Thursday Sep 10, 2020

Thursday, September 10, 2020

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Pharma Giant Pauses Vaccine Trial for Safety Review

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We Don’t Need an Influenza Epidemic Right Now US Gov’t to PR Officials: Establish Protocol for Mass COVID-19 Vaccination

Health Dept. Urges Citizens to Get Flu Shots Amid Pandemic

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Students Are Not Going to See Classrooms for Awhile P4

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

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September 10, 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.

Judge Swain denies request to lift stay motions in claims against 3 island public corporations

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.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain on Wednesday denied revenue bond lift stay motions requested by several bond insurers, the U.S. Bank National Association, and the Bank of New York Mellon to pursue claims against the Puerto Rico Highways and Transportation Authority (HTA), the Puerto Rico Infrastructure Financing Authority (PRIFA), and the Puerto Rico Convention Center District Authority (CCDA).

Swain also cancelled a hearing slated for the end of the month on the disputes. She said she will issue a decision on a dispute about the ownership of certain funds deposited in an account at Scotiabank later as part of a pending ruling in a separate CCDA-related adversary proceeding.

After holding a preliminary hearing, the court in July had issued three separate opinions and orders finding that the bond insurers and the banks had failed to establish colorable claims to ownership of, or other property interests in the bond revenues. The bond insurers are Ambac Assurance Corp., National Public Finance Guarantee Corp., Assured Guaranty Corp., Assured Guaranty Municipal Corp. and Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. After other procedural matters, Swain on Wednesday denied the HTA stay relief motion and the PRIFA stay relief motion. She also denied the CCDA stay relief motion as it sought relief from the automatic stay to pursue remedies with respect to monies other than those in an alleged transfer account in Scotiabank.

The bond insurers and the other parties had asserted that the automatic stay in the bankruptcy case had to be lifted to allow them to assert causes of action under the contracts, due process, and takings clauses of the U.S. Constitution, and under Section 303 of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), based on the invalidity of certain Commonwealth laws and executive orders issued by the governor and the Financial Oversight and Management Board’s fiscal plans and budgets.

Relying heavily on the First Circuit’s ruling, the bond insurers had argued that the stay relief was warranted because their causes of action cannot be addressed in the Title III bankruptcy court and that the commonwealth would not suffer if the issues were litigated elsewhere.

But the judge said the bond insurers and other parties had failed to establish that PROMESA has created any due process impediment that provides cause for relief from the automatic stay. She also said the bond insurers and other parties had failed to meet the so-called Sonnax factors, which are a dozen factors that bankruptcy courts generally

consider when deciding whether to lift an automatic stay.

“The first of these factors weighs heavily against stay relief. Here, lifting the automatic stay to allow movants to assert their proposed claims in an alternative forum would interfere with, and would not promote, the interests of judicial economy and the expeditious resolution of these Title III cases, as it would result in fragmented and possibly premature litigation of factual and legal issues, many of which are currently before the court in the revenue bond adversary proceedings, that are indisputably central to the restructurings of the Commonwealth and its instrumentalities,” Swain said.

The bond insurers and the other parties have therefore failed to make an adequate showing for purposes of their motion that their contract clause, due process and PROMESA Section 303 Proposed Claims are not “claims” within the meaning of Section 101(5) of the Bankruptcy Code that are capable of resolution by the bankruptcy court, she said.

Swain also said the bond insurers had failed to demonstrate how the hardship they would allegedly face from a continuation of the stay renders them differently situated than virtually any other creditor of a Title III debtor that is required to pursue its claims exclusively in the U.S. District Court.

“Any such hardship is outweighed by the potential harm to the Debtors and interference with the orderly administration of these Title III cases,” Swain said.

Regarding the CCDA, in a separate memorandum, Swain said she was unable to determine the extent of the monies in which the movants have said they have a lien, or the Commonwealth’s rights with respect to the funds at Scotiabank, which were derived from hotel taxes. She said she would be ruling on the ownership of the funds at a later date.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

Health Dept. urges citizens to get flu shot amid COVID-19 pandemic

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

I

n order to prevent an influenza epidemic in Puerto Rico amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the island Department of Health (DS by its Spanish initials) and other public health entities informed citizens on Wednesday that both the public and private healthcare sectors are prepared to vaccinate citizens against the flu virus.

DS Secretary Lorenzo González Feliciano said that as the influenza virus is around all year in Puerto Rico, it concerned him that people who have influenza, should they become infected with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, could face severe health risks or even death as data presented to him

by Puerto Rico Demographic Registry Director Wanda Llovet Díaz from Aug. 2 revealed that 17.4 percent of COVID-19 casualties had pneumonia or influenza on their comorbid diagnosis, while around 11.2 percent had a cardiovascular disease.

“As we come to see that having pneumonia or influenza under the context of COVID-19 develops a much more critical situation, vaccination against influenza is critical for our country,” González Feliciano said.

Meanwhile, DS Deputy Secretary Iris Cardona, who has worked as a vaccine consultant for 25 years, said that even though the Health Department has reported continuously about

the importance of getting vaccinated in order to prevent influenza and its complications, she considers it “particularly important” to spread the word this year as the more common respiratory virus and COVID-19 can “coexist” and present serious challenges for patients.

“Typically, influenza causes millions of infections in the United States each season, and the season is from September until the end of February or March. In tropical countries like ours, these respiratory viruses circulate all year round, as DS surveillance reports show,” Cardona said, adding that influenza can cause from 12,000 to 60,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.

DS Vaccination Program Director Ángel Rivera said meanwhile that 204 government healthcare providers have the vaccine available for people as young as six months. He said more than 335,000 doses are available in the Health Department and some 500,000 doses are available for the private sector.

“I make the reservation that people always go to the Health Department and see it as the place where they get vaccinated; we get people vaccinated, but it is for some who are eligible, who are those who have the Vital government health plan or who do not have a plan,” Rivera said. “Those who have a commercial healthcare plan can go to their provider, whether it is a doctor, a vaccination center, or commercial or community pharmacies.”

As for mass vaccination drives, Rivera said that although it is not the most recommended

strategy, the Department has 150,000 doses reserved for “directed events,” mainly a drive expected to begin in October reserved for first responders, hospital personnel, and elderly homes. In the case of the latter, the drive will be a cooperative effort with the National Guard and the VOCES Immunity and Health Promotion Coalition.

Meanwhile, another mass vaccination effort directed at homeless citizens is expected.

“We suggest [that citizens] visit their providers,” Rivera said. “We can’t do it as we

usually did before COVID-19, which was at coliseums with around 11,000 people. That we can’t do. It’s impossible. It’s not recommendable.”

The Star asked if the DS expects to take other vaccination initiatives such as drive-thru spots or taking reservations via digital outlets given that many citizens fear going to hospitals due to the pandemic. González Feliciano said it was under consideration since such methods for getting people vaccinated have been common practice since 2009-2012.

Health secretary: No way in-person classes can start next week

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

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ven though Puerto Rico Physicians & Surgeons Association (CMCPR by its Spanish initials) PresidentVíctor Ramos has requested that schools reopen amid the COVID-19 pandemic, island Health Secretary Lorenzo González Feliciano on Wednesday rejected the idea that schools could begin in-person classes on Sept. 17.

When members of the press asked if the reopening of schools could be part of Gov. Wanda Vazquez Garced’s next executive order, with the current one expiring on Friday, González Feliciano said it was not going to happen.

“We know that the expected date for the start of in-person [public school classes] was September 17. We know that that day won’t happen. Schools cannot start on September 17 with the situations we face. In the same way, we are working on the informatics, the [contact] tracing

part,” he said. “We are working to connect the full registration of 288,000 students enrolled in the public education system to guarantee that we get an interactive formula with these students, something very similar to what we did with the airport’s SARA Alert.”

Meanwhile, when the calls for reopening from the local gaming and gym sectors were brought up at the press conference, the CMCPR president said the discussions should shift into focusing more on how to reopen schools and begin in-person classes.

“I think that it is important for us, as pediatricians, to shift the discussion because we are always [focusing on] if casinos, gyms and ‘this or that’ will open. We should be focused more on opening schools. We, as pediatricians, want our kids to go to their schools because, more than education, the children, their social interaction, sedentariness are important [matters to address].

If I create the conditions so schools open again, the rest can also open,” Ramos said. “So the dis-

cussion should be centered on how to map out a goal so our schools open and the rest can open as it is more challenging to do so.”

Health chief hasn’t seen prevention proposal from domestic violence shelters The Star reported on Monday that domestic violence shelters have yet to receive a response

Health Secretary Lorenzo González Feliciano on Wednesday rejected the idea that schools could begin in-person classes on Sept. 17.

to a prevention protocol proposal for gender violence survivors with COVID-19 that was presented to the Health and Family departments and the Women’s Advocate Office back on April 26. González Feliciano said he has not seen any such proposal, while insisting that “every proposal that arrives gets our attention.”

“Once again, I would like to check on my desk and see if it exists in my department,” the Health chief said. “If not, I will call them to see what their needs are.”

When the Star asked whether the Health Department was aware of the matter, given that the Puerto Rico Domestic Violence Shelter Network had reported the lack of COVID-19 tests for both survivors and shelter employees, González Feliciano said he was sure that information about the issue had not arrived at the department. “[They] should come to the department,” he said. “It hasn’t arrived … it hasn’t arrived. There are tests available via drive-thru, 500-600 tests every day.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

5

Dept. of Defense instructs states, territories to prepare logistics for mass vaccination against COVID-19

By THE STAR STAFF

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uerto Rico National Guard Adj. Gen. José Reyes said Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Defense has instructed all U.S. states and territories, such as Puerto Rico, to prepare the logistics for a mass vaccination against COVID-19.

Reyes also expressed confidence that the vaccines will be safe.

President Trump has said in media reports that he hopes to have a vaccine ready by November. Reports on Tuesday noted that drug giant AstraZeneca has paused global trials of its coronavirus vaccine because of an unexplained illness in one of the volunteers.

“I have read remarks from people stating that they are not going to get vaccinated because it is Trump’s vaccine. But I assure you that federal officials have very strict procedures and are meticulous when it comes to vaccines,” Reyes said. “This is an alternative for fighting COVID 19 and it will be safe.”

Earlier Tuesday, AstraZeneca joined eight other companies in signing a pledge promising they would not seek premature government approval for any coronavirus vaccine. They promised they would wait until they had adequate data showing any

potential vaccine worked safely. There are two other vaccines being tested in the United States.

Currently, there are two COVID-19 vaccines approved for early use in China and one in Russia. They were endorsed without having completed a third phase of clinical trials, which has generated criticism at the international level. In the third phase of clinical trials, the vaccine is tested in hundreds of thousands of people in various localities, according to the New York Times.

Meanwhile, Reyes said Puerto Rico has to be prepared for when the COVID-19 vaccine is ready. Last week the 54 National Guard adjutant generals received communication from the Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services to prepare protocols for vaccination.

Reyes said that based on what the federal government did in 2009 with the H1N1 pandemic, he expects there will be a vaccination order. First, people working in hospitals and other medical staff will be vaccinated, followed by emergency medical personnel and other first responders, including the military, then individuals at risk such as the elderly, followed by the rest of the population.

He said that in the case of Puerto Rico, the plan contemplates supplying vaccines to pharmacies, clinics and hospitals.

Similarly, eight distribution centers will be established from where vaccines will be dispatched to all municipalities to carry out immunization campaigns within their communities.

“The plan is being developed because it involves several components for management [and] distribution, which includes hospitals, homes for the elderly, vaccination centers, [and] pharmacies that are already

used for vaccines such as flu [influenza],” Reyes said.

Health Secretary Lorenzo González Feliciano said at a press conference that Deputy Health Secretary Iris Cardona has already been working on the protocol.

“We will be working on the demographics -- who the vaccines should reach first,” he said.

Reyes, like González, did not know whether the vaccine will be ready by November as Trump said, but noted that the logistics must be ready.

Governor comments on next executive order

By THE STAR STAFF

G

ov. Wanda Vázquez Garced on Wednesday promised greater flexibility when it comes to the implementation of the next executive order for protective measures against the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are listening to the doctors, to the Economic Task Force, [and] we are going to work on that to present to the media to bring the message to Puerto Ricans about what we are going to do for the next executive order,” Vázquez said in response to questions from the press. “We have had some progress.”

“We had some advances in terms of

the positives. It’s certainly true, there were some advances in that regard,” the governor said. “But we have to emphasize that it is the responsibility of each one, individually. You saw it with the photos [of a party in Morovis] that we saw during the [past] weekend. It is unacceptable that there are still citizens who do not understand. Look, we’ve said it many times. It is [a matter of] individual [responsibility]. We cannot continue to delay the development of our economy [because] there are still citizens who do not understand how important it is that one wears their mask.

It’s as simple as wearing a mask.”

“We are going to examine those recom-

mendations that they are making to us and we are going to report what those provisions are in the new executive order,” Vázquez reiterated.

“I think there may be some changes,” she said. “I want to acknowledge the advances that have been made in the economic sector that have also strengthened its safety measures, its protection measures for citizens, and I believe that we must also recognize this and give them the opportunity so that the economy does not continue to be hurt.”

The governor added that she will make the announcement on the new executive order before the current order expires.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

378 police isolated as preventive COVID-19 measure

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

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uerto Rico Police Bureau Commissioner Henry Escalera Rivera offered updated data on COVID-19 in the barracks and agency staff on Wednesday, saying that 378 officers are currently isolated as a preventative measure.

At the moment, three stations and/or work units are closed as a preventive measure: the Finance Division, the Las Piedras District and the Caguas Area Office of Administrative Investigations, Escalera Rivera said in a written statement.

Since the emergency arose, 3,296

agents have been reinstated to their duties. Meanwhile, 136 agents have currently reported positive results for COVID-19, according to the tests ordered and certified by Dr. María del Carmen Calderón.

Officers assigned to neighboring barracks have been appointed to those affected in order to reinforce preventive patrolling and deal with reported complaints.

A decontamination and deep cleaning process is carried out in all police stations and closed units, Escalera said. The opening of the facilities will be announced shortly, according to the recommendations of the medical staff.

Teachers union: Repair of schools damaged by Hurricane Maria, quakes has not progressed

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

T

Photo: Luis R. Vidal/ CPI

he repair of island schools damaged by Hurricane Maria almost three years ago and the earthquakes since the beginning of this year in the southern part of Puerto Rico has not progressed, Puerto Rico Teachers Association (AMPR by its Spanish initials) President Elba Aponte said Wednesday.

“I have not seen a sense of urgency in rehabilitating the schools that initially sustained failures in their structures,” Aponte said in an interview.

“Schools are not being rehabilitated to receive students, particularly those children from the southern area,” Aponte said. “The 140 schools that were previously sharing ‘interlocking’ [alternating] schedules due to structural failures. Since [Hurricane] Maria there have been schools affected.”

The union leader added that some students do

not have the computers that the island Department of Education (DE) promised them or the modules they need to receive class instruction.

“Right now there are more than 80,000 students who selected a module mode and do not have the modules in their hands,” Aponte said, noting that modules will be distributed in October.

“There are things that teachers cannot control,” she said regarding complaints received by teachers.

Aponte held the DE responsible for the failures affecting education outside the classroom during the coronavirus pandemic.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

7

Coronavirus tests are supposed to be free. The surprise bills come anyway.

The New York Times is investigating the costs associated with testing and treatment for the coronavirus and how the pandemic is changing health care in America.

By SARAH KLIFF

S

arah Goldstone got a coronavirus test in Massachusetts after her health insurer said it was “waiving cost sharing for COVID-19 testing-related visits.”

Amanda Bowes, a health policy analyst in Maryland, got hers because she knew a new federal law should make coronavirus testing free for insured patients like her.

Kelly Daisley had one after seeing New York City’s ads offering free tests. “Do it for them,” says one bus shelter ad near her home, showing a happy family.

All three were surprised when their health insurers said that they were responsible for a significant chunk of their bills — in Daisley’s case, as much as $2,718.

“I had seen so many commercials saying there is testing everywhere, it’s free, you don’t need insurance,” said Daisley, 47, who was tested at an urgent care center three blocks from her Brooklyn apartment. “If I had to pay it off, it would clear out my savings.”

For months, Americans have been told not to worry about the costs of coronavirus tests, which are crucial to stopping the pandemic’s spread. “It is critical that Americans have peace of mind knowing that cost won’t be a barrier to testing during this national public health emergency,” Medicare’s administrator, Seema Verma, said in April.

Congress passed laws requiring insurers to pay for tests, and the Trump administration created a program to cover the bills of the uninsured. Cities and states set up no-cost testing sites.

Patients, whether with or without insurance, are beginning to find holes in those new coverage programs. Nationwide, people have been hit with unexpected fees and denied claims related to coronavirus tests, according to dozens of bills that The New York Times has reviewed. Insurers have told these patients they could owe from a few dollars to thousands.

These patients responded to a Times request for medical bills related to coronavirus testing and treatment, allowing us to identify previously unreported patterns in medical billing.

They are not alone. 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 77 million tests performed so far, it could add up to hundreds of thousands of Americans who receive unexpected bills.

“Whether it’s through legislative action or public statements, Congress has made it really clear that there shouldn’t be cost sharing for COVID-19 testing,” said Julie Khani, president of the American Clinical Laboratory Association. “In practice, that’s not really the case.”

The insurers faulted the complexity of American medical billing, which can sometimes make it hard to tell when a co-

A drive-through COVID-19 testing site in Houston on Aug. 21, 2020. Nationwide, people have been hit with unexpected fees and denied claims related to coronavirus tests. ronavirus test is provided. Insurers can’t know to cover a claim differently if hospitals and doctor offices don’t use the right codes.

The new rules that Congress wrote midyear do not slot neatly into insurers’ billing systems. One health insurer said it was having to manually revise each claim for a coronavirus test, deleting the charges one by one.

“This is legitimately a confusing area, and the coding is all evolving,” said Christen Linke Young, a Brookings Institution fellow who helped write federal billing rules during her time at the Department of Health and Human Services. “Even if you’re an insurer or provider operating in good faith, and think you know what the rules are, figuring out how to identify relevant claims is a hurdle.”

Congress has legislated twice on coronavirus test billing.

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act, passed in March, told insurers they could not charge copayments or apply deductibles to coronavirus tests and other “items and services furnished” during the doctor visit. The rules apply to tests both to detect the disease and to those for antibodies.

The CARES Act built on those protections. It created rules for how to handle out-of-network coronavirus tests, telling insurers those, too, had to be covered at no cost to the patient.

Insurers estimate that about 10% of coronavirus tests have been billed out of network so far, and that those tests tend to be more expensive than those in network.

Patients’ bills suggest that the rules aren’t always being followed. Insurers have, for example, applied copayments and deductibles to the tests, claim documents show.

Bowes, from Maryland, was especially surprised to be charged a $50 copayment for a coronavirus test at an urgent care center. She knew from her work as a health policy analyst for the National Association of Attorneys General that this wasn’t supposed to happen.

“I was really shocked when I got the bill,” she said. “It felt wrong, and I was angry especially because we were being billed before even receiving our results.” After protesting the fee to her insurer, the charge was reversed and covered.

Insurers have told some patients they are responsible for out-

of-network charges, even though federal law appears to require insurers to at least partly cover them. This includes Goldstone from Massachusetts, who went for a test after experiencing mild coronavirus symptoms.

UnitedHealth paid $160 for her coronavirus test, but denied the $250 doctor visit that went with it, stating that her plan did not come with out-of-network benefits.

“It’s upsetting and demoralizing,” said Goldstone, a musician who has been largely out of work since the start of the pandemic. “I’ve spent months being careful with my finances, and already pay $266 a month for insurance.”

Federal law requires insurers to pay for any doctor visit associated with a coronavirus test, specifically noting that visits to urgent care centers are included. It is silent, however, on how much an insurer must pay to an out-of-network facility — although most experts agree a health plan would need to pay something rather than deny the fee.

“They shouldn’t be able to do that,” Young of Brookings said. “But I have sympathy for them and their claims system.

It probably has rules that are saying: This person doesn’t have out-of-network coverage.”

UnitedHealth said it denied the charge because of how the urgent care center did its billing: It divided the coronavirus test and the visit into separate claims. After an inquiry from The Times, the insurer said it would reverse the bill and review how the urgent care center billed for its services.

“UnitedHealthcare is waiving cost share for COVID-19 testing, in accordance with state and federal guidelines, including the test Ms. Goldstone received,” a spokeswoman, Maria Gordon Shydlo, said. “She will not be responsible for the costs.”

Other bills present murkier situations. Daisley, from Brooklyn, had coronavirus diagnostic and antibody tests last month.

She was surprised when she logged into her health insurance portal and saw four claims associated with her tests: one for each test, one for the doctor visit, and one for other tests she didn’t realize were being ordered.

Her insurance covered the visit and the diagnostic test. But it paid nothing for an antibody test and the other lab services, which were both sent off to out-of-network providers.

Experts say federal law requires the insurer to cover the antibody test in full, even out of network. But the rules around the other tests are less clear: The law states that insurers must cover services related to obtaining a coronavirus test but doesn’t identify what type of care makes the cut.

Initially, Daisley was left with more than $2,000 to pay to out-of-network labs: $210 for the antibody test and $2,508 for the other lab services. Her health plan, Anthem, denied the larger charge because her health benefits do not cover out-ofnetwork care.

The insurer covered the charges after The Times inquired.

“Seeing as Ms. Daisley was unaware the treating provider would send her samples to multiple out-of-network labs for what she understood was related to COVID testing, Anthem is covering the costs of the outstanding claims,” a spokeswoman for Anthem, Leslie Porras, said.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

College quarantine breakdowns leave some at risk

Sarah Ortbal, a sophomore, outside her dorm complex at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa on Aug. 28, 2020. Ortbal said there was little supervision for quarantined students in her dorm.

By NATASHA SINGER

A

cross the United States, colleges that have reopened for in-person instruction are struggling to contain the rapid-fire spread of coronavirus among tens of thousands of students by imposing tough social distancing rules and piloting an array of new technologies, like virus tracking apps.

But perhaps their most complex problem has been what to do with students who test positive for the virus or come into contact with someone who has. To this end, many campuses are subjecting students to one of the oldest infection control measures known to civilization: quarantine.

Many public and private colleges have set aside special dormitories, or are renting off-campus apartments or hotel rooms to provide isolation beds for infected students and separate quarantine units for the possibly sick.

The general strategy has been supported by public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who say it is better to separate students until they are no longer contagious rather than send them home where they might infect their family and friends.

But in practice, many undergraduates and some epidemiologists say the policies have broken down, often in ways that may put students and college staff at risk. And that breakdown reflects the chaotic nature of this extraordinary semester, when schools are struggling to deliver both in-person and remote classes; to identify, isolate and treat coronavirus outbreaks; and to

maintain safe behavior among sometimes unruly undergraduates.

At the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, with at least 1,889 virus cases since mid-August, and at the University of Notre Dame, with about 550 cases, students have reported their classmates for violating quarantine and wandering outside.

At Iowa State University, which has reported more than 1,200 cases, a student who was waiting for his COVID-19 test results said he was sent back to his regular dorm room where he could have infected his roommate.

And at many campuses, students with confirmed or possible infections have flooded social media platforms to describe filthy rooms, meager food rations, lack of furniture, chaotic procedures and minimal monitoring from their universities.

At University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Brianna Hayes developed a fever after a week at school, went to campus health services and was immediately assigned to a quarantine dorm for students with virus risks. Two days later, the university informed Hayes, a first-year student from Wilmington, North Carolina, that she had tested positive and would need to move again, this time to a COVID-19 isolation dorm.

But there was no university staff in the dorm to help sick students, Hayes said, and no elevator.

Feverish and exhausted from the virus, she made four trips up and down staircases to move her bedding and other belongings to her isolation room. During her week in isolation, she said, no one from the university came to check on her.

“I felt like everyone was only interested in

how I was affecting others, like who I came in contact with, and then I was just left to be sick,” she said.

Amy Johnson, UNC’s vice chancellor for student affairs, said the school worked hard “to facilitate an easy and comfortable transition for students,” and to keep “lines of communication open.” With more than 900 student virus cases over the past month, the university switched to online instruction in mid-August, but it has permitted some students with demonstrated needs to remain on campus.

University officials say taking care of students with virus infections and exposures is logistically complex, involving dozens of employees from many departments. While sometimes acknowledging shortcomings in their programs, some schools also contend they are effectively sequestering students with possible infections and hampering the spread of the virus.

A number of universities said they were working to improve their outbreak responses. The University of Alabama said it had recently posted university police officers at its quarantine dorms while Notre Dame said it had hired security guards to monitor students in quarantine in hotels and off-campus apartments.

To try to stop the virus from spreading, other schools are moving students with infections to isolation units and then quarantining everyone remaining in their dorm. Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, recently put 23 fraternities, sororities, and other student housing under complete or partial quarantine. Last week, Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania quarantined all students, requiring them to remain in their rooms, and is now sending most of them home to do online instruction — except for first-year students who will remain on campus, each with a single dorm room.

Some public health experts say the spotty oversight of quarantine dorms raises questions about whether universities have made more fundamental changes that might have helped them limit outbreaks in the first place — changes like significantly reducing dorm occupancy and repeatedly testing all students for the virus.

“Universities shouldn’t be bringing students back if they don’t have a reasonable and feasible plan in place to keep the infection from spreading on campus,” said Carl Bergstrom, a biology professor at the University of Washington. “Without a plan like that, they’re in a really bad position and you’re trying to mitigate the harm that you’ve caused.”

A student at North Carolina State University, which recently switched to online instruction after a spate of virus clusters, said he packed up and

went home — learning only several days later that he had developed COVID-19. AtTulane University, several students with possible virus symptoms or exposures said the school had transferred them to a dorm with quarantine and isolation units where they shared suites and bathrooms — housing conditions that they worried could foster infections.

One of those Tulane students, Elena Markowitz, a sophomore, said she moved into an isolation unit after she developed symptoms and was awaiting the results of a virus test.There, Markowitz explained in a TikTok video, she discovered that her suitemate, with whom she shared a bathroom, had tested positive for COVID-19. Markowitz subsequently received negative test results.

“I realized they could have exposed me to more than one person with the virus,” Markowitz said in an interview.

Scott Tims, Tulane’s assistant vice president for campus health, said that the school had placed together only those students with similar virus exposures and that it had stationed nurses around the clock at the isolation dorm.

“They’re doing rounds every few hours, they check symptoms twice a day, they’re also doing room checks to make sure that students are there,” he said of the nurses. “We really want to make sure that the student is safe.”

At the University of Alabama, which is contending with one of the nation’s largest campus outbreaks, several students in the Highlands, a campus apartment complex with quarantine and isolation units, said the school had not stationed nurses on site and that they had observed classmates flouting quarantine.

Monica Watts, a spokeswoman for the University of Alabama, said the school was “constantly enhancing” support for students in isolation and quarantine housing. The school provided case managers, meal and pharmacy delivery, security and the personal cellphone number of a staff member for students to contact.

Watts added that the school was working to accommodate students’ relocation requests.

Another Alabama sophomore, Zoie Terry, from Birmingham, applauded the university for jumping into action after she tested positive for the virus, quickly sending her to isolate in the Highlands. Once she relocated, however, she said she felt anxious with no nurses or other staff coming by to check in on her. Students in isolation at other schools described similar experiences.

“One thing that needs to be taken care of more is the mental health aspect of it all because it is very, very scary having coronavirus,” Terry said of her isolation experience. “We’re college students. We just moved away from our homes and it’s very stressful.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

9

10

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

Democrats fear partisan slant at Postal Service as Trump allies dominate board

By LUKE BROADWATER, HAILEY FUCHS and KENNETH P. VOGEL

A

powerful but little-known group of Republican donors installed by President Donald Trump to oversee the U.S. Postal Service has helped raise more than $3 million to support him and hundreds of millions more for his party over the past decade, prompting concerns about partisan bias at the agency before the November election.

The largest amount of fundraising has been by groups with connections to Robert M. Duncan, who continues to sit on the boards of two super PACs pushing for Republicans to win in 2020, one of which has spent more than $1 million supporting the president’s reelection. But he is only one of five Republican members Trump has named to the board — most of whom have given generously to the party — who have taken a hands-on role in trying to defend the embattled agency against accusations that it is trying to help the president win a second term by sabotaging voting by mail.

At least one of the governors expressed concerns in an interview like those voiced by the president about possible voter fraud, citing an anonymously sourced news report circulated by the Trump campaign and the president’s son Eric Trump about how mail-in ballots can be manipulated.

“If any doubt is ever raised — like in the New York Post article, or by any other reputable publication — we want to get to the bottom of that,” said John M. Barger, one of the Republican board members named by Trump and a participant in a newly formed election mail task force.

Other governors have done little to hide their loyalty to the president, even as the board meets behind closed doors to plot a strategy for handling what is expected to be a record crush of mail-in ballots this fall.

Hours after Duncan assured lawmakers at a Capitol Hill hearing last month that he was committed to doing his job without partisan bias and according to “the public interest,” he appeared on video at the Republican National Convention, holding up four fingers and smiling as fellow Kentuckians chanted, “Four more years!”

For Democrats who are increasingly concerned that Trump is bent on kneecapping the mail system to bolster his own reelection chances, the juxtaposition was

an alarming reminder that the president has stacked the Postal Service board with allies who support him, and who can amplify and act on the concerns he has tried to sow about mail-in voting.

The Postal Service board has long been a landing pad for presidential loyalists of both parties, many of whom have continued to donate prolifically to candidates during their tenures. President Bill Clinton nominated a former member of his transition team who served as national finance chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign while serving on the board. But Trump has been able to shape the Postal Service more than most presidents.

A Postal Service spokesman did not provide specific responses to multiple questions concerning the board of governors, except to say that Duncan’s appearance at the Republican National Convention did not involve government resources and therefore did not violate federal law against partisan activities by federal workers. Duncan did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.

The concerns about a partisan bent at the Postal Service were underscored this weekend when DeJoy was accused of cultivating an environment at his former company, New Breed Logistics, that left employees feeling pressured to donate to Republican candidates, and rewarded them with bonuses for doing so.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the Senate minority leader, and Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y., the chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, called on the Postal Services’ board on Monday to suspend DeJoy while Maloney investigates the matter.

Now members of the board are toiling to respond to new questions about the Postal Service without wading into a political quagmire created by the president who installed them, and the homes of DeJoy and the once low-profile board members have become the sites of protests.

The agency has begun an advertising campaign, including a television spot, intended to assuage concerns about its ability to process the anticipated surge in voting by mail. But some officials there have cautioned against appearing to encourage the practice, which Trump has called fraudulent.

As part of the initiative, the agency is likely to distribute a mailer to households this month to reassure voters that the Postal

Service can handle the flood of mail-in ballots and to urge those who choose to cast them to send them early. But the mailer is expected to stop short of explicitly promoting voting by mail.

“We know our lane,” Barger said in the interview. “And that is to let the American people know that the Postal Service will serve this election like it has all others. We are ready.”

But Democrats worry that under Trump, the body has become too politicized to fulfill that role.

“It’s appalling,” said Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., who has highlighted examples of partisan activity by top postal officials, including $3.2 million in Republican campaign contributions by DeJoy. “The Postal Service is respected and revered because it has a single job: delivering the mail, not serving the partisan interest of whoever happens to be president at the moment.

The concerns among Democrats and government watchdog groups go beyond DeJoy. Five of the board’s seven members have a history of donating to Republicans, though some also have made more limited donations to Democrats. Duncan is a director for American Crossroads, which has spent more than $1.4 million since April on text messages supporting Trump’s reelection effort. He is also a director of the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC linked to Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate

majority leader and one of his close allies, that has raised about $129 million. Since 2016, DeJoy has contributed more than $1.2 million in support of Trump’s campaigns.

With DeJoy and Duncan, the three other Republican governors — Barger, Roman Martinez IV and William D. Zollars — make up a majority of the board, while only two members are Democrats. Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, helped vet prospective nominees to the board for Trump, recommending candidates who would carry out changes that the administration sought.

Mnuchin’s recommendation of Barger, a California lawyer and financial investment adviser, was seen as helpful, because while he had donated more than $90,000 to Republicans since 2010, he had never given to Trump.

The board tapped DeJoy to become postmaster general in June, and he has overseen the removal of hundreds of mail-sorting machines and the limiting of overtime, moves that have coincided with a well-documented slowdown in mail delivery.

Trump entered the White House when not a single board member was in place — Republicans had blocked all of President Barack Obama’s nominees — and as its long-term fiscal viability was increasingly in doubt.

“It’s pretty ominous,” Welch said. “It really is different. It’s not the way it’s always been.”

Postmaster General Lous DeJoy arrives to testify before the House Oversight Committee in Washington on Aug. 24, 2020.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

11

Federal report warns of financial havoc from climate change

By CORAL DAVENPORT and JEANNA SMIALEK

A

report commissioned by federal regulators overseeing the nation’s commodities markets has concluded that climate change threatens U.S. financial markets, as the costs of wildfires, storms, droughts and floods spread through insurance and mortgage markets, pension funds and other financial institutions.

“A world wracked by frequent and devastating shocks from climate change cannot sustain the fundamental conditions supporting our financial system,” concluded the report, “Managing Climate Risk in the Financial System,” which was requested last year by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and set for release Wednesday morning.

Those observations are not entirely new, but they carry new weight coming with the imprimatur of the regulator of complex financial instruments like futures, swaps and other derivatives that help fix the price of commodities like corn, oil and wheat. It is the first wide-ranging federal government study focused on the specific impacts of climate change on Wall Street.

Perhaps most notable is that it is being published at all. The Trump administration has suppressed, altered or watered down government science around climate change as it pushes an aggressive agenda of environmental deregulation that it hopes will spur economic growth.

The new report asserts that doing nothing to avert climate change will do the opposite.

“This is the first time a government entity has looked at the impacts of climate change on financial markets in the U.S.,” said Robert Litterman, the chairman of the panel that produced the report and a founding partner of Kepos Capital, an investment firm based in New York.

“Rather than saying, ‘What’s the science?’ this is saying, ‘What’s the financial risk?’ ” The commodities regulator, which is made up of three Republicans and two Democrats, all of whom were appointed by President Donald Trump, voted unanimously last summer to create an advisory panel drawn from the world of finance and charged with producing a report on the effects of the warming world on financial markets. The initial proposal for the report came from Rostin Behnam, one of the panel’s two Democrats, but the report is written by dozens of analysts from investment firms including Morgan Stanley, S&P Global and Vanguard; oil companies BP and ConocoPhillips;

Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, speaks in Wilmington, Del., Sept. 2, 2020. and agricultural trader Cargill, as well as academic experts and environmental groups.

It includes recommendations for new corporate regulations and the reversal of at least one Trump administration policy.

“It was shocking when they asked me to do this,” Litterman said. “This is members of the entire community involved in financial markets saying with one voice, ‘This is a serious problem, and it has to be addressed.’”

A White House spokesman, Judd Deere, declined Tuesday to comment on the report because the White House had not yet seen it.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a conservative research organization, who served as economic adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said: “This was initiated by the Trump administration. It is the only document of its type.”

He added, “If you’re denying this exists, you don’t ask for a report on it.”

The Republican chairman of the CFTC, Heath Tarbert, acknowledged the risk of climate change, but he noted that the report also detailed what the regulators called “transition risk” — the financial harm that could befall the fossil fuel industry if the government enacted aggressive policies to curb carbon dioxide pollution.

“I appreciate Commissioner Behnam’s leadership on convening various private sec-

tor perspectives on the important topic of climate risk,” Tarbert said in a statement. “The subcommittee’s report acknowledges that ‘transition risks’ of a green economy could be just as disruptive to our financial system as the possible physical manifestations of climate change, and that moving too fast, too soon could be just as disorderly as doing too little, too late. This underscores why it is so important for policymakers to get this right.”

The authors of the report acknowledged that if Trump is reelected, his administration is all but certain to ignore the report and its recommendations.

Instead, they said they saw the document as a policy road map for a Joe Biden administration.

Biden’s climate policy proposals are the most ambitious and expensive ever embraced by a presidential candidate, and most of them would meet resistance in Congress. But even without legislation, he could press forward with regulatory changes. Lael Brainard, a Federal Reserve governor who is seen as a top contender to be Treasury secretary in a Biden administration, has called for financial regulators to treat climate change as a significant risk to the financial system.

In calling for climate-driven policy changes, the report’s authors likened the financial risk of global warming to the threat posed by

the coronavirus today and by mortgage-backed securities that precipitated the financial crash in 2008.

One crucial difference, they said, is that in the case of climate change, financial volatility and loss are likely to be spread out over time, as they hit different regions and markets. Insurance companies could withdraw from California in the wake of devastating wildfires, and home values could plummet on coastlines and in floodplains. In the Midwest, banks could limit loans during or after extended droughts that drastically lower crop yields. All of those problems will be exacerbated by climate change, but they are unlikely to hit all at once.

“Financial markets are really good at managing risk to help us provide credit, so that the economy can flourish,” said Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, an editor of the report who served as senior official at the Treasury Department during the Obama administration. But, he added, the system breaks down “when it’s no longer able to manage risk, when it’s invisible, it’s not captured by the price of stocks.”

“That’s what we saw in the financial crisis of 2008, and it’s as relevant now on climate change as it was then on mortgage-backed securities,” he said.

The report makes several concrete recommendations for inoculating the financial system against potential harm.

It emphasizes the need to put a price on carbon emissions, which is often done either by taxing or through an emissions trading system that caps carbon emissions and allots credits that polluters can buy and sell under that cap.

The report calls for the reversal of a proposed rule being put forward by the Trump administration’s Labor Department that would forbid retirement investment managers from considering environmental consequences in their financial recommendations.

“If there’s any class of investors that should be thinking about the long run, it’s retirement funds and pension funds,” said Nathaniel Keohane, an author of the report and an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group.

The report suggests that the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a Treasury Departmentled body created in the wake of the 2008 crisis, incorporate climate risks into its annual report and its communications with Congress. It suggests that the Federal Reserve and other major financial regulators join international coalitions that focus on climate threats.

12

Thursday, September 10, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

9 Drug companies pledge to ‘stand with science’ on Coronavirus vaccines

By KATIE THOMAS

N

ine pharmaceutical companies issued a joint pledge Tuesday that they would “stand with science” and not put forward a vaccine until it had been thoroughly vetted for safety and efficacy.

The companies did not rule out seeking an emergency authorization of their vaccines, but promised that any potential coronavirus vaccine would be decided based on “large, high quality clinical trials” and that the companies would follow guidance from regulatory agencies like the Food and Drug Administration.

“We believe this pledge will help ensure public confidence in the rigorous scientific and regulatory process by which COVID-19 vaccines are evaluated and may ultimately be approved,” the companies said.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed in recent weeks that a vaccine could be available before Election Day — Nov. 3 — heightening fears that his administration is politicizing the race to develop a vaccine and potentially undermining public trust in any vaccine approved.

“We’ll have the vaccine soon, maybe before a special date,” the president said Monday. “You know what date I’m talking about.”

The move was welcomed by some researchers who said that the statement could increase public confidence in a coronavirus vaccine at a time when skepticism was running high. “There’s absolutely a desperate need for this vaccine,” said Dr. Judith Feinberg, the vice chairwoman for research in medicine at West Virginia University in Morgantown. “I love the fact that the nine big vaccine manufacturers today said they would not do anything premature — I think there’s enormous pressure to do something premature.”

Three of the companies that signed the pledge are testing their candidate vaccines in late-stage clinical trials in the United States: Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca.

Pfizer has said repeatedly over the past week that it could apply to the FDA for emergency approval as early as October. On Tuesday, its chief executive, Dr. Albert Bourla, predicted in an interview on the “To-

A Covid-19 vaccine trial carried out by Pfizer in May at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Pfizer is one of nine companies that pledged on Tuesday that it would not put forward a vaccine until it had vetted it for safety and efficacy. day” show on NBC that the company would have an answer about whether its vaccine worked by the end of October, but acknowledged that did not mean its vaccine would be available to the public by then.

Moderna and AstraZeneca have been less specific, saying only they hope to have a vaccine by the end of the year. Last week, Moderna’s chief executive said the company was slightly slowing its enrollment in order to include more people from groups that had been most affected by COVID-19.

Pfizer and Moderna are each close to fully enrolling the 30,000 participants in each of their trials, with some analysts predicting they will be finished within the next two weeks. AstraZeneca is further behind in its U.S. trials, having begun enrollment on Aug. 31.

Federal officials have been pushing back against Trump’s enthusiastic predictions. Late last week, Moncef Slaoui, the top scientist on Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to quickly bring a vaccine to market, warned in an interview with National Public Radio that the chance of successful vaccine results by October was “very, very low.”

And on Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said he believed that researchers would know whether the Moderna and

Pfizer vaccines were effective by “November or December.”

In a statement on Tuesday, Slaoui said the goal of Operation Warp Speed was “to ensure that no technical, logistic or financial hurdles hinder vaccine development or deployment without curtailing the critical steps required by sound science and regulatory standards.” He added that the pledge “reiterates the position of Operation Warp Speed, that this project is driven by science and that any vaccine must meet the gold standard of the Food and Drug Administration.”

Drug companies have had to carefully navigate the political landscape. A successful vaccine could help restore the industry’s battered image and offer an end to the pandemic. But rushing a vaccine to market that winds up causing serious side effects — or simply does not work — could do catastrophic damage to their reputations.

In the nine companies’ statement on Tuesday, they did not mention Trump, saying only that they have “a united commitment to uphold the integrity of the scientific process.”

The other six companies that signed the pledge were BioNTech, which is developing the vaccine in partnership with Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novavax and Sanofi.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

13 Stocks

Oil prices edge up off three-month lows; demand concerns persist

O

il futures on Wednesday clawed back some of the losses they sustained in the previous session, but a rebound in COVID-19 cases in some countries undermined hopes for a steady recovery in global demand.

Brent crude LCOc1 gained 81 cents, or 2.1%, to $40.62 a barrel by 11:28 a.m. EDT (1528 GMT). The benchmark dropped more than 5% on Tuesday to fall below $40 a barrel for the first time since June.

U.S. crude CLc1 rose $1.15, or 3.1%, to $37.91 a barrel, having fallen nearly 8% in the previous session.

That lifted the major benchmarks off Tuesday’s levels near three-month lows. Prices fell this week after Saudi Arabia’s state oil company Aramco cut the October official selling prices for its Arab light oil, a sign of softening demand.

“When strong Middle Eastern producers are willing to sell-off in lower prices it is normal that the global market panics and follows suit,” said Paola Rodriguez-Masiu, Rystad Energy’s senior oil markets analyst.

The global health crisis continues to flare with coronavirus cases rising in India, Great Britain, Spain and several parts of the United States. The outbreaks are threatening to slow a global economic recovery and reduce demand for fuels from aviation gas to diesel.

“Short-term oil market fundamentals look soft: the demand recovery is fragile, inventories and spare capacity are high, and refining margins are low,” Morgan Stanley said.

Record supply cuts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, known as OPEC+ have helped support prices, but with grim economic figures being reported almost daily, the outlook for demand for oil remains bleak.

China’s factory gate prices fell for a seventh straight month in August although at the slowest annual pace since March, suggesting industries in the world’s second-biggest economy continued their recovery from the coronavirusinduced downturn.

Investors awaited industry data on U.S. crude stockpiles due on Wednesday. U.S. crude oil stockpiles were expected to fall for a seventh straight week, while refined product inventories also likely dropped last week, a preliminary Reuters poll showed on Tuesday.

Reporting by Stephanie Kelly in New York, additional reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar in London and Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle, Louise Heavens, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and David Gregorio

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Thursday, September 10, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

What you can no longer say in Hong Kong

The changing nature of ‘free speech’ in Hong Kong can be seen in the territory’s everyday environment.

By JIN WU and ELAINE YU

A

national security law passed June 30 instantly altered the lives and liberties of Hong Kong’s residents, criminalizing words and images that just hours earlier had been legally protected free speech.

The next day, thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators tested the limits of the new law. Some carried signs bearing slogans like “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our Times,” which for months had been lawfully displayed in the streets of the semiautonomous Chinese city.

Police have since arrested more than 20 people under the new law, which lays out political crimes punishable by life imprisonment in serious cases and allows Beijing to intervene directly if it wants.

Hong Kong was once a bastion of free speech. It served as a base for the international news media and for rights groups, and as a ha-

ven for political refugees, including the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing. Books on sensitive political topics that are banned in mainland China found a home in the city’s bookstores.

But the limits of the security law are vaguely defined. As a result, artists, journalists, activists, academics and others risk running afoul of the law for what they say, write or tweet.

Restaurants and Shops The owners of a bubble tea shop, who had earlier publicly supported the protests, removed the pro-democracy ephemera that once decorated their store.

One restaurant took down signs in support of the protests and replaced them with Mao-era propaganda posters, giving the Communist Party’s calls for revolution back then an ironic modern twist.

Schools and Universities Publishers have hastily rewritten sections of

textbooks used in a mandatory high school civics course to avoid the appearance of openly criticizing the government. In one book, a publisher removed a cartoon that raised questions about how Hong Kong’s leader is chosen — by a small committee stacked with supporters of Beijing.

Passages about corrupt party officials and the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on democracy protesters, a topic largely taboo in schools in the mainland, have been amended or removed from new textbooks, a New York Times analysis has found.

The enforcement of the new security law in Hong Kong’s schools and universities targets the city’s younger residents, who played a critical role in months of protests last year. Forty percent of the 10,000 protesters arrested over the past year were students, and about 1 in 6 were under the age of 18, according to police officials.

Books Libraries have removed books written by

democracy activists and placed them under review. And writers working on sensitive topics have sought publishers overseas.

Raymond Yeung, author of “To Freedom: A Year of Defiance in Hong Kong,” said three printers in the city refused to produce his book after the law was passed.

To get the book published, he said, he had to remove photos that included the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong” and all mentions of independence for Hong Kong.

News Media The security law has also sent a chill through Hong Kong’s once freewheeling news media.

RTHK, the public broadcaster, removed a political podcast from its website after authorities warned that an interview with Nathan Law, a democracy activist now living abroad, could be in breach of the new law.

In August, Jimmy Lai, publisher of Apple Daily, a local newspaper, was arrested under the law. During a raid at the office of Lai’s newspaper, police officers selectively barred several news outlets from getting past their cordon.

Artwork Lau Kwong Shing, an illustrator known for artwork supporting the protests, said he planned to leave Hong Kong but until then would take a break from explicitly political drawings. “Staying in Hong Kong could become dangerous,” Lau said. “What I illustrate is just an expression of my thoughts, but that might now come with legal consequences.”

Protests Others have sought creative ways to skirt the law. They carry blank signs or ones with coded messages. They play protest songs but without lyrics. But there are concerns that even such workarounds may be deemed illegal. “The police were giving warnings to young protesters holding blank signs,” said Claudia Mo, a prodemocracy lawmaker. “They are trying to say: ‘If we say you’re expressing a criminal opinion, then that’s it, because we are the law.’ ”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

15

Fire destroys most of Europe’s largest refugee camp on Greek island of Lesbos

By PATRICK KINGSLEY

A

fast-moving fire destroyed most of Europe’s largest refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, leaving most of its 12,000 residents homeless just days after they were collectively quarantined because of a coronavirus outbreak there.

No deaths were initially reported. But vast stretches of the overcrowded camp and an adjacent spillover site were destroyed in the fire that began late Tuesday night, leaving only a medical facility and small clusters of tents untouched.

By Wednesday, the blaze had already begun to prompt widespread soul-searching across Europe, where the Moria camp, and the neglect of its residents, has become synonymous with the Continent’s increasingly unsympathetic approach to refugees.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Union’s executive arm, the European Commission, said she felt “deep sorrow” about the fire, while the governor of a region in western Germany, Armin Laschet, said he was willing to admit up to 1,000 refugees from the camp as part of a wider European resettlement program that has yet to be developed.

Some residents of the camp managed to escape to the island’s main town of Mytilene, while others were able to remain in their tents in small areas of the camp that were unaffected by the blaze. But many were being held nearby Wednesday morning while Greek authorities decided where to house them.

Aid workers said the fire at Moria, which is named after a nearby village, began shortly after 10 p.m. Tuesday following protests by residents over recent coronavirus restrictions and spread quickly because of high winds and the explosion of gas canisters.

Aid workers, activists and officials said a series of fires were started intentionally by a group of camp residents who were furious at being forced to quarantine after at least 35 people tested positive for coronavirus at the camp.

Stelios Petsas, a government spokesman, told Greek television Wednesday that the fire “wasn’t accidental.”

“There was a very widespread protest front by the refugees and migrants when they were asked to go into quarantine,” he said.

The fire quickly destroyed much of the camp’s formal enclosure, including a facility for 400 unaccompanied children and much of its water infrastructure, before spreading to a spillover site in olive groves close to the camp’s fence.

Videos provided to The New York Times by aid workers at the camp showed residents hurrying from Moria in droves in the early hours of Wednesday morning. They carried their belongings in bags slung over their shoulders, some of them pushing infants in strollers, and others draped in blankets.

“It was absolute chaos,” said Jonathan Turner, an aid worker who been building water infrastructure in the camp on behalf of Watershed Foundation and Choose Love.

“There were just so many people trying to move, trying to escape,” said Turner, who rushed to the camp late Tuesday night and tried to put out the fire.

By sunrise, footage showed that much of the camp’s formal infrastructure had collapsed, with many of the tents burned. Several metal portable cabins were blackened with soot, their walls having buckled in the heat. Trees on the nearby slopes had been charred.

“The whole camp has practically burned to the ground,” said Stephan Oberreit, head of mission in Greece for Doctors Without Borders, an aid group that has provided health care to residents of the camp for several years. “There is very little standing.”

Thousands of displaced residents were left with nowhere to go, with many simply sitting down a few hundred yards from the camp.

“There are thousands of people just sitting on the main road,” said Nick Powell, an Australian aid worker who witnessed the fire and its aftermath, and who was helping to provide food to the survivors Wednesday.

It is still unclear where they will be taken. George Koumoutsakos, Greece’s deputy migration minister, said during a Wednesday news conference that efforts were being made to rehouse around 3,000 people in

new tents.

The priority was to rehouse the most vulnerable, with some 400 unaccompanied minors being moved to “safe zones” and hotels, he said.

Since 2015, Moria has filled with an influx of migrants seeking to reach northern Europe. That year, more than 850,000 mainly Syrian and Afghan refugees and migrants made their way by boat from Turkey to nearby Greek islands like Lesbos, hoping to travel farther north. A further 300,000 have arrived in the years since.

In 2015, they passed quickly through the Moria camp when Europe largely tolerated the movement of migrants. But in 2016, Europe changed tack, blocking the onward movement of migrants to countries like Germany and leaving thousands stranded in squalid Greek camps like Moria, which soon became overcrowded.

Since then, Moria has been considered an emblem of Europe’s hardening approach to migrants in the aftermath of the 2015 crisis. Though the camp was built for 3,000 residents, its population has swelled at times to more than 20,000. Residents lived mostly in cramped and overcrowded tents with limited access to toilets, showers and health care.

Through the European Union, other European countries provided Greece with money to care for its refugee population. But European leaders refused to allow many of them to leave Greek camps like Moria for sanctuary elsewhere in Europe.

Large parts of the Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece, burned down overnight.

16

Thursday, September 10, 2020

Abducted opposition leader in Belarus averts expulsion by tearing up passport

By ANDREW HIGGINS

M

aria Kolesnikova, a prominent opposition leader in Belarus who vanished Monday in what her supporters said was a kidnapping by security agents, reappeared Tuesday at her country’s southern border with Ukraine.

But an elaborate operation aimed at forcing her to leave Belarus came unstuck, according to opposition activists who were at the border with Kolesnikova when she destroyed her passport to make it impossible for Ukraine to admit her.

At a news conference in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, on Tuesday evening, two Belarusian activists, Anton Rodnenkov and Ivan Kravtsov, told how they had been seized in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, on Monday and taken to the border with Ukraine, along with Kolesnikova, by masked security agents who warned that if they did not leave the country they would be jailed indefinitely.

After passing through a Belarusian border checkpoint, they said, Kolesnikova grabbed her passport and started shouting that she was not going anywhere. She tore the passport into small pieces and threw them out of the window.

Rodnenkov and Kravtsov continued onto Ukraine without her. “She climbed out of the car and started walking back toward the Belarus border,” Kravtsov said.

“She is very brave and dedicated to what she is doing.”

Ukraine’s deputy minister for internal affairs, Anton Gerashchenko, confirmed that authorities in Belarus had planned a “forced expulsion” of Kolesnikova but said the plans were not completed “because this brave woman took action to prevent her movement across the border.” He added that she “remained on the territory of the Republic of Belarus.”

The whereabouts of Kolesnikova had been the focus of intense speculation since she disappeared from a street in Minsk early Monday. A witness quoted by local media said Kolesnikova, a leading member of a coordinating council set up by opponents of Belarus’ embattled president, Alexander Lukashenko, had been grabbed by masked abductors and bundled into a van.

Her supporters denounced the apparent abduction as the work of Lukashenko’s security forces and a sign that authorities had shifted their strategy in response to nearly a month of protests over a disputed election Aug 9.

Instead of attacking protesters with often savage violence, the security apparatus now seems to be trying to demobilize the opposition movement by picking off its leaders one by one and sending them out of the country.

Lukashenko, in an interview with Russian journalists, gave his own account of events at the border, claiming that Kolesnikova had tried to flee

A demonstration against the embattled president of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, outside Independence Palace in Minsk, Aug. 30, 2020.

Belarus illegally in a car with two fellow activists but had been thrown out of the vehicle on the way to Ukraine. He said that Belarusian border officers then arrested her.

Dressed in business attire and unarmed, unlike in a previous public appearance when he swaggered outside the presidential palace wearing a black track suit and waving an assault rifle, Lukashenko used the interview to try to project an image of calm confidence.

He conceded that, after 26 years in power, he had “perhaps overstayed a bit” but made clear that he had no intention of stepping down, claiming that his supporters would be “slaughtered” if he quit. “I’m not going to simply throw it all away,” he said.

He also repeated what has become his favorite pitch for Russian support, asserting that Belarus could not survive without him and “if Belarus collapses today, Russia will be next.”

Belta, the official Belarus news agency, reported that a car carrying Kolesnikova and her two opposition colleagues had arrived near the border around 4 a.m.

Tuesday but that Kolesnikova had been pushed from the vehicle as it sped off toward the Ukrainian border post.

This bizarre version of events cast what seems to have been a forced departure gone awry as an unsuccessful escape attempt. Belta claimed that the car carrying Kolesnikova had “posed a threat to the life of a border guard.”

Kolesnikova had been the last member still active inside Belarus of a trio of female activists behind a groundswell of opposition to Lukashenko. The other two, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Lukashenko’s main challenger in the disputed election, and Veronika Tsepkalo, the wife of a would-be candidate who fled before polling day, both left Belarus to avoid arrest soon after Lukashenko claimed reelection.

Since then, a number of other opposition activists have also left Belarus under duress, threatened with long jail terms and trouble for their families if they stayed.

This program of expulsions seems to have begun at the advice of security officials from Moscow, who have become more involved in advising Lukashenko in recent weeks and have urged him to stop inflaming the anger of protesters with beatings and mass arrests.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who has never warmed to Lukashenko but still sees him as an important bulwark against the West, announced at the end of August that he had formed a reserve force of Russian security officers to assist Belarus if “the situation gets out of control.”

In another sign of close collaboration between the two countries, Belarus announced Tuesday that it would hold military exercises later this week with troops from Russia and Serbia. The exercises, called Slavic Brotherhood 2020, underscore an important propaganda point for Lukashenko, suggesting that he is not alone in his struggle for political survival but a sentinel for broader Slavic interests against the West.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

17

Afghan vice president, staunch opponent of Taliban, survives blast

By MUJIB MASHAL

A

mrullah Saleh, Afghanistan’s senior vice president and a staunch opponent of the Taliban, survived a bombing that targeted his convoy in the capital Wednesday, the second deadly attack against him in a little over a year.

At least 10 bystanders were killed and 15 other people were wounded by a bomb that had been planted on the side of the road, Afghanistan’s interior ministry said. Photos from the blast site, a crowded roundabout in Kabul with mechanic shops and crockery stores, showed vast carnage.

Rizwan Murad, a spokesman for Saleh, said “two or three” of the vice president’s guards had been wounded.

Saleh, a former spy chief who became one of the country’s two vice presidents early this year, appeared shaken in a video message from his office about two hours after the attack, his right hand bandaged. He said he and his son Ebadullah, a college student who was with him in the car as he headed to work in the morning rush hour, had suffered slight burns.

“My hand is wounded, as the explosion wave was strong and the car window melted,” Saleh said. “The situation that has come on me today comes on our security forces every day, every hour.”

The Taliban denied that they were behind the blast, and no group immediately claimed responsibility.

The insurgents signed a deal with the United States in February on a withdrawal of U.S. troops, with the understanding that the Taliban would stop bombing urban centers. But Afghan officials say they have continued to carry out attacks without claiming responsibility for them, exploiting a complicated situation in which violence is also perpetrated by an Islamic State offshoot, as well as organized crime gangs.

In July of last year, just hours after Saleh declared his candidacy for the vice presidency, he barely survived an attack on his office that killed about 20 of his closest aides, including family members. A squad of suicide bombers first set off a car bomb outside, then fought their way up the stairs to the fourth-floor office where Saleh was holding meetings. They gunned down many of his aides and guests. After hours of fighting, Saleh managed to escape by climbing a ladder to a neighbor’s roof.

The blast targeting Saleh on Wednesday came as final preparations were underway in Doha, the capital of Qatar, for direct negotiations between the Taliban and a group of government and opposition officials on ending the war in Afghanistan, which in some shape or form has dragged on for more than 40 years. The talks were originally expected to begin soon after the February deal between the United States and the Taliban, but they have been delayed for months because of disagreements over a prisoner swap.

The government has been reluctant to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners in return for 1,000 members of its se-

Smoke rose from the site of a bombing that targeted the convoy of Afghanistan’s senior vice president, Amrullah Saleh, in Kabul, the capital, on Wednesday. curity forces, an agreement that the insurgents reached with United States in talks that did not include the Afghan government. But after much pressure from the Trump administration over the past six months, the prisoner swap is nearly complete, removing the final hurdle to the upcoming talks.

Details are being sorted out regarding the last batch of prisoners, about a half-dozen men who were convicted of attacks on troops from France, Australia and the United States. Because all three countries oppose their release — including the United States, despite its overall push for the release of Taliban prisoners — they will be sent to Qatar under a form of house arrest so the talks can begin.

Saleh is seen as a close adviser and confidant of President Ashraf Ghani, playing a central role in strategizing for the Taliban talks and negotiating with the United States as it tries to phase out its expensive involvement in Afghanistan.

Ghani, who secured a second term in office early this year in a disputed election, has been accused of trying to delay the talks with the Taliban, even as his government’s authority wanes in the face of an insurgency emboldened by its deal with the United States.

The insurgents have tightened their grip on Afghanistan’s highways and are accused of carrying out a wave of assassinations in Kabul to increase pressure on the government.

On Tuesday, the Taliban carried out their first large-scale

attack in nearly two decades in the northern province of Panjshir, which was the hub of resistance to the group when it controlled about 90% of Afghan territory in the 1990s.

The attack on Panjshir, which is Saleh’s home province, came 19 years to the day after the death of Ahmad Shah Massoud, a politician and guerrilla commander who had led the resistance to the Taliban there. Massoud was killed by two al-Qaida suicide bombers posing as journalists, two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Saleh is hawkish in his opposition to the Taliban, describing them primarily as a proxy for the military of neighboring Pakistan, which has served as a haven for much of the group’s senior leadership.

As vice president, he has sometimes toned down his opposition to the group, drawing a line between his public responsibility and his personal views. But he has said that any deal with the Taliban should absorb them into the existing democratic system, rejecting anything that resembles a return to their time in power, when they ruled with an iron fist and banned women from public life.

“As the vice president, I don’t want to get in the way of peace,” Saleh said last week in an interview with the Afghan channel ToloNews. “But as Amrullah Saleh, the individual, and with the past and ideology that I have, I am irreconcilable with the Taliban. It’s not possible for us to make peace, to work together.”

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Thursday, September 10, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Strike. This could be our last stand.

By FARHAD MANJOO

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abor Day hit with an extra knife-twist of cruel irony this year, in an America that is barely trying to pretend anymore that the plight of tens of millions of working people merits national concern.

On Friday, the government announced a slowing recovery from the job losses and economic shutdown caused by the pandemic. Nearly 14 million Americans are now unemployed, and almost 8 million more are euphemistically called “involuntary part-time,” meaning they would work more if there were enough work.

In March, as part of a wider stimulus, Congress expanded unemployment aid by $600 per week, a plan that scholars say may have temporarily reduced the nation’s poverty rate. As of mid-August, about 29 million Americans were receiving some form of unemployment assistance.

But the $600-per-week bonus ran out in July, and Senate Republicans have rejected Democrats’ bill to extend the payments. The GOP is now working on its own more limited plan, though several Republican senators are reluctant to support even that.

Inaction may prove disastrous. Beth Ann Bovino, chief U.S. economist for S&P Global, told The New York Times last week that federal aid was meant as a kind of economic bridge through uncertain times, but, she added, “it looks like

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the ravine has widened and the bridge is halfway built, so there are a lot of people stranded.”

Bovino’s image suggests a way out of this mess: Workers should band together and demand, collectively, a bridge across the ravine.

To put it more plainly: It’s time for a general strike. Actually, it’s time for a sustained series of strikes, a new movement in which workers across class and even political divides press not just for more unemployment aid but, more substantively, a renewed contract for working in an economy that is increasingly hostile to employees’ health and well-being.

This may be the American worker’s last stand: If we can’t get our government to help us now, when will we ever?

The political case for an expanded safety net is dropdead obvious. Through no fault of their own, because their government failed to keep the nation safe, millions of Americans have lost jobs, they have lost or may soon lose health coverage, they may lose housing, and many are going without food.

Others are facing threats not just to their livelihoods but their lives. Schoolteachers, college professors, restaurant workers, retail workers, meatpackers and others are being pushed to return to work even though it’s far from clear that doing so is safe. Millions more are suffering extreme versions of the Sisyphean task of achieving work-life balance — the high cost and lack of access to quality child care, for instance, has become a consuming worry of just about every parent in the nation.

It is well within the grasp of the mighty federal government to alleviate many of these problems, and economists generally agree that urgent federal aid would stimulate wider economic activity, benefiting even those of us who do feel economically secure. Passing extra benefits should not be a hard call; in the most terrible economic climate since the Great Depression, it is just about the least the government could do.

And yet our political system is in a state of paralysis.

Even worse, the government’s failure to mitigate this suffering is somehow not the main story of the day — nor even, it seems, a pressing issue in the presidential election. The

speaker of the House’s haircut has gotten more coverage, recently, than the millions of people looking for work.

Why has the plight of American workers received so little attention? There are some obvious reasons. For decades, corporations waged a sustained assault on labor unions.

The assault has worked. Unions were once a key voice of political advocacy for low-income Americans; their decline in membership has left them with far less political power, allowing politicians to more easily ignore working-class voters.

Yet another factor is the corrosive stratification caused by rising inequality. American workers across the class spectrum face many similar problems — expensive or inaccessible health care, child care, loosening workplace safety standards, and lax protections against being fired, among other things.

But intense ideological and class polarization limits our ability to organize across these divides. For many wealthy Americans, the recession is all but over. Even with recent dips, the stock market has recovered much of its losses. Car sales are down — but the cars that are selling are more expensive than ever before. Billionaires are doing better than ever.

These stark class divisions mean that wealthy Americans are often insulated from the plight of the poor. What does it mean to be out of work or poor in pandemic America? Nearly “one in eight households doesn’t have enough to eat,” The Times Magazine reported Sunday, alongside a searing collection of images by Brenda Ann Kenneally, a journalist who has been traversing the world’s wealthiest country to document the lives of its hungry multitudes. Our culture is now so fragmented that it’s possible to live a full life in America blissfully ignorant of our neighbors going hungry.

But I’m newly hopeful for change. For much of 2020, the labor movement has been building momentum. In May, essential workers at Amazon, Instacart and other e-commerce and delivery companies staged a one-day national strike demanding better protections and higher pay. In July, thousands of workers from a range of industries walked off the job in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

At the other end of the pay scale, professional basketball players got their league to adopt a number of socialjustice initiatives after they went on strike last month to protest racial inequality and police brutality. Last week, several large unions announced they are considering authorizing work stoppages to push for concrete measures to address racial injustice.

Strikes won’t solve our problems overnight. But in the long history of American labor, including in the civil rights movement, walkouts have been an indispensable political tool, because when they get going, they’re hard to stop. Strikes bring about economic and social change the way water channels through canyon rock — forcefully, relentlessly and with time.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

19

AAA anuncia mejoras a sistema de distribución en Canteras y reconstrucción de tanque Buena Vista en Humacao Por THE STAR a presidenta ejecutiva de la Autoridad LDoriel de Acueductos y Alcantarillados (AAA), Pagán Crespo, anunció el miérco-

les, un acuerdo colaborativo con la Oficina para el Desarrollo Socioeconómico y Comunitario (ODSEC), para iniciar el proyecto de construcción de un nuevo sistema de agua potable a los sectores Último Chance y Brisas Oriental en Canteras.

“Con este esfuerzo interagencial, le hacemos justicia a estas familias para que puedan contar con un servicio de agua adecuado. Es nuestro interés que todas las comunidades puedan contar con el preciado líquido, para beneficio de todos los que vivimos en esta isla”, manifestó la gobernadora Wanda Vázquez Garced en comunicación escrita.

“Por años, estas comunidades han experimentado problemas de presiones muy bajas hasta intermitencia del servicio durante los periodos de alto consumo. Con estas mejoras de construcción se pretende aumentar y suplir la demanda de consumo en la zona. Al concluir el nuevo sistema, las comunidades afectadas podrán contar con el servicio de agua potable con los más altos estándares que le ofrecemos a todos nuestros clientes”, expresó la presidenta.

Los sectores afectados tienen en su

mayoría una topografía plana, lo que dificulta que llegue el servicio a la zona. El sistema que se instalará será uno hidroneumático diseñado exclusivamente como parte de las mejoras al sistema de agua potable y alcantarillado en las comunidades que circundan en el Caño Martín Peña.

Se espera que la construcción del proyecto, que beneficiará a unas 150 familias de Canteras, concluya para el mes de enero del 2021. Las mejoras, ascienden a un costo de $350,632.11 de los cuales $200,000 son por parte de la AAA y los restantes $150,632 fueron aportados por ODSEC. Por su parte, el director ejecutivo de ODSEC, Jesús Vélez, manifestó que “con la ejecución de este proyecto hemos puesto la acción donde empeñamos la palabra.

Nos hemos propuesto batallar las brechas sociales que afectan a nuestra gente, crear un Puerto Rico más justo y con oportunidades para todos sus residentes”.

“Hemos sido muy activos promoviendo el que nuestra gente sea escuchada y que sus problemas sean atendidos. Con este proyecto vemos el resultado de esta colaboración y cristalizamos nuestro compromiso con cantera y Puerto Rico”, añadió.

Por otro lado, se anunció la reconstrucción del Tanque Buena Vista en Huma-

cao. Este proyecto, incluye la demolición del tanque existente y su fundación, la disposición de los escombros y desechos resultantes y la construcción de un nuevo tanque con una capacidad nominal de 350 mil galones.

Los trabajos consistirán en mejoras temporeras, aprobadas por la Agencia Estatal para el Manejo de Emergencias (FEMA, por sus siglas en inglés). Se realizará la instalación de una bomba adicional, un sistema de generación de energía de emergencia y un sistema de telemetría que permitirá el monitoreo continuo de su operación, y las roturas en las tuberías de distribución.

Del mismo modo, se realizarán mejoras permanentes que consisten en la remoción del tanque existente, demolición y construcción de nueva fundación y tanque

con una capacidad de 363,281 galones.

Los materiales del tanque están en cumplimiento con el nuevo Código de Construcción de Puerto Rico del 2018.

“En el caso de la estación Buena Vista, estamos haciendo una inversión más de $1 millón. Los trabajos se realizarán con fondos propios de la AAA y luego de completadas las obras, FEMA reembolsará el 100 por ciento en el caso de mejoras temporeras, y un 90 por ciento en las mejoras permanentes”, detalló Pagán Crespo.

“Hoy me siento más que satisfecho, primero, porque con tantas situaciones que se vive en nuestra isla, en Humacao anunciamos obra, obra que impacta a sobre 660 familias humacaeñas. FEMA aprobó y asignó los fondos para la reparación del tanque de agua que suple a las comunidades de Buena Vista, y sectores aledaños.

Nos llena de esperanza que hoy se haga realidad tan esperado proyecto para todos los humacaeños. Con una inversión de $1,191,696.00 millones comenzará pronto la construcción del nuevo tanque, que resolverá la problemática de falta de agua a los más necesitados. Fue un compromiso que hice con las comunidades y verlo que ya será realidad me llena de alegría y me reafirma aún más mi compromiso con todo mi pueblo”, indicó el alcalde de Humacao, Luis Raúl Sánchez.

Justicia radica casos contra tres imputados por supuesta apropiación ilegal de fondos PUA, fraude, entre otros Por THE STAR

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a secretaria interina del Departamento de Justicia, Inés del C. Carrau Martínez, y el director de la División de Delitos Económicos, Alexis Carlo Ríos, informaron que este miércoles, se radicaron cargos, por hechos separados, contra César Santos Mercedes, Kelvin Freytes Rivera e Ignacia Jaime Rosario por supuesta tentativa de fraude, apropiación ilegal de identidad, falsificación de documentos y tentativa de apropiación ilegal de fondos de desempleo bajo el Programa de Asistencia de Desempleo Pandémico conocido por sus siglas: PUA. El 27 de julio de 2020 en horas de la tarde, en la sucursal del Banco Popular localizada en el municipio de Toa Baja el imputado Kelvin Freytes Rivera fue arrestado, mientras supuestamente se disponía a cambiar ilegalmente un cheque correspondiente al Desempleo y PUA. El imputado presentó una identificación falsa para lo-

grar el cambio de dicho cheque. A Freytes Rivera se le radicó un cargo por el Artículo 202 – Tentativa de Fraude; y un cargo por el Artículo 215 – Falsificación de Licencia, Certificado y otra Documentación, del Código Penal de Puerto Rico.

Por otra parte, el 28 de julio de 2020, en la sucursal del Banco Popular, ubicada en la parada 26 de Santurce, fue arrestado el imputado César Santos Mercedes mientras supuestamente se disponía a cambiar ilegalmente un cheque correspondiente al Desempleo y al Programa de PUA. Santos Mercedes logró acceso a dicho cheque mediante fraude utilizando información correspondiente a otra persona y fue detectado en la sucursal al presentar una identificación falsa para lograr hacer efectivo dicho cheque. El imputado fue arrestado en el lugar de los hechos por la Policía. A Santos Mercedes se le radicó un cargo por violación al Artículo 182 – Tentativa de Apropiación Ilegal Agravada de Fondos Públicos; un cargo por el Artícu-

lo 202 – Tentativa de Fraude; dos cargos por el Artículo 209 -Apropiación Ilegal de Identidad; y un cargo por el Artículo 215 – Falsificación de Licencia, Certificado y otra Documentación, del Código Penal de Puerto Rico.

En otro caso, el 24 de agosto de 2020 la imputada Ignacia Jaime Rosario fue arrestada, en la sucursal del Banco Popular localizada en la Ave. De Diego en San Juan, cuando supuestamente se disponía a cambiar ilegalmente un cheque correspondiente al Desempleo y al Programa de PUA. A Jaime Rosario se le radicó un cargo por el Artículo 215 – Falsificación de Licencia, Certificado y otra Documentación, del Código Penal de Puerto Rico.

La investigación y radicación de estos casos estuvo a cargo de los fiscales Roxanne Rivera Carrión, Brenda Rosado Aponte y Edmanuel Santiago Quiles en conjunto a los agentes Abraham Lebrón Hernández, Emilio Pérez Quiles y Katiria Rossini Padilla de la División de Robo a Bancos y Frau-

de del Negociado de la Policía de Puerto Rico. Los mismos forman parte de una serie de casos que están bajo investigación por parte del Negociado de la Policía y del Departamento de Justicia.

La juez Jimmy Ed Sepulveda Lavergne del Tribunal de Primera Instancia de San Juan, encontró causa probable para arresto en todos los cargos presentados contra los tres imputados, uno de ellos radicado en ausencia.

A Freytes Rivera le fijaron una fianza de $10 mil y su vista preliminar fue señalada para el 22 de septiembre de 2020.

Mientras a Jaime Rosario una de $5 mil y su vista preliminar quedó señalada para el 21 de septiembre de 2020. Éstos quedaron libre bajo fianza bajo las condiciones impuestas por el Programa de Servicios con Antelación al Juicio.

A Santos Mercedes le encontraron causa en los cinco cargos presentados en ausencia, el Juez ordenó su arresto y le impuso una fianza global de $100,000.

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Thursday, September 10, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Tilda Swinton has made the ‘ultimate lockdown film’

By ELEANOR STANFORD

I

magine being shut in at home, with only the dog to talk to, waiting for something to happen and getting closer and closer to a breaking point.

That might sound like a familiar scenario after the past few months of lockdowns around the world, but it’s also the premise for Pedro Almodóvar’s new short film, “The Human Voice,” starring Tilda Swinton, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival last week.

Based — loosely — on a one-woman play by French writer Jean Cocteau, the 30-minute film was shot over nine days in Madrid in July. In it, Swinton waits in her apartment for a call from her lover to negotiate the end of their relationship, popping pills and laying elegant outfits out on the bed. When he does finally call, she puts in Apple AirPods, rather than lifting a landline telephone as actresses usually do when performing Cocteau’s play.

The project had been planned before the coronavirus lockdowns hit in March, but shooting during the pandemic has given “The Human Voice” a special resonance: Swinton called it “the ultimate lockdown film.”

In a socially distanced interview at the Venice Film Festival, during which she received a lifetime achievement award, Swinton discussed the movie’s unusual shoot and explained why she is excited about the disruptive effects of streaming services on the film industry. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Q: Watching “The Human Voice” was a very cathartic experience for me. A lot of tension builds up as your character waits around, and then there’s this eruption of violence. Did it feel cathartic to make it?

A: It was so cathartic to make a film with Pedro, because I’ve basically been dreaming of that my entire life.

And it was really wonderful to make something in July.

That was such a blessing. We were all so happy to work — and to prove to ourselves that we can do it.

We’re just going to have to evolve, and we just have to figure it out. We figured it out with this movie: We’re in a studio; we’re with a relatively small crew; it’s entirely controlled; we were constantly tested. And we just did it.

Q: How did being on a film set again feel?

A: It was like having held your breath underwater for a long time.

I’m finding the most borderline traumatic things are the things that are similar: If everything was completely different, it might be easier to adapt, but when things are anything like what you recognize from before March, it is confusing, and confusion is very exhausting.

So after a millisecond of realizing there were going to be crew members I will never recognize without their masks, we just approached shooting a film the way we always would have shot it: A few things are going to change in this new world, and so much more is not going

The actress Tilda Swinton in Venice, Italy, Sept. 3, 2020.

In a socially distanced interview at the Venice Film Festival, during which she received a lifetime achievement award, Swinton discussed her new movie’s unusual shoot and explained why she is excited about the disruptive effects of streaming services on the film industry. to change.

Q: Did you learn anything unexpected during lockdown?

A: Nothing’s new under the sun. During lockdown — and this has been the first, but there may be more — there was an opportunity to reflect on all we have. My mantra at the moment is that we have what we need, we just need to look and see it.

Q: And what did you miss most?

A: Everybody missed big screen cinema in a way that they missed very little else. That was — and still is — a thing that we have to rally around.

Just that sharpening of that appetite for the bigger screen. Feeling that it might be months before I’d get a chance to be in a theater again, that was really sore. Just the sharpening of that dependence.

Q: It does almost sound like an addiction!

A: Well, for some of us, it is.

The thing that’s becoming clear is that it’s not about what’s on the screen, it’s the screen itself, and it’s being in that audience.

Q: The Berlin Film Festival recently announced it was getting rid of gendered categories for its acting prizes — next year, there’ll be no more “Best Actor” and “Best Actress,” just “Best Lead Performance” and “Best Supporting.” What do you think about that?

A: Duh, is what I would say to that. I’ve been saying “duh” for 30 years now, but these things take time. We’re just slowly figuring it out.

I think it is about identity — that’s the nub of it. I’m an optimist, and I believe in intelligence, and I do believe people are starting to understand how commodified, compartmentalized identity works in society — like in the case of gender — and that it is to be resisted.

That kind of compartmentalization, it’s not our original state. It’s something that’s learned, and we can move beyond it, and that’s what a gesture like Berlin’s gesture, which I have no doubt will be adopted everywhere, starts to do. These little gestures here and there just make small adjustments.

I think it’s going to be like when they brought in compulsory seat belts in the U.K., and there were so many people outraged about their civil liberties, and then the day after the law came into effect, everybody buckled up and got on with it, and it was fine.

Q: When you accepted your lifetime achievement award here at Venice, you said you were just getting started. What’s next?

A: I’ve been working on an essay film about learning for a while now, but we’re back to the drawing board, because what was a relatively esoteric, niche inquiry about “What should a school be?” is now something everybody’s asking, now that people have to think about home-schooling or just be deprived of school.

Through my experience of working with the school I co-founded (which is modeled on outdoor, student-led learning), I’ve realized we no longer need a school for information sharing. You can educate yourself via your phone, so then the question is: what did children miss about school during lockdown, what do they value school for? This is an opportunity to really shake it up, and I’m glad the film can be asking these questions.

Q: Cate Blanchett, the Venice jury president, and Alberto Barbera, the festival’s artistic director, both used speeches here to caution that the rise of streaming services, especially during lockdown, is a threat to cinema.

Do you share that worry?

A: I really don’t. I never have. It will just mean that we have to stay supple and limber: Cinema can do it. I’m all for necessity being the mother of invention. I’m actually, if anything, excited. Bring it on.

I’ve heard people be worried for a few years now, and then in the pandemic, a very interesting thing happens. On the one hand, those concerns become amplified, but, at the same time, look what happens: Everyone is longing to go to the cinema. I don’t think there’ll ever be a time when people don’t want to go and sit in a big space in the dark.

The issue, as with so much that’s coming to the fore now, is money and capitalism, and there is this whole question of financing films. People are just going to have to get lively, and roll up their sleeves and figure it out.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

21

Academy explains diversity rules for best picture Oscar

By NICOLE SPERLING

I

n June, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which oversees the Oscars, said it would add a diversity component to the Oscar race. On Tuesday, it explained how it’s going to work.

Beginning in 2024 with the 96th Oscars, films hoping to qualify for the best picture category will have to meet inclusion standards both on camera and behind the scenes.

To meet the on-screen representation standard, at least one of the lead actors or a significant supporting actor must be from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, whether that means Asian, Hispanic, Black, Indigenous, Native American, Middle Eastern, North African, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.

There are alternatives: Thirty percent of all actors in secondary or more minor roles could come from two of the following categories: women, LGBTQ, an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, or those with cognitive or physical disabilities. Or the main storyline must focus on an underrepresented group.

The move is part of a continuing effort to improve inclusion both within the organization and in the movies it honors. Over the years, the academy has come under fire for presenting all-white acting slates at nomination time, a fault many attribute to both the homogeneous makeup of the organization and the industry at large. These standards are meant to address the broader industry issues.

“The aperture must widen to reflect our diverse global

To take the top Oscar, filmmakers will have to explain how their productions reflected diversity on camera and off. population in both the creation of motion pictures and in the audiences who connect with them,” the academy’s president, David Rubin, and chief executive, Dawn Hudson, said in a statement, adding that the pending standards will “be a catalyst for long-lasting, essential change in our industry.”

Beginning in 2022, for the 94th Oscars and again in 2023 for the 95th Oscars, each best picture candidate must first submit a confidential academy inclusion standard form to be considered eligible — a baby step, if you will, to get the industry thinking more about inclusion.

Then in 2024, to qualify, a film must meet two of four standards in areas of on-screen representation, off-screen creative leadership, apprenticeship opportunities for mem-

bers of underrepresented groups and diversity in the ranks of the marketing and distribution departments.

Other standards involve filling the ranks behind the scenes with women or people of color; offering both paid apprenticeships and training opportunities to those in underrepresented groups; or hiring multiple senior executives from those groups at either the studio or the film company charged with marketing and distributing the films.

The standards will be enforced via spot checks of sets and through dialogue between the academy and a movie’s filmmakers and distributors.

Two academy governors — the producer DeVon Franklin and Paramount Pictures’ chairman and chief executive, Jim Gianopulos — headed up the task force to develop the standards. They took their inspiration from the British Film Institute, which in 2019 became the first major awards body to introduce diversity and inclusion criteria as part of its eligibility requirements.

In recent years, the academy has made efforts to diversify its membership in response to #OscarsSoWhite, a hashtag that emerged after the organization did not nominate any actors of color for Academy Awards two years in a row.

Academy leaders vowed to double the number of people of color and women members by 2020, a milestone they hit this summer when they invited 819 new members including the actresses Awkwafina and Zendaya to join. The organization is still predominantly white (81%) and male (67%).

In June, it announced that it would delay the 93rd Academy Awards to April 25.

Virtual New Yorker Festival will host Chris Rock and Elizabeth Warren

By SARAH BAHR

A

little under a month before Americans cast their ballots, they can be a fly on the wall for a conversation between Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The Democratic lawmakers will be interviewed together by The New Yorker’s Andrew Marantz as part of the 21st New Yorker Festival, which will, for the first time, be a mostly virtual affair. A dozen talks, panels and performances will be livestreamed on the festival website from Oct. 5 to 11.

This year’s lineup is packed with stars like Chris Rock, Steve Martin, Yo-Yo Ma and Ira Glass. Attendees will also get a chance to hear from Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been largely absent from national television since May. He will talk with Michael Specter, a science writer.

Noah Hawley, the creator of the FX series “Fargo,” which returns Sept. 27, and Rock, this season’s star, will be interviewed by journalist Doreen St. Félix. Comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Steve Martin will be in dialogue with Susan Morrison, an editor at the magazine.

Viewers will also get the chance to hear several per-

formances. Cellist Ma and pianist Emanuel Ax will play following a chat with Alex Ross, The New Yorker’s music critic.

Fiona Apple, who released her first album in nearly a decade last spring, will perform after a chat with Emily Nussbaum, who profiled her in March.

Maya Rudolph, the actor and comedian who portrays the Democratic vice-presidential contender Kamala Harris on “Saturday Night Live,” will be interviewed alongside Natasha Lyonne, who starred in the Netflix series “Russian Doll.” And Elizabeth Alexander, the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will talk with civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson about social justice, in a free community event.

The festival will also host the premiere of Regina King’s directorial debut, “One Night in Miami,” at the Queens Drive-In on Oct. 11, at 8 p.m. The film, which explores a pivotal moment in the early life of Muhammad Ali, will be followed by a prerecorded conversation among King, Kemp Powers (who wrote the screenplay and the stage play the film is based on) and The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick.

Attendees in the New York area can also order a dinner created by Harlem-based chefs Pierre Thiam and JJ Johnson any day that week. Streaming access to a prerecorded con-

versation with Thiam, Johnson and The New Yorker’s food critic, Hannah Goldfield, is included with the purchase.

Events will be available to stream through Oct. 13. A full lineup is at newyorker.com/festival.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren will be featured in conversation with The New Yorker’s Andrew Marantz, in the 21st New Yorker Festival.

22

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

In a big box-office test, ‘Tenet’ grosses $20 million

John David Washington, left, and Robert Pattinson in “Tenet.”

By BROOKS BARNES

W

arner Bros. said on Sunday that Christopher Nolan’s hotly anticipated “Tenet” collected an estimated $20.2 million in wide release at North American theaters over the weekend and in previews. It was Hollywood’s best domestic result since mid-March, when the coronavirus pandemic forced cinemas to close.

With the coronavirus still spreading widely in the United States — Friday and Saturday brought 93,908 new reported infections — the arrival of “Tenet” was seen as a crucial test for Hollywood. Big turnout?

All systems go for movies scheduled for release this fall, including “Wonder Woman 1984” and the latest James Bond extravaganza, “No Time to Die.” Sparse? Perhaps better to push big-budget movies into next year (and pray for a vaccine) or reroute them to streaming services, as Disney did with “Mulan,” which was made available to Disney+ subscribers on Friday for $30.

The outcome was not quite definitive.

David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a film consultancy, assessed the domestic turnout for “Tenet” as “fair.”

“Audience concern with theater safety remains a deterrent,” he said in an email.

“‘Tenet’ is a strong release, and Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. deserve enormous credit for their effort. For now, this is as good as it gets.”

He estimated that “Tenet” would have collected about $50 million over its first three days under normal circumstances.

“Tenet” cost roughly $200 million to make, not including marketing costs. Ticket sales are typically split 50-50 between studios and cinemas, but Warner Bros. was able to negotiate a 65% share, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In a statement, Toby Emmerich, chair of the Warner Bros. Pictures Group, credited Nolan with the film’s “box office success” and thanked movie theater owners for being “unwavering in their commitment to a safe theatrical experience.”

The studio noted that “Tenet” has been received enthusiastically overseas, where ticket sales total $129 million after two weeks and public health conditions are mostly better than in the United States. “Tenet” collected $30 million in China over its first three days, a record for a film directed

by Nolan.

Roughly 35% of U.S. cinemas remain closed. Three states — New York, New Mexico and North Carolina — have not permitted any theaters to reopen, along with most of California and parts of Washington,

Michigan and Oregon. That means more than 70 million Americans live in areas where government officials say that moviegoing remains too dangerous, even with theaters promoting a wide array of safety procedures: capacity limited to 50% or less, aggressive cleaning, masks required except when eating or drinking.

Theater chains are still working to reopen locations in some states that have lifted restrictions. AMC Entertainment, for instance, was only able to reopen two of its 27 locations in New Jersey by Friday, with the remainder scheduled to begin operating again by Sept. 10.

“Tenet” did not play in drive-in theaters in areas where indoor theaters remain closed, prompting some fans to fly out of state to see it. Warner withheld the film from certain drive-in cinemas to protect eventual ticket sales at indoor theaters in those markets. Concerns about piracy, keeping the plot under wraps and sound quality also played a role.

“Tenet” stars John David Washington (“BlacKkKlansman”), Robert Pattinson (“Twilight”) and Elizabeth Debecki (“The Night Manager”) in a highly complex, timebending story that involves a race to prevent a catastrophic world event. The film, shot in seven countries using IMAX cameras, is rated PG-13 and runs 2 hours, 30 minutes.

(In awkward timing, Pattinson tested positive for the coronavirus late last week while filming “The Batman,” another Warner Bros. movie.)

Reviews for the film have been strong, with critics enraptured with the visual splendor created by Nolan and his cinematographer, Hoyte Van Hoytema. But many critics also found the cerebral plot confusing. About 74% of appraisals were positive, according to Rotten Tomatoes. For context, reviews for “Dunkirk” were 92% positive.

IMAX said that “Tenet” provided $11.1 million in global ticket sales over the weekend — a new high-water mark for the chain for September, which is typically a sleepy month for visual spectacles. “It proves that there is a lot of pent-up demand,” Richard Gelfond, IMAX’s chief executive, said by phone on Sunday. “Where theaters are open and people feel safe, they want to go.”

Gelfond noted that “Dunkirk,” No-

lan’s previous film, was a big performer for IMAX in North America in 2017. Out of the 10 best-performing IMAX locations for “Dunkirk,” however, only two (the Scotiabank theater complex in Toronto and Opry Mills in Nashville, Tennessee) were open to show “Tenet.” “Dunkirk,” a war drama that cost an estimated $100 million to make, arrived to $50.5 million in domestic ticket sales and ultimately collected $190 million.

Before “Tenet” arrived, Warner Bros. worked to tamp down opening-weekend expectations. Ann Sarnoff, who runs WarnerMedia’s studios and networks group, on Thursday gave interviews to a spate of news outlets, offering the same message to Variety, Deadline and The Los Angeles Times: While all of Nolan’s previous big-budget films have been instant blockbusters, financial success for this one will be “a marathon, not a sprint.”

Warner Bros. supported “Tenet” with a marketing campaign that relied heavily on internet video and social media. In late May, for instance, the studio unveiled a trailer for the film inside Fortnite, the online video game. Traditional television commercials ran during CNN’s coverage of the Democratic National Convention, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and ESPN’s basketball coverage, according to iSpot.tv, an ad measurement firm.

Even Tom Cruise played pitchman, tweeting a 34-second video of himself going to see “Tenet” in a theater in London.

The tweet arrived on the day before “Tenet” was released in most of Europe. “Great to be back in a movie theater!” he said through a black mask. (Translation: If theaters are safe enough for Tom Cruise, they are safe enough for you.)

The decision to move forward with a theatrical release prompted debate among prominent film critics.

“I have a lot of patience with Nolan’s high-priest-of-cinema routine, his ardent defense of the theatrical moviegoing experience in a world of iPhones, streaming platforms and now coronavirus,” critic Justin Chang wrote in The Los Angeles Times on Aug. 20. “I also wish that, in a life-or-death situation, he and Warner Bros. weren’t thrusting ‘Tenet’ and its theaters-only release strategy so insistently into the spotlight.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

23

AstraZeneca pauses vaccine trial for safety review

By KATHERINE J. WU and KATIE THOMAS

T

he pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca halted large, late-stage global trials of its coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday because of a serious suspected adverse reaction in a participant, the company said. It is not yet known whether the reaction was directly caused by the company’s vaccine or was coincidental.

The pause, which was first reported by STAT, will allow AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish company, to conduct a safety review and investigate whether the vaccine caused the illness.

How long the hold will last is unclear.

Drug companies are racing to complete a coronavirus vaccine that could bring an end to a pandemic that has already claimed more than 890,000 lives globally. AstraZeneca is a front-runner, with late-stage clinical trials underway around the world, and has said it hoped to have a vaccine ready before the end of the year. If the cause of the reaction turns out to be related to the vaccine, those efforts could be derailed.

Late-stage vaccine testing remains crucial, as large trials can turn up rare but serious side effects that would surface only if many thousands of people received a vaccine.

“This is the whole point of doing these Phase 2, Phase 3 trials,” said Dr. Phyllis Tien, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco. “We need to assess safety, and we won’t know the efficacy part until much later. I think halting the trial until the safety board can figure out whether or not this was directly related to the vaccine is a good idea.”

President Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed for the approval of a vaccine by Election Day, Nov. 3. On Tuesday nine companies, including AstraZeneca, made a joint pledge to “stand with science” on coronavirus vaccines, reaffirming that they would not move forward with such products before thoroughly vetting them for safety and efficacy.

In a statement, AstraZeneca described the trial’s halt, which was instituted voluntarily, as a “routine action which has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials, while it is investigated, ensuring we maintain the integrity of the trials.”

The company said that in large trials like the ones it is overseeing, participants do sometimes become sick by chance “but must be independently reviewed to check this carefully.”

The company said it was “working to expedite the review of the single event to minimize any potential impact on the trial timeline,” and reaffirmed its commitment “to the safety of our participants and the highest standards of conduct in our trials.”

A spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration declined to comment.

A person familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the participant who experienced the suspected adverse reaction had been enrolled in a Phase 2/3 trial based in the United Kingdom. The individual also said that a volunteer in the U.K. trial had received a di-

Because of safety concerns, AstraZeneca paused late-stage trials of its coronavirus vaccine, which is being tested in locations like São Paolo, Brazil. agnosis of transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and is often sparked by viral infections.

However, the timing of this diagnosis, and whether it was directly linked to AstraZeneca’s vaccine, is still unknown.

Transverse myelitis can result from a number of causes that set off the body’s inflammatory responses, said Dr. Gabriella Garcia, a neurologist at Yale New Haven Hospital. But, she added, the condition is often treatable with steroids.

AstraZeneca declined to comment on the location of the participant and did not confirm the diagnosis of transverse myelitis. “The event is being investigated by an independent committee, and it is too early to conclude the specific diagnosis,” the company said.

Some said the company’s halt was evidence that the process was working as it should.

“At this stage, we don’t know if the events that triggered the hold are related to vaccination,” said Dr. Luciana Borio, who oversaw public health preparedness for the National Security Council under Trump and who was acting chief scientist at the FDA under President Barack Obama. “But it is important for them to be thoroughly investigated.”

AstraZeneca’s vaccine uses a viral vector that ferries coronavirus genes into human cells. The viral vector in this case is a modified chimpanzee adenovirus, altered to render it harmless to people. The coronavirus components of the vaccine are intended to spark a protective immune response that

would be roused again should the actual coronavirus try to infect a vaccinated individual.

In a paper published in The Lancet in July, researchers behind AstraZeneca’s formulation reported that the majority of participants in the vaccine’s Phase 1/2 trials, which are designed to assess the product’s safety, had experienced some mild or moderate side effects, including muscle aches and chills. None of the reactions, however, were considered severe or life-threatening, and resolved quickly. The vaccine was deemed safe enough to proceed to further testing.

AstraZeneca’s vaccine is in Phase 2/3 trials in England and India, and in Phase 3 trials in Brazil, South Africa and more than 60 sites in the United States. The company intended for its U.S. enrollment to reach 30,000, and started its American trials on Aug. 31.

Phase 3 trials evaluate whether vaccine candidates protect people from infection or severe disease compared to a placebo.

Among FDA-approved vaccines, serious side effects are extremely rare. If identified in late-stage trials, these events can factor strongly in the agency’s decision whether to greenlight a product.

AstraZeneca is one of three companies whose vaccines are in late-stage clinical trials in the United States. One of those companies, Moderna, said on Tuesday that the pause by AstraZeneca had not affected its own trial.

24

Thursday, September 10, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

These black holes shouldn’t exist, but there they are

An image provided by the Max Planck Institute shows a simulation of the black hole merger GW190521, which resulted in a chirp heard 7 billion years later by the LIGO and Virgo antennas.

By DENNIS OVERBYE

W

ell, that was some clash of the heavyweights.

Astronomers reported last week that they had detected the loudest, most massive and most violent collision yet between a pair of black holes. Two Goliaths of darkness crashed into each other 7 billion years ago, vibrating space-time and producing a loud, sharp chirp — almost a bang, one astronomer said — lasting just one-tenth of a second in the antennas of the Laser Interferometer GravitationalWave Observatory and the Virgo interferometer observatory.

That short signal from a galaxy far, far away has left astrophysicists with new questions about how black holes form and grow.

Daniel Holz, a theorist at the University of Chicago and a member of the LIGO team, called the new discovery “the first LIGO/Virgo detection that’s truly surprising. All the other binary systems that we’ve detected fit reasonably well within expectations. But the black holes in this event aren’t supposed to exist!”

One and perhaps both of the colliding holes were too massive to have been produced by the collapse of a star, according to conventional theories. Moreover, the merger created an even larger black hole, 142 times as massive as the sun, belonging to a whole new category of intermediate-mass, or “missing link,” black holes never reliably seen before.

“Another discovery from the worldwide gravitationalwave detector network that rewrites what we know about our universe,” Zsuzsanna Marka, an astrophysicist at Columbia University who works on LIGO, wrote in an email.

Janna Levin, a cosmologist at Barnard College who is

not part of the LIGO group, added: “Yes! I’ve been waiting for something like this since I first became interested in gravitational waves.”

The event unfolded at an almost unimaginable distance from Earth — 17 billion light-years away according to standard cosmological calculations that describe an expanding universe. One black hole with 85 times the mass of the sun, and a second with 66 solar masses, collided, creating a black hole 142 times as massive as the sun.

Another eight or so suns’ worth of mass and energy disappeared into gravitational waves, ripples of the space-time fabric, in a split second of frenzy, ringing the universe like a bell on the morning of May 21, 2019.

An international team of scientists who compose the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration reported their findings in two papers published Wednesday in Physical Review Letters and The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Their papers largely affirm a preliminary analysis of the event, known as GW190521 (after the date when it was recorded), made by a group outside the collaborations. In June, a team led by Matthew Graham of the California Institute of Technology, going on publicly available data, ran a preliminary analysis, hoping to beat the LIGO and Virgo groups to the answer.

Using a telescope in California called the Zwicky Transient Facility, or ZTF, Graham’s team detected a flash of light that could have been caused by the newly formed black hole racing through a disk of dense gas surrounding the center of a faraway galaxy.

They predicted that a final analysis would show that the

combined masses of the colliding black holes would exceed 100 solar masses, and that the resulting black hole would spin wildly and have a large recoil velocity.

“This is exactly what LIGO is now reporting,” Graham wrote in an email. “This is a great discovery from LIGO and provides strong evidence in support of the merger model and environment that we have been promoting.”

Most known black holes are the corpses of massive stars that have died and collapsed catastrophically into nothing: dark things a few times as massive as the sun. But galaxies harbor black holes millions or billions of times more massive than that. How these objects can grow so big is an abiding mystery of astronomy.

Until recently there had been scant evidence of black holes of intermediate sizes, with 100 to 100,000 solar masses.

The black hole created in the GW190521 merger is the first solid example of this missing link.

“I was searching for heavy black holes for 15 years and here it is!” Sergey Klimenko, a physicist at the University of Florida, wrote in an email. “This discovery is a milestone in gravitational wave astronomy.”

As a result, he said, astronomers may have glimpsed the process by which the universe builds black holes, transforming pipsqueaks into leviathans like the one in the galaxy M87 that was the first ever imaged.

“This is the first and only firm/secure mass measurement of an intermediate mass black hole at the time of its birth,” Vicky Kalogera, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University, wrote in an email. “Now we know reliably at least one way” these objects can form, “through the merger of other black holes.”

This merger process could be an important clue to the origin of the heavier of the two black holes that collided in June. That black hole had a mass of 85 suns, and it should not have been existed, according to standard astrophysical logic.

Black holes with masses between about 50 and 120 suns cannot be formed, at least from a dying star, so the story and the calculations go.

In stars massive enough to make such a beastly hole, the interior grows so hot when collapsing that light spontaneously creates pairs of electrons and positrons. This makes the star even hotter, which produces more particles, in a runaway reaction that results in a particularly violent explosion called a pair-instability supernova. Such a conflagration leaves nothing behind.

“No neutron star,” Holz said. “No black hole. Nothing.”

He mentioned the black hole in GW190521 with 85 solar masses: “The bigger black hole is right smack in the middle of the region where black holes don’t belong. Nature seems to have ignored all of our careful theoretical calculations arguing that black holes of this mass don’t exist.”

He added: “A discovery like this is simultaneously disheartening and exhilarating. On the one hand, one of our cherished beliefs has been proven wrong. On the other hand, here’s something new and unexpected, and now the race is on to try to figure out what is going on.”

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

LEGACY MORTGAGE ASSET TRUST 2019-GS5 Demandante vs.

MIGUEL A. GUIOT TORRES Y ELBA L. SANTIAGO RIVERA Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Parte Demandada CIVIL NUM: HU2019CV01856.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICDemandados CIVIL NUM. SJ2020CV00493. TO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE POR LA VIA ORDINARIA. EM- ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS. PLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. A: MIGUEL A. GUIOT ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRITORRES Y ELBA L. CA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS SANTIAGO RIVERA Y ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS. DE GANANCIALES

MARISOL AYALA-FELICIANO

A: MARISOL AYALA-FELICIANO

Queden emplazados y notificados que en este Tribunal se ha radicado Demanda sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca, en la que se alega que usted(es) le adeuda(n) a la demandante lo siguiente: La suma de $164,276.49 de principal mas los intereses sobre dichas sumas devengados desde el día 1 de marzo de 2017, más aquellos a devengarse hasta el pago total de la deuda a razón 6.50000% anual, mas las primas de seguro hipotecario y riesgo, recargos por demora y cualesquiera otras cantidades pactadas en la escritura de hipoteca desde la fecha antes mencionada y hasta la fecha del total pago de las mismas, mas la suma estipulada de $17,200.00 por concepto de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado incurridos por concepto de un préstamo .hipotecario, se advierte que si no contesta(n) la demanda, radicando el original de la contestación en este Tribunal y enviando copia de la contestación a Lcda. Edmy Cortijo Villock 1515 South Federal Highway, Suite 100, Boca Raton, FL 33432, teléfono 877-338-4101, dentro del término de treinta (30) días de la publicación de este Edicto, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia en su contra, - concediendo el remedio solicitado, sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPEDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el sello de este Tribunal, en San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy 26 de agosto de 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria. LUZ E FERNANDEZ Del Valle, SubSecretaria.

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

PALMAS DEL MAR HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION, INC. Parte Demandante v.

@

COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

POR LA PRESENTE , se les emplaza y requiere para que notifiquen a: GONZÁLEZ & MORALES LAW OFFICES, LLC PO BOX 10242 HUMACAO, PR 00792 TELÉFONO: (787) 852-4422 FACSÍMIL: (787) 285-4425 Email: jrg@gonzalezmorales .com abogados de la parte demandante, cuya dirección es la que deja indicada, con copia de su Contestación a la Demanda, copia de la cual le es servida en este caso, dentro de los TREINTA (30) días de haber sido diligenciado este Emplazamiento , excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Debe saber que en caso de no hacerlo así podrá dictarse Sentencia en Rebeldía en contra suya, concediendo el remedio solicitado en la demanda , o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal , en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente .

EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el Sello del Tribunal, hoy día 4 de septiembre de 2020. Ivelisse C. Fonseca Rodriguez, Sec Regional Auxiliar. Michelle Guevara De Leon, Sec Auxiliar.

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

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante vs.

SUCESION DE ROBERTO ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ GARCIA, compuesta por FULANO DE TAL y

DEMANDANTES VS. ZUTANO DE TAL, como La Sucesión de herederos desconocidos Genoveba Valentín Lugo con posible interés; compuesta por; Pedro YOLANDA RODRIGUEZ García Valentín, Rafael RODRIGUEZ, por sí y en García Valentín, Julio cuanto a la cuota viudal usufructuaria; CENTRO García Valentín y Dennis García Valentín. Andrea DE RECAUDACION DE Valentín Lugo; Nilda INGRESOS MUNICIPALES Margarita Valentín Lugo; (“CRIM”) La Sucesión de Carmen Demandado (a) Civil Núm.: SJ2018CV10474.

Zaida Valentín Lugo Sala: 506. SOBRE: COBRO compuesta por; Judith DE DINERO (EJECUCIÓN DE Borrero Valentín, Evelyn HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA). NOTIFICACIÓN DE Borrero Valentín y Dargie SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. Borrero Valentín. La A: YOLANDA RODRIGUEZ Sucesión de Luis Manuel RODRIGUEZ, por sí y Valentín Lugo, compuesta en cuanto a la cuota por: Luis Manuel Valentín viudal usufructuaria de la Rodríguez; Christine SUCESION DE ROBERTO Marie Valentín Rodríguez; ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ John Luis Valentín GARCIA; FULANO DE TAL Morales y su viuda Y ZUTANO DE TAL, como Gloria María Molina De herederos desconocidos Valentín; La Sucesión de la SUCESION DE de Juan Caliope, C/P ROBERTO ANTONIO Juan, Calio de Apellidos RODRIGUEZ GARCIA. Valentín Lugo compuesta EL SECRETARIO (A) que suscripor: Cristina Valentín be le notifica a usted que el 3 de Ortiz, Sandra Valentín septiembre de 2020 este Tribunal Ortiz, C/P Sandra ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Lee Valentín, Anette Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente Josephine Valentín Ortiz, registrada y archivada en autos C/P Aneette Josephine donde podrá usted enterarse Valentín, Juan Américo detalladamente de los términos Valentín Ortiz, C/P Juan de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un Américo Valentín y su periódico de circulación general Viuda Carmen Nereida en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro Ortiz C/P Carmen N. Ortiz de los diez (10) días siguientes a Rodríguez La Sucesión su notificación. Y, siendo o repreEdilberto, C/P Heriberto sentando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los térmi- Valentín Lugo, compuesta nos de la Sentencia, Sentencia por: Rolando Valentín Parcial o Resolución, de la cual Lyon, Estrella Valentín puede establecerse recurso de Lyon, María Valentín revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a Lyon, Esperanza Valentín partir de la publicación por edicto Lyon, Heriberto Valentín de esta notificación, dirijo a usMontijo, Noel Valentín ted esta notificación que se conMontijo, John C/P Joe siderará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia Valentín Montijo, Fulana de esta notificación ha sido archi- De Tal Viuda De Heriberto vada en los autos de este caso, Valentín Lugo. con fecha de 4 de septiembre de 2020. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 4 de septiembre de 2020.

Griselda Rodriguez Collado, Secretario Regional. Angela M. Rivera Hernández, Secretano(a) Auxiliar.

Thursday, September 10, 2020 La Sucesión de Carmen MIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL Zaida Valentín Lugo PRESIDENTE DE LOS E.U. EL compuesta por; Judith ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE Borrero Valentín, Evelyn PUERTO RICO. ss.

Borrero Valentín, Dargie A: LUIS ÁNGEL Borrero Valentín; La BÁEZ RAMOS Sucesión de Luis Manuel 4637 CA VERNS DRIVE Valentín Lugo, compuesta KISSIMMEE, FL 34758-2504 por: Luis Manuel Valentín Por la presente se notifica que la parte demandante de epígrafe, Rodríguez, Christine ha presentado ante este Tribunal Marie Valentín Rodríguez, una demanda sobre DIVORCIO John Luis Valentín en su contra, según surge de las Morales y su viuda Gloria alegaciones de la demanda en el María Molina De Valentín; caso de epígrafe. Se le requiere para que notifique con copia de La Sucesión de Juan su contestación a la demanda Caliope, C/P Juan, Calio al abogado de la parte demande Apellidos Valentín dante , cuyo nombre, dirección y Lugo compuesta por; teléfono, son los que se indican a Sandra Valentín Ortiz, continuación: F/LCDO. ELVIN OJEDA BONILLA C/P Sandra Lee Valentín, COLEGIADO NUM. 16859 / RUA 15583 Anette Josephine Valentín APARTADO 288 Ortiz, C/P Aneette CABO ROJO, PUERTO RICO 00623 Josephine Valentín, TEL.: 787-851-4226/ CEL.: 787-638-8963 Juan Américo Valentín C.E.: lcdo.ojeda@gmail.com Ortiz, C/P Juan Américo Se le apercibe que si no compaValentín. reciere usted a contestar dicha

Por la presente se le emplaza y requiere para que comparezca en el presente caso y exprese su posición respecto a la Demanda de División, Partición y Adjudicación de Herencia, dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto, radicando el original de su posición o comparecencia ante el Tribunal correspondiente y notificando con copia al abogado de la parte demandante, cuyo nombre y dirección se consigna de inmediato: Lcdo. Noel A. Arce Bosques Calle Muñoz Rivera #10 Lares, Puerto Rico 00669 Tel.: 787-897-3112 Fax: 787-897-8949 Email: noelarce@gmail.com Se le apercibe que de no contestar la comparecer, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia según Demanda de epígrafe sobre Demanda de División, Partición y Adjudicación de Herencia, según solicitado en la demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Lares, Puerto Rico, hoy 2 de diciembre de 2019. DIANE ALVAREZ VILLANUEVA, SECRETARIA REGIONAL I. YENITZA PEREZ BALLESTER, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL.

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM.: LAC-2011-0003.

SOBRE: DIVISION, PARTICION Y ADJUDICACION DE HERENCIA. EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRELEGAL NOTICE SIDENTE DE LOS E.E.U.U. EL Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE LEGAL NOTICE Rico TRIBUNAL PRIMERA INSPR. SS. ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE TANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE A: La Sucesión de PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE MAYAGÜEZ. PRIMER INSTANCIA SALA SU- Genoveba Valentín Lugo ALICIA LACOURT PÉREZ PERIOR DE UTUADO. compuesta por; Pedro Parte Demandante vs

La Sucesión de Julio C. García Valentín, Rafael Valentín Lugo, compuesta García Valentín, Julio por Elba Iris Valentín Rey; García Valentín y Dennis Ramonita Valentín Rey y García Valentín; Nilda Julio Cesar Valentín Rey. Margarita Valentín Lugo;

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

(787) 743-3346

LUIS ÁNGEL BÁEZ RAMOS

demanda dentro del término de 30 días a partir de la publicación del Edicto, excluyéndose el día de la publicación, podrá dictarse sentencia en rebeldía en su contra concediendo el remedio solicitado en la demanda o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.pr/ sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaria del Tribunal. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, a 22 de junio de 2020. Lic . Norma G. Santana lrizarry, Sec Regional II.

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

ORIENTAL BANK DEMANDANTE vs.

SIMON ELLIS CARL BAEYERTZ

DEMANDADO CIVIL NUM: SJ2019CV11029.

SALA: 604. SOBRE: COBRO DE DI ERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE IPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRÍCA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU. ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS.

A: SIMON ELLIS

The San Juan Daily Star radicado una demanda de ejecución de hipoteca en su contra. Se le notifica que deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Mane o y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.prs, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala de San Juan y enviando copia a la parte demandante: Lcdo. Baldomero A. Collazo Torres, PO BOX 70212, San Juan, Puerto Rico 009368212 / Doral Bank Plaza, Calle Resolución #33, Esquina Avenida F.D. Roosevelt, Oficina 201, San Juan, Puerto Rico 009202727, Tel. (787) 625-9999, Fax (787) 705-7387, Correo electrónico: bcollazo@lawpr.com. Se le apercibe y notifica que si no contestan la demand radicada en su contra dentro del término de treinta (30) días de la publicación de est edicto, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado en la demanda, sin más citárseles, ni oírseles. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, a 4 de marzo de 2020. Griselda Rodríguez Collado, Secretaria Regional. Por: Danilsa Ortiz Ramos, Secretaria Servicios a Sala.

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

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante vs.

JORGE WENCESLAO PEREZ VENTO y su esposa MAGAL Y MODESTA VALDES GARCIA y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales compuesta por ambos; ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA

Demandados CIVIL NÚM. CG2020CV00534 (702). SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO (Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria). ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: JORGE WENCESLAO PEREZ VENTO y su esposa MAGALY MODESTA VALDES GARCIA, por sí y como co-administradores de la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales compuesta por ambos

Parte Demandada CARL BAEYERTZ POR EL PRESENTE EDICTO Civil Número: CB2020RF00024. Queda emplazado y notificado se Je notifica que se ha radicado Sobre: DIVORCIO (RUPTURA de que en este Tribunal se ha en esta Secretaría por la parte IRREPARABLE).

EMPLAZA-

demandante, Demanda sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria en la que se alega adeuda la suma principal de $127,69 l.61, intereses al 4.50% anual, desde el día lro de septiembre; hasta su completo pago, más la cantidad de $18,584.00 estipulada para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado, más recargos acumulados, todas cuyas sumas están liquidas y exigibles. La propiedad hipotecada a ser vendida en pública subasta es: URBANA: Solar marcado con el número Nueve (9) del Bloque “H” de la URBANIZACIÓN HACIENDA BORINQUEN, radicado en el Barrio Tomás de Castro del término municipal de Caguas, Puerto Rico, con una cabida de CUATROCIENTOS PUNTO CUARENTA (400.40) METROS CUADRADOS. En linderos: NORTE, en una distancia de veintiocho punto cero cero (28.00) metros, con el solar número Ocho (8) del Bloque “H” de la Urbanización; SUR, en una distancia de veintiocho punto cero cero (28.00) metros, con el solar número Diez (10) del Bloque “H” de la Urbanización; ESTE, en una distancia de catorce punto treinta metros, con la Calle Palma de la Urbanización; y por el OESTE, en una distancia de catorce punto treinta (14.30) metros, con el solar número (18) del Bloque “H” de la Urbanización. Enclava una vivienda una sola familia. La escritura de hipoteca se encuentra inscrita al folio 168 del tomo l 691 de Caguas, Sección Primera, finca número 56,309, inscripción octava. POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los treinta (30) días de haber sido publicado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día de la publicación. 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: https://unired.ramaiudicial.pr/sumac/ salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal y enviar copia a la representación legal de la parte demandante cuya dirección más adelante se indica.

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.

Lic. Baldomero A. Collazo Torres RUAl0,189 Bufete Collazo, Connelly & Surillo, LLC P.O. Box 70212 San Juan, P.R. 00936-8212 Tel. (787) 625-9999

The San Juan Daily Star Fax (787) 705-7387 E-mail: bcollazo@lawpr.com Se le notifica también por la presente que la parte demandante habrá de presentar para su anotación al Registrador de la Propiedad del Distrito en que está situada la propiedad objeto de este pleito, un aviso de estar pendiente esta acción. Para publicarse conforme a la Orden dictada por el Tribunal en un periódico de circulación general.

EN TESTlMONlO DE LO CUAL, expido el presente.Edicto que firmo y sello en San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoy 11 de marzo de 2020.

CARMEN ANA PEREIRA ORTIZ, Secretaria.

Thursday, September 10, 2020 COMPUESTA POR AMBOS; INDIVIDUOS X, Y y Z; ASEGURADORAS X, Y y Z; COMPAÑÍA DE FIANZA X, Y y Z; ENTIDADES X, Y y Z.

SERVICER

Parte Demandante VS.

FELICIA ACOSTA VÁZQUEZ

Parte Demandada CIVIL NUM: SJ2020CV01167 (604). SOBRE: EJECUCIÓN DE Queda emplazado y notificado GARANTÍAS (IN REM). NOTIFIde que en este Tribunal HEC- CACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR TOR BRITO DIAZ, JOSE A LE- EDICTO. BRON FELIX, JUAN M PILLOT A: FELICIA MAISONETTE, ROBERTO ACOSTA VÁZQUEZ ACOSTA GONZALEZ, PAOLA COTTO DIAZ, MONICA ENID LA SECRETARIA que suscribe le APONTE RIVERA, WILNET- notifica a usted que el 4 de sepTE MARTINEZ VEGA, DAISY tiembre de 2020, este Tribunal CRUZ BASTIAN, WANDA GAR- ha dictado Sentencia, SentenCIA NATAL, CARLOS MATOS cia Parcial o Resolución en este CRUZ, MIGUEL A ALVAREZ, caso, que ha sido debidamente DAVID SIVENS MARINI, NEYSA registrada y archivada en auLEGAL NOTICE ZAYAS MONTANEZ, EMANUEL tosdonde podrá usted enterarse ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE VALENTIN HERNANDEZ, DEN- detalladamente de los términos PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE NISSE KANORLY MORALES de la misma. Esta notificación PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO DE JESUS, MARIANGELY DIAZ se publicará una sola vez en un JUDICIAL DE GUAYAMA. SALGADO, RAMON SOLIVAN periódico de circulación general HECTOR BRITO DIAZ, GONZALEZ, LUCAS HERNAN- en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro JOSE A LEBRON FELIX DEZ, SYRVIATEK CORP .. han de los 10 días siguientes a su radicado una demanda en su notificación. Y, siendo o repre, JUAN M PILLOT contra sobre : COBRO DE DI- sentando usted una parte en el MAISONETTE ROBERTO NERO, INCUMPLIMIENTO DE procedimiento sujeta a los térmiACOSTA GONZALEZ, CONTRATOS Y DAÑOS Y PER- nos de la Sentencia, Sentencia PAOLA COTTO DIAZ, JUICIOS. Se le notifica que com- Parcial o Resolución, de la cual establecerse recurso de MONICA ENID APONTE parezca ante el Tribunal dentro puede del término de treinta (30) días revisión o apelación dentro del RIVERA , WILNETTE a partir de la publicación de este término de 30 días contados a MARTINEZ VEGA , DAISY edicto y exponer lo que a sus de- partir de la publicación por edicCRUZ BASTIAN, WANDA rechos convenga, en el presente to de esta notificación, dirijo a GARCIA NATAL , CARLOS caso. Se le notifica que deberá usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha MATOS CRUZMIGUEL presentar su alegación responsi- de la publicación de este edicva a través del Sistema Unificado A AL V AREZ, DA VID de Manejo y Administración de to. Copia de esta notificación SIVENS MARINI, NEYSA Casos (SUMAC), a la cual puede ha sido archivada en los autos ZA Y AS MONT ANEZ, acceder utilizando la siguiente de este caso, con fecha de sepde 2020. En San Juan, EMANUEL V ALENTIN Dirección electronica: https:// tiembre salvo que Puerto Rico, el de septiembre de HERNANDEZ, DENNISSE unired.ramajudicial.pr, se represente por derecho propio 2020. Griselda Rodríguez CollaKANORL Y MORALES DE en cuyo caso deberá presentar do, Secretaria Regional. Mildred JESUS, MARIANGEL Y su alegación responsiva en la Martínez Acosta, Secretaria del DIAZ SALGADO, RAMON Secretaria del Tribunal Superior. Tribunal Confidencial I.

SOLIV AN, LUCAS HERNANDEZ, SYRVIATEK CORP. Demandantes v.

SKALAR PHARMA LLC; BIOAPI S.A.S. t/c/p BIOGEN S.A.S. ; FERNANDO LONDOÑO: SILVIA HENAO Y LA COMUNIDAD DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS INDIVIDUOS X, Y y Z; ASEGURADORAS X, Y y Z; COMPAÑÍA DE FIANZA X, Y y Z ENTIDADES X, Y y Z.

Demandados CIVIL NUM: GM2020CV00404.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO, INCUMPLIMIENTO DE CONTRATOS DAÑOS Y PERJUICIOS. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: FERNANDO LONDOÑO: SILVIA HENAO Y LA COMUNIDAD DE GANANCIALES

Puerto Rico, Sala de Guayama y enviando copia a la parte demandante: Lcda. Amergie Enid García Santiago, Calle Francisco G. Bruno #22 Oeste Guayama, Puerto Rico 00784, Teléfono 787-864-4090, amergiegarcia@ gmail.com ; y/o Leda. Mariely Rivera Rivera , Urb. El Verde Calle Venus Lote 1- B, Caguas, Puerto Rico 00725. Tel: (787)936-2214, marielyriveralaw@gmail.com, abogadas de la parte demandante. Se le apercibe y notifica que, si no contesta la demanda radicada en su contra dentro del término de treinta (30) días de la publicación de este edicto, se le anotará rebeldía en su contra y se dictará sentencia en su contra, conforme se solicita en la Demanda, sin más citarle, ni oírle.

Expido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, hoy día 1 de septiempre de 2020. MARISOL ROSADO RODRIGUEZ, Sec Regional.

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

BOSCO IX OVERSEAS, LLC, BY FRANKLIN CREDIT MANAGEMENT CORPORATION AS

LEGAL NOT ICE

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

COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CRÉDITO JESÚS OBRERO Demandante v.

LILLIAM S. MALDONADO RESTO

Demandado(a) Civil Núm.: GB2019CV01436.

SALA 202. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO, REGLA 60. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: LILLIAM S. MALDONADO RESTO

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 20 de agosto 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 septiembre de 2020. En Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, el 1 de septiembre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SANCHEZ, SEC. REG. II. f/DIAMAR GONZALEZ BARRETO, Secretaria Auxiliar.

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

ORIENTAL BANK DEMANDANTE vs.

JULIANNA MARIE LUGO ROQUE

DEMANDADA CIVIL NÚM.: SJ2019CV08460 (604). COBRO DE DIN RO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS.

A: JULIANNA MARIE LUGO ROQUE

Queda emplazada y notificada de que en este Tribunal se ha radicado una demanda de cobro de dinero y ejecución de hipoteca en su contra. Se le notifica que deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. prs,salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la Secretaría del Tribunal Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala de San Juan y enviando copia a la parte demandante: Ledo. Baldomero A. Collazo Torres, PO BOX 7021 , San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936-8212 / Doral Bank Plaza, Calle Resolución #33, Esquina venida F.D. Roosevelt, Oficina 201, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00920-2727, Tel. (787) 625-9 99, Fax (787) 7057387, Correo electrónico: bcollazo@lawpr.com. Se le apercibe y notifica que si no contesta la demanda radicada en su contra dentro del término de treinta (30) días de la publicación de este edicto, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado en la demanda, sin más citárseles, ni oírseles. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, a 4 de marzo e 2020. Griselda Rodríguez Collado, Secretaria Regional. Por: Danilsa Ortiz Ramos, Secretaria Servicios a Sala.

25

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Thursday, September 10, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

The Yankees, poised to dominate this year, are barely hanging on

By TYLER KEPNER

H

ere is one of those true statements that would have made no sense six months ago: The New York Yankees were in Buffalo, N.Y. earlier this week, facing Toronto, as they desperately try to hold off Seattle, Baltimore and Detroit for the eighth playoff spot in the American League.

Then again, that doesn’t make much sense today, either.

We’ve known for a while that the coronavirus pandemic had forced the Blue Jays out of Canada. We’ve also known that Major League Baseball and the union — seeking to recoup some lost revenue from a truncated season without fans — had sold a new playoff tier to the networks, inflating the postseason field.

But no one expected the Yankees to struggle like this, with 15 losses in their past 20 games after a 2-1 loss to the Blue Jays on Tuesday. The Yankees are 2121 with 18 games left to play.

The Yankees were set to play the Blue Jays once more in Buffalo on Wednesday night before heading back to New York for a four-game homestand against the Orioles starting tonight.

“We still have time here to turn this thing around, and I’m confident we will,” manager Aaron Boone said. “But we’re .500 right now. That’s the reality of the situation. But the other reality is: It’s there for the taking for us. We don’t need anyone’s help right now.”

General manager Brian Cashman, who does not usually travel with the team, addressed the players before Tuesday’s game, emphasizing their talent and responsibility.

“Just remind them, first and foremost, that I believe in them — I put this club together with my staff, and everybody in that room is here for a reason,” Cashman said, adding later, “The bottom line is we’re on our own. There’s no help coming from anywhere. The challenge is to find a way to get through this storm.”

As Buffalo visitors go, the Yankees looked like the Houston Oilers on Monday, cruising along with a seemingly insurmountable lead in the middle of the game before a rousing comeback by the home team.

In 1993, the Bills won with a flurry of touchdown passes by Frank Reich. This time, the Blue Jays won with a flurry of free passes by the Yankees.

The surging Blue Jays scored 10 runs in the sixth inning, taking advantage of four walks and an error on their way to a 12-7 win. It was only the second time in the Yankees’ history that they had allowed that many runs in an inning, with the first coming April 18, 2009, against Cleveland.

That year ended just fine for the Yankees, who won the World Series. They have not been back since, despite seven more playoff trips and the most regular-season victories (921) of any team in the 2010s.

Adam Ottavino after giving up six runs, including a grand slam, against the Blue Jays on Monday.

They addressed their biggest weakness last winter by signing Gerrit Cole from Houston, bolstering their rotation while weakening the Astros, who knocked them out of the postseason twice in the past three years. But the American League’s balance of power has not shifted toward the Yankees as might have been expected.

Cole has been ordinary: 4-3 with a 3.63 ERA and a major league-high 13 homers allowed. After losing in the opener of a doubleheader in Oakland on Tuesday, the Astros had the same record as the Yankees, the worst record among teams holding AL playoff spots. In the expanded postseason, all first- and second-place teams in each division will qualify for a best-of-three first-round series, along with the two teams in each league with the next-best records.

Through Monday, every major league team with a .500 record or better would get in. Playoff spots have suddenly become as cheap as an invitation to a college bowl game: Win half your games, and congratulations! The difference, of course, is that a Quick Lane Bowl triumph cannot lead you to a championship, but an MLB team with a No. 8 seed has the same title shot as the regular season’s best team.

Those odds should have worked against the Yankees, who seemed poised to dominate most opponents when this truncated season started. But while their offense overcame last year’s injury barrage, it has sputtered to do the same this season. Besides Clint Frazier, who has thrived with regular playing time, the Yankees’ injury replacements have flopped, accentua-

ting the persistent absences of Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton.

Everyday players like Gary Sánchez, Brett Gardner and Aaron Hicks have regressed, and while the Yankees still draw plenty of walks, their .756 on-base plus slugging percentage entering Tuesday was the worst in the AL East. Their team batting average, .237, would be their worst in a season in 51 years.

The pitching has been a mess, too, with a middling 4.56 ERA; even the rebuilding Orioles have been better. Through 41 games — about a quarter of a typical 162-game season — the Yankees had used 23 pitchers, more than they used all season a decade ago.

Much has changed in MLB since then, especially in starters’ workloads, but the Yankees have taken the trend to the extreme.

No Yankees starter has worked 200 innings since CC Sabathia and Hiroki Kuroda in 2013. Since then, every other AL team has pushed at least one pitcher to that milestone, but through Monday, Yankees starters were averaging less than 4 2/3 innings per start, ranking 21st among MLB’s 30 clubs.

In 32 games not started by Cole, the Yankees’ starter has worked more than five innings only eight times.

While no individual reliever seems overworked, the sheer volume of innings to cover increases the odds that one or two relievers will have a bad game. When they do, it blows up whatever scripted matchups the Yankees had planned.

In the fateful sixth inning Monday, Boone rightly pulled Chad Green after five batters, then seemed determined to let Adam Ottavino finish the inning. Ottavino — who now has a 7.82 ERA — was clearly struggling with command, and he later wondered aloud if the Blue Jays knew what was coming after he gave up four hits and six earned runs without recording an out.

For Boone’s part, he said he stayed with Ottavino “because we’re just up against it” in the bullpen, even though only three relievers — Miguel Yajure, Luis Cessa and Nick Nelson — had appeared in the previous two games. The urgency of a pennant race, it seems, will have to wait.

The Yankees played it cool at last Monday’s trading deadline, too, trusting in their current roster and protecting all of their prospects. Their true savior is the playoff format; as badly as the Yankees have played, it is still hard to expect the Mariners, the Orioles or the Tigers to overtake them. But there is no time to waste.

“In a COVID season, you can’t afford to have slumps last too long,” Cashman said. “You can’t afford to have too many injuries stack up on you, and you certainly can’t afford to feel down and out.”

As bleak as it seems, the Yankees still have one thing their fans hold dear: a much better record than the truly down-and-out Boston Red Sox, who are staggering through their worst season in almost 90 years.

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

27

Pironkova surprises even herself in her return at the US Open

By BEN ROTHENBERG

T

svetana Pironkova could see the surprise on the faces of the other players as she entered the locker room at the U.S. Open after being off the tennis tour for more than three years, since Wimbledon in 2017.

With the women’s singles field down to eight players, from 128, the locker room is emptier now. But she is still there, having reached the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam for the fourth time in her career.

Pironkova, 32, once thought her playing days were behind her after giving birth to a boy, Alexander, in April 2018.

“I was feeling pretty comfortable being a full-time mom — a little bit too comfortable, maybe,” Pironkova said in an interview. “I said, OK, I have to take this challenge, to get out of my comfort zone.”

Pironkova, who reached a career-high ranking of No. 31 in 2010 and has beaten Venus Williams three times in Grand Slam events, said she missed the physical and mental challenges of tennis.

“Sometimes a person just needs to push herself,” she said.

Though an individual sport like tennis can require a degree of self-centeredness, Pironkova said she felt better about her career in the context of her new family.

“Before I became a mother, I was the baby in the family; my parents, my family, everyone was taking care of me because I am the performer, and I need to feel well to do well,” she said. “I had all the attention. But now it’s different.

Now all the attention is with my son, and I kind of find it relieving in some way.

I know that whatever happens, I have my family, and that’s the most important thing now.”

Pironkova was one of nine mothers in the women’s singles draw this year.

Three of them made it to the quarterfinals, which is a first for a Grand Slam tournament, according to the U.S. Open.

Pironkova was to face another mother, Serena Williams, on Wednesday afternoon, and the winner could face yet another, Victoria Azarenka, in the semifinals.

While Williams and Azarenka were considered contenders in New York, Pironkova’s surge was unexpected. Unranked, she was able to enter the main draw using her protected ranking after several players dropped out of the tournament because of the pandemic.

She has justified her spot. After beating Liudmila Samsonova, 6-2, 6-3, in the first round, she beat 10th-seeded Garbiñe Muguruza, a two-time Grand Slam champion, in the second round and 18th-seeded Donna Vekic in the third. In the fourth round, she appeared fatigued after squandering a match point in the second set but hung on for a 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-3 win over Alizé Cornet.

“I’m glad I keep winning,” she said.

“I cannot hide it: I’m really proud of what I’m doing.”

Pironkova had planned to return to tennis in late March but was delayed by the pandemic. She has benefited from WTA rules that expanded the number of tournaments a returning mother could play with a protected ranking to 12, up from eight, including two Grand Slam tournaments. The window for a return was also expanded to three years, up from two. The rules were introduced at the end of the 2018 season, after Williams’ high-profile return from maternity leave.

“At that time I really didn’t care about that information because I was in a new place in my life,” Pironkova said of the rule changes. “But that was one of the motivations to come back; if I had to start from scratch, I’m not sure I would take that challenge, really. But when you know that you have your old place, it makes all the difference.”

Azarenka, who returned to the tour in 2017, six months after giving birth to a boy, Leo, also advanced to her first Grand Slam quarterfinal since becoming a mother, having struggled to refind her game and focus amid a custody battle. She said that she would not have done anything different in her return but that she was happy about the rule changes.

“We are more protected and feel more comfortable because it’s such a life-changing experience that you have,”

Tsvetana Pironkova of Bulgaria said she was comfortable being a full-time mother but missed the physical and mental challenges of tennis.

Azarenka said of motherhood. “To find that balance to be able to go out there ready to play, physically be ready, mentally be ready, I think it’s just a better opportunity for players to take that break if they want to, if that’s their choice.”

The success is slightly double-edged, however. By winning, Pironkova has been away from her son for more than two weeks.

“It’s very hard because up until now it’s the longest I’ve been away from him,” Pironkova said. “I’m used to sleeping with him, to cuddling with him, to waking up with him, to receiving a kiss in the morning. Now all this stuff, I really miss it. But I know it’s for good.”

Pironkova’s husband, Mihail Mirchev, has been sending her videos of Alexander watching her matches.

“I called my husband after the match,” Pironkova said. “He said Alexander watched the whole match. He didn’t want to go to bed until the match was finished. He was cheering, rooting, screaming and he was super happy. But it’s true, I really miss him.”

After her fourth-round win Monday over Cornet, Pironkova became emotional when asked by the on-court interviewer, Blair Henley, about being away from her son, whom she felt uncomfortable bringing to New York because of the pandemic.

“It’s very tough, and it gets tougher every day,” she said, her eyes welling with tears above her masked face. “But I know he’s watching me. I know he’s proud of me. And it’s worth it.”

28

Thursday, September 10, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

How golf won a bet the coronavirus would not squelch its US Open

By BILL PENNINGTON

O

n a rainy day in mid-March, nearly 300 National Guard members in military fatigues arrived to set up a containment area in the New York City suburb of New Rochelle, one of the earliest coronavirus hot spots in North America.

Three miles away in the adjacent town of Mamaroneck, the U.S. Golf Association (USGA) was getting ready to welcome 150,000 fans and the world’s best golfers to the 120th U.S. Open at Winged Foot Golf Club from June 18-21.

“At the time, you realize they’re trying to save lives and we’re just a golf event,” Mike Davis, the USGA chief executive, recalled in an interview last month.

He was nonetheless stunned.

“You think to yourself, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Davis said. “This has to show up in the town next to Mamaroneck? What’s the chance of that happening?”

Within hours, the USGA had pulled the plug on playing in June in New York’s Westchester County, confidentially suspending the construction work necessary to build colossal grandstands and hospitality tents. The logistical planning, laborious prep work at the golf course and marketing of the event had begun five years earlier.

Suddenly, no one in the organization knew when or where the championship might be played, or if it would be contested at all in 2020.

The following six months were a dizzying maze of global deliberations that acknowledged and yet defied the gloomy March prospects for holding the event, especially in New York. But next week, barring a new complication, the four-day U.S. Open, one of the oldest sporting events in America, will be conducted, albeit without fans, at Winged Foot beginning Sept. 17.

“It is really a bit of a miracle,” said George Latimer, the executive for Westchester County. “It could have easily turned the other way.”

Indeed, Davis had conversations with officials from at least four other states as he tried to find a new home for this year’s U.S. Open. At one point, unable to reschedule the event before the weather was expected to turn cold in New York, Davis agreed to hold the championship in December at Riviera Country Club in Southern California. Only a furtive 11th-hour call altered the negotiations again.

In the end, there were hundreds of similar phone calls, emails and texts between the leaders of golf’s governing bodies and New York state and local officials. The talks branched in myriad directions, including — surprisingly — the office of Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner.

“It was an absolute roller coaster,” Davis said of the past several months. “An intricate jigsaw puzzle that everybody was trying to put together at the same time.”

But if there was a first piece of the puzzle that fell into place, it was a belief, spurred by medical experts, that Westchester County’s status as the one of the nation’s earliest coronavirus hot spots might mean a quicker recovery from the crisis than in other parts of the country.

In March, the U.S.G.A. suspended the work necessary to build colossal grandstands and hospitality tents for tens of thousands of spectators at Winged Foot Golf Club.

“At one of our earliest meetings, our medical advisers told us to hang in there,” said John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s senior managing director of championships. “Let it play out. Their point was that what is a hot spot now might not be one in late summer.”

At the time, however, the fear and anguish in and around New Rochelle was profound. At Winged Foot Golf Club, one employee died from the virus, according to the club’s general manager, Colin Burns.

“We felt we were under siege as a community,” Burns said. “New Rochelle was just blistering with cases.

I don’t think the championship was in the forefront of anyone’s thinking. We were in a state of shock.”

Even outside New York, multiple obstacles were developing that seemed to doom the likelihood of a U.S. Open being held at Winged Foot this year, or anywhere in the northeastern United States. Most notably, a reconfigured golf calendar lacked an open week until October, and possibly later.

The coronavirus pandemic shut down all golf competitions in mid-March, but the sport’s seven governing bodies (the PGA, LPGA and European tours, as well as the independent stewards of golf’s four major championships like the USGA) had privately recast a tightly packed international golf schedule. The calendar had become a game of musical chairs, and the U.S. Open — still not officially postponed from June — appeared to be the one left standing.

Late in March, golf’s leaders decided they would announce the new schedule April 6, with the U.S. Open shifting to December in California. News releases had already been drafted. On April 3, it was announced that the U.S. Women’s Open would move from June to December in Houston, its original site.

Early on the morning of Palm Sunday, April 5, Davis got a call at home from Martin Slumbers of the R&A, the organization that oversees the British Open. Slumbers told Davis that the British Open, which had been postponed from July to Sept. 17, was canceled for 2020.

It was a blow for golf overall, but Davis knew it was a game-changer for his signature event. There was now an opening for the U.S. Open to remain at venerable Winged Foot, in mid-September. Davis then placed a

call to top executives at Fox Sports, which had broadcast the previous five U.S. Opens. Could Fox, which regularly televises multiple Sunday NFL games in September, still handle the final round of golf’s national championship — not in June but on Sunday, Sept. 20?

Davis said Fox called Goodell about abandoning an NFL doubleheader that day. “Roger came back and said, ‘Yeah, we’ll work with you,’” said Davis, who added, referring to Goodell: “Because he loves golf.”

As it played out, the decision to move the championship to September was, according to the USGA, the genesis of a new television deal for the event. In June, NBC Universal, which does not broadcast Sunday afternoon NFL games, took over the rights to the U.S. Open, and all USGA championships, from Fox. By midafternoon on April 5, the heads of the seven governing golf bodies got together on a telephone call for what was, Davis said, about the 40th time since March.

It was agreed that the U.S. Open at Winged Foot would assume the mid-September spot vacated by the British Open. Though that was the plan, it was still viewed as conditional.

On the same day, New York state’s death toll from the coronavirus climbed above 4,000, although Gov. Andrew Cuomo pointed to early indications that the crisis could be plateauing.

Larry Schwartz, Cuomo’s former chief of staff who rejoined the governor’s administration during the COVID-19 crisis, first contacted the USGA in May, not long after Cuomo had announced his support for professional sports to return in New York if the state’s tally of virus cases sustained a decline and if the sports adhered to strict safety protocols. Schwartz had worked with the USGA the last time the U.S. Open was at Winged Foot, in 2006.

But it wasn’t until July that Schwartz’s dialogue with the USGA intensified as he, along with Dr. Howard A. Zucker, the state health commissioner, reviewed the safety guidelines prepared for the U.S. Open, which were modeled after those in place on the PGA Tour since its restart in mid-June.

Schwartz advised Cuomo that the USGA’s safety protocols not only met state guidelines, but also went a step farther by insisting that the several hundred volunteers needed to run the championship would be entirely from the New York area. Typically, U.S. Open volunteers come from all over the world. In addition, at Winged Foot, no one would be permitted on the grounds without first passing a coronavirus test.

On July 29, Cuomo and the USGA announced the U.S. Open would take place in September without spectators.

At Winged Foot, already several years into the arrangements for its sixth U.S. Open, there was renewed excitement, although not exactly celebration. The angst of March was not yet distant and may not be for a while.

“You have to keep going back to the context of things,” Burns, the club’s general manager, said. “You’d have to be living somewhere else to not understand that it’s still a very serious moment in time.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

29

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

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

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

The San Juan Daily Star

Thursday, September 10, 2020

(Mar 21-April 20)

Making money from a creative talent is a strong possibility. Selling crafts or offering your services for a reasonable rate is a great way to boost your bank balance. Financial stability can be yours. Taking charge of a group effort is another good use of your talent. You have impressive leadership ability and will know how to keep your team inspired.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Restrictions that have been holding you back have been lifted. This is posing problems you hadn’t been anticipating. It is taking longer to get organised and it may be necessary to purchase new equipment and materials. Doing the best job you can remains the top priority.

A senior colleague is impressed by your dedicated efforts.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Scorpio

A challenge you take on will take more stamina and willpower than you expected.

Now you have begun, you don’t intend to give up. You have it within you to make quite an impression on those who matter through staying focused on your goal. Colleagues will be generous with their praise.

All you want is to enjoy the company of people you can relax with. Get together with your family or a few close friends. Discussing issues you can’t talk about in public will help you get things clearer in your mind. An older relative will help you see a situation from a new perspective. The stresses and strains of daily life will

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

A project is about to be launched but another person’s cooperation is a critical factor. If they aren’t ready yet to commit to this venture, you have no choice but to be patient. Currently, they are the one in control. It might vex you to have to wait for others to make decisions but give them the time they are asking for.

Daydreaming can be a welcome distraction from everyday routines. You don’t expect all fantasies to come true but this won’t stop you from losing yourself in your imagination.

Coming up with new ideas is a great way to express your creativity. Don’t be surprised if you start feeling you want something extra out of life.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

Heavy responsibilities leave you lacking in energy. Nourishing food will give you the necessary energy to fulfil your obligations. Worries weigh heavily on your mind. This makes it difficult for you to concentrate. You need some time alone to sort out your thoughts.

Get out into the outdoors and reconnect with nature.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

You’re annoyed with a friend who lets you down at the eleventh hour. They would never have made this promise if they had known they would have to cancel. Their excuses are genuine and although it will be hard not to show your annoyance, try not to make them feel any worse than they already do.

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Unexpected expenses add to the tension that is already in the home. This isn’t a good time to go on a shopping spree. Think of the longterm impact before splashing out on items you do not need. Put yourself on a strict budget until your bank account is replenished.

You can do this.

You long for a change of scenery but you feel safe and secure in familiar places. A sudden fascination with a foreign country, its culture and beliefs may wane very quickly. This is not the best of times to make travel plans.

You aren’t yet ready to travel down unfamiliar paths.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

You’re spending too long worrying about things that might never happen. Talking to a close friend would only increase your confusion. Push negative emotions aside and focus on the job in hand. Sometimes it helps to put your all into your work and other responsibilities. A good clear up around the house would also make you feel a hundred times better.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

You have the skills that other people lack in a group situation. You want to help but you have not used these talents in a long while and this makes you wonder whether your contribution will be useful. Swallow your uncertainty and offer your services. Once you get started, it will become apparent your skills are more valuable than you thought.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Thursday, September 10, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

The San Juan Daily Star

Ziggy

Jueves, 3 de septiembre de 2020 Thursday,SEMANA, SeptemberINC 10,•2020 32EDITORIAL

24

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