Tuesday Oct 13, 2020

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

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Pence’s Fly According to ‘SNL’ P20

Delgado Says He’ll Cancel LUMA-PREPA Deal If He Wins

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PDP Candidate Rips CVM Gov’t Plan Focuses on Decolonization, House Speaker for Charging Up to $3 Per Page Greater Use of Technology, Sustainable Economy to Access Public Info P5 P4

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

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October 13, 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.

UPR’s Medical Sciences Campus lands $15 million NIH grant

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he Medical Sciences Campus (RCM by its Spanish initials) of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) announced Monday that the RCM has been awarded a federal grant for $15 million to establish a resource project called the Hispanic Alliance for Clinical & Translational Research-The ALLIANCE. “The ALLIANCE award replaces the grant that the Campus previously had with the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) and the Puerto Rico Clinical and Translational Research Consortium (The PRCTRC),” RCM Chancellor Dr. Segundo Rodríguez Quilichini said in a written statement. “The grant represents a collaboration between three medical schools in Puerto Rico, including the Ponce Health Sciences University, and the Central University of the Caribbean, as an islandwide team.”

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant was awarded through the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS).

The project will be led by Dr. Carlos Luciano and Dr. Marcia Cruz Correa, principal investigators of the grant, in collaboration with Dr. Diana Fernández from the Central University of the Caribbean and Dr. Pedro Santiago from Ponce Health Sciences University.

The ALLIANCE, a project whose aim is to benefit all of Puerto Rico, will be supporting clinical and translational research, which is the investigation of diseases with patients and in communities, through the strengthening of research infrastructure, laboratories, and faculty development, among other vital areas to support the many researchers at the three institutions and other academic institutions in Puerto Rico.

Cruz Correa, a gastroenterologist-oncologist at RCM, noted that “this grant places Puerto Rico and the University of Puerto Rico in an elite group of researchers nationwide within the IDEA program, since only one grant of this type is awarded by state.”

“For this reason, we became the 12th Center of

this prestigious national program, and the only one specifically for Hispanics within these 12 Centers,” she said.

Luciano, who is director of neurology at the School of Medicine, said “La Alianza is a project aimed at uniting the strengths of three of the main academic institutions in Health Sciences in Puerto Rico, focusing on the research of high-risk diseases, frequency in our population and how to address their impact on disadvantaged populations within our population.”

UPR President Dr. Jorge Haddock, meanwhile, stressed that the approval of the grant will have a far-reaching impact on UPR and on the island.

“This is a project that is in line with the institutional objective of continuing to increase high-level research in our portfolio, and that these are [research] that is financed with external funds, supporting the university system as a leader in research, and just as important, providing an opportunity for development for teachers and students, which is even more unique in the historical context in which we find ourselves,” Haddock said. “On behalf of the entire university community, we extend our congratulations and thanks to Dr. Luciano and Dr. Cruz Correa. Their vision, effort and commitment to excellence and the UPR today bear valuable fruit. Congratulations!”

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Tuesday, October 13, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Delgado Altieri commits to canceling LUMA-PREPA pact if elected

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

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eferring to LUMA Energy’s closing agreement to manage the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s (PREPA) transmission and distribution system for 15 years, Popular Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate Carlos Delgado Altieri said Monday that he believes the contract was “signed under false pretenses and will make electric power service more expensive,” and as governor of Puerto Rico he will cancel it.

Flanked by members of the committee he appointed to evaluate the agreement -- Electrical Industry and Irrigation Workers Union spokesperson Pedro Pérez and Insular Union of Industrial and Electrical Construction Workers (UITICE by its Spanish initials) Vice President Miguel Cruz, along with UITICE spokespersons Víctor Castellano and David Rivera -- Delgado said that in order to have a resilient, efficient and up-to-date electrical grid, the government must be “careful and prudent as the economic and fiscal destabilization that we are experiencing cannot be used to make decisions lightly that would take us to something negative.”

Delgado added that he wants to propel PREPA into the future by cutting its dependence on fossil fuel in favor of generating power from sources such as solar, wind, ocean currents, wave motion or geothermal energy.

“It is unacceptable that [PREPA] employees are being removed and retirees who have offered and offered their services for years in PREPA are being stripped of their pensions,” the candidate said. “Not only would it represent a tragedy for more than 15,000 Puerto Rican families, but it would also have a multiplying impact on our economy.”

Delgado said his determination to scrap PREPA’s contract

Delgado said canceling the agreement within the initial period would cost between $50 million and $80 million, an amount that can be minimized, he said, “by anticipating the cancellation of the contract.” with LUMA is based largely on the minimum cost of maintaining the agreement, which in four years would be $540 million that LUMA would obtain through a rate increase, when the cost of electricity in Puerto Rico is already widely regarded as too high.

The Isabela mayor said canceling the agreement within the initial period would cost between $50 million and $80 million, an amount that can be minimized, he said, “by anticipating the cancellation of the contract.”

“To this, we must add the negative social cost for the almost 6,000 employees who will lose their rights and the almost 11,000 retirees who could lose their pensions,” Delgado said.

“The improvements that are expected to be made through the

LUMA contract will cost the people of Puerto Rico a minimum of $2 billion in 15 years, plus reimbursable expenses.”

Therefore, the PDP president said, it is urgent that PREPA’s infrastructure be transformed now that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has allocated $12.804 billion for recovery and reconstruction projects in PREPA and the island Department of Education. He said he will appoint an ad hoc group composed of the “best Puerto Rican professionals, selected from the academy [and] professional associations, [and including] retirees and employees of PREPA and young graduates of our public and private universities.”

Candidate responds to La Comay controversy As for Delgado’s position on the recent controversy over puppeteer Antulio “Kobbo” Santarrosa’s use of a doctored photo of CitizenVictory Movement gubernatorial candidate Alexandra Lúgaro’s underage daughter in a manner that sexualized the girl in the TV program “La Comay,” the candidate said Santarrosa’s actions are intolerable because “family is family -- they must be protected and it has nothing to do with political matters.”

However, when asked if part of the issue could be that the photo was used as an attack against Lúgaro for being a woman in the political realm, Delgado said that while he didn’t see the offense as “an attack on her [Lúgaro] for being a woman, it was a misuse of the production of that photo, but I cannot describe the intention …”

As for appearing on the program for an interview, as he has done before, Delgado said he would appear on any program when he is invited because it gives him a forum as a candidate to present his proposals.

“When it comes to that, I can’t assume actions of trying to restrict what it is public speech,” he said. “That’s what he does on his program. I appear to be interviewed, like on any other program.”

Citizen Victory Movement unveils its gov’t platform

By THE STAR STAFF

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he Citizen Victory Movement (CVM) unveiled its government platform Monday, focusing on the decolonization of Puerto Rico, greater use of technology and a sustainable economy.

The CVM proposes to decolonize Puerto Rico through a constituent assembly.

“We understand decolonization as the exercise of the inalienable right to self-determination to eliminate a country’s political dominance over another and reach the fullness of self-government,” the organization said.

The CVM said its proposal is different from those of other political parties because it is based on serious scientific data produced by various experts, presents an integrated strategy and is based on clear principles and strategic pillars of human development to generate a more fair and equitable society.

The movement said it will declare war on corruption, establish a merit system in government agencies, open up a dialogue with the federal government to obtain

federal funds to fit the needs of citizens, seek salary justice for all workers, enhance labor protections and protect pensions.

The party proposes intensive use of technology for government transactions, relying on PREPANet, the fiber optic system of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, to also detect suspicious transactions.

The CVM said it also will follow up on the effectiveness of government programs, promote gender perspective in teaching and implement anti-racist policies.

In the area of business, the CVM will promote a policy of solidarity toward small businesses and enhance the island government’s regulatory powers in the area of foreign investments.

The party said it will focus on rebuilding collapsed infrastructure and boost the development and use of alternative energy sources; create a new productive ecosystem based on agroecology and with 1,000 new family farms; create a hub for cultural industries and development of permanent regional markets; boost the production of medicines, generic drugs and essential

drugstore products; and push for a debt amnesty and training to formalize some 2,000 small businesses without permits.

In the area of health, the CVM said it will focus on establishing universal health insurance, legalizing the use of drugs, and integrating services and eliminating excess government bureaucracy.

In the area of education, the party proposes to increase the budget for schools, raise teachers’ salaries and give the University of Puerto Rico more autonomy.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

5

PDP House candidate to Méndez Núñez: ‘Face up and speak the truth’ Torres Reyes: Unheard of that House speaker charges $3 per page to access public information

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

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opular Democratic Party (PDP) at-large candidate for the House of Representatives Yaramary Torres Reyes on Monday demanded that House Speaker Carlos “Johnny” Méndez Núñez provide transparency and access to invoices, payrolls, and contracts in legislative offices after signing an administrative order that attaches a charge to requests for official public documents from the government.

Torres Reyes said Méndez should not keep dodging the issue but instead should “face up and speak the truth.” She called on the House leader to explain why he signed the order and “consented to highly questionable salaries and kept silent about many of the irregularities in the offices of several New Progressive Party [NPP] legislators.”

“It is shameful and outrageous that the House speaker, Johnny Méndez, in an attempt to maintain the leadership that he has lost to his spokesman Gabriel Rodríguez Aguiló, seeks to hide information paid for with public funds using the collection of documents as a barrier to prevent access to them,” Torres Reyes said.

As the Star reported on Sunday, Administrative Order 2020-016, which was signed on Sept. 15, established costs for providing requested public information.

Charges per photocopied page are 50¢ and $1 (for a

PDP at-large candidate for the House of Representatives Yaramary Torres Reyes called on the House leader to explain why he signed the order and “consented to highly questionable salaries and kept silent about many of the irregularities in the offices of several NPP legislators.” “simple” and certified copy, respectively), and an additional $2 per page for digital copies.

“It is a shame that Méndez has put a price on the copies of files that are requested, especially when it is of the utmost importance that the invoices of the contractors are made public so that the people can evaluate how contractors, like Oriol Campos, advise more than five representatives at the same time, generating, so far, $1,262,397.50 in this four-year term,” Torres Reyes said.

Back on Sept. 17 the Star reported that Torres Reyes referred Campos, who is currently Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González’s campaign treasurer, to the island Justice Department for alleged kickback schemes

as Campos, through his for-profit corporation OC Strategic Advisors LLC, has been awarded 46 contracts from the House of Representatives for both consulting and contracting services since January 2017.

The PDP House candidate also released documents that she said show Campos Hernández donated up to $15,850 from February 2017, a month after he began working at the Capitol, until December 2019 to NPP legislators such as Yashira Lebrón, Ángel Peña, Antonio “Tony” Soto, Urayoán Hernández, Félix Lasalle Toro, Jacqueline Rodríguez Hernández, Johnathan Alemán Arce, Gabriel Rodríguez Aguiló and María Milagros Charbonier, who was arrested by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents back on Aug. 17 for alleged involvement in conspiracy; theft, bribery and kickbacks concerning programs receiving federal funds; and honest services wire fraud.

“Méndez’s silence creates too much suspicion and questions about the real reasons for signing an order just one month after the arrests of representatives María Milagros ‘Tata’ Charbonier and Nelson del Valle, in addition to the multiple cases of employees with exorbitant salaries,” Torres Reyes said. “We do not understand what the fear is of opening the House’s books so that the people know what every penny they contribute as taxpayers is spent on. If there is nothing to hide or fear, show your face and respond to the country.”

Torres Reyes reiterated that, among the PDP candidates, “there is a commitment so that the next House of Representatives has a web page where all the information related to expenses is published, as does the United States Congress.”

House speaker kicks off pro-statehood ‘Yes’ campaign

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

S

peaker of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives Carlos “Johnny” Méndez Núñez on Monday began the campaign to promote the “Yes” option in the “Yes or No” statehood consultation on Nov. 3 with the presentation of a video that is circulating on all social networks.

“You will have only one question before you: Do you want the security and progress that only statehood guarantees? The answer is simple: Yes. Statehood is our right. As American citizens we are entitled to full equality, the guarantee that we will never lose our citizenship.

That in times of crisis, such as the current pandemic, the federal government will help us,” the legislative leader said in the video. “Likewise, in the event of a natural disaster, such as hurricanes or earthquakes, that security guarantees us help that no other nation in the world can provide.”

In the video, which lasts a little over two minutes, Méndez notes that “statehood guarantees that we will receive at least an additional $10 billion in federal funds each year, with large increases in education, health, nutritional assistance, housing and infrastructure, among others.”

“No other alternative guarantees that,” he says.

Méndez adds that with statehood “you will have the ability to buy your own home, have excellent healthcare service, and your children will have the best education.”

“It is having in the Puerto Rico that we love a better quality of life, the opportunity for all of a well paying job, with salaries higher than the current average, a dramatic increase in federal funds, an economic boost never before seen in our history,” the House speaker says.

The New Progressive Party vice president notes in the video that, according to reports from the General Accounting Office, under statehood Puerto Rico would experience a 36 percent increase in economic activity in the first five years.

Méndez emphasizes that only under statehood “[will] many [have] the opportunity for their loved ones to return to the land where they were born.”

“Say ‘Yes’ to your family, say ‘Yes’ to your community, say ‘Yes’ to Puerto Rico; we deserve it,” he says. “On November 3, ‘Yes’ to statehood.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

CPA Association supports initiatives and measures to boost manufacturing

By THE STAR STAFF

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he membership of the Certified Public Accountants Association of Puerto Rico has approved a resolution asking their governing board to support initiatives and measures that promote manufacturing in Puerto Rico, as well as the reactivation of the island’s pharmaceutical sector.

The resolution takes place at the same time that various measures are being evaluated in the U.S. Congress to bolster the pharmaceutical and manufacturing industries on the island, and amid the possibility that the 4 percent excise tax firms pay locally may no longer be accredited against U.S. taxes.

“Even though the issue of the accreditation of the tax paid by foreign companies and the legislative proposals at the federal level on the issue of the repatriation of manufacturing are different issues, it is undeniable that both issues are intrinsically tied to the economic development of Puerto Rico and have extreme tangency in the historical moment that we are living,” CPA Association President Rosa M. Rodríguez Ramos said in a statement Monday.

The CPA Association noted that in its vision of always seeking to promote the socioeconomic development of Puerto Rico, it is making its resources available to the island government, including its various working committees composed of certified public accountants with vast experience and extraordinary capabilities, to assist in the analysis, modeling and configuration of potential solutions to the current pressing situation.

“Thanks to its historical trajectory, Puerto Rico is

already recognized as a global manufacturing center of excellence, particularly of pharmaceutical products,” Rodríguez Ramos said. “Several groups … including the Association have called for the federal government to address the problem of national security through tax mechanisms that make Puerto Rico economically attractive, in such a way that they return to American soil those manufacturing operations that at some point have left. At present, there are already several bills under evaluation

by Congress that present alternatives for this purpose.”

Regarding the proposed changes to regulations in the federal Internal Revenue Code, which could affect

the federal accreditation of the taxes paid in Puerto Rico under Act 154 by certain multinational companies with operations on the island, Rodríguez Ramos described progress and the commitment obtained by the federal agency as “positive and encouraging.”

Treasury Secretary Francisco Parés stated recently that it is equally important to address the challenge of approving a new income tax regime to replace in an orderly manner the imposition of the excise tax at the local level.

“We recognize the diligence, responsibility and knowledge that Secretary Parés shows when addressing these issues,” Rodríguez Ramos said.

Businesses face fines for failing to comply with federal verification rules for employees

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

H

undreds of medium-sized businesses and corporations in Puerto Rico risk being fined up to $1,000 for failing to comply with the federal requirement that forms I-9 and E-Verify be completed for each employee, certified public accountant (CPA) Virgilio Vega said Monday.

Both forms are used to verify, under United States law,

the identity and employment authorization of each new employee hired.

“An employee is defined as any person who performs work or offers services, who receives remuneration or salary, within the United States, including Puerto Rico,” Vega said in a written statement.

“Even recruiters, associations, employers, or farm labor contractors are considered employees so they must fill out the forms,” he added.

To meet the federal requirement, employers must print the I-9 form and the employee must complete it on or before the first day of employment. It is the responsibility of both the employer and the employee to complete the three sections that make up the document and include the requested documents for identity verification and employment authorization. Offering false information at the time of filling out the form could lead to prosecution.

“If the employer participates in the E Verify program, he will be able to electronically verify the identity and employment eligibility of the employees,” Vega said. “This web-based system allows the information provided by the employee on the I-9 form to be electronically compared with other records available from the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.”

“E Verify is voluntary; however, it is necessary for employers to know that those federal contracts or subcontracts that contain the E-Verify Federal Procurement Regulations clause are required to enroll in the program as a condition for federal contracting,” the CPA said.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

7

The precedent, and perils, of Court packing

By ADAM LIPTAK

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here have been nine seats on the Supreme Court for a long time. Could that change?

The Constitution allows Congress to add or subtract seats, and it has done so several times, though not since 1869. Over the years, Congress has reduced the number of seats to as few as five and increased it to as many as 10. The changes were often made for partisan advantage.

There are contemporary analogies, too. In the past decade, according to a recent study, legislation was introduced in at least 10 state legislatures, most controlled by Republicans, to change the size of their highest courts. In Arizona and Georgia, the proposals succeeded. The two states were controlled by Republicans, and the moves made the courts more conservative.

“At the very least, that practice is in tension with the current Republican claim that court packing is an affront to separation of powers and must be off the table,” said Marin K. Levy, a law professor at Duke and the author of the study, which was published in The William & Mary Law Review.

The recent confirmation wars at the federal level have prompted calls to increase the size of the U.S. Supreme Court should Democrats capture the White House and Congress in the election next month.

Some liberals say it would be a fitting response to the Republican blockade of President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland in 2016, which effectively reduced the number of seats on the court to eight for more than a year on the premise that an opening in an election year should be filled by the new president. The rush now to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett, whose hearings begin Monday, before the election has only deepened anger on the left.

“The size of the court has changed six times in American history, and the Constitution clearly gives Congress the right to shape the contours of the court,” said Aaron Belkin, the director of Take Back the Court, which he described as “a campaign to inform public opinion about the urgency of court expansion as a necessary step to restore democracy.”

No president has tried to change the size of the court since 1937, when Franklin Roosevelt introduced what came to be known as his court-packing plan. It failed in the immediate sense: The number of justices stayed steady at nine. But it seemed to exert pressure on the court, which began to uphold progressive New Deal legislation.

Still, the experiment discouraged serious discussion of changing the size of the court. Indeed, court packing turned into an all-purpose response to efforts to shape the judiciary; Republicans accused Obama of it in 2013, when he sought to fill three existing vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The Supreme Court in Washington on Sunday, Oct. 11, 2020. Popular support for expanding the size of the court beyond the present nine justices remains low.

Popular support for expanding the Supreme Court remains low, which may explain the refusal of the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, to take a position on it. A survey taken in July, before the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month, found that 19% of Republicans and 30% of Democrats favored expanding the court.

The authors of an accompanying report — Lee Epstein and James L. Gibson of Washington University in St. Louis and Michael J. Nelson of Pennsylvania State University — said those numbers were telling.

“Support for enlarging the court today is about 20 percentage points lower than support for F.D.R.’s 1937 court-packing plan — a plan so derided that it has long served as a cautionary note about efforts to mess with the size the court,” they wrote.

But Belkin said public opinion was shifting fast.

“There’s been incredible momentum for court expansion, especially when you consider that two years ago there was zero support for it,” he said.

In the recent survey, there was substantially more support for imposing term limits on Supreme Court justices, but that would probably require a constitutional amendment.

A bipartisan group of former state attorneys general,

calling themselves Keep Nine, have proposed a different constitutional amendment, one that would fix the court’s size at nine members.

“We want to do what most everyone probably thought was in the Constitution but was not,” said Paul G. Summers, a former attorney general of Tennessee. The proposed amendment, he said, would help insulate the Supreme Court from politics.

In an interview with NPR last year, Ginsburg said she opposed changing the size of her court. “Nine seems to be a good number,” she said. “It’s been that way for a long time.”

“I have heard that there are some people on the Democratic side who would like to increase the number of judges,” she said. “I think that was a bad idea when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to pack the court.”

Epstein said there were reasons to question that analysis.

“The late Justice Ginsburg may have thought that reform was unnecessary and perhaps even detrimental to the court,” she said. “But that need not be the case.

Today’s Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, who support structural changes to the court may be seeking to enhance the court’s legitimacy, not harm it.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

The crowded, competitive world of anti-Trump GOP groups

President Trump’s opponents within the Republican party are eager to be listed as having been on the right side of history.

By ANNIE KARNI

L

ast month, Greg Schott, a lifelong Republican disgusted by President Donald Trump, decided it was time to speak out in a meaningful way.

Schott, who sold his business software company to Salesforce in 2018 for a reported $6.5 billion, decided to spend $1 million of his own money to start a new group, Reclaim Our Party, a super PAC targeting right-leaning independents and soft Republicans and telling them it was OK to vote against Trump.

Schott is entering an increasingly crowded space.

The two biggest groups that dominate the anti-Trump Republican landscape, the Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump, have both become multimillion-dollar operations that conduct their own sophisticated data research and polling.

Then there’s the Bravery Project, led by Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois; Stand Up Republic, which recently introduced a spinoff, Christians Against Trumpism & Political Extremism; the Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform, known as REPAIR and led by two former top Trump administration officials; and 43 Alumni for Joe Biden, which consists of alumni from President George W. Bush’s administration.

And don’t forget about the short-lived Right Side PAC, founded by Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, and Matthew Borges, a former chairperson of the Ohio Republican Party. The group formed in June with the mission of turning out Republican voters for Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, in battleground states, but it shut down after Borges was arrested on federal corruption charges. Scaramucci has since given the money to the Lincoln Project and teamed up with REPAIR. The crowded, competitive space of partyless anti-Trump Republicans is, in some ways, a product of the fact that not having a party means not having any clear leader. Groups with similar missions engage in little coordination or sharing of resources.

The groups’ leaders say this is all fine, and organic. Schott’s competitors in the conservative anti-Trump space say there is little downside to another player spending $1 million on advertising critical of the president.

But what is less clear is whether more coordination among the anti-Trump Republicans — who harbor deep worries about what would happen to the country if Trump were reelected, and are eager to be seen as having been on the right side of history if Biden wins — would better serve the collective project to unseat the president.

“The Never Trump movement is having a moment,” said Lucy Caldwell, a Republican

strategist who served as an adviser for Walsh’s failed Republican primary challenge to Trump this year. “But on the whole, the last four years have been a lot of throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks, and a lot of head chefs in the kitchen.”

Caldwell said a lack of coordination had meant “a lot of duplicative efforts in areas like digital, paid and earned media, with virtually no significant or coordinated effort in areas like field, or building a killer data set that everyone is making use of and enhancing.”

The fact that the groups operate as islands of resistance is, perhaps, underscored best by the setup of the Lincoln Project, where almost the entire staff has spent the pandemic in a COVIDtested pod in Park City, Utah, that some refer to as “Mountain West,” where employees work and live together.

Steve Schmidt, a founder of the Lincoln Project, said some of the smaller political action committees might seem like “vanity exercises.” But the groups, he said, “are all disaggregated, they’re all organic, and they’re all conviction-based and necessary to show defiance and opposition to a president and political class that’s completely enabled him.”

Sarah Longwell, a founder of Republican Voters Against Trump, said the diversity of the groups helped create a broader narrative about opposition to the president.

“People want to be counted, people want to be on the record saying they, in this moment, stood up against Trump,” she said. “That’s why you see this. It’s a discredit to Trump that there are so many groups.”

The various anti-Trump Republican groups have also, at times, been in competition for the people who can bring the most attention to the cause.

Scaramucci at one point wanted to start a PAC with George Conway, a prominent conservative lawyer who has become an outspoken and popular Trump critic. Conway, who had also worked closely with Longwell on setting up another anti-Trump group he started called Checks and Balances, ended up joining the Lincoln Project instead.

The result is a disparate landscape of groups doing complementary, but sometimes overlapping, work in trying to peel away Trump voters.

People in the movement said this was partly because the groups have slightly different goals.

Republican Voters Against Trump has focused on testimonials from former Trump supporters explaining why they’re reluctantly voting for Biden in November, with the aim of creating a permission structure for white, college-educated Republican voters in the suburbs to follow suit.

The Lincoln Project’s buzziest ads are

designed for the proverbial “audience of one” — Trump — and aim to play on the president’s own preoccupations. For instance, Rick Wilson, a founder of the Lincoln Project, claims partial credit for the president’s decision in July to demote his longtime campaign manager, Brad Parscale, after the group ran an ad highlighting his lavish lifestyle.

“He was a fairly immovable force in the campaign until we started beating the drum that he was driving a Ferrari and Land Rovers and he bought a $2.5 million house,” Wilson said.

Schmidt said the goal of the ads — the group has spent or reserved $16.9 million of television time this year, according to campaign finance records — boiled down to buying time for Biden by making the president waste news cycles defending himself, or worrying about the intentions and the loyalty of the people he surrounds himself with.

The Lincoln Project ads have been dismissed by some as “anti-Trump porn,” more concerned with going viral than moving voters. And the group has drawn criticism from other Republican critics of Trump for targeting lawmakers in the party who have supported him.

After Schmidt on Twitter compared Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., to “the type of man who would have gladly held Castro’s coat if it helped him rise, just a little,” another conservative anti-Trump writer, Matt Lewis, accused Schmidt of acting “just as bad as Trump” and sounding “just like him.”

But the group’s founders said they had also recently spent more money on an initiative targeting Puerto Rican voters in Florida, and planned to spend millions targeting Black male voters in Philadelphia, a bloc that Biden needs to turn out for him.

Caldwell said some of the tensions within the coalition stemmed from its players’ having different hopes for the future of the party, “a reality that will probably be much more obvious when they find their next acts, postelection.”

The Biden campaign, meanwhile, has continued with its own outreach to Republicans. The campaign introduced “Republicans for Biden” during the Republican National Convention, and has featured Republican voters in its own ads. The campaign’s national security, political, surrogate, paid media and field teams are all doing dedicated outreach to soft Republican and independent voters, an official said.

Despite all of the options, Schott still decided to start his own group rather than join forces with anyone else.

“To me, it’s just having another voice,” he said. “It’s saying, ‘Here’s yet another group of Republicans that are saying it’s OK to vote against Donald Trump.’ More voices saying it is better.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

9

More than $150,000 in fines issued on first weekend of New York City lockdown

By ALI WATKINS

A

uthorities cracked down this weekend on some of the city’s coronavirus hot spots, issuing more than 60 summonses and tens of thousands of dollars in fines to people, businesses and houses of worship that did not follow newly imposed restrictions on gatherings or maskwearing and social distancing requirements.

Among those issued a summons by the New York City sheriff were a restaurant and at least five houses of worship in the city’s “red zones,” where coronavirus infection rates are the highest. Each of those locations was given a summons that could result in up to $15,000 in fines, said Sheriff Joseph Fucito.

In total, officials issued 62 tickets and more than $150,000 in fines during the first weekend the new restrictions were in effect, the New York City government Twitter account said Sunday.

The city is wrestling with its most acute pandemic crisis since the virus first swept through the five boroughs in March. Since mid-August, city and state officials say large gatherings and lax social distancing have caused a surge in new cases in pockets of Brooklyn and Queens, many of them in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. The spike prompted Gov. Andrew Cuomo to issue new restrictions on large gatherings and nonessential businesses in certain parts of the city.

The moment has set an already anxious city on edge, particularly as doctors, experts and health officials express growing concern about a second wave of the virus this winter.

It has also underscored the challenges city officials will face as they try to quash emerging hot spots in small communities before the virus can spread into the rest of the city.

One of the Orthodox Jewish men who led protests against the restrictions, Heshy Tischler, was taken into custody by the police department’s warrants squad Sunday night, a police official said. Tischler, a talk radio personality, is expected to be charged with inciting a riot and unlawful imprisonment in connection with an assault on a Jewish journalist, Jacob Kornbluh, during a protest last week, the police said.

When Cuomo announced a new executive order imposing the restrictions last week, some religious leaders expressed staunch opposition, as case numbers continued climbing in pockets of Brooklyn and Queens that are home to large populations of Orthodox Jews.

The Orthodox Jewish community was devastated by the coronavirus in the spring, when local officials and ultraOrthodox news organizations said hundreds of people might have died, including beloved religious leaders.

The new restrictions are the most significant setback yet in the city’s recovery, rolling back some of the successful reopenings that much of New York has embraced since the most restrictive early days of the pandemic this spring.

According to Cuomo’s executive order, in neighborhoods with the highest infection rates — or “red zones” — houses of worship are limited to 25% capacity or a maximum of 10 people. Elsewhere, where rates are lower but still

Coronavirus cases have soared in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn. alarming, “orange zones” are limited to 33% capacity and “yellow zones” to 50% capacity.

“I understand the desire to hold large religious ceremonies. I understand how important it is to their culture and to their religion,” Cuomo said on a phone call with reporters Sunday. “I also understand that it, as a matter of fact, jeopardizes human life.”

The governor urged rabbis and other Jewish leaders to encourage their congregants to stay home amid reports that many synagogues had openly defied the state’s order and held services in person. Jewish teaching, Cuomo said, allows religious ceremonies to be postponed for matters of health and safety.

“The likelihood is the virus will spread,” he said.

While the positivity rate in the state’s 20 “red zone” neighborhoods was 5.7%, the positivity rate across the rest of New York state was less than 1%, with those clusters excluded.

Cuomo’s order Tuesday, which came during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot and right before Simhat Torah, spurred immediate backlash in the city’s Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, where religious leaders accused Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio of targeting religious minorities.

A national Orthodox organization filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of the new rules. Protests took place in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, where hundreds of demonstrators — most of them Orthodox men, most not wearing masks — burned

masks in the streets.

But Friday, a federal court ruled the new state rules could move forward, citing officials’ responsibility to keep “all New Yorkers” safe. can we ignore the compelling state interest in protecting the health and life of all New Yorkers?” said Judge Kiyo Matsumoto of Federal District Court in Brooklyn.

The Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn filed a separate lawsuit objecting to the new restrictions, which it said would force several churches in the borough to close. A judge in that case also ruled that the governor’s order could move forward.

The Sheriff’s Office declined to say if the houses of worship it cited this weekend were churches, synagogues, mosques or other religious institutions.

The office also broke up an illegal rave in Cunningham Park, in Queens, where more than 110 people had gathered and flouted city regulations. The organizers of the event were cited and charged with health code violations, Fucito said.

Fucito, whose office is one of a handful of city agencies responsible for enforcing the new rules, said his agents have rarely cited individuals if they comply with requests to put on masks or practice better social distancing.

“If they put a mask on, we don’t write a ticket for that,” he said. Most citations written by his office, he said, involve multiple violations or brazen disregard of city rules.

The protests among the Orthodox community appeared to have tempered over the weekend, with no major demonstrations taking place.

10

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

In emptier subways, violent crime is rising feel safe getting back on the system,” said Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, a watchdog group. “They shouldn’t feel like they are risking their health, and they should also know they are not risking their life. There was some sense of safety riders got when it was more crowded and there were more eyes in the system. Now stations and train cars have fewer people.”

So far this year, homicides have reached their highest level in three years: Six people have been killed in the subway, compared with two in all of last year, one in 2018 and none in 2017.

Five rapes have been reported this year, compared with two last year.

Robberies have risen 16%, to at least 457 so this year, compared with 394 during the same period last year. The number of burglaries, including breaking into shops on platforms, stands at 22 so A street performer and a passenger at the Times Square 42nd Street subway station far this year, compared with five in the same period last year. And acts of vandalism have spiked in Manhattan, Oct. 8, 2020.

24% to 868 so far this year, compared with 702 last year, according to the transit agency.

By CHRISTINA GOLDBAUM riders and money.

Police officials have cautioned against being So far this year, the number of reported overly alarmist, noting that crime is nowhere near as t began in the early days of the pandemic in homicides, rapes, burglaries and robberies in the bad as it was in decades past, when violence plaMarch, when someone lit a fire inside a subway subway are higher than during the same period gued the entire city, including the subway. In 1990, car that killed the train operator and injured last year, according to Police Department statis- for example, there were 26 homicides in the system.

16 others. In the following months, nearly 500 tics. Incidents of vandalism have also spiked, tran“We have these high-profile crimes on subway car windows were smashed on the No. 7 sit officials say. occasion, but that does not define the system,” line. In August, a man tackled and tried to sexually The subway is still far safer than during the Edward Delatorre, the transit police chief, said. assault a young woman at a station on the Upper dark days of the 1970s and 1980s, when violence Still, he added, “We are not going to tolerate East Side. And in September, a train derailed after on the graffiti-filled system was rampant and riders lawlessness in the subway system.” a man threw metal clamps that he had stolen onto feared riding at night or in empty cars. But after The drop in ridership during the pandemic the tracks. two decades of steady declines in felonies, the re- has helped push down overall crime. Today, riderWhen the pandemic hit New York and cent uptick in major crimes — several of which ship is around 30% of prepandemic levels. subway ridership plunged, misdemeanor and fe- have been captured on video and circulated on But while fewer riders has meant fewer poslony crimes dropped to record lows: Between Ja- Twitter — has fed a perception among many ri- sible targets for petty crimes — like sleeping pasnuary and the end of September, the number of ders that the system is slipping back into disorder. sengers victimized by pickpockets — it has also reported crimes in the system fell roughly 40% That negative image comes at a moment meant that criminals may feel emboldened becaucompared with the same period last year. when the state-run Metropolitan Transportation se there are fewer potential witnesses.

But even as overall crime has declined, Authority, which oversees the subway, is despera“It’s a reflection of what’s happening in the violent crime and episodes of vandalism are ri- te to win back riders as it grapples with the worst city generally, and it’s a reflection of the system sing, a trend that is stoking fear among passengers financial crisis in its history and tries to recover having been more empty than we’ve seen it in a and posing another challenge for a transit system fare revenue that practically vanished overnight. long time,” said Sarah Feinberg, interim president crippled by a virus outbreak that has deprived it of “It’s more important than ever that riders of New York City Transit.

I

To tackle safety concerns, the MTA hired 85 uniformed and unarmed security guards to patrol the subway and report crimes to the police. At any given time, there are as many as 60 MTA police and 300 city police officers in the subway, according to the transit agency. (A Police Department spokesman would not comment on the number, citing security reasons.)

In recent months, transit officials have called for additional uniformed city police officers to patrol the system after riders and transit workers complained of seeing fewer officers in the subway.

With the pandemic draining public transit systems across the country of their passengers, the effect that low ridership has had on crime has varied in big cities.

While Boston and Washington have not experienced any spike in crimes in public transit, Chicago has seen an increase in robberies and Philadelphia has seen a rise in felony assaults as well as robberies on their systems, according to police data and transit agencies.

For many riders still using public transportation in New York, the system’s emptiness has instilled a sense of insecurity and raised fears about being mugged or attacked when waiting on a desolate platform or if they happen to be the only person in a train car.

“We didn’t always feel safe before, but we definitely don’t feel safe now,” said Dana Drazila, whose 68-year-old mother was shoved onto the train tracks at the 14th Street-6th Avenue Station in Manhattan on her way home from her job as a housekeeper in July.

Passersby managed to pull her up from the tracks before a train arrived, but Drazila suffered five broken bones in her spine and two broken ribs. For two months after the attack, Drazila avoided public transit altogether, her daughter says.

But at the end of September she had to return to work — and to the subway.

“She has been very nervous but at the same time she needs to work, she needs the income,” the younger Drazila said. “My brother begged her to retire, but she can’t. Now we are all worried about safety.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

11

Are Amazon jobs worth 1,400 loads of traffic? French region is split

By LIZ ALDERMAN

O

n a sultry September morning, Claudie Cortellini headed into the vineyards to survey the grapes that go into her family’s heady Côtes du Rhône wines. In recent years, she has fought to ensure a good harvest as the climate grows warmer. But these days, she is facing an even bigger foe: a giant Amazon sorting center slated for construction near her land.

The project, a concrete-and-steel behemoth that would span nine acres, promises to bring hundreds of jobs to the Gard, an agricultural region in the south of France.

Tourists are drawn to the countryside to see a landmark of monumental beauty: the Pont du Gard, a 2,000-year-old Roman aqueduct that rises above the valley like a dusty jewel.

For Cortellini and worried residents, however, the jobs are not worth the pollution and explosion in traffic the Amazon warehouse would bring.

“They say they want to contribute to the economy,” said Cortellini, gesturing across her vineyard, Rouge Garance, toward the horizon where the warehouse would jut over 45 feet into the air. “But in the name of jobs, Amazon will do a lot of things that are damaging to the environment.”

The weedy plot carved out for Amazon — strategically near a six-lane highway — has become a point of contention in a bigger battle between rising environmental political forces and officials who say France can hardly afford to pass up opportunities for economic development, especially during a historically deep recession brought on by the coronavirus.

The Gard, despite picture-postcard beauty, has one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates. To people desperate for work, the environmental push to thwart Amazon — pointing to the stream of delivery trucks it will generate — seems out of touch with the hardscrabble reality facing families in the region. Many of them joined the Yellow Vest movement, which arose to protest income inequality after President Emmanuel Macron tried to raise taxes to fight climate change.

“We have people in distress — it’s our responsibility to find solutions and bring in economic activity,” said Thierry Boudinaud, the mayor of Fournès, a medieval-era village of 1,100 residents, where the sorting center would be built. “Big employers don’t often knock on our door. If Amazon doesn’t come, they will just go somewhere else.”

A spokesperson for Amazon declined to comment on the Fournès project, which is being spearheaded by a French warehouse developer, Argan. But Amazon widely promotes its environmental awareness and its pledge to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, to the point of buying the naming rights to a hockey arena in its hometown, Seattle, and calling it Climate Pledge Arena.

Meanwhile, the American online giant wants to enlarge its footprint in France as it pursues international ex-

The Pont du Gard, a UNESCO World Heritage site visited by about one million tourists and local people every year, near Fournes, France, Sept. 22, 2020. pansion. Since it arrived in 2000, Amazon has become a favorite in France, capturing nearly half of online spending in 2019.

It has deepened its grip worldwide as consumers in quarantine have stepped up internet shopping, reporting $88.9 billion in global sales in the second quarter, up 40% from a year earlier.

Amazon operates nine warehouses and sorting centers in France, at least five in poorer regions with high joblessness. They employ 9,300 full-time workers, and the company is reportedly looking to at least double the number of facilities. The sorting center near Fournès would be smaller than a massive pick-and-pack warehouse, according to the Argan proposal, but would sharply increase local traffic, with over 1,400 delivery vans and trucks rumbling in and out daily.

Jobs are a top priority in the Gard, which was devastated in the 1980s when the region’s coal mines closed.

Though it has remade itself into a wine and tourist destination, unemployment is near 17%, more than double the national 7.1%. Last year, two factories outside Fournès shut down, leaving over 200 people without work. In nearby Nîmes and Avignon, joblessness in some neighborhoods tops 25%.

As many as 240 full-time employees would sort Amazon packages in the highly automated plant, with more part-time workers hired around holidays. The location is close to farms and vineyards, and to a number of warehouses run by French companies — but none of them generate the heavy road use that is expected from Amazon.

The perceived ecological threat has galvanized environmentalists. Green party candidates captured elections this summer in major French cities, as voters pay more attention to climate change. Some want a moratorium on building any more Amazon-style warehouses in France.

“People in France understand what Amazon is,” said Patrick Fertil, a spokesman for ADERE, a local group trying

to encourage jobs that work in harmony with the environment. “It’s monstrous warehouses that pollute. They play regions with high unemployment against one another and create low-paid jobs. And they destroy small businesses with cheap competition.”

Since Argan broke ground in November, over 27,000 people have signed an online petition against the project.

Activists sued to halt construction, alleging that local officials would benefit from the sale of the property. Construction is now on hold until a court in Nîmes considers the case. Argan declined to comment.

Patrick Genay, a beekeeper with 300 hives in the area, is among those seeking to quash the Amazon project for good. The warehouse would destroy biodiversity that his bees need and risk polluting the Gard river with hydrocarbons, he said. Vehicle emissions from the motorway are already contributing to a decline in the bee population.

“We need plants and trees,” Genay said, standing amid a row of hives as clouds of bees buzzed around him.

“We know the kind of world Jeff Bezos wants,” he added, referring to Amazon’s founder and chief executive. “But when you pave over everything, it’s an environmental disaster.”

In a statement, Amazon said that preserving the environment was “a core value,” and that it incorporated energy-efficiency technology into its latest fulfillment centers in France. The company cited an independent study showing online shopping curbed urban air pollution by reducing car trips to stores. After employees spoke out about Amazon’s role in climate change, Bezos pledged $10 billion in February to address the crisis.

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, e-commerce is inherently the most sustainable way to shop,” Amazon said.

For Cortellini and other activists, however, the presence of Amazon would create a huge nuisance in a region that has sought to preserve its character. Her quaint stone village, Saint-Hilaire-d’Ozilhan, continues an old tradition by taking children to school by horse and carriage. On the Pont du Gard, visible from Cortellini’s vineyards, activists from ATTAC, a militant environmental group, unfurled large banners this summer reading “Stop Amazon,” and “Ni Ici Ni Ailleurs” — Not Here or Anywhere.

Such arguments fail to resonate with people like Ali Meftah, who lives a half-hour away in a poor suburb of Nîmes, where unemployment is rampant. He and most of his young neighbors, many of them French Arabs, typically get access only to temporary, low-paid jobs. Those include picking grapes at harvest time in vineyards around the Gard.

“Yes, the environment is important — we’re worried about climate change, too,” Meftah said, gesturing around his low-income neighborhood of towering apartment blocks. “But our biggest concern is work. Amazon would mean more than 150 jobs. That’s 150 families who could put food on the table and create a stable life.”

12

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Florida sees signals of a climate-driven housing crisis

In places like Bal Harbour, Fla., climate worries have reduced demand for high-risk coastal real estate, researchers say.

By CHRISTOPHER FLAVELLE

I

f rising seas cause America’s coastal housing market to dive — or, as many economists warn, when — the beginning might look a little like what’s happening in the tiny town of Bal Harbour, a glittering community on the northernmost tip of Miami Beach.

With single-family homes selling for an average of $3.6 million, Bal Harbour epitomizes high-end Florida waterfront property. But around 2013, something started to change: The annual number of homes sales began to drop — tumbling by half by 2018 — a sign that fewer people wanted to buy.

Prices eventually followed, falling 7.6% from 2016 to 2020, according to data from Zillow, the real estate data company.

All across Florida’s low-lying areas, it’s a similar story, according to research published Monday. The authors argue that not only is climate change eroding one of the most vibrant real estate markets in the country, it has quietly been doing so for nearly a decade.

“The downturn started in 2013, and no one noticed,” said Benjamin Keys, the paper’s lead author and a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “It means that coastal housing is in more distress than we thought.”

The researchers identified a decline in sales in low-lying coastal areas beginning in 2013, followed a few years later by a drop in prices compared with safer areas. On less vulnerable land, sales and prices continued to grow.

The idea that climate change will eventually ruin the value of coastal homes is neither new nor particularly controversial.

In 2016, the then-chief economist for the federal mortgage giant

Freddie Mac warned that rising seas “appear likely to destroy billions of dollars in property and to displace millions of people.”

By 2045, more than 300,000 existing coastal homes will be at risk of flooding regularly, the Union of Concerned Scientists concluded in 2018.

The question that has occupied researchers is how soon, and how quickly, people will respond to that risk by demanding price discounts or fleeing the market. Previous research has begun to tackle that question, showing that climate change, far from being a distant threat, is already starting to hurt real estate values.

The paper released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research takes a different approach. It focuses not on price declines, but instead tries to detect an earlier signal of trouble, a decline in the number of houses changing hands.

Falling sales have been a reliable predictor of price drops in previous housing crashes. A drop in home values follow a common pattern. First, prospective buyers become reluctant to pay the price that sellers are asking. But sellers, not wanting to take a loss, often hold out for months or even years, before grudgingly starting to accept lower bids.

Keys, along with his co-author Philip Mulder, a doctoral student at Wharton, wondered if the same pattern could predict a climate-induced housing crash.

To find out, the pair looked at Florida, with more miles of low-lying coastal land than any other state. Examining data for 1.4 million home sales over 20 years, they compared two types of coastal census tracts: Those on the most exposed land, where more than 70% of developed land is less than 6 feet above sea level, and also in higher areas, where less than 10% of developed land meets that criteria.

For most of that time, home sales in both areas rose in

lock step, suggesting that buyers weren’t particularly concerned about climate risk.

Then, starting in 2013, something started to change. While sales in safer areas kept climbing, sales in vulnerable ones began to fall. By 2018, the last year for which Keys and Mulder obtained data, sales in vulnerable areas trailed safer areas by 16% to 20%.

To check whether that drop in demand predicted a decline in prices, Keys and Mulder looked at a second set of data, from Zillow. They found that, since 2018, prices in high-risk markets have started to fall too, dropping by about 5% by 2020 compared with less vulnerable coastal census tracts.

The large and growing gap in sales volume between safer and riskier areas, Keys said, suggests that the gap in prices over the past two years isn’t just the normal boom-and-bust cycle of Florida real estate, but part of a longer trend, with prices likely to follow demand downward in risky areas.

“It tells us how fast this reality is approaching,” he said.

The market decline detected by Keys and Mulder appeared to be furthest along in the cycle in Miami-Dade County. There, prices in the most exposed towns aren’t just growing more slowly than in safer areas, they’re already falling.

In Key Biscayne, an island 20 minutes southeast of Miami where the average elevation is 3.4 feet above sea level, sales volume in 2018 was one-third below its 2012 peak, and the parts of the island most exposed to rising seas saw the greatest drop.

In the town of Sunny Isles Beach, in the northeast corner of the county, one particularly low-lying census tract saw sales volume fall by two-thirds.

Since 2016, prices have fallen by 13% in Key Biscayne, and 9% in Sunny Isles Beach.

The mayors of each city took issue with the paper’s findings. Some argued that the recent declines are part of the natural cycle of Florida real estate and that the market has shown signs of recovery in the past few months.

George “Bud” Scholl, the mayor of Sunny Isles Beach, said he didn’t think climate concerns explained the drop in sales volume, which he attributed to families that have lived in the town for a long time and were “simply holding onto their properties.”

Gabriel Groisman, the mayor of Bal Harbour, said the downturn in his city was caused by tighter federal rules that made it harder for wealthy foreign buyers to move money into the United States, as well as an uptick in new condominiums that pushed down prices. Climate change wasn’t the problem, he said, at least not in his town.

“I don’t see that being a consideration,” he said.

On Key Biscayne, Mayor Michael Davey said his city is addressing those concerns, seeking to elevate roads, protect beaches and bury power lines to avoid wind damage and power cuts as storms worsen.

“We’re protecting our property value by doing these projects,” Davey said. “I don’t think the sky is falling.”

Real estate agents were equally skeptical. Oren Alexander, a broker at Douglas Elliman Real Estate who sells what he called “trophy properties” around Miami, said every part of the country faces climate threats.

“Hurricanes have reached New York City. California is burning,” Alexander said. “I’ll tell you firsthand from working with buyers, are they concerned with sea level rise? No.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

13 Stocks

World stocks zoom to 5-week highs on economic, stimulus hopes

G

lobal stocks scaled five-week highs on Monday on hopes that more government stimulus was coming and the world economy was on the mend, while the Chinese yuan retreated from a 17-month high after a policy move over the weekend.

Investor optimism that Washington will work through talks that have repeatedly stalled to deliver another round of fiscal stimulus drove major U.S. stock indices to highs last seen in early September.

Hopes that the top Wall Street banks will announce a decent set of third-quarter earnings this week that show business activity was not as weak as feared also helped.

Slugged by stronger investor demand for risk, the U.S. dollar was pinned near a three-week low and gold, another safe-haven asset, stayed below a three-week high. The U.S. bond market is closed on Monday for Columbus Day. The cheer over the economic outlook and government stimulus did not boost oil prices, which dropped as investors focused on a boost in supply.

The S&P 500 jumped by 65 points, or 1.89%, to 3,542.51, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 316 points, or 1.11%, to 28,902.52. The Nasdaq Composite leapt 336 points, or 2.89%, to 11,916.49. All three indices touched highs not seen since Sept. 2.

Edward Moya, a senior market analyst at OANDA, a currency broker, said investors were shrugging off the uncertainty of U.S. stimulus negotiations and hoping instead that banks will not disappoint in their earnings.

A special event organized by Apple Inc on Tuesday also stoked speculation that the tech giant is set to unveil a new iPhone with 5G capabilities, boosting tech stocks across the board.

“There’s optimism that banks are going to post positive results,” Moya said. “If the consumer is not as weak as we thought, we might still have decent holiday spending.”

MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe climbed 1.43% to 592.96, while European stocks rose 0.72% to 373.00.

Bets that more U.S. stimulus was in the offing came in spite of indications that talks in Washington had stalled again, leading the Trump administration to call on Congress to pass a less ambitious coronavirus relief bill.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday had offered a $1.8 trillion coronavirus relief package after urging his team on Twitter to “go big” in negotiations with the Democrats to reach a deal.

A sluggish U.S. dollar kept the U.S. dollar index down 0.06% at 93.057.

The Chinese yuan was off 0.8% after sliding as much as 272 pips overnight in Asia, after the central bank cut foreign exchange forward reserve requirements that effectively lowers the cost of shorting the yuan.

The euro edged 0.14% lower to $1.1809 and the yen firmed 0.26% to 105.33 per dollar.

Gold was down 0.4% at $1,921.76 per ounce.

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14

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Virus hits foreign farmhands, challenging Canadians’ self-image

Daniel Hernandez Vargas, right, shops for groceries in Simcoe, Ontario, Canada, Sept. 4, 2020. Vargas was a roommate at Scotlynn Sweetpac Growers of a fellow Mexican laborer who died of Covid-19.

By CATHERINE PORTER

T

hree weeks after they began cutting asparagus in the thawing fields, Luis Gabriel Flores Flores noticed that one of his co-workers was missing. He said he found the man shivering with a fever, in bed — where he would remain for a week.

“I was trying to tell the foremen, ‘He is very ill, he needs a doctor,’” said Flores, one of thousands of migrant farmworkers flown into Ontario in April to secure Canada’s food supply. “They said, ‘Sure, soon, later.’ They never did.”

The sprawling vegetable farm where he worked became the site of one of the country’s largest coronavirus outbreaks. Almost 200 workers, all from Mexico, tested positive, seven were hospitalized and one died: Juan Lopez Chaparro, the one Flores said he had tried in vain to help.

The farm owner insisted that Chaparro had been treated promptly and called Flores a “bad apple” being used by activists to score political points. If that is the case, it has worked: The outbreak and others like it have spurred national protests about the systemic vulnerability of migrant farm laborers, a population unknown to many Canadians until they began to fall ill at a rate 11 times that of health workers.

Canadians pride themselves on a liberal immigration system welcoming to an array of ethnicities and nationalities, contrasting their attitude with what many see as xenophobia in their neighbor to the south. The reality does not always match the rhetoric,

but Canada encourages different groups to maintain their cultures, and an embrace of multiculturalism is enshrined in Canada’s charter and self-image. When other world leaders shunned refugees from Syria’s civil war, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau welcomed them in person, handing them winter coats.

But in importing large numbers of seasonal farm laborers from abroad and offering them no path to residence or citizenship, Canada looks disturbingly un-Canadian to many of its people.

Canada admits temporary workers who stay for most of a year but requires them to return home when their contracts end (the United States does, as well, but they are outnumbered by farmworkers who are undocumented and often do stay year-round).

As in the United States, farmworkers live for months on their employers’ property, often in large bunkhouses where disease can spread easily. Those who enter Canada with work permits often return year after year with no prospect of ever legally putting down roots. Canada, at least, guarantees them health care, but on isolated farms, gaining access to that care can be difficult.

The coronavirus outbreaks prompted the Mexican government to pause sending workers to Canada for a week in June.

In response, Trudeau said: “We should always take advantage of moments of crisis to reflect. Can we change the system to do better?”

Since then, his government has announced 59 million Canadian dollars (about $45 million) for improved farm housing, sanitation and inspections. But it has not offered the cure that

advocates for migrant workers demand: a path to citizenship.

“We have a group of people defined as good enough to work in Canada, but not good enough to stay,” said Vic Satzewich, a sociology professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. “As a country we have to ask ourselves why that’s the case.”

In theory, migrant farmworkers are protected by all the laws that shield Canadian farmworkers. But their contracts state that any worker fired for cause requires “immediate removal” from the country, which keeps people from complaining about abuses, advocates say.

The federal government introduced an enforcement system in 2015, with a complaint line for migrant workers, but Canada’s auditor general called it inadequate: Only 13 of 173 planned inspections were completed in the 2016 fiscal year. This year, no farms have been found noncompliant.

“The employers have too much power over their workers,” said Flores, 36, at a protest by migrant workers and their supporters in downtown Toronto in August. Around him, masked men and women held up pictures of Chaparro, his deceased co-worker.

“It could have happened to any of us,” said Flores, a father of two from the outskirts of Mexico City, who has worked on farms across Canada in four of the past six years.

This year, the program placed him at Scotlynn Sweetpac Growers, a family-run agribusiness with a large trucking fleet and 12,000 acres in Ontario, Florida and Georgia.

He tested positive for the virus, but experienced only mild symptoms. The day after he learned of Chaparro’s death, he left the farm two hours southwest of Toronto.

He has been supported since then by the advocacy group Migrant Workers Alliance For Change, which helped him file a complaint with the provincial labor board, seeking CA$40,000 from Scotlynn for lost wages and suffering. He contends that he was fired for asserting publicly that the company had a role in Chaparro’s death.

The farm’s owner, Scott Biddle, said his family had hired farmworkers from Mexico for more than 30 years and never fired a single one. He said Flores was one of three workers who asked to be returned to Mexico after the outbreak began.

Biddle said his farm had strictly followed the district’s coronavirus regulations, putting almost all the workers up in hotel rooms for two rounds of quarantine. He called Chaparro’s death an unfortunate reflection of the disease’s vagaries, not of systemic failures.

“Every regulation was followed that needed to be,” he said, standing in a parking lot behind his office. “At the end of the day, these gentlemen are living in close contact, they work in close contact, they are front-line workers providing food.”

He invited a New York Times reporter to speak to three of his employees, one of whom had worked for him for 32 years.

Two confirmed that Chaparro had lain sick in bed for a week. They said that four other workers in the bunkhouse had also had fevers and that one coughed so much, they thought he had pneumonia.

“All of us were 100% convinced it was just the change in climate,” said Daniel Hernandez Vargas, a roommate of Chaparro’s who was working at the farm this spring for the first time.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

15

‘Call me a dreamer.’ A shattered Beirut neighborhood rebuilds

By VIVIAN YEE

A

fter the August port explosion that disfigured much of Beirut, many compared the city to a phoenix that would rise again.

“We are staying,” read some signs in the famous nightlife district of Mar Mikhael, one of the worst-hit neighborhoods. Down the main thoroughfare in Gemmayzeh, another badly damaged area whose graceful old buildings housed storied families and Beirut newcomers alike, it was the same: Residents vowed to return, and banners on buildings promised to rebuild.

Two months later, some businesses have begun to reopen, and teams of volunteer engineers and architects are working to save heritage buildings. But even the bullish say they do not believe a full recovery is possible, pointing to the lack of government leadership and resources, combined with an imploding economy that has put even basic repairs beyond the wallets of many residents.

If Beirut is a phoenix, it has already endured too much, they say: civil war; war with Israel; incompetent and corrupt governments; huge protests, the coronavirus and now this.

Although they were traditionally Christian neighborhoods, Mar Mikhael, Gemmayzeh and the surrounding areas attracted young Lebanese of different religious backgrounds, as well as foreigners and tourists, to its bars, cafes and art galleries. Gay, lesbian and transgender people felt safe. Entrepreneurs and designers moved in. Dusty hardware stores sat a few doors down from trendy coffee shops.

The explosion has threatened that unique social fabric, locals say.

And not all are ready to return. It would feel like erasing what happened, a few said — like walking blithely over a grave.

Tarek Mourad, owner of Demo Bar At the edge of Gemmayzeh, between a church and an antique chandelier shop, a narrow street darts up the hill at odd angles. Locals call it Thieves’ Lane, from long ago, when it was a quick getaway route from authorities.

Over the past year, anti-government protesters dodging tear gas have often sprinted the same way and ducked into Demo, a bar with pleasantly worn wooden benches and experimental music thrumming from the DJ booth.

Its owner, Tarek Mourad, 38, opened Demo with a partner a decade ago, and it became a Beirut classic. The bar’s glass front was smashed in the explosion, and Mourad turned to GoFundMe to replace it.

“When you spend years planting something,” he said, “and suddenly there’s something that cuts the plant down, you hope the roots are there.”

But he was not sure whether everything that made Demo what it had been would return — the small shops and bakeries nearby that gave the street life, neighbors who stopped in for coffee or a beer.

“Everyone that works at Demo, or lives around it, needs to get back and get their lives back,” he said. “But it’s not just Demo; it’s a whole neighborhood. For years, I walked through Gemmayzeh daily. Now it’s not there anymore. What form it’ll take, I don’t know.”

Fadlo Dagher, architect Fadlo Dagher’s family began building their pale-blue villa on the main street of Gemmayzeh in 1820. To him, the houses in the neighborhood — and throughout Beirut — represent the tolerant, diverse, sophisticated country that Lebanon was meant to be.

“This is the image of openness,” he said, “the image of a cosmopolitan culture.”

The houses — generally wide dwellings a few stories high, with red tiled roofs and tall, street-facing triple-arched windows opening onto a central hall — began appearing in Beirut by the mid-1800s, after the city grew into a hub for trade between Damascus, Syria, and the Mediterranean.

The style blended architectural ideas from Iran, Venice and Istanbul. While the new houses’ walls were of Lebanese sandstone, their marble floors and columns were imported from Italy, roof tiles from Marseille, France, and cedar timbers from Turkey.

Despite war, neglect and a 20th-century fashion for highrises, many of the old houses stood untouched in Gemmayzeh and Mar Mikhael until the explosion, which seriously damaged about 360 structures built between 1860 and 1930.

To abandon them, Dagher said, would be to jettison one of the few shared legacies of a perpetually fractured country.

“I’d like to imagine that what is happening here, this diversity, this mixed city, that it still exists, that maybe it can reflourish,” he said. “Is it mission impossible? I don’t know. But, OK, call me a dreamer. This is what I want it to be.”

Roderick and Mary Cochrane, owners of Sursock Palace Sursock is the name of the neighborhood up the hill from Gemmayzeh. It is also the name of the area’s main street, the museum on that street, the palace a few doors down and the family that lives in that palace. All are now damaged.

Lady Yvonne Sursock Cochrane grew up in the palace, which was built by her forebears in the mid-1800s. She spent decades protecting it — first from Lebanon’s 15-year civil war (by staying put), and then from overdevelopment (by buying up neighboring properties). She was injured in the Aug. 4 explosion as she sat on her terrace, debris falling in a neat border around her chair. She died Aug. 31, aged 98.

Her last look at the house showed this: roof partly caved in; frescoed ceilings more holes than plaster; marble statues shattered; Ottoman-era furniture splintered; antique tapestries torn; intricately latticed windows blown in.

Her son and daughter-in-law, Roderick and Mary Cochrane, are rebuilding. They do not yet know the price, only that it will be astronomical.

“You restore things because it’s part of the history,” said Mary Cochrane, an American. She was hospitalized after the explosion but recovered. “We take care of it for future generations.”

Roderick Cochrane added: “Mar Mikhael and Gemmayzeh should remain a place for Lebanese, for small designers, small shops, small business owners. Without these, there’d be no Beirut.

We’d be a city like Dubai.”

The city center of Beirut in a view from the Mar Mikhael neighborhood, Sept. 14, 2020. Many worry that a full recovery won’t be possible, but residents of one of Beirut’s most diverse and cosmopolitan areas are moving back in and trying to repair the damage from the August explosion.

16

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

With elections ahead, some African presidents try engineering results

Refugees at a camp for displaced people in Kongoussi, Burkina Faso, in March 2020.

Presidential elections are scheduled soon in at least 10 African countries — many incumbents are changing constitutions and bending rules to ensure they stay in power.

By RUTH MACLEAN

T

he president of the West African nation of Guinea is running for a third term Oct. 18, even though Guinea requires its presidents to step down after two. But because of a constitutional change he initiated, his first two terms do not count.

The president in neighboring Ivory Coast has made his first two terms disappear with a constitutional amendment, too. So he is also running for a third-butactually-first term, on Oct. 31.

And after 34 years in power, Uganda’s 76-year-old president plans to run for reelection in February. The age limit for presidents in Uganda was 75, but then he changed the constitution and sought to prove his fitness to stay in office with a demonstration of his red-carpet workout routine in the State House — to the howls of many Ugandans.

While much of the world may be focused on the contest for the top job in the United States, presidential elections are also set to take place in at least 10 of Africa’s 54 countries over the next five months. All of the incumbents but one want to stay in office.

While most African presidents since 1990 have stepped down after their terms

were up, many are now bending the rules to ensure they stay in power. Some have manipulated supreme courts and electoral commissions; others have changed constitutions, prosecuted opposition candidates or prevented them from running by imposing onerous qualifying criteria.

But countries like the United States that once claimed to stand against those undermining democracy are now turning inward, and so, some political thinkers say, incumbents are increasingly getting away with it.

“Too many of our countries have not stood by the protocols and the resolutions that we have made in our regional institutions. Regarding democracy. Regarding term limits. Regarding the transfer of power in a regular and peaceful way,” said Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the former president of Liberia. “And those shifts are coming also because of the changes in the geopolitical landscape.”

European colonizers frequently damaged or destroyed Africa’s own systems and traditions of holding power to account, as historians have chronicled. Post-colonial African governments have instead relied on imported, sometimes ill-fitting political systems. And at around 60 years old, these systems are still younger than many current presidents.

In March, Ivory Coast’s president, Alassane Ouattara, 78, was basking in praise for saying he would step down when he had completed his two terms — despite arguing that he did not have to, because a constitutional change meant his term clock was reset to zero.

But four months later, his chosen successor suddenly died, and the president judged that no other candidate would do.

Like his predecessors, Félix HouphouëtBoigny, Ivory Coast’s first president, under whom Ouattara served as prime minister, and Laurent Gbagbo, whose refusal to leave office in 2011 set off the country’s second bloody civil war within a decade, Ouattara decided to hang on — calling it a “real sacrifice.”

Protests spread across the country.

Then two of the front-runners were barred from standing in the election — Gbagbo, who last year was acquitted of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court, and Guillaume Soro, a former prime minister and rebel leader living in exile, who was sentenced to 20 years in jail in absentia in April.

Four candidates remain, although 40 were disqualified.

“Not allowing the others to be candidates will surely bring another war,” said Mélodie Gnékonté, a secretary who said her uncle, an army doctor, had been killed during the last war.

Across French-speaking West Africa, civic space is shrinking, so that citizens trying to hold their governments to account face repressive laws, arrest and sometimes death, according to a report to be published by the global nonprofit Civicus.

Case in point: recent deadly clashes in Guinea, over the new constitution pushed by the country’s first democratically elected president, Alpha Condé.

His success at maneuvering to stay in power is partly the fault of Western negligence, said Cellou Dalein Diallo, the Guinean opposition leader.

“The Europeans are less attentive, and the Americans, with the arrival of Trump, are less demanding when it comes to democracy and human rights,” Diallo said on a recent campaign trip to Dakar, Senegal, where a large Guinean diaspora lives.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is-

sued a two-paragraph statement last week about “upcoming elections in Africa,” warning that “repression and intimidation have no place in democracies.” But many Africans commented on social media that such a skimpy, blanket statement about the continent, rather than specific countries, was evidence that there is little interest from the administration of President Donald Trump, who denigrated African countries with a memorable epithet in 2018.

When Diallo got back to Guinea, Condé accused him of going there to recruit mercenaries and attack his own country, which Diallo strongly denies. But Condé closed the border.

As a result, many Guineans living abroad may be unable to return to cast their votes. And some of those at home, who can vote, say politicians are trying to sow division.

“Power shouldn’t be something they cling to, knowing that there are people who could do better,” said Fanta Traoré, a student at the French University of Guinea.

In Uganda, political rallies are banned because of the coronavirus, making it harder for opposition candidates.

To reach voters, candidates have to rely on the news media, over which President Yoweri Museveni and the governing party exert great influence.

Tanzania’s political space is shrinking rapidly too. Opposition leader Tundu Lissu, who spent three years in exile after an assassination attempt, has returned to the country to run for president but says police are disrupting his campaign. He says he fears for his life.

Until recently, Gambia was riding on the joyful high that followed the dislodging of its longtime autocratic president in 2016. But the new president reneged on his promise to serve for only three years.

Last month, his supporters in the National Assembly rejected a new, transformative constitution because, civil rights activists say, it would limit the new president to a decade in power.

The other countries set to have elections in the next five months are Benin, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Ghana and Seychelles. The only country where the incumbent is not running is Niger.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

17

U.S. auction theorists win the 2020 Nobel in Economics

By JEANNA SMIALEK

T

wo American economists, Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson, were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats — innovations that have had huge practical applications when it comes to allocating scarce resources.

The pair, close collaborators who are both affiliated with Stanford University, have pioneered new auction formats that governments have since used to auction off radio frequency.

“They haven’t just profoundly changed the way we understand auctions — they have changed how things are auctioned,” said Alvin E. Roth, a Nobel laureate himself who was one of Wilson’s doctoral students. “The two of them are some of the greatest theorists living in economics today.”

Auctions help to sell a variety of products, including art, minerals and online advertising. They can also take on various characteristics: Objects can have a shared, common value for all bidders (such as commodities like oil) or private values that vary across bidders (like art). Bidders may know exactly what the object’s value is, or they may have imperfect information. Bids can be open, meaning everyone can see them, or closed.

Wilson “was the first to create a framework” for auctions of items with a common value, according to the prize committee. In his work, he explained that bidders will offer less than they think the object or service is worth because they are afraid of overpaying — the winner’s curse — even more acutely when they are at an information disadvantage.

But in most auctions, bidders have both common and private values — when buying a house, for instance, shoppers think about both what they personally like about the amenities and what the market value of the home might be.

Milgrom came up with a theory to deal with that mix of common and private value, and he examined how the “winner’s curse” plays out in such instances. He found that people underbid by less in so-called English auctions, in which prices start low and are raised, than in Dutch auctions, where they start high and are reduced.

Yet the pair’s “best-known contribution,” according to the committee, is their work in designing new auction formats for complex situations, including the format that governments now use to allocate radio frequencies to telecom operators.

Radio bandwidth was once allocated by “beauty contests” in which operators made a case for why they should get it — leading to intense lobbying. In the 1990s, the Federal Communications Commission pushed, and Congress permitted, a switch to lottery-based allocation of bandwidth. Initially, though, the new approach also worked poorly: The lotteries were held locally, leading to fractured networks for national operators, among other problems.

Milgrom and Wilson came up with a new format

Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson were awarded the Nobel in economic science on Monday for improvements to auction theory and inventions of auction formats. that allowed the simultaneous auctioning of the many geographic areas of the radio spectrum across various bidders, starting with low prices and allowing repeated bids. The FCC adopted the approach in 1994, and found that it allowed them to dole out the radio space while also raising far more money.

The Milgrom and Wilson approach met with such success that many other countries, including Britain, Canada, and Spain, went on to adopt it.

The economists “started out with fundamental theory and later used their results in practical applications, which have spread globally,” Peter Fredriksson, chairman of the prize committee, said in a release accompanying the announcement. “Their discoveries are of great benefit to society.”

Who are the winners?

Wilson was born in 1937 in Geneva, Nebraska, earned both his bachelor’s and graduate degrees from Harvard University, and he is now a professor emeritus at Stanford University.

Milgrom was born in 1948 in Detroit. He completed his graduate education at Stanford, where he received a doctorate in 1979 and where he is now a professor. He, like Roth, was a doctoral student of Wilson’s.

“Bob is a patriarch of a Nobel dynasty,” Roth joked, noting that Wilson also advised the laureate Bengt R. Holmstrom.

Milgrom and Wilson live on the same street in California, a prize committee member, Tommy Andersson, said during a streamed interview following the announcement in Stockholm. He said that neither of them answered their phones at first when they were called about the prize, because it was in the middle of the night on the West Coast. Milgrom was told just minutes before the public announcement.

A groggy-sounding Wilson called into the prize committee’s news conference. Asked if he himself had ever bought something at auction, he at first thought he had not.

“My wife points out to me — we bought ski boots on eBay,” he eventually concluded. “I guess that was an auction.”

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18

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Manic panic on the Potomac

By MAUREEN DOWD

A

t long last, a top Republican is distancing himself from Donald Trump.

Literally.

Mitch McConnell has been boasting to colleagues and to reporters in Kentucky that he knew better than to go to the Amy Coney Barrett superspreader event in the Rose Garden or set foot on that 18 acres of magical thinking known as the White House because he could see that the president and his team were courting danger.

At 78, the wily Senate majority leader, a polio survivor, wasn’t taking any chances.

“I actually haven’t been to the White House since Aug. 6,” he said at a news conference back home, “because my impression was their approach to how to handle this was different than mine and what I insisted that we do in the Senate, which is to wear a mask and practice social distancing.”

McConnell did more than physically distance himself from Trump. He politically distanced himself as well, throwing cold water on the president’s whiplash-inducing reversal on a stimulus bill. After torpedoing negotiations in a tweet Tues-

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day because he thought the Democrats wanted too much, the steroid-pumped president did a triple axel and tweeted to Congress to “Go Big!” “I would like to see a bigger stimulus package, frankly, than either Democrats or Republicans are offering,” he told Rush Limbaugh in a manic two-hour call Friday (during which he dropped the F bomb about Iran). “I’m going the exact opposite now.”

Clearly, McConnell does not want to invest whatever capital he has left in reviving Trump when the guy seems doomed. Why bring up an issue that really divides his Republican members weeks before an election that might be a wipeout — with the Senate in the balance?

McConnell is all about winning. He knows a loser when he sees one.

As Alex Conant, a Republican strategist, told The New York Times, Trumpworld is at a dangerous pass: “The knives come out, the donors flee and the candidate throws embarrassing Hail Marys.”

Proving once more that there’s no bottom to how low he’ll go, McConnell explained to reporters in Kentucky that he wasn’t ready to push a stimulus deal because “the situation is kind of murky, and I think the murkiness is a result of the proximity to the election and everybody kind of trying to elbow for political advantage.”

So it’s fine to elbow for political advantage and push to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg with an arch conservative who would threaten health care and abortion rights in proximity to the election. But a bill that would help millions of suffering Americans as the economy goes down the tubes? Nah. That’s too murky.

Speaking to Limbaugh, Trump had a rare moment of

sounding vulnerable, before he returned to his bombastic self.

“I said, ‘How bad was I?’” he recalled.

“They said, ‘You could have been very bad.

You were going into a very bad phase.’” The president continued: “This looks like it was going to be a big deal. And you know what that means, that means bad, because I’ve lost five people, at least five people who were friends of mine, one in particular, like an incredible guy who went in there, into the hospital, he was dead within three days.”

Trump mused, “I was not in great shape,” and said that without that special cocktail, “I might not have recovered at all from COVID.” (Pretty much the opposite of what he had said the day before.)

So was it sinking in? Was any of it sinking in? The damage he did to the country by dropping the mask and putting on a blindfold?

The danger he put his family, staff and supporters in, with his portrayal of mask-wearing as effete — the spiritual successor to casting liberals as latte-loving, tree-hugging, Volvo-driving, kale-eating losers.

No sooner had Trump admitted that things could have gone very badly than he began spreading bogus claims about the virus again, telling Limbaugh that the “cure” was now available.

And even with Anthony Fauci declaring that the ceremony in the Rose Garden was officially a superspreader event, and with Nancy Pelosi taunting Trump on the 25th Amendment, the tweaked-out president was fantasizing about more superspreaders.

He was busy concocting another White House crush on the South Lawn with another bizarre Evita turn on the balcony for Saturday, and Monday, he’s scheduled to travel to Florida for what he called “a very BIG RALLY!” Was it sinking in that he’s losing, that his greatest fear could be coming true? Were the physical and mental stresses of COVID and steroids mixing with his febrile fear of hearing “You’re fired!” from the American people?

Was this why he was tweeting a maniacal video in bronzeface begging for the votes of seniors, swaths of whom may be slipping away because they feel betrayed over his failure on the virus? Was this why he was demanding that Bill Barr indict Barack Obama and Joe Biden and calling Kamala Harris “a monster” and ranting about Hillary’s emails? Was this why he pulled out of the debate? Was this why he was picking a fight with Gretchen Whitmer in the midst of the FBI foiling a plot by a moronic militia to kidnap the Michigan governor?

Was it all finally sinking in? Or was it just another week on Planet Trump?

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

19

Presidente de Asociación de Alcaldes rechaza acciones de titiritero televisivo Antulio Santarrosa Por THE STAR

E

l presidente de la Asociación de Alcaldes de Puerto Rico, José R. “Joe” Román Abreu condenó lo protagonizado por el conductor del programa ‘La Comay’ en su campaña personalista contra la única mujer candidata a ocupar La Fortaleza en la presente campaña política.

“El poder que otorgan los medios masivos de comunicación no puede ser utilizado impunemente por aquellos que se valen de los mismos para agredir, violentar o causar daño a otras personas por el simple hecho de que se difiera de sus

ideas. Resulta todavía más aborrecible cuando ese poder mediático se utiliza para emprenderla contra una persona tergiversando la realidad valiéndose de una niña.

No podemos guardar silencio ante acciones de esta naturaleza. Hacerlo nos convertiría en cómplices de una acción absolutamente censurable que rebasa lo peor que hayamos podido presenciar en nuestro escenario social. Sobrepasa los límites de la maldad humana, sabrá Dios con qué objetivos, la manipulación realizada por el titiritero televisivo para emprenderla contra la familia de la única mujer que aspira a la gobernación de

nuestro país”, indicó.

Román Abreu además solicitó que espera que el suceso no se repita en otros medios.

“Rechazamos enérgicamente la acción de Kobbo Santarrosa y demandamos se tomen las medidas necesarias para que su deleznable acción no vuelva a repetirse en los medios de comunicación del país. Creemos en la libertad de pensamiento y en el más absoluto respeto a los derechos consignados en nuestra Constitución. Sin embargo, no hay manera de hacer compatible el ejercicio de las libertades humanas con el acto degradante en que ha incurrido este individuo.

Nuestros niños y niñas no tienen porqué sufrir la conducta depravada de Kobbo Santarosa”.

Anuncian nuevas tiendas a Plaza Las Américas y Plaza Del Caribe Por THE STAR

L

os centros comerciales Plaza Las Américas y Plaza Del Caribe anunciaron hoy la apertura de nuevas tiendas y establecimientos que se añaden a las ofertas disponibles para los consumidores puertorriqueños, de cara a la temporada de Navidad que se aproxima. For Eyes, Casa Febus Navidad y Gef France son las tiendas que recién abrieron sus puertas en Plaza Las Américas. Mientras que en Plaza Del Caribe hicieron lo propio For Eyes y PenFed Credit Union.

Esto, a pesar de los retos enfrentados localmente ante el azote de la pandemia del COVID-19 en la Isla.

“Estamos muy entusiasmados con la apertura de estas nuevas tiendas. Si bien es cierto que, durante los últimos meses y al presente, continuamos navegando en este nuevo escenario, también es igual de cierto que estamos esperanzados en continuar con paso firme de cara a una temporada navideña que será diferente, pero especial para todo Puerto Rico”, señaló Franklin Domenech Gerente General de Plaza

Las Américas en comunicación escrita.

En el caso de For Eyes, se trata de una tienda que cuenta con una gran selección de estilos de espejuelos, monturas clásicas, gafas de sol y lentes de contacto de las marcas más reconocidas. El local, que en Plaza Las Américas cuenta con aproximadamente 1,865 pies cuadrados, está disponible en el primer nivel, en el pasillo de JCPenney a Macy’s. En Plaza Del Caribe el local tiene un espacio de aproximadamente 1,600 pies cuadrado y está localizada en el

primer nivel, cerca de Kókomo y Macy’s.

“En Plaza Del Caribe también abrió PenFed Credit Union, la segunda cooperativa de crédito federal más grande de los Estados Unidos. Esta nueva sucursal está localizada en el segundo nivel del centro comercial en un espacio de aproximadamente 4,500 pies cuadrados. Estamos muy complacidos con la llegada de estos nuevos inquilinos que se unen al centro comercial”, indicó, por su parte, Edwin Tavárez, Gerente General de Plaza Del Caribe.

De igual manera, este año regresa a Plaza Las Américas Casa Febus Navidad, con cerca de 10,000 pies cuadrados de variada mercancía para todas las decoraciones navideñas. El local está localizado en el primer nivel, en el pasillo de Old Navy a Macy’s.

Gef France, a su vez, es una cadena de origen colombiano que se especializa en ropa moderna y casual para mujeres, hombres y niños de todas las edades. Los amantes de la moda encontrarán una gran selección de ropa, calzado y accesorios. La tienda acaba de abrir un espacio de aproximadamente 3,389 pies cuadrados en el primer nivel del mall, pasillo del atrio central a Old Navy.

20

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

‘SNL’ has a theory about the Pence fly ed his help, Carrey stepped into a David Cronenberg-style teleportation device, setting up an extended reference to that director’s remake of “The Fly,” in which Carrey was reduced to a winged insect.

Wandering around on a set meant to look like the top of Bennett’s head, Carrey — now in a fly costume — delivered a few impressions of Jeff Goldblum, who starred in “The Fly,” and then encountered a second fly, played by Kenan Thompson.

Thompson explained who he was: “I’m Herman Cain, reincarnated as a damn fly,” he said. “And these fools, Trump and Pence, killed me, man.”

Opening Monologue of the Week This weekend’s episode was hosted by stand-up comic Bill Burr, and if you’re not familiar with his work, we’ll forewarn you that some people swear by him and Jim Carrey guest starred as former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., whom “S.N.L.” others would rather swear at him. transformed into the fly that landed on Vice President Mike Pence’s head during Burr used his opening monologue to Wednesday’s debate. mock some sensitive topics, saying that it didn’t bother him if some people refused gressive interruptions between the candi- to wear masks during the pandemic: “Take

By DAVE ITZKOFF dates, and Rudolph explained the various out your grandparents,” Burr said. “Take rom the moment that an errant fly facial expressions she planned to make out your weak cousin with the asthma. I touched down on Vice President while Bennett held forth. “I’d like to hear don’t care. It’s your decision. There’s too Mike Pence during Wednesday’s vice the vice president’s response,” she began, many people. It’s a dream come true. If presidential debate, “Saturday Night Live” “and while he speaks, I’m going to smile at you’re that dumb and you want to kill your viewers started imploring the show to re- him like I’m at a TJ Maxx and a white lady own family members, by all means do it. It create the awkward moment. And “SNL” asked me if I worked here.” stops you from reproducing.”

McKinnon inquired about the health did just that — at some extravagant length Burr went on to joke about the re— in the weekend’s opening sketch, lead- of President Donald Trump, explaining to cent attack on actor Rick Moranis and ing off an episode full of comedy mono- Bennett that she was “asking with a sim- about white women, who he said had “hilogues that were certain to offend almost mering rage for his incompetence and a jacked the woke movement.” Addressing sadistic hope that he is not well.” every sensibility and political viewpoint. these women, Burr said: “You guys stood Bennett replied: “Unfortunately for by us toxic white males through centuBut first, that vice presidential debate parody, which starred Beck Bennett you, then, the president is doing amazing, ries of our crimes against humanity. You as Pence, Maya Rudolph as Sen. Kamala thanks to this team of terrified doctors. As rolled around in the blood money, and ocHarris and Kate McKinnon as moderator you heard from his primary physician, Dr. casionally when you wanted to sneak off Susan Page, who began the broadcast by Handsome Liar, Trump is in peak physical and hook up with a Black dude, if you got declaring, “One thing is for sure: If any- condition.” caught, you said it wasn’t consensual.”

Rudolph sipped comfortably from a thing’s going to be trending on Twitter Burr also talked about Pride Month, tonight, it will be one of the humans in- martini glass and delivered a long, drib- wondering if it was “a little long, don’t bling spit take when McKinnon asked you think, for a group of people that were volved in this debate.”

McKinnon pointed out that the can- for her position on packing the Supreme never enslaved.” He added, “Black people didates were protected by “buffet-style Court. were actually enslaved. They get February.

The scene then switched to the guest They get 28 days of overcast weather.” sneeze guards, on account of one of you star, Jim Carrey, in his new recurring role works for Patient Zero,” she said.

Weekend Update Jokes of the Week Bennett explained that this was to his as former Vice President Joe Biden, who At the Weekend Update desk, anliking: “Twelve feet apart and separated by was watching the debate from home with chors Colin Jost and Michael Che were Plexiglas is how Mother and I sleep,” he said. his wife, played by Heidi Gardner. not particularly delicate as they riffed on Having decided that Rudolph need- Trump’s return to the White House after he There was some cross-talk and ag-

F

was hospitalized with COVID-19.

Jost began by saying: This week was mental illness awareness week, and trust me (an image appears of Trump taking off his mask on the White House balcony), we’re aware. President and active bioweapon Donald Trump took his doctors hostage and broke out of the hospital like Sarah Connor in “Terminator 2.” And I guess he must have been in a coma and thought the year was 2016 because he started demanding Hillary’s emails and for the feds to arrest Obama.

Then he released a series of odd videos from the White House that started like this: (a video plays of Trump saying, “Perhaps you recognize me, it’s your favorite president”). Actually, I barely recognize you because your makeup artist seems to have given you the Dolezal. Also, why does it look like there’s a green screen behind you? It’s a little suspicious when you green-screen yourself into the place where you already are. It looks like you’re shooting a commercial for a Staten Island wedding venue.

Che continued: President Trump claims to have survived the coronavirus. Yay. I’m not going to say I’m disappointed, but it kind of feels like when there’s a car crash and the only survivor is the drunk driver. Trump said him getting COVID was “a blessing from God,” and I bet even God was like, “Hey, we tried, guys.” Actually, maybe we should be more optimistic about this. There’s two ways we can look at it. Either Trump’s telling the truth and we finally have a cure for COVID, or Trump is lying and he’s still going to die. I’m not going to say that’s a win-win but it’s definitely not a lose-lose.

Eddie Van Halen Tribute of the Week Jack White was not originally scheduled to be the weekend’s musical guest — that slot had originally been offered to country musician Morgan Wallen, who had his offer rescinded Wednesday after it was discovered that he had violated the show’s coronavirus protocols. Although White was a late addition to the “SNL” lineup, he certainly made the most of his time and paid homage to Eddie Van Halen, the virtuoso rock guitarist who died Tuesday.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

21

The concerts were canceled months ago. So where are the refunds?

By BEN SISARIO

E

arly this year, Joanne Brakatselos, a rock fan in Queens, New York, spent just over $1,000 for tickets to six concerts. In the months since those events were canceled because of the coronavirus, she got her money back for every show.

Except one.

Brakatselos is one of the thousands of fans still awaiting refunds for Tool and Judas Priest shows at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, a case that has begun to draw attention and finger-pointing behind the scenes of the music industry.

For consumers like Brakatselos, who paid $356.70 for two tickets to see Tool, getting those refunds has been an exercise in frustration. Since June, when the band’s show was canceled, she has been back and forth numerous times between Ticketmaster and the Coliseum, to no avail.

The venue box office repeatedly asked for her patience and said it was working on the problem, while Ticketmaster said it was awaiting funds from the “event organizer,” according to emails and other communications Brakatselos shared with The New York Times.

“Both sides are pointing to each other, and I’m monkey in the middle,” Brakatselos said in an interview.

But Nassau County, which owns the Coliseum, says responsibility for the refunds rests with the former leaseholder of the venue — a company run by billionaire Russian investor Mikhail Prokhorov.

“Under the county’s lease agreement, resolving refunds falls squarely with the tenant,” a spokeswoman for Nassau County executive Laura Curran said in statement.

The county directed further questions to Prokhorov’s company, Onexim Sports and Entertainment, which held the lease on the arena until August, when a deal brokered

by Nassau County transferred it to an investor that had financed recent renovations to the 48-year-old building.

(As part of that deal, the investor, U.S. Immigration Fund — which is not affiliated with the federal government — paid more than $2 million that Onexim owed the county in back rent.)

The reason for the delay of the refunds remains unclear, as is the question of how the problem will be resolved now that Prokhorov’s company is no longer in control of the venue.

Nassau Events Center, the Onexim subsidiary that operated the venue, said it is “working closely with Ticketmaster regarding refunds for tickets purchased through that channel, and is aiming for those refunds to be processed as soon as possible.”

The company noted that fans who bought tickets directly from the Coliseum box office — usually a tiny portion of overall sales — can get their money back from the venue. But it did not respond when asked about the cause of the delay in refunds through Ticketmaster, or

Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim Sports and Entertainment held the lease on the Nassau Coliseum until August.

Fans are awaiting refunds for canceled Tool and Judas Priest shows there. whether it could offer any more specific timing.

Prokhorov, who made his fortune in metals through the privatization of former Soviet assets in the 1990s, is well known to sports fans as the former owner of Barclays Center and the Brooklyn Nets. He is worth $11.3 billion, according to Forbes, and most recently has invested in virtual reality.

Ticketmaster’s exposure to refund claims is also uncertain. The company tells its customers that it pays refunds for all canceled shows in about 30 days. But the coronavirus shutdown has dealt a severe economic blow to Ticketmaster and its corporate parent, Live Nation Entertainment; the company reported that its revenue for the second quarter this year dropped 98% from the same period in 2019.

In a statement, Ticketmaster said only that it was “currently waiting” for Nassau Events Center to transfer the ticketing funds “so we can pass refunds along to fans.”

John Scher, the veteran New York-area concert promoter who was putting on the Tool show, said he has been flabbergasted by the arena’s refund failure. In an interview, Scher said his contacts at Ticketmaster and the venue told him that Ticketmaster had forwarded the money from the concert’s ticket sales — a little over $1 million, he said — to the Coliseum’s operators.

Scher said he had been unable to get answers about who was holding those funds and when refunds would be paid. But he minced no words in blaming Prokhorov and his company for the problem.

“The fact that they’re not refunding the money is blatantly unfair to the ticket holder,” Scher said in an interview. “There isn’t any gray area. He ran the building and took in the money.”

A spokeswoman for Prokhorov declined to comment beyond the statement issued by Nassau Events Center.

In a statement, Tool said it had not received any money from the show, and that “we simply do not have enough information to comment on the situation.”

But the band Judas Priest, which canceled a September show at the Coliseum, was more pointed.

“We hate the thought that fans are not getting their refunds but unfortunately we have no control over it,” said Jayne Andrews, a manager for the band. “The issue doesn’t lie with us, Live Nation or even Ticketmaster — the building must return the money to Ticketmaster first in order for Ticketmaster to do the refunds.”

Andrews said Judas Priest has had no refund problems at any of the other venues where it has canceled shows.

22

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Foul-mouthed parrots to return to park, possibly reformed

By DAN BILEFSKY

W

hen Steve Nichols, the chief executive of the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park, heard employees loudly swearing in the next room, he went over to tell them off.

But there were no employees in the next room. Just the birds.

He then realized that five parrots who moved to the park in the same week shared an unfortunate trait: They all had filthy, filthy mouths.

With more colorful language than plumage, the African grey parrots — Billy, Elsie, Eric, Jade and Tyson — used different curse words in different British accents, but they were all unprintably coarse. At one point, a group of women walking past the aviary thought the lewd comments shouted at them were from a hidden staff member, Nichols said.

The park had no complaints — in fact, visitors reveled in swearing right back at the birds — but the park officials feared children and parents might not enjoy the experience as much, he said. The chirpy birds were moved into a temporary space away from the public eye, giving them time to be around more family-friendly birds and hopefully clean up their vo-

Billy, one of the five parrots at the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in Friskney, England, that has been swearing at visitors. “Billy is the worst one,” a park official said. cabulary.

The birds are expected to be released back into the main colony Wednesday, after their time removed for bad behavior.

A major problem of the parrots’ language, he said, was that it was hilarious.

“When a parrot swears, it’s very difficult for other humans not to laugh,” he said. “And when we laugh, that’s a positive response. And therefore, what they do is they learn both the laugh and the swear word.”

“It’s not so bad with one on its own,” he continued. “But then, if you get five together, once one swears and another one laughs, and another one laughs, before you know it, it sounds like a group of teenagers or an old working men’s club.”

One parrot was especially foulmouthed, he said: “Billy is the worst one.”

The birds arrived at the park, about 130 miles north of London, at the end of August from five different owners across Britain. Each owner apologized that their pet might have picked up a few choice words, Nichols said.

They were among about 20 birds to arrive in the same week and spent a week together in quarantine.

(The others have been well behaved.)

Parrots are typically quiet when they are first placed in public, so the staff thought it was safe to put them outside.

It was not. When Nichols first saw visitors gathered outside the aviary, he thought they were there to see Chico, who achieved minor fame this month for learning to sing Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy.” Instead, he saw the parrots and the guests brutally cursing each other out.

Now that the birds have been removed from the public exhibits, some guests are arriving who have heard about the vulgar birds but don’t know which cage they’re in. So they have taken to swearing at all of the birds, hoping they’ll get some abuse back, Nichols said.

The burst of levity has been needed, Nichols said. The park was forced to shut down for 20 weeks during efforts to stem the coronavirus pandemic, and it has been hammered financially. And the center has taken in more birds than ever, with workingfrom-home parrot owners suddenly realizing that they had forced their pets to spend too much time in cages.

Parrots can pick up frequently used words from their owners, mimicking the sounds even if they can’t understand the meanings. The park occasionally takes in such foulmouthed birds, but having five in the same week was “the most amazing set of coincidences,” Nichols said.

The cursing isn’t usually much of a problem, he said — though parrots retain memory of the naughty words, they usually adapt their behavior to the larger colony, most of which does not call paying customers unspeakable names. Nichols expects them to be on their best behavior.

“They’ve probably got a really good vocabulary, too,” he said.

“It’s just we’ve only heard the swear words.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

23

What we dream when we dream about COVID-19

By BENEDICT CAREY

T

he swarm of insects — sometimes gnats, sometimes wasps or flying ants — arrived early in this year of nightmares. With summer came equally unsettling dreams: of being caught in a crowd, naked and maskless; of meeting men in white lab coats who declared, “We dispose of the elders.”

Autumn has brought still other haunted-house dramas, particularly for women caring for a vulnerable relative or trying to manage virtual home-schooling.

“I am home-schooling my 10-year-old,” one mother told researchers in a recent study of pandemic dreams. “I dreamed that the school contacted me to say it had been decided that his whole class would come to my home and I was supposed to teach all of them for however long the school remained closed.”

Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of “Pandemic Dreams,” has administered dream surveys to thousands of people in the last year, including the one with the home-schooling mother.

“At least qualitatively, you see some shifts in content of dreams from the beginning of the pandemic into the later months,” Barrett said. “It’s an indication of what is worrying people most at various points during the year.”

Barrett is editor-in-chief of the journal Dreaming, which in its September issue posted four new reports on how the sleeping brain has incorporated the threat of COVID-19. The findings reinforce current thinking about the way that waking anxiety plays out during REM sleep: in images or metaphors representing the most urgent worries, whether these involve catching the coronavirus (those clouds of insects) or violating mask-wearing protocols.

Taken together, the papers also hint at an answer to a larger question: What is the purpose of dreaming, if any?

The answers that science has on offer can seem mutually exclusive, or near so. Freud understood dreams as wish fulfillment; Finnish psychologist Antti Revonsuo saw them as simulations of pending threats. In recent years, brain scientists have argued that REM sleep — the period of sleep during which most dreaming occurs — bolsters creative thinking, learning and emotional health, providing a kind of unconscious psychotherapy.

Then again, there is some evidence that dreaming serves little or no psychological purpose — that it is no more than a “tuning of the mind in preparation for awareness,” as J. Allan Hobson, a Harvard psychiatrist, has said.

The four new studies are rooted in a more straightforward idea called the continuity hypothesis. This framework holds that the content of dreams simply reflects what people thought, felt and did during the day — the good and the bad, the hopeful and the frightening. In one study, Cassidy MacKay and Teresa DeCicco of Trent University in Canada compared dream journals kept by

students in the first two weeks of the spread of the coronavirus in North America with the journals of students logged before anyone had heard of COVID-19.

The researchers categorized each image, using a standardized measure, into types such as body parts, animals, food and medical objects. The differences in the early pandemic logs jumped out.

“People were clearly thinking about coronavirus-related events, like waiting in grocery lines, and had heads in their dreams, the body part associated with catching and spreading the virus,” DeCicco said.

People with persistent waking anxieties also tended to play out scenarios involving future work, relationships and life generally in their heads over the course of a day.

Previous research has correlated this pattern to sceneshifting in dreams: the frequent changing of the setting, from indoors to outdoors, city to country, mountains to coast. MacKay and DeCicco found that dreamers during the first phase of the pandemic recorded far more such shifts in their REM mini-dramas.

“These are classic anxiety dreams,” DeCicco said.

In another of the studies, Barrett recruited nearly 3,000 people online to track, describe and write about their dreams. She assessed the content of those essays, using a language-analysis algorithm that maps words onto categories like “anger,” “sadness,” “body,” “health” and “death.” These dreams, too, had all the hallmarks of

heightened waking anxiety, but emotions like anger and sadness were much more prevalent among women than men.

“I wasn’t expecting this, but the findings suggest to me this idea that men are mainly experiencing fear of getting sick and dying, health fears,” Barrett said. “Women have been weathering more secondary effects; they tend to be the ones nursing sick family members, more often than males, for instance.”

Not all the dreams, in either study, were infused with darkness and fear, and many were pleasant, involving reunions with friends or family, or featuring the containment and elimination of the virus. They included wishes and threats, healthy measures and mistakes, and adjustments to news of the spread: learning and emotional processing. There were also periodic injections of hope.

In short, the studies suggest that dreaming does not serve just one purpose but many.

For everyday dreamers during the pandemic, it may be enough to know that COVID-19 nightmares, like any others, tend to be emotionally over-the-top. “It was scary in the dream, but you wake up and it’s funny,” Barrett said. “The crisis is smaller than you thought.”

The whole class of schoolchildren isn’t invading your house. The hazmat suits aren’t standing outside the door. We may get through this after all.

24 LEGAL NOTICE

RICHARD ROE COMO POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS

Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL Demandado(a) DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de Civil: Núm. CA2020CV01628.

Sobre: CANCELACION DE PABAYAMON. GARE EXTRAVIADO . NOTIFIORIENTAL BANK CACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR Demandante v.

EDICTO.

JOSÉ MIGUEL LEONOR VERA

Demandado(a) Civil: Núm. BY2020CV00308.

SALA 403. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA . NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: JOSÉ MIGUEL LEONOR VERA

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 7 de octubre de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de 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 7 de octubre de 2020. En BAYAMON, Puerto Rico, el 7 de octubre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria.

LUREIMY ALICEA GONZALEZ, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

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

WILMINGTON SAVING FUND SOCIETY, FSB D/B/A CHRISTIANA TRUST, AS INDENTURE TRUSTEE, FOR THE CSMC 2015-PRl TRUST, MORTGAGE -BACKED NOTES, SERIE 2015-PRl Demandante v.

DORAL MORTGAGE, CORPORA TION, AHORA BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO, JOHN DOE Y @

A: JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE COMO POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 5 de octubre de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de 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 7 de octubre de 2020.

En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 7 de octubre de 2020. MARILYN APONTE RODRIGUEZ, Secretaria. KEILA GARCIA SOLIS, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

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 7 de octubre de 2020.

En SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, el 7 de octubre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria. F/MARILY LOPEZ MARTINEZ, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

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

Reverse Mortgage Solutions, Inc. DEMANDANTE VS.

Sucesión de Carmen Milagros Sotomayor Torres t/c/c Carmen Milagros Sotomayor Martinez t/c/c Carmen M. Sotomayor Torres t/c/c Carmen Sotomayor Torres t/c/c Carmen Milagros Sotomayor a/k/a Carmen M. LEGAL NOTICE Sotomayor t/c/c Carmen Estado Libre Asociado de Puer- Sotomayor t/c/c Carmen to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL M. Marín Sotomayor DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Pricompuesta por José mera Instancia Sala Superior de Marín Sotomayor y Rafael San Juan.

Marín Sotomayor; Centro PUERTO RICO de Recaudaciones de RECOVERY AND Ingresos Municipales DEVELOPMENT JV, LLC. y Estados Unidos de Demandante v.

América LUIS C. DEMANDADOS PASTRANA NAVARRO

Demandado(a) Civil: Núm. SJ2019CV11028 (604) . Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO (REGLA 60) . NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: LUIS C. PASTRANA NAVARRO

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 7 de octubre de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente

CIVIL NUM.: BY2019CV06771.

SALA: 505. SOBRE: Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. UNIDOS DE AMERICA PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: José Marín Sotomayor y Rafael Marín Sotomayor como miembros de la Sucesión de Carmen Milagros Sotomayor Torres t/c/c Carmen

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

Milagros Sotomayor Martinez t/c/c Carmen M. Sotomayor Torres t/c/c Carmen Sotomayor Torres t/c/c Carmen Milagros Sotomayor a/k/a Carmen M. Sotomayor t/c/c Carmen Sotomayor t/c/c Carmen M. Marín Sotomayor

POR LA PRESENTE, se les emplaza y se les notifica que se ha presentado en la Secretaria de este Tribunal la Demanda del caso del epígrafe solicitando la ejecución de hipoteca y el cobro de dinero relacionado al pagaré suscrito a favor de The Money House, mc, o a su orden, por la suma principal de $238,500.00, con intereses computados sobre la misma desde su fecha hasta su total y completo pago a razón de la tasa de interés de 5.060% anual, ¡a cual será ajustada mensualmente, obligándose además al pago de costas, gastos y desembolsos del litigio, más honorarios de abogados en una suma de $23,850.00, equivalente al 10% de la suma principal original. Este pagaré fue suscrito bajo el affidávit número 13,715 ante el notario Laura Mía González Bonilla. Lo anterior surge de la hipoteca constituida mediante la escritura número 13 otorgada el 1 de noviembre de 2013, ante la misma notario público, inscrita al folio 93 del tomo 1,818 de Bayamón Sur, finca número 72,353, 3ra inscripción.

La Hipoteca Revertida grava la propiedad que se describe a continuación: PROPIEDAD HORIZONTAL: Apartamento número 212. Apartamento residencial número 212 de forma irregular, constituido por I nivel, localizado en la primera planta del Edificio G de Alborada, El Condominio, que está situado en la Carreterra número 2, kilómetro 8.6, Bayamón, Puerto Rico. Consta de un nivel, siendo sus linderos los siguientes: por el NORTE, con el apartamento número 211 y corredor de uso común; por el Sur, con el apartamento número 111; por el ESTE, con área común general; y por el OESTE, con área de uso común general y con corredor de uso común.

Consta el mismo de 3 habitaciones con sus respectivos “closets”, una sala-comedor, cocina, 2 baños equipados con bañera, lavamanos y servicio sanitario. Se incluye bidet en el baño del cuarto principal. El área total del apartamento es de 137.64 metros cuadrados. La puerta de entrada de este apartamento está situada en el lindero OESTE y por ella se sale a la escalera y al área de circulación del proyecto. Se provee una entrada posterior con acceso al lindero Este que se considera como acceso al área común general y

(787) 743-3346

Tuesday, October 13, 2020 es parte de la fachada del edificio. Este apartamento tiene una participación de 0.3482%, en los elementos comunes generales del Condominio. De modificarse o enmendarse la escritura matriz de Alborada, El Condominio a los efectos de añadir 150 unidades de vivienda adicionales, el por ciento de participación de este apartamento en los elementos comunes generales del Condominio será de 0.2196%. Le corresponde y se le asigna a este apartamento como elemento común limitado los estacionamientos identificados con los números 3 y 4.

Finca Número 72,353 inscrita al folio 151 del tomo 1,732 de Bayamón Sur, Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección I de Bayamón. Se apercibe y advierte a ustedes como personas codemandada, que deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.jamaiudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal. De no contestar la demanda radicando el original de la contestación ante la secretaria del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Bayamón, y notificar copia de la contestación de esta a la parte demandante por conducto de su abogada, GLS LEGAL SERVICES, LLC, Atención: Lcda. Charline M. Jiménez Echevarría, Dirección: P.O. Box 367308, San Juan, P.R. 009367308, Teléfono: 787-758-6550, dentro de los próximos sesenta (60) días a partir de la publicación de este emplazamiento por edicto, que será publicado una sola vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general en la isla de Puerto Rico, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia, concediendo el remedio solicitando en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal hoy 6 de octubre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA L SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional. Sandra I. Cruz Vázquez, Secretaria Servicios a Sala.

t/c/c Carmen Sotomayor Torres t/c/c Carmen Milagros Sotomayor a/k/a Carmen M. Sotomayor t/c/c Carmen Sotomayor t/c/c Carmen M. Marín Sotomayor compuesta por Jose Mann Sotomayor y Rafael Mann Sotomayor; Centro de Recuadaciones de Ingresos Municipales y Estados Unidos de América

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: BY2019CV06771.

SALA: 505. SOBRE: Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria. EMPLAZAMIENTO. MANDAMIENTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. Por Cuanto: Se ha dictado en el presente caso la siguiente Orden: Examinada la demanda radicada por la parte demandante, la Solicitud de interpelación contenida en la misma y examinados los autos del caso, el Tribunal le imparte su aprobación y en su virtud acepta la Demanda en el caso de epígrafe, así como la interpelación judicial de la parte demandante a los herederos del codemandado conforme dispone el Artículo 959 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. sec. 2787. Se Ordena a los herederos del causante a saber Jose Mann Sotomayor y Rafael Mann Sotomayor a que dentro del término legal de treinta (30) días contados a partir de la fecha de la notificación de la presente Orden, acepten o repudien la participación que les corresponda en la herencia del causante Carmen Milagros Sotomayor Torres t/c/c Carmen Milagros Sotomayor Martinez t/c/c Carmen M. Sotomayor Torres t/c/c Carmen Sotomayor Torres t/c/c Carmen Milagros Sotomayor a/k/a Carmen M. Sotomayor t/c/c Carmen Sotomayor t/c/c Carmen M. Marín Sotomayor. Se le Apercibe a los herederos antes mencionados: (a) Que de no expresarse dentro del término de 30 días en torno a su aceptación o repudiación de herencia la misma LEGAL NOTICE se tendrá por aceptada; (b) Que ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE luego del transcurso del término PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE de 30 días contados a partir de PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA la fecha de la notificación de la DE BAYAMÓN. presente Orden, se presumirá que han aceptado la herencia Reverse Mortgage del causante y por consiguiente, Solutions, Inc. responden por la cargas de diDEMANDANTE VS. cha herencia conforme dispone Sucesión de Carmen el Artículo 957 del Código Civil, Milagros Sotomayor 31 L.P.R.A. sec. 2785. Se OrdeTorres t/c/c Carmen na a la parte demandante a que, en vista de que la sucesión del Milagros Sotomayor Martinez t/c/c Carmen causante Carmen Milagros Sotomayor Torres tic/c Carmen Mi-

M. Sotomayor Torres

The San Juan Daily Star lagros Sotomayor Martinez t/c/c Carmen M. Sotomayor Torres t/c/c Carmen Sotomayor Torres t/c/c Carmen Milagros Sotomayor a/k/a Carmen M. Sotomayor t/c/c Carmen Sotomayor t/c/c Carmen M. Marín Sotomayor incluyen como herederos a Jose Mann Sotomayor y Rafael Mann Sotomayor, como posibles herederos desconocidos, proceda a notificar la presente Orden mediante un edicto a esos efectos una sola vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general de la Isla de Puerto Rico. DADA en Bayamón, Puerto Rico, hoy día 5 de octubre de 2020. Fdo. Wanda Cintron Valentin, JUEZ. Por Cuanto: Se le advierte a que dentro del término legal de 30 días contados a partir de la fecha de notificación de la presente Orden, acepten o repudien la participación que les corresponda en la herencia del causante Carmen Milagros Sotomayor Torres t/c/c Carmen Milagros Sotomayor Martinez t/c/c Carmen M. Sotomayor Torres t/c/c Carmen Sotomayor Torres t/c/c Carmen Milagros Sotomayor a/k/a Carmen M. Sotomayor t/c/c Carmen Sotomayor t/c/c Carmen M. Marín Sotomayor. Por Orden del Honorable Juez de Primera Instancia de este Tribunal, expido el presente Mandamiento, bajo mi firma y sello oficial, en Bayamón, Puerto Rico hoy día 6 de octubre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional. Sandra I Cruz Vazquez, Sec Servicios a Sala.

LEGAL NOTICE

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 representado 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 7 de octubre de 2020. En Ponce, Puerto Rico, el 7 de octubre de 2020. LUZ MAYRA CARABALLO GARCÍA, Secretaria Regional. f/EREINA AGRONT LEON, Secretaria Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO.

CONDADO 3, LLC Plaintiff, vs.

BYRON SEBASTIAN JURADO BEQUER, MAYRA ERENID CASTRO VELAZQUEZ AND THE CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP CONSTITUTED THEREIN

Estado Libre Asociado de PuerDefendants. to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Pri- CIVIL NO. 3:20-cv-01086-PAD. mera Instancia Sala Superior RE: COLLECTION OF MONIES, FORECLOSURE MORTde Ponce.

GAGE. SUMMONS.

REVERSE MORTGAGE SOLUTIONS, INC. Demandante Vs

JOSE LUIS ALVARADO RODRIGUEZ Y ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA

Demandado Civil Núm. : PO2019CV03265.

Salón: 406. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA ENMENDADA POR EDICTO.

A: JOSE LUIS ALVARADO RODRIGUEZ, PARA SER NOTIFICADO POR EDICTO P/C: LIC. CHARLINE MICHELLE JIMENEZ ECHEVARRIA PO BOX 191134 SAN JUAN PR 00919-1134

(Nombre de las partes a las que se les notifica la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 10 de junio de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia , Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este

TO: BYRON SEBASTIAN JURADO BEQUER, MAYRA ERENID CASTRO VELAZQUEZ AND THE CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP CONSTITUTED THEREIN

The Plaintiff has filed proceedings for collection of monies and the foreclosure of mortgage executed by the defendants over the property that is described in Spanish as follows: URBANA: Solar número catorce “B” (14-B) de la Urbanización Extensión Santa Isidra en el barrio Sardinera de Fajardo, con una cabida de trescientos dieciocho (318.00) metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE y SUR, con la calle número 3 y el solar número 19-B, respectivamente y en veinticuatro (24.00) metros por cada uno de sus lados; ESTE y OESTE, con los solares número 15-B y 13-B, respectivamente. Enclava una casa de cemento reforzado de una sola planta. Inscrita al

The San Juan Daily Star folio 45 del tomo 102 de Fajardo, Registro de la Propiedad de Fajardo, finca número 3,174, Inscripción 15ta. The property is subject to the following mortgage which secure payments of the mortgage note payable to Plaintiff or its order: Mortgage Note dated October 31, 2008 for value received, defendants subscribed, signed and delivered a Mortgage note payable to Autoridad para el Financiamiento de la Vivienda de Puerto Rico, or to its order, for the principal amount of One Hundred Seven Thousand Eight Hundred Dollars ($107,800.00) with interest at the rate of 6.50% per annum, secured by a first mortgage constituted by deed number 556, executed in San Juan, Puerto Rico on the same date, before Notary Public Nay Del Carmen Rodríguez González.

(LOAN NUMBER XXXXX0039) Defendants have breached and are in default of the payment obligations towards plaintiff. As of December 4, 2019, the defendants still owed to plaintiff the sum of $90,843.82 in principal, $4,231.91 in accrued interest, which continues to accrue until full payment of the debt at the rate of 6.50% per annum, $183.96 accrued late charges, and any other advance, charge, fee or disbursements made by plaintiff on behalf of defendants in accordance with the mortgage deed, plus costs, and ten (10) percent attorney fees. This Court has entered an order providing for summons by publication in accordance with the provisions of Rule 4.6 of the Rules of Civil Procedure for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. ACCORDINGLY, you are notified so that you may appear and answer the complaint within thirty (30) days after publication of this summons, sending copy of such answer to Plaintiff’s attorney Francisco Fernández Chiqués, Esq., Fernández Chiqués, LLC - PO Box 9749, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00908. Tel. (787) 722-3040 Fax (787) 7223317. E-mail; ffc@ffclaw.com.

If you fail to do so, default judgment may be entered against you for the relief demanded in the complaint, and the court will proceed to adjudicate the case without further notice. A copy of the complaint and the summons is being sent to the defendant last known address by certified mail, return receipt requested within ten (10) days of the one and only publication of this summons. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, on October 6th, 2020.

MARIA ANTONGIORGI-JORDAN, ESQ. CLERK OF COURT. By:Viviana Diaz-Mulero, Deputy Clerk.

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

BANCO POPULAR

Tuesday, October 13, 2020 DE PUERTO RICO Y SUNWEST MORTGAGE COMPANY, INC. COMO AGENTE DE SERVICIO Demandante Vs

SUCESIÓN DE MAVIS CRISTINA DÍAZ ALFARO COMPUESTA POR SU HEREDERA CONOCIDA LUZ B. VÉLEZ T/C/C LUZ DE LOS ANGELES VÉLEZ; SUCESIÓN DE ALFREDO ANGEL VIERA GONZÁLEZ; FULANO DE TAL Y SUTANA DE TAL COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS Y/O PARTES CON INTERÉS EN DICHAS SUCESIONES; ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA DEMANDADOS vs.

CENTRO DE RECAUDACIÓN DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES y DEPARTAMENTO DE HACIENDA GOBIERNO DE PUERTO RlCO

PARTE INTERESADA Demandado Civil Núm. : CA2019CV03426.

Salón: 407. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: SUCESION DE MAVIS CRISTINA DIAZ ALFARO COMPUESTA POR SU HEREDERA CONOCIDA LUZ B, VELEZ T/C/C LUZ DE LOS ANGELES VELEZ; SUCESION DE ALFREDO ANGEL VIERA GONZALEZ; FULANO DE TAL Y SUTANA DE TAL COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS Y/O PARTES CON INTERES EN DICHAS SUCESIONES, CONS. RICOMAR APT. 405 (APT. Z405) PISO 3, CALLE AMAPOLA ISLA VERDE CAROLINA, PR 00979; 250 SW 48TH OCALA, FL 34471-8453

(Nombre de las partes a las que se les notifica la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 3 de octubre de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia , Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de 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 representado 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 5 de octubre de 2020. En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 5 de octubre de 2020. LCDA. MARILYN APONTE RODRIGUEZ, Secretaria Regional. MARY D. CARRASQUILLO, Secretaria Auxiliar.

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

UNITED STA TES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE vs

GONZALEZPLUGUEZ, HECTOR MANUEL

POR EDICTO DE ESTA NOTIFICACION, DIRIJO A USTED ESTA NOTIFICACION QUE SE CONSIDERARA HECHA EN LA FECHA DE LA PUBLICACION DE ESTE DICTO. COPIA DE ESTA NOTIFICACION HA SIDO ARCHIVADA EN LOS AUTOS DE ESTE CASO, CON FECHA DE 07 DE OCTUBRE DE 2020.

LIC. ALI CEA PARRILLA, GLENDA LEE ALICEAPARRILLA@GMAIL.COM LIC. COLÓN PRATTS, RAMÓN E. RAMONEDWINCOLONPRATTS@ AOL.COM LIC. FORTUÑO FAS, AGUSTIN AFORTUNO@FORTUNO-LAW.COM LIC. FORTUÑO FAS, JUAN C. JCFORTUNO@FORTUNO-LA W.COM SE ENMIENDA A LOS UNICOS FINES DE NOTIFICARLES A TODOS LOS ABOGADOS DEL CASO. EN UTUADO, PUERTO RICO, A 07 DE OCTUBRE DE 2020. DIANE ALVAREZ VILLANUEVA, SECRETARIA. POR: F/ LUZ YANIRA MONTES PACHECO, SECRETARIO AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE CASO: LCD2018-0006. SOPUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE BRE: COBRO DE DINERO. PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA HECTOR MANUEL DE CAROLINA.

GONZALEZ PLUGUEZ BOSCO CREDIT X, T/C/C HECTOR M. LLC, BY FRANKLIN GONZALEZ PLUGUEZ, CREDIT MANAGEMENT POR SÍ Y COMO CORPORATION AS COMPONENTE DE LA SERVICER SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE Demandante Vs. BIENES GANANCIALES; SUCESION DE BENITO BO LARES SR 111, ALVAREZ ABREU LOT 9 LARES PR / COMPUESTA POR SU URB BUENA VISTA HIJA DIBRIANDI ALVAREZ CALLE 4, B-3, LARES Y FULANO Y SUTANO DE PR 00669 / BUZON 526, TAL COMO MIEMBROS RUTA 2 MONTEBELLO, DESCONOCIDOS DE LA LARES PR 00669 / BO SUCESION, OMAYRA PALMARLLANO SOLAR CRUZ ORTIZ Demandados 9, LARES PR 00669 NOTIFICACION ENMENDADA CENTRO DE DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. RECAUDACION DE EL SECRETARIO(A) QUE SUSINGRESOS MUNICIPALES CRIBE LE NOTIFICA A USTED (CRIM) QUE EL 23 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2020, ESTE TRIBUNAL HA DICTADO SENTENCIA, SENTENCIA PARCIAL O RESOLUCION EN ESTE CASO, QUE HA SIDO DEBIDAMENTE REGISTRADA Y ARCHIVADA EN AUTOS DONDE PODRA USTED ENTERARSE DETALLADAMENTE DE LOS TERMINOS DE LA MISMA. ESTA NOTIFICACION SE PUBLICARA UNA SOLA VEZ EN UN PERIODICO DE CIRCULACION GENERAL EN LA ISLA DE PUERTO RICO, DENTRO DE LOS 10 DIAS SIGUIENTES A SU NOTIFICACION. Y, SIENDO O REPRESENTANDO USTED UNA PARTE EN EL PROCEDIMIENTO SUJETA A LOS TERMINOS DE LA SENTENCIA, SENTENCIA PARCIAL O RESOLUCION, DE LA CUAL PUEDE ESTABLECERSE RECURSO DE REVISION O APELACION DENTRO DEL TERMINO DE 30 DIAS CONTADOS A PARTIR DE LA PUBLICACION

Parte con Interés CIVIL NUM. CA2O19CVO4331.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA. MM1DINIENTO DE INTERPELACIÓN POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: DIBRIMDI ALVAREZ; FULANO Y SUTANO DE TAL COMO MIEMBROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESION BENITO ALVAREZ ABREU

El Artículo 959 del Código Civil de P.R., 31 LPRA § 2787, dispone: “Instando, en juicio, un tercer interesado para que el heredero acepte o repudie, deberá el Tribunal Superior señalar a éste un término, que no pase de treinta (30) días, para que haga su declaración; apercibido de que, si no la hace, se tendrá la

herencia por aceptada.” Por la presente el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, conforme al Art. 959, supra, y el caso Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria vs. Latinoamericana de Exportación, Inc., 164 DPR 689 (2005), les ordena que el término de treinta (30) días, hagan declaración aceptado o repudiando la herencia de BENITO ALVAREZ ABREU. Se les apercibe que de no expresar su intención de aceptar o repudiar la herencia dentro del término que se le fijó, la herencia se tendrá por aceptada. Los abogados de la parte demandante son: GREENSPOON MARDER, LLP, TRADE CENTRE SOUTH, SUITE 700, lOO WEST CYPRESS CREEK ROAD, FORT LAUDERDALE, FL 33309, Tel. (954) 343 6273, Fax. (954) 343 6982. Expido este edicto bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, hoy 8 de octubre de 2020. Lcda.

Marilyn Aponte Rodriguez, Secretaria Regional. LOURDES DIAZ MEDINA, Sec. Aux. Trib.

I.

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

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante Vs

SUCESION DE VICTOR JUAN OUSLAN CRESPO COMPUESTA POR SU HEREDEROS CONOCIDOS RICARDO OUSLAN QUIÑONES, VICTOR OUSLAN QUIÑONES, JOSE MANUEL OUSLAN QUIÑONES Y VICTOR JUAN III OUSLAN SANTOS: FULANO DE TAL Y SUTANA DE TAL COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS Y/O PARTES CON INTERES EN DICHA SUCESION

25

TAL Y SUTANA DE TAL COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS Y/O PARTES CON INTERES EN LA SUCESION DE VICTOR OUSLAN CRESPO

(Nombre de las partes a las que se les notifica la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 29 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 representado 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 6 de octubre de 2020. En MAYAGUEZ, Puerto Rico, el 5 de octubre de 2020. NORMA G SANTANA IRIZARRY, Secretaria Regional. f/ BETSY SANTIAGO GONZALEZ, Secretaria Auxiliar.

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

COMMERCIAL EQUIPMENT FINANCE Demandante Vs

GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS; FULANA DE TAL POR SÍ Y COMO COMPONENTE DE LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES QUE FORMA CON RAFAEL CARDONA ANDUJAR

(Nombre de las partes a las que se les notifica la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 21 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 representado 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 6 de octubre de 2020. En CAGUAS, Puerto Rico, el 6 de octubre de 2020. CARMEN ANA PEREIRA ORTIZ, Secretaria Regional. f/ YARITZA ROSARIO PLACERES, Secretaria Auxiliar.

UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NÚM.: BY2020CV02190.

SOBRE: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA (IN REM). EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRJCA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R.

A: FULANO DE TAL Y SUTANA DE TAL COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS O PERSONAS CON INTERÉS EN LA SUCESIÓN DE JOSÉ ANTONIO A YALA LÓPEZ y en la SUCESIÓN DE LIZETTE AYALA VIDAL URB. ESTANCIAS DE RÍO HONDO I 43-0 CALLE RÍO CAONILLAS BAYAMÓN PR0096l; COND. RIVER PARK 10 CALLE SANTA CRUZ APT. N304 BAYAMÓN PR 00961-8655

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los treinta (30) días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamicnto. 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, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación LEGAL NOTICE responsiva en la secretaría del ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE tribunal. Si usted deja de prePUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE sentar su alegación responsiva PRJMERA INSTANCIA SALA dentro del referido término el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia SUPERIOR DE BAYAMÓN. rebeldía en su contra y conBANCO POPULAR DE en ceder el remedio solicitado en PUERTO RICO Y SUN la den1anda. o cualquier otro, WEST MORTGAGE si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de COMPANY, INC. COMO su sana discreción, lo entiende AGENTE DE SERVICIO procedente. Se le apercibe que conforme al articulo 959 del CóDEMANDANTE VS. digo Civil, 3 J L.P.R.A. § 2787, SUCESIÓN DE JOSÉ usted tiene derecho aceptar ANTONIO AYALA LÓPEZ o repudiar la herencia. A esos COMPUESTA POR SU efectos. de no rechazarla se tendrá la herencia por aceptada.

VIUDA SOCORRO a la parte demanVJDAL MÉNDEZ, POR Representa dante, la representación legal SÍ; SU HEREDERA cuyo nombre) dirección y teléCONOCJDA MAYRA fono se consigna de inmediato: & FORTUÑO AYALA VIDAL; SUCESIÓN BUFETE FORTUÑO FAS, C.S.P. DE LIZETTE AYALA LCDO. JUAN C. FORTUÑO FAS RUA NUM.: 11416 VIDAL COMPUESTA PO BOX 9300, POR SUS HEREDEROS SAN JUAN, PR 00908 CONOCIDOS OMAYRA TEL: 787- 751-5290, FAX: 787-751-6155 GARCÍA AYALA Y OMAR E-MAIL: GARCÍA AYALA; FULANO ejecuciones@fortuno-law.com DE TAL Y SUTANA DE Expedido bajo mi firma y sello TAL COMO HEREDEROS del Tribunal, hoy 5 de octubre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA l. SANDESCONOCJDOS TA SANCHEZ, Secretaria ReY/O PARTES CON gional. YARILIZ CINTRON, Sec. INTERÉS EN DICHAS Regional.

L&B TRANS, LLC; RAFAEL CARDONA vs ANDUJAR, SU ESPOSA CENTRO DE FULANA DE TAL Y LA RECAUDACION DE SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES BIENES GANANCIALESC Y DEPARTAMENTO DE OMPUESTAP OR AMBOS; HACIENDA GOBIERNO EMMANUEL J. CARDONA DE PUERTOR ICO APONTE, SU ESPOSA Demandado SUTANA DE TAL Y LA Civil Núm. : MZ2019CV01820.

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OUSLAN QUIÑONES, Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO. JOSE MANUEL OUSLAN NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO ENMENDAQUIÑONES Y VICTOR DO. III OUSLAN SANTOS, A: EMMANUEL J. TODOS HEREDEROS CARDONA APONTE, SU CONOCIDOS DE L ESPOSA SUTANA DE A SUCESION DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD VICTOR JUAN OUSLAN LEGAL DE BIENES SUCESIONES; ESTADOS CRESPO: FULANO DE

26

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

The Lakers’ winding path ends with a championship

By SCOTT CACCIOLA

I

t was not a season. For the Los Angeles Lakers, it was an obstacle course.

It was 12 months packed with tragedies and togetherness. It was disjointed and odd, unprecedented and often unpleasant, an odyssey that began for them in a Chinese hotel amid a geopolitical feud and ended in a mostly empty arena at Walt Disney World, the site of the world’s most famous bubble since the invention of chewing gum.

But for all the disruptive forces that rocked the NBA, the Lakers triumphed in the end.

The Lakers won their 17th championship — and their first with LeBron James as their centerpiece — with a 106-93 victory over the Miami Heat on Sunday night in Game 6 of the NBA Finals. A mere 355 days after the Lakers played their season opener before a packed crowd at Staples Center in Los Angeles, they toppled the Heat, four games to two, to finish off their playoff run on an elaborate made-for-TV sound stage that lacked spectators, aside from a few of the players’ family members and friends.

It was one of the hard realities of competing for a title in a pandemic, one that had forced the NBA to suspend its season for more than four months before play resumed in July within the league’s self-contained slice of Disney World outside Orlando, Fla. The Lakers went about their business in isolation, winning it all as their fans cheered from home.

“It doesn’t matter where it happens if you win a championship,” James said not long after leaving a court covered in confetti, a victory cigar in his right hand. “A bubble, Miami, Golden State — it doesn’t matter. When you get to this point, it’s one of the greatest feelings in the world for a basketball player to be able to win at the highest level.”

No player was more brilliant than James, who, at age 35, was named the finals’ Most Valuable Player for the fourth time in his career.

After making his ninth trip to the finals in the past 10 seasons, and his 10th appearance overall, James has now won four championships with three franchises.

He powered Sunday’s rout — the Lakers led by as many as 36 — with 28 points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists. For the series,

Anthony Davis, center, and LeBron James combined for 68 of the Lakers’ 108 points in Game 5. he averaged 29.8 points, 11.8 rebounds and 8.5 assists while shooting 59 percent from the field.

James was pushed by the Heat’s Jimmy Butler, who solidified his place as one of the league’s most dynamic two-way players. Butler had extended the series in Game 5 by finishing with 35 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists, his second triple-double of the series.

Ultimately, Butler and the Heat posed just one final test for the Lakers, who felt the effects of the league’s longest season.

A preseason trip to China for two games against the Brooklyn Nets turned into an international incident when Daryl Morey, the Houston Rockets’ general manager, tweeted his support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters, angering the Chinese government. The Lakers were restricted to their hotel for days. After returning home, James criticized Morey for being “misinformed or not really educated on the situation.” James, who has business interests in China, was bashed by many fans for appearing to downplay the importance of free speech.

Then, the unimaginable: On Jan. 26, Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, were among nine people who died in a helicopter crash outside of Los Angeles.

Bryant, an iconic and polarizing star, had spent his entire 20-year playing career with the Lakers, winning five championships, before he retired in 2016.

Rob Pelinka, the Lakers’ general manager, was among Bryant’s closest friends, and many current players revered him. Artwork of Bryant and his daughter appeared in spaces across the city — and beyond. Fans left flowers and handwritten notes at the team’s practice facility. A public memorial was staged at Staples Center, where Beyon-

cé sang and Michael Jordan wept.

Just over two weeks later, the season was indefinitely suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic. As the hiatus dragged on, protests against police brutality and racial injustice roiled the country, and many players used their platforms as celebrities to bring attention to those issues. Some even questioned whether the season should be canceled so as not to be a distraction.

Yet, through it all — calamities, big and small — the Lakers remained determined to chase the franchise’s first championship since 2010, which was also Bryant’s last title.

“I think the hard times, or the trials, are when you grow,” Pelinka said.

Throughout the finals, James and his teammates warmed up in T-shirts that read, “VOTE.” And during the restart, they also occasionally wore black uniforms that Bryant had helped design.

“It means something,” James said, “something more than just a uniform.”

It is never easy to win a championship, and the challenges of winning one this season were unique. Consider the Milwaukee Bucks, who had the league’s best regular-season record — and Giannis Antetokounmpo, who beat out James to win his second straight NBA Most Valuable Player Award — but lost in the Eastern Conference semifinals after struggling to reassemble their chemistry after the hiatus. Consider the Houston Rockets, who tried (again) to reinvent themselves before losing to the Lakers in the Western Conference semifinals.

Consider the Philadelphia 76ers and the Boston Celtics, two teams with abundant young talent and title aspirations that will gnaw at them over the coming months.

And consider the Los Angeles Clippers, a popular pick to win it all after Kawhi Leonard and Paul George joined a playoff-tested team before the start of the season. Like the Rockets, the Clippers are shopping for a new coach after collapsing in the playoffs and parting ways with Doc Rivers. (He quickly landed a new gig with the 76ers, who had also fired their coach, Brett Brown.)

Still, the Lakers were not a perfect team, or a particularly dominant one. At a time when outside shooting has never been more valued, the Lakers were mediocre from 3-point range, shooting 34.9 percent during the regular season, which ranked 21st in the league.

They ran into a game challenger in the finals in the Heat. Despite losing Goran Dragic, their starting point guard, for most of the series after he tore a ligament in his left foot in Game 1, the Heat were determined.

But the Lakers had two dominant forces in James and Anthony Davis, who had 19 points and 15 rebounds in Sunday’s win, and a roster full of players who were willing to defend. After ranking third in overall defense during the regular season, the Lakers were still able to compensate for the absence of Avery Bradley, their top perimeter defender, after he opted out of the restart.

Last season, the Lakers were in the playoff hunt when James injured his groin in a win over the Golden State Warriors on Christmas Day. He missed a bunch of games, and the Lakers landed back in the draft lottery — but only after Magic Johnson, then the team president, abruptly resigned, and Luke Walton, their coach, stepped down.

A few weeks later, the Lakers traded for the player they needed most, sending a package that included three future firstround picks and two promising players — Lonzo Ball and Brandon Ingram — to the New Orleans Pelicans for Davis. In the wake of so much dysfunction, the Lakers — with the support of their owner, Jeanie Buss — were mortgaging their future to immediately pursue a title with James as their fulcrum.

At the same time, there were growing concerns about James’ durability — he had never missed so many games because of an injury, and most of his contemporaries had long since retired — along with questions about his drive. His critics had a field day when he spent part of last offseason on a studio lot filming “Space Jam 2.”

He acknowledged those critics — real or imagined — throughout this season by using the hashtags #WashedKing and #RevengeSZN on his social media accounts.

“I think personally thinking I have something to prove fuels me,” James said.

“It fueled me over this last year-and-a-half since the injury. It fueled me because no matter what I’ve done in my career to this point, there’s still rumblings of doubt.”

On Sunday, James left on top. After a season full of tumult and change, at least that much was familiar.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

27

Winless Falcons fire coach and general manager

The Falcons fired Coach Dan Quinn, left, and General Manager Thomas Dimitroff.

The Falcons lost big leads in consecutive weeks, first to the Cowboys then to the Bears.

By KEN BELSON

Blank had also endorsed Quinn and Dimitroff in the offseason. It was the first time during Blank’s 18-year ownership of the team that he did not fire a coach after consecutive non-winning seasons.

(Mike Smith was fired after his teams were 4-12 and 6-10 in 2013 and 2014, while Jim Mora was fired after going 8-8 and 7-9 in 2005 and 2006.)

Blank hoped Quinn and the Falcons could bounce back after two straight 7-9 seasons and return to the playoffs for the first time since 2017. Last season, the Falcons started 1-7 but were 6-2 in the second half.

But this year, the team’s season quickly went from bad to worse. After losing their opening game against the Seattle Seahawks at home, the Falcons blew double-digit leads to the Dallas Cowboys and Chicago Bears. The loss to the Cowboys was particularly unsettling because the Falcons misplayed a Dallas onside kick that, had it been recovered, probably would have secured a victory.

On Sunday, the Falcons lost their fifth straight game, falling to the Carolina Panthers at home, 23-16. The Falcons

T

he Atlanta Falcons, winless through five games this season, have fired their head coach, Dan Quinn, and general manager, Thomas Dimitroff, becoming the second team to reassess its fading prospects for the 2020 campaign.

“Decisions like these are very difficult, but the previous two seasons and start to this one have been especially hard for me because of the deep love, admiration and respect I and my family have for Dan, Thomas and their families,” team owner Arthur Blank said in a statement Sunday night. “But as everyone knows, this is a results business and I owe it to our fans to put the best product we can on the field.”

Rich McKay, the team’s president, will take over daily oversight of football operations while Blank finds new leadership. Falcons defensive coordinator Raheem Morris was named interim head coach on Monday, according to the Associated Press. Morris was head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 2009 to 2011, a stretch in which the Bucs sand-

wiched an encouraging 10-6 season in 2010 between 3-13 and 4-12 campaigns.

The firings in Atlanta came one week after the Houston Texans fired Bill O’Brien, the team’s longtime coach who had also recently become its general manager. In a season of wrenching change and accommodation brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, the firings were a reminder that the NFL is a cutthroat, win-at-all-costs business.

Other coaches remain in the hot seat, most notably Adam Gase, whose New York Jets (0-5) are also winless.

O’Brien’s firing was perhaps more curious because the Texans seemed to be on the rise. They won 11 games in 2018 and 10 in 2019, making the playoffs in four out of the last five years. The Texans also started this season against the Kansas City Chiefs, Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers, three formidable foes.

O’Brien was also given the general manager’s title in the offseason. Under interim coach Romeo Crennel, the Texans earned their first win Sunday, beating the Jacksonville Jaguars, 30-14.

head to Minneapolis to play the Vikings on Sunday.

The Falcons have given up 161 points, tied with the Jets for second-most in the league. Their chances of making the playoffs have been made even more difficult by playing in the NFC South, which includes the New Orleans Saints (2-2) and the Buccaneers (3-2).

In his six seasons in Atlanta, Quinn had a 43-42 record in the regular season and was 3-2 in the playoffs. In his second season, he guided the Falcons to the Super Bowl, where they blew a 28-3 lead to the New England Patriots. Before taking the Falcons job, Quinn was the defensive coordinator for two years in Seattle when the Seahawks appeared in two straight Super Bowls.

Dimitroff was in his 13th season as general manager. Since his arrival in 2008, the Falcons have been 109-88 with seven winning seasons and six trips to the playoffs. Dimitroff drafted some of the best players in Falcons history, including quarterback Matt Ryan, wide receiver Julio Jones, offensive lineman Jake Matthews and defensive lineman Grady Jarrett.

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

‘Everything is closed down.’ The lack of youth sports is a crisis.

By KURT STREETER

T

yrone Riley is worried.

He is a basketball coach and a father, and he is witnessing firsthand the devastating effects of the coronavirus pandemic on youth sports in America.

He describes it as a tragedy.

Riley is the coach of the boys’ varsity team at Jordan High School in Watts, one of the hardest parts of South Los Angeles.

He graduated from Jordan, grew up in one of the housing projects nearby, and went on to succeed in college basketball and then in European pro leagues.

He knows to his core the power that sports can have in changing lives and bringing communities together.

He also knows the grim reality of what has unfolded since the coronavirus spread to the United States in March.

Far from the glamour of professional and college games that appear in abundance on our screens, sports are barely limping along at the community level where children learn to love games and families come together to sit in stands and form lasting bonds.

Since March, youth participation in sports has dropped off a cliff. In communities like Watts, sports barely exist at all.

“Everything is closed down,” Riley told me this week. Recreation centers.

Gymnasiums. Many outdoor basketball courts are surrounded by fences and locked gates.

Riley has two sons, ages 14 and 10.

They’re budding basketball players. But all they can do right now is train when they can, where they can. Usually, that’s in the early morning at one of the outdoor courts, far from anyone else.

“I’m a coach, but the time my boys spend playing is down probably 80 percent,” he said. “I spend a lot of time wondering how we’re going to get out of this.”

Riley is not alone. Tom Farrey is worried.

He directs the Sports and Society Program at the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit think tank. His focus has long been on improving the world by increasing access to sports for young people.

And right now, “this is a moment of

There is concern communities like Watts are falling behind more middle-class and wealthy areas in keeping their children playing in the pandemic. historic crisis,” Farrey said.

Last week, the Aspen Institute released the worrying results of a nationwide survey on how youth sports had been impacted for families coping with the pandemic. The study shows that American children ranging in age from 6 to 18 are playing far less now than before the health crisis. Overall, there has been a nearly 50 percent drop.

The study also shows that the opportunity gap has widened. Compared with their counterparts in communities like Watts, middle-class and wealthy families are far more likely to have found ways to work around coronavirus restrictions and keep their children playing.

Then there are those who have found other things to do. The study showed that nearly 30 percent of youth who were playing sports before the pandemic were not likely to go back without a major intervention. They’ve lost interest.

Likely, some have lost momentum.

Others have probably gotten so used to spending time on screens and video games that getting out on a field and running around seems less appealing.

“A lot of kids have checked out of sports,” Farrey said.

It will be a battle to get them back.

Aaron Teklu is worried.

He is a 17-year-old point guard who is captain of the varsity team at the Northwest School in downtown Seattle.

Teklu, a teenager whose family immigrated from Ethiopia when he was a toddler, said he struggled with not having his father in his life. Basketball is his therapy, but he can get it only in slim drips right now.

Three days a week, he meets a few teammates at a gym, and they run through individual drills.

“It’s not enough,” he told me, his voice cracking with emotion. “It’s not nearly enough. Basketball has always been my way to step away from reality. It

has always helped me deal with my emotions and what is going on in my life.”

No real games. No real practices.

Only faint hopes for a senior season and one last chance to impress a college coach.

“All of this,” he said, “has taken a toll.”

Rich Luker is worried.

He is the founder of Luker on Trends, which has long provided data and advice about building loyal fans to pro leagues such as the NFL and Major League Baseball. He is also a social psychologist who has made a career out of studying the bond between sports involvement at an early age and a lifetime passion for it.

To Luker, the pandemic-fueled decline in youth participation is just one piece of a larger puzzle.

Few people are attending games of any kind. The fear of large crowds is wise, and it’s keeping most of us away from sitting in stands or standing on sidelines or even gathering for television watch parties.

But we need to be aware of the cost: Children, families and friends have been cut from fandom’s communal tradition. There are now far fewer chances to form friendships around watching sports together, and less opportunity for our youth to feel the generation-to-generation connections that come from getting together and rooting for a team.

It’s not just professional or college games we’re missing.

Next year, it is likely that teams in dozens of cities and towns across the country will shutter for good.

High school football has returned to some regions, but in many others it remains only a memory. High school wrestling, gymnastics and basketball in indoor gyms this winter or early next year? With another surge in the virus expected, don’t bet on any of that.

“What we’re talking about is a loss of simple community,” Luker said. The ramifications might be felt, he said, for generations. “Just like after the Depression.”

Now I’m worried. Are you?

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 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

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

(Mar 21-April 20)

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

You’re feeling lucky as good things keep happening to you. Your confidence shines, you radiate happiness and this attracts all sorts of good fortune. You would never take this for granted. You know how important it is to have practical skills and sound knowledge lodged in your brain.

You are so persuasive you could melt the iciest of hearts. A little charm will be needed to gain a senior colleague or official figure’s support.

You will be keen to accept a new challenge. Even though you know the going will be tough, you can do this. You will adapt to new work procedures as will your colleagues.

Taurus

Scorpio

(April 21-May 21)

Don’t feel as if you shouldn’t ask questions if you notice discrepancies in a group’s financial accounts. You might also see where savings can be made when someone in charge of finances has not been as careful as they should have been while looking after other people’s money. In a group project you will be learning as you go.

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Go along with a partner’s moods and wishes even if this means putting chores you had intended to do, aside for another day. If you’re spending the day with someone who seems restless, encourage them to get involved in a variety of activities and this will stop them getting fidgety and bored.

Gemini

You don’t want to leave a close friend out of anything. So, when they say they can’t make an event you are arranging, you will change the date to suit them. Their gratitude will confirm how much they really do want to attend and how they did regret circumstances that would have prevented them from joining you.

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

You could be faced with several attractive offers when you were only shopping for one specific item. You will find one offer especially hard to ignore. Although you are telling yourself that this purchase is too much of a bargain to resist, can you really afford it? Decide on which items you need most.

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

You’ve been too lenient with someone who has let you down one too many times. You’re disappointed in a friend who fails to keep a promise.

Their behaviour makes you inclined to follow your own preferences. You’re going to do what you want and from now on, they can find someone else to run after them.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

There will be a lot to gain from making changes and adjustments to everyday routines.

People will be counting on you to support their plans and ideas. Give yourself a chance to think about it and if you’re happy, there won’t be a problem. Alternatively, you might have some suggestions of your own.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

A team effort is going nowhere. They need someone like you to take the driver’s seat. Once you put your organisational abilities into action, this project will start moving again. A friend will share personal information with you. Reassure them that their words will go no further. You can always be relied on to keep a secret.

Allowing flights of fancy to lead you away from tried and trusted methods could mean it will take three times as long to complete routine tasks and duties. You’re trying not to be distracted but this won’t be easy. Keep your mind firmly fixed on what you are doing.

Stand up for someone who is being blamed for something they didn’t do.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Before jumping eagerly into anything, look first. Make a few phone calls and check you aren’t going to end up wasting your time. You may not be as organised about some arrangements as you think. If one job is beyond your capabilities, leave it for another time rather than plodding on and on, indefinitely.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

Someone you are close to is quieter than their usual self. It’s hard to get any conversation out of them. You sense there is something on their mind but you would rather leave it to them to tell you what it is. Until then, you will back off and respect their need for privacy.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Tuesday, October 13, 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 SEMANA, • Jueves, 1 de octubre de 2020 Tuesday, October 13,INC 2020 32EDITORIAL

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