Thursday Mar 16, 2023

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.

Permits put on pause as high court upholds ruling rendering 2020 joint reg null & void

By THE STAR STAFF

The Puerto Rico Supreme Court has declared the Joint Permit Regulation of 2020 null and void, a setback for the island Planning Board and for the Department of Economic Development and Commerce (DDEC by its Spanish acronym) that has placed thousands of permits in limbo.

The DDEC assistant secretary of the Office of Permit Management (OGPe), María R. Cintrón Flores, said the office has implemented a temporary pause on permits.

The decision was issued unanimously on March 14 and now casts doubt on the granting of thousands of permits that have been approved on the island using the aforementioned regulation as a basis.

Cintrón Flores confirmed that on Wednesday the agency was notified of the ruling issued by the island Supreme Court in the case challenging the 2020 joint regulation. The judgment of the top court confirms the previous one issued by the Court of Appeals regarding the nullity of the regulation.

“The OGPe had raised before the courts that the determination of the Court of Appeals was issued without jurisdiction, since the agency was not notified or included in the lawsuit,” Cintrón Flores said. “The OGPe respectfully differs from the interpretation made by the court when it understood that the charter law of the OGPe itself delegated a leading and indispens-

able role in the process of adopting the regulations.”

Cintrón Flores, together with the agency’s legal team, is evaluating the range of consequences and immediate alternatives to the ruling in order to address, diligently and promptly, the procedural and operational aspects under its jurisdiction. Among the options, the OGPe could appeal for reconsideration before the Supreme Court itself.

“We recognize that this is a complex issue that cannot be taken lightly,” Cintrón Flores said. “Therefore, as an immediate precautionary and preventive measure, we have implemented a maintenance window in the Single Business Portal that temporarily pauses the processes of filing and adjudication of cases in the portal.”

“This responds to a desire to protect the certainty and transparency of the processes before the citizens and the public interest,” she added.

“Because the OGPe is the body responsible for facilitation and procedures related to permits, it is also up to us to look for the certainties of these processes and keep the public duly informed about any changes to them,” the official said. “The procedures facilitated by the OGPe are essential for the optimal sustainability of economic activity, as well as for its development. We will be deferential to interagency processes while we guarantee that we fulfill our duty to provide clarity and certainty to citizens and businesspeople.”

María R. Cintrón Flores, assistant secretary of the Office of Permit Management

Governor will not ask for NPP caucus in Senate vote on women’s advocate

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

Gov. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia said Wednesday that he will not ask the New Progressive Party (NPP) Senate delegation for a caucus vote in favor of interim Women’s Advocate Vilmarie Rivera Sierra.

“What I hope is that everyone votes individually, that this is not a matter of caucus, but that everyone is allowed to set their position at their time,” the governor said in response to questions from the press.

Pierluisi Urrutia hopes that today’s public hearing before the Senate Appointments Committee will serve to clarify concerns about Rivera Sierra, who allegedly does not have the votes to be confirmed at the moment.

“I’m not going to be here asking for a caucus rule vote like everyone has to vote one way or another,” the governor said. “For appointments, I think that senators should have their own judgment and in due course, I will know who voted and why. But this is not yet the time, because the advocate has not had the opportunity to appear at that hearing.”

Pierluisi also said Wednesday he has no objection to giving the Office of the Elections Comptroller greater powers to oversee political campaign revenues.

“The electoral comptroller can propose a draft to that effect before the Legislative Assembly and at that time I will establish my position,” the governor told the press.

Among other issues, the electoral comptroller, Walter Vélez, wants anonymous donations to be eliminated and that he be allowed greater powers to oversee political action committees (PACs and

Super PACs).

“In principle, I see transparency as good, that donors are identified and that it is identified by check or money order,” Pierluisi said. “If the electoral comptroller wants to reduce it even more, I see it as good.”

His statements were in response to the allegations used by the legal team

of former Guaynabo mayor Ángel Pérez Otero that the money that contractor Oscar Santamaría gave him in a transfer recorded by federal authorities was donations to his political campaign.

Also on Wednesday, the governor said he understands why former Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced is asking for money to pay for her defense over charges she faces in federal court.

“The former governor is supported by the presumption of innocence,” he said. “And it is her right to solicit donations for the cost of her defense. I know that the cost of the defense in federal court is very high and I also know that the former governor is a middle-class professional who I know does not have great resources, and I am not surprised that she has done that.”

“What I want is for justice to be done and we will know the outcome in due course,” Pierluisi said. “In the meantime, I can’t criticize what she’s doing.”

Last week, a press release was issued announcing the creation of the “Corporation for the Defense of Justice, Truth and Honesty,” which requested donations and the intention to help pay for Vázquez Garced’s defense.

The former governor faces charges of bribery, conspiracy and wire fraud in connection with her 2020 election campaign.

Cataño mayor urges House to approve bill that boosts emergency aid available in towns

By THE STAR STAFF

Cataño Mayor Julio Alicea Vasallo on Wednesday endorsed Senate Bill 834, which would increase by $1,000 the amount of aid to citizens in emergency situations without the authorization of the municipal assembly.

In cases of fire, flood, earthquake, hurricane and other exceptional circumstances, the donation could reach $2,500.

“This measure does justice to the most vulnerable citizens and makes it easier for municipalities to quickly and efficiently meet their needs,” Alicea Vasallo said in a written statement. “We urge the House of Representatives to approve this measure that enjoys the support of the Federation and the Association of Mayors of Puerto Rico.”

The Puerto Rico Municipal Code of 2020

establishes in its article 2.034 that mayors can offer aid of $500, and in exceptional cases up to $1,500. Those amounts were fixed 26 years ago in the Autonomous Municipalities Law of 1997.

The measure approved in the Senate this week does not allocate additional economic resources for the stipulated increases. That is, the aid must be entered into municipal budget items for those purposes.

“We thank the senator for the district of Bayamón, Migdalia Padilla Alvelo, for having listened to our demand and for her sensitivity in filing the measure and her action in addressing these issues of such importance for the municipalities,” the Cataño mayor said.

“We trust that the House of Representatives will approve this bill that also recognizes the work of mayors in meeting the urgent needs of our constituents.”

Gov. Pedro Pierluisi

Cataño Mayor Julio Alicea Vasallo

CNE analysis casts doubt on promised results of Genera’s entry into PR energy market

By THE STAR STAFF

The Center for a New Economy (CNE) says the entry of Genera PR into the island energy market will not lead to the promised structure of competition and savings because there is a monopoly in transmission and distribution (T&D) and an oligopoly in the area of energy generation.

“The resulting structure will not yield the promised savings,” CNE Policy Director Sergio M. Marxuach said. “Consumers will only be able to buy energy from LUMA [Energy, the T&D system operator]. Any savings will not come from a competitive structure or because there is more efficiency but because of the elimination of the old power plants and their replacement with renewables.”

To understand the next steps in what the CNE hopes will be the transition to renewable energy and safeguard the interests of families and businesses in Puerto Rico, the think tank undertook the task of analyzing the 10year Operation and Maintenance (O&M) Public-Private Partnership Agreement between the government of Puerto Rico and Genera PR.

“Energy costs in Puerto Rico are very high since we depend on old power plants that burn mostly fossil fuels, which represents 70% of operational costs. The parties to the O&M Agreement are the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), which is the Owner of the Assets, the Puerto Rico Public-Private Partnerships Authority (P3A) as the Contract Administrator, and Genera PR as the Operator,” Marxuach said. “It lays out the blueprint to transition to renewable energy generation (and/or natural gas and hydrogen) which could provide a significant reduction in the cost of energy in the long term, depending on how this difficult and complex process of decommissioning fossil fuel generation while simultaneously deploying large-scale renewable generation is achieved. The 300+page contract lays out the terms and conditions pursuant to which Genera will operate, maintain and eventually decommission certain power plants.”

Genera was hired to provide, directly or through subcontractors, four types of services: Mobilization services, operation and maintenance services, decommissioning services and demobilization services. In exchange for providing these services, the operator is entitled to receive certain compensation, subject to any applicable incentive, payments or penalties. The compensation structure has been well developed and is a significant improvement from the LUMA contract, which was deficient in this area, the CNE analysis said. The agreement also includes clear benchmarks to measure Genera’s performance, such as stronger filters to analyze transactions with affiliates and related parties, including a comprehensive policy to address organizational conflicts of interest, the requirement to engage in good faith negotiations with current PREPA employees to minimize the learning curve of the new operator, and a fixed cap on the fees that the operator can earn during the mobilization period, Marxuach said.

Marxuach added that “a novel feature (for Puerto Rico) of the Generation O&M Agreement is that it requires Genera to use ‘commercially reasonable’ efforts to ensure that local companies, or foreign companies with a significant presence in Puerto Rico, are included in the procurement process for materials and services under the agreement.

In addition, it requires Genera to use “commercially reasonable” efforts to select companies established under the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico or companies that have “a significant presence in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico” as material subcontractors, he noted. These provisions, if implemented, have the potential to generate local economic activity and allow local firms and workers to obtain valuable experience working on a complex multi-year project, Marxuach said.

Regarding the expected savings, though, the analysis says the O&M agreement is clearly deficient. The CNE policy director said “the government of Puerto Rico has stated that it expects this agreement to generate significant savings. Yet, in the short term, the savings estimated by Genera will be insufficient to provide any savings to consumers even if the PREPA’s debt is cut approximately by 50% to $5 billion and pays 6% interest, which means consumers will need to pay $300 million annually to service the restructured debt.”

Genera estimates, as set forth in a report by FTI Consulting, that the “combined estimated savings from O&M and fuel range from $100 million to $200 million annually (including conversion savings if approved by the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau).” Under the terms of the

Generation O&M Agreement those “savings would be shared 50%/50% between Genera and the consumers of Puerto Rico,” the report says.

“That would result in $50 million to $100 million per year to Puerto Rico electric system customers,” the report points out. The methodology used by Genera to calculate those expected savings is not provided in the FTI report, so it cannot be properly evaluated, Marxuach noted.

Genera insists on pointing to potential savings to be extracted from the conversion of oil-burning plants to facilities that burn natural gas. Such conversions would generate approximately 50% of total expected savings from the agreement. Given that Genera is a wholly-owned subsidiary of New Fortress Energy, a company that produces and delivers natural gas, a clear conflict of interest arises. The O&M Agreement, however, includes a fully developed policy to address organizational conflicts of interest. It remains to be seen how thoroughly that policy will be enforced and implemented, Marxuach said. In addition, the agreement does not identify who would pay for the capital expenditures necessary for such conversions, nor does it explain how expected savings will be affected once the cost of capital is taken into account.

The CTE analysis concludes that, “relative to the status quo, is the post-Genera electricity market in better shape in Puerto Rico? Probably yes, but that is an awfully low bar.”

Marxuach adds that “however, if we set a higher bar, if we ask whether this transaction will really help Puerto Rico achieve its long-standing goals of generating affordable, cleaner, and reliable electricity, then the answer is not quite as clear, for the good is indeed mingled with the ill.”

“The fact is that there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding this transaction and it is hard to avoid the unsettling feeling we are being presented with a fait-accompli on a take it or leave it basis,” Marxuach said. “Maintaining the status quo, though, is not an option. The real question is whether there is a better alternative to a negotiated agreement in this instance. The answer, when taking into account the totality of the circumstances, appears to be no.”

Center for a New Economy (CNE) Policy Director Sergio M. Marxuach

NPP official: Comptroller’s audit exposes major corruption ‘rampage’ in Arroyo

By THE STAR STAFF

The scandal uncovered by a Comptroller’s Office audit into the operations of a municipal corporation created by Arroyo Mayor Eric Bachier Román exposes the same pattern of corruption used by former Mayagüez Mayor José Guillermo Rodríguez, a New Progressive Party (NPP) official said.

Guillermo Irizarry Rodríguez, an NPP leader and pre-candidate for the Senate for the District of Guayama, made the remarks after examining the detailed report of the Comptroller’s Office, whose conclusions call into question the legality of the municipal corporation.

“This is a major brand rampage, which demonstrates the total contempt of the mayor of Arroyo for the laws and the current order,” he said. “Millions have been wasted on a trick that only disguises corruption.”

In the opinion of Irizarry Rodríguez, all the principles of fiscal responsibility, integrity and austerity have been

violated at a time when the island is mired in bankruptcy.

“And every author, promoter and architect of all this scheme is Bachier,” asserted Irizarry Rodríguez, a former candidate for mayor of Villalba who holds a master’s de-

gree in public administration. “It is his misappropriation of public funds that he supports with his power as mayor.”

The NPP official noted that the report contains strong statements that include the mayor acting without legal authority, the issuance of certain insurance payments in cash and the usurpation of powers by the mayor himself.

“This is a scandal of unsuspected proportions that must be dealt with without further delay by the Secretary of Justice,” commented Irizarry Rodríguez, who has already sent a letter to that department urging the investigation.

He insisted that the audit notes questionable withdrawals from a municipal debit, a lawsuit that was settled without authorization of the municipal assembly, and the issuance of checks without invoices to justify them.

“Not only did the mayor go over the Municipal Assembly by blatantly violating the Municipal Code, but that body has been complicit in his excesses by remaining silent and not defending its supervisory power,” Irizarry Rodríguez said. “This is how a town is destroyed!”

By THE STAR STAFF

The Special Independent Prosecutor Panel (PFEI by its Spanish initials) has accepted a recommendation from Justice Secretary Domingo Emanuelli Hernández to appoint an independent special prosecutor and a delegated prosecutor to investigate alleged illegal acts by former Ceiba Mayor Ángelo Cruz Ramos and the former director of human resources of that municipality, Briseida Medero Osorio.

The PFEI on Wednesday appointed Miguel A. Colón Ortiz as special independent prosecutor and Manuel E. Nuñez Corrada as a delegated prosecutor.

The case results from a complaint filed by current Ceiba Mayor Samuel Rivera Báez. In his letter, he accused the former mayor of conducting a massive recruitment contrary to the applicable laws in force.

A preliminary investigation carried out by the Division of Public Integrity and Comptroller Affairs (DIPAC) of the Department of Justice together with the Special Investigations Bureau (NIE) revealed that once Cruz Ramos lost the 2020 primaries, he made a call to illegally recruit temporary and trust employees into career positions before the new municipal administration took over.

The investigation found that people who

did not have the requirements to be municipal employees were recruited, including individuals who had prior convictions. Consequently, the municipality of Ceiba disbursed some $774,834.00 for salaries, contrary to the pertinent laws and regulations.

The resolution issued by the PFEI highlights that the documents included in the record sent with the preliminary investigation report indicate that the officials could have violated the Penal Code.

In referring the matter to prosecutors Colon Ortiz and Nuñez Corrada, the PFEI granted a term of 90 days as provided in Law 2-1988, which could be extended for an additional term.

Transparency portal available for reporting misuse of FEMA funds

By THE STAR STAFF

In order to expand efforts to ensure the proper use of funds allocated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Central Office for Recovery, Reconstruction and Resilience (COR3) Executive Director Manuel A. Laboy Rivera on Wednesday announced the availability of the COR3 Transparency Portal (pr.gov), a digital tool to report fraud, waste or abuse in the use of funds from FEMA’s Public Assistance and Harm Mitigation Grant programs.

“As part of COR3’s responsibilities to protect the integrity of federal grant programs, we are creating the necessary

mechanisms to ensure the correct use of the funds FEMA allocates to government agencies, municipalities, and nonprofit organizations,” Laboy Rivera said. “The new section in the Transparency Portal makes it more accessible and easier for anyone who believes that there is an improper use of funds to make a complaint.”

As an example, the COR3 Compliance Division could address complaints related to irregularities in the processes of procurement of goods and services, fraud and conflicts of interest, as well as instances of bribery, extortion and intimidation referred by COR3 employees, sub-recipients and/or contractors, among others.

Those interested in making a complaint, which could be anonymous if desired, should include a summary of the events explaining the nature of the situation, scope, and period of time in which the alleged irregularity arose, how he/she became aware of the questioned activity and how the acts in question were carried out. The name and contact information of the individual(s) or company(s) related in the report should also be included, as well as the name and contact information of any witnesses who may help corroborate the information reported.

“I always emphasize that the reconstruction of Puerto Rico has to be carried out in compliance with laws and regulations, both

state and federal,” Laboy Rivera said. “For this reason, I call on citizens, sub-recipients and contractors to report any irregularities in the reconstruction process. Gov. Pedro Pierluisi is emphatic that the development of permanent works must be agile, but in compliance with the correct use of these funds allocated by the United States government.” Once the complaint is filed through the digital format, the filer will receive an automatic message to acknowledge receipt of it. The information provided will be reviewed by an investigative specialist to determine the course of action, including conducting a more thorough investigation or referring the matter to the appropriate office.

Special independent prosecutor to look into alleged illegal actions by ex-Ceiba mayor

Guillermo Irizarry Rodríguez

Former Ceiba Mayor Ángelo Cruz Ramos

Biden issues executive order to strengthen background checks for guns

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

In the nearly nine months since President Joe Biden signed into law a series of gun safety measures last summer, scores of Americans have been killed or wounded in mass shootings across the country: in the Illinois suburbs, at a Virginia university, in an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado and at a dance studio in this Los Angeles suburb.

Throughout that time, Biden has vowed to seek passage of a new ban on assault weapons “come hell or high water.” But the president and his aides have acknowledged there is virtually no chance of that happening in a Congress that remains deeply divided over how to confront the slaughter of its citizens in repeated spasms of gun-related violence.

So Biden traveled Tuesday to Monterey Park, where a gunman killed 11 people in January during Lunar New Year festivities at Star Ballroom Dance Studio, to announce a handful of steps designed to improve enforcement of existing laws that have so far failed to prevent mass shootings in one American community after another.

“Today, I’m announcing another executive order that will accelerate and intensify this work to save lives,” Biden told a small audience in Monterey Park that included family members and victims of the shooting, which terrorized the Asian American community here.

“It’s just common sense,” the president said during the event, which had the somber tone of a memorial to those who died. “Check whether someone is a violent felon, a domestic abuser, before they buy a gun.”

Biden, who spent time meeting privately with relatives of the shooting victims, during his public remarks offered a somber recounting — one by one — of the 11 people who were killed on “a day of festivity and light turned into a day of fear and darkness.”

One had an “infectious smile,” the president noted. Another exuded “kindness, sweetness and generosity.” A third was “a lifelong learner.”

The visit, and the announcement of a new executive order, is Biden’s latest attempt to express his horror over the continued loss of life and to demonstrate his administration’s effort to reduce the chance of another mass shooting.

But the president is constrained by the Second Amendment and a political system that has so far refused to make progress on his demands for universal background checks for gun sales, a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and the repeal of immunity from liability for gun manufacturers.

He repeated the assault weapons demand on Tuesday, noting that he had advanced the effort in the Senate in 1993 to pass a ban, which expired amid political disagreement a decade later.

“None of this absolves Congress from the responsibility of acting,” he said, his voice rising. “Let’s finish the job. Ban assault weapons. Ban them again. Do it now. Enough. Do something. Do something big.”

Biden’s new executive order is far more modest than that kind of lofty ambition.

It directs the attorney general to make sure gun dealers

are complying with existing background check laws. It seeks to improve reporting of guns and ammunition that are lost or stolen while in transit. It calls for better transparency about gun dealers who are cited for firearms violations. And it directs agencies to work with the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network to improve the quality of investigations into gun crimes.

Some gun control advocates praised Biden for the new order. John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said the effort to crack down on gun dealers “will significantly expand background checks on gun sales, keep weapons out of the hands of dangerous people and save lives.”

But few advocates think that the steps will bring an end to the country’s routine gun violence.

Jose Sanchez, the mayor of Monterey Park, said he is optimistic that the United States will eventually make bigger changes to seriously confront what he called an “addiction” to guns and gun violence in the country.

He praised Biden for signing the new executive order. But he said it is not enough.

“I don’t want in any way to offend the president,” Sanchez said. “Because I think he’s heading in the right direction. I think he’s listening to what we need. But if I were to advise him, and if I were to be able to sit down with him, I would tell him that after he gets himself reelected, that he needs to focus his next four years on making some serious changes.”

On Tuesday, Biden said he would continue to call on

Congress to act.

“In the meantime, my administration will continue to do all that we can, within existing authority, to make our communities safer,” he said in the preamble to the executive order.

Tuesday’s executive order is primarily an effort to make sure federal agencies are putting last year’s law into practice.

David Hogg, a co-founder of March for Our Lives and a survivor of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, said in a statement that he was pleased to see Biden taking action.

“In poll after poll, gun safety is a winning issue in elections,” Hogg wrote. “Americans and young people don’t care about excuses. We care about results.”

Hogg predicted that action on gun safety would win the youth vote in 2024.”

Whether that ends up being true could depend in part on whether the actions Biden announced are seen as playing a role in preventing at least some of the mass shootings that would have occurred without them.

And it will depend on how aggressively gun rights advocates fight back. Several groups issued statements Tuesday vowing to do just that.

“Our elected leaders should be supporting those lawabiding Americans instead of finding more ways to hinder their right to defend themselves,” said Katie Pointer Baney, managing director of government affairs for the U.S. Concealed Carry Association.

President Joe Biden shakes hands with Brandon Tsay, center, who disarmed the Monterey Park mass shooter, after he delivered remarks on reducing gun violence in Monterey Park, Calif., March 14, 2023.

Ohio attorney general sues Norfolk Southern over derailment

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

The Ohio attorney general filed a 58-count federal lawsuit against Norfolk Southern on Tuesday, charging that the derailment of a train carrying hazardous chemicals last month in the village of East Palestine was a product of the company’s negligence and recklessness, posing serious health risks to people in the area and causing “substantial damage to the regional economy.”

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, accuses Norfolk Southern of numerous violations of state and federal environmental laws; it also raises claims of public nuisance and trespass. It seeks to force the company to pay civil penalties, costs and damages to reimburse the state for economic losses and harm to natural resources.

“This derailment was entirely avoidable,” Attorney General Dave Yost said at a news conference in Columbus announcing the suit. “I’m concerned that Norfolk Southern is putting profits for their own company above the health and safety of the cities and communities that they operate in.”

In a statement, Norfolk Southern said it had been in discussions with Yost’s office about creating programs that would conduct long-term environmental monitoring, compensate residents for medical costs and address losses in property values caused by the derailment.

“We look forward to working toward a final resolution with Attorney General Yost and others as we coordinate with his office, community leaders, and other stakeholders to finalize the details of these programs,” the statement said.

The legal consequences for Norfolk Southern began piling up almost immediately after the train derailed on the night of Feb. 3. Nearly two dozen private lawsuits have been filed by local residents in Ohio federal court. Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania has asked the attorney general of his state, whose border with Ohio is near the derailment site, to investigate whether criminal charges are warranted. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, under the authority of a four-decadeold law, has ordered Norfolk Southern to clean up any contamination from the derailment and pay all the costs.

The company has been scrutinized not only for the derailment but also for its role in the decision three days later, backed by local and state officials, to release and burn thousands of gallons of vinyl chloride from the train to prevent a catastrophic explosion. Since then, federal and state officials have conducted tests on the water, soil and air and so far have not found significant levels of vinyl chloride and other dangerous chemicals; still, some residents and independent experts have raised concerns about the reliability of those tests.

The suit brought by Ohio, which cites the same law used by the EPA, details Norfolk Southern’s “extensive and tragic history of derailments and releases of hazardous materials,” recounting specific accidents and saying that the accident rate on the company’s trains “has nearly doubled in the past 10 years.”

Listing some of the hazardous chemicals that were aboard the train, the suit described the potential effects of each on people and animals.

Exposure to vinyl chloride, the suit said, may lead to “changes in liver structure or liver cancer.” The burning of vinyl chloride, which was conducted with the approval of local officials when it appeared that one or more of the rail cars was in danger of exploding, may have caused the formation of dioxins, which “are highly toxic and carcinogenic, and extremely persistent in the environment.” The EPA has ordered Norfolk Southern to test for dioxins.

While not listing all of the toxic materials, the suit said that many of them had the potential to cause “myriad” health problems in humans and animals, “including but not limited to headaches, dizziness, nausea, cancer and harm to the nervous system.”

The suit also charged that the derailment “caused substantial damage to the regional economy,” displacing people who had to leave East Palestine first under a mandatory evacuation order, and then out of concern for their own safety. It predicted that the accident could harm tourism and the sale of locally grown produce in the area “for years to come.”

In his remarks, Yost said he had been having productive conversations with Norfolk Southern about the recovery process.

“The company has repeatedly said that it wants to make it right,” he said. “Our lawsuit is designed to make sure that they keep their promise.”

California levee failures mount as storms continue relentless drive

By TIM ARANGO and SHAWN HUBLER

It began as a trickle, seeping through a 74-yearold earthen levee in Northern California, dribs and drabs of the Pajaro River, swollen with rain yet again on Friday night. Then pools bubbled up on beyond the levee walls, spreading toward darkened fields of strawberries and lettuce. Four miles downstream, the farmworker community of Pajaro slept.

Within half an hour, according to Mark Strudley, the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency’s executive director, sandbag crews were swarming the scene in “full flood fight.” But in the latest example of how California’s vast and aging infrastructure is being tested by this year’s onslaught of extreme winter weather, the crews could not keep up.

As they backed away, the river burst with a mighty roar through the worn-down levee, flooding freeways and farms, submerging the entire town of Pajaro and forcing thousands of residents in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties to flee.

“I have to start from zero,” Antonio Arroyo, a 58-year-old farmworker, said Tuesday as he sat in an evacuation center at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds with about 300 displaced residents from the same community, known for harvesting strawberries. He had been sleeping in a Honda minivan when firefighters rescued him from the rising floodwaters in Pajaro; the donated red sneakers, bluejeans, sweater and plaid shirt he was wearing were “all I have,” he said.

As a fresh atmospheric river ravaged California on Tuesday, causing high winds and flooding from Southern California to the Oregon border, water experts warned that the recent storms could be just a prelude to an even more challenging spring.

Already, the landscape is beyond saturated after a winter that has set or approached records for precipitation. By Tuesday afternoon, heavy rain reached the Los Angeles Basin, where officials warned residents to avoid driving through flooded roadways and fire authorities said they rescued eight people and eight dogs from the San Gabriel River in Azusa late Monday.

In the Bay Area and Central Coast, strong winds downed power lines and tall trees. More than 350,000 utility customers were without power at one point Tuesday, most of them customers of Pacific Gas and Electric in hard-hit Northern California, according to Poweroutage.us, which tracks blackouts. Gusts of up to 74 mph were recorded at San Francisco International Airport, where operations were paused briefly after the FAA issued a ground stop.

Water from the Pajaro River breached a levee on Tuesday, forcing the closure of a portion of Highway 1 until the safety of bridges could be assessed.

More than 1,500 dams and some 14,000 miles of levees help control California’s waterways, according to federal

statistics. And this year’s storms are capping the driest three years on record, noted Gary Lippner, deputy director of dam safety and flood management with the state’s Department of Water Resources.

“California,” he said, “has experienced true climate whiplash this year.”

Statewide, the winter storms have stressed the state’s infrastructure since January, particularly in low-lying, inland areas crisscrossed by rivers. Along the Cosumnes River near Sacramento, where more than a dozen levee breaches flooded roads and inundated homes during storms around New Year’s Day, communities are still recovering.

To the north of the state Capitol, the authorities who maintain the watershed that encompasses the Sacramento International Airport said that when one of their pumps exploded this year during a powerful storm system, they discovered that their equipment was so old that the manufacturer no longer carried the parts they needed to fix it.

”We managed to get it back online with a $600 part we found on eBay,” said Kevin L. King, the general manager of Reclamation District No. 1000, an agency formed to maintain levees and protect acreage from flooding. “We were within 12 to 24 hours of telling the airport to reroute flights because there would have been water flooding the runways.”

Strudley said that federal, state and local officials had talked since the 1960s about the need to shore up the water infrastructure around the Pajaro River, but the property values in the area were so low that they did not meet the threshold for repair under the cost-benefit formula that the federal government and the Army Corps of Engineers were using.

That approach, which systemically disadvantaged poorer communities, has begun to change, he said. A major project to upgrade and strengthen the local levees at an estimated cost of more than $500 million was underway when the storm hit, and the flood has prompted local officials to

begin talks with the federal government about expediting its planned 2025 groundbreaking, Strudley said.

Even so, he added, the project is expected to take eight to 10 years.

In Watsonville, across the river from their community of Pajaro, displaced farmworkers said it was unclear how long they could hold out with both their homes and the fields they depend on for paychecks underwater. Some said they had been living in their cars for days, not knowing where to go.

The working-class agricultural region is tucked between the beaches of Santa Cruz that are popular with surfers, and the wealthy Monterey Peninsula known for its world-class Pebble Beach Golf Links. Often cloaked in fog near the coastline of the Pacific Ocean, workers in the Pajaro Valley pick strawberries and harvest lettuce and artichokes savored by the rest of the nation.

Marina Hernandez, 31, said she received a knock on the door just after midnight Saturday from a county worker saying her family had an hour to evacuate. She called her husband, who was working an overnight shift about 20 miles away at a garlic packing plant in Gilroy, and then quickly collected important documents, like birth certificates and Social Security cards.

But she said county officials did not tell her where to find shelter, so she and her family were living for a few days in their pickup truck. “All they said was: ‘Get out! Get out!’ But they didn’t tell us where to go. Nothing.”

Finally, after being sent away from the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds because the evacuation center was over capacity, she found her way Tuesday afternoon to a small shelter set up in the gymnasium of a veterans hall in Watsonville.

Sitting on a cot with her 14-month-old daughter as her 5-year-old son lay playing with his phone on another cot, Hernandez said she was sad and frustrated and had no idea the condition of her home.

Weeks might pass, she said, before she and her family could go back. Until then, she said, “I’m not able to do anything.”

NOTA ACLARATORIA

Loyalty Finance LLC

Se notifica que por error involuntario se publicó ayer, miércoles 15 de marzo de 2023, la Tasa Mínima incorrecta. A continuación se publica la correcta. Disculpen los inconvenientes.

Floodwaters in Watsonville, Calif., March 14, 2023. Pajaro is the latest community to suffer from a levee break in California.

Late-winter storm brings heavy snow and rain to the Northeast

By JESÚS JIMÉNEZ and MICHAEL LEVENSON

Alate-winter storm dumped heavy, wet snow in parts of the Northeast on Tuesday, causing widespread power outages and dozens of flight disruptions.

The brunt of the storm appeared to be affecting a broad area in upstate New York, southern Vermont and northwestern Massachusetts, where 28 inches of snow had been recorded in Windsor, according to the National Weather Service. In Pittsfield, Massachusetts, southwest of Windsor, the police said there were downed power lines and felled trees throughout the area.

“If you don’t have to drive, can you please do us all a favor and not go out on the roads,” the Pittsfield Police Department said on Facebook. “We have wires down everywhere. We have trees down everywhere, and it’s not going to get any better.”

Two feet of snow had been recorded in Franklin County in northwest Massachusetts, and 11 inches of snow had been reported in southern New Hampshire, accor-

ding to the weather service.

In Piseco, New York, in the southern Adirondacks, about 2.5 inches of snow fell in the span of an hour Tuesday, bringing snow depth to 31 inches, the weather service office in Albany, New York, said. In Vermont, more than 32 inches of snow had been reported in Marlboro, near the state line with Massachusetts, according to the weather service.

An additional 3 to 8 inches of snow were expected over portions of New York and New England into Wednesday, the weather service said, with more power outages and tree damage expected.

Joe Villani, a meteorologist with the service in Albany, said that the storm was producing wet snow, which can build up on power lines and trees, weighing them down and causing outages.

“Even this morning, having maybe 3 inches of snow in my driveway, it was extremely heavy to push and lift around,” Villani said. “This is really probably our one real, true nor’easter we’ve seen this entire winter season.”

More than 251,000 customers were

without power as of Tuesday afternoon in parts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Maine and Vermont, according to PowerOutage.us.

Dozens of flights were delayed or canceled Tuesday at airports across the Northeast, including La Guardia Airport in New York and Logan International Airport in Boston, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website.

A ground stop was temporarily issued Tuesday morning for some flights departing La Guardia Airport, and in upstate New York, a plane carrying dozens of passengers slid off the runway around 7:30 a.m. at Syracuse Hancock International Airport, authorities said.

Delta Air Lines said in a statement later Tuesday that the nose gear of one of its planes “exited the paved surface of a taxiway,” and it “was not an airplane skidding off a runaway.” The airline said that there were 58 travelers on the aircraft and five flight crew members, none of whom were injured.

The storm was tamer in portions of New Jersey, Connecticut and New York City, where either rain or light flurries fell.

“It will be difficult to get much more than a coating on the grassy surface for the NYC metro and the coast,” forecasters at the weather service in New York said Tuesday morning.

After mostly rain in the morning, snow flurries fell throughout the afternoon in midtown Manhattan, but the snowflakes largely melted on the streets.

Central Park had only recorded a trace amount of snow and 0.75 inches of rain, and Killingworth, Connecticut, recorded more than 3 inches of rain since Monday night, according to the weather service.

Snowfall was expected to taper off Tuesday night as the storm system moved east, but widespread minor coastal flooding and beach erosion were also possible before the storm slowly moved away from the New England coast on Wednesday, the weather service said.

“This is really a long-duration, multihazard event,” Porter said.

The storm caused other disruptions, such as canceled classes in several cities and closed state offices in Maine.

In New Hampshire, more than 50 towns postponed municipal elections that had been scheduled for Tuesday, according to the secretary of state’s office.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency that began at 8 p.m. Monday, allowing the state to deploy additional resources.

“This will be a dangerous storm,” Hochul said. “Please stay off the roads for your own safety. Stay in your homes.”

Hochul said that 100 National Guard troops had been mobilized to respond to emergencies and that additional utility crews had been called in, including some from Canada.

Boston was preparing for at least 4 inches of snow and wind gusts of up to 55 mph. Mayor Michelle Wu said the city had asked construction companies to secure cranes and other heavy equipment.

Jon Mitchell, the mayor of New Bedford, Massachusetts, a port city about 60 miles south of Boston, said that crews were clearing catch basins to prevent rain and snow from pooling.

“The big issue, really, is the risk of flooding for us — and the wind gusts,” he said in an interview.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy also declared a state of emergency that began at 8 p.m. Monday for Warren, Sussex, Morris, Passaic and Bergen counties.

“Please, please, please be careful,” Murphy said at a news conference Monday. “If you don’t have to go out, don’t go out.”

Craig Hallstrom, regional president of electric operations for Eversource, a utility that serves Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, said that the storm was “so big” that it could stretch resources across the region.

Snow falls on Stone Arch Bridge at Kenoza Lake in Sullivan County, N.Y., March 14, 2023. A major storm dropped two feet of snow in portions of northwest Massachusetts, while other cities only saw flurries or rain. The weather brought power outages through the region and caused travel disruptions.

Sara Porter, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, said that anyone driving in coastal regions of the state should be on the lookout for flooding as snow continued along with gusty winds.

He said the utility was closely tracking the rain-snow line and was particularly concerned that wind gusts of 40 mph were expected across Massachusetts, with even stronger gusts along the coast.

Hallstrom said Eversource, in looking to prepare, had called in hundreds of additional workers from other states.

After days of panic, bank executives can breathe again

By ROB COPELAND

After nearly a week of tumult, the specter of a billowing crisis over the banking industry appeared to ease, at least for the moment, as pressure began to lift on the mid-size and regional lenders most in peril.

Shares of First Republic, which over the weekend had to slap together a multibilliondollar rescue package to shore up its finances, soared over 60% Tuesday before giving back some of those gains and closing up 27%. Shares are still down by roughly two-thirds over the past five trading days.

Western Alliance, previously a littleknown Arizona bank, saw its stock shoot up 50% on Tuesday after Citadel, the investment giant run by billionaire Ken Griffin, disclosed that it had taken a stake in the hard-hit lender, though that gain was pared back to 14% by the end of the day.

Some of the worst-hit banks seemed to go to extreme lengths to put on a brave face,

and they had some success doing so. Zions Bank of Salt Lake City convened an emergen-

cy forum featuring both senators from Utah. Its stock bounced back to a degree Tuesday, as did shares of PacWest Bancorp of Los Angeles and Charles Schwab, the Texas financial conglomerate.

Though the financial world was suddenly glued to news of banks that only the most obsessive observers would have earlier heard of, none of their CEOs would agree to be interviewed. Some sent out mass notes to customers that sidestepped the most pressing questions of the moment: How much money was being withdrawn this week, and what was the plan if the outflows pressed on?

One bank CEO, Brad Tidwell of VeraBank, shared his personal cellphone number to all 70,000 depositors at his institution, which has roughly $4 billion in deposits. His phone lit up Monday and Tuesday with more than 50 text messages and around two dozen phone calls from customers, asking him for personal assurances that everything would turn out OK.

While stock prices aren’t a clear proxy

for whether a bank is healthy or not, falling shares or even simply volatility in prices can set off panic in borrowers and lead to a bank run. The recent downturn in the industry, in fact, was set off in part by just that, when shares in Silicon Valley Bank, a technologyfocused lender, plummeted after it disclosed plans to raise money that it needed to pay out some depositors.

Less than two days later, Silicon Valley Bank, which had roughly $175 billion in deposits, was taken over by federal regulators, making it the biggest bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis. Shares in other relatively small institutions have since fallen precipitously on fears that they, too, could be insolvent, though thus far only one other bank, Signature Bank, has been seized by regulators.

On Sunday, federal officials committed to paying out depositors at those fallen banks in full, even if the banks did not have sufficient money. Depositors reported Monday that they were able to take out funds, an enor-

Continues on page 12

Ken Griffin, C.E.O. of Citadel, appears during The New York Times DealBook conference in Manhattan on Nov. 10, 2021. Citadel said it had taken a stake in Western Alliance, an Arizona bank.

‘Let 1,000 flowers bloom’: AI funding frenzy escalates

By ERIN GRIFFITH and CADE METZ

When four leading artificial intelligence researchers left Google this year to create a startup called Mobius AI, they weren’t sure what their product might be — just that it would involve AI technology that could generate its own photos and videos.

Within about a week, two of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital firms, Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures, had swooped in with a funding offer, three people with knowledge of the matter said.

Suddenly, Mobius — little more than four guys and a laptop — was valued around $100 million, an usually high number for a startup that was just a week or so old, the people said. When word of the deal leaked out, other investors descended to urge Mobius to take their money too, they said.

Over the past few months, a gold rush into startups working on “generative” artificial intelligence has escalated into a no-holds-barred deal-making mania. The interest has mounted so rapidly that AI startup valuations are soaring beyond that of 2021’s “everything bubble,” with investors trawling the rosters of companies like Google, Meta and OpenAI for AI experts who may have an itch to start their own company.

The funding race has heated up ever since ChatGPT, the chatbot made by OpenAI, went viral last year by showing the power of AI to generate its own tweets, emails, articles, answers and ideas. Even as investors expect last week’s failure of Silicon Valley Bank, an institution that many tech startups relied on, to cast a pall over

startup funding, there is still a mismatch between the number of opportunities in artificial intelligence and the money available to fund them.

That’s because of the scarcity of AI companies and the potential of the technology. With few experts in the field, and most of them working at a handful of big tech companies, only a few generative AI startups — such as Stability AI and Jasper — have broken out. Investors desperate for the next big thing are competing fiercely to invest in these companies, offering some AI entrepreneurs nine-figure valuations for little more than an idea and a resume.

“We’re in that phase of the market where it’s, like, let 1,000 flowers bloom,” said Matt Turck, an investor who specializes in AI at venture firm FirstMark. He added that the deal-making stood out in an otherwise dreary moment for tech marked by layoffs, cost-cutting and a drought of initial public offerings.

Andreessen Horowitz did not res-

pond to a request to comment. Index Ventures declined to comment on Mobius’ funding.

The blooming flowers include Dust, a startup founded by former employees of OpenAI. Dust is nearing a $5 million funding round led by Sequoia Capital that will value it at $30 million to $40 million, two people with knowledge of the situation said. The round was competitive, with term sheets offering valuations as high as twice that, one of the people said.

Perplexity AI, a startup created by former employees of OpenAI, Google and Meta, is raising $20 million to $25 million, led by NEA, that values the company at about $150 million, two people familiar with the situation said. And LangChain, a startup working on software that helps other companies incorporate AI into their products, has raised funding from Benchmark, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

Those follow the $13 billion that OpenAI raised from Microsoft, including $10 billion in January, and $300 million raised this year by Anthropic, another AI startup.

Dust and LangChain declined to comment. Various aspects of the funding rounds were earlier reported by Business Insider, The Information and Newcomer.

At Y Combinator, a startup incubator, at least 50 of the 218 companies in the current program are working on generative AI, according to a tally taken by Truewind, an AI bookkeeping startup that is part of the program. Alex Lee, Truewind’s CEO, said ChatGPT had helped investors, potential customers and potential employees un-

After days of panic, bank executives can breathe again

From page 11

mous relief to employers and individuals who had been worried about when and if they would regain access to their money.

Officials stressed, however, that stockholders and bondholders in the banks themselves would still be in line to lose money on their investments.

For the first day since Silicon Valley Bank’s unwinding, there were no widespread reports of customers being denied the chance to withdraw money from ATMs and bank branches. It appeared that

the worst fears of widespread cash shortages were contained for now.

Yet much uncertainty remains. As bank shares were recovering and branches returned to normalcy Tuesday, only a few institutions had provided extensive updates about the degree to which skittish customers were pulling out their money.

On Monday, First Republic’s executive chair, Jim Herbert, told CNBC in an off-camera interview that the bank was not experiencing an unusual level of withdrawals, a pronouncement that the anchors on the set greeted with visible

skepticism. The bank did not respond to inquiries from The New York Times about the statement.

Charles Schwab’s CEO, Walter Bettinger, boasted in a CNBC interview Tuesday that his firm had seen positive incoming deposits this month overall, but neither he nor a Schwab spokesperson would provide figures for this week, when Schwab’s stock has been under the most acute pressure.

Bettinger said he had bought roughly $3 million in new shares Tuesday to show his faith in the company.

derstand the possibilities of the technology.

“Before, you’d go in and say, ‘We’re doing something with AI,’ and it’s hard to picture exactly what that looks like,” Lee said. “Now, they say, ‘Oh, I’ve played with ChaptGPT, and I can imagine how I could use this in my world.’”

He declined to comment on his company’s fundraising before Y Combinator’s demo day, when companies pitch investors, in April.

Even though more mature AI startups have already raised large sums, they can’t afford to ignore the latest overtures from investors, said Mike Volpi, an investor at Index Ventures who sits on the board of the AI startup Cohere.

That’s partly because AI technologies like ChatGPT, which learn by analyzing vast amounts of digital data, require a lot of computing power, which is expensive. Volpi estimated that startups needed at least $500 million to develop their own large language model, the technology that underpins ChatGPT.

“There are a few times in technology where you really see a generational leap forward with revolutionary technology,” said John Somorjai, who leads Salesforce’s venture investments. “These companies are the next trillion-dollar opportunities in software.”

Sam Lessin, a venture capitalist at Slow Ventures, said he didn’t think the tech advances in AI translated to opportunities for startups. The best way to invest in AI, Lessin said, is to buy the publicly traded stocks of Big Tech companies.

“The absolute vast majority of the spoils will go to the incumbents,” he said.

Zions, whose ties to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stretch back to the bank’s first president, Brigham Young, has been similarly vague. On Monday, the company held a forum with highprofile political guests, including not just both senators but the governor as well.

Scott Anderson, the bank’s CEO, opened by reading a script that noted Zions had a more diversified business base than Silicon Valley Bank, but he did not take questions or provide new information about his organization’s financial base during the crisis.

Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, left, and Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s chief technology officer, in Redmond, Wash. on Feb. 7, 2023.

Global sell-off resumes after Credit Suisse renews worries; gold rallies

Renewed unease gripped world markets on Wednesday as news that Credit Suisse’s largest investor said it could not provide the Swiss bank with more financial assistance sent its shares and broader global equities sliding.

Treasury yields in the U.S. and euro zone tumbled on another bout of turmoil in banking stocks and shifting interest rate expectations. U.S. inflation data showed signs of economic weakness and cooling inflation.

Gold prices renewed their recent rally as investors sought safe havens. Oil prices plunged more than $5 a barrel.

Concern over further banking sector instability and closely watched inflation data published on Wednesday raised expectations the Federal Reserve may pause or slow down hiking rates.

“The question that is in everyone’s mind is: are we headed for another financial crisis?” said Brad McMillan, Chief Investment Officer for Commonwealth Financial Network in Waltham, Massachusetts. “That’s what’s driving the bus at the moment.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 331.20 points, or 1.03%, to 31,824.20, the S&P 500 lost 33.68 points, or 0.86%, to 3,885.61 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 15.20 points, or 0.13%, to 11,412.95 by 2:35 p.m. EDT (1835 GMT).

The MSCI world equity index, which tracks shares in 49 nations, lost 1.27%.

Signs of calm and stability in banking stocks, which have tanked in the past week following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), soon paved way for renewed selling as Credit Suisse shares fell to record lows.

The STOXX 600 index fell 1.67%, while Europe’s broad FTSEurofirst 300 index fell 51.58 points, or 2.91%

Investors rushed back into safe haven investments. Germany’s two-year yield DE2YT=RR dropped 51 basis points (bps) to 2.419%, putting it on course for its biggest daily fall since 1995..

The two-year Treasury yield fell to the lowest since September and last touched 3.9788% compared with a U.S. close of 4.225%. It has tumbled 98 basis points in the last five days, the biggest drop since the week of Black Monday on Oct. 19, 1987. On Tuesday, it fell to the lowest since September.

U.S. gold futures gained 1.1% to settle at $1,931.30. Spot prices were last up 0.6% at $1,913.52 an ounce.

“The Credit Suisse share price is falling and government bonds are rallying on the back of that. Still very much driven by the perceived health of the banking sector, but this time in Europe,” said Antoine Bouvet, senior rates strategist at ING.

The European Central Bank is still leaning towards a halfpercentage-point rate hike on Thursday, despite turmoil in the banking sector, given high inflation, a source close to its Governing Council told Reuters.

Markets are “spooked” by Credit Suisse headlines, said Richard McGuire, head of rates strategy at Rabobank in London.

“For today Credit Suisse is the dish of the day but we don’t

think this will be a longer lasting trend,” he said.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.6%, having slid 1.7% on Tuesday. Japan’s Nikkei index was flat while an index of Japanese banks, which has slid 8% this week, jumped over 3%.

As recently as last week, markets braced for the return of large Fed interest rate rises but the swift collapse of SVB has changed those expectations, with markets pricing in an 80%

chance of a 25 basis point hike next week.

Retail sales dropped 0.4% last month, the U.S. Commerce Department said on Wednesday, largely in line with expectations. January data was revised higher to show growth of 3.2% instead of 3.0% as previously reported.

“The real takeaway here for the Fed meeting is that while the inflation problem is not solved, does the Fed say they have more immediate problems,” McMillan said. “They will probably go with 25 basis points but I wouldn’t be shocked to see them go flat.”

The Euro was down 1.4% on the day at $1.0578, having gained 0.02% in a month, while the dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of currencies of other major trading partners, was up at 104.69.

Why the Black Sea is a flashpoint between Russia and the West

By BEN HUBBARD and GULSIN HARMAN

If you had to rank the spots around the globe where the militaries of the United States and Russia could physically run into each other, the Black Sea would probably be near the top of the list.

The giant body of water on Europe’s southeastern flank has long been a theater of international competition between the United States and its European allies on one side and Russia and its sphere of influence on the other, a dynamic that has been supercharged by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian air force’s downing of an U.S. surveillance drone Tuesday served as a stark reminder to the many countries operating in and around the Black Sea of the region’s potential to become a flashpoint, accidentally or otherwise.

“It has always been complicated, it remains complicated, but the stakes are much higher now,” said Ian Lesser, vice president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a research group. “And the longer the conflict goes on, the higher the risks of things spinning out of control.”

The Black Sea is larger than California, with six countries on its coast. Three of those countries — Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria — are members of NATO, while others, including Ukraine, are friendly to the alliance, which has long considered the Black Sea essential to its efforts to contain Russia.

Turkey has tremendous influence over the Black Sea since it controls two straits, the Dardanelles and the Bosporus, which ships must pass through to transit between the Black Sea and other global water ways. The Montreux Convention of 1936 gives Turkey the right to close the straits to most military traffic in times of war, a power it exercised after Russia invaded Ukraine last year.

The Black Sea is hugely important to the efforts of Russian President Vladimir Putin to expand Moscow’s influence and, stemming from that, it has been a locus of instability.

The surrounding region in recent years has seen Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008, political uprisings against Russianbacked leaders in Ukraine and Belarus and a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2020, eventually mediated by Moscow.

But Putin’s biggest power play around the Black Sea was the occupation of Crimea, a strategic peninsula that Russia seized from neighboring Ukraine in 2014. That enhanced Russia’s position in the Black Sea and gave it control of Sevastopol, Russia’s only warm-water port.

In the years since, Putin has increased Russia’s naval presence in the Black Sea, so much so that in 2016, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that the sea had “almost become a Russian lake.”

Russia’s foes responded by intensifying their own military maneuvers around the Black Sea. NATO members flew regular surveillance flights and the United States and Britain often dispatched warships, although international conventions kept them from remaining longer than 21 days.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine, causing both sides to further expand their maneuvers in the area.

“The tensions in the Black Sea were obviously amplified after the war,” said Arda Mevlutoglu, an independent Turkish defense analyst.

The war complicated maritime trade for Black Sea nations, and Russia initially blocked the export of grain from Ukraine, one of the world’s top producers, raising fears of an exacerbated hunger crisis in poor nations.

But Turkey helped broker an agreement overseen by the United Nations that has facilitated the export of more than 22 million metric tons of that grain through Turkey’s territorial waters.

Turkey’s closure of the straits to most military traffic, which was meant to prevent Russia from bolstering its naval force against Ukraine with ships from elsewhere, also kept ships from the United States and other NATO nations from entering the Black Sea.

At present, only countries with Black Sea coastlines have vessels in the water, said Yoruk Isik, a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute who closely monitors marine traffic through Turkey’s straits.

Of those, only Russia and Turkey have powerful navies, Isik said. Romania and Bulgaria have smaller forces, Georgia has only a coast guard, and the movements of Ukrainian vessels are complicated by the war.

But the skies remain open, so NATO members have increased surveillance flights over and around the sea, and Russia has responded with fighter jets as a show of force.

The Pentagon said the drone that came down Tuesday was unarmed and had taken off from Romania for a routine surveillance flight. About 75 miles south of Crimea, two Russian fighter jets intercepted it, dumping fuel on it, presumably to blur its camera. The jets also flew close to the drone in a way that U.S. officials described as dangerous.

One of the jets clipped the drone’s propeller, causing its U.S. operators to bring it down, the Pentagon said.

The Russian Defense Ministry told a different story, saying in a statement that the Russian air force had scrambled fighter jets to identify the drone, which then maneuvered sharply, lost altitude and hit the water.

U.S. officials had worried in recent months that some sort of incident over the Black Sea, even an accidental collision or miscommunication, could spiral out of control.

The downing of the drone has heightened tensions between the United States and Russia, although neither side has shown any inclination to allow the situation to escalate.

But analysts said that the war in Ukraine had led to so much more military activity in and around the Black Sea and elsewhere that the longer it lasts, the greater the chances that such incidents will occur.

“It simply points out that the potential geography of confrontation and escalation is much broader than what one may assume by reading the daily news,” said Lesser.

A Russian Navy ship entering the Black Sea through the Bosphorus strait in February 2022, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

US won’t stop surveillance flights despite downing of its drone

rection” of Russia’s border and that the fighter jets were dispatched “in order to identify the intruder.”

Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, said Wednesday that Russia was trying to retrieve the wreckage. John Kirby, a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council, said that because of the depths of the waters where the drone came down, “I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to recover it.”

“We’re still assessing whether there can be any kind of recovery effort mounted. There may not be,” Kirby said on CNN.

The Pentagon said the incident was an example of Russian incompetence. U.S. officials said they did not believe that the Russians had intended to clip the propeller of the drone with their plane, a risky move that endangered the Russian plane as well.

“This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional,” the U.S. military’s European Command said in a statement.

Other American officials said they had not seen indications that what happened heralded a broader strategy of harassing U.S. or NATO reconnaissance planes, with one official saying it was not any sort of “concerted chess move” by Russia.

The reaction on state media in Russia was largely muted, but some politicians sought to portray the episode as evidence that the United States was in direct confrontation with Moscow. Leonid Slutsky, head of the Russian Parliament’s Committee on International Affairs, said in an interview with Tass, the Russian state news agency, that it “once again proves the involvement of the United States in the Ukrainian conflict.”

By DANIEL VICTOR, MARC SANTORA, ERIC SCHMITT and VALERIE HOPKINS

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III said Wednesday that the United States would continue to conduct surveillance flights after a U.S. reconnaissance drone was struck by a Russian warplane and downed over the Black Sea.

“Make no mistake: The United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows,” Austin said in remarks at the beginning of a virtual meeting of some 50 nations supporting Ukraine’s efforts in the war against Russia.

“This hazardous episode is a part of a pattern of aggressive and risky and unsafe actions by Russian pilots in international airspace,” Austin said. “It is incumbent upon Russia to operate its military aircraft in a safe and professional manner.”

The incident, the first known physical contact between the Russian and U.S. militaries since the war in Ukraine began, has raised tensions between the superpowers, although there were signs Wednesday that both nations were trying to contain the fallout.

The United States and Ukraine have said that the

unarmed MQ-9 Reaper drone was flying in international air space on a routine surveillance and reconnaissance mission. American and Ukrainian officials have said they share intelligence gathered by such missions, particularly related to the threat posed by Russian warships and submarines in the Black Sea.

The Pentagon accused Moscow of recklessness, saying Russian planes had dumped fuel on the U.S. drone Tuesday before one then clipped the drone’s propeller and caused its U.S. operators to bring it down in the Black Sea, southwest of the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula. Ukrainian officials said that the drone crashed in waters to the southeast of Snake Island, around 30 miles off the Ukrainian coast.

Russia denied that its plane had hit the drone and demanded an end to U.S. military flights near its territory.

“I want to emphasize that the Russian fighters did not use airborne weapons, did not come into contact with the unmanned aerial vehicle and safely returned to their base airfield,” Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Defense Ministry’s chief spokesperson, said in a statement Wednesday.

He said that the drone had been flying “in the di-

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, left, alongside Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testifies at a Senate Armed Services Committee budgetary hearing, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 7, 2022.

Cyclone Freddy brings mudslides and floods, leaving 200 dead in Malawi

By GOLDEN MATONGA and LYNSEY CHUTEL

As a surge of water came roaring down a hill in Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre, on Sunday, a 15-year-old girl said she saw it coming from the veranda of her home, grabbed her four younger siblings and ran.

“It was terrifying,” said the girl, Alinafe Petrol, speaking on an aid worker’s phone. “We started running for our lives, but only realized later my mother was not with us. I have not heard from her since.”

Cyclone Freddy, a record-breaking storm that barreled into the landlocked southeast African nation of Malawi over the weekend, brought a deluge of mud and floodwaters that has left nearly 200 people dead.

In a shelter in Blantyre on Tuesday, Alinafe, her youngest sibling strapped to her back, was among dozens of Malawians anxiously awaiting news of their missing loved ones.

In Blantyre, the city hit hardest by the cyclone, authorities said 158 people were killed as houses slid from their foundations and winds ripped trees out of the ground. Several electric poles were strewn across the city’s main freeway.

The cyclone, which as of Tuesday had been going for 36 days straight, set the record for the longest-lasting storm in the Southern Hemisphere. Officials said they believed that the storm, now weakened, would dissipate by Wednesday.

The storm formed in February off the northern coast of Australia and cut an unusual path by traveling 4,000 miles across the southern Indian Ocean before it hit southeastern Africa.

The cyclone swirled in the Indian Ocean, ricocheting between the island nation of Madagascar and the southeastern coast, where it hit Mozambique. The cyclone made landfall twice in each of those countries, killing nearly 50 people.

As the storm traveled inland, it battered Malawi. The country’s death toll is expected to climb as rescue workers continued digging through sludge and rubble Tuesday, drenched by a third day of continuous rain.

Civilians joined in digging through the rubble with farm tools, aid workers said in phone interviews. They struggled to pull young children and older people from the wreckage. Some bodies were washed away down river, while others were pulled from the city’s sewer system.

With more than 20,000 people displaced by the destruction, the survivors huddled in hurriedly built camps in schoolyards and classrooms.

As a landslide rumbled toward his home at the foot of Soche, a hill in Blantyre, Patrick Melemba, 40, said he left everything behind and ran.

“I saw people being covered by mud, so many dead bodies,” he said.

His home was destroyed, but all six family members survived.

“I have lost everything,” Melemba said, but then added,

“I feel lucky at the same time that I am alive.”

At Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, desperate crowds overwhelmed medical staff, said Felix Washon, a spokesperson for the Red Cross in Malawi. Some carried the bodies of relatives crushed by fallen walls. Others searched for missing family members, hoping to find them alive. Dozens more arrived with injuries, some walking, while others had to be carried.

“It was an overwhelming situation,” said Washon. “People were rushing there with dead bodies.”

The water has cut new streams through the city, rushing downhill where more neighborhoods are likely to be flooded, said Washon. Such conditions hampered rescue efforts.

A boat from the Malawi Defense Force carrying six people capsized in a swollen river. Four of them survived, but two passengers — both soldiers — are still missing, said Maj. Emmanuel Mlelembela, spokesperson for the Malawi Defense Force.

Officials fear that the devastation may be worse in rural villages still cut off by washed-away roads or fallen trees.

As officials assessed the scale of the devastation, Malawi’s government declared a state of disaster across 10

districts in the country’s south on Monday.

Cyclone Freddy is the worst natural disaster the country has seen since 1991, when floods killed about 1,000 people, according to Douglas Moffat, commissioner for the Phalombe District, just outside Blantyre.

Malawi was already struggling to contain a cholera outbreak that had surprised health workers because it reemerged after the country had all but eradicated the disease. In the past year, more than 1,600 people have died from cholera.

At least 500 more cases and 13 deaths from cholera have been recorded since the storm, the World Health Organization said. Floodwaters may spread the disease wider, while hospitals and clinics are overwhelmed or destroyed.

“Right now, it’s too early to know how exactly the cyclone will impact cholera transmission and associated deaths,” said Dr. Patrick Otim, who is managing the World Health Organization’s response to the cholera outbreak in the region. “But we are seeing concerning developments.”

In neighboring Mozambique, where Cyclone Freddy made its second landfall last Saturday, about 55,500 people were at risk as heavy rain continued to fall, the United Nations said. Some areas, including the central province of Sofala, were flooded by the cyclone’s first arrival on Feb. 24.

Residents of Blantyre navigated harrowing and muddy conditions from the storm as the death toll continued to rise.

Garbage mounts in odorous last stand against France’s pension change

By CATHERINE PORTER

Mounds of food waste piled in view of the Eiffel Tower. Small cobblestone streets lined with overflowing garbage bins. The bank of the Seine skirted by heaps of trash.

For more than a week now, garbage workers in parts of Paris and other cities across France have been on strike, protesting President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the age when most workers begin collecting a government pension to 64, from 62.

The refuse rising in insalubrious piles, some taller than the pedestrians trying to avoid them, is a smelly, visceral symbol of popular outrage at the government’s plan. It also serves as a physical reminder of the hardship of professions not suited for old age, garbage workers say.

“You can see our work all over Paris,” said Alain Auvinet, 55, picketing at the garbage incinerator on the city’s western edge where he has worked for 35 years. “We held huge protests. The government didn’t listen. Instead, it gave us the finger. This is our last way of pushing back.”

After two months of political debates, large protests in towns and cities across the country, and scattered strikes, the final decision on France’s pension system is likely to be made this week. On Wednesday, a joint committee of lawmakers from both parliamentary houses met to hammer out a common version of the proposed law. Should that happen, the bill will move back to the Senate and National Assembly for final approval on Thursday.

The big question is whether Macron has assembled enough support from outside his hodgepodge centrist political party to secure the vote in the National Assembly, where it no longer holds a strong majority. If not, the next question is whether Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne would instead use her constitutional power to force the bill into law without a vote, exposing the government to a no-confidence motion.

Members of the government believed the “conditions were met” for a majority to approve the bill, its spokesperson, Olivier Véran, said Wednesday. The government was not contemplating using the alternative constitutional force, he said, “but neither are we contemplating abandoning our pension reform plans.”

Either way, few expect to see the week’s end with France retaining a retirement age of 62.

“I support the strikers,” said Dawoud Guenfoud, looking out at a slalom course of overflowing garbage bins lining the sidewalk outside the decorations and gift store he manages near Place de la Madeleine. “But, I think the reform is going to pass.”

The French enjoy one of the most generous retirement systems in Europe. Built after World War II as part of the country’s lauded social protection system, the complex pension program offers what many consider a golden — and lengthy — third stage of life, to explore passions, enjoy grandchildren and volunteer while enjoying a standard of living on par with or better than the general population. As many workers like garbage collectors argue, it is also seen as a

time to recuperate from a lifetime of arduous labor.

Macron’s government argues the retirement age must be pushed up to keep the system solvent. Current workers and their employers pay for the pensions of retirees, but with people living longer and the number of pensioners growing, the system faces long-term deficits.

But even the official body tasked with monitoring France’s pension system has acknowledged that there is no immediate threat of bankruptcy, and unions and left-wing opponents have accused Macron of ignoring other ways of increasing funding, including taxes on the wealthy.

From the beginning, opinion polls have shown that a large and relatively unwavering majority of French people oppose the change. Millions have poured out into the street for seven national protest marches.

While the country’s eight leading unions have joined together in a relatively rare show of unity to oppose the change, so far they have little to show for their actions. Macron declined to meet with them last week, arguing that he did not want to circumvent the parliamentary debates.

On Wednesday, marchers gathered in towns and cities across France to express their final opposition to the bill.

“It’s the last cry, to tell Parliament to not vote for this reform,” said Laurent Berger, the head of the country’s largest union, the French Democratic Confederation of Labor, from the protest in Paris on Wednesday afternoon.

He supported the garbage workers, who in Paris have voted to extend their strike into next week.

“This is not what I expected Paris to look like,” said Martina Stengina, 18, a German university student, stepping out of a taxi and maneuvering her bright red suitcase around a sprawling jumble of garbage in the middle of the street in the city’s eastern end, where she had rented an apartment.

“I just hope this doesn’t bring rats into our place,” she said, as one of her friends posed for a selfie in front of the trash.

Georgina Pillement, 32, surveyed the piles of garbage outside her office building near Place Vendôme during a smoke break.

“France is supposed to be a leader in ecology,” said Pillement, who works at a green investment firm. “The Olympic Games are just a year away. This makes me a bit worried.”

The workers went on strike more than a week ago in cities across the country, including Le Havre, Nantes, Antibes and Rennes. In Paris, about half of the city has been affected, from the swanky 16th arrondissement, to the city’s historic intellectual heart in the Latin Quarter and workingclass residential areas in the east.

On Wednesday, some 7,600 metric tons of garbage remained uncollected on the street, according to Paris city hall. Workers at all three incinerators that burn the city’s garbage are also striking.

Relishing the chance to redirect the anger, some national government ministers attacked the Socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, and the Paris city administration, which hung two banners in support of the protest movement outside its ornate city hall, for not picking up the garbage.

Deputy Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire responded by saying that Macron’s government was responsible. He expressed sympathy for garbage workers who have lower life expectancy than business executives, saying two more years of work “counts a lot.”

“The best way to get them back to work is to withdraw the retirement reform bill,” he said.

Few people think that will happen. The government is expected to force its plan through, no matter how unpopular.

If the bill becomes law, it is unclear whether huge protests would continue, and what long-term ramifications that would have, if any, for Macron and his government.

Some political analysts predict the protests will dissipate, but that a bitterness will drive voters to punish Macron’s party, first in next year’s European Parliament elections.

“People won’t mobilize for a law that’s already been voted on by the Parliament because French workers recognize the legitimacy of Parliament that results from universal suffrage,” said Guy Groux, a sociologist at Sciences Po. “The most likely outcome is that unions will say, ‘If the law is passed, there will be political repercussions at the ballot box.’”

But the specter of pushing the bill through without a vote — though constitutional — strikes many as undemocratic. “The least we can say is that it will be seriously disrespectful of what is happening in the streets and of what public opinion thinks,” said Philippe Martinez, the head of the far-left CGT union, on Wednesday. His workers intended to continue the combat, he said.

Garbage workers in France have let refuse accumulate in protest of President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the country’s retirement age.

How to make this the last banking bailout

second-longest stretch without a bank failure since the Great Depression.

Yet the details of Silicon Valley Bank’s rise and fall are depressingly familiar. The bank took big risks to grow quickly by gathering and investing money from a wide range of tech startups; its shareholders cheered, and its auditors and regulators did nothing to interfere. Indeed, regulators treated Silicon Valley Bank’s core strategy of investing in government bonds as essentially risk free, blind to the dangers posed by a rapid rise in interest rates. Regulators also should have limited the bank’s dangerous reliance on large, uninsured deposits.

banks have far less of it than other kinds of companies. They are allowed to borrow most of the money they use from lenders and depositors. If, for example, banks were required to raise 20% of funding from shareholders, that would still be well below the norm for other kinds of companies but enough that it might have covered Silicon Valley Bank’s losses and saved the bank.

Congress should also require clawbacks of executive compensation and dividends at failed banks. If bankers are required in the future to return some of what they have gained from their poor decisions, it might have a sobering effect.

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Here we go again. The federal government is bailing out the banking industry, and the American people, who have seen this show far too often, have every right to be furious.

The proper target for that anger, however, is not the bailout itself, but the need for it.

The government’s decision to guarantee the full amount of insured and uninsured deposits at Silicon Valley Bank and New York’s Signature Bank is the best choice available to preserve the health of the broader economy. A new Federal Reserve program that offers subsidized loans to banks is also a good idea under the circumstances. President Joe Biden’s pledge on Monday that “we’ll do whatever is needed” was needed.

But the wide-ranging intervention is only necessary because the newly shuttered banks — the second- and fourth-largest failed banks in American history — were not exceptions to a pattern of general probity. Just as before the 2008 financial crisis, banks have once again managed to ring up billions in profits by making risky bets and then gone running for government aid as those bets have started to sour. At the end of 2022, the U.S. banking industry was sitting on a total of about $620 billion in unrealized losses as a result of investments undermined by the rise of interest rates.

When the American public last swallowed the bitter pill of a bank bailout, policymakers promised to regulate the industry more stringently to end the long-running cycle of privatized profits and losses absorbed by the public.

Those changes, including the safeguards imposed by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, were, largely, to the good. On average, an American bank failed every three days between 1980 and 1994. The pace of failures reached similar heights in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, but since then failures have been much less common. The failures in recent days ended the

Policymakers — in Congress, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve — have a duty to explain to the American public how things were allowed to spin so far out of control. Banks are different from most private-sector companies. They are insulated from market discipline by various forms of federal protection because, like the power companies that keep the lights on, they provide a public service that is essential to a modern economy. Regulators have a responsibility to ensure that banks do not abuse those privileges.

In the case of Silicon Valley Bank, regulators failed to do that job. The Federal Reserve’s role as the lead agency in responding to this crisis has obscured its failures as the agency that was responsible for supervising the bank in the first place. “They should have stopped them months ago,” said Anat Admati, a finance professor at Stanford University. “That’s my problem with the Fed: If they were honest, they would admit their own mistakes.”

Congress bears responsibility, too. In 2018, a bipartisan bill weakened regulatory oversight of mid-size lenders like Silicon Valley Bank, reversing key portions of the Dodd-Frank Act. The new law increased the threshold for the strictest category of regulatory scrutiny to $250 billion from $50 billion. Greg Becker, CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, testified before Congress in 2015 that his institution, like others of its size, “does not present systemic risks.” Signature Bank officials also lobbied for, and benefited from, the 2018 changes.

Lawmakers accepted the arguments of the two banks, and their allies, barely a decade after the failure of similar-size lenders like Washington Mutual and National City Bank played a starring role in the 2008 financial crisis. The recklessness of that decision, and companion measures to loosen other safeguards, was clear at the time. This board warned that policymakers were inviting another crisis.

Congress should now correct its mistake by restoring the $50 billion threshold.

Policymakers also need to recognize the limits of government oversight as a substitute for market discipline. Banks should be required to raise more money from shareholders, who have a strong incentive to keep an eye on the way that money is used, since they can lose all of it. Money raised from shareholders is called capital, and

The government does not want to describe its actions as a bailout because voters don’t like bailouts. The customers of Silicon Valley Bank, in particular, have been loudly unhappy to be described as the beneficiaries of a bailout because that’s an embarrassing thing to be; it contravenes the mythology of Silicon Valley as a scrappy frontier where people build the future without help, or oversight, from the government.

But the success of both the financial industry and Silicon Valley has always depended on government aid and prudent regulation. This bailout is necessary because the government was not paying enough attention. Policymakers ought to be honest about those mistakes and be clear about the steps they will take to avoid a repeat.

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PONCE – La comisionada residente, Jenniffer González Colón y la Embajadora del Reino de Noruega en los Estados Unidos, Su Excelencia Anniken Ramberg Krutnes, impulsaron el miércoles, el estudio de los océanos; se reunieron con estudiantes en Villalba y recorrieron el buque escuela Statsraad Lehmkuhl, que se encuentra atracado en el puerto Las Américas Rafael “Churumba” Cordero Santiago de Ponce.

“Noruega es un aliado natural de los Estados Unidos, tanto económico como en ámbitos de seguridad nacional, ambiental y otros. Esta visita tiene un rol bien importante porque es científico. Este barco estuvo navegando el mundo y haciendo investigación sobre los océanos, conociendo nuestros océanos, como podemos manejar y mejorar también la conducta de cada país sobre el cuido de los mismos. Ahora este barco regresa a Noruega, y el que hubieran escogido a Puerto Rico como parada final en los EE.UU. para nosotros debe ser un privilegio,” dijo la comisionada residente en declaraciones escritas.

Este buque está dando la vuelta al mundo equipado como un barco de investigación científica, recopilando datos meteorológicos e hidrográficos junto con muestras de peces, microplásticos, zooplancton,

eDNA y dióxido de carbono en el agua.

El Statsraad Lehmkuhl es el velero de aparejo cuadrado más grande y antiguo de Noruega y también el más antiguo entre los grandes aparejos cuadrados en funcionamiento en la actualidad.

Actualmente, el barco lo navegan los cadetes de primer año de la Real Academia Naval de Noruega, que participan en capacitación de liderazgo y formación de equipos como parte del programa de capacitación básica de la Armada de Noruega.

“Este velero lleva 19 meses navegando el mundo por un proyecto de investigación científica sobe el océano, algo que es muy importante para nosotros y para vosotros en Puerto Rico para el conocimiento de los océanos. Necesitamos saber más sobre el mar, que es tan importante para nosotros. Esta visita de ese barco ahora es muy importante. Es oficialmente una visita de la Marina Noruega y es una muestra de la significancia que tiene nuestra cooperación militar entre Noruega, miembro de la OTAN desde el inicio. Estado Unidos es nuestro aliado más importante y nuestras relaciones políticas, pero también militares, son muy muy buenas y esta visita es muestra de esto,” expresó la embajadora Ramberg.

La copresidenta del Caucus de los Océanos del Congreso, González Colón, también llevó a la emba-

POR CYBERNEWS

SAN JUAN – El Departamento de Educación junto a Caribbean University y la organización internacional Virtual Educa, han aceptado ser parte del evento Reto Marte 2030, una competencia en la que estudiantes universitarios deberán preparar propuestas dirigidas a mantener la vida de seres humanos en el Planeta Marte, se informó el miércoles.

“Acogemos con beneplácito esta invitación para que nuestros estudiantes del nivel superior se unan a jóvenes universitarios en este Reto Marte 2030. Sin dudas es una gran oportunidad y experiencia única para aquellos interesados en el mundo de las Ciencias, Tecnología, STEM, las ciencias y las matemáticas. A la vez, la interaccionan con jóvenes universitarios los puede estimular a esa vida futura que están próximos a comenzar al graduarse de cuarto año. Los invito a orientarse y participar en este gran esfuerzo”, dijo Eliezer Ramos Parés, decretario del Departamento de Educación en declaraciones escritas.

Las universidades en el mundo tienen un reto especial en estos tiempos. Están en busca de alternativas via-

bles para conquistar nuevas fronteras, explorar y crear ambientes de vida factibles fuera del planeta Tierra. En esta ocasión, cinco instituciones universitarias en representación de los países de Colombia, Ecuador, República Dominicana, Perú, y Puerto Rico, han aceptado ser parte del Reto Marte 2030. El mismo tiene como objetivo la creación de capital humano iberoamericano con vocación aeroespacial en todas las ramas de conocimiento de la Educación Superior (www.virtualeduca. org/aerospace2030).

Caribbean University, es la única institución en Puerto Rico que fue seleccionada por la organización Internacional Virtual Educa para ser parte de esta importante competencia. Dicha entidad tiene como misión favorecer la transformación social y el desarrollo sostenible en América Latina y el Caribe a través del Programa de Educación Aeroespacial, mejor conocido como, Aerospace Education.

“En Caribbean University, como una institución de vanguardia científica y tecnológica, nos honra servir como coordinadores y traer la sede a Puerto Rico de este magno evento iberoamericano que está destinado a aportar al desarrollo de todas las carreras universita-

rias y áreas del conocimiento relacionadas al campo de la ciencia y la tecnología aeroespacial”, expuso la doctora Ana E. Cucurella, presidenta de Caribbean University.

Los estudiantes universitarios de Caribbean University, junto a estudiantes seleccionados de las escuelas superiores del Departamento de Educación, crearán propuestas de todo tipo dirigidas a mantener la vida de los humanos en el planeta Marte.

jadora Ramberg al Centro Residencial de Oportunidades Educativas en Villalba (CROEV), escuela que se especializa en ciencias y matemáticas.

Estudiantes universitarios y de escuela superior lideran uno de los eventos internacionales de mayor relevancia para la NASA

Jenniffer González y embajadora de Noruega impulsan el estudio de los océanos

When best picture winners overcome a release early in the year

By SARAH BAHR

When “Everything Everywhere All at Once” made its debut last March at the South by Southwest film festival, followed by a nationwide release the next month, expectations were modest.

Maybe the quirky A24 film about a multiverse-jumping mother striving to finally connect with her daughter — and busting some martial arts moves along the way — would make some money. And then “hot dog fingers” mania happened. Seemingly overnight, TikTokers glommed on to the prompt “If the multiverse is real, I hope there’s one where …” and imagined alternate timelines for their lives. Moviegoers nationwide flocked to see the film once, twice, nine times. But back in spring 2022, no one could have anticipated the movie’s best picture triumph at the Oscars on Sunday night.

Conventional wisdom has it that films released in the fall make stronger contenders. So when “Everything Everywhere” won, it

joined a select group of films that were similarly released early — or early-ish — in a previous year, and that went on to capture the most coveted prize in Hollywood.

Here are nine times a release in spring or summer — or, once, even in January — has gone on to win big.

January 1943

‘Casablanca’

A release early in the year was not viewed as a competitive disadvantage until the early 1990s, when former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s guerilla-style efforts on behalf of smaller indie films such as “The Crying Game” (1992) and “Il Postino” (1995) kicked off the modern era of Oscar campaigning. The World War II-set romantic drama “Casablanca” was actually in good company among the 10 best picture contenders: All but three were released between January and August.

May 1952

‘The Greatest Show on Earth’

In the 1950s, it was common for best picture winners to also be box office behemoths. “The Greatest Show on Earth,” Cecil B. DeMille’s 152-minute circus extravaganza, became the highest-grossing film of the year in 1952, thanks to its extended stay in theaters.

March 1965

‘The Sound of Music’

David Lean’s epic romance “Doctor Zhivago,” a December release, was the favorite after he won best director for his previous two movies (“The Bridge on the River Kwai” from 1957 and “Lawrence of Arabia” from 1962). But audiences loved Maria — “The Sound of Music” became the highest-grossing film of 1965 — and the film won five statuettes, including best picture.

May 1969

‘Midnight Cowboy’

The only X-rated film to ever win best picture hit theaters long before the four other best picture contenders. The idea of releasing awards contenders as close as possible to the date of the ceremony — just before the eli-

gibility cutoff at the end of the previous year — so they’d be top of mind for voters was just beginning to take hold and would become common in the 1980s.

March 1972

‘The Godfather’

Paramount brass locked horns with director Francis Ford Coppola on every major decision, and the studio chief at the time, Robert Evans, fought to push the film’s original Christmas 1971 release to the spring to force Coppola to do another edit. (That made the film, which runs nearly three hours, even longer!) To be fair, “The Godfather” would have been Oscars catnip no matter when it was released.

February 1991

‘The Silence of the Lambs’

Like “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “The Silence of the Lambs” was bolstered by huge word of mouth and strong reviews. The cannibalistic thriller — still the only horror movie to win best picture — topped the box office for five consecutive weeks after it was released in February 1991. Then it hit VHS just before Halloween, vaulting it back onto voters’ radar.

July 1994

‘Forrest Gump’

This crowd-pleasing baby boomer tale was up against a stacked lineup of best picture nominees that included “Pulp Fiction” and “The Shawshank Redemption.” But moviegoers had embraced the tale of Tom Hanks’ kindhearted Alabamian, and it spent the summer hovering at or near the top of the box office, a run that Oscar voters surely noted.

May 2005 ‘Crash’

The divisive, Los Angeles-set race-relations drama pulled off one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history. The gay western “Brokeback Mountain” was an early front-runner and theories abound about why voters gave its filmmaker, Ang Lee, the best director Oscar but the top prize to Paul Haggis’ urban drama. In hindsight the win wasn’t exactly definitive. In 2012, Film Comment named “Crash” the worst best picture winner of all time.

June 2009

‘The Hurt Locker’

“The Hurt Locker,” Kathryn Bigelow’s low-budget American war thriller, had a slow rollout in theaters, going from four to 535 by the end of July. But it racked up strong performances at precursor award shows leading into the Oscars.

‘The Hurt Locker’

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Is cannabis good or bad for sleep?

By HANNAH SEO

Q: I take forever to fall asleep and wake frequently throughout the night. I’ve heard cannabis can help — is that true?

A: Few things can throw off your day more than a night of bad sleep. Insufficient sleep can worsen mood, sap energy and has even been linked with a range of health issues including dementia, depression, heart disease and a weakened immune system.

Between 2013 and 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than a third of adults in the United States reported getting less than the recommended seven hours of sleep each night. And in 2020, a Department of Health and Human Services study found, about 8% of adults reported that they regularly took sleep medications to help them fall or stay asleep. Some of those people, studies suggest, may be smoking, vaping or consuming cannabis products such as marijuana to help with their sleep.

So we asked some experts, including cannabis and sleep researchers, a sleep psychologist and a cannabis pharmacist, to explain cannabis’ effects on sleep and how its various chemical compounds influence those effects.

Will cannabis help me sleep?

In a survey published in 2022 of more than 27,000 medical marijuana users in the United States and Canada, nearly half cited sleep as a physical health reason for its use.

But it’s tricky to explain exactly how cannabis affects sleep because the studies that have been done are limited, and their results are often mixed, said Vyga Kaufmann, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The two main active compounds in cannabis — tetrahydrocannabinol (or THC, which is largely responsible for getting people high) and cannabidiol (or CBD, which does not cause a high) — seem to affect sleep in different ways, said Cinnamon Bidwell, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor of cognitive science also at the University of Colorado Boulder.

For instance, limited studies have found that low doses of THC can improve sleep and high doses can worsen it, whereas the inverse is true of CBD. This makes studying cannabis and sleep challenging, Bidwell said — especially because different cannabis products may have varying ratios of the compounds.

That being said, researchers from one review of 26 studies that was published in 2020 reported that there was “promising preliminary evidence” that cannabinoid therapies, including THC and CBD, should be investigated as possible treatments for sleep issues like insomnia, sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome and nightmares related to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Cannabis’ effects on sleep and sleepiness can also be influenced by how you take it, said Dr. Ashima Sahni, a pulmonologist and sleep specialist at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. Oral forms, like pills or edibles, will take longer to kick in than inhaled forms, she said, but their effects on sleep will last longer throughout the night. Inhaled cannabis, via vaping or smoking, will yield faster results, but they won’t last as long. Of course, Sahni added, vaping and smoking can come with certain health concerns including damage to the lungs and inflamed airways.

There is also some evidence that cannabis might indirectly help with sleep by alleviating chronic pain and anxiety — the two top concerns motivating new patients to try medical cannabis, said Rahim Dhalla, a pharmacist specializing in medical cannabis in Ottawa, Canada, who has studied patient experiences with cannabis for sleep. Although research in this area is “limited” and “the data are kind of all over the place,” Kaufmann said.

What to consider before trying cannabis for sleep

In her clinical experience, Bidwell said that people who use cannabis products for sleep seem to be the most satisfied with them when they use them every now and then but not every day. This is because using THC too frequently can lead to a tolerance or dependency, she said,

which can reverse the benefits of cannabis on sleep.

“As you start taking it more chronically, you fall into this trap that, for the same amount of effect, you have to go up in the quantity,” Sahni added. And eventually, you might get to a point where it doesn’t work at all.

At the same time, you might become so dependent on it that you have to keep taking it to stave off withdrawal symptoms. In such people with marijuana addictions, Bidwell said, stopping its use can result in symptoms like anxiety, irritability, nausea and even unsettling dreams that can disrupt sleep. “That’s one of the main reasons they go back to using it, or why they can’t fully quit,” she said, “because of how hard it is to sleep as part of that withdrawal.”

And some people who use too much THC can report a “weed hangover” the next morning, which can include symptoms like fatigue, headache and dry eyes and mouth. Using CBD, however, does not seem to lead to a tolerance or dependency.

In Kaufmann’s clinical experience, many of her patients want to try cannabis for sleep because they are wary of sleep medications. But she urges them to try some lifestyle strategies first: such as going to bed and waking up at the same times every day, reducing screen-time before bed, cutting out afternoon caffeine, getting daily exercise and keeping your bedroom cool, clean and comfortable.

For her patients with insomnia, Kaufmann recommended trying cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBT-I — a kind of talk therapy designed to help change the way you think about sleep. It’s “the gold standard intervention for insomnia that has the longest lasting effects,” she said, and patients usually aren’t even aware that it’s a possible treatment for them.

A major consideration for anyone curious about marijuana is that it’s not legal everywhere in the United States. But even if you live in a state where it is legal, you should ask yourself some questions before trying cannabis for sleep, Dhalla said: Are you taking any medications that could possibly interact with it? (The blood thinner warfarin and several epilepsy drugs are of particular concern with cannabis products.) Would you like something you can use everyday or only as needed? If you’re looking for an everyday sleep aid, he said, cannabis is not your best bet.

Bidwell said that if you’re set on trying it, start with the lowest dose possible to see how you react. Sahni also cautioned that because these products are poorly regulated, it’s difficult to know exactly what you’re getting and whether it’s safe.

The bottom line is that we need more research, Kaufmann said. We want people to feel satisfied with their sleep, she said — so if cannabis is working for you, great. But if you’ve never done it and you’re looking for help with sleep, it should not be the first thing you turn

to.

Is cannabis good or bad for sleep? Here’s what the experts want you to know.

Thursday, March 16, 2023 24

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Guidelines warn against racial categories in genetic research

By CARL ZIMMER

Grappling with the deep history of racism in Western science, the National Academies of Science earlier this week released guidelines recommending that scientists not use race as a category in genetic studies.

The guidelines, produced in response to a directive from the National Institutes of Health, noted that racial categories were poor proxies for genetic diversity and that social and environmental factors, like poverty and injustice, were often overlooked.

“The recommendations in this report provide a pathway to generate lasting change in an evolving field,” the authors said in a statement. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which was chartered in 1863 as an independent adviser to the nation on science and medicine, will host a public meeting Friday to review the report.

The 239-page document came out of months of work by a team of geneticists, social scientists and historians.

“I can tell you honestly I have never worked harder on any committee I have ever been on in my entire career, and I think every single person on that committee would say the same thing,” said Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the authors. “I think part of the reason for that is we felt a lot of weight on our shoulders.”

tify a genetic makeup of all Africans that would correspond to a Black race. “There’s going to be more diversity between neighboring groups in certain regions of Africa than we see across the globe,” Tishkoff said.

At the same time, environmental variables can have potent biological effects on people. Groups who live in neighborhoods with high air pollution, for example, will have higher rates of certain diseases. The authors of the new study recommend building these environmental influences into studies, rather than looking at genes in isolation.

The authors created a flowchart to help scientists design their research. Different kinds of research call for different kinds of experiments.

Scientists looking for individual mutations that cause severe diseases, for example, may not need to consider the ancestry of their subjects at all. The mutation may well cause the same disease regardless of the ancestry of the person carrying it.

Other scientists look at the DNA of many people to reconstruct the ancestry of human populations. Tishkoff and her colleagues recommend that scientists don’t throw their subjects together in groups that don’t reflect their deep history. A national label like “Tanzanian,” for example, describes only people who live in a country that gained independence in 1961.

Reciclaje de artículos electrónicos.

Regalo de árboles ornamentales y frutales, semillas de hortalizas y vegetales.

Manicura (viernes) y Barbería (sábado) por MMM.

Mascotas:

• Grooming (sábado).

• Vales de esterilización (Hasta 5 por evento. Personas de escasos recursos).

• Kit básico de vacunación (Rabia, Multi-virus).

-Debe presentar identificación.

-Llevar hidratación para su mascota.

Servicios Municipales junto a sus

Directores:

Permisos • Obras Públicas Conservación de Edificios • Policía • Vivienda • Familia

• Oficina de la Mujer • Servicios al Ciudadano • Orientación Contributiva, Empresarismo y otros

Otros Servicios:

• Salud por SANOS

• Agencia de Empleo por AMSI

• Préstamos Comerciales por BADECO

In the 18th century, European naturalists began claiming that humans belonged to clearly separate biological groups living on different continents. Visible traits like the color of their skin supposedly reflected deeper differences between the races in intelligence and morality. A hierarchy of scientific racism emerged, with white people at the top.

When the science of genetics emerged in the early 1900s, some early geneticists tried to validate the old notions of race by looking for genetic markers in groups of people. But now a century later, after sequencing millions of human genomes, scientists say it is abundantly clear that those notions do not hold up.

Tishkoff pointed to the genetic variation among people in Africa, where she has done field work for decades. Humans arose in Africa about 200,000 years ago and diversified into many populations, which have mixed together over thousands of generations. A wave of people expanded out of Africa about 60,000 years ago, spreading to other continents.

That history makes it impossible to iden-

Instead, the authors recommend that scientists identify their subjects with meaningful information, such as their local ethnic group or language. In some studies, they said, it may be appropriate to describe subjects by the percentage of ancestry they can trace to different populations. When they publish their findings, researchers should be transparent about the grouping decisions they made so that other researchers can revise the groupings based on new evidence, the guidelines said.

Joseph Graves, an evolutionary geneticist at North Carolina A&T University who was not involved in writing the report, said it offered scientists a path out of some of the fallacies that have hampered previous studies on human health and variation.

“The strengths are really to help researchers disentangle the social definitions from the biological definitions,” he said.

But he warned that simply putting out a report would not be enough. “We need to get out there and be talking to our colleagues,” he said. “The report can work, but it requires people to get behind it.”

This buttery fish is weeknight easy and Julia Child fancy

sautéing, and nearly as fast. As a bonus, fish cooked in the oven also tends to be less, let’s call it, aquatically aromatic than fish cooked on the stove.

My second tweak is that, in addition to the lemon juice, I grate in some of the zest, which makes the flavor a few shades brighter and accentuates the citrus character. If you wanted to mix things up, you could substitute lime for the lemon, or use a Meyer lemon with its gentle perfume. I’ve even combined lemon and grapefruit, and it was lovely.

A dish this simple calls for an equally bare-bones accompaniment, maybe some roasted or boiled potatoes next to a mound of steamed broccoli or green beans, which work perfectly with the nutty sauce.

Or serve your fish almondine the way Julia Child had her meunière — by itself, in all of its buttery, pristine glory.

together in a flash.

Yield: 4 servings

Total time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

4 (6- to 8-ounce) fillets flaky white fish, such as hake, cod or flounder, or trout

Fine sea or table salt and black pepper

7 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup sliced almonds

1 lemon, zest finely grated, then fruit halved 1 tablespoon minced chives, plus more for garnish

Preparation:

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Place fish on a rimmed sheet pan and season fillets lightly with salt and black pepper on both sides. Cut 1 tablespoon butter into small pieces and scatter on top of the fish. Roast for 7 to 11 minutes, or until the fish is tender and cooked through. (Thin fillets will cook more quickly than thick ones.)

By MELISSA CLARK

Sole meunière is a time-honored classic, the dish that made Julia Child fall in love with French cuisine, so the story goes. A combination of butter and lemon poured over sautéed fish, it’s one of those sublimely simple recipes that needs no embellishment. Yet variations abound.

Eggplant, grapes, cucumbers, even radishes and beets have elbowed their way into what is otherwise a minimalist recipe. Sensibly, the French culinary bible “Larousse Gastronomique” gives these frills a thumbs-down, declaring, “This kind of ornament is quite useless and not at all in keeping with the recipe.”

But there’s one meunière spinoff that has broken out of the pack, becoming a classic in its own right: fish almondine.

It starts with the same basic preparation as meunière. Fish fillets are dusted with flour and sautéed in butter (clarified or regular). More butter is added to the pan to brown, then a squeeze of lemon and pinch of minced parsley finish things off.

To make almondine, you toss a handful of sliced almonds into the butter to toast just before the lemon juice. The almonds lend crunch and intensify the nuttiness of the brown butter. Usually, almondine is spooned over trout, but any fish works, particularly lean flaky fillets, which benefit from the richness of the sauce.

For this recipe, I made two small but significant changes. Instead of sautéing the fillets, I roast them. This lets you skip the flour, lightening things ever so slightly. I also find roasting fish easier and more forgiving than

Roasted white fish with lemony almondine

Fish almondine, a variation on a classic meunière, combines toasted sliced almonds, brown butter and lemon juice as a sauce for sautéed, flour-dusted fillets. In this easy, weeknight-appropriate version, the fish is roasted, skipping the flour, for a more delicate result. Then, the sauce gets extra citrus intensity from a bit of grated lemon zest. Flaky white fish, or trout, is most traditional here. But the winning mix of brown butter, lemon and almonds is equally good on any kind of salmon, shrimp, green beans, asparagus – even roast chicken. And it comes

2. While fish roasts, in a large skillet, melt remaining 6 tablespoons butter over medium heat. Cook, swirling the pan, until the foam subsides and the butter turns a deep nut brown, 3 to 7 minutes. (Watch carefully so that it doesn’t burn.)

3. Add almonds to the pan and turn off the heat; the nuts will immediately start to brown. Toss them in the hot butter until golden, about 2 minutes, turning the heat back on to low if the nuts need a little more color. Squeeze the juice from half a lemon into the pan and stir in half of the grated lemon zest, the chives, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper. Taste and add more lemon juice and salt, if needed.

4. Pour the sauce over the fish and garnish with more chives and lemon zest. Serve warm, with the remaining lemon half on the side for squeezing. (You can cut it into wedges, if you like.)

Fish almondine, a nutty variation on a French classic, sole meuniere, in New York, Feb. 16, 2023. Any fish works, particularly lean flaky fillets, for this roasted dish, which is weeknight easy and Julia Child fancy.

LEGAL NOTICE

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO LIME HOMES, LTD.

Plaintiff Vs. LUIS BONNET MERCIER; EDNA NAZARIO FIGUEROA AND THEIR CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP; ENTERTAINMENT UNLIMITED, INC.

Defendants

Civil No.: 19-CV-01756. Re: COLLECTION OF MONIES, FORECLOSURE OF MORTGAGE. NOTICE OF SALE.

To: LUIS BONNET MERCIER; EDNA NAZARIO FIGUEROA AND THEIR CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP; ENTERTAINMENT UNLIMITED, INC., AND ANY OTHER PARTY WITH INTEREST OVER THE PROPERTY MENTIONED BELOW, GENERAL PUBLIC.

WHEREAS: Judgment was entered in favor of plaintiff to recover from defendants the sum of $538,326.68 in principal, interest rate of 3.50% per annum since April 1st, 2015. Such interest will continue to accrue until the debt is paid in full. In addition, the defendants owes the Plaintiff the late charges amounting to 5.000% of each and any monthly installment not received by the note holder within 15 days after the installment was due. The Defendants also owe the Plaintiff all of the advances made pursuant to the provisions and/or dispositions of the Mortgage Note and the Mortgage Deed. The Defendants also woe an amount equivalent to 10% of the original principal balance as liquidated amount to cover costs, expenses and attorney’s fees. The records of the case and of these proceedings may be examined by interested parties at the Office of the Clerk of the United States District Court, Room 150, Federal Office Building, 150 Chardon Avenue, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico. WHEREAS:

Pursuant to the terms of the aforementioned Judgment, Order of Execution, and the Writ of Execution thereof, the undersigned Special Master was ordered to sell at public auction for U.S. currency in cash or certified check without appraisement or right of redemption to the highest bidder and at the office of the Clerk of the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, Room 150

– Federal Office Building, 150 Carlos Chardón Avenue, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, to cover the sums adjudged to be paid to the plaintiff, the following property (as described in the Property Registrar in the Spanish language): Property located at: Torre del Mar Condominium, Apt. 2307, 1477 Ashford Ave., San Juan, PR. URBANA: PROPIEDAD HORIZONTAL: Apartamento residencial denominado “Pent-house” número dos mil trescientos siete (2307), de dos niveles, localizado en la vigésima cuarta (24) planta del Edificio Torre del Mar, en el Sector Norte de Santurce, San Juan, Puerto Rico, con una cabida total privada de tres mil seiscientos sesenta (3,660) pies cuadrados, equivalente a trescientos cuarenta (340.00) metros cuadrados. El primer nivel de este apartamento lo constituye la caja de la escalera privada de entrada a la parte superior o nivel superior. La escalera privada que forma parte de la unidad de vivienda se encuentra situada en el extremo del corredor común del piso y tiene los siguientes linderos y medidas: por el NORTE en trece pies y seis pulgadas (13’6”) con el corredor común del piso, dando ésta la puerta de entrada de esta escalera; por el SUR, en trece pies seis pulgadas (13’6”) con el apartamento número dos mil trescientos uno (2301); por el ESTE, en siete pies y nueve pulgadas (7’9”) con el apartamento número dos mil trescientos uno (2301); y por el OESTE, en siete pies y nueve pulgadas (7’9”) con el apartamento número dos mil trescientos uno (2301). Esta escalera constituye la entrada de este apartamento y forma parte del mismo. El nivel superior (segundo nivel) tiene una medida de cincuenta y seis pies (56’) en su mayor longitud de sesenta y seis pies y diez pulgadas (66’10”) en su parte más ancha. Consta de escalera de entradas, foyer, sala, comedor, cocina, con mesa de trabajo, estufa, gabinetes de pared, fregadero y calentador de agua, gimnasio con su medio baño, cuarto de lavandería, dormitorio principal con su vestidor, un baño y su closet, vestidor, dos cuartos dormitorios con sus closets y un baño para uso de ambos, cuartos de servicio con su baño y closet, terrazas al Norte, Oeste, y Sur. Colinda por el NORTE en cuarenta y siete pies y dos pulgadas (47’2”) con el patio exterior separado por baranda de la terraza y pared exterior y en trece pies cinco pulgadas (13’5”) con la unidad familiar o apartamento número dos mil trescientos tres (2303) separado por pare-

des interiores; por el SUR, en cincuenta y seis pies (56) con el espacio exterior que mira hacia la Avenida Ashford, separado por pared exterior; por el ESTE, en treinta y un pies (31’00”) con el apartamento número dos mil trescientos dos (2302), separado por pared de carga en una línea irregular de treinta y cinco pies y diez pulgadas (35’10”), con baño común del piso corredor central y cuarto de servicio de la unidad familiar o apartamento número dos mil trescientos tres (2303) separados de ellos por paredes inferiores; y por el OESTE, en una distancia de sesenta y seis pies y diez pulgadas (66”10”) con el espacio exterior que mira hacia la calle Nairm, la puerta de entrada de este apartamento se encuentra en la escalera que conduce al nivel superior y desemboca en el foyer y por esta escalera privada se comunica con el corredor común limitado por el cual se sale al exterior. Le corresponde un porcentaje de uno punto cinco mil ochocientos seis por ciento (1.5806%) en los elementos comunes generales. Finca 29047, Inscrita al Folio 81 del Tomo 861 de Santurce Norte, registro de la Propiedad de San Juan, Sección Primera. The mortgage is recorded at page number page number 86 of volume number 861 of Santurce North of property number 29,047, 14th recording in the Registry of Property of San Juan, Section I.

On August 30th, 2013, the note and Deed of Mortgage were modified pursuant to Deed of Modification of Mortgage number 582 executed before Notary Nestor Machado Cortes to decrease the principal balance to $551,629.77 and modify the annual interest rate. The Deed of Modification is recorded at Karibe page property number 29,047 of Santurce North, in the Property Registry San Juan, Section I, 15th inscription.

WHEREAS: This property is subject to the following liens:

Senior Liens: None.

Junior Liens: Sentencia del 25 de octubre de 2017, Orden del 18 de enero de 2018 y Mandamiento del 22 de enero de 2018 dictados en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala de San Juan caso civil #KCD2016-

1516 (901) sobre Cobro de Dinero (Ley de Condominios Gastos Comunes) seguido por Consejo de Titulares del Condominio Torre del Mar representado por su Junta de Directores vs. Entertainment Unlimited, Inc. donde se anota Sentencia por la deuda de $37,582.97 en concepto de cuotas de mantenimiento, penalidades, intereses y primas de seguro comunal, anotada el

10 de agosto de 2022 en el tomo Karibe finca 29047 de Santurce Norte anotación “A”. Other Liens: None. Potential bidders are advised to verify the extent of preferential liens with the holders thereof. It shall be understood that each bidder accepts as sufficient the title and that prior and preferential liens to the one being foreclosed upon, including but not limited to any property tax, liens, (express, tacit, implied or legal) shall continue in effect it being understood further that the successful bidder accepts them and is subrogated in the responsibility for the same and that the bid price shall not be applied toward their cancellation. THEREFORE, the FIRST PUBLIC SALE shall be held on the 4TH DAY OF APRIL OF 2023, AT: 9:30 DE LA MAÑANA. The minimum bid that will be accepted is the sum of $551,629.77. In the event said first auction does not produce a bidder and the property is not adjudicated, a SECOND PUBLIC AUCTION shall be held on the 11TH DAY OF APRIL OF 2023, AT: 9:30 AM., and the minimum bid that will be accepted is the sum $367,753.18, which is two-thirds of the amount of the minimum bid for the first public sale. If a second auction does not result in the adjudication and sale of the property, a THIRD PUBLIC AUCTION will be held on the 18TH DAY OF APRIL OF 2023, AT: 9:30 AM., and the minimum bid that will be accepted is the sum of $275,814.89, which is one-half of the minimum bid in the first public sale. Should there be no award or adjudication at the third public sale, the property may be awarded to the creditor for the entire amount of its debt if it is equal to or less than the amount of the minimum bid of the third public sale, crediting this amount to the amount owed if it is greater. The Special Master shall not accept in payment of the property to be sold anything but United States currency or certified checks, except in case the property is sold and adjudicated to the plaintiff, in which case the amount of the bid made by said plaintiff shall be credited and deducted from its credit; said plaintiff being bound to pay in cash or certified check only any excess of its bid over the secured indebtedness that remains unsatisfied. WHEREAS: Said sale to be made by the Special Master subject to confirmation by the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico and the deed of conveyance and possession to the property will be executed and delivered only after such confirmation. Upon confirma-

tion of the sale, an order shall be issued cancelling all junior liens. For further particulars, reference is made to the judgment entered by the Court in this case, which can be examined in the Office of Clerk of the United States District Court, District of Puerto Rico. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, this 24th day of February of 2023. PEDRO A. VÉLEZ-BAERGA, SPECIAL MASTER, SPECIALMASTERPR@GMAIL.COM, 787-6728269.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA WILMINGTON SAVINGS

FUND SOCIETY, FSB, NOT INDIVIDUALLY BUT SOLELY AS TRUSTEE FOR FINANCE OF AMERICA STRUCTURED SECURITIES ACQUISITION TRUST

2018-HB1

Demandante Vs. SUCESION NITZA VIERA CORREA T/C/C NITZA VIERA COMPUESTA

POR JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS; ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA; CENTRO DE RECAUDACION DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES

Demandados

Civil Núm.: CA2021CV02544. Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EDICTO DE SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS.

A: LA PARTE DEMANDADA, AL (A LA) SECRETARIO(A) DE HACIENDA DE PUERTO RICO Y AL PÚBLICO

GENERAL:

Certifico y Hago Constar: Que en cumplimiento con el Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que me ha sido dirigido por el (la) Secretario(a) del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Carolina, en el caso de epígrafe, venderé en pública subasta y al mejor postor, por separado, de contado y por moneda de curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América y/o Giro Postal y Cheque Certificado, en mi oficina ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Carolina, el 1 DE MAYO DE 2023, A LAS 1:15 DE LA TARDE, todo derecho

título, participación o interés que le corresponda a la parte demandada o cualquiera de ellos en el inmueble hipotecado objeto de ejecución que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar marcado con el número veinticinco (25) “GZ” del plano de inscripción de la Tercera Extensión de la Urbanización COUNTRY CLUB, situada en el Barrio Sabana Abajo de la municipalidad de Carolina, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de cuatrocientos cuarenta y tres punto sesenta y cuatro (443.64) metros cuadrados y colinda por el Noreste, en dieciocho punto cincuenta y tres (18.53) metros, con el solar número uno (1) del bloque “GZ” de dicha Urbanización; por el Suroeste en diecisiete punto treinta y siete (17.37) metros, con la calle número doscientos catorce (214) de dicha Urbanización; por el Sureste, en veintitrés punto cuarenta y cinco (23.45) metros, con el solar veinticuatro (24) del bloque “GZ” de dicha Urbanización; por el Noreste, en dieciocho punto veinte (18.20) metros, con la calle número doscientos doce (212) de dicha Urbanización, por el Oeste, en cinco punto cincuenta (5.50) metros, con la intersección de las calles numero doscientos doce (212) y doscientos catorce (214) de dicha urbanización. En el solar enclava una residencia de concreto armado de tres (3) habitaciones dormitorios, sala-comedor, cocina, cuarto de baño, balcón y marquesina. Inscrita al folio 243 del tomo 84 de Carolina Norte, finca 3146, Registro de la Propiedad de Carolina, Sección Primera. La Hipoteca Revertida consta inscrita al folio 75 del tomo 1027, finca 3146 de Carolina Norte, Registro de la Propiedad de Carolina, Sección Primera, inscripción

11ª. Propiedad localizada en: URB. EXT COUNTRY CLUB, 1029 CALLE GENOVEVA DE LAGO, CAROLINA, PUERTO RICO 00924. Según figuran en la certificación registral, la propiedad objeto de ejecución está gravada por las siguientes cargas anteriores o preferentes: Nombre del Titular: N/A. Suma de la Carga: N/A. Fecha de Vencimiento: N/A. Según figuran en la certificación registral, la propiedad objeto de ejecución está gravada por las siguientes cargas posteriores a la inscripción del crédito

ejecutante: Nombre del Titular: Secretario de la Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano. Suma de la Carga: $235,500.00. Fecha de Vencimiento: 4 de noviembre de 2091. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad de la propiedad y que todas las cargas

y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes al crédito ejecutante antes descritos, si los hubiere, continuarán subsistentes. El rematante acepta dichas cargas y gravámenes anteriores, y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Se establece como tipo de mínima subasta la suma de $235,500.00, según acordado entre las partes en el precio pactado en la escritura de hipoteca. De ser necesaria una SEGUNDA SUBASTA por declararse desierta la primera, la misma se celebrará en mi oficina, ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Carolina, el 8 DE MAYO DE 2023, A LAS 1:15 DE LA TARDE, y se establece como mínima para dicha segunda subasta la suma de $157,000.00, 2/3 partes del tipo mínima establecido originalmente. Si tampoco se produce remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta, se establece como mínima para la TERCERA SUBASTA, la suma de $117,750.00, la mitad (1/2) del precio pactado y dicha subasta se celebrará en mi oficina, ubicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Carolina, el 15 DE MAYO DE 2023, A LAS 1:15 DE LA TARDE. Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo para, con su producto satisfacer a la parte demandante, el importe de la Sentencia dictada a su favor ascendente a la suma de $102,226.92 por concepto de principal, más la suma de $71,765.34 en intereses acumulados al 14 de febrero de 2022 y los cuales continúan acumulándose a razón de 5.060% anual hasta su total y completo pago; más la sumas de $20,868.55 en seguro hipotecario; $902.38 de impuestos; $675.00 de tasaciones; $440.00 de inspecciones; $615.00 de adelantos pendientes, más la cantidad de 10% del pagare original en la suma de $23,550.00, para gastos, costas y honorarios de abogado, esta última habrá de devengar intereses al máximo del tipo legal fijado por la oficina del Comisionado de Instituciones Financieras aplicable a esta fecha, desde este mismo día hasta su total y completo saldo. La venta en pública subasta de la referida propiedad se verificará libre de toda carga o gravamen posterior que afecte la mencionada finca, a cuyo efecto se notifica y se hace saber la fecha, hora y sitio de la PRIMERA, SEGUNDA Y TERCERA SUBASTA, si esto fuera necesario, a los efectos de que cualquier persona o personas con algún interés puedan comparecer a la celebración de dicha subasta. Se notifica a todos los intere-

sados que las actas y demás constancias del expediente de este caso están disponibles en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante horas laborables para ser examinadas por los (las) interesados (as). Y para su publicación en el periódico The San Juan Daily Star, que es un diario de circulación general en la isla de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas consecutivas con un intervalo de por lo menos siete (7) días entre ambas publicaciones, así como para su publicación en los sitios públicos de Puerto Rico. Expedido en Carolina, Puerto Rico, hoy 14 de febrero de 2023. JOSÉ CRISTÓBAL, ALGUACIL REGIONAL. HÉCTOR L. PEÑA RODRÍGUEZ, ALGUACIL PLACA #278.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SA LA SUPERIOR DE PONCE LEGACY MORTGAGE

ASSET TRUST 2019-GS5

Parte Demandante Vs. SAMUEL ORTIZ LEÓN, SU ESPOSA

JOAN ELIZABETH

FIGUEROA FLORES Y LA

SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES

Parte Demandada CITI MORTGAGE

Tercer Demandado Civil Núm.: JCD2018-0213. Salón Núm.: (406). Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA Y COBRO DE DINERO. EDICTO DE SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R., SS.

A: SAMUEL ORTIZ LEÓN, SU ESPOSA JOAN ELIZABETH FIGUEROA FLORES Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS: CITI

MORTGAGE: Y AL PÚBLICO EN GENERAL:

El Alguacil que suscribe, certifica y hace constar que en cumplimiento de Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que me ha sido dirigido por la Secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Ponce, procederé a vender en pública subasta y al mejor postor, por separado, de contado y por moneda de curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América. Todo pago recibido por el (la) Alguacil por concepto de subastas será en efectivo, giro postal o cheque certificado a nombre del (de la) Alguacil del Tribunal de

ALGUACIL, SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

FEDERAL NATIONAL MORTGAGE

ASSOCIATION T/C/C FANNIE MAE

Demandante Vs. NEIDA ERAZO CHEVERE

Demandada

Civil Núm.: CA2022CV02432.

Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA (IN REM). EDICTO ANUNCIANDO PRIMERA, SEGUNDA Y TERCERA SUBASTA. El Alguacil que suscribe, funcionario del Tribunal de la Sala Superior de Carolina, Puerto Rico, por la presente anuncia y hace saber al público en general que en cumplimiento con la Sentencia dictada en este caso con fecha 10 de noviembre de 2022, y según Orden y Mandamiento del 18 de enero de 2023 librado por este honorable Tribunal, procederé a vender en pública subasta al mejor postor, y por dinero en efectivo, cheque certificado o giro postal a nombre del Alguacil del Tribunal con todo título derecho y/o interés de la parte demandada sobre la propiedad que se describe a continuación:

URBANA: Solar marcado con el número Ocho del Bloque BJ con un área de trescientos metros con treinta y ocho centésimas de metro cuadrado, localizada en el Barrio Sabana Abajo del término municipal de Carolina de la Urbanización Jardines de Country Club; en lindes por el NORTE, en trece metros cincuenta centímetros con la calle número ciento catorce; por el SUR, en trece metros cincuenta centímetros con el solar número veintitrés del mismo bloque; por el ESTE, en veintidós metros veinticinco centímetros con el solar número nueve del mismo bloque; y por el OESTE, en veintidós metros veinticinco centímetros con el solar número siete del mismo bloque. Sobre dicho solar enclava una casa construida de concreto armado y bloques para fines residenciales. FINCA NÚMERO: 13,312, inscrita al folio 78 del tomo 351 de Carolina, sección I de Carolina. Dirección

Física: URB. JARDINES DE COUNTRY CLUB, LOTE 8-BJ CALLE 114, CAROLINA PR 00983. Se anuncia por medio de este edicto que la PRIMERA SUBASTA habrá de celebrarse el día 10 DE ABRIL DE 2023, A LAS 1:45 DE LA TARDE, en mi oficina sita en el edificio que ocupa el Tribunal Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala Superior de Carolina. Siendo ésta la primera subasta que se celebrará en este caso, será el precio mínimo aceptable como oferta en la

Primera Subasta, eso es el tipo mínimo pactado en la Escritura de Hipoteca para la propiedad, la suma de $106,000.00. De no haber remanente o adjudicación en esta primera subasta por dicha suma mínima, se celebrará una SEGUNDA SUBASTA el día 17 DE ABRIL DE 2023, A LAS 1:45 DE LA TARDE, en el mismo lugar antes señalado en la cual el precio mínimo serán dos terceras (2/3) partes del tipo mínimo pactado en la escritura de hipoteca, la suma de $70,666.66. De no haber remanente o adjudicación en esta segunda subasta por el tipo mínimo indicado en el párrafo anterior, se celebrará una TERCERA SUBASTA en el mismo lugar antes señalado el día 24 DE ABRIL DE 2023, A LAS 1:45 DE LA TARDE, en la cual el tipo mínimo aceptable como oferta será la mitad (1/2) del precio mínimo pactado en la escritura de hipoteca, la suma de $53,000.00. Si se declare desierta la tercera subasta se adjudicará la finca a favor del acreedor por la totalidad de la cantidad adeudada si ésta es igual o menor que el monto del tipo mínimo de la tercera subasta, si el tribunal lo estima conveniente. Se abonará dicho monto a la cantidad adeudada si ésta es mayor. El Honorable Tribunal dictó Sentencia In Rem, declarando Con Lugar la demanda al incumplir la parte demandada con los términos del contrato hipotecario y ordenando la venta en pública subasta del inmueble antes descrito. A tenor con la Regla 51.3 (b) de Procedimiento Civil y el Artículo 99 de la Ley 210-2015, conocida como “Ley del Registro de la Propiedad Inmobiliaria del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico”, el tribunal ordenó que el Alguacil de este Tribunal luego de haberse efectuado la correspondiente publicación de edictos en un periódico de circulación general, proceda a vender en pública subasta al mejor postor la propiedad descrita en las Determinaciones de Hechos de la Sentencia y que del producto de dicha venta, proceda a pagar en primer término los gastos del Alguacil, en segundo término las costas y honorarios de abogados según concedidos en esta sentencia, en tercer término los intereses acumulados por esta sentencia, en cuarto término los recargos acumulados, en quinto cualquier suma antes indicada como sobregiro en la cuenta de reserva y en sexto término hasta la suma de $27,596.88, para cubrir el principal pendiente de pago más los intereses acumulados hasta el día de la Venta Judicial, disponiéndose que si quedare algún remanente luego de pagarse las sumas antes mencionadas el mismo deberá ser depositado en la Secretaría del Tribunal para ser entregado a los demandados previa solici-

tud y orden del Tribunal. Se dispone que una vez celebrada la subasta y vendido el inmueble relacionado, el alguacil pondrá en posesión judicial a los nuevos dueños dentro del término de veinte (20) días a partir de la celebración de la Subasta. Si transcurren los referidos veinte (20) días, el tribunal podrá ordenar, sin necesidad de ulterior procedimiento, que se lleve a efecto el desalojo o lanzamiento del ocupante u ocupantes de la finca o de todos los que por orden o tolerancia del demandado/deudor la ocupen. El Alguacil de este Tribunal efectuará el lanzamiento de los ocupantes de ser necesario. Si la subasta es adjudicada a un tercero y luego se deja sin efecto, el tercero a favor de quién se adjudicó la subasta solo tendrá derecho a la devolución del monto consignado más no tendrá derecho a entablar recurso o reclamo adicional alguno (judicial o extrajudicial) contra el demandante y/o el acreedor y/o inversionista, dueño pagaré y/o su abogado. Si se anula la venta, el comprador tendrá derecho a la devolución del depósito de la venta judicial menos los honorarios y costos incurridos en el proceso de venta judicial. No tendrá ningún otro recurso contra el acreedor hipotecario ejecutante ni la representación legal de éste. Por la presente, también se notifica e informa a Santander Mortgage Corp., hoy First Bank de Puerto Rico, por éstos contar con una hipoteca a su favor por la suma de $75,00.00, intereses al 4 ¼ % anual y a vencer el 1ro de mayo de 2020, según consta de la escritura #314, otorgada el 29 de abril de 2005, ante el Notario José E. Franco Gómez, inscrito al folio 1367 del tomo 1065 de Carolina, finca #13,312, inscripción 8va, asiento abreviado el 5 de octubre de 2017. Además, se notifica e informa a Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal, personas desconocidas que puedan tener derechos en la propiedad o título objeto de este edicto. La Venta en Pública Subasta de la referida propiedad se verificará libre de toda carga y gravamen posterior que afecte la mencionada finca, a cuyo efecto se notifica y se hace saber la fecha, hora y sitio de la Primera, Segunda y Tercera Subasta, si eso fuera necesario, a los efectos de cualquier persona o personas con algún interés puedan comparecer a la celebración de dicha Subasta. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes. Se entenderá que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Los autos y

todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento del caso de epígrafe están disponibles en la Secretaría de este Tribunal durante horas laborables y para la concurrencia de los licitadores expido el presente Edicto que se publicará en un periódico de circulación diaria en toda la Isla de Puerto Rico por espacio dos (2) semanas y por lo menos una vez por semana y se fijará, además, en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Alcaldía y la Colecturía de Rentas Internas del Municipio donde se celebrará la Subasta y en la Colecturía más cercana del lugar de la residencia de la parte demandada. EN TESTIMONIO DE LO CUAL, expido el presente que firmo y sello, hoy día 2 de febrero de 2023. HÉCTOR L. PEÑA RODRÍGUEZ, ALGUACIL, SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA. ***

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN

REVERSE MORTGAGE FUNDING LLC

Demandante Vs. SUCESION JUAN RAFAEL CALOCA ROJAS COMPUESTA MARTA ISABEL RAFAELA CALOCA ROJAS, IVETTE RAFAELA CALOCA ROJAS, CARLOS MANUEL CALOCA MORALES, PAOLA A. CALOCA MARTINEZ, GRECIA NINOTCHKA CALOCA MARTINEZ; JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS; ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA; CENTRO DE RECAUDACION DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES Demandados

Civil Núm.: SJ2023CV00980. Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS.

A: CARLOS MANUEL CALOCA MORALES, PAOLA A. CALOCA MARTINEZ; JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE COMO POSIBLES MIEMBROS DESCONOCIDOS DE SUCESION JUAN RAFAEL CALOCA ROJAS.

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al Tribunal su alegación responsiva a la demanda dentro de

los treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación de este edicto. 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: http://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberé presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaria 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.

Greenspoon Marder, LLP

Lcda. Frances L. Asencio-Guido

R.U.A. 15,622 TRADE CENTRE SOUTH, SUITE 700 100 WEST CYPRESS CREEK ROAD FORT LAUDERDALE, FL 33309

Telephone: (954) 343 6273

Frances.Asencio@gmlaw.com

Expedido bajo mi firma, y sello del Tribunal, en San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy día 6 de marzo de 2023. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. BRENDA HERNÁNDEZ ZAVALA, SECRETARIA DE SERVICIOS A SALA.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANClA SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN

ORIENTAL BAK

Parte Demandante Vs. FELIPE SERRANO SÁNCHEZ, MARGARITA

LÓPEZ PUMAREJO Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES

POR ESTOS COMPUESTA

Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: SJ2023CV00410. (604). Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO; EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU., ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R., SS.

A: FELIPE SERRANO SÁNCHEZ, MARGARITA

LÓPEZ PUMAREJO Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES POR ESTOS COMPUESTA.

Queda emplazado y notificado de que en este Tribunal se ha radicado una demanda de COBRO DE DINERO; EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA en su contra. Se le notifica que deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.

pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala de San Juan y enviando copia a la parte demandante: Lcdo. Javier Montalvo Cintrón, Delgado & Fernández, LLC, PO Box 11750, Fernández Juncos Station, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00910-1750. Tel. [787] 274-1414. Se le apercibe y notifica que si no contesta la demanda radicada en su contra dentro del término de treinta (30) días de la publicación de este edicto, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado en la demanda, sin más citárseles, ni oírseles. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, a 6 de marzo de 2023. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. FERNÁNDEZ DEL VALLE, LUZ E., SECRETARIA DE SERVICIOS A SALA.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN

ZENOVIA CINTRON

AGOSTO T /C/C ZENOVIA

PEREZ T/C/C ZENOVIA

CINTRON PEREZ Parte Demandante Vs. ELBA PEREZ

CARRASQUILLO, JAIME

PEREZ HERNANDEZ, SYLVIA LUZ PEREZ

HERNANDEZ; LYDIA EMILIA PEREZ

HERNANDEZ, BLANCA EDITH PEREZ

MALDONADO, LUIS

ANTONIO PEREZ Y

EMILIO PEREZ JR, AMBOS MIEMBROS DE LA SUCN. DE EMILIO PEREZ MALDONADO

Y FLORA HERNANDEZ

ROSADO, MIEMBRO DE LA SUCN. DE JOSE

PEREZ T/C/C JOSE

PEREZ HERNANDEZ

T/C/C JOEY PEREZ

HERNANDEZ, TODOS MIEMBROS DE LA SUCN. DE EMILIO PEREZ ACEVEDO

T/C/C EMILIANO PEREZ ACEVEDO

Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: SJ2019CV08021. Salón de Sesiones: 906. Sobre: LIQUIDACIÓN DE BIENES COMUNIDAD. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO

POR SUMAC.

A: Jaime Pérez Hernández, P.O Box 222509

Christianted, St. Croix, US VI 00822.

Sylvia Luz Pérez Hernández. 75 Montgomery Apt. 15 B, New York, NY 10002.

Lydia Emilia Pérez Hernández. 90 Gold St. #8L, New York, NY 10038.

Blanca Edith Pérez Maldonado. 411 Lake Park Way, Bluffton SC 29909. Flora Hernández Rosado. 240 Madison St. Apt. 11-H New York NY 10002.

Emilio Pérez Jr. P.O. Box 7850 Sunny Isle, US VI 00823.

Luis Antonio Pérez. P.O. Box 6961, Sunny Isle US VI 00823.

A: Elba Pérez Carrasquillo, miembro de la Sucesión de Emilio Pérez Acevedo t/c/c Emiliano Pérez Acevedo, sus cesionarios, sucesores, herederos, causahabientes y/o legatarios Calle Damasco DB-8, Urb. Santa Juanita, Sección10ma, Bayamón, PR 00956.

A: Gloria Myrtelina Morales 0rtiz tic/c Gloria Myrtelina Morales t/c/c Gloria M. Morales 0rtiz t/c/c Gloria M. Morales, viuda de Emilio Pérez Maldonado t/c/c Emilio Perez Jr., con última dirección física en #8 Est. Diamond Ruby, Christiansted, St. Croix, V.I. y con últimas direcciones postales conocidas en P0 Box 7850 Sunny Isle, VI 00823 y PO Box 6961, Sunny Isle, US. VI 00823.

EL SECRETARIO (A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 15 de febrero de 2023, 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 esta. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los diez (10) días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha

sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 22 de febrero de 2023. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 22 de febrero de 2023. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. MYRNA D. VILLEGAS TRINIDAD, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA

MARIA ELIZ

RAMIREZ FIGUEROA

Demandante V. HOUSING INVESTMENT CORPORATION, JUAN DEL PUEBLO Y JUANA DEL PUEBLO Y CUALQUIER PERSONA DESCONOCIDA CON POSIBLE INTERES EN LA OBLIGACIÓN CUYA CANCELACIÓN POR DECRETO JUDICIAL SE SOLICITA

Demandado(a)

Civil: CA2022CV04059. 401. Sobre: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: HOUSING INVESTMENT CORPORATION, JUAN Y JUANA DEL PUEBLO. (Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 27 de FEBRERO de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 8 de MARZO de 2023. En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 8 DE MARZO de 2023. MARILYN APONTE RODRÍGUEZ, SECRETARIA. KEILA GARCÍA SOLÍS, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

RICO. DEPARTAMENTO DE ESTADO. NOMBRE COMERCIAL PARA REGISTRAR. AVISO.

A QUIEN PUEDA INTERESAR:

De acuerdo con las disposiciones de la Ley Núm. 75 del 23 de septiembre de 1992, según enmendada, mejor conocida como la Ley de Nombres Comerciales del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico y la Sección 24 del Reglamento promulgado bajo la ley citada anteriormente, el siguiente nombre comercial ha sido presentado en el Departamento de Estado de Puerto Rico para su archivo y registro

LECHONES TO GO, EL ORIGINAL CUERITO RELLENO

Número de Expediente:

242197-99-1. Propietario: C&C

LLC. Dirección: 300 Alfredo Gálvez Borinquen Gardens, SAN JUAN, PR 00926. Actividad Empresarial: Venta de alimentos cocinados e incluye exportación de los cueritos rellenos congelados. Renuncia a elementos no registrables:

NOTIFICACIÓN: Cualquier oposición a este registro deberá presentarse en el Departamento de Estado de Puerto Rico dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este aviso.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU-

NAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA

TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO

Demandante V. FRANCISCO RAMÓN

GONZÁLEZ MUÑIZ, STACEY GOEDHARD

STEENS Y LA SOCIEDAD

LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR

AMBOS, R&G MORTGAGE CORPORATION, JOHN DOE

Demandado(a)

Civil: CA2022CV03727. 401.

Sobre: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ, EXTRAVIADO POR LA VÍA JUDICIAL. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: FRANCISCO RAMÓN GONZÁLEZ MUÑIZ, STACEY

GOEDHARD STEENS Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR

AMBOS COMO TENEDOR

DESCONOCIDO DEL PAGARÉ A FAVOR DE R&G MORTGAGE CORPORATION

R&G MORTGAGE CORPORATION Y JOHN

DOE COMO TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARÉ A FAVOR DE R-G MORTGAGE CORPORATION

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto).

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 8 de MARZO de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 9 de MARZO de 2023. En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 9 DE MARZO de 2023.

MARILYN APONTE RODRÍGUEZ, SECRETARIA. KEILA GARCÍA SOLÍS, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO

DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE MAYAGÜEZ

ORIENTAL BANK

Demandante V.

MARIA ESTHER CRUZ GALARZA Y LA SUCESION DE MIGUEL

ANTONIO SANABRIA

MOLINA COMPUESTA

POR YOLANDA

SANABRIA, MIGUEL ANTONIO SANABRIA CRUZ, LILLIAM

SANABRIA CRUZ, ROBERTO ENRIQUE

SANABRIA CRUZ, IVONNE SANABRIA CRUZ, IVETTE SANABRIA CRUZ, ALBERTO

SANABRIA CRUZ, FULANO Y FULANA DE TAL

Demandado(a)

Civil: MZ2019CV02027. (206).

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: YOLANDA SANABRIA, MIGUEL ANTONIO

SANABRIA CRUZ, LILIAM

SANABRIA CRUZ, ROBERTO ENRIQUE SANABRIA CRUZ, IVONNE SANABRIA CRUZ, IVETTE SANABRIA CRUZ, ALBERTO SANABRIA CRUZ, FULANO DE TAL Y FULANA DE TAL .

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto)

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 1 de marzo de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 8 de marzo de 2023. En Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, el 8 de marzo de 2023.

LCDA. NORMA G. SANTANA IRIZARRY, SECRETARIA.

JOSSIE BOBE RODRÍGUEZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA

TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA

ANGEL LUIS PAGAN

SERRANO; EULALIA

MARIA RESTITUYO

REYES; ANA MARIA

PAGAN RESTITUYO Demandante V. MARIA CRISTINA

MAYSONET CRUZ Y VALENTIN AMOR Demandado(a)

Civil: CA2022CV03422. Sobre:

USUCAPIÓN Y/O ACCIÓN DE RENUDACIÓ DE TRACTO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: MARIA CRISTINA

MAYSONET CRUZ Y VALENTIN AMOR.

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto)

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 1 de marzo de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada

en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 7 de marzo de 2023. En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 7 de marzo de 2023. MARILYN APONTE RODRÍGUEZ, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. DENISSE TORRES RUIZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE GUAYAMA COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CRÉDITO DE CAGUAS Y OLGA IRIS GARCIA LAUREANO, T/C/C OLGA IRIS GARCIA LAUREANO

Demandantes Vs. FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DE TAL

Demandados

Civil Núm.: GM2022CV00022. Sobre: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO; FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DE TAL.

El Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Guayama dictó la siguiente providencia: “ORDEN: Vista la solicitud sobre publicación de edictos, la demanda que se acompaña para cancelar un pagaré a favor de DORAL MORTGAGE CORPORATION que se ha extraviado y las Reglas de Procedimiento Civil vigentes, el Tribunal ordena que se citen por edictos a los demandados desconocidos Fulano de Tal y Mengano de Tal, en su condición de posibles tenedores del pagaré a favor de DORAL MORTGAGE CORPORATION, o a su orden, por la suma de VEINTISEIS MIL QUINIENTOS DOLARES ($26,500.00), con intereses al ocho punto cuarenta y cinco por ciento (8.45%) anual, vencedero el primero (1ro.) de julio de dos mil doce (2012), según consta en la Escritura Número Trescientos Noventa y Seis (396), otorgada en

San Juan, Puerto Rico el once (11) de junio de dos mil cuatro cuatro (2004) ante el Notario Público Eric Hernández Batalla. La propiedad inmueble sobre la cual se encuentra anotado el gravamen antes detallado se describe de la siguiente manera: RÚSTICA: Predio de terreno radicado en el Barrio Jauca del término municipal de Santa Isabel, compuesto de cinco cuerdas. En lindes por el Norte, con la Sucesión de Miguel Rivera; Por el Sur, con la finca principal de la cual se segrega; por el Este, con el Río Juayes y por el Oeste, con otros terrenos de Sur Development Corporation. Consta inscrita al folio seis (6) del tomo sesenta y cinco (65) de Santa Isabel, finca número dos mil catorce (2,014), Registro de la Propiedad de Guayama. Los edictos se publicarán en un periódico de circulación general. En vista de encontrarnos ante demandados desconocidos, se exime a la parte demandante del envío por correo certificado del presente edicto. DADA en Guayama, Puerto Rico, 7 de marzo de 2023. HON. JOSIAN J. RIVERA TORRES, JUEZ SUPERIOR. Se le notifica que de no contestar, o alegar en contra de la demanda radicada en este caso, previa notificación del demandante, dentro de veinte (20) días si el demandado reside en Puerto Rico, o dentro de treinta (30) días si el demandado reside fuera de Puerto Rico, contados desde la publicación del edicto, se le anotará rebeldía, sin más citarle ni oírle, y oída la evidencia del demandante, el Tribunal dictará sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado. La abogada de la parte demandante es la Lcda. Teresa Pacheco Camacho con oficinas en la Calle Santiago Vivaldi Pacheco #24B, Yauco, Puerto Rico y con la siguiente dirección postal: P.O. Box 5004, PMB 200, Yauco, Puerto Rico 00698.

LCDA. TERESA PACHECO CAMACHO COLEGIADA NÚM. 12,713

RUA NÚM.11,490

P.O. BOX 5004

PMB 200 Yauco, Puerto Rico 00698

Tel. 787-267-5784 / Fax. 787-267-6328 teresa@ pacheco-camacholawfirm.com

Expedido bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal para su publicación, hoy día 7 de marzo de 2023. En Guayama, Puerto Rico. MARISOL ROSADO RODRÍGUEZ, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. IRIS V. RODRÍGUEZ RODRÍGUEZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL I.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CAGUAS COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CRÉDITO

DE CAGUAS Demandante Vs. JUANITA BERNABE GONZALEZ Demandada

Civil Núm.: CG2018CV01847. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO; EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. AVISO DE PÚBLICA SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU., EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R., SS. YO, ÁNGEL GÓMEZ GÓMEZ, ALGUACIL PLACA #593, Alguacil del Tribunal Superior, Sala de Caguas, al público en general: CERTIFICO Y HAGO

SABER: Que en cumplimiento de un Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que me ha sido dirigido por la Secretaría del Honorable Tribunal Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala de Caguas, en el caso arriba indicado venderé en pública subasta al mejor postor de contado y en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos de América, el DÍA DOCE (12) DE ABRIL DE 2023, A LAS DIEZ DE LA MAÑANA (10:00 AM) en mi oficina, sita en el Centro Judicial de Caguas, Puerto Rico, el siguiente inmueble: RÚSTICA: Parcela de terreno de forma irregular radicado en el Barrio Rio Cañas del término municipal de Caguas, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de tres mil ciento cincuenta y un metros veintisiete centímetros cuadrados (3,151,27); colinda por el NORTE, en cuarenta y ocho metros y cuarenta y ocho milímetros (48.048), con el Lago; por el SUR y OESTE, en setenta y ocho metros y cuatrocientos sesenta y dos milímetros (78.462) y sesenta y dos metros y quinientos cincuenta y cuatro milímetros (62.554), respectivamente, con el remanente de la finca principal de la cual se segrega; y por el ESTE, en treinta y cinco metros trescientos setenta y ocho milímetros (35.378), con una parcela compuesta de mil trescientos treinta metros y veinticuatro centímetros (1,330.24) a segregarse de la finca principal y en cuatro metros novecientos cuarenta y un milímetros (4.941), con un camino municipal. Inscrita al folio cuarenta y cinco (45) del tomo quinientos diecinueve (519) de Caguas, finca número dieciséis mil seiscientos setenta y ocho (16,678), Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección Primera. Dicha propiedad está afecta a una (1) hipoteca a favor de la parte demandante, la cual se desglosa a continuación: a. Hipoteca en garantía de un pagaré a favor de la Cooperativa de Ahorro y Crédito de Caguas, o a su orden, por la cantidad de $339,150.00, con intereses al 7% anual, vencedero el primero (1ro.) de febrero de 2040, según la escritura número 4, otorgada en Caguas, el 3 de enero de 2010 ante el notario público Manuel

U. Rivera Giménez, inscripción vigésima primera, Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección Primera. La dirección física de la propiedad es: Barrio Río Cañas, Sector La Ponderosa, Carr. 798, Km. 2.0, Caguas, Puerto Rico 00725. Se ha ordenado la venta en pública subasta de la finca antes mencionada para satisfacer el monto adeudado de la hipoteca y se llevará a efecto por un precio mínimo de $339,150.00 y su producto servirá a la demandante como abono al importe de la Sentencia que ha obtenido ascendente a $335,709.38 de principal de la primera hipoteca, más los intereses devengados a razón del 7% anual, más la suma de $33,915.00 para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado establecidos en la sentencia. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante las horas laborables. Todo licitador deberá asumir la parte proporcional de la carga que afecta la propiedad así subastada. Si se declarare desierta la subasta señalada, la misma será nuevamente celebrada el DIECINUEVE (19) DE ABRIL DE 2023 A LAS DIEZ DE LA MAÑANA (10:00 AM) en el mismo lugar antes señalado por la suma de $226,100.00, equivalente a 2/3 partes del tipo mínimo original pactado para la hipoteca. A su vez, de declararse desierta dicha segunda subasta, la misma será celebrada por tercera y última vez el VEINTISÉIS (26) DE ABRIL DE 2023 A LAS DIEZ DE LA MAÑANA (10:00 AM) en el mismo lugar antes señalado por la suma de $169,575.00, equivalente a la 112 parte del tipo mínimo original pactado para la hipoteca. No obstante, si se declarare desierta la tercera subasta se dará por terminado el proceso y se podrá adjudicar el inmueble a la parte demandante, conforme lo dispuesto en el Artículo 104 de la Ley del Registro de la Propiedad Inmobiliaria de 2015. Que se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes. Se entenderá, que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de éstos sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Que la propiedad objeto de ejecución está afecta a los siguientes gravámenes preferentes: Hipoteca en garantía de un pagaré a favor de Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, o a su orden, por la cantidad de $160,000.00, con intereses al 8.75% anual, vencedero a la presentación, según la Escritura número 149, otorgada en Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico el día 15 de junio de 1994 ante el Notario Público Juan Rivera

Torres, la cual consta inscrita al folio doscientos setenta y nueve (279) del tomo mil ciento cincuenta y siete (1,157) de Caguas, finca número dieciséis mil seiscientos setenta y ocho (16,678), inscripción décimo sexta, Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección Primera. Por la presente se notifica a los acreedores que tengan inscritos o anotados sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante o acreedores de cargos o derechos reales que hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca del actor y a los dueños poseedores tenedores o de interesados en títulos transmisibles por endoso o al portador garantizados hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito del actor y con los cuales no hubiese tenido efecto la notificación personal del escrito inicial y del Mandamiento del requerimiento de pago, para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les conviniere o satisficiera antes del remate el importe del crédito de sus intereses, costas y honorarios de abogados asegurados quedando subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. Que la propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. Que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado están de manifiesto en la Secretaría de este tribunal, pudiendo ser revisados por cualquier parte durante horas laborables. Y para su publicación de acuerdo con la Ley en un periódico de los de mayor circulación, y para conocimiento de la parte demandada y del público en general, y para conocimiento del Departamento de Hacienda y/o al Centro de Recaudación de Ingresos Municipales (CRIM) que pueda tener algún crédito por concepto de contribuciones territoriales o de cualquier otra índole, y para su publicación además, en los sitios públicos de costumbre, expido el presente Edicto de Subasta bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala de Caguas, hoy 8 de marzo de 2023. ÁNGEL GÓMEZ GÓMEZ, ALGUACIL PLACA #593, ALGUACIL DEL TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO L BRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBl!JNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA

CENTRO JUDICIAL DE AGUADILLA SALA SUPERIOR. JESUS CABRERA CRUZ

DEMANDANTE VS. ANA ELENA DIAZ

HERRERA (RUPTURA IRREPARABLE)

DEMANDADA

CIVIL NUM.: AG2023RF00087.

SOBRE: DIVORCIO. EMPLA-

ZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ES-

TADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA

EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PR. SS.

A: ANA ELENA DIAZ HERRERA

POR LA PRESENTE: se le emplaza para que presente al Tribunal su alegación responsiva a la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días de haber sido publicado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento, notificando copia de la misma al abogado de la parte demandante. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el Tribunal podrá dicta sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y concede el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. Debe notificar con copia de su contestación a la demanda a:

Lcdo. Luis A. González González PO BOX 613

Isabel, Puerto Rico 00662

Email: luisgonzalezgonzalez100 @hotmail.com

En Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, a 10 de marzo de 2023. Sarahi Reyes, Sec Regional. Peggy Sanchez Lopez, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO

DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA

CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAROLINA.

SUCESIÓN DE ARLENE

IZQUIERDO GARCIA, representada por su ALBACEA, Gladys Ileana Izquierdo García DEMANDANTE Vs. Michael McQueeny Keese DEMANDADO

CIVIL NUM.: CA2023CV00452.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO, REGLA 60. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS

UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. ss.

A : Sr. Michael McQueeny Keese

O sea, la parte demandada arriba mencionada.

Se notifica a usted que se ha radicado en esta Secretaria la demanda de epígrafe. Se le emplaza y requiere para que notifique a Lcdo. Jorge M. Azize, abogado de la parte demandante a la dirección: Apartado Postal 20083, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00928-0083. Teléfono: (787) 754-1828 y correo electrónico jmazize@gmail. com copia de la contestación a la demanda dentro de 30 días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto. Se le notifica que deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SU-

MAC), a la cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaria del Tribunal Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala de San Juan y enviando copia a la parte demandante. Se le apercibe que si dejare de hacerlo podrá dictarse contra usted sentencia en rebeldía concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la demanda. Expedido bajo firma y sello de este Tribunal, en San Juan, Puerto Rico a 8 de marzo de 2023. Lcda. Marilyn Aponte Rodriguez, Sección Regional. Denisse Torres Ruiz, Sec Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE SAN JUAN. EDWIN ALVARADO

ROMERO POR SI Y EN REPRESENTACIÓN DE LA SUCESION DE ELIEZER

AL VARADO FLORES

DEMANDANTE vs. JOHN DOE Y RICHARD

DOE, PRESUNTOS TENEDORES DEL PAGARE EXTRAVIADO; ACM CDGY VI LN LLC; MIDWEST SERVICING AGENT 3, INC.

DEMANDADA

CIVILNUM. SJ2023CV01472 (901). CASO: RE: CANCELACION DE PAGARE EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

JOHN DOE Y RICHARD DOE, PRESUNTOS TENEDORES DEL PAGARE EXTRAVIADO

POR MEDIO del presente edicto se le notifica de la radicación por Edwin Alvarado Romero & Otros de una Demanda donde se solicita la cancelación de pagaré hipotecario extraviado a la orden del Centro Hipotecario de Puerto Rico, Inc. por la suma principal de $18,000.00, que venció el 1 ro de febrero de 2020, garantizado con hipoteca constituida por la escritura número 23 otorgada el 25 de enero de 2005 ante el notario Fernando Rabell Echegaray, sobre el solar Número 2 de la manzana E-3 en la Urbanización Las Lomas, situada en el Barrio Gobernador Fidero ( antes Monacillos) de Río Piedras; con un área de 476.83 m.c.; en lindes por el Norte, que es su frente, con la calle número 22, distancia con 15 metros con 76 centímetros, por el Este con los solares número 3 y 5, distancia de 30 metros con 50 centímetros y por el Oeste, con el solar número 1, distancia de

30 metros con 5. POR EL PRESENTE EDICTO se le emplaza y requiere que conteste la Demanda radicando el original de su contestación ante el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de San Juan y notificándole con copia de dicha contestación a la abogada de la Peticionaria, Lcda. Dirma M. Valentín Capeles, PO Box 79165, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00984-9165, teléfono: (787) 667-9199, dentro del término de treinta días siguientes a la fecha de publicación de este edicto; usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejos de Caos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal; si dejare de así hacerlos se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia contra usted concediendo ‘el remedio solicitado sin más citarle ni oírle. Se le advierte que no es posible enviarle a usted por correo certificado con acuse de recibo, una copia del emplazamiento y de la Petición presentada al lugar de su última residencia conocida dentro de diez (10) días siguientes a la publicación del edicto, debido a que no hay dirección conocida. Para obtener copia de la Petición y los documentos relacionados, comuníquese con la Lcda. Dirma M. Valentín Capeles. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy día 10 de marzo de 2023.

GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria. f/MYRIAM RIVERA VILLANUEVA, SECRETARIA DE SERVICIOS A SALA.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE BAYAMÓN. Island Portfolio Services, LLC Como Agente de Fairway Acquisitions Fund, LLC

PARTE DEMANDANTE VS. Yainel A. Febles Saavedra

PARTE DEMANDADA

CIVIL NÚM.: TB2022CV00360.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO.

EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDIC-

TO.

gación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), la cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudiciaLpr, 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 sin más citarle ni oírle, si el tribunal en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. El sistema SUMAC notificará copia al abogado de la parte demandante, el Lcdo. José F. Aguilar Vélez cuya dirección es: P.O. Box 71418 San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936-85 18, teléfono (787) 993-3731 a la dirección jose.aguilar@orflaw.com y a la dirección notificaciones@orflaw.com. EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el sello del Tribunal, en Bayamón, Puerto Rico, hoy día 14 de marzo de 2023. En Bayamón, Puerto Rico, el 14 de marzo de 2023. LCDA.

LAURA L SANTA SANCHEZ, SECRETARIO (A). Lureimy Alicea González, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE VEGA BAJA ORIENTAL BANK

Demandante V. VÍCTOR JIMENEZ PAGÁN

A: Yainel A. Febles SaavedraURB LEVITTOWN 2305

PASEO ALEGRE

TOA BAJA, PUERTO RICO 009494306

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto. Usted deberá presentar su ale-

Demandada Civil Núm.: BY2022CV01386. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU., EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R., SS. AVISO DE PÚBLICA SUBASTA. El que suscribe, Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Vega Baja, hago saber a la parte demandada VÍCTOR JIMENEZ PAGÁN y al PÚBLICO EN GENERAL; que en cumplimiento del Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia expedido el 23 de agosto de 2022, por la Secretaría del Tribunal, procederé a vender y venderé en pública subasta por el precio mínimo de $221,184.00 y al mejor postor, pagadero en efectivo, cheque de gerente o giro postal, a nombre del alguacil del tribunal, la propiedad que se describe a continuación: 1510 CALLE VALLE ESCONDIDO, BARRIO LAS GRANJAS, VEGA BAJA, PR 00694, y que se describe de la siguiente manera: RÚSTICA: Solar identificado con el #5 en el plano de inscripción sustituyo II, ubicado en el Barrio Pugnado Afuera, Sector Las Granjas,

del término municipal de Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. Área del solar: 782.7231 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el Norte, con calle dedicada a uso público; por el Sur, con las granjas #10 y #7; por el Este, con solar #7, y por el Oeste, con calle dedicada a uso público. Finca 32313 inscrita al folio 222 del tomo 443 de Vega Baja, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección IV. La finca antes descrita se encuentra afecta a los siguientes gravámenes: (i) HIPOTECA constituida por Víctor Jimenez Pagan, soltero, en garantía de un pagaré, aff#.4244, a favor de Scotiabank de P.R., o a su orden, por $221,184.00, al 3.25%, vencedero el 1 de abril de 2045, según Esc. #48, en San Juan, a 31 de marzo de 2015, ante Rina Cofiño Hernández, inscrita al Sistema Karibe de Vega Baja, finca #32313, inscripción 7ma, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección IV. La hipoteca objeto de esta ejecución es la que ha quedado descrita en el inciso (i). Será celebrada la subasta para con el importe de la misma satisfacer la sentencia dicta el 15 de junio de 2022, mediante la cual se condenó a la parte demandada pagar a la parte demandante la suma de $194,514.23 de principal, más $8,285.52 de interés al 3.25% anual, al 1 de marzo de 2022, que continuarán acumulándose $16.9177 diario hasta el saldo total, $601.50 de otros cargos, $514.30 de cuenta escrow, $22,118.40 de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado, más cualquier otro desembolso que haya efectuado o efectúe la parte demandante durante la tramitación de este caso para otros adelantos de conformidad con el Contrato Hipotecario, incluyendo primas de seguro de hipoteca, prima de seguro de siniestro y cargos por demora. La PRIMERA SUBASTA será celebrada el día 11 DE MAYO DE 2023 A LAS 10:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en la oficina del Alguacil, sita en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. Servirá de tipo mínimo para la misma la cantidad de $221,184.00, sin admitirse oferta inferior. De no haber remate ni adjudicación, celebraré SEGUNDA SUBASTA el día 18 DE MAYO DE 2023 A LAS 10:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo lugar, en la que servirá como tipo mínimo, dos terceras (2/3) partes del precio pactado para la primera subasta, o sea, $147,456.00. Si no hubiese remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta, celebraré TERCERA SUBASTA el día 25 DE MAYO DE 2023 A LAS 10:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo lugar en la que regirá como tipo mínimo, la mitad del precio pactado para la primera subasta, o sea, $110,592.00. El Alguacil que suscribe hizo constar que toda licitación de-

berá hacerse para pagar su importe en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos de América, de acuerdo con la Ley y de acuerdo con lo anunciado en este Aviso de Subasta. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante horas laborables. Se entiende que todo licitador que comparezca a la subasta señalada en este caso acepta como bastante la titulación que da base a la misma. Se entiende que cualquier carga y/o gravamen anterior y/o preferente, si la hubiere al crédito que da base a esta ejecución continuará subsistente, entendiéndose, además, que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción cualquier parte del remanente del precio de licitación. La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. Por la presente se notifica a los acreedores que tengan inscritos o anotados sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante o acreedores de cargas o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca ejecutada y las personas interesadas en, o con derecho a exigir el cumplimiento de instrumentos negociables garantizados hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito ejecutado, para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les convenga o satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, costas y honorarios de abogados asegurados, quedando subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. Vendida o adjudicada la finca o derecho hipotecado y consignado el precio correspondiente, en esa misma fecha o fecha posterior, el alguacil que celebró la subasta procederá a otorgar la correspondiente escritura pública de traspaso en representación del dueño o titular de los bienes hipotecados, ante el notario que elija el adjudicatario o comprador, quien deberá abonar el importe de tal escritura. El alguacil pondrá en posesión judicial al nuevo dueño, si así se lo solicita dentro del término de veinte (20) días a partir de la confirmación de la venta o adjudicación. Si transcurren los referidos veinte (20) días, el tribunal podrá ordenar, sin necesidad de ulterior procedimiento, que se lleve a efecto el desalojo o lanzamiento del ocupante u ocupantes de la finca o de todos los que por orden o tolerancia del deudor la ocupen. Y PARA CONOCIMIENTO DE LOS LICITADORES Y DEL PUBLICO EN GENERAL y para su publicación de acuerdo con la Ley, expido el presente Edicto bajo mi firma y sello de

este Tribunal. En Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, hoy 23 de febrero de 2023. ALG. FREDDY OMAR RODRÍGUEZ COLLAZO, ALGUACIL, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA DE VEGA BAJA.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA

SALA DE HUMACAO ISLAND PORTFOLIO SERVICES, LLC COMO AGENTE DE ACE ONE FUNDING, LLC

Demandante Vs. ISRAEL GONZÁLEZ

Demandado

Civil Núm.: JU2022CV00044. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO.

A: ISRAEL GONZÁLEZURB REPTO ARENALES

31 CALLE 1 LAS

PIEDRAS, PUERTO RICO 00771-3117 / PO BOX 959 JUNCOS, PUERTO RICO 00777.

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto.

Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), la cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda o cualquier otro sin más citarle ni oírle, si el tribunal en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. El sistema SUMAC notificará copia al abogado de la parte demandante, el Lcdo. José F. Aguilar Vélez cuya dirección es: P.O. Box 71418 San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936-8518, teléfono (787) 993-3731 a la dirección jose. aguilar@orf-law.com y a la dirección notificaciones@orf-law. com. EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el sello del Tribunal, en Humacao, Puerto Rico, hoy día 09 de febrero de 2023. En Humacao, Puerto Rico, el 09 de febrero de 2023. IVELISSE C. FONSECA RODRÍGUEZ, SECRETARIA. MICHELLE GUEVARA DE LEÓN, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE HUMACAO SALA SUPERIOR

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO

Parte Demandante Vs. SUCESIÓN DE NICOLÁS AGOSTO ÁLVAREZ COMPUESTA POR: CARMEN D. AGOSTO SERRANO, CARMEN M. AGOSTO SERRANO, CARLOS AGOSTO SERRANO, NICOLÁS AGOSTO SERRANO Y MENGANO DE TAL, POSIBLE HEREDERO DESCONOCIDO; SUCESIÓN DE PAULA SERRANO RAMOS COMPUESTA POR CARMEN D. AGOSTO SERRANO, CARMEN M. AGOSTO SERRANO, CARLOS AGOSTO SERRANO, NICOLÁS AGOSTO SERRANO, SUTANO Y PRENCEJO DE TAL, POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS; DEPARTAMENTO DE HACIENDA POR CONDUCTO DE LA DIVISIÓN DE CAUDALES RELICTOS; CENTRO DE RECAUDACIÓN DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES (CRIM)

Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: HU2019CV00712. Sala: 206. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS. AVISO DE PÚBLICA SUBASTA. El Alguacil que suscribe por la presente anuncia y hace constar que en cumplimiento de la Sentencia en Rebeldía dictada el 22 de enero de 2020, la Orden de Ejecución de Sentencia Enmendada del 20 de enero de 2023 y el Mandamiento de Ejecución Enmendado del 24 de enero del 2023 en el caso de epígrafe, procederé a vender el día 10 DE MAYO DE 2023, A LAS 9:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en mi oficina, localizada en Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Centro Judicial de Humacao, Sala Superior, en la Avenida Nicanor Vázquez, (frente al Centro de Bellas Artes) Humacao, Puerto Rico, al mejor postor en pago de contado y en moneda de los Estados Unidos de América cheque de gerente o giro postal todo título, derecho o interés de la parte demandada sobre la siguiente propiedad: URBANA: Solar marcado con el Número Treinta (30) del plano de inscripción del Proyecto VBC-104 denominado Villa Oriente radicado en el Barrio Mabú del término municipal de Humacao,

Infielder who ‘wants the moment’ thrives for US team

the task.”

With infield shifting still allowed in the WBC, Anderson actually made one of his four assists on the shortstop side of second base. Both of his hits went to right field, the same direction as his game-ending homer at the Field of Dreams in Iowa in 2021.

That was a rare spotlight moment for Anderson, whose White Sox have made two rather forgettable playoff appearances in his seven-year career. The first, in 2020, was part of an expanded field with no fans in attendance. The other, in 2021, was a division series loss to Houston that was mostly hidden, with three of four games held on weekday afternoons.

Still, DeRosa said, Anderson is a player who “wants the moment” — and, indeed, he is 16 for 33 (.485) in those rare postseason games, and 4 for 7 with four runs batted in at this WBC.

against the White Sox in four years with the Philadelphia Phillies.

“That’s another part of the intrigue of an event like this. I’ve got to play with guys — I think I’ve played Trout one time my whole career. So being in the same clubhouse with him, with Anderson, and watching them on a daily basis, it’s a lot of fun.”

Mike Trout, the three-time winner of the AL’s Most Valuable Player Award for the Los Angeles Angels, is the headliner here; he homered Monday and made the team celebration gesture — a military-style salute — on his trip around the bases. But Trout was happy to share the stage at the postgame news conference.

“He’s a star,” Trout said, with Anderson just to his right. “There’s no way else to put it.”

By TYLER KEPNER

In baseball parlance, a quality major league player is known as a guy. A superstar, though, is more than a guy. He’s a dude.

Most of the pitchers for the United States in this World Baseball Classic are guys. The hitters are dudes, and that is why Tim Anderson was unfazed by losing badly to Mexico on Sunday night.

“Really, the vibe is still the same,” Anderson, the shortstop for the Chicago White Sox, said after leaving the U.S. clubhouse in Phoenix. “I mean, you look around and you see who’s in the locker room, there’s really nothing to complain about. You’ve got a bunch of dudes in there.”

The dudes showed up Monday with the cool assurance that they would not be embarrassed again. They blitzed Team Canada with a nine-run first inning, winning by mercy rule in seven innings, 121, for their second victory in three games. After a day off, the U.S. team was to face Colombia on Wednesday night in hopes of advancing to the quarterfinals in Miami.

Lance Lynn stifled Canada for five innings Monday, but it was Anderson, Lynn’s Chicago teammate, who may have shone brightest. In 10 seasons as a professional, Anderson has played 1,091 games in the field, always at shortstop. On Monday, for the very first time, he played second base.

“Everybody tells him that he can’t do something, he’s going to prove you wrong and do everything that he can to win, no matter where he is, whatever situation you put him in,” Lynn said. “And that’s who he is. He’s going to win at all costs.”

The U.S. team could have used a different batting champion at second base Monday, the New York Mets’ Jeff McNeil, a left-handed hitter. But Canada was starting a left-hander, and manager Mark DeRosa took no chances. He wanted the right-handed Anderson, who has hit .318 across the past four seasons but seems to have something to prove.

“When you play in the WBC, it’s a feeling-out process at first,” DeRosa said.

“I think he wanted to let some people know how good he was — in that dugout, in that clubhouse, the coaching staff, on down the line. He has really caught a lot of people’s eyes on this team.”

Anderson walked in the first against Mitch Bratt, 19, who pitched last season for the Class A Down East Wood Ducks in Kinston, North Carolina, and managed only nine strikes in 25 pitches. Anderson later added a triple, a single and a stolen base, while fielding flawlessly at second.

“It’s really not the first time I’ve played on the other side of the bag; when the shift was on, I stayed on that side,” Anderson said. “It’s a matter of just getting comfortable, and I got comfortable as the game went on and I was able to complete

“He’s been raking,” said Trea Turner of the Philadelphia Phillies, who started for the U.S. team at shortstop. “He can really, really hit.”

And that is Anderson’s objective: Confident in his ability to smack the ball hard to all fields, he never wants to take a hittable pitch. In 2019, when he won the American League batting title, Anderson walked only 15 times in 518 plate appearances.

“I ain’t in there to wait around,” Anderson said the next spring, and the numbers support his mantra.

He has 900 hits and 117 walks, the fewest among the 24 major leaguers with that many hits in the past seven seasons — and nobody wants him to change.

“He reminds me of my old teammate, Michael Young, who is on the coaching staff,” DeRosa said. “I’m telling Mikey all the time, ‘Mikey, he’s you, man. He plays with an edge, lightning bat speed, takes his knocks the other way.’”

Young used that approach to win a batting title and make seven All-Star teams while amassing the most hits in Texas Rangers history. Anderson, 29, has a long way to go to catch Luke Appling on the White Sox list — Appling, a Hall of Famer, had 2,749 hits — but his reputation is taking hold across the game.

“To actually be on the same field with him and watch him play, he’s an incredible player — just so dynamic, he can do so many things,” said U.S. catcher J.T. Realmuto, who has played just one series

There is one other way. Anderson, like the rest of the hitters in the decorated U.S. lineup, is a dude.

WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC WEDNESDAY’S

SCORES

Cuba 4, Australia 3

Venezuela 5, Israel 1

Mexico at Canada (3 p.m.)

Puerto Rico at Dominican Republic (7 p.m.)

USA at Colombia (10 p.m.)

TUESDAY’S SCORES

Venezuela 4, Nicaragua 1

Canada 5, Colombia 0

Dominican Republic 10, Israel 0 (7 inn.)

Mexico 2, Great Britain 1

TODAY’S GAME

Italy at Japan (6 a.m. ET, FS2)

Tim Anderson did a little bit of everything in helping his team crush Canada at the World Baseball Classic. All in a day’s work for a certified baseball dude.

Joe Pepitone, rowdy star when the Yankees faded, dies at 82

By BRUCE WEBER

Joe Pepitone, who won three Gold Gloves at first base and played in two World Series for the New York Yankees but who may be best remembered for his hair and his high jinks, has died at his home in Kansas City, Missouri. He was 82.

His son Bill confirmed the death. He said his sister, Cara Pepitone, who had lived with their father, had found him dead Monday morning. The cause was unknown, he said, but it appeared to have been a sudden event, like a heart attack. The Yankees also announced his death in a statement.

Pepitone was a fan favorite in New York. They called him Pepi, a local boy who came to the Yankees in 1962 with a sweet, compact, left-handed swing, a slick glove and the personality of an irrepressible joyrider from da naybahood.

His renegade nature would eventually cost him. He earned a reputation for wildness and unreliability, and in the 1980s, long after his career had ended, he went to prison on a drug charge. But at the start it was big fun.

A cutup in the locker room, a jabberer with the fans, Pepitone wore his hair pouffy and long; he was famously the first Yankee to bring a hair dryer into the clubhouse and supplemented his coiffure with toupees. And he led the life of a late-night social prowler, spreading money around, chasing women and hitting notorious glam-and-trouble spots like the Copacabana. Before the arrival in New York of Joe Namath, he was, well, a poor man’s Joe Namath.

Like Namath, the brash New York Jets quarterback christened Broadway Joe who in 1969 promised New York its first Super Bowl winner and then made it happen, Pepitone could play. A slender kid with surprising power, he also had the arm, speed and judgment to play more than 400 games in center field during his 12-year career.

In his second season, he displaced the Yankees’ longtime first baseman Bill Skowron, and with Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra aging and Roger Maris’ best years behind him, Pepitone seemed poised to become the focus of the nextgeneration lineup. From 1963 to 1965, he made three consecutive All-Star teams, belting 27 home runs in 1963, 28 in 1964, 18 in 1965 and a career-high 31 in 1966.

But this turned out to be a period of grim transition for the Yankees, from dominant club to also-ran. After winning 10 World Series in the previous 16 years, the Yankees lost in a sweep to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1963 — Pepitone mishandled a throw for a three-base error that cost the Yankees the final game — and in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1964.

The team wouldn’t return to the Series until 1976, and Pepitone, whose own performance leveled off, never did. His Yankee teams finished no higher than fifth through 1969, after which he completed his big-league career in the National League, playing for the Houston Astros, the Chicago Cubs and briefly in 1973 for the Atlanta Braves.

He socked 27 homers again for the Yankees in 1969 and hit .307 in more than 400 at-bats for the Cubs in 1971, but after 1966 he never drove in more than 70 runs in a season. Overall, he hit 219 home runs, with a career average of .258.

For most of his career, Pepitone undermined his own gifts with his rambunctious and self-destructive behavior. He had money problems and marital problems. His nightlife began after night games; he drank with and without his teammates and was no stranger to drugs. He claimed at one point to have turned Mantle and Whitey Ford on to marijuana, and in an interview in Rolling Stone

magazine in 2015, he recalled that when he was with the Cubs, fans in the bleachers would throw packets of joints and cocaine at him in the outfield, and he would hide them in the ivy that covered the stadium wall.

“Used to be I was always the first person at the ballpark, and the first one to leave; next thing you know, people are wondering why I’m hanging out at the ballpark so long,” Pepitone told Rolling Stone. When the manager, Leo Durocher, asked him what he was doing hanging around, he would say he was going to get a rubdown from the trainer.

“Then I’d be out in center field with my shorts on, looking through the ivy to find my dope,” he said. “I loved Chicago!”

Joseph Anthony Pepitone was born in Brooklyn on Oct. 10, 1940, to William and Angelina (Caiazzo) Pepitone. He grew up there in a rugged neighborhood of largely Irish American and Italian American working-class families. His mother worked in a clothing factory; his father was a pugnacious construction worker who was sometimes called Willie Pep after the boxer of that name and who was fond of using his fists to settle disputes both outside and inside the house.

In his forthright 1975 autobiography, “Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud,” written with Berry Stainback, Pepitone said he had a love-hate relationship with his father, whom he described as displaying

a volcanic temper but also a passionate devotion to his family.

Pepitone was introduced to baseball by his mother’s brother, Louie Caiazzo, who was called Uncle Red. Caiazzo spent hours with Pepitone throwing and catching and making him field grounders. Pepitone developed into a star in neighborhood stickball, in pickup games in Prospect Park and at Manual Training High School (later John Jay High School and now a building known as the John Jay Educational Complex, housing three small high schools). In high school, he was known for clubbing long home runs.

He also played for a semipro team sponsored by Nathan’s Famous hot dogs, playing so well that professional scouts began showing up to watch him play.

After his time in the majors, Pepitone played briefly in Japan in 1973 and wrote a whiny article for The New York Times about his treatment there; hardly anyone spoke English, he complained, “and at my apartment, I swear the door was 4 feet 5 inches high.”

He played some professional softball, was in the bar business for a time and in the early 1980s worked briefly for the Yankees as a hitting coach. In 1985, he was riding in a car with two other people when police stopped them for running a red light and found drugs — cocaine, heroin and quaaludes — and a loaded handgun in the car.

Pepitone was convicted on misdemeanor counts of possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia and served about half of a six-month sentence.

“I find it particularly sad,” the judge, acting Justice Allan Marrus of state Supreme Court, told him at his sentencing, “when someone who graced New York in Yankee pinstripes will now have to serve his time with the New York Department of Correction in their prison stripes.”

Pepitone later worked in public relations for the Yankees and mostly stayed out of trouble, though he did plead guilty to drunken driving after losing control of his car in the Midtown Tunnel in 1995. He was married and divorced three times.

In addition to his children Bill and Cara, Pepitone is survived by another son, Joseph Jr.; two more daughters, Eileen and Lisa; two brothers, Vincent and William; several grandchildren; and at least one great-grandchild. He had recently moved from Long Island to Kansas City to be closer to Cara.

Joe Pepitone in 1962. He took over first base for the Yankees and from 1963 to 1965 made three consecutive All-Star teams, belting a slew of home runs each year. But his renegade nature would cost him.

The Carlos Alcaraz show returns to raves

By MATTHEW FUTTERMAN

It’s a pretty easygoing crowd at the BNP Paribas Open in the heart of California’s Coachella Valley. Spectators soak up the sun. They wander the grounds while gazing at the mountains. They drink cheap beer priced expensively. Sometimes they watch tennis. Often they don’t.

And then Saturday night rolled around, and just about every seat in Stadium 1 in Indian Wells was occupied on a breezy night in the desert that was chilly enough for puffer jackets.

Carlos Alcaraz was in the house, tender hamstring and all, trying to deliver this tournament — and really the sport itself — the kind of juice that only he seems able to deliver these days, especially with Rafael Nadal sidelined with an injury and Novak Djokovic prohibited from entering the United States because of his refusal to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

To do that, though, Alcaraz, the 19-year-old Spanish star, needs to be on the court, and that has not happened much since he blasted his way to his first Grand Slam title and the No. 1 ranking at the U.S. Open in New York last September.

That effort required a series of marathon matches, including one that lasted until nearly 3 in the morning. He has been mostly hobbling ever since. He battled an abdominal injury through the fall. Then, in his final practice before his scheduled journey to the Australian Open, he pulled a hamstring as he sprinted and stretched to reach a short ball.

Alcaraz, whose foot-on-the-gas style may make him more prone to injuries, like his compatriot Nadal, returned to play two small tournaments last month in South America. He won the title in Buenos Aires. Then, in Rio de Janeiro, he made the final but aggravated his hamstring midway through his three-set loss to Cameron Norrie of Britain. He pulled out of his next tournament, in Acapulco, to rest for Indian Wells, where tournament organizers fretting over the loss of Nadal and Djokovic were praying that Alcaraz could recover in time.

“The tennis insiders knew that there was this new kid, maybe the next Rafa,” Tommy Haas, the German former pro who is the tournament director here, said

of Alcaraz in the tense days before the start of the tournament. “And all of a sudden, he just has a blowout year and becomes the youngest No. 1 of all time, and you go, ‘How is this possible, and how amazing is he to watch?’”

There are a handful of players that can make an early-round match feel like a big event, and Alcaraz did so Saturday night as he ambushed Thanasi Kokkinakis of Australia and won in straight sets.

Iga Swiatek of Poland, the women’s No. 1, had played in the afternoon in a mostly empty stadium. Taylor Fritz, the defending champion and top American, and Ben Shelton, also an American and the young season’s brightest surprise, then dueled in a tight, three-set battle that filled a good majority of the Stadium 1 seats. But it was nothing compared with the packed crowd that Alcaraz drew for the night’s final match.

Even Jimmy Connors, who knows something about putting on a show, stuck around, sitting high in the stadium in the media seats. Alcaraz was at it again Monday night, playing in the headliner’s spot — albeit in front of a thinner, school night crowd — against Tallon Griekspoor

of the Netherlands. The basketball great and tennis obsessive Dirk Nowitzki was courtside.

There is that crackling forehand that sounds different from everyone else’s, more like an ax splitting a log than polyester strings thumping a fuzzy ball. There are all the desperate sprints after nearly out-of-reach balls that so many players ignore. He has the most delicate and deceptive drop shot and stinging volleys.

When a willowy drop shot clipped the tape and trickled just over the sideline, he twisted in anguish. How dare the gravity and subtle currents of the desert air conspire to interfere with his attempts at perfection.

“I try to make the people enjoy watching tennis,” Alcaraz said after his first win. “And I think the way that I play, they love it.”

He advanced by walkover (6-2, 2-0) to the quarterfinals on Tuesday evening when opponent Jack Draper of Britain retired with an injury early in the second set.

The game wears on many younger players. The pressure of expectations, the constant attention and the relentless

schedule have toppled top talents either temporarily, in the case of Nick Kyrgios, or permanently. A year ago, Ashleigh Barty retired as the world No. 1 at 25.

There are also players a few years older than Alcaraz who have flirted with his level or achieved it, only to fall back before fans could get on the bandwagon.

Daniil Medvedev won the U.S. Open in 2021 and rose to the top spot in the rankings early last year but won just two minor titles. At the moment, he is on a 16-match winning streak. Stefanos Tsitsipas has made two Grand Slam finals, but nerves and Djokovic got the better of him both times.

As for the players who are of Alcaraz’s vintage, they know his early success has set a standard that will be hard to match.

“I will try,” Lorenzo Musetti of Italy, who is 21 and grew up playing in junior tournaments with Alcaraz, said unconvincingly with a shake of his head after his second-round loss here over the weekend.

So far, Alcaraz has seemed immune to the usual anxieties. His approach?

“Live the moment, play the match, and go for it,” he said.

Alcaraz had some help this week in producing the kind of buzz the sport is always seeking. Emma Raducanu of England, who won the 2021 U.S. Open as a qualifier, had gone on a roll, winning three consecutive matches for just the second time since her breakout Grand Slam win.

The success came largely out of nowhere. Raducanu, who last month deleted Instagram from her phone to better focus on herself, has been battling injuries and illnesses — most recently, a wrist problem. She hardly prepared for this tournament and didn’t practice for four days before her first match.

But on Monday afternoon against Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil, the 13th seed, Raducanu was once more whipping her lethal forehands into the corners and rolling her windmill backhand with a freedom that had been largely absent for the past year. And she was doing it in front of a raucous field-court crowd, just like in the not-so-old days of the 2021 U.S. Open.

That all ended Tuesday in a matchup between the two most recent U.S. Open champions as Swiatek dominated the second set to oust Raducanu, 6-3, 6-1.

The 2022 U.S. Open champion, Alcaraz battled injuries in fall and winter. At Indian Wells, he is nearly at full power, dominating opponents and dazzling fans.

Sudoku

How to Play:

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

Sudoku Rules:

Every row must contain the numbers from 1 through 9

Every column must contain the numbers from 1 through 9

Every 3x3 square must contain the numbers from 1 through 9

Crossword

Answers on page 38

Wordsearch

Aries (Mar 21-April 20)

You may seem decisive on the outside, but could have a few doubts on the inside. This feeling might cause you to hold back from taking the right action. The current line-up though, can encourage you to tap into your instincts and consider why you don’t feel ready just yet. Waiting may be the better option, as over coming days you’ll learn something to your advantage.

Taurus (April 21-May 21)

Have a chance to get away from it all? Positive influences suggest it could be a delightful experience. And yet with powerful Pluto involved in the mix, whatever happens might change you or cause a shift in beliefs. You may think you’re going on a quick getaway, but an encounter or experience can transform your perception of life or love, and this could alter everything.

Gemini (May 22-June 21)

As the Moon in Sagittarius aligns with soothing Venus, the idea of injustice might affect you more deeply. Aware of a situation that is unfair? If so, it could inspire you to do something by speaking out or joining a group or charity connected with this matter. If you want to show your support Gemini, this could be your chance to make a real difference, and you’ll feel good too.

Cancer (June 22-July 23)

It may seem that you’re putting in a lot more work, Cancer. Is it because you want to, or because you feel you have no choice? If you do feel pressured, it may be time for a shift in mindset. You’ll soon see possibilities you never thought of before. Need a restorative? An outing to a place of natural beauty could soothe your soul and be exactly what you need to feel better.

Leo (July 24-Aug 23)

The way someone describes an opportunity, you might think it’s the best thing ever, but they could be exaggerating. And unless you enquire further, you may never know until it’s too late. Don’t take someone’s word for granted as you might lose out. The current mesmerizing ties suggest that you scrutinize this in detail, Leo. It may well glisten, but gold? It’s unlikely!

Virgo (Aug 24-Sep 23)

Avoid making any promises or commitments, even if it seems everything is perfect, and nothing could possibly go wrong, Virgo. With the Sun, Mercury and Neptune cosying up, you may be pushed into a false sense of security. What seemed so certain could unravel over coming days, so think twice. If everything is still on target by the weekend, then you’ll be fine to give your word.

Libra (Sep 24-Oct 23)

With the Moon and lovely Venus aligning, something could come to light that paves the way for a reconciliation or a chance to put an issue to rest. If you feel like giving someone a second chance, then a chat could open a door to better communication. Or you might agree to disagree. In one way or another, any sense of distance can begin to reverse Libra, and not too soon!

Scorpio (Oct 24-Nov 22)

Fact or fiction, Scorpio? Key links with nebulous Neptune could leave you wondering how someone really feels about you. You might hope they will reciprocate, but can you be sure? If you take your cue from current events, you could get even more confused. Wait a few days, and you will have a very clear idea of what is going on and whether this is worth pursuing further.

Sagittarius (Nov 23-Dec 21)

A positive encounter could give you a boost, and brighten other facets of the day too. Someone’s wit and sense of fun might help you see a situation from a completely different and more uplifting perspective, and this may make all the difference. Ready to relax? Drowsy Neptune ties can inspire you to shut out the world, get cosy and lose yourself in a movie, Archer.

Capricorn (Dec 22-Jan 20)

With thoughtful Mercury lingering in the company of aquatic Neptune, you may find yourself questioning certain assumptions. Something you took for granted might now seem shaky and even unreliable. It may be an agreement or a planned project, or a relationship that leaves you wondering. Don’t make any sudden moves, but observe how things pan out over this week.

Aquarius (Jan 21-Feb 19)

You currently have an opportunity to tackle financial issues, especially areas where money is being lost in small ways, that can all add up by the end of the month. A look at your outgoings might identify items where you could make good savings and so feel more in control. With Mars coming to the end of its long stay in Gemini, something you’ve learned may come in useful.

Pisces (Feb 20-Mar 20)

Ready for some down time? The congenial Moon/ Venus hook-up, hints that allowing space in your schedule for small pleasures, such as a walk or a coffee with a friend, could make a difference. You’ll see a task or goal from a more balanced perspective. And if you do feel like channelling your talents into something you can earn from, it’s a good time to have a go.

Speed Bump