Thursday Oct 1, 2020

Thursday, October 1, 2020

San Juan The

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DAILY

Star

Modesto Lacén: Between the Philanthropy and the Celluloid P20

$84 Million Thrown Away?

UTIER: LUMA Violating Deal by Hiring New Employees P4

What’s Going On? Another Trans Woman Killed; Not a Word on Alexa’s Case

P3

Jaresko: Education Dept. Has Overpaid 17,000, Mostly Ex-Employees, Since 2007 P4

NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

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October 1, 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.

Femicides continue as another trans woman is fatally shot; no progress on Alexa’s murder case

Today’s

Weather

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

Day

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79ºF

Precip 40%

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Partly Cloudy

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Wind: Humidity: UV Index: Sunrise: Sunset:

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From ENE 9 mph 76% 10 of 10 6:13 AM Local Time 6:18 PM Local Time

INDEX Local 3 Mainland 7 Business 11 International 14 Viewpoint 18 Noticias en Español 19 Entertainment 20

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gents from the Homicide Division of the Mayagüez Criminal Investigation Corps (CIC by its Spanish initials) are investigating the killing of Michelle “Michellyn” Ramos Vargas, a 33-year-old trans woman who was found dead Wednesday at 6:15 a.m. on Road 114, km 10.1 in the Sabana Grande Abajo neighborhood of San Germán.

According to a report from the Puerto Rico Police Bureau (PRPB), a phone call from the 9-1-1 emergency line alerted authorities that a person had been found lying on the pavement. After authorities arrived at the scene, they confirmed that the body found there was Ramos Vargas, who lived at Residencial El Carmen in Mayagüez. Her body was identified by her brother Dennise Ramos, who arrived on the scene with other relatives.

Mayagüez Prosecutor’s Office attorney José Arocho, who appeared on the scene and ordered the removal and transfer of the body to the Forensic Sciences Institute (FSI), told digital outlet Noticel that “no angle is being ruled out.”

“There is a possibility that it was a hate crime, but we do not rule out anything,” he said. “We are beginning the investigation process.”

The PRPB said that Vargas Ramos’s body had sustained various gunshot wounds to the head, which caused her death. Authorities also found official documents and identification that bore her deadname, which is the name the Lajas native had before transitioning.

Trans rights activist and Camp Albizu Executive Coordinator Joanna Cifredo de Fellman pointed out that Ramos Vargas was the sixth trans person murdered in Puerto Rico this year. Layla Peláez (21), Serena Angelique Velázquez (32), Penélope Díaz Ramírez (31), and Alexa Luciano Ramos (29) were trans women who were slain earlier this year, and those cases remain unsolved. Meanwhile, Yampi Méndez Arocho (19), a transgender man, was killed in his hometown of Moca and his case also remains unsolved.

“Her name is Michelle Ramos Vargas and she was my age. Her passion, like mine, was helping other people; that’s why she decided to study nursing,” Cifredo de Fellman said. “Here is another sad example that gender perspective is urgently needed to educate our youth to recognize, respect, and celebrate the differences between us. … I wonder how long

we will continue to ignore sexist violence because, although we do not know the murderer’s identity, we already know that it was a man. Now they will come with their transphobia to make excuses and justify her death. Who has the right to take someone’s life?

Tell me!”

No progress in Alexa’s murder case As for Alexa, who was also known as Neulisa Luciano Ramos, Bayamón CIC Captain Richard Haddock told the Star that her case is still ongoing. However, there have been no advancements and he called on citizens to call 787-343-2020 for any confidential tips to help solve the case.

Asked if the video released on social media that showed Alexa being mocked and attacked by assailants in an open field could be of any use in the case, Haddock said “the case’s prosecutor is consulting to see if they can use the video as evidence of a crime in court.”

Meanwhile, as Bayamón CIC is in charge of the case of 20-year-old Rosimar Rodríguez Gómez, who was abducted in Toa Baja and found dead in Dorado’s El Caracol sector, Haddock said the prosecutors in that case have indicated that “no more statements about the case will be given because they are affecting the ongoing investigation.”

Photo of Michelle “Michellyn” Ramos Vargas shared through social media.

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Thursday, October 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Jaresko: $84 million in Education Dept. salary overpayments going back to 2007 included ex-employees

By THE STAR STAFF

T

he Puerto Rico Education Department (DE) has paid out since 2007 about $84 million to some 17,000 inactive and active workers, Financial Oversight and Management Board Executive Director Natalie Jaresko said Wednesday.

Jaresko did not know exactly how much of the $84 million went to employees who were no longer at the agency because, she said, part of the amount may have been an overpayment to active employees, “but the overwhelming majority went to inactive workers,” she said.

She said about 2,000 active employees may have been overpaid for a total of 17,000 workers who got checks they did not earn.

The agency has recovered about $4 million for a total of $80 million the agency still needs to collect.

“Payroll must be paid only to employees who earn their salaries …,” Jaresko said. “When an employee quits, retires or unfortunately dies, the system must reflect that change in status immediately and that change in status must immediately be reflected in the payroll system.”

Jaresko said the fiscal plan has asked for agencies to implement automated time and attendance but only one agency, the Treasury Department, has it in place. Some 12 agencies and instrumentalities have automated time and

attendance but do not use it to automatically affect data linked to payroll. Others are on their way to having automated time and attendance. She said many have manual time and attendance, which is prone to fraud.

The DE has some 40,000 workers, making up 40 percent of total government employment on the island. The agency invested in an automated system in 2007 but only recently has the system been configured. It currently has

the time clocks available in laptops and mobile phone apps as classes are being held online.

“However, those who do not punch out still get paid because the system is not mandatory,” Jaresko said. “The data shared with us is a systemic failure that allowed thousands of employees to be paid and now they must return the phones.”

While the problem was first detected in November, a chart shown by Jaresko shows that the DE paid out $3 million in overpayments in 2020. In 2019, the agency overpaid $9.1 million and in 2018 and in 2017, $3.7 million.

Jaresko said the problem has already been reported to local and federal authorities. She urged employees who were wrongly paid to return the funds. The Treasury Department has also been tapped to participate in the process of recovering the wrongly disbursed funds.

“I have confirmed this morning that the government will collaborate with us,” she said.

Going forward, Jaresko said, all agencies, not only the DE, must connect to the automated Kronos automated attendance system. There must be a validation and forensic accounting to validate the process. She asked for full implementation of time and attendance payroll across all government agencies, but “we are going to start first with DE, which is 40 percent of total government employment,” she said.

UTIER: LUMA violating contract, planning to hire new employees

By THE STAR STAFF

L

UMA Energy, in violation of the contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) to manage the utility’s transmission and distribution system, will hire new personnel instead of the employees already working at PREPA, Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo, president of Electricity Industry and Irrigation Workers Union (UTIER by its Spanish acronym), said Wednesday.

“Luma, in desperation, is already preparing a job fair, I think in Miramar, at the Convention Center,” Figueroa Jaramillo said in a Radio Isla 1320 AM report. “This shows that they have no interest in the so-called guaranteed jobs that they claimed to have with the Electric Power [Authority] employees. It doesn’t exist.”

The union leader said the workers will not receive the benefits currently provided by the utility.

“People under new conditions, new criteria,” Figueroa Jaramillo said about LUMA Energy’s plans with the job fair.

The UTIER president warned, meanwhile, about the lack of official PREPA documents to justify an increase in the electricity rate, which may lead to “surprises” when rate hikes are slated to take place.

LUMA Energy LLC is a consortium made up of Quanta Services, IEM and ATCO that was selected by the PublicPrivate Partnerships Authority (P3A).

The contract does not require LUMA Energy to hire PREPA workers and it says the company will begin an interview process with the employees.

In previous interviews, Figueroa Jaramillo has charged that the LUMA contract is one-sided and favors the interests of the consortium over the interests of the people of Puerto Rico. The union filed a lawsuit recently in the Puerto Rico Court of Appeals seeking to overturn the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau’s approval of the deal over the summer.

At a recent public hearing in Congress, P3A Executive Director Fermín Fontanés denied the LUMA Energy contract will result in layoffs of current PREPA employees and the loss of acquired benefits.

“I want to make clear that no employee will lose their job as a result of this transaction. The contract specifically requires LUMA to use reasonable efforts to interview all PREPA employees and evaluate them for positions at LUMA,” he said. “It is important to note that, as recently as eight years ago, PREPA employed about 9,000 employees and today the number is closer to 6,000. There is no doubt that PREPA is currently understaffed.”

Any employee who elects not to join LUMA will have the right to maintain their employment with PREPA or transfer to another government agency within Puerto Rico.

“These rights are clearly established in Act 120 and cannot be taken away – not through the contract with LUMA

or otherwise,” Fontanés said. “Employees continuing with PREPA or another governmental agency will also retain their acquired rights under applicable law and the relevant collective bargaining agreement. Nothing in the LUMA agreement contravenes those acquired rights, and LUMA is required to comply with all federal and local laws.”

As part of the transition to LUMA, employees will have the choice to stay with their existing pension plan or transfer to a new LUMA plan.

Once LUMA hires its workforce, it expects to recognize the unions with majority status in the various bargaining units, in compliance with all applicable labor laws.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

5

Commonwealth officially returns to capital markets for first time since 2014. Here’s what we know

By THE STAR STAFF

P

uerto Rico returned to the capital markets this week for the first time since 2014 after the Housing Financing Authority (HFA) and the Public Housing Administration (PHA) refinanced existing HFA bonds, generating about $43 million in debt service savings.

The announcement was made by Puerto Rico Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority (AAFAF by its Spanish initials) Director Omar J. Marrero Díaz. The goal of the bond refinancing was to reduce interest rate payments. The bonds were sold Tuesday.

Marrero Díaz noted that the HFA outstanding bonds were refinanced through the issuance of $249.6 million in refunding bonds of the Capital Fund Modernization Program (“Refunding Bonds”). In addition, the refinancing reduced the total debt existing prior to the transaction by $300.5 million because funds from the accounts of the aforementioned issuances were used, and new bonds were sold at premiums that

generated additional funds.

“This bond issue achieves average annual debt service savings of over $8.5 million, which could be used to assist the Public Housing Modernization Program,” said Marrero Díaz, who also serves as the Puerto Rico government’s chief financial officer. “The new bonds have similar maturities to the outstanding bonds, from 2020 to 2028. This deal is an important step in Puerto Rico’s return to the capital markets and proves that the market is re-establishing its trust in Puerto Rico.”

There was a substantial demand for the

bond deal from traditional investors with over $750 million in indications of interest, producing a demand that exceeded more than three times the available amount of bonds. The true interest cost, including expenses associated with pricing and selling the new issue, was 1.27 percent.

Currently, the HFA has some $300 million in outstanding bonds issued under the Capital Fund Program of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), maturing between 2020 and 2027. HFA issued these bonds in 2003 and 2008, the proceeds of which were lent to the PHA and were used to pay the costs of improvements and modernization of public residential projects throughout the island.

The principal of and interest on the refinanced bonds and the new bonds are payable solely from annual federal appropriations of the U.S. Congress to fund public residential modernization and improvement projects through HUD. The HFA bonds do not constitute a debt,

obligation or pledge of the full faith and credit of the commonwealth or any of its instrumentalities or political subdivisions.

The PHA is responsible for the development and operation of the public housing units and receives grants and subsidies from HUD. PHA’s goal is to improve the quality of life in public housing units, promote community activity and the integral development of Puerto Ricans who live in public housing projects by means of a highly efficient administration. It is important to note, Marrero Díaz said, that even though the source of repayment of the new refunding bonds consists of HUD appropriations, any debt service savings realized as part of this transaction will result in additional funds being made available to PHA to fund its mission and objectives.

Likewise, HFA provides financing options for low- or moderate-income families and other services to create and preserve affordable housing on the island, which contributes to the socioeconomic development of Puerto Rico, Marrero Díaz added.

Non-profit organization opens virtual community lab to promote civil empowerment Espacios Abiertos creates LaboratorioComunitario.com to provide tools for communities and citizens to strengthen recovery and sustainability skills

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

I

n order to continue its mission to develop civil capabilities, non-profit organization Espacios Abiertos (EA) on Wednesday uploaded Laboratorio Comunitario, an online project designed to provide empowerment and leadership modules to communities and citizens to strengthen their recovery and sustainability skills amid an emergency.

Project Coordinator Carla J. Alonso said the new website compiles support tools that were created since the passage of hurricanes Irma and Maria, and which the organization has now made available for the general public on a digital outlet.

EA collaborated with grassroots organizations to generate the new training instruments

for communities, as they said one of the greatest challenges they faced was the workload volume, which required that EA reach out for help to make the content helpful and usable for a diverse range of groups.

“One of our considerations for the community laboratory was its practicality, we wanted to make cumbersome and difficult topics into something simple and easy to understand so that it is relevant to the participant,” Alonso said as she emphasized that such an initiative needed to be adaptable to diverse study environments, structures and groups.

The project coordinator added that in terms of innovation, the focus was more on which new outlets the organization could use to educate participants, and how to make the content sustainable for a long period of time.

Likewise, she said the platform’s intention was to give the content replicability, given that its modules are meant to “train the trainer;” in other words, to involve other organizations to follow suit.

“The sky’s the limit,” Alonso said. “No one has to wait to be recruited as anyone is welcome to do community work.”

EA Community Liaison Mabel Román

Alonso said that more than providing the tools, LaboratorioComunitario.com is an extension to the organization’s mission to drive transparency and collaboration, and to continue promoting information access and democratization.

“In natural disasters and on a day-to-day basis, community organizations are the first aid front to meet the immediate needs of our people,” Román Alonso said. “In EA, we decided after the experiences following the passage of Hurricane Maria to support the communities by strengthening the capacities of their leadership so that they can have a greater recovery response and achieve sustainability.”

The community empowerment project has been carried out in two cycles in 2019 and 2020, with a direct impact on 27 communities. In addition to Laboratorio Comunitario, organizations such as Mentes Puertorriqueñas en Acción and Sembrando Sentido, along with representatives from four programs from Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, also participate in the project. The training process lasts for nine months, during which the participants complete eight modules with plenary ses-

sions, workshops and talks with experts in various fields.

Organización Solidaridad Humanitaria leader Lucía Santana Benítez, who heads a 12-woman grassroots organization at Residencial Manuel A. Pérez, said the community mapping module, which is based on analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, assets and threats within a district, has notably strong potential because “it could help them identify longtime problems that, as a community, they were unable to see,” such as food distribution, which is a common issue they address on a daily basis.

As for the modules, one focuses on community leaders having a broad knowledge of the characteristics of their community and its assets, while another covers topics aimed at developing civic and fiscal training that is particularly relevant to Puerto Rico, as well as the importance of participating in those processes.

Other modules address issues such as resources and community allies, relations with media outlets and the community, tax matters, recovery funds, preparing for any emergency, and disseminating complaints and controversies from the community.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Island receives $8.7 million federal injection

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

R

esident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón on Wednesday announced the allocation of $8.7 million in federal funds, of which $466,677 was awarded under the federal economic stimulus law to handle the coronavirus emergency, better known as the CARES Act (Public Law 116-136 ) and $8.2 million under the federal departments of Transportation, Agriculture, Education and Health.

Under the CARES Act, $466,677 was awarded to the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico, under the Institute of Museum and Library Services program that helps museums and libraries in their role of responding to the challenges of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the Puerto Rico Highways and Transportation Authority received a total of $3.2 million through the Federal Highway Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation for repairs and reconstruction of highways and roads under federal jurisdiction that have suffered serious damage as a result of natural disasters or catastrophic failure.

The allocations are in response to the earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters that Puerto Rico has faced.

These funds are awarded to a state after a formal emergency declaration is issued and the state submits an Emergency Relief application for the cost of the damages.

According to a press release, the announced award consists of $70,979 under the funds for repairs related to the disaster declaration for the earthquakes that began in January 2020, $916,279 for those requested for the heavy rains in 2019 and $2.2 million for work covered under the disaster declaration for Hurricane Maria.

The federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) through the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awarded the Puerto Rico Department of Health $1.5 million under theVaccines For Children program that provides vaccines at no cost to low-income children who otherwise could not be vaccinated.

Also under HHS and the Administration for Children and Families, $200,000 was allocated to the Center for Youth Services Inc. under the Basic Center Program, which helps create and strengthen community programs designed to as-

sist children under 18 who have run away or are homeless, and $445,831 for Universidad Central del Caribe under the Sexual Risk Avoidance Education Program, which provides grants for projects that implement education on how to voluntarily abstain from sexual activity outside of marriage.

The federal Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded a grant of $580,212 to Segar Advocacy Institute Inc., a nonprofit organization on the island, to carry out a project that would reactivate food production in Puerto Rico by creating and strengthening productivity for beginning farmers and ranchers with limited resources, and veterans.

Also under the USDA, $2.1 million has been allocated under the Value-Added Producer Grant program, which helps agricultural producers enter into value-added activities related to the processing and marketing of new products with the objective of generating new products, creating and expanding marketing opportunities and increasing the income of producers.

Of these funds, Empresas La Ceba Inc., Finca Luciana Inc., Growponics PR LLC, Hacienda Monte Alto Inc., Hatillo Nova Lact Inc., Puerto Rico Coffee Company and Tropical Farm Corp will receive $250,000 respectively. Meanwhile, Finca Dos Hermanas LLC will receive $50,000, Finca El Sol de Joaquin Inc., $160,000, and José T. Román Barceló Inc., $126,486.

For its part, the federal Department of Education allocated $200,000 to Pontificia Universidad Católica de Ponce to support projects for training personnel in the provision of vocational rehabilitation services to people with disabilities.

The funds were awarded under the Rehabilitation LongTerm Training -- Rehabilitation Counseling Program, with the grant expected to be for five years.

Police receive $16.7 million payment for overtime

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

G

ov. Wanda Vázquez Garced, Public Safety Secretary Pedro Janer and Police Bureau Commissioner Henry Escalera announced on Wednesday the payment of $16.7 million in overtime to members of Puerto Rico’s police force.

“During the emergency that the COVID-19 pandemic has

caused, the police are part of the first line of defense that the Puerto Rican people have to preserve their safety. Our officers have been fighting the battle, including risking their own lives, to ensure compliance with executive orders that seek to safeguard public health with measures of physical distancing, use of masks and various initiatives in commercial establishments,” Vázquez said. “We recognize your commitment to the Puerto Rican people and we appreciate your dedication. Thanks to all of you.”

The Public Safety secretary noted that the payment was disbursed to 6,877 officers and corresponds to overtime worked as of March.

“In the Police Bureau and the Department of Public Safety, we keep working to continue paying the overtime worked by our police officers, as has been the commitment of Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced,” Janer said. “The work carried out by our colleagues is hard and sacrificial, especially in times of emergency.”

For his part, Escalera stressed that “in the midst of this pandemic, several colleagues have been infected and others have lost their lives.”

“Despite the painful situations, the staff maintains its firm

commitment to protecting our people even in times of greatest difficulty,” the island police commissioner said.

“Our guiding principle will always be to do justice to the uniformed [officers] and recognize their work.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

7

Who won the presidential debate? Political observers weigh in

By JEREMY W. PETERS

A

s little as anyone can seem to agree on these days, one thing that liberals, conservatives and independent observers alike said was abundantly clear after the first presidential debate on Tuesday night was that there were no winners. America lost, they said.

On NBC, Lester Holt called the evening “a low point in political discourse.”

A top Republican strategist, Russ Schriefer, asked: “Seriously — if there weren’t any more debates, would that be a problem?

Anyone served by this mess?”

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a former Democratic presidential candidate, sounded despondent in his assessment: “America was the world’s leading democracy. Then this happened. Now what?”

Most of the political professionals and pundits watching said the 90 minutes of bickering, interrupting and shouting was an unbearable affair that had further exhausted the patience of a weary and beleaguered nation.

The near unanimity of the sentiment about the debate overall did not entirely extend to judgments about the performances of the two candidates, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. Though there were critics of the president’s domineering behavior among some of his usual defenders on the right, others insisted that his low blows against his opponent’s family were just what the Republican base wanted to hear. Here is a sampling of what political experts had to say about the more memorable moments of the night.

Joe Biden Biden seemed to speak for a wide array of the viewing audience when he snapped in exasperation at the president’s repeated interruptions, telling him, “Will you shut up, man?” “‘Will you shut up, man?’ - Joe Biden, speaking for…most Americans” — Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama “‘Will you shut up, man’ might be Biden’s Gettysburg Address.” — Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Biden also won bipartisan praise for the way he attacked Trump’s record, including, in one of the more poignant moments, his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

“How many of you got up this morning and had an empty chair at the kitchen table because someone died of COVID?” Biden said, laying the more than 200,000 deaths from the virus in the United States at Trump’s feet. “How many of you are in a situation where you lost your mom or dad and you couldn’t even speak to them — you had to have a nurse holding the phone up so you could say goodbye?”

Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, said that Biden was “scoring points” with his criticism of the president’s coronavirus response.

But Biden’s inability to compete with the unbridled force of Trump’s desire to be heard — not just over Biden but over Chris Wallace of Fox News, the moderator — left some doubting his effectiveness and asking whether he might skip the next two debates.

President Donald Trump during the first presidential debate with Joe Biden, at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020.

Just 41 minutes into the debate, Matt Gorman, who has worked for Jeb Bush, the National Republican Congressional Committee and Mitt Romney, pointed out, “We’re not even halfway done.” Later, Gorman said: “I honestly think Biden will pull out of the other debates. These 90 minutes were a microcosm of the last three years. Trump dominated the airtime and overpowered the discussion.”

President Trump Many pundits measured Trump’s performance the way they consider most of his confrontational and controversial moments in public: by asking whether it had hurt or helped with his base.

Undoubtedly, the disrespect he displayed toward Biden — with the constant interruptions and personal attacks on his family — delighted many of his most ardent supporters.

Kimberley Strassel, a pro-Trump columnist for The Wall Street Journal, said the performance was a hit with the president’s supporters and listed the many issues that would resonate with them that he mentioned. “On this, Trump wins,” she said. “He was consistent, and made the points that he is running on in this election — law/order; economy; D corruption in terms of FBI investigation/Hunter; handling of virus.”

Brit Hume, the Fox News analyst, said on television that with his peevish presence, Trump was “like a bucking bronco,” and added, “I’m not sure that people at home would find that all appealing.”

The base calculation fails to account for the many Americans, some of whom voted for Trump in 2016, who are tired and demoralized after four years of his constant, noisy presence in their lives.

Neil Newhouse, a leading Republican pollster, was barely a half-hour into the debate when he said: “I’m exhausted. Have voters turned this off yet?”

Other conservatives took issue with aspects of the Democrats’ criticisms of Trump that the president’s supporters find especially irritating, such as Biden’s comments about the president’s refusal to denounce white supremacists like those who demonstrated in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the summer of 2017.

Ben Shapiro, the conservative podcast host and author, objected to the idea that Trump was more morally compromised than some Democratic presidents, saying: “Woodrow Wilson screened ‘Birth of a Nation’ at the White House. FDR interned hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans. Bill Clinton used the Oval Office as a harem. Try again.”

Still, there were some who pointed out the possibility that the debate had helped neither candidate and had actually depressed voters.

Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, who was conducting a focus group of debate viewers on Tuesday night, said: “This debate has actually convinced some undecided voters to not vote at all. I’ve never seen a debate cause this reaction.”

8

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Six takeaways from the first presidential debate

President Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. faced off in the first presidential debate on Tuesday night in Cleveland.

By SHANE GOLDMACHER

P

resident Donald Trump and Joe Biden appeared onstage together for the first time Tuesday. It was not exactly a debate.

Shouting, interruptions and often incoherent cross talk filled the air as Trump purposefully and repeatedly heckled and blurted over his rival and the moderator alike in a 90-minute melee that showcased the president’s sense of urgency to upend a race in which polls show him trailing.

Biden labored to get his points in over Trump’s stream of interjections, turning directly to the camera for refuge from a scrum that hardly represented a contest of ideas. But Biden did not stumble, contradicting months of questions from the Trump campaign about his mental fitness, and Trump seemed to do little to bring over voters who were not already part of his base.

The impact on the race of the messy affair — given that 90% of voters say they are already decided — is an open question. Here are six takeaways from the first debate.

Trump trampled over everything.

From the opening bell, Trump came out as an aggressor, speaking over Biden in what seemed to be almost din-by-design: Pull the former vice president, who has run as a statesman promising to restore the soul of America, into a mudslinging contest.

He bulldozed Biden and the moderator, Chris Wallace, throughout the evening. But his goal, other than making for a convoluted contest, was less clear. Trump seemed principally focused on undercutting and disorienting Biden, rather than on presenting an agenda or a vision for a second term in the White House.

“I’ve seen better-organized food fights at summer camp,” said Michael Steel, a Republican strategist. “But Trump needed a clear ‘W,’ and he didn’t get it.”

Biden’s own performance was mostly adequate. He swallowed some of his own lines, and Trump talked over others.

Before the debate, Wallace had said that, if successful, his job was to be “as invisible as possible.” He sometimes managed to recede, though at other times he was caught up in the shout-fest. Rarely did he exert control over the chaos. “If you want to switch seats?” he offered gamely at one point to Trump.

The performance kept the focus squarely on Trump — often where he seems to like it — but also where the Biden campaign wants all the attention in a 2020 election the Democrat has cast as a referendum on the current president.

Biden, at his strongest, pivoted to the camera — and away from Trump.

Biden’s visceral dislike of Trump practically burst through the screen. He told Trump to shut up. He called him a clown and a liar.

He tagged him as a racist. “You’re the worst president America has ever had,” he said at one point. “Keep yapping, man,” he said at another.

But for the most part, Biden succeeded in avoiding the chum that Trump was tossing into the debate water. Instead, he kept turning — physically — to face the cameras and address the American people instead of his chattering rival.

“This is not about my family or his family,” Biden at one point, after Trump tried to bait him with an attack on his son Hunter. “It’s about your family. The American people. He doesn’t want to talk about what you need.”

The former vice president was strongest and most comfortable on the issues that he has focused on overwhelmingly in the past six months: the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic downturn.

“How well are you doing?” Biden asked the television audience about the economy, casting Trump as the candidate of the well-todo, seizing on the recent report from The New York Times that Trump had paid only $750 in federal income taxes in both 2016 and 2017.

Trump still wants to wear the outsider mantle.

Trump is the president. He held his convention speech on the White House grounds.

But he found some of his greatest success four years ago when running against Hillary Clinton as a failed Washington insider. And he is not ready to give up that angle in 2020.

In the 2016 debates, Trump hammered Clinton over her failure to fundamentally change the country. “She’s been doing this for 30 years,” he said then.

He reprised the same line almost verbatim against Biden. “Why didn’t you do it over the last 25 years?” Trump challenged him about overhauling the tax code.

“In 47 months,” Trump said in one of his better, if clearly well-prepared, lines, “I’ve done more than you’ve done in 47 years, Joe.” Like it was for Clinton, it was at times a hard attack for Biden to answer. But unlike her, he had Trump’s record to slash at.

“He’s going to be the first president of the United States,” Biden countered at one point, “to leave office having fewer jobs in his administration when he became president.”

Trump would not condemn white supremacy or urge his supporters to stay calm.

One of the chief reasons Biden has said he is running for president as a 77-year-old is because of the white nationalists who gathered in Charlottesville,Virginia, in 2017 and Trump’s

unwillingness to condemn them.

The president declined to condemn white supremacists againTuesday, despite being asked directly by Wallace if he would do so.

“I’m willing to do that,” Trump began, before instead saying that “almost everything I see is from the left wing. Not from the right.”

Eventually, after Biden suggested he condemn the Proud Boys, a far-right organization widely condemned as a hate group, Trump declared, “Proud Boys: Stand back and stand by.”

It was a moment likely to outlast the night.

Trump did little to address the gender gap.

Biden has staked himself to a steady lead in the race largely because of a historic gender gap: Women are supporting him far more than Trump, and by a far greater margin than Trump’s advantage among men. While Trump tried at times to explicitly tailor his points to suburban women, who have been at the center of his demographic erosion, his bullying performance seemed unlikely to win them back.

Trump has long seen politics in terms of strength and weakness, winning and losing, but his interruptions and self-aggrandizing seemed ill-suited to expanding his political coalition.

“Unless his strategy was to alienate more women to see if that helps him pick up more men, no,” said Sarah Isgur, who was a spokesperson for Jeff Sessions when he was serving as attorney general in the Trump administration and who is now a writer for The Dispatch, a conservative news site.

Or as Anne Caprara, a Democratic strategist and chief of staff to Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, put it, “I don’t know any woman watching that who isn’t going to be disgusted by everything Trump did.”

Biden rebuffed the leftist label.

Beyond his attacks on Biden’s mental fitness — which redounded to Biden’s benefit by driving down expectations for his performance — one of Trump’s most consistent lines of attack has been that Biden is actually a leftist or even a socialist masquerading as a centrist.

Trump, whose narrow 2016 victory was aided by disaffected liberal supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders who either stayed home or voted for a third party, has worked hard to foment ideological divisions among Democrats.

Biden repeatedly took the opportunities Tuesday to distance himself from his party’s left wing — without denouncing them. And he left little doubt who was in charge.

“The party is me, right now,” Biden said.

“I am the Democratic Party.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

9

How voting by mail tops election misinformation

By DAVEY ALBA

O

f all the election misinformation this year, false and misleading information about voting by mail has been the most rampant, according to Zignal Labs, a media insights company.

Just how much bigger has it been?

Of the 13.4 million mentions of voting by mail on social media; news on television, print and online; blogs and online forums between January and September, nearly a fourth — or 3.1 million mentions — have most likely been misinformation, Zignal Labs said.

That was 160% more than the 1.2 million mentions of misinformation on Bill and Hillary Clinton and their Clinton Foundation, the next biggest category, Zignal said.

Other misinformation categories included George Soros, the billionaire investor and Democratic donor (915,300 mentions); misinformation about vaccines (628,700 mentions); and Kamala Harris “birtherism” claims (69,200 mentions).

The misleading information about voting by mail was not uniform. It broke down into six main categories, according to the analysis. In the month of September, they included: — mentions of absentee voting or ballots, such as the false idea that it will be an

unreliable way to vote: 410,918 mentions — mentions of voter fraud, such as mentions of misleading stories about criminal conduct involving mail-in ballots: 345,040 mentions — mentions of voter IDs, such as the baseless idea that in states with strict voter ID laws, mail-in ballots have been dumped out: 31,021 mentions — mentions of foreign interference, such as inaccurately asserting that “foreign powers” are counterfeiting millions of votes: 11,857 mentions — mentions of ballot “harvesting,” a loaded political term used by President Donald Trump for ballot collection, a process that is legal in 26 states where someone other than a family member can drop off your absentee ballot for you: 10,562 mentions — mentions of a “rigged election”: 10,140 mentions Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have made combating false information about voting a priority, including highlighting accurate information on how to vote and how to register to vote. But the platforms have struggled to apply their election misinformation policies evenly, and many of the false posts are not removed unless the messages are explicit about causing imminent harm in the voting process.

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An election worker processes mail-in ballot requests at the Johnson County election office in Olathe, Kan.

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10

Thursday, October 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

These restaurants reopened. That doesn’t mean they’ll survive.

By TRACEY TULLY and DANIEL E. SLOTNIK

W

hen restaurants in New Jersey were allowed to reopen three weeks ago for indoor dining at reduced capacity, Jeanne Cretella took a look at her books and made a tactical choice.

Liberty House, her restaurant in Jersey City, New Jersey, known for its panoramic waterfront views of lower Manhattan, and Felina, in suburban Ridgewood, would reopen, but only four days a week.

The Ryland Inn in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey — quaint, upscale and popular with brides — would remain shuttered.

With a 25% cap on indoor dining, the costs and the staffing levels needed to provide a safe restaurant experience outweighed the benefits.

“We can’t cover our bills at 25%,” said Cretella, the president of Landmark Hospitality, a restaurant group.

“And we are at a point where we’re starting to get a little nervous once outside dining is no longer possible.”

As New York City restaurants prepare to reopen Wednesday, also at 25% capacity, the challenges emerging in New Jersey, one of the last states to restart indoor dining, underscore the enormous obstacles facing the dining industry. Many restaurants in New York suburbs, which were allowed to resume indoor dining at 50% capacity in late June, still face similar issues.

Indoor dining resumed after a summer of struggle, during which expansive outdoor seating options and takeout buoyed some restaurants that still had to cover rent and other expenses. It remains to be seen whether dining rooms that are open at limited capacity can entice customers concerned about the coronavirus, and make up for diminished outdoor dining, as fall fades into winter.

The number of virus cases in New Jersey and in New York City, the one-time epicenter of the pandemic, have increased over the past week. And with no sign that dining rooms will be permitted to reach full occupancy anytime soon, many restaurants are struggling to stay open and keep their workers employed.

The National Restaurant Association has estimated that 1 in 6 restaurants nationwide has closed long-term or for good during the pandemic, and restaurant industry groups in New York and New Jersey predict more hard times ahead.

In July, New Jersey and New York City abruptly halted plans to restart indoor dining as coronavirus cases soared in Sun Belt states that had reopened early and outbreaks were traced to restaurants and bars. New Jersey began permitting indoor dining at 25% occupancy on Sept. 4.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last week that dining on sidewalks and streets would be permitted year-round to help restaurants survive the impact of the pandemic — a crisis that in August left 9 in 10 city restaurants unable to pay full rent.

In New Jersey, where officials have said that no virus cases have been linked to indoor dining, pressure is

Customers at Liberty House, where indoor seating was available but most diners still preferred to sit outside, in Jersey City, N.J., Sept. 24, 2020. mounting on Gov. Philip D. Murphy to raise occupancy limits to bring the state in line with most parts of New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, where dining rooms can be half full.

Owners also say some customers are slowly growing comfortable eating inside.

Two weeks ago at the Mahwah Bar and Grill in New Jersey, the wait for an outside table was easily stretching to 40 minutes, even though only two to three tables inside the 200-seat dining room were filled, said Craig Kunich, who owns and operates the family restaurant with his brother and sister. “Now we’re starting to approach being full inside,” Kunich said.

At the Liberty House, more diners asked to move inside on a recent chilly night than the restaurant could accommodate, Cretella said.

“When it’s 50 degrees, the charm of outdoor dining gets lost real quick,” said Marilou Halvorsen, the president of the New Jersey Restaurant and Hospitality Association.

Still, many diners remain wary.

“Even when it was 100 degrees, hazy, hot and humid out — and I have a separate dining room with air conditioning — they didn’t want to come in,” said Tim Shanley, the owner of Coals, pizza restaurants in Bronxville and Port Chester, New York.

When restaurants throughout the region were shut down in March to stop the spread of the virus, Shanley began delivering pizzas for the first time, but sales still plummeted by 40%. He phased out delivery after he was allowed to resume indoor and outdoor dining in July, and he said his revenue was nearing normal levels, but only after cutting his staff in half.

“The cold weather’s coming,” he said, “and if they don’t let us bump up our inside, we’re going to struggle.”

Throughout New York, restaurant sales in August were down 46% compared with the same month last year, according to a survey by the National Restaurant Association.

Melissa Fleischut, the president of the New York State Restaurant Association, a trade group, said the 50% ca-

pacity limits in restaurants outside New York City would most likely be unsustainable for many of the 8,500 eateries she represents. “They’ll be lucky if they’re breaking even,” Fleischut said.

There are no statistics yet on New Jersey restaurant closures. But Halvorsen said anecdotal evidence of hardship was mounting: A liquor license is posted for sale. A restaurateur bids farewell on social media. Residents start a GoFundMe page to help a diner pay its bills.

Outdoor and indoor capacity is only part of the problem. Personal finances are also taking a toll, said Thomas Koukoulas, the owner of Thomas’s Ham ’n’ Eggery Diner in Carle Place on Long Island.

“Not only are people nervous about going out, but a lot of people are unemployed,” Koukoulas said, adding, “A lot of people are on very strict budgets.”

But his woes, he said, pale in comparison to the uphill climb facing New York City restaurants.

“Manhattan’s a whole different ballgame,” Koukoulas said. “There’s no theater, there’s no tourists. It’s going to be a long haul. My heart is broken for them.”

Dipesh Patel, the owner of Sabor Rico in New Jersey’s fourth-largest city, Elizabeth, about 20 miles southwest of Manhattan, said business at the Colombian restaurant was down 30% compared with last year. The fact that he owns the building is the only thing keeping him afloat.

“If I had to pay rent, it would be too hard,” he said.

Across the street, at Rancho Mateo, a festively decorated cafe and bar on a block jammed with small restaurants, customers filled two tables inside and one outside on a recent weekday at lunchtime.

Sasha Intriago and four relatives sat at a table close to a large open window as sirens and car horns sounded outside.

It was their first time dining indoors since the virus swept through Elizabeth, killing Intriago’s uncle and infecting her mother and aunt. Still, she said she was comfortable inside, pointing to a variety of precautions: cutlery sealed in paper sleeves; masks and gloves worn by servers; her ability to sit near an open window.

Intriago, a lawyer who lives in Elizabeth but works in Totowa, New Jersey, said she was back to work in an office, and her aunt regularly takes the train into New York City, where she works as a housekeeper.

By comparison, she said, eating indoors felt quite safe.

The Mahwah Bar and Grill, in northern Bergen County, is less than a mile from the New York border.

Since July, restaurants a short walk away in Suffern, New York, have been permitted to operate at half capacity, even though the Mahwah Bar and Grill was barred from reopening its dining room until early this month, at 25% capacity.

“It’s a shame — normally you couldn’t get a seat,” Jeff Goldstein, 67, said as he ate with a co-worker, Frank Flanagan, at the sole table occupied inside a little after lunchtime. “They’ve got so many people terrified.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

11

Disney lays off 28,000, mostly at its 2 U.S. theme parks

By BROOKS BARNES

F

or six months, Disney has kept tens of thousands of theme park workers on furlough with full health-care benefits in hopes that a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel would appear. On Tuesday, Disney conceded that none was coming.

The company’s theme park division said it would eliminate 28,000 jobs in the United States. Theme parks will account for most of the layoffs, although Disney Cruise Line and Disney’s retail stores will also be affected.

“As heartbreaking as it is to take this action, this is the only feasible option we have in light of the prolonged impact of Covid-19 on our business, including limited capacity due to physical distancing requirements and the continued uncertainty regarding the duration of the pandemic,” Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, said in an email to “cast members,” Disney’s term for its theme park workers.

About 67% of the layoffs will involve part-time jobs that pay by the hour.

However, executives and salaried workers will also be among those laid off. Disney’s theme parks in California and Florida employed roughly 110,000 people before the pandemic. The job cuts, which will come from both resorts, will reduce that number to about 82,000.

Disneyland in California has remained closed because Gov. Gavin Newsom has not allowed theme parks in the state to restart operations. About 32,000 people work at the Disneyland complex and the majority are unionized and have been on furlough since April.

D’Amaro said in a statement that the layoffs were “exacerbated in California by the state’s unwillingness to lift restrictions that would allow Disneyland to reopen.”

Disney held a virtual news conference Sept. 22 in an attempt to pressure Newsom to lift restrictions. “The longer we wait, the more devastation to the Orange County and Anaheim communities,” D’Amaro said then. “It’s time.”

In a statement Tuesday evening, Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California

Health and Human Services Agency, said: “Without a vaccine it is impossible to eliminate the economic impacts caused by this virus.” By taking a “science-based approach” to reopening, he continued, “we can minimize the health and economic risks that would be caused by opening and shutting repeatedly.”

In Florida, where government officials have been much less restrictive, Walt Disney World reopened on a limited basis in mid-July. About 20,000 union workers, or roughly half of the resort’s unionized employees, were called back for the reopening. The remainder have stayed on furlough. (Disney World employed about 77,000 people in total before the pandemic.)

But attendance at Disney World has been weaker than Disney expected. In particular, families have not felt safe flying to Florida for vacation, according to travel agents. Families are also delaying visits because they don’t want to pay for Disney excursions when the experience remains limited — no fireworks, fewer dining options, no hugs from Mickey Mouse, shorter park hours — and they have to wear face masks.

Disney’s zealous theme park safety procedures appear to be working. University epidemiologists and public health officials have said that — as far as they can tell — there have been no outbreaks among Disney workers or guests. Disney has declined to comment except to note that new infections in Florida have dropped sharply since Disney World reopened.

Revenue at Disney’s worldwide theme park division, which includes a stillclosed cruise line and the Disney Store chain, totaled $1 billion in the most recent quarter, an 85% decline from the same period a year earlier. Operating profit plunged by $3.7 billion, resulting in a quarterly loss of $2 billion. D’Amaro said Tuesday that the restructuring would create a more “effective and efficient operation when we return to normal.”

The rest of Disney has been bouncing back. Live sports returned to ESPN in August. Movie and television production has restarted, although Disney continues to postpone film releases. Disney+

The entrance to the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., July 11, 2020. The company said it would eliminate 28,000 jobs across its resorts in Florida and California, which have been hit hard by the pandemic. has been growing rapidly enough to keep Disney’s stock price relatively high at $125, down 3% from a year ago.

Central Florida’s once-booming leisure and hospitality industry has been decimated by the pandemic. Unemployment in Orange County — home to Disney World, the Universal Orlando Resort, SeaWorld and dozens of mom-and-pop tourist attractions — stood at 11.6% in August, up from 3.1% in August 2019, according to the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. Osceola County, which abuts Disney World to the south, had 15.1% unemployment in August, up from 3.5%.

Statewide, the August unemployment rate in Florida was 7.4%.

Universal Orlando laid off a steady stream of employees over the summer and recently notified state officials that about 5,400 workers had been placed on extended furlough. SeaWorld laid off 1,900 employees at its Orlando properties this month. A few days before its layoffs, SeaWorld surprised workers by altering its severance policy, moving to a discretionary system from a fixed formula based on tenure.

Workers at Universal and SeaWorld

are not unionized.

“The layoffs and furloughs have been devastating,” said Mike McElmury, trustee of Teamsters Local 385, which represents about 5,000 Disney World bus drivers, laundry workers and entertainers, including those who greet visitors in costume as Disney characters. At least 2,000 were still on furlough as of Monday. “We’re at the point where people are having a hard time figuring out where they will get their next meal,” McElmury said.

Anaheim is in similarly rough shape.

Disney had planned to reopen the property on July 17 with the same safety protocols as in Florida. But Disney abandoned that plan after unionized Disneyland employees told Newsom that they worried that Disney was moving too fast; Newsom threw the brakes on a regulatory process that would allow California theme parks to reopen.

Unemployment in Anaheim reached 15% in July, the most recent month for which data is available, up from 3.3% in July of last year. The Anaheim Chamber of Commerce said this month that Disneyland’s closure had cost local municipalities $1.3 billion in taxes and other revenue.

12

Tuesday, 6J[Vber 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Pandemic convinces airline workers it’s time for new horizons

By NIRAJ CHOKSHI

T

his was supposed to be the year that Steven Ray Littles II put down roots in the Seattle area. Instead, he returned to his parents’ home in Bakersfield, California, after taking a buyout from Delta Air Lines, ending a six-year career as a flight attendant.

He enjoyed the job, which allowed him to travel widely and make new friends from a variety of backgrounds.

But Littles, 32, feared his job was vulnerable because the coronavirus pandemic had dealt a huge blow to the airline industry.

“I was looking at it from a safety net perspective,” he said. “What control do I have in this situation, and how am I going to make this the best opportunity for myself?”

Across the country, airline workers like Littles have wrestled with similar decisions because of a substantial decline in travel and the growing fear that many passengers may not return for years. Congress threw the industry a lifeline in March by offering airlines $25 billion as long as they refrained from major job cuts.

That requirement expires Thursday, and airlines have warned that unless lawmakers extend that program, they will furlough tens of thousands of workers. To limit the number of layoffs, airlines have asked employees to voluntarily accept pay cuts, extended leaves, buyouts or early retirement. Tens of thousands have signed up.

Southwest Airlines has said so many employees have volunteered for such programs that it won’t furlough workers through the end of this year. Delta is also largely avoiding

furloughs for now, though it might reduce its staff in some professions, including pilots.

A Health Care Offer Too Good To Pass Up In four decades as an airplane mechanic, Mike Stoica survived expansions, contractions, a bankruptcy and a merger. But when American Airlines offered early-retirement packages this summer, he decided it was time to go.

“To me, at my age, it was a no-brainer,” said Stoica, who is 71.

He had planned to work longer, but the retirement package ensured that his younger wife would have health insurance coverage until she qualified for Medicare. His last day at work was Friday.

Now, Stoica is looking forward to turning his attention to planes of a different size. He recently finished restoring a 1944 Boeing Stearman biplane, and has another project lined up.

Making a Sacrifice for the Work Family Tina Jackson’s decision to accept a retirement package from Alaska Airlines was bittersweet. Leaving meant saying goodbye to co-workers who acted like extended family and threw her a baby shower when she adopted her daughter nearly two decades ago.

“When something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us,” said Jackson, 56, who worked in the reservations department.

As the pandemic wore on, it became clear that the industry would become smaller, and Jackson’s colleagues started to worry about their jobs. So she volunteered for a three-month furlough. When the airline offered retirement

Steven Ray Littles II left his job as a Delta Air Lines flight attendant and plans to pursue a hobby in drone photography as a business.

packages, she took one to help her colleagues who needed to work.

As a reservations agent, Jackson would often hear people at their best and worst. When someone called to buy tickets for a wedding or to visit a new grandchild, she could share in that joy. When a customer called to buy a ticket to attend a funeral, she could try to make his or her life a little easier.

For now, Jackson plans to stay at home with her husband on San Juan Island in northwest Washington. But once it’s safe to do so, she hopes to spend retirement traveling the globe, starting in Europe, with the help of lifetime flight benefits.

“For 20 years, I’ve gone all around the world and never left my chair,” she said. “I wanted to go to all these amazing places that everybody was telling me about.”

A Change In Perspective When his retirement began this month, Robert Browning Vaughn II was sitting next to the pool with his wife, Kimi Vaughn, at a Mexican resort in Cabo San Lucas. The trip had long been planned for Robert Vaughn’s 60th birthday, but the retirement was a late addition. Vaughn, a former Delta pilot who goes by R.B., had intended to work five more years, but then the airline offered early retirement.

He had been furloughed in the 1990s, but felt that Delta had given him a good career and allowed him to build a schedule around his family’s needs. So he decided to return the favor and help a colleague with less seniority. He also realized it was time for a break after a string of personal tragedies.

“I’ve gotten to do what I dreamed of doing,” he said.

“Now, I don’t have to go to another hotel room unless it’s one of my choosing.”

He and his wife had planned to travel the world, but are sticking to domestic trips from their home near Atlanta for now, like a road trip this week to Santa Fe, New Mexico. He also plans to ride his Harley-Davidson and golf with his son more frequently.

A Newlywed Takes a Step Back As a flight attendant and instructor at Alaska Airlines, Julia Ortega saw the unfolding crisis weigh on her colleagues as they arrived for an annual recertification class. She was worried, too.

Ortega, 34, and her husband married in February and were planning an April wedding celebration in Mexico, but had to postpone twice, to November and now to May. Also, they live in the Bay Area, where the cost of living is high. But after seeing her colleagues agonize about the future, Ortega decided she could afford to step back, volunteering to take leave in the spring and signing up for a nine-month unpaid furlough starting Thursday.

“If I had that chance to take a leave and allow them to keep a job, to at least save one more of my co-workers, then that’s what I would do,” she said.

For now, Ortega is spending time at home with her two dogs, while her husband continues to work in airport operations at San Jose International Airport. To keep busy and stay healthy, she has been running outside, building on a wedding workout regimen.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

13 Stocks

Wall Street jumps on stimulus hopes, upbeat data

W

all Street’s main indexes jumped on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 on course for its best two-quarter gain since 2009, as investors rekindled bets on an imminent fiscal stimulus package, while upbeat data suggested a domestic economic recovery was on track.

House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin expressed hope for a breakthrough on a COVID-19 relief package as the House stood poised to vote on a new $2.2 trillion Democratic coronavirus bill.

All 11 major S&P indexes were up. Healthcare .SPXHC, consumer discretionary .SPLRCD and financials .SPSY led gains as data showed U.S. private employers stepped up hiring in September, while contracts to buy previously owned homes surged to a record high last month.

“There’s some optimism that it’s not the end of the world,” said Greg Hahn, chief investment officer at Winthrop Capital Management in Indianapolis, Indiana. “(But) there’s more problems coming if we don’t have fiscal stimulus and the Federal Reserve has said we need this because we’re seeing trouble in the economy.”

The S&P 500 is headed for its first monthly decline since the coronavirus-led crash in March after a tumultuous September in which the benchmark index and the Nasdaq tumbled from record highs as investors dumped Wall Street favourites including Apple Inc AAPL.O and Tesla Inc TSLA.O. In the past few weeks, trading has become more choppy on doubts about whether President Donald Trump would accept the election’s outcome if he lost.

Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden battled fiercely in a chaotic and bad-tempered first debate over Trump’s record on the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare and the economy.

“The scenario that poses a significant risk is a contested result,” said Keith Buchanan, portfolio manager at GLOBALT Investments in Atlanta, Georgia.

At 12:57 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was up 1.79%, the S&P 500 .SPX was up 1.35%, and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC was up 1.24%.

Energy was the only S&P index set to end the quarter in the red, having lost nearly 20% of its value as fears of weak fuel demand hammered oil prices. On the other hand, the consumer discretionary index, which includes heavyweight Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O, has soared more than 15% since the end of June.

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14

Thursday, October 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

As cases surge, pandemic restrictions again descend on Quebec

A coronavirus walk-in clinic in Montreal, on Tuesday.

By DAN BILEFSKY and IAN AUSTEN

T

here has been a veneer of normalcy in Montreal.

Couples hunched over steak-frites and poutine at popular neighborhood bistros. Young people thronging comedy shows and CrossFit classes in parks.

Shopping sprees, even if armed with masks and sanitizers.

But this week the sense that regular life was gradually returning was upended when Quebec, faced with a resurgence of coronavirus cases, became Canada’s first province to reintroduce tough shutdown measures — including closing restaurants, cinemas and theaters, and forbidding household visits to friends or family, with some exceptions.

“The situation has become critical,” Quebec’s premier, François Legault, said Monday evening, lamenting that people had relaxed their vigilance and prioritized fun.

“If we don’t want our hospitals to be submerged, if we want to limit the number of deaths, we must take strong action.”

Alarm has also shaken Ontario, where some cities are again posting record case numbers, and some new, modest restrictions have been imposed, including shutting down strip bars and banning alcohol sales after 11 p.m.

Epidemiologists attributed the growing numbers of case to inadequate contact tracing; an unwillingness to

shut down schools and businesses; and people letting their guards down. For example, the karaoke bar, Bar Kirouac, in Quebec City, was linked to 72 cases of COVID-19, according to Quebec health officials.

The relapse has underlined how even Canada, a country with universal health care and a generally disciplined, rule-bound population, remains vulnerable to the coronavirus.

On Tuesday, Ottawa, the national capital, reported 105 cases — its highest number of new cases in one day since the beginning of the pandemic. It now has the highest number of active cases since late April.

Quebec, Canada’s epicenter throughout the pandemic, reported 750 new cases on Monday, helping to bring the total number in the province to 73,450. In total, 5,833 people have died in Quebec; the entire country has seen 9,289 deaths.

Canadians have until recently taken some satisfaction in the country’s approach to containing the virus.

Most provinces moved swiftly in March to shut down schools and businesses. The border with the United States was closed and some provinces limited travelers from other parts of Canada — a restriction that still is in effect.

By spring and through the summer, many of those measures were significantly relaxed in most parts of the

country.

In contrast to the hard-hit United States, where President Donald Trump has repeatedly clashed with governors over how to manage the pandemic, partisan and regional grievances in Canada have been largely set aside.

Premier Jason Kenney of Alberta, a conservative who has often sparred with premiers in more liberal provinces, offered surplus masks, gloves and ventilators to Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia.

Without exception, political leaders have also deferred to physicians, scientists and public health experts to inform the country’s approach.

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has recently been buffeted by scandal, he has been generally credited for his authoritative handling of the pandemic. Early on, he set an example when he became the first leader of a major industrialized country to go into self-isolation, when his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, tested positive for the virus.

His government has since offered billions of dollars in financial support for businesses and workers hit by the virus to limit economic harm.

But David Buckeridge, an assistant professor and public health surveillance researcher at McGill University in Montreal, said that in Quebec, the provincial government did not act fast enough this time around.

“There’s so much pressure to maintain the economy that the government was a little slow to act decisively and close businesses,” Buckeridge said. He said certain types of businesses like bars should never have been reopened.

He also said that although Legault blamed the rise in cases on private social gatherings, the province’s poor record at contact tracing made it impossible to confirm that. Legault’s analysis, he suggested, may be motivated by economic rather than medical considerations.

Health officials and epidemiologists said Quebec’s party culture has helped make it the pandemic troublemaker, compared with other provinces like British Columbia and those on Canada’s Atlantic coast, where the numbers of cases per capita have been significantly lower.

Under Quebec’s new rules, which will go into effect on Thursday, people will be forbidden to invite houseguests with the exception of individuals who require a caregiver, child care or maintenance services. Museums, bars and libraries will be closed. Churches, synagogues and mosques will be limited to 25 people.

People gathering outside will also be expected to remain 2 meters, or about 6.6 feet, apart. However, schools, which have been buffeted by dozens of cases of coronavirus, will remain open, as will gyms, hotels and hair salons.

The new restrictions will be imposed for 28 days and apply to three regions in Quebec, including Montreal.

Buckeridge said that Quebec’s new measures will take weeks to have any effect on infection rates, and that the province will likely have to go further.

“There are going to be a few 28-day periods unless we change what we’re doing in a meaningful way,” he said.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

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Vilified early over lax virus strategy, Sweden seems to have scourge controlled

By THOMAS ERDBRINK

T

he scene at Norrsken House Stockholm, a coworking space, oozed with radical normalcy: Young, turtleneckwearing hipsters schmoozed in the coffee corner. Others chatted freely, at times quite near one another, in cozy conference rooms. Face masks were nowhere to be seen.

It seemed like January, before the spread of the coronavirus in Europe, but it was actually last week, as many European nations were tightening restrictions amid a surge of new cases. In Sweden, new infections, if tipping upward slightly, still remained surprisingly low.

“I have potentially hundreds of tiny interactions when working here,” said Thom Feeney, a Briton who manages the coworking space. “Our work lives should not be reduced to just the screen in front of us. Ultimately, we are social animals.”

Normalcy has never been more contentious than now in Sweden. Almost alone in the Western world, the Swedes refused to impose a coronavirus lockdown in the spring, as the country’s leading health officials argued that limited restrictions were sufficient and would better protect against economic collapse.

It was an approach that transformed Sweden into an unlikely ideological lightning rod. Many scientists blamed it for a spike in deaths, even as many libertarians critical of lockdowns portrayed Sweden as a model. During a recent Senate hearing in Washington, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading U.S. infectious disease specialist, and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., angrily clashed over Sweden.

For their part, the Swedes admit to making some mistakes, particularly in nursing homes, where the death toll was staggering. Indeed, comparative analyses show that Sweden’s death rate at the height of the pandemic in the spring far surpassed the rates in neighboring countries and was more protracted. (Others point out that Sweden’s overall death rate is comparable to that of the United States.)

Now, though, the question is whether the country’s current low caseload, compared with sharp increases elsewhere, shows that it has found a sustainable balance, something that all Western countries are seeking eight months into the pandemic — or whether the recent numbers are just a temporary aberration.

“It looks positive,” said Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, who gained global fame and notoriety for having kept Sweden out of lockdown in March.

With a population of 10.1 million, Sweden averaged a little more than 200 new cases a day for several weeks, although in recent days that number has jumped to about 380. The per capita rate is far lower than nearby Denmark or the Netherlands (if higher than the negligible rates in Norway and Finland). Sweden is also doing far better, for the moment, than Spain, with 10,000 cases a day, and France, with 12,000.

Critics say Sweden does not test for the virus as thoroughly as many other nations — with 142,000 tests for the week ending Sept. 13. Britain, with about six times the population, tested only 587,000 people in the most recent week, far fewer per capita than Sweden. And Britain conducted far more tests

than France, Germany or Spain in that period.

In early September, 1.2% of tests in Sweden were positive, compared with about 7% currently in Northwest England, Britain’s hardest-hit area.

In response to the recent outbreaks, many European countries are imposing new restrictions. But political leaders, anxious to avoid unpopular and economically disastrous lockdowns, are relying mostly on social-distancing measures, while trying to preserve a degree of normalcy, with schools, shops, restaurants and even bars open.

In essence, some experts say, they are quietly adopting the Swedish approach.

“Today, all of the European countries are more or less following the Swedish model, combined with the testing, tracing and quarantine procedures the Germans have introduced, but none will admit it,” said Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health, in Geneva. “Instead, they made a caricature out of the Swedish strategy. Almost everyone has called it inhumane and a failure.”

Back in the spring, when other nations were clamping down, Sweden was often vilified for having gone its own way.

Its borders stayed open, as did bars, restaurants and schools.

Hairdressers, yoga studios, gyms and even some cinemas remained open, as did public transportation and parks.

Gatherings of more than 50 people were banned, museums closed and sporting events canceled. But that was the extent of the measures, with officials saying they would

trust in the good sense of Swedes to keep their distance and wash their hands.

Flahault lauded Sweden’s government for that part of its approach.

“The Swedes went into self-lockdown,” he said. “They trusted in their people to self-apply social distancing measures without punishing them.”

But Flahault also warned about what he called a major flaw in the Swedish approach.

“They continue not to wear masks,” he said. “That can be a big drawback in the Swedish strategy if masks prove effective and key in fighting the pandemic.”

Sweden might also just be enjoying a lull between peaks of infection. The public face of the country’s coronavirus policies, Tegnell, agrees, saying the numbers can always go up, as they just have. That said, however, “Sweden has gone from being one of the countries in Europe with the most spread to one that has some of the fewest cases in Europe,” he said in a recent interview.

Some experts believe that Sweden is now almost fully in control of the virus.

“There are indications that the Swedes have gained an element of immunity to the disease, which, together with everything else they are doing to prevent the infection from spreading, is enough to keep the disease down,” Kim Sneppen, professor of biocomplexity at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, said in an interview.

People socialize at a small park in Stockholm, Sept. 8, 2020. After weathering high death rates when it resisted a lockdown in the spring, Sweden now has one of Europe’s lowest rates of daily new cases, but the country might also just be enjoying a lull between peaks of infection.

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Thursday, October 1, 2020

Court sets up showdown over outside health review of Guantánamo prisoners

By CAROL ROSENBERG

A

federal appeals panel refused on Tuesday to delay a court-ordered, independent medical examination of a mentally ill prisoner who was tortured at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to decide whether he should be repatriated to psychiatric care in Saudi Arabia.

The decision in the case of Mohammed al-Qahtani by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sets the stage for a showdown between the Trump administration and a federal judge over outside evaluation of health care at the prison, which holds 40 people.

Justice Department lawyers have warned that the first use of a mixed medical commission — one doctor from the U.S. Army and two from a neutral country chosen by the International Red Cross and approved by the United States and Saudi

Arabia — would be disruptive and unleash more requests by other prisoners.

Al-Qahtani, who is in his 40s, suffered an acute psychotic break attributed to schizophrenia in his homeland long before he was taken to Guantánamo. His lawyers argue he is too profoundly ill to be treated

by U.S. military medical personnel there, and requires inpatient care in Saudi Arabia.

In March, Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of U.S. District Court ordered the government to establish a mixed medical commission to evaluate al-Qahtani and his claim of inadequate treatment. She said she would honor the panel’s recommendation and order his release if it concluded repatriation was in his best medical interests.

She has since retired. Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle took up the case in August and she renewed the order, which comes as the coronavirus pandemic has twice prompted the International Red Cross to cancel travel

Ray, which is no longer in use, the original detention camp for detainees after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, April 17, 2019.

to the remote base in southeast Cuba.

The order has rattled the Defense Department, which considers the Guantánamo detention center its domain and any Red Cross role as advisory. The current prison commander, Rear Adm. Timothy C. Kuehhas, predicted in a court filing in April that the detainees would exploit the creation of a mixed medical commission “to undermine their health or injure themselves,” to seek medical repatriation, and “jeopardize the safety of the guard force.”

But the three-judge panel at the circuit appeals court ruled that the decision to conduct a fact-finding in the context of a habeas corpus petition was not subject to review by the higher court. The judges — Karen LeCraft Henderson, Judith W. Rogers and David S. Tatel — added that, even if it was, the government did not demonstrate in its filings that conducting a mixed medical commission at Guantánamo “might have a ‘serious, perhaps irreparable, consequence.’”

The makeup of the panel was entirely different from a three-judge panel in the same court that found last month that Guantánamo detainees are not entitled to invoke the due process protections of the Constitution, suggesting that the administration might ask the full court to consider the question.

Lawyers for al-Qahtani, and a psychiatrist who was consulted on the case, made a novel argument for enacting an Army regulation that includes medical-repatriation provisions of the Third Geneva Convention for prisoners of war. Their position is that al-Qahtani can only be effectively treated in his homeland.

Most claims of torture of Guantánamo detainees center on what happened in the CIA prison network before their transfer to military custody. But leaked documents show that al-Qahtani was subjected to two

months of continuous, brutal interrogations at Guantánamo’s Camp X-Ray — sleep deprivation, dehydration, nudity and being menaced by dogs — while under the care of military medics from the same prison operation that provides his medical care now.

The Defense Department views Guantánamo detainees as unprivileged enemy combatants, not classic prisoners of war, and therefore not entitled to the mixed medical commission.

A top Defense Department responsible for detainee affairs, Steven W. Dalbey, wrote in a declaration in May that he interpreted the Army regulation for a medical commission to mean al-Qaida, not Saudi Arabia, would have a say in approving the foreign doctors. That would be at odds with the government’s policy “of not negotiating with terrorist groups,” he added.

In May, lawyers for another prisoner, Ammar al-Baluchi, who is accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, wrote Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper asking him to arrange a similar independent medical evaluation.

His lawyers argue that al-Baluchi, whose uncle is accused of being the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury as a result of his torture by the CIA. Esper has not responded to the request, alBaluchi’s lawyer, James G. Connell III, said on Tuesday.

Al-Qahtani has been portrayed as a would-be 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks. He tried to enter the United States at Orlando International Airport in the summer of 2001 and was turned away by a border agent. He was captured after the attacks fleeing Afghanistan and was sent to Guantánamo, where a senior Pentagon official concluded his torture made him ineligible for trial in the Sept. 11 case.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

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Thursday, October 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

After that fiasco, Biden should refuse to debate Trump again

By FRANK BRUNI

I

wasn’t in the crowd of people who believed Joe Biden shouldn’t deign to debate President Donald Trump, but put me in the crowd that believes he shouldn’t debate him again.

Not after Tuesday night’s horror show: a disgrace to the format, an insult to the country, a nearly pointless 90 minutes.

And, I should add, a degradation of the presidency itself, which Trump had degraded so thoroughly already. He put on a performance so contemptuous, so puerile, so dishonest and so across-the-board repellent that the moderator, Chris Wallace, morphed into some amalgam of elementary-school principal, child psychologist, traffic cop and roadkill.

No matter how Wallace pleaded with Trump or admonished him, he couldn’t make him behave. But then why should Wallace have an experience any different from that of Trump’s chiefs of staff, of all the other former administration officials who have fled for the hills, of the Republican lawmakers who just threw up their hands and threw away any scruples they had? Trump runs roughshod over everyone and everything, and on Tuesday night in Cleveland he ran roughshod over the idea that two presidential candidates presenting rival visions for America should do so with at least a small measure of dignity and an iota of decorum.

Almost from the start, he talked over Biden, taunting him, demeaning him, trying to provoke him. He interrupted him and interrupted him and then interrupted him some more, all the

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while complaining that he, Trump, ever the martyr, was being persecuted once again.

“Mr. President, I’m the moderator of this debate, and I would like you to let me ask my question,” Wallace said early on, trying in vain to contain one of Trump’s tantrums and wrestle him into submission. I’d seen debate moderators get perturbed. Wallace bordered on plangent.

“I guess I’m debating you, not him, but that’s OK,” Trump shot back. “I’m not surprised.” Of course not. To be Trump is to be accustomed to an unjust world unimpressed with your majesty.

He plumbed uncharted presidential-debate depths of nastiness. When Biden, objecting to Trump’s reported dismissal of people who serve in the military as “losers,” brought up his son Beau’s tour of duty in Iraq, Trump brought up the past cocaine use of Biden’s other son, Hunter. And looked impressed and delighted with himself for doing so.

When Trump was challenged on holding huge rallies where supporters pressed tight together, the coronavirus be damned, he said that Biden would do likewise if he could just get anyone to show up.

When Biden said that Trump needed to get “smarter” about the pandemic, Trump erupted, a Vesuvius of petulance and pettiness. “Did you use the word smart?” he asked. “Don’t ever use the word smart with me. Don’t ever use that word. Because you know what? There’s nothing smart about you, Joe.” His voice was so thick with unwarranted condescension that it made my skin crawl.

When Biden noted that under Trump’s watch, our country became the world leader in recorded deaths related to COVID-19, with more than 200,000 Americans gone, Trump’s retort was a claim so hyperbolic that I didn’t know whether to laugh at its inanity or cry over its insanity. He said that if Biden had been president, 2 million people would have died.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that Trump was breathtaking, and I may even be paying him something of a compliment, because it takes a peerless combination of audacity and mendacity to pull off some of what he pulled off.

On taxes, for example: He turned the revelation that he had paid only $750 in federal income taxes for each of two re-

cent years into an indictment of Biden, as a former senator and vice president, for creating so many tax loopholes.

On federal judges: His boast of appointing scores and scores of them segued into a rebuke of President Barack Obama and Biden for leaving behind so many vacancies, as if they’d simply forgotten about them. Not exactly. Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s Republican majority leader, blocked the Obama administration from filling many of them, and then, after Trump was inaugurated, abetted him.

On the integrity of the upcoming vote count: He pivoted from Wallace’s question about whether he would refrain from declaring victory “until the election has been independently certified” into a fresh exhortation that his supporters serve as poll watchers, looking out for sketchy activity. He’s going to get people hurt. I mean, on top of all the people he has hurt already.

Responding to this pile of bile, Biden was hardly a choir boy. “You’re the worst president America has ever had,” he said at one point. He repeatedly called Trump a liar and several times called him “this clown.”

“Will you shut up, man?” Biden said to him. “This is so unpresidential.”

But Biden was right: Trump wouldn’t shut up, and wasn’t remotely presidential, and to the extent that Biden occasionally flung mud of his own, well, when you’re dragged into the pigsty, you have no other choice.

Mostly, though, Biden shook his head as Trump ranted and raged. He smiled dismissively. He looked at Wallace or at the camera or anywhere but at Trump, his lack of eye contact a suggestion that some nonsense — and some nonsense purveyors — are best ignored. His obvious strategy was to treat Trump as part spectacle, part joke, all embarrassment. Which is precisely how Trump deserved to be treated.

Who won and who lost? I know I’m supposed to make something of a determination along those lines, but that’s not how this debate went down. Trump talked more and faster and louder, which was clearly his strategy: Be so damned vivid that Biden would look even paler than usual.

In this Trump was successful. He had more fire — but dangerously, even dementedly, so. He never wore Biden down, but at moments he wore Biden out: Listening to Biden’s sentences peter out could be like hearing the air seep from a tire.

But here’s the deal, as Biden would say: Only one man on that stage persuasively communicated that he has the interests of the American people at heart. Only one man on that stage seemed at all interested in maintaining a tether to the truth. Only one man demonstrated any respect for Wallace or for the process. Only one man would be bearable for the next four years.

I needn’t spell out who that man is.

But I have a message for him, and I’m serious: Don’t do this again. You showed your willingness. You showed up. But another of these fiascos is beneath you. I’d add that it’s beneath America, if there’s even such a thing anymore.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

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Informe del Contralor revela desembolso de $192 millones en proyectos sin utilidad en la AEE Por THE STAR a Contraloría de Puerto Rico emitió el miércoles, una Ltoridad opinión adversa de las operaciones fiscales de la Aude Energía Eléctrica de Puerto Rico (AEE), rela-

cionadas con los proyectos de mejoras capitales.

El Informe revela la inversión sin utilidad de $192 millones en la compra de terrenos o desarrollo de proyectos que no se construyeron o no se completaron. La AEE invirtió $62,205,965 en la cancelación del proyecto Gasoducto del Sur, desembolsó 31,911,596 dólares en el proyecto Vía Verde que nunca comenzó, y pagó compras y servicios por $85,533,332 para el proyecto de conversión de unidades en la Central Cambalache, Central San Juan, Central Palo Seco y Central Aguirre, que luego canceló.

El Informe comenta que, tras dos años desde la cancelación del contrato de la AEE para el proyecto del Gasoducto del Sur, la Autoridad de Acueductos y Alcantarillados (AAA) desembolsó $51,855,640 para la adquisición de algunos de los activos y por la línea de crédito que asumió de la AEE. De los activos, la AAA vendió 35 tubos a la AEE por $45,500, ya que éstos no podían ser utilizados para transportar agua. Los auditores de la Contraloría confirmaron que dichos tubos estaban en desuso y deteriorados en el Almacén 5 de la Central Palo Seco.

La auditoría de seis hallazgos señala también que la AEE adquirió en el 2011, dos aerogeneradores por $3,714,21. Uno de los aerogeneradores está instalado para servir a la Planta de Tratamiento de Aguas Usadas de la AAA, y el otro está almacenado en la Central Palo Seco (ver fotos en el Anejo 6 del Informe). Los auditores hallaron que el equipo instalado también presenta problemas técnicos.

Según el informe, en el 2011 la AEE adquirió seis predios de terreno y edificios colindantes a las oficinas

centrales de la Autoridad en Santurce por $2,140,960, que se encuentran abandonados y en desuso. De hecho, los terrenos y las estructuras no están registrados en el sistema de contabilidad de la Autoridad.

Del examen realizado a las minutas de la Junta, encontramos falta de detalles y documentación sobre las consideraciones y negociaciones para cancelar contratos, o los métodos de selección de los contratistas. Estas situaciones obedecen a que no se realizaron estudios de conveniencia y viabilidad no se consideraron los costos asociados y el impacto económico en la AEE. Además, la Junta no requirió los estudios de impacto, ni protegió los mejores intereses de la Autoridad.

Contrario a las leyes y reglamentación vigente sobre contratación, la AEE no solicitó propuestas de al menos tres profesionales para ninguno de los servicios contratados en el desarrollo del Proyecto Vía Verde. Además, se identificaron pagos antes de formalizar contratos, y que el director ejecutivo no había presentado un contrato de cuantía mayor a $500 mil para la aprobación de la Junta. De 2009 al 2012, la Autoridad había formalizado 15 contratos y siete enmiendas.

La AEE no suministró a los auditores, las evaluaciones sobre la capacidad administrativa operacional y financiera de un contratista para desarrollar Via Verde a quien se le pagó $12,576,262. Además, desembolsó $393,630 en servicios de publicidad y planificación, en exceso a lo contratado.

La Junta de la Autoridad, no había actualizado los By-laws con las nuevas disposiciones de la Ley Número 83, de la Autoridad de Energía Eléctrica, no había evaluado el cumplimiento con los estándares de gobernanza de la industria, ni había realizado reuniones públicas de marzo de 2016 a diciembre de 2018.

La auditoría revela que la AEE incumplió con los principios de transparencia y rendición de cuentas establecidos por la Ley 57-2014 de Transformación y Alivio

Energético. Al 10 de diciembre de 2019, la Autoridad no contaba con normas o procedimientos escritos para regir el trámite de la información que por ley se requiere publicar, y no había publicado en su portal 188 contratos y enmiendas por $1,940,566,845 que sí estaban anotados en el Registro de la Oficina del Contralor de Puerto Rico.

Luego de 78 años de haberse constituido la Autoridad de Energía Eléctrica como una corporación pública, la División de Contabilidad no cuenta con un manual de normas y procedimientos de contabilidad.

Además, se observaron deficiencias en el sistema de cuentas en el PREPA Chart Accounts que no se revisa desde el 1989. Estas situaciones impiden mantener información financiera confiable y afecta la toma de decisiones razonables.

La Oficina del Contralor exhorta a que se tome en consideración el impacto y la carga de proyectos de esta envergadura en sus presupuestos. Los proyectos que comprometen los presupuestos presentes y futuros, pueden representar una carga financiera en momentos de crisis fiscal como la que se vive desde la aprobación de leyes que declaran el estado de emergencia fiscal en Puerto Rico desde el 2006.

Ofrecen talleres sobre violencia doméstica y fatiga profesional a policías y personal de cuarteles municipales Por THE STAR Oficina de la Procuradora de las Mujeres (OPM) llevó Lasíaacomo cabo una serie de talleres para la policía municipal, para el personal de los cuarteles municipales, di-

rigidos a orientar sobre los aspectos biopsicosociales de la violencia doméstica, así como sus protocolos de manejo y el síndrome de fatiga profesional, se informó el miércoles.

En la mañana, hubo sobre 90 participantes y en la tarde, se ofrecerá otra sesión. Los ocho municipios que participaron de estos talleres incluyen a cuarteles municipales de Aguadilla, Canóvanas, Cidra, Guaynabo, Juana Díaz, Vega Baja, San Sebastián y Yauco.

“En los últimos diez años, 158 mujeres han sido asesinadas por violencia de género en Puerto Rico. Además, casi el 30 por ciento de las mujeres que han tenido una relación de pareja indican haber sufrido alguna forma de violencia física o sexual por parte de su pareja en algún momento de su vida. La violencia doméstica ha sido reconocida como uno de los problemas sociales y de salud pública más serios que afectan a Puerto Rico”, sostuvo la procuradora de las Mujeres, Lersy Boria Vizcarrondo en comunicación escrita.

La funcionaria también agregó que “las respuestas vio-

lentas contra una persona son una violación a sus derechos humanos y la manifestación de una conducta delictiva. La uniformada y el personal de los cuarteles deben contar con las herramientas necesarias de forma continua para entender la complejidad de la violencia doméstica y proteger a las víctimas”.

Los talleres se llevan a cabo según establece la Ley 592020 para la Educación, Prevención y Manejo de la Violencia Doméstica para los Municipios de Puerto Rico.

Durante los talleres, se discutieron los orígenes de la inequidad hacia la mujer, la definición e impacto de la violencia de género en víctimas sobrevivientes y familiares y cómo sentar las bases para lograr intervenciones efectivas y sensibles fundamentadas en trauma.

También se habló sobre los aspectos de la Ley 2172006 de Protocolo de Manejo de Situaciones de Violencia Doméstica en el Trabajo, y sobre cómo identificar y manejar estas instancias de forma adecuada en nuestro entorno laboral.

Asimismo, se identificaron las señales de la fatiga laboral (burnout en inglés) y sus implicaciones en el trabajo; y se instruyó sobre herramientas de autocuidado para prevenir y manejar la fatiga laboral.

El currículo de educación para instruir sobre la prevención y el manejo de violencia doméstica a los agentes del orden público municipal y al personal que labora en sus cuarteles consta de ocho horas de adiestramientos al año.

Actualmente, la OPM ha ofrecido cuatro horas del total de los talleres por medio de la plataforma TEAMS. A partir del 2021, se ofrecerán en la Academia de la Policía y se trabajarán temas como entrevista a víctimas y testigos, estrategias de investigación y manejo de escenas del delito.

Por otro lado, la procuradora hizo un llamado a los municipios que no han iniciado las gestiones para tomar los talleres. “Estamos esperando por los municipios, que lamentablemente son la mayoría, y a la Federación y la Asociación de Alcaldes para que se comuniquen con nosotros para poder coordinar una nueva fecha. Es importante recordar que la erradicación de la violencia es un asunto de todos”, enfatizó.

Los municipios de Aguas Buenas, Barceloneta, Carolina, Cayey, Fajardo, Guánica, Guayanilla, Lares, Naranjito, Mayagüez, Morovis, Peñuelas, Quebradillas, San Germán, San Lorenzo, Utuado y Vega Alta ya están en proceso de coordinación con la OPM para llevar a cabo los talleres.

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Thursday, October 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Modesto Lacén: Between the philanthropy and the celluloid

By THE STAR STAFF

A

ctor, writer and director Modesto Lacén, with his nonprofit foundation Artocarpus 76, presented his first project, called Centro Sereno, on Wednesday.

Artocarpus 76 takes its name from one of Puerto Rico’s most emblematic trees, the breadfruit tree (panapén), which bears one of the most complete and nutritious fruits.

The foundation will start operations this month virtually with the first project.

Centro Sereno is a multidisciplinary space to accompany, grow and heal. It is focused on three areas: the arts, wellness and cultural events.

The first cycle of arts and well being classes begins Oct. 12 virtually.

According to a written statement, “the mission of the space is to recognize and explore the talent of our community through creativity in order to promote its development and project its renewal.”

Centro Sereno seeks to build, grow and heal, in an effort that will have the leadership of various artists, workshops and experts in the field. The center will offer children, adults and the elderly a variety of workshops from different disciplines for their full human and professional development, in addition to offer-

ing tools for youth to guide their lives in one of the most vulnerable stages of their development. .

“In a project that took us almost two years, the vision we want to provide at Centro Sereno is to develop a community of peace and creativity that is capable of projecting itself as a manager of values in all areas of life,” Lacén said. “We want to highlight the values of equity, diversity and sensitivity. This endeavor was born out of a deep love for our island and the desire to contribute to the creation of healthy, strong and healthy spaces.”

Among courses and teachers at the center are: * Film Script Writing -- Kisha Tikina Burgos * Dance: Commercial Style -- Kiki Rivera * Non-Fiction Literature -- Ana Teresa Toro * Histrionic Poetry of the Artist -- Daniel Irrizary * Theater for Children -And there was no light

* Basic Performance for Adolescents -- Francés Sánchez * Basic Performance and Intensive Adult Cinema Workshop -- Modesto Lacén * Painting for Teenagers and Wine and Paint -- Miguel Vélez * Create Your Own Garden -- Pedro Muñiz López * Pottery -- Yamil Collazo * Basic Photography -- Luis R. Vidal * Film Direction -- Arí Maniel Cruz * Family Yoga -- Juliette Marie * Yoga for Adults -- Oscar Guerrero * Coaching for Auditions for BFA/MFA in Acting -- Luis Sebastián Borges.

In addition to the virtual

courses, Centro Sereno has a studio in Río Grande where face-to-face classes will be offered next year.

Lacén recently hosted the Miss Universe Puerto Rico 2020 special “I Offer My Heart” on WAPA TV. He also has five films to be released in the coming months -- “Tu me manques” with the Argentine actor Oscar Martínez and the Puerto Rican films “La última gira,” “23 horas,” “Mixtape” and “Rémora” -- along with the presentation on the YouTube channel of the short film “3,000” in which Lacén portrays baseball legend Roberto Clemente.

For more information visit www. artocarpus76.com or call 787-709-1075. @Artocarpus 76 on Instagram and Facebook

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

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The San Juan Daily Star

‘The trial of the Chicago 7’ review: They fought the law

Jeremy Strong as the Yippie Jerry Rubin in the docudrama from Aaron Sorkin.

By A.O. SCOTT

A

nyone who has been paying attention to the news recently might conclude that Karl Marx was wrong.

History doesn’t repeat itself, and it’s usually tragedy and farce at the same time.

“The Trial of the Chicago 7,” Aaron Sorkin’s snappy, sloppy reenactment of a famous real-life slice of American political courtroom drama, understands that the somber and the ridiculous have a habit of becoming entwined. (It’s in theaters Friday but will be on Netflix next month.) Some of the film’s unwieldiness, as well as its energy, comes from the way it combines banana-peel gags with lectures on the nutritional importance of potassium.

(That’s a metaphor. The characters like to point out when they’re using metaphors.) There’s a lot of deadly serious stuff in here — about war and peace, justice and racism, democracy and order — and a fair bit of silliness as well, some of it intentional.

It’s possible that the ’60s were really like that. On the other hand, a Sorkin movie rarely has much to do with what anything was really like. This isn’t meant dismissively. Sorkin has never been a realist. His sensibility is rhetorical, theatrical, argumentative. He’s a master of big speeches and sitcom beats, of walk-and-talk dialectics, of earnest mansplaining and liberal wishful thinking.

He gave us “The West Wing” on television and “To Kill a Mockingbird” on Broadway, for goodness’ sake. Show-

manship in the service of high civic purpose is his thing.

Here, he assembles a remarkable collection of performers in what might be described — again, not dismissively — as a Very Special Sober Episode of “Drunk History.” The subject is the federal trial, beginning in September 1969 and stretching into the following year, of eight prominent political radicals. Among them were Tom Hayden, one of the founders of the Students for a Democratic Society, the notorious Yippies Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale, a leader of the Black Panther Party.

The eight were accused of conspiring to cause the riots that had broken out at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. (Seale was dropped from the case before verdicts were reached, leaving seven.) Sorkin grounds the often absurd spectacle of their prosecution — including the erratic behavior of the presiding judge, Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella) — in the violence and paranoia of the times. He starts with the assassinations of the Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in the spring of ’68, flashes back frequently from the trial to the riots, and never loses sight of the relentless death toll in Vietnam.

Reminders of that war help, at least partly, to inoculate “The Trial of the Chicago 7” against the cynical trivialization that so often afflicts pop-cultural recollections of the ’60s. The movie is interested in the politics of the time, as manifested both in the streets and in the corridors of power. An early scene brings the prosecutors (played by

J.C. MacKenzie and Joseph Gordon-Levitt) into the office of John Mitchell (John Doman), Richard Nixon’s newly installed attorney general, who sees the conspiracy charges as a way of taking revenge on both the anti-war movement and his predecessor, Ramsey Clark. (Clark shows up later in the always-welcome person of Michael Keaton.)

For their part, the defendants, while united in opposition to the war, disagree on style, tactics and strategy.

David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch) is an uncompromising pacifist. Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and the head of the Chicago Panthers, Fred Hampton (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), favor more confrontational methods. Hoffman, played as a shaggy jokester with a wayward Boston accent by Sacha Baron Cohen, is frequently at odds with Hayden, a clean-cut avatar of righteousness played by the eminently sober Eddie Redmayne.

That rivalry — the clash of two smart guys who have trouble separating ego from idealism — is the Sorkinian engine of the plot, giving shape and momentum to a sprawling and crowded pageant. The casting is eccentric (and Anglocentric too), but the emphatic playacting gives way to a few moments of subtlety. Many of these come from Mark Rylance as the defense lawyer William Kunstler, an intriguing mixture of pragmatism and inscrutability.

“Succession” fans will be amused to see Jeremy Strong — the anguished, high-strung Kendall Roy — as Rubin, Hoffman’s stoner sidekick and Sorkin’s designated holy fool. When Hayden accuses Hoffman (metaphorically) of trading a prize cow for a handful of magic beans, it’s Rubin who notes that all in all, that turned out not to be such a bad deal.

“The Trial of the Chicago 7” is a mixed bag. While Sorkin draws some of his dialogue from court transcripts, he also exercises the historical dramatist’s prerogative to embellish, streamline and invent. Some of the liberties he takes help to produce a leaner, clearer story, while others — an undercover FBI agent (Caitlin FitzGerald) who tries to honey-trap Rubin; a shot of female protesters burning their bras in Grant Park — serve no useful purpose.

I don’t think, on balance, that this is a very good movie. It’s talky and clumsy, alternating between self-importance and clowning. But it’s also not a movie that can be easily shaken off. Partly this is an accident of timing.

Echoes of 1968 seem to be everywhere in this election year: the appeals to law and order, the rumors of radicals sowing disorder in the streets, the clashes between police and citizens.

“The Trial of the Chicago 7” offers an absorbing account, in some ways alarming and in some ways reassuring, of an earlier moment of polarization and violent conflict. It isn’t just like now, but the analogies are enough to get you thinking about what happens in a democracy when state power confronts popular dissent. A loud, chaotic mess. A tragedy and a farce. And that’s if we’re lucky.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

23

Studies begin to untangle obesity’s role in COVID-19

By KATHERINE J. WU

I

n early April, Edna McCloud woke up to find her hands tied to her hospital bed.

She had spent the past four days on a ventilator in a hospital in St. Louis County, Missouri, thrashing and kicking under sedation as she battled a severe case of COVID-19.

“They told me, ‘You were a real fighter down there,’” recalled McCloud, a 68-year-old African American retiree with a history of diabetes and heart problems. She weighed close to 300 pounds when she caught the coronavirus, which ravaged her lungs and kidneys. Nearly six months later, she feels proud to have pulled through the worst. “They said people with the conditions I have, normally, this goes the other way,” she said.

As rates of obesity continue to climb in the United States, its role in COVID-19 is a thorny scientific question. A flurry of recent studies has shown that people with extra weight are more susceptible than others to severe bouts of disease. And experiments in animals and human cells have demonstrated how excess fat can disrupt the immune system.

But the relationship between obesity and COVID-19 is complex, and many mysteries remain. Excess weight tends to go hand in hand with other medical conditions, like high blood pressure and diabetes, which may by themselves make it harder to fight COVID-19. Obesity also disproportionately affects people who identify as Black or Latino — groups at much higher risk than others of contracting and dying from COVID-19, in large part because of exposure at their workplaces, limited access to medical care and other inequities tied to systemic racism. And people with extra weight must grapple with persistent stigma about their appearance and health, even from doctors, further imperiling their prognosis.

“A new pandemic is now laying itself on top of an ongoing epidemic,” said Dr. Christy Richardson, an endocrinologist at SSM Health in Missouri. Regarding obesity’s effects on infectious disease, she said, “We are still learning, but it’s not difficult to understand how the body can become overwhelmed.”

The correlations between COVID-19 and obesity are worrisome. In one report published last month, researchers found that people with obesity who caught the coronavirus were more than twice as likely to end up in the hospital and nearly 50% more likely to die of COVID-19. Another study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, showed that among nearly 17,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the United States, more than 77% had excess weight or obesity.

Experts said part of obesity’s threat is mechanical: Large amounts of fat, for instance, can compress the lower parts of the lungs, making it harder for them to expand when people breathe in. The blood of people with obesity also seems to be more prone to clotting, plugging up delicate vessels throughout the body and starving tissues of oxygen.

Fat, or adipose tissue, can also send out hormones and other signals that make nearby cells go haywire. “Adipose tissue is very active,” said Rebekah Honce, a virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee and an author on a recent review describing how metabolism intersects with immunity. “It’s not a dormant tissue.”

Elaine Franklin, left, and Edna McCloud, who are sisters and both battled Covid-19 this year, in St. Louis County, Mo., Sept. 24, 2020.

One of fat’s most potent effects appears to involve quelling the body’s initial immune response to the virus, allowing the pathogen to spread unchecked.

Eventually, the body’s immune soldiers get their act together. But this delayed assault might do more harm than good: When late-arriving immune cells and molecules finally rouse themselves into action, they go berserk, driving uncontrolled bouts of inflammation throughout the body.

These aberrant early responses can have severe long-term consequences as well, said Melinda Beck, who studies how nutrition affects immunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The constant inflammation, she said, can wear away at the immune system’s ability to generate a long-lived population of “memory” cells, which store intelligence about past encounters with pathogens.

Similar trends have been noted in the immune systems of elderly patients, who also struggle to marshal effective defenses against pathogens. When obesity enters the picture, Beck said, some of the immune cells found in 30-year-old people “look like those of an 80-year-old.”

These problems could have a big impact on the first coronavirus vaccines, Beck said. If the immune systems of people with obesity are more prone to pathogen amnesia, then they may need different dosages of a vaccine. Some products might not work at all in people carrying extra weight.

Like many other conditions that can exacerbate COVID-19, excess weight does not have a quick fix — especially in areas where access to healthy food and opportunities for exercise are vastly uneven among communities.

“If we don’t address these social underpinnings, I think we’ll continue to see a recurrence of what is happening now,” said Dr. Jennifer Woo Baidal, a pediatric weight management specialist at Columbia University.

In her neighborhood in St. Louis County, where there have been more than 23,000 cases of the coronavirus since March, McCloud has struggled to find fresh, affordable produce at her local grocery store. Availability has plummeted further since the start of the pandemic, she said, and what little is on the shelves is often on the verge of rotting.

A few months after McCloud got sick, her younger sister,

Elaine Franklin, 62, began to experience terrible headaches.

When she spoke to family members, they asked why she sounded so out of breath. “My son said, ‘Mama, you need to go to urgent care,’” Franklin recalled. A test soon revealed that she, too, had caught the coronavirus.

Franklin’s case of COVID-19 was more moderate than her sister’s. But she still deteriorated quickly, to the point where she could no longer reach the bathroom without assistance. “I was so weak, I couldn’t balance myself,” she said.

Her physical symptoms haven’t been the only hardship.

Franklin, who is overweight, said she had been irritated by incessant messaging in news reports blaming illnesses like hers on excess fat.

“The way they were saying it is that because you’re obese and didn’t take care of yourself, you’ll get this disease,” Franklin said. “I feel like that was unfair.”

Even medical professionals show bias when caring for patients with excess weight, said Dr. Benjamin Singer, a pulmonologist at the University of Michigan and an author on a recent review of obesity’s influence on immunity. Studies have shown that doctors tend to be more dismissive of patients with obesity and may brush off worrisome symptoms as irrelevant side effects of their weight. Drug dosages and diagnostic machines are also often incompatible with patients carrying excess weight, making it difficult to tailor treatments. Such interactions can be a powerful disincentive to some of the people who most need care.

“These are not easy conversations,” said Dr. Kanakadurga Singer, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Michigan. (She and Benjamin Singer are married.) Not everyone who weighs more than average is unwell, she said. “It’s more than just the numbers, and it’s not just the weight we should focus on.”

In St. Louis County, McCloud and Franklin have recovered well, although both sisters still grapple with lingering symptoms.

McCloud has occasional fatigue and an intermittent cough. “I can’t talk like I did before,” she said. Franklin’s headaches never disappeared, and her mind now feels constantly clouded by a fog.

Both women have worried about their sons, who also developed COVID-19. Chris McCloud, a teacher, was like his mother put on a ventilator and spent several weeks in the hospital shortly before Edna McCloud fell ill. He was overweight as well.

Franklin suspects she might have contracted the coronavirus from her son Darren Catching, who most likely caught it from a former co-worker. He had recently lost a large amount of weight, Franklin said, and was not hospitalized either, instead recovering at home.

In July, when she was infected, she sought medical attention twice. She had lupus, an autoimmune disease, and worried that she wouldn’t be able to fight off the virus. Thoughts of friends and acquaintances who had died from COVID-19 rushed through her head.

But both times, Franklin was sent home — first from an urgent care facility and then from a hospital emergency room.

She managed to heal on her own, she said. Still, she wonders if her weariness and brain fog might have been prevented by more attentive clinical care. “I’m not a doctor or anything,” she said. “But if I had been in the hospital, maybe it would have been better.”

24

Thursday, October 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

A hopeful forecast: more accurate long-term weather predictions

Torrential rains in Guaruja, Brazil, led to flooding that killed at least 15 people in March. More satellites and improved models could help forecasters make better long-term forecasts.

By SARAH WITMAN

W

hat if you could get an accurate weather report as much as three weeks in advance? In some parts of the world, that could soon be possible.

Right now, forecasters can reliably predict the weather in most parts of the United States up to eight days in advance, according to the American Meteorological Society. In recent years, research has shown that improving technology could make weather forecasts accurate 15 days ahead of time. And recent research published by Falko Judt, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, found that there’s even more unlocked potential in the tropics.

Judt ran a series of simulations using a global weather model. As expected, the model’s ability to make accurate weather predictions dissipated after about two weeks for the polar and middle-latitude regions, which encompass most of the U.S. But for the tropics, the model showed almost no dissipation, even after 20 days. This suggests that forecasters will one day be able to accurately predict tropical weather as much as three weeks ahead of time — and potentially even further in advance.

In general, tropical weather phenomena are subtler and less variable, so they “have intrinsically longer predictability,” Judt said. For example, New York might

have warm weather the day before a blizzard, but the Amazon rainforest is never quite so capricious.

In the Amazon, “you could have a day that rains a lot and then two weeks later a dry spell of 10 days, but the temperature variation will just be a couple of degrees.”

But even if there is a lot of uniformity in tropical weather, that is not the same as predictability.

“A stopped clock is very predictable,” said Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “If a clock stops at five minutes past noon, you can say it’s going to be at five minutes past noon forever, and you’d be right. But we wouldn’t call that a very skillful prediction.”

Weather prediction is challenging in the tropics in part because existing forecasting models aren’t well-suited to their most common weather phenomena.

“In the tropics, most of the weather is in the form of showers and thunderstorms, which are much smaller than a typical weather system in the middle latitudes,” Judt said. “These smaller showers and thunderstorms are more difficult to simulate with our current weather prediction models.”

By the same token, there’s less readily available data to put into these models. The U.S. and other countries in the middle latitudes have hundreds of weather stations. But there are far fewer stations in the tropics

because so much of that territory is covered by oceans.

Also, many tropical countries lack the necessary funding to collect data via weather balloons, planes, drones and other costly devices.

Not being able to accurately predict the weather in the tropics, especially rain, has an outsized impact on the people who live there. Many make their living from farming, Judt said, and “it’s very difficult to plant crops and harvest when you don’t know when it will rain, how much it will rain and how long it will rain for.”

The tropics are also prone to extreme storms where “it just pours for hours and hours,” Judt said. Accurate weather predictions made further in advance would better prepare communities and help prevent property damage, injuries and deaths resulting from flooding.

Judt’s findings, and those of scientists at Penn State University and the University of Munich published in recent years, test the limits of a theory introduced in 1969

by Ed Lorenz, a prolific MIT mathematician and meteorologist. He theorized that tiny disturbances in the atmosphere can build up and have vast impacts over time — a phenomenon now known as the butterfly effect.

This effect, he wrote, seems to ensure that predicting the weather more than two to three weeks ahead of time will always be mathematically impossible.

Scientists today call this roadblock the predictability horizon, a point of no return for weather forecasting.

Anything beyond it is not much better than a random guess.

“Science has painted a fence around what it can do in a very spectacular way,” said Emanuel, who worked alongside Lorenz for more than three decades. No matter how much data you have or how powerful your computers are, he said, eventually your ability to improve “slows down and grinds to a halt.”

Still, things have improved over the past few decades, narrowing the gap between the aspirational and actual predictability of weather. Eugenia Kalnay, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Maryland in College Park who studies the predictability of weather, says the advent of weather satellites has revolutionized forecasting in the tropics.

“In the ’90s, we had almost no satellite observations in the southern hemisphere,” she said. “Since then, the number and quality of satellite observations has increased substantially,” so our ability to make accurate forecasts in the Southern Hemisphere is almost as good as in the Northern Hemisphere.

Additionally, the global weather models that are now in development can simulate showers and thunderstorms, Judt said, whereas existing models cannot. This, coupled with a series of weather satellites set to launch over the next few years, should translate to longer lead times for tropical forecasts.

“We should see an improvement in tropical weather prediction in the next 10 years,” he said.

24 LEGAL NOTICE

Regional.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUSALA DE SAN JUAN. NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYAORIENTAL BANK, MON. Demandante, V.’

FRANCISCO ROVIRA ROLLAN

Demandado CIVIL NUM.: SJ2020CV00315.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: FRANCISCO ROVIRA RULLAN

POR MEDIO del presente edicto se le notifica de la radicación de una demanda en cobro de dinero por la vía ordinaria en la que se alega que usted adeuda a la parte demandante, Oriental Bank, ciertas sumas de dinero, y las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado de este litigio. El demandante, Oriental Bank, ha solicitado que se dicte sentencia en contra suya y que se le ordene pagar las cantidades reclamadas en la demanda. POR EL PRESENTE EDICTO se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva a la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra, y conceder el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. Se le advierte que dentro de los diez (10) días siguientes a la publicación del presente edicto, se le estará enviando a usted por correo certificado con acuse de recibo, una copia del emplazamiento y de la demanda presentada al lugar de su última dirección conocida: 1314 Ave. Wilson Apto. 2, San Juan, PR 00907-2273. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal en San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy día 25 de junio de 2020. Griselda Rodriguez Collado, Sec

@

REVERSE MORTGAGE FUNDING LLC. Demandante vs.

SUCESION ELIU HILARIO REYES RUIZ COMPUESTA POR JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE COMO POSSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS; ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA; CENTRO DE RECAUDACION DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES (CRIM)

Demandados CIVIL NUM. BY2020CV02473.

SOBRE: EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA EMPLAZNIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTPDOS UNIDOS EL ESTPDO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

SubSecretaria.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE MAYAGUEZ.

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Demandante Vs.

PEDRO A. JUSTINIANO RODRÍGUEZ, FULANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandados CIVIL NÚM.: MZ2019CV02245.

SALÓN: SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A) FULANA DE TAL POR SÍ Y EN REPRESENTACIÓN DE LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL A: JOHN DOE Y DE GANANCIALES JANE DOE COMO COMPUESTA POR ÉSTA POSIBLES MIEMBROS Y PEDRO A. JUSTINIANO DESCONOCIDOS DE LA RODRÍGUEZ SUCESION ELIU HILARIO POR LA PRESENTE: Se le notifica que contra usted se ha REYES RUIZ

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al Tribunal su alegación responsiva a la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación de este edicto.

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

Greenspoon Marder, LLP Lcda. Frances L. Asencio-Guido R.U.A. 15,622 TRADE CENTRE SOUTH, SUITE 700 100 WEST CYPRESS CREEK ROAD FORT LAUDERDALE, FL 33309 Telephone: (954) 343 6273 Frances.Asencio@gmlaw.com Expedido bajo mi firma, y sello del Tribunal, en Bayamón, Puerto Rico, hoy 15 de septiembre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional. Yariliz Cintron Cotto,

presentado la Demanda sobre Cobro de Dinero de la cual se acompaña copia. Por la presente se le emplaza a usted y se le requiere para que dentro del término de TREINTA (30) días desde la fecha de la Publicación por Edicto de este Emplazamiento presente su contestación a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https: //unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Mayagüez, P.O. Box 1210, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00681-1210 y notifique a la LCDA. GINA H. FERRER MEDINA, personalmente al Condominio Las Nereidas, Local 1-B, Calle Méndez Vigo esquina Amador Ramírez Silva, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00680; o por correo al Apartado 2342, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 006812342, Teléfonos: (787) 8329620 y (845) 345-3985, Abogada de la parte demandante, apercibiéndose que en caso de no hacerlo así podrá dictarse Sentencia en Rebeldía en contra suya, concediendo el remedio solicitado en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPIDO

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

BAJO MI FIRMA y el Sello del Tribunal hoy 03 de SEPTIEMBRE de 2020. LCDA NORMA G SANTANA IRIZARRY, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. Por: F/ BETSY SANTIAGO GONZALEZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

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

DLJ MORTGAGE CAPITAL, INC.

Parte Demandante Vs.

WANDA PAGÁN MORALES y NANCY ACEVEDO VEGA

Parte Demandada CIVIL NUM. CG2019CV02846.

SOBRE: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR VIA ORDINARIA IN REM. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTOS. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU. EL ESTADO LlBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: WANDA PAGÁN MORALES Y NANCY ACEVEDO VEGA

POR LA PRESENTE se les emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto. Usted deberá radicar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: http://unired.ramajudicial.pr/ sumac/. salvo que se presente por derecho propio. en cuyo caso deberá radicar el original de su contestación ante el Tribunal correspondiente y notifique con copia a los abogados de la parte demandante, Lcda.

Marjaliisa Colon Villanucva. al PO BOX 7970, Ponce. P.R. 00732; Teléfono: 787-8434168. En dicha demanda se tramita un procedimiento de cobro de dinero y ejecución de hipoteca bajo el número mencionado en el epígrafe. Se alega en dicho procedimiento que la parte Demandada incurrió en el incumplimiento del Contrato de Hipoteca, al no poder pagar las mensualidades vencidas correspondientes a los meses de octubre de 2017 , hasta el presente, más los cargos por demora correspondientes.

Además adeuda a la parte demandante las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado en que incurra el tenedor del pagaré en este litigio. De acuerdo con dicho Contrato de Garantía Hipotecaria la parte Demandante declaró vencida la totalidad de la deuda ascendente a la suma de $61,491.37, más intereses

(787) 743-3346

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020 a razón del 6.00°/o anual, así como todos aquellos créditos y sumas que surjan de la faz de la obligación hipotecaria y de la hipoteca que la garantiza, incluyendo la suma pactada para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado. La parte Demandante presentó para su inscripción en el Registro de la Propiedad correspondiente, un A VISO DE PLEITO PENDIENTE (“Lis Pendens”) sobre la propiedad objeto de esta acción cuya propiedad es la siguiente: URBANA: Unidad Residencial cuatro guion C (4-C) del Bloque “E” construida sobre la superficie de la Unidad Residencial cuatro A guion E (4 A-E) que a su vez está construida sobre el solar el solar cuatro A (4A) del bloque “E” de la Urbanización Jardines de San Lorenzo, radicado en el barrio Quemados del término municipal d San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, construida de cemento y bloques de hormigón con un área de construcción cubierta de mil trescientos setenta y nueve punto setecientos setenta y cuatro (1379.764) pies cuadrados equivalente a ciento veinte ocho punto mil ochocientos setenta y cuatro (128.1874) metros cuadrados.

Contiene tres habitaciones dormitorio, sala-comedor, cocina, servicio sanitario y terraza.

Los sistemas sanitarios y de drenaje pluvial de la propiedad son comunes en algunos puntos, de acuerdo a los planos y especificaciones con aquellos provistos para las siguientes unidades colindantes cuatro A guion E (4A-E), cuatro B guion E (4B-E) y cuatro O guion E (4D-E). Es el predio dominante sobre unas servidumbres de acceso y aparcamiento constituidos sobre la solar propiedad de la unidad 4A guion E ( 4A-E).

Inscrita al folio ciento setenta y ocho (178) del tomo doscientos once (211) de San Lorenzo, Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas, sección segunda, finca número once mil cuarenta y uno (11,041). SE LES APERCIBE que de no hacer sus alegaciones responsivas a la demanda dentro del término aquí dispuesto, se les anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Caguas, Puerto Rico. A 22 de septiembre de 2020. Carmen Ana Pereira Ortiz, Secretaria. Ana Lugo Muñoz, SubSecretaria.

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

COOPERATIVA DE

AHORRO Y CRÉDITO DE CABO ROJO Parte Demandante vs

SUCESIÓN NICOMEDES SÁNCHEZ RIVERA, COMPUESTA POR YOLAND SÁNCHEZ RIVERA, LIGIA RIVERA, CARMEN SÁNCHEZ, FULANO DE TAL, SUT. ANO DE TAL, JOHN DOE, RICHARD DOE

Parte Demandada CIVIL NÓM. MZ2020CV00050.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA (VÍA ORDINARIA). EDICTO.

A: LIGIA RIVERA

Se le apercibe que la parte demandante por mediación del Ledo. Rafael Fabre Colón, P.O. Box 277, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00681, Tel. 787-265-0334, ha radicado la acción de epígrafe en su contra. Copia de la demanda, emplazamientos y del presente edicto le ha sido enviado por correo a la última dirección conocida. Pueden ustedes obtener mayor información sobre el asunto revisando los autos en el Tribunal.

Se le apercibe que tiene usted un término de treinta (30) días para radicar contestación a dicha demanda de cobro de dinero y/o cualquier escrito que estime usted conveniente a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal de epígrafe, pero que de no radicarse escrito alguno ante el Tribunal dentro de dicho término, el Tribunal procederá a ventilar el procedimiento sin más citarle ni oírle. Dada en MAYAGUEZ , Puerto Rico, hoy 21 de SEPTIEMBRE de 2020.

LIC. NORMA G. SANTANA IRIZARRY, SECRETARIA GENERAL, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA MUNICIPAL DE AGUADA. POR: F/ZAHIRA RODRIGUEZ SOLER, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

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

COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CRÉDITO DE CABO ROJO Parte Demandante vs

SUCESIÓN NICOMEDES SÁNCHEZ RIVERA, COMPUESTA POR YOLAND SÁNCHEZ

RIVERA, LIGIA RIVERA, CARMEN SÁNCHEZ, FULANO DE TAL, SUT. ANO DE TAL, JOHN DOE, RICHARD DOE

Parte Demandada CIVIL NÓM. MZ2020CV00050.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA (VÍA ORDINARIA). EDICTO.

A: CARMEN SÁNCHEZ

Se le apercibe que la parte demandante por mediación del Ledo. Rafael Fabre Colón, P.O. Box 277, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00681, Tel. 787-265-0334, ha radicado la acción de epígrafe en su contra. Copia de la demanda, emplazamientos y del presente edicto le ha sido enviado por correo a la última dirección conocida. Pueden ustedes obtener mayor información sobre el asunto revisando los autos en el Tribunal.

Se le apercibe que tiene usted un término de treinta (30) días para radicar contestación a dicha demanda de cobro de dinero y/o cualquier escrito que estime usted conveniente a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal de epígrafe, pero que de no radicarse escrito alguno ante el Tribunal dentro de dicho término, el Tribunal procederá a ventilar el procedimiento sin más citarle ni oírle. Dada en MAYAGUEZ , Puerto Rico, hoy 21 de SEPTIEMBRE de 2020.

LIC. NORMA G. SANTANA IRIZARRY, SECRETARIA GENERAL, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA MUNICIPAL DE AGUADA. POR: F/ZAHIRA RODRIGUEZ SOLER, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

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

COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CRÉDITO DE CABO ROJO Parte Demandante vs

SUCESIÓN NICOMEDES SÁNCHEZ RIVERA, COMPUESTA POR YOLAND SÁNCHEZ RIVERA, LIGIA RIVERA, CARMEN SÁNCHEZ, FULANO DE TAL, SUT. ANO DE TAL, JOHN DOE, RICHARD DOE

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA (VÍA ORDINARIA). EDICTO.

A: YOLANDA SÁNCHEZ RIVERA

Se le apercibe que la parte demandante por mediación del Ledo. Rafael Fabre Colón, P.O. Box 277, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00681, Tel. 787-265-0334, ha radicado la acción de epígrafe en su contra. Copia de la demanda, emplazamientos y del presente edicto le ha sido enviado por correo a la última dirección conocida. Pueden ustedes obtener mayor información sobre el asunto revisando los autos en el Tribunal.

Se le apercibe que tiene usted un término de treinta (30) días para radicar contestación a dicha demanda de cobro de dinero y/o cualquier escrito que estime usted conveniente a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal de epígrafe, pero que de no radicarse escrito alguno ante el Tribunal dentro de dicho término, el Tribunal procederá a ventilar el procedimiento sin más citarle ni oírle. Dada en MAYAGUEZ , Puerto Rico, hoy 21 de SEPTIEMBRE de 2020.

LIC. NORMA G. SANTANA IRIZARRY, SECRETARIA GENERAL, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA MUNICIPAL DE AGUADA. POR: F/ZAHIRA RODRIGUEZ SOLER, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

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

BAUTISTA CAYMAN ASSET COMPANY, DEMANDANTE; V.

HECTOR SERRANO SANTIAGO; MERCEDES OYOLA CINTRÓN Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

DEMANDADA. CIVIL NUM. BY2020CV02234 (701). SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE PRENDA E HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. EMPLAZAMTENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Parte Demandada CIVIL NÓM. MZ2020CV00050. DE PUERTO RICO.

The San Juan Daily Star

A: Héctor Serrano Santiago, Mercedes Oyola Cintrón y la Sociedad Legal de Gananciales compuesta por ambos.

Dirección Conocida: Urb. Ciudad Jardín 3, 176 Calle Jacaranda Toa Alta, PR 00953-4868.

Por la presente se les notifica que se ha radicado en su contra una Demanda a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramaiudicial.pr. Se les emplaza y requiere para que notifiquen a: Ferraiuoli LLC Looking Forward Lcda. Elizabeth Villagrasa-Flores RUA Núm.: 16,877 PO Box 195168 SanJuan, PR 00919-5168 Tel.: 787-766-7000 / Fax: 787-766-7001 E-mail: evillagrasa@ferraiuoli.com Abogados de la Parte Demandante, con copia de respuesta a la Demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto y radicar el original de dicha contestación en este Tribunal en donde podrá enterarse de su contenido. Si dejare de hacerlo, podrá anotársele la rebeldía y se le dictará sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, hoy 24 de septiembre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA L SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional. Sandra I. Cruz Vázquez, Secretaria Servicios a Sala.

Thursday, October 1, 2020

gación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramaiudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Este caso trata sobre Incumplimiento de Contrato, Cobro de Dinero y Reposesión en que la parte demandante solicita que se condene a los demandados a pagar al 1 de julio de 2020 la cantidad de $26,464.38 de principal, más $1,982.48 de intereses los cuales se continúan acumulándose hasta el saldo total de la deuda, más $408.44 de cargos los cuales continúan acumulándose hasta el saldo total de la deuda, más una suma equivalente al 5% del total adeudado para honorarios de abogados según pactado.

Se le apercibe que si dejare de hacerlo, se dictará contra usted sentencia en rebeldía, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle.

Lcda. Carolina M. Mejía Lugo, Número del Tribunal Supremo 19857 221 Ponce de León Ave., Suite 900, San Juan, PR 00917, Teléfono: (787) 296-9500, Correo Electrónico: cmejia@lvprlaw.com EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y Sello del Tribunal, hoy 21 de septiembre de 2020.

Carmen Ana Pereira Ortiz, Secretario(a). Ana Lugo Hernandez, Sub-Secretario(a).

LEGAL NOTICE

MARJALIISA COLON VILLANUEVA

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 25 de septiembre de 2020, , este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 25 de septiembre de 2020. En HUMACAO, Puerto Rico, el 25 de septiembre de 2020. DOMINGA GOMEZ FUSTER, Secretaria Regional. F/ILEANETTE RIVAS SERRANO, Sec Auxiliar.

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

PR RECOVERY AND

Estado Libre Asociado de DEVELOPMENT JV, LLC LEGAL NOTICE Demandante Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENEESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO RAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de RICARDO IVAN DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- Primera Instancia Sala Superior DAVILA FRANQUI NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA de HUMACAO. Demandado(a) SALA SUPERIOR DE CACivil: SJ2019CV11115 . SALA: WILMINGTON SAVING GUAS. FUND SOCIETY, FSB, 901. Sobre: COBRO DE DINEFIRSTBANK d/b/a CHRISTIANA TRUST, RO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENPUERTO RICO TENCIA POR EDICTO. as indenture trustee, Demandante v.

A: RICARDO IVAN

JOANN M. RIVERA RIVERA; ANGEL D. GARCIA ROSA

for the CSMC 2015· PR1 TRUST, MORTGAGE BACKED NOTES, SERIE 2015-PR1

Demandados Demandante CIVIL NUM. CG2020CV01528.

Sobre: INCUMPLIMIENTO DE POPULAR MORTGAGE, CONTRATO; COBRO DE DIINC.; JOHN DOE y NERO Y REPOSESION. EMRICHARD ROE como PLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. posibles tenedores ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE desconocidos LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL Demandado(a) ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Civil: HU2020CV00739. Sobre: DE PUERTO RICO. CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICAA: JOANN M. CIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR RIVERA RIVERA EDICTO.

LC 11 Calle 29, Villa del Rey, 5ta Sección, Caguas, Puerto Rico 00727 DE: FIRSTBANK PUERTO RICO

Se le emplaza y requiere que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto.

Usted deberá presentar su ale-

A: POPULAR MORTGAGE, INC.; JOHN DOE y RICHARD ROE como posibles tenedores desconocidos, DIRECCION DESCONOCIDA: SE DESCONOCE DIRECCION; P/C LIC.

DAVILA FRANQUI

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 13 de AGOSTO de 2020, , este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publi-

25

A la parte co-demandada: FULANO Y FULANA Demandado(a) DE TAL COMO Civil: SJ2020CV03722. Sala: POSIBLES HEREDEROS 903. Sobre: CANCELACION DESCONOCIDOS DE DE PAGARE EXTRAVIADO. LA SUCESIÓN DE NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENNICHOLAS LOPEZ CIA POR EDICTO. VELEZ T/C/C N~CHOLAS A: -MERRILL LYNCH CREDIT CORPORATION; LOPEZ, A LA SIGUIENTE LEGAL NOTICE DIRECCION : FISICA: JOHN DOE Y RICHARD Estado Libre Asociado de SR 477 KM 2.4 INT ROE COMO POSIBLES Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENESECTOR NAYO MENDEZ TENEDORES DEL RAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de BARRIO AIBONITO SAN PAGARE EXTRAVIADO Primera Instancia Sala Superior EL SECRETARIO(A) que susSEBASTIAN, PR 00685; de CAROLINA. le notifica a usted que 25 Y POSTAL: PO BOX LIME RESIDENTIAL LTD cribe de septiembre de 2020 , este Demandante 7004 BUZON 246 SAN Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, BANCO BILBAO VIZCAYA Sentencia Parcial o Resolución SEBASTIAN, PR 00685ARGENTARIA PUERTO en este caso, que ha sido debi- 9004; PO BOX 7004 SAN RICO ahora ORIENTAL damente registrada y archivada SEBASTIAN, PR 00685en autos donde podrá usted enBANK; JOHN DOE Y 9004. detalladamente de los Por la presente se le(s) notifica RICHARD ROE como terarse términos de la misma. Esta noque se ha radicado en la Secreposibles tificación se publicará una sola cación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 25 de septiembre de 2020. En SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, el 25 de septiembre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria Regional. F/MARTHA ALMODOVAR CABRERA, Sec Auxiliar.

tenedores desconocidos Demandado(a) Civil: CA2020CV01632 (406) .

SALA: 901. Sobre: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE como posibles tenedores desconocidos

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 25 de septiembre de 2020, , este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 25 de septiembre de 2020. En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 25 de septiembre de 2020. MARILYN APONTE RODRIGUEZ, Secretaria Regional. JANNETTE RAMIREZ BERNARD, Sec Auxiliar.

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

LORENZO IRIZARRY COLON Y MAGDALENA ARANA COLON Demandante

MERRILL LYNCH CREDIT

CORPORATION; JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE

vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 25 de septiembre de 2020. En SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, el 25 de septiembre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria. F/MILDRED J. FRANCO REVENTOS, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO DEMANDANTE vs.

LA SUCESIÓN DE NICHOLAS LOPEZ VELEZ T/C/C NICHOLAS LOPEZ COMPUESTA POR FULANO Y FULANA DE TAL COMO POSIBLES MIEMBROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESIÓN; CENTRO DE RECAUDACIÓN DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES (CRIM)

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: SS2020CV00344.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA (VÍA ORDINARIA). EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO Y MANDAMIENTO DE INTERPELACION.

taría de este Tribunal una Demanda Enmendada en Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la vía ordinaria en contra de la Sucesión de Nicholas López Vélez tic/e Nicholas López, por razón de no haber cumplido con los pagos mensuales según pactados, adeuda a la parte demandante la suma de $89,777.68 por concepto de principal, desde el lro de febrero de 2020, más intereses al tipo pactado de 3.1/2% anual que continúan acumulándose hasta el pago total de la obligación. Además La Sucesión de Nicholas López Vélez t/c/c Nicholas López adeuda a la parte demandante los cargos por demora equivalentes a 4.00% de la suma de aquellos pagos con atrasos en exceso de 15 días calendarios de la fecha de vencimiento; los créditos accesorios y adelantos hechos en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca; y las costas, gastos y honorarios de abo gado equivalentes a $9,768.60. Además La Sucesión de Nicholas López Vélez tic/e Nicholas López se comprometió a pagar una suma equivalente a $9,768.60 para cubrir cualquier otro adelanto que se haga en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca y una suma equivalente a $9,768.60 para cubrir intereses en adición a los garantizados por ley y cualquiera otros adelantos que se hagan en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca número 37, otorgada en Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, el día 10 de diciembre de 2015, ante el notario José Manuel Alvarez Allende, de la finca número 15,707, inscrita al Folio 147 del Tomo 298 de San Sebastián, Registro de la Propiedad de San Sebastián. Por razón de dicho incumplimiento, y al amparo del derecho que le confiere el Pagaré, el demandante ha declarado tales sumas vencidas, líquidas y exigibles en su totalidad. Este Tribunal ha ordenado que se le(s) cite a usted(es) por edicto que se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general. Quedan emplazados y notificados de que

en este Tribunal se ha radicado una demanda enmendada en su contra. Se les ordena a que dentro del término de treinta (30) días, a partir de la notificación de la presente Orden, acepten o repudien la participación que les corresponda en la herencia de Nicholas López Vélez t/c/c Nicholas López. Los co-demandados miembros de la Sucesión de Nicholas López Vélez t/c/c Nicholas López se incluyen en la demanda enmendada ya que como herederos responden por las cargas de la herencia según lo dispuesto en Nuestro Ordenamiento Juridico. Se les apercibe y notifica que, de no expresarse dentro de ese término de 30 días en tomo a su aceptación o repudiación de herencia, la herencia se tendrá por aceptada. También se les apercibe que luego del transcurso del termino de 30 días antes señalado contados a partir de la fecha de la notificación de la presente Orden, se presumirá que han aceptado la herencia del causante y, por consiguiente, responden por las cargas de dicha herencia conforme el Articulo 959 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. 2785. Se ordena a la parte demandante a que, en vista de que la sucesión de Nicholas López Vélez t/c/c Nicholas López, se incluye a los herederos y herederos desconocidos de Nicholas López Vélez t/c/c Nicholas López denominados Fulano y Fulana De Tal, 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. Se le(s) emplaza y requiere que dentro de los sesenta (60) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto excluyendo el día de la publicación de este edicto conteste(n) la demanda radicando el original de la contestación en este Tribunal y enviando copia de la Contestación de la Demanda a las oficinas de CARDONA & MALDONADO LA W OFFICES, P.S.C. ATENCIÓN al Ledo. Duncan Maldonado Ejarque, P.O. Box 366221, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936-6221; Tel (787) 622-7000, Fax (787) 625- 7001, Abogado de la Parte Demandante. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// unired.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(s) advierte que si dejare(n) de contestar la Demanda en el período de tiempo antes mencionado, podrá dictarse contra usted(es) Sentencia en Rebeldía, concediéndose el remedio solicitado sin más citarle(s) ni oirle(s). EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y con el Sello del Tribunal.

DADA hoy 29 de SEPTIEMBRE de 2020, en San Sebastián,

Puerto Rico. SARAHI REYES PEREZ, Secretaria. IVELISSE ROBLES MATHEWS, Sec Aux I.

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

FIRSTBANK PUERTO RICO Demandante v.

CARLOS O. ROLON RODRIGUEZ

Demandado CIVIL NUM. PO2020CV01107 (601). Sobre: INCUMPLIMIENTO DE CONTRATO; COBRO DE DINERO Y REPOSESION. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: CARLOS O. ROLON RODRIGUEZ 170 CALLE REINA, PONCE, PUERTO RICO 00730 DE: FIRSTBANK PUERTO RICO

Se le emplaza y requiere que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto.

Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramaiudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Este caso trata sobre Incumplimiento de Contrato, Cobro de Dinero y Reposesión en que la parte demandante solicita que se condene a la parte demandada a pagar al 23 de julio de 2020 las siguientes cantidades: $26,926.61 de principal, más $3,288.67 de intereses los cuales continúan acumulándose hasta el total y completo pago de la deuda, más $498.60 de cargos los cuales se continúan acumulándose hasta el total y completo pago de la deuda, y más una suma equivalente al 5% del total adeudado para honorarios de abogados según pactado. Se le apercibe que, si dejare de hacerlo, se dictará contra usted sentencia en rebeldía, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle.

Lcda. Carolina M. Mejía Lugo, Número del Tribunal Supremo 19857 221 Ponce de León Ave., Suite 900, San Juan, PR 00917, Teléfono: (787) 296-9500, Correo Electrónico: cmejia@lvprlaw.com EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y Sello del Tribunal, hoy 15 de septiembre de 2020. LUZ MAYRA CARABALLO GARCIA, Secretario(a). GLORIBEE MORALES MORENO, Secretaria Aux. del Tribunal I.

26

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

A hotel shows the French Open is another sports bubble that isn’t

By KAREN CROUSE

T

he lobby was nearly empty at the Pullman Paris Tour Eiffel when American Coco Gauff breezed through the front door with her parents Sunday after her firstround victory at the French Open. It was approaching 10 p.m., the witching hour when the hotel’s restaurant, like those throughout the city, is required to close in compliance with restrictions imposed because of the countrywide rise in coronavirus cases.

Situated at the base of the Eiffel Tower, near the Seine, the hotel has become for this Grand Slam tournament part of what organizers call its bubble, a term that has been casually embraced throughout sports for the exceedingly difficult goal of a controlled environment meant to prevent the spread of the virus. Yet unlike during the recent U.S. Open in New York, the tennis biosphere in Paris is also welcoming outsiders — people who did not have to be tested for the virus upon arrival and who will not need to take tests or follow any of the tournament’s protocols during their stay.

At the Pullman, nearly half of the 430 rooms, with nightly rates starting at $335, have been made available to guests like the American Airlines captain who shared air and space with the players before piloting a Boeing 777 back to Dallas on Monday.

Over the weekend, the outside guests included this reporter, who checked in for one night to observe how the protocol in place to protect the players worked.

What I found was a mixed bag. Security guards patrolled the lobby to keep traffic flowing away from players, and segregated dining areas were clearly defined and defended. The protection sagged as soon as I entered the cramped elevators, which I shared with players and rode to and from my assigned room. It was situated on the same floor as the players’ lounge, where I crossed paths with a few stragglers departing after closing time.

For those who oversee tennis, golf and other college and professional sports entities, the protective plans designed to satisfy local health officials often look very different when put into practice.

“It’s not a bubble,” contended American Sam Querrey, who said a more accurate term would be “a controlled environment.”

To create the perfect impermeable pod,

he added, would require a megaresort large enough to house players, support staff, tournament officials and hotel staff — everybody likely to come in contact with anybody whose office for the next two weeks is Roland Garros.

“So it’s actually impossible, I think, to make a true, 100 percent bubble where no one can come in and out,” Querrey said after his first-round loss Tuesday to Andrey Rublev.

It is certainly the case here, where the commingling of players whose presence is predicated on passing multiple virus tests with potentially infected members of the public in a virus hot spot gives new meaning to the Saturday night mixer.

Sunday at the Pullman might have been serene, but Britain’s top-ranked player, Dan Evans, was discomfited by what he observed the day before in one of the busier sections of the city.

“There was a lot of people in our hotel,” he said after his five-set loss to Kei Nishikori in the opening round. “For me, that’s not what I want to see in this situation, personally. If we’re not allowed to leave, then we shouldn’t be seeing the public in the hotel.”

Instead of consensus, leaders in tennis have conflicting agendas. Given that the French Open is its main source of funding, the French Tennis Federation was desperate to hold the event, to collect the broadcast rights revenue and salvage some ticket sales.

The federation negotiated a deal with the Pullman, as well as a second hotel nearby, to house players and their support staff.

But it chose not to shoulder the cost of reserving all of the rooms to assure a Tupperware-tight perimeter.

Given that the Pullman has struggled to fill more than 60 rooms on an average nightly basis since its June reopening, management had no choice, a hotel spokesman explained, but to continue taking reservations during the French Open. To accommodate everyone, extra measures, such as the different dining areas, have been instituted to separate the players from the others like cottons and wools in the wash.

There is no such division for the hotel employees, including the person on the breakfast shift in the public restaurant who was serving guests from outside the tennis bubble a day after waiting on Rafael Nadal in the players’ separate dining area a floor

A fan approaches Pablo Carreño Busta for a selfie outside the Pullman Paris Tour Eiffel, one of the hotels where players are staying during the French Open. below. Nadal, the defending men’s champion, looms large in the lobby, where an enormous video screen loops highlights from last year’s men’s and women’s finals.

To walk into the lobby as a scene flashes on the screen of Nadal surrounded by admirers in a tight Philippe-Chatrier corridor with ball kids squeezed in on either side of him is to be hit with the reality of how far this year’s tournament has strayed from normal.

“It’s not easy to be stuck in the bubble,” the Canadian Vasek Pospisil said, adding: “You can’t even get fresh air. But it is what it is.”

If Gauff was famished Sunday night after her first-round upset of Johanna Konta, she could have grabbed a late-night snack at the players-only dining area, but she could not have gained access to any of the popular spots that serve the crepes and croissants that feed her love of Paris, since that would have meant mingling with those outside the bubble.

The restrictions make sense on paper, but the moment players interact with guests who have not been tested — or in my case, who were tested but were free to stray into potential hot spots across the city — the integrity of the environment is compromised.

Similar circumstances play out in the tournament’s media setup, as players sit for interviews on tight sets with broadcasters that have paid millions to televise the tournament but yet do not socially distance or wear masks while they talk.

The players aren’t blind. They can see the gaps in the French federation’s virus defense.

“I’m a little bit nervous about the health situation,” said the former women’s world No. 1 Victoria Azarenka, a two-time major winner.

Azarenka stayed at a private house during the U.S. Open and paid for security to monitor her movements to ensure that she honored the quarantine when she was not practicing or playing. So did Serena Williams, another former world No. 1, whose plans to avoid the hotel scene in Paris by staying at an apartment that she owns in the city were thwarted by French officials. Other players who live in Paris were also forced to stay in one of the hotels to play.

Like Britain’s Evans, Williams failed to see the logic in not allowing the players out of the bubble while people who had not been tested for the virus were essentially being let in.

She may not have agreed with the mandate, but the alternative was even less appealing: to pass up a major she has won three times when she is one year from age 40 and one title from Margaret Court’s record of 24 Grand Slam singles championships.

“I guess it’s a must,” said Williams, who added that she has created her own “personal bubble” and is doing everything she can think of to make it impenetrable.

“It definitely beats staying at home,” she said.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

27

FIFA plans to order release of players over clubs’ objections

By TARIQ PANJA

A

fter weeks of indecision and discussion, FIFA is planning to order soccer clubs to release players who have been called up for World Cup qualification games next week, a move that is likely to lead to a furious backlash from teams, leagues and player unions fearful of the risks of international travel during the coronavirus pandemic.

The FIFA demand will come after weeks of unsuccessful talks to find a compromise that addresses concerns about committing players to intercontinental travel amid a global rise in virus cases, and will apply most notably to South American national teams eager to recall their overseas-based players for the first round of qualifying matches for the 2022 World Cup. In a meeting last week, an alliance of leagues, Europe’s top club association and the global players union FIFPro pressed FIFA to relax its rules on player release for this month’s games, which will take place Oct. 8 through Oct. 13.

FIFA, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, plans to accede to demands that players not be compelled to play in exhibition or friendly matches, but it will enforce release requirements for the first round of South America’s World Cup qualification games and for matches in Europe’s Nations League. The decision will require clubs to release dozens of Europeanand North American-based athletes as soon as this weekend for what their teams and unions argue are risky trips that could force them — because of quarantine rules — to miss club games once they return.

The dispute also could set the scene for a major confrontation between FIFA and the wealthy clubs that employ the world’s best players. Clubs and leagues have long chafed about having little say over the release for national team action of players on whom they spend millions of dollars to employ.

Major League Soccer and some of its teams on Friday became the first group to write to federations in South

America to say they would not release players for the games, saying quarantine requirements in the United States and concerns about testing procedures elsewhere meant they were within their rights to block requests for players to join their national teams.

“While we understand that players and staff will undergo testing and screening, we do not believe it is medically possible to determine the COVID-19 status of the player’s teammates, coaches and technical staff given the timing of the travel, training and match dates,” read one of the letters from MLS reviewed by The New York Times. In it, the league said it “was not prepared to release” the player, Paraguay’s Alejandro Romero, who is known as Kaku.

CONMEBOL, the regional body for South American soccer, wrote to FIFA that same day, urging it to enforce its rules. A letter signed by its president, Alejandro Domínguez, insisted that any failure to do so would impact on the sporting integrity of its qualification campaign. In the letter, Domínguez demanded that FIFA issue sanctions for any breach.

Under its laws, FIFA can bar a player from playing club soccer for five days after the end of the international release window if a legitimate request is ignored. It also can open disciplinary procedures against the player‘s club, which would typically result in a fine. The head of the global players union said FIFA’s decision would push players into an untenable position next week, forcing them either to set aside their personal health concerns or risk punishment.

“The reality is we are in the middle of a pandemic, and the prospect that a player could be sanctioned for taking a decision based on his consideration of what is safe for them is completely wrong,” said Jonas Baer-Hoffmann, the general secretary of FIFPro, a global players union. FIFPro, along with groups like the World Leagues Forum and the European Club Association, a lobby group for top teams in Europe, had been in talks with FIFA about the October window.

In the past, players and clubs have

Lionel Messi of Argentina and Luis Suárez of Uruguay are among the European-based players who have been called up for next month’s World Cup qualifiers in South America. skirted the release rules by claiming minor injuries just before an international window. Many now expect a rash of such diagnoses over the next week.

A study by FIFPro showed the biggest impact of the FIFA rule would be borne by teams in North America and Europe. In all but one case — that of Bolivia — the majority of players on South American national team rosters are based overseas. Once FIFA issues its ruling, the first players will be required to travel starting Sunday, though there are no uniform protocols in place to safeguard their health.

Current proposals being considered by FIFA for the October games will require a minimum test turnaround of 72 hours. That is looser than the 48-hour requirement it had for games played in Europe in September, and could expose players to greater risks of contracting the virus while they wait for results.

And while FIFA is moving to enforce its rules for the World Cup qualifiers, it will simultaneously ease the obligation for exhibition games. That decision,

while welcomed, has led to confusion about the “health first” mantra FIFA has repeated throughout the pandemic; critics of the strict adherence to the rule for qualifiers noted that the risks of contracting the virus remain unchanged regardless of the stakes of the match.

“There are players that will want to play if they feel safe — we are not saying they should be banned,” Baer-Hoffmann said. “But we are saying they should be safe when they do so.”

The global pandemic has already upended the soccer calendar, forcing adjustments to schedules and postponements of both World Cup qualifiers and international and regional championships. But South America has remained resolute, insisting its games take place.

Failure to do so could result in the loss of millions of dollars in television revenue for the continent’s national soccer federations, but players are already feeling the consequences. A recent outbreak among players on Brazil’s top team, Flamengo, led to 16 players being forced out of action and placed in isolation.

28

Thursday, October 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

With his star fading, Aaron Rodgers flips the script

By MIKE TANIER

G

reen Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers has a reputation as someone who always wishes to speak to the manager.

To the public, he is the beer snob who turns up his nose at all 500 brewpub taps, the fault-finding coworker whose arrival prompts everyone to politely excuse themselves from the break room with their lunches half-eaten. No pass route is ever run precisely enough for Rodgers, no game plan creative enough for his talents, and dissatisfaction radiates from him with the passive-aggressive fury of a million failed marriages.

Nevertheless, Rodgers’ 2020 season is off to an excellent start. The Packers are 3-0 after a 37-30 victory in Sunday night’s duel with Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints. Rodgers is tied for third in the NFL with nine touchdown passes, ranks sixth with 887 passing yards and third with a 121.1 efficiency rating.

Aaron Rodgers said he poured four fingers of tequila to help digest the news that the Packers drafted a quarterback His success should be unsurprising in April. His on-field response has been nine touchdowns, 887 passing yards and a 3-0 record. for an eight-time Pro Bowl selection and former Super Bowl champion, except that 2020 was supposed to be the year feuded with McCarthy. if his game-day breakfast was laced with distributing short tosses while waiting for that the perpetually disgruntled 36-yeBy the time McCarthy was fired du- peyote, posed no immediate threat to ideal opportunities to unleash his (still ar-old Rodgers earned his comeuppan- ring a 6-9-1 Packers season in 2018, Rod- Rodgers’ starting job. But Love’s arrival magnificent) deep ball. ce at the hand of a rookie heir apparent, gers had established a reputation as an sent an obvious signal that the franchise Perhaps Rodgers has become a moJordan Love. aging action hero who could no longer was weary of Rodgers’ declining produ- del employee out of sheer spite, though So much for that storyline. do many of his own stunts but still de- ction, huge salary and slow-boil hostility, if Rodgers were truly motivated by spite, Much of Rodgers’ dyspeptic repu- manded script and casting approval; the probably in reverse order. he might have conquered the world by tation was earned in the years that fol- Packers, by extension, had fallen from Rodgers signaled back in a July inter- now. Perhaps it took a rookie’s arrival lowed the Packers’ Super Bowl victory perennial contenders to a straight-to-stre- view with The Ringer: He said he pou- to persuade both sides — Rodgers and in the 2010 season and his MVP Awards aming “Taken” sequel. red himself four fingers of tequila when the coaching staff — to work things out in 2011 and 2014. He then fell into increMatt LaFleur became the Packers’ he learned the Packers selected Love, for the sake of a Super Bowl instead of mental decline. Rodgers missed portions coach for the 2019 season and installed offered an exhaustive list of rookie wide plunging the team into free agency and of three seasons with shoulder and knee a variation on the trendy offense that receivers he would have preferred and a rebuilding era. Or, just maybe, Rodinjuries. propelled the Los Angeles Rams to the generally sounded like someone venting gers’ churlish reputation is somewhat His favorite receivers faded, most previous season’s Super Bowl: heavy about a spouse’s text messages to the au overblown, as were observations about of their replacements were less accom- on balanced rushing and tightly scripted pair. his deteriorating skills. plished and his former coach Mike Mc- passing, light on quarterback guitar soWhatever the cause of Rodgers’ reIn the wake of so much melodrama, Carthy’s game plans shrank to the size los. The Packers went 13-3 and reached this Packers season was expected to be surgence, it has caught NFL talk-show of a children’s menu. Rodgers’ statistical the NFC championship game, but Rod- part “All About Eve” and part “Who’s dramatists without a narrative arc for excellence eroded, but his salary kept in- gers produced his second-lowest effi- Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” with a dash him. He is not yet a venerable warrior creasing — he signed a reported four-ye- ciency rating as a starter and appeared of “Sunset Boulevard.” But Rodgers has like Brees or Tom Brady. He’s certainly ar, $134 million extension in the 2018 as enthusiastic when executing LaFleur’s proved that he is still ready for his clo- not a young hero like Mahomes or Laoffseason — trapping the Packers in a intricate play designs as he would be to se-up. mar Jackson. He never fell far enough for cycle of diminishing returns.

He is also playing nicely with others: comeback player of the year redemption scrub the locker room showers.

Rodgers wasn’t shy about expressing The friction between Rodgers and With his favorite receiver, Davante and he won too many accolades to join his disenchantment. On the field, he the organization appeared to reach a Adams, hobbled, Rodgers has been con- Russell Wilson on a quest for validation. scrambled and gestured to receivers like tipping point when the Packers traded up necting with his secondary targets inste- And he refuses to play the role of arroa sandlot quarterback and scowled at to select Love from Utah State in the first ad of heaving the ball out of bounds and gant heel as cast. He is just a future Hall his coaches when he did not like a play round of April’s draft. Love, who mixed lamenting his lack of weapons in post- of Famer on the inside track toward a recall. Off the field, he publicly grumbled Patrick Mahomes-like collegiate high- game interviews. Rodgers is even opera- turn to the Super Bowl. about the team’s decisions and privately lights with stretches where he played as ting comfortably within LaFleur’s system, Ho hum.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 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)

Shouting to get what you want isn’t going to work when you are up against people who are determined to do the opposite. If you sense someone is about to object to your suggestions, find another way to put your views across. You can be persuasive in subtle ways if you try.

Taurus

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 1, 2020

(April 21-May 21)

A friend or neighbour who is feeling down is taking up a lot of your time. You want to help them but you have to start thinking about your own health. Their company is pulling you down when what they are going through preys on your mind and colours your thinking. Start limiting the time you spend together.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Seeing someone flirt with your partner without either of them realising you are watching will confuse you. You might feel their behaviour isn’t as innocent as it looks. If you bring this up in conversation they won’t understand why you’re making such a big issue over it. You feel they’re hiding something. Trust your instincts.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

A job you used to enjoy is now becoming quite a chore. You are growing bored with tasks that once stimulated you. This is a sign you are ready for a change. There’s something exciting in a challenge that is presented to you later today. This is your chance to break out of a rut.

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

You seem to have no choice but to take on tasks you don’t normally do. A colleague’s long absenteeism is causing problems in the workplace. You understand they can’t help being ill but when you’re asked to do jobs you’ve never done before, this is slowing down your progress in other areas.

You are ready now for one of the biggest challenges you have ever faced. It is through having been able to help others achieve their goals that you realise you have it in you to go far. The gratitude being shown for your support and encouragement will be sincere and will inspire you to go after new aims of your own.

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

A partner is in two minds about continuing with a project you started together. You can’t work out why they aren’t enjoying this as much as they used to. You want to make the most of the opportunities this is bringing your way and it may be that you will have to continue without them.

You can’t help it but your imagination will fill in the gaps when a friend or partner is saying very little. You had hoped to share a meaningful conversation but they aren’t being very cooperative. This leaves you none the wiser and you had wanted to know their thoughts and feelings on an important issue.

Leo

Aquarius

(July 24-Aug 23)

You’ve been so busy lately that you’ve missed a lot of what has been going on around you.

Something you overhear makes you realise a situation you had been vaguely aware of was more eventful than a friend made it out to be.

You want to know more and you want to know why you weren’t told the full story.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Avoid a confrontation of wills in the workplace. The moment you sense someone getting antagonistic and awkward, take a step back.

Go with an inspiration to work towards your personal goals. Some good news will confirm you have chosen the right path. An offer or opportunity will be like a dream come true.

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

As much as you are tempted, don’t try to push events along. You’re eager to receive news you have been waiting for, for some time. If events go as you are hoping this will mean important changes ahead. You are dreading another delay but this is a situation where you need to be patient. It is not a time for haste or impetuosity.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

Bite your lips if a housemate accuses you of being lazy. Getting defensive will only add to the tension that’s already in your household.

Quietly do what you have to do and if that’s not enough, they are the one with the problem. A website you visit regularly will be inaccessible which is frustrating when you had wanted to visit this site for a specific reason.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Thursday, October 1, 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, October 1, 2020

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