Thursday Oct 8, 2020

Thursday, October 8, 2020

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Gubernatorial Candidates on How to Transform Island’s Old Power Grid

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Thursday, October 8, 2020

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October 8, 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.

Over $300 million approved for Unemployment, PUA in PR

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ov. Wanda Vázquez Garced and Labor and Human Resources (DTRH by its Spanish initials) Secretary Carlos Rivera Santiago announced Wednesday the approval by the federal government of over $300 million in additional compensation beyond what has already been received by citizens whose workplaces have been compromised by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Thanks to the meeting we had yesterday with the administrator of Region 2 of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Tom Von Essen, today the administrator of FEMA, Peter Gaynor, informed us that Puerto Rico was included in the supplemental federal unemployment assistance program,” Vázquez said in a written statement. “This is of great help for many Puerto Ricans who have had to resort to receiving unemployment assistance due to the pandemic.”

Rivera Santiago added that “[t]he federal government issued specific guidelines for those who would

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be qualifying to receive this compensation.”

“The claimant for Unemployment Insurance or Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) has to be receiving $100 or more on a weekly basis to qualify,” he said.

The Labor secretary also detailed the process in which the money will be disbursed -- that each eligible citizen will receive three weeks retroactive to Aug. 1 ($900), and the remaining weeks will be subject to the approval and logistics established by FEMA. The Puerto Rico government asked FEMA for six weeks, which is the maximum established by the program, and an initial disbursement of $339,871,532 was authorized for three weeks. At the moment, the DTRH is waiting for the transfer of these funds and for the federal government to inform it if FEMA will proceed with the authorization of the remaining three weeks that were originally requested.

Once the funds have been received, the claimant will not have to take any other steps, since the payments will be applied automatically.

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Thursday, October 8, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Gubernatorial candidates weigh in on how to transform the island’s power grid

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

W

ith the purpose of advancing concrete ideas on how the next government that takes office in January will transform Puerto Rico’s electric power system and provide fair access to every citizen, five of the six gubernatorial candidates participated Wednesday in community collective Queremos Sol’s Energy Forum at Polytechnic University.

The forum’s goal was to understand each candidate’s proposal for transforming the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s (PREPA) business and governance model as Queremos Sol’s objective, said CAMBIO Founder Ingrid Vila Biaggi, is to present “an energy public policy of transformation in Puerto Rico with a preference for immediate conservation, efficiency, and clean renewable energy measures.”

“Puerto Rico can become a transition model for renewable energy and be a pioneer in an integral energy focus that considers risk reductions, effects of climate change, human and environmental health, adaptability, equality, and democratization,” Vila Biaggi said.

In the forum’s first round, Puerto Rican Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Juan Dalmau said his vision for transforming the island’s electrical grid involves taking advantage of its geographic location to use the natural resources available, such as solar energy, instead of burning fossil fuel, an approach the pro-independence senator said is based on “antiquated models.”

“I consider that today, it is more urgent now than ever before to take the fundamental steps to adapt an energy policy that is based on renewable sources; therefore, in the Energy, Environmental Protection and Natural Resources section of my government program Patria Nueva, we integrated, by name and surname, the proposals that were contained in Queremos Sol’s program,” Dalmau said.

Dalmau said further that he was against the so-called sun tax and would install solar panels on abandoned industrial grounds such as the Commonwealth Oil Refining Co. Inc. or the Rafael Cordero Santiago Port of the Americas as he will not consider compromising the health of agricultural land and recognized issues on land ownership and the conflicts that exist for their acquisition.

“We must emphasize the access to technologies such as photovoltaic sheets in solar communities, in other words, that

the energy production systems via renewable energy must be accessible through community, residential and individual ends,” Dalmau said. “We must democratize access to the sun.”

Dignity Project (DP) gubernatorial candidate César Vázquez said he would not bet that “the majority of us will be alive in 2035, much less in 2050” if something is not done starting Jan. 2, the day the next elected government takes power as it “will confront a decimated economy with 150,000 new unemployed, and many citizens who have lost their healthcare plans.”

“For the DP, our principal project, which begins by creating a government that is honest and recovers credibility before the country and the federal government, is to stimulate our economy, and that stimulation depends on that source we call energy,” Vázquez said. “Our source of energy, PREPA, has been a drag on our economic development and, to top it off, we are still recovering from Hurricane Maria.”

Vázquez said his response as governor would be “to create trustworthy energy at a reasonable price” whereby the price per kilowatt-hour shouldn’t surpass 20 cents. He added that he would “breathe down LUMA Energy’s neck to comply with PREPA’s agreement and put pressure on making sure that energy cost per kilowatt-hour should not surpass 12 cents.”

In the second round, independent candidate Eliezer Molina said he saw electric power as something “medullary” and proposed creating a cooperative system that would generate energy and develop microgrids, which have the advantage of going “around every community and bringing back electric power to the most disadvantaged communities.”

“Human development is focused on housing, health, education, every fundamental element that we must guarantee to every member of our society; therefore, naturally, electric power is for our people, not for those who [advertise] on billboards and don’t pay for electric power,” Molina said. “It’s not for those great capital businesses that have established [themselves] here with great tax exemptions.”

Molina emphasized that his government will create an Evaluation and Enforcement Office to ensure compliance with regard to the funds invested in the island and guarantee that every citizen has access to free will and human development.

“We can’t depend on only one source of renewable energy, and I insist, microgrids can enforce such a purpose as Puerto Rico, being a small island, can use hydroelectric, solar and wind energy, but we have to do it in a balanced manner,” he said.

The spokesperson for Popular Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate Carlos Delgado Altieri, Josué Brenes, said “we were informed that a person who was in contact with Charlie Delgado in recent days, tested positive for COVID-19. In a preventive way, the corresponding adjustments have been made in his schedule, while the candidate undergoes the proper tests. Once the results are ready they will be made public.”

In the third round, Citizen Victory Movement gubernatorial candidate Alexandra Lúgaro said that for decades the energy model pushed by the Puerto Rican government has been a “contradiction,” such that even though the Energy Public Policy Law mandates a swift a transition to renewable power sources, the government has “pushed for dependence on fossil fuels, such as natural gas, that would delay reaching the goal of fully producing renewable energy by 2050.”

“In the next few years, there will be multiple funds allocated to building a resilient electrical grid; the most recent estimate is $1.9 billion in Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) Program funds,” Lúgaro said. “With that amount of money, Puerto Rico could [build] 210,000 systems of two kilowatts each, when we talk about conglomerates, that would be 428 megawatts, whereby we could replace the AES coal plant, which we would close as soon we become a government.”

New Progressive Party candidate Pedro Pierluisi said he envisions an island with “sustainable economic growth for everyone.” He said it can be accomplished if energy costs are reduced in order to make the country competitive and by enforcing laws that were already signed in latter administrations.

“It is equally important to protect our natural sources, particularly, the ecologically sensitive, in order to be diligent in fighting against climate change,” Pierluisi said. “Electric power is a pivotal service that sustains our economic development so people can have the quality life they deserve; therefore, it’s indispensable to have an efficient and [affordable] service.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case in recent decades as PREPA, as a public corporation, has been ineffective at modernizing its infrastructure.”

Regarding the LUMA Energy contract for managing PREPA’s transmission and distribution system, Dalmau, Molina and Lúgaro were against the agreement, which they deemed “leonine,” and contended that PREPA should be treated as a public asset. Meanwhile, Vázquez and Pierluisi said the contract should be reviewed once again for the sake of the island’s needs.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

5

Candidate Delgado proposes creation of a ‘National Climate Action and Resilience Program’

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

I

n order to address the issue of climate change with an effective and integrated public policy, Popular Democratic Party candidate for governor Carlos “Charlie” Delgado Altieri announced Wednesday that if elected he will create the National Climate Action and Resilience Program to address the effects of the climate crisis in Puerto Rico.

“Despite the efforts made at a government level to address such an important issue, in Puerto Rico there is no specialized entity capable of establishing the direction and executing climate public policy effectively,” the gubernatorial candidate said. “The jurisdictions that are successfully managing this climate crisis have chosen to create new governmental structures to integrate climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience actions in all governmental, municipal and community structures.”

Delgado announced that if elected he will create the Office of Climate Change and Resilience, attached to the Office of the Governor to implement and execute the National Climate Action and Resilience Program. The office will be responsible for integrating climate public policy, will serve as a liaison with municipalities and com-

munities to provide expertise in requesting state and federal funds for the design of climate resilience plans at the local level, and will monitor and publish progress in compliance with the climate public policy to serve as a planning instrument in terms of mitigation, adaptation and research actions.

“Given the vulnerability of the archipelago of Puerto Rico to the imminent effects of climate change, addressing this issue in

an integrated and responsible way, working on climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience measures at the governmental, municipal and community levels [is imperative],” Delgado said.

Delgado’s public policy on climate change also includes a Study of Public Infrastructure Vulnerability to Climate Change that will include any agency or corporation with public infrastructure in areas vulner-

able to the effects of climate change.

The candidate also said he will promote entrepreneurship, self-management and sustainability as aspects of economic development to address the climate crisis.

As part of his strategy, he will seek to reduce dependency on imported food, strengthening local agriculture by integrating the Agro Futuro 2030 Program along with the College of Agricultural Sciences of the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez Campus to increase the island’s food security overall and bring all agricultural lines to their maximum productive capacity in a period of 10 years.

Meanwhile, Delgado said he will work with island communities to strengthen them and prepare them for possible disasters.

In addition, the regular dredging plans for Aqueduct and Sewer Authority dams will be investigated and supervised.

Likewise, an integral waste management plan will be promoted that includes plans and programs to reduce the generation of solid waste, the candidate said.

“We will protect critical ecosystems by increasing the conservation of high ecological value land from 16 percent today to 25 percent by 2025,” Delgado said. “We will do this by promoting acquisitions, land donations and conservation easements through nonprofit organizations from the entire country.”

Ferrer Santiago to governor: Allow your successor to name new high court justice

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

G

iven the vacancy that will open in the Puerto Rico Supreme Court before the end of the year, Héctor Ferrer Santiago, a Popular Democratic Party (PDP) at-large candidate for the island House of Representatives, asked Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced on Wednesday to allow the next elected governor to appoint the new justice.

“The governor has a pattern of making appointments of people who are close to her and who are totally unable to do the job,” Ferrer Santiago said in a written statement.

“In December there will be a vacancy on the Supreme Court and it must be a legitimate governor who makes this appointment,” he said. “Wanda Vázquez was not elected by the people and received a clear rejection by the NPP [New Progressive Party] in the gubernatorial primary.”

“We are less than a month away from the elections, and this appointment must be made by the candidate [for

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The PDP legislative candidate stressed the importance of safeguarding judicial independence and maintaining a constitutional balance.

“The Supreme Court interprets the laws that protect the rights of Puerto Ricans,” he said. “To ensure and protect the credibility of our highest judicial forum, the appointment of the new justice must be made with legitimacy.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

Fiscal board tilts conservative with appointment of new member

By THE STAR STAFF

T

he appointment of Justin Peterson, managing partner of the Washington, D.C. lobbying firm DCI Group, to the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico appears likely to bring about a conservative majority at the federally appointed panel in which none of the board members reside in Puerto Rico.

DCI Group represented Puerto Rico’s general obligation bondholders in their fight to stop the approval by Congress of the federal Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), which created a financial control board to oversee Puerto Rico’s finances and represent it in the bankruptcy process.

“I hope he [Peterson] can differentiate between his role as debt collector and his role in rebuilding the island,” Puerto Rico Senate Majority Leader Carmelo Ríos said. “Puerto Rico does not need another debt collecting agency.”

Ríos said PROMESA was created to help Puerto Rico rebuild its economy and not to please bondholders. He warned that Peterson will not have allies in the commonwealth government if he attempts to cut public pensions and force the people to make more sacrifices.

Yesterday, President Trump nominated Peterson as a

member of the oversight board, two days after the resignation of board chairman José Carrión, a Republican. The appointment means the board will have three Republicans and two Democrats.

Neither Peterson nor any of the current oversight board members lives in Puerto Rico.

Kenneth Rivera, a former president of the Puerto Rico Chamber of Commerce, said the fact that Peterson does not live in Puerto Rico and is unfamiliar with its social problems is a drawback.

“The fact that Peterson is familiar with Puerto Rico’s debt crisis has its merits because he is not here to learn the ropes, but I would rather have someone who lives in Puerto Rico on the board,” Rivera said. “He does not have a relative who goes to public school or who has a government pension like someone who lives here [would likely have].”

Cate Long, who runs a research service for Puerto Rico’s bondholders, hailed the appointment via Twitter. Long has been a critic of the oversight board for allegedly disregarding the creditors’ protections contained in PROMESA, a charge the board has denied.

“I don’t know him but know his firm was deeply involved in the fight over the development of PROMESA,” Long tweeted. “I think he will be a good foil to those on the OBoard who think there are no creditor protections incorporated into the statute.”

John Mudd, a bankruptcy lawyer, said he hopes Peterson’s arrival will help hasten Puerto Rico’s exit from bankruptcy as the costs in lawyers and fees had surpassed $735 million as of July.

Environmental groups: LUMA Energy’s intentions are to enrich itself

By THE STAR STAFF

T

he environmental organizations that make up the Renewable Energy Alliance Now charged Wednesday that LUMA Energy’s billing, which has amounted to $26.3 million in just two and a half months, shows that the company wants to enrich itself at the expense of the people of Puerto Rico through the island Electric Power Authority (PREPA).

Upon examining the LUMA Energy invoice and billing reports submitted to the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau from June to August, the Alliance highlighted that LUMA’s billing includes a total of $283,492 in attorneys’ fees, $150,000 in advertising and $301,237 for its executives.

“How many police or PREPA employees are paid for a whole year with such an amount?” said Adriana González, a grassroots organizer for Sierra Club Puerto Rico and member of the Alliance. “Even more outra-

geous, the reports of these LUMA invoices do not indicate the cost for each service that the company outsourced, as they should. If the invoices do not detail how much and to whom was paid with public funds, they are not justified.”

The organization also questioned why the many millions of dollars in funds assigned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

for the reconstruction of PREPA do not include a penny for renewable energy and warned that, as is already evidenced by this billing, the funds will enrich LUMA, as happened previously with companies such as Cobra Energy and Whitefish, which were hired to perform restoration work for PREPA. “We denounce the government of Puerto Rico for once again not

prioritizing the needs of the country, since they are the ones who decide how to handle the funds under the parameters of FEMA,” González said.

Lydia Díaz, from the Yabucoeño Pro Quality of Life Committee, said “it is regrettable that this allocation of funds of almost $10 billion [in disaster aid] to transform the electrical system does not have an allocation for renewables.”

“We do not need an improvement of the obsolete system that we have, we need a true transformation that is in line with the public energy policy established by Law 17-2019 to have 100 percent energy from renewable sources by 2050,” she said.

Amy Orta Rivera, a member of the organization El Puente-Enlace Latino de Acción Climática, asked “How many solar panels could have been installed on roofs with $26 million?”

“The money is not lacking, the will is lacking,” she said. “This is why we cannot let FEMA funds enrich LUMA.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

7

Trump abruptly ends stimulus talks after fed chair urges economic support

By JEANNA SMIALEK

H

ours after the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, warned that the economy could see “tragic” results without robust government support, President Donald Trump abruptly cut off stimulus talks, sending the stock market sliding and delivering a final blow to any chance of getting additional pandemic aid to struggling Americans before the election.

Trump, in his first full day back at the White House after being hospitalized with COVID-19, said in a series of conflicting messages on Twitter that the economy was “doing very well” and “coming back in record numbers,” suggesting that no additional help was needed. But he also tweeted that “immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business.”

The prospects for enacting another trillion-dollar package before the election had already been dim. But Trump’s directive

carried heavy stakes both for himself and for members of his party, making clear that it was the president himself who was unwilling to continue seeking an agreement. Some Republicans rushed to condemn the move, as they prepared to face voters in less than a month.

Markets fell as the reality sank in that the economic recovery, which is slowing, would not get another jolt anytime soon.

The S&P 500, which had begun to climb before Trump’s announcement, slid more than 1% soon afterward, and ended the day 1.4% lower.

The president’s political calculation in calling off talks while negotiations were underway — and while financial markets were open — remained unclear, though Trump said he wanted the Senate to focus on Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

His tweets came less than an hour before Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Speaker Nancy Pelosi were to resume talks on the phone aimed at hammering

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell spoke about the role of the federal response to the economic decline caused by the coronavirus pandemic. out a compromise. Instead, when they did speak, Mnuchin confirmed that Trump had withdrawn from the negotiations, and Pe-

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losi, according to a spokesman, “expressed her disappointment.”

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8 From page 7 In a letter to her caucus Tuesday, Pelosi called Trump’s decision to pull the plug on the talks “an act of desperation.”

“Today, once again, President Trump showed his true colors: putting himself first at the expense of the country, with the full complicity of the G.O.P. members of Congress,” Pelosi wrote.

Republican leaders said the president’s move was merely a bow to reality.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader, told reporters on Capitol Hill that Trump’s view of the talks “was that they were not going to produce a result, and we need to concentrate on what’s achievable.”

In deciding to forgo any more immediate relief, the president could be setting the economy up for the type of painful outcome that Powell warned of Tuesday. The Fed chair, who has increasingly called for more government help, said policymakers should err on the side of injecting too much money into the economy rather than too little given how much work remains.

“Too little support would lead to a weak recovery, creating unnecessary hardship for households and businesses,” Powell said in remarks before the National Association for Business Economics.

“Over time, household insolvencies and business bankruptcies would rise, harming the productive capacity of the economy and holding back wage growth,” he said. “By contrast, the risks of overdoing it seem, for now, to be smaller.”

In multiple tweets later Tuesday night, Trump appeared to backtrack his assertion that an agreement would wait until after Nov. 3, at one point urging both chambers to “IMMEDIATELY Approve” reviving a

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

lapsed loan program for small businesses, funds to prevent airlines from furloughing or laying off workers and another round of stimulus checks. It remained unclear if his tweets, which came after stocks plummeted, reflected a willingness to restart negotiations with Pelosi. Both provisions have bipartisan support, but several lawmakers have pushed for them to be included in a broader package.

Nearly seven months into the pandemic, millions of Americans remain unemployed as the coronavirus keeps many service industries operating below capacity. The unemployment rate has fallen more rapidly than many economists expected, dropping to 7.9% in September, and consumer spending is holding up.

But the economy’s resilience owes substantially to strong government assistance that has been provided to households and businesses.

That included direct payments to families, forgivable loans to small businesses and an extra $600 per week in unemployment benefits, which Powell said had “muted the normal recessionary dynamics that occur in a downturn,” like lower consumer spending that leads to additional layoffs.

But that assistance has since run dry, putting what Powell called an “incomplete recovery” at risk at a time when he said additional help was likely to be needed.

“There is still a long way to go,” he said regarding the labor market, adding that “many will undergo extended periods of unemployment.”

Powell’s comments were a clear signal that the Fed remained worried about the economy’s ability to continue its rebound without more government spending. One big risk, he noted, was

Top Trump administration officials have played down the need for another big fiscal package by pointing to the falling unemployment rate

that prolonged economic weakness could perpetuate job losses that have weighed most heavily on women, people of color and low-wage workers.

“A long period of unnecessarily slow progress could continue to exacerbate existing disparities in our economy,” he said. “That would be tragic, especially in light of our country’s progress on these issues in the years leading up to the pandemic.”

Negotiators had resumed talks in recent days, but they were still far from an agreement, reflecting months of political incentives that pushed all sides away from a deal. Pelosi and Mnuchin again engaged in hourlong phone calls and were exchanging documents and paperwork in an effort to reach an agreement. But a number of critical issues remained, including how much aid to provide to state and local governments, extra unemployment benefits and the overall size of the package.

The failure to reach a deal had already infuriated rank-and-file lawmakers, who were largely excluded from talks and faced with the prospect of going home to campaign without the promise of relief.

Trump’s decision to withdraw from negotiations prompted immediate, bipartisan backlash.

“Waiting until after the election to reach an agreement on the next COVID-19 relief package is a huge mistake,” Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who is facing her toughest reelection bid, said in a statement.

“I disagree with the President,” Rep. John Katko, a moderate Republican from New York, said on Twitter. “With lives at stake, we cannot afford to stop negotiations on a relief package.”

Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a moderate Democrat who joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers in pushing for an agreement, said in a statement that “I cannot understand why the president would halt negotiations until after the election except in a cynical move to secure votes.”

“Doing so does not serve the needs of the Michigan families and our small businesses,” she added. “It places himself above the needs of the country, and it’s out of step with the mission of government, which is to help in moments of crisis.”

Republicans had argued that Pelosi, who pushed a $3.4 trillion package through the House in May and then muscled through a $2.2 trillion package last week, had pushed for unrelated “poison pills” that she knew Republicans could not support. But it was never clear that Republicans would have supported any

deal. In recent days, as Mnuchin proposed a $1.6 trillion plan, lawmakers and aides in the Senate warned that a majority of Republicans would not support such a large price tag.

Top Trump administration officials have played down the need for another big fiscal package by pointing to the falling unemployment rate as a sign that the economy is experiencing a rapid rebound.

And many Republican lawmakers have begun publicly fretting about the ballooning federal deficit, which is expected to top $3 trillion this year.

The Fed chair did not weigh in on what type or amount of aid was appropriate. But Powell, who has a long track record of worrying about the federal debt, has tried to convince lawmakers that “this is not the time to give priority to those concerns.”

Instead, he has reiterated time and again the importance of returning the economy to full strength, and that both the Fed and Congress need to continue to provide help.

“This will be the work of all of government,” Powell said. “The recovery will be stronger and move faster if monetary policy and fiscal policy continue to work side by side to provide support to the economy until it is clearly out of the woods.”

The Fed itself has gone to great lengths to support the economy, cutting interest rates to near-zero in March, rolling out a large bond-buying program and setting up emergency lending efforts, many of them backed by Treasury Department funding.

While the Fed invoked its emergency powers in the 2008 recession, it has gone even further this time, buying municipal debt and corporate bonds to shore up key markets.

But Powell, along with many of his Fed colleagues, have made clear that monetary and fiscal policy can do only so much to buttress the economy and that the recovery will be determined in large part by the path of the virus.

Powell, whose institution is set up to operate independently of the White House, was unambiguous in recommending a solution, one that contrasts with the message and example that have at times been held out by the Trump administration.

“We should continue do what we can to manage downside risks to the outlook,” Powell said, adding that doing so required “following medical experts’ guidance, including using masks and social-distancing measures.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

9

How much would Trump’s Coronavirus treatment cost most Americans?

By SARAH KLIFF

P

resident Donald Trump spent three days in the hospital.

He arrived and left by helicopter. And he received multiple coronavirus tests, oxygen, steroids and an experimental antibody treatment.

For someone who isn’t president, that would cost more than $100,000 in the American health system. Patients could face significant surprise bills and medical debt even after health insurance paid its share.

The biggest financial risks would come not from the hospital stay but from the services provided elsewhere, including helicopter transit and repeated coronavirus testing.

Trump has praised the high quality of care he received at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and has played down the risk of the virus. “Don’t be afraid of Covid,” Trump tweeted on Monday, before returning to the White House. “Don’t let it dominate your life.”

Across the country, patients have struggled with both the long-term health and financial effects of contracting coronavirus.

Nearly half a million have been hospitalized. Routine tests can result in thousands of dollars in uncovered charges; hospitalized patients have received bills upward of $400,000.

Trump did not have to worry about the costs of his care, which are covered by the federal government. Most Americans, including many who carry health coverage, do worry about receiving medical care they cannot afford.

For some Americans, the bills could start mounting with frequent tests. Insurers are generally required to pay for those tests when physicians order them, but not when employers do.

The Trump administration made that clear in June, when it issued guidance stating that insurers do not have to pay for “testing conducted to screen for general workplace health and safety.” Instead, patients need to pay for that type of testing themselves. Some might be able to get free tests at public sites, and some employers may voluntarily cover the costs. Others could face significant medical debt from tests delivered at hospitals or urgent care centers.

COVID tests can be expensive. Although they typically cost $100, one emergency room in Texas has charged as much as $6,408 for a drive-through test. About 2.4% of coronavirus tests billed to insurers leave the patient responsible for some portion of payment, according to the health data firm Castlight. With 108 million tests performed in the United States, that could amount to millions of tests that leave patients responsible for some share of the cost.

Marta Bartan, who works as a hair colorist in New York City, needed a coronavirus test to return to her job this summer. She received a $1,394 bill from the hospital running the drive-through site where she was tested.

“I was so confused,” said Bartan, who is contesting the bill.

“You go in to get a COVID test expecting it to be free. What could they have possibly charged me $1,400 for?”

The bills for the typical American would continue at the hospital, with the routine monitoring that any patient would receive and the drugs provided in the course of care.

Remdesivir, a new coronavirus treatment created by Gilead, costs $3,120 when purchased by private insurers and $2,340 with public programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

Trump also received an experimental antibody treatment

President Donald Trump’s physician, Dr. Sean Conley, accompanied by other medical staff members, briefing reporters outside of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda Md., on Oct. 4, 2020. from Regeneron. It’s currently available to clinical trial participants or to those granted a “compassionate use” exemption. In either situation, the drug would typically be provided to the patient at no charge. This will most likely change, however, when the treatment finishes trials and hits the commercial market. These types of drugs are hard to manufacture, and other monoclonal antibodies cost thousands of dollars.

Health economists are only starting to understand the full costs of coronavirus treatment, just as scientists are mapping out how the disease works and spreads. They do have some early estimates: The median charge for a coronavirus hospitalization for a patient over 60 is $61,912, according to a claims database, FAIR Health That figure includes any medical care during the hospital stay, such as an emergency room visit that led to admission or drugs provided by the hospital.

For insured patients, that price would typically be negotiated lower by their health plan. FAIR Health estimates that the median amount paid is $31,575. That amount, like most things in American health care, varies significantly from one patient to another.

In the FAIR Health data on coronavirus patients over 60, one-quarter face charges less than $26,821 for their hospital stay.

Another quarter face charges higher than $193,149, in part because of longer stays.

Many, but not all, health insurers have said they will not apply copayments or deductibles to patients’ coronavirus hospital stays, which could help shield patients from large bills.

Uninsured patients, however, could be stuck with the entire hospital charges and not receive any discounts. While the Trump

administration did set up a fund to cover coronavirus testing and treatment costs for the uninsured, The New York Times has reported that some Americans without health insurance have received large bills for their hospital stays.

The financial consequences of a coronavirus hospitalization could be long-lasting, if a new Supreme Court challenge to the Affordable Care Act is successful. That case argues that all of Obamacare is unconstitutional, including the health law’s protections for preexisting conditions. The administration filed a brief in June supporting the challenge.

The Supreme Court hears that case on Nov. 10. If the challenge succeeds, COVID-19 could join a long list of preexisting conditions that would leave patients facing higher premiums or denials of coverage. In that case, coronavirus survivors could face a future in which their hospital stays increase their health costs for years to come.

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10

Thursday, October 8, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Delayed Homeland Security report warns of ‘lethal’ white supremacy

By ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS

T

he Department of Homeland Security warned on Tuesday that violent white supremacy was the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland” in an annual assessment that a former intelligence chief had accused the agency of withholding in deference to President Donald Trump.

The intelligence chief-turned-whistleblower last month accused the department of blocking the report and directing analysts to play down the threat of violent white racism as well as Russian election interference to align the agency’s message with the president’s. But the final report appeared to do no such thing.

The threat assessment highlighted white supremacists as the most deadly among domestic terrorists in recent years and Russia as the primary threat to spreading disinformation.

“I am particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years,” Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, wrote in the foreword to the assessment. The threat report also stated that “Russia is the likely primary covert influence actor and purveyor of disinformation and misinformation within the homeland.”

The agency also highlighted Iran and China’s cyberwarfare abilities and warned of a potential surge in migration to the southwest border.

The delayed release of the report has been a point of scrutiny for a department that has faced consistent accusations of morphing into a tool for Trump’s reelection campaign.

After the department singled out domestic terrorists and specifically white supremacists in a terrorism framework in September 2019, the agency’s leadership committed to releasing a follow-up assessment to the threat as well as a blueprint to confront it within months. It took far longer.

Brian Murphy, who was demoted from his post as the Homeland Security Department’s intelligence chief in August, said last month in a whistleblower complaint that Wolf and his deputy, Kenneth Cuccinelli, blocked the release of the assessment because of how it would “reflect upon President Trump.”

The Homeland Security blueprint did finally emerge, shortly after Murphy’s com-

nerally right-wing movement that seeks to bring about a second civil war, shot and killed a member of the Federal Protective Service during protests in Oakland, California. Trump blamed “the left” for the killing.

The report also warns that extremist groups could be inspired to attack because of restrictions to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

“We also remain particularly concerned about the impacts from COVID-19, where anti-government and anti-authority violent extremists could be motivated to conduct attacks in response to perceived infringement of liberties and government overreach,” the report said.

It also indicated that the department was preparing for an increase in migration to the southwestern border. Homeland security analysts warned that the easing of coronavirus restrictions could lead to an increase in border “I am particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have crossings by land and sea. been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years,” The department has cited the pandemic Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, wrote in the foreward to in using a public health emergency to seal the the assessment. border to migrants, rapidly returning most to Mexico or other countries without offering to plaint. It included $10 million for nonprofits ce and destruction in our cities,” according to review their asylum claims. and other organizations to prevent extremist the report. “The co-opting of lawful protests In an interview with CBS published violence. led to destruction of government property and on Monday, Wolf defended the assessment, The administration’s treatment of white have turned deadly.” noting that the Russia threat was mentioned supremacy reemerged as an issue last week, While a majority of the protests against multiple times. But he also asserted that “the when Trump failed to condemn white racist police violence and racism this summer were most long-term strategic threat to Americans, violence during the presidential debate, even peaceful, some did include individuals who to the homeland and really to our way of life after FBI Director Christopher Wray affirmed committed violent acts, including in Portland, would be the threat from China,” a position to Congress the lethal threat of the racist ex- Oregon, where the Homeland Security De- that mirrors Trump’s. Wolf has faced criticism tremists. partment sent teams of tactical agents. The for refusing to single out the threat from Russia Now, the Homeland Security De- aggressive methods of those agents, including but rather placing it on the same level as Iran partment has done so in the assessment. forcing demonstrators into unmarked cars and and China.

“This threat assessment confirms two using tear gas, is under investigation by the In the report, analysts described China things: that white supremacist extremists are inspectors general for the Homeland Security as exploiting shortages of critical supplies, the top domestic threat to the homeland, and and Justice Departments. committing intellectual property theft and they are often inspired by President Trump’s Some demonstrators also lobbed com- waging disinformation campaigns on the inrhetoric,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D- mercial-grade fireworks at a federal courthou- ternet. As for election interference, China and Miss., the chairman of the House Homeland se and the agents surrounding it. A self-pro- Iran have for the most part targeted Trump, but Security Committee. claimed supporter of the loose-knit movement intelligence officers have said that Russia preThe threat assessment for the most part known as antifa was also accused of fatally sented a more severe short-term threat. mirrored drafts that were leaked to the public, shooting a right-wing activist who was part of Javed Ali, a former senior director at the refuting concerns that the department would a pro-Trump caravan in Portland. That antifa National Security Council under Trump, said dilute any warnings. The department did add supporter, Michael Forest Reinoehl, was shot the homeland threat assessment was reassua section absent from previous versions of the and killed last month by law enforcement ring “given the significant politicization that report, titled “exploitation of lawful and pro- agents before he could be taken into custody. has occurred” in the Homeland Security Detected speech and protests.”

While the threat assessment does not partment.

The section echoed Trump’s description specifically mention antifa, it does warn of “It was good to see the HTA take a more of city governments led by Democrats as fos- anti-government groups that could commit objective, nonpartisan and analytically driven tering chaos. violence under the guise of protests. Last May, perspective on cataloging the major homeland “We have seen over 100 days of violen- a suspected member of the boogaloo, a ge- threats,” Ali said, referring to the assessment.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

11

12 Accusations in the damning House report on Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google

By MIKE ISAAC, STEVE LOHR, JACK NICAS and DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI

H

ouse lawmakers released a scathing report on four of the world’s largest tech companies, accusing them of abusing their market power. The report, which was released on Tuesday and concludes a 16-month investigation into Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, recommended breaking up the companies and passing the most sweeping changes to antitrust laws in decades.

Here is a summary of the accusations against each company in the report, which was endorsed only by Democratic lawmakers.

Amazon — The company uses its market power as both the largest online retailer and the leading e-commerce marketplace to its advantage and to hobble potential competitors. Amazon sets the rules for digital commerce. About 2.3 million third-party sellers do business on the Amazon marketplace worldwide, the report said, and 37% of them rely on Amazon as their sole source of income — essentially making them hostage to Amazon’s shifting tactics.

— Amazon harvests the sales and product data from its marketplace to spot hotselling items, copy them and offer its own competing products, typically at lower prices. One former Amazon employee told the House investigators, “Amazon is first and foremost a data company, they just happen to use it to sell stuff.”

— In cloud computing, where Amazon Web Services is the market leader, the company has dealt unfairly with some open source developers, whose software is often freely shared. One open-source engineer said, “We develop all this work and then some large company comes and monetizes that.”

Apple — Apple has a monopoly on the app marketplace on iPhones and iPads, enabling the company to take an excessive cut of app developers’ sales and “generate supranormal profits.” Apple has charged a 30% commission on many app sales since it introduced the fee more than a decade ago, forcing many developers to raise prices for consumers or reduce investment in their apps.

— Apple has used its control over the App Store to punish rivals, including by ranking them lower in search results, restricting how they communicate with customers, and removing them outright from the store.

Apple is the sole enforcer of sometimes opaque App Store rules, leaving developers few options to complain.

— Apple favors its own apps and services on its devices by preinstalling them and making them the default options for a variety of actions. For instance, when iPhone users click a link to a webpage, a song or an address, their devices will typically open Apple apps. Such an advantage, combined with the services’ deep integration into Apple’s software, makes it difficult for thirdparty apps and services to compete.

Facebook — Facebook’s monopoly power in social networking is “firmly entrenched,” and the company has snuffed out competitors through strategic acquisitions and copying products. Services like Onavo, a data analytics firm Facebook acquired, helped the company to spot “early bird warning” signals on would-be competitors rising quickly in the app store.

— The company has grown so overwhelmingly powerful that internal findings suggest its greatest competition exists within itself. Services like Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, grew so quickly that

it threatened to overtake the popularity of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg shifted his strategy quickly, in what one employee called “collusion, but within an internal monopoly.”

— Because of the absence of competition, user privacy has been eroded while misinformation and toxic content have proliferated across all of the company’s services, which are used regularly by more than 3 billion people.

Google — Google maintained its search monopoly by grabbing information from third parties without permission to improve search results. In other instances, it introduced changes in search to give a leg up to its own services and disadvantage competitors’ offerings.

— The committee found that the company goes to great lengths to keep Google search front and center for users. In the past, it has forced smartphone-makers to install Google search in order to use its Android software and have access to its Google Play app store. It pays Apple billions of dollars to be the default search engine on iPhones and it takes steps to prevent users from switching search providers on Chrome.

— Google has nine products with more than 1 billion users. That provides the company with a trove of data that can be used as “near-perfect market intelligence” and reinforces its dominance because Google can track what new products or services people are using in real time to closely monitor competitors.

12

Thursday, October 8, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Lumberjack, tailor, counselor, host: A hotel owner does it all during the pandemic

From left, Yasir Fahmy, front desk supervisor, uses hand sanitizer while serving guest Nita Shinn, at the Hampton Inn in Clinton, N.J., on Tuesday, July 14, 2020.

By EMILY FLITTER

S

ince the pandemic began, Montu Patel has learned how to sew masks and fight with Wall Street lenders. He has helped draft pleas for relief to state and local officials on behalf of small business owners. He knows how to fashion plastic dividers.

As the head of a small business, Patel, whose family owns eight budget hotel franchises, was used to wearing multiple hats.

But since March, when the long-haul drivers, families on road trips and business travelers who made up most of his clientele stopped checking in, forcing him to lay off workers and hunt for cash, Patel has become a one-man army battling for the survival of his business. Its death would be no less than the extinguishing of an American dream.

One August morning, before meeting with a loan officer whom he had to convince that the hotel industry had a rosy future, Patel had to hack down a tree that had fallen across the parking lot of one of his properties.

The hotels are Patel’s whole life. The son of Indian immigrants, he grew up in and around an Econolodge hotel that his family owned and operated in Bordentown, New Jersey. He studied real estate in graduate school, knowing he would eventually take over the business from his father.

“My parents came to this country with nothing in their pockets,” Patel, 43, said. “Everything that we’ve accumulated since then has been gravy.”

Patel has managed his hotels through tragedy and growth.

Two years ago, his sister, who was the business’ finance chief, died of a brain tumor. Last year, Patel bought four new properties, and now the family runs three Hampton Inns, two Comfort Inns, two Holiday Inn Expresses and one Days Inn, licensing the popular names from big hotel companies.

The pandemic has forced thousands of small businesses to close permanently. Those that have survived, like Patel’s, have had to recalibrate constantly, as their owners cling to the hope that things will improve. But a widely available vaccine is at least a year away, there is little chance of new federal aid weeks before the presidential election and the virus is still spreading.

“As long as the pandemic subsides next year, we will be in good shape to start replenishing our savings, digging ourselves out of the hole we’re in,” Patel said.

Operating the hotels required adjustments. Elevator buttons had to be cleaned hourly, and electronic key cards had to be sanitized each time they were returned. Front desks required Plexiglas screens. Trays and equipment for meals served buffetstyle — a common feature of budget hotels — were removed.

Gyms were shut; pools were closed.

Patel shored up his hotels’ finances. Between April and August, he drew roughly $500,000 from a pool of cash contributions made by friends and family. He secured forgivable loans of about $150,000 per hotel through the federal government’s $650 billion Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses, which he used to pay employees through the early stretch of the lockdowns.

With few guests, Patel assigned some of his staff to deep-cleaning jobs. Still, he furloughed around 225 people, or about 75% of his workforce. (He has now asked almost everyone to come back, but some have chosen not to, he said.) He tried to upgrade the properties, but it became harder to do as supply chains faltered. LED vanity mirrors and faucets were back-ordered.

He also struggled in the spring to find a reliable supply of masks and hand sanitizer, which the hotel chains overseeing his properties required him to provide free to every guest. Supplies were easier to get as the summer progressed,

but it was still hard to pay for them.

“When you’re renting rooms at a steeply discounted rate and still trying to offer all of these additional things, it’s either a very thin profit or not profitable at all,” Patel said. He added that some of the hotel companies’ requirements had started to seem unreasonable. “They can come up with any rules for the franchisee that they want, and they don’t have to worry about fulfilling them,” he said. “They’re not part of our hardship at all.”

Patel has pleaded with government officials for help, especially for his property in Hershey, a town once popular with tourists. In late August, he attended a county commissioners’ meeting in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, seeking relief for himself and other local businesses on property taxes. The commissioners said there was nothing they could do.

Over time, having fewer guests created fresh peril with lenders. Rather than take out a traditional bank loan for his Hershey property, Patel had borrowed from Wall Street, attracted by terms that did not allow for the seizure of his personal assets in case of a default. It turned into a nightmare. The commercial mortgage-backed securities loan was controlled by a contract with onerous terms that were almost impossible to change.

Patel worries that he may lose the Hershey property. He has set aside $200,000, taken from his company’s other holdings, to pay the $60,000 monthly shortfall he expects to face starting in November, for four months. After that, only another round of aid from the government could keep the property afloat. He is also finding it harder to deal with traditional banks, which typically had more straightforward loan terms but became stricter during the pandemic about negotiating changes to existing loans and even with disbursing what they have already agreed to lend.

In early August, Patel’s biggest lender asked him for a 12-month “pro forma,” a detailed estimate for how his business would perform over the next year, a monumental request considering how uncertain the future remains. On the morning he had to make a bullish case to the loan officer about the hotel business, the dissipating winds of hurricane Isaias had knocked down the tree in his Hampton Inn parking lot in New Jersey, forcing him to grab a chain saw.

His daily routine has changed, too. He used to reach for his phone while still in bed each morning and scroll through spreadsheets that showed the daily activity at each hotel. But there was little point in doing so after the lockdowns slashed occupancy.

“If I were to calculate all the money that we’re losing, I think I would become unable to just do and see the strategy ahead,” he said.

These days, he often spends hours every day on the phone talking to employees who can’t make it back to work because of child care conflicts or transportation problems. He strategizes about how to help them pay for transportation and their families’ care. He has also found more time to spend with his wife and three children, his parents and members of his extended family who help run the business.

When a vice president in the company started sewing masks in April, Patel, his wife and his parents joined her in the effort. They kept some of the masks they made for personal use and donated the rest to a hospital. And Patel picked up a new skill: “I learned how to sew.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

13 Stocks

Wall Street jumps on hopes for piecemeal stimulus deal

W

all Street’s main indexes jumped on Wednesday on hopes of at least a partial deal on more fiscal stimulus after U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly called off negotiations on a comprehensive bill in the previous session.

Suggesting a risk-on mood, all the major S&P indexes were up by early afternoon, while safe-haven U.S. Treasuries sold off, as analysts said investors also appeared to grow comfortable with the prospect of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden winning the Nov. 3 election.

The Dow Jones airlines index .DJUSAR jumped 3.1% after Trump urged Congress on Tuesday to pass a series of smaller, standalone bills that would include a bailout package for the battered airline industry.

“The market is reacting positively to the fact that there is a possibility of targeted stimulus,” said Carlton Neel, chief executive officer of investment research firm Chaikin Analytics in Philadelphia.

Still, top White House officials downplayed the possibility of more coronavirus relief, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disparaged Trump for backing away from talks on a comprehensive deal.

Hopes of a new round of fiscal aid had fueled a broad rally in U.S. stocks on Monday. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Tuesday also called for more help for businesses and households to keep a nascent economic recovery from faltering.

Minutes of the Fed’s September policy meeting are due later in the day, with investors looking for details on the central bank’s new approach to inflation.

Focus on Wednesday will also be on a debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Democratic challenger Kamala Harris, with Trump’s battle with COVID-19 and Biden’s age providing an unusual backdrop.

Reuters/Ipsos opinion polls released on Tuesday showed Biden expanding his lead over Trump in battleground Michigan and the two candidates locked in a toss-up race in North Carolina.

“The market is okay when it knows what the news is - good or bad,” said Kenny Polcari, managing partner at Kace Capital Advisors in Boca Raton, Florida.

“The polls are clearly suggesting that (Biden’s) got a substantial enough lead, where it will be nearly impossible for Trump to contest the election.”

At 1:18 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was up 1.49%, the S&P 500 .SPX was up 1.37% and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC was up 1.68%.

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14

Thursday, October 8, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

‘It really was abandonment.’ Virus crisis grips British universities

By BENJAMIN MUELLER

I

nside a dormitory now known by students as HMP, for Her Majesty’s Prison, trash piled up in shared kitchens. Students washed their clothes in bathroom sinks. Security guards stalked the gates, keeping anyone from leaving or entering.

The building had been primed for a coronavirus outbreak since first-year students arrived at Manchester Metropolitan University for Freshers’ Week, Britain’s debaucherous baptism into university life, complete with trips to heaving pubs and dorm room parties.

But when the inevitable happened, and the virus tore through chockablock student suites, the university largely left students on their own: It imposed such a draconian lockdown that students had to nurse roommates back to health, parents drove hours to deliver food and lawyers offered pro bono help.

To date, roughly 90 British universities have reported coronavirus cases. Thousands of students are confined to their halls, some in suites with infected classmates, and many are struggling to get tested. The government, fearful of students seeding outbreaks far from campus, has warned that they may need to quarantine before returning home for Christmas.

Britain had ample warning: The reopening of American colleges weeks earlier reportedly swelled the country’s case count by 3,000 a day and left several students dead. But British universities beckoned students to campus anyway, fueling outbreaks that are seeping into surrounding towns. The infection rate in Manchester is ten times as high as it was in August.

The outbreaks have shone a harsh light on Britain’s decadelong campaign to turn higher education into a ruthless market. By cutting state grants and leaving schools dependent on tuition fees and room rents, the government encouraged them to jam more students onto campuses.

The pandemic threatened to dry out that income stream. But Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government largely withheld the rescue money it gave to other industries, so universities carried on as normal, whatever the risks.

To academics, the government’s policies reflect not only its erratic and fumbling approach to the coronavirus, but also its longstanding suspicions of universities. Echoing American ideas about the supposed coddling of left-wing students, some Conservative law-

Students hold a small demonstration outside Birley Halls of residence at Manchester Metropolitan University in Manchester, England, where many have been placed under a severe lockdown, on Oct. 2, 2020. makers in Britain have accused universities of stifling politically incorrect speech, and threatened a crackdown.

“There’s a lot of money being splashed around on other parts of the economy, but the government isn’t offering universities any money,” said Steven Fielding, a professor of political history at the University of Nottingham. “The relevant people in government see universities as antagonists, political antagonists, and people like me as the enemy.”

The situation was complicated by a scandal over university entrance exams this summer. After initially using an algorithm that lowered many students’ scores, the government revised them upward.

That created an unexpected influx into more prestigious universities, as students abandoned places in less competitive ones, said Dr. Gavan Conlon, a partner at London Economics, an education economics consulting firm.

Some schools abruptly lost enrollment and revenue, but many became more crowded than ever. That made it impossible for Britain’s universities to implement the sort of on-campus social distancing that U.S. colleges have used to try to contain the virus.

At Manchester Metropolitan, a 33,000-student campus, at least 137 students were quickly infected and 1,500 freshmen forced to isolate.

Supplied with little more than a single mask each, some first-year students watched their food supplies dwindle and trash and laundry accumulate when coronavirus cases forced their suites into isolation. Lucia Dorado, a freshman, recalled leaving meals and tea at a suitemate’s door, and watching students keep partying in the courtyard.

“It really was abandonment,” Dorado said of the university. “They put in barely anything to battle this, and it’s come at the expense of our mental and physical health, really.”

The university said in a statement that shortly after the lockdown, it gave students a two-week rent rebate and an online shopping voucher, and later helped send them home testing kits. It said it had reopened in part because “the government places a high priority on universities staying open,” but on Tuesday moved most courses online for October, in keeping with guidance from Manchester public health officials.

The British government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies forecast the difficulties on Sept. 3, saying it was “highly likely there will be significant outbreaks” at universities.

But neither mass testing nor additional government money was in the offing, and universities feared losing students to competitors if they shut campuses or mandated online classes.

“The government has been deafeningly silent,” said Rob Ford, a professor of politics at the University of Manchester, “and has been looking to basically foist the initiative back on universities.”

The financial pressures on universities grew out of a Conservative-led overhaul of British higher education in 2010, when the government slashed subsidies and tripled the cap on tuition fees to 9,000 pounds, or $11,600. The government later lifted a limit on how many students a university could recruit, transforming a higher education system that had once been the reserve of the middle and upper classes and creating fierce competition for students.

Rental fees rose as universities scrambled to build dormitories, often with loans: From 2012 to 2019, the overall average student rent rose by 31%, to 147 pounds, or $190, a week.

And universities began aggressively recruiting higher-paying foreign students, especially from China, to compensate for the government keeping its cap on domestic students’ tuition virtually unchanged since 2010.

The growing reliance on student payments left universities dangerously exposed when the coronavirus landed, said Peter Dolton, an economics professor at the University of Sussex. Fearing that huge numbers of students would stay home this fall, or demand lower fees if classes moved online, almost all universities reopened.

The decision left professors demoralized; some have felt pressure to teach in-person classes and others have described feeling uneasy about a semester that they say is being staged for transparently financial reasons.

Students, too, said it had become all too clear why they were on campus.

“Students are money in the bank, and as long as we’re on campus, they’ll worry about the consequences later,” said Aslan Warburton, a freshman at Manchester Metropolitan.

“The financial side has taken priority over student well-being and the greater good.”

Despite calls from the opposition Labour Party to halt in-person classes, most British universities have resisted moving all classes online. But in the hardest-hit cities, there are signs that universities are beginning to restrict classroom teaching.

And with the fees for many students becoming ineligible for refunds soon, some professors suspect that universities may wait until students’ money is in hand before taking more aggressive precautions.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

15

Distrust of China jumps to new highs in Democratic nations

By CHRIS BUCKLEY

X

i Jinping celebrates China’s battle against the coronavirus as a success. But in the United States and other wealthy democracies, the pandemic has driven negative views of China to new heights, a survey published Tuesday showed.

The illness, deaths and disruption caused by the coronavirus in those countries have intensified already strong public distrust of China, where the virus emerged late last year, the results from the Pew Research Center’s survey indicated.

“Unfavorable opinion has soared over the past year,” said the survey on views of China taken this year in 14 countries including Japan, South Korea, Canada, and Germany, Italy and other European nations. “Today, a majority in each of the surveyed countries has an unfavorable opinion of China.”

The results illustrate how much negative opinions of China have taken hold around the world in recent years. To China’s leaders, such wary attitudes could present obstacles for the Communist Party’s ambitions of expanding Beijing’s influence. The tide of public distrust could make cooperation harder even on issues where national interests align.

“Public opinion is a powerful constraint,” said Natasha Kassam, a former Australian diplomat who is a research fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, where she studies public opinion and foreign policy. “We can see in both Australia and the United States, for example, souring public opinion has served as a powerful driver for governments to be particularly vocal” about China.

The U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, was in Tokyo on Tuesday for meetings with his counterparts from Japan, Australia and India — all nations that have had icy relations with China. Pompeo is often condemned by Chinese officials as an ideological warrior bent on subduing Beijing.

In many Western countries, the coronavirus crisis appears to have deepened public unease about China and Xi, China’s proudly authoritarian leader. Across the 14 countries surveyed, an average of 61% of respondents said China had done a bad job of responding to the outbreak.

In the United States, negative views about China increased by 13 percentage points compared to a similar survey last year. Close to three-quarters of 1,003 American respondents surveyed in June and July said they now had a somewhat or very unfavorable view of China.

Distrust of Xi’s international intentions reached new highs in every country surveyed, except for Japan and Spain.

In the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and several Western European nations, roughly half of the respondents said they had “no confidence at all” in Xi. “I think this sentiment is likely to persist because of longer-term trends in China toward growing repression,” said Jessica Chen Weiss, an associate professor of government at Cornell University who studies Chinese foreign policy.

In many Western countries, public distrust of China and its leader, Xi Jinping, has soared in the past year.

“As long as its order of priorities remains in place, it will be difficult for the Chinese Communist Party to really turn around the trends in public opinion overseas.”

The rise in disapproving opinions of China was starkest in Australia, which has been mired in diplomatic flare-ups with Beijing in recent months.

Australia has protested the detention in China of Cheng Lei, an Australian news anchor working for Chinese state-run television, and Yang Hengjun, an Australian businessman and writer born in China who is accused of espionage, charges that his supporters say are baseless.

The number of Australian respondents with negative views of China grew by 24 percentage points compared to a year ago, so that 81% said they saw China unfavorably.

That was a drastic turn from 2017, when 64% of Australian respondents said they had a favorable view of China.

“Until two years ago, the Australian public very much saw China as an economic opportunity,” said Kassam, the Australian researcher. China’s response to the outbreak has only deepened skepticism in Australia, she said.

At home, the Communist Party has tried to turn the coronavirus crisis into a political asset by assiduously censoring criticism of its early missteps in the outbreak and highlighting its later success in sharply reducing infections.

But abroad, the Chinese government’s sometimestriumphant rhetoric and claims of selfless altruism during the crisis have grated in societies struggling to cope with

outbreaks or lockdowns. European governments were irritated when China pressed European officials to praise China for medical supplies that it had sent, when Beijing had been muted about the help it provided in the first months of the pandemic. The combative language used

by Chinese officials in international disputes has also irked many in Australia, Canada and other countries.

“Many Chinese people seem to have forgotten the first few scary weeks that we experienced, but other countries have not forgotten,” Shen Dingli, a professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai, said by telephone. “It would be better if China had been more low-key and humble.”

The Chinese government has pushed back against the negative sentiment, asserting that it has been unfairly maligned by Western news outlets and politicians who want to escape responsibility for mishandling the crisis.

(Chinese leaders may feel some consolation that many respondents in the Pew survey took an even dimmer view of how the United States has handled the pandemic.

An average of 84% of the people surveyed across the 14 countries said the United States had done a bad job with the coronavirus.

“In the end, this is more damaging for America than for China,” said Shen, the scholar in Shanghai. “China cannot be used to explain away the 210,000 American people who have died from this.”

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Thursday, October 8, 2020

North Korean diplomat, missing since 2018, is in Seoul, lawmaker says

By CHOE SANG-HUN

A

senior North Korean diplomat who disappeared from Italy in late 2018 has been living secretly in South Korea since July of last year, a member of the intelligence committee of the South Korean Parliament and the South’s news media said Wednesday.

The diplomat, Jo Song Gil, then 48, was North Korea’s acting ambassador to Rome when he and his wife disappeared days before he was scheduled to return home to Pyongyang in November 2018. His whereabouts had since remained a mystery, prompting speculation that he had become one of the most senior diplomats to desert the totalitarian North.

The revelation about Jo could further aggravate North-South relations, which have been in a downward spiral for months after the North blew up a jointly run liaison office and its troops killed a South Korean government official during a sea patrol.

Diplomats’ defections are a sensitive issue for Pyongyang because they are often interpreted in the outside world as a possible sign of fraying loyalty among the privileged class. They also raise the possibility that the South Korean authorities could glean a wealth of information, especially about smuggling and other illicit ways in which North Korean diplomats earn foreign currency in violation of United Nations sanctions.

Ha Tae-keung, a member of the main opposition party in South Korea, said on Facebook on Wednesday that Jo had arrived in the South 15 months ago and remained under government protection. Ha is a senior member of the intelligence committee of the South’s National Assembly and often briefs the news media on closed-door parliamentary reports from the country’s National Intelligence Service.

Ha went public with his revelation

Jo Song-gil, second from right, in Italy in 2018. He was North Korea’s acting ambassador to Rome when he and his wife disappeared that year. hours after JTBC, a South Korean cable channel, reported that Jo had defected to the South. JTBC cited anonymous intelligence sources as confirming Jo’s defection, and other South Korean news outlets followed up with similar stories.

The National Intelligence Service said Wednesday that it “will not confirm” the news reports or Ha’s statement. The agency has often used such a stock phrase when it wants to keep secret the defection of a prominent North Korean for fear of consequences in inter-Korean relations or to help protect the defector’s relatives in the North.

If his defection is confirmed, Jo will be the most senior North Korean government official to flee to the South since H wang Jang Yop, a former secretary of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, defected to Seoul through the South Korean Embassy in Beijing in 1997.

The last senior North Korean diplomat

to defect to the South was Thae Yong Ho, a minister in the North Korean Embassy in London, who fled to Seoul in 2016 with his wife and two sons.

Over the years, some prominent North Koreans like Hwang and Thae have led public lives after their defections to the South. But many others have wanted to keep their defections secret to protect their relatives in the North, and the South Korean intelligence authorities have abided by their wishes. When its diplomats are posted abroad, North Korea requires them to leave some of their children in the North in order to discourage defections.

Jo and his wife lived with their daughter in Rome. But when they escaped, they could not bring the daughter with them. Italy later said that the daughter had been taken home by the North Korean authorities.

After Jo disappeared from Italy, Thae, who defected with his wife and all his chil-

dren, issued an open letter appealing to the acting ambassador to defect to South Korea. But after Jo’s daughter was taken to the North, Thae said it would be extremely difficult for Jo to settle in the South.

“His daughter would suffer a more severe retaliatory punishment if he chose to defect to South Korea” rather than to other countries, Thae told reporters last year.

“He may have to remain silent and keep his whereabouts secret to protect his daughter.”

On Wednesday, Thae, now a lawmaker affiliated with the main opposition party in South Korea, issued a statement worrying that the revelation in the news media of Jo’s whereabouts would further jeopardize the fate of Jo’s daughter in the North.

It remains unclear exactly why Jo decided to flee North Korea. He was posted in Rome in May 2015. He served as the North’s acting ambassador after Italy expelled the ambassador, Mun Jong Nam, in 2017 in protest over the North’s sixth nuclear test.

Jo’s disappearance was kept secret until a South Korean newspaper reported last year that he was seeking asylum in the West. South Korean lawmakers later briefed by the National Intelligence Service confirmed his disappearance. In August of last year, the spy agency told lawmakers in Seoul that Jo was safe “somewhere” outside Italy.

North Korea has yet to comment on Jo’s case.

More than 30,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since the mid1990s. The North typically calls them “human scum” and “traitors,” or claims that they were kidnapped by the South Korean spy agency.

North Korea diplomats are usually children of elite families. Jo’s father and father-in-law both had been ambassadors, Thae said.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

17

Dangers posed by plastic are hidden far beneath the ocean’s surface

By TIFFANY MAY

T

here is more plastic embedded in the sea floor, 9.25 million to 15.87 million tons, than floating on the ocean’s surface, researchers in Australia have found, in what a scientist called the world’s first estimate.

The new study published Monday by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, or CSIRO, in Australia highlights how humankind’s use of plastics has seeped into the darkest depths of the world’s waters.

The research puts a number on the amount of microplastics that has accumulated in a hidden part of the environment. It is an issue that activists have long warned about even as the fight to clean up the ocean has focused largely on the eradication of single-use plastic products like shopping bags.

“It really points to the ubiquity of the problem. It is really everywhere all the time and increasing,” Britta Denise Hardesty, a principal scientist for CSIRO and an author of the study, said in a phone interview Wednesday.

“You could say that’s a huge amount, or you could say it’s a drop in the bucket compared to how much we dump into the ocean every year, depending on what one’s perspective is,” she said. She added that the aim of the study was merely to measure the problem, and she described it as the first global estimate.

The figures translate to roughly 18 to 24 shopping bags full of small plastic fragments for every foot of coastline on every

continent except for Antarctica, Hardesty said.

Using a robotic submarine, the scientists collected 51 deepwater samples of sand and sediment in the Great Australian Bight in 2017, hundreds of miles from the shore, and determined the global estimate based on the average number and size of the particles.

The study found zero plastic particles in some deep-ocean sediment, but up to 13.6 particles per gram in others, a figure up to 25 times larger than what had been found in earlier deep-sea studies of microplastics.

Hardesty said that trash was more likely to accumulate in some parts of the ocean than others.

“People think of the oceans as being flat and not having a lot of geology, so to speak, but it’s underwater mountains, caves and valleys, as well,” she said. “So there’s a lot of structure there. Things are going to accumulate or end up in some areas.”

She added, “It’s similar to if you go to the beach, you can walk along the beach and see no trash, no trash, no trash, no trash, and all of a sudden you reach this spot and it’s just full of trash.”

Hardesty said that there was incredible variability in the plastic samples: “You can sample a site a few meters away and find more difference there than you find in a site that is kilometers away.”

The variability allowed the scientists to apply their findings on a larger scale, she added. The scientists said that their estimates were conservative to take into account the full

2020 had the warmest September on record, data shows

By VERONICA PENNEY

W

orldwide, last month was the warmest September on record, topping a record set just a year before, European scientists announced Wednesday.

It was also the hottest September on record for Europe.

Northern Siberia, western Australia, the Middle East and parts of South America similarly recorded above-average temperatures.

The announcement, by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, an intergovernmental agency supported by the European Union, comes after nine months of devastating wildfires and during the most active Atlantic hurricane season since 2005.

It also came as Arctic sea ice plunged to its second-lowest levels on record, driven by record temperatures in late June.

Many experts predict that by 2050, Arctic sea ice could melt completely during the summer.

According to Copernicus, last month was 0.63 degrees Celsius warmer than average and topped the average for September 2019 by 0.05 degrees Celsius. The agency’s satellite observations date to 1979, and averages are calculated using data spanning 1981 through 2010.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

also publishes monthly assessments of global temperature data, which are generally issued about a week after the Copernicus measurements.

The two organizations calculate averages differently, but the results are generally similar. NOAA relies on surface temperature measurements from land stations, ships and buoys.

Copernicus relies heavily on computer modeling.

“Even though the details of the report are different, they all come to the same conclusion that the global temperatures are increasing,” said Ahira Sánchez-Lugo, a physical scientist for NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

According to NOAA’s predictions, this year is 99.9% certain to be one of the top five hottest years on record. Whether that prediction holds true will partly rely on the impact of La Niña, which NOAA scientists declared last month.

La Niña is the opposite phase of the climate pattern that also brings El Niño and affects weather across the globe. Its strongest influence is usually felt in winter. And while the precise effects are unpredictable, La Niña can result in warmer and drier conditions across the southern United States and cooler conditions in southeastern Alaska, the Northern Plains and western and central Canada.

Plastic waste on a beach in Panama City. Scientists believe that 4.4 million to 8.8 million tons of plastic enter the sea every year. range of samples. They also eliminated fibers or other materials from their count to rule out the potential contamination of the samples.

Scientists believe that 4.4 million to 8.8 million tons of plastic enter the sea every year. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a gyre of refuse between California and Hawaii that is estimated to be more than twice the size of Texas, carries more than 87,000 tons of trash. In recent years, hundreds of plastic objects have been found in the bellies of dead whales around the world.

Over time, some plastics break down into smaller pieces and sink into the ocean. More buoyant types of plastic do not sink by themselves and either wash up on beaches or end up in deepwater. Microbes and mussel colonies growing on floating plastic often cause the entire mass to sink from the added weight.

Although the study did not research the effects of microplastics — fragments between five millimeters and one micrometer — in deepwater, Hardesty said that they could be ingested by smaller plankton and fish on the seabed and move up the food chain. Once eaten by fish, they can be consumed by people.

Microplastics are not confined to the ocean; they are also found in air particles and are spread by wind. One study even detected a variety of microplastics in the human gut.

While cities across the world have banned plastic bags and straws, the use of disposable plastic packaging has surged amid the coronavirus pandemic as consumers grow more concerned about hygiene and contamination.

Hardesty said that it was important to prevent plastic from ending up in the ocean in the first place. CSIRO is also involved in efforts to reduce plastic consumption significantly and in improving waste management with new technology to prevent plastic bags and debris from clogging gutters and washing into the ocean during floods.

Hardesty said that she was hopeful that awareness about plastic pollution would lead to more sustainable policies and shifts in behavior.

“Most of what ends up in oceans are in people’s hand at some point,” she said. “They can see that their behavior — their actions and purchasing power — is very powerful and that can result in change.”

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Thursday, October 8, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Trump’s not Superman. He’s Superspreader.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

T

he most important question today is not what President Donald Trump has learned from his bout with COVID-19. Trump is one of those leaders who never learns and never forgets, as the saying goes. The most important question is what have we as citizens learned — and, in particular, what have Trump’s supporters learned?

Because the debate over Trump himself is over. The verdict is in: He cast himself as Superman, but he turns out to have been Superspreader — not only of a virus but of a whole way of looking at the world in a pandemic that was dangerously wrong for himself and our nation. To reelect him would be an act of collective madness.

But while I see it that way, and maybe you see it that way, will enough Trump voters see it that way? That will depend on Joe Biden’s ability to help them see all the big and small things where Trump has been so fundamentally mistaken.

The list of “small” things is long: Caution in a pandemic is not a sign of weakness but of wisdom. Face masks in a pandemic are not cultural markers, just common-sense protection that says nothing other than “I’m a responsible person who wants to protect myself and my grandparent, myself and my customer, myself and my co-worker, myself and my neighbor from an invisible pathogen.”

Machismo in a pandemic is not strength. Resisting maskwearing in a pandemic is not safeguarding freedom. Lockdowns in a pandemic are not an abridgment of our rights of assembly or

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speech. Blue states aren’t more attractive to the coronavirus than red states. Scientists are not politicians. Politicians are not scientists.

Everything is not politics. Lysol is a disinfectant for cleansing counters, not your lungs. Our choices were never masks OR jobs but masks FOR jobs — the more your employees and customers wear them, the more your business can stay open and flourish.

The big things Trump got wrong were twofold. The first was how to lead in a pandemic. The quality of our leadership in general is always a serious business, but in a pandemic, it becomes a matter of life and death. Leaders at every level — teachers, scientists, principals, presidents, school superintendents, hospital directors, CEOs, mayors, governors, media, parents — are all being looked to for direction today more than ever because so many people feel disoriented and unmoored.

Donald Trump proved to be the worst kind of leader in a pandemic: a morally reckless leader.

“When it comes to living in the face of uncertainty, people tend to fall along a spectrum, reflecting their attitudes toward individual freedom versus responsibility and their disposition toward risk-taking,” explained Dov Seidman, the founder and chairman of LRN, an ethics and compliance company, and the How Institute for Society, which promotes values-based leadership.

You can see this spectrum starkly in how people contracted the virus and dealt with COVID-19, Seidman said. “First, there were those along the spectrum who were just unlucky and unfortunate — wrong place, wrong time when a tiny invisible pathogen was present.”

Second, he added, “there were frontline workers, heroes, who bravely ran toward the virus to help save others and were infected by it in the process. Third, there were individuals who were reckless and did not wear masks or stay 6 feet apart, harming themselves, their family, friends and co-workers, too.”

And finally, said Seidman, there were the leaders: “There were those in positions of power and authority — whom people were trusting for lifesaving guidance. Some shouldered their responsibility, knowing that in this time of crisis more people than ever would heed their advice and emulate their example, if they behaved accordingly. Other leaders, though, did not lead that way; they actually encouraged people to ignore the science and let down their guard. That is moral recklessness.”

That was Trump.

As a result, Seidman concluded, “today, we have a real crisis of leadership and authority — people don’t know who to trust and what to believe. But what is clear is that leaders who can put more truth into the world than they muddy and put more trust into the world than they erode matter now more than ever — those are the leaders we admire and whom history will remember well.”

Trump and Fox News and Facebook will not be among them.

They will be remembered for how much truth they muddied and how much trust they eroded, which together have helped to compromise our country’s cognitive immunity — our ability to sort out facts from fiction — and our social immunity — our ability to face this crisis together.

The second big thing Trump got completely wrong is: You

President Trump at last week’s presidential debate mocked mask-wearing. don’t mess with Mother Nature.

This pandemic was a natural systems event. But Trump looks at the world through markets, not Mother Nature. He and his advisers consistently downplayed the virus so as not to panic the market, whose rise they saw as Trump’s ticket to reelection.

At a White House briefing back in March, Kellyanne Conway literally sneered at a reporter who implied in her question that the virus was not being contained.

“Do you not think it’s being contained in this country?” Conway barked at the journalist. “You said, ‘It’s not being contained,’ so are you a doctor or a lawyer when you’re saying it’s not being contained? That’s false. You just said something that’s not true.”

Of course, it was true. While Trump and his advisers were playing down the virus to protect the market, Mother Nature was silently, inexorably, exponentially and mercilessly spreading the coronavirus around our nation, irrespective of state boundaries or political affiliations. Conway herself now has COVID-19.

In a pandemic, Mother Nature asks you and your leader three basic questions: 1. “Are you humble? Do you respect my virus? Because if you don’t, it could hurt you or someone you love.” 2. “Are you coordinated in your response to my virus, which I evolved to find any crack in your individual or communal immune system?”

3. “Is your adaptation response to my virus grounded in chemistry, biology and physics? Because that is all I am. If it is grounded instead in politics, ideology, markets and an election calendar, you will fail and your community will pay.”

When it came to Mother Nature, Trump was not humble, he did not seek national coordination in response to the virus and he did not ground what strategy he had in chemistry, biology and physics, but rather in ideology, politics, markets and an election calendar. Our nation has paid a huge price for that.

Trump wanted us to believe that we had only two choices: open the economy and ignore the virus, as he claims to prefer, or close the economy and fear the virus, as he claims Democrats prefer.

It’s a fraud. Our real choices were to open the economy smartly or to open it recklessly.

That is, open the economy by doing the easy things, like wearing masks and social distancing, so people could shop, go to school and go to work with a reasonable prospect of not getting sick, as Biden proposes, or open the economy recklessly, without masks, and force people to risk getting sick every time they go to work or school, as Trump demands.

Trump did not respect Mother Nature or us. All I can do now is pray that enough Trump supporters have learned that — and vote against him between now and Nov. 3. The lives and livelihoods of many Americans depend on it.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

19

Gobernadora se reúne con miembros de JSF en NY para insistir en aprobación del Plan Vital para 200,000 personas Por THE STAR a gobernadora Wanda Vázquez Garced, el represenLMarrero, tante ante la Junta de Supervisión Fiscal (JSF), Omar y el secretario de Salud, Lorenzo González

Feliciano, y la directora ejecutiva de la Administración de Asuntos Federales de Puerto Rico (PRFAA, por sus siglas en inglés) Jennifer Storipan, comparecieron hoy a una vista solicitada por la primera ejecutiva ante el ente congresional para insistir en agregar 200,000 personas al Plan Vital.

En julio de este año, el gobierno de Puerto Rico hizo esta solicitud a la junta, más la misma fue denegada. Es por eso que la gobernadora solicitó una reunión presencial, luego de una exitosa reunión con los Centros de Servicios de Medicare y Medicaid (CMS, por sus siglas en inglés) el pasado lunes.

“El Congreso de los Estados Unidos aprobó el PL116-94 en 2019 para desembolsar 1.5 mil millones de dólares para Medicaid en dos años. Debido a los terremotos, a la pandemia y a procesos burocráticos, lamentablemente no se pudo desembolsar por completo.

Queremos hacerle justicia a 200,000 vidas que necesitan cubierta de plan médico, especialmente en estos momentos en que vivimos una pandemia. Para poder hacerlo, necesitamos que la JCF apruebe poder utilizar los fondos”, explicó la primera ejecutiva en comunicación escrita.

Destacó que, además de agregar 200,000 personas al Plan Vital, esto ayudaría a hacerle justicia a los médicos en Puerto Rico, al incrementar las tarifas de pago para que equiparen 70 por ciento de lo que gana un médico que da servicio a pacientes de Medicaid en Estados Unidos. Esto ayuda a retener a los médicos para que no se vayan de la isla, además de que también se atendería el aumento de salario a los dentistas, el cual no se ha evaluado en 20 años.

“Esta partida que solicitamos no requiere un finan-

ciamiento recurrente, dado a que sería temporero por el término de 12 meses”, indicó Vázquez Garced.

Por su parte, Marrero indicó: “En el día de hoy, nuestra administración sostuvo una reunión importante con el nuevo presidente de la JSF, David Skeel, con el propósito de identificar soluciones concretas que nos ayuden a tener un sistema de salud igualitario con el aumento de fondos federales asignados al programa Medicaid de Puerto Rico. Ante los desafíos que nuestro pueblo ha enfrentado en los últimos años y los controles presupuestarios de la JSF, una parte de los fondos asignados para este y el próximo año fiscal se encuentran en riesgo. Nuestro compromiso es trabajar varias iniciativas junto a la JSF para utilizar estos fondos efectivamente y para que nuestro pueblo no tenga que pagar las consecuencias de las acciones de la JSF. Nuestro pueblo merece un programa de salud digno”.

Por su parte el secretario de Salud indicó que como parte de la agenda de discusión ante la JSF, le expuso la necesidad de ajustar los estándares del nivel de pobreza en la isla para que el programa Medicaid pueda ofrecer servicios a más puertorriqueños que lo necesitan.

“La población que atiende Medicaid está sujeta al nivel de pobreza de Puerto Rico, que está en un 43 por ciento del nivel federal. Nuestra petición a los directivos de la JSF es que dicho nivel de pobreza sea ajustado al 85 por ciento del nivel federal lo que nos permitiría que cerca de 200,000 puertorriqueños más tengan acceso al plan de salud Vital. Estamos confiados en que se acogerá nuestra recomendación, por la salud del pueblo de Puerto Rico”, dijo González Feliciano, quien destacó que la petición cobra relevancia en momentos en que la isla enfrenta la pandemia provocada por el COVID-19.

Storipan señaló: “Hemos visto las consecuencias que la pandemia ha causado, no solo en Estados Unidos sino en todo el mundo. Debemos trabajar para asegurar que haya cubierta de salud para todos los que necesitan

durante en estos momentos de gran preocupación por la salud pública. Hoy hemos compartido con la JSF las distintas maneras en que podemos utilizar los fondos de Puerto Rico durante esta pandemia. Su aprobación a esta solicitud nos ayudará a salvar vidas y proveer servicio de salud adecuado a la gente de Puerto Rico”.

El 15 por ciento de la población en la isla no cuenta con plan médico en este momento crítico. Esto significa que personas infectadas por COVID-19 podrían no recibir atención médica a tiempo y tengan que esperar demasiado, con el riesgo de perder sus vidas.

“Para mí, éste es un asunto de vida o muerte y por ello quise tener estas conversaciones de manera personal y directa. Confío que aprueben esta solicitud, para garantizar que en medio de esta histórica pandemia, todos los puertorriqueños puedan tener una cubierta de plan médico que les garantice acceso a servicios médicos”, agregó la gobernadora.

Alcalde denuncia que FEMA pide a familia devolver $25 mil que aprobó para reconstruir su hogar Por THE STAR l alcalde de Toa Alta, Clemente “Chito” Agosto, deEManejo nunció este miércoles que la Agencia Federal para el de Emergencias (FEMA, por sus siglas en inglés)

pidió a una familia toalteña devolver el dinero que le fue aprobado para reconstruir su hogar destruido por el huracán María, por presuntas discrepancias en los documentos que fueron entregados para validar la titularidad del terreno.

“Luego de dos años que FEMA le otorgó $25 mil a una jefa de familia de la comunidad Las Acerolas para reconstruir el hogar que María destruyó, viene a decirle que tiene que devolver el dinero porque los documentos son insuficientes y no cualifica para la ayuda. Documentos que el municipio le otorgó a la familia para que pudieran, precisamente, cualificar para la reclamación.

Es increíble que FEMA pretenda que se devuelva el dinero cuando ese dinero se invirtió en su totalidad en la

reconstrucción de la casa”, afirmó Agosto en declaraciones escritas.

El Alcalde de Toa Alta detalló que como parte del proceso de cualificación de FEMA los residentes de la comunidad Las Acerolas tenían que proveer un documento que validara que la persona tenía una estructura en un espacio de terreno que le pertenece al municipio de Toa Alta.

“Dentro del papeleo que pedía FEMA para cualificar, pedían un documento que validara que el municipio les permitía a las familias tener una estructura en esos terrenos. Yo como alcalde validé la información de esta y otras familias y se les otorgó el documento para que FEMA pudiera procesar y aprobar las reclamaciones para reconstruir las casas que María destruyó. El caso de Yailis es el primero con el que nos topamos, pero ¿FEMA les pedirá a todos los residentes de Las Acerolas devolver el dinero que se les aprobó? Si es así es bien preocupante y más cuando las familias cumplieron con lo que el propio

FEMA estableció”, reclamó Agosto.

El alcalde de Toa Alta “teme que el caso de Yailis Vergara, madre de 3 niños” se repita en esta y otras comunidades de Toa Alta, ya que la discrepancia sería por el mismo documento que la familia entregó.

“Me preocupa grandemente que lo que le ocurrió a Yailis les ocurra a otras familias toalteñas. El municipio validó y otorgó a cientos de familias el mismo documento por el que hoy FEMA pide la devolución del dinero.

Si la discrepancia es ese papel, pues podrá pasarle esto mismo a más familias. FEMA ya se comunicó con el patrono de Yailis para (presuntamente) congelar el sueldo para poder recobrar el dinero, ¿Cómo es posible que FEMA quiera congelar el sueldo de una jefa de familia para recuperar un dinero que ellos mismos aprobaron porque se cumplió con los requisitos?, cuestionó Agosto.

El alcalde de Toa Alta pidió a FEMA “reevaluar el caso de Yailis y que se encuentre una solución a la mayor brevedad posible”.

20

Thursday, October 8, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

‘SNL’ had a live audience. It went home with paychecks.

“Saturday Night Live” returned to the studio last week with a live audience. In order to comply with state restrictions, the show treated those guests as cast members by compensating them for their time.

By JULIA JACOBS and DAVE ITZKOFF

B

efore the coronavirus outbreak, tickets to join the studio audience of “Saturday Night Live” were a precious commodity — offered free by NBC but so hard to obtain that some comedy fans were willing to pay money for them.

But now the tickets to this long-running sketch show — still free, and still scarce — come with an added bonus: Members of its studio audience have been paid to attend.

The payments are the result of new guidelines implemented by the state of New York, which has been regulating the reopening of businesses and industries during the pandemic.

On Monday night, the state’s health department confirmed that “SNL” had followed its reopening guidelines by “casting” members of the live audience for its season premiere Saturday — the show’s first live episode since March 7 — and paying them for their time. (It is not clear how many audience members were paid guests.)

Sean Ludwig, who attended the “SNL” season premiere over the weekend, said that he and seven friends who had gone with him each received a check for $150 from Universal Television, a division of NBC’s parent company, when the show was over.

“We had no idea we would be paid before we were

handed checks,” Ludwig said. “We were all very pleasantly surprised.”

Ludwig, a freelance writer who runs a barbecue website and newsletter, said that he and his friends had obtained the tickets through a website called 1iota that screens audiences for talk shows and other events. Ludwig said that they had been given a rapid virus test and asked to sign health forms indicating that they did not have COVID-19 or symptoms of the disease and had not come into contact with anyone who had it before they were allowed to attend the show.

In the days leading up to the “SNL” season premiere, it was unclear whether the show would be able to draw its studio audience from the general public, as it has done in past years, because of state restrictions around reopening during the pandemic. In an earlier statement, the state’s health department said that ticketed events had been prohibited since March 16, and that the restriction had not changed.

But “SNL” had already been asking live audience members to register through its 1iota page, which has since been taken down. The show had asked applicants to request between seven and nine tickets for people whom they considered to be part of their “social bubble” and had outlined the coronavirusrelated precautions that the show would be taking.

(The president of 1iota Productions, Ben Biscotti, declined to comment on the company’s role regarding the show’s live audience and did not immediately respond to a

question about why the “SNL” page was taken down.)

Based on the guidelines around pandemic-era media production that were released by the state, television shows are not allowed to host live audiences unless they consist of paid employees, cast and crew. And if the show decides to create an audience out of its workers, the audience can be only 25% of its typical size — and can be no more than 100 people.

That left “SNL” an option that would allow them to include members of the public in its live audiences while keeping in line with the state’s rules: Pay those audience members like employees.

A spokesman for the state health department, Jonah Bruno, said in a statement Monday night that “SNL” had confirmed to them that it had followed the state’s reopening guidance by selecting audience members through a thirdparty screening and casting process and by compensating them for their time.

“There is no evidence of noncompliance,” he said, “but if any is discovered, we will refer that to local authorities for follow-up.”

A spokeswoman for “Saturday Night Live” said in an email that the show was “working closely with the Department of Health and following all of their guidelines.” The spokeswoman did not say how many members of the “SNL” audience were paid.

“SNL,” which is broadcast from Studio 8H in NBC’s Rockefeller Plaza headquarters, had to halt its live episodes in March amid the spread of the pandemic. It concluded its previous season with three remotely produced episodes consisting of sketches that its cast members had filmed from their homes.

Last month, NBC announced that “SNL” would return to its traditional live format, starting with its Oct. 3 season premiere, which was hosted by Chris Rock. The show is expected to air at least four more live episodes through the end of the month.

A now-defunct registration page for “SNL” on the 1iota website outlined the coronavirus protocol for its guest audience members. All guests would be required to take a nasal antigen test upon arrival, with results available before the start of the show. They would be required to wear a face covering at all times in the building and would be asked a series of questions about their potential coronavirus exposure. And they would have to get their temperature checked at arrival; anyone with a temperature of 100.4 degrees or higher would be asked to leave (along with everyone else in that person’s group).

A portion of the tickets to the show were reserved for health care workers, who received a humorous shout-out at the start of Saturday’s show. In his opening monologue, Rock addressed the front section of audience members, whom he identified as first responders, and joked, “They’re so good, we let people die tonight so they could see a good show.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

21

A musician’s white whale: perfectly re-creating the ‘Funky Drummer’ beat

By ELISABETH VICENTELLI

D

ylan Wissing has been making a living as a versatile session drummer since the early 1990s and earned credits on tracks by Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Drake, Eminem and Rick Ross. Yet there’s something he hasn’t achieved that he just can’t give up: reenacting the drumming on the James Brown track “Funky Drummer” as faithfully as possible.

“It’s my Moby-Dick, my Mona Lisa, my Mount Everest,” Wissing said.

If you have heard any new music over the past three decades, you have heard part of “Funky Drummer,” which spawned one of the most sampled breakbeats ever (the website WhoSampled puts the number at 1,637).

It has popped up on songs by artists as different as Public Enemy and Ed Sheeran, and appeared on work by Sinead O’Connor, N.W.A and Melissa Etheridge.

Wissing does not want to simply cover what Clyde Stubblefield did back in 1969, though. Using vintage gear, he wants to duplicate every inflection and micro-pause, the finesse of Stubblefield’s ghost notes and his metronomic timing. And he wants to sustain the effort for all nine minutes of the track’s full version.

“I’ve been playing this song forever, and I still can’t play it at the album tempo all the way through without my arm feeling like it’s going to fall off,” said Wissing, 50. Speaking on Zoom from his studio in Hoboken, New Jersey, he did not sound so much frustrated as energized by a challenge that calls on all of his qualities as a musician.

Indeed, Wissing is not just technically excellent but a bit of a forensic detective.

Over the past 17 years, he has used his skills, and his extensive drum collection, to create vintage-sounding loops and perform sample replays. (In the pipeline: downloadable packs inspired by 1970s disco and Stax house drummer Al Jackson’s beat-keeping on Otis Redding and Carla Thomas’ “Tramp.”) He calls replays a “crazy little hyper-specialized corner of the music industry.”

Clearing samples to incorporate them in new songs can get expensive if you follow the proper legal channels. Since music involves two types of copyright, one for the musical work (the composition) and one for the recording (the capture of a performance), producers came up with the cost-cutting idea of recording new versions of those vintage fragments.

“One reason a cover version is automatically easier to license than a sample is that it only implicates one of the copyrights, the composition one,” said Peter DiCola, a law professor at Northwestern University and coauthor of the book “Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling.”

Wissing was introduced to sample replay by producer and engineer Ken Lewis, and in 2003 the duo successfully re-created a drum part from Billy Squier’s “The Big Beat” for Alicia Keys’ hit “Girl on Fire.”

“There’s only that one bass drum and that one snare drum and it was, I think, three or four days of solid work,” Wissing said. “And it’s literally six notes.”

Lewis said the effort involved a mountain of equipment. “We set up maybe 20 microphones in Alicia Keys’ studio and brought down probably 20 snare drums and 20 kick drums, and we just started capturing everything and comparing and fine-tuning and adjusting,” he explained on the phone. (Wissing had to rebuild his stockpile of drum components after losing most of it to Hurricane Irene flooding; you can check out some of his goods in the hypnotic gear-nerdery video “50 Snares Drums in 5 Minutes: The Heart of the Breakbeat.”)

At least with “The Big Beat,” from 1980, the pair knew the original version. The exacting process requires super-hearing and sleuthing. “You listen to the sample you need to re-create literally hundreds and hundreds of times, picking out every single minute detail: every timing, every inflection, every note, every off-pitch note, every late snare hit,” Lewis said. Room echo, crackles and pops are also mixed in.

This analytical bent came early to Wissing, who was raised in a music-friendly family — his great-grandfather, Clarence Stout, was a songwriter and drummer — in Bloomington, Indiana. Listening to his parents’ copy of the 1973 Pharoah Sanders LP “Village of the Pharoahs” when he was young, he realized the record featured a bell with “the exact same sound as the bell at my grandparents’ farmhouse,” he said. “The connection stuck in my head. That was kind of the first time I understood that stuff.”

After graduating from Indiana University, Wissing spent 13 years crisscrossing the country with the band Johnny Socko. When that project ended and he had moved to Hoboken, he reconnected with Lewis, who had produced the group’s last studio album, and the two men became regular collaborators.

Drummer Dylan Wissing, a versatile session drummer since the early 1990s, at his studio in Hoboken, N.J., Sept. 23, 2020. Using vintage gear, Wissing wants to re-enact the drumming on the James Brown track “Funky Drummer” as faithfully as possible.

Sample replay does not come cheap — Lewis said it can range between $1,500 and $15,000, based on the complexity of the task — and even then it can be discarded at the last minute. Wissing replayed the drum part of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man” for the initial version of Kanye West’s “Power,” in 2010, but West ended up using a sample.

“That was kind of heartbreaking, although I am on the remix with Jay-Z and Swizz Beatz, an acceptable consolation prize,” Wissing said. “Being able to handle rejection can definitely be a useful skill in this line of work.

As a working musician, Wissing handles a lot more than sample replay. He does session gigs, goes on the occasional tour — his concert dates with violinist Alexander Markov fell through, like so many, after the COVID-19 shutdown — and tutorial videos. He also creates, usually with engineer Cooper Anderson, royalty-free packs of beats and loops for Sounds.com.

“Beginners just starting to make music generally don’t have access to expensive instruments, don’t have a big network of musicians to call on,” Sounds.com’s senior partnering manager Justin Myracks explained in a phone interview. “Dylan democratizes music creation.”

Wissing’s sound packs have titles like “50s R&B Drums” (described as “a full collection of shuffle beats and fills, heavy on the vintage drums and cymbals, dripping with ribbon mics and tube preamps”) and “70s TV Drama Drums” (cue visions of “Kojak” and “Police Woman”). In addition to his Stax module, he is putting the finishing touches on a pack inspired by Queen’s drummer.

“Imagine you had Roger Taylor with his 1977 kit and you wanted him to play on your song, and you can’t afford to actually hire Roger Taylor,” Wissing said. “I dissect what they’re playing and I try to match the feel, the sonic vibe, and do some variations from my imaginary outtakes.”

And then there is that white whale. On his sound pack “The Junky Drummer,” Wissing deconstructs that famous breakbeat “using garbage, so the hi-hat sound would be ripping paper or a Slinky from my son’s toy box,” he said.

Wissing is naturally ebullient, but his enthusiasm rises even further when he talks about “Funky Drummer.”

“I’ve devoted my life to this damn track,” he said. “Just how the (expletive) did he do it? He’s Clyde Stubblefield, that’s how.” He laughs. “Probably on my deathbed I’ll figure out how to do it.”

22

Thursday, October 8, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

With no new films, Regal Cinemas shuts down again

By NICOLE SPERLING AND GILLIAN FRIEDMAN

A

little more than a month after movie theater chains restarted operations in the United States, some are starting to shut back down.

On Monday, Cineworld, the parent company of Regal Cinemas, the second-largest theater chain in the country, announced that it would temporarily close its 663 theaters in the United States and Britain this week.

Late last week, MGM/Universal announced that it was delaying the release of the new James Bond film, “No Time to Die,” until next year, the latest in a slew of bigbudget movies that have been moved out of 2020 by Hollywood studios. And Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet,” whose Labor Day weekend release was intended to herald the return of movie theaters, continues to struggle at the U.S. box office, at least in part because audiences are wary of theaters.

Cineworld’s decision to close again, affecting 40,000 employees in the United States and 5,000 more in Britain, raised questions about what other chains will do if Hollywood’s release schedule remains barren.

For instance, Warner Bros. is postponing releasing the remake of “Dune,” once scheduled for December, until Oct. 1, 2021, according to two people familiar with the studio’s plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been made public. Warner Bros. declined to comment.

“If the studios continue postponing all their releases, the movie theaters aren’t going to be there for those postponed releases,” John Fithian, chief executive of the National Association of Theatre Owners, said in an interview.

Fithian also pointed to the government-mandated closure of theaters in New York state, home to a crucial box office market because of its size and cultural influence, as a major reason that releases were being delayed

A closed Regal Cinemas movie theater in Gainesville, Fla., on July 11, 2020. The plight of the entertainment industry deepened on Monday as the British company Cineworld, which owns Regal Cinemas in the United States, said it would temporarily close all of its movie theaters in the United States and Britain. and chains were suffering financially.

Cinemark, the third-largest theater operator in the country, said Monday that it would not shut its theaters.

But it did say it would consider reducing the number of days and hours they operate while it “awaits new studio content to encourage theatrical moviegoing.”

This past weekend, 2,931 U.S. movie theaters were open, about 57% of the country’s total. They generated a mere $12 million in box office receipts. The box office totals from the same weekend a year ago reached $150 million, buoyed by the release of “Joker,” which alone earned $96.2 million.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

23

Companies ditch plans for rapid Coronavirus spit tests at home

By KATHERINE J. WU

F

or months, public health experts have been eagerly watching the companies developing spit tests for the coronavirus that could be used at home, producing results in a matter of minutes.

If these rapid tests worked, as many news articles have pointed out, they could greatly expand the number of people tested. Some experts have said they could perform as well as a vaccine in curbing the spread of the virus. But so far, the technology is not panning out as some have hoped.

E25Bio and OraSure, two companies pursuing rapid athome coronavirus tests, have abandoned efforts to use saliva in their products. Their tests, which detect pieces of coronavirus proteins called antigens, will for now rely on shallow nose swabs.

“If I was placing a bet — which I am, because I’m leading an antigen-based testing company — I would say it’s going to be very difficult for antigen-based testing to work on saliva samples,” said Bobby Brooke Herrera, an E25Bio founder and its chief executive. The notion that the virus sets up shop in the mouth and produces enough antigen to be picked up by today’s technology, he said, “is far-fetched.”

The two companies pursued saliva (or “oral fluids,” in the case of OraSure) for months in the hopes of their tests being more comfortable than swabs, some of which go painfully deep into the nose, and less reliant on supply chains that have caused long delays for laboratory tests.

“There’s nothing more convenient than spitting in a tube,” said Dr. Valerie Fitzhugh, a pathologist at Rutgers University.

But as they continued to tinker with their tests, researchers at both E25Bio and OraSure found saliva’s performance to be more lackluster than anticipated. “This was a result of optimization studies,” said Stephen Tang, OraSure’s chief executive. A saliva antigen test is still theoretically possible, Tang added. But after comparing the amount of coronavirus antigen found in the nostrils and throat, as well as different parts of the mouth, including the cheeks, gums and tongue, “we decided to optimize around the nasal cavity,” he said.

Despite a deluge of data on saliva’s benefits, it’s relatively new to the testing scene. No fully government-approved test for a respiratory pathogen has ever used spit. And there’s still no consensus on how well saliva works for detecting the coronavirus, compared with the fluids obtained by nose swabs. Studies comparing the amount of virus in the two sites have produced conflicting results.

Spit also differs vastly among people, and can even change over the course of a single day. “We’ve all noticed that there is variable performance,” said Sarah Jung, scientific director of clinical microbiology at Children’s Hospital Colorado.

Both E25Bio and OraSure plan to seek authorization from the Food and Drug Administration to sell at-home antigen tests using nose swabs instead of spit, a technique similar to the one used by the Abbott antigen test that takes about

In an undated photo from the Columbia University Fertility Center, results from a new rapid test for the coronavirus being developed by Columbia University, which heats saliva with a mix of chemicals. If the virus is detected, the sample turns yellow.

15 minutes. The E25Bio test would require people to swab their nose, stir the sample into a chemical soup, apply the mixture to a paper strip and wait up to half an hour for bands to appear. E25Bio’s test picks up on about 80% of the infections that ultrasensitive laboratory tests detect — the FDA’s bare minimum for a regulatory greenlight. OraSure declined to give any details about its test’s methodology or accuracy.

Saliva does seem to be working when used in laboratory tests known as PCR, which look for bits of the virus’s genetic material, or RNA, rather than antigens. PCR tests detect minute amounts of coronavirus RNA, making them far more sensitive than antigen tests. Research teams at Rutgers and Yale have been granted emergency authorization for these spit PCR tests.

At the University of Illinois, some 10,000 of the institution’s in-house PCR tests are performed each day on saliva from students, faculty and staff members — roughly 1% of the nation’s daily tests. Standard PCR tests, however, take hours to run and are subject to shortages.

Other scientists, like Dr. Zev Williams of Columbia University, are working on variants of rapid saliva tests that, like PCR, detect RNA, but don’t require expensive laboratory machines. His team’s prototype takes 45 minutes. It uses an array of portable equipment, including two tissue-box-size heaters.

That’s too bulky and expensive for at-home testing. But he said the test could be deployed in places where crowds

gather. His team has submitted an application for emergency approval from the FDA. In the meantime, they’ve partnered with Sorrento Therapeutics to scale up production.

The Columbia saliva test relies on a technique called LAMP that’s generally faster but a bit less accurate than PCR. The spit sample is briefly boiled and mixed into a cocktail of chemicals that then gets incubated at 145 degrees Fahrenheit for half an hour. The latest data shows the Columbia test performs as well as a laboratory deep-nose swab test more than 96% of the time, even when using saliva from sick patients who gave messy samples.

“Even if there was food or blood, we took it,” Williams said. That wouldn’t fly with most other saliva tests in use, he said, which ban eating, tooth-brushing and even gum chewing for about an hour before.

Another saliva LAMP test is being tested by David O’Connor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their technique bears many similarities to the Columbia test but takes slightly longer and involves extra steps. Early trials have gone well, O’Connor said.

But saliva LAMP tests face their own hurdles. Saliva tends to clump and stick, and can be a difficult substance to handle and transfer from tube to tube, said Jennifer Dien Bard, director of the clinical microbiology and virology laboratory at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

“To me,” Dien Bard said, “something like this might still belong in a lab.”

24 reidas, Local 1-B Calle Mendez Vigo esquma Amador Ramirez ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Silva, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL 00680; o por correo al Apartado GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRI- 2342, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico BUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTAN- 00681-2342, Teléfonos: (787) CIA SALA DE LARES. 832-9620 y (845) 345-3985, BANCO POPULAR DE Abogada de la parte demandante, apercibiéndose que en PUERTO RICO caso de no hacerlo así podrá Demandante Vs. dictarse Sentencia en Rebeldía SUCESIÓN DE ISRAEL en contra suya, concediendo TORRES RIVERA el remedio solicitado de la DeCOMPUESTA POR manda sin mas citarle ni oírle.

ORDEN DE INTERPELACIÓN JESSENIA TORRES JUDICIAL Vista la Urgente MoFIGUEROA, ISRAEL ción Informativa Solicitando ExTORRES FIGUEROA, pedición de Emplazamiento por FULANO DE TAL, ZUTANA Edicto en el caso de epígrafe, DE CUAL Y NORMA y examinado los autos de este caso y la ley aplicable, este TriFIGUEROA LÓPEZ, VIUDA. SUCESIÓN DE bunal declara CON LUGAR la solicitud de Interpelación JuNORMA FIGUEROA dicial, y en su consecuencia se LOPEZ COMPUESTA ordena a que la parte demanPOR JESSENIA TORRES dada Fulano de Tal y Zutana de Cual por si y como miembros FIGUEROA, ISRAEL de La Sucesión de Israel Torres TORRES FIGUEROA, Rivera, y como miembros de La FULANO DE TAL, Sucesión de Norma Figueroa ZUTANA DE CUAL E López y conforme lo dispone ISRAEL TORRE RIVERA, el Artículo 959 del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. 2787, a que denVIUDO. tro del término legal de treinta Demandado CIVIL NÚM.: LR2019CV00384. (30) días contados a partir de SALÓN: SOBRE: COBRO DE la fecha de la notificación de DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO la presente Orden, acepte o POR EDICTO Y DE INTERPE- repudie la participación que les LACIÓN JUDICIAL. ESTADOS corresponda en la herencia de UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL los causantes. Se le apercibe PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTA- que de no expresarse dentro DOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LI- de ese término de treinta (30) BRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO días en torno a su aceptación o repudiación de herencia, la RICO. herencia se tendrá por acepA: FULANO DE TAL, También se le apercibe ZUTANA DE CUAL POR tada. a los demandados que luego SI Y COMO MIEMBROS de trascurso del término antes DE LA SUCESIÓN DE indicado, se presumirá que han ISRAEL TORRES RIVERA aceptado la herencia del cauY COMO MIEMBROS DE sante, por consiguiente responpor las cagas de dicha heLA SUCESIÓN DE NORMA den rencia conforme al Artículo 957 FIGUEROA LÓPEZ del Código Civil, 31 L.P.R.A. POR LA PRESENTE: Se le 2785. Se Ordena a la parte notifica que contra usted se ha demandante a que proceda a presentado la Demanda sobre notificar la presente orden meCobro de Dinero de la cual se diante publicación de un edicto acompaña copia. Por la pre- a esos efectos una sola vez en sente se le emplaza a usted y un periódico de circulación diase le requiere para que dentro ria general de la isla de Puerto del término de TREINTA (30) Rico. DADA en Lares, Puerto días desde la fecha de la Publi- Rico, hoy 4 de septiembre de cación por Edicto de este Em- 2020. DIANE ÁLVAREZ VILLAplazamiento presente su con- NUEVA, Secretaria Regional I. testación a través del Sistema YANELLY PEREZ SOTO, SeUnificado de Manejo y Adminis- cretaria Auxiliar. tración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando LEGAL NOTICE la siguiente dirección electrónica: https: //unired.ramajudicial. ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO pr, salvo que se represente por DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUderecho propio, en cuyo caso NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA deberá presentar su alegación SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROresponsiva en la Secretaría del LINA.

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Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Lares, P.O. Box 1249, Lares, P.R. 00669-1249 y notificando a la LCDA. GINA H. FERRER MEDINA, personalmente al Condominio Las Ne-

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LEGACY MORTGAGE ASSET TRUST 2019-PR1 DEMANDANTE Vs.

CITIBANK N.A.; JOHN DOE y RICHARD ROE

como posibles tenedores desconocicios

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM. CA2020CV01671.

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

A: JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE como posibles tenedores desconocidos

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

Usted deberá radicar su alegación responsiva a través d I Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: http://unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se presente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá radicar I original de su contestación ante el Tribunal correspondiente y notifique con copia a los abogados de la parte demandante, LCDA. MARJALIISA COLÓN VILLANUEVA A su dirección: PO. Box 7970 Ponce, PR. 00732. Tet: 787-843-4168. En dicha demanda se tramita un procedimiento de cancelación de pagare extraviado. Se alega en dicho procedimiento que se extravió un pagaré hipotecario por la suma de $120, 100.00, intereses al 5 1/2%, anual, vencedero el primero de noviembre de 2019, a favor de Citibank N.A, o a su orden, según consta de la escritura número 826 otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el dla 7 de octubre de 2004, ante el notario Jorge García Soto. está inscrita ciento treinta y cinco 135) del tomo novecientos cuarenta y cuatro (944) de Carolina, finca número catorce mi seiscientos cuarenta y cuatro (14,644), inscripcíón duodécima (12ma). Que grava la propiedad que se describe continuación: URBANA: Solar radicado en la Urbanización Villa Fontana, situada en el Barrio Sabana Abajo el término municipal de Carolina, Puerto Rico, que se describe con el número dos (2 de la manzana cinco guion K (5-K). con un área de trescientos cincuenta dos punto cuarenta y cuatro (352.44) metros cuadrados. En lindes por eI NORTE, con el solar número uno (1), distancia de veintitrés punto trescientos setenta y uno (23.371) metros; por el SUR, con el solar número tres (3), distancia de veintitrés punto trescientos cuarenta (23.340) metros; por el ESTE, con la calle cinco guion dos (5-2), dis-

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tancia de trece punt ochocientos (13.800) metros en arco y por el OESTE, con los solares veinte (20), veintiuno (21) y veintidós (22) distancia de dieciséis punto ciento ochenta y seis (16.186) metros. Enclava casa. Inscrita al folio doscientos cuarenta (240) del tomo trescientos ochenta y tres (383) de Carolina, finca número catorce mil seiscientos cuarenta y cuatro (14,644) Registro de la Propiedad Sección Primera (1ra) de Carolina. SE LES APERCIBE que, de no hacer sus alegaciones responsivas a la demanda dentro del término aquí dispuesto, se les anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi finna y sello del Tribunal en Carolina, Puerto Rico, a día 30 de agosto de 2020.

Lcda. Marilyn Aponte Rodriguez, Secretaria Regional. IDA FERNÁNDEZ RODRÍGUEZ, Sec Auxiliar del Tribunal.

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

dio solicitado en la demanda o cualquier otro sin más citarle ni oírle, si el tribunal en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. El sistema SUMAC notificará copia al abogado de la parte demandante, el Lcdo. Kenmuel J. Ruiz López cuya dirección es: P.O. Box 71418 San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936-8518, teléfono (787) 993-3731 a la dirección kenmuc1.riuz@orft1aw.com y a la dirección notificaciones@ orf-law.com.

EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el sello del Tribunal, en Bayamon, Puerto Rico, hoy día 24 de septiembre de 2020. En Bayamón, Puerto Rico, el 24 de septiembre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional. Sandra I. Cruz Vázquez, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

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ACM CDGY VI LN LLC DEMANDANTE V.

CARMEN LUISA MARTÍN T/CIC CARMEN LUISA MARTÍN DE PABEY MIDLAND CREDIT Y LA SUCESIÓN DE MANAGEMENT PUERTO FRANCISCO PABEY RICO, LLC., COMO DÍAZ COMPUESTA AGENTE DE MIDLAND POR WILSON PABEY FUNDING, LLC. TORRES, EFRAÍN PABEY DEMANDANTE VS. TORRES Y EDWINA PEDRO L. COLÓN VEGA PABEY TORRES Y DEMANDADO CIVIL NÚM.: BY2020CV02077. CARMEN - LUISA MARTÍN SALÓN: SOBRE: COBRO DE T/CIC CARMEN LUISA DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO MARTÍN DE PABEY POR EDICTO. EN SU CUOTA VIUDAL A: PEDRO L. USUFRUCTUARIA; COLÓN VEGA CENTRO DE ¯ PMB 239 RR8 P.O. BOX RECAUDACIONES DE 1995, BAYAMON, P.R. INGRESOS MUNICIPALES 00956. ¯ MANSIONES DEMANDADOS SIERRA TAINA, 115 CIVIL NÚM. PE2019CV00122.

CALLE #5 BAYAMON, P.R. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTE00956.

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

Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), la cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el reme-

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CA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO E INTERPELACION. LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. AL ALGUACIL DE ESTE TRIBUNAL:

A: SUCESIÓN DE FRANCISCO PABEY DÍAZ compuesta por WILSON PABEY TORRES, EFRAÍN PABEY TORRES, EDWINA PABEY TORRES Y CARMEN LUISA MARTÍN tic/e CARMEN LUISA MARTÍN DE PABEY en su cuota viudal usufructuaria

da que en este Tribunal se ha radicado una Demanda sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca en su contra. Se le notifica para que comparezca ante el Tribunal dentro del término de treinta (30) dias a partir de la publicación de este edicto y exponer lo que a sus derechos convenga, en eJ presente caso. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos SUMAC, al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica https:// unired.ramaiudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se presente por derecho propio y notificando copia de dicha contestación a los abogados de la parte demandante: Ana J. Bobonis Zequeira, Fernandez Chiques LLC PO Box 9749 San Juan, PR 00908; Teléfono 787-722-3040 dentro del término de Treinta (30) días de haberse radicado este edicto, descontando la fecha de la publicación del edicto. Se le advierte que si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción lo entiende procedente. Se les ORDENA a usted a que dentro del termino legal de treinta (30) días, contados a partir de la fecha de la publicación de la presente Orden, acepte o repudie la participación que le corresponda en la herencia de FRANCISCO PABEY DÍAZ. Se les APERCIBE que de no expresarse dentro de este termino de treinta (30) días en torno a su aceptación o repudiación de herencia, la herencia se tendrá por aceptada.

También se les APERCIBE que luego del transcurso del termino de treinta (30) días antes señalado contados a partir de la fecha de la notificación de la presente Orden, se presumirá que han aceptado la herencia del causante FRANCISO PABEY DÍAZ, proceda a notificar la presente Orden mediante publicación de un edicto a esos efectos una sola vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general de la Isla de Puerto Rico.

EXPEDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA Y SELLO DE ESTE TRIBUNAL. En Peñuelas, Puerto Rico, hoy día 1 de octubre de 2020. Luz Mayra Caraballo Garcia, Sec Regional. Delia Aponte Velazquez, Sec de Servicios.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE YAUCO Queda emplazada y notifica- EN SABANA GRANDE.

The San Juan Daily Star ACM CDGY VI LN LLC DEMANDANTE V.

CARMEN LUISA MARTÍN T/CIC CARMEN LUISA MARTÍN DE PABEY Y LA SUCESIÓN DE FRANCISCO PABEY DÍAZ COMPUESTA POR WILSON PABEY TORRES, EFRAÍN PABEY TORRES Y EDWINA PABEY TORRES Y CARMEN - LUISA MARTÍN T/CIC CARMEN LUISA MARTÍN DE PABEY EN SU CUOTA VIUDAL USUFRUCTUARIA; CENTRO DE RECAUDACIONES DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NÚM. PE2019CV00122.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO E INTERPELACION. LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. AL ALGUACIL DE ESTE TRIBUNAL:

A: CARMEN LUISA MARTÍN t/c/c CARMEN LUISA MARTÍN DE PABY por sí y en la cuota viudal usufructuaria de la Sucesión del finado Francisco Pabey Díaz

ceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción lo entiende procedente. Se les ORDENA a usted a que dentro del termino legal de treinta (30) días, contados a partir de la fecha de la publicación de la presente Orden, acepte o repudie la participación que le corresponda en la herencia de FRANCISCO PABEY DÍAZ. Se les APERCIBE que de no expresarse dentro de este termino de treinta (30) días en torno a su aceptación o repudiación de herencia, la herencia se tendrá por aceptada.

También se les APERCIBE que luego del transcurso del termino de treinta (30) días antes señalado contados a partir de la fecha de la notificación de la presente Orden, se presumirá que han aceptado la herencia del causante FRANCISO PABEY DÍAZ, proceda a notificar la presente Orden mediante publicación de un edicto a esos efectos una sola vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general de la Isla de Puerto Rico.

EXPEDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA Y SELLO DE ESTE TRIBUNAL. En Peñuelas, Puerto Rico, hoy día 1 de octubre de 2020. Luz Mayra Caraballo Garcia, Sec Regional. Delia Aponte Velazquez, Sec de Servicios.

LEGAL NOTICE

Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior Queda emplazada y notifica- de BAYAMON. da que en este Tribunal se ha ORIENTAL BANK radicado una Demanda sobre Demandante vs.

Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución EDWIN A. MALDONADO de Hipoteca en su contra. Se QUIÑONES, FULANA le notifica para que comparezDE TAL Y LA ca ante el Tribunal dentro del SOCIEDAD LEGAL término de treinta (30) dias a partir de la publicación de este DE GANANCIALES edicto y exponer lo que a sus COMPUESTA POR derechos convenga, en eJ preAMBOS sente caso. Usted deberá preDemandado(a) sentar su alegación responsiva Civil: BY2019CV004969. a través del Sistema Unificado SALA: 503. Sobre: COBRO DE de Manejo y Administración de DINERO POR LA VIA ORDINACasos SUMAC, al cual puede RIA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENacceder utilizando la siguiente TENCIA POR EDICTO. dirección electrónica https:// A: EDWIN A. unired.ramaiudicial.pr/sumac/, MALDONADO QUIÑONES, salvo que se presente por derecho propio y notificando copia FULANA DE TAL Y LA de dicha contestación a los SOCIEDAD LEGAL abogados de la parte demanDE GANANCIALES dante: Ana J. Bobonis ZequeiCOMPUESTA POR ra, Fernandez Chiques LLC PO AMBOS Box 9749 San Juan, PR 00908; Teléfono 787-722-3040 dentro (Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) del término de Treinta (30) días EL SECRETARIO(A) que susde haberse radicado este ediccribe le notifica a usted que to, descontando la fecha de la 1 de octubre de 2020, , este publicación del edicto. Se le adTribunal ha dictado Sentencia, vierte que si usted deja de preSentencia Parcial o Resolución sentar su alegación responsiva en este caso, que ha sido debidentro del referido término, el damente registrada y archivada tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en autos donde podrá usted enen rebeldía en su contra y con-

The San Juan Daily Star terarse 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 2 de octubre de 2020. En BAYAMON, Puerto Rico, el 2 de octubre de 2020.

LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Sec Regional. IVETTE M. MARRERO BRACERO, Sec Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOT ICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO ·TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE MAYAGÜEZ.

COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CRÉDITO DE AÑASCO Parte Demandante vs

HAZARMAVETH VEGA FRANQUI (SOCIO NÚM. 111018)

Parte Demandada CIVIL NÚM. MZ2020CV00568.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO (VÍA ORDINARIA). EDICTO.

A: HAZARMAVETH VEGA FRANQUI

Se le apercibe que la parte demandante por mediación del Lcdo. Rafael Fabre Colón, P.O. Box 277, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00681, Tel. 787-265-0334, ha radicado la acción de epígrafe en su contra. Copia de la demanda, emplazamientos y del presente edicto le ha sido enviado por correo a la última dirección conocida. Pueden ustedes obtener más información sobre el asunto revisando los autos en el Tribunal. Se le apercibe que tiene usted un término de treinta ( 30) días para radicar contestación a dicha demanda de cobro de dinero y/o cualquier escrito que estime usted conveniente a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal de epígrafe, pero que de no radicarse escrito alguno ante el Tribunal dentro de dicho término el Tribunal procederá a ventilar el procedimiento sin más citarle ni

Thursday, October 8, 2020

oírle. Dada en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, hoy 25 de SEPTIEMBRE de 2020. LCDA NORMA G SANTANA IRIZARRY, SECRETARIA GENERAL REGIONAL. POR: F/ BETSY SANTIAGO GONZALEZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

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

COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CREDITO RINCÔN Parte Demandante VS

MAGALY LORENZO VEGA, ET AL

Parte Demandada CIVIL NóM. AU2020CV00087.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO (VIA ORDINARIA). EDICTO.

A: ANTONIO MARTINEZ VEGA

Se le apercibe que la parte demandante por mediación del Lcdo. Rafael Fabre Colon, P.O. Box 277, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00681, Tel. 787-265-0334, ha radicado la acción de epIgrafe en su contra. Copia de la demanda, emplazamientos y del presente edicto le ha sido enviado por correo a la ultima dirección conocida. Pueden ustedes obtener más información sobre el asunto revisando los autos en el Tribunal. Se le apercibe que tiene usted un término de treinta (30) dias para radicar contestación a dicha demanda de cobro de dinero yb cualquier escrito que estime usted conveniente a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegaciOn responsiva en la Secretaria del Tribunal de epígrafe, pero que de no radicarse escrito alguno ante el Tribunal dentro de dicho término el Tribunal procederá a ventilar el procedimiento sin más citarle ni oírle. Dada en Aguada, Puerto Rico, hoy 2 de octubre de 2020. Sarahi Reyes Perez, Secretaria Regional, SECRETARIA GENERAL TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE AGUADA. POR: ERIKA I. RUZ PEREZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

FULANO DE TAL

Demandado(a) Civil: HU2019CV01917. Sobre: CANCELACION DE PAGARE EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: FULANO DE TALDireccion desconocida p/c de Lcdo. Julian A. Parrilla Boria-BanCoop Plaza, 623 Ponce de Leon, Suite 1100-A, San Juan PR 00917

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 1 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 1 de octubre de 2020. En HUMACAO, Puerto Rico, el 1 de octubre de 2020.

DOMINGA GOMEZ FUSTER, Sec Regional. F/ZULMA Y OCASIO DIAZ, Sec Auxiliar.

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

VACATION OWNERSHIP LENDING, L.P. Demandante V.

CHARLES THOMAS HOLMAN, LISA TICINO HOLMAN Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES, COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandado(a) Civil: VB2019CV00716. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJEEstado Libre Asociado de PuerCUCION DE HIPOTECA. NOto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL TIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de PriPOR EDICTO. mera Instancia Sala Superior A: CHARLES THOMAS de HUMACAO.

LEGAL NOTICE

BANCO COOPERATIVO DE PUERTO RICO Demandante vs.

COOPERATIVA DE A/C ORIENTAL;

HOLMAN, LISA TICINO HOLMAN Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR

AMBOS

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 29 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 archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 5 de octubre de 2020. En VEGA BAJA , Puerto Rico, el 5 de octubre de 2020. LAURA I. SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria.

LILLIAN MERCADO RIVERA, Secretaria Auxiliar.

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

HAMIL ALVAREZ RIVERA Demandante V.

EX PARTE

Demandado(a) Civil: CA2019CV04533. Sala: 403. Sobre: EXPEDIENTE DE DOMINIO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: COLINDANTES O CUALQUIER PERSONA CON INTERES

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 1 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

25

Plaintiff, v. esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la CARMEN LUISA RIVERApublicación de este edicto. CoGONZÁLEZ, et al., pia de esta notificación ha sido Defendants archivada en los autos de este Civil No. 19-1942 (FAB). SUMcaso, con fecha de 1 de octu- MONS. bre de 2020. En CAROLINA , TO: CARMEN LUISA Puerto Rico, el 1 de octubre de RIVERA-GONZÁLEZ, 2020. LCDA. MARILYN APONEVELYN RIVERATE RODRIGUEZ, Secretaria.

MARICRUZ APONTE ALICEA, GONZÁLEZ AND RAFAEL Secretaria Auxiliar.

RIVERA-GONZÁLEZ, AS

te this case based on the relief demanded in the Complaint. BY ORDER OF THE COURT, summons is issued pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 4(e) and Rule 4.6 of the Rules of Civil Procedure for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, on September 16, 2020. MARIA ANTONGIORGI-JORDAN, ESQ., CLERK OF THE COURT. By: Viviana Diaz-Mulero, Deputy Clerk.

divorcio. Es el abogado de la parte demandante: LCDO. FELIPE BRAVO GARCIA RUA #8483 P. O. BOX 21090 SAN JUAN, P. R. 00928 TEL./FAX: (787)764-2275 Se le advierte que este edicto se publicará en un periódico de circulación general una (1) sola vez, y que sino contesta la demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días de haberse publicado el original de esa contestación ante el Tribunal de Primera Instancia de Puerto Rico, Sala Superior, Sala de San Juan, con copia a la parte demandante, se podrá dictar Sentencia en Rebeldía en contra suya, concediendo el remedio solicitado en la Demanda. EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y Sello del Tribunal, hoy día 4 de septiembre de 2020. F/ GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria. Carmen J. Castro Serrano, SubSecrearia.

parte demandada. El nombre de la abogada de la parte demandante lo es, Lcda. Lourdes M. Collazo Algarín, cuya dirección es la siguiente: PMB 126 PO BOX 4956 Caguas, PR 00726, su teléfono es el (787)704-6220. Usted debe contestar la demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días siguientes de haberse publicado el edicto, debiendo plantear las defensas que estime pertinentes, presentando el original de su contestación a la Demanda en este Tribunal y/o directamente al abogado de la parte demandante, y de no hacerlo así, se le anotará la rebeldía en contra suya y se dictará sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado, sin más citarle ni oírle. Se dispone además que dentro de diez (10) días siguientes a la publicación del edicto, la parte demandante dirija a la parte demandada por correo certificado con acuse de recibo al lugar de su última dirección conocida, una copia de la Demanda presentada y del Emplazamiento expedido.

Se expide este edicto bajo mi firma y el sello de este Tribunal, en Caguas, Puerto Rico, hoy día 10 de septiembre de 2020. CARMEN ANA PEREIRA ORTIZ, SECRETARIA. ADA

CARRION CARRASQUILLO, SUB-SECRETARIA.

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

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante V.

SUCESION DE HECTOR ANTONIO CAMACHO PEREZ Y SUCESION LEGAL NOTICE DE CARMEN LYDIA ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO MALDONADO NEGRON DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUcompuesta por: OLGA NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA OFELIA CAMACHO CENTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGONZALEZ, HECTOR GUAS SALA SUPERIOR. JESUS CAMACHO JUDITH MALDONADO; FULANO ALVARADO RIVERA Y MENGANO DE TAL DEMANDANTE Vs. MANUEL JOSE GERMAN como posibles herederos desconocidos BENITEZ BERMUDEZ

KNOWN MEMBERS OF THE ESTATE OF CÉSAR ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO RIVERA-MÉNDEZ AND DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA THE ESTATE OF CARMEN SALA DE SAN JUAN. ANA GONZÁLEZ A/K/A JORGE LUIS CARMEN A. GONZÁLEZ LOPEZ-OYOLA A/K/A CARMEN A. DEMANDANTE VS. GONZÁLEZ DE RIVERA; MARTA JOSEFINA THE ESTATE OF CÉSAR GONZALEZ BERMUDEZ RIVERA-GONZÁLEZ; DEMANDADO THE ESTATE OF CIVIL NUM: SJ2020RF00450, GLORIA RODRÍGUEZSOBRE: DIVORCIO, RUPTUDemandado(a) DEMANDADO RA IRREPARABLE. EMPLABERNARDO A/K/A ZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. GLORIA RODRÍGUEZ; CIVIL NUM.: CG2020RF00314. Civil: BY2019CV05192. Sobre: 504. SOBRE: DIVOR- COBRO DE DINERO Y EJEESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMETHE ESTATE OF MARÍA SALA CIO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR CUCION DE GARANTIAS. NORICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE DOLORES SANTIAGO DE EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS TIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO RIVERA A/K/A MARÍA D. DE AMERICA EL PRESIDEN- POR EDICTO. DE PUERTO RICO. SS. SANTIAGO-MATTO; JOHN TE DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTAA: OLGA OFELIA A: MARTA JOSEFINA DOE AND RICHARD ROE DO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PR. CAMACHO GONZALEZ GONZALEZ BERMUDEZ AS UNKNOWN MEMBERS SS. Y HECTOR JESUS A: MANUEL JOSE BARRIO SUD, OF ALL THE ESTATES CAMACHO MALDONADO GERMAN BENITEZ Pursuant to the Order AuthoriCARRETERA 171 como miembro de la T/C/C MANUEL JOSE zing Service of Process by PuKM. 1.8 CIDRA, PUERTO Sucesión de Héctor blication entered on September GERMAN BENITEZ RICO 00739 Antonio Camacho Pérez 16, 2020, by the Court (Docket PINZÓN o sea la parte demandada No. 19), you are SUMMONED y Sucesión de Carmen CALLE 159 #55-14 APTO. arriba mencionada. to appear and answer the Lydia Maldonado Negrón.

POR LA PRESENTE, se le no- Complaint no later than thirty 202 SANTA FE, BOGOTA FULANO Y MENGANO COLOMBIA tifica que ha sido presentada (30) days after publication of DE TAL como posibles en este Tribunal, por la parte this Summons, by serving the En este Tribunal se ha presendemandante, una acción sobre answer in the United States tado una Demanda contra la herederos desconocidos.

LEGAL NOTICE

District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, and serving a copy to counsel for plaintiff, Attorney Juan C. Fortuño-Fas, at P.O. Box 13786, San Juan, PR 00908, telephone numbers 787-751-5290 and 787-7515616. This Summons shall be published only once in a newspaper of general circulation in Puerto Rico. Within ten (10) days following publication of this Summons, a copy of this Summons and the Complaint shall be sent to defendants Carmen Luisa Rivera-González, Evelyn Rivera-González and Rafael Rivera-González, as well as John Doe And Richard Roe as unknown members of The Estates of César RiveraMéndez; Carmen Ana González A/K/A Carmen A. González A/K/A Carmen A. González de Rivera; César Rivera-González; Gloria Rodríguez-Bernardo A/K/A Gloria Rodríguez; and María Dolores Santiago de RiLEGAL NOTICE vera A/K/A María D. SantiagoIN THE UNITED STATES DIS- Matto, by certified mail/return TRICT COURT FOR THE DIS- receipt requested, addressed to their last known addresses.

TRICT OF PUERTO RICO. Should you fail to appear and UNITED STATES OF answer the Complaint as ordeAMERICA, acting red by the Court and notified by through the United States this Summons, the Court will Department of Agriculture enter default against you, and (Farm Service Agency), proceed to hear and adjudica-

(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 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 BAYAMON , Puerto Rico, el 5 de octubre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria. F/MILITZA MERCADO RIVERA, Secretaria Auxiliar.

26

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

Dusty Baker: The beloved manager leading a hated team

By DAVID WALDSTEIN

S

oon after the Houston Astros completed a two-game sweep of the Minnesota Twins in their first-round playoff series last week, Dusty Baker’s phone went into overdrive: Scores of congratulatory texts, emails and calls came pouring in from friends, family and many others around baseball.

“It was like Father’s Day and my birthday all rolled into one,” said Baker, the Astros manager.

It was no surprise. For as much as the baseball world despises the Houston Astros, and wishes epochs of misfortune upon them for their sign-stealing caper in 2017, who could muster that kind of animosity toward Baker, one of the most popular figures in the game?

For five decades — Baker made his debut in 1968 as an outfielder for the Atlanta Braves — he has spread goodwill across Major League Baseball and engendered undying loyalty by dint of a magnetic personality, a wisdom borne of deep experience, a splash of spirituality and an unyielding sense of honor.

In return, he has earned the near-unanimous admiration of former players, coaches, fans and fellow managers.

“It’s a very egotistical, very selfish world, but not when you talk to this man,” Chicago White Sox manager Rick Renteria said.

“He’s timeless. Everybody changes, but everybody loves him.”

That is part of the reason Jim Crane, the Astros owner, hired Baker in January.

The Astros were facing a crisis of credibility after they were found to have illegally stolen opposing team’s signs during their 2017 championship season, and Crane immediately fired the team’s manager, A.J. Hinch, then hired Baker and picked up his option for 2021.

There is also his long track record on the field. He has 1,892 regular-season wins over 23 seasons as a manager. That’s an average of 86 wins in each of 21 full-length seasons. (The average does not include this year or the strike-shortened 1994 season.)

This month, Baker suddenly has one more chance at the only thing that has eluded him as a manager: a championship.

“It’s a piece of something that is missing,” he said over the weekend. “You hate

The Astros are the fifth team that Dusty Baker has led to the postseason, but he has never won a championship as a manager. to go through life missing anything.”

The season has been bumpy, to be sure. Take the fallout of the cheating scandal, add a series of injuries and slumps, and the Astros finished two games under .500.

But with the expanded playoff format (16 teams made the postseason this year instead of the usual 10), the Astros qualified. Baker is now the first manager to lead five teams to the postseason (the San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, Washington Nationals and Astros). And despite going only 9-23 on the road in the 60-game regular season, the Astros swept the Twins in Minneapolis in the first round.

“Everywhere he’s gone, he’s won,” Astros third baseman Alex Bregman said. “He’s a winner and it’s fun to play for him.”

Bregman and the Astros have taken a 2-0 lead against the Oakland Athletics in their division series, perhaps fittingly at Dodger Stadium, where Baker was a champion and an All-Star outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers. A win in Game 3 on Wednesday would get Baker back to a league championship series for the first time since 2003, when he managed the Cubs.

It’s a long way from the first several weeks of this season, when Baker said he felt like a substitute teacher struggling to connect to his students. This was a particularly serious obstacle for Baker, whose primary strength is his ability to forge deep personal connections with his players. The bonds are carefully constructed over time, in conversations in his office, at the back of airplanes during team flights, in bars and taverns on

the road, or even on the mound in the middle of a game.

“A lot of tough love,” said Shawn Estes, the former pitcher who played seven of his 13 seasons under Baker on both the Giants and Cubs. Now an analyst on Giants’ television broadcasts, Estes said Baker always knew the right moment to spew hot rivets at a player and when to offer a verbal hug.

Sometimes both were wrapped in the same sentence.

“He’d come to the mound with his toothpick in his mouth, his shades and batting gloves, look me in the eye and say, ‘No one is better at getting into trouble than you, and no one is better at getting out of it,’” Estes recalled. “He’d tell me to put my bigboy pants on, but he left me in the game. He showed faith in you when you deserved it.

Players love that.”

Estes said Baker came as close as a manager could get to being a player while still maintaining command of the team, and conversations with him could sometimes take a spiritual turn, too.

“He believes in energy and the universe, and he is such a great communicator,” Estes added. “He knew the right buttons to push with every guy. He’d give out books, too. We’d talk, and ultimately I’d end up with a book.”

Baker once handed Estes “The Art of War,” by Sun Tzu, and another time it was a book by Phil Jackson, the Hall of Fame NBA coach. But Baker’s book club did not extend to every player because, as Baker noted, people are different.

“No sense giving a book to someone you know isn’t going to read it,” Baker said.

“Estes was an intellectual guy who would appreciate it. Other guys, you have to find different ways to reach them.”

Now, Baker said he no longer rides in the back of the planes, in part because players today don’t congregate as they once did. Headphones have replaced boomboxes, and screens have taken over where card games once ruled.

“I miss being in the back of the bus and the plane,” he said. “I never really belonged up in the front.”

But this unique year has disrupted even Baker’s well-honed managerial techniques.

He lamented that, about one month into spring training this year, just as he was starting to shed the substitute teacher role, the season stopped for almost four months because of the pandemic.

But perhaps the biggest challenge he faced was a string of defections and injuries. Gerrit Cole, Houston’s ace in 2019, joined the New York Yankees in free agency. Justin Verlander had Tommy John surgery last week; Yordan Alvarez, last season’s American League Rookie of the Year, only played two games because of knee issues that required surgery; and Roberto Osuna, the closer, has been out since early August with an elbow injury. Baker has had to rely mostly on rookie relief pitchers.

On Aug. 10, the Astros acquired Brooks Raley, a 32-year-old left-hander from the Cincinnati Reds, to bolster the relief corps.

When he arrived, Baker called Raley into his office, drawing a smile when he told Raley, “I love older lefties.”

“Since that day he’s leaned on me and given me opportunities,” Raley said. “I’m going to work for that man.”

That kind of sentiment serves as an antidote to the general hostility aimed at the Astros this year. That even includes Brendan Donley, a Cubs fan from Chicago who started the popular Twitter account Astros Shame Tour, which has focused the ire of some 300,000 haters on the Astros this year. Donley acknowledged that Baker brought a dose of likability to a team he cannot otherwise stomach.

“I wish he hadn’t taken the job,” Donley wrote in a text message. “He’s a good man, of course, and is doing his best and is acting classy.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

27

Rafael Nadal, after a late night at the French Open, will face Diego Schwartzman in the semifinals

By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY

D

iego Schwartzman had to play for more than five hours to defeat the third-seeded Dominic Thiem in five sets at Roland Garros, while Rafael Nadal required just three sets to beat Jannik Sinner, an unseeded 19-year-old Italian.

But Nadal and Schwartzman, who will play in the semifinals on Friday, both had to overcome significant obstacles during the longest session of tennis ever at the French Open.

It began on Tuesday morning and ended Wednesday at nearly 1:30 a.m.

Paris time as Nadal finished off Sinner with a leaping overhead, 7-6 (4), 6-4, 6-1.

By then, Schwartzman was back in the players’ hotel near the Eiffel Tower, recovering from his grueling duel with Thiem.

Schwartzman was so shaky when it came time to close out sets against Thiem but so solid when he most needed to be.

Schwartzman’s reward was a 7-6 (1), 5-7, 6-7 (6), 7-6 (5), 6-2 victory that put him into a Grand Slam singles semifinal for the first time.

The match was a classic clay-court tussle, full of long slides and extended rallies, many of which stretched past 20 strokes and left both men fluttering their lips or puffing out their cheeks. But it was hardly just a baseline struggle.

Schwartzman went to the net 71 times; Thiem 53, often to track down a deft drop shot.

Schwartzman, the No. 12 seed from Argentina, often looked like the fresher man, but Thiem — who won his first major title at the U.S. Open last month, just 14 days before the French Open began — can scrap for points as well as end them in a hurry with thunderous groundstrokes, and he kept pushing and swinging away.

For quite some time, Schwartzman kept cracking. With Thiem serving at 4-5 in the second set, Schwartzman had a straightforward forehand near the net that he would typically have smacked for a winner to take a 15-40 lead and give himself two set points. Instead, Schwartzman missed into the net and

Thiem went on to hold and even the match at one set apiece.

Schwartzman also served for the third set at 5-3, only to be broken at love, making four unforced errors.

“I was so nervous,” Schwartzman said. “I saw a chance today, and I didn’t take it in the second and third sets.”

It looked as if he might not be able to break the bad habit when he served for the fourth set at 5-4 and took a 40love lead. Thiem saved all three set points, the last with a forehand winner on the run, and broke Schwartzman’s serve.

But Schwartzman, often frustrated with himself and his team after Tuesday’s earlier disappointments, smiled through the pain this time.

He then broke Thiem’s serve twice in the fifth set, and the friendly rivals were soon chatting and grinning at the net, their 5-hour-8-minute test complete.

“I just told him that he deserves it,” Thiem said.

So there will be no U.S. Open-French Open double champion in singles for this unique season. Thiem, a finalist at Roland Garros the last two years, tried to recover from his breakthrough victory in New York by taking two weeks off before the French Open, which was postponed from its usual dates in May and June because of the coronavirus pandemic.

But Thiem was pushed to five sets in the fourth round by the French wild-card entry Hugo Gaston and was pushed even harder by Schwartzman in cool, heavy conditions that made clean winners a challenge.

Thiem at times looked as weary as a man who had finished a marathon rather than one who was still in the middle of one.

“To be honest, I was over the limit today,” Thiem said. “Maybe I would have recovered. Even though I’m physically and mentally on the edge, you never know in a Slam, especially with Wednesday and Thursday off, two full days to recover. You never know what’s happening. But at the end, I gave everything I had out there. It was an amazing match.”

This year at Roland Garros, it will be up to Schwartzman, not Thiem, to face Nadal, whom Schwartzman defeated

Diego Schwartzman is one of the shortest contenders in men’s tennis — and he recently beat Rafael Nadal on red clay. The circumstances of this French Open could line up in his favor. for the first time in the Italian Open last month.

Nadal, the 12-time French Open champion, is a creature of ritual, but this year’s autumnal edition of his signature tournament has pushed him far outside his comfort zone. With a roof on the main Philippe Chatrier Court, as well as floodlights, night matches are now possible. The conditions have blunted some of the pace of Nadal’s whipping forehand and left it bouncing on average 3 1/2 inches lower than in 2019, according to Tennis Channel.

On Tuesday, that often put the ball right in the gifted Sinner’s strike zone during the first two sets, and the teenager held his own for nearly two hours. He served for the first set and won a surprising share of the baseline duels with his clean, relatively flat hitting. His feathery footwork and ability to open up the court with power and sharp angles were all remarkable.

It was also quite a day for Argentine tennis. Earlier Tuesday, Nadia Podoroska became the first qualifier to reach the women’s singles semifinals at the French Open in the Open era. Podoroska, ranked 131st and playing for the first time in

the main draw at Roland Garros, upset the No. 3 seed, Elina Svitolina, 6-2, 6-4.

It was Podoroska’s first singles match against a top 20 opponent, but however improbable on paper, the result looked nothing but logical on clay as their match unfolded. Podoroska dictated play with her heavy topspin forehand, changed pace effectively with drop-shot winners and converted eight of 13 break points on Svitolina’s shaky serve.

It was the latest bravura performance by a new arrival this year, and it guaranteed that there would be an unseeded woman in the singles final. In today’s semifinals Podoroska will face Iga Swiatek, a 19-year-old from Poland who overwhelmed the No. 1 seed, Simona Halep, in the fourth round and defeated Martina Trevisan, an Italian qualifier, 6-3, 6-1, on Tuesday.

Trevisan, ranked 159th, got one more game than Halep against Swiatek, a powerful athlete who has yet to drop a set in the tournament and has long been considered a potential star.

Thiem’s and Schwartzman’s lengthy duel on Philippe Chatrier Court pushed the start of Swiatek‘s and Trevisan’s quarterfinal into the evening, and Nadal and Sinner into late night.

But the backlog was also prompted by the decision to start the day’s schedule on Chatrier with the postponed fourth-round women’s singles match between Danielle Collins of the United States and Ons Jabeur of Tunisia. Collins ended up winning, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, in just under two hours.

Collins, a fiery competitor and a two-time NCAA singles champion at the University of Virginia, was a surprise semifinalist at the 2019 Australian Open.

She entered Wednesday as a surprise quarterfinalist at another major, after falling back in the rankings in the past year, only to fall to Sofia Kenin, the American No. 4 seed and the highest-ranked player remaining in the women’s draw.

Kenin, who won her first Grand Slam singles title at the Australian Open this year, beat Collins 6-4, 4-6, 6-0 to advance to the semifinals today against seventh-seeded Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic. Kvitova defeated Laura Siegemund of Germany, 6-3, 6-3 in Wednesday’s other quarterfinal.

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

NHL draft: Rangers select Alexis Lafreniere with first overall pick

Jamie Hersch of the N.H.L. Network interviewed Lafreniere after his selection.

Alexis Lafreniere won the Canadian Hockey League Player of the Year Award Commissioner Gary Bettman read the draft picks from the network’s studio in for the second straight season in 2020.

Secaucus, N.J.

By ALLAN KREDA

T

he New York Rangers selected wing Alexis Lafreniere, the consensus top prospect, with the No. 1 pick Tuesday night in an NHL draft conducted virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Lafreniere, who will turn 19 next week, scored 35 goals and had 112 points in 52 games last season for Rimouski Oceanic of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. He joins a youthful Rangers roster, with forward Kaapo Kakko, 19, the second overall pick in 2019; forward Filip Chytil, 21; defenseman Adam Fox, 22; and goaltender Igor Shesterkin, 24, at its core.

The Rangers last won a playoff series in 2017 and committed to a rebuild the following season. After trading up from No. 22 to No. 19 on Tuesday night to select defenseman Braden Schneider, the Rangers have now used eight first-round picks in the past four drafts, including three picks in 2018.

Lafreniere, who is 6-foot-1 and 193 pounds, won the Canadian Hockey League Player of the Year Award for the second consecutive season, becoming the

second player, after Sidney Crosby, to win the award twice. Lafreniere became the first Quebec-born forward drafted first overall since Vincent Lecavalier by Tampa Bay in 1998. All three forwards played their junior hockey for Rimouski.

“It was an unreal feeling,” Lafreniere, wearing a blue Rangers sweater and hat, said in a Zoom news conference shortly after he was selected. “Obviously, the New York Rangers is a great organization.

For me, I am really honored to join them.”

Lafreniere also is a notably rare wing who can be more of a playmaker than a pure goal scorer, similar to Chicago’s Patrick Kane, Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov or Artemi Panarin, who led the Rangers in assists (63) and points (95) last season.

“Everybody talks about his ability to produce off the wing,” said Kevin Weekes, the lead analyst with the NHL Network and a former Rangers goaltender. “Wingers who can generate that much offense — make plays and create off the wall — are rare and hard to come by.”

Weekes added that Lafreniere possessed a bonus element, augmenting his offensive prowess.

“He has some jam and intensity,” Weekes said. “He will grit his teeth and

dig in.”

Quinton Byfield, a 6-foot-4 center selected second overall by the Los Angeles Kings, had a succinct assessment of Lafreniere, his teammate on Canada’s 2020 World Junior Championship team.

“His play speaks for itself,’’ said Byfield, who became the highest-selected Black player in league history, surpassing Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Seth Jones. “He can do everything.”

Lafreniere said he had never been to New York and was looking forward to making his first visit soon. He was also looking forward to playing at Madison Square Garden, which last hosted a game in March, before the season was suspended because of the pandemic.

Commissioner Gary Bettman said during Tuesday’s broadcast that the league was targeting Jan. 1, 2021, to start the next season.

“I heard a lot of good things about the fans and about the building,’’ Lafreniere said. “I am really excited to arrive in New York in the next maybe couple of months. I hope we’re going to have a good season.”

The draft was originally scheduled for the last weekend in June in Montreal,

but like everything else on hockey’s calendar since the league suspended play in March, it was delayed because of the pandemic.

An expanded 24-team playoff tournament began in Toronto and Edmonton, Alberta, on Aug. 1, and the Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup, defeating the Dallas Stars in six games.

The initial draft lottery — held in June — included the seven teams that did not qualify for the summer playoffs plus a placeholder pick for one of eight clubs that would lose in the qualification round. That placeholder team won the June lottery, leading to another drawing in August among the eight losing teams, with each having a 12.5 percent chance to snare the first overall pick.

After the Rangers were swept, 3-0, by the Carolina Hurricanes, they won that second lottery, guaranteeing the Original Six franchise its first No. 1 pick since the universal draft format was adopted in 1969.

In 1965, when the NHL had only six teams, the Rangers chose forward Andre Veilleux with the top selection in an amateur draft that had only 11 picks.

Veilleux never played in the NHL.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 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 project you’ve been working on may need some extra cash if it is going to succeed. Once you’ve given this some thought, you will see how such an investment will pay off. The rewards you are likely to get out of this will be worth any minor inconvenience you are going through at the moment.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

(June 22-July 23)

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

The best way to improve communications between you and someone you live or work with is to break down their defences. Don’t give up in your efforts to get them to open up to you. Persist in your persuasion and relationships will improve. The more you share, the stronger your bonds will become.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Colleagues who have been leaving you to do all the work will resent it when you ask for help.

Don’t let this stop you from demanding assistance. You’re growing tired of having to carry out jobs you never asked to take on. Although you are highly skilled, people shouldn’t take it for granted you will do everything.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

A joint project will be rewarding if you can persuade your team to work together harmoniously. If you sense an argument is brewing find a way to separate people who aren’t getting on with each other. Your leadership ability can help keep things moving in the right direction. Be ready to take the driver’s seat.

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

You can’t relax until you know everything is running smoothly and effectively. That’s why you will choose to put responsibility in front of pleasure. This may mean missing out on a social event but you will not regret this or begrudge it. There are things you have to do and you will not be distracted.

Improvements being made to your home are necessary. Housemates are doing their best to make repairs and improvements. Offer plenty of encouragement. Apply for funding to install energy efficiency upgrades if you think you are entitled to this. A relative who has a lot on at the moment would appreciate a helping hand.

Cancer

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

You would do anything to avoid it but a disagreement over money will escalate before you know it. Things will be said that are going to hurt either you or someone you live with. You don’t want anyone to feel you aren’t paying your way and if someone complains you will set up a new arrangement to resolve the problem.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

An increasing need to establish a secure family life encourages you to stay at home rather than going out in the world in search of adventure. Friends may not understand why you are making this choice after months of restriction but you just aren’t ready yet to venture into unfamiliar territory.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

A troublemaker will try to cause arguments.

It pleases them to set people up against each other. You won’t get sucked into the drama and your calm influence will help keep the atmosphere harmonious. Someone is looking to you to deal with outstanding financial matters. You understand why they feel out of their depth and will happily oblige.

Your surroundings are too cluttered for your liking. A housemate or workmate will think you’re making too much fuss but you’ve never felt comfortable in an untidy environment.

Once all the clutter has been cleared, you will feel a lot better. What’s surprising is someone who complained at first will seem to enjoy having a clear out.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Take some time to consider what you want.

What is it that will make you happy? Set longterm goals, make a plan and set a course for yourself. Take action rather than reacting. Instead of going along with other people’s plans, take the initiative. Now is a good time to take charge of your life.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

You may have to make some changes to your lifestyle to make the most of your leisure time. Don’t be surprised if an elderly relative notices this and starts demanding more attention. Travel arrangements will be subject to sudden alterations or complications. To be fair, you were expecting this.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

Herman

Ziggy

32

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, October 8, 2020

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