Wednesday Sep 30, 2020

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

San Juan The

50¢

DAILY

Star

Health Secretary: It Would Be ‘Premature’ to Specify Recommendations for Next Executive Order P5

No Electricity Bill Increase PDP Candidates: Housing Dept. Used $60M from Recovery Funds for Publicity P4

Organizations Create New Guidelines for Choosing Energy Bureau Denies PREPA’s Bill Hike Request Gov’t Officials P3

P5

NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

2

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Queremos ayudarte en la compra de tu nuevo hogar

EN COOP LAS PIEDRAS te lo podemos financiar... ¡Estamos aquí pa ti!

*Pregunta como puedes obtener hasta un 100% de financiamiento.

• RURAL • REHABILITACIÓN • TERRENO • COMERCIAL • CONVENCIONAL • VETERANO • CONSTRUCCIÓN COOP LP NMLS #787612

787.733.2821 EXT: 1918, 1223, 1224, 1231, 1251

CAGUAS • LAS PIEDRAS • SAN LORENZO • HUMACAO • TRUIMPH PLAZA • YABUCOA • HATO REY • CAROLINA Ciertas resticciones aplican. El financiamiento será basado en el tipo de producto hipotecario que aplique en la solicitud Los depósitos y acciones están asegurados por la cantidad de $250.000 por COSSEC. En caso de insolvencia, por estar asegurados con COSSEC estamos excluidos de todo seguro federal.

www.cooplaspiedras.com

GOOD MORNING

3

September 30, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star, the only paper with News Service in English in Puerto Rico, publishes 7 days a week, with a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday edition, along with a Weekend Edition to cover Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Energy Bureau denies PREPA bill hike request

Today’s

Weather

By THE STAR STAFF

Day

Night

High

Low

88ºF

80ºF

Precip 40%

Precip 20%

Rain Showers

Overcast

Wind: Humidity: UV Index: Sunrise: Sunset:

T

From E 14 mph 77% 10 of 10 6:14 AM Local Time 6:13 PM Local Time

INDEX Local 3 Mainland 7 Business 12 International 14 Viewpoint 18 Noticias en Español 19 Entertainment 20

Fashion Health Legals Sports Games Horoscope Cartoons

22 23 24 26 29 30 31

he Puerto Rico Energy Bureau denied in part Tuesday a request from the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) for adjustments to certain factors in utility bills that would have resulted in rate hikes.

The Bureau ordered PREPA to grant consumers a $6.6 million credit but denied the utility’s request to get back $91 million from customers citing inconsistencies in information on fuel purchases provided by the power utility.

During the hearing, it appeared PREPA had paid more than it should have for fuel.

Every three months PREPA has to submit to the Energy Bureau a reconciliation of expenses and income for factors such as fuel rate adjustments.

The Bureau had convened a hearing on Sept. 23 to evaluate the power utility’s Sept. 18 request in which PREPA had asked the energy regulator to authorize a reconciliation in utility bills for the fuel adjustment and for the purchase of energy riders. PREPA Executive Director Efran Paredes said the utility was seeking to get back $91 million for the fuel adjustment factor but give customers a credit of $6.6 million for the fuel purchasing factor. The projected fuel

adjustment charge would have come out to .082 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) from October to December and the power purchase factor to .046 cents per kWh. “Given the marked difference between the fuel costs presented by the Authority in some of its units and the trend in market prices, as well as the statements of the Authority during the hearing regarding the average monthly fuel prices, the Energy Bureau cannot determine, at this time, if the costs for the purchase of fuel for the period of June, July and August 2020, as presented by the Authority, are reasonable,” the Energy Bureau’s resolution and order reads.

The $6.6 million credit to customers represents a reduction of 0.02 cents per kWh. “The revenues of the Authority for the months of June, July and August 2020 are greater than the amount to be recovered for the purchase of energy for the referred period,” the document says. “Therefore, PREPA has to grant a credit to its customers equal to the difference during the next billing period.”

At the hearing, PREPA officials said the utility had over $470 million in its bank accounts so it could compensate the loss in the event that the Bureau denied its request for the $91 million reimbursement from customers.

4

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

PDP senator, House candidate: Housing Dept. awarded some $60 million in recovery funds for public relations

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

P

opular Democratic Party (PDP) Sen. Aníbal José Torres and at-large candidate for the House of Representatives Gabriel López Arrieta alleged Tuesday that the island Housing Department has awarded around $60 million in seven contracts for public relations, digital advertising, campaign development and office furniture using Community Development Block GrantDisaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) Program funds.

“The mismanagement of these funds can cause displacement of communities, delays in recovery, which we are experiencing today,” Torres said. “In the same way, the mismanagement of these funds can benefit a single group of communities. These contracts have nothing to do with housing recovery.”

The PDP spokesmen said the Housing Department granted contracts from 2018 to 2020 with federal funds that were assigned to address the recovery after Hurricane Maria. Among the awarded enterprises were Foundation for PR, which received $37.5 million in with CDBG-DR funds to create a community resilience plan; Publicidad Tere Suárez, which received $5.1 million to work on advertising campaigns and public relations, and Invest Puerto Rico, which was granted $5.7 million to produce press and social media campaigns.

As for the Publicidad Tere Suárez contract, whose due date is May 9, 2021, López Arrieta said employees hired for the project could earn up to $130,000 a month. Regarding the Invest Puerto

Rico contract, the candidate said the funds were used to develop online commercials and to “develop and participate in efforts to promote Puerto Rico as a tourist destination at tradeshows and attend conferences in Arizona, the Bahamas, Canada, London, Las Vegas and Italy.”

Torres said meanwhile that other contracts, some approaching $1 million, were signed for payroll management, office furniture purchases and web management services. He said the Housing Department hired Caribbean Data System Inc. for $541,262 to purchase 200 laptops and accessories for its personnel.

“Once again, we see how the priorities of the New Progressive Party (NPP) government have been not to solve the problems of both the country and those who were affected by the hurricanes, but rather to favor companies that have only dedicated themselves to trying to promote the image of the NPP government,” Torres said.

The PDP spokesman in the Senate called on Gov. Wanda

Vázquez Garced and NPP gubernatorial candidate Pedro Pierluisi to respond to “the waste of millions of dollars in federal funds.”

He also said Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón should respond “if this is the way to use recovery funds,” given her “boasting about how they got them.”

López Arrieta urged Housing Secretary Luis Fernández Trinchet to let the island’s mayors manage the recovery funds and to be clear on how 34 percent of the emergency funds allocated, which is around $20 billion, is being used.

PDP and its president in favor of education with gender perspective Regarding what PDP gubernatorial candidate Carlos Delgado Altieri said Monday during a Zoom meeting that went viral on social media during which he told PDP public servants to “focus on education and economic development, forget about the issues that arise with the genders and all those things that incite passions” as they are issues created by Citizen Victory Movement, López Arrieta said “the next governor [of Puerto Rico clarified] after the debate [on Sunday] that he is in favor of education with gender perspective” as the party itself favors and defends it.

“I listened to the NPP leadership talk hypocritically today [Tuesday] about gender perspective when it was they who eliminated educating students on what gender perspective is from the Department of Education curriculum,” he said. “Gender perspective is a tool that is used to break gender stereotypes, so there’s no differences among us. Every person must understand that and no one should be against it because it doesn’t have to do with sexual orientation.”

CVM candidate goes to court to force Senate president to make staff salaries public

By THE STAR STAFF

I

n a new attempt to demand transparency from Puerto Rico’s legislative bodies, Eva Prados Rodríguez, the San Juan District 3 candidate for the House of Representatives under the Citizen Victory Movement (CVM) banner, went to court Tuesday to force Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz to update his staff roster and make the list of salaries public.

As she did with the House of Representatives, Prados Rodríguez said in a statement that she sent a letter asking the

Senate over 30 days ago to publish the salaries of the upper chamber’s employees on its website, but as of Tuesday the request has not been answered, in violation of the Law for Transparency and Expedited Procedure for Access to Public Information (Act 141-2019), which provides 10 working days to provide an answer. Given the lack of response, the candidate decided to file a request for a mandamus so that the constitutional right of citizens to have access to the requested information is respected and validated.

“Senate employees’ salaries are public information that must be accessible for the people to evaluate how public funds are used by the Legislature,” Prados Rodríguez said. “This is information that must be kept and updated on the web pages of both [legislative] bodies.”

She noted that, unlike the House of Representatives, the Senate maintains an outdated list of its staff on its website that does not indicate their salaries.

Following her request on Aug. 21, the House of Representatives responded by providing a partial list of employees but did not provide their salaries. The CVM candidate reaffirmed her commitment to normalizing transparency processes in the government as a way to combat corruption and mismanagement of public funds.

“Every day that passes without the people having access to how our public funds are handled in the Legislative Assembly is a day we lose in the fight against corruption,” Prados Rodríguez said. “Don’t wait to get to the Legislature to promote transparent government. I do this as a person who believes that the government must be open and its efforts must be supervised by the citizens, without so many obstacles. This information must always be accessible to the public.”

WE BUY OR RENT IN 24HRS

787-349-1000

SALES • RENTALS • VACATIONS RESIDENTIAL • COMMERCIAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (SOME RESTRICTIONS MAY APPLY).

FREE CONSULTS REALTOR

Ray A. Ruiz Licensed Real Estate Broker • Lic.19004 rruizrealestate1@gmail.com

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

5

Health chief: Too soon for final Union asks Health secretary to extend recommendations on new executive order oversight action to all gov’t agencies

By THE STAR STAFF

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

I

sland Health Secretary Lorenzo González Feliciano said Tuesday that it is premature to offer recommendations regarding the new executive order on pandemic restrictions that would come into force on Oct. 4.

“Today [Tuesday] we resume the meeting process to devise the recommendations that will be presented to Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced, in view of the next executive order that begins on October 4,” González Feliciano said in a written statement. “The group of scientists met today and the preliminary data on each of the components related to the behavior of COVID-19 in Puerto Rico were shared; however, it is premature to advance the final recommendations, given that the complete analysis of the data is in the initial stage.”

“In the coming days, the meetings with the different sectors will continue to, finally, make recommendations to the first executive, who will make the final decision on what the next executive order will include,” the Health secretary added.

The total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported at press time was 23,801, of which 12,767 are women and 11,034 are men. The total was adjusted after adding two cases with a sampling date of Aug. 20. The reported cases are those that have a positive PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test, with a sample collection date range of Sept. 14-26.

G

eneral Union of Workers (UGT by its Spanish initials) President Gerson Guzmán López asked island Health Secretary Lorenzo González on Tuesday to extend his supervisory work to all government agencies after ordering the closure of several businesses over the weekend for non-compliance with the executive order on public health protocols in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The union leader also urged hospital personnel to demand compliance on the part of their employers with the provision of the equipment and materials necessary for the prevention of infection from COVID-19.

“Our membership complains of a lack of protective materials, non-compliance with distancing measures in areas of reduced space, poor or limited cleaning and disinfection processes, and trying to bypass the mandatory quarantine measures when a positive case is detected,” Guzmán López said in a written statement. “For this reason, we ask the Secretary of Health to extend oversight action to other government agencies that do not comply with the protocols that they promised to maintain while the current pandemic lasts.”

The UGT president said his intention is to guarantee the strictest compliance with the

measures established in the protocols so that government agencies can continue to provide services to citizens without putting the health and safety of both the staff and the public at risk.

“The Secretary of Health must prioritize those agencies where the number of affected employees has been high, as is the case with the Department of Labor [and Human Resources], and in those cases where multiple complaints have arisen due to the relaxation of the rigor required by the established protocols,” Guzmán López said.

He added that many of the risks can be minimized if work is organized through the alternate day system or the intensive use of telework when conditions allow it.

“Of course, if there is no other alternative than to do the work in person, then what must be imposed is the greatest rigor in complying with the established rules,” Guzmán López said.

New alliance urges gubernatorial candidates to enforce healthy public administration

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

A

group of entrepreneurs, professionals, academics, and members of non-profit organizations have joined forces to demand improvements in the recruitment of public officials for the leading government agencies and are urging gubernatorial candidates to reveal how they will enforce healthy public administration.

Talento PRO unites citizens from multiple sectors who are calling for the candidates who aspire to lead Puerto Rico starting in January 2021 to expeditiously address the issues that the island government faces with public management and provision of services.

The alliance establishes that for decades the island has experienced deterioration in the quality of public service “as a result of many appointments of officials who do not have the experience, training, leadership, and commitment that government management requires.”

Talento PRO’s goals are to make healthy public administration, and the criteria outlined for it, a priority for candidates for governor in the upcoming elections; increase the number of citizens with the profile of worthy administrators willing to serve the country; improve satisfaction on the part of average citizens with the government services they receive; and increase citizen participation by establishing metrics and criteria that meet citizens’ expectations for healthy public administration.

Talento PRO spokeswoman Cecille Blondet Passalacqua, who also is the executive director of Espacios Abiertos, said that in order to improve public administration, the next governor must bring back trust and make sure that every appointment is distinguished by merit and knowledge over every other consideration.

“If we want a country that works, where everyone has access to quality essential services, the rescue of public value is unpostponable,” Blondet Passalacqua said Tuesday.

Talento PRO spokesman Carlos M. Ro-

dríguez, who chairs the Puerto Rico Manufacturers Association (AIPR by its Spanish initials), said the organization is calling for clear guidelines to prevent corruption such as establishing an anti-corruption office and an effective whistleblower system. However, he said, willingness and commitment are required in both the public and private sectors.

“Let’s think about deep solutions that pay to establish controls for transparency and elimination of cronyism in the government, of corruption and embezzlement of funds; controls for donations to political campaigns and creation of favors,” Rodríguez said. “If we want the economic development that we deserve, and for which the AIPR works daily, we need a country of high values and principles, with zero corruption and with transparency.”

As the initiative was created five weeks before the general elections on Nov. 3, Talento PRO declared that they arose at a time when nominated candidates do not have the professional experience or training required to occupy core positions in public service.

Likewise, the group stated that as media outlets have revealed, there exists a rampant practice of nepotism in all government spheres by members of various political parties as they have appointed relatives and friends who do not have expertise or merit for the positions they have obtained, leading to deep discontent on the part of citizens who demand dramatic changes in this practice.

Puerto Rico Public Relations Association Chairwoman Karen Garnik said that even though “the phenomenon of government gigantism has added people, it has not translated into offering better services to citizens, but rather into increasing bureaucracy, lack of transparency and inefficiency.”

The alliance will broadcast public service announcements with the aforementioned claim on social media, TV, and radio created by pro-bono graphic designers and public relations officials. They are also collecting signatures to add allies through the “Change. org” portal, which is available at www.talentopropr.com.

6

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Women’s rights organization blames government for killings

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

T

he Matria Project, an organization that fights for the rights of women and advances the economic development of women in Puerto Rico, criticized the island government and called it “responsible for our murders.”

“Every time the Governor turns her back on the claim of a State of Emergency for Gender Violence, she becomes responsible for our murders,” attorney Amárilis Pagán Jiménez, executive director of Proyecto Matria, said in a written statement in reaction to the slaying of young Rosimar Rodríguez Gómez. “Every time the Advocate gives an excuse for not doing her job, she helps to pull the trigger of the weapon with which they kill us. Every time a legislator teams up with self-described conservative forces to legislate against fairness, she pats bullies and murderers on the back. There is no greater corruption than that of legislating and acting based on gender discrimination.

And that corruption is costing us lives.”

“Since we found out about the case, we called it kidnapping. But the Puerto Rico Police spoke of disappearance. From there, they started badly,” Pagán Jiménez added. “What did we expect as a country?

That her kidnappers would return her alive? After days without hearing from her, after wasting time without initiating a well executed investigation, in the midst of a state of emergency where the government’s message is one of impunity?”

“This case touches us all because we know that there is no way to do justice. Justice would be that as a country we would have achieved education for equality, campaigns for people to identify danger signs, security agencies with sensitivity and also with

expertise to handle these cases immediately and effectively. Justice would be to have been ready and willing so that neither Rosimar nor any other young woman from our motherland had to live and die in violence.

Justice would be for Rosimar to be alive and safe with her family,” Pagán Jiménez said. “We are fed up with the aggressions and also with the complicity of the State and of the politicians who presume to lead the country without committing to women, their peace, development and safety.”

The organization expressed its solidarity with the family of Rodríguez Gómez and said that they are not alone.

“We know they need space right now,” the attorney said. “We hope that the press understands this and that the agencies called to act do so with sensitivity.

We are here for you.”

Matria reiterated the importance of recognizing that women are kidnapped in Puerto Rico and that the Police act slowly in those cases.

“As with dating violence, the reaction is often

one of disparaging the seriousness of the matter and acting without due diligence. That cannot continue to happen,” Pagán Jiménez said. “Agencies are accountable. In this case, they must explain what they have done since day one when the family reported the kidnapping. What did you do? When? What was your plan? I hope they don’t answer that they were waiting for tips because that is pure ineptitude.”

According to Matria, some of the recommendations the group has repeatedly made to the government sector include: 1. Maintain educational campaigns aimed not only at women, but also at communities and men.

2. Implement a model of education for equity in all public schools on the island.

3. Have trained personnel in all agencies of the security system so that they can identify signs of lethality when responding to calls or requests for services.

4. Financially strengthen organizations specialized in gender violence so that there is a support network throughout all of Puerto Rico.

5. Recognize risk factors such as COVID-19 quarantine, natural disasters, and economic hardship and have responses that are appropriate to them.

6. Alert the health system to fulfill its duty to identify and report to the authorities cases in which there are signs of gender violence.

7. Implement gender violence management protocols and evaluate the performance of the personnel in charge of them.

8. Publish protocols for the management of gender violence in disaster situations, including those applicable to shelters.

Anyone interested in learning more about Matria can access the following page on Facebook: https:// www.facebook.com/ProyectoMatria/

Couple indicted for Medicare fraud

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

R

amón Crespo Zamora and Carmen Pagán Domínguez, a married couple, have been indicted by a federal grand jury for committing Medicare fraud for almost $400,000, W. Stephen Muldrow, United States Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, announced Tuesday.

The couple were arrested by law enforcement officers from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

The grand jury issued two separate indictments against Crespo Zamora and Pagán Domínguez. The crimes charged are health care fraud, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit health care fraud, obstruction of a criminal investigation related to health crimes and conspiracy to mail fraud, prosecutor Muldrow said in a written statement. .

According to the first accusation, from November 2015 to May 2020, the defendants were enriched by presenting 1,002 false and fraudulent claims for noninvasive cardiovascular studies to Medicare, in the amount of $259,147.

Cardiology Medical Group and Cardiology Medical Services, both owned by Pagán Domínguez, obtained $132,312 for fraudulent claims. Crespo Zamora is a cardiovascular technician for the companies.

The couple billed Medicare for non-invasive cardiovascular studies allegedly performed by two cardiologists even though the services were not provided by those doctors.

“Submitting false claims to federal health care benefit programs is unacceptable and a waste of taxpayer funds,” Muldrow said. “Today’s [Tuesday] arrests show the strong commitment of the Department of Justice and its law enforcement partners to protect public funds and safeguard the well-being of Medicare and Medicaid

beneficiaries.”

If Pagán Domínguez and Crespo Zamora are found guilty, they face maximum sentences of up to 10 years in prison on charges related to health care fraud, conspiracy to commit health care fraud, and conspiracy to mail fraud; up to five years in prison for obstruction of a criminal investigation related to crimes against health; and a mandatory prison term of two consecutive years for aggravated identity theft.

The public is urged to report suspected cases of health care fraud to the HHS Office of Inspector General hotline at 1-800-HHS-TIPS (1-800-447-8477) or https:// oig.hhs.gov/ fraud / report-fraud /index.asp.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

7

Immigrants say they were pressured into unneeded surgeries

By CAITLIN DICKERSON, SETH FREED WESSLER and MIRIAM JORDAN

W

endy Dowe was startled awake early one morning in January 2019, when guards called her out of her cellblock in the Irwin County immigration detention center in rural Georgia, where she had been held for four months. She would be having surgery that day, they said.

Still groggy, the 48-year-old immigrant from Jamaica, who had been living without legal status in the United States for two decades before she was picked up by immigration authorities, felt a swell of dread come over her. An outside gynecologist who saw patients in immigration custody told her that the menstrual cramping she had was caused by large cysts and masses that needed to be removed, but she was skeptical. The doctor insisted, she said, and as a detainee — brought to the hospital in handcuffs and shackles — she felt pressured to consent.

It was only after she was deported to Jamaica and had her medical files reviewed by several other doctors that she knew she had been right to raise questions.

A radiologist’s report, based on images of her internal organs from her time at Irwin, described her uterus as being a healthy size, not swollen with enlarged masses and cysts, as the doctor had written in his notes. The cysts she had were small, and the kind that occur naturally and do not usually require surgical intervention.

“I didn’t have to do any of it,” Dowe said.

The Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, drew national attention this month after a nurse, Dawn Wooten, filed a whistleblower complaint claiming that detainees had told her they had had their uteruses removed without their full understanding or consent.

Since then, both ICE and the hospital in Irwin County have released data that show that two full hysterectomies have been performed on women detained at Irwin in the past three years.

But firsthand accounts are now emerging from detainees, including Dowe, who underwent other invasive gynecological procedures that they did not fully understand and, in some cases, may not have been medically necessary.

At least one lawyer brought the complaints about gynecological care to the attention of the center’s top officials in 2018, according to emails obtained by The New York Times, but the outside referrals continued.

The Times interviewed 16 women who were concerned about the gynecological care

they received while at the center, and conducted a detailed review of the medical files of seven women who were able to obtain their records.

All 16 were treated by Dr. Mahendra Amin, who practices gynecology in the nearby town of Douglas and has been described by ICE officials as the detention center’s “primary gynecologist.”

The cases were reviewed by five gynecologists — four of them board-certified and all with medical school affiliations — who found that Amin consistently overstated the size or risks associated with cysts or masses attached to his patients’ reproductive organs. Small or benign cysts do not typically call for surgical intervention, where large or otherwise troubling ones sometimes do, the experts said.

The doctors stressed that in some cases the medical files might not have been complete and that additional information could potentially shift their analyses. But they noted that Amin seemed to consistently recommend surgical intervention, even when it did not seem medically necessary at the time and nonsurgical treatment options were available.

In almost every woman’s chart, Amin listed symptoms such as heavy bleeding with clots and chronic pelvic pain, which could justify surgery. But some of the women said they never experienced or reported those symptoms to him.

Both the reviewing doctors and all of the women interviewed byTheTimes raised concerns about whether Amin had adequately explained the procedures he performed or provided his patients with less invasive alternatives. Spanishspeaking women said a nurse who spoke Spanish was only sporadically present during their exams.

“He is overly aggressive in his treatment and does not explore appropriate medical management before turning to procedures or surgical intervention,” said Dr. Deborah Ottenheimer, a forensic evaluator and instructor at the Weill Cornell Medical School Human Rights Clinic.

But the doctors who reviewed the cases noted that aggressive overtreatment is all too common among doctors — especially with patients who do not have the resources to seek a second opinion.

Dr. Ada Rivera, medical director of the ICE Health Service Corps, said in a statement that the whistleblower’s allegations “raise some very serious concerns that deserve to be investigated quickly and thoroughly.” She added, “If there is any truth to these allegations, it is my commitment to make the corrections necessary to ensure we continue to prioritize the health, welfare and safety of ICE detainees.”

The Irwin County Hospital in Ocilla, Ga., on Sept. 24, 2020. Independent doctors that provide treatment for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees are paid for the procedures they perform with Department of Homeland Security funds.

Amin’s lawyer, Scott Grubman, said in a statement that the physician “strongly disputes any allegations that he treated any patient with anything other than the utmost care and respect.”

“Dr. Amin also strongly disputes that any patient was treated without full informed consent,” the statement continued. Grubman said that patient privacy laws prevented him from discussing any specific patient’s treatment, but in each case it “was medically necessary, performed within the standard of care, and done only after obtaining full informed consent.”

The statement added that Amin always uses an interpreter when treating patients who do not speak English and “always attempts to treat his patients with more conservative treatment, including medicine and less invasive procedures, before even recommending surgery,” which he views as a last resort.

Independent doctors that provide treatment for ICE detainees are paid for the procedures they perform with Department of Homeland Security funds. Procedures like the ones that Amin performed are normally billed at thousands of dollars each.

Amin’s billings had previously come to the attention of federal authorities. In 2013, the Justice Department named him in a civil case alleging that he and several other doctors had overbilled Medicare and Medicaid by, among other things, performing unnecessary procedures on terminal patients and leaving the emergency

room staffed by nurses while billing for diagnoses and treatments as if they had been performed by doctors. The case was settled, and the defendants were collectively required to pay $520,000 while admitting no fault.

‘I could not ask any questions’ In many cases, Amin’s patients said they were confused about why they ended up being sent to his office in the first place — some after raising medical issues that had nothing to do with gynecology.

Yuridia, a 36-year-old immigrant from Mexico, sought out a nurse at the center soon after she arrived because she was having pain in her rib after a fight with her abusive ex-partner just before she was picked up by ICE. She asked to be identified by her first name because she feared for her safety.

She was sent for a medical exam at Amin’s office, where she said he began to prepare an ultrasound machine. “I was assuming they were going to check my rib,” she said. “The next thing I know, he’s doing a vaginal exam.”

Amin recorded in his notes thatYuridia had cysts in her ovaries and scheduled a surgery to remove them. He also wrote that she had complained of heavy menstruation and pelvic pain.

She said that she never experienced or reported those conditions and that she had not asked to see a gynecologist.

Continues on page 8

8 From page 7 Weeks later, she underwent surgery.

Pathology reports show that she did not have dangerous cysts, but small ones of the kind that occur naturally in most women and do not call for surgical intervention.

Yuridia said she had expected only a minor procedure that would be performed vaginally, but she was surprised when she woke up to find three incisions on her abdomen and a piece of skin missing from her genital area.

“I woke up and I was alone, and I was in pain and everyone spoke English so I could not ask any questions,” Yuridia said. Three days later, still sore and recovering, she was deported.

Yuridia’s case bears striking similarities to others that the panel of doctors reviewed.

Many of them led to two surgical procedures performed simultaneously: “dilation and curettage,” often referred to as a “D & C,” which involves inserting tools into a woman’s vagina and scraping tissue from the uterus, and laparoscopy, in which three incisions are made to insert a camera into the abdominal cavity to examine or perform procedures on the reproductive organs.

The cases suggest a pattern of “exces-

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

sively aggressive surgical intervention without adequate trial of medical remedies,” Ottenheimer said.

A report reveals long-standing complaints It was the Irwin County center’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic that inspired Wooten, the nurse whose whistleblower complaint was first reported by The Intercept, to come forward about another issue that troubled her: Amin’s surgeries. She said in an interview that she had for years noticed that an inordinate number of women were being referred to Amin.

She said she would hear reports that they had undergone surgeries but that they had no idea why the surgeries were performed.

“After they get up from general anesthesia,” Wooten said, the women would ask, “Why’d I have this surgery?”

“And I don’t have an answer for why,” she said. “I am just as shocked as they are. Nobody explained it to them.”

Data from ICE inspection reports show that the center, which is operated by a private prison company, Lasalle Corrections, refers more than 1,000 detainees a year for outside medical care, far more than most other immigration detention centers of the same size. It is not clear how many of these referrals are for

Mileidy Cardentey Fernandez in Fairfax, Va., on Sept. 24, 2020. She says her requests for more information about the surgical procedure Mahendra Amin was advising her to undergo were ignored. gynecological care. Lasalle Corrections did not respond to requests for comment.

Some women said they had managed to avoid surgeries by Amin but not without facing

resistance.

Enna Perez Santos said she objected when Amin suggested that she undergo a procedure similar to the ones that other women had complained about. Amin, she said, counseled her that it was a mistake to forgo the treatment and he wrote in his notes that she had asked to speak to a mental health care provider.

Back at the detention center on the same day, Perez Santos was given a psychiatric evaluation. “I am nervous about my upcoming procedure,” Perez Santos told the examiner, according to the practitioner’s notes. “I am worried because I saw someone else after they had surgery, and what I saw scared me.”

Perez Santos was brought three more times to Amin’s office over the next several months, she recalled. Each time, she said, Amin raised the prospect of a surgery. She felt “pressured” to agree, she said, but each time she told him she did not consent.

Three board certified gynecologists who reviewed Perez Santos’ medical files say that her instincts appear to have been correct. “Based on what I see here, Amin was inappropriately suggesting a D & C scope,” Ottenheimer said.

“There is nothing at all there to support the procedure.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

9

How Trump voters feel about his refusal to commit to transferring power

By JEREMY W. PETERS and HANK STEPHENSON

A

lan Knight can list the reasons he won’t trust the results of the Nov. 3 election if President Donald Trump loses.

First, almost everyone he knows is supporting the president. “Just from everything I see around me, it’s going to be a landslide,” the 68-year-old Republican from Sahuarita, Arizona, said. Knight also believes Democrats will do whatever they can to win — even if it means they have to “pull votes out of ditches” and “cheat in every possible way,” he said.

So, as he sees it, Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer to power to Democrats at this point makes sense, even if it was dismissed by other Republican leaders and condemned as dangerous by Democrats.

“He’s going to wait and see whether it was an honest election before handing over power,” Knight said.

Trump supporters saying they have Trump’s back is not a surprise at this point in the Trump era. But recent interviews with Republican voters in several battleground states show just how much Trump’s unrelenting campaign to shake trust in voting has compounded the deep misgivings his supporters have about the integrity of the process. While some were troubled by the idea that Trump might refuse to leave if he was decisively defeated, many simply do not believe that he could, or will, lose fair and square.

Polls now show Trump behind in most battleground states and nationally. If he does come up short in November, these voters say he would be justified in questioning whether Democrats manipulated the outcome and whether the results and state-by-state race calls of news organizations were wrong.

Sylvia Rhodes Blakey, 73, of Green Valley, Arizona, was categorical: The only way Trump will lose is if the Democrats rig the election in favor of former Vice President Joe Biden, she said.

“There’s going to be massive attempts at fraud,” Blakey said. “There are so many illegals that have the names of dead people, and they’re voting on those ballots.”

Even though there is no evidence of widespread fraud, the allegation came up repeatedly among Republicans as a reason for Trump not to commit to handing over power.

Jim Thienel, 73, of Waterford, Michigan, said that in his view, fraud was inevitable and Trump was simply refusing to accept any

President Donald Trump speaks during a news briefing in the White House in Washington, Sept. 27, 2020. Many Trump supporters do not believe that he can or will lose, and say he would be justified in questioning whether Democrats manipulated the outcome, but some believe a loss is a loss. election tainted by it.

“I think what Trump is really saying is that if the election is filled with fraud, which I believe it’s going to be, do you walk out on your role as the president of the United States simply because the Democrats cheated?” said Thienel, who runs an appliance repair shop.

It is impossible to tell whether Trump would follow through on his threats not to leave willingly, or whether this is another example of the bluster and hyperbole he has always employed to generate controversy and enrage many on the left.

But his refusal to make a plain-spoken commitment to a transfer of power, as other American leaders have done, stands out in the series of unprecedented developments rippling through this election season. Already, tens of millions of people will be casting ballots by mail for the first time, putting pressure on that method of voting and processing. The vote count is likely to continue in some key states after Nov. 3. And there are the persistent, unfounded claims of a president who insists that mail-in ballots will be manipulated by his political opponents.

Election experts and campaign strategists warn that these unique circumstances have made Republicans more skeptical than ever about the legitimacy of the electoral process, which could lead to considerable

political instability.

“The main effect President Trump has had is to make Republicans very skeptical about mail voting,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who has been critical of the president. According to a poll conducted this month by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, about twice as many Democrats plan to cast their ballot by mail than Republicans, 52% compared with 28%.

If those mail votes take time to count, and eventually swing the election to Biden, Trump and the GOP’s small army of lawyers could try to claim fraud.

Trump has already declared that the results of the election “may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED,” as he argued in a tweet. And on Monday he continued to claim, without offering any evidence, that ballot counting was going awry. “Many things are already going very wrong!” he wrote on Twitter.

In interviews, many Trump supporters — who tended to be suspicious about election tampering and supportive of Republican efforts to pass laws limiting access to voting early — didn’t want Trump to promise to give up power in the face of a potentially drawnout and messy vote count.

Sherry Livering, 58, a homemaker from Lebanon, Pennsylvania, who plans to vote for

Trump, said she found the idea of waiting several days or even weeks to identify a winner unacceptable. “We have an Election Day,” she said. “I don’t want to wait two weeks, that’s ridiculous.”

Rick Slowicki, 52, who owns a courier service in Philadelphia, said Trump’s comments about remaining in office weren’t nearly as troubling to him as the angry opposition he envisioned if the president wins a second term.

“I think the country is more volatile if he wins legitimately. That’s my bigger concern,” he said. “Republicans aren’t the ones known to be strong protesters. Before he even stepped into the presidency, the protests and the rioting had begun. And it’s just continued.”

And like many Trump supporters, Slowicki doesn’t take Trump literally word for word.

“He says things to trigger people. But if he clearly loses, I don’t support him refusing to leave if he does follow through on those words,” he said.

Some Trump supporters also said while they did not entirely agree with the president’s recent comments, they understood why he would not declare his intentions to leave office given how many unknown variables are involved with holding a presidential election in the middle of a pandemic.

Lance Dechant, 55, of Holmen, Wisconsin, a village in the western part of the state, said the question of whether Trump should leave office willingly wasn’t necessarily so straightforward. “Yes and no. Yes, if the outcome of the election’s clear. If it’s in doubt, I can understand his point,” said Dechant, an employee of the federal government who described himself as an independent and said he would be voting for Trump.

“I mean, it could be weeks before you actually know what the vote total was,” he added. “If you’ve got five or six states where, after the election it’s still up in the air, why would he leave office?”

Mark Warner, 55, an automotive engineer from Lake Orion, Michigan, said he had many concerns about voting by mail. “I’ve gotten at least five applications for absentee ballots mailed to me. It’s insanity. If there’s an opportunity for people who want to commit fraud, they’re going to do it,” he said.

Still, he doesn’t put much stock in the president’s reluctance to commit to a peaceful transition of power. “At the end of the day, if he loses the election, the moving vehicles will be there on Jan. 20,” he said, “and he’ll be gone.”

10

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Compact nuclear fusion reactor is ‘very likely to work,’ studies suggest

An image provided by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows a rendering of the reaction chamber of the Sparc fusion energy macine.

By HENRY FOUNTAIN

S

cientists developing a compact version of a nuclear fusion reactor have shown in a series of research papers that it should work, renewing hopes that the long-elusive goal of mimicking the way the sun produces energy might be achieved and eventually contribute to the fight against climate change.

Construction of a reactor, called SPARC, which is being developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a spinoff company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, is expected to begin next spring and take three or four years, researchers and company officials said.

Although many significant challenges remain, the company said construction would be followed by testing and, if successful, building of a power plant that could use fusion energy to generate electricity, beginning in the next decade.

This ambitious timetable is far faster than that of the world’s largest fusion-power project, a multinational effort in Southern France called ITER, for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. That reactor has been under construction since 2013 and, although it is not designed to generate electricity, is expected to produce a fusion reaction by 2035.

Bob Mumgaard, Commonwealth Fusion’s chief executive and one of the company’s founders, said a goal of the SPARC project was to develop fusion in time for it to play a role in mitigating global warming.

“We’re really focused on how you can get to fusion power

as quickly as possible,” he said.

Fusion, in which lightweight atoms are brought together at temperatures of tens of millions of degrees to release energy, has been held out as a way for the world to address the climatechange implications of electricity production.

Like a conventional nuclear fission power plant that splits atoms, a fusion plant would not burn fossil fuels and would not produce greenhouse-gas emissions. But its fuel, usually isotopes of hydrogen, would be far more plentiful than the uranium used in most nuclear plants, and fusion would generate less, and less dangerous, radioactivity and waste than fission plants.

But the hurdles to building a machine that can create and control a fusion plasma — a roiling ultrahot cloud of atoms that will damage or destroy anything it touches — are enormous.

Some scientists who have worked on fusion energy for decades say that while they are enthusiastic about the prospects for SPARC, the timetable may be unrealistic.

“Reading these papers gives me the sense that they’re going to have the controlled thermonuclear fusion plasma that we all dream about,” said Cary Forest, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin who is not involved in the project. “But if I were to estimate where they’re going to be, I’d give them a factor of two that I give to all my grad students when they say how long something is going to take.”

SPARC would be far smaller than ITER — about the size of a tennis court, compared with a soccer field, Mumgaard said —

and far less expensive than the international effort, which is officially estimated to cost about $22 billion but may end up being far costlier. Commonwealth Fusion, which was founded in 2018 and has about 100 employees, has raised $200 million so far, the company said.

Since experiments on fusion began nearly a century ago, the promise of a practical fusion device that can produce more energy than it uses has remained elusive. Fusion power has always seemed to be “just decades” away.

That might turn out to be true in this case as well. But in seven peer-reviewed papers published Tuesday in a special issue of The Journal of Plasma Physics, researchers laid out the evidence that SPARC would succeed and produce as much as 10 times the energy it consumes.

The research “confirms that the design we’re working on is very likely to work,” said Martin Greenwald, deputy director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and one of the project’s lead scientists.

Greenwald is a founder of Commonwealth Fusion but has no current affiliation with the company.

SPARC employs the same kind of device as ITER: a tokamak, or doughnut-shaped chamber inside which the fusion reaction takes place. Because the plasma cloud is so hot — hotter than the sun — it must be confined by magnetic forces.

ITER does this using huge electromagnetic coils that contain superconducting wires that must be cooled by liquid helium.

SPARC takes advantage of a newer electromagnet technology that uses so-called high temperature superconductors that can produce a much higher magnetic field, Greenwald said. As a result, the plasma is much smaller.

The papers show “this high-field path still looks viable,” Greenwald said. “If we can overcome the engineering challenges, this machine will perform as we predict.”

Commonwealth Fusion said it would announce a location for SPARC in a few months.

It is just one of a number of companies working to develop and commercialize fusion power in partnership with research institutions, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars of investment money.

TAE Technologies, for example, which is based in Southern California, is working on a design that uses a linear device that shoots two clouds of plasma at each other to generate fusion.

First Light Fusion, a spinoff of the University of Oxford in England, uses energy to compress and collapse the fusion fuel.

Forest said that by using stronger magnetic fields, SPARC ended up with what he called a “conservative” design.

“That distinguishes it totally from all of the startups, which are by definition more edgy and higher risk,” he said.

William Dorland, a physicist at the University of Maryland and editor of The Journal of Plasma Physics, said the journal had asked some of these fusion projects “to tell us their physics basis.”

MIT and Commonwealth Fusion group quickly said yes, he said.

“From my perspective, it’s the first of these groups that have private money that actually is saying very clearly what they’re doing,” Dorland said.

“Reasonable people disagree about whether it works,” he said. “I’m just happy that they stepped up and are telling us in normal science speak what’s going on.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

11

Apple and Epic Games spar over returning ‘Fortnite’ to the App store

By ERIN GRIFFITH

A

pple and Epic Games, the maker of “Fortnite,” sparred in federal court Monday over whether to reinstate the popular game in Apple’s App Store, raising antitrust arguments that may reshape a key part of the internet economy and the way people use smartphones.

In a three-hour videoconference hearing in the Northern District of California, Epic laid out its allegations that Apple had abused its power. Their fight began last month when Epic tried collecting its own payments for “Fortnite” without going through the app store, breaking Apple’s rules. Apple then booted “Fortnite” from the app store; Epic responded by suing Apple, accusing it of violating antitrust laws.

On Monday, Epic said Apple’s unwillingness to let it use its own payment system was anti-competitive and monopolistic. Apple countered that Epic had created a “self-inflicted wound” by not complying with its payment policy. Apple also said Epic had plenty of alternative ways to distribute its games.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers concluded the hearing by recommending a jury trial in the case in July.

In the coming days, she is expected to rule on whether Apple must allow “Fortnite” back into its app store and support Unreal Engine, Epic’s software development tools, in the interim.

The battle is playing out as scrutiny of the power of the tech giants ramps up. Lawmakers, regulators, academics and activists are increasingly taking issue with the reach of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google in people’s lives. For months, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general and House lawmakers have investigated the clout of the companies and whether they stifle competition and harm consumers.

Those inquiries are set to come to a head soon. The Justice Department is poised to sue Google on claims of anti-competitive search practices, while Congress is expected to release a report of a yearlong antitrust investigation into the big technology platforms.

Much of the scrutiny of Apple has centered on the power it holds over developers in its app store. Apple and Google control access to apps on virtually all of the world’s smartphones through their iOS and Android operating systems. The companies charge a 30% fee for purchases made inside apps in their app stores. And they make their own apps that compete with those of independent developers.

Apple has long said that all app developers are subject to the same rules, and that its commission is fair.

But Epic has said Apple’s power creates an unlevel playing field and is unfair. Apple’s 30% cut of fees, for instance, is too high a tax on commerce, the games maker has said. It is seeking the option to use its own payment

Apple booted Fortnite, a popular video game made by Epic Games, out of its App Store last month. method and publish its own app store within Apple’s and Google’s systems.

Last week, Epic joined with Spotify, Match Group and other independent developers to form a nonprofit coalition to push for changes in the app stores and to “protect the app economy.”

But by taking on Apple so directly and publicly, Epic — a 29-year-old privately held company worth $17.3 billion and based in Cary, North Carolina — may be in for the fight of its life. Apple has a market capitalization of nearly $2 trillion and almost unlimited resources. Last month, it cut off its support for Epic’s Unreal Engine, a software development tool that thousands of developers use. That took the smaller company by surprise.

“We recognized the theoretical possibility in advance, but thought it would be so foolish of” Apple to cut off Unreal Engine, Tim Sweeney, Epic’s founder and chief executive, said in an interview last week.

In court Monday, Gonzalez Rogers sharply criticized Epic’s decision last month to break with Apple’s payment rules. “There are plenty of people in the public who consider you guys heroes for what you did, but it’s still not honest,” she said.

Epic argued that “Fortnite’s” removal from the

app store had caused it irreparable harm. But Gonzales Rogers noted that Epic’s publicity campaign around the fight, including a parody video of Apple’s famous “1984” ad and a hashtag, #FreeFortnite, had probably increased goodwill toward the company.

Epic’s attorney, Katherine B. Forrest, a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, defended the publicity campaign.

“When you are taking on the biggest company in the world and you know it’s going to retaliate, you don’t lie down in the street and die,” she said. “You plan very carefully.”

Apple said it would reinstate “Fortnite” to its App Store only if Epic complied with its rules.

“They don’t need this court’s emergency help — they have the keys to free ‘Fortnite’ right there in their pocket,” said Apple’s attorney, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a partner at Gibson Dunn.

Apple also repeated a long-standing argument that it maintains tight control over its app store to keep customers’ data secure and private.

Gonzalez Rogers encouraged both companies to consider a jury trial. “It is important enough to understand what real people think,” she said. “Do these security issues concern people or not?”

12

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Duterte lashes out at Facebook after it takes down fake accounts

“I allow you to operate here,” President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines said of Facebook on Monday. The company recently took down fake accounts that were promoting his policies, among other activity.

By JASON GUTIERREZ and PAUL MOZUR

P

resident Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines is one of a number of populists around the world who rose to power in part by harnessing Facebook to get his unfiltered messages to millions. During Duterte’s 2016 campaign, his allies flooded the social media platform with misinformation about his opponents and laudatory stories about him.

Four years later, after allegations that Facebook aided disruptive misinformation campaigns in many countries, the Silicon Valley giant has put up increasing checks on what politicians and their allies can say online. And Duterte is not pleased.

In his weekly public address Monday, Duterte lashed out at Facebook for taking down fake accounts that supported his policies, making vague threats to shut the platform down in the Philippines.

“I allow you to operate here,” Duterte said. “You cannot bar or prevent me from espousing the objectives of government. Is there life after Facebook? I don’t know. But we need to talk.”

It was the latest reminder that the populists Facebook has empowered can turn quickly on the platform. The American social network has come under increasing pressure to grapple with the influence it gives to sowers of disinformation, be they Russian agents

seeking to influence U.S. elections or military forces stirring ethnic hatred.

Yet even as it seeks to police those in power, better relations with leaders like Duterte are — in the short run, at least — better for Facebook’s bottom line.

The company said last week that it had taken down two networks, one based in China and one in the Philippines, that used fake accounts to post information about a variety of subjects, including Philippine politics. It said both networks had misled users about their identities.

The Philippine network had ties to the military and the police, the company said. It showed examples of memes the network had posted that criticized communist insurgents in the Philippines, as well as progressive activist groups.

In his address Monday, Duterte accused Facebook of opposing his policies and supporting the Philippine left. He said the company had “opened a Pandora’s box” and that his government might respond with tougher regulations.

“We allow you to operate here hoping that you could help us also,” he said. “Now, if the government cannot espouse or advocate something which is for the good of the people, then what is your purpose here in my country?”

Facebook executives in the Philippines declined

to comment. In its statement last week, the company said it had shut down the networks because of their “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” not the content of the posts.

Duterte’s threats against Facebook were a striking turnaround for a president who has reaped considerable benefit from the platform. Before he won the 2016 election, running as a belligerent populist, fake accounts on Facebook spread positive stories about him and inflammatory attacks on his opponents, many of them untrue.

Since he took office, misinformation on Facebook — some of it shared openly by his aides — has been used to slander his critics and promote Duterte’s policies, including his bloody war on drugs. In March of last year, Facebook suspended 200 accounts linked to Nic Gabunada, social media manager of Duterte’s 2016 campaign, also for “coordinated inauthentic activity.”

In its statement last week, Facebook said the Philippine network appeared to have escalated its activity in 2019 and 2020. It posted in Filipino and English about Philippine news, including domestic politics, anti-terrorism legislation and the military’s activities against terrorism, the company said.

The China-based network posted in Chinese, Filipino and English, focusing most of its activity in Southeast Asia, the company said. It posted about Philippine politics, including material supportive of Duterte and his daughter, who is said to be weighing a presidential run in 2022. But it also posted on global topics, including China’s activity in the South China Sea, where it has territorial disputes with the Philippines.

The Chinese network also posted content aimed at influencing the U.S. presidential election, though Facebook said the network devoted little focus to that effort and had gained “almost no following” in the United States.

Duterte and his officials did not appear to dispute that the military was involved in the Philippine-based network. He denounced Facebook for taking down the posts backing the military’s campaign against the country’s long-running communist insurgency.

“You know, Facebook, insurgency is about overturning the government,” Duterte said. “What would be the point of allowing you to continue if you cannot help us? We are not advocating mass destruction; we are not advocating mass massacre. It’s a fight of ideas.”

On Tuesday, the military issued a statement saying that Facebook “could be the medium that will help consolidate people’s support to their armed forces as their true protectors and defenders of the state against its enemies.”

A spokesman for Duterte, Harry Roque, said the government considered Facebook’s move “a form of censorship,” adding, “We are not conceding these are fake accounts.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

13 Stocks

JPMorgan agrees to pay $920 million to settle market manipulation charges

J

PMorgan Chase & Co JPM.N has agreed to pay more than $920 million and admitted to wrongdoing to settle federal U.S. market manipulation probes into its trading of metals futures and Treasury securities, the U.S. authorities said on Tuesday.

The landmark multi-agency settlement lifts a regulatory shadow that has hung over the bank for several years and marks a signature victory for the government’s efforts to clamp down on illegal trading in the futures and precious metals market.

JPMorgan will pay $436.4 million in fines, $311.7 million in restitution and more than $172 million in disgorgement, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Tuesday, the biggest-ever settlement imposed by the derivatives regulator.

According to the settlement, between 2009 and 2016 JPMorgan Treasurys traders placed orders on one side of the market which they never intended to execute, to create a false impression of buy or sell interest that would raise or depress prices. The manipulative practice designed to create the illusion or demand or a lack of demand is known as “spoofing.”

“The conduct of the individuals referenced in today’s resolutions is unacceptable and they are no longer with the firm,” said Daniel Pinto, co-president of JPMorgan and CEO of the Corporate & Investment Bank.

He added that the bank had invested “considerable resources” to boosting its internal compliance policies, surveillance systems and training programs.

In parallel settlements, the bank entered into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the Department of Justice and the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut, staving off criminal prosecution on charges of wire fraud.

It also agreed to pay $35 million to settle related charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission, although the bank’s payment to the CFTC would offset that fine, it said.

“This record-setting enforcement action demonstrates the CFTC’s commitment to being tough on those who intentionally break our rules, no matter who they are. Attempts to manipulate our markets won’t be tolerated,” said CFTC Chairman Heath Tarbert.

MOST ASSERTIVE STOCKS

PUERTO RICO STOCKS

COMMODITIES

CURRENCY

LOCAL PERSONAL LOAN RATES Bank

LOCAL MORTGAGE RATES Bank

FHA 30-YR POINTS CONV 30-YR POINTS

BPPR Scotia CooPACA Money House First Mort Oriental

3.00% 0.00 3.50% 0.00 3.50% 2.00 3.75% 2.00 3.50% 0.00 3.50% 0.00

3.50% 000 4.00% 0.00 3.75% 2.00 3.75% 2.00 5.50% 0.00 3.75% 5.50

PERS.

CREDIT CARD

AUTO

BPPR --.-- 17.95 4.95 Scotia 4.99 14.99 4.99 CooPACA

6.95 9.95

2.95

Reliable

--.-- --.--

4.40

First Mort 7.99 --.-- --.-Oriental 4.99 11.95 4.99

14

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Coronavirus deaths pass 1 million worldwide

A funeral home in Queens on April 16, 2020. Over the past 10 months, the coronavirus has taken more lives than HIV, malaria, influenza and cholera.

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

M

ore than HIV. More than dysentery. More than malaria, influenza, cholera and measles — combined.

In the 10 months since a mysterious pneumonia began striking residents of Wuhan, China, COVID-19 has killed more than 1 million people worldwide as of Monday — an agonizing toll compiled from official counts, yet one that far understates how many have really died. It may already have overtaken tuberculosis and hepatitis as the world’s deadliest infectious disease, and unlike all the other contenders, it is still growing fast.

Like nothing seen in more than century, the coronavirus has infiltrated every populated patch of the globe, sowing terror and poverty, infecting millions of people in some nations and paralyzing entire economies. But as attention focuses on the devastation caused by halting a large part of the world’s commercial, educational and social life, it is all too easy to lose sight of the most direct human cost.

More than 1 million people — parents, children, siblings, friends, neighbors, colleagues, teachers, classmates — all gone, suddenly, prematurely. Those who survive COVID-19 are laid low for weeks or even months before recovering, and many have lingering ill effects whose se-

verity and duration remain unclear.

Yet much of the suffering could have been avoided — one of the most heartbreaking aspects of all.

“This is a very serious global event, and a lot of people were going to get sick and many of them were going to die, but it did not need to be nearly this bad,” said Tom Inglesby, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which aims to protect people’s health from epidemics and disasters.

Places like China, Germany, South Korea and New Zealand have shown that it is possible to slow the pandemic enough to limit infections and deaths while still reopening businesses and schools.

But that requires a combination of elements that may be beyond the reach of poorer countries and that even ones like the United States have not been able to muster: wide-scale testing, contact tracing, quarantining, social distancing, mask wearing, providing protective gear, developing a clear and consistent strategy, and being willing to shut things down in a hurry when trouble arises.

No one or two or three factors are the key. “It’s all an ecosystem. It all works together,” said Martha Nelson, a scientist at the National Institutes of Health who specializes in epidemics and viral genetics, and who studies COVID-19.

It comes down to resources, vigilance, political will

and having almost everyone take the threat seriously — conditions harder to attain when the disease is politicized, when governments react slowly or inconsistently, and when each state or region goes its own way, advisable or not.

“It’s one thing to have all the technical capabilities, but if our leaders undermine science, minimize the epidemic or falsely reassure people, we put everything else at risk,” Inglesby said.

Time and again, experts say, governments reacted too slowly, waiting until their own countries or regions were under siege, either dismissing the threat or seeing it as China’s problem, or Asia’s, or Italy’s, or Europe’s, or New York’s.

Thomas R. Frieden, a former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that a major failing had been in governments’ communication with the public, nowhere more so than in the United States.

“You have standard principles of risk communication: Be first, be right, be credible, be empathetic,” he said. “If you tried to violate those principles more than the Trump administration has, I don’t think you could.”

The world now knows how to bend the curve of the pandemic — not to eliminate risk, but to keep it to a manageable level — and there have been surprises along the way.

Masks turned out to be more helpful than Western experts had predicted. Social distancing on an unheard-of scale has been more feasible and effective than anticipated. The difference in danger between an outdoor gathering and an indoor one is greater than expected.

And, crucially, people are most contagious when they first show symptoms or even earlier, not days or weeks later, when they are sickest — a reversal of the usual pattern with infectious diseases. That makes preventive measures like wearing masks and swift responses like isolating and testing people for possible exposure much more important; if you wait until the problem is evident, you’ve waited too long.

Countries have learned the hard way that their supply chains for testing kits, laboratory chemicals and protective equipment were inadequate, too prone to breakdown, or too dependent on foreign suppliers.

It remains unclear how the virus mutates, or how fast, which makes it impossible to predict how long a possible vaccine might work. More broadly, the pandemic has exposed how little scientists know about coronaviruses, even those that cause the common cold, and especially those that circulate in bats and other animals.

“It seems to people who are on lockdown that it’s going on interminably, but for scientists it’s just the beginning,” Nelson said. “We are still just scratching the surface of this.”

From a public health standpoint, the biggest unknown may be whether the world will be any better prepared when — not if, but when — the next pandemic arrives.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

15

As Europe’s Coronavirus cases rise, so do voices crying hoax

By MEGAN SPECIA

A

longside a strip of candy-colored houses on London’s Portobello Road, a freshly scrawled message blared out from the older graffiti on a garage door: “Take off your mask!”

The sentiment echoed that of thousands of unmasked protesters who packed Trafalgar Square in the center of the city on Saturday, and a week earlier, rallying against Britain’s coronavirus restrictions. Many called the pandemic a hoax — even as the global death toll neared 1 million.

“No more lies, no more masks, no more lockdown,” one sign read.

In Berlin, Brussels, Dublin and Paris, similar gatherings have gone ahead in recent weeks as coronavirus cases are again rising across much of Europe. But with health experts warning that a second wave has already arrived in some places and with many governments moving to reintroduce restrictions, the ranks of those dismissing the dangers of the virus and others calling it a government-led hoax have swelled.

Daniel Jolley, a senior lecturer in psychology at Northumbria University and an expert in conspiracy theories, said the emergence of a growing, vocal contingent of people who believed governments were not being truthful about the pandemic was unsurprising.

“People are drawn to conspiracy theories in times of crisis,” Jolley said. “When there is something happening — a virus outbreak, rapid political change, the death of a celebrity, a terrorist attack — it breeds conspiracy theories.”

The prolonged nature of the pandemic and the prospect of a new round of government restrictions, he believes, have only deepened that distrust and potentially spurred on the naysayers.

“People are trying to understand the world in which we live,” he said, whether or not that explanation is rooted in reality.

“But when you have this belief, you hold on to it, and you ascribe to evidence that supports your viewpoint.”

This was the mentality on display at recent protests against the coronavirus restrictions that have popped up in cities across Europe, which have at times turned violent. On Saturday, at least four police officers were injured in clashes in Trafalgar Square.

At another protest in the square a week earlier, Kate Shemirani — a nurse placed on an interim suspension by Britain’s Nursing Council this summer after complaints about her claims that the coronavirus is fake or linked to 5G mobile networks, and about her outspoken anti-vaccine stance — told the crowd: “They want you all wearing a mask, there’s no science behind that mask.

That mask is going to make you sick.”

Science has long shown that wearing a mask can prevent a person from spreading airborne illness, and new research suggests that it also protects the person wearing it. But Shemirani, and many others, are unswayed.

The movement has attracted some prominent supporters.

This month, singer Van Morrison released three new lockdown protest songs, recorded in Belfast and England in recent weeks, criticizing the government’s measures but also claiming scientists are “making up crooked facts” about the virus.

Northern Ireland’s health minister, Robin Swann, called the

songs “dangerous” in an interview with BBC Radio Ulster.

“I don’t know where he gets his facts,” Swann said of the new songs. “I know where the emotions are on this, but I will say that sort of messaging is dangerous.”

In France, where infections have skyrocketed with a daily average of 12,000 new cases reported over the past week, critics have questioned the effectiveness of masks and new measures to control the spread, while others have urged people to ignore the government’s guidance entirely.

A study released in early September by Fondation Jean Jaurès, a Paris-based research institute, found that many opponents of mask-wearing believed it was useless or dangerous to their health and a tool of oppression by the government. As many as 90% of the anti-maskers surveyed — and 43% of the wider French population — believed that the country’s Health Ministry was colluding with pharmaceutical companies to hide information about the harmfulness of vaccines.

“There is a significant part of the population that does not believe or no longer believes in the noxiousness of the virus,” said Antoine Bristielle, the sociologist who conducted the study.

Bristielle said that the pandemic had provided “an extremely fertile ground” for conspiracy theories because of its many uncertainties.

Around 200 people demonstrated in Brussels against coronavirus restrictions in early September, taking particular aim at mask requirements. The protest was the second organized in the Belgian capital by a fringe group called “Viruswaanzin,” or “Virus

Madness,” and was quickly dispersed by police.

The group, which staged similar protests in the Netherlands, does not deny the existence of COVID-19 but believes that measures taken by the governments are “disproportionate to the scale and threat of the disease,” said Michael Verstraeten, one of the organizers, in an interview with Radio 2, a public radio station.

Verstraeten, a lawyer, is representing a group of Belgian citizens who sued the government for infringing on their freedoms by imposing coronavirus restrictions. The presiding judge dismissed the case in July, saying that “the intellectual poverty of their argument is mind-boggling.”

An estimated 50,000 people attended a protest in Berlin last month, among them some far-right extremists and QAnon conspiracy theorists. Yet the group that organized the event, Querdenken-711, tends to be more moderate, for the most part claiming that the severity of the virus is overblown, although some call it a hoax.

Similar threads can be seen throughout many of the protests in Europe, with links to similar conspiracy theories in the United States, and experts agree that the protests seem to be gaining strength. But they warn that the growing support for these once fringe theories poses a growing threat.

Jolley, the conspiracy theory expert, warned that while it was easy to dismiss such theories, their adherents could have a real effect on public health.

“If people don’t vaccinate or wear their masks,” he cautioned, “that is going to impact us all, not just individuals.”

Hundreds rallied in Trafalgar Square in London this month to protest Britain’s coronavirus restrictions

16

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

The ship that stopped 7,000 migrants, and smuggled 700,000 cigarettes

By PATRICK KINGSLEY and SARA CRETA

B

y the time the Caprera, a small gray Italian warship, returned to its base in southern Italy in July 2018, it had helped intercept more than 80 migrant smuggling boats off the coast of Libya, and stopped more than 7,000 people from reaching Europe.

For this work, the Caprera won the praise of Italy’s then interior minister, Matteo Salvini, an anti-migrant nationalist, who lauded the ship for “defending our security,” as he wrote on social media. “Honor!”

There was just one problem: The Caprera was itself smuggling contraband to Europe.

During an inspection of the ship on the day it returned home, Italy’s financial police found about 700,000 contraband cigarettes and several boxes of Cialis, a medication for erectile dysfunction. All the contraband was bought when the Caprera was moored in Tripoli from March to July 2018 as part of an anti-peoplesmuggling mission by the Italian navy.

“I felt like Dante descending into the inferno,” said Lt. Col. Gabriele Gargano, the police officer who led the raid and a subsequent investigation. “I’ve seen many smuggling busts — but 70 sacks of cigarettes on a military vessel?

I never saw that in my whole life.”

The bust has tarnished what European leaders have portrayed as a tough-minded, but principled, effort to curb migration to the continent. At the time of the incident, European states — particularly Italy — were closing their ports to migrants, criminalizing the private crews that rescued them in the Mediterranean and outsourcing responsibility for search-and-rescue operations to the Libyan coast guard.

A trial is now underway in Brindisi, in which five sailors are accused of involvement in the smuggling operation. But the investigation has expanded beyond just the Caprera.

Invoices seen by The New York Times show that the Caprera’s sailors purchased the cigarettes in Libya using a method apparently developed by crew members of a second Italian ship, the Capri, moored in Tripoli in January 2018. A third warship involved in the mission was raided in Naples in May on suspicion of smuggling, according to other court documents obtained by The Times.

“This thing could be much bigger and could involve more ships,” said Gargano, who is investigating crew members aboard at least one other ship. “We are expecting to see some developments.”

Documents seen by The Times and interviews with investigators and Italian officials

An undated handout photo shows Marco Corbisiero, the ship’s chief engineer, right, during his fairwell party on board the Italian warship Caprera in May 2018. Behind him are several sacks of contraband cigarettes. reveal crucial details about how crew members of a ship so central to European efforts to curb people-trafficking from Libya conducted a criminal enterprise below decks.

A U.N. panel determined in 2019 that the Italian naval mission violated a U.N. arms embargo by providing repairs to one Libyan warship. But the documents reveal that the Caprera may have violated the embargo on at least three more occasions.

They also show that the mission delayed alerting the Italian coast guard to the presence of migrants in the southern Mediterranean so that Libyan officials could intercept and return them to war-torn Libya.

The Times has confirmed the Caprera’s involvement in the smuggling operation by interviewing police investigators; sailors serving on the mission; the Italian and Libyan coast guards; and lawyers for the defendants — and corroborated this evidence with text messages, photographs and wiretap transcripts contained within a judicial investigation and a military investigation obtained by The Times.

“I’m a bit in the poop,” one Caprera sailor, Antonio Mosca, said in a text message sent after the ship was seized. “Port authorities are onboard the Caprera. We were unloading those bags with the cigarettes.”

The events that brought the Caprera to

Tripoli began in 2011, when uprisings across the Middle East left a power vacuum in much of the region, including in Libya. The unrest prompted hundreds of thousands of migrants to flee toward safety in Europe, many of them from Libya.

To block this exodus, the Italian government struck a deal in 2017 with the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli.

Italy promised logistical and financial support — funded in part by the European Union — to rebuild the Libyan coast guard. Under the agreement, Italy donated several old coast guard vessels to Libya. It also deployed its own naval vessels on rotation in Tripoli to coordinate their anti-migration activities.

Since the underequipped Libyan coast guard lacked the radios needed to communicate with its boats at sea, its operations were secretly directed from aboard the Italian warships, despite a pledge made by Tripoli after the agreement that it would handle such activities itself, according to two sailors involved in the mission, a Libyan coast guard commander, evidence contained in a judicial investigation, and Salvini.

“They coordinated the rescue activities,” Salvini told The Times earlier this year.

Italy’s goal was to enable the Libyan coast guard to stop migrants reaching international waters — making it harder for them to be saved by a fleet of private rescue boats and Italian coast guard vessels that took refugees to safe harbor in Europe.

To that end, the sailors aboard the Italian warships in Tripoli would sometimes delay relaying information to the Italian coast guard command in Rome, according to coast guard logbooks viewed by The Times and an interview with an Italian coast guard commander.

During a botched interception coordinated by Italian sailors in November 2017, in which several migrants drowned, logbooks show the Italian ambassador to Tripoli and his naval attaché even demanded the Italian coast guard withdraw its boats from the area, to give the Libyan coast guard more space to operate.

Even before its sailors began smuggling contraband, the Caprera had apparently violated the terms of a U.N. arms embargo on at least three occasions, according to the documents.

The embargo bars foreign actors from supplying arms to any faction involved in the Libyan civil war and repairing military equipment.

“We repaired the Libyans’ weapons despite the embargo,” said one engineer from the Caprera, in a phone call tapped by the police. “If this gets out, it’s a mess.”

The Italian navy declined to comment — on either this or any other aspect of the situation.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

17

In proud corners of Afghanistan, new calls for autonomy

By THOMAS GIBBONS-NEFF and FATIMA FAIZI

H

is face juts alongside the single-lane roads carved into the remote and forbidding Panjshir Valley, and looms over twisted hulks of Soviet tanks and the patchwork of cornfields.

Seemingly everywhere, billboards carry the image of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the admired and assassinated military commander from this region, and quotes that testify to Panjshir’s pride and willingness to go it alone. One reads: “Dependency is a disgrace.”

The Panjshiris, who are known for holding off the Soviets in the 1980s, protecting their remote and forbidding valley from the Taliban in the 1990s and helping lead the opening salvos of the U.S. invasion in 2001, find themselves once again drawn toward defiance. This time, the struggle is against the national leadership in Kabul, despite Panjshir’s ties to the capital through both money and power.

As the Afghan government conducts peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar, one of the main concerns has been over how fractured their side is, leading many to question whether government negotiators can truly speak for much of a country that is torn by political discord and lack of faith in the system.

The restiveness in Panjshir, where many are outraged by the effort to make peace with the Taliban, is raising fears that the province and other regions might take up arms and try to force more autonomy for themselves, in an echo of the early days of Afghanistan’s warlord era. Some factions are openly calling to reestablish the Northern Alliance, the armed coalition that helped the United States topple the Taliban in 2001.

There are also growing concerns that as they did in the past, Panjshir and other breakaway places will more actively court regional actors like Russia, India and Iran for cash if the government in Kabul appears to weaken further.

Panjshiris “don’t see themselves in the government anymore,” Mohammad Amin Sediqi, the deputy governor of Panjshir, said from his desk in Bazarak, the provincial capital. “We fought for a better Afghanistan, and now we’re stepping back and watching history repeat itself,” he added, a reference to Afghanistan’s fracturing and the bloody civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.

The people of Panjshir, who are mostly of the ethnic Tajik minority, simply “don’t trust the government anymore,” said Mohammad Alam Izedyar, the deputy head of the upper house of Parliament who represents Panjshir. “The government isn’t going to resist for long and be able to defend its people.”

These sentiments came to a head in Panjshir late last month, after a failed government operation to arrest the powerful former chairman of Afghanistan’s soccer federation, Keramuddin Keram.

He also used to be governor of Panjshir, and still claims many loyalists there.

Keram faces criminal charges of sexual abuse of female players, many of whom come forward with harrowing accusations of being assaulted and threatened by him. He has denied the accusations. The Afghan attorney general’s office issued an arrest warrant last year for Keram, who was banned from soccer for life by the sport’s global governing body, FIFA, and fined about $1 million.

In Panjshir, Sediqi said the national government in Kabul refused to coordinate with the Panjshir authorities. Panjshiri of-

Supporters of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud wave the Northern Alliance flag on a street in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept.

8, 2020. In Panjshir, one of the last holdout regions against the Soviets and the Taliban, some would prefer to go their own way rather than support a government negotiating peace with the insurgency. ficials have yet to hand Keram to the Kabul authorities, although local community members have pushed for them to do so.

Weeks after the botched arrest attempt, Keram addressed a crowd in Panjshir, breaking months of silence to deny the charges leveled by the government against him.

“I am not fugitive, nor a criminal,” Keram said. He added that ordering his arrest from Kabul was the equivalent of sending “thieves to someone’s home.”

Panjshir is not the only region that is simmering. Other powerful regional figures have increasingly bridled at the administration of President Ashraf Ghani, and clashes between federal and local officials have at times tipped over into violence.

There is a contradiction in Panjshiris’ restiveness, though.

Although they say the national government does not represent them, they have for years made up a large slice of Afghanistan’s political and security elite. One Panjshiri figure, Amrullah Saleh, who worked alongside Ahmad Shah Massoud through the civil war years, is the country’s first vice president, for example.

Panjshiri leaders were key pillars in the creation of the Afghan government after the Taliban’s withdrawal in 2002. Former Vice President Muhammad Qasim Fahim, was born in Panjshir and led the Northern Alliance, a group of militias welded together to resist the Taliban after Massoud’s assassination just two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

But while Panjshiri leadership is comfortable, for now, with critiquing the Kabul government from afar and protecting Keram, Shamsudin Hamid, 57, a former fighter who fought under Massoud in both the Soviet-Afghan war and the civil war, has other plans.

In his office in a government-funded education center in

Bazarak, a gray Czech-pistol strapped to his hip, Hamid outlined a renewed effort to bring back the Northern Alliance. It will be led, he said, by Massoud’s protégés, including Massoud’s son, Ahmad Massoud, a 31-year-old who earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees in London and has little military experience.

Hamid has lived well, like many of his compatriots who became warlords during the civil war and after the U.S.-led invasion. Hamid sent five of his daughters to university and landed a well-paid government job as the head of Panjshir’s teacher training center.

Still, he says his generation will lead the renewal of the Northern Alliance, also known as the United Front. The calls for the return of independent militias have drawn public condemnation from officials in Kabul, although some privately believe their return could serve some purpose in the months to come.

“We’re the second generation,” Hamid said. “There are thousands of people who want to reform the United Front.”

Frustration has often simmered in the north, but it has seldom been given as much fuel as it is getting now, as the government and other Afghan factions negotiate with the Taliban in Qatar in a process that could lead to a power-sharing government with the insurgency.

Hamid and other Panjshiri figures accuse the United States of abandoning the country to the same forces they fought a generation ago, and vow they will not go without a new fight.

“This peace process is an American project,” Hamid said.

“The Americans want the Taliban to come back to the country.

But we are going to fight them. We won’t sacrifice the last 19 years of progress — that is nonnegotiable.”

18

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

The picture of a broken tax system

By THE NYT EDITORIAL BOARD

I

n the years before he became president, Donald Trump lived lavishly while paying little in federal income taxes.

The Times reported on Sunday that Trump paid no taxes in 10 of the 15 years immediately preceding his run for the White House. In each of the following two years, 2016 and 2017, he paid the token sum of $750.

Remove Trump’s current job from the picture, and what remains is a story that still demands attention. The portrait of a man who earned hundreds of millions of dollars, lived a life of comic excess and yet, in many years, paid nothing in federal income taxes is an indictment of the federal income tax system. It illustrates the profound inequities of the tax code and the shambolic state of enforcement.

The government has sharply reduced the share of income that it collects in taxes from the wealthiest Americans.

One recent study found that the 400 wealthiest households paid 70% of their total income in federal, state and local taxes in 1950, 47% in 1980 and 23% in 2018. The cuts in tax rates have come mostly at the federal level.

The government allows income to be sheltered from taxation for hundreds of different reasons, but real estate investors have long enjoyed a particularly sweet set of loopholes. A homeowner can write off the interest payments on a mortgage loan, but the owners of commercial buildings get

PO BOX 6537 Caguas PR 00726 Telephones: (787) 743-3346 • (787) 743-6537 (787) 743-5606 • Fax (787) 743-5100

Dr. Ricardo Angulo Publisher Manuel Sierra

Ray Ruiz

General Manager

Legal Notice Director

María de L. Márquez

Sharon Ramírez

Business Director

Legal Notices Graphics Manager

R. Mariani

Elsa Velázquez

Circulation Director

Editor / Reporter

Lisette Martínez

María Rivera

Advertising Agency Director

Graphic Artist Manager

“Donald Trump’s tax returns illustrate the profound inequities of the tax code and the shambolic state of federal enforcement,” writes The New York Times Editorial Board. a host of other benefits, too. It’s relatively easy for real estate investors to use past losses to offset income, to defer income and to avoid reporting some kinds of income. Best of all, the law lets investors claim a building is depreciating in value — a theoretical loss of money — even as the actual value increases.

“I love depreciation,” Trump said during the 2016 campaign.

Moreover, the formidable complexity of the tax code makes it difficult to tell when wealthy taxpayers have crossed legal lines. For the rich, taxation often becomes a kind of structured negotiation between the taxpayer’s experts and the government’s experts.

It’s not a fair fight: The rich keep getting richer, while the Internal Revenue Service keeps getting smaller. Republicans in Congress have slashed funding for the IRS, stripping the agency of expertise, resources and authority. The number of IRS auditors has fallen by one-third since 2010. The government employs fewer people to chase deadbeats than at any time since the 1950s.

The share of all tax returns subject to an audit declined by 46% from 2010 to 2018, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Astonishingly, the decline was even steeper for millionaires — the audit rate fell 61% over the same period.

Legend has it that bank robber Willie Sutton said that he

robbed banks because that’s where the money is. The IRS has been reduced to going where the money isn’t. As ProPublica has reported, the government now audits lower-income households that claim the earned-income tax credit at roughly the same frequency as high-income households. It’s easier for the depleted agency to pick on people who can’t afford to hire expensive tax attorneys.

The result? On current trends, the federal government will fail to collect $7.5 trillion in taxes over the next decade — about 15% of the total amount owed.

Cracking down on rich tax cheats is law enforcement.

It is a basic function of government to ensure that people are playing by the rules. Tax cheating is not a victimless crime.

Every dollar hidden from the government is that much less money to spend on education, roads and research. The rich are benefiting at the expense of everyone else.

It would be relatively easy to start collecting some of that money. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in July that adding $40 billion to the IRS budget over the next decade would yield $103 billion in otherwise uncollected federal income taxes.

The methodology of that estimate is extremely conservative, as Natasha Sarin, an assistant law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Lawrence Summers, an economics professor at Harvard, noted in a July paper. Sarin and Summers estimated that fully restoring IRS funding, and modernizing collection techniques, would allow the government to collect $1 trillion of the unpaid taxes.

Strict enforcement should start with the president, to show that no American is above the law.

Trump claimed a tax refund of $72.9 million in 2010, according to the Times report; the government paid the claim, and then opened an investigation. If Trump loses, he could owe the government more than $100 million in repayment, interest and penalties. It should not take federal authorities more than a decade to determine whether Trump has paid the full amount he owes. The government must move urgently to resolve this question.

On Tuesday night, when Trump and his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, take the stage for their first presidential debate, both men should be asked what steps they will take to ensure that all Americans pay the full amount they owe.

And Congress should restore every penny of funding stripped from the IRS since 2010 — plus whatever is necessary for the agency to perform its critical work.

Paying taxes is a civic duty, and the government needs the money. Most Americans try to pay what they owe, even if they wish they owed less, and they take comfort in the assumption that most of their neighbors are conducting themselves in the same way.

Americans deserve to know that the president has paid his taxes, too.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

19

Tribunal ordena entrega de expediente utilizado para despedir a exadministradora de ADSEF Por THE STAR

E

l juez del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de San Juan, Anthony Cuevas Ramos ordenó el martes mediante sentencia a que el secretario del Departamento de La Familia, Orlando López Belmonte entregue los documentos públicos que llevaron al despido de la Administradora de la Administración de Desarrollo Socioeconómico de la Familia (ADSEF), Surima Quiñones Suárez y concedió un plazo de 24 horas para que se entreguen los documentos sin edición alguna.

A tal objetivo, Quiñones Suárez solicitó un recurso de mandamus, derecho de acceso a información pública contra el Estado Libre Asociado de

Puerto Rico, la secretaria de Justicia designada, María del C. Carrau Martínez, el titular del Departamento de La Familia y la Oficina del Panel del Fiscal Especial Independiente.

“Este Tribunal declara Ha Lugar la moción de desestimación presentadas por la OPFEI y, como consecuencia, se desestima el caso solo en cuanto a la OPFEI. Además de lo anterior, se declara No Ha Lugar la moción de desestimación presentada por el Gobierno. En su consecuencia, se ordena al Gobierno de Puerto Rico y al Departamento de la Familia a entregar, en el término final de 24 horas y sin edición alguna, los documentos solicitados por la señora Surima Quiñones Suárez”, reza la sentencia.

Quiñones le solicitó al secretario del Departamento de la Familia, Orlando López Belmonte, la entrega de varios documentos públicos relacionados con una investigación preliminar y final que fueron el fundamento para el despido de la señora Quiñones de su puesto como Administradora de la Administración de Desarrollo Socioeconómico de la Familia (ADSEF). Entre los documentos solicitados se encuentran: los informes o memorandos de investigación preliminar y final relacionados a la determinación del cargo de la señora Quiñones; la evidencia, documentos, declaraciones juradas y/o escritos que sirven de base para los informes; y el expediente relacionado a la separación de la señora Quiñones de su puesto.

El Departamento de la Familia denegó la solicitud y alegó que estos documentos son confidenciales.

Denuncian tala de árboles adultos y saludables en parque en Vega Baja por autorización del DRNA Por THE STAR

R

esidentes de las urbanizaciones Villa Real y San Demetrio en Vega Baja, y el alcalde de ese pueblo, Marcos Cruz Molina, alertaron este martes del corte masivo de árboles adultos y saludables sin avisarle a la comunidad.

“Nos referimos al crimen ambiental que significa acabar con estos árboles por contratistas autorizados por el Departamento de Recursos Naturales y Ambientales (DRNA) y el Departamento de Recreación y Deportes (DRD) en las instalaciones recreativas en dichas urbanizaciones”, dijo Cruz Molina.

Por su parte, la ciudadana Luz Crespo, residente de la urbanización Villa Real, relató que la tala de árboles fue “una masacre” que ocurrió el pasado jueves 24 de septiembre. “Nosotros no teníamos conocimiento de esas labores en nuestro parque pasivo, especialmente necesario en tiempos de pandemia, cuando tanta falta hace el realizar actividades al aire libre”, denunció Crespo.

La mujer cuestionó la alegación de que hay profesionales involucrados en dicha tala y que las especies a ser impactadas son árboles enfermos o lastimados por el impacto del Huracán María hace tres años. Otra residente de la urbanización Villa Real mencionó que “es una gran tristeza ver nuestro parque sin sus

árboles frondosos que funcionaban como un pulmón. Este es un acto indignante, una masacre, un crimen a la naturaleza y contra los seres humanos que aquí vivimos”.

El alcalde de Vega Baja reclamó que tanto el DRNA como el DRD deben publicar de inmediato las cláusulas del contrato, “porque obviamente aquí hay un problema serio. Estamos hablando de árboles que estaban en buenas condiciones. No había razón para cortarlos” al igual solicita que notifiquen los lugares a impactar ya que la ciudadanía requiere estar informada.

Tanto Cruz Molina como los vecinos señalaron además que la reforestación del área no representa una mitigación “que es el término que se usa en estos casos, pero ¿cuantos años habrá que esperar para que esta zona se recupere, cuántos árboles harán falta y quién asegura su protección?”, reclamaron.

Cruz Molina afirmó que las agencias del DRNA y DRD no han cursado ninguna comunicación notificando las labores de tala de árboles.

“La semana pasada personal contratado por DRNA y DRD realizaron trabajos de recogido, limpieza de escombros y rehabilitación en en las instalaciones del Departamento de Recreación y Deportes, sin embargo no informaron en qué consisten los mismos”, dijo el alcalde.

20

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Early works by Edward Hopper found to be copies of other artists

In a photo provided by Bruce Crane, Louis Shadwick found that Bruce Crane’s “A Winter Sunset,” circa 1880s, in The Art Interchange magazine, was an almost perfect match for Hopper’s later teenage work, right down to the horizontal streak of light.

By BLAKE GOPNIK

M

ost grad students in art history dream of discovering an unknown work by whatever great artist they are studying. Louis Shadwick has achieved just the opposite: In researching his doctorate on Edward Hopper, for the storied Courtauld Institute in London, Shadwick has discovered that three of the great American’s earliest oil paintings, from the 1890s, can only barely count as his original images.

Two are copies of paintings Shadwick found reproduced in a magazine for amateur artists published in the years before Hopper’s paintings. The reproductions even came with detailed instructions for making the copies.

Shadwick spells out his discovery in the October issue of The Burlington Magazine, a venerable art historical journal. “It was real detective work,” Shadwick explained, Zooming from his sunny apartment in London. At 30, he’s older than most of his graduate-school peers because of a longish spell fronting an alt-rock trio (White Kite), a past not revealed in the blue button-down he wore when we talked and his closecropped dark hair. Shadwick was working out the earliest influences on Hopper’s art — one aspect of his Ph.D., half-finished so far — when he figured out that an American

Tonalist painter named Bruce Crane (18571937) might have played some kind of role.

Then, early this summer, in what Shadwick called a “eureka moment” of pandemic Googling, he landed on “A Winter Sunset,” a painting by Crane from an 1890 issue of The Art Interchange that was an almost perfect match for one of Hopper’s teenage works, long known as “Old Ice Pond at Nyack,” circa 1897, depicting a winter landscape with a streak of waning light. (A gallery is selling it now, with a price estimate of $375,000; the change in its status might affect buyers’ offers.) Shadwick went on to discover similar sources for all but one of Hopper’s first oils.

Scholars have talked about those early Hoppers as showing us his childhood home in Nyack, New York, and as examples of his preternatural talent as a self-trained young painter, “and actually, both these things are not true — none of the oils are of Nyack, and Hopper had a middling talent for oil painting, until he went to art school,” said Shadwick, adding, “Even the handling of the paint is pretty far from the accomplished works he was making even five years after that.” Those weak brush-skills are now the only thing in those earliest oils that anyone can lay claim to as Hopper’s.

“It’s always great to find out something new about a major artist,” said Carter Foster,

deputy director at the Blanton Museum of Art, in Austin, Texas, and a Hopper expert who organized the landmark show of his drawings at the Whitney Museum in 2013.

He got to know Shadwick’s work after meeting him at a Hopper symposium and admires the depth of the archival research involved.

He also admitted that the discovery did not come to him as much of a surprise, given that, before the advent of modern art and its freedoms, artists almost always got their start by copying.

For Kim Conaty, curator of drawings and prints at the Whitney Museum in New York, where she is at work on a big Hopper show, the copying that Shadwick revealed has more important repercussions: “It cuts straight through the widely held perception of Hopper as an American original,” she said — as an artist whose innate genius allowed him to emerge on the scene without a debt to others. “The only real influence I’ve ever had was myself,” he once claimed.

Conaty said that Shadwick’s discovery promises to be “a pin in a much broader argument about how to look at Hopper.” Shadwick is building precisely such an argument in his doctorate; the parts I’ve read look very promising.

Shadwick submitted his discovery about Hopper’s early oils to the Burlington Magazine for peer review, according to Michael Hall, its editor. It was part of a larger project meant to spell out the cultural context from which the painter evolved — “the things he was seeing, the things he was reading, the newspapers his family received, the journals,” Shadwick said.

A Londoner, he especially wants to understand the notion of “Americanness” that Hopper grew up around, and that then grew up around Hopper as his reputation matured; it still rules much of the talk about him. But we’re more likely to assume or assert that Hopper and his art are quintessentially American than to ask ourselves what that meant for him and his audience, or what it might mean for us today.

In our new century, when the country’s place in the world seems less sure by the day and when even Americans are split on the state of their nation — does it need to be made great again or does it need to face up to past failures? — a “national” treasure like

Hopper seems to beg for a fresh approach.

“What is this Americanness that people are identifying? Where does it come from, is it useful as a term?” — Shadwick said those are the questions at the heart of his study of Hopper. Maybe it takes someone from elsewhere to recognize just how artificial and peculiar American identity has been, and how directly Hopper was involved in constructing it in his persona and his work.

“Yes, there’s a lot of talent and beauty and all that,” said Shadwick, who remains a big Hopper fan, “but there’s also a very conscious awareness of his place in history, and of the purported Americanness of the scenes he was painting.”

Moving on from copying, the young Hopper spent a long spell in art schools in New York and then flirted for a while with modern French styles and subjects. But when a 1915 show of his Frenchified paintings got panned, while a single New York cityscape earned praise, Hopper knew where to head next: “He refines and refines and refines these ideas of what it means to be an American painter,” Shadwick said.

One aspect of this “Americanness” involved the image of the lone male — tall, taciturn, remote, just like Hopper — bravely forging his own path. This was precisely the image of himself that Hopper helped to propagate; even after his death, it went on to shape the story, now revealed to be a myth, of the miraculous early oils that Hopper is supposed to have come up with on his own. Shadwick’s discovery about those first paintings may also illuminate Hopper’s much later, most iconic masterpieces. Critics and scholars have always been intrigued by an awkwardness that Hopper allowed himself in many of his classic paintings: seas that look more painted than liquid in his famous “Ground Swell”; the awkward anatomy of his female nude in “Morning in a City” or the stony faces of the diners in “Nighthawks.”

If Hopper claimed to be an absolute original, uninfluenced by others, his greatest paintings work hard to convey a different image of their maker: Their studied awkwardness asks us to imagine him as someone who might indeed have started his career copying someone else — as just your average American, working hard to make good.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

21

7 Takeaways from Mariah Carey’s memoir

By ELISABETH EGAN

“I

cried on my 18th birthday. I thought I was a failure because I didn’t have a record deal yet,” Mariah Carey writes in her memoir, “The Meaning of Mariah Carey,” which comes out Tuesday. Now 50, the singer and songwriter has recorded 15 studio albums, including more No. 1 singles than any other solo artist.

Here is what she tells readers in her new book.

She knows what domestic violence looks and sounds like.

“By the time I was a toddler, I had developed the instincts to sense when violence was coming,” Carey writes. “As though I was smelling rain, I could tell when adult screaming had reached a certain pitch and velocity that meant I should take cover.”

She recalls numerous physical altercations, including her brother slamming her mother into a wall with such force, it sounded “like an actual gunshot.” Carey, then 6, called a family friend — “‘My brother really hurt my mother, and I’m home alone. Please come help.’” — who called the police. When they arrived, “One of the cops, looking down at me but speaking to another cop beside him, said, ‘If this kid makes it, it’ll be a miracle.’ And that night, I became less of a kid and more of a miracle.”

She experienced racism and colorism from a young age.

When she was 4, Carey used a brown crayon to color her father, who is Black, for a family portrait. She remembers a trio of teachers “cackling hysterically,” insisting she’d used the wrong shade.

“They had only ever seen one member of my family of five: my mother, who dropped me off at school each day,” Carey writes. “They had no idea and no imagination to suspect that the light toast of my skin, my bigger-than-button nose and the waves and ringlets in my hair were from my father.”

Her mother was estranged from her own parents, who didn’t approve of their daughter’s marriage. Eventually Carey’s grandmother allowed her mother to visit — but only with Carey.

“I was a 12-year-old little girl and didn’t quite understand why she only invited me,” she writes.

“Looking back, I suspect it was because I was blond-ish and very fair for a mixed kid.”

With her family, she at times felt like ‘an ATM with a wig on.’

The singer shares occasional warm moments where she bonds with her mother over music, but most of her family memories involve fistfights, ruined holidays and airborne condiment bottles.

Some are more alarming: “When I was 12 years old, my sister drugged me with Valium, of-

fered me a pinkie nail full of cocaine, inflicted me with third-degree burns and tried to sell me out to a pimp.” As soon as Carey became a household name, her siblings and mother started treating her like “an ATM with a wig on.”

When the exhausted singer sought refuge at the cabin she’d purchased for her mother, her mother called the police. “She gave them an odd, knowing look,” Carey writes, “which felt like the equivalent of a secret-society handshake, some sort of white-woman-in-distress cop mode.” Soon after, her brother abandoned her at a “spa” that turned out to be “closer to a prison” — and then at a detox facility. Later, Carey realized that her family “just happened to claim I was unstable and try to institutionalize me immediately after I had signed the biggest cash deal for a solo artist in history.”

She slept near a ‘to go’ bag during her first marriage.

In her telling, Carey’s first husband — who was 21 years her senior and the president of Sony Music — was abusive and manipulative.

Carey writes, “Even now it’s hard to explain, to “There is nothing more powerful than surviving a trip to hell and coming home put into words how I existed in my relationship covered in the light of restoration,” writes Mariah Carey, pictured here at the with Tommy Mottola. It’s not that there are no Golden Globe Awards in 2018. words, it’s just that they still get stuck moving up from my gut, or they disappear into the thick- perstar Derek Jeter, Carey was turned off by his a “spa” that operated “like an upscale juvenile ness of my anxiety.” He wooed her with Gund “pointy shoes” and “Kalamazoo vibe.” But when detention center” and where she overheard felteddy bears, then persuaded her to marry him they started chatting at a candlelit restaurant in low patients giggling about her; and a stay at (“I prayed that in doing so he would calm down downtown Manhattan, she learned he also had the Los Angeles detox facility where, in a room and loosen his vise grip on my life”). As she de- an Irish mother and a Black father. surrounded by strangers, she watched the twin “It was like the moment in ‘The Wizard of towers “crashing down in excruciatingly slow scribes it, “There was never really a strong sexual or physical attraction” but “I gave him my work Oz’ when the screen went from black-and-white motion” on television. to Technicolor,” she writes. and my trust.”

Beyond these details, however, Carey Thus began a clandestine, Champagne- doesn’t offer much information about what she Carey slept with a “to go” bag under her bed, “filled with essentials just in case I had to soaked, lyric-inspiring courtship. “Derek was was being treated for, beyond a diagnosis of “somake a quick escape.” The couple’s 50-acre only the second person I had slept with ever (co- matization.” In 2018, she spoke publicly about compound in Bedford, New York, was “fully incidentally, his number was 2 on the Yankees),” having bipolar disorder, but she does not menstaffed with armed guards” in addition to the se- Carey writes. “Just like his position on the team, tion the diagnosis in her memoir. curity cameras installed in most rooms. (Carey our relationship was a short stop in my life.” But, Carey’s twins, Roc and Roe, are having a refers to the place as “Sing Sing,” after the near- she goes on, “he was the catalyst I needed to get very different childhood from her own. by maximum-security prison.) When she went out from under Tommy’s crippling control and Carey and her second husband, cometo the kitchen to write lyrics, “‘Watcha doin?’ get in touch with my sensuality. And the intimacy dian and rapper Nick Cannon, divorced when of our shared racial experience was major — to their children were small — “Making the neceswould crackle through the speaker.”

Mottola controlled everything, from the connect with a healthy family who looked like sary adult adjustments to being working parents music they listened to — “What a tragic meta- mine was very inspiring.” in entertainment took its toll on our relationShe talks about some of her diva moments ship” — but Moroccan and Monroe (so named phor, listening to Tommy hum ‘My Way’ as he drove us back to my captivity” — to the music — but doesn’t explain everything. “because I wanted them to have the initials Carey recounts her “crash” of MTV’s MC, like me”) are ensconced in “the safe and she created. He wanted Carey to sound “mainstream (meaning white).” She writes, “From the “TRL,” in 2001, when she appeared on the abundant environment that has been created moment Tommy signed me, he tried to wash show’s set pushing an ice cream cart and wear- for them.” the ‘urban’ (translation: Black) off of me.” Final- ing a “Loverboy” T-shirt — and not much more.

It is a far cry from her childhood, she ly, after Mottola held a butter knife to her face “Maybe Carson Daly didn’t know I was coming,” writes. “Their lives have never been threatand dragged it down her cheek, she knew the she writes, “but producers had to schedule my ened. Cops have never stormed our house. time had come to “emancipate” herself from his appearance — coordinators, publicists, whole- They probably have 300 shirts to rotate and ass teams of people knew I was coming.” clutches. donate, and their sweet, soft curls are deeply She walks readers through some of her understood. They do not live in fear. They have Derek Jeter was the ‘catalyst’ for her to struggles with her mental and physical health, never needed to escape. They don’t try to deend the marriage.

When she first met New York Yankees su- including her chronic sleeplessness; her stint at stroy each other.”

FASHION The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, March 4, 2020 Wednesday, September 30, 2020 20 22

The TheSan SanJuan JuanDaily DailyStar Star

Raf Simons and Miuccia Prada make civil discourse look lovely

By VANESSA FRIEDMAN

I

n the normal course of human events, it would have been the biggest show of the fashion season in Milan. Possibly the most anticipated show of the whole season.

Flotillas of black cars would have jammed the streets around the Via Fogazzaro. Throngs of guests and groupies would have pushed en masse toward the doors, the chroniclers of street style running hither and yon around them like a cloud of swarming gnats. The official attendees would have waved their invitations above their heads like little handkerchiefs of surrender, the better to catch the bouncers’ eyes. The air would have hummed with anticipation.

Once inside, there would have been prosecco, probably, and anchovy-and-butter canapés, and smartphones would have lit up the room as the first collection from Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons as co-creative directors at Prada finally appeared.

This being an abnormal course of events, however, none of that occurred.

Instead, because of the pandemic, it was a digital presentation — with a pastel-tinted care package of jams and tea and cookies from the Prada pastry shop, Marchesi, sent to get everyone in the mood — that provided an answer to the questions that had been percolating since the Prada-Simons agreement was announced.

Would the combined force of two of the greatest fashion minds of this particular period, designers who on their own — Prada at Prada and Miu Miu, and Simons at Jil Sander, Dior, Calvin Klein and his own label — have irrevocably

shaped the way we dress (the way we think about dress), be greater than the sum of their parts? Or would it be an unmitigated disaster; a clash of egos and ideas that could sink them both?

More than the reputations of both designers and the fortunes of a company were riding on the result. If it worked, the joining of two great creative talents at one brand had the potential to reshape the future of high fashion, in the same way the 1983 decision to install Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel to yank that then-stagnating heritage name into the present gave rise to an entire industry strategy: John Galliano at Dior and now Margiela; Tom Ford at Gucci; and so on.

So did it?

A qualified yes. What Simons and Prada did with their debut will not upend the industry. They didn’t expose the shibboleths of dress or kick over any sacred cows. They didn’t cleave the history of fashion into then and now.

But they did, pragmatically and with a great deal of grace and forethought, lay the groundwork for a path forward. One that resonated beyond clothes.

Working from the bottom up, they sent out first a series of basics: shell tops that brushed the thighs and matching narrow trousers, clutch coats that circled the body like a hug, made from upcycled nylon (they call it re-nylon; it’s one of Prada’s sustainability initiatives) in black-andwhite, shell pink and magenta, polka dots and tiny poesies, to create a pseudo-uniform for the modern age. All of it was branded with an oversize Prada logo triangle at the neck like a stamp of identity.

From there, they built, adding layers of

knits and undershirts with polka dots punched into moth holes; full 1950s skirts with utilitarian luggage belts nipping in the waist; sweatshirts and egg-shaped trenches that nodded to both couture and technology. Prints, made by artist Peter De Potter, referenced both exotic blooms and what looked like packing instructions. Sleeveless satin shifts came with three-dimensional roses sprinkled on top (very fancy polka dots).

It wasn’t quite a return to first principles; more like a renegotiation. One done with great harmony.

There has been a current of personal connection running through the early Milan shows that can be felt even through a computer. It was there, albeit in a heavy-handed way, in Dolce & Gabbana’s patchwork-palooza: 92 trouser and gowns and greatcoats and rompers created by uniting swatches of many colors and many histories.

And it was also there at Fendi, if not at Alberta Ferretti, where music festival-ready hot pants, embroidered macramé tops and big fringe bags felt like an atonal reversion to fashion week norms (the sleeping beauty negligee dresses were more on-point), or at Emporio Armani, where a short film, “Building Dialogues,” squashed the easy separates with arty pretentiousness.

After all, for her last collection as sole designer of the brand, Silvia Fendi began with pasta.

Come February, Kim Jones will take over as the designer of womenswear, stepping into the place left empty by Lagerfeld’s death last year.

Fendi will continue with menswear and accessories, and though they will not have the sort of equal input on everything that Simons and Prada do, there will be a symbiosis, ideally, of sorts.

But first, the pasta. (Despite all the sniping about fashion people never eating, meals play a meaningful part in the industry; it does, after all, have to do with “taste.”) To be specific: two bags of Fendi-shaped pasta, along with a recipe for Fendi’s grandmother Adele’s lemon pesto pasta.

Then came the clothes.

Which were, in fact, related to the food.

Fendi said, via Zoom after the show, that she had spent lockdown thinking about family and history and values; about what we want to keep close, like embroidered linens inherited as part of a trousseau, and what really lasts over time.

That meant tissue-thin voile tunics and shirts for both men and women printed with the view of clouds and sky and trees as seen from her window (complete with window frame); midcentury shapes such as portrait collars on princess coats and fluted 1940s sleeves on skirt suits; mink shaved into lace; and cozy quilted down opera capes that trailed on the floor like super-elegant duvets.

Since Lagerfeld’s death it has sometimes felt as if the weight of legacy has lain heavy on Fendi’s work, but these looks conveyed the incredible lightness of memory. The word that came to mind was empathy.

We could all use some of that, wherever it lies.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

23

Do masks impede children’s development?

By PERRI KLASS, M.D.

N

othing about masks and masking has come easily in the United States, it seems. There were mixed and confusing messages at the beginning of the pandemic; then political discussion that got in the way of sane public health decision-making; as well as disinformation, anger and shaming and finger-pointing by those who wanted masks and by those who didn’t.

But evidence keeps accumulating that masks help keep us all safer.

Now, with many families dealing with the specifics of children returning to at least some classroom instruction, pediatricians are getting questions about whether masks — on the children or on their caregivers — may interfere with development, including speech, language and social interactions.

Kang Lee, a professor of applied psychology and human development at the University of Toronto, who studies the development of facial recognition skills in children, pointed to three potential problems masks might pose for children in interacting with classmates or teachers. First, he said, kids under the age of 12 may have difficulty recognizing people, because they often focus on individual features.

Second, and perhaps more important, he said, “a lot of our emotional information, we display through movement of our facial musculature.” Because that musculature and therefore that information will be obscured by a mask, he said, children may have issues with “emotional recognition and social interaction.”

And finally, Lee said, children may have problems with speech recognition; even though we tend to think of speech communication as taking place through sound, he said, a great deal of information can be communicated visually.

David Lewkowicz, a senior scientist at the Haskins Laboratories and the Yale Child Study Center, has studied lip-reading in babies. Around the age of 6 months to 8 months, he said, as babies start to babble, they change the ways that they are looking at people who are speaking to them. Instead of concentrating on the eyes, he said, “they spend a lot of time looking at that person’s mouth, trying to master their own native speech, getting not only auditory cues but visual.”

In one type of experiment, people are asked to look at multiple faces on a screen, while listening to a voice talking — but the voice is synchronized with only one of the faces.

Children as young as 3 already tend to show a preference for that synchronized face, and the preference gets markedly stronger as they grow.

Babies whose caretakers are masked will miss some of these visual cues, and it’s possible, Lewkowicz said, that young children may have some trouble sorting out who goes with which voice.

“Masks are not a great thing for communication in young kids,” Lewkowicz said.

On the other hand, he said, the time children spend

at home with people who are not masked will give them a chance to practice picking up the visual cues. And there is opportunity to be creative and to help children take full advantage of the information that they do get. He suggested that parents and teachers could “encourage their kids to communicate more through gestures” and even make a game of helping children to find ways of communicating with their hands and bodies.

Eva Chen, a developmental psychologist who is an associate professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, focuses her research on children’s cognitive development with respect to social groups. “We should give more credit to our own children,” she said, “that being covered for a few hours every day isn’t going to make them less able to recognize social expressions.”

Voices, gestures and overall body language are all important for children, she said. While children typically pay attention to people’s mouths while they are talking, “it’s by far not the only cue children have to communicate and to learn,” she said, and referred to a 2012 study showing that children were able to read facial emotions just as well when a mask was added.

In fact, all of the scientists I talked to who have studied the complex ways that children process and use the information hidden by masks also believe that children will find ways to communicate and that parents and teachers can help them. Several of them also pointed out that children with neurodevelopmental issues such as autism will need special consideration — but also that some of the techniques that parents and teachers already use to help these children learn

to interpret social cues may be helpful for everyone when masks are in use.

As far as emotional communication, Lee suggested that teachers emphasize their gestures and pay attention to their tones of voice. “Make your voice more expressive, your gesture more expressive, your eyes more expressive,” he said.

And finally, he said, “I would slow down my speech as a teacher, particularly when interacting with younger ones, so kids can pick up more from the auditory channel.”

There is no evidence, Chen said, that children from cultures with much more extensive face covering are any worse at recognizing faces or emotions.

In Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia, it’s standard to wear masks as protection against illness or air pollution.

Because there are always a fair number of people wearing masks in public, “culturally, there is not the same level of anxiety — not the urgency to see whether wearing masks interferes with children’s development that we have heard from European colleagues and American colleagues,” Chen said. People understand, she said, that children will see the full faces of parents and siblings at home.

And given the adaptability of children’s brains, it seems reasonable to hope that one effect of spending time masked and around masked people may be that children actually improve their ability to read those other cues. Children may end up “more sensitive to tones, more sensitive to someone’s overall body language,” Chen said.

“Kids are very, very adaptive, more adaptive than we are — they learn very quickly,” Lee said. “I don’t think parents should be too worried.”

24 LEGAL NOTICE Condado de Wake de Carolina del Norte. En la Sala del Tribunal Superior del Tribunal General de Justicia Archivos No. 20 SP 421 y 20 SP 422 AVISO DE SERVICIO DE PROCESO POR PUBLICACIÓN

A: MANUEL RAMON ROMERO-BRITO,

Demandado.

Tenga en cuenta que se ha presentado un alegato en busca de reparación en su contra en la acción antes mencionada. La naturaleza del amparo que se solicita es para la legitimación de dos menores: Elmer Valentin Reyes, nacido el 28 de diciembre de 2016, y Ruby Valentin Reyes, nacida el 26 de marzo de 2015. Debe presentar la defensa de dicho alegato a más tardar el 26 de octubre, 2020, siendo dicha fecha al menos cuarenta (40) días a partir de la primera publicación de este Aviso, y en caso de que usted no lo haga, el peticionario solicitará al tribunal la reparación solicitada.

Este, el día 16 de septiembre de 2020.

Yvonne Armendáriz, Esq. Oficina Legal Armendáriz, PLLC 1140 Kildaire Farm Road Suite 206-4 Cary, NC 27511 Teléfono: (919) 656-1524 Email: yvonne@armendarizlaw.com ****

LEGAL NOTICE

te se le emplaza a usted y se le requiere para que dentro del término de TREINTA (30) días desde la fecha de la Publicación por Edicto de este Emplazamiento presente su contestación 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 Secretarla del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Arecibo, P. 0. Box 6005, Arecibo, Puerto Rico 00613-6005 y notifique a la LCDA. GINA H. FERRER MEDINA, personalmente al Condominio Las Nereidas, Local 1-B, Calle Méndez Vigo esquina Amador Ramirez Silva, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico 00680; o por correo al Apartado 3779, Marina Station, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico 0068 1-3779, Teléfonos: (787) 832-9620 y (845) 345-3985, Abogada de la parte demandante, apercibiéndose que en caso de no hacerlo asI podrá dictarse Sentencia en Rebeldía en contra suya, concediendo el remedio solicitado en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPIDO , BAJO MI FIRMA y el Sello del Tribunal hoy 31 de agosto de 2020. Vivian Y Fresse Gonzalez, Sec Regional. Emily Feliciano Torres, Sec Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUDE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRI- SALA SUPERIOR DE PONCE. PAULA BUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE ARECIBO. PIZARRO GONZALEZ

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Demandante Vs.

SHELVYN L. MONTALVO VIRUET, FULANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

DEMANDANTE Vs.

RG PREMIER BANK OF PUERTO RICO ahora BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO; JOHN DOE y RICHARD ROE como posibles tenedores desconocidos

Demandados CIVIL NUM.: AR2019CV02440.

SALON: SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NUM. PO2020CV01446.

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

POR LA PRESENTE: Se le notifica que contra usted se ha presentado la Demanda sobre Cobro de Dinero de la cual se acompaña copia. Por la presen-

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

Usted deberá radicar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder

A) SHELVYN L. MONTALVO VIRUET, FULANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

@

A: JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE como posibles tenedores desconocidos

utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: http://unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se presente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá radicar el original de su contestación ante el Tribunal correspondiente y notifique con copia a los abogados de la parte demandante, LCDA. MARJALIISA COLÓN VILLANUEVA A su dirección: PO. Box 7970 Ponce, PR. 00732. Tel: 787-843-4168. En dicha demanda se tramita un procedimiento de cancelación de pagare extraviado. Se alega en dicho procedimiento que se extravió un pagaré hipotecario por la suma de $101,500.00, con intereses al 5 7/8% anual, y vencedero el primero de enero de 2025, a favor RG PREMIER BANK OF PUERTO RICO (ahora Banco Popular) o a su orden, según consta de la escritura número 855, otorgada en Carolina, Puerto Rico, el día 30 de diciembre de 2004, ante el notario Angel A Colón Vázquez. Inscrita al folio ciento treinta y cinco (135) del tomo novecientos cincuenta y dos (952) de Carolina, Finca número doce mil novecientos treinta y dos (12,392}.

Registro de la Propiedad de Carolina l. Que grava la propiedad que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar cuatro de la manzana cinco B de la Urbanización Villa Fontana del Barrio Sabana Abajo de Carolina, Puerto Rico, con un área de trescientos diez y ocho metros cuadrados con tres centésimas de metro cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, con el solar cinco, distancia de veintiún metros con seiscientos cincuenta milésimas de metro; por el SUR, con el solar tres, distancia de veintiún metros con seiscientos cincuenta milésimas de metro; por el ESTE, con los solares seis y siete, distancia de catorce metros con seiscientos noventa milésima de metro; por el OESTE, con la calle trecientos cuarenta y seis, distancia de catorce metros con seiscientos noventa milésimas de metro. Enclava una casa de concreto. Inscrito al folio ciento treinta y ocho (138) del tomo trescientos cuarenta y uno (341) de Carolina. Finca número doce mil novecientos treinta y dos (12,392). Registro de la Propiedad de Carolina I. SE LES APERCIBE que, de no hacer sus alegaciones responsivas a la demanda dentro del término aquí dispuesto, se les anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la Demanda , sin1mas citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Ponce, Puerto Rico, a 18 de septiembre de 2020.

LUZ MAYRA CARABALLO GARCIA, Secretaria Regional.

Hilda J. Rosado Rodriguez, Sec Auxiliar.

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

LEGAL NOTICE United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico.

FORM H.

BAUTISTA CAYMAN ASSET COMPANY; Plaintiff, v.

THE ESTATE OF VICENTE MÓJICA ANDUZE formed by NORAIDA MÓJICA LAUREANO AND MINERVA ROSA PIMENTEL by herself and as member of the ESTATE OF VICENTE MÓJICA ANDUZE;

Defendants.

Civil No. 20-cv-01301 (PAD).

COLLECTION OF MONIES AND FORECLOSURE OF MORTGAGE. SUMMONS BY PUBLICATION.

TO: NORAIDA MÓJICA LAUREANO, MEMBER OF THE ESTATE OF VICENTE MÓJICA ANDUZE Condominio Bayola (B), Apartamento 503, Calle Estrella #1447, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00912

The plaintiff, Bautista Cayman Asset Company (“Bautista”) has filed proceedings for the foreclosure of mortgage on a property situated at: “URBAN: Lot of land composed of 22.00 meters in front, 12.00 meters deep, with a superficial area of 264.59 square meters, located between Street Diez de Andino and Street Pesante of Santurce, San Juan, Puerto Rico, It’s boundaries by the NORTE, with the site of Antonia Galán; SOUTH, with Justino Barreto and José Lao Manso; EAST, with José Medina and Lydia Acevedo; WEST, with Angel Cordero and Justina Barreto. It houses a consistent wooden house made of cardboard and zinc, with two bedrooms, living room, dining room and kitchen”. The property described above is recorded at page 11 of volume 672 of Santurce Norte, property number 24,932, Registry of Property, First Section of San Juan. As of June 25, 2020, the defendant(s) owe(s) plaintiff the following amounts: (a) $106,147.05 in principal; interests in the amount of $54,931.10 which continues to accrue, even post-judgment as per the agreement of the parties, until full payment of the debt at $22.11 per diem; accrued late charges in the amount of $3,779.28; other expenses in the amount of $4,001.50 and any other advance, charge, fee or disbursements made by Bautista, under the other loan documents, plus costs and agreed attorney’s fees in the amount of $12,000.00. You are requested and required to notify Luis

(787) 743-3346

Wednesday, September 30, 2020 G. Parrilla Hernández, Esq., FERRAIUOLI LLC, 221 Ponce de León Avenue, 221 Plaza, 5th Floor, San Juan, PR 00917, PO Box 195168, San Juan, PR 00919-5168, Telephone number (787) 766-7000, email lparrilla@ ferraiuoli.com, attorney for plaintiff, with a copy of the answer to the Complaint within thirty (30) days of the publication of this summons and file the original of said answer in this Court where you can find out its content.

This Court has entered an order providing for summons by publication in accordance with the provisions of Rules 4.6 and 4.7 of the Rules of Civil Procedure for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. THEREFORE, notice is hereby given to you so that you may appear and answer the Complaint within thirty (30) days after publication of this summons and in case of failure to do so, judgment by default will be rendered for the relief demanded in the complaint and the court shall proceed to an adjudication without further notice. San Juan, Puerto Rico, on this 16th day of September, 2020. MARIA ANTONGIORGIJORDAN, ESQ., Clerk of Court.

By: Viviana Diaz-Mulero, Deputy Clerk.

Mall, Caguas, Puerto Rico 00725; #C-7 Calle Gautier Benítez, Edificio Mall Central, Cond.

Consolidated Mall, Caguas, Puerto Rico 00725

Por la presente se le notifica que se ha radicado en su contra una acción de Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca por la Vía Ordinaria 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. Se le emplaza y requiere para que notifique a: Ferraiuoli Looking Forward Lcdo. Luis G. Parrilla Hernández, RUA 16,736 P.O. Box 195168 San Juan, PR 00919-5 168 Tel.: 787-766-7000 / Fax: 787-766-7001 jparrilla@ferraiuoli.com Abogado de la parte demandante, con copia de respuesta a la Demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto y radicar el original de dicha contestación en este Tribunal en donde podrá enterarse de su contenido. Si dejare de hacerlo, podrá anotársele la rebeldía y se le LEGAL NOTICE dictará sentencia concediendo ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO el remedio solicitado sin más DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL citarle ni oírle. EXPEDIDO bajo DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENmi firma y con el sello del TriTRO JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS. bunal. DADO hoy en Caguas, BAUTISTA CAYMAN Puerto Rico, 12 de septiembre ASSET COMPANY, de 2020. CARMEN ANA PEDEMANDANTE V. REIRA ORTIZ, SECRETARIA. MARGARITA MARTÍ LON, TERESITA VEGA GONZALEZ, SubSecretaria.

SU ESPOSO RUBÉN TORRES SÁNCHEZ Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

DEMANDADOS. CIVIL NÚM. CG2020CV01176.

SALA: 704. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. S.S.

A: MARGARITA MARTÍ LON, SU ESPOSO RUBÉN TORRES SÁNCHEZ Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS Urb. Veredas, Calle 2 #109, Gurabo Puerto Rico 00778; P.O. Box 6132, Gurabo, Puerto Rico 00778; P.O. Box 6132, Caguas, Puerto Rico 00778; 7C Consolidated

The San Juan Daily Star URB. PASEOS REALES 74 CALLE ATIENZA AGUADILLA, PR 00690 P/C LCDO. JAIME RUIZ SALDAÑA PMB 450 400 CALLE CALAF SAN JUAN, PR 00918-1314

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 21 de SEPTIEMBRE de 2020, , este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma.

Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación.

Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 22 de septiembre de 2020. En AGUADILLA, , Puerto Rico, el 22 de septiembre de 2020. SARAHI REYES PEREZ, Secretaria Regional.

ARLENE GUZMAN PABON, Sec Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

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 24 de septiembre de 2020 En MAYAGUEZ Puerto Rico, el 24 de septiembre de 2020. LCDA. NORMA G SANTANA IRIZARRY, Secretario(a).

F/BETSY SANTIAGO GONZALEZ, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

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

CARLOS NACHMANN Y MARIA LEDESMA DE NACHMANN Demandante V.

R. F. MORTGAGE INVESTMENT CORPORATION, JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE

Demandado(a) Civil: SJ2020CV03754. SALA; 807. Sobre: CANCELACION DE PAGARE HIPOTECARIO EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE o sea, las personas ignoradas que puedan ser tenedores de pagaré extraviado

Estado Libre Asociado de PuerLEGAL NOTICE to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL Estado Libre Asociado de Puer- DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Pri- (Nombre de las partes a las que se to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL mera Instancia Sala Superior de le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que susDE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Pri- MAYAGUEZ. cribe le notifica a usted que 23 mera Instancia Sala Superior de ORIENTAL BANK de septiembre de 2020 , este AGUADILLA. Demandante V. Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, ORIENTAL BANK JOHN DOE Y Sentencia Parcial o Resolución Demandante en este caso, que ha sido debiRICHARD ROE TAINA RAMOS damente registrada y archivada Demandado(a) RODRIGUEZ, Civil: MZ2020CV00517. Sobre: en autos donde podrá usted FULANO DE TALY LA CANCELACION DE PAGARE enterarse detalladamente de los EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN términos de la misma. Esta noSOCIEDAD LEGAL DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. tificación se publicará una sola DE GANANCIALES vez en un periódico de circulaA: JOHN DOE Y COMPUESTA POR ción general en la Isla de PuerRICHARD ROE AMBOS to Rico, dentro de los 10 días (Nombre de las partes a las que se Demandado(a) le notifican la sentencia por edicto) siguientes a su notificación. Y, Civil: AG2019CV01523. Sobre: EL SECRETARIO(A) que sus- siendo o representando usted COBRO DE DINERO POR LA cribe le notifica a usted que 21 una parte en el procedimiento VIA ORDINARIA. NOTIFICAde septiembre de 2020 , este sujeta a los términos de la SenCIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, tencia, Sentencia Parcial o ReEDICTO. Sentencia Parcial o Resolución solución, de la cual puede esA: TAINA RAMOS en este caso, que ha sido debi- tablecerse recurso de revisión damente registrada y archivada o apelación dentro del término RODRIGUEZ, en autos donde podrá usted de 30 días contados a partir de FULANO DE TAL Y L enterarse detalladamente de los la publicación por edicto de esta A SOCIEDAD LEGAL términos de la misma. Esta no- notificación, dirijo a usted esta DE GANANCIALES tificación se publicará una sola notificación que se considerará COMPUESTA POR vez en un periódico de circula- hecha en la fecha de la publición general en la Isla de Puer- cación de este edicto. Copia de AMBOS esta notificación ha sido archiDIRECCION POSTAL: to Rico, dentro de los 10 días vada en los autos de este caso, siguientes a su notificación. Y,

The San Juan Daily Star con fecha de 24 de septiembre de 2020 En SAN JUAN Puerto Rico, el 24 de septiembre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretario(a). F/ MILDRED J. FRANCO REVENTOS, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO Tribunal General de Justicia TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE AGUADILLA.

Wednesday, September 30, 2020 LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE BAYAMÓN.

Reverse Mortgage Solutions, Inc. DEMANDANTE VS.

Sucesión de Luis Antonio Pabón Negrón, t/c/c Luis A. Pabón Negrón, t/c/c Luis A. Pabón compuesta BANCO POPULAR DE por Nitza Pabón Cabrera, PUERTO RICO Antonio Pabón Cabrera y Parte Demandante Vs. Ricardo Díaz Sosa como DEBORAH BARRETO encargado de Fulano NIEVES, FULANO DE TAL Díaz Pabón, Sutano Díaz Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL Pabón (menores de edad) DE GANANCIALES y Perensejo de Tal como COMPUESTA POR miembros conocidos AMBOS y desconocidos de la Parte Demandada Sucesión de Raquel CIVIL NUM. AG2019CV01533.

Pabón Cabrera; Sutano SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. de Tal como posibles NOTIFICACIÓN ENMENDADA DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. herederos desconocidos A: DEBORAH BARRETO de la Sucesión de NIEVES, FULANO DE TAL Luis Antonio Pabón Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL Negrón, t/c/c Luis A. DE GANANCIALES Pabón Negrón, t/c/c COMPUESTA POR Luis A. Pabón; Centro AMBOS de Recaudación de DIRECCION FISICA- BO, Ingresos Municipales y BORINQUEN 15 VILLA a los Estados Unidos de BETANIA, AGUADILLA, América DEMANDADOS PR 00603 DIRECCION POSTAL - PO CIVIL NIJM.: BY2019CV03162.

Cobro de Dinero y BOX 101 SAN ANTONIO, SOBRE: Ejecución de Hipoteca por la PR 00690-0101 Vía Ordinaria. EMPLAZAMIENP/C: LCDA. GINA H. TO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL FERRER MEDINA PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTAP.O. BOX 2342 DOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIMAYAGUEZ, P.R. 00681-2342 BRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO EL SECRETARIO que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 9 de SEPTIEMBRE de 2020, este tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recursos 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 24 de SEPTIEMBRE de 2020. En Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, A 24 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2020. SARAHI REYES PEREZ, Secretaria Regional. ARLENE GUZMAN, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

RICO.

A: Ricardo Díaz Sosa como encargado de Fulano Díaz Pabón, Sutano Díaz Pabón (menores de edad) como miembros de la Sucesión de Raquel Pabón Cabrera y/o como cualquier otra persona con interés en este caso.

POR LA PRESENTE, se les emplaza y se les notifica que se ha presentado en la Secretaria de este Tribunal la Demanda del caso del epígrafe solicitando la ejecución de hipoteca y el cobro de dinero relacionado al pagaré suscrito a favor de RF Mortgage and Investmnet Corporation, o a su orden, por la suma principal de $166,500.00, más intereses computados sobre la misma desde su fecha hasta su total y completo pago a razón de la tasa de interés de 5.560% anual, la cual será ajustada mensualmente, obligándose además al pago de costas, gastos y desembolsos del litigio, mas honorarios de abogados en una suma de $16,650.00 equivalente al 10% de la suma principal original. Este pagaré fue

suscrito bajo el afidávit número 24,224 ante el notario público Manuel Rivera Melendez. Lo anterior surge de la hipoteca constituida mediante la escritura número 136 otorgada el 23 de julio de 2010, en San Juan, Puerto Rico, ante el notario Manuel Rivera Melendez, inscrita al Folio 15 del Tomo 701 de Toa Baja, Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección de Bayamón II, finca número 20,942.

La hipoteca grava la propiedad que describe a continuación: ---URBANA: Urbanización La Altagracia, sita Barrio Candelaria de Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, solar número 3 del Bloque L, área del solar trescientos treintiocho punto cero cincuenta metros cuadrados (338.050 m.c.).

En lindes por el NORTE, con el solar número 36 Bloque Len 13.26 1 metros; por el SUR, con la Calle número 11 en 13.261 metros; por el ESTE, con el solar número 2 del Bloque L en 25 .492 metros; y por el OESTE, con el solar número 4 del Bloque L en 25.492 metros. Enclava una estructura de hormigón y bloques de hormigón dedicada a vivienda para una sola familia.

Finca número 20,942, inscrita al folio 165 del tomo 353 de Toa Baja. Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección II de Bayamón. Se apercibe y advierte a ustedes como personas desconocidas, que 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.jamajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal.

De no contestar la demanda radicando el original de la contestación ante la secretaria del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Bayamón, y notificar copia de la contestación de esta a la parte demandante por conducto de su abogada, GLS LEGAL SERVICES, LLC, Atención: Lcda. Charline Michelle Jiménez Echevarría, Dirección: P.O. Box 367308, San Juan, P.R. 00936-7308, Teléfono: 787-7586550, dentro de los próximos 60 días a partir de la publicación de este emplazamiento por edicto que será publicado una sola vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general en la isla de Puerto Rico, se le anotara la rebeldía y se dictara sentencia, concediendo el remedio solicitando en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal hoy d23 de septiembre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional. Iniabeth Colon, SubSecretaria.

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

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO DEMANDANTE VS.

IBIS FIGUEROA CARDONA

DEMANDADOS CIVIL NÚM.: BY2020CV01096.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R ) ss.

A: IBIS FIGUEROA CARDONA COND. CHALETS DE LA PLAYA, APT. 597 VEGA BAJA PR 00693 PO BOX 243 VEGA BAJA, PR 00694

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

Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC). al cual puede acceder utilizando Ia siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en Ia secretarla del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en Ia demanda o cualquier otro, 51 el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. Representa a la parte demandante, la representación legal cuyo nombre, dirección y teléfono se consigna de inmediato: BUFETE FORTUÑO & F0RTUÑO FAS, C.S.P. LCDO. JUAN C. FORTUÑO FAS RUA NUM.: 11416 P0 BOX 13786, SAN JUAN, PR 00908 TEL: 787- 751-5290, FAX: 787-751-6155 E-MAIL: ejecuciones@fortuno-law.com En Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, a 17 de septiembre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria. KAREN CASTRO MELENDEZ, SubSecretaria.

Parte Demandada CIVIL NÚM. PO2019CV00441.

SALA 601. SOBRE: CANCELACION DE PAGARE EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE COMO POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARE EXTRAVIADO, FIGUEROA MORTGAGE AND INVESTMENT, INC., PARA SER NOTIFICADO POR EDICTO P/C: LCDO: LEO M. IRIZARRY ROMÁN P.O. BOX 188, JUANA DÍAZ, PUERTO RICO, 00795

(Nombre de las partes a las que se les notifica la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 15 de septiembre de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representado 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 15 de septiembre de 2020. En Ponce, Puerto Rico, el 15 de septiembre de 2020. LUZ MAYRA CARABALLO GARCIA, Secretario(a) Regional. f/ MARICELL ORTIZ MUÑIZ, Secretaria(a) Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

25

demandado, padre de la menor, José David Vázquez, fue emplazado por edicto el 11 de junio de 2020. Al no haberse recibido alegación responsiva por parte del señor Vázquez, le fue anotada la rebeldía. Habiendo el Tribunal examinado la prueba documental sometida, y admitida en evidencia, así como el testimonio de la demandante, se declara CON LUGAR la petición de custodia. En virtud de ello, se concede la Custodia Legal, con facultades tutelares, de la menor Yadielis Vázquez Valdez a Sandra Rodríguez Medina. Por lo que, Sandra Rodríguez Medina además de la custodia legal y física de la menor, ostenta la facultad de tomar decisiones en favor de Yadielis Vázquez Valdez, incluyendo, sin que se limite a, su salud, incluyendo asuntos de plan médico, educación, representación ante agencias estatales y locales, pudiendo realizar todo trámite necesario para la obtención de pasaporte y ante las oficinas del Seguro Social, y toda acción o gestión necesaria y pertinente, sin límite alguno, en favor del bienestar de Yadielis Vázquez Valdez, asegurándose de su bienestar físico, académico y emocional. Se ordena la notificación mediante edicto, de la presente Sentencia, al demandado en rebeldía, José David Vázquez.

REGISTRESE Y NOTIFIQUESE. Dada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, a 24 de septiembre de 2020. f/ RAFAEL E. JIMENEZ RIVERA, JUEZ SUPERIOR.

PR 00750 - FULANO DE TAL COMO POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARE HIPOTECARIO O SEA, LA PARTE DEMANDADA DE EPIGRAFE ARRIBA MENCIONADO * DIRECCION DESCONOCIDA

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 27 de septiembre de 2020 , este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 28 de septiembre de 2020. En FAJARDO , Puerto Rico, el 28 de septiembre de 2020. WANDA I. SEGUI LEGAL NOTICE REYES, SEC. REGIONAL. F/ Estado Libre Asociado de PuerMARYLIN SÁNCHEZ CORDEto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL RO, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de LEGAL NOTICE FAJARDO. Estado Libre Asociado de PuerMARIA EUGENIA to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL ENCARNACIÓN EN DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de REPRESENTACIÓN VEGA BAJA.

DE SIXTA FELICIANO AGOSTO Demandante

ADMINISTRACION DE HOGARES DE AGRICULTORES Y FULANO DE TAL

VACATION OWNERSHIP LENDING, L.P. Demandante V.

VIRGILIO ELPIDIO PEREZ MAÑON, AILIN PEREZ Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES, COMPUESTA POR AMBOS Y FIDELIZA DEL ROSARIO PEREZ MAÑON

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO EN EL TRIDemandado(a) BUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTAN- Civil: FA2020CV00220. Sobre: CIA SALA DE SAN JUAN. CANCELACION DE PAGARE LEGAL NOTICE EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN SANDRA Estado Libre Asociado de PuerDE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. RODRIGUEZ MEDINA to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL Demandado(a) A: - ADMINISTRACION Civil: VB2019CV00553. Sobre: Demandante v.

DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de PriDE HOGARES DE mera Instancia Sala Superior COBRO DE DINERO. NOTIFIJOSE DAVID VAZQUEZ CACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR de Ponce.

Demandado AGRICULTORES EDICTO. CIVIL NUM. SJ2019RF01411 LEOPOLDO

FONTANILLAS PINO, LUIS ALFREDO FONTANILLAS PINO Y JOSE ARNALDO FONTANILLAS PINO Parte Demandante VS.

FIGUEROA MORTGAGE AND INVESTMENT, INC.; JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE COMO POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS

(708). SOBRE: Custodia. SENTENCIA. A la Vista en su Fondo señalada para el 24 de septiembre de 2020, por videoconferencia, comparece la Lcda. Irma E. Castro Dieppa, abogada de la demandante, así como Sandra Rodríguez Medina, parte demandante y la joven Yadielis Vázquez Valdez. El Sr. José David Vázquez, no compareció ni representación legal alguna.

El Tribunal hace constar que el

Y A TODAS LAS A: FIDELIZA DEL PERSONAS IGNORADAS ROSARIO PEREZ MAÑON QUE PUEDAN SER (Nombre de las partes a las que se TENEDORAS O QUE le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EN SU PODER TENGAN EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 16 DOS PAGARES septiembre de 2020 , este HIPOTECARIOS QUE SE de Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, EXTRAVIARON Sentencia Parcial o Resolución * AVE FERNANDEZ en este caso, que ha sido debiJUNCOS EDIFICIO 1309 damente registrada y archivada PDA 19 1/2 SANTURCE, en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los

términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 25 de septiembre de 2020 En VEGA BAJA Puerto Rico, el 25 de septiembre de 2020. LAURA I. SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretario(a).

LILLIAN MERCADO RIVERA, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

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

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante V.

ANTONIO DE JESUS RODRIGUEZ CHARRIEZ

Demandado(a) Civil: CA2019CV04458. SALA; 404. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA POR LA VIA ORDINARIA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: ANTONIO DE JESUS RODRIGUEZ CHARRIEZ

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que 08 de septiembre de 2020 , este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 24 de septiembre de 2020 En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 24 de septiembre de 2020. LCDA. MARILYN APONTE RODRIGUEZ, Secretario(a).

F/BETHZAIDA MERCADO ALVAREZ, Secretario(a) Auxiliar.

26

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Tampa Bay Lightning win Stanley Cup in pandemic bubble

By CAROL SCHRAM

T

he Tampa Bay Lightning defeated the Dallas Stars, 2-0, on Monday, more than two months after they entered the NHL bubble in Toronto, to leave Edmonton as the winners of the 2020 Stanley Cup Final.

Brayden Point scored on a first-period power play and Andrei Vasilevskiy made 22 saves for his first shutout of the postseason as Tampa Bay won the best-of-seven series, four games to two. Blake Coleman also scored for the Lightning in the second period.

Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the playoffs. He led all defensemen this postseason with 10 goals.

Anton Khudobin made 27 saves for the Stars, who had fallen behind three games to one and forced a sixth game with a doubleovertime win in Game 5 but could not push the series to a Game 7.

“We knew what we were capable of, with our whole roster, and we were just pretty thankful to get the opportunity to come back and play,” Lightning defenseman Ryan McDonagh said. “Right from Day 1 there, we were focused and dialed in, and now we can say mission accomplished, which is a pretty incredible feeling.”

Point’s tally came on the second Tampa Bay power play of the game. He streaked down the slot, then picked up his own rebound and beat Khudobin high for his playoff-leading 14th goal of the postseason. His linemate Nikita Kucherov drew the primary assist, his playoff-leading 34th point and 27th assist, fifth highest in NHL history behind only Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux.

Vasilevskiy played every minute in net for the Lightning and set a postseason record for minutes played. The old record was held by the Calgary Flames’ Miikka Kiprusoff, who was on the losing side in 2004 when the Lightning won their franchise’s only previous championship.

After Lightning captain Steven Stamkos made a brief but thrilling appearance for 2 minutes, 47 seconds in Game 3 and scored a goal on his only shot, Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper officially ruled him out for the rest of the playoffs Sunday. He put on his uniform to receive the Cup from Commissioner Gary Bettman after the game.

“I think we put our gear on with like three or four minutes left. We didn’t want to jinx anything,” Stamkos said. “But just to be out there and celebrate with the guys. It’s something we talked about at the beginning

The Lightning won their second Stanley Cup in franchise history, with the first coming in 2004. of training camp, that it’s not just going to take 20 guys to win the Stanley Cup, it’s going to take every single guy who was in this bubble, and more. And I’m so proud of each and every one of them.”

Cooper made two lineup changes for Game 6 — reinserting defenseman Zach Bogosian in place of Jan Rutta for the first time since Game 1 and swapping out forward Carter Verhaeghe in favor of rookie Alexander Volkov, who saw his first career playoff action.

Following back-to-back games in which the Lightning won in overtime Friday and the Stars answered back in double overtime Saturday, the intensity took a bit of a dip Monday as the clubs settled in for another tightchecking first period.

As was often the case in this series, special teams were the difference. The Lightning were 1 for 3 with the man advantage, while the Stars were 0 for 3. Dallas’ final power play came with 4:33 left in the third period.

The Stars were unable to generate a single shot on goal but kept pressing after pulling Khudobin for the extra attacker. After generating just eight shots in the first two periods, Dallas outshot Tampa Bay, 14-8, in the third, but Vasilevskiy stopped them all.

“We worked the whole season,” Khudobin said. “We were down one goal, two goals, three goals. We never doubt ourselves that we can’t win. We just kept going. Unfortunately it is what it is right now. The character in this room is unbelievable.”

As time ran out, the screams of joy echoed through Rogers Place, which was devoid of ticket-buying fans, as the Lightning players poured onto the ice to celebrate a Stanley Cup win that had been a long time coming.

Point’s first-period goal proved to be the game winner, and Coleman’s insurance tally came off a pretty tic-tac-toe passing play at 7:01 of the second period. Assists on that goal went to Cedric Paquette and Pat Maroon, who stole the puck to start the play.

A new addition to the Lightning this season, Maroon came into the playoffs as the only Tampa Bay player with a Stanley Cup ring. On Monday, he lifted the trophy for the second consecutive year after winning with his hometown St. Louis Blues in 2019.

“The boys, you know, obviously with COVID, they came together as a group. We had a plan,” Maroon said. “They sacrificed, being away from their families and kids, and I think it’s probably one of the hardest trophies to win. Obviously, we didn’t have family there, it was a little different this year, but it’s nice to celebrate with these boys.”

For the Lightning and many of their players, this Stanley Cup carries an air of vindication. One year ago, they finished the regular season as the NHL’s top team and tied a league record with 62 wins. But their championship aspirations were snuffed in a first-round sweep at the hands of the eighthseeded Columbus Blue Jackets.

This season, the Lightning came back

mentally tougher, in part thanks to the addition of some other veterans who felt they had something to prove. One of them, defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk, scored the overtime winner in Game 4 to put the Lightning one win away from the Stanley Cup — just one year after he was bought out of the last two years of his contract with the New York Rangers.

In an era of parity in the NHL, where dynastic franchises largely belong to a bygone era, Tampa Bay has been one of the most successful teams in the league since Cooper took over behind their bench near the end of the 2012-13 season.

For five of those years, from 2013 to 2018, Cooper was assisted by Rick Bowness, the veteran defensive coach who left for Dallas at the beginning of the 2018-19 season.

He was named the Stars’ interim head coach midway through this season, after Jim Montgomery was dismissed.

Bowness had also been to the finals in 2011 with Vancouver and with the 2015 Tampa team.

“Three kicks at it — last nine years — it’s disappointing,” he said. “Sitting here as a coach, you have to roll with the punches.

We don’t second-guess anyone’s effort or commitment. We came up short against a team. We lost to a better team.”

Cooper is currently the longest-tenured coach in the league. Under his leadership, the club has now made the playoffs in six of his seven full seasons, reaching the Eastern Conference finals twice and losing to Chicago in the 2015 Stanley Cup Final before finally finishing the job this year — a Sun Belt team realizing its championship dreams in an empty arena in Alberta, Canada.

“It’s easy to talk about now,” Cooper said. “The bottom line is, there are some gifted people I guess, that success finds them instantly. But in a team sport, I truly believe that failure — you have to feel it before you can have success.

“You wear the bumps, you wear the bruises, you wear the heartache,” he continued. “You wear the feelings, you wear it on your sleeve and it keeps you up at night, but it also drives you. And it almost becomes — the fear of losing becomes greater than the joy of winning, and we were not going to be denied.

“Our players weren’t going to be denied.

We got to get up here and talk about and own what happened last year, but the players took it on the chin, and I can’t be happier for those guys because they deserve it.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

27

Gómez and Korda in French Open decades after their fathers played it, too

By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY

T

ennis remains a family game, and former French Open champion Andrés Gómez’s five children all became good enough to play college tennis in the United States.

Only one became good enough to follow their father’s path and play in the French Open, and when Emilio Gómez took to Court 3 earlier this week for his Grand Slam tournament debut, Andrés Gómez was back home in Guayaquil, Ecuador, watching it on a screen in the early morning Monday with his stomach churning.

His son got close, very close, pushing Lorenzo Sonego of Italy to a fifth set, but there will be no second round for the younger Gómez in Paris. Sonego prevailed 6-7 (6), 6-3, 6-1, 6-7 (4), 6-3 in just over four hours.

“That’s how tennis goes,” Andrés Gómez said by telephone. “I’m still happy. Obviously, I would have wanted a different result today, but clay is not his best surface. Good things are coming for him, I think.”

Just reaching the main draw was quite a journey for Emilio Gómez, a former collegiate player at the University of Southern California. He is 28 and nearly quit the game in 2018 after a string of disappointing results, only deciding to push on after winning two satellite events in Ecuador. But in this strange and disjointed season, he finally broke through in Paris, coming through three rounds of qualifying and saving two match points in the final round against Dmitry Popko.

Thirty years after his father won the French Open in 1990, defeating Andre Agassi, Emilio made it into the main draw, breaking into tears.

“To be on the courts where my father won is something special,” said Emilio, ranked 155th. “I’m not a firstlevel player like him, but I enjoy it.”

Choosing the same path as a champion parent is not without its perils.

“Emilio had to carry the name on the back, and it was a heavy load, sometimes even heavier because he thought it was heavy,” Andrés Gómez said. “But I think Emilio started to enjoy being my son. Everybody is the son of somebody, and there’s always expecta-

tions and sometimes expectations are a little tougher on some of them. Being the son or daughter of a neurosurgeon, which maybe doesn’t get the recognition or exposure of an athlete, for sure in that family you’re going to have a big, big bag to carry.”

Emilio Gómez is not the only child of a Grand Slam champion making his main-draw debut at this year’s French Open. There is also Sebastian Korda, a 20-year-old American who will face John Isner in the second round of men’s singles today.

Korda’s father and coach is Petr Korda, the 1998 Australian Open champion from the Czech Republic who also reached the French Open final in 1992, losing to Jim Courier.

Andrés Gómez said he and Petr Korda had compared notes on the art of parenting and coaching. But the nextgeneration Kordas are not just tennis players.

Petr Korda and his wife, Regina, who was also a leading Czech player, also have two older daughters: Jessica, 27, and Nelly, 22, who are two of the leading women’s professional golfers.

Each has won multiple LPGA Tour titles, with Nelly tying for second in the ANA Inspiration, a major championship held earlier this month.

“They are having a good year this year, so we’re always in contact, and we’re always talking about what we can do better, and how we’re doing it,” Sebastian said of his sisters. “But yeah, they’re a big help, and I love them a lot.”

Sebastian, nicknamed Sebi, started out with a passion for ice hockey but decided to focus on tennis at age 9 after traveling to the U.S. Open in 2009 with his father when Petr was coaching the Czech player Radek Stepanek.

“He played Djokovic on Ashe at like 10:30 at night,” Sebastian said of Stepanek. “It was completely packed, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever after that. I went home and said, this is exactly what I want to do, just kind of fell in love with it.”

Home was Bradenton, Fla., which is also home to IMG Academy, the sprawling multisport academy where his sisters developed their golfing talents and where he honed his tennis skills.

Emilio Gómez of Ecuador played college tennis for the University of Southern California, and nearly quit the game two years ago. He said qualifying for this French Open was “the story of my father and our country.

For the Kordas, juggling the travel to support their children’s careers has long been complicated and is only getting more complicated: Petr chose not to travel to Paris in part because of French Open restrictions on player entourages and in part because of Nelly’s and Jessica’s golf schedule.

“It’s challenging,” Petr said. “But once this year will be over and hopefully life will go back to the normal direction and the schedule will be much more firm in tennis and then golf, then I will make my schedule and try to balance it so I can always be between the girls and Sebastian.”

The Korda parents taught Sebastian the tennis fundamentals, which included a two-handed backhand, which has developed into his best shot and is quite a contrast with his father’s flat one-hander.

Petr is a lefty. Sebastian, like his mother, is a right-hander.

But both father and son are tall and wiry, and since winning the 2018 Australian Open boys junior title, Sebastian

has grown a couple of inches taller than Petr. He is now 6-foot-5 and starting to make inroads on the main tour.

Like Emilio Gómez, he qualified here for his first French Open, and on Sunday he upset Andreas Seppi, a 36-year-old Italian with much more experience on clay and every other surface.

Sebastian is ranked 213, but not for long. His next hurdle: Isner, the thunderous server who is still the top-ranked American at age 35.

The next challenge for the lateblooming Gómez: Making the main draw at another Grand Slam tournament on a surface better suited to his tight-tothe-baseline game, although that may not be quite as symbolic for him, his family and those who remember what happened at Roland Garros in 1990.

“To be here and get through qualifying was already a privilege for me,” he said. “It’s the story of my father and our country. I can’t be too hard on myself.

It’s something that means more now. If it had come earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate it as much.”

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

The Celtics have a bright future — and a low ceiling?

By SOPAN DEB

T

here are two types of Boston sports fans: those who yell about firing or trading everyone after any loss — and those who, in a quieter voice, call for firing or trading everyone after any loss.

So the Boston Celtics losing in six games to the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals — a series that Boston was favored in — was not ideal for the blood pressure of either kind of fan. It was Boston’s best chance to get to the finals since the 2011-12 season, when the Celtics also lost to Miami, in seven games. But in that case, the Heat, led by LeBron James, were by far the more talented team.

Let’s remember, though, the expectations for the Celtics entering the season: They had just lost Kyrie Irving (Nets), Al Horford (Sixers) and several other key players. Of the 17 players on the Celtics this season, seven were rookies. Yes, they added point guard Kemba Walker — a solid replacement for Irving, but last fall they were not expected to make much noise in the playoffs.

Instead, the Celtics went on a surprisingly strong regular-season run, going 48-24 for the third-best record in the East. They overachieved.

“It was a fun run,” Walker said after Sunday’s loss. “A tough finish, obviously, but we fought hard and that’s all you can ask for. You want guys to compete at a really high level, and I’m just proud of all these guys.”

Even with a disappointing playoff loss, the Celtics washed off the stain from last year’s torturous campaign in which they lost in the second round amid whispers that Irving was unhappy. Now, they have one of the youngest rosters in the NBA. If all goes well, they are equipped to make deep postseason runs for years to come.

If all goes well.

You cannot help but wonder whether they have enough to get over the hump. For years, Danny Ainge, the president of the Celtics, has resisted trading players or picks for stars like Jimmy Butler, Paul George and Anthony Davis; the trade with Cleveland for

Jayson Tatum showed superstar potential with the Boston Celtics this season.

Irving in 2017 was a notable exception.

The Celtics have not won a title since 2008. At what point does a rebuilding team become rebuilt? And will it be strong enough to withstand the returns of several top opposing players who have been injured, including Irving and Kevin Durant for the Brooklyn Nets — another obstacle in Boston’s way?

This offseason is crucial for Ainge.

After this draft, he won’t have the treasure chest of picks he has typically accumulated. He can either pick around the edges and hope the young players improve enough to get to the finals or he can cash in some chips and hope to acquire more top-level talent.

Two Celtics stars made significant leaps this year: Jayson Tatum, 22, and Jaylen Brown, 23. They are outstanding on both ends of the floor and solid building blocks for a winning team.

Tatum, in particular, showed superstar potential in the playoffs. One of Ainge’s first priorities this offseason is likely to be signing Tatum to a maximum contract extension. (On Sunday, Tatum said he hadn’t thought about this yet.)

It’s an easy decision for Boston, given Tatum’s uncommon talent and skill.

Brown is locked in through 2024.

But the Celtics have some other choices to make. They need better playmaking off the bench and shooting. Boston was 13th in 3-point shooting percentage this season and 29th in bench scoring. The team was topheavy — and toppled over against Miami without reliable bench contributors.

They have three first-round draft picks, which Ainge could package to move up higher than his best pick at No. 14 or combine with a veteran in a deal to get another piece for the bench.

Ainge has been deft at giving himself flexibility during his Celtics tenure.

There is also the question of what the Celtics should do about Gordon Hayward. He has a player option for next year that is slated to be roughly $34 million. Hayward, 30, had a good season, averaging 17.5 points, 6.7 rebounds and 4.1 assists on 50 percent shooting from the field, looking fully recovered from his horrific 2017 leg injury. But he struggled against the Heat

after returning from a serious ankle sprain he suffered in the first round against Philadelphia. (He missed the birth of his son to stay with the team for the series, so hopefully Boston fans — known for being rational — cut him a break.)

Hayward is unlikely to get that much money from any other team this offseason, or ever again, given his age and the recent playoff performance.

However, even if he stays, it’s an open question whether he fits with the Celtics going forward. He is still a startingcaliber player, but so is Marcus Smart.

It would be hard to justify bringing Smart off the bench for Hayward, but starting both of them would mean that Boston couldn’t play a center for extended stretches. That strategy has its own drawbacks, as we saw in the playoffs.

The Celtics won’t have much room to sign free agents beyond cap exceptions. If Hayward opts in, Boston will have about $70 million tied up in Walker and Hayward, more than half the cap. And that’s just a projection: The salary cap may be a bit lower next season as a result of lost revenue from the league’s dispute with China and not playing in front of fans because of the pandemic.

It’s also possible that Boston’s roster shortcomings could be solved by the improvement of their young players who did not see the court much this season. Grant Williams, 21, showed promise on both ends as a reserve forward. Robert Williams III, 22, made the most of his limited minutes in the playoffs as an athletic, rim-running shot blocker. Guards like Carsen Edwards — a 22-year-old undersized sharpshooter — and Romeo Langford, a 20-year-old with a penchant for getting to the rim — should be ready to play larger roles next year.

Either way, this season should be seen as a step forward. The Celtics have all the ingredients for success: a young stud (Tatum), strong complementary pieces to surround him with (Brown, Walker), several draft picks and talented young players.

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

29

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

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

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

(Mar 21-April 20)

New opportunities to expand your experience should be seriously considered. If you walk away they aren’t likely to be there for you in the future. Either take the chance now while a new job, study course or travel opportunity is being offered. Your popularity will soar to new heights through your involvement in a community exercise.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

No matter what the weather you feel like getting out and about or doing something sporty.

Even if you aren’t usually very active, a long walk would do you the world of good. Besides, being in a different environment will bring you into contact with new people, some of whom could become good friends.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Your boss or a senior colleague will make it clear how much they rely on your good judgement. They are happy to leave it to you to make some important decisions. Colleagues appreciate your skills and your hard-working nature. You have a reputation for being able to get the job done without any fuss or bother.

Discussions aren’t likely to be peaceful when you and a partner are in total disagreement over future arrangements. Try not to overreact even when you feel they are being deliberately awkward. Arguments could get heated and something you are arranging together could be cancelled. You can choose a path of conflict or you can choose a more harmonious option.

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

A new partner may not be very talkative or outgoing. You aren’t sure this relationship is right for you. Give it a fair chance. They could turn out to be creative, romantic and lots of fun once you get to know them properly. They may even admit they weren’t sure about you and you will both be glad to have stuck it out.

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

You can be moody and a little too touchy at times. Good friends will sense when they should give you a little space and privacy.

Someone who doesn’t understand you will say something that triggers intense feelings.

Count to ten before you react. A small misunderstanding will seem like a major issue when you feel this way.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

A friend or loved one’s quiet mood is starting to make you anxious. You’ve always preferred honesty in relationships and you hate it when you sense someone is hiding something from you. If you can’t persuade them to reveal their thoughts you can see this relationship falling to pieces.

You and a partner need to find a way to relax and enjoy each other’s company. This relationship won’t last if one or both of you are still feeling annoyed over a recent argument or misunderstanding. Be honest if you feel you need to talk. Getting away from familiar places will allow you to focus on what really matters.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Actions may speak louder than words but not all the time. There are three special words you are longing to hear. It doesn’t matter how many gifts they buy for you or what they do for you, you need someone close to tell you how they really feel about you.

Workmates value your creative contributions to a group effort. Their feedback lifts your confidence. Increased levels of harmony within yourself will have a great effect on your relationships. You have more energy to keep your love life dynamic, fun and eventful. A positive mindset will attract some great opportunities.

Virgo

Pisces

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

You’re feeling less than your best. It would be foolish therefore to agree to taking on more than you can comfortably handle. You’ve got into the habit of saying yes when in your head you are thinking no’. You will cope with what you have to do if you take it at a slow and steady pace.

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

People are treating you as if your views aren’t important and don’t matter. There is something you feel strongly about. Although you rarely push yourself forward, you are determined to have your say and you need to know that others are listening. It is time someone started to respect your views and stopped ignoring you.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

The San Juan Daily Star

Ziggy

32

The San Juan Daily Star

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

DESPIDETE DEL CALOR CON NUESTRAS CONSOLAS DE AIRE ¡Disfruta el mejor Perfortmance!

Desde

$589.00

Microwave Oven

$89.00

Estufa de gas 2 hornillas .00

$129

Licuadora OSTER

$49

.00

Cafetera Oster .00

$29

$449

Samsung A10s

$149.00

Freezer Commercial con Ruedas .00

$449

Learning Tab

$169

.00

Portable Ice Maker

$289.00

Samsung Galaxy Tab A .00

$489.00

$29 Water Dispenser

$169.00

Electric Instant Hot Water Heater .00

$489

Super Sonic 32”

QFX Remote Controlled Motorized 360 Rotating Outdoor Antenna

Lavadora GE Comercial .00

Silla Metal Estudiantes .00

Ipad 7 .00

$189

$189.00

$29.00

$589

Nevera Mabe 10pc.

$749

$18

$20

Tope de Gas Mabe 20” .00

Estufa Mabe 30” .00

Plancha Oster Ceramica .00

Pulsar 2300 .00

Bitz Stand Fan Turbo 5 aspas

Abanico recargable

$69.00

Smart-tv-kit

$99.00

$29.00

$130

DEALER AUTORIZADO EN PIEZAS Y SERVICIO

Sony. CDF-S70

$79.00