Wednesday Jun 24, 2020

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

San Juan The

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Meeting Naomi Campbell, for Real

Star

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Clash Over Retirement Bill

Oversight Board Executive Director: Bill for Early Retirement of Public Servants Inconsistent with Fiscal Plan

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Federal Funds Allocated for Municipalities

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NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

Powerful Earthquake Jolts Mexico P16

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

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June 24, 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.

CDBG-DR funds allocated for various island towns

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By THE STAR STAFF

G

ov. Wanda Vázquez Garced signed a fund allocation agreement on Tuesday with the municipalities of Aguadilla, Aguas Buenas, Gurabo, Orocovis, Ponce, Villalba and Yauco through the Puerto Rico Housing Department as part of the first phase of the federal revitalization program under Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds.

The agreement will finance reconstruction of damaged infrastructure in the seven towns.

“The idea of this agreement is that mayors improve urban areas and help small and midsize businesses,” the governor said.

Urban revitalization — subsidized with CDBG-DR Program funds — will provide funding to revitalize key urban centers and corridors to improve communities and foster their social and economic development.

“Puerto Rico is going to rebuild itself. We are taking a firm step forward,” Vázquez said. “It was important for our people to see to it that these funds were appropriated.”

Ponce Mayor María Meléndez Altieri said island towns have struggled for the past three years as they take over a high number of responsibilities previously held by the

central government.

“We have had hurricanes, earthquakes and a pandemic, but the mayors are not going anywhere,” she said.

“We have the fight to thank for these funds. Also we are grateful for the funds to these seven municipalities.”

Villalba Mayor Luis Javier Hernández said the agreement will help hasten funds to municipalities.

“Without a doubt these funds are going to be well used by these seven municipalities,” he said. “We have the financial structures to be able to properly manage these funds.”

The program will also promote green infrastructure in municipalities and create opportunities for recovery activities, including the rehabilitation or construction of buildings within major urban areas.

The governor also met with members of the Mayors Association, which comprises Popular Democratic Party mayors.

Hernández and Guayanilla Mayor Nelson Torres Yordán, who is vice president of the Mayors Association, said they discussed with the governor the need for an agreement with the Department of Transportation and Public Works to expedite the cleanup of state and municipal roads to be ready in the event of a natural disaster.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Jaresko to governor, legislative leaders: Bill for early retirement of public servants inconsistent with fiscal plan

By THE STAR STAFF

T

he Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB) for Puerto Rico told the island government and the legislative leaders Tuesday that legislation that would create incentives for public employees to retire early is inconsistent with the fiscal plan certified in May. Senate Bill (SB) 1616 proposes to create incentives for public employees to retire before reaching their retirement age, and imposes restrictions on agencies with regard to replacing public employees who accept early retirement, with certain exceptions purportedly to maintain the government’s ability to perform essential services.

“As proposed, it appears that SB 1616 would be significantly inconsistent with the 2020 Fiscal Plan, and it should not be enacted until the information requested in this letter is provided to the Oversight Board,” FOMB

Executive Director Natalie Jaresko said.

The oversight board said it recognizes that SB 1616 intends to improve retiree benefits to certain currently active employees while simultaneously paying for the increased benefits by freezing/eliminating certain of the positions held by early retirees. However, the affordability of the proposed benefit improvements is dependent on the elimination of a certain number of these positions, she said.

“Thus, failure to achieve the required down-sizing could potentially cause significant increases in long-term costs to the government,” Jaresko said in the letter. “Moreover, provisions in SB 1616 that allow agencies to rehire for ‘essential’ positions or allow participants to participate on a deferred basis would potentially allow agencies to provide improved retirement benefits without generating associated payroll savings, resulting in cost increases. We note the Commonwealth has offered public employees over 20 early retirement windows since 1994,

which have hampered the government’s ability to execute and many of these programs failed to realize significant savings.”

Downsizing is based on efficiencies in back-office work (administration and support personnel), not front office work, the oversight board official pointed out.

“Another example of programs such as the one proposed in SB 1616 is Senate Bill 1623, which proposes a retirement program to the members of the Rank System of the Puerto Rico Police,” Jaresko said in the letter.

“Further, the Fiscal Plan already includes an expectation that various agency headcounts/ payroll will reduce over the next few years due to Fiscal Plan rightsizing measures. The Oversight Board requires that achieving agency reductions through improved benefits would at least meet the rightsizing requirements without reducing the ability of the agencies to provide essential services and also pay for the cost of any additional benefits.”

Given that SB 1616 appears to be significantly inconsistent with the fiscal plan, the oversight board required a complete analysis of the outcomes SB 1616 is intended to achieve and the likelihood they will be achieved, as part of its evaluation.

The oversight board also requested additional information, including all actuarial reports and any documentation evaluated that provide support for the savings and number of affected employees described in the bill, including analysis regarding the impact on individual agencies.

“Finally, and independently of PROMESA Section 204, we remind you that enacting or implementing SB 1616 would violate PROMESA Section 108(a)(2) because it impairs or defeats purposes of PROMESA such as the Board’s exclusive right to determine treatment of pension claims in a plan of adjustment,” the letter said. “Indeed, the law would be contrary to the currently proposed plan of adjustment.”

Hector Luis Acevedo: New Electoral Code a ‘vile assault’

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

H

éctor Luis Acevedo, a professor of electoral law for more than 30 years, on Tuesday described the signing of the Electoral Code by Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced as a “vile assault” on democracy and called on the people of Puerto Rico to fight with peaceful militancy for their right to a fair vote and to have it counted according to their will.

“What to do now? Report, protest and litigate. And each act in its time. Report in all relevant forums the abuses and risks of this legislation, go to the streets in an organized way to protest and bring lawsuits when they are ready,” Acevedo said in a written statement. “The signing of the Electoral Law by governor Wanda Vázquez on Saturday afternoon will be known as The Election Massacre. She hopes to change the subject this week and that the people forget the breach of her word. She was wrong to hand over her credibility in exchange for primary issues. She was wrong to think of silencing our people.”

He noted that, paraphrasing Ernesto Ramos Antonini and bridging the gap, “I come today to defend Wanda Vázquez the governor, against Wanda Vázquez the candidate.”

Acevedo said further that it is important to bear in mind some of the alleged attacks on this law against the free will of the elector.

First: One of the electoral rights is to have guarantees against electoral fraud so that the legal vote does not lose its value with illegal votes. All political parties in 1982-1983 were very careful to protect the integrity of the electoral process. Now the absentee vote is made in an unrestricted manner and the requirement to obtain the electoral card issued by the State Elections Commission (SEC) in Puerto Rico is removed, inviting people who no longer have their domicile on the island to vote.

In fact, articles 9-035 and 9-038 of the law prevent the applicant from being questioned, which shows the governor’s

clear intention. Rather than requiring you to declare that you are not registered to vote in two jurisdictions, you are prevented from questioning it, and hard-to-get documents are required to challenge it. See the 5,551 cases of double-registered voters already detected and that the New Progressive Party is opposed to the SEC initiating procedures to clear its rolls in front of all opposition parties.

Second: Article 9.9 of the bill takes away the voter’s right to vote by marking the insignia of his party or the portrait of a candidate, canceling that expression if it does not appear in the small quadrant, although the voter’s intention is clear and manifest.

The Puerto Rico Supreme Court unanimously adjudicated the same situation by recognizing the voter’s intention above any technicality. See PSP. v CEE 110 DPR 400 (1980). That standard has been consistently upheld since then. This right is intended to be abolished by the Electoral Reform bill.

Third: According to the new Electoral Code, in its definition 55 and other articles, if an elector votes in the quadrant of one party and marks the face of a candidate from another party, this mark is deemed not to have been set and the vote contrary to intention is counted as an expression by the voter for the candidate he rejected. In other words, it has a double effect against the will of the voter.

Fourth: The new Electoral Code bill aims to remove the voter’s right to vote for an insignia and for candidates from other parties.

This right was validated by the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals of the first federal circuit in 2004, respecting the intention of the voter. Now, with this law, a voter voting for one party and the governor and resident commissioner of another have their vote voided. See Suárez Jiménez v. CEE 163 DPR 407 (2004).

The mixed vote that former Gov. Luis A Ferré requested in 1968 and that is respected today with the three ballots, would be null with this new law.

Fifth: The law eliminates the voter’s right to be counted for

their vote by direct nomination (“write in”) in accordance with their intention, requiring the full name of the selected candidate, contrary to the decision in the Santos v. PPD Case 109 DPR 798 (1980).

In other words, if a voter writes in that column, “Wanda, or Pierluisi, or Bhatia, or Yulín, or Charlie, Lúgaro, or Dr. Vázquez, or Eliezer or Vidot” that vote counts; with the new law, however, it is understood as not entered and the vote is counted in a way the voter did not want. This amendment was made behind the backs of the people, without discussion, in the process of eliminating internet voting. In other words, the governor eliminated a right acquired 40 years ago.

Sixth: Since 1984, the SEC has been enrolling students in high school to facilitate their right to vote. This population worldwide is the one with the lowest enrollments, and with this initiative, tens of thousands of young people have been made eligible. Their electoral card and their right to vote are activated when they reach the required years. The current order covers this right in Article 6-016 of the current law and in the new Electoral Code it is eliminated.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

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Governor: More restrictions at airport in next executive order

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

G

ov. Wanda Vázquez Garced announced on Tuesday that due to outbreaks of COVID-19 reported in Canóvanas and Guayanilla, her next executive order will include more rigorous testing requirements for all travelers who come to the island.

“Yes, without a doubt we are working on a little more rigorous measures for the entry of tourists, passengers, not only residents, but the people who come due to the opening of Puerto Rico,” the governor said in response to questions from the press. “We will probably announce it in the next executive order.”

She said a traveler could bring the result of a negative test or else they would have to undergo a test at the airport.

“We are going to make sure that the people who arrive in Puerto Rico can produce, perhaps a nega-

tive molecular result or otherwise,” Vázquez said.

“Once they enter Puerto Rico they have to know that they must undergo the test or else [they will] not be [allowed] in free exposure if the test is not done.”

Asked about the power that the executive branch has to compel travelers to undergo a coronavirus test, which is currently carried out on a voluntary basis, she noted that the island secretary of Health

has that power.

“The Department of Health has all the power in the world to give the secretary the measures to protect the population, and they are implemented through an executive order,” the governor said. “As you know, we are in the midst of an emergency, we are handling it and executive orders count as if they were in law.”

Officials meet to reinforce screening of airline passengers

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

P

uerto Rico National Guard (PRNG) Adj. Gen. José Reyes participated on Tuesday in a meeting with other government officials to reinforce the screening of passengers arriving at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport, and possibly conduct COVID-19 tests.

“The answer must be yes, modified,” Reyes said in a radio interview when asked if tests will be done at the airport on a mandatory basis. “We cannot control air traffic and make impositions, but certainly as a territory, as a country, we can establish criteria for this screening process.”

As an example, he said that in Alaska each passenger is required to present the result of a 72-hour polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, test. Otherwise, the compulsory test is done there.

“That could be an alternative to strengthen these medical screenings,” Reyes said. “Maybe a home quarantine plan could possibly be done … can be done. There are CARES Act funds that are available and arrangements could be made with hotels and people who have to quarantine, and be able to separate those hotels.”

The PRNG leader said that imposing such a determination is in the hands of Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration

and airlines, state and federal agencies, among others.

“Today [Tuesday] we have a meeting with the director of Tourism [Carla Campos] and with the attorney [Joel] Pizá [Batiz], who is the director of Ports, yours truly and the secretary of Health [Lorenzo González Feliciano],” Reyes said “We continue to look for alternatives for how we can improve this process at the airport.”

Reyes noted that an average of 6,000 to 7,000 passengers a day are now arriving on the island. The normal rate before the pandemic was 14,000 or 15,000 passengers. In addition, he said that currently 234,018 medical screenings have been performed at the airport -- 1,322 molecular tests and about 30,000 rapid tests.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

González presses for PR in FY2021 budget before House Appropriations Committee

By THE STAR STAFF

R

esident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón said Tuesday that she stressed to the U.S. House Appropriations Committee on Appropriations her priorities for Puerto Rico in the FY2021 budget.

“Our island has the capacity, infrastructure and manpower to play a leading role in the efforts of the United States to secure the national supply chain for medical products,” González Colón said in a written communication.

The resident commissioner said she emphasized requests for increased funds from the Nutritional Assistance Program (known as PAN in Puerto Rico by its Spanish acronym); resources for the Caño Martín Peña and other mitigation projects; increasing the supply and domestic capacity of pharmaceutical products and medical supplies, cataloging it as national security issue using the island as a place to develop these industries, among other issues; and initiatives for which she had already advocated in subcommittee hearings on appropriations during February and March.

The resident commissioner also requested an increase in the $1.9 billion suggested by the Trump administration for the PAN program in Puerto Rico.

On March 3, the resident commissioner made the same request to the Agriculture Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, in which she received a positive

response from Reps. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) and Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), chairman and minority leader of the subcommittee, respectively, who expressed themselves in favor of working together with her to eliminate the disparities in the nutritional assistance programs on the island.

González Colón stressed at Tuesday’s hearing that additional resources be assigned to the United States Army Corps of Engineers to help advance projects such as the Guayanilla River and the Grande de Loíza River, among others, which received partial complementary funds after Hurricane Maria. She also requested an increase in the number of new start projects to no less than eight, and that of these, four be ecosystem restoration projects. This will

help to better position projects already authorized by Congress, including the Caño Martin Peña Ecosystem Restoration Project in San Juan, she said.

In the defense area, the resident commissioner defended language to urge the executive branch to use the Defense Production Law to increase the domestic supply and capacity of pharmaceutical products and medical supplies produced in the United States, and in turn expand the presence of research and pharmaceutical industry on the island as a matter of national security.

Along with Reps. Donna Shalala (DFla.), Rob Bishop (R-Utah), Darren Soto (D-Fla.), Rubén Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Peter King (R-N.Y.), the resident commissioner filed HR 6443, the 2020 National Supply Chain Security Act, which would secure the supply chain nationwide by providing incentives to “distressed zones” in the United States and its territories. On June 8, the resident commissioner met with the assistant to the president, director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy and public policy coordinator of the National Defense Production Law, Peter Navarro, to discuss how to attract new manufacturing to Puerto Rico.

On March 12, González Colón deposed before the Defense Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee in support of this request, as well as more federal funds and resources for the Fisher House, the Youth ChalleNGe program of the National Guard and the Civil Air Patrol, and

to expedite the cleanup of Vieques and Culebra. The resident commissioner also supported the request of the Coast Guard to make the transition for the Borinquen Air Station in Aguadilla from MH-65 to MH-60 helicopters and language for the Federal Emergency Management Agency related to the authorities in locations in Puerto Rico, including municipalities that are still recovering from the 2020 hurricanes and earthquakes, to achieve faster disbursement of Public Assistance payments and reimbursements for immediate response categories, and to facilitate the initiation and termination of construction projects.

González Colón spoke in opposition to the proposed closure of the International Institute of Tropical Forestry, based in Puerto Rico, which has been vital in advancing knowledge of tropical ecosystems at the local, national and international levels.

The resident commissioner’s petitions for fiscal year 2021 encompass funds for environmental conservation and historic sites, as well as veteran services and military construction, plus resources to fight crime in Puerto Rico, and for commerce and science, including funds for the Arecibo Observatory, and for tsunami and CariCOOS alerts.

Each year, Congress prepares a budget for the following fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1 to Nov. 30 of the following year, detailing expenses, the budget for federal agencies, as well as funds for the various federal programs.

Medical Review Board proposed

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

R

ep. Joel Franqui Atiles announced on Tuesday that he has introduced legislation to establish a review board with the power to initiate and execute remedies, actions or legal procedures that are necessary or appropriate to guarantee that the needs of patients and the medical class are met, including with regard to determinations made by insurers that affect the public interest.

House Bill 2567 amends the Insurance Code in order to eliminate the Advisory Committee that currently exists under Law 77 and establishes a Review Board that will be made up of a health provider -- which can be a doctor, pharmacist, or medical technologist in Puerto Rico -- a consumer attorney and two representatives of the public interest.

“The legislative intention is to confer broad powers on a Review Board that is representative of the sectors most affected by

the actions of insurers. With this measure it is possible to subordinate the criteria of the Insurance Commissioner to a representative Board of the people,” the legislator said in a written statement.

He noted that the review board, through the majority vote of its members, may declare the insurers that administer medical plans as a critical sector.

When declaring a critical sector, the review board will have the ability to review, revoke and modify the determinations of the insurance commissioner, as well as regulate or propose legislation aimed at avoiding cancellations of contracts with providers without just cause, and review the rates of medical plans, coverage, payments, contractual relationships with health providers, among other related purposes.

“Insurers have been free [of regulation].

The figure of the Insurance Commissioner must be complemented by the powers conferred on the Review Board,” Franqui Atiles

said. “The Board will have representation of health providers and representatives of the public interest. In this way, decisions will be made by men and women who do not come from the insurance industry.”

“I am convinced that this Review Board will help us avoid cases such as that of the young Camuyan Alexis Joel, who has been denied payment by his insurer for the medical treatment he received after suffering burns all over his body when he was studying medicine in Mexico,” the legislator added.

“Currently this situation prevents him from continuing with his therapies and receiving the treatments he needs for his recovery, which affects his physical and emotional health.”

The bill also establishes that the review board will have the power to confirm or revoke the resolutions that the insurance commissioner reports under his or her power to adjudicate disputes over violations of the Insurance Code.

Rep. Joel Franqui Atiles

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

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How Biden is catching up to the Trump money ‘juggernaut’

By SHANÉ GOLDMACHER

F

ormer Vice President Joe Biden will hold his first event of the 2020 campaign with former President Barack Obama on Tuesday, and more than 120,000 people have already paid to attend, according to the Biden campaign, raising more than $4 million.

The joint appearance will be the biggest grassroots fundraiser of the cycle for the Democratic Party, serving not just as a coming-out party for the former running mates but also as something of a punctuation mark on Biden’s arrival as a financial force in his own right.

In May, for the first time, Biden and the Democratic National Committee outraised President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, $80.8 million to $74 million, and receipts are on pace to surge even higher in June. Biden’s online fundraising so far this month has already surpassed May’s $34.4 million total, according to people familiar with the matter. Now, some party officials see $100 million as an achievable goal for June.

“May is the floor for June,” declared Tom Perez, chairman of the DNC, who, along with senior campaign officials, declined to comment on the potential to reach $100 million.

The outpouring of cash has allowed Biden to sharply cut into the enormous financial advantage that Trump and the Republican National Committee built in the lead-up to 2020, shaving tens of millions of dollars off what had been a $187 million edge entering April. Since the beginning of March, Biden and the DNC have banked more than $100 million.

Biden’s at-times anemic fundraising was one of his most glaring weaknesses during the primary race, when he was often badly outspent by rivals. The recent surge in donations comes as Trump appears increasingly vulnerable, reeling under the pressure of a national health crisis, an economic collapse and a wave of protests over racial injustice. Biden leads Trump in almost every national poll.

Still, Trump remains a prolific fundraiser, reportedly raising $10 million at a recent dinner, and he has a significant cash advantage, even if it is no longer triple that of Biden.

Biden’s brightening financial picture is the result of a rapid confluence of events.

The primary race ended earlier and the Democratic Party coalesced faster behind the former vice president than expected, sparing him the expense of a drawn-out contest across dozens of states. The coronavirus pandemic sharply shrank the cost of campaigning, as Biden sheltered in place in Delaware for nearly three months. He did not need to add staff as quickly or as robustly as he otherwise might have.

At the same time, top Democratic donors have widely embraced virtual events, willingly forgoing some of the traditional perks of attending lavish in-person fundraisers while cutting checks for up to $620,000. And as Trump falters on the national stage, small donors have seized at the chance of ousting him.

“Donald Trump is the best poster child for Democratic fundraising in the history of Democratic politics,” said Chris Korge, national finance chairman of the DNC. Marc Nathanson, a veteran Democratic fundraiser who helped host a Biden event Friday, said the minimum price to get

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, addresses a round table on economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, in Philadelphia. on that call was $50,000, and they doubled an initial goal of raising $1 million.

“We raised over $2 million on a Zoom call of all things,” Nathanson said.

Biden’s advisers see 2020 largely playing out as a referendum on Trump. The president’s erratic response to world events — the threats to sic the “most vicious dogs” on protesters, the forcible removal of peaceful demonstrators for his photo op outside a church, his use of racist language in calling the coronavirus the “kung flu” — has served as an accelerant for grassroots giving, in particular as Americans took to the streets nationwide to protest systemic racism and police brutality.

About six weeks ago, the DNC saw about 20 unsolicited $1,200 donations show up online — unusually large sums to arrive unexpectedly. Perez asked his team to investigate. In turns out, people had decided to essentially forward their government stimulus checks to defeat Trump.

“We actually think that we’ve become a really powerful place where people feel like they can do something about what’s happening right now,” said Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s campaign manager.

For many months, Trump’s team has boasted about its prolific fundraising hauls and swelling list of online supporters, with Brad Parscale, the president’s campaign manager, calling his operation a “juggernaut” in October, then again in January and February and May. But the flip side of the enormous $817 million raised by the Trump campaign and the RNC since the beginning of 2019

— and the $265 million still in the bank at the end of May — is that Trump and the Republican Party have already spent more than half a billion dollars and yet still entered the summer of 2020 trailing in the polls, with Biden cracking 50% in one prominent polling average. Trump spent $22.6 million on television ads from mid-March to mid-June, according to data from Advertising Analytics, a media-tracking firm; Biden just went on the air Friday.

“The Republican war chest continues to dwarf that of Joe Biden and the Democrats,” the Trump campaign said in a statement over the weekend. (The Biden team has not released its exact cash-on-hand total, but campaign records indicate it is from $120 million to $150 million.)

Now, money is coming from all corners. The Biden campaign processed more than 900,000 online contributions in May on ActBlue, the main online portal for Democratic giving, and more than half of the donors were new to the campaign. This month began even faster, as Biden invested millions in online ads and expanded his email list by 1.5 million people, tapping into the activism arising from the protests.

Online donations were up 62% at the DNC over the first 10 days of June compared with the same period in May. Proceeds from direct mail are booming, too: The committee saw its best May for direct mail since 2004, and the Biden campaign saw a large increase as well, according to party and campaign officials.

Overall, the number of donors to Biden has tripled since February.

“Its increasingly clear we’re going to be highly competitive with our resources against Trump,” O’Malley Dillon said.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Bolton assaults Trump from the right and takes fire from all directions

By PETER BAKER

H

e knew what he was getting into. He knew he would be showered with brickbats from the left for not speaking out sooner and denounced by the right for speaking out at all. He knew he would be thrashed by thunderous presidential tweets, and he knew he might even be dragged into court.

And yet John Bolton could not help himself. For decades, he has been the enfant terrible of the political right, speaking out in blunt and uncompromising terms even at the risk of offending some in his own party. That is what got him on Fox News. That is what got him speaking invitations. That is what made him a hero to conservatives who even urged him to run for president.

But after a lifetime in conservative politics, Bolton has now put himself in the crosshairs of just about everybody as he publishes a scorching tell-all memoir about his time as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser in which he portrays the commander in chief as a walking, talking constitutional and national security disaster who knows little and cares little about anything other than himself. After seeing how it worked from the inside, Bolton knows he will pay a price.

“Look, I thought many times in the course of preparing this book that given the series of two-minute hates I was going to get from Trump himself that the whole thing wasn’t going to be worth it,” he conceded in an interview Monday on the eve of the book’s publication. “But I just figured ultimately you’ve got to go through the hardships in order to get the facts out. I’m fully prepared for it. I’m not saying I’m going to enjoy it, but I understand the environment we’re in. I just think it’s important to tell the story.”

Not everyone accepts the getthe-facts-out explanation, seeing instead some mix of ambition, selfpromotion, personal grievance and

John Bolton, then the White House national security adviser, looks on as President Donald Trump meets with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan. a reported $2 million book contract.

Bolton is one subject on which Trump and Speaker Nancy Pelosi agree: He is in it for himself, not the country, cashing in rather than doing his duty and hardly to be celebrated as a public-spirited truth teller.

But whatever the motivations, Bolton has presented the nation with a caustic and hard-to-ignore inside look at the 45th president just as voters are about to decide whether to reward him with another four years in the White House.

In Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened,” the president solicits foreign powers to help him win domestic elections, wants to intervene in criminal investigations to please dictators, threatens to blow up the nation’s long-standing alliances, endorses China’s creation of concentration camps, presses for adversaries to be prosecuted and says journalists “should be executed.”

While former advisers have for decades written memoirs exposing the foibles of presidents, even while they are still in office, perhaps none who served at a high level has offered such an incriminating portrait since the Watergate era. And what makes Bolton so different from other refugees from this White House or drifting-to-the-left Never Trump Republicans is that he is taking on the president from the right, making the case that when it comes to conservatism, Trump is a fraud.

“It’s perfectly apparent he’s not a conservative,” Bolton said. “I’m not saying he’s a hidden liberal. He’s a nothing in philosophical terms.”

As a result, Bolton’s portrayal challenges Trump’s conservative base-oriented strategy by disputing the president’s claims to be tough on China or strong on national security.

And Bolton is trying to force Republicans to decide who they really are after allowing an outsider to take over their party.

“The day after the election, whether Trump wins or loses, we face a real debate, maybe an existential debate, about what the future of the Republican Party is,” he said. He added, “I just think it’s important for the Republican Party to separate itself from Trump and for the conservative philosophy to separate itself from Trump.”

Bolton, 71, has been a Republican stalwart far longer than Trump.

The son of a firefighter and machinist, Bolton grew up in Baltimore and became a conservative from an early age, passing out leaflets as a 15-yearold for Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential campaign and later becoming part of what he called the “conservative underground” at Yale.

A lawyer, he served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, eventually rising to become ambassador to the United Nations.

With his trademark bushy mustache and say-anything style, he became known as one of Washington’s

most outspoken hawks, derisively scorning international organizations that in his view are feckless and diminish U.S. sovereignty while advocating regime change in rogue states like Iran and North Korea.

While he was not one of the architects of the Iraq War, as he is often described, he was a vocal supporter and remains so.

Trump, 74, by contrast, has switched political parties a halfdozen times and favored negotiations with the likes of North Korea and a friendship with Russia. Despite that, Bolton agreed in 2018 to become his third national security adviser, convincing himself, like others before him, that he could manage the volatile personality in the Oval Office.

“Despite what everybody said, I just fundamentally didn’t believe it was as bad as they were saying — and as it turned out,” he said Monday.

For Bolton, it was a transactional relationship, a calculation that the burden would be worth it if he could accomplish some of his long-held goals and prevent Trump from making what he considered mistakes.

On his watch, Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear accord and the IntermediateRange Nuclear Forces Treaty, both agreements that Bolton detested.

Bolton also considered it a victory that the president never made his own agreement with Iran or with North Korea, either of which he was convinced would be to the detriment of America. But Trump and Bolton clashed so many times that the adviser finally resigned in September, although the president said he was fired.

“He doesn’t operate on the basis of philosophy or grand strategy or policy,” Bolton said. “He operates on the basis of gut instinct and what he thinks is good for Donald Trump.”

While the president is often accused of a short attention span, “when it comes to the politics of his reelection, he has an infinite attention span.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

9

Virus cases grow, but some police officers shed masks

By DIONNE SEARCEY, LUCY TOMPKINS AND ROBERT CHIARITO

W

hen America first reported an alarming wave of coronavirus cases this year, police departments across the country swiftly raised alarm about a lack of masks and other equipment that would protect officers as they went about their essential jobs.

“We just don’t have enough,” a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department complained in March about a shortage of personal protective equipment for officers.

But in Chicago as well as in other cities across the nation, police officers have been seen doing their jobs in recent weeks without masks, even in places where officials have mandated they wear them and even in situations such as crowded protests over racial injustice and police abuse, in which social distancing is nearly impossible. Sightings of officers without masks have come amid an uptick of virus cases in the South and the West in the weeks since many areas began reopening.

It is a worrisome development, according to medical experts, who warn that such moves increase the risk of infections both for officers and the residents they are charged with protecting. It is a puzzling turn, too, for people like Early Walker, an Illinois resident who was so moved by pleas from the police for personal protective equipment that he helped pay for hundreds of masks — handmade, with filters and customized with the Chicago Police Department logo. He handed them out to police officers in April, along with hot meals of chicken and mashed potatoes, at a funeral for Marco DiFranco, the first Chicago officer known to die of complications from COVID-19.

“They weren’t free,” Walker said, speaking of his donations. “I would think they would wear them, you know, especially considering the seriousness of this disease. One of the reasons I partook in buying them was because one of their fellow officers lost his life.”

Since tens of thousands of people began pouring into the streets to protest the death of George Floyd last month, images of lines of barefaced officers in

Chicago, Seattle, Phoenix, New York City and elsewhere have circulated on social media.

In recent days, police officers without masks have been spotted on regular patrols and at protests in cities where policies require masks and where broader social distancing rules are still in place. During several protests in Phoenix, dozens of officers patrolled the streets as protesters marched. While a vast majority of protesters wore masks, almost none of the officers — a mix of city officers and state troopers — did so. In California, several sheriff’s departments have said they would not comply with the governor’s new rules requiring masks when social distancing was not possible.

Some protesters complained that officers who opted not to wear masks were endangering residents — another piece of a pattern that had sent people to protest police conduct in the first place.

“I do feel like it’s hypocritical,” said Mitchell Brooks, 30, a web developer in Raleigh, North Carolina, who said he had been at several demonstrations where most officers were not wearing masks while most protesters were. “Just trying not to risk being a disease vector is a pretty straightforward and easy way to mitigate any hardship you might do to your community and to protect it.”

Police officers and representatives for departments defended the actions of officers. They described a fast-moving situation in recent months that began with urgent concerns about the virus but quickly turned to contending with large protests over the death of Floyd and others.

Beyond the protests, officers have been spotted without masks in the course of regular police work.

About two weeks ago, Marie Mott said a dozen officers who responded to people fighting in the street in her neighborhood in Chattanooga, Tennessee, were barefaced when they hopped out of their vehicles and did not put on masks as they questioned people.

Mott, who has helped organize several protests over Floyd’s death, said she had spotted only a handful of officers with masks at marches and relatively few wearing masks since the coronavirus out-

break began.

Chattanooga does not have a written policy for police use of personal protective equipment “due to the fluid and often changing directives coming from the CDC and other levels of government,” Elisa Myzal, a police spokeswoman, said in an email.

“They have been instructed to wear PPE at all times when dealing with the public so long as it is feasible,” she said.

Myzal said that at protests, “a mask can greatly inhibit the clarity and volume of verbal commands. Standing on the front lines of a protest is not the time or place for confusion.”

When fears about the coronavirus began increasing in the United States — long before the nation convulsed in protests over police conduct — many police departments scrambled to obtain protective equipment.

In Chicago, donations of masks and gloves began to pour into the Police Department from the community, one longtime Chicago police lieutenant said.

Officers were exceedingly concerned then about the spread of the virus, a worry that grew in the weeks that came after as dozens of officers across the country were found to have or died of COVID-19. In Chicago alone, more than

500 police employees tested positive for the virus, with most recovering and able to return to work. Officers there took care, according to the lieutenant, who asked not to be named because he did not have authorization from police officials to speak with the news media. The police wiped down patrol cars between shifts and each vehicle was stocked with hand sanitizer and wipes.

Then on the last weekend in May, hundreds of officers were ordered into buses to be deployed to respond to protests over Floyd’s death.

At that point, worries about the virus became secondary, the lieutenant said.

Officers were so busy handling protests, he said, that virus concerns were pushed aside in the moment.

In the days since, the spread of the virus in the city of Chicago has slowed, and many officers have abandoned their masks, the lieutenant said.

Thomas Ahern, a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department, said officers were required, and continuously reminded, to wear masks and gloves.

“Given the heightened activity that officers have been responding to in the past weeks, there may be situations in which officers may not have masks and gloves on,” he said.

Police officers arrested a 16-year-old boy in Los Angeles earlier this month for breaking curfew.

10

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Qualified immunity protection for police emerges as flash point amid protests

By HAILEY FUCHS

L

ong before the death of George Floyd set off a nationwide uproar over police brutality, before protests erupted in 2014 over the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a 50-year-old man named Wayne Jones took a night stroll through the streets of Martinsburg, West Virginia.

A police officer saw Jones walking illegally in the road that night in 2013 and asked whether he was carrying a weapon. Jones, who had a small knife, and the police got into a tussle, after which one officer accused Jones of stabbing him. Fifteen minutes later, Jones lay on the ground facedown between a stone wall and five officers, who had fired 22 bullets at his backside.

Jones’ brothers, Robert and Bruce, have tried for years to hold the police accountable for Wayne’s death but have repeatedly run into hurdles: Most recently, the officers claimed they could not be held liable under so-called qualified immunity, an esoteric legal doctrine invoked by police departments across the country for decades in response to allegations of excessive force. It provides legal protections for officers when they are accused of violating others’ constitutional rights.

Once a little-known rule, qualified immunity has emerged as a flash point in the protests spurred by Floyd’s killing and galvanized calls for police reform. In the vast majority of cases of police brutality, officers are never criminally prosecuted. For families of victims seeking some sort of relief through the justice system, qualified immunity presents another obstacle to obtaining financial or other damages. Even in the rare cases where the officers are charged, as in Floyd’s death, the police can still claim qualified immunity if relatives or victims sue them.

“Every time across the country that I hear of a new case, I see a news report of another victim, it just opens up the wounds again,” Robert Jones said. “It makes it feel like it just happened yesterday.”

Activists have seized on qualified immunity as what they see as one of the biggest problems with policing and argued that it shields officers from being held accountable in cases of misconduct. Police leaders said it was essential for officers’ ability to respond to calls and to make splitsecond decisions.

Qualified immunity is a focal point of the new debate on Capitol Hill over how to address systemic racism in policing and use of excessive force. House Democrats unveiled a bill that would allow victims of police brutality to seek damages from their assailants. A competing Senate Republican bill made no mention of qualified immunity, and the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, called it a “total and complete nonstarter.”

State legislatures have taken up the issue as well. The Colorado General Assembly became the first to eliminate qualified immunity this month.

“It’s a message that’s sent in these cases — that offi-

When “I see a news report of another victim, it just opens up the wounds again,” said Robert Jones, whose brother was killed by the police in 2013. cers can violate people’s rights with impunity,” said Joanna Schwartz, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has written extensively on the doctrine.

“That is outrageous to people and causing people to act.”

In 1967, amid another era marked by civil rights protests, the Supreme Court introduced qualified immunity to protect government officials acting in good faith — not just police officers — from financial liability. In a case involving clergy members who said they were wrongfully arrested on charges of breach of peace for entering a whites-only bus terminal waiting room, the justices argued that if officers were personally held responsible for their misconduct, it might deter them from performing their duties and making arrests.

The court expanded the protection in ensuing decades, and it now covers “all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law,” a rationale offered by the Supreme Court in 1986 in an unlawful arrest case.

As a result, victims and families accusing police officers of brutality must find a virtually identical case where officers were held responsible to cite as precedent in cases where officers claim qualified immunity.

Since Brown’s shooting death by a white officer in 2014 and protests over it prompted a national conversation about racism and police brutality, both liberal and conservative justices have expressed doubts about the doctrine.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in 2018 that the doctrine “tells officers that they can shoot first and think later, and it tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct will go unpunished.”

When the Supreme Court declined last week to take up several cases concerning qualified immunity, Justice Clarence Thomas, the lone dissenting voice, expressed “strong doubts” about the doctrine.

Critics have accused the court of arbitrarily contriving it. At a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., the committee chairman, said that before qualified immunity was “invented” by the Supreme Court, “the world did not fall in.”

David Cole, the national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed one of the petitions rejected by the Supreme Court last week, called the doctrine “a free pass” for police officers “to violate constitutional rights without being held to account.”

Although the doctrine is intended to protect officers from paying for the damages they cause, he said the result is that officers are more likely to abuse their powers.

“Fiscal concerns are overriding concerns about justice and police accountability,” Cole added.

Advocates on behalf of police insisted that qualified immunity was necessary for officers to protect the public.

Its protections allow officers to make life-or-death decisions in a matter of seconds, they said, and without it, fewer people might be willing to join police forces.

Republicans in Congress have rejected any change to the broad protection afforded to police officers. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who sponsored his party’s bill, called Democrats’ effort to eliminate qualified immunity a “poison pill.” Republicans’ policing bill would create incentives for departments to use body cameras and ban chokeholds as well as create a system to track misconduct.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, did signal an openness to revisiting the doctrine at a committee meeting last week.

“Maybe there’s something we can do with the concept of qualified immunity that would put more accountability into the agencies that run police departments,” he said.

Another Republican senator, Mike Braun of Indiana, told reporters last week that he would introduce legislation this week to change how qualified immunity was applied.

Wayne Jones’ family won a small victory this month when the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the officers involved in his killing could not claim qualified immunity. Noting that the FBI had just begun investigating Floyd’s killing, the court wrote, “This has to stop.”

Jones’ relatives are awaiting a decision from the West Virginia Supreme Court about whether they are entitled to see secret testimony given to the grand jury that voted not to indict the officers and whether they are entitled to a new grand jury altogether to investigate the case anew.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

11

Apple to ditch Intel chips in Macs as it consolidates its power

By JACK NICAS

A

pple confirmed on Monday that it would design the processors inside its new Mac computers, ditching Intel, its partner of 15 years, and completing a yearslong effort to control the core components underpinning its main devices.

Apple said that the first Macs with Apple chips would arrive by year’s end, and that the full transition from Intel to Apple chips would take two years.

Apple’s move, announced at the start of its annual developers conference, is the latest sign of the growing power and independence of the biggest tech companies.

Making the silicon chips that power computers has been a multibillion-dollar industry for decades, creating giants like Intel that built their businesses by supplying PC makers with the processors for their devices.

While companies like Dell and HP still rely on Intel for the chips inside their laptops, Apple has become large enough to design and produce its own silicon with the help of Asian chipmaking partners. Apple already made custom chips for iPhones, iPads and the Apple Watch, and now it will do so for its final major product line: the Mac. “When we make bold changes, it’s for one simple yet powerful reason: so we can make much better products,” Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, said during a recorded video announcing the change Monday. “When we look ahead, we envision some amazing new products, and transitioning to our own custom silicon is what will enable us to bring them to life.”

Johny Srouji, the head of Apple’s chip team, said in the video that Apple’s processors would make Mac computers faster and more powerful, while consuming less power.

Apple, Microsoft and Adobe have already transitioned many of their Mac apps to the new chips, Apple said, and developers will be given tools to make their software work on the new computers, too.

The most noticeable change for Mac users: IPhone and iPad apps will work directly on Mac computers with the Apple chips, with few if any changes needed by their developers.

Apple’s Mac chips are expected to be built by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the partner Apple uses to build similar components it designs for iPhones and iPads — an arrangement much like Apple’s use of Foxconn to assemble iPhones.

Losing Apple as a customer is a symbolic hit, as well as a financial one. Intel sells to Apple about $3.4 billion in chips for Macs each year, or less than 5% of Intel’s annual sales, according to C.J. Muse, an Evercore analyst.

“Intel remains focused on delivering the most advanced PC experiences and a wide range of technology choices that redefine computing,” the company said in a statement. Intel-powered computers give users “the best

“When we look ahead, we envision some amazing new products, and transitioning to our own custom silicon is what will enable us to bring them to life,” Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, said on Monday. experience in the areas they value most, as well as the most open platform for developers.”

With the full transition to take two years, Cook said Apple still had several Intel-based Macs in its product pipeline.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is the company’s annual get-together with the entrepreneurs and programmers who make the apps and services that run on iPhones, iPads and Macs. Apple uses the weeklong event to tell developers about its new software, teach them new tools and further cultivate them as Apple loyalists.

With this year’s conference fully virtual for the first time, Apple already had a challenge. But then last week, the hot topic in tech circles became Apple’s control over its App Store and the fees and rules it enforces on app developers.

The European Union announced an antitrust investigation into how Apple wields its control over the App Store, responding to a complaint from Spotify. The music-streaming service has protested Apple’s strict rules on Spotify’s iPhone app, including that Apple collects 30% of the revenue from many Spotify subscribers.

Apple did announce a new feature that could further upset many developers: App Clips, a way for iPhone ow-

ners to basically use an app without having to download it. For the feature to work in many cases, users would sign in and pay for an app’s services with Apple’s proprietary systems, further entrenching Apple between businesses and their customers — a central complaint of many app developers.

Many iPhone users, however, will probably like the feature; it means they will have to download fewer apps, with privacy policies they haven’t read or don’t understand.

On the privacy front, Apple made three significant moves in its new iPhone software, set for this fall. Apps will have to get permission from iPhone owners to track them across other apps and the web. Apps must clearly say what data they collect and share about a user, before they are downloaded. And iPhone owners can choose to share just their approximate location with apps.

Those changes could have the biggest long-term impact of any of Apple’s announcements on Monday. They could sharply reduce the amount of data many apps collect about their users, which would hamper their advertisingbased business models. Apple has benefited from the digital economy’s slow shift away from advertising and toward subscriptions; Apple takes a cut of many of the subscriptions sold in the App Store.

12

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Stocks

Central banks hint at pandemic stimulus exit. Markets aren’t buying it

A

s strict coronavirus lockdowns end, some central bankers have started hinting at another kind of exit — from emergency stimulus they launched just three months ago. Markets so far appear to be calling their bluff.

The estimated $5 trillion in asset purchases unleashed by the five biggest central banks to cushion the impact of the pandemic has helped lift world stocks to within 10% of record highs, while the global economy seems set for recovery — confirmed by advance readings of June business activity surveys.

Some central banks have signalled full-throttle stimulus won’t last for ever, though, including the Bank of England which last week slowed its bond purchases, citing signs of economic improvement.

Yet in contrast to the decade after the 2008 financial crisis, when any hint that stimulus might be unwound provoked a “taper tantrum”, markets have paid little heed.

Responses to the BoE were confined to a brief spike in sterling and a dip in bond prices. Nor did markets react much to People’s Bank of China Governor Yi Gang urging stimulus restraint and “timely withdrawal of policy tools in advance”.

There are many reasons why central banks may be wary of keeping asset purchases at their current pace, above all the potential for a debt “hangover” highlighted by Yi. But investors reckon policymakers are only preparing the ground for changes.

“My interpretation is that central banks are sending little messages saying ‘don’t take me for granted’. Now some people will be listening, others won’t and others will say ‘yeah I heard you, but I think you are bluffing’,” said Kim Catechis, head of investment strategy at Legg Mason affiliate, Martin Currie, in Edinburgh.

He said investors likened central banks to firefighters: “They are going to stay there, chucking more water ... until the embers are completely out, and they don’t think that the job is done yet.”

Chinese 10-year bond yields rose 4 bps on Monday after the PBOC held off cutting its loan prime rate and are up 14 basis points in June. But Shanghai shares .SSEC are at threemonth highs.

Norway’s and Canada’s currencies meanwhile firmed only modestly following relatively hawkish policy messages, with the Norges Bank even outlining a rate hike path from 2022.

The subdued reaction is partly because the big guns of central banking — the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan — show no signs of straying from the stimulus path. Fed chairman Jerome Powell vowed last week to keep his “foot on the gas”.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

13

Betraying frustration with China, EU leaders press for progress on trade talks

By STEVEN ERLANGER

T

he European Union pleaded with Chinese leaders at a summit meeting Monday to put more effort into lagging negotiations on an investment and trade deal, an issue that has increasingly vexed the 27-member bloc. But the plea seemed likely to go unanswered by China, which has tightened control over its domestic economy and turned more combative in relations with Western powers.

China’s sensitivity about the source of the coronavirus, its moves against Hong Kong and its aggressive diplomacy toward European governments colored the atmosphere of the summit meeting. The videoconference setting reduced the ability to negotiate or pass quiet messages.

So the meeting, already postponed from late March, was never likely to produce a breakthrough on stymied efforts to conclude an investment treaty. While expectations were low for the talks, the first for the new European leaders, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Council President Charles Michel, they were still seen as frustrating.

The Europeans first had discussions with Premier Li Keqiang, then with President Xi Jinping, China’s paramount leader.

Afterward, the two European leaders made a plea for China to put more ambition and political weight behind lagging negotiations on a host of topics and to honor previous pledges. Asking for “a higher level of attention” from Xi, von der Leyen said: “We have the intentions, the words put on paper, but we need the deeds.’’

“We continue to have an unbalanced trade and investment relationship,’’ she said, with little progress on Beijing’s commitments last year about market access. “We need to follow up on these commitments urgently and we also need to have more ambition on the Chinese side in order to conclude negotiations on an investment agreement.”

At best, European officials say, the talks could produce some more momentum from top leadership to break the impasse on issues from state subsidies and technology transfer to climate change and equal opportunities for European companies. But prospects have been made more difficult as Xi has exercised tighter state control over the society and the economy.

The talks Monday did not produce a joint statement, nor did the Chinese government agree to any sort of joint news conference.

An account by Xinhua, China’s official news agency, suggested Xi had stuck to old themes. “China and the EU should be the two main forces of safeguarding global peace and stability,’’ he said. “China and the EU are the world’s two main forces, two main markets, two main civilizations. What we advocate, what we are opposed to, what we collaborate on, carry global meanings.”

China, which prefers to deal with each European country individually, has always been a dilemma for Brussels. The EU is China’s largest trading partner, and China is the second-

The European Union pleaded with Chinese leaders at a June 22 summit meeting to put more effort into lagging negotiations on an investment and trade deal, an issue that has increasingly vexed the 27-member bloc. largest for the bloc. But such interdependence also produces a kind of paralysis, with neither side particularly willing to risk that trade.

Josef Borrell Fontelles, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, said Monday that the West had been “a little naive” in expecting convergence from China. “Now China is more assertive and a global player,’’ he said. “It’s a partner” on issues like climate change, he said, “but also a competitor, and at the same time a rival.’’

In the past few years, Europeans have become less idealistic about China, favoring an investment screening process for member states that is voluntary but sends a message. Europe has also warned about Chinese investments in key infrastructure and potential Chinese takeovers of strategically important companies, especially now that some are weaker because of the coronavirus recession.

At the same time, the Europeans have been careful not to be seen as backing President Donald Trump in his more aggressive position toward China, but trying to find some middle way, even if they share many of the same complaints.

“The Europeans are saying the same thing each time and expecting things to be different,’’ said Theresa Fallon, director of the Center for Russia Europe Asia Studies, a research institution in Brussels. The Chinese “have been dragging their feet on this investment deal for seven years, and they are not going

to deliver,’’ she said. “Beijing is focusing on the fragmentation of Europe, courting Germany. It’s more of a managed trade world than the EU imagines.’’

Trade, not foreign policy, is at the heart of the relationship. But that is where the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, has found considerable frustration. Promises made by China last year to improve behavior and create a more “level playing field” with Europe were good, “but implementation has been lagging,’’ a senior European official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the issue is delicate.

Technical talks on issues like unfair subsidies to stateowned enterprises; limited market access for European companies for automobiles, computers, telecommunications and biotechnology; China’s demands for one-sided technology transfers, limits on financial services and disagreements over ways to settle disputes are not making much progress, the official said.

Other disputes concern proposed changes at the World Trade Organization and China’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions. As some officials noted, Xi is proud to be a father of the Paris climate accord, but China also is building coal-fired power plants at a great rate, raising questions about its commitments — even as the country invests heavily in renewable energy.

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Wednesday, June 24, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

France brings 10 children of French Jihadis home from Syria

A woman carries an injured youth at the Kurdish-run Al Hol detention camp in northern Syria.

BY CONSTANT MÉHEUT AND BEN HUBBARD

F

rance on Monday brought home 10 children of French jihadis who had been stuck in sprawling detention camps in northeastern Syria since at least the collapse of the Islamic State group last year.

The French foreign ministry said it had decided on repatriation because of “the situation of these particularly vulnerable young children.” About 270 children of French citizens remain in Syria, according to rights groups, which argue that this leaves the children at risk of illness and radicalization.

About 900 children from Western nations including France, Belgium, Canada and Australia are still stuck in the camps, which sprung up to hold relatives of Islamic State fighters who survived the battles with Kurdish-led fighters and a U.S.-led military coalition aimed at destroying the caliphate.

But since the jihadis lost their final foothold in Syria in March 2019, many Western nations have resisted calls from the Kurdish-led forces that run the camps to repatriate their citizens, saying they do not want to bring home people who chose to join a terrorist organization.

Rights groups have pressed the governments to at least bring home their citizens’ children, arguing that the minors did not choose to go to Syria or, in many cases, were born there.

But only small numbers have been repatriated, many because they were orphans or because they needed lifesaving medical care not available in Syria.

The French foreign ministry announced the arrival of the

10 children in a statement Monday, saying they were handed over to judicial authorities and were under medical supervision and being cared for by social services.

The statement gave no further information about the children, but lawyers representing their relatives said they included three orphans and seven other children from two mothers who had agreed to give up custody so their children could travel to France.

The repatriated children included two brothers and the twin sister of Taymia, a 7-year-old French girl who suffered from a double heart defect and was flown to France in April for urgent medical care after her health had deteriorated.

In a phone interview last month from the sprawling Al Hol camp where the family was stuck in Syria, Taymia’s mother said she had grown so worried about the potential for radicalization in the camp that she had agreed to allow all of her children to leave.

“That’s why I’m ready to separate from them and let France take them back,” she said.

It was unclear why France brought the children home now after leaving them behind in April, but all three arrived safely Monday as part of the repatriation operation, said Ludovic Rivière, the family’s lawyer.

The New York Times is not publishing Taymia’s last name, nor the names of her mother and siblings, to protect the children’s privacy.

The four other nonorphaned children who arrived in France on Monday were taken from a Kurdish-run detention

facility, Roj Camp, after their mother agreed to give up custody, said Jean-Charles Brisard, director of the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism. She kept her other two children with her in the camp.

“Some women at some point feel compelled to try to separate from their children because the living conditions in the camps are too difficult,” said Marie Dosé, a French lawyer who has campaigned for the repatriation of all former French residents of the Islamic State group.

The French government’s actions have lagged behind its vows to repatriate the children of its citizens stranded in Syria.

“They are children, they didn’t choose to go to these battlefields, they didn’t choose to join the jihadists’ operations,” France’s justice minister, Nicole Belloubet, told a French radio station Monday, adding that, “when conditions permit,” France should repatriate all minors and orphans.

But so far, the government has followed a case-by-case policy that prioritizes orphans and children whose mothers surrender custody. Under that policy, 18 children, including 15 orphans, had been brought home before the 10 who arrived Monday, leaving about 270 other French children marooned in dire conditions in the camps.

Countries like Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have each repatriated more than 100 of their citizens, many more than Western nations.

With public opinion firmly against bringing home those who left to fight with the Islamic State group, France has long sought to avoid dealing with French jihadis, even preferring to try dead fighters rather than the living.

French authorities have made it clear that it sees adult women who joined the Islamic State as “fighters” who must be tried where they committed their alleged crimes, in Syria or Iraq, suggesting that the mothers were unlikely to be repatriated with their children.

Both Rivière and Dosé, the French lawyers, said France had initially planned to repatriate more than 10 children, but that some mothers, caught off guard by the sudden operation, had decided not to let their children go.

The 10 children were handed over to a delegation from the French foreign ministry that traveled to northeastern Syria to meet with Kurdish officials. The delegation included Éric Chevallier, a former French ambassador to Syria, according to a photo of the meeting posted on Twitter by Abdulkarim Omar, a foreign affairs official with the Kurdish-led administration.

It was unclear when the photo was taken, but many European officials have cited the danger of sending diplomats into Syria as one of the barriers to repatriation.

The grandfather of four other French children who have been in a camp in Syria with their mother since early 2018 called the arrival of the 10 children “a glimmer of hope.”

But he said the repatriation process would remain limited as long as France waited for mothers to give up custody of their children.

“If we want to bring the children back, it’s not by waiting for all the women to give in one by one,” said the grandfather, who gave only his last name, Lopez, to protect the family’s privacy.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

15

Saudi Arabia drastically limits hajj pilgrimage to prevent viral spread

By BEN HUBBARD

E

very year, Saudi Arabia welcomes millions of Muslims from around the world for the hajj pilgrimage, a sacred rite that pumps cash into the economy and enhances the prestige of the monarch.

But not this year.

The kingdom announced Monday that the 2020 hajj, scheduled to take place next month, would welcome “very limited numbers” of pilgrims in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The dramatic shrinkage of the largest annual rite in Islam could hit Saudi Arabia particularly hard, with a reduced pilgrimage delivering a further financial blow to a kingdom already grappling with low oil prices and an economic slowdown caused by the lockdowns aimed at preventing contagion.

It could also disappoint Muslims from around the world who have saved for years to perform a once-in-a-lifetime religious experience.

The Saudi statement Monday marked the first time since the founding of the modern Saudi kingdom in 1932 that such restrictions have been placed on the hajj. The event is so closely linked to the king’s international standing that he bears the title “the custodian of the two holy mosques,” a reference to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina where the hajj takes place.

The pilgrimage has been canceled many times throughout history because of wars and disease, but has faced no significant limits on attendance since the mid-1800s, when outbreaks of cholera and plague kept pilgrims away for a number of years.

On Monday, the kingdom made clear it was not canceling the event outright but drastically reducing the total number of pilgrims for safety.

In a statement published by the state-run Saudi Press Agency, the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah, which oversees the pilgrimage, said the event this year would welcome only pilgrims from Saudi Arabia and from other nationalities who are already inside the kingdom.

“This decision is taken to ensure Hajj is performed in a safe manner from a public health perspective while observing all preventative measures and the necessary social distancing protocols to protect human beings from the risks associated with this pandemic,” the statement said.

The statement did not specify what the target attendance would be, but the lack of pilgrims from abroad will surely make for a much smaller pilgrimage.

Last year, of the 2.49 million pilgrims who performed the hajj, 1.86 million came from outside Saudi Arabia, according to the Saudi General Authority for Statistics.

Nor did the statement specify what precautions would be taken to prevent viral spread among the pilgrims who did attend.

The pilgrimage’s conditions can lend themselves to the spread of contagious diseases. Pilgrims fly, drive or sail in from countries across the globe and often form dense crowds while performing a series of religious rites over a number of days.

At night, many sleep close together in tents or other crowded accommodations and share meals. At the end,

many return home to grand receptions with crowds of family and friends.

In addition to its religious significance, the pilgrimage is a moneymaker for the kingdom and especially for the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

The hajj and a lesser pilgrimage called the umrah, which can be performed year-round, earn the kingdom about $12 billion per year, according to government statistics. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, has spoken of boosting pilgrim numbers to help diversify the economy away from oil.

The kingdom needs that income even more now because low oil prices have deprived the state of income and created a budget deficit.

Saudi Arabia has struggled to contain the virus while balancing lockdowns with the damage they have caused to the economy.

In March, the government imposed strict round-the-

clock curfews in many parts of the country, with exceptions only for medical care and essential shopping. It began a phased reopening last month and lifted the last remaining restrictions Sunday.

But the number of coronavirus cases has continued to rise, with the government reporting more than 160,000 total infections and more than 1,307 deaths.

In an effort to slow the virus’s spread, the kingdom closed the holy sites in Mecca and Medina to non-Saudis in February, and in April, a Saudi official warned pilgrims planning to travel to the kingdom for this year’s hajj to delay making plans.

Monday’s announcement of the limited hajj will surely disappoint many Muslims who had hoped this year to perform the pilgrimage, one of the five pillars of Islam, which every Muslim who is able must undertake once in a lifetime.

So Muslims who have spent years saving for the trip and jockeying for bookings will now have to wait until next year to try again.

Singapore calls for elections despite pandemic

By HANNAH BEECH

P

rime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore announced Tuesday that the city-state would hold the first elections in Southeast Asia since the coronavirus pandemic began.

The elections are scheduled for July 10, and Parliament was dissolved Tuesday to begin the electoral process.

In a televised speech Tuesday, Lee acknowledged the pandemic’s devastating effect on a country that is, more than most, dependent on a globalized world for its economic security.

“A long struggle lies ahead,” Lee said. “Singapore has not yet felt the full economic fallout from COVID-19, but it is coming.”

Unemployment will go up, Lee cautioned, adding that “external uncertainties,” such as the coming U.S. elections and simmering tensions between the United States and China further complicated the outlook for Singapore.

“To overcome these challenges, we must stand completely united as one people,” Lee said. “An election now, when things are relatively stable, will clear the decks and give the new government a fresh five-year mandate.”

Elections have to be held by April, and some opposition lawmakers have advised against conducting them while pandemic regulations make normal campaigning impossible.

Singapore has criminalized the breaching of its strict social distancing measures.

Shaking hands will not be allowed during the nine-day campaign period, nor will political rallies, according to the Singaporean electoral authority.

“There is no need to rush into organizing one so soon, especially as the country continues to record hun-

dreds of new daily coronavirus cases,” Teddy Baguilat Jr., executive director of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights and a former Philippine member of parliament, said in a statement.

In the early months of the pandemic, Singapore successfully stifled most local transmission through a meticulous contact-tracing program. But the coronavirus made its way into dormitories where hundreds of thousands of foreign workers live in communal quarters. As of Tuesday, the country had recorded more than 42,400 cases of the coronavirus, most within the foreign worker community.

Singaporean leaders point out that the country has suffered only 26 deaths and that the relatively high caseload is more a function of comprehensive testing than of runaway transmission. Most cases are asymptomatic or very mild.

In his speech Tuesday, Lee noted that there was only one patient currently in intensive care. The rate of new cases has declined in recent days, and Singapore has relaxed some of its lockdown measures.

Nevertheless, the pandemic has weighed heavily on the country, which is disproportionately reliant on the international networks that the coronavirus has disrupted. Its economy could contract by 5.8% this year, according to a survey by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

The People’s Action Party — co-founded by Lee’s father, Lee Kuan Yew, who was prime minister from 195990 — has governed Singapore since before it separated from Malaysia to become an independent nation in 1965. It is expected to win the coming elections, as well.

Lee, 68, has been prime minister since 2004 and has had cancer twice.

“This general election,” he said, “will be like no other that we have experienced.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Powerful earthquake jolts southern Mexico

By KIRK SEMPLE

A

strong earthquake shook southern Mexico on Tuesday, killing at least one person, causing buildings to shake hundreds of miles away, and prompting residents to flee homes and offices to seek safety on the streets under open sky.

The earthquake’s magnitude was 7.5, according to Mexico’s national seismological service, and it was centered in the Pacific Ocean, about 14 miles off the coast, south of Crucecita, a beach town in the southern state of Oaxaca that has been popular with tourists. It struck at 10:29 a.m. local time.

The U.S. Geological Survey, however, estimated the magnitude at 7.4, and placed the epicenter about 12 miles inland; it is not unusual for preliminary measurements to vary.

Another quake, estimated by the USGS at 4.9 magnitude, struck the same region Monday night. By early afternoon Tuesday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said, there had been 147 aftershocks to the larger quake, and officials warned that more were expected.

Government officials said that at least one person in Oaxaca had died, possibly two, but news of casualties remained sketchy.

In a Twitter video, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was shown speaking by phone with David León, Mexico’s national coordinator of civil protection, and saying that one person had died and another had been injured.

“Fortunately there was no major damage,” the president said, a phone pressed to his ear as he relayed information from León. “Collapses, some broken glass, signage fell, walls, but nothing serious.”

He urged everyone to remain attentive to further seismic warnings and to stay calm. “I hope and I wish with all my soul that there will be no more damaging aftershocks,” he said.

The area closest to the epicenter is largely rural, and the nearest sizable city is Oaxaca, the state capital, more than 90 miles away.

Buildings swayed in Mexico City, more than 300 miles to the northwest, but local news reports showed little damage beyond debris that had fallen away from some building facades. The mayor

The 7.5-magnitude quake, centered in the state of Oaxaca, killed at least one person, and caused buildings to shake hundreds of miles away. of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, said neither the city’s security command center nor officials conducting overflights of the municipality had reported any “serious” impacts from the earthquake.

Flora Pedro Mora, the administrator of Mansiones Cruz del Mar, a condo-hotel complex near Crucecita, described the earthquake as “horrible.”

“It was like one of those movies,” she said, audibly shuddering.

But she added that apart from some roof tiles that were knocked loose and fell to the ground, the property suffered no serious damage. Though some hotels and resort properties in the area, commonly known as Huatulco, had begun to reopen in the past week after an extended shutdown in response to the pandemic, Mansiones Cruz del Mar was still closed to guests.

The state oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos, reported that the earthquake caused the temporary shutdown of its refinery in the port city of Salina Cruz, and that a fire there was quickly put out.

The U.S. National Oceanic and At-

mospheric Administration said there was a “potential threat” of a tsunami along the coasts of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, but withdrew the advisory a few hours later.

The agency’s ocean buoys recorded small seismic waves after the quake — too small to have much noticeable affect.

Powerful offshore earthquakes can trigger devastating tsunamis like the ones that hit Fukushima, Japan in 2011 and Aceh province in Indonesia in 2004. But it is difficult to predict which quakes will cause such destructive waves.

In 2017, at least 90 people were killed after an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.2 struck offshore in the middle of the night, mostly affecting the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas. That earthquake did generate a tsunami.

Aftershocks continued for days as volunteers in Juchitán, a provincial city of 100,000, clawed through mounds of debris left by collapsed buildings, searching for survivors.

Weeks later, a separate quake near Mexico City killed at least 248 people, in-

cluding children who were buried beneath a collapsed school.

Many Mexicans have grown accustomed to earthquakes, taking them as an immutable fact of life. The country is situated near the colliding boundaries of several sections of the Earth’s crust.

In 1985, a devastating earthquake killed as many as 10,000 people in Mexico City. After the disaster, construction codes were reviewed and stiffened. Today, Mexico’s construction laws are considered as strict as those in the United States or Japan.

The earthquake in 2017, the most powerful quake in Mexico in a century, occurred near the Middle America Trench, a zone in the eastern Pacific where one slab of the Earth’s crust, called the Cocos Plate, is sliding under another, the North American, in a process called subduction.

Subduction releases vast amounts of energy and, if the slip occurs under the ocean, can move a lot of water suddenly.

Subduction zones, which ring the Pacific Ocean, cause the world’s largest earthquakes and most devastating tsunamis.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

17

America is too broken to fight the Coronavirus

By MICHELLE GOLDBERG

G

raphs of the coronavirus curves in Britain, Canada, Germany and Italy look like mountains, with steep climbs up and then back down. The one for America shows a fast climb up to a plateau. For a while, the number of new cases in the U.S. was at least slowly declining.

Now, according to The Times, it’s up a terrifying 22% over the last 14 days.

As Politico reported Monday, Italy’s coronavirus catastrophe once looked to Americans like a worst-case scenario. Today, it said, “America’s new per capita cases remain on par with Italy’s worst day — and show signs of rising further.”

This is what American exceptionalism looks like under Donald Trump. It’s not just that the United States has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths of any country in the world.

Republican political dysfunction has made a coherent campaign to fight the pandemic impossible.

At the federal level as well as in many states, we’re seeing a combination of the blustering contempt for science that marks the conservative approach to climate change and the high tolerance for carnage that makes American gun culture unique.

The rot starts at the top. At the beginning of the crisis Trump acted as if he could wish the coronavirus away, and after an interval when he at least pretended to take it seriously, his administration has resumed a posture of blithe denial.

The task force led by Mike Pence has been sidelined, its members meeting only twice a week.

Last Tuesday, the vice president wrote an op-ed essay in The Wall Street Journal about how well things are going: “We are winning the fight against the invisible enemy,” he claimed.

In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity last week, Trump said the virus is “fading away.”

Speaking to The Journal, he said that some people might be wearing masks only to show their disapproval of him and suggested, contrary to all credible public health guidance, that mask-wearing might increase people’s risk of infection. It’s not surprising, then, that many people at his sad Saturday rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma — where coronavirus cases are spiking — went maskless.

Just a few weeks ago, panicked about occupying my kids through the summer in a shut-down New York City, I thought about taking them to stay with my retired parents in Arizona. Now, as New

over police violence played in coronavirus spikes is mixed, but liberal support for the demonstrations solidified the conviction among many conservatives that strict social distancing rules are a hypocritical tool of social control. The paranoia and resentment that have long been part of the culture of the modern right are now directed at those warning about the ongoing dangers of the pandemic.

Across the country, public health workers have faced death threats, harassment and armed protesters at their homes. No matter how bad things get in red America, it’s hard to imagine where the political will to contain the virus will come from.

So while countries with competent leader“TRUMP 2020” merchandise, including a face mask, on ship haltingly return to normal, ours will continue sale near the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla. to be pummeled. In mid-May, when America’s coronavirus death toll was around 85,000, Trump York gingerly reopens, Arizona has become a hot sycophant Lindsey Graham said that as long as spot — which isn’t stopping Trump from holding fatalities didn’t go much beyond 120,000, “I think a rally at a Phoenix megachurch Tuesday. Cases you can say you limited the casualties in this war.” are also soaring in Texas, Florida and several other

By The Times’ count, we just hit that number. states. An epidemic that was once concentrated The war goes on, but Trump has already lost it. in blue states is increasingly raging in red ones.

When coronavirus cases started exploding on the East Coast in March, there were devastating failures by Democratic leaders. New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, not only forced nursing homes to take back residents who’d been hospitalized for the coronavirus, he barred them PO BOX 6537 Caguas PR 00726 from testing the residents to see if they were still Telephones: (787) 743-3346 • (787) 743-6537 infected.

As ProPublica reported, following Cuomo’s (787) 743-5606 • Fax (787) 743-5100 order, “COVID-19 tore through New York state’s nursing facilities, killing more than 6,000 people — about 6% of its more than 100,000 nursing home residents.” In Florida, which prohibited such transfers, the virus has so far killed only 1.6% of nursing home residents.

Publisher Given how Cuomo’s errors contributed to New York’s catastrophe, it’s hard to say how much Manuel Sierra Ray Ruiz credit he deserves for eventually rising to the ocGeneral Manager Legal Notice Director casion. Still, by the time New York’s cases got to where Arizona’s are now, he at least understood María de L. Márquez Sharon Ramírez that the state faced calamity and imposed the Business Director Legal Notices Graphics Manager lockdown that helped bring it back from the abyss.

R. Mariani Elsa Velázquez Arizona, Florida and Texas, by contrast, aren’t Circulation Director Reporter even doing simple things like mandating maskwearing. Worse, until last week, the governors of Lisette Martínez María Rivera Arizona and Texas prevented cities from instituting Advertising Agency Director Graphic Artist Manager their own such requirements.

So far, evidence about the role mass protests

Dr. Ricardo Angulo

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Wednesday, June 24, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

A plague of willful ignorance

Trump has, with his words and actions — notably his refusal to wear a mask — encouraged and empowered America’s anti-rational streak, Paul Krugman writes.

By PAUL KRUGMAN

I

n the early 20th century, the American South was ravaged by pellagra, a nasty disease that produced the “four Ds” — dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia and death. At first, pellagra’s nature was uncertain, but by 1915 Dr. Joseph Goldberger, a Hungarian immigrant employed by the federal government, had conclusively shown that it was caused by nutritional deficiencies associated with poverty, and especially with a corn-based diet.

However, for decades many Southern citizens and politicians refused to accept this diagnosis, declaring either that the epidemic was a fiction created by Northerners to insult the South or that the nutritional theory was an attack on Southern culture. And deaths from pellagra continued to climb.

Sound familiar?

We’ve known for months what it takes to bring COVID-19 under control. You need a period of severe lockdown to reduce the disease’s prevalence. Only then can you reopen the economy — while maintaining social distancing as needed — and even then you need a regime of widespread testing, tracing and isolation of potentially

infected individuals to keep the virus suppressed.

Most advanced countries have gone down this route.

A few countries, like New Zealand and South Korea, have largely or completely defeated the coronavirus. The European Union, comparable in population and diversity to the United States, continues to record new cases of COVID-19, but at a far slower rate than at the pandemic’s peak in late March and early April.

But the United States is exceptional, in a very bad way.

Our rate of new cases never declined all that much, because falling infection rates in the New York area were offset by flat or rising infections in the South and the West. Now cases are on the rise nationally and surging in such states as Arizona, Texas and Florida.

And no, reported infections aren’t rising just because we’re doing more testing; contra Donald Trump, we can’t solve this problem just by testing less. Other indicators, like the percentage of tests coming back positive and hospitalization rates, show that the COVID-19 surge is real.

It’s true that deaths are still falling for the nation as a whole, although they’re rising in some states. This reflects some combination of the way that deaths lag infections, better precautions for the elderly, who are the most vulne-

rable, and better treatment as doctors learn more about the disease.

But we’re still losing around 600 Americans per day — that is, we’re experiencing the equivalent of six 9/11s every month. And many people who aren’t killed by COVID-19 are nonetheless debilitated by the illness, sometimes permanently.

Why are we doing so badly? A lot of the answer is that many state governments have rushed to return to business as usual even though only a handful of states meet federal criteria for even the initial phase of reopening. Epidemiologists warned that premature reopening would lead to a new wave of infections — and they were right.

Beyond that, in America, and only in America, basic health precautions have been caught up in a culture war.

Most obviously, not wearing a face mask, and hence gratuitously endangering other people, has become a political symbol: Trump has suggested that some people wear masks only to signal disapproval of him, and many Americans have decided that requiring masks in indoor spaces is an assault on their freedom.

As a result, social distancing has become partisan: selfidentified Republicans do less of it than self-identified Democrats. We all saw how this plays out in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a large (if smaller than expected) crowd gathered, mostly without masks, in an indoor setting custom-designed to spread the coronavirus.

And the next Trump rally, on Tuesday, will take place in Arizona, where COVID-19 is exploding, but where the Republican governor not only refuses to require mask-wearing but refused until a few days ago to allow local governments to impose their own rules.

The moral of this story is that America’s uniquely poor response to the coronavirus isn’t just the result of bad leadership at the top — although tens of thousands of lives would have been saved if we had a president who would deal with problems instead of trying to wish them away.

We’re also doing badly because, as the example of pellagra shows, there’s a long-standing anti-science, antiexpertise streak in American culture — the same streak that makes us uniquely unwilling to accept the reality of evolution or acknowledge the threat of climate change.

We aren’t a nation of know-nothings; many, probably most Americans are willing to listen to experts and act responsibly. But there’s a belligerent faction within our society that refuses to acknowledge inconvenient or uncomfortable facts, preferring to believe that experts are somehow conspiring against them.

Trump hasn’t just failed to rise to the policy challenge posed by COVID-19. He has, with his words and actions — notably his refusal to wear a mask — encouraged and empowered America’s anti-rational streak.

And this rejection of expertise, science and responsibility in general is killing us.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

19

Estudiante de medicina afectado por quemaduras y una millonaria deuda se reúne con la gobernadora Por CYBERNEWS

E

l joven Alexis Joel Hernández, un estudiante de medicina que sufrió severas quemaduras en enero de 2019 acudió el martes a La Fortaleza para reunirse con la gobernadora Wanda Vázquez Garced en búsqueda de una solución a su nuevo problema, pagar a una aseguradora $1.3 millones por el tratamiento que le salvó la vida.

“Que se atienda mi reclamo, que me puedan ayudar”, clamó Hernández a su llegada a la mansión ejecutiva.

“Toda ayuda es bienvenida”, añadió.

Hernández compartió tuvo severas quemaduras durante un accidente en su apartamento en México.

El joven, oriundo de Camuy, enfrenta una deuda ascendente a $1.3 millones con la aseguradora First Medical por concepto del tratamiento que recibió en un hospital militar en San Antonio, Texas, a donde fue trasladado gracias a ges-

tiones gubernamentales en la Isla luego del siniestro.

Hernández resultó con quemaduras en el 71 por ciento de su cuerpo tras una explosión en su apartamento a donde se había mudado para continuar estudios en medicina.

El joven acudió junto a su madre, Wanda Vélez.

El presidente de la Cámara de Representantes, Carlos ‘Johnny’ Méndez Núñez, junto a los representantes Yashira Lebrón Rodríguez y Joel Franqui Atiles, anunciaron un acuerdo con la Corporación del Fondo del Seguro del Estado (CFSE) para brindarle al joven puertorriqueño Alexis Hernández Vélez, de 23 años y quien sufriera quemaduras de segundo y tercer grado en su cuerpo hace poco más de un año a causa de una explosión en un apartamento que alquilaba en México; servicios médicos, de rehabilitación y farmacia, entre otros.

“La situación de este joven puertorriqueño es inaceptable. Es

por eso que esta Cámara de Representantes decidió actuar a favor de la salud y rehabilitación de Alexis Joel con la coordinación con el Administrador de la CFSE para que se le brinde servicios médicos y de rehabilitación, algo muy importante en estos momentos, a este joven de manera gratuita y bajo la mejor supervisión posible. El norte es me-

jorar la calidad de vida de Alexis Joel”, señaló el presidente de la Cámara en comunicación escrita.

Las expresiones del líder legislativo surgen luego de una reunión con Hernández Vélez en el Capitolio en donde la representante Lebrón Rodríguez, junto a su homólogo Franqui Atiles, ayudaron en la coordinación de los servicios.

Populares alertan a JSF sobre impacto fiscal del Código Electoral Por THE STAR

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l comisionado electoral del Partido Popular Democrático (PPD), Lind Merle Feliciano, envió el martes, una misiva a la Junta de Supervisión Fiscal (JSF) en la cual esboza las preocupaciones, de la colectividad que representa, en torno al aprobado Código Electoral.

“En cumplimiento con las responsabilidades de nuestro cargo, enviamos una carta a la Junta de Control Fiscal en la cual plasmamos nuestras preocupaciones relacionadas con el impacto fiscal que implica la aprobación del Código Electoral. La gobernadora Wanda Vázquez Garced, estampó su firma en un proyecto que tendrá un impacto fiscal para el próximo año que inicia el 1ero de julio. Para que la CEE pueda cumplir con el mandato de ley se requiere un aumento considerable en la asignación de fondos a la Comisión. Al momento se desconoce de dónde proveerán los fondos necesarios para el aumento salarial de altos funcionarios de la CEE y el Sistema de Endosos Electrónicos”, resaltó Merle

Feliciano en comunicación escrita.

“Del mismo modo, se desconoce cómo pagarán los costos relacionados con el Sistema de Lista de Votantes Electrónicas y el Registro Electrónico”, añadió.

Para el comisionado electoral del PPD, el que la gobernadora haya convertido en ley el Código Electoral “a pesar de la falta de información y determinaciones relacionadas con las asignaciones de fondos, no le sorprende porque desde que se inició el proceso de aprobación el mismo fue uno atropellado”.

“Estas preocupaciones fueron discutidas en diferentes foros y llevadas ante la atención de la gobernadora. Aún así, todos sabemos el resultado de la medida y quedó evidenciado que el proyecto en nada aporta al proceso eleccionario.

Estamos a menos de 50 días de las primarias y a menos de 150 días de las elecciones generales y ni la Gobernadora, ni la Administración del PNP, ni el presidente de la CEE, saben de dónde identificarán los fondos necesarios para cumplir con la Ley”, concluyó.

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Wednesday, June 24, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Curators urge Guggenheim to fix culture that ‘enables racism’

Curators at the Guggenheim Museum sent its leadership a letter Monday, June 22, in which they urged it to reform a culture that, they said, “enables racism.

By ROBERT POGREBIN

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letter signed “The Curatorial Department” of the Guggenheim Museum was sent Monday to the institution’s leadership, demanding immediate, wholesale changes to what it described as “an inequitable work environment that enables racism, white supremacy, and other discriminatory practices.”

“We write to express collective concern regarding our institution, which is in urgent need of reform,” said the letter addressed to Richard Armstrong, the museum’s director; Elizabeth Duggal, the senior deputy director and chief operating officer; Sarah G. Austrian, the general counsel; and Nancy Spector, the museum’s artistic director and chief curator.

The letter comes as cultural institutions are being called to account for what critics describe as their role in perpetuating systemic racism. Amid protests prompted by the killing of George Floyd, museums are looking more seriously at issues of equity in their hiring, governance, exhibitions and acquisitions.

The letter said it was not signed with individual names because the curators feared retaliation.

In a statement, Armstrong confirmed receipt of the letter from the curators “outlining requests to

change procedures to ensure more collective, transparent and accountable decision-making processes in the department.”

“Our curatorial staff is essential to the Guggenheim and we are listening,” he said in the statement.

“Their effort to make change is an opportunity for us to engage in a beneficial dialogue to become a more diverse, equitable and welcoming organization for all.”

Armstrong began that dialogue with some of the museum’s 22 curators on Monday in Zoom calls after receiving the letter, a museum spokeswoman confirmed. The spokeswoman, Sarah Eaton, also confirmed that the chief curator, Spector, has decided to take a three-month sabbatical beginning July 1, though there was no indication the decision was related to the letter.

Spector declined to comment.

On Sunday, Troy Conrad Therrien, the museum’s curator of architecture and digital initiatives, sent his own letter to the museum’s leadership in which he announced his plans to step down to take responsibility for what he described as his complicity in an “institutional culture that has systematically disenfranchised many for too long.”

“It’s time for many of us who have benefited from this flawed system while holding leadership positions to make space for those who can more fully embody the equity that is no longer just necessary but urgent,” Therrien said.

The museum said it had not made a decision on Therrien’s offer to resign.

The Guggenheim, which attracts about 1.2 million visitors annually, has a $60 million budget and a $90 million endowment. Of the museum’s 276 full time staff members, 26 are black, 24 are Latino and 20 are Asian. Of the museum’s 25 trustees, 23 are white.

The curators letter calls on the museum to “put an end to the culture of favoritism, silencing, and retribution”; to review recruitment practices and guarantee the hiring of curators of color; and “to redress the museum’s primarily white, male exhibition history and collecting practices.”

The letter also calls for the museum to commission an independent investigation into its handling of last year’s Basquiat exhibition and the show’s guest curator, Chaédria LaBouvier, an art historian.

The letter followed on the heels of “An open letter to New York City’s Cultural Institutions,” on June 20 from a coalition of current and former employees — and their supporters — at the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Opera, the Museum of Modern Art and other cultural institutions.

“We do not need any more surveys, affinity groups, panels, or committees and other empty attempts to conceal the racism,” the open letter said.

“We write to you to express our outrage and discontent of consistent exploitation and unfair treatment of Black/Brown people at these cultural institutions.”

The letter from the Guggenheim curators references the treatment of LaBouvier, who is Black and who was not invited to participate in the museum’s panel discussion about Basquiat with other scholars — including some she, as guest curator, had selected for the exhibition catalog.

LaBouvier nevertheless attended the panel discussion, where from the audience she accused the Guggenheim of snubbing her and undermining her curatorial role in the show, “Basquiat’s ‘Defacement’: The Untold Story.” She also told The New York Times that she was excluded from decisions on how the exhibition was presented.

A few months later, the museum hired Ashley James, the first Black full-time curator in the Guggenheim’s 80-year-history.

Earlier this month, LaBouvier posted a tweet that attracted considerable attention: “Working at the Guggenheim w/ Nancy Spector & the leadership was the most racist professional experience of my life.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

21

Joel Schumacher, director of ‘St. Elmo’s Fire,’ is dead at 80

By DAVE ITZKOFF

J

oel Schumacher, the director whose visually inventive and sometimes subversive movies — including the coming-of-age drama “St. Elmo’s Fire,” the vampire action-comedy “The Lost Boys” and the campy superhero caper “Batman and Robin” — became cultural mile markers of the 1980s and ’90s, died Monday in New York City. He was 80.

The cause was cancer, with which he had been struggling for about a year, Bebe Lerner, a spokeswoman for his family, said in a statement.

After satiating a youthful appetite for illicit drugs, Schumacher found more constructive outlets as a window designer for New York department stores like Henri Bendel. And after arriving in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, he worked as a costume designer on films like the crime drama “The Last of Sheila” and Woody Allen’s “Sleeper” (both from 1973), then graduated to directorial assignments for television and motion pictures.

In his movies, Schumacher helped elevate emerging talents, assembling actors like Judd Nelson, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez for “St. Elmo’s Fire” (1985) in a group that came to be called the Brat Pack.

He made bold sartorial choices in his films as well. Some, like the punk-rock outfits of his young vampires in “The Lost Boys” (1987), advanced fashion trends; others, like the articulated nipples on the Batsuit in “Batman and Robin” (1997), did not.

Schumacher worked steadily for decades, directing thrillers like “A Time to Kill” (1996), “Phone Booth” (2002) and “Trespass” (2011). Yet he saw himself as dispensable in the eyes of the industry he served, where a single perceived misstep can end a career.

“Film making is like mountain climbing,” he told The New York Times in 1993. “No matter how many times you’ve climbed, you can still fall off. Even if you’ve climbed Everest seven times, the eighth time can be your last.”

Joel Schumacher was born Aug. 29, 1939, to Francis and Marian Schumacher. His father, a Baptist from Knoxville, Tennessee, died when Joel was 4, and he was raised in Long Island City, Queens, by his mother, who was Jewish and had come from Sweden. (As Joel Schumacher said of himself, “I’m an American mongrel.”)

Schumacher said he began drinking at the age of 9 and spent his formative years abusing LSD, methedrine and other drugs. But he found steady work as a window dresser (Macy’s, Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue also hired him) and studied for a time at the Fashion Institute of Technology. He later graduated with honors from the Parsons School of Design.

When his mother died in 1965, Schumacher felt he had hit bottom. “My life seemed like a joke,” he told The Times. “I was living in this criminal environment. I was $50,000 in debt. I had lost six teeth. I weighed 130 pounds.”

Yet by 1970 he had stopped taking drugs and was employed at Bendel, the luxury goods emporium on Fifth Avenue, where, he said, he rebuilt his life. “I got my self-respect back getting a good day’s pay for a good day’s work,” he said.

In Hollywood, his costume-design work, beginning with the 1972 drama “Play It as It Lays” (directed by Frank Perry, and written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne), gave him a

foothold in filmmaking and screenwriting. He went on to write the screenplays for the musical drama “Sparkle” and the comedy “Car Wash,” both released in 1976, and for Sidney Lumet’s 1978 adaptation of the musical “The Wiz.” Schumacher earned his first directorial credits with TV movies: “Virginia Hill” (1974), starring Dyan Cannon as the title character and Harvey Keitel as her gangster boyfriend, Bugsy Siegel; and “Amateur Night at the Dixie Bar and Grill” (1979), an ensemble comedy-drama set at a country-western roadhouse.

His first feature film, the Lily Tomlin comedy “The Incredible Shrinking Woman,” opened to mixed reviews in 1981.

After directing the 1983 comedy “D.C. Cab,” Schumacher found greater acclaim with “St. Elmo’s Fire,” about the postcollege meanderings of a group of friends from Georgetown University. That drama was a hit, powered by the performances of at least a half-dozen future screen heartthrobs, an earnest musical theme by David Foster and the bombastic title track “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion),” sung by John Parr.

So, too, was “The Lost Boys,” which pit Jason Patric and Corey Haim against a gang of young bloodsuckers led by Kiefer Sutherland. Still other hits included the supernatural thriller “Flatliners” (1990), which starred Sutherland and Julia Roberts, and his 1991 romantic drama “Dying Young,” which starred Roberts and Campbell Scott.

After directing “Falling Down” (1993) with Michael Douglas and “The Client” (1994), adapted from the John Grisham novel, Schumacher was chosen to take over Warner Brothers’ then-nascent Batman franchise from director Tim Burton, who

was perceived to have taken the superhero movies in an increasingly gothic (and hence, uncommercial) direction.

Schumacher fared well enough with his candy-colored entry “Batman Forever” (1995), which grossed more than $336 million worldwide, though he would later call its leading man, Val Kilmer, “psychotic” in a 2019 interview with Vulture.

But the 1997 follow-up, “Batman and Robin,” starring George Clooney as the Caped Crusader, was somewhat less successful. Widely panned, it grossed about $238 million globally.

At his death Schumacher lived in Greenwich Village. Information on his survivors was not immediately available.

Speaking to Vice in a 2017 interview, Schumacher apologized for “Batman and Robin,” saying that he had never intended to make so-called Hollywood tent-pole movies, moneymakers that can support an entire studio.

“My other films were much smaller and had just found success with the audience and not often with the critics, which is really why we wrote them,” he said. “And then after ‘Batman and Robin,’ I was scum. It was like I had murdered a baby.”

Even so, Schumacher was not ostracized from filmmaking; his output remained constant, as did his passion for the movies he made.

“I spent so much time as a kid in the movies in Long Island City,” he told The Times in 1993. “There’s something about being that kid in a dark theater and growing up and cutting these films in dark editing rooms and putting them out in dark theaters where people can connect to them. I somehow feel connected with humanity when I create humanity on that screen.”

Schumacher, whose movies including the coming-of-age drama “St. Elmo’s Fire,” and the campy superhero caper “Batman & Robin” became cultural mile markers of the 1980s and ’90s, died in New York on Monday, June 22, 2020.

FASHION The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, March June 4, 2020 Wednesday, 24, 2020 20 22

The The San San Juan Juan Daily Daily Star Star

11 Things about Naomi Campbell

By GUY TREBAY

T

here are so many Naomi Campbells, you never know which you will get.

There is goddess Naomi, whose verified superpowers (ask any eyewitness) include an ability to part seas of people and alter the electrical charge in a room. There are cover girl Naomi and campaign Naomi and runway Naomi, whose catwalk strut is unlikely to ever be outclassed. There is vulnerable Naomi, the unexpectedly bashful human who first appeared on the modeling scene at the tender age of 15.

There is activist Naomi, who called Nelson Mandela granddad, and there is party girl Naomi, who wears a string of playboy and oligarch heads strung from her belt. There is goldenhearted Naomi who “would give you the Prada off her back,” as an old friend recently noted. And there is coldhearted Naomi who, when a close friend needed funds for heroin rehab, turned her back.

“Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival,” the modeling agent Bethann Hardison, Campbell’s lifelong guide and protector, once said of her. And despite struggles with the race-based inequalities too long unchecked in fashion, Campbell has not only remained in the public eye for three decades — light-years in the modeling business — but also has reinvented herself, after a half-century on earth, as a digital media phenomenon. Her show, “Being Naomi,” is both vacant and mesmerizing, almost Warholian level, and a canny master class for the aspiring brandbuilding narcissist.

Campbell, who was born in London and recently turned 50, has kept busy during and beyond lockdown at a friend’s house in Los Angeles. She shares her daily workouts with the Ocho System founder Joe Holder on Instagram, attends virtual recovery meetings, has become the first face of the Pat McGrath Labs makeup line, and tapes “No Filter” interviews with old friends and colleagues like Sharon Stone, Marc Jacobs and Cindy Crawford. Recently she conducted a disarmingly frank beauty tutorial for Vogue’s YouTube channel.

Reached by phone on a Friday evening in early June, Campbell talked about what, in fact, it is like to be Naomi.

1. Unconscious Bias Was Never Unconscious “Of course, it is race based,” Campbell said of the bias in fashion that kept the deck stacked against the Black creators whom Anna Wintour recently conceded had not been given enough “space” in places like Vogue.

“But I never expected things to come to me easy,” said Campbell, a woman the chiffon warrior, André Leon Talley, once called “a self-made cyclone of energy, style and drama.”

2. She Dealt With It in the Usual Way “I knew I had to work extra hard, and when I think about it now, I’m grateful to have had a lot of strong women in my family showing me how to stay strong physically and mentally if you want to survive and strive,” Campbell said. “I’ve always been raised, by my mother, my nana, the wonderful strong women in my family, from this strong ancestry to understand that, whatever I was going to do, I had to do it 110%.”

Campbell’s heritage is a combination of Afro Jamaican

and Chinese Jamaican. (Her Chinese Jamaican grandmother was Pearline Ming.)

3. But Don’t Call Her a Survivor “It’s adaptation,” she said. “Back in the day, I would say: ‘Why am I doing this if I’m not getting treated the same as my counterparts? Why am I not earning the same money?’ Luckily, I had wonderful people like Bethann that I would call, and she would explain to me why it would be beneficial to go forward and do it and we’ll see the results in the long run.”

4. Maybe Say Pragmatist Instead “If I thought things were unjust, I had to say something,” said Campbell, whose record on the subject is somewhat mixed.

True, she was a founder of the Black Girls Coalition, a group organized to address race-based inequities in fashion. It is also true that she once tried to squelch the career of a newcomer named Tyra Banks.

“This is to do with me I am talking about, my career,” she said. “The point is to try to make the best of the situation you’re dealing with. I don’t look at it as surviving. I look at it as life.”

5. She Has Depended on the Kindness of Strangers “I am blessed with the people I’ve had in my life, the influences of their wonderful great minds and spirits and beings,” said a woman whose Rolodex — if people still kept such things — would be the size of a tire on a 16-wheeler.

“I think of Azzedine Alaïa and Nelson Mandela. I got to meet them, live with them, know them, be around them, consider them family. You sometimes don’t realize when people are here that you could never think of the planet without them. Then, when they go, suddenly the panic sets in: What do I do? Who do I run to?”

6. She Found Spirituality, But Only After the Drugs “What I found is that this strength comes,” Campbell said.

“All the connections, everything you ever had with them, comes to you in another form. They’re still here and pushing you. When Papa passed away, it was such a shock.” Alaïa, the Tunisian couturier who effectively parented Campbell throughout her career, died in 2017 at 82. “I was really thrown,” she said.

“But then this strength came to me from somewhere, I don’t know, I can only say from him. I realized I had to do more, help more, be there more.”

7. She Believes in That Second A “I’m very proud of my recovery and proud to be in recovery and would never hide that fact,” said Campbell, whose much publicized anger management issues may have been fueled in part by chemical dependence. (Alexander McQueen used to joke to friends that they should hide their phones when Campbell came to visit.)

“We’re not supposed to promote recovery, but I am not in denial of any of that,” she said. “It has been a great help to me in other areas of my life.”

8. The Steps in 12-Step Programs Are More Than Metaphor “I’m the kind of person that needs structure,” said Campbell, who has a notoriously individual relationship to time, and who was, for instance, two hours late for the Zoom photo session for this article; who was once famously fired at first meeting by

Naomi Campbell, photographed at her home in Los Angeles, via FaceTime on June 9, 2020 producer-director Lee Daniels for being three hours late to an audition (an incident that resulted in a screaming match followed by an acting gig and an enduring friendship); and who nevertheless must own a very big alarm clock since she has somehow managed to rise on time to be photographed for the 300 magazine covers that have been graced with her image. “That’s how I function best.”

9. She Is a Routine Queen “I have a routine I kept during quarantine,” she said. “Get up, pray, shower, work out. In times like this, you need that sense of familiarity and routine to keep your mind and spirit in a safe space.” You also need, to judge by Campbell’s Vogue YouTube tutorial, a foolproof 10-minute method for beating your face with skills so refined that they may give Bianca Del Rio pause.

10. The Federal Aviation Administration Should Hire Her “I never made that to go viral,” Campbell said of the 2019 video of her flight sanitizing ritual, which has more than 2.9 million views on YouTube and which, though it may once have seemed extreme, ought to be required viewing for anyone planning to board a plane again.

11. She Understands That Wherever You Go, There You Are “This virus, the lives it has taken, is devastating, and yet being still, being in one place, can be amazing,” said Campbell, who has logged more planetary orbits than most satellites. “If there is one thing that I’ve learned in this lifetime so far, it is that there’s no getting away from anything. We’ve got to face our fears and go through the emotions.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

23

The race to develop a COVID vaccine

By JANE E. BRODY

J

udging from comments I’ve heard and read, many Americans expect that a vaccine against COVID-19 will soon end the need for masks and social distancing and enable us to resume our pre-COVID lives. As one neighbor said, citing the administration’s “Warp Speed” agenda to rush a vaccine to market, “I’ll start taking the subway and going to the office in the fall when we have the vaccine.”

Alas, experts agree, such optimism is totally unrealistic.

My neighbor — and the rest of us “nonessential” workers — will be lucky if we have access to a safe and effective vaccine a year from now. Here’s why.

Doctors most knowledgeable about vaccine development and the real dangers of reckless haste warn that, however promising a vaccine may seem now or months from now, premature release can do far more harm than good.

As was shown, for example, in 1955 when the original Salk polio vaccine was hastily rolled out, from rushing no good can come. A mishap in mass-producing the vaccine caused polio in 70,000 children, permanently crippling 164 of them and killing 10.

A similar mishap with a coronavirus vaccine “could backfire, increasing people’s skepticism about vaccines and vaccine development and their distrust of doctors,” Dr. Brit Trogen told me.

“Everyone wants the vaccine to be the silver bullet that gets us out of this crisis, but intense political and public pressure to release a vaccine before the science is ready could have devastating negative consequences,” said Trogen, a pediatric resident at NYU Langone Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital in New York.

Keep in mind that if one or more of the vaccines now being tested for COVID-19 should happen to cause serious illness in even a very small percentage of people, there is still no effective cure.

Experts also worry about unwarranted expectations for the effectiveness of a vaccine. No vaccine prevents illness in 100% of recipients, though as with the flu vaccine, people who are vaccinated may end up with milder illness. One of the COVID vaccines being tested would likely be able to prevent many cases of more serious, life-threatening infections, said Dr. Paul A. Offit, a world leader in vaccine development.

“Even a vaccine that is 50% effective in preventing fatal illness might be acceptable,” said Offit, professor of pediatrics and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

It is not enough to know that a candidate vaccine produces an antibody response — even a vigorous response — in susceptible people or that hundreds of volunteers inoculated with it experienced no serious adverse effects. Not until a vaccine is tested in tens of thousands of people can doctors be reasonably certain it is safe and effective, and sometimes not even then.

Under normal circumstances, this process takes years.

But these are not normal times, so the testing of potential COVID-19 vaccines is being collapsed into months, which could

Doctors warn that releasing a vaccine prematurely can do more harm than good. increase the risk of foul-ups. However, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, gave his word that, despite being in a hurry to get an effective vaccine to the public, “we will not compromise on safety.”

Here’s how Offit, who is involved in supervising the COVID vaccine trials, described the necessary sequence of events: A prospective vaccine is first tested on laboratory animals that normally develop COVID-19 when infected with the virus, such as mice, to see if it prevents the disease. This is called “proof of concept” that the vaccine can work. It is followed by Phase I and Phase II trials in perhaps hundreds or thousands of human volunteers. Researchers look for evidence that the vaccine is safe and test different vaccine doses to find one that best results in antibodies that could protect against the virus. At least two vaccine candidates are already in this stage.

Now comes the big test, Phase III, a prospective placebo-controlled trial of tens of thousands of individuals to assess both safety and effectiveness. For one or more of the five promising COVID vaccine candidates being fast-tracked, this stage is expected to start in July. Each Phase III trial will entail 20,000 people who get the experimental vaccine and a control (placebo) group of 10,000 unvaccinated people. The trials will take place in areas here and abroad that are already, or expected to be, “hot spots” for COVID infections.

But depending on how prevalent the virus is this summer where the trials take place, it could take months — or even a year — to determine how well the vaccine prevents disease.

“That’s the only way to know if the immune response seen in earlier trials is protective in the real world,” Offit said.

“If there’s little disease over the summer, it could be a problem. We may have to keep recruiting participants until enough people in the placebo group got sick to have a meaningful comparison with the vaccinated group. We can’t short-circuit the process.”

He expects that the vaccine would have to be at least 70% effective to roll it out for mass use. But even then, he added, “we wouldn’t know for many more months how long immunity would last.” He cautioned against undue optimism about how good an approved vaccine will be. He said a vaccine might be considered acceptable if it prevents severe disease but not most or all infections that cause no symptoms or only mild illness.

“Science is humbling — it always comes up with surprises we can’t anticipate,” he said. “Once we have a vaccine, our job will be managing expectations. We’ll know about safety once millions have been given the vaccine, and we’ll know about durability only with time.”

The first doses of an approved COVID vaccine will go to health care workers and residents and employees of longterm care facilities, then essential public servants like police officers, firefighters and transit workers as well as workers in food processing plants. Not until there are hundreds of millions of doses available — sometime in 2021 if all goes well — will the vaccine be offered to the general public.

Adequate protection against COVID-19 is expected to require two doses of vaccine. Thus, if the entire country were to be immunized, more than 600 million doses of vaccine would have to be manufactured.

24

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

DNA of ‘irish pharaoh’ sheds light on ancient tomb builders

By JAMES GORMAN

T

he vast Stone Age tomb mounds in the valley of the River Boyne, about 25 miles north of Dublin, are so impressive that the area has been called the Irish Valley of the Kings.

And a new analysis of ancient human DNA from Newgrange, the most famous of the mounds in Ireland, suggests that the ancient Irish may have had more than monumental grave markers in common with the pharaohs.

A team of Irish geneticists and archaeologists reported last week that a man whose cremated remains were interred at the heart of Newgrange was the product of a first-degree incestuous union, either between parent and child or brother and sister. The finding, combined with other genetic and archaeological evidence, suggests that the people who built these mounds lived in a hierarchical society with a ruling elite that considered themselves so close to divine that, like the Egyptian pharaohs, they could break the ultimate taboos.

In Ireland, more than 5,000 years ago people farmed and raised cattle. But they were also moved, like their contemporaries throughout Europe, to create stunning monuments to the dead, some with precise astronomical orientations. Stonehenge, a later megalith in the same broad tradition as Newgrange, is famous for its alignment to the summer and winter solstice. The central underground room at Newgrange is built so that as the sun rises around the time of the winter solstice it illuminates the

whole chamber through what is called a roof box.

Archaeologists have long wondered what kind of society built such a structure, which they think must have had ritual or spiritual significance. If, as the findings indicate, it was a society that honored the product of an incestuous union by interring his remains at the most sacred spot in a sacred place, then the ancient Irish may have had a ruling religious hierarchy, perhaps similar to those in ancient societies in Egypt, Peru and Hawaii, which also allowed marriages between brother and sister.

In a broad survey of ancient DNA from bone samples previously collected at Irish burial sites thousands of years old, the researchers also found genetic connections among people interred in other Irish passage tombs, named for their underground chambers or passages. That suggests that the ruling elite were related to one another.

A Holy Place Daniel G. Bradley, of Trinity College, Dublin, a specialist in ancient DNA who led the team with Lara M. Cassidy, a specialist in population genetics and Irish prehistory also at Trinity College, said the genome of the man who was a product of incest was a complete surprise. They and their colleagues reported their findings in the journal Nature.

Newgrange is part of a necropolis called Bru na Boinne, or the palace of the Boyne, dating to around 5,000 years ago that includes three large passage tombs and many other monuments. It is one of the most remarkable of Neolithic monumen-

A photo provided by Ken Williams shows the central underground chamber of Newgrange, a 5,000-yearold Irish tomb in the valley of the River Boyne, near Dublin.

tal sites in all of Europe.

Of the site’s tombs, Bradley said, “Newgrange is the apogee.” It is not just that it incorporates 200,000 tons of earth and stone, some brought from kilometers away. It also has the precise orientation to the winter sun.

On any day, “when you go into the chamber, it’s a sort of numinous space, it’s a liminal space, a place that inspires a sort of awe,” Bradley said.

That a bone recovered from this spot produced such a genomic shocker seemed beyond coincidence. This had to be a prominent person, the researchers reasoned. He wasn’t placed there by accident, and his parentage was unlikely to be an accident.

“Whole chunks of the genome that he inherited from his mother and father, whole chunks of those were just identical,” Bradley said. The conclusion was unavoidable: “It’s a pharaoh, I said, it’s an Irish pharaoh.”

Signs of a Hierarchical Society David Reich of Harvard University, one of the ancient DNA specialists who has tracked the grand sweep of prehistoric human migration around the globe, and was not involved in the research, called the journal article “amazing.”

“I think it’s part of the wave of the future about how ancient DNA will shed light on social structure, which is really one of its most exciting promises,” he said, although he had some reservations about evidence that the elite was genetically separate from the common people, a kind of royal family.

Bettina Schulz Paulsson, a prehistoric archaeologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, said the researchers’ finding that suggested a religious hierarchy was a “very attractive hypothesis.”

The paper is rich with other detail, including the discovery that an infant had Down syndrome. The authors believe this is the oldest record of Down syndrome. Chemical tests of the bone also showed that the infant had been breastfed, and that he was placed in an important tomb. Both of those facts suggest that he was well cared for, in keeping with numerous other archaeological finds of children and adults with illnesses or disabilities who were supported by their cultures.

Cassidy said they also found DNA in other remains that indicated relatives of the man who was a child of royal incest were placed in other significant tombs.

“This man seemed to form a distinct genetic cluster with other individuals from passage tombs across the island,” she said.

She said “we also found a few direct kinship links,” ancient genomes of individuals who were distant cousins. That contributed to the idea that there was an elite who directed the building of the mounds. In that context, it made sense that the incest was intentional. That’s not something that can be proved, of course, but other societies have encouraged brother-sister incest, and not only the Egyptians. Brothers married sisters in ancient Hawaii, and in Peru among the Incas.

“The few examples where it is socially accepted,” she said, are “extremely stratified societies with an elite class who are able to break rules.”

The San Juan Daily Star LEGAL NOTICE EN EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYAMÓN

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Puerto Rico, compuesto de 602.1065 metros cuadrados, POR LA PRESENTE, se le con las siguientes medidas li- notifica que se ha presentado neales y colindancias; por el una Demanda en cobro de diNORTE: en una distancia de nero por la vía ordinaria, en la 13.13 metros con una quebra- cual la parte demandante alega da que la separa de terrenos se le adeuda la cantidad de de la Sucesión Martínez Nadal; $9,912.44. Por consecuencia, por el SUR: su frente en 12.02 se le emplaza y requiere para metros con camino público; por que conteste dicha Demanda el ESTE: en una distancia de dentro de los treinta (30) días 9.50 metros con terrenos de siguientes a la publicación de Juan Suárez y en distancia de este Edicto, radicando su ale26.17 metros con terrenos de gación responsiva a través del Dolores Ortiz (estos dos co- Sistema Unificado de Manejo y lindantes hoy son sustituidos Administración de Casos (SUpor Carlos Martínez Serrano) MAC), al cual puede acceder y por el OESTE: en distancia utilizando la siguiente dirección https://unired.rade 40.62 m. l. con terrenos de electrónica: Diego Centeno.” Esta preten- majudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que sión se publicará tres veces en se represente por derecho proveinte días en este periódico. pio, en cuyo caso deberá preEl que tenga interés o derecho sentar su alegación responsiva real en el inmueble, los anterio- en la Secretaría del Tribunal res dueños y personas ignora- Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala das que puedan perjudicarse de Humacao y enviando copia y deseen oponerse tienen 20 a la parte demandante: Lcdo. días para ello a contar desde Israel O. Alicea Luciano, Númela última publicación, siendo ro RUA: 16,267, Capital Cen-

staredictos@gmail.com

ter Building, South Tower, 239 Arterial Hostos Ave. Suite 305, San Juan, Puerto Rico 009181476, teléfono (787) 250-1420, correo electrónico: israel_alicea@yahoo.com. Se le apercibe que si dejare de comparecer se podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra de acuerdo con la súplica de la demanda, conforme a lo establecido en la Regla 45 de Procedimiento Civil de 2009. EXPEDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el sello del Tribunal, en Humacao, Puerto Rico hoy día 18 de junio de 2020.

Dominga Gomez Fuster, Sec Regional. Michelle Guevara De Leon, Sec Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE HUMACAO SALA SUPERIOR DE HUMACAO.

CONSEJO DE TITULARES DEL CONDOMINIO CALA DE HÚCARES, Demandante v.

25 en la Secretaría del Tribunal Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala de Humacao y enviando copia a la parte demandante: Lcdo.

Israel O. Alicea Luciano, Número RUA: 16,267, Capital Center Building, South Tower, 239 Arterial Hostos Ave. Suite 305, San Juan, Puerto Rico 009181476, teléfono (787) 250-1420, correo electrónico: israel_alicea@yahoo.com. Se le apercibe que si dejare de comparecer se podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra de acuerdo con la súplica de la demanda, conforme a lo establecido en la Regla 45 de Procedimiento Civil de 2009. EXPEDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el sello del Tribunal, en Humacao, Puerto Rico hoy día 18 de junio de 2020.

Dominga Gomez Fuster, Sec Regional. Michelle Guevara De Leon, Sec Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO Tribunal General de Justicia TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE AGUADILLA.

JORGE AMÍLCAR RIVERA COLON, ANA LUISA RUFINO MUÑIZ ACEVEDO MUÑOZ BERMÚDEZ, SAMUEL MUÑIZ LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL ACEVEDO Parte Demandante Vs. DE GANANCIALES AGUSTIN GARCIA COMPUESTA POR ACEVEDO; SU AMBOS, JANE Y JOHN ESPOSA MARIBEL DOE, Demandados NEGRON SANCHEZ LA Civil Núm.: NG2020CV00001.

SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE SALA: 208. Sobre: Cobro de DiGANANCIALES GARCIA nero, Procedimiento Ordinario.

NEGRON EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERO RICO.

A: Jorge Amílcar Rivera Colon, por sí y en representación de la Sociedad Legal de Gananciales compuesta por éste y Ana Luisa Muñoz Bermúdez.

POR LA PRESENTE, se le notifica que se ha presentado una Demanda en cobro de dinero por la vía ordinaria, en la cual la parte demandante alega se le adeuda la cantidad de $9,912.44. Por consecuencia, se le emplaza y requiere para que conteste dicha Demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto, radicando 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

(787) 743-3346

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 recursos 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 18 de JUNIO de 2020.

En Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, A 18 DE JUNIO DE 2020. SARAHI REYES PEREZ, Secretaria Regional. ARLENE GUZMAN, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

dictara Sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado sin mas citarle ni oirle. Se orden además remitir por correo certificado con acuse recibo en el término de diez (10) días una copia del emplazamiento y de la Demand a presentada a toda s las ultimas direcciones conocidas de la parte demandada antes mencionada. Representa a la parte demandante el abogado cuyo nombre, dirección y teléfono se consigna de inmediato: LIC. SANTOS MANUEL RIVERA ESTRELLA. cuya dirección es la siguiente: Calle Gcorgetti número 11, Apartado 1118, Comerío, Puerto Rico 00782 y su Teléfono es 787-875-2734 y/o 787-460-1255. Se le apercibe que si no compareciera usted a con testar dicha Demanda dentro del termino de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación del Edicto radican do el original de la contestación, a se le anotara la rebeldía y se le dictara LEGAL NOTICE Sentencia concediendo el reESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO medio so licitado sin mas citarle DE PUERTO RICO TRJBU- ni oírle. DADA EN COMER IO. NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA PUERTO RICO A 5 DE MARZO SALA DE COMERIO. DE 2020. ELIZABETH GONZALEZ RIVERA, SECRETAJlJLIAN RIA REGIONAL. CARMEN L. RIVERA FIGUEROA APONTE FLORES, SEC AUDemandante Vs. XILIAR..

REBECCA HERNANDEZ GALARZA

Demandada CIVIL NUM: CR2020RF00009.

SOBRE: DIVORCIO, RUPTURA IRREPARABLE. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE NORTE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS Parte Demandada CIVIL NÚM. AG2019CV00367. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIASOBRE: INJUCTION PRELI- DO DE PUERTO RICO. SS, A: REBECCA MINAR; DESLINDE Y REINVINDICACIÓN; SENTENCIA HERNANDEZ GALARZA DECLARATORIA. NOTIFICA425 Woodland Avenue CIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR Lote #9 EDICTO.

A: AGUSTIN GARCIA ACEVEDO SU ESPOSA MARIBEL NEGRON SANCHEZ LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES GARCIA NEGRON DIRECCION POSTAL PMB 200 PO BOX 5968 AGUADILLA, PR 00605 P/C: LCDO. NELSON ESTEBAN VERA SANTIAGO APARTADO 810 MOCA, PR 00676

EL SECRETARIO que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 16 de JUNIO 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

Lakeland, FL 33801

Por la presente se le notifica que la parte demandante ha presentado ante este Tribunal, demanda contra usted , so licitando la concesión del siguiente remedio: DIVORCIO P OR LA CAUSAL DE RUPTURA IRREPARABLE. La publicación del edicto se realizara una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general diaria en la Isla de Puerto Rico, con el fin de que dicha parte demandada presente la contestación a la Demanda dentro del termino de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación del mismo, 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 presente por derecho propio, advirtiéndosele que de no hacerlo así se le ano tara la rebeldía y se

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

IVETTE MARÍA RIVERA CARRASQUILLO, y PABLO ORTIZ KUILAN Demandante V.

ORIENTAL BANK; JOHN DOE & RICHARD ROE

Demandados CIVIL NÚM. BY2020CV01835.

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

A JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE, personas desconocidas que se designan con estos nombres ficticios, que puedan ser tenedor o tenedores, o puedan tener algún interés en el pagaré hipotecario a que se hace referencia más adelante en el presente edicto, que se publicará una sola vez.

Se les notifica que en la Demanda radicada en el caso de epígrafe se alega que el 10 de enero de 2001, a favor de R&G Premier Bank of Puerto Rico (hoy: Oriental Bank por fusión con Scotiabank), o a su orden,

por la suma de $22,750.00 de principal, con intereses al 10 %%anual, y vencedero el primero 1ro de febrero de 2011, ante la Notario Ruth Castro Algarín. En garantía del pagare antes descrito se otorgo la escritura de hipoteca numero 7, en Bayamon, Puerto Rico, el día l0 de enero de 2001, ante la Notario Ruth Castro Algarin, inscrita al folio 64 del torno 1944 de Bayamón Sur, Fina Número 74913, inscripción 3ra y ultima, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamon, Sección I. El inmueble gravado mediante la hipoteca antes descrita es la finca número 74913 inscrita al folio 18 del tomo 1827 de Bayamón Sur, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección 1. La obligación evidenciada por el pagaré antes descrito fue saldada en su totalidad. Dicho gravamen no ha podido ser cancelado por haberse extraviado el original del pagaré. El original del pagaré antes descrito no ha podido ser localizado, a pesar de las gestiones realizadas. R&G Premier Bank of Puerto Rico (hoy Oriental Bank por fusión con Scotiabank) es el acreedor que consta en el Registro de la Propiedad. El último tenedor conocido del pagaré antes descrito fue la parte demandante. POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 30 días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente.

LCDO. JAVIER MONTALVO CINTRÓN RUA NÚM. 17682 DELGADO & FERNÁNDEZ, LLC PO Box 11750, Fernández Juncos Station San Juan, Puerto Rico 00910-1750, Tel. (787) 274-1414; Fax (787) 764-8241 E-mail: jmontalvo@ delgadofernandez.com Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, hoy de 16 de junio de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SANcHEz, Secretaria Regional. Amalyn Figueroa Nieves, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal.

26

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Florida’s virus spike gives NBA players one more reason to hesitate

By MARC STEIN

R

obert A. Iger, the executive chairman of the Walt Disney Co., introduced the phrase into the NBA lexicon. Adam Silver, the league’s commissioner, passed it on to the news media.

In a virtual meeting with NBA team owners on April 17, Iger counseled his audience to make “data and not the date” the focus of the league’s comeback efforts.

Some two months later, as 22 teams ramped up activities in practice facilities and prepared to begin regular coronavirus testing for players and staff members last week, fretting about the data was suddenly one of the most popular pastimes in the NBA universe.

The main reason: Since last Tuesday night, when the league began distributing a 113-page guide of health and safety protocols to govern its planned restart of the 2019-20 season at Walt Disney World next month, the rate of confirmed coronavirus cases in Orange County, Fla., has risen dramatically.

Last Tuesday through Saturday, according to state data, 17 percent of coronavirus tests in the county returned positive results.

That was a significant jump from the 10-day period before that, from June 6-15, when the positive rate was 5 percent.

The spike is yet another source of apprehension to manage for league and union officials, who just emerged from weeks of com- The entrance to the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex near Orlando, Fla., this plicated discussions to come to terms on all month. The N.B.A. is set to restart its season at the campus in July. the health and safety restrictions for its restart beginning July 7.

As today’s deadline approaches for pla- movement, which has surged worldwide sin- that represents both players — but there are yers to notify their teams whether they wish ce the May 25 death of George Floyd while likewise many players who struggled in the to withdraw from participation, for whatever in police custody in Minneapolis. initial stages of the pandemic to find places reason, there are three main sources of anxie“In six weeks, the world may need some to get shots up. ty among the players and executives in the healing, they may need us to be on the floor,” Through June 29, there will be a maxileague: Williams said. “But if more black kids or mum of four players allowed in team practice — The location of the contained campus more black adults or any adults dealing with facilities. The next week, until teams begin for the restart is a fresh source of unease. The police brutality are getting killed and we’re arriving at Disney World on July 7, up to eight NBA chose Disney World for its single-site still outraged, I don’t know if it’s in our best players will be allowed. Players can thus only resumption of play for many reasons — bu- interests to suit up, because it looks like we count on roughly 20 days of full practices and siness reasons among them, given Disney’s don’t care.” scrimmages with five-on-five work in Florida status as the league’s top media partner. But — A third prime worry that has been before the season resumes — considerably Orange County’s increase in positive tests routinely overlooked with so much else hap- less than the norm. A month’s worth of picover the past two weeks has made it an “in- pening is the injury risk players will face after kup games in team practice facilities every fection hotbed,” as described by Perry Hal- what has been, for many, the longest layoff of September typically precede the start of NBA kitis, dean of the Rutgers School of Public their career from full-speed, five-on-five play. training camps.

Health.

There are certainly several players who Regarding the first (and perhaps fore— As Lou Williams of the Los Angeles have been participating for weeks in un- most) concern, Halkitis, like many in his field, Clippers said last week in a video chat with authorized workouts and pickup games — a has praised the scope of the NBA’s plans to fans, some players are wrestling with fears photo of LeBron James and Ben Simmons tra- combat the coronavirus at the Disney camthat returning to full-time basketball may di- ining together was posted on Instagram last pus near Orlando. vert momentum from the Black Lives Matter week by the Klutch Sports Group, the agency “It is very, very, very well structured,”

Halkitis said of the 113-page document in a telephone interview. “My reaction is that it makes the best use of the science we have to date, knowing perfectly well that things can change tomorrow.”

The main weakness in the NBA’s approach, Halkitis said, is the prospect of players or team staff members leaving the campus without authorization and exposing themselves to the coronavirus — or “workers who are not staying on the grounds” bringing it in.

“Do I 100 percent believe that people aren’t going to leave?” Halkitis said. “I mean, these are adults, right? Human behavior is really hard to control.”

Yet he also acknowledged that the worrying trajectory of the testing data, at the very least, is bound to prompt questions about whether even the NBA’s strict protocols will be sufficient. The Florida Department of Health has seemed to acknowledge the shifting situation, issuing a lengthy health advisory Saturday that included a reminder to “wear masks in any setting where social distancing is not possible,” and a recommendation that “all individuals should refrain from participation in social or recreational gatherings of more than 50 people.”

Another concerning development in the state from the weekend: Major League Baseball, while still searching for the labor agreement it needs to salvage some semblance of a 2020 season, ordered all team facilities in Florida and Arizona to shut down after players in both locations tested positive for the coronavirus.

“If the numbers were staying stable or they were going down, I’d have lots of confidence in the plan,” Halkitis said of the NBA’s restart. “The numbers going up mean you have a different circumstance now, which increases the probability of transmission and makes the plan — which is excellent but not foolproof — more susceptible to infiltration by the virus.

“I keep using the flood and the dam example: A dam holds water, but if there’s a lot of pressure on the dam, like lots of infections, it’s more likely to crack. And that’s the problem here. They have to keep an eye on what’s going on.”

As players and coaches begin to reunite in earnest, with only two weeks to go before charter planes are revved up to take them straight to Disney World, one suspects that no one on the NBA map will have to hear that advice twice.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

27

Owners vote to hold MLB season after players reject latest offer

By TYLER KEPNER

M

ajor League Baseball announced Monday night that it would impose a 2020 schedule on the players after nearly three months of rancorous talks with the union ended without a negotiated settlement.

The league did not specify the length of the schedule but said in a statement that it wanted players to report to their home ballparks by July 1 for training camp. If they do — and if the union signs off on health protocols — the schedule would be for 60 games, most likely starting July 24.

The league and the union exchanged proposals last week, with Commissioner Rob Manfred offering a 60-game schedule, 104 percent of prorated salaries for players and several other elements, including an expanded playoff field and a universal designated hitter. The players overwhelmingly rejected Manfred’s plan in a vote earlier Monday evening.

Manfred said again Monday that he and Tony Clark, the executive director of the players’ union, had developed an “agreement framework” last week, when Manfred flew to Arizona to meet with Clark in person. The union vigorously disputed that characterization, and Manfred framed Monday’s rejection as something of a betrayal.

“Needless to say, we are disappointed by this development,” Manfred said in a statement. “The framework provided an opportunity for MLB and its players to work together to confront the difficulties and challenges presented by the pandemic.”

The union’s rejection, Manfred said, means that many items included in the proposal — expanded playoffs, a universal designated hitter, 104 percent of prorated salaries, $25 million from a playoff pool and $33 million in forgiven salary advances — would not be in place in 2020.

There also will be no advertising patches on uniforms, a provision that was also in the proposal.

The owners continually pushed for a shorter schedule because they would lose revenue by staging regular-season games without fans in attendance while the pandemic continues, and players did not budge from their demand for full prorated pay, which many of the owners’ proposals did not include. The players’ last proposal was for 70 games, and the owners would not consider it.

The locked gates of the Baltimore Orioles’ stadium, Oriole Park at Camden Yards. M.L.B. and its players’ union have been unable to come to an agreement for a 2020 season.

However many games Manfred imposes, the union seems likely to file a grievance seeking substantial payouts to players, on the grounds that the league negotiated in bad faith. The union would have had to drop its right to litigation as a condition of the proposal it rejected Monday, a concession they viewed as too great, because Manfred was likely to implement a truncated schedule either way.

“The full Board reaffirmed the players’ eagerness to return to work as soon and as safely as possible,” the union said in a statement. “To that end we anticipate finalizing a comprehensive set of health and safety protocols with Major League Baseball in the coming days, and we await word from the league on the resumption of spring training camps and a proposed 2020 schedule.”

Trevor Bauer, the outspoken Cincinnati Reds pitcher, expressed the exasperation felt by some on both sides of the negotiations in a tweet Monday evening, writing, “It’s absolute death for this in-

dustry to keep acting as it has been. Both sides. We’re driving the bus straight off a cliff. How is this good for anyone involved?”

The league gave the players a 67page manual on health and safety provisions last month, and the union has not approved it. Manfred said in his statement Monday that he wanted an answer on those protocols by 5 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday.

MLB shut down all teams’ spring training complexes over the weekend for extensive cleaning after players on several teams — including five members of the Philadelphia Phillies — tested positive for the coronavirus. Teams would train at their home ballparks instead of their complexes in Florida and Arizona before the season begins.

The backdrop of the negotiations has been a return-to-play agreement negotiated in March that the sides have interpreted in vastly different ways. The players agreed to forgo their salaries until

games began in exchange for a full year of service time in the event no season was held.

But Manfred expected further salary concessions for a season played without fans in the stands, and the union — long skeptical of owners crying poor — has not budged, wary of setting a precedent that would weaken them in the next collective bargaining agreement.

The players believe the existing CBA, which expires in December 2021, is far too favorable to management. Owners seem unlikely to spend lavishly on free agents this offseason, and could try to flood the market by letting go of many players eligible for salary arbitration.

The combined effect of all these factors — the failed negotiations of the past three months, a potentially looming depressed free-agent market, the union’s resolve to gain ground in the next CBA, and the mutual distrust between Manfred and the players — makes for an ominous landscape for baseball’s near future.

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Djokovic tests positive for the coronavirus

By ELIAN PELTIER and CHRISTOPHER CLAREY

N

ovak Djokovic, the world’s topranked male tennis player, said Tuesday that he and his wife, Jelena, had tested positive for the coronavirus, after days of growing criticism over a tournament he organized after which other players and coaches were also found to be infected.

The exhibition tournament, called the Adria Tour, was supposed to bring some of the world’s best players to Balkan nations, including Serbia, where Djokovic is from, and provide some income for the participants and some welcome entertainment to tennis fans who have not seen professional games since March.

No one wore face masks and social distancing was not enforced in the stands during the series. Players mingled freely with each other after matches and posed for photographs with ball kids and tournament officials. There was no systematic testing done for the coronavirus on the participants before the event began, according to the organizers. Besides the Djokovics, at least three prominent players — Grigor Dimitrov, Borna Coric and Viktor Troicki — and two coaches tested positive, prompting fears among the authorities in Croatia and Serbia that the athletes may have triggered a new wave of infections.

In Zadar, a small coastal town in Croatia that had no confirmed infections until it hosted a leg of the competition, authorities were left scrambling to trace and test people who might have come in contact with Dimitrov, a Bulgarian player who said Sunday after returning to his home base in Monaco that he had tested positive.

Djokovic returned to Belgrade, the Serbian capital, after the tournament’s final Sunday was called off. He caused a stir in April after he suggested that he would rather not be vaccinated against the coronavirus. The Serbian player has said he wanted to know what is best for his body, while keeping an open mind.

“Everything we did in the past month, we did with a pure heart and sin-

Novak Djokovic during a match against Nino Serdarusic in Zadar, Croatia, on Sunday. cere intentions,” Djokovic said in a statement announcing his positive test. “Our tournament meant to unite and share a message of solidarity and compassion throughout the region.”

He said before the event began in Belgrade earlier this month that the tour was following guidelines from local authorities by not imposing strict restrictions on player contact and by allowing spectators to attend matches.

“We organized the tournament when the virus has weakened, believing that the conditions for hosting the tour had been met,” Djokovic said Tuesday. “Unfortunately, this virus is still present, and it is a new reality that we are still learning to cope and live with. I am hoping things will ease with time so we can all resume lives the way they were. I am extremely sorry for each individual case of infection. I hope that it will not complicate anyone’s health situation, and that everyone will be fine.”

Djokovic said that his two young children — Stefan, 5, and Tara, 2 — had tested negative for the virus and that he

would remain in isolation in Belgrade for the next 14 days. The remainder of the tour, scheduled for Banja Luka and Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina, has been canceled.

Three other leading players who took part in the tour — Marin Cilic, Alexander Zverev and Andrey Rublev — all announced Monday that they had tested negative for the virus but would also selfisolate for two weeks.

Djokovic, 33, is not only the top player in the world, he is also president of the ATP Player Council, which has been actively involved in planning for the return of the regular men’s tour. The tour has been shut down since March because of the pandemic and is now scheduled to resume in mid-August at the earliest.

When it resumes, the plan is to do so without spectators and with strict testing and health protocols in place.

Several top players have criticized Djokovic’s decision to organize the Adria Tour without any such measures, arguing that it not only risked public health, but sent the wrong message to the wider

world.

“Apparently there’s a pandemic,” Andy Roddick wrote on Twitter.

“A horror show,” said Bruno Soares, a Brazilian doubles star who is also a member of the player council, in an interview with GloboEsporte. “With the situation in the world, even if you are at the North Pole, you don’t go out and party and post the photos on Instagram.”

“That’s what happens when you disregard all protocols. This IS NOT A JOKE,” wrote Australian player Nicholas Kyrgios.

Other players have been less critical of Djokovic directly.

“It’s not Djokovic who is at fault,” said Richard Gasquet, a veteran French player, in an interview with L’Équipe on Monday. “He did not put a gun to people’s heads and demand that there be 5,000 spectators. It’s the government that chose to welcome these 5,000 people in a single site. But it’s true that all those people, it was crazy. It’s the only place in the world where we saw a crowd like that.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Sudoku

29

How to Play:

Fill in the empty fields with the numbers from 1 through 9.

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

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

(Mar 21-April 20)

Beware of becoming preoccupied with the past. Dwelling on things you can’t change is a waste of valuable energy. It’s much more productive to bring your attention to the present moment. Take stock of where you are and give thanks for your blessings. When you cultivate an attitude of gratitude, it’s easy to attract the things you want. In times to come money, love, creative opportunities and travel will be yours for the asking. It’s as simple as lifting the veil between fantasy and reality.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Your work situation isn’t as stable as you’d like. Instead of waiting and wondering, start looking for a new position. If you’re a freelance worker whose assignments have dried up, think about taking a position at a company. Earning a regular income will keep the wolf from the door. It will also teach you some valuable skills. By working remotely and looking at all the positives of such an arrangement, you will reap tremendous rewards. Never underestimate the power of optimism.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Scorpio

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

Friends are losing their influence over you. That’s not because you are indifferent to their opinion. It’s simply due to the fact you are determined to follow your own path during these self-isolating days. Blessed with tremendous creative talent, you’re compelled to bring beauty into the world. Being involved in a group is no longer possible so give yourself permission to break away from it. Your defection may hurt some people, but that can’t be helped.

You’re no longer interested in going through the motions.

Your career plans are obviously undergoing some changes.

If you’re not happy with how your current industry works, take a look around you at what else is on offer. A multitalented person like you can thrive in virtually any job. Find an employer who will pay you handsomely. If you’re worried about what people will think about your new direction, breathe deep. You’ll be pleasantly surprised to discover that your nearest and dearest are only concerned for your happiness. Drop the act and embrace your authenticity.

Be willing to learn something new. So much of your identity is caught up with your expertise. As soon as you give yourself permission to venture in a new direction, the easier it will be to realise your full potential. If you’d like to cultivate a more spiritual life, explore your options. What makes you feel connected to your higher source? Activities can include anything from adopting a formal religion to communing with nature to performing sacred rituals. Be open and experimental.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

Are you afraid of intimacy? Stop pushing yourself so hard to merge with someone else. Closeness will come naturally if you are patient. Once you begin to appreciate a partner who has demonstrated their love and loyalty, you’ll let down your defences. It’s best to keep your bank accounts separate. You’re not the type who likes to justify every expenditure, especially since you put so much emphasis on luxury. Keep a joint account for shared expenses and maintain a discretionary fund for yourself.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

It’s important to assert your independence with a business or romantic partner. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do some things on your own. Forging your own path will strengthen your resolve to be happy. It’s so important to get the mental stimulation you crave during these testing times. If you’re single, you will see your relationship status as a blessing instead of a burden. It will be much easier to earn an advanced degree when you don’t have to consider someone else’s needs.

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

You’re ready to revise a plan or project. Although you were initially happy with the results, you’ve come to notice some small cracks in the foundation. Take this opportunity to make some small adjustments. This will add to the potential packed possibilities of your good work.

A romantic attraction that once captivated you is starting to lose its power. Be honest about your feelings. If you no longer want to hitch your star to someone, break things off as quickly and cleanly as possible.

Stop putting so much emphasis on what your family wants. Although it would be nice to please your nearest and dearest, your priority should be meeting your own needs. This might mean sequestering yourself in a quiet corner of the house and hanging up the Do Not Disturb’ signs. The key is to be guided by your emotions. When an idea feels good, it’s worth developing. You’re a lot more intuitive than you realise. Don’t get thrown if a relative questions your judgment. The answers you seek are within you.

It’s difficult to be optimistic when you’re confronted with upsetting current events. Beware of becoming even more immersed in a news cycle that thrives on fear. By immersing yourself in uplifting stories, songs and movies, you’ll make an important realisation. Reality is of your own making. Giving your energy to things that fill you with excitement and hope will make you more aware of life’s inherent beauty. People are much kinder than you suspect.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

The importance of money is losing its hold on you. That’s because you realise you have everything you need to survive and thrive. Instead of wasting precious time yearning for creature comforts, you’re smart enough to give thanks for all the luxuries you possess. Strangely, this attitude makes you much more magnetic to abundance. Rather than working hard to earn cash, you’ll conjure it as if by magic. Great things happen when you tap into the law of attraction. Start experimenting with it now.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

Blending in with the crowd came naturally to you, but that’s not possible now. The desire to be unconditionally accepted is starting to fade. When confronted with ideas you find upsetting or offensive, you’ll speak up. People might be shocked by your contentious behaviour. It’s not that you want to start an argument; it’s simply that you don’t want to be lumped in with ugly beliefs. Your willingness to speak as you find will win the admiration of people who were previously indifferent to you.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

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Ziggy

32

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

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