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June 26-28, 2020

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PREPA Workers: 42 New Luma Executives to Get Juicy Salaries

NASA Honors ‘Hidden Figures’ Engineer Jackson by Naming Headquarters After Her

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Obstacles Loom Over Governor’s Board Urges Replenishment Desire for Air Travelers to Hand of Emergency Reserve, In COVID-19 Test Results Governor Replies P4 P4 NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

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The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

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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.

PREPA workers: Luma to pay juicy salaries to new executives

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s part of the transition to private management, Luma Energy will bring 42 executives to Puerto Rico to help operate the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s (PREPA) transmission and distribution system (T&D) system, each of which will be paid “juicy salaries,” the main PREPA workers’ union charged Thursday.

The names and positions of the executives are contained in an organizational chart included in the contract between PREPA and Luma Energy that also details the executives’ hourly pay rates.

Annex V of the contract contains the hourly rates that will be paid for 12 positions as part of the transition. The vice president will be making $325 per hour, the senior director $300 per hour, the director $275 per hour, a senior manager will make $210 per hour, a field crew leader $205 per hour, a trainer $200 per hour, a manager $200 per hour, a field technician $195 per hour, a senior analyst $160 per hour, an engineer/field supervisor $160 per hour, an analyst $125 per hour and administrative support personnel $50 per hour.

Luma Energy will manage not only T&D, but also administrative aspects such as customer service.

“Why was there no transparency? Why did no one know the Energy Bureau was evaluating this contract without public input?,” Electrical Industry and Irriga-

tion Workers Union (UTIER) President Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo asked.

LUMA, a consortium made up of Canadian firm ATCO and U.S.-based companies Quanta Services Inc. and IEM, the latter as a subcontractor, was awarded a $1.5 billion contract for 15 years that will allow the island’s power company to retain ownership of the T&D as part of a public-private partnership (P3), the third for Puerto Rico in recent years.

Figueroa Jaramillo questioned the reasons why Luma Energy was hired in the first place because while the government has been negotiating for 18 months, Luma Energy was incorporated in January of this year.

“How can it have participated in a process that began 18 months ago?” the union leader asked.

On May 18, the Public-Private Partnership Authority, the entity that negotiated the contract, asked the Puerto Rico Energy Board (PREB) to approve a certificate of compliance, but the record of the request was not made public until earlier this month. Tomás Torres, the consumer representative to PREPA’s board, charged that PREB President Edison Avilés was also a member of the committee that participated in contract transactions in a conflict of interest. Avilés could not be reached for comment.

UTIER, meanwhile, filed before PREB on June 24 a motion seeking reconsideration by the regulator of the aforementioned certificate of compliance.

4

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

González: Feds will oppose governor on compulsory COVID-19 test results for air travelers

By THE STAR STAFF

R

esident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón said Thursday that Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced’s desire to see that travelers arriving in Puerto Rico hand in negative COVID-19 tests is going to collide with federal government public policy.

“The issue of passenger entry and movement is an interstate commerce one,” the resident commissioner said at a press conference. “The governor stated that they are evaluating restricting entry to Puerto Rico and I trust that this will be studied by the local Justice Department.”

González Colón gave the example of the state of Hawaii, which made a determination similar to that proposed by the governor, but the U.S. Justice Department let it be known that it will challenge that action.

“So it is up to the [Puerto Rico] Depart-

ment of Justice to make that evaluation and give its input to the governor, so that when the determination is made, it can be

done based on what is right in law,” the resident commissioner said.

González Colon noted that the possi-

bility has been raised in the Transportation Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives that the airlines may require passengers to show evidence of a negative result from a COVID-19 test before being allowed to enter an airplane.

“In other words, this is a matter of legislative discussion today in Congress, regarding security measures for planes, cruises and [other] ships,” she said. “So Congress is going to be taking action on this. There is still no bill; it emerged in a public hearing as one of the alternatives.”

At a press conference Wednesday in Dorado, the governor insisted that it was her wish to include the evidence requirement in the next executive order related to the coronavirus pandemic emergency, but she needs the opinion of her advisory groups.

On Thursday, Vázquez was supposed to release the contents of the new executive order, but it was announced that the release will be on a different date.

Oversight board urges replenishment of emergency reserve

By THE STAR STAFF

T

he Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico announced Thursday that it proposed to the Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced and the Puerto Rico Legislature to replenish the Emergency Reserve that is part of the certified Fiscal Plan.

Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced in a statement threw her hat behind the idea.

“With great enthusiasm, I announce that we have reached an agreement with the Oversight Board to allocate $536 million to the Emergency Reserve, an unprecedented amount that will help us deal with any emergency, including this hurricane season, earthquakes and the current pandemic caused by COVID-19,” she said.

The oversight board proposed to appropriate up to $536 million from government cash and previous year budget surpluses through a special appropriation to replenish funds tapped by the government, including following Hurricane Maria in 2017, Tropical Storm Dorian in 2019, the series of earthquakes earlier this year, and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the federal entity said in a statement.

“The Emergency Reserve will ensure that the Government has the necessary

funds to help the people of Puerto Rico in case of natural disasters and other emergencies fast and effectively,” said Natalie Jaresko, the oversight board’s executive director. “The Emergency Reserve established in the 2018 Certified Fiscal Plan has strict rules that ensure the government can use the funds only for emergencies, not for other government expenses. The funds should be available when unexpected disasters strike to provide urgent relief to the residents of Puerto Rico.”

“Over the last 12 months alone, the Emergency Reserve provided direct assistance to people affected by the earthquakes, provided food and shelter, funded the temporary relocation of schools during the pandemic, and provided vital support to municipalities,” Jaresko said. “Now, as we prepare for hurricane season, we can be assured resources will be available to ensure a swift response in case of need.”

The Emergency Reserve is funded every year with a regular $130 million appropriation from the island government’s annual budget through fiscal year 2028.The oversight board’s proposed appropriations would replenish the $260 million in combined contributions from fiscal years 2019 and 2020, and $276 million the Puerto Rico government used as emergency funding,

the statement said.

The proposed special appropriations, together with remaining unused funds from previous years and future Emergency Reserve contributions outlined in the Certi-

fied Fiscal Plan, would provide the island government with a total Emergency Reserve of $1.7 billion in 10 years, in line with the International Monetary Fund’s definition of an adequate emergency reserve.

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The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

5

WIPR employees, actors hold ‘public hearings for the people’

By THE STAR STAFF

E

mployees of the Puerto Rico Corporation for Public Broadcasting, known as WIPR, and members of the Puerto Rico Actors Association held a “public hearing for the people” Thursday at the Capitol in Puerta de Tierra in repudiation of House Bill (HB) 2564, which would lead to the privatization of the public television station.

“This afternoon, the Puerto Rico Actors Association did what the House of Representatives did not do with [HB] 2564, to open a space for public hearings so that the parties could explain the reasons why WIPR should remain in the hands of the people and not [pass into] the hands of a private company,” said Gerson Guzmán López, president of the General Workers Union, which represents WIPR employees. “Here our actors and actresses displayed the importance of WIPR for the Puerto Rican people.”

José Vidal Martínez, president of the Actors Association, added that purpose of the legislation, which authorizes the sale of the assets of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, “is to remove from the hands of the Puerto Rican people part of what was and continues to be an exemplary instrument of collective education that affirms us as a people, and see

to it that it is passed and delivered into private hands that we do not know.”

HB 2564 took root on June 18, a day after Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced said in her commonwealth budget message that she has been and will remain firm in defending WIPR and where she also urged everyone to join together to protect

this piece of cultural heritage while preserving its assets in the hands of the people.

Recently, the WIPR President Eric Delgado revealed to The San Juan Daily Star that he will soon announce his plan for the public corporation and how he will manage the funding. Delgado hasn’t said when he is releasing the plan.

CVM opposes WIPR privatization bill

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

M

embers of the CitizenVictory Movement (CVM) voiced their opposition Thursday to House Bill 2564, which seeks to create a law to transfer assets of the Puerto Rico Corporation for Public Broadcasting, known as WIPR, to a non-profit organization.

The group also expressed solidarity with the employees and union members of the public corporation, who demonstrated in front of the island Capitol in Puerta de Tierra on Thursday.

“The position of the Citizen Victory Movement and its agenda is firm: no to the privatization of our public media,” said Pedro Muñiz, a television executive and member of the Communications Network, in a written statement. “Past administrations have bled

WIPR to death, to the point that the [Corporation for Public Broadcasting] Board does not want to allocate a budget. While [advertising agency] KOI has been paid $84 million for distorting reality, WIPR, which fulfills an essential function for the people, is allocated an insufficient budget.”

The Communications Network, part of the CVM’s network of knowledge and talent and its “network of networks” organizational structure, presented in May through Facebook Live a proposal in which funds from other agencies destined for advertising contracts would be redirected so that WIPR would produce the official publicity of the commonwealth government agencies, apart from establishing alliances with the Department of Education to develop curricular integration programs, returning WIPR to its origins as an educational station. The proposal also contemplates diversifying the programming offerings of WIPR and WIPM as two separate channels.

“Public media are more necessary today than ever, given the poor cultural offering of commercial media,” said José “Papo” Coss, a social communicator and member of the CVM’s communications staff. “Achieving Puerto Rican radio and television, focused on our cultural values, represents an imperative. Privatization will only benefit the economic interests of big capital.”

The CVM alleged that House Bill 2564 assures that it will sell WIPR assets without a development plan

and will take funds from the Lucy Boscana Dramatic Workshop and the Radio AM Dramatic Workshop.

According to the bill, the central government will allocate $1 million annually, but the public corporation will not be considered a government agency, but rather a non-profit entity.

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6

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

Teachers can apply for pension benefits online

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

T

eachers Retirement System (SRM by its Spanish initials) Executive Director Luis M. Collazo Rodríguez announced Thursday that active teachers will be able to apply for the pension benefit online, without having to submit the request physically at SRM facilities in the Hato Rey sector of San Juan.

Teachers from the Puerto Rico Department of Education (DE) who wish to retire in December will have from July 1 to July 31 to file their pension application.

SRM participants who are interested in filing their pension application (Merit, Years of Service and Age, Disability and Deferred) may fill out their application online by accessing the MiSRM link on the www.srm.pr.gov website, Collazo Rodríguez said in a press release.

Teachers will also be able to visit the MiSRM application within the SRM page to verify if they are currently qualified for a pension. In the application, they can use tools avail-

able for Active Loan status, Pension Calculator, Quoted Time (RAS), Unlisted Services Calculator (Time Recognition) and Contribution Refunds. In addition, teachers may update their demographics.

Collazo Rodríguez noted that if an active teacher qualifies for the pension benefit as of December 2020, he or she may begin the process by completing the Retirement Application from July 1 to July 31, a term that has been extended given to the coronavirus pandemic emergency situation on the island.

“Before, teachers had to come to our facilities in San Juan to file their documents,” the SRM director said. “With this new tool the process has been facilitated, and the DE will receive notification of the filing instantly.”

Any teacher who does not have access to the internet or email can write to: PO Box 191879, San Juan PR 00919-1879.

The communication must include the teacher’s name, postal address, and telephone number and a service representative will contact the sender as soon as possible. For inquiries about services and procedures, send an email to: servicioretiro@ srm.pr.gov.

Medalla Light expands distribution to Maryland, Virginia, DC

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

M

edalla Light beer widened distribution into Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland on Thursday as part of the third phase of expansion of the renowned Puerto Rican brand in the mainland United States, announced Jorge Bracero, chief marketing officer of Cervecera de Puerto Rico.

Earlier this month, the company announced the arrival of Medalla Light in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Including the first mainland U.S. markets in which distribution began, Florida and Connecticut, there are now seven states in which beer lovers enjoy the Puerto Rican light beer, which has earned

important international distinctions.

“It never ceases to surprise us, the great acceptance that our brand continues to have in the eastern-central region of the United States, which should be a source of pride, not only for our company, but for all of Puerto Rico,” Bracero said. “The can of Medalla Light carries its logo, but in an emblematic way it carries our flag. That, without a doubt, has been part of the success.”

Medalla Light will be available in nearly 300 establishments in the coming weeks, in packages of six and 12 cans, as well as packages of six and boxes of 24 bottles. Responsibility for its distribution in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia was delegated to EMD Sales, a company owned by Puerto

Rican Elda Devarie, one of the fastest-growing international food distributors in the market, with a portfolio that includes dry products, frozen and refrigerated foods as well as its own private label products.

Bracero estimated that in the areas where Medalla Light will be distributed, about 170,000 Puerto Ricans reside.

“This is undoubtedly a great advantage, but we do not rely on that fact, but on the excellence of our product,” he said. “We want to delight our own, but also win over new consumers.”

In Puerto Rico, Medalla Light is the number one beer in sales with a 30 percent market share -- leadership that has served as a spearhead for its foray into the North American market.

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The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

7

Showing strength with white voters, Biden builds lead in battleground states

By NATE COHN

P

resident Donald Trump has lost significant ground in the six battleground states that clinched his Electoral College victory in 2016, according to New York Times/ Siena College surveys, with Joe Biden opening double-digit leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Trump’s once-commanding advantage among white voters has nearly vanished, a development that would all but preclude the president’s reelection. Biden now has a 21-point lead among white college graduates, and the president is losing among white voters in the three Northern battleground states — not by much, but he won them by nearly 10 points in 2016.

Four years ago, Trump’s strength in the disproportionately white working-class battleground states allowed him to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote.

The surveys indicate that the president continues to fare better in these relatively white battleground states than he does nationwide.

A separate Times/Siena survey released on Wednesday found Biden leading by 14 points nationwide, 50% to 36%.

Biden would win the presidency with at least 333 electoral votes, far more than the 270 needed, if he won all six of the states surveyed and held those won by Hillary Clinton four years ago. Most combinations of any three of the six states — which include Florida, Arizona and North Carolina — would suffice.

With a little more than four months to go until the election, there is still time for the president’s political standing to recover, just as it did on so many occasions four years ago. He maintains a substantial advantage on the economy, which could become an even more central issue in what has already been a volatile election cycle. And many of the undecided voters in these states lean Republican, and may end up returning to their party’s nominee.

But for now, the findings confirm that the president’s political standing has deteriorated sharply since October, when Times/Siena polls found Biden ahead by just 2 percentage points across the same six states (the gap is now nine points). Since then, the nation has faced a series of crises that would pose a grave political challenge to any president seeking reelection.

The polls suggest that battleground-state voters believe the president has struggled to meet the moment.

Overall, 42% of voters in the battleground states approve of how Trump is handling his job as president, while 54% disapprove.

These six​ states — with their mix of major cities, old industrial hubs, growing suburbs, and even farmland — together deliver a grim judgment of Trump on recent issues that have shaken American life. His handling of the pandemic and the protests after the death of George Floyd help explain his erosion across both old and new battlegrounds.

Trump’s ratings are healthier on the kinds of issues that might have dominated the election season under more ordinary circumstances. His 56% approval rating on the economy, versus 40% who disapprove, is nearly the opposite of his overall job approval rating. Voters say by a double-digit margin that he

would do a better job on the issue than Biden, and they also prefer Trump to handle relations with China.

With a little more than four months to go until the election, there is still time for memories to fade or for the national debate to return to more favorable turf for the president. But these are not ordinary circumstances, and for now the president’s coalition has suffered serious defections, eroding the familiar demographic divides of recent elections.

Trump retains the support of 86% of respondents who said they voted for him in 2016, down from 92% in October.

Biden, by contrast, has emerged from a contested primary with a unified Democratic coalition. He wins 93% of the voters who backed Clinton four years ago, as well as 92% of self-identified Democrats. Biden also enjoys a significant advantage among those who voted for neither Trump nor Clinton in 2016. He has a 35-point lead among battleground voters who said they backed a minor-party candidate or wrote in another.

Together, these shifts give Biden a 6-point lead among voters who participated in the 2016 election, according to voter-file records. The same voters said they backed Trump over Clinton in 2016 by 2.5 percentage points, slightly better for Trump than the actual result of the six states, offering a level of validity to the survey’s findings. Biden also has a 17-point lead among registered voters who did not vote in the 2016 race.

Trump’s once-decisive advantage among white voters has all but vanished, despite national attention to the kind of racial issues that many analysts believed propelled his strength among white voters in the first place. If attitudes about race were vital to Trump’s appeal with white voters, then a foun-

dation of his strength has been badly shaken.

National polls suggest that the Black Lives Matter movement has become significantly more popular since the 2016 election. The Times/Siena polls find that white voters in the battleground states support the recent protests and agree with the movement’s major complaints about the criminal justice system, including that the death of Floyd is part of a broader pattern of excessive police violence, and that the criminal justice system is biased against African Americans. They disapprove of how the president is handling both the recent protests and race relations more generally.

Biden’s gains among white voters have been largest among the young and college-educated white voters likeliest to back the protesters’ views on racial issues.

Overall in the six states, Biden holds a 55-34 lead among white voters with at least a four-year college degree, an 11-point gain from October. White voters under age 35 now back Biden by a margin of 50% to 31%, up from an allbut-tied race in October.

White voters with more conservative attitudes on racial issues appear to have soured on Trump in recent months, and yet they have not embraced Biden.

White voters without a degree, the linchpin of the president’s winning coalition, back Trump by a 16-point margin in the battlegrounds, down from a 24-point margin in October and a 26-point one in the final polls of the last election. Despite that slide, Biden’s support among white voters without a degree has increased by only 1 percentage point since October.

Biden leads among voters 65 and over, reversing a decade-long Republican advantage. But he has made relatively limited gains among voters over age 50 since October, including no gains at all among white voters over age 50 without a college degree.

Their relatively conservative attitudes on race and the protests could be part of the reason for the president’s resilience: White voters in the battleground states who are 50 and over oppose the recent demonstrations, and say too many have turned to violent rioting. They are split on whether discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against minorities, and say that riots are a bigger problem than police treatment of African Americans by a 10-percentagepoint margin.

Perhaps more surprisingly, Biden has also made few to no gains among nonwhite voters, despite the national attention on criminal justice and racism over the last month.

Overall, Biden leads among Black voters by 83% to 7%, up only slightly from October. Hispanic voters back Biden by 62-26, also essentially unchanged. Neither lead exceeds Clinton’s margin in the final polls from 2016.

Biden’s wide lead is a reflection of the president’s weakness rather than of his own strength. Overall, 55% of Biden’s supporters say their vote is more a vote against Trump than a vote for Biden, while 80% of Trump’s supporters say they’re mainly voting for the president. And Biden’s gains have come without any improvement in his favorability ratings, even as Trump’s have plummeted.

8

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

Poland’s right-wing president meets with Trump and gets a pre-election boost

President Donald Trump gestures towards President Andrzej Duda of Poland, left, during a news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, on June 24, 2020.

By MICHAEL CROWLEY

P

resident Donald Trump welcomed President Andrzej Duda of Poland to the White House on Wednesday, his first meeting with a foreign leader since February and one that Democrats called an unseemly effort to boost a European ally whose country is tilting toward autocracy days before a close reelection vote.

Duda, who has served as Poland’s president since 2015, has presided over political restrictions on Poland’s judiciary, media and civil society while becoming one of Trump’s preferred foreign partners. The Polish election is Sunday, a fact Trump made no effort to gloss over.

“I do believe he has an election coming up, and I do believe he will be successful,” Trump said of Duda during a news conference the men held in the Rose Garden.

Pressed on whether he was seeking to tip the scales in the Polish election, Trump deflected the question.

“He’s doing a terrific job. The people of Poland think the world of him,” Trump said. “I don’t think he needs my help.”

But it is clear that Trump would be happy to see Duda retain power. The two leaders have met one-on-one at least five times, including three times at the White House. Two years ago Duda hosted the president in Warsaw, where Trump delivered a speech calling for nationalist, anti-immigration policies worldwide. Duda has even offered to host a “Fort Trump” that would house U.S. troops in his country.

His visit had no clear official purpose, analysts said, and amounted to a photo opportunity for a populist leader whom polls show with just 40% support heading into an election that requires a majority to avoid a runoff.

“This was really an endorsement masquerading as a meeting,” said Molly Montgomery, a former career diplomat and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Montgomery noted that Trump “didn’t even try to hide or gloss over the election piece here.”

Trump has not met in Washington with a top foreign official since February, when he hosted Venezuela’s opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, whom the U.S. recognizes as the country’s rightful president.

He tried without success to coax several heads of state to a Group of 7 summit in the Washington area this month, an event he said would signal a “return to normalcy.” But Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany quashed the idea in a statement saying the coronavirus made such a gathering unsafe.

For Duda, the political benefits clearly outweighed any risk of travel, even if his visit violated a longstanding American political norm.

“There is a good rule in U.S. diplomacy where you don’t do that,” said Daniel Fried, a retired career diplomat who served as the U.S. ambassador to Poland in the Clinton administration. “Trump doesn’t much care about those things, but the reason you don’t do it is because it injects

the U.S. into the domestic politics of another country, and it alienates a whole bunch of people there’s no reason to alienate.”

The leaders said they discussed a range of issues, including efforts against the coronavirus, Poland’s purchase of liquid natural gas from the United States and U.S. assistance for Poland’s civil nuclear program.

“I don’t think we’ve ever been closer to Poland than right now,” Trump said in brief remarks to reporters in the Oval Office. “I have a very good personal relationship with the president.”

The men also discussed U.S. troop levels in Poland, which could rise if Trump follows through on his stated plans to withdraw 9,500 U.S. troops from Germany, capping America’s permanent presence there at 25,000 troops.

Many officials in Poland are hopeful that Trump will relocate some of those troops to their country, which now hosts some 4,500 U.S. service members on a rotating basis.

But Trump officials say no such plans have been set.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal last week, Trump’s national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, said military officials were still drawing up options for the president.

“We’re going to be reducing our forces in Germany,” Trump said. “Some will be coming home and some will be going to other places — but Poland would be one of those other places, other places in Europe.”

If more U.S. troops do go to Poland, they are unlikely to be housed at a site named after Trump. Last year, Poland proposed spending some $2 billion to build a new base informally designated as Fort Trump to host thousands of U.S. troops. Those plans fell through, but the United States did agree to send 1,000 more troops to the country.

Duda said on Wednesday that he had asked Trump to relocate some of the troops into his country and warned that major American withdrawals from the continent “would be very detrimental to European security.”

But European leaders are concerned about what Trump might do. In his new book, Trump’s former national security adviser, John R. Bolton, confirmed reports that Trump had considered withdrawing from NATO altogether.

Several prominent Democrats criticized the visit before Duda’s arrival. Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who is PolishAmerican, called on Trump to cancel the meeting, citing in a statement his “inappropriate efforts to insert himself into Polish domestic politics and boost President Duda’s reelection with a White House visit.”

Former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, who helped to expand the NATO alliance into Eastern Europe the 1990s, also criticized the visit.

“I was proud to welcome a democratic Poland into NATO, and I am very concerned by the extent to which the current Polish governing party has retreated from the values at the heart of the alliance,” she said in a statement.

“The United States should be standing up for those values, rather than rewarding President Duda with a White House visit days before the election.”

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

9

New York will impose quarantine on visitors from states with big outbreaks

By J. DAVID GOODMAN

A

few months ago, New York was suffering through the worst ravages of the coronavirus pandemic. Hospitals filled to near capacity. Hundreds of people died each day, reaching a peak in mid-April.

The rest of the country recoiled at the sight of a New York license plate. Florida and Rhode Island singled out New York travelers, who researchers now believe helped to seed the spread of the virus in other states.

But as New York has largely controlled its outbreak, other states — especially in the Sun Belt and the West — have seen virus cases surge, leading to a table-turning moment: Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday announced that anyone coming to New York from a state currently hard hit by the virus would have to quarantine for two weeks.

The restrictions were based on specific health metrics related to the coronavirus, Cuomo said. At the moment, travelers from eight states — as well as New Yorkers returning from those states — would have to quarantine.

“We now have to make sure that the rate continues to drop,” Cuomo said. “A lot of people come into this region and they could literally bring the infection with them. It wouldn’t be malicious or malevolent, but it would still be real.”

Failure to quarantine in New York could result in thousand-dollar fines, Cuomo said. Travelers to New Jersey and Connecticut would also be told to quarantine, although officials from both states said there was no enforcement mechanism at the moment.

The order — a “joint travel advisory” with the two other states — would take effect at midnight, Cuomo said Wednesday.

He said the quick implementation was aimed at preventing a rush of travelers trying to avoid the requirement, which currently applied to Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.

Washington state had originally been included, but after a further review of the data, it was dropped from the list.

As businesses reopen and public life returns, the virus has been spreading to areas that had mostly managed to initially evade the worst of the outbreak.

In recent days, Texas has seen record-high levels of hospitalizations for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Hospitals, particularly in Houston, have struggled to keep up with the rising number of patients needing intensive care. “There is a massive outbreak of COVID-19 across the state of Texas,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a television interview Wednesday.

Amid rising hospitalizations in North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper said Wednesday that the state would “pause” its move into the next phase of reopening and make masks required statewide in public when distancing is not possible.

In Florida, more than 20,000 people tested positive for the virus over the five days ending Tuesday; in New York, where far more people are being tested daily, roughly 3,100 tested positive over those same five days.

Only a handful of states — including Maine, Rhode Island and Hawaii — have required out-of-state travelers to quarantine. A larger number have asked travelers to quarantine

New York has largely controlled its coronavirus outbreak, while other states — especially in the Sun Belt and the West — have seen virus cases surge, leading to a table-turning moment: Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday announced that anyone coming to New York from a state currently hard hit by the virus would have to quarantine for two weeks. but have not mandated doing so. And a few, such as Florida and Kansas, apply the requirement only to those coming from certain states.

The new quarantine in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut would apply to any person arriving from a state with a positive test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents, or a state with a 10% or higher rate over a seven-day rolling average.

Cuomo said that enforcement would be up to each of the three states. In New York, he said, those violating the quarantine order could be “subject to a judicial order and mandatory quarantine.” A first violation could result in a $2,000 fine and could go up to $10,000 for subsequent violations.

Indeed, the effect of the order may be largely symbolic.

Even in places where out-of-state arrivals are already formally required to quarantine, there has not been widespread enforcement to make sure the rules are being followed.

A spokesman for Cuomo said that if a New Yorker believes that a recent arrival — or a returning neighbor — has not been abiding by the quarantine, then that person should start by reporting the possible violation to the local health department.

“You could argue that every law is the honor system until you get caught,” Cuomo said. “You can violate the quarantine until you get caught,” he added, then “you’re in mandatory

quarantine and fined thousands of dollars.”

Players from the New York Mets and New York Yankees who have been in Florida but are coming back to New York for an abbreviated and late spring training will not be required to quarantine, Cuomo said. The state had been working on separate “health protocols” with them since last week, he said.

Cuomo, who hosted the news conference from New York City, was joined via video link by Gov. Philip Murphy of New Jersey and Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut, all three Democrats.

“This is a smart thing to do. We have taken our people, the three of us, these three states, through hell and back,” Murphy said. “The last thing we need to is subject our folks to another round.”

The goal, the governors said, was to maintain the hardfought gains against the virus that have been made, at great economic and human cost, over the past three months. On Monday, for example, nearly 49,000 people were tested for the virus in New York, with just shy of 600 coming back positive.

Since the middle of March, New Yorkers have largely abided by the orders to stay at home and wear masks in public, creating a new way of life in the city and surrounding suburbs that helped to bring new infections down to a manageable level.

10

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

U.S. sets record for daily new cases

Sólo en

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

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19-30 de Junio

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En Pinturas y tintEs 26.94

Precios comienzan desde $

he United States reported 36,880 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, the largest one-day total since the start of the pandemic and more than two months after the previous high.

The number of infections indicated that the country was not only failing to contain the virus, but also that the caseload was worsening — a path at odds with many other nations that have seen steady declines after an earlier peak.

Cases in the United States had been on a downward trajectory after the previous high of 36,739 cases on April 24, but they have roared back in recent weeks.

The resurgence is concentrated largely in the South and West. Florida, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas reported their highest singleday totals on Wednesday, but case numbers have been rising in 29 states.

The tally of new cases, based on a New York Times database, showed that the outbreak was stronger than ever. The elevated numbers are a result of worsening conditions across much of the country, as well as increased testing — but testing alone does not explain the surge. The percentage of people in Florida who have tested positive for the virus has risen sharply. Increases in hospitalizations also signal the virus’ spread.

Some states, including New York, which at one point had the most daily virus cases, have brought their numbers under control. Hoping to keep it that way, New York — along with Connecticut and New Jersey — said it would institute a quarantine for some out-of-state travelers.

As of Wednesday, more than 2.3 million Americans have been infected and about 122,000 have died.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said that his state had recorded more than 7,000 new

cases over the previous day.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis gave no indication that the state would roll back its economic opening, but he urged residents to avoid closed spaces with poor ventilation, crowds and close contact with others.

DeSantis, a Republican, continued to attribute the rising infections, especially in cities, to younger people who have started to socialize in bars and homes, in spite of rules in many municipalities prohibiting group gatherings. He pressed older people to keep staying home as much as possible, and pleaded with young people to be responsible.

“You need to do your part and make sure that you’re not spreading it to people who are going to be more at risk for this,” he said.

Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina announced that the state would pause reopening for three weeks and require face masks. In Texas, more than 4,300 people with the virus are hospitalized, more than double the number at the beginning of June.

The World Health Organization warned Wednesday that if the Americas were not able to stop the spread of the virus, there may be a need to impose — or reimpose — general lockdowns.

“It is very difficult to take the sting out of this pandemic unless we are able to successfully isolate cases and quarantine contacts,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, the executive director of the WHO health emergencies program. “In the absence of a capacity to do that, then the specter of further lockdowns cannot be excluded.”

He said that the growing number of coronavirus cases in the Americas had not peaked and that the region was likely to see sustained numbers of cases and deaths in the coming weeks. Brazil, Chile and Peru are among the countries with the highest caseloads.

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Visiting the River Walk in San Antonio, Texas. The state recorded its highest single-day case total on Wednesday.

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

11

Coronavirus surge alarms states, markets and businesses; slow recovery feared

By MATT PHILLIPS and ANUPREETA DAS

O

n Wednesday, governors, mayors, investors and others across the United States woke up to news that was impossible to ignore. More than 35,000 new coronavirus cases had been identified the day before. It was the highest number reported in a single day since late April.

The news kept getting worse. Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and South Carolina reported their highest single-day totals. New York instituted a quarantine for some travelers from out of state. And the stock market slid 2.6% as investors fretted about what the latest troubling news meant for economic recovery.It was as if the country had found itself back in March — at the start of the pandemic, in the early days of the lockdown, when masks were in short supply and the death toll was skyrocketing.

By the end of Wednesday, more than 36,000 new cases had been reported nationwide, the second-highest daily total since the pandemic began. The new cases showed that the outbreak had been far from contained.

That could lead some states to slow the process of reopening businesses, further hobbling the economy and delaying its recovery.

Some states, including New York, which at one point had the most virus cases, have brought the number under control. But cases are still rising in more than 20 states, especially in the South and West.

Florida reported a new daily high of 5,508 cases Wednesday, and the percentage of residents testing positive has risen sharply.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said Wednesday that the state recorded more than 7,000 new cases over the past day.

“I want to remind everybody that we are still in the first wave of this pandemic,” Newsom said during a virtual news briefing.

The governor pleaded with residents, many of whom he acknowledged were gathering with friends and relatives, to continue practicing social distancing, to stay outdoors whenever possible and to wear a mask.

Texas reported more than 6,000 new cases Wednesday. In Houston, the intensivecare units were at 97% of capacity, and hospitals risked running out of ICU beds within two weeks if nothing is done to slow the upward trajectory of the virus.

“I strongly feel we are moving in the wrong direction, and we are moving fast,” Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston said.

In Washington state, where cases are rising again, Gov. Jay Inslee said residents would have to start wearing masks in public.

“This is about saving lives,” Inslee said.

“It’s about reopening our businesses.”

In Florida on Wednesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis gave no indication that the state would roll back its economic opening, but he urged residents to avoid closed spaces with poor ventilation, crowds and close contact with others.

DeSantis continued to attribute the rising infections to younger people who have started to socialize in bars and homes, despite rules in many municipalities prohibiting group gatherings.

“You need to do your part and make sure that you’re not spreading it to people who are going to be more at risk for this,” he said.

The percentage of people in Florida testing positive has risen sharply, but testing alone does not explain the surge. Increases in hospitalizations also signal the virus’s spread.

New case reports also reached their highest levels in recent days in Missouri, but coronavirus hospitalizations have declined slightly over the past month.

“We are NOT overwhelmed,” Gov. Mike Parson wrote on Twitter, linking the uptick to more testing. “We are NOT currently experiencing a second wave. We have NO intentions of closing Missouri back down at this point in time.”

The World Health Organization warned Wednesday that if governments and communities in the Americas were not able to stop the spread of the virus through surveillance, isolation of cases and quarantine of contacts, there might be a need to impose — or reimpose — general lockdowns.

The New York quarantine announced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo applies to visitors from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Texas, as well as New Yorkers returning from those states. Violators could be subject to a mandatory quarantine and fines of up to $10,000. Travelers to New Jersey and Connecticut will also be told to quarantine.

The reopening of many businesses is not going smoothly. Apple said Wednesday that it had shut seven stores in the Houston area because of the rising number of cases in the region. Last week, it closed 11 stores in Arizona, Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina. Apple had opened most of its stores in

A motorist fills up gas at a truck stop in Odessa, Texas, April 24, 2020. Texas reported more than 5,000 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday. the United States in recent weeks after closing nearly all of its roughly 500 stores worldwide months ago.

Many stock market investors, who had been expecting the virus to retreat swiftly, were alarmed by its resurgence. The spike appeared to undermine hopes for a V-shaped rebound, in which both the economy and corporate profits would bounce back as swiftly as they plunged when the United States fell into a recession.

“All the hopes of investors looking for a better economy to improve the bottom lines of companies shut down in the recession have been dashed,” Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank, wrote in a note to clients Wednesday. “Forget about the fears of the virus coming back in the fall. The number of new cases and hospitalizations in states like Arizona, Texas and Florida says the threat is happening right now.”

This is the second time in recent weeks that the S&P 500 stock market index has faltered. On June 11, reports of rising infections set off a 5.9% drop. Wednesday’s market drop was led by sharp downturns in sectors including energy, industrial and financial shares, which tend to be sensitive to the near-term expectations for economic growth.

For most of the day, investors clobbered the stocks of companies that are most vulnerable to the risks of a prolonged pandemic.

Cruise line Norwegian was down 12.4%, while competitors Royal Caribbean and Carnival both plummeted more than 11%. They were the three worst-performing issues in the S&P 500.

Airlines were hammered, with United Airlines down more than 8.3% and Delta Air Lines dropping by 7.8%. Energy and oil field services companies tumbled, too. Occidental Petroleum dropped 9%, and Haliburton fell 8.8%, as oil prices dropped more than 5%, pushing the cost of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate oil below $40.

The global picture also looked gloomy.

The International Monetary Fund said global gross domestic product would shrink 4.9% in 2020, a sharper contraction than the 3% decline it predicted just two months ago. The IMF also lowered its expectations for growth in the United States, saying that the world’s largest economy will shrink 8% this year, more than the roughly 6% rate it expected in April.

“We are definitely not out of the woods,” said Gita Gopinath, director of the IMF’s research department. “This is a crisis like no other and will have a recovery like no other.”

And as infection rates rise in California, The Walt Disney Co. on Wednesday abandoned its plan to reopen Disneyland and Disney California Adventure on July 17, citing a slower-than-anticipated approval process by state regulators.

12

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

Stocks

Wall Street ends choppy session higher as strength in banks offsets virus woes

W

all Street’s main indexes closed higher in choppy trading on Thursday, with bank stocks soaring ahead of annual stress test results and helping to offset investor jitters over alarming increases in new coronavirus cases.

The recently battered S&P 500 banks sub-index led the gainers for the session after U.S. banking regulators eased rules and investors waited for results of the sector’s annual stress test, which helps determine dividend policies.

The bank index had fallen 19 percent from its recent high on June 5 to Wednesday’s lowest point. It closed up 3.6% on Thursday.

But investors remained nervous throughout the day as the number of new virus cases in U.S. states grew, especially in the West and South.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said he was halting his state’s phased economic reopening in response to a jump in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.

And stocks wobbled temporarily late in the session after Apple Inc said it would close 14 stores in Florida again due to rising COVID-19 cases after other re-closures in Houston, Arizona, South Carolina, and North Carolina.

A flare-up in virus cases in recent days has taken some wind out of a Wall Street rally powered by hopes of a quick economic recovery and massive government stimulus efforts.

However, the benchmark S&P 500 still closed less than 9% below its Feb. 19 record.

While bank stocks provided one of the biggest boosts on Thursday, Michael James, managing director of equity trading at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles, said investors were buying the dip after a pullback in stocks on Wednesday.

“None of those issues that caused yesterday’s weakness were really resolved today,” said James. “You could argue that the market could be a fair amount lower. The reason we’re not is there is still some understanding that things are going to have a brighter ending at some point.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 299.66 points, or 1.18%, to 25,745.6, the S&P 500 gained 33.43 points, or 1.10%, to 3,083.76 and the Nasdaq Composite added 107.84 points, or 1.09%, to 10,017.00.

All the three major indexes had opened Thursday’s session lower after data showed the number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits fell less than expected last week, likely as hiring by reopening businesses is being partly offset by a second wave of layoffs.

But the S&P’s financial sector, up 2.7%, stayed strong for the session and was the S&P’s top percentage gainer. Earlier, regulators had unveiled two rules easing restrictions covering large banks with complex trading and investment portfolios..

The Federal Reserve was due to release results of annual bank stress tests after the markets close, potentially indicating how much flexibility banks will have to return capital to shareholders.

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The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

13

Decades-old Soviet studies hint at Coronavirus strategy

By ANDREW KRAMER

T

o the boys, it was just a sugary treat. To their parents, prominent medical researchers, what happened in their Moscow apartment that day in 1959 was a vital experiment with countless lives at stake — and their own children as guinea pigs.

“We formed a kind of line,” Dr. Peter Chumakov, who was 7 at the time, recalled in an interview. Into each waiting mouth, a parent popped a sugar cube laced with weakened poliovirus — an early vaccine against a dreaded disease. “I was eating it from the hands of my mother.”

Today, that same vaccine is gaining renewed attention from researchers — including those brothers, who all grew up to be virologists — as a possible weapon against the new coronavirus, based in part on research done by their mother, Dr. Marina Voroshilova.

Voroshilova established that the live polio vaccine had an unexpected benefit that, it turns out, could be relevant to the current pandemic: People who got the vaccine did not become sick with other viral illnesses for a month or so afterward. She took to giving the boys polio vaccine each fall as protection against flu.

Now some scientists in several countries are taking a keen interest in the idea of repurposing existing vaccines, like the one with live poliovirus and another for tuberculosis, to see if they can provide at least temporary resistance to the coronavirus. Russians are among them, drawing on a long history of vaccine research — and of researchers, unconcerned about being scoffed at as mad scientists, experimenting on themselves.

Experts advise that the idea — like many other proposed ways of attacking the pandemic — must be approached with great caution.

“We are much better off with a vaccine that induces specific immunity,” Dr. Paul Offit, a co-inventor of a vaccine against the rotavirus and professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a telephone interview. Any benefits from a repurposed vaccine, he said, are “much shorterlived and incomplete” compared with a tailored vaccine.

Still, Dr. Robert Gallo, a leading advocate of testing the polio vaccine against the coronavirus, said that repurposing vaccines is “one of the hottest areas of immunology.” Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said that even if the weakened poliovirus confers immunity for only a month or so, “it gets you over the hump, and it would save a lot of lives.”

But there are risks.

Billions of people have taken live poliovirus vaccine, nearly eradicating the disease. However, in extremely rare cases, the weakened virus used in the vaccine can mutate into a more dangerous form, cause polio and infect other people. The risk of paralysis is estimated at 1 in 2.7 million vaccinations.

For those reasons, public health organizations say that once a region eliminates naturally occurring polio, it must stop routine use of the oral vaccine, as the United States did 20 years ago.

And this month, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases delayed a study designed by Gallo’s institute, the Cleveland Clinic, the University of Buffalo and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center to test the effectiveness of live po-

lio vaccine against the coronavirus using health care workers as subjects. The agency raised safety concerns, including the chance of live poliovirus making its way into water supplies and infecting others, according to researchers familiar with the study application. The press office of the NIAID declined to comment.

But other countries are moving ahead. Trials with the polio vaccine have begun in Russia and are planned in Iran and GuineaBissau.

A specific vaccine for the coronavirus would be one that trains the immune system to target that virus specifically, and more than 125 vaccine candidates are under development around the world.

Repurposed vaccines, in contrast, use live but weakened viruses or bacteria to stimulate the innate immune system more broadly to fight pathogens, at least temporarily.

The first polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, an American, used “inactivated” virus — particles of killed virus. It had to be injected, an obstacle to immunization campaigns in poorer countries.

When that vaccine was widely introduced in 1955, Dr. Albert Sabin was testing a vaccine using live but attenuated poliovirus, which could be taken orally. But in the United States, with the Salk vaccine already in use, authorities were reluctant to take the perceived risk of conducting live-virus trials.

Sabin gave his three strains of attenuated virus to a married pair of virologists in the Soviet Union, Dr. Mikhail Chumakov, founder of a polio research institute that now bears his name, and

Voroshilova.

Mikhail Chumakov vaccinated himself, but a medicine intended primarily for children needed child test subjects, so he and Voroshilova gave it to their three sons and several nieces and nephews.

Their experiment enabled him to persuade a senior Soviet official, Anastas Mikoyan, to proceed with wider trials, eventually leading to the mass production of an oral polio vaccine used around the world. The United States began oral polio vaccinations in 1961 after it was proved safe in the Soviet Union.

“Somebody has to be the first,” Peter Chumakov said in an interview. “I was never angry. I think it was very good to have such a father, who is confident enough that what he is doing is right and is sure he will not harm his children.”

Something Voroshilova noticed decades ago has renewed interest in the oral vaccine.

A typical healthy child is host to a dozen or so respiratory viruses that cause little or no illness. But Voroshilova could not find any of them in children soon after they were immunized against polio.

A huge study in the Soviet Union of 320,000 people, from 1968 to 1975, overseen by Voroshilova, found reduced mortality from flu in people immunized with other vaccines, including the oral polio vaccine.

She won recognition in the Soviet Union for demonstrating a link between vaccinations and broad protection against viral diseases, likely by stimulating the immune system.

An image provided by Peter Chumakov, from left: Mikhail Chumakov, Peter Chumakov, Marina Voroshilova, Konstantin Chumakov and Ilia Chumakov at their home near Moscow in 1960.

14

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

George Floyd’s killing forces wider debate on France’s slave-trading past

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

A

t a bend in the river, a succession of stately stone buildings, each more imposing than the last, stretches along the left bank.

Their elegant 18th-century facades had helped Bordeaux, France, already famous for its wineries, become a UNESCO World Heritage site.

“This facade, it’s a monumental and extraordinary heritage — and a sort of stage metaphor,” said Laurent Védrine, director of the Museum of Aquitaine. “Let’s go look behind the stone facade: Where did this wealth come from?”

Bordeaux, unlike much of France, began digging into that question more than a decade ago. It found that its grand buildings had been financed, in part, by the slave trade. Slavery touched on its monuments and its architecture. So the city began to address the past, but instead of tearing down the telltales of its ugly history, it has put up plaques to acknowledge and explain it.

Other European cities with similar histories have preferred to remain silent. But the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis has now widened and invigorated the debate over Europe’s long, brutal and lucrative history in Africa, punctuated by the recent toppling of statues of colonial-era figures.

In France, a long history of slavery and colonialism has been eclipsed by a national narrative and self-identity as the revolutionary champion of universal human rights.

But France’s colonialist past is a subject as sensitive as slavery is in the United States. Behind the refined facade of much of Europe, the world’s most-visited tourist region, lies wealth that was generated by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the subsequent colonization of the African continent.

Many decades after most African nations gained independence, there has been no complete coming to terms with that history, either in Europe or in Africa. Caught in the silence are people of African origin in Europe, where enduring racism, near-hysterical fear over migration and the failure to integrate generations of immigrants cannot be separated from that unresolved past.

“It’s the inability to shed light on that past that maintains the racism and the impunity of the police, or the impunity of those who make decisions, in employment or in housing, based on physical criteria and deny the rights of French people who are Black or Arab,” said Karfa Diallo, the Senegalese-born founder of Mémoires et Partages, an organization that has pushed the city of Bordeaux to fully acknowledge its history.

“It’s never said as clearly as that, but that’s the heart of the matter.”

As researchers dug deeper into Bordeaux

The Place de la Bourse in Bordeaux, France, where carved African faces look down from grand stone buildings, June 18, 2020.

— past the sculpted African faces looking down from a building in the Place de la Bourse — they found logbooks, records and paintings, all showing that the French city in the interior, at a bend in the Garonne, had flourished because of commerce based on the enslavement of humans.

Local men had made fortunes sending ships to Africa, where the French bartered goods for people, who were then taken across the Atlantic to Caribbean colonies. There, they were sold and forced to labor on plantations, producing goods that were finally brought to Bordeaux’s port and sold in Europe.

In 2009, the Museum of Aquitaine established a permanent exhibition detailing Bordeaux’s role in France’s slavery-based commerce.

From 1672 to 1837, 180 shipowners in Bordeaux led 480 expeditions that transported as many as 150,000 Africans to France’s Caribbean colonies, making Bordeaux the most important French slave-trading port after Nantes.

The city government has physically acknowledged that history, starting in 2006 with a modest plaque on a dock along the river to commemorate the history of slavery. Over the years, the reminders have grown more prominent and moved closer to where people live. Last year, the statue of Modeste Testas, an enslaved woman bought by two Bordeaux brothers, was erected on the riverbank.

This month, the city installed plaques on five residential streets named after prominent local men who were involved in the trans-Atlantic

slave trade. One plaque, placed on the wall of a one-story house on Gramont Street, explained that Jacques-Barthélémy Gramont, a former mayor of Bordeaux, financed a slave-trading expedition in 1783 and two more in 1803.

Marik Fetouh, a deputy mayor, said that the city had always believed that the past must be remembered and explained, in contrast to a growing number of people pushing to tear down statues in Europe and the United States.

“Getting rid of statues won’t erase horrible crimes that have been committed,” Fetouh said.

“Not only do you not change history, but you also deprive yourself of ways of explaining it.”

But Diallo said that Bordeaux — and France — should do more, especially in light of the anger stirred by Floyd’s killing. Diallo said that while he found the possibility of financial reparations politically unrealistic, he believed the idea was morally just: When France abolished slavery in 1848, it compensated enslavers for their financial loss. Far short of that, he said, he’d like to see one street in the city renamed entirely as a “strong symbol.”

Fetouh said that changing street names makes residents angry and would make the population less open to look at the past. But around Europe there is less sentiment in favor of preserving the status quo.

In France, many protesters focused on Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the 17th-century statesman who is still celebrated for his lasting impact on France’s political economy but who was also

the author of the Code Noir, the 1685 decree regulating slavery in the colonies. On Tuesday, a protester splattered red paint on a statue of Colbert in front of the National Assembly and wrote “state Negrophobia” on its pedestal.

Jean-Marc Ayrault, a former prime minister who is now president of the Foundation for the Memory of Slavery, urged the government to remove Colbert’s name from important halls and buildings. The idea was quickly shot down, led

by President Emmanuel Macron, who said during a national address that France “will not erase any trace or name from its history. The republic will not take down any statues.”

But France — whose diplomatic power rests greatly on the influence it still exerts over its former African colonies — has struggled more than other European nations to come to terms with its imperial past.

Achille Mbembe, a Cameroonian expert on post-colonial history and France, said that those efforts were complicated by France’s selfunderstanding as a nation and as a proponent of universal values like equality and liberty.

“There aren’t that many countries in the world which believe profoundly that they are invested with a universal mission,” said Mbembe, who teaches at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. “The U.S. is one of them, and France is the other.

“It is the idea of a universal which is premised on the concept that there is one human race,” he added. “But the French confuse the horizon with the existing reality. There’s a huge gap.”

The gap was easy to ignore because slavetrading and colonialism were carried out well beyond France’s main territory in Europe, Mbembe said, adding, “It was always a kind of offshore enterprise.”

The enduring ties between France and its former colonies also continue to shape the perspective of Francophone Africans, generations after independence.

Poor, young African migrants keep risking their lives to cross the Sahara and the Mediterranean, homing in on France and its vague, though talismanic, pull.

The elite keep apartments in Paris and send their children to schools there.

Diallo, the Senegalese-born activist in Bordeaux, left Africa a quarter-century ago as a young man imbued with the words of Léopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire. In France, he built a life at the bend in the river, making its town his, too.

“The desire for Europe is stronger than the desire for Africa,” Diallo said. “Even in us, it’s not at all absent. We came to study here, and finally we stayed. We became French.”

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

15

For North Korea, blowing hot and cold is part of the strategy

By CHOE SANG-HUN

evidence that the country has decided to abandon its nuclear weapons. ne of North Korea’s favorite geopo“When such a shift comes, the world litical strategies has long been goes, ‘Wow!’” said Yun Duk-min, a former compared to dipping alternately in chancellor of the Korea National Diplomatic pools of scathingly hot and icy cold water Academy. “The world is so impressed that​ in a public bathhouse. just ​starting dialogue with the North feels ​Just a week ago, Kim Yo Jong, the like a major turnaround.” only sister and key aide of North Korea’s Kim’s decision on Wednesday​w ​ ill at leader, Kim Jong Un, threatened to k​ ill the least temporarily keep the latest tensions country’s agreement​ s​with South Korea from spinning out of control on the Korean that were intended to ease military tensions Peninsula. ​But it also showed that Kim was along the border. ​She called the South Ko- calibrating his m ​ oves as he sought to rerean president, Moon Jae-in, “disgusting” claim some of the domestic credibility and and “insane.” Then the North blew up the diplomatic leverage he had lost after his two joint inter-Korean liaison office, the first of years of diplomacy with Moon and Trump.

Kim returned from his second summit a series of actions that threatened to reverse a fragile détente on the Korean Peninsula. with Trump, held in Vietnam in February of On Wednesday, Kim Jong Un emerged last year, without winning a badly needed reas the good cop, overruling his military and prieve from international sanctions that he had suspending i​ts plans to d ​ eploy more troops​ promised to his people. Those sanctions have and resume military exercises along the devastated the North’s exports since late 2017.

Kim began this year by exhorting his world’s most heavily armed border. Hours later, South Korean border guards confirmed people to build a “self-reliant economy” that the North Korean military had dismant- impervious to international sanctions. At led loudspeakers installed on the border the same time, he tried to ease the pain of in recent days as part of its threat to revive sanctions by attracting more Chinese tourists propaganda broadcasts against the South. and encouraging illegal smuggling.

If the flip-flop seemed disorienting, But that plan sputtered amid the cothat was exactly the effect North Korea ronavirus epidemic, which has forced the intended. Over the decades, ​ alternating country to shut its borders.

“First and foremost, the economy is the between raising tensions and extending ​​ an olive branch​has been part of the North’s problem for Kim Jong Un,” said Park Wongon, a professor of international relations dog-eared playbook​. ​ In 2017, Kim conducted a series of​ in Handong Global University in South increasingly daring ​nuclear and long-range​ Korea. “As the impact of the prolonged ballistic m ​ issile tests​, driving his country to COVID-19 epidemic wore heavily on his the edge of war with the United States. Then people’s livelihoods, Kim Jong Un doesn’t ​ e must find he made a s​ udden s​ witch the next year to have a lot of time left” before h a giddy round of diplomacy with President a way out, Park said.

In the North’s playbook, domestic ​ Donald Trump​, as well as with Moon.

Kim’s grandfather Kim Il Sung, North trouble often calls for raising tensions with Korea’s founding president, proposed re- its outside enemies to win their concessions conciliation with South Korea even as he and also consolidate internal unity. prepared to invade the South to start the The North is widely believed to have 1950-53 Korean War. His father and prede- expedited its nuclear weapons development cessor, Kim Jong Il, discussed co-hosting the after it struggled under a devastating famine 1988 Summer Olympics with South Korea in the late 1990s. It has pushed its nuclear before North Korean agents planted bombs program as a deterrent against “American on a Korean Air Boeing 707 in 1987. The invasion,” as well as a tool to extract econoplane exploded near Myanmar, killing all mic and other concessions from Washington and its allies.

115 on board.

This year, the North’s first target was When the move is toward peace, the change of tack is so dramatic that North South Korea and Moon. North Korea has Korea’s external enemies often take the shift repeatedly accused Moon of being so itself as progress, even though there is no beholden to Washington’s policy of enfor-

O

A provided photo from the Korean Central News Agency shows the demolition of an inter-Korean liaison office building in Kaesong, North Korea, on Tuesday, June 16, 2020. cing sanctions that he has reneged on his promise to Kim to improve inter-Korean economic ties.

Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, took the lead in t​he attack against South Korea. But Kim stayed out of the​escalating standoff with the South, giving himself flexibility to change course.

“The brother and sister play ​​​ the good and bad cop​toward South Korea​,” said Lee Byong-chul, a North Korea expert at Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul.

Although North Korea has often sounded incorrigibly bellicose, it has proved​to be a shrewd s​trategist capable of judging when to throttle up the tensions and when to pull back on them.

After two South Korean soldiers were injured by land mines in 2015, the South​ accused the North of planting the devices near the soldiers’ front line guard post. In retaliation, South Korea resumed loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts along the border, bombarding North Korean soldiers with K-pop music and screeds against Kim. When North Korea fired at the loudspeakers, the South responded with artillery​​fire. As both sides raised their military alert level, ​it was ​the North ​that first ​proposed dialogue​, and it later expressed regret over the South Korean soldiers’ injury.

In 2018, a North Korean diplomat called Vice President Mike Pence​“stupid” and​ a “political dummy,” threatening to cancel a planned summit between Kim and Trump.

When Trump acted first​and called off the meeting, North Korea immediately issued​ another statement saying that Kim wanted to meet Trump “at any time.” Trump was happy to revive the summit​plan.

This month too, North Korea ​has been carefully calculating its maneuvers. Even when its military drew up action plans along the border, the state news media took pains to point out that they would need Kim’s “ratification.”

Kim suspended t​hose plans​during​a meeting of his Central Military Commission​ on Tuesday. The next day, the North Korean media said the meeting was “preliminary​.”

The language prompted some analysts to suspect that the commission could hold a regular meeting to have more discussions and potentially reverse course if needed.

“Now that he has succeeded in seizing the attention of Washington, Seoul and Beijing, Kim Jong Un thinks he can pause for a b ​ it to see how they respond,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea specialist at Dongguk University in Seoul. “By saying that he ‘suspended,’ not ​terminated, the action plans, he is still keeping the o ​ ption on the table.”

16

June 26-28, 2020

Palestinians in Jordan Valley fear annexation would choke off their villages

By ADAM RASGON

H

amdan Saeed rises at 5:30 each morning to sell hot coffee to Palestinian and Israeli motorists along Route 90, the main highway through the Jordan Valley, a resource-rich borderland in the occupied West Bank.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s push to annex the area has him worried that he could lose his livelihood if his tiny farming village is blocked off from the road.

“We have no idea what annexation would mean for us, because nobody is telling us anything,” Saeed, 49, a father of three who makes around $20 a day, said at his makeshift coffee stand on a recent blazing hot morning. “Who knows if I’ll be able to come here?”

Palestinians in the Jordan Valley have been left in the dark about how annexation would affect them. Many worry that it could block them from their farmlands, prevent them from getting to their jobs in Israeli settlements, and choke off their villages behind walls, fences and checkpoints.

Netanyahu has vowed to begin the process of annexing parts of the West Bank as soon as July 1, encouraged by the Trump administration’s proposal for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The unilateral annexation of occupied territory has been widely condemned by other countries as illegal.

While Netanyahu has not released his plan, he has promised to include the Jordan Valley, a 620-square-mile farming region that would give Israel a permanent eastern border abutting Jordan. Netanyahu considers the valley a nonnegotiable requirement for Israel’s security.

He has suggested that he would carve out Palestinian villages, which would “remain as Palestinian enclaves.”

Israel would not “apply sovereignty over them,” he said in an interview with an Israeli newspaper last month, but would retain “security control.”

Presumably the enclaves and their residents would be connected somehow to a larger Palestinian entity in the West Bank, but Netanyahu has not explained how such a system would work, and his

Jihad Abu al-Asal, the Palestinian Authority’s governor of Jericho and the Jordan Valley, at his office in Jericho. office declined to comment.

But Netanyahu’s pledge has fueled concerns among Palestinian residents that they would be confined to isolated islands.

“What he’s saying is we should be put in small birdcages,” said Hazem Abu Jish, 53, a convenience store owner in Furush Beit Dajan, a village in the northern Jordan Valley. “How can we live like that?

What if I need to go to the hospital in Jericho for an emergency? Will I no longer be able to drive there in a half-hour?”

Jihad Abu al-Asal, the Palestinian Authority’s governor of Jericho and the Jordan Valley, said that Netanyahu seemed to be willing to jeopardize Palestinian communities to advance annexation.

“He thinks we are like pawns,” alAsal said in an interview. “He thinks he can do whatever he wants with us to achieve his goals. What he wants to do is to formally institute an apartheid system.”

Netanyahu has said he would not annex the Jericho area, home to more than 40,000 Palestinians. A conceptual map in the Trump administration’s proposal leaves Jericho under Palestinian control, as does a map Netanyahu proposed when he first promised to annex

the valley last fall.

The valley, which Israel has controlled since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, comprises approximately a quarter of the West Bank and lies hundreds of feet below sea level. Outside the Jericho region, it is inhabited by about 12,000 Palestinians and 12,500 Israeli settlers.

Israeli authorities already prohibit Palestinians from building on most of the territory and deny them access to large parts of it, over half of which has been declared a closed military zone, according to Peace Now, an anti-settlements group.

Palestinian villages in the Jordan Valley regularly face power outages and receive far smaller allocations of water than neighboring settlers, according to several Israeli nongovernmental organizations.

“They give more water to the fruits and vegetables than the people,” said Ibrahim Obayat, mayor of the village of Fasayil, referring to Israeli farms in the area.

Israeli officials say they are not to blame for shortages of water and electricity.

Danny Tirza, a former Defense Ministry official who worked on zoning issues

in the West Bank, said the local utility, the Jerusalem District Electricity Co., has not renovated its infrastructure and does not purchase sufficient electricity from Israel to cover Palestinian demand there.

He blamed the Palestinian Authority for the water shortage, saying it has refused to work with Israel to advance projects that would benefit both Palestinians and settlers. The Palestinians, alongside most of the international community, consider the Israeli settlements to be illegal.

Whoever is at fault, farmers in the valley fear that annexation will only make matters worse.

Abdo Moussa, 29, a farmer from Al Jiftilik, said Israeli authorities have squeezed Palestinian communities in the area for decades by cutting off their access to land and providing inadequate services.

“It’s always been that Israel wants the land but not the people,” said Abdo Moussa, 29, a farmer from Al Jiftilik.

“They’ve tried encouraging us to leave our land by refusing to grant building permits and barely giving us enough water and electricity. I’m not sure the situation can get much worse, but I’m afraid they’ll find a way to do so.”

Shaul Arieli, a former Israeli negotiator who specializes in maps and borders, said that he did not expect Israel to implement any annexation immediately but that authorities could eventually decide to erect a barrier separating the Palestinian enclaves from the rest of the valley.

Despite the overwhelming pessimism about the prospect of annexation, some Palestinians in the area did not rule out the possibility that it might benefit them.

Raed Bani Fadal, 35, a worker at an Israeli date plant in the Netiv Hagdud settlement, said annexation might open the door to permanent residency, the status afforded to Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem. He sees that as an improvement over the current military occupation.

“It might mean they have to pay us higher wages and allow greater freedom of movement,” he said. “If I’m right, I hope they annex right away.”

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

United StateS diStrict coUrt For the diStrict oF PUerto rico

In re: The FInancIal OversIghT and ManageMenT BOard FOr PuerTO rIcO, as representative of The cOMMOnWealTh OF PuerTO rIcO, et al., debtor.1 In re: The FInancIal OversIghT and ManageMenT BOard FOr PuerTO rIcO, as representative of The eMPlOyees reTIreMenT sysTeM OF The gOvernMenT OF The cOMMOnWealTh OF PuerTO rIcO. debtor.

PrOMesa Title III case no. 17 BK 3283-lTs (Jointly administered) re: ecF nos. 10839, 12438, 13020

PrOMesa Title III case no. 17 BK 3566-lTs (Jointly administered) re: ecF nos. 810, 837, 888

notice oF eXtended deadLine For SUBMittinG inForMation ForMS For retireMent BeneFiciarieS oF the coMMonWeaLth oF PUerto rico and the eMPLoYeeS retireMent SYSteM oF the GoVernMent oF the coMMonWeaLth oF PUerto rico

DEADLINE EXTENSION to aLL ParticiPantS oF the eMPLoYeeS retireMent SYSteM For the GoVernMent oF the coMMonWeaLth oF PUerto rico (“erS”), the JUdiciarY retireMent SYSteM For the coMMonWeaLth oF PUerto rico (“JrS”), and the PUerto rico teacher’S retireMent SYSteM (“trS”), PLeaSe taKe notice oF the FoLLoWinG: The Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto rico (the “Oversight Board”) has filed the Amended Title III Joint Plan of Adjustment of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, et al. [case no. 17-bk-3283, ecF no. 11946] (as amended or modified from time to time and including all exhibits thereto, the “Plan”) and a related disclosure statement [case no. 17-bk-3283, ecF no. 11947] (as amended or modified from time to time and including all exhibits thereto, the “disclosure statement”) pursuant to which the commonwealth of Puerto rico (the “commonwealth”) (together with ers, the “debtors”) and the Puerto rico Public Buildings authority (“PBa”) seek to adjust their debts under Title III of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act.2 The Oversight Board is soliciting certain information from certain holders of retirement benefits claims (“employee claimants”)3 for whom the debtors have incomplete or outdated information.

You may be a current or former participant of erS, JrS, or trS, and you may be required to submit a form with information the debtors are currently missing (the “information Form”), including: (a) name; (b) mailing address; (c) email address; (d) date of birth; (e) gender; (f) social security number4; and (g) employment information (collectively, the “requested Information”). The debtors request that, if at all possible, you submit your Information Form electronically on the website hosted by the debtors’ claims and solicitation agent, Prime clerk llc (the “claims agent”), at https://cases.primeclerk.com/PrretirementBenefit/ePOc-Index. the deadline to file an information Form has been extended to July 29, 2020 at 4:00 p.m. (atlantic time). if you have already filed an information Form, no further action is required unless directed by court order, notice, or otherwise.

Key Points • In a Title III case under PROMESA, certain retirement beneficiaries of the Commonwealth and ERS may be entitled to vote on any plan of adjustment filed by the commonwealth and ers. In order for the debtors to reduce the number of solicitation packages returned undeliverable, and ensure the claim amounts for such beneficiaries are accurately calculated, the debtors are requesting that certain claimants submit an Information Form containing the requested Information. This document explains how to submit Information Forms.

• A plan of adjustment is a document that explains how the Debtors propose to pay the amounts they owe to their creditors. This plan is available for creditors to review at https://cases.primeclerk.com/puertorico/.

• if you are required to submit an information Form, you must do so by July 29, 2020 at 4:00 p.m., atlantic Standard time.

• Information Forms may be submitted by (a) electronically submitting on the Claims Agent’s website at https://cases.primeclerk.com/ PrretirementBenefit/ePOc-Index, or (b) mail or hand delivery to the following addresses5: ◦ Puerto rico retirement Benefit Information Processing center, c/o Prime clerk, llc, 850 Third avenue, suite 412, Brooklyn, ny 11232; ◦ citi Towers, 250 Ponce de león ave., suite 503, hato rey, san Juan, Pr 00918; ◦ 151 calle de san Francisco, 2nd Floor, san Juan, Pr 00901; ◦ Bianca convention center, carr 2 KM 143, Floor 1, añasco, Pr 00610; ◦ Oceana huB center, 2 calle acerina, caguas, Pr 00725; ◦ Joe’s Blue, Mcs Building, 880 Tito castro avenue, 1st Floor, Ponce, Pr 00716-4732.

• the debtors request that, if at all possible, you submit your information Form electronically on the claims agent’s website.

• PLEASE NOTE THAT, in light of the Governor’s executive order issued on May 21, 2020, addressing the situation regarding COVID-19, the collection centers at which employee claimants may file Information Forms will not open prior to June 15, 2020. Please call (844) 822-9231 before proceeding to one of these locations to confirm whether the location is open. employee claimants are encouraged to file Information Forms electronically or by mail. after reading this notice, if you require additional information, you may contact the claims agent at (844) 822-9231 (toll free for u.s. and Puerto rico) or (646) 486-7944 (for international callers), available 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (atlantic standard Time) (spanish available), or by email at puertoricoinfo@primeclerk.com. Please note that the people answering the phone number are not able to provide legal advice. If you have questions about your legal rights, including whether you need to file a claim, you should talk to an attorney.

1 The debtors in these Title III cases, along with each debtor’s respective Title III case number and the last four (4) digits of each debtor’s federal tax identification number, as applicable, are the (i) commonwealth of Puerto rico (Bankruptcy case no. 17-BK-3283-lTs) (last Four digits of Federal Tax Id: 3481); (ii) Puerto rico sales Tax Financing corporation (“cOFIna”) (Bankruptcy case no. 17-BK-3284-lTs) (last Four digits of Federal Tax Id: 8474); (iii) Puerto rico highways and Transportation authority (“hTa”) (Bankruptcy case no. 17-BK-3567-lTs) (last Four digits of Federal Tax Id: 3808); (iv) employees retirement system of the government of the commonwealth of Puerto rico (“ers”) (Bankruptcy case no. 17-BK-3566-lTs) (last Four digits of Federal Tax Id: 9686); (v) Puerto rico electric Power authority (“PrePa”) (Bankruptcy case no. 17-BK-4780-lTs) (last Four digits of Federal Tax Id: 3747); and (vi) Puerto rico Public Buildings authority (“PBa”) (Bankruptcy case no. 19-BK-5523-lTs) (last Four digits of Federal Tax Id: 3801) (Title III case numbers are listed as Bankruptcy case numbers due to software limitations).

2 PrOMesa is codified at 48 u.s.c. §§ 2101–2241. The class number containing the retirement benefits claims may be changed therein.

3 In the Plan filed at case no. 17-bk-3283, ecF no. 8765, class 25 constitutes the claims of employee claimants. The class number(s) constituting the claims of employee claimants may change in any subsequently filed Plan.

4 The debtors seek to obtain the last four digits of claimants’ social security numbers in order to match claimants with their employee records.

5 The debtors reserve the right to amend the locations accepting Information Forms by hand delivery.

17

United StateS diStrict coUrt For the diStrict oF PUerto rico

In re: The FInancIal OversIghT and ManageMenT BOard FOr PuerTO rIcO, as representative of The cOMMOnWealTh OF PuerTO rIcO, et al., debtors.1 In re: The FInancIal OversIghT and ManageMenT BOard FOr PuerTO rIcO, as representative of The PuerTO rIcO PuBlIc BuIldIngs auThOrITy, debtors.

PrOMesa Title III no. 17 BK 3283-lTs (Jointly administered) PrOMesa Title III no. 17 BK 5523-lTs (Jointly administered) re: ecF nos. 55, 56, 57, 79

notice oF eXtended deadLineS For FiLinG ProoFS oF cLaiM

DEADLINE EXTENSION to aLL creditorS oF the deBtorS, and to other PartieS in intereSt, PLeaSe taKe notice oF the FoLLoWinG: On september 27, 2019, the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto rico (the “Oversight Board”) filed a voluntary petition under section 304(a) of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (“PrOMesa”),2 initiating a Title III case under PrOMesa (a “Title III case”) for the Puerto rico Public Buildings authority (“PBa”), Federal Tax Id no. 3801, case no. 19 BK 5523. You may be a creditor of PBa, and you may be required to file a proof of claim (“Proof of claim”). the deadline to file a proof of claim has been extended to July 29, 2020 at 4:00 p.m. (atlantic time). if you have already filed a Proof of claim, no further action is required unless directed by court order, notice, or otherwise.

Key Points • In a Title III proceeding under PROMESA, creditors may be required to file claim forms stating the amount of money owed to them as of the day the Title III proceeding was filed. This document explains how to file claims.

• Many creditors in the title iii cases are not required to file a claim. For more information, please refer to the claims agent’s website at https://cases.primeclerk.com/puertorico/, call the claims agent at (844) 822-9231 (toll free for u.s. and Puerto rico) or (646) 486-7944 (for international callers), available 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (atlantic standard Time) (spanish available), or email at puertoricoinfo@primeclerk.com.

• if you are not required to file a claim, you do not need to complete and return a claim form, and you will still keep your rights to vote on a plan of adjustment and receive payments under the plan. a plan of adjustment is a document that explains how a debtor proposes to pay the amounts it owes to its creditors. Once filed, this plan will be available for creditors to review. Who gets to vote on the plan will be determined at a later date. The amount you may receive under the plan also will be determined later.

• if you are required to file a claim against any of the debtors, the deadline to do so has been extended to July 29, 2020 at 4:00 p.m., atlantic Standard time. To obtain a form that you may use to file your claim, refer to the contact information below.

• Claims may be filed: ◦ electronically by filing on the claims agent’s website at https://cases.primeclerk.com/puertorico/ePOc-Index, ◦ by first class mail, at the following address: commonwealth of Puerto rico, claims Processing center, c/o Prime clerk, llc, 850 Third avenue, suite 412, Brooklyn, ny 11232, ◦ by overnight courier, at the following address: commonwealth of Puerto rico, claims Processing center, c/o Prime clerk, llc, 850 Third avenue, suite 412, Brooklyn, ny 11232, or ◦ by hand delivery, at any of the following locations: ▪ commonwealth of Puerto rico, claims Processing center, c/o Prime clerk, llc, 850 Third avenue, suite 412, Brooklyn, ny 11232 ▪ citi Towers, 250 Ponce de león ave., suite 503, hato rey, san Juan, Pr 00918; ▪ 151 calle de san Francisco, 2nd Floor, san Juan, Pr 00901; ▪ Bianca convention center, carr 2 KM 143, Floor 1, añasco, Pr 00610; ▪ Oceana huB center, 2 calle acerina, caguas, Pr 00725; ▪ Joe’s Blue, Mcs Building, 880 Tito castro avenue, 1st Floor, Ponce, Pr 00716-4732.3 • PLEASE NOTE THAT, in light of the Governor’s May 21, 2020 executive order addressing the situation regarding COVID-19, the collection centers at which claimants may file proofs of claim by hand delivery will not open prior to June 15, 2020. Please call (844) 822-9231 before proceeding to one of these locations to confirm whether the location is open. claimants are encouraged to file proofs of claim electronically or by mail. after reading this notice, if you require additional information, you may contact the claims agent at (844) 822-9231 (toll free for u.s. and Puerto rico) or (646) 486-7944 (for international callers), available 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (atlantic standard Time) (spanish available), or by email at puertoricoinfo@primeclerk.com. Please note that the people answering the phone number are not able to provide legal advice. If you have questions about your legal rights, including whether you need to file a claim, you should talk to an attorney.

1 The debtors in these Title III cases, along with each debtor’s respective Title III case number and the last four (4) digits of each debtor’s federal tax identification number, as applicable, are the (i) commonwealth of Puerto rico (the “commonwealth”) (Bankruptcy case no. 17 BK 3283-lTs) (last Four digits of Federal Tax Id: 3481); (ii) Puerto rico sales Tax Financing corporation (“cOFIna”) (Bankruptcy case no. 17 BK 3284-lTs) (last Four digits of Federal Tax Id: 8474); (iii) Puerto rico highways and Transportation authority (“hTa”) (Bankruptcy case no. 17 BK 3567-lTs) (last Four digits of Federal Tax Id: 3808); (iv) employees retirement system of the government of the commonwealth of Puerto rico (“ers”) (Bankruptcy case no. 17 BK 3566-lTs) (last Four digits of Federal Tax Id: 9686); (v) Puerto rico electric Power authority (“PrePa”) (Bankruptcy case no. 17 BK 4780-lTs) (last Four digits of Federal Tax Id: 3747); and (vi) Puerto rico Public Buildings authority (“PBa”, and together with the commonwealth, cOFIna, hTa, ers, and PrePa, the “debtors”) (Bankruptcy case no. 19-BK-5523-lTs) (last Four digits of Federal Tax Id: 3801) (Title III case numbers are listed as Bankruptcy case numbers due to software limitations).

2 PrOMesa is codified at 48 u.s.c. §§ 2101-2241.

3 PBa reserves the right to amend the locations accepting proofs of claim by hand delivery.

18

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Trump is feeding America’s Coronavirus nightmare

By NICHOLAS KRISTOF

P

resident Donald Trump says the coronavirus is “fading away” and pats himself on the back for “a great job on CoronaVirus” that saved “millions of U.S. lives.”

“It’s going away,” Trump said Tuesday at a packed megachurch in Phoenix where few people wore masks.

That’s what delusion sounds like. We need a Winston Churchill to lead our nation against a deadly challenge; instead, we have a president who helps an enemy virus infiltrate our churches and homes.

Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt worked to deceive the enemy; Trump is trying to deceive us.

For a reality check, my colleague Nathaniel Lash has prepared a map showing how much of America is trending in the wrong direction.

A few glimpses of the challenge: — Texas, California, Arizona and four other states reported record numbers of cases this week.

— Some 27 states, by the count of the New York Times tracker, are reporting increasing numbers of new cases. Ten states and Washington, D.C., are reporting declining numbers, with the rest holding steady.

— Arizona, where Trump held his rally, now has the highest number of new cases per day per million population, and the highest share of positive test results.

Black Lives Matter protests do not seem to have spread the virus much, perhaps because they were held outside and many participants wore masks. The virus is spreading most quickly in Trump Country in the South and Southwest and in both red and blue states in the West.

“The next couple of weeks are going to be critical in our ability to address those surges that we’re seeing in Florida, in Texas, in Arizona and other states,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told a congressional hearing Tuesday.

The rest of the world is watching aghast.

“What’s happened in the U.S. is utterly tragic and seems like a consequence of appalling leadership and incompetent government,” said Devi Sridhar, an American who is a professor of global health at the University of Edinburgh. “Those of us abroad are watching in horror, disbelief and pity.

“This is a warning to other countries of the dangers of the virus going out of control,” she said.

The European Union is even preparing to bar American visitors because of the United States’ failure to manage the coronavirus properly. Visitors

from countries that have controlled the virus better, like Vietnam, Cuba and Uganda, will be welcome.

That’s humiliating for the United States, but it should be a wake-up call as well. Europe is right to fear American visitors. The United States hasn’t brought down case numbers the way European countries have and seems to simply accept a vast continuing toll of deaths.

Tracking the new COVID-19 cases in the European Union versus the United States, with Canada and Australia thrown in for good measure, yields an interesting result.

The United States is now reporting new cases at nine times the rate of Europe, per million people.

In the New York region, memories are fresh, people are scared, and the virus is under control. But in much of the rest of the country, the virus initially seemed remote, and people relaxed in ways that are now leading to a crisis.

I passed through Phoenix twice last month to report on COVID-19 cases in the Navajo Nation, and I was horrified then by how few Arizonans wore masks. Now we see the consequences.

Deaths are still below their peaks because for now it’s disproportionately younger people getting sick. That may change.

“I wonder how many fathers got a Father’s Day present from their kids — this virus,” reflected Michael T. Osterholm, a University of Minnesota epidemiologist.

While some epidemiologists expect a second wave to arrive this fall, Osterholm foresees more of a relentless toll of sickness and death. He anticipates spikes in this city or that — he fears Houston may become the next New York — but not much of a reprieve.

“I think it’s going to keep going on,” he told me. But he also emphasizes that even the experts don’t really understand the virus or know what to

anticipate.

His advice: Be humble and be bold, and make rigorous preparations.

We don’t know for sure, but the post-peak experience from New York and Europe as well as from street protests, offers some guidance: If people wear masks, distance as much as possible and avoid mixing indoors, it just might be possible to keep the virus in check.

Instead, our president refuses to wear a mask and brings people together indoors to cheer his newest proposed strategy, which in his words is “slow the testing down.” After aides rushed to say he was joking, Trump denied that, saying, “I don’t kid.” He amplified in a tweet: “With smaller testing, we would show fewer cases!”

Yes, and by ending cancer screenings, we would reduce cancer rates. By locking hospital doors, we would reduce hospitalizations. And if we stopped issuing death certificates, Americans would achieve immortality!

That’s the kind of strategizing that has led the United States, with 4% of the world’s population, to experience one-quarter of the deaths worldwide from the coronavirus — and instead of “fading away,” it’s surging.

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The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

19

Márquez Lebrón advierte sobre destrucción de WIPR tras aprobación de presupuesto de JSF Por THE STAR l representante del Partido Independentista E Puertorriqueño (PIP), Denis Márquez Lebrón, advirtió que con la aprobación del presupuesto

impuesto por la Junta de Supervisión Fiscal, comenzó el desmantelamiento y destrucción de la Corporación de Puerto Rico para la Difusión Pública, WIPR “La mayoría legislativa del PNP en la Cámara no solo entregó la confección del presupuesto del país a la JSF sino que, además, con dicha acción se han convertido en cómplices verdugos de WIPR, dando inicio a su destrucción privatizándola”.

Márquez Lebrón precisó, que el presupuesto de la JSF aprobado por la Cámara condiciona que la asignación de $7.5 millones a WIPR estará sujeta a que se apruebe el proyecto 2564 que pretende eliminar la corporación pública y convertirla en un ente privado porque permite la transferencia de los activos a una entidad no gubernamental (organización sin fines de lucro) y cuya transición deberá comenzar no más tarde del 1 de julio de 2021.

“Mediante el proyecto 2564 la organización sin fines de lucro podrá entonces ‘vender, alqui-

lar, gravar, enajenar o de cualquier otra forma, disponer de los activos que conforme a la ley venga en titularidad. Una vez más, la respuesta del Gobierno ante la crisis fiscal y administrativa, es la privatización y la entrega de los activos del país. En esta ocasión, en perjuicio de artistas, productores, técnicos y una diversidad de traba-

jadores relacionados al mundo de las comunicaciones”, expresó el líder independentista.

Por último, Márquez Lebrón insistió en la urgente necesidad de proteger el patrimonio nacional y cultural del país y reiteró su compromiso de continuar alerta ante los intentos de mutilar los mismos.

Laboratorios Clínicos denuncian prácticas de aseguradoras en detrimento de pacientes y proveedores Por THE STAR a Asociación de Laboratorios Clínicos (ALC) L denunció este jueves, que varios planes médicos se niegan a ofrecer cobertura a aquellos

pacientes que deciden hacerse las dos pruebas de COVID-19 -molecular y serológica -para corroborar que hayan contraído el virus y que las tarifas que pagan por realizar las mismas están por debajo de las establecidas durante la crisis de salud que afecta la isla, entre otras prácticas cuestionables que afectan los esfuerzos para detener el alza de casos con esta condición, según informó el presidente de la entidad, Juan Rexach.

El titular de la Asociación indicó, además, que a dichas actuaciones se suma el hecho de que algunos planes se niegan a pagar a los laboratorios por la toma de muestra de las pruebas de coronavirus independientemente de que vayan con una orden médica.

“Estas prácticas cobran mayor relevancia en momentos en que el País inicia su fase de reapertura laboral y muchos patronos están enviando a sus empleados a realizarse las pruebas” enfatizó Rexach en comunicación escrita.

Según el presidente de ALC desde el pasado año “hemos estado denunciando al gobierno que las tarifas pagadas por las aseguradoras para unas 150 pruebas no cubren los costos mínimos En un país como el nuestro con una gran población de

adultos mayores, resulta imperativo que se evalúen los mecanismos para evitar que se niegue un acceso equitativo a los servicios de salud. Si un proveedor lleva el reclamo a la Oficina del Comisionado de Seguros, cuyo proceso burocrático desalienta la radicación de las mismas, se expone a represalias con la cancelación de su contrato por parte de la aseguradora”.

El problema se agudiza por el incumplimiento de algunas aseguradoras con la Ley 90 de 2019, que exige que el pago de dichas tarifas no sea menor al establecido por los Centros de Servicios Medicare y Medicaid (CMS, por sus siglas en inglés). Cuatro de las aseguradoras Advantage más conocidas en el País, el pasado año decidieron acudir al Tribunal Federal para impugnar esta ley.

“Ello, sin importar los efectos que esto pueda tener en miles de pacientes y los servicios que reciben de sus proveedores de salud”, enfatizó el galeno quien añadió que todo esto ocurre a pesar de que durante la pandemia, la reducción en la utilización de servicios médicos por parte de los pacientes representó un ahorro para las aseguradoras.

Según Rexach, el 71 por ciento de las decisiones clínicas se basa en los resultados de pruebas de laboratorios, por lo que es indispensable que sean rápidos y precisos.

“La implementación del plan Vital ha sido causante de una reducción de un 30 por ciento

a las tarifas pagadas en el 2017 a pesar de que los costos operacionales han ido en constante aumento. Estas reducciones han obligado a los laboratorios a tomar medidas que afectan sus servicios lo cual se ha visto agudizado durante la pandemia en que han visto multiplicarse sus gastos operacionales en la compra de equipo protector y una merma constante de pacientes para realizarse pruebas excepto las de COVID-19”, indicó Rexach.

Como resultado de esta situación, algunos laboratorios han tenido que reducir sus horas de operación, reducir el personal y detener o reducir los servicios al hogar.

20

June 26-28, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

George R. R. Martin is typing

George R. R. Martin at the Season 4 premiere of “Game of Thrones” in Manhattan.

By CHOIRE SICHA and ALAN YUHAS

W

inter may finally be on its way to Westeros. Eventually. Or not.

But all that fans of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” the sweeping fantasy series that led to the HBO hit show “Game of Thrones,” have to go on is the word of George R. R. Martin, its creator.

Martin, who is 71 and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has for years blown past deadlines to deliver the final manuscript for “The Winds of Winter,” the sixth book in the series, which began

publishing in 1996. On Wednesday, he tweeted that “the enforced isolation” of life during a pandemic was helping him to make “steady progress” on the book.

He did not say when readers might get a look at it. “I finished a new chapter yesterday, another one three days ago, another one the previous week,” he wrote in a Tuesday update to his blog that was shared with the tweet. “But no, this does not mean that the book will be finished tomorrow or published next week. It’s going to be a huge book, and I still have a long way to go.”

He also lamented that he had been

forced to cancel plans to visit New Zealand, but said there was “definitely a silver lining in that cloud.”

“The last thing I need right now is a long interruption that might cost me all the momentum I have built up,” he wrote. “I can always visit Wellington next year, when I hope that both Covid-19 and THE WINDS OF WINTER will be done.”

That was the only clue for his publication plans. He urged fans not to “give any credence to any of the click-bait websites that like to parse every word of my posts,” although fans of the series are well known for doing that on their own.

David Moench, Martin’s representative at Random House, declined to answer questions about the timing of the next book.

“George Martin is not available for an interview, as he is indeed focused on writing THE WINDS OF WINTER,” he said. “Random House will publish that book once it is finished, whenever that may be.”

On Reddit, fans at the “A Song of Ice and Fire” subreddit responded to the announcement with a mixture of despair, excitement and plot suggestions. “This is not great news, it hardly even qualifies as news,” one contributor wrote. “I hate to be negative but the only posts I want to see are about an imminent release,” another wrote.

Hungry fans of the written series

have gathered at the subreddit for years, collectively sharing their hopes and frustrations for the series, noting each blog update and dissecting every word from the author in an attempt to find just one more bread crumb about the upcoming book. Martin also assured readers that he was healthy “for an out-of-shape guy of 71,” gave a few author recommendations — Stephen King, Emily St. John Mandel — and said he was still involved with the slow production of “The House of the Dragon,” HBO’s follow-up to “Game of Thrones.”

“A Dance With Dragons,” the most recent volume in the series, was published in 2011. The HBO adaptation began airing at nearly the same time, stretched on for eight years, and then lapped Martin’s production of plot.

While that show soared to audience heights, regularly breaking HBO audience records, it ended in critical defeat for its creators.

Martin has declined interview requests from The New York Times this year, and his team is protective of his writing time. He did find time in recent months to buy a railroad with his friends.

(He also owns a cinema in Santa Fe.) With a possible delivery date of 2021, that would make the unfolding of the books a three-decade process.

Except “The Winds of Winter” is not the end of this story. There’s meant to be one more.

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

21

Jazz is built for protests. Jon Batiste is taking it to the streets.

By ALAN SCHERSTUHL

J

on Batiste, the jazz pianist and “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” bandleader, has spent the last three weekends marching in the streets of New York, leading musicians and protesters through hymns and songs like “We Shall Overcome” and “Down by the Riverside.” Those without a horn or drum sing and, at Batiste’s exhortation, say their names: George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. And many others.

On June 12, however, Batiste opened his protest concert, part of a series called “We Are,” seated at an upright piano in front of Barclays Center in Brooklyn, wearing a mask and bright-blue protective gloves. Unaccompanied, surrounded by hundreds of silent protesters, he dug deep into a song that he says demands reinvention: “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“We all know that Francis Scott Key owned slaves,” Batiste said of the song’s lyricist in a Zoom interview last week. In Batiste’s hands, the national anthem seethes, mourns and aspires, drawing on the rollicking stride piano of Fats Waller and the volcanic eruptions of Art Tatum.

“The way that Jimi Hendrix took the song, the way that Marvin Gaye or Whitney took it — that tradition is what I am thinking of when I play it,” Batiste, 33, added.

“The diaspora that they infused into it is a response to the toxic ideologies that are embedded in the song and thus in the culture.”

The history of jazz is in many ways a history of protest, of celebrating blackness and insisting on individual freedom. Composer and bass player William Parker, who has taken free jazz from community centers to Town Hall, traces this spirit to works like Duke Ellington’s 1943 “Black, Brown and Beige” to later suites by Max Roach and Sonny Rollins, and the free jazz and loft jazz movements of the 1960s and ’70s.

Then came the ’80s, when “everybody went to sleep thinking that we had accomplished something, but all we really got were the leftovers,” Parker said in a Zoom interview.

Artists like Parker, of course, have performed and recorded revolution-minded “fire music” through the 1980s and up to the present, and the last decade has seen a resurgence in political jazz music, especially from the downtown, avant-garde and

Batiste, the jazz pianist and “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” bandleader, has spent the last three weekends marching in the streets of New York, leading musicians and protesters through hymns and songs like “We Shall Overcome” and “Down by the Riverside.”

Brooklyn scenes.

It’s certainly rare, though, to see a jazz musician with a household name and a national platform like Batiste inviting thousands into the streets. And the pianist has the support of Colbert, who has carved out time on his broadcast to discuss his musical director’s activism.

“In the present darkness that constitutes so much of the national conversation, Jon, by his example and his spirit, gives me hope I might do my job and maintain my own humanity,” Colbert said in an email. “I believe long after no one knows who I am, the name Jon Batiste will be spoken with admiration. I’m grateful to know him.”

A genre-crossing virtuoso and crowdpleaser, Batiste is particularly suited for a moment of protest in the streets: He’s from New Orleans, where the city’s famed Second Line marches have built a tradition of “catharsis and release,” he said, in which music lifts anguish or outrage toward a collective joy. He grew up surrounded by musical relatives and draws special inspiration from his grandfather, the president of a New Orleans postal workers union, who marched and organized for his workers.

“Jon is walking in that lineage, and not just musically,” said Brian Blade, a drummer and composer with his own

strong New Orleans connection. “It’s in the essence of our feet on the ground, moving forward, gathering a movement through example.”

Batiste and his organizers are weighing the logistics of taking the “We Are” protests to cities across the United States in the coming months, focusing on a practical goal: voter registration and the exposure of voter suppression.

“There are three candidates that we’re dealing with,” Batiste said. “Donald Trump, Joe Biden and the candidate of apathy.

Apathy’s insidious. It comes from having a weight on our collective shoulders for centuries that has made us feel that we don’t matter, that we’re not seen and that our vote doesn’t count.”

Like many of the city’s jazz players, Caroline Davis, a saxophonist and composer, has protested at several Brooklyn and Manhattan rallies in recent weeks. “It’s inspiring to be with people who are in this for the long haul,” she said, after marching with Batiste on June 6, the first time she’s gotten to play music with colleagues in person since March.

Davis co-teaches a course in jazz and gender at the New School and feels a responsibility to honor jazz’s history of protest. “I feel that, as Nina Simone said,

it’s the artist’s job to reference the time in which we live,” she said.

Parker has dedicated his career to nurturing that activist spirit. He has marched dozens of times since 2016 with the Artists for a Free World marching band, a loose collective organized by Arts for Art, the nonprofit organization that hosts the annual Vision Festival and is presenting Zoom concerts and salons.

“I’ve been talking for the last, oh, 40 years or so about how every once in a while a window opens up and things can happen,” Parker, 68, said. “But we have to have numbers, we have to be persistent, and we have to really lay it out in the consciousness of people.”

Last week, on Bandcamp he released the searing and mournful “Baldwin,” a track from a coming 10-disc box set of new material dedicated to “those who want to eliminate hate, racism, sexism, greed and lies.”

“Music is a wake-up call,” Parker said. “After the protest, you listen to it and it helps keep you awake. Because the problem is not to wake up — it’s not to go back to sleep.”

Batiste believes it’s his responsibility to use his platform to keep the crowds awake. That platform is also expanding.

Batiste’s fingers will power the music in “Soul,” the first Pixar feature to center on a Black lead, slated for a Nov. 20 release.

He has maintained the kind of proudly unpredictable career common to 21st-century jazz musicians. In 2019 he released a pair of in-the-tradition Verve albums recorded at the Village Vanguard.

Since then he’s debuted a funk-favoring band of all-women collaborators on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts and improvised on an independent release, “Meditations,” with guitarist Cory Wong.

Despite his personal success, he remains focused on the inequality he’s committed to fighting. “Four hundred and one years of people and their voices being completely marginalized has led to systemic racism and sexism that has been perpetuated even in our triumphs,” he said. “The idea that we can have triumphs and also perpetuate toxic ideologies is a nuance that we have yet to explore in the public dialogue. But now there’s a chance for a real collective consciousness shifting.”

22

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

10 Reasons you should give riesling another look

By ERIC ASIMOV

N

o other wine has been the object of such devoted campaigning, proselytizing and ardor as riesling.

What has been the result of all that fervor? Yawns,

mostly.

According to Nielsen, retail sales of riesling in the United States have dropped over the last few years, though they shot upward over the first 2 1/2 months of the pandemic, outperforming sales of wine as a whole during that time.

Riesling seems to be one of those wines, like Loire reds, that do not seem to move consumers in the way wine writers assume and hope, no matter how impassioned the promise that it takes only one sip to become a convert.

Perhaps it’s confusion: Is riesling sweet? Is it dry? How can you tell?

The glory of riesling’s versatility is paradoxically both a strength and a commercial weakness. Its capacity to make complex, thrilling dry wines as well as luscious yet refreshing sweet wines is unmatched. But in a world that prefers simple messaging, riesling’s spectrum of possibilities may be confounding.

This is compounded by a general fear of sweet wines. For too long in the mid-20th century, riesling was associated with cheap, bland German sweet wines like Blue Nun and Black Tower.

People seem more accepting of dry riesling, which is the predominant style around the world, even in Germany.

Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to discern which rieslings are dry and which have some degree of sweetness.

German rieslings marked “trocken” are always dry, but not all dry German rieslings carry the designation. Some might be marked “grosses gewächs,” indicating a dry wine from a top site, unless it comes from the Rheingau region, where such a wine might be marked “erstes gewächs.” If in doubt, don’t hesitate to ask.

Austrian rieslings are almost always dry. Alsatian rieslings, unless they are late-harvest bottlings, ought to be dry. For a time around the beginning of the century, some were bottled with residual sugar and without designation, which could be a rude surprise. But this issue has largely been rectified in the last few years.

Australian rieslings tend to be dry unless marked otherwise. This is also true of U.S. rieslings, most of the time. But occasionally I am surprised. If you’re in doubt, it’s worth doublechecking with a retailer or sommelier.

Dry or sweet, riesling is among the most transparent of grapes, one that can be grown and produced around the world with distinctive results, assuming it has been planted in the right sort of place, ideally with a cool climate in rocky soils on a slope, the steeper the better.

I love rieslings year-round, but am particularly drawn to them in the spring and early summer, maybe because they are so good with seasonal dishes like asparagus, soft-shell crabs and wild salmon. Rieslings are light and refreshing, and German ones in particular, dry or sweet, are often delicate and low in alcohol, though I have come upon a few surprising bruisers.

In the interest of championing the beauty of riesling, here

Critics love it, consumers not so much. But the beauty of these wines requires stubborn advocacy because they are that good. Really. are 10 moderately priced bottles of dry riesling, roughly $20 to $45, from around the world.

Hermann J. Wiemer Seneca Lake Riesling Dry 2018; $19.99 Hermann J. Wiemer, an immigrant from the Mosel Valley, was one of the pioneering modern winemakers in the Finger Lakes and an early proponent of riesling there. Wiemer sold the estate in 2007 to Oskar Bynke and Fred Merwarth, who manages the vineyards and makes the wine. The Wiemer rieslings have always been more floral than mineral. Breathing in this wine is like inhaling a meadow full of flowers. It’s floral on the palate, too, with a touch of fruit and wet stones.

Dreissigacker Rheinhessen Riesling Trocken 2018; $19.99 I tried my first Dreissigacker riesling last year and was won over immediately. The winery’s excellent higher-end rieslings come from several limestone sites in Rheinhessen. This entry-level bottle is from vines grown on loess and loam on gentle slopes.

The wine, fermented and aged in stainless steel vats, is rich, fresh and balanced, with great acidity. It’s not particularly complex, but is full of pleasing citrus and mineral flavors. (Schatzi Wines, Milan, New York) Dautel Württemberg Riesling Trocken 2017; $21.96 Christian Dautel is part of a young vanguard that is bringing recognition to the Württemberg region in southwestern Germany. Dautel is better known for its red wines, which predominate in Württemberg, but this riesling is a beauty. It’s clear, pure, precise and energetic, with plenty of fruit and stony flavors. It’s made with minimal manipulation, from grapes grown on steep terraced slopes. (Skurnik Wines, New York) Stein Mosel Riesling Kabinett Trocken St. Aldegunder Himmelreich 2016; $26 Ulrich Stein’s wines are always fascinating. This one, from 75-year-old ungrafted vines, is no exception. It’s brisk and dry, complex, energetic and delicious, with lingering flavors of lime and wet stones. Stein favors steep slate vineyards, and has fought successfully to reclaim some that were abandoned because they were so difficult to work, leading one wine writer, David Schildknecht, to term him “more a David than a Don Quixote.” (Vom Boden, Brooklyn, New York)

Bründlmayer Kamptal Riesling Terrassen 2018; $26.99 Bründlmayer is one of the best estates in the Kamptal region of Austria, just west of Vienna. This entry-level bottle is a blend from younger vines grown at several different terraced sites. It’s easy to drink, maybe a touch austere in a good way, with aromas and flavors of pressed flowers, apricot and stones.

(Skurnik Wines) Heinrich Spindler Pfalz Riesling Trocken Musenhang 2017; $28.96 Many moderately priced rieslings can be extremely pleasant, but lack depth and substance. This is not one of them. It’s rich and deep, fresh and incisive, with electric acidity. The Musenhang vineyard is a cool site high on a slope in the foothills of the Haardt Mountains of southwestern Germany, where the vines are planted on limestone and sandstone. (Schatzi Wines) Koerner Clare Valley Watervale Riesling Gullyview Vineyard 2019; $29.99 Koerner is the vision of two Australian brothers, Damon and Jono Koerner, whose parents owned an old vineyard in Clare Valley, north of Adelaide. Instead of selling off the fruit as their parents had done, they used it to make wine. Now they get grapes from all over Clare and make a wide variety of wines, including this riesling. It’s fresh, with a gravelly texture and flavors that offer, as is the case with many Australian rieslings, the distinct impression of lime zest. (Little Peacock, New York) Emrich-Schönleber Nahe Riesling Trocken Mineral 2017; $34.99 This wine, a midrange offer from one of the Nahe region’s leading estates, is called Mineral for a reason. The aromas are floral and herbal, but on the palate it tastes like stone and citrus, with an almost salty tinge. It’s dry and lip-smacking, pure, clear and energetic. (Petit Pois/Sussex Wine Merchant, Moorestown, New Jersey) Keller Rheinhessen Riesling von der Fels 2018; $37.99 Julia and Klaus Peter Keller are among the leading lights of German wine. They make G-Max, one of Germany’s most coveted rieslings and a true cult wine, along with exceptional single-vineyard rieslings, spätburgunders, as pinot noir is known in German, and a host of wines from other grapes. Their entrylevel rieslings are excellent, but for my money the best value is Von der Fels, a rich, pure wine with chalky minerality and great clarity and focus. It’s wonderful now, and will be even better with a few years of aging. (Petit Pois/Sussex Wine Merchant) Weiser-Künstler Mosel Riesling Trocken Enkircher Steffensberg 2018; $44.99 This is a fascinating and unusual bone-dry expression of the Mosel Valley. Weiser-Künstler is a small, relatively young estate established by Konstantin Weiser and Alexandra Künstler in 2005. They have sought out small lots of riesling on ridiculously steep slopes. This bottle, from the Steffensberg vineyard, has an earthy breadth yet feels transparent, as if you are smelling and tasting the vineyard itself. This, too, will benefit from a few years of aging. (Vom Boden)

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 20200

23

NASA names headquarters after its first black female engineer, Mary Jackson

By ALLYSON WALLER

N

ASA announced Wednesday that it would name its Washington, D.C., headquarters after Mary Jackson, the organization’s first Black female engineer and a pivotal player in helping U.S. astronauts reach space.

Jim Bridenstine, the administrator of NASA, said the agency would continue to honor those whose histories have long been overlooked.

“Today, we proudly announce the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building,” Bridenstine said in a statement. “It appropriately sits on ‘Hidden Figures Way,’ a reminder that Mary is one of many incredible and talented professionals in NASA’s history who contributed to this agency’s success.”

Carolyn Lewis, Jackson’s daughter, said she felt honored to see NASA continue to celebrate her mother’s legacy.

“She was a scientist, humanitarian, wife, mother and trailblazer who paved the way for thousands of others to succeed, not only at NASA, but throughout this nation,” Lewis said in the statement.

Born in Hampton, Virginia, Jackson graduated from the Hampton Institute, now known as Hampton University, in 1942, after majoring in math and physical science.

In 1951, she began working at NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, in the then-segregated West Area Computing Unit of what is now the Langley Research Center.

She went on to work with NASA’s 4x4 supersonic pressure tunnel and became the agency’s first Black female engineer in 1958. She completed additional training and courses for her new role after petitioning the city of Hampton to allow her to learn with white students, taking University of Virginia night classes at a local high school.

Jackson retired from NASA in 1985. Aside from her professional accomplishments, she was known

for her dedication to elevating women in scientific fields. She died in 2005.

Her contributions, along with the work of NASA mathematicians Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan, were highlighted in the 2016 film “Hidden Figures,” inspired by a book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly. The film, in which Jackson was portrayed by Janelle Monáe, was nominated for three Oscars.

Since the women’s stories have been brought to a wider audience, NASA has taken steps to make sure their names — and contributions — remain known.

Last year, NASA renamed its Independent Verification and Validation Facility in Fairmont, West Virginia, after Johnson, just days before her death; in 2017, the agency named a research facility in her honor. In June 2019, NASA renamed the street in front of its headquarters Hidden Figures Way. “NASA facilities across the country are named after people who dedicated their lives to push the frontiers of the aerospace industry,” Bridenstine said.

“The nation is beginning to awaken to the greater need to honor the full diversity of people who helped pioneer our great nation.”

Mary Jackson at the NASA Langley Research Center. After 34 years, she retired from the center in 1985 as an aeronautical engineer.

24 CARABALLO, por sí y JESUS MARTINEZ LUGO, como miembro de la compuesta por ROBERTO ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO SUCESION DE ISRAEL ANTONIO, ISRAEL DE DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUMARTINEZ LUGO, JESUS, MARÍA DEL NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA TAMBIEN CONOCIDO ROSARIO, ANTONIO SALA SUPERIOR DE YAUCO. COMO ISRAEL DE RAMON Y FRANCES ROSA JULIA COURET JESUS MARTINEZ LUGO, MARIE todos de apellidos CARABALLO, por sí y compuesta por ROBERTO MARTINEZ COURET como miembro de la PETICIONARIOS ANTONIO, ISRAEL DE SUCESION DE ISRAEL EX-PARTE JESUS, MARÍA DEL MARTINEZ LUGO, ROSARIO, ANTONIO CIVIL NUM: YU2020CV00001.

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ROSARIO, ANTONIO A: SUCESION SOBRE: EXPEDIENTE DE RAMON Y FRANCES PEREZ VELEZ ART. 195 LEY DEL MARIE todos de apellidos DOMINIO, Se le notifica a usted que ha REGISTRO DE LA PROPIEsido radicada ante este TribuMARTINEZ COURET DAD INMOBILIARIA DE PR. LEGAL NOTICE

nal de Primera Instancia, Sala EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICde Superior de Yauco, una PetiTO. ción de Dominio. Usted deberá CIVIL NUM: YU2020CV00001.

A: ENSENADA presente al tribunal su alegaSOBRE: EXPEDIENTE DE CONSTRUCTION, CORP. ción responsiva dentro de los DOMINIO, ART. 195 LEY DEL Se le notifica a usted que ha 30 días desde la última publicaREGISTRO DE LA PROPIEsido radicada ante este Tribu- ción de este edicto, sirviéndole DAD INMOBILIARIA DE PR. nal de Primera Instancia, Sala copia de dicha contestación a EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICde Superior de Yauco, una Peti- la Lcda. Teresa Pacheco CaTO. ción de Dominio. Usted deberá macho, con oficinas en la CaA: JOHN DOE / presente al tribunal su alega- lle Santiago Vivaldi Pacheco, MARIE DOE ción responsiva dentro de los Número 24-B, Yauco, Puerto Se le notifica a usted que ha 30 días desde la última publicaRico, dirección postal: P.O. sido radicada ante este Tribu- ción de este edicto, sirviéndole Box 1942, Caguas, Puerto Rico nal de Primera Instancia, Sala copia de dicha contestación a 00726-1942, teléfono número de Superior de Yauco, una Peti- la Lcda. Teresa Pacheco Ca787-267-5784, fax número 787ción de Dominio. Usted deberá macho, con oficinas en la Ca267-6328, correo electrónico presente al tribunal su alega- lle Santiago Vivaldi Pacheco, terasa.pacheco@pcrglaw.com, ción responsiva dentro de los Número 24-B, Yauco, Puerto abogada de los Peticionarios.

30 días desde la última publica- Rico, dirección postal: P.O. Se le apercibe que, de no hación de este edicto, sirviéndole Box 1942, Caguas, Puerto Rico cerlo así, el tribunal podrá diccopia de dicha contestación a 00726-1942, teléfono número tar sentencia en rebeldía en su la Lcda. Teresa Pacheco Ca- 787-267-5784, fax número 787contra y conceder el remedio macho, con oficinas en la Ca- 267-6328, correo electrónico solicitado en la petición, o cuallle Santiago Vivaldi Pacheco, terasa.pacheco@pcrglaw.com, quier otro, si el tribunal, en el Número 24-B, Yauco, Puerto abogada de los Peticionarios. ejercicio de su sana discreción, Rico, dirección postal: P.O. Se le apercibe que, de no halo entiende procedente. EXPEBox 1942, Caguas, Puerto Rico cerlo así, el tribunal podrá dicDIDO bajo mi firma y sello de 00726-1942, teléfono número tar sentencia en rebeldía en su este Tribunal en Yauco, Puerto 787-267-5784, fax número 787- contra y conceder el remedio Rico, hoy 12 de marzo de 2020.

267-6328, correo electrónico solicitado en la petición, o cualLuz Mayra Caraballo Garcia, terasa.pacheco@pcrglaw.com, quier otro, si el tribunal, en el Sec Regional. Delia Aponte Veabogada de los Peticionarios. ejercicio de su sana discreción, lazquez, Sec Auxiliar.

Se le apercibe que, de no ha- lo entiende procedente. EXPEcerlo así, el tribunal podrá dic- DIDO bajo mi firma y sello de LEGAL NOTICE tar sentencia en rebeldía en su este Tribunal en Yauco, Puerto EN EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOcontra y conceder el remedio Rico, hoy 12 de marzo de 2020.

CIADO DE PUERTO RICO solicitado en la petición, o cual- Luz Mayra Caraballo Garcia, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSquier otro, si el tribunal, en el Sec Regional. Delia Aponte VeTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE ejercicio de su sana discreción, lazquez, Sec Auxiliar.

BAYAMÓN lo entiende procedente. EXPEOTONIEL HUERTAS LEGAL NOTICE DIDO bajo mi firma y sello de RODRIGUEZ. URB. este Tribunal en Yauco, Puerto ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO HIGHLAND GARDENS Rico, hoy 12 de marzo de 2020. DE PUERTO RICO TRIBULuz Mayra Caraballo Garcia, NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA A18 CALLE ALBORADA Sec Regional. Delia Aponte Ve- SALA SUPERIOR DE YAUCO. GUAYNABO, PR 00969 lazquez, Sec Auxiliar.

Peticionario PETICIONARIOS

EX-PARTE

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

ROSA JULIA COURET @

ROSA JULIA COURET CARABALLO, por sí y como miembro de la SUCESION DE ISRAEL MARTINEZ LUGO, TAMBIEN CONOCIDO COMO ISRAEL DE

staredictos1@outlook.com

EX-PARTE

The San Juan Daily Star

Friday, June 26, 2020

TE DE LOS EE.UU., ESTADO el exceso de cabida sobre la LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUER- finca que se describe según TO RICO, SS. sus títulos del siguiente modo: “URBANA: Parcela de terreno A: Rubén Rodríguez Centeno, se desconoce en el barrio los Frailes del térdirección específica; Ana mino municipal de Guaynabo, Luisa Serrano Rodríguez, Puerto Rico, compuesto de 463.14 metros cuadrados, con se desconoce dirección las siguientes medidas lineales específica; Edwin H. y colindancias; por el NORTE: Rodríguez Rivera, se en una distancia de 13.13 medesconoce dirección tros con una quebrada que los separa de los terrenos de la específica: Vicente Rodríguez Rivera, se Sucesión Martínez Nadal; por desconoce dirección el SUR: su frente, en 12.02 metros con camino público; por el específica; Primitivo ESTE: en una distancia de 9.50 Juan Ros Rodríguez, se metros con terrenos de Juan desconoce dirección Suárez y en distancia de 26.17 específica; Gladys García metros con terrenos de Dolores Rodríguez, falleció y Ortiz y por el OESTE: en distanrecibí información de cia de 40.62 m con terrenos de Diego Centeno.” Enclava una son sus herederos sus hijos nombrados estructura para fines residenGladimir Ortega, reside en ciales. Consta inscrita al folio 20 del tomo 307 de Guaynabo, Clermont, Florida, EUA, finca 16871. Según mensura Ángel José Ortega, reside se describe del siguiente modo: en Carolina del Sur, EUA “URBANA: Parcela de terreno y, Glarimar Ortega, reside en el barrio los Frailes del téren Texas, no se conoce mino municipal de Guaynabo, dirección específica; Luz Puerto Rico, compuesto de María García Rodríguez, 602.1065 metros cuadrados, se desconoce dirección con las siguientes medidas lineales y colindancias; por el especifica; María del NORTE: en una distancia de Carmen Meléndez García, 13.13 metros con una quebrase desconoce dirección da que la separa de terrenos especifica; José M. de la Sucesión Martínez Nadal; Meléndez García, ultima por el SUR: su frente en 12.02 metros con camino público; por dirección conocida: 30023 Tavares Ridge Blv, el ESTE: en una distancia de Tavares, Florida, 32778; 9.50 metros con terrenos de Juan Suárez y en distancia de Carlos D. Meléndez 26.17 metros con terrenos de García, ultima dirección Dolores Ortiz (estos dos coconocida: 2510 Hadleigh lindantes hoy son sustituidos St., Kissimmee, Florida por Carlos Martínez Serrano) 34743; Delfín Meléndez y por el OESTE: en distancia Quiñones, falleció y lo de 40.62 m. l. con terrenos de que tenía era el derecho Diego Centeno.” Esta pretende usufructo viudal y sión se publicará tres veces en veinte días en este periódico. sus hijos son los de El que tenga interés o derecho apellidos Meléndez real en el inmueble, los anterioGarcía arriba indicados res dueños y personas ignoraen los apartados h, i y das que puedan perjudicarse j; Elisa Odette García y deseen oponerse tienen 20 se desconoce dirección días para ello a contar desde la última publicación, siendo especifica; Ruth abogado de los peticionarios, Haydee Calo, ultima Lic. Jaime Rodríguez Rivera, dirección conocida: cuya dirección es #30 Calle 420 Windmeadow, Reparto Piñero, Guaynabo, PR Alto monte spring, Fla 00969-5650, Teléfono 787-72032707; José Emanuel 9553 (Fax 787-790-4104). En García Calo, ultima Bayamón, Puerto Rico, a 11 de dirección conocida: 420 febrero de 2020. LAURA SANWindmeadow, Alto monte TA SÁNCHEZ, SECRETARIA. spring, Fla 32707 Y A XIOMARA FERRER VARGAS, CUALQUIER PERSONA SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL I. IGNORADA QUE PUEDA ****

PUERTO RICO, DENTRO DE LOS 10 DIAS SIGUIENTES A SU NOTIFICACION. Y, SIENDO O REPRESENTANDO USTED UNA PARTE EN EL PROFINANCE OF AMERICA CEDIMIENTO SUJETA A LOS TERMINOS DE LA SENTENREVERSE, LLC CIA, SENTENCIA PARCIAL O VS RESOLUCION, DE LA CUAL VARGAS MARTINEZ, ESTABLECERSE RETERESA (SUCN) T/C/C PUEDE CURSO DE REVISION O APECASO: FCD2017-0553. SOLACION DENTRO DEL TERMIBRE: EJECUCION DE HIPONO DE 30 DIAS CONTADOS A TECA. NOTIFICACION DE PARTIR DE LA PUBLICACION SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. POR EDICTO DE ESTA NOTICARLOS ENMANUEL FICACION, DIRIJO A USTED CABRERA VARGAS, ESTA NOTIFICACION QUE SE FULANO DE TAL, CONSIDERARA HECHA EN SUTANO DE TAL, COMO LA FECHA DE LA PUBLICAPOSIBLES MIEMBROS CION DE ESTE DICTO. COPIA DE ESTA NOTIFICACION HA DE NOMBRES DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SIDO ARCHIVADA EN LOS SUCESIÓN DE TERESA AUTOS DE ESTE CASO, CON FECHA DE 23 DE JUNIO DE VARGAS MARTINEZ 2020.

T/C/C CARMEN TERESA LIC. LOPEZ STIPES, GENEVIEVE LCDA.GLOPEZ@GMAIL.COM VARGAS MARTINEZ T/C/C CARMEN TERESA EN CAROLINA, PUERTO VARGAS T/C/C TERESA V. RICO, A 23 DE JUNIO DE 2020. LCDA. MARILYN APONCABRERA T/C/C TERESA TE RODRIGUEZ, SECRETAVARGAS MARTINEZ T/C/C RIO.POR: F/ LOURDES DIAZ TERESA VARGAS T/C/C MEDINA, SECRETARIO AUCARMEN VARGAS T/C/C XILIAR. DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE CAROLINASUPERIOR.

TERESA C. VARGAS LEGAL NOTICE Y A JAVIER DONATO ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO CABRERA VARGAS T/C/C JAVIER CABRERA DE PUERTO RICO Tribunal General de Justicia TRIBUVARGAS; DAVID NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CABRERA VARGAS SALA SUPERIOR DE MANATI. COMO MIEMBRO DE LA Lourdes Milagros SUCN. DE DE TERESA Rosario Villamil también VARGAS MARTINEZ conocida como Lourdes T/C/C CARMEN TERESA Rosario Villamil y VARGAS MARTINEZ Lourdes Rosario, por si T/C/C CARMEN TERESA y en representación de VARGAS T/C/C TERESA Gladys Minerva Ocasio V. CABRERA T/C/C Maldonado, también TERESA VARGAS conocida como Gladys MARTINEZ T/C/C TERESA Minerva Ocasio y Gladys VARGAS T/C/C CARMEN Detlor VARGAS T/C/C TERESA Demandante Vs. C. VARGAS. POR Miguel Angel Ocasio CONDUCTO DE LA LCDA. Maldonado; Joaquin GENEVIEVE LÓPEZ Armando Ocasio STIPES. Maldonado también EL SECRETARIO(A) QUE conocido como Joaquin SUSCRIBE LE NOTIFICA A Armando Ocacio; José USTED QUE EL 22 DE JUNIO Humberto Ocasio DE 2020 , ESTE TRIBUNAL Maldonado, también HA DICTADO SENTENCIA, conocido como José SENTENCIA PARCIAL O REHumberto Ocasio SOLUCION EN ESTE CASO, QUE HA SIDO DEBIDAMENTE Jr., Joe Ocasio, José REGISTRADA Y ARCHIVADA Humberto Ocacio y EN AUTOS DONDE PODRA José Ocasio; Jeannette USTED ENTERARSE DETARachel Rodriguez Ocasio, LLADAMENTE DE LOS TERtambién conocida por MINOS DE LA MISMA. ESTA Jeannette Rodriguez NOTIFICACION SE PUBLICA-

Civil #: BY2019CV06142. Sobre: EXPEDIENTE DE DOMIDemandado(s) NIO POR EXCESO EN CABIRA UNA SOLA VEZ EN UN PEPERJUDICARSE. CIVIL NÚM. MT2019CV00962.

DA. COD: 114-013-028-04-001.

LEGAL NOTICE RIODICO DE CIRCULACION POR CUANTO: La peticionaria SOBRE: Partición de Herencia.

EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS GENERAL EN LA ISLA DE solicita se declare a su favor ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENDE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDEN-

(787) 743-3346

CIA POR EDICTO.

A: Miguel Ocasio Maldonado-Apt. A 773 Saint Ann’s Avenue, Bronx, NY 10456

EL SECRETARIO que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 19 de MAYO de 2020, este tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse 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 19 de mayo de 2020. En Manati, Puerto Rico, A 19 de mayo de 2020. VIVIAN Y. FRESSE GONZALEZ, Secretaria Regional. F/CARMEN J. ROSADO VALENTIN, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOT ICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO Tribunal General de Justicia TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE MANATI.

Lourdes Milagros Rosario Villamil también conocida como Lourdes Rosario Villamil y Lourdes Rosario, por si y en representación de Gladys Minerva Ocasio Maldonado, también conocida como Gladys Minerva Ocasio y Gladys Detlor Demandante Vs.

Miguel Angel Ocasio Maldonado; Joaquin Armando Ocasio Maldonado también conocido como Joaquin Armando Ocacio; José Humberto Ocasio Maldonado, también conocido como José Humberto Ocasio Jr., Joe Ocasio, José

The San Juan Daily Star

Humberto Ocacio y José Ocasio; Jeannette Rachel Rodriguez Ocasio, también conocida por Jeannette Rodriguez

Demandado(s) CIVIL NÚM. MT2019CV00962.

SOBRE: Partición de Herencia.

NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: Jeannette Rachel Rodriguez Ocasio-4360 Baychester Ave., Bronx, NY 10466 -y- plc Miguel Ocasio MaldonadoApt. A 773 Saint Ann’s Avenue, Bronx, NY 10456

EL SECRETARIO que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 19 de MAYO de 2020, este tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse 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 19 de mayo de 2020. En Manati, Puerto Rico, A 19 de mayo de 2020. VIVIAN Y. FRESSE GONZALEZ, Secretaria Regional. F/CARMEN J. ROSADO VALENTIN, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

conocido como Joaquin Armando Ocacio; José Humberto Ocasio Maldonado, también conocido como José Humberto Ocasio Jr., Joe Ocasio, José Humberto Ocacio y José Ocasio; Jeannette Rachel Rodriguez Ocasio, también conocida por Jeannette Rodriguez

Demandado(s) CIVIL NÚM. MT2019CV00962.

SOBRE: Partición de Herencia.

NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: José Ocasio Maldonado2519 Main Street, Rocky Hill, CT 06067

EL SECRETARIO que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 19 de MAYO de 2020, este tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse 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 19 de mayo de 2020. En Manati, Puerto Rico, A 19 de mayo de 2020. VIVIAN Y. FRESSE GONZALEZ, LEGAL NOTICE Secretaria Regional. F/CARESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO MEN J. ROSADO VALENTIN, DE PUERTO RICO Tribunal Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

General de Justicia TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA LEGAL NOTICE SALA SUPERIOR DE MANATI. ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Lourdes Milagros DE PUERTO RICO Tribunal Rosario Villamil también General de Justicia TRIBUconocida como Lourdes NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA Rosario Villamil y SALA SUPERIOR DE MANATI.

Lourdes Rosario, por si y en representación de Gladys Minerva Ocasio Maldonado, también conocida como Gladys Minerva Ocasio y Gladys Detlor Demandante Vs.

Miguel Angel Ocasio Maldonado; Joaquin Armando Ocasio Maldonado también

25

Friday, June 26, 2020

Lourdes Milagros Rosario Villamil también conocida como Lourdes Rosario Villamil y Lourdes Rosario, por si y en representación de Gladys Minerva Ocasio Maldonado, también conocida como Gladys Minerva Ocasio y Gladys Detlor Demandante Vs.

Miguel Angel Ocasio Maldonado; Joaquin Armando Ocasio Maldonado también conocido como Joaquin Armando Ocacio; José Humberto Ocasio Maldonado, también conocido como José Humberto Ocasio Jr., Joe Ocasio, José Humberto Ocacio y José Ocasio; Jeannette Rachel Rodriguez Ocasio, también conocida por Jeannette Rodriguez

Demandado(s) CIVIL NÚM. MT2019CV00962.

SOBRE: Partición de Herencia.

NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: JoaguIn Armando Ocasio MaldonadoApt. A 773 Saint Ann’s Avenue, Bronx NY 10456

EL SECRETARIO que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 19 de MAYO de 2020, este tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse 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 19 de mayo de 2020. En Manati, Puerto Rico, A 19 de mayo de 2020. VIVIAN Y. FRESSE GONZALEZ, Secretaria Regional. F/CARMEN J. ROSADO VALENTIN, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE IN THE UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO.

IN RE: LA MERCED LIMITED PARTNERSHIP, S.E.

Debtor CASE NO.: 18-06858 (ESL).

CHAPTER 11. NOTICE OF BID DEADLINE, AUCTION, AND SALE HEARING IN CONNECTION WITH THE SALE OF

THE ASSET FOR SALE. NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN, as follows:. 1. On June 23, 2020, the Court entered and order for the approval of, and authorization for, among other things (i) the bidding procedures (the “Bidding Procedures”) to be used in connection with the sale (the “Sale”) of the property herein described; (ii) the dates of the Bid Deadline, Auction (if needed) and Sale Hearing (all as defined below), and (iii) related relief (the “Bidding Procedures Motion”), on the docket of the Debtor’s chapter 11 case, currently pending in United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Puerto Rico (the “Bankruptcy Court”). By said order dated, the Bankruptcy Court approved the Bidding Procedures and the Bidding Procedures Motion (the “Bidding Procedures Order”).

A copy of the Bidding Procedures Order, together with the Bidding Procedures, is enclosed herewith. In the event of any inconsistency between the Bidding Procedures Order (or the Bidding Procedures) and this Notice, the Bidding Procedures Order (or the Bidding Procedures) shall control. As set forth in the Bidding Procedures, the Sale of the Debtor’s asset described herein remains subject to competing offers from any prospective qualified bidder. The Asset for Sale proposed to be sold is the following: ---URBANA: Predio de terreno radicado en la URBANIZACION ELEONOR ROOSEVELT, radicada en el Barrio Hato Rey del término municipal de Rio Piedras, hoy San Juan, Puerto Rico, con una cabida de TRES MIL TRESCIENTOS CATORCE PUNTO VEINTICINCO (3,314.25) metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, en ciento veintinueve (129) pies nueve (9) pulgadas con la Avenida A; por el SUR, en igual medida con terrenos de la Asociación de Miembros de la Policía Insular; por el ESTE, en doscientos setenta y cinco (275) pies ocho y tres cuartos (8 ¾) pulgadas, con la Calle “T”; y por el OESTE, en igual medida con la Calle “H”.--Enclava en dicho terreno un edificio todo de concreto, de dos (2) plantas, dedicado a una escuela privada.---Finca número trece mil cuatrocientos cincuenta y tres (13,453), inscrita al folio cuatro (4) del tomo mil cuatrocientos sesenta y seis (1466) de Rio Piedras Norte, en el Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Segunda Sección de San Juan. 2. The Proposed Sale Price is: $4,071,744.35 in cash or other, equally valued equity like instrument or Credit Bids. 3. All interested parties

are invited to become a Qualified Bidder (as defined in the Bidding Procedures Order) and to make offers to purchase the Debtor’s assets in accordance with the terms of the Bidding Procedures and the Bidding Procedures Order. The deadline to submit competing bids is July 9, 2020 at 5:00 p.m. (prevailing Atlantic time). 4. Interested bidders requesting information about the qualification process, including a description or information on the asset, the forms of asset purchase agreement, confidentiality agreement and/or information in connection with due diligence and sale of the property should contact via email communication: Nelson Robles Diaz, Esq., Nelson-Diaz Law Offices, Esq., nroblesdiaz@gmail.com, with a copy to Francisco Fernández Chiqués, Fernández Chiqués, LLC, ffc@ffclaw.com. 5. Pursuant to the Bidding Procedures Order, the auction for the Sale of the Asset for Sale will be held at the offices of Fernández Chiqués LLC, 653 Ponce de León, Second Floor, San Juan, PR 00907, Tel. (787) 7223040; commencing on July 10, 2020 at 10:00 a.m., (prevailing Atlantic Time), or at such other place and time as OSP Consortium, LLC (“OSP”) shall notify all Qualified Bidders. Only the authorized representatives of each of the Qualified Bidders shall be eligible to participate in the Auction. 6. At a hearing on July 14, 2020 at 10:00a.m. (prevailing Atlantic time) or such other time as the Bankruptcy Court shall determine (the “Sale Hearing”), OSP intends to seek the Bankruptcy Court’s approval of the Sale to the Proposed Buyer, for authority to sell the Asset for Sale to any bidder submitting the highest, or otherwise best, offer (the “Successful Bidder”). The Sale Hearing will be held before the Honorable Enrique S. Lamoutte in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Puerto Rico, at Jose V. Toledo Federal Building & US Courthouse, 300 Recinto Sur, Second Floor Courtroom 2, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00901, to be held via Skype for business. 7. At the Sale Hearing, the Bankruptcy Court may enter such orders as it deems appropriate under applicable law and as required by the circumstances and equities of this chapter 11 case. 8. Objections, if any, to the transactions contemplated by the Sale (a “Sale Objection”) pursuant to the terms of the agreements reached with the Proposed Buyer or any other Successful Bidder, shall be in writing, shall conform to the Federal Rules of

Bankruptcy Procedure and the Local Rules of the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Puerto Rico, shall set forth the name of the objecting party, the nature and amount of any claims or interests held or asserted against the Debtor’s estate or properties, the basis for the objection and the specific grounds therefor, and shall be filed with the Bankruptcy Court and be duly noticed, so as to be actually received on or before July 13, 2020 at 5:00 p.m.

(Prevailing Atlantic Time) (the “Objection Deadline”). 9. This notice is qualified in its entirety by the Bidding Procedures Motion, Bidding Procedures Order and the Bidding Procedures, and all persons and entities are urged to read the those filing and the provisions thereof carefully. PLEASE TAKE NOTICE THAT THE FAILURE TO ABIDE

BY THE PROCEDURES AND DEADLINES SET FORTH IN THE BIDDING PROCEDURES MOTION AND BIDDING PROCEDURES ORDER MAY RESULT IN THE DISQUALIFICATION OF A BID AND THE FAILURE OF THE BANKRUPTCY COURT TO CONSIDER A SALE OBJECTION.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE LAS PIEDRAS.

ORIENTAL BANK, Demandante, V.

EMMA I. VELAZQUEZ MORENO,

Demandada CIVIL NUM.: LP2019CV00212.

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

A: EMMA I .

VELAZQUEZ MORENO

POR MEDIO del presente edic-

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

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

POR EL PRESENTE EDICTO se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva a la demanda dentro de los treinta ( 30) días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento.

Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra, y conceder el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. Se le advierte que dentro de los diez (10) días siguientes a la publicación del presente edicto, se le estará enviando a usted por correo certificado con acuse de recibo, una copia del emplazamiento y de la demanda presentada al lugar de su última dirección conocida: Bo. Ceiba Sur, Carr.

189 KM. 21.6, Las Piedras, PR 00771; PO Box 1459, Las Piedras, PR 00771-1450. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal en Humacao, Puerto Rico, hoy día 21 de febrero de 2020. Dominga Gomez Fuster,

San Juan

Secretaria Regional. Ileana Miranda Arroyo, SubSecretaria.

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

ROBERTO LORAN SANTOS Demandante VS.

ORIENTAL BANK AND TRUST; JUAN DEL PUEBLO, como posible tenedor dcl pagaré hipotecario.

Demandados Caso Numero: CA2020CV01221.

Civil: CANCELACION PAGARE EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO.

A: JOHN DOE DIRECCION DESCONOCIDA

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al Tribunal su alegación responsiva a la demanda por cobro de dinero de mantenimiento de condominio dentro de los treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación de este edicto el cual se publicará en un periódico de circulación general diana durante una (1) sola vez. 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. VICTOR FALCON DAVILA (RUA 19242) P0 Box 821 Caguas, Puerto Rico 00726-0821 Tel. (787) 647-5336 E-mail: victor@victorfalcon.com FOR ORDEN DEL JIJEZ DE ESTE TRIBUNAL, hoy día 10 de junio de 2020. EXPEDIDO bajo ml firma y sello del Tribunal, hoy día 10 de junio de 2020. Lcda. Marilyn Aponte Rodriguez, Secretaria RegionaI. Eliann Reyes Morales, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal.

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26

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

Baseball’s new rules: No spitting, no arguing and lots of testing

By JAMES WAGNER

C

oronavirus testing every other day for players and coaches. Wet rags for pitchers’ pockets to prevent them from licking their fingers. Masks in the dugout and bullpen for any non-players. And no public transportation to the stadium, communal food spreads, saunas, fighting, spitting, smokeless tobacco or sunflower seeds.

Got all that?

These are among the many new rules that Major League Baseball teams will have to follow for the shortened 2020 season.

This week, after months of haggling over pay and how many games to play, MLB and the players’ union finalized their season plan, including a 113-page operations manual that will govern this unprecedented 60-game season without fans in the stands.

“There’s a lot of stuff to get used to,” New York Mets pitcher Seth Lugo said.

Unlike some other pro leagues that will play in a single, sequestered environment, MLB will play games at teams’ home stadiums, with the regular season beginning either July 23 or 24 after a second round of spring training starting July 1.

Even before any players have officially reported to their camps, several teams — including the Philadelphia Phillies, Toronto Blue Jays, Colorado Rockies and New York Yankees — have reportedly had positive coronavirus tests among their players and staff members.

“This is a challenging time, but we will meet the challenge by continuing to work together,” read part of the introduction to the MLB manual, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “Adherence to the health and safety protocols described in this manual will increase our likelihood of being successful.”

Dr. Michael Saag, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, commended baseball’s health and safety plan, calling it “fairly detailed” in a telephone interview Wednesday.

“A player’s risk, based on what they’re planning, is probably greater for acquiring this infection in the community than while engaged in baseball-related activities,” Saag said.

A four-person committee, which includes doctors appointed by the league and the players’ union, will oversee the implementation of the plan. Each team must de-

A statue of Ken Griffey Jr. got a mask earlier this year. While players won’t have to wear masks during games, any non-playing staff members will be required to wear one in the dugout this season. signate an individual to serve as a coronavirus point person who ensures compliance with the rules.

To facilitate testing, the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory, which normally helps run the league’s anti-doping testing, has converted a portion of its facility in Salt Lake City for virus tests, promising a 24-hour turnaround on results.

The manual designates the different tiers of people: Tier 1 consists of players and on-field personnel, like coaches and umpires; Tier 2 is other essential personnel, like members of the front office or strength and conditioning staff; Tier 3 is other necessary workers, like cleaning crews, who do not come in contact with players and coaches.

Before spring training begins, players and key staff must be screened for any symptoms and potential exposure to the virus, as well as a separate examination that includes a saliva or oral/nasal swab test and a blood sample for an antibody test.

During spring training and the season, players and select staff will have their temperatures and symptoms checked twice per day at club facilities. They will also be given

oral digital thermometers for self-screening each morning. Those with temperatures at or above 100.4 degrees will not be allowed to enter a team facility.

Players and on-field personnel will be tested for the virus every other day, while other key staff will be tested “multiple times per week.” Antibody testing will happen about once a month.

If anyone tests positive for the virus, they will receive medical attention and be required to self-isolate. Contact tracing will be conducted and the team facility will be disinfected.

Teams’ medical staffs must identify players and key staff members who are at higher risk of contracting the virus — because of age or medical history, for example — or who live with someone who is at a higher risk. Those individuals could receive special treatment, including separate travel arrangements.

If a higher-risk player still wants to opt out of playing this season after consulting with the team doctor, he would be placed on the “COVID-19 Related Injured List” and would still receive service time and pay. The COVID-19 list will have no time

limits and will also be open to players who test positive for the virus, were exposed to a confirmed case or exhibit symptoms.

The manual includes 11 pages of diagrams to ensure social distancing during on-field drills and in dugouts, batting cages and bullpens. Among the other measures in the manual: — Players should keep at least 6 feet away from one another in the clubhouse, and additional clubhouse space should be provided if needed — Players are “discouraged but not prohibited” from showering in the clubhouse — Inactive players are asked to sit 6 feet apart in the stands — Clubhouse food must be served in individual to-go containers — Players (or managers) who leave their positions to argue with umpires or come within 6 feet of them or an opposing player or manager face ejection and discipline — Any ball in play or touched by multiple players will be replaced — The traveling party will have a private check-in and entrance at hotels to avoid interactions with the public — Members of the traveling team are “not permitted to leave the hotel to eat or otherwise use any restaurants (in the hotel or otherwise) open to the public.” They must be provided with a private dining room at the hotel, and they can use room service or food delivery services.

— Hotel room visits are permitted for only other members of a traveling party or immediate family.

Given the stakes, some players have said they must police themselves away from the field to prevent the type of virus outbreaks that have occurred in women’s professional soccer or college football because of visits to bars or nightclubs.

Lugo said Wednesday afternoon that he had only read a three-page summary of the MLB manual that had been provided by his agents. But given the complexities of the protocols and the virus, Lugo, who lives in Louisiana, said he expected to learn more when he arrived in New York this week.

According to the manual, players and employees will undergo mandatory training about the virus throughout the year.

“A lot of it is pretty much common sense,” Lugo said of the rules. “Just don’t touch anybody.”

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

27

NBA ironmen cling to routine during the load management era

By MICHAEL PINA

L

ittle will be ordinary when the abbreviated 2019-20 NBA season resumes as expected on July 30.

Games will be played at the Walt Disney World Resort inside a so-called bubble, a plan that does away with playoff basketball’s normal hallmarks of rigorous travel, home-court advantage and the motivational fuel provided by screaming fans.

How it will look and feel to the participants once they get there is a mystery. But in an era of basketball defined by load management — the practice of deliberately holding stars out of some regular-season games to keep them healthy for playoff runs — there exists a faction of NBA players who pride themselves on rarely, if ever, missing a game. They will now have to navigate their return without being moored to the grind of an 82-game season.

At the forefront of that group is Utah Jazz wing Joe Ingles, 32, who has played in all of his team’s games since Dec. 16, 2015, the longest active streak in the league. When the season was suspended in March, Ingles quarantined for two weeks with his pregnant wife, Renae, and their infant twins.

Everyday life was disrupted overnight, and Ingles, without any idea when, or if, basketball would come back, turned his focus to his family. Every morning, he made breakfast for his children, and he tucked them in at night, enjoying parenting pleasures that had been mostly impossible during the season.

His professional life has revolved around the same practice-game-practice-game routine since he first signed a professional contract at age 17. He has spent his offseasons from the NBA playing for the Australian national team. In the past few years, he became one of the NBA’s ironmen, tightly regulating his daily regimen to maximize the amount of basketball he could play.

Before the pandemic, he made a habit of getting to practices an hour early so he could get a massage, stretch and do corrective exercises. After practice, he’d stay an extra hour for treatment.

“If I knew 10 years ago what I know now, maybe I would still be dunking,” he said.

Today, with a full gym at home that includes a treadmill and exercise bike, Ingles has tried to recreate a recognizable groove for himself. Every night, he massages himself after workouts with a vibrating foam roller or a massage gun — he owns several — and then, usual-

Utah Jazz wing Joe Ingles, 32, has played in every game since Dec. 16, 2015, the longest active streak in the N.B.A. ly while watching a movie in bed with his wife, slips into NormaTec compression pants, which aid muscle recovery.

“I had days where I was meant to lift and I didn’t because it’s hard to get that motivation when you’re doing it at your house,” he said. “I’m not going to a game tomorrow, I’m not going to a practice tomorrow. I’m just going to do the same thing tomorrow. Again.”

A sprinkling of other players who have similarly committed to playing full seasons are dealing with the NBA shutdown and resumption plan in their own way.

Since the league expanded the schedule to 82 games, its current normal length, before the 1967-68 season, going the distance has become an increasingly rare achievement, partially owing to advances in sports science that have informed teams about the myriad harmful consequences seven straight months of professional basketball can have on a human body.

In the 2018-19 season, less than 4 percent of the league (21 players) appeared in 82 games. Injuries, personal issues, coaches’ decisions and scheduled rest can take the choice of playing out of a player’s hands, but those who are healthy enough to have the option to play at every opportunity know they are a rarity.

“It’s very challenging. That’s why there’s only a few that do it,” said Houston Rockets forward P.J. Tucker, 35, who hasn’t missed a game since

2017. “You get a day off when the schedule permits.”

Their motivations vary: Some want to defy an injury-prone reputation, fulfill a sense of duty to fans and teammates, or avoid permanently losing their minutes to a replacement player.

Many also cited their love of basketball and an obsessive attentiveness to their body as reasons they’ve embraced the monotony that invades the NBA lifestyle.

Since he was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers midway through the 2018-19 season, forward Tobias Harris, 27, has checked in with team staffers to look at his performance analytics, since any decrease would suggest a need to rest to prevent injury. But Harris said that taking time off when he feels well enough to compete tends to have an adverse effect.

“I feel if I don’t play, it’s kind of like hurting me a little bit,” Harris said in an interview before the shutdown. “I’m in a routine and a rhythm. That’s the type of guy I am.”

Harris was inactive for the final game of the 2018-19 regular season, but still played in 82 total games after logging 55 with his former team, the Los Angeles Clippers.

Phoenix Suns wing Mikal Bridges, 23, has not missed a game in his first two seasons as a pro. He is disposed to a strict daily routine, and once the season stopped, he immediately mapped out a plan that could best replicate its

physical drudgery while he was home.

Bridges did body weight exercises and used weights already in his home, and used a nearby field for conditioning drills.

“I knew I wasn’t going to take time off, but I didn’t know how hard I should go,” Bridges said. “Am I just going OD hard for nothing? It was awkward because if the season didn’t come back I think I was going to keep working out and then treat it like the season was still there.”

Denver Nuggets guard Monté Morris, 24, sat zero games during four years at Iowa State and has not missed one since the start of the 2018-19 season.

“It’s really, really, really important that I stay in my rhythm,” he said in an interview. “I’ve always been a guy who’s able to find a way. Even when the gyms weren’t open.”

A couple of months ago, Morris reached out to Ann Najjar, a boxing trainer, on Instagram and asked her to fly in from her home in San Diego to work out in his backyard.

When the NBA in early June approved a proposal to send 22 teams to play in Florida, concerns about spreading the coronavirus were shared widely among players, including those who see playing every game as an obligation.

“Going into a hub, I think the hardest part for me is I know I’ll do the right thing and I’m assuming my teammates will, but we’re all relying on 22 teams, 17 players per team,” Ingles said before the league last week distributed a 113-page guidebook of health precautions needed to make the resumption work. He worries that a player contracting the virus is inevitable. “I want to be there to play the games with my team, but I’m definitely not 100 percent comfortable going.”

Players and team staff members are expected to remain on the premises nearly at all times and cannot enter other people’s hotel rooms, among other regulations while in Florida.

Ingles prioritizes his family’s safety at such a precarious time, but acknowledges that he does not want to let his team or fans down by not playing.

“I know people aren’t paying money to come watch me play — they’re coming to watch Donovan play,” he said, referring to his teammate Donovan Mitchell. “But if I’m healthy and can get out there, then I should play.”

28

The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 2020

Talladega noose incident puts spotlight on NASCAR’s troubles with racism

By JULIET MACUR and ALAN BLINDER

D

arrell Wallace Jr. said he was relieved to hear the FBI say he had not been the target of a hate crime at Talladega Superspeedway last weekend, after a noose hanging in his garage stall was found to have been there since at least last fall.

In a statement on Twitter on Wednesday, Wallace, known as Bubba, thanked NASCAR and the FBI for taking the threat seriously.

“We’ll gladly take a little embarrassment over what the alternatives could have been,” said Wallace, the sole Black driver in NASCAR’s top series.

The national turmoil over race and serial injustice has complicated both Wallace’s reaction and the public’s response to the FBI’s findings. With the government’s investigation closed and no charges filed, Wallace has found himself all but forced to defend himself from baseless speculation that he or his supporters staged the incident to garner publicity.

While NASCAR characterized the noose as a pull rope for a garage door that was “fashioned like a noose,” some people insisted the noose was just a rope with a handle and that Wallace and stock-car racing executives had overreacted. Wallace said Wednesday on NBC’s “Today” show that he considered the knot to be a noose that someone took time to create at the end of a door pull. Though the noose was not functional, he said, the sight of it “makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.”

The debate over the episode was hardly deterred by the timeline of the case, the Justice Department’s conclusions or the history of a sport that long has battled racism both inside and outside the garage, including by fans who proudly flew the Confederate flag at competitions until Wallace called for NASCAR to ban it June 8. NASCAR barred the battle flag two days later.

Wallace wasn’t the first person to notice the noose in his garage or even the fourth.

The accounts of Wallace and others within NASCAR indicated that he was at least the fifth person to be made aware of the noose after it was found Sunday and that he first learned about it from Steve Phelps, NASCAR’s president.

According to racing officials, a member of Wallace’s crew noticed the suspicious rope and reported it to Jerry Baxter, the crew chief and a fixture of the sport. Baxter alerted Jay Fabian, a senior NASCAR official. Ultimately, Phelps met Wallace at the

driver’s motor home and tearfully told him what had been found.

FBI agents traveled to Talladega, Ala., less than an hour’s drive from Birmingham, and began reviewing evidence. A crucial clue was an assertion Monday morning by an employee of Wood Brothers Racing, another NASCAR team, that he had noticed the tied rope at a race in the fall, long before Wallace had been assigned to the garage stall for this week’s Geico 500.

Through a spokeswoman, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, Jay Town, declined to be interviewed Wednesday. But the Justice Department said Tuesday that officials were certain that the noose had been in the garage since at least October and that “nobody could have known Wallace would be assigned to garage No. 4” that far in advance.

“The 43 team had nothing to do with this,” Phelps said in a teleconference with reporters, referring to Wallace’s Richard Petty Motorsports team. He said that NASCAR was still investigating who might have tied the noose last year or perhaps even earlier.

There was good reason for Wallace and his team to be sensitive to anything that could be perceived as racist. His own parents were concerned for his safety after he spoke out this month, saying the Confederate flag was a symbol of hate and not heritage. Those safety concerns were focused on the reaction of fans in the predominantly white sport, but history has shown that racism also exists inside the stock-car circuit.

In early 1999, David Scott, one of two Black crew members in NASCAR, described in a news report that other crew members often called him names like Leroy and Lemont and also called him racial slurs.

“I expected that coming here,” Scott, who drove the motor home for a top owner, told The Orlando Sentinel. “I just figure that’s the way it is.”

That harassment culminated with an incident in July 1999 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, according to a lawsuit Scott filed against NASCAR in 2006. Two white employees of top NASCAR drivers showed up at the door of his motor home, and one had pulled a pillowcase over his head to impersonate a Ku Klux Klan member, the suit said. When Scott opened the door, the two men screamed.

The two white men involved in the incident were fired, and NASCAR reminded teams that it had a zero-tolerance policy for racism. Scott’s lawsuit in 2006 claimed that

Darrell Wallace Jr. before the start of a race at Talladega Superspeedway on Monday. the association had not given him a job he had been promised, which was supposed to protect him from the harassment he had faced working for a team in the garage area.

A judge dismissed the case in 2008, the same year NASCAR settled a separate lawsuit involving the first Black woman to work as a NASCAR technical official.

That official, Mauricia Grant, sued NASCAR for $225 million for racial discrimination, sexual harassment and wrongful termination. In her lawsuit, Grant, who went by the first name Mo, said she endured “virulently racist comments” and “ugly racist bigotry” by co-workers who called her names like “Nappy Headed Mo,” “Mohammed” and “Simpleton.” Some fellow officials discussed the Ku Klux Klan, she said, and it scared her. Her colleagues often made her work outside, the suit said, telling her that she would not sunburn because she was Black, and would say she was “on coloredpeople time” if she was late.

Grant, who didn’t respond to messages, once rode in a car with another official at Talladega who told her to duck. According to court documents, he said, “I don’t want to start a riot when these fans see a Black woman in my car.” Another official at Talladega, according to the lawsuit, “jokingly” threatened to sic the garage’s bomb-sniffing

dog on Grant because she could be perceived as a criminal.

While Wallace hasn’t directly faced similar daily racism within NASCAR, he has acknowledged that whatever he does or says will be placed under a microscope and criticized by fans who might not want him to be in the sport. While enduring the backlash from the noose episode, he has had to remind himself that he can’t please everybody.

“I will always have haters,” Wallace said on CNN.

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The San Juan Daily Star

June 26-28, 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

June 26-28, 2020

(Mar 21-April 20)

Communication is the cornerstone of any relationship. It will be especially easy to get your message across to loved ones, friends and family. Your confident and reassuring words will get a warm and welcome reception. This is a good time to enter an agreement concerning luxury goods.

Don’t be afraid to ask for as much as you think you can get.

Whilst there are bargains to be had in some areas you must take care not to pay over the odds in some other areas.

Cash caution must be your motto for a wee while.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

It can be challenging to make an important commitment. So many people cases and causes fire your interests that you might be spoilt for choice. This is fine if you are honest with people. Even when you are being truthful, some people will feel you are favouring others and leaving them in the cold.

The more you learn about a foreign culture, the stronger your desire will be to expand your horizons. Whether this means learning a language, adopting an exotic diet or reading as much as you can about it.

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)

You have a brand of sensuality that is down to earth, relaxed and utterly devastating. Unfortunately, you may not have a chance to use it. If you already have a partner, this would be a wonderful time to coax them into giving you a lavish gift. Embrace your love of wealth, beautiful objects and luxury. Use creature comforts on a regular basis rather than saving them for special occasions. Anyone who accuses you of being shallow is jealous of your ability to thoroughly enjoy the finer things in life.

Having a contentious romance fills you with happiness.

Being with someone who agrees with everything you say would put you to sleep. You fare much better with someone who gives you a run for your money. Arguments are often preludes to passion for you. This is a great time to change your look. Altering your appearance will cause others to treat you in a different way. Being a love magnet will be a refreshing change of pace, making you aware of a sensual side you never knew existed.

Idealistic expectations can backfire. If you want to feel content and at ease it’s important to ease your expectations of them and of yourself. When you take responsibility for your moods, it becomes much easier to collaborate. Indulge your love of solitude for a few hours. Create a quiet corner in your house where you can hear yourself think and make sure those who share your home know that when you are in that zone you are not to be disturbed.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

You’re not worried what others will think about your choices. As a result, you are very happy with the decisions you are making now. Instead of getting caught up in superficial matters like looks, status and money, you focus on connecting with someone’s heart. It may not be possible to meet with friends in person, but that doesn’t mean you can’t communicate online. Skype with someone who stimulates your intellect and makes you feel slightly stupid.

They’ll inspire you to fill in the gaps to your knowledge.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Organising a team of people to do something purposeful and positive is a great use of your time and energy. People respond well to your upbeat spirit. Divide the work through a series of telephone or online conference calls. You can assemble the pieces. You have a reputation for being a perfectionist. This will work to your advantage with anyone who expects the best from the people around them. Accept a job with their organisation; in the long run it will be creatively and financially rewarding.

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

You’re ready to delve deep into a mysterious subject.

The more you learn, the more fascinated you become with this topic. It’s possible you will enter a challenging academic online programme to get an advanced degree in this field. Merely scratching the surface holds no appeal. An intriguing encounter gives you plenty of new things to think about. You’re never completely happy unless you know you are doing whatever it takes to make things better for the people around you.

Teaming up with people who are intelligent, versatile and logical is strongly recommended. You have all the fire and passion necessary to get a project off the ground, but you require a strategist to help you across the finish line. Someone who used to sideline you will ask you for advice.

You’ll be surprised by their gentle approach. After having an honest conversation, you’ll be delighted to discover they have had a change of heart. When things get back to normal you might even become friends.

You will want to make your own mind up about how to act and react to what’s happening around you, but in the end you will have to abide by rules and restrictions aimed to benefit you as well as the world in general. Of course you will listen carefully to those with advice to offer. Taking better care of your health will make you sleep easier. Staying away from sugar, fat and alcohol will improve the quality of your slumber. Getting more rest will make you more productive, loving and generous.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Obey a creative impulse. Whether you’re writing a story, composing music or inventing a gadget, the end results will be satisfying and give you something to work on in your leisure time. It’s nice to be loved and those closest to you will be extra affectionate and supportive. If you’ve been longing to take a break, shake up your schedule. Put work on the back burner while you focus on a favourite hobby. Reading as much as you possibly can about a fascinating subject will be just as fun as travelling.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

Having a close, loving home is becoming increasingly important. No matter what is happening in your professional life, your equilibrium will be restored the moment you see your nearest and dearest. The key to cultivating this contentment is choosing decor that uplifts and inspires you. If you’re distanced from your family, it’s important to create or join an online social network that can uplift and sustain you. You’re a thoroughly kind person who will want to play a part in a voluntary support group.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

June 26-28, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

The San Juan Daily Star

Ziggy

32

June 26-28, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star