Wednesday Oct 7, 2020

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

San Juan The

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Guitar Hero Eddie Van Halen Dies at 65

Star

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Trying to Overcome Medicaid Crisis Governor Meets with US Health Officials to Discuss PR Funding Limbo

Gubernatorial Candidates Respond to Restaurant Industry Concerns

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NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

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US Supreme Court: Sorry, Governor.

Oversight Board Has More Say-So on PR Budget

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

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October 7, 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.

Gubernatorial candidates address concerns from the local restaurant industry

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o be more clear on what the next government will do for the island restaurant industry starting in January, the Puerto Rican Restaurant Association (ASORE by its Spanish acronym) held a forum Tuesday via Zoom where five of the six gubernatorial candidates agreed to present their proposals for helping the sector amid the national emergencies that have marked the current four-year term.

New Progressive Party (NPP) gubernatorial candidate Pedro Pierluisi, who recognized that the restaurant industry has gone “through challenging ideas” and acknowledged that “restaurants have been critical to enforcing safety protocols” to prevent the spread of coronavirus infections, said even though he thought that reducing the sales and use tax -- commonly known by its Spanish acronym IVU -- on prepared meals to 7 percent was a good idea, it would “be better to eliminate taxes on prepared meals.”

As for permitting transactions, the NPP president and former resident commissioner said “the government would be more effective and facilitating through auto certification for both restaurant and business owners” as there “there is still much inefficiency” in obtaining permits.

Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) candidate Juan Dalmau said meanwhile that one of the proposals for economic development in his Patria Nueva government plan is to establish a 10 percent income tax on all businesses located in Puerto Rico. The PIP senator said this would help “reduce local business tax rates by 20 percent because they pay more than 30 percent in income tax.”

Moreover, Dalmau said he was in favor of eliminating the inventory tax and increasing the minimum wage, although he understood that the latter would mean a sharp sting for the restaurant industry. He said however that an income-based tax system was necessary to alleviate local businesses from paying for governmental obligations because “we can’t take more from our citizens; more poor people would mean less economic injection and less consumption.”

Meanwhile, Dignity Project candidate César Vázquez said his proposal would be more focused on promoting employment on the island given that “Puerto Rico has some of the lowest employment rates within both the U.S. states and territories and some of the highest unemployment rates.”

The cardiologist added that his government plan would be focused on creating public policies “that control the entrance [to the island] of substances that produce solid waste” and provide “trustworthy electric power sources,” and freeing up federal funds for the island’s recovery, as “60 to 70 percent of funds from Hurricane Maria” have yet to be used.

Independent gubernatorial candidate Eliezer Molina said his government plan is a “re-evolution to transform Puerto Rico’s economy of consumption to an economy of production.” He said one of his goals is to create an Evaluation and Enforcement Office at La Fortaleza “to make sure that the money from Washington gets to the people.”

He insisted that neither the COVID-19 pandemic nor Hurricane Maria has been the obstacle because “we have been in this economic situation for more than 20 years.”

As for waste reduction, Molina said he would develop a recycling project “to produce electric power, raw materials, and income because I want to give value to waste.”

Citizen Victory Movement gubernatorial candidate Alexandra Lúgaro said one of her goals as governor is to develop an educational curriculum based on learning through problem solving to produce citizens who are capable of finding “integral solutions” to the island’s issues and increase production, “given that 97 percent of the island’s economy is consumer-based.”

Lúgaro said further that “I would allocate 600,000 acres for farming to grow fresh fruits and vegetables based on the island’s local diet and for hemp production” to provide farmers with better income and restaurants with locally sourced ingredients.

At the last minute, Popular Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate Carlos Delgado Altieri canceled his participation in ASORE’s virtual forum. He was supposed to be the first candidate to present his proposals.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Governor, US health officials meet to discuss PR Medicaid funding crisis

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

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ov. Wanda Vázquez Garced met Tuesday with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Region 2 Director Anthony C. Ferreri, regional administrators, and representatives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services at the Region 2 New York City office to discuss Puerto Rico’s healthcare system and the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the meetings, the governor was joined by Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration (PRFAA) Executive Director Jennifer M. Storipan and island Health Secretary Lorenzo González Feliciano.

The governor discussed the island’s Medicaid program, the central government’s response during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic emergency, and additional ways to strengthen Puerto Rico’s health care system.

For the past two years, the Puerto Rico government, with assistance from the PRFAA, has focused and directed its efforts toward providing the people of Puerto Rico with a fair and just healthcare system with an increase

in the allocation of federal funds assigned to the island’s Medicaid program.

Nonetheless, after receiving a historic sum of $5.5 billion for the island’s Medicaid program in December 2019 for fiscal years (FY) 2020 and 2021, a portion of the funds appropriated for FY 2020 are currently at risk because of the many circumstances that have affected Puerto Rico, delaying the process of utilizing those funds.

Those circumstances range from the island’s receiving the funds three months into the start of the federal fiscal year, to the Financial Oversight and Management Board’s refusal to raise the Puerto Rico poverty level to expand the base of coverage, and the island’s current struggles with COVID-19.

Thus the governor called for Tuesday’s meeting to discuss ways to work with the federal government to maximize the island’s usage of the aforementioned funds.

“I want to assure the people of Puerto Rico that I will do all that is in my power to guarantee them the health care system they deserve,” Vázquez said. “In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges the island is confronting, we must fight even

harder to have access to these funds that will keep our people and their loved ones safe. We have advised Congress on the many challenges affecting our island, particularly the usage of these assigned federal funds; however, I am confident that the outcome of the meetings we are conducting will be of benefit to our island, and we can revisit those conversations.”

Storipan added that “[u]nder my tenure, PRFAA has worked tirelessly with the governor to increase the federal funding for Puerto

Rico’s Medicaid program culminating with the increased funding and FMAP [Federal Medical Assistance Percentage] received at the end of last year.”

“While we have had some setbacks in utilizing the money, we continue to direct our efforts to maximizing federal funds received and providing a health care system that is fair and efficient for those who need it the most,” she said.

Vázquez also met Tuesday with the Region 2 administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Tom Von Essen, who indicated that in addition to the historic assignment of close to $13 billion for the island’s electric power and educational systems, more jobs and aid are being discussed for Puerto Rico.

“We appreciate the opportunity to meet with Tom Von Essen at the FEMA office to ensure the continuity of work between the government of Puerto Rico and the federal government, especially now that we have just been awarded the historic amount for our electric power and education system,” the governor said. “We will continue working together on the reconstruction of Puerto Rico.”

PDP leaders accuse resident commissioner of discriminatory voting pattern in Congress

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

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opular Democratic Party (PDP) Rep. Luis Vega Ramos, along with PDP House of Representatives at-large candidate Keyliz Méndez and San Juan District 4 candidate Manuel Calderón Cerame accused Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón on Tuesday of supporting President Donald Trump’s “agenda of hate, discrimination, and corruption.”

Vega Ramos said during a press conference at PDP headquarters in San Juan’s Puerta de Tierra sector that González Colón’s legislative voting record in the U.S. House of Representatives showed “discrimination against minorities, discrimination against Mexicans, discrimination against Puerto Ricans, discrimination against women, discrimination against the LGBTT community.”

The PDP lawmaker and legislative candidates revealed documents where González Colón did not show up for the voting session, despite being in Congress, when a proposal by New York Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Córtez (D-N.Y.) was being considered that sought to prohibit the use of the

armed forces against immigrants and their children at a time of heightening tensions on the United States-Mexico border due to the number of people crossing to American soil in search of better opportunities.

“We already know that, for a whole year, she hid from the country that on July 11, 2019, at 2:04 in the afternoon, while the Department of Defense budget was being considered, she voted against an amendment presented by California Democratic congresswoman Jackie Speier that established a prohibition on including criteria related to the race, color, national origin, religion or sex -- including gender identity or sexual orientation -- of an individual when occupying positions and serving in the armed forces,” Vega Ramos said, adding that the bill passed with 242 votes in favor and 187 votes against, González Colón’s vote included.

Vega Ramos, who is running for an atlarge seat in the Puerto Rico Senate, said González Colón voted against another proposal that would extend the prohibition on contracting with the federal government to the president, vice president, and members of the cabinet as a response to the scandal involving the receipt of funds

for the use of hotels owned by the Republican president. Furthermore, he said, the resident commissioner did not participate in a vote on requiring the executive branch to provide all the necessary guidelines and resources to protect airport Transportation Security Administration workers, which includes Puerto Rico, and refused to vote on a measure to establish stricter controls under the Environmental Protection Agency on the use by multinational companies of chemicals in consumer products that reach the 50 states and Puerto Rico.

“The Republican Jenniffer González owes an explanation to the people of Puerto Rico and the Hispanic community in the United States, on whom she turned her back,” Vega Ramos said.

Meanwhile, Calderón Cerame said the resident commissioner has “always shone for her complicity with the New Progressive Party [NPP] and with the Republicans when it comes to violating people’s rights.”

“We cannot forget that when the NPP and [then-Gov.] Ricardo Rosselló eliminated gender perspective from the education curriculum in our schools, implemented by the [previous] PDP ad-

ministration and [former Gov.] Alejandro García Padilla, Jenniffer was silent and said nothing,” he said. “As recently as yesterday, Monday, at a press conference, the [resident] commissioner, in her customary style of throwing mud at her political adversaries, stated that ‘that is what happens when one is not consistent with the things that one believes, when one is not honest with people,’ and today I demand that Jenniffer apply her own words and stop being dishonest with our people.”

Méndez urged NPP president and gubernatorial candidate Pedro Pierluisi to express himself and say if he endorses the positions of his running mate or if, on the contrary, she said, he is going to take her to task as islanders expect.

“The same thing happened when voting against extending the prohibitions on hiring high-ranking officials with the federal government while they hold public office, which is contradictory to the anticorruption discourse that she [González Colón] proclaims on the island,” Mendez said. “Here she talks about the environment and the workers, but there [in Congress], when it comes to voting for that legislation, she disappears.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

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US Supreme Court declines to hear case on oversight board’s budget powers

By THE STAR STAFF

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he United States Supreme Court has declined to hear the Puerto Rican government’s challenge to the budget powers of the U.S. commonwealth’s oversight board.

In May, Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced appealed a U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that upheld the ban imposed by the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico that prevents the island government from reprogramming unspent money from earlier years to fund unapproved expenditures. The appeals court found that the government had no right to spend money that wasn’t approved by the board, even if they were using unspent money from previous years.

The top court in the land announced Monday it had denied the governor’s petition.

Meanwhile, a Puerto Rico bond insurer has asked the U.S. District Court for an independent investigation into potential trading of Puerto Rico general obligation (GO) debt during Title III proceedings in violation of court confidentiality orders.

National Finance Corp. also wants the court to determine if confidentiality agreements were violated.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the oversight board is renegotiating the commonwealth’s plan support

agreement (PSA), which was reached in February. On Sept. 30, the board made public proposed agreements, which have been discussed.

Court-ordered financial disclosures from bondholders indicate that hedge funds involved in the renegotiations of the commonwealth’s PSA to take into account the economic impact of COVID-19 significantly increased their exposure to bonds that increased in value as a result of the agreement, National says.

“While participating in the court-ordered mediation, certain hedge fund creditors may have engaged in improper trading in the debtors’ debt securities,

realizing significant profits and improperly positioning themselves to negotiate based on illegitimate incentives and motives,” said a motion filed Tuesday by National requesting an independent investigation.

According to National, July disclosures that clarified the nature of bonds held by various hedge funds indicate that some members of the hedge fund groups were “very likely” purchasing commonwealth bonds that they had previously maintained were invalid.

National says members of a group of hedge funds referred to as the Lawful Constitutional Debt Coalition (LCDC) significantly increased their holdings of challenged late vintage GO bonds, which are those from before 2013. LCDC was among the groups that had argued those bonds were invalid.

Although LCDC did not officially change its position on the validity of the bonds, it did ultimately accept an agreement that significantly increased recovery for those bonds, National said.

“The supplemental 2019 disclosures raise very serious concerns,” the motion states. “They show that some members of the hedge fund groups were likely trading the bonds at the same time they were negotiating in the mediation the treatment of and recoveries for holders of those bonds, and in particular, the bonds receiving better treatment in the New PSA than in the Initial PSA.”

Skeel Jr. named oversight board’s chairman

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

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he Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico on Tuesday appointed board member and professor of corporate law and bankruptcy,

David Skeel Jr.

David Skeel Jr., as chairman of the board, effective immediately.

Skeel will replace outgoing board member José Carrión III whose tenure as chairman and Board member of the board ended Tuesday.

“I am grateful to have been appointed to this position and I continue the mission of the Financial Oversight Board for the benefit of the people of Puerto Rico,” Skeel said in a written statement.

The other three remaining members of the oversight board -- Arthur González, Ana Matosantos and Andrew Biggs -- voted unanimously in favor of Skeel’s appointment. Natalie Jaresko, the board’s executive director, did not vote.

Prior to Carrión’s departure, two other past board members, Carlos García and José Ramón González, resigned from the board after serving for more than three years.

“It is an honor to continue working with my fellow Board members and Executive Director Natalie Jaresko to help steer Puerto Rico’s fiscal and economic environment toward a brighter future,” Skeel said. “Sure, it will be impossible to fill José’s shoes, but I look forward to taking the responsibility steadily into the future.”

Skeel is an S. Samuel Arsht professor of corporate law at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, a

position he has held since 2004 after joining the university in 1999. From 1990 to 1998, Skeel taught at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, while also teaching at Temple University, where he was associate professor from 1993 to 1998 and adjunct professor from 1990 to 1993. Skeel received a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a juris doctor degree from the University of Virginia.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

NPP lawmaker asks governor to reopen ‘chinchorros’

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

C

iting the precarious economic situation in the western region of Puerto Rico given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rep. José “Che” Pérez Cordero asked Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced on Tuesday to allow the reopening, with strict health and safety measures, of businesses known as “chinchorros” (roadside stands).

“The western region of our island is one of the most affected by the measures imposed to combat COVID-19,” said Pérez Cordero, who represents District 18 (Aguada, Añasco, Moca, Rincón and Mayagüez) in a written statement.

“Our economy is in danger, so we ask the Governor to amend the current Executive Order so that the operations of these businesses, the ‘chinchorros,’ are allowed. This reopening has to be done under the strictest health protocols, including work plans developed by experts such as epidemiologists and

with the support of municipal governments; since these businesses are small operations, generally the owners manage and even work at them.”

“These businesses have been closed for months and many of them can’t take it any longer and will be forced to close operations permanently, leaving many people out of work, and that cannot be allowed [to happen],” added the New Progressive Party legislator, who chairs the House Legal Committee. “Those

who operate these small businesses are parents whose only support is the [chinchorros]. Likewise, the municipalities receive income from the operations of the ‘chinchorros,’ income that is necessary now more than ever to deal with the pandemic and its effects. The vast majority of these stands are openair establishments, which can operate under the standards of other similar businesses and under [extensive] and continuous regulation of agencies such

as the Department of Health.”

With his appeal to the governor, Pérez Cordero joined the request made a few weeks ago by Coamo Mayor Juan Carlos García Padilla, who also asked that the chinchorros be reopened.

Puerto Rico’s economy has contracted severely since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March. According to data from the island Planning Board, in the first seven months of the year sales were 11.4 percent below those of the same period last year. Small businesses saw a decrease in sales of 21.7 percent.

A chinchorro is usually operated by a single family that depends on the income generated by the establishment.

Although there are no exact statistics, according to the statement, the chinchorro businesses in the island’s western region employ between 3,000 and 5,000 people directly and indirectly.

Chinchorros across the island, including in the San Juan metro area, have been affected as well.

DDEC issues request for proposals for ocean energy park in Yabucoa

By THE STAR STAFF

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conomic Development and Commerce (DDEC by its Spanish acronym) Secretary Manuel A. Laboy Rivera announced on Tuesday the start of the request for proposals process for companies that have prequalified to develop PROtech, a regional industrial park in the eastern municipality ofYabucoa that is expected to generate revenue through manufacturers working with seawater for ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC).

“Since 2017, we have worked with dedication and determination in the preparation of the PROtech master plan, which will be the starting point for investing in the efforts of industries related to the oceans and create the necessary technologies for the energy transition from conventional [sources] and fuels, to more responsible and sustainable energy alternatives,” Laboy Rivera said in a statement. “A few weeks ago, we shortlisted the companies: WSP USA Building, Inc./ Marvel Marchand, Agru América, Energy Center Cajuhu LLC, through a Request for

Qualifications process.This project will be a great opportunity for the development of multiple economic and research sectors.”

PROtech is a comprehensive and innovative project that will use the water from the Yabucoa coast and the energy it produces to develop multiple eco-friendly and scientific research projects from the southeast of Puerto Rico. Those interested in submitting their development plans must be highly qualified entities with experience and the ability to design, build, finance, operate and maintain the cutting-edge project, the statement said.

The DDEC secretary saidYabucoa was selected because it meets the necessary characteristics for developing a project of this scope. A similar existing project in Hawaii was used as a reference in the development of PROtech’s master plan.

Based on this model, Technical Consulting, Estudios Técnicos, Makai Engineering and Integra carried out a feasibility study in Puerto Rico. It is estimated that some $300 million will be needed for construction.

It is not clear yet how the project will be funded. In 1981, the Puerto

Economic Development and Commerce Secretary Manuel A. Laboy Rivera.

Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) already had a concrete plan to begin the construction of an OTEC plant in the island’s southeastern region. In December of that year, PREPA submitted a proposal to the U.S. Department of Energy to develop the first such plant in Puerto Rico. However, the PREPA project

depended on federal funds, and once the White House administration changed in 1980, the new president, Ronald Reagan, dismissed the development of this type of energy and favored the development of nuclear and fossil fuel energy. The program was immediately shut down.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

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Trump compares pandemic to flu season, further undermining public health messages

By GINA KOLATA and GLENN THRUSH

A

day after exhorting Americans to overcome their fear of the pandemic, an ailing President Donald Trump cast the crisis as a state-of-mind problem Tuesday morning, saying the country is “learning to live” with the virus — and likening it, as he is done in the past, to the flu.

Public health experts had hoped that Trump, chastened by his own infection and alarmed by the cases that have erupted among his staff members, would act decisively to persuade his supporters that wearing masks and social distancing were essential public health safeguards.

Instead, the president has continued his yearlong pattern of downplaying the deadly threat, tweeting on Monday from the military hospital where he had been receiving stateof-the-art treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

“Don’t be afraid of Covid,” he wrote, shortly before flying back to the White House late Monday. “Don’t let it dominate your life.”

The president was back at it again first thing Tuesday, taking toTwitter to offer a mixed message that combined the boilerplate of a public service announcement with his little-to-fear-but-fear-itself

spin on a pandemic that has killed more than 210,000 Americans.

“Flu season is coming up!” wrote Trump.

“Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu,” he added, echoing, if not quite repeating, his earlier false claims that COVID-19 was comparable in lethality to the seasonal influenza, which experts say is much less deadly than the coronavirus.

“Are we going to close down our Country?

No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!”

UponTrump’s return Monday evening from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, he climbed the steps of the White House, turned to face the TV cameras that were carrying the news live, and removed his mask.

He appeared to breathe with difficulty, but his respiration seemed less labored in a directto-camera video he taped shortly after.

The president’s comments and actions over the past few days have drawn outrage from scientists, ethicists and doctors, as well as from some people whose relatives and friends have died. They come about a month after journalist

Bob Woodward disclosed that he knew the virus was far more deadly than the flu soon after the pandemic emerged as a national threat this spring.

Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical School in Tennessee, called the president’s

message “dangerous” because it encouraged his followers to ignore basic recommendations to keep themselves safe.

“I am struggling for words — this is crazy,” said Harald Schmidt, an assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It is just utterly irresponsible.”

Kellyanne Conway and Attorney General William Barr at the White House in Washington, following Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court, Sept. 26, 2020.

Barr plans to return to Justice Dept. after negative Coronavirus test results

By KATIE BENNER

A

ttorney General William Barr did not plan to get a coronavirus test Monday after receiving negative results from four tests and was likely to return to work at the Justice Department this week, his spokeswoman said.

Barr, who had attended an event at the White House on Sept. 26 linked to the outbreak, quarantined himself over the weekend and was at home Monday with no symptoms, said the spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec.

She said that Barr would get tested​Tuesday and was likely to return to the office Wednesday.

That would be before the end of the 14-day quarantine period recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as Justice Department guidelines, but Kupec said the attorney general was considered a critical worker exempt from the CDC guidelines.

Kupec said Barr, 70, “routinely wears masks and takes a variety of precautions” at the office.

Some department employees expressed

anger at Barr’s decisions, saying that his leadership example indicated that he did not take the threat of the virus seriously, according to five employees who would not be named discussing Barr’s approach to the virus for fear of retribution.

Asked about the criticism, Kupec said that as the nation’s chief federal law enforcement officer, Barr was considered a critical worker under the CDC guidance. It says that essential workers “may be permitted to continue work following potential exposure to COVID-19, provided they remain asymptomatic and additional precautions are implemented to protect them and the community.”

Precautions include wearing a mask at all times in the workplace, social distancing, regular temperature checks and continued testing. “​Even with this flexibility, out of an abundance of caution, he has remained home since Friday other than to get tested and attend the meeting at t​he Justice Department​on Friday morning​,” Kupec said.

In President Donald Trump’s own battle with the coronavirus, his oxygen levels have

dropped, and he has taken experimental drugs and a steroid. He left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday.

After Trump revealed early Friday that he had tested positive for the virus, Barr took a rapid test each day and took an additional diagnostic test called a PCR test, and made their results public. Through the weekend, his tests came back negative, Kupec said.

Barr also decided to reduce his schedule to one meeting Friday and to self-quarantine at home over the weekend, she said.

Kupec said Monday that Barr had not had any contact with Trump for nine days, when both men attended a reception at the White House for the president’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

Several Republican leaders and others who attended the reception have since learned they have the virus, including Trump; the first lady, MelaniaTrump; Sens. Mike Lee of Utah andThom Tillis of North Carolina; John Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame; Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey; and Kellyanne

Conway, a former counselor to the president.

Barr was photographed standing in proximity to Conway at the reception, during which neither person wore a mask.

According to the Justice Department’s coronavirus guidance, “individuals ill with, or exposed to individuals with COVID-19, should self-quarantine for 14 days.”

The event for Barrett also seemed to have violated Washington’s guidance for gatherings during the pandemic. More than 150 people attended; Mayor Muriel Bowser has stipulated that no private gatherings should exceed 50 people and that attendees must wear masks, particularly in spaces where they cannot remain 6 feet apart.

Attendees sat close together in chairs set up in the White House Rose Garden as they listened to speeches, and few wore masks. At a reception inside the White House, guests were photographed without masks, standing close together to hug or talk.

Kupec did not comment on why Barr did not comply with the city guidelines for gatherings while at the reception.

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Wednesday, October 7, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

White House blocks new Coronavirus vaccine guidelines

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows speaks to reporters at the White House in Washington, Oct. 2, 2020. Top White House officials are blocking strict new federal guidelines for the emergency release of a coronavirus vaccine, objecting to a provision that would almost certainly guarantee that no vaccine could be authorized before the election on Nov. 3, according to people familiar with the approval process.

By SHARON LaFRANIERE and NOAH WEILAND

T

op White House officials are blocking strict new federal guidelines for the emergency release of a coronavirus vaccine, objecting to a provision that would almost certainly guarantee that no vaccine could be authorized before the election Nov. 3, according to people familiar with the approval process.

Facing a White House blockade, the Food and Drug Administration is seeking other avenues to ensure that vaccines meet the guidelines. That includes sharing the standards — perhaps as soon as this week — with an outside advisory committee of experts that is supposed to meet publicly before any vaccine is authorized for emergency use.

The hope is that the committee will enforce the guidelines, regardless of the White House’s reaction.

The struggle over the guidelines is part of a monthslong tug of war between the White House and federal agencies on the front lines of the pandemic response. White House officials have repeatedly intervened to shape decisions and public announcements in ways that paint the administration’s response to the pandemic in a positive light.

That pattern has dismayed a growing number of career officials and political appointees involved in the adminis-

tration’s fight against a virus that has claimed more than 209,000 lives in the United States.

The vaccine guidelines carry special significance: By refusing to allow the Food and Drug Administration to release them, the White House is undercutting the government’s effort to reassure the public that any vaccine will be safe and effective, health experts fear.

“The public must have full faith in the scientific process and the rigor of FDA’s regulatory oversight if we are to end the pandemic,” the biotech industry’s trade association pleaded Thursday, in a letter to President Donald Trump’s health secretary, Alex Azar, asking for release of the guidelines.

The Food and Drug Administration submitted the guidelines to the Office of Management and Budget for approval more than two weeks ago, but they stalled in the office of Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff.

Their approval is now seen as highly unlikely.

A main sticking point has been the recommendation that volunteers who have participated in vaccine clinical trials be followed for a median of two months after the final dose before any authorization is granted, according to a senior administration official and others familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Given where the clinical trials stand, that two-month follow-up

period would all but preclude any emergency clearance before Election Day. The conflict began almost as soon as the Food and Drug Administration submitted the guidelines to the White House budget office Monday, Sept. 21. The next day, Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, the FDA commissioner, briefed Azar on the matter.

That Wednesday, Meadows raised a series of concerns, a senior administration official said. He questioned the need for two months of follow-up data, said that stricter recommendations would change the rules in the middle of clinical trials and suggested that Hahn was overly influenced by his agency’s career scientists. The White House on Monday did not respond to a request for comment.

Speaking to reporters Sept. 23, Trump publicly cast doubt on whether the guidance would be approved. “We may or may not approve it,” he said, suggesting that the regulatory action “was a political move more than anything else.”

FDA officials later provided additional justification to the White House, explaining that the two-month follow-up was necessary to identify possible side effects and ensure that a vaccine’s protection against COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, was not short-lived. But they have been unable to break the stalemate.

The testing and release of a vaccine is an issue that has gained wide national attention. Trump has repeatedly misrepresented how quickly a vaccine might be available to most Americans, promising a major breakthrough in vaccine development as early as this month. No clinical trial in the United States has yet advanced far enough to prove that any vaccine is safe and effective, although Pfizer, one vaccine developer, is hoping for interim results soon from its trial.

The Food and Drug Administration’s new guidelines were intended to assure companies developing vaccines that they were being held to a common standard and to reassure the public. Polls suggest that Americans are increasingly wary about taking a coronavirus vaccine: A survey published last month by the Pew Research Center found that 51% of Americans would either probably or definitely take one, down from 72% in May. Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA’s top regulator for vaccines, said last week in an event organized by Friends of Cancer Research that the government had to be transparent about the standards it was using to evaluate experimental vaccines in order to build public trust. He and other health officials have stressed that the companies developing vaccines are already fully aware of the agency’s expectations for products seeking authorization for emergency use.

Azar on Friday played down the conflict with the White House, telling a House panel that those concerned about its involvement in the guidelines were making “a mountain out of a molehill.”

“What the commissioner is proposing to put out is public emergency use authorization guidance on a vaccine that would be consistent with letters already sent to the manufacturers,” Azar said. “The FDA has already told the manufacturers what they’re going to look for.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

9

What it’s like living in 9 parts of New York facing a new lockdown

Students get their temperature taken outside Edward R. Murrow High School on Monday, Oct. 5, 2020, in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn, where cases of the coronavirus have been rising.

By MICHAEL GOLD

F

or as long as the coronavirus pandemic has stalked New York City, Tatsiana Vazgryna has been looking for work near her home in southern Brooklyn.

After a halting search, the last week brought some hope. With her 9-year-old daughter returning to in-person public school, Vazgryna thought she would have time to prioritize her job search over child care.

Then, on Sunday, Vazgryna learned that Mayor Bill de Blasio, worried about an uptick of cases in parts of Brooklyn and Queens, planned to close schools in nine ZIP codes. Her daughter’s elementary school in Bensonhurst would be among those shut, giving Vazgryna less time to visit stores and restaurants for work.

“You can’t do that with school,” she said.

As positive test rates rose in a number of city neighborhoods, residents of the affected areas faced growing fear over another wave of the virus and uncertainty over officials’ plans to address it.

On Sunday, de Blasio announced a plan to close all schools and nonessential businesses in nine ZIP codes in Brooklyn and Queens where there had been an uptick, essentially rolling back the city’s cautious reopening.

Then on Monday afternoon, Gov. Andrew Cuomo effectively preempted the mayor’s plan, saying he would keep businesses open in those areas but allow schools to be closed. An hour

later, de Blasio said the matter was unsettled and city officials were still planning to close businesses “until we hear otherwise.”

The back and forth between the governor and the mayor, only the latest instance of a rocky relationship that has marked their tenures, left residents of the neighborhoods in limbo over how exactly their lives may be altered in the coming days.

But even without clarity, those residents

were still staggering from a potential shutdown that threatened to reverse the progress that New York City has made in the months since it was a global epicenter of the pandemic.

“Just when we thought we had a little life again, we’re going back to a living hell,” said Shonna Hawes, an event designer who lives in Kew Gardens, Queens.

Across Brooklyn and Queens, people expressed frustration at the disconnect between the governor and the mayor, and at how their lives could be upended.

“Nothing has been consistent,” Susan Chan, 42, said. Hours after the governor’s announcement, she had to rush to her son’s school in Bensonhurst to pick up his books for remote learning.

“I was hoping my kids would get at least two weeks in the building,” she added.

For weeks, New York City’s Health Department has warned that COVID-19 was spreading more quickly in several neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens with large populations of Orthodox Jews where city officials have struggled to persuade people to adhere to public health guidelines.

Some residents complained that for months they had seen their ultra-Orthodox neighbors without face coverings.

“You don’t want to be vindictive, you don’t want to call the police, but what am I to do?”

Hawes said. “It’s very upsetting, because now people are freaking out.”

The announcement that schools would be closing marked the first major setback in

People on Monday, Oct. 5, 2020, in Kew Gardens, Queens, one of the neighborhoods where the city was planning to roll back the reopening.

officials’ efforts to stem the pandemic in New York, which had seen months of declining or flat transmission rates after a devastating and deadly spring.

With leaders encouraged by weeks of low rates of positive test results, the city took further steps toward reopening last month, finally allowing indoor dining for the first time after months of delay and becoming the first major school district in the United States to bring children back into public schools.

The mayor’s plan, if fully implemented, would ultimately impose new restrictions in 21 of the city’s 146 ZIP codes, beginning Wednesday.

In nine of them, where positivity rates have been higher than 3%, all public and private schools will be required to close as of Tuesday, Cuomo said.

Those nine ZIP codes include portions of Far Rockaway and Kew Gardens in Queens, and Borough Park, Midwood, Gravesend, Bensonhurst and Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn.

De Blasio is also seeking to close all nonessential businesses in those areas and to forbid indoor and outdoor dining. In 12 other ZIP codes, de Blasio is seeking to allow schools to remain open but ban indoor dining and close gyms.

Those ZIP codes include parts of Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Manhattan Beach, Bergen Beach, Kensington and Crown Heights in Brooklyn; and Rego Park, Fresh Meadows, Hillcrest, Jamaica Estates and Forest Hills in Queens.

The state has not yet approved those parts of the mayor’s plan.

In Orthodox communities in the affected ZIP codes, public health officials have said that efforts to boost mask wearing and social distancing have been met with skepticism and defiance.

Many of the areas covered under the mayor’s plans have considerable numbers of residents who are not Jewish, and new restrictions could increase tensions between them and Orthodox Jews.

Mark Carter, 60, a maintenance man who lives in Far Rockaway, said there was already some friction between parts of the neighborhood where people were wearing masks and other sections where the majority did not.

De Blasio has largely avoided singling out the Jewish community in his statements. In a television interview Monday, he refuted the idea that the rise in cases was being driven by Jewish yeshivas more than other gathering places.

“It is a bigger issue across these nine ZIP codes that really have a wide range, diverse range of NewYorkers in them,” de Blasio said on CNN.

10

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

In Louisville, looking to protests of the past to move forward

The police killing of Breonna Taylor has thrust Louisville, Ky., back into a longtime battle for racial justice.

By JOHN ELIGON and WILL WRIGHT

T

hey gathered near the banks of the Ohio River last weekend, about 100 deep, and began marching toward downtown, belting out chants that have become part of the city’s soundtrack.

“Bre-on-na Tay-lor!” “I love being Black!”

When they reached Jefferson Square Park, where protesters have held vigil since late May, the demonstrators lit candles, laid flowers and offered words that were by turns meant to soothe and to rally.

“Louisville has always responded to get justice,” said Raoul Cunningham, 77, president of the city’s branch of the NAACP, who participated in sit-ins in 1961 that helped lead to the integration of commercial businesses. “I think today’s demonstrations are a continuation or even an advancement of that quest,” he said.

As activists work to chart a path forward after prosecutors announced that the two Louisville police officers who fatally shot Breonna Taylor would not be charged, some are drawing on the city’s past to help guide them. Louisville has a robust, if overlooked, history of civil rights struggle that has spanned generations. Many see what is happening today as a continuation of that legacy.

During the civil rights movement, Louisville was a regular stop for Martin Luther King Jr., whose brother served as a pastor in the city. There were sit-ins, pickets and marches that led to landmark victories: It was the first major city in the South to pass local civil rights and fair housing ordinances, and it was the rare Southern city to peacefully integrate its schools after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

The 1970s brought a violent clash over the use of busing to integrate schools. In the ’80s there was so much labor unrest that Louisville became known as Strike City.

In the nearly two weeks since the prosecution’s announcement, the street rallies have shrunk and the national news media has largely left. But marches are still happening nearly every night, as they have been for more than four months. An array of new activist organizations grew out of the response, created in part by many young people protesting for the first time. Together with legacy civil rights groups, they are pressing Taylor’s case on several fronts — advocating for legal consequences for the officers, public awareness, and state and local legislative changes.

The city is working to create a civilian oversight board that is stronger than the one currently overseeing the Police Department.

A local ordinance, known as “Breonna’s Law,” was passed banning no-knock warrants and expanding the requirements for the use of police body cameras. Attica Scott, a state representative, is sponsoring similar legislation at the state level that would also allow lawsuits against officials who violate a person’s civil rights, and would require drug and alcohol testing for officers after fatal encounters.

In the mid-20th century, Louisville was the stop for trains coming from the North where Black passengers had to move to the “colored cars” before continuing their southward journey, said Tracy E. K’Meyer, a historian at the University of Louisville and the author of “Civil Rights in the Gateway to the South.” But it also was the place where organized labor as well as liberal churches helped to produce a civil rights movement that was relatively interracial for its time.

“One of the things the ’60s era sort of bequeathed to us is a sort of playbook for activism,” K’Meyer said. “Some of my younger students, especially some of my more radical younger students, will say, ‘We’re not like them. We’re different from what they did back in the ’60s,’ while doing pretty much exactly what they did back in the ’60s.”

Some older movement leaders say that the younger generation has shown less patience at times, and that the current activist efforts can seem chaotic.

Shameka Parrish-Wright, a co-chair of the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, has been helping to guide some of the younger activists.

“They’re still reacting,” Parrish-Wright, 43, said.

“They’re still processing and they’re doing it out loud.”

Parrish-Wright helped to set up the encampment in the downtown square — which activists now call Injustice Square Park — in late May when protesters began flooding the streets of Louisville. Taylor was killed in March at age 26, but her case only started receiving national attention in May after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The 40-year-old Alliance runs its operations out of the two-story Craftsman home where one of its founders, Anne Braden, who was white and died in 2006, lived in Louisville’s predominantly Black West End. Inside the home there is a clutter of cases of water and other supplies donated to support the protesters. Large yellow sheets of paper propped on an easel have lists of protest “demands” and “wins,” such as the ban on no-knock warrants.

Protesters have said they want more to come out of this moment, but as they continue to push, activists are encountering resistant public officials and internal disagreements that threaten to thwart their efforts.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

11

How Facebook and Twitter handled Trump’s ‘Don’t be afraid of COVID’ post

By MIKE ISAAC

F

acebook and Twitter have pledged to keep their networks safe from misinformation about the coronavirus to protect the public’s health. But Monday, the sites were tested when President Donald Trump posted that people should not be afraid of the disease.

“Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of COVID. Don’t let it dominate your life,” Trump wrote on his Facebook and Twitter pages, saying he would be discharged from the Walter Reed military hospital after being treated there for COVID-19 the last few days. “I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”

Medical experts immediately took issue with the post. More than 200,000 Americans have died from the virus, and more than 35 million cases have been reported around the world. Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said Trump’s tweet was “breathtakingly callous, inhumane & counterproductive.” Dr. Bernard P. Chang of Columbia University’s Department of Emergency Medicine warned that people should remain afraid of the virus.

But Facebook and Twitter did nothing about Trump’s post, even though the companies have publi-

cized their coronavirus misinformation policies.

Facebook has said it does not allow coronavirus posts that can lead to direct physical harm, and will redirect people to a COVID-19 information center.

Twitter also removes only posts that contain demonstrably false information with the “highest likelihood of leading to physical harm.”

For Facebook and Twitter, these details matter.

They are paying close attention to whether or not Trump is giving a specific direction or command to engage in an activity that could immediately put people in danger. When he suggested in April that experts look into whether people could inject disinfectant to fight off the coronavirus, Facebook and Twitter used the same yardstick and took no action to remove clips and posts about the unproven treatment.

Trump and his director of social media, Dan Scavino, have hewed closely to the line of what is allowed on various social media accounts over the past four years, seemingly pushing the envelope as far as possible without inciting the tech companies to take punitive action.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment. A Twitter spokesman said the tweet did not violate the company’s rules since it did not include a

clear call to action that could potentially cause realworld harm.

By Monday evening, Trump’s tweet and Facebook post on COVID-19 had been viewed by more than 1 million people across both networks. Trump later posted a video reiterating that people should not let the virus dominate their lives. “Get out there,” he said. “The vaccines are coming momentarily.”

Far right sees ‘miracle’ in Trump’s outing. Medical experts see recklessness.

By DAVEY ALBA

P

resident Donald Trump’s decision to drive by wellwishers outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Sunday was widely criticized by medical experts as irresponsible for unnecessarily exposing Secret Service agents inside the vehicle to the virus.

“By taking a joy ride outside Walter Reed the president is placing his Secret Service detail at grave risk,” tweeted Dr. Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University. “This is the height of irresponsibility.”

Yet many far-right commenters called it something else: a miracle. They said it was evidence that the president was overcoming his illness from the coronavirus.

The Gateway Pundit, a website notorious for regularly spreading misinformation and falsehoods, published an article calling Trump’s drive-by to greet fans a “miracle in Maryland.”

“I believe in miracles,” said another tweet Sunday afternoon, after Trump’s doctor said he could return to the White House as early as Monday. “We are going to see another one in November!”

Others reposted and repeated Trump’s own words

in a video he released Saturday that his hospitalization and process of recovery constituted a “miracle from God coming down.”

Alex Plitsas, vice chairman of the Fairfield Republican Town Committee in Connecticut and a onetime contributor to the conservative news and opinion site The Daily Caller, said the people criticizing Trump’s trip past supporters Sunday were hypocritical. He said that they advocated wearing masks to stop the spread of the virus, but that when Trump wore one they said that was not enough to please them.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization say face coverings are a safeguard but not an absolute guarantee of stopping transmission — especially in a small, sealed space like a vehicle occupied by a person known to be infected, as was the case Sunday.

Plitsas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Greg Price, another contributor to The Daily Caller, said the Secret Service agents accompanying Trump during the drive-by had always been at risk because they have been around the president during his bout of illness.

“The point of my tweet was that the safety of the agents didn’t become a big story until President Trump did the drive-by,” Price said in a direct message Monday.

Dr. James Phillips, an attending physician at Walter Reed, said the specific situation of being in a sealed vehicle increased the agents’ risk.

“Presidential SUV is not only bulletproof, but hermetically sealed against chemical attack,” he tweeted.

He added that the risk of COVID-19 transmission was “as high as it gets outside of medical procedures.”

The CDC says cloth face coverings help prevent the person wearing the mask from spreading COVID-19 to others, but it does not say wearing a mask fully prevents the spread of the virus. The drive angered some members of the Secret Service, The Washington Post reported.

“Many of the statements that are being pushed by Trump’s supporters have been debunked by medical experts, but at this time, no one is being rational,” said Claire Wardle, executive director of First Draft, an organization that fights online disinformation. “These tweets and the online conversation is not about science or expertise; it’s about emotions and partisanship.”

12

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Britain is getting ready for its space race

By STANLEY REED

C

ornwall, in England’s far southwest, is known for antique fishing villages and snug, cliff-lined beaches. Soon it may be the scene of something very different: a small but growing space industry.

One day in a year or two, a modified Boeing 747 is expected to lift off from the long runway at the region’s airport, head out over the Atlantic Ocean and soar into the stratosphere.

There, a rocket will drop from below a wing, fire its engines and ferry a load of small satellites into orbit, while the plane returns to the airport.

After six years of planning and fundraising, construction of a bare-bones spaceport, budgeted at about 22 million pounds ($28 million), is beginning this month at the airport in Newquay.

The anchor tenant is expected to be Virgin Orbit, a part of Richard Branson’s Virgin universe. Its selling point: Putting satellites into orbit via aircraft can be done faster and with less infrastructure than earthbound rockets. It plans to bring its 747 (called the Cosmic Girl) and other gear being tested in the Mojave Desert to Britain with the help of 7.35 million pounds from the U.K. Space Agency.

“At the beginning, people laughed at us,” said Melissa Thorpe, head of engagement for Spaceport Cornwall, the developer. “It took a lot of work to convince a lot of people.”

Among the better arguments: The spaceport, which is owned by the local government, could eventually provide 150 good jobs in what, despite its charm, is a region dependent on low-paid, seasonal work from tourism.

Britain is doubling down on the always risky space business after, some would say, years of neglect. Besides Cornwall, the government is putting money behind several other potential launch sites, including one on the remote north coast of Scotland, which is being tailored for an environmentally friendly rocket to be manufactured nearby.

A big reason for the turnaround is Brexit.

The decision to pull away from the European Union has heightened awareness that Britain, which has largely relied on European and American space programs for services like satellite navigation, would be at risk without its own space infrastructure. This year the space agency’s budget was bumped up 10% to 556 million pounds (still a small fraction of NASA’s $22 billion).

Brexit has provided “a real stimulus to get us to think about what we actually need as a country in space,” said Graham Turnock, chief

It has been nearly 50 years since the last British-made, satellite bearing rocket launched into space. executive of the U.K. Space Agency.

But the decision to look skyward also coincides with the growing commercial use of space around the world, promoted by deeppocketed investors like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Branson, but also pushed along by a range of less prominent entrepreneurs and businesses.

Key has been the emergence of much smaller and cheaper satellites, some the size of a shoe box and costing a relatively small $1 million or less. Some are used for observation, such as measuring how much oil is stored in a tank farm, valuable data for energy investors.

Others are planned to provide internet connectivity on earth and a key link in the burgeoning Internet of Things, essential for self-driving cars and smart kitchens.

“We are right at the beginning of this journey,” said Mark Boggett, chief executive of London-based Seraphim Capital, which is managing a $90 million space fund.

The government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson put its own chips on such efforts by agreeing in July to spend 500 million pounds to acquire 45% of OneWeb, a satellite operator.

OneWeb filed for bankruptcy this year, but is involved in the hottest area of the satellite industry: the creation of so-called constellations, blizzards of coordinated satellites in low orbit, designed to provide blanket coverage for purposes like extending the internet to remote regions.

OneWeb is building its satellites at a factory co-owned by Airbus in Florida. The hope in the British government and space community is

that OneWeb will build a future generation of satellites in Britain.

Overall, the government is trying to support activity in what is known as “new space,” a more agile and commercial approach to an industry traditionally dominated by government and military programs.

“OneWeb, and what we are doing on launch, is all about taking a really big role in that new economy,” Turnock said.

While Britain has participated in prestigious space activities like making a Mars rover for an upcoming European-Russian mission, it has catching up to do. Still, space experts say the direction the industry is moving could play to its advantage.

The launch vehicles that Britain is trying to nurture would be suited for smaller satellites that operate in low-Earth orbit, around 800 miles up, compared with about 22,000 miles for telecommunications giants that sometimes cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Smaller satellites also have much shorter life spans than the larger ones, implying the need for more of them, and more launches. Virgin Orbit says it plans to charge $12 million to take a nearly 700-pound payload of satellites into space.

Having nearby launch sites will fill a need for companies like In-Space Missions, a space service firm in Hampshire, outside London. Doug Liddle, the chief executive, said the company went all the way to New Zealand to launch a satellite this year, only to lose it when the rocket failed.

The new space economy is also more affordable for medium-size countries like Britain.

“The small-satellite approach now means we are not going to spend our entire national budget on our space program,” said Martin Sweeting, a founder and executive chairman of a British university spinoff called Surrey Satellite Technology, a pioneer in small satellites.

That said, Britain’s ambitions face large unknowns and risks.

The launch technologies it is counting on are unproven. Virgin Orbit’s first test this year in the United States sputtered when the main rocket engine shut down. And the coronavirus pandemic has put huge financial strain on Branson’s empire, including the flagship, Virgin Atlantic. To help bolster the finances of the airline and other companies, the entrepreneur sold around $500 million of shares in Virgin Galactic, a space tourism business.

But Will Pomerantz, Virgin Orbit’s vice president for special projects, said the 747 would come to Cornwall “when they are ready and they need us.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

13 Stocks

Tech sell-off weighs on Wall Street as Powell warns on recovery

T

he S&P 500 and the Nasdaq retreated on Tuesday as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned the U.S. economic recovery remained far from complete, with a selloff in some of the biggest technology companies also weighing on sentiment.

The domestic rebound could still slip into a downward spiral if the coronavirus is not effectively controlled and growth sustained, Powell said.

“Markets are worried about what the Fed knows that we don’t know,” said John Augustine, chief investment officer at Huntington National Bank in Columbus, Ohio.

“The things that are obvious to us are that small businesses are closing and unemployment remains high in the services sector. The Fed aggressively wants to address both of those with more fiscal stimulus.”

Comments from officials that a stimulus deal was still possible had lifted the three main stock indexes on Monday, helping them recoup losses from last week that were sparked by news that President Donald Trump had contracted COVID-19.

Trump said on Tuesday he felt “real good” upon returning to the White House after a three-day hospital stay where he received an experimental treatment for the disease.

Six of the 11 major S&P sectors were up, with the battered energy index tracking a 2% jump in oil prices. [O/R] A rotation into value-linked sectors such as industrials helped boost the blue-chip Dow, but the Nasdaq slipped further away from record highs following a dip in shares of heavyweight technology mega-caps.

Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Facebook Inc and Google-owner Alphabet Inc fell between 0.8% and 1.6% after news about a U.S. House of Representatives’ antitrust report containing a “thinly veiled call to break up” the companies.

Declines in their share prices led the S&P 500 growth index down 0.4%.

“When you’re in bubble territory with higher volatility, the market is very much driven by sentiment,” said Matt Hanna, portfolio manager at Summit Global Investments. “The sentiment has shifted a little bit, it’s not nearly as bullish as it was just a couple months ago.”

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14

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

China ramps up a war of words, warning the U.S. of its red lines

Chinese tourists last year in the city of Dandong, near statues of soldiers who took part in the Korean War.

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

T

he soldiers run through the forest, through the surf, through smoke and flames, ready to die for the motherland. The video, one of a series that has recently appeared online in China, climaxes with the launch of nine ballistic missiles and a fiery barrage of explosions.

“If war breaks out,” a chorus sings, “this is my answer.”

Chinese propaganda is rarely subtle or particularly persuasive, but the torrent of bombast online and in state media in recent weeks is striking and potentially ominous.

The targets are China’s main adversaries: the United States and Taiwan, which are moving closer and closer together.

The propaganda has accompanied a series of military drills in recent weeks, including the test-firing of ballistic missiles and the buzzing of Taiwan’s airspace. Together, they are intended to draw stark red lines for the United States, signaling that China would not shrink from a military clash.

While the prospect of war remains remote, the militaristic tone reflects the hawkishness of the country’s leader, Xi Jinping.

The risk is that the propaganda could translate into more provocative actions, at a time when the relationship with the United States has sharply deteriorated. The recent military moves in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait raise the possibility of actual clashes, intended or not.

In Washington, President Donald Trump’s hospitalization

for treatment of COVID-19 has overshadowed everything else, creating the impression that his administration is in chaos and raising fears of a decision-making void. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cut short his trip to Asia this week, although he is expected to push for confronting China when he meets in Tokyo with his counterparts from Australia, India and Japan.

China is already facing pressure over Taiwan and is pressing other disputed territorial claims, from the South China Sea to the Himalayas. If China feels directly challenged on any of those fronts, Xi may not be able to back down, having primed the public for a combative stance.

One video featured a simulated airstrike on Guam, the U.S. territory in the Pacific, with clips cribbed from two Hollywood films: “The Rock” and “The Hurt Locker.”

Global Times, the voice of the Communist Party’s hawks, warned recently that the United States was “playing with fire” by supporting Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of a unified China. Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, the editorial went on, would be “wiped out” if she moved against Chinese sovereignty.

“I don’t think it’s just bluster, and I don’t think it’s just about venting anger,” said Bonnie S. Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who is an expert on Taiwan and China.

“I think there is growing pressure — and that Xi Jinping finds that it’s useful to display that pressure.”

More bombast is to come. The latest propaganda surge has coincided with the 70th anniversary of the Korean War, also known in China as the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea, which has long served as an instrument for stoking anti-American sentiment.

Chinese forces intervened in the war Oct. 19, 1950, and, as official narratives here have it, ultimately drove the U.S.-led United Nations forces back to the 38th parallel in a heroic triumph of the newly established People’s Republic of China.

With U.S.-China relations at a new low, officials and propagandists are using the anniversary to remind Chinese people that the nation has stood up to the world’s superpower before — and prevailed.

A memorial museum dedicated to the conflict recently reopened in Dandong, a Chinese city across the Yalu River from North Korea. A series of films about the war is also rolling out — “to carry forward the great spirit of resisting U.S. aggression,” as the description of one documentary put it.

A new war drama stars Wu Jing, the lead actor in the “Wolf Warrior” action film franchise that has given a name to Chinese diplomacy of late. It tells the story of a combat engineering unit keeping a crucial bridge intact during one of the last battles of the Korean conflict.

“Never underestimate Chinese people’s determination to safeguard national security,” the editor of Global Times, Hu Xijin, wrote on Twitter last week, after a ceremony commemorating the return of the remains of Chinese soldiers who died in South Korea.

Chinese propaganda often uses martial language and images. The fight against the coronavirus was declared a People’s War. Xi, too, evokes the idea of a warlike struggle to overcome threats.

Last month he listed five conditions that China would “never accept,” including any effort to divide or bully the Chinese people.

The flurry of videos released by the People’s Liberation Army, though, has left little doubt about its message. At least two have included the chorus “if war broke out today,” including one for the secretive submarine service — with details of equipment and geography blurred out. They have been viewed millions of times.

Another video was even more explicit. It featured a bombing run with an H6 strategic bomber, zeroing in on a satellite photograph of a runway at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam. After briefly going viral, the post was removed without explanation.

The new propaganda campaign has also emerged amid the increased military activity.

This summer, China and Taiwan each held annual training exercises that simulated attacks across the Taiwan Strait.

In one video, released by China’s Eastern Theater Command, troops rehearsed a landing on a beach on Hainan, the island off China’s southern coast whose geography is similar to Taiwan’s.

Since then, China has repeatedly tested Taiwan’s defenses with air and sea patrols. Twice last month, squadrons of fighters and bombers crossed the unofficial median line over the Taiwan Strait, which both countries have largely observed for decades.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

15

‘Then I heard a boom’: Heavy weapons take toll on civilians in Armenia-Azerbaijan clash

By ANDREW E. KRAMER

R

uzanna Avagyana, a 53-year-old social worker from the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, was taking stock Monday of the region’s rapidly escalating military conflict with Azerbaijan from inside her basement.

The fighting, the worst in Nagorno-Karabakh since a vicious ethnic war erupted in the region in the early 1990s, began a week ago and drove Avagyana underground.

She counted a half-dozen or so explosions in each of the first days she hid out in the basement, more on Sunday and so many on Monday she could hardly keep track. Then the apartment building on top of her took a direct hit.

“People are afraid,” Avagyana said in a telephone interview.

“I heard whistling this way and that,” she said, recalling the artillery strikes on her city, Stepanakert, earlier in the day.

“I couldn’t understand where they were falling. And then I heard a boom.”

As her building burned, she escaped unharmed, Avagyana said.

Skirmishes have been common for years along the front lines of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is run by ethnic Armenian separatists but internationally recognized as a part of Azerbaijan.

But this conflict is distinct, analysts and former diplomats say, for the more direct support that Turkey has offered to Azerbaijan and for the scale of the fighting. Both sides have been using armed drones and powerful, long-range rocket artillery, they say. Turkey has denied offering anything more than training, weapons sales and political support to Azerbaijan.

Stepanakert, once a city of well-tended boulevards and stately stone homes, is now scattered with the ruins of bombarded buildings. On Monday, it came under heavy bombardment for a second day, Armenia’s military said.

On the Azerbaijani side, authorities said rockets had landed in a residential area of Ganja, the country’s secondlargest city. At least 250 people have died in the recent fighting, including dozens of civilians on both sides, according to official reports.

The long-range artillery fire of the type that destroyed Avagyana’s apartment building, which she said was across a street from a military headquarters and thus in a vulnerable location, has alarmed observers and former diplomats.

The weapons raise the risks of a direct conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, two former Soviet states divided by a poisonous and long-running ethnic dispute and competing claims to the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

So far, the fighting along the front has been muddled and inconclusive; reports from both sides are impossible to independently verify.

Azerbaijan has reported capturing, and then recapturing again, several villages in seesaw fighting over small strips of land. Those accounts have been denied by Armenia, which has accused the other side of targeting civilians and Turkey of shooting down one of its planes.

Both countries have in the past threatened to target

A photo from the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh Infocenter showing the aftermath of recent shelling. strategic infrastructure with long-range weapons, raising worries that the conflict may intensify.

Over the weekend and on Monday, both sides fired largecaliber, Russian-made rockets of a type known as Smerch, or Tornado, saying they were aiming for military targets. Russia has for decades sold the same weapons systems to both parties to the conflict.

Nagorno-Karabakh vowed to fire back into Azerbaijan to retaliate for its shelling of Stepanakert.

“We are not targeting the civilian population but military facilities permanently deployed in large cities,” Vahram Poghosyan, a spokesman for the enclave’s president, told the Armenian news agency Arka. He said civilians should leave their homes to escape harm.

Rockets had already landed in Ganja on Sunday. Nagorno-Karabakh said it had fired at the city’s military airport, but photographs published in Azerbaijani media showed demolished houses.

A Russian television channel posted pictures of a Smerch rocket that did not explode sticking out of a parking lot of an Azerbaijani hydroelectric station at a jaunty angle, suggesting the targeting of strategic infrastructure.

Azerbaijan accused Armenia of firing the rockets from its territory, rather than from the disputed enclave, and said it was a tactic intended to provoke a retaliation that might trigger Armenia’s mutual defense pact with Russia. Armenia denied the charge.

The cause of the fighting is disputed. Azerbaijan said

it responded to artillery fire across the front line on Sept.

27. Armenia said the Azerbaijani offensive was unprovoked.

Armenia has said it is open to negotiating a cease-fire.

Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, on Sunday told Al-Arabiya television in an interview that the offensive would continue until Armenia withdrew support for the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave — something that is highly unlikely to happen.

“They must give us a timetable, or withdraw from the occupied territories,” Aliyev said. “Their prime minister who said ‘Karabakh is Armenia’ should now say that ‘Karabakh is not Armenia,’ and after that, of course, we will be ready to put an end to hostility.”

Negotiating a cease-fire now will be harder than it was during a previous escalation in 2016, said Olesya Vartanyan, a Caucasus analyst with the International Crisis Group, because Azerbaijan felt misled by that settlement. After the 2016 escalation, Russia brokered a truce with an assurance to return to Azerbaijan some territory occupied by ethnic Armenians in the 1990s fighting, but that never happened.

“Even if Moscow calls on Baku to stop fighting, they have nothing to propose” now because the earlier promises never panned out, Vartanyan said, referring to the Azerbaijani government in the capital, Baku.

The bombardments suggest that a wider conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is possible, said Carey Cavanaugh, a former U.S. ambassador and mediator in previous peace talks. “We can see in Syria how fragile cities can be” in artillery barrages, he said.

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Wednesday, October 7, 2020

In U.K.’s test and trace: Now you see ’em, now you don’t

By MARK LANDLER and BENJAMIN MUELLER

P

rime Minister Boris Johnson’s “world beating” testand-trace program has been dogged by technical glitches, overburdened laboratories and poorly trained contact tracers. Now, add to that a data-entry error more likely to trip up an amateur bookkeeper than the public health service of the world’s sixth-largest economy.

Nearly 16,000 people who tested positive for the coronavirus between Sept. 25 and Oct. 2 were not recorded in the nation’s daily number of reported cases, producing an artificially low picture of the spread of the virus and delaying efforts to trace those with whom the infected people had been in contact.

The disclosure brought a storm of criticism on the Johnson government, which has been on the defensive for its haphazard handling of the pandemic since March, when Johnson hesitated for days before imposing a nationwide lockdown. More than 57,000 people have died from the virus in Britain, the highest number in Europe, and the country is facing a second wave of infections.

“This incident should never have happened,” the health secretary, Matt Hancock, said to Parliament on Monday, promising that the government would conduct an investigation and upgrade its outmoded computer systems.

That did not mollify the opposition Labour Party, which seized on the latest glitch as evidence of the government’s serial incompetence. “This isn’t just a shambles,” said the Labour shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, jabbing his finger at Hancock. “It is so much worse than this.”

For a pandemic-ravaged country, the computer error was not the only bit of unnerving news. Government officials said that fewer than half of Britons should expect to be vaccinated, even after a vaccine was widely available.

Britain’s goal is to vaccinate about 30 million people, less than half the population, the head of the government’s vaccine task force, Kate Bingham, told the Financial Times.

The priority would be the most vulnerable people, hospital and nursing-home workers, and those over the age of 50. Children and young people, who are considered less

Nearly 16,000 people who tested positive for the coronavirus were not recorded in Britain’s daily number of reported cases for a test and trace program.

at risk from the disease, would not be vaccinated.

The data-entry error, officials at Public Health England said, occurred because some of the Excel files containing the names of people who tested positive were too large to transfer to a central computer system. When they were transferred, the system simply lopped off a chunk of the names. Officials said they fixed the problem by splitting up the files and transferring smaller amounts of data.

The glitch did not affect when people were informed of their positive test results, according to officials. Nor did the missing data prevent the government from imposing restrictions in hard-hit parts of the country. But it did delay the contact-tracing process, which depends on rapid response to be effective in curbing the spread of the virus.

“The timing of it couldn’t be worse,” said Devi Sridhar, the director of the global health governance program at the University of Edinburgh. “You’re heading into winter, and we already knew that cases were rising. This is really when you’d need your test-and-trace system to do its work.”

Instead, she said, virtually every part of the system has broken down. Apart from the data error, people were being sent to testing sites hundreds of miles from where they lived, and tests came back from the labs too slowly amid a huge backlog of untested samples.

Public compliance with the program has remained sluggish: In a survey of 32,000 people living in Britain, fewer than 1 in 5 people who reported coronavirus symptoms said they had stayed home. Of those alerted that they had been close to an infected person, only 1 in 10 said they had complied with orders to self-isolate.

Britain reported 12,594 new cases Monday — a number that did not include the backdated cases, which had been added to Sunday’s numbers.

The fragile infrastructure behind England’s contact tracing program came into stark relief in mid-August when a weekly government report revealed that “a temporary infrastructure issue” had created a delay in people with positive test results being entered into the contact tracing system.

The magazine New Scientist later reported that an internet outage in southern England had created problems with the contact tracing program’s digital infrastructure, causing delays of up to a week in tracers being able to call the contacts of thousands of newly infected patients.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

17

Jobs bill advances in Indonesia, over labor and environmental objections

By RICHARD C. PADDOCK

I

ndonesia’s parliament gave final approval Monday to a sweeping jobs-creation bill that would loosen labor and environmental regulations, moves that critics say would harm workers and permit widespread deforestation.

With seven of parliament’s nine political parties in favor, lawmakers easily passed the 905-page stimulus measure that aims to attract investment by slashing regulations contained in nearly 80 separate laws.

Parliament had planned to consider the bill at the end of this week but moved up the vote after labor unions called for a three-day national strike starting Tuesday to protest the legislation.

The measure has the backing of Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, who is expected to sign it quickly.

He is eager to push ahead with the country’s economic recovery from the coronavirus, even though the number of cases is rising and large-scale social restrictions remain in place in Jakarta, the capital.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth most-populous country, has been among the hardest hit by the pandemic. Its economy is expected to contract this year for the first time since the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s.

For more than two weeks, Indonesia has averaged 4,000 new cases a day. On Monday, it reached a total of 307,120 cases and 11,253 deaths. Health experts say many more cases and deaths have gone unreported.

Supporters of the omnibus bill say that it will attract investors by cutting regulations on businesses, speeding approval of projects and eliminating many permit requirements.

“This bill is meant to create jobs and attract investments, from within the country and abroad, that are expected to increase the prosperity of the people,” Heri Gunawan, a member of parliament who supports the measure, said during the debate.

But opponents argued that slashing regulations on businesses would come at a high cost to workers and the environment.

“The job creation bill is said to ease the way for business activities that increase investment and create more jobs, but the bill is full of various agendas that would potentially destroy the environment and violate the rights of the Indonesian people,” said Marwan Cik Asan, a member of parliament who opposes the measure.

Labor unions say that the legislation would harm workers by reducing severance pay, cutting mandatory leave, allowing longer work hours, and permitting the hiring of contract and part-time workers in place of fulltime employees.

After the vote, the president of the Indonesian Trade Union Confederation, Said Iqbal, vowed to go ahead with a national strike Tuesday. He predicted that 2 million workers would participate.

“Laborers will voice their rejection of the omnibus law,” he said.

Environmentalists contend that by eliminating environmental reviews for many new projects, the legislation would lead to the destruction of primary rainforests that are essential in controlling carbon emissions and slowing climate change.

Supporters of the measure say they expect it to attract foreign investment. But some foreign investors said that relaxing restrictions on forest burning would have the opposite effect.

Hours before the vote, a group of 36 global investors representing more than $4 trillion in assets under management released an open letter calling on the Indonesian government to support the conservation of forests and peatlands and take a long-term approach to recovery from the pandemic.

For decades, much of the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests has been caused by palm oil producers who burn huge swathes of land to clear it for plantations.

Indonesia is a major exporter of palm oil.

The investors warned that by reversing recent gains in reducing burning, Indonesia could run afoul of restrictions being considered by the European Union on the import of products that result from deforestation.

“Protecting tropical forests is vital for combating

climate change, the degradation of ecosystems, and biodiversity loss, all of which pose systemic and material risks to our portfolios as well as to the health of our societies, economies and environment,” the letter said.

The human rights group Amnesty International Indonesia also criticized passage of the measure, saying that parliament acted without consulting labor and rights groups and that the result is a measure that deprives Indonesian workers of their right to work and their workplace rights.

Amnesty’s executive director for Indonesia, Usman Hamid, said the measure could violate Indonesia’s commitment to protect human rights as a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. He urged parliament to reconsider.

“This is a catastrophic law,” he said. “It will harm workers’ wallets, job security and their human rights as a whole.”

Parliament approved the bill through a process known as “fraksi” in which each party casts a vote, rather than each lawmaker. This method is often used when there is little doubt about the result. About three quarters of parliament’s members support Joko.

In this case, only two parties opposed the bill, the Democratic Party of former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and the Islamic-based Prosperous Justice Party.

Firefighters extinguish a fire in the Pulang Pisau Regency in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, Sept. 19, 2019.

Parliament moved up a vote on the coronavirus stimulus bill after unions called for a national strike but critics say it will relax rules to prevent deforestation and protect workers.

18

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

A White House infected with propaganda

By MICHELLE GOLDBERG

T

here is a line from Hannah Arendt’s 1951 book “The Origins of Totalitarianism” that I’ve thought about constantly during the last four years. “Totalitarianism will not be satisfied to assert, in the face of contrary facts, that unemployment does not exist; it will abolish unemployment benefits as part of its propaganda,” Arendt wrote.

A regime dedicated to creating its own reality doesn’t just use language to lie. To truly animate lies, those in power must behave as if they’re true, no matter who gets hurt.

For the past seven months, Donald Trump’s big lie has been that the coronavirus isn’t as dangerous as scientists say, and that his administration has the virus under control. To sustain this lie, Trump’s circle has had to reject the mitigation and containment strategies that many other countries have used to get a handle on the pandemic, because those strategies are tangible reminders of the threat the virus poses.

The face mask is the ultimate symbol of the frightening abnormality of this moment, and so the Trump administration treated masking as a sign of disloyalty. It’s not just that Trump himself frequently

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Attendees listen as President Donald Trump announces Judge Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee to the Supreme Court at the White House in Washington, Sept. 26, 2020. declined to wear masks. He mocked Joe Biden for wearing them, and discouraged their use in his presence.

“Everyone knew that Mr. Trump viewed masks as a sign of weakness,” Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times reported this weekend, citing White House officials. They quoted Olivia Troye, formerly one of Mike Pence’s top aides on the coronavirus task force: “You were looked down upon when you would walk by with a mask.”

So it’s not surprising that the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, the very face of administration propaganda, didn’t wear a mask when briefing reporters on Sunday, even though she’d been exposed to the virus. On Monday news broke that she’d tested positive, making it clear that she’d put those reporters in danger.

Or, I should say, further danger: Three journalists covering the administration had already tested positive on Friday, underlining what a perilously infectious environment this White House has become.

Two of McEnany’s deputies in the press shop also tested positive — that’s in addition, as of this writing, to Trump, his wife, his campaign manager, his personal assistant, his informal advisers Kellyanne Conway and Chris Christie, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee and three senators.

In June, when the coronavirus tore through senior political and military ranks in Iran, it was seen as a sign that the country’s sclerotic leadership might be teetering. “They have not been completely straightforward with their people,” Gen. Frank Mc-

Kenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, was quoted saying at a think tank event. “And as a result of that, the distrust you begin to see within Iran of their leadership is perhaps magnified.” Iran’s government, he said, was “struggling.”

Now ours is too. The problem is not that a sickened Trump can’t perform the duties of the president. After his diagnosis, a strange political fiction took hold that American national security would be threatened if Trump were incapacitated, as if Trump ordinarily does work that protects the nation’s interests.

In truth, while it’s scary that Trump is making decisions while on a steroid with documented psychological side effects, when it comes to the stability of our government, it’s hard to see how it matters whether the president watches Fox News and tweets from the White House or from a suite at Walter Reed.

What’s alarming, rather, is that each new diagnosis in the White House demonstrates how thoroughly this administration has been infected by its own disinformation. The refusal to take basic precautions against the pandemic is the starkest evidence yet of how our government has morphed into a personality cult. The out-of-control spread of the coronavirus in the White House is a microcosm of its out-of-control spread in the country, where on Friday new cases hit the highest point since midAugust.

What matters now is whether the COVID-19 cluster at the pinnacle of Republican politics acts how the Chernobyl disaster did in the Soviet Union, further exposing a regime rotten with mendacity.

That’s far from guaranteed.

In the hospital, Trump and his enablers worked to minimize the perception that he was really sick.

His doctor misled the public about the president’s condition. Trump staged photo shoots of faux work sessions and risked the health of Secret Service agents to drive by a gathering of fans.

If a critical mass of people continue to trust Trump, the way he’s spinning his ordeal might lead them to take the coronavirus even less seriously. Announcing his discharge Monday, Trump tweeted that he felt better than he had in 20 years, saying: “Don’t be afraid of COVID. Don’t let it dominate your life.”

But Americans should fear COVID. And if coronavirus dominates our lives, it’s because an administration charged with protecting us is so subservient to the president’s lies that it can’t even protect itself.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

19

Representante Juan Oscar Morales confirma que tiene COVID-19 Por THE STAR

E

l presidente de la Comisión de Salud de la Cámara de Representantes, Juan Oscar Morales confirmó el martes que salió positivo a coronavirus (COVID-19).

“Salí positivo a COVID-19”, escribió Morales en su cuenta de Twitter.

“Tengo algunos síntomas por lo que decidieron ingresarme en una institución médica para ser

monitoreado. Me he mantenido realizando pruebas constantemente y siguiendo los protocolos”, añadió.

“Todas esas pruebas habían salido negativas.

Ayer lunes, advine en conocimiento que una empleada con quien estuve trabajando dio positivo al virus. Inmediatamente me aislé en mi hogar. Ayer en la tarde comencé a sentir esos síntomas. Todos en mi núcleo familiar están negativo”, aseguró el legislador.

Hermano del alcalde de Carolina dice que en el municipio lo persiguen políticamente Por THE STAR

E

l representante del Partido Popular Democrático (PPD), Javier Aponte Dalmau, denunció el martes, que lleva semanas en una luchan con “una persecución política” en su contra por parte del Municipio de Carolina, quien supuestamente le están removiendo ilegalmente su propaganda política ubicada en áreas privadas.

“Esto es una clara persecución que se está llevando en mi contra por orden del Municipio de Carolina. Aquí yo no he violado ninguna ley, los furgones están siendo ubicados acorde a los estatutos legales.

Lo que sí constituye delito es que venga el Municipio a remover ilegalmente unos furgones que no le pertenecen y que están correctamente ubicados. Por eso, ante la insistencia del Municipio de remover mi propaganda, me veo en la obligación de acudir esta misma tarde al Tribunal a presentar un injunction para que el Municipio cese y desista de esta práctica que, sin duda, va en contra de la ley”, expresó Aponte Dalmau en declaraciones escritas.

El también hermano del alcalde del Municipio de Carolina, José Carlos Aponte Dalmau relató que la situación comenzó el 14 de septiembre cuando instaló dos furgones en Carolina, específicamente en

la Avenida 65 de Infantería y la Carretera Núm. 3, intersección con la entrada del Barrio La Central de Canóvanas.

“Ambos fueron ubicados en áreas privadas con la debida autorización de los dueños de los predios. Entre el 18 y 19 de septiembre fueron removidos por el Departamento de Obras Públicas del Municipio. Según el señor Víctor Rodríguez, director del Departamento, fueron removidos y depositados en el vertedero municipal por haber estado ubicados en lugares públicos y en violación de una orden municipal”, relató el legislador.

Explicó que junto al dueño de los furgones, se personaron a la comandancia de la policía municipal para radicar una querella por los siguientes delitos: violación al Artículo 197 del Código Penal por el Municipio haber entrado a heredad ajena sin la debida autorización con el propósito de ocupar propiedad privada; violación al Artículo 181 por apropiación ilegal; y violación al debido proceso de ley por falta de notificación a los dueños. La querella fue imposible radicarla porque la policía indicó que primero debían realizar una investigación.

Aponte Dalmau dijo que luego de dos semanas de inacción por parte de las autoridades municipales, colocó nuevamen-

te el furgón en la Avenida 65 de Infantería con la certeza de que está en total cumplimiento con la ley. No obstante, en menos de 24 horas, el Municipio volvió a remover el furgón en la mañana del martes.

Enfatizó, además, en que “es una vergüenza que el Municipio continúe con este tipo de prácticas y aseguró que no es la primera vez que lo hace.

A menos de un mes de las elecciones generales todos deberíamos estar enfocados en llevar una campaña de altura, no en este tipo de prácticas bajas que atentan contra la democracia y el

derecho que todos tenemos de colocar propaganda política en lugares privados. El Municipio de Carolina debería autoevaluarse”.

Para concluir, Aponte Dalmau mencionó que el video que está circulando en las redes sociales diciendo que él está colocando propaganda política en el vertedero, lo cual es un lugar público, no es correcto. El furgón rotulado con su propaganda se encuentra allí porque el propio Municipio lo removió y allí lo depositó. “Es al Municipio a quien deben increpar”, puntualizó.

20

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

‘Stairway to Heaven’ copyright case won’t go to Supreme Court

Robert Plant, left, with Jimmy Page at a Led Zeppelin reunion concert in 1988. The Supreme Court declined to hear a case involving “Taurus,” a 1968 song by the psychedelic band Spirit.

By BEN SISARIO

T

he long road of a copyright suit over Led Zeppelin’s 1971 megahit “Stairway to Heaven” came to an end Monday, when the Supreme Court announced that it had declined to hear the case.

The high court’s decision means that a ruling for Led Zeppelin in March by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will stand.

That ruling affirmed Led Zeppelin’s victory

at a trial in 2016 over a challenge led by a trustee representing “Taurus,” a 1968 song by the psychedelic band Spirit.

“Taurus,” written by Randy Wolfe — better known as Randy California, the nickname Jimi Hendrix gave him — has long drawn comparisons to the pastoral opening segment of “Stairway to Heaven,” a staple of rock radio that, by some estimates, has earned more than $500 million. The two songs share similar chord progressions and

a bass line that descends along a chromatic scale.

When the case was filed in 2014, it may have seemed a run-of-the-mill copyright-infringement fight, if an especially high-profile one. But the case came to embody some of the most contested questions in music law, including exactly what is covered by the registration documents of old songs and whether copyright can be claimed over common chord progressions or short sequences of notes.

The case drew intense interest in the music industry, which had been reeling since a jury found in 2015 that Robin Thicke’s hit “Blurred Lines” had copied Marvin Gaye’s 1977 song “Got to Give It Up.” Even the Trump administration weighed in, with the Justice Department filing a brief in support of Led Zeppelin.

The ruling by the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, caught the attention of lawyers and other judges. The court said that when it came to works involving generic or commonplace elements, only a minimal, or “thin,” level of copyright applied to them, and that to prevail, a plaintiff must show that another work is “virtually identical” to theirs. The decision effectively placed a hurdle in front of many plaintiffs in musiccopyright cases.

The appellate judges also held that for

musical compositions before 1978, when a new law took effect, only the material on the sheet music submitted to the Copyright Office (sometimes called a deposit copy) was legally protected. For songs like “Taurus,” where only a basic sketch had been submitted, it meant that many of the notes heard on a recording were not covered by copyright — and thus could not be infringed upon.

The 9th Circuit’s ruling had an immediate effect and was widely seen as giving an advantage to defendants in music-copyright cases, which often include pop stars and the companies that release their music and typically control their copyrights.

Citing the appeals court’s decision, a federal judge in March threw out a jury’s $2.8 million verdict against Katy Perry, who had been found to copy an eight-note melodic pattern from a Christian rap song.

A New York judge also cited the Led Zeppelin decision in a case involving Ed Sheeran’s song “Thinking Out Loud,” which was said to have copied another Gaye classic, “Let’s Get It On.” The Sheeran case is scheduled to go to trial next month. But last week, lawyers for the singer asked the judge for a delay because, they said, Sheeran and other witnesses, who are British citizens, may not enter the United States under coronavirus travel restrictions.

Machine Gun Kelly leads a shake-up at the top of the Billboard chart

By BEN SISARIO

A

lmost a decade ago, Machine Gun Kelly emerged from Cleveland with an aggressive rap style and a rock ’n’ roll attitude. Now, with his first No. 1 album produced in part by Travis Barker of Blink-182 — and a social media feed filled with Oasis and Paramore covers — he has seemingly completed his transition into the realm of Day-Glo pop-punk.

“Tickets to My Downfall,” Machine Gun Kelly’s fifth studio album, opened at No. 1 on Billboard’s chart with the equivalent of 126,000 sales in the United States, leading a slew of high-charting

new releases. The full take for “Tickets” included 81 million streams and 63,000 copies sold as a full album, according to Nielsen Music.

K-pop group SuperM debuted at No. 2 with “Super One,” its first full LP, which had the equivalent of 104,000 sales. Machine Gun Kelly and SuperM are among the last to benefit from the “bundling” of their albums with sales of merchandise; after much controversy, Billboard said it would no longer allow albums from such deals to count on its charts, effective this week.

Joji, a singer-songwriter and former YouTube comedian, opened at No. 3 with

“Nectar,” while veteran alt-metal band Deftones arrived at No. 5 with “Ohms,” its ninth studio album. Pop Smoke’s “Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon” is No. 4.

Taylor Swift’s “Folklore,” which last week notched its seventh time at No. 1, fell to No. 7 in its 10th week out.

Machine Gun Kelly in New York, March 6, 2020. “Tickets to My Downfall,” Machine Gun Kelly’s fifth studio album, opened at No. 1 on Billboard’s chart with the equivalent of 126,000 sales in the United States, leading a slew of highcharting new releases.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

21

Eddie Van Halen, virtuoso of the Rock guitar, dies at 65

By JIM FARBER

E

ddie Van Halen, the immensely influential guitarist whose band, Van Halen, was one of the most popular rock acts of all time, — died on Tuesday. He was 65.

Van Halen’s son, Wolfgang, said in a statement that his father had “lost his long and arduous battle with cancer.” The statement did not say where he died.

Van Halen’s razzle-dazzle approach made him the most influential guitarist of his generation. He structured his solos in roughly the same way Macy’s choreographs its Independence Day fireworks shows: shooting off rockets of sound that seemed to explode in a shower of light and color. His outpouring of riffs, runs and solos was hyperactive and athletic, joyous and wry, making deeper or darker emotions feel irrelevant.

“Eddie put the smile back in rock guitar at a time when it was all getting a bit broody,” his fellow guitar ace Joe Satriani told Billboard in 2015. “He also scared the hell out of a million guitarists because he was so damn good.”

Van Halen was most widely revered by his peers for perfecting the technique of twohanded tapping on the guitar neck. That approach allowed him to add new textures, and percussive possibilities, to his instrument, while also making its six strings sound as expressive as a piano’s 88 keys or as changeable as a synthesizer. He received patents for three guitar devices he had created. In 2012, Guitar World Magazine ranked him No. 1 on its list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.”

“I’m always pushing things past where they’re supposed to be,” Van Halen told the educational website Zocalo Public Square in 2015. “When ‘Spinal Tap’ was going to 11, I was going to 15,” he said — a reference to that film’s famous joke about a guitarist who dubiously claims that his amplifier can exceed its highest decibel level.

The zest in Van Halen’s playing paired perfectly with the hedonistic songs and persona of his hard-rocking band, Van Halen, whose original lineup featured his brother Alex on pummeling drums, Michael Anthony on thunderous bass and singer David Lee Roth, who presented a scene-stealing mix of Lothario, peacock and clown.

Formed in 1972, Van Halen went on to sell more than 56 million albums in the United States alone. Ten of the band’s studio albums (some of which were cut with Sammy Hagar as lead singer during a long split with Roth) went multi-platinum. One sold more than 6 million copies (“5150” in 1986, featuring Hagar); another sold 5 million (“Van Halen II” in 1979); and two passed the 10 million

mark to achieve “diamond” status (the band’s debut, “Van Halen,” in 1978, and “1984,” issued the year in the title).

Eleven of the band’s studio albums reached the Top 5, and four snagged the top spot on Billboard’s Top 200. Van Halen amassed eight Billboard Top 20 singles, including their heavy-bottomed cover of Roy Orbison’s “(Oh) Pretty Woman,” which reached No. 12 in 1982, and “Jump,” which seized the No. 1 spot in 1984 and held it for five weeks. In 2007, the band — including both Roth and Hagar — was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Edward Lodewijk Van Halen was born on Jan. 26, 1955, in Amsterdam to Jan and Eugenia (Beers) Van Halen. His father, a struggling Dutch classical musician who played clarinet, saxophone and piano, met his Indonesianborn wife while on tour in Indonesia.

In 1962, when Van Halen was 7, his family relocated to the United States, driven away by prejudice against his mother and unfavorable work opportunities in the Netherlands.

They settled in Pasadena, California. His mother worked as a maid, his father as a janitor while seeking work as a musician.

Inspired by the British group the Dave Clark Five, Van Halen and his brother began playing rock ’n’ roll, with Eddie on drums and Alex on guitar. They switched instruments once Eddie discovered that his brother had a better feel for percussion.

The siblings formed their first band in 1964, the Broken Combs, which became the Trojan Rubber Company. In 1972 they formed a new group, calling themselves Genesis, even though there was already a British band by that name. They rented a sound system from Roth, whom they eventually hired as

their singer — but only, Eddie Van Halen later said, to save the rental money. Two years later, they recruited Michael Anthony on bass and changed their name first to Mammoth and then to Van Halen.

Van Halen recorded its debut album for the label in just three weeks, employing few overdubs, the better to capture its in-concert brio. Released in early 1978, the album broke the Billboard Top 20 and, in the process, reasserted the power of hard rock at a time when disco, punk and new wave dominated.

Just as important, the album alerted the world to a new kind of guitar hero, one who ignored the blues-rock roots of the previous generation of guitar gods, like Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, to grow what sounded like roots of its own. In the studio as onstage, Eddie Van Halen could make the guitar sound like a divebombing plane one moment and a pack of wild hyenas the next.

His showstopping solo piece from the album, “Eruption,” showcased his finger-tapping technique, which set a new bar for guitar pyrotechnics. While other guitarists, notably Alan Holdsworth, had used this approach before, Van Halen had noticed that “nobody was going more than just one stretch and one note, real quick,” he said in a 1979 interview that was published 20 years later in Classic Rock magazine. “I hadn’t really seen anyone get into it as far as they could.”

But by the band’s “1984” album, it had pulled a switch, augmenting its sound with keyboards played by Eddie Van Halen. That slicker approach helped make “1984” the band’s top-selling album and turned “Jump” into its sole chart-topping song.

Van Halen raised his own profile that year with a guest appearance on Michael

Jackson’s megahit “Beat It,” for which he not only contributed a star turn of a solo but also rearranged the song. And that new presence in the spotlight only further fanned long-smoldering personal and creative conflicts with Roth, causing the singer to leave the band that year for a solo career.

His replacement, Hagar, had released a string of successful solo albums. While hardcore fans missed the original lineup, Van Halen’s debut release with Hagar, “5150,” gave the group its first No. 1 Billboard album, and its single, “Why Can’t This Be Love,” reached No. 3. The band’s next three albums, all fronted by Hagar, also topped the charts, while the concert set “Live: Right Here, Right Now” climbed to No. 5.

Still, tensions developed between Eddie Van Halen and Hagar, causing the singer to leave the band in 1996. A subsequent proposed reunion with Roth fell apart over the usual arguments. “I don’t think the guy was ever real,” Van Halen said of Roth to Rolling Stone. “I never felt any connection.”

For the band’s third frontman, Van Halen hired Gary Cherone, formerly of the metal band Extreme. And while the lone album with him, “Van Halen III,” broke the Top 5 in 1998, it didn’t sell as well as earlier efforts and received withering reviews.

A dark period followed for Eddie Van Halen, during which, as he later admitted, his drinking and drug use increased. He separated from his wife, actress Valerie Bertinelli, whom he had married in 1981 (they divorced in 2007), and the band lost its contract with Warner Bros. He also had to have hip replacement surgery in 1999 and, the next year, underwent treatment for tongue cancer. In 2002, he was declared cancer-free after having had one third of his tongue removed.

Two years later, the band reunited with Hagar for a successful compilation album and tour, though Eddie Van Halen’s drinking again spiked, causing problems that led Hagar to leave the band for a second time. After much speculation, Van Halen finally reunited with Roth for a tour in 2007, by which time the band had fired Anthony, whose talents Eddie Van Halen had long questioned. The replacement on bass was Eddie’s 17-year-old son, Wolfgang.

In addition to his son and his brother, Van Halen is survived by his wife, Janie Liszewski, whom he married in 2009.

In his 1979 interview, Van Halen clarified his guiding principle for the band. “All we’re trying to do is put excitement back into rock ’n’ roll,” he said. “A lot of people seem like they forgot what rock ’n’ roll is about. We’re very energetic. We get up there and blaze.”

FASHION The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, March 4, 2020 7, 2020 Wednesday, October 20 22

The TheSan SanJuan JuanDaily DailyStar Star

How many lives can a fashion brand have?

A Rykiel show, like this collection for spring 1981, always had an element of fun.

Sonia Rykiel, spring 1989. The brand was known for its humor and feminist attitude.

euros in losses before finally filing for bankruptcy.

The Dayans brush all that off like a piece of lint. They say they are different. They say, as far as they are concerned, “Sonia Rykiel right now is like a startup,” as Eric put it. And the Dayans know all about running startups.

The sons of Moroccan immigrants, Eric, age 40, and Michael, who is 38, grew up in the 12th Arrondissement, a middle-class quarter on the east side of Paris. Michael studied law, passed the bar and went into practice. Eric enrolled in business school, dropped out and worked for the family’s destocking business. In the midaughts, Michael quit law and, with Eric, their brother David and their friend Thierry Petit, took the family business online.

The flash sale site they founded, showroomprive.com, “made money from the beginning and grew every year,” Michael said. In 2010, they sold a 30% stake to the Palo Alto-based investment fund Accel Partners for 37 million euros. In the fall of 2015, the company was listed on the Euronext stock market and by the end of the year had a market capitalization of 655 million euros. “It was one of the first French digital startups to do an IPO,” Michael said.

For the next two years the brothers took what they describe

By DANA THOMAS

A

little more than a year ago, the beloved French fashion house Sonia Rykiel — founded in 1968 by a flame-haired feminist to empower women, passed on to her daughter in 2007 and sold to Hong Kong investors in 2012 — went into liquidation. At the time, it appeared to be a sad denouement for the once-revolutionary ready-to-wear brand.

But now the house of Rykiel is about to rise again, under new owners. Or is it? Fashion history is littered with tales of newfangled entrepreneurs who have swooped in to save old brands, only to leave them in tatters. Will Rykiel be one of them or the exception that proves the rule?

“The Sonia Rykiel brand is not damaged. It still has strong values,” said Michael Dayan, who, along with his brother Eric, made a fortune in outlet e-tailing and bought Rykiel late last year. The Dayans have big plans for the brand. A revamped womenswear line. A menswear line. A perfume. Perhaps even a boutique hotel.

However, they have no experience in luxury fashion, and as Serge Carreira, a business lecturer at Sciences Po, put it, “luxury fashion is a very specific and demanding sector, and a challenging business,” even before the COVID-19 slump.

“There is a fascination and attraction to owning a luxury brand — it brings a lot of glam and fame, and it has been a booming industry and a very profitable industry,” Carreira continued. “But luxury takes time; it’s not a fast move. It’s a kind of game. And the return on investment is not guaranteed at all.”

Rykiel has already been through this once. In February 2012, when the Rykiel family sold the company to the billionaire brothers Victor and William Fung of the Hong Kong manufacturing firm Li & Fung, there was lots of talk of potential, with grand plans to “ensure the longevity of the brand,” as Nathalie Rykiel, Sonia’s daughter, said at the time. But the company was plagued by a series of outside economic troubles and in-house management issues. In seven years, sales dropped from 83.7 million euros in revenue and 1.4 million euros in losses to 35 million euros in revenue and 20 million

Sonia Rykiel, fall 2013, a show held during one of the brand’s earlier reinventions. as “a break,” to spend time with their families and explore other avenues. They invested in Back Market, a French website that sells reconditioned electronic equipment, and BlaBlaCar, a French online marketplace for carpooling. Then they heard about the Rykiel woes. “It made us dream,” Eric said.

Although they have never worked in the luxury sector, they were sure they could run Sonia Rykiel. After all, at Showroomprive. com, they launched #collectionIRL, an in-house womenswear label. “We are ambitious,” Eric said. “And we have experience.”

The first round of takeover offers came in July. Bidders included former Balmain Chief Executive Emmanuel Diemoz, French real estate entrepreneurs Nicole Levy and Julien Sedbon, and a Chinese investor. The Dayan brothers were not among them. “The timing wasn’t great — it was July, vacation time,” Eric said. “The information escaped us, and we missed it.”

In the fall, David saw that French court was about to choose a new owner for Sonia Rykiel. He asked Eric and Michael if they were still interested. They were. “This was on a Thursday,” Eric said. “And the court date was Monday, at 11 a.m.”

The brothers spent the weekend hunkered down with their

lawyers, their bankers “and a lot of coffee,” Eric said. They drew up a business plan, got the bank to cut a sizable check and went to court. In their dossier, they asked for the company name, the unsold stock, the licenses (eyewear, homeward, linens and children’s) and archives, which are stored in a warehouse near Tours, in the Loire Valley.

They skipped the real estate, including the company’s flagship store and headquarters on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, a property still owned by the Rykiel family. Like showroomprive.com, they wanted to make Sonia Rykiel primarily an e-commerce fashion brand. Luckily, as it turned out. “With coronavirus, it would have been a heavy lift with the boutiques,” Eric said. “We were lucky not to take them.”

The courtroom was standing room only. The brothers’ bid was one of nearly two dozen that included two American funds, a Chinese fund, a Korean family fund and Sonia Rykiel’s former sonin-law and former CEO, Simon Burstein, of the Browns retailing family in London. The judges opened each packet, one by one, and read the price and pitch out loud.

“We kept holding our breath, wondering: Are we still in the race?” Michael remembered.

In the end theirs was the highest bid — 10 million euros, according to a source who attended the hearing — and, after a threeweek review, the court approved their proposal. When asked about what she thought of the new buyers, Nathalie Rykiel, who did not pursue buying back the company from liquidators, said by email: “I am looking forward to seeing how this new chapter will evolve.”

Since taking over, they have rebooted the brand’s social media accounts. On Instagram, they are posting pictures from the archives: old ads, runway shots and portraits of Sonia Rykiel, with some of her bon mots, like, “If you are beautiful, enjoy it; if you’re not, play with it.” Michael said, “We’ve had thousands of likes, and notes of support. People love Rykiel and happy to see it back online.”

They are staffing up the company (when they bought it, there were no employees) and are interviewing designers for the creative director post. “We would like to hire a woman,” Michael said. “We want that sensibility.” They will start with knitwear, since Sonia Rykiel was known as its queen.

“It’s going to be great,” Michael said, with an air of unquestioned confidence. “You’ll see.”

The Sonia Rykiel spring 2019 show took place outdoors in Paris, on the “Allée Sonia Rykiel,” the first street in the city ever named for a fashion designer.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

23

An ‘awe walk’ might do wonders for your well-being

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

C

onsciously watching for small wonders in the world around you during an otherwise ordinary walk could amplify the mental health benefits of the stroll, according to an interesting new psychological study of what the study’s authors call “awe walks.”

In the study, people who took a fresh look at the objects, moments and vistas that surrounded them during brief, weekly walks felt more upbeat and hopeful in general than walkers who did not. The findings are subjective but indicate that awe walks could be a simple way to combat malaise and worry. They also underscore that how we think and feel during exercise can alter how the exercise alters us.

There already is considerable evidence, of course, that exercise, including walking, can buoy our moods. Past studies have linked increased physical activity to greater happiness and reduced risks for anxiety, depression and other mental ills.

Feeling a sense of awe also seems to up our overall feelings of gladness and improve health. A somewhat nebulous emotion, awe generally is defined as the sense that you are in the presence of something larger and more consequential than yourself and that this something is mysterious and ineffable. In past studies, people who reported feeling awe also tended to have less emotional stress and lower levels of substances related to body-wide inflammation.

But no studies had looked into whether mixing awe and activity might somehow augment the benefits of each — or, on the other hand, reduce them. So, for the new study, which was published in September in Emotion, scientists affiliated with the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco, and other institutions decided to start teaching older walkers how to cultivate awe.

They concentrated on people in their 60s, 70s and 80s, ages when some people can face heightened risks for declining mental health. The researchers also had a ready-made volunteer pool, consisting of men and women already participating in an ongoing UCSF study of how to age well.

The scientists asked 52 of the study volunteers if they would mind adding a weekly 15-minute walk to their normal schedules. All of these selected recruits were physically and cognitively healthy. Fresh, baseline studies of their mental health showed they were psychologically well-adjusted as well, with little anxiety or depression.

The scientists randomly divided these volunteers into two groups. One, as a control group, was asked to start walking, at least once a week, for 15 minutes, preferably outside, but given few other mandates.

The members of the other group likewise were asked to walk once a week, but also were instructed in how to cultivate awe as they walked.

“Basically, we told them to try to go and walk somewhere new, to the extent possible, since novelty helps to cul-

tivate awe,” says Virginia Sturm, an associate professor of neurology at UCSF, who led the new study. The researchers also suggested that the walkers pay attention to details along their walks, Sturm says, “looking at everything with fresh, childlike eyes.”

They emphasized that the awesome can be anywhere and everywhere, she says, from a sweeping panorama of cliffs and sea to sunlight dappling a leaf. “Awe is partly about focusing on the world outside of your head,” she says, and rediscovering that it is filled with marvelous things that are not you.

The awe walkers, like the control group, were asked to walk outdoors. Neither group was told to confine their walks to parks or to avoid urban settings, Sturm says. Both groups were asked to take a few selfies during their walks, in order to document locales, but otherwise to avoid using their phones while walking.

The walkers in both groups uploaded their selfies to a lab website and also completed a daily online assessment of their current mood and, if they had walked that day, how they had felt during their strolls.

After eight weeks, the scientists compared the groups’ responses and photos.

Not surprisingly, they found that the awe walkers seemed to have become adept at discovering and amplifying awe. One volunteer reported focusing now on “the beautiful fall colors and the absence of them among the evergreen for-

est.” A control walker, in contrast, said she spent much of a recent walk fretting about an upcoming vacation and “all the things I had to do before we leave.”

The researchers also found small but significant differences in the groups’ sense of well-being. Overall, the awe walkers felt happier, less upset and more socially connected than the men and women in the control group. The volunteers in the control group reported some improvements in mood, but their gains were slighter.

More startling, the researchers noted a variance in the groups’ selfies. Over the course of the eight weeks, the size of awe walkers’ countenances shrank in relation to the scenery around them. Their faces grew smaller, the world larger. Nothing similar occurred in the photos from the control group.

“We had not expected that,” Sturm says.

The findings are subjective, though, since awe, like other emotions, is difficult to quantify, and there is, as yet, no other science indicating that becoming a punier part of your own selfies says something about you. The study participants also uniformly were older people in good health who walked.

It is not clear whether young people or those with illnesses likewise would benefit, or if you can and should try awe runs, swims, hikes or rides.

But Sturm thinks the possibility is enticing, especially now, when the pandemic and other concerns are rampant.

“It is such a simple thing” to look around for small wonders while you exercise, she says, “and there’s no downside.”

24 dormitorios, un baño, cocina, comedor, sala, marquesina. DiESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE cha construcción tiene un área PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE de 101.47 metros cuadrados. La PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA propiedad y la escritura de hipoSUPERIOR DE COMERÍO. teca constan inscritas al folio 38 BANCO POPULAR DE del tomo 154 de Comerío, Finca 9981. Registro de la Propiedad PUERTO RICO de Barranquitas. La hipoteca PARTE DEMANDANTE VS. la inscripción segunda. La LA SUCESIÓN DE GLEN es demandante es la tenedora por EDWIN DALE FRAME endoso, por valor recibido y de T/C/C GLEN E. DALE buena fe del referido pagaré objeto de la presente acción.

FRAME COMPUESTA Se interpela a los demandados POR DAVID DALE Y para que acepten o renuncien a MENGANO DE TAL, la herencia de la causante denPOSIBLE HEREDERO tro de los 30 días subsiguientes a la fecha que fuesen emplazaDESCONOCIDO dos o requeridos que contesPARTE DEMANDADA CIVIL NÚM. CR2020CV00044 ten, para darle cumplimiento (001). SOBRE: COBRO DE DI- al Artículo 959 del Código Civil NERO EJECUCION DE HIPO- entendiéndose que, si no se exTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINA- presan dentro de dicho término, RIA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR aceptan el caudal relicto; la reEDICTO e INTERPELACIÓN. nuncia se hará por instrumento ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉ- público o por escrito judicial. La RICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS parte demandada deberá preE.E.U.U. EL ESTADO LIBRE sentar su alegación responsiva ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de A: DAVID DALE (SUMAC), al cual puede HEREDERO DE GLEN Casos acceder utilizando la siguiente EDWIN DALE FRAME dirección electrónica: https://uniT/C/C GLEN E. DALE red.ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, FRAME a sus últimas direcciones conocidas: en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la URB. SABANA DEL secretaría del Tribunal. Se le PALMAR, A13 CALLE advierte que si no contesta la 5, COMERÍO, PR 00782, demanda, radicando el original de la contestación en este Triy URB. SABANA DEL bunal y enviando copia de la PALMAR, 113 CALLE contestación a la abogada de la YAGRUMO, COMERÍO, PR parte demandante, Lcda. Belma 00782-4819.

Alonso García, cuya dirección es: PO Box 3922, Guaynabo PR MENGANO DE TAL, POSIBLE HEREDERO 00970-3922, Teléfonos: (787) 789-1826 y (787) 708-0566, DESCONOCIDO. correo electrónico: oficinabelQueda usted notificado que en maalonso@gmail.com, dentro este Tribunal se ha radicado del término de treinta (30) días demanda sobre ejecución de de la publicación de este edicto, hipoteca por la vía ordinaria excluyéndose el día de la publien la que se alega se adeucación, se le anotará la rebeldía da las siguientes cantidades: y se le dictará Sentencia en su $38,053.96 de principal, interecontra, concediendo el remedio ses sobre dicha suma de 5.75% solicitado sin más citarle ni oíranual desde el 1 de agosto le. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y de 2019 hasta su completo el sello del Tribunal, hoy 26 de pago, más $84.90 de recargos agosto de 2020 en Comerío, acumulados, más la cantidad Puerto Rico. ELIZABETH GONestipulada de $5,820.00 para ZÁLEZ RIVERA, SECRETARIA costas, gastos y honorarios de REGIONAL. CARMEN A. TOabogados, así como cualquier RRES TORRES, SECRETARIA otra suma que contenga el conDEL TRIBUNAL CONFIDENtrato de préstamo. La propiedad CIAL II. que garantiza hipotecariamente el préstamo es la siguiente: LEGAL NOTICE URBANA: Lote número 13 del ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE Bloque A de la Urbanización PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE Sabana del Palmar localizado PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE en el Barrio Río Hondo del térBAYAMON. mino municipal de Comerío, ORIENTAL BANK Puerto Rico, con una cabida de Demandante V. 814.9051 metros cuadrados.

JORGE L. ECHEVARRÍA En lindes por el: NORTE: con el lote número 12; por el SUR: GORDON, LINDA con área verde; por el ESTE: RODRIGUEZ REYES y con área verde; y por el OESTE: la SOCEDAD LEGAL con calle número 5. Casa esDE GANANCIALES tructura de una planta construicompuesta por ambos da en hormigón y bloques, tres

LEGAL NOTICE

@

Demandado CIVIL NÚM.: BY2020CV00954.

Sobre: Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

CIVIL NÚM.: BY2020CV00954.

Sobre: Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

Wednesday, October 7, 2020 Demandados CIVIL NUM.: CA2020CV00788.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO POR LA VIA ORDINARIA Y EJECUCION DE GRAVAMEN MOBILIARIO (REPOSESION DE VEHICULO). EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. DE AMERICA EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: JORGE L ECHEVARRÍA A: LINDA RODRIGUEZ GORDON por sí y en REYES por sí y en representación de la representación de la SOCIEDAD LEGAL A: RALPH A. GONZALEZ SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES BENITEZ, SU ESPOSA DE GANANCIALES compuesta por este FULANA DE TAL Y LA compuesta por y LINDA RODRIGUEZ SOCIEDAD LEGAL esta y JORGE LUIS REYES DE GANANCIALES ECHEVARRIA GORDON Sunflower Valey Dey, 10B COMPUESTA POR Sunflower Valey Dey. 10B Tornasol St. Toa Alta PR AMBOS Tornasol St. Toa Alta PR 00953; RIR2 Box 2030, Quedan emplazados y notifica00953; RR2 Box 2030, Toa Toa Alta, PR 00953 -8974. dos que en este Tribunal se ha Alta, PR 00953-8974 Por la presente se le emplaza radicado Demanda sobre cobro

de dinero por la vIa ordinaria y ejecución de gravamen mobiliario (reposesión de vehículo) en la que se alega que la parte demandada RALPH A. GONZALEZ BENITEZ, SU ESPOSA FULANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS, le adeudan solidariamente a Americas Leading Finance, LLC., la suma de principal de $3,925.88, más los intereses que continúen acumulando, las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado según pactados. Además, se solicita al Honorable Tribunal que autorice la reposesión y/o embargo del Vehículo. Se les advierte que este edi entro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación del Edicto, a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretarIa del tribunal, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia concediendo el remedio asI solicitado sin más citarles ni oirles. El abogado de la parte demandante es el Lcdo. Gerardo M. Ortiz Torres, cuya dirección física y postal es: Cond. El Centro I, Suite 801, 500 Muñoz Rivera Ave., San LEGAL NOTICE Juan, Puerto Rico 00918; cuyo LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE nUmero de teléfono es (787) ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE 946-5268, y su correo electróniPUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA co es: gerardo@bellverlaw.com.

Expedido bajo mi firma y sello PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA. BAYAMON. AMERICAS LEADING de este Tribunal, en Carolina, Puerto Rico, hoy día 29 de sepORIENTAL BANK FINANCE LLC tiembre de 2020. Lcda. Marilyn Demandante V. Demandante, V. Aponte Rodriguez, Secretaria JORGE L. ECHEVARRÍA RALPH A. GONZALEZ Regional. Rosa M. Viera VelazGORDON, LINDA BENITEZ, SU ESPOSA quez, Subsecretaria.

Por la presente se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 30 días de haber sido publicado y notificado este emplazamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la dirección electrónica htlps://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro de! referido termino, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza y requiere para que notifique a: LCDA. RAQUEL DESEDA BELAVAL E-mail: rdeseda@deladofernandez.com DELGADO & FERNÁNDEZ, LLC P.O. Box 11750, Fernández Juncos Station San Juan, Puerto Rico 00910-1750 Tel. [787] 274-1414 / Fax [787] 764-8241 Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, hoy 23 de septiembre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Sec Regional.

RODRIGUEZ REYES y la SOCEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES compuesta por ambos Demandado

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 30 días de haber sido publicado y notificado este emplazamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la dirección electrónica htlps://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro de! referido termino, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza y requiere para que notifique a: LCDA. RAQUEL DESEDA BELAVAL E-mail: rdeseda@deladofernandez.com DELGADO & FERNÁNDEZ, LLC P.O. Box 11750, Fernández Juncos Station San Juan, Puerto Rico 00910-1750 Tel. [787] 274-1414 / Fax [787] 764-8241 Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, hoy 23 de septiembre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Sec Regional.

FULANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

(787) 743-3346

LEGAL NOTICE

de TOA ALTA.

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante vs.

JOSE CUSIDO ESCOBAR Y OTROS

Demandado(a) Civil: TA2019CV00238. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: JOSE CUSIDO ESCOBAR, FULANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES;

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 5 de marzo 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 29 de septiembre de 2020. En TOA ALTA, Puerto Rico, el 29 de septiembre de 2020.

CC: LCDO. JAIME RUIZ SALDAÑA PMB 450 CALLE CALAF, SAN JUAN PUERTO RICO 00918-1314 LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Sec Regional. LIRIAM M. HERNANDEZ OTERO, Sec Auxiliar.

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

CARRINGTON MORTGAGE SERVICES LLC Demandante vs.

SISTEMA DE RETIRO DE LOS EMPLEADOS DEL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, FULANO DE TAL, FULANA DE TAL COMO POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARE EXTRAVIADO

Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de PriDemandado(a) mera Instancia Sala Superior Civil: FA2019CV01362. Sobre:

The San Juan Daily Star CANCELACION DE PAGARE le notifican la sentencia por edicto) HIPOTECARIO EXTRAVIADO. EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscriNOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTEN- be le notifica a usted que 1 de CIA POR EDICTO. octubre de 2020, , este Tribunal A: FULANO DE TAL, URB. ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia SANTA ISIDRA III, E-10 Parcial o Resolución en este que ha sido debidamente CALLE 2, FAJARDO PR caso, registrada y archivada en autos 00738; FULANA DE TAL, donde podrá usted enterarse URB. SANTA ISIDRA III, detalladamente de los términos E-10 CALLE 2, FAJARDO de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un PR 00738; (Nombre de las partes a las que se periódico de circulación general le notifican la sentencia por edicto) en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro EL SECRETARIO(A) que sus- de los 10 días siguientes a su cribe le notifica a usted que 29 notificación. Y, siendo o reprede septiembre de 2020, , este sentando usted una parte en el Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, procedimiento sujeta a los térmiSentencia Parcial o Resolución nos de la Sentencia, Sentencia en este caso, que ha sido debi- Parcial o Resolución, de la cual damente registrada y archivada puede establecerse recurso de en autos donde podrá usted revisión o apelación dentro del enterarse detalladamente de término de 30 días contados a los términos de la misma. Esta partir de la publicación por edicnotificación se publicará una to de esta notificación, dirijo a sola vez en un periódico de cir- usted esta notificación que se culación general en la Isla de considerará hecha en la fecha Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 de la publicación de este edicdías siguientes a su notificación. to. Copia de esta notificación ha Y, siendo o representando usted sido archivada en los autos de una parte en el procedimien- este caso, con fecha de 1 de octo sujeta a los términos de la tubre de 2020. En BAYAMON, Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Puerto Rico, el 1 de octubre de Resolución, de la cual puede 2020. LCDA. MARILYN APONestablecerse recurso de revisión TE RODRIGUEZ, Sec Regional. o apelación dentro del término F/ELIBETH M. TORRES ALIde 30 días contados a partir CEA, Sec Auxiliar. 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 30 de septiembre de 2020. En FAJARDO, Puerto Rico, el 30 de septiembre de 2020. WANDA I SEGUI REYES, Sec Regional. F/ANA CELIS MARQUEZ APONTE, Sec Auxiliar.

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

LEGAL NOT ICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOClADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA ·SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN.

ELSA BOUSON GARCIA Demandante Vs.

POPULAR MORTGAGE; FULANO DE TAL

Demandados CIVIL NUM.: SJ2020CV04727.

SALA: 802. SOBRE: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ INC., EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉIDCA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE . UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: FULANO DE TAL JOSE FERNANDO posible tenedor del ROVIRA RULLAN. SU pagaré extraviado objeto ESPOSA CAROLINA la presente acción LUISA MARTINEZ GODAS Se de le notifica que se ha presenY LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL tado una Demanda en su contra DE GANANCIALES en este caso. En la Demanda se COMPUESTA POR ELLOS solicita se decrete judicialmente Demandante vs.

VANCO SANTANDER DE PUERTO RICO, FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DE CUAL

Demandado(a) Civil: SJ2020CV02739 (402).

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

A: FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DE CUAL

(Nombre de las partes a las que se

la cancelación de un (1) pagaré hipotecario a favor de Popular Mortgage, Inc. o a su orden, por la suma de $340 ,000 .00 , con interés a razón del 8.50% anual, vencedero el 28 de enero de 2022. Este pagaré fue suscrito el 25 de octubre de 1999 ante el Notario Público Pablo F. Jiménez Meléndez , y garantizado por una hipoteca constituida mediante la escritura núm. 501 de 25 de octubre de 1999, otorgada en San Juan , Puerto Rico, e inscrita en la finca núm. 18108 al folio 291 del tomo 996 de San-

The San Juan Daily Star turce Norte , inscripción 9na, del Registro de la Propiedad de San Juan, Sección Primera , sobre la siguiente propiedad : ---URBANA: Propiedad Horizontal: CONDOMINIO CARIBE de Santurce Norte. Apartamento número Once C ( 11-C). Cabida Doscientos Veintiuno punto Cuarenta y Siete (221.47) metros cuadrados, localizado en el extremó Norte del edificio, piso número once ( 11) con frente a la Calle Conveniencia esquina Calle Washington. Consta de sala -comedor , cocina, laundry, cuatro (4) dormitorios , tres (3) cuartos de baño y balcón en la parte posterior hacia el patio del edificio. Tiene un área de dos mil trescientos ochenta y dos punto noventa y siete (2,382.97) pies cuadrados, equivalentes a doscientos veintiuno punto cuarenta y siete (221 .4 7) metros cuadrados, incluyendo el balcón que está localizado en la parte posterior del edificio y conecta con el vestíbulo del servicio y que mide treinta y un pie con dos pulgadas (31 ‘2”) de largo por seis pies seis pulgadas (6’6 “) d e an cho por un lado y cinco pies seis pulgadas (5’6”) de largo por tres pies seis pulgadas (3’6”) de ancho por otro lado. Su puerta principal de entrada queda en el vestibulo Norte con entrada hacia la sala mide cuarenta y cuatro pies siete pulgadas (44’7 “) por el Este con frente a la Calle Washington y cincuenta y nueve pi es (59 ‘), por el Norte con frente a la Calle Conveniencia. Colinda por el NORTE, con la Calle Conveniencia; al ESTE, con la Calle Washington ; al SUR, con pared interior medianera y patio del edificio; al OESTE, con marquesina y entrada al vestíbulo principal. POR CIENTO QUE REPRESENTA DEL CONJUNTO DEL INMUEBLE, Representa dos punto sesenta y cuatro (2.64) porciento. GARAJE, le corresponde espacio marcado como el Once C (11-C). Inscrita al folio doscientos treinta y siete (237), del tomo cuatrocientos noventa y cuatro (494) de Santurce Norte, finca dieciocho mil ciento ocho (18,108), inscripción primera. Este apartamento se separa de la finca número diecisiete mil quinientos ochenta y ocho (17588) inscrita al folio cuatro (4) del tomo cuatrocientos setenta y siete (477) de Santurce Norte.

Catastro número: 040-040-00903-033. La parte demandante alega que el original del pagaré se extravió y la deuda evidenciada y garantizada por el mismo fue satisfecha, según consta más detalladamente en la Demanda presentada, la cual puede examinarse en la Secretaría de este Tribunal. Por la presente, se le emplaza y se le notifica que debe contestar la demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación del presente edicto. Deberá presentar la contestación a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac, salvo que se represente por derecho propio , en cuyo caso deberá presentarla ante el Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de San Juan con copia a la representación legal de la parte demandante a la siguiente dirección: Ledo.

Carlos García Ceballos; Número RUA 16262; Apartado 427, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 006810427; Tel 787-833-1595; Fax 787-834-2635; correo electrónico: lcdo-carlosgarcia @hotmail. com . Se le apercibe que, de no contestar la demanda dentro del término aquí establecido, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en San Juan, Puerto Rico, a 23 de septiembre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. ADELLE RIVERA APONTE, SECRETARIA SERVICIO.

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

LEGACY MORTGAGE ASSET TRUST 2019-PR1 Demandante vs.

CITIFINANCIAL SERVICES OF PUERTO RICO H/N/C CITIFINANCIAL PLUS; JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE COMO POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS

Demandado(a) Civil: HU2020CV00682. Sobre: CANCELACION DE PAGARE EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE COMO POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS; DIRECCION; DESCONOCIDA

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 2 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 5 de octubre de 2020. En HUMACAO, Puerto Rico, el 5 de octubre de 2020. DOMINGA GOMEZ FUSTER, Sec Regional. F/DALISSA REYES DE LEON, Sec Auxiliar.

vada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 1 de octubre de 2020. En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 1 de octubre de 2020.

LCDA. MARILYN APONTE RODRIGUEZ, Sec Regional. MARY D. CARRASQUILLO BETANCOURT, Sec Auxiliar.

Sello del Tribunal, hoy día 8 de septiembre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria Regional. Rosa M. Torrens Colon, Sec Serv Sala.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO TRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMON DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL SALA SUPERIOR. LEGAL NOTICE DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENE.M.I. EQUITY Estado Libre Asociado de Puer- TRO JUDICIAL DE SAN JUAN MORTGAGE, INC SALA SUPERIOR 807. to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DEMANDANTE VS. DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Pri- MR CONSTRUCTION, INC EDUARDO TORRES Demandante Vs. mera Instancia Sala Superior de CAROLINA.

E.M.I. EQUITY MORTGAGE INC,

LEGAL NOTICE

INMOBILIARIA MEDIO MUNDO, LLC; y otros

Demandados CWIL NUM: SJ2019CV13173.

Demandante vs.

SOBRE: LEY DE CORPORADORAL MORTGAGE CIONES, COBRO DE DINERO CORPORATION, ORDINARIO -FRAUDE DE AHORA FEDERAL ACREEDORES, DAÑOS, IMDEPOSIT INSURANCE PUGNACIÓN DE CONTRATO, CORPORATION, JOHN NULIDAD DE CONTRATO, DOE Y RICHARD ROE ACCIÓN RESCISORIA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. COMO POSIBLES ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMETENEDORES RICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL DESCONOCIDOS ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE Demandado(a) Civil: CA2020CV00090. SALA: PUERTO RICO. SS. 407. Sobre: CANCELACION DE A: Inmobiliaria Medio PAGARE EXTRAVIADO. NOMundo, LLC.; María TIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA Eugenia Ortiz y la POR EDICTO.

CARRERO, MARISELA FRANCO PEREZ Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

CIVIL NUM.: BY2020CV02911.

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

A la parte co-demandada: EDUARDO TORRES CARRERO, MARISELA FRANCO PEREZ Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE Sociedad Legal de BIENES GANANCIALES A: DORAL MORTGAGE Gananciales; y Rafael COMPUESTA POR CORPORATION, Enrique Rodríguez Torres, AMBOS, a sus ultimas AHORA FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE su esposa Jennie Amilivia direcciones conocidas: Reyes y la Sociedad ((a) 4615 WINDiNG RIVER CORPORATION, A SU Legal de Gananciales WAY LAND O LAKES, FL ULTIMA DIRECCION compuesta por ambos 34639; (b) PO BOX 1688 CONOCIDA FISICA Y POR LA PRESENTE se les emPOSTAL 1601 BRYAN plaza y notifica de que en este DORADO, PR 00646; (c) #370 CALLE 19 COMM. STREET, DALLAS Tribunal se presentó Demanda LOS PUERTOS DORADO, TEXAS, USA 75201-3430. de Ley de Corporaciones; CoPR 00646. bro deDinero Ordinario; Fraude JOHN DOE Y RICHARD Acreedores; Impugnación Por la presente se le(s) notifica ROE, DEMANDADOS de de Contrato; Daños; Nulidad de que se ha radicado en la SeDESCONOCIDOS Contrato; y Acción Rescisoria y cretaría de este Tribunal una CUYA DIRECCION SE requiere para que conteste la Demanda en Cobro de Dinero demanda dentro de los treinta y Ejecución de Hipoteca en DESCONOCE

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 30 de septiembre de 2020, , este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación.

Y, siendo o 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 archi-

(30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto. Usted deberá radicar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema.

Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: http://unired,ramajudicial,pr/surnac/ salvo qué se presente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá radicar el original de su contestación ante el Tribunal correspondiente y notifique con copia al abogado de la parte demandante, LCDO GABRIEL R AVILES APONTE, 1056 AVE MUNOZ RIVERA, COND FIRST FEDERAL, STE 613 SAN JUAN, PR 00927, TELEFONOS: (787) 764-1430/1530 FAX (787) 7671683, gravileslaw@gmail.com.

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. EXTEND1DO BAJO MI FIRMA y el

su contra, en la cual se alega entre otras cosas que la parte demandada adeuda a la parte demandante por concepto de hipoteca la suma de $102,069.46 por concepto de principal, desde el 1ro de noviembre de 2019, más intereses al tipo pactado de 4.00% anual que continúan acumulándose hasta el pago total de la obligación. Además la parte demandada adeuda a la parte demandante los cargos por demora equivalentes a 4.00% de la suma de aquellos pagos con atrasos en exceso de 15 dias calendarios de la fecha de vencimiento; los créditos accesorios y adelantos hechos en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca; y las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado equivalentes a $11,782.60. Además la parte demandada se comprometió a pagar una suma equivalente a $11,782.60 para cubrir cualquier otro adelanto que se haga en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca y una suma equivalente a $11,782.60 para cubrir intereses cii adición a los garantizados por

25

ley y cualquiera otros adelantos que se hagan en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca número 222, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 20 de diciembre de 2012, ante el notario Duncan Maldonado Ejarque, inscrita al Folio 147 del Tomo 273 de Dorado, de la finca número 14,770, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección Cuarta. Por razón de dicho incumplimiento, y al amparo del derecho que le confiere el Pagaré, el demandante ha declarado tales sumas vencidas, líquidas y exigibles en su totalidad. Este Tribunal ha ordenado que se le(s) cite a usted(es) por edicto que se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general.

Por tratarse de una obligación hipotecaria y pudiendo usted tener interés en este caso o quedar afectando por el remedio solicitado, se le emplaza por este edicto que se publicará una vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general de Puerto Rico. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal y notifique copia de la Contestación de la Demanda a las oficinas de CARDONA & MALDONADO LAW OFFICES, P.S.C. ATENCIÓN al Lcdo. Duncan Maldonado Ejarque, P.O. Box 366221, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936-6221; Tel (787) 622-7000, Fax (787) 625-7001, Abogado de la Parte Demandante. Dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto, apercibiéndole que de no hacerlo así dentro del término indicado, el Tribunal podrá anotar su Rebeldía y dictar Sentencia, concediéndose el remedio solicitado sin más citarle(s) ni oirle(s). EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y con el Sello del Tribunal. DADA hoy 1 de octubre de 2020, en Bayamon, Puerto Rico. LCDA LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional. Yariliz Cintron Colon, SubSecretaria.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE PATILLAS-SUPERIOR LIMITADO.

LIME HOMES LTD vs

SOTO BERRIOS, ANGELIS

EL SECRETARIO(A) QUE SUSCRIBE LE NOTIFICA A USTED QUE EL 28 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2020 , ESTE TRIBUNAL HA DICTADO SENTENCIA , SENTENCIA PARCIAL O RESOLUCION EN ESTE CASO, QUE HA SIDO DEBIDAMENTE REGISTRADA Y ARCHIVADA EN AUTOS DONDE PODRA USTED ENTERAR SE DETALLADAMENTE DE LOS TERMINOS DE LA MISMA. ESTA NOTIFICACION SE PUBLICARA UNA SOLA VEZ EN UN PERIODICO DE CIRCULACION GENERAL EN LA ISLA DE PUERTO RICO, DENTRO DE LOS 10 DIAS SIGUIENTES A SU NOTIFICACION. Y, SIENDO O REPRESENTANDO USTED UNA PARTE EN EL PROCEDIMIENTO SUJETA A LOS TERMINOS DE LA SENTENCIA, SENTENCIA PARCIAL O RESOLUCION , DE LA CUAL PUEDE ESTABLECERSE RECURSO DE REVISION O APELACION DENTRO DEL TERMINO DE 30 DIAS CONTADOS A PARTIR DE LA PUBLICACION POR EDICTO DE ESTA NOTIFICACION , DIRIJO A USTED ESTA NOTIFICACION QUE SE CONSIDERARA HECHA EN LA FECHA DE LA PUBLICACION DE ESTE DICTO. COPIA DE ESTA NOTIFICACION HA SIDO ARCHIVADA EN LOS AUTOS DE ESTE CASO, CON FECHA DE 02 DE OCTUBRE DE 2020.

LIC. CORTIJO VILLOCK, EDMY PRSERVICE@ TROMBERGLAWGROUP.COM EN PATILLAS, PUERTO RICO, EL 02 DE OCTUBRE DE 2020.

MARISOL ROSADO RODRIGUEZ, SECRETARIO. POR: F/ MIGDALIA CINTRON HERNANDEZ, SECRETARIO AUXILIAR.

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Demandante vs.

SUCESION DE RAFAEL CUEBAS MORALES, compuesta par sus hijos RAFAEL CUEBAS ORTIZ, AIXA CUEBAS PEREZ, MARIA MERCEDES CUEBAS PEREZ; SUCESION DE NAYDA MARGARITA CUEBAS ORTIZ corn puesta por FULANO DE TAL y ZUTANO DE TAL como posibles herederos desconocidos; CENTRO DE RECAUDACION DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES (“CRIM”)

CASO: G3CI201500163. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. Demandados NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTEN- CIVIL NUM. CA2019CV01683 CIA POR EDICTO. (406). SOBRE: COBRO DE A: MARIA MILAGROS DINERO (Ejecución de HipoTORRES CORREA, JOHN teca por Ia VIa Ordinaria). EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO DOE, JANE DOE ENMENDADO E INTERPELA-

CION. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: MARIA MERCEDES CUEBAS PEREZ, como miembro de Ia SUCESION DE RAFAEL CUEBAS MORALES; FULANO DE TAL y ZUTANO DE TAL, como posibles herederos desconocidos de Ia SUCESION DE NAYDA MARGARITA CUEBAS ORTIZ

POR EL PRESENTE EDICTO se le notifica que se ha radicado en esta Secretaria por Ia parte demandante, Demanda Enmendada sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por Ia Via Ordinaria en Ia que se alega adeuda Ia suma principal de $99,589.12 intereses at 6.25% anual, desde el dia 1ro de agosto de 2017, hasta su completo pago, más Ia cantidad de $13,000.00 estipulada para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado, más recargos acumulados, todas cuyas sumas están liquidas y exigibles. Se le advierte que de no comparecer en autos dentro del término do los treinta (30) dias siguientes a partir de Ia publicación de esto Edicto, so Ie anotará Ia Rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia concediendo eI remedio solicitado, sin más citarle ni oIrle, debiendo radicar el original de su contestación en este Tribunal, enviando copia a Ia abogada de Ia parte demandante: LCDA. ADELA SURILLO GUTIERREZ BUFETE COLLAZO, CONNELLY & SURILLO, LLC P.O. Box 70212, San Juan, PR 009368212 Teléfono: (787) 625-9999 Se le advierte, además, a Ia parte demandada quo conforme el caso do Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria v. Latinoamericana de Exportación, Inc., 2005 TSPR 50, Op. de 22 de abril de 2005 y a tenor con las disposiciones del Articulo 959 del Codigo Civil de Puerto Rico (31 L.P.R.A. sec. 2787), deberá aceptar o repudiar Ia herencia de los causantes, dentro del término do treinta (30) dias. De no expresar su intención de aceptar a repudiar Ia herencia dentro del término que se le fijó, Ia herencia se tendrá por aceptada. Se le notifica también por Ia presento quo Ia parte demandante habrá de presentar para su anotación al Registrador de Ia Propiedad del Distrito en que está situada Ia propiedad objeto de esto pleito, un aviso de estar pendiente esta acción. Para publicarse conformo a Ia Orden dictada por el Tribunal on un periódico de circulación. EN TESTIMONIO DE LO CUAL, expido el presente Edicto que firma y sello en Carolina, Puerto Rico, de 2 de octubre de 2020. Lcda.

Marilyn Aponte Rodriguez, Sec Regional. Solmarie Montero Castro, Sec Auxiliar.

26

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

After 12 years, a Yankees scout’s dream pairing comes to fruition

By JAMES WAGNER

D

ave Keith, a New York Yankees amateur scout, was on a road trip in Utah last month when he received a text message from Kyle Higashioka, the Yankees’ backup catcher. Higashioka wanted to know if Keith had received anything in the mail.

Keith told him that he was on a scouting trip, but would give him a heads up when he got home.

When Keith returned home, what he found waiting for him brought tears to his eyes: a baseball signed by Gerrit Cole, the new ace of the Yankees, and Higashioka — two players he had scouted as amateurs before they were drafted by the Yankees in 2008.

Ever since he had watched them playing as teammates on top prospect showcase squads in Southern California, Keith had dreamed that Cole and Higashioka would one day form a battery in pinstripes. It finally came true this season, after winding and diverging journeys for each player, and has continued into the playoffs, including Monday in a 9-3 win in Game 1 of the Yankees’ American League Division Series against the rival Tampa Bay Rays.

Scribbled on the ball was a message — “1st strike out of the Cole-Higashioka battery” — along with details of the moment: The batter was Hanser Alberto of the Baltimore Orioles, and the setting was the first inning of a Sept. 5 game at Camden Yards in Baltimore.

“It knocked me off my feet,” Keith said in a telephone interview. “Scouts, we don’t ask for stuff. That was just coming from the heart.

It touched me big time. Wow, this is special.”

The nature of Keith’s job helps explain why the small gesture means so much to him.

Area scouts are a team’s primary eyes and ears for finding talent: They spend most of the year on the road away from their families, visiting smaller towns across the country to watch games, getting to know prospects and their families, and vouching for players from their coverage area to their bosses.

“When you draft these guys and you send them off — and I tell the parents this, too — you become a stepdad,” Keith said.

“You’re pulling for them, and you’re in it with them the whole way. You become really at-

Gerrit Cole, left, and catcher Kyle Higashioka were teammates on top prospect showcase squads in Southern California more than a decade ago. tached to these kids — I still call them kids.

For me, I love those two guys, and I’m so proud of them.”

Keith was particularly thrilled that Cole and Higashioka, both 30, had linked up on the field. He told both players on several occasions that he envisioned this, even as far back as 2008, when the Yankees selected Cole in the first round out of Orange Lutheran High School and Higashioka in the seventh round from Edison High School. Both schools are in Orange County, Calif.

After Higashioka was drafted, the Yankees brought him to their stadium in the Bronx, where he met with team officials and players, including veteran catcher Jorge Posada.

“I told Higgy, ‘It’s going to be pretty cool one day watching Cole and you on the mound,’” Keith said. “And he goes, ‘Hopefully it’s a long time.’”

It took a long time for the reunion to happen, though. Unlike Higashioka, Cole passed up the chance to sign for millions with the franchise he had adored growing up because he and his father believed it was more valuable to study at UCLA and develop into a better pitcher.

They were proven right when Cole was selected first overall in the 2011 draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Yankees tried to trade for Cole before the 2018 season, but the Houston Astros won out. With the Astros,

Cole blossomed into one of the best pitchers in the sport, combining a fierce competitive drive and a potent arsenal on the mound with a sharp intellect.

All along, the Yankees loomed in the background. In 2001, when he was 11, Cole attended the World Series between the Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks with his father and was photographed holding a now well-known “Yankee Fan Today Tomorrow Forever” sign. Keith said he still remembered Cole, during a predraft meeting with him and his father, rattling off details from past Yankees seasons and showing off his bedroom, which was covered in team memorabilia.

“That’s always stuck with me,” Keith said. “I said then, ‘I hope one day Gerrit gets to live out his dream and we can get him, and Higgy is with us.’”

So Keith was delighted in December — and he told Cole as much in a text message then — when general manager Brian Cashman, who referred to Cole as his “white whale,” lured him as a free agent with a nineyear, $324 million contract.

Higashioka was still with the Yankees, but it had taken nine years of development, troubles at the plate, injuries and re-signing as a minor league free agent before he made his major league debut in 2017. This season, he finally earned the team’s second-string catcher’s job.

So when starting catcher Gary Sánchez

struggled, Higashioka earned more playing time, clicked instantly with Cole and showed why he had long been considered a strong defender and pitch caller.

“We have a pretty good understanding of how each other likes to attack the hitters, and between innings we always have a good dialogue,” Higashioka said of Cole.

Cole added: “Probably because we’re both from Southern California and we have a lot of the same interests. Kyle is easy to communicate with and a really creative thinker.”

Although the sample sizes are small, Cole has a 3.91 ERA in eight starts with Sánchez behind the plate but a 1.32 ERA in five starts entering Monday with Higashioka, including a seven-inning, 13-strikeout performance against the Cleveland Indians in the first round of the playoffs. Keith, of course, watched that game with glee from his home in Dana Point, Calif., and planned to do the same Monday.

“Their baseball IQs are through the roof,” he said. “I would love to be sitting in that dugout listening to them.”

But Keith cannot be with them, so Cole and Higashioka sent him a token of their appreciation. When Keith thanked Higashioka for the ball, Higashioka told him it was Cole’s idea to save the one from their first strikeout together as Yankees.

“Those area scouts are often underappreciated,” Cole said Sunday, adding later, “They’re kind of the boots on the ground, and it’s hard not to at least develop some relationship with them and be appreciative for what they bring to the game.”

In fact, the gift’s impact went beyond Keith himself, he said. It has been a tough time for talent evaluators — some teams were already minimizing the role of traditional scouting before the pandemic, but now several had laid off or furloughed dozens of scouts because of revenue shortfalls.

When other scouts found out about Cole and Higashioka’s gesture, Keith said, they told him that it gave them hope to “keep fighting and going for the good kids.”

He added later, “It was a dream for me to see them together, it was a dream for Cole to be a Yankee, and for the scouting community, for that class act of those two guys, it meant a lot.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

27

The French Open cold drives Kenin and Djokovic toward the drop shot

By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY

S

ofia Kenin, who is having the most successful season of any U.S. tennis player, is eager to deploy her drop shot on any surface.

But the temptation has been even greater than usual at this autumnal French Open, where the cool and often humid conditions make for lower bounces off the red clay.

“Drop shot heaven,” Kenin confirmed on her way to the quarterfinals of Roland Garros.

Players, both seeded and unseeded, have definitely taken the hint in Paris.

Hugo Gaston, a quick and flashy French wild card, tried 55 drop shots and won 40 of those points in his fiveset thriller with Dominic Thiem in the fourth round, losing the match but acquiring plenty of new followers.

Men’s No. 1 Novak Djokovic, who has yet to lose a set in four matches, tried more than 30 drop shots Monday in his 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 victory over Karen Khachanov. Djokovic has said from the start of the tournament that the tactic was going to be a particularly important factor this year.

But as Djokovic knows too well at age 33, drop shots do not always lead to paradise.

They run the same risk as potato chips: Once you open the bag, it can be hard to resist the temptation.

“I love the drop shot but maybe too much,” Djokovic acknowledged Monday.

Gaston also indulged himself too often down the stretch and eventually began missing on critical points; but not before making a deep impression on Thiem, 27, a great athlete and clay-court master who has chased down enough drop shots to be a connoisseur.

“I haven’t seen for a very long time a player with such a big touch in his hands,” Thiem said. “His drop shots are just from another planet. I was sprinting like 400 times to the net.”

It was a delicate dance for Gaston, but surely the right play considering that standing at the baseline and exchanging full-cut topspin groundstrokes with the powerful Thiem would have played

right into Thiem’s strengths.

“Perhaps at the end there were three or four shots that weren’t quite right for the moment in the match,” said Marc Barbier, Gaston’s coach. “But you can’t criticize him for that. Hugo has to find and search for solutions to avoid confronting Thiem on his terms. In trying to be creative, Hugo exposes himself to the counterattack but also exposes himself to making a bad choice. You can’t have regrets.”

A bad drop shot is usually about as effective as a double fault, but a good one is a thing of cruel beauty: a wicked change of pace, preferably hit off the same backswing as a full-force groundstroke and then sliced with just the right feel to barely cross over the net and die a glorious death in the clay.

Put too much arc on the ball or hit the shot from too far behind the baseline and hard-running players like Thiem will easily track it down. Fail to disguise it and players will start to sprint forward before the drop shot is deployed. But time it correctly — as Djokovic, Kenin, Gaston and others have done so often this year — and the rewards are often immediate.

“I have different stuff that I really like, but the drop shot is definitely a key,” Kenin, the 2020 Australian Open champion, said of her game. “It’s a great factor, especially on the clay.”

Her opponents have often not even tried to run down some of her best efforts. She hit nine drop shot winners against Fiona Ferro in her 2-6, 6-2, 6-1 victory in the fourth round Monday, using the tactic with her forehand and her two-handed backhand.

“I was having a hard time reacting, especially when she was playing her regular strokes deeper,” Ferro said.

Powerful, deep groundstrokes can set up drop shots, which is part of the reason that Djokovic’s are usually so effective.

“With the opponent fearing the big shot, the tendency is to back up, and that’s the ideal moment to use the drop shot,” Mats Wilander, a three-time French Open champion in the 1980s, said in an interview with L’Équipe. “You change your grip and voilá, there it is.”

Hugo Gaston won 40 points off drop shots in his fourth-round loss to Dominic Thiem. “His drop shots are just from another planet,” Thiem said of Gaston.

But drop shots can also set up powerful, deep groundstrokes.

In the third round, qualifier Irina Bara was so bamboozled against Kenin that on several occasions, she started to move forward in anticipation of a backhand drop shot only to have to quickly change plans and directions when Kenin went for a flat, two-handed backhand drive instead.

In French, the drop shot is called an “amortie,” which translates as “cushion” or “shock absorber” — a fine way of putting it when you watch a player like Kenin or Gaston absorb an opponent’s power and respond with deft spin.

Spanish-speakers call it a “dejada,” which comes from the verb dejar, which means “to leave” something, like keys on a counter. But leaving the ball out of your opponent’s reach is not always necessary for a drop shot to be effective. It is often a combination-punch: all the more so on a lowbouncing surface like the red clay of

Roland Garros in the fall of 2020.

Time and again, Thiem would slide forward and get a racket on a Gaston drop shot but fail to do much more than poke the ball back into play, leaving Gaston free to lob him or rip a passing shot.

The classic clay-court duel is a drop shot answered with another drop shot: frequently on display as Djokovic played Khachanov. The prospect of that counterattack is why it is generally wise to follow a drop shot into net, which means that both players end up there together: not the way it typically works on faster surfaces in singles.

It has led to some spectacular exchanges in Paris: reflex volleys, extreme angles and lunging athleticism.

And although much is far from ideal about the French Open this October — small crowds, mandatory masks and dreary weather — drop shot mania is a fine consolation prize.

“It definitely is the right play here this year,” Kenin said.

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

NFL adds new COVID-19 protocols to keep season on track

By KEN BELSON

W

orking overtime to keep its season intact, NFL officials earlier this week introduced additions to existing coronavirus protocols established with the players union following a call between the league office, team owners, general managers and head coaches.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the changes included the introduction of a leaguewide video system to monitor whether players and staff were wearing personal protective equipment like masks while inside team facilities and while traveling. The league is also limiting the number of free agent tryouts per week and placing bans on gatherings outside team facilities.

“Protocol violations that result in virus spread requiring adjustments to the schedule or otherwise impacting other teams will result in additional financial and competitive discipline including the adjustment or loss of draft choices or even the forfeit of a game,” Goodell said in a memo sent to teams Monday afternoon.

Goodell used the meeting and the memo that followed to ramp up efforts to enforce the following of coronavirus guidelines and to emphasize the impact to the NFL’s business. The hastily called virtual meeting came after a tumultuous week that included the league’s first team outbreak on the Tennessee Titans and two games this week having to be postponed — the Titans-Pittsburgh Steelers game to Oct. 25 and the New England Patriots-Kansas City Chiefs matchup to Monday night. Patrick Mahomes threw for 236 yards and two touchdowns in a 26-10 win for Kansas City.

Going forward, if outbreaks on teams require that a game be postponed, the league will continue to move games to Monday or Tuesday, or later in the season by juggling bye weeks.

After last week’s positive tests to more than a dozen Titans players and team personnel and to one of the league’s biggest names, Patriots quarterback Cam Newton, the league has increased its efforts to police the following of health-related guidelines. Goodell and Troy Vincent, executive vice president in charge of football operations, have sent a ream of

N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell called on teams to be vigilant in adhering to coronavirus protocols. “Simply put, compliance is mandatory,” he wrote in a memo sent Monday. memos reminding teams to wear masks properly, physically distance where possible and limit access to locker rooms and other places where players and coaches congregate.

The league also continues to fine coaches and teams that have not abided by its rules, penalizing head coaches seen during games not wearing masks properly $100,000 and their teams $250,000.

The call Monday was a sign that the league was not satisfied that its memos were being taken seriously enough, and that lax adherence to health protocols could jeopardize the goal of playing a full calendar of games at teams’ home stadiums, ending with the Super Bowl in February. Football executives emphasized yet again that the virus is spread in myriad ways and demanded vigilance from franchises.

Those rules have been broken several times, most notably in Las Vegas.

Last week, the league fined the Raiders $50,000 after an unauthorized person entered the team’s locker room, potentially exposing players and staff to the virus. Nine players were also fined $15,000 each for attending a charity event that was held indoors last week with hundreds of people who were not wearing

masks. A 10th player, Darren Waller, who hosted the event, was fined $30,000.

The NFL has said for months that it expected some players, coaches and staff members would test positive for the coronavirus, in part because team owners and players chose not to create a closed community, or “bubble,” and instead have allowed personnel to leave the relatively secure team facilities after practice every day, dramatically increasing the odds of exposure.

“The big thing for us is to not get comfortable,” Goodell said before the start of the season. “We’re dealing with a lot of uncertainty.”

The inevitable became the inescapable last week when nine players and nine staff members on the Tennessee Titans tested positive for the virus, the league’s first full-fledged outbreak of the season. Soon after the league postponed the Titans’ game against the Steelers (which had been scheduled for last Sunday), the NFL was forced to push back the New England Patriots’ game against the Kansas City Chiefs to Monday night after Newton’s positive test.

There were no further positive tests over the weekend, so the Patriots were

allowed to fly to Kansas City, Mo., but in two separate planes — one for players and staff who were exposed to Newton and a second plane for everyone else.

In response to the outbreak in Nashville, Tenn., the league Friday told teams that players and coaches cannot leave their team’s city on bye weeks, and those exempt from testing are still required to report to the team’s facility for daily screening and temperature checks.

The team reported no new positive tests Monday, a sign that the outbreak may now be confined, and none of the Minnesota Vikings, who played the Titans on Sept. 27, tested positive.

Still, there are many other opportunities for players to be exposed to the virus when they are away from NFL-regulated facilities. For now, the league’s approach appears to be to tighten its grip on the spaces it controls — continually reminding players, coaches and staff to adhere to health guidelines, watching them on video and threatening penalties if they don’t — to keep the season on track.

“That’s the right decision to make, before you have to do something more drastic,” said Steve Smith, a sports law attorney at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner who advises teams and leagues on media contracts, stadium operations, licensing and naming rights. “If you have double-digit attacks on six, eight teams, you might have to postpone the season and pick back up. That’s what you have to avoid.”

The unblinking focus on test results comes as a growing number of teams allow fans to attend games in limited capacities. On Sunday, the Carolina Panthers and Houston Texans joined about 10 other clubs in welcoming fans into their stadiums. Fans — as well as members of the news media and many others — are not allowed anywhere near the players while they’re working. But the return of paying customers to games is a way for the NFL to reduce some of the billions of dollars in revenue losses this season, even if it means increasing the risk that fans will be exposed by attending large gatherings.

“No one wants to lose billions of dollars,” Smith said.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 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)

A friend will be asking you to make some changes to fit in with their plans and ideas. Even though this will be an inconvenience you will be happy to do this because you know they would do the same for you. What you may not have expected is to see how much you gain from making such adjustments.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

It can sometimes feel as if you’re just talking to yourself when you are with a partner or housemate. When you ask for an opinion, they have little to say. Even though they are making out that they agree with your views, you sense they don’t. This lack of communication is starting to irritate you.

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

You have a lot planned but don’t get carried away with excitement. You may not be taking as practical and organised an approach to some arrangements as you think. Before jumping headlong into anything, look before you leap. You won’t be able to get a word in edgeways when talking to a friendly neighbour.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

There is talk of a lot of money going into an area of your community that needs it. If a group is looking for support to keep things moving in the right direction, offer yours. At home, someone is in an aggravating mood and nothing you say will please them.

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

You will get a chance to say thank you to someone in your community who has gone above and beyond to help others during lockdown. It is only right that they get the respect and recognition they deserve. Fulfilment will come from a group project. Important decisions need to be made. Now is the time to think through the opinions of other interested parties.

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

Leo

Aquarius

Working for a charity in a volunteer capacity will cultivate financial fortune. Initiate a program that might help vulnerable members of society. People are influenced by your persuasive personality and you will attract plenty of support. Friends and family feel able to let down their defences in your company. Secrets are revealed.

(July 24-Aug 23)

Before shopping online make a list of priorities. You could find a number of attractive offers that will be hard to resist. If money is tight, be sensible and put yourself on a budget. This isn’t a good time to splash out on a new phone, car or computer even though a loved one is pushing you to do so.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

The past few months have been difficult for the industry in which you work. It won’t surprise you that further cutbacks need to be made and new restrictions put in place. Are you unemployed? An offer will fall through due to sudden changes that no one had been expecting.

Someone will pick up the wrong end of the stick about a work or money matter. You get the impression they’re exaggerating a situation that isn’t half as bad as they are making out. Maybe they just need to get something off their chest. Let them rant and rave if this might make them feel happier. You don’t have to listen.

Someone who is at the pinnacle of their power will support a cause you are involved in. Funding will be received for a worthy venture.

Unexpected events will make this an unusual day. There’s very little that is predictable about your life at the moment. Continue to go with the flow.

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Don’t hold back from fulfilling promises already made. The happiness you spread by doing so will be immeasurable. Someone is expecting a visit from you. Instead of being vague about this, make binding plans. If you’re offered a choice, aim to make your evening’s activities quieter than usual.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

People are starting to see an independent streak they don’t normally associate with you.

You’re tired of abiding by rules and regulations that make no sense to you. If everything is working well, you see no reason why some people decide to make more changes. Your rebellious ways could cultivate a small fan club.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

Herman

Ziggy

32 SEMANA, • Jueves, 1 de octubre de 2020 Wednesday, OctoberINC 7, 2020 32EDITORIAL

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