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October 16-18, 2020

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Changing Stages: Actress Angela Meyer Ready to Defend the Arts in SJ as Assemblywoman P20

COVID-19 at School Only One of Experts’ Concerns

Safety Measures Could Pose a Risk to Social Development Skills if Schools Reopen P4 Islanders Make Their Case to Stateside Boricua Voters in Pro-Biden Campaign P5

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A Bit of Justice for Rosimar: Alleged Perpetrator of Kidnapping-Slaying in Jail P3

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October 16-18, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

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October 16-18, 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.

Alleged perpetrator of kidnapping-slaying of Rosimar Rodríguez in jail

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cting Justice Secretary Inés del C. Carrau Martínez and the District Attorney Melissa Vázquez Sandoval of the Bayamón Prosecutor’s Office announced Thursday that charges were filed against Jay O’Neill González Mercado for the kidnapping and murder of Rosimar Rodríguez Gómez during events that began on Sept. 17 in the Sabana Seca section of Toa Baja.

On Sept. 17, Rodríguez Gómez, 20, was kidnapped from in front of a relative’s residence in Toa Baja. After several days of searching, on Sept. 27, the young woman’s body was found in grassland in the El Caracol sector of Dorado.

González Mercado, 20, was arrested on five charges: one charge for violation of Article 93 in its subsection (b),

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statutory murder; a charge for Article 157, kidnapping; and one charge for Article 268, false allegation related to a crime, all under the Penal Code of Puerto Rico. He also faces a charge for Article 6.05, carrying, transportation or use of firearms without a license, and a charge for Article 6.14, shooting or aiming firearms, under the Weapons Act of 2020.

Judge Lorraine M. Biaggi Trigo of the Bayamón Superior Court determined probable cause in all the charges brought against González Mercado and set bail at $2.14 million, which he did not pay and therefore will be admitted to jail. The preliminary hearing was scheduled for Oct. 29.

Prosecutors Jessika Correa González and Gretchen Pérez Catinchi were put in charge of the investigation along with agent Jesús Alicea Ortiz of the Bayamón CIC’s Homicide Division.

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October 16-18, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Should the gov’t restart schools amid the pandemic? Safety measures aren't the only ones to be taken. Here’s what you need to know

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

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ith Health Secretary Lorenzo González Feliciano saying recently that conversations were happening within the government about reopening schools for in-person classes amid the COVID-19 pandemic, public and mental health experts suggested on Thursday that schools could reopen only if there were effective safety measures enforced. There’s more: social development has to be taken seriously, too.

Puerto Rico Public Health Trust (PRPHT) Executive Director José Rodríguez Orengo said the trust has recommended that the government look hard at examples of properly structured school reopenings. He added that for a reopening to be organized, it was fundamental to have a contract tracing system that works 100 percent and that molecular tests are ready in case any exposure was to happen “in such a way that we can handle this reopening adequately, in that we have all the elements ready and [the coronavirus] does not catch us off guard.”

“You can ask pediatricians in Puerto Rico and primary health educators, who are more expert than I am on the subject, according to [the most recent literature], with children who are particularly of school ages from kindergarten to third grade, it is necessary that education is carried out in a way that is a bit more structured,” Rodríguez Orengo said.

The PRPHT executive director also told the Star that other pediatric colleagues have raised concerns to him

regarding K-3 students’ social development being greatly affected due to the pandemic and its subsequent lockdowns, and not knowing “what will happen in 14 years, when these students are already in high school or entering university, what pattern [of behavior] they will have, because they get less time at school in a social and structured way.”

“There may be other elements that we have not considered at the moment due to never being through this,” Rodríguez Orengo added.

Puerto Rico Psychology Association (APPR by its Spanish initials) President Kalitza Baerga, meanwhile, said it is natural for parents who have young children to show great concern as they are trying to make rational decisions during the emergency to protect their offspring. She said that on the other hand, children “can be surprising” as they are capable

of adapting and following rules “through orientation and continuous repetition.” Nonetheless, she emphasized that for elementary-level students, “continuous supervision is required to keep enforcing safety measures.”

“What matters is that schools must be prepared if they are to reopen,” Baerga said. “We now know that public schools, especially in the south [of the island], are not ready to receive any children due to the earthquakes.

Unfortunately, we must solve that first.”

She added that “there are many public schools that were shut down; there’s a chance to re-evaluate their reopening so they have fewer students inside the [school buildings], since it has been recommended to maintain physical distancing in classrooms and prevent crowding.”

“We must look at what other countries are doing successfully,” Baerga said.

When the Star asked if K-3 children are required to have in-person courses instead of virtual courses, the APPR president answered that young children need “structure, routines, and supervision, as virtual education is not effective for all children.”

“A few are more capable of managing the technology since they are immersed in virtual gaming, but there are risks of children being logged into technology all the time, such as their sight and concentration skills being affected,” Baerga said. “They also are not socializing with their peers, and that’s also fundamental for their growth. However, as we see that the [infection] curve has not decreased, the state is responsible for taking care of our children and not exposing others to the virus.”

DTOP: Laminated Social Security cards now accepted as valid

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

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fter receiving the approval of the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to relax some requirements regarding requests for licenses and identifications in Real ID format by U.S. citizens residing in Puerto Rico, island Transportation and Public Works Secretary (DTOP by its Spanish acronym) Carlos Contreras Aponte ordered that laminated Social Security cards be accepted as valid starting Wednesday.

Contreras Aponte also approved a resolution that extends the validity of all driver’s licenses and sworn statements required to conduct transactions at the island’s Driver Service Centers (CESCO by its Spanish acronym).

“For years we have seen how thousands of citizens have faced problems completing transactions at the CESCOs because their Social Security card is laminated and, by DTOP regulation, it could not be accepted as valid,” Contreras Aponte said in a written statement. “Although there are other

documents that citizens can submit as a substitute for [the] Social Security [card], such as the … W-2 tax withholding form, it never made sense to us that the Social Security card was not accepted just because it was laminated.”

“At the same time, this limitation is incompatible with the CESCO 2.0 model, which has allowed us to serve hundreds of thousands of citizens quickly, safely and without queues in just over three months,” he added. “It is not acceptable that in the historic time in which we live, when we have transformed the CESCOs and made applications such as Digital CESCO available to the people to make their lives easier, a single document, which does not change at all due to the fact that it is laminated, can result in a headache for citizens.”

The clear plastic cover should not affect the readability of the Social Security card, the DTOP chief noted.

Contreras Aponte said he requested a legal opinion and consulted with the DHS, which gave him the go-ahead, for which, by means of a resolution, he authorized the acceptance of Social Security cards for both license and

identification transactions in regular format or as Real ID, even if they are laminated, as long as their readability has not been compromised.

With the approval of Resolution Number 2020-26, effective as of Thursday, in addition to approving the aforementioned provisions in relation to the Social Security card, the secretary established that “all categories of driver’s licenses and identification cards whose original expiration date corresponds to the months of June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2020, will have an automatic extension of six months from their original expiration date.”

The resolution also provided that “the computation of the 30-day term to renew the license or identification card or take the practical exam without surcharge, will be counted from the expiration date, as extended by this Resolution.”

For transactions that require the delivery of a sworn statement, the secretary has increased the term of validity from one to six months, established at the time the statement is signed before a notary public.

The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

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PDP Rep. Hernández opens the books, makes payroll info from his office public

By THE STAR STAFF

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ep. Rafael “Tatito” Hernández Montañez, the spokesman for the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) in the Puerto Rico House of Representatives, announced on Thursday that he had made his legislative office’s payroll information public.

“Contrary to the procedure that House Speaker Carlos ‘Johnny’ Méndez has demonstrated during all these weeks by delaying processes and placing obstacles before citizens’ access to public information, I have no problem in disclosing the data referring to the payroll and contracts of my legislative office,” Hernández Montañez and fellow PDP Rep. Ángel Matos said in a joint written statement.

The legislator announced that “yesterday [Wednesday], at 3:43 in the afternoon, a citizen made a request for information about our personnel similar to those that our delegation has been making since the beginning of the year, and recently, citizens across the entire island [have been making].”

“Quickly, without delay and with nothing to hide, we authorized by letter [House] Speaker Carlos ‘Johnny’ Méndez to supply the information requested by the applicant,” Hernández Montañez said.

“I have always been in favor of the most absolute accessibility to public documents,”

he continued. “To prevent the public policy of non-transparency of the NPP [New Progressive Party] in the House and Senate led

by Carlos ‘Johnny’ Méndez and Thomas Rivera Schatz from delaying the citizen’s claim, I publicly disclosed the information requested about our office.”

“It was Johnny Méndez who signed an administrative order that establishes a bureaucratic, burdensome and difficult process, which instead of facilitating access to information, discourages citizens who wish to exercise their right to access it,” Hernández Montañez said. “Today I am calling on the House speaker, Carlos ‘Johnny’ Méndez, to disclose the requested information from the entire legislative body, without delay and without excuses. Likewise, I urge the president of the NPP legislative conference, [gubernatorial candidate] Pedro Pierluisi, to request transparency from his delegations in the House and Senate and to comply with the law. The people want to know their position on this matter; if they remain silent, with their silence they will become an accomplice in the schemes of corruption and irregularity of the NPP Legislative Assembly.”

A copy of the citizen request and a letter was sent to Méndez. LIkewise, evidence of the process was sent to the citizen.

Biden launches campaign for Puerto Rican votes

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

T

he Biden for President campaign announcedThursday the launch of #HazloXMi (#DoItForMe), a “Go Out to Vote, Get Out the Vote” initiative aimed at mobilizing Puerto Rican voters living in Florida and Pennsylvania.

The initiative includes print and digital ads that highlight the strength that Puerto Ricans have to contribute to the future of the country by voting for the Democratic presidential ticket.

The campaign seeks to motivate Puerto Ricans on the island to influence their Puerto Rican friends and family living in the United States to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Nov. 3. “#HazloXMi” includes print and digital advertisements in Spanish that take place in Puerto Rico, Florida and Pennsylvania.

A variety of island residents show up in the ads, urging their family and friends to use their vote to help those who live on the island.

They remind the audience of what is at stake in the upcoming election: healthcare, education and a better future.

The “Use your Vote” digital ad features upbeat music with the lyrics “use your vote to speak for us.”

The ad closes with the reminder: “with your vote there you help us here.”

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October 16-18, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Oversight board: Gov’t can’t cancel LUMA-PREPA contract

By THE STAR STAFF

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he Financial Oversight and Management Board said Thursday that the cancellation of the contract between the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and LUMA Energy, as several gubernatorial candidates have proposed, is highly unlikely.

The oversight board said the 15-year contract can’t be cancelled by the island government.

“The LUMA contract is the result of an extensive, legal and careful process that was and still is required under Puerto Rico’s Public-Private Partnership Law,” the oversight board said in written remarks. “It is also the result of the clear need to transform the power sector, as set out in Act 120-2018 and Law 17-2019, and as recognized by the Government and the Fiscal Board. PREPA does not have a legal option to cancel the contract, and the discussions on the cancellation of the contract are not helpful to the clear need to transform the agency and attract private sector investment and job creation to Puerto Rico.”

“Discussions about contract cancellation are also not doing any good to individuals and businesses in Puerto Rico, who deserve more reliable, lower-cost, and cleaner energy,” the board added. “The LUMA transaction will achieve these critical goals.”

PREPA, as it currently exists, and as it has existed for the last decade or more, has not served the people of Puerto

Rico very well, the oversight board pointed out. Both the island government and the board concluded that a private operator is essential to achieve a necessary change. Bringing in an experienced operator to transform the electrical grid into one with greater reliability, resilience, and lower costs is vital so that better electricity service can be offered to the

people of Puerto Rico, the oversight board said.

“LUMA will operate the network in a more efficient manner than PREPA, offer better service to consumers, and provide better safety standards for employees and the public than PREPA,” the oversight board said. “The global experience of the business partners that make up LUMA, the rigorous safety records and knowledge of Puerto Rico will reduce costs, reduce spending on external consultants, reduce blackouts, and achieve deferred maintenance, including addressing the issue of vegetation management, among others.”

The congressionally mandated oversight board said LUMA will not only be responsible for improving the quality of service to all PREPA customers, but also for strategically investing recently announced funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to rebuild and improve the resilience of the electrical grid. Previously, PREPA borrowed $9 billion to build a system that is now failing its customers, the board noted.

Popular Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate Charlie Delgado said that if elected he would be cancelling the 15-year contract. His remarks were echoed by aspiring gubernatorial candidates such as Citizens Victory Movement candidate Alexandra Lúgaro, independent candidate Eliezer Molina and Juan Dalmau, the gubernatorial candidate of the Puerto Rican Independence Party.

New Progressive Party gubernatorial candidate Pedro Pierluisi has said he will review the contract.

Treasury reports start of FY 2021 with revenues of close to $1.7 billion in first two months

By THE STAR STAFF

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uerto Rico Treasury Secretary Francisco Parés Alicea announced Thursday that preliminary net income to the General Fund in July and August, the first two months of fiscal year (FY) 2020-2021, totaled almost $1.7 billion, exceeding the fiscal estimate by $190 million, or 12.8 percent.

The secretary highlighted that the collection performance for the first two months of FY 2021 shows the stability of the tax system, particularly in the context of an atypical period affected by earthquakes and the COVID-19 pandemic. The fiscal plan certified by the Financial Oversight and Management Board at the end of May of this year projected a growth in the economy for FY 2021 of between 0.5 percent and -3.4 percent of the real gross product.

The oversight board in its certified fiscal plan revised the projection of net income to the General Fund for FY 2020 to $9 billion, which represented a reduction of $1.3 billion, or 13.4 percent, in relation to the original projection of $10.4 billion included in the certified fiscal plan on May 9, 2019. Also, the fiscal projection of the board for FY 2021 was revised to $9.6 billion in relation to the income base of FY 2020, a growth of 6.7 percent, or $608 million.

“However, of the total of $9.6 billion planned for this fiscal year, $600 million, or 6.2 percent, of the total corresponds to income from tax transactions whose expiration dates were postponed for periods corresponding to this new fiscal year,” the Treasury chief said. “From the period in which the state of emergency was declared in March due to the pandemic, the Department granted postponements in the due dates of pay-

ments of different types of tax, such as the returns on income tax for individuals, corporations and companies, payments for withholding, and sales and use tax payments, both on imports and in the monthly sales and use payroll.”

That said, the projection for the current fiscal year without considering the postponement measures for COVID-19 totals $9 billion, or $608 million more than the numbers estimated by the oversight board for FY 2020 in its latest certified fiscal plan.

“At the beginning of this fiscal year, the month of July, in addition to exceeding the projection for the month at $947.5 million by $94.9 million, fulfilled a large part of the expected collections for deferred income for fiscal year 2020,” Parés Alicea said.

The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

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Barron Trump tested positive for coronavirus, Melania Trump says

By ANNIE KARNI

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arron Trump, the president’s youngest son, tested positive for the coronavirus after his parents did earlier this month, Melania Trump, the first lady, revealed Wednesday, adding that he has since tested negative.

President Donald Trump announced early Oct. 2 that he and his wife had tested positive, and the White House had said Barron, 14, had tested negative. But Melania Trump said in a statement Wednesday that “my fear came true when he was tested again and it came up positive.”

“Luckily, he is a strong teenager and exhibited no symptoms,” she said. President Trump, speaking briefly to reporters as he left the White House for a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, said Barron was doing “fine.” Later, in Iowa, the president shrugged off his son’s case, telling supporters, “I don’t even think he knew he had it — because they’re young, and their immune systems are strong, and they fight it off.”

Melania Trump did not say when Barron tested positive, and White House officials did

not say why they did not reveal it at the time.

But the president and first lady have generally tried to shield Barron from news media coverage.

A White House official said Barron had not been in contact with anyone outside his family and the residence staff since his positive test. St. Andrew’s Episcopal, the school in Maryland he attends, has been all virtual.

Several studies have suggested that children under 10 are about half as likely as adults to be infected. But teenagers may be just as likely as adults to become infected and to transmit the virus to others.

Public health experts have criticized the example the White House has set in taking few precautions against the spread of the coronavirus and the number of staff members who have tested positive as a result.

President Trump has frequently refused to wear a mask and mocked his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, when he did, and many staff members, including Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, have followed his example.

Returning last week from four days and

From left: President Donald Trump, Melania Trump and Barron Trump, at the RNC Convention at the White House in Washington, Aug. 27, 2020. three nights at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he received treatment for the virus, the president made a show of removing his mask before entering the White House.

Trump also hosted a large gathering in the Rose Garden for his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, where at least eight people, including the president, may have become infected.

The White House has chosen not to trace the contacts of guests and staff members from that event.

Melania Trump has generally taken a more cautious approach than her husband to the virus and has not minimized its effects the way her husband has.

President Trump has downplayed his symptoms, including a shortness of breath, and focused only on trying to demonstrate that he has recovered. Melania Trump, on the other hand, described the “roller coaster” symptoms she experienced in a statement Wednesday titled “My Personal Experience With COVID-19,” her first extensive update on her health since the announcement that she had tested positive.

“I experienced body aches, a cough and headaches, and felt extremely tired most of the time,” she said.

Melania Trump, who had not been seen or heard from since the positive test announcement, said that she had spent her recovery “reflecting on my family” and that she hoped “to resume my duties as soon as I can.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

As virus spread early on, reports of Trump administration briefings fueled sell-off

By KATE KELLY and MARK MAZZETTI

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n the afternoon of Feb. 24, President Donald Trump declared on Twitter that the coronavirus was “very much under control” in the United States, one of numerous rosy statements that he and his advisers made at the time about the worsening epidemic. He even added an observation for investors: “Stock market starting to look very good to me!”

But hours earlier, senior members of the president’s economic team, privately addressing board members of the conservative Hoover Institution, were less confident. Tomas J. Philipson, a senior economic adviser to the president, told the group he could not yet estimate the effects of the virus on the U.S. economy. To some in the group, the implication was that an outbreak could prove worse than Philipson and other Trump administration advisers were signaling in public at the time.

The next day, board members got another taste of government uncertainty from Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council. Hours after he had boasted on CNBC that the virus was contained in the United States and “it’s pretty close to airtight,” Kudlow delivered a more ambiguous private message.

He asserted that the virus was “contained in the U.S., to date, but now we just don’t know,” according to a document describing the sessions obtained by The New York Times.

The document, written by a hedge fund consultant who attended the three-day gathering of Hoover’s board, was stark. “What struck me,” the consultant wrote, was that nearly every official he heard from raised the virus “as a point of concern, totally unprovoked.”

U.S. stocks were already spiraling because of a warning from a federal public health official that the virus was likely to spread, but traders spotted the immediate significance: The president’s aides appeared to be giving wealthy party donors an early warning at a time when Trump was publicly insisting that the threat was nonexistent.

Interviews with eight people who either received copies of the memo or were briefed on aspects of it as it spread among investors in New York and elsewhere provide a glimpse of how elite traders had access to information from the administration that helped them gain financial advantage during a chaotic three days when global markets were teetering.

The memo appears to have overstated the gravity of some administration officials’ warnings to the group and included dire projections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, without clear attribution, that do not appear to have come from the gathering.

But the memo’s overarching message — that a devastating virus outbreak in the United States was increasingly likely to occur, and that government officials were more aware of the threat than they were letting on publicly — proved accurate.

To many of the investors who received or heard about the

Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, speaks to reporters at the White House on Feb. 28, 2020. memo, it was the first significant sign of skepticism among Trump administration officials about their ability to contain the virus.

“Short everything,” was the reaction of the investor.

The memo was written by William Callanan, a hedge fund veteran and member of the Hoover board, a research institution at Stanford University that studies the economy, national security and other issues.

Callanan described the Hoover briefings in a lengthy email he wrote to David Tepper, the founder of the hedge fund Appaloosa Management, and one of his senior lieutenants about the level of concern among U.S. officials over the spread of the virus domestically. In the email, he also touched on how ill-prepared health agencies appeared to be to combat a pandemic.

Inside Appaloosa, the email circulated among employees, who in turn briefed at least two outside investors on the more worrisome parts of Callanan’s email, according to people who received those briefings.

Those investors in turn passed the information to their own contacts, ultimately delivering aspects of the readout to at least seven investors in at least four money-management firms around the country. By late afternoon on Feb. 26, U.S. stock markets had fallen close to 300 points from their high the previous week.

Tepper was one of the first prominent money managers to signal concern over COVID-19 in the United States.

On Feb. 1, On CNBC on Feb. 3, Tepper described the virus as a possible “game changer,” saying that investors needed to be “cautious” until more was known about its reach.

Three weeks later, Callanan’s readout seemed to validate Tepper’s warning.

“I just left D.C. and wanted to reply to your question ASAP,” Callanan wrote to Tepper and one of his senior lieutenants in an email on Feb. 25. “If you can keep the comments below confidential, I would be grateful.”

From there, Callanan reported that numerous Trump administration officials expressed a greater degree of alarm about the coronavirus than the administration was saying publicly.

In a statement, Callanan said his email to Tepper contained “personal and professional views based on extensive research and publicly available information,” showing his “concern on the global pandemic that was emerging.” The email was shared with others without his knowledge or consent, he said.

Tepper initially denied receiving Callanan’s message, then acknowledged in a later interview that he most likely received the email but that it was not memorable.

On Feb. 24, the White House asked lawmakers for $2.5 billion in additional funding. That afternoon, the Hoover group held a panel discussion with members of the Council of Economic Advisers. That talk struck some audience members as worrying for the economy, according to Callanan’s memo and interviews with three people who were there. Of particular note, one of the people said, was the reluctance of Philipson, the council’s acting chair, to estimate the potential effect of the virus on American economic growth for the year, given that the situation was still unfolding.

Philipson confirmed that he had conveyed a message to that effect, though he could not recall specifics.

On Feb. 25, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, a top official from the CDC, gave the first public glimpse of internal government assessments about the potential spread of the virus.

“It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen,” she said.

Shortly after, Kudlow made his “airtight” comments on CNBC. Two hours after that, however, his Hoover presentation struck Callanan as backpedaling.

Kudlow “revised his statement about the virus being contained,” Callanan wrote to Tepper, saying “we just don’t know” whether it was at the time — even as Kudlow continued to downplay its consequences to the private audience. Kudlow “did add that he has recommended to the president a period of ‘tariff tranquility,’ as markets don’t need more uncertainty now.”

Kudlow confirmed making both assertions, adding that in his mind, they were essentially the same as his remarks on CNBC. “There was never any intent on my part to misinform,” he said.

The Hoover Institution has close relations with the Trump administration, and the White House has pulled from its ranks to fill top positions. Joshua D. Rauh, one of the White House economists addressing the Hoover crowd on Feb. 24, has returned to the institution, where he worked previously. Kevin Hassett, who moderated the panel and has served as the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, is now a Hoover Institution fellow.

Dr. Scott W. Atlas, a Hoover fellow and Stanford professor known for his unorthodox positions on encouraging “herd immunity,” was named to Trump’s coronavirus task force in August.

Barron Trump tested positive for coronavirus, Melania Trump says From page 7 She added, “I also thought about the hundreds of thousands of people across our country who have been impacted by this illness that infects people with no discrimination.”

Just as she did during her speech at the

Republican National Convention, Trump acknowledged the effects of the virus on Americans across the country. President Trump, in contrast, emerged from his own hospitalization for the coronavirus with a less empathetic message: “Don’t let it dominate your life.”

And unlike President Trump, who has been

promoting an experimental drug as a “cure” for COVID-19, she said she “chose to go a more natural route in terms of medicine, opting more for vitamins and healthy food.”

There are no fully effective, federally approved treatments for COVID-19. Some have promoted vitamins and supplements as immunity-

bolstering additions to the diet, but there is not yet evidence that this can specifically benefit coronavirus patients.

Melania Trump encouraged Americans to try to stay healthy, noting that “a balanced diet, fresh air, and vitamins really are vital to keep our bodies healthy.”

The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

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Justice Dept. ‘unmasking’ review finds no irregularities and is given to Durham

By KATIE BENNER and JULIAN E. BARNES

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or years, President Donald Trump has accused national security officials in the Obama administration of wrongdoing for making routine classified information requests called unmaskings, falsely portraying them as part of a plot to undermine him.

“The big story is the ‘unmasking and surveillance’ of people that took place during the Obama Administration,” he posted on Twitter in 2017.

But John Bash, a U.S. attorney appointed

by Attorney General William Barr to vet the issue, found no irregularities in those unmasking requests, which revealed that the president’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn had appeared in intelligence reports, according to two U.S. officials briefed on the matter.

The Justice Department has portrayed Bash’s work as a review, not a criminal investigation. His findings were given to John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, who is conducting a criminal investigation into the roots of the Russia inquiry, the officials said.

Bash, who stepped down last week as the U.S. attorney in the Western District of Texas for a job in the private sector, was inclined to recommend changes to the unmasking process, one official said. Barr replaced him with Gregg Sofer, a veteran of the U.S. attorney’s office in the district’s Austin division, who was most recently a counselor to Barr.

“Without commenting on any specific investigation, any matters that John Bash was overseeing will be assumed by Gregg Sofer,” said Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman.

She declined to comment on any aspect of Bash’s work. The Washington Post earlier reported his conclusions.

The revelation about Bash’s findings is a blow to Trump’s push to portray the Russia investigation and related matters as an election issue and the Justice Department’s scrutiny of them as certain to reveal a “deep state” plot against him.

Barr has told associates that the Durham investigation is unlikely to yield any revelations that can be shared with the public before the election in November; Bash’s findings seem to have knocked down one of the president’s key allegations against his foes.

News that Bash did not find serious wrongdoing by any Obama-era official infuriatedTrump.

“Personally, I think it’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous.

It’s a disgrace,” he said in an interview with Newsmax on Wednesday. “They actually said no indictments before the election,” he added, in an apparent reference to the larger Durham investigation.

For the past few days, Trump has publicly

Attorney Gen. William Barr in the Oval Office in Washington, July 15, 2020. He has told associates that the Durham investigation in to the roots of the Russia inquiry is unlikely to yield any revelations that can be shared with the public before the election in November. excoriated Barr and accused him of failing to deliver on charges against the president’s perceived enemies.

“Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes, the greatest political crime in the history of our country, then we’re going to get little satisfaction unless I win,” Trump told Fox Business last week.

He said he had asked the Justice Department to charge former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the election next month, extraordinary requests by a sitting president to wield the power of federal law enforcement against political foes. The attorney general said this spring that neither was likely to even be investigated.

The president also said he was determined to find out why Durham was not ready to release a report. “He’s got so much stuff,” Trump said.

National security officials routinely make unmasking requests as they read and try to understand intelligence reports and other classified communications; for privacy reasons, names of Americans in the reports are blacked out, but officials can ask to see them to better understand the documents.

Such requests made by Obama administration officials during the presidential transition revealed conversations involving Flynn. For the past year, Trump and his allies have placed increasing pressure on the Justice Department to address those requests.

In May, Republicans released a list of names of Obama administration officials who

had inquired in late 2016 and early 2017 about the identity of an American in National Security Agency intelligence reports that turned out to be Flynn, then Trump’s incoming national security adviser. They included John Brennan, the CIA director; Samantha Power, the ambassador to the United Nations; James Clapper, the director of national intelligence; James Comey, the FBI director; and Douglas Lute, the U.S. ambassador to NATO. But the list did not say what the intelligence reports were about, or whether they included surveillance of foreign officials talking about Flynn or of intelligence targets talking to him.

After the list was released, the Justice Department said that Barr had asked Bash to review whether the requests were irregular or improper, and then give his research to Durham.

“Unmasking inherently isn’t wrong, but certainly the frequency, the motivation and the reasoning behind unmasking can be problematic,” Kupec said in an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News when she announced Bash’s review.

10

October 16-18, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

5 Professors sue Rutgers, saying it shortchanges women on pay

By JULIAN E. BARNES

R

uth Bader Ginsburg joined the faculty of Rutgers Law School in 1963, the same year that federal legislation aimed at abolishing wage disparity between women and men became law. But Ginsburg, who was the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court and who died last month, was paid much less than her male peers.

So, she and other female faculty members mounted a legal challenge against Rutgers, New Jersey’s flagship university, winning a settlement that earned the women substantial raises.

More than 50 years later, some women claim they are still being shortchanged.

On Wednesday night, in the latest battle over equal pay in higher education, five female tenured professors accused Rutgers in a lawsuit, filed in State Superior Court, of paying them far less than their male counterparts.

Two of the plaintiffs are distinguished professors, a title given only to faculty members who have achieved the highest levels of scholarship. One, Nancy Wolff, has published two books and written more than 100 peer-reviewed articles. Another, Judith Storch, has presented at more than 150 research seminars and won multiple awards. And a third, Deepa Kumar, is a world-renowned scholar of Islamophobia and race.

All of them say they are paid tens of thousands of dollars a year less than male peers with similar qualifications.

“We as professors are working so hard to inspire our students, to expand the knowledge base, and to work with our communities and policymakers to solve social problems,” said Wolff, who teaches public policy, “and we should know that within our academic community, principles of economic justice will be safeguarded.”

University officials said that they would not comment on the lawsuit. But the school, in a statement, said it was “committed to pay equity” and was reviewing the way it paid professors but had been hampered by the pandemic.

“Creating a new and complex faculty pay equity program that accounts for the variety of disciplines, individual schools, and titles at a university is challenging even in the best of times,” the school said.

The complaint comes days after Princeton University agre-

“We should know that within our academic community, principles of economic justice will be safeguarded,” said Nancy Wolff, a professor at Rutgers University. She and other women at the school claim they have been paid less than their male counterparts. ed to pay more than $1.2 million to women on the faculty after a federal investigation revealed that they were being paid less than male professors.

Similar equal pay challenges have been lodged recently against universities across the country, including Northern Michigan University, the University of Arizona and the University of Denver.

Kumar, who teaches journalism and media studies, was hired in 2004 along with four white men and women who, at the time, earned about the same — and in some cases, lower — salaries than her.

Over time, they were given bigger raises and today, according to the lawsuit, Kumar earns about $25,000 less than other full professors in her department.

She said she had tried repeatedly to negotiate pay raises, but it had been “very difficult and very time consuming.”

“It is also emotionally draining to keep having to prove that you are equivalent to your white peers and your male peers only to be told that you are not on grounds that are at best flimsy,” she added.

Storch, a distinguished professor of nutritional sciences, said she earned more than $46,000 less on average than all the

distinguished professors in biomedical science.

“I was stunned when I saw the data,” she said.

Donna Ginther, an economist at the University of Kansas who studies wage inequity, says her research shows that the pay disparity between women and men grows as women move up the ranks in academia.

“The longer women are in their careers, the more the gap grows,” Ginther said, “and that suggests something is happening with respect to how their contributions are valued.”

At Rutgers, a study commissioned in 2018 by the university’s faculty union showed that when adjusted for rank, women who are tenured earned on average about 2% less than men. Because women make up only 30% of full professors and 20% of distinguished professors, the study also examined pay discrepancies among faculty members of different ranks.

When rank was eliminated, women’s pay lagged more than 7% on average to men’s salaries, according to the study.

As a result of the findings, Rutgers and its faculty last year reached a pay equity agreement that established a formal process to allow any faculty member to request a salary adjustment. Reviews are supposed to be completed within 90 working days, and the university must notify applicants of any delay.

Storch, citing her pay discrepancy, made her request Nov. 18. On Aug. 19, she was told that her case was still under review.

She said she had not heard anything since.

The other four plaintiffs have also filed pay equity requests but have not had their cases resolved, according to the suit.

The university, in its statement, said the challenges in addressing the pay issues were “magnified after having to divert our personnel resources to responding to the immediate issues presented by the COVID crisis, including preserving jobs and benefits after the shutdown was ordered and telecommuting for employees, as well as a variety of health and safety concerns for everyone who works at Rutgers.”

Kumar said she estimated that she would have earned more than $300,000 in additional salary at Rutgers if she had been paid at the same rate as colleagues with similar credentials.

Wolff said she would have earned $500,000 more in wages.

“What that means is that I have indirectly given a half a million dollar subsidy to the university to pay higher wages to my faculty equivalents, who are primarily white males,” she said.

The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

11

Ikea will buy back used furniture to stop ‘excessive consumption’

By DERRICK BRYSON TAYLOR

M

oving up in the world or at least moving homes, customers have for generations faced an awkward question: What do you do with old Ikea furniture, so carefully assembled but so ready to be replaced?

Ikea, the Swedish retailer with a reputation for bargain furniture, if not durable furniture, offered a solution this week. It announced that next month it will begin a global buyback program of unwanted Ikea furniture to encourage customers to take a stand against excessive consumption.

The program, called “Buy Back,” will begin in Britain on Nov. 24, just ahead of Black Friday, an Ikea spokeswoman said Wednesday. The program will also run in 26 other countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia. The initiative has no end date in Britain or Ireland.

Although Ikea has various buyback programs running at stores in many countries, the company said November’s event would be the first time 27 countries have scaled this service together.

“By making sustainable living more simple and accessible, Ikea hopes that the initiative will help its customers take a stand against excessive consumption this Black Friday and in the years to come,” the company said in a news release.

Noticeably absent from the list of participating countries was the United States. Ikea did not immediately say why the program would not be implemented there.

“It is a country decision, and Ikea Retail U.S. will not participate in the buyback program,” the spokeswoman said. “The U.S. is currently exploring ways to bring Buy Back to the country in the future.”

She added, “This year, they will use the traditional Black Friday to focus on other sustainability initiatives and to promote sustainable living among their customers.”

Customers selling back furniture will receive an Ikea refund card, with no

expiration date, the news release said.

The condition of the item sold back to Ikea will determine the value.

Ikea furniture in “new” condition with no scratches could receive 50% of the original price, the release said.

Furniture in “very good” condition with minor scratches may receive 40% of the original price, and “well-used” items, with several scratches, could receive 30% of the original price. The items will be resold as secondhand in the “As-Is” section of stores.

Any item that can’t be resold will be recycled or donated to local community projects, the company said.

While the program has ignited interest among Ikea lovers, not all of the company’s furniture products will be eligible for it. Among the items the program will accept are dressers, bookcases and shelf units, small tables, cabinets, dining tables and desks, chairs and stools without upholstery, and chests of drawers.

The initiative stands in contrast to an aggressive marketing campaign that Ikea used in the early 2000s, encouraging consumers to replace items more frequently and earning the company some scorn for selling “disposable furniture.” In one ad from 2002, somber piano music plays as a woman takes an old lamp out to the trash in the pouring rain.

“Many of you feel bad for this lamp,” a man suddenly says in a Swedish accent. “That is because you’re crazy. It has no feelings, and the new one is much better.”

Almost 20 years later, the company has embraced sustainability, which Peter Jelkeby, country retail manager for Ikea UK and Ireland, called “the defining issue of our time.” The company, he said, “is committed to being part of the solution to promote sustainable consumption and combat climate change.”

Hege Saebjornsen, country sustainability manager for Ikea UK and Ireland, said “being circular” was a good business opportunity as well as a responsibility, adding that the climate crisis requires everyone to radically rethink their consumption habits.

Ikea, the Swedish retailer with a reputation for bargain furniture, if not durable furniture, announced that it will begin a global buyback program, on Nov. 24, 2020, of unwanted Ikea furniture to encourage customers to take a stand against excessive consumption.

The company, which was founded

by Swedish entrepreneur Ingvar Kamprad in 1943 and has expanded to locations in more than 40 countries, also plans to become “climate positive” by 2030, saying it will drastically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and store carbon in land, plants and products.

Ikea’s leadership has directly linked

some of its stores’ challenges to climate change. In January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jesper Brodin, chief executive of Ikea, said his company was already feeling its effects after severe flooding in the United States, where stores were temporarily closed, and in Australia, where fires had disrupted business.

12

The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

Bank earnings show diverging fortunes on Wall Street and Main Street

In quarterly reports this week, JPMorgan Chase and other big banks said trading and investment banking revenue had helped them remain profitable.

By EMILY FLITTER and KATE KELLY

H

undreds of thousands of small businesses are closing for good. Temporary layoffs at larger companies are becoming permanent. But the country’s largest banks, which together serve a majority of Americans through loans, credit cards or deposit services, are not raising an alarm.

In their third-quarter earnings reports this week, big banks have said they are generally prepared for a wave of loan defaults they expect in the second half of next year. And their own fortunes are just fine: A trading and investment banking bonanza on Wall Street is helping them stay profitable.

A few common themes have emerged from the reports.

Wall Street Is Booming The pandemic has made for a turbulent year across a wide

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range of markets, but all the trading that investors have done in response has kept the revenue rolling into the banks.

Goldman Sachs reported strong markets revenue Tuesday, helping it generate profits of $3.62 billion — far surpassing analyst expectations of $2 billion. Trading of bond products linked to interest rates, corporate credit, mortgages, and the prices of oil and other commodities lifted the bond division’s quarterly revenue 49% higher from the same period last year. In stocks, divisional gains were 10%.

In a call with analysts, Goldman executives said some of the boom had come because the firm increased its share of trading activity on behalf of the market’s 1,000 biggest money managers and other active traders who give business to Wall Street.

Goldman’s asset-management operations benefited from a rally in stock prices as well. A rise in the value of its positions in companies like the online commerce platform BigCommerce (up more than 40% since its shares began trading in August) and the medical equipment maker Avantor (up nearly 30% this year) helped the division generate 71% more revenue.

But it was not just Goldman that benefited. Bank of America’s investment banking business had the second-best performance in its history in the third quarter, trailing only this year’s second quarter, according to the bank’s chief financial officer.

At JPMorgan Chase, trading revenue rose 21% and investment banking revenue 52% from a year earlier.

Customers Are Hanging On Steeling themselves for widespread defaults by customers

unable to pay credit-card, home-loan or other debts because of the pandemic, the biggest banks have sent vast sums of cash into special pools they will draw from to cover losses in the future.

But in general, the banks say, their customers are doing better than they expected.

The reason? Bank officials pointed to the trillions of dollars the federal government has distributed in the form of enhanced unemployment benefits, forgivable small-business loans and other programs created this spring by the CARES Act. “Recent economic data has been more constructive than we would have expected earlier this year,” JPMorgan’s chief financial officer, Jennifer Piepszak, said on a call with journalists Tuesday. “Overall, consumer customers are holding up well.

They have built savings relative to pre-COVID levels and, at the same time, lower debt balances.”

This quarter, the banks each set aside less money than in previous quarters to prepare for losses. Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase said their credit-card customers were making their payments again.

The bank with the most strained customers seems to be Wells Fargo, which said it had spent nearly $1 billion trying to help customers who were struggling to repay their loans come up with new payment plans to keep them from defaulting. Even so, the bank said, its borrowers are less likely to fall behind now than they were earlier this year.

More Stimulus? Don’t Count on It While government relief programs have prevented serious problems in the financial sector, none of the banks are banking on more stimulus.

In their economic forecasting, each bank takes a range of possible outcomes into account, from better than expected to doomsday. On Wednesday, Bank of America’s chief financial officer, Paul Donofrio, said just one of the scenarios it was looking at might contain more stimulus money. And that model is based on a consensus of various Wall Street economists’ forecasts; the bank’s own internal models aren’t counting on further relief.

JPMorgan’s economic forecast accounts for the effects of a government stimulus package only until the end of 2020. No more stimulus is built into its models for 2021.

The bank’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, and his peers have all pointed out that the industry is grappling with a great deal of uncertainty about the future. JPMorgan might be overprepared if the economy fares better than expected — but a worstcase scenario could still expose the bank to heavy losses.

Although his bank is not expecting further federal relief next year, Dimon said another round of stimulus would be important.

“There are still 12 million people unemployed. There is still a lot of pain and suffering. There are still a lot of small businesses that need help,” he said.

Indeed, calls for more government aid to struggling businesses are growing, even as an impasse in Washington seems unlikely to end as Election Day draws near.

On Wednesday, a former Goldman Sachs executive, Gary Cohn — who served for a year as President Donald Trump’s economic adviser — urged lawmakers to get a deal done quickly.

“This isn’t a matter of politics, this is a matter of protecting our economy as we know it,” Cohn wrote on Twitter.

The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

13 Stocks

Wall Street drops after surprise rise in jobless claims, stimulus impasse

U

.S. stocks dropped on Thursday as an unexpected rise in weekly jobless claims compounded fears of a stalling economic recovery against the backdrop of dimming hopes for more fiscal aid before the election.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits totaled a seasonally adjusted 898,000 for the week ended Oct. 10, compared to 845,000 in the prior week, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 825,000 applications in the latest week.

A separate report showed manufacturing activity in New York State fell more than expected in October.

“Going into the fall it will be difficult for unemployment to make a lot of positive headway because of the lack of stimulus,” said Christopher C. Grisanti, chief equity strategist, MAI Capital Management in Cleveland.

A day after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said a deal on more federal aid was unlikely before the Nov. 3 presidential election, President Donald Trump said there was still a chance.

The CBOE volatility index, investors’ fear gauge, hit a one-week high and Wall Street’s indexes fell for the third straight day. The S&P 500 is now nearly 4% below its intraday record high hit on Sept. 2, after rising to within 1% of that level earlier this week.

With less than 20 days to Election Day, Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden will hold dueling primetime town halls on Thursday instead of their second presidential debate, which was canceled after Trump declined to take part in a virtual matchup.

Focus is also on the quarterly results for corporate America, with expectations for third-quarter earnings improving to an 18.8% drop from a 25.0% tumble forecast on July 1, according to Refinitiv IBES data.

Morgan Stanley edged 1.5% higher after it beat thirdquarter profit estimates, winding up mixed results from major U.S. lenders. The earnings reports saw those focused on trading clocking big gains, while retail banks took a hit from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Financial stocks added 0.2%, while communication services and technology shares posted the steepest losses among S&P sectors. At 12:35 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 140.43 points, or 0.49%, at 28,373.57, the S&P 500 was down 27.98 points, or 0.80%, at 3,460.69. The Nasdaq Composite was down 151.04 points, or 1.28%, at 11,617.69.

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc gained 2.7% as the drugstore chain forecast profit to grow in single digits in 2021 after reporting a better-than-expected fourth-quarter profit.

The S&P 1500 airlines index shed 2.2% as United Airlines reported a 78% drop in quarterly revenue.

Shares of drug developer Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc sank 20.2% after it discontinued its trial of a protein deficiency disorder treatment.

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14

October 16-18, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Trump thought he had a nuclear deal with Putin. Not so fast, Russia said.

President Donald Trump meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia during the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, June 28, 2019. Trump administration officials want to broaden the New START accord and warn that the price of a new deal will rise after the election — Joe Biden supports a straight five-year extension of the deal.

By DAVID E. SANGER and ANDREW KRAMER

P

resident Donald Trump had a preelection plan to show he had gotten something out of his mysteriously friendly relationship with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

In the weeks before the election, the two men would announce that they had reached an agreement in principle to extend New START, the last remaining major arms control agreement between the two countries. It expires Feb. 5, two weeks after the next presidential inauguration.

Trump has long refused to sign off on a clean five-year extension of the agreement, a step that both leaders could take without Senate approval. He has described the Obama-era treaty as deeply flawed — the same thing he said about the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Iran nuclear accord — because it did not cover all of Russia’s nuclear arms or any of China’s.

But if Putin is really rooting for Trump to be reelected, he is not acting like it.

On Tuesday, Marshall Billingslea, Trump’s lead negotiator, announced that the two leaders had an “agreement in principle,

at the highest levels of our two governments, to extend the treaty.” Billingslea described an added “gentleman’s agreement” to cap each country’s stockpile of weapons not currently deployed on missiles, submarines or bombers. Details needed to be worked out, he cautioned, including the tricky work of verifying compliance.

It sounded like a promising solution, for a few hours.

Then the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov, shot back that this was a figment of someone’s election-season imagination.

“Washington is describing what is desired, not what is real,” he said in a statement.

For example, he said, Moscow would not freeze the number of tactical weapons it possesses.

With less than three weeks to Election Day, it seems that no agreement is in the offing, and Trump administration officials are saying that, after the election, the price will go up. Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee who was involved in the negotiation of the original agreement in 2010, has indicated that, if elected, he will agree to a straightforward, immediate exten-

sion of the accord for five years, the maximum allowed under the current terms, and then work to expand its scope.

As a result, Putin, looking at the polls, may be calculating that there is no reason to agree to any additional limits. But it also suggests that despite the CIA’s conclusion that the Russian leader has a preference for Trump, Putin may also be hedging his bets — or betting that Trump will be a private citizen by the time the treaty runs out.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tried to put the best face on the Russian rejection.

“I am hopeful that the Russians will find a way to agree to an outcome that, frankly, I think is in their best interest,” he said at a news conference at the State Department.

But Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, joined the Kremlin’s dismissal of prospects for an agreement before the election, saying that the Trump administration’s one-sided announcement of a nuclear limitation deal was an “unclean” diplomatic maneuver.

It was not the first time that Putin, who worked so hard on Trump’s behalf in 2016, has shown possible signs of backing away from the president.

Earlier this month, he hinted in an interview with state television at an effort to reach out to Democrats. While his goals were unclear, and with U.S. officials cautioning that Russian disinformation may be at work, Putin spoke warmly of the Democratic Party and suggested that he could work with Biden on arms control.

Analysts in Russia saw in the rejection of a preelection nuclear deal the Kremlin preparing the ground in case Trump loses.

“As the chances of a Trump reelection are increasingly remote,” Pavel Felgenhauer, a military commentator for the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper, said in a telephone interview, “why should we bend over backward?”

Putin’s position all year has been that the New START agreement, which limits both countries to 1,550 deployed nuclear weapons, should be extended for five years.

But there are no limits on stockpiled weapons, which are essentially in storage. And that is why fears of a resumed arms race

have arisen, as the United States and Russia move to improve their arsenals with new, more sophisticated weapons.

Putin has taken pride in developing new weapons, some of which have apparently run into trouble in testing, leading to a major accident in the summer of 2019. The current strategic arms treaty does not limit such work — or put limits on tactical weapons.

Trump has pulled out of a series of arms control treaties, including the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, widely known as the INF. And now Russia has no incentive to negotiate on tactical warheads, which it has preserved and expanded in recent decades while the United States abolished most of its arsenal, save for small numbers stored around Europe.

China was not a party to either New START or the INF, and Trump has argued that the treaties need to be updated to account for Beijing’s arms buildup. But the Chinese counter that they have around 300 nuclear weapons deployed — a fifth of the number that Russia and the United States are limited to under the treaty — and that they would have no interest in any restrictions. Some Chinese officials, somewhat facetiously, have suggested that Trump’s initiative could lead them to quintuple their arsenal and then enter into arms control talks.

On Beijing entering into nuclear arms talks, Pompeo expressed hopes Wednesday “that the Chinese Communist Party will come to see that this is how mature nations deal with these issues,” but he acknowledged that Chinese leaders have “refused to join the conversation.”

Biden’s advisers say nothing is wrong with the idea of bringing China into arms control agreements. But they have said that abandoning New START in a failing effort to accomplish that goal would only destroy the last remaining significant limits on deployed nuclear weapons.

If Biden wins, it is possible Russia could get what it wants, a straightforward extension before the February expiration, in a quick deal immediately after a Biden inauguration.

“If we don’t take Trump’s proposal now, it doesn’t mean we lose New START,” Felgenhauer said.

The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

15

As motorcade rolls by, Thai royal family glimpses the people’s discontent

By HANNAH BEECH and MUKITA SUHARTONO

T

he cream-colored stretch Rolls-Royce limousine crawled past the angry crowds. The queen of Thailand smiled.

But what Queen Suthida Vajiralongkorn Na Ayudhya saw Wednesday, on a stately road in Bangkok, may have been sobering.

Anti-government protesters yelled “my taxes!,” referring to their personal contributions to royal coffers. The police held them back but could not hide the demonstrators’ defiant salutes.

For months now, pro-democracy protesters have gathered by the thousands to call for reforms to the monarchy and military, influential institutions that have dominated Thailand’s power structure for decades.

But the royal limousine’s route Wednesday was the first time that members of the nuclear royal family had gotten such a close look at the faces of Thais who are openly questioning the monarchy’s exalted position in the country. Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun and some of his immediate family — the queen, who is his fourth wife, and his youngest son, the heir apparent — live most of the year in Germany.

By Thursday morning, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha of Thailand, a retired general, had ordered riot police to clear the protesters from their rally site near his offices at Government House, where they had camped out overnight calling for his removal.

Officials imposed an emergency decree in Bangkok, and gatherings of five or more people were not permitted. The decree also banned news or online content that “could create fear or intentionally distort information” by compromising national security or damaging peace and order.

The government of Prayuth, who came to power in a 2014 military coup, was also given purview to declare any area off-limits to potential demonstrators. The protesters have vowed to regroup Thursday afternoon in a busy shopping district.

The simple act of a royal motorcade driving near an anti-government protest, and the swift crackdown that followed, might not seem a watershed moment. But Thailand is

no ordinary constitutional monarchy. It is bound by some of the world’s strictest lèsemajesté laws criminalizing criticism of the crown. During public occasions, Thais are expected to stand for an anthem praising some of the richest royals on the planet.

When politicians are given an audience with the king, they typically prostrate themselves and crawl forward in a sideways slither.

But as the protest movement has strengthened over the past three months, taboos surrounding the monarchy have fallen in rapid succession. In Parliament, opposition legislators are demanding an investigation of royal budgets. (After his father’s death in 2016, King Maha Vajiralongkorn took personal control of the crown’s assets.)

In cinemas, people no longer feel obliged to stand for a photo montage of the king that precedes each screening.

And protesters, old and young alike, have demanded that the 10th king of the Chakri Dynasty, who was formally crowned last year with a 16-pound Great Crown of Victory, not be positioned above the country’s constitution.

“We are going to fight for democracy, fight for freedom, fight for the equality of us as human beings,” a protest leader popularly known as Justin Samutprakan said Wednesday. “We will not bow, prostrate, crawl ever again.”

“As humans, no one is bigger than anyone,” he added. “No one has power more than others.”

Dozens of protest leaders, many students, have been arrested in recent weeks and charged with crimes like sedition that carry imprisonment for up to seven years.

Early Thursday, at least three protest leaders, Arnon Nampa, Parit Chirawat and Panupong Jadnok, were arrested, according to the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights group. Each had been arrested before.

The rally Wednesday also brought out large numbers of royalist counterprotesters in yellow shirts symbolizing their loyalty to the king. Some had the matching buzz cuts often worn by members of the security forces, suggesting that their defense of the Thai crown was an official duty rather than a personal mission.

As the crowds for both sides swelled Wednesday, some people in a country conditioned to regular bouts of political

violence feared that clashes might break out. But aside from a few scuffles, the anti-government rally, which pushed past barricades to march toward Government House, was peaceful.

Before the police swept away the protesters Thursday, the protesters had planned to stay on the streets for at least three days.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn is now back in Bangkok for weeks, a rarity for a monarch who normally spends no more than a couple of days in the country he reigns over.

Street protests have regularly gripped Thailand over the past two decades. The security crackdowns on some of those mass rallies have been bloody, with dozens of people killed. Over the past few years, outspoken dissidents who fled overseas after criticizing the monarchy and the military have disappeared. Some of their bodies have washed up with obvious signs of foul play.

“Thailand’s international friends should call on the government to stop arresting peaceful protesters, listen to their views, and allow them to freely and safely express their visions for the future,” Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

The security presence Wednesday was formidable. About 15,000 police were

dispatched to the protest area near Democracy Monument, built to commemorate the end of absolute monarchy in 1932. Public buses were parked to block the path toward Government House.

Thai political history is littered with army coups that have nullified the results of national elections. The junta leaders that conceived of the past two putsches justified their actions as necessary to protect the monarchy from naysayers. The last coup, in 2014, was followed by the passage of an army-drafted Constitution that has eroded democratic institutions further. The Senate, for instance, is now entirely appointed.

The protesters have called for a new charter and for fresh elections, after a national vote last year that was dismissed by some international observers as neither free nor fair.

“We have been imprisoned in a special prison called Thailand for a long time,” said Attapon Buapat, another protest speaker.

The protest movement has woven together disparate strands of dissatisfaction, ranging from frustration with school uniform rules to anger at the lavish lifestyle of the king at a time when a coronavirus ban on international tourism has hit Thailand’s economy hard.

Anti-government protesters, some raising a three finger salute, a reference from the “Hunger Games” movies that has become a symbol of antigovernment defiance, during a march from Democracy Monument to Government House in Bangkok on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020.

16

October 16-18, 2020

From hiding, head of central Asia’s only Democracy says he’s quitting

By ANDREW HIGGINS

A

fter more than a week in hiding following a disputed election, the president of Kyrgyzstan — Central Asia’s only democracy — on Thursday announced his plans to resign, saying that he did not want to go down in history as a leader “who shed blood and shot at his own citizens.”

In a statement issued from an undisclosed location, the president, Sooronbai Jeenbekov, said he had “taken a decision to resign,” although he did not specify whether he had already quit.

Jeenbekov vanished from view after protesters, enraged

by Oct. 4 parliamentary elections that were marred by widespread vote-buying, stormed the president’s office and other government buildings in the capital, Bishkek. He was rumored to have taken refuge in a Russian military air base in the town of Kant, about 12 miles from Bishkek, but his exact whereabouts remained unclear.

His departure is the third time in 15 years that violent protests have toppled a president of Kyrgyzstan, the only country in the region with a vibrant civil society, a relatively free press and regular competitive elections for Parliament and the presidency.

The Kremlin, which in 2010 helped engineer the toppling of a Kyrgyz president who had resisted Russian pressure to shut down a since-closed U.S. air base in his country, responded

coolly to the announcement Thursday. Jeenbekov has had good relations with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Russia is watching the events in Bishkek “very closely,” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, told journalists in Moscow, and wants “the situation there to calm down as soon as possible.”

But he added that Russia, which suspended financial aid to Kyrgyzstan after last week’s unrest, would not resume funding until the country has a functioning government. He noted that it currently has no cabinet and that the president’s resignation cannot not take effect until approved by Parliament.

With the president apparently out of the way, his role as head of state — and commander in chief of the armed forces — will be taken by the speaker of Parliament, who has also come under mounting pressure to resign.

In what is formally a parliamentary democracy, however, the governing of Kyrgyzstan falls to Sadyr Japarov, a convicted kidnapper who was sprung from jail last week by antigovernment protesters. He was named prime minister Saturday by lawmakers who gathered for an unusual and, his opponents say, illegal session without a quorum at the president’s official residence.

In announcing his resignation, Jeenbekov, who last week ordered troops into the capital to restore order, called on Japarov and rival politicians to “withdraw their supporters from the

capital and give back a peaceful life to the people of Bishkek.”

Hundreds of protesters — some of them Japarov’s supporters, but also a group that included men whom observers in Bishkek described as paid thugs linked to criminal groups — gathered outside the president’s official residence Thursday to demand that Jeenbekov give up the presidency.

A group of Japarov’s followers, mostly young men, clashed violently last week with supporters of another would-be prime minister. Since that confrontation, there have been growing fears that Japarov, reviled by his critics as a bare-knuckled nationalist rabble-rouser, would again mobilize his followers if the president did not step down.

Jeenbekov, who was elected in 2017, had said that he would leave office once calm returned to the capital, which has in recent days been free of the turmoil that engulfed it last week.

Japarov, the new prime minister, has long insisted that his 2017 conviction on charges of organizing the kidnapping of a regional governor was politically motivated in a country where each new government has often jailed members of the previous one and rival politicians. Jeenbekov had his presidential predecessor, Almazbek Atambayev, arrested and jailed on corruption charges soon after taking office.

Atambayev, who was serving an 11-year sentence, was among those sprung from jail last week, along with Japarov, the new prime minister. He was rearrested Saturday.

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The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

17

What happens when COVID-19 meets toxic air? India is about to find out A

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and HARI KUMAR

s a thick quilt of smog wrapped itself around New Delhi on Thursday, signaling the start of the fall pollution season, doctors and scientists warned that the deteriorating air quality could make the city’s COVID-19 problems even worse.

One of the most common symptoms of severe coronavirus cases is breathing difficulty.

And doctors say that if the ambient air suddenly becomes more toxic, as it does every year around this time in northern India, then more people who become infected by the virus might end up in the hospital or die.

“If two people are shooting at the lungs, then obviously the lungs will have more problems,” said Arvind Kumar, a chest surgeon and founder of the Lung Care Foundation in New Delhi, a group that raises awareness about respiratory problems.

India is now struggling with two major health challenges that are both assaulting the respiratory system and peaking at the same time.

Coronavirus cases are spreading far and wide, putting the country on track to have the largest reported virus caseload in the coming weeks. With 7.3 million reported infections, it is just behind the United States’ 7.9 million. And each day, India outpaces the United States in new infections by around 10,000 more cases per day, even as India’s death rate remains much lower.

In the background is India’s vexing air pollution, which shoots up in the fall and winter. The rapid economic growth of the past two decades — and along with it, increased urbanization and congestion — has left Indian cities horribly polluted.

Last year, India was once again home to 14 of the 20 cities with the most hazardous air globally, and health experts have detailed how such conditions can lead to brain damage, respiratory problems and early death.

In the fall, air temperatures and wind speeds drop, condensing pollutants over India’s cities, especially in the north. And farmers in the surrounding rural areas burn the stalks and refuse from their crop, sending up huge clouds of black smoke that drift for miles.

This year there have been five times the number of farm refuse fires in northern India as the same period last year, and experts say it is a bad sign of what’s to come.

The agricultural sector has been a rare bright spot an Indian economy that has been shattered by the pandemic, and pollution experts fear that more farming will mean more burning.

“My gut is it’s going to be a bumper, bumper harvest and a bumper, bumper combustion event, probably the biggest of our lifetime,” said Jai Dhar

Jogging along Rajpath, a ceremonial avenue at New Delhi’s heart, on Thursday.

Gupta, an Ivy League-educated environmental activist and entrepreneur.

“And now that you’ve got the combined impact of a respiratory virus and respiratory contaminants, every public health specialist is holding their breath to see what happens,” Gupta said.

“We’re just sitting ducks.”

Doctors say long-term exposure to severely polluted air can cause chronic lung inflammation, which can leave people who are exposed to the coronavirus more vulnerable. A recent study from Italy found a correlation between long-term exposure to dirty air and an increase in excess mortality — a measure of deaths above normal — from the coronavirus.

“Pollution-afflicted areas will have a higher incidence of COVID,” said Kumar, the chest surgeon. “And once this population gets COVID, they then have a higher chance of mortality.”

Up until now, people in New Delhi this year had been spoiled in terms of breathable air. When a coronavirus lockdown in the spring shut down many industries and kept cars off the road, Delhi’s skies turned a miraculous blue. It was the cleanest air in decades, and at night, residents felt as if they were being treated to a star show. Constellations that hadn’t been seen for years shone above the apartment blocks.

But that has become a dim memory. The sky is back to its usual hazy brown, and the city now smells of smoke.

The Delhi government is doing more this year to fight pollution, including setting up a war room to track pollution hot spots and turning to anti-smog guns that blast mist into the air to knock down the dust.

On Thursday, officials in Delhi, which is controlled by a progressive opposition political

party, got locked into a blame game with national politicians who are part of the right-leaning ad-

ministration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Delhi officials blamed the Modi government for not doing enough to stop crop burning in the states that ring the capital. Modi administration officials argued that crop burning contributed only a minuscule amount to overall air pollution, and they blamed the Delhi government for not doing enough to control dust.

Many more people in India’s cities are donning masks these days because of the pandemic, but experts say this probably won’t help much.

Most people wear cloth masks or surgicaltype masks that don’t seal well and won’t stop someone from inhaling small pollution particles (or the virus, either).

Pollution alerts whizzed around the city via WhatsApp messages Thursday.

“Delhi pollution level reported hazardous.

335,” read one message, referring to an Air Quality Index reading of 335, about six times as bad as that of New York City.

The message continued: “Be Careful. Seniors don’t go out. Wear mask.”

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October 16-18, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Bye-bye, Lindsey Graham? Jaime Harrison chases a Democratic dream

By FRANK BRUNI

I

t was a bit of news that came and went quickly amid the fury of political developments these days, but last weekend Jaime Harrison, the South Carolina Democrat who is fighting to unseat Lindsey Graham, announced that he had not merely broken the record for fundraising for a Senate candidate in a single quarter. He had shattered it.

From July through September, Harrison took in about $57 million. That was nearly $20 million more than Beto O’Rourke, the previous record-holder, collected during the same span two years ago, when he waged his ultimately unsuccessful battle against Ted Cruz in Texas.

“I pinch myself,” Harrison said when I spoke with him on Tuesday night. “Good Lord.”

He’s the recipient of so much money because he’s the vessel of so much hope.

While he may not have the nationwide celebrity that O’Rourke attained in 2018 and South Carolina is much smaller than Texas, the themes in Harrison’s challenge of Graham are as big as can be.

No other political contest in 2020 offers quite the same referendum on the ugliness of Donald Trump’s presidency. No victory would rebut Trump’s vision of America as emphatically and powerfully as Harrison’s would.

Harrison would be the first Black Democrat to be elected to the Senate from the Deep South. The only Black Republican in the Senate, Tim Scott, is also from South Carolina. So South Carolina — where about 40% of the enslaved Africans brought to North Ameri-

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breathtaking inconstancy.

He once vowed that he’d never consider, let alone promote, a Supreme Court nominee put forward in the last year of a president’s term, telling journalists to mark his words and use them against him if the need ever arose. The need sure did.

He once railed that the way to make America great again was to “tell Donald Trump to go to hell.” Now he’s Trump’s adoring golf buddy. Does that mean Graham is a fairway-weather friend? It certainly means that his convictions have all the weight of whipped cream.

One of the main storylines of the Trump years has been the spectacular moral capitulation of most Republican lawmakers, who A win by Jaime Harrison would be “the most thorough re- junked supposedly cherished principles to placate a president whobuke of Trumpism that we’ve seen. se hold on his base and capacity for vengeance mattered more to them than honor, than patriotism, than basic decency. Graham is ca arrived, where the Civil War began and where a 21-year-old whi- the poster boy of that surrender, Complicitus Maximus, in part bete supremacist named Dylann Roof killed nine Black churchgoers in cause his 180-degree turn to Trump required that he show his back their house of worship in 2015 — would have two Black senators to his close friend and onetime hero John McCain. and would be the only state with an all-Black Senate delegation.

Graham’s defeat by Harrison would be more than a persoHow’s that for an answer to Trump’s racism and for a stirringly nal comeuppance. It would be a morality play. And so, just as the inspirational turning of the page? unprecedented contributions to O’Rourke owed plenty to the nastiHarrison noted that the Senate seat that he is seeking was ness of Cruz, the even bigger contributions to Harrison speak to the once held by John C. Calhoun, an infamous defender of slavery. noxiousness of Graham.

“This was the seat of Benjamin Tillman, who would go to the floor “Lindsey Graham is, next to Mitch McConnell, the most atand talk about the joys of lynching,” he added. “This was the seat of tractive target for the left to take down,” Todd Shaw, an associate Strom Thurmond,” who took a leading role in opposing civil rights professor of African American studies and political science at the legislation.

University of South Carolina, told me.

Harrison, 44, rose from a mobile home to college at Yale, law Harrison conceded that a significant measure of his traction school at Georgetown and the distinction of being the first Black in this race is attributable to “the fever about Lindsey Graham,” who chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. He also worked personifies what voters dislike most about politicians. “So many for Rep. James Clyburn, the South Carolina lawmaker who played people thought so highly of him, and to have him betray that trust a key role in salvaging Joe Biden’s beleaguered presidential bid by has added an extra layer of passion,” Harrison said. rallying Black voters to the former vice president.

He added: “The country is simply tired of being divided.

South Carolina turned Biden’s campaign around. Is it about to They’re tired of the chaos. They’re tired of the racialized rhetoric. set the national tone again?

One of the things I say, tongue-in-cheek, is that we need a national “If Jaime is to win, then this is the most thorough rebuke of holiday after this election so that all of us can sit on a counselor’s Trumpism that we’ve seen,” Bakari Sellers, a former state legislator couch for a few hours. We all just need that reprieve.” in South Carolina, told me. “It also restores a lot of people’s faith in Jessica Taylor, who analyzes Senate races for the nonpartithe basic humanity of this country.” san Cook Political Report, told me that Graham’s predicament was And it’s no pipe dream. While I wouldn’t bet on a Harrison neatly illustrated by a surprising recent development: “He started victory — not in a state that Trump won by 14 points in 2016 and running a biography ad this past weekend.” That suggests that he’s that still seems to be safely in his column — some political handi- concerned about his likability and needs to reintroduce himself to cappers now consider the Harrison-Graham race a tossup. Several his constituents. “That’s not the kind of ad you run if you’ve been in recent polls show the men effectively tied. Harrison’s financial ad- Congress for 25 years,” Taylor said. vantage is overwhelming. And he has been able to blanket the state Like other prominent political analysts, she favors Demoin ads — excellent ones at that — while Graham has struggled to crats, who are currently at a three-seat disadvantage, to regain keep up. control of the Senate. She gives them the clear edge to defeat Harrison said that while Graham hasn’t done a traditional, Republican incumbents in Colorado and Arizona, and she in-person town hall with voters in South Carolina in years, “You can puts seven other races with Republican incumbents, including find him on Sean Hannity every other night begging for money.”

Harrison’s, in the tossup category.

Graham craved this week’s hearings on Trump’s Supreme One of those races, in Georgia, also involves a Black DemoCourt nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, because, as chairman of cratic challenger, Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer the Senate Judiciary Committee, he’s getting oodles of free tele- Baptist Church in Atlanta. He’s trying to unseat Sen. Kelly Loeffler, vision exposure just when he needs it. He’s surely also betting and if both he and Harrison were to win, there would be two pothat his role in elevating another conservative justice will please pularly elected Black Democratic senators from the Deep South, many South Carolina voters and shift their attention from his where there had never been any before.

The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

19

Completan impresión de papeletas para las elecciones generales y el plebiscito Por THE STAR

L

a Comisión Estatal de Elecciones (CEE), informó que el jueves que la empresa Printech haría entrega de la totalidad de las papeletas oficiales para las Elecciones Generales y el Plebiscito del 3 de noviembre.

“Poder completar este proceso once días antes de la fecha establecida en nuestro calendario,

reitera el compromiso de la Comisión con el electorado y el pueblo puertorriqueño”, resaltó el presidente de la CEE, Francisco Rosado Colomer en comunicación escrita.

José Santana, gerente de la planta de Printech, informó que la impresión de las 11.8 millones de papeletas concluyó antes de la fecha prevista, y estas serán entregadas hoy a la CEE.

Salvatore Anello hace alegación de culpabilidad por homicidio negligente de la menor Chloe Wiegand Por THE STAR

L

a Juez Gisela Alfonso Fernández del Tribunal de Primera Instancia de San Juan acogió el jueves la alegación de culpabilidad de Salvatore Anello, por el delito de homicidio negligente, Artículo 96 del Código Penal de Puerto Rico.

Así́ lo dieron a conocer la secretaria interina del Departamento de Justicia, Inés del C. Carrau Martínez y la fiscal de Distrito Interina de la Fiscalía de San Juan, María Hernández Medina.

Las fiscales Ivette Nieves Cordero y Laura Hernández Gutiérrez estuvieron a cargo de la investigación en coordinación con el agente Carlos Claudio La Santa del CIC de San Juan del Negociado de la Policía de Puerto Rico.

Los hechos ocurrieron el 7 de julio de 2019 mientras la embarcación Freedom of the Seas estaba anclada en el muelle Panamericano II en San Juan. El imputado Salvatore Anello, expuso negligentemente al vacío, por una de las ventanas del piso 11 de la embarcación a una menor de 1 año y 7 meses. Este acto provocó que la menor cayera al cemento del muelle Panameri-

cano II, desde una altura de 115 pies, lo que le causó la muerte en el acto.

La juez Alfonso Fernández refirió al convicto

al Programa de la Comunidad Metropolitana para la investigación que corresponde previo al dictamen de sentencia.

20

October 16-18, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Actress Angela Meyer commits to making the arts in San Juan shine again as a municipal assemblywoman

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

A

fter a lifetime of working as a performer on various stages in Puerto Rico, the United States, Latin America and Europe; working on television programs on the island with stars such as Luis Vigoreaux, Jacobo Morales, and friend Sandra Zaiter; and contributing as Bayamón’s cultural and educational affairs executive assistant for almost 20 years, actress Angela Meyer is retiring from the stage to contribute as a municipal assemblywoman for New Progressive Party (NPP) candidate for San Juan mayor Miguel Romero to revive the arts scene in the capital city.

“Theater has been my life, to the extreme that, whenever there’s a hurricane warning, my instinct tells me to run to a stage. It’s what I can recognize as a safe space in my life,” Meyer told the Star on Thursday.

Meyer noted that after Romero, who she has known for years since he was the Labor and Human Resources secretary in former NPP Gov. Luis Fortuño’s administration, presented his cultural platform to her, she saw a glimmer of hope. She called the platform “exceptional because he breaks things down by need within a municipality that is bankrupt” by proposing the development of a municipal theater company that focuses on creating educational and social awareness, as well as children’s productions. Inspired, she decided to fully embrace her new job, which she would be doing without pay as municipal assembly members are not permitted to work as public officials in other government entities.

Meyer said that such a project could be possible after determining that the city could obtain funds from the National Endowment for the Arts “to not erode the amount of income that is available today for the city of San Juan to make this possible.”

“The company would help bring theater to neighborhoods and barrios, where it would handle topics that the audiences confront in their daily lives, such as education on what is violence against women and against children, teenage pregnancy, addiction. … There are so many social issues that we could tackle,” she said. “He presented such an excellent project, and

“Theater has been my life, to the extreme that, whenever there’s a hurricane warning, my instinct tells me to run to a stage. It’s what I can recognize as a safe space in my life,” Meyer told the Star on Thursday.

the company would be led by educators, artists, a member of the municipal police, officials from the municipal Department of Family office, and personnel from the Department of Justice so that if you feel you identify with the issues or if you’re currently going through something that is being presented, you wouldn’t just sit down and watch, but it could tell you what laws protect you and where to go whenever you need help as we would have professionals on hand who would inform our audience members.”

Meanwhile, the 73-year-old performer said some of the other proposals in Romero’s cultural platform include developing entertainment events and workshops for the elder community at the San Juan Municipal Museum; monthly children’s events at Luis Muñoz Marín Municipal Park to promote puppet theater, musical retreats, and outdoor activities; and cultural events to incentivize and promote street performance from Plaza de Armas to Plaza San José in Old San Juan.

“I noticed that every proposal from every mayor would always focus on tourism -- let’s do this route of whatever, let’s lift up tourism -- and I said: ‘But where is your cultural platform?’ Where is something that doesn’t have to do with tourism? Where is that something that shows the importance of artistic activity that is not only for our tourists, but also to develop an industry where we could live from performing?” Meyer said. “Through this pandemic, I learned that the last thing we give thought to is our artists,” she added. “There has been no project for the industry; we had to reinvent by ourselves, as we had to delve into virtual platforms. No one called us to ask us how we could be useful amid the pandemic.”

Meyer, who is the granddaughter of famed magician Richardine and daughter of actress Margot Debén, told the Star that she is committed to using her life experiences to “make the arts in San Juan shine, to have a reason and purpose again.”

Likewise, another project that moved her was to revitalize the Teatro Tapia to incentivize performing arts once again amid the COVID-19 pandemic by providing producers access to the venue at no cost.

“At this age that I have, there’s a moment in your life that you have to begin, in some way, to give back to people all they gave you. I have had a long career that many have always supported. Every time I had a TV program, people would watch it. I was able to support myself through the arts as both my main and second job thanks to the people,” Meyer said. “I had the luxury to do two things, perform and work as a counselor, as I was able to give a smile back to those who entered my office without any hope to live due to having a terminal illness, and when you are able to hold their hands and listen to them, I feel like I got a standing ovation whenever I was able to help others. If I could help the same way I did back when I was in Bayamón through the arts and culture

in all its manifestations, I will do it with so much love.”

Asked for a response about the future of the Puerto Rico Corporation for Public Broadcasting (known as WIPR by its Federal Communications Commission call sign), as WIPR has both the Lucy Boscana Dramatic Workshop and the Radio Dramatic Workshop, Meyer said she hopes the current administration will keep fighting to keep the corporation public because there are many things that it is well suited to work for.

“WIPR is important. WIPR is the official voice of the country. It was a disgrace when we lost funding from the Public Broadcasting System that provided aid to keep cultural programs alive,” she said.

“It would have been amazing if we were able to produce programs for the system to teach Latino minorities, which are now an important population in the United States, to help them understand and learn their culture.”

The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

21

Yes, there will be an Oscar season. But what will it look like?

By KYLE BUCHANAN

I

t’s a big achievement to win an Oscar. But in 2021, it may be an even bigger achievement just to stage them.

We’re now nearing the end of a disastrous movie year in which the release calendar has melted before our eyes and theaters have been left in dire straits because of a still-raging pandemic. This is not exactly “Hooray for Hollywood” material, but Oscar season has begun anyway, albeit with new rules that allow for streamingservice debuts and a ceremony that has been pushed two months past its usual date to April 25.

Who will be nominated, elected or vaccinated by then? It would be a tall order to forecast all three of those fraught outcomes, so let’s just stick with the Oscars. Here are four ways I expect Hollywood’s hallowed gantlet to play out during the most unusual period of our lives: 1. Big-budget movies will be scarce.

In the face of dwindling broadcast ratings, ABC has prodded the academy for category tweaks that will allow more blockbusters to be featured. Still, with the box office curtailed since March, bona fide hits will be few and far between.

Major potential contenders like “West Side Story” and “Dune” have already been shuttled to 2021, and even some of the starriest specialty titles, like Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch,” have opted to sit out the season entirely instead of pivoting to a digital debut. Universal is so far holding fast to a Christmas Day theatrical release for its Tom Hanks western, “News of the World,” from “Captain Phillips” director Paul Greengrass, but another big release earmarked for that holiday, “Wonder Woman 1984,” is widely expected to fly to 2021.

All that big-studio scarcity could create an opening for Pixar’s “Soul,” which was plucked from the theatrical calendar and recommissioned for a debut on Disney+ in December. With a diminished field of would-be blockbusters to choose from, “Soul” may sneak in and become the first animated film nominated for best picture since “Toy Story 3” in 2011.

2. Major categories could be more diverse than ever.

The academy recently introduced new diversity guidelines meant to encourage more equitable representation behind and in front of the camera. Although the guidelines aren’t set to take effect until 2024, this year’s nominees could already make good on those goals.

The best-director category, regularly criticized for its lack of female nominees, has a wealth of strong options this year. Contenders like Chloé Zhao, who directed the Frances McDormand road drama “Nomadland” (due in December), and Regina King, a recent supporting-actress winner who stepped behind the camera to adapt the play “One Night in Miami ...” (also December), could even become the first women of color to ever be nominated for the bestdirector Oscar.

And a repeat of #OscarsSoWhite in the four acting races ought to be avoided thanks to a strong slate of Black-led ensemble dramas.

In addition to “One Night in Miami ...” and Spike Lee’s Vietnam drama “Da 5 Bloods,” both of which could produce multiple nominees in the male categories, there are three splashy films coming that are focused on Black female singers and may all factor into the bestactress race: “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” starring Viola Davis; “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” with Andra Day as the jazz singer; and “Respect,” with Jennifer Hudson playing Aretha Franklin.

Viola Davis could factor into the best-actress race for her role in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”

3. Netflix will gain more ground.

Don’t expect a full slate of titles from hot distributors like A24, Neon and Searchlight: With moviegoing still a dicey proposition during the pandemic and production calendars largely stalled, smaller studios have mostly elected to keep their powder dry.

Among titles still to be released, A24 will mount a push for the moving immigrant drama “Minari,” which won pre-pandemic plaudits at the Sundance Film Festival in January, but the studio’s Joaquin Phoenix vehicle “C’mon C’mon,” once eyed for a late-2020 debut, won’t be seen until next year. Similarly, Searchlight’s “Nomadland” and Neon’s Kate Winslet-Saoirse Ronan romance “Ammonite” will serve as their distributors’ main hope to score multiple nominations, even as other enticing options may be kept in reserve for 2021.

Meanwhile, the theatrically unfettered Netflix will try to gobble up even more best-picture nominations than the three it managed last year. In addition to “Da 5 Bloods” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (featuring an Oscar-worthy Chadwick Boseman performance), Netflix will push David Fincher’s forthcoming black-and-white Hollywood tale “Mank” and Aaron Sorkin’s historical drama “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” which Paramount sold off to the streamer. Netflix will also have “The Prom” (a Ryan Murphy musical starring Meryl Streep), “Pieces of a Woman” (with a wrenching performance by Vanessa Kirby of “The Crown”) and “Hillbilly Elegy” (an adaptation of the J.D. Vance book starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close) in play for acting nominations.

In other words, it’s a streamer’s market. Old-school Oscar voters who have tried to mount a bulwark against the incursion may finally have to wave the white flag. Along with Netflix’s many awardsseason possibilities, the streamers Amazon (“One Night in Miami …”), Apple TV+ (“Cherry,” “On the Rocks,” “Boys State”) and Hulu

(“Palm Springs”) will all try to take advantage of a landscape that has radically tilted in their favor this year.

4. Nothing will look the same.

Oscar season is usually a wild and woolly adventure made up of riotous standing ovations, glitzy parties fueled by champagne, and face-to-face emotional connections that make the whole damn thing worthwhile.

Suffice it to say, you won’t get any of that over Zoom.

The awards circuit will eventually adapt to voters’ stay-athome reality, but the barometer of buzz will be harder to track when applause and box office can no longer be conclusively measured. I remember the entire theater gasping at Sundance when the plot took a turn in the Anthony Hopkins dementia drama “The Father” (set for December), but will it play the same way when a voter is watching the film by himself, with his dog in his lap and sunlight streaming in from the living-room window?

The ceremony will almost certainly look different, too. It’s anyone’s guess how this pandemic-stricken country will be faring in late April, but sardine-packed red carpets and crowded awards-show ballrooms will probably have to be modified to allow a smaller, more distanced cohort to assemble.

Will the Oscar telecast take cues from the Emmys, where presenters showed up onstage but couture-clad nominees stuck it out in their living rooms? And would a disjointed ceremony like that benefit from a strong host, even though the Oscars have recently gone without one?

We’ll find out, eventually. From this far-off vantage point, only one thing is certain: If the Oscars always reflect the year they were voted on — for better and for worse — this one’s still got a few more wallops left to come.

22

The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

For northern Rhône reds, it’s not the age but the emotions

Young wines, like Northern Rhône reds, even if they have the potential to evolve into something more complex and revealing, still have a lot of pleasures to offer.

By ERIC ASIMOV

B

y virtue of job and inclination, I’ve got a lot of favorite wines. But of all my favorites, the reds of the Northern Rhône Valley of France, made entirely or almost entirely of the syrah grape, are possibly my favorite favorite.

It’s not just the pleasures of the aromas and flavors that I love. A good bottle somehow conveys to me a sense of reassurance that as bad as things might be in the world, all will be well.

Some people find comfort snuggling a cat. I open a bottle of St.-Joseph.

Here at Wine School, we know the perception of a wine is often emotional, although that side of the experience is generally given short shrift. Instead, our wine culture too often cuts right to the rational analysis, tracing aromas and flavors to soil types, winemaking techniques and so on.

That is important, too. The best wines affect us both emotionally and intellectually. They cause us to think and to feel.

I’ve found that people who have not studied wine are more apt to experience it emotionally because they have not yet learned the vocabulary for discussing wine analytically. Those who have studied wine tend to ignore their emotional response, possibly because it seems facile.

I don’t want to say that it’s essential to be open to both sides of the equation, because how people find

satisfaction is a personal choice. I will say, though, that approaching wine from all sides, examining it analytically and emotionally, heightens the potential rewards.

As usual, I recommended three wines that readers would drink and ponder. Instead of picking three examples of a single genre, I instead suggested one bottle each from three different Northern Rhône appellations.

They were J.L. Chave Sélection Crozes-Hermitage Silène 2018, J.L. Chave Sélection St.-Joseph Offerus 2017 and Vincent Paris Cornas Granit 30 2018.

The idea was simply to see whether we could sense characteristics among the wines that might illuminate differences in their various terroirs. Not that we could definitively pin down identities — that would take years of experience and repeated tastings to discern consistent patterns.

But I thought at least this might get us used to thinking about these differences and whether they might be traced to where the grapes had been grown rather than to other variables, like producers with different intentions or to the characteristics of the vintage.

In an effort to eliminate some variables, two of the wines even came from the same source, J.L. Chave Sélection, although, unfortunately, they were from different vintages.

I admit, this was entirely a rational exercise. And it drew some rational pushback.

“I really don’t think any true appreciation of the Northern Rhône is possible while drinking these wines (no age),” said ES of New York. “They are simply not tasty.”

I don’t know whether ES drank the wines. But to me, they were absolutely delicious — that’s an emotional response. Would they have been better in a few years, becoming more complex and more distinctively themselves, highlighting whatever differences might be a direct result of their various terroirs?

Yes, I think they would. I recently drank a 2007 St.-Joseph, from Domaine Jean-Louis Chave rather than the Chave négociant operation. It was sensational.

But sadly, older bottles are few and hard to come by. For Wine School, we are left with what’s sold currently in stores, and if that creates a less-than-ideal situation for exploration, it by no means makes it impossible.

What’s more, these are the wines most likely to be found at restaurants, which only in rare cases put the time and expense into aging wines for diners.

That’s certainly an incentive to avoid the 4-year-old Bordeaux, Barolo and Hermitage in favor of potentially lesser wines that will be more pleasing when young.

But these three Northern Rhônes? Eminently drinkable, although with much still to be revealed.

We could have chosen young bottles with little in reserve. In Crozes-Hermitage, for example, vines are planted on stony granite slopes but also on fertile plains. The plains wines tend to be fruity, and sometimes jammy, easily accessible when young but without much more to offer. They are very much expressions of the syrah grape rather than of a particular place.

The Chave Silène came from two areas. One, near the village of Gervans, is a vineyard mostly on granite, where the wine is firmer and more structured.

The other is around the village of Larnage, which has a little more clay, producing wines that are more generous and easygoing.

The result was a wine that was aromatic, savory, earthy and quite open, with aromas and flavors of herbs, black olives and flowers. I thought it was lovely, much more than a fruity, simple Crozes yet still relatively approachable.

St.-Joseph is divided similarly to Crozes-Hermitage. The wines from the granite hillsides are the most distinctive, complex, interesting and age-worthy, while the wines from the plains are relatively simple and fruity.

The St.-Joseph Offerus was nonetheless different from the Crozes. Jean-Louis Chave, the proprietor, has put a lot of time and energy into reconstructing ancient, abandoned hillside vineyards in St.-Joseph, and 60% of the grapes in this négociant bottle come from young vines owned by the Chave estate on historic hillsides. They provide structure and depth, while the rest come from vineyards to the north that are more easygoing.

The San Juan Daily Star Although it was a blend of elements like the Crozes, the St.-Joseph, a year older, felt denser, with aromas of violets and crushed rocks, and chalky tannins. It did not have the more obvious black olive flavors and felt more elegant and tightly wound.

Of the three wines, I would have thought the Cornas, from a warmer site in the southern end of the Northern Rhône, would have been the least ready to drink. Cornas generally requires more aging than either St.-Joseph or Crozes-Hermitage.

I’ve had 15-year-old bottles of Cornas that still seemed too young. That might have been before the effects of climate change were as apparent in Cornas as they are now. Ferocity was once considered a hallmark of Cornas. I haven’t seen a clenched-tight bottle like that in a long time.

But the Granit 30 is intended for early drinking.

For our purposes, this was good in that the wine is enjoyable now, and not so good, perhaps, in that it’s atypical of the region. Even so, I felt as if I could still sense the Cornas identity in this wine.

It was even more dense and concentrated than the St.-Joseph, yet paradoxically more ready to drink.

It was fruitier than the other two wines, with lingering aromas and flavors of violets, black olives, and red and black fruits. On the second day, earthy mineral flavors emerged.

As I said earlier, the characteristics of a terroir can be discerned only over time. Yet in my experience, these wines very much bore out what I would have expected to see: The Crozes-Hermitage was the most open, and the St.-Joseph more tightly wound and stonier.

The Cornas was an outlier stylistically because the producer intended it to be easygoing. But in its density and concentration, it revealed the possibilities of this appellation. Vincent Paris’ Granit 60 — the numbers reflect the gradient of the vineyards — is a more traditional Cornas, made from older vines. I wouldn’t try to drink a 2-year-old bottle of Granit 60.

Beyond my effort to analyze the wines, I have to say they were a great joy for me to drink, one night with Cuban-style black beans, another night with roast chicken.

Readers gave the wines mixed reviews. Michael of White Plains, New York, and VSB of San Francisco both very much enjoyed the St.-Joseph, but Peter of Philadelphia called it “a one-dimensional wall of acidity.” He much preferred the Cornas.

Jack of Los Angeles agreed with Peter about the St.-Joseph, but Geoff Dick of New York found the St.Joseph smooth and approachable — although he, too, preferred the Cornas.

Ultimately, I think this experiment went well.

While not remotely conclusive, the comparison of appellations adds an extra element, at least from the analytical side. As for the emotional side, feeling is believing.

Turmoil, Strife and Wine: Reds From Lebanon With the pandemic and all the damage it has

October 16-18, 2020

done to economies, businesses and personal relations, and the daily consequences of climate change, 2020 has been a difficult year for wine in general.

But few places in the world have faced the onslaught of obstacles that have challenged the wine industry of Lebanon.

The country has been in an economic and political crisis for several years, which made life difficult even before COVID-19. The huge and damaging explosion that rocked Beirut on Aug. 4 was the latest national trauma.

The Lebanese people ordinarily consume about 8 million bottles of wine annually, half of which are Lebanese and the rest imported, said Marc Hochar, whose family owns Chateau Musar, the leading Lebanese producer, which achieved renown for its wines under his father, Serge Hochar.

Because the currency has been devalued, Hochar said, Lebanon can no longer afford imported goods, which has heightened the demand for locally produced wines. But the cost of materials required by the industry, like machinery, glass and labels, has gone up as well, and because of the economic conditions wine producers cannot raise their own prices to cover those expenses.

Hochar called it “a very bizarre situation.”

The Lebanese wine industry has had to demonstrate its resilience for decades, most famously navigating through 15 years of civil war. When the war ended in 1990, just five wineries were operating in Lebanon.

As of 2018 there were roughly 50.

Most of the Lebanese wine production is centered in the Bekaa Valley in the east, near the border of Syria, but another region in northern Lebanon around Batroun has been growing as well.

23

WINE

The three red wines I suggest are all from the Bekaa Valley. They are: Massaya Bekaa Valley Le Colombier 2018 (Winebow, New York) $15 Chateau Musar Bekaa Valley Musar Jeune 2018 (Broadbent Selections, Sonoma, California) $20 Domaine des Tourelles Bekaa Valley Cinsault Vieilles Vignes 2017 (RC Distributors, Cleveland) $24 You can sense the influence of France, which controlled Lebanon roughly from the end of World War I until the country achieved independence in 1943.

Aside from their place of origin, the wines are not all that similar. The Massaya is made of grenache, cinsault and tempranillo; the Musar Jeune of cinsault, syrah and cabernet sauvignon and the Tourelles solely of cinsault.

If you cannot find these wines, try any Lebanese wines you do come across, even the whites, which are often made with the indigenous grapes obaideh and merwah. If you don’t mind a splurge and can find an older bottle of Chateau Musar — Musar Jeune is the budget-priced, entry-level wine — you are in for a treat. These are idiosyncratic but wholly distinctive.

“To understand Lebanon is not easy,” Serge Hochar told me in 2012 when he was visiting New York.

“The dimension of taste in Lebanon is different than anywhere else. Not better, but different. Better has no meaning.”

The idea this month is not so much to compare the wines as to see if we can sense a Lebanese difference. And, while 2020 has been challenging for all of us, maybe we can spare a few thoughts for the people of Lebanon as well.

“Wine is above politics,” Serge Hochar also said in 2012. “Wine is tolerance.”

The Lebanese wine industry has had to demonstrate its resilience for decades, most famously navigating through 15 years of civil war.

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SALA: 409. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: FULANO DE TAL Y SUTANO DE TAL COMO POSIBLES MIEMBROS DE NOMBRES DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESION DE MANUEL ANGEL MENDOZA SIFRE T/C/C MANUEL A. MENDOZA SIFRE T/C/C MANUEL MENDOZA

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 9 de octubre de 2020 , este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 14 de octubre de 2020 . En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico , el 14 de octubre de 2020. LCDA. MARILYN APONTE RODRIGUEZ, Secretaria.

MARICRUZ APONTE ALICEA, Secretaria Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

The San Juan Daily Star

Friday, October 16, 2020

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Teléfono: (787) 296-9500, Correo Electrónico: DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUcmejia@lvprlaw.com NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el Sello del Tribunal, en San JUAN. Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy día 13 FIRSTBANK OF de octubre de 2020. GRISELPUERTO RICO DA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Demandante v.

SECRETARIO. MARILYN ANN SUCESION DE OMAR ESPINOSA RIVERA, Sec Serv ROLON SANYUZT a Sala.

COMPUESTA POR ALANIS ROLON RENTAS, KEVIN OMAR ROLON, FULANO DE TAL, FULANA DE TAL, SUTANO DE TAL, SUTANA DE TAL, A, B Y C COMO MIEMBROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESION

Demandados CIVIL NÚM.: SJ2020CV04416 (503). Sobre: INCUMPLIMIENTO DE CONTRATO; COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. S.S.

A: FULANO DE TAL, FULANA DE TAL, SUTANO DE TAL, SUTANA DE TAL, A, B Y COMO MIEMBROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESION DE OMAR ROLON SANYUZT

POR LA PRESENTE Se le emplaza y requiere que conteste la Demanda Enmendada dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto. Usted deberá presentar 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, cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Este caso trata sobre Cobro de Dinero.

Se le apercibe que si dejare de hacerlo, se dictará contra usted sentencia en rebeldía, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la demanda enmendada, sin más citarle ni oírle. Se ordena a los herederos a que dentro del mismo término de treinta (30) días contados a partir de la fecha de notificación, ACEPTEN O REPUDIEN la participación que les corresponda en la herencia del causante Omar Rolón Sanyuzt. Se les apercibe que de no expresarse dentro del término de (30) días en torno a su aceptación o repudiación de herencia, se tendrá por aceptada.

Lcda. Carolina M. Mejía Lugo, Número del Tribunal Supremo 19857 P.O. Box 194089, San Juan, PR 00919

cmejia@lvprlaw.com EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y Sello del Tribunal, hoy 14 de octubre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria. Waleska Rivera Suavedra,Sub-Secretaria.

LEGAL NOTICE

Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de PriLEGAL NOTICE mera Instancia Sala Superior ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO de CAGUAS. DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUDALILA NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA ALEJANDRO DIAZ SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN Demandante v.

JUAN.

FIRSTBANK PUERTO RICO Demandante v.

GABRIEL ESCALERA ROMERO

Demandado CIVIL NUM. SJ2020CV04263 (803). Sobre: INCUMPLIMIENTO DE CONTRATO, COBRO DE DINERO Y REPOSESIÓN. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: GABRIEL ESCALERA ROMERO Edif. 140, Apt.2583, Res. Luis Llorens Torres, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00913 DE: FIRSTBANK PUERTO RICO

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

Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramaiudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Este caso trata sobre Incumplimiento de Contrato, Cobro de Dinero y Reposesión en que la parte demandante solicita que se condene a la parte demandada a pagar $15,857.80 de principal, más los intereses acumulados hasta el total y completo pago de la deuda, más una suma equivalente al 5% del total adeudado para honorarios de abogados según pactado.

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

Lcda. Carolina M. Mejía Lugo, Número del Tribunal Supremo 19857 221 Ponce de León Ave., Suite 900, San Juan, PR 00917, Teléfono: (787) 296-9500, Correo Electrónico:

JOSE RAMON MONTERO JAVIER

Demandado(a) Civil: Núm. CG2020RF00088.

Sobre: DIVORCIO RI. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: JOSE RAMON MONTERO JAVIER CALLE EUGENIO MARIA DE HOSTOS #10, BARRIO QUIJA QUIETA, San Juan DE LA MAGUANA, REPUBLICA DOMINICANA, REPUBLICA DOMINICANA 72000

Parte Demandante Vs.

LA SUCESION DE AUGUSTO CESAR HIRALDO COTTO, t/c/c Augusto Cesar Hiraldo Cortijo y como Augusto Cesar Hidalgo compuesta por Vanessa Hiraldo Rivera y John Doe y Richard Roe como posibles miembros desconocidos; LA SUCESION DE HAYDEE RIVERA SANCHEZ compuesta por Vanessa Hiraldo Rivera, John Doe y Richard Roe como posibles miembros desconocidos; ADMINISTRACION PARA EL SUSTENTO DE MENORES, Y CENTRO DE RECAUDACIÓN SOBRE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES

Parte Demandada CASO CIVIL NUM: CA2020CV00094.

SOBRE: EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA y COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO Y NOTIFICACIÓN DE INTERPELACIÓN POR EDICTO. Estados Unidos de Amé(Nombre de las partes a las que se rica Presidente de los Estados le notifican la sentencia por edicto) Unidos de América Estado EL SECRETARIO(A) que susLibre Asociado de Puerto Rico. cribe le notifica a usted que A: VANESSA HIRALDO el 7 de octubre de 2020 , este RIVERA como miembro Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución de la Sucesión de en este caso, que ha sido debiAUGUSTO CESAR damente registrada y archivada HIRALDO COTTO, t/c/c en autos donde podrá usted enAugusto Cesar Hiraldo terarse detalladamente de los Cortijo y como Augusto términos de la misma. Esta noCesar Hidalgo y de la tificación se publicará una sola Sucesión de HAYDEE vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puer- RIVERA SANCBEZ; JOHN to Rico, dentro de los 10 días DOE Y RICHARD ROE siguientes a su notificación. Y, como posibles herederos siendo o representando usted desconocidos de la una parte en el procedimiento Sucesión de AUGUSTO sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Re- CESAR HIRALDO COITO, t/c/c Augusto Cesar solución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o Hiraldo Cortijo y como apelación dentro del término de Augusto Cesar Hidalgo; 30 días contados a partir de la y como posible heredero publicación por edicto de esta desconocido de la notificación, dirijo a usted esta Sucesión de HAYDEE notificación que se considerará RIVERA SANCHEZ hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de POR LA PRESENTE se les emesta notificación ha sido archi- plaza y requiere para que convada en los autos de este caso, teste la demanda dentro de los con fecha de 13 de octubre treinta (30) días siguientes a la de 2020 . En CAGUAS, Puer- publicación de este Edicto. Usto Rico , el 13 de octubre de ted deberá radicar su alegación 2020. CARMEN ANA PEREIRA responsiva a través del Sistema ORTIZ, Secretaria. CARMEN Unificado de Manejo y AdminisFLORES MARTINEZ, Secreta- tración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando ria Auxiliar la siguiente dirección electróniLEGAL NOTICE ca: http://unired.ramajudicial.pr/ ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO sumac/, salvo que se presente DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- por derecho propio, en cuyo NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA caso deberá radicar el original de su contestación ante el TriSALA DE CAROLINA. MTGLQ INVESTORS, L.P. bunaJ 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 enero de 2018 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 $47,877.75, más intereses a razón del 9.95% anual, así como todos aquellos créditos y sumas que surjan de la faz de la obligación hipotecaria y de la hipoteca que la garantiza. incluyendo $5,700.00, pactado para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado. La parte Demandante presentó para su inscripción en el Registro de la Propiedad correspondiente, un A VISO DE PLEITO PENDIENTE (“Lis Pendens”) sobre la propiedad objeto de esta acción cuya propiedad es la siguiente: URBANA: Solar radicado en la Urbanización El Conquistador situada en el barrio Carraizo del Municipio de Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico, marcado con el número 26 de la manzana B, con una cabida de 342 metros cuadrados con 4 7 centímetros. En linderos por el NORTE, con el solar 27 distancia de 23.00 metros; por el SUR. con el solar 25 en 23.00 metros; por el ESTE, con los solares 23 y 24 distancia de 13 metros con 694 milésimas de metro en arco y por el OESTE, con la Avenida Diego Velázquez distancia de 16.00 metros en arco. El inmueble antes descrito contiene una casa de concreto diseñada para una familia. Inscrita al folio doscientos setenta y dos (272) del tomo ciento noventa y ocho (198) de Trujillo Alto, finca número diez mil cincuenta y cinco ( 10055).

Registro de la Propiedad de San Juan, Sección Cuarta.

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.

Además, como miembro de la Sucesión de AUGUSTO CESAR HIRALDO COTTO, tic/e Augusto Cesar Hiraldo Cortijo y como Augusto Cesar Hidalgo, y

25

de la Sucesión de HAYDEE RIVERA SANCHEZ se ha presentado una solicitud de interpelación judicial para que sirva en el término de treinta (30} días aceptar o repudiar la herencia.

Se le apercibe que si no compareciera usted a expresarse dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación de este edicto en tomo a la aceptación o repudiación de la herencia, se presumirá que han aceptado la herencia del causante AUGUSTO CESAR HIRALDO COTTO, t/c/c Augusto Cesar Hiraldo Cortijo y como Augusto Cesar Hidalgo; y de la Sucesión de HA YDEE RIVERA SANCHEZ y por consiguiente, responderán por las cargas de dicha herencia conforme dispone el Art. 957 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. S2785. En Carolina, Puerto Rico, a 3 de septiembre de 2020. Lcda. Marilyn Aponte Rodríguez, Secretaria Regional. IDA FERNANDEZ RODRÍGUEZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL.

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

E.M.l. EQUITY MORTGAGE, INC. DEMANDANTE vs.

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

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: SS2020CV00344.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA (VÍA ORDINARIA). EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO Y MANDAMIENTO DE INTERPELACION. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, El Presidente de los Estados Unidos, El Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico.

A la parte co-demandada: FULANO Y FULANA DE TAL COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESIÓN PE NICHOLAS LOPEZ VELEZ T/C/C NI CHOLAS LOPEZ, A LA SIGUIENTE DIRECCIÓN: FISICA: SR 477 KM 2.4 INT SECTOR NAYO MENDEZ BARRIO AIBONITO SAN SEBASTIAN, PR 00685;

Y POSTAL: PO BOX 7004 BUZON 246 SAN SEBASTIAN, PR 006859004; PO BOX 7004, SAN SEBASTIAN, PR 006859004.

Por la presente se le(s) notifica que se ha radicado en la Secretaría de este Tribunal una Demanda Enmendada en Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la vía ordinaria en contra de la Sucesión de Nicholas López Vélez t/c/c Nicho las López, por razón de no haber cumplido con los pagos mensuales según pactados, adeuda a la parte demandante la suma de $89, 777.68 por concepto de principal, desde el 1ro de febrero de 2020, más intereses al tipo pactado de 3.1/2% anual que continúan acumulándose hasta el pago total de la obligación. Además La Sucesión de Nicho las López Vélez t/c/c Nicholas López adeuda a la parte demandante los cargos por demora equivalentes a 4.00% de la suma de aquellos pagos con atrasos en exceso de 15 días calendarios de la fecha de vencimiento; los créditos accesorios y adelantos hechos en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca; y las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado equivalentes a $9,768.60. Además La Sucesión de Nicholas López Vélez t/c/c Nicholas López se comprometió a pagar una suma equivalente a $9,768.60 para cubrir cualquier otro adelanto que se haga en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca y una suma equivalente a $9,768.60 para cubrir intereses en adición a los garantizados por ley y cualquiera otros adelantos que se hagan en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca número 37, otorgada en Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, el día 10 de diciembre de 2015, ante el notario José Manuel Alvarez Allende, de la finca número 15,707, inscrita al Folio 147 del Tomo 298 de San Sebastián, Registro de la Propiedad de San Sebastián. Por razón de dicho incumplimiento, y al amparo del derecho que le confiere el Pagaré, el demandante ha declarado tales sumas vencidas, líquidas y exigibles en su totalidad. Este Tribunal ha ordenado que se le(s) cite a usted(es) por edicto que se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general.

Quedan emplazados y notificados de que en este Tribunal se ha radicado una demanda enmendada en su contra. Se les ordena a que dentro del término de treinta (30) días, a partir de la notificación de la presente Orden, acepten o repudien la participación que les corresponda en la herencia de Nicholas López Vélez t/c/c Nicholas López. Los co-demandados miembros de la Sucesión de

Nicholas López Vélez t/c/c Nicholas López se incluyen en la demanda enmendada ya que como herederos responden por las cargas de la herencia según lo dispuesto en Nuestro Ordenamiento Jurídico. Se les apercibe y notifica que, de no expresarse dentro de ese término de 30 días en tomo a su aceptación o repudiación de herencia, la herencia se tendrá por aceptada. También se les apercibe que luego del transcurso del termino de 30 días antes señalado contados a partir de la fecha de la notificación de la presente Orden, se presumirá que han aceptado la herencia del causante y, por consiguiente, responden por las cargas de dicha herencia conforme el Articulo 959 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. 2785.

Se ordena a la parte demandante a que, en vista de que la sucesión de Nicholas López Vélez t/c/c Nicholas López, se incluye a los herederos y herederos desconocidos de Nicholas López Vélez t/c/c Nicholas López denominados Fulano y Fulana De Tal, proceda a notificar la presente Orden mediante publicación de un edicto a esos efectos una sola vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general de la Isla de Puerto Rico.

Se le(s) emplaza y requiere que dentro de los sesenta (60) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto excluyendo el día de la publicación de este edicto conteste(n) la demanda radicando el original de la contestación en este Tribunal y enviando copia de la Contestación de la Demanda a las oficinas de CARDONA & MALDONADO LAW OFFICES, P.S.C. ATENCIÓN al Ledo. Duncan Maldonado Ejarque, P.O. Box366221, San Juan, Puerto Rico 009366221; Tel (787) 622-7000, Fax (787) 625-7001, Abogado de la Parte Demandante. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Se le(s) advierte que si dejare( n) de contestar la Demanda en el período de tiempo antes mencionado, podrá dictarse contra usted( es) Sentencia en Rebeldía, concediéndose el remedio solicitado sin más citarle(s) ni oirle(s). EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y con el Sello del Tribunal.

DADA hoy 6 de OCTUBRE de 2020, en San Sebastián, Puerto Rico. SARAHI REYES PEREZ, Secretaria. IVELISSE ROBLES MATHEWS, Sec Aux I. /

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The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

Iker Casillas remembers everything

By RORY SMITH

O

ccasionally, as he idled on the sidelines at Real Madrid’s training facility, Iker Casillas would be asked to wheel out his party trick. A coach or a teammate would throw out the date of a game he had played and the name of an opponent: Jan. 5, 2002, Deportivo de La Coruña. Casillas would pause for a moment. And then he would tell them the score.

By his own very specific estimate, he got about 98 percent right. Given the context, it is an impressive success rate.

The category “Games Played By Iker Casillas” is a considerable one, even for Casillas himself. His career touched three decades, and two centuries. Between Real Madrid, FC Porto and Spain, he racked up more than a thousand games.

In an ideal world, that list would still be growing. Casillas announced his retirement in August, at age 39. He had little choice. In May 2019, during a training session at Porto, he noticed pain in his chest, his mouth and his arms. The club’s doctors took him to the hospital; it was only after he had surgery that he was told he had had a heart attack.

As he recuperated, he thought about returning to the field. He was enjoying his time in Portugal, relishing the “tranquility” he had found there in the autumn of his career. He was named in Porto’s squad for last season. And a few months after the heart attack, he was back in the gym.

Eventually, though, the medical advice became clear. “The doctors said the best I could do would be to stop,” he said. It is hard for athletes to stand down, to stand aside — it is, as Casillas said, as much an identity as a job — but he is also a husband, and a father of two young children. “There was a risk,” he said. “And if there is a risk, then it would be absurd to carry on.”

And so, now, all he is left with are his memories: vivid and bright and 98 percent eidetic, and not just for score lines but for sensations, too.

He remembers what he was thinking as he walked up to collect the trophy in Vienna in 2008, the few seconds before Spain was officially crowned European champion, its first international honor since 1964.

Casillas with his wife, Sara Carbonero, and their two children. His responsibilities to them, he said, helped ease his decision to retire after a heart attack.

“We had broken the curse that seemed to have been on Spanish football,” he said.

He remembers how normal the same walk felt two years later, at Soccer City in Johannesburg, after Andrés Iniesta’s goal had turned Spain into a world champion. “It was history, but you do not value it in that moment,” Casillas said.

“You think it is normal: ‘We’ve won the Euros, we’ve won the World Cup, we’re a strong team.’”

And he remembers, in 2012, when Spain retained its European crown, feeling as if that team “might have played the Globetrotters or the Dream Team from the 1992 Olympics and we would have won.”

They are all real memories, he said, not ghosts of memories, memories of photographs, composed and layered and compacted over time. It is a blessing, of course, to recall with such clarity all of those high points: the trophies won and the triumphs claimed, for club and for country. But it comes with a curse, too, because Casillas remembers the defeats with no less precision. His memory, after all, works just as well when he would rather forget.

A few days before we spoke, Casillas had retweeted a video from UEFA’s official Champions League account. It was a montage of his performance at Anfield, in 2009, when he captained Real

Madrid against Liverpool in the competition’s round of 16. It was not hard to see why they had compiled it: Casillas filled it with a string of spectacular saves, defying Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard again and again.

What was not mentioned — and what made it curious that Casillas had, effectively, endorsed it — was the score.

Liverpool had won, 4-0. Anfield had afforded Casillas a standing ovation, but the crowd, like the goalkeeper, understood that “Liverpool could have scored 12.” Casillas left the field with tears in his eyes.

“It was a face of powerlessness, not rage,” he said. “I was frustrated, sad. It meant it was seven years since Real had reached the final. You can lose a knockout game. We lost the first leg, 1-0. But to lose, 4-0? All of the Real fans in Liverpool, all of the fans around the world — I felt their frustration.” Despite his heroics, he also felt a lot of “responsibility.”

He had felt that responsibility, he said, since he was 8 or 9, since the day he joined his childhood team. He had grown used to it, even started to enjoy it, but it exerted a particular strain on him.

His one-time teammate, Fernando Hierro, used to say that one year at Madrid is like five anywhere else. At times, Casillas said, he felt as if he had been there for half a century. “The pressure,” he said, “is constant.”

Particularly given what he experienced at the height of his career. In the years that he was lifting all of those trophies and breaking all of those barriers for Spain, his club career was consumed by what may — in time — come to be seen as the most intense rivalry soccer has ever seen: Real Madrid against Barcelona; Cristiano Ronaldo against Lionel Messi; José Mourinho against Pep Guardiola and Tito Vilanova.

It was no wonder, then, that by 2015, Casillas was ready for a change of scenery. His relationship with Real Madrid had changed; he admitted to feeling “alone” at one point, as he was ostracized first by Mourinho and then, later, cut adrift by the club’s president, Florentino Pérez. He saw, in Porto, the chance to find “some peace.”

“I needed to be calm to enjoy it again,” he said. “I didn’t like seeing myself in the press every day, or in the middle of certain arguments. The best option was to leave, even if it was the place where I grew up, the place that was my home, the place where many people suffered with me. I didn’t want that angst. I wanted less fear.”

The stress and the strain, though, do not change the memories. That is what Casillas cherishes from his career: not so much all of the acclaim — praised by no less an authority than Gianluigi Buffon as one of the best goalkeepers of all time — or all of the trophies he won, but all of the things he remembers, and is remembered for.

Soccer, to Casillas, is about memory: not the score lines, necessarily, but the sensations. The players he holds in the highest esteem are the ones who played the most games, lasted the longest — he mentions Paul Scholes and Francesco Totti — the ones who burned themselves into the history of a club.

He likes those moments when fans tell him where they were when Spain won the World Cup, or what they were doing when he came off the bench, barely out of his teens, to win his second Champions League.

“It happens when you go to the park, go to a restaurant, meet someone Spanish when you’re abroad,” he said. “They remember where they were: getting married, or watching it with their son. These moments mark everyone. It is lovely to know that you are remembered.”

The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

27

Murky financial forecast looms over Yankees’ offseason questions

By JAMES WAGNER

A

t some point this offseason, New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman will meet with Hal Steinbrenner, the team’s managing general partner, for their usual dissection of the season.

The team’s professional scouts will huddle to do much of the same: examine the roster and discuss ways to avoid repeating the outcome of the 2020 season.

Despite being a preseason World Series favorite and possessing one of the most talented rosters in MLB, the Yankees again failed to reach the World Series, extending a drought that dates to their 2009 title. This time, they were toppled in a best-of-five American League Division Series by the Tampa Bay Rays, who sit one win from reaching the final round despite having a payroll about a third of the Yankees’.

In the Bronx, though, the path forward this offseason is perhaps hazier than any other in Yankees history.

Will Gleyber Torres, who was tied for the AL lead in fielding errors among shortstops, stay at that position next season? Will Gary Sánchez, who was one of the worst hitters in baseball and was benched during the playoffs, be the team’s primary catcher — or with the team at all? Will Luis Severino, who may not return until next summer from Tommy John surgery, and Domingo Germán, who was suspended for the entire 2020 season for violating MLB’s domestic abuse policy, be enough to upgrade a starting rotation that Cashman called “atrisk” in the playoffs and in definite need of improvement?

Beyond that sampling of questions, one issue perhaps supersedes all: How much money will MLB teams, the Yankees included, be willing to spend after a year in which they said they suffered billions in losses because of a pandemic-shortened season without fans in the stands until late in the postseason?

“We’ll see,” Steinbrenner said Tuesday on the radio show hosted by Yankees television broadcaster Michael Kay. “It depends what kind of money is going to be required to be spent, based on what we look at and decide needs change. But look: There’s no doubt we sustained significant losses this year, more so than any other team in baseball. It’s just been a crazy year.”

While teams have not opened their

books, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has said about 40 percent of revenue comes from tickets, concessions and other gaterelated income. The Yankees, who generally rank near the top of the league in attendance, have said that share might be higher for them. And just before the pandemic, they committed a record $324 million to ace Gerrit Cole and pushed past several luxury-tax thresholds with the largest opening day payroll in the majors, at $265 million, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts.

About $65 million in 2020 salaries are set to come off the books as star infielder D.J. LeMahieu, and pitchers J.A. Happ, Masahiro Tanaka and James Paxton are eligible for free agency. That doesn’t include Zack Britton, a key reliever, and outfielder Brett Gardner, the longest-tenured Yankee, who have team options or clauses in their contracts that will need to be sorted out soon.

Exactly how much wiggle room the Yankees have to upgrade their roster, specifically on the mound, is unclear at best. One area the Yankees could improve is adding more left-handed batters to a lineup that was heavily right-handed, which the versatile Rays exploited in the playoffs. But that is not a simple exercise.

“Of course you’d like to have the balance, if you can, but then when you’re faced with a decision of: Do I not try to resign D.J. LeMahieu because he’s right handed, so I can get a left-handed bat in there?” Cashman said.

During his and manager Aaron Boone’s annual season-ending news conference with reporters Wednesday, Cashman said he had yet to have the “heavy lifting” conversations about the future payroll with Steinbrenner.

But he said he was looking forward to pairing existing talent on the team (including the young starters Deivi García and Clarke Schmidt) with players who weren’t available in 2020 (like Germán and Severino). He said the front office would consider free-agent and trade options at a later date.

“This global pandemic has affected everybody in a horrific way in a business setting,” Cashman said, adding later, “These are real constraints that exist throughout all industries and in households alone, and so it’ll be something that will clearly factor into how we approach the future.”

Over two days, Steinbrenner, Boone and Cashman spent a lot of time explaining the shortcomings of the year (like the regular-season inconsistencies that led to a

fifth seed in this year’s expanded playoffs, Sánchez’s disappointing performance and the team’s overall defensive troubles, including Torres’); the disappointment of once again not winning a title (“At this point in time, all I can do is apologize to our fans,” Steinbrenner said); and the organization’s decision-making in Game 2 of the ALDS. In that contest, the Yankees started García for only one inning before handing the ball to Happ, who wasn’t pleased with the decision and struggled.

“If I can get better players, a deeper roster — which is on me — I think we have a chance to have maybe a better outcome in some of these matchups,” Cashman said.

He said he was sorry that he put Boone — whom Steinbrenner said would return as manager in 2021 — in a position where he had to use a less-traditional pitching plan that backfired.

“Because of the roster, the way it was configured — which is my responsibility, not his — he was forced to try to come up with different game plans and be open-minded to how to best navigate it,” Cashman said of Boone. “And it didn’t work out. But hopefully in the future, we’ll be in a better position than we are right now.”

28

The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

Polish Olympian wins fight to compete in fencing for team USA

By JERÉ LONGMAN

A

leksandra Shelton, a four-time Olympic fencer for Poland, has prevailed in a contentious battle with the country’s sports authorities to gain eligibility to compete for the United States at the Tokyo Olympics, which were postponed from 2020 to next summer because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration for Sport has ruled that Shelton’s public criticism of Polish fencing officials was an improper basis on which to deny her request to compete as an American in the Summer Games, scheduled for July and August 2021. She is a dual citizen, married to a U.S. serviceman. The court had not yet published its ruling by Wednesday afternoon, but it was provided to The New York Times

by Shelton’s lawyer.

Her case, chronicled in February in The New York Times, had broader implications regarding age and gender discrimination, and it represented another high-profile effort by a female athlete to stand up for what they consider their fundamental rights and freedoms in Olympic sports, where women’s eligibility and voices have historically been restricted.

Those efforts include Caster Semenya’s attempt to gain eligibility to run the 800 meters, at which she is a two-time Olympic champion for South Africa, in a case involving testosterone limits placed on intersex athletes in certain events. Semenya lost her appeal before the Swiss sports arbitration court and the Swiss Supreme Court but is considering appealing to the European Court of Human Rights.

Gwen Berry, a U.S. Olympian in the hammer throw event, has been at the forefront of an attempt by athletes to overturn a prohibition against making political gestures at international sporting events. She was reprimanded by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee for raising her fist on the medal podium at the 2019 Pan American Games to protest social and racial injustice. But Sebastian Coe, president of track and field’s world governing body, said recently that he would support athletes’ taking a knee on the medal podium at

“I hope my example will give courage to other women to stand and fight for our rights,” Aleksandra Shelton said. the Tokyo Games.

Carlos Sayao, Shelton’s Torontobased lawyer, said her victory before the arbitration court represented “the imposing of important checks and balances on the powers of national Olympic committees over their athletes.”

After competing in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Shelton, now 38, said that Polish fencing officials had reduced their support for her once she became pregnant and had made comments that she was too old and should stay home to care for her son, who was born in 2017. Polish officials denied making the remarks or discriminating against Shelton. But, feeling frustrated, she sought to gain eligibility to compete in a fifth Olympics for the United States instead of her native Poland.

Athletes must generally wait three

years after switching countries to become eligible to compete in the Olympics, unless they are granted a waiver. In January 2019, the Polish fencing federation granted Shelton a release to change sporting nationalities and to compete for the United States. The matter seemed settled, except for final approval from the Polish Olympic Committee, which said it would support Shelton’s change of nationality but then changed its mind as the case went sideways.

In March 2019, Shelton gave two interviews to Polish reporters to explain her switch to competing for the United States.

During the interviews, she criticized what she considered the lack of support from the Polish fencing federation and its demand for sporting equipment worth 43,000 euros, now about $50,000, to grant her release. The Polish fencing federation threat-

ened to sue Shelton unless she apologized and then attempted to rescind its waiver.

In January, Shelton appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The court ruled in her favor Sept. 28, saying that her remarks to reporters were “irrelevant” to the case and that the Polish Olympic Committee had in 2019 “irrevocably agreed to the immediate change” of Shelton’s sporting nationality and to the cancellation of the three-year waiting period to be eligible to participate in the Games. If she makes the U.S. Olympic team in April, Shelton would become approximately the 220th woman worldwide to compete in five or more Games.

“It’s a huge relief,” Shelton said. “I should never have had to go that far to get help. I hope my example will give courage to other women to stand and fight for our rights.”

The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

29

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

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

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

The San Juan Daily Star

October 16-18, 2020

(Mar 21-April 20)

Work issues and affairs affecting your budget keep your mind fully occupied. Don’t be surprised if by the end of the day you want to switch your thoughts to less weighty concerns. Focus on anything that comes under the heading of fun. Organise something that will bring you and your family plenty of pleasure.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

You’re involved in a variety of activities and this will make for a hectic and chaotic atmosphere. You long to escape distracting background noise and activity. There are matters you had hoped to sort out today but you will sensibly decide these would be better left for a more appropriate time.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Scorpio

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

You instinctively feel you should keep discussions about shared finances on ice for the moment. A partner is not in the right mood to deal with these. It may even be that you will have to make decisions for you both. You’re doing your best to lift someone’s spirits. Planning a future treat or celebration would be an ideal topic to chat about.

Irrelevant thoughts clutter your mind. There’s nothing wrong with escaping into a world of fantasy when the time is right. Anything that needs intense concentration also needs you to remain focused. Writing, studying and any kind of mental effort seems next to impossible when there is no structure to your thoughts.

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

You could do with some pampering. Relaxing to music, reading a favourite novel or watching a romantic film would make you feel happy and contented. Romantic displays of affection from your amour will be even better. Give your partner a hug when they aren’t expecting it. Cutting back on sugar will give you more energy. Watch your diet.

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Continue to include plenty of give and take in any dealings with colleagues and neighbours.

The more you strive to achieve harmony, the stronger the bonds of friendship will grow.

Making minor adjustments to your life will make for a happier future. Your plan should be to ensure you and your family live together in even greater harmony.

Learning about another culture will help you understand a new neighbour’s recent behaviour. You’re spending time with someone or a group of people who rely on routine to get them through the day. They may be struggling when their life has changed so much recently.

Small gestures keep the mood cheerful.

Patience is not your strong point today. You seem to have no control over your tongue especially when discussing finances or work-related issues. A careless colleague has cut one too many corners and you can’t let this go by unchecked. In the future they will be expected to go through proper channels and follow a correct code of conduct.

Leo

Aquarius

(July 24-Aug 23)

Make a start on an art project. Channel your imagination into creative activities. Writing, poetry, photography and art can feel emotionally therapeutic. Let your creativity flow.

Reconnecting with your spiritual side is becoming more important to you. You might be thinking about visiting a place that meant a lot to you as a child.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Keep busy to keep happy. You may have hoped to have met up with some friends but they’ve already made other plans. You have a lot of excess energy and it will be up to you to find an outlet. Other people might be busy which is disappointing but you could find something of your own to do.

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

You can’t get any sense out of a colleague or neighbour who has their mind on romance.

Their vague comments make conversations frustrating. They aren’t hearing a word you are saying and if you’re working together, expect them to make a lot of mistakes. Curb any critical comments as this will make them even more flustered.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

You are more relaxed, outgoing and cheerful than you have been for a while. You will be able to make a joke out of almost anything.

Even if a friend lets you down where some joint arrangements are concerned, you will shrug your shoulders and decide that at least this will give you more free time than you had anticipated.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

October 16-18, 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

October 16-18, 2020

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