Wednesday Oct 14, 2020

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

San Juan The

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Star

Henry Golding Draws on His Cultural Confusion in ‘Monsoon’ P20

All About the Benjamins?

PDP: Resident Commissioner Campaign Money Comes from PREPA, Fiscal Board Lobbyists González Fires Back: Who Was It That Acknowledged Illegal Political Donations in 2009?

70 Million People to Receive Social Security Increase P3 NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

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Protesters at Women’s Advocate Office: ‘Where Were They When We Were Being Killed?’

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

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October 14, 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.

Social Security/SSI increase announced

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he Social Security Administration (SSA) announced Tuesday that Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits will increase 1.3 percent in 2021 for nearly 70 million people.

“The 1.3 percent increase due to the cost of living adjustment (COLA) will take effect in January 2021 for more than 64 million Social Security recipients,” announced Víctor Rodríguez, the SSA’s director of public relations for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, in a written communication. “For the more than 8 million SSI beneficiaries, the increase will take effect on December 31, 2020. (Note: some people receive both Social Security and SSI benefits). The Social Security Law bases the annual COLA on the Consumer Price Index, as determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Department of Labor.”

Some of the other changes that take effect in January of each year are based on increases in average wages. Based on that increase, the maximum

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amount of earnings subject to Social Security tax will increase from $137,700 to $142,800.

Notice of the new benefit amount is normally mailed to Social Security and SSI recipients in early December. Most people who receive Social Security benefits will be able to view the COLA notice online through their My Social Security accounts (only available in English). People can create or access their My Social Security account online at www. socialsecurity.gov/myaccount.

Information about changes in Medicare coverage for 2021, as soon as it is announced, will appear on es.medicare.gov. For those who receive Social Security and Medicare benefits, the new amount of their benefits cannot be calculated until the amount of the monthly Medicare premiums for 2021 is announced. The exact amount of the benefits for 2021 will be released in December via mail-in COLA notices and in the Message Center section of My Social Security.

The Social Security Law establishes how the COLA is calculated. More information is available at www.segurosocial.gov/noticias/cola.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

PDP pols: González Colón’s campaign is wrapped in money from fiscal board and PREPA lobbyists

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

P

opular Democratic Party (PDP) Rep. Luis Vega Ramos and at-large candidate for the island House of Representatives Gabriel López Arrieta called out Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón on Tuesday for obtaining a total of $37,720 in donations from lobbyists, advisers and suppliers of the Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB) and the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) for her re-election campaign.

During a press conference at the party’s headquarters in Puerta de Tierra, San Juan, Vega Ramos revealed the details of González Colón’s campaign committee income issued by the Federal Election Commission and by the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-profit organization dedicated to overseeing the income and expenses of members of Congress and candidates for president of the United States. Vega Ramos said that “like [New Progressive Party (NPP) gubernatorial candidate] Pedro Pierluisi, González’s loyalties also expire.”

According to official documents, the resident commissioner received $2,700 from the oversight board’s former chairman, José Carrión III, for the 2016 primary elections on Dec. 12, 2015. López Arrieta pointed to Car-

rión as “Pierluisi’s former brother-in-law, and member of the Latinos for Trump committee, which González Colón co-chairs.”

The at-large House candidate said González Colón also received $1,000 from Proskauer Rose LLP Government Affairs and Bankruptcy Division Director Martin Bienenstock for the 2020 Primary Elections campaign. He said Bienenstock is also a partner in the aforementioned law firm, which represents the oversight board in the island’s and PREPA’s bankruptcy processes.

“So you are seeing clearly when we see the position of the resident commissioner, in favor of the bondholders and not in favor of the Puerto Rican people,” López Arrieta said, adding that Proskauer Rose LLP charged the oversight board $68.4 million for its work. “After four years, they haven’t accomplished anything; but González accomplished something, [she] keeps receiving funds from those who drown the people of Puerto Rico.”

Meanwhile, electoral income reports revealed that González Colón received $2,000 from Guayama-based Applied Energy Services (AES) Puerto Rico and its Corporation Political Action Committee for her recent primary campaign. López Arrieta said that such donations are “behind great interests that intend to privatize PREPA and put at risk more than 6,000 workers and more than 11,000 retiree pensions.”

“This was also a [legal] client of Pierluisi, who does not want to tread on that issue, but it is very clear that he has been a lawyer for the incinerator and [yet] has wanted to deny it completely,” he said.

Meanwhile, Vega Ramos said González Colón received a total of $30,800 from the firm Essential Insurance and its president Marc Tacher, who is “PREPA’s insurance broker and whose million-dollar contracts do not reveal the exact annual amount, since its collection mechanism is through hundreds of policies that it does not disclose.”

Other income reports show that González Colón’s campaign received $14,232 from King & Spalding, PREPA’s legal advisory firm. The atlarge Senate candidate said King & Spalding’s main lobbyist Steve Kupka was involved in a conflict of interest scandal since while advising PREPA “he lobbied for a firm seeking a gasification contract for Units 5 and 6 in San Juan for more than $1.5 billion through a contract managed through the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau’s (PREB) parent company, Fortress Investment Group, which was signed by former PREPA Executive Director José Ortiz.”

At the same time, Vega Ramos said González Colón also received “$2,700 from Justin Peterson, the general manager of DCI Group who was appointed to the FOMB, and another $1,000 from the political action

committee of DCI, a company that represents general bondholders and those who promote the privatization of PREPA.” As for Pierluisi, Vega Ramos alleged that he has not published his 2019 income taxes as he fears the people seeing “how much the FOMB paid for his settlement, or his down payment when he ‘liquidated’ his participation in the board’s law firm to become governor.”

Resident commissioner responds to allegations Later in the day, González Colón responded to the allegations during a press conference where she revealed her public safety and antinarcotics agenda.

“I have never … played with donations, or committed crimes, or given money as the PDP [resident commissioner] candidate Aníbal Acevedo Vilá has done.”

“The donation that was made by the now appointed FOMB member Justin Peterson was from 2016 and now, I was opposed to his appointment. I believe in transparency,“ she González Colón said. “As you have seen in the polls, I am the resident commissioner that the people of Puerto Rico are supporting; therefore, there are a lot of people who are donating to my campaign, all by the law.”

The Star requested a response from Pierluisi’s spokesperson Lisdián Acevedo via text message, but had not received one as of press time.

San Juan mayoral candidate Romero presents health platform

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

M

iguel Romero, the New Progressive Party (NPP) candidate for mayor of San Juan, presented his health platform Tuesday based on strengthening the medical services offered to San Juan residents through the Municipal Hospital, the health centers (CDTs by the Spanish initials), the clinic for trans people and programs aimed at the population with HIV, among others.

Romero said that through his proposal he seeks to achieve health equity and raise the level of health awareness to improve health and well being in the island capital.

“The health services model that operates in Puerto Rico presents the Capital City with greater challenges than those that affect the other municipalities in Puerto Rico. However, the integration of leaders and key constituents, as well as entities from the health industry

and the community, will be central to taking measures and designing policies that improve health,” the candidate said at a press conference.

The San Juan District senator also noted that the goals of his health platform are aligned with the objectives of health promotion and disease prevention found in the United States Department of Health and Human Services’ “Healthy People 2030” initiative.

“The municipality must strengthen its service structure while considering the challenge of fewer doctors and health professionals, the growing number of patients with the greatest need who prefer to receive medical care in the facilities closest to their surroundings, and the need to identify and attract external funds that make the development of quality health services for the residents of San Juan viable,” he said.

Romero presented a series of initiatives to be implemented by the municipality to strengthen and expand the residency programs at San Juan Municipal Hospital, in alliance with the Medical Sciences Campus of the University of Puerto Rico, so that the municipality has more health services and at the same time has a more efficient fiscal operation that allows more economic resources to be brought to the municipality. This in turn, he said, allows services and treatments to be offered to people

who lack access to a health plan, while concentrating resources on community prevention.

“If we enhance the capacity of our hospital to be a teaching medical center, then medical services will be developed under the highest standards,” he said. “In addition, we increase the medical residencies necessary for the development of health services and we increase the number of doctors who can provide services in health centers.”

The president of the San Juan NPP said he will bet on alliances with health providers for specialized services.

“With the network of specialized medical services, the creation of alliances with private hospitals with specialties will be promoted to provide health services to San Juan citizens with great need for care and little access to these services,” Romero said. “Meanwhile, the availability of family clinics in San Juan will be increased through the integration of municipal clinics and different health providers -- public, private and non-profit.”

The candidate added that working through alliances can also strengthen the management of emergency rooms and CDTs -- diagnosis and treatment centers -- through service agreements, without selling or disposing of medical facilities.

Romero also proposed that, in the municipal health facilities, as well as with their providers,

there will be a prescription drug program with significant discounts for patients of the health system through the provisions of Section 340.B of the federal Public Health Law. Likewise, the candidate promotes making San Juan a leader and coordinator of technological integration, through a cooperative model among providers to develop a health exchange platform integrated into the Puerto Rico Health Information Network. Through that initiative, Romero said he will seek economic integration and functionality in the capital’s health system, in addition to access to medicines for all who use the system. The goal in part will be to maximize and audit access to federal funds so that each indigent medical patient has direct access to their medical information, laboratories and studies in order to guarantee appropriately directed health care.

Romero, a former La Fortaleza chief of staff and secretary of Labor and Human Resources, has also proposed the establishment of a registry of the population with special medical needs that require individual attention during an emergency. Through a census of this population, he said, it will be possible to coordinate the location of residents whose medical conditions exceed the capacities of a standard shelter, but which are not serious enough to require hospitalization.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

5

González Colón presents public safety and anti-drug trafficking agenda

By THE STAR STAFF

P

uerto Rico Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón said Tuesday that on Sept. 30 a federal task force was created to deal with the ever-growing problem of gender violence on the island.

In 2019, the Puerto Rico Police reported 5,896 cases of domestic violence against women, while so far in 2020, the Office of the Women’s Advocate has reported 4,018 cases of domestic violence against women. Equally worrisome have been the spate of abductions of women in recent months.

“As a result of this alarming number and the recent cases of missing women, I asked the United States Attorney for Puerto Rico Stephen Muldrow to create a federal task force composed of federal and state agencies, non-profit organizations and institutions of higher education to address violence and violent crimes against women, and propose immediate and long-term measures to protect women against violence,” González Colón said.

The task force was announced recently along with new initiatives and resources assigned under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), she said.

González Colón is co-author of the bipartisan Reauthorization of the Debbie Smith Act (Public Law 116-104), which allocates funds to states and jurisdictions to perform analysis of accumulated DNA samples from offenders and crime victims.

“As vice president of the Women’s Caucus in Congress, I have always supported equality and the safety of women,” she said. “As resident commissioner, my commitment is to continue advocating so that educational institutions, nonprofit organizations and state agencies related to women’s issues continue to be allocated the necessary funds to combat domestic violence, to empower women to leave a relationship ahead of any violence.”

González Colón also expressed her dismay at the hate crimes that have been increasing on the island against transgender individuals.

She made her remarks at a news conference to discuss her public safety platform and initiatives to reduce drug trafficking.

Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands have been exploited as a destination and point of transfer for the illicit drugs. It is estimated that between 70 and 80 percent of the drugs transferred to the continental United States are funnelled through the islands.

González Colón, along with U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), published in June the Caribbean Border Counternarcotics Strategy, updating the article on federal governments’ efforts and initiatives to reduce drug use and narcotics activity in Puerto Rico and the U.S.V.I. In it, three general objectives are established to counter criminal offenses, interpret interlocutory and application capabilities, and identify specific drug trafficking routes.

Among various points, the document indicates that historically the cases of assessments in these territories have been among the highest levels in the United States

and that many, if not the majority, of homicides and other violent crimes are related to narcotics. According to law enforcement agencies, some 65 percent of all employees in Puerto Rico can be related to drugs.

According to the 2020 edition of the Caribbean Border Counternarcotics Strategy, González Colón discussed with James Carroll, director of White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, his implementation and the need to try additional remedies to combat drug addiction and crime in Puerto Rico.

The president’s anti-drug czar traveled to the island to coordinate meetings with federal and island law enforcement bodies. At the end of the visit, Carroll publicly stated that his office would work to push federal and state agencies on the need to pursue effective action against these cases, and that Congress would then follow up.

Another initiative is the so-called Transit Zone, an area comprising thousands of square miles that includes the maritime corridors of the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean that is riddled with criminal activity.

According to the U.S. Coast Guard, approximately 2,700 tons of cocaine went through the area in the fiscal year 2017, 2,892.4 in 2018 and 2,226 in 2019.

González Colón noted that she succeeded in getting resources allocated to the island to fight crime. An example of such efforts is that the San Juan Sector of the Coast Guard has the largest number of rapid response vessels -- seven of the 38 that have been commissioned throughout the nation, thus improving the capacity to combat drug trafficking in Puerto Rico.

The resident commissioner said she got the U.S. House Appropriations Committee to include language for federal law enforcement agencies to pay attention to public safety in Puerto Rico.

Protester: ‘We are tired of being brave, we want to be free’ Activists shut down street to demand that Women’s Advocate Office take action against gender violence

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

“W

here were they when we were being killed?”

Where were they when we were being raped?”

This is what women’s rights defenders chanted Tuesday in front of the Women’s Advocate Office (OPM by its Spanish initials) headquarters as they demanded meaningful action from the agency amid the increase in femicides and gender violence in Puerto Rico.

A group of women’s rights activists, organizers, and community leaders blocked the street in front of the OPM on Juan Ponce de León Avenue in Hato Rey to demand a state of emergency for gender violence and call out the office’s lack of action.

“We mobilized ourselves, organizers, activists, members of the [LGBTQIAP+] community because we are tired! We are tired of waking up day by day, listening to the names of every woman that has been taken away from us. We are tired of getting killed, getting raped, disappearing, getting violated, getting attacked, and nothing is being done,” said

a protester minutes before they began reading the names of every victim of gender violence that was written on a black and white banner.

The protester said that both the OPM and the central government “have the responsibility and duty to guarantee our safety and welfare, to implement public policies and address the structural issues that kill us every day.”

Women’s Advocate Lersy Boria Vizcarrondo, meanwhile, repudiated “the use of violence to seek an end to violence against women” as demonstrators threw red liquid and pieces with the names of every cis and trans women who have been murdered written on them, which differed from a 2002 event in which male-identifying politicians broke into the office to put a U.S. flag inside.

“In the OPM, we work with committed people to eradicate once and for all violence in all its manifestations. The events witnessed today in our office violate the dignity of the 17 people who fight daily for the rights of Puerto Rican women.

We were the object of an act of vandalism; the receptionist was attacked. Is this how we want to work against violence?”

Boria Vizcarrondo said in a written statement. “Those who think that, through these actions, threats or attacks will lessen the desire to continue working, are wrong; our commitment to Puerto Rico is much stronger. This [public] servant will not allow violence and abuse to reign. This is not the first time that some, by running over us, try to silence us and intimidate us; ENOUGH NOW.”

The Puerto Rico Police Bureau (PRPB) reported that at around 10:48 a.m. it was alerted about a demonstration taking place in front of the Popular Center in Hato Rey, on the premises of the Office of the Women’s Advocate.

According to the PRPB, a group of 15 to 20 protesters carried out the demonstration and requested that a state of emergency be declared on the island due to the femicides that have occurred. At the time it was indicated that the women tried to enter the OPM by force, for which reason the agents had to intervene with the demonstrators. It was reported that damages, if any, are to be verified.

Data from the PRPB indicates that 31 adult women and two minors have been slain so far this year. That figure does not include the violent deaths of six trans people. According to independent outlet Bandera Roja, 40 femicides and 53 complaints of missing women and girls have occurred so far this year.

Photo by Bandera Roja

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

PIP candidate for Arecibo mayor denounces return of incinerator

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

T

he Puerto Rican Independence Party candidate for mayor of Arecibo, Javier Biaggi Caballero, called on his New Progressive Party (NPP) and Popular Democratic Party (PDP) opponents on Tuesday to state their position regarding the announcement in island media outlets that two companies have presented a motion to the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau (PREB) to revive the failed waste-to-energy (WTE) incinerator project proposed for Arecibo as part of the Integrated Resource Plan of the Electric Power Authority (PREPA).

“Since 2010, the Arecibo community and members of the PIP have confronted the mega-garbage incinerator sponsored by Mayor Carlos Molina and members of his municipal assembly, after a cooperative agreement was signed between the municipality and the Energy Answers incinerator,” Biaggi Caballero said. “We [the PIP] appeared in multiple forums in Arecibo to express our rejection of a project that, beyond solving a problem, threatened the health and lives of tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans.”

“Faced with the threat that the nightmare of incineration will be revived, we in Arecibo want to be clear about the position of the Arecibo mayoral candidates

for the [NPP] and the [PDP] on this important issue,” the candidate said. “Only the PIP has been consistent in repudiating incineration as a mechanism to address the problem of solid waste disposal. I publicly call on Carlos Molina and Rubén Ramírez that, instead of being silent about incineration, they clearly express their position.

Only in this way will we know who is on the side of the big interests and the deterioration of our quality of life, and who is committed to ensuring the health and well being of Arecibo.”

It is known that both Molina and Ramírez supported

the incinerator in the past, Biaggi Caballero said, adding that given the risk posed by the incineration of garbage to the health and development of Arecibo and neighboring towns, it is essential for Arecibo to know where the candidates for elective positions stand on on the issue.

“The people of Arecibo know that I am the only mayoral candidate who has rejected incineration as a means to address solid waste management,” he said.

“My track record and my record are clear. Can the other candidates make the same claim?”

Biaggi Caballero announced through a press release that if he is elected mayor of Arecibo, he will act to cease the danger of incineration on Arecibo.

“To set the course for our Casa Grande, which is Arecibo, the members of the Municipal Legislature will receive in January my first two municipal ordinances to prohibit the incineration of garbage and the deposit of coal ash throughout the territory of Arecibo,” the candidate said. “With this we will put an end in Arecibo to this threat to our unborn children, infants, nursing mothers, older adults and citizens with respiratory diseases. Let’s turn the page and start toward a great future of quality of life in community collaboration.”

Biaggi Caballero was a spokesperson for the AntiIncineration Coalition and co-founder of the organization Basuro Cero (Zero Waste) Puerto Rico.

FEMA assigns $238 million to PREPA for peaking generators

By THE STAR STAFF

T

he Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recently obligated over $238 million to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) for costs related to 28 peaking generator units that are providing power to critical facilities until the Costa Sur units are back in service.

The announcement was made Tuesday in a statement.

The units, which typically only run when there is high demand for electricity, were used after the earthquakes in order to save lives and prevent further damage to properties. The generation systems are being used to supply power to critical facilities such as hospitals, police departments, fire departments, emergency centers and water facilities.

“This obligation addresses the need to maintain power

generation capacity for the benefit of thousands of residents who rely on these critical services in their towns. We will continue to work closely with the Government of Puerto Rico to ensure a successful recovery from the earthquakes,” said Federal Disaster Recovery Coordinator for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands José Baquero Tirado.

Emergency protective measures of this sort are actions taken to eliminate or lessen immediate threats either to lives, public health or safety, or of significant additional damage to public or private property in a cost-effective manner.

“We appreciate FEMA’s continued support in providing the necessary resources to mitigate damage and support critical facilities,” said Ottmar Chávez, executive director of the Office of Recovery, Reconstruction and Resilience (COR3). “We continue working together in the rebuilding of PREPA’s infrastructure not only to provide essential power, but also to save lives, strengthen public health and provide quality of life.”

Costa Sur is the largest of four power plants on the island and provides about a quarter of the electric power throughout Puerto Rico. The facility suffered extensive structural damage from the earthquakes in January, which resulted in compromised foundations, walls and support structures. The damage caused islandwide power outages, leaving more than 327,000 residents without power.

The 28 peaking units currently in use are located in Aguirre, Cambalache, Daguao, Jabos, Mayagüez, Palo Seco, Vega Baja and Yabucoa.

To date, FEMA has obligated over $240 million for costs related to the earthquakes. FEMA works with COR3 through the agency’s Public Assistance program to obligate recovery funds to private nonprofit organizations, municipalities and agencies of the Puerto Rico government. FEMA’s Public Assistance program provides grants to eligible government organizations and certain private non-profit organizations for debris removal, life-saving emergency protective measures and the repair, replacement or restoration of disasterdamaged facilities.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

7

Trump’s false claims as he resumes his rallies after hospitalization

By LINDA QIU

P

resident Donald Trump made a litany of false or misleading claims — many of them familiar — about his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, and the coronavirus pandemic on Monday in a campaign rally in Florida. Here’s a review of the facts.

What Trump Said “Sleepy Joe wants to quadruple your taxes. You know?

Wants to quadruple. How about where he gets caught again? He said, ‘Oh, no, we are not going to give a tax increase, but we are going to terminate all of the Trump tax cuts.’ Well, that’s $2,000, plus child tax credits, plus all of the other things.”

False. The 2017 tax-cut law lowered the top individual tax rate to 37% from 39.6%. Biden is proposing reverting that top rate to 39.6%, but no other income bracket would be affected. Under Biden’s plan, no one making under $400,000 would see a direct increase in their taxes, though they might feel the indirect effects of the higher corporate taxes that Biden is also proposing. Biden would also expand the child tax credit, not eliminate it.

What Trump said “Obama gave the whole planet away to Castro and I said: ‘No, thank you. We’re not doing that.’ That’s why we just got the Bay of Pigs award from the Cuban Americans.”

This is misleading. Trump is imprecisely referring to a shield and endorsement he received from a group of Cuban veterans and stating an incorrect timeline.

In 2016, Trump was endorsed by a Bay of Pigs veterans association and presented with the Shield of Brigade 2506. This year, the group called it a “recognition award.”

In 2017, Trump reimposed travel and commercial restrictions on Cuba, which the administration of President Barack Obama had eased. He did not receive the award because of that reversal.

What Trump said “But the World Health Organization, did you see what happened? They just came out a little while ago and they admitted that Donald Trump was right. The lockdowns are doing tremendous damage to these Democrat-run states.”

False. Trump was most likely referring to and distorting comments made by Dr. David Nabarro, a special envoy to the World Health Organization.

Trump resisted shutting down the economy in the early months of the coronavirus, when the WHO was warning that lifting restrictions would lead to a “deadly resurgence.”

Nabarro said in an interview last week with The Spectator that national lockdowns should not be the primary means of controlling the virus, but rather used to “buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted.”

Countries, he said, should aim instead for a “middle path” between lockdowns and letting the virus “run wild

President Trump spoke to supporters on Monday night in Florida. and build up herd immunity” — which Trump suggested last month.

That would require testing, contact tracing, isolation, good hygiene and robust monitoring at a local level, Nabarro said. He did not mention Trump or the United States, but noted that East Asia, Germany and parts of Canada were models of that approach.

What Trump said “And if you look at our upward path, no country in the world has recovered the way we’ve recovered economically or otherwise, not even close.”

False. Economic recovery in the United States has outperformed some peer nations, but not every other country in the world.

Its gross domestic product contracted by 9.1% in the second quarter; among the nations of the Group of 20, five other countries’ shrank at a smaller rate, while China’s grew at 11.5%.

Its unemployment rate for August — the latest month for which there is available data to compare across all countries — was 8.4%. That’s higher than the average 7.4% for the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

What Trump said “And when I asked him, ‘Name one organization, give me one organization’ — during our debate, where he was saved by the moderator about four times — he couldn’t answer it. Name one law enforcement organization. He couldn’t name one. Then I said, ‘Say the words law en-

forcement, just say it.’ Couldn’t do it. He couldn’t say it.”

False. Chris Wallace, the debate moderator and Fox News anchor, objected to Trump’s questioning of Biden — but because Trump had constantly interrupted Biden.

Moreover, Biden has the support of more than 190 law enforcement officials.

Trump pressed Biden to say the words “law and order” during the debate. Biden did and responded: “Yes, I’m in favor of it. Everybody’s in favor of law and order.

I’m in favor of law and order with justice, where people get treated fairly.”

What Trump said “I just got nominated for the Nobel Prize. And then I turned on the fake news, story after story. They talk about your weather in the Panhandle and they talk about this.

Story after story, no mention. Remember when Obama got it right at the beginning and he didn’t even know why he got it.”

This is misleading. Trump was nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize by two right-wing Scandinavian politicians, whereas Obama won one in 2009.

There were 318 candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize this year, and thousands of people have been nominated over time, including such figures as Hitler and Stalin.

Nominations can be put forth by members of national assemblies and national governments, university professors in certain fields like history and social sciences, and members of international bodies like the International Court of Justice in The Hague, among others.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

How a feud between Cuomo and de Blasio led to a chaotic virus crackdown

A protest of mostly Orthodox Jewish residents against new coronavirus restrictions on synagogues, schools, restaurants and nonessential businesses, in the Borough park neighborhood of Brooklyn, on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2020.

By JESSE McKINLEY, LUIS FERRÉ-SADURNÍ, DANA RUBISTEIN and JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

G

ov. Andrew M. Cuomo had barely finished a fairly routine coronavirus briefing earlier this month when he got word that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio had just blindsided him.

The mayor unexpectedly announced that he intended to close down schools and nonessential businesses in parts of Brooklyn and Queens, where the coronavirus was surging in communities with large Orthodox Jewish populations. De Blasio asserted that he had been in contact with the state, whose approval was needed.

It took less than 24 hours for Cuomo to fire back.

He halted the mayor’s plan to shutter businesses, calling it imprecise and incomplete, and sped up the closure of schools. By the next day, the governor unveiled his own plan: another phased-in lockdown, complete with color-coded maps and a barely veiled message for de Blasio.

“A law doesn’t work if you’re too incompetent or too politically frightened to enforce it,” Cuomo said last week.

The governor and mayor, both Democrats, have feuded for years, and their reluctance to work together closely has become a critical issue during the pandemic. De Blasio,

who needed Cuomo’s approval to act, pushed out a plan without the state’s blessing, only to have the governor override that plan with one of his own, causing unnecessary confusion for thousands of business owners and school parents.

Restaurants and other businesses were left wondering if they were meant to be open or closed; parents wondered the same about their children’s schools. Tricolor maps set boundaries in the middle of city blocks and public parks. Some rules resembled past restrictions; others were completely new.

For observers of New York politics, the governor’s actions were no surprise. For the last seven years, Cuomo has overruled de Blasio again and again, seeing himself as both more capable and constitutionally correct: The city is, after all, a creation of the state, and, as Cuomo likes to remind people, the governor outranks the mayor.

But that penchant for control over city affairs may have spawned a new set of problems. Cuomo’s crackdown sparked angry protests, federal lawsuits, and accusations that the governor was castigating Orthodox Jews, whose leaders urged more sensitivity toward a community once cast by Nazis as purveyors of disease.

The protests in Brooklyn even became political fodder for President Donald Trump, whose campaign signs were visible at some

of the demonstrations. On Wednesday, the president used Twitter to suggest that the police response was emblematic of the “radical left.” Two days later, Cuomo accused the Trump campaign of instigating the protests.

Whether Cuomo’s plan would work was still an open question: The city issued some 60 summonses and more than $150,000 in fines over the weekend, as some congregants continued to gather in large groups.

“I understand these are difficult acts to enforce,” Cuomo said last week. “These are state laws. Blame me. I have no problem with that.”

De Blasio’s initial plan called for closing schools and nonessential businesses in nine areas defined by ZIP codes; a city official familiar with the city’s planning process said that the mayor did not use more specific boundaries, partly out of concern for stigmatizing the Orthodox community.

ZIP codes were also thought to be generally easier for people to understand, and cover more ground.

In the week before de Blasio’s announcement, city and state officials had regular discussions about the rising virus numbers in Brooklyn and Queens.

“As recently as Friday of that week, we told them we were open to shutting things down,” said Rich Azzopardi, a senior adviser to the governor. “They were resistant, they said it wasn’t necessary and they could control the situation without a shutdown. Then they make the announcement on Sunday.”

De Blasio admitted that his announcement, without warning Cuomo, was a tactic to publicly pressure the governor to act quickly.

“We want the state to know, in a very public manner, what we believe will allow us to contain the situation,” the mayor said last week. “The thing I’ve learned now over these seven-plus months is that it is very important, once we have come to a conclusion of what is needed, to be very public about it.”

De Blasio’s initial plan called for closing schools and nonessential businesses in nine areas defined by ZIP codes; a city official familiar with the city’s planning process said that the mayor did not use more specific boundaries, partly out of concern for stigmatizing the Orthodox community.

ZIP codes were also thought to be generally easier for people to understand, and cover more ground.

The mayor, citing a court order, also shied away from imposing attendance limits

at synagogues, beyond the 50% capacity restrictions already in place.

That omission — as well as de Blasio’s unilateral decision to announce a plan — stunned and perplexed Cuomo’s team. Robert Mujica, the governor’s budget director and a member of his coronavirus task force, said that not limiting mass gatherings flew in the face of advice of public health officials “everywhere, around the world.”

The following day, Cuomo held a conference call with de Blasio and Michael Mulgrew, the head of the teachers union, which had been pushing for the mayor to close schools in the hot-spot neighborhoods.

That phone call was the only conversation Cuomo has had with de Blasio all month, a City Hall official said.

As Cuomo’s staff worked feverishly to finish their own plan, Cuomo tried his hand at diplomacy, gathering Orthodox leaders on a conference call Tuesday.

The governor asserted that local officials like de Blasio wanted a “total close-down” of synagogues, while he wanted to work with the Orthodox community to cap the occupancy at 50%.

“I don’t want to do it in an adversarial way,” the governor said, according to a recording of the conversation obtained by The New York Times. “I need you to tell the community, ‘We have to comply.’”

Cuomo also said to the leaders that “we’re going to enforce the rules, but the 50% is OK.” “And no more than 50 people at an outdoor gathering,” he added.

But just hours later, the governor then put forward rules to limit attendance to 25% — or 10 people, whichever number was lower, at some houses of worship. Cuomo’s aides acknowledged that the governor had not disclosed those plans on the conference call because he had not finalized them; they said that epidemiologists later convinced him to institute a new cap.

Cuomo’s “cluster action initiative” included a three-tiered, color-coded stratagem that involved a series of varying restrictions governed by often hard-to-read maps that initially cut streets and city blocks in two, leading to confusion about the new boundaries.

Among those apparently confused was Bill Neidhardt, the mayor’s spokesman, who posted a video image on Twitter of Kermit the Frog futilely trying to decipher a map.

Continues on page 9

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

9

Denver photojournalist captures shooting as it unfolds

By BRYAN PIETSCH

T

he harrowing set of photos taken by a Denver Post photographer that captured a fatal shooting unfolding on Saturday did not make it onto the front page of the newspaper the next day.

That was not because Helen H. Richardson, a Post staff photographer, was dawdling, but because she spent three hours after the shooting at the Denver Police Department headquarters being questioned as a witness.

“It’s 4 o’clock and I have a deadline,” she recalled telling the police after the shooting.

Richardson was near Civic Center Park in Denver on Saturday afternoon steps away from the fatal shooting, which left an attendee of a “Patriot Muster” rally dead and a private security guard, hired by a television news station, in police custody for a first-degree murder investigation.

Richardson had been photographing the far-right rally while a far-left counterprotest took place nearby.

After people started to disperse, she was at the southern end of the park, near the Denver Art Museum, when an argument broke out.

“I don’t really know what compelled me to walk that way,” Richardson said in a phone call on Monday.

One of the men in the argument, Lee Keltner, abruptly disengaged from that confrontation, she said, and then slapped the private guard, Matthew Dolloff, who

had not been involved in the argument.

Richardson said that the events unfolded in seconds and that Dolloff had come from behind her. Instinctively, she kept capturing the episode, “knowing to calm down, to focus, to keep shooting,” she said.

After slapping Dolloff, Keltner sprayed a Mace-like substance at him, “it seemed like simultaneously,” Richardson said, as Dolloff pulled out a firearm and opened fire.

“There was never a thought, Am I going to run?” she said. “I didn’t have enough time to, really.”

Two seconds after Keltner struck Dolloff, Keltner was shot and splayed on the pavement.

In the photo of Keltner lying on the ground, Dolloff, his head turned hard to his left, appears to look directly at Richardson’s camera.

“In that moment it felt like it was only me and him,” she said. “Is he going to start spraying bullets into the crowd?” she recalled thinking. “I had no bulletproof vest, nothing.”

“I felt this sense of, I am open; I am really vulnerable,” she said. “And then it was over.”

Keltner, 49, who owned a custom hat shop in the Denver area, died after being taken to a hospital, the police said on Saturday.

Dolloff, 30, had not yet been charged on Monday, a police spokeswoman said, and his lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Any charges

A Denver Post photographer captured an encounter between Lee Keltner, left, and Matthew Dolloff on Saturday. would occur at a hearing within 72 hours of his first advisement — an initial court appearance under Colorado state law — which was on Sunday, said H. Michael Steinberg, a defense lawyer in the Denver area who is not representing Dolloff.

Richardson is one of four staff photographers at The Denver Post, which has been gutted by layoffs after a hedge-fund bought the paper in 2011. She photographs a variety of subjects, like sports, wildfires and other breaking news. The rally on Saturday is one of only a few

protests she has photographed in 2020 because she was furloughed earlier in the year, she said.

The photos on Saturday “just happened,” she said. “I just shot at the right time.”

Richardson’s photo of Keltner spraying Dolloff was a “moment of everything coming together in one frame,” she said, adding that it is difficult in fast-moving situations to situate the camera in focus and with the correct exposure.

“To get that moment,” she said, “it’s not easy to do. I was shocked.”

How a feud between Cuomo and de Blasio led to a chaotic virus crackdown From page 8 Cuomo’s restrictions were quickly rebuked by Orthodox Jewish lawmakers, all Democrats, who said the new rules unfairly targeted Jews and included a “duplicitous bait-and-switch” on new rules surrounding synagogues. In a statement, they described the governor’s rhetoric in recent days as “irresponsible and pejorative, particularly to a community of Holocaust survivors and their descendants.”

On Thursday, Agudath Israel of America, a prominent Orthodox group, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn each

filed suit in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, claiming their First Amendment rights had been violated.

By then, protesters had already been demonstrating for two nights in the streets of the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, lighting fires, burning masks and attacking a local journalist. In remarks on Thursday, Cuomo decried the lack of enforcement from the New York City police.

“If we had enforced the law,” he said, “we wouldn’t be here.”

Two separate judges later upheld Cuomo’s new restrictions.

City officials worried whether the

governor’s actions might alienate and discourage cooperation in a conservative Orthodox community where some members look askance at dictums from secular governments.

“I am very worried that we have completely lost trust with the most impacted communities and that it’s going to undermine our public health efforts,” said Mark D. Levine, a Manhattan councilman who leads the health committee. “The rollout of this policy, which was going to be extremely sensitive in the best of circumstances, only further eroded that trust.”

In announcing his plan, Cuomo, a Catholic, said he had taken the action against

the communities because he loved them and wanted to protect them, quoting the Torah about “how certain religious obligations can be excused, if you are going to save a life.”

“This is about saving a life,” the governor said.

State Sen. Simcha Felder, a Democrat who has also worked closely with Republicans over the years, said he had no opinion on the governor’s sense of Judaic teaching, but had another piece of scripture in mind.

“I highly recommend the governor read the Bible’s story of David and Goliath,” Felder said. “It really doesn’t end that well for Goliath.”

10

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Roberta McCain, mother of the senator and his beacon, dies at 108

Roberta McCain and her son, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the Republican presidential candidate, greet a crowd as he arrives at a campaign rally at the airport in Grand Junction, Colo., Nov. 4, 2008.

By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

R

oberta McCain, whose son, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said she had inspired his will to survive as a prisoner of war in Vietnam — and who at 96 campaigned spiritedly in his losing bid for the presidency against Barack Obama in 2008 — died on Monday at her home in Washington. She was 108.

Her death was announced on Twitter by her daughter-in-law, Cindy McCain,.

An adventurous world traveler who took frequent home dislocations in stride and wartime family perils with outward calm, Roberta McCain was Navy through and through — the wife and daughter-in-law of admirals and the mother of the naval aviator who was shot down over Hanoi in 1967 and who, for 5 1/2 years, was America’s most famous prisoner of the Vietnam War. For Roberta McCain and her husband, Adm. John S. McCain Jr., the commander of all United States forces in the Pacific and in the Vietnam War theater, their son’s captivity in North Vietnam was painfully endured with prayer, and with near silence in public.

They knew that Hanoi tortured prisoners, and that Lt. Cmdr. John S. McCain III, as a propaganda prize, could hardly be exempted. He was not.

The younger McCain came home a war hero and, with his mother’s encouragement, began a po-

litical career as a Republican stalwart. He won two terms in the House of Representatives and six terms in the Senate, and he ran twice for the White House. In 2000, he lost the nomination to George W. Bush, who went on to win the presidency; eight years later he won the nomination, but lost the election to Obama.

He died in 2018.

“From both my parents, I learned to persevere,” John McCain wrote in a memoir, “Faith of My Fathers” (1999, with Mark Salter). “But my mother’s extraordinary resilience made her the stronger of the two. I acquired some of her resilience and her felicity, and that inheritance made an enormous difference in my life.

“Our family,” he continued, “lived on the move, rooted not in location but in the culture of the Navy. I learned from my mother not just to take the constant disruptions in stride, but to welcome them as elements of an interesting life.”

The rebellious daughter of a wealthy Oklahoma oil wildcatter who settled his family in Los Angeles, Roberta McCain eloped and became a Navy wife in 1933. As her husband rose to global military prominence, she lived in capitals and naval bases in Europe, Asia and the Americas for nearly four decades. Her children were born in Honolulu, in the Panama Canal Zone and at the submarine base in Groton, Connecticut.

Her husband was promoted to rear admiral in 1958. Her father-in-law, John S. McCain Sr., was also an admiral, who commanded Western Pacific Naval air and carrier task forces in World War II. In the early 1960s, the family lived in New York when John McCain Jr. was attached to the United Nations, and in London when he commanded American naval forces in Europe. During the admiral’s Pacific and Vietnam theater commands, from 1968 to 1972, Roberta McCain often accompanied him to Saigon, where he conferred with Gen. Creighton Abrams, the Vietnam military commander. She also joined him on missions to Thailand, Japan and the Philippines.

“My mother always traveled with my father,” John McCain III wrote. “Had the Navy allowed it, I am sure she would have accompanied him on sea duty, and found in the alternately exciting and dull world of men at sea some useful and interesting way to occupy her time.”

After her husband’s death in 1981, Roberta McCain and her identical twin sister, Rowena, took long driving trips through Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Once, when she was denied a rental car in Paris because of her age, she went out and bought a car. On road trips in the United States, she accumulated numerous speeding tickets and was once clocked at over 100 mph, her son said.

In her later years, she encouraged her son’s political career. Retired from the Navy in 1981, he was elected in 1982 to the House of Representatives, where he served four years, and then to the Senate in 1986, winning reelection five times, most recently in 2016. She had no role in his run for president in 2000.

But she joined John McCain’s 2008 “Straight Talk Express” campaign. She occasionally stole the show with acerbic comments on her son’s political foes, and she once mistakenly accused one rival, Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, of involvement in a scandal that rocked the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. She and her son both apologized.

Roberta Wright was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, on Feb. 7, 1912, one of five children of Archibald and Myrtle (Fletcher) Wright. She was a freshman at the University of Southern California in 1931 when she met Ensign John McCain Jr., a recent Naval Academy graduate.

Her parents disapproved of their courtship, but the couple eloped and were married in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1933. They had three children, Jean Alexandra, John S. III and Joseph Pinckney II. Meghan Latcovich, Cindy McCain’s chief of staff, said Roberta McCain was survived by her son Joseph; 10 grandchildren; 11 great-grandchildren; and seven great-great-grandchildren. Her daughter, Jean Alexandra McCain Morgan, died last year.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

11

COVID-19 vaccines are chance at salvation, financial and beyond, for drugmakers

By JESSE DRUCKER, DAVID GELLES and KATIE THOMAS

F

or a long time, drugmakers have been the most hated industry in America. Companies are blamed for gouging prices on lifesaving drugs and enriching themselves through the opioid crisis, among other sins.

Now, with pharmaceutical companies racing to find vaccines to end the coronavirus pandemic, the industry is hoping to redeem itself in the public’s mind.

The primary goal, of course, is to rescue the world from the grips of a vicious virus. But a big fringe benefit is to get public credit — and to use an improved image to fend off government efforts to more heavily regulate the industry.

Consider Johnson & Johnson, one of the world’s largest health care companies.

In recent years, its reputation has been battered by accusations that products like its artificial hips and talcum powder have harmed customers. In 2019, an Oklahoma judge ordered the company to pay $572 million for contributing to the opioid epidemic.

This spring, Johnson & Johnson jumped into the hunt for a COVID-19 vaccine; its candidate is now in the final stage of clinical trials. (On Monday, the company said it had temporarily paused the study after a participant became sick with an unexplained illness.)

Regardless of whether the vaccine ever comes to market, the company is looking to create a surge of positive publicity from its work. Its chief executive, Alex Gorsky, went on the “Today” show this spring and called Johnson & Johnson’s lab workers heroes. The company has produced a slick, self-promotional online video series, “The Road to a Vaccine,” featuring feel-good interviews with the company’s scientists and segments on issues like whether it is safe to send children back to school.

Johnson & Johnson’s efforts to develop a vaccine will show that “J&J is a company full of people with heart and soul who are doing this 24-7, with all their science and knowhow,” said Dr. Paul Stoffels, the company’s chief scientific officer. While the company’s image at times has been “trashed,” he said, “I hope that we can get to a better reputation.”

That is a widely held sentiment across the pharmaceutical industry. Companies are looking for public makeovers as a political battle over drug price controls looms. Others are seizing the once-in-a-generation opportunity to raise money for future projects from investors and the government.

Public opinion matters. The industry is facing a fight in Washington over price controls, which could take a bite out of companies’ profits in the United States. The latest salvo came last month when President Donald Trump issued an executive order that called for capping the costs of some prescription drugs.

The industry’s largest trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, is fighting back by invoking the industry’s effort to fight the coronavirus. It denounced Trump’s executive order as “a reckless attack on

Representative Tom Rice, a South Carolina Republican, at a House hearing last month on prescription drug costs. the very companies working around the clock to beat COVID-19.”

Kim Monk, managing director of Capital Alpha Partners, a policy research firm based in Washington, said that finding a safe and effective vaccine could help drug companies in their campaign to stave off price controls. “You don’t even need to say it,” she said. “It’s part of the strategy.”

To be sure, the race for a coronavirus vaccine is much more than a public relations play. Scientists at pharmaceutical companies take great pride in their work to combat human suffering. And there is immense prestige involved in being among the first to successfully conquer a devastating global pandemic.

There are also potentially enormous profits on the line.

Vaccines are often thought of as the pharmaceutical industry’s sleepy, low-profit backwater, but that is not always the case, said Dr. David Bishai, a professor of health economics at Johns Hopkins University’s school of public health.

Two leading drugmakers have pledged to not profit from their vaccines. But those promises are laden with caveats.

Johnson & Johnson has said it will sell the vaccine on a “not-for-profit” basis for “emergency pandemic use.” But the company hasn’t explained in detail how it will define “not for profit.” In any case, when the “emergency pandemic” phase of the crisis ends, the company will no longer be bound by

its pledge. Jake Sargent, a Johnson & Johnson spokesman, said the end of the emergency phase “will be defined at a future date by global health authorities.”

Another major drug company, AstraZeneca, has made a similar pledge not to profit on its vaccine, which is also in large clinical trials, during the pandemic. But in a contract with one of its manufacturers, AstraZeneca has suggested that it can declare the pandemic to be over as soon as July 2021 — around the time that a successful vaccine is likely to be getting sold worldwide, according to the Financial Times.

“The company has committed to supplying the potential vaccine at no profit during this pandemic period,” said an AstraZeneca spokeswoman, Michele Meixell. “It is too early to determine pricing post-pandemic.”

The COVID-19 vaccine business is likely to be unusually lucrative because much of the risk has been taken out of the equation. The federal government has entered into deals with companies totaling more than $10 billion to develop, manufacture and distribute coronavirus vaccines. Drug companies usually spend small fortunes to market their products.

But that will probably not be required to generate public interest in a coronavirus vaccine.

“If you get a vaccine and it gets recommended by the CDC, you barely need a sales force,” said Geoffrey Porges, the director of therapeutics research at the investment bank SVB Leerink.

12

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

July is the new January: More companies delay return to the office

By GILLIAN FRIEDMAN and KELLEN BROWNING

W

hen the coronavirus pandemic shuttered offices around the United States in March, many companies told their employees that it would be only a short hiatus away from headquarters.

Workers, they said, would be back in their cubicles within a matter of weeks. Weeks turned into September. Then September turned into January. And now, with the virus still surging in some parts of the country, a growing number of employers are delaying return-tooffice dates once again, to the summer of 2021 at the earliest.

Google was one of the first to announce that July 2021 was its return-to-office date. Uber, Slack and Airbnb soon jumped on the bandwagon. In the past week, Microsoft, Target, Ford Motor Co. and The New York Times said they, too, had postponed the return of inperson work to next summer and acknowledged the inevitable: The pandemic isn’t going away anytime soon.

“Let’s just bite the bullet,” said Joan Burke, the chief people officer of DocuSign in San Francisco. In August, her company, which manages electronic document signatures, decided it would allow its 5,200 employees to work from home until June 2021.

“We’re still in a place where this is evolving,” she

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Many employers are delaying return-to-office dates once again, setting their sights on the summer of 2021 at the earliest. said. “None of us have all the answers.”

Many more companies are expected to delay their return-to-office dates to keep workers safe. And workers said they were in no rush to go back, with 73% of U.S. employees fearing that being in their workplace could pose a risk to their personal health and safety, according to a study by Wakefield Research commissioned by Envoy, a workplace technology company.

More companies are also saying that they will institute permanent work-from-home policies so employees do not ever have to come into the office again.

In May, Facebook was one of the first to announce that it would allow many employees to work remotely even after the pandemic. Twitter, Coinbase and Shopify have also said they would do so. On Friday, Microsoft announced it would also be part of that shift.

The elongating timelines and changing policies add up to a continued balancing act for companies as the coronavirus shatters work norms and upends assumptions about where workers need to be to achieve maximum productivity. Employers are also under pressure to be as open as possible about their intentions so that workers can plan ahead with their lives.

The postponement of return dates is a “psychological blow for those who expected this to be a transition phase,” said Tsedal Neeley, a Harvard Business School professor who studies remote work. “The reality is hitting that, ‘There won’t be a vaccine as I expected very quickly. This is going to be my life, and I’d better learn how to do this.’”

Neeley likened the situation to waiting at an airport terminal for a flight that is continually delayed.

With the new dates announced, she said, people can finally start adjusting from a temporary “grinning and bear it” approach to a permanent shift.

Successful companies “have begun to think about

long-term strategy rather than ‘Let’s just survive our crisis,’” she said.

Much of corporate America is now following the lead of Silicon Valley tech companies like Google and Facebook. They were among those that allowed employees to work from home even before the pandemic hit in full force in March. Since then, Facebook has set the tone in planning for permanent remote work, while Google established the July 2021 target date for returning to the office.

“I hope this will offer the flexibility you need to balance work with taking care of yourselves and your loved ones over the next 12 months,” Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, wrote in an email to employees about the July 2021 date.

Other employers soon emulated the tech giants, also citing worker flexibility as a key factor in pushing their return-to-office dates to next summer.

Burke, the DocuSign executive, said announcing the June 2021 return date to employees prompted a “collective sigh of relief inside the company” because it put an end to the incremental postponements and uncertainty of when they would be expected to return.

Remote work has been productive, she said, and people like not having to commute. But a mix of inperson and remote is probably the most popular option for employees when life returns to normal, she said, because they also miss the social interaction of an office space.

Zoom “is not the same thing, and it’s exhausting,” Burke said. “By 7 o’clock last night, I was Zoomed out.”

Other companies that have delayed their returns to the office until next summer often face a more complicated decision because their workforces are not just made up of white-collar engineers, unlike those of internet companies.

Ford said last week that its decision to hold off on back in-person office work through June 2021 would apply to its roughly 32,000 employees in North America who are already working remotely. The company, which has about 188,000 employees, said the policy does not apply to factory staff.

When Target announced its decision to let some employees continue to work at home through June 2021 in a letter to staff last week, it said it would apply just to employees at its headquarters in Minneapolis.

The company said a small number of employees who rely on the headquarters facilities would continue to work on-site. In-store employees will work in retail stores as usual.

Some companies that have already tried bringing employees back to the office have grappled with safety concerns. Last month, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase sent send some workers back home after employees who had returned to the office tested positive for the virus.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

13 Stocks

S&P 500, Dow fall on J&J vaccine worries; tech gains prop up Nasdaq

T

he Dow and the S&P 500 fell on Tuesday after a four-day winning streak as a pause in Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 trial triggered concerns about the timing of a vaccine, although a rally in technology shares supported the Nasdaq.

Johnson & Johnson shed 2% as it said it would take “a few days” to review its halted clinical trial following an unexplained illness in a study participant, possibly delaying results on one of the most closely watched efforts to contain the global pandemic.

The S&P healthcare index slipped from a record high hit in the prior session and weighed on broader markets as vaccines are seen critical to stopping the pandemic, which has driven the economy to its worst recession in decades.

Some of the worst-hit companies due to the pandemic - cruise line operators Carnival Corp, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and hotel operator Wynn Resorts Ltd - fell between 3% and 7%.

The J&J news is “an excruciating reminder of the difficulties that the coronavirus has brought on the economy,” said Eric Schiffer, chief executive officer of private equity firm Patriarch Organization.

Adding to the negative tone, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected President Donald Trump’s latest offer on COVID-19 stimulus, the latest sign that a bipartisan deal on coronavirus relief remains unlikely ahead of the November election.

Hopes of more U.S. fiscal aid and a rally in tech heavyweights led stocks higher on Monday, bringing the benchmark S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq within 2% of their record highs hit in September after a pullback last month.

Apple Inc slipped 1.1% ahead of a virtual event starting 1 p.m. ET (1700 GMT) where it is widely expected to unveil four new iPhone models.

Amazon.com Inc shares, which have already surged 86% this year, added 1% as the company began 48 hours of promotions as part of “Prime Day” in an early start to the holiday shopping season.

Kicking off third-quarter earnings season, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Citigroup surpassed analyst estimates for quarterly profit on a surge in trading revenue.

However, Citi’s results underscored deeper troubles in its consumer bank that struggled with a decline in customers and spending, sending its shares down 4%.

JPMorgan was also down 1.1%, while the S&P 500 bank index shed 2%.

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14

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Britain’s new measures to control virus inflame north-south tensions

By MARK LANDLER and STEPHEN CASTLE

P

rime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday ordered pubs, bars and gyms in the high-risk city of Liverpool to be closed, a move that inflamed tensions with local officials and laid bare how the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic is hitting Britain’s north harder than London or the rest of the south.

Johnson’s measures dramatized the country’s increasingly urgent battle to avert a repeat of last spring’s deadly outbreak. But the rigors of this latest campaign are being felt unevenly: 2.4 million people in Liverpool and its suburbs face tough new restrictions while, for now, life in London goes on more or less normally.

The prime minister introduced a much-heralded three-tier system of restrictions that he promised would simplify what had become a confusing patchwork of targeted lockdowns in cities around the country.

Rather than calm the waters, the plan has infuriated officials in the north of England, who complain that they were cut out of the government’s deliberations. And they say the new lockdowns will throttle their economies, betraying an election-year promise by Johnson and his Conservatives to raise prosperity in the north closer to the

level of London and other richer areas in the south.

“We don’t want to go back to another national lockdown,” Johnson said in Parliament.

But with new infections quadrupling over the past three weeks and hospitalizations rising to crisis levels, he said the government had no choice but to tighten its measures.

“We can’t let the virus rip,” Johnson said.

Under the government’s new system, cities or regions will be subject to three escalating tiers of restrictions, depending on the severity of their outbreaks. In the first, or medium alert level, they would merely face the most recent restrictions that Johnson announced for the entire country: a ban on social gatherings of more than six people and a 10 p.m. curfew on bars and restaurants.

The second, or high alert level, triggers a ban on mixing by people from different households, while under the third, or very high alert level — the one just imposed on Liverpool — pubs, gyms and some other nonessential businesses must close. Schools, shops and offices can remain open, fulfilling Johnson’s vow last summer that if he faced a choice between schools or pubs, he would close pubs.

Fears that the virus could overwhelm

A pub in Liverpool showed Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking in the House of Commons in London on television on Monday, as new local lockdown measures are set to be imposed to help stem a second wave of the coronavirus.

the health service in the north prompted a decision to prepare three field hospitals there to admit patients. A network of “Nightingale hospitals,” constructed earlier this year, had been mothballed, but now those in Manchester, Sunderland and Harrogate have been placed on standby.

Britain’s deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, said that northern parts of the country were badly affected partly because infection rates were higher there than in other areas when the earlier lockdown measures were lifted.

Disease levels in the north, and certainly in the northwest, “never dropped as far” in the summer as they did in the south, said Van-Tam, while adding that “pretty much all areas of the U.K. are seeing growth in the infection rate.”

Health experts criticized the latest measures, saying they would neither stamp out the virus nor shield the economy from damage.

Devi Sridhar, the chair of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh, said the government failed to use the time during its earlier lockdown to put in place an effective test-and-trace program.

Unless it remedied that failure now, there was little point to closing pubs or gyms.

“It’s a slow strangulation of both the economy and human health,” she said.

Other experts said the government should abandon the whole concept of lockdowns, since they predict that a second wave of cases will be less lethal and more manageable because of better medical treatments and a more resistant population.

Sunetra Gupta, an infectious disease expert at Oxford University, said the slower rate of transmission in London suggested that a significant percentage of the population there had already developed immunity to the virus. The government, she said, should aim for the same natural immunity in the north, shielding the elderly and vulnerable but not closing down parts of the economy.

“It just kicks the problem down the road,” Gupta said. “It causes a lot of small businesses to fold, a lot of people on temporary contracts to lose their jobs.”

Johnson has already faced fissures with Scotland, where authorities have diverged regularly from the government’s health measures. Now, though, he is facing criticism from local and regional officials in

the north of England, who want more power in shaping the rules that affect their communities.

Several of the worst-hit areas are represented by city or regional mayors, who are demanding more aid from the government to help struggling businesses. On Monday, Johnson promised some extra cash to the regions through a modified extension of the government’s massive wage-subsidy program.

“If you see parts of your economy closed, potentially until March, whereas London and the south are not locked down similarly, you will think that the consequences could be a long-term worsening of economic performance of the north versus the south,” said Tony Travers, a professor of politics at the London School of Economics.

“Mayors in these cities may have few formal powers,” Travers said, “but they have a media profile and enough political legitimacy to make a government in a weak position look even weaker.”

The government has tried to build support by bringing some local officials into its deliberations. It also left some major urban areas, like Manchester, out of the highest alert level. But even being in the second tier poses problems because it forbids people from different households from meeting for a drink in a pub, which the owners say will cripple their business, even if they stay open.

“This is something the latest local epidemiology does not support, and I am disappointed that the government is pressing ahead with this despite the united view of local leaders,” said Andy Street, the Conservative mayor of the West Midlands, who the government had hoped would be an ally.

These tensions could have far-reaching political implications for Johnson. Voters in many of the affected areas traditionally supported the opposition Labour Party but last year switched to the Conservatives, propelling Johnson to victory.

Now some of those newly elected Conservative lawmakers are becoming restive. Several have joined a new caucus, the Northern Research Group, which is modeled on an influential pro-Brexit alliance of Conservative lawmakers known as the European Research Group. The goal, its founder, Jake Berry, told the BBC, is “to make sure that the government delivers on its promise to level up the north.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

15

Israel accepts Ethiopians of Jewish descent, but fewer than promised

By ADAM RASGON

T

he Israeli government on Monday approved an airlift of 2,000 Ethiopians of Jewish descent to Israel in the coming months, prompting angry reactions from Ethiopian Israeli activists who insist that about 8,000 should be resettled.

Israel permits Jews around the world to settle there under its Law of Return, but does not grant that right to people known as Falash Mura, descendants of Ethiopian Jews who converted to Christianity about a century ago, many under duress, though they identify as Jewish or of Jewish lineage.

“We need all of our brothers and sisters to be brought here,” said Kassahun Shiferaw, an Ethiopian Israeli activist.

“Only allowing part of them to come is not sufficient.”

Jews in Ethiopia, known as Beta Israel, were largely cut off from the mainstreams of Judaism for millenniums and their faith evolved in somewhat different form, but Israeli authorities have generally recognized them as Jewish.

Since the 1970s, tens of thousands have been admitted from Ethiopia, where they had faced persecution.

But what was once celebrated as a heartwarming story of rescue and solidarity has taken on a less rosy hue, raising questions about racial acceptance in Israel. Israelis of Ethiopian descent, who number about 150,000, say they often face discrimination and excessive use of force by the police. Many of them have had trouble integrating into Israeli society, and their rates of poverty and unemployment are high.

The position of the Falash Mura — a term some of them consider demeaning — is more tenuous than that of the larger Beta Israel population.

Though many of the descendants of converts to Christianity are observant Jews, the Israeli government does not consider them to be fully Jewish. They require special permission to migrate to Israel, and upon arriving in the country must undergo a conversion process, even if they already practice Judaism.

In November 2015, Israel approved a plan to bring the remaining Falash Mura, about 10,000 people, to its territory by the end of 2020. But a few months after the decision, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said it would not follow through on the plan due to budget constraints. Since then, Israel has allowed around 2,000 of the Ethiopians to immigrate.

The plan approved on Monday would admit about one-quarter of the roughly 8,000 who remain, living in mostly rundown communities in the Ethiopian cities of Addis Ababa, the capital, and Gondar. Some have been trying to relocate to Israel for 20 years.

“There have been too many broken promises,” said Shiferaw. “The time has come for executing decisions.”

In a letter to Netanyahu, current and retired Israeli military officers from the Ethiopian community blasted

Ethiopian immigrants arrive at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport in Lod in May. the government decision.

“It is unfathomable that the immigration from around the world continues, while quotas and limits are only placed on immigration of Ethiopian Jews,” said the officers, all of whom have siblings or parents waiting in Ethiopia to come to Israel.

Pnina Tamano-Shata, the minister of immigration and absorption who spearheaded the plan to bring the 2,000 Ethiopians, called the government decision “very exciting,” but she acknowledged that she was sympathetic to the criticisms against it.

“They are right,” said Tamano-Shata, the first Ethiopian Israeli to serve as a government minister, referring to the Ethiopian Israeli activists. “I think we need to bring everyone here as soon as possible, but unfortunately we only received a budget for 2,000 people this time.”

The minister said she planned to present to the government a plan to relocate another 7,000 Ethiopians to Israel in 2021 and 2022, and the rest in 2023.

Tamano-Shata said the government had allocated $109,320,000 to bring the 2,000 Ethiopians to Israel and assist them with their absorption into Israeli society. She also said all of them would receive coronavirus tests before entering Israel and would be required to quarantine for two weeks at special facilities or family members’ homes.

Netanyahu said he had spoken last week with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who he said had

promised to help with Israel’s effort to bring the Ethiopians to its territory.

Sefy Bililin, an Israeli Ethiopian who is waiting for her two sisters, 22 and 29, to come from Addis Ababa to Israel, said she was praying they would be included in the 2,000.

“It’s impossible to know if they will make it this time, but I really hope they do,” said Bililin, 25, who last saw her sisters a year ago on a trip to Ethiopia. “I don’t want to even think about the possibility that they’ll be left behind again.”

In Addis Ababa, Amare Ezra said both of his parents had already moved to Israel but he was still stuck in Ethiopia.

“I’ve been here for 18 years,” waiting to go, said Ezra, 40. “I’m wishing it will finally happen.”

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16

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Nigerians demand end to police squad known for brutalizing the young

A protest against the police in Lagos on Sunday.

By SHOLA LAWAL and ADENIKE OLANREWAJU

W

ith protests breaking out across Nigeria and in expatriate Nigerian communities around the world, the country’s president vowed to a skeptical public on Monday that he would crack down on rogue police officers accused of brutalizing citizens.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s promise came a day after his government announced that it would dismantle a widely feared police unit known as SARS, for Special Anti-Robbery Squad.

“The disbanding of SARS is only the first step in our commitment to extensive police reforms,” Buhari said in a televised statement, speaking out for the first time since protests started last week. “We will also ensure that all those responsible for misconduct are brought to justice.”

To many, Buhari’s response was too little, too late, and they predicted it would do little to placate the angry young Nigerians who have

been blocking major routes in cities across the country to protest the police unit.

One protester in Lagos, Olasunkanmi Amoo, 26, said Buhari’s statement was a hollow promise — and he noted that the demonstrations had not come to a halt.

“We’re all still outside,” he said. “People are just very wary because you can talk all you want, but if you don’t do anything we’re still going to be here. We’re coming back tomorrow.

We don’t trust him, and we don’t believe him.”

The Special Anti-Robbery Squad was created in 1992 and charged with tackling the problem of violent crime in Lagos. It operated as a faceless, 15-member team that traveled in two unmarked buses, its officers often wearing neither uniforms nor name tags.

The anonymity was considered vital for taking on the gangs that openly terrorized Lagos at the time. But as the police unit grew, establishing itself throughout the country, its faceless nature opened the door to abuse, making it difficult to identify and report rogue officers and emboldening them to act with impunity, critics say.

The SARS unit has been accused of targeting young people who appear well-dressed, shaking them down for money, and torturing and abusing and even killing those who resist.

Amnesty International says it documented more than 82 cases of abuse and extrajudicial killings

by SARS officers from January 2017 to this May. Many of the victims were between 18 and 35, the human rights group said. Nearly half of Nigeria’s population of 182 million population is below age 30, one of the world’s largest concentrations of young people.

The government has claimed before that it planned to shut down the unit, but its officers are still on the streets.

“The government disbanded SARS in 2017, in 2018 and in 2019,” said Omobolanle Adams, 25, a Nigerian graduate student at Boston University. “We’re not buying it this time.”

Protesters say they won’t be satisfied until the president issues an executive order and until clear action is taken not just to disband SARS but to address broader problems with the police.

Their demands include psychological evaluations for reassigned SARS officers, and compensation for victims of police violence. They are also pushing for better pay for police officers to reduce the financial exploitation of citizens.

Protesters are also demanding the release of those arrested at the recent demonstrations, and a requirement that the police use only rubber bullets during civil unrest.

The protests broke out in major Nigerian cities, including Lagos and the capital, Abuja, and the outrage quickly spread online.

The #EndSARS hashtag on Twitter soon garnered global attention, resonating particularly in the United States, birthplace of the Black Lives Matter movement. The Nigerian protests have been embraced by top American stars like Chance the Rapper and Cardi B. Demonstrations in shows of solidarity have been held across the Nigerian diaspora in cities like Atlanta, Berlin and London. In New York on Sunday, young protesters gathered in

front of the Nigerian Consulate General in Midtown to share their own stories of police brutality while in Nigeria and to demand action from the Nigerian government.

“The youth in Nigeria are tired,” said Adams, 25, the Boston University graduate student, who helped organize the event with other activists she met on Twitter.

She pointed to the harsh crackdowns on the protesters in Nigeria.

“People are being tear-gassed,” she said.

“People are being shot dead. We’re here today to amplify Nigerians’ voices. The time is now.”

The protests that began over the last week were set off by reports that a young man in Delta State, in southern Nigeria, had been killed during a stop-and-search operation on Oct. 3. The police have said that SARS officers were not involved.

As the protests over the killing grew, demonstrators faced increasingly violent crackdowns from security forces.

One person, Jimoh Isiaq, was killed in the demonstrations in Oyo State on Saturday, and an unidentified bystander was killed in Lagos on Monday, as the police fired bullets into crowds of protesters, witnesses said. Protesters and journalists have also been shot at and beaten in Abuja. And dozens more have been arrested and remain in custody.

The demonstrations have been the biggest in Nigeria in recent years, rivaling protests in 2012 over fuel-price increases during President Goodluck Jonathan’s tenure.

Worn down by weak governments and corrupt leadership for decades, and divided along religious, ethnic and class lines, Nigerians do not often join in mass protests.

But since last week, protesters of varying economic status and religion have taken to the streets to voice their demands. Top Nigerian celebrities like the pop stars Wizkid, Davido and Tiwa Savage have attended rallies in big cities.

And the protests have bridged generational divides as older people briefly joined the demonstrations this weekend.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

17

An Italian teenager could become the first millennial saint

By MARIE FAZIO

I

n many ways, Carlo Acutis was a typical teenager. He loved his PlayStation and making videos of his dogs. He favored Nikes and jeans, and he had a cellphone and an email address.

But in one significant respect, Carlo — who was just 15 when he died of leukemia in 2006 — stands out from his peers: He is on his way to becoming the first millennial to be recognized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church.

Carlo, who lived in Milan, was beatified, or declared “blessed” by the pope, on Saturday after a miracle was attributed to him earlier this year. The ceremony, in Assisi, Italy, was the second-to-last step before Carlo can be canonized as a saint.

Since his death, Carlo has become known in some Catholic circles as the patron saint of the internet for his facility with computers and his early and enthusiastic embrace of the web, which he used as an expression of his Catholic faith.

When he was 9, Carlo began studying computer science textbooks and taught himself computer programming and graphic design, his mother, Antonia Acutis, said in a phone interview. In the months before his death, he created a website that cataloged miracles.

“Carlo was the light answer to the dark side of the web,” his mother said, adding that some admirers have called him an “influencer for God.” Her son’s life, she said, “can be used to show how the internet can be used for good, to spread good things.”

After his death, the Diocese of Assisi, where his family had a second home, petitioned the Vatican to recognize Carlo as a saint. The diocese dug into his emails and computer search history, and interviewed witnesses. Then they waited for miracles.

Acutis said that people from all over the world had told her about medical miracles, including cures for infertility and cancer, that happened after they prayed to her son. In February, Pope Francis attributed the unexplainable healing of a boy with a malformed pancreas to Carlo after the child came in contact with one of his shirts.

Now that he has been beatified, Carlo could become a saint if a second verified miracle is attributed to him and is recognized by the pope. A formal canonization ceremony would follow.

If that happens, Carlo would be joining an elite group.

Among the more than 10,000 saints recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, just 120 died as children or teenagers, the National Catholic Register reported in 2017.

The time between beatification and sainthood varies widely, and sainthood might not happen at all, said Kathleen Sprows Cummings, a professor of American studies and history and the director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. For some saints, including Joan of Arc, who died when she was about 19, centuries pass between death and canonization.

Hundreds of masked devotees, including Carlo’s parents and siblings, gathered in Assisi on Saturday for his beatification ceremony, which was postponed from March because

of the coronavirus. Many watched on screens that were spread throughout the town’s piazzas as a church official read a letter from Pope Francis that declared Carlo “blessed.”

“Already Carlo, he’s only just been beatified, but already he’s a worldwide phenomenon,” said the Rev. Will Conquer, a Catholic priest and missionary in Cambodia who has written about Carlo’s path to sainthood. “What makes it so extraordinary is that he was ordinary. We’re telling people the guy you should be following is a guy very similar to you.”

Carlo’s body, which was exhumed for veneration this month, was displayed in a nearby church with his preferred wardrobe of Nikes, jeans and a sweater.

Those signs of modernity resonated with many young people who see themselves in him, said Paul Jarzembowski, who leads the U.S. Council for Catholic Bishops’ youth and young adult ministries. Carlo was not a theological writer or world leader, he said, but rather an ordinary young person with compassion, a drive to integrate faith into his daily life and “a dedication to make the world a better place.”

“He is truly a patron for our self-isolating, digitally reliant times, and for other young people who are now accompanying all of us as we enter more fully into this new normal,” Jarzembowski said.

Born in London to Italian parents, Carlo moved to Milan with his family as a child, his mother said. He enjoyed soccer and video games, including Pokémon and Mario Kart, limiting himself to one hour a week with those games, his mother said.

He was inquisitive about Catholicism from a young age, inspiring his mother, who was not a practicing Catholic at

the time, to return to the faith. He attended daily Mass from the time he was 7, never missing a day, she said.

Carlo sought ways of helping poor, older and disabled people, and refugees. On the way to school, he would stop to chat with people about their problems, she said. He took meals and sleeping bags to homeless people and knew many by name.

At Carlo’s funeral, the church overflowed with people whose lives he had touched, she said.

“People are gravitating to the idea of a young person becoming a saint at a time when young people are leaving the church, becoming disenchanted with the church,” Cummings said.

And, as people worry about the corrosive effects of social media on young people, it is notable, she said, that the church is recognizing a person who used the internet to promote the faith.

Francis has embraced the internet and called it a “gift from God.” Writing to young people last year, he commended Carlo as an example for his use of the internet and quoted him as saying, “Everyone is born as an original, but many people end up dying as photocopies.” The pope added, “Don’t let that happen to you!”

On Monday, the pope wrote on Twitter that Carlo’s example showed that “true happiness is found by putting God in first place and serving him in our brothers and sisters, especially the least.”

Francis, who has been known to embrace the internet — notably with Twitter and Instagram accounts — has been outspoken about the harmful effects of social media and the depravity of internet culture.

Carlo Acutis was beatified in Assisi, Italy, on Saturday, moving him a step closer to becoming the first millennial to be declared a Catholic saint.

18

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Imagining the Trump presidency that wasn’t

By BRET STEPHENS

W

here would we be now if we had a truly politically incorrect president? Donald Trump is supposed to be politically incorrect, but, for the most part, he isn’t. He’s mainly just a jerk.

Jerkishness is often mistaken for political incorrectness, in the way that blind luck is easily mistaken for great skill. They’re fundamentally different. Political incorrectness is an expression of intellectual independence.

Jerkishness is a personality defect. The former requires a sense of inner rectitude. The latter reveals an absence of inner boundaries.

Politically incorrect people are prepared to deviate from their own party, ideology or personal interest for the sake of a moral principle. Jerks are always in it for themselves alone.

Andrei Sakharov and Liu Xiaobo were politically incorrect: honest men in dishonest systems. Trump is a dishonest man in a country with an increasingly tenuous grip on the concept of honesty itself.

With this in mind, let’s imagine an alternative history for a (politically incorrect) Trump presidency.

January 2017: Shortly after his inauguration as president, Trump fulfills a campaign promise by releasing

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President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the White House in Washington, Sept. 15, 2020. “America still awaits a politically incorrect president — while it waits out the jerk,” writes Bret Stephens. his full tax returns. In a statement, the president says he’s releasing them for two reasons.

“First of all, if our dishonest media ever gets a hold of them, and they will, they’ll lie about what’s in them!

And second, they show just what’s wrong with our tax code. As a real estate developer, I make no apologies for taking advantage of every loophole. As president, I will close these crazy holes for the sake of the American people. #IAloneCanFixIt. #MAGA.” February 2017: Infuriating movement conservatives, Trump resubmits 64-year-old Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court, saying he wants to uphold the principle — denied to his predecessor — that a president has the right to nominate a candidate to fill a vacant judgeship at any point in his administration.

But he does so as part of a deal in which one of the court’s older conservative justices steps down from the bench in favor of Neil Gorsuch, 49. The subsequent retirement of Anthony Kennedy and the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg mean the court regains its conservative majority, with three younger justices, by the end of Trump’s first term.

October 2017: Following the massacre of some 60 people (and the injury of more than 800) by a lone gunman in Las Vegas, Trump delivers a prime-time address on the subject of gun control. He observes that, at the time the Second Amendment was written, a skilled marksman could fire, at most, three or four rounds a minute.

“The right to bear arms cannot become a license for American carnage,” he says, borrowing a line from his inaugural address. “We’re either going to get serious about regulating the ability of just about anyone to get

access to high-powered, rapid-firing weapons, or we’re going to start requiring every gun owner to spend every other Sunday doing drills in their local ‘well-regulated militia’ — just like it says in the Constitution.”

May 2018: In the face of a migration crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump proposes a grand-immigration bargain with congressional Democrats: full funding for a border wall, in exchange for a path to citizenship for Dreamers. Later, he expands the proposal to a $2 trillion infrastructure bill with “Buy American” provisions, in exchange for expedited environmental reviews for federal projects and a repeal of the Jim Crow-era Davis-Bacon Act, which has long inflated the labor costs of public works.

June 2018: Invoking Gerald Ford’s congressional testimony regarding his presidential pardon of Richard Nixon, Trump agrees to sit before the House Intelligence Committee on the subject of his campaign’s links to Russia. He expresses regret for hiring Paul Manafort as campaign chairman and for his praise for WikiLeaks, which he concedes interfered in the 2016 election. But he challenges the factual basis of the Steele dossier and the legal basis for the FBI’s investigation of his campaign.

July 2019: In a telephone call with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Trump makes no mention of the Biden family.

February 2020: Warning Americans that the novel coronavirus risks becoming the greatest global health emergency of the century, Trump tells Americans that we can beat this, and keep the economy strong, by adopting common-sense social-distancing measures: avoiding crowded public transportation, sports arenas, concerts and bars. Going further than even his own health experts recommended, he talks up his well-known germophobia and insists that everyone in the White House wear a face mask. But he also warns state governors that attempts to lock down entire communities in an effort to contain the spread is a futile cure that will impose ruinous economic costs.

June 2020: After the killing of George Floyd, Trump convenes a conference of law enforcement officials and others to develop a set of national police standards. He asks Rep. Valerie Demings, D-Fla., to lead the conference.

For many conservatives (including me), some of these proposals would have been hard to accept. Liberals would have their own objections to some of this ideological jiujitsu. Then again, what an interesting and fruitful administration it might have been. America still awaits a politically incorrect president — while it waits out the jerk.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

19

Caravanas políticas no están dentro de la orden ejecutiva vigente, recuerda titular de Salud Por THE STAR

E

l secretario de Salud, doctor Lorenzo González Feliciano, dijo el martes que las caravanas políticas no están contenidas dentro de la orden ejecutiva vigente.

“Ha venido a discusión el hecho de que hay candidatos a la gobernación haciendo campaña, particularmente, las caravanas. Hemos dicho y reiteramos que eso no está contemplado dentro de la orden ejecutiva”, dijo González Feliciano a preguntas de la prensa.

“Se hace un llamado a los candidatos a reconocer están en violación a la orden ejecutiva aquellos que quieren ser gobernantes del país”, añadió.

Explicó que tuvo comunicación con el comisionado del Negociado de la Policía, Henry Escalera para cuestionar el uso de la Uniformada en clara violación a la orden ejecutiva.

“Cómo es posible que el gobierno de Puerto Rico provea escolta o manejo de tránsito para violentar una orden ejecutiva”, exclamó.

“No podemos reclamar a la ciudadanía que respeten la orden ejecutiva si los candidatos a la gobernación violentan de forma abierta con fotografías en los medios informáticos violentando una orden ejecutiva. ¿Cómo vamos a gobernar el país si no queremos seguir las reglas que se establecen dentro de la orden ejecutiva?”, cuestionó.

Panel del FEI determina no asignar FEI contra Glorimar Ripoll Por THE STAR

T

ras concurrir con los hallazgos y recomendaciones del Departamento de Justicia rechazando alegadas actuaciones ilegales de la Principal Ejecutivo de lnnovación e Información del gobierno, ingeniera Glorimar Ripoll Balet, la oficina del Panel sobre el Fiscal Especial Independiente (PFEI) ordeno el martes, el archivo definitivo dcl asunto. Según informo el Panel en un comunicado de prensa, el caso nace de un referido a Justicia de la entonces Secretaria de la Gobernación, licenciada Zoé Laboy Alvarado, sobre una información que le llegó de manera anónima, se alegó que la ingeniera Ripoll intentó mediante un correo electrónico, suministrar información sensitiva de una cotización se servicios, para que otro contratista pudiera mejorarla y otorgarles el contrato.

No obstante, el Departamento de Justicia realizo una minuciosa y detallada investigación que incluyó a varios

testigos y el examen forense de los correos electrónicos de la funcionaria, determinando la carencia de evidencia fáctica y real que pudiera sostener alguna comisión de delito.

Según la pesquisa, la ingeniera Ripoll consultó con asesores externos — como suele ser el curso de acción en la industria de la informática—, la pericia para determinar si la cotización provista se ajustaba a parámetros reales. El asesor externo no competía en la subasta.

Igualmente, se le proveyó a Justicia una alegada evidencia de un correo electrónico, que no contenía la dirección correcta del contratista como tampoco coincidía en la fecha de los alegados hechos.

Siendo así, el resultado de la pesquisa de Justicia reflejo que no existía causa suficiente para creer que Ripoll haya cometido delito alguno. El Panel acogió la recomendación y, en consecuencia, determinó no procedía que se designara un fiscal especial sobre este asunto.

20

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Henry Golding drew on his own cultural confusion in ‘Monsoon’

By ISABELLA KWAI

H

enry Golding was delighted to discover a visitor in his Los Angeles backyard.

“It’s a tiny hummingbird on my hummingbird feeder!” he said excitedly, turning his computer’s camera toward the bird in a recent Zoom interview. “Can you hear?” It’s the kind of gentle moment Golding has been relishing since swapping a globe-trotting filming schedule for the slower pace of life in a pandemic.

Previously a TV presenter in Britain, Golding, 33, starred as the wealthy, winsome Nick Young in “Crazy Rich Asians” in 2018, and has since rapidly built a career playing roles that call for a debonair touch. Last year, alongside Hugh Grant and Matthew McConaughey, he was part of Guy Ritchie’s all-star ensemble cast for “The Gentlemen,” and he is one of the latest rumored to be in the running to take over as James Bond.

But his new film “Monsoon,” written and directed by Hong Khaou, is a more introspective endeavor. In the drama, out now in Britain and the United States on Nov. 13, Golding plays Kit, a British Vietnamese man returning to Vietnam for the first time since fleeing as a refugee at age 3. Back to scatter his parents’ ashes, Kit tries to orient himself in the streets of Ho Chi Minh City with unfamiliar relatives and in a new relationship with an American designer, Lewis (Parker Sawyers).

Kit’s search to understand his cultural identity will be familiar to many with immigrant backgrounds. What does homecoming mean when you’re returning to a place — and family — you barely remember? And what does it meant to do it as a Westerner?

In the recent video interview, Golding discussed how feeling “I was never Asian enough. I was never English enough” in the past helped inform Kit, the “magical” experience of making an indie film and what representation in Hollywood means to him. This is an edited and condensed version of the conversation.

Q: The role of Kit feels quite different from ones we’ve seen you play before. How did it come about?

A: “Monsoon” started casting before “Crazy Rich Asians” had come out. I was in this Hollywood limbo where no one really knew what I had been working on, and I immediately fell in love with the script for “Monsoon,” not only because it was based in Southeast Asia, where I’d lived for the past 10 years, but also because of Kit’s journey of selfexploration. As a young man, straddling these two cultures of being half-Malaysian and half-English, I was always confused about who I was and what culture I represented. I was never Asian enough. I was never English enough. That’s something Kit has to get to the bottom of.

The film’s director, Hong Khaou, puts it really nicely: Are you a product of your naturalization or cultural background? Because I’ve got a British passport does that make me British? Or because I was born in Malaysia, does that mean that I’m Malaysian?

Q: “Monsoon” explores the idea of having Asian heritage but still experiencing a place through a Western lens.

The actor Henry Golding at his home in Los Angeles, Oct. 8, 2020. The actor discussed how playing a BritishVietnamese man trying to understand his identity in “Monsoon” resonated with Golding’s experiences living in Britain and Malaysia.

Did that resonate with you, too?

A: I decided to move back to Malaysia back when I was 21. After leaving Malaysia at 8, I grew up in the Surrey countryside and then worked in London. It was dumbfounding for the first few months to the point where I thought, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

There is a sense of white privilege when it comes to being mixed-race in Malaysia, because of the perception that you’re well educated, or your parents are rich — which is far from reality — because of this deep-rooted sense of colonial supremacy. I’d never experienced that in the United Kingdom. There it was like, “Oh — you’re half-Asian.” It was never, “that’s exotic, that’s unique.” As a kid, there weren’t many other mixed-race kids around. Now it’s very different.

Q: How did you prepare to play a British Vietnamese character?

A: For this character, the less I knew, the better. Kit, as a young Vietnamese man, really had no connection to that part of his life. I read a lot about the struggles of how these immigrants came to countries like the U.K., and how that would have made an impression on your outlook. I had been to Vietnam a few times before filming, so I was fairly familiar with it from a tourist point of view.

Q: You’ve said that you were unsure about taking the

role as a straight actor because Kit is gay. What was that conversation like with the director?

A: It’s a tough conversation. There was always a question: Does this role belong to me? Hong auditioned pretty much every type of young Asian man possible. He came to the understanding that I knew what Kit had gone through in a sense, so I was the best person for the job. For me, I’m going to give the best performance I can and do this young man justice. Taking the role was the best decision I made Q: What does representation for the Asian diaspora mean to you? Is this the kind of film you want to do more of?

A: It was magical as an actor to be able to sit in a character’s feelings and confusion and history. I’ve been trying to find great material to work from like this, much more independent styles of moviemaking.

For representation, I think it is a long road. We definitely broke some ground with “Crazy Rich Asians.” There’s that fantastic new film from A24, “Minari.” With the director Bong Joon Ho’s films being on Netflix now, it’s only going to lead to more people to watch films like that. But the pace has to be kept. The representation has be not only on screen, but as writers and directors. We’re all cogs in the system. There’s no end to it, it’s fighting the good fight, and not allowing the critics to quieten you.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

21

Broadway will be a while. These venues say they’re ready now.

By MICHAEL PAULSON

T

he Park Avenue Armory’s vast drill hall has nearly 40,000 square feet of unobstructed open area. The Shed’s central performance space has a 115-foothigh ceiling. St. Ann’s Warehouse has 10 big double doors and a new air ionization system.

While the pandemic-prompted closing of Broadway is expected to drag into next summer or fall, these and other adventurous performing arts organizations argue that their futures need not wait that long.

They are pressing state regulators to consider a series of architectural advantages that they say should make their buildings easier to adapt for safety than the glorious but cramped houses that symbolize New York’s theater district.

Most significantly: Their venues all have flexible seating, meaning no chairs fastened to the floor, which they say makes social distancing much more feasible. Also implicit: These institutions are nonprofits, which makes it plausible for them to reopen with sharply limited seating capacity, because they don’t need to cover their production costs with ticket sales.

The coalition, which also includes BRIC, Harlem Stage, National Black Theatre and the still-under-construction Perelman Center, is pressing Gov. Andrew Cuomo to permit performances for small masked audiences.

“We need to start breathing life back into this carcass that is our industry,” said Alex Poots, artistic director and chief executive of The Shed, a cultural center that opened last year in the new Hudson Yards development on Manhattan’s West Side, and that has since revised its website to note the ease of social distancing in its cavernous space, which even has a retractable roof.

“We all know that theater, music and the performing arts are dying on their feet right now,” Poots said, “and if we can find a safe way of getting back to work, surely that has to be taken seriously.”

The New York Forward advisory board, which is shaping the state’s reopening strategy, is receptive to the argument that some venues should be allowed to open before Broadway does.

“New York Forward has been working collaboratively with all segments of the

performing arts industry and are on a path to see performing arts return to New York,” Steven M. Cohen, co-chair of the advisory board, said in a statement.

“Of course, this is not an all-or-nothing proposition, so it’s likely that certain segments, such as flexible spaces, will be likely to find their spaces again in use sooner than some other traditional theaters, provided the health situation permits.”

One sign of goodwill: The state quietly declared recently that its guidelines allow flexible multidisciplinary spaces to be legally used for activities like rehearsals (now underway at the Armory), gallery exhibits (opening this week at The Shed) and film production. But the holy grail — ticketed events featuring live performers — remains out of reach so far.

“We’re happy that we’re allowed to rehearse and tape performances in our space,” said Patricia Cruz, executive director of Harlem Stage, which presents work inside a decommissioned aqueduct gatehouse. “But there is a sadness that has occurred in New York’s culture when we can’t enjoy live performances — I know I came to New York for that purpose — and our artists are suffering mightily.”

The venues pressing for an opportunity are all in New York City. But the potential beneficiaries are statewide: New research by the New York State Council on the Arts found that 45% of performance venues surveyed had “majority flexible seating.”

Seating is not the only advantage these buildings have in responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Many also have high ceilings and large open floor areas, and some are not constrained by characteristics that complicate the reopening of Broadway: orchestra pits, backstage quarters, lobbies and even restrooms that now seem uncomfortably tight.

Their task force has put together a lengthy list of safety protocols for the governor’s consideration, and is arguing that the buildings can be at least as safe as restaurants, bowling alleys, gyms, churches, casinos and museums, all of which have been allowed to reopen. As has become the standard these days, all audience members would have to be masked, and parties of ticket buyers would have to be socially distanced from one another.

All the venues say they would radi-

Stew sings to a small audience from the roof of St. Ann’s Warehouse, which is among the performance spaces lobbying to present shows indoors, in Brooklyn, Oct. 7, 2020. cally reduce the size of their audiences to make an initial reopening possible. The Shed, which has held concerts for 2,300, says it could socially distance 300; the Armory, which often seats 1,000, proposes an audience of 96; Harlem Stage, which normally seats 160, is proposing audiences of 41.

“We have pivoted to digital, and pivoted and pivoted and pivoted, but until we can safely get audiences into our spaces, we can’t do what it is that we actually do,” said Sade Lythcott, National Black Theatre’s chief executive.

The initial shows being contemplated are fairly stripped down — small casts, minimal sets — to reduce costs. Susan Feldman, artistic director at St. Ann’s, which previously brought artists from around the world to perform in a former tobacco warehouse in Brooklyn Bridge Park, said she imagines restarting with local musicians.

Already, she is inviting some to perform unannounced (to avoid drawing crowds) from atop the theater’s roof.

“We’re not saying we have to have everybody in the building right away, but we want a pathway that recognizes it’s not one-size-fits-all,” she said.

The Shed is reconfiguring a show it had already planned. The nonprofit’s late winter schedule had included a new play by Claudia Rankine called “Help,” which was to run

70 minutes and feature one Black actress (Roslyn Ruff) surrounded by 18 white men.

Now “Help” has been reworked into a 47-minute monologue without an audience, to be filmed by Phillip Youmans (“Burning Cane”). If The Shed gets permission, it will be staged for live audiences, too.

Because most of the flexible venues are nonprofits, they do not face the same pressure to make money at the box office that commercial producers face; they can instead seek support from foundations and individual donors.

The Park Avenue Armory, which presents work inside a grand 19th-century military facility on the Upper East Side, is already deep into rehearsing “Afterwardness,” a new commission by choreographer Bill T. Jones.

The immersive production, with no stage, dancers placed across the room, and a cast of 96 coronavirus-tested people portraying audience members, is to be filmed next weekend; the Armory hopes to perform it eventually for paying audiences.

Rebecca Robertson, the Armory’s president and executive producer, said she had other dance and music pieces she is prepared to stage, too.

“Artists are leaving the city, and the ecology is eroding,” she said. “We can provide employment to artists and crew and support staff. We can be that glimmer of hope.”

FASHION The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, March 4, 2020 14, 2020 Wednesday, October 20 22

The TheSan SanJuan JuanDaily DailyStar Star

Matthew Williams on his Givenchy debut and what Kanye taught him

By VANESSA FRIEDMAN

M

atthew Williams, a 34-year-old American from Pismo Beach, California, with no formal fashion training, took the reins this week at Givenchy in what was the biggest — and only — debut in Paris.

Here, in an interview that has been edited, he talks to The New York Times about what it was like to start in a pandemic and how his background working with Kanye West and Lady Gaga prepared him for the job.

Q: You just had your big reveal. How do you feel?

A: Really excited, and just happy. My mom came to visit yesterday. I hadn’t seen her in nine months. We just had like a quiet dinner and caught up. This morning I went around to all the studios and just thanked the teams for their help because it was really a mission getting everything done in the past 60 days.

Q: You’ve talked a lot about the fact that even though you have a somewhat unconventional fashion background, you always dreamed of running a big brand in Paris. But you probably never dreamed of running a big brand dur- In an undated image provided to The New York Times, ing a pandemic. So is this a case of be careful Matthew Williams at work. Williams unveiled his first what you wish for? collection for Givenchy at Paris Fashion Week.

A: I think I never really understood the scale until I was actually here. It takes some getting used to. But big companies like this have the structure to be able to do everything that needs to get done.

Q: When most people hear Givenchy, they still think of Audrey Hepburn. Is that something you relate to, or do you think of a different kind of muse?

A: Well, I definitely relate to it in that my first muses, who I made costumes for, were Kanye and Gaga. That idea of a relationship with an entertainer really resonates with me. And I love that there is this connection with Hollywood, which is really natural for me because that was my way into fashion, being from California.

Hollywood was the closest place that I could begin making clothing, and that led to New York City and then Europe, so there is that genuine relationship between entertainment and fashion for me, and for the house.

Q: Why did you decide to have a presentation rather than a big show for your first collection?

A: I wanted this first collection to really be about the product, and showing a vision for the

casting and the models. A lot of my choices are really emotional — things that I feel are desirable or, with the menswear, what I want to wear myself. Like the blazer I was wearing yesterday. I love how boxy the fit was, and how easy it was.

It could be dressed up or dressed down with jeans, or with elevated tailored pants that maybe have more stretch than usual.

But it also didn’t feel like the right time to be doing a show, for many reasons, including not being able to have my friends and family from America and Asia be able to come and be a part of it. So it seemed better to have a humble approach.

Q: There’s been a lot of discussion about the need for a reset and a new way of working in fashion. Are you using your new start to change any of the existing systems?

A: As far as the pace of the collections, we’re showing men’s and women’s together. So that’s one change. I think it’s important always to evaluate the system that you’re working in and try not to perpetuate out-of-date models.

We also have amazing access and direct communication to our customer now, and I think that will change what we make. In the past, merchandising and ordering was really defined by guessing what people wanted, but maybe in the future there will be ways that products can really be produced more specifically to the consumers’ needs.

Q: You’ve never worked with a couture atelier before. How is it?

A: I mean, it’s incredible. Some of the members of the atelier have been working here for 20 years, and worked with Hubert himself and John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Riccardo Tisci.

The knowledge and the pieces that we can create here are unlike any I’ve ever seen.

Q: Are you planning a couture show for January?

A: You’re going to have to stay tuned.

Q: How did working with Kanye and Gaga prepare you for Givenchy?

A: That’s really hard to synthesize in two sentences, but it was an amazing education being beside these two creatives when they were inventing, and still are, at a pace that was so fast.

It wasn’t like collections, where we’re working in seasons that take months. It was like every week a new idea and a new project and a new collaborator. That pace and work ethic was something that really stayed with me, and I’m really fortunate. It was really formative for me.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

23

The race for an antibody against the Coronavirus

By APOORVA MANDAVILLI

E

ven as vaccines are hailed as our best hope against the coronavirus, dozens of scientific groups are working on an alternate defense: monoclonal antibodies. These therapies shot to prominence just this month after President Donald Trump got an infusion of an antibody cocktail made by Regeneron and credited it for his apparent recovery, even calling it a “cure.”

Monoclonal antibodies are distilled from the blood of patients who have recovered from the virus. Ideally, antibodies infused early in the course of infection — or even before exposure, as a preventive — may provide swift immunity.

An enthusiastic Trump has promised to distribute these experimental drugs free to anyone who needs them. But they are difficult and expensive to produce. At the moment, Regeneron has enough to treat only 50,000 patients; the supply is unlikely to exceed a few million doses in the foreseeable future.

Dozens of companies and academic groups are racing to develop antibody therapies. Regeneron and Eli Lilly have requested emergency-use authorizations for their products from the Food and Drug Administration.

These drug companies have the long experience and deep pockets needed to win the race for a powerful antibody treatment. But some scientists are betting on a dark horse: Prometheus, a ragtag group of scientists who are months behind in the competition — and yet may ultimately deliver the most powerful antibody.

Prometheus is a collaboration between academic labs, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, and a New Hampshire-based antibody company called Adimab.

The group’s antibody is not expected to be in human trials until late December, but it may be worth the wait. Unlike the antibodies made by Regeneron and Eli Lilly, which fade in the body within weeks, Prometheus’ antibody aims to be effective for up to six months.

“A single dose goes a long way, meaning we can treat more people,” said Kartik Chandran, a virologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the group’s leader.

In mice and laboratory tests, Prometheus’ antibody protects against not just the coronavirus but also the SARS virus and similar bat viruses — suggesting that the treatment may protect against any coronaviruses emerging in the future.

Outgunned, at first Antibodies are as variable as the people who produce them. Some antibodies are weaker than others, some target a different part of the coronavirus than others, and some are powerful protectors, while a small number may even turn against the body, as they do in autoimmune diseases.

Monoclonal antibodies are artificially synthesized copies of the most effective antibodies produced naturally by patients.

In late February, AbCellera fished out an apparent winner from among 550 antibodies drawn from the blood of an infected patient. Barely three months later, partner Eli Lilly began the first trial of a synthesized version in patients.

Regeneron, which has a $450 million contract from the

Dr. Kartik Chandran in his lab at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York on Sept. 30, 2020. Chandran is the principal investigator of the Prometheus collaboration of scientists, who are researching monoclonal antibodies as a treatment for COVID-19. federal government to develop its treatment, was not far behind.

Its drug is a cocktail of two antibodies. One was discovered in a patient in Singapore, while the other was made using a synthetic viral snippet in mice.

On Sept. 29, days before Trump received his infusion, Regeneron announced that this cocktail seemed particularly helpful for people who did not produce enough antibodies of their own against the coronavirus.

Both Regeneron and Eli Lilly have stockpiled tens of thousands of doses of their drugs, rather than wait for FDA approval.

Without the resources or reach of these bigger companies, Prometheus has lagged behind.

With a $22 million federal grant, the group had been developing therapies for deadly viruses like the one causing Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and various hantaviruses.

But in the earliest days of the pandemic, the group was not able to take on the coronavirus.

“We had all of the technology, all the tools ready to go,”

Chandran said. “The only thing we didn’t have was a patient sample.”

Most of those samples had been handed to large pharmaceutical companies by the federal government. So the Prometheus researchers took an unusual tack, instead relying on blood from a survivor of the 2003 SARS outbreak. (The coronavirus is a close cousin.)

These scientists had experience on their side. One teammate, Jason McLellan of the University of Texas at Austin, was an expert in coronaviruses; another, John Dye of the Army’s infectious diseases institute, had done pioneering work on Ebola antibodies.

In March, McLellan was the first to publish the structure of the new coronavirus in the journal Science. He supplied Adimab, Prometheus’ commercial arm, with the pathogen’s “spike protein,” a protrusion on its surface that latches on to human cells and breaks in.

Using the protein as a lure, Adimab snared 200 antibodies from the patient sample. Chandran screened those antibodies against a proxy for the coronavirus, and Dye against the live virus in a high-safety laboratory.

Together, they refined the list to seven antibodies that recognized both SARS and the new coronavirus. Scientists at Adimab then enhanced the neutralizing power of one antibody by about 100-fold, yet retaining its effectiveness against all SARS family coronaviruses.

‘Too complicated to make’ Monoclonal antibodies can rapidly prevent the virus from taking hold in the body — say, in residents of a nursing home with one confirmed case of infection. Vaccines, which require weeks to unspool an immune response, are useless in such a scenario.

But limited production capacity is likely to keep monoclonal antibodies out of reach for most people.

“It’s a finite capacity, and there are only so many things you can do to try to increase that capacity,” said John Kokai-Kun, the director of external scientific collaboration at U.S. Pharmacopeia, an organization that monitors manufacturing quality.

The antibodies are also expensive to produce. Some cost up to $200,000 — even the cheapest cost about $15,000 — per year of treatment, making them unattainable for all but the richest of countries, according to a report released in August.

“I don’t see monoclonal antibodies being at large-scale use in the public,” Kokai-Kun said. “They’re just too complicated to make and too expensive to really be effective in that regard.”

Like vaccines, the antibodies have to be injected, and the amounts, which are calibrated to a person’s weight, can be significant. (Trump received 8 grams — vaccine doses tend to be in micrograms or even nanograms.) The protection wanes after just a few weeks.

“That puts a strain on your manufacturing infrastructure already to make the kinds of doses that we think are going to be required worldwide,” said Andrew Adams, a vice president at Eli Lilly. “We have to start thinking about the populations that we should prioritize.”

24 manda presentada al lugar de su última dirección conocida: ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO 6581 Calle Jazmín Apto. B113, DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- Sabana Seca, PR 00952-4375.

NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal en Ponce, SALA DE PONCE. Puerto Rico, hoy día 13 de julio ORIENTAL BANK, de 2020. Luz Mayra Caraballo Demandante, V. LIZA SERRA TORRES, Garcia, Sec Regional. Loyda Torres Irizarry, Sec Auxiliar.

Demandada.

CIVIL NUM.: PO2020CV00047 LEGAL NOTICE (605). SOBRE: COBRO DE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DINERO POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIDE AMERICA EL PRESIDEN- BUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANTE DE LOS EE. UU. EL ES- CIA SALA DE PONCE.

LEGAL NOTICE

TADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: LIZA SERRA TORRES

POR MEDIO del presente edicto se le notifica de la radicación de una demanda en cobro de dinero por la vía ordinaria en la que se alega que usted adeuda a la parte demandante, Oriental Bank, ciertas sumas de dinero, y las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado de este litigio.

El demandante, Oriental Bank, ha solicitado que se dicte sentencia en contra suya y que se le ordene pagar las cantidades reclamadas en la demanda.

POR EL PRESENTE EDICTO se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva a la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra, y conceder el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente.

El abogado de la parte demandante es: Jaime Ruiz Saldaña, RUA número 11673; Dirección: PMB 450, 400 Calle Calaf, San Juan, PR 00918- 1314; Teléfono: (787) 759-6897; Correo electrónico: legal@jrslawpr. com. Se le advierte que dentro de los diez (10) días siguientes a la publicación del presente edicto, se le estará enviando a usted por correo certificado con acuse de recibo, una copia del emplazamiento y de la de-

@

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Demandante Vs.

OLGA E. SERRANO MONTALVO, LA SUCESIÓN DE FULANO DE TAL COMPUESTA POR ZUTANO DE TAL, ZUTANA DE TAL Y OLGA E. SERRANO MONTALVO, VIUDA

Demandados CIVIL NÚM.: PO2019CV04460.

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

A: OLGA E. SERRANO MONTALVO, y LA SUCESIÓN DE FULANO DE TAL COMPUESTA POR ZUTANO DE TAL, ZUTANA DE TAL Y OLGA E. SERRANO MONTALVO, VIUDA

POR LA PRESENTE: Se le notifica que contra usted se ha presentado la Demanda sobre Cobro de Dinero de la cual se acompaña copia. Por la presente se le emplaza a usted y se le requiere para que dentro del término de TREINTA (30) días desde la fecha de la Publicación por Edicto de este Emplazamiento presente su contestación a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Ponce, P.O. Box 7185, Ponce, P.R. 00732-7185 y notifique a la LCDA. GINA H. FERRER MEDINA, personalmente al Condominio Las Nereidas, Local 1-B, Calle Méndez

Vigo esquina Amador Ramírez Silva, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00680; o por correo al Apartado 2342, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00681-2342, Teléfonos: (787) 832-9620 y (845) 345-3985, Abogada de la parte demandante, apercibiéndose que en caso de no hacerlo así podrá dictarse Sentencia en Rebeldía en contra suya, concediendo el remedio solicitado en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle.

ORDEN DE INTERPELACIÓN JUDICIAL. Vista la Urgente Moción Informativa Solicitando Expedición de Emplazamiento por Edicto en el caso de epígrafe, y examinado los autos de este caso y la ley aplicable, este Tribunal declara CON LUGAR la solicitud de Interpelación Judicial, y en su consecuencia se ordena a que la parte demandada Olga E. Serrano Montalvo y La Sucesión de Fulano de Tal compuesta por Zutano de Tal, Zutana de Tal y Olga E. Serrano Montalvo, Viuda y conforme lo dispone el Articulo 959 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. 2787, a que dentro del término legal de treinta (30) días contados a partir de la fecha de la notificación de la presente Orden, acepte o repudie la participación que les corresponda en la herencia de los causantes. Se le apercibe que de no expresarse dentro de ese término de treinta (30) días en torno a su aceptación o repudiación de herencia, la herencia se tendrá por aceptada. También se le apercibe a los demandados que luego de trascurso del término antes indicado, se presumirá que han aceptado la herencia del causante, por consiguiente responden por las cagas de dicha herencia conforme al Artículo 957 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. 2785. Se Ordena a la parte demandante a que proceda a notificar la presente orden mediante publicación de un edicto a esos efectos una sola vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general de la isla de Puerto Rico. DADA en Ponce, Puerto Rico, hoy 3 de septiembre de 2020. LUZ MAYRA CARABALLO GARCIA, Sec Regional Gloribee Morales Moreno, Sec Aux del Tribunal I.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIRO DE SAN SEBASTIÁN.

MTGLQ INVESTORS, L.P. Parte Demandante Vs.

ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ REYES; SUCESION DE AIDA IRIS NIEVES

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

RAMOS compuesta por OCTAVIO SOTO NIEVES, LISETTE SOTO NIEVES, MARISOL SOTO NIEVES, HECTOR SOTO NIEVES, JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE como herederos desconocidos, ADMINISTRACION PARA EL SUSTENTO DE MENORES Y CENTRO DE RECAUDACION SOBRE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES

Parte Demandada CASO CIVIL NUM: SS2020CV00376.

SOBRE: EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA V COBRO DE DINERO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ REYES

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

Marjaliisa Colon Villanueva, al PO BOX 7970, Ponce, P.R. 00732; Teléfono: 787-8434168. En dicha demanda se tramita un procedimiento de cobro de dinero y ejecución de hipoteca bajo el número mencionado en el epígrafe. Se alega en dicho procedimiento que la parte Demandada incurrió en el incumplimiento del Contrato de Hipoteca, al no poder pagar las mensualidades vencidas correspondientes a los meses de septiembre de 2016, hasta el presente, más los cargos por demora correspondientes.

Además, adeuda a la parte demandante las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado en que incurra el tenedor del pagaré en este litigio. De acuerdo con dicho Contrato de Garantía Hipotecaria la parte Demandante declaró vencida la totalidad de la deuda ascendente a la suma de $14,415.30, más intereses a razón del 13.469% anual, así como todos aquellos créditos y sumas que surjan de la faz de

(787) 743-3346

Wednesday, October 14, 2020 la obligación hipotecaria y de la hipoteca que la garantiza, incluyendo la suma pactada para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado. La parte Demandante presentó para su inscripción en el Registro de la Propiedad correspondiente, un AVISO DE PLEITO PENDIENTE (“Lis Pendens”) sobre la propiedad objeto de esta acción cuya propiedad es la siguiente: RÚSTICA: Solar número uno (1) sita en I Barrio Sonador de San Sebastián, Puerto Rico, compuesto de cuatrocientos punto cero cero (400.00) metros cuadrados, colinda por el NORTE, ESTE, y OESTE, con remanente de la finca principal y por el SUR, con la Carretera Estatal Número ciento nueve (109). Inscrita al folio ciento sesenta y seis (166) del tomo trescientos veintiocho (328) de San Sebastián, finca número diecisiete mil ciento ochenta y seis (17,186). Registro de la Propiedad de la Propiedad Sección de San Sebastián.

SE LES APERCIBE que de no hacer sus alegaciones responsivas a la demanda dentro del término aquí dispuesto, se les anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle.

Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en San Sebastián, Puerto Rico. A 29 de SEPTIEMBRE de 2019. SARAHI REYES PEREZ, Secretaria. IVELISSE ROBLES MATHEWS, SUB..

SECRETARIA.

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

LEGACY MORTGAGE ASSET TRUST 2019-PR1 DEMANDANTE Vs.

ASSOCIATES INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS CORPORATION; JOHN DOE y RICHARD ROE como posibles tenedores desconocidos

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM. BY2020CV02962.

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

A: JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE como posibles tenedores desconocidos

POR LA PRESENTE se les emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto.

Usted deberá radicar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: http://unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se presente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá radicar et original de su contestación ante et Tribunal correspondiente y notifique con copia a los abogados de la parte demandante, LCDA. MARJALIISACOLÓN VILLANUEVA A su dirección: PO. Box 7970 Ponce, PR. 00732. Tal: 787-843-4168. En dicha demanda se tramita un procedimiento de cancelación de pagare extraviado. Se alega en dicho procedimiento que se extravió un pagaré hipotecario a favor Associates lnternational Holding Corporation .. , o a su orden, por la suma treinta y dos mil quinientos cincuenta y uno dólares con noventa y nueve centavos ($32,551.99), con intereses al diez punto setenta y ocho por ciento (10.78%) anual, vencedero el catorce (14) de febrero de dos mil dieciocho (2018),según cuarenta y siete (47), otorgada en Cataño, Puerto Rico, el día diez (10) de febrero de dos mil tres (2003), ante la notario Félix R. Figueroa Cabán. !inscrita al folio móvil del tomo ciento setenta y cuatro (174) de Calaña, finca número siete mil ochocientos ochenta (7,880), inscripción segunda (2da). Que grava la propiedad que se describe a continuación: RÚSTICA: Parcela marcada con el número B guion uno (B1) en el plano de parcelación de la comunidad rural Cucharillas del Barrio Palmas del término municipal de Cataño, Puerto rico, con una cabida superficial de cuatrocientos diecisiete punto cincuenta y cuatro (417.54) metros cuadrados. En lindes por et NORTE, con la Autoridad de Tierras: por el SUR, con la parcela B guion dos (B-2) y la calle Comunidad; por el ESTE, con las parcelas números B guion doce (B-12) y B guion dos (B-Solar marcado con el número veinte (20) del bloque D de la Urbanización 2); y por el OESTE, con la calle de la comunidad. Inscrita al folio ciento sesenta y uno (161) del tomo ciento sesenta y cinco (165) de Calaña, finca número siete mil ochocientos ochenta (7,880).

Registro de la Propiedad Sección Cuarta (4ta) de Bayamón.

The San Juan Daily Star SE LES APERCIBE que, de no hacer sus alegaciones responsivas a la demanda dentro del término aquí dispuesto, se les anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle.

Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Bayamón, Puerto Rico, a día 29 de septiembre de 2020. LCDA, LAURA l.

SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretarla Regional. Yarilis Cintron Colon, Secretaria Auxiliar.

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

CAMPO RICO, INC. Demandante V.

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO; FIRSTBANK PUERTO RICO; JUAN DEL PUEBLO Y JUANA DEL PUEBLO y cualesquier persona desconocida con posible interés en la obligación cuya cancelación por decreto se solicita.

Demandados CIVIL NÚM. SJ2020CV05079.

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

A: JUAN DEL PUEBLO Y JUANA DEL PUEBLO COMO POSIBLES TENEDORES Y CUALESQUIER PERSONA DESCONOCIDA CON POSIBLE INTERÉS EN LA OBLIGACIÓN CUYA CANCELACIÓN POR DECRETO JUDICIAL SE SOLICITA.

Por la presente se le notifica que ha sido presentada en este Tribunal una Demanda en su contra en el pleito de epígrafe. En este caso la parte demandante ha radicado una Demanda para que se decrete judicialmente el saldo de un (1) pagaré hipotecario a favor de Doral Mortgage Corporation, por la suma de $74,661.00.

Dicho pagaré fue suscrito el día 31 de octubre 2005, ante el notario Magda V. Alsina Figueroa, garantizado por hipoteca constituida mediante la Escritura número 423 otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, inscrita al folio 7 del tomo 1020 de

Sabana Llana, finca número 5,949, inscripción 12a. Se describe la propiedad a continuación: URBANA: Solar marcado con el numero 8 del Bloque AO de la Urbanización Extensión de Country Club, situado en el Barrio Sabana Llana de Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de 300.15 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, en 23 metros con el solar 9; por el SUR, en 23 metros con el solar 7; por el ESTE, en 13.5 metros con el solar 20; y por el OESTE, en 13.5 metros con la Avenida Campo Rico Principal Street.

Finca #5,949, inscrita al folio 21 del tomo 137 de Sabana Llana, Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección V de San Juan. La parte demandante alega que dicho pagaré ha sido saldado según más detalladamente consta en la Demanda radicada que puede examinarse en la Secretaría de este Tribunal. Por tratarse de una obligación hipotecaria y pudiendo usted tener interés en este caso o quedar afectado por el remedio solicitado, se le emplaza por este edicto que se publicará una vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general de Puerto Rico. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// unired.ramaiudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, y notifique con copia de ella al abogado de la parte demandante el Lcdo. Ignacio García Franco, PO Box 361844 San Juan, PR 00936-1844 ; TeL (787) 7478-33 79, dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto, apercibiéndole que de no hacerlo así dentro del término indicado, el Tribunal podrá anotar su rebeldía y dictar sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, en San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy día 24 de septiembre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria. Raquel E. Figueroa Nater, Secretaria de Servicios a Sala.

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

RIOS DELGADO, JUNE JUDITH

The San Juan Daily Star VS

VAZQUEZ MEDINA, ROSA (SUCN)

CASO: KAC2017-0313. SOBRE: USUCAPION.

SUCESION DE ROSA VAZQUEZ MEDINA, COMPUESTA POR FULANO Y FULANA DE TAL; SUTANA Y SUTANO DE TAL COMO PARTES INTERESADAS DESCONOCIDAS

NOTIFICACION DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. EL SECRETARIO(A) QUE SUSCRIBE LE NOTIFICA A USTED QUE EL 05 DE OCTUBRE 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 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 06 DE OCTUBRE DE 2020 LIC. MOYER ALMA, GWENDOLYN GMOYERALMA@GMAIL.COM EN SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO, A 06 DE OCTUBRE DE 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIO. POR: F/ JESSICA MORALES FIGUEROA, SECRETARIO AUXILIAR.

Wednesday, October 14, 2020 PUEBLO y cualesquier persona desconocida con posible interés en la obligación cuya cancelación por decreto judicial se solicita

Demandado Civil Núm.: SJ2020CV00164.

SALA: 807. Sobre: CANCELACION DE PAGARE EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: JUAN DEL PUEBLO Y JUANA DEL PUEBLO COMO POSIBLES TENEDORES Y CUALESQUIER PERSONA DESCONOCIDA CON POSIBLE INTERÉS EN LA OBLIGACIÓN CUYA CANCELACIÓN POR DECRETO JUDICIAL SE SOLICITA

(Nombre de las partes a las que se les notifica la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 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 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 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, el 6 de octubre de 2020.

GRISELA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria Regional. f/ MILDRED J. FRANCO REVENTOS, Secretaria Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL LEGAL NOTICE DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de PriEstado Libre Asociado de Puer- mera Instancia Sala Superior to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL de CAROLINA. DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de PriISLAND PORTFOLIO mera Instancia Sala Superior SERVICES, LLC., como de SAN JUAN.

EDDIE O’BRAIN COSME AMARO Y ARACELIS CRUZ VAZQUEZ Demandante Vs

FIRSTBANK PUERTO RICO; JUAN DEL PUEBLO Y JUANA DEL

Agente de Jeferson Capital System, LLC. Demandante Vs

DOEL RODRIGUEZ SANCHEZ

Demandado Civil Núm.: CA2019CV01613.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO.

NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTEN- tencia, Sentencia Parcial o ReCIA POR EDICTO. solución , de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o A: DOEL RODRIGUEZ SANCHEZ apelación dentro del término de (Nombre de las partes a las que se 30 días contados a partir de la les notifica la sentencia por edicto) publicación por edicto de esta EL SECRETARIO(A) que sus- notificación, dirijo a usted esta cribe le notifica a usted que 5 notificación que se considerará de OCTUBRE de 2020, este hecha en la fecha de la publiTribunal ha dictado Sentencia , cación de este edicto. Copia de Sentencia Parcial o Resolución esta notificación ha sido archien este caso, que ha sido debi- vada en los autos de este caso, damente registrada y archivada con fecha de 7 de octubre de en autos donde podrá usted 2020. En SAN JUAN, Puerto enterarse detalladamente de Rico, el 7 de octubre de 2020. los términos de la misma. Esta GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COnotificación se publicará una LLADO, Secretaria Regional. sola vez en un periódico de F/MARTHA ALMODOVAR CAcirculación general en la Isla BRERA, Secretaria Auxiliar. de Puerto Rico, dentro de los LEGAL NOT ICE 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representado Estado Libre Asociado de Puerusted una parte en el procedi- to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL miento sujeta a los términos de DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Prila Sentencia, Sentencia Par- mera Instancia Sala Superior cial o Resolución , de la cual de SAN JUAN. puede establecerse recurso ORIENTAL BANK de revisión o apelación dentro Demandante Vs del término de 30 días contaRALPH dos a partir de la publicación RODRIGUEZ ORTIZ por edicto de esta notificación, Demandado dirijo a usted esta notificación Civil Núm.: SJ2019CV11251. que se considerará hecha en la SALA: 506. Sobre: COBRO DE fecha de la publicación de este DINERO POR LA VIA ORDINAedicto. Copia de esta notificaRIA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENción ha sido archivada en los TENCIA POR EDICTO. autos de este caso, con fecha A: RALPH de 7 de octubre de 2020. En RODRIGUEZ ORTIZ CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 7 (Nombre de las partes a las que se de octubre de 2020. MARILYN les notifica la sentencia por edicto) APONTE RODRIGUEZ, SecreEL SECRETARIO(A) que sustaria Regional. KEILA GARCIA cribe le notifica a usted que 6 SOLIS, Secretaria Auxiliar. de OCTUBRE de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia , LEGAL NOTICE Sentencia Parcial o Resolución Estado Libre Asociado de Pueren este caso, que ha sido debito Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL damente registrada y archivada DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Prien autos donde podrá usted enmera Instancia Sala Superior terarse detalladamente de los de SAN JUAN. términos de la misma. Esta noORIENTAL BANK tificación se publicará una sola Demandante Vs vez en un periódico de circulaAMANDA D ción general en la Isla de PuerMORAO ORTIZ to Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, Demandado Civil Núm.: SJ2019CV11472. siendo o representado usted Sala: 505. Sobre: COBRO DE una parte en el procedimiento DINERO POR LA VIA ORDINA- sujeta a los términos de la SenRIA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SEN- tencia, Sentencia Parcial o ReTENCIA POR EDICTO. solución , de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o A: AMANDA D apelación dentro del término de MORAO ORTIZ (Nombre de las partes a las que se 30 días contados a partir de la les notifica la sentencia por edicto) publicación por edicto de esta EL SECRETARIO(A) que sus- notificación, dirijo a usted esta cribe le notifica a usted que 6 notificación que se considerará de OCTUBRE de 2020, este hecha en la fecha de la publiTribunal ha dictado Sentencia , cación de este edicto. Copia de Sentencia Parcial o Resolución esta notificación ha sido archien este caso, que ha sido debi- vada en los autos de este caso, damente registrada y archivada con fecha de 7 de octubre de en autos donde podrá usted en- 2020. En SAN JUAN, Puerto terarse detalladamente de los Rico, el 7 de octubre de 2020. términos de la misma. Esta no- GRISELA RODRIGUEZ COtificación se publicará una sola LLADO, Secretaria Regional. vez en un periódico de circula- f/ANGELA M. RIVERA HERción general en la Isla de Puer- NANDEZ, Secretaria Auxiliar. to Rico, dentro de los 10 días LEGAL NOTICE siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representado usted Estado Libre Asociado de Pueruna parte en el procedimiento to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL sujeta a los términos de la Sen-

DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de SAN JUAN.

JULIO MIGUEL DIAZ Demandante Vs

JOHANNA ECHEVARRIA VARGAS

Demandado Civil Núm.: SJ2020RF00307.

Sobre: DIVORICIO, RUPTURA IRREPARABLE. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: JOHANNA ECHEVARRIA VARGAS

(Nombre de las partes a las que se les notifica la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 15 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 21 de SEPTIEMBRE de 2020. En SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, el 21 de SEPTIEMBRE de 2020.

GRISELA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria Regional.

MALLIAM COLLAZO HUERTAS, Secretaria Auxiliar.

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

Reverse Mortgage Solutions, Inc. DEMANDANTE VS.

Sucesión de Miguel Sebastián Pagán Mir, t/c/c Miguel S. Pagán Mir, t/c/c Miguel Pagán Mir, t/c/c Miguel Pagán Jr., t/c/c Miguel Pagán M., tt/c/c Miguel Pagán Mir compuesta por Miguel Pagán, Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal como posibles herederos desconocidos; Sucesión de Felisa Merced David compuesta por Miguel Pagán, Fulano de Tal

25

y Sutano de Tal como posibles herederos de nombres desconocidos, Centro de Recaudaciones Municipales; y a los Estados Unidos de América.

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.:CG2019CV03697.

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: 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, Miguel Pagán, Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal, herederos de nombres desconocidos a que dentro del término legal de 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 Felisa Merced David.

Se le Apercibe a los herederos antes mencionados: (a) Que de no expresarse dentro del término de 30 días en tomo a su aceptación o repudiación de herencia la misma se tendrá por aceptada; (b) Que luego del transcurso del termino de 30 días contados a partir de la fecha de la notificación de la presente Orden, se presumirá que han aceptado la herencia del causante y por consiguiente, responden por la cargas de dicha herencia conforme dispone el Artículo 957 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. sec. 2785.

Se Ordena a la parte demandante a que, en vista de que la sucesión del causante Felisa Merced David incluyen como herederos a Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal, 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 Caguas, Puerto Rico, hoy día 3 de febrero de 2020.

Fdo. JORGE L. DIAZ REVERON, 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 Felisa Merced David. Por Orden del Honorable Juez de Primera Instancia de este Tribunal, expido el presente Mandamiento, bajo mi firma y sello oficial, en Caguas, Puerto Rico hoy día 4 de febrero de 2020. CARMEN ANA PEREIRA ORTIZ, SECRETARIA GENERAL. MARITZA ROSARIO PLACERES, Secretaria Auxiliar del Tribunal I.

DO BAJO MI FIRMA Y SELLO DE ESTE TRIBUNAL. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy día 9 de octubre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria. Jessica Soto Pagan, Sec Servicios Sala.

LEGAL NOTICE

FREDERICK WILLIAM RIVERA EAVES Y SU ESPOSA MAIKA SCHOERGMAYER Y LA SOCIEDADA LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

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

ACM CDGY VILN LLC Demandante, Vs.

FREDERICK WILLIAM RIVERA EAVES Y SU ESPOSA MAIKA SCHOERGMAYER Y LA SOCIEDADA LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

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

ACM CDGY VILN LLC Demandante, Vs.

Demandados.

CIVIL NUM.: SJ2020CV03945.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDemandados.

DOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIVIL NUM.: SJ2020CV03945. CIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO AL ALGUACIL DE ESTE Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA. TRIBUNAL: EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICA: MAIKA TO. LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS SCHOERGMAYER Y LA DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNISOCIEDADA LEGAL DE DOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOBIENES GANANCIALES CIADO DE PUERTO RICO. COMPUESTA CON

AL ALGUACIL DE ESTE TRIBUNAL: A: FREDERICK WILLIAM RIVERA EA VES Y LA SOCIEDADA LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA CON MAIKA SCHOERGMAYER

Quedan emplazados y notificados que en este Tribunal se ha radicado Demanda sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la vía ordinaria en su contra. Se le notifica para que comparezca ante el Tribunal dentro del término. de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación de este edicto y exponer lo que a sus derecho.s convenga, en el presente caso.

Se le advierte que si no contesta la demanda radicando en su contra, radicando el original de la misma y enviando copia de su contestación a la parte demandante, Lcdo. Francisco Fernández Chiqués a su dirección: Fernandez Chiques LLC, PO Box 9749 San Juan, PR 00908, Tel. (787) 722-3040, Fax (787) 722-3317, dentro del término de treinta (30) días de su publicación de este edicto, se le anotaia.la rebeldía en su contra y se le dictara sentencia en su contra, conforme se solícita en la Demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPEDI-

FREDERICK WILLIAM RIVERA EAVES

Quedan emplazados y notificados que en este Tribunal se ha radicado Demanda sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la vía ordinaria en su contra. Se le notifica para que comparezca ante el Tribunal dentro del término. de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación de este edicto y exponer lo que a sus derecho.s convenga, en el presente caso.

Se le advierte que si no contesta la demanda radicando en su contra, radicando el original de la misma y enviando copia de su contestación a la parte demandante, Lcdo. Francisco Fernández Chiqués a su dirección: Fernandez Chiques LLC, PO Box 9749 San Juan, PR 00908, Tel. (787) 722-3040, Fax (787) 722-3317, dentro del término de treinta (30) días de su publicación de este edicto, se le anotaia.la rebeldía en su contra y se le dictara sentencia en su contra, conforme se solícita en la Demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPEDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA Y SELLO DE ESTE TRIBUNAL. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy día 9 de octubre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria. Jessica Soto Pagan, Sec Servicios Sala.

26

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

The NBA season’s Hollywood ending still leaves questions

By MARC STEIN

F

or the newly crowned NBA champion LeBron James, living and working in the same place for more than three months “played with your mind” and “played with your body.” Phoenix Suns coach Monty Williams marveled most at an enviable statistic — zero coronavirus-related postponements during the league’s grand sports and social experiment.

Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA, called it a triumph that required “extraordinary sacrifices by everyone involved,” along with “a bit of luck, honestly, too.” Seven months after halting play as the pandemic surged across the United States, the NBA concluded its 2019-20 season in a restrictedaccess quarantine zone at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla. that became universally known as the bubble.

The league tested players for the virus daily. It imposed strict rules and occasionally doled out penalties to ensure that 113 pages of health and safety protocols were followed.

Long bouts of isolation and the resultant mental and emotional strain prompted Rajon Rondo, James’ teammate, to deem this “by far” the hardest postseason of his 14-year career.

Yet it also worked. The bubble held for 96 days, and when players leaguewide refused to play in a gesture of civil rights protest during the first round of the playoffs, league officials and team owners pledged to do more to support social justice causes. The restarted season, which began amid considerable skepticism, ultimately delivered a televised spectacle with a Hollywood ending, as the Los Angeles Lakers — still reeling from the January death of basketball legend Kobe Bryant — emerged with the franchise’s 17th NBA title. It was James’ fourth.

Now thorny discussions loom between league officials and the players’ union to address an array of unknowns about next season. What is certain is that the players have been promised eight weeks’ notice before they have to start anew.

Silver has said he doesn’t expect the 2020-21 season to start before January. Michele Roberts, the union’s executive director, has said in multiple recent interviews that the delay may stretch into February. While there

The 2019-20 season ended with a champion crowned and a bubble intact. is a strong desire on both sides to see teams play in their home markets, preferably with at least a small number of fans admitted to games, it remains unclear how soon it will be safe to do so. Sports that have eschewed a bubble concept, such as the NFL, lurch from one coronavirus crisis to the next.

The 2020 NBA draft is set for Nov. 18, and the league’s $180 million bubble allowed it to crown a champion for the 74th consecutive year while also satisfying some agreements with television partners. Yet there is much to resolve.

The league and the union must decide when to start free agency and how long they can hold out for a return to home markets before conceding that short-term regional bubbles may be necessary to play. Perhaps most crucially, they must establish a new salary cap and luxury tax amid the pinch of a $1.5 billion shortfall in projected revenue from 2019-20.

At least the sides head into this daunting offseason with the momentum that flows from finding a creative solution to stay operational. The lengths they went to to do so were remarkable.

The NBA was the first major North American sports league to suspend operations in March in response to the coronavirus outbreak. After a four-month stoppage, 22

of the league’s 30 teams were summoned to one site for the first time in league history.

No one was allowed to leave the campus once inside without league authorization and submitting to additional quarantines upon reentry, and fans were barred from the three game venues.

Each day, players, coaches and team staff members were tested and required to record their temperatures and other symptoms.

They were also governed by social distancing regulations during meal times and leisure activities, and urged to wear masks around other people away from the basketball court.

The formula succeeded in gradually hushing criticism that the NBA was taking grave risks, primarily for financial motivations, by rebooting a full-contact indoor team sport amid a pandemic.

There was also pushback about the constraints from the inside — “I feel like when we got in the bubble, everyone was complaining about not wanting to be here,” Miami’s Bam Adebayo said — but players wanted to use the visibility of the NBA’s comeback to support their social advocacy. In a period of great civil unrest in the country, Boston’s Jaylen Brown, Utah’s Donovan Mitchell, Indiana’s Malcolm Brogdon, Adebayo and several of their peers campaigned loudly against racism and voter suppression. Many spoke daily about George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black people who had been killed by the police.

There were roughly 1,500 campus residents at the bubble’s peak. Although greater leniency was shown to players on maskwearing than the rules detailed, the league managed to stage 172 regular-season and playoff games without a serious coronavirus threat. Quality of play, perhaps buoyed by the elimination of air travel, likewise exceeded expectations despite injuries that marred both the first round of the playoffs and the Miami Heat’s finals bid against James’ Lakers.

The Suns went home in August with an 8-0 record in seeding games that left them narrowly short of a playoff spot. But Williams, the head coach, pointed to what he deemed a far more impressive achievement: Silver’s Sept. 30 statement that the league had registered “no cases” of the coronavirus among representatives of the 22 teams and NBA personnel who began reporting to the

campus on July 7.

In the buildup to the bubble, Silver worked closely with a special committee that included three players: Dwight Powell of the Dallas Mavericks, Toronto’s Kyle Lowry and Oklahoma City’s Chris Paul, the players’ union president. Powell said in an interview that union and league officials faced “a healthy fear in the preparation process” because they knew “people’s livelihoods along with their well-being was at stake.” On the three players’ first phone call after they were inside the bubble, Powell said: “Kyle, Chris and I all made it a point to say: ‘Wow. We’re really here. This is surreal.’”

The strongest league discipline for breaching coronavirus protocols resulted in Danuel House of the Houston Rockets being sent home during the second round of the playoffs for allowing an unauthorized guest — a woman who had worked on the campus — into his hotel room. Yet the only stoppage of bubble play was not health-related. The Milwaukee Bucks walked out before an Aug. 26 playoff game against the Orlando Magic in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin. That led to a three-day shutdown — with a cancellation of the rest of the season averted in part because players did not want to relinquish the platform to amplify their calls for social justice provided by the NBA restart.

Talks among players to decide to continue the season were contentious, and further “difficult negotiations” between the league and the union, as Silver described them at a news conference, await next season’s terms.

The sides, though, could also use a meaningful break after a season that lasted a whopping 380 days.

Together they have weathered a costly dispute with the league’s partners in China after Rockets general manager Daryl Morey posted a tweet in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, then the January deaths of the former commissioner David Stern and Bryant, and then the pandemic and all its attendant complications.

It took a bubble with unforeseen durability, so sturdy that “bubble” is now a common word in the NBA lexicon, to shepherd everyone through the past three months to fashion a finish to the longest, most turbulent season in league history.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

27

Cristiano Ronaldo tests positive for Coronavirus

By VICTOR MATHER and TARIQ PANJA

C

ristiano Ronaldo, one of soccer’s biggest stars and among the world’s most famous athletes, has tested positive for the coronavirus, Portugal’s soccer federation announced Tuesday.

Ronaldo, 35, was removed from Portugal’s training camp in Lisbon and will miss his country’s Nations Cup game today against Sweden, the federation said.

The team said Ronaldo was not displaying symptoms of COVID-19, and was in isolation.

“Following the positive case, the remaining players underwent new tests Tuesday morning,” the federation said in

a statement. “All tested negative.”

Ronaldo played in Portugal’s scoreless draw against France on Sunday, and posted a photo of himself dining with his teammates on his social media accounts Monday.

“United on and off the field,” the caption read.

Ronaldo, who plays for the Italian club Juventus, had been spared infection earlier this year when the virus swept through his team and the Italian league system. At least three Juventus players — Paulo Dybala, Daniele Rugani and Blaise Matuidi — tested positive in the first wave of cases earlier this year.

But Ronaldo is not the first soccer star to test positive this fall as Europe’s

top leagues start their new seasons.

Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba was found to be positive when he turned up for a training camp with France’s national team in August, weeks after the Brazilian star Neymar and two of his teammates at the French club Paris St.-Germain are believed to have caught the virus during a postseason vacation in Spain.

Liverpool, the reigning Premier League champion, has seen several players test positive in recent weeks.

Forward Xherdan Shaqiri was the most recent, though his test result was later ruled a false positive. It followed earlier cases involving Thiago Alcantara and Sadio Mané.

Cristiano Ronaldo has tested positive for Covid-19.

Fastballs and homers: Braves win a playoff archetype

By TYLER KEPNER

F

reddie Freeman spent a decade in the majors, all with the Atlanta Braves, before reaching the National League Championship Series. He made the most of his first swing in the opener Monday, lifting a 97 mph fastball into the seats at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. Then something strange happened.

It was strange by 2020 standards, anyway: The home run ball landed in a row of actual humans instead of stationary cutouts. For the first time in a season ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, Major League Baseball sold tickets to a game. The league blocked off the first five rows of bleachers with yellow tape, but Freeman’s drive sailed eight rows back.

“We haven’t heard anything other than fake crowd noise, so it was muchneeded,” Freeman said later, after the Braves had broken a tie in the ninth inning to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 5-1. “The 11,000 people really felt like 50,000 people to us, because we haven’t had any all year. It was just great to have cheering for both teams.”

The fans were instructed to wear masks and stay in groups of four, spaced at least 6 feet from others. No tickets were sold within 20 feet of the field, dugouts or bullpens. But the fans showed up

— the attendance was listed at 10,700 in a ballpark that seats 40,300 — and they saw a textbook postseason game: mostly dominant pitching, won by the team with more homers.

Game 2 of the NLCS was scheduled for Tuesday night.

According to ESPN’s Park Factor, which compares home and road statistics, Globe Life Field had the most depressive impact on home runs in the majors this season. But the Dodgers led all teams in homers, the Braves ranked second, and their hitters handled the setting just fine.

After Freeman connected off Walker Buehler in the first, the Dodgers’ Enrique Hernández went deep off Max Fried in the fifth. The game stayed 1-1 until the ninth, when Austin Riley led off with a go-ahead blast. A two-run shot from Ozzie Albies soon followed, and homers accounted for five of the game’s six runs.

“I feel like it’s going to be like this all series,” said Freeman, the favorite to win the NL MVP Award. “That’s all we’ve been facing now, for six games, is 95plus — it feels like every single guy. But our pitching staff is pretty good, too. It’s going to be hard to string hits together.

That’s what the playoffs is all about: It usually comes down to the home run, because getting three hits against a staff like this is going to be difficult.”

The Dodgers managed only four hits in Game 1, and just one base runner after Hernández’s homer. Relievers Chris Martin, Will Smith and Mark Melancon followed Fried with a perfect inning apiece, and Melancon even caught Albies’ homer as he paused between warm-up pitches in the bullpen.

The Braves traded for Martin, Melancon and Shane Greene in July 2019, and general manager Alex Anthopoulos signed Smith to a three-year, $40 million contract as a free agent last fall. He also re-signed Martin for two years and $14 million and retained Tyler Matzek, who was signed from an independent league and returned to the majors this summer after a five-year mental struggle to throw strikes.

By shopping in bulk, Anthopoulos created a staff deep enough to withstand injuries and performance declines in the rotation, which now includes only Fried, Ian Anderson and Kyle Wright.

“I don’t want to have to live through the 2019 trade deadline again, where we had to trade a bunch of young assets for the back of the bullpen,” Anthopoulos said. “It’s really tough to do. We felt we had a really good team and we owed it to them, but it was expensive both in terms of salary commitments and giving up young talent.”

The 2019 Braves did win the NL East, but flopped in the division series

for the second year in a row. Riley, who had hit 18 homers as a rookie, slumped down the stretch and was left off the roster. After hitting .132 in September, he could not argue.

“You never want to think you’re off the roster, but I think everybody knows that I wasn’t playing to my ability, and there just wasn’t a spot on there for me,” said Riley, who hit .239 with eight homers this year. “I just took it to heart and told myself: ‘Going into next year, you’re not going to panic when things aren’t going your way.’ To start off slow this year but just keep at it and keep at it and finally come through is a good feeling.”

Like Freeman, Riley fell behind in the count, 1-2, before homering off a fastball, this one at 98 mph from Blake Treinen, a sinker specialist who gave up just one home run in the regular season.

The ball caromed off the facing of the second deck in left — a home run in Yellowstone Park, as the old saying goes — and the Braves quickly pulled away.

“That’s just what these guys do,” manager Brian Snitker said. “I say we’re like an NBA game — you don’t want to leave, because a lot of things don’t happen till the last third.”

This time, finally, real fans could take the advice. For the rest of the series, those in the bleachers should bring a glove to the ballpark — along with a mask, of course.

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Is Mookie Betts the piece that pushes the Dodgers to a title?

By JONATHAN ABRAHAMS

W

hen Jerry Hairston Jr. ran out of contemporary comparisons to describe Mookie Betts, the Los Angeles Dodgers studio analyst called his father for added perspective.

“Dad, the way Mookie plays, does he remind you of Willie Mays?” Hairston asked Jerry Sr., a former pinch-hitting specialist who broke into the big leagues as Mays was concluding his celebrated career.

“Jerry,” his father said, “his throwing arm, the accuracy, the way he runs the bases, how smart he is, it’s very, very similar.”

Betts, 28, is a player entering his prime, a few hundred home runs and a couple thousand hits short of Mays. For now, the Dodgers will be satisfied if the dynamic Betts can help craft eight more wins to cap this truncated season in championship fashion and end a 32-year title drought. The Dodgers opened play Monday night in the best-of-seven National League Championship Series against the Atlanta Braves with a 5-1 loss after sweeping past Milwaukee and San Diego.

Game 2 was scheduled for Tuesday night at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.

On a star-heavy team with a history full of larger-than-life figures, Betts has the opportunity to do something distinct in the sport: Leading Los Angeles to its first championship since Ronald Reagan served in the Oval Office, without ever hitting in front of a packed Dodger Stadium crowd.

Despite flexing championship-worthy rosters for much of the past decade, the Dodgers have annually fallen short of replacing Kirk Gibson’s slow trot around the bases in 1988 as their latest moment of championship glory. The string of disappointments includes two World Series losses: one scandal-tainted defeat to the Houston Astros in 2017 and another to Betts’ Boston Red Sox the following season.

The Dodgers’ current roster has much of the same nucleus — including Cody Bellinger, Clayton Kershaw and Kenley Jansen — that has regularly bulldozed through the regular season, winning eight consecutive NL West titles, only to encounter postseason stumbling blocks.

There have been some improvements this year: Their bullpen is deeper, the young

Mookie Betts joined the Dodgers via a trade and signed a 12-year, $365 million contract extension in February. standouts — pitcher Dustin May and catcher Will Smith — are each a year older and better, and Corey Seager and Julio Urías are now healthy.

But the biggest factor behind more October optimism for the Dodgers is the one they agreed to pay $365 million, the 2018 American League MVP who is surpassing already lofty expectations in Los Angeles.

Fred Claire, general manager of the Dodgers from 1987 through 1998, noted that the franchise’s historical jumps from contention to celebration had traditionally coincided with the addition of a memorable, talented player: Maury Wills in 1959, Lou Johnson in 1965, Gibson in 1988.

“It shows the impact that a player can make,” Claire said. “And that’s what Mookie is doing this year.”

The Red Sox parted with Betts, a generational talent known for his generosity away from the diamond, as part of a salary dump that frustrated fans in Boston.

The three-way trade, which also included the Minnesota Twins, also provided the Dodgers with Brusdar Graterol, a young flamethrower who may play a pivotal playoff role out of the bullpen, and starter David Price, who opted out of the season.

Once Dodgers manager Dave Roberts slotted Betts permanently in the leadoff spot in mid-August, he and the rest of the offense clicked into position. He finished the sprint of a season with 16 home runs, 39 RBIs and an MLB-best WAR of 3.4. He stacked highlights, flexing a cannon arm, mixing speed, instinct and technique on the basepaths.

He also added to the Dodgers’ rich history of prominent Black players in a sport that has seen both interest and participation among African Americans steadily dip over the last 30 years. Betts could become the team’s first Black player to win the MVP Award since Wills in 1962 (outfielder Matt Kemp finished as runnerup to the Brewers’ Ryan Braun in 2011).

As Claire was attempting to engineer the next Dodgers championship team in the early 1990s, he landed Darryl Strawberry and Eric Davis, two potential cornerstones at the corner outfield positions, two Black stars from Southern California returning home. Injuries and personal issues derailed the collaboration.

“What a difference this could make — not only for our team, first and foremost, because that was my obligation, but for the community,” Claire said of his thinking at the time. “Two players coming back to Los Angeles at really what should have been the peak of their careers, and it just didn’t happen.”

Betts, though, quickly became one of the team’s leaders when the season began in late July. He has also used his voice and platform since arriving in Los Angeles. Though he had stood for the national anthem throughout his career — his father, Willie, served in the Vietnam War — Betts was the only Dodger to kneel during the playing of the national anthem on opening night.

He took the action after seeking further education on peaceful protests and realizing that kneeling was not aimed at disrespecting military veterans.

Later, Betts joined other athletes throughout sports in declining to play a game to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin.

“In my shoes, I couldn’t play,” he said after the walkout in August.

The rest of the Dodgers joined him in solidarity, as did their opponent, the San Francisco Giants.

“I don’t think he overdid anything,” said Mike Morrison, Betts’ baseball coach at John Overton High School in Nashville, Tenn. “I don’t think he tried to shove it down anybody’s throat in any way. He’s just drawing attention to some things that have always gone on in this country that we’ve got to do a better job of getting a handle on.”

Hairston hopes that Betts’ influence, in a city as large and diverse as Los Angeles, will also draw more minority children

to seek out baseball. To him, Michael Jordan’s cultural dominance robbed baseball of many Black children who would have otherwise played the sport.

“Every kid would turn on the TV and they would look at Michael Jordan every night, and Kobe Bryant and LeBron James would look at Michael and go, ‘I want to be just like him,’” said Hairston Jr., who ended his 13-year career with the Dodgers in 2013. “And guess what? Those guys strived to beat Michael Jordan. And he took away a lot of our athletes from the baseball field.”

That could have been the route Betts had taken as well, had he grown a couple inches: His nickname, after all, is derived not from Wilson, the former Mets outfielder, but Blaylock, the former Atlanta Hawks point guard. At Overton, Betts was a skinny, pass-first point guard who earned honors throughout Nashville on the hardwood.

Morrison recalled watching Betts in high school as he waited to enter a pickup game against college players. Betts observed the players from the sidelines, ascertaining their strengths and weaknesses until he went on the court and succeeded against older players he had no business beating.

To Morrison, it’s not much different from watching Betts now — waiting out a pitcher, seeking a mistake, and then delivering a detailed scouting report back to teammates in the dugout.

“That’s kind of what he’s always been,” Morrison said.

These days, Betts reminds Hairston of a couple NBA legends with his off-field demeanor.

“He could care less about stats, it’s all about rings, plural,” Hairston said. “And that’s all Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant ever talked about.”

Betts’ impact cannot be overstated, even if Roberts recently tried to understate it. Roberts said that Betts’ defense was a “game changer,” that he had an uncanny ability to control the strike zone and that he “does a lot on the bases.”

“He just made everyone around him better,” Roberts said. “But with that said, we all got to do our part.”

If Betts continues to do more than his part in leading the Dodgers to a title, the applause before that first at bat in front of a Los Angeles audience will be long and thunderous, the appreciation of three decades worth of frustration ended.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

29

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

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

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

(Mar 21-April 20)

You won’t let a younger member of the family get away with selfish behaviour. It will be hard not to lose your temper with them. Afterwards they will apologise and they will mean it. You shouldn’t let stubbornness or anger stop you accepting. The issue isn’t that important. Forgive and forget.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

(June 22-July 23)

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

A strange text message will make the day unusual. In fact there will be little that is usual around the home or workplace when strange things keep happening that surprise you all. Are you closely linked with another?

Your other half will be in a restless mood and unwilling to stay in one place for very long.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

People in power will remember how helpful you are being when you might need them in the future. It won’t take a lot of effort to pander to their wishes. Some of their requests might irritate you but don’t let it show. Paste on a smile and be at your helpful best. Your support will count in your favour in times to come.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

You may need to spend more cash than planned to put yourself on the road to success. An ambition you were determined to see fulfilled this year can still be achieved. You’ve already overcome a number of hurdles. Rest assured, such an investment will be worth any minor inconvenience it may bring at present.

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

It isn’t enough for a loved one to hear you say you are serious about obligations you are taking on together. You have discussed these for a while and now they need you to make a definite commitment. It will make them feel more secure knowing you will always be there for them.

A lonely neighbour will welcome a phone call or visit. Don’t be surprised if they keep you talking longer than expected. A partner wants to discuss plans for the future. Their ideas will be a lot more ambitious than you realised. Although some may sound unrealistic, others will be practical and you certainly won’t stop them from dreaming.

Cancer

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

A young relative longs to buy something they can’t afford. You know how much this means to them and if you can help by offering a loan, you will do so. If you haven’t much money in your account, it would be foolish to offer a loan that will leave you strapped for cash. No matter how much you would like to help them.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

Someone in the family needs to get something off their chest. Lend a sympathetic ear to their tale of woe. An elderly relative or neighbour will make exaggerated claims about their health or a community issue. A few checks will reveal they’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

When you do what you love, the money will follow. Make more room in your life for hobbies, interests and things that bring you pleasure. Making money from a creative talent is a strong possibility. Whether it is baking, blogging, making crafts or photography it will have a positive effect on your bank balance.

Your boss or an older colleague is being stubborn. Arguing will only cause future problems. Instead, smile and show by your words and deeds how flexible you can be. Social invitations are coming your way. Choose the ones that make safety a priority. Online chats, workshops and webinars continue to be a great way to meet up with others.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

A highly emotional conversation will lead to a calmer discussion of important issues. Disagreements over money have been making you miserable. New information you hadn’t considered before will come to light. Approach a financial adviser for investment advice. They will help you avoid making costly mistakes.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

You’re thinking about moving in with a partner or sharing your home with someone else.

Home security is an important consideration.

You need to feel your decision will create long-term security for yourself. Don’t ignore any doubts lurking in the back of your mind.

Discuss these in full and you will be more certain of what your decision must be.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

The San Juan Daily Star

Ziggy

32

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

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