Tuesday Oct 20, 2020

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

San Juan The

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The Chicago 7 Trial Onscreen: An Interpretation for Every Era

Star

P20 Photo by Pedro Correa Henry

Focused on the Gov’t US District Attorney Muldrow: Any Judge, Officer, Gov’t Contractor Can Be Investigated

Reviews His First Year in Office: Millions Confiscated from Drug Trafficking, Money Laundering, Fraud; Probes into Legislature Still Ongoing

Gov’t Announces $400 Incentive for Students to Pay for Internet P3 NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

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PDP Mayors Blame Pierluisi for Towns’ Never-Ending Fiscal Problems

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

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October 20, 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.

Gov’t offering $400 incentive for public school students, personnel to pay for internet

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ov. Wanda Vázquez Garced announced Monday that the island government will grant an economic incentive of $400 to students in the public education system so that they can pay for internet expenses related to virtual classes until the end of the school year in 2021.

“Since the COVID-19 emergency began, we have discussed and evaluated alternatives for guaranteeing the health and safety of students, parents or guardians, and teachers,” the governor said. “Proper education is our primary concern and that is why we have invested millions of dollars in computers for all students and staff.

Now we guarantee them access to the internet so that they can continue with distance educational services.”

Through the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, some 276,413 public school students and 26,893 public school teachers in Puerto Rico will be able to apply for the subsidy, whose total cost is $90 million.

The money should help students acquire an internet modem and pay the monthly fee for the service from now until May 31, 2021, the governor said. The deadline to apply for the service is Nov. 30.

“It fills me with satisfaction that no student will be left behind due to a lack of resources for distance education,” Vázquez said.

Education Secretary Eligio Hernández said the service will guarantee that all students and school personnel have access to the network according to their location. The subsidy will also benefit librarians, social workers, principals and counselors.

“It is important to make good use of this aid,” Hernández said.

Officials from the Puerto Rico Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority (AAFAF by its Spanish initials) helped identify the source of

the federal money and the staff of the commonwealth Treasury Department implemented the electronic system to be used for the application for and disbursement of the aid.

AAFAF Executive Director Omar Marrero stressed the importance of technology in a quality online education.

“Upon request, beneficiaries of the subsidies will go directly to the service providers included in the project and the sales representatives will validate the information,” he said. “To pay for the service, mothers, fathers or guardians must have the student’s full name, the student’s number (SIE), which appears on the student’s report card, and the date of birth. Teachers will need to have their employee number, photo ID, date of birth, place of employment, and the last four digits of their Social Security [number].”

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Tuesday, October 20, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

US Attorney for Puerto Rico: ‘I don’t announce promises, I announce results’ Stephen Muldrow continues to ‘fight and deter corruption and fraud’ a year after his appointment

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

A

fter a year as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, William Stephen Muldrow said Monday that “we haven’t stopped working,” as his office has to date closed 684 cases during the year -- 93 more cases than the average.

Muldrow also confirmed that investigations in the Puerto Rico Legislature are ongoing.

During a roundtable at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Muldrow spoke with reporters about the achievements during his first year as the head of the office, which consists of the progress of task forces such as the Public Affairs Division to connect with the community, Caribbean Corridor Strike Force (CCSF), Affirmative Civil Enforcement (ACE), Hate Crimes Division, Caribbean Anti-Money Laundering Alliance and other programs.

As for the CCSF, he said it is “working really hard in the community,” as it is a program within the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, which works closely with the Office of National Drug Control Policy and collaborates with different agencies to “perform maritime operations, identify, interrupt and dismantle international narcotics and large-scale money laundering organizations that import and promote cocaine transshipment and money laundering activities.”

“That mission is being amplified to focus on transnational criminal organizations based in the Caribbean and South America that are behind the daily maritime [trafficking of] narcotics contraband from Puerto Rico to the continental United States and in the laundering of the proceeds of drug trafficking through cash smuggling on every scale,” Muldrow said.

The U.S. attorney said the strike force not only targets transnational organized crime groups, but it also has task forces such as the Caribbean Anti-Money Laundering Alliance that intervene with both the import and export of controlled substances and dirty money through airports and along coasts, and with fugitives.

“We recognize that we’re having an effect in the streets due [to an increase in] the price of cocaine per kilo. A kilo of cocaine before would have cost $21,000; as of now, it’s around $30,000-$35,000. This shows that we are confiscating drugs on the streets, which has an impact on their price,” Muldrow said. “Through CCSF, we confiscated approximately 6,256 kilos of cocaine in 2019. In 2020, we have retrieved more than 15,680 kilos; although it’s not an official number, it reflects, without a doubt, the tremendous increase in drug confiscation by the agencies with which we are working. It’s almost triple the numbers from last year.”

In terms of money, the CCSF has retrieved more than $3.1 million in Puerto Rico through the aforementioned task force, compared to last year when it netted $1.3 million.

However, Muldrow said those numbers can be expected to change because the office intervened with two cases in which they retrieved up to $1.3 million and which have yet to be included in the official data.

“As for the Asset Recovery and Money Laundering Division, led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Miriam Fernández, during fiscal year 2020, the total recovery of money from forfeiture was more than $17.1 million,” he said.

Meanwhile, ACE, whose mission Muldrow said is to promote and protect the United States’ financial and programmatic interests through civil litigations, has collected more than $14 million since 2018. He emphasized that “fighting and dissuading fraud is one of the main priorities for both the Department of Justice (DOJ) and this office.”

“The program is focused on detecting, prosecuting, and deterring the waste and abuse of federal funds in healthcare, education, housing and other general matters,” Muldrow said, adding that his office invested in ACE by hiring four prosecutors, an investigative analyst and a financial analyst to focus on fraud cases.

“If we combine the money that we have confiscated through every force, it adds up to more than $26 million, and our main yearly budget is $12 million, which means that we are getting more than what we are allocated,” he said.

As for gang-related violence, the U.S. attorney said his office “has been focused on the investigation and prosecution of crime organizations that dedicate themselves to distributing illegal drugs on a large scale.” He also noted that they work on cases of organizations involved in murders, shootings and other violent incidents on the island along with the DOJ and the Puerto Rico Police Bureau.

“The U.S. Attorney will continue confiscating illegal firearms from the hands of criminals, and this includes

a renewed focus on those who illegally trade weapons,” Muldrow said. “A great portion of such weapons retrieved from the streets of Puerto Rico originate outside the island; reducing their flow is fundamental to decreasing violent crimes.”

As for the U.S. attorney joining forces with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to fight against judicial corruption as was announced last year, Muldrow said his office is providing attention and allocating resources because “any person who is a judge, an officer or a contractor with the government, we are going to investigate.”

“I can’t tell you that we have three ongoing investigations against judges or anything like that,” Muldrow said.

“What I am going to tell you is that judicial integrity is extremely important and anyone who decides to be corrupt will be investigated.”

Regarding the ongoing investigations in the Puerto Rico Legislature, in which the U.S. attorney issued indictments against New Progressive Party Reps. María Milagros Charbonier and Nelson del Valle, Muldrow said that although their cases are yet to be closed, “I don’t talk about them if they are investigating or a case is pending, but you can assume that there are other investigations going.”

“As I said before, we are adding many resources in order to work in this area and as I have said: ‘I don’t announce promises, I announce results.’ You can assume that we are investigating,” Muldrow said. “I want to emphasize that if a person in the community has more information on the case, it’s always better to come [to us] early than to come late.”

When a reporter asked if citizens could expect to see the results of such investigations before the general elections in two weeks, Muldrow replied “I can’t say when you will see results, but you will see results.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

5

PDP mayors: Fiscal problems in island towns are Pierluisi’s fault

By THE STAR STAFF

W

th the Nov. 3 election just around the corner, Popular Democratic Party (PDP) mayors on Monday accused New Progressive Party (NPP) gubernatorial candidate Pedro Pierluisi of being an “accomplice” in the drafting of a fiscal plan that keeps the 78 municipalities enduring dire fiscal problems.

The mayors said the NPP administration prepared and submitted a fiscal plan to the Financial Oversight and Management Board that contained a reduction of allocations to municipalities at a time when Pierluisi was a lawyer for the firm O’Neill & Borges, which represents the oversight board in bankruptcy matters.

The mayors spoke at a press conference held at PDP headquarters in the Puerta de Tierra ward of San Juan.

“He is an accomplice. Throughout this process of approving the fiscal plan, it was Pedro Pierluisi who was advising the [oversight] board,” Villalba Mayor Luis Javier Hernández Ortiz said.

Hernández Ortiz said Pierluisi brought the mayor of Orocovis to the oversight board, who saw him advising the federal entity about the pilot project in which 10

municipalities were declared covered entities by the board.

Comerío Mayor Josian Santiago stressed that the fiscal plan, beyond being an administrative matter that is affecting the municipalities’ operations, is a matter that also has to do with the political process.

“We are 15 days away from the elections and we must say a few things to the people who are going to make an important decision on November 3 about the people who will represent them,” Santiago said. “The fiscal plan that we are facing today due to the imposition of the board was approved by the NPP administration and [the current] candidate for governor for that party was an adviser to the board at that time.”

Loíza Mayor Julia Nazario Fuentes emphasized the importance of municipalities bringing their services to the public.

“After hurricanes Irma and Maria, it was the municipalities that first responded,” she said. “I will never forget the day I arrived at the [Puerto Rico] Convention Center for the first time and what was there was totally different from what I was experiencing with my people in Loíza.

Where was Mr. Pierluisi when all this was happening?”

The mayors listed the amount of money that was eliminated from the towns. The oversight board opted to eliminate transfers from the central government to cover $133 million in exemptions, $227 million in the parity fund while asking municipalities to pay for the retirement of employees and health insurance despite an agreement with the central government.

In March 2019, 10 municipalities were designated as covered entities by the oversight board, requiring them to provide fiscal plans and budgets, but Hernández Ortiz insisted the whole thing was a fraud.

PDP candidate condemns NPP senator’s ‘violent attitude’ with firearms in pro-GOP demonstration

By THE STAR STAFF

P

opular Democratic Party (PDP) Senate candidate for the Carolina District Christian Rodríguez on Monday characterized as violent and out of place the attitude of New Progressive Party (NPP) Sen. Nayda Venegas Brown, who held a press conference Sunday afternoon to show her support for President Donald Trump.

“It is unusual, and the violent deployment of assault weapons to make a public statement has caused great annoyance in the district. When no fewer than 418 violent deaths have been registered this year, Venegas Brown surrounds herself with hooded men in a violent posture,” the PDP candidate said. “Has someone from the senior leadership of the New Progressive Party called Senator Venegas Brown to meet with her, or is it that they agree with her?”

Rodríguez was referring specifically to a photograph published on Facebook in which the legislator, who defines herself as a Republican and pro-Trump, stands holding a banner in support of the president, flanked by eight people who are masked and dressed as if they were riot squad personnel, holding assault rifles in an intimidating manner, standing in front of a U.S. flag that hangs from the roof of a building to the ground.

“It is incongruous to claim to follow Christian doctrine and to propose the use of assault weapons indiscriminately. It is incongruous to say, on the one hand, that the lives of the unborn must be protected and, on the other hand, carry out a march in favor of violence,”

Rodríguez said. “Senator Venegas Brown, 15 days before the elections, you must evaluate your positions. If you are so interested in statehood, don’t try to imitate the bad and the violent of the American nation. Better to propose the values of responsibility and solidarity.”

Sunday’s Republican event was called by, among others, former NPP Sen. Myriam Ramírez de Ferrer, who no longer lives in Puerto Rico and traveled to the island for the demonstration. In a radio interview Monday, Ramírez de Ferrer described the event as “spectacular,” also ensuring that Trump favors statehood.

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Tuesday, October 20, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Romero presents animal control proposal for San Juan

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

N

ew Progressive Party candidate for mayor of San Juan Miguel Romero presented his proposal Monday to address the problem of animal populations that inhabit the streets of the capital along with several initiatives that, if he is elected, the municipal government will implement to promote the health and well being of pets.

The initiatives include alliances that promote mass vaccination and sterilization events, education for citizens and the transformation of the San Juan Animal Control and Adoption Center.

“To date there is a high social awareness about the needs of animals and a collective rejection of any action that constitutes animal abuse,” said Romero, who represents District 1 (San Juan, Guaynabo, Aguas Buenas) in the island Senate.

“As mayor of San Juan, it will be my commitment to work for the protection, well being and proper care of animals, and we will also implement measures that reflect the growing concern of the citizens of San Juan for these values.”

The candidate also stressed concern and interest in raising the quality of the services provided by the municipality through the San Juan Animal Control and Adoption Center and promised to create a task force with veterinary medicine professionals and entities that promote animal welfare to transform that facility and improve the services offered.

“The situation of mistreatment and overpopulation of animals are matters that the Municipality of San Juan by law has to attend to and to achieve this, we must have a functional Animal Control and Adoption Center with the necessary equipment and personnel to be able to fulfill basic functions and services

such as the collection and transportation of homeless animals, vaccination, sterilization and promoting and facilitating the adoption of pets in and out of San Juan,” Romero said. “At the moment, the Center is in a precarious situation due to the lack of both human and material resources and the deterioration of its facilities. As mayor, I am going to promote that both the municipality, veterinary medicine professionals and entities that promote animal welfare contribute to transforming the form and manner in which we provide services.”

The candidate, who serves on the Municipal Affairs Committee in the Senate, said likewise that, as part of its proposals and in order to reduce abandonment and abuse, San Juan will launch an educational campaign focused on responsible pet ownership, emphasizing the importance and benefits of the human-animal bond, vaccination, sterilization and adoption.

The author of Senate Bill 1621, which became Law 86-2020 authorizing provisional licenses for the practice of veterinary medicine in free large-scale events such as the “Spayathon PR,” emphasized the importance of carrying out such events in municipal facilities.

“The promotion of these mass initiatives that provide access to veterinary medical services is important in improving the health of our animal population and offering educational events to our citizens,” Romero said. “This type of alliance with different groups will be essential to achieving the greatest possible access to professional services that come at no cost to the citizen who participates in them.”

To transform the operation of the Animal Control and Adoption Center with the aim of improving its services, the candidate announced that he would establish a “Municipal Board of Veterinary Affairs and Animal Welfare,” which would offer recommendations on strategies and municipal ordinances related to the management of stray animals, in addition to identifying alternatives to address the problem.

The board will also have the task of reviewing, along with municipal administrative and legal personnel, the Animal Control Regulations of the Municipality of San Juan in order to ensure that the municipality complies with all the provisions established in the regulation within a framework of respect for animal rights and with a sanitary approach toward citizens of the island’s capital city.

Romero also emphasized that non-profit organizations such as the Pro-Animal Welfare Social Movement have presented ideas and initiatives that he would adopt as mayor.

The initiatives include workshops on responsibility, care and avoiding mistreatment of animals and the establishment, through the Adoption Center, of a program of “vouchers” for the vaccination and sterilization of dogs and cats for use by rescuers and people of low income. As part of the process of turning these proposals into active policy, the municipality could contribute its facilities and current personnel, the candidate said.

NPP Senate candidate Morán blasts Rossana López’s record

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

N

ew Progressive Party (NPP) candidate for Senate District 1 (San Juan, Guaynabo, Aguas Buenas) Nitza Morán charged Monday that Popular Democratic Party (PDP) San Juan mayoral candidate Rossana López León’s record is “against San Juan and the people of Puerto Rico” and that “is evidenced in her legislative record by having voted in favor of increases to gasoline, SUT [sales & use tax], electricity, insurance and legislation that eliminated the Seniors Bonus and other tax benefits.”

Morán detailed a series of measures that had the vote and support of López as a senator during the administration of PDP Gov. Alejandro García Padilla: 1. Law 31-2013, which increased the tax on the use of oil from $3.00 to $9.25 (Crudita I) 2. Law 40-2013, which reduced taxpayer deductions, increased insurance premiums, eliminated SUT exemptions in cooperatives, and increased income taxes for individuals and businesses 3. Law 41-2013, which increased the tax on cigarettes 4. Law 77-2014, which reduced the Seniors Bonus, increased income taxes to individuals and businesses, and reduced payroll the deductions

5. Law 1-2015, which increased the tax on oil use from $9.25 to $15.50 (Crudita II) 6. Law 4-2016 on the restructuring of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s debt, which included an increase in the electricity bill.

Morán stated that “on multiple occasions I have heard the senator express herself in the media about her work as a prosecutor for the Office for the Elderly.”

“Now, how can you explain that you have been in favor of reducing the benefits to this population, increasing taxes and

PDP San Juan mayoral candidate Rossana López León

rates for insurance, gasoline and electricity, among others?” the NPP Senate candidate said.

The businesswoman added that “Rossana López intends to run the capital of Puerto Rico after harming hundreds of thousands of merchants and citizens by increasing taxes even more and reducing profits.”

“Senator López’s record against the economic development of San Juan is evidenced by her having been an accomplice and participant, from the Senate, in the imposition of close to 100 taxes during the last PDP administration when García Padilla governed.”

Morán added that “the merchants and citizens of San Juan have been run over by their [PDP] mayor Carmen Yulín, and we have never heard the senator raise her voice in defense of the people of San Juan.”

“We all know about the precarious conditions in the capital and we never saw Senator López demand that the mayor get off the plane and offer better services or greater attention to the needs of the people of San Juan,” she said. “Nor have we heard her in the past legislate for improvements in the capital.”

Morán also charged that López “was the great absentee in the voting on various legislative tax measures such as Law 72-2015, which increased the SUT from 7 percent to 11.5 percent, and tried to impose the VAT [value-added tax] of 16 percent on us.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

7

Refugees who assisted the U.S. military find the door to America slammed shut

By ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS

T

he certificate of appreciation that Hanadi Al Haidari’s family received for providing shelter, food and translation services for the U.S. military still looks brand-new, without even a crease. She keeps it next to her Iraqi passport in her new home in Denver.

The document is both proof of the risk the family took to assist American soldiers and a reminder of a promise unkept.

Al Haidari’s brother, Ahmed, whose work as a translator for the troops allowed his family to apply for a priority refugee visa to the United States, remains in limbo in the Middle East, struggling to support his 9-year-old son.

“He just wants the basic rights of a normal person,” Al Haidari said, adding that she did not blame any specific official or government for the delay in approval for her brother’s resettlement. But she was also quick to note that her family’s displacement was rooted in the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ensuing upheaval. “We wanted to come here because we don’t have a home,” she said. “We don’t have a country anymore.”

The Trump administration had reserved 4,000 slots for Iraqi refugees who had helped American troops, contractors or news media or who are members of a persecuted minority group in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. It ultimately admitted only 161 Iraqis — or 4% — to the United States, the lowest percentage of the four categories of refugees the administration authorized for resettlement last year. While the coronavirus pandemic caused refugee flights to be canceled for months, immigration lawyers also cited the lasting effects of President Donald Trump’s initial refugee bans and expanded vetting of those fleeing persecution. Of the 5,000 slots reserved for victims of religious persecution, 4,859 were filled — a reflection, perhaps, of the administration’s political priorities.

Al Haidari’s hopes for her family’s reunion dimmed further last month when Trump told Congress he planned to cut the cap on refugees for a fourth straight year. The number of refugees admitted depends on the administration and world events, but the ceiling for the current fiscal year, 15,000, is the lowest in the program’s four decadelong history. During the Obama administration, the cap was at least 70,000 a year. The announcement came as Trump fell back on the kind of antiimmigration messaging that has been a staple of his campaigns, tarring refugees as threats to public safety and the economy, despite multiple studies debunking such generalizations. He also used the issue to attack his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, who has proposed raising refugee admissions to 125,000.

But families like the Al Haidaris make for unlikely political targets. Veterans and active-duty service members fear that the exclusion of those who assisted the military from resettlement is the real threat to national security because such cooperation will be harder to come by in future conflicts. More than 9,800 Iraqis were welcomed to the United States in 2016, according to State Department data. By the 2019 fiscal year, that was down to 465.

“If the message is sent that those who stepped up to help

Afghan refugees in Turkey in February. Last year, the Trump administration reduced the overall cap on refugee admissions and empowered local governments to block resettlement in their communities.

American service members were left behind, forgotten, and to die, then it’s going to significantly reduce the likelihood of people stepping forward in the future in other countries to help U.S. service members with their missions,” said Allen Vaught, a former captain in the Army who served in Iraq from 2003 to 2004.

Vaught has helped two Iraqis and their families resettle in Texas, his home state, where he served in the Legislature from 2007 to 2011. Two other translators who helped his squad were executed, Vaught said. He has spent years lobbying for the approval of a fifth who fled to Egypt in 2014 to escape retaliation from Iraqi militia groups. At least 110,000 Iraqis are waiting to be approved as refugees based on their assistance to U.S. authorities, according to resettlement organizations.

Those seeking refuge in the United States have long had to undergo multiple interviews with immigration officers and organizations contracted by the Department of State to obtain approval to travel to the United States. In Iraq, those interviews were slowed last year by the withdrawal of nonessential employees from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

The administration now requires additional information from many refugees and their families. Applicants from 11 countries — most of them with Muslim majorities — have to wait for their social media accounts to be vetted, exacerbating delays. Their relatives, including children, have been subjected to additional security screenings.

And refugees have been asked to provide phone numbers and addresses dating back 10 years instead of five — no easy task for a family that may have been searching for a permanent

residence for years, according to a report published this month by the International Refugee Assistance Project, or IRAP. “It creates a really convenient feedback loop if you actually don’t want to admit refugees,” said Becca Heller, the group’s executive director.

The Department of State’s press office said in a statement that the agency needed to conduct the additional security screenings to ensure that those being allowed to resettle in the country had been properly vetted.

Vaught’s former translator, now in Egypt, is caught in that loop, waiting to clear security checks even after he was told to prepare to travel to the United States in 2017.

The translator earned the support of the troops he helped.

In an interview, he asked to be identified as Sam, the nickname Vaught’s team gave him.

“I believe it is too dangerous for him to work in Fallujah any longer,” an Army officer wrote in a 2004 memo requesting that the Army relocate Sam. “He has been loyal and trustworthy and deserves our appreciation.”

That same year, a militia group fired more than a dozen shots at Sam and lobbed a bomb at his home, according to written testimony he provided in a lawsuit against the administration’s expanded vetting. He decided he needed to get away from his wife and two daughters for their safety. After bouncing from home to home in Iraq, he escaped in 2014 to Egypt, where he hoped to complete the refugee process.

Sam said he still feared for his family’s safety.

“Even death is better than the situation I’m in,” he said in a phone interview. “They took my integrity with all of this.”

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Tuesday, October 20, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Supreme Court to review Trump’s ‘remain in Mexico’ asylum program

By ADAM LIPTAK

T

he Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether the Trump administration could maintain a program that has forced at least 60,000 asylumseekers to wait in Mexico while their requests are heard.

An appeals court blocked the program in February, saying it was at odds with both federal law and international treaties and was causing “extreme and irreversible harm.” But the Supreme Court stayed that ruling in March while it considered whether to hear an appeal, leaving the program in place.

The program applies to people who leave a third country and travel through Mexico to reach the U.S. border. Since the policy was put in place at the beginning of last year, tens of thousands of people have waited for immigration hearings in unsanitary tent encampments exposed to the elements. There have been widespread reports of sexual assault, kidnapping and torture.

The coronavirus pandemic has also complicated matters. In its brief seeking Supreme Court review, filed in April, the administration acknowledged that “the public health emergency caused by the COVID-19 virus” prompted it to take additional measures making it even harder to seek asylum.

“The government’s response to the emergency is

fluid,” the brief said, “and measures attributable to the emergency are not at issue in this case.”

The brief said the program, known formally as the Migrant Protection Protocols and administered by the Department of Homeland Security, has been successful.

Migrants at the United States and Mexico border in April.

“During the 14 months that MPP has been in operation, it has been enormously effective: It has enabled DHS to avoid detaining or releasing into the interior more than 60,000 migrants during removal proceedings, and has dramatically curtailed the number of aliens approaching or attempting to cross the Southwest border,” the brief said. “The program has been an indispensable tool in the United States’ efforts, working cooperatively with the governments of Mexico and other countries, to address the migration crisis by diminishing incentives for illegal immigration, weakening cartels and human smugglers, and enabling DHS to better focus its resources on legitimate asylum claims.”

Asylum-seekers and legal groups, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, responded in July that the dispute is for now academic, as the administration, citing the pandemic, has in effect closed the border to asylum-seekers. They urged the court to deny review in the case, Wolf v. Innovation Law Lab, No. 19-1212.

In a second brief, the administration said the pandemic did not make the case less urgent.

“The current suspension on introducing certain aliens is a temporary response to the pandemic,” the brief said. “The decisions below impose severe constraints” on the government, the brief said, “and those constraints will endure long past the present emergency.”

Stimulus talks are stuck as time runs short, Pelosi says

By LUKE BROADWATER and EMILY COCHRANE

C

ongressional Democrats and the White House remain at an impasse over a fresh package of coronavirus economic relief, as time runs out to get a bill passed before the election, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday.

Pelosi said on the ABC program “This Week” that she was still in negotiations with the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, but that “we don’t have agreement on the language yet.” She said a deal would have to be struck within 48 hours for a package to be enacted by Election Day. But even if she and Mnuchin reach a deal, Senate Republicans are not expected to accept it. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said he does not believe he can sell a package of more than $1 trillion to conservative Senate Republicans, which is less than half the size of the bill House Democrats have proposed. The Democrats have proposed a $2.4 trillion package, named the Heroes Act, that would provide aid to families, schools, restaurants, businesses and airline workers; it includes about $500 billion for state and

local governments. Mnuchin, negotiating on behalf of President Donald Trump, has countered with a number of proposed alterations to scale back the package.

On Sunday, Trump said he remained optimistic.

“We’re talking about it. I think Nancy Pelosi maybe is coming along, we’ll find out,” he said. “I want to do it at a bigger number than she wants. That doesn’t mean all the Republicans agree with me, but I think they will in the end if she would go along.”

The White House has proposed changes to the Democrats’ proposal, and in a letter to colleagues Sunday afternoon, Pelosi detailed her objections.

“The White House has removed 55 percent of the Heroes Act’s language for testing, tracing, and treatment,” Pelosi wrote. “Especially disappointing was the elimination of measures to address the virus’s disproportionate and deadly impact on communities of color. The White House does not appreciate the need to direct resources to culturally competent contact tracing.”

She added: “The Administration continues to fail to meet the well-documented need for funds to protect frontline workers in health care, first responders, sanitation, transportation, food workers, teachers and others,

and to prevent service cuts to struggling communities.”

Nevertheless, she said, she hoped to find common ground. “I am optimistic that we can reach agreement before the election,” she wrote.

McConnell, who has not been negotiating with Pelosi, is expected to put forward a $500 billion package this week.

McConnell also said Saturday that he planned to hold votes on a stand-alone bill to revive the Paycheck Protection Program, a federal loan program for small businesses created in the spring. Some of the $500 billion in his relief proposal would be used to finance the loan program.

McConnell has faced pressure from moderate members of his conference to act on relief legislation.

Trump’s decision to abruptly end talks, and then to reverse course, prompted concerns among Republicans that he had in effect guaranteed that Republicans would be blamed for a failure to provide further federal aid.

Without congressional action and a new round of federal relief, the country’s economic recovery has continued to shudder, and millions of Americans have slipped back into poverty.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

9

How prepared are these 7 battlegrounds for the election? A readiness report

Poll workers on Thursday during the first day of early voting in Charlotte, N.C.

By NICK CORASANITI and REID J. EPSTEIN

I

n Georgia, the state’s voting machines have malfunctioned in three consecutive elections this year alone.

In Pennsylvania, election officials are staring down possibly the biggest ballot processing backlog in the country, with no means of even touching the ballots until polls open on Election Day. And in North Carolina, thousands of submitted absentee ballots are currently in purgatory, neither rejected nor accepted but “under review,” amid a back-and-forth court battle over so-called ballot curing.

Short on money, overworked and under enormous pressure, many battleground states are still in the process of standing up their electoral systems, a building-a-plane-midflight reality for a democratic process that is being challenged daily by court cases, new laws and surges in the coronavirus.

The New York Times assessed the readiness of seven battleground states, and will continue to do so up to Nov. 3. Each of these states was won by Donald Trump in 2016. Joe Biden is now ahead or effectively tied with Trump in most polls in all seven.

After spring and summer primary elections that were undermined by a host of issues — ballot delays in the mail, polling location consolidation resulting in long lines, voter confusion and lengthy lags in counting — officials have mounted a fall sprint to recruit poll workers, scout safe poll locations, seek more time to process ballots, and start a significant education campaign to help voters navigate

the pandemic-muddled process.

Now, the readiness of states chiefly involves two distinct challenges: processing the tens of millions of absentee ballots that are already flooding election offices, and maintaining an Election Day operation that as closely as possible resembles normalcy.

Here’s where the seven states stand with just 15 days before Election Day, ranked in order of preparedness.

1. Arizona Of all the battleground states, none is expected to have as smooth an election as is Arizona. In the midterm elections in 2018, 79% of Arizonans voted before Election Day — a figure that jumped to 88% for the primary this August.

After 2018, when it took a week for Arizona to count enough ballots for a winner to be declared in its Senate race, the state changed its laws to allow absentee ballots to be counted beginning 14 days before Election Day. Maricopa County, which includes 60% of Arizona’s population, acquired new ballotcounting machines that officials expect will allow the vast majority of the voting results to be known on election night.

“I somewhat jokingly say that we are prepared for everything except Godzilla,” said Adrian Fontes, the Maricopa County recorder, who is responsible for running the county’s elections. “Nowadays that includes a global pandemic and possible terrorism.”

Fontes and other Arizona officials have more experience with absentee ballots than any other battleground state in the country.

Arizona created a permanent absentee voter list in 2007, and by 2010, 60% of the state’s voters cast ballots before Election Day, a figure that has increased every two years since.

2. Michigan Michigan has had a successful poll worker recruitment program, with more than 30,000 having signed up and no regional restrictions preventing them from going anywhere in the state.

That same pool of workers could also be asked to serve on the counting boards, which are the election workers assigned to sift through, verify and tally the absentee ballots.

While thousands will be needed for the task, which Michigan law allows to start only 10 hours before Election Day, the secretary of state’s office is confident that staffing will not be a problem.

Because of that late start to counting, Michigan anticipates being one of the last states to report full results, with election officials estimating that the vast majority will be announced through Nov. 6. An appeals court ruled Friday that ballots must be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day, though it is possible the decision is appealed to the state Supreme Court.

The secretary of state’s office has begun a voter education campaign as if it has lost the decision in court, telling voters that the last day to safely mail back their ballots is Oct. 19.

After that, they should be hand-delivered to an election office or one of the state’s 1,000 drop boxes.

Also weighing on the minds of election officials is the threat of polling place intimidation. Armed right-wing protesters entered the Statehouse earlier this year to denounce the coronavirus lockdowns of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and law enforcement officials are anticipating a similar presence at the polls.

On Friday, the secretary of state in Michigan issued an order banning firearms at polling places and any areas within 100 feet of a voting center.

3. Wisconsin In the past decade, Wisconsin Republicans enacted laws that have made voting tougher: — It now has one of the nation’s strictest voter-identification mandates. Voters who apply for an absentee ballot online or through the mail must include a photograph for their identification, which requires both equipment and technical sophistication.

— They also must have a witness sign their ballots, a hurdle made more difficult by a pandemic that is hitting Wisconsin nearly

as hard as anywhere in the country.

Some Wisconsinites have taken it upon themselves to help their neighbors navigate an absentee voting process that is new for the vast majority of voters. Lori Miller, a retired dietitian from rural Arkansaw, Wisconsin, spent $59 on eBay for a portable photocopy machine to tote to tables set up this summer by the League of Women Voters so she could make copies of people’s driver’s licenses for them to include in absentee ballot applications.

“What used to be a fairly simple process now has new steps to it,” Miller said. “With every election, and especially this year, there have been proposals made to change deadlines and then those get challenged and changed and appealed. People lose track.”

Unlike most states, Wisconsin does not have a single office responsible for voting statewide, nor do county officials oversee elections. Instead, more than 1,800 municipalities manage their own elections. In scores of rural townships, a part-time town clerk is responsible for conducting elections and counting the votes.

The municipal clerks are forbidden from feeding the ballots through counting machines until the polls open Nov. 3. But Gov. Tony Evers said Thursday that he expects the state to have its results completed by the end of Election Day or, at the latest, by the day after.

4. Florida On Sept. 30, Peter Antonacci, the elections supervisor in Broward County, was scrambling: The vendor his office had hired to pick up and drop off voting equipment to the polls had canceled the county’s order, leaving Broward hunting for trucks 34 days before Election Day. It was one of the myriad challenges faced daily by the 67 county supervisors in Florida, who run elections in the nation’s largest and often closest presidential battleground.

Winning by “1.5% in the state of Florida is a landslide,” said Wesley Wilcox, the elections supervisor in Marion County.

The supervisors say they are ready to handle problems small and large. Of utmost concern is the crush of mail ballots already arriving. More than 2.4 million ballots had been returned as of Sunday afternoon, led by a stunning return rate from Democrats, who are typically outpaced by Republicans in mail voting. So far, 400,000 more Democrats have returned mail ballots than Republicans, though Republicans are expected to turn out en masse to vote in person.

Continues on page 10

10 From page 9 Florida has years of experience with voting by mail — an effort led largely by Republicans — which should mean the state is better positioned to deal with this year’s surge.

State law allows counties to start processing mail ballots 22 days before Election Day. An executive order signed during the pandemic

by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, allowed for the processing to begin even sooner: 30 days before Election Day once counties had conducted public tests of their voting equipment.

Supervisors in the state’s largest counties say their goal is to process the ballots — remove them from the envelopes, verify signatures and tabulate the vote — on the day they arrive, to avoid a backup building up as Election Day nears. That would leave only the mail ballots that arrive on Nov. 3 to be processed that day.

“Our focus is getting it right,” said Mark Earley, the elections supervisor in Leon County, home to Tallahassee, the state capital. “Not getting it done as fast as possible.”

5. North Carolina Election officials in North Carolina were increasingly confident in the state’s electoral apparatus earlier in the fall, with no reported poll worker shortages in any county and more than 500,000 absentee ballots already returned and being processed.

But two forthcoming court decisions threaten to disrupt the elections. In one, the state Republican Party is pushing to be allowed to send partisan citizen inspectors

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

into the county boards of elections before absentee ballots are approved by election officials, with the ability to start challenging those ballots that they see as potentially not meeting requirements.

If the court sides with the Republicans, it could severely delay the counting of absentee ballots to well beyond Election Day. And with officials estimating that roughly 25% of the vote in North Carolina will be cast through absentee ballots, a lengthy delay would most likely mean no statewide results in the presidential election or the contested Senate race for days, if not weeks.

In the second case, the state is keeping at least 7,000 absentee ballots with potential issues in limbo while a court sorts out a legal challenge on whether the North Carolina State Board of Elections can contact voters and allow them to fix, or “cure,” any issues with their ballots.

In that case, a federal judge on Wednesday blocked officials from allowing voters to “cure,” or address a missing witness signature but said that deficient information, like a missing or incomplete address, could still be cured. Appeals from both sides are pending. So now, thousands of voters whose ballots are in limbo — roughly about 40% of which belong to Black voters statewide — are awaiting word from county election officials as to how to proceed.

While that ruling is likely to draw an appeal, any prolonged legal uncertainty for the absentee ballots could threaten a voter’s opportunity to cure the ballot in time.

“The longer a voter says, ‘Oh I turned

Mail-in ballots being moved last week in Largo, Fla.

in my ballot, it must be good,’ when they do finally hear from the county, they might be more suspicious about it, considering how much disinformation there is going around,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, a voting rights group.

6. Georgia No state had a worse voting experience in the 2020 election primaries than Georgia.

Absentee ballots either failed to arrive on time or showed up damaged. Poll workers, scared by the virus, bailed at the last minute, forcing the consolidation of thousands of voters into a single location in Midtown Atlanta. Lines stretched for hours, with some voters not able to cast ballots until nearly 1 a.m. And sometimes the state’s new voting machines malfunctioned.

When Georgia’s in-person early voting began Oct. 12, voters and elections officials braced for a repeat. Lines stretched for hours in suburban Gwinnett County, a predicament the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, initially attributed to high turnout but later admitted was because of technical difficulties related to the state’s new machines. As wait times fell, Raffensperger’s office took credit, saying it had requested the state’s elections software vendor increase bandwidth to its devices.

By Sunday, more than 1.4 million Georgians had voted, a figure that accounts for more than 34% of the state’s 2016 turnout.

Lines on Friday still stretched for up to three hours at some locations in Cobb County, a rapidly diversifying suburb that backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 but is still run by Republican officials.

In Fulton County, which experienced the worst delays during the June primary, wait times have largely been alleviated by opening Atlanta’s pro basketball arena as a mega early-voting site. With more than 300 voting machines, the facility has managed to Arizona created a permanent absentee voter list in 2007, and by 2010, 60 percent move voters through without a delay.

Election Day, which will require far of the state’s voters cast ballots before Election Day.

more poll workers given the larger number of voting locations, will present another stress test for the state’s voting system.

7. Pennsylvania Few states are still facing more litigationdriven uncertainty than Pennsylvania.

The state has had its plans to install drop boxes hung up in the courts for months. The question of whether it will be able to accept ballots that arrive after Election Day has been similarly stalled. The state Legislature still hasn’t decided on allowing election officials to begin processing ballots early. And Kathy Boockvar, the secretary of state, is still awaiting guidance from the state Supreme Court as to whether election officials have to perform signature matching checks on absentee ballots.

“Pennsylvania is the one everyone is worried about,” said Charles Stewart III, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who runs the university’s Election Data and Science Lab. While all of this uncertainty might seemingly depress enthusiasm for mail ballots, Pennsylvania voters are still requesting them at a record clip. More than 2.7 million ballots have been requested, and about 683,000 have been returned. Yet at the moment, election officials in the state’s 67 counties cannot touch the ballots until Election Day, raising the likelihood that full results will not be known for days.

By law, Pennsylvania does not offer any form of in-person early voting. But Boockvar has worked with county officials to set up satellite elections offices where voters can come and vote by absentee ballot in person (as in, request a ballot in person, receive it, fill it out there and then drop it off). The offices are intended to expand voting options and help decrease an expected surge on Election Day. But so far, only five of the state’s 67 counties — Philadelphia, Centre, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery — have set up offices.

The lack of true in-person voting means Pennsylvania will most likely have a large Election Day turnout. Though the statewide poll worker recruitment effort was successful — more than 56,000 raised their hands — Pennsylvania has strict rules stating that a poll worker can serve only in the county in which they are registered to vote.

The city is also bracing for a potentially contentious Election Day, and Lawrence S. Krasner, the district attorney for Philadelphia, is expanding the regular Election Day task force.

“We have probably at this point over 60 of our 300 attorneys who are volunteering to handle these duties on top of their other duties,” Krasner said. “And it’s my expectation, in light of the conversation I’ve had with the Philadelphia Police Department, that they are going to ramp that up for Election Day.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

11

With COVID-19 under control, China’s economy surges ahead

A line for the sale of a limited edition Nike shoe in Shanghai, Oct. 16, 2020. The Chinese economy surged in the July-to-September quarter according to the country’s National Bureau of Statistics, showing that a fast economic rebound is possible when the virus is brought firmly under control.

By KEITH BRADSHER

A

s most of the world still struggles with the coronavirus pandemic, China is showing once again that a fast economic rebound is possible when the virus is brought firmly under control.

The Chinese economy surged 4.9% in the July-to-September quarter compared with the same months last year, the country’s National Bureau of Statistics announced Monday.

The robust performance brings China almost back up to the roughly 6% pace of growth that it was reporting before the pandemic.

Many of the world’s major economies have climbed quickly out of the depths of a contraction last spring, when shutdowns caused output to fall steeply. But China is the first to report growth that significantly surpasses where it was at this time last year. The United States and other nations are expected to report a third-quarter surge too, but they are still behind or just catching up to pre-pandemic levels.

China’s lead could widen further in the months to come. It has almost no local transmission of the virus now, while the United States and Europe face another accelerating wave of cases.

The vigorous expansion of the Chinese economy means that it is set to dominate global growth — accounting for at least 30% of the world’s economic growth this year and in the years to come, Justin Lin Yifu, a Cabinet adviser and honorary dean of the National School of Development at Peking University, said at a recent government news conference in Beijing.

Chinese companies are making up a greater share of the world’s exports, manufacturing consumer electronics, personal protection equipment and other goods in high demand during the pandemic. At the same time, China is now buying more iron ore from Brazil, more corn and pork from the United States and more palm oil from Malaysia. That has partly reversed a nosedive in commodity prices last spring and softened the impact of the pandemic on some industries.

Still, China’s recovery has done less to help the rest of the world than in the past because its imports have not increased nearly as much as its exports. This pattern has created jobs in China but placed a brake on growth elsewhere.

China’s economic recovery has also been dependent for months on huge investments in highways, high-speed train lines and other infrastructure. And in recent weeks, the country has seen the beginning of a

recovery in domestic consumption.

The affluent and people living in export-oriented coastal provinces were the first to start spending money again. But activity is resuming now even in places like Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the new coronavirus first emerged.

“You’ve had to line up to get into many restaurants in Wuhan, and for Wuhan restaurants that are popular on the internet, the wait is two or three hours,” said Lei Yanqiu, a Wuhan resident in her early 30s.

George Zhong, a resident of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in western China, said that he had made trips to three provinces in the last two months and has been actively shopping when he is home. “I spend no less than in previous years,” Zhong said.

China’s economic growth in the past three months came in slightly below economists’ forecasts of 5.2% to 5.5%. But the performance was still strong enough that stock markets in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong rose in early trading Monday.

China’s broadening recovery could also be seen in economic statistics just for September, which were also released Monday. Retail sales climbed 3.3% last month from a year ago, while industrial production was up 6.9%.

China’s model for restoring growth may be effective, but may not be appealing to other countries.

Determined to keep local transmission of the virus at or near zero, China has resorted to comprehensive cellphone tracking of its population, weekslong lockdowns of neighborhoods and cities and costly mass testing in response to even the smallest outbreaks.

China’s rebound also comes with some weaknesses, particularly a surge in overall debt this year by an amount equal to 15% to 25% of the economy’s overall output. Much of the extra debt is either borrowing by local governments and state-owned enterprises to pay for new infrastructure, or mortgages taken out by households and companies to pay for apartments and new buildings.

The government is aware of the risk of letting debt accumulate quickly. But reining in new credit would hurt real estate activity, a sector that represents up to a quarter of the economy.

Another risk to China’s recovery is its heavy dependence on exports. The surge in exports in the last three months, along with lower prices for imports of commodities, accounted for a big chunk of economic growth, one of the largest shares of any quarter in a decade. Exports represent more than 17% of China’s economy, more than double the proportion that they make up in the U.S. economy.

China’s leaders recognize that the country’s exports are increasingly vulnerable to geopolitical tensions, including the Trump administration’s moves to unwind trade relations between the United States and China. Shifts in global demand might also threaten exports, as the pandemic batters overseas economies.

12

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Disney prefaces some older films with warning of ‘racist’ stereotypes

The 1953 film “Peter Pan” portrays Indigenous people “in a stereotypical manner” and refers to them repeatedly with a slur, according to Disney.

By BRYAN PIETSCH

T

hey are classic animated films like “Dumbo” (1941) and “Peter Pan” (1953), but on Disney’s streaming service they will now get a little help to stand the test of time.

Before viewers watch some of these films that entertained generations of children, they will be warned about scenes that include “negative depictions” and “mistreatment of people or cultures.”

The 12-second disclaimer, which cannot be skipped, tells viewers, in part: “These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now. Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.”

In addition to “Peter Pan” and “Dumbo,” the warning plays on films including “The Aristocats” (1970) and “Aladdin” (1992), and directs viewers to a website that explains some of the problematic scenes.

In “The Aristocats,” a cat with slanted eyes

and buck teeth is a “racist caricature of East Asian peoples with exaggerated stereotypical traits,” the website says. The cat’s song about egg foo young and fortune cookies — Westernized foods — “mock the Chinese language and culture,” it says.

“Dumbo” includes a group of crows that “pay homage to racist minstrel shows,” the site says. The leader of the group of birds is named Jim Crow, a reference to the laws that enforced racial segregation in the United States. “Peter Pan” portrays Indigenous people “in a stereotypical manner” and refers to them repeatedly with a slur, it says.

Disney was advised by organizations such as the African-American Film Critics Association and the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment, according to the site, which says a third-party “advisory council” is providing Disney with “ongoing guidance and thought leadership on critical issues and shifting perceptions.”

The disclaimer follows a similar, yet less extensive, warning from Disney in 2019 that told viewers: “This program is presented as ori-

ginally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.”

Hemant Shah, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies portrayals of race and ethnicity in film and media, said that if white children consumed content with racist portrayals that went unchecked, it could “normalize the stereotype” for them and make it “normal for them not to call out stereotypes or racist behaviors they see in their lives.”

For children of color, it could lead to selfesteem issues, Shah said. “They may have a sense of, ‘That’s how I am?’” he said.

Though he was skeptical that the disclaimer would have a large impact on children, Shah said that racist scenes offered learning opportunities when children watched them with their parents at home or in the classroom as part of media literacy education. Disney “ought to also have some sort education program” about the stereotypes in conjunction with the disclaimer, he said.

The revised language was installed over the past week, a Disney spokesperson said in an email Sunday, noting that the original advisory had appeared since Disney+ kicked off in November last year.

Disney said in June that it would remake its Splash Mountain theme park ride, which includes characters and songs from the 1946 musical “Song of the South.” Disney has not made the musical available for over three decades because of the racist imagery it includes.

The updated warning comes as other companies have reckoned with racist or otherwise insensitive parts of their brands or products.

Quaker Oats said in June that it would change the name and packaging of its Aunt Jemima brand, which is based on racist imagery. A formerly enslaved person was hired to portray the character in the late 1800s, and in the 1930s a white actress who had performed in blackface played Aunt Jemima in a radio series.

Last month, the company that produces the Cream of Wheat brand of hot cereal said it would discontinue its use of a Black chef as the face of the brand to ensure it did not “inadvertently contribute to systemic racism.” Though the branding may be based on an actual chef from Chicago, the company said, the imagery “reminds some consumers of earlier depictions they find offensive.”

Popular YouTube personality Jenna Mourey, better known as Jenna Marbles, said in June that she would wind down her channel after she faced criticism for videos that she made in blackface as well as others that mock Asian people.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

13 Stocks

Vaccine hopes drive stocks higher on ‘Black Monday’ anniversary

W

all Street opened higher and the dollar slipped on Monday as rising hopes of a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year and a U.S. fiscal package before the election offset concern over record daily infections in Europe.

U.S. stocks rose in early trading, on the 33rd anniversary of the 1987 “Black Monday” crash, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 22.6% in one day, equivalent to a drop of about 6,500 points in the index today.

Worries about a second wave of coronavirus infections and no breakthrough in the Brexit stalemate failed to curb risk appetite among investors, after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Sunday she was optimistic about a coronavirus relief deal before Election Day. Boosting overall sentiment, drugmaker Pfizer Inc said on Friday it could have a coronavirus vaccine ready in the United States by the end of this year.

Adding to optimism, China’s economic recovery accelerated in the third quarter as consumers shook off their coronavirus caution, although the weaker-than-expected headline growth capped stock market gains in Asia.

“I think there is a heady cocktail of vaccine optimism, good Asian data and a lack of full scale lockdowns which is helping the sentiment,” said John Woolfitt, director of trading at Atlantic Capital Markets.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 27.24 points, or 0.10%, at the open to 28,633.55. The S&P 500 opened higher by 9.85 points, or 0.28%, at 3,493.66, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 60.78 points, or 0.52%, to 11,732.34 at the opening bell.

The European blue-chip stocks index was slightly positive even as new COVID-19 cases were growing at a record 150,000 a day in Europe. Parts of the UK were put into lockdown and France imposed curfews.

Trading volumes in Europe were however sharply lower due to a technical glitch at exchange operator Euronext, which led to trading activity being halted in the Amsterdam, Brussels, Lisbon and Paris bourses.

Investors took comfort from China’s economic recovery in the third quarter as consumers shook off their coronavirus caution, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.5% for a second straight day of gains, paring back following third-quarter gross domestic product data from China.

Monthly indicators pointed to an expansion in economic activity in China. Industrial output accelerated 6.9% in September from a year earlier, when analysts were looking for a 5.8% gain from a 5.6% rise in August.

In currency markets, the yuan soaring to a fresh 1-1/2year high against the dollar, while the U.S. dollar slipped 0.4% to 93.295 against a basket of six major currencies.

The Chinese currency touched 6.6737 against the U.S. dollar in the offshore market, its strongest since March 2019. It was last up 0.4%.

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14

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

In election, Bolivia confronts the legacy of its ousted socialist leader

Dated posters depict former president Evo Morales along a sidewalk in El Alto, Bolivia, Oct. 17, 2020, the day before an election that will choose a new president.

By JULIE TURKEWITZ

A

dalid Zelada fully supported Evo Morales when Bolivia chose him as the country’s first Indigenous president in 2005.

The way many saw it, large numbers of Bolivians were painfully poor, society was deeply unequal and power was overwhelmingly concentrated among the white elite. Morales, a socialist and former llama herder, spoke of equality, ending discrimination and recovering the nation’s resources from foreign hands.

“They were very good ideas,” said Zelada, 47. “But over time, it all became an authoritarian strategy to co-opt power. And those good ideas became just words.”

As Bolivians went to the polls Sunday to choose a new president, the election is widely viewed as a referendum on the 14-year political project of Morales, a towering figure in Bolivian politics who lifted hundreds of thousands out of poverty but whose policies and rhetoric often divided the country.

In recent years, even supporters began to abandon him amid allegations of misuse of funds, abuse of power and, more recently, a sexual relationship with a minor.

He fled Bolivia last year after his attempt to win a fourth term ended in a contested election and deadly protests. Morales called it a coup. Others accused his government of trying to rig the vote.

Voting in Bolivia is mandatory, and on Sunday lines began

to form outside schools converted into precincts before polling places opened at 8 a.m. Soon, patios filled with voters, who entered classrooms one by one to fill out paper ballots then dropped their votes in cardboard boxes, to be counted by hand later that night.

Many called the moment critical, and said they had arrived despite fears of the coronavirus. “This is going to define our country’s destiny,” said Enrique Huanca, 58.

Sunday is a redo of last year’s election and comes at a time of deep polarization, at a level notable even for a country accustomed to division and unrest. In the weeks leading up the election, the United Nations has documented at least 41 acts of political violence.

In the streets of La Paz, the administrative capital, there is little agreement about whether there was electoral fraud last year.

And Morales’ party, the Movimiento al Socialismo, or MAS, is casting doubt on the voting system, warning supporters of almost certain “electoral fraud” and a process stacked against them.

A recent poll by the nongovernmental organization Fundación Jubileo found that just 40% of Bolivians trust the country’s electoral body, despite major efforts to overhaul it since last year.

It could take days for results to come in.

And when the count is announced, large swaths of the country is likely to be angry, political observers say, and violence is a real possibility.

The vote is largely a choice between Morales’ hand-picked

successor, his former economics minister, Luis Arce, and Carlos Mesa, a centrist former president.

Arce’s appeal to voters is that he can continue the socialist movement his predecessor started — while being very different from Morales.

In the back of his campaign car just before the election, he called Morales’ decision to run for a fourth term “an error,” insisted that he would run for only a single term and said he considered himself a transitional candidate.

“I have no interest in power,” he said. “I want to move the country forward, leave it in the hands of young people, and I’ll go.”

Morales, he added, would have no part in his government.

“We see him as a historical figure.”

Mesa is running as the anti-Morales candidate, promising a return to peace after years of political and social division.

Morales’ wrongdoings, he added, had been papered over by journalists and left-wing politicians “who have a fascination with the fact that he was the first Indigenous president.”

“We are the only political force in this country with the ability to begin reconciliation, heal the wounds and construct a space of unity,” he said.

A third candidate, Luis Fernando Camacho, threatens to split the conservative vote, pushing Arce and Mesa to a potential runoff.

In the streets of La Paz last week, much of the conversation was not about Arce, Mesa or Camacho — but about the legacy Morales leaves behind.

During Morales’ time in office, he promised to lift many living on the margins, and in some places fulfilled that promise, building schools, hospitals and roads. The country’s poverty rate fell to 35% of the population from 60%, according to World Bank figures.

But Zelada, the disillusioned Morales supporter, said he ultimately felt that the former president wasted his chance to truly transform the country. Morales ran Bolivia amid a commodities boom — with money pouring into the country — and his party controlled Congress for all 14 years of his presidency.

The president could have done so much more, Zelada said.

He plans to vote for Mesa.

In the city of El Alto, a MAS stronghold perched above the capital, there were plenty of people who said they were voting for Arce and said they remained faithful to Morales. “He governed well,” said Luisa Álvarez, 40.

But at one precinct, Miguelina Sanabria, 59, sat in a wooden chair on the second floor, explaining how she had gone from longtime MAS supporter to Mesa voter. She grew up in Chapare, the jungle region of Bolivia where Morales got his political start, and appreciated that he was from the countryside and that he had tried to help women like her.

In his third term, though, she began to turn against him when, she said, he seemed unwilling to give up power. This year, she is jobless and angry, and looking for something new.

“He just kept going,” she said of Morales. “He didn’t leave space for younger leaders. He wanted to run everything.”

She raised her voice. It seemed she wanted voters around her to hear. “I decided to switch to Mesa,” she went on. “I hope he doesn’t let me down, too.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

15

‘We have to speak out’: Thai students defy protest ban

By HANNAH BEECH and MUKTITA SUHARTONO

T

hai authorities shut down parts of Bangkok’s commercial center and crippled public rail networks over the weekend in an effort to prevent young demonstrators from continuing their antigovernment protests.

It didn’t work.

Tens of thousands of members of the pro-democracy movement, which has been galvanized by a political awakening among social media savvy students, gathered in Thailand’s capital and in about 20 provinces Saturday and Sunday to call for fresh elections, a new Constitution and reforms to the monarchy’s lofty position in Thai society.

“I wasn’t always politically active,” said Perakarn Tangsamritkul, 23, who participated in one of several rallies in Bangkok on Saturday. “You should have met me three months ago. Now I understand why we have to be here. We have to speak out.”

Over the past few days, Thailand’s military-linked government, led by Prayuth Chan-ocha, a retired general who orchestrated an army coup in 2014, has intensified efforts to snuff out the monthslong protests. But the calls for change appear to have gotten only stronger, making once-taboo political sentiments suddenly commonplace.

And in a country divided for decades between hostile factions — broadly, an urban elite and a rural base that has long felt ignored as Thailand’s wealth gap has grown — the current pro-democracy movement has transcended the traditional political rifts.

A 30-year-old civil servant who attended a rally at Victory Monument in Bangkok on Sunday said that he was gratified that the young generation had the courage to come out. He declined to provide his name given his government job, but said that he and the student protesters were united in the belief that the country had to change.

For years, Thais would elect populist leaders, only to see them removed by military coups or judicial maneuvers that were approved by the palace. The

country’s political old guard argued that the elected prime ministers were corrupt and adept at milking the system, charming the masses with promises of cheap health care and crop subsidies.

According to the country’s entrenched political elite, some of those elected leaders also challenged the authority of the constitutional monarch by positioning themselves as rivals in popularity to the king.

On Saturday, hundreds of doctors, some from hospitals known to be managed by royalists, signed a letter against the water cannons used to forcibly disperse protesters the day before. The water was laced with a chemical irritant, and the sight of students fleeing riot police shocked many Thais.

Hours later, Dr. Jarosdao Rimphanitchayakit, a surgeon, was fired for having her name among the 386 doctors.

“Mongkutwattana Hospital has a clear policy of not accepting those who are part of the enemy movement,” said Maj. Gen. Rienthong Nanna, the hospital director.

Thai authorities have built a formidable legal structure to try to criminalize the movement. On Thursday, the government issued an emergency decree in which public gatherings of more than four people were banned in the Thai capital, an order that has been ignored.

With their emergency powers, the police can also declare any place in Bangkok off-limits to protesters.

Each day, the authorities detain more protest leaders, a whack-a-mole approach that has spurred new organizers to come forward. Thai Lawyers for Human Rights said that more than 80 protesters have been arrested over the past five days.

Over the weekend, the largely leaderless crowds in Bangkok took inspiration from their counterparts in Hong Kong, where protesters spent months honing their tactics for peacefully confronting a police force armed with tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets: umbrellas, goggles and invocations to “be like water.” They also followed the strategy of waiting until the last minute to announce protest sites, to try to outwit

Anti-government protesters gather at the Victory Monument for a rally in Bangkok, Oct. 18, 2020. the riot police.

Amid an occasional drizzle over the weekend, Thai protesters formed orderly lines to pass down helmets and raincoats to those closer to the front lines. With the telecommunications signal weakening, they took to yelling news and instructions down the protest columns instead.

On Sunday, a government spokesman said that while Prayuth was committed to listening to problems from all sides, he was also alert to any protesters who might incite violence. Thailand has suffered numerous violent crackdowns on protesters in the past, most recently in 2010 when dozens were killed in Bangkok as demonstrators were forcibly cleared from the streets.

Parliament has been warned to stand by for a special session Monday.

The legislature was otherwise not scheduled to meet until November.

Far more incendiary than calling for Prayuth’s exit are the protesters’ demands that the king, one of the world’s richest monarchs, must hew to the Constitution rather than floating above it as a semidivine being.

Thailand abolished absolute monarchy in 1932, but the crown retains an exalted status and is protected by strict laws criminalizing any disparagement.

On Friday, two protesters were charged with committing “an act of violence against the queen’s liberty” after they had yelled in surprise at a passing royal motorcade in Bangkok two days earlier. If convicted, they could serve life in prison.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun, his queen and the heir apparent live mostly in Germany, even as the king has expanded his control over the crown’s finances and military units. The protesters have stressed that they are not looking to topple the king; they chanted “reform the monarchy” by the thousands on Sunday.

The day before, protesters took turns posing in front of a spray-painted sign on a road that showed the Thai flag superimposed with the words “Republic of Thailand.” The country is officially a kingdom.

At first, the demonstrators, despite their identities being obscured by face masks or helmets, posed quickly for selfies before darting away nervously. But soon they lingered, raising their arms in the three-fingered salute that has become a hallmark of the protests.

One young man stomped on the word “king” written near the flag. Members of the crowd gasped. Then they started to clap.

16

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

‘If there were no hashish here, you wouldn’t see a single house’

Syrian farmhands work on a cannabis farm in Yammouneh, Lebanon, Sept. 24, 2020.

By BEN HUBBARD

I

n a Lebanese farming village of rocky soil and stone villas, cannabis grows everywhere.

It fills the fields that surround the village and lines nearby roads where the army operates checkpoints. It sprouts in the weedy patches between homes and is mixed with other colorful blooms in flower beds.

There is a cannabis crop near the mosque, and down the road from a giant yellow flag for Hezbollah, the militant group and political party whose leaders forbid its use on religious grounds.

Jamal Chraif, the mukhtar, or village chief, of Yamouneh, praised cannabis as “a blessed shrub” for what he called its many beneficial properties and the ease of its cultivation.

“There is something sacred about it,” he said. “God makes it grow.”

But for the first time since he began growing cannabis two decades ago, Chraif planted none this year because a chain of events has erased most of the profits that used to come with the village’s main product: the hashish extracted from the plant. Instead, he is focusing on apples.

He blames the woes afflicting the village, and Lebanon in general, on cosmic forces, including aliens, the Anti-

christ and the Bermuda Triangle — an explanation that could have been inspired by the drug itself.

The reality is more terrestrial. The Lebanese pound has lost 80% of its value against the U.S. dollar since last fall, and farmers have taken the hit.

The costs of imported fuel and fertilizer needed to grow the crop have soared, while the Lebanese pounds that growers earn by selling their hash are worth less and less.

Lebanon’s financial crisis has also undermined the drug’s domestic market, and the war in Syria has snarled smuggling routes, making it harder for middlemen to reach foreign markets.

This has forced painful choices in Yamouneh, a picturesque hamlet in a neglected pocket of Lebanon where drugs, poverty, religion and stunning natural beauty converge in unexpected ways.

For as long as anyone alive can remember, the yearly cycle in Yamouneh has been driven by the planting, weeding and harvesting of cannabis.

The hashish extracted from the plant and sold to smugglers who spirit it out of the country has done more than any other crop to help the village residents edge out of abject poverty. It has provided reliable income not offered by their legal, more fickle crops, like apples

and potatoes, and funded home expansions, truck purchases and children’s educations.

Now, the drug earns so little that some growers in Yamouneh doubt it is still worth producing.

“It’s over,” Chraif said. “Now, growing hashish is a hobby.”

The production here and in other communities made Lebanon the world’s third largest hashish supplier, after Morocco and Afghanistan, according to the United Nations.

Although hashish, a cannabis concentrate with high levels of THC, is illegal to produce, possess and sell in Lebanon, the government this year passed a law legalizing some cannabis cultivation for medicinal purposes. The law has yet to be implemented, and the cannabis grown in Yamouneh remains illegal because of its high THC content.

Now Lebanon’s economic crisis threatens to do what years of army raids and government efforts to combat the drug never did: reduce hashish production.

While fondly recalling the days when a kilogram of hashish easily fetched between $500 and $800 — and the few years when the price shot above $1,000 — the farmers fear the earnings for this year’s product could fall to around $100 per kilo, or about $45 a pound.

“If the situation stays like this, we won’t plant,” one longtime grower said, speaking on condition of anonymity like others to avoid legal jeopardy. “Hope has been cut off.”

But the full effects of hashish’s declining appeal as a cash crop are yet to be seen in the village. Even as some farmers are abandoning it, others are still clinging on.

During a recent visit, scores of Syrian refugees swung scythes to fell waisthigh cannabis plants outside town, then piled the cut stalks into large bales. Most were minors, some as young as 9, who said they welcomed the work since fears of the coronavirus had shut their schools.

They earned about $2.50 for a long day in the sun.

The landowner looked on, occasionally raising a shotgun from his shoul-

der to fire at birds overhead. He had grown up with hashish and said this was the worst year he had ever seen. The costs for imported supplies — fuel, fertilizer and plastic sheeting to bale the harvest — ate into his profits, but tradition kept him growing.

“We were born into this,” he said.

“If there were no hashish here, you wouldn’t see a single house in the village.”

The 5,000 or so citizens of Yamouneh, at the base of a mountain in the Bekaa Valley, are Shiite Muslims.

Nearly all share the same last name, Chraif. About 1,200 Syrians have settled in the area to look for work and escape the war across the border.

Talal Chraif, the mayor and elected head of the village council — and a rare resident who says he has never grown cannabis — attributed its prominence to chronic unemployment and the plant’s suitability for the local environment.

“No sickness afflicts it. The bugs don’t attack it. The lack of water doesn’t affect it,” Chraif said. “There is a guarantee with the crop, and that is why the farmers went in that direction.”

He recalled the old days when the Lebanese government, with funding from the United States, tried to snuff out cannabis, dispatching soldiers to torch fields and sparking clashes with armed growers. But those efforts yielded to official neglect about a decade ago.

“It reached a state where they realized, because of the poverty, ‘Let’s leave those people alone and act like we don’t see them,’” Chraif said.

The many two- and three-story villas and pricey SUVs out front bear testament to the cash that hashish has brought to the village, but residents say the big money has always gone to the smugglers.

As he was receiving struggling farmers outside his home, the mayor said he expected hashish production to drop by as much as half this year as growers struggle to make ends meet.

“They are asking, ‘Why should I grow it if I am going to lose?’” he said.

“They smoke it themselves to forget their worries.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

17

Pakistan rescinds TikTok ban

By SALMAN MASOOD

J

ust 10 days after introducing a ban on TikTok, Pakistani authorities said Monday that they were reversing the decision after receiving assurance from the Chinese-owned social media platform that it would moderate content according to local laws.

“TikTok is being unlocked after assurance from management that they will block all accounts repeatedly involved in spreading obscenity and immorality,” the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the national regulator, said in a statement.

Pakistan banned the app Oct. 9 after officials said they had received a slew of complaints about indecent content.

The app was functioning again Monday.

TikTok, with its lip-syncing teenagers and meme-heavy videos, has faced problems in several countries for varying reasons. The Trump administration has attempted to block the app over privacy fears, India has prohibited the service as part of rising tensions between New Delhi and Beijing, and public decency concerns have led to occasional bans in

places like Bangladesh and Indonesia.

TikTok has 20 million users in Pakistan, but conservatives in the country say that the app has been overtaken by vulgar song-and-dance numbers and memes. Officials said that a big reason behind the ban was the sexualization of underage girls and that TikTok was given several warnings to regulate its content before the ban was imposed.

But others said the Pakistani authorities’ move to lock the app was also intended to limit criticism of the government, which is struggling with a sagging economy and facing growing opposition. In recent months, the app has had a substantial increase in content that caricatured or mocked the policies of the governing party, Pakistan Tehreek-eInsaf. Officials have denied any political undertones to the ban.

ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, said in a statement Monday that it welcomed the decision.

“At TikTok, we’re committed to enforcing our community guidelines and complying with local laws in all markets in which we operate, as these are pillars of our work to promote a safe and positive

Using TikTok in Karachi, Pakistan, in July. Officials in the country banned the app on Oct. 9, saying they had received a slew of complaints about indecent content. community online,” the statement said.

The decision to allow TikTok to resume operations in Pakistan was widely welcomed by the app’s users, too, and finance analysts said it would increase

investor confidence.

“The expedited reversal of the ban also goes to show that ByteDance is very much invested in the Pakistan market,” said Saif Ali, a marketing executive.

Landslide in Vietnam kills at least 20 military personnel

By LIVIA ALBECK-RIPKA

A

landslide in Vietnam on Sunday killed at least 20 military personnel and left two missing, the local news media reported, following weeks of torrential rains and flooding that have devastated parts of the country and killed dozens of people.

The mudslide began in the early hours of Sunday and leveled the soldiers’ barracks in Huong Phung Commune, in the central coastal province of Quang Tri. “There have been four to five landslides, exploding like bombs, and it feels like the whole mountain is about to collapse,” Ha Ngoc Duong, the vice chairman of the commune, told VnExpress, an online state-run news outlet.

Duong added that the mudslides

were likely to continue, hindering search-and-rescue efforts.

The deaths could be the country’s largest military loss in peacetime, officials said, and came just days after another landslide killed 13 people, most of whom were also members of the military, in neighboring Thua Thien Hue. “We’ve never lost so many military members, including two generals and high-ranking officials, in natural disasters,” the government said in a statement.

Pham Tan An, a survivor of the Sunday mudslide, told VnExpress he felt “completely powerless” after seeing his colleagues buried beneath the rubble.

“For us who were lucky enough to survive, it’s really heartbreaking to know our 22 teammates didn’t make it.

Now, when closing my eyes, all I can think of is us enjoying a meal together,” he told the news outlet.

Rapid development and deforestation have exacerbated the damage caused by seasonal flooding. Floods in 2018 killed more than 20 people and destroyed hundreds of homes.

“Vietnam has the perfect storm,” Adam Switzer, a sedimentologist at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, said of Vietnam’s susceptibility to flooding and landslides. “It has seas, rainfall, it has very heavily vegetated steep slopes, and it has seismic activity.”

Extreme downpours have pummeled Vietnam since early October, causing some of the worst flooding in years. More severe rain is expected this week.

In Quang Tri province alone, close

to 50 people are dead or missing. More than 12,000 residents have been evacuated because of the floods, which have inundated nearly 45,000 homes, the state news media reported.

Seventy schools have also been submerged beneath the floodwaters in areas along the Thach Han River in Quang Tri, according to the government newspaper VGP News.

So far, the floods have cost Vietnam around $520,000, Vo Van Hung, the chairman of the Quang Tri People’s Committee, told the paper.

“We need to understand why this happened,” said Switzer, the sedimentologist, who warned that effects of climate change could cause similarly devastating floods in the future, “so that when the next landslide happens, we are better prepared.”

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Tuesday, October 20, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Democrats dare to believe

By CHARLES M. BLOW

D

emocrats across the country are beginning to believe.

They are daring to believe that the national nightmare could be coming to an end, that Donald Trump will not only not be reelected, but that Democrats could also flip the Senate.

But, this is a hope, a possibility, that they are refusing to give voice to.

They are still stung by the shock of 2016.

They believed the polls that said Hillary Clinton would win. Their faith in all polling remains shaken.

They tell themselves, “Take nothing for granted.” Allowing themselves to even entertain the notion that they are ahead is a threat to enthusiasm. Some may feel like they are behind, even though they aren’t.

But, the fact remains: If Election Day were today and access to the ballot was unencumbered and undisturbed, it is most likely that Joe Biden would become our next president.

Donald Trump and his campaign see the same data that the rest of us do, and campaigns

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also have internal data that they don’t make public. Trump sees himself behind and sees that calendar winding down. And, no matter what he’s done in the last few months, the race has barely changed.

This is why Donald Trump is attempting to undermine the legitimacy of the election, doing everything he can to suppress the vote, and refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

Because he doesn’t believe that he can win.

It is clear that he is consumed by the prospect of losing.

As he told the crowd at a rally in Macon, Georgia, on Friday: “Running against the worst candidate in the history of presidential politics puts pressure on me. Could you imagine if I lose?

My whole life, what am I going to do? I’m going to say I lost to the worst candidate in the history of politics. I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country. I don’t know.”

Not only can we imagine him losing, it is clear that he can as well. In fact, Trump has repeated some version of the passage at rallies for the last few days.

And Trump isn’t even trying to make a case for a second term. He isn’t laying out a vision and a plan. He is simply demonizing Biden and painting the darkest possible vision of an America where he loses as Biden wins.

The following lines come from speeches Trump has delivered in just the last few days: “If he wins, the radical left will be running the country, and they’re addicted to power, and God help us if they ever got it, because we would never have the same country again.”

“If he wins, there will be nothing but bedlam all over the place.”

“If Biden wins, China wins, all these other countries win.”

“If he wins, the radical left will be running the country. He won’t be running the country.

The radical left will take over.”

“If Biden wins, your borders are gone, which means your health care is gone, the middle class is gone, and your safety is gone.”

“If Sleepy Joe Biden and the Democrat Socialists are elected, every citizen in America will be subjected to their extreme ideology, possessed by this Marxist madness.”

It is a sign to me that he fully expects his reelection bid to fail. It means that Democrats’

A Biden supporter holds up a campaign sign while the former vice president speaks at an event in Durham, N.C., on Sunday. optimism about the election outcome is well placed. This man is panicking. He made it clear when he said at a campaign rally in Michigan on Saturday: “And you know then they say, they’re taking away … Me, I’m taking away their freedom. Then they say, ‘If you lose, will you have a friendly transition?’ I say, ‘I want a fair election.’ Then they say, ‘Will you have a fair … We want a fair and friendly transition.’ I said, ‘Really?

Well, when I won, you spied on my campaign, we caught you trying to overthrow the president of the United States. You’re crooked as hell. And we caught you, and let’s see what happens to them. But you’re crooked as hell.’ And to me, that didn’t exactly look like a friendly transition.”

The postelection drama threatens to be a disaster that could truly test America’s institutions and indeed our democracy itself. But, we’ll just have to deal with that when we get to it.

Now, we are witnessing something else that we must not overlook: a rejection of hate, division and dishonesty. We are witnessing America acknowledging that character matters.

I dare not make election predictions because to do so is folly. There are still two weeks remaining in this campaign. Anything could happen. But, the situation for Trump continues to be dire and time is running out.

I’m allowing myself to believe.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

19

Llega a Puerto Rico por primera vez Cumbre Internacional de Jóvenes Líderes Por THE STAR

E

l próximo de 28 de octubre se realizará la Cumbre Internacional de Jóvenes Líderes (CIJL), un evento que se produce entre Puerto Rico y Argentina, con el objetivo de motivar a los jóvenes y proveerles herramientas de liderazgo, así lo anunció el lunes el secretario del Departamento de Desarrollo Económico y Comercio (DDEC), Manuel Laboy Rivera.

“La Cumbre Internacional de Jóvenes Líderes, promete ser un intercambio de vivencias y aprendizaje entre líderes puertorriqueños y extranjeros. Este evento se realiza desde el año 2007 en diferentes lugares en Latinoamérica y este año logramos posicionar a Puerto Rico como coorganizador. Para que este evento fuera posible aunamos esfuerzos con el Departamento de Educación, de manera que integramos la cumbre dentro del currículo de los estudiantes de escuela intermedia y superior. El evento, tiene como objetivo apoyar a los jóvenes estimulándolos a participar, emprender, contactarse y debatir acerca del futuro de las naciones. Desde el 2017, promovemos diferentes eventos e iniciativas dirigidas a impulsar una nueva generación que desde temprana edad puedan identificar sus intereses, habilidades y destrezas para ayudarlos a encaminarse en lo que será su profesión o vocación en su adultez”, explicó Laboy Rivera en comunicación escrita.

La transmisión de la Cumbre Internacional de Jóvenes Líderes se realizará el próximo 28 de octubre de 9:00 de la mañana a 4:00 de la tarde, a través de WIPR canal 6 y el 29 de octubre en el mismo horario, en la plataforma digital YouTube, Jóvenes Líderes TV. “Para mí y para Puerto Rico es un gran honor ser coanfitriones, junto a Argentina, de la Cumbre Internacional de Jóvenes Líderes 2020, sobre todo en estos momentos que el mundo está viviendo, y cuando más unidos tenemos que estar, para apoyarnos unos a otros y aprender cómo afrontar cualquier situación y mejorarla, dentro de las circunstancias. Nuestro deseo es que le saquen

el mejor partido posible a esta Cumbre que ha sido armada tomando en consideración varios temas que les ayudarán a construir su presente y proyectarse hacia el futuro cercano, para que sean líderes y, sumando a los demás, mejoren el mundo que les ha tocado vivir. Estoy segura de que así lo harán”, expresó la gobernadora Wanda Vázquez Garced Por su parte, el secretario del Departamento de Educación, Eligio Hernández, resaltó que “este evento es un impulso para nuestros estudiantes del sistema público que necesitan de actividades distintas que los inviten a crecer y alcanzar sus metas. Mediante el Programa de Desarrollo de la Juventud, el equipo académico de Educación se inserta en el proyecto para promover el liderazgo, la disciplina y responsabilidad escolar. Invito a todas las comunidades escolares a involucrarse y a desarrollar proyectos relacionados a la cumbre”.

En la primera etapa del evento, los asistentes podrán conocer las historias de éxito de aproximadamente 30 figuras

de gran reconocimiento a nivel mundial.

Mientras, en la segunda parte de la CIJL, que se realizará el 29 de octubre, diversos jóvenes iberoamericanos expondrán entre sus pares sobre problemáticas y temas vinculados al sector de juventud. Esta parte fomenta el intercambio cultural, de ideas y soluciones a través de un dialogo constructivo y será transmita para Puerto Rico, a través de YouTube.

Entre los oradores se encuentran importantes figuras como: Giovani Stella, gerente de Google para América Central y El Caribe; María Ríos, considerada la mujer emprendedora más poderosa de Estados Unidos por Fortune; Natalia Denegri, productora y conductora, ganadora de 13 Premios Emmy y reconocida por el Congreso de Los Estados Unidos por su labor comunitaria en ayuda a los damnificados por el huracán María en Puerto Rico.

Así como, Carlos Vives, Noel Schajris y Margarita Cedeño, exvicepresidenta de República Dominicana y Yazmín Colón, Primera Dama de Panamá, – quien es una empresaria puertorriqueña-, entre otros.

“Cuando nos presentaron el evento, supimos que era una oportunidad extraordinaria para que la juventud puertorriqueña, pudiese conectar y conocer las grandes oportunidades que existen para crecer a nivel mundial y al mismo tiempo posicionar a Puerto Rico en términos de su liderazgo en la política pública de juventud”, mencionó el director del Programa de Desarrollo de la Juventud del DDEC, Roberto Carlos Pagán Santiago.

Mientras, Leandro Viotto, fundador de la Cumbre Internacional de Jóvenes Líderes, especificó que “los jóvenes precisan de espacios institucionales que les permitan desarrollarse e impulsar su crecimiento humano y profesional. Este evento representa una oportunidad trascendente para que ello suceda”.

Para participar del evento y recibir un certificado digital, los jóvenes deben registrarse gratuitamente, a través de www.cumbredejoveneslideres.com. Si desea más información, puede comunicarse a juventud@ddec.pr.gov.

20

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

The Chicago 7 trial onscreen: An interpretation for every era

Sacha Baron Cohen and Jeremy Strong as Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin in the new “Trial of the Chicago 7.”

By JASON BAILEY

A

bbie Hoffman described the trial of the Chicago 7 as “a great show,” and for the past 50 years, moviemakers have agreed. Aaron Sorkin’s new Netflix production “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is the fourth filmed dramatization of the 1969 prosecution of Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Lee Weiner and John Froines, who faced federal charges of conspiracy and incitement of the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

That the events in that Chicago courtroom are such catnip to dramatists is understandable — it was, in many ways, performative in nature, with heroes and villains and court jesters aplenty. At one point, Judge Julius Hoffman demanded of Rubin, “You said you enjoyed being here?” And the defendant responded, “It’s good theater, your honor.”

In fact, Jeremy Kagan’s 1987 madefor-HBO movie “Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago Eight” (now streaming on Amazon) was adapted from a piece of theater, the play “The Chicago Conspiracy Trial” by Ron Sossi and Frank Condon. Among other differences, the various film versions can’t even agree on their titles; Bobby Seale is often counted, as he began the trial alongside

the Chicago 7 but was dismissed midway through to be tried separately, while the defendants themselves often included their two attorneys, making it the “Chicago 10.”

In “Conspiracy,” the attorneys, defendants and judge address the camera as if it were the jury; all of the dialogue is drawn from the original transcripts and, aside from superimposed flashes of archival footage and brief interview snippets from the real participants, all of the action is confined to the courtroom.

If “Conspiracy” feels a touch stagebound (the battery of unconvincing wigs and beards doesn’t help), the instinct to dig into the single setting is sound, striving for the grand tradition of theatrical courtroom dramas: “Inherit the Wind,” “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” and Sorkin’s own “A Few Good Men.” The transcript’s best moments feature the kind of dialogue most dramatists would die for, from the Marx Brothers-esque act of Abbie Hoffman and Rubin arriving in court in fake judge’s robes to the righteous anger of Seale, furiously demanding his constitutional rights in an encounter that escalates to his strangerthan-fiction binding and gagging by U.S. marshals.

Most of all, focusing on the courtroom allows “Conspiracy” to let this trial function as a miniature version of the riot

itself — featuring, as it did, hidebound authority figures, youthful rabble-rousers, demands for social justice and out-of-control cops. Microcosms abound, in other words; in that trial, just as in the riot that precipitated it, the participants were acting out the entire cultural conflict of the moment.

“Conspiracy” aims to be a time capsule of the late 1960s, but its style and method of filming (it’s shot on vintage, ugly videotape) render it a time capsule of its own late-’80s origin. Yet in a strange way, the creakiness of the technique makes it feel more like the trial simulcast Americans didn’t get. They had to make do with courtroom sketches — as Abbie Hoffman explains, “This trial was being seen by millions of people as a one-minute cartoon each night,” so it’s perhaps appropriate that the next film of the case, Brett Morgen’s “Chicago 10,” is part cartoon.

It’s rotoscoped, to be precise, the animation technique that traces over existing film, popularized by Richard Linklater’s “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly.”

Thus, “Chicago 10” (available on Fandango Now) is also a time capsule of its 2008 release, a point underscored by the anachronistic soundtrack featuring Rage Against the Machine, Eminem and the Beastie Boys. As with “Conspiracy,” much is made of the verisimilitude of the dialogue (both films open by noting the dialogue is sourced from the court transcripts). But Morgen approaches his film as a documentarian first, using archival footage whenever possible, and only dramatizing when those materials are not available; Morgen uses the trial as his film’s framework rather than its centerpiece.

Sorkin’s “Trial of the Chicago 7” opens with the same Lyndon B. Johnson clip as “Chicago 10,” but this is quite a different beast, most noticeably in the lack of fealty to the record. Sorkin diverges markedly from the transcripts, and though trace elements of the text remain, he mostly rewrites the events in (and out of) the courtroom with his distinctive, fast-paced, rat-tat-tat voice. (This is merely an observation, not a complaint; he’s a better writer than most people are speakers.)

Perhaps due to the extended passage of time, or the mass audience he typically courts, Sorkin writes with a greater eye to-

ward context. He contrasts the separate factions of the counterculture all-star team of defendants with helpful clarity: he spends no small amount of screen time on the backroom dealings that led to their prosecution in the first place, and the role of incoming President Richard M. Nixon in reanimating an investigation his predecessor had abandoned.

That’s all new, and helpful. So is the increased prominence given to Fred Hampton, head of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers and the closest thing to an adviser the lawyer-less Seale had during his time at the defense table. The choice to spotlight Hampton’s participation, as well as his senseless death at the hands of Chicago police during the trial, gives Seale a clearer motivation for his actions, and renders his treatment in the courtroom (where Julius Hoffman directs marshals to take Seale “into a room and deal with him as he should be dealt with”), all the more disturbing.

Sorkin doesn’t dispense entirely with the trappings of his predecessors — there are flashes of documentary footage, and some of the testimony (most notably Abbie Hoffman’s) is closely replicated. And for much of “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” this isn’t a problem. As proven by “The Social Network,” strict fidelity to history is not exactly a make-or-break proposition for Sorkin. But his instincts fail him when he arrives at his cringingly corny conclusion, in which the group’s “sentencing statement” is disrupted by soaring music and Capraesque theatrics that are patently phony — something you simply cannot do in a true story like this.

On the other hand, the real sentencing statements, dramatized in previous films, included this shot from Davis to Julius Hoffman: “You represent all that is old, ugly, bigoted, and repressive in this country, and I will tell you that the spirit of this defense table will devour your sickness in the next generation.” It’s the most Sorkineseque dialogue in the transcript, and Sorkin’s decision to exclude it is downright baffling. Dramatic license is good and well, but if there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s that sometimes you simply cannot improve upon history.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

21

Bruce Springsteen is living in the moment

By LINDSAY ZOLADZ

E

very music fan with blood burning in their veins has felt the sting of missing live shows since March, but the pain has been particularly acute for Bruce Springsteen, an artist who has spent the past six decades onstage, yet says he’s just now hitting his stride.

“I’m at a point in my playing life and artistic life where I’ve never felt as vital,” he said on a Zoom call from his New Jersey home. “My band is at its best, and we have so much accumulated knowledge and craft about what we do that this was a time in my life where I said, ‘I want to use that as much as I can.’”

Springsteen, 71, was stationed in a small, utilitarian home office, with primarycolor file folders hanging on the wall in place of flashier décor, to discuss “Letter to You,” his first record with the E Street Band in six years, and an Apple Plus film of the same name that captures the kinetic experience of recording it last November.

“Letter to You” often harks back to a time much earlier than that, though: The elegiac rocker “Last Man Standing” is an ode to the band Springsteen joined as a teenager, the Castiles (and a meditation on the fact that, after the death of his friend George Theiss in 2018, Springsteen became the only surviving member). And three of the album’s songs originated almost 50 years ago, when Springsteen was an unknown, writing florid, Bob Dylan-esque ballads.

“The record is the first record that I’ve made where the subject is the music itself,” he said. “It’s about popular music. It’s about being in a rock band over the course of time.

And it’s also a direct conversation between me and my fans at a level that I think they’ve come to expect over the years.”

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q: Like everyone else, this year hasn’t exactly gone how you’d expected. You’re putting out a record that you can’t yet tour.

A: Oh, yeah. I think there’s going to be a process before people are comfortable rubbing up against one another again. But if somebody told me, “That’s never going to happen again,” that would be a big life change for me. That act of playing has been one of the only consistent things in my life since I was 16 years old. I’ve depended a lot on it not just for my livelihood but for my emotional well-being. So if somebody said, “Five years from now, maybe” — that’s a long

time, particularly at my age. I’m 71, and I’m thinking, “Well, I know one thing. I’m in the mood right now to burn the house down for as long as I can.”

Q: I take it you saw the people playing “Born in the U.S.A.” outside Walter Reed when President Donald Trump was there earlier this month. How did that make you feel? Decades after Ronald Reagan, people still seem to be misunderstanding that song.

A: That is my lot in life. (Laughs) That is my lot in life, and I have learned to live with it with a smile. I mean, I do believe that as much as it is the writer’s job to write well, it is the listener’s job to listen well. And yet still, on occasion, I’m going to hear something like that.

I still believe it’s one of my best songs, and when we play it, it just has a cumulative power that remains with it. The pride that people feel as a part of that music is true. But to understand that piece of music you need to do what adults are capable of doing, which is to hold two contradictory ideas of one thing in your mind at one time. How something can be prideful and at the same time call to account the nation that you’re writing about. That was just a part of that piece of music. It’s a song that’s not necessarily what it appears to be.

Q: You got the band back together for “Letter to You.” At what point did you realize it needed to be an E Street Band record?

A: I knew I wanted to make a record with the band, and I knew I wanted it to be the pure instrumentation of the band: two keyboards, the guitars, the bass, drums and saxophone, and I didn’t want anything else. I didn’t want to demo or have preconceptions of the music, so I didn’t touch the songs until I taught them to the band. My blueprint for what I was doing was basically the two songs that we’d done in the past that were cut completely live, “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and “Born in the U.S.A.,” which is like two takes. So we cut about a song every three hours, we did two a day, and we were done in four days. And on the fifth day, we rested.

Q: Recording wasn’t always that easy for you.

A: Oh, no, recording used to be hell on earth. I spent years making records sometimes. Even “Western Stars” took a long time.

It was not a painful process, but it was a lengthy process.

Q: Aside from the new material, there are three songs on this album that you wrote in the early 1970s. What made you return to them?

From left: Max Weinberg, Benjamin Newberry, Bruce Springsteen, Roy Bittan and Garry Tallent in the studio. Springsteen’s new album with the E Street Band, “Letter to You,” is due Friday.]

A: I had been working on a box set of music from our vault, so I came across a bunch of those songs that I had recorded for John Hammond, the previous vice president of Columbia Records who discovered me and got me signed. I had done a demo for him in 1972 when I was 22, and these songs were on it, and they were songs I’d written previous to my first record. So I happened to come into contact with that music, and there were a couple of others that I thought might be fun for the band to play.

It’s fun to go back and see how wild my lyric writing was and how uninhibited it was at a certain moment, and to be able to take that and bring it into the present with the band and sing it in my voice right now was a bit of a joyride. The thing about those songs: Every line is insane! And somehow they end up making sense about something. I’m not sure how I did it at the time.

Q: I hear you grappling a lot with spirituality on this record, especially in a song like “The Power of Prayer.”

A: As I’ve gotten older, I’ve kind of become a spiritual songwriter just by nature, by the things I’ve grown interested in. At the end of the day I’m writing about my own spiritual life, and I’m addressing yours. We make a lot of music that addresses the soul; that’s the nature of our band. Whether I heard, as I say on the record, Ben E. King’s voice, or the Drifters, some of the otherworldly doo-wop of the early ’60s — I just find a great essence of spir-

it in them. It was something that I wanted to communicate when I wrote my own music.

It’s not sort of dogmatic or overblown; there’s no religion in it. There’s just spirit, I hope.

Q: Between your book, the Broadway show and now the “Letter to You” film and some of the reflections on this album, I get the sense that you’re starting to think about your legacy.

A: Legacy was on my mind when I was, like, a kid. The older you get, the more you realize, who the (expletive) knows! (Laughs) Who knows what’s going to last and not last.

John Sayles, a director friend of mine, said, “I make my movies for right now. I make them for the audience that’s going to come and see them right now and take them into their lives.” Because nobody knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. And I’ve sort of taken that as my mantra the past 20 or 25 years, that my records are for today.

I just try to find a vein of present energy in what I’m doing and in the language that I’ve learned to make my music both current and relevant at this point on. I think if you keep the inner spirit of what you’re doing alive, you remain relevant. I remember playing behind Roy Orbison in 1988. I was surprised at how incredibly present and current his music felt, and it was all because that was the way he was singing it. I realized it was not old to Roy. It was not nostalgia to him. It was as alive in his heart and in his spirit in 1988 as it was in 1960.

22

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

The best animal feeds from around the world

By SARA ARIDI

I

f you spend hours scrolling through cat videos online, there’s a scientific explanation for why that’s a hard habit to kick: A new study has found that watching footage of cute animals can reduce your anxiety, blood pressure and heart rate.

The study, led by the University of Leeds in Britain, Singapore Airlines and Western Australia’s tourism agency, featured videos of a quokka — a cuddlylooking wallaby native to Australia that the internet dubbed “the happiest animal on earth.”

But footage of other wildlife can also elicit positive emotions like adoration, awe and love, said Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies how nature affects the human psyche.

“We are a visual species,” he said. “We derive a lot of health and happiness from our relationship to the natural world.”

If you can’t get out into the natural world, let it come to you. The internet has dozens of smile-inducing animal feeds from around the world.

Service Dogs At the nonprofit Warrior Canine Connection in Maryland, veterans train service dogs that will later be paired with other veterans. Watch the heroes-to-be lounge around the organization’s puppy playroom or nursery.

If you spend hours scrolling through cat videos online, there’s a scientific explanation for why that’s a hard habit to kick: A new study has found that watching footage of cute animals can reduce your anxiety, blood pressure and heart rate.

At Service Dog Project, a charity in Massachusetts that trains Great Danes to become service dogs for people with disabilities, live cameras capture puppies sleeping in a nursery and staff members tending the grown dogs.

Kitten Rescue Not a dog person? Kitten Rescue, a nonprofit in Los Angeles, has live feeds in its nursery and a private

room where kittens and cats wait to be adopted.

Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute Check out one of the museum’s six live feeds to see black-footed ferrets, cheetah cubs, naked mole-rats, lions or elephants. Volunteers aren’t currently operating the cameras, so the animals may not always be visible. And while naked molerats don’t top the cute animals list, it’s still a treat watching them nibble on vegetables.

Gorilla Rehabilitation Whether a gorilla is cute really depends on your point of view, but the footage from the Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center, a sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of Congo, might win you over. The rescued primates are usually napping or grazing on vegetation.

Monterey Bay Aquarium Fans of nature documentaries like the BBC’s “Blue Planet” series will want to tune in to this California aquarium’s underwater feeds. Watch jellyfish delicately swim in and out of the frame, or enjoy the aquarium’s largest exhibition, an awe-inspiring,

1-million-gallon tank that houses an array of sea creatures, including stingrays, sharks and turtles. Each camera operates on a different schedule; check the website for details.

San Diego Zoo The zoo runs live cameras from 10:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Eastern time and rebroadcasts the day’s stream at night. There’s something here for everyone: hippos, baboons, rhinos, tigers, giraffes and more. The zoo even lists the names and bios of each of its nine elephants, so you can get to know them while watching.

Wolong Giant Panda Reserve This breeding center at the Wolong National Nature Reserve in China has live feeds of pandas in 11 yards. Toggle between the feeds to see the gentle giants playing together, lounging on logs or chowing down on bamboo.

Katmai National Park If you prefer admiring animals in their native habitats, this national park in Alaska is home to roughly 2,000 brown bears, and its cameras capture them from multiple angles and locations. See them fish for salmon or swim in a river against the backdrop of breathtaking mountains.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

23

The lasting damage of COVID-19

By JANE E. BRODY

J

udy Londa, a 55-year-old Brooklynite who had been traveling by subway to teach art in a Manhattan public school earlier this year, developed symptoms of COVID-19 two days before in-person schooling was abruptly canceled mid-March.

Londa said she was very ill for two weeks with “intense chest tightness that felt like a car was parked on it and barely able to walk from one room to another.” But she stayed out of the hospital, using FaceTime to consult regularly with her doctor, an infectious disease specialist.

By May, she felt well enough to stroll around the neighborhood, gradually increasing the distance she walked. She expected a full recovery. But now, more than six months after she fell ill, walking up even a short hill can exhaust her, and she wonders if she will ever again feel like the athletic, energetic, healthy woman she was before the novel coronavirus entered her life.

“I will feel better for about five days and able to walk a mile or more and do yoga, then I’m flattened again for another five days,” Londa told me. “On and off like a switch, the same symptoms keep repeating — a feeling like cement is pushing on my chest, chills, cough, sore throat, dry mouth, tingling in my arm, an irregular heartbeat.

I’m about to fall asleep, then suddenly start gasping for air like I’m drowning, and I have to get up and walk. It’s really, really depressing.”

COVID-19 also has left her with health problems she never had before: prediabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and premature ventricular contractions — a heart flutter caused by extra beats in one of the heart’s pumping chambers. Checking with COVID-19 survivors on Facebook, she found that others shared her lingering, recurring symptoms. Londa has been fairly well the past 10 days, but to conserve energy she has been teaching remotely.

At the start of the pandemic, doctors were necessarily focused on combating the acute effects of COVID-19 and saving lives, but research is now underway to assess its long-term effects and find ways to prevent and treat lasting symptoms. There is increasing concern that the pandemic will result in

“a significant surge of people battling lasting illnesses and disabilities,” the journal Nature reported.

In a commentary in The Lancet in September, an international team of infectious disease specialists conceded that “we do not know what to tell our patients when they are asking about the course and prognosis of their ongoing complaints.” Among the many unknowns they cited: “Does acute COVID-19 cause diabetes? Or other metabolic disorders? Will patients develop interstitial lung disease?”

They wondered, too, “which symptoms might be explained by the anxiety caused by a new disease and by the isolation, and which symptoms are secondary to a complicated form of COVID-19.” At present, the unknowns about long-term consequences of this potentially devastating viral infection far outnumber what is known.

One fact already known: A person need not have had severe disease to experience symptoms that persist for months and, time will tell, possibly for years. Even some people who had mild COVID infections continue to experience symptoms long after recovering from the acute illness.

The variety of reported symptoms includes unusual fatigue from physical or mental activity, brain fog, temperature irregularities, rashes, memory problems and insomnia. It’s as if the body’s immune response to the coronavirus has thrown the nervous system out of whack, according to Dr. Dayna McCarthy, rehabilitation specialist at the Mount Sinai Center for Post-COVID Care.

The lasting effects among those who survived another serious coronavirus disease, SARS, are not very encouraging. As the Mayo Clinic reported, “Many people who have recovered from SARS have gone on to develop chronic fatigue syndrome, a complex disorder characterized by extreme fatigue that worsens with physical or mental activity, but doesn’t improve with rest. The same may be true for people who have had COVID-19.”

The COVID-19 virus can damage the lungs, heart and brain, increasing the risk of persistent health problems. According to the Mayo experts, “Imaging tests taken months after recovery from COVID-19 have shown lasting damage to the heart muscle, even

Research is underway to assess the coronavirus pandemic’s long-term effects and find ways to prevent and treat lasting symptoms. in people who had only mild COVID-19 symptoms.” The illness can cause very small blood clots that can block capillaries in the heart and permanently injure the heart muscle. The disease can also weaken blood vessels and injure the kidneys and liver.

COVID can scar the lungs’ tiny air sacs and cause long-term breathing difficulty even if the scars partly heal. This effect on lung function ended the 107-year-old life of Marilee Shapiro Asher, a celebrated artist in Washington who remained professionally active until COVID-19 laid her low in early spring. During five days in the hospital, she recovered from the acute infection, then died several months later with virus-caused damage to her lungs that left them brittle and filled their air sacs with fluid.

With SARS, a 15-year follow-up of patients found that most lung recovery took place within two years, but some mild pulmonary effects remained indefinitely in more than a third of recovered SARS patients.

Brain-related effects of an active COVID-19 infection can include strokes, seizures and a temporary paralysis called Guillain-Barré syndrome. Many COVID patients lose their sense of smell and taste during the acute illness, but for some this neurological effect persisted for months after they had otherwise recovered. And questions remain

whether the viral infection also will raise the risk of later developing neurological problems like Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease.

People who were severely ill with COVID-19, especially those who spent weeks or longer isolated in intensive care with or without a ventilator, can develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome and persistent problems with anxiety and depression. Their emotional trauma may cause recurrent nightmares and a fear of being alone and even of going to sleep.

Indeed, Londa said it’s impossible to know how many of her recurring symptoms or their severity are the result of unresolved anxiety stemming from the acute illness or to a fear that she may never again be the person she was before COVID. A study of 179 recovered COVID patients in Italy revealed a “worsened quality of life” months later in 44.1%, with a high proportion reporting ongoing fatigue, shortness of breath, joint pain and chest pain. In McCarthy’s experience, however, post-COVID patients do get better, although symptoms tend to wax and wane and improvement “is glacially slow.” She suggests that patients do things in smaller doses and not push themselves to live as they did before COVID, which can make their problems worse.

24 yra Caraballo Garcia, Secreta- POR LA PRESENTE se le emria Regional. Madeline Rivera plaza para que presente al triESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Mercado, Sec Aux Serv a Sala. bunal su alegación responsiva DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL dentro de los 30 días de haber LEGAL NOTICE GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIsido diligenciado este emplaBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTAN- ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO zamiento, excluyéndose el día CIA SALA DE PONCE. DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL del diligenciamiento. Usted BANCO POPULAR DE GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRI- deberá presentar su alegación BUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTAN- responsiva a través del Sistema PUERTO RICO CIA SALA DE SAN GERMAN. Unificado de Manejo y AdminisDemandante Vs. tración de Casos (SUMAC), al ORIENTAL BANK MONSERRATE PABÓN cual puede acceder utilizando Demandante LLANTIN, FRANCISCO la siguiente dirección electróniJOHN DOE & ca: https://unired.ramajudicial.

RIVERA ALVARADO Y RICHARD ROE pr, salvo que se represente por LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL Demandados derecho propio, en cuyo caso DE GANANCIALES CIVIL NÚM. SG2020CV00307. deberá presentar su alegación SOBRE: CANCELACION DE responsiva en la secretaría del COMPUESTA POR PAGERE EXTRAVIADO. EM- tribunal. Si usted deja de preAMBOS PLAZAMIENTO POR EDIC- sentar su alegación responsiva Demandados CIVIL NÚM.: PO2019CV04459. TO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE dentro del referido término, el SALÓN: SOBRE: COBRO DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE tribunal podrá dictar sentencia DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO en rebeldía en su contra y conPOR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNI- LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PR. SS. ceder el remedio solicitado en A: JOHN DOE Y DOS DE AMÉRICA EL PREla demanda, o cualquier otro, SIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS RICHARD ROE, personas si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE desconocidas que se su sana discreción, lo entiende ASOCIADO DE PUERTO procedente. designan con estos LCDO. JAVIER MONTALVO RICO. CINTRÓN A) MONSERRATE PABÓN nombres ficticios, que RUA NÚM. 17682 puedan ser tenedor o LLANTIN, FRANCISCO DELGADO & FERNÁNDEZ, LLC PO Box 11750, RIVERA ALVARADO Y tenedores, o puedan tener Femández Juncos Station LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL algún interés en el pagaré San Juan, Puerto Rico 00910-17 50, hipotecario a que se hace Tel. (787) 274-1414 / DE GANANCIALES referencia más adelante Fax (787) 764-8241 COMPUESTA POR E-mail: jmontalvo@ en el presente edicto, que AMBOS delgadofemandez.com POR LA PRESENTE: Se le se publicará una sola vez. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello notifica que contra usted se ha Se les notifica que en la De- del Tribunal, hoy 2 de octubre presentado la Demanda sobre manda radicada en el caso de de 2020. Lic. Norma G. SantaCobro de Dinero de la cual se epígrafe se alega que un paga- na Irizarry, Secretaria Regional acompaña copia. Por la pre- ré hipotecario fue otorgado el II. Guillermina Torres Pagan, sente se le emplaza a usted y 26 de marzo de 1999, se otor- Sub-Secretario(a). se le requiere para que dentro gó un pagaré a favor de R&G LEGAL NOTICE del término de TREINTA (30) Premier Bank of Puerto Rico días desde la fecha de la Pu- (hoy Oriental Bank), o a su or- wESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO blicación por Edicto de este den, por la suma de $96,000.00 DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL Emplazamiento presente su de principal, con intereses al 6 GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIcontestación a través del Sis- 5/8% anual, y vencedero el 1 BUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANtema Unificado de Manejo y de abril de 2029, ante la Nota- CIA SALA DE CAGUAS. Administración de Casos (SU- rio Gerardo Casanova Tirado.

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GUADALUPE, CARLA ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se la Notario Gerardo Casanova represente por derecho propio, Tirado, inscrita al folio 11 del IRIS ROBLES LÓPEZ Y en cuyo caso deberá presen- tomo 314 de Lajas, finca 13638, LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE tar su alegación responsiva inscripción 4ta, Registro de la BIENES GANANCIALES en la Secretaria del Tribunal Propiedad de San German. El POR ESTOS de Primera Instancia, Sala de inmueble gravado mediante la pONCE, P. 0. Box 7185, Ponce, hipoteca antes descrita es la COMPUESTA; ANTONIO Puerto Rico 00732.7185 y noti- finca número 13638 inscrita al LÓPEZ GUADALUPE fique a la LCDA. GINA H. FE- folio 1 del tomo 314 de Lajas, Demandados RRER MEDINA, personalmen- Registro de la Propiedad de CIVIL NÚM.: CG2020CV00196. te al Condominio Las Nereidas, San Germán. La obligación evi- SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Local 1-B, Calle Méndez Vigo denciada por el pagaré antes Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTEesquina Amador Ramírez Silva, descrito fue saldada en su to- CA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00680; talidad. Dicho gravamen no ha AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE o por correo al Apartado 3779, podido ser cancelado por ha- DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO Marina Station, Mayagüez, berse extraviado el original del LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS. Puerto Rico 00681-3779, Telé- pagaré. El original del pagaré EDICTO. fonos: (787) 832-9620 y (845) antes descrito no ha podido ser A: ANTONIO LÓPEZ 345-3985, Abogada de la parte localizado, a pesar de las gesGUADALUPE tiones realizadas.

R&G Premier demandante, apercibiéndose Apartamento 701, que en caso de no hacerlo así Bank of Puerto Rico (hoy Orienpodrá dictarse Sentencia en tal Bank) es el acreedor que Condominio Caguas Rebeldía en contra suya, con- consta en el Registro de la Pro- Tower, Caguas, PR 00725: cediendo el remedio solicitado piedad. El último tenedor cono13154 Woodford Street, en la Demanda sin más citarle cido del pagaré antes descrito ni oírle. EXPIDO BAJO MI FIR- fue Oriental Bank ( antes Sco- Orlando, FL 32832-6958; 16 AC Hawai Caguas MA y el Sello del Tribunal hoy tiabank como sucesor de R&G 31 de agosto de 2020. Luz Ma- Premier Bank of Puerto Rico). Norte, Caguas, PR 00725.

LEGAL NOTICE

@

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 30 días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento.

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

Representa ala parte demandante el Lcdo. Javier Montalvo Cintrón, Delgado & Fernández, LLC, PO Box 11750, Fernández Juncos Station, San Juan.

Puerto Rico 00910-1750. Tel. [787] 274-1414. DADA en Caguas, Puerto Rico, a 6 de octubre de 2020. Carmen Ana Pereira Ortiz, Sec Regional.

Magaly Colon Mendoza, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal I.

Orlando, FL 32832-6958; Condominio Caguas 16 AC Hawai Caguas Tower, Caguas, PR 00725; Norte, Caguas, PR 00725. 13154 Woodford Street, POR LA PRESENTE se le Orlando, FL 32832-6958; emplaza para que presente al 16 AC Hawai Caguas tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 30 días de Norte, Caguas, PR 00725.

haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento.

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

Representa ala parte demandante el Lcdo. Javier Montalvo Cintrón, Delgado & Fernández, LLC, PO Box 11750, Fernández Juncos Station, San Juan.

Puerto Rico 00910-1750. Tel. [787] 274-1414. DADA en Caguas, Puerto Rico, a 6 de octubre de 2020. Carmen Ana LEGAL NOT ICE Pereira Ortiz, Sec Regional. wESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Magaly Colon Mendoza, Sec DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL Auxiliar del Tribunal I. GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRILEGAL NOTICE BUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANwESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO CIA SALA DE CAGUAS. DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL ORIENTAL BANK GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIDemandante BUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANOSCAR FEBO CIA SALA DE CAGUAS.

GUADALUPE, CARLA ORIENTAL BANK IRIS ROBLES LÓPEZ Y Demandante LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE OSCAR FEBO BIENES GANANCIALES GUADALUPE, CARLA POR ESTOS IRIS ROBLES LÓPEZ Y COMPUESTA; ANTONIO LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE LÓPEZ GUADALUPE BIENES GANANCIALES Demandados POR ESTOS CIVIL NÚM.: CG2020CV00196.

COMPUESTA; ANTONIO SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO LÓPEZ GUADALUPE Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTE-

CA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS. EDICTO.

Demandados CIVIL NÚM.: CG2020CV00196.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS. EDICTO.

A: CARLA IRIS ROBLES LÓPEZ. por sí yen representación de la Sociedad Legal de A: OSCAR FEBO Bienes Gananciales GUADALUPE, por sí yen compuesta por estay su representación de la esposo, OSCAR FEBO Sociedad Legal de Bienes GUADALUPE. Gananciales compuesta Apartamento 701, por este y su esposa, Condominio Caguas CARLA IRIS ROBLES Tower, Caguas, PR 00725; LOPEZ. 13154 Woodford Street, Apartamento 701,

(787) 743-3346

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

en su contra y se le requiere para que conteste la misma dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación del edicto, radicando el original de su contestación en el Tribunal correspondiente y notificando con copia de la misma a la parte demandante a la siguiente dirección: BUFETE APONTE & CORTES LCDA. ERIKA MORALES MARENGO PO Box 195337 San Juan, Puerto Rico 00919 Tel. (787) 302-0014 / (787) 239-5661 / Email: emarengo16@yahoo.com 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 presente por derecho propio. Se le apercibe que de no hacerlo, el tribunal podrá dictar Sentencia en rebeldía concediendo el remedio solicitado en la demanda, sin citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, hoy día 30 de septiembre de 2020. WANDA l.

SEGUÍ REYES, Secretario(a) Regional. Katherine Robles Torres, Sub-Secretario(a).

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 30 días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento.

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

Representa ala parte demanLEGAL NOTICE dante el Lcdo. Javier Montalvo Cintrón, Delgado & Fernández, United States District Court LLC, PO Box 11750, Fernán- for the District of Puerto Rico. dez Juncos Station, San Juan. FORM H. Puerto Rico 00910-1750. Tel. BAUTISTA CAYMAN [787] 274-1414. DADA en ASSET COMPANY; Caguas, Puerto Rico, a 6 de Plaintiff, v. octubre de 2020. Carmen Ana THE ESTATE OF VICENTE Pereira Ortiz, Sec Regional.

MÓJICA ANDUZE Magaly Colon Mendoza, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal I. formed by NORAIDA

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA REGUIN JUDICIAL DE FAJARDO SALA MUNICIPAL DE FAJARDO.

COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CRÉDITO CENTRO GUBERNAMENTAL MINILLAS (GUBECCOP) Demandante v.

FÉLIX MEDINA CRUZ

MÓJICA LAUREANO AND MINERVA ROSA PIMENTEL by herself and as member of the ESTATE OF VICENTE MÓJICA ANDUZE;

Defendants.

Civil No. 20-cv-01301 (PAD).

COLLECTION OF MONIES AND FORECLOSURE OF MORTGAGE SUMMONS BY PUBLICATION.

TO: NORAIDA MÓJICA LAUREANO, MEMBER OF THE ESTATE OF VICENTE MÓJICA ANDUZE Condominio Bayola (B), Apartamento 503, Calle Estrella #1447, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00912

Demandado(a) CIVIL NÚM. FA2020CV00063.

SALA: 305. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO (ORDINARIO).

EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIThe plaintiff, Bautista Cayman DOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOAsset Company (“Bautista”) CIADO DE PUERTO RICO. has filed proceedings for the S.S. foreclosure of mortgage on a A: FÉLIX MEDINA CRUZ property situated at: “URBAN: DIRECCIÓN: Lot of land composed of 22.00 Calle José J. Acosta #178 meters in front, 12.00 meters Fajardo, Puerto Rico 00738 deep, with a superficial area of 264.59 square meters, located POR LA PRESENTE, se le between Street Diez de Andino emplaza y se le notifica que and Street Pesante of Sanuna Demanda sobre Cobro turce, San Juan, Puerto Rico, de Dinero ha sido presentada

It’s boundaries by the NORTE, with the site of Antonia Galán; SOUTH, with Justino Barreto and José Lao Manso; EAST, with José Medina and Lydia Acevedo; WEST, with Angel Cordero and Justina Barreto.

It houses a consistent wooden house made of cardboard and zinc, with two bedrooms, living room, dining room and kitchen”.

The property described above is recorded at page 11 of volume 672 of Santurce Norte, property number 24,932, Registry of Property, First Section of San Juan. As of June 25, 2020, the defendant(s) owe(s) plaintiff the following amounts: (a) $106,147.05 in principal; interests in the amount of $54,931.10 which continues to accrue, even post-judgment as per the agreement of the parties, until full payment of the debt at $22.11 per diem; accrued late charges in the amount of $3,779.28; other expenses in the amount of $4,001.50 and any other advance, charge, fee or disbursements made by Bautista, under the other loan documents, plus costs and agreed attorney’s fees in the amount of $12,000.00. You are requested and required to notify Luis G. Parrilla Hernández, Esq., FERRAIUOLI LLC, 221 Ponce de León Avenue, 221 Plaza, 5th Floor, San Juan, PR 00917, PO Box 195168, San Juan, PR 00919-5168, Telephone number (787) 766-7000, email lparrilla@ferraiuoli.com, attorney for plaintiff, with a copy of the answer to the Complaint within thirty (30) days of the publication of this summons and file the original of said answer in this Court where you can find out its content. This Court has entered an order providing for summons by publication in accordance with the provisions of Rules 4.6 and 4.7 of the Rules of Civil Procedure for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

THEREFORE, notice is hereby given to you so that you may appear and answer the Complaint within thirty (30) days after publication of this summons and in case of failure to do so, judgment by default will be rendered for the relief demanded in the complaint and the court shall proceed to an adjudication without further notice. San Juan, Puerto Rico, on this 16th day of September, 2020. MARIA ANTONGIORGI-JORDAN, ESQ., Clerk of Court. By: Viviana Diaz-Mulero, Deputy Clerk.

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

MTGLQ INVESTORS, LP PARTE DEMANDANTE vs.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

cada en su contra, radicando el RAFAEL ANTONIO de la misma y enviando COLÓN TELLADO, ELEID original copia de su contestación a la MARGARITA COLÓN parte demandante, Leda. MarTELLADO, LA SUCESIÓN jalíisa Colón Villanueva, P.O. DE JANNETTE VALENTÍN Box 7970 Ponce, Puerto Rico LAUREA NO COMPUESTA 00732, Tel. (787) 843-4168 Fax: (787) 840-1049, Email: POR JAVIER ENRIQUE colonlawoffice@yahoo.com, HERNÁNDEZ VALENTÍN, mcolon@wwclaw.com, dentro JANYFEL . AMAGDYS del término de treinta (30) días HERNÁNDEZ VALENTÍN de la publicación de este edicto, les anotará la rebeldía en su Y JOHN DOE Y RICHARD se contra y se dictará sentencia en ROE COMO MIEMBROS su contra, conforme se solicita DESCONOCIDOS; ELEJD en la Demanda, sin más citárseles, ni oírseles. Se ordena a MARGARITA COLÓN TELLADO, ÁNGEL LUIS los herederos de la causante a saber: JANYFEL AMAGDYS LEÓN SIERRA T/C/C HERNÁNDEZ VALENTÍN POR LUIS LEÓN SIERRA, Y LA SÍ Y COMO HEREDERA DE SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE LA SUCESIÓN DE JANNETTE BIENES GANANCIALES VALENTÍN LAUREANO, a que dentro del mismo término de COMPUESTA POR treinta {30) días contados a parAMBOS; LUIS tir de la fecha de la notificación, FRANCISCO COLÓN ACEPTEN o REPUDIEN la TELLADO T/C/C LUIS participación que le corresponFRANCISCO COLÓN, da en la herencia de la referida causante. Se les apercibe a los LA SUCESIÓN DE herederos antes mencionados MARGARITA TELLADO que de no expresarse dentro de ese termino de treinta (30) DE COLÓN T/C/C MARGARITA TELLADO días en torno a su aceptación o repudiación de herencia, se ARCE, MARGARITA tendrá por aceptada. Expedido TELLADO, MARGOT bajo mi firma y sello del TriTELLADO Y COMO bunal, a 30 de septiembre de REGALADA TELLADO 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA. ARCE COMPUESTA LUZ ENID HERNANDEZ DEL POR RAFAEL ANTONIO VALLE, SERVICIOS A SALA. COLÓN TELLADO, LEGAL NOTICE ELEID MARGARITA ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO COLÓN TELLADO, LUIS DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUFRANCISCO COLÓN NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA TELLADO Y JOHN SALA SUPERIRO DE SAN SEDOE Y RICHARD ROE BASTIÁN. COMO MIEMBROS MTGLQ INVESTORS, L.P. Parte Demandante Vs. DESCONOCIDOS; ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ ADMINISTRACIÓN REYES; SUCESION PARA EL SUSTENTO DE DE AIDA IRIS NIEVES MENORES Y CENTRO RAMOS compuesta DE RECAUDACIÓN DE por OCTAVIO SOTO INGRESOS MUNICIPALES PARTE DEMANDADA NIEVES, LISETTE SOTO CIVIL NÚM.: SJ2019CV01813. NIEVES, MARISOL SOTO SALA: 604. SOBRE: COBRO NIEVES, HECTOR SOTO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN NIEVES, JOHN DOE Y DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZARICHARD ROE como MIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA herederos desconocidos, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. ADMINISTRACION UU. ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIAPARA EL SUSTENTO DE DO DE P.R. SS. MENORES Y CENTRO DE A: JANYFEL AMAGDYS RECAUDACION SOBRE HERNÁNDEZ V ALENTÍN INGRESOS MUNICIPALES POR SÍ Y COMO Parte Demandada HEREDERA DE LA CASO CIVIL NUM: SUCESIÓN DE JANNETTE SS2020CV00376. SOBRE: VALENTÍN LAUREANO EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA Quedan emplazados y notificados de que en este Tribunal se ha radicado una demanda de cobro de dinero y ejecución de hipoteca en su contra. Se les notifica para que comparezcan ante el Tribunal dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación de este edicto y exponer lo que a su derecho convenga, en el presente caso.

Se les apercibe y notifica que si no contestan la demanda radi-

POR LA VIA ORDINARIA Y COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO Y NOTIFICACION DE INTERPELACION POR EDICTO. Estados Unidos de América Presidente de los Estados Unidos de América Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico.

A: OCTAVIO SOTO NIEVES, LISETTE SOTO NIEVES, MARISOL

SOTO NIEVES, HECTOR SOTO NIEVES COMO MIEMBROS DE LA SUCESION DE AIDA IRIS NIEVES RAMOS; JOBN DOE Y RICHARD ROE COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESIÓN DE AIDA IRIS NIEVES RAMOS

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

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

Además, adeuda a la parte demandante las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado en que incurra el tenedor del pagaré en este litigio. De acuerdo con dicho Contrato de Garantía Hipotecaria la parte Demandante declaró vencida la totalidad de la deuda ascendente a la suma $14,415.30 de principal, más los intereses sobre dicha suma al 13.469% anual, así como todos aquellos créditos y sumas que surjan de la faz de la obligación hipotecaria y de la hipoteca que la garantiza, incluyendo la suma estipulada 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 (1’Lis Pendens”) sobre la propiedad objeto de esta acción cuya propiedad es la siguiente: RÚSTICA: Solar número uno (1) sita en I Barrio Sonador de San Sebastián, Puerto Rico, compuesto de cuatrocientos punto cero cero (400.00) metros cuadrados, colinda por el NORTE, ESTE, y OESTE, con remanente de la finca principal y por el SUR, con la Carretera Estatal Número ciento nueve ( 109). Inscrita al folio ciento sesenta y seis ( 166) del tomo

trescientos veintiocho (328) de San Sebastián, finca número diecisiete mil ciento ochenta y seis ( 17, 186). Registro de la Propiedad de la Propiedad Sección de San Sebastián.

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

Además, como miembro de la SUCESION DE AIDA IRIS NIEVES RAMOS 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 torno a la aceptación o repudiación de la herencia, se presumirá que han aceptado la herencia del causante SUCESION DE AIDA IRIS NIEVES RAMOS y por consiguiente, responderán por las cargas de dicha herencia conforme dispone el Art. 957 del Código Ci\’il, 31 L.P.R.A. S2785. En San Sebastián, Puerto Rico, a 06 de octubre de 2020. SARAHI REYES PEREZ, SECRETARIA(O). IVELISSE ROBLES MATHEWS, SUBSECRETARIA(O).

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

ALBERTO LUIS FERNANDEZ GARCIA Demandante vs

ANGEL FERNANDEZ GARCIA, TCC ANGEL FERNANDEZ Y GARCIA Y OTROS

COLON, TCC MARIA FELICIDAD O SUS POSIBLES SUCESORES; ISMAEL FERNANDEZ SANTIAGO O SUS POSIBLES SUCESORES; ISMAEL FERNANDEZ MONTERO; Y FULANO DE TAL PARA SER NOTIFICADOS POR EDICTO, P/C LIC JESUS DELGADO VELEZ LIC JESUS DELGADO VELEZ PMB 289 1575 AVE MUÑOZ RIVERA PONCE, PR 00717-0211

(Nombre de las partes a las que se les notifica la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 15 de septiembre de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representado usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 19 de octubre de 2020. En Ponce, Puerto Rico, el 19 de octubre de 2020. LUZ MAYRA CARABALLO GARCÍA, Secretario(a) Regional. f/ MADELINE RIVERA MERCADO, Secretaria(a) Auxiliar.

Demandado Civil Núm.: PO2019CV01660.

Salón: 604. Sobre: ACCION CIVIL; USUCAPION. NOTIFILEGAL NOTICE CACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO A: ANGEL FERNANDEZ DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUGARCIA TCC ANGEL NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE AGUADILLA.

FERNANDEZ Y GARCIA PR RECOVERY AND O SUS POSIBLES DEVELOPMENT JV, LLC SUCESORES; DEMANDANTE VS. HERIBERTO FERNANDEZ JOSE LUIS SANTIAGO O SUS ARCE CRESPO POSIBLES SUCESORES; DEMANDADO HAYDEE FERNANDEZ CIVIL NUM.: AG2019CV01634.

SALA: 1. SOBRE: COBRO DE SANTIAGO O SUS POSIBLES SUCESORES; DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO MERCEDES FERNANDEZ POR EDICTO. A: JOSE LUIS SANTIAGO O SUS ARCE CRESPO POSIBLES SUCESORES; RESIDENCIAL LAS PABLO FERNANDEZ MUNECAS EDIF 9 APT LABOY O SUS POSIBLES 120 AGUADILLA, PUERTO SUCESORES; SALVADOR 00603 FERNANDEZ LABOY POR LARICO PRESENTE se le O SUS POSIBLES emplaza y requiere para que SUCESORES; MARIA conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes FELICITA SANTIAGO

25

a la publicación de este Edicto.

Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Adrninistración de Casos (SUMAC), la cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretarIa del tribunal. Si usted

deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda o cualquier otro sin más citarle ni oírle, si el tribunal en ci ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. El sistema SUMAC notificará copia al abogado de la parte demandante, el Lcdo. José F. Aguilar Vélez

cuya dirección es: P.O. Box 71418 San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936-85 18, teléfono (787) 993-3731 ala dirección jose. aguilar@orf-law.corn y a la dirección notificaciones@orf-law. com. EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el sello del Tribunal, en Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, hoy dia 7 de octubre de 2020. En Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, el 7 de octubre de 2020. Sarahi Reyes Perez, Secretaria.

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Tuesday, October 20, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

‘They just get it’: How women in MLB found support in a group text

By JAMES WAGNER

W

hen Alyssa Nakken in July became the first woman in major league history to coach on the field, it was big news in the baseball world. But it was a particularly extraordinary development in one small corner of the industry: a text message group featuring dozens of women working in professional baseball.

Several members said they were overjoyed at Nakken’s achievement. Others said that they planned to buy her No. 92 San Francisco Giants jersey. When someone shared an illustration of Nakken breaking down a brick wall encircling a baseball field, it quickly became the group’s photo on WhatsApp. “You can share this moment with somebody else, but maybe they don’t understand the importance of it,” said Andrea Nuñez, 27, a minor league strength and conditioning coach with the Los Angeles Angels. “To be able to have the women in that group to share excitement with was so awesome.”

This “Women in Baseball” text chain, though, is more than simply a place to celebrate promotions. For the 49 women involved — all of whom work full-time in professional baseball — it is a rare space for support, brainstorming and understanding.

They discuss their experiences in a male-dominant industry known more for its tradition than its progressivism. They talk about the discrimination they have faced. They trade ideas on player development or management. They chat about improving the diversity within the sport. They check in on one another.

“I have a group family chat with my parents, my brothers and my sisters-in-law, and after a hard day or a really good day, it’s really fun to text them,” Nakken, 30, said. “This is like another type of family that I feel like, if there’s something going on, I can share it with them and they’ll get it. They just get it.”

The text chain is the brainchild of Jen Wolf, 33, a life skills coordinator in the Cleveland Indians’ farm system.

Sensing a void in support groups for women in baseball when she was in between jobs, Wolf started the text chain in the summer of 2019 with fewer than 10 people.

The earliest members invited other women, who invited others, and the group now includes scouts, major and minor league coaches, education coordinators, media relations staffers and more.

“Being able to mentor other women that are coming into the game is huge,” Wolf said. “I didn’t have that.

I had mentors, but not really female mentors.”

That is little surprise considering baseball has long been an industry controlled by men. But women are increasingly becoming a presence in the sport.

Forty percent of the professional employees at Major League Baseball’s central office are women (the highest percentage since 2008), and 21 women had on-field coaching or player development roles for organizations entering 2020 (up from just three in 2017), according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida.

Still, that institute’s latest report card gave MLB and its 30 teams a C grade for gender hiring. A look at the gender breakdown at the club vice president-level jobs shows why: Of roughly 500 vice president jobs among the 30 clubs, 95 were held by women, according to the report. And a woman has yet to break through as an MLB player, manager or general manager.

‘I had no clue’ It was that lack of midlevel opportunities, in part, that led Wolf to start the WhatsApp group.

In 2018, she left her job as the coordinator for minor league and international operations for the New York Mets to look for work elsewhere in the industry. But she found that baseball’s efforts for women were geared more toward entry-level and executive positions. At the annual industrywide winter meetings in December, she said, she could not even attend an MLB-run event for women because she was not employed by a team at the time.

She realized women needed help in this tricky part of their careers — the steppingstones of middle management — not just at the highest or lowest positions.

“Major League Baseball has done a lot to get women and minorities into the game, but there isn’t as much support for those who are already in the game,” she said. “And I had a lot of female friends or colleagues or peers that may have had one bad experience with a club or something and then decided not to work in baseball anymore.”

So after Wolf was hired in February 2019 by the Indians, she started the WhatsApp group for women to talk, vent and assist one another outside of the few formal programs that existed.

The group is limited to women who hold full-time jobs in baseball operations. But if someone is furloughed or laid off, a more common occurrence during the pandemic, she said, they are not kicked out of the group.

In fact, Wolf said, every woman added is made an administrator in the WhatsApp group so that she can, in turn, invite more.

“This has all been spread grassroots and word-ofmouth,” she said. “So if somebody is not in it, it’s not anything personal. Maybe I don’t have their number.”

The text group includes, among others: two other minor league coaches hired before this season, Rachel Balkovec of the New York Yankees and Rachel Folden of the Chicago Cubs; Eve Rosenbaum, the Baltimore Orioles’ director of baseball development; Melissa Lambert, the Kansas City Royals’ assistant director of behavioral science; and Karla Espinoza, a scout for the Tampa Bay Rays in Mexico.

Nuñez was invited into the group over the winter by her colleague Andrea La Pointe, a minor league operations assistant for the Angels, and found it eye-opening because she did not have such a network before.

“I had no clue there were so many women,” she said. “Obviously there’s not enough, but I didn’t know there were so many in terms of the numbers we have now.

The only other female-filled position that I had seen was maybe an athletic trainer.”

During an exhibition game in July, Alyssa Nakken of the San Francisco Giants became the first woman to coach on the field in the major leagues.

Stubborn hurdles remain A watershed moment for the text group, and women in the sport, came a year ago. During a celebration following the Houston Astros clinching a trip to the World Series, Brandon Taubman, the team’s assistant general manager, yelled at a group of female reporters in the clubhouse, “Thank God we got Osuna,” along with an expletive.

Taubman was referring to Roberto Osuna, a reliever acquired by the Astros in 2018 while he was serving a 75-game suspension because of accusations of domestic violence. Three days after a Sports Illustrated article brought the Taubman outburst to light, the Astros fired Taubman. The group text lit up.

“We kind of used it to talk more about what women face in general, instead of that specific incident, so that way nobody who may or may not have been involved felt like they had to talk on that specifically,” said Wolf, who knew some women in the group might have known or worked with Taubman.

Overall, Wolf — echoing the sentiments of Nakken and Nuñez — said her experience working in baseball had been overwhelmingly positive.

“If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t still be here,” she added.

“That said, it’s not perfect. It can definitely improve.”

Earlier in her career, Wolf was star struck when she met Kim Ng, who has worked as an assistant general manager with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Yankees, and is currently MLB’s senior vice president for baseball operations. She later met Raquel Ferreira and Jean Afterman, assistant general managers of the Boston Red Sox and Yankees.

Finding more role models for women in baseball was part of why Wolf started the text chain. While she said she looks forward to the day that women in baseball are known for their merits, not their gender, Wolf wants young girls or women to hear Nakken’s story and see her in uniform on the field.

“Those women are incredible, but I wish there were more,” Wolf said. “It’s been those same women for a long time. We need more of them.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

27

In Tampa Bay, a plan just might be coming together

By BEN SHPIGEL

S

o maybe — maybe, maybe, maybe — this is how the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ thrust into NFC contention begins.

Maybe it begins with some anticipatory mastery, with a cornerback intercepting a quarterback who never throws interceptions. Or with an almost-full complement of offensive skill players available at last, their renewed health powering consistency, and efficiency. Or with the increased involvement of a tight end who unretired for days like Sunday, when he’s mincing defenses and catching touchdowns and spiking footballs, leaving Gronk-sized divots in the grass.

The Green Bay Packers arrived in the Florida heat as one of the NFL’s four unbeaten teams, with an offense gaining yards and scoring points and throttling opponents at a maximum pace. They trudged off the field at Raymond James Stadium on Sunday night pummeled and discombobulated, unsettled by the outcome and the margin of defeat, yes, but also by how completely Tampa Bay exploited the Packers’ every deficiency.

The Buccaneers’ 38-10 victory doubled as validation of an admission they made in the offseason and the commitment they demonstrated to correct it.

With their defense ascending, the front office recognized that the pathway to relevance — and indeed, the franchise’s first playoff berth since the 2007 season — entailed acquiring the stylistic antithesis of their incumbent quarterback, Jameis Winston, who had a pesky habit of throwing the ball to the other team.

So Tampa Bay (4-2) signed six-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady, thus creating Tompa Bay, an exotic locale — avocado ice cream! pliability classes! — with an evolved way of thinking: With Brady, at 43, assuming the role of gleeful caretaker, the Buccaneers can win in complementary fashion.

On offense, with the Buccaneers running for nearly as many yards (158) as Brady passed for (166), they didn’t commit a turnover or allow a sack, and converted all four red-zone opportunities. On defense, they converted two takeaways — including Jamel Dean’s return for a touchdown — into 14 points.

As a team, Tampa Bay wasn’t penalized even once. The blueprint evoked that of Brady’s former team — where did he

play again? New England? — and recalibrated expectations.

“We kind of set a new standard for ourselves,” coach Bruce Arians said.

Coming off a 20-19 Week 5 loss to the Chicago Bears in which Brady may or may not have forgotten (OK, he did) what down it was during a late drive, the Buccaneers regained equilibrium by stuffing the NFL’s most prolific offense.

The Packers (4-1) entered Sunday leading the league in points and yards per play and, according to Pro Football Reference, were the first team in league history to score 150 points in their first four games without a giveaway. Undeterred, Tampa Bay’s defensive coordinator, Todd Bowles, told his unit all week that it was going to smother Aaron Rodgers like no other defense had done so far.

Assembling the defense after Green Bay went ahead by 10-0, Bowles told his charges that they were respecting Rodgers and the Packers too much. “They’ve got to earn our respect,” Bowles said, as recounted by linebacker Devin White, who led Tampa Bay with 10 tackles and a sack. Then Bowles reminded his charges of his prediction and their mission.

In torching the Minnesota Vikings and the Detroit Lions, the New Orleans Saints and the Atlanta Falcons, Rodgers had yet to encounter a defense — a secondary, especially — as physical and aggressive as Tampa Bay’s. Facing third-and-10 at his 22-yard line, Rodgers dropped back to pass, his eyes never leaving Davante Adams along the far sideline, which Dean noticed, too.

“When I saw the formation, then I saw how everything started to develop, I’m like, ‘I have to make this play because I know what’s coming,’” Dean said. “And then once I saw him throw it, I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s mine.’”

It was. Undercutting Adams’ route, Dean grabbed the ball and raced 32 yards for a touchdown. Three plays into the Packers’ ensuing series, Mike Edwards snatched a deflected pass and ran down to the Green Bay 2. On the next snap, Ronald Jones rumbled into the end zone for the first of two touchdowns.

The Packers punted. Tampa Bay scored. The Packers punted again. Tampa Bay scored again — a 12-yard fade from Brady to Rob Gronkowski, his first touchdown since December 2018 and the 91st time they’ve connected for a score, counting the postseason. Across

a dizzying 12 minute, 30 second span of the second quarter, the Buccaneers held Green Bay without a first down and scored 28 consecutive points.

“We always pride ourselves on having great stars on the offensive side of the ball,” White said, adding, “We want this team to be a defensive team.”

The moment of surrender came after Tampa Bay had sacked Rodgers four times, after its array of pressures and coverages had condemned him to the third-lowest passer rating (35.4) and third-worst completion percentage (45.7) of his career, when LaFleur pulled him — for his own health, perhaps — for backup Tim Boyle. Soon, Brady departed, too, in place of Blaine Gabbert, sacrificing another series of work with players he’s still coming to learn, coming to trust, for the privilege of savoring victory.

The backdrop to Brady’s first season in Tampa Bay — chaotic offseason, truncated training camp, managing injuries to receivers Chris Godwin, Mike Evans, Scotty Miller and O.J. Howard — has disrupted the Buccaneers’ continuity. It stands to reason that they, as Brady continues adjusting to a new offense and a new play-caller, will improve over the

next few months as much as any team in the league.

In a product of the NFL’s interconference scheduling formula, only twice before had Brady and Rodgers faced each other as starters: in 2014, a Green Bay victory, and in 2018, a New England win. That quirk consigned Brady and Rodgers to an endless state of parallel play — excelling at the same time, but apart from, the other. By signing with the Buccaneers, Brady created more opportunities for tantalizing games against NFC contemporaries like Drew Brees, whose Saints reside in Tampa Bay’s division, and Rodgers, who may very well get a rematch come January.

However enticing, it’s imprecise to view Tampa Bay’s romp — as well as a potential postseason meeting, should it come to pass — as a matchup between Brady and Rodgers. They were facing defenses scheming to thwart them, and not facing each other. Brady was better this time, his team was, too, and if the Buccaneers are to go on to win their first division title since 2007, they might remember Sunday as the day that catapulted them there.

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Liverpool’s Van Dijk needs surgery, a cruel twist in a tough year

By RORY SMITH

V

irgil van Dijk walked gingerly around the side of the field, ruefully shaking his head, muttering under his breath. He stopped to offer Jürgen Klopp a grimace and then trudged on, out of Goodison Park. That will be the last Liverpool, and the Premier League, sees of the Dutchman for quite some time.

How long, precisely, is not yet known.

On Sunday, a consultant confirmed what both the player and his coach feared in that brief pause in the Merseyside derby: Van Dijk has damaged the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. It is too early to assess, precisely, the extent of the damage, but not too early to know that van Dijk needs surgery.

Only after that happens will Liverpool be able to put a time frame on van Dijk’s rehabilitation and recovery. The best case is that he can emulate Antonio Rüdiger, the German defender who sustained a similar injury in June 2016 and was playing again by October of that year. Ilkay Gundogan, by contrast, required twice as long to return. He is not the worst-case scenario.

Either way, Liverpool must now undertake a sizable portion of its Premier League title defense without the central pillar of its back line, a player who had played 74 consecutive league games and who had barely missed a minute of domestic competition in the 2 1/2 years since arriving at Anfield.

Certain injuries have ramifications that stretch beyond the pain and despair felt by the player who has suffered them; they have the capacity to change the course of the season.

Tomas Rosicky, the former Arsenal midfielder, has argued that his team might have won the Premier League in 2008 had Eduardo, its Croatian-Brazilian striker, not sustained a career-threatening injury in a game at Birmingham. And a line might be drawn between Roy Keane’s absence in 1998 and Manchester United’s collapse in the Premier League title race. Inter Milan might not have had to wait so long between Serie A crowns at the end of the last century had Ronaldo, the Brazilian striker widely regarded as the finest player in the world at the time, not torn the tendons in his knee late in 1999.

Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford charged van Dijk, arriving just as the ball bounced away.

The same is not always true, of course: Arsenal (again) lost Robert Pires to injury in 2002 as it chased a league and cup double, and went on to win both anyway. Five games into this season, then, Liverpool should not yet be written off. But in this case it is difficult to see how the context of the injury does not exacerbate the consequences.

It is possible to see, in what happened to van Dijk, a glimmer of almost every aspect of soccer in 2020. The incident that caused it felt distinctly au courant: the Everton goalkeeper, Jordan Pickford, has spent the last couple of years gaining a reputation for a tendency to act first and think later, one that has led to spiraling calls for him to lose his place on England’s national team.

More apt still is the fact that the severity of van Dijk’s knee injury did not seem to be the main source of controversy in its immediate aftermath. Instead, the focus was on why Pickford escaped any punishment for what appeared to be an obvious red-card offense.

The theory emerged that Michael Oliver, the on-field referee, and Da-

vid Coote, his colleague in the video bureau, could not punish Pickford for an incident that happened when van Dijk was offside. After 130 years of organized, codified soccer in England, a loophole seemed to have appeared in which, once the ball was no longer in play, everyone had carte blanche to do what they liked.

That was later amended: Pickford would have been punished had he been guilty of serious foul play, but (rightly or wrongly) in the eyes of Oliver and Coote, that did not apply.

It is worth pausing, though, to consider that this is where the introduction of video assistant referees (VARs), and the subsequent rewriting of the game’s regulations to keep up with the technology, has brought us: the idea that perhaps there is a glaring gray area in the rules that has gone unnoticed in the last century is no longer especially unthinkable. All of a sudden, nobody really knows where they stand anymore.

The fact that Liverpool, after the game, wrote to the Premier League asking for an explanation as to why Pickford

was not reprimanded — as well as requesting conclusive proof of the offside decision that had denied Klopp’s team a late-winning goal — has the air of sour grapes. But there will be few clubs that have not felt aggrieved by some VAR decision they do not fully understand over the last season or so.

It might be helpful, then, for more than just Klopp’s burning sense of injustice, for the Premier League and its officials to consider why this keeps happening, and to wonder if, perhaps, the rules of the game are fundamentally undermined if those playing and watching it do not believe them to be just. Soccer is policed by consent, after all, and that consent is thinning and waning.

More immediately, though, is what van Dijk’s absence means for Liverpool.

Losing a player of his stature would be damaging in any season, in any situation, but to do so in this campaign is particularly troubling.

In the 75 days between now and Jan. 1, the soonest available date Liverpool can acquire a replacement or reinforcement, Klopp’s team must play 17 games in the Premier League and the Champions League. (Its schedule would have been even heavier had it not been eliminated from the League Cup by Arsenal.)

That is about once every four days.

And it must do so with only two fit, senior, specialist central defenders: Joel Matip and Joe Gomez, both of whom have vaguely checkered injury histories themselves. The next alternative, Fabinho, is a central midfielder by trade, anointed an emergency center back by Klopp partly through choice — he prefers working with a small squad — and partly out of necessity: His spending power this summer was limited because of the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and he determined that the money was better spent elsewhere.

In a season so compact and condensed, injuries are even more likely than usual to be the determining factor in who succeeds and who does not. The teams that triumph — across Europe — this season will not only have to excel, they will have to endure, too. Titles may well go to the last team standing. It may be that when it is all over, we come to see that moment, as van Dijk trudged round the field at Goodison Park, as the one in which Liverpool fell.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

29

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

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

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

(Mar 21-April 20)

You’ve had a strong propensity for war lately, Aries. Your drive toward getting things done has rallied and you’re anxious to make progress. The problem is that you might have to hold back a bit today, since there is a great force at work encouraging to you to take a break from your current trajectory. Slow down and make a plan instead of just plowing blindly ahead toward the unknown.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Your best plan of attack today is to not attack at all, Libra. There is enough aggressiveness out there. You don’t need to add any more to the fray. Let others duke it out. Your job is to wait until the dust settles. Try not to get involved in other people’s disputes. You might get dragged further into the situation than makes you feel comfortable.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Scorpio

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Your ship is finally coming into port after being out in rough seas for so long, Gemini. It’s time to dock the boat for a while. Relax and explore the area. There is nothing wrong with getting off your vessel for a while. You may not even realize how much you’ve missed solid ground until now. Remember what it’s like to be stable again.

If you’ve been reluctant to make a move, Sagittarius, you should consider why. What has been holding you back? Fear of failure? A negative comment from someone else? Feeling like you aren’t quite prepared for the consequences of your actions? It’s time to free yourself of these mental barriers that keep you from making progress. Don’t let selfdoubt get in the way of your plans.

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

Your balancing powers will be put to the test today when your desire to fight conflicts with your need to plan, Taurus. You might be even more indecisive than usual as a result of this internal tension. Be aware of time and the restrictions that it puts on you. Devise a plan that uses your energy in the most efficient way possible. It’s especially important for you to think before you act.

Indecisiveness could be your biggest nemesis today, Cancer. The general tone of the day is apt to be quite explosive as a feeling of restriction and discipline comes into conflict with a need to fight and conquer. You might find that your go-with-the-flow, easygoing attitude is exactly what saves you on a day like this. Lay low and let someone else take the lead now.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

You might need to put on the brakes today, Scorpio. Your present trajectory isn’t quite in line with the people and energy around you. Make sure you aren’t stepping on other people’s toes with your abrasive behavior.

This is a day to consider a more disciplined approach. You might need to establish a better structure, so you use your energy more efficiently in general.

Discipline and a solid plan are your friends today, Capricorn. Slow your approach and consider the consequences of your actions. This is the time to concentrate on what you need to get done and devise a plan to make it happen. There is restlessness in the air that might cause you to act hastily. Don’t forget the old saying that says haste makes waste. This is an important lesson.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Your plans meet with harsh opposition today, Leo. You’ve been going along at a slow and steady pace, but you will find that abrasive tension arises the more you try to force your will on others. Gridlock is quite likely due to the fact that there are strong forces coming to a head. Neither one of them is in the mood to yield now.

You might experience a bit of an internal conflict today and be you’re unsure how to proceed, Aquarius. One side feels an urge to fight, while another side - a more mental aspect - asks you to keep this urge under wraps. It could be that this conflict keeps you immobile because of your lack of confidence in either camp. Try not to get stressed out over any one issue.

Virgo

Pisces

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Getting your opinions out now may stir up the maelstrom even more, but ultimately, it’s for the best, Virgo. There is an explosive tone in the air right now that’s difficult to ignore. You need your strong will to combat the abrasive forces at work today. You have the opportunity to initiate control over the situation. Other people might be too unsure of themselves to make a move.

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

It may be hard to connect with others today, Pisces. People may be rather indecisive. On the other hand, people are apt to be more malleable. This could be a good time to take charge. Be sure that you keep in mind the best interests of all parties involved. It isn’t fair for you to take advantage of people who can’t make up their own minds about something.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Tuesday, October 20, 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

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

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