Wednesday Sep 27, 2023

Wednesday, September 27, 2023

The San

Not So Golden Years: Contentment Lacking for Many in Retirement, Study Finds

Several PDP Mayors Urge Confirmation of Raíces Vega as

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Alex Cora Leads 2023 PR Sports Hall of Fame Induction Class

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.

PDP mayors call for confirmation of Raíces Vega as secretary of education

By THE STAR STAFF

Agroup of mayors under the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) banner asked the island Senate on Tuesday to confirm Dr. Yanira Raíces Vega as secretary of the Department of Education, pointing out that “she has the preparation and experience,” among other arguments.

Loíza Mayor Julia Nazario Fuentes, who attended Raíces Vega’s confirmation hearing in the Senate last week, said that during her time in the Education Department (DE) she worked with the secretary-designate and “I can attest to her commitment to education.”

“She is an academic who has more than 20 years of experience in her work,” the president of the Popular Women’s Organization said. “It is time for us to have a person in ownership in that agency.”

Comerío Mayor Josian Santiago Rivera said “confirmation is necessary to end the uncertainty due to the lack of a permanent Secretary.”

“It is one of the most important departments of the government and the Legislature must prevent the people from having the perception that by not confirming [the secretary post], they are obstructing the governor’s management,” he said. “Let the governor and his team take responsibility as they should. The function of the opposition is to monitor and demand accountability.”

Morovis Mayor Carmen Maldonado González said she evaluated the governor’s appointee based on the experience she had with her as director of the Bayamón educational region, to which the municipality of Morovis belongs.

“My experience is that Raíces was effective in leading the region,” Maldonado González said. “When I called her regarding a need in our Moroveña schools, she responded and took action. I ask the PDP senators to vote in favor. Partisan politics should not have a place in this issue. Having an interim [secretary] in the DE for the rest of the four-year term does no one any good. The priority is the education of our children and adolescents.”

Guayama Mayor O’brain Vázquez Molina, who also attended the confirmation hearing last week, received the nominee last Friday at City Hall along with a group of school directors in Guayama, who presented their visions for the DE. Then they visited one of the schools.

“She has the commitment and the experience, too,” Vázquez Molina said. “Our endorsement of Dr. Raíces includes, of course, that in the year and three months remaining to this four-year period, she fulfills her work plan. You have to be realistic.”

Tún’ arrested following exchange of gunfire minutes after leaving court

By THE STAR STAFF

Agents from the island Department of Correction and Rehabilitation and the Puerto Rico Police Bureau arrested Delwin Berríos Navarro, known as “Tun Tún,” after a shootout in the Limones sector of Yabucoa on Tuesday, shortly after leaving a court hearing.

During the incident, Ángel Berríos Navarro, a brother of “Tun Tún,” was injured and taken to a hospital.

filed the charges.

The injured brother, prior to Tuesday’s incident, had manipulated a shackle to escape, prompting an extensive police operation to find him.

The Intelligence and Arrests Division of Humacao seized a weapon that had been altered to fire automatically. Delwin Berríos Navarro had been under electronic supervision since last week after Judge Martín Ramos Junquera granted him habeas corpus.

The conflict occurred after Berríos Navarro’s participation in the Humacao court for a criminal process related to a murder. The Humacao Prosecutor’s

Office

The car from which the Berríos Navarro brothers were shot at lost control, hitting a utility pole. Authorities are searching for the occupants, who were considered armed and dangerous.

‘Tun

Several Popular Democratic Party mayors told the island Senate that Yanira Raíces Vega “has the preparation and experience” to be confirmed as secretary of Education.

UPR governing board votes to remove Ríos Reyes as RCM chancellor

By THE STAR STAFF

The University of Puerto Rico (UPR) governing board on Tuesday voted to remove Ilka Ríos Reyes from the position of chancellor of the UPR Medical Sciences Campus (RCM) at a time when the campus is the target of a probe by the commonwealth comptroller and a possible federal probe.

Ten board members voted in favor of removal.

Ríos said she received a letter from the comptroller’s office indicating that it is starting a probe into the possible diversion of public funds under the administration of former RCM Chancellor Segundo Rodríguez.

The comptroller’s office confirmed to the STAR that it is starting a probe into the RCM but did not reveal the nature of the investigation.

Ríos said she referred RCM employees to federal authorities for violations of federal laws, and that former federal prosecutor Osvaldo Carlo is helping her.

Ríos and another source said the diversion of public funds is one of the reasons individuals behind the movement to have her ousted are seeking to get her out of the picture in order to divert the probe.

UPR governing board member Hermán Cestero said the board decided to carry out a referendum vote to determine if Ríos should be removed.

Ríos has warned about the danger of the Middle State Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) confirming the instability on campus and insisted that choosing a new chancellor during the electoral ban next

year would delay other important processes because he or she could not be appointed until January 2025, which would mean that eight deans in interim positions could not be confirmed either.

While Ríos said UPR President Luis Ferrao Delgado, who asked her to resign on Monday, told other media outlets that he did so because he was under pressure, she told the STAR that Ferrao’s job was also on the line and that he instead chose to “give them my head.”

For a week, students have been protesting at the campus against Ríos.

Right after Ferrao requested Ríos’ resignation, Ricardo Dalmau, the UPR governing board chairman, held a virtual meeting with each of the board members to determine if they were in favor of replacing the embattled RCM chancellor. Meanwhile, according to

sources, the board is not going to discuss the controversy around Río at a public meeting slated for later this week.

Protesting students and faculty contend that Ríos poses a danger to the credibility of the university because, they say, as interim chancellor she changed a 15-year-old medical school student’s grade as part of an arrangement made between the RCM and the young student’s parents.

Ríos reached an agreement with the student, similar to one made by Rodríguez, the former RCM chancellor, to avoid a lawsuit over the university’s alleged failure to provide the girl with counseling services to which she was entitled as a minor.

The STAR has previously reported, meanwhile, that the established facts of the situation do not establish any wrongdoing by Ríos. A document from the Registrar’s Office shows Ríos allowed the student to drop several courses and did not authorize a change of grades.

Meanwhile, a probe by UPR that was conducted by Maritza Miranda López refuted a 2022 probe that had concluded Ríos violated internal processes when she reached a settlement with the medical student, who had failed several courses.

Also on Tuesday, Electrical and Irrigation Industry Workers Union (UTIER by its Spanish acronym) President Josué Mitjá expressed his support for the striking RCM students in their demand for Ríos’ resignation.

“We extend all our solidarity to the RCM students who continue to fight for transparency in the UPR’s processes,” Mitjá said in a written statement. “The UTIER has always

been on the side of those who fight for justice and democracy in all the institutions of our country. The future of Puerto Rico rests in the hands of young people like the students of the Medical Sciences Campus.”

Late on Monday the island House of Representatives approved House Resolution 1032, which expresses the legislative body’s rejection of Ríos’ appointment as RCM chancellor, which took effect Sept. 1.

The appointment of Dr. Ilka Ríos has been surrounded by controversies due to several events and disagreements in the selection process and her previous history as interim chancellor,” at-large Rep. Héctor Ferrer Santiago said in a written statement. “Added to this is the unfortunate attitude of Dr. Ríos, who has created a climate of uncertainty and confrontation by not wanting to resign from the position.”

District 29 Rep. Gretchen Hau Irizarry stressed that “with a vote of 66.7 percent of the student enrollment in the Medical Sciences Campus and with 97.7 percent of the student body against, Dr. Ilka Ríos appears to put “her personal interest over the interest of the institution by ignoring the rejection of her appointment and the request for her resignation.”

District 35 Rep. Sol Higgins Cuadrado added that “the approval of the resolution reflects the commitment of the House of Representatives to preserving integrity and excellence in higher education in Puerto Rico above any consideration.”

“It is crucial that appointments at academic institutions meet the highest ethical and professional standards,” she said.

CESCO to offer learners’ permit tests in San Juan neighborhood

By THE STAR STAFF

House District 4 (San Juan) Rep. Víctor Parés Otero announced on Tuesday that the Driver Services Center (CESCO by its Spanish acronym) will go to the Parcelas Canejas community in San Juan to administer the driver’s license exam to dozens of young people.

The event is scheduled for today at the Parcelas Canejas Community Center starting at 8 a.m.

“Seeking to encourage our young people to start their journey to drive a motor vehicle on the roads of Puerto Rico, we have developed this activity where CESCO staff of San Juan, whom I thank, will move to the Parcelas Canejas community center to administer the learner’s exam, an important step in their social development,”

the New Progressive Party lawmaker said.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for our young people in San Juan, so we urge all those who wish to get their learners’ permit to meet tomorrow Wednesday at the community center of Las Parcelas Canejas,” he added.

In order to take the learner’s test, prospective drivers must be 16 years or older, and minors under 18 must be accompanied by a parent and/or guardian. Also required is an unlaminated social security card, a medical certificate for a valid driver’s license (less than 30 days), as well as completing the application for examination (DTOP-DIS-255), and a birth certificate, also valid.

All youths under 18 also must present a school class certificate, a document to serve as proof of a residential physical address, a receipt of $17 from Internal Revenue, and stamps of $11 and $2.

Ilka Ríos Reyes

Rep. Víctor Parés Otero

Retirement is not a time of joy or contentment for Puerto Rico’s seniors

By THE STAR STAFF

While retirement should be a time of rest and reaping the fruits of a lifetime of work, a study by Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico (PUCPR) found that retirees on the island face precariousness and a continuous struggle to make ends meet with their meager pensions.

The struggle to make pension money last until the end of the month by reducing basic needs, causing sadness and anxiety among retirees.

The study carried out by PUCPR’s Observatory of Society, Governance and Public Policies sought to obtain an overview of the socioeconomic profile and perceptions of retired people. The research follows up on work developed in 2012 by Hernán A. Vera Rodríguez, director of the Observatory, on retirees in the southern and western regions of Puerto Rico. The most recent study led by Vera, who worked alongside Jennifer Castellanos Barreto, another researcher, had the support of the Alliance for Pensioner Health, the Puerto Rico Government Pensioners Association and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), Puerto Rico chapter, which helped with data collection.

Vera said “the study results reinforce our 2012 findings that, for most surveyed, retirement is not a time of joy and rest, but rather a continuous struggle to make ends meet and cover basic needs.”

“In fact, one of the study’s main findings is that a segment of retirees has had to continue

The struggle to make pension money last until the end of the month by cutting back on basic needs is causing sadness and anxiety among many retirees in Puerto Rico, according to a new study.

working to meet the expenses of their daily lives,” he said.

“This research gives us a clearer picture of the social, economic and emotional situation of retired people in the country at a time when the segment with the greatest population growth on the island is the elderly,” Vera continued. “This is particularly important given the reforms that have occurred and others being developed in the various retirement systems in the country. The research had a sample of 1,604 retired people and also analyzed the adjustments that retired people have had to make in their daily lives, the feeling of loneliness, their intention to return to work and the perception of retirees regarding the role of the government.”

Castellanos Barreto highlighted that the study generated a lot of interest in the pop-

ulation, being one of the fastest empirical investigations carried out by the Observatory.

“Between March and May 2023, approximately two and a half months, we attracted the interest of more than 4,000 people on the online platform,” she said. “In this sense, the study process was faster than expected, thanks to the acceptance and participation of retired people. We believe that the acceptance of the project reflects the need that people have to tell about the economic and emotional situation they are going through at the moment.”

Among the outstanding data from the research is that 75% of the retired people who responded are women, and the average age of the participants is 66 years. The vast majority (85%) have incomes ranging from $100 to $2,499 per month, and 75% of respondents say they have adjusted their basic expenses, including a dramatic reduction in their leisure activities, such as entertainment outings.

“A large segment of the retirees surveyed live in a precarious situation and 84% understand that the country’s economic situation has affected their finances,”Vera noted. “But beyond that, a quarter of the participants have seen their economic situation worsen after the pandemic, and a large segment of those surveyed claim to feel loneliness, sadness and perceive little social support. Retirement in Puerto Rico is not a time of joy, it is a time in which poverty is accentuated, especially among the female population.”

The Observatory’s director said economic precariousness during retirement is of such

magnitude that 73% claimed to have made adjustments by buying cheaper foods to make their money last, and 53% said high healthcare costs affect their quality of life. A third of the participants indicated that they did not have savings. Although 66% said they had money saved, that group said the savings would not be enough to live on for more than a year. Retirees’ income comes mostly from Social Security and their pensions, and almost half (47%) have considered returning to work, the researchers highlighted.

Among the most relevant conclusions of the study, 56.3% say that the money they receive does not allow them to live comfortably, and 60% say that they do not trust that the government will do justice to retirees. Most retired people say that their life was more comfortable before retirement and that leaving the world of work has created economic hardship accompanied by sadness and worry in a time of vulnerability due to being older adults.

Regarding the researchers’ recommendations,Vera indicated that “[f]rom public policies, a continuous review of the pensions of Puerto Rican retirees is proposed, as well as possible contributory benefits for those pensioners who work after their retirement.”

“It is understood that they have already contributed significantly to the country during their lives,” Vera said. “Likewise, free or lowcost leisure opportunities available to retirees should be expanded, which could help improve their physical health and reduce their levels of sadness and social loneliness.”

New executive director of Luis Muñoz Marín Foundation named

By THE STAR STAFF

Carlos Olivencia Gayá, chairman of the Luis Muñoz Marín Foundation board of directors, announced on Tuesday the appointment of researcher Javier Alemán Iglesias as executive director of the foundation.

“We are proud that this outstanding Puerto Rican researcher and historian is assuming the reins of our Foundation,”

Olivencia Gayá said in a written statement. “We know that Javier Alemán will strengthen our objectives of continuing to be not only the center of documentation, study, dissemination and education on the values, philosophy and thought of Luis Muñoz Marín, but also a meeting point for the discussion of issues based on our social, economic, cultural and natural history of the twentieth century to the present.”

Alemán Iglesias holds a doctorate degree in American history from Inter-American University of Puerto Rico and a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR). In his career he has stood out for directing his research toward economic models, mainly those of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean between the 18th and 20th centuries.

For the new executive director, the Foundation “constitutes the most important historical archive of the twentieth century in Puerto Rico and we aspire to become an epicenter of community and educational dialogues necessary in the country.”

“In the same way, we want to create creative spaces that integrate the new generations, where not only history is learned, but also serve as a vehicle to promote conservation and appreciation for our nature and environment,” added Alemán Iglesias.

Prior to his appointment, Alemán Iglesias served as executive director of the Jesús T. Piñero Library and Social Research Center and was director of the journal Ámbito de Encuentros at Ana G. Méndez University.

Javier Alemán Iglesias

Para la Naturaleza to distribute 25,000 trees

By THE STAR STAFF

The organization Para la Naturaleza will distribute 25,000 native, endemic and fruit trees free of charge on Oct. 6 and Oct. 7 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., as part of its commitment to reforest the archipelago of Puerto Rico, reduce the effects of climate change and minimize heat waves.

“We urge all people to join La Siembra; in this way we contribute to reducing the effects of climate change and we get closer to improving air quality, protecting ecosystems, preventing coastal erosion and combating heat waves, in addition to beautifying the landscape,” said Ahmed Pérez, superintendent of reforestation at Para la Naturaleza, in a written statement.

Trees will be distributed simultaneously at six locations: Para la Naturaleza Nursery in the North Botanical Garden in Río Piedras, Hacienda La Esperanza Natural Reserve in Manatí, La Guancha in Ponce, Centro de Visitantes de Medio Mundo and Daguao in Ceiba (former Roosevelt Roads base), Antiguo Club de Leones in Barranquitas Isidoro García Park in Mayagüez.

People interested in obtaining their trees should reserve the day and time of collection through the website, pln. org/lasiembra. On the website, participants will find information on locations, available species and recommendations of which species they should plant for their place and space. Each person can collect up to four trees.

The distribution will be drive-through and more than 80 species will be available depending on the locality and inventory, including: native oak, acerola, guava, button mangrove, soursop, coffee, currant, maga, mamey, beach grape and many others.

“Trees are our best allies in the face of the environmental challenges we face. The shade of a tree decreases heat up to 10 degrees,” said Rígel Lugo, communications director for Para La Naturaleza.

“In addition to beautifying the island and providing fruits that nourish communities, trees contribute to the local agricultural industry, supply aquifers to generate drinking water, prevent flooding, improve air quality and serve as a shelter for local wildlife. They are also an invaluable legacy for future generations.”

San Juan marks International Tourism Day with strategy-sharing session

By THE STAR STAFF

As part of the celebration of International Tourism Day, which is today, the San Juan municipal administration, through its Department of Economic Development and Tourism, brought together a large group of tourism industry representatives to share strategies on how to maximize their efforts to attract more tourists to the island capital.

The event, entitled “Conversemos: San Juan,” also served the purpose of familiarizing tourism industry representatives with the municipal services that they have at their disposal and that are an integral part of improving the tourism offer, as well as the attractions that the Capital City has to offer, both for international and local tourists.

San Juan Mayor Miguel Romero Lugo highlighted the importance of the meeting, taking into account “that tourism is one of the central axes of our work plan to promote the economic development of the Capital City.”

“That is why we want to bring all possible tools

to our merchants and entrepreneurs linked to this industry, … and support them while strengthening communication ties and teamwork, which are pillars of the public policy that I promote,” the mayor said.

Daphne Barbeito, director of the Municipal Department of Economic Development and Tourism, noted that during the event “we presented the Capital Entrepreneurship program and the resources we have available to support the creation of new jobs and the strengthening of businesses.”

“Among these, we reported on the decrees of tax exemption, for municipal and property for periods of five years, and real estate for a period of 10 years, as qualified,” she said. “In addition, guidance was provided on financial assistance grants for operational expenses of up to $5,000 for existing businesses and up to $10,000 for new businesses that qualify, depending on the availability of funds.”

Likewise, Discover Puerto Rico staff presented the tools they have available to give greater visibility to businesses through the various digital platforms that exist in the market.

Trees will be distributed simultaneously at six locations: Para la Naturaleza Nursery in the North Botanical Garden in Río Piedras, Hacienda La Esperanza Natural Reserve in Manatí, La Guancha in Ponce, Centro de Visitantes de Medio Mundo and Daguao in Ceiba (former Roosevelt Roads base), Antiguo Club de Leones in Barranquitas Isidoro García Park in Mayagüez.

San Juan Mayor Miguel Romero Lugo

Menéndez, defiant, says he will not resign

By TRACEY TULLY

Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey returned earlier this week to the familiar territory of Hudson County, New Jersey, a Democratic bastion where he rose to political prominence, to publicly address the corruption charges that now threaten his career and his freedom.

Standing alone at a lectern, accused of bribery for the second time in a decade, he indicated that he had no intention of bowing to the chorus of voices calling for his resignation.

The allegations, he said, were framed by prosecutors to “be as salacious as possible.”

“I recognize that this will be the biggest fight yet,” Menendez, a Democrat, said as heavy rain beat against the windows of a community college not far from where he grew up in Union City, the child of Cuban refugees.

But he said he expected that once the judicial process concluded, “not only will I be exonerated, I will still be New Jersey’s senior senator.”

Speaking first in English and then in Spanish, Menendez, 69, reiterated much of the message he offered immediately after the three-count indictment was announced Friday. He urged patience “to allow all the facts to be presented.”

He was not joined by family members or any of his most stalwart political allies as he faced a bank of television cameras and a standing-room-only crowd of reporters. Behind him, against a wall, were roughly two dozen people he called “everyday people and constituents who know me.”

Menendez left without answering questions shouted by reporters about the gifts, including gold bars and a MercedesBenz, that prosecutors say he received as bribe payments.

He did, however, attempt to offer a justification for the $550,000 in cash investigators found during July 2022 searches of a safe deposit box and his home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, much of it stashed in clothing and closets or stuffed into envelopes. Some of the envelopes containing the cash had the fingerprints of a businessperson charged in the scheme; one envelope also had Menendez’s fingerprints, according to the indictment.

Menendez said it had been his habit to withdraw cash from his savings accounts to keep at home, a tendency he said was rooted in his parents’ experience in Communist Cuba.

“This may seem old-fashioned,” he said, adding, “I look forward to addressing other issues at trial.”

It was the first time he had appeared publicly since federal prosecutors in New York City unsealed a 39-page indictment that accused him and his wife, Nadine Menendez, of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange

for wielding his political influence to benefit the government of Egypt and business associates in New Jersey.

The indictment depicted a far-reaching web of political corruption involving aid and weapons sales to Egypt and efforts by Menendez to persuade state and federal prosecutors to go easy on his associates in three criminal cases.

Menendez and the others accused in the bribery conspiracy — his wife and three New Jersey businesspersons — are expected to appear today in federal court in New York to respond to the charges.

He stepped down Friday as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, as required by rules the Senate Democrats adopted to govern themselves.

Nadine Menendez, 56, who has been married to the senator for three years, did not attend the news conference.

One longtime friend, Joseph Panepinto, a New Jersey developer, said Menendez’s office called to ask him to attend the event. He said he wanted to be there to support his friend of 40 years.

“I see he has a problem,” Panepinto said. “I hope he’s innocent. If he’s proven guilty, he’ll pay the price.”

“What happened? I don’t know,” he added. “I have no idea. I’m wondering why he has so much cash in his house, but that’s his business.”

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a close ally of Menendez, called for the senator’s resignation hours after the charges were announced, unleashing a torrent of similar messages from Democratic leaders across the state.

In Washington, however, the reaction among Democrats has been more muted; by late Monday, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, a close friend of Menendez’s, still had taken no public position on the charges outlined in the indictment.

At the White House, President Joe Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said that the decision about whether Menendez should step down was “going to be up to him and the Senate leadership.”

Rep. Andy Kim, a third-term Democrat from South Jersey, said Saturday that he would challenge Menendez in next year’s primary, and he wasted no time in establishing a campaign committee.

“New Jersey deserves better,” Kim said Monday on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Menendez just had a press conference doubling down on his refusal to resign. Then we have to beat him in the primary election.”

The response from New Jersey Democrats was a marked departure from 2017, when most Democratic leaders stood solidly at Menendez’s side while he stood trial in federal court on charges that he had taken bribes from a wealthy doctor in exchange for political favors.

The jury could not reach a unanimous decision, and the Justice Department declined to retry Menendez after a judge dismissed the most serious charges.

At Monday’s news conference, Menendez alluded to his previous case. “Remember, prosecutors get it wrong sometimes,” he said. “Sadly, I know that.”

Still, Republicans said Menendez’s legal problems would only bolster their effort to win over voters in November, when lawmakers are running for reelection in the state Assembly and Senate.

“It’s a real problem for Democrats that he’s not going away quietly,” said Alexandra Wilkes, a spokesperson for the state Republican Party.

“If you’re the Democrats, this is not what you want to have be the top story on every single news station, every single night.”

Loyalty Finance LLC

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) speaks at a news conference in Union City, N.J., Sept. 25, 2023. The appearance, where he said he will not resign, was his first time speaking publicly since being charged with taking bribes in exchange for exerting political influence.

As Trump prosecutions move forward, threats and concerns increase

not only his employees but also the rule of law.

The FBI, which has seen the number of threats against its personnel and facilities surge since its agents carried out the court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, in August 2022, subsequently created a special unit to deal with the threats. A U.S. official said threats since then have risen more than 300%, in part because the identities of employees, and information about them, are being spread online.

“We’re seeing that all too often,” said Christopher Wray, the bureau’s director, in congressional testimony this summer.

The threats are sometimes too vague to rise to the level of pursuing a criminal investigation, and hate speech enjoys some First Amendment protections, often making prosecutions difficult. But the Justice Department has charged more than a half-dozen people with making threats.

have engaged in treason, “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the penalty would have been DEATH.” (Milley has been interviewed by the special counsel’s office.)

The day before the threatening call last month to Judge Tanya Chutkan’s chambers in U.S. District Court in Washington, Trump posted on his social media site: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING FOR YOU!” (A Texas woman was later charged with making the call.)

On Friday, a judge presiding over a case in Colorado about whether Trump can be disqualified from the ballot there for his role in promoting the Jan. 6 attack issued a protective order barring threats or intimidation against anyone connected to the case. The judge cited the types of potential dangers laid out by Smith in seeking the gag order on Trump in the federal election case.

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, ADAM GOLDMAN, ALAN FEUER, MAGGIE HABERMAN and GLENN THRUSH

At the federal courthouse in Washington, a woman called the chambers of the judge assigned to the election interference case against former President Donald Trump and said that if Trump were not reelected next year, “we are coming to kill you.”

At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, agents have reported concerns about harassment and threats being directed at their families amid intensifying anger among Trump supporters about what they consider to be the weaponization of the Justice Department. “Their children didn’t sign up for this,” a senior FBI supervisor recently testified to Congress.

And the top prosecutors on the four criminal cases against Trump — two brought by the Justice Department and one each in Georgia and New York — now require roundthe-clock protection.

As the prosecutions of Trump have accelerated, so too have threats against law enforcement officials, judges, elected officials and others. The threats, in turn, are prompting protective measures, a legal effort to curb Trump’s angry and sometimes incendiary public statements, and renewed concern about the potential for an election campaign in which he has promised “retribution” to produce violence.

Given the attack on the Capitol by Trump

supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, scholars, security experts, law enforcement officials and others are increasingly warning about the potential for lone-wolf attacks or riots by angry or troubled Americans who have taken in the heated rhetoric.

In April, before federal prosecutors indicted Trump, one survey showed that 4.5% of American adults agreed with the idea that the use of force was “justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.” Just two months later, after the first federal indictment of Trump, that figure surged to 7%.

The indictments of Trump “are the most important current drivers of political violence we now have,” said the author of the study, Robert Pape, a political scientist who studies political violence at the University of Chicago.

Other studies have found that any effects from the indictments dissipated quickly, and that there is little evidence of any increase in the numbers of Americans supportive of a violent response. And the leaders of the far-right groups that helped cause the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 are now serving long prison terms.

But the threats have been steady and credible enough to prompt intense concern among law enforcement officials. Attorney General Merrick Garland addressed the climate in testimony to Congress on Wednesday, saying that while he recognized that the department’s work came with scrutiny, the demonization of career prosecutors and FBI agents was menacing

This has had its own consequences: In the past 13 months, FBI agents confronting individuals suspected of making threats have shot and fatally wounded two people, including one in Utah who was armed and had threatened to kill President Joe Biden, who was planning to visit the area.

In a brief filed in Washington federal court this month, Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the Justice Department’s prosecutions of Trump, took the extraordinary step of requesting a gag order against Trump. He linked threats against prosecutors and the judge presiding in the case accusing Trump of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election to the rhetoric Trump had used before Jan. 6.

“The defendant continues these attacks on individuals precisely because he knows that in doing so, he is able to roil the public and marshal and prompt his supporters,” the special counsel’s office said in a court filing.

Trump has denied promoting violence. He says that his comments are protected by the First Amendment right to free speech, and that the proposed gag order is part of a far-ranging Democratic effort to destroy him personally and politically.

“Joe Biden has weaponized his Justice Department to go after his main political opponent — President Trump,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the former president.

But Trump’s language has often been, at a minimum, aggressive and confrontational toward his perceived foes, and sometimes has at least bordered on incitement.

On Friday, Trump baselessly suggested in a social media post that Gen. Mark Milley, the departing chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, might

There have been recent acts of political violence against Republicans, most notably the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Last year an armed man arrested outside the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he had traveled from California to kill the conservative Supreme Court jurist.

But many scholars and experts who study political violence place the blame for the current atmosphere most squarely on Trump — abetted by the unwillingness of many Republican politicians to object to or tamp down the violent and apocalyptic language on social media and in the conservative media.

In one example of how Trump’s sway over his followers can have real-world effects, a man who had been charged with storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 was arrested in June looking for ways to get near former President Barack Obama’s Washington home. The man — who was armed with two guns and 400 rounds of ammunition and had a machete in the van he was living in — had hours earlier reposted on social media an item Trump had posted that same day, which claimed to show Obama’s home address.

Pape, of the University of Chicago, said that while the numbers of people who felt violence was justified to support Trump were concerning, he would rather focus on a different group identified in his survey: the 80% of American adults who said they supported a bipartisan effort to reduce the possibility of political violence.

“This indicates a vast, if untapped, potential to mobilize widespread opposition to political violence against democratic institutions,” he said, “and to unify Americans around the commitment to a peaceful democracy.”

A mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump storm the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021. As criminal cases proceed against Trump, heated rhetoric and anger among his supporters has authorities worried about the risk of political differences becoming deadly.

7 candidates qualify for second Republican debate; Trump won’t attend

By MAGGIE ASTOR

Seven candidates qualified for the second Republican presidential debate, the Re publican National Committee announced Monday night, just one fewer than participated in the first debate last month.

The event, scheduled for today from 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern time, will include:

— North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum;

— Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie;

— Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis;

— Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassador;

— Former Vice President Mike Pence;

— Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy;

— And Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.

Although former President Donald Trump, the runaway front-runner in polls, easily exce eded the donor and polling requirements for participation, he is planning to skip the debate. He also skipped the first debate, which still managed to draw nearly 13 million viewers and was also the most-watched cable telecast of the year outside of sports.

For his rivals, time is running short to gain ground on the leader. Trump’s closest rival, DeSantis, has fallen in recent polling, and the other candidates have been unable to make substantial breakthroughs. They will need to seize on moments like debates, with national audiences, to make noise in early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.

13-15 de octubre de 2023

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La Asociación de Detallistas de Gasolina de Puerto Rico te invita a su Sexagésima Cuarta Convención Anual a celebrarse del 13 al 15 de octubre de 2023 en el Conquistador Resort, Fajardo.

Oportunidades de negocio para los socios.

Mini Convención para menores de 3-16 años.

Invitamos a nuestros socios a participar de nuestra Asamblea Anual a celebrarse el sábado, 14 de octubre de 2023 a las 9:00am en el Salón Poinsettia.

Para más información, puede comunicarse al 787.726.0961. ¡Le esperamos!

The first Republican presidential primary debate stage is set, at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee on Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023.

Hollywood’s focus turns to actors after writers agree to deal

By JOHN KOBLIN, NICOLE SPERLING and BROOKS BARNES

Hollywood’s actors are back in the spotlight.

With screenwriters reaching a tentative agreement with the major entertainment studios on a new labor deal on Sunday night, one big obstacle stands in the way of the film and TV industry roaring back to life: ending the strike with tens of thousands of actors.

The two sides have not spoken in more than two months, and no talks are scheduled.

Leaders of the Screen Actors GuildAmerican Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the actors union, have indicated a willingness to negotiate, but the studios made a strategic decision in early August to focus on reaching a detente with the writers first. A big reason was the rhetoric of Fran Drescher, the president of the actors union, who made one fiery speech after another following the strike, including one in which she denounced studio executives as “land barons of a medieval time.”

“Eventually, the people break down the gates of Versailles,” Drescher said after the actors strike was called in July. “And then it’s over. We’re at that moment right now.”

Drescher has been less vocal in recent weeks, however. Only a resolution with the actors will determine when tens of thousands of workers — including camera operators, makeup artists, prop makers, set dressers, lighting technicians, hairstylists, cinematographers — return to work.

The actors union offered congratulations to the Writers Guild of America, which represents more than 11,000 screenwriters, in a statement Sunday night, adding that it was eager to review the tentative agreement with the studios. Still, it said it remained “committed to achieving the necessary terms for our members.”

With a tentative deal in hand, the Writers Guild suspended picketing. But protests by actors will begin again on Tuesday, after a break for Yom Kippur on Monday. “We need everyone on the line

Tuesday-Friday,” actress Frances Fisher, a member of the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee, said on Sunday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Show us your #Solidarity!”

Dozens of Writers Guild members vowed to support the actors. “I know there’s a huge sign of relief reverberating through the town right now, but it’s not over for any of us until SAG-AFTRA gets their deal,” Amy Berg, a Writers Guild strike captain, wrote on X.

Their support will go only so far, however. Writers Guild negotiators were unsuccessful in receiving the contractual right to honor other unions’ picket lines; writers will be required to return to work, perhaps before a ratification vote is final.

It has been 74 days since the actors union and representatives of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, have talked. That will probably soon change given the high stakes of salvaging the 2024 theatrical box office, which will be in considerable jeopardy should Hollywood not be able to restart production within the next month. The TV production window for the remainder of the year is also closing, given the coming holidays.

Restarting talks with the actors’ union is a bit more complicated than it sounds. For a start, SAG-AFTRA officials will need time to scrutinize the deal points achieved by the Writers Guild; those wins and compromises will inform a new bargaining strategy for the actors. Also, talks between studios and writers restarted only after leaders on both sides spent time back-channeling about the thorniest issues and seeing if there was a willingness to negotiate. Studios are likely to try the same strategy with the actors.

The soonest that negotiations between actors and the studios could restart is next week, according to a person directly involved in the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the strike.

Neither SAG-AFTRA nor the studio alliance commented on Monday.

“There’s tremendous pressure on both sides to get this done,” said Bobby Schwartz, a partner at Quinn Emanuel and a longtime entertainment lawyer who has represented several of the major studios. “The deal that the Writers Guild and the studios struck economically could have been worked out in May, June. It didn’t need to go this long. I think the member-

ship of SAG-AFTRA is going to say we’ve been out of work for months, we want to go back to work, we don’t want to be the ones that are keeping everybody else on the sidelines.”

The dual strikes by the writers and the actors — the first time that has happened since 1960 — have effectively shut down TV and film production for months. The fallout has been significant, both inside and outside the industry. California’s economy alone has lost more than $5 billion, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Warner Bros. Discovery said this month that the impact from the labor disputes would reduce its adjusted earnings for the year by $300 million to $500 million. Additionally, share prices for other major media companies such as Disney and Paramount have taken a hit in recent months.

The industry took a meaningful step toward stabilization Sunday night, though, with the tentative deal between the writers and studios all but ending a 146-day strike.

The deal still needs to be approved by union leadership and ratified by rankand-file screenwriters. “I’m waiting impatiently to see what the exact language is around AI,” said Joseph Vinciguerra, a Writers Guild member and a professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

The approval vote by union leadership is expected on Tuesday.

Although the fine print of the terms has not been released, the agreement has much of what the writers had demanded, including increases in compensation for streaming content, concessions from studios on minimum staffing for television shows and guarantees that artificial intelligence technology will not encroach on writers’ credits and compensation.

“We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional — with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership,” the Writers Guild’s negotiating committee said in an email to members.

On Monday, President Joe Biden released a statement applauding the deal, saying it would “allow writers to return to the important work of telling the stories of our nation, our world — and of all of us.”

Striking members of SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, picket outside Universal Studios in Los Angeles on Aug. 4, 2023. Actors have been on strike since July, with many of the same demands as the writers.

Equities Fall as U.S. Treasury Yields, Dollar Stay Elevated

Equities around the world were lower on Tuesday in a choppy trading session as Treasury yields stayed close to 2007 levels while fears of higher for longer interest rates ate into appetites for riskier assets.

The dollar index eased from a 10-month high but was still rising and the Japanese yen bounced from an 11-month low as Japanese officials warned about a possible intervention in the currency.

U.S. Treasury 10-year yields surpassed 16-year peaks touched in the previous session before pulling back while the yield curve flattened a bit, as investors paused selling bonds and re-assessed how far rates have come.

Wall Street’s major stock indexes followed Asian and European equities lower as investors continued to digest last week’s indication from the Federal Reserve that it would keep rates higher for longer than investors had previously expected.

However, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said on Tuesday that he sees a “soft landing” for the U.S. economy as likelier than not, but also sees a 40% chance that the Fed will need to raise rates “meaningfully” higher to beat inflation.

Nervousness in the market was also exacerbated by the prospects of a government shutdown. Republicancontrolled House of Representatives’ are pushing to advance steep spending cuts this week, which are unlikely to become law but could trigger a partial shutdown, furloughing hundreds of thousands of federal workers and suspending public services.

In the latest phase of the probe of more than a dozen investment advisers, the SEC has in recent months asked for messages on personal devices or applications during the first half of 2021 that discuss business, the sources said. It has targeted a selection of employees, in some cases as many as a dozen, including senior executives.

The firms include Carlyle Group, Apollo Global Management, KKR & Co, TPG, and Blackstone, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter, as well as some hedge funds, including Citadel, said a different person with direct knowledge.

The Washington stand-off added to negative sentiment, along with rising oil prices and auto worker strikes that started in Detroit on Sept 14, as investors also waited for a key inflation reading, core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE), which is due out on Friday.

“As long as rates keep pushing higher that’s going to keep the market nervous,” said Jack Janasiewicz, portfolio manager at Natixis Investment Managers Solutions. “It feels like this dark cloud is having over the market until we get to the PCE print.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 305.54 points,

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or 0.9%, to 33,701.34, the S&P 500 lost 50.6 points, or 1.17%, to 4,286.84 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 168.53 points, or 1.27%, to 13,102.79.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index lost 0.56% and MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe shed 1.01%.

In Treasuries, benchmark 10-year notes were up 0.4 basis points to 4.546%, from 4.542% late on Monday. The 30-year bond was last up 1.6 basis points to yield 4.675%, from 4.659%. The 2-year note was last was up

1.1 basis points to yield 5.1423%, from 5.131%.

In currencies, the dollar index rose 0.179%, with the euro down 0.16% to $1.0573 while Sterling was last trading at $1.2161, down 0.41% on the day.

The Japanese yen weakened 0.01% versus the greenback at 148.90 per dollar. The greenback’s strength against the yen in particular has kept traders on alert for an intervention to prop up the Japanese currency, especially after Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki said no options were off the table.

The 150 yen per dollar level is seen by financial markets as a red line that would spur Japanese authorities to act, as they did last year.

After taking away critics’ citizenship, a country takes their houses

By FRANCES ROBLES

Workers in bright-orange construction vests showed up at a house in Nicaragua’s capital, Managua, with tools to pick the lock and remove cabinets.

Days earlier, employees from the attorney general’s office went to another Managua home and said it was now state property. The men who arrived in police trucks at a third house in the city’s wooded outskirts came with sledgehammers.

“They were ready to break down the door,” Camilo de Castro, a filmmaker whose work is critical of the government, said of the police’s arrival at his door.

De Castro and the other two homeowners, Gonzalo Carrión and Haydee Castillo, are human rights activists who are among more than 300 Nicaraguans declared traitors this year by the Sandinista government with no rights to citizenship or property.

Now, the government has started making it official in stark fashion by fanning out and seizing its opponents’ properties, including the homes of two former foreign ministers.

The campaign is a throwback to the leftist party’s first time in office in the 1980s, when the Sandinistas expropriated homes, setting off yearslong legal disputes. The country’s leader, Daniel Ortega, led the Sandinista revolution that thrust them into power and lives in a house he confiscated decades ago.

Ortega was beaten at the ballot box in 1990, but after changes to the constitution that made it possible for him to win, Ortega reclaimed the presidency in 2007. He spent the next decade chipping away at the country’s democracy by interfering with the National Assembly, elections and the Supreme Court.

Tens of thousands of people rose up against Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, in 2018, accusing them of becoming exactly what they had once fought against: leaders of a dictatorial family dynasty. Government opposition landed hundreds of people in prison, and at least 300 were

Andeno Co

Tasa mínima, promedio ponderado, y máxima para préstamos personales pequeños otorgados para la semana que terminó el sábado, 23 de septiembre de 2023

shot in protests.

Earlier this year, 222 political prisoners were released into exile.

The move to start seizing properties in recent days follows the confiscation of a prominent Jesuit university and the arrests of several priests. On Monday, the Sandinistas seized a private business school that Harvard University founded nearly 60 years ago. The government’s campaign signals that even five years after a failed uprising, dissent has serious consequences.

“It was not enough for him to imprison me and send me into exile in addition to stigmatizing me as a terrorist and traitor,” said Castillo, who now lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Murillo, who acts as the government spokesperson, did not respond to a request for comment. She and Ortega have said they consider opposition activists terrorists for trying to overthrow the government by blocking roads, bringing commerce to a standstill and occasionally resorting to violence. Many of them, including de Castro, are officially fugitives from justice.

The international community has widely criticized the Ortega government, with the United Nations likening the government to Nazis who committed crimes against humanity.

Ortega helped lead an insurgency that in 1979 overthrew the corrupt dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. A civil war ensued, during which the new Sandinista government seized the Somoza family’s many ill-gotten spoils. The confiscation was initially intended as a quest to return to the Nicaraguan people what had been stolen, by redistributing land through agrarian reform.

But the Sandinistas also took the homes of people who fled, either accusing them of being allies of the Somoza regime

or declaring the property abandoned.

When they were voted out of office in 1990, the Sandinistas used the transition period to whip up legal documentation for the properties they had doled out to their cronies, a giveaway known as the “piñata.”

Experts say it will be a long road before the properties are ever returned to their owners. It took decades for people who lost their homes in the 1980s, many of whom had been or eventually became American citizens, to be compensated — and that was only after the Sandinistas no longer occupied the presidency.

It took pressure from Washington and threats of withholding U.S. aid to make a dent in the thousands of claims, said Peter Sengelmann, 87, who lost his house in 1979, presumably because his two brothers were associated with the Somoza government and later led the Committee to Recover Confiscated American Properties in Nicaragua.

“The Sandinista government paid me about a third of what it was worth, and I took it, because I thought it was better than nothing,” said Sengelmann, who now lives in Miami. “It took about 15 years.”

He was paid $85,000.

Jason Poblete, a U.S. lawyer who specializes in international property claims, mostly out of Cuba, said about a year and a half ago he started getting calls from property owners in Nicaragua who said they were being harassed with false unpaid property tax bills, another tactic the government uses to give seizures “the color of law,” he said.

The issue is likely to become a longtime sticking point as it is in Cuba, where nearly 6,000 American citizens and corporations lost homes, farms, factories, sugar mills and other properties totaling $1.9 billion when the Castros took power in 1959. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans also lost property, Poblete said, without compensation.

“The Cubans learned how to do this, and they taught the Nicaraguans,” Poblete said. “It is a more sophisticated form of political intimidation.’’

De Castro, who in the past briefly worked as an assistant to New York Times reporters, said no lawyer in Nicaragua would ever take their cases. He added that several activists who were stripped not just of property but also their citizenship planned to bring a case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, arguing that the moves violated international law. Among the plaintiffs are his mother, writer Gioconda Belli, whose home was also taken.

“As long as the regime is in power, we won’t be able to go back and won’t be able to get our houses back,” he said. “I don’t think they’re going to stop.”

A poster with an image of Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, in Managua. Mr. Ortega’s autocratic government has stepped up its campaign against opponents.

In a blow to Russia, Ukraine says it killed chief of Black Sea fleet

By MATTHEW MPOKE BIGG and ANDREW E. KRAMER

Ukraine’s military claimed earlier this week that it had killed the commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in a strike on Crimea — a blow that, if confirmed, would be among the most damaging suffered by the Russian navy since the sinking of the fleet’s flagship last year.

Citing “new information about the losses of the enemy as a result of the special operation,” Ukraine’s special operations forces said in a statement that the strike on Friday killed 34 officers, including the fleet commander, and wounded 105 others. It did not name the naval leader, but the commander of the Black Sea Fleet is Adm. Viktor Sokolov, one of the most senior officers in Russia’s navy.

The attack came during a meeting of Russian commanders, Ukraine’s military said, and badly damaged a headquarters of the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea. The chief of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, also told Voice of America on Saturday that the strike had badly wounded two senior Russian generals — Col. Gen. Alexander Romanchuk and Lt. Gen. Oleg Tsekov. There has been no further word from either side on their condition.

There was no immediate comment from Russia’s Defense Ministry on the status of any of its commanders, and there was no independent verification of the claims.

In recent weeks, Ukraine has sharply increased the pace of strikes in Crimea, a strategically vital peninsula illegally annexed by Russia nearly a decade ago. Ukraine has used missiles and aerial and maritime drones to attack warships, a naval port, bridges and military depots.

By going after Crimea, analysts say, Ukraine is making it harder for the Kremlin to use the region as a logistics hub for the territory it seized last year in southern Ukraine, where Russia is now battling a Ukrainian counteroffensive. It is also raising the price that Russia must pay to maintain control of the peninsula and use it as the base for a fleet that regularly fires missiles into Ukraine, attacks and attempts to enforce a blockade on Ukrainian ports.

“Any target inside Crimea is essentially fair game to demonstrate to the Russians

they do not have security, they do not control skies over Crimea, they are vulnerable to Ukrainian strikes, and Ukraine can get to them whenever it wants,” said Samuel Bendett, an analyst of Russia’s military at CNA, a think tank based near Washington.

Russia on Monday fired a barrage of drones and missiles at the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, a hub of the grain export trade that Ukraine has tried to maintain despite Russian efforts to cripple it. Ukraine’s military said it had shot down most of the weapons, but officials said one had hit a grain warehouse, killing two people, and others had damaged a marine terminal and an abandoned high-rise hotel.

The attack on Sevastopol on Friday used a combination of missiles and exploding drones to overwhelm Russian air defenses, according to Ukraine’s military. Video footage showed the headquarters building smoking as an airborne weapon plunged into it and detonated it, sending debris flying and engulfing it in a cloud of thick smoke and debris.

The Russian news agency TASS featured an image showing part of the building caved in, and an analysis of satellite images before and after the attack also showed that the building was heavily damaged.

If Ukraine’s claims are accurate — that it knew of the high-level Russian meet-

ing, learned the identities of those hit and was able to obtain casualty counts — the statements would indicate an intelligence coup as well as a military one.

It was not clear what weapons were used on Friday, but Ukraine has recently deployed Storm Shadow cruise missiles given by Britain and nearly identical SCALP cruise missiles supplied by France that reportedly can travel more than 300 miles, far beyond the range of other Western weapons used by Ukraine.

The strikes have exposed flaws in Russia’s system of air defenses, according to Budanov, forcing Moscow to redeploy anti-missile batteries from elsewhere on the battlefield to Crimea.

“We are depleting their air-defense missile stocks because those are not limitless,” he said. “And from the political standpoint, we’re also demonstrating the obvious inability of Russian air defense systems.”

The Ukrainian statement on Monday also asserted that an attack this month on one of the Russian fleet’s landing ships, the Minsk, had killed 62 sailors — another claim that could not be independently verified. It did not specify a date, but on Sept. 12, a Ukrainian attack on Sevastopol damaged two navy ships, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Pro-war Russian military bloggers and the Russian news outlet

Baza identified them as the Minsk and an attack submarine.

Although it remains the paramount naval power in the Black Sea, the Russian fleet there has suffered multiple setbacks. In April, 2022, Ukraine sank the Moskva cruiser, the fleet’s flagship vessel, with a missile attack. In August 2023, it used naval drones to damage a Russian warship on the far side of the Black Sea.

Crimea is central to the expansive territorial vision that President Vladimir Putin of Russia has outlined, so Moscow’s inability to protect it from strikes is an embarrassment to the Kremlin, analysts said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine insists that his country will retake all of the territory annexed by Russia, including Crimea, but for years Moscow had faced no military challenge to its occupation of the peninsula. The Kremlin promoted immigration from Russia to Crimea, and the region’s balmy climate and beaches attracted Russian vacationers, as it had for generations.

At the same time, a regional administration installed by the Kremlin after it seized Crimea in 2014 cracked down on dissent. International human rights groups and Crimean activists say that scores of people, mostly from the peninsula’s Tatar ethnic group, have been arrested and detained in brutal conditions.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, its forces used Crimea as a jumping-off point to seize parts of southern Ukraine, establishing a land bridge that connects to Russian-occupied areas farther east.

In the longer term, Russia aims to ride out the Ukrainian attacks, aware that Ukrainian ground forces are still far from reaching Crimea, much less retaking it, according to Dmitry Kuznets, an independent analyst of the war who writes for Meduza, a Russian news website.

Ukrainian stocks of longer-range missiles are finite, he said, adding that, while damaging, the campaign of strikes had not yet reached a critical point for Russia.

“The goal is to disrupt Russian logistics and control in order to gain an advantage at the front,” he said. “To achieve this, strikes are carried out not only in Crimea, but also throughout the south of Ukraine. In this sense, progress has been limited so far.”

Olha and Volodymyr Radiuk, right, mourn over the coffin of their son, Serhiy Radiuk, a member of the Ukrainian National Guard, during his funeral at St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv, Sept. 25, 2023.

Biden hosts Pacific islands, with a rising China in mind

military power.

The event, reprising one from last September, was mainly designed to strengthen and spotlight ties after what officials concede were years of bipartisan neglect. But Biden also announced that he was working with Congress to invest $40 million in infrastructure spending for the islands, among other initiatives.

Those announcements hardly amount to a seismic diplomatic event. But they are two of many recent moves the Biden administration has made to strengthen America’s presence in a region east and northeast of Australia.

Over the past year, the United States has opened embassies in the Solomon Islands and Tonga, and plans to open one early next year in Vanuatu. When Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Fiji in February 2022, it was the first visit there by an American secretary of state in 36 years.

And China’s state-controlled media has derided U.S. efforts to gain influence as part of an obvious power struggle. An editorial Monday in Beijing’s China Daily newspaper said the Pacific island countries had been “largely forgotten by the West” until recently, “when the United States and its allies started viewing China as a rival.”

“All of a sudden, the region has become an area of interest on their geopolitical chessboard,” the newspaper said.

The White House event Monday was part of an elaborate multiday program that included a trip Sunday to a Baltimore Ravens game and to a U.S. Coast Guard cutter in Baltimore Harbor, for a briefing by the Coast Guard commandant on maritime issues. Those issues include the growing problem of illegal fishing off the nations’ shores, for which China is primarily responsible.

By MICHAEL CROWLEY

The Pacific Island state of Niue is one of the world’s tiniest. Covering just over 100 square miles and with a population of about 1,700, it has no military, is not a member of the United Nations and was not recognized as a sovereign nation by the United States until last year.

But President Joe Biden was talking about Niue earlier this week at the White House, when he hosted the leaders of 18 Pacific Island nations, the second gathering of its kind in a year and the latest illustration of a regional competition for influence between the United States and China.

Among Biden’s announcements at the event was that the United States would, for the first time, establish formal diplomatic relations with Niue and the Cook

Islands, a nearby haven for snorkelers.

Speaking to the leaders at the White House on Monday, Biden invoked America’s World War II campaign against Japan in the region and, without naming China, implied that another kind of battle was now underway.

“Like our forebears during World War II, we know that a great deal of the history of the world will be written across the Pacific over the coming years,” Biden said. “And like them, we owe it to the next generation to write that story together.” Officials said Biden spent more than 2 1/2 hours with the group.

Biden’s second U.S.-Pacific Islands Forum Summit, as the White House calls the event, is part of a larger Biden administration effort to deepen ties with a string of islands in the South Pacific, where officials say Beijing hopes to project

Biden had hoped to become the first sitting U.S. president to visit a Pacific Island nation but was forced to cancel a trip to Papua New Guinea in May because of the federal debt ceiling crisis.

Those steps are, in no small part, chess moves in response to growing Chinese influence in the region, which became particularly vivid last year when the Solomon Islands surprised U.S. officials by signing a sweeping security pact with Beijing, in what analysts say could eventually allow for a permanent Chinese military presence.

Biden administration officials say their goal is not specifically to compete with China, or to ask countries to choose between Washington and Beijing, but to help ensure a “free and open” Pacific that is peaceful and hospitable to commercial shipping. But they acknowledge that China’s assertiveness has forced them to pay increased attention to the region.

Blinken was also scheduled to host the leaders at a State Department dinner Monday night. They were set to join a business roundtable Tuesday with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and to meet with Biden’s special envoy for climate, John Kerry.

Biden officials say the climate is the premier issue for the leaders, whose countries risk being submerged by rising sea levels. But they are also eager for other forms of U.S. assistance, including a greater Peace Corps presence and undersea cables to increase internet access on the islands.

To the frustration of the Biden administration, one key leader was notably absent from this week’s gathering: Manasseh Sogavare, prime minister of the Solomon Islands, whose close relationship with Beijing has elicited concern in Washington.

Despite his presence in New York last week for the United Nations General Assembly, Sogavare did not come to Washington this week.

President Joe Biden, along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, hosts a Pacific Islands Forum summit at the White House in Washington, Monday, September 25, 2023.

Being there

By DAVID FRENCH

want to begin this column by sharing with you one of the worst things I ever did. I was only 18 years old, but that was no excuse. Late one night I got a call from a close friend. “My dad’s on the way to the hospital,” he said. “It’s really bad.” His voice was shaking.

I was shocked. I didn’t know what to say. More important, I didn’t know what to do. I told my friend that I was so sorry. I told him I’d pray for him. And then I went to sleep. I called my friend the next morning. No answer. I asked around. He was at the hospital.

The same pattern repeated for two long days: I’d call. No answer. I’d ask about him and find out he was at the hospital. But I didn’t go. To this day, I can’t replicate the thought processes that kept me away. I remember feeling some irrational confidence that his father would be fine. I remember being busy. I remember feeling not quite prepared to face such pain and loss. Then I got the call: My friend’s father had died.

I did go to the visitation. I knew — at the very least — that’s what friends do. What happened next is burned into my heart. When I walked in the door, my friend came up to me, looked at me with immense hurt and said, “Where were you?”

I had no answer then. I have no answer now. I failed, and the older I get the better I understand the magnitude of my failure. I had violated the first commandment of

friendship: presence. Simply being there was all that had been required. I couldn’t pass even that one simple test.

Last week I read a poignant piece arguing that the male loneliness epidemic was afflicting a surprising group: American fathers. In one sense, these were men who were surrounded by love. They were typically married. They had children. Yet they still felt alone. They struggled to make friends.

The longer we march through these anxious, sad and divided times, the more I’m convinced that the bigger story, the story behind the story of our bitter divisions and furious conflicts, is our loss of belonging, our escalating loneliness. And one of the markers is the extraordinary decline of friendship.

According to an American Perspectives Survey, between 1990 and 2021, the percentage of Americans reporting that they had no close friends at all quadrupled. For men, the number had risen to 15%. Almost half of all Americans surveyed reported having three close friends or fewer.

The statistics raise the question: Why? I’d suggest that a big part of the answer lies in the story I told above. Ever since I’ve started thinking and writing about America’s loss of belonging, I’ve been asking people what virtue they value most in a friend. I’ve asked people who are religious and secular, white-collar and blue-collar, men and women, Black and white. And it’s remarkable how often the answer boils down to the single virtue I mentioned above, of presence, of being there.

Time and again I hear versions of this answer, one that grows more salient the longer you live and the greater the headwinds you face: “A friend is there when you need him.” “A friend picks up the phone when you call at 2 a.m.” “A friend stands with you.”

The temptation of absence destroys the virtue of presence, and that absence, as I showed as a younger man, need not come through shocking neglect or selfishness. It can occur simply because you’re busy. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Most Americans make their close friends through work. So what happens when friends change jobs and they’re suddenly just gone?

There are times, too, when friends can almost seem

to disappear owing to parenthood, especially if their kids play sports or are engaged in extracurricular activities. “This summer is rough for me. Travel soccer is destroying our calendar.” And yes, you often make friends with other parents while you watch your kids play. But next year your child might be on a new team, with new parents around, and all the parent friends you just made are suddenly gone.

I’ve never met a person who wants to lose friends. But I’ve met many, many people who suffer from loneliness and say that they just “lost touch.” What happened? I ask. “Life happened,” they say. At each new stage of life it was easier to say no to a friend than to say no to work, to a spouse, to one’s kids. And while each individual no can be understandable and even justifiable, the accumulation of noes suffocates friendships, even without an argument, a breach or a betrayal.

During the early pandemic, when Zoom calls were a brand-new thing to many of us, I received an unusual invitation from a reader, who wrote that he and his old college friends all read me and would I mind joining one of their weekly Zooms? It sounded fun, so I said yes. When I joined I was struck by the obvious joy of their friendship — the inside jokes, the easy camaraderie. They were much younger than me, in their 30s, and before we signed off, they asked if I had any last thoughts.

Stay together, I said. It’s going to get hard. Your kids are young. Your careers are just starting to take off. But stay together. Be there, even when it’s hard. Even when it’s inconvenient. After I got off the call, I kicked myself for not remembering a quote by C.S. Lewis: “Friendship is unnecessary,” he wrote, “like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”

That single quote says so much. Compared with the competing demands of family and work, in any given moment friendship can feel unnecessary. But as the years roll on, and countless justifiable individual absences wear down our relationships, there will come a time when we will feel their loss. But it need not be that way, especially when our simplest and highest command is merely being there.

A man places his hand on another’s shoulder at Katy City Park in Katy, Texas on Aug.13, 2022.

LA FORTALEZA – El gobernador Pedro Rafael Pierluisi Urrutia, anunció el martes, la firma de un acuerdo entre el Departamento de la Vivienda y la Autoridad de Carreteras y Transportación de Puerto Rico (ACT) para la inversión de 49 millones de dólares de fondos de recuperación para realizar mejoras a la PR-2 en la zona Oeste.

Para completar el proyecto, que tiene un costo total de 185 millones de dólares, la ACT recibió fondos la de subvención de Infraestructura para la Reconstrucción de América (INFRA, por sus siglas en inglés) de la Administración de Autopistas federal (FHWA, por sus siglas en inglés) de 90 millones de dólares y el resto será sufragado con fondos estatales.

“La reparación, reconstrucción, mejoramiento y modernización de toda nuestra infraestructura es uno de los elementos prioritarios de mi administración, con particular atención a nuestras carreteras. Y es que cuando hablamos de mejorar la seguridad vial, de lo que estamos ha-

blando es de la calidad de vida de nuestra gente. Hoy estamos anunciando avances significativos en el proyecto de mejoras a la carretera interestatal PR-2 en el área de Mayagüez, específicamente en La Vita y otras intersecciones importantes de la zona. La PR-2 es una de las vías más importantes de Puerto Rico y es el corredor más extenso en la Isla, por la que se recorren 143 millas. Y este proyecto en el municipio de Mayagüez es un proyecto crítico para el área oeste ya que tiene un impacto en sobre 365,000 residentes, comerciantes y visitantes, y brinda acceso a los principales puntos comerciales, industriales, residenciales, hoteleros, hospitalarios y educativos de la Sultana del Oeste. La inversión combinada que haremos para mejorar 1.4 millas de la vía es de 185 millones de dólares”, sostuvo el gobernador en conferencia de prensa.

Se espera que el proyecto genere 2,035 empleos directos, 2,220 empleos indirectos y 185 empleos inducidos. La construcción beneficiará a un total de 365,872 personas; de esta población, aproximadamente un 82.9% son personas de ingresos bajos a moderados.

Por su parte, el secretario del Departamento de la Vivienda, William Rodríguez Rodríguez, expresó que “la PR-2 no es solo una carretera; es el pulso de muchas comunidades, empresas y la vida diaria de miles de puertorriqueños. Al facilitar la movilidad, no solo buscamos solucionar problemas inmediatos, sino que también vemos el potencial de estas mejoras para transformar las comunidades circundantes, fomentar el desarrollo económico y elevar la calidad de vida de nuestros ciudadanos, lo que al final es el propósito de los fondos de mitigación”.

Mientras, el director ejecutivo de ACT, Edwin González Montalvo, explicó que “la carretera interestatal PR-2 conecta los municipios más grandes de Puerto Rico, Arecibo y Ponce. No obstante, actualmente, opera con tiempos de viaje excesivos y niveles de servicio deficientes, lo que impacta negativamente la economía y el desarrollo de la zona. El proyecto beneficiará a la región oeste impactando una de las intersecciones más congestionadas en Puerto Rico. Esto redundará en una mejor calidad de vida para todos los ciudadanos que visiten el área de Mayagüez”.

Estudiante doctoral de ciencias ambientales UPR-RP recibe subvención de la National Science Foundation

SAN JUAN – La estudiante doctoral Solimar Pinto Pacheco, del Programa Graduado de Ciencias Ambientales de la Facultad de Ciencias Naturales del Recinto de Río Piedras de la Universidad de Puerto Rico (UPR), fue seleccionada para recibir el National Science Foundation (NSF) Crest Post Doc Fellowship. Esta subvención es por la cantidad de $338,225 por un periodo de dos años, y provee ayuda económica a científicos que estén comenzando su carrera, además de impulsar su desarrollo profesional.

Para aprovechar la subvención, Pinto Pacheco llevará a cabo su proyecto titulado “Ecohidrología en el Antropoceno: controles hidrometeorológicos de procesos físicos y biogeoquímicos en ecosistemas crónicamente estresados”.

El proyecto se enfoca en el estudio transdisciplinario, combinando la hidrología, ecología, eco fisiología vegetal y la meteorología, de ecosistemas tropicales, que están expuestos a cambios climáticos y a efectos antropogénicos para determinar su adaptabilidad a sus estresores presentes y futuros.

“Proteger nuestros ecosistemas es sumamente importante en nuestra actualidad, en donde el cambio

climático es una amenaza. Investigaciones como la que hago, las que hacen otros colegas en el laboratorio de la doctora Elvira Cuevas y otros colegas en distintos campos de la ciencia en la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras, son sumamente necesarios para una adaptación sustentable de estos ecosistemas y sirven de guía para otras zonas de estudios con características similares”, expresó la estudiante doctoral.

Pinto Pacheco trabajó en la ecohidrología del humedal urbano costero Ciénaga Las Cucharillas en Cataño, en colaboración con el Humedal del Yaguazo, como parte del Center of Research Excellence in Science and Technology (CREST) y el Center for Innovation, Research, and Education in Environmental Nanotechnology (CIRE2n), bajo la mentoría de la profesora e investigadora Elvira Cuevas.

CREST-Cire2n está dedicado a la educación de estudiantes universitarios y de posgrado, utilizando la última tecnología, descubrimientos y material educativo para una integración exitosa en la fuerza laboral científica. Los esfuerzos que realizan en el laboratorio estudiantes e investigadores se centran en el desarrollo de nanomateriales y dispositivos para abordar cuestiones medioambientales, utilizando na-

notecnología y partiendo de puntos focales locales.

El centro tiene su sede en el Recinto de Río Piedras de la UPR e incluye estudiantes de recintos hermanos como Mayagüez y Cayey, así como asociaciones con la Universidad Ana G. Méndez (UAGM).

“La profesora Elvira Cuevas ha sido fundamental en mi desarrollo como científica… Ella fue de mucha ayuda en el proceso del desarrollo de la propuesta; redacción, búsqueda de cartas de colaboradores, y corrección de la propuesta. En fin, fue mi mano derecha durante todo el proceso para desarrollar y someter una propuesta digna de mi calibre como investigadora”, comentó Pinto Pacheco.

Anuncian acuerdo entre Vivienda y ACT para mejoras a la PR-2 en el Oeste

Five international movies to stream now

By DEVIKA GIRISH

This month’s picks include a Mexican resort thriller, a British time-travel caper and a coming-of-age drama from Costa Rica.

‘Vicenta’

In 2006, Vicenta, a poor and illiterate domestic worker in Buenos Aires, discovered that her 19-year-old daughter, Laura, who had a developmental disability, was pregnant; she had been raped by her uncle. Darío Doria’s gutting movie relates the Kafkaesque torment that followed as the family tried to get Laura an abortion. A network of doctors, lawyers, social workers and judges became embroiled in a case that surfaced the misogyny and ableism in Argentina’s legal and medical system. As Vicenta and Laura navigated this bureaucratic labyrinth — which went all the way from the local police office to Argentina’s Supreme Court to, eventually, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights — the clock ticked on, making it harder for Laura to terminate her pregnancy safely.

Rather than relay this tale as a traditional documentary, Doria employs an ingenious formal conceit. The entire film is visualized using Plasticine models, with a poetic voice-over that dramatizes Vicenta’s inner monologue. The figurines and sets are crafted with beautiful, painstaking detail, but they’re immobile; Doria creates the impression of movement through the use of light, sound and camera tricks, and embeds archival news footage within Plasticine TV sets to offer framing context. The result is an incredibly expressive yet unsentimental film that vividly captures the terrible process of a woman’s dehumanization. (Stream it on Ovid.)

‘Maaveeran’

This ironic Tamil riff on superhero movies is the kind of genre film that’s rare in Hollywood these days: a populist picture about people power. Madonne Ashwin’s superbly inventive caper revolves around a cartoonist, Sathya (Sivakarthikeyan), who lives in a slum in Chennai, in South India, with his mother and sister. He is the ghostwriter of a comic strip about a brave warrior, “Maaveeran,” that runs in the local newspaper, though his own

personality is in marked contrast to his creations. When a local politician razes Sathya’s slum and moves all its dwellers into dangerously shoddy high-rises, our protagonist, to his feisty mother’s great chagrin, prefers to make do meekly rather than fight back.

All that changes when Sathya suffers an injury and begins to hear a voice that narrates his life and controls his actions — except the narrator makes him out to be a courageous hero rather than the coward he is. Reluctantly but helplessly, Sathya begins to battle the corrupt overlords. What ensues is an uproarious film, brimming with action, laughs and foot-tapping music, that doubles as a whip-smart inquiry into the very nature of heroism. As Sathya discovers, it is often those with nothing to sacrifice but themselves who are burdened with changing the world for the better. (Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.)

‘The Great Seduction’

Celso R. García’s sun-drenched comedy is more of an extended April Fools’ gag than a movie, yet it just may leave you grinning from ear to ear. The fable-like story takes place on a small Mexican island called Santa Maria, which over the years has become abandoned and isolated. Industrial developments in neighboring areas have wrecked Santa Maria’s ancestral fishing economy, forcing its residents to live off monthly dole checks or emigrate in search of work. But Germán (Guillermo Villegas), who has resided in the town his whole life, refuses to lose hope. When he hears that a fish-packing company might be enticed to set up shop if Santa Maria manages to employ a doctor, Germán enlists his whole community in a crazy plan.

Enter Mateo (Pierre Louis), a city doctor who is banished to Santa Maria for a month as punishment for some drunken vandalism at his hospital. Led by Germán, the townspeople orchestrate a farce to convince Mateo that Santa Maria is the destination of his dreams. They pretend to play American football, learn how to make chicken tikka masala and even tolerate rock music. These high jinks may be simple and contrived, but they’re performed by a fantastic cast (including Yalitza Aparicio of “Roma” fame) that tenderly conveys the desperation of a forgotten town struggling to preserve its legacy as it is battered by the winds of change.

(Stream it on Netflix.)

‘The Future Tense’

A border is never just a line in the sand — it is a rift through history, memory, even psychology, fundamentally shaping how we see and place ourselves in the world. This idea animates Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s dense, thrilling essay-documentary about the relationship between Ireland, where they are from, and Britain, where they’ve lived since the 1980s and raised their teenage daughter. Two journeys undertaken by the couple frame the film: a flight from London to Dublin, and a road trip through Ireland to scout locations for a film about Rose Dugdale, an English debutante who became an Irish Republican Army volunteer. Facing the camera, Christine and Joe read out ruminations about family and country triggered by these journeys, while archival footage, home video, interviews and more illustrate their monologues.

Their narration is perfectly poised between droll and erudite, personal and political. Joe’s affecting recollection of his troubled mother’s life in the United States, Britain and Ireland is punctuated by ironic asides; at one point, he wonders facetiously whether the gap in his teeth had something to do with his family’s migrations across geographic and political chasms, as a pair of dentures slowly oozes out of his mouth. Elsewhere, the directors imagine a conversation between the mannequins of Queen Elizabeth I and the 16th-century Irish pirate Grace O’Malley at the Famine Museum in Louisburgh. Confronting a future that threatens to replicate a fraught past, the couple craft something that feels like a stand-up bit, an elegy and a wishful dream all at once. (Stream it on Mubi.)

‘Magoado’

There’s something strangely alluring about this skeletal Brazilian drama. Maybe it’s the incongruous combination of a flimsy narrative and gorgeous, intricate cinematography; or perhaps it’s the staging of soapy performances within a stylish, boxy frame that recalls silent films. We meet Peio (Diego Álvarez), a drunken, good-for-nothing fisherman in Santa Catarina in Brazil, as he lies passed out on the sand, lapped by ocean waves. He is a sorry sight, but the scene looks like a painting, dappled by sunlight and streaked with red and blue tints.

Rubén Sainz’s feature mounts a simple, even trite tale: Peio is forced to take charge of his life when his estranged adolescent son is suddenly, mysteriously sent back to him. But this familiar narrative feels fresh and startling on screen, rendered as it is with an extraordinary visual sensitivity. As the film unfolds, Peio’s miserable existence and cantankerous demeanor contrast with the serenity of the setting — until, by the end, our protagonist finally seems to see in his life the beauty that the camera sees throughout. (Stream it on Tubi.)

By JEANINE BARONE

Huddled in the North Atlantic between Iceland, Scotland and Norway, the Faeroes — an 18-island archipelago and self-governing nation within the Kingdom of Denmark — captivates visitors the instant they land at the airport on the island of Vágar. Silence saturates the emerald green slopes and basalt cliffs. Sheep roam the grassy expanses that are sliced vertically by dark rocky threads caused by the erosion of streams. It’s hard to keep your eyes focused on the road as you behold a gauzy mist swirling around the mountains, veiling deep gorges, wide fjords, occasional turf-roofed dwellings and waterfalls.

In this isolated land with its sparse population of some 54,400 people, the environment’s magic is pervasive — one reason, perhaps, why the Faeroes also bubble with human innovation that takes its cue from nature. And getting there is easier than ever — Atlantic Airways just started its first nonstop flights from the United States (from New York’s Stewart International Airport, about 60 miles from Manhattan).

Consider the islands’ 14 miles of sub-

sea tunnels that are currently open. The newest, at about 7 miles, takes drivers from Tórshavn, the cosmopolitan capital of the Faeroes, on the island of Streymoy (the largest island), to Eysturoy (the second largest island). Said to be the world’s first subsea tunnel with a roundabout, its unusual design features a multicolored illuminated pillar encircled by a steel installation of people holding hands, by Faeroese artist Tróndur Patursson. To augment the experience of driving through the tunnel, tune in to 97.0 FM to listen to the spellbinding soundscape created by musician Jens L. Thomsen, who said he “wanted to find the voice of the tunnel.” Another art-infused subsea tunnel is scheduled to open by Christmas, making for faster travel between Tórshavn and Sandoy, one of the southern isles.

Coastal Tórshavn — one of the world’s smallest capitals — is itself a nexus of creativity, embracing the contemporary without losing its connection to the past. The old quarter, populated by centuries-old turfroofed houses, covers a peninsula that juts into the busy harbor. Walk the city’s winding lanes, steep alleyways and wide boulevards, and you’ll find buzzy coffee shops,

wine bars and fashion emporia. Rather than just using Tórshavn as a base for island hopping, stay awhile and explore the city’s food, fashion and art.

For food lovers

A sense of whimsy pervades ROKS (meaning “silly”), the laid-back sister restaurant to two-Michelin-starred KOKS (temporarily decamped to Greenland, but returning to Streymoy in 2025). Occupying a two-story, turf-roofed structure dating to at least the 1600s, the space is filled with amusing art, including depictions of an octopus holding glasses of red wine. The seasonal offerings, created by the head chef, Poul Andrias Ziska, showcase the Faeroes’ fish and shellfish bounty in two tasting menus (595 and 895 Danish kroner, or about $87 and $130). The razor clams, a must-try, are served raw, accompanied by a vinaigrette and shallot sauce, and sprinkled with yellow dandelion and white sweet cicely blossoms.

Across the rugged cobbled lane stands another centuries-old building, housing a different kind of restaurant. With three homey dining rooms adorned with photos of former Tórshavn residents from the late

1800s and early 1900s, Raest, which means “fermented,” honors this age-old Faeroese method for preserving food. The chef, Sebastian Jiménez, hails from Atlixco, Mexico, and puts a Mexican twist on the traditional fermented cuisine served in the 14-course tasting menu (1,400 kroner), each dish assembled like a work of art. Faeroese flatbread, for example, is fashioned into a tortilla and topped with a pan-fried langoustine, fermented carrots and pipián rojo, a moletype sauce that Jiménez’s mother regularly cooks.

A treat for oenophiles (and art aficionados), Vingardurin (meaning “wine garden”), is where Faeroese art reviewer and critic Kinna Poulsen curates works by mostly Faeroese artists. This unpretentious wine bar and art gallery is an ideal setting for sipping wines from mainland Europe, nibbling on Iberian ham and manchego cheese and mingling with artists at the bimonthly exhibition openings, which are held in the snug, candlelit space and, in good weather, the spacious backyard terrace. Elsa Maria Holm Olsen, a co-owner, selects the wine cellar’s more than 200 different bottles, and sources ingredients such as cockles, squid and various charcuterie from Spain, France and Italy. There’s one nightly seating (Thursday to Saturday) for the five-course tasting menu that changes several times a year and can be paired with wine (1,300 kroner, with wine).

For the style-conscious

Fluffy sheep are ubiquitous in the Faeroes, as are the bulky sweaters made from their thick wool. But two shops — both on Niels Finsens gøta, a major shopping street in Tórshavn — defy expectations. Ullvoruhusid (“wool wear house”) features racks of long, stylish cardigans, sweaters and vests, all with a minimalist silhouette — hardly what you’d expect a fisherman or farmer to wear (1,500 to 2,500 kroner).

The artist Hansina Iversen at her studio in Tórshavn, Faeroe Islands, on Aug. 22, 2023. Along the harbor you’ll find the studio of Hansina Iversen within the ironworks shop of a shipyard building; inside, gears and other machinery clutter the immense, shadow-laden warehouse.

Sissal Kristiansen, a co-owner of the shop, created her Shisa Brand using predominantly undyed Faeroese wool, working in the wool’s natural shades of gray, brown and white. Knitting since she was a child, Kristiansen mostly designs female figureflattering apparel, some bearing side slits. It shouldn’t be at all surprising that the fogdraped landscape influences her. “The side slits were inspired by the layering in the landscape, when I looked at the mountains

The San Juan Daily Star

September 27, 2023

through the fog,” she says.

At Gudrun & Gudrun, owned by Gudrun Ludvig and Gudrun Rógvadóttir, cocktail and ankle-length dresses bear spaghetti straps, plunging backs and, sometimes, a diaphanous texture. Delicate sweaters are made with a mix of materials: one silk and one alpaca sleeve; mohair paired with glittery threads; a patchwork of different colorful wools. You can even custom order a mohair bridal gown. Ludvig constructs some of her garments by modernizing traditional Faeroese patterns, including the star that’s often emblazoned on seamen’s sweaters. She sources organic wool from all over the world, including the Faeroes. The apparel (2,025 to 4,725 kroner) is mostly hand-knit in the Faeroes, and also by women’s empowerment groups that the owners established in Peru and Jordan.

will be delighted to show you around. Some 2,000 original lithographs are for sale (810 to 24,818 kroner). The ground-floor gallery is worth exploring for exhibitions that range from graphic arts to mixed media, mostly from the Faeroes and the Nordic countries.

Also along the harbor you’ll find the studio of Hansina Iversen within the ironworks shop of a shipyard building. Inside, gears and other machinery clutter the immense, shadow-laden warehouse. Yet Iversen’s space is suffused with sunlight, the white walls hung with her boldly colored and pastel-hued abstract oils and lithographs (25,000 to 90,000 kroner). An appointment is necessary, but worth it. Visitors can chat with the artist about her canvasses, and how she takes inspiration from the Faeroes’ unpredictable weather.

upsstovu; and a giant spider-like installation by Ole Wich, representing the topography of Lítla Dímun, the smallest of the Faeroes.

A short uphill walk away is a green knoll dotted with curious sculptures, including a cluster of steel sheep by Bernhard Lipsoe. Here, the Nordic House makes a statement of unity via its design and its eclectic offerings. Each of the Nordic countries contributed to this modernist structure, including Norway (granite flooring), Finland (birch furnishings), Iceland (roof construction), Denmark (glass and steel construction), Sweden (ash wood wall panels) and the Faeroes (grass roof). Faeroese and Nordic theater, music, dance, cinema, art and

literature are all celebrated here. Every summer, the house also hosts an afternoon concert series, mainly classical and jazz, in the glass-walled amphitheater.

A 20-minute stroll back to the city center takes you from the architecturally grand to the petite. Leirlist (“clay art”) is the small, by-appointment-only atelier of ceramist Gudrid Poulsen. Experimenting with local ash, mud, sand and volcanic basalt in her glazes, Poulsen evokes the Faeroes in her stoneware and porcelain plates, cups and sculptures. Her latest works: rough, yet delicate, chawan cups (350 to 500 kroner), which make evocative souvenirs. And, in this land that’s peppered with memorials to men who died at sea, she’s working on a massive sculpture debuting in November on Eysturoy, honoring women who died in childbirth.

Getting around

The easiest way to get from Vágar Airport to Tórshavn is by either a shared taxi (about 243 kroner; prebook at auto.fo or taxi.fo), or a rental car (around 1,000 kroner per day, including basic insurance). Downtown Tórshavn is walkable, so you don’t need a car. You can also take a free bus to get around downtown and the rest of the municipality. Be aware that driving in the Faeroes involves travel along narrow, winding roads where sheep will often cross your path. Winds can be quite blustery and fog can obscure visibility. Driving on other islands can involve transiting dark, singlelane tunnels that require you to veer into a pull-in if another car is approaching.

For art enthusiasts

A sprawling, late-19th-century cannery building fronting the harbor is home to a lithography workshop: Steinprent (meaning “stoneprint”), which has worked with Faeroese and Nordic artists over its two dozen years, relying on a printing process that dates to 1798. In the sun-flooded, second-floor space, you can watch an artist painting on the unusual beige-colored limestone, and lithographers manning the printing presses. Don’t be shy: The owner, Jan Andersson, or his 22-year-old son, Mikkjal,

You can also see her work at the National Gallery of the Faeroe Islands, which is snuggled on a grassy expanse within the trail-laced forest known as the Plantation (90 kroner for adults). The exterior of this black, turf-roofed, multi-gabled building references a Faeroese boat shed. Sun floods the modern interior, offering views of the surrounding woodland and the figurative bronzes of Hans Pauli Olsen that are displayed outside. The more than 200 works in the gallery’s permanent collection are arranged by genre (landscape, the ocean, wool and knitting) and include the dark, melancholy, 20th-century seascapes of Samuel Joensen-Mikines, one of the Faeroes’ most revered artists. Other works range from political to playful, like the “rocks” constructed of wool and embroidered with flowers and moss by Súsan í Ják-

Chef Sebastian Jiménez at Raest restaurant in Tórshavn, Faeroe Islands, on Aug. 22, 2023. Jiménez, who is from Mexico, puts a Mexican twist on the restaurant’s traditional fermented cuisine.

Nes vindmøllepark, where you may run into some animals cloaked in thick fog, in the Faeroe Islands, on Aug. 22, 2023.

The Gudrun & Gudrun boutique in Tórshavn, Faeroe Islands, on Aug. 22, 2023.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

LIME HOMES,

Plaintiff, v.

LTD.

ENRIQUE MANUEL ESPINOSA NUÑEZ

Defendants

Civil Action Num.: 19-cv-1989 (JAG). Matter: Foreclosure of Mortgage. NOTICE OF SALE.

TO: ENRIQUE MANUEL ESPINOSA NUÑEZ: AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC:

WHEREAS: On July 19, 2023, Default Judgment was entered and grated on same day, in favor of Plaintiff to recover from defendants the principal amount of $197,578.80, plus interests at a rate of 6.5% per annum since March 1, 2016, which continues to accrue until the debit is paid in full, a deferred principal balance that does not accrue interest of $5,465.05, late charged on the amount of 5.00% of each and any monthly installment not received by the note holder within 15 days after the installment is due, all advances made in accordance with the mortgage note including, but not limited to, insurance premiums, taxes and inspections as well as 10% ($21,150.00) to cover costs, expenses, and attorney’s fees guaranteed under the mortgage obligation. The records of the case and of these proceedings may be examined by interested parties at the Office of the Clerk of the United States District Court, Room 150 or 400 Federal Office Building, 150 Chardon Avenue, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico.

WHEREAS: Pursuant to the terms of the aforementioned Judgment, Order of Execution, and the Writ of Execution thereof, the undersigned Special Master was ordered to sell at public auction for U.S. currency in cash or certified check without appraisement or right of redemption to the highest bidder and at the office of the Clerk of the Court, Room 150 or 400 – Federal Office Building, 150 Carlos Chardón Avenue, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, to cover the sums adjudged to be paid to the plaintiff, the following property described in Spanish:

URBANA: Solar marcado con el número catorce (14) del bloque “G” en la Urbanización El Álamo, en el Barrio Frailes de Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de trescientos setenta y cinco metros cuadrados (375.00 m.c.), en lindes por el NORTE, en quince metros (15.00 m.), con la franja verde; por el SUR, en quince metros (15.00 m.), con la calle número dos (2); por el ESTE, en veinticinco metros (25.00

m.), con el solar número “G” trece (G-13); y por el OESTE, en veinticinco metros (25.00 m.), con el solar número “G” quince (G-15). Enclava una casa. The property is recorded at Page 85 of Volume 240 of Guayanbo, Property Registry of Puerto Rico, and lot number 14,822, First Section of Guaynabo. The deed of mortgage and deed of modification are recorded at Page 203 of Volume 1244 of Guaynabo, Property Registry of Puerto Rico, and lot number 14,822. Property address: Urbanización El Alamo, Calle Jacinto 14-G, Guaynabo, P.R. 00969. WHEREAS: This property is subject to the following liens: Senior Liens: NONE. Junior Liens: NONE. Other Liens: NONE. Potential bidders are advised to verify the extent of preferential liens with the holders thereof. It shall be understood that each bidder accepts as sufficient the title and that prior and preferential liens to the one being foreclosed upon, including but not limited to any property tax, liens, (express, tacit, implied or legal) shall continue in effect it being understood further that the successful bidder accepts them and is subrogated in the responsibility for the same and that the bid price shall not be applied toward their cancellation. THEREFORE, the FIRST public sale shall be held on the October 16, 2023 at 9:30 am. The minimum bid that will be accepted is the sum of $208,144.59. In the event said first auction does not produce a bidder and the property is not adjudicated, a SECOND public auction shall be held on the October 23, 2023 at 9:30 am, and the minimum bid that will be accepted is the sum $138,763.06, which is twothirds of the amount of the minimum bid for the first public sale. If a second auction does not result in the adjudication and sale of the property, a THIRD public auction will be held on the October 30, 2023 at 9:30 am, and the minimum bid that will be accepted is the sum of $104,072.29, which is one-half of the minimum bid in the first public sale. Should there be no award or adjudication at the third public sale, the property may be awarded to the creditor for the entire amount of its debt if it is equal to or less than the amount of the minimum bid of the third public sale, crediting this amount to the amount owed if it is greater. The undersigned Special Master shall not accept in payment of the property to be sold anything but United States currency (cash), or certified checks, except in case the property is sold and adjudicated to the plaintiff, in which case the amount of the

bid made by said plaintiff shall be credited and deducted from its credit; said plaintiff being bound to pay in cash or certified check only any excess of its bid over the secured indebtedness that remains unsatisfied. WHE-

REAS: Said sale to be made by the undersigned Special Master subject to confirmation by the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico and the deed of conveyance and possession to the property will be executed and delivered only after such confirmation. Upon confirmation of the sale, an order shall be issued cancelling all junior liens. For further particulars, reference is made to the judgment entered by the Court in this case, which can be examined in the Office of Clerk of the United States District Court, District of Puerto Rico. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, this 29 day of August of 2023. Pedro A. Vélez Baerga, Special Master, 787-672-8269.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CAGUAS. JOSE JUAN BURGOS VELEZ PETICIONARIA

EX - PARTE

CIVIL # JU2023CV00183 (304).

SOBRE: EXPEDIENTE DE DOMINIO. EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: LAS PERSONAS IGNORADAS Y DESCONOCIDAS A QUIENES PUDIERA PERJUDICAR LA INSCRIPCIÓN DEL DOMINIO A FAVOR DE LA PARTE PETICIONARIA EN EL REGISTRO DE LA PROPIEDAD DE LA FINCA

QUE MÁS ADELANTE SE DESCRIBIRÁ Y A TODA

PERSONA EN GENERAL

QUE CON DERECHO PARA ELLO DESEE OPONERSE A ESTE EXPEDIENTE

POR LA PRESENTE: se les notifica para que comparezcan, si lo creyeren pertinente, ante este Honorable Tribunal dentro de los veinte (20) días contados a partir de la última publicación e este edicto a exponer lo que a sus derechos convenga en el expediente promovido por la parte peticionaria para adquirir su dominio sobre la finca que se describe más adelante. Usted deberá presentar su

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

Wednesday, September 27, 2023 20

posición 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 en la secretaría del Tribunal. Si usted deja de expresarse dentro del referido término, el Tribunal podrá dictar sentencia, previo a escuchar la prueba de valor de la parte peticionaria en su contra, sin más citarle ni oírle, y conceder el remedio solicitado en la petición, o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. El abogado de la parte peticionaria es el Lic. Jaime Rodríguez Rivera, cuya dirección es #30 Calle Reparto Piñero, Guaynabo, PR 00969-5650, Teléfono 787720-95S3. “RÚSTICA: Radica en el barrio Ceiba Sur, Juncos, Puerto Rico, con una cabida de noventa y siete (97) céntimos de una cuerda, equivalente a 38 áreas, 12 centiáreas, y cuarenta y siete miliáreas. SEGÚN MENSURA TIENE UNA CABIDA DE 2,824.9380 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el norte: con la carretera de Juncos a Las Piedras; por el SUR: con Carretera de Ceiba Sur: por el ESTE: con Jesús Collazo y por el OESTE con Manuel Lozada. Enclavan dos (2) estructuras.” Este edicto deberá ser publicado en tres (3) ocasiones dentro del término de veinte (20) días, en un periódico de circulación general diaria, para que comparezcan si quieren alegar su derecho. Toda primera mención de persona natural y/o jurídica que se mencione en el mismo, se identificará en letra tamaño 10 puntos y negrillas, conforme a lo dispuesto en las Reglas de procedimiento Civil, 2009. Se le apercibe que de no comparecer los interesados y/o partes citadas, o en su defecto los organismos públicos afectados en el término improrrogable de veinte (20) días a contar de la fecha de la última publicación el edicto, el Tribunal podrá conceder el remedio solicitado por la parte peticionaria, sin más citarle ni oírle. En Caguas, Puerto Rico, a 8 de agosto de 2023. Lisilda Martinez Agosto, Secretario(A) Regional. F/Yamaira Rios Carrasco, Sec Auxiliar Del Tribunal.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA SALA DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE PONCE CARMEN MARTINEZ GONZÁLEZ Y SANDRA

NANNETTE GONZÁLEZ

MARTÍNEZ PETICIONARIAS VS. EX PARTE CIVIL NUM.: PO2023CV01388. SOBRE: EXPEDIENTE DE DOMINIO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: John Doe y Richard Roe, posibles interesados en la Propiedad que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar radicado en el barrio Machuelo Abajo de esta ciudad de Ponce, con una cabida superficial de mil punto cuatro mil quinientos cuarentidós (1,000.4542 mc) metros cuadrados, equivalentes a cero punto dos mil quinientas cuarenticinco (0.2545 cdas) cuerdas, en lindes por el NORTE, con la Urbanización La Rambla,; por el SUR con la carretera catorce (14); por el ESTE con Rosalía Santiago Martínez; por el OESTE con la Sucesión Benito Vázquez Rosado. Existe una estructura de madera y planchas de hierro galvanizado dedicada a taller. No consta inscrita en el Registro de la Propiedad. Los interesados incluyen a colindantes desconocidos, anteriores dueños desconocidos y posibles herederos de dueños anteriores desconocidos de la Propiedad antes mencionada. Por la presente quedan notificados que Carmen Martínez González y Sandra Nannette González Martínez, han radicado en este Tribunal una Petición de Expediente de Dominio sobre la propiedad antes descrita, alegando que adquirieron la propiedad mediante, compraventa junto a Israel González Negrón, una y herencia intestada de su anterior dueño Israel González Negrón, otra y que el

periodo de posesión de la propiedad de las peticionarias y todos los anteriores dueños sobre pasa un término de 30 años de posesión y por ello solicitan Orden para que Ordene al Registrador de la Propiedad de Ponce I que inscriba dicha finca a nombre de las Peticionarias. Se apercibe que si transcurrido Veinte (20) días desde la publicación de este Edicto, no ha habido reparos u oposición contra la demanda interpuesta, este Tribunal dictará Sentencia de acuerdo a lo solicitado en la misma. 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. Copia de la contestación deberá ser notificada al Licenciado Salvador Márquez Colón a su dirección en: 485 Ave. Tito Castro, Ponce, PR. En cumplimiento de una orden dictada por este Tribunal expido el presente bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal en Ponce, Puerto Rico, a 26 de julio de 2023. CARMEN TIRÚ QUIÑONES, SECRETARIA DEL TRIBUNAL, CENTRO JUDICIAL, PONCE, PUERTO RICO. KEILENE RODRÍGUEZ MELÉNDEZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL I.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE VEGA BAJA

HACIENDA DEL MAR

OWNERS

ASSOCIATION, INC.

DEMANDANTE VS. RESTITUTO RAMOS

CINTRÓN, JOSEFINA

CHARRIEZ RODRÍGUEZ Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES, COMPUESTA POR

AMBOS DEMANDADA

CIVIL NUM.: VB2019CV01042.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. EDICTO DE SUBASTA. Yo, ALG. FREDDY OMAR RODRÍGUEZ COLLAZO, Alguacil del Tribunal Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala de Vega Baja, al Público HAGO SABER: Que en cumplimiento de un Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que se me libró con fecha

The San Juan Daily Star

de 1 de mayo de 2023 por la Secretaría de este Tribunal en el caso de epígrafe, venderé en pública subasta y al mejor postor con dinero en efectivo, cheque de gerente o letra bancaria con similar garantía, todo título, derecho o interés de la parte demandada de epígrafe sobre la siguiente propiedad inmueble perteneciente a la parte demandada, la cual se describe a continuación: Número de Catastro: Propiedad Multivacacional: CONDOMINIO CLUB

VACACIONAL HACIENDA

DEL MAR de Vega Alta. Apartamento Multivacacional: B-208 SEMANA 35. Cabida: 101.42 Metros Cuadrados. Unidad

B-208 SEMANA 35. Vacation Club Regime located in the Sabana Ward of the Municipality of Vega Alta. This specific vacation club right is coupled with a special property right to the above mentioned Unit B-208 and includes the right to use such unit during the 35 week of each year until December 31, of the year 2070, such week commencing at 12:00 noon on the 35 Saturday of each calendar year and ending at 12:00 noon of the same day of the following week, coupled with the membership in the Hyatt Vacation Club or a successor club. Notwithstanding this specific vacation club right allocation of right to use a specific week in Unit B-208 the use of the said unit during the described time interval is subject to the exercise by the owner of certain priority rights during a fixed period of the prior to the commencement of said interval. In the absence of such exercise, other owners of vacation club rights in the Haciendas del Mar, Vacation Club Regime and owners of timeshare or vacation club rights in resorts throughout the world affiliated to the Hyatt Vacation Club, may use the unit to with this vacation right pertains during the above described interval on a first come, first come, first serve reservation basis, and the owner of this vacation club right may use units of this Vacation Club Regime and in such other affiliated resorts, as more fully described in the Deed of Dedication of Hacienda del Mar, a Vacation Club Regime to the vacation club regime. This vacation club right has been assigned a share of 1/52 of 1.2194% in the Facilities and common expenses of the vacation club regime. Esta descripción de la propiedad corresponde a la finca número 14,202 inscrita en el Registro de la Propiedad Bayamón, Sección III. La venta se llevará a cabo para con su producto satisfacer a Hacienda del Mar Owners Associaton, Inc. el importe de la Sentencia dictada en el caso

de epígrafe, ascendente a la siguiente cantidad: $8,976.64 por concepto de cuotas de mantenimiento correspondiente a la unidad B 208 semana 35 en Hacienda del Mar. La fecha y hora de la subasta es como sigue: SUBASTA: Se celebrará el día 2 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2023, A LAS 10:45 DE LA MAÑANA. La subasta de dicha propiedad se llevará a efecto en mi oficina situada en el local que ocupa este Tribunal en el Centro Judicial de Vega Baja, advirtiéndose que el que obtuviere la buena pro de dicha propiedad consignará en el acto del remate el importe de su oferta en moneda legal, en adición a los gastos de la subasta, siendo éste el mejor postor. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante el título del inmueble y las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes al crédito del ejecutante, si los hubiere, continuarán subsistiendo, entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Si se declara desierta la subasta se dará por terminado el procedimiento, pudiendo adjudicarse al demandante la finca dentro de los veinte (20) días siguientes, si así lo estimare conveniente, por la totalidad de la cantidad adeudada. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento del caso de epígrafe están disponibles en la Secretaría del Tribunal de Vega Baja, durante horas laborables. Para conocimiento de la parte demandada y de toda persona que tenga interés inscrito con posterioridad a la inscripción del gravamen que se está ejecutando, si alguna, y para la concurrencia de licitadores y para el público en general el presente edicto se publicará en un diario de circulación general en el Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico dos (2) veces por espacio de dos (2) semanas consecutivas con un intervalo de por lo menos siete (7) días entre ambas publicaciones. Se fijará, además, por espacio de dos (2) semanas mediante avisos por escrito visiblemente colocados en tres (3) lugares públicos del Municipio donde ha de celebrarse la subasta, estos lugares serán: la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la comandancia de la Policía más cercana al Tribunal de Vega Baja. Se notificará a la parte demandada copia del edicto de subasta mediante correo certificado con acuse de recibo a la última dirección conocida. Expido el presente edicto bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal de Vega Baja. En Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, a 1ro de septiembre de 2023. ALG.

Wednesday, September 27, 2023

trana, Sec Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE ARECIBO SALA SUPERIOR DE ARECIBO SALÓN DE SESIONES SALON 402 - CIVIL SUPERIOR. JOSE JOVINO COSTALES

LOPEZ Y OTROS

Demandante V. BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Y OTROS

Demandado(a)

Caso Núm.: AR2023CV01329.

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

MAGALY RODRIGUEZ BATISTA MRODRBATISTA@GMAIL.COM

A: FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DE TAL (Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto)

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 18 de septiembre de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha 18 de septiembre de 2023. En ARECIBO, Puerto Rico, el 18 de septiembre de 2023. Vivian Y Fresse Gonzalez, Secretaria. F/Alexandra Alvarez Natal, Sec Auxiliar Del Tribunal.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU-

NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA

SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYA-

MÓN

SAVINGS BANK; DORAL FINANCIAL CORPORATION, DORAL MORTGAGE CORPORATION T/C/C

DORAL MORTGAGE, LLC, ORIENTAL BANK COMO SUCESOR EN DERECHO DE RG PREMIER BANK OF PUERTO RICO, CARMEN HERNÁNDEZ SANTIAGO, FULANO Y MENGANO DE TAL, POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARÉ

Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: BY2023CV04798. (501). Sobre: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO POR LA VÍA JUDICIAL. EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS E.E.U.U., EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: CARMEN HERNÁNDEZ SANTIAGO A SU ÚLTIMA DIRECCIÓN CONOCIDA URB. VILLAS DE BUENA VISTA, B20 CALLE ARGOS, BAYAMÓN, PR 00956-5939;

FULANO Y MENGANO DE TAL, POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARÉ.

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO

Parte Demandante Vs.

FEDERAL DEPOSIT

INSURANCE

CORPORATION (FDIC) COMO SÍNDICO DE RG MORTGAGE CORPORATION y DE

DORAL BANK T/C/C

DORAL FEDERAL

Queda usted notificado que en este Tribunal se ha radicado demanda sobre cancelación de pagaré extraviado por la vía judicial. El 12 de junio de 1996, Carmen Hernández Santiago, soltera, constituyó una hipoteca en San Juan, Puerto Rico, conforme a la Escritura núm. 801 autorizada por el notario Eric Hernández Batalla en garantía de un pagaré suscrito bajo testimonio número 3816 por la suma de $6,000.00, a favor de Doral Federal Savings Bank, o a su orden, devengando intereses al 9¾% anual y vencedero el 1ro de julio de 2006, sobre la siguiente propiedad: URBANA: Solar radicado en la Urbanización Villas de Buena Vista, localizado en el barrio Buena Vista del término municipal de Bayamón. Puerto Rico, que se describe en el plano de inscripción de la urbanización, con el número, área y colindancias que se relacionan a continuación: Solar B-20, con una cabida superficial de 404.40 metros cuadrados. Colindando por el NORTE, en 16.85, metros con la calle 3, por el SUR, en 16.85 metros con terrenos de Villas de Buena Vista por el ESTE, en 24.00 metros con el solar B-21 por el OESTE, en 24.00 metros con el solar B-19. Enclava una estructura construida de hormigón armado y bloques, dedicada a vivienda para una familia. Inscrita al folio 271 del tomo mil 1533 de Bayamón

Sur, Finca 67437, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección I. La escritura de hipoteca consta inscrita al folio 274 vuelto del tomo mil 1533 de Bayamón Sur, Finca 67437, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección I. Inscripción quinta. La parte demandada deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal. Se le advierte que, si no contesta la demanda, radicando el original de la contestación en este Tribunal y enviando copia de la contestación a la abogada de la parte demandante, Lcda. Belma Alonso García, cuya dirección es: PO Box 3922, Guaynabo PR 00970-3922, Teléfono y Fax: (787) 789-1826, correo electrónico: oficinabelmaalonso@gmail.com, dentro del término de treinta (30) días de la publicación de este edicto, excluyéndose el día de la publicación, se le anotará la rebeldía y se le dictará Sentencia en su contra, concediendo el remedio solicitado sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal, hoy 18 de septiembre de 2023, en Bayamón, Puerto Rico. Lcda. Laura I. Santa Sánchez, Secretaria. Neida Quiles Santana, SubSecretaria.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA

CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMÓN SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYAMÓN SALÓN DE SESIONES SALÓN 702 ASOCIACIÓN DE RESIDENTES DE ESTANCIAS DE RIO HONDO III, (A.R.D.E.R), INC.

Demandante V. RICHARD TAPIA GONZÁLEZ

Demandado(a)

Caso Núm.: BY2023CV01273.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO

- REGLA 60, COBRO DE DINERO - ORDINARIO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. MELVYN E FONTÁN LOZADA MELVYNFONTAN@GMAIL.COM

A: RICHARD TAPIA GONZÁLEZ. (Nombre de las partes que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto)

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 15 de septiembre de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los

términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha 18 de septiembre de 2023. En Bayamón, Puerto Rico, el 18 de septiembre de 2023. Laura I. Santa Sánchez, Secretaria. Mircienid González Torres, Sec Aux Del Tribunal.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE MAYAGÜEZ SALA SUPERIOR DE AÑASCO SALÓN DE SESIONES SALÓN 0001 COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CRÉDITO DE RINCÓN Demandante V. JOEL RIVERA VEGA Demandado(a)

Caso Núm.: AÑ2022CV00124. Sobre: COBRO DE DINEROREGLA 60. NOTIFCACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. RAFAEL FABRE COLÓN RFABRE@MCMLAWPR.COM

A: JOEL RIVERA VEGA. (Nombre de las partes que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 18 de mayo de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha 18 de septiembre de 2023. En Añasco, Puerto Rico, el 18 de septiembre de 2023.

NORMA G. SANTANA IRIZARRY, SECRETARIA. EVELYN PADILLA NIEVES, SECRETA-

RIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN CONDOMINIO BAHÍA PROPERTIES, LLC. Demandante V. BELKIS JACQUELINE RAMIREZ T/C/C BELKYS JACQUELINE CRUZ RAMÍREZ, NIGAL ENRIQUE CARPIO CALDERÓN Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR

AMBOS

Demandados

Civil Núm.: SJ2023CV05601. Salón de Sesiones: 603. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO POR SUMAC.

A: BELKIS JACQUELINE RAMIREZ T/C/C BELKYS JACQUELINE CRUZ RAMÍREZ, Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA CON

NIGAL ENRIQUE CARPIO CALDERÓN. EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 22 de septiembre de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha 22 de septiembre de 2023. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 22 de septiembre de 2023. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. LUCRECIA PAGÁN MORALES, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE AGUADILLA

SECURITY

GROUP, LLC.

Demandante V. ORIENTAL BANK, como sucesor en derecho de Southern Mortgage Inc.; JUAN DEL PUEBLO Y JUANA DEL PUEBLO y cualesquiera persona desconocida con posible interés en la obligación cuya cancelación por decreto judicial se solicita.

Demandados CIVIL NÚM: AG2023CV01305

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

A: JUAN Y JUANA DEL PUEBLO

Por la presente se le notifica que ha sido presentada en este Tribunal una Demanda en su contra en el pleito de epígrafe. En este caso la parte demandante ha radicado una Demanda para que se decrete judicialmente el saldo de (1) pagaré hipotecario: pagaré a favor SOUTHERN MORTGAGE INC., por la suma principal de $62,000.00 con intereses al 10 1/8% anual, vencedero el día 1 de noviembre de 2016, constituida mediante la escritura número 49, otorgada en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, el día 3 de noviembre de 1986, ante la notaria Elba Emmanuelli Zayas, e inscrita al folio 41 vuelto del tomo 379 de Aguadilla, finca número 21,457-A, inscripción 3era.; sobre la propiedad que se describe a continuación:

RÚSTICA: Solar marcado con el número 3 del plano de inscripción radicado en el Barrio Aguacate del término municipal de Aguadilla, con una cabida superficial de 1,028.12 metros cuadrados; en lindes por el NORTE, en 20.28 metros con el farallón; por el SUR, 19.94 metros con solar “B” dedicado a uso público; por el ESTE, en 2 alineaciones que suman 51.24 metros con el solar número 2; y por el OESTE, en una distancia de 51.33 metros con el solar número 4. Propiedad número 21,457-A, inscrita al folio 41 del tomo 379 de Aguadilla. Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección de Aguadilla. La parte demandante alega que dicho pagaré ha sido saldado según más detalladamente consta en la Demanda radicada que puede examinarse en la Secretaría de este Tribunal. Por tratarse de una obligación hipotecaria y pudiendo usted tener interés en este caso o quedar afectado por el remedio solicitado, se le emplaza por este edicto que se publicará una vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general de Puerto Rico. Usted deberá pre-

sentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac, salvo que se represente por derecho propio. Debe notificar con copia de ella a la abogada de la parte demandante a la Lcda.

Alyssa Rivera Rivera, a la dirección P.O. Box 19815, San Juan, P.R. 00910. Teléfono 787-4007269, dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto. Se le apercibe que, de no hacerlo así dentro del término indicado, el Tribunal podrá anotar su rebeldía y dictar sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado en la Demanda sin más citarle, ni oírle.

EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA Y SELLO DEL TRIBUNAL, en Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, hoy a 5 de septiembre de 2023. Sarahí Reyes Pérez, Secretaria. Nathalie I. Acevedo Quiñones, Sub-Secretaria.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMÓN SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYAMÓN SALÓN DE SESIONES SALÓN 503

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO

Demandante V. SUCESION DE ANGEL

LUIS PEREZ RIOS, POR SI Y COMO MIEMBRO DE LA SUCESION DE CRUZ RIOS CRUZ T/C/C

CRUCITA RIOS CRUZ Y OTROS

Demandado(a)

Caso Núm.: BY2023CV03225. Sobre: COBRO DE DINEROORDINARIO, EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA: PROPIEDAD RESIDENCIAL. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

JOSÉ A. LAMAS BURGOS JLAMAS@LVPRLAW.COM

A: SUCESION DE ANGEL

LUIS PEREZ RIOS, COMPUESTA POR: ZUTANO Y PERECENJO DE TAL, COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESION; FULANO Y MENGANO DE TAL, COMO POSBILES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESION DE CRUZ RIOS CRUZ T/C/C CRUCITA RIOS CRUZ. (Nombre de las partes que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 21 de septiembre de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted en-

terarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha 25 de septiembre de 2023. En Bayamón, Puerto Rico, el 25 de septiembre de 2023. Laura I. Santa Sánchez, Secretaria. Ivette M. Marrero Bracero, Secretaria Auxiliar Del Tribunal.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

ORIENTAL BANK

Demandante v. OSV ALDO RIVERA SANTIAGO

Demandado

CIVIL NÚM.: SJ2022CV04048. SALON DE SESIONES: 906. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO POR SUMAC.

A: OSVALDO RIVERA SANTIAGO EL SECRETARIO (A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 12 de diciembre de 2022, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de esta. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los diez (10) días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación 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 18 de septiembre de 2023. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 18 de septiembre de 2023. Griselda Rodríguez Collado, Secretaria Regional. F/Myrna Deliz Vi Llegas, Secretario (A) Auxiliar.

As the number of women in the NFL expands, so does this group text

By EMMANUEL MORGAN

Adecade before Catherine Raîche became the current highest-ranking female executive with an NFL team, she was a scout for the Canadian Football League.

Back then, it was still uncommon for a woman to hold a job evaluating football players, a role that required Raîche to travel the country looking for talent. In a few instances, she said, when she arrived at a college or a training camp, football staff members there would ask for her business card to confirm her identity.

“When I was asked, ‘Where is the scout?’” Raîche, 34, said in a phone interview, “I would be like, ‘Well, it’s me.’”

Raîche, now the Cleveland Browns’ assistant general manager and vice president of football operations, is part of an influx of women who have permeated pro football in a relatively short span, taking on the kinds of inside-the-game but outside-an-office roles that had been reserved for men. As their numbers increase, the women have formed their own support systems to navigate a culture that has historically excluded them.

After Jen Welter became the first woman to coach in the NFL in 2015, Katie Sowers made history by becoming the first to coach in a Super Bowl in 2020, and Sarah Thomas in 2021 became the first woman to officiate the title game. Nearly 70 women, according to league statistics, are in scouting and personnel roles, positions critical to the selection and development of players, and 10 female assistant coaches are in the league.

“I think it’s great and there’s just so much interest now,” said Connie Carberg, 72, who was hired by the New York Jets in 1974 as a secretary and was later promoted to become the first female scout in league history. “Back then, there just weren’t any other women doing it. Now they’re really enjoying it and learning it.”

Scouting and assistant coaching jobs have typically been the entry point for those with dreams of running a team or becoming a head coach. Nearly 75% of current NFL general managers — a role that typically oversees player contracts, draft picks, trades and other major roster decisions — got their start as scouts evaluating collegiate and professional players through film study, attend-

ing games and practices and interviewing coaches about an athlete’s character.

Scott Pioli, the former general manager of the Kansas City Chiefs and a former personnel executive for the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons, said hiring for those entry positions had traditionally been marked by racial and gender discrimination as well as nepotism. Coaches and front office executives tended to stock the jobs with their sons, their friends’ sons or former NFL players.

“One of the fascinating things I often heard people say over the years is, ‘How is this going to affect me or my son?’” Pioli, now an analyst for the NFL Network, said in a phone interview. “‘I want my son to get a training camp internship, I want my son to be a ball boy.’ But what about your daughter?”

He continued, citing a speech from soccer player Abby Wambach, “There’s only so much opportunity, and the people in power and control will say, ‘OK, more for her will mean less for me.’”

As the NFL experiences a wave of women in football personnel positions, the league has also faced accusations of discrimination over its treatment of female employees. Attorneys general for New York and California in May announced a joint investigation into those claims.

A group text is a lifeline.

The NFL has tried to establish pipelines for women. In 2022, the NFL expanded the Rooney Rule — the mandate that forces teams to interview minority candidates for leadership positions — to include women. And since 2017, the NFL has hosted the Women’s Careers in Football Forum, a multiday event to connect women working at college and professional teams to hiring managers and offer panel sessions.

But women have also developed their own networks to support one another. Three years ago, Raîche and Ameena Soliman, the Eagles’ director of personnel operations, started a group text through messaging service WhatsApp to connect women in the NFL across coaching, scouting and other roles. They use the message chain to post jobs, celebrate promotions and ask questions about the dress code at certain events. The chat has ballooned to 129 people, including women in various non-coaching roles, as of August.

“It’s just nice to feel connected and just know that you have a community out there of other women,” said Hannah Burnett, 28, a scout for the New York Giants.

Burnett was hired in 2020 after two seasons with the Atlanta Falcons to survey players in 13 states in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. She lives in Denver, and during

busy times, she said, she averages about 20 days a month on the road. The nomadic lifestyle typical of most scouts leaves her detached from colleagues at the team facility, which she said she would visit about five times a year for training camp and draft meetings.

The conversation, and the number of participants, expand.

As the group chat expanded, Raîche noticed that most of the women in it were in entry-level jobs. So she and Soliman, who declined to comment, brainstormed ways to offer career-development opportunities. They organized video calls held roughly every three months in which participants can talk about topics ranging from macro-level experiences as women in the profession to advice on the scouting vocabulary or the best shorts to wear for training camp in the summer heat.

Soliman also formed a mentoring program to pair younger women with more experienced ones.

“I thought there was kind of a void in terms of being able to connect with other women on the football side across the entire league, and we also felt like we didn’t even know who we all were,” Raîche said. “We wanted to make sure that once you’re in the league, we could promote vertical growth.”

Burnett was not paired with a formal mentor through the group chat partly because there were so few female scouts at that time, she said, and because she already considered Kelly Kleine Van Calligan, the executive director of football operations for the Denver Broncos, a confidant. Burnett looked up to Van Calligan, who was a scout for the Minnesota Vikings, and also lives in the Denver area.

Burnett now mentors Kasia Omilian, a scout for the Indianapolis Colts since 2021, and the two try to talk on the phone every two weeks, she said. The first few years on the road can be overwhelming, Burnett added, and she tries to make sure Omilian feels supported.

“I think a lot of times in this job, you internalize and you just deal with things and move on,” Burnett said. “But I just try to give her a safe space to talk to someone and try to be there and give her my tips and do anything that I can to just kind of make her life a little bit easier.”

Catherine Raîche, the Browns assistant general manager and vice president of football operations, is the N.F.L.’s highest ranking woman in a team personnel job.

Alex Cora, others congratulated on Sports Hall of Fame selection

By THE STAR STAFF

The Caguas Sports Hall of Fame board of directors congratulated Alex Cora and nine other athletes on Tuesday for their selection to be inducted into the Puerto Rican Sports Hall of Fame.

“Our congratulations also go to Eva Cruz (volleyball), Eddie Casiano (basketball), Luis “Torito” Meléndez (baseball), Luis Rivera (gymnastics), María “Cuca” Cordovés (basketball), Jesús “Chu” García (sports press), Bobby Ríos (basketball) and José Julián Álvarez (sports promoter),” Luis Domenech, secretary of the Caguas Sports Hall of Fame, said in a written statement. “All of them will be inducted along with Alex Cora in the Class of 2023.”

The 2023 induction class of the Puerto Rican Sports Hall of Fame was announced Monday afternoon.

The induction ceremonies will be held on Sunday, Oct. 29 at the Caribe Hilton Hotel in San Juan.

Cora, the current manager of the Boston Red Sox, was inducted into the Caguas Sports Hall of Fame in 2019.

Irish gymnastics body apologizes after Black girl is shunned at ceremony

By EMMA BUBOLA

The governing body for gymnastics in Ireland apologized earlier this week after a video circulating on social media showed an official who was handing out medals to gymnasts skip over a young Black girl during the presentation.

The video of the March 2022 gymnastics event in Dublin showed the girl appearing to eagerly await her medal as she stood in a line with several other recipients. But the official passed by the girl, the video clip showed, instead moving down the line to give other gymnasts their medals.

The clip, which emerged last week, fueled indignation online and drew condemnation from the seventime Olympic medalist Simone Biles, among others. “There is no room for racism in any sport or at all !!!!” Biles wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday. She said that watching the video “broke my heart.”

On Monday, Gymnastics Ireland, the sport’s national governing body, issued a statement to “unreservedly apologize” to the young athlete and her family. “What happened on the day should not have happened and for that we are deeply sorry,” the statement said, adding that the group condemned “any form of racism.”

The episode comes as Black female athletes remain generally underrepresented in many sports programs, and it triggered calls for better policies to address racism and discrimination in the sports world.

“This was a wake-up call,” said Perry Ogden, the

CEO of Sports Against Racism in Ireland, adding that sport bodies needed to do more to support diversity and inclusion.

In an earlier statement, issued Friday, Gymnastics Ireland said it had received a complaint from one of its athletes’ parents accusing their official of racist behavior. The group then issued a statement acknowledging having made a mistake, and adding that the girl had received a medal before leaving the field where the awards ceremony was held. According to Gymnastics Ireland, the official sent the family and the girl a written apology.

But on Saturday, the athlete’s mother told The Irish

Independent, a news website, that the sports body had failed to publicly apologize for what had happened. The mother was not named in the news report, which said she feared the family being targeted with racist abuse, The Irish Independent reported. She also called on Gymnastics Ireland to urge social media companies to take down the March 2022 video clip.

In its apology Monday, Gymnastics Ireland said it had appointed an independent expert to review its policies and procedures, and said those recommendations would be followed.

“We are committed to ensuring nothing like this will happen again,” it wrote.

Alex Cora

Gymnastics Ireland has apologized 18 months after a viral video showed a young Black gymnast seemingly snubbed when she and her teammates were being handed participation medals in March 2022.

María “Cuca” Cordovés

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

Aries (Mar 21-April 20)

Tension is building today that may wreak havoc with your harmonious nature, Aries. The key for you now is to see the opportunity instead of conflict in each situation. This is a good time to gain a greater perspective on certain things. A bit of internal transformation may take place when you see things from the other side of the fence.

Taurus (April 21-May 21)

Tension is building today that may wreak havoc with your harmonious nature, Aries. The key for you now is to see the opportunity instead of conflict in each situation. This is a good time to gain a greater perspective on certain things. A bit of internal transformation may take place when you see things from the other side of the fence.

Gemini (May 22-June 21)

Find your strength from within, Gemini. There’s a great deal of it in there, and it’s ready to erupt like a volcano. Let your passion drive your engine today and you’ll be amazed at the incredible places you can go. Don’t be afraid to take things to extremes. Your fantastic good luck will pull you out of any sticky predicament.

Cancer (June 22-July 23)

Your strong yet steady pace may get a lift today, Cancer. It might seem like there’s a fire under your feet, and you probably need to keep moving in order to keep yourself from getting burned. Use your independent streak to get things done the way you want them. This could be a powerhouse day for you!

Leo (July 24-Aug 23)

There’s excitement today that indicates that things are happening, things are changing. Stay alert and in tune with what’s going on around you, Leo. There’s a wonderful energy charge urging you to push the boundaries of everything going on around you. Do your part to help the world evolve to a happier, more peaceful place.

Virgo (Aug 24-Sep 23)

You’re the sensitive one in a sea of anger today, Virgo, so keep your guard up. Don’t be tempted or seduced by any rage around you. Be wary of people who seem motivated by fear. You’ll be much better off when you align yourself with those who act from a point of neutrality and self-confidence. Model your behavior after the people you see as superheroes in your world.

Libra (Sep 24-Oct 23)

You should mesh quite well with the prevailing energy today, Libra. There’s a powerful, transformative force helping to give greater strength to your ego and vitality. Note the fiery energy about the day that encourages your dynamic and forceful personality to shine through. Feel free to express your independence in every situation.

Scorpio (Oct 24-Nov 22)

Things may be happening too fast around you today, Scorpio, but that doesn’t mean you necessarily have to join the frenzied pace. You’re probably much better off sticking with your methodical approach. Take the time to collect the facts you need before you jump into a major decision or plan of attack. People may be a bit jumpy, so do your best to be the stable one in the group.

Sagittarius (Nov 23-Dec 21)

Make sure you aren’t projecting a picture of yourself that doesn’t represent the real you, Sagittarius. It’s important that you remain true to your soul or you’ll end up in situations that make you uncomfortable and frustrated. There’s a strong transformative force working against you today, but you’ll have the leadership and confidence to stand up for yourself in whatever way you need.

Capricorn (Dec 22-Jan 20)

Remind yourself of all the positive things you have going on in your life now, Capricorn. It’s possible that you’ll be met with tension and challenges today that are threatening your sense of self. Arguments may break out around you, and you may have questions regarding what it is you stand for. Don’t lose touch with your nurturing qualities and sixth sense.

Aquarius (Jan 21-Feb 19)

The fire within you is burning extra hot, Aquarius, so make the most of this incredible internal furnace. Treat yourself to some new attire and proudly show it off tonight. Take the lead on projects that might be floundering. You have power behind your words and actions today, so use it for the highest good.

Pisces (Feb 20-Mar 20)

You may feel the urge to get up and go today, Pisces, but at the same time you may feel like you aren’t prepared. Perhaps you don’t feel you’re on solid enough ground to take the next step. Don’t let the pressure of the outside world move you to a place you aren’t ready to go. Take things at your own pace, and be tolerant of those who choose to go at theirs.

Speed