Monday Nov 23, 2020

Monday, November 23, 2020

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Never-ending Election Drama Update: Scrutiny Process Could Start (Finally) Today Pending a High Court Ruling

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FDA Grants Trans Community Emergency Skeptical, at Best, of Incoming Gov’t; Authorization of Activists Demand Changes, Antibody Treatment Not More Empty Promises Given to Trump P8 P6

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Monday, November 23, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

GOOD MORNING

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November 23, 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.

Fiscal board back in talks with creditors for new debt adjustment plan

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he Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico is recommencing negotiations with creditors toward a new plan of adjustment for the commonwealth debt after agreeing last week on a new offer to creditors that would cut the commonwealth debt to about $11.9 billion from about $35 billion.

The decision had to be made because U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain gave the oversight board until Feb. 10 to file a debt deal with the court or, at a minimum, a term sheet with its offer. At a news conference, Natalie Jaresko, the executive director of the oversight board, said she hopes stakeholders can reach a consensus on a deal by then. There are fewer than 80 days to negotiate and possibly less time with the holidays in between.

The oversight board was unable to start negotiations and lost a month after it was unable to approve new terms on its Oct. 30 meeting because one of the board members left the meeting, leaving the board without a quorum, for which the board needs four votes to pass resolutions. The board made a new offer to take into account the pandemic’s impact on the government’s finances.

The oversight board’s offer to creditors provides for $6 billion in cash, $5 billion in general obligation (GO) bonds, and a contingent value instrument (CVI) of up to $1 billion. The CVI will be based on a portion of the sales and use tax (IVU by its Spanish acronym) revenue if tax collections exceed the estimates of the fiscal plan certified in May 2020. The board’s prior debt adjustment plan unveiled in February did not include a CVI, whose goal is to ease creditor concerns regarding various potential economic upside scenarios not incorporated into the certified fiscal plan.

The amended terms propose an 8.5 percent reduction to pensions that are higher than $1,500 per month, impacting only 30 percent of 330,000 retirees.

Under the deal, GO bondholders should be able to recover between 59 percent and 64 percent of what they invested. Pension bondholders and holders of Convention Center District bonds will not get anything. All creditors will have a blended recovery of 34.1 percent.

During the discussion of the resolution agreed to by the oversight board, adviser Jaime El Koury said that if the negotiations produce changes to the terms of the proposed offer, then those changes will have to be approved by the board before they are presented to the court. He said that if the negotiations fail, then the board will be authorized to file the plan of adjustment under its own proposed terms.

Justin Peterson, President Trump’s representative on the oversight board, voted in favor of the resolution even though he said he did not like it. He and fellow board member David Skeel said they will participate in the negotiations.

Peterson said governor-elect Pedro Pierluisi and his team should also be part of the negotiations with bondholders. Pierluisi said Saturday he plans to be involved.

Center for the New Economy Policy Director Sergio Marxuach said in a written column that one of the main quibbles with the proposed Plan of Adjustment (POA) is that according to the oversight board’s own analysis, the commonwealth’s cash balance as of June 30, 2021, after payment of the POA obligations, is estimated to be slightly below the required minimum working capital level of $2.5 billion (which includes commonwealth working capital needs, Federal Emergency Management Agency advances, and initial liquidity of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority transmission and distribution project.

“Indeed, under the current proposal, liquidity tightens significantly by 2026 and by 2030 the initial cash balance is negative at the beginning of that fiscal year,” Marxuach said.

The government, however, has $9 billion in its main government account and over $20 billion in other government accounts, most of which is restricted.

Marxuach said the introduction of a CVI is a novel and welcome development as it provides an alternative for mitigating the high level of uncertainty since it is very difficult to make reliable medium- and long-term economic and financial projections in the best of times.

In the absence of reliable economic and financial projections, it is unfeasible for Puerto Rico to submit in good faith a POA that will be binding on the island’s government for 30 years, Marxuach contended.

“Yet, it is required under PROMESA [the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act] for Puerto Rico to submit a viable Plan of Adjustment in order to successfully exit the Title III process and Judge Taylor Swain has given the parties until February 10, 2021 to agree to the basic terms of a POA,” Marxuach said. “The CVI helps the parties to get around this conundrum and mitigate some of the uncertainty surrounding the Fiscal Plan, by providing investors with an equity-like exposure to Puerto Rico, should its economy overperform, while protecting the government and residents of Puerto Rico in the event government revenues come in below expectations.”

FOMB executive director Natalie Jaresko

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The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, November 23, 2020

Vote scrutiny is supposed to (finally) start today, pending a high court ruling. Here’s what we know.

By THE STAR STAFF

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ending a decision of the Puerto Rico Supreme Court, at press time Sunday it was not known whether the State Elections Commission (SEC) will be able to start the scrutiny of votes today.

The parties had until Sunday at noon to file their responses to a petition filed

by New Progressive Party (NPP) Electoral Commissioner Hector J. Sánchez that took to the Supreme Court a suit submitted by the Citizen Victory Movement (CVM) last week that seeks to force the SEC to give the party the list of voters who filed early voting ballots.

The CVM suit has paralyzed the scrutiny process. After it was filed, San Juan Judge Rebecca de León Ortiz had ordered the SEC to unveil the list of voters who cast absentee or early voting ballots before the scrutiny, but the SEC did not do so. Therefore, the CVM went to court again on Thursday to find the SEC in contempt of court. The judge then ordered the suspension of the work at the SEC, but the NPP took the matter to the Supreme Court, which took over jurisdic-

tion of the case.

Late Saturday, the high court ordered all of the parties to submit their responses Sunday on the case filed by the CVM. Popular Democratic Party Electoral Commissioner Gerardo Cruz Maldonado said his party filed its response to the Supreme Court related to the SEC’s refusal to supply the lists of voters who cast early voting ballots.

In the argument, Cruz Maldonado said the controversy should never have reached the Supreme Court, since all the electoral commissioners had agreed that, before concluding the general scrutiny process, it was possible to know that all the voters who voted in advance in effect had requested such a vote. Also, he said the early voting lists are needed to ensure that no voter committed the crime of casting a double vote.

“The absence of early voting voters lists is a problem if indeed we want to know if the voters did so of their own free will and if someone voted twice,” Cruz Maldonado said in a written statement. “It is urgent to have the lists, among other [documenta-

tion], to be able to guarantee an impartial, uniform, transparent, pure and fair process.”

“Puerto Ricans are waiting to be able to legitimize the process and the most useful tool for doing so is through the availability of the lists, as required by the regulations approved unanimously before

the elections,” Cruz Maldonado said.

On Saturday, the work at Roberto Clemente Coliseum in Hato Rey was concentrated on the tally of records for 19 precincts in the review of votes added by hand -- which is estimated to be 13,000 votes and had not been added.

Leadership positions in PR Democratic Party won by NPP members

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

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embers of the New Progressive Party (NPP) occupied all leadership positions in the Democratic Party in Puerto Rico, in a vote held Saturday at the Convention Center in Cataño.

Charlie Rodríguez returned as president with 1,619 votes.

(Photo: Cybernews)

Members of the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) boycotted the vote.

According to the results provided: Charlie Rodríguez returned as president with 1,619 votes, while PDP Rep. Rafael “Tatito” Hernández Montañez received 33.

JohanneVélez was chosen as vice president, over Salinas Mayor Karilyn Bonilla of the PDP. In the other positions, the following were chosen: María “Mayita” Meléndez Altieri (committeewoman); Luis Daniel Dávila Pernas (Committee); Albita Rivera Ramírez, Aida Márquez Ibañez, Ibelissa Ocasio Ibarra, María Mayoral Maldonado, Jessica Nieves Soto, Ingrid Morales Colón, Rosachely Rivera Santana, and Lornna Soto Villanueva (female district members); Miguel B. Hernández Vivoni, José “Pichy” Torres Zamora, Ángel “Kuko” Ramos López, Braulio Torres Jiménez Emmanuel, Piñeiro Castro, Jesús “Gardy” Colón Berlingeri, Ángel R. Peña Ramírez and Sergio Estévez Vélez (male district members).

Men and women elected at-large were: Gabriela “Gabi” Medina Marrero, Miguel Romero Lugo, Frances Rodríguez Torres, Joel Franqui Lugo, Rosemarie “Mai”

Vizcarrondo. Carmelo Ríos Santiago, Evelyn Vázquez Nieves, José “Che” Pérez Cordero, Zoe Laboy Alvarado and Víctor Ramos Otero.

In total, 1,741 people voted.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, November 23, 2020

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Parador Owners Association: Beaches, rivers open. With some restrictions, but open

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

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he Puerto Rico Parador (Small Inn) Owners and Tourism Association announced Sunday that based on the latest COVID-19-related executive order (EO 2020-80), the beaches and rivers of the island are open for the use and enjoyment of the public, with some restricted uses, to minimize mass gatherings of people and reduce the risk of spreading the virus.

“We definitely support the guidelines and the priority assigned by the honorable governor [Wanda Vázquez Garced] to the health of our people, and although there is no scientific basis to support some of the new guidelines, we have made the necessary adjustments in our inns and restaurants to be in full compliance,” said Association President Jesús Ramos, owner of ParadorVillas Sotomayor in Adjuntas. “However, we make this clarification because it has been incorrectly disseminated that ‘our beaches are closed. …’ We are causing irreparable damage to thousands of businesses and the more than 80,000 employees in the tourism sector, the most affected by the pandemic.”

“Our rivers and beaches are a key part of our tourist and recreational offer, for which

we thank the honorable Governor and the secretary of the Recreation and Sports Department [DRD by its Spanish initials] for the clarifications that have been made after the announcements of the executive order,” added Tomás Ramírez, co-owner of Combate Beach Resort and a past president of the Association.

According to the Administrative Bulletin 2020-080 and DRD memo 2020-12, the use of island beaches is allowed for individual activities or sports such as running, walking, surfing, sailing, rowing, diving, volleyball or beach tennis, among others.

In addition, activities such as open water swimming, kayaking and paddle boarding are permitted. On the other hand, camping on the shore, or taking tents, umbrellas, coolers, or chairs to park or sunbathe is not allowed under the order.

Meanwhile, sports training in groups of up to six people is authorized, provided that participants follow the rules and regulations of physical distancing and the use of masks, as prescribed by the DRD. Xavier A. Ramírez, general manager of the Combate Beach Resort in Cabo Rojo, said the new restrictions do not represent a significant change for his guests, since the resort is only 100 meters from the beach and guests usually alternate between using the beach and the pool several times a day.

“We have made additional adjustments to our facilities to ensure maximum enjoyment for our visitors in a welcoming, safe and healthy environment,” Ramírez said.

“In particular, our guests can enjoy over 30 recreational activities, including the use of the beach, as stipulated, sunbathing, relaxing and bathing in the pool in two shifts of two hours each; people can rent kayaks, paddleboards and bicycles, and play sand volleyball at our facilities. In addition, they can enjoy the art of photography, bird

Teachers Assn. to present forum on adapting special education to distance learning

By THE STAR STAFF

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he Puerto Rico Teachers Association (AMPR by its Spanish initials) announced Sunday that on Tuesday at 4 p.m. it will hold the virtual forum “How to adapt special education to the reality of distance learning” through the Zoom platform.

AMPR President Elba Aponte Santos highlighted the importance of the online meeting due to the need for services of the 105,000 students who belong to the Special Education Program, out of an overall official enrollment of 284,000 students in public schools.

In addition, in keeping with Special Education Month, meeting participants will discuss various issues related to the modality of distance education, which has been a fundamental part of the response to the dramatic increase in cases of COVID-19 in Puerto Rico.

Aponte Santos said the following topics will be discussed at the forum: “How to identify signs of learning disabilities,” “Challenges of special

education and the pandemic,” “How to adapt to the new reality” (by Dr. Gretchen I. Seda Irizarry, interim director of the master’s program in School Psychology at Albizu University), and “Teachers with successful strategies: The importance of teamwork,” by professor Noelis Giovanna Reyes Rodríguez and Spanish teacher Noelia Cotto. The AMPR will collaborate with Víctor M. Rivera, CEO & creative director of the renowned group Attention Attention, to reveal his successful techniques for capturing the attention of children.

“In celebration of Special Education Month, at AMPR we seek that our educators have the essential tools to continue improving their service,” Aponte Santos said. “We thank all these professional resources, with extensive knowledge in their respective topics, for accepting our invitation to be part of the forum. We reiterate the commitment of our organization with the enrollment of special education students, as well as with the educators who provide them with the bread of education and help their adjustment to society.”

watching, and other recreational activities on the 1,960 acres of the Cabo Rojo Wildlife Refuge. Other paradors in the Porta del Sol Region, such as Boquemar, El Faro, and Guánica 1929, provide very similar activities.”

Ramos said something similar regarding Adjuntas, the “city of the Sleeping Giant.”

“Recent rains have beautified the two rivers that run through our 79-acre property and the new temperatures invite a family getaway in the Christmas spirit,” he said.

“Everything is working with the necessary health and safety measures,” the Parador Villas Sotomayor owner said. “Our guests can enjoy over 15 recreational activities, including the use of the rivers, as agreed; sunbathing and bathing in the two pools, playing basketball and sand volleyball with your family group, cycling, and riding one of our horses. In addition, they can visit the Don Jun farm where we have several animals and we produce over 70 agricultural products that we serve in our two restaurants.”

There are 13 small inns (paradors) certified by the Puerto Rico Tourism Company and each one has an offer for any taste and budget, the Association noted.

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Monday, November 23, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Skepticism toward incoming gov’t rising in trans community Members will keep betting on community organizations for support, while others call for a ‘surprise,’ changes from new leaders

By PEDRO CORREA HENRY Twitter: @PCorreaHenry Special to The Star

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ittle to no hope.

That’s the consensus that some members of the trans community have expressed toward the incoming government as they still wait for their needs and concerns to be addressed properly.

As the community recently gathered for a collective “outcry” in front of the Capitol to demand justice and fair treatment, the Star spoke with trans, non-binary and intersex citizens on what to expect from the incoming government and what issues are of utmost importance to address.

La Sombrilla Cuir cofounder Ínaru de la Fuente Díaz, who identifies as a trans and nonbinary person, said he will be waiting for a “surprise” from the incoming government as “there have been no conversations or concrete proposals.”

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines non-binary as “relating to or being a person who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that is neither entirely male nor entirely female.”

“The mere fact of saying that ‘these people are going to recognize that we exist in our society,’ recognition of trans people is not enough, you have to do something much more than simply speak to the cameras and say that you recognize us,” de la Fuente Díaz said.

As for issues to work on, the activist said the government must include the community in conversations about looking out for better welfare and conduct extensive investigations to gather data and recognize the particular needs the community needs to be addressed with more immediacy. The law student added that dignified medical services for every trans member, coverage on gender affirmation procedures, a third gender option on official paperwork, and a faster, calmer, and easier name-changing process are imperative.

“We have too many claims to be contained in one space because we have literally been given almost no rights at all,” de la Fuente Díaz said. “People think that after we were given nondiscrimination rights at work based on sexual orientation and gender identity, it’s over.”

“The reality is that we cannot even get a job. How can a law that protects us in employment be applied if not even trans people can get a job, either because they don’t give us a job, or because we don’t want to go through violence again, or we decide not to work?” they/them said.

Meanwhile, the groups say that although they believe that “the people save the people and the community saves the community, sadly, the cases of femicides and transfeminicides are something that must be addressed by everyone, not simply the community,” de la Fuente Díaz said.

“That has to be done from a process of awareness from the state, from the government, and from all the people who are in command and in charge,” they/them said.

André Pó Rodil Rivera, a trans, non-binary and intersex individual, told the Star that “current governments do not meet the expectations of anything my community needs right now.”

Non-profit organization Planned Parenthood defines intersex as “a general term used for a variety of situations in which a person is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit the boxes of ‘female’ or ‘male.’”

“It’s all very bureaucratic, classist, and very limited to people who have the privilege,” Rodil Rivera said. “It’s very difficult for me to be, ‘Oh, I feel content,’ because I don’t.”

The groups insisted that the more suppressive the government is toward civil rights, the more the intersex community is set up for more violence against their bodies and identities.

Rodil Rivera, a transdisciplinary performance artist, said the community fears visiting any medical professional, its members caught between either masking their gender identity or coming out because “I never know what the reaction is that’s gonna happen.”

“If it wasn’t for my own questioning and my own interest, I wouldn’t be able to know that I was intersex,” Rodil Rivera said. “I always had a suspicion because my body and I never got answers, because my mom wasn’t sure either, and if it wasn’t for me being pushy, where I said I need this testing, let me do this, let me do that, it wasn’t until I pushed and found doctors that were willing to test me that I found out [I was intersex].”

The groups pointed out the unfairness of intersex people who face similar difficulties possibly having no access to medical services. They told the Star that the medical community, both in the field and in academia, must become better educated on the matter.

“Doctors don’t have any knowledge of certain intersex conditions because their mentality is: ‘If it’s not visible, it’s not real.’ In part, there’s that invisibilization of who’s intersex and who’s not because some conditions are not visible, [while] some conditions were visible when the kids were born and they performed surgeries without any consent,” Rodil Rivera said. “It’s a very difficult topic because there are plenty of intersex conditions, there are many variances in how it can be expressed in someone’s body and there’s absolute ignorance from the medical community.”

Meanwhile, 26-year-old trans man Alexander Milán Santiago Cordero said “expectations with the government have always been low.”

As for being trans, which comes from the word transgender,

the National Center for Transgender Equality defines transgender people as “people whose gender identity is different from the gender they were thought to be at birth.”

Santiago Cordero said one thing he does expect is for the next San Juan mayor to preserve a trans clinic that provides free services toward the community, to which he said they should “expand their working days, the services they offer, [retain] the people they have [working] there, [offer] a bigger space, better promotion, cover for more [trans patients], in general, so that it grows.”

Moreover, he said the government should expand those services as there are only three clinics across Puerto Rico, two in San Juan, and another in Mayagüez.

As for expecting more changes, Cordero Santiago said that aside from the preservation of the clinics, he has not seen “any other government effort to truly work with the community.”

“The Puerto Rico government had in their hands the people who said that, in effect, they were there that night, that they saw Alexa and that they were the people who told them: ‘We’re going to shoot you,’ because that’s what it says in the video, and that, on top of that, they say: ‘Yes, I shot Alexa, but it was with a paintball gun. What did the police do? Nothing,” he said. “On top of that, you have a video that positions a group of people, quite possibly being the last to see a person who was brutally murdered, who confessed that, in effect, they were harassing and attacking her, because it would have been with what whatever she was shot; it’s an attack because she was on the street. And what does the prosecutor in the case decide? She decides not to charge them.

Would that prosecutor have filed charges if it had been her, if it had happened to her daughter, if it had happened to her neighbor?

Of course, because it was an attack.”

Trans woman Adi Love told the Star meanwhile that she does not have any expectations “if [New Progressive Party governorelect Pedro] Pierluisi and other candidates become the official candidates-elect.”

“I don’t expect any support for the LGBTQIAP+ community from them,” the drag performer said. “There should be governmental support because everyone deserves safety, we deserve for the murders of trans people to be solved, that there are laws to protect trans people, that they understand that we are a different community, with other experiences that deserve recognition and validity.”

However, Love told the Star that she feels a glimmer of hope from the current legislators-elect from parties such as Citizen Victory Movement and the Puerto Rican Independence Party, who have been collectives that have been vocally supportive of the queer community.

“It was difficult to see, a hard pill to swallow, to see that people still voted for people who steal, who hate the community specifically, who have no values, who voted due to their family traditions. We had two governors, one who was historically disposed of and another one who didn’t want to become governor, but then became corrupted,” she said. “Learn already and accept that diversity not only exists in the human experience, and not even only in the trans, non-binary or queer experience, but in the political experience, too.”

Love told the Star that citizens should support politicians for their legislation, not their ideals, as political measures “bring the money to your plate and provide you better welfare.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, November 23, 2020

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Judge dismisses Trump lawsuit seeking to delay certification in Pennsylvania

By ALAN FEUER

A

federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed on Saturday night a lawsuit by the Trump campaign that had claimed there were widespread improprieties with mail-in ballots in the state, ending the last major effort to delay the certification of Pennsylvania’s vote results, which is scheduled to take place Monday.

In a scathing order, Judge Matthew Brann wrote that President Donald Trump’s campaign, which had asked him to effectively disenfranchise nearly 7 million voters, should have come to court “armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption” in its efforts to essentially nullify the results of Pennsylvania’s election.

But instead, Brann complained, the Trump campaign provided only “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” that were “unsupported by evidence.”

After legal defeats in nearly all of the key swing states — Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona and Wisconsin — Trump’s path to overturning the results of the election through the courts has all but vanished.

The Pennsylvania lawsuit, filed Nov. 9, accused its secretary of state, Kathy Boockvar, and several counties with largely Democratic populations of unfairly handling mail-in ballots, which were used in unprecedented numbers during this year’s election. The suit claimed that under Boockvar’s guidance, the Democratic counties gave voters who had submitted mail-in ballots with minor flaws an opportunity to “cure” or fix them while counties with mostly Republican populations did not alert voters about faulty ballots.

That, according to the Trump campaign, violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Brann, a former Pennsylvania Republican Party official and a member of the conservative Federalist Society, who was

appointed by President Barack Obama, rejected this argument, likening it to Frankenstein’s monster, which, he noted, had been “haphazardly stitched together.”

He ruled that the Trump campaign, lacking standing to make the claim, could not prove that it had suffered any harm if some counties, anticipating a deluge of mail-in ballots, helped their voters to file proper ballots while others did not.

“That some counties may have chosen to implement” Boockvar’s suggestions but others did not “does not constitute an equal-protection violation,” Brann wrote.

The dismissal of the suit just two days before Pennsylvania was scheduled to certify its vote and award its 20 electors to President-elect Joe Biden was merely the latest of the more than 30 legal losses the Trump campaign and other Republican plaintiffs have suffered since Election Day. At a rambling news conference Thursday that mixed misleading statements, conspiracy theories and outright fabrications, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, promised more suits attacking the integrity of the elections and proving “massive fraud,” but at least so far, those suits have not been filed.

The suit Brann considered was particularly troubled by legal challenges.

One week after it was filed, the Trump campaign was already on its third set of lawyers. On Tuesday, Giuliani, rushing into the matter, personally appeared at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and gave a disjointed opening statement that mentioned Mickey Mouse, former Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago and the Philadelphia mafia.

In court papers filed Saturday, he misspelled the name of Pennsylvania’s governor, Tom Wolf.

Even though Giuliani began his presentation at the court hearing by accusing the Democratic Party of committing “nationwide fraud” in Pennsylvania and at least nine other states, under questioning by Brann he quickly backtracked and acknowledged

he was making no such claims in this case.

“This is not a fraud case,” he said.

In his 37-page order, Brann systemically dismantled the Trump campaign’s arguments and those brought by the suit’s two other plaintiffs, Republican voters who claimed their mail-in ballots had not been counted.

Given the almost total lack of evidence that the Trump campaign provided, Brann seemed incredulous that he was being asked to toss the results of an entire state’s election.

“In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state,” he wrote. “Our people, laws and institutions demand more.”

Election workers sorted ballots in Philadelphia earlier this month. A federal judge on Saturday firmly rejected the Trump campaign’s claim of widespread irregularities with Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballots.

Presidential memoirs don’t always take this long to write

By IAN PRASAD PHILBRICK

T

he wait is over for the first volume of Barack Obama’s presidential memoirs, “A Promised Land,” which came out last Tuesday.

But as a slew of articles calling the book’s arrival “longawaited” and “highly anticipated” suggest, it was a considerable wait. Obama took three years and 10 months to publish — longer than any other American president in the last century.

With the exception of presidents who died in office and George H.W. Bush, who never wrote a standard presidential memoir, no modern president has taken as long to publish after leaving the White House.

What accounts for Obama’s comparatively slow pace?

A look at how he crafted his memoir, and how past presidents approached theirs, suggests some answers.

First, Obama’s book is long. While he “initially plan-

ned to write a 500-page memoir and be done in a year,” The Times’ Jennifer Szalai explained in a review, the book ended up stretching nearly 800 pages and taking more than three times longer to complete. And that’s just volume one; a second remains in the works.

Even so, other presidents have published similarly lengthy memoirs in less time. Bill Clinton’s “My Life” appeared less than 3 1/2 years after he left the White House and weighed in at around 1,000 pages. Harry Truman published the first installment of his two-volume memoirs a full year faster than Obama published his.

Obama’s meticulous approach — and insistence on writing the book himself — offers a second clue. “Obama is a genuine literary stylist,” said Jonathan Alter, author of two books about the 44th president. “And anybody who has ever tried to be one knows that it can be like squeezing blood from a stone.”

In an Atlantic interview, Obama confessed to laboring for hours over single paragraphs. “As I understand it, he writes in a very classic way,” said Peter Osnos, who in 1995 published “Dreams From My Father,” Obama’s first memoir, at Times Books, then an imprint of Random House. “He sits down with a pen and a pad.”

Obama also seems to have eschewed tactics embraced by other presidents who also wrote their own books. He has admitted to struggling to keep a consistent diary while in the White House, a useful aid for past presidential memoirists.

Jimmy Carter drew heavily on his diaries to write “Keeping Faith,” which came out a brisk 21 months after he left office.

“His discipline allowed him to write it quickly,” said Alter, the author of a new biography of Carter. “Diaries help you speed the completion of your memoirs, and what slows them down is writing them yourself.”

Continues on page 8

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The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, November 23, 2020

FDA grants emergency authorization of antibody treatment given to Trump

By KATIE THOMAS and NOAH WEILAND

T

he Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency authorization for the experimental antibody treatment given to President DonaldTrump shortly after he was diagnosed with COVID-19, giving doctors another option to treat COVID-19 patients as cases across the country continue to rise.

The treatment, made by the biotech company Regeneron, is a cocktail of two powerful antibodies that have shown promise in early studies at keeping the infection in check, reducing medical visits in patients who get the drug early in the course of their disease. A similar treatment, made by Eli Lilly, was given emergency approval earlier this month.

The emergency authorization for Regeneron’s drug is limited in scope: It is for people who have tested positive for the coronavirus and who are at high risk for developing severe COVID-19. Evidence so far suggests that antibody treatments work best early in the course of the disease, before the virus has gained a foothold in the body. Like Eli Lilly’s treatment, Regeneron’s is not authorized for use in people who are hospitalized or who need oxygen.

The emergency authorization raises immediate questions about who will get access to the treatments as an average of more than 168,000 people are diagnosed each day with COVID-19 in the United States and hospitals are running out of beds in some regions of the country. Regeneron has said it will have

Regeneron’s headquarters in Tarrytown, N.Y.

enough of the drug for only about 80,000 people by the end of November, enough for 200,000 patients by the first week of January, and 300,000 by the end of January. After that, the company said, it will be able to ramp up production thanks to a partnership with Swiss manufacturer Roche.

Regeneron has received more than $500 million from the federal government to develop and manufacture the treatments.

Although the first 300,000 doses will be provided free, patients may be charged for having the treatment administered; it must be infused in a clinic or hospital. For some Medicare beneficiaries, that cost would be $60, depending on the patient’s coverage plan.

Antibody treatments have gotten less attention than vaccines, but health officials have long held out hope that they may serve as a possible bridge until a coronavirus vaccine is more broadly available. Two vaccines, one made by Pfizer and another by Moderna, were recently shown to be more than 90% effective in early analyses. Pfizer, which has completed its trial, submitted an application Friday for emergency authorization of the vaccine, and Moderna said it planned to apply soon. Still, it will be weeks before a vaccine is available, and even then, access will be limited to people in high-risk groups.

Dr. George Yancopoulos, Regeneron’s president and chief scientific officer, said in a statement that he was encouraged by the recent vaccine results but that “there remains a need to treat patients who develop COVID-19, especially as some may not have had access to or were not protected by vaccination.”

Regeneron enjoyed a burst of publicity in October, when Trump received an infusion

of its cocktail and then enthusiastically promoted the drug as lending him a superpowerlike feeling. In a video released Oct. 7, the president claimed without evidence that it had cured him and that he had authorized it — something he does not have the power to do.

It remains impossible to know whether the Regeneron treatment helped Trump. He was given multiple drugs while at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and many people recover from the virus on their own.

Since the spring, White House and health officials have been closely watching the development of the antibody treatments. In addition to Regeneron’s deal with the federal government, Eli Lilly announced a $375,000 deal in October to supply the government with 300,000 doses.

A similar antibody treatment that Regeneron developed to fight Ebola was approved by the FDA in October, bolstering confidence that its COVID-19 version would prevail in the ongoing trials of outpatients.

The president and two of his top advisers — Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law — have called Dr. Stephen Hahn, the FDA commissioner, to press for speed in agency reviews. And Dr. Leonard Schleifer, the billionaire co-founder and chief executive of Regeneron, who has known Trump casually for years, has told associates that Trump calls him to ask about the status of the treatment.

Early data released by Regeneron suggest that its cocktail works best in people who do not appear to be mounting an early immune response to the virus, or who have high levels of the virus, and who are therefore at greater risk of faring poorly.

Presidential memoirs don’t always take this long to write From page 7

Clinton took a different tack, hiring a former foreign policy speechwriter, the historian Ted Widmer, to interview him at length about his early life. Widmer then had the interviews transcribed and sent to Clinton, where they became grist as the former president wrote.

“It’s hard to look at a blank piece of paper and wonder what to say, especially if you’re a former president trying to write for millions of readers,” said Widmer, a professor at the Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York. “He understood intuitively

that talking was a great way to begin.”

Other presidents, such as Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, were able to publish their books faster with the help of aides and ghostwriters. Obama’s publisher, Crown, said aides assisted him with research, but he wrote the memoir himself.

Reagan’s “An American Life,” which appeared less than two years after he left office, was largely ghostwritten; Reagan had little zeal for the project. “He used to jokingly refer to it as the monkey on his back,” said Mark Weinberg, a former aide. “He didn’t want it to dominate his post-presidency life.”

Richard Nixon came the closest to surpassing Obama’s timeline, though for different reasons. Holed up in his San Clemente, California, property with the handful of aides who helped draft his 1978 memoir, “RN,” Nixon had to contend with litigation stemming from the Watergate scandal.

“There were lawsuits that he had to defend against, and the Congress was still tracking him down,” said Ken Khachigian, a former staffer who assisted with both Nixon’s book and his legal defense. “The experience, day to day, was not fun.”

Presidential memoirs are “a really hard genre,” said Craig Fehrman, author of a history of

presidential books. “We’ve seen lots of presidents with lots of talented aides, and ghostwriters too, take swings at this genre and struggle.”

Despite selling well, the books often resist lively prose, genuine introspection and fluid storytelling, he said, and they can quickly derail amid policy wonkery, self-justification or score-settling.

Fehrman believes that Obama’s book could be an exception. “You don’t have to look far to find a literary writer who misses deadlines and goes on long bouts of self-contemplation,” he said. “On paper, he seems like the president who could break the streak.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, November 23, 2020

9

Why are states imposing virus curfews?

By KWAME OPAM and CONCEPCIÓN DE LEÓN

C

ities, states and counties from Massachusetts to Colorado have imposed curfews on residents and businesses to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus as caseloads reach new highs around the country.

The curfews, enacted by Republican and Democratic leaders, now affect residents in two of the country’s biggest states. In California on Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered “a limited stay-at-home order” in dozens of counties, barring “nonessential work and gatherings” from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.

And in New York this month, Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered bars, restaurants and gyms to close by 10 p.m.

Some cities, like Newark, New Jersey, have taken a more targeted approach, setting a curfew for residents in ZIP codes with soaring case numbers; and leaders in Europe have made similar moves, like a 10 p.m. curfew for pubs and restaurants in England.

But the patchwork response, with rules sometimes varying from town to town, also has some residents asking, what effect could a curfew have on a virus that seems to be everywhere, spreading day and night?

What’s the point of a curfew?

Nicholas Gradisar, the mayor of Pueblo, Colorado, said his city’s curfew aimed to decrease mobility among those with the highest infection rate in the state, ages 20 to 50, who are also most likely to be out late at night. The city had a severe spike in cases after Labor Day and imposed a curfew the night before Halloween to try to prevent a similar increase. It was recently extended to Nov. 27.

“The rules for when bars are open are supposed to be that you can come down with your group and you don’t interact with others,” Gradisar said. But people are less likely to do this after a few hours of drinking, he added. “That’s how this virus spreads.”

Governors have given similar reasons for asking residents to stay home at night except for essential needs like groceries, framing curfew measures as a compromise between a full lockdown and keeping businesses open.

Dan Tierney, the press secretary for Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, where a 21-day curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. was instituted starting Nov. 19, said the governor had con-

sidered closing bars, restaurants and fitness centers altogether. But the economic impact would have been too damaging, Tierney said.

Instead, he said, the hope is that the curfew, combined with the statewide mask mandate and social distancing, will encourage people to reduce their contact with others.

“We think we can make a dent in these numbers by doing what we’re doing,” he said.

Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts said at a news conference this month that the state’s stay-at-home advisory was meant to “reduce the number of opportunities and activities where people gather in groups and get them home with only members of their household.”

In California, counties with severe outbreaks will have a curfew beginning Saturday.

Dr. Mark Ghaly, the secretary of California health and human services, said the state’s order was meant to “target activities that are particularly high-risk,” like eating and drinking inside restaurants.

“We’ve seen in the past that COVID goes from zero to 60 miles per hour very quickly,” he said at a news conference Nov. 19.

What can go wrong?

While authorities hope curfews reduce transmission, their enforcement abilities are limited. Some bar patrons, for instance, may gather in homes after a few hours of drinking — and at-home gatherings of any kind would be difficult to prevent.

“These are best guidelines, so we’re not expecting police to go knocking on people’s doors or anything Orwellian like that,” said Tierney, the Ohio press secretary.

“We’re hopeful that Ohioans will do what they need to do.”

And though the curfews are meant to be more economically palatable than full lockdowns, some businesses that depend on late customers expect to take a hit.

“It’s going to have an immediate effect on our revenue,” said Jeff Castleberry, owner of Caz’s Pub in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the governor recently set a curfew. Castleberry said that the bar installed a filtration system and has taken fewer customers as a safety precaution but that losing late business will cut deep.

“We’ve been trying to operate in the right, and operating that way has cost us about 25% of our revenue,” he said. With the curfew, he anticipated, “we’re going to lose half of that 75%.”

A couple embraces as businesses close on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, Fla., due to a curfew amid the coronavirus pandemic, on Friday, July 24, 2020. The city of Miami Beach instituted a curfew in July.

Do the curfews work?

Gradisar, the mayor of Pueblo, said there wasn’t enough data yet to show whether the curfew has helped. He said that cellphone usage data, analyzed by the Colorado Department of Health, has demonstrated decreased mobility between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.

“You say, ‘Don’t have private parties; don’t have Halloween parties,’ but that’s nearly impossible to enforce,” he said. “At least we’re breaking up the parties a little earlier.”

But like cities around the country, Pueblo has had a significant increase in cases. Given this spike, Gradisar said he and other local officials were “desperate to try anything at this point.”

Health experts said it was not clear how effective curfews could be. Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, said that while curfews might have a “modest impact,” they should be “considered as part of a whole series of interventions” that need to be sustained.

“There are no quick fixes here,” he said.

Dr. Helen Boucher, an infectious disease specialist at Tufts Medical Center, said that because mask mandates, curfews and rules against gathering indoors are being put in effect together, it will be difficult to determine which made the biggest difference.

“If we see benefits in a month, was it one of them, or was it all of them?” she

said. “It’s hard to ascertain. This is not a controlled trial. This is real life.”

Dr. Gregg Gonsalves, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, called curfews a “crude, inelegant instrument” being used to address a problem without a simple answer.

“In many places, it’s small gatherings at home,” he said of transmission, describing a scenario with “four of us having dinner, and none of us assumes we have COVID.” Gonsalves said the curfew measures, combined with other measures, were “a logical approach” borne out by practical experience in the United States and across the world. “We’re doing what seems to reduce contacts.”

But he said that leaders’ efforts were suboptimal, if understandable, given their compromised position. People are weary of isolation, and the cost of giving up social ties this holiday season is high. Workers at bars, restaurants, gyms and other businesses need economic support, but Congress has signaled that another stimulus package is unlikely before year’s end.

“It’s really like putting a Band-Aid on a machete wound,” Gonsalves said. “It’s not about Republican or Democratic governors.

They’re all in the same boat. They’re not getting support. Faced with the onslaught, mayors and governors would love to do more. But they can’t do more.”

10

Monday, November 23, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

An unlikely Thanksgiving tradition carries on

By MARIE FAZIO

celebrate even a modest holiday.

Instead of a large multifamily event, Dench and Hinton held a small dinner our years ago, Wanda Dench on Friday, where they gave thanks and didn’t know her grandson had talked about their friendship and Lonchanged his phone number when nie Dench’s death, Wanda Dench said. she invited him to her house for ThankDuring their meal, they kept a burning sgiving dinner at 3 p.m. sharp. candle and portrait of Lonnie Dench in First there was confusion from the front of his seat at the table. apparent stranger on the receiving end “It’s going to be different, my first of the text, then an exchange of selfies.

Thanksgiving without him,” she said.

“You not my grandma,” texted “My husband was always right behind Jamal Hinton, then a 17-year-old high me, telling me how proud he was of Jaschool senior. “Can I still get a plate mal and me for what we’ve done.” though?”

‘You can be family with anybody.’

“Of course you can,” Dench, Dench and Hinton’s chance ennow 63, of Mesa, Arizona, responded. counter in 2016 blossomed into a deep “That’s what grandma’s do … feed friendship. They met up for frequent every one.” double dates, accompanied by Lonnie Thus began a holiday tradition that Dench and Mikaela Grubbs, 21, Hinton’s has charmed the world. Hinton tweegirlfriend. The couples once spent four ted photos of their exchange, promptly hours at a barbecue restaurant laughing drawing the internet’s attention; Dench and talking about “everything imaginareceived so many requests for plates ble”— their lives, jobs, favorite music, that year that she had to change her movies and the possibility of life on number. A few weeks later, Hinton took other planets, Dench said.

Dench up on the offer, and the pair and “After meeting her the first time their families celebrated that ThanksgiI just knew, she’s another person, age ving together — and each one since. is really just a number,” Hinton, who is Their holiday tradition has drawn now 21 and works as a car salesman, attention every year, and Dench even said of Dench. “It doesn’t matter, you can be friends with anybody, you can be family with anybody.”

Hinton, who said he had aspirations of becoming a sports agent, started a YouTube channel after his rise to fame, where he occasionally chronicles his life with his girlfriend, including some cameos by the Denches.

Their Thanksgivings have usually been spent at the Dench home, but last year — the one Dench recalls as her favorite — they spent the day with Grubbs’ family. “Gosh it was just a whirlwind of fun,” she said.

Dench met her husband when she was 20 and living in Idaho, an encounter she considers love at first sight, she said. They married a year later and had a daughter, in addition to two children Wanda Dench and Jamal Hinton, who met in 2016, at her home in Mesa, Ariz. on from her previous marriage. They settOct. 29, 2020. After a misdirected text, Wanda Dench and Jamal Hinton became led in Arizona to escape the cold and internet famous for their holiday celebrations and this year, they will feel major doted on their six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. loss from the pandemic at their table.

F

has an entry as “Thanksgiving Grandma” at KnowYourMeme, the online database of the internet’s favorite moments. So when her husband, Lonnie, died of the coronavirus in April, it, too, made headlines around the country.

This year’s holiday will be different for Thanksgiving Grandma, as it will for millions of other people. Dench and Hinton weighed the risks of holding a Thanksgiving celebration during the pandemic. They wondered if they could find a way to celebrate together early in the day, before splitting off to see their respective families, but decided the risk of spread was too great.

With cases rising, states’ officials and health experts have urged people to scale down their Thanksgiving celebrations; this week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged Americans to stay home. The director of the Arizona Department of Health Services said she expected to see a “significant increase” in the number of coronavirus cases after Thanksgiving, and the state, like others, has urged people to limit the number of guests, physically distance from one another and wear masks if they are going to

“He was always true to himself,” she said. “He was the person I wanted to be like.”

Hinton said Lonnie Dench was always the first to pull people in for a hug or insist on a group picture. When the Denches upgraded their phones, Hinton spent the day helping to set them up. Afterward, he said, Lonnie Dench excitedly texted and called him to show him it worked.

“I always remember Lonnie looking at the bright side of things,” Hinton said. “He would want us to celebrate his life instead of hating COVID and hating everything.”

A holiday season filled with grief As more than a quarter of a million people in the United States have died from the coronavirus, a collective grief has swept the country. In many households, the loss is personal and tangible: an empty seat at the dinner table; silence in moments once filled with conversation; confronting a holiday season emptier than those that have come before.

The Denches both became ill with the coronavirus in the spring. Lonnie Dench died on April 5, with his wife of 42 years at his side.

The day after Lonnie Dench died, Hinton and Grubbs brought Wanda Dench takeout from their favorite barbecue restaurant. They also brought some puzzles and a flash drive filled with well wishes from fans around the world, strangers who told her they had her in their prayers and how she and Hinton had inspired them.

A bit of joy in a harsh reality Four years ago, when Dench and Hinton first met, the country was going through a similarly turbulent time during an election year with heated racial tension, Hinton said. He thinks their texts offered a holiday reprieve from a harsh reality.

“It was something to show everybody, ‘Hey, we’re all still human, we’re all still together and we can all be friends,’” he said. He said he hoped the same message carries weight today.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, November 23, 2020

11

52 years later, IBM apologizes for firing transgender woman

By MARIA CRAMER

I

n August 1968, Lynn Conway, a promising computer engineer at IBM in Sunnyvale, California, was called into the office of Gene Myron Amdahl, then the company’s director of advanced computing systems.

Amdahl had been supportive when he learned that she was “undertaking a gender transition,” Conway wrote in an account, but the company’s chief executive, Thomas Watson Jr., was less tolerant.

That summer day, Amdahl had grim news.

“I was fired,” Conway wrote.

Fifty-two years later, Conway was called back to speak with IBM supervisors. This time, the setting was a virtual meeting witnessed by other company employees.

They watched last month as Diane Gherson, IBM’s senior vice president of human resources, told Conway that while the company now offered help and support to “transitioning employees,” no amount of progress could make up for the treatment she had received decades ago.

Conway, 82, was then given a lifetime achievement award for her “pioneering work” in computers, a company spokesperson said.

“It was so unexpected,” Conway said in an interview, adding that she recalled blinking back tears. “It was stunning.”

For gay and transgender scientists and friends of Conway, the apology, while late, was a validation of the work she and others in the community had contributed to the fields of science and technology. The apology, which was reported

by Forbes, was made four months after the Supreme Court ruled that a person could not be fired for being gay or transgender.

Rochelle Diamond, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology who is friends with Conway, said she learned of the apology Nov. 20, the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, which honors the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was stabbed to death in 1998.

“This is important for us,” said Diamond, who is also the retired chair of the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals. “It’s another reason why we need to remember and remember all of the people that have died because they were trans and to encourage trans people to be themselves.”

Christine Burns, who is friends with Conway, said she never showed bitterness about the way she was fired but that the apology must have felt healing.

“Nothing beats an unequivocal apology for vindication and closure,” said Burns, a retired British IT specialist who edited “Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows.”

Conway was hired at IBM in 1964, just after she graduated from Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science.

“It was a golden era in computer research, a time when fundamental breakthroughs were being made across a wide front,” she wrote.

Conway was on the verge of such a breakthrough — working on the architecture team of a project centered on creating a computer that would work at top speed — when she began undergoing medical treatments. In early 1968, she told a supervisor that she was “undertaking a gender transition to resolve a terrible existential situation” she had faced since childhood, she wrote.

Her direct supervisors wanted her to stay at the company and came up with a plan: She would take a leave from IBM, complete her transition and return as a new employee with a new identity, Conway said.

But company executives were alarmed, she said. Conway said she later learned that IBM executives feared “scandalous publicity” if her story got out.

The company’s medical director said employees who learned she was transgender “might suffer major emotional problems,” Conway wrote.

After she was fired, Conway underwent gender confirmation surgery and began rebuilding her career.

She worked at Memorex in 1971, and in 1973, she was recruited by Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where she de-

Lynn Conway at the University of Michigan in 2018. IBM executives in 1968 feared “scandalous publicity” if her story of being a transgender woman got out. veloped computer chip design methods that would eventually be used by tech companies worldwide.

In 1985, she became a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan.

She joined a weekly canoeing group, where she met her future husband, Charlie, an engineer.

Conway did not publicly reveal that she was transgender until 1999, when she said she learned computer scientists were researching the project she had been a part of at IBM. It was only a matter of time, she concluded, that someone would figure out what had happened.

In 2000, she created a website. Her goal, she wrote on the site, was to “illuminate and normalize the issues of gender identity and the processes of gender transition.”

“I also wanted to tell, in my own words, the story of my gender transition from male to female,” Conway wrote.

The website, rich with detail about her experiences as a computer engineer and a transgender woman, became a critical source of information for other people in the transgender and larger gay community, Diamond said.

She said of Conway’s website, “Here I am. I’m an accomplished trans woman. Let’s talk about things. How can we help each other?”

In 2005, the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals named Conway engineer of the year for her work in computers and for her public outreach efforts.

Conway said she was never angry at the people who fired her.

“To go back and slam and blame and defame people, there is a problem with that because it tends to divide people and create an angst that’s unresolvable,” she said. “However, you do need evidence that there has been serious learning and appreciation and horror over what happened from today’s gestalt.”

Transgender employees at IBM who witnessed the apology said they felt “part of something phenomenal,” said Ella Slade, who is IBM’s LGBT+ and global leader and whose pronouns are they and them.

“Lynn made a comment at one point about her joining this IBM event was like returning home, and it’s hard not to get choked up hearing that,” they said.

12

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, November 23, 2020

Who postpones Black Friday? This year, the French

A person enters a jewelery shop in Paris on Aug. 2, 2020. Spurred by small retailers’ anger over Amazon’s grip on sales, especially during lockdown, France has delayed the start of holiday discounts.

By LIZ ALDERMAN

T

he French government late last week declared it was postponing Black Friday as it moved to quell a nationwide rebellion by shopkeepers who say that Amazon has been stealing business from them during France’s coronavirus lockdown.

Black Friday, the U.S. import that has been embraced by European retailers as the quasi-official kickoff to the Christmas shopping season, will be delayed by a week in France, to Dec. 4, after the government wrested an agreement from Amazon and the country’s biggest retailers to delay their discounts.

The move is intended to level the playing field for booksellers, clothing shops and “nonessential” businesses that were forced to close their doors Oct. 30 after a second national lockdown was imposed, propelling consumers to online sites, including Amazon.

Under the accord, big retailers agreed to put off their Black Friday sales promotions on the condition that the government reauthorizes the reopening of small retailers by then. Shopkeepers have agitated since the new lockdown orders took effect to be able to restart business.

“Let us open or we will die,” Yohann Petiot, director general of France’s Alliance du Commerce, a trade group for businesses, told government officials this week.

But the finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, did not say Friday when shops and other nonessential businesses would be allowed to resume operations. While the current lockdown has helped curb an alarming new outbreak of coronavirus cases, French health authorities have cautioned that any reopenings must meet strict safety protocols.

Stores “will be able to open as soon as health indicators improve,” Prime Minister Jean Castex said Friday.

The spectacle of one of Europe’s most powerful countries scrambling to protect its retailers from Amazon highlights the difficulties governments are facing as they try to strike a balance between enforcing a second round of shutdowns amid pandemic fatigue and preventing businesses that don’t have the same deep pockets as big corporations from collapsing into mass bankruptcies.

In France, the episode has ignited a fresh backlash against the U.S. online giant.

Since it arrived in 2000, Amazon has become a favorite in France, capturing nearly half of online spending in 2019. During the most recent lockdown, sales in France jumped nearly 50% from a year ago, the company said.

But rapid growth has turned Amazon into a symbol of a dominant multinational that detractors say is importing unwanted American-style consumerism as well as job instability and environmental degradation to the eurozone’s second-largest economy.

In the lead-up to the announcement, Le Maire and other politicians urged shoppers not to give Amazon their business.

The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, and environmental organizations and trade groups, circulated an online petition titled “Noël Sans Amazon” (“An Amazon-free Christmas”). Addressed to Santa Claus, it commits signatories to a “#ChristmasWithoutAmazon,” which is described as a tax-dodging Grinch that destroys small businesses, jobs and the environment in France.

The virtual call to arms, however, quickly fell victim to an online hack that overloaded the website with fake signatures sent from more than 200 different servers, including hundreds in the name of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, with the comment, “Sorry, not sorry, Jeff.”

But Amazon’s influence in France — it holds around 20% of the French e-commerce market — is such that other big retailers held back from agreeing to postpone their Black Friday sales until Amazon did.

After Le Maire told the French Senate on Wednesday that it made sense to help small retailers by postponing Black Friday, Frédéric Duval, general manager of Amazon France, told a French radio station Thursday that Amazon was “listening to the recommendations of the government” and would put off its online sales until Dec. 4, paving the way for a broad accord.

Still, the scramble by French politicians to soothe the ire of small businesses has reopened a broader controversy over Black Friday itself, which wasn’t even an event in Europe until a few years ago. It was ushered in mainly by Amazon, which began promoting major sales in lockstep with those in the United States.

While the American Thanksgiving is just another Thursday in Europe, Black Friday has thrived. In Britain, Spain and other countries, Amazon and other big retailers already started offering Black Friday discounts online earlier this month.

France has been slower than other European countries to join the trend, and politicians have discouraged shoppers from participating, warning of “a frenzy of consumption” in which people are encouraged to buy products they don’t need. The fact that Amazon is not a French company did not help, either.

Yet Black Friday has been a crucial tool for retailers to top up sales. Last year, retailers in France raked in an estimated 6 billion eu-

ros in revenue around Black Friday.

Those sales are more critical than ever this year as retailers faced unprecedented losses from lockdowns linked to the coronavirus pandemic. Although stores reopened from June through September, it was not enough to fully compensate for France’s first lockdown; year-to-date sales are still, on average, 10% below their 2019 levels, according to an analysis by German bank Allianz.

Restrictions on nonessential stores in France have already cast a shadow over the nearly 18 billion euros in retail sales that retailers normally make in November and December, Allianz said.

Whether pushing back Black Friday will help small retailers remains to be seen.

The pandemic has rocked the economy, and the government is spending billions of euros to keep small businesses afloat, offering cheap state-backed loans and government subsidies for payrolls.

In one sense, the Black Friday delay has given small retailers a leg up. Several big chains that were allowed to remain open, including supermarkets like Carrefour and electronics giants including Fnac and Darty, had already printed promotional materials that may now have to be discarded.

Some bigger retailers had started offering discounts this week. Others have contracts with suppliers for deliveries in time for Nov. 27 promotions that may now need to be delayed.

Small retailers have used the lockdown to speed up the creation of websites and infrastructure to enable online ordering. The government has tried to encourage a transition to online sales, pushing “click and collect” activity, where customers can order online and come collect their own package.

Many shops, though, still don’t have the resources to compete with organized bigger retailers that have pickup and delivery infrastructures in place. In some cases, the government has stepped in with even more subsidies: Recently, it announced it would pay postage for booksellers to send orders through the mail as a way of encouraging the French to buy locally rather than on Amazon.

The online giant, however, will likely continue to be a big winner in the pandemic. Global sales surged 35% in the first nine months of the year, to $260 billion.

It is expected to rake in billions more with global Black Friday sales, which are now being carried out Nov. 27 everywhere in the world where it operates — except France.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, November 23, 2020

13 Stocks

Gap between vaccine hopes and pandemic reality poses market hazard A

s winter approaches, U.S. equity investors are weighing brightening prospects for a COVID-19 vaccine against a resurgence of the pandemic across the United States.

Several market strategists have predicted significant gains in U.S. stocks in 2021, as long as Congress passes further fiscal stimulus and a vaccine becomes widely available in the first half. But the path for stocks could be bumpy while investors await those developments, they said.

Over the past few weeks, investors had largely looked past immediate risks from the pandemic. The benchmark S&P 500 index recently soared to record highs on evidence of high efficacy rates in two experimental vaccines - from Moderna Inc and jointly from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE. Both vaccines could be ready for U.S. authorization and distribution within weeks, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has said.

Still, the pandemic remained an immediate threat as the number of U.S. deaths from the disease has climbed to 250,000. The S&P 500 fell more than 1% on Wednesday as New York City announced the closure of public schools.

Economic indicators including a rise in jobless claims last week signaled that the recovery may have stalled, reflecting the need for further fiscal stimulus, some investors said. Data from IHS Markit’s flash purchasing managers’ index and the Conference Board’s consumer confidence survey are scheduled for release next week.

“We anticipate a vaccine becoming partially available this year, but that still leaves a gap,” said Colin Moore, global chief investment officer at Columbia Threadneedle Investments.

Further signs the pandemic is growing more severe could stir volatility in U.S. stocks. The Cboe Volatility Index, known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” fell sharply after the U.S. presidential election but has leveled off and remains above its long-term average near 20. VIX futures also reflect elevated expectations for market gyrations throughout the first half of 2021.

Questions about more stimulus have fed volatility expectations, investors said. Two U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia scheduled for January could decide which political party controls that chamber and hence the scope of further pandemic relief.

“The big event risk in 2021 might be that’s just completely off the table,” said Derek Devens, senior portfolio manager of Neuberger Berman’s options group, referring to further stimulus. “That would be a pretty negative event for the market.”

Some strategists anticipate a bid to haven currencies as a hedge against market declines. TD Securities strategists wrote on Tuesday that they expect the dollar, which has weakened this month, to gain for a brief period in part due to “evolving COVID realities.” Societe Generale has recommended options strategies that would benefit from a strengthening in the yen.

But overall, investors largely expect any further slide in U.S. stocks to be fleeting. Restrictions on mobility and economic activity in response to rising COVID-19 cases are likely to be more limited than in the spring, they said. New York City, for instance, has kept stores and restaurants open even as schools close.

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14

Monday, November 23, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

A Holocaust survivor lifts neighbors in dark times

By MATINA STEVIS-GRIDNEFF

S

imon Gronowski had committed many acts of bravery and generosity in his 89 years of life, and opening a window in April wouldn’t ordinarily have counted among them, but this was no ordinary April.

It was the height of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, which hit Belgium as hard as anyplace in the world. But as a Holocaust survivor, Gronowski had faced death more intimately before.

The diminutive lawyer summoned his courage, moved his electric piano to beneath a windowsill and flung the window open, letting in spring sunshine along with the thick, wary quiet of a city terrified of the virus. And he began to tap out a jazz tune.

“I was afraid,” he said. “It’s not normal to just open the window and play.”

But soon, his neighbors popped their heads out of their windows, some even donning masks and walking up to his house to hear better.

Amy Edwards Anderson, an English teacher from the United States who has lived in Brussels for 22 years, first heard Gronowski play while sitting in her backyard with her husband and three children. She was surprised, she said, because it quickly became clear this wasn’t someone practicing the piano. It was someone performing for the block.

The short window concerts burst into her family’s confinement and lifted them up.

“Here was someone who was amplifying music to share with neighbors for no other reason than to make people feel good during a difficult time,” she said. “A kind of unsolicited gift to the neighborhood.”

Gronowski had meant for his impromptu concerts to make people happy, but playing for others has also had intrinsic value for him his entire life.

“Music is a means of communication, of connection,” he said on a recent afternoon in his home office, surrounded by piles of documents.

Gronowski taught himself how to play the piano as a teenager because he, too, was seeking to communicate, to connect — first and foremost with his older sister, Ita, who had perished in Auschwitz in 1943 at age 19.

“I adored her,” he said. “She was a brilliant pianist.”

Gronowski’s first act of bravery took place many Aprils ago, when an altogether dif-

Simon Gronowski, a Holocaust survivor, at the electric piano he moved beneath a window of his apartment at the height of the first wave of the coronavirus in Europe, in Brussels, Oct. 22, 2020. ferent kind of calamity was gripping Europe.

On April 19, 1943, when he was 11, Gronowski jumped out of a speeding train.

He and his mother were packed with dozens of others in a cattle wagon on the deadly route from Mechelen, a town where Belgian Jews were rounded up, to Auschwitz.

Of all the trains to doom, Gronowski’s became especially etched in Holocaust history. Known as “Convoy 20,” it was disrupted by three resistance fighters soon after departing Mechelen. In the commotion, dozens got a chance to escape into the farmlands of Flanders.

Soon after the train started accelerating again, Gronowski’s mother, perhaps emboldened by the incident and the glimmer of hope, urged him to jump off.

“I jumped because I listened to my mother’s orders,” Gronowski said. He leapt for his life.

His mother did not follow.

“If I had known she was not going to jump, I would have stayed on the train,” he said, resting his cheek in his palm as if his head was suddenly too heavy.

For the next 17 months, the boy was hidden in the attics of some Catholic families. After Brussels was liberated in September 1944, he reunited with his ailing father, who had been in and out of the hospital for years, and eventually succumbed — to a broken heart, Gronowski believes — leav-

ing the boy an orphan the following year.

Gronowski drew on the memories of prolonged confinement, the fear and desperate sadness of the 1940s, in a newspaper column he wrote as encouragement for fellow Belgians in late March as they struggled to settle into lockdown.

“Currently reduced to forced idleness, conducive to reflection, my thinking wanders and rejoins the confinements that I suffered 75 years ago, from 1942 to 1944, when I was 10-12 years old,” he wrote.

“Today, we can stay with our family or be helped by it, keep in touch, we can do our shopping, stock up on provisions, read the newspapers, watch television, but then we lived in terror, we lacked everything, we were cold, hungry and our families were separated, dislocated,” he added.

The pluckiness on display today was already burning inside the boy who had lost everything by the end of World War II. After spending three years in foster care, he moved back into the empty family home on his own and took in lodgers to raise funds for his life and schooling.

By the time Gronowski had turned 23, he held a doctorate in law. He became a lawyer, married Marie-Claire Huybrechs, and had two daughters, Katia and Isabelle. And for six decades he said little about his perished parents,

his beloved sister, Ita, or that day he jumped off a moving train on its way to Auschwitz.

“It was not a secret, but I did not talk about it,” he said, his upbeat mood momentarily darkening. “Why? Because I was feeling guilty.

Why are they dead, and I am alive?”

All that changed in 2002, when, pressured by friends who knew his story, he decided to take on the past.

“I needed to bear witness and write my story, so I wrote my first book,” another act of bravery, one that gave Gronowski an unexpected new life of media appearances and a higher profile to advance progressive goals.

After “L’Enfant du XXe Convoi” (“The Child of the 20th Convoy”) was published and Gronowski’s story became more widely known in Belgium and beyond, he started giving lectures, especially at schools.

“It was very painful to stir it all up again,” he said. “But now I feel that I am bringing something positive to young people, and it makes me happy. I am liberated.”

As Belgium battles a second coronavirus wave with another lockdown, Gronowski plays his piano with the windows shut this time (“It’s a bit too cold now”) and plots future adventures. “I want to play with this band from New Orleans,” he said, brimming with boyish enthusiasm. “They’re called Tuba Skinny.

They’re great!”

Most of his school lectures have been put on hold because of the pandemic, but they’ll restart soon enough, he said, and that’s what he looks forward to the most.

“When I tell my story at schools, I always finish with a message of hope. I always tell them one important thing: I tell them that life is beautiful,” he said. “But it is also a daily struggle.”

Photos shared by Simon Gronowski at his Brussels apartment, Oct. 22, 2020, of himself with his sister, Ita, left, and his mother, right.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, November 23, 2020

15

Under a divisive peace, wartime rifts hobble hope in Bosnia

By ANDREW HIGGINS

H

eartened by a peace deal between Bosnia’s warring ethnic groups brokered 25 years ago by the United States, Jusuf Arifagic, a Bosnian refugee sheltering in Norway, returned home to help rebuild his traumatized country. He took with him 100 Norwegian cows.

Arifagic took the cows to his home village — just down the road from the concentration camp where he and thousands of other local Muslims were herded in the summer of 1992 — and set up what became Bosnia’s biggest dairy farm.

The farm in Trnopolje now has 800 cows and 41 workers, a mix of Muslims, Orthodox Christian Serbs and other Christians. Arifagic, 59, said he did not know the precise number from each ethnic group because, “I don’t care.”

His refusal to put identity politics at the center of his business, however, has put him sharply at odds with a system created by the 1995 peace settlement that revolves around ethnicity and loyalty to one ethnonationalist authority or another. It has also crippled one of the few success stories in a country blighted by what reports to the United Nations Security Council in April and May described as “chronic dysfunctionality” and “the pandemic called corruption.”

Squeezed by requests for payoffs and other pressures from nationalist politicians pushing their own interests, Arifagic has decided to sell his cattle, lay off workers and shut the farm.

“Bosnia today is one big psychiatric ward and we are all its patients,” Arifagic said, bemoaning the tenacious grip of the hatred unleashed more than a quarter-century ago when multiethnic Yugoslavia fell apart, and neighbor set upon neighbor in a frenzy of fear-driven violence and nationalist passion.

War engulfed the Balkans for four years, ignited by the end of socialist dictatorship in Yugoslavia and the splintering of what had been a peaceful federal state. As nationalism took hold, Croats, Serbs and Muslims living in Bosnia — the most ethnically mixed and therefore most flammable part of the imploding Yugoslav state — took up arms, clamoring for their own states.

The bloodletting in Bosnia, which claimed around 100,000 lives and drove more than 2 million from their homes, came to an end with the Dayton Accords, reached at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio on Nov. 21, 1995.

The agreement’s terms, however, entrenched ethnoreligious divisions that had driven the war, leaving Bosnia as an amalgamation of ministates dominated by political parties that still win support by fanning fear and vowing to protect their own.

When the International Monetary Fund offered Bosnia $386 million in April to help fight the coronavirus, leaders of the three dominant parties, each representing a different ethnic group, spent weeks arguing about how to divide the money.

They eventually reached an agreement, but when the money arrived it sat idle for weeks in the central bank, stuck there by yet more squabbling instead of being used to buy badly needed ventilators and other equipment for the country’s ramshackle public health system.

“This is the real consequence of the Dayton model,” said Christopher Bennett, a former international official in Bosnia and author of the book “Bosnia’s Paralyzed Peace.” He added: “It simply does not work. It stopped a war but did not create conditions to make a life.”

That many ordinary Bosnians, irrespective of tribal identity, are fed up was made clear in local elections Sunday when Muslim and Serb nationalist parties lost their grip on their respective city strongholds: Sarajevo and Banja Luka. Three ethnic parties — representing Croats, Muslims and Serbs — still control a majority of Bosnia’s towns, but their recent electoral setbacks have stirred some hope that politics and minds frozen by Dayton may one day thaw.

Instead of creating a single state populated by citizens with equal rights, Dayton divided Bosnia into two self-governing “entities” — the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska and a federation of 10 cantons controlled by Muslims and Croats.

Above this plethora of fiefs stands a weak and feud-ridden federal government headed by three presidents representing Croats, Muslims and Serbs. They all speak the same language, and nothing distinguishes one group from another physically, but they are divided by religion (although few actually worship), by politics and by rival narratives of the war, and they rarely agree on much.

For a time, the area in northwestern Bosnia where Arifagic established his farm encouraged hopes that wartime divisions could be overcome. Muslims who had been expelled returned in the years after the Dayton agreement, first in a nervous trickle then in a joyous flood.

Emptied of Muslim residents by ethnic cleansing and reduced to burned-out rubble in the early 1990s, the village district of Kozarac, which includes Arifagic’s hamlet, returned to life in the early 2000s. The school reopened, destroyed homes were rebuilt and the local soccer team re-formed, although it never recovered its previously multiethnic squad and became an almost entirely Muslim team. The population grew to around 10,000.

Many Serbs, who often see themselves as victims and not perpetrators of past crimes, feel the same way and also want to leave.

“I am not proud of what we Serbs did, but terrible things happened to Serbs, too,” said Zdravka Karlica, whose husband was killed during the fighting in Prijedor, a city near Kozarac that was majority-Muslim before the war but is now 95% Serb.

Karlica plans to stay but her 12-year-old granddaughter, like many young people, wants to get out: “I love this place but I really want to leave,” she said.

The area is part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the overarching federal state created

by Dayton, but the only flag that flies in local government buildings is that of the Republika Srpska, the Serb entity of which it is also part.

Local Serb leaders have worked tirelessly to undermine the federal state and have even threatened to secede.

Arifagic, the dairy farmer, said that he returned to Bosnia to build a future, not dwell on the past, but that he had quickly butted up against the reality of a country ruled by ethnonational political parties that thrive by keeping communities apart and promising to protect their own.

“It is all very tragic,” said Sebina Sivac, an anthropologist from the area who has written a book about its postwar struggles.

“Bosnia needs people like Arifagic to move beyond Dayton, which always reminds everyone that what counts is ethnicity,” she said. “All sides wanted him to show that he was on one side or another. But he wanted to change this mindset.”

When Arifagic opened his farm, the local electricity company, owned by the Republika Srpska, refused to provide a transformer box to get power to his cow sheds. He installed his own but then spent three years in legal battles before he could get it connected to the network.

Then, last year, the Republika Srpska abruptly rewrote the rules governing milk subsidies, slashing Arifagic’s revenue but leaving intact the money received by smaller Serb-owned dairy farms. “If your name is Jusuf,” he said, referring to his name, which immediately identifies him as Muslim, “nothing is ever easy here.”

Jusuf Arifagic, a Bosnian war refugee who returned home with hopes of helping to rebuild his country, at his farm in the village of Trnopolje in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, Oct. 30, 2020.

16

Monday, November 23, 2020

Saudi Arabia and human rights activists fight over kingdom’s image at G-20

By BEN HUBBARD

F

or Saudi Arabia, hosting the Group of 20 summit in Riyadh this year was supposed to cement its global stature.

Heads of state from the world’s richest nations were to be wowed by the kingdom’s rugged beauty and changing society — and encouraged to let its war in Yemen and murder of a prominent journalist drift into the past.

For critics of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, the event looked very different: a golden opportunity to highlight the kingdom’s abuses and press world leaders to embarrass its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The two-day summit, which started Saturday, is not expected to live up to either side’s hopes. Instead, the coronavirus has effectively reduced the G-20 summit — like so many other meetups this year — to a giant webinar.

That may not be entirely bad news for Crown Prince Mohammed. Despite fierce campaigning by activists, no state chose to boycott the virtual event, marking a significant step in the crown prince’s rehabilitation among world leaders.

“Clearly, it has not gone as planned, but that may have been a blessing” for the Saudis, said Karen Young, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who studies Middle Eastern economies.

Heads of state and other dignitaries who might have balked at appearing in photos in Riyadh have less to lose at an online event, she said, while the summit still advances the kingdom’s goal of claiming a place among powerful countries it considers peers.

“A virtual conference plays to Saudi Arabia’s strengths and could prevent any embarrassing mishaps,” she said.

The summit, which continues Sunday, is expected to address the battle against the

A family photo of G20 Leaders was projected on the outskirts of Riyadh on Friday.

coronavirus, the restart of damaged economies and potential financial aid for poor countries hit hard by the pandemic.

King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud Salman of Saudi Arabia opened the summit Saturday with a video address calling on rich countries to ensure that poor nations also receive tools to fight COVID-19.

“We must work to create the conditions for affordable and equitable access to these tools for all peoples,” the 84-year-old monarch said. “At the same time, we must prepare better for any future pandemic.”

Also on the agenda is potential debt relief to help poor countries deal with the economic fallout of the pandemic, and a European Union proposal for an international treaty on pandemics.

President Donald Trump briefly took part in the summit Saturday from the White House Situation Room, but he was not listed as a participant at a sideline event on pandemic preparedness. Instead, he followed his recent weekend routine of tweeting baseless assertions of U.S. election fraud and heading to his Virginia country club for a round of golf.

The G-20 is a forum for the 19 nations with the world’s largest economies and the European Union to discuss global economic affairs. The organization’s presidency rotates among five groups of countries, with one country in each group holding the position at a time. Saudi Arabia, in a group with Canada, Australia and the United States, was named president for the first time last December. It is the first Arab country to host the summit.

The kingdom celebrated the title as a recognition of the importance of the world’s largest oil exporter in the global economy as well as an opportunity to showcase vast social and economic reforms being championed by Crown Prince Mohammed, whose father, King Salman, became the Saudi

monarch in 2015.

Since then, Crown Prince Mohammed has lifted some restrictions on women, promoted entertainment and tourism, and advanced plans to diversify the economy away from oil. He has also led the Saudi military into Yemen’s civil war, which has become a grave humanitarian crisis, and locked up clerics, women’s rights activists and even members of the royal family.

In 2018, Saudi agents entrapped, killed and dismembered the dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, damaging Crown Prince Mohammed’s reputation and leading to calls from activists to punish Saudi Arabia for that and other human rights violations.

Those activists seized on the kingdom’s presidency of the G-20 to campaign for their cause, lobbying members of the group to boycott the summit or use it as a platform to call for the release of detainees.

Last month, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz used his keynote address at a related event organized by Saudi Arabia to call for a moment of silence for Khashoggi and for women who were detained after opposing and defying the kingdom’s former ban on women driving.

The ban was lifted in 2018, but some of the women remain in detention.

“If this meeting does not come to terms with the violations of these human rights and those in other countries around the world, it cannot hope to achieve inclusive societies for which we all strive,” Stiglitz said in a video of the event, called the Think 20 summit, that was captured by activists but not published on the event’s website.

The mayors of Paris, Los Angeles, London and New York declined invitations to join G-20 events, and a number of rights groups organized an alternative virtual summit this weekend to highlight the kingdom’s human rights record.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, November 23, 2020

17

For Netanyahu and Israel, Trump’s gifts kept on coming

By DAVID HALBFINGER

T

he U.S. decision to allow Jonathan J. Pollard, the American convicted of spying for Israel in the 1980s, to complete his parole on Friday freed him to move to Israel and ended one of the most rancorous and long-running disputes between the two allies.

It also capped what has been an extraordinary four-year stretch in the countries’ relationship, during which President Donald Trump’s treatment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been nothing short of lavish.

Here are some of the most noteworthy gifts Netanyahu has received.

Jerusalem After buoying Palestinian hopes with early talk of striking “the ultimate deal” President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, prepare to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to walk out onto a balcony at the White House in Washington, on Sept. 15, 2020.

Trump dashed them when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the House. The White House answered with Bank territory, which Netanyahu made the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. a series of punitive measures. centerpiece of his reelection campaigns, That fulfilled a campaign promise of great Seeking to compel the Palestinians and the Trump peace plan contemplated importance to evangelical Christians, and to drop their demand for millions of their Israeli annexation of as much as 30% of to many Jews. refugees to be able to return to what is the West Bank.

Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its now Israel — a demand Israel has always Annexation was eventually suscapital, but Palestinians consider East Je- rejected — the Trump administration cut pended in exchange for normalization of rusalem, which Israel seized in the 1967 all funding to the United Nations Relief ties with the United Arab Emirates — with war, the capital of their own future state. and Works Agency, which provides aid to the Trump administration offering to sell U.S. policy before Trump had been Palestinian refugees across the Middle East. the Emiratis coveted F-35 fighters as a deal that the status of Jerusalem should be It steadily cut off all other aid: $200 sweetener. Similarly, the administration resolved in peace talks. Congress had million in support for the Palestinian Au- wooed Sudan by removing it from a list repeatedly urged the embassy move, but thority through the U.S. Agency for Inter- of states that sponsor terrorism. prior administrations kept it as a bargaining national Development, about $60 million But many other administration steps chip to induce Israel to make concessions in aid for Palestinian security forces, $25 helped normalize Israel’s designs on land to the Palestinians. million for hospitals in East Jerusalem and that the Palestinians want for a future state.

There was more to come in Jerusa- $10 million for Israeli-Palestinian coexisIn late October, Friedman and Nelem, much of it provocative, as when the tence efforts. tanyahu signed agreements allowing U.S. U.S. ambassador to Israel, David FriedNext, the State Department ordered government grants to go to Israeli research man, swung a sledgehammer to open an the closing of the Palestine Liberation institutions in occupied territory. The archaeological tunnel under a Palestinian Organization’s diplomatic mission in only such institution is Ariel University, neighborhood of East Jerusalem that was Washington. A month later, it abolished funded by Sheldon Adelson, the casino dug by a group leading efforts to bolster the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, which billionaire who is a backer of both Trump Israeli claims of sovereignty there. oversaw relations with the Palestinians, and Netanyahu.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and folded those operations into the new On Thursday, Pompeo visited a Jewadded a stroke of his own last month, embassy. ish settlement near Ramallah, becoming changing passport rules to allow AmeriAiding Israel’s West Bank ambitions the first secretary of state to do so. He also cans born in Jerusalem to list “Israel,” Led by Friedman, a longtime sup- issued new guidelines for imports from rather than “Jerusalem,” as their place of porter of the settlements, the administra- the West Bank, requiring that products birth. Long-standing policy had avoided tion has repeatedly cheered those who made in areas under Israel’s full control identifying the city as part of Israel. envision the entire West Bank permanently be labeled products of Israel. The move Pressuring the Palestinians in Israel’s hands. could require dates or olives grown by The Palestinian response to the The ambassador publicly endorsed Palestinian farmers to be labeled “Made embassy move was to boycott the White the idea of Israeli annexation of West in Israel” to reach American consumers.

Isolating Iran After clashing with President Barack Obama over the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Netanyahu found Trump an approving audience for his denunciations of the agreement as too lenient: Trump pulled out of the deal in March 2018.

Pompeo articulated a strategy of “maximum pressure” against Tehran through severe economic sanctions, and laid down a 12-point set of demands of its leaders that could have been drafted

by Netanyahu.

Seeking to repulse Iran’s expansionist moves in the Middle East, Israel mounted a campaign of airstrikes against Iranian forces and their proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq while, with the Trump administration’s encouragement, making common cause with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Gulf states against Iran.

Trump’s ordering of the killing in January of Gen. Qasem Soleimani eliminated one of Israel’s most feared adversaries. And an explosion in July that destroyed Iran’s center for advanced nuclear centrifuges, in Natanz, was described by some officials as a sign that a joint American-Israeli strategy was evolving into a campaign of short-ofwar secret strikes against Iran.

International backup The Trump administration has repeatedly stood by Israel in its diplomatic fights, as when the United States withdrew from the U.N. Human Rights Council in protest of its frequent criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

The two countries also have assailed the International Criminal Court, of which neither is a member, for looking into potential crimes by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and by Israel in its treatment of the Palestinians. In September, Pompeo called the ICC a “thoroughly broken and corrupted institution” and announced sanctions on two of its officials.

And the Trump administration has increasingly equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, both domestically and internationally. Building on that, Pompeo this week announced that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel would be deemed antiSemitic, and that its adherents would no longer be eligible for federal government support.

18

Monday, November 23, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Who will we be without Donald Trump?

By FRANK BRUNI

A

friend was all worked up about the possibility of Trump 2024.

“I can’t go through this again!” she cried. But what I heard was that she couldn’t stop going through this. Her contempt for Donald Trump is too finely honed at this point, too essential a part of her psyche. Who would she be — conversationally, politically — without it?

Another friend sent me an email in which he’d worked out the economics of a web-only Trump news channel of the kind that Trump may — or may not — start. With minimal investment, Trump could rake in millions and millions!

We were supposed to be breathing a huge sigh of relief about Joe Biden’s victory. But instead he was finding a fresh source of outrage about Trump.

And here I am writing about Trump — again. It’s a tic, not one I’m proud of. But I’m surrendering to it now to acknowledge that I can’t continue doing so. None of us can.

I’m not talking just about journalists. An obsession with Trump as the brute of all evil extends far beyond us. It has been an animating, organizing principle for the Democratic Party, a bond among civic-minded people of otherwise divergent persuasions and a pillar of many Americans’ political identity. It turned his rise and reign into an all-consuming international soap opera with ratings not just through the roof but also through the stratosphere.

No public figure in my lifetime has made such a monopolizing claim on our attention, even our souls.

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“And here I am writing about Trump -- again. It’s a tic, not one I’m proud of. But I’m surrendering to it now to acknowledge that I can’t continue doing so. None of us can,” writes New York Times opinion columnist Frank Bruni.

On Jan. 20 — praise be! — his presidency will be over. But his hold on us may not end as quickly and cleanly. And his departure from the White House will be more disorienting than some of us realize, posing its own challenges — for Democrats, for news organizations, for anyone who has grown accustomed over these past four years to an apocalyptic churn of events and emotions.

“Donald Trump is still coursing through your veins, isn’t he?” asked John Harris in a column in Politico published Nov. 17, likening him to an addiction from which there must be a meticulously plotted recovery.

Actually, Democratic lawmakers seem to be moving on from him — and revealing, in the process, what a potent glue he was. He united the party’s left and center by giving them the same top priority: Dump Trump. No sooner was he dumped than the glue dissolved.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York progressive, and Rep. Conor Lamb, a Pennsylvania moderate, began trading recriminations about where Democrats went right, where they went wrong and where they should go from here. So did Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia moderate, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan progressive.

In a column published in The New York Times on Nov. 16, my colleague Michelle Goldberg implored Democrats to tone it down and keep it together. In a column published Nov. 18, my colleague Thomas Edsall asked whether they could. This one-two punch wasn’t overkill. It was a 20-20 glimpse of life beyond 2020.

Policy differences between progressives and moderates may be solved by Mitch McConnell. If Republicans win at least one of the two runoffs in Georgia on Jan. 5 and hold on to their Senate majority, McConnell, as the majority leader, will be the grim reaper of any transformative legislation.

But that still leaves room for arguments about the issues that Democrats should emphasize and the tone that they should strike for the 2022 midterms. Especially with Trump out of office, those disputes could be heated.

And there will be plenty of political friction to go around.

Up until Nov. 3, Never Trump Republicans were heroes to many Democrats — ultimate proof that the ruler was rotten. But that love affair can’t survive Trump’s defeat, a reality evident in a few progressives’ fierce attacks on the Lincoln Project — an antiTrump super political action committee founded by Republicans — since Election Day. And what happens to those Republicans? The more than 73 million ballots cast for Trump in 2020 — giving him about 47% of the popular vote, up from 46% four years ago — prove that the party didn’t come around to them and isn’t about to cue up Peaches and Herb’s “Reunited.” They’re paradigmatic, emblematic. When you’ve shaped yourself almost entirely in opposition to someone who has been vanquished, are you free or formless?

The test for the mainstream media is our ability to turn away from Trump even if he remains a potent audience draw. It’s not certain that he will be; when Trump and Biden appeared at rival town halls on the same night in October, Biden drew more television viewers. And the much-discussed “Trump bump” that cable news channels and newspapers experienced in and right after 2016 faded over time.

But there’s no doubt that chronicling and commenting on how bad Trump is for democracy has been good for business. It also made virtuous sense; his station and power justified coverage of every tweet and bleat. His attempt to steal the election demands exactly the scrutiny it’s getting, as does the assent of his base and most of his fellow Republicans.

The situation, however, will soon grow complicated. Unlike his more dignified predecessors, he won’t maintain a relatively low post-presidency profile; he’ll keep whipping up passions on the right. And there will surely be a laudable journalistic excavation of Trump administration misdeeds that he and his aides successfully buried. Suffice it to say that Trump won’t exit the news.

But he also won’t be nearly as relevant as he is now, and that compels news organizations to ratchet down his presence in a huge way, potentially turning our backs on easy stories that would have been raptly consumed by readers and viewers still consumed by their disgust with him. I worry about our resolve.

“With Biden you’re not going to have these wild rallies,” Jim VandeHei, a co-founder of Axios, told Bloomberg recently.

“You’re going to have speeches on budget reconciliation. I don’t think that’s going to light people’s hearts afire.” He added that “there’s no way you’re not going to see lower cable ratings and some reduction in traffic to websites.”

I also worry that in the wake of Trump’s presidency, which both reflected and intensified the furious pitch of U.S. politics, melodrama may be the new normal. I worry that while Americans are exhausted by it, we’re also habituated to it; that we’ll manufacture it where it doesn’t exist; that hearings in a Republicancontrolled Senate will turn Hunter Biden into the new Benghazi; and that we’ll hear no less from the likes of Lindsey Graham and Rudy Giuliani next year than we did this one, because no reality show would cast off cast members that juicy.

I worry that my worry is part of the problem — that it’s not so much epiphany as muscle memory. It has gotten a hell of a workout since 2016.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, November 23, 2020

19

Reconocen el baluarte científico y legado histórico del Observatorio de Arecibo Por THE STAR

L

a Sociedad de Astronomía de Puerto Rico Inc. (SAPR) expresó el domingo que como parte de su compromiso por la divulgación, exploración e investigación de la astronomía y ciencias espaciales, reconoce la importancia, notoriedad y legado del Observatorio de Arecibo.

El Observatorio de Arecibo recientemente sufrió daños severos debido al colapso de cables tensores en su plato de 305 metros, razón por la cual la Fundación Nacional de Ciencia (NSF por sus siglas en inglés) determinó durante los pasados días su demolición de forma parcial.

La organización expresó en un comunicado que está al tanto de la situación actual y decisión fiscal tomada por la NSF con respecto al Observatorio de Arecibo, y que la misma debe de ser vista como un proceso transitorio para salvaguardar el futuro de la investigación científica en la Isla y a nivel global con las nuevas tendencias tecnológicas del presente.

La SAPR indicó además que a pesar de que los daños actuales son reparables, no se debe dejar a un lado el baluarte cn peso histórico y sociocultural que tiene el lugar que económicamente produce ganancias por su operación a las entidades que lo administran y es una inversión de sobre 100 millones anuales.

El Observatorio de Arecibo, creado en el 1963 y administrado hasta el 2011 por la Universidad de Cornell en acuerdo colaborativo con la Fundación Nacional de Ciencia (NSF), representa un lugar de vital importancia para descubrimientos e investigación científica, elementos cruciales para el desarrollo de la humanidad. El instrumento es único e insustituible por lo menos en el futuro previsible.

Desde el Observatorio de Arecibo, además de realizarse investigaciones ionosféricas y ser el único cen-

tro de investigación con capacidad de transmitir señales de gran potencia, se estudian asteroides y objetos cercanos a la Tierra con capacidad de posible impacto, objetos de espacio profundo como lo son pulsares, supernovas y agujeros negros, asi como la geología y topografía de la Luna y planetas rocosos de las cercanía del Sistema Solar, algunos de ellos con alta posibilidad de ser habitados en un futuro como es el caso del planeta Marte.

Fue desde el Observatorio de Arecibo que se descubrieron los primeros exoplanetas (o planetas fuera del Sistema Solar), se envió en el 1974 el primer mensaje interestelar al cúmulo de estrellas M13, y se rodaron filmes de gran popularidad y éxito taquillero como lo fueron Golden Eye (1995) y Contact (1997).

Actualmente el Observatorio de Arecibo que también se le da el nombre de National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC), lo administra la Universidad Central de la Florida bajo un acuerdo cooperativo con la Universidad Ana G. Méndez y Yang Enterprises Inc. para la National Science Foundation (NSF).

La Sociedad de Astronomía de Puerto Rico, Inc. (SAPR), es una organización sin fines de lucro, según definida por ley, que desde 1985 con motivo del paso del cometa Halley se ha encargado de promover el interés en la Astronomía, para el disfrute, orientación y educación de la comunidad puertorriqueña en general.

A través de la Astronomía se pueden practicar destrezas relacionadas con todas las ciencias y las áreas de conocimiento humano tales como física, la química, la biología, las altas matemáticas, la antropología, la sociología y hasta las ciencias políticas.

La SAPR aspira a ser el vehículo mediante el cual se pueda viabilizar el conocimiento de la Astronomía hacía la comunidad en general. De esa manera, por medio del conocimiento científico relacionado al Cosmos podemos ayudar a construir los caminos que nos llevarán a comprender lo que desconocemos de las estrellas fomentando el bienestar de la humanidad.

Para más información acerca de la SAPR y pueden visitar su portal de Facebook en https://www.facebook. com/saprinc

Inician vistas públicas del Comité de Transición de la Administración Municipal de Ponce Por THE STAR

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as vistas públicas del Comité de Transición de la Administración Municipal de Ponce, compuesto por integrantes de los equipos de las administraciones entrante y saliente, comenzarán este lunes 23 de noviembre y se extenderán hasta el jueves, 3 de diciembre, anunció el domingo el portavoz de la administración municipal de Ponce Harold Rosario.

“En la primera semana será de la siguiente forma: el lunes 23 de noviembre, comparecerán la Oficina de Recursos Humanos, la Oficina de Finanzas y Presupuesto, y la Oficina de Compras y Suministros; el martes 24 de noviembre, harán lo correspondiente la Oficina del Ad-

ministrador, la Oficina de Servicios Legales, la Oficina de Auditoría Interna y la Oficina de Secretaría Municipal; y el miércoles 25 de noviembre les corresponde a la Oficina de Ingeniería, la Oficina de Reconstrucción la Oficina de Planificación y SITRAS”, detalló Rosario en una declaración escrita.

“La segunda semana de vistas públicas será de la siguiente forma: el lunes 30 de noviembre, la Oficina de Turismo, Cultura y Desarrollo Económico, la Oficina de Policía Municipal y la Oficina de Manejo de Emergencias Municipal; el martes 1 de noviembre, la Oficina de Vivienda Pública Municipal, la Oficina de Permisos, la Oficina de Ordenación Territorial y la Oficina de Obras Públicas; el miércoles 2 de noviembre la Oficina

de Secretaria Municipal de Recreación y Deportes la Oficina de WIDA, la Oficina de Prensa y la Oficina de Protocolo y Primera Dama; y el jueves 3 de noviembre la Oficina de Educación Municipal, la Oficina de Head Start, la Oficina de Servicios al Ciudadano y la Oficina de Informática y Tecnología”, informó Rosario.

Por su parte el doctor Javier Negrón, presidente del Comité Saliente expresó: “Hasta el momento todas las conversaciones han sido muy correctas y apropiadas y esperamos poder mantenerlas durante las vistas públicas. Tanto la alcaldesa María “Mayita” Meléndez”, como el alcalde entrante, Luis Irizarry están en esa dirección. Seremos ejemplo para otras administraciones, esa es la meta y así será”.

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Monday, November 23, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, aka Mr. and Mrs. Claus

By ASHLEY SPENCER

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he last time Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn headlined a movie together, the Berlin Wall was intact and the rescue of Baby Jessica dominated the news.

It would take more than 30 years after their 1987 comedy “Overboard” for the pair to team up on screen again: tentatively, at first, with Hawn’s brief cameo in Russell’s 2018 Netflix family holiday film, “The Christmas Chronicles,” and now in delightful full force for the Chris Columbus-helmed sequel, “The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two” (Netflix, Nov. 25).

This time around, Hawn’s Mrs. Claus is a central figure opposite Russell — embodying, as she puts it, “an up-to-date Santa, who’s kind of sexy” — as they help two kids thwart a troublemaker’s North Pole schemes.

Portraying Yuletide royalty suits the real-life couple of 37 years. After meeting on a film set in 1966, they eventually began dating in 1983 while shooting “Swing Shift” and quickly formed something of an A-list Brady Bunch. Never married, they raised actors Kate and Oliver Hudson — Hawn’s children from her marriage to Bill Hudson — who lovingly refer to Russell as “Pa.” The couple also have a son together, actor Wyatt Russell. (Kurt has another son, Boston Russell, from a previous marriage.)

More recently, Hawn, who turns 75 on Nov. 21, and Russell, 69, have been leaning on each other during the pandemic, taking masked strolls around Los Angeles and filming energetic at-home Instagram videos — highlights include Russell tickling Hawn during a “laughing challenge” and Hawn shimmying to Outkast’s “Hey Ya” in the kitchen. “I like to dance with Goldie every once in a while, but I can’t tell you how little I care about social media,” Russell said.

For our October video chat, the two were perched on the patio of their Pacific Palisades home. Russell’s transitional lenses darkened in the afternoon sun; Hawn occasionally paused to make kissing noises at a pet dog running astray or to rub Russell’s back in a bid to get him to change the subject. They could be the grandparents next door, if the grandparents next

Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell in Los Angeles, Nov. 9, 2020. door also happened to have stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The couple spoke about “The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two,” the state of Hollywood and why they think celebrities shouldn’t always air their opinions. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.

Q: This is the first time you’ve costarred together since “Overboard.”

What took so long?

HAWN: Material! Really, it’s about the material, and it just didn’t come along.

RUSSELL: I thought we’d work together much sooner than this, but Goldie and I are pretty choosy. And generally, Goldie Hawn movies and movies that Kurt

Russell is in are pretty different things.

HAWN: True.

RUSSELL: It’s not mandatory just because you live with someone, you love someone and you enjoy working together that you should do 10 or 15 movies together.

Q: Chris Columbus has said that he wanted Kurt to be a sort of “superhero Santa.” Goldie, did you have any notes around what direction to take Mrs. Claus?

HAWN: To be honest, I didn’t quite know. My instinct was that she was very benevolent, very kind, and Chris gave her a little bit more gravitas. It wasn’t as pixieesque as I may have seen her.

RUSSELL: In the first movie, Mrs. Claus became like Columbo’s wife. What’s fun about it is that she’s a mysterious character. She’s not just a sweet old lady who bakes cookies.

Q: She’s only referred to as “Mrs. Claus” in both films. Does she have a first name?

RUSSELL: She does have a first name, and we will never know it for a reason.

HAWN: And that reason is in [Kurt’s] mind. [Laughter] Q: Santa and Mrs. Claus communicate with the elves by speaking Yulish, an elfish language created specifically for these films. Was that a challenge?

RUSSELL: There’s a guy who writes it out phonetically and then you read it. We have no idea what we’re saying!

HAWN: He says it’s a language, but in my mind it’s just sounds.

RUSSELL: It’s not to be taken lightly.

I’ll never forget when I saw “The Passion of the Christ” and went, “Mel discovered something that nobody figured out for all this time we’ve been making movies.” If you do anything that’s historical, especially the Bible, and you do it in an original language, it gives it a sense of authenticity.

And when I saw that, and I read this script, I thought, elfish will give this a sense of authenticity.

Q: What’s the dynamic like now when you work together? Did you go full method as Mr. and Mrs. Claus?

HAWN: I left Mrs. Claus in her outfit.

I hung it up on a hanger, and we went and had a cocktail and ate mushroom soup and that’s pretty much it. [Laughter] RUSSELL: We’re pretty old school.

We do what we do at work, and then when you come home it’s not ruling your life.

HAWN: The really fun part was that it was just the two of us in the makeup trailer. We were always right next to each other. And your makeup guy always had candy.

Q: Christmas at the Hawn-Russell home seems like a big deal in real life, too.

HAWN: I just can’t even tell you; it’s more than Christmas. This year, we’re going to be here, but normally we’re in Aspen. It’s a fantasy: the snow and the kids and all the stockings hanging from the fireplace. And Kurt in his Santa suit —

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The San Juan Daily Star RUSSELL: I’m very careful about what I say about this because we have grandkids who will see this stuff.

HAWN: Oh, that’s right. Well, they’re not going to be reading The New York Times. [Laughter] RUSSELL: Right, right. After we have Christmas Eve dinner we always have somebody read “The Night Before Christmas,” and then we track Santa’s movements on the app. Right after that, you start getting things in shape because at any point he can show up.

Q: Goldie, you were raised Jewish.

Do you still keep any Hanukkah traditions?

HAWN: Growing up, we’d light candles for Hanukkah, but I think my mother stopped lighting them because I was on the phone once, and I backed up to the Hanukkah candles. You know the wall phones back in the day? I had wrapped myself in the cord, and I caught on fire. I literally burned my robe and my back. It’s like, Baruch atah ... My mom came, and they unraveled me and, thank God, I’m fine.

Q: Is the plan to keep reteaming on more “Christmas Chronicles” films?

RUSSELL: We have no idea what Netflix wants to do there. I’ve never been big on sequels, but that was 50, 40, 30 years ago. Now sequels aren’t even sequels anymore. We’ve just cyclically found our way around to making television. You go to the movies and you’re seeing television because there’s a serial aspect to it.

HAWN: It’s like Marvel.

Q: You’ve seen the industry go through a lot of changes. What are your thoughts on the state of Hollywood in 2020?

HAWN: We’re all trying to figure out what to do. I mean, when you look at how AMC has only so much money to exist before it goes away. When you see that big screen and people are in there engaging, there’s nothing like it. It makes me very melancholy to know that that could be over.

However, there’s more content now than ever, and not only that, there’s a place for content. We’re looking at incredible talent. Like “Succession,” the acting is amazing. But the one thing I wonder about all of that is will there be any movie stars? That thing of the old days when there were these glamorous movie stars and people that you just couldn’t wait to go see. I don’t know if that will

Monday, November 23, 2020

happen again. What do you think?

RUSSELL: I think the question is will there be an arena for that? Without the arena, those movie stars don’t happen. That cultural aspect doesn’t happen.

Q: Speaking of an arena, Kurt, you’ve said in the past that celebrities shouldn’t really weigh in on politics. Do you still feel that way?

RUSSELL: Totally. I’ve always been someone who felt we are court jesters.

That’s what we do. As far as I’m concerned, you should step away from saying anything so that you can still be seen

by the audience in any character. There’s no reason entertainers can’t learn just as much as anybody else about a subject, whatever it is. But I think that what’s sad about it is that they lose their status as a court jester. And I’m a court jester. That’s what I was born to do.

HAWN: You’re not always funny.

RUSSELL: A court jester isn’t always funny. A court jester is the only one who can walk into the castle and put the king down as long as he doesn’t hit too close to home. I think that’s been a big, important part of all cultures throughout history, and I’d like to see it stay in ours.

HAWN: But we did have a president who was an actor, Ronald Reagan.

RUSSELL: Like I said, actors can learn as much as anybody else can.

HAWN: Well, I’m just saying Reagan definitely was a well-known actor. I think it’s a personal choice whether you want to get into that. The one thing I don’t

21

agree with is that just because we have a platform we always have to use it. That is our choice.

Q: What’s left on your career bucket list?

HAWN: I really don’t have anything that I’m dying to do. I want to live a happy life, and I have that. I want to be able to go places, but right now, we can’t do that.

If a movie comes along and it’s great, that could be fun. Other than that, I want to be with the grandkids.

RUSSELL: It’s still fun to act. I don’t know why that is. By now, it shouldn’t be.

HAWN: I think there’s a reality here, and the reality is not so much for Kurt or for certain kinds of men who do certain kinds of movies. But for people that had careers such as mine, you have to get real.

There is a finite amount of time that you get to do what you want to do.

RUSSELL: I’m honestly more interested in the kids’ careers than what’s going on in mine.

HAWN: Oliver is doing a pilot for a series, and maybe also my grandson. So if it works out, I said, “Is there a mother who comes around every now and then? Anybody want to hire me as Oliver’s mother and Bodhi’s grandmother?” So, I’m just looking for the fun and not the career. I’m so grateful to have had the career that I have.

one.

RUSSELL: You’ve had a pretty good

Q: It sounds like your grandkids will continue the acting tradition, too.

HAWN: There is no doubt about it.

It’s pretty amazing how those genes just keep moving on.

RUSSELL: There’s only a few families in history that have as many people in it that are at the level that our family is. It’s not something we promote. It’s just something that if it comes to them and they want to do, then they do it.

Q: You’ve both talked about not getting caught up in the industry, despite your successes. How has that approach shaped your lives?

HAWN: In terms of our family, we tried to not work at the same time. But sometimes we were gone. [In the 1990s] Kurt was gone for five months during “Backdraft,” so everybody missed Kurt. I was gone almost six months when I was doing “Everyone Says I Love You” and “The First Wives Club.”

RUSSELL: We did the best we could, and I think our kids benefited from the good decisions, and they obviously didn’t benefit from the decisions that were either bad or didn’t turn out. It’s life.

HAWN: I mean, you’ve got to have something to go to a psychiatrist about.

[Laughter]

Together 37 years but rarely paired onscreen, the real-life couple’s new Netflix holiday movie is an indication of how they — and Hollywood — have changed.

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Monday, November 23, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

No, a negative coronavirus test does not mean you can safely socialize

Lining up for a Covid test in Manhattan this month.

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER, KATHERINE J. WU and MARGOT SANGER-KATZ

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n the lead-up to Thanksgiving, Americans are no strangers to planning. But this year, as they prepare to let turkeys brine and pie crusts thaw, people across the country are waiting for something extra: a coronavirus test they hope can clear them to mingle with loved ones.

Many people consider a negative coronavirus test to be a ticket to freely socialize without precautions. But scientists and doctors say this is dangerously misguided. It is one precautionary measure but does not negate the need for others, like quarantining, masking and distancing.

The main reason is that a test gives information about the level of the virus at one point in time. A person could be infected but not have enough virus yet for it to register on a test. Or, a person may become infected in the hours or days after taking a test. Also, the tests do not have 100% accuracy.

“If you require all of your guests to email you a negative test result before your Thanksgiving dinner, it will definitely decrease the risk of an outbreak — but not completely,” said Dr. KJ Seung, chief of strategy and policy for the COVID-19 response at Partners in Health. Yet this is a common misperception contact tracers hear when talking to people, he said.

The experts agreed that tests were very useful for one thing: If someone receives a positive test,

that person knows to stay home and isolate.

Not all tests are created equal Different tests for the coronavirus give different information.

Laboratory tests that rely on a technique called polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, can detect the virus when it’s present even at very low levels. But it might take a couple of days to return results, leaving time for someone to be exposed. Antigen tests are faster, less expensive and more convenient — they can deliver results in a matter of minutes — but are also more prone to missing the virus when it’s scarce. To receive emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, antigen tests for the coronavirus need to detect only 80% of the infections found by PCR. Many rapid tests also aren’t authorized for use in people who don’t have symptoms.

In some cases, a person who tests negative with an antigen test might test positive by PCR — raising the risk that a negative antigen test could give someone a false sense of security en route to Thanksgiving dinner, said Paige Larkin, a clinical microbiologist at NorthShore University HealthSystem in Chicago, where she specializes in infectious disease diagnostics.

Why tests alone aren’t enough “A negative result is a snapshot in time,” Larkin said. “It’s telling you that, at that exact second you are tested, the virus was not detected. It does not mean you’re not infected.”

After infiltrating a person’s body, the virus can take several

days to build up, and in the meantime, there may not be enough virus for a test to detect it. But the person could still be infected or contagious in the interim. A person who tests negative one day might turn positive just a day later, or even an hour later.

People can spread the virus in the days before they first start feeling ill, and can also spread the virus even if they never develop symptoms.

“The challenge then for the individual is that a negative test today does not mean that a person will be negative tomorrow or the day after that,” said Natalie Dean, an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida.

Taking multiple tests over a period of days gives a clearer answer. But experts cautioned that no test — regardless of how many times it is taken in succession — can definitively determine whether someone infected by the coronavirus is contagious, or no longer poses a transmission risk to other people.

The October outbreak at the White House is a good example of what can happen when a group of people rely heavily on testing and ignore other strategies to limit the spread of the virus.

In an informal survey of 670 epidemiologists, just 6% said that if they recently tested negative for the virus, they would be comfortable spending time indoors with others without precautions. Twenty-nine percent said they would do so if everyone also used masks and stayed distant. And a full 64% said that even if they tested negative, they would not be comfortable spending time indoors with people they don’t live with.

How to think about risk Still, it’s often unrealistic to avoid other people for months on end. People need to work and take care of their basic needs, and they also crave connection with family and friends. Risk is a spectrum, not binary, and there are ways to decrease it, experts said.

Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and immunologist at Harvard, said that at this point in the pandemic people couldn’t be expected to eliminate coronavirus risk entirely. He compared it to the risk of a car accident. To avoid all risk, people wouldn’t get in a car at all. Seat belts, air bags and adherence to traffic laws all cut down on risk, but they don’t mean someone is completely safe — and people don’t forgo using a seat belt just because the car has air bags. Coronavirus precautions like testing, distancing and masking work in the same way, he said.

How to decrease risk and still gather Before gathering with others, Mina said, people could combine a negative test with a two-week quarantine if they’re able, and have a frank conversation with older family members about the risk and whether they’re willing to attend. At a gathering, he said, risk mitigation strategies might include keeping dinner short, hosting the event outdoors, wearing a mask when not eating and giving air hugs instead of touching.

Avoiding any contact with other people for a week or more before taking a test is a powerful tool, said Jeffrey Townsend, a professor of biostatistics at the Yale School of Public Health. Not only does it decrease exposure, but it also gives the virus more opportunity to reach detectable levels in infected people, his research has found.

24 MORTGAGE: For the amount of $73,000.00 with annual interest IN THE UNITED STATES DIS- of 7.125%, in guarantee of a TRICT COURT FOR THE DIS- promissory note in favor of R&G TRICT OF PUERTO RICO. Premier Bank of Puerto Rico or to BOSCO IX OVERSEAS, order, due on September 1, 2038.

According to deed #158 executed LLC BY FRANKLIN in Mayaguez on August 21, 2008 CREDIT MANAGEMENT before Christian M. Castillo MoCORPORATION AS reno. Recorded pursuant to Law 216 of December 27, 2010, know SERVICER as Property Registry Expediting Plaintiff, v.

BENJAMIN RODRIGUEZ Act on page 58 of volume 1530 in Mayaguez, 6th and last entry, RODRIGUEZ; WALESKA dated December 11, 2012. WHESANTIAGO AGUILAR; REAS: The property is subject to Defendant the following junior liens: Entry CIVIL NO. 19-cv-1092 (PAD). 2017-061803-MY01, dated June COLLECTION OF MONIES AND 2, 2017: Filed and pending: FoFORECLOSURE OF MORTGA- reclosure Notice issued on Civil GE. JURY TRIAL DEMANDED. Case #ISCI2017-00043(206) on NOTICE OF SALE. the First instance Court, Mayaguez Part pursued by Scotiabank TO: BENJAMIN de Puerto Rico (Petitioner) vs RODRIGUEZ Benjamin Rodriguez Rodriguez, RODRIGUEZ; WALESKA his wife Waleska Santiago AguiSANTIAGO AGUILAR; lar, and the community property regime instituted by both of them AND THE GENERAL (Defendants). Petitioner requests PUBLIC WHEREAS: On July 29, 2020, payment of debt guaranteed by this Court entered Judgment in mortgage recorded on the 6th favor of Plaintiff, against Defen- entry, amounting $73,000.00 dants. On September 1st, 2020, reduced to $52,792.01, plus inthis Court entered Order for Exe- terests, and other amounts, or cution of Judgment. Pursuant to its settlement via public auction the Judgment, the Defendants of the plot. Potential bidders are were Ordered to pay Plaintiff the advised to verify the extent of amount of $52,792.01 of principal preferential liens with the holders of the said mortgage note, ac- thereof. It shall be understood crued interest at the annual rate that each bidder accepts as suffiof 7.125% which continues to cient the title and that prior and accrue, plus fees, costs and any preferential liens to the one being other amount expressly agreed foreclosed upon, including, but upon in the mortgage deed, plus not limited to any property tax, 10% for agreed upon attorneys’ liens (express, tacit, implied or fees in the amount of $7,300.00, legal), shall continue in effect it plus all expenses and advances being understood further that the made by the plaintiff. WHEREAS: successful bidder accepts them Pursuant to the terms of the afo- and is subrogated in the responrementioned Judgment and the sibility for the same and that the Order for Execution of Judgment price shall be applied toward their thereof, the following property be- cancellation. The present properlonging to the Defendants will be ty will be acquired free and clear sold at a public auction: RUSTIC: of all junior liens. WHEREAS: For Portion of land located in Barrio the purpose of the first judicial Leguisamo, in the municipality of sale, the minimum bid agreed Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, with a upon by the parties in the mortsurface area of one rope, equiva- gage deed will be $73,000.00, for lent to 3,930.39 square meters. the property and no lower offers On the border: to the North, with will be accepted. Should the first a plot of land segregated from judicial sale of the above descrithe main property, but according bed property be unsuccessful, to the plan, with land belonging then the minimum bid for the to María Selectre, de Aurora vda. property on the second judicial de Rivera and a public plot; to the sale will be two-thirds the amount South, with the remainder of the of the minimum bid for the first main property; to the East, with judicial sale, or $48,666.66. The the road (352) but according to minimum bid for the third judicial the plan, with the public plot; and sale, if the same is necessary, to the West, with a stream and will be one-half of the minimum land belonging to the main pro- bid agreed upon the parties in perty, but according to the plan, the aforementioned mortgage with the remainder. The property deed, or $36,500.00. (Known in is recorded at page 113 of volu- the Spanish language as: “Ley me 1224 of Mayagüez, property del Registro de la Propiedad number 38163, Registry of the Inmobiliaria del Estado Libre Property of Puerto Rico, Section Asociado de Puerto Rico”, 2015 of Mayagüez. The property is lo- Puerto Rico Laws Act 210 (H.B. cated at: RD 352 KM. 3.3 Bo. Le- 2479), Articule 104, as amenguisamo, Mayagüez, PR 00680. ded). WHEREAS: Said sale to be WHEREAS: The mortgage that made by the appointed Special encumbers the above described Master is subject to confirmaproperty is described as follows: tion by the United States District

LEGAL NOTICE

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Court for the District of Puerto Rico and the deed of conveyance and possession to the property will be executed and delivered only after such confirmation.

The records of the case and of these proceedings may be examined by interested parties at the Office of the Clerk of the United States District Court, Room 150 or 400 Federal Office Building, 150 Chardon Avenue, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico. NOW THEREFORE, public notice is hereby given that the Special Master, pursuant to the provisions of the Judgment herein before referred to, will, on the 4th day of December 2020 at 10:30 am, in his offices located at Mayagüez Street #134, San Juan, Puerto Rico, in accordance with 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2001, will sell at public auction to the highest bidder, the property described herein, the proceeds of said sale to be applied in the manner and form provided by the Court’s Judgment. Should the first judicial sale set hereinabove be unsuccessful, the second judicial sale of the property described in this Notice will be held on the 11th day of December 2020 at 10:30 am, in the Office of the Special Master located at the address indicated above. Should the second judicial sale set hereinabove be unsuccessful, the third judicial sale of the property described in this Notice will be held on the 18th day of December 2020 at 10:30 am, in the Office of the Special Master located at the address indicated above. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, this 9th day of October 2020. Victor Encarnacion Pichardo, Appointed Special Master.

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

BAUTISTA REO PR CORP.; Demandante v.

MMP REAL ESTATE CORPORATION;

Demandados CIVIL NÚM. KCD2008-1982 (508). SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. AVISO DE SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PUEBLO DE PUERTO RICO. SS. YO, el(la) Alguacil que suscribe, por la presente anuncia y hace constar, que en cumplimiento del Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia, expedido el 3 de febrero de 2020 por la Secretaría de este Tribunal, procederé a vender en pública subasta y al mejor postor, quien pagará el importe de la venta en dinero efectivo o en cheque certificado o de gerente, a la orden del Alguacil suscri-

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

biente, en moneda del curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América, el día 10 de diciembre de 2020, a la(s) 9:00 a.m., en mi oficina localizada en el Tribunal de San Juan, todo título, derecho o interés que corresponda a la parte demandada sobre el inmueble que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Apartamento comercial localizado en la planta baja de la Torre denominada A del Condominio Plaza Universidad 2000. Sometido al Régimen de Propiedad Horizontal, ubicado en la Calle Añasco del Municipio de San Juan, Puerto Rico. Es un espacio comercial de un solo nivel de forma rectangular y está localizado en la parte Oeste del Edificio, con un área total aproximada de 2,337.22 pies cuadrados, equivalentes a 217.1347 metros cuadrados. Sus lindes y distancias son las siguientes: por el NORTE, en una distancia de 50’ 2” con áreas comunes, estacionamiento y escalera; por el SUR, en una distancia de 50’ 2” con el local comercial #2; por el OESTE, en una distancia de 50’ 2 ½” con áreas comunes y estacionamiento y por el ESTE, en una distancia de 51’ 2 ½” con áreas comunes y estacionamiento. Este espacio es susceptible de división para uso comercial flexible. La puerta de entrada principal está en el lado Oeste y por ella se sale al exterior. Le corresponden los estacionamientos del 40 al 47. Este apartamento comercial tiene una participación en los elementos comunes generales de punto cero cero siete uno seis ocho dos por ciento (.0071682%) y una participación en los elementos comunes limitados de punto cero cero ocho seis tres dos dos por ciento (.0086322%). Inscrita al folio 146 del tomo 1630 de Río Piedras Norte, Registro de la Propiedad, Sección Segunda de San Juan, finca número 41,677, inscripción tercera. Dirección Física: Oficina 1, Cond. Plaza Universidad 2000, San Juan, Puerto Rico. La propiedad descrita anteriormente está afecta a los siguientes gravámenes: Por su procedencia está libre de cargas. Por sí afecta a: HIPOTECA constituida por MMP REAL ESTATES CORP., en garantía de un pagaré a favor de Doral Financial Corp., o a su orden, por la suma principal de $206,250.00, con interés al 7¼%, vencedero el 1ro de octubre de 2035, según consta de la escritura #114, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 30 de septiembre de 2005, ante el Notario Público Christian M. Castillo Moreno, inscrita al folio 146 del tomo 1630 de Río Piedras Norte, finca #41677, inscripción 3ra. HIPOTECA constituida por MMP REAL ESTATES CORP., en garantía de un pagaré a fa-

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Monday, November 23, 2020 vor de Doral Bank, o a su orden, por la suma principal de $150,000.00, con interés al 2% sobre el Prime Rate, vencedero a la presentación, según consta de la escritura #29, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 27 de abril de 2006, ante el Notario Público Manuel I. Vallecillo, inscrita al folio 146 del tomo 1630 de Río Piedras Norte, finca #41677, inscripción 4ta. ANOTACIóN DE DEMANDA: Es objeto de esta anotación la hipoteca que surge de la inscripción 3ra por la suma de $206,250.00 a favor de Doral Financial Corporation, radicada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de San Juan, en el caso Civil Núm.

KCD2008-1982, sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria, seguido por Doral Bank vs. MMP Real Estate Corp., según Orden y Mandamiento fecha 11 de marzo de 2013, se solicita el pago de la deuda garantizada con la hipoteca que surge de la inscripción 3ra., reducida a $201,734.93, anotada al folio 149 del tomo 1630 el 27 de Río Piedras Norte, finca #41677, anotación A del 27 de mayo de 2015. ANOTACIóN DE DEMANDA: Es objeto de esta anotación la hipoteca que surge de la inscripción 3ra por la suma de $206,250.00 a favor de Doral Financial Corporation, en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de San Juan, radicada en el caso Civil Núm. KCD20081982, sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria, seguido por Doral Bank vs. MMP Real Estate Corp., de fecha 30 de mayo de 2008, se solicita el pago de la deuda garantizada con la hipoteca que surge de la inscripción 3ra., reducida a $201,734.93, anotada al Sistema Karibe de Río Piedras Norte, finca #41677, inscripción 5ta. y última de 10 de mayo de 2017. Servirá como tipo mínimo para la primera subasta en ejecución de la Finca Número 41,677 antes descrita la suma de $206,250.00, conforme a lo estipulado en la escritura de Hipoteca número 114, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 30 de septiembre de 2005 ante el Notario Público Christian M. Castillo Moreno. De no adjudicarse la propiedad en la primera subasta, se celebrará una segunda subasta, en las mismas oficinas de este Alguacil, el día 17 de diciembre de 2020, a la(s) 9:00 a.m. El tipo mínimo para la segunda subasta será dos terceras partes (2/3) del tipo mínimo de la primera subasta, o sea, $137,500.00. De no adjudicarse la propiedad en la segunda subasta, se celebrará una tercera subasta en las mismas oficinas de este Alguacil, el día 14 de enero de 2021, a la(s) 9:00 a.m.

El tipo mínimo para la tercera

subasta será la mitad (1/2) del tipo mínimo que se pactara para la primera subasta, o sea, $103,125.00. Esta subasta se hará para satisfacer a la parte demandante, hasta donde alcance, el importe adeudado a BAUTISTA REO PR CORP. ascendente a la suma de $201,734.93 de principal, más intereses al tipo convenido del 7¼% anual, desde el primero de diciembre de 2007 hasta su total y completo pago, más la cantidad estipulada de $20,625.00 para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado que la parte demandada se obligará a satisfacer como suma líquida y sin necesidad de nueva liquidación y aprobación por este Tribunal, más los cargos por demora. La venta en pública subasta de la propiedad descrita anteriormente se verificará libre de toda carga o gravamen posterior que afecte dicha propiedad. Se entiende que cualquier carga y/o gravamen anterior y/o preferente, si lo hubiera, al crédito que da base a esta ejecución, continuará subsistente, entendiéndose además, que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría de este Tribunal durante horas laborables. El Alguacil procederá a otorgar la correspondiente escritura de venta judicial y se pondrá al comprador en posesión física del inmueble, de conformidad con las disposiciones de Ley. POR LA PRESENTE, se les notifica a los titulares de créditos y/o cargas registrales posteriores, si alguno, que se celebrará la SUBASTA en la fecha, hora y sitio anteriormente señalados, y se les invita a que concurran a dicha subasta, si les conviniere, o se les invita a satisfacer, antes del remate, el importe del crédito, sus intereses, otros cargos y las costas y honorarios de abogado asegurados, quedando entonces subrogados en los derechos del Acreedor ejecutante, siempre y cuando reúnan los requisitos y cualificaciones de Ley para que se pueda efectuar tal subrogación. Y PARA SU PUBLICACIÓN en el tablón de edictos de este Tribunal y en tres (3) lugares públicos del Municipio donde se celebrará la subasta señalada.

Además, en un periódico de circulación general en dos (2) ocasiones y mediante correo certificado a la última dirección conocida de la parte demandada. EXPEDIDO el presente EDICTO DE SUBASTA en San Juan, Puerto Rico, a 9 de noviembre de 2020. Pedro Hieye González, ALGUACIL, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTAN-

CIA, SALA DE SAN JUAN. ****

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE LEGAL NOTICE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PERIOR DE FAJARDO. PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE CONDADO 5, LLC PONCE. Demandante, v.

B. FERNÁNDEZ & HNOS., INC.

PEDRO JOSE JURADO COTTO; SUCESION DE DEMANDANTE V. MICHAEL ANTHONY NABEL JALAL RASHID MARRA MASKO H/N/C PUMA MAGAS COMPUESTA POR NINA DEMANDADOS MARRA SIERMAN t/c/c CIVIL NÚM.: PO2020CV01528.

SALA 602. SOBRE: COBRO DE NINA MARRA MASKO, DINERO. ESTADOS UNIDOS PETER MARRA t/c/c DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE PETER MARRA MASKO DE LOS EE . UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P .R. SS. Y ROBERT MARRA t/c/c EDICTO. ROBERT MARRA MASKO; A: NABEL JALAL RASHID JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE • VALLE REAL 1665, COMO HEREDEROS PONCE, PUERTO RICO DESCONOCIDOS; 00732; • CARR. 127 INT. DEPARTAMENTO DE 383, BO. MAGAS ABAJO, HACIENDA Demandados GUAYANILLA, PUERTO RICO 00656 ; CASO NUM.: NSCI201700183.

SALA (307). SOBRE: COBRO • BRISAS DE YAUCO #124, DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE YAUCO, PUERTO RICO HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDI00698 ; • BRIKI DE YAUCO NARIA. AVISO DE VENTA EN #124, YAUCO, PUERTO PÚBLICA SUBASTA. RICO 00698; • PO BOX A: PEDRO JOSE JURADO COTTO; SUCESION DE 1487, AGUAS BUENAS, MICHAEL ANTHONY PUERTO RICO 00703; MARRA MASKO • CARR. 127 INT. 383, COMPUESTA POR NINA GUAYANILLA, PUERTO MARRA SIERMAN t/c/c RICO 00656 NINA MARRA MASKO, POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al triPETER MARRA t/c/c bunal su alegación responsiva PETER MARRA MASKO dentro de los 30 días de haber Y ROBERT MARRA t/c/c sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del ROBERT MARRA MASKO; diligenciamiento. Usted deberá JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE presentar su alegación responsiCOMO HEREDEROS va a través del Sistema Unificado DESCONOCIDOS; de Manejo y Administración de DEPARTAMENTO DE Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente HACIENDA; BANCO dirección electrónica: https://uniDE DESARROLLO red.ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se ECONOMICO PARA represente por derecho propio, PUERTO RICO O A SU en cuyo caso deberá presentar ORDEN; Y AL PUBLICO su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal . Si usted EN GENERAL: deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. Representa a l a parte demandante la Lcda .

Maristella Sánchez Rodríguez, Delgado & Fernández, LLC, PO Box 11750, Fernández Juncos Station, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00910 - 1750. Tel. [787) 2741414. DADO en Ponce, Puerto Rico, a 09 de noviembre de 2020. LUZ MAYRA CARABALLO GARCIA, SECRETARIA (O) REGIONAL. POR: BRENDA L. SANTIAGO LOPEZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL.

El que suscribe, Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior, Centro Judicial de Fajardo, Fajardo, Puerto Rico, hago saber a la parte demandada, y al PUBLICO EN GENERAL: y a todos los acreedores que tengan inscritos o anotados sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante, o de los acreedores de cargas o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca ejecutada y las personas interesadas en, o con derecho a exigir el cumplimiento de instrumentos negociables garantizados hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito ejecutado, siempre que surjan de la certificación registral, para que puedan concurrir a la

The San Juan Daily Star subasta si les convenga o satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, costas y honorarios de abogados asegurados, quedando entonces subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante a saber: BANCO DE DESARROLLO ECONOMICO PARA PUERTO RICO, O A SU ORDEN: A cuyo favor aparece un Pagaré por la suma de $143, 000.00, intereses al 8% anual y vencedero a la presentación, según consta de la escritura #101, otorgada en San Juan, el 16 de septiembre de 2013, ante el Notario Gil A. Mercado Nieves, inscrito al folio 166 del tomo 172 de Ceiba, finca 598, inscripción 13ra., debidamente modificado la hipoteca por $143,000.00, que grava esta propiedad, la misma se amplía en la suma de $117,603.98 para un nuevo principal de $260,603.98, con intereses al 4.75% sobre la tasa de interés preferencial y vencimiento el 5 de mayo de 2029, según consta de la escritura #11, otorgada en San Juan, el 8 de mayo de 2014, ante el Notario Frank M. González Acevedo, inscrito al folio 166 del tomo 172 de Ceiba, finca 598, nota marginal. BANCO DE DESARROLLO ECONOMICO PARA PUERTO RICO, O A SU ORDEN: A cuyo favor aparece inscrita una anotación de Demanda de fecha del 17 de junio de 2016, en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Fajardo, caso civil NSCI201600372 sobre Cobro de Dinero, Incumplimiento de Contrato, Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria y Ejecución de Gravamen Hipotecario, en la cual se reclaman la suma de $602,730.06. Anotado el 24 de julio de 2018 al Sistema Karibe de Ceiba, finca número 2,598, Anotación A y última. Que en cumplimiento del Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia expedido el día 14 de enero de 2020, por la Secretaria del Tribunal, procederé a vender y venderé en pública subasta y al mejor postor la propiedad que se describe a continuación: SR-977 KM 1.2 BO. SACO, CEIBA, Puerto Rico 00735: RUSTICA: Compuesta de 12.50 cuerdas de terreno en los Barrios Secos y Machos del término municipal de Ceiba. En lindes por el NORTE, con Bernabé Lima, Jose Maria Rodriguez y carretera 977; por el SUR, con don Bernabé Colón; por el ESTE, con la Sucesión de Antonio Baez y por el OESTE, con Rodolfo Morales. Consta inscrita al Folio 12 del tomo 55 de Ceiba, finca número 2,598, Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección de Fajardo. El producto de la subasta se destinará a satisfacer al demandante hasta donde alcance, la SENTENCIA dictada a su favor, el día 6 de agosto de 2019, notificada el 12 de agosto de 2019, en el presente caso civil, a saber, para el Préstamo No. 52200000497 un balance insoluto de $381,236.72, el cual se desglosa en $354,745.04 de principal, $26,190.69 de intereses, $300.99 de cargos por de-

mora, más costas, gastos, y para el Préstamo No.5200000498 los demandados adeudan al 27 de noviembre de 2017, un balance insoluto de $284,941.98 el cual se desglosa en $244,129.06 de principal, $49,543.96 de intereses, $1,298.96 de cargos por demora, costas y gastos. Adeudan además los honorarios de abogado, ascendente al 10% de principal de la deuda según pactados.

Los intereses se continúan acumulando hasta el saldo total de la deuda, para cubrir el principal adeudado, disponiéndose que si quedare algún remanente luego de pagarse las sumas antes mencionadas el mismo deberá ser depositado en la Secretaría del Tribunal para ser entregado a los demandados previa solicitud y orden del Tribunal. La venta de la referida propiedad se verificará libre de toda carga o gravamen que afecte la mencionada finca.

La adjudicación se hará al mejor postor, quien deberá consignar el importe de su oferta en el acto mismo de la adjudicación, en efectivo (moneda del curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América), giro postal o cheque certificado a nombre del alguacil del Tribunal. LA PRIMERA SUBASTA se llevará a efecto el 12 DE ENERO DE 2021 A LAS 10:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en la oficina del referido Alguacil, localizada en el Centro Judicial de Fajardo, Fajardo, Puerto Rico. Que el precio mínimo fijado para la PRIMERA SUBASTA es de $455,000.00.

Que de ser necesaria la celebración de una SEGUNDA SUBASTA, la misma se llevará a efecto el día el 20 DE ENERO DE 2021 A LAS 10:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en la oficina antes mencionada del Alguacil que suscribe. El precio mínimo para la SEGUNDA SUBASTA será de $303,333.34, equivalentes a dos terceras (2/3) partes del tipo mínimo estipulado para la PRIMERA subasta. Que de ser necesaria la celebración de una TERCERA SUBASTA la misma se llevará a efecto el día el 27 DE ENERO DE 2021 A LAS 10:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en la oficina antes mencionada del Alguacil que suscribe. El precio mínimo para la TERCERA SUBASTA será de $227,500.00, equivalentes a la mitad (1/2) del tipo mínimo estipulado para la PRIMERA subasta. Si se declarase desierta la tercera subasta, se adjudicará la finca a favor del acreedor por la totalidad de la cantidad adeudada si ésta es igual o menor que el monto del tipo de la tercera subasta, si el Tribunal lo estima conveniente; se abonará dicho monto a la cantidad adeudada si esta es mayor, todo ello a tenor con lo dispone el Articulo 104 de la Ley Núm. 210 del 8 de diciembre de 2015 conocida como “Ley del Registro de la Propiedad Inmueble del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico”.

La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquiere libre de toda carga y gravamen que afecte la mencionada finca según el Artículo 102, inciso 6. Una vez confirmada la venta judicial por el Honorable

Monday, November 23, 2020 Tribunal, se procederá a otorgar la correspondiente escritura de venta judicial y se pondrá al comprador en posesión física del inmueble de conformidad con las disposiciones de Ley. Para conocimiento de la parte demandada y de toda aquella persona o personas que tengan interés inscrito con posterioridad a la inscripción del gravamen que se está ejecutando, y para conocimiento de todos los licitadores y el público en general, el presente Edicto se publicará por espacio de dos (2) semanas consecutivas, con un intervalo de por lo menos siete días entre ambas publicaciones, en un diario de circulación general en el Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico y se fijará además en tres (3) lugares públicos del Municipio en que ha de celebrarse dicha venta, tales como la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la Colecturía. Se les informa, por último, que: a. Que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la secretaría del tribunal durante las horas laborables. b. Que se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes. Se entenderá, que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. EXPIDO, el presente EDICTO, en Fajardo, Puerto Rico, hoy día 13 de noviembre de 2020. Sandraliz Martinez Torres, Alguacil Auxiliar #737, División de Subastas, Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Fajardo.

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

FRANKLIN CREDIT MANAGEMENT CORPORATION COMO AGENTE DE SERVICIO DE DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST COMPANY, SÍNDICO DEL FIDEICOMISO BOSCO CREDIT II TRUST SERIES 2017-1 Demandante v.

ROBERTO MANUEL CACHO PEREZ y ILEANA MARGARITA CAMBO SAAVEDRA y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES POR ELLOS COMPUESTA,

CIVIL NÚM. KCD2009-0835.

SOBRE: PROCEDIMIENTO IN REM SOBRE EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. AVISO DE PÚBLICA SUBASTA.

A: LOS CODEMANDADOS DE EPIGRAFE Y AL PÚBLICO EN GENERAL:

El Alguacil que suscribe por la presente anuncia y hace constar

que en cumplimiento de una Sentencia Sumaria dictada en el caso de epígrafe el 12 de febrero de 2010, notificada el 20 de julio de 2010 y de un Mandamiento de Ejecución emitido el día 5 de febrero de 2020, que le ha sido dirigido por la Secretaria del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de San Juan, procederá a vender en subasta, por separado, y al mejor postor con dinero en efectivo, cheque de gerente o letra bancaria con similar garantía, todo título, derecho o interés de los demandados de epígrafe sobre el inmueble que adelante se describe. Se anuncia por la presente que la primera subasta habrá de celebrarse el día 11 de enero de 2021 a las 9:00 de la mañana, en mi oficina localizada en el edificio que ocupa la Sala del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de San Juan, sobre el inmueble que se describe a continuación: HORIZONTAL PROPERTY: Apartment #801 located at the 8th floor of the Marymar Condado Condominium in the Santurce North Ward, San Juan, Puerto Rico, consisting of an irregular shaped, one story residential dwelling with a total area of 2,620.15 square feet, equivalent to 243.42 square meters.

Apartment #801 contains a vestibule with a guest bathroom, living room, balcony, dining room, kitchen, laundry, closet, breakfast area, bedroom hall, bedroom hall closet, master bedroom with bathroom and walk-in closet, bedroom #2 with closet, family room, walkin closet with access from the master bedroom and the bedroom hall, bathroom #2 and 2 eaves (“aleros”) for air conditioning compressor. The main entrance of this apartment is located on the side of the apartment leading to the elevator lobby of the 8th floor of the condominium, which is a general common element of the condominium. Its boundaries are by the North, with exterior common areas of the condominium; by the South, with exterior common areas of the condominium; by the East, with exterior common areas of the condominium and by the West, with a common wall of the condominium which separates apartment #801 and apartment #802 and the individual storage cellars area, the elevator lobby and the elevator shaft of the 8th floor of the condominium.

Apartment #801 has 3 privately owned parking spaces, which form part the apartment, identified as follow: 1) Private parking space #1 located at the basement level parking facility of the condominium with an approximate total area of 165.00 square feet, equivalent to 15.33 square meters, with boundaries by the North, with a common areas of the condominium; by the South with private parking space #2; by the East, with a common wall which separates it from exterior common areas the condominium and by the West, with the main driveway of the basement level parking facility. 2) Private parking

space #2 located at the basement level parking facility of the condominium with an approximate total area of 165.00 square feet, equivalent to 15.33 square meters, with boundaries by the North, with private parking space #1; by the South, with private parking space #3, by the East, with a common wall which separates from the exterior common areas of the condominium and by the West, with main driveway of basement level parking facility. 3) Private parking space #39 located at the ground level parking facility of the condominium with an approximate total area of 148.5 square feet, equivalent to 13.79 square meters, with boundaries by the North, with private parking space #38; by the South, with private parking space #40; by the East, with a common wall which separates it from exterior common areas of the condominium and by the West, with the main driveway of the basement level parking facility. The total area of apartment #801 and its private parking spaces is approximately 3,098.16 square feet, equivalent to 287.87 square meters. ---PORCENTAJE: Elementos Comunes Generales: 4.0694%.

FINCA: Número 43805, inscrita al tomo 1109 de Santurce Norte, Registro de la Propiedad de San Juan Sección I. Dirección Física: Apt. 801 Este Cond. Mar y Mar San Juan PR 00924. El siguiente pagaré consta inscrito en la propiedad antes mencionada y es el que se pretende ejecutar: HIPOTECA: A favor de R-G Premier Bank of Puerto Rico, o a su orden, por la suma de $700,000.00, con intereses al 6% anual y vencimiento el 1 de agosto de 2035. Así resulta de la escritura número 735, otorgada en Guaynabo el 5 de agosto de 2005, ante el notario Rafael Bras Benítez. Inscrita el 25 de abril de 2008 al folio 216 del tomo 1161, inscripción 2da.

La referida hipoteca grava el bien inmueble antes descrito. Que según surge del estudio de título, la propiedad se encuentra afecta a los siguientes gravámenes posteriores: HIPOTECA: Por $480,000.00, con intereses a razón de la tasa preferencial (“prime rate”), según establecido de cuando en cuando por el Citibank N.A. de la ciudad de Nueva York, en garantía de un pagaré a favor del Portador, que vence a la presentación. Según escritura #1, otorgada en San Juan, el 6 de junio de 2003, ante Francisco González Nieto, inscrita al folio 216 del tomo 1161 de Santurce Norte (ágora), inscripción 3ª.

Nota: Esta hipoteca es preferente a la anterior inscripción 2da. MODIFICACIÓN: Modificada la anterior hipoteca, en cuanto al tipo de interés, que será igual al resultante, al añadir la mitad de un punto porcentual (0.50%) a la tasa preferencial (“prime rate”) según establecida de cuando en cuando por el Citibank N.A. en la ciudad de Nueva York desde la fecha del pagaré hasta su completo pago. Vigencia extendida:

25

Las partes renuncian al término prescrito de 20 años de la hipoteca, que en virtud de esta inscripción se modifica y lo prorrogan o amplían a 25 años a partir de la fecha de otorgamiento de la escritura. Según escritura #673, otorgada en San Juan, el 30 de agosto de 2005, ante Adrián J. Hilera Torres, inscrita al folio 216 del tomo 1161 de Santurce Norte (ágora), inscripción 4ta. y última.

La subasta se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer al demandante, total o parcialmente según sea el caso, de la referida sentencia que fue dictada por las siguientes sumas: $670,916.61 por concepto de principal, más intereses al 6.0000% anual desde el 1ro de octubre de 2008, recargos por demora desde el 1ro de noviembre de 2008 hasta el total del pago de la deuda; y la suma estipulada de $70,000.00 para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados, así como cualquier otra suma que contenga el contrato de préstamo. Y PARA CONOCIMIENTO DE LAS PARTES INTERESADAS y del público en general, se advierte que los autos de este caso y demás instancias están disponibles para ser inspeccionadas en la Secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de San Juan, durante las horas laborables. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad del inmueble y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes al crédito del ejecutante, incluyendo el gravamen por las contribuciones sobre la propiedad inmueble adeudadas, si los hubiere, continuarán subsistentes, entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda responsable de los mismos sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá Libre de Cargas y Gravámenes posteriores. Los tipos mínimos a utilizarse para la subasta son los siguientes: El inmueble antes descrito ha sido tasado en la suma de SETECIENTOS MIL DOLARES ($700,000.00) para que dicha suma sirva de tipo mínimo en la primera subasta a celebrarse. De no producirse remate ni adjudicación en la primera subasta del antedicho inmueble, se celebrará una segunda subasta en el mismo lugar antes mencionado, el día 19 de enero de 2021 a las 9:00 de la mañana, sirviendo como tipo mínimo para dicha segunda subasta, una suma equivalente a las dos terceras (2/3) partes del tipo mínimo pactado para la primera subasta, o sea, la suma de CUATROCIENTOS SESENTA Y SEIS MIL SEISCIENTOS SESENTA Y SEIS DOLARES CON SESENTA Y SEIS CENTAVOS ($466,666.66) para la finca antes descrita. De no producirse remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta del antedicho inmueble, se celebrará una tercera subasta en el mismo lugar antes mencionado, el día 26 de enero de 2021 a las 9:00 de la mañana, sirviendo como tipo mínimo para dicha

tercera subasta, una suma equivalente a la mitad (1/2) del tipo mínimo fijado para la primera subasta, o sea, la suma de TRESCIENTOS CINCUENTA MIL DOLARES ($350,000.00) para la finca antes descrita. En testimonio de lo cual, expido el presente aviso, el cual firmo y sello, hoy 10 de noviembre de 2020, en San Juan, Puerto Rico. EDWIN E. LOPEZ MULERO, ALGUACIL AUXILIAR.

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

GAMALIEL VAZQUEZ FLORES Demandante Vs.

GUSTAVO ADOLFO SANCHEZ VAZQUEZ

y la Sociedad Legal de Gananciales compuesta por ambos

Demandados CIVIL NUM. MT2019CV00394.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: LELAINE FERRA COLON a sus ultimas direcciones conocidas: Estancias de Imbery M15, Barcelona, PR 00617; 235 Estancias de Imbery, Barceloneta PR 00617-9722; Estancias de Imbery, M-15 (235), Barceloneta PR 006179722; Urb. Puerto Nuevo, 268 Calle 13 NW, San Juan PR 00920-2206; Urb. Puerto Nuevo, 268 Calle 13, NO San Juan PR 00920-2206

Demandado CIVIL NUM.: SJ2020CV05138.

SALA: 802. SOBRE: PARTICION DE HERENCIA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL (Nombre de las partes a las que se PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTA- le notifican la sentencia por edicto) DOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LI- EL SECRETARIO (A) que suscriBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO be le notifica a usted que el 16 RICO. S.S. de NOVIEMBRE de 2020, este A: GUSTAVO ADOLFO Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución SANCHEZ VAZQUEZ Por la presente, se le emplaza y en este caso, que ha sido debidase le notifica que debe contestar mente registrada y archivada en la demanda dentro del término autos donde podrá usted entede treinta (30) días a partir de la rarse detalladamente de los térpublicación del presente edicto. minos de esta. Esta notificación Deberá presentar la contestación se publicará una sola vez en un a través del Sistema Unificado periódico de circulación general de Manejo y Administración de en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede de los diez (10) días siguientes acceder utilizando la siguiente a su notificación. Y, siendo o redirección electrónica: https://uni- presentando usted una parte en red.ramajudicial.pr/ sumac, salvo el procedimiento sujeta a los térque se represente por derecho minos de la Sentencia, Sentencia propio, en cuyo caso deberá Parcial o Resolución, de la cual presentarla ante ci Tribunal de puede establecerse recurso de Primera Instancia Sala Superior revisión o apelación dentro del de San Juan con copia a la re- término de 30 días contados a presentación legal de la parte partir de la publicación por edicto demandante a la siguiente direc- de esta notificación, dirijo a usted ción: Lcdo. Hiram Lozada Perez; esta notificación que se conside452 Ave. Ponce de Leon, Ofic. rará hecha en la fecha de la pu416, San Juan, PR 00918-3412; blicación de este edicto. Copia Tel. (787) 640-8867; Correo elec- de esta notificación ha sido architrónico: hiramlozada@yahoo. vada en los autos de este caso, com. Se le apercibe que, de no con fecha de 16 de noviembre contestar la demanda dentro del de 2020. En Manati, Puerto Rico, término aquí establecido, se le el 16 de noviembre de 2020. VIanotará la rebeldía y se dictará VIAN Y. FRESSE GONZALEZ, sentencia concediendo ci reme- Secretaria. f/ CARMEN J. ROdio solicitado sin más citarle ni SARIO VALENTIN, Secretario oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y (a) Auxiliar. sello del Tribunal, en San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy 10 de noviembre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. Raquel E. Figueroa Nater, Secretaria de Servicios a Sala.

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Demandante VS

KENNY VEGA NEGRON, LELAINE FERRA COLON

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

BAUTISTA REO PR CORP., Demandante, v.

INMOBILIARIA DE DIEGO, INC.; CÉSAR CEDANO HERRERA, DAMARYS BREA TINEO Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS Demandada

26 CIVIL NÚM.: KCD2014-0632 (503). SOBRE: ACCIÓN IN REM Y EJECUCIÓN DE PRENDA E HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. AVISO DE SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PUEBLO DE PUERTO RICO. SS. El(la) Alguacil que suscribe, por la presente anuncia y hace constar, que la Sentencia In Rem, expedida el 3 de enero de 2018 por la Secretaría de este Tribunal, procederé a vender en pública subasta y al mejor postor, quien pagará el importe de la venta en dinero efectivo o en cheque certificado o de gerente, a la orden del Alguacil suscribiente, en moneda del curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América, el día 16 de diciembre de 2020 a la(s) 9:30 a.m. para la Finca número 19,582; en mi oficina localizada en el Tribunal de San Juan, todo título, derecho o interés que corresponda a la parte demandada sobre el inmueble que se describe a continuación: Finca Número 19,582 URBANA: Solar sito en el Barrio Monacillos de la Municipalidad de Río Piedras, marcado con el Número tres guión A (3-A) de la Manzana “Y” de la Urbanización Caparra Terrace, con un área superficial de doscientos treinta y ocho punto setecientos veinticinco metros cuadrados (238.725 m.c.), el cual colinda por el NORTE, con terrenos de la Iglesia Católica; por el SUR, con la Avenida Central de la Urbanización; por el ESTE, con propiedad tres B (3B) de la Manzana “Y”; y por el OESTE, con el Solar Número dos (2) de la Manzana “Y”. Enclava una casa con pared medianera. Consta inscrita al folio ciento veintisiete (127) del tomo quinientos cincuenta y dos (552) de Monacillos, finca número diecinueve mil quinientos ochenta y dos (19,582), en el Registro de la Propiedad de San Juan, Sección Tercera.

Dirección física: 1591 Ave. Jesus T. Pinero, Caparra Terrace Development, San Juan, PR Según pactado en la Escritura de Hipoteca Número 275, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 31 de diciembre de 2003, ante el Notario Público Manuel L. Correa Márquez, servirá como tipo mínimo para la primera subasta de la propiedad antes descrita la suma de $265,000.00. La propiedad descrita anteriormente afecta a los siguientes gravámenes: a) Por su procedencia está afecta a: Servidumbre a favor de la Autoridad de Fuentes Fluviales de Puerto Rico. Condiciones restrictivas sobre edificación y uso. b) Por sí está afecta a: Hipoteca en garantía de un pagaré a favor de Doral Bank, o a su orden, por la suma principal de $265,000.00, con intereses al 6.95% anual, vencedero a la presentación, constituida mediante la escritura número 275, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 31 de diciembre del 2003, ante el notario Manuel L. Correa Márquez, e inscrita al folio 11 del tomo 995 de Monacillos, finca número

19,582, inscripción 11ra. c) Aviso de Demanda del día 24 de septiembre del 2012, expedido en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de San Juan, en el Caso Civil número KCD2012-2335, sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria, seguido por Doral Bank, contra Inmobiliaria de Diego, Inc., Cesar Cedano Herrera y su esposa Damarys Brea Tineo, por la suma de $455,931.26, anotado el día 8 de febrero del 2013, al folio 11, del tomo 995 de Monacillos, finca número 19,582, Anotación A. d) Embargo Federal contra César Cedano Herrera, seguro social xxx-xx-5363, por la suma de $19,464.36, notificación número 582062009, anotado el día 25 de septiembre del 2009, al folio 167, Asiento 1, del libro de Embargos Federales número 4. e) Embargo Federal contra César Cedano Herrera, Damarys Brea Tineo, seguro social xxx-xx-5363, dirección Ave. De Diego 614, San Juan, P.R., 00920, por la suma de $30,209.81, notificación número 132978614, anotado el día 8 de diciembre del 2014, al folio 156, Asiento 3, del libro de Embargos Federales número 7. f) Embargo a favor del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, contra César Cedano Herrero y Damarys Brea Tineo, en la suma de $28,610.92, cuenta número xxx-xx-5363 y xxx-xx-9109, Embargo número GUA-18-0313, según Certificación de fecha 11 de abril del 2018, anotado el día 26 de julio del 2018 al Asiento 2018-005942-EST del Sistema Karibe. Registro de Embargos del ELA, incluyendo los de la Ley número 12 del día 20 de enero de 2010. De no adjudicarse la Finca número 19,582 en la primera subasta, se celebrará una segunda subasta, en las mismas oficinas de este Alguacil, el día 13 de enero de 2021 a la(s) 9:30 a.m. El tipo mínimo para la segunda subasta será dos terceras partes (2/3) del tipo mínimo de la primera subasta. De no adjudicarse la Finca número 19,582 en la segunda subasta, se celebrará una tercera subasta en las mismas oficinas de este Alguacil, el día 21 de enero de 2021 a la(s) 9:30 a.m. El tipo mínimo para la tercera subasta será la mitad (1/2) del tipo mínimo que se pactará para la primera subasta. La venta en pública subasta de la propiedad descrita anteriormente se verificará libres de toda carga o gravamen posterior que afecte dichas propiedades. Se entiende que cualquier carga y/o gravamen anterior y/o preferente, si lo hubiera, al crédito que da base a esta ejecución, continuará subsistente, entendiéndose además, que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante horas laborables. El Alguacil procederá a otorgar las

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 23, 2020

correspondientes escrituras de venta judicial y se pondrá al(os) comprador(es) en posesión física del inmueble, de conformidad con las disposiciones de Ley. POR LA PRESENTE, se les notifica a los titulares de créditos y/o cargas registrales posteriores, si alguno, que se celebrarán las SUBASTAS en la fecha, horas y sitio anteriormente señalados, y se les invita a que concurran a dichas subastas, si les conviniere, o se les invita a satisfacer, antes del remate, el importe del crédito, sus intereses, otros cargos y las costas y honorarios de abogado asegurados, quedando entonces subrogados en los derechos del Acreedor ejecutante, siempre y cuando reúnan los requisitos y cualificaciones de Ley para que se pueda efectuar tal subrogación. Y PARA SU PUBLICACIÓN en el tablón de edictos de este Tribunal y en tres (3) lugares públicos del Municipio donde se celebrarán las subastas señaladas. Además, en un periódico de circulación general en dos (2) ocasiones y mediante correo certificado a la última dirección conocida de la parte demandada.

EXPEDIDO el presente EDICTO DE SUBASTA en San Juan, Puerto Rico, a 16 de noviembre de 2020. Pedro Hieye Gonzalez, ALGUACIL, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE SAN JUAN-SUPERIOR.

ZAMORANO LEIRO, MERCEDES DEMANDANTE VS

JOHN DOE

BIDAMENTE REGISTRADA Y ARCHIVADA HOY 12 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2020, Y QUE SE ENVIÓ COPIA DE ESTA NOTIFICACIÓN A LAS PERSONAS ANTES INDICADAS, A SUS DIRECCIONES REGISTRADAS EN EL CASO CONFORME A LA NORMATIVA APLICABLE. EN ESTA MISMA FECHA FUE ARCHIVADA EN AUTOS COPIA DE ESTA NOTIFICACIÓN. EN SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO, A 12 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIO(A) REGIONAL. POR: F/ VIRGEN DEL VALLE DIAZ, SECRETARIO(A) AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL.

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

EDDIE MARTINEZ SANTIAGO DEMANDANTE VS

COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CREDITO SAN CONRADO; DORAL MORTGAGE CORPORATION T/C/C DORAL MORTGAGE, LLC; JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE, POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM: PO2020CV01519.

SOBRE: CANCELACION DE PAGARE EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO. SS.

A: JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE, personas desconocidas que se designan con estos nombres ficticios, que puedan ser tenedor o A: LIC. RIVERA BURGOS, tenedores o puedan tener RAÚL; RAULRBLAW@ algún interés en el pagaré GMAIL.COM hipotecario a que se hace EL (LA) SECRETARIO(A) QUE referencia más adelante SUSCRIBE CERTIFICA Y NOTIFICA A USTED QUE CON en el presente edicto que RELACIÓN AL (A LA): MOCIÓN se publicará una sola vez.

DEMANDADO CASO NÚM. KCP2015-0127.

SALON NÚM. 0901. SOBRE: CANCELACION PAGARE HIPOTECARIO EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACION.

SOLICITUD DE SENTENCIA NUNC PRO TUNC. ESTE TRIBUNAL EMITIÓ UNA ORDEN EL 06 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2020.

SE TRANSCRIBE LA DETERMINACIÓN A CONTINUACIÓN: HA LUGAR. VER SENTENCIA ENMENDADA NUNC PRO TUNC. FDO. REBECCA DE LEON RIOS, JUEZ. SE LE ADVIERTE QUE AL SER UNA PARTE O SU REPRESENTANTE LEGAL EN EL CASO SUJETO A ESTA ORDEN, USTED PUEDE PRESENTAR UN RECURSO DE APELACIÓN, REVISIÓN O CERTIORARI, DE CONFORMIDAD CON EL PROCEDIMIENTO Y EN EL TÉRMINO ESTABLECIDO POR LEY, REGLA O REGLAMENTO. CERTIFICO QUE LA DETERMINACIÓN EMITIDA POR EL TRIBUNAL FUE DE-

Se les notifica que en Demanda radicada en el caso de epígrafe se alega que un pagaré hipotecario fue suscrito a favor de COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CREDITO SAN CONRADO, o a su orden, en garantía de un pagaré suscrito bajo affidavit #2,393, por la suma principal de TREINTA MIL DOLARES ($30,000.00) y créditos adicionales, según resulta de la escritura número seis (6), otorgada en Ponce, Puerto Rico, el día veintidós (22) de febrero de mil novecientos noventa y cuatro (1994), ante la Notario Carmen Salicetti Maldonado. De igual manera se alega que también fue suscrito un pagaré bajo affidavit #1,573 a favor de DORAL MORTGAGE CORPORATION, o a su orden, por la suma principal de CIN-

CUENTA Y DOS MIL DOLARES ($52,000.00) y créditos adicionales, según resulta de la escritura número ciento cincuenta y siete (157), otorgada en Ponce, Puerto Rico, el día veintinueve (29) de mayo de mil novecientos noventa y nueve (1999), ante la Notario María Elsa Sánchez Santiago. El inmueble gravado mediante las hipotecas antes descritas consta inscrito al folio 294 del tomo 1875 del Registro de la Propiedad, Ponce I, finca número 50,731.

Las obligaciones evidenciadas por los pagarés antes descritos fueron saldadas en su totalidad.

Dichos gravámenes no han podido ser cancelados por haberse extraviado los originales de los pagarés y no han podido ser localizados, a pesar de las gestiones realizadas. La Cooperativa de Ahorro y Crédito San Conrado y Doral Mortgage son los acreedores que constan en el Registro de la Propiedad. Por la presente se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 30 días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo de Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// unired.ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se presente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente.

LCDA. DORABEL RODRIGUEZ CINTRON RUA NUM. 14.623 1214 BLVD SAN LUIS COTO LAUREL, PR 00780-2243 TEL. (787) 617-0857 E-mail: rodriguezcintronlaw@gmail.com Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, hoy 10 de noviembre de 2020. Luz Mayra Caraballo Garcia, Secretaria. Madeline Rivera Mercado, Secretaria Aux. Del Tribunal I.

LEGAL NOT ICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE SAN JUAN SALA SUPERIOR.

E.M.I. EQUITY MORTGAGE, INC. DEMANDANTE VS.

ABIGAIL MARERI RIVERA RÍOS T/C/C ABIGAIL RIVERA RIOS; LA SUCESIÓN DE JUAN MALDONADO BERRIOS, COMPUESTA POR JUAN MALDONADO RIOS (PADRE), ANGÉLICA ISABEL MALDONADO

RIVERA, BIANCA RAQUEL MALDONADO RIVERA, FULANO Y FULANA DE TAL COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESIÓN; DEPARTAMENTO DE HACIENDA Y CENTRO DE RECAUDACIÓN DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES (CRIM)

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: SJ2018CV09880.

SOBRE: EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA “IN REM” (VÍA ORDINARIA). EDICTO DE SUBASTA. El Alguacil que suscribe por la presente CERTIFICA, ANUNCIA y hace CONSTAR: Que en cumplimiento de un Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que le ha sido dirigido al Alguacil que suscribe por la Secretaría del TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE SAN JUAN, SALA SUPERIOR, en el caso de epígrafe procederá a vender en pública subasta al mejor postor en efectivo, cheque certificado en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos de América el 12 de enero de 2021, a las 9:00 de la mañana, en su oficina sita en el local que ocupa en el edificio del TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE SAN JUAN, SALA SUPERIOR, todo derecho, título e interés que tenga la parte demandada de epígrafe en el inmueble de su propiedad que ubica en 1757 CALLE ANDROMEDA URB. VENUS GARDENS SAN JUAN, PR 00976 y que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar radicado en el barrio Sabana Llana de Río Piedras, término municipal de San Juan, marcado con el #11 del bloque L de la Urbanización Venus Gardens, con una colindancia superior de 338.00 metros cuadrados, en colindancia por el NORTE, con el solar #10 del propio bloque, en una longitud de 26.00 metros; por el SUR, con el solar #12 del mismo bloque, en una longitud de 26.00 metros; por el ESTE, con el solar #16 del propio bloque, en una longitud de 13.00 metros y por el OESTE, con la calle #13, en una longitud de 13.00 metros. ENCLAVA: Una casa residencial de concreto y bloques, consistente principalmente de marquesina, sala, comedor, cuatro habitaciones, dos baños y cocina. La propiedad antes relacionada consta inscrita al Folio 21 del Tomo 383 de Sabana Llana, finca número 16,803, Registro de la Propiedad de San Juan, Sección Quinta (5ta). El tipo mínimo para la primera subasta del inmueble antes relacionado, será el dispuesto en la Escritura de Hipoteca, es decir la suma de $133,866.00. Si no hubiere remate ni adjudicación en la primera subasta del inmueble mencionado, se celebrará una segunda subasta en las oficinas del Alguacil que suscribe el día 20 de enero de 2021, a las 9:00 de la mañana. En la segunda subasta que se celebre servirá

de tipo mínimo las dos terceras partes (2/3) del precio pactado en la primera subasta, o sea la suma de $89,244.00. Si tampoco hubiere remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta se celebrará una tercera subasta en las oficinas del Alguacil que suscribe el día 27 de enero de 2021, a las 9:00 de la mañana. Para la tercera subasta servirá de tipo mínimo la mitad (1/2) del precio pactado para el caso de ejecución, o sea, la suma de $66,933.00. La hipoteca a ejecutarse en el caso de epígrafe fue constituida mediante la escritura de hipoteca número 352 otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 25 de noviembre de 2016, ante la Notario Ricardo Marín Arias, y consta inscrita al Tomo Karibe de Sabana Llana, finca número 16,803, en el Registro de la Propiedad de San Juan, Sección Quinta (5ta), inscripción Novena (9na). Dicha subasta se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer al demandante total o parcialmente según sea el caso el importe de la Sentencia que ordena a la parte demandada pagar a la parte demandante la suma de $130,498.77 de principal, intereses pactados y computados sobre esta suma al tipo de 3.75% anual desde el 1 de diciembre de 2017 hasta su total y completo pago, contribuciones, recargos y primas de seguro adeudados y la suma de $13,386.60 por conceptos de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado. Que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al Procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la SECRETARIA DEL TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE SAN JUAN, SALA SUPERIOR durante las horas laborables. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titulación del inmueble y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio de remate. Según estudio de título preparado por Capital Title Services, Inc. el día 21 de febrero de 2020, la propiedad está sujeta a los siguientes gravámenes anteriores y/o preferentes. Hipoteca en garantía de un pagaré a favor de United Mortgage Corporation, o a su orden, por la suma principal de $22,900.00, con intereses al 7 1/2% anual, vencedero el día 1 de octubre de 1999, constituida mediante la escritura número 393, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 15 de septiembre de 1969, ante el notario Antonio José Amadeo, e inscrita al folio 21 vuelto del tomo 383 de Sabana Llana, finca número 16,803, inscripción 1ra. Observación: Según estudio de título, dicha hipoteca fue cancelada mediante Sentencia del 24 de marzo de 2013, en el Caso Civil número DDI2013-0698, Certificado el día 18 de marzo de 2003 y Mandamiento del día 4 de abril de 2003,

en el Caso Civil número KICD022175 de cancelación de pagaré extraviado por $22,900.00. Surge del estudio que al asiento 2017094921-SJ05 DEL SISTEMA KARIBE se presentó el día 23 de agosto de 2017, la escritura número 167, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 15 de agosto de 2017, ante el notario Ricardo Marín Arias, mediante la cual comparece la Autoridad para el Financiamiento de la Vivienda de Puerto Rico, a consentir hipoteca por la suma de $133,866.00, que surge de la inscripción 9na. Según documento Juan Maldonado Berrios y Abigail Mareri Rivera Ríos, adquirieron la propiedad bajo el Programa Mi Nuevo Hogar recibieron de la Autoridad por la suma de $6,383.58, Condiciones Restrictivas de 10 años, de dicha inscripción, no surge lo antes expresado. Retirado el día 5 de junio de 2019. NOTA: Ninguno de los gravámenes antes detallados surgen de la Certificación Registral expedida el 20 de junio de 2019 firmada electrónicamente por la Honorable Registradora Vanessa López Ortiz. Por la presente se notifica a los acreedores conocidos y desconocidos que tengan inscritos, no inscritos, presentados y/o anotados sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante o acreedores de cargas o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca del actor y a los dueños, poseedores, tenedores de o interesados en títulos transmisibles por endoso o al portador garantizados hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito del actor que se celebrarán las subastas en las fechas, horas y sitios señalados para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les conviniere o se les invita a satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, otros cargos y las costas y honorarios de abogado asegurados quedando subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. La propiedad objeto de ejecución y descrita anteriormente se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores una vez el Honorable Tribunal expida la correspondiente Orden de Confirmación de Venta Judicial. Y para conocimiento de licitadores del público en general se publicará este Edicto de acuerdo con la ley por espacio de dos semanas en tres sitios públicos del municipio en que ha de celebrarse la venta, tales como la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la Colecturía. Este Edicto será publicado dos veces en un diario de circulación general en el Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas consecutivas. Expido el presente Edicto de subasta bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal en San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy día 18 de noviembre de 2020. EDWIN E. LOPEZ MULERO, ALGUACIL DE SUBASTAS, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, CENTRO JUDICIAL DE SAN JUAN, SALA SUPERIOR.

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, November 23, 2020

27

Dear Jets: There’s hope to be found in a winless season. Take it from someone who knows.

By GILLIAN R. BRASSIL

O

nly two NFL teams have gone 0-16 since the regular season expanded to 16 games in 1978: the Detroit Lions in 2008 and the Cleveland Browns in 2017.

It appears the 2020 New York Jets (0-9 heading into Sunday’s games) are making a run at joining them.

Yet here are some reassurances that fans should keep in mind: No team gives up, even in the face of injuries, smack talk or other adversity on and off the field.

And no coach guides a team toward losing in order to gain a top draft spot, although some people have suggested that is the case with the Jets’ Adam Gase.

At least that is the view from someone who has been there, Hue Jackson, who was the head coach of the Browns during their 0-16 season.

“That was the best coaching job I’ve ever done,” he insisted in a telephone interview last week.

Jackson had to keep his team focused, ready and excited every week throughout a season with little hope of a win. That year, the Browns were the youngest team in the league.

“We could see that we needed to go get better talent to provide a winning opportunity for our players,” said Jackson, who was fired in October 2018 with a record of 3-36-1 over his 2 1/2 seasons with the Browns. “But we kept going by the grace of God, and belief in our players and selves as coaches.”

The Jets, after shedding some older players, are relying heavily on rookies, and Gase has said that the team is aiming to train younger players for the coming years.

Gase was 7-18-0 with the Jets heading into Sunday, and he might not be around for long if things don’t improve.

Mathematically, the Jets have no way of getting to the playoffs. But there is a good chance they will acquire Clemson’s dynamic quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, with the No. 1 pick next spring, assuming he enters the 2021 NFL draft and the Jets continue being worse than the Jacksonville Jaguars, who were 1-8 heading into their game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday.

Jets quarterback Joe Flacco walked off the field after a 24-0 loss to the Miami Dolphins last month.

Gase and his players have insisted they are not tanking. “Nobody’s talked about that,” Gase said in a call with reporters last Wednesday.

On Sunday against the Los Angeles Chargers, Joe Flacco was slated to make his fourth start at quarterback for the Jets while Sam Darnold continues to recover from a shoulder injury. The timeline for Darnold’s return is blurred; many fans and Twitter users have wondered if he will be out of a job by draft time.

“I have social media. I’ve seen some of the things,” Darnold told reporters last month.

Giving up on Darnold, though, would mean the Jets had already failed to convert a highly drafted quarterback into an NFL success. He was the No. 3 pick in 2018, the same year that the Browns used the No. 1 spot — the fruit of their 0-16 season — to take quarterback Baker Mayfield, who is often credited with helping to move the franchise toward respectability. In his NFL debut, in Week 3 of the 2018 season, Mayfield

helped the Browns end their winless streak by defeating the Jets. Cleveland went 7-8-1 in his rookie year and 6-10 last year.

This season, the Browns were 6-3, tied for second place in the AFC North and vying for a playoff spot as they went into a game against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday.

Throughout his time with the Browns, Jackson reminded players that nothing was over until the final whistle of the last game. Which, to some extent, could not come fast enough.

“People are not built to lose, especially when you’re a leader,” he said. “In order to continue to be your best, you have to keep those down feelings away from the players, your family, the office and even yourself.”

Boosting morale can be difficult in the face of steady losses and shaming by fans. In an “All Things Covered” podcast episode last week, safety Jamal Adams said that frequent losing had left him depressed for much of his three seasons

with the Jets. After a 7-9 record last season and disagreements between Adams and the front office, he was traded to the Seattle Seahawks this summer.

Many of the current Jets have said they are hopeful about ending their losing streak.

“We just want to go out there and win. We don’t care about the draft,” offensive tackle Mekhi Becton said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday.

“Football is a game of love, so I can’t ever be that depressed,” linebacker Jordan Jenkins said Thursday.

The Jets were entering a four-week stretch of facing teams that currently have at least a 60 percent chance of reaching the playoffs.

Regardless, Jackson said the road through a difficult season can lead in several directions. Since 2017, he has built a foundation that aims to fight human trafficking, helped manage a tequila company and created an organization in Cleveland called Strangers 2 Changers, which helps bring together people from different backgrounds for community projects.

Jackson said he still hoped to take his expertise back to football, adding that he often summons memories of the scent of grass from the field.

Gregg Williams, the Jets’ defensive coordinator, was by Jackson’s side as the Browns’ defensive coordinator from January 2017 until he was appointed interim head coach in October 2018.

Gase brought Williams on in January 2019, and he coached the Jets’ defense to seventh place overall in the NFL last season, despite a 7-9 record. This season, the defense is ranked 28th in the league and the offense is at the bottom.

“One of the reasons I’ve been able to coach in the league for this long is because I’ve been a mentor: a life coach and a football coach,” Williams said in a call with reporters Friday. “And I like that challenge, having to start over with young people in that way.”

When you’re a Jet, looking for the bright side seems a prerequisite. And on Friday, Williams was no exception, saying: “We had one of best practices since I’ve been here in two years today.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, November 23, 2020

Nancy Darsch, champion coach of women’s basketball, dies at 68

By ALEXANDRA E. PETRI

N

ancy Darsch, who helped turn Ohio State into a women’s basketball powerhouse and then joined the professional ranks, becoming the first coach of the New York Liberty and leading the team to the WNBA’s inaugural championship game, died Nov. 2 at her home in her hometown, Plymouth, Mass. She was 68.

She had suffered from Parkinson’s disease, her sister-in-law, Mary Darsch, said.

Darsch had solid credentials when she joined Ohio State as the women’s head coach in 1985. She had been an assistant to the renowned Pat Summit at the University of Tennessee — the first assistant women’s basketball coach at the university to be paid — and helped lead the Lady Vols to five Final Four appearances.

She was also an assistant coach for the U.S. teams that won gold medals in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and in the 1996 Games in Atlanta.

“We were committed to finding someone with a national reputation,” Ohio State’s athletic director, Rick Bay, told The Columbus Dispatch in June 1985.

Darsch, he said, had coached “every great women’s basketball player in the country in the past five years.”

In her 12 years at Ohio State, her teams won four Big Ten titles, made seven NCAA tournament appearances and played in one championship game, in 1993, when the No. 3 Buckeyes lost to No. 5 Texas Tech, 84-82. It was the first time a Big Ten women’s team had made it to the NCAA championship.

Under Darsch, the Ohio State women had their first televised game, on ESPN in 1990. She brought in one of the first full-time strength coaches for a college women’s team as well as a sports psychologist, an emerging concept at the time.

In 1991-92, Ohio State recruited the top freshman class in the country, signing Katie Smith, who would be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 2018. In the 1993-94 season, the Buckeyes led the country in attendance for women’s collegiate basketball games.

Nancy Darsch with the New York Liberty in the first W.N.B.A. game, in 1997, against the Los Angeles Sparks in Inglewood, Calif. She had just come off a successful coaching run at Ohio State.

Darsch was also host of “The Nancy Darsch Show” on local television, on which she talked basketball with guests.

Having one’s own show was a rarity for female coaches at the time.

She accomplished another milestone in 1994, when she became the first coach of an Ohio State women’s team to receive a multiyear contract — a breakthrough at a time when most women’s coaches worked year to year.

Her salary started at $75,000 (about $133,000 in today’s money), up from the reported $55,524 that she had been making — half of what the men’s basketball coach earned. Darsch also pushed for bonuses for herself and her staff. She was inducted into the Ohio State Hall of Fame in 2014.

Darsch, who was fired in 1997 following several lackluster seasons, amassed a 234-125 record, making her the coach with the second-most wins alltime in Ohio State women’s basketball history, behind Jim Foster.

When the WNBA started up in 1997, Darsch, with nearly 20 years of top-tier college experience, signed on as head coach of the Liberty, a team anchored by superstars Rebecca Lobo and Teresa Weatherspoon and owned by Madison Square Garden.

The night before the team’s first practice, Darsch, along with her assistant coach, athletic trainer and a volunteer equipment manager, sat with a black magic marker putting players’ numbers on white socks. The team barely had a practice court — they’d usually work out at a sports club — and no video system to make game tapes for studying.

But it was no matter: Darsch led the Liberty to win the first game played in the WNBA, a 67-57 victory over the Los Angeles Sparks. She then took the team to the championship game that year in Houston before losing to the Houston Comets, 65-51.

After two seasons and a 35-23 record, Darsch was dismissed in Sept-

ember 1998 after the Liberty had failed to make the playoffs that year. The following February, she was named head coach of the Washington Mystics. But she resigned during her second season with the team after a poor start and amid reports of tension with Chamique Holdsclaw, one of the league’s top players.

“We were not meeting the goals I set for myself or the team,” Darsch said at the time. She later had stints as an assistant coach with the Minnesota Lynx and the Seattle Storm of the WNBA and at Boston College.

Her teams were well drilled, and she was respected for her technical knowledge of the game.

“Some people sit down and do two or three crossword puzzles a day, or jigsaw puzzles or video games,” Darsch told The Washington Post in 1999. Basketball was the equivalent for her, she said. “I like to watch it and see what people are running,” she said. “I like to try to understand from the outside what the other team is doing.”

Nancy Mary Darsch was born in Plymouth on Dec. 29, 1951. Her mother, Arline (Giovanetti) Darsch, was a maternity nurse. Her father, John Darsch, was an automobile mechanic.

Darsch played on the girls’ basketball team at Plymouth-Carver High School and graduated from Springfield College in 1973 with a degree in physical education. She took a job teaching and coaching the girls’ field hockey, softball and basketball teams at Longmeadow High School in Longmeadow, Mass., outside Springfield. There, in the wake of the newly instituted Title IX federal legislation barring sex discrimination in education, she fought to improve conditions for the girls’ athletic program.

She received a master’s degree in physical education from the University of Tennessee in 1979.

Her brother, John, died in 2013 at 66. She had no immediate survivors.

Darsch remained a proud New Englander, finding pleasure in teaching people how to eat lobster and taking them whale watching. She told The Columbus Dispatch that if she hadn’t made basketball her life, “I’d want to own a bar on Cape Cod, like the one in ‘Cheers.’”

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, November 23, 2020

29

Sudoku How to Play: Fill in the empty fields with the numbers from 1 through 9.

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

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

(Mar 21-April 20)

If others complain that your buoyant mood seems to have been replaced with a sterner outlook, then it may be down to expansive Jupiter moving closer to taskmaster Saturn. If you have matters to attend to or negotiate, then you are quite right to want to get on with them. Yet Mercury’s link to Neptune, suggests that unless you keep your focus, you could get distracted.

Taurus

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, November 23, 2020

(April 21-May 21)

There may be an air of intensity regarding a relationship that seems to be at a crucial phase. Key issues might need to be discussed, and the future of the bond could depend on how they pan out.

Even if this is romantic in nature, you can find yourself being quite business-like. Yet knowing what you both want out of any new association may build a solid foundation that serves you both.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Today’s Quarter Moon in your lifestyle sector, could be a test of whether you can walk your talk. You may have been busy telling everyone about your latest diet or exercise routine, but unless they start to see results, they might wonder. If you have been true to your word, then you can flaunt your progress. If not, make a start Libra, as even if tardy it’s better than nothing at all.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

A dreamy lunar phase could see you weighing up the cost of something that’s a tad expensive, if truth be told. Even so, this may not deter you, as with the Sun in the sign of adventurous Sagittarius and the Moon in Pisces, you might decide to conveniently ignore the facts in your rush to make it your own. But it can pay to be a little cautious here, Scorpio.

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

A pleasant Mercury angle to Neptune can make for a buoyant day, when your confidence may be boosted by a compliment or words of praise. Yet in contrast, an edgy lunar tie could leave you wondering about someone, and their take on your ideas. Why not ask them? If they give constructive criticism, this might help you to do better, and you can be grateful for their input.

With the Moon in your home zone angling towards the Sun, you may have reached a crucial stage in a plan that requires careful thought. If it’s linked to home and domestic matters, then asking the family for their ideas might help clarify your own. You certainly have nothing to lose if you want to find a workable compromise. This moon phase can be a springboard to success too.

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

With a Quarter Moon in your sector of adventure, the idea of exploring new ways to improve your life and enhance day-to-day activities, can appeal.

However, rather than dive in right away, the cosmos encourages you to firm-up your intentions. This could be a stepping off point to bigger things if you know what you want, and why. Dream away, but take steps to make them a reality.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

With the Moon angling towards Venus in Scorpio, your attitude to a friend or associate may be quietly intense, and you likely know why. Do they though, Capricorn? If not, then telling them might not be the easiest of conversations, but it can help you feel better. On another note, don’t mistrust your intuition regarding a key situation, as it could be more accurate than you think.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

The Sun in your leisure zone could amp up your social scene, Leo. Indeed, getting more involved in an interest you’re passionate about, might be one way to connect with someone you are drawn to. Today’s powerful lunar phase may find you contemplating a business or financial opportunity that can be linked with your creative abilities, and that seems to show promise.

With the Sun in your sector of friendship and longterm goals for the coming four weeks, this can be one of the peak times to network and add valuable contacts to your current list. It’s also an opportunity to down tools and have some fun, as far as you are able considering the current restrictions. Have a desire to get moving on a personal dream? This could soon be a reality.

Virgo

Pisces

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

As the Sun moves further into your home zone, this is a time to take stock and consider what needs doing, especially if you have neglected those important tasks, Virgo. While you might not feel like getting your house in order, you’ll be amazed at how much better you feel if you get down to some serious tidying up and decluttering. Your mental clarity could be enhanced.

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

Today’s Quarter Moon in your sign, can highlight a plan or project that may have reached a crucial stage, Pisces. How are you enjoying it so far? If it’s all falling into place and you are happy with your progress, then go ahead and see it through to a successful conclusion. Having doubts? Perhaps someone with experience could offer words of advice that boost confidence.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Monday, November 23, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

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Ziggy

32

Monday, November 23, 2020

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