresas y digitales guardadas en dispositivos de memoria externa) • Botiquín de primeros auxilios Artículos de higiene y cuidado personal Herramientas básicas Juegos de mesa o entretenimiento que no requiera electricidad para niños Comida, agua y medicamentos para mascotas Jaula o “kennel” para transportar mascotas “Las personas con padecimientos de salud deben consultar a su médico o proveedor de servicios para que les oriente sobre las medidas a tomar para obtener sus medicamentos y tratamientos como diálisis, y quimioterapias, entre otros. Las embarazadas deben discutir con su obstetra la continuidad de sus cuidados. Se recomienda que las personas que padecen asma tengan consigo su inhalador y medicamentos, las personas con padecimientos cardiacos deben tener el equipo necesario para monitorear la presión arterial y los diabéticos, deben mantener su insulina debidamente preservada según las indicaciones médicas, así como los equipos para monitorear su condición. Para los pacientes dependientes de oxígeno, se exhorta a que pregunten a su proveedor sobre el plan para mantener el suministro de oxígeno”, recalcó el titular de NMEAD. Sobre el traslado a refugios, el funcionario explicó la importancia de contar con una mochila de emergencia para cada miembro de la familia, que puedan llevar consigo en caso de que necesiten abandonar el hogar. Esta mochila debe incluir:

• Certificación de vacunas • Collar con chapa de identificación • Jaula para transporte • Correa (“leash”) • Foto del dueño junto a la mascota (para que pueda identificarlo en caso de pérdida) • Juguete Bolsas, “pads” y artículos para recoger desechos Correa recalcó que si existe la necesidad de instalar un generador eléctrico, se deben solicitar los servicios de un perito electricista licenciado para que la instalación se realice de acuerdo a los estándares requeridos y asegurarse de realizar el mantenimiento de acuerdo a las instrucciones del manufacturero. De igual forma, para la instalación de cisternas o reservas de agua, es importante recurrir a los servicios de una persona cualificada para estas labores.

“Nos acercamos a la parte más activa de la temporada de huracanes y es el momento de prepararnos.

Revise los drenajes en su residencia, verifique puertas y ventanas que necesiten ser reforzadas, pode los árboles dentro de su propiedad, establezca un plan de comunicación y encuentro con su familia, atienda cualquier situación vulnerable que pueda convertirse en un riesgo para su hogar y familia. Es vital que repase su plan de preparación familiar con cada miembro de su hogar y que los más pequeños entiendan la importancia de preparase. Hacemos un llamado a que se mantenga informado a través de fuentes oficiales y no haga caso a rumores o personas que utilizan plataformas electrónicas para desinformar”, concluyó el comisionado interino.

• Agua • Meriendas (frutas secas, barritas nutritivas, cereales, etc.)

• Una muda de ropa • Sábana o manta • Kit de primeros auxilios • Medicamentos • Comida, leche y pañales para bebé • Libro de colorear, cartas, libros, crucigramas o algún otro artículo de entretenimiento • Dinero en efectivo • Copias de documentos importantes y llaves • Artículos de higiene y cuidado personal • Toallitas húmedas • Mascarillas y desinfectante en gel • Radio de baterías o dínamo (cuerda) • Linterna y baterías de reemplazo Para las mascotas: Comisionado interino del Negociado para el Manejo de • Comida y agua Emergencias y Administración de Desastres (NMEAD), • Medicamentos Nino Correa Filomeno.

20

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Taylor Swift, a Pop star done with Pop

Taylor Swift surprise-released “Folkore,” an album of delicate, atmospheric music that’s a definitive jolt away from the last near decade of her big-tent pop.

By JON CARAMANIZA

T

he song that catapulted Taylor Swift from too-cool-forcountry phenom to the-world-is-not-enough pop supernova was “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” the debut single from her fourth album, “Red,” in 2012. The first of her songs to top the Billboard Hot 100, it deployed country references as a tease on the way to an ecstatically saccharine, unmistakably pop hook — a universal anthem of I’m over it.

Right after the song’s gleeful taunt of a first chorus, Swift drilled down on just the kind of guy she was thrilled to be rid of: “You would hide away and find your peace of mind/With some indie record that’s much cooler than mine.”

Sick burn. Delivered with an eye roll — literally, in the song’s video — it announced that Swift understood the power and cool of her own music (which was not, at that point, widely conceded). And it tautly encapsulated the way that mopey interiority has often been perceived as — make that mistaken for — depth. That’s about men, of course, but certainly about songs, too. It’s a trap that whole genres are built on.

Now, eight years later, Swift has made, well, one of those records herself, or at least something like it. “Folklore” (Republic), her alternately soothing and soppy, pensive and suffocating eighth album, is a definitive jolt away from the

last near-decade of Swift’s high-gloss, style-fluid, emotionally astute big-tent pop.

Made from scratch in the quarantine era, “Folklore” was recorded at her home in Los Angeles, and written and produced in remote collaboration largely with Aaron Dessner (from the National) and her go-to emotional extractor, Jack Antonoff.

Choosing this approach may be purely a function of circumstance, but Swift has been due for a rebaptism for some time now. “Folklore” marks a conclusion (temporary or not, it’s unclear) to her long march into the teeth of contemporary megapop, which over the course of four albums — “Red,” “1989,” “Reputation” and “Lover” — has paid decreasing dividends, musical and social. Becoming a true centrist pop star is a battle Swift never quite won, and is a battle no longer worth waging.

“Folklore” is the first attempt at a post-pop Swift, and it is many things that Swift albums generally are not: roughedged, downtrodden, spacey. It is a completely canny pop album smothered in places by Dessner, whose production can be like wet clothing tugging at Swift, slowing her down, sapping her vim. Swift isn’t an especially powerful singer, though she achieves a lot with a naturally jumpy tone and enthusiasm. But both of those signatures wilt here as often as not. The tart edge that she specializes in — the one that’s viciously effective when taunting, or pining — is coated with

layers of gauzy strings (there is plenty of cello), austere piano, throbbing Mellotron, smeared saxophone, atmospherics that thicken the air.

As Swift has long demonstrated, contemplation and exuberance aren’t mutually exclusive; nor are brightness and reflection. And so “Folklore” songs fall into roughly two camps: excellent Swift-penned songs that are sturdy enough to bear the production, and others that end up obscured by murk.

Some of the album’s best songs are mildly restrained versions of familiar Swift modes. On “Betty,” she delivers teenage romantic regret with the icy, knowing vocal shiver she deploys in her most felt moments, with faint echoes of the wistful “Tim McGraw,” her 2006 debut single. The airy, earthy “Invisible String,” about trusting fate, is the only truly hopeful-sounding song on the album (and the only one about a happy, fulfilled relationship), and it features some of Swift’s most vivid lyrics: “Cold was the steel of my ax to grind/For the boys who broke my heart/Now I send their babies presents.”

More intriguing are the tracks where the experimentation with tonal approach succeeds. “Seven” opens with an ethereally lustrous vocal, with Swift sighing her lyrics, landing the rhymes in unexpected places. On “Illicit Affairs,” she whispers her words like long-resented secrets — “Tell your friends you’re out for a run/You’ll be flushed when you return” — sprinkled with sunburst syllables designed to freeze perpetrators in their tracks.

And then there’s “Exile,” the most atypical song on the album. A lovely, anguished duet with Justin Vernon (credited as Bon Iver), it’s a stark and unsettling back and forth of recriminations. Swift telegraphs distance and skepticism: “I can see you staring, honey/Like he’s just your understudy/ Like you’d get your knuckles bloody for me.” But it’s the end of the song, when Swift and a husky-voiced Vernon go line for line in some combination of hard-whiskey country, desperate R&B and black-box-theater dialogue, that you feel the full emotional corrosion. All around them, pianos toll like grandfather clocks, stern and fatalistic.

Given its overall dourness, the album is a retreat from conventional pop language, which is to say, it may well be a retreat from radio. Not that that much matters for Swift, who has spent more than a decade earning her fans, and may well be approaching the Beyoncé stage of her career, where cultural authority isn’t dependent on steady hitmaking. That’s the new nature of pop superstardom anyhow: mass-scale cult figures superserving their most ardent followers by the millions.

Seen that way, perhaps the sonic experimentation on “Folklore” isn’t really about embracing a new genre so much as abandoning any sense of duty to the ones she’s been built upon. Country, pop, ’80s rock, hip-hop: they’ve merely been vessels, weapons she knows how to trigger to advance the central tenets of Swiftiness.

The desolate, stubborn, overcomposed indie rock of “Folklore,” though, is a tough thicket to tame. Sometimes she triumphs, wrestling it until it’s slack. But when it stifles her, it deserves all the eye rolls it gets.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

21

The pleasure of watching Charlize Theron throw a punch

By JASON BAILEY

“Y

ou really wanna do this, kid?”

The way Andy (Charlize Theron) puts that question to Nile (Kiki Layne), in an early fight scene in Netflix’s “The Old Guard,” is key to understanding the character — and all of the action heroines Theron has played lately. She’s not posing it as a taunt or a dare; she wants to make sure the younger woman understands what she’s getting into. This will not be any old brawl. She’s about to get schooled.

The two women are facing off on a small freight aircraft, and like any good fighter, Andy uses the tightness of the space to her advantage, throwing her opponent into walls and cargo to break her down and wear her out. Andy’s eyes light up occasionally when her opponent surprises her — an unexpected jab, a well-aimed kick — but those moments are fleeting, and when Andy growls, “We’re done,” she means it. Nile never really stood a chance.

It’s not just that Theron throws her punches with force and precision or executes her stunts successfully; this is not a matter of a capable action star hitting her marks. Watching Charlize Theron fight has become one of the singular pleasures of contemporary American cinema, as close as we’re going to get to the endorphin rush of watching Gene Kelly dance, or Judy Garland sing, or Charlie Chaplin pantomime.

Her action work feels like a recent addition to her versatile career, but Theron has been brawling since her big-screen debut in “2 Days in the Valley,” a third-rate “Pulp Fiction” knockoff from 1996. It’s a film that seems designed primarily to leer at her — she spends all of her time either in a skintight white costume or out of it — and her big action scene is a poorly choreographed hubba-hubba “catfight” with co-star Teri Hatcher. But Theron rises above, putting across a fierce, unmistakable danger in the furniture-smashing encounter. Her only unconvincing moment is when she has to throw the fight to Hatcher, then the bigger star.

Theron’s opening bid for action stardom came in 2005, with the release of “Aeon Flux.” Though a critical and commercial failure, it showcased the raw ingredients she’d later refine: her no-nonsense demeanor, catlike movements and undeniably imposing physical presence. But the filmmaking undermines Theron’s gifts, cutting her stunts to ribbons in the specific, Michael Bay-influenced style of the era, so you seldom get a clear sense of what she can really do. And she’s inexplicably sidelined in her own movie’s climax, a fate repeated in her next action picture, the unfortunate “Hancock” from 2008.

The breakthrough would come seven years later, with George Miller’s deservedly celebrated “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

Though she spends most of that film driving and shooting, she also engages in a memorable round of fisticuffs with the title character, going at him with steely-eyed rage and easily disarming him — literally single-handedly. But the ur-text of Charlize Theron Fighting is 2017’s “Atomic Blonde.” The director, David Leitch, was one of the minds behind the “John Wick” franchise, and “Blonde” tries to do for Theron what “Wick” did for her twotime co-star Keanu Reeves.

Like Wick, Theron’s MI6 agent, Lorraine Broughton, thinks brilliantly on her feet, inventively turning the materials at hand into improvised deadly weapons; she wields and deploys a sti-

Charlize Theron’s Andy puts Nile (KiKi Layne), left, through her paces in “The Old Guard.” letto heel, a corkscrew, a ladder, a shelving unit, a handful of keys, a gun that’s run out of bullets, and a strategically unhooked seat belt. In the film’s best action sequence, her investigative visit to an abandoned apartment is interrupted by a team of policemen, whom she dispatches with a water hose, a kitchen pot and a refrigerator door.

It’s both bone-crunching and delightful, pairing genuine action mastery with clockwork slapstick ingenuity. And when it all seems over, when she’s made her death-defying escape, the scene goes one step further, as Theron takes out two more villains at once, in a jaw-dropping medium-wide shot with no cuts.

Like the musical numbers of Hollywood’s golden age, this loosely composed, uninterrupted view of the artist at work allows the viewer to fully appreciate the sheer grace and athleticism on display. In this one scene, she’s simultaneously Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Buster Keaton and Jackie Chan.

In her action showcases, Theron frequently plays a professional — someone, we are told, who is unstoppable and formidable, who has been fighting and killing for years (or, in the case of “The Old Guard,” centuries). So it’s not just that she has to convince us, in these action beats, that she can fight; she has to demonstrate that she is, irrefutably, the best at it. And she’s never less than convincing.

The stern professionalism of these characters matches Theron’s approach as an actor. She looks the intense physical challenges of these roles square in the eye and doesn’t blink. Aging male actors have juiced up their careers with second-act pivots to action for years — whether Liam Neeson, Denzel Washington or the Bond of your choice — but that courtesy is rarely

extended to their female counterparts, who are instead expected to spend their middle period playing supportive wives and similar creaky archetypes. Theron would have none of that; she even created some of these opportunities herself (she is one of the producers of “Atomic Blonde” and “The Old Guard”). The Oscar winner clearly takes preparation for these roles as seriously as the immersion and research of a standard, dramatic turn, and the work shows; compare her fights, for example, with the kind of hyper-editing required to make someone like Neeson seem convincingly spry.

More important, she’s never just playing the action. The physical force and bravado of her characters is overwhelming, but Theron also knows how to seize their rare, private moments and squeeze. Lorraine Broughton’s vulnerability is a running theme in “Atomic Blonde”; she’s first seen tending to her badly bruised body with an ice cube bath, Band-Aids, pills and vodka, and throughout the film, she’s bloodied and beaten up regularly. The damage isn’t just physical. In the final scene, after leaving yet another blood bath in her wake, she stares herself down in a mirrored elevator with a look that is closer to weariness than triumph.

Those haunted eyes return in the new Netflix movie “The Old Guard,” and we get the sense that this character similarly kills because she’s good at it and not because she enjoys it. These offhand touches and extra nuances underscore (if it were even necessary) the legitimacy of Theron’s fight work; she never comes across as a respected thespian slumming it for a paycheck. This is pure film acting, rooted in the challenge of playing a character who expresses herself not through words, but action — glorious, graceful, balletic action.

22

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Dogs may be good for children’s psychological development

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

L

iving in a home with a dog may be linked to healthier psychological development in young children, researchers report.

Australian scientists collected data from 1,646 parents of 3- to 5-year-old boys and girls on various socio-demographic factors — siblings, sleep time, screen time, parents’ level of education, work status and so on. They also gathered information on dog ownership, active play with the dog and family dog walking. And they used a well-validated scale to measure the social and emotional development of the children.

The study, in Pediatric Research, found that after adjusting for other factors, compared to children without dogs, those who had them were about 30% less likely to have conduct problems, 40% less likely to have difficulty relating to peers, and 34% more likely to show pro-social behavior. There was no association of dog ownership with emotional difficulties or hyperactivity.

The senior author, Hayley E. Christian, an associate professor at the University of Western Australia and Telethon Kids Institute, said that while the study suggests that the benefits of dog ownership start very early in life, this is an observational finding that does not prove cause and effect.

“We are not saying ‘go out and get a dog,’ ” she said. “That’s a really important decision. Owning a dog comes with responsibilities and costs. But both anecdotal reports and research show that the benefits outweigh the costs.”

Forget ‘dog years’: Scientists say we’ve been calculating our pups’ ages wrong A new study from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine published in the Cell Systems journal has found that one “dog year” is not necessarily equivalent to seven “human years,” as has been commonly thought.

Researchers have created a better way of determining how to compare the ages of people and their four-legged friends.

“Since the two species don’t age at the same rate over their lifespans, it turns out it’s not a perfectly linear comparison, as the 1:7 years rule-of-thumb would suggest,” reads a press release on the study.

The scientists say they have a formula that provides a new “epigenetic clock,” or a method that determines an organism’s age, that takes into account those differing patterns in aging. “Epigentic changes,” they write, can offer clues to a genome’s age, much like wrinkles on a person.

The research, which focused on more than 100 Labrador retrievers over a 16-year age range, found the animals age quickly when they’re young, only for

it to slow down as they get older.

“The comparison is not a 1:7 ratio over time,” the release said. “Especially when dogs are young, they age rapidly compared to humans. A one-yearold dog is similar to a 30-year-old human. A fouryear-old dog is similar to a 52-year-old human. Then by seven years old, dog aging slows.”

“This makes sense when you think about it — after all, a nine-month-old dog can have puppies, so we already knew that the 1:7 ratio wasn’t an accurate measure of age,” said Trey Ideker, a senior author on the study and a professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center.

While only one breed was analyzed in the study and more research needs to be done, Ideker believes this new method will apply to all breeds. In the meantime, Ideker says he has a new way of looking at his own pet.

“I have a six-year-old dog — she still runs with me, but I’m now realizing that she’s not as ‘young’ as I thought she was,” Ideker said.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

23

Bright outdoor lights tied to less sleep, more anxiety in teenagers

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

A

rtificial outdoor light at night may disrupt adolescents’ sleep and raise the risk for psychiatric disorders, a new study suggests.

Researchers tracked the intensity of outdoor light in representative urban and rural areas across the country using satellite data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They interviewed more than 10,123 adolescents living in these neighborhoods about their sleep patterns, and assessed mental disorders using well-validated structured scales. They also interviewed the parents of more than 6,000 of the teenagers about their children.

The study, in JAMA Psychiatry, found that the more intense the lighting in the neighborhood, the more sleep was disrupted and the greater the risk for depression and anxiety. After adjustment for other factors such as sex, race, parental education and population density, they found that compared with the teenagers in the one-quarter of neighborhoods with the lowest levels of outdoor light, those in the highest went to bed, on average, 29 minutes later and reported 11 fewer minutes of sleep.

Adolescents living in the most intensely lit

neighborhoods had a 19% increased risk for bipolar illness, and a 7% increased risk for depression. The study is observational, and does not prove cause and effect.

The senior author, Kathleen R. Merikangas,

a senior investigator with the National Institute of Mental Health, said that future policy changes could make a difference. In the meantime, she said, “At least as individuals, we ought to try to minimize exposure to light at night.”

Eating fish may protect the brain from pollutants

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

E

ating fish could help protect the brain against the detrimental effects of air pollution, a new study suggests.

Previous studies have shown that exposure to the smallest particles of air pollution, called PM 2.5, is associated with decreases in brain volume, which may increase the risk of memory and thinking problems as we age. This new study, published in Neurology, included 1,315 women ages 65-80 who underwent brain MRI’s to determine brain volume.

The participants filled out questionnaires on their fish consumption and had blood tests to determine their levels of omega-3s, the healthy unsaturated fatty acids found in fish. Using data from the Environmental Protection Agency, the researchers tracked three-year levels of air

pollution at the women’s addresses.

The scientists found that women with higher blood levels of omega-3s had significantly greater volumes of white matter in their brains, and the adverse effects of PM 2.5 on brain volume were much smaller in women with high blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids.

Independent of omega-3 blood levels, they found that a small increase in nonfried fish consumption — one 8-ounce serving a week — was also associated with increased white matter volume.

The lead author, Cheng Chen, a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University, said that while the mechanism remains unknown, “this is one of many studies that demonstrate that a healthy diet can reduce these negative effects of air pollution: neurodegeneration and cognitive decline.”

24 a la Demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO la publicación de este edicto y DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- radicar el original de dicha conNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA testación en este Tribunal en SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN donde podrá enterarse de su JUAN. contenido. Si dejare de hacerlo, BAUTISTA CAYMAN podrá anotársele la rebeldía y se le dictará sentencia conceASSET COMPANY, diendo el remedio solicitado sin DEMANDANTE; V. más citarle ni oírle. Se le aperSUCESIÓN DE EDIA a la parte que, conforme ELVIRA PÉREZ MUÑOZ cibe al Art. 959 del Código Civil, 31 T/C/C EDIA PÉREZ L.P.R.A. § 2787, los codemanMUÑOZ COMPUESTA dados antes mencionados, miembros de la Sucesión de POR JOBSE IBZÁÑ LEBRON PEREZ, Y JOSE Edia Elvira Pérez Muñoz t/c/c Edia Pérez Muñoz, que tienen ANTONIO LEBRÓN un término de treinta (30) días SOTO T/C/C JOSÉ A. para informarle al Tribunal si LEBRÓN SOTO, POR SÍ acepta o repudia la herencia de Y COMO MIEMBRO DE los causantes. En caso de que LA SUCESIÓN DE EDIA usted no manifieste su declaraELVIRA PÉREZ MUÑOZ ción sobre la aceptación de la herencia dentro del plazo coT/C/C EDIA PÉREZ rrespondiente, se tendrá la heMUÑOZ; FULANO DE rencia por aceptada. EXPEDITAL Y MENGANO DE DO bajo mi firma y con el sello TAL COMO POSIBLES del Tribunal. DADO hoy en San Juan, Puerto Rico, 21 de julio MIEMBROS DE LA de 2020. Griselda Rodriguez SUCESIÓN DE EDIA Collado, Secretaria. Marlyn Ann ELVIRA PÉREZ MUÑOZ Espinosa Rivera, Sec Servicios T/C/C EDIA PÉREZ a Sala.

LEGAL NOTICE

MUÑOZ,

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NÚM. SJ2020CV03518 (803). SOBRE: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA INREM. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

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

WILMINGTON SAVINGS FUND SOCIETY, FSB, AS TRUSTEE OF UPLAND MORTGAGE LOAN TRUST A

A: FULANO DE TAL Y Demandante vs.

MENGANO DE TAL como MARIO RODRIGUEZ posibles miembros de la COLOME, HILDA Sucesión de Edia Elvira AURORA RODRIGUEZ Pérez Muñoz t/c/c Edia también conocida Pérez Muñoz 993 Calle como HILDA AURORA Madrid, Santa Rita Dey., MENDOZA SANCHEZ Y San Juan, Puerto Rico LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE 00926; P.O. Box 1347, BIENES GANANCIALES Carolina, Puerto Rico COMPUESTA POR 00986 AMBOS; DAMARIS Por la presente se le notifica CLAUDIO MARCANO que se ha radicado en su contra una Demanda de Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// unired.ramajudicial.pr. Se le emplaza y requiere para que notifique a: Ferraluoli LLC Looking Forward Lcdo. Luis G. Parrilla Hernández P.O. Box 195168 San Juan, PR 00919-5 168 Tel.: 787-766-7000 / Fax: 787-766-7001 lparrilla@ferraiuoli.com Abogado de la parte demandante, con copia de respuesta

@

Demandados CIVIL NUM. CA2019CV03213.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: DAMARIS CLAUDIO MARCANO

Queden emplazados y notificados que en este Tribunal se ha radicado Demanda sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca, en la que se ale-

ga que usted(es) le adeuda(n) a la demandante lo siguiente: La suma de $178,345.12 de principal mas los intereses sobre dichas sumas devengados desde el día 1 de diciembre de 2015, más aquellos a devengarse hasta el pago total de la deuda a razón 5.12500% anual, mas las primas de seguro hipotecario y riesgo, recargos por demora y cualesquiera otras cantidades pactadas en la escritura de hipoteca desde la fecha antes mencionada y hasta la fecha del total pago de las mismas, mas la suma estipulada de $21,680.00 por concepto de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado incurridos por concepto de un préstamo hipotecario, se advierte que si no contesta(n) la demanda, radicando el original de la contestación en este Tribunal y enviando copia de la contestación a Yelissa Caraballo Del Valle, 1515 South Federal Highway, Suite 100, Boca Raton, FL 33432, teléfono 877-338-4101, dentro del término de treinta (30) días de la publicación de este Edicto, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia en su contra, concediendo el remedio solicitado, sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPEDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA, y el sello de este Tribunal, en Carolina, Puerto Rico, hoy día 18 de julio de 2020. Lcda. Marilyn Aponte Rodriguez, Sec Regional. Ruth M. Colon Luciano, Sec Aux del Tribunal.

LEGAL NOT ICE Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de BAYAMON.

CONDADO I, LLC Demandante v.

FULANO DE TAL Y OTROS

Demandado(a) Civil: BY2020CV01258. SALA: 506. Sobre: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ HIPOTECARIO EXTRAVIADO..

NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: FULANO DE TAL Y SUTANA DE TAL

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 22 de julio de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puer-

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

to Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 22 de julio de 2020. En BAYAMON, Puerto Rico, el 22 de julio de 2020. F/ LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria. F/VIVIAN J. SANABRIA, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de SAN JUAN.

CENTURION INSURANCE AGENCY, INC. Demandante v.

ADMINISTRACION DE LOS SISTEMAS DE RETIRO DE LOS EMPLEADOS DEL GOBIERNO Y LA JUDICATURA DE PUERTO RICO, JOHN DOE Y RICHARD DOE

Demandado(a) Civil: SJ2020CV00261 (901).

Sobre: CANCELACIÓN O RESTITUCION DE PAGARÉ HIPOTECARIO..

NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: JOHN DOE / RICHARD DOE .

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 21 de julio de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se consi-

(787) 743-3346

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020 derará hecha en la fecha de la de VEGA BAJA. publicación de este edicto. Co- COOPERATIVA AHORRO pia de esta notificación ha sido Y CREDITO VEGA BAJA archivada en los autos de este Demandante v. caso, con fecha de 21 de julio SENIOR MORTGAGE de 2020. En SAN JUAN , PuerBANKERS INC., CELINK to Rico, el 21 de julio de 2020. y US DEPARTMENT OF GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria. YARILIS HOUSING AND URBAN CASTRO VALLE, Secretario(a) DEVELOPMENT, FULANO Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de CAROLINA.

VAPR FEDERAL CREDIT UNION Demandante v.

PAZ AURORA NOGUERAS SANTIAGO Y OTROS

DE TAL Y MENGANO DE TAL

Demandado(a) Civil: VA2019CV00103. Sobre: PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DE TAL CELINK (REVERSE MORTGAGE SERVICING DPT. - 3900 CAPITAL CITY BOULEVARD LANSING, MI 48906

Demandado(a) (Nombre de las partes a las que se Civil: CA2019CV04601. Sobre: le notifican la sentencia por edicto) CANCELACIÓN O RESTITUEL SECRETARIO(A) que susCION DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIAcribe le notifica a usted que DO.. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENel 13 de MAYO de 2020, este TENCIA POR EDICTO. Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, A: PAZ AURORA Sentencia Parcial o Resolución NOGUERAS SANTIAGO Y en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada FULANA DE TAL (Nombre de las partes a las que se en autos donde podrá usted le notifican la sentencia por edicto) enterarse detalladamente de EL SECRETARIO(A) que sus- los términos de la misma. Esta cribe le notifica a usted que el notificación se publicará una 20 de julio de 2020, este Tri- sola vez en un periódico de bunal ha dictado Sentencia, circulación general en la Isla Sentencia Parcial o Resolución de Puerto Rico, dentro de los en este caso, que ha sido debi- 10 días siguientes a su notificadamente registrada y archivada ción. Y, siendo o representando en autos donde podrá usted usted una parte en el procedienterarse detalladamente de miento sujeta a los términos los términos de la misma. Esta de la Sentencia, Sentencia notificación se publicará una Parcial o Resolución, de la cual sola vez en un periódico de puede establecerse recurso de circulación general en la Isla revisión o apelación dentro del de Puerto Rico, dentro de los término de 30 días contados a 10 días siguientes a su notifica- partir de la publicación por edicción. Y, siendo o representando to de esta notificación, dirijo a usted una parte en el procedi- usted esta notificación que se miento sujeta a los términos considerará hecha en la fecha de la Sentencia, Sentencia de la publicación de este edicParcial o Resolución, de la cual to. Copia de esta notificación puede establecerse recurso de ha sido archivada en los autos revisión o apelación dentro del de este caso, con fecha de 20 término de 30 días contados a de MAYO de 2020. En VEGA partir de la publicación por edic- BAJA , Puerto Rico, el 20 de to de esta notificación, dirijo a mayo de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I usted esta notificación que se SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria. considerará hecha en la fecha MARITZA ROSARIO ROSAde la publicación de este edic- RIO, Secretario(a) Auxiliar. to. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos LEGAL NOTICE de este caso, con fecha de 21 ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO de julio de 2020. En CAROLIDE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNA , Puerto Rico, el 21 de julio NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA de 2020. MARILYN APONTE CENTRO JUDICIAL DE SAN RODRIGUEZ, Secretaria. JANJUAN SALA SUPERIOR. NETTE RAMIREZ BERNARD, PR RECOVERY & Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior

DEVELOPMENT JV, LLC, por conducto de su Agente Autorizado, Island Portfolio Services, LLC, Demandante v.

ONE FILM

CORPORATION; LAURA M. DUQUE LEMOS

de CAROLINA.

AMERICAS LEADING

FINANCE, LLC. Demandados Demandante v.

CIVIL NUM.: SJ2020CV00605.

SALA: 903. SOBRE: cobro de MARCOS A. dinero; INCUMPLIMIENTO DE MONSERRATE ORTIZ CONTRATO y EJECUCIÓN Demandado(a) DE GRAVAMEN MOBILIARIO. Civil: CA2019CV02362. Sobre: EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDIC- COBRO DE DINERO POR LA TO. VIA ORDINARIA, EJECUCION A: ONE FILM GRAVAMEN MOBILIARIO. CORPORATION y LAURA NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. M. DUQUE LEMOS POR EL PRESENTE EDICTO se le notifica que las partes demandantes de epígrafe han radicado en este Tribunal una demanda en su contra por la causal de Cobro de Dinero, Incumplimiento de Contrato y Ejecución de Gravamen Mobiliario. Se le emplaza conforme a la Regla 4.5 y 4.6 de las de Procedimiento Civil, mediante la publicación de un solo edicto en un periódico de circulación general diaria en la Isla de Puerto Rico, a los efectos de que se presente cualquier alegación responsiva a la demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación de este Edicto, excluyéndose el día de la publicación. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Se le advierte que, si no contesta la demanda o deja de presentar una alegación responsiva, radicando el original de dicha alegación responsiva en este Tribunal y notificando copia de la misma al abogado de la parte demandante, dentro del referido término, el Tribunal podrá anotarle la rebeldía y dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra, concediendo el remedio solicitado en la demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle. Favor de notificar copia de su contestación al: LCDO. LUIS J. VILARÓ VÉLEZ: PO Box 363812, San Juan, PR 00936-3812 Tel.: 787-753-2160 luisvilaro@gmail.com EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, en San Juan, Puerto Rico, a 15 de julio de 2020. Griselda Rodriguez Collado, Secretaria. Melba Orti Silva, Sec de Serv a Sala.

LEGAL NOTICE

A: MARCOS A. MONSERRATE ORTIZ

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 13 de MAYO de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 22 de julio de 2020. En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 22 de julio de 2020. MARILYN APONTE RODRIGUEZ, Secretaria. JANNETTE RAMIREZ BERNARD, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de CAROLINA.

PUERTO RICO RECOVERY AND DEVELOPMENT JV, LLC. Demandante v.

WILFREDO MORALES NAVARRO

Demandado(a) Civil: CA2019CV04044. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: WILFREDO

MORALES NAVARRO Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL (Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de PriEL SECRETARIO(A) que susmera Instancia Sala Superior cribe le notifica a usted que el

The San Juan Daily Star 21 de julio de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 22 de julio de 2020. En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 22 de julio de 2020. MARILYN APONTE RODRIGUEZ, Secretaria. JANNETTE RAMIREZ BERNARD, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala de PONCE.

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Demandante v.

PEDRO A. FLORES MATOS, FULANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandado(a) Civil: PO2019CV03606. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. NOTIFICACION DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: PEDRO A. FLORES MATOS, FULANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS A SER NOTIFICADOS POR EDICTO POR CONDUCTO DE LA LCDA. GINA H. FERRER MEDINA, PO BOX 2342, MAYAGUEZ, PUERTO RICO 006812342

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 17 de julio de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representado usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, el 22 de julio de 2020. En Ponce, Puerto Rico, el 22 de julio de 2020. LUZ MAYRA CARABALLO GARCIA, Secretaria Regional. f/BRENDA L SANTIAGO LOPEZ, Secretaria Auxiliar I.

LEGAL NOTICE Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala de PONCE.

miento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, el 22 de julio de 2020. En Ponce, Puerto Rico, el 22 de julio de 2020. LUZ MAYRA CARABALLO GARCIA, Secretaria Regional. f/BRENDA L SANTIAGO LOPEZ, Secretaria Auxiliar I.

LEGAL NOTICE Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de GUAYNABO.

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Demandante v.

notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 22 de julio de 2020. En GUAYNABO, Puerto Rico, el 22 de julio de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria. F/SARA ROSA VILLEGAS, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de CAROLINA.

sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 22 de julio de 2020. En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 22 de julio de 2020. LCDA. MARILYN APONTE RODRIGUEZ, Secretaria.

F/ DAMARIS TORRES RUIZ, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de SAN JUAN.

FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION COMO BANCO POPULAR DE BANCO POPULAR DE SINDICO DE RG PREMIER BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO PUERTO RICO BANK OF PUERTO Demandante v.

PUERTO RICO Demandante v.

Demandante v.

FELIX J. ORTIZ COLON, RICO; SCOTIABANK DE INTER ISLAND PUERTO RICO, ORIENTAL JAMES T. BARNES & LUZ E. IRIZARRY MORTGAGE BANK, COMO SUCESOR COMPANY H/N/C JAMES MERCADO Y LA CORPORATION T BARNES OF PUERTO DEL BANCO BILBAO SOCIEDAD LEGAL OF PUERTO RICO, RICO, ET ALS VIZCAYA ARGENTARIA DE GANANCIALES CONTINENTAL Demandado(a) PUERTO RICO, MANUEL COMPUESTA POR MORTGAGE Civil: CA2020CV00031. SALA: ANTONIO LEBRON AMBOS CORPORATION, OSCAR 408. Sobre: CANCELACIÓN Demandado(a) FERMAINT, FULANO DE DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. PAGAN COLÓN, Civil: PO2019CV02043. Sobre: TAL Y MENGANO DE TAL, MARÍA E. RIVERA Y NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCOBRO DE DINERO. NOTIFIPOSIBLES TENEDORES CIA POR EDICTO. LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL CACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR DESCONOCIDOS DEL A: JAMES T. BARNES DE GANANCIALES EDICTO. NOTIFICACION DE PAGARE & COMPANY H/N/C COMPUESTA POR SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. Demandado(a) JAMES T BARNES OF AMBOS, FULANO Y A: FELIX J. ORTIZ Civil: GB2019CV00532. SALA: PUERTO RICO, CARLOS MENGANO DE TAL, COLON, LUZ E. 201. Sobre: CANCELACIÓN JUAN HERNANDEZ POSIBLES TENEDORES IRIZARRY MERCADO Y DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO DESCONOCIDOS DEL LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL POR LA VIA JUDICIAL. NO- COLON, CARMEN LYDIA MARCHANT RAMOS Y PAGARÉ TIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA DE GANANCIALES Demandado(a) POR EDICTO. LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL COMPUESTA POR Civil: SJ2019CV12418 (803).

A: MANUEL ANTONIO DE GANANCIALES AMBOS A SER Sobre: CANCELACIÓN DE PALEBRON FERMAINT a COMPUESTA POR NOTIFICADOS POR GARÉ EXTRAVIADO POR LA AMBOS, FULANO Y EDICTO POR CONDUCTO sus últimas direcciones VÍA JUDICIAL. NOTIFICACIÓN conocidas: COND. MENGANO DE TAL, DE LA LCDA. GINA H. DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. A: CONTINENTAL FERRER MEDINA, P. O. LINCOLN PARK, APT 6L, POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS MORTGAGE BOX 2342, MAYAGÜEZ, GUAYNABO, PR 00969 Y COND. LINCOLN PARK DE VICTOR LUIS CORPORATION, OSCAR PUERTO RICO 00681APT 612, GUAYNABO, SANTIAGO, SUTANO PAGAN COLÓN, 2342 PR 00969; FULANO Y EL SECRETARIO(A) que susY PERENCEJO DE TAL MARÍA E. RIVERA Y cribe le notifica a usted que el MENGANO DE TAL, POSIBLES TENEDORES LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL 17 de julio de 2020, este Tri- POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL DE GANANCIALES bunal ha dictado Sentencia, DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARE COMPUESTA ENTRE Sentencia Parcial o Resolución (Nombre de las partes a las que se PAGARÉ AMBOS, FULANO en este caso, que ha sido debile notifican la sentencia por edicto) (Nombre de las partes a las que se damente registrada y archivada le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que susDE TAL Y MENGANO en autos donde podrá usted EL SECRETARIO(A) que sus- cribe le notifica a usted que el DE TAL COMO enterarse detalladamente de cribe le notifica a usted que el 22 de julio de 2020, este TriPOSIBLES TENEDORES los términos de la misma. Esta 10 de julio de 2020, este Tri- bunal ha dictado Sentencia, DESCONOCIDOS DEL notificación se publicará una bunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución PAGARÉ sola vez en un periódico de Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debicirculación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representado usted una parte en el procedi-

en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta

damente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 21 de julio de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia,

25

Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 23 de julio de 2020. En SAN JUAN , Puerto Rico, el 23 de julio de 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria. MILDRED MARTINEZ ACOSTA, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de CAROLINA.

REVERSE MORTGAGE FUNDING, LLC Demandante v.

MARTÍNEZ VARA, T/C/C DE GANANCIALES MERCEDES M. MARTÍNEZ COMPUESTA POR VARA T/C/C MERCEDES AMBOS, PARTE MARTÍNEZ, T/C/C DEMANDADA EN EL MERCEDES MARTÍNEZ CASO DE: VARA, T/C/C MERCEDES Banco Popular de Puerto MARÍA MARTÍNEZ Y Rico vs. Carlos C. Cortés VARA, T/C/C MERCEDES Coriano, Fulana de Tal RODANÉS, T/C/C y la Sociedad Legal de MERCEDES MARTÍNEZ Gananciales Compuesta DE RODANÉS por Ambos, Civil (Nombre de las partes a las que se Núm.: GB2018CV01169 le notifican la sentencia por edicto) (201), sobre Cobro de EL SECRETARIO(A) que susDinero (Procedimiento cribe le notifica a usted que el 10 de julio de 2020, este TriOrdinario). bunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 23 de julio de 2020. En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 23 de julio de 2020. LCDA. MARILYN APONTE RODRIGUEZ, Secretaria.

F/MYRIAM I. FIGUEROA PASTRANA, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

SUCESION MERCEDES MARIA MARTÍNEZ VARA, T/C/C MERCEDES M. MARTÍNEZ VARA T/C/C MERCEDES MARTÍNEZ, T/C/C MERCEDES MARTÍNEZ VARA, T/C/C MERCEDES MARÍA LEGAL NOTICE MARTÍNEZ Y VARA, TIC/C ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO MERCEDES RODANÉS, DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUT/C/C MERCEDES NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA MARTÍNEZ DE RODANÉS, SALA SUPERIOR DE GUAYACOMPUESTA POR BO FULANO DE TAL Y BANCO POPULAR DE SUTANO DE TAL COMO PUERTO RICO Parte Demandante Vs. POSIBLES HEREDEROS CARLOS C. CORTES DE NOMBRES CORIANO, RAQUEL DESCONOCIDOS, ACEVEDO RODRIGUEZ CENTRO DE Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL RECAUDACIONES DE GANANCIALES MUNICIPALES; Y A LOS COMPUESTA POR ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMBOS AMÉRICA

Demandado(a) Civil: CA2019CV01172 (406).

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: FULANO DE TAL Y SUTANO DE TAL COMO CUALQUIER MIEMBRO AÚN DESCONOCIDO DE LA SUCESION DE MERCEDES MARÍA

Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: GB2018CV01169.

Sala: 201. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO (PROCEDIMIENTO ORDINARIO).

EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO EMITIDO POR EL TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA DE PUERTO RICO, SALA SUPERIOR DE GUAYABO.

A: CARLOS C. CORTES CORIANO, RAQUEL ACEVEDO RODRIGUEZ Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL

Se le notifica a ustedes, CARLOS C. CORTES CORIANO, RAQUEL ACEVEDO RODRIGUEZ Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS, que en la Demanda que originó este caso se alega que ustedes le adeudan solidariamente a la parte demandante, BANCO POPULAR DE Puerto Rico, las siguientes cantidades: a. $16,673.56 de principal e intereses devengados al tipo pactado hasta el 12 de septiembre de 2018, más los intereses que se devenguen a partir de la fecha de radicación de la Demanda al tipo legal hasta el total y completo pago de la obligación, más una suma razonable por las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados incurridos por la parte demandante, por concepto de sumas desembolsadas a los demandados bajo una Visa cuyos últimos 4 dígitos son 3199. Se les emplaza y requiere que presenten al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto, a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Deberán notificar a la licenciada; María S. Jiménez Meléndez al PO Box 9023632, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00902-3632; teléfono: (787) 723-2455; abogada de la parte demandante, con copia de la contestación a la demanda. Si ustedes dejan de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. Expedido en Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, a 25 de noviembre de 2019.

LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. SARA ROSA VILLEGAS, SECRETARIA DEL TRIBUAL CONFIDENCIAL I.

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Tuesday, July 28, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

For the NBA, a long, strange road trip to the finals

By MARC STEIN

L

eBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers has likened his new surroundings to a youth basketball tournament for grown men who happen to be some of the most recognizable sports stars on the planet.

CJ McCollum of the Portland Trail Blazers combats the pangs he feels for his fiancée and his dog back home with “my essential oils and my dehumidifier and my books,” and the occasional indulgence in wine he packed.

Gone are the ostentatious arena entrances dressed in the finest fashions and the whirl of big-city night life. NBA players have gathered for the most extraordinary experiment in league history: to play out the rest of the season without fans on a confined campus and abide by a thick book of rules that includes assigned seats on the bench and prohibitions on postgame showers until players return to a team hotel. (The WNBA is engaged in a similar experiment in Bradenton, Fla.) Life in what everyone calls “the bubble” is at once strange and mundane. With more than 350 players and the staffs of 22 teams thrown together in a restricted-access environment at Walt Disney World to resume this virus-interrupted season, even a routine encounter between two of basketball’s top distance shooters takes on heightened meaning.

JJ Redick of the New Orleans Pelicans and Buddy Hield of the Sacramento Kings had their first extended conversation in the players’ lounge of a hotel where, odd as it sounds, both men now reside.

“We just kind of chopped it up a little bit,” Redick said.

On March 11, when Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz tested positive for the coronavirus before a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the NBA became the first major North American sports league to shut down. Now, some four months later, the league has summoned all but the eight teams with the worst records to the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, where, starting Thursday, it will stage games over the next three months even as the pandemic rages across Florida and much of the South and West.

“It’s such a unique experience,” Ian Mahinmi of the Washington Wizards said. “When is the last time the whole NBA was in one spot at the same time? It’s crazy.”

Living together in relative isolation, in three team hotels, players are tested daily for the coronavirus and reminded to wear masks and observe social-distancing rules when they are engaged in any activity apart from playing, practicing or working out. Tests are returned far faster than for residents in surrounding areas because the NBA has hired a private laboratory to process the results for an estimated campus population of 1,500.

The limitations of the tightly controlled existence are such that some players look forward to practice sessions they may not have otherwise relished because “they like to get out of their rooms,” Orlando Magic coach Steve Clifford said.

shallow nose and throat swabs that are standard here.

Lou Williams of the Los Angeles Clippers began a similar 10-day quarantine Saturday after he was photographed, on an excused absence to attend a family funeral, picking up dinner and spending time in a gentlemen’s club in Atlanta.

Playing video games has emerged as the most popular activity to combat isolation. Food variety was initially a big discussion point, but criticisms have dwindled as the league has increased the options. Early consternation about hotel assignments, which were based on team records at the time the season was suspended in March, has also faded, with several players acknowledging the poor optics of complaining about food and accommodations at a time of widespread economic struggle.

Yet the hunger for a shred of normalcy, such as going out to eat, quickly took hold. Players have largely taken Monty Williams of the Suns, right, and Anthony Davis of over the only restaurant available in the Gran Destino the Lakers got a chance to talk last week in the N.B.A.’s hotel, which houses the top eight teams. Crowds at the restaurant, the Rix Lounge, have gotten so big that it has restricted environment in Florida. adopted a players-only policy in recent days.

As the pandemic rages just beyond the campus pePlayers, coaches and team personnel are not allowed rimeter and while the country is roiled by protest and deto leave the campus without authorization and will live bate over race relations, far more than sports glory is on here for a minimum of six weeks. For the two teams that the line in the NBA’s comeback. The league is spending at reach the NBA Finals, that stay will last until mid-October least $180 million with ESPN’s parent company, Disney, and on its testing operation to ensure that the league’s — provided the virus does not pierce the bubble.

“It requires significant sacrifice from our players,” 74th season ends the way the previous 73 did — with a Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, said in a phone champion crowned.

Achieving that goal would not only enable the NBA interview from his home in the New York metropolitan to avoid a potential loss of $1 billion in television revarea.

I live among them in the bubble, having also consent- enue, but also allow its players, an estimated 80 percent ed to daily coronavirus testing and a seven-day quaran- of whom are Black, to protest racism and police brutality tine in a hotel room to join a small group of news media louder than ever before, as many have pledged, from a representatives approved to report on the restart. highly visible platform.

But I’m in a bubble within the bubble. The restricThe players have vowed not to let the hoopla around tions on members of the news media are onerous; I was the restart of the season obscure their efforts to speak out not allowed to leave my room even to fill an ice bucket on social justice issues. “Black Lives Matter” is embladuring quarantine, and I had to agree not to approach zoned in bold lettering near the scorer’s table at the three team personnel if I happened to see them outside official- venues that will be used for games. And players, including ly arranged interview sessions. The typical interactions the Lakers’ James, have used their interactions with the that nourish my reporting have largely been banned. news media to call for the arrest of the officers involved in I arrived two weeks ago, but players arrived before Breonna Taylor’s death in Louisville, Ky., in March. that and have had nearly three weeks to get acquainted The NBA has not yet said how it would handle an outwith the 113 pages of health and safety regulations that break on campus as the season resumes, but the bubble govern campus life. The depth of the regulations remains appears to be holding. The league announced that of the 346 players tested daily for the coronavirus from July 13 to a shock to the system for many.

Spending any time in a teammate’s hotel room is for- 19, none tested positive for the virus. A few notable playbidden. No caddies are allowed on golf outings, playing ers have left, but the departures have been attributed to doubles in table tennis is outlawed — singles only — and urgent personal matters or injuries. there can be no sharing of goggles or towels.

“From my standpoint, it’s going very well, and I’m Leaving the campus without permission carries one cautiously optimistic that we’re on the right track,” said of the heftiest punishments: After he crossed a campus Silver, the commissioner, who is scheduled to make his border to pick up a delivery order of chicken wings, first appearance on campus this week. “But I also recRichaun Holmes of the Sacramento Kings was ordered to ognize what we’re doing has not been done before, and quarantine for 10 extra days and, at the league’s discre- the competition is just beginning. The real test will come tion, was subject to receiving the more invasive nasopha- when players are commingling, playing basketball without ryngeal swab for coronavirus tests, rather than the usual masks and without physical distancing.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

27

NHL Award races bode well for a compelling restart

By ANDREW KNOLL

T

he NHL announced finalists for its major awards last week, and it was both a reminder of how long ago those performances were and how compelling the postseason tournament will be if players can get back to that level of play quickly. The awards will be based on play before the league was shut down in March because of the coronavirus pandemic.

It’s Edmonton’s Show Edmonton, Alberta, will host the Western Conference playoffs, both conference finals and the Stanley Cup Finals.

The city earned its designation as one of the NHL’s hub cities because of how well it has handled the coronavirus outbreak. The Eastern Conference playoffs will unfold in Toronto before the conference finals.

The Edmonton Oilers have racked up 10 Hart Trophies since joining the NHL in 1979. Wayne Gretzky won the award eight times, Mark Messier once with Edmonton and Connor McDavid won it in 2017. Goalie Grant Fuhr was once a finalist.

“Amazing players, legends of the game no question about it,” Edmonton forward Leon Draisaitl said. “It’s a big honor to be part of that group for sure.”

No one exemplified that connection more this season than Draisaitl, who is a finalist for both the Hart Trophy, for most valuable player, and the player-voted award for most outstanding player, alongside Rangers wing Artemi Panarin and Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon.

Matchup to Watch: No. 5 Edmonton Oilers vs. No. 12 Chicago Blackhawks (best-of-five series starts Saturday) The Oilers (37-25-9) tightened defensively under coach Dave Tippett, but also have plenty of firepower to trade goals with the run-and-gun Blackhawks (32-30-8), who are led by three-time Stanley Cup champions Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane.

Bruins Awards Add Up to a Cup? The Boston Bruins (44-14-12) already had the Presidents’ Trophy, given to the team with the most points, and right wing David Pastrnak won the Maurice Richard Trophy as the league’s top goal scorer. But the Bruins racked up more recognition for the league’s subjective honors, too: Coach Bruce Cassidy joined Alain Vigneault of the Philadelphia Flyers and John Tortorella of the Columbus Blue Jackets as Jack Adams Award finalists for coach of the year.

Goalie Tuukka Rask is a Vezina Trophy finalist, awarded to the league’s top netminder. Rask won the award in 2014.

Center Patrice Bergeron became a Selke Trophy finalist for a record ninth time and could win his record fifth trophy, given to the league’s top defensive forward. But after pushing the St. Louis Blues to a Game 7 in last year’s Stanley Cup Finals, it’s probably safe to say there is only one trophy the Bruins are focused on lifting.

Matchups to watch: Boston thought it had locked up home ice through the playoffs, winning 16 of its previous 20 games, before the pandemic pause and the reformatting of the postseason. No team will be playing for its life when the Eastern Conference round-robin tournament begins Sunday, but Boston will face Philadelphia (Sunday), Tampa Bay (Aug. 5) and Washington (Aug. 9) to determine seed-

Rangers left wing Artemi Panarin is a first-time finalist for the Hart Trophy. ing in the first-round. Against those teams this season, the Bruins won just three of 10 games, losing four in shootouts.

In the West, St. Louis (42-19-10) will compete against Colorado (Sunday), Las Vegas (Aug. 6) and Dallas (Aug. 9) in Edmonton.

Artemi Panarin Wants His Just Due New York Rangers winger Artemi Panarin’s late push helped make him a first-time finalist for the Hart and Lindsay hardware while helping the team (37-28-5) come to within one game of a wild-card spot before play was halted. After signing the most lucrative contract of any free agent since 2013 last summer, he accumulated 61 points in his final 41 games. That was even more remarkable for a player whom NHL teams passed over multiple times before he signed with the Blackhawks in 2015 at age 23.

“I would like to thank all the GMs for not choosing me in the draft because it allowed me to choose the team where I wanted to play that played my style of hockey,” Panarin, a Russian, said through an interpreter last week.

Matchup to watch: No. 6 Carolina Hurricanes vs. No. 11 Rangers (starts Saturday) The Rangers should have a healthy Igor Shesterkin between the pipes for the postseason, though the team declined to officially name him the starter over Henrik Lundqvist. Carolina (38-25-5) has its own talented Russian wing, Andrei Svechnikov, and star defenseman Dougie Hamilton back healthy for the last hurrah of their veteran leader, right wing Justin Williams.

Blue Ribbons for Blue-Liners Skilled defensemen have become a must-have for Cup contenders since the league’s mid-aughts scoring boom.

But Washington’s John Carlson and Nashville’s Roman Josi — two finalists for this year’s Norris Trophy, awarded to the league’s best all-around defenseman — have long been understated among their blue-liner peers.

Josi’s blend of smooth skating, positioning and deceptiveness helped him to a career-high 65 points this season.

Still, Carlson may remain the favorite, as he led the league’s defensemen in points (75) and assists (60).

The Calder Trophy, awarded to the league’s top rookie, is also likely to be awarded to a defenseman. In his first full season, Colorado defenseman Cale Makar challenged the rookie points record for defensemen before play stoppage, ultimately finishing with 50, second among rookies only to Vancouver defenseman Quinn Hughes (53), his competition for the award.

Matchup to watch: No. 7 Vancouver Canucks vs. No. 10 Minnesota Wild (starts Sunday) Vancouver boasts not only a Calder favorite but also last year’s winner, center Elias Pettersson, nicknamed the Alien for his otherworldly playmaking ability. The young Canucks will face the Minnesota Wild, who had turned their season around sharply near the time of stoppage.

Can Hellebuyck Get Past the Vezina Veterans?

The Vezina Trophy for the league’s top goalie includes another relative unknown turned bright star, Connor Hellebuyck, the Winnipeg Jets goalie and former fifth-round pick. The Winnipeg defense saw massive turnover as four regulars departed from the roster last summer, but Hellebuyck thrived anyway.

The other finalists are last season’s winner, Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy, and Boston’s Rask. Hellebuyck and Vasilevskiy were ranked first and third in games played and shots against. Rask played fewer games, but led all starters in save percentage and all goalies in goals-against average.

Matchup: Winnipeg Jets vs. Calgary Flames (starts Saturday) The Jets pulled out a 2-1 overtime win in the outdoor Heritage Classic over the Flames in October, their only meeting this season.

Oskar Strong In a regular season that began a cultural shift in the sport and ended with an abrupt closure, not all hockey news was bad.

After missing the playoffs last year and wobbling through October, the Flyers were the hottest team in the NHL when play was suspended, having won nine of their final 10. The Flyers were galvanized by forward Oskar Lindblom’s battle with a rare form of bone cancer. Lindblom was told he had Ewing’s sarcoma in December and completed treatment in July, in time to be named to the Flyers’ 31-man roster for Toronto. Lindblom also signed a three-year, $9 million contract extension with Philadelphia this month.

Lindblom, a finalist for the Masterton Trophy for perseverance, became an inspiration around the hockey world, with “Oskar Strong” T-shirts sold to benefit cancer research.

Matchups: Philadelphia’s round-robin schedule will see the team face Boston (Sunday), Washington (Aug. 6) and Tampa Bay (Aug. 8).

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

The Premier League calls it a year, 352 strange days after it began

By RORY SMITH

T

hose final few minutes, the ones upon which an entire season rests, do something strange to time. The clock seems to slow, each second clawing and scratching for its moment before it yields to the next. But each is so pregnant with meaning, or with the possibility of meaning, that even in these moments that last an age, it can be hard to keep up.

Leicester City is losing at home to Manchester United, and Chelsea is winning at home to Wolves. United and Chelsea will make the Champions League.

Unless Leicester can make something of this free kick: The goalkeeper, Kasper Schmeichel, has gone up.

Aston Villa has scored at West Ham. That should be enough to ensure its survival: There are only four minutes left.

Bournemouth is ahead at Everton, and Watford is threatening a comeback at Arsenal, but as things stand, both would be relegated. In the time it takes a screen to refresh, though, West Ham scores to draw level. It is back on the knife’s edge.

Another goal and Villa might yet fall.

This was the final day as the Premier League would have wanted it, the final day that the Premier League, not so long ago — not so long as it feels, in this year in which every day has somehow felt like a lifetime and yet every week has passed in the blink of an eye — worried it might never have, as its clubs bickered and squabbled and the coronavirus pandemic threatened to claim the season itself.

The title, long since claimed by Liverpool, might not have been in play Sunday, but almost everything else was. Six of the 10 games on the pandemic-delayed schedule’s final day had something tangible at stake, something beyond league position or personal pride or a lingering sense of optimism before the new season, hovering close on the horizon: a place in the Champions League, a slot in the Europa League, survival.

That jeopardy remained almost to the last moment. United scored deep into injury time to confirm its victory at Leicester and the return to the Champions League that the club hopes might act as a springboard to help close the gap on Liverpool and Manchester City. Vil-

BOURNEMOUTH got the win it needed, but Philip Billing and his teammates didn’t get the help they had to have from other results. la’s struggle lasted until the final whistle against West Ham; only then were Bournemouth’s hopes extinguished, and its relegation confirmed. Watford followed them down a few minutes later.

The season that started 352 days ago, with Liverpool’s dismissal of Norwich on a balmy August night in a very different world, retained its intrigue until its final whistle. That, the Premier League would say, is why it had to play on, why it could not declare the season over in March, why it did not want to decide its outcome on paper. The most compelling league in the world, after all, deserved a conclusion.

There can be no question that the Premier League — like the Bundesliga, the competition that showed everyone else the way, and the other leagues across Europe that followed in its footsteps — deserves credit for finding a way through, for playing to completion in the age of the pandemic.

In that long, frightening spring, as executives and observers alike debated the morality of doing so in the face of daily death tolls touching the thousands, there were times when it felt a

distant prospect.

It has passed off, though, relatively smoothly. The swaths of positive tests that many feared have not materialized.

There was no need for neutral venues.

The players have handled the compressed workload impressively well. The standard has not dropped, nor has the drama.

That it has all been played out in stadiums stripped bare of fans has given games an eerie, alien air, and demonstrated how much of soccer’s spectacle is dependent on packed houses, but it has not deprived the games of meaning.

This has not, as once appeared a threat, been a season of asterisks.

There has been little sense that the players are going through the motions: the suffering of Leicester players in the stands at the King Power Stadium on Sunday was no less real than the joy of Liverpool’s players in lifting the Premier League trophy Wednesday night.

Players do play for the fans, of course, for the faintly mystic institution of the “club,” the one that lives in collective memory and in myth accumulated over time. But they also, at heart, play for them-

selves: for their ambitions, for their pride, for their win bonuses, for their new contracts, for their sense of worth. They have imbued this strange and quiet miniseason, this delayed denouement, with their own purpose.

But for all that the 2019-20 Premier League season will always stand out — the season of the pandemic, of empty stadiums and games in July — it is worth pausing to ask quite what has made it memorable, aside from the circumstances of its climax.

Perhaps it was the introduction of the video assistant referee system, tortured and then decisive: Aston Villa might have been relegated, and Bournemouth survived, had it not been for a technological error on June 17, the day the league returned, when VAR failed to spot a Sheffield United goal at Villa Park.

There was certainly Liverpool’s relentless march toward its first championship in three decades; possibly the end of one era at Tottenham Hotspur and the start of a new one at Arsenal; maybe the final sight of David Silva, one of the finest imports ever to grace the league, on English soil.

That apart, though, it has all ended as might have been predicted. The insurgencies from Sheffield United, Wolves and Leicester all, ultimately, fell flat: Leicester managing to go from mounting a title challenge to missing out on the top four; Wolves and Sheffield United missing out on Europe altogether.

The top four teams are the four richest in England. Even Tottenham, which fired a coach and spent much of the season in crisis, managed to finish sixth. Might, as always with the Premier League, has served to make right.

All that drama on the final day, those long minutes and those nails chewed to the quick and those glances at the table as it stands, wondering what might come next, and here we are again, with everyone — a couple of notable exceptions, in the form of Sheffield United and Burnley, aside — in their rightful place, as ordained by their financial firepower.

It took 352 days. The Premier League rode out a pandemic, waited until the final whistle. And then, after all of that, everything was just as it always is. The season that nobody could have foreseen ended just as you would have predicted.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 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

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

(Mar 21-April 20)

Obligations and duties to others are making you feel stifled and used. People you have been helping for some time are taking it for granted this arrangement will continue. It was only meant to be temporary. It is time to encourage those who are capable of managing on their own, to stand on their own two feet.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

When you and a partner or friend first got together, this relationship filled a gap in your life. A lot has changed since then including your feelings for each other. It’s hard to admit you don’t care for someone as much as you used to but you are both ready to go your separate ways.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Scorpio

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

A chance to learn or enrol on a study or training course will be just what you need at this time. You may have your doubts about your ability to complete this course. You will never know the answer if you don’t try. Taking up a challenge will bring out your best and give you a huge sense of achievement.

Working behind the scenes seems to be the inevitable result of recent measures put in place in the workplace. You might enjoy this chance to get on with your work in a peaceful environment. With the help of other volunteers, you will find new ways to assist those impacted by the Corona Virus.

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

A refund that is owed to you could fail to arrive. This will be annoying when you needed this money to pay other obligations. It may be necessary to threaten legal action. If a friend owes you money, take steps to make certain it is paid in full. Don’t feel guilty about letting money get in the way of friendship.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Subtle changes indicate a turning point in your career or social obligations. You sense you are in a transition period. You may need some type of agreement to establish where you are and where you are going to. There may be some strange experiences during this transition.

Be discreet in what you decide to divulge and what you plan to keep secret. Choose wisely who you confide in. Hidden enemies can create problems for you. Keeping a neighbour’s secret will have unintended rewards. People do appreciate your loyalty and honesty even if they don’t say it.

Whether you are redecorating your home, creating a piece of art or writing a book, the important thing is to use your imagination. A creative project brings you joy. You aren’t ready to reveal all your plans to everyone, but you feel good about your intentions and your ability to reach a long-term goal.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

The chance to travel will be hard to resist.

Make certain others who are involved know what to expect. A misunderstanding could ruin what you had hoped to be a special experience. Be certain to get reservations in writing and keep relatives who live some distance away informed about what you are planning.

Getting away from familiar places will broaden your perspective. You don’t have to travel far to feel the benefit. Being out in nature will sharpen personal insights. Solitary pursuits like reading, writing and meditation will help settle your restless mind. A passion packed break will bring you and your amour closer to each other.

Virgo

Pisces

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

It is time to start restricting how much you do for others. You cannot devote all your time to helping other people. If a friend tries to draw you into their problems, don’t get involved.

Your family and other loved ones need you.

This should be your priority as they are starting to feel neglected.

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

A new relationship you had big hopes for is falling apart at the seams. It’s disappointing to discover you aren’t compatible. It may have felt like love at first sight but now you realise you were in love with the idea of being in love. A conversation with a senior colleague will increase your luck.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

The San Juan Daily Star

Ziggy

32

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

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