Thursday Nov 5, 2020

Thursday, November 5, 2020

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Freshman Ferrer Shows How to Start Off On the Right Foot P4

She’s Back

Photo by Mabel Tossas

González Colón on Her To-Do List: First Things First, Statehood P5 Natal Prevails in SJ Mayoral Race, Defends His Votes P5

PIP At-Large Senator-Elect María de Lourdes Santiago Returns Stronger Than Ever with Heavy Agenda P4

NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

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Thursday, November 5, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

GOOD MORNING

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November 5, 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.

Pierluisi and Delgado talk, but Charlie insists he is still in the race

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he candidate for governor for the New Progressive Party (NPP), Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia, said on Wednesday that the opposition candidate for governor for the Popular Democratic Party (PDP), Carlos “Charlie” Delgado Altieri, called him to put himself at his disposal and to congratulate him.

“I appreciate the call from [Isabela] Mayor Charlie Delgado, who contacted me this afternoon to put himself at my disposal and [so that we] cooperate with each other for the good of Puerto Rico,” Pierluisi said on his social networks.

“We both agree to put the well being of our island above all considerations,” the former resident commissioner added. “I reiterate my commitment to have the greatest openness in the government,

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because I take with great humility and responsibility the trust they have placed in me.”

However, Delgado said the call cannot be interpreted as a gesture of concession.

“Just a few minutes ago I spoke with Mr. Pedro Pierluisi, who has been preliminarily certified. My call should not be construed as an acceptance of defeat,” Delgado said on his social networks. “The Popular Democratic Party continues to be active, counting votes that could alter results, including that of the governor’s office. My call to Mr. Pierluisi was directed toward maintaining a climate of stability at a time when votes are still being counted.”

According to data from the State Elections Commission, at press time, Pierluisi led the governor’s race with 380,875 votes for 32.41 percent, compared to Delgado, who had 368,518 votes for 31.36 percent.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

María de Lourdes Santiago: ‘There’s much to do after the elections’ PIP VP is elected to island Senate for a 3rd time, leads at-large vote

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

F

or the third time, citizens cast their votes to prove she has work left to do.

Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) Vice President María de Lourdes Santiago Negrón got a third chance on Wednesday as she was elected senator at-large in the island’s 2020 general elections.

After a chaotic Election Day, Santiago Negrón sat in third place in the early stages of vote counting. However, by late Tuesday the pro-independence candidate had taken the lead by a wide margin, followed by Dignity Project candidate Joanne Rodríguez Veve and New Progressive Party (NPP) candidate William Villafañe. Current Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz followed his NPP colleague closely in fourth place.

“I’m very thankful for the people who voted for me, people who supported the entire campaign, as [PIP at-large representative-elect] Denis [Márquez] is solid in the House and [PIP gubernatorial candidate] Juan’s [Dalmau] votes multiplied by six from the earlier elections. I’m grateful for everyone who supported me,” Santiago Negrón said.

As for the support that the pro-independence party has received, obtaining double-digit points in an electoral event for the first time since 1956, she said those results were influenced by factors such as the struggles citizens went

PIP reelected representative Denis Márquez and elected senator María de Lourdes Santiago through after the 2017 hurricanes, the earthquakes in the southern regions of island early this year, corruption and “Dalmau’s great campaign as he was able to connect with people and demonstrate complete proposals.”

Santiago Negrón added that, along with Márquez, she will work on a legislative agenda focused on a national healthcare plan, a Special Education Program legislative monitor, environmental projects, and civil participation projects on administrative and legislative matters.

“Right at the [time of the] Summer 2019 protests, we presented three amendments that would request a recall and an adequate process of choosing who would take the seat whenever a governor resigns or is dismissed, and a second electoral round in those cases where none of the

candidates get half of the entered votes,” she said. “The bill was there and was never considered during this fouryear term. In light of the recent results of the gubernatorial race from the general elections, it’s important to bring our constitutional amendments back to the table.”

The at-large senator-elect said that to guarantee transparency in the Capitol, she will introduce bills that seek to adopt a pay scale within the Legislature, “and that the information on the people who work in both [chambers] be disclosed until a commission is formed with the participation of all the delegations to approve the budget of each [chamber].”

“This is something that [traditionally] would happen behind closed doors in the presidency,” she said. “We would also demand information from the Capitol’s lobbyists, and not by just saying that they go there, because if a lobbyist tells you that they visited the Capitol, but they don’t tell you who they visited and for what [reason], we absolutely will never know anything.”

Santiago Negrón said further that other bills that remain in draft seek to promote citizen participation in both legislative and administrative terms as “most of the terrible things that happen in this country are related to permit grants.”

“There are difficulties with access to public information. Many documents are handled by the state as if they were inaccessible; we believe there must be a presumption that every document must be public,” she said. “It’s the state’s turn to demonstrate that citizens don’t have the right to investigate and hold [state officials to] accountability. We believe this process must be transparent, free, and expedited.”

Ferrer deflects talk of seeking House speakership

By THE STAR STAFF

N

ewly elected Popular Democratic Party (PDP) Rep. Héctor Ferrer, who received the most votes in Tuesday’s at-large House of Representatives race, does not have plans to become House speaker, arguing that such a move would be out of line at this time.

In an interview with the Star, the freshman lawmaker-elect

appeared eager to take over the position in a new House of Representatives in which the PDP appears to have a very slim majority and which includes minority lawmakers from emerging parties such as the Citizens Victory Movement and the conservative Dignity Project.

“The people spoke clearly. We must work together,” he said. “While I have my own proposals, I now have to see where we agree and where do we not agree.”

Ferrer, who is the son of the late former PDP Rep. Héctor Ferrer, a former PDP president who died of cancer in 2018, said that besides an anti-corruption package, he wants to focus on ongoing problems in the areas of education and health.

One of the things he wants to do is legislate for a salary hike for teachers, who “are the worst paid public workers.”

In the area of health, he would like to draft legislation that could result in a cut in medicine prices.

In Tuesday’s general election, voters also voted in a “Yes or No” statehood plebiscite in which the “yes” received a majority vote. Asked if the island’s political status was going to be an issue this term, Ferrer said it was up to the United States.

In response to a question, Ferrer said he believes the commonwealth status can be enhanced but did not say if he supported a sovereign commonwealth.

At press time, Ferrer had 11.68 percent of the votes in the at-large representatives race.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

5

Statehood tops González Colón’s agenda

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

W

ith a clear majority favoring statehood in Puerto Rico in Tuesday’s status plebiscite, obtaining statehood will be at the top of the agenda for Jenniffer González Colón, the resident commissioner said Wednesday in an interview with the Star.

“The governor-elect Pierluisi and I have a clear mandate after achieving an absolute majority for statehood,” González said. “This is a clear message that equality and an end to discrimination can be granted only through statehood.”

The resident commissioner said the recognition that the status issue received nationwide would be vital to the passage of statehood.

She also stressed that the creation of a tourism industry task force would be another high priority for her new administration.

Other priorities for the resident commissioner are the creation of infrastructure as a motor of economic development and turning Puerto Rico into a hub for manufacturing companies returning to the United States from abroad with the prospect of creating regions of development in Puerto Rico.

“With more companies relocating to the United States we will be allowing the reconstruction of Puerto Rico as an island

of opportunity,” González said.

The island has already become an air cargo hub and “we are going to try to get that in a permanent way,” she added.

The extension of economic security is the fourth pillar of the resident commissioner’s agenda, though another priority will be to have Puerto Rico treated as a state with an extension of health care resources based on equal standing with respect to Medicare and Medicaid.

“Puerto Rico needs to be treated as a state in health care and it’s not,” she said.

The resident commissioner said the creation of a tourism industry task force would also be a high priority for her new administration, with the extension of an earned income tax credit being another priority.

González also has a wide-ranging plan for citizen security.

The resident commissioner declined to speculate about the prospect of having to cooperate with a U.S. government led by Democrat Joe Biden as president, saying that all the votes have not been counted.

“The best economic development plan that Puerto Rico has is statehood and to open the way to it, we will work on a concerted strategy in various forums and areas,” González said.

“These proposals complement very well with what would be our union with the United States. We are focused on bringing jobs

here now, in the medium and long term, more investment here, more opportunities here, more creation here, more aid here.”

The resident commissioner said the fact that Pedro Pierluisi is a member of the Democratic Party would help the statehood cause.

“It is a bipartisan issue now; it is not about voting by party lines,” she said. “There are several bipartisan networks. We do have a bill that has bipartisan support. The recognition the issue has at the nationwide level is very important.”

‘Army of volunteers’ helps CVM mayoral candidate Natal in vote review

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

“W

e are more, and we fear nothing! We are more, and we fear nothing!”

This is what hundreds of citizens chanted on Wednesday as they gathered at the State Elections Commission (SEC) Absentee and Early Vote Administrative Board at Roberto Clemente Coliseum in Hato Rey to voluntarily assist Citizen Victory Movement (CVM) San Juan mayoral candidate Manuel Natal Albelo in reviewing votes from Tuesday’s general elections.

The chant was taken up as New Progressive Party (NPP) electoral officials were taunting CVM supporters by shouting “Four more years, four more years!” as both groups waited for the SEC to open the ballot count area, which was supposed to open at 1 p.m. but was delayed for more than two hours.

Earlier in the day, Natal Albelo called on citizens via Twitter to go to the CVM’s Río Piedras headquarters at 11 a.m. to receive vote count training as he was locked in a tight race with NPP mayoral candidate Miguel Romero for the leadership of the island capital, where the cur-

rent lawmaker had only 429 more votes than his opponent at press time.

“Throughout this campaign process, we have spoken transparently to the people of San Juan. We are in the fight for the Mayor’s Office and we need your help,” Natal Albelo said. “If you were a CVM Official during the electoral process and have the time to help in the next few days, we are waiting for you. If you have not been an officer and want to help, we are also waiting for you. We will defend the will for change of the people of San Juan.”

Little did he know, the support was about to be overwhelming.

“An army of volunteers has filled our committee and the Plaza de la Convalecencia committed to making the will of the people be respected,” said Natal Albelo as pictures and videos released on social media showed more than a hundred citizens, mostly wearing black shirts, listening to the mayoral candidate.

Natal also reported that he appointed lawyer and former electoral commissioner Guillermo San Antonio Acha, as its representative during the vote counting.

The lawyer will ensure the transparency of the process and that “all votes are counted and the will of the people is respected.”

PDP SJ mayoral candidate congratulates whoever ultimately wins, begins propaganda removal Meanwhile, Popular Democratic Party (PDP) San Juan mayoral candidate Rossana López León expressed her gratitude for the thousands of San Juan citizens who voted for her in the general elections and congratulated whoever is finally elected mayor of San Juan.

“There are still votes to count and my solidarity is with the entire electoral component that is doing a very important job,” she said. “Whoever is finally elected, Manuel Natal or Senator Romero, deserve to have the cooperation of all the capital’s residents, because the challenges are big and serious.”

The PDP senator asked her campaign team to begin removing all pieces of political campaign advertising, that of municipal assembly candidates included.

“There are some initiatives, bills, and proposals that I believe are very important and I will leave them in writing so that the Senate majority considers them,” López León said. “I continue in the PDP capital city presidency and, soon, we will begin the reorganization of all party structures.

There’s much more to be done, and, as I insisted in the campaign, public service is my vocation.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

House and Senate races continue; PDP poised to regain majority

By THE STAR STAFF

P

uerto Rico will have a divided government, with the Legislature as of Wednesday on track to be controlled by the Popular Democratic Party (PDP).

The House of Representatives had a total of 25 elected PDP representatives, 21 New Progressive Party (NPP) representatives, one Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) representative, two representatives from the Citizens Victory Movement (CVM) and one from the Dignity Project (DP). The results are with 95 percent of the votes counted.

In the Senate, the tally resulted in 14 senators from the PDP, eight senators from the NPP, one PIP senator, two CVM senators, one senator from the DP, and independent Sen. José Vargas Vidot earning a second term.

Several individuals noted that the presumptive governor-elect, Pedro Pierluisi of the NPP, will have a tough year.

“If Pierluisi wins, he will have a difficult year, but more so the PDP,” attorney John Mudd said via Twitter.

Puerto Rico had a difficult four-year term

when former Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá was in La Fortaleza because the NPP-controlled Legislature put up roadblocks to his legislation and he often had to issue executive orders.

The at-large House seat final tally had a mix of all political parties. Eva Prados of the CVM won a District 3 (San Juan) House seat.

The Carolina Senate district, meanwhile, is

divided as it has one NPP senator and one PDP senator.

The at-large House candidates who took the first 11 spots were Héctor Ferrer of the PDP, PIP Rep. Dennis Márquez, Marianna Nogales Molinelli of the CVM, Lisie Janet Burgos of the DP, José Torres Zamora of the NPP, Rep. José Enrique Meléndez of the NPP,

Jesús Manuel Ortiz of the PDP, José Bernardo Márquez of the CVM, Rep. José Aponte of the NPP, Néstor Alonso of the NPP and Jorge Emmanuel Báez Pagán of the NPP. Left out were NPP Rep. Lourdes Ramos, Enid Monge of the PDP, Keyliz Méndez of the PDP, Yaramary Torres of the PDP and Gabriel López of the PDP. In the Senate at-large race, winning the 11 spots were María de Lourdes Santiago of the PIP, Joanne Rodríguez Veve of the DP, William Villafañe of the NPP, current Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz, Vargas Vidot, former Treasury Secretary Juan Zaragoza of the PDP, former Puerto Rico Bar Association President Ana Irma Rivera Lassen of the CVM, PDP Sen. José Luis Dalmau, Rafael Bernabe of the CVM, Gregorio Matias of the NPP and PDP Sen. Aníbal José Torres.

Left out with 95 percent of the votes counted were PDP Sen. Brenda López de Arraras, Keren Riquelme of the NPP, Sen. Itzamar Peña of the NPP, Ada Álvarez Conde of the PDP, Carlos Rodríguez Mateo of the NPP and Rep. Luis Vega Ramos.

Many long-serving mayors denied new terms

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

S

everal mayors, including some who had served for several four-year terms, were defeated in Tuesday’s general elections, according to data from the State Elections Commission (SEC).

The New Progressive Party (NPP) mayor of Ponce, María “Mayita” Meléndez, accepted her defeat after being in office for 12 years. Meléndez urged the new mayor, Dr. Luis Irizarry Pabón, to do a good job “like I did.”

The NPP mayor of Adjuntas, Jaime Barlucea, acknowledged his defeat meanwhile after spending 16 years at the head of the City of the Sleeping Giant.

“I congratulate the new mayor, José Hiram Soto Rivera,” Barlucea said in a message on his social networks.

The 16-year Popular Democratic Party (PDP) mayor of Santa Isabel, Enrique “Quique” Questell Alvarado, was defeated by Rafael “Billy” Burgos Santiago of the NPP, while the PDP mayor of Guayanilla, Nelson Torres Yordán, accepted his defeat against Raúl Rivera of the NPP. In Arecibo, New Progressive Party Mayor Carlos Molina Rodríguez lost to Carlos Ramírez Irizarry of the PDP, while in Aguadilla, Yanitsia Irizarry Méndez of the NPP lost the election to Julio Roldán Concepción of the PDP. The mayor of San Lorenzo for the PDP, José “Joe” Román

Abreu, who is also the president of the Mayors Association, lost to Jaime Alverio Ramos of the NPP. Meanwhile, the mayor of Cidra, Javier Carrasquillo (NPP) lost to David Concepción González (PDP) by a difference of 56.65 percent to 36.13 percent.

Another incumbent mayor who went down in defeat was Ernesto Samuel Irizarry Salvá (PDP), who lost his post in Utuado to Jorge “Jorgito” Pérez (NPP).

Vieques mayor Víctor Emeric (PDP),meanwhile, lost to José “Junito” Corcino (NPP).

In Vega Alta, María Vega defeated Mayor Oscar “Can” Santiago Martínez with 48.19 percent of the vote to 46.84 percent for the incumbent.

Virgilio Olivera Olivera of the NPP defeated Mayor NPP mayor of Ponce, María “Mayita” Meléndez, Isidro Negrón Irizarry (PDP) to become the new mayor of accepted her defeat after being in office for 12 San Germán. The same thing happened in Cabo Rojo, where years.

Jorge Morales Wiscovitch (NPP) beat incumbent Roberto Ramírez Kurtz (PDP).

In Corozal, Luis “Luiggi” García (NPP) beat the mayor of Meanwhile, in Maricao, Wilfredo “Juny” Ruiz (PDP) Corozal, Sergio Luis Torres Torres (PDP), by a wide margin. defeated Mayor Gilberto Pérez Valentín (NPP). In Maunabo, In Añasco, Kabir Solares (NPP) defeated Mayor Jorge Estévez Ángel Omar Lafuente Amaro (NPP) bested incumbent Jorge Martínez. In Lares, Fabián Arroyo Rodríguez (PDP) won, 49.02 Luis Márquez Pérez (PDP). percent to 47.81 percent, over José Rodríguez Ruiz (NPP), Miraidaliz Rosario Pagán (PDP) dethroned Noe Marcano who had been certified as mayor last January.

Rivera (NPP) in Naguabo, while Maritza Sánchez Neris Another incumbent who acknowledged defeat Tuesday achieved 47.52 percent to exceed the 45.45 percent obtained night was Lajas Mayor Marcos “Turín” Irizarry of the PDP, by the mayor of Patillas, Norberto Soto Figueroa. who lost to Jayson “Jay” Martínez (NPP).

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

7

These candidates made history in the 2020 election

BY MATT STEVENS AND MAGGIE ASTOR

T

he 2020 election saw a diverse set of candidates in races across the country, even though the presidential contest was between two septuagenarian white men. Votes are still being tallied, but barrierbreaking candidates have notched victories in some of the races that have been called.

Here are some of the winners who have made history.

In the House of Representatives: Cori Bush, a progressive who toppled a member of the Democratic Party establishment during her primary, cruised to victory over Anthony Rogers, a Republican, and became the first Black woman elected to represent Missouri in Congress. “To the Black women, the Black girls, the nurses, the essen-

tial workers, the single mothers — this is our moment,” Bush said in her victory speech.

Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones, both Democrats, swept aside their Republican opponents and became the first openly gay Black men to be elected to Congress. Torres, the first openly gay Afro-Latino elected to Congress, will replace Rep. José Serrano in New York’s 15th Congressional District.

Jones will fill the seat in New York’s 17th Congressional District that is being vacated

by Rep. Nita Lowey.

Election night victories by Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., in the state’s 1st District;Yvette Herrell, a Republican, in its 2nd District; and Teresa Leger Fernandez, a Democrat, in its 3rd District mean that New Mexico’s entire House delegation will be made up of women of color.

In the Senate: Cynthia Lummis, a Republican former congresswoman, will become the first woman to serve in the Senate from Wyoming.

She cruised to victory in the race to succeed Sen. Michael Enzi, who is retiring.

In statehouses: Sarah McBride, elected to the Delaware Senate, will become the first openly transgender state senator and the highest-ranking transgender official in the U.S. Her victory came just three years after Danica Roem of Virginia became the first openly trans person elected to the lower chamber of a state legislature.

“I am hopeful that there’s a young person desperately in need of that message, who, just before going to bed, looked online and saw this result,” McBride said. “For that

Ritchie Torres, a New York City councilman who represents the Bronx, speaks to reporters in the Bronx, Nov. 3, 2020. person, they know that change is possible and things can get better.”

Collins wins in Maine, denying Democrats a crucial Senate pickup

BY EMILY COCHRANE

S

en. Susan Collins, R-Maine, claimed victory Wednesday in her bid to secure a fifth term, beating back an avalanche of Democratic money and liberal anger in the most difficult race of her career to defeat Sara Gideon, a Democrat, and strengthen the party’s hold on the Senate.

Her triumph, reported by The Associated Press, preserved Collins’ status as the only remaining New England Republican in Congress. She became the first senator in the state’s history to be chosen by voters for a fifth term in the upper chamber, dashing Democratic hopes of a crucial pickup as their ambitions of a Senate takeover hung by a thread.

Collins said she received “a very gracious call” from Gideon, who also gave a concession speech.

“Regardless of the result, we built a movement that will help us make progress for years to come,” Gideon said in her concession speech.

Collins, 67, who had trailed in most public polling this year, overcame the liberal groundswell in part by centering her campaign on local issues and distancing herself from President Donald Trump, even declining to say whether she would vote for him. Toiling to preserve an image she has carefully cultivated as an independentminded moderate, she reminded voters of her

accomplishments for the state and emphasized her likely ascendance to the helm of the powerful Appropriations Committee, which allocates federal spending, should Republicans keep the majority, as well as her personal relationships in the state.

National Democrats, furious after Collins became a key vote in support of his tax plan and the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018, had singled out Collins as a top target on their path to reclaiming the Senate majority. As a result, the race had become the most expensive in Maine history, with national donors flooding the state with tens of millions of dollars and an onslaught of negative campaign ads.

Gideon, the speaker of Maine’s House, had sought to frame the campaign as a referendum on Republicans, painting Collins as

out of touch with the state and in lock-step with Trump and Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. She capitalized on the growing polarization of the state in the Trump era, as Democrats and independent voters became increasingly frustrated with Collins’ pattern of expressing distress at the president’s language and actions, only to side with her party on crucial issues.

The pandemic offered an opportunity for Collins to counter the narrative by highlighting her work with Democrats, as she championed what would become a popular federal loan program to stabilize thousands of small businesses across the country in the $2.2 trillion stimulus law enacted in the spring. The creation of the Paycheck Protection Program, along with a series of measure to overhaul and replenish it, also

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) speaks during her election night rally in Bangor, Maine, on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020.

allowed Collins to draw a sharp contrast with Gideon, who adjourned the state’s legislature in March and failed to secure bipartisan support to reconvene it.

Collins, whose vote for Kavanaugh spurred critics to amass nearly $4 million for her eventual opponent, further burnished her credentials as a moderate willing to break with her party when Senate Republicans rushed to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left in September by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Collins became one of only two senators in her party to object to moving forward to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett before the election, and the only one to vote “no.” She pointed to her objections after her fellow Republicans stonewalled Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s pick to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia after his death in 2016, when they insisted such a seat should not be filled in an election year.

With Republicans otherwise nearly united on moving forward, they did not need her vote anyway, and the unusual circumstances allowed Collins, who supports abortion rights, to sidestep the question of whether to confirm a nominee who personally opposed abortion.

In a statement, Collins emphasized that she was merely objecting to the process, saying, “My vote does not reflect any conclusion that I have reached about Judge Barrett’s qualifications.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

Oregon decriminalizes heroin and cocaine, and two states legalize marijuana

Mail-in ballots in Toms River, N.J. New Jersey voters decisively passed an amendment legalizing recreational marijuana on Tuesday.

By THOMAS FULLER

T

he march to decriminalize drugs moved further across the nation Tuesday despite continued federal prohibition.

Oregon became the first state to decriminalize small amounts of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs. And in New Jersey and Arizona, voters decisively passed laws legalizing recreational marijuana.

Cannabis is now legal across a large bloc of states in the West — from Washington down to the Mexican border — and well beyond.

Cannabis was also on the ballot in Montana, Mississippi and South Dakota. If all of the marijuana measures pass, it will be legal for medical use in three dozen states and recreational use will be allowed in 15.

The Oregon measure would make possession of small amounts of what have long been considered harder drugs a violation, similar to a traffic ticket, and no longer

punishable by jail time. The law would also fund drug addiction treatment from marijuana sales taxes.

“This is incredible,” said Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the advocacy group Drug Policy Alliance. “This is like taking a sledgehammer to the cornerstone of the drug war.”

Possession of larger amounts could result in misdemeanor charges, and some cases that rise to what is considered a commercial level could still be charged as felonies.

Frederique said passage of the measure showed that voters were eager for a new approach on drug policy to handle it as a health issue and prioritize treatment. She said she expected other states to follow suit, mentioning efforts in states such as California, Vermont and Washington.

Separately, Oregon voters also legalized psilocybin, known as magic mushrooms, for people age 21 and older. Proponents said the

move would allow the drug to be used to treat depression, anxiety and other conditions.

Even in a year when the number of citizen initiatives in states across the country was sharply down from the 2016 presidential election, the diverse slate of measures offered a chance to gauge the mood of the nation.

In Florida, where the two presidential candidates were within a few points of each other, voters approved a pro-labor amendment to the state constitution that will raise the minimum wage incrementally to $15 an hour in 2026.

Florida becomes the eighth state to enact a minimum wage of $15, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, but the first state that Donald Trump carried four years ago. The District of Columbia has also enacted a $15 minimum wage.

Florida’s measure, known as Amendment 2, earned a place on Tuesday’s ballot in December and needed at least 60% of the

vote to pass. With 99% of the vote counted, the measure had slightly more than 61%.

Under the measure, the state minimum wage would rise from its current hourly rate of $8.56 to $10 in September, and then increase by $1 every September through 2026. After that, annual increases would be tied to inflation.

A study by the Florida Policy Institute, a think tank backing the increase, found that the higher wage would directly benefit 2.5 million workers in the state.

The amendment was supported by unions and the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, and was opposed by business organizations representing construction companies, citrus farmers, hotels and restaurants.

In Louisiana a measure supported by two anti-abortion Democrats, Gov. John Bel Edwards and state Sen. Katrina Jackson, passed comfortably. Amendment 1 would add these words to the state constitution: “Nothing in this constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion, or require the funding of abortion.”

In Mississippi, voters approved a new state flag with red, yellow and blue stripes, a magnolia flower and the words “In God We Trust.” The state’s previous flag, which dated to 1894 and contained a Confederate battle cross, was decommissioned by lawmakers in June.

Two measures in California were won by those in favor of criminal justice reform, including former Gov. Jerry Brown. Voters rejected Proposition 20, which would have rolled back earlier measures that allow people convicted of certain felonies early parole consideration. And voters approved Proposition 17, which will restore the right to vote for felons on parole. In Oklahoma, voters went the other way, rejecting Question 805, a measure that would have prohibited using a person’s past nonviolent felony convictions to impose an enhanced sentence for another nonviolent felony.

There were 38 statewide citizen initiatives being decided across the country Tuesday, about half the level of the last presidential election, when there were 72. Experts attribute the decline to the effect of the coronavirus, which has made gathering signatures more difficult. When all measures are tallied, including those placed by legislatures on the ballots, there were a total of 124 statewide ballot initiatives this year, down from 154 four years ago.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

2,258 New Jersey prisoners will be released in a single day

By TRACEY TULLY

I

n a sweeping acknowledgment of the risks of the coronavirus in cramped prisons, New Jersey will release more than 2,000 inmates Wednesday as part of one of the largest-ever single-day reductions of any state’s prison population.

More than 1,000 additional prisoners will be released in the coming weeks and months after earning early-release credits for time served during the health crisis — resulting in a roughly 35% reduction in New Jersey’s prison population since the pandemic began ravaging Northeast states in March.

Beyond the health imperatives, the emptying of prisons and jails comes at a moment when there is intense national debate over transforming a criminal justice system that ensnares people of color in disproportionate numbers.

In New Jersey, supporters of the freeing of prisoners said it would not only help make prisons safer but would also build on the state’s efforts to create a fairer penal system. But opponents said they were worried about releasing so many inmates at once and potentially posing a public safety risk in communities where they end up.

The mass releases were made possible by a bill that passed with bipartisan support in the New Jersey Legislature and was signed into law last month by Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat, as part of the first legislative initiative of its kind in the country.

Prisoners in New Jersey within a year of completing sentences for crimes other than murder and sexual assault are eligible to be released as many as eight months early. They will be freed through the gates of state prisons and halfway houses, or driven by bus to transit hubs to begin treks to the county where they last lived, according to state officials and criminal justice advocates.

The releases are set to start less than 24 hours after polls closed on one of the most consequential Election Days in modern history, amid concerns about the potential for civil unrest after President Donald Trump repeatedly sought to sow distrust in the voting process itself.

Assemblyman Jon M. Bramnick, the Republican minority leader, said he opposed the bill because it included people convicted of certain violent crimes and left too many questions unanswered.

“The legislation is way too broad for me to give my rubber stamp,” Bramnick said. “Is the public aware of who is being released and where they are going?”

More than 1,000 additional prisoners will be freed in New Jersey in the coming weeks and months.

Other states have made large coronavirus-related reductions to their prison populations this year, including Connecticut and California. California’s governor ordered the release of about 8,000 nonviolent offenders and two weeks ago was told by a judge to free or transfer 1,500 inmates from San Quentin, the state’s oldest and most notorious prison where more than 2,000 inmates contracted the virus and 28 have died from it.

New Jersey had already released nearly 1,000 inmates early from its prison system under a pandemic-related executive order in April and freed close to 700 people from its county jails after a legal challenge.

But the decision to take a systemwide step on a single day is unique and has drawn criticism from the mayor of Trenton, the state’s capital where gun violence is surging, and from lawmakers in Cumberland County, home to three sprawling state prisons.

Those who fought for the releases have argued that there was no time to waste in a state where the virus was seeping anew into prison populations after tapering off in the summer following outbreaks that killed at least 52 inmates.

The infection rate in state prisons is now below 1%, but a federal prison in Fort Dix in central New Jersey is experiencing an outbreak involving at least 166 inmates and 10 staff members. An additional 41 people at Fort Dix have recovered from COVID-19, federal officials said.

State correction officials have said the 2,258 people being released Wednesday will

leave with necessary prescription medicines and state ID cards, which are crucial for applying for social services.

Social service teams have also provided housing and transportation assistance, as well as food stipends for those with minimal financial resources, according to Liz Velez, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections.

“We are taking a process that normally takes six months and compressing it into a very short time-frame,” a spokesman for the governor, Michael Zhadanovsky, said in a statement.

Multiple state agencies have been “working diligently” with local officials, Zhadanovsky added, “to identify areas of anticipated need and fill those gaps with necessary resources so that people can thrive in their communities.”

James E. McGreevey, the former governor who now runs New Jersey Re-entry Corporation, a nonprofit that contracts with the state to help people transition out of prison, said the number of soon-to-be released inmates who had been signed up for Medicaid had increased over the past several weeks after a slow start.

This, he said, was a positive sign that would help them to access vital health and addiction treatment services.

Criminal justice advocates are preparing to fan out across the state at prisons and transit hubs to offer a friendly welcome and to help connect new arrivals access social services.

But even advocates who fought for passage of the bill have been critical of its implementation.

“We stand as ready as we can be, but we’re getting mostly really halfhearted gestures from the state,” said J. Amos Caley, lead organizer for New Jersey Prison Justice Watch, a coalition of social justice advocacy organizations that championed the bill. “It’s felt like we’ve been either dragging them along, or educating them at every step, or just outright wrestling with them.”

Justice Watch volunteers will be dressed in red and will be handing out bags filled with masks and information about area homeless shelters and social service groups.

To find the former inmates, volunteers will look for telltale garb: gray sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt.

“And they’ll be carrying a white mesh laundry bag, holding all their possessions,” Caley said.

Deb Johnson, 55, said she planned to be helping out at a bus and train station in Camden, New Jersey, and dreaming of the day her 30-year-old son, who was convicted of a weapons possession charge, walks out of South Woods State Prison. Under the bill, he is eligible for early release before Christmas.

“For me, it’s bittersweet,” Johnson said.

“It’s sweet because it’s my child. I get to hold him a little sooner, especially during the holidays that we haven’t shared in five years. But there’s still a lot of other people who are incarcerated and could die.”

Since March, more than 252,000 people in jails and prisons across the country have been infected with the virus, and at least 1,450 inmates and correctional officers have died, according to a New York Times database.

“You have a child who has done something to get them incarcerated,” Johnson said. “But now you’re worried that you’re going to be getting a phone call telling you your son is dead.”

Jessica S. Henry, a former public defender who is now a criminal justice professor at Montclair State University, said the confusion accompanying Wednesday’s release underscored problems that existed with the prison re-entry process long before the pandemic.

“They are often released with $10, a bus ticket and the shirt on their back, and wished good luck,” Henry said.

Amid a pervasive virus that has left hundreds of thousands residents out of work, the challenges are compounded.

“You’re releasing people because of the pandemic, into the pandemic,” she said. “Unless there are safe places for them to go, what are we doing with all these people to make sure they can begin to build new lives?”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

11

Uber and Lyft drivers in California will remain independent

By KATE CONGER

D

rivers and other workers for so-called gig economy companies in California will not become their employees.

California voters carried Uber and Lyft to victory, overwhelmingly approving Proposition 22, a ballot measure that allows gig economy companies to continue treating drivers as independent contractors.

Uber, Lyft and the delivery service DoorDash designed the measure to exempt the companies from a state labor law that would have forced them to employ drivers and pay for health care, unemployment insurance and other benefits. As a concession to labor advocates, the initiative offers a wage floor and limited benefits to drivers.

The Associated Press projected early Wednesday that Prop. 22 had carried 58% of the vote. Prop. 22 faced the strongest opposition in San Francisco, where Uber and Lyft are headquartered, with more than a 19-point deficit.

The vote resolves the fiercest regulatory battle that Uber and Lyft have faced and opens a path for the companies to remake labor laws throughout the country. The fight pit labor groups and state lawmakers against ride-hailing and delivery startups that spent $200 million in support of the measure.

In voting to support Uber and Lyft, Californians rejected the principles outlined in a 2018 state Supreme Court ruling and enshrined in a 2019 state law that said workers who perform tasks within a company’s regular business — and are controlled by the company and do not operate their own firms — must be treated as employees. Under Prop. 22, gig workers are exempted from these rules and can continue to work independently.

The Yes on Prop. 22 campaign, backed by Uber, Lyft and DoorDash, celebrated the victory.

“California has spoken,” Geoff Vetter, a spokesman for the campaign, said in a news release. “Prop. 22 represents the future of work in an increasingly technologicallydriven economy.”

Uber’s stock rallied almost 3% Tuesday as polls suggested that Prop. 22 was likely to pass. Lyft’s stock was also up 7%.

Uber’s chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, thanked drivers for the win in a late-night email.

“The future of independent work is more secure because so many drivers like you spoke up,” he wrote. He said Uber

Drivers and other gig workers urging voters to reject California’s Proposition 22 outside of Uber’s headquarters in San Francisco, Oct. 15, 2020. The victory of Proposition 22, the most expensive initiative in the state’s history, could help gig companies remake labor laws throughout the country. would make the new benefits promised by Prop. 22 available “as soon as possible.”

“The last 14 months in California have been the most critical point on this issue,” said Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist who advised Uber on political issues during its early years.

Emboldened by the election, Uber and other gig economy players will likely pursue federal legislation to formally enshrine gig work in the nation’s labor laws.

The passage of Prop. 22 is a bitter loss for state and local officials who have long seen the ride-hailing companies as obstinate upstarts that shrugged off any effort to make them follow the rules.

Many local officials believed that California was too gentle for too long when it came to regulating Uber and Lyft and naïve about how powerful and influential the ride-hailing companies would quickly become.

“For all too long, Uber and Lyft banked on the timidity of public officials throughout the country,” said Dennis Herrera, the city attorney of San Francisco.

Herrera has sued Uber and Lyft in an attempt to force them to employ their drivers, and the litigation continues.

“They said, ‘We’re not going to ask permission, we’ll sort of ask for forgiveness after the fact, once the horse has left the barn,’” he said.

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Thursday, November 5, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

China halts Ant Group’s blockbuster IPO

Jack Ma, the Alibaba co-founder, is also Ant’s controlling shareholder.

By RAYMOND ZHONG and CAO LI

A

nt Group challenged China’s state-dominated banking system by bringing easy-to-use payments, borrowing and investing to hundreds of millions of smartphones across the country. On Tuesday, Chinese officialdom reminded the company who was really in charge.

In a late-evening announcement that stunned China, the Shanghai Stock Exchange slammed the brakes on Ant’s initial public offering, which was set to be the biggest stock debut in history with investors on multiple continents and at least $34 billion in proceeds.

The stock exchange’s notice to Ant said that the company’s proposed offering might no longer meet the requirements for listing after Chinese regulators had summoned company executives, including Jack Ma, the co-founder of the e-commerce titan Alibaba and Ant’s controlling shareholder, for a meeting Monday.

Neither the regulators nor Ant have said in detail what was discussed at the meeting. But the timing of the conversation, mere days before Ant’s shares were expected to begin trading concurrently in Shanghai and Hong Kong, suggested discord with the company or with Ma, who spun Ant out of Alibaba in 2011.

Although he is not part of Ant’s management, Ma has been a spirited champion for the company’s mission of bringing financial services to small businesses and others in China who he says have been ill-served by stodgy, government-run institutions.

Shortly after the Shanghai exchange’s announcement, Ant said it was suspending the Hong Kong leg of its listing as well.

The company apologized to investors “for any inconvenience.”

“We will keep in close communications with the Shanghai Stock Exchange and relevant regulators,” the company said, “and wait for their further notice with respect to further developments of our offering and listing process.”

Shares of Alibaba, a major Ant shareholder, fell 8% on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

Over the past decade, Ant has transformed the way people in China interact with money. The company’s Alipay app has become an essential payment tool for more than 730 million users, as well as a platform for obtaining small loans and buying insurance and investment products.

But competing against China’s politically connected financial institutions always came with risks. Regulators have looked warily upon Ant’s fast growth in certain areas, fearful it might become too big to rescue in the event of a meltdown.

Ant has pivoted in response. Instead of using its own money to extend loans, the company now primarily acts as an agent for banks, introducing them to individual borrowers and small enterprises that they might not otherwise reach. It describes itself as a technology partner to banks, not a competitor or a disrupter.

This business model works just fine for many of Ant’s investors, evidently. The company’s expected market valuation after the dual listing, more than $310 billion, would make it worth more than many global banks. Ma, already China’s richest man,

would become even richer.

Still, Ant’s future remains at the mercy of Chinese regulators, whose views on the melding of tech and finance are still evolving.

“The regulators have long been looking at the risks in this area and how it should be regulated, but it’s all suddenly coming out at this specific time,” said Yu Baicheng, head of the Zero One Research Institute, a think tank in Beijing focused on finance and tech. “It’s definitely a statement of the regulators’ attitude.”

An article on the website of Economic Daily, an official Communist Party newspaper, praised the decision to suspend Ant’s share sale, calling it in the best interest of investors.

“Every market participant must respect and revere the rules — no exceptions,” the article said.

Besides Ma, the meeting Monday with the regulatory agencies included Ant’s executive chairman, Eric Jing, and its chief executive, Simon Hu. “Views regarding the health and stability of the financial sector were exchanged,” Ant said in a statement.

In another sign of the continuing scrutiny, the nation’s banking regulator, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, issued new draft rules on Monday for online microfinance businesses. Among them were higher capital requirements for loans and tighter controls on lending across provincial lines.

The Shanghai exchange’s suspension of the Ant IPO appeared to take note of the draft rules, saying that recent changes in the regulatory environment had affected Ant significantly. Bai Chengyu, an executive at the China Association of Microfinance, said the new rules could cause the entire microfinance industry to shrink.

The famously outspoken Ma did not ingratiate himself with the authorities when he said, in a recent speech in Shanghai, that financial regulators’ excessive focus on containing risk could stifle innovation.

“We cannot manage an airport the way we managed a train station,” he said. “We cannot use yesterday’s methods to manage the future.”

The head of consumer protection at China’s banking regulator, Guo Wuping, slapped back Monday, calling out two popular features in Alipay by name in a sharply critical article in 21st Century Business Herald, a government-owned newspaper.

Guo argued that online finance products were not fundamentally different from traditional ones, and that financial technology companies should therefore be regulated in the same way as established institutions.

Huabei, a credit function in Alipay, is no different from a credit card issued by a bank, Guo wrote. And Jiebei, an Alipay loan feature, is no different from a bank loan. Ant has called Huabei and Jiebei the most widely used consumer credit products in China.

Loose regulation has allowed financial technology companies to charge higher fees than banks, Guo wrote. This, he said, “has caused some low-income people and young people to fall into debt traps, ultimately harming consumers’ rights and interests and even endangering families and society.”

Ant declined to comment on Guo’s article.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

13 Stocks

Stocks surge as U.S. presidential election still undecided

U

.S. stocks surged on Wednesday, while longer dated Treasury yields buckled on Wednesday as results from the U.S. presidential election proved far closer than expected and the Senate appeared likely to remain in Republican hands, keeping legislative gridlock in place.

Early in the count, betting markets flipped from having for months assumed a win for Democrat challenger Joe Biden to suddenly price a high probability President Donald Trump would keep the White House. But as votes continue to stream in they have jumped back sharply in favor of Biden in recent hours and many investors still think it’s still too close to call.

With Republicans holding on to the Senate and preventing a Democratic ‘clean sweep’ of the Presidency and Congress, Democrat policy initiatives are unlikely to be implemented, although a stimulus package may now be on the horizon.

“It’s the day after a pivotal election, and the jury is still out on who the next president will be. Yet, stocks are up across the board. We’re bound to learn more about the presidential race and other contests in the coming days as ballots are counted. It looks likely that we’ll see a split Congress, which, based on history, has been the preference of the stock market. You can see this expectation being priced into the market today with health care, communication services and technology stocks are leading the market. Notably, a split Congress may also mean a smaller chance for another big round of fiscal aid for U.S. businesses and individuals. We have a lot to learn in the next few weeks.”

“The markets were very much setting up for a blue wave. This result takes that off the table, which we’re seeing in price action in equity markets this morning. It is being taken very positively by the markets that it will not be one party that has the House, Senate and the White House.”

“For now, we remain constructive on the U.S. economic outlook, on further fiscal support and loose monetary conditions.

“Electoral uncertainty may cause some near-term market volatility, but we remain overweight on U.S. equities, and stay strategically underweight U.S. Treasuries, given low prospective returns and bond yields.

“Fiscal stimulus measures are still expected in 2021 which can still push yields higher (prices lower), even if Fed policy action reduces this risk. Recent market performance also challenges the assumption that government bonds can act as a reliable portfolio diversifier.”

MOST ASSERTIVE STOCKS

PUERTO RICO STOCKS

COMMODITIES

CURRENCY

LOCAL PERSONAL LOAN RATES Bank

LOCAL MORTGAGE RATES Bank

FHA 30-YR POINTS CONV 30-YR POINTS

BPPR Scotia CooPACA Money House First Mort Oriental

3.00% 0.00 3.50% 0.00 3.50% 2.00 3.75% 2.00 3.50% 0.00 3.50% 0.00

3.50% 000 4.00% 0.00 3.75% 2.00 3.75% 2.00 5.50% 0.00 3.75% 5.50

PERS.

CREDIT CARD

AUTO

BPPR --.-- 17.95 4.95 Scotia 4.99 14.99 4.99 CooPACA

6.95 9.95

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Reliable

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First Mort 7.99 --.-- --.-Oriental 4.99 11.95 4.99

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Thursday, November 5, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Coronavirus study in Germany offers hope for concertgoers

A test concert, held to examine how a virus might be transmitted among a crowd at an indoor venue, in Leipzig, Germany, Aug. 22, 2020. Findings from the test event with 1,200 attendees suggest that indoor concerts have a “low” impact on infection rates, providing they are well ventilated and follow hygiene protocols.

By ISABELLA KWAI

R

esearchers in Germany may have some good news for frustrated concertgoers across the world whose activities have been constrained by the spread of the coronavirus.

Analysis of an indoor concert staged by scientists in August suggests that the impact of such events on the spread of the coronavirus is “low to very low” as long as organizers ensure adequate ventilation, strict hygiene protocols and limited capacity, according to the German researchers who conducted the study.

“There is no argument for not having such a concert,” Dr. Michael Gekle, part of the team at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg who conducted the study, said in an interview. “The risk of getting infected is very low.”

The study was posted online and announced at a news conference Thursday but has not yet been peer reviewed.

The test event, one of the first close examinations of how a virus might be transmitted among a crowd at an indoor venue, was closely watched in the global entertainment industry, which has been hampered by lockdown

restrictions in most countries since the pandemic broke out early this year.

Some experts expressed skepticism about the results, saying they needed to be replicated and reviewed, and that more information was needed about how researchers used the modeling.

Dr. Gabriel Scally, president of epidemiology and public health at the Royal Society of Medicine, said that the findings were potentially “useful,” but that it might be difficult to replicate the controls that the researchers had implemented at many real-life events.

To gauge contacts during the concert, which was held in Leipzig, volunteers were first tested for the virus and given temperature checks before entering the venue.

Each person was given a hand disinfectant laced with a florescent dye and a digital location tracker, and different social distancing scenarios were simulated over 10 hours.

They included breaks for attendees to go to the bathroom and to simulate buying food and drink from vendors.

Participants were not distanced in one scenario, partially distanced in a checkerboard formulation in a second and strictly distanced in a third.

Researchers also used a fog machine to observe the movement of air inside the venue and calculate the likeli-

hood of exposure to aerosol droplets.

In one model, jet nozzles on the roof above the arena’s highest rows sent fresh air through to the inner floor of the arena. In another, fresh air was sucked into the arena from the rooftop and the jet nozzles were switched off.

Computer modeling found that 10 times as many people would be exposed to an infectious person’s aerosols in the second scenario compared with the first, suggesting that regular circulation of air decreased the density of any viruses in aerosols, the researchers said. Social distancing further decreased exposure to the aerosols, they said.

“We knew that ventilation was important, but we didn’t expect it to be that important,” Gekle said.

The simulation also found that prolonged contact — of at least several minutes — was the highest during breaks in programming, and when audience members entered the venue.

But Paul Linden, a professor of fluid mechanics at the University of Cambridge, said that the computer modeling had not taken into account factors such as heat rising from an audience or indoor air turbulence, and that it was difficult to pinpoint whether it was the pattern of air flow or less ventilation in the venue that led to increased exposure to aerosols. As a general rule, he added, venues needed to bring in as much clean air as possible to lower transmission rates.

The German team has already made a series of recommendations for safety guidelines at live events including installing new ventilation technology that effectively and regularly exchanges air, seated food and drink breaks, making masks compulsory and directing attendees through multiple entrances.

Event organizers received the findings with cautious optimism.

“Obviously if masks are going to work for larger gigs then that’s big progress,” said Emily Eavis, co-organizer of the Glastonbury Festival, an outdoor event that drew crowds of about 135,000 people before the pandemic shut it down this summer, although she added it was much too early to tell. “We are hoping for more news by the end of the year.”

And researchers in other countries are working on similar studies in the hope of finding a safe and viable way to reopen nightlife even with the pandemic still present.

“We are monitoring closely and with huge interest all the similar initiatives in Europe,” Marta Pallarès, a spokeswoman for Primavera Sound, an annual festival in Spain, said in an email.

Primavera Sound’s organizers are helping to conduct a study testing whether rapid coronavirus tests can be an efficient screening measure for live music events.

“All these projects are tremendously important in order to secure a new future for live music,” Pallarès added.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

15

16

Thursday, November 5, 2020

Two presidential candidates detained as they file to run in Uganda

Bobi Wine, with a raised fist, parading through crowds of supporters in Kampala, Uganda, on Tuesday.

By ABDI LATIF DAHIR

T

wo opposition candidates in Uganda who are preparing to challenge the country’s strongman president in an election next February were detained Tuesday as they went to register as candidates, the latest indication of a tough fight to come as they seek to unseat President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986.

One candidate, Bobi Wine, 38, a musicianturned-lawmaker who is the most prominent challenger to the president, was dragged from his car after he submitted his nomination papers in the capital, Kampala. The other, Patrick Amuriat, was detained at the headquarters of his party, the Forum for Democratic Change, the party said on Twitter.

The detentions are the latest examples of the roadblocks facing opposition leaders and movements in African countries as they try to challenge entrenched powers. In neighboring Tanzania, opposition leaders who challenged president John Magufuli in the polls on Oct. 28 were arrested when they called for protests of what they called a stolen election.

In the West African nation of Guinea, authorities placed opposition candidate Cellou Dalein Diallo under house arrest after he contested the results

of the October vote. And in Ethiopia, Jawar Mohammed, the leading critic of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, was charged with terrorism in September.

In Uganda, both prospective candidates were prevented by police on Tuesday from going to their party offices to address their supporters and set out their campaign platforms. Police said the candidates had defied orders to limit the size of their crowds in the pandemic, and failed to comply with plans for police to escort them to the registration center.

After changing age-limit provisions in the constitution, Museveni, who is 76, is running for a sixth time and is due to face nine other candidates in February. The country’s electoral commission had designated Monday and Tuesday as the dates for the candidates to submit their nominations.

Both of the candidates will still be on February’s ballot.

The detention of Wine — a popular musician whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi and who was elected to Parliament in 2017 — was not the first time he has faced the wrath of the authorities. Police have arrested him several times, severely beat him in custody and even killed his driver. His party offices have been raided, including last month when

authorities confiscated election materials.

Wine has drawn huge support in recent years, particularly among young people who are disillusioned with the corruption, unemployment, poverty and crackdowns on free speech that have come to define the East African nation under Museveni.

When he came to power, Museveni was seen

by Ugandans and the West as a source of stability in a nation that had undergone years of war and political strife. But his government has been dogged by controversies over his involvement in wars in neighboring countries, the passage of anti-gay laws, his expansion of digital surveillance, and rising food and fuel prices.

On Monday, Wine said police had sent him a statement saying that they were going to escort him to the nomination venue. But after he filed his nomination papers Tuesday, he was detained after dozens of security officers surrounded the vehicle carrying him and his aides.

In a series of live videos on his Facebook page, a security officer can be seen using a lug wrench to break the window next to the front passenger seat.

After a scuffle with those inside the car, officers opened the door and dragged away Wine, who was sitting in the back.

“Jesus, this is what the police is doing,” he could be heard saying before being lugged from the car.

“We will not be violent.”

As security vehicles whisked him away, live videos on Facebook showed his supporters involved in a car chase with them.

After being blocked from going to his offices, Wine was taken to his residence, where he addressed his supporters. Defiant and raising his voice, he turned around to show that his suit jacket was torn and pointed to injuries that he said some of his associates had suffered in the incident.

Amuriat’s detention took place at his party’s headquarters in Kampala, and officers brought him to the grounds of Kyambogo University, where he was to submit his nomination papers. He did not have his shoes or papers on him when he arrived at the center, as he pointed out to the local news media.

After the detentions, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Museveni’s son, who is also a senior adviser to the president, tweeted a photo of himself with Wine, writing: “You can NEVER intimidate us. We are much stronger than you can ever imagine to be. If you want to fight we will simply defeat you.”

Wine tweeted in response to Kainerugaba’s post, “You should be ashamed,” adding: “This country belongs to Ugandans, not you and your father.

You will soon understand that.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

17

Ethiopia’s leader orders military action in a northern region

By DECLAN WALSH and SIMON MARKS

P

rime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia ordered military action against a regional government in the country’s north early Wednesday, in a major escalation of a simmering conflict that threatens to plunge the country into a new phase of turmoil.

In a statement, Abiy accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the governing party in the region, of attempting to provoke a war by orchestrating a militia assault on a major Ethiopian army base in Tigray in the early hours of Wednesday.

“The last red line has been crossed with this morning’s attacks, and the federal government is therefore forced into a military confrontation,” he said. The army had been ordered into Tigray to “carry out their mission to save the country and the region,” he added.

Hours later, a spokeswoman for Abiy said that military operations were underway, although she did not specify what those operations entailed.

The government then declared a six-month state of emergency in Tigray, giving itself sweeping powers to suspend political activity and democratic rights.

It was not immediately possible to verify that the intervention described by Abiy, apparently with the purpose of seizing artillery and other military equipment, had indeed taken place. His statement, which said the attack had occurred that morning, was released by 2 a.m., which would make it a remarkably quick response.

Abiy’s declaration, which came as global attention was focused on the counting of ballots in the U.S. presidential election, prompted fears that Ethiopia, the second-most populous country in Africa and already shaken by violent ethnic tensions in other regions, was on the verge of a potentially disastrous internal conflict.

“Abiy has just made the worst strategic blunder of his career,” Rashid Abdi, a Horn of Africa analyst based in Kenya, said on Twitter. Any conflict over Tigray could have “devastating consequences across the entire subregion,” he added.

Tensions between Tigray and the federal government have grown steadily since September, when Tigray defied Abiy by holding elections that had been canceled in the rest of Ethiopia because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a news conference Monday, Debretsion Gebremichael, the president of Tigray, warned that Abiy was planning to attack the region as punishment for that defiance.

After Abiy issued his statement Wednesday, Tigray announced that it had closed its airspace and restricted road movement in the region, the regional television broadcaster reported. Tigray authorities also called on Ethiopian army generals and troops “to repudiate against dictatorship,” in an apparent call for a mutiny

against the government.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which started as a rebel group, has been a dominant presence in Ethiopia for decades. In 1991, it ousted the country’s longtime dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, and held power for the next two decades under Meles Zenawi, who came from Tigray and ruled as president and then prime minister until his death in 2012.

But the party’s influence has waned sharply under Abiy, who came to power on a reformist wave in 2018, and its leaders have made increasingly assertive claims that they were being deliberately sidelined in favor of other regions.

Tigray accounts for just 5% of Ethiopia’s 109 million people, but its history and wealth have lent it greater political clout than more populous regions.

Last year, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front split from Abiy’s governing coalition, then proceeded in September with elections for the regional parliament.

Abiy’s bellicose declaration was especially striking from a leader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for making peace with Eritrea. After coming to power, he won widespread praise for trying to modernize Ethiopia by allowing new freedoms and championing an ambitious program of economic growth.

Over the summer, Abiy was embroiled in a diplomatic dispute with Egypt over a $4.6 billion hy-

droelectric dam that Ethiopia is building on the Nile, and which started filling in July. President Donald Trump, who tried to mediate the dispute in the spring, speculated recently that Egypt might launch a military attack on the dam.

At home, Abiy has struggled to manage longsuppressed demands from Ethiopia’s patchwork of ethnic groups for greater autonomy from the central government. On Sunday, attackers killed at least 54 ethnic Amharas in the western Oromia region, rights groups said.

Abiy attributed that attack to a group called the Oromo Liberation Army, which he said was supported by the Tigray government. Tigray denied any role in it.

Some analysts speculated that Abiy had chosen to move against Tigray when the world’s attention was absorbed by the American presidential election. “I guess the most important factor that dictated the timing of the war is not TPLF attack but U.S. election,” Semir Yusuf, a senior researcher in the Horn of Africa program at the Institute for Security Studies in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, said by text message.

Zemelak Ayitenew, an associate professor in government studies at Addis Ababa University, said Abiy’s declaration was “sad but not a surprise.”

“Tigray is a heavily militarized region,” he added.

“I hope everyone knows what they are doing.”

Police officers in Mekelle, a city in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, in February.

18

Thursday, November 5, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

2020 Should be the last time we vote like this

By FARHAD MANJOO

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ow that the ballots have been cast and we wait to see whose will be counted and whose will be ignored, can we please take a moment to acknowledge what a huge mess this whole thing has been?

I don’t mean the big things — the absurd twists in the ugly, never-ending, pandemic-blurred, possibly world-ending presidential election of 2020. No, I’m referring to the smallest, most particular act of this saga: the way we voted. The process of registering your democratic preference, the citizen’s core duty in a democracy. Can we take a moment to acknowledge how terribly inefficient, inaccessible, unfair and just plain backward this process remains in the United States?

When all the tallying is done, up to an estimated 160 million Americans will have voted this year — a turnout of about 67% of eligible voters. That would be a modern record, and given that it occurred as the coronavirus raged, the casting and counting of all those votes should be regarded as an achievement for the United States’ election system.

But that’s not a very high bar, and the biggest problem about how America conducts its elections is that we have been too tolerant, for too long, of a bar set way too low.

High turnout notwithstanding, the glaring lesson of this year’s election is that we cannot go on this way. From the endless lines to the pre-election legal wrangling to the president’s

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constant effort to undermine the process, every ballot cast this year was a leap of faith: Would it get there in time? Would it get there at all? Would they try to toss it out because you voted from a car? Would they throw it out because you signed your name carelessly? Would judges be called upon to alter the mailin deadline after the election had already begun? Would you ever be able to find the one dropbox in your sprawling county?

And, after all that, would anyone believe the count, anyway?

All of this uncertainty is unworthy of the world’s “oldest democracy.” American elections are broken, and because the legitimacy of the entire political system rests upon our votes, their brokenness mars every other part of our democracy.

Fixing how we vote isn’t a mystery. Experts have recommended several specific measures that could greatly expand the franchise, including federal measures to make registration easier, expand early voting and ensure we have adequate resources at polling locations to prevent long lines.

The difficulty is, instead, political. For decades, limiting who gets to vote has been a key strategy of the Republican Party — though usually people on the right have not been quite so proud of this fact. This year, as has happened often with Donald Trump, subtext became text. In the weeks before Election Day, Trump all but boasted about the role that voter intimidation and suppression would play in his campaign.

“We’re watching you, Philadelphia,” Trump warned in Pennsylvania last week, suggesting something untoward going on with the vote in a city highly unfavorable to his candidacy.

“We’re watching at the highest level.”

If Democrats win the presidency and the Senate, undoing the Republican bet on disenfranchisement ought to be among their highest priorities. One reason voting remains so onerous is that we rarely think about it except close to Election Day. The further out we get from the vote, the less urgency there is to fix things. But nothing else in a democracy works if voting doesn’t work. So, please, let’s fix voting first.

None of the problems we saw this year were new; inaccessibility, confusion, bureaucratic hoop-jumping and outright intimidation have long been hallmarks of American elections.

Though politicians speak dreamily of the importance of voting, the United States badly lags other democracies on many measures of electoral success; in many countries, a turnout rate of about two-thirds wouldn’t rank as particularly extraordinary.

Voting in this country is also highly unequal. Compared with turnout among whites, turnout among people of color is often lower. It’s hard to argue this isn’t by design, a result of decades of deliberate disenfranchisement and the perpetuation, still, of voter suppression efforts aimed at people of color.

But the best way to appreciate the shortcomings in how we vote isn’t by looking at other countries. Instead, compare the act of voting to other modern services. Set against so many less important transactions in American life — ordering a complicated coffee from a national chain, or finding the best sushi place in a town you’ve never visited before — the simple act of casting a ballot is laughably antiquated.

Across much of the country, registering to vote is a labyrinth. In most states, if you haven’t remembered to register by Election Day, you’re too late. Not that you’d necessarily know about it. In between elections, it’s become common for states to “purge” voter rolls of people deemed ineligible, a process that many voters only learn about when they show up at the polls and are denied the chance to vote.

The system is also fragmented and underfunded, and it suffers from misaligned incentives. In many countries, elections are administered by nonpartisan agencies that set rules for the entire nation. In the United States, elections are often run by elected officials — Republican or Democratic secretaries of state, for instance — and rules about who gets to vote and how they do so differ from state to state.

Because states and the federal government do not sufficiently fund the voting system, it is often unable to meet anything more than ordinary demand. In the last few weeks, Americans in many cities have waited hours for the chance to vote, which is both inspiring and a really terrible comment on the state of our democracy.

As Amanda Mull noted recently in The Atlantic, in 2020 the act of voting was elevated to that most sacrosanct place in American society — it became feel-good marketing for brands.

This year it felt as if just about every brand in America turned giddy about the democratic process. Retailers and fashion designers and restaurant chains couldn’t stop reminding us to “Vote!”

But the embrace of voting as a way to project corporate virtue only highlights how little the government has done to promote this supposedly precious democratic act. “As long as America’s leaders decline to make the system-wide changes that would help more people vote, corporations with something to sell will seep into the void,” Mull wrote.

She’s right, and it’s terrible. Voting shouldn’t be this difficult or this uncertain. We know what needs to be done to improve the process. And we shouldn’t wait until another election to get it done.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

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Mayagüezanos celebran la elección de Jocelyne Rodríguez como su nueva representante Por THE STAR

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a dirigente del Partido Popular Democrático, Jocelyne M. Rodríguez Negrón resultó ser la ganadora del escaño Representativo del Distrito 19 (San Germán y Mayagüez) en el proceso eleccionario.

“Agradezco la confianza depositada por los electores del Distrito Representativo 19 que lo componen los pueblos de Mayagüez y San Germán, los cuales me eligieron como su la persona que ocupará el cargo en la Cámara de Representantes de Puerto Rico. Esto ha sido un proceso muy diferente, agotador, sobre todo, de mucha precaución ante el azote de la pandemia del COVID 19 (coronavirus) que nos afecta a todos. Trabajamos arduamente para visitar cada rincón y lugar donde se requería mi presencia, atendiendo las necesidades de mis constituyentes, lo que resultó en un endoso muy favorable para mi grupo y el Partido Popular Democrático donde milito desde muy joven”, señaló Jocelyne M. Rodríguez Negrón.

Rodríguez Negrón felicitó al alcalde de Mayagüez por su reelección “Tengo que felicitar públicamente al alcalde José Guillermo Rodríguez por su también victoria obtenida en el proceso de ayer. Gracias a su liderato y determinación con orgullo podemos decir que “Mayagüez se mantiene como la Capital de la Pava”. Voy a la legislatura con el más grande deseo de trabajar por mi Distrito y por Puerto Rico.

Creo fielmente en que juntos podemos transformar el Oeste de Puerto Rico. Aunque todavía no tenemos la certificación oficial de la Comisión Estatal de Elecciones, sabemos que hemos prevalecido ante los resultados y los números que arrojó la votación. Sin embargo, desde hoy me propongo trabajar para planificar los proyectos y estrategias para mi Distrito”, expresó la representante electa.

Solicita copia de nómina y contratos de oficina de representante PNP “Estamos solicitando de inmediato a la Presidencia de la Cámara de Representantes de Puerto Rico que se nos haga entrega de un listado de la nómina y de los contratos que han mantenido las oficinas que operan como parte de la representación que se ha hecho del Distrito 19. Queremos copia de todos los contratos de servicios profesionales que se han tramitado en los últimos cuatro (4) años, para así poder evaluar el uso de los dineros públicos para tales fines.

Esperamos que se nos haga llegar dicha documentación tan necesaria para iniciar un proceso de transición ordenada a la luz de los reglamentos y leyes que aplican. Suplicamos que se le ofrezca protección, seguridad y cuidado a todos los archivos de los asuntos tramitados en las oficinas que opera la actual representante del Partido Nuevo Progresista y que se prohíba la destrucción de documentos oficiales que queremos examinar”, dijo Rodríguez Negrón.

YouTube Originals lanza una serie producida en suelo boricua Por THE STAR

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a industria cinematográfica en Puerto Rico continúa haciendo historia, el secretario del Departamento de Desarrollo Económico y Comercio (DDEC), Manuel A. Laboy Rivera, anunció el apoyo que el Programa de Desarrollo de la de la Industria Cinematográfica (PDIC) otorgó a la filmación BRAVAS, una serie de YouTube Originals, producida por Cinema Giants, desarrollada completamente en Puerto Rico, y grabada en la Isla en el año 2019.

“Estamos muy contentos con este importante anuncio para 222 talentos del patio que trabajaron en esta serie. Con un presupuesto bruto de sobre $6.5 millones de dólares, esta producción fue muy beneficiosa para la economía puertorriqueña ya que se tradujo en empleos directos e indi-

rectos, ventas, noches de hotel, entre otros asuntos”, detalló Laboy Rivera.

Por su parte, el productor ejecutivo y director de la serie, Jessy Terrero, destacó “estoy muy agradecido con Puerto Rico por haberme permitido filmar esta serie y hacerla lo más auténtica posible. Fue un placer poder trabajar con un grupo de artistas tan talentoso y un equipo increíble de la isla.”

La trama de BRAVAS, la serie de YouTube Originals, gira en torno a un grupo de jóvenes que viven en Puerto Rico y sueñan con dedicarse a la música latina y las historias que transcurren en su intento por lograrlo. La historia se desarrolla dentro del mundo de la música urbana en Puerto Rico.

“Programas como estos son ejemplo del trabajo del gobierno, específicamente del DDEC y de PDIC,

para el desarrollo de la economía y de la industria fílmica en la isla. De esta manera, continuamos demostrando el compromiso de esta admi-

nistración de este sector, con miras de convertir a Puerto Rico en la meca del cine en el Caribe”, expresó la gobernadora Wanda Vázquez Garced.

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Thursday, November 5, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Bob Dylan’s first musical had a devil of a time

By ADAM LANGER

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t sounded like a fine idea at the time — pair two poetic giants of different generations and get them to collaborate on reinventing an American classic.

The year was 1969. The producer Stuart Ostrow and director Peter Hunt already had a hit show on Broadway with “1776.” Now they were setting their sights on “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” Stephen Vincent Benét’s classic 1936 story about Jabez Stone, a New Hampshire farmer who sells his soul to the devil, has second thoughts, and enlists the orator and statesman Daniel Webster to argue his case before a jury composed of American villains.

The tale had been adapted into a 1939 opera and a 1941 movie, but never a musical.

Archibald MacLeish, three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author of the Tony Award-winning play “J.B.,” which re-imagined the Book of Job, would write the book. The composer and lyricist would be Bob Dylan — decades before he proffered his songbook to Twyla Tharp for 2006’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and to Conor McPherson for “Girl From the North Country.” (That show’s Broadway run was interrupted by the pandemic.)

“Stuart had this idea that we would get the oldest poet of note and the youngest poet of note to work together,” Hunt recalled in a conversation earlier this year, before he died at 81 from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

“I thought coupling the Republic’s poet laureate and America’s balladeer was a unique invitation to young and old audiences,” Ostrow added in a recent email.

“Scratch” took its title from the name the devil calls himself in Benét’s story. MacLeish offered a deeply considered meditation on the nature of good and evil, obliquely asking whether the ideals upon which America was founded could endure in the time of Richard Nixon and Vietnam.

The show would be the “opposite of a musical,” MacLeish wrote to Ostrow in papers now held by the Billy Rose Theater Division of the New York Public Library; it would be a “ballad play,” featuring an actor in modern dress who would sing songs and serve as conduit between the audience and the action onstage.

As for what this 20th-century troubadour would sing, well, that was Dylan’s job.

MacLeish proposed some song titles — among them, “Red Hands,” “Lower World,” “New Morning,” and “Father of Night,” and Dylan, who’d wearied of the limelight and was trying on new personas, started writing on spec.

The poet effused over Dylan’s initial contributions.

“Those songs of yours have been haunting me — and exciting me,” he wrote to Dylan. “‘New Morning’ marries the opening as though they’d been intended for each other.”

But Dylan and MacLeish were separated not only by age but by background, style, temperament and sensibility. MacLeish divided his time between his western Mas-

Bob Dylan in New York in 1963. The unlikely collaboration between the poet Archibald MacLeish, left, and Bob Dylan on a musical based on “The Devil and Daniel Webster” started well, but went south. sachusetts home and a private club in Antigua, and was the product of boarding schools and Ivy League universities.

Dylan, a more instinctive, less deliberative artist, was the Minnesota-born son of a Jewish appliance store owner, and was, as he averred on “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” his latest album, “born on the wrong side of the railroad track, like Ginsberg, Corso and Kerouac.”

A disagreement over lyrics to “Father of Night” epitomized the difference between the two visions. Dylan’s song was full of oppositions (“Father of day, Father of night/Father of black, father of white”). MacLeish liked the melody but thought the song should comment more exclusively on the nature of evil; he suggested alternative lyrics: “Father of night, father of dread/Father of cold in the void overhead/Father of serpent under the stone/Father of fear in the dark alone.”

As relayed in Dylan’s fanciful 2004 memoir, “Chronicles: Volume One,” a meeting between the septuagenarian MacLeish and the 20-something Dylan — with the elder

poet discoursing on Sappho, Socrates, Dante and John Donne — reads like deleted dialogue from the scene in “Trading Places,” when Eddie Murphy’s street-smart con man finds himself improbably welcomed into the home of blue-blooded Dan Aykroyd.

Inevitably, the creative process on “Scratch” devolved; the story of how that happened differs depending on who’s telling it.

“I backed out of the production,” Dylan wrote in the liner notes to “Biograph,” his 1985 collection of outtakes, bootlegs and previously released material. “It was nothing really, kind of like a misunderstanding I supposed.”

Then later, in “Chronicles”: “I knew that I couldn’t have anything to add to the message of [MacLeish’s] play.

He didn’t need my help anyway.”

In his 2005 memoir “Present at the Creation: Leaping in the Dark and Going Against the Grain,” Ostrow, a quadruple Tony winner whose Broadway career spanned four decades, takes issue with Dylan’s version of events, to say the least. He presents the future Nobel Laureate as a monosyllabic dolt and poseur who froze in the presence of a true man of American letters and spent his time at MacLeish’s home pounding brandy, then conking out.

“The only impression the celebrated folk singer had made was a nasty ring from his brandy snifter on the MacLeish’s 1785 cherry table,” Ostrow wrote.

Despite his early enthusiasm, MacLeish soured on Dylan’s contributions. “Dylan proved incapable of writing new songs,” he wrote in a 1970 letter.

In an email, Ostrow put it more bluntly: “Dylan could not collaborate.”

Perhaps. But, seeing as Dylan had just released “Nashville Skyline,” which featured a duet with Johnny Cash, and, two years earlier, had worked with the Band on recordings that would become known as “The Basement Tapes,” the truth seems more specific: Dylan could collaborate when he felt like it, just not with Archibald MacLeish.

Ostrow and MacLeish considered presenting “Scratch” with songs that Dylan had already recorded, but when the show opened at Broadway’s St. James Theater on May 6, 1971, it did so as a straight play, starring Patrick Magee as Daniel Webster, Will Geer as Scratch, and Will Mackenzie as Jabez Stone.

Without the balancing voice of a contemporary songwriter, it registered as pompous and outdated, characterized by what The New York Times critic Walter Kerr called “echoes of a vanishing style.”

The show closed two days later.

“It was conceived as a musical, ergo it failed,” Ostrow said simply, by email.

As for Dylan, months earlier, he had released “New Morning,” a collection of a dozen new songs, including the title track and his version of “Father of Night.” It was, Greil Marcus wrote in The Times, “his best album in years.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

21

On Ariana Grande’s ‘Positions,’ intimacy is a topic and an aesthetic

By LINDSAY ZOLADZ

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n a recent interview with radio personality Zach Sang, Ariana Grande described the moment she and one of her writing collaborators first listened to part of the instrumental track that would become “34+35,” the second song on her new album, “Positions.” “We heard the strings that sounded so Disney and orchestral and full and pure,” she said. “And I was just like, Yo, what is the dirtiest possible, most opposing lyric that we could write to this?”

They came up with an airy hook centered around that titular math problem, which adds up to a lascivious wink. (Nice.) Like the best songs on her previous album, “Thank U, Next,” “34+35” shares a light, inside-jokey intimacy with its listener; it’s full of Grande’s conspiratorial giggles and whispered secrets.

But it also contains a few new flourishes: theatrical, plucked strings that do not evoke grandeur so much as the creep of mischievous cartoon characters; unapologetically and sometimes humorously libidinous lyrics; and occasional slips of vulnerability that reveal the giddiness and anxiety of new love.

As the follow-up to the record that subtly reframed Grande’s persona and release strategy, “Positions” (Republic) has some big Gucci tennis shoes to fill. The implicit argument of “Thank U, Next” — a less polished and more quickly made album that Grande put out less than six months after her more carefully orchestrated 2018 LP, “Sweetener” — was that the meticulously planned, reflexively worldtoured Big Pop Album had become too slow and impersonal a delivery system for a digital-era pop star to express herself with any semblance of authenticity or timeliness. This was particularly true for Grande, now 27, who endured two life-changing events in the months after “Sweetener” came out: the death of her ex-boyfriend Mac Miller, and the dissolution of her engagement to comedian Pete Davidson.

“My dream has always been to be — obviously not a rapper, but, like, to put out music in the way that a rapper does,” Grande explained in a December 2018 interview, while she was working on the album. It was a winningly reformist approach if not an outright revolutionary one: to turn the pop record into something more like a mixtape than a multiplatform corporate product launch — all the better to swiftly deliver songs that could seem like status updates.

With its text-speak song titles and air of relative idiosyncrasy, “Positions” continues in that direction. But it also gestures toward Grande’s earlier, more traditional past. Its R&B leanings (like the twinkling, ’90s-nostalgic closer, “POV,” or the understat-

ed “West Side,” which samples Aaliyah’s “One in a Million”) imagine a more mature update of Grande’s 2013 debut, “Yours Truly.” “Off the Table,” a slinky, searching duet with the Weeknd, even name-checks their collaboration from Grande’s pop 2014 breakout “My Everything”: “I can love you harder than I did before.”

While “Thank U, Next” emphasized hip-hop cadences, “Positions” largely finds Grande exploring her full vocal range, from those whistle notes to the low croon she employs on “Safety Net,” a moody ballad in which she trades verses with Ty Dolla Sign.

Both the Weeknd and Ty Dolla Sign collaborations, though, feel more like demure throwbacks and show that Grande hasn’t quite figured out how to update her approach to balladry with the same fresh, personable energy that enlivens her more upbeat tunes.

She fares better with a house beat (as on the weightless highlight “Motive,” which features production by Murda Beatz, or the disco-inflected “Love Language”), which allows her to capitalize on one of her breathy voice’s greatest strengths: its uncanny

ability to make a song feel like it’s hovering just a few inches off the ground. The sumptuous manifestation anthem “Just Like Magic” makes this Good Witch energy explicit. “Middle finger to my thumb and then I snap it,” she sings — a clever lyric in the way it thwarts expectation by moving from saucy to sweet.

“Positions” isn’t quite the reinvention that “Thank U, Next” was, but it continues Grande’s effort to make the mainstream pop album a looser, weirder and more conversational space. Some of the credit for that atmosphere should also go to Victoria Monet and Tayla Parx, two of Grande’s closest friends, who have been writing with her since “Yours Truly.” On Grande’s most distinct songs, their bestie chemistry is palpable.

Many pop stars attempt to take their sound to the next level by making increasingly grand and bombastic big-tent statements. Grande has succeeded largely by doing just the opposite: turning her music into an atmosphere as intimate as her bedroom, a place where she’s sometimes entertaining a lover but just as often cracking goofy jokes with her closest friends.

Ariana Grande’s new album both pushes into the future and gestures back toward her earlier, more traditional past.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

‘Borat subsequent moviefilm’ review: More cultural learnings

Sacha Baron Cohen in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.”

By DEVIKA GIRISH

I

n the 2006 movie “Borat,” an American humor coach explains the concept of a “not” joke to Borat Sagdiyev, the disarmingly moronic Kazakh journalist played by Sacha Baron Cohen. “We make a statement that we pretend is true, but at the end, we say, ‘not,’” the coach explains. But Borat struggles to grasp the pause required to make the joke work. First he pauses for too long before “not”; then, too briefly.

The joke falls flat.

Baron Cohen’s postmodern com-

edy hinges on that pause. Traveling through America as a bigotry-spewing buffoon, he confronts people with a series of “not” jokes posed as ethical litmus tests. He’s an anti-Semite … not.

He’s a misogynist … not. He’s an ignorant foreigner … not. If you can detect the pause, you’re the audience for the joke; if you can’t, you’re its butt.

In the long-awaited sequel, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” (streaming on Amazon starting Oct. 23), Baron Cohen and director Jason Woliner bring that guerrilla concept back into a strange new world. Borat emerges as if from a

time capsule: All these years, the film’s nudgy-winky opening montage tells us, he’s been serving time for embarrassing Kazakhstan with his prior exploits. But now, he’s being dispatched to America again to curry favor with President “McDonald” Trump. In an inspired (and ludicrously contrived) turn, he has a new partner in his madcap mockumentary: his 15-year-old daughter, Tutar (played

by Maria Bakalova), whom he plans to gift to “Vice Premier” Mike Pence as a gesture of goodwill.

It’s an amusingly harebrained scheme, but there’s nothing in this moviefilm that matches the elegant social experiment of the first, which sought to explore where precisely American civility departs from morality. The problems with the sequel start right at the beginning. Borat is too recognizable in the U.S. now, so to pull off the same pranks, he has to disguise himself heavily, as Baron Cohen did on his 2018 TV show, “Who Is America?”

These often ridiculous costumes (including a memorable one at a conservative conference) undercut the film’s promise of revelation — one that already feels compromised by the age of media manipulation and disinformation that we live in. The test is no longer of civility but of gullibility. In one extended gag, Borat spends some days living with followers of QAnon, who scoff at his outrageous fabrications but respond with their own conspiracies

about bloodlusty, Satan-worshipping cults. Unlike the curiosity that seemed to motivate Baron Cohen in the previous film, here the goal appears to be to goad people to confirm what we already know.

What does add some novelty is Bakalova’s presence, which offers a change of pace from Borat’s usual litany of phallic humor. Tutar starts out as a feral, sheltered teen who’s taught that women will die if they work or drive or masturbate; slowly, she’s exposed to a double-sided experience of American womanhood, first at clothing shops and salons, then at an anti-abortion center and a plastic surgery clinic. In these encounters, Bakalova matches Cohen in committing to the part with not a trace of self-consciousness, capturing a disturbing range of sexist attitudes that build into the film’s finale — possibly its only politically hefty moment, involving President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Cohen said in a Times interview that he wanted to put out the film before the election as “a reminder to women of who they’re voting for — or who they’re not voting for.” But at a time when those in power brazenly flaunt their misogyny, this faith in the persuasive effects of public shaming strikes me as misplaced. The elaborate ruses of “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” left me neither entertained nor enraged, but simply resigned.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

23

Are ‘kidfluencers’ making our kids fat?

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

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arents beware: Many YouTube channels that are wildly popular with young children are targeting them with thinly veiled ads for sugary beverages and junk food.

That is the conclusion of a new study published last week in the journal Pediatrics.

The authors of the study analyzed over 400 YouTube videos featuring so-called kid influencers — children with large social media followings who star in videos that show them excitedly reviewing toys, unwrapping presents and playing games. The study found that videos in this genre, which attract millions of young followers and rack up billions of views, were awash in endorsements and product placements for brands like McDonald’s, Carl’s Jr., Hershey’s, Chuck E. Cheese and Taco Bell.

About 90% of the foods featured in the YouTube videos were unhealthy items like milkshakes, french fries, soft drinks and cheeseburgers emblazoned with fast food logos. The researchers said their findings were concerning because YouTube is a popular destination for toddlers and adolescents.

Roughly 80% of parents with children 11 years old or younger say they let their children watch YouTube, and 35% say their children watch it regularly.

A spokeswoman for YouTube, citing the age requirement on its terms of service, said the company had “invested significantly in the creation of the YouTube Kids app, a destination made specifically for kids to explore their imagination and curiosity on a range of topics, such as healthy habits.” She added, “We don’t allow paid promotional content on YouTube Kids and have clear guidelines which restrict categories like food and beverage from advertising on the app.”

Young children are particularly susceptible to marketing. Studies show that children are unable to distinguish between commercials and cartoons until they are 8 or 9 years old and that they are more likely to prefer unhealthy foods and beverages after seeing advertisements for them.

Experts say it is not just an advertising issue but a public health concern. Childhood obesity rates have soared in recent years: Nearly 20% of Americans between ages 2 and 19 are obese, up from 5.5% in the mid-

1970s. Studies have found strong links between junk food marketing and childhood obesity, and experts say that children are now at even greater risk during a pandemic that has led to school closings, lockdowns, increased screen time and sedentary behavior.

The new findings suggest that parents should be especially wary of how children are being targeted by food companies on social media.

“The way these branded products are integrated in everyday life in these videos is pretty creative and unbelievable,” said Marie Bragg, an author of the study and an assistant professor of public health and nutrition at the New York University School of Global Public Health. “It’s a stealthy and powerful way of getting these unhealthy products in front of kids’ eyeballs.”

Bragg was prompted to study the phenomenon after one of her co-authors, Amaal Alruwaily, noticed her young nieces and nephews obsessively watching YouTube videos of “kidfluencers” like Ryan Kaji, the 9-year-old star of Ryan’s World, a channel with 27 million subscribers, formerly named Ryan ToysReview. The channel, run by Ryan’s parents, features videos of him excitedly reviewing new toys and games, doing science experiments, and going on fun trips to stores and arcades.

Children’s channels like Ryan’s World — which are frequently paid to promote a wide range of products, including toys, video games and food — are among the highestgrossing channels on YouTube, raking in millions of dollars from ads, sponsored content, endorsements and more. According to Forbes, Ryan earned $26 million last year, making him the top YouTube earner of 2019.

Among the brands he has been paid to promote are Chuck E. Cheese, Walmart, Hasbro, Lunchables and Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., the fast food chains. One of his most popular videos shows him pretending to be a cashier at McDonald’s. The video has been viewed about 95 million times.

In a statement, Sunlight Entertainment, the production company for Ryan’s World, said the channel “cares deeply about the well-being of our viewers and their health and safety is a top priority for us. As such, we strictly follow all platforms terms of service, as well as any guidelines set forth by the FTC and laws and regula-

One of the most popular YouTube videos from Ryan’s World shows its star, Ryan Kaji, pretending to be a cashier at McDonald’s. “It’s a stealthy and powerful way of getting these unhealthy products in front of kids’ eyeballs,” a public health expert says tions at the federal, state, and local levels.”

The statement said Ryan’s World welcomed the findings of the new study, adding, “As we continue to evolve our content we look forward to ways we might work together in the future to benefit the health and safety of our audience.”

Other popular children’s channels on YouTube show child influencers doing taste tests with Oreo cookies, Pop Tarts and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream or sitting in toy cars and ordering fast food at drive-thrus for Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC and other chains. “This is basically a dream for advertisers,” Bragg said.

To document the extent of the phenomenon, she and her colleagues identified five of the top kid influencers on YouTube, including Ryan, and analyzed 418 of their most popular videos. They found that food or beverages were featured in those videos 271 times, and 90% of them were “unhealthy branded items.” Some of the brands featured most frequently were McDonald’s, Hershey’s, Skittles, Oreo, Coca-Cola, Kinder and Dairy Queen.

The videos featuring junk food have collectively been viewed more than 1 billion times.

The researchers could not always tell which products the influencers were paid to

promote, in part because sponsorships are not always clearly disclosed. The Federal Trade Commission has said that influencers should “clearly and conspicuously” disclose their financial relationships with brands whose products they endorse on social media. But critics say the policy is rarely enforced and that influencers often ignore it.

McDonald’s USA said in a statement that it “does not partner with kid influencers under the age of 12 for paid content across any social media channels, including YouTube, and we did not pay or partner with any of the influencers identified in this study. We are committed to responsibly marketing to children.”

Last year, several senators called on the FTC to investigate Ryan’s World and accused the channel of running commercials for Carl’s Jr. without disclosing that they were ads. The Council of Better Business Bureaus, an industry regulatory group, also found that Ryan’s World featured sponsored content from advertisers without proper disclosures. And a year ago watchdog group Truth in Advertising filed a complaint with the FTC accusing the channel of deceiving children through “sponsored videos that often have the look and feel of organic content.”

24

Thursday, November 5, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Home sweet home in orbit

By DENNIS OVERBYE

F

rom afar, the International Space Station might look like a gangling machine, or like robot butterflies mating, but inside it is a cradle of humanity. Over the past 20 years, 141 people from 19 countries have worked, played with their food, grumbled about the toilet, drawn blood, space-walked and gazed up and down at the universe, and at Earth.

In the process they have thronged their hightech surroundings with gear, including laptops and cameras, and plastered the walls with mission stickers and photographs of friends, loved ones and heroes of the Space Age such as Yuri Gagarin. Toys, stuffed animals and even orderly graffiti — the signatures of crew members and visitors — abound.

All this and more is documented in “Interior Space: A Visual Exploration of the International Space Station,” by Roland Miller and Paolo Nespoli.

The result is a high-tech tour of a high-tech home in the sky; to an astronaut it must look almost cozy.

The space station has been variously occupied by as few as two astronauts (just enough to keep the lights on) and as many as 13 (when the space shuttle visited with new crews). Most of their work — endless medical and biological tests on weightlessness, maintenance of the ever-growing station — has not garnered headlines. Astronaut Scott Kelly famously spent a year in space while his twin brother, Mark (now running to be Arizona’s senator), stayed on Earth so their physiologies could be compared.

For many fans of the space station, the outpost’s high point came in 2013 when Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, on his last mission in space, sang a modified version of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” while floating with his guitar in a most peculiar way through the ISS. It was a reminder that humans take their humanity with them, even to space, with all joys and troubles that entails.

Over two decades, an international community has sprung up, of people who have been to space, have lived in space or expect to live in space, people so enthusiastic that some, like Charles Simonyi, the Microsoft billionaire and philanthropist, have paid millions of dollars to go and, in his case, go again.

Quietly, these astronauts and other offworld tourists have created a style for future space exploration — best practices for living and communing in space with grace and dignity. In a tradition passed down from the days of Mir, the Soviet Union’s final orbital outpost, new arrivals to the station are offered bread and salt. In “Interior Space,” Nespoli, a veteran Italian astronaut, recalls his shipmate Cady Coleman playing her flute in the station’s cupola, a windowed dome that offers spectacular views of Earth, and hearing her music float through the corridors.

The photographs shown are the result of an unusual collaboration between Miller, a photographer, and Nespoli, who at the time was flying his last mission on the space station, in 2017. “To our knowledge, this is the first collaboration at this level between a visual artist on Earth and an astronaut in space,” Miller said in an email.

Earthbound, Miller scoured Google for images of the space station and potential scenes he wanted captured, and emailed them to Nespoli. Nespoli took the shots and emailed them back to Miller, who critiqued them.

“I think the most surprising thing for me was how much the photographs Paolo made looked and felt like my work,” he said.

Nespoli, in his own email, said: “The basic

An undated photo from NASA and the European Space Agency shows the International Space Station, docked with the space shuttle Endeavor, roughly 220 miles above Earth, May 23, 2011.

An undated photo from NASA shows the astronaut Scott Parazynski assessing repair work to the damaged solar array on the International Space Station during a seven-hour spacewalk in 2007.

An undated photo from SpaceX shows the astronauts Bob Behnken, left, and Doug Hurley at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida as they prepared for their Crew Dragon flight, which would dock with the International Space Station.

structure of the ISS is fairly stable and it’s represented decently in Google Street View. What is missing there, though, are the signs of the human presence.”

He added, “I paid a lot of attention to the details of the environment, making sure that the possible sterile appearance of the ISS was moderated by the little details of human presence that made this science lab feel like a home.”

The book includes an essay by an archaeologist, Justin St. P. Walsh, of Chapman University, who is using the photographs as a proxy for the kind of fieldwork that might be carried out in, say, a desert in Egypt.

Walsh said he was particularly interested in the aft wall of the Russian Zvezda module, where crew members live, eat, exercise and work. The wall is covered with memorabilia — flags, pictures of wooded landscapes, religious items that come and go depending on events in Russia.

“The cultural landscape of the International Space Station is every bit as rich as any terrestrial context an archaeologist might want to study,” he writes.

So many missions, so many stickers and mission patches to collect.

24 LEGAL NOTICE SUMMONS (CITACION JUDICIAL) NOTICE TO DEFENDANT: (AVISO AL DEMANDADO):

RYAN ANDERSON and DOES 1 to 20, inclusive

YOU ARE BEING SUED BY PLAINTIFF (LO ESTÁ DEMANDANDO EL DEMANDANTE):

AIMCO VENEZIA LLC

NOTICE: You have been sued.

The court may decide against you without your being heard unless you respond within 30 days. Read the information below. You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this summons and legal papers are served on you to file a written response at this court and have a copy served on the plaintiff. A letter or phone call will not protect you. Your written response must be in proper legal form if you want the court to hear your case.

There may be a court form that you can use for your response.

You can find these court forms and more information at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/ selfhelp), your county law library, or the courthouse nearest you. If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the court clerk for a fee waiver form. If you do not file your response on time, you may lose the case by default, and your wages, money, and property may be taken without further warning from the court.

There are other legal requirements. You may want to call an attorney right away. If you do not know an attorney, you may want to call an attorney referral service. If you cannot afford an attorney, you may be eligible for free legal services from a nonprofit legal services program.

You can locate these nonprofit groups at the California Legal Services Web site (www. lawhelpcalifornia.org), the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/ selfhelp), or by contacting your local court or county bar association. NOTE: The court has a statutory lien for waived fees and costs on any settlement or arbitration award of $10,000 or more in a civil case. The court’s lien must be paid before the court will dismiss the case. ¡AVISO! Lo han demandado.

Si no responde dentro de 30 días, la corte puede decidir en su contra sin escuchar su versión. Lea la información a continuación. Tiene 30 DÍAS DE CALENDARIO después de que le entreguen esta citación y papeles legales para presentar una respuesta por escrito en esta corte y hacer que se entregue una copia al demandante. Una carta o una llamada

@

telefónica no lo protegen. Su respuesta por escrito tiene que estar en formato legal correcto si desea que procesen su caso en la corte. Es posible que haya un formulario que usted pueda usar para su respuesta. Puede encontrar estos formularios de la corte y más información en el Centro de Ayuda de las Cortes de California (www.sucorte. ca.gov), en la biblioteca de leyes de su condado o en la corte que le quede más cerca. Si no puede pagar la cuota de presentación, pida al secretario de la corte que le dé un formulario de exención de pago de cuotas.

Si no presenta su respuesta a tiempo, puede perder el caso por incumplimiento y la corte le podrá quitar su sueldo, dinero y bienes sin más advertencia.

Hay otros requisitos legales. Es recomendable que llame a un abogado inmediatamente. Si no conoce a un abogado, puede llamar a un servicio de remisión a abogados. Si no puede pagar a un abogado, es posible que cumpla con los requisitos para obtener servicios legales gratuitos de un programa de servicios legales sin fines de lucro. Puede encontrar estos grupos sin fines de lucro en el sitio web de California Legal Services, (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), en el Centro de Ayuda de las Cortes de California, (www.sucorte.ca.gov) o poniéndose en contacto con la corte o el colegio de abogados locales.

AVISO: Por ley, la corte tiene derecho a reclamar las cuotas y los costos exentos por imponer un gravamen sobre cualquier recuperación de $10,000 ó más de valor recibida mediante un acuerdo o una concesión de arbitraje en un caso de derecho civil. Tiene que pagar el gravamen de la corte antes de que la corte pueda desechar el caso.

CASE NUMBER: (Número del Caso): 198MCV01124 The name and address of the court is: (El nombre y dirección de la corte es): SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES Santa Monica Courthouse 1725 Main Street Santa Monica, CA 90401.

The name, address, and telephone number of plaintiff’s attorney, or plaintiff without an attorney, is: (El nombre, la dirección y el número de teléfono del abogado del demandante, o del demandante que no tiene abogado, es): Robert C. O’Brien, Paul A. Rigali, Timothy C. Tanner LARSON O’BRIEN LLP 555 S. Flower Street, Suite 4400, Los Angeles, CA 90071 Tel: (213) 436-4888; Fax: (213) 623-2000

Email: robrien@larsonobrienlaw.com; prigali@larsonobrienlaw.com; ttanner@larsonobrienlaw.com DATE (Fecha): 06/18/2019.

Clerk, by (Secretario): Marcos Mariscal, Deputy. ****

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

VACATION OWNERSHIP LENDING, L.P. DEMANDANTE VS

JULIO HÉCTOR PAGAN BRIGNONI, FULANO Y SUTANA DE TAL COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE NITZA IVETTE PÉREZ HERNÁNDEZ

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM. : VB2019CV00563.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO e INTERPELACIÓN. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA El Presidente de los Estados Unidos, El Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico.

A: JULIO HECTOR PAGAN BRIGNONI; FULANO Y SUTANA DE TAL, COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE NITZA IVETTE PEREZ HERNÁNDEZ

Se les notifica a ustedes que se ha radicado mediante el sistema SUMAC una Demanda Enmendada por la parte demandante VACATION OWNERSHIP LENDING, L.P. solicitando un Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria. Se les emplaza y se les requiere que notifiquen a GARRIGA & MARINILAW OFFICES, C.S.P., P.O. Box 16593, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00908-6593, teléfono (787) 275-0655, telefax (800) 4817130, copia de su contestación a la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto. Ustedes deberán presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual pueden acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se representen por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberán presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Vega Baja. Si dejaren de contestar podrá anotarse la rebeldía y dictarse contra ustedes sentencia en rebeldía concedién-

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

Thursday, November 5, 2020

dose el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, sin más citarles ni oírles. Se les ordena además a que dentro del término legal de treinta (30) días contados a partir de la publicación del presente edicto, acepten o repudien la participación que les corresponde en la herencia de Nitza Ivette Pagán Hernández. Se les apercibe a los herederos antes mencionados que de no expresarse dentro de ese término de treinta (30) días en torno a su aceptación o repudiación de herencia, se tendrá por aceptada. También se les apercibe a los herederos antes mencionados que luego del transcurso del término de treinta (30) días antes señalados contados a partir de la fecha de la notificación de la presente Orden y publicación, se presumirá que han aceptado la herencia del causante, y por consiguiente, responden por las cargas de dicha herencia conforme dispone el Artículo 957 del Código Civil, 31 LPRA §2785. EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el Sello del Tribunal, a tenor con la Orden del Tribunal, hoy día 22 de octubre de 2020 LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, SECRETARIA. LILLIAN MERCADO RIVERA, SUB-SECRETARIA.

embargo del Vehículo. Se le advierte que este edicto se publicará en un periódico de circulación general una sola vez y que, si no comparece a contestar dicha Demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación del Edicto, a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia concediendo el remedio así solicitado sin más citarles ni oírles. abogado de la parte demandante es el Lcdo.

Gerardo M. Ortiz Torres, cuya dirección física y postal es: Cond. El Centro I, Suite 801, 500 Muñoz Rivera Ave., San Juan, Puerto Rico 00918; cuyo número de teléfono es (787) 946-5268, el facsímile (787) 946-0062 y su correo electrónico es: gerardo@bellverlaw. com. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, en Toa Alta, Puerto Rico, hoy día 27 de octubre de 2020. Lcda. Laura I. Santa Sanchez, Secretario LEGAL NOTICE Regional. Liriam Hernandez ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Otero, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal.

DE PUERTO RICO TRIBULEGAL NOTICE NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE TOA Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL ALTA. AMERICAS LEADING DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior FINANCE, LLC Municipal de San Juan.

Demandante v.

NICK ALBERTO NEGRÓN FALCÓN

Demandados CIVIL NÚM.: TA2020CV00361.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA Y EJECUCIÓN DE GRAVAMEN MOBILIARIO (REPOSESIÓN DE VEHÍCULO). EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. DE AMERICA EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: ALBERTO NEGRÓN FALCÓN

Queda emplazado y notificado que en este Tribunal se ha radicado Demanda sobre cobro de dinero por la vía ordinaria en la que se alega que el demandado, NICK ALBERTO NEGRÓN FALCÓN, le adeuda a Americas Leading Finance, LLC la suma de $16,261.88 más los intereses que continúen acumulando, las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado según pactados. Además, se solicita de este Honorable Tribunal que autorice la reposesión y/o

(787) 743-3346

AMERICAS LEADING FINANCE LLC VS

DAVID GUERRA FEBULO; SU ESPOSA FULANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

CIVIL NUM. SJ2020CV03219 (602). SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN GRAVAMEN MOBILIARIO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO POR SUMAC.

A: DAVID GUERRA FEBULO; SU ESPOSA FULANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

EL SECRETARIO (A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 30 de OCTUBRE de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada

en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de esta. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los diez (10) días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 30 de octubre de 2020. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 30 de octubre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria Regional. f/ DENISE M. AMARO MACHUCA , Secretario (a) Auxiliar.

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

CONDADO 3, LLC Demandante Vs.

MIGDALIA SANCHEZ ALGARIN, SUCESION DE PABLO SANCHEZ RIVERA COMPUESTA POR MIGDALIA SANCHEZ ALGARIN, FULANO DE TAL Y FULANA DE TAL COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS Y LA SUCESION DE ROSAURA ALGARÍN OLMEDA COMPUESTA POR MIGDALIA SANCHEZALGARIN, SUTANO DE TAL Y SUTANA DE TAL COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS, CENTRO DE RECAUDACIONES DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES (CRIM

Demandados.

CIVIL NÚM.: SJ2020CV05102.

SALA: 506. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO E INTERPELACION. LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS.

A: MIGDALIA SANCHEZ

The San Juan Daily Star ALGARIN, SUCESION DE PABLO SANCHEZ RIVERA COMPUESTA POR MIGDALIA SANCHEZ ALGARIN, FULANO DE TAL Y FULANA DE TAL COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS Y LA SUCESION DE ROSAURA ALGARÍN OLMEDA COMPUESTA POR MIGDALIA SANCHEZ ALGARIN, SUTANO DE TAL Y SUTANA DE TAL COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS

presumirá que han aceptado la herencia de los causantes Pablo Sánchez Rivera y Rosaura Algarín Olmeda, proceda a notificar la presente Orden mediante publicación de un edicto a esos efectos una sola vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general de la Isla de Puerto Rico. EXPEDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA Y SELLO DE ESTE TRIBUNAL. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy día 28 de octubre de 2020.

Griselda Rodriguez Collado, Secretaria. Haydee Morales, Sec Serv a Sala.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA, Trbunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Quedan emplazados y notifiSuperior de AIBONITO. cados que en este Tribunal ha COOPERATIVA DE radicado Demanda sobre Cobro AHORRO Y CREDITO de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca en su contra. Se les notifiDE LA INDUSTRIA ca para que comparezcan ante BIOFARMACEUTICA el Tribunal dentro del término Demandante Vs de treinta (30) días a partir de MARISELA la publicación de este edicto y MENDOZA MERLY exponer lo que a sus derechos Demandado convenga, en el presente caso.

Usted deberá presentar su ale- CIVIL NUM. AI2018CV00347. gación responsiva a través del SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO, Sistema Unificado de Manejo y ORDINARIO. NOTIFICACIÓN Administración de Casos (SU- DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO MAC), al cual puede acceder POR SUMAC. utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que represente por derecho propio, y notificando copia de dicha contestación a los abogados de la parte demandante: Lcda. Ana J. Bobonis Zequeira, Fernández Chiqués, LLC, P.O. Box 9749, San Juan, P.R. 00908; Teléfono 787-722-3040 dentro del término de Treinta (30) días de haberse radicado este edicto, descontando la fecha de la publicación del edicto. Se le advierte que, 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 ejercicio de su sana discreción lo entiende procedente. Se les ORDENA a que dentro del término legal de treinta (30) días, contados de la fecha de la publicación de la presente, acepte o repudie la participación que le corresponda en la herencia de los causantes Pablo Sánchez Rivera y Rosaura Algarín Olmeda. Se les APERCIBE que de no expresarse dentro de este término de treinta (30) días en torno a su aceptación o repudiación de herencia, la herencia se tendrá por aceptada. También se les APERCIBE que luego del transcurso del término de treinta (30) días antes señalado contados a partir de la fecha de la notificación de la presente, se

A: MARISELA MENDOZA MERLY P/C LCDA. ERIKA F. MORALES MARENGO PO Box 195337 SAN JUAN PR 00919

EL SECRETARIO (A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 14 de mayo de 2019, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de esta. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los diez (10) días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 17 de mayo de 2019. En AIBONITO, Puerto Rico, el 17 de mayo de 2019. ELIZABETH GONZALEZ RIVERA, Secretaria. MARIBEL AVILES RODRIGUEZ , Secretario (a) Auxiliar.

26

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

‘Diego is fighting’: Fans show support as Diego Maradona recovers from brain surgery

By RT NEWS

A

rgentine soccer legend Diego Maradona is currently in recovery following successful brain surgery, with fans gathering outside the hospital to show their support for their hero.

Maradona went into surgery to address a blood clot on the brain, with Maradona‘s personal physician and neurosurgeon Leopoldo Luque, stating that the 80-minute operation was a success. „I was able to evacuate the hematoma successfully and Diego tolerated the surgery very well,“ said Luque, who described the process as a „routine surgery.“ „The steps now are observation, but it is controlled. It will depend on how he does,” Luque said. “It is not highly complex, but it is still brain surgery.“

Around 50 fans congregated outside of the Olivos Clinic in Buenos Aires, where Maradona was treated, and showed their support by chanting, „DIEGO! DIEGO!“ Many of the fans are supporters of Gimnasia y Esgrima, which Maradona currently coaches, and they told the media of their devotion to the legendary 1986 World Cup winner. „What we want the most is for Diego to get out of all this,“ said fan Diego Bermúdez. „He can be, he is the greatest, the greatest in the world.“ Another fan, Oscar Medina, offered his support, saying, „Diego is fighting inside with medics.”

“Hopefully, God blesses the medics, to move on from this,” he said. „His people are out here on the street, hearts beating.“

Wisconsin football cancels over virus cases. Again.

By ALAN BLINDER and GILLIAN R. BRASSIL

F

or the second consecutive week, the University of Wisconsin canceled a football game because of a coronavirus outbreak in the program.

Wisconsin, ranked No. 10 in the Associated Press poll, said Tuesday that it would not host Purdue on Saturday, less than two weeks after its program began to see a surge of cases. Wisconsin reported Tuesday that at least 15 players and 12 staff members, including coach Paul Chryst, had tested positive since Oct. 24.

“I share in the disappointment of our student-athletes and staff,” Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez said in a statement. “We have seen a level of improvement in our testing numbers, but not enough to give us confidence to resume normal activities and play our game on Saturday.”

He added, “We will continue to test regularly, take the proper health-related precautions and look forward to getting our team back on the field as soon as possible.”

The Wisconsin football team won its season opener on Oct. 23, but hasn’t played since because of a coronavirus outbreak.

The infections on and around the football team have played out while the state has confronted some of its most wrenching weeks of the pandemic. Statewide, about 245,000 people have tested positive for the virus; more than 2,100 people have died, many of them in October, according to a New York Times database.

Wisconsin, which canceled a game at Nebraska earlier, will have played no

more than six regular-season games by the time the Big Ten Conference’s championship matchup is set. Under the league’s rules, if Wisconsin, the only ranked team in the conference’s West Division, misses one more game, it will not be eligible to play in the conference championship. (The threshold, though, could change if more of the league’s games are canceled this season.)

Both of Wisconsin’s canceled games

will be classified “no contest.”

The Badgers won their first game of the season, at home against Illinois, 45-7, on Oct. 23, but have not played since.

Their next game is at Michigan, ranked No. 23, on Nov. 14, assuming the Badgers are cleared to take the field.

The Big Ten said in August that it would not play this fall, but it reversed its decision in September and began competition in October. The league’s revised plan called for Big Ten teams to play at least nine games, one of them something of an exhibition that would not affect the race to reach the league championship showdown.

“While we looked forward to our game this weekend against Wisconsin, we understand the Badgers’ decision to cancel based on medical advice and their need to control any additional transmission of the virus within their team and staff,” Mike Bobinski, Purdue’s athletic director, said in a statement Tuesday.

More than three dozen top-tier college football games across conferences have been postponed or canceled for virus-related reasons since late August.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

27

Roethlisberger, Brees and Brady just won’t go quietly. Lucky for the NFL.

By MIKE TANIER

W

ith a combined age of 85 years and 30 days, Tom Brady and Drew Brees will be the oldest pair of starting quarterbacks in NFL history when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers host the New Orleans Saints in Sunday night’s marquee matchup. The previous record of 84 years and 243 days was set by Brady and Brees when the Saints and Buccaneers squared off in the regular-season opener. The pair will set another record in the likely event that they meet in the playoffs.

Brady (43) and Brees (41), along with Ben Roethlisberger (38) of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philip Rivers (38) of the Indianapolis Colts comprise the NFL’s quarterboomers, a generation of still-spry living legends who can teach the league’s whippersnappers a thing or two, at least so long as they are perched behind fortresslike offensive lines and supported by star-studded rosters.

These 40-ish quarterbacks should not be mistaken for creaky has-beens who are merely coasting on their reputations. The Buccaneers, Colts, Saints and Steelers have a combined 23-6 record through Week 8.

Brady is tied for third in the NFL with 20 touchdown passes, while Roethlisberger is tied for seventh with 15. Brees and Brady rank seventh and ninth, respectively, in the league in efficiency rating. Brady and the others are keeping their teams near the front of the playoff chase while outperforming many would-be challengers 10 to 20 years younger.

That’s not to say that the veterans never show signs of age. Roethlisberger, who used to shrug off would-be tacklers and launch downfield missiles, now more often flings short passes to a coterie of young playmakers. Rivers throws like an old knuckleballer with petroleum jelly on his fingers, his passes mysteriously wobbling and weaving their way through defenders to their targets. Brees shares snaps with the fleet-footed Taysom Hill to compensate for his ever-decreasing mobility.

Even Brady looks at times like a classic rock legend supported on his farewell tour by a 60-piece orchestra and a choir that swells whenever he cannot reach a high note. And in case that’s not enough, scheduled to join the band this week is former

Aaron Rodgers had a perfect 158.3 passer rating in a win over the Oakland Raiders on Sunday. The Packers (6-1) are again atop the N.F.C. North standings.

Pro Bowl wide receiver Antonio Brown, who had been suspended from the league after pleading no contest to burglary and battery charges related to a dispute in January and for threatening a woman who accused him of sexual misconduct.

The quarterboomers appeared to be on their last legs at the end of the 2019 season. Roethlisberger missed most of the year with an elbow injury. Teddy Bridgewater was performing Brees’ trickier stunts. Rivers threw 20 interceptions in his final season with the Los Angeles Chargers. The Giants mercifully benched Eli Manning, who at 38 could no longer keep up with his peers. Brady looked washed up as the New England Patriots’ roster crumbled around him.

It finally appeared to be time for all of them to cede the spotlight to new superstars like Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson, or to any of a dozen lesser candidates who still cannot quite string together three games in which they are healthy and productive.

But a healthy Roethlisberger returned to a rebuilt Steelers roster. Rivers has been rejuvenated by the sturdy Colts offensive line and a reunion with game-planning guru Frank Reich, who coached Rivers in some of his best recent seasons. And Brady has thrived since a divorce with the

Patriots that has left Bill Belichick eating microwave dinners over the sink and grousing to anyone with a sympathetic ear.

Age brings a measure of wisdom, which is one reason quarterbacks old enough to own Dave Matthews Band boxed CD sets are so effective. There is no coverage scheme or blitz package that Brady and the others cannot instantly diagnose and counterattack after 17 to 21 NFL seasons. The peculiarities of 2020 may even have increased their advantage: The veterans are recalling tactics from memory that their opponents learned this summer in Zoom meetings.

There’s more to the quarterboomers’ success than just residual talent and life experience, however. The Buccaneers, Colts, Saints, and Steelers are going “all in” to win a Super Bowl in their quarterbacks’ golden years by adding weapons, maxing out the salary cap and planning almost exclusively for the short-term future. Younger quarterbacks may get stuck behind jury-rigged offensive lines or with middling receiver corps as their teams economize and strategize for long-term success, but Brady and the others are granted every available immediate advantage.

A reckoning will come for their teams once Brady and the others fade or retire.

The Saints are almost $93 million over the

projected 2021 salary cap, per OverTheCap.com; the team may have to be relegated to a seven-on-seven league to make ends meet. The Colts and Steelers have no quarterbacks-of-the-future in the wings, and neither team will be in position next year to draft one. The Buccaneers, who are paying Brady a guaranteed $25 million this season, are making the sort of Faustian bargain that guarantees dire consequences. Any of these teams could soon look like the ruins of the Patriots empire, and only one of them (at most) can win the Super Bowl that will make it worthwhile.

That mix of sustained excellence, presumptive entitlement and win-at-any-cost ambition makes it possible to both admire and resent the quarterboomers. In many ways, they are re-enacting a well-trod generational conflict: Old-timers, still vital but also benefiting from past accomplishments, are lording their continued success over youngsters too shackled to bad coaches or endangered by leaky offensive lines to pick themselves up by their bootstraps just yet.

That said, anyone who suffered through Carson Wentz versus Ben DiNucci in last Sunday night’s game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys knows that we should cherish matchups like Brady vs. Brees while we can.

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

For some veteran stars, NASCAR’s appeal is fading

By JERRY GARRET

W

hen the checkered flag falls on Sunday at Phoenix Raceway for the final race of NASCAR’s 2020 Cup Series, it will also fall on the stock car career of one of its most decorated drivers, Jimmie Johnson, a seven-time champion.

Johnson is a part of a wave of retirements in recent years that has carried away NASCAR’s marquee stars like Dale Earnhardt Jr., Danica Patrick, Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon. Many longtime second-tier stars, such as Clint Bowyer, Greg Biffle, Michael Waltrip, Jamie McMurray, Kasey Kahne and Carl Edwards, have ended their careers, or are now ending them, as well.

With Johnson gone, NASCAR’s elder statesmen will be Kevin Harvick, 44, and Kurt Busch and Ryan Newman, who are both 42 and are the only two drivers remaining in the sport who started before Dale Earnhardt Sr. died in 2001.

The drivers who have stepped away cited health concerns, changing consumer interest in the sport, challenging economics, new rules and radically different schedules. Johnson, for one, wants to keep racing, but he may do it in the IndyCar Series.

NASCAR has made significant changes in recent years: breaking races into segments, awarding points differently and designating the final third of a season as a playoff elimination tournament.

Johnson gave an upbeat reason for retiring: “I’m fulfilled,” he said. Certainly, his list of accomplishments in the sport needs no embellishment: 83 Cup victories — sixth on the career list — and a record-tying seven top driver titles.

Johnson, at 45, is still competitive, fit and relatively unscathed physically from 21 years of banging fenders and trading paint at NASCAR’s premier level.

“But it’s a grind,” admitted Johnson, who is the oldest full-time driver in the series.

By traditional NASCAR standards, Johnson is hanging up his helmet much earlier than did the other seven-time champions: Richard Petty raced until he was 55; Earnhardt Sr. was going strong at 49 when he died in a wreck; Darrell Waltrip retired at 53, after 28 seasons in Cup racing; Cale Yarborough also raced 28 seasons.

Johnson said he thought two decades was plenty. “It seems like a more common

The seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson bids farewell to Nascar this weekend. number for a career these days,” he said. “I don’t think you will see guys racing at this level for 25, 30 years anymore.”

He added: “We go 38 weeks now, with really intense competition. It’s almost nonstop.”

Off the track, the most popular drivers, like Johnson, are also swamped with commitments to sponsors, the press and social media. The scramble for sponsor money has become almost as intense as the racing on the track; losing deep-pocketed longtime backers like Home Depot, Lowe’s, DuPont, GoDaddy and Budweiser dented the income potential for stars like Stewart, Johnson, Gordon, Patrick and Earnhardt Jr. For midlevel racers, in Earnhardt’s estimation, the income hit has been worse — up to 90 percent.

Gordon acknowledged that some drivers would rather retire than “take a step back” in what they are paid.

“I assure you, though, there are still guys being paid tens of millions to drive these cars,” Gordon said. A select group, to be sure, that might include Harvick, Kyle Busch and Chase Elliott. He added, “Talent still matters.”

But there is no shortage of up-and-coming talents hankering to drive for a fraction of the previous going rate.

Johnson said, “When I started out, I would have driven for free; in fact, I would have paid to have that ride I got.”

Ominously, wrecks are a growing concern — not only for the ruinous economic toll on financially challenged teams, but also for the physical toll on drivers. It’s the era of the multicar crash, the Big One, when NASCAR’s close-quarters racing can result in chain-reaction melees.

Repeated head injuries caused Earnhardt Jr. to step back after 18 Cup seasons.

Patrick estimated she had “more than a dozen concussions” in her crash-plagued career; diminishing results also cost her sponsorship. Gordon, who retired at 44, said worsening back pain helped push him into the Fox Sports broadcast booth.

“I was starting to think about, more and more, what kind of life I wanted to have off the track, after racing,” said Gordon, who is married with small children.

“Especially what I could do on the business side.” Gordon has gone into business with his longtime car owner Rick Hendrick and is a part owner of Johnson’s No. 48 race car.

“You look at it at a certain point, and have to say to yourself, ‘There’s more to life,’” said Johnson, who also has a young family. “I’m not into fishing or golf. I’ve met — exceeded beyond my wildest dreams, really — every goal I ever set for myself in NASCAR. Actually, my original goal was to win a Cup race — one race! When I did that, in just my 13th start, I realized, ‘I need to set some new goals!’”

Unlike NASCAR’s other recent retirees, Johnson has decided he wants to keep racing, just not Cup cars.

“I got a chance to drive a Formula 1 car in Bahrain awhile back, and it made me realize: I could do this,” he said. “That opened my eyes to a whole range of possibilities. Watching Fernando Alonso at Indianapolis also inspired me.”

Recently, Johnson was invited to test one of Chip Ganassi’s IndyCars. The results were promising enough that he was offered a two-year contract to campaign IndyCar road races. He is also now considering testing on the oval tracks too, with an eye on a possible Indianapolis 500 drive.

After another test session on Monday, Johnson said he was so far lacking the “bravery and aggression” necessary to become a front-runner. But, he added, “it’s coming; it’s going to be a real steep learning curve for me.”

Johnson, from El Cajon, Calif., said he originally aspired to race IndyCars. So did others, including Stewart, Gordon and Kurt Busch, who also ended up in NASCAR. But a damaging rift in IndyCar racing 25 years ago spoiled the earning potential for decades.

“That’s now changing,” Johnson said.

“The gap is narrowing, which helped make it feasible for me to try the switch.” IndyCar’s safety advances have also helped allay Johnson’s fears.

Johnson acknowledges that he could have returned to NASCAR next year, to try again for an eighth crown, his original goal before his ultimately disappointing 2020 campaign.

He would not rule out racing a NASCAR stock car again, for a special occasion. But if he does, he will be with a different team, like Ganassi, which runs only two cars, rather than Hendrick, which is fielding a full stable of four.

Not every driver makes his retirement decision by weighing every factor. Some years ago, a reporter asked Stewart, a three-time Cup series champion, if he had considered how much longer he might race before retirement. “I’ll quit when it’s not fun anymore,” Stewart said gruffly, echoing an answer that his taciturn idol, A.J. Foyt, once gave.

After Stewart retired from NASCAR in 2016, the same reporter asked Stewart why. “I think I already answered your question,” he responded.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 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)

You hate to feel restricted by anything or anyone. You’re about to make a bid for freedom in a big way. A journey you are soon to embark on could take you further than you have been before. Be flexible and as an extra layer of precaution, check the latest health advice for your destination.

Taurus

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

(April 21-May 21)

A partner or close relative will make an announcement that means big changes ahead.

You might wish they had prepared you for this. When you think about it, you will realise this explains what you have been intuitively sensing. You want to please others and support their ideas but your own happiness counts too.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

A relationship that doesn’t work out will still have had its benefits and for that reason, you won’t regret it. Your ex will have put you in touch with some interesting people, many of whom are now good friends. You also shared some great experiences together. The relationship may be over but, in many ways, it has changed your life.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Your life is veering in a new direction. A strange twist of events will throw you together with someone who turns out to be compatible with you in many areas. You will share similar beliefs and values. Offering to do someone a favour could mark the start of a new relationship or friendship.

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

Curb your restless spirit. It is at times like these that you are inclined to make rash decisions just for the sake of change. Be on your guard for a so-called friend who, if given half a chance, would happily lead you astray. A colleague who is always getting in trouble could not only undermine your productivity but damage your professional reputation too.

Trying to do too much at once could have unsettling consequences. Be realistic about your schedule. Don’t take on any more responsibility if you already have enough on your plate. You can’t work well when you feel overwhelmed.

Travel and social plans call for moderation.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

People admire your leadership ability. Don’t be surprised if you are asked to take charge of a group project. Using a mix of humour and practical advice, you will help others make good decisions. It’s a great time to arrange a small gathering bearing in mind all safety measures and guidelines.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Devoting more time to your personal needs and taking better care of your health is strongly advised. You could be suffering from periodic spells of fatigue and exhaustion. Apart from pushing yourself too hard, another contributory factor is your diet. Eating nutritious food and taking regular exercise can improve your health.

Despite a lacklustre start, a new project will gain momentum. A realistic plan is the key to making good progress. There’s no need to strain every muscle in an effort to get everyone moving. Others can see the benefit of this work and your enthusiasm will help carry the team through when motivation levels dip.

A close friend or partner is thinking about making some changes. They have hinted about this but they haven’t yet told you exactly what they are planning. This could be because they are yet to work out the details and whether or not their ideas are realistic. Even so you would like to have some idea of what they are up to so you can prepare yourself for what might lie ahead.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

The way a stranger takes charge of a weird and unexpected situation will earn your respect and admiration. You will be impressed with their intuitive handling of an emergency.

Make an effort to get to know the new people who are coming into your life and this will bring zest and excitement to your relationships.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

Money worries may have forced you into a situation where you are trying to make every penny count. Recent difficult financial experiences are stopping you from making brave decisions about your long-term future. You may not be rich but it could be that a little extravagance won’t hurt too much, financially. Everyone deserves a little treat every once in a while.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Thursday, November 5, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

The San Juan Daily Star

Ziggy

32

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, November 5, 2020

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