Monday May 25, 2020

Monday, May 25, 2020

San Juan The

50¢

DAILY

Spike Lee and the Battlefield of American History

Star

P20 & 21

Stories from an Unemployment Odyssey After Months in Need, Citizens Endure Long Lines at Labor Dept. to Finally Get a Glimpse of Hope

P4

Could Nuclear Plants Hong Kong’s Fate Fill an Energy Need Once Again at Stake for PR? P6

NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

P13

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Monday, May 25, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

GOOD MORNING

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May 25, 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.

Today’s

Memorial Day: What you should know if planning to visit a cemetery

Weather Day

Night

High

Low

90ºF

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77ºF

Precip 20%

Precip 20%

Partly Cloudy

Partly Cloudy

Wind: Humidity: UV Index: Sunrise: Sunset:

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

From ESE 12 mph 64% 10 of 10 5:48 AM Local Time 6:45 PM Local Time

INDEX Local 3 Mainland 7 Business 11 International 13 Viewpoint 17 Noticias en Español 19 Entertainment 20 22 Travel

Health Science Legals Sports Games Horoscope Cartoons

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ov. Wanda Vázquez Garced announced Sunday that, as part of Memorial Day observances, regulated visits to cemeteries will be allowed today, with the requirement that the precautionary measures established as part of Health Department protocol due to the coronavirus pandemic emergency be taken.

“On Memorial Day we pay tribute to fallen heroes and show appreciation for their sacrifice in defense of the nation,” the governor said. “On the occasion of this date, visits to cemeteries will be allowed, taking all the protective and safety measures established in the protocol designed by the Health Department.

Health is paramount, so I urge you to honor our heroes without neglecting us. The fight against COVID-19 is everyone’s responsibility, at all times.”

Puerto Rico Veterans Advocate Agustín Montañez said that in the morning hours today, the recording of the “Moment of Remembrance” will take place, a brief ceremony that serves to honor our fallen heroes tempered by the conditions imposed by the need to protect against COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The ceremony will be recorded for distribution on social media.

In the remembrance, which will be held at the State Veterans Cemetery in Aguadilla, only those

invited will participate and all protocols for social distancing and personal protection will be followed.

Upon completion of the ceremony, the cemetery will be opened, in a limited way, following the rules of the established protocol.

As part of the protocol, cemetery administrators must ensure the health and safety of all citizens who visit the cemetery, as well as workers.

Everyone who visits a cemetery must wear a mask. At the same time, a distance of six feet must be guaranteed between each person to ensure social distancing.

The protocol establishes that the visit time at graves and other cemetery sites will be between 15 and 30 minutes maximum, per family. Cemetery administrators must ensure that access control measures are taken at their premises, to prevent crowding and promote the continuous flow of visitors.

As part of the protocol, the cemetery must have sanitary services in optimal condition, providing soap and water, in order to ensure that any visitor or employee can wash their hands properly, according to the recommendations established to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The recommendations are part of the protocol established for both public and private cemeteries.

People who are planning to visit cemeteries should call ahead to make sure of opening hours, as well as any other requirements.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

Thousands of unemployment stories, one long line and one problem After the latest technology fails, the island Labor Dept. finds a creative way to receive and process unemployment and PUA claims

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

T

he sun was still hiding when the snake started to take shape. Its head was a grey Nissan Sentra parked next to the small concrete isle that is the entrance to the Department of Labor and Human Resources headquarters, located at the corner of Muñoz Rivera Avenue and Mayagüez Street in San Juan’s Hato Rey sector.

The metal serpent grew with each passing minute. More cars kept arriving and lengthening the metallic rope, to the point that it went around the building, like shiny Ouroboro, the mythical snake that eats its own tail. Yet this Ouroboro was composed of people who were arriving at the Labor Department to personally hand in their unemployment and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) forms.

This was the scene after several weeks in which the Department was in full crisis control mode following the total failure of the automated system designed by Evertec to allow document submission via phone.

“The offices open at around 7 a.m. But some people start arriving before sunrise,” said police officer Germán Montalvo, who was stationed a quarter mile away from the building, redirecting regular traffic so that it did not clash with the snake, which at around 10:30 a.m. had grown and extended itself almost to the main entrance of the Polytechnic University campus at Muñoz Rivera Avenue.

“We arrived at 6 a.m. to this post and there was already some traffic backed up, people who came to submit their documents,” added Montalvo, who is assigned to the Hato Rey East police station. “Some arrive early, but people keep coming until about 4 p.m. There’s a lot of people who come with somebody else to both submit their application, although many come by themselves.”

By noon, Montalvo’s post was not only extremely busy but, with temperatures surpassing 100 degrees, it was as hot as hell. This made

working under the sun exceedingly difficult, and not only for officer Montalvo.

The ‘snake charmers’ Over a dozen Labor Department employees formed the connection of the inverted drive-through operating dynamic that was the document transfer procedure. These were the “snake charmers.” Their mission was to walk to a car in the line, pick up the documents from each client and take them to the receiving area at the Prudencio Rivera Martínez building, the edifice’s official name.

At high noon, the sun made their job extremely difficult. Yet the employees soldiered on, walking to the cars, taking the applications, making sure that all the required forms were included. Then they would walk or jog to the entrance of the building and hand off the package, their paths criss-crossing one another, like worker ants.

It is an archaic system, but an oddly effective one.

“How many cars do I work with? In a day?

It has got to be way more than a hundred, easy,” said Jorge Del Valle, one of the “snake charmers” of the drive-through project, which will not be in operation today. “I have been helping here for two days straight. We start at 7 a.m, but we start picking up the documents earlier than that.”

DelValle, who wears an Oakland Athletics baseball cap to protect himself from the sun, is an 18-year veteran with the Department of Labor and Human Resources. He was temporarily transferred from the Norms and Regulations Division to help in the emergency caused by the automated system’s total failure.

Backup forces at the ready “The only cases that take some time to deal with are those with problematic matters,” Del Valle said. “Someone might have erroneously filled out a part of the document, written information in the wrong part of the application.

They might have to fill out a new document.

For those cases we have a few coworkers from those areas who stay in this area with us and they help those people.”

For those who decided not to go through the drive through, there was a tent in front of the building where the applicants could wait in line. The lanes were divided with yellow “Do not cross” police tape. Most of those waiting in the area were maintaining social distancing guidelines and did not seem that bothered by the wait.

One of them was Luis Ortega. The Río Piedras resident decided to come in person after not being able to get through by telephone.

“First, I tried by phone, but I called and called and got no answer. Today I arrived not that long ago, about 20 minutes,” said Ortega, who seemed in good spirits despite the heat and the line. “I had to park far away but it hasn’t been that long, and I am almost there to file my request.”

On Saturday, the Labor Department announced that it was able to process 79,246 PUA claims and distribute $165 million of the program’s aid.

“Honestly, I think this system has been very effective,” Del Valle said. “You don’t see that many people criticizing the Department like in the beginning [of the islandwide pandemic emergency]. What the computers couldn’t do, we are doing.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

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Acevedo Vilá pushes bill to give special treatment to pharma, medical equipment firms

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

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he former governor and current Popular Democratic Party (PDP) candidate for resident commissioner, Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, announced on Sunday that three prominent members of Congress have joined House of Representatives Bill 6648, which seeks to grant special tax treatment to U.S. companies that do business in the territories as foreign entities.

HR 6648 seeks to give Puerto Rico and the other territories a federal incentive to attract the production of the pharmaceutical and medical equipment industries.

The measure filed by U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) Delegate Stacey Plaskett, already has the endorsement of Rep. Nydia Velázquez as co-author, who is now joined by fellow New York City Democrats Rep. Adriano Espaillat, House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney, and House Energy and Commerce Committee Vice Chairman Rep. Yvette Clarke.

“This Bill 6648 is a concrete step so that the economy of Puerto Rico can rise from the crisis that COVID-19 has deepened,” Acevedo Vilá said.

Much of the pharmaceutical production consumed by the United States is currently made with ingredients and components from abroad, particularly from China.

“This measure provides for us in Puerto Rico to be a fundamental piece in solving the problem that the United States has at this time due to the lack of production of medicines and health-related products,” he said, after noting that a decrease in pharmaceutical production has been evident since the start of the pandemic.

During the broadcast of “El Podcast de Aníbal” on the Facebook social network, Velázquez said HR 6648 “is going to be a debate in which we will have to join forces with other elected officials, including in Puerto Rico, and in the diaspora.”

Velázquez argued that in addition to seeking alternatives for pharmaceutical investment in Puerto Rico, efforts should be inserted into

the debate to encourage new technological and agricultural projects on the island.

“For my part, I will continue the effort to advance this important measure, which all experts in the private sector recognize is the best alternative to attract the investment and jobs that Puerto Rico needs and help the United States to solve the problem of lack of

production of medicines under its jurisdiction,” said Acevedo Vilá, who once again called on all sectors of Puerto Rican society, including Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced and Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón, to support HR 6648. “I am confident that the next few weeks will show more movement in favor of this measure.”

PDP gubernatorial hopeful spurns privatization of WIPR

By JOHN MCPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

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arlos “Charlie” Delgado Altieri, who is campaigning to be the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) candidate for governor in November, spoke on Sunday in favor of promoting the Puerto Rico Corporation for Public Broadcasting (WIPR) to serve the country from different angles, saying that it would be a serious mistake to privatize that asset.

“It is a mistake by the [federal] fiscal control board to propose the sale of WIPR and worse still, by the government of Wanda Vázquez, who plays along for purely ideological reasons,” Delgado Altieri said in a written statement.

“There is an agenda against everything that represents education and culture.

We see it in how these two entities have

mercilessly attacked the University of Puerto Rico, and now WIPR.” Last April, Financial Oversight and Management Board Executive Director Natalie Jaresko issued a letter requesting the government to be efficient in the process of transferring the entity to a non-profit organization.

However, Delgado pointed out that to raise funds for the entity and make alliances with non-profit institutions, “what is needed is imagination and creativity, but above all, desire and the will to do things well.”

“For these people, privatization is the easy, but wrong option,” he said.

“There are assets there, there are licenses granted by the Federal Communications Commission that must be defended. In the same way, in other countries they have their public radio and television stations operating with efficiency and

quality; Puerto Rico has to do the same.”

Delgado Altieri also pointed out as an example of mediocrity the declarations of the chairman of the WIPR board of directors, Rafael Pagán González, that he would follow the demands of the oversight board, as did WIPR President Eric Delgado.

“They are expected to defend this important cultural, educational, historical, and economic asset that is an asset of all Puerto Ricans,” the gubernatorial hopeful and mayor of Isabela said.

The PDP primary candidate also supported the legislative initiative of Sen. Rossana López León, who filed Joint Senate Resolution 544 on May 11, to prohibit the WIPR board, as well as its president from any action, management, or participation in processes or proposals whose purposes are the privatization of the public corporation.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

Fiscal board to hold its 18th public meeting with live streaming

By THE STAR STAFF

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he federal Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico announced over the weekend plans to hold its 18th public meeting on Wednesday to consider certification of the 2020 Fiscal Plan for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

The meeting, which will be live-streamed on the oversight board’s website, will be open to the public and is slated to begin at 10 a.m.

“The audio will be available in English and Spanish. A recording will be posted on the site as soon as possible following the meeting,” the board said in its news release.

The island government is seeking a twoyear moratorium on all austerity measures to allow the island to recover from the COVID-19 crisis, which caused the lockdown of businesses starting March 15.

While the government says in its fiscal plan issued earlier in May that it had made progress in the implementation of structural reforms over the past three years, some of the reforms, including those in the labor market, may need to be put on hold because of the crisis brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.

“While the government is not arguing for the abandonment of the 19 fiscal measures implemented in prior fiscal plans, there must be an evaluation as to which measures need to be suspended, amended, or modified,” the plan says.

The government recently announced that on Tuesday it will allow the reopening of businesses with restrictions while continuing to observe social distancing rules. An initial reopening is limited to primary and specialist doctors and dentists, animal shelters, vehicle repair and parts services, laundromats, elevator inspections, services to ports and airports, air conditioner repair and maintenance services, notary services, and critical infrastructure services.

Many businesses, however, have been forced to lay off or furlough workers, resulting in a record number of unemployment claims in Puerto Rico.

“The 2020 fiscal plan estimates an economic impact of approximately $5.7 billion between FY [fiscal year 20]20 and FY22 from the pandemic in Puerto Rico” the fiscal plan says. “The total impact could be much greater depending on the trajectory of the virus and the

ability of policy decisions to sustain households and businesses during this difficult period.”

The recent commonwealth fiscal plan projects declines in Puerto Rico’s real gross national product of -3.8 percent for FY20 and -7.8 percent for FY21, noted the group Espacios Abiertos recently.

The government made economic projections on the impact of the coronavirus using three scenarios for the period from 2020 to 2025 in the fiscal plan. The first, an optimistic estimate, suggests a low impact from the coronavirus crisis, resulting in an average surplus of $502 million each fiscal year.

The second is a “baseline” scenario that predicts the impact of the COVID-19 crisis will result in an average primary fiscal surplus of $32 million from 2020 to 2025. The third scenario or pessimistic estimate predicts an annual average deficit of $578 million in each fiscal year through 2025 as a result of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the oversight board is set to present a revised baseline for Puerto Rico’s budget today. The fiscal plan is used as a basis for the budget.

However, Iris Santos, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), noted at

a budget hearing in the island Senate on May 20 that the current baseline budget recommended by the board is $15.6 billion, a figure that is lower than the government’s proposed $17.1 billion budget for FY21 and would lead to layoffs.

Santos said that the OMB warned the oversight board that its current baseline budget did not include funds for recurrent expenditures for certain agencies and “aggressively” reduced the budgets of other agencies that could hinder essential services and result in payroll cuts.

Although the government submitted a draft of the budget in February, and updated it on May 8, the oversight board told the government at a meeting on April 17 that it intended to file its own budget for the Legislature’s discussion

by June 5.

Santos warned that the oversight board’s budget will leave 40 of 99 agencies with a shortfall of more than $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.

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

Study: Nuclear plants could be part of PR’s energy solution

By THE STAR STAFF

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study by the Nuclear Alternative Project (NAP), which since 2015 has sought to educate the public about the innovations of nuclear reactors as a source of energy, found that nuclear energy could help make Puerto Rico’s electrical system strong with zero emissions.

“In order for Puerto Rico’s economy to re-emerge and compete at the global scale, it is imperative for its energy generation fleet to modernize and transform into a robust and modern system,” the study published last week said.

“Advanced nuclear reactors could be part of Puerto Rico’s energy portfolio and potentially supply a substantial part of a strong and diverse zero-emission energy mix.”

Nuclear energy is not part of the island’s energy portfolio.

Puerto Rico had a nuclear reactor in the 1960s in Rincón, but it was decommissioned because it required costly modifications.

However, a group of Puerto Rican engineers who belong to NAP are trying to overturn the mentality that nuclear energy is not a solution to the island’s energy needs. They say renewables alone will not provide a steady energy solution.

“There is a public misconception that nuclear power is prohibited in Puerto Rico. This notion is based on an early 1990s executive order that stated nuclear power was not a viable alternate energy source at the time, but not that nuclear power plants were prohibited,” the study says. “Since that order, no further Executive Branch statements have been issued on the viability of nuclear energy, nor have any of the existing laws that permit nuclear power businesses in the island been amended to prohibit nuclear energy in the island.”

Puerto Rico’s daily electricity demand (or load profile) peaks at approximately 10 percent from average and utilization rates (load factors) in the range of 75 percent. “Thus,

power demands require steady baseload plants such as fossil or nuclear plants rather than intermittent renewable sources like solar and wind,” the study says. “Steady high-power demand throughout the year requires a higher than average reserve margin, which limits preventive maintenance and increases the potential for forced outages.”

The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s (PREPA) power plants are 28 years older and experience outage rates 12 times higher than the U.S. average. Outage rates are impacted by old equipment and high daily and seasonal power demands despite the system’s higher than average reserve margin. This has been aggravated by plant damage from recent hurricanes and earthquakes. “PREPA estimates the retirement of 13 of its generation assets summing a total of about 3,600 [megawatts] MW over the next 10 years,” the study says. “These retirements represent 74 percent of the PREPA generation fleet and emphasize the need for expedient installation of new capacity to ensure a reliable grid and power supply.”

PREPA’s Integrated Resource Plan’s (IRP) proposed high reliance on renewables necessitates sufficient baseload capacity such as liquefied natural gas and nuclear reactors to support the power demand, according to the study. However, only nuclear reactors can complement the intermittency of renewable power sources with zero-emission baseload power generation, the study says.

As part of the study, more than 3,000 residents of all ages and educational backgrounds were surveyed around the island. The survey found that 94 percent of the residents are interested in continuing to explore the option of nuclear energy for Puerto Rico; and second, residents rated their top priorities for power generation options as impact to health and environment, lower electricity bills and resistance to natural disasters.

The IRP estimates that fuel costs account for about 67 percent of the total price of delivered fuel at its generation stations. The overall net costs of electricity could increase as much as 30 percent to 50 percent by fiscal year 2024 through a transition charge levied to pay off more than $8 billion in PREPA’s outstanding legacy debt.

“This will place Puerto Rico’s electricity prices among the highest in all U.S. jurisdictions, second only to the U.S. Virgin Islands and some regions of Alaska,” the study says.

“Advanced nuclear reactors provide a combination of reduced electricity costs, zero-emission baseload electricity and minimal dependency on fuel imports that can lead to a strong degree of energy security and reliability much needed for a robust manufacturing and industrial sector in Puerto Rico,” the study contends. “A strong local industry translates into job creation, economic growth, additional exports, and global competition and innovation expansion, among many other [benefits].”

The study notes that microreactors can support the required retirement of 74 percent of the aging PREPA generation fleet and expedient installation of new capacity to ensure a reliable grid and power supply.

The design of nuclear reactors against extreme natural events is stricter than any other power generation asset being considered for the island, the study says, and the delivery of electricity from nuclear reactors can be cost competitive when compared with natural gas generation from mobile gas units.

Like all U.S. nuclear power plants, it is expected that the Puerto Rico nuclear plant’s low-level waste would be shipped to a U.S. licensed low-level waste disposal facility on an as needed basis and high-level spent fuel safely stored on site and later shipped to a long-term high-level waste storage facility in the mainland U.S., according to the study.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

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The project behind a front page full of names

By JOHN GRIPPE

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nstead of the articles, photographs or graphics that normally appear on the front page of The New York Times, on Sunday, there was just a list: a long, solemn list of people whose lives were lost to the coronavirus pandemic.

As the death toll from COVID-19 in the United States approaches 100,000, a number expected to be reached in the coming days, editors at the Times have been planning how to mark the grim milestone.

Simone Landon, assistant editor of the Graphics desk, wanted to represent the number in a way that conveyed both the vastness and the variety of lives lost.

Departments across the Times have been robustly covering the coronavirus pandemic for months. But Landon and her colleagues realized that “both among ourselves and perhaps in the general reading public, there’s a little bit of a fatigue with the data.”

“We knew we were approaching this milestone,” she added. “We knew that there should be some way to try to reckon with that number.”

Putting 100,000 dots or stick figures on a page “doesn’t really tell you very much about who these people were, the lives that they lived, what it means for us as a country,” Landon said. So, she came up with the idea of compiling obituaries and death notices of COVID-19 victims from newspapers large and small across the country, and culling vivid passages from them.

Alain Delaquérière, a researcher, combed through various sources online for obituaries and death notices with COVID-19 written as the cause of death. He compiled a list of nearly a thousand names from hundreds of newspapers. A team of editors from across the newsroom, in addition to three graduate student journalists, read them and gleaned phrases that depicted the uniqueness of each life lost: “Alan Lund, 81, Washington, conductor with ‘the most amazing ear’ … ” “Theresa Elloie, 63, New Orleans, renowned for her business making detailed pins and corsages … ” “Florencio Almazo Morán, 65, New York City, one-man army … ” “Coby Adolph, 44, Chicago, entrepreneur and adventurer … ”

Landon compared the result to a “rich tapestry” that she could not have woven by herself. Clinton Cargill, assistant editor on the National desk, was Landon’s “editing co-pilot,” she said. Other key players in the project were Matt Ruby, deputy editor of Digital News Design; Annie Daniel, a software engineer; and the graphics editors Jonathan Huang, Richard Harris and Lazaro Gamio. Andrew Sondern, an art director, is behind the print design.

Marc Lacey, National editor, had warned Tom Bodkin, chief creative officer of The Times, that the milestone was coming. “I wanted something that people would look back on in 100 years to understand the toll of what we’re living through,” Lacey said in an email.

For the front page of the paper, two ideas stood out: either a grid of hundreds of pictures of those who had lost their lives to COVID-19, or an “all type” concept, Bodkin said. Whichever approach was chosen, he said, “we wanted to take over the entire page.”

The all-type concept came to the fore.

Such a treatment “would be hugely dramatic,” he said.

The design references that of centuriesold newspapers, which Bodkin is keenly interested in. For many years after The Times started publishing in 1851, there were no headlines, in the modern sense.

“It was kind of running text with little subheads,” Bodkin said, describing newspapers in the mid-1800s.

Bodkin said he did not remember any front pages without images during his 40 years at The Times, “though there have been some pages with only graphics,” he said, adding, “This is certainly a first in modern times.”

Inside the paper, the list continues, threaded with an essay by Dan Barry, a Times reporter and columnist. But mostly there are names. More names, and more lives lost.

The front page of the May 24, 2020 Late Edition of The New York Times.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

Summer in lockdown: 5 Families mull a spoiled season

From left, Nael, Lisandro, Arianna, and Adrian Genao in Brooklyn’s Highland Park.

By ELIZA SHAPIRO

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olly and Amaya Diaz were hoping to spend July and August in the sun, playing softball. Nael Genao was planning a big trip out of the country. Amy Tsai’s five children were supposed to be in math programs or day camp, finally leaving her time and space to catch up on work.

When New York City’s public schools shuttered in March, it was hard to imagine that the city’s 1.1 million public school students and their families would still be in lockdown at the end of the school year.

But with quarantine now looking like the new normal in the national epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, families across New York are steeling themselves.

“It’s been tough so far on our kids; it’s going to in some ways be even tougher as the summer goes on,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said last week.

Nearly 180,000 children will be asked to attend summer school, but that still leaves about 85% of public school students with little to do in July and August. Pools will be closed through the summer, and city beaches are closed for swimming.

Here’s how parents and children in each of the five boroughs are preparing for a strange summer.

The Genaos: Bushwick, Brooklyn Nael Genao had her family’s summer

agenda all settled before the coronavirus hit the city. They were going to take a longawaited trip to the Dominican Republic and hold their annual July 4 party, which coincides with Genao’s birthday July 3.

Genao’s son, Adrian, 16, had planned to find a job through the city’s summer youth employment program, save up some money and spend his free time playing basketball.

Her daughter, Arianna, 10, was going to attend a voluntary summer school program.

But the youth employment program has been canceled, and schools are unlikely to reopen this summer.

“We have to come up with a plan,” Genao said.

If it is safe, Genao’s husband will return to work at a building supply company, and Adrian may join him there part-time.

Genao is building an exercise regimen that she and Arianna can practice in a neighborhood park, away from Bushwick’s crowded commercial stretches.

The Perezes: Jackson Heights, Queens After Gicel Perez, a freshman at the University at Buffalo, decided to major in public health, she made what seemed like the perfect plan for the summer: She would volunteer at Elmhurst Hospital, just a few blocks from her family’s apartment.

But shortly after Perez, 18, came home for spring break, Elmhurst became the hardest-hit hospital in the city. She never

went back to Buffalo and instead spent March and April listening to the stream of sirens blaring outside.

The crisis at Elmhurst made her mother and stepfather anxious, so the family has not left their two-bedroom apartment much.

“It’s like bumper cars in here,” Perez said.

She and her two younger brothers sleep in bunk beds in one bedroom, and the boys sometimes burst through the door when she is studying.

She goes out only to volunteer with a group that delivers food and supplies to families in Jackson Heights.

Perez has already dug into her savings from a job at Old Navy last summer to help pay for groceries. Her school offers online summer classes, but her financial aid package does not cover them.

While watching her brothers ride their bicycles in circles around their small garage, she daydreams about being back at college.

“I’m hoping and praying that next year is way better,” she said, “and that the pandemic ends soon so that I can get back on track.”

The McClanahans: Norwood, Bronx Amy Tsai’s challenge for the summer is making it as bearable as possible for her five children, who range in age from 5 to 14.

The summer typically looks much like the school year: Her eldest son, Seanmichael’s McClanahan, who is on the autism spectrum and visually impaired, attends school year-round to receive specialized services. He is one of thousands of children with disabilities whose crucial routines have been upended during the crisis.

Seanmichael’s will be one of nearly 28,000 students with advanced special needs who will continue remote learning through July and most of August. But he will miss the familiarity of being with his classmates in person, which is especially important given his needs, his mother said.

Two of Tsai’s other children always looked forward to their summer day camp, and the other two previously attended a summer math and engineering program at their local public school.

This year, she will try some free online learning classes for her youngest children in the hopes of getting them ready for

school again.

The Diazes: East Harlem Summer means softball for Dolly and Amaya Diaz, 17-year-old twins who have been playing the game since they were toddlers.

And this summer was going to be a culmination of all those years of practice: The girls were going to travel to Florida for their last year of training camp and coach and mentor younger players at their school, DREAM Charter. The school is planning to keep a version of the program going online if the lockdown does not lift in the summer.

“I would rather be safe in my house than go outside and risk me getting the virus,” said Amaya.

She and her sister are preparing for the possibility that they may not be able to play outside at all and have begun to tally what they will miss during their last summer of high school.

There is the 116th Street Festival each June, when neighbors flood the streets to eat Puerto Rican food and dance. There is the big softball game their school arranges each summer, when the girls reunite with students they’ve coached.

“Missing that is going to be difficult this year,” Amaya said.

For now, Dolly and Amaya are doing YouTube workout videos sent by their coaches — squats, pushups and wrist exercises — to get them ready for whenever they can throw a softball again.

Until then, the twins and their mother, Nancy Diaz, will continue to gather in the living room each night to watch a movie.

Nancy Diaz isn’t expecting much fun this summer. Mostly, she said, “I miss watching them play.”

The Carberrys: Westerleigh, Staten Island The summer camp at the local YMCA has been a godsend for Alisha Carberry’s family in years past.

Her two girls — Reagan, 6, and Avery, 8 — usually spent July and August swimming and playing soccer with their friends from early morning until late afternoon so that their parents could work full days — he in construction and she in training and finance at Northwell Health, the largest hospital system in the city.

Continues on page 9

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

9

Black Coronavirus patients land in hospitals more often, study finds

By RONI CARYN RABIN

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s the coronavirus spread across the United States, sweeping through low-income, densely populated communities, black and Hispanic patients died at higher rates than white patients.

Crowded living conditions, poorer overall health and limited access to care have been blamed, among other factors.

But a new study suggests that the disparity was particularly acute for black patients.

Among those seeking medical care for COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, black patients were hospitalized at nearly three times the rate of white and Hispanic patients, according to an analysis of patient records from a large health care system in Northern California.

The disparity remained even after researchers took into account differences in age, sex, income and the prevalence of chronic health problems that exacerbate COVID-19, like hypertension and Type 2 diabetes.

The finding suggests that black patients may have had limited access to medical care or that they postponed seeking help until later in the course of their illness, when the disease was more advanced.

Black patients were also far less likely than white, Hispanic or Asian patients to have been tested for the virus before going to the emergency room for care.

Black patients “are coming to us later and sicker, and they’re accessing our care through the emergency department and acute care environment,” said Dr. Stephen Lockhart, the chief medical officer at Sutter Health in Sacramento and one of the authors of the new study.

Black patients were hospitalized at nearly three times the rate of white and Hispanic patients, California researchers found.

The study, which was peer reviewed, was published in Health Affairs.

Delayed care may give the virus more time to spread through households and neighborhoods, Lockhart and his colleagues concluded. The delays also suggest that minority patients continue to face barriers despite California’s broad expansion of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. “How soon you access care, even supportive care, affects how you experience illness and how much pain and suffering you have,” said Kristen Azar, a research scientist at Sutter Health who was the study’s lead author.

She added, “While we don’t necessarily have treatments at this point, there are therapies being developed, and identifying people early on as these

treatments become available will be important in order to prevent poor outcomes, like death and being put on ventilators.”

Dr. Clyde Yancy, chief of cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said the granular study of patient records bolstered cruder public health reports of higher COVID-19 death rates among black Americans.

The data confirm that socioeconomic factors play an outsize role in influencing health status and vulnerability to infection, he added.

“Where and how we live contributes greatly to our health,” said Yancy, who has written about health disparities and the pandemic.

The new study analyzed the electronic health records of 1,052 confirmed COVID-19 patients who sought care bet-

ween Jan. 1 and April 8 at Sutter Health, a health system serving 3.5 million patients in Northern California.

More than half of the 61 black patients who tested positive for the coronavirus were admitted to hospitals, compared with about one-quarter or fewer of the Hispanic, white and Asian patients who tested positive.

Black patients were also more likely than the others to be so sick that they required treatment in an intensive care unit.

Even after the investigators factored out a number of differences between patient groups, black patients were still 2.7 times more likely than others to require hospitalization when they sought care.

“The important thing we found in this study is that even when we were accounting for all those things, race mattered,” Lockhart said. “That’s a message that’s incredibly important as we think about going forward.”

The study was too small to detect differences in death rates among the patient groups, the authors said. In California as a whole, however, black residents are bearing a disproportionate burden of COVID-19 deaths.

Black residents make up 6% of the state’s population and roughly the same percentage of the state’s COVID-19 cases.

But black patients represented 10.3% of COVID-19-related deaths as of May 13, according to the California Department of Public Health.

One limitation of the study was that researchers did not make adjustments for obesity. Rates of obesity are somewhat higher among black people, and obesity has emerged as a risk factor in patients with more severe complications from COVID-19.

Summer in lockdown: 5 Families mull a spoiled season From page 8 But Carberry has been planning for a tough summer ever since school was shuttered in March.

“I had a feeling there would be no camp.

These are such extraordinary times; you can’t expect life to just snap back to normal right away,”

she said. It is not yet clear if the YMCA’s day camp will be able to open, and Carberry is wondering if there would be a safe way to hire a babysitter for the summer so she could continue to work.

Her husband, Chris Carberry, has been home for a few weeks but is hoping to return to work soon. And Alisha Carberry has rarely been busier, since her work is right at the center of

New York’s coronavirus crisis.

In the meantime, she is thinking of ways to stave off the loneliness and sadness her typically bubbly daughters have been wrestling with. “I don’t want it to be scarier than it needs to be for them,” she said.

Family members are determined to hold some version of their summer kickoff party, which

usually brings about 100 friends and neighbors to their backyard — even if it’s just the four of them and a few close friends meeting outside.

Alisha Carberry said she reminded her children frequently to be grateful and that the quarantine could have been so much harder.

But, she said, “we can grieve the things we are missing at the same time.”

10

Monday, May 25, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

After 17 years underground, cicadas stage a 2020 southern invasion

By MARIA CRAMER

Periodical cicadas have the longest life span of any insect, but they spend only a sliver of their days in the sun.

The billions that are left alive can then mate in peace and lay their eggs. The adults quickly die off after their work is done. Once their eggs hatch, the nymphs fall to the ground, where they will nestle into the earth for the next 17 years.

Entomologists believe that periodical cicadas evolved to emerge every 13 to 17 years to avoid syncing up with the population booms of their predators.

The predictability of the cycle makes it possible for farmers to plan ahead, he said.

For that reason, Pfeiffer recommends that growers avoid planting new trees in the year or two leading up to an emergence, he said.

Noonkester said she expected that cicadas would come from other parts of the state and descend soon on her young trees to lay eggs. All she can do, she said, besides hoping that a majority of them will stick to the forest, is prune any twigs that they do damage and keep grabbing and stomping errant cicadas.

“There goes one flying over me now — I couldn’t reach him,” she said. “He’s flying into the woods. He knows better.”

Noonkester said.

Noonkester said she had heard the familiar buzz saw sound of the cicadas on a recent Sunday and had immediately thought of the scene in “The Shining” in which Jack Nicholson bursts through a door with an ax and announces “Here’s Johnny!”

She has sprayed the orchard grounds with poison to keep down the number of emerging nymphs, as young cicadas are called, but has been careful to leave the trees alone. Noonkester said she did not want to kill the spiders and other predators that eat the cicadas.

“We like our meat eaters,” said Noonkester, who also does her part to hunt the insects. (If she sees a recently hatched cicada on a leaf, she grabs it, throws it to ground and stomps on it with a parting message: “Take that, you fool.”)

Individually, cicadas are helpless. When they shed their exoskeletons, their wings are wet, and they must wait for them to dry before they can fly off, making them vulnerable to predators who grab them and gobble them up. The insects also fall easily into ponds, where frogs and turtles can snatch them.

Their primary defense? Sheer numbers.

Shortly after a brood emerges, predators are quickly overwhelmed by the insects’ abundance.

“Predators can’t make a dent in the population,” said Doug Pfeiffer, a professor of entomology at Virginia Tech.

After growing underground for 13 to 17 years, a brood will come out to breed.

T

hey break through the ground, like the undead emerging from graves.

They scuttle in huge packs in the same direction, through the forest floor and up trees where they settle on the branches. There, they break out of their exoskeletons, at first sickly white and soft before they take on their red-eyed, coal-black adult form and fly off by the billions.

After 17 years as nymphs growing underground and feeding on tree roots, cicadas are back across much of the South, much to the delight of the raccoons, turtles and birds that gorge on them and the entomologists who have waited patiently for their return.

“They’re big, they’re noisy,” said Eric Day, an entomologist at Virginia Tech. “What’s not to love about them?”

Periodical cicadas have the longest life span of any insect, but they spend only a sliver of their days in the sun. After growing underground for 13 to 17 years, a brood will come out in one of 15 specific regions of the United States, the only country in the world where they are found. This year, males have already started calling out to females in southwest Virginia, West Virginia and parts of North Carolina, the mating grounds of Brood IX. Typically around this time, Day starts getting calls for advice from nervous brides and grooms fearful that cicadas will drop in Champagne flutes or disrupt outdoor ceremonies with their loud buzzing, he said. (The sound is made only by the male, which has a membrane in its abdomen that vibrates to attract females.)

But with the coronavirus limiting gatherings, this could be a good time for Southerners to sit in their backyards and marvel at the creatures, Day said. Some may even be tempted to eat them, according to Day, who in the past has fried them up with sake and garlic.

“This is a biological phenomenon,” he said. “So we can observe them and maybe even enjoy them.”

Debbe Noonkester has no such plans. Noonkester, who owns Windy Hill Orchards in Ararat, Virginia, near the North Carolina border, said she was worried about the damage the cicadas could do to her young apple and peach trees.

Cicadas are not poisonous — a big part of their appeal to animals — and they do not harm humans.

But they lay enormous quantities of eggs on small twigs, which does little damage to mature trees but can stunt the growth of young trees and vines, or even kill them.

“They’re like those old horror movies,”

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

11

Hertz, car rental pioneer, files for bankruptcy protection

By NIRAJ CHOKSHI

H

ertz, which started with a fleet of a dozen Ford Model T’s a century ago and became one of the world’s largest car rental companies, filed for bankruptcy protection on Friday after falling victim to its mountain of debt.

The coronavirus pandemic has devastated Hertz by grounding business travelers and tourists, making it impossible for the company to continue paying its lenders. A sharp drop in used car prices has also decreased the value of its fleet.

“They were doing quite well, but when you turn off the revenues and you own all these cars and all of a sudden the cars are worth less it’s a very tough business,” said John Healy, an analyst and managing director with Northcoast Research in Cleveland.

Hertz said late Friday that it would use more than $1 billion in cash on hand to keep its business running while it proceeds with the bankruptcy process.

“Today’s action will protect the value of our business, allow us to continue our operations and serve our customers, and provide the time to put in place a new, stronger financial foundation to move successfully through this pandemic and to better position us for the future,” Paul E. Stone, its chief executive, said in a statement.

The bankruptcy filing excludes operations in Australia, Europe and New Zealand as well as the company’s franchisee locations. Hertz also said that it had sought aid from the federal government but that funding for its industry “did not become available.”

Though it had piled up $17 billion in debt, Hertz, which also owns the Dollar and Thrifty brands, was reporting healthy sales at the start 2020. The company’s revenue rose 6% in January and February.

But the pandemic dealt what the company has described as “a rapid, sudden and dramatic” blow. Sales dried up in March as much of the world started to shelter at home. Airports, where Hertz and its competitor Avis Budget Group earn most of their revenue, turned into ghost towns.

By late March, the company started

The pandemic dealt what Hertz has described as “a rapid, sudden and dramatic” blow. Sales dried up in March as much of the world started to shelter at home. to cut back on spending, sold some of its cars, furloughed workers and combined nearby outposts. Hertz management suggested that they had some room to maneuver, including access to $1 billion in cash.

“Hertz is a resilient company, with resilient brands and resilient people,” its chief executive, Kathryn Marinello, said in a statement at the time.

But Marinello resigned last week, and Hertz has since laid off or furloughed 20,000 employees, half of its work force.

The company had cut pay for senior leaders in March, too, but reversed that decision recently.

The company’s march to bankruptcy began in late April when it missed a payment on a lease for some of its fleet, which includes about 667,000 cars, SUVs and other vehicles worldwide. It persuaded lenders to give it until midnight on Friday to put together a financial plan that they could accept. But in a filing this month, Hertz acknowledged the enormity of the task.

“If our business does not recover quickly and we are unable to successfully restructure our substantial indebtedness, obtain further waivers or forbearance or raise additional capital, there is substantial

doubt that we will be able to continue as a going concern,” the company said.

Hertz had struggled in the years after the financial crisis of 2008 but had begun to turn around recently. Under Marinello, the company had improved operations, cut costs and reduced its debt, analysts said.

“I have no doubt that had the coronavirus not happened that Hertz would have eventually achieved its turnaround,” said Ryan Brinkman, an automotive industry analyst with J.P. Morgan.

The company’s shares closed on Friday at $2.84, down from around $20 in late February. Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor, owned about 39% of the company’s shares as of mid-March.

Its peers were better suited for the moment. Avis Budget Group, which has less debt, said last month that it had access to enough cash to survive the year.

Avis, which also raised $500 million in a bond sale this month, acted more quickly to cut costs, analysts said. Enterprise, a private company, is better diversified and not nearly as reliant on rentals at airports as either Avis or Hertz.

When Marinello took the helm of Hertz in early 2017, she inherited a troubled company.

In addition to amassing a lot of debt,

Hertz had recently purchased too many compact cars, which have been falling out of favor with American drivers for years, and failed to meet corporate costcutting goals. Her predecessor spun off the company’s equipment rental business.

Earlier, Hertz decided to move its headquarters from New Jersey to Florida, which led many seasoned executives to leave the company.

“The company lost a lot of momentum during that time,” Marinello told investors soon after taking over. She was the company’s fourth boss in three years. And Hertz had been poorly served by “incredibly optimistic demand forecasts” and misguided car purchases, she said.

By some accounts, the company’s modern difficulties date to 2012. That year, Hertz, under the leadership of Mark Frissora, bought Dollar Thrifty in a deal valued at $2.3 billion, a price that some investors and analysts believed was too rich.

“That was the beginning of their troubles,” said Betsy Snyder, a credit analyst at S&P Global Ratings.

In mid-2014, Hertz said it would need to correct its financial results going back three years because of a string of accounting errors. A few months later, Frissora stepped down.

The bankruptcy filing represents a devastating blow to an institution that began in the early days of the American automobile industry.

Hertz was founded in Chicago in 1918 when a former Ford Motor salesman, Walter Jacobs, bought a dozen Model T’s and formed Rent-a-Car, Inc. The business grew rapidly and, within five years, it had a fleet of about 600 vehicles, according to Hertz.

In 1923, Jacobs sold the company to John Hertz, the owner of Chicago Yellow Cab Co., who renamed it. Together, the pair expanded the business nationwide. In 1932, the company opened its first airport car rental facility at Chicago’s Midway Airport, according to Hertz. The next year, it started offering one-way rentals. By 1955, the company had more than 1,000 locations worldwide. Today, there are more than 12,000 corporate and franchisee locations.

12

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

Stocks

Wall Street Week ahead: Investors look beyond drug makers as hunt for COVID-19 treatment heats up

I

nvestors are diversifying bets in the healthcare sector, as the rush to develop treatments for Covid-19 has driven up prices for some pharmaceutical stocks.

A record 48% of fund managers are overweight healthcare stocks, a BofA survey showed, and the S&P 500 healthcare sector is up nearly 34% since its March low. Hopes for a treatment have also sparked outsize rallies in the shares of companies such as Moderna and Inovio Pharmaceutcials, up 253% and 327% since the start of the year, respectively, as of Friday’s close.

In recent weeks, news of potential treatments or vaccines to fight the pandemic have occasionally fueled swings in broader markets.

Yet some fund managers believe lasting profits may be elusive for vaccine-makers, leading them to seek corners of the healthcare sector that could see longer-term benefits from the fight against coronavirus.

Large pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline Plc have said they plan to make any successful vaccine available at cost, though they could reap profits later if a seasonal shot is needed. Multiple treatments could also divide the market between many players, investors said.

“There’s the question of ‘Does anyone really make a lot of money on this?,” said Larry Cordisco, co-portfolio manager of the Osterweis Fund.

Signs of progress on potential treatments could bolster the case for a quicker economic recovery and further fuel the rally that has boosted the S&P 500 around 30% from its late March lows. In the next two weeks, Gilead Sciences is expected to announce results of clinical studies of its potential coronavirus treatment remdesivir for patients with moderate symptoms of Covid-19. Pfizer has said it expects to release safety data for initial human testing of experimental vaccine by the end of May. Cordisco is looking further afield. One of the companies he owns is medical device maker Danaher Corp, which manufactures a rapid Covid-19 test the FDA approved in March. Its shares are up 3.1% since the start of the year.

“If you’re looking for where the profits might be in the chain, it’s somebody like that who is going to benefit. They can cash in the whole way,” Cordisco said.

Alessandro Valentini, portfolio manager at Causeway Capital Management, said his firm is looking for value opportunities as the healthcare sector becomes more expensive, trading now at 22.9 times trailing earnings, slightly more than the 21.9 multiple of the S&P 500 index as a whole.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

13

‘I am just Hong Kong’: A city’s fate in China’s hands

By HANNAH BEECH

H

ong Kong was born at the crossroad of empires, a hybrid of British and Chinese parentage. It may fade there, too.

This “barren rock,” as an envoy of Queen Victoria once called it, transformed into one of the world’s first truly global cities, a place where international finance has thrived as its people created a cultural identity all their own. Even the territory’s current political system is bound by a negotiated settlement, called “one country, two systems,” that, despite all odds and an inelegant moniker, seemed to work.

But this past week, Hong Kong discovered the limits to the middle ground that it has carved out to nourish one of the most prosperous and dynamic cities on Earth: between East and West, between rice and bread, between a liberal and an authoritarian order.

The territory’s fate is once again being decided in faraway halls of power as Beijing moves forward with plans to strip some of the autonomy the territory was supposed to enjoy for 50 years after Britain returned it to China in 1997.

The death knell for Hong Kong has been sounded many times since that handover. But the proposed national security legislation could have crushing implications for a place so dedicated to the international language of commerce that the local form of English is stripped of embellishment: Can, no can?

Too often these days, the answer is “No can.”

The new national security laws, outlined at the annual session of China’s legislature Friday, will likely curtail some of the civil liberties that differentiate Hong Kong from the rest of the country.

And they take aim at the mass protest movement that showed the world last year the extent to which people were willing to go to protect their hybrid home.

“At the end of the day, we have to accept that we answer to one country,” said Nicholas Ho, the 33-year-old scion of a Hong Kong tycoon family. “And that country is more and more powerful.”

With tensions between the United States and China growing, some have characterized the fight for Hong Kong’s future as a skirmish in a more fundamental clash of civilizations. Beijing considers its intervention in Hong Kong a necessary move for maintaining the country’s sovereignty, while Washington considers it a full-frontal attack on the city’s autonomy.

In both worldviews, Hong Kong again is caught in the middle.

Either the territory is poised for a return to protest politics — the sort of running street battles that shattered the city’s reputation as an orderly center of international finance — or the latest national security diktats from Beijing will only serve to drive away the commerce and capital Hong Kong needs to flourish.

And both outcomes are possible.

Douglas Young started a home décor and fashion brand called G.O.D. that plays with Western notions of orientalism and celebrates totems of Hong Kong life: puns that mix Cantonese and English, breakfasts of macaroni soup, kung fu films that deliver a kick to Hollywood.

He is, he admits, a typical Hong Kong mishmash. Even with his posh English accent, impeccable manners and boarding

school pedigree, he is, at 54, old enough to remember what life was like under the British, when Hong Kong Chinese couldn’t easily enter certain clubs.

But Young also rattles off the democratic touchstones that he says make Hong Kong special: rule of law, freedom of expression and an independent judiciary. These are the civil liberties that some fear are at risk under Beijing’s proposed national security legislation.

“I’m worried that Hong Kong people are becoming secondclass citizens in our own city again,” Young said. “Is our fate to always feel colonized?”

Identity Politics Since British gunships secured its rocky outcroppings nearly 180 years ago in the opium wars, Hong Kong has evolved into something unique: an enclave bound by Western ideals yet populated by Chinese people who speak a language, Cantonese, that is believed to be more ancient than the one used across mainland China.

Last year, more than 90% of young people here said they considered themselves to be from Hong Kong, not China, according to a University of Hong Kong poll, the highest number since the survey began more than a decade ago.

As proud as they are of their Hong Kong identity, people here don’t always know what to call themselves. In English, some say Hong Kongers, others Hong Kongese. Still others use the unwieldy, if factual, term Hong Kong people.

Whatever they are called, many share in a rejection of China that embodies Beijing’s soft-power failure, an inability to capture the hearts of a populace that should have been naturally sympathetic to it. The British had stinted on political reform in Hong Kong until the twilight of their rule. Meanwhile, the Communist Party transformed China’s backward, agrarian society into the world’s second-largest economy. Hong Kong profited.

In 2008, when Beijing hosted the Summer Olympics, Hong Kong fielded its own team, as befitted a city governed under the “one country, two systems” model. But the five stars of the Chinese flag flew proudly in the city. Hong Kong residents who had fled for safe harbor in countries like Canada or Australia returned.

More than a decade on, the disappointments have accumulated.

Just as under colonial rule, the people of Hong Kong can neither choose their own leader nor fully shape how their government is run. Promised political reforms never materialized.

Booksellers critical of Chinese leadership were snatched from the streets of Hong Kong and ended up in China.

The catalyst for last year’s mass protests, a now-revoked extradition bill, underlined Beijing’s ability to at any moment threaten Hong Kong’s freedoms.

Starting last June, an acute sense of anxiety about the future brought millions of peaceful marchers to the streets. Fury at the police — for deploying rubber bullets and tear gas against holiday shoppers and students alike — fueled each subsequent rally, even as unease grew over front-line agitators unleashing Molotov cocktails.

Cathy Yau was raised by a single mother in one of those tiny flats that, Tetris-like, form the cramped architecture of Hong Kong. She attended a school with a pro-China curriculum and

Televisions in Hong Kong showed reports about Beijing’s plans to impose national security legislation. worked for 11 years as a police officer. Last summer, as the protests blazed, she quit the force.

“I could not face a job where we were ordered to use tear gas on normal people like they were criminals,” she said. “That’s against the core values of Hong Kong.”

In November, Yau, 36, ran for district council and beat the pro-establishment incumbent. While the position holds little power, the electorate’s overwhelming support for pro-democratic candidates reflected the angry mood in Hong Kong.

The pressure has continued to intensify. In January, China replaced its top representative in the city with a senior official known for his harsh stance on security. Some of Hong Kong’s most august pro-democracy figures were arrested last month. The latest salvo, the national security legislation, does not surprise Yau. “This is the Communist Party,” she said. “This is what will happen eventually. The only question is when.

“I grew up raising the Chinese flag in school every day, but I feel nothing,” she added. “I don’t know what I am. I don’t know where I’m going. I’m just Hong Kong.”

Voting With Their Feet The generation that built Hong Kong from the middle of the last century, powering its workshops and raising its skyscrapers, was never rooted in the territory.

Many residents came here fleeing unrest in China, most notably after the 1949 Communist revolution. The inflow continued even after 1997, when the Union Jack was lowered for the last time. Since the handover to Chinese rule, more than 1 million Chinese from the mainland have moved to Hong Kong to enjoy its commitment to commerce, rule of law and education.

Even if fortunes were made in the city, a refugee mentality still defined the city’s elite. Most anyone who’s anyone in Hong Kong has a foreign passport, just in case.

But many of their children, especially those who have come of age since Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule, feel differently.

This is home — not Canada, not Australia and certainly not China.

Besides, for the 1 in 5 people in Hong Kong who live below the poverty line, there is no escape hatch to another country.

They cannot purchase foreign citizenship.

For them, protecting Hong Kong is a matter of defending the only future they have, a future that is looking increasingly bleak.

14

Monday, May 25, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

European defense and ‘strategic autonomy’ are also Coronavirus victims

By STEVEN ERLANGER

T

he coronavirus has upended the best-laid plans and priorities of many, including the European Union. But one of the biggest casualties may be European efforts to build a more credible and independent European military.

For several years, especially since President Donald Trump came to office with his skepticism about NATO, European alliances and multilateral obligations, leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron have been pushing for what he has called European “strategic autonomy,” the ability to defend Europe and act militarily in its neighborhood without so much reliance on the United States.

But even before the virus hit so hard, and despite loud calls that the bloc was in greater peril from new technologies and a more aggressive Russia and China, the European Commission was already sharply slashing projected European military spending in the next seven-year budget.

Now, with the pandemic having cratered the economy, there will be an even fiercer battle of the budget. Recovery and jobs will have to be the priority, and Brussels continues to emphasize investment in a European “Green Deal” to manage the climate crisis. Military spending is highly likely to lose out, making cries for European boldness and selfreliance ring increasingly hollow.

“We Europeans truly need to take our fate in our own hands,” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said after Trump’s election.

In February, Macron called again for “a much stronger Europe in defense.”

And only last week, Josep Borrell Fontelles, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, said that the virus “will only increase the need for a stronger EU security and defense and for a stronger Europe in the world.” He pleaded for more funds, saying that “the pandemic is a new threat and will deteriorate our security environment.”

But despite such calls, a modest trend toward more European military spending is likely to be reversed. European governments were struggling bitterly over the size of the bloc budget, especially after the hole left by Brexit, even before the virus added new elements of uncertainty and massive fiscal deficits.

Washington’s chaotic and self-centered response to the virus has made Europeans feel even more vulnerable.

“This pandemic has been another nail in the coffin of European trust in U.S. leadership,” said Radoslaw Sikorski, a European legislator and former Polish defense minister. “But if the idea of European autonomy has been strengthened by this crisis, the ability to finance it has been put on ice.”

Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, was blunt.

“If there’s no money for it, then you’re not serious about it,” he said.

Two years ago, the Europeans created, with much fanfare, two important programs — one for collective military procurement and investment on projects, known as Pesco and funded by participating nations; and another, the Euro-

Patrons on May 18, 2020, at a cafe in Milan, where a phased lifting of a lockdown is drawing mixed feelings.

pean Defense Fund, to promote military research and development, funded from the bloc’s new seven-year budget and projected at 13 billion euros, or 1.86 billion euros per year.

Pesco was a modest beginning, but the fund was a breakthrough, because it came from the collective budget.

Another key proposal, in agreement with NATO, was a mobility initiative of 6.5 billion euros, to facilitate moving heavy arms like artillery and tanks through Europe if a crisis broke out with Russia. Those capabilities, including reinforced bridges, railway carriages and bureaucratic permissions, had been largely abandoned with the Soviet collapse.

But now, after Russian wars against Georgia and Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea and increased Russian military pressure on Baltic nations, the idea of armed conflict with Moscow or its proxies no longer seems absurd. NATO enhanced deterrence by stationing troops along Russia’s borders — but NATO needed credible means to reinforce them.

But even in the European Union’s pre-virus negotiations over the next seven-year budget, more contentious than usual because of the gap created by Brexit, military spending was gutted. The European Commission cut the defense fund by more than half, to 6 billion euros. Proposed funding for military mobility dropped from 6.5 billion euros to 2.5 billion euros, then 1.5 billion euros, and now, in the latest proposal, to zero.

Now the Europeans are wrangling over how to include a massive virus recovery fund. Defense is barely discussed.

Some analysts, like Claudia Major of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, caution that the budget negotiations are not finished. Given the pandemic, Brussels may decide to have only a one- or two-year budget, postponing harder choices.

But the crises of six months ago have not gone away, cautioned Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of NATO. “If anything,” he said in an interview, “the virus amplifies the problems,” which range from Russia and China to cybersecurity, terrorism and civil wars in Libya and Syria.

In the past two years alone, he said, China has built 80 new ships and submarines, while both Russia and China are investing in new missiles, nuclear capability, drones, unmanned weapons and artificial intelligence.

He conceded that there is a struggle for investment now but insisted that NATO militaries had shown their usefulness during the pandemic and that “investing in defense can be a powerful engine for economic recovery.”

But it was obvious, Stoltenberg said, that “the European Union cannot defend Europe” without the United States.

He hoped Europe would do more on defense, “but it cannot replace NATO,” he said.

If Stoltenberg is reluctant to criticize the Europeans, Hodges is less shy.

“Any European leader who talks of strategic autonomy and a European army and can’t come up with a single euro for mobility — well, no one will take that seriously, either in the United States or among adversaries,” said Hodges, who works with the Center for European Policy Analysis.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

15

Is it time to stop clapping for health care workers? An organizer thinks so

By DERRICK BRYSON TAYLOR

O

n Thursday nights, Britons bang pots and pans and let out hearty cheers of support for doctors and nurses who care for coronavirus patients and for other essential workers amid the pandemic.

But the organizer behind the weekly ritual says it’s time for it to end, pointing to concerns that the act of recognizing the workers had become politicized.

Annemarie Plas, who started #ClapForOurCarers, said in an interview with the BBC on Friday that next week’s national applause, the 10th, should be the last. It’s unclear if the nightly clapping in other cities, including New York, where it began in late March and continues to go strong in some neighborhoods, will come to an end as well.

“I think that would be beautiful to be the end of the series, to maybe then stop and move to an annual moment,” Plas said. “I feel like this had its moment and then we can, after that, continue to something else.”

Plas said that she believed the ritual was “slowly shifting” and that other opinions had “started to rise to the surface,” referring to some criticism the movement has received. An opinion article in The Independent questioned the point of applauding if health care workers were underpaid.

And some National Health Service workers have said they felt “stabbed in the back” by people who ignore public health guidelines.

To date, the United Kingdom has reported more than 250,000 coronavirus infections and over 36,000 deaths. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans for reopening the country have been met with criticism and some confusion.

While Britons have shown their appreciation for health care workers, Plas said, it’s now time for people in power to “reward and give them the respect they deserve.”

Londoners applauded in support of British health care professionals and other essential workers on Thursday.

“I think to maintain the positive impact that it’s had so far, it’s best to stop at its peak,” she told the BBC. Plas did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

Clapping for essential workers isn’t unique to Britain. Similar daily or weekly events have taken place in Italy, Spain and across the United States.

Every evening at 7 in New York City, where more than 202,000 cases and over 20,000 deaths have been reported, cheers of support for essential workers can be heard across all five boroughs.

Candi Obrentz, an entrepreneur who lives in Midtown Manhattan, regularly shares clips of the nightly applause from her neighborhood on Twitter.

“If I’m home, I kind of hang out the window, and if I’m on the street, I stop wherever I am to participate,” Obrentz said on Saturday.

She said she understood Plas’ point of view but disagreed.

“I feel like just the gesture in itself is so important for our psyche,” she said, adding that the very act helped bring people together.

“Even if a health care worker isn’t hearing the clapping because they are at work and not hearing it, I do think it reminds the reveler, the clapper, that this is real and it’s still happening,” she said. “There’s no reason why we can’t, for two minutes every night, connect with each other.”

Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, said he thought that

the applause should continue and that it had united communities with health care workers.

“We’re here to do our jobs always,” Glatter said. “We don’t need the clapping. We’re here to take care of our patients, but it’s certainly a very positive feeling.”

Dr. Armando Castro, chairman of surgery at Long Island Jewish Forest Hills, a hospital in Queens, New York, said that the first time he experienced the clapping it nearly brought him to tears but that the practice should come to a close.

“It does have to come to its natural end,” Castro said. “And when that happens, it’s not going to mean that we are not appreciated and the work that we do and continue to do as health care workers is taken for granted in any way.”

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Monday, May 25, 2020

Argentina tries to escape default as it misses bond payment

By DANIEL POLITI

A

rgentina missed a bond payment on Friday and fell into default, plunging it into a new period of economic isolation and deepening a recession that has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

The missed deadline means Argentina has entered default for the ninth time in its history. But the government signaled that it was making progress toward a deal with creditors to restructure $66 billion in foreign debt and announced that negotiations would continue until June 2.

On Saturday, one of the major groups representing the country’s creditors said it had been invited to sign a nondisclosure agreement by Argentina’s government, suggesting negotiations could accelerate in the coming days.

The statement from the Exchange Bondholder Group, which is made up of eight investment institutions, came hours after Martín Guzmán, the country’s economy minister, told Bloomberg the government would be amending its offer to restructure the country’s debt. He did not go into details about what the new offer might entail.

President Alberto Fernández downplayed the missed payment and said the government would not accept a deal that deepens the economic pain for Argentines who have seen their earning power decimated by the pandemic.

“I want the world to see us as an honorable country that fulfills its commitments,” he said in a speech on Thursday night.

Argentina last defaulted on its debt in 2014, and its long history of spending beyond its means and defaulting on loans

The financial district in Buenos Aires stood empty on Thursday during a governmentordered lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19.

has given it a reputation as a deadbeat. But its current efforts to negotiate an advantageous restructuring of its debt have drawn broad support by prominent figures including Pope Francis and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a lawyer and recognized expert on bankruptcy and commercial law.

“With COVID-19 worsening an already weak economy, this is no time for Wall Street creditors to exploit any country struggling to deal with debt burdens,” Warren wrote on Twitter recently. “A fair deal will help save more lives.”

A group of 138 economists, including the Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Edmund Phelps, signed an open letter urging Argentina’s creditors to come to an agreement with the insolvent country. The International Monetary Fund has also expressed optimism about the negotiations to restructure Argentina’s debt, which it has characterized as “unsustainable.”

Guzmán, who is leading the negotiations, expressed optimism that the country would avoid a prolonged default.

“Argentina is holding constructive negotiations with its creditors,” he said in an email. “The positive thing about all this is that there is a willingness from all sides to seal a deal, now the agreement needs to be an agreement that is sustainable.”

Hans Humes, the CEO of Greylock Capital Management, who is involved in the negotiations, said Thursday during a panel discussion hosted by the Wilson Center that the consequences of Argentina technically slipping into default on Friday would be minimal in the short term.

“There should be enough flexibility to get to a deal that’s acceptable,” he said, sounding upbeat about the ongoing negotiations.

The government’s initial offer to cred-

itors, which was roundly rejected, called for a three-year grace period on future payments, a 5.4% reduction in the loan balance and a 62% cut in interest payments.

Argentina had initially offered to pay about 40 cents on the dollar, while creditors demanded 60 cents. Analysts say the two sides appear closer to accepting a midpoint between 50 and 55 cents.

Argentina’s economy, which has been in a recession for more than two years, took a major hit after the government imposed a strict lockdown in mid-March to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Analysts said there would be no significant consequences to Argentina missing the Friday deadline.

“A soft default doesn’t look like such a negative scenario compared to what we’re dealing with today,” said Todd Martinez, an expert on Argentina at Fitch Sovereign Ratings Group. “In practice, not a lot changes, although it may have some psychological impact.”

But if talks break down in coming days, Argentina will face a new, lengthy period of economic isolation and contraction.

“If it extends for a prolonged period of time, that is when you will start seeing difficulty to access credit for companies and people as well as complications in the exchange market and inflationary pressure,” said Daniel Marx, a former finance secretary who heads Quantum Finanzas, a consultancy.

Although polls show that Argentines would rather not fall into default, the issue has not dominated the news in recent days.

“I’m really not following it,” Victoria Ferreira, a 37-year-old venue manager, said.

“I’d rather worry about things I can solve.”

Living in Argentina, she added, means there is always “a context of uncertainty.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

17

Crumbs for the hungry but windfalls for the rich

By NICHOLAS KRISTOF

W

hile President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress seek to tighten access to food stamps, they are showing compassion for one group: zillionaires. Their economic rescue package quietly allocated $135 billion — yes, that’s “billion” with a “B” — for the likes of wealthy real estate developers.

My Times colleague Jesse Drucker notes that Trump himself, along with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, may benefit financially from this provision. The fine print was mysteriously slipped into the March economic relief package, even though it has nothing to do with the coronavirus and offers retroactive tax breaks for periods long before COVID-19 arrived.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas, both Democrats, have asked the Trump administration for any communications that illuminate how this provision sneaked into the 880-page bill. (Officially, the provision is called “Modification of Limitation on Losses for Taxpayers Other Than Corporations,” but that’s camouflage; I prefer to call it the “Zillionaire Giveaway.”)

About 82% of the Zillionaire Giveaway goes to those earning more than $1 million a year, according to Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation. Of those beneficiaries earning more than $1 million annually, the average benefit is $1.6 million.

In other words, a single mom juggling two jobs gets a maximum $1,200 stimulus check — and then pays taxes so that a real estate mogul can receive $1.6 million. This is dog-eat-dog capitalism for struggling workers and socialism for the rich.

Many Americans understand that Trump bungled the public health response to the coronavirus, but polls suggest that they don’t appreciate the degree to which Trump and Congress also bungled the economic response — or manipulated it to benefit those who least need help.

The United States simply accepted that the pandemic would cause vast numbers of workers to be laid off — and then it provided unemployment benefits. But Germany, France, Britain, Denmark and other countries took the smarter path of paying companies to keep workers on their payrolls, thus preventing layoffs in the first place. The United States did a little bit of this, but far less than Europe — yet the United States in some cases spent a larger share of gross domestic product on the bailout than Europe did.

So the unemployment rate in Germany and

A line to receive application forms for unemployment benefits in Hialeah, Fla., last month.

Denmark is forecast to reach about 5%, while in the United States it may already be about 20%, depending on how you count it.

It’s not fair to viruses to blame our unemployment crisis simply on the pandemic. It’s also our national choice.

At the same time, it has become increasingly clear that money intended to rescue small businesses has often gone not to those with the greatest need but rather to those with the most shameless lawyers.

They are part of our national equation: Power creates money creates more power creates more money.

One provision in the rescue package provides a tax break that benefits only companies with more than $25 million in gross receipts. AutoNation, a Fortune 500 company, received $77 million in small business funds, although it returned the sum after The Washington Post reported its haul. For-profit colleges, which are better known for exploiting students than educating them, have raked in $1.1 billion.

A Brookings Institution study found that young children in 1 in 6 U.S. households are not getting enough to eat because of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and we’re rushing to help … tycoons!

A Kaiser Family Foundation study found that because of layoffs, 27 million Americans as of May 2 were at risk of losing employer-sponsored health insurance. You might think that this would lead to a push for universal health coverage. But, no, the opposite: Trump is continuing to support a lawsuit to overturn the entire Affordable Care Act — and allow millions more to lose coverage.

During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt responded boldly to economic desperation by creating jobs, passing Social Security and

starting rural electrification. In this crisis, Trump is trying to restrict food stamps and health insurance while giving free money to real estate tycoons — probably including himself.

Of course, America does remain a land of opportunity, if you have the wealth. A new study determined that in the two months since March 18, roughly the start of the economic crisis, America’s billionaires saw their wealth collectively grow by 15%. And another 16 Americans became billionaires in that period. It’s great to see people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps!

The House of Representatives is trying to repeal the Zillionaire Giveaway, but Trump and his congressional allies are resisting. Trump meanwhile sees little need to help states and localities, which in April alone laid off more employees than in the entire Great Recession.

Trump was elected in part by voters angry at the way the system was rigged. But under Trump, the economy has become rigged ever more decisively, even as children go hungry and ordinary workers lose their jobs and their lives.

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Monday, May 25, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

The end of the New World Order

Some of the protesters against Gov. Jay Inslee’s stay-at-home order in Olympia, Wash., on May 9 carried signs doubting the dangers of the coronavirus.

By ROSS DOUTHAT

I

t’s a mistake to believe most conspiracy theories, but it’s also a mistake to assume that they bear no relation to reality. Some are just insane emanations or deliberate misinformation. But others exaggerate and misread important trends rather than denying them or offer implausible explanations for mysteries that nonetheless linger unexplained.

This is as true in the Trump era as in any other. Extraterrestrials are probably not among us, but we keep being handed new evidence that the UFO phenomenon is real.

QAnon is a landscape of fantasy, but the fact that powerful sexual predators have ties to presidents, popes and princes is a hard post-Jeffrey Epstein truth.

Sometimes, though, conspiracy theories outlive the reality that once sustained them, surging in popularity just as the real world is making their anxieties irrelevant. And something like that may be happening right now with conspiratorial thinking about the so-called New World Order.

On the one hand, the coronavirus is inspiring a surge of NWO paranoia, a renewed fear of elite cabals that aspire to rule the world. But at the same time, the actual new world

order, the dream of global integration and transnational governance, is disintegrating before our very eyes.

The phrase “New World Order” was lifted by the conspiracy-minded from the optimistic rhetoric of George H.W. Bush, and since then the paranoia and the facts have always existed symbiotically. The fantasy is looming totalitarian control, black helicopters descending, secret Bilderberg plots. But it’s been encouraged by various undeniable realities: the growth of transnational institutions, the manifest power of a global overclass, the often undemocratic expansion of the European Union, and the rise of digital surveillance and the ties binding China and the U.S. into “Chimerica.”

Now it’s being given new life by the response to the coronavirus, which is being cast as a pretext for some sort of one-worlder takeover — with Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci held up as potential masterminds, “test and trace” as a scheme for permanent surveillance.

These fears span the political spectrum, but because the global overclass tends to be secular and hostile to traditional religion, fears of one-world government have long been particularly strong (and flavored with end-times

anxiety) among conservative Christians. And in the current moment, with church closures as a precipitating force, such fears have reached even into the Catholic hierarchy, where at least two cardinals signed a statement written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò — a whistleblower against sex abuse cover-ups turned traditionalist gadfly — describing the coronavirus lockdowns as a possible “prelude to the realization of a world government beyond all control.”

But unlike in the 1990s or 2000s, when New World Order paranoia exaggerated real developments and trends, in the current moment the reality is the opposite of what is feared. Instead of leading to some sort of globalist consolidation, the rule of the coronavirus is unraveling internationalism everywhere you look.

The virus has exposed global entities as either weak and politically compromised, in the case of the World Health Organization, or all-but-irrelevant, in the case of the United Nations. It has restored or hardened borders, impeded migration, devolved power from the international to national and the national to local. And it has spurred renewed great-power rivalry, with “Chimerica” dissolving and a trans-Pacific Cold War looming.

Yes, some forms of test-and-trace may increase techindustry surveillance power. But in every other respect, the trends and institutions that provoke New World Order paranoia are likely to emerge from this crisis battered, discredited or permanently weakened.

The same counterpoint applies to the narrower, lessapocalyptic suggestion that the pandemic lockdowns are an expression of late-stage liberal cosmopolitanism, of the liberal technocrat’s obsession with physical health and state control. (My friends R.R. Reno of First Things and Daniel McCarthy of Modern Age have both offered variations on this argument.)

In reality, late-stage liberalism is obsessed with health and state supervision for the purposes of personal liberation, pleasure-seeking, tourism and commerce. So a period of lockdown and closed borders is not the apotheosis of liberal cosmopolitanism but its temporary negation. (And it’s not a coincidence that the most self-consciously secular and cosmopolitan of Western countries, Sweden, has kept the bars open and aimed for herd immunity instead.)

That temporary negation doesn’t mean the liberal order is about to give way to a new post-liberal age; and neither does the weakness of the WHO or the EU mean that globalism, ideological and institutional, will simply disappear. But in the post-pandemic era both liberalism and globalism may seem more like zombie ideologies, ghosts of the more ambitious and utopian past, than ascendant forces capable of inspiring either hope or fear.

And those who presently fear them, even to the point of paranoia and conspiracy, may come to realize that they were mistaking spasms for real strength and the bitter twilight of the globalist era for a new world order’s dawn.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

19

DTOP extiende vigencia de licencias y permisos hasta agosto Por THE STAR

E

l secretario del Departamento de Transportación y Obras Públicas, Carlos M. Contreras Aponte, informó el domingo que extenderán hasta el 31 de agosto la vigencia de las licencias de conducir en todas sus categorías, las licencias de gestor y/o gestoría, entre otros permisos.

Entre estos permisos están los de operar escuelas de conductores, los permisos en forma de rótulo removible para estacionar en áreas designadas para personas con impedimentos, las tarjetas de identificación que emite esa agencia y los permisos de exención de tintes en los cristales de los vehículos de motor, con fechas de vencimiento de marzo, abril, mayo, junio, julio y agosto de este año.

La Resolución 2020-11, firmada por el funcionario, enmienda la Resolución 2020-04, según enmen-

dada por las Resoluciones 2020-06, 2020-07 y 202008, entra en vigor de inmediato.

La vigencia de los marbetes vencidos en marzo, abril, mayo y junio se mantiene hasta el 30 de junio.

Según Contreras Aponte, “a diferencia de las licencias, identificaciones, permisos de tintes y de estacionamiento para personas con impedimentos, que dependen de la reapertura de los Centros de Servicios al Conductor (CESCO) para poder renovarlos, los marbetes pueden y están siendo renovados en más de 260 Estaciones Oficiales de Inspección de vehículos de motor disponibles alrededor de toda la Isla. Por tanto, hemos mantenido la extensión de vigencia de los marbetes hasta el 30 de junio”.

“Por supuesto, nos mantenemos atentos al movimiento de renovaciones y, de resultar necesario hacer alguna extensión adicional en el futuro, no se descarta”, añadió.

Senador busca que clientes de AEE tengan un alivio en factura Por THE STAR

C

on el objetivo de lograr de forma inmediata un alivio en el bolsillo del consumidor puertorriqueño, el portavoz senatorial del Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño (PIP), Juan Dalmau Ramírez, anunció el domingo la radicación de sendas resoluciones conjuntas que ofrecen un método que haría frente al aumento en la factura de electricidad.

Para proteger el bolsillo del consumidor de manera inmediata, el también candidato a la gobernación anunció la radicación de la Resolución Conjunta del Senado 552, que ordena a la Junta de Gobierno de la Autoridad de Energía Eléctrica (AEE) realizar ajustes a las facturas equivalentes al periodo de cuarentena, de sus clientes residenciales, como medida de justicia para afrontar la crisis económica producida por el Coronavirus (COVID-19) y su correspondiente desfase en el consumo de energía eléctrica.

“Desde el toque de queda impuesto por el gobierno el consumo energético residencial ha aumentado dramáticamente. El encierro familiar, a su vez acompañado por el aumento del uso de electrónicos para estudios y trabajo remoto, cocinar, y el entretenimiento, entre otros, obliga a consumir más electricidad. La Resolución Conjunta 552 ordena a la Junta de Gobierno de la AEE a realizar ajustes a las facturas residenciales de los meses de marzo, abril y mayo, utilizando como referente el consumo menor que haya sido facturado al consumidor residencial antes del toque de queda. Esto brinda un

alivio inmediato, no sólo económico, sino mental y emocional a cientos de miles de familias puertorriqueñas”, puntualizó el legislador independentista.

Por otra parte, para lograr un alivio a mediano y largo plazo, el senador Dalmau Ramírez presentó la Resolución Conjunta del Senado 551 que ordena al Negociado de Energía de Puerto Rico que revisen las tarifas vigentes de la AEE a los fines de determinar si ha traspasado al consumidor las reducciones que han ocurrido en el precio del combustible a nivel internacional y para tomar las medidas compensatorias correspondientes en caso de que no haya ocurrido ese traspaso.

“Todos en Puerto Rico estamos muy conscientes de la drástica reducción en el precio del petróleo y sus derivados que ha ocurrido en los pasados meses.

Ese cambio debió afectar el precio del combustible que compra la Autoridad de Energía Eléctrica para algunas de sus plantas generatrices. No obstante, ha habido muchas quejas de la clientela residencial y comercial de la AEE en el sentido de que no ven el impacto de la reducción en ese costo en la tarifa que mensualmente deben pagar. La presente medida le ordena al Negociado de Energía de Puerto Rico que realice una investigación para con el fin de determinar si la reducción en el costo del combustible que compra la AEE se refleja debidamente en las tarifas que han estado vigentes y puedan estar vigentes al momento de la medida entrar en vigor. En caso de que se determine que la tarifa debió ser menor se ordena al Negociado que fije una tarifa compensatoria”, subrayó Dalmau.

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Monday, May 25, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Spike Lee and the battlefield of American history

By REGGIE UGWU

I

t’s a funny thing, Zooming with Spike Lee. He’s remote, confined within a box within a box on your computer screen, yet somehow undiminished.

Maybe it’s the look — the ball cap and the glasses — or maybe it’s the way he looks at you. Lee has been staring directly into cameras for more than 30 years.

Think of his most famous characters — Mars Blackmon, from his 1986 feature, “She’s Gotta Have It,” and a series of Nike commercials with Michael Jordan; or Mookie from “Do the Right Thing” — and they’re confronting you head-on. This is Lee’s preferred stance: undaunted, in your face, eye to eye. And it works. Even on a stuttering videoconference, the man is unmistakable.

He’s been isolating at his Manhattan home since March, when the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of New York City. His only regular contact with the outside world comes via his bike — a gift, custompainted orange and blue in honor of his beloved New York Knicks — which he rides alone for 3 to 5 miles each morning, wearing a mask and helmet. At night, he has dinner with his wife, Tonya, and two children, Satchel and Jackson, just as the neighbors begin cheering and banging pots and pans as part of citywide tributes to beleaguered health care workers.

As a 63-year-old African American, Lee is in a high-risk group for mortality from the virus. Is he afraid? “Hell, yeah, I’m afraid!” he said, sitting on a sofa beneath an oversize vintage poster for the 1950 biopic “The Jackie Robinson Story.” “That’s why I’m keeping my black ass in the house!”

This is Lee at a strange and singular moment in his career. He has spent nearly four decades and more than 30 films reckoning with the jagged and brutal course of history. Now, in the middle of a global calamity, and with a new film, “Da 5 Bloods,” that revisits the Vietnam War, he is its witness once again — older, more contemplative and as insatiable as ever, despite a legacy as solid as exists in U.S. cinema.

“The morning after I got the Oscar, I got on a plane and headed to Thailand,” he said, referring to a shooting location for “Da 5 Bloods,” which will premiere June 12 on Netflix. Tonya brought home the award — his first competitive Oscar win, in the best adapted screenplay category for “BlacKkKlansman” (2018) — where it now sits in their library next to the honorary Oscar he received in 2015. “For me, it was right back to work.”

He is acutely aware that many people don’t have the luxury of isolating as he has. A healthy majority of his films are set among the working-class characters like the ones he grew up around in Brooklyn — pizza

Director Spike Lee near his home in New York. delivery men, teachers and hairdressers of color — who he has argued are as deserving of empathy and valorization as anyone else. And he has been watching as they risk their lives for the benefit of the rest of us.

“The people who are doing the dirty work — people in the grocery store, the bodegas, the mailmen — cannot afford to stay home,” he said. “They’re putting their lives in peril every day just to get to work. My hope is that those who have looked down upon and dismissed those people will change their thinking because these are the people who kept this thing going.”

As his own tribute to the essential workers of New York, Lee made a short film, “New York, New York,” that premiered on CNN this month. Filmed over a month and using Frank Sinatra’s iconic ballad of the same name as its soundtrack, the film captures the city’s eerily empty landmarks. But it ends on an optimistic note: hospital workers in personal protective gear who arrive like the cavalry.

“There’s going to be great stories about this time — novels, music, documentaries, poems, feature films, TV shows — it’s going to be a cottage industry!” he said. “And hopefully people tell the truth. There are plenty of real heroes,” he continued, adding, “just tell the truth, and it will be captivating.”

If front-line workers are the heroes of this story, it’s clear who Lee thinks is the villain. The director, an outspoken antagonist of Donald Trump since the 1980s, lamented the president’s “pathetic lack of leadership,” singling out his widely condemned public musings on crackpot treatments for the virus.

“Telling people to use ultraviolet lights? Drinking bleach and whatnot?” Lee said, leaning into a chuckle.

He squinted, as if he still couldn’t believe it. “People will go to the hospital because they believe” that stuff, he said. “Get out of here with that!”

Trump is a significant figure in “Da 5 Bloods,” an action-adventure tale about four black veterans who

The San Juan Daily Star return to Vietnam more than 40 years after the war.

A central character, Paul, played by longtime Lee collaborator Delroy Lindo, is an avowed Trump supporter and spends much of the film in a red “Make America Great Again” hat.

Although Paul’s vocal defense of the president may come as a surprise to some, Lee has a long track record portraying complicated black characters without sanitizing them. Exit polls show that while the vast majority of black voters supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, 13% of black men supported Trump.

“My mother taught me at an early age that black folks are not a monolithic group,” Lee said. “In order to make the story dramatic, I said, ‘What would be the most extreme thing we could do with one of the characters?’”

“It was a problem for me at first,” admitted Lindo, who said Trump was “anathema to everything that I believe in.” He continued, “I tried to talk Spike out of it: ‘Can we just make him a conservative?’ But I think there are some black people who are so deeply disgruntled, because of very real disenfranchisement, that they’re ready to believe someone like Trump might be able to help them.”

The four veterans of the film — played by Lindo, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Norm Lewis — affectionately refer to one another as “bloods,” a term used by their real-life counterparts in the war. In a story that pays homage to “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948), “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957) and “Apocalypse Now” (1979), the bloods are on a mission to recover the body of their former squad leader, Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman), which is not incidentally buried near a secret treasure.

The drama that unfolds — among the men, and between the group and their present-day Vietnamese rivals — is a modern parable about the enduring depravations of war and the false promises of American individualism.

“All of us, and humanity as a whole, have to learn to think about more than just ourselves,” Lee said. “If the pandemic has shown us anything, it’s that we’ve got to support one another. We can’t go back to what we were doing in B.C., before corona, with great inequalities between the haves and have-nots.”

Lee, born in 1957 in Atlanta, the eldest of six children, grew up watching news reports about the Vietnam War on television. His most indelible memories are of his heroes denouncing the conflict, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Muhammad Ali, who was stripped of his world heavyweight boxing title for refusing to be drafted into the armed forces.

The film incorporates documentary footage of both men. An opening montage also features clips of Angela Davis, Malcolm X and Kwame Ture, whose ascendant black power movement in the late 1960s coincided with the most contentious years of the war.

The blurring of where history ends and the story

Monday, May 25, 2020

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With his new film, the peerless American filmmaker — self-isolating and reflective in New York — unsettles past and present conflicts. begins is vintage Lee. “BlacKkKlansman” ended with footage of the racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, crashing the fictionalized horror into a factual one. Lee used a similar technique in the opening of his 1992 epic, “Malcolm X,” which overlaid vocals of an incendiary Denzel Washington, speaking in character as X, onto video of the police beating of Rodney King.

“The thing that’s been consistent with him is the idea that the past is not just the past but has a connection to today,” said Kevin Willmott, who co-wrote both “BlacKkKlansman” and “Da 5 Bloods” with Lee. “I think he believes that our country has been damaged by films that misconstrue history, and that we, especially as minorities, have a responsibility to tell the truth as we see it.”

With “Da 5 Bloods,” Lee saw an opportunity to explore a side of the black experience of Vietnam that hadn’t been shown in cinema, despite the many classic films that have been made about the war. The original script, titled “The Last Tour” and written by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, was about white soldiers. Lee and Willmott began rewriting it in 2017, after the original director, Oliver Stone, reportedly dropped out.

The two were particularly interested in the psychology of black soldiers who fought for freedoms abroad that they’d been denied at home, a subject Lee

explored in his World War II film “Miracle at St. Anna” (2008). In “Da 5 Bloods,” we see how that cognitive dissonance has refracted over time, as the bloods, among a disproportionately high percentage of African Americans who served in the war, look back at their lives and try to assess the damage.

“All they had was each other, and there was a real unity and brotherhood that came from that,” Willmott said.

Lee added flashbacks, including one in which Stormin’ Norman gives a speech about Crispus Attucks, a black man who became the first U.S. casualty of the Revolutionary War. Another, inspired by real stories told by black veterans, shows the moment when the bloods learn that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated.

“The black soldiers weren’t having it,” Lee said.

“They were about to be firing some guns, and it wasn’t going to be at the Viet Cong, either!”

Turning to the example of Attucks, who confronted British soldiers at the Boston Massacre, Lee began to think out loud about the definition of patriotism.

“We’ve always believed in the promise of what this country could be; we’re very patriotic,” he said.

“But I think that patriotism is when you speak truth to power. It’s patriotic to speak out about the injustices in this country. That is being an American patriot.”

22

Monday, May 25, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

The beach is open. Should I go?

By LAUREN SLOSS

A

s climbing temperatures herald summer’s return, cities and states around the United States are beginning the stilted process of reopening. In many places, that means a chance to return to the beach. Texas state beaches were ordered to reopen on May 1; now state beaches in Florida, Oregon and California are also starting to reopen. On the East Coast, New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Connecticut were reopening state beaches for the Memorial Day weekend, though with limits on capacity and other measures. (Cities, counties and other municipalities may have different restrictions; New York City’s 14 miles of public beaches, for example, remain closed.)

For those concerned about their safety during the coronavirus pandemic, the current consensus is that socially distant outdoor activities are some of the safer ways to re-engage with the world.

“Outdoor settings, like beaches, are less likely to spread the virus than indoor settings,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.

Linsey Marr, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech who specializes in the airborne transmission of infectious diseases, agrees that a beach visit should be fine — as long as you are able to maintain social distancing.

“The good news is that the virus dies off relatively quickly in direct sunlight,” she said. “There’s often some wind at the beach, which really helps disperse the virus particles in the air.”

But no activity is going to be completely risk-free.

“The steps you take are not going to be one-sizefits-all; it depends on your individual risk tolerance,” said Adalja.

Here are five things to keep in mind when planning a beach day.

Getting there: Read up on local rules and regulations Like most things in the time of COVID-19, rules governing beach access, use and safety change frequently and likely differ depending on your state, city and even your beach.

“We’re in a very dynamic place right now in terms of beach access,” said Dr. Chad Nelsen, chief executive officer of Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit organization that has been compiling resources and providing recommendations regarding water quality and beach safety with regards to COVID-19. The group also works with coastal communities on opening beaches safely.

Start by learning the regulations of your area and your beach by accessing government websites for your city or county. And consider how far along your local area is in terms of reopening.

“If your community is still in active mitigation mode, plan on being extra cautious,” said Kristine Stratton, presi-

dent and chief executive officer of the National Recreation and Park Association, a nonprofit organization that recently published guidelines for phased re-openings of public spaces, including beaches.

Consider your day, and your beach’s geography The varied regulations are because of the diversity of beaches across the United States and the likelihood of crowds.

“Local context matters,” Nelsen said. “The U.S. coastline is hugely varied in terms of its geography and population. You could go up to Oregon, or Northern California, and be at a beach all day alone. Urban beaches in Southern California or Miami are a different story.”

Densely crowded beaches make maintaining 6 feet of distance more difficult, and increase the likelihood of more sustained exposure to the virus. You may need to navigate a crowded parking lot, or take a narrow path or stairway to access the sand.

Safety at the shore: Stay moving or stay far away Keeping your hands clean, avoiding touching your face and, of course, maintaining at least 6 feet of social distance are as paramount at the beach as they are anywhere else.

“If it’s a crowded beach with people playing games, or parties mixing with other parties, there is always a risk of transmission,” said Adalja. “There will be people who think that risk is acceptable, others who don’t, especially at at-risk populations.”

Surfrider’s current recommendations encourage beachgoers to “keep it moving.” The NRPA similarly recommends that, in these early days of reopening, it’s safer to plan on shorter, recreation-driven visits.

“If you’re out swimming or paddling, walking or running, it’s going to be easier to avoid the packed towel-to-towel beach crowd,” Nelsen said. A recreationonly policy is currently in place in Los Angeles County; similar policies tend to prohibit beachgoers from bringing chairs, umbrellas, coolers, barbecues and other gear (again, check on the latest status at your local beach before going).

Adalja agrees that being on the move is, overall, a safer proposition: “If people are running by each other, the virus can’t magically transport from one person to another,” he said, noting that the highest risk for exposure comes from spending anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes within 6 feet of another person.

When you are in and near the water, there may be fewer lifeguards than usual, or none at all.

“Many of our parks and rec agencies are already affecting budget cuts, there’s a real risk of not being able to staff beaches with required lifeguards,” Stratton said.

“There may be continued beach closings, both out of concerns for public health, and because of limitations of staffing, recruiting and training.”

Beachgoers enjoy the sun on Huntington Beach in Southern California. Strict social distancing measures and other restrictions are in place throughout the hard-hit state.

Enjoy your swim and your own beach gear While much about transmissibility of the coronavirus remains unclear, waterborne transmission appears to be less likely.

As for other surfaces you might encounter at the beach, such as rental beach chairs and kayaks, or even beach toys, Stratton urges caution in all regards.

And take your garbage home too. Single-use plastics have been on the rise, and beaches are taking the hit — after some in Florida reopened, nearly 12,000 pounds of trash were left behind according to news reports. But pandemics don’t render environmental concerns irrelevant. If there is no trash collection or it appears to be overwhelmed, take your trash home with you to dispose of accordingly.

“Our municipalities are going to be incredibly challenged from a budget perspective,” Stratton said. “Rather than leave trash in receptacles that are overflowing, do your part and carry it out.”

About those restrooms ...

Public restrooms are a tough topic these days. They have high-touch, frequently shared surfaces, and some reports also cite a possibility of transmission via an aerosolized “toilet plume.”

Recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for public restrooms include guidelines for regular cleaning and disinfection, operational toilets and well-stocked hand-washing supplies.

But beachgoers should check out facilities when they first arrive, to see if restrooms are clean and can allow for social distancing.

“We, of course, are recommending that municipalities and parks and recreation maintain facilities, but beachgoers should not assume that that’s the case,” Stratton of the NRPA said.

It’s always wise to bring hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes, wear a mask, close the lid of the toilet when you flush, if possible, and thoroughly wash your hands.

The safest course: Keep your beach visit short enough that using public restrooms won’t be necessary — use the bathroom, and change into your swimsuit, before you leave home.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

23

Is it safe to go back to the gym?

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

I

s it safe to return to the gym? As a growing number of communities ease the stay-at-home mandates they had put in place to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus, gyms are beginning to reopen their doors — even as the virus continues to infect thousands more every day.

To find out more about gyms and the risks for coronavirus exposure there, I spoke with clinicians, researchers, engineers and a gym owner in Atlanta whose newly reopened facility caters, in part, to scientists from the nearby Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What follows is their expert consensus about whether, when and how best to head back safely to weight rooms, cardio machines and classes, including tips about which gym wipes are effective, what equipment is most grimy, how to socially distance on treadmills and why we should keep several clean gym towels draped over our shoulders throughout our workouts.

Gyms and Germs By their very nature, athletic facilities like gyms tend to be germy. In a study published earlier this year, researchers found drug-resistant bacteria, flu virus and other pathogens on about 25% of the surfaces they tested in four different athletic training facilities.

“When you have a relatively high density of people exercising and sweating in a contained space, you have conditions where communicable diseases can spread easily,” says Dr. James Voos, the chairman of orthopedic surgery at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, head team physician for the Cleveland Browns and senior author of the study.

Gym equipment also can be devilishly difficult to sanitize. Dumbbells and kettlebells, for instance, “are high-touch metal, with strange shapes and many different places people can grasp,” says Dr. Deverick Anderson, a professor of medicine and director of the Duke Center for Antimicrobial Stewardship and Infection Prevention at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. His group consults with the National Football League and other sports teams about infection control. “They are not easy to clean.”

In consequence, “people are going to have to understand and accept that there will be some risk” of virus transmission, if and when they revisit their gyms, Anderson says.

“But,” he says, “there are many steps people can take to mitigate those risks.”

Wash. Spray. Wait. Wipe. Repeat.

First, and most essential, the experts agree, plan to disinfect yourself and any surfaces that you touch at your gym, frequently.

“There should be a sink with soap so you can wash your hands, or a handsanitizer station as soon as you walk in the door,” says Radford Slough, the owner of Urban Body Fitness, a gym in downtown Atlanta frequented by doctors and CDC scientists. Sign-in procedures should not require touch, and gym employees should stand behind sneeze guards or be wearing face masks, he adds.

The gym space itself should be plentifully stocked with spray bottles containing disinfectant that meets Environmental Protection Agency standards against coronavirus, as well as clean cloths or bleach wipes for sanitizing surfaces. The standard allpurpose wet wipes that many gyms stock are not EPA-approved, Voos says, and “will not kill most germs.” Bring your own water bottle to avoid using drinking fountains.

When spraying a disinfectant, give it time — a minute or so — to kill germs before wiping. And clean any grime or dust off surfaces first.

Ideally, other gym patrons who have lifted weights or perspired on machines will have scrupulously scrubbed them afterward. But do not depend on the cleanliness of strangers, Anderson says. Instead, disinfect any weights, bars, benches and machine rails or knobs yourself before and after every use.

It would be advisable, too, to carry several clean towels, he says. “I would keep one on my left shoulder to wipe sweat from my hands and face, so I am not touching my face all the time, and the other to cover the weight bench” or yoga mat.

Space Out Social distancing is also necessary.

Slough says to reduce density, his gym currently allows only 30 people an hour into its 14,000-square-foot facility. Colored

As gyms begin to reopen, many of us are wondering whether it’s safe, or wise, to return. tape on the floor boxes off spaces wide enough to keep weight trainers at least 6 feet apart on either side.

Treadmills, elliptical machines and stationary bicycles also can be moved apart, or some can be taped off or removed from service, Anderson says.

But appropriate distancing during indoor aerobic exercise remains problematic, says Bert Blocken, a professor of civil engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands and KU Leuven in Belgium. Blocken, who studies airflow in buildings and around bodies, says exercisers breathe heavily and produce many respiratory droplets, and with no wind or forward momentum to shift and disperse these droplets, they could linger and drop inside the facility.

“Therefore,” he says, “it is very important to have a well-ventilated gym,” preferably using a system that constantly refreshes inside air with filtered air from outside. If your gym does not have such a system, expect, at minimum, “peak natural ventilation” — meaning wide-open windows on opposite walls — to help move air from inside out, he says.

Educated Decisions Finally, to help these various safety measures take hold, gyms should sprinkle their space with posters and other remind-

ers of why and how to sanitize, Voos says. In his study of microbes and infection control at athletic facilities, germs became somewhat less prevalent when the researchers set out cleaning supplies for trainers and athletes. But the prevalence of germs fell almost to zero when they began regularly educating the facilities’ users about how and why to clean their hands and surfaces.

Still, the decision about whether to return to our gyms as soon as they open likely will remain knotty and personal, dependent to some extent on how each of us balances the benefits of exercise, risks of infection and any health fragilities among those we live with and would return to after working out.

There also may be flash points, including about masks. Anderson predicts that “few people will wear them” while working out inside, though gyms may require them. He also notes they would rapidly dampen during exercise, reducing their antimicrobial benefits.

“What it comes down to is that the risks will never be zero,” Anderson says.

But at the same time, “there are so many mental and physical health benefits” to the workouts. “So, my approach is that I will accept some risk but be aware of the steps I need to take to mitigate it. And then, yes, I will go back.”

24

Monday, May 25, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

What happens if a hurricane hits during the pandemic?

By PATRICIA MAZZEI

I

t’s deep into the summer, and a massive hurricane looms off the Florida coast, threatening enormous destruction and widespread power blackouts. In normal times, in such a scenario, the orders would come down for millions of coastal residents: Evacuate.

But in the middle of a pandemic, the most consequential of disaster decisions becomes complicated by fears of contagion.

Temporarily moving in with a relative might expose older family members to the coronavirus. Friends might be wary of letting in evacuees from outside their quarantine bubble. People who might otherwise book a flight out of town worry about getting infected on a plane. And the more than 1.5 million Floridians who are out of work might be unable to afford gas or a motel room.

What is left are emergency shelters, where hundreds of people crowd into high school gymnasiums, share public bathrooms and line up for buffet-style meals.

Gulp.

This is the planning dilemma facing emergency managers across the Southeast before June 1, the official start of a hurricane season that meteorologists expect to be quite active. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has forecast as many as six storms rated Category 3 or higher. A named system, Tropical Storm Arthur, already formed in May. If a big storm comes this summer, people in harm’s way may hear advice from authorities that is somewhat contradictory and perhaps confusing: Stay at home and remain socially distant from others to avoid contracting the coronavirus. But leave home — even if that means coming into closer contact with other people — to be safe during a dangerous hurricane.

“We’re going to need to get people out because that is the emergent threat,” said Jared Moskowitz, director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management. “We will undoubtedly have to balance the risks.”

Some people in India and Bangladesh resisted evacuations when a powerful cyclone struck last week. Communities in Michigan, after a river flooded and two dams were breached, and in Arkansas, after a tornado, recently struggled with how to safely shelter large numbers of people.

There is plenty of hurricane fatigue in Florida, which has endured hits or brushes with at least five hurricanes over the past four years, including Hurricane Irma in 2017, Hurricane Michael in 2018 and Hurricane Dorian in 2019. The prospect of another busy storm season felt exhausting even before the arrival of COVID-19, which has led to 50,000 cases and more than 2,000 deaths since the beginning of March.

A mild storm might not require many evacuations. People with newer homes built to withstand strong winds could be safer sheltering in place than leaving their homes, Moskowitz said, as long as they do not live in a low-lying area prone to storm surge.

But experts always prepare for the worst case: a behemoth storm riding up the entirety of the peninsula, or hitting a big city like Miami or Tampa directly. During Irma, which made landfall in the Florida Keys and moved north, some 350,000 people sought refuge in shelters.

In new storm guidelines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended small shelters of fewer than 50 people. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency ac-

Families at the Lincoln High School Red Cross Shelter ahead of Hurricane Michael’s arrival to the Florida Panhandle in 2018. knowledged that big shelters “will still be necessary.”

To find alternatives where evacuees might be more spread out, Moskowitz’s team created a map of hotels — along with their wind rating and whether they have a power generator — that might be commandeered as shelters. The Division of Emergency Management also developed an app that counties could use to assign evacuees to those hotels.

Traditional school shelters will be unavoidable, at least in densely populated areas, said Frank Rollason, emergency management director for Miami-Dade County. Only 20 hotels in Miami-Dade are outside of a storm evacuation zone, he said, and many might be booked with guests evacuated from coastal hotels or with crews deployed in advance to restore electricity or phone service after the storm.

“We’re looking at those, but this is the eleventh hour,” Rollason said. “It’s a long shot.”

He has focused instead on how the county’s 81 shelters, the largest of which can usually accommodate up to 1,500 people, might adapt to prevent virus spread: Set aside 36 square feet per person, up from the usual 20 square feet. Stagger meal times.

Empty classrooms of furniture so they could be used for large families, groups of symptomatic people or those who have tested positive for the virus. It may be possible to designate a specific shelter for those evacuees.

Volunteers to work in the shelters alongside county employees would be difficult to come by. The state may assign its own workers or temporarily hire unemployed people, Moskowitz said. Florida has set aside 10 million masks for use during hurricanes, he added.

To send evacuees to other counties — out of the vulnerable Keys, for example — emergency managers might have to rent more buses so passengers can sit at a safe distance from each other. Moskowitz said the state is in talks with Uber to possibly provide individual rides if needed.

Florida ordered all nursing homes and assisted living facilities to install generators for cooling systems after as many as 12 people died from the sweltering heat in a Broward County nursing home during Hurricane Irma. Some homes with temporary generators were granted variances as they work toward installing permanent ones, but almost all are in at least basic compliance, said Mary Mayhew, who runs the Agency for Health Care Administration, which oversees long-term care facilities.

But nursing homes in evacuation zones might have to send residents to facilities out of the storm’s path that have extra beds, she said, or to one of the various sites that have been set up recently to relieve overcrowded hospitals in the event of a COVID-19 surge.

Then there is the question of accommodations for storm workers. Gone would be the usual large tent cities for up to 2,000 workers with centralized cafeterias, showers and laundry.

Instead, crews would have to stay in smaller staging areas that allow for social distancing but also result in less efficient replenishing of equipment.

That slows workers down, said Eric Silagy, chief executive of Florida Power & Light, the state’s largest utility.

“The things that we’re going to have to do to keep folks safe from a virus will lead to inefficiencies in our ability to respond normally,” he said.

The San Juan Daily Star LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE ARECIBO.

LUIS FELIPE DÁVILA, también conocido como LUIS FELIPE DÁVILA RODRÍGUEZ DEMANDANTE VS.

DORAL MORTGAGE CORPORATION, HOY SU SUCESORA BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO; FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DE TAL

DEMANDADA CIVIL NUM. AR2020CV00517.

SOBRE: CANCELACION DE PAGARE EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DE TAL

POR LA PRESENTE se le notifica que ha sido presentada en este Tribunal por la parte demandante una demanda enmendada sobre cancelación de pagaré extraviado, cuyos hechos se detallan en la misma, la cual puede ser examinada en la secretaría de este Tribunal. REPRESENTA a los demandantes el bufete RIVERA COLON, RIVERA TORRES & RIOS BERLY (Lcdo. Víctor M. Rivera Torres) con dirección en Avenida Fernández Juncos #1420, Santurce, Puerto Rico 00909, teléfonos (787) 727-5710, fax (787) 268-1835, email: victor.rivera@rcrtrblaw. com. Se le advierte que este edicto se publicará en un periódico de circulación general una sola vez y que si no comparece en el término de treinta (30) días desde su publicación, los querellantes podrán solicitar que se dicte sentencia en rebeldía, declarándose con lugar la querella, sin más citarle ni oírle.

EXPEDIDO, bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal, hoy día 15 de mayo de 2020. Vivian Y Fresse Gonzalez, SECRETARIA. f/ YANOLIES QUILES ROSARIO, SUB-SECRETARIA.

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO

PARTE DEMANDANTE VS.

FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE @

CORPORATION (FDIC) COMO SÍNDICO DE RG PREMIER BANK OF PUERTO RICO Y DE DORAL BANK T/C/C DORAL FEDERAL SAVINGS BANK; SCOTIABANK DE PUERTO RICO, SUCESIÓN DE VÍCTOR DE JESÚS CARRERAS T/C/C VÍCTOR MANUEL DE JESÚS CARRERAS T/C/C VÍCTOR M. DE JESÚS CARRERAS COMPUESTA POR VÍCTOR DE JESÚS MARTÍNEZ, MAYRA MILAGROS DE JESÚS MARTÍNEZ, JAVIER DE JESÚS MARTÍNEZ, SUTANO Y PERENCEJO DE TAL, POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS, CRUZ MARTÍNEZ DE DE JESÚS T/C/C CRUZ MARTÍNEZ CALDERÓN POR SÍ Y EN LA CUOTA VIUDAL USUFRUCTUARIA; FULANO Y MENGANO DE TAL, POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARÉ

PARTE DEMANDADA CIVIL NÚM. CG2019CV04657.

SOBRE: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO POR LA VÍA JUDICIAL. EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS E.E.U.U. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: SUTANO Y PERENCEJO DE TAL, POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE VÍCTOR DE JESÚS CARRERAS T/C/C VÍCTOR MANUEL DE JESÚS CARRERAS T/C/C VÍCTOR M. DE JESÚS CARRERAS. FULANO Y MENGANO DE TAL, POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARÉ.

Queda usted notificado que en este Tribunal se ha radicado Demanda sobre Cancelación de Pagaré Extraviado por la vía judicial. El 30 de agosto de 1996, Víctor De Jesús Carreras t/c/c Víctor Manuel De Jesús Carreras t/c/c Víctor M. De Jesús Carreras, Cruz Martínez De De Jesús t/c/c Cruz Martínez Calderón constituyeron una

staredictos1@outlook.com

Monday, May 25, 2020 segunda hipoteca en San Juan, Puerto Rico, conforme a la Escritura núm. 513 autorizada por el notario César A. Vélez Miranda, en garantía de un pagaré por la suma de $10,000.00 a favor de Doral Federal Savings Banks o a su orden, con intereses al 11% anual y vencedero el 1ro de septiembre de 2006, sobre la siguiente propiedad: URBANA: Solar radicado en la Urbanización Villa Del Rey, situado en el Barrio Turabo de Caguas, que se describe en el plano de inscripción de la Urbanización con el número, área y colindancias que se relacionan a continuación: Número del solar 10 de la manzana “3-C”, Área del solar de 350.00 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE con los solares No. 8 y 49, distancia de 14.00 metros; por el SUR, con la calle No. 2, distancia de 14.00 metros; por el ESTE, con el solar No. 9, distancia de 25.00 metros; y por el OESTE, con el solar No. 11, distancia de 25.00 metros. Enclava una vivienda de concreto.

La propiedad consta inscrita al folio 60 del tomo 441 de Caguas, Finca 13109. Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección I. La escritura de hipoteca consta inscrita al folio 79 vuelto del tomo 727 de Caguas, Finca 13109. Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, Sección I. Inscripción undécima. La parte demandada deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal. Se le advierte que si no contesta la demanda, radicando el original de la contestación en este Tribunal y enviando copia de la contestación a la abogada de la Parte Demandante, Lcda.

Belma Alonso García, cuya dirección es: Terrazas de Guaynabo, H-26 Calle Las Flores, Guaynabo Puerto Rico 00969, Teléfono y Fax: (787) 789-1826, correo electrónico: oficinabelmaalonso@gmail.com, dentro del término de treinta (30) días de la publicación de este edicto, excluyéndose el día de la publicación, se le anotará la rebeldía y se le dictará Sentencia en su contra, concediendo el remedio solicitado sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal, hoy 19 de mayo de 2020, en Caguas, Puerto Rico. Carmen Ana Pereira Ortiz, Secretaria.

Maritza Rosario Placeres, Sec

Auxiliar del Tribunal I.

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

25 FEDERAL SAVINGS BANK; JOHN DOE y RICHARD ROE, como posibles tenedores desconocidos del pagaré extraviado

Demandados NUMERO: AMERICAS LEADING CIVIL CA2020CV00795.

SOBRE: FINANCE LLC CANCELACION DE PAGARE Demandante V. EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMARISOL MIENTO POR EDICTO. EN GONZALEZ ALLENDE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE Demandado(a) AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE Civil: BY2019CV03644. Sobre: DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS COBRO DE DINERO POR LA EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIAVÍA ORDINARIA Y EJECUDO DE P.R. SS. CIÓN DE GRAVAMEN MOA: John Doe y Richard BILIARIO (REPOSESIÓN DE Roe como posibles VEHÍCULO). NOTIFICACIÓN tenedores de pagaré DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: MARISOL GONZALEZ ALLENDE

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 15 de mayo de 2020 , este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 20 de mayo de 2020. En TOA ALTA Puerto Rico, el 20 de mayo de 2020.

LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretario(a) Interino.

KARLA P. RIVERA ROMAN, Sec Auxiliar.

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

FIRSTBANK PUERTO RICO Demandante, vs.

FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION (FDIC) como sucesores en derecho de R &G

(787) 743-3346

extraviado

MEDIANTE el presente edicto se le notifica de la radicación de una demanda sobre cancelación de pagaré extraviado. El demandante, Firstbank Puerto Rico ha solicitado que se dicte sentencia contra usted y se ordene la cancelación del pagaré y la hipoteca que lo garantiza.

El pagaré cuya cancelación se solicita es uno por la cantidad $90,000.00, a favor de R & G Federal Savings Bank con intereses al 7% anual, vencedero el 1 de octubre de 2003 y está afecta a hipoteca constituida mediante la escritura número 576 otorgada en Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, el día 9 de octubre de 1993 ante el Notario Público Fénex Torres Torres, inscrita al folio 38 del tomo 8 de Trujillo Alto, de la finca número 2,290, en el Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección Cuarta de San Juan. Por la presente se les emplaza y requiere para que notifique a la Lcda.

Maritza Guzmán Matos, PMB 767, Avenida Luis Vigoreaux, Guaynabo, Puerto Rico 00966, teléfono (787) 758-3276, abogada de la parte demandante, con copia de vuestra contestación a la demanda radicada en este caso contra ustedes, dentro de un término de sesenta (60) días contados a partir de la publicación de este Edicto.

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.ramaiudicial. pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio. Por la presente se les apercibe de que de no comparecer a formular alegaciones dentro de sesenta (60) días contados a partir de la fecha de la publicación de este Edicto, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia de acuerdo con lo solicitado en

la demanda, sin más citarle ni oirle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, en Carolina, Puerto Rico hoy- 21 de mayo de 2020. Lcda. Marilyn Aponte Rodriguez, Sec Regional. Myriam I Figueroa Pastrana, Sec Auxiliar.

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

COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CREDITO DE CABO ROJO Demandante V.

CARMEN CANCEL PAGAN Demandado(a)

Civil: CB2019CV00205. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO (REGLA 60). NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: CARMEN CANCEL PAGAN

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 10 de febrero de 2020 , este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y,

siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 21 de mayo de 2020. En CABO ROJO, Puerto Rico, el 21 de mayo de 2020.

NORMA G SANTANA IRIZARRY, Secretario(a) Interino. F/ VERONICA MARTINEZ ORTIZ, Sec Auxiliar.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

As sports begin reopening, athletes weigh health risks

By JAMES WAGNER and MARC STEIN

K

athleen Baker, 23, a gold medal-winning Olympic swimmer, began wearing masks on airplanes long before the coronavirus outbreak began to avoid contracting illnesses that are especially hard for her to shake off because she has Crohn’s disease, which causes inflammation in the digestive system.

Jordan Morris, 25, a soccer player for the Seattle Sounders and the U.S. men’s national team, wears a blood sugar monitor on his arm — even on the field — to keep track of his Type 1 diabetes.

And Dusty Baker, a former player and now the manager of the Houston Astros, has endured many health complications: prostate cancer, hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, an irregular heartbeat and a ministroke.

They have managed their underlying health conditions to enjoy successful careers in sports. But now, with the coronavirus disproportionately afflicting those with such issues, their personal risks, and those of many other athletes and team staff members, are primed to escalate as the gradual reopening of America feeds momentum for a return of sports.

Sports leagues are devising plans to resume play to salvage economic lifelines and sate fans pleading to be entertained by live games on TV. Yet in the absence of a vaccine or widespread immunity, any return to the field of play poses some added risks for athletes and officials. And many are balancing potential exposure to the coronavirus and their health needs against the zeal to play.

“It’s scary for everyone,” Morris said after taking part in the voluntary, socially distanced practices that began this past week throughout Major League Soccer, which plans to resume its season as soon as next month.

“The unknown of the coronavirus, and there’s so many unknowns, like when the vaccine will come and all that kind of stuff,” Morris continued. “There’s definitely that underlying sense of uncertainty.”

As of Friday, unions representing athletes in major North American team sports were still negotiating specific plans for returning to play.

The Centers for Disease Control and

Oakland Athletics pitcher Jake Diekman at spring training in February. He has a chronic inflammatory condition that necessitated the removal of his colon in 2017.

Prevention has said that people 65 and older or anyone with a serious underlying medical condition “might be at higher risk for severe illness” from the coronavirus.

Dr. Preeti Malani, the chief health officer for the University of Michigan and a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases, said there was still much to learn about how the virus can affect anyone.

“My own personal advice would be to perhaps sit out and wait until you have more information,” said Malani, who has been advising the Big Ten Conference about the pandemic. “But that’s a hard thing to do when your job depends on it, whether you’re driving a bus or working in a restaurant or you’re a Major League Baseball player.”

As part of their plans to reopen, leagues are devising specific precautions for the most vulnerable returning employees.

In a proposal on safety and testing procedures presented last week to its players’ union, MLB suggested before any resumption of training each club’s doctor identify high-risk players, coaches and essential staff members — plus anyone who comes into regular contact with someone considered high risk.

Some of the suggestions to protect higher-risk players and essential staff members included separate spaces in dugouts and clubhouses; distinct or less crowded travel options; or shifting to remote work or modified hours.

Even then, if high-risk individuals believed that participating in the 2020 season would pose “an unreasonable risk” to their

health, MLB’s proposal would allow them to sit out — although the league did not take a position on whether players in that situation would continue to be paid.

“We would never force them or try to force them to come back to work,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said last week.

“They can wait until they’re ready to come.”

In MLB, there are several players with Type 1 diabetes, a history of cancer treatment, colitis or heart conditions. So far, none have said publicly that they would sit out this season.

Morris, the soccer player who learned he had diabetes at age 9, said not returning because of health fears had not crossed his mind. He has felt safe at practice, he said, because the Sounders have done daily temperature and symptom checks, staggered workouts and encouraged frequent handwashing, and he has managed his diabetes as usual. According to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the condition is most likely to exacerbate the risks of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, among people with consistently elevated blood sugar levels and those with a second chronic illness.

“It’s so important to take seriously the precautions that are set out for myself and to protect others as well, because there’s a lot of people out there that are at a higher risk,” said Morris, who wears a mask outside the house and keeps gloves and hand sanitizer in his car.

Few American athletes have publicly raised concerns about racial health disparities, even though the United States has seen a significantly higher death rate among

black and Latino people with COVID-19.

In England, however, the players’ union has asked the Premier League to research the disease’s adverse effect on nonwhite players. Troy Deeney, who is black and is the captain of Watford FC, said recently on a British boxing show that he wouldn’t practice because of those concerns and because his 5-month-old son has had difficulty breathing.

“For black, Asian and mixed ethnicities, they are four times more likely to get the illness and twice as likely to have long-lasting illness,” Deeney said on “Talk the Talk,” adding later, “I can’t get a haircut until mid-July, but I can go and get in a box with 19 people and jump for a header?”

Athletes wouldn’t be the only ones taking risks. Some essential sports personnel — umpires, referees, coaches, front office executives and members of TV crews — may fall into higher-risk categories.

In baseball, Washington Nationals manager Dave Martinez, 55, missed three games last season because of a heart procedure, and the team’s assistant general manager, Doug Harris, 50, has battled a blood-cell cancer.

Baker, who vowed to wash his hands often and use a mask and gloves, is the oldest manager in baseball at 70. Two of his coaches are older than 65.

“My family is very aware that I’m a high risk, but I ain’t scared, either,” Baker said from his home in Granite Bay, Calif. “I’m not going to take any unnecessary chances.

My friends say I’ve got nine lives anyway.

The longer I live, the more I think I’ve got a guardian angel that’s looked out for me my whole life.”

Any athlete or essential team employee could also put higher-risk loved ones at home in danger: Eireann Dolan, the wife of Nationals closer Sean Doolittle, has a history of respiratory complications, and Leighton Accardo, the 8-year-old daughter of the New York Mets assistant pitching coach, Jeremy Accardo, is undergoing cancer treatments.

“You’ve just got to be very cautious and very careful about everything, and I don’t think you can take anything for granted,” said Alvin Gentry, 65, the coach of the New Orleans Pelicans.

He is one of three NBA head coaches who are 65 or older.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

27

NBA in talks to resume season at Walt Disney World Resort

By SOPAN DEB and MARC STEIN

T

he NBA is in the early stages of discussions with the Walt Disney Co. to restart its suspended season in late July at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, a league spokesman said Saturday.

The restart, said Mike Bass, the spokesman, would be at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, which would act as “a single site for an NBA campus for games, practices and housing.” ESPN, which is owned by Disney, is a broadcast partner for the NBA. “Our priority continues to be the health and safety of all involved, and we are working with public health experts and government officials on a comprehensive set of guidelines to ensure that appropriate medical protocols and protections are in place,” Bass said in a statement.

The NBA was among the first major sports leagues to suspend its season March 11 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, beginning a cascade of other leagues doing the same. Since the postponement, several NBA players, including Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant, have tested positive for the virus.

In recent days, all states throughout the country have started reopening their economies at various paces. President Donald Trump has urged sports leagues to find a way to restart, something many NBA owners and players have been keen on with billions of dollars at stake.

“We want to get sports back. We miss sports,” Trump said earlier this month. “We need sports in terms of the psyche of our country. And that’s what we’re doing.”

There are still several hurdles that must be crossed before a resumed season at Walt Disney World becomes a reality. One is the optics of testing.

The league was criticized when some of its teams were able to obtain tests for their players even though there was

N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver. a nationwide testing shortage, raising questions of greater accessibility for the wealthy.

Last Tuesday, Bass said that “[r]egular testing will be key in our return to play,” and that the league wanted to ensure that it “does not come at the expense of testing front line health care workers or others who need it.”

Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, told The Athletic earlier this month that he would not be willing to bring his team back unless all members of the team could get daily testing.

Any return to play must also come with a green light from the NBA players’ union. A spokeswoman for the union did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It is also un-

clear what the logistics of such a return would be, such as how many, if any, fans would be allowed into an arena for games, how freely players would be allowed to move around or what kind of testing would take place.

The games would almost assuredly be run without fans in the stands, as has been the case for some other recent sporting events in golf and soccer. Any return to play would also have added risks for players or team personnel who have underlying health conditions, or for people older than 65, a group that includes three head coaches.

When the NBA came to a halt in March, the league had completed roughly 80 percent of its season. The league Saturday did not say whether

it would play the remaining regularseason games or jump straight into the playoffs. (Bass did not immediately respond to messages seeking additional information.)

The NBA’s board of governors is scheduled to have a call Friday, and teams are expected to start recalling players to team facilities in early June.

Teams have been informed that they will likely be allowed to have about 35 members of the team — between staff, players and coaches — at the site, according to three people briefed on the league’s plans. Some teams typically travel with more than 50.

At least one player, Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie, has raised one of the issues the league and the union will have to navigate if the league, as some have suggested, returns and goes straight to the playoffs.

“If we go 16 teams directly to playoffs do those teams get paid more for the risk and carrying this years revenue after Corona and China?” Dinwiddie, who is not the designated players’ union representative for the Nets, posted on Twitter, referring to the loss of revenue from the league’s rift with the Chinese government.

The ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, which opened in 1997, is a multisport complex covering more than 200 acres in Kissimmee, Fla., and is part of the Orlando-based Walt Disney World Resort. It has routinely hosted several basketball events, including college invitationals, AAU tournaments and the Jr. NBA World Championship.

The NBA’s announcing its attempt to finish this season comes weeks after Major League Baseball formalized a proposal from owners to salvage its own season — one that would last 82 games with an expanded playoff field.

The league’s plan has run into heavy resistance from the players’ union over its salary structure. Like the NBA, the MLB’s revenue comes in no small part from fans in the stands.

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 2020

In Joe Flacco, Jets get a credible backup for Sam Darnold

By BEN SHPIGEL

T

he New York Jets are hoping that their most prominent addition this offseason — a former most valuable player of the Super Bowl — never takes a snap for them. Such is the plight of a backup quarterback, and that is the new role for veteran Joe Flacco, who agreed to a one-year deal Friday as he recovers from neck surgery.

If having a reliable understudy at football’s most important job can preserve a season — just ask New Orleans, which won all five games last year behind Teddy Bridgewater after an injury to Drew Brees, or Philadelphia, which won a championship with Nick Foles — then undervaluing that position can derail it.

The Jets endured this reality last season when they lost all three games while their starter, Sam Darnold, was out with mononucleosis and fell to 0-4. They then resolved to acquire a credible backup and considered former Cincinnati starter Andy Dalton — who eventually signed with Dallas — before focusing on Flacco, the longtime Baltimore Raven who played eight games last season for Denver before sustaining a season-ending neck injury.

His agent, Joe Linta, said on Saturday that Flacco’s rehabilitation from neck surgery in April is going well and that if he continues recovering at his current rate, Flacco can expect to join the team for training camp in early August and should be cleared for contact no later than midSeptember. Linta said Flacco had already been examined by a Jets orthopedist.

“He can do everything except hit somebody or go surfing,” Linta said in a telephone interview.

The financial terms of the deal — $1.5 million, with about another $3 million in incentives, Linta said — are a pittance relative to Flacco’s potential value.

They evoke the contract signed by Jameis Winston, who, unable to find a starting job, joined New Orleans for $1.1 million in an effort to revive his career after leading the league in interceptions. Unlike Winston, who at 26 might be able to parlay this sojourn into abiding stability, Flacco, 35, is confronting the possibility that he won’t enter a season as a starter again. Lamar Jackson’s emergence in the

Joe Flacco faded in Baltimore after winning a Super Bowl in the 2012 season, but he may be just who the Jets need now. second half of the Ravens’ 2018 season, after Flacco sustained a season-ending hip injury, made him expendable, and Baltimore traded him to Denver in March 2019.

Flacco adds immediate cachet and credibility to an inexperienced position group that, beyond Darnold, has three quarterbacks — Mike White, David Fales and unsigned fourth-round pick James Morgan — who have combined to throw 48 NFL passes, all by Fales. Staying close to home appealed to Flacco, a native of Audubon, N.J., as did the opportunity to reunite with Jets general manager Joe Douglas, who was a Ravens scout in 2008 when Baltimore drafted Flacco with the 18th overall pick.

Those Ravens teams were powered by stingy defenses and strong running games, and Flacco, stabilizing a position long unmoored in Baltimore, steered the Ravens to playoff berths in his first five seasons, including three trips to the AFC championship game. But in the playoffs after the 2012 season, Baltimore blasted

through the AFC bracket on the strength of Flacco’s arm en route to winning Super Bowl 47 against San Francisco. Flacco threw 11 touchdowns without an interception in the Ravens’ stirring playoff run.

Although Flacco has played in only two playoff games since that Super Bowl victory, that is still two more than the Jets have over that span. Their inability to identify, and develop, franchise quarterbacks has contributed to their malaise, but the Jets believe they have a long-term starter in Darnold. Still, it is perhaps inevitable that he will get hurt. Darnold has missed six games in two seasons, and the Jets have lost all six. But he is hardly the exception: Last season, according to Pro Football Reference, 19 of the NFL’s 32 teams started a backup at quarterback in at least one game.

The Jets, after years of mismanagement, are again seeking to build a contender, a task that seems more doable now that Tom Brady, their longtime nemesis, has left the AFC East. Douglas overhauled the offensive line and re-

ceiving corps, signing Breshad Perriman and drafting Denzel Mims in the second round. Those moves figure to help whoever is playing quarterback for them this season — be it Darnold, as planned, or Flacco, who provides a comforting presence, whether he ever takes a snap or not.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, May 25, 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

Monday, May 25, 2020

(Mar 21-April 20)

Are you feeling restless? Take a short trip for a walk nearby. Visiting an area that has beautiful architecture will give you a lift. You might even be inspired to design something of your own based upon these findings.

Escaping a frenetic routine will cause you to breathe a sigh of relief. Recently, neighbours and relatives have started to rely on you to do their work. It’s time to put an end to this dynamic. These dependents will become more resourceful when you’re not on the scene.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Emotional satisfaction comes from communing with nature.

No matter what the weather, you should push yourself to spend time outside. Going for a brisk walk before or after work will be therapeutic. Visiting a park at lunch can also be invigorating. Someone will seek your expertise, asking for you to serve as their mentor, coach or tutor. Feel free to charge a good price for your services. You deserve to be compensated for your insight. Anyone who complains about your fees won’t be a rewarding client.

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 stimulating relationship fills you with joy. Whenever you are blue, you can always depend on your best friend or romantic partner to lift your spirits. Recently, your loved one helped you navigate a stressful situation. Give them a handsome reward for their assistance. A fabulous moneymaking opportunity is on its way to you. Getting paid to share your opinions or promote your taste will be fulfilling. Instead of groaning at the prospect of work, you will approach it with joy.

You’re more popular than ever. People adore your upbeat attitude. Instead of complaining about stubborn problems and depressing news cycles, you rejoice over simple pleasures like a delicious cup of coffee, wonderful service or a magical sunset. No wonder you have so many friends.

Accept an opportunity to put your creative work on the internet. Submit a manuscript to an agent or perhaps audition for a role if rehearsals are happening over web conferencing applications.

Spending this time on your own will recharge your batteries.

It’s sometimes difficult for a devoted person like you to practice self-care. Stop worrying what others will think when you put your needs first. Adopting a spiritual practice will give you a new lease on life. After carrying out this routine for a few days, your focus will change. Instead of concentrating on things that are going wrong, you’ll develop a deeper appreciation the many blessings you have.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

Joining a group of highly creative people will be stimulating. You’ve got wonderful ideas but aren’t sure how to implement them. Other members of the team will teach you how to manifest these dreams. Treat their advice with respect; these people know what they’re doing. If you’re looking for love, you could find it with a friend you have known for years. The more that you talk, the more it will reveal some hidden qualities about your loved one. Suddenly, you’ll become acutely aware of their powerful allure.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Keeping cool in the face of pressure will cause your professional prospects to improve. Someone who admires your grace under fire will offer you a wonderful job. Working for a company that is dedicated to making life beautiful will be the answer to a prayer. Creative types will enjoy collaborating with you, because you bring order to chaos.

Thanks to your talent for organisation, everyone will know where to go and what to do and how to operate at maximum efficiency.

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

An intense relationship makes your imagination flow like a mighty river. It feels so good to talk with someone who doesn’t judge you. After discussing your hopes, dreams and fears, you’ll be compelled to start a creative project. Gather your supplies and get to work. More money for luxuries has become available. Don’t hesitate to treat yourself to beautiful artwork, clothing and furniture. Catching sight of these purchases will make you feel wonderfully prosperous and decadent. Exchange deprivation for indulgence.

An ability to intuit the needs of a loved one strengthens your relationship. Follow an impulse to pitch in and help out those nearest and dearest to you with a host of small favours, kind words and thoughtful deeds. Your caring and considerate behaviour will be greatly appreciated.

Are you yearning for companionship? You could cross paths with an attractive person on a chat forum focussed on new books to read but in these uncertain times when you can meet face to face is not yet clear.

Being of service to others gives you a kinder, gentler outlook. In the past, you were impatient with inefficient and lazy people.

Now you realise such individuals are struggling with demons. By giving them a break, life will become more pleasurable for you.

One of the greatest causes of physical distress is resentment. As soon as you let go of anger, you’ll become more dynamic and vibrant. Instead of collapsing into bed when you have finished work, you’ll be ready to paint the town red, or maybe your living room.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Although you prefer using logic as a guide, that won’t be possible now. Your heart is urging you to pour all your energy into romantic pursuits. If you’re single, you’ll meet someone special at a concert, sporting event or movie.

Are you in a relationship? You and your amour will rediscover your mutual desire. Spending all day in bed is a distinct possibility. Let down your defences and abandon yourself to pleasure. You’ve neglected your sensual side for too long.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

You’re even more sensitive than usual. Your heart and mind are working in perfect synchronicity. This is a wonderful time to make important decisions about your home life.

Relocating is a mild possibility. Take a few moments to clarify your desires. If you’re torn between staying where you are and setting up home somewhere else, take a few deep breaths. It’s understandable you feel tied to your current abode. Since undergoing some dramatic changes, you’re ready for a new experience.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Monday, May 25, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

The San Juan Daily Star

Ziggy

32

Monday, May 25, 2020

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