Thursday May 21, 2020

Thursday, May 21, 2020

San Juan The

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Elections Left Out of Fiscal Board’s Budget Plan

DAILY

Star

New Artists, Facing the Worst, Get Creative P21

‘Governor, Don’t Sign the Electoral Reform’ Leaders from Different Political Parties Join Forces, Deliver Letter to La Fortaleza in a Final Appeal for ‘Consensus’

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COVID-19 Economic Impact Raises Doubts About Sustainability of PR Gov't

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NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

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Thursday, May 21, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

GOOD MORNING

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May 21, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star, the only paper with News Service in English in Puerto Rico, publishes 7 days a week, with a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday edition, along with a Weekend Edition to cover Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

A tale of two governors

Today’s

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By JOSÉ A. SÁNCHEZ FOURNIER @SanchezFournier Special to The Star

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Vázquez Garced’s condemnation of $38 million contract clashes with her own previous statements on the matter

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acquire the rapid test kits, who could provide them, where they could be acquired. The Food and Drug Administration [FDA] had already allowed the relaxing of the guidelines [for buying the test kits].”

In Wednesday’s tweet, however, Vázquez claimed that “our decisions have always been the correct ones, that is why I solicited the cancellation of the contract and purchase orders with that company [Apex General Contractors].”

However, her claim in that same tweet that her staff’s “diligence in canceling the purchase order on time and recovering the money without losing a single penny stopped the intended wrongdoing” misstates the facts.

Her administration gave the green light to the $38 million purchase order and the advance payment of $19 million did not go through as originally scheduled because the private bank ordered to make the payment found the transaction too out of the ordinary and froze it.

“I want to stop talking about this, not because I have something to hide but because my main interest is getting over this coronavirus situation,” Vázquez said on April 8.

ov. Wanda Vázquez Garced railed against the comments made by former Maritime Transport Administration Director Juan Maldonado de Jesús and Apex General Contractors LLC proprietor Robert Rodríguez in a series of text messages the day they were awarded a $38 million sales contract for one million COVID-19 test kits.

In one message sent late in the day on March 26, the day they were awarded the contract, Maldonado de Jesús wrote Rodríguez that “the virus was productive.”

“Too many millions for just one Puerto Rican. ¡Congratulations!” answered Rodríguez.

In a written message published Wednesday on her official Twitter account, the governor described the messages between Maldonado de Jesús and Rodríguez as “condemnable” and “deserving our strongest repudiation.”

“These actions require the most urgent action from the investigative authorities, as we have sought since the beginning,” read part of the governor’s tweet. “We hope that when these conclude, no illegal action remains unpunished.”

Those words stand in stark contradiction to her original comments related to the matter. On April 8, when Vázquez was first questioned in public about the $38 million purchase order and other similar incidents that occurred at the beginning of the COVID-19 national emergency, she defended her administration’s management of the procedure and approval of the Apex bid.

“All this [related to the $38 million Apex agreement] was discussed during several meetings we had,” the governor said at an April 8 press conference. “I already told this to the people of Puerto Rico. We met several times with the task force, with the labs, with all the people who had something to do with this, we discussed the need to Governor Vázquez posted her reaction on her social media platforms.

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All for one

Members of several political movements join in opposition to electoral reform bill

By JOSÉ A. SÁNCHEZ FOURNIER Twitter: @SanchezFournier Special To The Star

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ed by former gubernatorial candidate Alexandra Lúgaro and former San Juan mayor and Popular Democratic Party (PDP) leader Héctor Luis Acevedo, a group of political figures of different and divergent groups met today in front of La Fortaleza to present Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced with a letter urging her not to sign into law the new electoral reform bill.

The letter was also signed by Sen. Eduardo Bhatia, Dignity Project Party President Dr. César Vázquez, PDP President Sen. Aníbal José Torres, Citizen Victory Movement President Ana Irma Rivera Lassén, independent gubernatorial candidate Eliezer Molina, independent Sen. José Vargas Vidot and former guber-

natorial candidate Manuel Cidre.

“We want to end up with an electoral reform bill that is written, passed and signed into law with a consensus from all parties, like the current law was authored, one that reflects the will of the people,” Lúgaro said during an exchange with the media in front of La Fortaleza prior to delivering the letter.

“Here we represent over 50 percent of the votes cast in the last election, so clearly there is no consensus on the current bill and it was not arrived at through respectful dialogue,” Lúgaro added.

The current electoral reform bill, which was spearheaded by Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz, was already approved by the Legislature. The governor returned it to the Senate because of disagreements on electronic voting.

“This [the current electoral reform bill] is a coup attempt against democracy,” said veteran PDP leader Acevedo, who was on the front lines of the political fight on Election Day 1980 when, after an early lead that disappeared around the same time as a power outage, his party’s candidate lost the governor’s race by just over 3,000 votes. “Governor Vázquez Garced promised that she would not sign into law an electoral reform bill that was not arrived at with a consensus from all political parties. She said this before she was a candidate for governor. A person’s

NPP holds primary elections lottery

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

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little over two months before the electoral primaries, proposed for Aug. 9, the New Progressive Party (NPP) on Wednesday held the traditional draw for positions on the ballots for elective office in the executive branch of the Puerto Rico government, Senate at-large and district seats, House of Representatives at-large and district seats, and mayoralties.

The draw, which was led by the designated NPP Electoral Commissioner María D. “Lolin” Santiago and transmitted through official social networks, was carried out through a technological platform at the party’s administrative offices and was validated last night by representatives of candidates for elective positions. The application that was used was based on candidates’ data from the State Elections Commission.

Once the data and photos of the applicants were entered into the electronic system, the application organized them alphabetically,

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

according to the position to which they aspire.

To begin the lottery for positions, the system took the list of names available for the particular elective office and selected one at random. That name in turn was randomly assigned to a position on the ballot.

“You have all been witnesses to how the process was carried out. We had observers from all positions. We will deliver the ballot electronically to all candidates as it was formed. The ballot is an unofficial preliminary,” Santiago told the media. “… What we are certifying are the positions that remained. The system that was used was validated yesterday by the candidates or candidates for governor who sent their representatives and validated the process.”

Santiago added that “[i]n the NPP’s eagerness to comply with all the provisions of the administrative orders on social distancing, there have been no observers here beyond what is necessary, and we are pleased with the entire process.”

NPP Secretary General June Rivera Ortega said that on Aug. 9 the party “will send a force-

dignity or integrity should not change just because she is running for office. Now it’s her turn to be true to her word.”

“In this electoral reform bill, I see the inception of the same dealings that led us to what happened in 1980,” the former mayor added.

Lúgaro emphasized that “[w]e are not here to criticize.”

“We are here to offer an honest, respectful discussion,” she said.

César Vázquez, the Dignity Project Party president and gubernatorial candidate, noted that “[i]n life you have two kinds of argument. Either you argue with the strength of truth, or you use strength to argue.”

“As of now, the Legislature can argue based on their strength,” he said. “But their argument goes against the true will of the people and against democracy.”

When asked about the group’s main objective, Lúgaro answered: “That the governor accepts our recommendations and does not sign the electoral reform bill.”

“We are here acting in good faith,” she said. “We all arrived at a consensus to be here. We want her to hear all sides and take part in this discussion.”

Added Rivera Lassén: “If the governor is unwilling to adopt our recommendations, we have our ways to make the voice of the people be heard.”

ful message to all of Puerto Rico that we are ready and prepared so that on November 3 the NPP will win the governorship, [the office of] resident commissioner, the mayoralties, the plebiscite with ‘yes,’ and that Puerto Rico continues to progress.”

In the case of the Senate, apart from the primary for at-large seats, eight senatorial districts (San Juan, Bayamón, Arecibo, Mayagüez, Ponce, Guayama, Humacao and Carolina) will be up for grabs, while in the House of Representatives primaries will be held in 15 of the 40 representative districts.

The party will also field candidates for more than 30 mayorships.

The ballot order for the highest elective positions was as follows (in the numerical order that will appear on the ballot): Governor: 1. Wanda Vázquez Garced (represented by Jorge Dávila) 2. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia (represented by Caridad Pierluisi) Senate at-large: 1. William Villafañe 2. Héctor Martínez 3. Carlos Rodríguez Mateo 4. Itzamar Peña Ramírez 5. Alba Iris Calderón 6. Evelyn Vázquez Nieves

7. Keren Riquelme 8. Gregorio Matías Rosario 9. Thomas Rivera Schatz House of Representatives at-large: 1. José Enrique “Quiquito” Meléndez Ortiz 2. José Aponte Hernández 3. Jorge Emmanuel Báez Pagán 4. Néstor Alonso 5. José “Joito” Colón 6. Lourdes Ramos 7. María Milagros Charbonier 8. José “Pichy” Torres Zamora 9. Eddie Manso The draw was observed by notary attorneys Jorge Rivera and Carlos Padín to guarantee a fair and impartial process in accordance with all legal requirements.

The NPP alternate electoral commissioner, Juan Guzmán Escobar, was present. Also present were representatives from the Mayors Federation (Isabelo Molina), Organization of Municipal Presidents (Fernando Sanabria, Guayama municipal president), Senate (Jennisca Rodríguez) and House of Representatives (William Joel Estrada).

In the live transmission through https:// w w w. f a c e b o o k . c o m / p n p p r o r g / v i d eos/246416046679052/ the ballot positions were reported for the district senators and representatives as well as for the mayoralties.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

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November elections left out of fiscal board’s budget plan

By THE STAR STAFF

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ffice of Management and Budget Director Iris Santos said Wednesday that the fiscal year 2021 budget as proposed by the federal Financial Oversight and Management Board does not include funding for the Nov. 3 general elections.

Her remarks were made in response to a question from Senate Treasury Committee Chairwoman Migdalia Padilla during a hearing to analyze the budget for the next fiscal year, which is still in the making. Santos said the government’s proposed budget and the oversight board’s proposal contain numerous differences.

In 2016, the government created an electoral fund of $25 million, including $10 million to pay overtime to police officers to support the general election. The State Elections Commission (SEC) in 2016 requested $40 million for the event.

Santos said the government proposed a smaller

amount than what was spent in 2016, but she did not reveal the specific number. The SEC has prepared a budget for the general election totaling $22 million.

Padilla noted that in the past, the oversight board’s executive director, Natalie Jaresko, has said elections in Puerto Rico are expensive.

In the past, the SEC had asked the oversight board for $1.8 million to hire temporary personnel to work in the local and presidential primaries, but the federal entity demanded a reduction in its workforce that now totals 651 employees.

SEC President Juan Ernesto Dávila Rivera has publicly said that cutting staff before the November general election would be ill advised.

Of the 651 employees at the SEC, 99 are career employees and the rest are at will or in positions of trust as they are hired by the political parties. Dávila Rivera has said the oversight board has not instructed him as to how many employees the SEC should have.

Virus’ impact on PR’s economy raises doubts about operational capacity of gov’t

By THE STAR STAFF

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he latest numbers on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Puerto Rico’s economy is about $6.6 billion, about $800 million this year and $5.8 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2021, raising serious questions as to the government’s ability to operate.

Hecrian Martínez, an assistant director for the Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority, said Wednesday that the revised fiscal plan submitted to the Financial Oversight and Management Board on May 3 seeks a two-year pause in the so-called right-sizing imposed by the federal board and in the cuts to the University of Puerto Rico to allow for the island’s economic recovery.

“The Fiscal Plan also avoids reductions related to the Departments of Health and Education, and the Department of Public Safety,” Martínez said at a Senate Treasury Committee hearing analyzing budget woes.

Neither the government nor the oversight board have yet presented a budget for the analysis of the Legislature, which would have less than a month and a half to analyze it.

Officials at the hearing were also unable to say when Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced will present her state of the commonwealth address.

The delay in the budget is caused by disputes between the government and the

congressionally appointed oversight board as to the contents of the budget.

The oversight board is slated to present on May 25 a revised baseline for Puerto Rico’s budget. However, Office of Management and Budget Director Iris Santos said Wednesday that as things stand now, the baseline budget recommended by the oversight board is $15.6 billion, while the government is proposing a $17.1 billion budget for FY 2021.

Santos said her office had warned the board that its current baseline budget of $15.6 billion did not include funds for recurrent expenditures for certain agencies and accelerates budget cuts for other agencies that could hinder essential services and result in layoffs.

Although the government submitted a draft of the budget for FY 2021 in February, which was updated on May 8, the oversight board told the government at a meeting on April 17 that it intends to file its own budget for the Legislature’s discussion by June 5.

Santos warned at the Senate Treasury Committee hearing that the oversight board’s budget as currently proposed will leave 40 of 99 agencies with a shortfall of over $1 million in payroll.

“As a group, the baseline budget in the area of payroll for 99 agencies is $267 million less than the current budget, which

represents an 8.5 percent risk of shortfall in payroll execution,” she said.

In response to questions during an aside, the official could not say how many government employees may have to be cut.

“We told the [oversight] board that if we accepted their budget, on July 1 we would have to cut payroll,” Santos said.

She said that of the 305 government programs, 40 programs, or 12.8 percent, provide direct service and have an aggregate shortfall of $199 million when compared to the baseline.

“That is the reason we insist to the board that the baseline budget proposed by the board would hinder the execution of services to maintain critical areas like safety, health, the protection of the most vulnerable and education,” Santos said.

As of May 1, the oversight board had not informed the government that the proposed $17 billion budget was in violation, or not, of the current fiscal plan. On May 3, the government presented a revised fiscal plan that takes into account the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Second-phase economic impact payments begin

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

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ov. Wanda Vázquez Garced announced Wednesday that delivery of the Economic Impact Payment had begun as part of the second phase of implementation based on information derived from returns filed for the 2018 tax year.

The governor also reported that disbursements to Puerto Rico taxpayers under the first phase continue and announced an additional disbursement for those taxpayers who filed the 2019 return and reported their bank accounts to the island Treasury Department.

“This first disbursement of the Economic Impact Payment of $1,200, in its second phase, was for taxpayers who included their bank accounts in those 2018 returns and amounts to $47,789,008, for a total of 33,183 citizens,” the governor said. “Payments were also sent to 99,270 taxpayers who filed the 2019 return, for $157,382,388. In total, $205,171,396 was disbursed for 132,453 families.”

Vázquez Garced reminded citizens that the various incentive payments assigned to provide relief, in the face of the impact of COVID-19, are ongoing and processes continue to be refined to expedite aid.

“We keep monitoring these programs to make sure that the various grants arrive as soon as possible,” she said.

With the payments begun Wednesday, the Economic Impact Payment sum disbursed so far is approximately $1,128,771,396.

Commonwealth Treasury Secretary Francisco Parés

Alicea noted that the returns corresponding to tax year 2018 were filed under the old department program, so the process required further analysis of the data, in addition to retrieving the information and migrating it to the Internal Revenue Unified System (SURI), which is the department’s new technological platform.

“These first automatic payments correspond to those

forms that we managed to validate internally in our systems to ensure that the information was accurate to make the deliveries,” Parés Alicea stressed. “As happened with a group of taxpayers in the first phase of this program, we will soon enable the link for those taxpayers who filed the 2018 return to enter their bank accounts. Following the instructions of the governor, these deposits must reach the citizens as soon as possible.”

As in the first phase of disbursements, Parés Alicea said the process of submitting the bank account information will not require having a SURI account, but only accessing the link enabled through pagodeimpactoeconomico.com. However, those taxpayers with username and password will be able to provide their information in their SURI accounts.

Meanwhile, $1,005,000 from the Self-Employed Assistance Program was deposited to 1,005 own-account workers and $985,500 from the $500 incentive went to another 1,971 self-employed islanders.

“Payments of the different grants continue to be sent and I emphasize that the phases do not end when the next one begins, but rather that they work as the different strategies that we have established progress,” the Treasury chief said. “At the end of May, the department will relay the instructions so that citizens who are not obliged to file a return can receive their payments in a third phase of the distribution plan.”

For more information, go to pagodeimpactoeconomico.com and look for the most frequently asked questions.

Health centers conducting COVID-19 testing in nursing homes

By THE STAR STAFF

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he 330 health centers in Puerto Rico are conducting serological and molecular COVID-19 tests in nursing homes as part of an effort conceptualized by the humanitarian organization Direct Relief and passed on to various agencies for implementation.

“This is a complex project where coordination and logistics are carried out by collaborators such as the Puerto Rico National Guard and the Family Department, while the 330 health centers are the last link in the effort,” said Alicia Suárez Fajardo, executive director of the Puerto Rico Primary Health Association (Asociación de Salud Primaria de Puerto Rico), referring to the previous processes that must be completed before the staff at the 330 clinics conduct testing in nursing homes.

“Once all the processes are implemented, the primary health centers are quickly brought in to carry out the COVID-19 tests,” Suárez Fajardo said, noting that they are administering both rapid tests and, if they have a positive result, then performing the

molecular test. “The centers respond quickly when called.”

Suárez Fajardo, whose group includes all the non-profit organizations that make up the 330 health centers with 85 clinics in 67 municipalities, called for more guidance to leaders and owners of senior centers.

“We understand that nursing homes have their hands full with the health and well being of fragile people, but it is necessary to guide them on the project,” she said.

Ivonne Rodríguez, executive adviser to Direct Relief in Puerto Rico, highlighted the access of 330 Centers to work with vulnerable communities in Puerto Rico, stating that: “At Direct Relief we are committed to 330 Centers to facilitate medical access in Puerto Rico, for their responsibility and expertise when caring for those most in need, even more so now, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The 330 health centers continue to conduct sampling in the communities. For example, in the week ending May 8, 17 centers reported to the Health Resources and Services Administration that they performed 3,468 rapid and molecular tests. The

following week, 21 of the 22 organizations reported evidence.

The 330 Centers continue to report details of COVID-19 tests to the island Health Department through the regional epidemiologists and the Bioportal.

Recently, the 330 Centers received

federal government approval to initiate the tracking strategy in communities. Many centers are already in talks with mayors and leaders to join municipal tracking efforts, among other initiatives.

To find the nearest 330 health center, visit the website www.saludprimariapr.org.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

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More than 900 children have been expelled under a pandemic border policy

By CAITLIN DICKERSON

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he last time Sandra Rodríguez saw her son Gerson, she bent down to look him in the eye. “Be good,” she said, instructing him to behave when he encountered Border Patrol agents on the other side of the river in the United States, and when he was reunited with his uncle in Houston.

The 10-year-old nodded, giving his mother one last squinty smile. Tears caught in his dimples, she recalled, as he climbed into a raft and pushed out across the Rio Grande toward Texas from Mexico, guided by a stranger who was also trying to reach the United States.

Rodríguez expected that Gerson would be held by the Border Patrol for a few days and then transferred to a government shelter for migrant children, from which her brother in Houston would eventually be able to claim him. But Gerson seemed to disappear on the other side of the river. For six frantic days, she heard nothing about her son — no word that he had been taken into custody, no contact with the uncle in Houston.

Finally, she received a panicked phone call from a cousin in Honduras who said that Gerson was with her. The little boy was crying and disoriented, his relatives said; he seemed confused about how he had ended up back in the dangerous place he had fled.

Hundreds of migrant children and teenagers have been swiftly deported by U.S. authorities amid the coronavirus pandemic without the opportunity to speak to a social worker or plea for asylum from the violence in their home countries — a reversal of years of established practice for dealing with young foreigners who arrive in the United States.

The deportations represent an extraordinary shift in policy that has been unfolding in recent weeks on the southwestern border, under which safeguards that have for decades been granted to migrant children by both Democratic and Republican administrations appear to have been abandoned.

Historically, young migrants who showed up at the border without adult guardians were provided with shelter, education, medical care and a lengthy administrative process that allowed them to make a case for staying in the United States. Those who were eventually deported were sent home only after arrangements had been made to assure they had a safe place to return to.

That process appears to have been abruptly thrown out under President Donald Trump’s latest border decrees. Some young migrants have been deported within hours of setting foot on U.S. soil. Others have been rousted from their beds in the middle of the night in U.S. government shelters and put on planes out of the country without any notification to their families.

The Trump administration is trying to justify the new practices under a 1944 law that grants the president broad power to block foreigners from entering the country to prevent the “serious threat” of a dangerous disease. But immigration officials in recent weeks have also been abruptly expelling migrant children and teenagers who were already in the United States when the pandemic-related order came down in late March.

Since the decree was put in effect, hundreds of young migrants have been deported, including some who had asylum

Pedro Buezo Romero with his mother. Pedro said he was even more vulnerable now than he was when he decided to leave for the United States. appeals pending in the court system.

Some of the young people have been flown back to Central America, while others have been pushed back into Mexico, where thousands of migrants are living in filthy tent camps and overrun shelters.

In March and April, the most recent period for which data was available, 915 young migrants were expelled shortly after reaching the U.S. border, and 60 were shipped home from the interior of the country.

During the same period, at least 166 young migrants were allowed into the United States and afforded the safeguards that were once customary. But in another unusual departure, Customs and Border Protection has refused to disclose how the government was determining which legal standards to apply to which children.

“We just can’t put it out there,” said Matthew Dyman, a public affairs specialist with the agency, citing concerns that human smugglers would exploit the information to traffic more people into the country if they knew how the laws were being applied.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration extended the stepped-up border security that allows for young migrants to be expelled at the border, saying the policy would remain in place indefinitely and be reviewed every 30 days.

Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said the policy had been “one of the most critical tools the department has used to prevent the further spread of the virus and to protect the American people, DHS front-line

officers and those in their care and custody from COVID-19.”

An agency spokesman said its policies for deporting children from within the interior of the country had not changed.

Democratic members of Congress argue that the swift deportations taking place now violate the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a 20-year-old federal law that lays out standards for the treatment of foreign children who arrive at the U.S. border without an adult guardian.

In a letter last month to Wolf, Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said the moves had “no known precedent or clear legal rationale.”

Immigrant advocates say their pleas for help ensuring that the children have somewhere safe to go when they land have been ignored. Since the coronavirus was first discovered in the United States in January, 239 unaccompanied minors have been returned to Guatemala, and 183 have been returned to Honduras, according to government figures.

“The fact that nobody knows who these kids are and there are hundreds of them is really terrifying,” said Jennifer Nagda, policy director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. “There’s no telling if they’ve been returned to smugglers or into harm’s way.”

Some minors have been deported overnight despite an Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy that says they should be repatriated only during daylight hours.

Sandra Rodríguez with her son Gerson, 10.

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Thursday, May 21, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

They beat the virus. Now they feel like outcasts.

Elizabeth Martucci and her son, M.J., recovered from Covid-19, but she said that some neighbors treated them “like a contagion.”

By SARAH MASLIN NIR

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n the day Elizabeth Martucci and her 11-year-old son were deemed to have recovered from the coronavirus, they emerged from their home on the Jersey Shore with some sidewalk chalk to sketch a message in the driveway.

“We are COVID survivors,” they wrote.

“I thought I’m going to tell everybody, ‘I had this, and I’m OK,’ just to show people it’s not a death sentence,” Martucci said.

She also bought T-shirts that said “COVID SURVIVOR,” anticipating that some of the neighbors on her cul-de-sac in Cape May Court House might have some lingering discomfort.

Martucci soon learned that she had drastically underestimated the anxiety she and her son, Marcus, would encounter. Even now, a month into their recovery, some neighbors see them and run.

As those who have been stricken with the virus emerge from hospitals or home quarantine, they are being forced to navigate a world that clearly is not yet ready to welcome them back into a still-sheltering society.

There are still many unanswered questions about the efficacy and duration of any post-virus immunity, and the uncertainty has caused some people who have survived the illness to confront a fear-driven stigma from the outside world.

The veterinarian who refused to treat a recovered woman’s dog. The laundromat worker who jumped at seeing an elected official whose illness had been reported on the local news. The gardener who would not trim the hedges outside a recovered man’s home. The neighbor who dropped off soup and said not to bother returning the Tupperware it was in. And the sick teenager whose solace during his long illness was the thought of fishing

with friends, only to have them ghost him when he recovered.

“My gut thought was not, ‘Oh, people will now be afraid of me because I had this virus,’” said Martucci, 41, who described a neighbor tripping over a curb while running for her door when she and her son, who goes by MJ, approached on their bicycles.

“It didn’t even occur to me — being shunned,” said Martucci, a real estate investor. “You’re looked at as a contagion, versus as a survivor.”

She said she had put the “COVID SURVIVOR” T-shirts away.

Feeling stigmatized is not what many survivors said they expected after their tough bouts of illness. It carries a particular sting given the worldwide discussions about how reopening society will hinge in part on people with antibodies being able to return to work, and about how those who have recovered can donate convalescent plasma for experimental treatments of those who are still sick.

“There is a dichotomy between feeling like you can go give your plasma to save other people’s lives but feeling like you’re an untouchable,” said Sheryl Kraft, a health journalist in Fairfield, Connecticut, who has written about surviving COVID-19 and how it affected her physical and mental health.

“We’re like the chosen ones,” she added. “We can go back into society, we can donate plasma, we are very valuable. But to people who are afraid of catching it, we are like pariahs.”

Mark Levine, a New York City Council member who leads the health committee, experienced virus symptoms in late March.

He quarantined at home until he recovered from the illness, which was covered by the news media.

Weeks after he had recovered, Levine, who represents Upper Manhattan, said he was stunned when a worker at his local

laundromat jumped at the sight of him.

“There are people who really think if you got it you essentially have magical armor and can never get sick again — that’s dangerous — but clearly, there are people who do not understand you’re no longer contagious if you’ve recovered,” he said. “It feels like we’ve failed on education on both sides of that.”

On Long Island, Flora Touloupis, 60, experienced both kindness and caution from a neighbor. After a brutal case of the virus that left her with bilateral pneumonia and blood clots in her legs, Touloupis said, she was warmed by the homemade chicken soup a neighbor in Lindenhurst dropped off after she had tested negative.

But when she texted about returning the soup container, Touloupis said, her neighbor told her to throw it away. So did her sister-in-law, who dropped off some lentils in a dish that she left on Touloupis’ porch.

“I said, ‘Oh my God, I feel like a leper!’” Touloupis said.

“I am hoping that the people who normally eat at my house for Christmas will show up this year. It almost makes you feel ashamed.”

During the 21 days he was stuck isolating in his bedroom in Lakeland, Florida, William Long, 17, said the one thing that kept his spirits up was the idea of going fishing with his friends once he was better.

“It was my No. 1 thought,” he said. “‘I can’t wait to get back and get healthy and hang out with all of my friends.’”

But even two weeks after he had recovered, he said, his friends had not returned his text messages. The loneliness and feeling of being ostracized, William said, had prompted him to enroll in mental health counseling and to seek new friends.

“I was three weeks in isolation and then to see nobody?” he said. “It’s really heartbreaking.”

William and other survivors said they understood the anxiety.

They know that there are instances of virus patients becoming infected a second time and that the disease is so new there has not been enough time to study how long any immunity lasts, if it lasts at all.

“People need to be afraid of this virus, because you do want to keep the numbers down,” Touloupis said. “But it’s still hurtful.”

Samantha Hoffenberg, who lives in Manhattan, said she understood why her family had stayed away from her for nearly two months after she had recovered: Her father died of the virus in April after contracting it at the hospital where he was admitted because of complications from dementia. She said the ordeal had been deeply traumatic.

After she became infected, she was committed to staying far away from her loved ones, even after she recovered.

Then on April 23, there was a fire in her building. After being hospitalized for smoke inhalation, she had a series of panic attacks. A social worker at the hospital called Hoffenberg’s family to tell them she was virus-free and wanted to see them.

They refused.

“I have never been in such a sad dark place after that happened,” Hoffenberg, a hiring recruiter, said. “And my own family is that scared of me that they are not even able to see through the fact that I am alone through this.”

Still, even as she craved a hug, she said, she had empathy for people who were scarred by the virus and as well as their loss.

“They’re petrified,” she said.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

9

No more ‘kneecap to kneecap’ talks: Coronavirus hinders military recruiting

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

T

he Army is in constant need of new soldiers, and Sgt. Austin West knows precisely where to find them and reel them in: high school auditoriums, local fairs and even Walmart. At the store, he casually questions workers to “see how they are doing there, how they like their job, to see if we can tailor their hopes” to fit with the Army’s need for thousands of recruits each year.

These days, his operations have been largely contained to his house near Syracuse in Calcium, New York, where the coronavirus pandemic has him grounded. His cats have replaced colleagues as he confabs with potential candidates over a computer screen in his living room (one of the better spots for his Wi-Fi), turning the camera around to show them job listings.

He makes sure his guitars are in the background and has taken to wearing casual clothes rather than a uniform, so that potential soldiers might conclude, “This is a different kind of guy,” West said. “You have to explore new things in these times.”

A faltering economy usually spells success for military recruiters. But a sector that relies on face-to-face interactions to bring in newcomers — followed by mandatory medical exams and intensive job training in close quarters — has been hampered by the pandemic, which has curtailed recruitment efforts and hobbled some service members who are forced into quarantine for weeks on end before they can get to their first assignment.

The combination has the potential to compromise the pipeline that is essential to the military’s goal of perpetual readiness, a central concern of Defense Secretary Mark Esper. Last month, Matthew Donovan, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, suggested that not all the services were going to meet their recruiting goals this year with the pressures of COVID-19.

“The military has not been able to recruit as effectively since the pandemic began because so much of the recruiting process involves developing good personal relationships,” said Nora Bensahel, a visiting professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“The Army, for example, enlisted 5,500 fewer people in March than expected,” Bensahel said. “Army leaders expect to be able to make up those numbers over the summer and fall, and they could be right about that,” she added. “But the longer that restrictive measures last, the harder it will be to make their recruiting goals.”

In late March, as coronavirus cases rose, the Army halted training exercises, only to reverse itself days later.

Many military officials say they hope to make up the difference by increasing retention of service members considering leaving active duty. Sgt. Maj. Michael Grinston, the Army’s top enlisted soldier, for instance, said the Army is “over 100%” in hitting its goals on persuading soldiers to stay in uniform and not retire.

Like other sectors in the job market, the military has married creativity with technology as it scrambles to keep up with recruitment goals and to train those who are already in.

Some recruiters for the Coast Guard, for instance, have held socially distanced meetings outside using a car, said Nelson Lim, a senior social scientist at the RAND Corp. who specializes in military personnel issues. “They are passing paperwork back and forth across the top,” Lim said.

The Marine Corps uses an app called Squad Bay that features a digital leader board for workouts as well as information about recruit training.

Yet military recruitment depends on a certain level of sales techniques — as well as an almost Spider-Man-like sense about potential service members — that is hard to emulate over FaceTime or Zoom.

“Our systematic recruiting process has always placed a premium on ‘kneecap to kneecap’ interaction between a recruiter and applicant,” said Sgt. Justin Kronenberg, a communication strategy chief for the Marine Corps Recruiting Command. “So it has been challenging to replicate this physical assessment of those wanting to become Marines through tech mediums and limited personal interactions.”

Officials at the Air Force note that they are training fewer young men and women who have signed up but have not yet shipped off to basic training. The branch is sending 460 new trainees per week to Basic Military Training instead of the usual 600 to 800, said Ann Stefanek,

a spokeswoman for the Air Force. “Where we put social distancing at basic training, you can only put about half as many in the training space,” she said.

Then there is the challenge of the medical exams, which are required of all recruits. Some exam stations have been hit by the virus, and yet each service branch — and at times recruiting stations within them — seems to be using individual judgments on how and when exams can take place.

“I am being appreciative of the difficulty decisionmakers are struggling with,” Lim said. “What I worry about is that we don’t have any built-in learning processes” to figure out how a recruitment policy, especially involving the medical aspects, may not be working and end it.

“Everything we know is based on old normal,” he said.

“We don’t know what the future holds.”

Most of the service branches had already moved to recruit in new ways, like using Facebook to start conversations and other virtual techniques to handle paperwork, which has been a bit of a boon during the pandemic.

“Some of the changes include witnessing signatures over video chat,” said Lisa Ferguson, a spokeswoman for the Army Recruiting Command, as well as having applicants upload documents or take an online version of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. “These steps are likely much easier to accomplish digitally,” she said.

This week, recruiters in certain areas of the country began resuming some in-person prospecting activities.

Marine recruits at Parris Island, S.C. on Feb. 20, 2020. Roughly four dozen recruits there tested positive for COVID-19 in the spring.

10

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Amid Hydroxychloroquine uproar, real studies of drug are suffering

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

P

resident Donald Trump’s enthusiastic embrace of a malaria drug that he now says he takes daily — and the resulting uproar in the news media — appears to be interfering with legitimate scientific research into whether the medicine might work to prevent coronavirus infection or treat the disease in its early stages.

The drug, hydroxychloroquine, which is also widely used to treat lupus and other autoimmune diseases, has shown no real benefit for hospitalized coronavirus patients and may have contributed to some deaths, recent studies show. Some bioethicists are even calling for the Food and Drug Administration — which has warned that the drug can cause heart problems — to revoke an emergency waiver it granted in March to accept millions of doses of hydroxychloroquine into the national stockpile for use in hospitals.

But specialists — including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert — say the jury is still out on whether the drug might help prevent infection or help patients avoid hospitalization. Trump’s frequent pronouncements and misstatements — he has praised the drug as a “game changer” and a “miracle” — are only complicating matters, politicizing the drug and creating a frenzy in the news media that is impeding research.

“The virus is not Democrat or Republican, and hydroxychloroquine is not Democrat or Republican, and I’m just hopeful that people would allow us to finish our scientific work,” said Dr. William O’Neill, an interventional cardiologist at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, who is studying hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic in health care workers.

“The worst thing in the world that would happen,” he added, “is that at the end of this epidemic, in late September, we don’t have a cure or a preventive because we let politics interfere with the scientific process.”

On Tuesday, Trump added to the uproar.

Addressing reporters on Capitol Hill, he called the research on hospitalized patients “a Trump enemy statement.” Later, at the White House, he said he decided to take hydroxychloroquine after his valet tested positive for COVID-19 — and intended to do so for “a little while longer” because he viewed it as a “worthwhile line of defense” and was “very curious” about it.

“It’s gotten a bad reputation only because I’m promoting it,” the president added. “If anybody else were promoting it, they would say it’s the best thing ever.”

Bottles of hydroxychloroquine. President Trump said this week that he had been taking the drug as a preventative measure against the coronavirus.

Last week, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci leads, announced a 2,000-patient study to determine whether hydroxychloroquine, when combined with the antibiotic azithromycin, “can prevent hospitalization and death from COVID-19,” joining more than 50 other clinical trials involving hydroxychloroquine that are continuing in the United States.

“Although there is anecdotal evidence that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin may benefit people with COVID-19, we need solid data,” Fauci said in making the announcement.

Other researchers around the country said the controversy was depressing enrollment in their clinical trials.

“People who had already enrolled would say, ‘Now I’m afraid, I want to disenroll,’ ” said Deneen Vojta, the executive vice president for research and development at UnitedHealth Group, the insurance giant, which is conducting a smaller study of hydroxychloroquine alone.

In a draft letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association, obtained by The New York Times, members of a research consortium complained that “negative media coverage” of hydroxychloroquine — in particular the studies showing it might have harmed hospitalized patients — “directly correlated” with a drop in enrollment in trials run by institutions including the University of Minnesota, the University of Washington, Columbia University in

New York and Henry Ford Hospital.

Inside the White House, the president’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, who is an enthusiast for hydroxychloroquine and has worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to steer 19 million pills from the stockpile to 14 coronavirus hot zones around the country, said “hydroxy hysteria” in the news media — not Trump — was to blame.

“Has the media’s war of hysteria on hydroxychloroquine killed people?” Navarro asked in an interview. “If the scientific evidence does indeed prove that the medicine has both prophylactic and therapeutic value, the answer is yes.”

While Navarro complained that “fake news and bad reporting” had resulted in a “dramatic drop in demand for hydroxy at hospitals,” Dr. Mitchell Katz, president and chief executive of NYC Health and Hospitals, the nation’s largest municipal health system, said hospitals and doctors became less interested in hydroxychloroquine after the FDA approved another medicine, remdesivir, for treatment of COVID-19.

Dr. Adrian Hernandez, who directs the Clinical Research Institute at the Duke University School of Medicine and has enrolled 550 health care workers in a clinical trial to study whether hydroxychloroquine is effective as a prophylactic, said Trump’s promotion of hydroxychloroquine “may have hurt public health.”

When Trump first began talking up hydroxychloroquine, Hernandez said, he faced

questions about whether his study should be weighted toward giving the drug to more people than were receiving placebo.

When he started, he said, two-thirds of more than 12,000 health care workers who have signed up for a coronavirus registry were willing to participate in his study. Now, only half are.

“When we have this playing out in the media instead of the scientific and clinical communities, people don’t know what the right answer is, and so they will use what they hear the most through the media,” Hernandez said. “So it’s a pingpong match, in terms of, is it good one day? Is it bad one day?”

Hernandez and others, including O’Neill, say that no study — even those conducted in hospitalized patients — has produced definitive results about hydroxychloroquine for the coronavirus, although several have suggested it could be harmful especially to patients with underlying heart conditions.

An analysis of veterans treated with hydroxychloroquine found that 28% of them died, compared with 11% who had routine care. A small study in Brazil was halted after patients taking a high dose of chloroquine — a predecessor to hydroxychloroquine that researchers consider less safe — developed irregular heart rates that increased their risk of a potentially fatal heart arrhythmia.

On April 24, the FDA issued a warning about hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, cautioning against their use “outside of the hospital setting or a clinical trial due to risk of heart rhythm problems.” An FDA spokesman, Michael Felberbaum, said in a statement that the agency was continuing to evaluate all emergency use authorizations issued during the coronavirus crisis “to determine whether they continue to meet the statutory criteria for issuance.”

More recently, a large observational study of 1,446 patients at NewYork-PresbyterianColumbia University Hospital in New York City, published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine, found no clear benefit or risk to hydroxychloroquine.

The authors concluded that randomized controlled clinical trials — studies in which half the patients are given placebo, half are given the drug, and neither the patients nor doctors know who is getting what — are needed.

“Studying it is exactly the right thing to do,” said Aaron S. Kesselheim, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who is among those calling for the FDA to revoke the waiver. “And heck, if it turns out there is some activity, then great.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

11

Johnson & Johnson to end talc-based baby powder sales in North America

By TIFFANY HSU and RONI CARYN RABIN

J

ohnson & Johnson is discontinuing North American sales of its talc-based baby powder, a product that once defined the company’s wholesome image and that it has defended for decades even as it faced thousands of lawsuits filed by patients who say it caused cancer.

The decision to wind down sales of the product is a huge concession for Johnson & Johnson, which has for more than a century promoted the powder as pure and gentle enough for babies.

The company said Tuesday that it would allow existing bottles to be sold by retailers until they ran out. Baby powder made with cornstarch will remain available, and the company will continue to sell talc-based baby powder in other parts of the world.

Johnson & Johnson has often said that faulty testing, shoddy science and ill-equipped researchers are to blame for findings that its powder was contaminated with asbestos. But in recent years, thousands of people — mostly women with ovarian cancer — have said that the company did not warn them of potential risks that the company was discussing internally.

Even as it announced the withdrawal of its baby powder, the company said that it “will continue to vigorously defend the product” in court. But Johnson & Johnson acknowledged that demand for the talc-based version had slumped as consumer habits changed and concerns about the product spread.

For decades, baby powder’s main ingredient was talc, a mineral known for its softness. Sold in an iconic white bottle, its fragrance is said to be one of the most recognizable in the world.

It was only in 1980, after consumer advocates raised concerns that talc contained traces of asbestos, a known carcinogen, that the company developed a cornstarch alternative.

Krystal Kim, a Philadelphia woman who has survived two bouts of ovarian cancer that she blames on her lifelong use of the powder, said the decision to remove the product was a victory. Kim was one of a group of women who won a lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson in 2018.

“It means no more little girls are going to go through what we went through,” said Kim, who started using baby powder when she was 10 years old. “This stops now. That monster is off the shelves.”

Early lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson clai-

Johnson & Johnson is discontinuing North American sales of baby powder made with talc, a product at the center of nearly 20,000 lawsuits filed by cancer patients. med the talc itself caused ovarian cancer, though the scientific evidence on that was never conclusive. Plaintiffs’ lawyers later shifted their focus, arguing that traces of asbestos — an indisputable and much-feared carcinogen — were present in talc and capable of causing cancer even in microscopic amounts.

Asbestos contamination can occur when talc is mined because both minerals can be intermingled underground, and internal memos and reports revealed during litigation showed that the company had been concerned for at least 50 years about the possibility of traces of asbestos in its talc. Asbestos was first linked to ovarian cancer in 1958.

The revelation of these company documents also prompted inquiries by the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as congressional committees and authorities in Mississippi and New Mexico.

As of late March, Johnson & Johnson faced 19,400 lawsuits related to talc body powders, many of them involving complicated science. A federal judge ruled in April that plaintiffs’ scientific experts could testify with some exceptions, a blow to Johnson & Johnson, which had been pushing to exclude the testimony in hopes of shutting down thousands of cases.

The legal record has been mixed so far. Several juries have decided against Johnson & Johnson, in one case awarding $4.7 billion to 22 women including Kim in 2018. But the company has prevailed in other cases and is appealing nearly all the cases it has lost.

Johnson & Johnson’s talc supplier, Imerys Talc America, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year.

In October, Johnson & Johnson recalled 33,000 bottles of baby powder after the Food and Drug Administration said it discovered evidence of chrysotile asbestos in a bottle purchased from an online retailer. Soon after, the company said that multiple tests of the same bottle came up clean.

Nathan A. Schachtman, a lawyer who defends product liability cases and spent decades handling asbestos-related claims, said that companies often agreed to settle lawsuits or discontinue products that they believed were safe in an attempt to soothe shareholders and win back public confidence — to “buy peace,” he said.

“At some point, the shareholders don’t care whether the science is on your side,” said Schachtman, who said he was not involved in the Johnson & Johnson talc cases. “Companies have to make very practical and hard decisions about withdrawing products that they don’t think are bad products or dropping cases because they know they can’t win them all, and it’s expensive to defend them.”

On Tuesday, Johnson & Johnson said that baby powder made up half a percent of its total consumer health business in the United States and that demand for the talc-based version had slumped.

The decision to discontinue the product stemmed from a re-evaluation of its product portfolio, the company said.

Mark Lanier, a lawyer who represents thousands of cancer survivors and their families who are suing Johnson & Johnson, said the company had made “the right move.”

“They can give all the reasons they want — I’m just thankful the stuff is off the market. I do believe this will save untold misery and lives,” Lanier said.

12

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Stocks

Oil gains, stocks rally on renewed recovery hopes

C

rude prices rose and a gauge of global equities broke out of a three-week trading range on Wednesday as investors bet on a rapid recovery from the coronavirus-induced recession.

Oil prices climbed 3%-4% on signs of improving demand and a drawdown in U.S. crude inventories, while a surge in Facebook Inc and Amazon.com Inc to record highs lifted the Nasdaq to within 5% of its all-time high.

U.S. Treasury yields were little changed and gold edged higher, but gains were limited as risk appetite improved.

The markets are expecting economic recovery sooner rather than later, though there is a risk the slowdown isn’t as temporary as some think, said Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors in Boston.

“There’s a view that as the economy reopens there hasn’t been, so far, a resurgence in the hospitalization rates and that perhaps some of the ‘worst-ever’ data that we’ve seen will soon be behind us,” Arone said.

MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe gained 1.40% to within 1 point of 500, after the benchmark was unable to climb past 495 the past three weeks.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.98% to close just shy of a three-week high, led by the tech, chemicals and energy sectors.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 381.62 points, or 1.58%, to 24,588.48. The S&P 500 gained 50.34 points, or 1.72%, to 2,973.28, and the Nasdaq Composite added 185.64 points, or 2.02%, to 9,370.75.

Two-thirds of 223 fund managers surveyed by Bank of America reckon recent equity gains indicate a bear-market rally.

Federal Reserve policymakers re-upped a pledge to keep interest rates near zero until they are confident the U.S. economy is on track to recovery, a detailed summary of their most recent policy-setting meeting shows.

The 10-year Treasury notes fell 2.8 basis points to yield 0.6834%.

U.S. crude inventories fell by 5 million barrels last week, Energy Information Administration data showed, while Cushing, Oklahoma, stocks dropped by 5.6 million barrels. [EIA/S] U.S. crude futures rose $1.53 to settle at $33.49 a barrel, while Brent gained $1.10 to settle at $35.75 a barrel.

The euro extended gains on Monday’s FrenchGerman proposal for a 500 billion euro common fund that could move Europe closer to a fiscal union.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

13

One crisis too many: How the Coronavirus pushed Germany to shift course

By STEVEN ERLANGER

I

n her time as chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel has seen the European Union put to the test by Brexit, a wave of migration, the Greek debt crisis and populism, and still she held to a largely steadfast course.

Then came the coronavirus.

Faced with a tarnishing of her own legacy and a deep recession gutting her own country and its main trading partners, Merkel this week agreed to break with two long-standing taboos in German policy.

Along with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, Merkel proposed a 500 billion euro ($546 million) fund to help the EU member states most ravaged by the virus.

The proposal, which is hardly a done deal, departs from two central elements of German orthodoxy, said Jean Pisani-Ferry, an economist and former French government adviser.

It would allow the transfer of funds from richer countries to those more in need.

And it would do so with money borrowed collectively by the European Union as a whole.

It will not be popular in Germany, and it may help populist opponents on the political extremes. But Merkel, in the twilight of her long political career, has put the interests of the 27-nation union — which embeds Germany into Europe as much as NATO does — before her domestic concerns.

Confronted with a pandemic that has cratered Europe’s economy, Merkel and Macron, who have often found themselves at odds over the years, dragged the rusty Franco-German motor out of the garage and got it running again.

The proposal was a clear recognition of the threat presented by the pandemic, whose full economic carnage has yet to be felt. And it was an attempt to overcome the deepening divisions within the European Union — between the frugal north and the devastated south, between Brussels and central European authoritarian governments — over how to respond.

It also reflected the fact that, with Britain gone, Germany and France — two very different countries that represent Europe’s largest and most powerful economies —

Supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany party protest in Berlin. now have more room to assert themselves, if they can only find common ground.

When they agree, they normally carry the rest of the member states along with them.

“This crisis tells us something about leadership, and how important the FrancoGerman engine is, and how bad things can go without that,” said Nathalie Tocci, an adviser to the European Union and head of Italy’s Institute of International Affairs. “The FrancoGerman relationship epitomizes ultimately what the EU is about, crystallizing the arguments of different sides, and if they agree, it creates a critical mass for the others.”

On Monday, Merkel and Macron proposed borrowing about $545 billion for a common recovery fund. Its repayment would be the financial responsibility of the entire bloc, but it would primarily benefit the poorer south, which has been hit hardest by the virus.

The proposal will be factored into a plan being drawn up by the European Commission, the bloc’s bureaucracy, which is supposed to be finished by May 27.

Caught between poorer southern states hit hardest by the virus, like Italy and Spain, which want European support in terms of grants, and richer northern states that reject collective debt and favor loans instead, the commission had been at an impasse.

Merkel’s defection from the northern

camp, even it is just a “one-off” response to the crisis, as she insisted, may help break the logjam.

There will inevitably be further, angry horse-trading before any proposal is finally agreed upon unanimously by member states, but knowledgeable European diplomats believe the final result is now more likely to emphasize grants instead of loans, with any new European debt to be paid off in common sometime after 2027.

Germany’s finance minister, Olaf Scholz, said Tuesday that the fund would help both Europe overall and Germany in particular.

“When the lockdown phase ends, we need to ensure that Europe recovers,” he said in Berlin. “It’s good for the necessary consensus in Europe that Germany and France are making a joint proposal on this issue.’’

Whatever emerges from the European Commission will be followed by tough negotiations, Tocci said.

“Italy will want more, and the Netherlands will want less,” she said.

The whole process will most likely finish only under the German presidency of the bloc, which begins July 1.

Already, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of Austria has raised objections to the idea of grants rather than loans, saying that he has been in contact with the leaders of Sweden,

the Netherlands and Denmark. “Our position remains unchanged,’’ he said.

Kurz said, “We are ready to help most affected countries with loans.’’ But he said the new seven-year EU budget should not be significantly higher than it is now.

A European diplomat said that in his view, while the Dutch agree with Kurz that debt for grants is unacceptable, they may go along with some grants if they are accompanied by conditions on their use. They may also want to see real efforts by countries like Italy to fix impediments to the working of the single market.

While most attention has been paid to north-south divisions, opposition may also come from member states in central and Eastern Europe. They appear to have been less affected by the virus, but their smaller economies have been hit hardest by the collapse of consumer demand in the rest of Europe.

Those countries are going to be reluctant, the European diplomat said, to see so much European aid — for which they will in the end have to help pay — skewed to southern countries that are richer than they are.

There are also worries about new impetus toward euroskeptic populism. In countries like Italy, where many voters have felt abandoned by Brussels on both migration and the virus, anti-European sentiment is very high.

At the same time, in northern countries, moves for collective debt to bail out poorer southern countries may feed far-right, anti-European populists like the Alternative for Germany or the Sweden Democrats. They are angry at the idea of subsidizing southerners who, they believe, work less hard and retire much earlier.

Such views are also widespread among center-right politicians who do not consider themselves populists, in countries like Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany, too.

Anna Wieslander, a Swede who is the Atlantic Council’s director for Northern Europe, praised Merkel and said she wished that Sweden would show more solidarity with those in Europe hit hardest by the virus.

“We want Merkel to lead, and now she does, and does it for the common good of Europe,” Wieslander said. “Of course, in Germany she won’t win votes for this. But it’s about leadership.”

14

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Cyclone Amphan strikes coast as India and Bangladesh take shelter

Rohingya Muslim refugees in the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh last week.

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

C

yclone Amphan slammed into India’s coast Wednesday afternoon, knocking down huge trees, bringing ropes of rain and sending millions of poor villagers rushing into evacuation shelters.

The emergency response was complicated by the coronavirus. India and Bangladesh are still under lockdown, and many people living along India and Bangladesh’s swampy coast were fearful of packing into crowded shelters where the chances of infection could be much higher.

The storm made landfall around 4 p.m. near the Indian town of Digha, on the eastern coast, with wind speeds between 80 and 100 mph. This week, meteorologists were calling Amphan, which has been fueled by the warm waters of the Bay of Bengal, one of the most powerful cyclones in decades.

Indian television channels showed images of frothy waves cresting sea walls and trees snapping into pieces. The winds blew apart some buildings, and Indian news media reported that at least one child was killed after a mud wall collapsed on top of him.

An aid agency official in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, near where 1 million Rohingya refugees are marooned in muddy camps, posted videos of heavy rain streaming down between apartment buildings.

The storm was forecast to pass over the ecologically fragile Sundarbans region, between the Indian state of West Bengal and Ban-

gladesh’s Hatiya Islands. The region is home to many rare animals, including Bengal tigers. It was also predicted to pound Kolkata, one of India’s biggest and most historic cities, the first major capital during British colonial times and full of old and delicate buildings.

India and neighboring Bangladesh are both struggling with rising coronavirus infections. Just this week, India reported it had crossed 100,000 infections. Before Cyclone Amphan was on India’s radar screen, authorities there decided to repurpose hundreds of emergency shelters and turn them into COVID-19 quarantine centers, which has now left them with fewer shelters at the time of a cyclone.

Authorities are trying not to pack the shelters to capacity — some can house thousands. But many shelters are filled wall to wall with people. Still, because of fears of catching the coronavirus, many villagers were reluctant to seek refuge inside the packed shelters.

“We are fighting a war on two fronts,” said Rajesh Pandit, a police officer along India’s coast. “First to evacuate people, and then to be make sure that they don’t catch the infection.”

Around 3 million people in India and Bangladesh have been evacuated to cyclone shelters.

Bangladesh has more than 4,000 dedicated cyclone shelters. On top of that, authorities have cleared out schools and government buildings to house more than 2 million people who are expected to evacuate.

“Many people are not aware about social

distancing and hygiene,” said Sharif-ul-Islam, a government official in Bangladesh. “Our priority is to educate them and try to keep them safe.”

A million Rohingya refugees are at risk.

For the past few days, Abdur Rahim, a Rohingya refugee, has barely slept.

As Cyclone Amphan heads toward Bangladesh, Rahim and about 1 million other Rohingya Muslims living in refugee camps along the coast are preparing for the worst.

Residents are stockpiling food and wrapping personal documents in plastic. Humanitarian groups are placing inflatable boats in the camps to prepare for storm surges of several feet. Government officials are securing steep, muddy hillsides with concrete and bamboo to prevent landslides from the rain.

Rahim, 39, who lives with his wife and six children in the Kutupalong refugee camp, near the town of Cox’s Bazar, said he and his neighbors were terrified to leave their homes.

“We fear anything can happen,” he said.

Though forecasts show that the Rohingya camps are not in the cyclone’s direct path, aid workers said the storm still posed enormous risks for the Rohingya refugees, who have been sheltering in Bangladesh since 2017 after fleeing violence and persecution in neighboring Myanmar.

With wind gusts expected to reach 100 mph, many Rohingya worry that their makeshift tin and tarpaulin shelters could be blown away.

And in recent days, the first cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in the camps, adding another layer of anxiety and danger to relief efforts.

Snigdha Chakraborty, the Bangladesh director for Catholic Relief Services, said the coast’s limited health facilities and poor infrastructure suggested “a grim picture for the days ahead.”

“There are no evacuation shelters in the camps and we are worried about damage from flooding, wind and risk of COVID-19 as resources are stretched,” she said.

Historic Kolkata hunkers down in the storm’s path.

Kolkata, one of India’s biggest and most historic cities, filled with graceful buildings hundreds of years old, sits directly in Cyclone Amphan’s path. By Wednesday afternoon, the streets were deserted.

“No one is out there,” said Jawhar Sircar, a retired government administrator who lives in the city’s Gariahat neighborhood. He said the skies were gray and that it was drizzling outside, “like London.”

In this case, coronavirus precautions

seem to be helping. Many of the 15 million people who live in the Kolkata metropolitan area had already been staying at home, obeying India’s lockdown rules.

Still, Kolkata officials were not taking any chances. They cleared out storm drains, shored up slum shanties with bamboo poles and removed objects like potted plants from roofs and balconies so they wouldn’t turn into missiles.

In Kolkata’s fancier neighborhoods, residents were being told to jam cloth into the rails of their sliding doors and windows — to make sure the incoming wind gusts didn’t wrench them open — and to leave their parked cars in gear and with the emergency brake on so they didn’t roll away.

Kolkata served as the capital of British India from 1772 to 1911, until New Delhi was chosen. It is usually spared the brunt of cyclones, as it lies more than 50 miles inland from the Bay of Bengal. “The British wanted safety from the turbulent sea weather,” Sircar said.

By Wednesday afternoon, that turbulent weather was headed straight toward the city.

A huge mangrove forest may act as a buffer against the cyclone, but at a cost.

Experts say that the Sundarbans — the world’s largest mangrove forest, on a vast delta that supports several hundred animal species — could act as a buffer against the cyclone when it strikes, slowing wind speeds and protecting villages from the worst effects.

But around 70% of the 4,000-squaremile forest, which spreads across the border between India and Bangladesh, is just a few feet above sea level. Heavy rains and flooding could have deadly consequences for rare animals there, pushing them out of their habitats and into areas populated by humans.

“The Sundarbans will bear the brunt and soften the blow,” said Prerna Singh Bindra, a conservationist and the author of “The Vanishing: India’s Wildlife Crisis.”

Cyclone Amphan poses a particular risk for the region’s few hundred Bengal tigers, one of the largest remaining populations of wild tigers in the world. Habitat loss, hunting and the illegal trade of animal parts have devastated the global population of tigers, now estimated at fewer than 4,000, compared with about 100,000 a century ago.

“Animals both big and small will be affected if the cyclone hits hard,” said Philip Gain, director of the Society for Environment and Human Development, a nonprofit organization in Bangladesh that works for environmental justice.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

15

Israel hack of Iran Port is latest salvo in exchange of cyberattacks

By RONEN BERGMAN and DAVID M. HALBFINGER

I

srael was behind a cyberattack May 9 that disrupted operations at a major port in Iran, according to high-ranking intelligence officials and experts in the Middle East who are kept informed of covert Israeli actions in the region.

The attack on the computer systems at the Shahid Rajaee port in the strategically important Strait of Hormuz was limited in scope, creating traffic jams of delivery trucks and some delays in shipments but causing no substantial or lasting damage.

Israel and Iran have recently been engaged in an exchange of attempted and successful cyberattacks, and the purpose of Israel’s relatively small-scale effort at the port, according to intelligence officials, was to send a message to Tehran: Don’t target Israeli infrastructure.

The hacking of the port’s computers came in direct response, those experts familiar with the decision-making process said, to a failed Iranian cyberattack on an Israeli water facility last month.

Officials in Israel initially decided the country should not retaliate for the attack on the water system, according to the intelligence sources, because its effect would have been minor even if it had succeeded.

But when the story of the attempted attack was published in Israeli media, government officials, led by Naftali Bennett in his last days as defense minister, thought Israel should react in the same token by targeting Iranian civilian infrastructure and then leaking that story to international news media.

Israel’s responsibility for the cyberattack on the port was first reported by The Washington Post.

The incident that prompted the Israeli attack on the port happened April 24, when a pump at a municipal water system in the Sharon region of central Israel stopped working. The facility’s computer system resumed pump operation in a short time but also recorded the occurrence as an exceptional event.

A security company that investigated discovered that malware had caused the shutdown. Because water is defined as “critical infrastructure” in Israel, the incident was reported to the Israel National Cyber Directorate and other intelligence agencies in Israel.

Commodities containers at Shahid Rajaee harbor at Bandar Abbas, Iran, in August.

According to Israeli experts with knowledge of the investigation, Israeli officials identified the malware as coming from one of the offensive cyberunits of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

While some unprotected pumps connected to the internet were not properly protected, the facility’s computer system identified the malfunction and restarted the pump, and no damage or interference with the water supply to residents and farmers in the region was recorded.

The attack and its quality were described by an intelligence official as “miserable.”

The main push for an Israeli counterresponse came from Bennett, the outgoing defense minister, who had advocated an assertive line against Iran in his seven months in office, both in actions and in his public statements.

“We must not let go of Iran for a moment,” Bennett said Monday in his farewell remarks to the ministry as Israel swore in a new government. “We need to increase

political, economic, military, technological pressure and do that in even more and bigger dimensions,” he said.

The site in Iran was specifically chosen as a non-central target, with an intent to send a warning that attacking Israel’s civilian infrastructure would not go unanswered and was crossing a red line, the intelligence officials said.

Activity at the Shahid Rajaee port has been severely hampered by the U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran after the United States abandoned the nuclear deal. No more than 20 freight ships reach it every month.

Soon after the cyberattack began, the port’s authorities detected it. They failed to fix it immediately but switched to manual management of unloading and loading.

The restrained nature of the recent cyberattacks seem to indicate that both sides want to avoid escalation.

On the Israeli side, this is somewhat similar to the way that the country is waging war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria,

where it is careful to bomb and destroy equipment but only after verifying that there is no danger to Hezbollah’s personnel.

An intelligence official said that Israel hopes the attack on the port will end this cyber exchange but that, according to one intelligence assessment, the Revolutionary Guard will respond by attacking Israel again.

In a ceremony Tuesday evening, Gen. Aviv Kochavi, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, appeared to allude to the cyberattack on the Iranian port. “We will continue to use a diverse array of military tools and unique warfare methods to hurt the enemy,” he said.

“While we do everything in our might to avoid harming civilians, the enemy makes every possible effort to harm civilians,” he said, adding, “The dozens of strikes that we have conducted, both recently and in the past, have already proved the superior nature of the intelligence and fire abilities of the IDF.”

16

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Myanmar raids reveal new production of a killer drug

By HANNAH BEECH and SAW NANG

T

he jungle-covered hills of Shan state in Myanmar might seem an unlikely outpost along global trade routes. But it is the remote region, wracked by ethnic conflict and undisturbed by normal policing, where much of the world’s synthetic drug trade originates.

Now, two months of counternarcotics operations in Shan state, which the United Nations says resulted in the largest synthetic drug haul on record in Southeast Asia, show that regional lockdowns imposed to tackle the coronavirus pandemic have done little to stem an illicit global trade.

Forty-four raids conducted by the Myanmar military and police from Feb. 20 to April 9 netted nearly 200 million tablets of methamphetamine, 1,120 pounds of crystal methamphetamine, 630 pounds of heroin, almost 300 pounds of raw opium, 640 pounds of opium poppy and 990 gallons of methyl fentanyl, Myanmar authorities said.

“This operation resulted in the seizure of the biggest amount of drugs ever,” said Win Thein Shan, spokesman for Shan state police. “We will make more efforts in the future.”

The value of the drugs, which were churned out in farflung labs often hidden in forested areas of Kutkai township, exceeded $200 million, Myanmar officials said, and would be far more if measured by street value in the West.

“The drug trade in Shan state operates more freely amid COVID-19 because police are busy with other things,” said Tin Maung Thein, district president of the Myanmar An-

Yaba pills, which contain methamphetamine, in Lashio, in the northern Shan State of Myanmar,

ti-Narcotics Association in the town of Kyaukme in northern Shan state. “The price of all kinds of drugs has dropped, and it shows the trade is easier because of COVID-19.”

The discovery of vats of methyl fentanyl, which is related to the synthetic opioid that has caused a crisis of overdoses in the United States, is particularly worrisome to counternarcotics officials, who say this is the first time such mass production has been found in Myanmar. A few years ago, experts in organized crime watched as Southeast Asian crime syndicates began to dominate the methamphetamine trade.

The Golden Triangle, where Myanmar abuts Laos and Thailand, is now believed to be the world’s largest producer of methamphetamine, after China cracked down on pharmaceutical ingredients being diverted for illicit production of the synthetic stimulant.

Fentanyl, which has been blamed for tens of thousands of overdose deaths in the United States, is far deadlier than methamphetamine. Narcotics experts believe that Chinese manufacturers have been responsible for many of the precursor materials needed to synthesize the drug. In late 2018, President Donald Trump brought up the drug in discussions with President Xi Jinping of China.

As fentanyl began to play a part in U.S. trade talks, the Chinese started to curb the trade, much as they had done for methamphetamine in the face of global pressure, drug experts said. Last year, Beijing declared all forms of fentanyl controlled substances.

But the crackdown in China has simply created opportunities for others, narcotics analysts say.

“Organized crime and drug syndicates look for business environments where there’s government dysfunction or limited government control, as well as easy access to the chemicals,” said Jeremy Douglas, regional representative for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime in Southeast Asia.

“Shan state hits every mark.”

The counternarcotics operations in Myanmar this year uncovered precursor ingredients from China, India, Thailand and Vietnam, Douglas said, showing the international diversity of chemicals that were being used in Shan labs and hinting at the involvement of transnational crime syndicates.

Initially, Myanmar officials were not sure of the exact use of the methyl fentanyl that was discovered alongside the more familiar methamphetamine tablets and bags of crystal methamphetamine. They are still not certain where

the methyl fentanyl was meant to go, but the sheer volume makes it likely that North America, the drug’s biggest market, was the ultimate destination, authorities said.

While Mexican production of fentanyl is believed to have been disrupted by coronavirus lockdowns in the West, Shan syndicates tend to stockpile precursor ingredients and do not appear to be facing supply shortages, Douglas said.

“We’re very worried that Asian crime syndicates will look at the coronavirus as a business opportunity to move in on Mexican syndicates and bring their fentanyl production to North America and the world,” he said. “If that happens, it could be really a direct threat to our public health.”

Most of the recent drug raids were in a region of northeastern Shan state controlled by the Kaungkha militia, an ethnic Kachin force that is aligned with the Myanmar army.

Narcotics experts believe the Kaungkha militia, also known as the Kachin Defense Army, has been funneling methamphetamine and crystal methamphetamine to the Arakan Army, an ethnic armed group that is embroiled in heavy fighting with the Myanmar military in the country’s far west.

Now authorities have added fentanyl to the rap sheet.

“I don’t know the effect of fentanyl, but we seized all kinds of synthetic drug materials,” said Win Thein Shan, of Shan state police.

Representatives of ethnic armed groups say the fact the Kaungkha militia was able to operate on such a large scale for so long hinted at official involvement in the drug trade.

“People think the Wa people are doing the biggest drug trade, but the largest haul of synthetic drugs was seized in Kaungkha, which is under the control of the Myanmar military,” said Nyi Rang, a spokesman for the United Wa State Army. “I don’t want to say it by name, but everyone knows who controls these areas.”

Brig. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, a spokesman for the Myanmar military, denied any army involvement in narcotics production.

“Most of the drug traffickers are ethnic armed groups,” he said. “Yes, there are some drug users in the Myanmar military, but there is no one in the military who is involved in the drug trade.”

In its report last year, the International Crisis Group said that “the military should also investigate and take concerted action to end drug-related corruption within its ranks, focusing on senior officers who facilitate or turn a blind eye to the trade.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

17

Is Trump challenging Mother Nature to a duel?

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

O

n Easter, as the coronavirus was rapidly spreading, NPR’s “Weekend All Things Considered” carried excerpts from sermons from across the country.

I was particularly touched by the way Presiding Bishop Michael Curry ended his talk at Washington National Cathedral, singing, “He’s got the whole world in his hands, he’s got the whole world in his hands. ...”

It was a powerful close that left me thinking: Just substitute “She” for “He” and you’ve defined the core problem we’re facing. For the first time in the life of our generation of human species, Mother Nature has the whole world in her hands. The entire planet is collectively facing the same challenges from the same coronavirus at the same time.

That has been the starting point of all my analyses. I try to ground all my thoughts on how to deal with this pandemic in the logic of Mother Nature and the laws of natural systems. If you don’t — if instead you start your analysis with politics or ideology, or the fact that you’re just tired of being locked down so what the hell, let’s throw back a few with the gang at the local bar and the virus be damned — you’re actually challenging Mother Nature to a duel.

And no one seems to be doing that more these days than President Donald Trump, who’s practically been sounding the all-clear lately, Mother Nature’s powers be damned.

I understand how people are desperate to save their businesses and get their salaries back. Anyone reading this column knows my heart has been with them from the start.

But if you define wearing a mask, or restrictions on the size of religious gatherings, as a sign of disrespect for your personal freedom — not an act of respect for Mother Nature when she has the whole world in her hands — you’re making a huge mistake.

Let’s remember, Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics, and the engine that drives her is one thing: natural selection. That is the quest of all organisms, to survive and thrive in some ecological niche as they engage in the struggle to pass on their DNA to their next generation and not end up among those that get returned to the manufacturer and decommissioned.

And that’s what viruses do, too: try to survive and replicate. The coronavirus, for instance, co-evolved with bats in the wild. But it apparently jumped to humans when someone ate an infected mammal in Wuhan, China. When it did, it made a warm home in human cells and tissues in ways that can harm or kill us. Once that happened, the coronavirus became just another one of Mother Nature’s fastballs that she throws at us to see who’s the fittest.

Mother Nature is not only all powerful, she’s also unfeeling. Unlike that merciful God that most humans worship, Mother Nature doesn’t keep score. She can inflict her virus on your grandmother on Monday and blow down your house with a tornado on Wednesday and come back

on Friday and flood your basement. She can hit you in the spring, give you a warm hug in summer and hammer you in the fall.

As such, telling her that you’re fed up with being locked down — that it’s enough already! — doesn’t actually register with her.

All that registers, all that she rewards, is one thing: adaptation. She doesn’t reward the richest or the strongest or the smartest of the species. She rewards the most adaptive. They get to pass along their DNA. And in a pandemic, that means she rewards a president, governor, mayor or citizen who, first and foremost, respects her power. If you don’t respect her viruses, wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, floods and so on, she will hurt you or your neighbors or your citizens.

Trump doesn’t respect Mother Nature, because he measures everything in terms of money and markets. He has no feel for natural systems, except golf courses, where he developed the illusion that he could tame nature, even building man-made waterfalls.

Mother Nature also rewards leaders whose adaptive responses are the most thought-through and coordinated.

She evolved her viruses to be expert at finding any weakness in your personal or communal immune system. So, if your family or community is not utterly coordinated in its response to her viruses, they will find the tiniest cracks and make you pay.

Also, because Mother Nature is entirely made up of chemistry, biology and physics, she rewards only adaptation strategies grounded in those same raw materials. If your adaptation strategy is grounded instead in ideology or election-year politics, she will mercilessly expose that.

And remember, Mother Nature will not stop spreading this virus until either we come up with a vaccine to give

us herd immunity or some 60% of us get the infection, overcome it naturally, and develop herd immunity that way.

But her viruses don’t just magically disappear because of lockdowns.

It is true that the coronavirus hits different regions, climates and populations differently, and so each should be able to adapt a little differently. But as University of Minnesota epidemiologist Michael Osterholm recently told USA Today, over time “this damn virus is going to keep going until it infects everybody it possibly can” — until it meets a vaccine or natural herd immunity.

For all these reasons it’s clear, or should be, that the holy grail every nation needs to be looking for is what Dr. David Katz, a public health expert, argued from the beginning of this crisis: a “sustainable strategy of total harm minimization.” That means a strategy that would save as many lives and as many livelihoods as possible at the same time. We have to be trying our very best to do both, and we can.

“Our choice never had to be accepting millions of deaths from the virus or from economic ruin,” said Katz.

We could have, and still can, acknowledge that different members of our population face different risks from COVID-19 “and therefore develop strategies that protect the most vulnerable in our populations and let the least vulnerable return to work — and thus achieve the best of both ‘lock it down’ and ‘open it up.’ ” Basically China, Germany, South Korea, Sweden and many others have all been pursuing different strategies for sustainably and maximally saving lives and livelihoods. It is too soon to say that any of them has found the perfect strategy.

But what it’s not too soon to say is that they are all reopening in ways that respect Mother Nature, appreciate the need for coordination and are grounded in science. So they’re still requiring some degree of wearing of masks in public, practicing social distancing, restricting the number of people who gather in any enclosed space, protecting the most vulnerable and limiting further spread by massive testing, tracing and quarantining to contain inevitable new outbreaks — until they get herd immunity.

America, by contrast, is a mess. In some places you see reopenings that respect Mother Nature’s power, are coordinated and are grounded in science, and in other places you see crowded restaurants or a gym owner defying his governor’s guidelines as cheering demonstrators waive signs that read “My freedom doesn’t end where your fear begins.”

The people making those signs, and the morons on Fox cheering them on, don’t get it. We’re not up against each other. We’re all up against Mother Nature.

We need to reopen and we need to adapt, but in ways that honor Mother Nature’s logic, not in ways that court a second wave — not in ways that challenge Mother Nature to a duel. That is not smart. Because she hasn’t lost a duel in 4.5 billion years.

18

Thursday, May 21, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Why did Mike Pompeo want his watchdog fired?

By MICHELLE COTTLE

T

hree years in, President Donald Trump’s vow to “drain the swamp” stands as one of his more ludicrous campaign promises. That said, his spring cleaning of inspectors general has exposed a patch of grime that threatens to make life awkward for one of his staunchest allies, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Late Friday, Trump informed Congress that he was ousting yet another internal watchdog — the fourth in six weeks. His latest target: Steven Linick of the State Department. The president offered no explanation for the firing, saying only that he no longer had “the fullest confidence” in Linick.

Pressed on his decision Monday, the president insisted that he personally had no problem with Linick. “I never even heard of him,” he told reporters.

“But I was asked to by the State Department, by Mike.” Stressing repeatedly that he has the “right to terminate” as many pesky IGs as he wants to — especially those appointed by President Barack Obama — Trump professed ignorance of the details: “You’d

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have to ask Mike Pompeo.”

Democratic lawmakers, journalists and even some Republicans are now lining up to do just that.

Because as it turns out, Pompeo asked the president to ax Linick while the inspector general was in the midst of investigating potential misconduct by …

Pompeo.

Some of the secretary’s alleged behavior suggests a pattern of petty swampiness. For instance, he and his wife, Susan, are accused of inappropriately directing a staff assistant to handle domestic chores, including picking up their dry cleaning, booking restaurant reservations and walking the family dog, Sherman.

Similar charges surfaced last summer, when House Democrats were looking into a whistleblower complaint that the Pompeos had misused diplomatic security. According to CNN, the couple would dispatch agents to run personal errands such as picking up their adult son from the train station, retrieving Sherman from the groomer and fetching Chinese takeout — prompting agents to grouse that they were being treated like “UberEats with guns.”

Also last year, Susan Pompeo ruffled feathers in the department by tagging along on her husband’s trip to the Middle East during the government shutdown, running up costs and requiring staff members who were going unpaid because of the shutdown to tend to her. Questions have also arisen about why she has her own security detail, even when not traveling.

Going back further, Pompeo prompted grumbling during her husband’s tenure as director of the CIA. As the honorary head of the Family Advisory Board, she would borrow offices on the seventh floor of the agency’s headquarters, where Pompeo and other top officials work; CIA staff members would assist with her projects.

Using taxpayer funds to make their lives easier or more glamorous has been a continuing issue for Trump administration officials. Remember Tom Price’s love of private planes? David Shulkin’s European sightseeing and tickets to Wimbledon? Pretty much everything Scott Pruitt ever did? At this point, a Trump Cabinet secretary could perhaps be forgiven for assuming that this sort of behavior is the new normal.

But Pompeo’s issues may go deeper. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., has revealed that Linick was also investigating whether the administration unlawfully declared an “emergency” last year that enabled

Mike Pompeo on Capitol Hill in February.

Pompeo to circumvent a congressional ban and approve the resumption of arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Pompeo has denied that Linick’s scrutiny of him played any role in his dismissal. He has claimed, in fact, that he didn’t even know that he was under investigation for misusing staff members.

So far, the secretary has been vague about why he wanted Linick gone — something about how the IG wasn’t “performing a function” that was “additive.” One of Pompeo’s aides, Brian Bulatao, told The Washington Post that there had been concerns about Linick’s office leaking to the media. Bulatao said the secretary also was miffed that Linick had not embraced the new “ethos statement” the department put out last year.

Democratic lawmakers would like a smidgen more clarity. Engel and Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, announced Saturday that they would conduct a joint investigation into the matter.

This scrutiny comes at an inconvenient time for Pompeo. It is among Washington’s worst-kept secrets that he harbors ambitions for higher office. Some people think he plans to run for president in 2024. He had been eyeing this year’s Senate race in his home state, Kansas, and spent a striking amount of time schmoozing with folks back in the state — not exactly a focal point of American foreign policy. In January, he reportedly told the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, that he had decided against running. But with Republicans increasingly anxious about keeping control of the chamber, McConnell has been leaning on Pompeo to jump in.

Whatever Pompeo’s plans for the future, he can look forward to answering uncomfortable questions about how he’s been handling his current job.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

19

ACLU reta en el tribunal federal leyes de PR contra “Fake News” sobre COVID-19 Por THE STAR Americana de Libertades Civiles (“ACLU” LcaronaporUnión sus siglas en inglés) y ACLU Puerto Rico radieste miércoles, una demanda sobre violación a

la Primera Enmienda por las dos leyes recientes contra noticias falsas o ‘fake news’ en Puerto Rico.

La demanda fue radicada a nombre de dos periodistas, Sandra Rodríguez Cotto y Rafelli González Cotto, quienes temen que las leyes se usarán para castigarlos por sus reportajes sobre la crisis de COVID-19, sobre todo por reportajes que reflejan al gobierno pobremente. Argumentan que las leyes violan sus derechos constitucionales a la libertad de expresión, la libertad de prensa y el debido proceso de ley, y procuran una orden judicial que impida la aplicación de las leyes.

“Durante tiempos de crisis, como la pandemia a la que ahora nos enfrentamos, la gente necesita recibir más información sobre cómo su gobierno está operando”, dijo la demandante Sandra Rodríguez Cotto en comunicación escrita.

“La prensa tiene que ser libre para ejercer su trabajo, sin miedo a represalias del gobierno. Estas leyes le colocan una barrera importante a la información de interés público y al debate que debe poder llevarse a cabo”, añadió.

Explicó que las leyes, una de las cuales fue aprobada durante la cobertura mediática sobre el manejo de la pandemia de COVID-19 por parte de Puerto Rico, criminaliza el compartir información que el gobierno considere falsa sobre las emergencias en Puerto Rico, incluyendo la actual pandemia global de COVID-19.

Los violadores podrían enfrentarse a hasta tres años de cárcel y a una multa de hasta $5,000.

ACLU argumentó que las leyes de Puerto Rico

contra “fake news”, las cuales no le requieren al gobierno que demuestre que el hablante sabía que su expresión era falsa, viola la Primera Enmienda y la Cuarta Enmienda por su terminología imprecisa y alcance tan amplio. Las leyes les proveen a las personas muy pocas guías sobre qué puede constituir un crimen y le dan demasiada discreción al gobierno en cuanto a decidir a quién enjuiciar. Como consecuencia, las leyes enfrían una porción importante de los reportajes sobre la crisis de COVID-19 y otras emergencias, concretamente porque los periodistas corren el riesgo de ser enjuiciados si el gobierno reclama la precisión de sus reportajes.

“Una sociedad libre y democrática depende de una prensa libre, especialmente durante tiempos de emergencia” dijo Brian Hauss, abogado del proyecto de expresión, privacidad y tecnología de ACLU. “Estas leyes contra ‘fake news’ violan el principio cardenal de la Primera Enmienda, el cual establece que no puede confiársele al gobierno la regulación del diálogo sobre asuntos de interés público”.

Aunque las leyes aparentemente solo aplican a “información falsa”, ACLU advierte que inevitablemente suprimirán una porción importante de información verdadera sobre asuntos de inmenso interés público. ACLU añade que la transparencia de gobierno, no la censura, sería una manera más efectiva de combatir la desinformación, si efectivamente ese fuera el fin del gobierno. El gobierno podría comenzar por celebrar ruedas de prensa frecuentes sobre la crisis de COVID-19 en Puerto Rico, publicando récords pertinentes y explicándole al público su plan de acción.

“Por demasiado tiempo la gente de Puerto Rico ha tenido que tolerar administraciones que legislan en la oscuridad de la noche, sin rendir cuentas al pueblo por sus acciones, ni responder a cualquier forma de

supervisión”, dijo William Ramírez, director ejecutivo de ACLU Puerto Rico. “Estas leyes solo sirven para alentar el temor en aquellos que exigen respuestas y un gobierno limpio. Deben ser tildadas como ofensivas a la primera enmienda y al gobierno democrático”.

Sandra Rodríguez Cotto es la anfitriona el programa de radio unionado “En blanco y negro con Sandra” y publicó las primeras 11 páginas de la conversación de Telegram entre el entonces-gobernador Ricardo Rosselló y sus asesores, revelando el uso de lenguaje misógino y descripciones de violencia en contra de mujeres. La cobertura mediática de las conversaciones del entonces-gobernador desembocaron en protestas en toda la isla en contra del gobierno, las cuales eventualmente terminaron en la renuncia del gobernador.

Sus reportajes también expusieron la realidad sobre la severidad en números sub-reportados de las muertes como resultado del Huracán María y su fracaso en la distribución de ayuda para las víctimas de los terremotos.

Rafelli González Cotto ha publicado numerosos escritos sobre la respuesta de Puerto Rico ante el brote de COVID-19. Su reportaje reveló, por ejemplo, que el porcentaje de muertes por casos publicado por el Departamento de Salud estaba significativamente subreportado con respecto al porcentaje real de muertes por casos. Pronto después de publicado el artículo, el Departamento de Salud quitó la información de su página web. Como resultado de las leyes, teme que sea enjuiciado injustamente por reportajes certeros que el gobierno reclame como falsos. Sus fuentes han parado de compartirle información como de costumbre por miedo a que el gobierno aplique estas leyes para enjuiciarlos.

La demanda se radicó en el tribunal federal para el distrito de Puerto Rico.

Asociación de Maestros entrega cheques por servicarro a maestros jubilados Por THE STAR a presidenta de la Asociación de LAponte Maestros de Puerto Rico (AMPR), Elba Santos, informó el miércoles, que

junto con su equipo de trabajo entregó cheques por servicarro a los maestros que solicitaron retiro para enero de 2017 y cumplieron con los requisitos de ley para jubilarse en el verano de 2017.

“Estamos más que contentos con este logro que obtuvimos en el tribunal en favor de estos maestros retirados. Hoy se les hace justicia y es un placer estar aquí personalmente entregando este dinero y viendo sus caras de felicidad. Ciertamente se viven momentos de emergencia en el país y que mejor que recibir estos chavitos que tanta falta hacen”, expresó Aponte Santos en comunicación escrita.

Por su parte, el vicepresidente de la

AMPR, Víctor Bonilla, quien se encontraba también en el estacionamiento de la AMPR indicó que el personal de la AMPR se está comunicando poco a poco con todos los maestros para otorgarle un turno con hora y de fecha.

“Estaremos despachando cheques más o menos hasta el 29 de mayo y todo aquel que no pueda pasar a recogerlo se harán las gestiones para enviárselo por correo. Si todavía no ha recibido la llamada, tenga la seguridad que los llamaremos”, dijo Bonilla.

Los maestros comenzaron la fila de autos por la marginal de la avenida Muñoz Rivera, por detrás de la sucursal de Oriental Bank. Luego entraban al estacionamiento de la AMPR, le entregaban su cheque y salían por la avenida Ponce de León, siempre con las debidas precauciones de tener su mascarilla y sus guantes.

20

Thursday, May 21, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

An audience comes out of lockdown for Schubert and Mahler

By JACK EWING

N

ormally, when a performer peers beyond bright stage lights into a darkened theater and sees every fourth seat occupied, it’s not a good sign.

“Is it because we’re no good?” Günther Groissböck, an Austrian baritone, recalled thinking as he stepped before a sparse audience at the State Theater of Hesse here Monday evening. “Is it because we’re unpopular?”

At least three empty seats separated every occupied one in the neo-Baroque auditorium, which normally holds 1,000 but accommodated fewer than 200 on Monday. This was by design, part of a hotly debated and potentially risky attempt to revive live performance as the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic ebbs in Europe. Wiesbaden’s concert could serve as a model for other theaters — or as a warning, if anyone who attended gets sick.

Although Groissböck understood the social-distancing rationale for the empty seats, it still felt strange, he said in an interview after his performance of works by Schubert and Mahler.

“At the beginning it felt almost like an art installation, an experiment,” he said. “But from song to song, it very quickly became something very human.”

Concertgoers were required to wear face coverings to the theater, though they were allowed to remove them once seated. Tickets came without seat assignments, and members of a household could sit together. The theater recorded everyone’s name and address, so they could be contacted later in case someone turned out to be infected.

The driving force behind the event was Uwe Eric Laufenberg, a veteran actor who is the Wiesbaden theater’s director.

Not everyone is happy about his aggressive push to restart live performances. Last month, Laufenberg stirred a political firestorm when he called government-mandated restrictions a violation of the German constitution and suggested reaction to the pandemic was overblown. He was accused by some commentators of echoing the arguments of right-wing groups that have protested measures designed to stop the virus’ spread.

Laufenberg said in an interview that some theater employees had reservations about opening so soon. But the performance Monday, the first in a series that continues daily through the first week of June, is part of a general return to normal in Germany, where the growth of new cases has fallen well below 1%.

The country is ahead of the curve in reviving its culture sector. Shops, hairdressers and nail salons are also taking customers again, and schools are operating on abbreviated schedules. In the state of Hesse, of which Wiesbaden is the capital, restaurants and gyms have been allowed to reopen, provided visitors observe distancing.

Elsewhere in Europe, governments are also taking steps to get music lovers back into concert halls. Austria announced last week that events of up to 100 people, with social distancing, can be held starting May 29. In August, a new limit of 1,000 people has been proposed, if an event’s organizers present a safety plan for government approval — a development

Fewer than 200 audience members attend a concert featuring the baritone Gunther Groissböck and the pianist Alexandra Goloubitskaia at the State Theater of Hesse in Wiesbaden, Germany, which normally seats 1,000, May 18, 2020. that led the Salzburg Festival, one of Europe’s grandest summer traditions, to announce that it hopes to go ahead with performances, in some form.

In Italy, the government passed a decree Monday allowing concerts starting June 15, so long as they meet certain conditions, including everyone involved — musicians as well as audience — remaining at least 1 meter, or about 3 feet, apart.

Laufenberg said that putting on a concert while respecting health guidelines involved negotiating with officials and reprogramming the theater’s ticketing software in less than three days. Barriers were erected to funnel the audience into the theater without crowding. Signs were put up to direct the flow of foot traffic and explain anti-contagion measures. Hand sanitizers were placed at strategic locations.

“It’s easier to close a theater than to reopen one,” Laufenberg said.

During intermission, wine, pretzels and other refreshments were served outdoors from a food cart near the colonnaded theater entrance, instead of in a foyer, like normal. Luckily the weather Monday was clear and warm.

“It’s not the atmosphere we’re used to,” Wolfgang Allin, an Austrian architect who has a home in Wiesbaden, said shortly after he and his wife, Angelika, took their seats in the balcony. “But you have to take it as it comes.”

The idea for the performance Monday grew out of dis-

cussions between Laufenberg and Groissböck, who worked together last year on a staging of Richard Wagner’s “Parsifal” at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany (which has canceled this year’s productions).

Groissböck was at his home in Switzerland, he said, trying to stave off depression. “We get along well,” he said of Laufenberg, “and we share the same rebellious attitude” toward the restrictions.

The baritone chose the title of the concert, “My Spirit Thirsts for Action, My Lungs for Freedom,” a line from Schiller.

He said it expressed his frustration with the lockdown.

Groissböck and Alexandra Goloubitskaia, the pianist who accompanied him, accepted drastically lower fees than usual. “Money is the last priority at the moment,” he said, adding: “I’m overjoyed this is even happening.”

For an encore, Groissböck sang an excerpt from a role he was scheduled to perform at Bayreuth if the pandemic had not interfered: Wotan’s Farewell from the end of Wagner’s “Die Walküre.” The audience was ecstatic, making up in volume what it lacked in numbers.

But Laufenberg said that performances like this were not a permanent solution, either financially or artistically. “If you want to tell the story of Romeo and Juliet, they aren’t going to be able to follow social distancing rules,” he said. “I can’t imagine that. I don’t want to imagine it.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

21

Newly minted artists, facing a precarious future, take action

By HILARIE M. SHEETS

F

or art students finishing BFA and MFA programs this spring, the big debut was supposed to have been the thesis exhibition. The culmination of years of work, these shows represent a shot at getting discovered by curators, dealers, collectors and critics who make the rounds at top schools.

Then the pandemic forced schools to close and truncate programs.

“Having the thesis show canceled is like having the rug pulled out from under you,” said Ben Werther, a 22-year-old senior at Cooper Union in New York who, like his peers across the world, felt the added loss of this important first exposure amid the growing health anxiety.

The COVID era is a precarious time for students joining the art world, itself reckoning with the economic sustainability of museums, galleries and global art fairs. For those who have also taken out student loans for expensive programs and received no tuition reimbursement, the disappointment has been especially stark. Since being shut out of his painting studio at Yale and missing hands-on instruction, James Bartolacci, 31, is one of many wondering what exactly he’s paying for.

He chose Yale, despite the $80,000 tuition for the two-year master’s program (not including living expenses), because of the school’s rigor and reputation for helping kick-start its graduates’ careers through its well-connected faculty and visiting artists. (Students hold up the example of Jordan Casteel, who showed her paintings at a New York gallery just months after graduating from Yale in 2014 and now has her first solo museum exhibition in New York hanging — behind closed doors — at the New Museum.)

But Bartolacci said he’s feeling a little skeptical about the whole MFA, “when you’re burdened by student debt and you’re in this reality of increasing financial uncertainty in the art world and not necessarily able to make that money back.”

Now Bartolacci and his peers have been driven to collective action — demanding relief funds and leading the charge on a number of online alternatives to thesis shows, with the help of veteran gallerists and established artists.

On March 21, 128 master’s students at the Yale School of Art sent a letter to the president of the university and their dean requesting partial tuition reimbursement.

“We were told that Yale is not offering tuition refunds of any kind,” said Cindy Hwang, 27, a graphic design student. She and other Yale students reached out to peers at seven art schools across the country and created a communal spreadsheet comparing how each program had responded to the students’ relief efforts.

While all have struck out on tuition refunds, MFA students at the University of Chicago have gained other concessions. In response to a letter from the 16 students in the visual art department, the university has given each

$9,000 living stipends and extended their program an extra quarter, with the thesis show to be held in November.

“They still value a physical experience of the work,” said Madeline Gallucci, 30, a second-year MFA student at Chicago. “That’s one of the main things we argued for when we collectively organized.”

At Yale, students have shifted to repeated requests for “universal emergency subsidies,” according to Hwang.

The university has an endowment that topped $30 billion in June 2019. On Tuesday, the dean of the Yale School of Art, Marta Kuzma, said the school will begin accepting relief applications to the Student Support Fund on May 20, “made possible through the generosity of donors, including Yale alumni, faculty and staff,” adding that it would “directly support our student artists by providing emergency aid to students in need.”

Students have been advocating for one another, as well, by organizing virtual exhibitions that have sprung up quickly to fill the void of canceled thesis shows.

After schools closed in March, Los Angeles dealer Steve Turner checked in with Susan MB Chen, an MFA student from Columbia with whom he had recently done a studio visit. “She sent me a picture of her first self-portrait done in quarantine and it showed so much anxiety on her

Susan M B Chen, “First Self-Portrait” (2020). An art student from Columbia University, Ms. Chen suggested to the Steve Turner Gallery exhibit work from her graduating M.F.A. class. The show, “Alone Together,” is online through June 6.

face,” said Turner, who immediately offered Chen an exhibition. She in turn suggested that he show Columbia’s entire graduating MFA class.

“Alone Together,” at the Steve Turner gallery’s online viewing room, through June 6, shows works by 24 students made in the isolation of their apartments and reflective of their emotional states. Twelve pieces by eight students have sold already, and they will get 60% of the sales (more than the standard 50-50 arrangement between artists and galleries).

“To sell work through a gallery this soon doesn’t happen in ordinary times,” said the gallerist, who offered solo and two-person shows to six of the artists over the next year.

As for Bartolacci’s gamble on Yale’s reach — it may yet pay off. He was introduced to Peggy Leboeuf, a partner and executive director of Perrotin gallery in New York, who offered to host an exhibition for his Yale painting and printmaking class, opening June 8 in the gallery’s new online viewing salon.

“This is a gesture to connect students with the community of collectors and curators that we’re working with everyday,” said Leboeuf, whose gallery previously wagered on an artist right out of the gate, taking on Daniel Arsham in 2005 after seeing his thesis show at Cooper Union. Each of the 23 Yale students will exhibit three works and receive 95% of any sales.

Generous as these exhibitions are, they cater to a small number of students already advantageously positioned.

More democratic in scope is “Thesis Shows 2020,” a website conceived by the graduating photography class at the Rhode Island School of Design and built by students Erin Wang and Travis Morehead. It links to documentation of complete exhibitions by the entire class at 75 art programs in the United States and Canada.

A professor and photographer, Laurel Nakadate, suggested the online platform, which was then workshopped with her class over Zoom. Nakadate sent out an open call to colleagues at other institutions with overwhelming response. The public can connect directly to the artists.

Werther, the senior at Cooper Union, realized that he, too, could advocate for his deflated classmates. He organized an online show hosted on the digital site Serving the People run by Lucien Smith (an artist who caught his own early break when dealer Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn bought a piece out of his 2011 thesis show at Cooper).

But what started as an exhibition just for Cooper Union has snowballed into a sprawling international collaboration, The BFA Show 2020, going live May 21, now includes work by 836 students from 96 art schools around the globe. No submissions were excluded and nothing is for sale. Smith is setting up virtual critiques connecting this network of students with established artists and writers.

“That’s a good way to build mentorship and stimulate internships that are going to help these students more than just an art sale,” he said.

22

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

How the ‘plandemic’ movie and its falsehoods spread widely online

By SHEERA FRENKEL, BEN DECKER AND DAVEY ALBA

T

here have been plenty of jaw-dropping digital moments during the coronavirus pandemic.

There was the time this month when Taylor Swift announced she would air her “City of Lover” concert on television. The time that the cast of “The Office” reunited for an 18-minutelong Zoom wedding. And the time last month that the Pentagon posted three videos that showed unexplained “aerial phenomena.”

Yet none of those went as viral as a 26-minute video called “Plandemic,” a slickly produced narration that wrongly claimed a shadowy cabal of elites was using the virus and a potential vaccine to profit and gain power. The video featured a discredited scientist, Judy Mikovits, who said her research about the harm from vaccines had been buried.

“Plandemic” went online May 4 when its maker, Mikki Willis, a little-known film producer, posted it to Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo and a separate website set up to share the video. For three days, it gathered steam in Facebook pages dedicated to conspiracy theories and the anti-vaccine movement, most of which linked to the video hosted on YouTube.

Then it tipped into the mainstream and exploded.

Just over a week after “Plandemic” was released, it had been viewed more than 8 million times on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and had generated countless other posts.

The New York Times focused on the video’s spread on Facebook using data from CrowdTangle, a tool to analyze interactions across the social network. (YouTube and Twitter do not make their data as readily available.) The ascent of “Plandemic” was largely powered by Facebook groups and pages that shared the YouTube link.

On Facebook, “Plandemic” was liked, commented on or shared nearly 2.5 million times, according to the CrowdTangle data.

That far outdid Swift’s May 8 announcement about her “City of Lover” concert, which plateaued at about 110,000 such interactions on Facebook. “The Office” cast’s Zoom wedding video, which was posted May 10, reached 618,000 interactions in less than a week. And the Pentagon’s videos, which were posted

April 27, had 1 million interactions two weeks after the first post.

“Plandemic” stormed into people’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube feeds even though its claims were widely debunked and the social media companies vowed to remove the video. Yet it has continued spreading online, raising questions about how it might damage trust in the medical community and color people’s views on a coronavirus vaccine.

Willis, who has said he plans to release a second video, did not respond to a request for comment.

Here’s how “Plandemic” went from a niche conspiracy video to a mainstream phenomenon.

The QAnon Factor On the morning of May 5, less than 24 hours after Willis posted “Plandemic,” a Facebook group dedicated to QAnon, a right-wing conspiracy group, posted “Plandemic” to its nearly 25,000 members with the headline “Exclusive Content, Must Watch.”

Within days, more than 1,660 people had shared the video to their own Facebook pages after watching it on the QAnon page, according to CrowdTangle. The video went from being viewed directly on YouTube to people linking out to the video on Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels, fueling its rise.

A Doctor’s Endorsement On the afternoon of May 5, Dr. Chris-

tiane Northrup, a women’s health physician, shared “Plandemic” with her nearly half a million Facebook followers. Northrup, who had developed a following from her appearances as a medical expert on “Oprah,” had previously expressed misgivings about vaccines.

Her status as a celebrity doctor made her endorsement of “Plandemic” powerful. After Northrup shared the video, more than 1,000 people also shared it, many of them to groups that oppose mandatory vaccinations, according to an analysis by The Times. She did not respond to a request for comment.

Reopen America’s Move By the evening of May 5, “Plandemic” had popped up on a large-scale political page on Facebook.

The page was for Reopen Alabama, which has over 36,000 members and was part of the movement by Americans who wanted to lift shelter-in-place orders. Once the video appeared on that page, which was linked to dozens of other Reopen America groups, it quickly began spreading to the pages of those other groups in a kind of forceful multiplier effect.

The Facebook user who posted “Plandemic” to the Reopen Alabama page did not respond to a request for comment.

The MMA Fighter That same night, Nick Catone, a professional mixed martial arts fighter, also shared “Plandemic” on his Facebook page. Catone, 38, with nearly 70,000 followers on Face-

book, has been an anti-vaccine activist since the death of his nearly 2-year-old son in 2017.

Catone, who did not respond to a request for comment, has publicly blamed vaccines for his son’s death.

More than 2,000 people quickly liked Catone’s post about “Plandemic,” which he exhorted people to watch before it was taken down. His post was one of the first by a public figure who had no special medical expertise.

The Politician’s Post Two days after “Plandemic” went online, it came to the attention of Melissa Ackison, who lost in the Republican primary for Ohio’s 26th District Senate seat last month.

On May 6, Ackison, 41, an anti-Obamacare campaigner, posted the video and told her 20,000 followers on Facebook, “If you watch ANYTHING on my page, it needs to be this.”

Her post spread the video to a broader political audience, which then shared it among conservative groups and other Republican campaign pages.

“I knew when I shared that video that people would watch,” Ackison said. “People know me as a person who is skeptical of what the mainstream media narrative is telling them.”

Mainstream Media’s Tipping Point BuzzFeed wrote an article May 7 about “Plandemic” and its falsehoods, in one of the first signs that the mainstream news media had noticed the video. The article was shared on 63 Facebook pages, including the page of Occupy Democrats, a popular left-wing group, according to The Times’ analysis. “‘Plandemic’ is a part of a larger narrative of conspiracy theories and disinformation reporters have been highlighting since the pandemic began,” Jane Lytvynenko, who reported on the video for BuzzFeed, said in an email. “Its popularity shows how vital it is to keep reporting on false and misleading information and take online events as seriously as offline ones.”

After BuzzFeed published its piece, the tenor of comments and shares around “Plandemic” shifted. More people began to factcheck and debunk the video.

That same day, YouTube and Facebook removed “Plandemic” for violating their misinformation policies. By then, the video was fully in the mainstream.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

23

Prototype vaccines protect monkeys from Coronavirus

By CARL ZIMMER

A

prototype vaccine has protected monkeys from the coronavirus, researchers reported Wednesday, a finding that offers new hope for effective human vaccines.

Scientists are already testing coronavirus vaccines in people, but the initial trials are designed to determine safety, not how well a vaccine works.

The research published Wednesday offers insight into what a vaccine must do to be effective and how to measure that.

“To me, this is convincing that a vaccine is possible,” said Dr. Nelson Michael, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

Scientists are engaged in a worldwide scramble to create a vaccine against the new coronavirus. Over a hundred research projects have been launched. Early safety trials in humans have been started or completed in nine of them.

Next to come are larger trials to determine whether these candidate vaccines are not just safe, but effective. But those results won’t arrive for months.

In the meantime, Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and his colleagues have started a series of experiments on monkeys to get a broader look at how coronaviruses affect monkeys — and whether vaccines might fight the pathogens. Their report was published in Science.

The scientists started by studying whether the monkeys become immune to the virus after getting sick. The team infected nine unvaccinated rhesus macaques with the new coronavirus.

The monkeys developed symptoms that resembled a moderate case of COVID-19, including inflammation in their lungs that led to pneumonia. The monkeys recovered after a few days, and Barouch and his colleagues found that the animals had begun making antibodies to the coronavirus.

Some of them turned out to be socalled neutralizing antibodies, meaning that they stopped the virus from enter-

ing cells and reproducing.

Thirty-five days after inoculating the monkeys, the researchers carried out a “re-challenge,” spraying a second dose of the coronavirus into the noses of the animals.

The monkeys produced a surge of protective neutralizing antibodies. The coronavirus briefly managed to establish a small infection in the monkeys’ noses but was soon wiped out.

These results don’t necessarily mean that humans also develop strong, long-lasting immunity to the coronavirus. Still, Barouch and others found the research encouraging.

“If we did the re-challenge study and it didn’t work, the implication would be that the entire vaccine effort would fail,” he said. “That would have been really, really bad news for 7 billion people.”

In a separate experiment, Barouch and his colleagues tested prototype vaccines on rhesus macaques. Each monkey received pieces of DNA, which their cells turned into viral proteins designed to train the immune system to recognize the virus.

Both macaques and humans make neutralizing antibodies against coronaviruses that target one part in particular: a protein that covers the virus’s surface, called the spike protein.

Most coronavirus vaccines are intended to coax the immune system to make antibodies that latch onto the spike protein and destroy the virus. Barouch and his colleagues tried out six variations.

The researchers gave each vaccine to four or five monkeys. They let the monkeys develop an immune response for three weeks, and then sprayed viruses in their noses.

Some of the vaccines provided only partial protection. The virus wasn’t entirely eliminated from the animals’ lungs or noses, although levels were lower than in unvaccinated monkeys.

But other vaccines worked better.

The one that worked best trained the immune system to recognize and attack the entire spike protein of the corona-

Katherine McMahan, a research assistant working on research related to a new coronavirus vaccine at the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. virus. In eight monkeys, the researchers couldn’t detect the virus at all.

“I think that overall this will be seen as very good news for the vaccine effort,” Barouch said. “This increases our optimism that a vaccine for COVID-19 will be possible.”

Florian Krammer, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York who was not involved in the study, said that the levels of antibodies seen in the monkeys were promising.

“This is something that would protect you from disease,” he said. “It’s not perfect, but you certainly see protection.”

Barouch and his colleagues found a strong connection between neutralizing antibodies and how well a vaccine worked: The vaccines that gave monkeys stronger protection produced more neutralizing antibodies.

Pamela Bjorkman, a structural biologist at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved in the study, said that this correlation gave her more confidence in Barouch’s findings. “I think that’s really reassuring,” she said.

Michael said that link could help scientists running safety trials in humans. They may be able to get some early clues about whether the vaccines are effective.

When a new vaccine goes into testing, the first round of trials are designed to see if it’s safe. Only then do researchers move forward with bigger trials to determine if the vaccine actually protects against a disease.

Lisa Tostanoski, a postdoctoral fellow working with Barouch and coauthor of the new study, noted that the study only offers a glimpse at how the vaccine works three weeks after injection.

It’s possible that the vaccines may defend the monkeys for many years to come, she noted — or the protection may fade much sooner.

How long immunity to the coronavirus lasts may determine whether people will need just one shot of a vaccine or more. People may need boosters from time to time to rev up their defenses again and keep the pandemic at bay.

“Every three years is thinkable,” Krammer said. “That doesn’t mean a vaccine doesn’t work.”

24

Thursday, May 21, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

With the world on pause, salamanders own the road

By BRANDON KEIM

O

ut they come on warm, wet spring nights, from beneath leaves and under logs and inside burrows where they have hibernated since fall: a veritable army of amphibians embarking on one of nature’s great migrations, albeit largely hidden from human sight and all too often ending beneath automobile tires.

It is an ignominious fate for creatures with life histories that read like fairy tales. And although nobody knows exactly how many frogs and salamanders are killed while crossing roads, scientists say that even moderate traffic at the wrong time can wipe out entire populations in a few years.

This year, however, amphibian migrations in the northeastern United States coincide with the COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing and shelter-in-place orders have caused vehicular traffic to decline, turning this spring into an unintended, largescale experiment.

“It’s really exciting to see what might come of this year,” said Greg LeClair, a graduate herpetology student at the University of Maine. He is the founder of Big Night Maine, a statewide network of citizen scientists who help amphibians cross roads and count them in the process. “It’s not too often that we get this opportunity to explore the true impacts that human activity can have on road-crossing amphibians,” LeClair said.

On a night in early May, LeClair and his girlfriend, Samantha Grimaldi, patrolled a stretch of wooded road in the central Maine town of Unity. (They took turns carrying their 10-monthold daughter, Audrey, who was clad in a dinosaur-print face mask

function of weight, as Baldwin has done, and a “Future Herpetologist” onesie.) On it is comparable to the trek undertaken by each side of the road was a vernal pool. caribou between Arctic tundra and boUnknowing eyes might dismiss these ephemeral springtime ponds as large pudreal forest. The frogs make documentarydarling wildebeest migrations look like dles, but they are founts of woodland life. weekend hikes.

The air resonated with the trilling of Many pool-breeding amphibians spring peepers seeking mates; a pool may cover equally dramatic distances, Baldcontain thousands. Two of these fingertipsize frogs were the first amphibians spotted win said. The next road-crosser that night on the road. Frozen solid on a forest floor was a juvenile eastern newt, the length just months earlier, they were now headed of a finger and luminously orange under to a bacchanal. LeClair and Grimaldi set headlamps. After losing their larval gills, them by the pool. the newts crawl to upland forests a halfFarther along on his journey was a Greg LeClair, who coordinates mile or more away, returning years later wood frog, evidently returning home af- the Maine Amphibian Migration as adults to aquatic life. The outbound soter mating. His mottled brown skin helped Monitoring project, helps move a journ alone can take a year. him hide on the forest floor but offered spotted salamander across a roadOne study of salamanders in Maslittle camouflage on the tarmac. The round way in Unity, Maine. sachusetts found that cars killed 17% of trip could easily span a quarter-mile — those migrating just 100 meters and 37% not much to a human pedestrian, but an of those traveling 500 meters. To LeClair, epic journey for a ground-level, 3-incheach death is tragic, but his mind also turns long frog. to population consequences and lost ecological interactions.

“Large animals who migrate a lot and are highly visible This eastern newt, like many salamanders, will live on a doing so tend to get some attention,” Robert Baldwin, a con- forest floor, consuming minuscule leaf-eating invertebrates — a servation biologist at Clemson University, said in an email. “But tiny niche, yet vast when considering that, in many forests, the when you consider what a wood frog has to negotiate, it’s kind total biomass of salamanders may eclipse that of birds and small of mind-boggling. Nighttime and rain, giant logs to get around, mammals combined.

With the populations of detritivores regulated by salasticks and leaves, snakes.”

When the distance of the frogs’ migration is calculated as a manders, soils can be nourished by slowly decomposing leaves, making forests more resilient and slowing the release of carbon into the atmosphere.

Salamanders are also eaten by many other creatures, thus becoming conduits of energy and nutrients between pools and the surrounding forests.

“I like to think of the annual vernal pool cycle as a breathPRODUCTION EQUIPMENT MANAGER ing cycle,” LeClair said. “It inhales water in the spring and exhales salamanders in the summer.”

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A: JOSE LUIS MOLINA IRIZARRY

Queda emplazado y notificado que en este Tribunal ha radicado Demanda sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca en su contra. Se le notifica para que comparezca ante el Tribunal dentro del término de treinta (30) A: MARANGELY días a partir de la publicación de este edicto y exponer lo que a CUEVAS TORRES Con dirección y domicilio sus derechos convenga, en el presente caso. POR LA PREdesconocido en las SENTE, se le emplaza para que Estados Unidos de presente al tribunal su alegación America; responsiva a la demanda dentro En calidad de miembro de los TREINTA (30) días de haber sido diligenciando este de la sucesión emplazamiento, excluyéndose el Cuevas Lopez, y parte día del diligenciamiento. Usted indispensable en este deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema caso.

Se le notifica que deberá pre- Unificado de Manejo y Adminissentar su alegación responsiva tración de Casos (SUMAC), al a la demanda de Autorización cual puede acceder utilizando Judicial a través del Sistema la siguiente dirección electróniUnificado de Manejo y Adminis- ca: https://unired.ramaiudicial. tración de Casas (SUMAC), al pr/sumac/, salvo que represencual puede acceder utilizando te por derecho propio, en cuyo la siguiente dirección electróni- caso deberá presentar alegación ca: https://unired.ramajudicial. responsiva en la secretaria del pr, salvo que se representa por tribunal. Si usted deja de prederecho propio, en cuyo caso sentar su alegación responsiva deberá presentar su alegación dentro del referido termino, el responsiva en la Secretaria del tribunal podrá dictar sentencia Tribunal de Primera Instancia en rebeldía en su contra y conde Puerto Rico, Sa la de San ceder el remedio solicitado en la Sebastian, enviando copia a la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el parte demandante a través de tribunal, en el ejercicio de sana su abogado, LCDO. MILTON D. discreción, lo entiende proceden RIVERA ADAMES , RUA 11 480, te. Se le advierte que si no conURB. VILLA RITA, CALLE 2 84, testa la demanda radicada en su SAN SEBASTIAN, PR 00685 contra, radicando el original de , Tel. (787) 810-7577, Correo la misma y enviando copia de su electrónico: estudiolegalrive- contestación a la parte demanra2@gmail.com. Se le apercibe dante por conducto de la Leda. y notifica que si no contesta la Ana Bobonis Zequeira a su demanda radicada en su contra dirección: Fernández Chiqués dentro del termino de treinta (30) LLC, PO Box 9749 San Juan, días de haber sido emplazada, PR 00908, Tel. (787) 722-3040, se le anotara la rebeldía en su Fax (787) 722-3317, dentro del contra, y se dictara sentencia término de treinta (30) días de en su contra , conforme se so- la publicación de este edicto, se licita en la demanda, sin mas anotará la rebeldía y se podrá citársele ni oírsele. EXTENDIDO dictar sentencia en su contra, sin BAJO MI FIRMA Y EL SELLO EL más citarle ni oírle, conforme se TRIBUNAL, en Aguadilla, Puer- solicita en la Demanda. EXPEto Rico, hoy día 23 de abril de DIDO BAJO MI FIRMA Y SELLO 2020. Sarahi Reyes Perez, Sec DE ESTE TRIBUNAL. En Carodel Tribunal. Peggy Sanchez Pe- lina, Puerto Rico, hoy día 18 de mayo de 2020. Lcda. Marilyn rez, Sec Auxiliar.

Aponte Rodriguez, Sec RegioLEGAL NOTICE nal. Ruth M Colon Luciano, Sec ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE Auxiliar del Tribunal.

PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE LEGAL NOTICE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA. DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL CONDADO 3, LLC DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENDemandante v.

TRO JUDICIAL DE PONCE JOSE LUIS SALA SUPERIOR.

MOLINA IRIZARRY

Demandados.

CIVIL NÚM. CA2019CV04468.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE PRENDA POR LA VI ORDINARIA. EM-

@

LEOPOLDO FONTANILLAS PINO, LUIS ALFREDO FONTANILLAS PINO, Y JOSE ARNALDO FONTANILLAS PINO

staredictos1@outlook.com

Thursday, May 21, 2020 DEMANDANTES VS.

FIGUEROA MORTGAGE AND INVESTMENT, INC.; JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE como posibles tenedores desconocidos

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM. PO20190V00441.

SALA 601. SOBRE: CANCELACION DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. Estados Unidos de América Presidente de los Estados Unidos de América Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico.

A: FIGUEROA MORTGAGE AND INVESTMENT, INC.

Se notifica a ustedes que los demandantes han radicado una demanda solicitando se ordene la cancelación de un pagaré suscrito, en fecha 16 de julio de 1976, con vencimiento el día primero de agosto de 2006, otorgado ante el notario Wendell W. Colón, suscrito por los anteriores dueños, a favor Figueroa Mortgage and Investment, Inc., o a su orden, por la suma de $35,100.00, intereses al 9.50% anual. Dicho pagaré está garantizado mediante la Escritura pública número 292 otorgada en Ponce, Puerto Rico, el día 16 de julio de 1976, y grava Ia siguiente propiedad: “URBANA: Solar marcado con el número cincuenta y cinco del Bloque “D” del Plano de lnscripción de la Urbanización Buena Vista en el Barrio Machuelo Abajo del Municipio de Ponce, Puerto Rico, que según las medidas que aparecen de dicho Plano de Inscripción tiene una cabida superficial de cuatrocientos cincuenta y cuatro metros setenta y dos centímetros cuadrados, en colindancia por el Norte, con el solar número sesenta y dos, por donde mide dieciséis metros sesenta y seis centímetros; por el Sur, con la calle “C”, por donde mide quince metros ochenta y dos centímetros; por el Este, con solar número cincuenta y cuatro por donde mide veintiocho metros; y por el Oeste, con solar numero cincuenta y seis, por donde mide veintiocho metros. Existe una casa de una sola planta, de concreto armado, dividida en sala, comedor, tres cuartos dormitorios, cocina, dos cuartos de baño y marquesina. Inscrita al folio 100 del tomo 1507, Ponce, finca número 19,038, Registro de la Propiedad, Sección Primera de Ponce. El pagaré antes descrito se ha extraviado sin que el mismo se hubiese traspasado, negociado o cedido a persona alguna. POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 30 días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsi-

va a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// unired.rarnaludicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente.

LCDO. LEO M. IRIZARRY ROMAN ABOGADO DE LA PARTE DEMANDANTE RUA NUM. 13453 PO BOX 188 Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico 00795 Tel. (787) 608-6814 E-mail: leolaw2012@gmaii.com Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Ponce, Puerto Rico, hoy 4 de marzo de 2020.

LUZ MAYRA CARABALLO GARCIA, Sec Regional. Hilda J. Rosado Rodriguez, Sec Auxiliar.

25 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 12 de mayo de 2020. En AGUADILLA , Puerto Rico, el 19 de mayo de 2020. SARAHI REYES PÉREZ, Secretaria. Nathalie Acevedo Quiñones, Secretaria Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

este caso, con fecha de 20 de mayo de 2020. En TOA ALTA, , Puerto Rico, el 20 de mayo de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria. KARLA P. RIVERA ROMAN, Secretaria Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE PONCE SALA SUPERIOR.

LEOPOLDO FONTANILLAS PINO, LUIS ALFREDO FONTANILLAS PINO, Y JOSE ARNALDO FONTANILLAS PINO DEMANDANTES VS.

FIGUEROA MORTGAGE AND INVESTMENT, INC.; JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE como posibles tenedores desconocidos

Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE DEMANDADOS JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera CIVIL NUM. PO20190V00441.

Instancia Sala Superior de TOA SALA 601. SOBRE: CANCELAALTA. CION DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIAHACIENDA DEL MAR DO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. Estados Unidos de OWNERS LEGAL NOTICE América Presidente de los EsASSOCIATION INC. Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto tados Unidos de América Estado Demandante Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico.

DAVID BERRIOS JUSTICIA Tribunal de PrimeA: JOHN DOE Y ra Instancia Sala Superior de SANTIAGO Y OTROS RICHARD ROE COMO AGUADILLA. Demandado(a) POSIBLES TENEDORES Civil: TA2019CV00425.

Sobre: GUILLERMOANTONIO VENTURA RODRÍGUEZ, COBRO DE DINERO. NOTIFI- DESCONOCIDOS DEL CACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR PAGARE EXTRAVIADO t/c/c GUILLERMO A. EDICTO. Se notifica a ustedes que los

VENTURA

A: DAVID BERRIOS SANTIAGO, MIGDALIA ORELLA EVELYN WEIKEL VAZQUEZ REYES Y LA SPOTTS, t/c/c ORELLA E. SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE VENTURA; y JOHN DOE BIENES GANANCIALES Demandado(a) COMPUESTA POR Civil: AG2019CV01303. Sobre: EXEQUÁTUR. NOTIFICACIÓN AMBOS Demandante

DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: ORELLA EVELYN WEIKEL SPOTTS, t/c/c ORELLA E. VENTURA; DIRECCIÓN: 216 W. 4th.

Street, East Greenville, PA 18041 y JOHN DOE; DIRRECCIÓN DESCONOCIDA. P/C: SANTIAGO MARl ROCA 101 OESTE CALLE MENDEZ VIGO STE 502 MAYAGÜEZ. PUERTO RICO 00680

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican le sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 12 de mayo de 2020 , este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un

(787) 743-3346

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican le sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 6 de marzo de 2020 , este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. - Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto.

Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de

demandantes han radicado una demanda solicitando se ordene la cancelación de un pagaré

suscrito, en fecha 16 de julio de 1976, con vencimiento el día primero de agosto de 2006, otorgado ante el notario Wendell W. Colón, suscrito por los anteriores dueños, a favor Figueroa Mortgage and Investment, Inc., o a su orden, por la suma de $35,100.00, intereses al 9.50% anual. Dicho pagaré está garantizado mediante la Escritura pública número 292 otorgada en Ponce, Puerto Rico, el día 16 de julio de 1976, y grava Ia siguiente propiedad: “URBANA: Solar marcado con el número cincuenta y cinco del Bloque “D” del Plano de lnscripción de la Urbanización Buena Vista en el Barrio Machuelo Abajo del Municipio de Ponce, Puerto Rico, que según las medidas que aparecen de dicho Plano de Inscripción tiene una cabida superficial de cuatrocientos cincuenta y cuatro metros setenta y dos centímetros cuadrados, en colindancia por el Norte, con el solar número sesenta y dos, por donde mide dieciséis metros sesenta y seis centímetros; por el Sur, con la calle “C”, por donde mide quince metros ochenta y dos centímetros; por el Este, con solar número cincuenta y cuatro por donde mide veintiocho metros; y por el Oeste, con solar numero cincuenta y seis, por donde mide veintiocho metros. Existe una casa de una sola planta, de concreto armado, dividida en sala, comedor, tres cuartos dormitorios, cocina, dos cuartos de baño y marquesina. Inscrita al folio 100 del tomo 1507, Ponce, finca número 19,038, Registro

San Juan The

de la Propiedad, Sección Primera de Ponce. El pagaré antes descrito se ha extraviado sin que el mismo se hubiese traspasado, negociado o cedido a persona alguna. POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 30 días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// unired.rarnaludicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente.

LCDO. LEO M. IRIZARRY ROMAN ABOGADO DE LA PARTE DEMANDANTE RUA NUM. 13453 PO BOX 188 Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico 00795 Tel. (787) 608-6814 E-mail: leolaw2012@gmaii.com Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Ponce, Puerto Rico, hoy 4 de marzo de 2020.

LUZ MAYRA CARABALLO GARCIA, Sec Regional. Hilda J. Rosado Rodriguez, Sec Auxiliar.

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26

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

NFL team owners enhance Rooney Rule, but stop short of incentives

By KEN BELSON

A

fter years of criticism about the lack of minorities in top coaching and player personnel positions, the NFL’s 32 owners on Tuesday took steps to increase racial diversity in the league’s leadership ranks but stopped short of adopting the most aggressive measure under consideration, which would have tied hiring to draft slots.

The owners approved a proposal to change the league’s anti-tampering policy by prohibiting teams from denying assistants chances to interview with other clubs for head coaching or coordinator positions, regardless of their contract status. The proposal also broadens the tampering rule to allow lower-level football executives under contract with one team to interview for an assistant general manager’s job with another.

Teams were already prevented from blocking employees from pursuing head coaching or general managers’ jobs. The ability of teams to block other movement by coaches or executives on their staffs is believed to have kept minority candidates from landing better positions.

The owners declined to make a decision on a more contentious proposal that would have rewarded teams that hire head coaches or general managers of color by giving the clubs improved picks in the draft.

The plan was widely criticized, including by several prominent African American coaches, after details of the proposal were published last Friday. Some said that teams should not need incentives to hire minority coaches and that the measure’s intent could be distorted by teams that just want to move up in the draft.

“I just have never been in favor of rewarding people for doing the right thing,” Tony Dungy, former coach of the Indianapolis Colts, said in a podcast interview. “And so I think there’s going to be some unintended consequences.”

After the vote on the two measures, which came at a scheduled virtual meeting of the league’s owners, Commissioner Roger Goodell emphasized that the proposal including incentives had been set aside, not rejected. The owners, he said, were supportive of the idea and considering ways to improve it. The measure, he added, could be voted on again later this year.

N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell, left, speaking to Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, a member of the league’s Workplace Diversity Committee, which proposed incentives for teams that hire nonwhite coaches and general managers.

“We’re not satisfied where we are, we know we should and can do better,” Goodell said on Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. “There’s no single solution to this. It’s a matter of a number of initiatives.”

The measures were the latest attempt by the NFL to address the lack of diversity in its decision-making ranks.

Three-quarters of the league’s players are people of color, but the vast majority of top coaches and player personnel executives are white men.

The effort to rectify this inequity took on a renewed urgency this offseason when only one nonwhite coach was hired: Ron Rivera, who is Hispanic, took charge of the Washington Redskins. In 2019, eight NFL teams filled head coaching vacancies, and the Miami Dolphins were the only club to hire a nonwhite head coach, Brian Flores. There are now just four nonwhite head coaches, down from a high of eight in 2014, and only two general managers of color.

Since 2003, the league has relied on the Rooney Rule, which compels teams to interview at least one candidate of color for its top coaching and personnel jobs. But with the paucity of diverse hires, the owners decided to look at a more forceful approach, rewarding teams for racially diverse hiring practices.

“The facts are, we have a broken system and we’re looking to change where we are going, and it’s been going south, and not a gradual south,” said Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president for football operations.

In the proposal that was set aside, a team that hired a nonwhite head coach would have moved up six spots from its position in the third round of the draft in the year preceding that coach’s second season. A team that hired a nonwhite candidate to fill the general manager’s position would have moved up 10 spots in the third round of the draft before that executive’s second season on the job. A team would have lost its advantage if it

fired the new hire after a single season, a provision designed to circumvent a tanking strategy and to discourage firing coaches after one losing season.

“The problem is, it can’t be about incentives. It’s got to be about giving the right coaches the right opportunities,” Sam Acho, a member of the NFL Players Association’s executive committee, told ESPN. “The problem with the NFL is that there’s so much cronyism; it’s all about who you know.”

On Tuesday, owners also adopted a provision obligating clubs to send the league office the job descriptions of their coaches and coordinators in order to prevent teams from changing a person’s job title later as a way to block the individual from seeking work with another franchise.

The league also strengthened the Rooney Rule, which did not require a vote to amend. Teams now must interview at least two external minority candidates for head coaching vacancies, up from one; at least one minority candidate for any vacancy among the three coordinator jobs; and at least one external minority candidate for the senior football operations position, which is typically the general manager’s job.

The Rooney Rule will also be applied to more executive positions in front offices. Clubs must interview minorities or female applicants for all senior positions, including club president and executive roles in communications, finance, human resources, the legal department, football operations, sales, marketing, sponsorship, information technology and security.

With just two months until the start of training camps, the owners also heard an update of the league’s approach to reopening team facilities. Dr. Allen Sills, the league’s top medical officer, said that determining a safe way for players to come back would be complex.

Among many hurdles, Sills said the league and the players’ union must create a system for testing players and staff often and reliably, and decide what to do when, not if, players are found to have the coronavirus.

“Obviously, football and physical distancing are not compatible,” Sills said.

“We fully expect we will have positive cases that arise because this disease is endemic in our society.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

27

Belmont Stakes to run June 20 as first leg of Triple Crown

By JOE DRAPE

T

he 152nd running of the Belmont Stakes will kick off this year’s Triple Crown — not the Kentucky Derby.

The Belmont will be run June 20, before both the Derby and the Preakness Stakes for the first time in history.

Those races have been moved to the fall.

The Belmont will be run at a mile and an eighth rather than its usual mile and a half, and its purse has been reduced by a third to $1 million with no spectators allowed at the track during this racing season because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“It was tough to ask developing 3-year-old horses to go that far after not racing for months,” David O’Rourke, the chief executive of the New York Racing Association (NYRA), said in an interview. “As far as the purse, we partly rely on casino revenues, and it doesn’t look like they are running any time soon.”

The track on Long Island plans 25 days of racing starting June 3, offering an average of $646,000 in purses a day — down from the $750,000 daily average last year.

“This is the year for traditions to go out the window,” O’Rourke said.

There is some precedent for a topsy-turvy Triple Crown schedule — from 1923 through 1932, the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore preceded the Derby. In 1930, Gallant Fox won the Triple Crown with the Derby falling in the middle leg.

Belmont decided on its changes because of the calendar and the economics of a sport that has become something of a bright spot in a sports-starved landscape throughout the pandemic.

The racing association also intends to open a training track in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., ahead of a summer meet there starting in mid July.

While horse racing has many detractors, viewers have tuned in and gamblers have bet more on the handful of tracks that have remained open throughout the pandemic. Tiny Fonner Park in Grand Island, Neb., for exam-

ple, has set records for betting handle.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York urged major sports leagues to employ imagination to return to action, saying they had a willing partner to stage events if they could reduce risk by focusing on television audiences.

“There’ll be guidelines for the actual participants, but no crowds, no fans, but for the industry itself, for the televised viewers, that can still work,” Cuomo said Saturday while announcing plans for horse and auto racing tracks to reopen in early June.

NYRA guidelines call for a reduced number of people at the track, plus daily health screenings, social distancing and masks. The association had given more than 800 antibody tests to backstretch workers and other racing employees, and was working on securing more tests, O’Rourke said.

In March, racing was suspended at Aqueduct Racetrack after a worker who cared for animals and lived at Belmont Park tested positive for the virus. Belmont Park was not in season at the time.

In horse racing, officials saw an opportunity to stage the first major sporting event in New York against little competition. Usually, the Belmont falls on a busy sports weekend, with the NBA and NHL playoffs underway and the MLB season in full swing. It is unlikely any of those sports will return before July.

Churchill Downs officials picked Sept. 5 for the Derby in hopes that shelter in place rules will be relaxed enough by then to welcome fans. Last week, the Stronach Group announced the Preakness would be held Oct. 3. If racing officials tried to keep the traditional Triple Crown sequence intact, it would have meant scheduling the Belmont within a week of the Breeders’ Cup World Thoroughbred Championships and perhaps competing against college football.

The impact the Belmont Stakes will have on the Triple Crown by going first remains to be seen. There are talented 3-year-olds out there ready to run with owners eager to make money.

Among them are New York-based Tiz the Law, the Florida Derby winner, and

Sir Winston, ridden by Joel Rosario, won the Belmont Stakes in 2019. This year, the race is scheduled for June 20 at a shorter distance and without fans, becoming the first leg of the Triple Crown. two undefeated colts from the Bob Baffert barn, Nadal and Charlatan, each of whom won a division of the Arkansas Derby.

“If you got a 3-year-old ready to run, we have a $1 million race,” O’Rourke said.

With the second and third legs of the Triple Crown pushed to the fall, owners and trainers of 3-year-old colts may face some difficult decisions.

The usual five-week Triple Crown season generally assures a full field of 20 horses in Kentucky, followed by a smaller and weaker group in Baltimore for the Preakness. Only the Derby winner must go to the second leg to keep its Triple Crown hopes alive, while the runners-up and horses that had rough trips or bad luck are rested to try again at the Belmont Stakes.

To sweep this year’s series, a horse

will have to win in June, come back nearly three months later, then wait another month for the Preakness. That could make the feat even harder; a compact schedule benefits the most dominant horse.

Holding two legs of the Triple Crown in the fall means potentially greater competition from late-developing horses that tap their talent over the summer. The long downtime between races gives each horse more time to recover and should result in full and stout fields.

Throw in the fact that the $7 million Breeders’ Cup Classic and the opportunity to race against older horses awaits on the first weekend of November, and owners may have to pick judiciously among the lavish races.

“It’s a time to try anything and everything,” O’Rourke said.

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

NBA teams ‘obligated’ to provide players’ blood in search for COVID-19 breakthrough in US

By RT NEWS

P

layers from every team in the NBA are being expected to provide blood samples as part of a major study into the novel coronavirus – with the doctor behind the scheme telling them to “do something right for their communities.”

Dr. Robby Sikka, the vice president of Basketball Performance and Technology for the Minnesota Timberwolves, has teamed up with the state’s Mayo Clinic medical center for a major study that aims to discover more about which people have a lower risk of contracting COVID-19 and how prevalent the disease is.

Players, coaches, executives and staff will be tested under the plans, which follow a study carried out across Major League Baseball in April that found only 0.7 percent of participants carried antibodies for the virus.

“We are learning about this disease,” Sikka told ESPN, speaking ahead of finger prick blood draws that will be conducted as team practice facilities continue to open more fully across the country. “We have learned a lot in two months. So if we can take the next two months, learn on the fly, mitigate risk, then we can move pretty quickly to do the right things to have safe play.

“I think teams are obligated to do something right for their communities before they do right for anybody else.”

Timberwolves star Karl-Anthony Towns’ mother, Jacqueline, died because of complications from COVID-19 on April 13 after being put in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator.

The center, whose father also tested positive but later recovered, subsequently donated $100,000 to the clinic, which describes itself as “the number one hospital in the nation” and has had a long partnership with the team.

Praising Sikka as a doctor who could “attack blind spots,” club president Gersson Rosas said Towns had encouraged the team to lead their testing drive.

“We took that cue and looked for ways to be good teammates to the NBA and the 29 other teams,” he explained. “[We are] connecting with Mayo Clinic to try to find strategies to fight the virus.”

Sikka hopes the tests will help doctors to understand whether antibodies provide immunity to the virus, validate the use of the finger prick method while there is still a shortage of available tests in the U.S. and identify which people have had the virus but remained asymptomatic.

There was uproar when sports teams were perceived to have been given greater access to testing than the general population after the NBA was suspended on March 13, and the national death toll from the virus has now risen to more than 92,000 in the U.S. “It very much hit home for us,” Sikka said of Towns’ family tragedy. “I am never going to forget that experience with Karl.

“It changed my life, it changed his life, it changed our organization’s history. It was extremely challenging

A message on the video board at Oklahoma City’s Chesapeake Energy Arena announced the postponement of the Thunder’s game against the Utah Jazz on Wednesday. for everybody.”

An expert in sports injury recovery, Sikka is one of 10 people on the NBA’s sports science committee. His supporters are likely to include the Utah Jazz, whose own player, Rudy Gobert, did not display symptoms of illness before being diagnosed as the first NBA player infected with COVID-19.

While some fans voiced optimism that the idea could help officials to decide when the NBA might be able to resume its season, others voiced doubts that the tests would provide meaningful results.

“Testing a large group of wealthy individuals who have had the ability and means to isolate themselves for the last eight weeks does [not do] a whole lot to inform you on the spread of a virus,” said one.

Another called the move “self-serving,” adding: “Testing the most fit individuals is not a sample that does much good.”

The Mayo Clinic became embroiled in a COVID-19 controversy at the end of last month when President Donald Trump’s deputy, Mike Pence, visited the hospital without wearing a mask.

Pence, who is leading the White House coronavirus taskforce, appeared to be the only person at the event

without a mask, breaching site guidance issued by organizers.

The clinic deleted a tweet in which it said Pence had been notified of its policy of wearing masks in advance, and the vice president defended his actions before later apologizing.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Sudoku

29

How to Play:

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

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

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, May 21, 2020

(Mar 21-April 20)

Falling prey to pessimistic thinking will drive opportunity from your door. Just because you have recently experienced a string of disappointments doesn’t mean your bad luck will continue. Remember that difficulties always precede boom times. Model your behaviour after an optimist you’ve always admired. Someone will ask for your opinion.

Although you don’t want to hurt their feelings, you simply can’t praise their inferior work. Give an honest assessment of the project and then offer some constructive criticism.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Are you unemployed? Rather than trying to get a job in a single industry, it would be wise to broaden your search. A position at a charitable organisation, religious institution or hospital might be tailor-made for you. Use your interpersonal skills to comfort others. Don’t let your personal beliefs interfere with your social relationships. You can be friends with someone with different values. Rather than trying to convert them, seek common ground. You’re both very artistic and appreciate each other’s unique talents.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Scorpio

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

A friend, group or organisation will give you bad advice.

Their motives are pure but their assessments are poor. Listen to your instincts, especially about a spiritual matter.

Turning down a job that bothers your conscience is the best course of action. Trying to fill an emotional void with luxury goods is an exercise in futility. The contentment you seek comes from exercising your creative talent.

Stop insisting it’s frivolous to paint, write or play music.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

An unrealistic attitude about professional opportunities is holding you back. If you lack critical experience or training, it’s time to fill the gaps of your knowledge. Working with a seasoned teacher will be challenging. Put personal pursuits on the back burner while you study. You don’t want your instructor to think you’re frivolous. By doing all your assignments on time, you’ll earn top marks. Best of all, you’ll receive a glowing recommendation for a promotion. It’s time to show the world you’re capable of focus and diligence.

Beware of putting your faith in a celebrity guru. Although this superstar seems to have all the answers, they have an army of assistants that make them look great. Deep down, they’re just as insecure as you are. Look within for the answers you seek.

If you’ve been hiding a vice, it’s time to reveal this weakness.

Someone will come forward and give you help with this issue. Be open to rehabilitation or undergoing some counselling. Leaving this bad habit behind will be liberating.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

Rushing into a new physical relationship should be temporarily put on hold. If you’ve developed a crush on someone, concentrate on getting to know each other before becoming intimate. Your ideal partner won’t feel threatened by your natural star power. Steer clear of insecure types. If you’re already in a close relationship, try not to feel threatened by your amour’s dreams. Your relationship will grow much stronger when you support their desire to write a book, become a teacher or record a podcast.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Nobody can make you happy. If you’re single, stop waiting for someone to rescue you from boredom. You possess everything necessary to cultivate your dream life. By pursuing your desires, you’ll become a love magnet. Your future amour will enhance your pleasure, not cause it. Resist the urge to use your professional position for personal gain.

Pay full price instead of asking for a discount, even if you do give a vendor lots of business. You don’t want anyone to question your ethics.

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

You feel lonely and isolated. It seems like nobody appreciates your dark sense of humour. Instead of trying to make others understand you, continue to march to the beat of your own drum. By remaining true to yourself, you’ll attract a fellow nonconformist. Beware of getting tempted into a physical encounter. It’s easy to forget your responsibilities when feeling enchanted. Have fun but take precautions to protect your health. Foresight is half the battle.

Family responsibilities are weighing heavily on your shoulders. Stop feeling guilty about having one pair of hands. If you can’t handle all the work you’ve been given, get some professional assistance. A government agency, religious organisation or cultural institution can lend assistance.

Beware of neglecting your best friend or romantic partner.

Although you face a lot of problems, they have their own struggles. Take time to enquire after their health and wellbeing. A show of concern will strengthen your bond.

Practicality is usually your strong suit, but that’s not the case now. It’s hard for you to set your priorities, simply because you can’t decide what’s important. Rather than pushing yourself to produce results, take time to reflect on what you want. Try not to drown your feelings with a food binge. By sticking to a diet that is mainly comprised of fresh produce, whole grains and lean protein, you’ll have enough energy to accomplish everything on your ‘To Do’ list.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Be responsible with finances. If you don’t make enough money to buy the luxuries you desire, look for a more lucrative line of work when the world opens back up. Alternatively, you could sell handcrafted products for a big profit. People are willing to pay good money for unique items. Trying to buy into someone’s affections is a bad move and will be cause for regret. You don’t want to be liked or loved for the gifts you give.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

It’s possible you are daydreaming to postpone an important decision. Stop putting off the inevitable. When in doubt, you can always flip a coin. Few choices are irreversible.

Your intuition is pushing you to take the unconventional route. Listen and obey. You have no other choice than to avoid public life. Staying home you could cross paths on a forum with a generous person who admires your creative ability. Accept this benefactor’s offer to promote your work.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Thursday, May 21, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

The San Juan Daily Star

Ziggy