Tuesday Sep 15, 2020

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

San Juan The

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DAILY

Star

Imagine Staying at ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ Mansion

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UTIER: Looks Like Only 2 Gubernatorial Candidates Concerned About LUMA-PREPA Deal P5

Anti-Coronavirus Agents Studied at UPR’s School of Pharmacy P3

Photo Pedro Correa Henry

Tens of Thousands of New Voters Say ‘Enough’

Long Lines of Citizens Registering to Vote in November Show That the Commonwealth Deserves, Needs Better People Who Have Never Voted Want to ‘Change Things Up’

NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

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September 15, 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.

Seaweed-derived anti-coronavirus agents studied at UPR

Today’s

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By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

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INDEX Local 3 Mainland 7 Business 11 International 14 Viewpoint 18 Noticias en Español 19 Entertainment 20 22 Pets

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he School of Pharmacy of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) Medical Sciences Campus announced Monday that Dr. Eduardo Caro, an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, is conducting research to study natural seaweed products as antiviral agents against the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The study is part of the 10 UPR research projects that were selected to receive the $1.7 million grant awarded by the Puerto Rico government to contribute to the mitigation and eradication of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic that we are going through and the lack of an immediate vaccine, combined with the recurrent outbreaks of coronavirus (CoV) since 2003, demonstrates the urgent need for robust and broad-spectrum antivirals against this group of pathogens,” Caro said. “Today, more than 50 percent of the drugs approved by the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] exist or are derived from naturally produced chemicals.

Blue-green algae produce natural products that inhibit specific mechanisms of infectious diseases and recent reports have described the susceptibility of SARS-CoV-2 to being inhibited by chemical

compounds derived from seaweed.”

The researcher noted that “our project seeks to redirect our efforts to discover natural products derived from marine algae and other organisms from the sea of Puerto Rico, to discover and develop antiviral agents for the treatment of COVID-19.”

Caro said he is “extremely excited about the opportunity to contribute to scientific knowledge, locally and globally, about COVID-19 along with the UPR.” “Our project highlights the importance of marine biodiversity as an infinitely valuable resource for the development of biotechnologies, especially at a time when the maritime-terrestrial zone of Puerto Rico is in danger of being destroyed by irresponsible development, as is the situation in Playuela in Aguadilla,” he said. “The selection of this proposal sends a clear message to all Puerto Ricans: bio-resources belong to us and we have to protect them, since they represent concrete solutions for human health.”

Dr. Wanda Maldonado, dean of the School of Pharmacy, stated that “these initiatives are fundamental for the search for new therapeutic alternatives against multiple medical conditions, and at the same time raise awareness in the community to protect the maritime-terrestrial zone of Puerto Rico.”

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Tuesday, September 15, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Citizens waiting in SEC voter registration line ‘want things to be different’

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

“W

e are tired of the same things every year and voting for the same people who have proven, year after year, that things won’t change, that things will stay the same.”

That is what 25-year-old Ashley Torres told the Star at 9:52 a.m. on Monday while waiting in line with her 25-year-old boyfriend Jan Carlos García and hundreds of other citizens at the State Elections Commission (SEC) on the last day to register to vote in the 2020 general elections.

Torres said she abstained from participating for the first time back in 2016 as no candidates convinced her; however, as she wishes for a “definite change in the government and to have the chance to vote for new candidates with new proposals,” Torres seeks a change from the bipartisanship brought by the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) and the New Progressive Party (NPP) with her vote.

“Whether it is [Puerto Rican Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Juan] Dalmau or [CitizenVictory Movement gubernatorial candidate Alexandra] Lúgaro, we must take the opportunity to listen to their proposals,” Torres said. “We, as young people, must show that we care about our country’s future and want things to be different.”

García said this was also his first time registering at the SEC to vote and he felt like he was becoming part of society as he prepared to exercise his right to vote on Nov. 3.

“I am a part of the youth that thought their vote didn’t matter, and now their vote will have a great effect in the

next elections,” García said. “We want a new leader with a chance to execute their ideas and stop trying to follow two parties like if they were donkeys trying to pull the same rope in opposite directions.”

Meanwhile, 41-year-old Delia J. Pérez was another citizen who took time Monday to join her friend and register to vote for the first time. When the Star asked if Pérez had any candidate or political party in mind, she said she was still asking questions. However, she insisted that candidates who end up in the government “must work well and do something for the people, as one keeps on voting and voting and we still see the same [outcome].”

Eighty-two-year-old Miriam Miller, meanwhile, was calmly waiting to complete her early vote request in the SEC senior line, which had folding chairs with cushions for both elders and citizens with physical disabilities. She told the Star that her intention for the next election is to voteYes in the StatehoodYes/No referendum approved by the NPP majority in the Legislature and signed by Gov. WandaVázquez Garced because she thought that “it was more important than voting for any other political party.”

“This referendum has a lot of weight for Puerto Rican citizens,” Miller said. “Possibly, things will stay the same, and what I mean by that is that the political parties that have been [in power] for many years will come out ahead, either of the two. But I don’t care about political parties, I care about the Yes/No referendum, and in my case, it’s a yes.”

People should ‘exercise their right to vote’ Ana Jiménez, who said she was “a lotta years old,” showed up at the SEC to get her electoral card back, as she had lost it, and consequently, requested early voting for the general elections ahead of the Sept. 19 deadline for doing so. Later revealing that she was 76 years old, Jiménez said that no matter the outcome, “people cannot criticize not argue if they don’t vote, because if they don’t vote, they don’t have the right to say a word.”

“Everyone should exercise their right to vote,” she said. “It’s a right, not a privilege.”

A vote ‘to eliminate the country’s corruption’ Later in the day, Enrique Collazo Calzada, a 62-yearold retiree, told the Star that he went to the SEC to reactivate his voter account because he has not exercised his right to vote since he was 18 years old.

“I am voting for any candidate who is committed to eliminating the country’s corruption, which are just a few,” Collazo Calzada said.

However, Miriam Marrero, who is a 65-year-old retiree and Collazo Calzada’s wife, said that since she didn’t vote in either the 2012 or 2016 elections, she was going to reactivate her account in order to take action “to stop NPP gubernatorial candidate Pedro Pierluisi and Senate at-large candidate Thomas Rivera Schatz from taking their seats.”

“I want to leave a better government to our offspring and grandchildren. Let’s see if Puerto Rico can change and

someone, a good candidate, can work for real change.

People are tired of so much corruption,” Marrero said. “I am not considering anyone from the traditional parties, I am looking for candidates with different proposals, a genuine interest in leading, and who actually love our country.”

Meanwhile, Janice Rodríguez, a 45-year-old mother of three children, said she came to the SEC because she also lost her electoral card, but later found out that she has not voted since 1996. The local economic peril and her children’s welfare brought her to the commission to exercise her right to vote.

“We have to come back and vote; one can think that this is not important when you have a job and children, but look at the disaster this has caused -- it really matters,” Rodríguez said. “Voting for the PDP or the NPP is truly a waste of time; they haven’t changed, they won’t change, they are still [running] with the same obsolete ideas. The new parties offer better alternatives and progressive ideas.”

Likewise, Terrance Vetter, who is 39 years old and Rodríguez’s husband, told the Star that since he did not think through his younger years about which direction the world was going, he said he would like “a last chance to have some kind of influence” as he was committed to voting for the first time.

“Things are stagnant. Change is necessary, and it’s imminent if we don’t decide to be a part of those changes, the decisions will be made for us, and that is unacceptable,” Vetter said. “I would say that I’m independent.

I think the one that stands to give us the best edge on becoming independent and thinking independently, and moving in a direction that is non-partisan, but favors all of humanity, I think that [Alexandra] Lúgaro has some of the better ideas.”

At press time Monday, the SEC had registered more than 117,000 first-time voters through the weekend. Citizens who are 60 years or older, meanwhile, have until Sept. 24 to register or update their voter account for the 2020 general elections.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

5

Only two gubernatorial candidates have responded to UTIER letter on LUMA-PREPA deal

By THE STAR STAFF

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wo weeks after the Electrical Industry and Irrigation Workers Union (UTIER by its Spanish acronym) sent a letter to gubernatorial candidates asking them to put in writing their stances on the contract awarded by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) to LUMA Energy to manage its transmission and distribution system and on the privatization of essential services, labor reform and other issues, only two candidates have responded to their concerns, the union said Monday.

“It is unusual that out of six candidates seeking to take the reins of this country, only two have responded, in writing, as requested, as to what they will do with the disastrous LUMA Energy contract and what their commitment is to canceling it during their first 100 days in office,” UTIER President Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo said. “It is incredible

that the other four candidates have not yet answered regarding what they will do with LUMA and what they will also do with the retirement system of PREPA employees, with the privatization of essential services and the repeal of the labor reform that has done so much damage to the workers of this country, especially the younger ones.”

On Wednesday, the U.S. District Court in San Juan is slated to hear arguments on whether to give priority over other debt to the payments given to LUMA Energy as part of PREPA’s bankruptcy.

Only Puerto Rican Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Juan Dalmau and Carlos Delgado Altieri, who is the gubernatorial candidate under the Popular Democratic Party, have responded to UTIER’s letter. In addition to knowing what they will do with Luma and PREPA’s retirement system, the UTIER president said, the candidates were

required to answer questions about their positions regarding the possibility of elevating to constitutional status any decision related to the privatization of essential public services, the freezing of collective bargaining processes in the public sector, the repeal of the Labor

Reform and the repeal, in whole or in part, of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act, which imposed an oversight board over Puerto Rico.

“In the letter that we sent almost three weeks ago, we not only asked about energy issues, we also asked about important issues for all Puerto Ricans. Failure to answer the letters is not to reply to a country that is aware of everything the candidates say about such matters that are important for the people and even more so now that the people have removed a governor who did not meet expectations and disrespected the country,” Figueroa Jaramillo said. “The other four [candidates] know that the workers are attentive to their responses, that the country is attentive to what they have to say in response, that the people are tired of empty promises and that now they are asking for change and action.”

Acevedo Vilá: Almost 3 years after Hurricane Maria only 2 percent of total federal funds has been disbursed

By THE STAR STAFF

A

lmost three years after Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico and destroyed homes and infrastructure, only 16 percent of the federal funds has been obligated and only 2 percent has been disbursed for public works.

According to official data, the federal government has allocated more than $49 billion in federal funds for recovery. Of that amount, $19 billion comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Of that item, only $3 billion has been obligated while only $67 million has been disbursed or spent, according to information provided by former Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, who is running for resident commissioner under the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) banner.

Acevedo Vilá, along with other PDP candidates, said Monday that this constitutes “a scandal of greater proportions because only 0.33 percent of the total allocated has been invested to address the housing crisis that the country [Puerto Rico] faces.”

In the opinion of the former head of the Public Housing Administration and candidate for an at-large House seat, Gabriel López Arrieta, this “disaster” in the administration of the aforementioned funds is due to the inability of the current New Progressive Party

administration, including Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced and Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón.

“Three years after Hurricane Maria, the country continues to suffer from the administrative incapacity of this administration, the complicity of the Legislative Assembly and the abandonment of Puerto Rican families who continue without safe roofs over their homes,” López Arrieta said.

Acevedo Vilá pointed out that those federal funds that have been allocated, some through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and others through various other federal agencies, are simply not reaching the people.

“The incredible thing is that this government has

had three years to use funds that ordinarily expire six years after the Action Plan is approved,” Acevedo Vilá said. “The incompetence of this administration has caused about 25,000 families today to be living under blue tarps and another 70,000 families are waiting for the reconstruction of their homes.”

“The resident commissioner has to work with her Republican government and the president that she defends so much, so that these items are usable. She has to work with Ben Carson, the federal secretary of housing, to expedite the amendments to the action plan,” the former governor added. “To date all their advertisements and fanfare are mere optical illusions full of bureaucracy resulting in a highly inefficient process.”

PDP Sen. Aníbal José Torres said the outlook is complicated due to the bureaucratic process created to award the funds.

“This outlook makes clear an administrative collapse in the face of an incoherent reconstruction plan, thus costing thousands of Puerto Ricans housing at the peak of the hurricane season,” he said.

The PDP group proposed amending the action plan with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to channel the projects to Puerto Rico’s municipalities and other island non-profit organizations so they can move fast.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Arecibo mayor requests declaration of disaster area due to flooding

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

A

recibo Mayor Carlos Molina Rodríguez said Monday that he will request that that municipality be declared a disaster area due to damages suffered from flooding on Sunday, which caused one death.

“This [Monday] morning I will be submitting to the governor [Wanda Vázquez Garced] part of the damages so that she declares this [municipality] a disaster area,” Molina Rodríguez said in a radio interview.

“We know that the rains are going to come and people can move cars that are in low areas, move them and go to a relative’s house. What happened is that this caught us by surprise,” Molina Rodríguez said regarding heavy downpours that fell on Sunday in Arecibo, Camuy and Hatillo, leading the National Meteorological Service to issue a flash flood warning for those towns for several hours.

A man drowned on Sunday night when his vehicle was swept away by fast-moving floodwaters caused by heavy rains.

That incident occurred at kilometer 80.3 inland on highway PR-2 in the San Daniel neighborhood of Arecibo’s Las Canelas sector. The drowning victim was identified as Efraín Cintrón González, 77, of Arecibo.

“He was a person from the area, he tried to cross it [the highway] and the water hit him,” Molina Rodríguez said in the radio interview.

The Manuel Petaca Iguina Coliseum was set up on Sunday night as a refuge to receive families affected by floods or at risk of flooding.

The municipality offers updates on the floods through its Facebook page: Municipality of Arecibo.

Highway 653 in Barrio Barrancas, Arecibo was still impassable Monday due to the floods.

10,000 to 15,000 public employees may have illegally applied for PUA

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

J

ustice Secretary Inés Carrau estimated Monday that some 10,000 or 15,000 public employees in Puerto Rico may have illegally applied for federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA).

“Since the PUA fraud was discovered, we at the Department of Justice have been working hand in hand with the Department of Labor [and Human Resources] and with the Puerto Rico Police [Bureau] to investigate the cases and be able to take them to court and recover the

money that it has been obtained illegally,” Carrau said in a radio interview.

In the cases in which people return the money received illegally, Carrau said “that does not exclude them from us being able to take action investigating them and we can file charges, because the crime was actually committed.”

“If you fraudulently requested the PUA benefits with false information, you can be sure that if Justice investigates it, it will go to the final consequences in those cases,” the Justice secretary added.

Asked how her department is going to investigate thousands and thousands of individuals who may have requested the PUA illegally, Carrau said they are working to purge the list of public employees.

As an example, she said that regarding the complaint that Justice employees illegally requested the PUA, it was confirmed that none of the names of people who received the aid are working in the department.

Labor and Human Resources Secretary Carlos Rivera Santiago said meanwhile that his department has received more than $12.5 million in checks that people have returned because they requested

the PUA but later realized that they did not qualify.

Rivera Santiago stated in an interview that between unemployment and other aid that the Labor and Human Resources Department has disbursed, “$5 billion has been distributed in Puerto Rico.”

He noted that public employees have been told on more than one occasion that they do not qualify for the PUA (or unemployment) “because they have not stopped collecting.” “Even if they have a second job they do not qualify for unemployment,” Rivera Santiago said.

“We have identified thousands of cases of public employees” who receive PUA without [the] right [to do so], the Labor and Human Resources secretary said.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

7

After a pandemic pause, ICE resumes deportation arrests

By MIRIAM JORDAN

F

or Alicia Flores Gonzalez, Aug. 4 began like any other day. She dropped off her little girl at day care and drove to work at a winery in the Sonoma Valley. But as she was parking her white Toyota Tacoma, she found herself surrounded by armed men.

“What happened? What did I do?” Flores recalled asking them.

“Hands up! Turn around,” ordered one of the men, who shackled her and escorted her to a van.

Six agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement in three unmarked vehicles had been deployed to arrest her. Within 24 hours, the 43-year-old single mother of four U.S.-born children had been deported to Mexico. She had lived without legal permission in the United States for 27 years.

Flores was seized during a new nationwide enforcement operation announced this month, the first large-scale arrests and deportations in the interior of the country since the coronavirus pandemic halted field operations for several months. Since mid-July, immigration agents have taken more than 2,000 people into custody from their homes, workplaces and other sites, including a post office, often after staking them out for days.

In Los Angeles, agents made 300 arrests. More than 1,000 others were rounded up in New York, Atlanta and Phoenix, as well as in cities in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, Utah and Wyoming.

President Donald Trump has made curbing immigration a cornerstone of his agenda. He has blocked most asylumseekers and refugees, built 300 miles of border wall and invoked the health crisis to seal the border to nonessential travelers.

During the Republican National Convention, he reiterated his pledge to clamp down on illegal immigration, and his reelection campaign has emphasized the restrictive immigration agenda that was central to his platform in 2016. A recent television ad airing in battleground states said former Vice President Joe Biden’s support for offering a path to citizenship to millions of immigrants unlawfully in the country would undermine Americans by creating more competition for jobs and more beneficiaries of welfare programs.

Federal immigration agents arriving to make an arrest at a home in Paramount in March.

Arrests that were paused during the pandemic have since resumed.

The United States is home to about 10.5 million people living in the country illegally. In a June survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, 3 out of 4 adults said they favored a pathway to legal status for them.

Thirty-two percent of Trump supporters said immigrants strengthen society, up from 19% in 2016, according to a Pew survey of voters released Thursday. While the issue of immigration still appeals to Trump’s base, concerns about the economy and the coronavirus pandemic animate more voters, strategists say.

The wide-ranging immigration operation, which had been underway for weeks before it was publicly announced, was touted by officials as a mission designed to capture hardened criminals.

“The aliens targeted during this operation preyed on men, women and children in our communities, committing serious crimes and, at times, repeatedly hurting their victims,” said Tony Pham, the new interim director of ICE. But analysis of the totality of the government’s own data shows that the administration is arresting large numbers of immigrants whose crimes are minor or who have not committed any crime at all. They are easier to locate and remove precisely because they are not trying to evade law

enforcement, even if they have outstanding deportation orders.

Flores has no criminal record but had lost an appeal to stay in the country after she was ordered deported more than a decade ago. Like millions of immigrants who are quietly living and working in the country illegally, she had managed to avoid arrest, working in Northern California and seeing her children through school.

“My mom has always been a hardworking lady who just minds her business and takes care of my brothers and sister,” said her oldest child, Alex Salinas, 26, who lives in Healdsburg, California, with his three siblings. “I am shocked that this happened the way it did.”

In the 2019 fiscal year, federal agents arrested more than 143,000 people in the interior of the country. The most common convictions or criminal charges pending against them were for driving under the influence (74,000) and drug offenses (67,000).

Only 1,900 had been charged or convicted of homicide.

Under the Trump administration, there has been a steady rise in immigrants detained without a serious record, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which has compiled data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

TRAC found that a jump in the number of detained immigrants in 2019 was a direct result of arrests of people with no criminal records.

“ICE makes it sound like they are snatching wanted felons off the streets when it conducts these operations,” said Austin Kocher, a geographer at the university who analyzes immigration enforcement data.

“We don’t get a full picture,” he said.

“They downplay the large numbers of people detained and deported who committed minor offenses, usually a long time ago, or who had no crime on record.”

The Obama administration set records for deportation, removing 409,849 people in the 2012 fiscal year, an all-time high, and 235,413 in the 2015 fiscal year. By comparison, the Trump administration deported 267,258 people in the 2019 fiscal year.

In its second term, the Obama administration put into place a policy of discretion that spared immigrants who were long-term residents of the United States, especially if they had American children and had not run afoul of the law, even if, like Flores, they had outstanding removal orders.

The impact of the pandemic on ICE’s ability to hold immigrants in detention could have played a role in the agency’s targeting of immigrants like Flores, who can be rapidly bused out of the country because she is Mexican.

In Northern California, where Flores was living, 47 immigrants living in the country illegally were apprehended during the recent operation, according to the regional ICE office. In a statement, a spokesman cited as examples a 34-year-old Mexican who had been convicted of committing battery against a former spouse and a 57-year-old Mexican who had been convicted of petty theft and inflicting corporal injury to his spouse. Both had been previously deported.

Katie Kavanagh, a lawyer with the Rapid Response Network of Northern California, which provides emergency legal assistance to people detained by ICE, said that in the span of five workdays in early August she handled the cases of four Mexicans arrested in California’s wine country.

“ICE was going after people who they quickly could deport,” said Kavanagh, who was contacted by Flores’ employer. “They were low-hanging fruit. They were the most legally vulnerable.”

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Tuesday, September 15, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

For prisoners in the west, the virus and the wildfires are colliding threats

Oregon State Penitentiary on Thursday, after inmates were relocated from three Salem-area prisons.

By TIM ARANGO and NICHOLAS BOGEL-BURROUGHS

A

s wildfires tore through huge swaths of Oregon last week, prisoners were hurried away from the encroaching flames — not to freedom but to an overcrowded state prison, where they slept shoulder-to-shoulder in cots and, in some cases, on the floor. Food was in short supply, showers and toilets few, and fights broke out between rival gang members.

They were safe from one catastrophe but delivered to another: the coronavirus pandemic, which has spread at an alarming rate in America’s prisons.

“From what we know about COVID-19, how quickly it can spread and how lethal it can be, we have to prepare for the worst,” said Bobbin Singh, executive director of the Oregon Justice Resource Center, a prisoner advocacy organization.

Twin crises of the pandemic and a devastating wildfire season have left a significant toll in prisons along the West Coast. Virus outbreaks have spread through cellblocks — Oregon’s state prison system has had 1,600 infections over the past three months — even as poor ventilation systems have whipped in smoke from the fires outside.

The quandary for prison officials, too, is complex, as they grapple with managing large facilities through simultaneous dangers. Before the fires started, the virus spread in America’s prisons partly because routine transfers of prisoners proceeded without testing them first for the coronavirus and isolating those infected. Now fires have forced Oregon officials to move so many prisoners so quickly that some inmates and advocates for prisoners say they fear it is only a matter of time before transferred inmates begin falling sick with the virus.

“Right now, it’s this situation of, no matter which way you turn, there’s something waiting,” said Rasheed StanleyLockhart, who was released from prison in California in January after serving 18 years for armed robbery and now works for Planting Justice, a nonprofit in Oakland, California, that helps newly released prisoners. “Turn here, there’s COVID. Turn here, there’s the fires. You turn here, there’s mass incarceration as a whole.”

There have been more than 200,000 coronavirus infections in American prisons and jails and nearly 1,200 deaths since the pandemic began. As the wildfires have raged, the problems have been especially acute in Oregon, where officials ordered evacuations of about 2,750 prisoners.

Kristina Boswell, a prisoner in Oregon who was moved overnight Friday from a state prison in the fire zone to one away from the threat of fires, described a chaotic evacuation in an audio recording her lawyer shared with The Times.

She said prisoners were bound together with zip ties and loaded into buses in the middle of the night, without their medications or water. When they arrived at the new prison, she said, there was a shortage of mattresses and no chance of social distancing.

“We’re all in dorm settings,” said Boswell, who was among more than 1,300 female prisoners moved to Deer Ridge Correctional Facility in Madras, Oregon. “Everyone is crammed in.”

Boswell said prisoners were watching newscasts of the fires and worried about their families outside. She said prisoners had gone almost 24 hours without food.

“I hate not knowing what’s going to happen,” she said.

“I’m worried about my family out there.”

Her lawyer, Tara Herivel, a public defender in Portland, said of the wildfire evacuations: “It’s like COVID doesn’t even exist.”

Jennifer Black, a spokeswoman for Oregon’s Department of Corrections, said that the fires had created a highly difficult situation for everyone in the state. “Our daily operations have been affected, and life at some of our institutions is not ideal for those who live and work at them,” she said, “However, life and safety are our first priority, and we will return to normal operations as soon as conditions allow.”

In California, thousands of dry-lightning strikes set off ferocious wildfires in Northern California in August. As thousands of people evacuated homes in the city of Vacaville, and volunteers rescued animals from the encroaching flames, thousands of people incarcerated in two prisons, some suffering from the coronavirus, were not moved. Even the animal shelter just up the road from the prison complex was emptied.

The fire ultimately did not reach the prisons — known as the California State Prison Solano and the California Medical Facility — but prisoners and their families grew increasingly anxious as the flames crept closer.

A spokesman for the California’s corrections agency said that no prisons are currently threatened by wildfires and that there are “long-standing evacuation contingency plans in place in the event a prison needs to be evacuated.”

When the fires were burning near the prisons in Vacaville, the spokesman said, prisoners were given N95 masks.

Families of prisoners worry that so many people in close quarters could lead to a large virus outbreak, especially because similar prison transfers elsewhere in the country in recent months have turned deadly because of the virus. None of the prisoners who were transferred in Oregon have been tested for the virus, according to the Oregon Department of Corrections, which acknowledged overcrowding at the

Oregon State Penitentiary, where prisoners from three facilities have been taken in recent days as the fires intensified.

At San Quentin State Prison in California, 26 inmates have died of the virus and more than 2,500 prisoners and staff have been sickened since infected prisoners from a Southern California prison were transferred to San Quentin in May without being tested.

And at an immigration detention center in Farmville, Virginia, a botched inmate transfer in June led to the death of one detainee and the infection of at least 339 others — nearly every single person housed at the facility, according to court documents and federal data.

Adnan Khan, who was previously incarcerated in California and now runs Re: Store Justice, a criminal justice reform organization, spent three years at the prison in Solano.

As the fires were bearing down in the area last month, he said, he spoke with a friend at the prison over the phone.

“I got a call and honestly, man, I could literally hear people coughing in the background,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Is that COVID? What’s going on?’ My friend says, ‘No, there’s fires here.’”

He said his friend told him that corrections officers were walking into the building with ash on their hats and shoulders. Khan said he had no confidence that prison officials would be able to safely evacuate prisoners if a fire became threatening enough.

“Approximately 7,000 people in both prisons,” he said. “And COVID. And buses. Where are you going to get all these buses from? Fire evacuations are relatively fast.

You can’t just take your time.”

Stanley-Lockhart, the former prisoner, said he knows the dangers of fires firsthand. While he was incarcerated, he worked among the ranks of prisoners who joined firefighting crews and is a trained emergency medical technician.

Every month while he was in San Quentin, he said, he participated in evacuation drills for staff and corrections officers but still worried that he and other prisoners would be left behind in a fire.

California has long relied on prison firefighting crews to battle blazes. This year, facing a historic wildfire season and with resources stretched thin, there are fewer prisoner firefighters available, either because they were released early because of the pandemic or became sick.

The prisoner firefighting program has long been fiercely debated. Some activists have called it exploitative, because firefighters earn up to just over $5 a day — and an extra $1 per hour while fighting fires — for such dangerous work. Others have said it is deeply unfair that once inmate firefighters are released from prison they are not allowed to become professional firefighters because of their criminal records.

As Stanley-Lockhart was being interviewed on the phone Friday, he suddenly paused when he received a text message, alerting him that Gov. Gavin Newsom of California had just signed a bill that would allow more inmates who work as firefighters while serving their sentences to get jobs with fire departments once they are released.

“Sorry,” he said, as he paused. “That’s huge.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

9

Progressive donor Susan Sandler to give $200 million to racial justice groups

By ASTEAD W. HERNDON

foundation has helped create organizations like the Center for American Progress and usan Sandler, a liberal philanthropist, has the Learning Policy Institute, and has supannounced a $200 million investment ported nonprofit journalism outfits including in racial justice organizations, targeting ProPublica. areas across the South and the Southwest Susan Sandler, a trustee at the foundathat are experiencing rapid demographic tion, has supported several Democratic cantransformation. didates and campaigns and has been a power Sandler, who learned she had a rare form broker in national and California politics for of brain cancer four years ago, unveiled the years along with her husband, Steve Phillips. effort in a lengthy post on Medium published She was a key supporter of former President Monday morning. In the post, which was shared Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential with The New York Times before publication, run, and she backed Sens. Cory Booker of Sandler said her investments would be made New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California. through a new organization, the Susan Sandler With her new effort, Sandler will shift Fund, aimed at combating systemic racism and from the insider world of campaign donations building civic power. Sandler characterized the to long-term efforts at building power. In traeffort as a shift in her political priorities and ditionally Republican states such as Arizona, giving philosophy.

Georgia and Texas, the prospect of a changing “I have come to believe that, rather than electorate has enthralled political observers trying to use persuasive papers and reports to Protesters outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington in June. Since the killing of for years, and it is one reason such states are attempt to change the minds of those who are George Floyd, racial justice groups have seen an influx of donations large and often mentioned as future battlegrounds in making decisions, the more effective way to national elections. small. transform societal priorities and public policies Leaders of the groups receiving the new is to change the climate and environment in grant money said unlocking that potential which decisions are made,” Sandler writes. “When our Center for Empowerment. would require organizing — and investment. They praised Vivian Chang, a veteran of the California nonprofit Sandler’s decision as a legacy-defining one, a move that government, corporate, and other societal institutions are responsive to — and, frankly, fearful of — the people who world who will serve as the fund’s executive director, said sees where the country is going rather than where it is now. most bear the brunt of inequality and injustice, then better in a phone interview that “the investments are not so much The list of grantees also includes the Asian American targeted to battleground states, but looking at the landscape and Pacific Islander Civic Engagement Fund, Advance Native priorities, practices and policies follow.”

Sandler’s announcement comes amid skyrocketing of racism and demographic change.”

Political Leadership, the California Digital Divide Fund and “This fund really underscores what’s left out of many PICO California, a progressive, faith-based organizing group. investment in racial justice organizations, fueled by the national reckoning on systemic inequities and injustice that philanthropic discussions,” Chang said. “This concept of “A lot of campaign dollars, a lot of party dollars, a lot being accountable to real people with real problems, that of political-donor dollars are typically in service to shortswept the country this summer.

Small-dollar donations to bail funds after the killing is what catalyzes change; it’s what generates urgency and term, tactical-issue campaigns,” said Joseph Tomás McKellar, of George Floyd, a Black man who died in Minneapolis creativity. And so that’s why we’re focused on increasing the co-director of PICO California. “This is about building a after a police officer knelt on his neck, reached over $90 power and influence of those who bear the brunt of racism.” strong constituency that can withstand the kind of storms The Sandler Foundation, which was started in 1991 of the moment and help us build long-term resiliency and million. In July, the foundation started by George Soros by Sandler’s parents, billionaires Herb and Marion Sandler, commitment amongst a large base of people for systemic pledged $220 million to groups focused on racial equity, has long been a hub of left-leaning philanthropic efforts. The change.” an eye-popping total that gave long-term sustainability to several organizations. Sandler’s fund will provide several groups with a similar assurance.

Taken together, the donations have reshaped the landscape of Black political and civil rights organizations, and made clear that race and identity will remain at the center Assets listed in this notice will be remitted to the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions (OCFI) if not of American politics. It also signals a commitment by liberal claimed by November 30th, 2020. donors to invest in long-term efforts to change the political ^ƌ͘ hŶĐůĂŝŵĞĚ landscape, not simply one-off efforts to win an election or EŽ͘ KǁŶĞƌ EĂŵĞ &ƵŶĚ WƌŽƉĞƌƚLJ ĚĚƌĞƐƐ invest in a particular candidate. $138.61 1 AMAURY VELASCO VELEZ 1800 MCLEARY AVE #401, SAN JUAN, PR 00911 “In ways big and small, each of us can establish a $375.00 2 GUILLERMO MARTINEZ STE 207, OLIMPO PLAZA BLDG, 1002 MUNOZ RIVERA AVE, SAN JUAN, PR 00927 legacy,” Sandler writes. “I’m grateful that I’ve been given NEREIDA GONZALEZ $375.00 3 PO BOX 912, LAJAS, PR 00667 the time since my cancer diagnosis to establish mine. I urge NESTOR SANTANA CARIRE $353.84 4 APARTMENT W-302 BUILDING C HATO REY CENTRO CONDOMI, SAN JUAN, PR 00919 each of you not to wait to work on establishing yours.”

PROVALUE PROPERTY SERVICE $350.00 5 PO BOX #548, VEGA ALTA, PR 00692 Initial recipients of grants from Sandler’s fund include THOMAS EDWARD KIERCE ITURRIOZ $965.84 6 187 APARTMENT TORRE PONCE DE LEON 100 CIUDADELA CO, SAN JUAN, PR 00908 several progressive organizations working in battleground states to register new voters from underrepresented groups.

To access this notice on Sun West Mortgage Company’s website, please visit: The organizations include the Texas Organizing Project, New ŚƩƉƐ͗ͬ​ͬǁǁǁ͘ƐǁŵĐ͘ĐŽŵͬƐǁŵĐͲƉƌĞƐƐͲƌĞůĞĂƐĞƐ͘ƉŚƉ͍ĚсϬϴйϮ&ϭϬйϮ&ϮϬϮϬΘŶсƉƌͲƉƵďůŝĐĂƟŽŶƐͲϮϬϮϬ Virginia Majority, New Florida Majority and the Arizona

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10

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Trump and Biden joust in Florida, looking for votes in the margins

Michael Bloomberg, then Democratic presidential candidate, speaks during a campaign rally in San Antonio, Texas, March 1, 2020.

By JONATHAN MARTIN and PATRICIA MAZZEI

A

s Linda Kanner hoisted groceries into her Volvo outside the Publix in this affluent Gulf Coast enclave last week, she unleashed a stream of invective toward President Donald Trump to explain why she would “vote for Mickey Mouse” before an incumbent whose conduct she finds appalling.

A Midwestern Republican retiree like many voters here, Kanner is supporting Joe Biden, instead of shunning both major-party nominees as she did in 2016, because she finds him a more palatable option than she did Hillary Clinton.

Across the state in Miami, though, it’s Biden’s apparent slippage with Hispanics that’s garnering the most attention and has Democrats wringing their hands. Republican officials, and Trump himself, have repeatedly made overtures not just to Cuban Americans who have been an enduring part of their coalition but to non-Cuban Hispanics, a growing and potentially pivotal voting group.

Biden is just as unlikely to win Longboat Key, in sleepy and mostly white Sarasota County, even with the support of voters like Kanner, as Trump is to prevail in Miami-Dade County, the pulsating and diverse Democratic hub across the state. Yet Florida, and the White House itself, could hinge on the two candidates’ ability to narrow their losses in such forbidding locales.

In an era of polarization, where swing voters are scarce, elections in Florida are won by driving up turnout among the faithful and running up margins in favorable terrain while losing more closely in hostile precincts. In a state so evenly divided that races are often decided by a few thousand votes — or, more memorably, a few hundred — mobilizing the converted outweighs preaching to the undecided few.

“The secret to Florida now is that it’s a margins game,” said Gwen Graham, a former congresswoman who worked for decades in the campaigns of her father, the governor-turnedsenator Bob Graham.

That’s partly why Democrats were so stung last week by a federal appeals court decision that almost ensured that at least 774,000 former felons in the state — many of whom lean Democratic — would not be able to reclaim their voting rights this year without first paying all of their court fees. But the party received some good news over the weekend when billionaire Michael Bloomberg, under pressure to make good on his promises, vowed to spend $100 million in Florida to help Biden win there.

Four years after Trump won Florida by just over 1 percentage point, polls show the state is, true to form, sitting on a knife’s edge — and looming again as a potential tipping point.

On Tuesday, Biden will make his first trip to the state since claiming the nomination last spring.

Trump has made a number of visits to the state, including last week.

No voters appear more decisive than se-

niors, who polls show are more amenable to Biden than they were Clinton, and Hispanics, who the same surveys indicate are more supportive of Trump than they were in 2016.

“Cuban Americans have consolidated more around Trump, and the thing that has not gelled for Joe as it should are Puerto Rican voters,” said former Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat who is close to Biden. Nelson, who lost in 2018 in part because of Sen. Rick Scott’s gains with Hispanics, said he had told Biden’s senior campaign staff about his concern.

Asked if they were acting on his plea, he said, “If they want to win, they better be.”

Biden’s trip Tuesday will include a visit to the Puerto Rican community outside Orlando.

Amid the anxiety, Biden’s campaign dispatched his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, to Miami last week, where she made an unscheduled stop at an arepa joint in Doral, home to so many Venezuelans that it is nicknamed Doralzuela.

The Democrats’ challenge with Hispanics is twofold: They have until recently avoided campaigning in person amid the pandemic, and Republicans have devoted years to courting Latinos in the one place in the country where they are less heavily Democratic.

Though Cubans have dominated the Hispanic vote in the state for decades, they now only narrowly outnumber non-Cuban Hispanics, 51% to 49%. That makes Puerto Ricans and Central and South Americans an attractive target for Democrats, who can more easily make inroads among those Democratic-leaning voters than among more conservative Cubans.

But winning over non-Cuban Hispanics requires the sort of time and money that the Biden campaign has only recently started to invest.

“It’s just typical: Taking communities for granted and thinking they’re going to deliver 30 days out from an election,” scoffed Ana Carbonell, a Republican and a senior adviser to Scott’s Senate campaign who specialized in outreach to Hispanics.

Perhaps more telling, some Latino voters are more comfortable with Trump than in 2016, when he trounced and belittled local sons Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio. And they are increasingly uncomfortable witnessing violence in U.S. cities.

“There were a lot of people on the Hispanic side that said, ‘I don’t want to deal with him’ in 2016,” Carbonell said of Trump. “Now we have accepted this is who he is, and they’re doing a little bit better financially, and they had thought, ‘Well, Cubans have always been

exaggerating’ — but now they’re seeing these anarchists on the streets and thinking, ‘Whoa, what’s going on?’ ” Before the pandemic, Florida Democrats had sought to avoid the mistakes of the past by lavishing attention on the Hispanic community, engaging the local news media, attending community events, and running candidates in local and state legislative races that could bring more Hispanic voters to the polls. But unable to start voter registration campaigns, they have ceded ground to Republicans, who have shown far less restraint about in-person organizing.

Christian Ulvert, a Miami-based adviser for Biden, said it was only in the past few weeks that South Florida had demonstrated “levels of baseline acceptability’’ for resuming in-person campaigning.

“You’ve got to be present, you’ve got to be engaged, and it has to be authentic,” he said, pointing to Harris’ trip last week as “the clearest sign and commitment that the campaign is doing just that.”

With Florida’s vast senior population, it is Biden who is overperforming. Four years after Trump won voters 65 and older by 17 points, he’s trailing his Democratic opponent by 1 point, according to a recent NBC survey.

“They just did not like Hillary,” said Alex Sink, a Democrat and a former state official.

“But I think those white senior women, especially, who didn’t like her will be fine with Joe Biden — what’s not to like about Joe Biden?”

In conversations with a few dozen voters last week in retiree-heavy communities in and around Sarasota, the general lack of venom toward Biden among Republicans was notable.

Some borrowed Trump’s tropes to describe Biden as enfeebled and yanked to the left by his party, but few voiced the sort of contempt that was a feature of every conversation with a Democrat about the president.

A handful of voters volunteered that they had supported Trump or sat out in 2016 and were now supporting Biden. All retirees, they cited the same two factors: the president’s behavior and his handling of the virus.

“Trump is killing us!” exclaimed a 73-yearold voter named Michelle, who declined to provide her last name. She said she supported the president four years ago because she had been voting on the economy.

Walking her wheaten terrier, Patsy, through downtown Sarasota, she explained that she was undergoing chemotherapy and was more susceptible to the coronavirus. “I could catch an infection and die,” she said. “And he knew about it; he admitted it.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

11

Microsoft says its bid for TikTok was rejected in U.S.-China standoff

By DAVID E.SANGER, DAVID McCABE and ERIN GRIFFITH

T

he Chinese owner of TikTok has chosen Oracle to be the app’s technology partner for its U.S. operations and has rejected an acquisition offer from Microsoft, according to Microsoft officials and other people involved in the negotiations, as time runs out on an executive order from President Donald Trump threatening to ban the popular app unless its American operations are sold.

It was unclear whether TikTok’s choice of Oracle as a technology partner would mean that Oracle would also take a majority ownership stake of the social media app, the people involved in the negotiations said. Microsoft had been seen as the American technology company with the deepest pockets to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations from its parent company, ByteDance, and with the greatest ability to address national security concerns that led to Trump’s order.

“ByteDance let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s U.S. operations to Microsoft,” Microsoft said in a statement. “We are confident our proposal would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests.”

ByteDance declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for Oracle did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The fast-moving series of events Sunday came as the clock ticks down on the executive order from Trump, which said that TikTok essentially needed to strike a deal to sell its U.S. operations

by Sept. 20 or risk being blocked in the United States. But sale talks had been in a holding pattern because China issued new regulations last month that would bar TikTok from transferring its technology to a foreign buyer without explicit permission from the Chinese government. And any resulting deal could still be a geopolitical piñata between the United States and China.

The Chinese regulations helped scuttle the bid by Microsoft. The software giant had said in August that it would insist on a series of protections

that would essentially give it control of the computer code that TikTok uses for the American and many other Englishspeaking versions of the app.

Microsoft said the only way it could both protect the privacy of TikTok users in the United States and prevent Beijing from using the app as a venue for disinformation was to take over that computer code, and the algorithms that determine what videos are seen by the 100 million Americans who use it each month.

“We would have made significant changes to ensure the service met the highest standards for security, privacy, online safety, and combating disinformation,” Microsoft said in its statement.

Oracle has said nothing publicly about what it would do with TikTok’s underlying technology, which is written by a Chinese engineering team in Beijing — and which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has charged is answerable to Chinese intelligence agencies. That is a major concern of U.S. intelligence agencies, led by the National Security Agency and United States Cyber Command, which warned internally that whoever controls the computer code could channel — or censor — a range of politically sensitive information to specific users.

ByteDance and TikTok have denied that they help the Chinese government.

TikTok has become the latest flash point between Washington and Beijing over the control of technology that affects American lives. The Trump administration had already banned the Chinese telecom giant Huawei from selling next-generation, or 5G, networks and equipment in the United States, citing the risk of a foreign power controlling the infrastructure on which all internet communications flow.

But TokTok took the battle in new directions. For the first time, the United States was trying to stop a Chinese cultural phenomenon, with an intense following among American teenagers and millennials, which carries with it the possibility of future influence.

Even if Oracle may try to close a deal, it is unclear whether Beijing would create new obstacles to the process. And election-year politics have hung over the negotiations from the start. Unlike many

Microsoft, led by Satya Nadella, was seen as the American technology firm with the deepest pockets to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations. other technology companies, Oracle has cultivated close ties with the Trump administration. Its founder, Larry Ellison, hosted a fundraiser for Trump this year; and its chief executive, Safra Catz, served on the president’s transition team and has frequently visited the White House.

Along with Amazon, Oracle tried to win a $10 billion contract to run the Pentagon’s cloud services, one of the most hotly contested technology contracts issued by the Trump administration. Microsoft ultimately won that.

Oracle was also poised to provide the administration with a system earlier this year to help with a planned study that would have enabled the wide release of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. While doctors had warned the drug could have dangerous side effects, Trump had promoted its possible use to treat patients infected by the coronavirus.

Oracle’s relationship with the administration has drawn scrutiny. In August, a Department of Labor whistleblower said that Trump’s labor secretary, Eugene Scalia, had intervened in a pay discrimination case involving the company.

On a call to discuss Oracle’s earnings last week, Catz preemptively told analysts that she and Ellison would not

discuss reports about their bid for TikTok. The rise of TikTok in the United States has been remarkably rapid; it has taken off in just the past two years.

ByteDance, founded in 2012, has raised billions of dollars in funding, valuing it at $100 billion, according to PitchBook, which tracks private companies. Its investors include Tiger Global Management, KKR, NEA, SoftBank’s Vision Fund and GGV Capital.

In July, as pressure from the U.S. government escalated, ByteDance began discussions with investors to carve out TikTok. But the deal quickly become a freefor-all, with bids from various corporations and investment entities around the world and new demands from the U.S. and Chinese governments.

As the deal progressed, two of ByteDance’s largest backers, Sequoia Capital and General Atlantic, have sought to retain their holdings in its valuable subsidiary while saving TikTok from a ban in the United States. Both firms are represented on ByteDance’s board of directors.

In late August, the firms teamed up with Oracle to bid against Microsoft.

Microsoft, meanwhile, teamed up with Walmart to make its bid.

12

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

‘The Fresh Prince’ Will Smith invites you to a royal stay on AIRBNB

By THE STAR STAFF

F

or the first time ever, local guests invited to chill out and relax in a wing of one of television’s most iconic homes It’s been 30 years since Will Smith rolled up the driveway and became part of the lovable family, we all remember. To celebrate the unforgettable memories, valuable life lessons and laughs that have lasted decades, “The Fresh Prince” will turn things upside down - once again for the town where his reign began.

The actor and entrepreneur is adding Airbnb Host to his long resume and opening the doors to his former “kingdom” so fans can create some memories of their own.

The familiar residence is just as fly as it was when “The Fresh Prince” called it home. Bold graffiti art, posh interiors, timeless family portraits, and Philly cheesesteaks served on silver platters will transport guests to the lap of luxury — auntie and uncle not included. Starting September 29 at 11:00am PDT, groups of up to two Los Angeles County residents will have the chance to book one of five nostalgic stays in Will’s wing of the home occurring on October 2, October 5, October 8, October 11 and October 14. Bookings are priced at just $30 to recognize the 30 years since Will knocked on the door of

this iconic LA crib for the very first time.

The stays will take place for one night each in Will’s wing of the decked-out mansion with access to Will’s posh bedroom and bathroom, a poolside lounge area and an elegant dining room. During this royal overnight, guests will be treated to some old school fun, Big Willie Style.

Perks include: Lacing up a fresh pair of Air Jordans before shooting some b-ball in the bedroom.

Spinning throwback classics all night on turntables just like DJ Jazzy Jeff’s.

Donning a fly look from Will’s closet, from argyle prepster to all-star athlete and Bel-Air Athletics gear.

Soaking up the sun poolside on luxe lounge chairs.

Being (virtually) welcomed to the mansion by none other than DJ Jazzy Jeff.

Interested guests should note that house rules are in strict adherence with local Covid-19 guidelines, and those who request to book must prove Los Angeles County residency and currently live in the same household to minimize risk. Guests can rest easy in the king-size bed knowing that the home will be cleaned in accordance with CDC rules and consistent with the Airbnb enhanced cleaning protocol.

“YOOOO!! Y’all think we should rent out the Fresh Prince house?? We’re making it happen with the squad at Airbnb!! #FreshPrince30th,” Will Smith posted on Facebook.

So that fans around the world can get in on the fun, DJ Jazzy Jeff will also be hosting an Airbnb Online Experience in which he’ll teach guests how to spin & scratch like a hip-hop legend. Guests will get to spend some time with him in his home studio, virtually of course, and spin some vinyl together in honor of the good ‘ole days at the freshest crib in LA. Aspiring DJs can request to book this onetime event starting today at abnb.co/ djjazzyjeff, and the experience will take place on October 1.

To celebrate the feeling of family and community Will Smith and friends brought to all of us, Airbnb will make a donation to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Philadelphia, a charity that supports youth, including those in greatest need, by offering development and skill-building programs, recreational activities and empowerment tools. For those who want to experience the freshest staycation ever, you can request to book* beginning on September 29 at 12:00 p.m. on airbnb.com/fresh.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

13 Stocks

Wall Street climbs on mega mergers, vaccine hopes

W

all Street’s major indexes climbed on Monday on a boost from technology stocks while signs of progress in developing a COVID-19 vaccine and a spurt of multi-billion dollar deals also brightened the mood.

Nvidia Corp jumped 5.7% on plans to buy UK-based chip designer Arm from Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp for as much as $40 billion, in a deal set to reshape the global semiconductor landscape.

The Philadelphia SE chip index rose 2.1%. All major S&P sectors were higher with technology leading the charge with a 2.1% increase.

Oracle surged 5.1% as the cloud services company said it would team up with China’s ByteDance to keep TikTok operating in the United States, beating Microsoft Corp in a deal structured as a partnership rather than an outright sale.

U.S. stocks are coming off of two straight weeks of losses as investors sold heavyweight technology shares that had powered the benchmark index to record highs in a dramatic recovery from its March lows.

“The tail-end of last week seemed to indicate a continued wobble in market sentiment that appears to be finding some more solid footing this morning,” said Yousef Abbasi, global market strategist at StoneX Group Inc in New York.

“Behind this, we have the positive developments on vaccines as well as an active merger Monday.”

Apple Inc, Facebook.com and Google-parent Alphabet Inc rose between 1.6% and 2%.

Tesla Inc’s shares rebounded 8.4%, almost making up for all of its losses from last week.

At 12:23 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 373.05 points, or 1.35%, at 28,038.69 and the S&P 500 was up 53.75 points, or 1.61%, at 3,394.72. The Nasdaq Composite was up 215.62 points, or 1.99%, at 11,069.16.

Sentiment got a lift on Monday after drugmaker AstraZeneca resumed its British clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine, one of the most advanced in development.

Pfizer Inc gained 3.3% after the drugmaker and German biotech firm BioNTech SE proposed to expand their Phase 3 pivotal COVID-19 vaccine trial to about 44,000 participants.

“Markets are becoming increasingly comfortable with the notion that we may be moving towards a safe and effective vaccine, perhaps as early as the end of 2020, but at least into early 2021,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.

Later this week, investors will focus on the Federal Reserve’s last policy meeting before the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential elections.

Immunomedics Inc’s shares more than doubled on Gilead Sciences Inc’s $21 billion buyout deal, which is a steep premium to the biotech company’s closing price on Friday.

Gilead gained 3.0%.

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Tuesday, September 15, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Colombia sees surge in mass killings despite historic peace deal

A funeral for two of six men killed by an armed group in one of several massacres in August. Colombia is going through a worrying surge in mass violence.

By JULIE TURKEWITZ

T

hey were 20-somethings at a party after months of pandemic-related quarantine.

Then the shots rang out, and soon eight of them were dead.

“Peace was our dream,” said Jesús Quintero, whose son John Sebastian died after gunmen opened fire in their small town, Samaniego, a mountain-fringed community trapped between warring criminal groups.

“But nothing has changed.”

Four years after ending the longestrunning war in the Americas with a historic peace deal that was celebrated around the world, Colombia is experiencing a distressing surge in mass violence.

The United Nations has documented at least 33 massacres this year, up from 11 in all of 2017, the year after the accord was signed, with at least a dozen more since the United Nations announced its last official count, in mid-August.

The peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, ended five decades of war that had left thousands dead and displaced an estimated 6 million people. It earned then-president, Juan Manuel Santos, a Nobel Peace Prize and was viewed as the country’s biggest shot at a radically different future.

But the surge has left many disenchanted with the peace process and concerned that this escalation could further destabilize the countryside, tipping Colombia into more widespread violence and dashing many of the dreams that emerged in the days after the accord.

“This moment is really, really dangerous,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombiabased analyst for the International Crisis Group. “The history in Colombia is, when you start a wave of violence, it accelerates, and it’s very hard to stop.”

In recent days, Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, erupted in violent protest after a man who was subdued by police and repeatedly shocked with a stun gun died in custody. The images, caught on video, drew thousands to the streets in demonstrations that left at least 10 dead and hundreds of people injured. The cause of those deaths is under investigation.

But many say that at the heart of the outpouring is a deeper frustration with the pace of change.

“The last government tried to end the war, and it didn’t work,” said Eliana Garzón, 31, whose brother-in-law, Javier Ordóñez, was the man killed by police.

“This is a country that is fed up,” she went on. “His death was the perfect excuse to head to the streets.”

The attacks in the countryside are widely considered to be an ugly byproduct of the peace deal. After the accord, thousands

of fighters laid down their arms and agreed to testify before a tribunal in exchange for government aid.

But as the FARC pulled out of vast swaths of the country, other groups — some old, some new — moved in.

Now these groups are fighting over territory in an effort to control not only the country’s longtime scourge — the coca crop used to make cocaine often sent to customers in the United States — but also drug routes, illegal mining and human trafficking. They are also fighting over who can extort from everyday people.

Many of the same communities that suffered during the war between the FARC and the government are caught in the conflict, with criminal groups using killings as a preferred method of terror.

And in the last month the pace of the killings has accelerated, with a massacre taking place on average every two days, according to the human rights group Indepaz, which tracks the killings.

Both Indepaz and the United Nations define a massacre as a killing with three or more victims.

In Colombia, massacres have long served either as a retaliatory measure to punish people for working or appearing to work with a rival, or as an intimidation tool to keep entire towns in line.

Samaniego, where Quintero’s son was killed, sits in the country’s lush southwest, in a coca-growing region controlled by a longstanding guerrilla group called the ELN, according to the government. Quintero, 55, is the teaching coordinator at a local school.

His son, known as Sebas, 24, grew up in Samaniego and was a university student and aspiring engineer who had a particularly close relationship with his niece, a toddler.

“He was an excellent human being,” Quintero said.

In recent months, a wing of FARC defectors had tried to gain power in the region.

But the government suspects that a small-time gang, the Cuyes, working with permission of the ELN, was responsible for his son’s death.

The Cuyes appeared to have instituted a curfew to make their criminal dealings easier and may have been angered that they had been disobeyed, said the country’s high commissioner for peace, Miguel Ceballos.

“Why did they do it?” he said. “To show strength. And to try to say that they control that region.”

The government of President Iván Duque, a conservative whose party vociferously opposed the peace deal, calling it too easy on the FARC, has condemned the spate of mass killings while also playing down the recent surge.

Ceballos, who was appointed by Duque, highlighted that there are now far fewer mass killings each year when compared with the years before the accord.

“The number of massacres has decreased,” he said. “This is good news.”

And overall, he noted, homicides have gone down amid the pandemic.

Duque’s critics, however, have accused him of failing to fully fund many of the programs written into the deal that were meant to address the economic and security problems that keep the criminal groups in business.

Many coca farmers, for example, had hoped to join a substitution program that would help them shift from coca to legal crops. But only a limited number of families have been included in the program, while violent groups only seem to multiply around them.

Ceballos called the criticism unfair, saying the president, who came into office in 2018, has worked aggressively to fund the peace-building programs. And he cited the country’s mountainous terrain, the world’s voracious appetite for cocaine and the slippery nature of criminal groups as major challenges.

“It is not easy to protect the whole population,” he said.

“Give the man a chance,” he went on, speaking of Duque. “We cannot undo 56 years of war in just two years.”

But Wilder Acosta, the leader of a coca growers’ association near the border with Venezuela, is impatient. “Every day the conflict sharpens,” he said.

Eight growers were killed recently in his area, he said, in the town of Totumito, pushing about 300 families to flee the region, many carrying children and suitcases.

In those murders, police have accused yet another group, the Rastrojos, which is battling the ELN for territory. Acosta faulted the government for failing to protect his community.

“When the FARC was in power,” he said, “there was a law, and there was order in our communities. Now that the FARC has disarmed, there is a chaos that we don’t understand.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

15

After fire razes squalid Greek camp, homeless migrants fear what’s next

By MATINA STEVIS-GRIDNEFF

T

hey’ve been sleeping on tombstones and on the side of the road, in parking lots and among dried weeds on the hillsides. They’ve pitched makeshift tents with bamboo poles and blankets. They’ve used the few clothes they have to make mattresses so their babies don’t sleep on tarmac.

About 4,000 children, including hundreds of infants, and 8,000 adults have been stranded without shelter or sanitation on the Greek island of Lesbos, most of them packed along a 1.5-mile stretch of coastal road, since blazes last week razed their squalid refugee camp, Europe’s largest.

“We escaped from fire, but everything is black,” said Mujtaba Saber, sitting on a thin blanket spread on a street, next to his napping 3-year-old son. His 20-day-old baby slept nearby in her mother’s arms.

The fires have intensified what was already a humanitarian disaster on the Aegean islands, where Europe warehouses tens of thousands of migrants in overcrowded camps with severe shortages of toilets, showers, medical care and even food.

The camps are a centerpiece of the European Union’s strategy, following the migrant crisis of 2015-16, to slow the movement of people from the Middle East, Asia and Africa who try to reach Europe.

The now-destroyed camp, called Moria after a nearby village, had for years been a byword for misery, an unflattering emblem of European policy.

The razing of the camp “was a tragedy,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece said in a speech Sunday. “It was a warning bell to all to become sensitized.

Europe cannot afford a second failure on the migration issue.”

Aid workers and Greek officials say the fires were started by a small group of asylumseekers who were angry that the government had instructed them to quarantine after an outbreak of coronavirus, and put the entire camp under a lockdown. But if COVID-19 was the spark that lit the tinderbox, its arrival in Moria was hardly a surprise.

The European Commission — the EU executive branch that has funded much of the construction and operation of the camps but has not taken responsibility for their squalor — and aid groups had warned that conditions there made Moria an ideal

breeding ground for disease outbreaks.

What remains of Moria is a rancid pile of charred tents, ash and debris, melted metal frames, gutted communal toilets and burned rats lying next to potatoes and onions that will never be consumed.

Originally built to hold 3,000 newly arrived people, Moria quickly burst at the seams, spilling into surrounding olive groves and fields. Six months ago, more than 20,000 asylum-seekers lived there.

The pandemic expedited the relocation of thousands of them, but by the time the fires struck last week, the camp was still dramatically overcrowded, hosting 12,600 people.

No one will miss it, homeless asylumseekers said, even as they faced more nights in the open.

“I think sleeping on the street is bad, but Moria is bad-bad,” said Mahbube Ahzani, 15, who had been in the camp with her family for 10 months. But what will be worse, she said, is the “new Moria.”

“They’re building it again, and I don’t want to go — it will be a prison,” she said of the tent city the Greek army has been setting up. Greek authorities said they hoped to relocate the migrants over the next few days into 2,000 tents in the new seaside camp, fitting six people into each tent.

The migrants, nearly two-thirds of whom are Afghans, fear that they will simply be put back into a lockdown where the coronavirus will run rampant. Fewer than 1,000 people had voluntarily moved into the tent city by Sunday evening. Of 300 tested, seven were infected with the virus.

Asylum-seekers desperate to be moved off Lesbos protested against the new camp Saturday, a small number clashing with Greek riot police, who responded with tear gas that sent women and children fleeing in screams.

After the first cases were detected in Moria earlier this month — eventually at least 35 people tested positive — the government responded by quarantining the entire camp, rather than isolating only the infected and their close contacts. Medical groups and aid workers protested that with thousands of people crowded together, the decision put everyone at risk, including pregnant women and elderly people.

Local authorities on Lesbos, hostile to any moves that could be interpreted as improving the lives of asylum-seekers, obstructed the establishment of a response

plan. They fined and threatened to sue the international medical charity Doctors Without Borders for alleged violations of urban planning rules with its temporary COVID-19 isolation facility, forcing the organization to shutter it. A similar clinic built with donations from the Dutch government had no staff and never operated.

Aid workers and officials say that a few camp residents who were furious about being told to isolate started a fire.

According to officials, of the 12,600 who fled the fire, 400 were unaccompanied children who have already been taken to mainland Greece and will travel on to new homes across the EU. Another 1,200 people have already been granted refugee status, and Mitsotakis, the prime minister, said he was in talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel about potentially relocating some of them to Germany.

And the European Commission, which has deflected responsibility for the grim conditions at Moria onto the Greek government, has raised the prospect of a new, improved first-reception facility on Lesbos that it would co-manage with Greece.

Still, several days after the fires, it had become clear that most EU countries were not scrambling to help Greece and Moria’s displaced. Most that have expressed an interest in taking in asylum-seekers do not want large numbers, and want to pick them

based on criteria that Greece has long decried as deeply unfair.

Many countries want only unaccompanied minors, and others said they would only take a few dozen Syrians or Yemenis, according to international migration officials.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters, the officials welcomed the offers, but said the majority of those in need of assistance on the island were Afghans.

A new EU migration and asylum policy, in the works for months and due to be presented this month, is meant to address the reluctance of most EU countries to take in any refugees from the countries where they first reach the continent, such as Greece and Italy. Their resistance to helping ease the crisis on Lesbos does not bode well for such an agreement.

“The near-total demolition of the Moria camp has removed the fig leaf that allowed policymakers to avert their eyes from the fact that an EU-unworthy solution to the reception of newcomers has persisted for years now,” said Hanne Beirens, director of the Brussels-based think tank Migration Policy Institute Europe, in a note.

“Keeping asylum-seekers on an island, in some cases for years, under the bleakest of conditions, is symptomatic of a Europe that is unable to craft an equitable solution around burden-sharing,” she said.

Women with their children in a field near the beach after they were displaced from the destroyed Moria migrant camp on Lesbos in Greece, Sept. 12, 2020.

16

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Feminists paper Paris with stark posters decrying domestic abuse

By CONSTANT MÉHEUT

O

n a recent mild night, a squad of four young women wandered through a peaceful neighborhood in eastern Paris, armed with a bucket of glue, a paintbrush and backpacks loaded with posters.

They were looking for surfaces to paper with a stark message.

“There, it’s not bad, is it?” said Astrid Tenon, wearing all black, as she pointed to a 20-foot-long wall, just east of the Marais neighborhood. Her comrade in arms, Chloé Madesta, holding a bucket, nodded.

A well-choreographed operation immediately started: First, a woman brushed some glue over the wall, then a second woman pasted up page after page, while a third patted each piece down with another layer of glue.

After less than seven minutes, the wall bore the words: “You said you loved me, but it was still rape.”

For about a year, posters denouncing sexual abuse and femicides — killing women because of their gender — have popped up by the hundreds in Paris, despite the fact that posting on public walls

is considered vandalism and is illegal.

The posters are the work of feminist activists who, critical of the French government’s response to the growing problem of domestic violence, have taken to the streets with a large-scale poster campaign aimed at raising awareness of violent crimes carried out against women by their current or former partners.

“Our goal is to bring these facts before the eyes, so that one cannot look away,” Madesta said. “Because this violence always remains in the shadows.”

Chilling slogans reading “Dad killed Mom” or “She leaves him, he kills her” have been pasted on the sandstone facades in the city’s center. A “Silence is not consent” statement stands on a canal bridge in northern Paris. Longer messages recounting the death of women at the hand of their partners have spread out along tunnels near the outskirts of the city.

The posters have gradually become a fixture of the capital’s landscape, so common that many Parisians have walked past at least several of them.

The women want the messages “to burst into the daily, the ordinary life,” Madesta said. “That is where this vio-

Posters denouncing sexual abuse and femicides line a bridge in Paris on Aug. 25, 2020. The posters are regularly torn off or splattered with paint by passers-by, but activists fix the damage, restoring the words

lence takes place.”

The messages have also become an unlikely battleground over who owns the streets. Posters are regularly torn off or splattered with paint by passers-by, but the activists fix the damage, restoring the words.

The posters draw much of their strength from a bold graphic identity of black, capital letters painted onto white sheets of paper: simple, sober and instantly recognizable.

“With this style, we are looking for the crude side of the message, the literality,” Madesta said. “There is no metaphor in what we paste, there is no poetry.”

The postering technique is simple and inexpensive, helping explain why the messages have sprung seemingly everywhere, so quickly.

The campaign is the work of a new feminist group, “Les Colleuses,” or “the Gluers,” begun by Marguerite Stern, who, in the summer of 2019, put out a call on social networks. Dozens of women responded. Now some 1,500 activists have joined the postering operations.

“I think it has something to do with Paris,” Stern said of the strong response to her initial call. “It’s a city where there are a lot of young women, students, a large activist network.”

The activists say papering walls not only enables them to publicly expose a reality, domestic violence, that is often relegated to the private sphere, but also allows them to reclaim a space — the street — where many women feel vulnerable.

But the operations themselves are not without risk.

As Tenon was pasting up her third poster of the night, teaming up with Anne-Elisabeth Ropartz, they heard what sounded like a police siren.

“Oh no!” said Ropartz, 24, standing on tiptoes to paste a half-completed poster. It turned out the sirens came from an ambulance that raced past the group.

“The situation is increasingly tense,” said Tenon, 26, a drama coach who said she has experienced years, of harassment by men in the street.

Although the authorities at first turned a blind eye, they have started to

crack down, with more activists stopped by the police recently. The maximum fine for vandalism can reach $4,500.

Some pedestrians have verbally confronted the activists.

“It causes a strong irritation, but that’s precisely what’s great about it,” said Madesta, 27, whose clothing was stained with glue. “It means that our fight and our determination is starting to get things moving.”

In the eastern Paris neighborhood where some of the feminists gathered on the recent night, the group found a spot for their work on a faded gray wall.

One man shouted “Police! Police!” upon seeing the women put up the posters. But other local residents leaned out of their apartment windows and expressed support.

Khalid Bakari, a 42-year-old wholesaler sitting casually on a bench near the wall, was unsure about the effectiveness of the women’s fight.

“It can change things just as it can change nothing,” Bakari said.

Last year, 146 women in France were killed by their current or former partners, according to government data, an increase of 21% from 2018. In November, the government introduced new measures to combat the problem, like more education and more social workers in police stations. Activists say the efforts do not go far enough and are underfunded.

Thanks to social networks, the postering movement has spread to many other French cities and to Belgium and Italy.

Madesta said she used to fear the streets until she started using them as a platform for activism. In late 2019, she pasted her own story as the daughter of an alcoholic father who beat her and her mother.

Pasting messages denouncing domestic violence “is a mechanism that is so empowering and that allows you to change your relationship with the world, with others, with the street,” Madesta said.

Tenon agreed. “It’s silly,” she said, “but from the moment we have our bucket, our glue and our paintbrush, we feel invincible.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

17

Japan’s next Prime Minister emerges from behind the curtain

By MOTOKO RICH and MAKIKO INOUE

Y

oshihide Suga has charted an unlikely course to the cusp of Japan’s premiership.

While most leading Japanese lawmakers come from elite political families, Suga is the son of a strawberry farmer and a schoolteacher from the country’s rural north.

He’s known more for his expressionless recitations of government policy than any flashes of charisma. At 71, he’s even older than Shinzo Abe, who suddenly announced in late August that he was resigning as prime minister because of ill health.

Yet Suga, the longtime chief Cabinet secretary to Abe, should have little trouble sliding into the job. He has vowed to pick up from where Abe left off, a gesture that reassured the nation after a string of revolving-door prime ministers.

And in Japan, where stability often outweighs ideology, Suga appealed to a tradition-bound political establishment that resists change.

On Monday, Suga swept an election for the leadership of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party — which has governed Japan for all but four years since World War II — all but assuring that he will become prime minister after a vote in Parliament in the coming days.

Whether he ends up a caretaker leader or stays after a general election is likely to depend on his response to Japan’s immediate economic and geopolitical challenges. But for now, in quickly locking up what had initially seemed a wide-open contest, he has demonstrated the behind-the-scenes political skills he had honed while serving Abe for nearly eight years.

“How quickly the talk coalesced toward Suga,” said Mireya Solis, director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, “shows his political acumen.”

His role as a shadow power in Japanese politics, however, has rendered him a bit of a cipher.

In many ways, he seems like yet another in a long line of dour Japanese politicians. The most exciting nugget to emerge in recent news reports is the revelation that Suga, a teetotaler with a sweet tooth, starts and ends each day with 100 situps. On his website he says he likes river fishing and karate.

More substantively, it has been difficult to discern Suga’s vision for Japan or whether he could muster fresh solutions for the country’s entrenched issues.

“Generally, politicians have at least a facade of expressing ideals,” said Megumi Naoi, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, who said she

Yoshihide Suga, 71, swept an election on Monday for the leadership of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, assuring him the prime ministership of Japan. would usually expect “policy statements about the ‘type of world that I want to see.’ ” Despite nearly a quarter century in national politics, Suga, who serves essentially as Abe’s chief of staff and main government spokesman, “hasn’t really come out with very strong policies,” Naoi said.

Reflecting his years as Abe’s loyal adviser, Suga, who declined a request for an interview, has promised to pursue some of the departing prime minister’s most cherished goals. He is expected to continue to push for a revision of Japan’s pacifist constitution and the return of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea.

He has also said he would roughly stick to Abe’s signature economic formula, known as Abenomics, combining easy monetary policy, government spending and structural reform of industries such as agriculture.

When Suga showed a tiny sign of staking out a new policy last week — a potential increase in a tax that has hampered consumer spending — he quickly backtracked.

With global turbulence from the coronavirus pandemic and rising geopolitical threats in Asia, a successor who stays the course may be just what Japan needs.

“Japan is not a country with revolutionary reform taking place very often,” said Christina Davis, director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard. “Especially in times of crisis and uncertainty, being seen as a stable crisis manager could be an asset.”

Even as he epitomizes the status quo, Suga has also been a catalyst for significant

change. He is credited with helping Abe push through contentious security laws that allow Japan’s military to join overseas combat missions alongside allies. Suga was also considered a strong proponent of a bill, passed two years ago, authorizing a sharp increase in the number of foreign workers permitted in Japan.

Other glimpses of his political hand have yielded concerns. Some critics say Suga was the architect behind some of Abe’s more authoritarian impulses, including his consolidation of power over Japan’s sprawling bureaucracy and the use of tactics to silence criticism in the news media.

“I think Suga is more dangerous than Abe,” Kihei Maekawa, a former vice education minister, told The Sunday Mainichi, a weekly magazine.

With Suga as prime minister, Maekawa predicted, “bureaucrats will be servants or act as a private military” under the prime minister’s office, “worse than in the Abe era.”

One major question, which arose as soon as Suga become the front-runner, is just how long he will last. The answer may be determined by his handling of the pandemic, the postponed Tokyo Olympics and increasing tensions with China.

There are rumors that Suga could call a snap election soon after he takes over the prime ministership. If successful, he could consolidate his popularity. If not, “maybe this is just an interim leader,” said Ken Hijino, a professor of law at Kyoto University, “and they will come up with some surprise younger, more attractive face to go into the general election.”

For now, the public supports Suga, with

more than 50% of those surveyed in a national poll last week backing him to be prime minister.

While Japanese voters see Suga and Abe as something of a pair, their family backgrounds could hardly be more different. Abe is a thirdgeneration politician and the grandson of a prime minister; Suga had an unremarkable upbringing in rural Akita prefecture, along with two older sisters and a younger brother.

According to a biography by Isao Mori, Suga’s father suggested he work on the family farm, but Suga decided to move to Tokyo. He took odd jobs, first with a cardboard company and then driving turret trucks at the old Tsukiji fish market, before enrolling at Hosei University.

When he decided to pursue politics, absent family connections, he asked the career services center for an introduction to a member of Parliament.

In 1975, Suga took a job as secretary to Hikosaburo Okonogi, a member of the House of Representatives from Yokohama, Japan’s second-largest city. Suga’s duties included buying cigarettes and parking cars.

In 1987, he ran for a seat on the City Council in Yokohama, where he became known as a “shadow” Yokohama mayor. He helped develop transportation links to the port and pushed to lower waiting lists at city day care centers.

“He has four eyes and four ears,” Koichi Fujishiro, a former chairman of the Yokohama City Council, said in a telephone interview. “He worked from morning to late at night.”

In 1996, Suga made the leap to national politics, winning a seat in the lower house of Parliament. During Abe’s first, fumbling stint as prime minister, from 2006 to 2007, Suga served as minister of internal affairs and telecommunications. Even after Abe left office following a series of scandals, Suga remained loyal.

Abe rewarded that loyalty when he came back as prime minister in 2012 and chose Suga as his chief Cabinet secretary. According to Kenya Matsuda, author of “Shadow Power: Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga,” Suga urged Abe to focus on the economy rather than the nationalist agenda that had consumed his first term.

On foreign policy, Suga has worked to fill holes in his portfolio. He visited Washington last year, the first chief Cabinet secretary to make such a trip in three decades.

For Abe, personal diplomacy with President Donald Trump has been crucial. If Trump wins reelection, the question, said Solis, of the Brookings Institution, “is whether Suga can work the magic or whether that was a bromance between Trump and Abe not to be repeated again.”

18

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

When good people don’t act, evil reigns

By CHARLES M. BLOW

I

have often wondered how major world tragedies and horrors were allowed to unfold. Where were all the good people, those who objected or should have? How did life simply go on with a horror in their midst?

How did the trans-Atlantic slave trade play out over hundreds of years? How did slavery thrive in this country? How was the Holocaust allowed to happen? How did the genocides in Rwanda or Darfur come to be?

There is, of course, nearly always an explanation. Often it is official policy; often it is driven by propaganda. But I’m more concerned with how people in the society considered these events at the time, and how any semblance of normalcy could be maintained while events unfolded.

It turns out that our current era is providing the unsettling answer: It was easy.

As I write this, nearly 200,000 Americans have died — many of them needlessly — from COVID-19, in large part because the Trump administration has refused to sufficiently address the crisis, be honest with the American people and urge

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Attendees as President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Minden, Nev., Sept. 12, 2020. “Don’t let history record this moment as it has recorded too many others: a time when good people did too little to confront wickedness and disaster,” writes Charles M. Blow. caution. Instead, Donald Trump has lied about the virus, downplayed it and resisted scientists’ warnings, and continues to hold rallies with no social distancing and no mask requirements.

Things are poised to get worse: Models now predict that the number of Americans killed by the virus could double between now and Jan. 1. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington: “We expect the daily death rate in the U.S., because of seasonality and declining public vigilance, to reach nearly 3,000 a day in December. Cumulative deaths expected by Jan. 1 are 415,090; this is 222,522 deaths from now until the end of the year.”

And yet, Americans still flock to Trump rallies, Republicans continue to defend his pandemic response, and it is not clear that he will be defeated in November. We are, in many states, back to restaurants and bars, schools and churches, gyms and spas. It’s not as if we don’t know that there is a deadly virus being transmitted through the air, but it seems as though many Americans, weary of restrictions, have simply made their peace with it.

We have a climate crisis that continues to worsen. Storms are getting stronger. Droughts are severe. Rivers are flooding. The sea level is rising.

And yet, we don’t do nearly enough to stop it and may not do enough before it’s too late to do anything.

Right now much of the West Coast is ablaze with hellish scenes of orange skies, and yet too many of us entertain climate change deniers, or, perhaps worse, know well the gravity and preca-

riousness of the situation and still haven’t changed our habits or voted for the candidates with the boldest visions to save the planet.

Right now, China has detained as many as 1 million mostly Muslim citizens in indoctrination camps, hoping to remold many into what The New York Times called “loyal blue-collar workers to supply Chinese factories with cheap labor.”

And yet, the world does little. Many look away. Life goes on.

This is how these catastrophes happen — in full sight — and people with full knowledge don’t revolt. People sometimes think that the issue is far away, or if it’s not, that it’s too big and they are too powerless.

They think provincially, or even parochially, concerned with their own house, their own street, their own community.

“It’s too bad that those children are in cages, but I can’t worry about that now. The clothes in the dryer need folding.”

“It’s too bad that an unarmed Black man just got shot by the police, but I can’t worry about that now. The yard needs mowing.”

I guess in some ways this impulse is self-protecting, preventing the mind and spirit from becoming overwhelmed with angst and rage. But the result is that evil — as a person or system — rampages, unchecked, taking your personal laissezfaire as public license.

If you don’t complain, you condone.

But this mustn’t be. Stop thinking of yourself as weak or helpless. Stop thinking that things will simply work themselves out. Stop thinking that evil will stop at the gate and not trample your own garden.

Gather the energy. Gather your neighbor.

Fight, vote, email, post. Do all you can to stand up for the vulnerable, for the oppressed, for the planet itself. Don’t let history record this moment as it has recorded too many others: a time when good people did too little to confront wickedness and disaster.

As Edmund Burke wrote in “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents” in 1770: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

But you may be more familiar with another quote often attributed to Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

19

Feria de salud de Cannabis Medicinal llega a Plaza Las Américas del 1 al 4 de octubre Por THE STAR

M

edCann.Biz uno de los eventos emblemáticos sobre el cannabis medicinal en Puerto Rico se traslada al centro comercial Plaza Las Américas del 1 al 4 de octubre, de 9:00 de la mañana a 8:00 de la noche de jueves a sábado y de 11:00 de la mañana a 7:00 de la noche el domingo. La ubicación será en el primer nivel del centro comercial, en el local del lado de la tienda Macys, observando las más estrictas reglas de salud implementadas con motivo del covid-19 y la orden ejecutiva vigente.

“En estos tiempos cuando la salud, física y emocional se recrudece, queremos ofrecer una alternativa que ha probado ser efectiva como lo es el cannabis medicinal. Durante esta pandemia muchos países han reconocido el cannabis como una industria esencial por lo que se ha mantenido en un continuo crecimiento y Puerto Rico no es la excepción.” comentó Noemí Pérez, presidenta del Puerto Rico MedCann.Biz En lo que será una feria de salud, el Puerto Rico MedCann.Biz contará con expertos en el campo del cannabis medicinal, profesionales del

sector de la salud, proveedores, exhibidores de diversos productos derivados del cannabis y pacientes con extraordinarios testimonios. Además de las orientaciones sobre el tema, proveerán los mecanismos para la certificación de nuevos pacientes y renovación de licencias.

“Hemos hecho un esfuerzo porque sabemos la gran necesidad que hay de recibir orientación sobre el cannabis medicinal y su impacto positivo

en muchos padecimientos que tienen las personas que no quieren continuar dependiendo de fármacos. En estos cuatro días que estaremos en Plaza Las Américas, les aseguramos que podrán obtener las respuestas a todas sus inquietudes.” añadió Ingrid Schmidt, Directora de Puerto Rico MedCann.

Biz Para garantizar el acceso gratuito al Puerto Rico MedCann.Bizz que este año es dedicado a los pacientes, se requiere registro previo a través de www.prmedcannbiz.com o llamando para orientación al 939- 338-3303.

Firmes en lo importante que es mantener controles salubristas Puerto Rico MedCann.Biz tendrá activo un protocolo en cumplimiento tanto para los visitantes como para sus empleados, uso de mascarillas en todo momento, lavado las manos o use “hand sanitizer” frecuentemente, limpieza y desinfección del área, cernimiento de pacientes, distancias mínimas de 6 a 9 pies entre los exhibidores y estaciones de desinfección de manos. Puerto Rico MedCann.Biz del 1 al 4 de octubre desde Plaza Las Américas, para más información pueden llamar al 939-330-3303, email info@prmedcannbiz. com y pagina web www.prmedcannbiz.com

Crean Comité Ciudadano de Salud para informar sobre el COVID-19 Por THE STAR

E

n respuesta al vacío creado tras la decisión de disolver el Task Force médico, la organización Mentes Puertorriqueñas en Acción (MPA) facilitó la creación del Comité Ciudadano de Salud (CCS), con el fin de proveer a la ciudadanía información y recomendaciones utilizando como base los datos más actualizados sobre el COVID-19.

El comité tendrá la encomienda de informar sobre los datos que se actualicen respecto a la pandemia, y dar sugerencias y recomendaciones a la ciudadanía desde un punto de vista salubrista sobre lo que debe o no hacerse como respuesta. Para ello, se utilizarán las redes sociales con el fin de mantener una comunicación directa y recurrente. La iniciativa también incluirá la transmisión de conferencias que se harán cada dos semanas con el fin de comunicar a la ciudadanía los datos disponibles hasta el momento, según se informó

este lunes en declaraciones escritas.

“Entendimos que la coyuntura actual amerita facilitar un espacio de participación ciudadana entre profesionales de salud para exponer los datos y la información pertinente sobre un tema tan importante como el COVID-19”, comentó Christian Arvelo Forteza, Vicepresidente de MPA. El CCS será coordinado por la candidata doctoral en Inmunología y Co-Directora de la Iniciativa de Política Pública Científica PRSPAN Bianca Valdés. Este grupo contará

con el peritaje multidisciplinario de doctores, profesionales de salud pública, y otras materias de salud. Los miembros del CCS incluyen al doctor Emmanuelli Algarín; el analista de datos y Asesor Científico de COSACO PR Danilo Pérez; a la evaluadora de calidad de ASSMCA, Regina Ortíz; a la experta en salud y seguridad ocupacional la doctora Marysel Pagán Santana; a la epidemióloga la doctora Melissa Marzán, y a Franklin Avilés, Director Ejecutivo de COSACO PR. Otros expertos de diversas disciplinas se unirán a este esfuerzo en los próximos días.

Valdés expresó que el espacio servirá para educar a la ciudadanía sobre el COVID-19. “Desde el día uno cada uno de nosotros hemos abogado, desde distintos espacios, para que se tomen decisiones de política pública que salvaguarden la salud y seguridad de los ciudadanos. Estamos listos para informarle a Puerto Rico dónde estamos en cuanto al COVID-19 y sobre recomenda-

ciones para frenar los contagios.”

Por su parte, el Director Ejecutivo de MPA, Alejandro Silva, explicó que aunque la organización facilitó la creación del grupo, el CCS contará con discreción absoluta sobre sus expresiones y la manera en la que se quieran organizar. “Nuestro trabajo es fomentar la participación de los ciudadanos, pero ellos son los expertos en temas de salud, por lo cual tendrán independencia a nivel programático”.

Silva añadió que el grupo estará en comunicación con otros esfuerzos ciudadanos que han surgido por parte de agrupaciones y organizaciones sin fines de lucro para atender y visibilizar necesidades no atendidas por los Task Forces médicos y económicos de La Fortaleza.

Las intervenciones del CCS serán transmitidas por las redes sociales de Mentes Puertorriqueñas en Acción en: https://www.facebook.com/MentesPuertorriquenasenAccion/

20

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

This ‘Lovecraft Country’ actor is happy in her own skin

By KATHRYN SHATTUCK

F

or the gore-adverse Wunmi Mosaku, “Lovecraft Country” might seem a curious choice. But she’d already read most of the pilot script when the monstrous Shoggoths started ripping off appendages, and by then, she was hooked.

“I got so lost in the story, I felt like I was committed to this character before I realized it was a horror,” Mosaku said of the HBO supernatural thriller set in 1950s Jim Crow America. “But what I think is so clever about the script and the book, and also so magical and mystical and wild, is that the scariest thing is the reality of the horror.”

Mosaku plays Ruby Baptiste, the bluesbelting half sister of gutsy Leti (Jurnee Smollett), whose dreams of working behind a counter at Marshall Field’s remain unfulfilled.

Until, that is, in Sunday’s episode, the fifth of the season. With the help of a potion, Ruby wakes up in the body of a white woman, played by Jamie Neumann. Calling herself Hillary Davenport, Ruby spends the day alternately enjoying and being bewildered by her newfound cultural currency before metamorphosing — graphically, painfully — back into Blackness.

“Seeing ribs and elbows popping out of someone else’s skin is gross, but I was actually more enamored by their artistry,” Mosaku said. “Like, how did they do that?”

The Nigerian-born actor, 34, speaks with a sunny British accent flecked with laughter; she emigrated to Manchester, England, with her professor parents when she was 1 year old. As a child obsessed with “Annie,” she discovered that Albert Finney, a fellow Mancunian, had attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, so she applied too and was accepted.

A BAFTA-winning stalwart on British TV (“Luther,” “Vera”), Mosaku is better known in the United States from films like “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” and “Philomena.” Audiences can also see her in the upcoming movie “His House,” in which she and Sope Dirisu play Sudanese war refugees who discover something terrible lurking in their new home in Britain. (It premieres Oct. 30 on Netflix.)

Now based in Los Angeles, Mosaku has spent the past few months trying to keep birds away from her quarantine garden of cucumbers and eggplants. In a recent phone inter-

Wunmi Mosaku, who plays Ruby in the HBO horror thriller “Lovecraft Country” in Los Angeles, Sept. 3, 2020. view, she discussed “Lovecraft Country,” its “disheartening” cultural relevance and why revenge is a dish best served without stiletto heels. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q: In Sunday’s episode, Ruby says that most days she’s happy to be both Black and a woman, “but the world keeps interrupting, and I am sick of being interrupted.” Who is Ruby, uninterrupted?

A: I would describe her as very ambitious. She’s very aware of the game she needs to play. But she still has the idea that if you work hard enough — and you just need one

break — then systemic racism will stop applying to her. We all know that she’s talented enough, intelligent enough. She has this deep hope, but actually it’s masking this even deeper and more fiery rage over the injustice that she’s experienced.

Q: The story is set some 60 years ago, but is there anything in Ruby’s situation that you related to?

A: Oh, yeah. I look like Ruby in a world that still experiences racism, injustice, inequality, the patriarchy and colorism. I’ve experienced that and my family’s experienced that, absolutely. The thing I find the hardest

about the show is that it does still feel so relevant. I am Ruby in many ways. The car chase at 25 mph and the police officer in pursuit was the most intense thing, because it’s based in reality and resonates with me. It resonates with a lot of people of color. So that’s the thing that I find incredibly powerful about the piece but also really disheartening as well: It feels like not enough has changed, and sometimes it feels like, have we moved on?

Q: How was it shooting those gruesome scenes where Ruby claws her way out of Hillary’s body?

A: The worst thing was the shape-shifting.

Jamie gets off a little light — she has to do all the physical stuff, and she’s amazing. But the actual coming out of a cocoon? That gore, blood, gunk stuff? That’s all on me. When I saw my eye pop out of her throat, I was like, “Ohhh.”

Q: In an even gorier scene, Ruby slips back into her white disguise in order to violate her racist boss with a stiletto heel, payback for his abuse of a Black co-worker.

How do you prepare to perform something like that?

A: I had no idea until I read [the script for Episode 5], and it was a real shock, because I didn’t see it going there. That kind of violence is not OK in any aspect of revenge.

Revenge is something that I have never really explored and, personally, my mom’s always like, “Kill them with kindness.” Which generally just means to smile and let it go, and shame them for their actions.

We both, me and Jamie, really struggled with that scene. It was a very emotional day, to be honest, because there was the exploration of the depth of your rage and revenge.

The pain just feels so real and so deep that it brings up a lot in your own life, of your own rage and your own pain.

Q: Ruby uses the magic potion several times. What do you make of the fact that she chose to keep turning into a white woman?

A: It ends up a superpower she now has access to — now she has unmitigated freedom. There’s magic where there’s not really consequences. But I really disagree with what Ruby does. Sometimes I’m like, wow, it’s hard, because it feels like a betrayal, and it feels so wrong. It feels so anti-loving oneself, which is obviously the kind of movement we’re in as a society: love oneself. It is really difficult for me, personally, to understand.

Not understand — I understand it. I just don’t empathize with it.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

21

50 Years ago, they did something rare in Gospel: tied music to protest

The Voices of East Harlem started out at a nonprofit community center in Manhattan. Their 1970 album “Right On Be Free” was a landmark release for gospel music.

By ROBERT MAROVICH

T

he graphic video montage of violence against people of color that accompanies Isaac Cates & Ordained’s sobering neospiritual “Hold On” brought the hosts of the 2020 online music festival Vox Virtual nearly to tears.

Lydia Salett Dudley commissioned a clip with similarly vivid imagery for “Whatcha Gonna Say?,” a funky song released this summer that commands listeners to speak out about inequality or face the consequences of inaction today and in the afterlife.

These recent developments in gospel music are striking: Although singing spirituals and hymns has energized generations of protesters to stand up against oppression, few of the genre’s songs recorded over the past 30 years have explicitly condemned injustice. This gap is due in part to a trend toward praise and worship songs that celebrate God and give thanks for personal blessings. And like the anonymous composers of the spirituals, Black gospel singers learned early

that survival sometimes meant veiling their anger in biblical imagery that only those in the know could decode.

However, the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and the protests they sparked have prompted gospel singers to begin lifting the veil and making their outrage more public. The roots for this moment can be traced back to an album celebrating its 50th anniversary — “Right On Be Free,” the debut by an African American youth choir called the Voices of East Harlem. Released by Elektra in late 1970, the record tied protest messages to an appealingly groovy soundtrack that mixed the soulcleansing power of gospel with R&B, funk and rock. It was as if Sly and the Family Stone and gospel’s Edwin Hawkins Singers had linked arms in solidarity.

The Voices of East Harlem came out of the East Harlem Federation Youth Association, a nonprofit community center founded in 1968 by activist Chuck Griffin to give youth — his own children included — a sanctuary from the neigh-

borhood’s heroin-infested streets. Griffin’s wife, Anna Griffin, and her friend Bernice Cole were veteran gospel singers and recording artists.

“When the Voices of East Harlem first started, there were like 32 of us, because it was basically an all-souls call,” said Gerri Griffin Watlington, one of the couple’s two daughters, who replaced Ronnie Dyson on Broadway in “Hair” in 1969. “Anybody interested in singing in a choir, come.”

The choir sang only gospel songs and spirituals at first, and while its initial appearances were at churches, at some point Chuck Griffin began transporting the troupe to perform for local colleges, where he would preach the social value of integration to the mostly white audience. It was the late ’60s and “a time when people were becoming socially aware of color,” said Kevin Griffin, another of Chuck Griffin’s children.

The Voices’ big break occurred at a youth association fundraiser at Electric Circus, a New York club owned by music entrepreneur Jerry Brandt. Moved by the Voices of East Harlem’s

unbridled spirit, “he approached my parents and Bernice and basically pitched them,” Watlington recalled. “He said, ‘I see something here, and I’d like to manage these kids.’ ” Brandt loved the group’s sound but hated the preppy orange blazers, and directed the kids to come to rehearsal in street clothes. They returned wearing what became their signature “freedom suits,” what screenwriter Denis Watlington, a youth association participant, later described as “working-class jeans and dungaree jackets with red, black and green fists” painted on their backs.

The Voices of East Harlem also modified their repertory, adding protest music and songs of social significance, including Nina Simone’s “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black” and Bobby Darin’s anti-war ode, “Simple Song of Freedom.”

“That was the time we were in,” Gerri Watlington said. “It was about folk songs, protest songs.”

The group’s performances featured dancing — sometimes choreographed but more often free-form — that evoked freedom and Black Pride, and Brandt worked to secure the singers a national platform where audiences could take in the whole package. The Voices appeared on Dick Cavett and Ed Sullivan’s shows. They opened for the Kinks at the Fillmore East, in New York City.

Their performance at the January 1970 Winter Festival for Peace, alongside Richie Havens and Blood, Sweat & Tears, moved a Billboard journalist to gush, “The least known group on the bill earned the first, most unanimous, and most immediate standing ovation of the evening.”

With positive reviews pouring in, Brandt felt it was time to take the Voices into the studio.

Produced by Brandt, “Right On Be Free” was among the first albums recorded at Electric Lady Studios in Manhattan, New York. Eddie Kramer was the recording engineer, and session veterans including bassist Chuck Rainey and guitarist Cornell Dupree joined the Voices’ musicians.

“In those days, if you didn’t have Rainey and Dupree on your album, you didn’t have an album,” Voices member Monica Burruss Pege, the lead soloist on the group’s 1973 hit “Giving Love,” said in a phone interview.

On March 6, 1971, the Voices joined Santana, Ike and Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett, the Staple Singers and pianist Wayne Shorter at the Soul to Soul festival in Accra, Ghana, which was filmed for a documentary by Denis Sanders.

As captured on film, they are a kaleidoscope of sound and motion. What the Voices were singing was significant but supplemental to how they were singing it. The music of the African Diaspora had come full circle.

22

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

On the packing list this year: masks, sanitizer and a very good boy

Malo the Labradoodle puppy with his “parents,” Dana Bakich and Daniel Snyder, in Norcross, Ga., on Sept. 4, 2020. Neither house sitters nor jetting off for the weekend are possibilities for most dog owners who want to travel right now, so these furry friends are increasingly curled up in the back (or front) seat, enjoying the ride.

By SARAH FIRSHEIN

I

n mid-March, three days after canceling their April wedding in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, because of the pandemic, Dana Bakich and Daniel Snyder consoled themselves by bringing home a new puppy: a curly-haired, black-and-white Labradoodle chosen for his sweet disposition and littleto-no likelihood of shedding. Three months later, with the pandemic raging on and hoping to live closer to their families, the couple packed up their home in Los Angeles and drove eastward toward the Atlanta suburbs with Malo — named for the French port city of Saint-Malo, where his “parents” got engaged — in tow.

Dog lovers are quick to point out that dogs make any situation better, but Bakich learned that even with a canine co-pilot, no road-trip is fully disaster-proof — especially when it begins in a 2006 Honda Civic stick shift with 200,000 miles on it.

“On day two, we were driving through Death Valley and the air-conditioner stopped working,” said Bakich, 31, the founder of Positive Equation, a social media consultancy for nonprofits, and HerDesk, a soon-to-launch

line of desks. “It was 108 degrees and Malo hadn’t been groomed yet.”

The couple purchased trash bags from a local drugstore and filled them with ice, then cushioned them around Malo in the front seat.

“He slept; he was totally fine,” Bakich said. “But the second we got to Scottsdale we bought a new car.”

Beyond the parade of snouts on social media, there is plenty to suggest that the “corona-puppy” surge — for many, fueled by the quest to find joy or purpose while stuck at home — is real. Breeders’ wait-lists stretch into 2022. Animal nonprofits report dramatic increases in adoptions and fosters this year.

But when their humans want to jet off on vacation for the weekend, pets are not staying at home with house sitters: For most people, neither jetting off for the weekend, nor even house sitters, are possibilities right now. Instead, these pups are curling up in the back seat — or, like Malo, snuggling up in the front seat — and enjoying the ride.

When Lanto Griffin, 32, and Maya Brown, 28, of Jacksonville Beach, Florida, suddenly found their careers on pause this spring, Troy, their new shar-pei-lab rescue,

helped them weather the downswing. (Research suggests that dogs can affect one’s physical and emotional well-being, from cardiovascular health to happiness.) Brown lost her job as an attorney and Griffin, a professional golfer, was idle when the PGA Tour temporarily suspended its season.

“When you’re used to being on the road almost every week and all of a sudden you’re home for three months, Troy helped get my mind off everything that was going on,” Griffin said.

Golf has resumed and, although dogs are not allowed at tournaments, Troy has driven with the couple around the Eastern United States, with stops in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina; Columbus, Ohio; and elsewhere. From his perch in back, he has routinely “upgraded” himself, worming between the front seats and resting his head on the air vents.

Troy and Malo were hardly the only pups relishing life on the road this summer; the travel industry abounds with data showing that dogs are on the move. BringFido, a website and app that lists dog-friendly hotels, restaurants and activities around the world, has seen 27% more user sign-ups over last summer. The “Allows Pets” filter was the second-most searched for amenity (after “Pool”) on Airbnb.

In August, the proportion of pet-tohuman passengers flying on JSX, a low-cost hop-on jet service, was more than double January’s figure. VistaJet, a private aviation company, is seeing a 68% increase in yearover-year dogs on board. From Memorial Day weekend through August, the 100,0000 campsites listed on Campspot had more than 80,000 reservations with pets — about 40% more than last year.

At LoveThyBeast, a New York Citybased pet-accessories company, travel-carrier sales were 32% higher from March to July than they were last year.

In July, as part of its COVID reopening, Ireland’s Dromoland Castle began welcoming dogs for the first time in its 58-year history: An Instagram post featuring Callie, the managing director’s new springer spaniel, heralded the news.

Although Amtrak’s overall ridership dropped in March, the proportion of animalto-human passengers was about three times higher in June than it was in June 2019. This fall, the rail company will expand its pet pro-

gram — which allows dogs and cats of a certain size to ride in carriers under seats — to all weekday Acela trains (pets have historically only been allowed on Acela on weekends).

Some airlines, meanwhile, have become temporarily stricter about pets. American Airlines suspended checked pets (versus pets that fit in the cabin) in late March during the flurry of pandemic-related flight cancellations and late-breaking government restrictions. Delta Air Lines and United Airlines have enacted similar restrictions around cargo pets.

But because so many flights aren’t at capacity these days, carry-on pets are living large. When Angie Camus, 37, flew on Southwest Airlines from New York City to Atlanta for a vacation in July, there was plenty of room in the cabin for Marvel, her new Pomeranian-mix puppy, to stretch her little legs.

Camus, who lives in Queens and works in the legal services industry, had a difficult February and March, even by 2020 standards, losing her father-in-law and her 16-year-old Border collie.

“We got married in October and as newlyweds that’s not exactly how we expected to start off,” she said. “In April and May, we were like, ‘What do we do now?’”

Camus and her husband quickly realized that, like everything, adopting a dog is harder during a pandemic. Most of their 20 applications were rejected or unanswered.

When they found a shelter with puppies, their home inspection was conducted over Zoom and the adoption went through.

Two months later, after resolving to take some much needed time off with close friends — and deciding that a road trip would involve too many bathroom breaks for Marvel — Camus and her husband found themselves sitting in a nearly empty LaGuardia Airport, tossing around a squeaky ball.

Marvel, for her part, was a travel pro, basking in a chorus of “oohs” and “ahhs” on the flight (at $95 each way, the Southwest Airlines pet fare cost about the same as the human fares). On the weeklong vacation in Jasper, Georgia, she walked and swam in the mountains, learned to play with other dogs and befriended goats at a local vineyard.

“It was beneficial to both of us mentally — it was a time to have some fun and be outdoors and let loose a little,” Camus said. “She just loves being around her people and living life, no matter where we are.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

23

How the aging immune system makes older people vulnerable to COVID-19

By VERONIQUE GREENWOOD

C

OVID-19 patients who are 80 or older are hundreds of times more likely to die than those under 40.

That’s partly because they are more likely to have underlying conditions — like diabetes and lung disease — that seem to make the body more vulnerable to COVID-19.

But some scientists suggest another likely, if underappreciated, driver of this increased risk: the aging immune system.

The changes that ripple through our network of immune cells as the decades pass are complex, resulting in an overreaction here, a delayed response there and, overall, a strangely altered landscape of immunity.

Scientists who study the aging immune system say that understanding it may lead not only to a clearer sense of how age is tied to disease vulnerability, but to better strategies for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.

“I felt like I was shouting at people, ‘This is what’s going on!’ but no one was listening,” said Arne Akbar, a professor of immunology at University College London who recently published an article in the journal Science explaining the state of research on the aging immune system.

When a virus infiltrates the body, cells in the first line of defense act swiftly and violently — sending out alerts and instructions to other cells, and provoking inflammation to start knocking down the virus.

The “innate” immune system, as it’s called, also happens to be responsible for cleaning up damaged cells, misfolded proteins and other detritus in the body, even when there’s no infection to fight.

In older people, such waste seems to outrun the immune system’s ability to clear it, said Dr. Eric Verdin, the chief executive of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California. The innate immune system grows overwhelmed, and slides into a constant state of alert and inflammation.

As a result, even perfectly healthy 65-year-olds usually have higher levels of immune proteins, like cytokines. This heightened state of chronic inflammation, sometimes called “inflammaging,” is linked to frailty — older adults with higher levels of it may be more fragile and less mobile.

It also means that fighting off pathogens

becomes more complicated: This inflammatory chaos in an aging body makes it harder for the messages sent out by the innate immune system to reach their targets.

On top of that, there’s the danger that the innate immune system may overreact.

“We think that this is one of the reasons older individuals respond poorly to COVID-19,” said Verdin.

Verdin and other experts said the aging immune system might be linked to reports of severe COVID-19 culminating in a cytokine storm, a reaction that causes high numbers of immune messengers to flood the body and can lead to organ failure.

This inflammation may also be part of why vaccines, whose effectiveness relies on a robust reaction from the immune system, don’t work as well in older people — an effect that’s likely to extend to COVID-19 vaccines. Akbar and his colleagues have found that people with high levels of inflammation tended to have weaker immune responses to the chickenpox virus, for example. And when they took an anti-inflammatory drug for four days before being injected, their immune responses improved.

A Second Wave Several days after the innate immune response begins, the body starts a second wave of attacks against the viral invader. This adaptive immune system response is more targeted than the first, destroying cells infected by this specific virus.

But in older bodies, the adaptive response not only takes longer to get into gear, it arrives to find a scene of inflammatory pandemonium, said Amber Mueller, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School who co-wrote a paper published in May about COVID-19 and aging. Think of firefighters coming to put out a house fire, she said.

“You have a whole neighborhood of pedestrians or bystanders that are just hanging around, screaming their heads off, causing chaos,” she said. “To the point that it makes it harder for the firefighters to find the fire — to find the infection — and then put it out effectively.”

These delays mean that the pathogen has already made many copies of itself by the time the adaptive immune system gets to work and gains a foothold that might not have

Nurses addressed a nursing home patient showing coronavirus symptoms in Sant Andreu de la Barca, Spain, earlier this year. been available in a younger person. Additionally, older people have fewer fresh T cells, important players in the adaptive response that are trained to hunt down cells infected with a specific pathogen. When everything is working correctly, successful T cells make copies of themselves so that at the height of the infection, the body is swarming with them.

Afterward, a few remain to prime us against return attacks from the same virus.

The supply of T cells that haven’t already been assigned a pathogen dwindles over the decades. Those that remain may not be as good at copying themselves. And they may have trouble making the transition to patrolling the body against future attacks, said Dr. Shabnam Salimi, a professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who wrote a recent paper about the interaction between aging and COVID-19.

“All these together make the immune system less functional during aging,” Salimi said.

Drug Potential Research investigating COVID-19 treatments will have to take into account the specific cells and substances that go awry when the immune system ages, and drugs under investigation for fighting aging may be useful against the coronavirus, write Salimi and her

colleague John Hamlyn in their article.

So far, little has been straightforward when it comes to treatments for COVID-19.

Since it became clear that the virus sometimes provokes an out-of-control immune response, researchers have been testing whether reducing inflammation might help. Drugs that tamp down the levels of cytokines, like those used for treating rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases, have not shown success in fighting the virus. What’s more, chloroquine, which can help inhibit the aging of cells, caused increased mortality in COVID-19 clinical trials.

But the steroid dexamethasone, a potent anti-inflammatory, has been shown to reduce deaths from the virus. It resulted in one-third fewer deaths in people on ventilators and one-fifth fewer deaths in those on oxygen, according to a study published in June. (The drug may be ineffective, or even harmful, for patients in the early stages of the disease, however.)

At this point, it’s important to design studies that take into account the special immune status of aging populations. Understanding these immune changes may help in finding treatments that work for older COVID-19 patients, but, Salimi said, it may also help younger people who may have some of the same problems without knowing it.

24 LEGAL NOTICE TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE BAYAMÓN.

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante

JOSÉ ANTONIO RIVERA RODRÍGUEZ, EVELYN TORRES RIVERA Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES POR ESTOS COMPUESTA; JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE; ASOCIACIÓN DE EMPLEADOS DEL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO

Demandados CIVIL NÚM. CZ2020CV00069.

SOBRE: SUSTITUCIÓN DE PAGARÉ HIPOTECARIO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS. EDICTO.

dante el Lcdo. Javier Montalvo Cintrón, Delgado & Fernández, LLC, PO Box 11750, Fernández Juncos Station, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00910-1750. Tel. [787] 274-1414. DADA en Bayamón, Puerto Rico, a 27 de agosto de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional. SANDRA I CRUZ VAZQUEZ, Serctaria Servicios a Sala.

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.

Representa a la parte demandante el Lcdo. Javier Montalvo Cintrón, Delgado & Fernández, LLC, PO Box 11750, Fernández Juncos Station, San Juan, LEGAL NOTICE Puerto Rico 00910-1750. Tel. TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE [787] 274-1414. DADA en BaJUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRI- yamón, Puerto Rico, a 27 de MERA INSTANCIA SALA DE agosto de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SANCHEZ, SecretaBAYAMÓN. ria Regional. SANDRA I CRUZ ORIENTAL BANK VAZQUEZ, Serctaria Servicios Demandante a Sala.

JOSÉ ANTONIO RIVERA RODRÍGUEZ, EVELYN TORRES RIVERA Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES POR ESTOS COMPUESTA; JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE; ASOCIACIÓN DE EMPLEADOS DEL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO

A: EVELYN TORRES RIVERA, por sí y en representación de la Demandados Sociedad Legal de CIVIL NÚM. CZ2020CV00069.

Bienes Gananciales compuesta por esta y su SOBRE: SUSTITUCIÓN DE PAGARÉ HIPOTECARIO. ESesposo, JOSE ANTONIO TADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRIRIVERA RODRIGUEZ. CA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS Apartamento 701, EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS. EDICCondominio Caguas Tower, Caguas, PR 00725; TO. A: JOSÉ ANTONIO HCO6 Box 14096, Corozal, PR 00783; Mana Ward Los RIVERA RODRÍGUEZ, por sí y en representación Riveras carretera 802, km de la Sociedad Legal 1.5 #2, Corozal, PR 00783. de Bienes Gananciales POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al compuesta por este y su tribunal su alegación respon- esposa, EVELYN TORRES siva dentro de los 30 días de RIVERA. HC06 Box haber sido diligenciado este 14096, Coroza!, PR 00783; emplazamiento, excluyéndoMana Ward Los Riveras se el día del diligenciamiento. carretera 802, km 1.5 #2, Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Coroza!, PR 00783.

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

Representa a la parte deman-

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

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

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

CONDADO 3, LLC Demandante, v.

INSTITUTO UROGINECOLÓGICO OBSTÉTRICO DEL SUR, P.S.C.; SUCESIÓN DE ROHEL PASCUAL IRIZARRY COMPUESTA POR SUS MIEMBROS ROHEL PASCUAL VILLARONGA, RODOLFO PASCUAL VILLARONGA, RICARDO PASCUAL VILLARONGA, MARTA PASCUAL VILLARONGA Y SU VIUDA MARTA VILLARONGA NEGRONI; ROHEL PASCUAL VILLARONGA, MENGANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS; MERCEDES DE LOS MILAGROS SUAZO MATTEI, FULANO DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS.

Demandados CIVIL NÚM. MZ2019CV01831.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE PRENDA E HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO ENMENDADA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. DE AMERICA EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: FULANO DE TAL, LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

COMPUESTA POR FULANO DE TAL Y LA SRA. MERCEDES DE LOS MILAGROS SUAZO MATTEI Y MENGANA DE TAL COMO CONYUGUE DESCONOCIDO DEL SR. ROHEL PASCUAL VILLARONGA

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Quedan emplazados y notificados que en este Tribunal se ha radicado Demanda sobre cobro de dinero y ejecución de prenda e hipoteca por la vía ordinaria en la que se alega que la parte demandada INSTITUTO URO-GINECOLÓGICO OBSTÉTRICO DEL SUR, P.S.C.; SUCESIÓN DE ROHEL PASCUAL IRIZARRY COMPUESTA POR SUS MIEMBROS ROHEL PASCUAL VILLARONGA, RODOLFO PASCUAL VILLARONGA, RICARDO PASCUAL VILLARONGA, MARTA PASCUAL VILLARONGA Y SU VIUDA MARTA VILLARONGA NEGRONI; ROHEL PASCUAL VILLARONGA, MENGANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS; MERCEDES DE LOS MILAGROS SUAZO MATTEI, FULANO DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS, adeudan la suma de: a) del préstamo número 259130394 la suma de $25,000.00 por concepto de principal, más la suma de $21,972.46 por concepto de intereses, más aquellos que continúa acumulando; más costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados, así como cualquier otra suma que contenga el contrato; (b) del préstamo número 259130393 la suma de $49,043.67 por concepto de principal, más la suma de $96,383.97 por concepto de intereses, más aquellos que continúa acumulando; más costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados, así como cualquier otra suma que surja el contrato, y, en defecto del pago correspondiente, ordene la ejecución de las garantías mobiliarias.

Se les advierte que este edicto se publicará en un periódico de circulación general una sola vez y que, si no comparecen a contestar dicha Demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación del Edicto, a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la

(787) 743-3346

secretaría del tribunal, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia concediendo el remedio así solicitado sin más citarles ni oírles. La abogada de la parte demandante es la Lcda. Melanie del Carmen Rivera Marrero, cuya dirección física y postal es: Cond. El Centro I, Suite 801, 500 Muñoz Rivera Ave., San Juan, Puerto Rico 00918; cuyo número de teléfono es (787) 946-5268, y su correo electrónico es: melanie@bellverlaw.com. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, en Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, hoy día 26 de agosto de 2020. LCDA. NORMA G SANTANA IRIZARRY, Secretaria Regional. F/BETSY SANTIAGO GONZALEZ, Secretaria Auxiliar del Tribunal I.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMON Sala de Familia y Menores.

ANDRES ALVARADO VEGA Demandante vs.

DIANA CRISTINA MONZELUN GOMEZ

Demandado CIVIL NÚM. BY2020RF01241.

SALÓN: DIV (R.I.). SOBRE: DIVORCIO (RUPTURA IRREPARABLE). EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO DEL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A : DIANA CRISTINA MONZELUN GOMEZ 144 14N 19 Street Apt. A Tampa Florida 33613.

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza y se le notifica que una demanda ha sido presentada en su contra, la cual obra en el expediente del Honorable Tribunal de Primera Instancia de San Juan en el caso de epígrafe, y se le requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto, Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), el cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: http://unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o

cualquier otro, si el tribuna l, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente.

VAZQUEZ & ASSOCIATES LAW OFFICES LCDA. ROSA L. VAZQUEZ LOPEZ RUA 17843 COL 18853 379 Calle Cesar González Hato Rey, San Juan, PR 00918 Tel (787) 766-0949 / Fax (787) 771-2425 Email: vazquezyasociadospr@ gmail.com Se le apercibe que de no hacerlo , se podrá dictar Sentencia en rebeldía concediendo el remedio solicitado en la demanda, sin citarle ni oírle más. EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA Y EL SELLO DEL TRIBUNAL, en Bayamón, Puerto Rico, hoy día 28 de agosto de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE PONCE .

MTGLQ Investors, L.P., DEMANDANTE V.

SUCESIÓN DE ILIA IRAIDA TORRES MARTÍNEZ T/C/C ILIA I. TORRES MARTÍNEZ compuesta por JUAN PÉREZ TORRES COMO HEREDERO CONOCIDO; FULANO DE TAL, FULANA DE TAL, ZUTANO DE TAL, ZUTANA DE TAL, A, B Y C COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESIÓN; HONORABLE SECRETARIO DE HACIENDA DEL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO; y EL HONORABLE SECRETARIO DE JUSTICIA DEL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO,

DEMANDADOS Civil Núm.: GU2019CV00092.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. Estados Unidos de América Presidente de los Estados Unidos Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico. SS.

A: FULANO DE TAL, FULANA DE TAL, ZUTANO DE TAL, ZUTANA DE TAL, A, B Y C COMO HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESIÓN ILIA IRAIDA TORRES MARTÍNEZ T/C/C ILIA I. TORRES

The San Juan Daily Star MARTÍNEZ

Por la presente se le emplaza y notifica que debe contestar la demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación del presente edicto, radicando el original de la contestación ante el Tribunal y sala que se menciona en el epígrafe de este edicto con copia a la parte aquí demandante. Se le apercibe que, de no contestar la demanda dentro del término aquí estipulado, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia sin más citarle ni oírle. 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. Por la presente el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, conforme al caso de Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria vs.

Latinoamericana de Exportación, Inc., 164 DPR 689 (2005), le ordena que en el término de treinta (30) días, haga declaración aceptando o repudiando la herencia de la SUCESIÓN ILIA IRAIDA TORRES MARTÍNEZ T/C/C ILIA I. TORRES MARTÍNEZ. Se le apercibe que de no expresar su intención de aceptar o repudiar la herencia dentro del término que se le fijó, la herencia se tendrá por aceptada.

La abogada de la parte demandante es: Lcda. Mariceli Pérez González, 1606 Ave. Ponce de León, Edif. Julio Bogoricín, Suite 900, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 00909, Tel. (787) 977-1932 Fax (787) 722-1932. Expido este edicto bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, hoy 31 de agosto de 2020. Luz Mayra Caraballo Garcia, Sec Regional. Delia Aponte Velazquez, Sec Auxiliar.

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

EDUARDO ROBLES CARRILLO Demandante V.

EZEQUIEL GONZALEZ BENCON, CARMEN MARTINEZ GUEVARA y Ia SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES compuesta entre ellos, INFINITY HOME & CONSTRUCTION, CORP.

Demandados CIVIL NUM.: BC2020cv00060.

SOBRE: INCUMPLIMIENTO

DE CONTRATO Y COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNBDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: CARMEN MARTINEZ GUEVARA por Si y en representación de Ia Sociedad Legal de gananciales compuesta con Ezequiel Gonzalez Bencon Urb. Brisas del Monte, calle B #C-12, Barceloneta, PR 00650 Parte demandada arriba mencionada:

POR LA PRESENTE, se le notifica que Ia parte demandante de epígrafe, ha presentado ante este Honorable Tribunal, una demanda contra usted solicitando Ia concesión del siguiente remedio: COBRO DE DINERO. POR LA PRESENTE, se le emplaza y requiere para que notifique a: LCDA. GWENDOLYN MOYER ALMA (RUA 12840) PU Box 361485 San Juan, P. R. 00936-1485 Tel/Fax: (787)596-3335 gmoyeralma@gmail.com sharonhernandezlopez@yahoo.com Abogada de Ia parte demandante, cuya dirección es Ia que deja indicada, con copia de su Contestación a Ia Demanda. Se le apercibe que si no comparece a contestar dicha demanda a este Tribunal, con copia al abogado de Ia parte demandante, dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de Ia publicación del presente edicto, podrá anotársele Ia rebeldía y dictará sentencia en su contra concediendo los remedios solicitados en Ia Demanda, sin más citarle ni oIrle. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de Casos (SUMAC), a! 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 secretarla del tribunal”. EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el Sello del Tribunal, hoy dIa 4 de septiembre de 2020, en Bayamon, Puerto Rico. VIVIAN Y. FRESSE GONZALEZ, Sec Regional.

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

PR RECOVERY AND

The San Juan Daily Star

DEVELOPMENT JV Demandante

JOEL A. LÓPEZ RODRÍGUEZ, SAMARIS FERRER LASALA & LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS H/N/C INNOVA VIDEO & FOTO SOLUTIONS

Demandado (a) Civil Núm.: AR2019CV01846.

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

A: JOEL A. LÓPEZ RODRÍGUEZ, H/N/C INNOVA VIDEO & FOTO SOLUTIONS, POR SI Y EN REPRESENTACION DE LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES: COLINAS METROPOLITANAS W 14 CALLE CERRILLOS GUAYNABO, PUERTO RICO 00969-5239; SAMARIS FERRER LASALA H/N/C INNOVA VIDEO & FOTO SOLUTIONS, POR SI Y EN REPRESENTACION DE LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES: COLINAS METROPOLITANAS W 14 CALLE CERRILLOS GUAYNABO PR 009695239

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

En Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, el 10 de septiembre de 2020.

LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional II. f/ DIAMAR GONZALEZ BARRETO, Secretario (a) Auxiliar.

Tuesday, September 15, 2020 LEGAL NOTICE

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO

PARTE DEMANDANTE Vs.

SAMUEL RODRÍGUEZ MORALES

Demandados DOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LICIVIL NÚM. GM2019CV00910. BRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO SOBRE: CANCELACIÓN DE RICO. SS. PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. EDICA: SR. JOSE LUIS TO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE PORRATA FERNÁNDEZ, AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE CARMEN YOLANDA DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO CARRASQUILLO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS.

FERRER Y LA SOCIEDAD A: SECRETARIO DE LEGAL DE BIENES DESARROLLO URBANO GANANCIALES Y VIVIENDA DE LOS COMPUESTA POR ESTADOS UNIDOS AMBOS 235 Federico Costa Street Suite 200 San Juan, PR 1219 Ave. Magdalena, Apt. 301, Cond. Lores, San 00918-1322.

Juan, Puerto Rico 00907 POR LA PRESENTE se le emDE: BANCO POPULAR plaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva DE PUERTO RICO

PARTE DEMANDADA CIVIL NÚM. SJ2019CV06988 (604). SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO; EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU. ES- dentro de los 30 días de haber TADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE sido diligenciado este emplazamiento , excluyéndose el P.R. SS. día del diligenciamiento. Usted A: SAMUEL deberá presentar su alegación RODRÍGUEZ MORALES responsiva a través del Sistema Queda emplazado y notificado Unificado de Manejo y Adminisde que en este Tribunal se ha tración de Casos (SUMAC), al radicado una demanda de cocual puede acceder utilizando bro de dinero y ejecución de la siguiente dirección electrónihipoteca en su contra. Se le ca: https://unired.ramajudicial. notifica que deberá presentar pr, salvo que se represente por su alegación responsiva a traderecho propio, en cuyo caso vés del Sistema Unificado de deberá presentar su alegación Manejo y Administración de responsiva en la secretaría del Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede tribunal. Si usted deja de preacceder utilizando la siguiente sentar su alegación responsiva dirección electrónica: https:// dentro del referido término, el unired.ramajudicial.pr, salvo tribunal podrá dictar sentencia que se represente por derecho en rebeldía en su contra y conpropio, en cuyo caso deberá ceder el remedio solicitado en presentar su alegación responla demanda, o cualquier otro, siva en la Secretaría del Tribusi el tribunal, en el ejercicio de nal Superior de Puerto Rico, su sana discreción, lo entienSala de San Juan y enviando de procedente. Representa a copia a la parte demandante: la parte demandante el Ledo.

Lcda. Adela Surillo Gutiérrez Javier Montalvo Cintrón, DelCollazo, Connelly & Surillo gado & Femández , LLC, PO LLC, P.O. Box 70212 San Juan, Box 11750, Femández JunPR 00936-8212; Teléfono: 625cos Station, San Juan, Puerto 9999, correo electrónico: asuriRico 00910-1750. Tel. [787] llo@lawpr.com. Se le apercibe 274-1414. DADA en Guayama, y notifica que si no contesta la Puerto Rico, a 2 de septiembre demanda radicada en su contra de 2020. MARISOL ROSADO dentro del término de treinta RODRIGUEZ, Sec Regional.

(30) días de la publicación de este edicto, se le anotará la LEGAL NOTICE rebeldía y se dictará sentencia ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO concediendo el remedio soliciDE PUERTO RICO TRIBUtado en la demanda, sin más NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA citárseles, ni oírseles. Expedido SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN bajo mi firma y sello del TribuJUAN. nal, a 2 de septiembre de 2020.

BANCO POPULAR DE GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COPUERTO RICO LLADO, Secretaria. LUZ ENID Demandante v.

FERNANDEZ Del Valle, Sec JOSE LUIS PORRATA Serv a Sala.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE GUAYAMA.

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante v.

SENIOR MORTGAGE BANKERS INC.; SECRETARIA DE VIVIENDA Y DESARROLLO URBANO; JOHN DOE & RICHARD ROE

FERNÁNDEZ, CARMEN YOLANDA CARRASQUILLO FERRER Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandado CIVIL NÚM: SJ2020CV00526.

Sala 506. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE GARANTÍAS. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTA-

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 30 días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto.

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

Este caso trata sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Garantías en que la parte demandante solicita que se condene a la parte demandada a pagar: la suma principal de $75,282.01, más intereses a razón de 5.95%, desde el 1 de julio de 2019, que se acumulan diariamente hasta su total y completo pago, más la suma de $136.88 por cargos por mora, más la suma de $1,069.24 en conexión con la cuenta de reserva, más la suma de $11,475.00 por concepto de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado hipotecariamente asegurados. Se le apercibe que, si dejare de hacerlo, se dictará contra usted sentencia en rebeldía, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle.

Lcda. Juan C. Salichs Pou, Número del Tribunal Supremo 11,115 PO Box 195553, San Juan, PR, 00919-5553, Teléfono: (787) 449-6000, Facsímile: (787) 474-3892, Correo Electrónico: jsalichs@splawpr.com EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y Sello del Tribunal, hoy 2 de septiembre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria. LUZ E FERNANDEZ Del Valle, SubSecretaria.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

This US Open will be judged by the future of Osaka and Thiem

By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY

N

aomi Osaka and Dominic Thiem.

The surreal, fan-free zone of a U.S. Open that ended Sunday night deserves to be judged on many levels.

It was, let us not forget, extraordinary that it happened at all considering the headwinds, domestic skepticism and international quarantine issues it faced amid the coronavirus pandemic.

After all the understandable concern, just one player, Benoît Paire of France, tested positive, although several other French and Belgian players and coaches were restricted to their hotel rooms for more than a week because of contact with Paire.

Further down the track, however, this U.S. Open will be judged in large part by the quality of its champions.

When future tennis fans and historians scan the long list of Grand Slam tournament results that date to the 19th century, they will see Osaka’s and Thiem’s names for 2020.

If both turn out to be tennis greats, there will be even less of a reason to retrofit an asterisk onto this unique — please, let it be unique — edition of the tournament, which was missing six of the top 10 women and Rafael Nadal, its defending champion in men’s singles.

“The whole issue will really be solved by time, and it depends a lot on the winners,” said Steve Flink, a tennis historian. “If a player who wins a tournament like this never backs it up and never gets near to another big title, then I think historians will look at it differently.”

Osaka, 22, and Thiem, 27, are young in a sport that has largely been dominated by the elders for the past decade. But the 2020 U.S. Open appears to be on solid ground in the champion department.

Osaka, with three Grand Slam singles titles and a former ranking of No. 1, is a surefire Hall of Fame candidate. She also has charisma, an offbeat wit and other intangibles, including a knack for being a part of big-picture narratives.

Her victory over Serena Williams in the 2018 U.S. Open final turned into an international incident after Williams

was docked a point and then a game for code-of-conduct violations, sparking conversations about gender bias and sympathy for Osaka, whose victory celebration was anything but.

Consider, too, Osaka’s role over the past three weeks in shining the spotlight on Black victims of violence, including police violence, a campaign she said had inspired her to keep winning.

Her willingness to embrace the political was not as bold as it would have been for past champions (this is a different time), but it was still quite a contrast with her fellow finalist, Victoria Azarenka. Perhaps the most famous athlete from Belarus, Azarenka chose not to weigh in on the tumult in her country, where mass protests continue against President Alexander Lukashenko, a leader she knows personally who is accused of stealing his last election.

In light of Osaka’s easy power, hard-earned fitness and ability to lift her level on big points in New York, she would quite likely have won this U.S. Open even if all of the top 10 had made the trip.

The picture is less clear but still promising for Thiem.

His nerve-jangling, strength-sapping marathon victory Sunday over Alexander Zverev gave him only his first Grand Slam singles title. But that is quite an achievement in this top-heavy era, and Thiem has already reached three other Grand Slam finals.

If he can walk in less than two weeks, when the French Open begins, he will be among the top three favorites there as well, along with the 12-time champion Nadal and the world No. 1, Novak Djokovic.

While Osaka’s victory was a reflection of the present in women’s tennis, Thiem’s victory was a projection of the future in the men’s game.

Although it is refreshing and significant that someone other than the Big Three — Nadal, Djokovic and Roger Federer — finally won a major, the downside is that Thiem did not have to beat any of the Big Three in this tournament to do so. That is hardly Thiem’s fault: Djokovic was defaulted in the fourth round for unsportsmanlike conduct after knocking a ball in frustration that hit a line umpire in the throat.

Dominic Thiem of Austria won the U.S. Open on Sunday in five sets. It was his first singles title in a Grand Slam event.

But a victory in these circumstances does leave a lesser impression. What made Osaka such a star is, in large part, that she won her first major title against Williams, the greatest player of this era, in extraordinary, debate-generating circumstances.

Thiem has beaten each of the Big Three at least four times, just not yet in New York. As irresistible as it was in its final stages, Sunday’s final — between a German and an Austrian — was expected to draw one of the lowest television ratings in the United States for a U.S. Open men’s final.

That was no blip. In a tournament with no paying spectators, there were very few American television viewers, either. ESPN’s ratings were microscopic: a surprise and disappointment to both Open organizers and ESPN, which pushed hard for the tournament to happen. The network, indeed, was the main reason the tournament was held, because of its rights fee worth more than $100 million annually.

It should not be viewed as churlish to make that point. The U.S. Open revenue does not simply pay big salaries to U.S. Tennis Association officials. It funds the sport at many levels in the U.S., and most of the players who took part in the tournament had not had a significant payday in six months. First-round losers in singles earned $61,000, and the USTA had contributed to player relief funds and provided some support for coaches and tennis programs in the U.S.

But staging the U.S. Open was not entirely about the money. It was also a symbolic gesture after all that New York has endured, and although none of the players made it to Manhattan — at least officially — they did make it to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and give it their all amid the silence. The night of the women’s singles semifinals — when Osaka held off Jennifer Brady and Azarenka defeated Williams — would have been quite a night in any tennis season.

Scanning the sports landscape Sunday, live professional sports were everywhere: NBA and NHL playoffs, NFL openers, Major League Baseball, WNBA, European soccer and more.

That glut helps explain the U.S. Open’s low ratings, but how would it have looked if the tournament’s leaders had not managed to get big-time tennis back on court with so many other leagues succeeding?

The players came prepared even after a long break. There were only two retirements in the men’s tournament: the lowest number since 2006.

Five-set duels were commonplace, none more gripping than Borna Coric’s third-round comeback from six match points down to beat Stefanos Tsitsipas, and none more significant than Thiem’s high-wire, to-the-limit victory over Zverev from two sets down. It was an extraordinary final more than a great final, but extraordinary still has its thrills.

“The roller coaster of roller coasters,” said John McEnroe, who rode a few in his long career.

Big Three or no Big Three, it was clear how much the outcome mattered to both young men as they struggled to fight the ache in their legs and the doubt in their heads. On the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Open tiebreaker, they played the first fifth-set tiebreaker in a singles final in the history of the U.S. Open.

“The first of many Grand Slam titles,” Zverev said between the tears to Thiem as he congratulated his friend and rival.

If so, this U.S. Open full of effort against the odds will look even more worthy in the history books than it did as of Sunday night.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

27

A’ja Wilson for MVP, and more WNBA Awards picks

By TAMRYN SPRUILL

T

alent in the WNBA runs so deep that many teams have bench players who would start on other teams.

With some of the league’s most familiar faces sitting out or having received medical exemptions for this season because of the coronavirus pandemic, under-the-radar players have seized their increased minutes as opportunities to shine. And while lesser-known players were compiling breakout seasons, some established stars were helping their teams win in unexpected ways.

The success these players created on the courts at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., where the WNBA has played its season in a so-called bubble without fans, is a testament of their mettle in a most unusual year.

With the regular season over, here are my picks for the winners of the top season awards, plus a bonus award I created.

All statistics were current entering Sunday’s games.

Most Valuable Player: A’ja Wilson, Las Vegas Aces In a season of outstanding performances by the league’s stars, A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces stood out as an exemplar of the complete player. Powered by her basketball IQ and ready hands, she created shots for herself and others. Her 20.3 points per game have been critical to the team’s success. She also contributed 8.6 rebounds and nearly two blocks per game, more than anyone except Phoenix’s Brianna Turner. Plus, as a 6-foot4-inch post player, she was remarkably light on her feet — spinning beautiful, even balletic, moves on the way to dropping in graceful left-handed layups.

Responsible for bringing a hairdresser into the IMG Academy bubble, Wilson was also surely deemed an MVP by her peers — and Aces coach Bill Laimbeer, whose shaggy hair in the early going kept his team, and fans, laughing.

Rookie of the Year: Crystal Dangerfield, Minnesota Lynx Not long into her rookie season, Crystal Dangerfield, a 5-foot-5-inch, 122-pound guard, made three things clear: first, she is not intimidated by the size and strength of her opponents; second, her speed matches the pace of WNBA play perfectly; and third, her fall to the second round in this year’s draft was an underestimation of her pro potential.

Dangerfield’s versatility and consistency made her an immediate asset for the dynastic, although retooling, Minnesota Lynx. In 30 minutes per game, she averaged 47.1 percent field-goal shooting, 33.3 percent 3-point shooting and 16.2 points per game. She also averaged 3.6 assists per game. Dangerfield can draw fouls, too, and converted an impressive 92.2 percent of her free throws. Her firstyear highlights include a 29-point performance against the Aces.

Defensive Player of the Year: Candace Parker, Los Angeles Sparks Candace Parker has always been well rounded, but she is revered more as an offensive threat. This season, 12 years into a surefire Hall of Fame career in which she has twice won the league MVP Award, Parker has carried the defensive load for the third-seeded Los Angeles Sparks.

She averaged a league-leading 9.7 rebounds and recorded

A’ja Wilson, left, has been a standout performer for the Las Vegas Aces, who came into the season missing bigname stars but are still among the league’s best.

1.2 blocks and 1.2 steals per outing, all while compromising little on offense (14.7 points per game on 51 percent shooting from the field). Her 4.6 assists per game rank second for the Sparks behind Chelsea Gray’s 5.3 per game.

Parker accomplished these feats all while moonlighting as a basketball analyst for TNT. She pulled down double-digit boards in 12 games, including 17 last Thursday against the Washington Mystics, and recorded 10 doubledoubles.

Most Improved Player: Angel McCoughtry, Las Vegas Aces Brionna Jones (Connecticut Sun), Betnijah Laney (Atlanta Dream), Kahleah Copper (Chicago Sky), Jackie Young (Aces) and others have had breakout performances, with increased minutes bringing increased production. Angel McCoughtry, however, upgraded her production in fewer minutes per game and seemed to make an impact on almost every offensive and defensive possession for the Aces.

The No. 1 overall pick in 2009, McCoughtry signed with Las Vegas this year after a decade with Atlanta. In 2018, she led the Dream to the playoffs before sustaining a knee injury that caused her to miss the 2019 season. Now, with the Aces, she is blistering opponents with scoring efficiency well above her 2018 and career averages, and she is doing it in seven fewer minutes per game.

McCoughtry was already an elite player, but her improvement and the impact her efficiency has had on the Aces make her the undeniable, although unconventional, most improved player.

Sixth Woman of the Year: Dearica Hamby, Las Vegas Aces No player reflects a blue-collar work ethic more than Dearica Hamby, who rose from the bench, rolled up her proverbial sleeves and sank 54 percent of her field goal attempts and 43.8 percent of her shots from beyond the

arc. In 28 minutes per game, Hamby appeared to embrace the workhorse role assigned to her — keeping her head down and getting it done on both ends of the court for 12.9 points, 7.1 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.7 steals per game.

Hamby was named sixth woman of the year in 2019.

If honored again, she will be the first player since the Sky’s Allie Quigley (2014 and 2015) to repeat for the award.

Coach of the Year and Executive of the Year: Bill Laimbeer, Las Vegas Aces When your 6-foot-9-inch All-Star center (Liz Cambage) isn’t playing because of the medical risks posed by the coronavirus, your zippy starting point guard (Kelsey Plum) tears her Achilles tendon weeks before the regular season and you still manage to secure one of the best records, you just may be on to something. Bill Laimbeer, coach of the Aces, definitely is.

Sure, he has the All-Star Wilson in his favor and Hamby consistently putting in gritty work off the bench. But he has had just 10 players suiting up this season, and he has used them wisely. Having Lindsay Allen start at the point guard position in limited minutes, and the 2019 No. 1 overall pick Jackie Young come off the bench in longer, energy-packed stretches, has helped the Aces avoid offensive stagnation.

As an executive, Laimbeer shored up the Aces’ depth by adding veteran Angel McCoughtry, whose reinvigorated play has been central to the team’s success. Bringing in guards Danielle Robinson and Sugar Rodgers further deepened the Las Vegas bench, with Robinson — amid a breakout season of her own — doing wonders with her passing, speed and ability to slice through seams.

With center Ji-Su Park opting out of the season because of concerns about the coronavirus outbreak, Laimbeer lured Carolyn Swords out of her brief retirement.

Swords has quietly adhered to her role of affecting every possession on both ends of the floor — similar to what Daniel Theis does for the NBA’s Boston Celtics — enabling her teammates to thrive.

Bonus Award: Social Justice Queen: Layshia Clarendon, New York Liberty Layshia Clarendon signed with the New York Liberty in 2020 with the expectation of providing veteran leadership to a team with seven rookies. Off the court and in meeting rooms, she has been a vocal leader in support of equal rights for women, people of color and LGBTQ individuals.

As first vice president of the WNBA players union, Clarendon helped negotiate the league’s landmark collective bargaining agreement announced in January. And when it came to the season being played amid the coronavirus pandemic and social justice protests, Clarendon pushed for the season to be dedicated to initiatives supporting racial justice and the African American Policy Forum’s Say Her Name campaign, which focuses on Black women and girls affected by violence and police brutality. In an impassioned speech before the first game of the season, Clarendon said the season would be dedicated to Breonna Taylor and other Black women “who so often are forgotten in this fight for justice, who do not have people marching in the streets for them.”

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

NFL kicks off season with nods to unrest and focus on anthem

San Francisco 49ers players and coaches locked arms during the national anthem before their game against the Arizona Cardinals, who stayed in the locker room.

By KEN BELSON

T

wo NFL teams locked arms and knelt.

A star quarterback wore cleats bearing the message “No Justice No Peace.”

The phrase “End Racism” was stenciled on the field, which many players avoided during the playing of the national anthem.

A year ago, such demonstrations would have ignited a fierce debate among fans and hand-wringing by the league’s owners. But now, after an offseason punctuated by protests and a pandemic, the players’ actions, with the endorsement of the NFL, had the air of a foregone conclusion.

Even so, there was no consensus on what action, if any, to take in such tumultuous times, and several teams, wanting to avoid controversy of any kind, stayed in their locker rooms during the playing of the national anthem and the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” known as the Black national anthem, which the NFL arranged to have played before games in the opening week of the season. Their absence appeared to dilute the pledge many players

had made to use their positions to raise awareness of racial injustice, even without fans in most stadiums.

Still, there were plenty of gestures. Like other teams, the Atlanta Falcons linked arms during the anthems. Several members of the opposing team, the Seattle Seahawks, knelt or raised a right fist. Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson formed a triangle with a coach and another player, Geno Smith.

On the opening kickoff, players on both teams stood in place as the Falcons let the ball go for a touchback. Then every player briefly took a knee, a display of unity coordinated by Wilson and Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan. The Falcons earlier named John Lewis, the civil rights icon and congressman who died in July, as their honorary captain.

Cam Newton, making his debut as the quarterback of the New England Patriots, wore cleats saying “7 Shots” and “No Justice No Peace.”

During warmups, Indianapolis Colts players and coaches wore shirts that read Black Lives Matter, something other clubs did as well. Their coach, Frank Reich, knelt

during the national anthem as his players stood. Two players on the San Francisco 49ers sat during the anthem.

In Minneapolis, the Vikings honored George Floyd and other victims of racial violence. The team did not sound its Gjallarhorn, which it blows to fire up fans, at Sunday’s game.

Their opponent, the Green Bay Packers, stayed in the locker room during the playing of the national anthem and “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the team said, “so as to not distract from our message that we stand united for social justice and racial equality.”

In the late game at Los Angeles, all but two of the Rams players went to the locker room when “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was played, but the Rams and the Dallas Cowboys were both on the sideline for the national anthem. About a dozen Rams and one Cowboy, Dontari Poe, knelt.

While other sports leagues were delayed, interrupted and shut down by the coronavirus starting in March, the NFL, the nation’s most popular league, overcame myriad hurdles to begin its regular season

on time, albeit with a vastly altered look because of the pandemic. Stands were empty, no cheerleaders strutted the sidelines and the singers performed the national anthem and “Lift Every Voice and Sing” from remote locations in most cases.

Even the field reflected the turmoil of this past spring and summer, with the messages “End Racism” and “It Takes All of Us” stenciled in the end lines. After initially ignoring, then coming around to embrace, the efforts by players to fight social injustice and end police brutality, the NFL reaffirmed the players’ right to peaceful protest, echoing the NBA, Major League Baseball and other leagues that returned to action earlier. Players wore league-approved decals on their helmets calling for unity and an end to hate and racism.

The players took advantage of the league’s embrace of their efforts, even at the cost of alienating fans who do not want social statements to encroach on their sports viewing. The gesture of kneeling during the anthem was started by 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2016; he has not been picked up by a team since opting out of his contract in March 2017 and has become a potent symbol of protest across sports.

“The days of ‘sports and social issues aren’t going to mix,’ that’s the old world,” said Michael Rubin, a social justice activist and executive chairman of Fanatics, which operates merchandise websites for the NFL and other major leagues. “These issues are top of mind, and the players are going to use their platforms. I don’t see any chance of this reversing course.”

Still, as the self-proclaimed “America’s game,” the NFL remains a lightning rod for controversy in everything it does. To avoid being swept into the debate inflamed by President Donald Trump over whether it is unpatriotic to protest during the playing of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” the Buffalo Bills, the Jacksonville Jaguars, the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins, as well as the Houston Texans, who played last Thursday, stayed in their locker rooms during the anthem. The Arizona Cardinals did the same, while their hosts, the 49ers were on the field.

“We don’t need another publicity parade, so we’ll just stay inside until it’s time to play the game,” the Dolphins’ players said in a video released Thursday.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

29

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

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

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

(Mar 21-April 20)

You will acquire some valuable skills through joining a team of talented people. Not only this, but you will make more money. A chance to work for a prominent company is worth considering. This will mean more responsibility which goes against your need for freedom but there will be other compensations. Reject this offer and you will look back with regret.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

You’re left with the lion’s share of work when a partner refuses to accept their fair share of the responsibility. You deserve to be treated with more respect. If after a heart to heart talk they still refuse to do their bit, it might be time to walk away from this relationship.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Scorpio

If a job application is turned down or you fail to get a position in an educational or cultural organisation, don’t let this get you down. You will get another opportunity to advance your interests and this will come your way sooner than you think. Keep a lookout for openings at rival institutions.

Talk to a medical professional if you are struggling with a bad habit. If you really want to change their ways they will be able to suggest some therapies. Breaking this habit will be more difficult than you expected but it is possible. Joining a support group can also help.

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

A senior colleague is monitoring your progress and watching your behaviour. If they see you shirking your responsibilities, they will offer a plum position to a rival. Watching a competitor achieve the success you long for would be a bitter pill to swallow. Be on your best behaviour and remember to think before you speak.

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

A partner will appreciate your support and encouragement. If they’re showing interest in starting a new hobby, let them know you’re interested too. Are you single and looking for love? Instead of expecting a potential partner to fit into a fairy tale ideal, give yourself a chance to get to know someone who may not at first appear to be your kind of partner.

Neglecting your friends and family for the sake of your job will be a cause for later regret. Your boss might value your ambition and dedication to your job but don’t let this consume you. If you’re missing a family celebration because of your work this is a sign you need to start changing your focus.

Friends will thank you for it when you stand up against a moody neighbour. You’ve not been able to get on with your own life due to their outrageous requests and demands.

You’re tired of bending over backwards to keep a selfish person happy. They don’t deserve your friendship. Sometimes you’re too kind for your own good.

Leo

Aquarius

(July 24-Aug 23)

Some interesting debates will pave the way for some rewarding friendships. Showing patience and consideration towards anyone who has different beliefs from yours will be appreciated. The more respect you give, the more you are likely to receive. Open your heart and mind. Be kind to someone who looks like they need some tender loving care.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

A neighbour’s gossipy comments should be ignored. Their aim is to damage someone’s reputation but their remarks will backfire.

People are starting to avoid them. A devious colleague will be put in their place when you fail to mimic their spiteful ways. Mixing with like-minded people will bring you joy.

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

There is only so much you can do to help the people you love. A relative’s unreliable behaviour is causing problems at home and in their friendships. You have done your best to help them avoid making foolish decisions but they continue to make the same mistakes. It is time to leave them to it.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

A partner is refusing to take on work which they say is beneath them. Their stubbornness is causing problems in the home. You are tired of suggesting moneymaking opportunities when they keep turning your suggestions down. You are ready to take on an assignment without their support. This will lead to a bigger project.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

The San Juan Daily Star

Ziggy

32

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

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