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October 30-November 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

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Oct. 30 - November 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star, the only paper with News Service in English in Puerto Rico, publishes 7 days a week, with a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday edition, along with a Weekend Edition to cover Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

GAO study notes barriers to island’s air cargo goals

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hile industry stakeholders identified economic benefits that could result from increasing air cargo operations in Puerto Rico, they held varying perspectives on the potential of the island to achieve such an increase, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study found.

Puerto Rico seeks to increase the number of foreign air-cargo carrier flights at its airports by attracting existing flights between Europe and Latin America that could use Puerto Rico’s international airports as transfer points for air cargo instead of other Latin American airports. The move is seen as a potential industry that could bring millions of dollars to the island.

But the GAO report noted that there are different views on the island’s potential to be a cargo hub.

While some industry stakeholders interviewed by the GAO viewed Puerto Rico’s geographic location as advantageous for serving as a transfer point for cargo transported between Europe and Latin America, and the government noted that the island’s location makes it a logical stopping and refueling point for flights between Europe and Central and South America, others noted problems.

“Puerto Rico’s location may be too close to some destinations in Latin America for it to be used as a stopover or refueling destination for flights originating in Europe,” the GAO report said. “For example, Puerto Rico lies more than three-quarters of the way on routes between Frankfurt, Germany, and Panama City, Panama or Bogotá, Colombia. Similarly, several other industry stakeholders stated that Puerto Rico’s interest in increasing air cargo operations puts it in direct competition with Miami International Airport, which has an extensive air cargo infrastructure and already serves as the principal gateway and transshipment point between Latin America and the U.S.” Some of the industry stakeholders said Puerto Rico’s susceptibility to hurricanes might deter some carriers from operating or expanding on the island.

There are also problems of proximity to distribution networks and customer bases.

“Two industry stakeholders we interviewed said Puerto Rico airports’ lack of connection to other extensive transportation networks, such as access to the types of highway and rail systems that are present at many mainland U.S. airports, limits its ability to attract additional air cargo operations,” the study said.

On the other hand, proximity to distribution networks may not necessarily be a limiting factor for Puerto Rico because some airports that handle large amounts of cargo, such as Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport in

Alaska, do not rely on such access, the GAO report noted. More specifically, most of the cargo handled by the Anchorage airport passes through -- that is, it originates from and is destined to locations outside of -- Alaska, so access to distribution networks or a customer base are not needed. In addition, as an island territory, Puerto Rico has access to maritime cargo networks at its ports in San Juan and in Ponce, on the southern coast of the island.

As for a customer base, some industry stakeholders noted that Puerto Rico’s pharmaceutical manufacturing industry is heavily reliant on air cargo services. Further, products produced by Puerto Rico’s other major manufacturing industries -- including electronics and medical devices -- are among those that are well suited for transport by air cargo, the report said.

But other stakeholders said products from these industries alone may not be sufficient to drive demand for expanded air cargo operations on the island.

The Puerto Rico government stated that the island’s three underutilized international airports have important competitive advantages that can help attract air carriers that are currently using other Latin American airports, and some industry stakeholders the GAO interviewed generally agreed that Puerto Rico has the basic airport infrastructure in place to support expanded air cargo operations.

However, other stakeholders said Puerto Rico may not have all the requisite supporting infrastructure, such as cargo loading equipment. The Puerto Rican government acknowledged that additional infrastructure improvements are needed at its airports and that it has taken steps to improve its airport infrastructure.

According to the island government’s economic development promotional information, Puerto Rico’s status as a U.S. territory provides the same level of stability, protection, and operational security to businesses as mainland U.S. locations do, but Puerto Rico carriers would be negatively affected by any changes to air traffic in Puerto Rico, the GAO report noted.

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The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

SEC official: ‘Nov. 3 General Elections are ready’

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

W

ith only a few days left before every Puerto Rico citizen of voting age has their turn to cast their ballot, State Elections Commission (SEC) Associate Chairman Jessika Dory Padilla Rivera told the Star on Thursday that “the General Elections on Nov. 3 are ready.”

“Ballot containers are already prepared; all the ballots that are necessary to carry out the event are already in our vaults and inside the containers,” Padilla Rivera said.

The SEC official added that electoral officials from the Absentee and Early Voting Administrative Board (JAVAA by its Spanish acronym) are working hard at Roberto Clemente Coliseum in Hato Rey counting both absentee and early votes, with the results of those counts being sheltered inside counting machines, and will begin to submit them once island polling stations close at 5 p.m. on Election Day. “We invite voters, electoral officials, mayors, SEC officials who are assigned to the Permanent Registration Board offices, those assigned to pick up ballot containers

at polling sites, anyone who has knowledge or suspicion of any electoral crime to report it -- that’s our invitation,” Padilla Rivera said.

“We might have control over some matters, but not over everything. Our call is to not let this happen because our purpose, since day one, has been to make the electoral process in Puerto Rico transparent, trustworthy and safe.”

As for extraordinary events during the electoral process -- such as a three-minute power outage at JAVAA headquarters, regarding which SEC Chairman Franciso Rosado Colomer told the digital news outlet Noticel that an electrical generator had been installed to prevent any repeat of that inconvenience -- Padilla Rivera said the SEC determined that “both presidential and commissioner affairs were to be situated permanently in the Coliseum to address any issue that occurs immediately.”

Meanwhile, as for a report by Ivette Sosa of Telemundo via Twitter that unidentified people leaked the voter registry with confidential information to people outside the SEC, Padilla Rivera said they “have no control as to what is released on social media.”

“That information could well be infor-

mation that necessarily has to be corroborated; should it be true, we would initiate the investigations that it requires,” she said.

“We have to ensure that our officials handle that information confidentially, and if there is any leak, any information that has been disclosed on social networks, it has to be corroborated and investigated as required by the authorities.”

SEC prepared to receive voters amid COVID-19 pandemic Regarding its efforts to safeguard voters against COVID-19, the SEC released a 10-page protocol guide for the general elections and the plebiscite amid the global coronavirus pandemic.

The SEC states in the guide that “to enter the electoral unit, all voters will have to wear a face mask.” Likewise, all officials are required to wear face masks, face shields, gloves and a robe to protect themselves against the coronavirus.

If a voter screens for a body temperature at or above 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit or 38 degrees Celsius, they will be required to return to their vehicles as the SEC subboard unit activates a protocol whereby an official arrives at the voter’s vehicle with the ballots inside a security folder, along

with a lamp to verify the voter’s right index finger, ink, gloves, antibacterial gel and a marker. Once the voter fills out the ballot, the ballot is returned to the security folder and the folder is given back to the official.

“The sub-board will return to the voting station, instruct the station secretary to write on the list next to the voter’s name: VOTED (COVID-19),” the guide says. “They will proceed to introduce the ballots face down in the counting machine, pressing the vote button, no matter what message appears on the screen.”

According to the protocol guide, if a voter arrives with a medical certification or a positive COVID-19 test result, they will also be required to return to their vehicles and go through the aforementioned process.

Unions call on candidates to sign proposal for a better Puerto Rico

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

S

eventeen labor unions teamed up in front of State Elections Commission headquarters in Hato Rey on Thursday and requested that every political candidate put their name on a proposal to work for a better Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rican Workers Central (CPT by its Spanish initials) President Emilio Nieves said the proposal focuses specifically on concrete measures to address issues such as health, education, the public retirement system, workers’ rights, sustainable development, effective civil participation, corruption, public debt, women’s rights, human rights and the island’s political status. Nieves said that through every union representative, what the proposal calls for is that every candidate speak up on the aforementioned concerns and commit to work effectively on those matters starting in January 2021.

“In each of these areas, we present alternatives that are perfectly viable and whose consideration and approval will allow us to live in a more just society, will lay the foundations for a true social transformation, and will allow each Puerto Rican family a higher standard of living,” the CPT president said, emphasizing that the 17 syndicates that approved the proposal represent “a total of 200,000 workers who expect sensitivity toward their living and working conditions from future elected officials.”

Meanwhile, Puerto Rico Teachers Federation President Mercedes Martínez Padilla said no candidate from the Popular Democratic Party, the New Progressive Party or the Dignity Project had replied regarding the proposal,

much less signed their name to it. However, she added, every candidate from both the Citizen Victory Movement and the Puerto Rican Independence Party, independent gubernatorial candidate Eliezer Molina and independent senator at-large candidate José Vargas Vidot have signed the proposal.

She added that she urges citizens to “vote consciously and outside of [party] colors.”

“Moreover, the candidates who aspire now to govern and legislate know what the people deserve. They know what workers deserve. We are not responsible for the public debt, we are not corrupt, nor did we lead the country to the precipice it is on. Therefore, it is not up to us to pay for

it,” Martínez Padilla said. “Part of the proposal is to commit to legislating the bills that were left on the table [that are] focused on a dignified retirement system that guarantees a pension for all public employees. If they don’t sign the proposal, it says a lot about their work [going forward].”

Meanwhile, Puerto Rican University Professors Association President Ángel Rodríguez called the recent determination by the Financial Oversight and Management Board to cut the public workforce in order to implement Laws 80, 81 and 82 to preserve the retirement system for civil servants “a crude, insensitive, inhuman and cowardly attempt to blackmail the people of Puerto Rico into choosing to have a salary or to have retirement money.”

“It is up to local politicians to develop a backbone that allows them to stand tall in front of the oversight board and say that the interests of the poor, working, subordinate and marginalized people have to be above a debt that is not ours,” Rodríguez said.

When the Star asked the union leaders if they will advocate for the approval of HB 2572, which addresses the University of Puerto Rico’s retirement system, and HB 2434, the Dignified Retirement Act, given that unions have endorsed and lobbied for both bills as being in compliance with the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act, both Rodríguez and Nieves said they will not keep lobbying for the bills, but instead will occupy the streets until the Legislative Assembly passes them.

“Both retirees and workers must keep an eye on every government proposal, because the majority of them end up being mere promises,” Nieves said. “They must assume their commitment to the proposal that we are presenting today; that’s the government program they should follow.”

The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

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Concerns raised over number of intensive care beds occupied due to COVID-19

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

P

hysicians and Surgeons Association of Puerto Rico President Víctor Ramos expressed concern on Thursday about the occupancy level of beds in hospital intensive care areas.

“The main concern continues to be the number of beds in intensive care,” Ramos said in an interview on “Pegaos en la Mañana” on Radio Isla 1320 AM. “We have enough general beds, [but] we have higher intensive [occupancy] than usual.

And that’s when we could have problems.”

Ramos stressed that COVID-19 cases have increased in Puerto Rico. He indicated that the majority of intensive care patients have the coronavirus.

The island Health Department’s Thursday report included one death from COVID-19, along with 705 confirmed cases and 508 additional probable cases.

There were 425 people hospitalized on Thursday, nine fewer than Wednesday. At press time, 63 patients were in intensive units, three of them in pediatrics, and 39 people were on a ventilator.

As of Thursday morning, 814 people in Puerto Rico had died as a result of COVID-19, according to the Health Department.

Physicians and Surgeons Association of Puerto Rico President Víctor Ramos

Health Dept. urges modified Halloween celebrations due to COVID-19

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

T

o prevent the spread of COVID-19, Deputy Health Secretary Iris Cardona recommended on Thursday that Puerto Rico residents modify their celebration of Halloween with safe and fun activities that do not put the health of any member of the family at risk.

“Certainly, this year Halloween should not be celebrated like in other years, but that does not mean that you can not do fun activities,” said Cardona, a pediatrician, in a written statement.

“This holiday is anticipated and enjoyed by many, especially children and young people, so it is recommended to use technology and creativity in order to avoid trick-or-treating from house to house.”

The Health official noted that trick-

or-treating is not safe because it puts children and adults at risk from direct contact with people outside their family nucleus.

Among the existing alternatives for risk-free celebration, the use of technology is recommended to plan a virtual costume party, decorating competitions and any other activity that, in addition to being fun, promotes safe sharing while avoiding contact with people who are not part of the family nucleus.

Cardona said fun things can be done even within the home.

“The little ones can help decorate the house. Parents can share with children making drawings or crafts,” she said. “In addition, they can join in the kitchen to bake cookies or make decorated food [that evokes] the holiday.”

The Health official likewise urged young people and adults who typically

coordinate fancy dress parties on Halloween to do them virtually this year, so as to avoid crowding and physical contact between people.

Other alternatives that health organizations recommend for celebrating Halloween include organizing a virtual cinema with horror movies; there are digital platforms with which it is possible to share movies with other people.

Another recommendation is to create activities such as Halloween makeup competitions, so that everyone connects and sees each other’s progress, until they share the final work.

“The important thing is to be vigilant in complying with preventive measures, at the time of planning and during the celebration of the event,” Cardona said. “The prevention of COVID-19 is a responsibility that we must fulfill daily, including during holidays and special days.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

Majority leader: Senate info on hiring and salaries to be disclosed in full before Election Day

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

S

enate Majority Leader Carmelo Ríos Santiago confirmed Thursday that the upper chamber will complete its disclosure of data on hiring and salaries before Tuesday’s elections.

“What is lacking in information [to disseminate] is Eduardo Bhatia’s [previous] four-year term, not this four-year term,” Ríos Santiago said in an interview on “Pegaos en la Mañana” on Radio Isla 1320 AM. Bhatia was president of the Senate from January 2013 until January 2017, when it was under Popular Democratic Party (PDP) control. The New Progres-

sive Party (NPP) took control of the upper chamber on Jan. 1, 2017.

“Everything from this four-year term has been published,” added Ríos Santiago.

The senator for District II (Bayamón, Guaynabo, Cataño, Toa Baja, Toa Alta) asserted that those who have refused to release information about wages and contracts were employees who said they were not public figures. He clarified that among those employees there are people from both the PDP and the NPP. Ríos Santiago’s statement comes after Superior Court Judge Anthony Cuevas gave the Senate five days to make the information public.

ABRE launches 2019 muni fiscal health index, with 8 towns scoring an ‘A’

By THE STAR STAFF

A

BRE Puerto Rico on Thursday launched its fiscal health index for the commonwealth’s 78 municipalities for 2019.

It is the sixth municipal fiscal health index published by the organization, which according to its website “is a social innovation project that uses data science and technology to present and communicate public data, making it useful and accessible to every citizen in Puerto Rico.”

The towns that received an ‘A’ in fiscal health for 2019 were Aibonito, Fajardo, Culebra, Isabela, Naguabo,

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Aguas Buenas, Orocovis and Barranquitas.

Receiving ‘Fs’ in fiscal health were the municipalities of San Lorenzo, Ceiba, Río Grande, Loíza, Lajas, Gurabo, Yauco, Cabo Rojo, Guayanilla and Patillas.

The index uses 13 indicators with information derived from audited financial statements to establish a grading system. In the previous edition published in November 2019, six municipalities failed to deliver their statements on time and therefore were not part of the index.

This time, seven municipalities -- Añasco, Arecibo, Guánica, Maricao, Maunabo, Santa Isabel and Vieques -- did not deliver the information requested and are not part of the latest edition, which ABRE said is unfortunate

for the residents of these towns, who will not be able to rate the state of their municipality’s finances. Logically, one would expect most municipalities to adjust to the new fiscal reality, ABRE said in a statement.

The results for 2019 show that 45 percent of the municipalities had an excess of expenses in their general fund (deficit), 27 percent of the municipalities decreased their net assets during 2019, 17 percent of the municipalities decreased the balance in their general fund, 37 percent of municipalities had a negative balance in their general fund, and 41 percent of municipalities received more than 40 percent of their income from the central government fund.

The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

7

‘Tsunamis of misinformation’ overwhelm local election officials

By KELLEN BROWNING and DAVEY ALBA

T

he morning after last month’s presidential debate, the phones inside the Philadelphia election offices that Al Schmidt helps oversee rang off the hook.

One caller asked whether President Donald Trump’s comments hinting at rampant voter fraud in Philadelphia were true. Another yelled about the inaccurate rumor that poll watchers were being barred from polling places. Still another demanded to know what the city was trying to hide.

It was just another day at the office for Schmidt, one of Philadelphia’s three city commissioners, a job that includes supervising voter registration and elections. Hundreds of people have called in every day for months, many parroting conspiracy theories about the election and lies about how partisan megadonors own the voting machines. Staff members spend hours shooting down the rumors, he said.

“It’s not like we have tens of millions of dollars to spend on communications to battle tsunamis of misinformation that come our way,” said Schmidt, 49, whose team has been working up to 17-hour days ahead of Election Day on Tuesday. “It wears on all of us.”

Election officials across the country are already stretched thin this year, dealing with a record number of mail-in ballots and other effects of the coronavirus pandemic. On top of that, many are battling another scourge: misinformation.

Fueled by inaccurate comments from Trump and others, election lies have spread across social media. They include claims that Black Lives Matter protesters incited violence at polling places, that mail-in ballots were dumped, that ballot boxes and voting machines were compromised, and that ballots were “harvested,” or collected and dropped off in bulk by unauthorized people.

Election officials in places such as Philadelphia, El Paso, Texas, and Santa Rosa, California, are bearing the brunt of the fallout, according to interviews with a dozen of them in seven states. Some have had to contain misinformationinduced voter panic. Others are fighting back by posting accurate information on social media or giving newspaper and television interviews to spread their messages. Many are working longer shifts to debunk the distortions.

But their efforts have largely been fruitless, they said. When one rumor is smacked down, another pops up. And the reach of the rumors

online is often so vast that the officials said they could not hope to compete.

“They’re definitely overwhelmed,” said Isabella Garcia-Camargo, an organizer of the Election Integrity Partnership, a new coalition of misinformation researchers.

Since Sept. 8, she said, her group has investigated 182 cases of election-related misinformation, most of which started locally.

When mail was found in a ditch in Greenville, Wisconsin, for example, some conservative media outlets inaccurately claimed that Democrats were dumping absentee ballots. In Germantown, Maryland, a video of an election official darkening an oval on a ballot was erroneously used as evidence that voters’ preferences were being altered, Garcia-Camargo said.

Last week, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an information-sharing partnership, warned election officials about a spate of suspicious emails that impersonated state officials or included links to websites that asked them to verify their password information.

The emails, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, did not appear to be part of a coordinated campaign, said Jason Forget, a spokesman for the group. But it was a sign that local officials should “remain vigilant in identifying and reporting suspicious activity to protect the vote,” he said.

The experience of Deva Marie Proto, the registrar of voters in Sonoma County, California, has been typical of local election officials.

Some mornings, she rises at 5 to answer voter questions on Facebook. She then heads to the county offices in Santa Rosa to lift the morale of the 15 full-time staff members, plus a handful of temporary election workers, who are dealing with people’s calls about rumors and conspiracies.

One day this month, Proto’s office received 1,200 calls, many related to distortions about whether certain ballot drop boxes were real or fake, said Chanel Ruiz-Bricco, a county elections manager.

Sonoma County was also a specific target of misinformation last month when conservative media personality Elijah Schaffer posted photos on Twitter of local ballot envelopes that had been discarded at a recycling center. “SHOCKING,” he wrote. That prompted people to claim that votes for Republicans were being tossed.

In fact, the envelopes were empty and from the 2018 election, Proto said. After voters called in asking about the photos and the local newspaper approached her for comment, the

City workers in Philadelphia sort mail-in ballots on Oct. 27, 2020. From Philadelphia to Sonoma County, Calif., election officials say they are working marathon hours to fight a flood of falsehoods. county tweeted about how outdated the envelopes were. Proto said voters had thanked her for the fact check.

Schaffer, whose tweet is no longer available, said he hadn’t stated that the debris was from this year and had simply wanted people on Twitter to investigate.

“I didn’t make any claims, just inquired to get to the bottom of the story,” he said.

But the damage had been done. Schaffer’s tweet was shared more than 5,400 times across Facebook and Twitter, according to a New York Times analysis. (Twitter eventually locked accounts that shared the post until they deleted it; Facebook added a label saying the post contained false information.) In contrast, Proto’s clarification was shared just 1,400 times on Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook and Twitter said they had strengthened their policies before Election Day and were referring people to authoritative sources.

The companies also said they were talking with state officials, political parties and academics to respond to false rumors about the election.

In El Paso County this month, a viral rumor that started on Facebook falsely claimed that ballots cast by voters at the polls could be thrown out if election officials had written on them first. The El Paso County Elections Facebook page debunked the inaccuracy by posting: “Texas election code requires the election judge

to initial the back of each ballot before giving it to the voter.”

But by then, the original post had spread 1,017 times on Facebook. Copies of the post also gathered nearly 27,000 likes and shares on the social network and reached up to 7.6 million people, according to a Times analysis.

The post has spread further in text screenshots, in private Facebook groups and in hundreds of Twitter posts.

The county’s elections administrator, Lisa Wise, said countering falsehoods was difficult “because even if you backtrack to that first person” who spread the misinformation, that person was “probably not going to call the 20 or 30 people” he or she had misled.

Asked for comment, Facebook said it had put policies in place to fight voter suppression and removed claims that errant marks invalidate ballots if the state has provided guidance saying otherwise.

Lisa Kaplan, the founder of Alethea Group, a company that helps public officials and private clients fight misinformation, said she and her team had tried a proactive approach, sometimes alerting social media companies to copyrighted elements in election misinformation, like background music, so they will remove it.

“We don’t wait for engagement levels of those narratives to get high,” Kaplan said. “We definitely take the Whac-a-Mole approach.”

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October 30-November 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Celebrity vetting and ‘helping the president’ to defeat coronavirus despair

Alex M. Azar II, the health secretary, has ordered a review of whether a public relations initiative centered on the pandemic served “important public health purposes.”

By NOAH WEILAND and SHARON LaFRANIERE

A

$265 million public campaign to “defeat despair” around the coronavirus was planned partly around the politically tinged theme that “helping the president will help the country,” according to documents released Thursday

by House investigators.

Michael R. Caputo, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, and others involved envisioned a star-studded campaign to lift American spirits, but the lawmakers said they sought to exclude celebrities who had supported gay rights or same-sex marriage or who had publicly disparaged President Donald Trump. Actor Zach Galifianakis, for instance, was apparently passed over because he had declined to have Trump on his talk show “Between Two Ferns.”

Ultimately, the campaign collapsed amid recriminations and investigation.

Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee and the select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis released the records, declaring that “these documents include extremely troubling revelations.” They accused Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, of “a cover-up to conceal the Trump administration’s misuse of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for partisan political purposes ahead of the upcoming election.”

Caputo, a fierce ally of Trump, had drawn attention to the public relations campaign last month during an extended rant on Facebook, claiming that the president had personally put him in charge of the project and that career government

scientists were engaging in “sedition” to undermine the president. He is now on medical leave battling cancer.

That public relations effort is now in shambles. The celebrities picked to promote the campaign, including actor Dennis Quaid, have pulled out. Azar ordered a review of whether the initiative served “important public health purposes.” Top health department officials have privately tried to distance themselves from the project.

“The plan has always been to only use materials reviewed by a departmentwide team of experts,” a department spokeswoman said in a statement.

The new documents indicate that Quaid stood out mainly because he had agreed to participate in the campaign.

Documents show contractors involved in the public relations effort researched the political views of at least 274 celebrities in what appeared to be an effort to root out anti-Trump sentiment that could inflect the initiative.

Galifianakis “refused to host President Trump on talk show,” one notation reads. Bryan Cranston, the antihero of the television program “Breaking Bad,” “called outTrump’s attacks on journalists during his Tony Awards speech in 2019.” Actor Jack Black was “known to be a classic Hollywood liberal.”

Singer Christina Aguilera “is an Obama-supporting Democrat and a gay-rights supporting liberal.” Adam Levine of the band Maroon 5 “fights for gay rights.” Justin Timberlake “supports gay marriage.”

Dakota Johnson, the actress, once “wore a pin to support Planned Parenthood.” And Sarah Jessica Parker, the actress, was tagged as an “LGBTQ supporter including marriage equality.”

In the end, only 10 of hundreds of potential celebrities

considered for the campaign were approved, the documents suggest.

The new documents deal with a $15 million contract awarded to Atlas Research and indicate that government officials successfully urged the company to hire three littleknown subcontractors with no obvious expertise to join the bigger campaign.

When Mark H. Chichester, the president of Atlas, tried to research those subcontractors, he discovered “small shops with little on them in the public domain,” according to documents the committee released.

One was a one-person operation run by a state-level Republican pollster, Chichester wrote. Another appeared to be “a small — perhaps one-man” operation.

A third was a “platform owned by Den Tolmor, a Russian-born business associate of Caputo’s,” Chichester said.

In a September meeting with one subcontractor, Caputo suggested “taglines” for the effort, some of which had a distinctly partisan tone, such as “helping the president will help the country,” according to notes released by the lawmakers.

Caputo said that theme “would appeal to his base in terms of wearing a mask, vaccine,” the notes state.

Caputo appeared to be trying to shore up support from Trump’s followers who might be skeptical of wearing masks or getting a vaccine by linking those activities with supporting the president. Atlas Research could not be immediately reached for comment. A person familiar with Caputo’s version of events, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Caputo was never in business with Tolmor, the subcontractor, and did not try to improperly intervene in the contracting process.

But the documents released by congressional investigators suggest that contract officials with the Food and Drug Administration, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services, were so concerned about Caputo’s involvement in the process that one removed him from an email chain and warned Atlas executives that only contract officers could advise the company about how to fulfill its government obligations.

The public relations campaign became politically toxic even to those who signed up for it. Quaid recently backed out after recording an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, saying in an Instagram post that his role was not an endorsement of Trump, and that he was “feeling some outrage and a lot of disappointment” after public reports on the campaign. Singer CeCe Winans also dropped out.

Democratic lawmakers have questioned the campaign’s funding after Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified in September that $300 million had been steered from his agency’s budget to Caputo’s office, and that the CDC was given no role in the campaign, which aimed to “defeat despair.”

The federal government awarded the campaign’s biggest contract to the Fors Marsh Group, a research company in Northern Virginia. A department official said the award, for $250 million, was competitively bid and Caputo had “nothing to do” with it.

The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

CERO TOLERANCIA Y CERO IMPUNIDAD A LA CORRUPCIÓN VOTA POR

#JUNTOSGANAMOS AAnuncio Pagado por Comité Amigos Carlos Delgado Altieri.

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The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

Wedding and birthday party infect 56, leaving nearly 300 in quarantine

By ED SHANAHAN

L

ong Island, New York, health officials scrambled to contain a coronavirus outbreak in Suffolk County when dozens of people tested positive for the virus after attending a high-end Sweet 16 party in September that violated state restrictions on gatherings.

On Wednesday, county officials said they were coping with the fallout from two more so-called superspreader events that left 56 people with the virus and nearly 300 in quarantine: a wedding that exceeded the state’s 50-person limit and a birthday party that did not.

“This kind of blatant disregard for the well-being of others is not only extremely disappointing, it will not be tolerated,” Steven Bellone, the Suffolk County executive, said at a news conference, referring specifically to the wedding. “If you violate the rules, you’ll be caught and held responsible.”

Bellone said the venue where the wedding was held, the North Fork Country Club in Cutchogue, would be fined $17,000.

Ninety-one people attended the wedding, on Oct. 17, officials said. Thirty people, including 27 guests, two employees and an outside vendor, later tested positive for the virus, and 156 people wound up under quarantine, officials said.

A spokesman for the State Liquor Authority said it had opened an investigation into the matter “upon learning of this allegedly illegal and dangerous event.”

Raluca Pintea, the country club’s general manager, did not respond to requests for comment.

The announcement Wednesday came two weeks after county officials fined an opulent catering hall, the Miller Place Inn, $12,000 for hosting a Sweet 16 party that drew more than 80 people. Thirty-seven people tested positive for the virus after the event, and 270 were forced to quarantine.

Like much of the New York City area, parts of Suffolk County were hit hard by the pandemic earlier in the year, but officials have made major strides in keeping the virus at bay since then, according to data posted on the

county government website.

County data showed that 1.7% of those tested for the virus in the most recent 24-hour period had tested positive, a figure slightly above the 1.5% statewide average reported by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Wednesday. By comparison, the positive rate in New York’s socalled virus hot spots was 3.8%.

At a news conference Wednesday where Cuomo discussed the latest virus figures and how families should handle the coming holidays, he noted that weddings, birthday parties and other celebratory gatherings had become causes for concern.

“The problem, at one time, was large gatherings: bars, restaurants, right?” Cuomo said. Now, he said, “it’s these small gatherings that are creating issues.”

The aftermath of the Long Island birthday party, which adhered to state restrictions, underscored the governor’s point.

About 50 people attended the party in Bellport on Oct. 17, officials said. Nonetheless, inadequate social distancing resulted in 26 guests testing positive for the virus and

132 people being forced to quarantine, officials said.

Although there was nothing illegal about the party, Bellone said, it was important for county residents to consider the potential harm that even seemingly modest family gatherings could do.

“These kinds of superspreader events are a threat to our public health and to our continued economic recovery,” Bellone said.

In addition to fining the country club that hosted the wedding, officials said Wednesday that for the first time since the pandemic began, the county was penalizing a local homeowner for violating the restrictions on gatherings.

The homeowner, Kim Catalanotto, was hit with a $2,500 fine after the county police broke up a party at her Farmingville house, where 200 to 300 people, most of them underage, had gathered and were consuming alcohol last Saturday, officials said. No virus cases had been linked to the party as of Wednesday, Bellone said.

Catalanotto could not be reached for comment.

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The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

11

12

October 30-November 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

It’s time to talk about Social Security. No more waiting.

By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD

S

ocial Security has always seemed like a future problem, with experts long predicting a benefits squeeze in the decades ahead. But the coronavirus has put tens of millions of Americans out of work, and economists are predicting that the recovery will take years.

That means the future is now.

If nothing is done to shore up the program, all benefit checks would need to be cut by roughly one-quarter in perhaps 11 years — or, if the recession is protracted and severe, maybe even sooner.

“We thought we had more than a decade, and now it could be less than a decade,” said Kathleen Romig, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “That makes a big difference both psychologically and in policy terms.”

The pandemic has hastened the cash crunch’s arrival by wiping out jobs and the payroll taxes — Social Security’s dedicated source of revenue — that they provide. Fewer people are paying into the retirement trust fund, and the longer they’re out of work, the deeper the problem becomes. (Even more pressing may be a fix for Social Security’s disability program, which has a trust fund of its own. A report issued by the Congressional Budget Office last month projects that fund could be exhausted in 2026.)

Despite such grim projections, Social Security hasn’t received a lot of attention during the presidential campaign, given everything else going on. But whoever wins next week will have little choice but to stretch out his hand toward the third rail of politics. And both candidates have offered ideas that could significantly shift how Social Security works.

President Donald Trump hasn’t released a proposal, but he has said he wants to eliminate the payroll tax as an expansion of the temporary holiday enacted by executive action over the summer. (Few companies have stopped collecting the tax, which would have to be repaid in 2021.)

“At the end of the year, on the assumption that I win, I’m going to terminate the payroll tax,” he said in August. Instead, he said, he would pay for the program through the general budget, which could count on “tremendous growth.”

Joyce Welch, 73, who lives solely on the $1,370 that she receives each month from Social Security, at her son’s home in Sacramento, Calif., Oct. 18, 2020.

Trump has stated this on more than one occasion, but Sarah Matthews, deputy White House press secretary, said the president meant only that he wants to forgive the taxes deferred under his order.

“President Trump will always protect Social Security, as he has stated numerous times,” she said.

Policy experts are highly skeptical that the payroll tax could be eliminated; it would require congressional action and be politically difficult. But if it happened, Social Security would have to compete for funding in a way it hasn’t before.

“We have a very crowded budget as it is,” said Shai Akabas, economic policy director at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

“And having Social Security in the mix with everything else puts the program at risk in the future.”

Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, has released a proposal that’s more moderate than many offered by his party’s

progressive wing. But it would nonetheless make fundamental changes.

Biden proposes an expansion of the payroll tax, but only on the highest earning Americans. Currently, the payroll tax — 12.4%, split between employees and employers — applies to the first $137,700 of a worker’s earnings. Under Biden’s plan, high earners would also have the tax assessed on their earnings above $400,000. (Because the $137,700 threshold rises over time, eventually all income up to $400,000 would be subject to the tax — in about 30 years, the Urban Institute estimated.)

For decades, the amount a worker pays into the system has factored into how much they ultimately receive in benefits. But Biden has suggested that higher earners might not get anything in return for the added tax they pay, a change that would break a link that has been in place since the program began. The issue is still being studied, however, and no decision has been reached.

Even with the tax on high earners, Biden’s proposal would buy the program only an additional five years of solvency, according to the Urban Institute analysis, although it would soften the benefit cuts that would be necessary if further changes aren’t made.

Biden’s policy advisers, however, said the proposal is something of an opening bid.

“The vice president’s financing proposal shows how he would protect and increase benefits for all Social Security recipients while making a down-payment on long-term solvency,” said Gene Sperling, an outside adviser to Biden and a former national economic adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

The cost of inaction is serious, Akabas said, because as insolvency creeps closer, the changes necessary will become increasingly painful — tax increases will need to be greater, any cuts more severe.

“The longer we wait to fix the problem,” he said, “the fewer people who can play a role in the solution.”

About half the population 65 and older live in households that receive at least half of their income from Social Security, according to a 2017 study published in the Social Security Bulletin.

Roughly 25% of elderly households rely on Social Security for at least 90% of their income.

The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

13 Stocks

Wall Street rebounds ahead of tech earnings, upbeat data helps

U

.S. stocks gained ground on Thursday as investors piled into technology heavyweights ahead of their earnings reports, while upbeat economic data calmed worries about surging coronavirus cases.a seasonally adjusted 898,000 for the week ended Oct. 10, compared to 845,000 in the prior week, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled

by Reuters had forecast 825,000 applications in the latest week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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October 30-November 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

France and Germany lock down as second coronavirus wave grows

The last screening at a movie theater in Pontoise, France on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020. France announced a second nationwide lockdown and Germany moved to the very edge of one on Wednesday, testing their pandemic-weary populations as they tried to stop a mounting new wave of coronavirus infections from swamping hospitals and undoing hopes of economic recovery.

By MATINA STEVIS-GRIDNEFF

F

rance announced a second nationwide lockdown, and Germany moved to the very edge of one Wednesday, testing their pandemic-weary populations as they tried to stop a mounting new wave of coronavirus infections from swamping hospitals and undoing hopes of economic recovery.

The measures followed on the heels of severe new restrictions in other European countries, from Belgium to Italy to the Czech Republic. While they mostly fell short of the total lockdowns of the spring — a ‘‘lockdown lite,’’ the Germans called it — they raised the specter of a dark winter of relative confinement, leaving leaders in Paris and Berlin pleading with their frustrated publics to follow the new rules.

“I know the weariness and this feeling of a day with no end that is overcoming all of us,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said Wednesday in a national address. “We must stick together and remain united, and not give in to the poison of division. This period is hard precisely because it is testing our resilience and our unity.’’

Underscoring the need for urgent action, he and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany drew on hard lessons learned over the last eight months, attempting to keep open the parts of the economy and everyday life deemed necessary or less risky, while shutting almost everything else. Any tougher course risked sparking popular rebellion.

The pandemic surge and new lockdowns battered stock markets in Europe, as in the United States, with major indexes down about 3% Wednesday.

Starting Friday, France will go into a nationwide lockdown with just schools and essential businesses staying open until Dec. 1. In Germany, the new measures will close restaurants, bars, gyms and cultural spaces like theaters for one month, but exempt schools and shops.

When Italy became the first European country to impose a nationwide lockdown in March, the curbs to freedom stunned Europeans who hadn’t experienced anything like it since World War II. But curfews and confinements have since become a regular, if sporadic, feature of life in Europe, which used them to beat back the virus before the summer, then relaxed them, initiating the second wave of infections.

The rising toll of the virus made clear that the course available to Europe’s governments was fast narrowing, and that they could no longer delay reimposing some of the strictest measures, particularly if they wanted to salvage any part of the winter holiday season.

Spain went back into a state of emergency last week, while on Sunday the government in Italy moved to shut restaurants by 6 p.m. In Belgium, which currently has the continent’s highest infection rate, restaurants were shuttered this month, followed by museums and gyms over the weekend.

This second wave differs from the first in significant ways.

Unlike springtime lockdowns, the new raft of measures will not be open-ended. Most of the recent restrictions announced in European countries have been put in place for about one month, which scientists and policymakers believe can act as a “circuit breaker.”

And while hospitals are filling at an alarming rate, the mortality rate of this wave is significantly lower than the first, owing to the lower average age of patients and better treatment protocols for those who are hospitalized.

Still, many Europeans are exhausted, emotionally and financially, by the new curbs to their freedoms after getting a taste of unhindered movement over the summer.

“We’re dealing with two enemies: We’re dealing with coronavirus itself and corona fatigue,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as she unveiled new plans to fight the virus in the European Union. “People are getting fed up with the measures,” she added.

The epidemiological situation on the continent is dire. Europe’s rate of new infections has tripled in the past month, topping 200,000 a day.

France, Spain, Italy and Britain are all among the European countries reporting spikes in new cases — and their highest death tolls in months. France this week reported its highest daily death toll since April, while Italy and the U.K. reported their highest since May. In France, where the toughest measures were announced Wednesday, 288 new virus-related deaths were reported in hospitals on Tuesday and 235 deaths in nursing homes over the previous four days.

France’s intensive-care unit beds were half-full, and modeling of the virus’s spread indicated that the country’s health care system was two weeks away from reaching the same number of hospitalizations as the peak of the first wave. Macron stressed that much of Europe faced a similar situation, “overwhelmed by a second wave that we now know will probably be harder and more deadly than the first.”

Most nonessential businesses in France will close — including bars and restaurants — and movement outside one’s home will be strictly limited. Private and public gatherings will be banned. But schools will remain open. Some economic activity — public services, factories, farms and construction sites — will continue, and restrictions on retirement home visits and burials will not be as strict as in the spring.

In Germany, restaurants and bars will close for a month starting Monday, professional sports teams will play to empty stadiums, while theaters, gyms and nail salons and spas will be shuttered. But supermarkets, shops, schools and day care centers will remain open, Merkel said Wednesday.

Merkel, who has overseen a broad set of stimulus measures to support struggling businesses and workers, said the government will compensate small- and medium-sized businesses affected by closures for up to 75% of losses.

The measures aim to ease the strain on the country’s hospitals, where the number of patients has doubled in just 10 days, and halt the rapid spread of the virus before the coming holidays, without bringing the economy to a complete standstill.

The San Juan Daily Star

Supp

October 30-November 1, 2020

15

16

October 30-November 1, 2020

Rooster kills police officer in COVID-19 lockdown raid bourne, leading to hefty fines.

In the Philippines, which has confirmed 375,180 cases of the virus and 7,114 deaths, security forces help maintain lockdown orders.

Cockfighting, an ancient sport, became wildly popular in the country when the Spanish ruled the islands for more than three centuries before ceding them to the United States in 1898.

While the sport has Residents with fighting cocks at low tide on Batasan, been legalized in many areas an island in the Philippines, Nov. 27, 2019. and matches are sometimes sanctioned and televised, the

By JASON GUTIERREZ government banned them and other such police officer in the Philippines was events in March to prevent the spread of the killed this week after a fighting roost- coronavirus among large crowds.

Investigators are still trying to find er slashed him during a raid on an illegal cockfighting den to stop the spread the owner of the rooster that killed Bolok.

The bird was seized by authorities and of the coronavirus.

The officer, Lt. Christian Bolok, 38, was being held at a police station as eviwas part of a team that descended on an dence.

Three spectators were arrested and arena in the province of Northern Samar on several other birds confiscated during the Monday, after it was suspecting of violating raid. Apud said the suspects had been lockdown rules against mass gatherings.

“There was a commotion, the spec- charged with illegal gambling and could be tators scampered away, and when the dust freed soon.

“We are still in the process of invescleared, Officer Bolok tried to pick up one of the birds, but he didn’t notice that it still tigating,” he said. “But surely somebody had bladed spurs on,” the provincial police must be charged with homicide at least for chief, Col. Arnel Apud, said in an interview. the death of our officer.” He added, “It was Fighting roosters typically have a ra- ironic that a good man who had seen a lot zor-sharp steel blade called a gaff attached of action against criminality would be killed to their legs, and the bird Bolok grabbed by a fighting cock.”

A spokesman for the national police, slashed him with one.

“He was wounded in his femoral ar- Col. Ysmael Yu, said that rooting out the tery on the left leg and lost a lot of blood,” blood sport in illegal arenas could be difApud continued. “Within minutes, he died. ficult, especially in far-flung areas.

“Are there people still conducting this It was a freak accident.” despite the ban? The answer is yes, because The officer was a 13-year veteran of man by nature is vicious,” Yu said. the force and a father of three.

Ashley Fruno, the regional campaigns As countries enter second and third waves of the virus, authorities have strug- director for People for the Ethical Treatment gled to enforce lockdown and social-dis- of Animals, said the officer’s death should tancing rules. In New York, recent “super- be a “wake-up call,” for the Philippine auspreader” events — a wedding and party thorities, as well as the public, that cock— have led to the infection of 56 people fighting is brutal.

“The world has evolved, and times are and forced nearly 300 others into quarantine. In Australia, 16 people broke coro- changing rapidly,” she added. “It’s time for navirus restrictions in July by attending a the Philippines to relegate cruel cockfightsurprise birthday event in a suburb of Mel- ing to the history books.”

A

The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

17

In Azerbaijan, a string of explosions, screams and then blood

By CARLOTTA GALL

T

he first explosion was loud enough to make us stop the car. It seemed close and sounded like a rocket, so we quickly jumped out and crouched down by a wall.

If we hadn’t stopped, I later realized, we might have driven straight into one of the blasts, a scant 20 yards up the road.

At the time of the blast Wednesday, we were driving along the main street of the provincial town of Barda, Azerbaijan, toward an intersection.

Azerbaijan is at war with Armenia, but the front line was 20 miles away and life to that point was going on uneventfully in the area. Women were out shopping, men were filling their cars at the gas station.

Then, a string of deafening explosions sounded in rapid succession, each one seeming closer and louder. A woman started shrieking. A man bellowed at his family. They rounded the street corner, his wife pulling the sleeve off one of her children, and they all dashed down a side alley.

Across the road, blood smeared the steps into the basement of a private health clinic. Inside, a taxi driver, bleeding heavily from the leg, was being treated. Nurses, patients and passersby huddled in the basement, stepping around the blood, calling their families on their cellphones.

I am in Azerbaijan with a photographer, Ivor Prickett, to cover the war that broke out last month between Azerbaijan and Armenia. It was my first time back in more than 20 years, yet coming under rocket fire was not unfamiliar — the Caucasus region has been wracked by half a dozen conflicts since the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

The conflict between the two countries began in 1988 over the territory of NagornoKarabakh, an Armenian populated region inside Azerbaijan. By 1994, Armenia had made major territorial gains, driving nearly 1 million Azerbai-

janis from their homes, but the war ended without resolving the issue.

Now, it has burst out again. Azerbaijan has mounted a full-scale offensive to take back the lost territory, and the two sides have exchanged barrages of rockets and missiles at villages and cities across the region.

Azerbaijan is widely considered to have the superior firepower, using a fleet of drones to target Armenian forces with deadly accuracy and launching rocket attacks against two of the largest cities in Nagorno-Karabakh.

In Azerbaijan, a string of settlements close to the front line have suffered almost daily rockets strikes. The attack on Barda, which lies slightly further from the front line, appeared to be an escalation.

“You see what the Armenians are doing to us,” Kamil Kerimov, 55, shouted. “Do you see someone from the military here? Why are they doing this? You see only civilians.” He added: “They want to create chaos.”

Yagubiya Hamidova, 44, a cardiologist taking shelter in the clinic’s basement, had moved recently from the front line town of Terter, thinking it would be safer here. “Please help us,” she said.

“No one in the world knows what is happening to us.”

Outside at the intersection, a burned-out car was still smoldering. Blood was smeared on the sidewalk and at the door to an office building, amid shattered glass. Bomb disposal officers in coveralls and visors stood over pieces of exploded ordinance.

We piled into the car and began driving out of town but came upon another scene of carnage at the very next intersection.

Wrecked cars stood at awkward angles.

Someone had draped blankets over bodies inside two of the cars. A pair of shoes and more blood lay on the ground beside another vehicle. The road was blackened and the air smelled of explosives.

Fuad Izmayilov’s sister kisses his hand shortly after he had been killed in a rocket attack launched by Armenian forces on the city of Barda, Azerbaijan on Oct. 28, 2020.

“Why did they do that to him?” wailed a woman in black, as two men supported her on each arm. “People! Please look at what they are doing. Why did they kill him? Please God, help us.”

Rescue workers levered open one of the car doors with an iron bar. As they lifted the blanketed form out the woman sank to the ground. “My baby,” she cried.

Across the street two more people had been cut down on the sidewalk. A man and a woman, they lay under blankets amid broken branches and fallen leaves.

One was Fuad Izmayilov, 31, a sports teacher, who died just outside the gate to his mother’s house.

In all, 21 people died in downtown Barda in the rocket strike and 70 people were wounded, the government said in the evening, adding that the rockets were fired from a Russian-made Smerch

multiple-rocket system and unleashed cluster bomblets. Designed to be used against armies in open spaces, cluster bombs are banned in much of the world because of their danger to civilians in residential areas.

Armenia denied responsibility for the attack.

The two main cities of the Armenian-controlled territory of Nagorno-Karabakh also came under rocket attack on Wednesday, as they have on a regular basis since the fighting began. A city hospital was damaged in the regional capital of Stepanakert and a civilian was killed and another wounded in Shusha, the local Emergency and Rescue Service said.

There is evidence that both sides have used cluster bombs. Human Rights Watch criticized Azerbaijan for using cluster munitions against civilian areas of Nagorno-Karabakh at least four times this month.

18

October 30-November 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

There is only one existential threat. Let’s talk about it.

By FARJAD MANJOO

I

f you’re a supporter of that radical extremist group Keep America Habitable for Human Beings, you might have been encouraged by the 2020 presidential race.

In 2016, climate change — the scientific fact of the Earth’s encroaching uninhabitability — was mostly ignored, including in the debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. This year, the changing climate and what to do about it got airtime in both presidential debates and the vice-presidential debate. Climate change was also one of the top issues during the Democratic primary race. Several candidates published detailed climate plans; Joe Biden’s proposal is the most ambitious response to climate change ever proposed by a major-party nominee for president.

And yet I keep getting discouraged by how far there is to go. Voters, the candidates and especially the political media have not given it enough attention this year, considering the stakes at hand. Worse, when politicians do address climate change, the discussion in mainstream media is often uninformed, following a script favorable to oil companies.

These problems were on stark display in the ridiculous dust-up over Biden’s statement during the debate last week that the United States needs to transition away from oil. When asked about climate change, Biden told a series of truths. He noted, correctly, that it’s an “existential threat to humanity,” that “we don’t have much time” to address it, that doing so could create hundreds of thousands of jobs and that it would involve eliminating

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A screen shows a video of Democratic presidential nominee President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump during the final presidential debate, at a rally in Allentown, Pa., Oct. 26, 2020. our reliance on the cause of the problem, fossil fuels.

Trump’s answer was a series of absurdities. He said that he loves the environment, but that plans to address climate change would cost a lot of money and many jobs, would require buildings with very small windows and that wind power creates “fumes” and kills a lot of birds. (In fact, cats, buildings and cars are far bigger threats to birds.)

I’m not sure how anyone could come away from that debate thinking that Biden is the one who made a rhetorical flub.

“The takeaway isn’t what Biden said, it’s what Trump said,” Kendra Pierre-Louis, a former reporter for The New York Times who is now a reporter on the podcast “How to Save a Planet,” told me.

“Trump effectively said he doesn’t have a climate plan, and we are facing an existential crisis.”

Yet it was Biden, not Trump, who got in political hot water for his answer. After the debate, Trump’s campaign, with an assist from talking heads on cable news and the internet, began suggesting that Biden’s comments would hurt his chances in oiland gas-producing states like Texas and Pennsylvania. Biden later walked back his comment, explaining that a transition away from oil would take very long time.

What a disaster. Why can’t we abide an honest discussion about climate change?

One problem is the Electoral College: Our nutty electoral system gives more say to some voters than others. This year the nation has suffered a string of terrifying weather disasters hastened by climate change. Large parts of the West are on fire, and there have been so many tropical storms that we had to go deep into the Greek alphabet to name them. But in the race for president, the future of the fracking industry in Pennsylvania is ele-

vated above all these other problems, because Pennsylvania is a swing state and Louisiana is not.

To make things much worse, the pundit class on Twitter and cable news rarely discuss climate change as the existential threat to humanity that it now plainly is.

It’s easy to dismiss talking heads as background noise, but how we talk about climate change does real damage. The climate is often viewed through a narrow, partisan lens — as if it’s just another lefty issue, somewhere on the priority list between free college and a higher minimum wage.

But passing a climate plan wouldn’t be a partisan win for Democrats — it would be a win for human beings. Climate change isn’t a policy issue — it’s a reality that every other political question hinges on: jobs, tax policy, national defense, and the size and scope of the welfare state. As climate change becomes increasingly damaging, we will have to think about all of these issues through the larger response to a changing planet.

Finally, efforts to address climate change are usually framed as a trade-off between the environment and jobs, which is way off base. The trade-off goes the other way. Every major climate proposal involves lots of government spending to create more sustainable technologies and infrastructure — a process that experts say would result in more economic activity, including new jobs.

On the other hand, ignoring climate change will be costly.

A report published by 13 federal agencies in 2018 estimated hundreds of billions of dollars in damage and a reduction in gross domestic product of up to 10% by the end of the century if America does nothing.

Emily Atkin, a journalist who covers climate change in her newsletter, Heated, analyzed media coverage of last week’s Trump-Biden climate exchange. Out of 30 mainstream news outlets, she found that only a handful mentioned the cost of inaction on climate change, raising the concern that “voters might not be getting a balanced look at presidential climate policy at a crucial point in the election,” she wrote.

One possibly very silly metaphor I have found useful for conveying the enormity of climate change is an alien attack. Imagine that the Martians arrive, hover over our planet and aim their weather machines at us to create hurricanes and fires, flood our cities, raise the seas, and otherwise generally cause destruction.

How would we talk about the problem then? If one candidate showed us a plan for creating a new ray gun to defeat the aliens, and the other insisted everything was fine and the alien ships were actually just clouds, who would you vote for?

As people who want a habitable planet, we’ve got to demand that political media and politicians approach this issue with the gravity it deserves. Climate change is real. Its effects are now being felt around the nation and the world. And when one politician offers a plan to address the thing causing all this misery and the other does not even bother, it shouldn’t be this difficult to spot the problem.

The sitting president of the United States has no plan to address the most important problem facing humanity. That’s it.

That’s the scandal. That’s the tweet. That’s the headline.

The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

19

Presentan Plano Seguro para construcción de viviendas resilientes a huracanes y terremotos Por THE STAR

A

nte la necesidad en Puerto Rico de estructuras seguras y resilientes por la frecuencia de eventos de la naturaleza, así como para ayudar a erradicar la construcción irregular que pone en peligro la vida de muchas familias durante estos sucesos, el secretario del Departamento de Desarrollo Económico y Comercio (DDEC), anunció la disponibilidad libre de costo de planos seguros de viviendas.

“A través de estos planos para el desarrollo de viviendas seguras, ofrecemos una herramienta importante para el proceso de construcción o reconstrucción de miles de viviendas afectadas por el huracán María, así como por los eventos telúricos de inicios de año.

Además, desalentamos las construcciones informales y fomentamos el uso de los nuevos Códigos de Construcción”, manifestó la gobernadora Wanda Vázquez Garced.

Laboy Rivera agregó, “cuando los huracanes Irma y María azotaron a Puerto Rico en septiembre de 2017, cerca de la mitad de las residencias unifamiliares eran de construcción informal. Se estima que el 47% de las viviendas en la isla estaban construidas sin el uso de planos formales y no estaban diseñadas por profesionales y a través de estos planos atendemos esa situación”.

El proyecto consta de cuatro modelos de viviendas modulares de interés social a escoger. Los módulos están disponibles en modelos de una o dos plantas en cemento, madera, y en combinación de materiales. Son diseños modulares al que (de forma planificada y con la asistencia de un profesional) se le pueden añadir módulos con más habitaciones.

El módulo principal es una casa terrera de 20’x 24’ con dos habitaciones, sala/comedor, cocina, baño y balcón. Las opciones de módulos a añadir son dos (2) de 10’x24’ cada uno. Si una familia usas los planos con todos los módulos, la casa tendría hasta 5 cuartos y dos baños.

El secretario Auxiliar de la Oficina de Gerencia de Permisos del DDEC, Gabriel Hernández Rodriguez, indicó “cada casa está diseñada según el nuevo Código de Construcción de Puerto Rico 2018 (PR Codes 2018). Aunque su conceptualización surge tras los huracanes en el año 2017, las estructuras cumplen con todos los requisitos para movimientos sísmicos. El diseño estructural utiliza como base

vientos de 190 mph y las aceleraciones sísmicas máximas según los códigos vigentes.

Por su parte, la arquitecta Astrid Díaz, cuya firma de arquitectura lideró el proyecto, destacó que un aspecto importante es que es la primera vez que se incluye el concepto de “Habitación Segura-Safe Room” según los parámetros de FEMA P-361 en donde la familia puede pasar una emergencia de forma segura en su propio hogar. Esta habitación tiene su estructura y cimientos independientes del resto de la casa y aguanta cargas de vientos base de 250 mph.

El diseño arquitectónico es moderno, minimalista, e incorpora elementos de nuestra cultura y contexto a través del balcón, la distribución de espacios, la iluminación y la ventilación natural. Cada casa incluye conexiones para cisterna, calentador solar y equipos útiles. Todos los modelos terreros están diseñados para cumplir con las personas físicamente impedidas según las exigencias del “American with Disabilities Act”.

El secretario del DDEC, añadió “cada familia debe completar el proceso del diseño de planos de construcción de la mano de un ingeniero o arquitecto licenciado. Debe llevar estos planos seguros a una oficina de ingenie-

ría o arquitectura para que ubiquen la casa en su solar y cumpla con los requisitos de diseño finales previos a solicitar los permisos de construcción. Una vez certificados los planos, se someterá a la OGPE para completar los permisos correspondientes a través de la plataforma digital Single Business Portal (SBP).

Para Más información puede comunicarse a la Oficina de Gerencia de Permisos”.

El proyecto de Plano Seguro fue coordinado por la Oficina de Gerencia de Permisos del DDEC, en colaboración con un grupo interdisciplinario, tales como: FEMA y STARII Stantec & Atkins North America, junto a ADV Architects y la arquitecta Astrid Díaz como parte del equipo de STARR II, el Comité de Códigos de Construcción de Puerto Rico, el Colegio de Ingenieros y Agrimensores de Puerto Rico, así como el Colegio de Arquitectos y Arquitectos Paisajistas de Puerto Rico y el Departamento de Ingeniería Civil y Agrimensura de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Mayagüez.

Para descargar los Planos Seguros, acceda a www.ddec.pr.gov/plano-seguro/. La información inicial que se le requiere al solicitante es sencilla y los planos están disponibles en formato PDF o en Auto CAD.

20

October 30-November 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

He helped create Lollapalooza. Now he wants to save live music.

By BEN SISARIO

F

or small music venues, the situation is dire. Starved for revenue since March, and with no lifeline from Congress, independent clubs across the country are shuttering by the dozen — devastating fans and artists alike and delivering a brutal blow to the ecosystem that develops tomorrow’s Grammy winners and underground heroes.

One music executive, however, thinks he can save them, through a plan to invest in small clubs and build an indie touring network.

Marc Geiger, the former global music chief of the giant talent agency WME, has quietly amassed a war chest to fortify empty clubs during the pandemic and help them grow once they reopen. One of the most charismatic figures behind the scenes of the music industry — a motormouth futurist who helped create Lollapalooza and was an early proponent of how the internet could help musicians — Geiger portrays his latest venture as a kind of personal crusade.

“One of my favorite things in the world is to go to a club, be treated well and see an incredible band,” Geiger, 58, said in an interview. “So I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to raise a bunch of money and I’m going to backstop all these clubs. I’m going to be a bailout solution for them, and I’m going to call the company SaveLive.’”

His plan for SaveLive is to invest in dozens of clubs around the country — buying at

Marc Geiger, a music executive, in Los Angeles, Sept. 24, 2020. Geiger plans to invest in clubs around the country — buying at least 51 percent of the equity in those businesses — and help them expand once concerts return. least 51% of the equity in those businesses — and help them expand into regional forces once concerts return at full steam, which he does not expect until 2022 or later. SaveLive has secured $75 million in available capital from an initial investment round, Geiger said, and is already negotiating with a number of venues around the country.

“The hope here is to create a network effect,” Geiger said, “to be a long-term backer, helper, grower of these businesses, and enjoy the wins.”

The night-after-night churn of club gigs is less lucrative and glamorous than the world of superstar arena tours. But it is a vital feeder for the entire industry, and clubs often inspire a passionate devotion that can be measured by the names and band logos scrawled on backstage walls.

The prospect of losing a large swath of the nation’s small venues — to bankruptcy or forced sales — has drawn wide alarm. This month the National Independent Venue Association, a new advocacy group, raised nearly $2 million from an online festival, hosted by YouTube, that featured artists like Dave Matthews, the Foo Fighters and Brittany Howard performing in their favorite spots and pleading for relief. On Wednesday, a new nonprofit, the Live Music Society, said it would give $2 million in grants over the next two years to venues that can hold 250 people or less.

Since June, when Geiger left WME after 17 years, his next move has been one of the most buzzed-about questions in the industry.

For three decades, he has been a power broker and an aggressive visionary, often among

the first in the business to glimpse — and proselytize over — the potential of new trends in music and technology.

“I think Marc has consistently been ahead of the game,” said Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, which Geiger booked for the first Lollapalooza tour, in 1991. “He knows that music should be revered. It isn’t just an asset — it is a special thing that deserves to be presented to people in a way that helps them discover the magic.”

For SaveLive to be successful, Geiger needs a critical mass of venue proprietors to sign on his dotted line. Under normal circumstances, that would be a tough sell for lonewolf club owners who have spent decades resisting corporate consolidation. But even Geiger’s skeptics admit there may be few other options.

“Geiger’s solution on some level scares me,” said Frank Riley of High Road Touring, an indie stalwart who books artists like Wilco, My Bloody Valentine and Robert Plant. “He is going to buy distressed properties for money on the dollar and end up owning 51% of their business. Is that independent? I don’t know.

But it does save the platforms on which things grow and where artists are sustained.”

Geiger, who founded SaveLive with John Fogelman, a fellow WME alumnus, insisted that his venue deals would be partnerships and that despite controlling a majority share he would not seek to flip assets. That was seconded by Geiger’s primary backer, Jordan Moelis of Deep Field Asset Management, who said he is committing his company’s money as well as his family’s. (He is a son of Ken Moelis, a prominent Wall Street investment banker.)

“We don’t see this as a distressed-asset play,” Moelis said in an interview. “We see this as a business-building play, a play to be a longterm partner and to be around for a long time.”

Even with clubs now dark, SaveLive projects that it will be profitable within four years.

To a degree, indie venues’ vulnerability is rooted in their very independence: Most operate on thin margins and have limited financial resources. As SaveLive partners, Geiger said, they would gain economies of scale as well as access to favorable deals for ticketing or sponsorship — suggesting that SaveLive would, to some degree, resemble a mom-and-pop version of Live Nation or AEG, the giant companies that dominate the touring business.

The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

21

Reclaiming, on Netflix, an ancient battle beloved of Germany’s far right

By THOMAS ROGERS

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or those unfamiliar with German history, the new Netflix show “Barbarians” might not seem especially provocative. The historical epic — reminiscent of the long-running History channel series “Vikings” — centers on a tribe of villagers in the first century A.D. trying to survive in a forested region of what is now northern Germany. Its rugged protagonists clash violently with rival tribes and, most of all, with the Roman forces who control the area.

But the show’s six episodes build toward the first fictionalized depiction on German TV of an event that remains fraught even after two millenniums: the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, which put an end to the Roman Empire’s aspirations of controlling much of what is now Germany.

German nationalists, including the Nazis, have used the battle as an ideological rallying point — a supposed foundational moment for German civilization and proof of their superior pedigree and fighting skills. To this day, the battle, and the tribes’ leader in the fight, Arminius, remain sources of inspiration for far-right extremists, who regularly make pilgrimages to related sites.

The Netflix show arrives at a moment of increased German interest in the period, coinciding with a high-profile new exhibition of archaeological finds, “The Germanic Tribes,” at the James Simon Gallery on Museum Island here. Both the “Barbarians” creators and the exhibition curators faced the dilemma of how to depict the period for a broad audience without giving oxygen to extremists.

Arne Nolting, a writer and showrunner of the series, explained via Zoom last week that part of his inspiration for making a show about the Battle of Teutoburg Forest was a desire to reclaim a pivotal moment in European history from the far right. “We didn’t want to be scared away and leave the subject to those forces we detest,” he said.

The battle has been a political flash point since the 19th century, when modern-day Germany was a fractured mosaic of smaller states. Nationalists embraced Arminius as a symbol of German identity in their push for unification. In 1875, four

years after the German Empire’s founding, officials unveiled a colossal statue of Arminius in the Teutoburg Forest. (The battle is now believed to have taken place 50 miles away at a site called Kalkriese.)

Under the Third Reich, Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg depicted Arminius as part of a “line of German ancestry” leading to Adolf Hitler, and schoolbooks of the period claimed that he had saved “the purity of German blood.” In 2009, the far-right extremist National Democratic Party of Germany organized a “remembrance march” commemorating the battle, under the slogan “2,000 years of fighting against foreign infiltration.”

Nolting said that he and the other showrunners were conscious of this political baggage while crafting the narrative arc of “Barbarians,” which premiered Oct. 23. The show focuses on three characters with connections to a real-life tribe called the Cherusci: Thusnelda (Jeanne Goursaud), daughter of a Cherusci leader; Folkwin (David Schütter), a fictional warrior; and Arminius (Laurence Rupp).

In its telling, Arminius is born a Cherusci but is taken away by the Roman occupiers as a young boy, only to return as a member of the imperial army — a portrayal that reflects historians’ belief that the real-life Arminius served in the Roman military before changing sides. The show’s plot is set in motion when the Romans demand large tributes from the Cherusci, heightening tensions and gradually leading Arminius to doubt his allegiance to the empire.

Jan Martin Scharf, another writer and showrunner, said that the production team had taken a consciously gritty approach to the subject matter to avoid glorifying the violence between the Cherusci and the Romans. They also wanted to emphasize Arminius’ identity as a migrant, he said, adding, “It was important for us not to show him as some big war hero or the founder of a German empire.”

And the creators cast Rupp, an Austrian actor, in the role in part because, with his darker complexion and hair, he did not fit the blond, blue-eyed depictions of Arminius that have been common in the past.

When it came to overseeing the “Germanic Tribes” exhibition, Matthias

The Battle of Teutoburg Forest, as depicted in “Barbarians.”

Wemhoff also found depicting this period of German antiquity to be a fraught endeavor. Wemhoff, director of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin, said in an interview that he and his team had taken a matter-of-fact approach to avoid appealing to the far right.

The first survey exhibition of archaeological finds from Germanic peoples, it presents over 700 items from the first to the fourth centuries A.D. — including weapons, personal items and ceramics — in understated displays. It also features an exhibit about the ways archaeological finds from the period have been politicized in the past.

Wemhoff said that his team had worried “a lot” about how to avoid appealing to the far right and that they had chosen a restrained subtitle — “Archaeological Perspectives” — for that reason. “We’ve never had an exhibition with such a plain

title,” he said.

Wemhoff said that many Germans had a false or clichéd view of the period because it hasn’t been widely taught in German schools since World War II. “After the Nazi period, the subject was scorched,” he said. “People have made a large detour around it.”

The greatest false assumption, he said, is that the Germanic tribes involved in the battle were the precursors to modern-day Germans. In fact, he noted, most tribes in the area abandoned their settlements and left modern-day German territory starting in the late fourth century.

Today’s Germans, Wemhoff noted, are descended from groups that came from other regions of Europe. “There is no continuity,” he said. “For people who have these strong, preexisting images in their heads, it’s a challenge to engage with the topic.”

22

October 30-November 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

How income inequality has erased your chance to drink the great wines

Benchmark bottles were always a splurge but an increasing concentration of wealth has put them out of reach for all but the richest connoisseurs.

By ERIC ASIMOV

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mong the many ways the rich are different from you and me: Only they can afford grand cru Burgundy.

That wasn’t always the case. In the 1990s, middle-class wine lovers could still afford to experience that rite of passage — drinking a truly great wine, not simply to enjoy it but to understand what qualities made it exceptional in the eyes of history.

It might have been a splurge, perhaps requiring a few sacrifices. But it was feasible, just as it was possible to buy first-growth Bordeaux, or the top wines of Barolo, Brunello di Montalcino or Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon, to name a few other standard-bearers.

For example, back in 1994, a bottle of Comte Georges de Vogüé Musigny 1991, a grand cru, retailed for $80 (the equivalent of $141 in 2020, accounting for inflation). Today, that bottle costs about $800.

In a more extreme case, Domaine de la RomanéeConti La Tâche 1990, another grand cru and one of the world’s great wines, cost $285 in 1993 ($513 in 2020, accounting for inflation). That’s no small sum then or now, but profoundly curious people might have found a way.

Today, a bottle of the 2017 La Tâche goes for about $5,000, well out of reach for dedicated students of wine, except for the most wealthy.

Plenty of other options exist: Village Burgundy rather than grand cru, or any of the many other great wines now being produced around the world. But these bottles, as good as they may be, have not been part of a conversation that has endured for centuries.

For wine lovers, drinking such renowned bottles would be the equivalent of a college course in Shakespeare, Beethoven or Charlie Parker. In any field, it’s necessary to comprehend the reference points, the benchmarks that connote greatness, to join that conversation even if ultimately you choose to argue the point.

These days, it is impossible for most people to pay for these wines.

You could argue that prices have risen on all sorts of consumer goods since then. Why should wine be different?

You would not be wrong.

But the issue is not simply that prices in general have gone up. The prices of top wines have risen at a far steeper rate than the prices of many other luxury goods. La Tâche 2017 is almost 18 times as expensive as the 1990, while a

basic Hermès Birkin 30 bag, the grand cru of handbags, has gone from about $3,000 in 1990 to $11,000 in 2020, not quite four times as much.

Bordeaux operates on a slightly different scale than Burgundy. Far more wine is produced. But it, too, has its benchmark wines, and like Burgundy, the prices have skyrocketed.

Orley Ashenfelter, an economics professor at Princeton University, has closely tracked the Bordeaux market for years. In 1980, the price of a first-growth Bordeaux was roughly four times the price of a fifth-growth Bordeaux, he said in a phone interview, referring to an 1855 classification that ranked top Médoc producers in five tiers, or growths.

Nowadays, he said, as prices have risen for all these top wines, the ratio between first- and fifth-growth price is more like 10-to-1.

What accounts for these disparities?

Partly it’s the good old law of supply and demand.

Great wine is tied to finite pieces of land and to the rhythms of agriculture. With a limited quantity of grapes and only one opportunity to make wine each year, production cannot be increased to meet rising demand.

With the exception of certain top Champagnes like Dom Pérignon, which are not linked to particular vineyards, the best wines are not luxury goods like watches or handbags in which production can grow to meet demand.

Nor can production be kept artificially low, for that matter, to create demand.

Though the problem matters to wine lovers, the rising inaccessibility of fancy wines is just a microscopic example of how income inequality and the concentration of wealth in fewer hands have affected daily life.

I live in Manhattan, where, until the pandemic at least, the price of Manhattan real estate has soared for decades as more people and companies competed for a fixed amount of space. Predictably, Manhattan became harder to afford for small businesses, struggling artists and writers, not to mention civil servants, police officers or firefighters.

Yet billionaires continue to vie for space. A hedge fund billionaire paid $238 million for a new apartment in 2019, in a building constructed only after dozens of middle-class tenants were evicted from their apartments. When billionaires decide that they want something, whether an apartment or a bottle of wine, it drives up prices for everybody else.

Fortunately, great wines are being produced all over the world nowadays. Those who are fascinated by how wine can express in intricate detail the characteristics of a place and culture can turn to German rieslings, the chenin blancs of Savennières, Chianti Classicos and Priorats.

They also have many other less-expensive options, in places like Burgundy and Bordeaux, wines that are highly pleasurable and offer a taste of what the fuss is about, even if they don’t tell the full story.

The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

23

Why running won’t ruin your knees

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

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ould running actually be good for your knees?

That idea is at the heart of a fascinating new study of the differing effects of running and walking on the knee joint. Using motion capture and sophisticated computer modeling, the study confirms that running pummels knees more than walking does. But in the process, the authors conclude, running likely also fortifies and bulks up the cartilage, the rubbery tissue that cushions the ends of bones. The findings raise the beguiling possibility that, instead of harming knees, running might fortify them and help to stave off knee arthritis.

Of course, the notion that running wrecks knees is widespread and entrenched. Almost anyone who runs is familiar with warnings from well-meaning, nonrunning family members, friends and strangers that their knees are doomed.

This concern is not unwarranted. Running involves substantial joint bending and pounding, which can fray the cushioning cartilage inside the knee. Cartilage, which does not have its own blood supply, generally is thought to have little ability to repair itself when damaged or to change much at all after childhood.

So, repeated running conceivably wears away fragile cartilage and almost inevitably should lead to crippling knee arthritis.

But in real life, it does not. Some runners develop knee arthritis, but not all. As a group, in fact, runners may be statistically less likely to become arthritic than nonrunners.

The question of why running spares so many runners’ knees has long intrigued Ross Miller, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Maryland in College Park.

In earlier research, he and his colleagues had looked into whether running mechanics matter, by asking volunteers to walk and run along a track outfitted with plates to measure the forces

generated with each step.

The resulting data showed that people hit the ground harder while running, clobbering their knees far more with each stride. But they also spent more time aloft between strides, meaning they took fewer strides while covering the same distance as when walking. So, the cumulative forces moving through their knees over time should be about the same, the researchers concluded, whether someone walked or ran.

But, recently, Miller had begun to doubt whether this finding really explained why running wasn’t wrecking more knees. He knew that some recent studies with animals intimated that cartilage might be more resilient than researchers previously had believed. In those studies, animals that ran tended to have thicker, healthier knee cartilage than comparable tissues from sedentary animals, suggesting that the active animals’ cartilage had changed in response to their running.

Perhaps, Miller speculated, cartilage in human runners’ knees likewise might alter and adapt.

To find out, he again asked a group of healthy young men and women to walk and run along a track containing force plates, while he

and his colleagues filmed them. The researchers then computed the forces the volunteers had generated while strolling and running. Finally, they modeled what the future might hold for the volunteers’ knees.

More specifically, they used the forceplate numbers, plus extensive additional data from past studies of biopsied cartilage pulled and pummeled in the lab until it fell apart and other sources to create computer simulations.

They wanted to see what, theoretically, would happen to healthy knee cartilage if an adult walked for six kilometers (about 3.7 miles) every day for years, compared to if they walked for three kilometers and ran for another three kilometers each of those days.

They also tested two additional theoretical situations. For one, the researchers programmed in the possibility that people’s knee cartilage would slightly repair itself after repeated small damage from walking or running — but not otherwise change. And for the last scenario, they presumed that the cartilage would actively remodel itself and adapt to the demands of moving, growing thicker and stronger, much as muscle does when we exercise.

The models’ final results were eye-open-

ing. According to the simulations, daily walkers faced about a 36% chance of developing arthritis by the age of 55, if the model did not include the possibility of the knee cartilage adapting or repairing itself. That risk dropped to about 13% if cartilage were assumed to be able to repair or adapt, which is about what studies predict to be the real-world arthritis risk for otherwise healthy people.

The numbers for running were more worrisome. When the model assumed cartilage cannot change, the runners’ risk of eventual arthritis was a whopping 98%, declining only to 95% if the model factored in the possibility of cartilage repair. In effect, according to this scenario, the damage to cartilage from frequent running would overwhelm any ability of the tissue to fix itself.

But if the model included the likelihood of the cartilage actively adapting — growing thicker and cushier — when people ran, the odds of runners developing arthritis fell to about 13%, the same as for healthy walkers.

What these results suggest is that cartilage is malleable, Ross says. It must be able to sense the strains and slight damage from running and rebuild itself, becoming stronger. In this scenario, running bolsters cartilage health.

Modeled results like these are theoretical, though, and limited. They do not explain how cartilage remodels itself without a blood supply or if genetics, nutrition, body weight, knee injuries and other factors affect individual arthritis risks. Such models also do not tell us if different distances, speeds or running forms would alter the outcomes. To learn more, we will need direct measures of molecular and other changes in living human cartilage after running, Miller says, but such tests are difficult.

Still, this study may quiet some runners’ qualms — and those of their families and friends. “It looks like running is unlikely to cause knee arthritis by wearing out cartilage,” Ross says.

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

JORGE LUIS BAEZ GUZMAN Peticionario

EX-PARTE

CIVIL: BY2020CV02425.

SOBRE: EXPEDIENTE DE DOMINIO/ Catastro: 171-001940-72-000. EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: SUCN. DESCONOCIDA DE GREGORIO BÁEZ Y MARÍA CAMACHO COMO ANTERIORES DUEÑOS y CUALQUIER PERSONA IGNORADA QUE PUEDA PERJUDICARSE

POR CUANTO: El peticionario solicita se declare a su favor el dominio de la finca que se describe según sus títulos del siguiente modo: “RUSTICA: Predio de terreno radicado en la calle Flamboyán, Barrio Mamey de Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, con una cabida de 1705.732 rn/c, equivalentes a 0.4339 de cuerda. En lindes por el NORTE: con Sucesión de Gregorio Báez y María Camacho (hoy) Maximina Santos Guzmán; por el SUR: Calle municipal Flamboyán; por el ESTE: con María Meléndez Sierra (hoy) Marisol Figueroa Báez y por el OESTE: con Sucn. Gregorio Báez y María Camacho (hoy), Valentín Carrillo Carrillo.” Esta pretensión se publicará tres veces en veinte días en este periódico. El que tenga interés o derecho real en el inmueble, los anteriores dueños y personas ignoradas que puedan perjudicarse y deseen oponerse tienen 20 días para ello a contar desde la última publicación, siendo abogado de los peticionarios, Lic. Jaime Rodríguez Rivera, cuya dirección es #30 Calle Reparto Piñero, Guaynabo, PR 009695650, Teléfono 787-720-9553.

En Bayamón, Puerto Rico, a 20 de octubre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Reional. Sandra I. Cruz Vázquez, Secretaria Servicios a Sala.

PARTE DEMANDANTE VS.

SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION COMO SÍNDICO DE WESTERNBANK OF PUERTO RICO, DARÍO BONILLA MARTÍNEZ, YVONNE FELICIANO ACEVEDO Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS FULANO Y MENGANO DE TAL, POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARÉ

PARTE DEMANDADA CIVIL NÚM. VQ2020CV00021.

SOBRE: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO POR LA VÍA JUDICIAL. EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS E.E.U.U. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: FULANO Y MENGANO DE TAL, POSIBLES TENEDORES :DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARE

Queda usted notificado que en este Tribunal se ha radicado demanda sobre cancelación de pagaré extraviado por la vía judicial. El 23 de septiembre’ de 1999, Darío Bonilla Martínez y su esposa Yvonne Feliciano Acevedo constituyeron. una hipoteca en Carolina, Puerto Rico, mediante a la Escritura núm. 76 aUtorizada pr el notario Dolores Barceló Ramírez en garantía de Un pagaré por la suma de $49,000.00 a favor de Small Business Administration, o a su orden, con intereses al 3.437% anual y vencedero en 10 años, sobre la siguiente propiedad: RÚSTICA: Parcela de terreno ubicada en el Barrio Flamenco del término municipal de la Isla Municipio de Culebra, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de cero punto cinco tres dos cuatro cuerdas (0.5324 cda) equivalente a dos cero nueve dos punto cuatro seis siete cinco metros cuadrados (2092.4675 m.c.), en lindes por el NORTE, en una alineación, con la Carretera número PR-250, km. 2 hm. 6 interior, según el Plano de Inscripción; LEGAL NOTICE por el SUR, en una alineación, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO con terrenos pertenecientes a DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUla Sucesión de Dámaso BerNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA múdez, conforme al Plano de SALA SUPERIOR DE VIEInscripción; por el ESTE, en QUES. una alineación, con terrenos BANCO POPULAR DE pertenecientes a Justo E. Ri-

PUERTO RICO

@

vera, según el Plano de Inscripción; y por el OESTE, en dos alineaciones, con terrenos pertenecientes a Ignacio S. Padrón, conforme al Plano de Inscripción. La propiedad consta inscrita al folio 151 del tomo 22 de Culebra, Finca 1002.

Registro de la Propiedad de Fajardo. La parte demandada deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudkial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal. Se le advierte que, si no contesta la demanda, radicando el original de la contestación en este Tribunal y enviando copia de la contestación a la abogada de la Parte Demandante, Lcda. Belma Alonso García, cuya dirección es: PO Box 3922, Guaynabo, PR 00970-3922, Teléfono y Fax: (787) 789-1826, correo electrónico: oficinabelmaaalonso@gmail.com, dentro del término de treinta (30) días de la publicación de este edicto, excluyéndose el día de la publicación, se le anotará la rebeldía y se le dictará Sentencia en su contra, concediendo el remedio solicitado sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPEDIDO bajo ml firma y el sello del Tribunal, hoy 17 de septiembre de 2020 en Vieques, Puerto Rico. OLGA N. MORALES TORRES, SECRETARIA.

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

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante v.

JOSE E. MARRERO ORTIZ

Demandado(a) Civil: Núm. BY2019CV06453.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO VIA ORDINARIA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: JOSE E. MARRERO ORTIZ

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 20 de octubre de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola

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vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 21 de octubre de 2020. En TOA ALTA, Puerto Rico, el 21 de octubre de 2020.

LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional.

Gloribell Vazquez Maysonet, Sec del Tribunal Conf I.

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

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante v.

ALBERTO J. LLERANDI ROMAN, FULANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandado(a) Civil: Núm. HU2019CV01707.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO POR LA VIA ORDINARIA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: ALBERTO LLERANDI ROMAN, FULANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS, a sus ultimas direcciones conocidas: PALMAS DEL MAR 66 AGUABELL, HUMACAO PR 00791; B5 CALLE TABONUCO, PM 332 SUITE 216, GUAYNABO PR 00968-3022 P/C LIC. JAIME RUIZ SALDAÑA

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 20 de octubre de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puer-

(787) 743-3346

The San Juan Daily Star

Friday, October 30, 2020 to Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 16 de octubre de 2020. En HUMACAO, Puerto Rico, el 21 de octubre de 2020.

DOMINGA GOMEZ FUSTER, Secretaria. F/EVELYN FELIX VAZQUEZ, Secretaria Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

Estado Libre Asociado de PuerDEMANDADO to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL Civil Núm. CG2019CV00809.

DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de PriSobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y mera Instancia Sala Superior EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA. de SAN JUAN. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENORIENTAL BANK CIA POR EDICTO. Demandante v.

NELSON ABRAHAM FREYRE GALLARDO, KARENNIE MALAVE COTTO Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES POR ESTOS COMPUESTA; JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE

Demandado(a) Civil: Núm. SJ2020CV03502.

SALA: 207. Sobre: SUSTITUCION DE PAGARE HIPOTELEGAL NOTICE CARIO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE Estado Libre Asociado de Puer- SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL A: JOHN DOE Y DE JUSTICIA Tribunal SupeRICHARD ROE rior SALA DE AGUADILLA. (Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) ORIENTAL BANK EL SECRETARIO(A) que susDemandante v. cribe le notifica a usted que el EVELYN E. 15 de octubre de 2020, este BABILONIA ACEVEDO Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Demandado(a) Sentencia Parcial o Resolución Civil: Núm. AG2020CV00101. en este caso, que ha sido debiSobre: COBRO DE DINERO. damente registrada y archivada NOTIFICACIÓN DE SEN- en autos donde podrá usted TENCIA POR EDICTO. EL enterarse detalladamente de SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe los términos de la misma. Esta le notifica a usted que el 14 de notificación se publicará una octubre de 2020, este Tribunal sola vez en un periódico de ha dictado Sentencia, Senten- circulación general en la Isla cia Parcial o Resolución en este de Puerto Rico, dentro de los caso, que ha sido debidamente 10 días siguientes a su notificaregistrada y archivada en autos ción. Y, siendo o representando donde podrá usted enterarse usted una parte en el procedidetalladamente de los términos miento sujeta a los términos de la misma. Esta notificación de la Sentencia, Sentencia se publicará una sola vez en un Parcial o Resolución, de la cual periódico de circulación general puede establecerse recurso de en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro revisión o apelación dentro del de los 10 días siguientes a su término de 30 días contados a notificación. Y, siendo o repre- partir de la publicación por edicsentando usted una parte en el to de esta notificación, dirijo a procedimiento sujeta a los tér- usted esta notificación que se minos de la Sentencia, Senten- considerará hecha en la fecha cia Parcial o Resolución, de la de la publicación de este ediccual puede establecerse recur- to. Copia de esta notificación so de revisión o apelación den- ha sido archivada en los autos tro del término de 30 días con- de este caso, con fecha de 23 tados a partir de la publicación de octubre de 2020. En SAN por edicto de esta notificación, JUAN, Puerto Rico, el 23 de dirijo a usted esta notificación octubre de 2020. GRISELDA que se considerará hecha en la RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Sefecha de la publicación de este cretaria. F/MILDRED J. FRANedicto. Copia de esta notifica- CO REVENTOS, Secretaria ción ha sido archivada en los Auxiliar. autos de este caso, con fecha de 21 de octubre de 2020.

LEGAL NOTICE

A: EVELYN E. BABILONIA ACEVEDO PO BOX 1294 MOCA PR 00676-1294

En AGUADILLA, Puerto Rico, a 21 de octubre de 2020. SARAHI REYES PEREZ, Secretaria General. F/KATHERINE VARGAS MENDEZ, Secretaria Auxiliar.

MIGUEL A. CABRERA RODRIGUEZ

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

COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CREDITO DE CAGUAS DEMANDANTE VS

A: MIGUEL A. CABRERA RODRIGUEZ

(Nombre de las partes a las que se les notifica la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 28 de febrero de 2020 este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 23 de octubre de 2020. En Caquas, Puerto Rico, 23 de octubre de 2020. CARMEN ANA PEREIRA ORTIZ, Secretario (a). f/ GLORIMAR RIVERA RIVERA, Secretario (a) Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOT ICE Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de MAYAGUEZ.

ALICIA LACOURT PEREZ

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 diez (10) días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 27 de octubre de 2020.

En MAYAGUEZ, Puerto Rico, el 27 de octubre de 2020. LIC. NORMA SANTANA IRIZARRY, Secretario Regional II. Hilda L Irizarry Rodriguez, Secretaria Auxiliar del Tribunal I.

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

ORIENTAL BANK COMO AGENTE DE SERVICIOS DE THE MONEY HOUSE, INC. Demandante v.

JORGE GOMEZ LABOY, KAREN TORRES RODRIGUEZ Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS (DEUDORES HIPOTECARIOS); MADELINE ORTIZ GARCIA Y ARMANDO DE LEON ACEVEDO (TITULARES REGISTRALES)

Demandado(a) Civil: Núm. HU2020CV00338.

LUIS ANGEL Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y BAEZ RAMOS EJECUCION DE SENTENCIA Demandado(a) (VIA ORDINARIA). NOTIFICACivil Núm: CB2020RF00024. CIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR Sala: 301. Sobre: DIVORICO, EDICTO. RUPTURA IRREPARABLE. A: JORGE GÓMEZ NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENLABOY, KAREN TORRES CIA POR EDICTO. Demandante v.

A: SR. LUIS ANGEL BAEZ RAMOS

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO (A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 23 de OCTUBRE de 2020 este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de

RODRIGUEZ Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS (DEUDORES HIPOTECARIOS) (A) PR 914 KM 0.8 SECTOR ASTURIANOS BARRIO TEJAS, HUMACAO, PR 00791; (B) 2IO1 HARVEY MITCHELL PKWY 5,

The San Juan Daily Star

Friday, October 30, 2020 publication of this Summons, a copy of this Summons and the Complaint will be sent to you, by certified mail/return receipt requested, addressed to your last known address. Should you fail to appear, plead or answer to the Complaint as ordered by the Court and noticed by this Summons, the Court will enter default against you and proceed to hear and adjudicate this cause based on the relief demanded in the Complaint.

BY ORDER OF THE COURT, summons is issued pursuant to Federal Rules Civil Procedure 4(e) and Rule 4.6 of the Rules of Civil Procedure for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, this October 26, 2020. MARIA ANTORGIORGI-JORDAN, ESQ., CLERK, U.S. DISTRICT COURT. By: Ana E. Duran-Capella, Deputy Clerk.

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 28 de octubre de 2020. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 28 de octubre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria Regional. f/ DENISE M. AMARO MACHUCA, Secretario (a) Auxiliar.

CASE NO. 20-01097 (DRD). (802). SOBRE: CANCELAForeclosure of Mortgage. SUM- CIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO POR LA VÍA JUDICIAL. MONS BY PUBLICATION. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENTO: JOHN DOE AND Defendants CIA POR EDICTO POR SURICHARD ROE AS CIVIL NO. 20-01135 (JAG).

MAC. Foreclosure of Mortgage. SUM- UNKNOWN MEMBERS OF A: FULANO Y MONS BY PUBLICATION. THE ESTATE OF AURELIO

demandante, la solicitud de interpelación contenida en la misma y examinados los autos del caso, el Tribunal le imparte su aprobación y en su virtud acepta la Demanda en el caso de epígrafe, así como la interpelación judicial de la parte demandante a los herederos del codemandado conforme dispone el Artículo 959 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. sec. 2787. Se Ordena a los herederos del causante a saber, Norma Yolanda Donate Laureano, t/c/c Yolanda Donate Laureano, Francisco Javier Donate Laureano, t/c/c Francisco J. Donate Laureano, Carlos Daniel Donate Laureano, t/c/c Carlos D. Donate Laureano a que dentro del término legal de 30 días contados a partir de la fecha de la notificación de la presente Orden, acepten o repudien la participación que les corresponda en la herencia del causante Norma Laureano Rosario, t/c/c Norma Laureano.

Se le Apercibe a los herederos antes mencionados: (a) Que de no expresarse dentro del término de 30 días en torno a su aceptación o repudiación de herencia la misma se tendrá por aceptada; (b) Que luego

COLLEGE STATION, TX GONZALEZ; JOHN DOE Morales-Ramos, Victor 77840; (C) HC-I2 BOX Morales-Ramos/ Norma and RICHARD ROE as 5665, HUMACAO, PR unknown members of Morales-Ramos and John 00791; (D) HC-15 BOX said estates Doe and Richard Roe/ Defendants as unknown heirs to the 16264 HUMACAO, PR 00791; (E) PMB 436 PO CIVIL NO. 19-02030 (PG). Foestate reclosure of Mortgage. NOTICE BOX 2017 LAS PIEDRAS, OF JUDGMENT BY PUBLICA- The Clerk of the Court notifies you that on January 30, 2020, PR 00771, MADELINE TION. the Court entered judgment ORTIZ GARCÍA Y TO: GILBERTO L. REYES in favor of plaintiff and against ARMANDO DE LEÓN SANTIAGO, MILAGROS you. The judgment has been ACEVEDO (TITULARES duly registered/ and its terms REYES RIVERA and REGISTRALES) FISICA: MARITZA REYES RIVERA are available for review in the Clerks^ office. ACCORDINGLY/ PR 914 KM 0.8 SECTOR as known members of you are notified that judgment ASTURIANOS, BARRIO the Estate of GENARO has been entered against you TEJAS HUMACAO, PR REYES GONZALEZ in this case. The notice will be 00791; Y POSTAL: HC-12 and GENARO REYES deemed effective and a thirty BOX 5665 HUMACAO, PR GONZALEZ; JOHN DOE (30) day term to file a notice appeal will begin/ on the 00791; HC-15 BOX 16264 and RICHARD ROE as of day this notice is published in HUMACAO, PR 00791 unknown members of a newspaper of general circuP/C LIC. DUNCAN R. said estate lation in Puerto Rico. A copy MALDONADO EJARQUE THE CLERK OF THIS COURT of the Notice of Judgment and

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 20 de octubre de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 27 de octubre de 2020. En HUMACAO, Puerto Rico, el 27 de octubre de 2020. LCDA. DOMINGA GOMEZ FUSTER, Secretaria. F/EVELYN FELIX VAZQUEZ, Secretaria Auxiliar.

hereby notifies you that on October 8, 2020, this Court entered judgment in favor of plaintiff. Said judgment has been duly registered and the terms of such judgment are available for review in the Clerks’ office.

THEREFORE, this notice is hereby given to you that judgment has been entered against you in the instant proceedings.

Notice will be deemed effective, and the thirty (30) day term to file the notice of appeal will begin the day this judicial notice is published in a newspaper of general circulation. A copy of the Notice of Judgment by Publication and Judgment in this case will be sent by plaintiff to the defendant’s last known address by certified mail, return receipt requested within ten (10) days of the one and only publication of this judicial notice. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, this 23rd day of October, 2020. MARIA ANTONGIORGI JORDÁN, ESQ., CLERK OF COURT. By: Viviana Diaz-Mullero, Deputy Clerk.

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

UNITED STATES acting through the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AMERICA AGRICULTURE (Farm Service Agency)

25

publication of this Summons, a copy of this Summons and the Complaint will be sent to codefendant Angela Ana Mercado Morales by certified mail/return receipt requested, addressed to her last known address. Should you fail to appear, plead or answer to the Complaint as ordered by the Court and noticed by this Summons, the Court will enter default against you and proceed to hear and adjudicate this cause based on the relief demanded in the Complaint.

BY ORDER OF THE COURT, summons is issued pursuant to Federal Rules Civil Procedure 4(e) and Rule 4.6 of the Rules of Civil Procedure for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, this October 23, 2020. MARIA ANTORGIORGI-JORDAN, ESQ., CLERK, U.S. DISTRICT the Judgment will be sent by COURT. By: Ana E. Duran-Caplaintiff to the defendants^ last pella, Deputy Clerk. known addresses by certified LEGAL NOTICE mail/return receipt requested within ten (10) days of the one UNITED STATES DISTRICT and only publication of this ju- COURT FOR THE DISTRICT dicial notice. San Juan, Puerto OF PUERTO RICO. Rico, April 21th, 2020. MARIA ANTONGIORGI-JORDAN, ESQ., CLERK OF THE COURT. By: Ana E. Duran-Capella, Deputy Clerk.

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

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE (Farm Service Agency) Plaintiff V.

FELIX RIVERA MONTALVO; ANGELA ANA MERCADO MORALES

TO: CO-DEFENDANT ANGELA ANA MERCADO MORALES

Pursuant to the Order for Service by Publication entered on 10/22/2020, by the Honorable Jay A. Garcia Gregory, Senior United States District Judge LEGAL NOTICE (Docket No. 10), you are hereby UNITED STATES DISTRICT SUMMONED to appear, plead COURT FOR THE DISTRICT Plaintiff, V. or answer the Complaint filed OF PUERTO RICO. VICTOR MANUEL herein no later than thirty (30) UNITED STATES MORALES-SERRANO, days after publication of this DEPARTMENT OF Summons by serving the origiet al., AGRICULTURE nal plea or answer in the United Defendants.

(Farm Service Agency) Civil No. 18-1338 (FAB). NOTI- States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, and serving CE OF JUDGMENT. Plaintiff v.

TO: The Estate of Victor a copy to counsel for plaintiff: GILBERTO L. REYES Juan C. Fortuño Fas, SANTIAGO, MILAGROS Manuel Morales-Serrano Attorney at PO Box 3908 Guaynabo, a/k/a Victor M. Morales- PR 00970, telephone numbers REYES RIVERA and MARITZA REYES RIVERA Serrano, composed by 787-751- 5290 and 787-7515616. This Summons shall be Norma Ramos-Vega as known members of a/k/a Norma Margarita published by edict only once in the Estates of GENARO a newspaper of general circulaRamos-Vega, Javier REYES GONZALEZ tion in the island of Puerto Rico.

Morales-Ramos/ Wanda Within ten (10) days following and GENARO REYES

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

Finance of America Reverse, LLC Demandante VS.

del transcurso del término de 30 días contados a partir de la fecha de la notificación de la presente Orden, se presumirá que han aceptado la herencia del causante y por consiguiente, responden por la cargas de dicha herencia conforme dispone el Artículo 957 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. sec. 2785.

Se Ordena a la parte demandante a que, en vista de que la sucesión del causante Norma Laureano Rosario, t/c/c Norma Laureano incluyen como herederos a Norma Yolanda Donate Laureano, t/c/c Yolanda Donate Laureano, Francisco Javier Donate Laureano, t/c/c Francisco J. Donate Laureano, Carlos Daniel Donate Laureano, t/c/c Carlos D. Donate Laureano, proceda a notificar la presente Orden mediante un edicto a esos efectos una sola vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general de la Isla de Puerto Rico. NOTIFÍQUESE. DADA en Carolina, Puerto Rico, hoy 2 de octubre de 2020. f/THAINIE REYES RAMÍREZ, JUEZA SUPERIOR.

Sucesión de Norma Laureano Rosario, LEGAL NOTICE t/c/c Norma Laureano Estado Libre Asociado de Puercompuesta por Norma to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL Yolanda Donate DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de PriLaureano, t/c/c Yolanda mera Instancia Sala Superior Donate Laureano, de San Juan.

UNITED STATES LEGAL NOTICE Francisco Javier Donate MANUEL MEDINA JACA DEPARTMENT OF ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Laureano, t/c/c Francisco VS AGRICULTURE ‘ DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUJ. Donate Laureano, BANCO SANTANDER (Farm Service Agency) Carlos Daniel Donate NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA DE PUERTO RICO; Plaintiff V. SALA SUPERIOR DE CALaureano, t/c/c Carlos GUAS. SUCESOR EN DERECHO Estate of AURELIO D Donate Laureano; DE BAYAMÓN FEDERAL MENDEZ SANTIAGO; DLJ MORTGAGE Centro de Recaudaciones SAVINS & LOAN CARMEN LYDIA VELEZ CAPITAL INC. Municipales; y a los ASSOCIATION OF Parte Demandante Vs. CORTES, as co debtor Estados Unidos de PUERTO RICO; FULANO CITIFINANCIAL and in the widow América Y MENGANO DE TAL SERVICES PR1 h/n/c usufructuary share; JOHN Demandados DOE and RICHARD ROE, POSIBLES TENEDORES CIVIL NÚM: CA2020CV01734 CITIFINANCIAL; John DESCONOCIDOS DEL Doe y Richard Doe, as unknown heirs to the (407). Sobre: Ejecución de HiPAGARÉ Como posibles tenedores estate poteca. ORDEN. Examinada la CIVIL NUM. SJ2020CV04444 demanda radicada por la parte Defendant(s) desconocidos

MENDEZ SANTIAGO; AND CARMEN LYDIA VELEZ CORTES

Pursuant to the Order for Service by Publication entered on 10/22/2020, by the Daniel R. Domingez, Senior United States District Judge (ECF No. 12), you are hereby SUMMONED to appear, plead or answer the Complaint filed herein no later than thirty (30) days after publication of this Summons by serving the original plea or answer in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, and serving a copy to counsel for plaintiff: Attorney Juan C. Fortune Fas, at PO Box 3908, Guaynabo, PR 00970, telephone numbers 787-751-5290 and 787-7515616. This Summons shall be published by edict only once in a newspaper of general circulation in the island of Puerto Rico.

Within ten (10) days following

MENGANO DE TAL POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARÉ

EL SECRETARIO (A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 28 de OCTUBRE de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de esta. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los diez (10) días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación

Parte Demandada CIVIL NUM: CG2020CV02003.

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

A: JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE COMO posibles tenedores desconocidos

POR LA PRESENTE se les emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) dias 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/ 1 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: 787-843-

4168. En dicha demanda se tramita un procedimiento de cancelación de pagare extraviado.

Se alega en dicho procedimiento que se extravió un pagaré de fecha veintinueve(29) de enero de dos mil cinco (2005), bajo testimonio número doce mil ochocientos treinta y dos (12,832), a favor Citifinancial Services PR, haciendo negocio como Citifinancial, o a su orden, por la suma de setenta y nueve mil dólares ($79,000.00), con un interés al cinco punto tres siete cinco por ciento (5.375%) anual, vencedero el primero (1 ro) de febrero de dos mil dieciocho (2018), según consta de la escritura número seis (6) otorgada en Caguas, Puerto Rico el treinta y uno (31) de enero de dos mil cinco (2005) 29 de mayo de 2004, ante el notario Amaury Llorens Balsac. Inscrito folio ochenta y nueve (89) del tomo trescientos ochenta y siete (387) de Gurabo, finca número diez mil setecientos noventa y dos (10,792), inscripción cuarta (4ta). Que grava la propiedad que se describe a continuación: RÚSTICA: Predio de terreno de forma irregular sito en el barrio Quebrada Infierno del término municipal de Gurabo, Puerto Rico, con una cabida de mil novecientos noventa y nueve punto setenta y cuatro (1999.74) metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, en treinta y dos punto ocho dos seis (32.826} metros, con el predio tres (3) del plano de inscripción; por el Sur, en dos (2) alineaciones treinta y tres punto nueve siete dos (33.972) metros, con el predio número uno 91) y otra de veintiocho punto cinco tres dos (28.532) metros, con el predio B de uso público; por el ESTE, en veintidos punto setenta (22.70) metros, con el predio A y por el NOROESTE, en tres (3) alineaciones que suman cuarenta y uno punto setenta (41.70) metros, con el predio A y por el OESTE, en dos (2) alineaciones, una de dieciséis punto ocho dos cuatro (16.824) metros, con predio uno (1) y otra de veintisiete punto cero cero (27.00) metros, con Librado Hereter. Inscrita al folio ocho (8) del tomo doscientos ochenta y nueve (289) de Gurabo, finca número diez mil setecientos noventa y dos (10,792) del Registro de la Propiedad de Caguas Sección Segunda (2da). SE LES APERCIBE que, de no hacer sus alegaciones responsivas a la demanda dentro del término aquí dispuesto, se les anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Caguas, Puerto Rico, a 15 de octubre de 2020. CARMEN ANA PEREIRA ORTIZ, SECRETARIA. Jessenia Pedraza Andino, Sec Auxiliar.

26

October 30-November 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

MLB says Justin Turner refused to stay off field after Dodgers’ win

By DAVID WALDSTEIN, GILLIAN R. BRASSIL and JAMES WAGNER

T

he joy of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ long coveted World Series title was overshadowed Tuesday night when Justin Turner, the team’s veteran third baseman, joined his teammates in celebration on the field shortly after learning he had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Turner’s return to the field, which occurred right in front of Rob Manfred, Major League Baseball’s commissioner, at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, raised questions about how the league had allowed such a public lapse in its coronavirus protocols and drew widespread criticism from experts in epidemiology.

MLB said Wednesday afternoon that it would investigate the incident, but placed the blame squarely on Turner, saying he had refused the orders of league security to remain in isolation.

“Turner was placed into isolation for the safety of those around him,” MLB said in a statement.

“However, following the Dodgers’ victory, it is clear that Turner chose to disregard the agreed-upon joint protocols and the instructions he was given regarding the safety and protection of others. While a desire to celebrate is understandable, Turner’s decision to leave isolation and enter the field was wrong and put everyone he came in contact with at risk. When MLB Security raised the matter of being on the field with Turner, he emphatically refused to comply.”

The Dodgers had pulled Turner, 35, from the game when they learned of his positive test before the eighth inning, but he came back onto the field during the postgame celebration. He was seen kissing his wife, holding the World Series trophy, and hugging and talking to teammates — sometimes with a mask, sometimes without. And he took his place at the center of a team photograph, sitting between manager Dave Roberts and Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations — none of whom wore a face covering during the photo shoot.

According to Dr. John Swartzberg, an infectious disease expert and professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, who has consulted the Pac-12 Conference on coronavirus guidelines, the fact that the team knew to pull Turner from the game should have been sufficient reason to keep him off the field for celebrations, especially as he could have exposed more people to the virus than he had before.

Turner, who joined the Dodgers in 2014, has been one of their leaders and best players, particularly in the postseason. Friedman admitted the scene on the field made for bad optics, but he said everyone in the Dodgers’ so-called postseason bubble had already been exposed to Turner and seemed to suggest that

Justin Turner, center with beard, took off his mask for a post-game team picture. sentimentality for a beloved player influenced the situation — especially with his contract expiring after the World Series.

“For him, just being a free agent, not knowing exactly how the future is going to play out, I don’t think there was anyone who was going to stop him,” Friedman said.

The players’ union said it was also gathering facts about the incident but had no further comment. Turner did not speak to reporters after the game, though he wrote on Twitter that he felt “great, no symptoms at all.”

Teams have been subject to regular testing since the season began in July, a process that was jointly negotiated between the league and the players’ union.

Several players tested positive early in the season, and more than 40 games were postponed because of virus cases. In an effort to prevent the spread of the virus, the final three rounds of the postseason were held in four contained environments at neutral-site stadiums in Houston, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Arlington.

Teams were restricted to hotels that were closed to the public, and they were taken to and from the stadium, forbidden from going anywhere else. Players’ wives and children were allowed to join them as long as they had quarantined, and many of the Dodg-

ers’ immediate family members were on the field after Tuesday’s game. There had not been a positive case among major league players in nearly two months entering Tuesday.

Multiple news media reports said that Turner’s test from Monday had come back “inconclusive” during the second inning of Tuesday’s game. That led the league to expedite processing Turner’s test from Tuesday morning, which came back positive.

Some doctors said the delay in accessing the results significantly reduced the effectiveness of testing.

“The test result should be back before they started playing,” said Dr. Abraar Karan, a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and global health researcher at Harvard Medical School. “That’s the whole point of testing to begin with.”

MLB said Wednesday that the Dodgers’ entire traveling party had been tested after Tuesday’s game and that both them and the Tampa Bay Rays were tested again in the morning. It said “appropriate authorities” would determine whether the teams could travel or not, but did not specify which ones. The Dodgers flew home Wednesday evening, but it was unclear how many members of the team were on the flight.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said that it was working with the Dodgers to prevent additional exposures and that it had “provided direction on the required quarantine of players and staff that are close contacts.”

Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state that anyone who has been within 6 feet of a person who has the coronavirus for at least 15 minutes over a period of 24 hours should isolate for 14 days, regardless of whether they were wearing personal protective equipment, including masks.

“Exposure on the field is different from a World Series celebration, too,” said Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston. “When they’re in closer proximity, yelling and hugging, they are more likely to transmit the virus.”

Turner seemed keenly aware of the threat of the virus earlier this season. Just before MLB strengthened the health and safety protocols in early August in the wake of large outbreaks within the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals, Turner helped lead a charge to tighten his club’s own behavior.

Turner sent to a reporter from SportsNet LA, the Dodgers’ broadcaster, a list of rules on July 31 that players and coaches had stressed among themselves, apart from MLB’s protocols. The Dodgers-specific rules included maintaining 6 feet of distance, ensuring any player not in the game wasn’t in the dugout during a contest and stating that “all players will wear face coverings in the dugout.”

The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

27

The manager, the ace and a decision that will haunt the Rays

By TYLER KEPNER

T

he Tampa Bay Rays pride themselves on creativity, on aggressively challenging conventional wisdom.

That ethos helps make them an annual contender on a tight budget, and this was their best season ever.

But when the Rays needed to believe in the unseen, while facing elimination in Game 6 of the World Series on Tuesday, they were blind. Everyone watching at Globe Life Field, especially the Los Angeles Dodgers, could see that Blake Snell was pitching the game of his life.

Kevin Cash, the Rays’ manager, could not — and he paid for it with a seasonending 3-1 defeat and a lifetime of questions.

“Blake could not have been better tonight,” Cash said. “The strikeouts, the pitch efficiency, the stuff — it was all really, really special. He put it all together for us in a big way.”

It was the kind of mesmerizing effort that World Series are made for: a former Cy Young Award winner carving through a powerful lineup with fastballs, curveballs, sliders and changeups. Snell had a 1-0 lead in the sixth inning, with one out, Austin Barnes on first and all winter ahead of him to rest.

“I wanted to go that whole game,” said Snell, who gave up two singles and no walks with nine strikeouts. “That was everything I wanted to do: burn the tank and see how far I could go.”

Cash believed he had gone far enough, never mind that Snell was pitching with a full five days of rest. Snell, 27, had not worked six innings in any start since last July, and Cash could not imagine him doing it with the season on the line. He called for the right-hander Nick Anderson to replace Snell.

The Rays rely heavily on analytics, which often serve them well. But Anderson had given up at least one run in each of his past six outings. The next three Dodgers hitters — Mookie Betts, Corey Seager and Justin Turner — had each struck out twice against Snell in Game 6 already.

What more could Snell have possibly done to stay in the game?

“That’s a fair question,” Cash said. “I

Blake Snell was taken out of Game 6 in the sixth inning despite having allowed just two hits. The Rays went on to lose, 3-1, ending the World Series. don’t know if I’ve got the best answer right now. He did above and beyond what any of us could have asked for.”

So why not ask for more? If you go to a restaurant, order a small dinner portion and find that it tastes better than you expected, you’re allowed to order seconds.

You don’t have to switch to something that hasn’t been very good lately.

Predictably, this happened within six pitches from Anderson: a double by Betts, a game-tying wild pitch, and a go-ahead grounder to first by Seager, the World Series’ Most Valuable Player, putting the Rays in a 2-1 hole with three innings left.

Snell’s departure had jolted the Dodgers to life.

“I was pretty happy, because he was dominating us and we just weren’t seeing him,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Snell. “Once Austin got the hit, Mookie looked at me with a little smile. He was excited Snell was out of the game.”

Cash said Anderson had been arguably “the best reliever in baseball” since the Rays acquired him last July, and he trusted him to be the best version of himself. But Anderson had nothing left; in his final seven appearances this postseason, he had a shoddy 7.20 ERA and only five strikeouts in 10 innings. Did he feel like the best version of himself?

“Definitely no,” Anderson said, with refreshing candor. “Workload, 2020 season, the whole thing is just crazy, honestly. Not having a normal routine, lif-

ting, the season, everything — it’s been crazy. I didn’t feel as good as I would have liked to, but it’s the big leagues; you’re not going to feel good every time. I was still confident. It wasn’t the situation, it wasn’t being in the World Series or anything like that. Not a lot of gas.”

Anderson did not tell the coaches he was tiring, he said, because relievers almost never do — everyone deals with general fatigue by late October, he added, and he was not injured. It is a core belief of almost every player: If they are active, they expect to perform.

“My mindset going out — it was the same, it really was,” Anderson said. “The ball just wasn’t coming out. Either way, I still should have been able to get the job done, and didn’t. I’ll always carry a lot of that weight on my back. The guys always say, ‘Win as a team, lose as a team,’ but I don’t know: I take pride in my work, so I’ll take a lot of the blame.”

Cash insisted there was no set plan to switch pitchers as soon as Betts came up a third time, no script he was told to follow. But every manager says that. The Rays believe strongly that the advantage shifts to the hitter after he has seen a pitcher twice in a game. Cash pulled Charlie Morton for Anderson in nearly the same spot in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, and it worked. This time, it backfired.

“Cash is usually right,” Snell said. “For you guys that are going to write bad sto-

ries on the decision, he’s usually right.”

True enough, and the first rule of sports is that you can’t win ’em all. But this decision seemed inexplicable as soon as Cash left the dugout, a push-button move when the moment demanded vision — or at least an acknowledgment that Anderson had been struggling.

“We factor in all of that,” Cash said.

“But also: The different look means something. We know how talented those guys are, and it felt like giving Blake another time, with the margin of error that Blake was pitching with, I felt the different look was going to be beneficial.”

In his career, Snell has held hitters to a .247 average the third time through the order. That figure rose to .304 this season, but his second time through the order was actually worse, at .307. And while Betts is a right-handed hitter, he batted .200 against lefties like Snell during the regular season, with no home runs.

Mostly, though, Snell just looked like an ace who had a lot more than 73 pitches to offer. He said he had thoroughly scouted the Dodgers and himself, and knew what they were looking for and how to counter.

“I get it, it’s the third time through the lineup, but I think I’m going to make the adjustments I need to make as I see them a third time,” Snell said. “I don’t know — I just believe in me. I believe in myself, I believe in what I was doing.”

Last October, facing elimination in Game 6 of the World Series, the Washington Nationals let Stephen Strasburg work into the ninth inning in Houston.

Strasburg’s masterly performance forced a Game 7, which the Nationals won when Astros’ manager, A.J. Hinch, pulled Zack Greinke too soon.

So it is again, another World Series that ends with a manager trusting matchups over pedigree, afraid to let an ace be an ace. Snell will never get this game back and may always wonder what could have been.

“The hardest thing for me is I was rolling, I was in a groove,” he said. “I just really felt dominant, like I had them guessing. It’s just tough for me, man. It’s going to be tough for me for a while to accept that, accept losing the World Series.”

28

October 30-November 1, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

The NBA’s $500 million hope for the holidays

So much is still undetermined about the next N.B.A. season, such as when it will begin. But it looks like the Lakers will start their title defense sooner than later.

By MARC STEIN

T

he most frequently posed query in NBA circles over the past several weeks — When do you think next season will start? — had also been one of the hardest to answer.

Even Commissioner Adam Silver, at a news conference before Game 1 of the finals, cautioned reporters that it was too soon for him to provide details in response “to most of your questions” about the 2020-21 season.

That all changed last Friday after a board of governors meeting. In yet another reminder of 2020’s seemingly boundless unpredictability, numerous team owners supported the league’s new plan to push for a Dec. 22 start date — just 10 weeks removed from the Los Angeles Lakers’ six-game championship triumph over the Miami Heat.

The league office cannot unilaterally impose its preferred timetable upon NBA players, but negotiations have been underway ahead of today’s deadline to modify the current labor agreement. Although that deadline has been moved back three times, expectations are that the sides will ultimately strike a deal this time on the terms for next season, such as setting the salary cap and luxury tax figures and an overhauled calendar with Dec. 22 as opening night.

These are the three main reasons a December start, after the longest NBA season, suddenly became the target: — This is what the league’s television partners want.

Throughout the NBA’s three-month stay at Walt Disney World, all signs pointed to the 2020-21 season beginning in 2021. League insiders frequently cited midJanuary as the earliest possible start date, and several said they would not be surprised to see the wait extended until February or March. Playing the long game, it was often suggested, would enhance the chances of fan

attendance for at least a portion of the regular season.

Of course, over the two-plus weeks since the season ended, daunting projections about the spread of the coronavirus this winter have led to rising pessimism about the league’s ability to admit even small crowds anytime soon. Multiple teams thus began to whisper last week that momentum was building to start the new season around Dec. 25 to preserve the ability to broadcast five games on Christmas Day. Disney, which owns ESPN and has been described

by Silver as the league’s biggest partner, badly wants to continue that Christmas tradition and have five games to televise on either ABC or ESPN. Turner, the NBA’s other primary broadcast partner, would get its traditional opening night doubleheader on a Tuesday if the union agrees to the Dec. 22 proposal. The league, for its part, has informed the union that it projects a difference of $500 million in revenue if it can start the season in December rather than mid-January.

All of those factors resonate pretty loudly after the season that the NBA just endured.

The league fell an estimated $1.5 billion short of its projected revenue for 2019-20 after a costly breakdown in its relationship with China, the cancellation of 171 regular-season games in response to the virus outbreak and the absence of playoff ticket income. The shortfall would have been an estimated $3 billion if the league didn’t engineer a bubble environment near Orlando, Fla., to find a way to finish its suspended season — at a cost of roughly $180 million.

It is smart business for any league, when possible, to make its broadcast partners happy. Just as establishing the bubble inside Disney World’s gates, rather than in Las Vegas or any other proposed locale, presumably only strengthened the NBA’s bond with Disney, moving up the timetable for next season for the networks’ benefit is another potentially grand gesture.

The league’s current TV contract with Disney and Turner runs through the 2024-25 season, but it’s not too early to start thinking about the next one — especially when there is so much negative noise about the NBA’s TV ratings.

— The league wants to give fans (and players) their summers back.

Starting the new season before Christmas would probably enable NBA players to participate in the Tokyo Olympics in July 2021. And several of the league’s top international players, such as Italy’s Danilo Gallinari, Marco Belinelli and Nicolo Melli and France’s Evan Fournier and Rudy Gobert, have said in recent weeks how important it is to them.

The league wants to make that happen, if possible, which would also prevent high-profile NBA playoff games from clashing with the Summer Games. But the bigger motivation for preventing the playoffs from straying too far into July is to avoid playing throughout the summer for a second successive season, while also

restoring free agency as the centerpiece of the NBA’s summer calendar.

League officials have publicly downplayed concerns about the recent ratings decline, pointing to the NBA’s mammoth social media following as a source of optimism about its broader appeal. Vocal critics — with little to no evidence — increasingly attribute the plunge to a leaguewide embrace of social justice causes, but the dip has had an effect even if there is no clear-cut explanation. Long-held fears among NBA traditionalists that the viewing audience will inevitably shrink after July appear to have been validated.

The bubble was a test run for those who have lobbied the league to move to a season that starts around Christmas and continues through the summer months to compete more with Major League Baseball rather than the NFL. Although numerous sports are contending with worrisome TV ratings, it was a setback for NBA change-seekers that Bubble Ball did not come close to approaching the ratings bonanza some were expecting.

Another inescapable truth: Players want their summers back, too. After the intense demands of the bubble, with the Lakers and the Heat forced to spend nearly 100 days on an isolated campus, Damian Lillard of the Portland Trail Blazers was most likely speaking for many of his peers when he said as much Sunday on Twitter.

— Making this move sets up the NBA for something resembling normalcy in 2021-22.

The sudden shift to a December start, even if it is accepted by the players, would create chaos across the league.

Twenty-two teams have been off since early September, but the Lakers and Miami were still playing less than three weeks ago and would face an unenviable turnaround. Rookies selected in the Nov. 18 NBA draft would find themselves in practice settings just days later, without the benefit of summer league to help with the transition. A compressed free agency is likely to begin before Thanksgiving and run concurrently alongside expedited training camps. And seven teams have new coaches who will be rushing to implement their systems — while Houston and Oklahoma City still have vacancies to fill.

It’s a given that the 2020-21 season can’t possibly proceed as smoothly as bubble life did. Even if the arenas are essentially empty, teams are determined to play in their home markets. Players, coaches and team staffers living at home and traveling would invite the same coronavirus-related risks and problems that have plagued the NFL this season.

But making sure the 2020-21 season ends in July at the latest would increase the NBA’s readiness for a traditional October-through-June run in 2021-22, which appears to be its next real opportunity to regain access to the crowds, sponsors and ancillary arena income that, as Silver said in May, typically accounts for 40 percent of the league’s annual revenue.

The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

29

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

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

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

(Mar 21-April 20)

You will soon be expanding your horizons.

You are ready for a challenge and for change. Accept the chance to take on new responsibilities. This may mean taking on duties of an absent colleague. Once you have adopted these into your work, you will be able to revise them to suit your situation better.

Taurus

The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

(April 21-May 21)

Your clever approach to an unexpected challenge will win you popularity. People will applaud your ideas as these will help save everyone time and money. Don’t be surprised if you are asked to take charge of a group project that hasn’t been making much progress. With your help, it will get moving once again.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

People often look to you to mediate when there are arguments. You will have no objections to helping sort out a quarrel between two people who are close to you. Just be careful not to get drawn in too deeply. Help them see it from each other’s perspective and then leave it to them to resolve their differences.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Don’t feel guilty about admitting to a need to take some time off and have a break from your usual responsibilities. Tasks take twice as long because your energy is running low. Taking a break will help refresh you and in the long run you will be able to get on top of your work more quickly when you return to it.

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

Be patient when talks about the future don’t go the way you are expecting. You may not get the results you are hoping for straight away but all is not lost. You are creating a good impression and people have gone away with lots to think about. Eventually they will come around to your way of thinking.

You’re ready to shop around for a few things you have not been able to find recently. This may have been through a lack of time and this is not something that will stand in your way now. A chance to browse over a wider field will help you find everything you are looking for.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

A social event will take you out of the area and this will make for a very pleasant change.

There may be fewer people getting together than would be normal but this won’t seem to matter. Just having a chance to be sociable while following safety guidelines will mean a lot to you.

There is only so much you can do in a day.

Routine chores are being neglected as you turn your attention to other more exciting areas. This is all very well in the short term but jobs will build up and could get too much to cope with if you push them aside for too long.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

After a strenuous few days it isn’t surprising that your energy is running low. You will need to recharge your batteries. Taking a short break from your usual responsibilities could be the ideal solution. You’re aware of all you have to do and are prepared to have this to return to.

In the workplace there’s little room for manoeuvre and things could get much tougher.

Are you single? An unexpected invitation from a friend could lead to a new romantic and passionate relationship. This will turn your emotional life upside down. You never expected to meet anyone new through a friend of a friend.

Virgo

Pisces

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Getting involved with a new group of people will be hard at first. Once you get to know everyone, your confidence will grow and you will find you are able to work alongside others in a team much better than you have done in the past. The reason for this is the high level of compatibility that exists between you all.

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

It may not be a sea of protestors but there will be enough people banding together to demand change to get the attention of those in high places. Protests make it clear that people aren’t happy with a situation. You need to decide where exactly you stand in all this.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

October 30-November 1, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

The San Juan Daily Star

Ziggy

32

The San Juan Daily Star

October 30-November 1, 2020

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$79

.00

Freezer Avanti 10pc

$749.00

Smart-tv-kit

$99

.00

TV Samsung 58” .00

$640

$69

Electric Instant Hot Water Heater .00

$130

Nevera Bizt 12pc

$589.00

Nintendo Switch con pagos desde .00

$20

$29.00

Nintendo Mini Games

$29

.00

$29.00

Gaming Headset

$39.00

PS4 Controller .00

Conair Kit

Bitz Stand Fan Turbo 5 aspas

$989.00

Nintendo Switch Controller desde .00

$49

Samsung Galaxy Tab A .00

$189

Samsung A10s

$149.00

$169.00

Desde

$499.00

Water Dispenser

LG Aire Acondicionado 8 a 10 BTU

$349.00

ENTREGA INMEDIATA A TODA LA ISLA, COMUNICATE POR TELÉFONO, NUESTRAS REDES SOCIALES, PARA CONOCER NUESTROS PRODUCTOS Y HACER TU PEDIDO