Monday Sep 30, 2024

Victor Moriyama/The New York Times

GOOD MORNING September

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.

Caguas mayor lauds self-management as driving force for change & social development

By THE STAR STAFF

Rural aqueducts and water purification systems that work with solar energy, community gardens, and beautification and landscaping programs are some of the initiatives that various communities in Caguas have developed through the collaborative model of community self-management that they share with the municipal administration of Mayor William Miranda Torres.

“We have a firm commitment to the model of community self-management that has allowed communities to be protagonists in the creation of solutions and in the decisionmaking that impacts their environment,” Miranda Torres said. “Through this model, citizen participation, sustainable development and resilience in communities are encouraged.”

The mayor highlighted that last fiscal year $545,452.49 was allocated to communities and rural aqueducts. The funds were part of the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (CSLFRF), approved under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

In the first phase of funding, 52 community organizations were supported with a total of $104,000. Meanwhile, in the second phase, 60 organizations benefited with $150,000. Ten rural aqueducts received $291,452.49. Likewise, the municipality allocated $175,137.53 under the Citizen Participation Fund Program, focused on the acquisition of equipment for community centers, recreational areas and community beautification, promoting a safer and more functional environment for residents.

Among the most notable projects that reflect the success of the self-management model are: the organized community

Comet to be visible this week

By THE STAR STAFF

Eddie Irizarry of the Caribbean Astronomical Society confirmed on Saturday that comet C/2023 A3 (TsuchinshanATLAS) can be observed with the naked eye this week. The celestial phenomenon is brightest and most visible on the eastern horizon between 5:15 and 5:25 a.m.

“Once you manage to locate it, you realize that you can indeed see the comet and its tail slightly with the naked eye,” Irizarry said in a written statement

“Close comets are objects that are much better appreciated through binoculars,” Irizarry said. “During the observations, we noticed that comet A3 is showing a tail of at least three degrees.”

Comet A3 is located at a distance from the sun similar to the orbit of Mercury. Its approach to the sun causes the ejection of dust and ice, creating the visible trail that can be observed in the mornings.

Irizarry noted that the comet comes from the Oort cloud.

of the San Salvador neighborhood that has initiatives such as an ecological garden and its agricultural market De La Finca a tu Puerta, as well as a water purification system that works with solar energy, and the Resilience Center.

Likewise, the community of Caguas Norte II developed the pilot project Ornato en tu Comunidad, through which they are responsible for cleaning gutters, areas surrounding stormwater systems, and the disposal of pet waste, among others.

Other communities such as Buenos Aires Revive, La Unión and Santa Juana have also promoted projects to beautify and maintain common green areas, demonstrating the positive impact of community organization. The achievements were presented within the framework of the first Community Self-Management Congress, held last Friday at the Caguas Fine Arts Center. The event brought together community leaders and experts in the field to share experiences and knowledge that strengthen this particular model of participatory government.

The congress included conferences on youth entrepreneurship, the future of self-management, technology and community security, and the empowerment of community leaders. Attendees were also able to enjoy a virtual gallery

Although its orbit was believed to take 80,000 years, new observations suggest that it could be hyperbolic, indicating that this is the first time it has come close to the Sun.

For those who do not have telescopes or binoculars, it is recommended to use the camera on your phone, he said.

“You can capture images between 5:15 and 5:25 in the morning,” Irizarry said. “It is important to hold it steady to avoid blurry images.”

Comet A3 is expected to be visible until Tuesday or Wednesday and will reappear around evening time Oct. 12-14, becoming the brightest comet of the year if it continues to brighten.

Caguas Mayor William Miranda Torres speaks at the Community Self-Management Congress last Friday.

Island’s GOP chapter appoints committee to show how PR would be a Republican state

By THE STAR STAFF

Puerto Rico’s chapter of the Republican Party has appointed a committee whose goal is to show that if Puerto Rico ever becomes a state, it would be Republican.

The local GOP’s decision comes even though the national Republican Party removed the U.S. territory’s status from its political platform. Most Republicans believe that if Puerto Rico ever were to become a state, it would be Democratic.

As a territory, Puerto Ricans cannot vote for president. Still, people on the island can express their preference for one of the two main national political parties: the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.

Republican Party Chairman for Puerto Rico Ángel Cintrón García said in a statement issued over the weekend that the party appointed a committee of Republican supporters led by Alfredo Ocasio, a legal adviser of the GOP, and co-directed by Zoraida Buxó, a delegate for statehood in the U.S. Senate, to promote the triumph on the current ballot of the Republican Party and its presidential candidate, Donald Trump.

In July, the local GOP pledged all its 35 delegates to Trump during the Republican National Convention.

“Today, the Republican Party of Puerto Rico is proud to announce the campaign’s launch, in a unified statewide effort to mobilize the conservative electorate to demonstrate to the United States of America that, if Puerto Rico becomes a state, it would be Republican,” the party said.

Ocasio supports conservative values and is a member of the Puerto Rican delegation that exercised the right to vote at the last Republican Party Convention held in Wisconsin, where Donald Trump was officially nominated as the party’s presidential candidate.

The committee leader said the effort would be a broad one, which would include talks and social networks with the purpose of mobilizing the conservative electorate in Puerto Rico.

freedoms that are framed in the Constitution, especially the freedom of speech contained in the First Amendment and the right to own firearms, the Second Amendment,” Ocasio said. “Likewise, the defense of the free market.”

The GOP also supports the right to private property.

“We are advocating for the elimination of taxes on tips, overtime income, and Social Security income, which is part of our candidate Donald Trump’s platform,” Ocasio added.

“We aspire to the return of manufacturing industries for the creation of jobs, the development of our energy industry so as not to depend on countries like Venezuela, and we seek that “every citizen can live in maximum freedom,” he said.

Ocasio said conservatives “seek the reduction of the federal government’s power in favor of the states, as was the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which gave the power to the people to decide on a fundamental issue such as the right to life.”

“We promote the values of family unity, that every child has an education free of the ‘woke’ culture, of gender ideology and of groups that seek to indoctrinate in hatred of democracy and freedom,” he continued.

The GOP adviser said that, contrary to what some think, “this vote is not symbolic, it has a lot of significance if the Republican Party wins, because it would be a giant step toward statehood, since it will break down the last barrier of the alleged allegation that we would be a Democratic state.”

“We will be open to public scrutiny, to answer questions and clarify doubts about what the conservative movement means on the island,” Ocasio said. “How we think and how we aspire to live within our nation.”

“The Republican Party promotes the cessation of illegal immigration, integrity in all elections, where only U.S. citizens vote as stated in the Constitution, as well as the defense of the

“We fight for the statehood vote to return to its home, the Republican Party, since it has been demonstrated that, under the Democratic Party, Puerto Rico will never be a state,” Ocasio said. “All this in view of the fact that, in the last electoral campaign, the [ticket of] Joe Biden and Kamala Harris promised statehood to Puerto Ricans as a campaign promise, and even when they had control of the House and Senate for the first two years of the four-year term, they decided to shelve and break their promise.”

San Juan mayoral candidate addresses obstacles faced by immigrants

By THE STAR STAFF

Terestella González Denton, who is running for mayor of San Juan under the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) banner, said Sunday that since the beginning of her campaign she has been examining the needs and obstacles faced by the immigrant community in Puerto Rico with undefined immigration status in Puerto Rico, including the Dominican community.

The PDP candidate said there are several studies that show that the capital city must be addressing the problem of immigrant communities in a more responsible and proactive manner.

“According to the study Profile, Current Situation and Aspirations of the Dominican Population in Puerto Rico, commissioned by the Technical Studies firm United Way, there is a lack of access to health insurance on the island,” said González Denton, who is also president of the party’s municipal committee in San Juan. “In addition, the study confirmed that there are several factors that make access to education impossible for this population; among these, schedule conflicts between

work and school hours.”

“As for health systems, many of these citizens still face problems when seeking medical services for outpatient conditions, operations or long-term illnesses,” the candidate said. “Furthermore, the immigrant population, especially our Dominican brothers, are those with the least access to medical plans in Puerto Rico, according to a study conducted by the Census Information Center of the University of Puerto Rico, Cayey Campus.”

Regarding education, González Denton said that although Puerto Rico offers a free and accessible education system, there are still documentation obstacles that can affect the enrollment of students. She said the island needs to be more flexible regarding the processing of documents so that parents can enroll children or young people who wish to access higher education or university studies.

The mayoral candidate stressed that the housing crisis that persists in the capital city continues to adversely affect the immigrant community as well.

Republican Party Chairman for Puerto Rico Ángel Cintrón García

Terestella González Denton, the Popular Democratic Party candidate for mayor of San Juan

Pro-statehood lawyer files complaint challenging ‘Alliance’

By THE STAR STAFF

With fewer than 40 days before the general election, pro-statehood lawyer Gregorio Igartúa has filed a complaint with the electoral comptroller against the “Alliance” formed by the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) and Citizen Victory Movement (MVC) to exchange their votes for one party’s candidate to the other party’s candidate, contending it violates local and federal laws. It is the second time since last year that the legality of the Alliance has been challenged.

According to Igartúa’s complaint filed last week, the Alliance agreement is an illegal federal and state conspiracy to defraud electoral laws and the voter’s vote through false representation. It should not be allowed to pass unchecked.

“Consider the case of the MVC voting for the PIP’s Juan Dalmau [Ramírez] for governor in exchange for his party voting for the MVC’s candidate for resident commissioner, Senator Ana I. Rivera Lassén,” Igartúa said. “The scheme is not limited to high electoral offices but includes candidates at various lower political levels.”

The complaint includes advertising instructing voters on how to vote for the Alliance.

Leaders of both parties have argued that the Alliance is constitutionally legal under the veil of free speech rights protected by the First Amendment.

“However, this is not a case of mere free speech by the candidates,” Igartúa said. “This has its limits, especially when, as in this case, the conduct interferes with other constitutional rights. The Alliance is a violation of the equal protection of the laws and the rights to due process of law under the United States Constitution.”

“When considering the political damage to candidates from other parties that do not conspire, the equal protection of the laws and their rights to due process are affected in the result of the elections by the illegal agreement of the

Pro-statehood lawyer Gregorio Igartúa

leaders of the PIP and the MVC, that is, by the political manipulation between both parties to give a manipulated advantage to their candidates,” he said in the complaint.

Igartúa also said the Alliance is a fraudulent scheme in its use of public funds because each party is an independent recipient of state funds through a false representation of having conspired with a quid pro quo agreement to exchange and swap their candidates.

“They provoke and obtain a political-financial advantage over the other parties,” he said.

“The conspiracy attempts to defraud our democratic

Padilla Rivera: SEC employees do not visit voters

By THE STAR STAFF

State Elections Commission (SEC) Alternate Chairwoman

Jessika Padilla Rivera, reiterated over the weekend that the commission’s employees do not visit voters to conduct electoral transactions of any kind.

“As we said several months ago, all Commission employees have an official identification with a photo and signature provided by the SEC that they must carry at all times while carrying out official tasks inherent to their functions,” Padilla Rivera said in a written statement. “If it is not visible to the voter, the latter has the right to demand it before starting any process to which they have freely and voluntarily agreed.”

However, volunteers from the various political parties do make visits and approach voters in various settings outside the

SEC’s control, the official noted.

She said the Electoral Code of Puerto Rico (Act No. 58 of June 20, 2020) establishes, in its Article 12.3, that “Any person who obstructs, intimidates, interrupts or illegally intervenes with the electoral activities of the Commission, a Political Party or Political Action Committee, Campaign Committee or group of citizens, Aspirant, Candidate, Independent Candidate or Voter, will [have engaged in] a serious crime and, if convicted, will be punished with a prison sentence of not less than one year or more than 3 years or a fine that will not exceed five thousand dollars or both penalties at the discretion of the Court.”

Padilla Rivera informed voters that they can go to the commission and file a formal complaint in the secretariat division if they perceive any irregularity in the types of processes noted above.

system by manipulating the votes of the electorate, including voting under a scheme where the support for some candidates of one party are exchanged and/or swapped for the support for candidates of the other, and vice versa, a violation of federal and state law,” the lawyer said.

Citizens can legally vote through what is known as a mixed vote, whereby a voter votes for candidates of different parties on the same ballot in the same election.

“However, an agreement between the leaders of two parties to induce their members to cast a mixed vote on the same ballots for one candidate for an office in exchange for a vote for a candidate of the other party is illegal,” Igartúa said. “It is a gerrymandering agreement to try to gain advantages for the candidates of each party by defrauding the electoral process, and it is made worse if each receives public funds.”

Under federal law, there are damages where two or more people have conspired to deprive another of the equal protection of the law or the same privileges and immunities of the law.

In the Alliance, the PIP and MVC conspirators defraud the electoral process and cause damage to candidates from other parties that are not part of the conspiracy or the political scheme. In this context, the gubernatorial candidates of the New Progressive Party (Jenniffer González Colón), the Popular Democratic Party (Jesús Manuel Ortiz González), and Proyecto Dignidad (Javier Jiménez Pérez) are adversely affected by the PIP and MVC conspiracy to vote for Dalmau Ramírez, as well as by candidates at other levels.

Igartúa said the Alliance violates his rights as a voter, as well as those of other U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico, to equal protection of the laws and due process of law by benefiting, contrary to the law, its candidates with illegal schemes that the other candidates of voters’ preference do not practice, he said.

Neither the MVC, the State Elections Commission, nor the electoral comptroller responded to requests for comment.

State Elections Commission Alternate Chairwoman Jessika Padilla Rivera

What we know about Hurricane Helene’s destruction so far

By ADEEL HASSAN

After making landfall as a Category 4 hurricane and tearing through the Gulf Coast of Florida and parts of Georgia last week, Helene left large parts of North Carolina in a state of paralysis over the weekend, washing out roads, causing landslides and knocking out power and cell service for millions.

Across western North Carolina, towns were destroyed, gas stations were running out of fuel, and residents were in a communications black hole, scrambling for Wi-Fi to try to reach their friends and family. Officials were racing to find victims, rescue people and restore flood-damaged water systems on Sunday. In Buncombe County, which includes Asheville, the sheriff said Sunday morning that there were at least 10 storm-related deaths.

The chaos in the state was part of a path of destruction that Helene carved through the region including Tennessee, South Carolina and Virginia. More than 60 people across the Southeast have died, with some communities decimated.

Here’s how Helene has wreaked havoc across the Southeast.

before water started to recede. Elsewhere in the state, helicopters were called in Friday to rescue dozens of people who were surrounded by floodwaters and stranded on a hospital roof.

In Atlanta, even with the storm largely sparing the city, several neighborhoods have endured flooding, and about 100,000 households in the area had their power knocked out Friday. Across Georgia, there were at least 15 storm-related deaths, according to Gov. Brian Kemp.

In a sense of how widespread the damages were, the White House approved emergency requests for federal help from Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Alabama before Helene made landfall.

On Saturday, President Joe Biden said he had directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s administrator, Deanne Criswell, to travel across the region to assess damage. More than 1,270 rescuers have been deployed, FEMA said.

The death toll is likely to rise, officials say.

Western North Carolina was facing a historic disaster after the storm.

Helene has brought pounding rains and dangerous landslides to western North Carolina, putting the region in crisis mode. “It’s like a mini-apocalypse,” Gretchen Hogan, a resident of Brevard, North Carolina, said of the situation there.

Across several counties, towns were cut off from the rest of the state. Cellphone service and power were down in many areas, complicating officials’ efforts to reach people calling 911. Debris, downed trees and flooding led to more than 400 road closures, and gas stations were running out of fuel. Officials said to consider all roads in western North Carolina closed, with only emergency rescue vehicles allowed to travel.

These challenges have made rescuing residents and assessing damage a nearly impossible task.

On Sunday, with assistance from search-and-rescue teams from other states and the federal government, the state was airdropping food to cutoff communities and sending workers to restore water systems. In Asheville, officials said restoring the water system there could take weeks.

People in the region were scrambling to find cellular service, congregating in public places like libraries to try to

reach their family and friends. Officials in Buncombe County have asked for portable cell towers.

After roaring ashore into Florida, Helene set several records.

Helene barreled into Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane on Thursday, packing 140-mph winds. Fueled by very warm ocean temperatures, the storm was the strongest ever to strike the Big Bend region, a marshy and sparsely populated area.

Helene, which was the third hurricane to hit the Big Bend in 13 months, broke storm surge records across the Gulf Coast, many of which were last set just more than a year ago, when Hurricane Idalia drenched the same area.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke about the “complete obliteration of homes” in parts of the state at a news conference Saturday. Cedar Key, a small community on a collection of tiny islands jutting into the Gulf of Mexico, was “completely gone,” said Michael Bobbitt, who lives there. In Keaton Beach, another small shoreline community, the sheriff told a local TV station that 90% of the homes were washed away.

A record-high storm surge inundated the Tampa Bay region, including in areas that had rarely, or never, seen flooding. After facing several hurricanes in recent years, some residents in the region were left wondering whether it’s worth living there.

The storm also razed communities beyond Florida and North Carolina.

Helene overwhelmed towns hundreds of miles away from Florida with pounding rain, muddy water and tornadoes, knocking out power as far north as Cincinnati. Many creeks and rivers breached their banks, and water overtopped some dams.

A dam in eastern Tennessee, the Nolichucky Dam, was also on the verge of failing Saturday,

As of Sunday morning, at least 60 people were confirmed dead across five states: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. Causes of death ranged from rising floodwaters, falling trees, car crashes and a tornado produced by the storm. Many details on the victims were still unknown.

The highest toll out of one state was 25, in South Carolina. The fatalities included two volunteer firefighters who were responding to calls and killed after a tree fell on their fire truck, an official said.

In Florida, DeSantis said that 11 people were confirmed dead. And in North Carolina, officials said there were at least 11 storm-related deaths, adding that emergency responders have had trouble reaching relatives of the victims because of communications problems in the state.

“And tragically, we know there will be more,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said at a news briefing Sunday afternoon.

Storm waters from the French Broad River flood the River Arts District after Hurricane Helene in Asheville, N.C., on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (Mark Barrett/The New York Times)

The San Juan Daily Star

Wreckage and debris in the Gulf Coast community of Keaton Beach, Fla., on Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. Search-and-rescue efforts continue across the flooded southeast United States in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. (Zack Wittman/The New York Times)

Harris and Trump are neck and neck in Michigan and Wisconsin, polls find

By REID J. EPSTEIN, RUTH IGIELNIK and CAMILLE BAKER

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are in an even tighter race in the battlegrounds of Michigan and Wisconsin than just seven weeks ago, according to new polling from The New York Times and Siena College.

Harris’ advantage from early August has been chiseled away slightly by Trump’s enduring strength on economic issues, the polls found, a potentially troubling development for the vice president given that the economy remains the most important issue driving voters.

With less than 40 days until Election Day, the race is essentially tied in Michigan, with Harris receiving 48% support among likely voters and Trump garnering 47% — well within the poll’s margin of error. In Wisconsin, a state where polls have a history of overstating support for Democrats, Harris holds 49% to Trump’s 47%.

The polls also found that Harris had a lead of 9 percentage points over Trump in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, whose lone electoral vote could be decisive in the Electoral College. In one possible scenario, the district could give Harris exactly the 270 electoral votes she would need to win the election if she carried Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Trump captured the Sun Belt battlegrounds, where Times/Siena polls show he is ahead.

The Times and Siena College also tested the presidential race in Ohio, which is not considered a battleground for the White House but has one of the country’s most competitive Senate races. Trump leads by 6 points in Ohio, while Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, is ahead of his Republican opponent, Bernie Moreno, by 4 points. Wisconsin, which has for months appeared to be a bright spot for Democrats on the presidential battleground map, has been decided by less than 1 point in four of the last six campaigns, including 2020. Biden won Michigan by 3 points that year after Trump carried it by 0.3 points in 2016.

Trump remains broadly disliked, but interviews with those polled show that Harris faces a challenge in winning over voters who cannot bring themselves to support the former president.

“I’m not a happy camper,” said Matt Henderson, 65, a maintenance man for the local electric company in Westland, Michigan. He said he was likely to vote for Harris not because he was politically drawn to her but to prevent Trump from returning to power.

“Jan. 6, 2021, proved he is a traitor,” Henderson said. “He doesn’t care about anything but himself. He tried to steal an election.”

The polls found that 80% of Black voters across Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio were planning to vote for Harris, and 13% for Trump. An additional 7% of Black voters said they did not know how they would vote. While Harris has a huge edge among Black voters, the 80% figure is less than Biden won nationally four years ago.

Antonio Dawkins, 40, a regional sales manager from Waukesha, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, said he planned to vote but would leave the presidential line blank. He dislikes Trump but is also dissatisfied with Harris.

“She’s kind of taking the car salesman pitch and trying to sell everybody that she’s not Trump, and that’s not enough,” said Dawkins, who is Black. “She says a lot of things that sound good with no details. So I guess they call that — there’s no meat and potatoes.”

The polling results fit a recurring theme with voters in battleground states: Many tend to believe that Trump’s time in office helped people like them, and they worry that Harris’ policies would hurt people like them.

In Michigan and Wisconsin, voters were about equally likely to say Harris’ policies would help as they are to say her policies would hurt: 41% versus 40%. But 46% of voters in the two states said Trump’s policies would help people like them.

Yet when voters in Michigan and Wisconsin were

presented with a direct head-to-head question about which candidate they trusted more to “help people like you,” Harris had a slight edge, suggesting that voters drew a subtle distinction between the candidates and their policies.

Voters in the states were also tied on which candidate they trust more to help the working class.

After the economy, abortion was the second most important issue to voters in Michigan and Wisconsin, with 18% saying it was central to their choice. That is an increase from May, when 13% of voters in the two states said abortion was their top issue.

On abortion, voters in Michigan preferred Harris to Trump by 20 points and in Wisconsin by 13 points. In Wisconsin, though, that is down from a 22-point advantage in August. In Michigan, Harris’ numbers on abortion are largely unchanged.

Trump’s biggest vulnerabilities relate to his comportment. In Wisconsin, 55% of undecided and persuadable voters cited his behavior, his honesty and his ability to serve as president as their among their chief concerns. In Michigan, the number was lower, at 47%.

“He’s divisive, he’s violent, he’s vile,” said Lesley McKenzie, 64, an executive assistant from Southfield, Michigan. “He’s unbecoming to even sit or even to pass by the White House. I mean, it’s totally crazy.” She added: “He is like rolling in a pigsty. Every day he comes up with crazy things. I don’t think he’s all there. And if he is, oh my God.”

The crucial group of voters who could decide the election — undecided and persuadable Americans — has shrunk slightly since August as they begin to solidify their decisions.

In Michigan and Wisconsin, these voters leaned slightly toward Harris, though they have reservations about both candidates. Roughly a third said their primary concern about Trump is his personality, while 12% worried about whether he could actually do the job and 8% were apprehensive about his honesty and truthfulness.

Fewer undecided and persuadable voters had concerns about Harris’ personality and temperament. Just 10% in Michigan and Wisconsin said her personality or judgment were their main concern, while 19% worried about her honesty and truthfulness.

Nathan Booth, 27, a surgical resident from the Detroit suburbs, called Trump’s debate performance this month “embarrassing.” Booth said he voted for Trump in 2016 and then for Biden in 2020 because of the Republican president’s behavior.

Despite those feelings, Booth said he was inclined to vote for Trump again this year because of his dissatisfaction with Biden’s handling of the economy.

“In the last three years, my purchasing power has gone down,” he said. “I have less money than I did before, and I imagine that the majority of the country making under $100,000 is feeling the same way.”

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, stands on stage during a rally at the Prairie du Chien Area Arts Center in Prairie du Chien, Wis., on Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

Eastern Tennessee officials brace residents for ‘life lost’ after Helene

By NICHOLAS BOGEL-BURROUGHS

There has been “life lost” in Tennessee, an emergency official in the state said Saturday evening, making it the sixth state where people have been killed by Hurricane Helene, which ravaged the Southeast and left more than 50 dead this past week.

Jimmy Erwin, the director of emergency management in Unicoi County, Tennessee, fought back tears at a news conference as he said there had been some deaths in the storm. He declined to say how many people had died, and the police chief in Erwin, Tennessee, Regan Tilson, said no bodies had yet been recovered.

Erwin said five or six people remained missing — a list winnowed significantly from more than 30 missing people earlier in the day — and that search and rescue teams would be looking for people along the Nolichucky River until nightfall. They would then pick back up first thing in the morning.

“We didn’t think we’d be here today,” Erwin said. Many residents are without water or power, and he said it could be a week before the electricity returns for some. The county also lost its water

treatment plant, and he said anyone with water should boil their drinking water. Showers are being set up at a shelter at a local high school for residents to use.

Scenes of devastation abounded throughout the hilly, green Appalachian county of 17,000, particularly in and around Erwin, where a Baptist church was surrounded by rubble, and a crumpled recreational vehicle sat in a parking lot filled with debris. Downed trees lay on an impassable highway that cuts through the town.

Cody Scott, a Unicoi County commissioner, said he had never seen flooding in the county this bad. His brother had checked on the family’s farm Friday afternoon and been shaken by what he saw.

“He couldn’t believe his eyes,” Scott said. “It’s devastated the community.”

He said he and his family were evaluating how many trucks, tractors, pumps and other farm equipment they had lost, as well as how much of the farmland was flooded, but that he was most worried about his constituents who had lost homes. He said he was holding out hope that those missing would be found.

“The longer it goes, in any type of search and rescue situation, that’s not what you want to hear,” he said.

Debris surrounds a flood-damaged area in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Erwin, Tenn., on Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. There has been “life lost” in Tennessee, an emergency official in the state said on Saturday evening, making it the sixth state where people have been killed by Hurricane Helene, which ravaged the Southeast and left more than 50 dead last week. (David Kasnic/The New York Times)

Extreme weather is taxing utilities more often. Can AI help?

By AUSTYN GAFFNEY

More than 4 million people were without power Friday morning after the enormous ring of wind and rain known as Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida and moved north.

It is the latest storm to show utility companies’ increasing vulnerability to extreme weather events that are becoming more common and more intense under climate change.

“There are a lot of different signs of climate-related weather risks to infrastructure,” said Catie Hausman, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. Those risks include hurricanes and flooding, wildfires, heat waves and increased tornado risks or cold snaps in regions less used to them.

Extreme weather has increasingly strained the grid, and it is the No. 1 cause of major power outages in the United States. In some areas of the country, the risk of hurricane-induced power outages could become 50% higher in the coming decades as such storms get stronger.

Wind and rain are the dominant factors that can strain power grids, said Andrea Staid, a researcher in energy systems and climate analysis at the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute. The institute’s models show that as more hurricanes affect the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, more power outages will occur if the grid does not change.

“Hurricanes are not just a coastal problem,” Staid said. “Our models show that these storms can travel pretty far inland with strong winds, so we need to make sure people and communities have the information and resources needed to prepare.”

Now, in an effort to better predict what storms are coming and how to transition out of a fossil-dependent grid, utilities are looking to a new generation of technologies driven by artificial intelligence.

Hausman said that while she did not know whether AI was the right way to harden the grid, modern data and computing were needed to understand the problems.

“Whether AI is giving us something new or a black box of mush is going to depend on the company and the tools they’re using,” Hausman said.

What is clear? Utilities need to spend a lot of money to update their power systems to deal with storms both present and future.

“We’re still thinking of the grid as we

Curtis Drafton, who heads a volunteer search and rescue organization, surveys downed trees and power lines in Waukeenah, Fla., on Friday morning, Sept. 27, 2024. From hurricanes to wildfires, a new generation of technologies could help utilities better plan for the risk of extreme weather to their electric grid. (Paul Ratje/The New York Times)

have for the past 100 years, and it’s increasingly obvious that needs to change,” said Mark Dyson, managing director of the carbon-free electricity program at the global research firm Rocky Mountain Institute.

“Extreme weather, aging infrastructure and new technology are coming together in a way that creates an opportunity to use better technology, including AI-driven software, to help us keep the lights on and keep the grid affordable,” Dyson said.

One of the newest players in the nascent industry is Rhizome, a company founded in 2022 that uses AI-driven technology to help electric utilities identify and plan for vulnerabilities that could cause power failures.

“Rhizome’s AI platform approach is to fundamentally understand the relationships between hurricane conditions and grid impacts,” said Mishal Thadani, Rhizome’s cofounder. The company’s data points from thousands of hurricane-related asset failures and what caused them can show utilities their long-term risks from hurricanes, helping them figure out where to harden poles, move power lines underground or cut vegetation.

“Ultimately, we’re able to project how many future potential hurricane-related outages will be reduced per dollar of utility in-

vestment,” Thadani said.

Figuring out how to harden the grid and expand the country’s transmission network could lower costs to consumers, bring more renewables online and reduce power outages, Hausman said.

Most utilities are already using some machine learning or artificial intelligence technology, said Booga Gilbertson, a former utility executive and an investor in Rhizome. Right now, the flashy types of AI programming are language models like ChatGPT from Microsoft or Gemini from Google. Machine learning has been combing through a mind-boggling amount of data for more than a decade, Gilbertson said.

“It seems like once a month there’s a new entrant into this space,” she said. “Products like this are relatively new to the market, and the advent of AI and computing power have made them more available. It’s a tool utilities can now put into their tool chest.”

Artificial intelligence is also a known energy hog, and could ramp up the nation’s electricity demand by as much as 20% by the end of the decade. But the United States, like other global powers, wants to lead the world in AI. In September, the White House convened a group of utilities, artificial intelligence companies and data center opera-

tors to strategize for the future.

As the country’s transmission system struggles beneath the weight of growing electrification and a changing generation mix, the growing set of AI-driven products could potentially pivot AI’s bad climate reputation.

“I suspect that the amount of energy we would spend more than pays for itself in terms of maintaining an affordable and reliable grid,” Dyson said. “But the data to support that suspicion doesn’t exist yet. The industry is so immature we don’t have an outlook yet for the types of sectors that would be most advantaged from AI.”

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Assets in actively managed ETFs top $1 trillion worldwide

Assets in actively managed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) worldwide hit a record $1 trillion at the end of August, according to data provider ETFGI, boosted by easier regulations and a wave of product innovation.

Active ETFs seek to outperform the indexes they are benchmarked to, including the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100 and the Russell 1000 Growth Index. Bear Stearns launched the first active ETF in 2008.

While they make up just 7% of all global ETFs, active ETFs have accounted for 30% of all inflows into the funds as a whole for the last several years, Matthew Bartolini, head of SPDR Americas Research at State Street Research, told Reuters in the latest episode of Inside ETFs.

A key growth catalyst, analysts said, was the 2019 regulation popularly known as the “ETF rule,” which streamlined the complex process of winning approval for active ETFs from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Assets in the active ETF category have grown about 10-fold since 2019, according to data from ETF. com.

“We’re entering that period where seasonality has been a bit less favorable,” said Angelo Kourkafas, senior investment strategist at Edward Jones. “Despite the excitement about the start of the new rate-cutting cycle, it could still be a bumpy road ahead.”

The second half of September is historically the weakest two-week period of the year for the S&P 500, according to a Ned Davis Research analysis of data since 1950.

The index has also logged an average 0.45% decline in October during presidential years, data from CFRA going back to 1945 showed.

The S&P 500 was last up 1.87% at 5,723.44 points. The Nasdaq gained 2.70% to 18,048.05 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.42% at 42,090.90 points.

The rules apply to the highly technical space between prices stock sellers are willing to accept in a trade and what buyers are willing to pay, known as the bid-ask spread.

Allowing prices to be quoted in increments, or “tick sizes,” of less than a penny will result in narrower spreads, cutting transaction costs and allowing for more aggressive pricing, according to the SEC.

Volatility also tends to pick up in October in election years, with the Cboe Market Volatility index rising to an average level of 25 at the start of the month, as opposed to its long-term average of 19.2, according to an Edward Jones analysis of the past eight presidential election years. The VIX was recently at 16.4.

The market could be particularly sensitive to this year’s close election between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris. Recent polls show a virtually tied race.

“Unless the data deteriorates considerably, we think U.S . elections will start to be more at the forefront,” UBS equity derivative strategists said in a note.

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Growth has continued this year. As of Aug. 31, active ETF assets soared 42%, data from ETFGI showed.

The more relaxed regulations have also fueled innovation, Bartolini said, encouraging issuers to take novel approaches to products as they vie for investor dollars.

Active ETFs run the gamut from the plain vanilla, such as the BlackRock Large Cap Value ETF to more niche offerings, like the AdvisorShares Vice ETF, which invests in shares of companies involved in the alcohol, tobacco and cannabis industries.

“These regulatory rule changes have actually accelerated some of the more novel approaches that ETF issuers

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can bring to the marketplace,” Bartolini said.

Active ETFs include products that have been wildly volatile, such as Ark Innovation ETF, which soared 152% in 2020, only to slump 23% the following year. So far in 2024, it has lost 9.74%, compared with a 20% gain in the S&P 500. Some can also magnify risk, such as leveraged ETFs tied to the performance of individual stocks like Nvidia.

Nor are all active ETF issuers faring well.

The 10 largest issuers accounted for 75% of active ETF assets, according to a Morningstar report from earlier this year. The bottom half of active equity ETFs have only 3% of all the group’s assets.

The San Juan Daily Star

Why the world’s biggest powers can’t stop a Middle East war

By ROGER COHEN

Over almost a year of war in the Middle East, major powers have proved incapable of stopping or even significantly influencing the fighting, a failure that reflects a turbulent world of decentralized authority that seems likely to endure.

Stop-and-start negotiations between Israel and Hamas to end the fighting in the Gaza Strip, pushed by the United States, have repeatedly been described by the Biden administration as on the verge of a breakthrough, only to fail. The current Western-led attempt to avert a full-scale IsraeliHezbollah war in Lebanon amounts to a scramble to avert disaster. Its chances of success seem deeply uncertain after the Israeli killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, on Friday.

“There’s more capability in more hands in a world where centrifugal forces are far stronger than centralizing ones,” said Richard Haass, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The Middle East is the primary case study of this dangerous fragmentation.”

The killing of Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah over more than three decades and the man who built the Shiite organization into one of the most powerful nonstate armed forces in the world, leaves a vacuum Hezbollah will likely take a long time to fill. It is a major blow to Iran, the chief backer of Hezbollah, that may even destabilize the Islamic Republic. Whether full-scale war will come to Lebanon remains unclear.

“Nasrallah represented everything for Hezbollah, and Hezbollah was the advance arm of Iran,” said Gilles Kepel, a leading French expert on the Middle East and author of a book on the world’s upheaval since Oct. 7. “Now the Islamic Republic is weakened, perhaps mortally, and one wonders who can even give an order for Hezbollah today.”

For many years, the United States was the only country that could bring constructive pressure to bear on both Israel and Arab states. It engineered the 1978 Camp David Accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt, and the Israel-Jordan peace of 1994. Just over three decades ago, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Yasser Arafat, the chair of the Palestine Liberation Organization, shook hands on the White House lawn in the name of peace, only for the fragile hope of that embrace to erode steadily.

The world, and Israel’s primary enemies, have since changed. America’s ability to influence Iran, its implacable foe for decades, and Iran’s proxies like Hezbollah, is marginal. Designated as terrorist organizations in Washington, Hamas and Hezbollah effectively exist beyond the reach of American diplomacy.

The United States does have enduring leverage over Israel, notably in the form of military aid that involved a $15 billion package signed this year by President Joe Biden. But an ironclad alliance with Israel built around strategic

A demonstrator holds a portrait of Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, as others wave Iranian and Hezbollah flags at an anti-Israel rally after Friday prayers in Tehran, Sept. 27, 2024. Israeli officials gave their American counterparts no advance warning of the strike that killed Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, according to U.S. officials. (Arash Khamooshi/The New York Times)

and domestic political considerations, as well as the shared values of two democracies, means Washington will almost certainly never threaten to cut — let alone cut off — the flow of arms.

The overwhelming Israeli military response in Gaza to the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of Israelis and its seizure of some 250 hostages has drawn mild reprimands from Biden. He has called Israel’s actions “over the top,” for example. But American support for its embattled ally has been resolute as Palestinian casualties in Gaza have risen into the tens of thousands, many of them civilians.

The United States, under any conceivable presidency, is not about to desert a Jewish state whose existence had been increasingly questioned over the past year, from American campuses to the streets of the very Europe that embarked on the annihilation of the Jewish people less than a century ago.

“If U.S. policy toward Israel ever changed, it would only be at the margins,” Haass said, despite the growing sympathy, especially among young Americans, for the Palestinian cause.

Other powers have essentially been onlookers as the bloodshed has spread. China, a major importer of Iranian oil and a major supporter of anything that might weaken the American-led world order that emerged from the ruins in 1945, has little interest in donning the mantle of peacemaker.

Russia also has scant inclination to be helpful, especially on the eve of the Nov. 5 election in the United States. Reliant on Iran for defense technology and drones in its intractable war in Ukraine, it is no less enthused than China over any signs of American decline or any opportunity to

bog America down in a Middle Eastern mire.

Based on his past behavior, the potential return to the White House of former President Donald Trump is likely seen in Moscow as the return of a leader who would prove complaisant toward President Vladimir Putin.

Among regional powers, none is strong enough or committed enough to the Palestinian cause to confront Israel militarily. In the end, Iran is cautious because it knows the cost of all-out war could be the end of the Islamic Republic; Egypt fears an enormous influx of Palestinian refugees; and Saudi Arabia seeks a Palestinian state, but would not put Saudi lives on the line for that cause.

As for Qatar, it funded Hamas with hundreds of millions of dollars a year that went in part to the construction of a labyrinthine web of tunnels, some as deep as 250 feet, where Israeli hostages have been held. It enjoyed the complicity of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who saw Hamas as an effective way to undermine the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and so undercut any chance of peace.

The disaster of Oct. 7 was also the culmination of the cynical manipulation, by Arab and Israeli leaders, of the Palestinian quest for statehood. A year on, nobody knows how to pick up the pieces.

Absent any coherent and coordinated international response, Netanyahu and Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader and a mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack, face no consequences in pursuing a destructive course, whose endpoint is unclear but which will certainly involve the loss of more lives.

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Much of Amazon burns, with dire implications

By MANUELA ANDREONI

Large parts of Brazil, a country that holds over a tenth of the world’s fresh water, are on fire. They include vast areas of the Amazon rainforest and the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetlands, as well as the Cerrado grasslands and the Atlantic forests along the country’s eastern coast.

The number of fires in the country has more than doubled compared with last year, burning an area the size of Costa Rica in August alone.

Smoke covered large parts of South America this month and blackened the skies of some of the region’s biggest cities, including Buenos Aires, Argentina; Sao Paulo; and La Paz, Bolivia. As if that weren’t dystopian enough, black rain from the soot produced by the fires has fallen over cities in several states in Brazil.

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In much of Brazil, fire season usually peaks this time of the year, as farmers set fire to pasture and burn recently deforested plots to clear them of unwanted vegetation. But blazes have unleashed a lot more destruction this year.

Although experts say many of the fires were very likely started by humans, the abundance of dry vegetation fueled immense blazes that grew out of control in extraordinary ways.

Almost half of the fires in the Amazon burned pristine forests, according to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. That is far from typical. It means fighting deforestation in the Amazon is no longer enough to stop fires.

This shows that fire-control practices in some of the world’s most biodiverse places are not working. And that threatens myriad forms of life, including us. The collapse of the Amazon rainforest could release the equivalent of as much as 20 years’ worth of global carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

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Deforestation is still a big problem in South America. The Cerrado grasslands, in the east of Brazil, continue to lose much of their tree cover as farmers plant soy crops that can cover areas as big as whole cities. And, while deforestation in the Amazon rainforest has slowed, it is still happening at a faster pace than the forest’s recovery rate.

Stopping deforestation should still be the priority, according to scientists. But, as the planet warms, other threats are growing.

The aftermath of a fire in the Amazon rainforest, in Brazil’s Para state, Aug. 13, 2020. Fire-control practices in some of the world’s most biodiverse places are not working. (Victor Moriyama/The New York Times)

that heat up the atmosphere, so extreme droughts like the current one are likely to become more frequent, scientists say.

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A study from 2018 showed that when there is drought in the Amazon, fires can increase even when deforestation goes down. That’s because drier vegetation in the form of standing trees continues to fuel the blazes.“If fires are a direct consequence of deforestation, then a policy to fight deforestation should also be effective against fires,” said Luiz Aragão, a scientist at the space research institute and one of the authors of the study. “And what we are seeing is that it isn’t.”

“Maybe 2024 is the best year of the ones that are coming, as incredible as it may seem,” said Erika Berenguer, a senior research associate at the University of Oxford. “The climate models show a big share of the biome is going to become drier.”

Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, recently told senators there that “we may lose the Pantanal by the end of the century,” explaining that dwindling rain and increasing heat are huge obstacles to the wetlands’ ability to recharge to sustainable levels.

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Large parts of South America are under the worst category of drought. That’s partly because of natural climate patterns, such as El Nino, which are associated with scarcer rains in the region. But global warming is probably making matters worse in the background.

Last year, scientists found that higher temperatures had made the drought in the Amazon more intense. It’s also likely that these weather patterns will change soon, as La Nina, which cools the Pacific and usually means more rain in this part of the world, sets in.

Possible ecosystem changes

Looking years ahead, the situation is unlikely to improve. Humans are still burning fossil fuels

The forest didn’t evolve to burn like other ecosystems such as the boreal forests, Berenguer said. The bark on its trees is thin, unlike that of redwood trees and sequoias, so even a little fire can kill them.

The types of Amazonian plants that can grow back after fires aren’t the majestic trees we associate with the rainforest, but scrubbier ones that grow and die fast and hold a lot less planet-warming carbon in their trunks.

“What the data shows is that even 30 years after fire, the burned forest still has 25% less carbon than a forest that never burned,” Berenguer said.

Pontevedra, a Spanish city that picked pedestrians over cars

By TANYA MOHN

Pontevedra may be a smaller city in northwest Spain, but it has been a pioneer in favoring pedestrians over cars for more than 20 years. The city has played a large role in inspiring other municipalities and continues to be a model on how to successfully confront the challenges of climate change by reducing traffic and cutting emissions.

When Mayor Miguel Anxo Fernández Lores was elected in 1999, Pontevedra embarked on a quest to transform itself into a city that supports clean air, walkability and safe streets. Since then, it has received international recognition and numerous awards for sustainability mobility, road safety and urban design.

Officials, architects and urban planners in dozens of cities in Europe, North and South America, and Asia, have made inquiries and traveled to Pontevedra — including a recent visit from a delegation from Suncheon, South Korea — to learn about its achievements.

In a video interview, the mayor spoke about the steps taken by the city and if they can be replicated elsewhere. The conversation, interpreted by Pontevedra’s general director of mobility, Jesús Gómez Viñas, and general director of security, Daniel Macenlle, has been edited and condensed.

Q: You described Pontevedra as a “car warehouse” in 1999. Why?

A: The city center was overcrowded by private cars and congested. Noise, pollution and safety risk were high. The whole municipality is about 120 square kilometers (about 46 square miles), with just under 85,000 people, about 80% of them living in the historic center, where every day the number of vehicles trying to enter was three times more than Madrid and five times more than London.

Q: What inspired you to make changes?

A: I studied alternative models for cities during the 12 years before becoming mayor. I read many books, like “City of Children” by Francesco Tonucci, about the transformation of cities and what we had to do in order to make changes. And I looked at what other cities were doing, in Spain and around the world.

Q: What were the goals in 1999?

A: The idea was to reclaim public space for pedestrians and limit cars in the city center. We wanted a city for people, a compact city where all the basic services and shops would be within a five-minute walk, accessible to everyone.

Q: What were the initial steps?

A: Measures were implemented little by little. The first stages, which took four to eight years, were designed to give the people more

Pedestrians in the downtown area of Pontevedra, a city in northwest Spain, Sept. 9, 2024. For over two decades the city’s mayor has reclaimed public space for people and limited vehicles in the city center, which reduced traffic and improved air quality.

(Matilde Viegas/The New York Times)

public space by reducing traffic and expelling most cars. We did this by eliminating vehicles passing through the city center as a shortcut and driving around looking for parking places. Roads were closed off, most on-street parking spots were removed, and free parking on the center’s periphery and for service vehicles for a limited time was established. We allowed only necessary traffic to keep the city working, for things like loading and unloading goods, and picking up or dropping off people. Eventually, streets were narrowed, sidewalks were widened, the speed limit was lowered, traffic-calming measures like raised pedestrian crosswalks and other physical barriers were installed, and more lighting, trees and green spaces were added.

Q: How did residents react?

A: At the beginning, there were protests until they could see the results of the initial transformation. We listened to the public, but it’s important for leaders to have the political courage to implement the project despite initial opposition.

When I became mayor, I had a very strong team with very clear ideas and focus. Within a month of pedestrianizing the historic center, there was approval from the citizens, local business owners and professional associations. After they saw the advantages, they asked for more, so changes expanded to the surrounding areas.

Q: Have any cities successfully replicated what Pontevedra has done?

A: There are many cities in the world taking steps in this direction, recovering spaces and seeking environmental balance, but very

slowly and not with the same determination as in Pontevedra. More places could do it, but aren’t.

Most ideas about what to do to accomplish the transformation that we have done are widely known. Books on the topic date from 1928, but we aren’t doing what we need to do to get it done. The knowledge has been there for many years. Many government leaders know what to do, but are afraid they will lose elections.

Q: Can the principles that worked in Pontevedra be applied in any city or town?

A: The philosophy, values and principles implemented in Pontevedra: traffic reduction, recovering spaces from the cars for pedestrians, calming traffic measures — these can be applied anywhere.

There are three basic pillars needed for success: political will, skilled civil servants and citizen support. Politicians must have studied and read widely about mobility and the transformation of cities, and have a clear idea about what they want to implement. Police, engineers, architects and others who do the work must understand the goals of the project and work together to accomplish them. And the public must also understand and support the policies and the process and defend them through voting.

Q: Are the challenges different for large and small cities?

A: In big cities, the problem is not as serious because people have alternative ways to move, often a complex network of public transport, like subways and other transportation options that Pontevedra doesn’t have. If you ban cars, people have to move mostly on foot. But despite smaller cities facing more challenges, Pontevedra’s principles are globally applicable

Q: What is Pontevedra like today?

A: The air quality is good 365 days a year. CO2 emissions dropped about 70%, and we have practically no noise in the city. Traffic decreased — by 97% in the historic center and by 77% and 53% in the peripheral areas.

The space devoted to people increased. Travel inside the city center — about 90% — is mostly on foot, 80% of children 6 to 12 years old walk to school and can play safely in plazas and streets, and there have been no traffic deaths since 2011.

People came back to the city center. The population of Pontevedra grew and is the youngest in Galicia, a region where it declined overall. Urban transformation — it’s a process, and we are still working on it. But the quality of life is really high. You can see it.

The most important question Kamala Harris hasn’t answered

By ROSS DOUTHAT

Not all the policy questions left unanswered by Kamala Harris’ studiously vague presidential campaign are created equal. It is not especially urgent, for instance, to know how Harris’ views of the ideal health care system have evolved since the great Medicare for All debates of 2020, given the strong likelihood that as president she would share power with a Republican Congress and any sweeping domestic policy initiatives would be stillborn.

It is rather more important, on the other hand, to know what a President Harris would do about the war in Ukraine, the most significant crisis that she would immediately inherit.

With Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington last week, we were treated to a formal restatement of Harris’ support for the Biden administration’s position from early in the war, which envisioned Ukraine taking back most of its lost territory: Standing beside the Ukrainian leader, the vice president dismissed any deal-making that involves territorial concessions as Putinist fellow-traveling and “proposals for surrender.” (The intended contrast with Donald Trump is obvious, since Trump is promising to immediately seek an armistice even as he declines to detail terms.)

But even as the vice president was issuing this statement, the administration was leaking doubts about Zelenskyy’s supposed plan for victory, dismissing it as “little more than a repackaged request for more weapons and the lifting of restrictions on long-range missiles,” to quote The Wall Street Journal. In other words, it’s a request for help to slow the grinding pace of Russian gains, but not a plan to actually deliver the victorious endgame that Kyiv and Washington have officially been seeking.

In fairness to Zelenskyy, it’s not clear what form such a plan could take, absent the direct NATO intervention that the Biden White House has prudently resisted. The situation on the front has turned against Ukraine over the last year, with the main question right now being just how bad things are likely to get.

The Economist, speaking for some part of the Western establishment, has an intensely pessimistic assessment in its latest issue, emphasizing Russian advantages in numbers, firepower and cash. Cathy Young, writing for The Bulwark, has a more optimistic take, arguing that the current Russian push may hit its limits soon, that Moscow may be hoping “to seize as much land as they can by winter, in hopes of getting a cease-fire deal that freezes the territorial status quo.” But both readings converge on

the reality that for now Ukraine’s main goal is to stabilize the front, and the hope of a rapid Russian retreat that many hawks nurtured in 2022 and 2023 has slipped away.

Such a situation presents two levels of uncertainty about what a Harris administration might decide to do. The immediate questions are how long the United States can persist in supporting a “plan” for victory that does not actually exist, to what extent Trump’s call for negotiations is a likely endpoint for U.S. policy no matter which candidate wins in November, and whether both the Biden White House and Harris herself are just hoping Ukraine holds the line through the election — at which point their no-negotiation stance may become a lot more flexible.

The longer-term questions involve the place of Ukraine in American grand strategy, which is dealing with a range of dangerous stress points at the moment. The initial hope that the Ukraine war would neutralize one of our challengers looks relatively vain: Russia has weathered our economic warfare and seems to be thriving, for now, with a war economy deeply integrated with our more significant rivals in Beijing. And that SinoRussian integration is a key part of a landscape that a recent bipartisan report by the Commission on the National Defense Strategy called “the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945,” in terms of our vulnerabilities to our major adversaries and “the potential for near-term major war.”

There may be some hyperbole in that assessment, but certainly this is the most fraught moment for American power since the end of the Cold War, with challenges on a scale that requires either substantial rearmament, meaningful retrenchment or some combination of the two. And the current White House has struggled with this balance, first retrenching chaotically in Afghanistan, and thereafter responding to new crises by doubling down on America’s promises — but without a clear plan to make those commitments sustainable, to match our rhetoric with underlying strength.

Ukraine in this context isn’t just a major strategic problem in its own right but one decision point among many, from the Middle East to East and Northeast Asia, that will test the next president’s ability to set priorities, recalibrate commitments and match our expansive ends with our more limited means.

Does Harris have a different vision from the current president on how to defend the Pax Americana? Does she have any specific vision? None of the unanswered questions about her candidacy are likely to matter more, or have answers that cost more if the world does not cooperate.

Vice President Kamala Harris and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine speak on the balcony of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. (Damon Winter/The New York Times)

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SAN JUAN – Con el fin de viabilizar mayores oportunidades de vivienda para los adultos mayores, el representante por el Distrito #4 de San Juan, Víctor Parés, propuso utilizar escuelas en desuso para la creación de una red de complejos de vivienda asistida para personas de 65 años o más.

“Cónsono con las acciones de nuestro alcalde, Miguel Romero, el cual busca ampliar el inventario de unidades de vivienda para personas de la tercera edad, estamos evaluando la propuesta de utilizar escuelas en desuso, al igual que otras estructuras del gobierno central que se encuentren en desuso, para crear complejos de vivienda asistida para nuestra población de adultos mayores”, comentó el Representante del Partido Nuevo Progresista.

“En Puerto Rico viven alrededor de un millón de personas de 65 años o más. La cifra en San Juan es sustancial, por eso necesitamos buscar alternativas de viviendas reales y concretas. La idea de convertir estas estructuras abandonadas en áreas funcionales de vivienda

asistida es una alternativa que vamos a explorar con la empresa privada, pues estos complejos podrían convertirse en un modelo de alianza público-privada para el beneficio de nuestra gente”, explicó Parés.

Según dijo el legislador, el concepto de utilizar espacios, particularmente escuelas en desuso para convertirlas en complejos de vivienda asistida para adultos mayores ha ido en aumento en estados como Arizona, Alabama, Oregon, Nebraska y Oklahoma, entre otras jurisdicciones.

“El Departamento de Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano federal, (HUD por sus siglas en inglés) provee fondos para este tipo de proyectos, junto con la empresa privada, se pueden crear estos complejos de vivienda asistida, inclusive hasta cooperativas se pueden formar para esos fines. Lo que no podemos hacer es quedarnos de brazos cruzados en esto”, añadió el Representante novoprogresista, quien iniciara el proceso realizando un inventario de estructuras gubernamentales en desuso que cuenten con el potencial de convertirse en complejos de vivienda.

“Este modelo de ecosistemas de vivienda para adul-

POR CYBERNEWS

LOÍZA – Las autoridades estatales y federales incautaron a eso de la 1:00 de la madrugada del sábado, 10 fardos de cocaína en las costas del sector Arenas, en Piñones, Loíza.

Según el reporte de la Policía, la embarcación, que trajo este cargamento de drogas fue descrita como una Eduardono color azul, de 25 pies de eslora y dos motores.

SAN SEBASTIÁN – Las autoridades rescataron en la tarde del sábado a 7 personas que quedaron atrapadas en una crecida del charco Gozalandia, del barrio Bahomamey de San Sebastián.

Personal de Manejo de Emergencia, efectivos de diversas agencias y voluntarios, realizaron el rescate del grupo.

tos mayores establece una comunidad de servicios, así como genera empleos directos para hasta para los mismos residentes. Son complejos que impulsan al adulto mayor a alcanzar un grado de independencia de movilidad que los ayudará en esta etapa de sus vidas”, concluyó diciendo.

Además, se detuvieron 4 personas de estatus migratorio no definido.

Este valor estimado aproximado es de 5 millones de dólares.

Se exhorta a la ciudadanía que de poseer información que ayude al esclarecimiento de casos favor de llamar al 787-343-2020. También, pueden escribir a través de Twitter en @PRPDNoticias o Facebook en www.facebook. com/prpdgov.

September 30, 2024

10 great Maggie Smith performances to stream

The actress Maggie Smith, in character as Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, on the set of “Downton Abbey” outside Highclere Castle in England on June 4, 2015. Smith, one of the finest British stage and screen actors of her generation, whose award-winning roles ranged from a freethinking Scottish schoolteacher in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” to the acid-tongued dowager countess on “Downton Abbey,” died Friday, Sept. 27, 2024 in London. She was 89. (Nick Briggs/The New York Times)

By NOEL MURRAY

Maggie Smith, who was 89 when she died Friday, made her professional stage debut on Broadway in the 1950s, when she was still in her early 20s. In the decades that followed, she worked steadily in movies and television, while regularly returning to the theater.

Smith won her first Oscar for the title role in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (1969), a charismatic and manipulative teacher who has a profound and, at times, destructive effect on the lives of the teenage girls in her charge. She went on to win another Oscar, a Tony and four Emmys, and became known in her later years for playing a particular type of Englishwoman: sturdy, smart, sharp-tongued and rooted sometimes stubbornly in the traditions of the past.

Audiences in the 21st century came to love Smith in two recurring roles: as the heroic Professor Minerva McGonagall in the “Harry Potter” movies and as the coolly disapproving dowager countess Violet Crawley in the period TV drama “Downton Abbey.” But her career was long and eclectic, with a mix of serious and comic characters, in both supporting and leading roles. Here are 10 of Smith’s best performances that are available to stream:

1972: ‘Travels With My Aunt’

Though she was only in her late 30s at the time, Smith took an early step toward her most familiar screen persona — the dynamic and unforgettable older relative — in this adaptation of Graham Greene’s offbeat adventure novel. Filling in for Katharine Hepburn (who differed with the studio and with her old friend, director George Cukor, on how best to tell her character’s story), Smith ended up nabbing her third Oscar nomination, playing the eccentric globe-trotter Augusta Bertram, who enlists a stuffy, middle-aged Londoner

in one of her illicit moneymaking schemes while hiding her true connection to him. Smith builds an outsize yet complex character via flashbacks that show how she learned to eschew conventional mores and to enjoy life on her own terms. (Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.)

1976: ‘Murder by Death’

Written by Neil Simon, this parody of country house murder-mysteries — the kind where a bunch of disparate folks gather for a weekend and someone winds up dead — has a cast of veteran actors playing spoof versions of some classic literary and movie detectives. Smith is paired with David Niven, who play Dora and Dick Charleston, a witty, high-society couple in the mold of Nick and Nora Charles from “The Thin Man.” Though the film is silly by design, Smith looks to be having a marvelous time swapping acerbic quips with her husband and the other guests. (Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.)

1978: ‘California Suite’

Two years after “Murder by Death,” Smith tackled another Neil Simon script and won her second Oscar, aptly, for playing a British actress who’s been nominated for an Academy Award. Based on Simon’s play, “California Suite” is made up of four short vignettes, each set in a ritzy Beverly Hills hotel. Smith’s segment has her opposite Michael Caine as her character’s not-so-secretly-gay husband. The role allowed Smith to explore some of the anxieties of being a respected middle-aged movie star, known more for small, arty pictures than blockbusters. (Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.)

1982: ‘Evil Under the Sun’

In the 1970s and ’80s, actor Peter Ustinov played Agatha Christie’s persnickety Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in a popular series of feature films and TV movies. Smith appeared in two of the big-screen outings: “Death on the Nile” (1978) and “Evil Under the Sun” (1982). Both are highly entertaining, but the ’82 film is superior both as a mystery — with a clever plot involving a murder for which every suspect seemingly has an airtight alibi — and as a showcase for Smith, who is wryly funny as a hotelier who has hilariously cutting comments to make about her more troublesome guests. (Stream it on BritBox; rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.)

1984 ‘A Private Function’

Though Smith won only two Oscars (from six nominations), she was a regular at the BAFTAs throughout her career, often winning awards for movies that barely made a ripple in the United States. She took home the best actress prize for this small gem: a subtle social satire, set just after World War II, about a small English town where the locals are beginning to turn on one another over the government’s food-rationing laws. Smith plays an ambitious middle-class wife who’s fed up with living a life of enforced poverty, and who urges her timid husband (Michael Palin) to steal a pig. She excels in the role of someone who is both manipulative and sympathetic. (Stream it on The Criterion Channel.)

1985: ‘A Room With a View’

Director James Ivory, screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and producer Ismail Merchant had an Oscar-winning boxoffice hit with their adaptation of the E.M. Forster’s charming romance set against the picturesque backdrops of rural England and Italy’s Tuscany region. The story is about a young woman named Lucy (Helena Bonham Carter) whose carefully planned life is upended when she meets a freethinking hunk (Julian Sands). Smith plays a key role as Lucy’s dreary older cousin, whose fussy, gossipy nature ultimately helps drive the heroine to seek something more. (Stream it on Max, BritBox or The Criterion Channel; rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.)

1987: ‘The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne’

In another BAFTA-winning performance, Smith plays an alcoholic piano teacher named Judith, living alone in a Dublin boardinghouse and still holding out hope she might meet and marry the man of her dreams. Bob Hoskins plays her latest prospect, James, a restless schemer from America, who mistakenly thinks Judith has enough money to invest in his business. Based on a Brian Moore novel, “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” is a muted and melancholy film, featuring one of Smith’s richest, if saddest, performances. (Stream it on The Criterion Channel.)

1992: ‘Sister Act’

In the 1990s and beyond, Smith became an in-demand character actor, lending her withering glares and dryly disdainful line readings to more comic supporting roles. She had one of her most high-profile parts in the musical comedy “Sister Act,” playing a grumpy old nun who makes life miserable for Deloris (Whoopi Goldberg), a key witness in a criminal trial who hides out in a financially struggling convent. Smith’s turn as the Reverend Mother is remarkably well-rounded — both funny and poignant — as she plays someone whose authoritarian bent masks her worry that she’s become old and out of touch. (Stream it on Disney+; rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.)

2001: ‘Gosford Park’

In Robert Altman’s lightly satirical and enormously entertaining murder-mystery, Smith is part of an ensemble of excellent British and American actors, all playing an assortment of 1930s aristocrats and servants gathered at a country house for a weekend of hunting and socializing. Nearly everyone in the film has something pithy or snide to say about nearly everyone else, but Smith has the keenest wit as a countess who coolly dissects the vulgar Americans in their midst. (Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.)

2010-15: ‘Downton Abbey’

This long-running TV and movie series was created by Julian Fellowes, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Gosford Park,” who used the project to expand on one of that film’s central themes: the huge changes in English culture in the 20th century, as members of the landowning aristocracy saw their power and influence over their servants and tenants wane. Smith plays a wealthy family’s irritable old matriarch: a dowager countess who vocally decries nearly every move toward modernity. Over the course of the long “Downton Abbey” run, Smith made the character more than just a collection of gripes, finding the relatable humanity within a woman watching the rapid decline of a world she once ruled. (Stream it on Amazon Prime, BritBox or Peacock; buy it on Apple TV, Google Play or Vudu.)

The San Juan Daily Star

The San Juan Daily Star

Monday, September 30, 2024 17

Who’s the dodo now? A famously extinct bird, reconsidered.

By FRANZ LIDZ

The dodo was a flightless bird about the size of a male turkey that had a long, hooked beak and the goofy charm of an emperor penguin. Its ancestor first appeared on Earth more than 25 million years ago, and by 1662, because of humans, it had vanished from Mauritius, a remote island in the Indian Ocean, the only place it ever existed.

The dodo has since become fixed in society’s imagination as the very emblem of ineptitude, an evolutionary clown — an impression greatly helped by the bird’s appearance in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” in 1865. In 1941, humorist Will Cuppy wrote that the dodo — with an ugly face, a misplaced tail, too-small wings and a prominent stomach — seemed to have been invented for the sole purpose of becoming extinct. “You can’t look like that and survive,” he mused. “Or can you?”

Neil Gostling, a paleobiologist at the University of Southampton in England, listens to these aspersions and laughs. “Eighty-three years later, the idea persists that dodos were slow, fat, useless balls of feathers that blundered into their own demise,” he said. “The fact is that the birds were fast, agile and, before being wiped out, had been doing their thing and doing it incredibly well for about 12 million years.”

Gostling was an author of a recent paper published in The Zoological Journal of the Linnaean Society that tries to set the record straight. By revisiting 400 years of literature and analyzing fossil evidence — including the world’s only surviving soft tissue from a dodo, kept in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History — his team of scientists undertook the most comprehensive review to date of the bird’s taxonomy and evolutionary history.

The team’s research forms the bedrock of a broader project to shed light on the dodo’s role in the ecosystem of Mauritius, which was once almost entirely a dense forest of ebony and bamboo. Julian Hume, an avian paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London who collaborated on the study, said of the dodo, “Perhaps no creature has been so widely written about yet so poorly understood.”

The dodo was the first recorded extinction directly caused by humans and witnessed in real time, and it went extinct a century before the scientific rules of naming species were formalized, Gostling said: “Our aim was to provide new insights into its biology, behavior and what led to its disappearance.”

Dumb as a dodo?

In reassessing the dodo, researchers also sought to bring clarity to the story of its closest relative, the Rodrigues solitaire. Also flightless, the gooselike bird was endemic to the equally isolated island of Rodrigues, which is 350 miles east of Mauritius. After the island was settled by humans, the solitaire vanished for good around 1750.

The new study reconfirmed that the dodo and the solitaire were columbids, members of the pigeon and dove

A photo provided by the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in England shows the only known flesh and bone specimen remaining of the dodo. A comprehensive review of dodo science offers new insights into the biology and behavior of the much-ridiculed bird. (Oxford University Museum of Natural History via The New York Times)

family prized for their singular intelligence — an attribute that runs counter to the notion that the dodo was destined to die out because it was too stupid to survive. The researchers also concluded that there was just a single species of dodo (Raphus cucullatus) and solitaire (Pezophaps solitaria). They created a new family group name, Raphina subtribus nova, to unite the two birds.

Leon Claessens, a paleontologist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands who is not connected to the study, said the dodo was one of a select group of animals that had been named, classified and described often — probably too often. “The authors of the new paper make a valiant effort to hack through the nomenclatural thicket in which the dodo and the solitaire are hidden,” he said.

Genetic testing suggests that around 25 million years ago the two species shared a common Southeast Asian ancestor, which diverged about 12 million years ago into what became the dodo and the solitaire. Hume said the ancestral species, which could fly, island-hopped along the emergent Mascarene Plateau, an undersea archipelago that extends about 1,200 miles, from the Seychelles in the north to Réunion in the south. The dodos evolved on Mauritius, which arose through volcanic activity some 8 million years ago, and the solitaire stopped on Rodrigues, which popped up some 6.5 million years later.

Both birds were well adapted to their isolated habitats. The dodo’s large bill had a hooked tip that appears to have been its only real defense. (One 17th-century seaman called the dodo’s beak its “war weapon.”) Likewise, the clublike bone growths on the end of each solitaire wing were presumably used against other solitaires in turf wars. Absent mammalian predators, the dodo and solitaire, both fruit eaters, gradually began to fly less and walk more. In these resource-rich subtropical settings, their size increased so drastically that they lost their ability to fly.

The consensus among the investigators is that the average adult male dodo stood 2 1/2 feet tall and weighed about 32 pounds, while the average female weighed about

23 pounds. For contrast, the typical male solitaire would have tipped the scales at a massive 60 pounds. Both birds had annual cycles during which they were plump for several months and relatively slender the rest of the year. “This would have given them a survival advantage when cyclones hit the islands between November and March,” Hume said.

The word “dodo” has multiple possible origins. It may have been coined by the Portuguese mariners who visited Mauritius in 1507 and called the bird “doudo,” meaning “fool” or “crazy.” Or perhaps the name came from Dutch sailors, who colonized the island in 1598 and called the bird “dodaersen” (“fat behind”) because of its generously proportioned rump. A third possibility: Dodo was an onomatopoeia of the bird’s call, which may have resembled the two-note coo that male band-tailed pigeons make to attract mates.

Hume said that the dumb-as-a-dodo trope might have arisen from the way the trusting bird remained still when approached by half-starved sailors, only to be clubbed on the head and trussed up for dinner. According to journal entries of Dutch seafarers, as many as 50 dodos were killed in a single day.

For the men on the exploratory fleets that came ashore at the island, the preferred game was parrots and pigeons. Dodos were an acquired taste. “Greasie stomackes may seeke after them, but to the delicate they are offensive and of no nourishment,” Thomas Herbert, an English writer, observed in a 1634 travelogue.

Decline and fall

Almost all dodo skeletons are composites of several birds. Only one specimen — a head, with soft tissue and feathers — is known to exist. The study leaned largely on a set of male and female solitaire bones housed at the Natural History Museum in London, and the most intact skeleton of an individual dodo, consisting of all the bird’s original bones except for a few toe segments, which is on display at the Natural History Museum in Port Louis, Mauritius’ capital.

“These provided important details about body ratios, which can help interpret body mass, size and sexual differences,” Hume said. Evidence from bone specimens indicated that the dodo had a powerful tendon analogous to those found on climbing and running birds alive today, a finding that effectively dispels its slow and sluggish reputation.

Unfortunately, those tendons weren’t powerful enough to escape the Homo sapiens who arrived at the dodos’ pristine paradise and laid waste to its habitat. The visitors also introduced domestic and wild animals — cats, dogs, pigs, monkeys and rats — that preyed on the dodos, competed with them for fruit and ate their eggs, which were obligingly laid on the forest floor. When the Dutch began to chop down the trees, the dodo’s decline sharpened.

“Most of us feel that we could never become extinct,” Cuppy wrote. “The dodo felt that way, too.”

Monday, September 30, 2024 18

36 hours in Lima, Peru

By BIANCA PADRÓ OCASIO

Peru’s capital, with dramatic cliffs that separate its high-rises and colonial architecture from the sea, gets overlooked by travelers heading for Cuzco, in the Andes, or surf spots to the north. The pandemic, then political unrest in 2022 and 2023, slowed tourism, but Lima, home to more than 10 million, is giving visitors more reasons to stay. It now holds three places on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, as many chefs embrace Indigenous Andean and Amazonian ingredients in the seafood-centric cuisine, and the growing Venezuelan diaspora brings its traditional foods, like arepas, into the local food culture.

ITINERARY

Friday

4 p.m. | Cycle along the cliffside

Grab a bicycle at the shared dock on Federico Villarreal Avenue (download the CityBike Lima app; 4.50 soles, or about $1.20, for 30 minutes) and bike along the malecón, the cliffside promenade overlooking the Pacific Ocean, in Miraflores, a scenic, upscale neighborhood popular with tourists. (You’re particularly likely to hear English in the bars and shops surrounding Kennedy Park, a landmark with street art, food vendors and a locally beloved stray cat colony.) Ride about 30 minutes south along the coast to the edge of Miraflores. Along the way, see flower-filled parks teeming with joggers and street vendors and surfers riding waves down below. The Parque del Amor is a colorful midpoint stop in the route, with a sculpture called “The Kiss” by Peruvian artist Víctor Delfín.

6 p.m. | Shop for ceramics

After docking your bike at the corner of Armendáriz Boulevard and La Paz Avenue, cross the overpass that leads to Barranco, a bohemian oceanside district with plazas, murals and trendy restaurants. From there, walk 20 minutes to Mirador Sousa, a sunset viewpoint that’s especially popular when the skies clear. Then head to Dédalo Arte y Artesanía, a store with a variety of Peruvian ceramics, textiles, books, toys and jewelry that’s hard to find in one place elsewhere in Lima. Look for Mundo de Barro-made teapots and vases, which are hand-painted with colorful botanical and Indigenous motifs. Dédalo also has a back patio cafe, perfect for a break away from the traffic noise. For more shopping nearby, UNO and El Clóset de Mi Hermana both sell clothing and accessories in minimalist contemporary styles.

8 p.m. | Try Venezuelan flavors

In Lima, home to more than 1 million Venezuelans, a new generation of that diaspora is carving out space for its own culture. Last year, Venezuelan chef Juan Luis Martínez opened Clon, one of Barranco’s most exciting restaurants. Much as he does at his more upscale award-winning restaurant Mérito, Martínez brings elements of his homeland to Peru’s seafood-heavy cuisine: Take an arepa, a corn-based flatbread ubiquitous in Venezuela, stuffed with pejerrey, an anchovylike fish native to and a staple in Peru (23 soles). Similarly, the vuelve a la vida acevichado is a tangy Venezuelan seafood-cocktail dish in the style of a Peruvian ceviche (56 soles). Clon, like other local seafood restaurants, often adapts dishes to comply with Peru’s seasonal fishing bans, intended to improve sustainability. Reservations recommended.

10 p.m. | Stay up late with locals

The hole-in-the-wall aesthetic is part of the charm at Juanito de Barranco, a cash-only bar a few doors down from Clon. Officially open since 1937, Juanito is a typical example of a traditional taberna or bodegón, a casual bar and restaurant. Employees know the names of regulars, artists convene and hang posters advertising coming exhibitions or performances, and most nights, a guitarist circles among the tables playing old romantic tunes

The early-19th-century catacombs at the San Francisco Convent and Catacomb Museum in the historic center of Lima, Peru, Aug. 31, 2024. (Angela Ponce/The New York Times)

view from the Government Palace of Lima, Peru, Aug. 31, 2024. Peru’s

with dramatic cliffs that separate its high-rises and colonial architecture from the sea, now holds three places on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, as many chefs embrace

People swim with South American sea lions in the Palomino Islands, a protected string of inlets that is also home to Humboldt penguins and seabirds, in Lima, Peru, Aug. 31, 2024. (Angela Ponce/The New York Times)

for tips. Have a bottle of Pilsen beer (8 soles), Peru’s popular light lager, or try a chilcano (11 soles), a classic cocktail that mixes pisco — a grape-based spirit — and ginger ale. Snack on a sandwich with jamón del norte, smoked ham, with or without ají, a spicy condiment of blended chiles (15 soles). Open until 2 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays.

Saturday

9 a.m. | Swim with sea lions

From Miraflores, take a 30-minute Uber (about 25 soles) to Callao, a small seaside province north of Lima. There, board a boat with tour company Mar Adentro Excursions to

visit the Palomino Islands, a protected string of islets, to see South American sea lions, Humboldt penguins and seabirds. (From July to October, you may also spot dolphins and humpback whales migrating north.) Guests can swim with the sea lions; the pups are generally curious and likely to approach (guides advise keeping a 40-foot distance from the island where many of the adults rest). Tours are in English and Spanish; 170 soles per person for 2/12 hours. Reserve via the website or WhatsApp (+51 958 877 667). Bring a swimsuit and sun protection, and if you need it, medicine for seasickness.

1:30 p.m. | Eat like a fisherman Head to nearby La Punta, a walkable oceanside neighborhood in Callao that’s full of colorful houses with wooden balconies and restaurants playing salsa music to lure in customers. Eat a classic and cheap fisherman’s lunch at Don Giuseppe, a popular and informal cevichería, or seafood restaurant. The pan con pejerrey (9 soles), a sandwich with breaded and fried fish, onion, and tartar sauce or mayo, is a specialty in Callao. There is, of course, ceviche, which Peruvians typically eat during the day rather than at night (Don Giuseppe closes at 4 p.m.). While in Callao, check out the galleries at Monumental Callao, the district’s refurbished historic center, where several old buildings now house artists’ studios. The safest way to get around Callao, especially beyond touristy La Punta, is by car. 6 p.m. | Unwind with a lonche Limeños have quite the sweet tooth, and

A

capital,

Indigenous Andean and Amazonian ingredients in the seafood-centric cuisine. (Angela Ponce/The New York Times)

The San Juan Daily Star

lonche, their late-afternoon coffee or tea hour, is the perfect time for a treat. From the LUM, walk about 15 minutes to the Teoría de los 6 Cafés in Miraflores, a cafe with a friendly staff and quality coffee drinks made from Peruvian beans. Try a cortado (8 soles) with a doughnut in changing flavors like raspberry-chocolate, mango sticky rice or caramelized popcorn (10 soles). In October, look for their version of the turrón de Doña Pepa, a traditional layered cookie dessert with Afro-Peruvian roots that is especially popular in September, when the Lord of Miracles religious festival is held.

8:30 p.m. | Sample Nikkei cuisine

Since the first Japanese people migrated to Peru in the late 19th century, Japanese Peruvians (known as Nikkeis) have become an integral part of the country’s politics, arts and cuisine. Few restaurants blend these two culinary traditions as well as Tomo Cocina Nikkei, in Miraflores, where you can try colorful tiraditos, a Nikkei dish of sashimi-style slices of raw fish in a citrusy Peruvian marinade (an octopus tiradito starter is 55 soles). Tomo’s specialty, however, is its creative nigiri. Here, the rice mounds, topped with raw local fish, are flavored with onion, tomato, cilantro and a yellow-chile sauce called chalaca, or an Amazonian fruit called cocona (nigiri, about 25 to 80 soles for two pieces). Sit at the sushi bar and ask the chefs to pick your dishes. Reserve ahead.

10:30 p.m. | Sign off with a drink

The laid-back Bar Capitán Meléndez is easy to miss, down a set of stairs and through a patio the bar shares with two late-night pizza and chicken-wing joints. This small, bare tavern, with just a few seats, has a back bar showcasing what seems like every type of pisco in Peru, and it serves one of the city’s best pisco sours (31 soles), a local cocktail that blends that liquor with lime, simple syrup and egg whites for a foamy top. Locals also come here for a quiet respite from the trendy bars that line Miraflores’ touristy Berlin Street: There is no loud music, flashy neon or staff people standing outside to draw in customers. Even on a busy night, it’s most likely that the owner himself, Roberto Meléndez, will be serving you.

Try tropical-inspired smoothie bowls with local fruit, like one with dragon fruit or açaí (from about 28 soles) and a cappuccino (9 soles) with housemade almond milk (4 soles). The free Wi-Fi is handy, too.

11:30 a.m. | Go underground

Tour the early-19th-century catacombs at the San Francisco Convent and Catacomb Museum in Lima’s historic center. The convent, founded in 1546 (and restored several times after devastating earthquakes), is believed to have been the largest in the Americas at its peak, and it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Besides the convent’s religious art, the main attraction is its crypts, under the main chapel, where more than 25,000 people are believed to have been buried. Visitors can see skulls and bones through an impressive channel of subterranean chambers. Tickets (20 soles) include 45-minute guided tours, which run every 20 minutes. As an alternative, check out the nearby Museo de Arte de Lima, Lima’s main art museum,

WHERE TO EAT

Clon, the newest restaurant from renowned chef Juan Luis Martínez, fuses Venezuelan culinary elements with Peru’s seafoodcentric cuisine in the Barranco neighborhood.

Tomo Cocina Nikkei is an upscale Miraflores restaurant that blends Japanese and Peruvian culinary cultures.

Juanito de Barranco, a casual Barranco bar established in the 1930s, is a spot for a cocktail and a sandwich.

Don Giuseppe, a homey lunch spot in Callao’s La Punta area, is where you can try Lima’s classic seafood dishes, including the pan con pejerrey, a fried-fish sandwich.

Bar Capitán Meléndez is a no-frills latenight bar that features one of Lima’s best pisco sours.

The Chinese Peruvian restaurant Chifa El Dorado, on the 18th floor of a nondescript building in the middle-class Lince district, has a 360-degree view of the city.

Sunday

9 a.m. | Fuel up like a surfer

For breakfast, head to Caleta Dolsa, in Barranco, a coffee shop and restaurant with an aesthetic inspired by Lima’s surfer culture. It serves coffee that is roasted in-house, sourced from producers in the highlands and the Peruvian Amazon, alongside fresh juices.

housed in a gorgeous late-19th-century palace. Tickets for foreigners, 40 soles.

1 p.m. | Get a bird’s-eye view

You can’t leave Lima before trying chifa, Chinese Peruvian food, a legacy of the migrants who arrived as contract laborers in the late 19th century. Chifa El Dorado is a lively and long-standing restaurant with filling, cheap feasts and kitschy décor on the 18th floor of a nondescript building in the Lince district, about a 20- to 30-minute car ride south of the historic center. Beyond its affordability, it’s worth the trip for one main reason: There’s a 360-degree view of the city from every table. A must-try chifa dish is the

aeropuerto (38 soles) — named because all ingredients land there, as at an airport. It’s a fried rice dish of excess that includes noodles, plantains, veggies and a variety of meats.

KEY STOPS

The Palomino Islands, a string of islets near the port in the Callao area, is where you can swim with sea lions and spot a rare Humboldt penguin.

The malecón in Miraflores, a cliffside boardwalk and bicycle path, is a pleasant way to see the city’s coastal districts, watch surfers catch waves below or stop for some ice cream from a street vendor in the Parque del Amor.

The San Francisco Convent and Catacomb Museum, a complex in Lima’s historic center that dates to the Spanish colonial period, draws visitors to its crypts.

WHERE TO STAY

Miraflores Park, among Lima’s top hotels, is on a quiet street surrounded by public green areas. Enjoy breakfast with an ocean view at the rooftop Observatory, or fine dining at its restaurant, Tragaluz. Rooms start around $543 a night (many hotels charge in U.S. dollars).

Hyatt Centric San Isidro Lima is in the exclusive San Isidro district, a 20-minute car ride (a short trip, on Lima’s congested roads) from the historic center and from Barranco. The hotel bar, Celeste, is one of few upscale rooftop lounges in Lima. Rooms start around $186 a night.

For short-term rentals, look for Airbnbs in San Isidro, Miraflores or Barranco, the safest and most accessible neighborhoods. Options start around $50 a night.

Chifa El Dorado, a restaurant with filling, cheap feasts and kitschy decor on the 18th floor of a nondescript building in the Lince district, south of the historic center of Lima, Peru, Aug. 31, 2024. (Angela Ponce/The New York Times)

Paragliders off the coast of Lima, Peru, Aug. 31, 2024. (Angela Ponce/The New York Times)

Dedalo Arte y Artesana, a store with a variety of Peruvian ceramics, textiles, books, toys and jewelry that’s hard to find in one place elsewhere in the capital, in Lima, Peru, Aug. 31, 2024.(Angela Ponce/The New York Times)

COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandados

CIVIL NÚM.: VB2024CV00534.

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

A: Joseph Elmer Shirk Jr., Carolyn Shirk, y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales compuesta por ambos 119 Wahoo Drive, Ocean City, New Jersey 08226

POR LA PRESENTE, se le notifica a Joseph Elmer Shirk Jr, su esposa Carolyn Shirk, y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales compuesta por ambos, que se ha radicado mediante el sistema SUMAC una Demanda por la demandante

HACIENDA DEL MAR OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC., solicitando un Cobro de Dinero. POR LO TANTO se le emplaza por edicto y se le requiere que notifique a MARINI PIETRANTONI MUÑIZ LLC., Lcdo. Luis C. Marini Biaggi (lmarini@ mpmlawpr.com) y la Lcda. Getzemarie Lugo Rodríguez (glugo@mpmlawpr.com), 250 Ponce de León Ave., Suite 900 San Juan, PR 00918, Tel. 787705- 2171, copia de su contestación a la Demanda dentro de los (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Vega Baja. SE LE ADVIERTE que, de no proceder conforme con lo antes indicado, se le anotará la rebeldía y podrá dictarse Sentencia en su contra, concediendo a la parte demandante los remedios solicitados en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle, o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, a 16 de septiembre de 2024. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, SECRETARIO GENERAL. LILLIAN MERCADO RIVERA, SECRETARIO AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA

SALA SUPERIOR DE VEGA BAJA.

HACIENDA DEL MAR OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC.

Demandante v. JOSEPH ELMER SHIRK

JR., CAROLYN SHIRK Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES, COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandados CIVIL NÚM.: VB2024CV00534.

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

A: Joseph Elmer Shirk Jr., por si y en representación de la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales

119 Wahoo Drive, Ocean City, New Jersey 08226

POR LA PRESENTE, se le notifica a Joseph Elmer Shirk Jr, su esposa Carolyn Shirk, y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales compuesta por ambos, que se ha radicado mediante el sistema SUMAC una Demanda por la demandante HACIENDA DEL MAR OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC., solicitando un Cobro de Dinero. POR LO TANTO se le emplaza por edicto y se le requiere que notifique a MARINI PIETRANTONI MUÑIZ LLC., Lcdo. Luis C. Marini Biaggi (lmarini@ mpmlawpr.com) y la Lcda. Getzemarie Lugo Rodríguez (glugo@mpmlawpr.com), 250 Ponce de León Ave., Suite 900 San Juan, PR 00918, Tel. 787705- 2171, copia de su contestación a la Demanda dentro de los (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Vega Baja. SE LE ADVIERTE que, de no proceder conforme con lo antes indicado, se le anotará la rebeldía y podrá dictarse Sentencia en su contra, concediendo a la parte demandante los remedios solicitados en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle, o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, a 16 de septiembre de 2024. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, SECRETARIO GENERAL. LILLIAN MERCADO RIVERA, SECRETARIO AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

HACIENDA DEL MAR OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC.

Demandante v. JOSEPH ELMER SHIRK JR., CAROLYN SHIRK Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES, COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandados CIVIL NÚM.: VB2024CV00534.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS. A: Carolyn Shirk, por si y en representación de la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales

119 Wahoo Drive, Ocean City, New Jersey 08226 POR LA PRESENTE, se le notifica a Joseph Elmer Shirk Jr, su esposa Carolyn Shirk, y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales compuesta por ambos, que se ha radicado mediante el sistema SUMAC una Demanda por la demandante HACIENDA DEL MAR OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC., solicitando un Cobro de Dinero. POR LO TANTO se le emplaza por edicto y se le requiere que notifique a MARINI PIETRANTONI MUÑIZ LLC., Lcdo. Luis C. Marini Biaggi (lmarini@ mpmlawpr.com) y la Lcda. Getzemarie Lugo Rodríguez (glugo@mpmlawpr.com), 250 Ponce de León Ave., Suite 900 San Juan, PR 00918, Tel. 787705- 2171, copia de su contestación a la Demanda dentro de los (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Vega Baja. SE LE ADVIERTE que, de no proceder conforme con lo antes indicado, se le anotará la rebeldía y podrá dictarse Sentencia en su contra, concediendo a la parte demandante los remedios solicitados en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle, o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, a 16 de septiembre de 2024. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, SECRETARIO GENERAL. LILLIAN MERCADO RIVERA, SECRETARIO AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE VEGA BAJA. HACIENDA DEL MAR

OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC.

Demandante v. CHARLES COSIMO AQUILINA t/c/c/ CHARLES AQUILINA ; KATHLEEN SARA AQUILINA t/c/c/ KATHLEEN AQUILINA y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES

COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandados CIVIL NÚM.: VB20240V00553.

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

A: Charles Cosimo Aquilina t/c/c/ Charles Aquilina Kathleen Sara Aquilina t/c/c/ Kathleen Aquilina y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes

Gananciales compuesta por ambos, Attorney Advocates of America 18851 NE, 29th Ave., Suite 700, Aventura, Florida, EE. UU. 33180

POR LA PRESENTE, se le notifica a Charles Cosimo Aquilina t/c/c/ Charles Aquilina y su esposa Kathleen Sara Aquilina t/c/c/ Kathleen Aquilina, y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales Compuesta por ambos, que se ha radicado mediante el sistema SUMAC una Demanda por la demandante HACIENDA DEL MAR OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC., solicitando un Cobro de Dinero. POR LO TANTO se le emplaza por edicto y se le requiere que notifique a MARINI PIETRANTONI MUÑIZ LLC., Lcdo. Luis C. Marini Biaggi (lmarini@ mpmlawpr.com) y la Lcda. Getzemarie Lugo Rodríguez (glugo@mpmlawpr.com), 250 Ponce de León Ave., Suite 900 San Juan, PR 00918, Tel. 787705- 2171, copia de su contestación a la Demanda dentro de los (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Vega Baja. SE LE ADVIERTE que, de no proceder conforme con lo antes indicado, se le anotará la rebeldía y podrá dictarse Sentencia en su contra, concediendo a la parte demandante los remedios solicitados en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle, o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal, en el ejercicio de

su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, a 12 de septiembre de 2024. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, SECRETARIO GENERAL. POR: MARITZA ROSARIO ROSARIO, SECRETARIO AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

HACIENDA DEL MAR OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC. Demandante v. CHARLES COSIMO AQUILINA t/c/c/ CHARLES AQUILINA ; KATHLEEN SARA AQUILINA t/c/c/ KATHLEEN AQUILINA y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandados CIVIL NÚM.: VB20240V00553. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: Kathleen Sara Aquilina t/c/c/ Kathleen Aquilina por si y en representación de la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales Attorney Advocates of America 18851 NE, 29th Ave., Suite 700, Aventura, Florida, EE. UU. 33180 POR LA PRESENTE, se le notifica a Charles Cosimo Aquilina t/c/c/ Charles Aquilina y su esposa Kathleen Sara Aquilina t/c/c/ Kathleen Aquilina, y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales Compuesta por ambos, que se ha radicado mediante el sistema SUMAC una Demanda por la demandante HACIENDA DEL MAR OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC., solicitando un Cobro de Dinero. POR LO TANTO se le emplaza por edicto y se le requiere que notifique a MARINI PIETRANTONI MUÑIZ LLC., Lcdo. Luis C. Marini Biaggi (lmarini@ mpmlawpr.com) y la Lcda. Getzemarie Lugo Rodríguez (glugo@mpmlawpr.com), 250 Ponce de León Ave., Suite 900 San Juan, PR 00918, Tel. 787705- 2171, copia de su contestación a la Demanda dentro de los (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por

derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Vega Baja. SE LE ADVIERTE que, de no proceder conforme con lo antes indicado, se le anotará la rebeldía y podrá dictarse Sentencia en su contra, concediendo a la parte demandante los remedios solicitados en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle, o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, a 12 de septiembre de 2024. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, SECRETARIO GENERAL.

POR: MARITZA ROSARIO ROSARIO, SECRETARIO AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE VEGA BAJA. HACIENDA DEL MAR OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC.

Demandante v. CHARLES COSIMO AQUILINA t/c/c/ CHARLES AQUILINA ; KATHLEEN SARA AQUILINA t/c/c/ KATHLEEN AQUILINA y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandados CIVIL NÚM.: VB20240V00553. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS. A: Charles Cosimo Aquilina t/c/c/ Charles Aquilina por si y en representación de la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales Attorney Advocates of America 18851 NE, 29th Ave., Suite 700, Aventura, Florida, EE. UU. 33180 POR LA PRESENTE, se le notifica a Charles Cosimo Aquilina t/c/c/ Charles Aquilina y su esposa Kathleen Sara Aquilina t/c/c/ Kathleen Aquilina, y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales Compuesta por ambos, que se ha radicado mediante el sistema SUMAC una Demanda por la demandante HACIENDA DEL MAR OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC., solicitando un Cobro de Dinero. POR LO TANTO se le emplaza por edicto y se le requiere que notifique a MARINI PIETRANTONI MUÑIZ LLC., Lcdo. Luis C. Marini Biaggi (lmarini@ mpmlawpr.com) y la Lcda. Getzemarie Lugo Rodríguez

(glugo@mpmlawpr.com), 250 Ponce de León Ave., Suite 900 San Juan, PR 00918, Tel. 787705- 2171, copia de su contestación a la Demanda dentro de los (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Vega Baja. SE LE ADVIERTE que, de no proceder conforme con lo antes indicado, se le anotará la rebeldía y podrá dictarse Sentencia en su contra, concediendo a la parte demandante los remedios solicitados en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle, o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, a 12 de septiembre de 2024. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, SECRETARIO GENERAL. POR: MARITZA ROSARIO ROSARIO, SECRETARIO AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

HACIENDA DEL MAR OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC.

Demandante v. HECTOR KABA ; SHIRLEY ARLEENE MALDONADO RIOS Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES, COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandados CIVIL NÚM.: VB2024CV00539. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: Hector Kaba, Shirley Arleene Maldonado Ríos y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales compuesta por ambos, 3556 Belland Circle Unit B Clermont, Florida 34711

POR LA PRESENTE, se le notifica a Hector Kaba, su eposa Shirley Arleene Maldonado Ríos y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales compuesta por ambos, que se ha radicado mediante el sistema SUMAC una Demanda por la demandante HACIENDA DEL MAR OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC., solicitando un Cobro de Dinero. POR LO TANTO, se le

emplaza por edicto y se le requiere que notifique a MARINI PIETRANTONI MUÑIZ LLC., Lcdo. Luis C. Marini Biaggi (lmarini@mpmlawpr.com) y la Lcda. Getzemarie Lugo Rodríguez (glugo@mpmlawpr.com), 250 Ponce de León Ave., Suite 900 San Juan, PR 00918, Tel. 787- 705- 2171, copia de su contestación a la Demanda dentro de los (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Vega Baja. SE LE ADVIERTE que, de no proceder conforme con lo antes indicado, se le anotará la rebeldía y podrá dictarse Sentencia en su contra, concediendo a la parte demandante los remedios solicitados en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle, o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, a 12 de septiembre de 2024. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, SECRETARIO GENERAL. POR: MARITZA ROSARIO ROSARIO, SECRETARIO AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

HACIENDA DEL MAR OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC. Demandante v. HECTOR KABA ; SHIRLEY ARLEENE MALDONADO RIOS Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES, COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandados

CIVIL NÚM.: VB2024CV00539.

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

A: Shirley Arleene Maldonado Ríos, por si y en representación de la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales 3556 Belland Circle Unit B Clermont, Florida 34711

POR LA PRESENTE, se le notifica a Hector Kaba, su eposa Shirley Arleene Maldonado Ríos y la Sociedad Legal de

Bienes Gananciales compuesta por ambos, que se ha radicado mediante el sistema SUMAC una Demanda por la demandante HACIENDA DEL MAR OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC., solicitando un Cobro de Dinero. POR LO TANTO, se le emplaza por edicto y se le requiere que notifique a MARINI PIETRANTONI MUÑIZ LLC., Lcdo. Luis C. Marini Biaggi (lmarini@mpmlawpr.com) y la Lcda. Getzemarie Lugo Rodríguez (glugo@mpmlawpr.com), 250 Ponce de León Ave., Suite 900 San Juan, PR 00918, Tel. 787- 705- 2171, copia de su contestación a la Demanda dentro de los (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Vega Baja. SE LE ADVIERTE que, de no proceder conforme con lo antes indicado, se le anotará la rebeldía y podrá dictarse Sentencia en su contra, concediendo a la parte demandante los remedios solicitados en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle, o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, a 12 de septiembre de 2024. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, SECRETARIO GENERAL.

POR: MARITZA ROSARIO ROSARIO, SECRETARIO AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

HACIENDA DEL MAR

OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC.

Demandante v. HECTOR KABA ; SHIRLEY ARLEENE

MALDONADO RIOS Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES, COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

Demandados

CIVIL NÚM.: VB2024CV00539. SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS

EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: Hector Kaba, por si y en representación de la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales

3556 Belland Circle Unit B

Clermont, Florida 34711

POR LA PRESENTE, se le notifica a Hector Kaba, su eposa Shirley Arleene Maldonado Ríos y la Sociedad Legal de Bienes Gananciales compuesta por ambos, que se ha radicado mediante el sistema SUMAC una Demanda por la demandante HACIENDA DEL MAR OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, INC., solicitando un Cobro de Dinero. POR LO TANTO, se le emplaza por edicto y se le requiere que notifique a MARINI PIETRANTONI MUÑIZ LLC., Lcdo. Luis C. Marini Biaggi (lmarini@mpmlawpr.com) y la Lcda. Getzemarie Lugo Rodríguez (glugo@mpmlawpr.com), 250 Ponce de León Ave., Suite 900 San Juan, PR 00918, Tel. 787- 705- 2171, copia de su contestación a la Demanda dentro de los (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Vega Baja. SE LE ADVIERTE que, de no proceder conforme con lo antes indicado, se le anotará la rebeldía y podrá dictarse Sentencia en su contra, concediendo a la parte demandante los remedios solicitados en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle, o cualquier otro, si el Tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, a 12 de septiembre de 2024. LCDA.

LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, SECRETARIO GENERAL. POR: MARITZA ROSARIO ROSARIO, SECRETARIO AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE MAYAGÜEZ CARMEN Y MATOS LUCIANO

Demandante Vs. SUCESION FRANCISCA

SILVA ARCE COMPUESTA POR FULANO Y SUTANA

Demandada

Civil Núm.: MZ2024CV00916. Sobre: TÍTULO CONTRADICTORIO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, SS. A: SUCESIÓN DE LA SEÑORA FRANCISCA

SILVA ARCE TAMBIEN CONOCIDA COMO MARÍA FRANCISCA SILVA

ARCE COMPUESTA POR FULANO Y SUTANA DEMANDADOS

DESCONOCIDOS.

Por la presente se emplaza y se les notifica que se ha presentado en la Secretaria de éste Tribunal la Demanda del caso de epígrafe sobre Título Contradictorio. Se apercibe y advierte a ustedes como personas desconocidas que de no contestar la demanda radicando su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal y notificar copia de la contestación de ésta a la parte demandante por conducto de su abogado el Lcdo. Saúl Zapata Ripolls a PO Box 6086, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00681, teléfono 787-4505850, desde los próximos 30 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 anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia, concediendo el remedio solicitado en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle. Extendido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal hoy 18 de septiembre de 2024. LCDA.

NORMA G. SANTANA IRIZARRY, SECRETARIA. JOSSIE D. BOBE RODRÍGUEZ, SUBSECRETARIA.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

CARMEN Y MATOS LUCIANO

Demandante Vs. SUCESION FRANCISCA SILVA ARCE Compuesta por Fulano y Sutana Demandada CIVIL NUM.: MZ2024CV00916. SOBRE: TITULO CONTRADICTORIO. CITACION POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS A: PERSONAS

IGNORADAS Y DESCONOCIDAS

Por la presente se le cita a fin de que comparezcan si quieren alegar su derecho sobre la siguiente finca: RUSTICA: Porción de terreno radicada en el Barrio Llanos Tuna del Municipio de Cabo Rojo, con una cabida de 1,000 metros cuadrados, equivalente a 0.2544 cuerdas, marcada con el número C1 en el correspondiente plano de inscripción, colindando por el Norte en una distancia de 28.477 metros lineales con terrenos de Brunilda Pérez

Pagán, y en 20.783 metros lineales con terrenos de Eufracio Padilla Matos; por el SUR, en una distancia de 26.189 metros lineales con terrenos de Felix J Rodriguez Natal; ESTE, en 17.068 metros lineales con servidumbre de paso AEE y 25.229 metros lineales con terrenos de Eufracio Padilla Matos; y por el OESTE, en 10.702 metros lineales con terrenos Primitivo Pagán y en 16.068 metros lineales con terrenos de Brunilda Pérez Pagán. Catastro número 356-058-358-20-000. Se segrega de la finca 1270 al folio 82 vuelto del tomo 26 de Cabo Rojo. Tendrán un plazo improrrogable de veinte (20) días a contar de la fecha de la última publicación del edicto, los interesados y/o las partes citadas, o en su defecto los organismos públicos afectados, podrán comparecer ante el tribunal. Se apercibe y advierte a usted, que de no contestar la demanda radicando su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal y notificar copia de la contestación de ésta a la parte demandante por conducto de su abogado el Lcdo. Saúl Zapata Ripolls a PO Box 6086. Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00681, teléfono 7874505850, a fin de alegar lo que en derecho proceda. Expedido bajo mi firma y con el sello del Tribunal, en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico a 12 de septiembre de 2024. Lcda. Norma G Santana Irizarry, Secretaria Regional. Jossie D. Bobé Rodríguez, Secretaria Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

PEDRO

CLAUDIO ALVERIO

Demandante Vs. MADERAS TRATADAS DEL OESTE, INC Y EDGAR DAVILA OLIVERAS

Demandados

CIVIL NUM.: MZ2024CV00938. SOBRE: TITULO CONTRADICTORIO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: MADERAS TRATADAS DEL OESTE INC Y EDGAR DAVILA OLIVERAS

Por la presente se emplaza y se les notifica que se ha presentado en la Secretaria de éste Tribunal la Demanda del caso de epígrafe sobre Titulo Contradictorio. Por la presente

de emplaza y se le notifica que se ha presentado en la Secretaria de éste Tribunal la Demanda del caso de epígrafe sobre Divorcio por Ruptura Irreparable. Se apercibe y advierte a usted, que de no contestar la demanda radicando su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal y notificar copia de la contestación de ésta a la parte demandante por conducto de su abogado el Lcdo. Saúl Zapata Ripolls a PO Box 6086. Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00681, teléfono 787- 4505850, desde los próximos 30 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 anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia, concediendo el remedio solicitado en la Demanda sin más citarle no oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y con el sello del Tribunal, en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico a 12 de septiembre de 2024. Lcda. Norma G Santana Irizarry, Secretaria Regional. Jossie D. Bobé Rodríguez, Secretaria Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE MAYAGUEZ. PEDRO CLAUDIO ALVERIO

Demandante Vs. MADERAS TRATADAS DEL OESTE, INC Y EDGAR DAVILA OLIVERAS

Demandados

CIVIL NUM.: MZ2024CV00938. SOBRE: TITULO CONTRADICTORIO. CITACION POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS. A: PERSONAS IGNORADAS Y DESCONOCIDAS

Por la presente se le cita a fin de que comparezcan si quieren alegar su derecho sobre la siguiente finca: Urbana: URBANIZACIÓN SEVERIANO

CARLO de Cabo Rojo. Solar: 4. Cabida: 492.58 Metros Cuadrados. Linderos: Norte, con una calle de uso público. Sur, con el solar 1 y terrenos pertenecientes al caso numero 4 -66-0641 LS. Este, con el solar 5. Oeste, con terrenos pertenecientes al caso numero 4-660641 LS. Inscrita al folio 194 del tomo 336 de Cabo Rojo, Finca 11359. Catastro número 380-013-165-03-000. Tendrán un plazo improrrogable de vein-

te (20) días a contar de la fecha de la última publicación del edicto, los interesados y/o las partes citadas, o en su defecto los organismos públicos afectados, podrán comparecer ante el tribunal. Se apercibe y advierte a usted, que de no contestar la demanda radicando su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal y notificar copia de la contestación de ésta a la parte demandante por conducto de su abogado el Lcdo. Saúl Zapata Ripolls a PO Box 6086. Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00681, teléfono 7874505850, a fin de alegar lo que en derecho proceda. Expedido bajo mi firma y con el sello del Tribunal, en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico a 12 de septiembre de 2024. Lcda. Norma G Santana Irizarry, Secretaria Regional. Jossie D. Bobé Rodríguez, Secretaria Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

FRANKLIN CREDIT MANAGEMENT

CORPORATION, COMO AGENTE DE SERVICIO DE WILMINGTON SAVINGS FUND SOCIETY, FSB, NOT IN IS INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY BUT SOLELY AS CERTIFICATE TRUSTEE OF BOSCO CREDIT II TRUST SERIES 2017-1

Parte Demandante Vs. ESDRAS MISAEL RIVERA COLÓN T/C/C

ESDRAS RIVERA COLÓN Y SUCESION DE DIANA RAMÍREZ

NATAL T/C/C DIANA ROSA RAMÍREZ NATAL, COMPUESTA POR LAURA RAMÍREZ NATAL T/C/C LAURA LOURNISCH, JUDITH RIVERA

RAMIREZ, RAQUEL

RIVERA RAMIREZ Y MISAEL RIVERA

RAMIREZ; JOHN DOE Y RICHARD DOE, COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS

Parte Demandada JESÚS MANUEL GUERRA CEDEÑO, AMARILYS

ALVAREZ TEJEDA Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE BIENES GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR

AMBOS; UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO CORPORACIÓN Z, COMO POSIBLE ACREEDOR DESCONOCIDO

Parte con Interés Civil Núm.: SJ2023CV07377. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU., EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PR, SS. AVISO DE VENTA EN PÚBLICA SUBASTA. Yo, EDWIN E. LÓPEZ MULERO, ALGUACIL AUXILIAR, Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de San Juan, a la parte demandada y al público en general les notifico que, cumpliendo con un Mandamiento que se ha librado en el presente caso por el Secretario del Tribunal de epígrafe con fecha 20 de agosto de 2024, y para satisfacer la Sentencia dictada en el caso de autos fechada 23 de mayo de 2024, notificada en igual fecha y publicada el 30 de mayo de 2024, procederé a vender el día 29 DE OCTUBRE DE 2024, A LAS 9:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en mi oficina, localizada en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de San Juan, al mejor postor en pago de contado y en moneda de los Estados Unidos de América, cheque certificado y/o giro postal, todo título, derecho o interés de la parte demandada sobre la siguiente propiedad: URBANA: Solar número 105 del Plano de la Urbanización de la finca que procede de una finca de mayor cabida, radicada en la Sección Sur del Barrio de Santurce, en San Juan Puerto Rico, con una cabida de 172.50 metros cuadrados. Lindantes por el NORTE, en 11.50 metros, con el solar de la misma finca principal arrendada a Balbina Almonte; por el SUR, en 11.50 metros, con otro solar de la misma finca principal arrendado a Bonifacio Rosa; por el ESTE, en 15.00 metros, con un solar de María Cortina; y por el OESTE, con el solar de la misma finca principal arrendado a Juan Cruz. Enclava una casa. Inscrita al Folio 180 del Tomo 41 de Santurce Sur, Registro Inmobiliario Digital del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, Sección Primera (I) de San Juan, Finca Número 2,518. Dirección Física: Pda. 23 Lote 105, Calle San Juan, Santurce, PR 00907. Con el importe de dicha venta se habrá de satisfacer a la parte demandante las cantidades adeudadas, o sea, la suma principal de $55,139.30 más intereses al tipo convenido y demás términos y condiciones, según la Sentencia dictada en el caso de epígrafe, por el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de San Juan. La PRIMERA SUBASTA se llevará a cabo el día 29 DE OCTUBRE DE 2024, A LAS 9:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en la cual el tipo mínimo será de

$60,000.00. De no haber adjudicación en la primera subasta se celebrará una SEGUNDA SUBASTA, el día 6 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2024, A LAS 9:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo lugar, en la cual el tipo mínimo será de dos terceras (2/3) partes del tipo mínimo fijado en la primera subasta, o sea, la cantidad de $40,000.00. De no haber adjudicación en la segunda subasta se celebrará una TERCERA SUBASTA, el día 14 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2024, A LAS 9:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo lugar, en la cual el tipo mínimo será la mitad (1/2) del tipo mínimo fijado en la primera subasta, o sea, la cantidad de $30,000.00. A la propiedad no le afectan gravámenes preferentes. A la propiedad le afecta el siguiente gravamen (a ejecutarse): Hipoteca en garantía de un pagaré a favor de RG Premier Bank of Puerto Rico, o a su orden, por la suma principal de $60,000.00, con intereses al 8 1/8% anual, vencedero el día 1 de septiembre de 2027, constituida mediante la escritura número 571, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 11 de agosto de 1997, ante el notario Fénex Torres Torres, e inscrita al tomo Karibe de Santurce Sur, finca número 2,518, inscripción 14ta. Modificada la hipoteca de la inscripción 14ta., por $60,000.00, la cual se cancela parcialmente en cuanto a la suma de $300.00, para un nuevo principal que será por $59,700.00, mediante la escritura número 82, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 27 de febrero de 2004, ante el notario José V. Gorbea Varona, e inscrita al tomo Karibe de Santurce Sur, finca número 2,518, inscripción 15ta. A la propiedad le afectan los siguientes gravámenes posteriores: Aviso de Demanda de fecha 2 de agosto de 2023, expedido en el Centro Judicial de San Juan, en el Caso Civil número SJ2023CV07377, sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipotecas, seguido por Franklin Credit Management Corporation, como Agente de Servicio de Wilmignton Savings Fund Society, FSB, not in is individual capacity but solely as Certificate Trustee of Bosco Credit II Trust Series 2017-1 versus Esdras Misael Rivera Colón, también conocido como Esdras Rivera Colón y Sucesión de Diana Ramirez Natal, también conocida como Diana Rosa Ramirez Natal, compuesta por Laura Ramirez Natal, también conocida como Laura Lournisch, Judith Rivera Ramirez, Raquel Rivera Ramirez y Misael Rivera Ramirez; John Doe y Richard Doe, como posibles herederos desconocidos, por la suma de $104,383.04, más intereses y otras sumas adicionales o en su defecto la venta en Pública Subasta, anotado el día 15 de agosto de 2023, al tomo Karibe de Santurce Sur, finca número 2,518, Anotación “C”. Embargo Federal contra Jesús Guerra

White Sox lose 121 games in a season, making history

The Chicago White Sox warm up between innings of a game against the San Diego Padres at Petco Park in San Diego, Sept. 22, 2024. Last Friday night, the White Sox lost their 121st game of the season, 4-1 to the Tigers in Detroit, vaulting themselves into modern baseball history by breaking the record for most losses in a season. (Liv Paggiarino/The New York Times)

By SAM ANDERSON

Friday night in Detroit, as people bought hats and ate hot dogs and sang along to rock anthems, the Chicago White Sox pulled off a staggering feat. They lost their 121st game of the season, vaulting themselves into modern baseball history by breaking the record for most losses, one previously held by the 1962 New York Mets. And yet, because the White Sox lost that record-setting game away from home, in front of 44,435 delirious Tigers fans celebrating an unlikely run to the playoffs, hardly any-

one present seemed to notice.

That might have been the most merciful thing. The record is a fitting end to a cursed year.

How bad were the 2024 White Sox? Up in the press box, reporters traded terrible stats like kids trading scary stories around a campfire. Chicago started the year 3-22, and in a recent stretch of home games they went 1-28. They slumped through separate losing streaks of 21 games, 14 games, and 12 games. Over the course of the season, the White Sox have been outscored by more than 300 runs.

After a while, the numbers feel less like statistics than like some sort of numerical insult comedy.

After Friday, all of those terrible numbers can be reduced to one big number, 121. (And it could go up with two games left in the season.)

So what went wrong? Basically, everything. Injuries, trades, slumps. Close losses. Flukey bounces. A game-winning home run robbed by a flying left fielder. Sitting at his locker one day, late in this miserable season, the pitcher Chris

Flexen searched for a word to describe it. The best he could come up with, he said, was “weird.”

Setting the record in Detroit was, in itself, a kind of victory. It should have happened earlier. At the beginning of the week, the White Sox returned to Chicago tied for the record with 120 losses. The baseball gods had set them up perfectly. The team would make history at home, where the fans could let them hear about it. Early in the first game, when the White Sox dropped a pop-up, the crowd exploded. They chanted “Sell the Team” and “Break the Record” and “121.” When the White Sox won, the home fans booed.

“It’s definitely the first win I’ve ever had where the whole crowd was upset about it,” said Gavin Sheets, a first baseman for the team.

Somehow, defiantly, the White Sox won all three of their final home games. They refused to lose. Anyone who wanted to see history would have to travel to Detroit. In this season of loss, it felt like a small act of heroism.

In Detroit, history was overdue. And it came fast. In true White Sox style, the game got weird. In the first inning, a White Sox triple was demoted to a double because a Tigers fan reached over the wall and touched the ball while it was in play. Then the White Sox brought out all the classics: They made fielding errors and struck out and pelted their own catcher with wild pitches.

The Detroit crowd was loud and — unlike Chicago’s home crowd — seemed to have an uncomplicated relationship to its team. When good things happened, Tigers fans cheered. They had a lot to cheer about. By the seventh inning, they led 4-1.

Loss 121 ended in the perfect way. Andrew Vaughn, Chicago’s designated hitter, lofted an easy fly ball to rightcenter field — where two Detroit outfielders, as if paying tribute to the White Sox, ran into each other. One of them fell down. But he still made the catch. The game was over. It felt like a cruel parody of the White Sox season.

The White Sox slumped off the field. But very few people watched them go. The crowd seemed unaware of, or uninterested in, the White Sox’s disgrace; they were too busy roaring for their own team.

In the clubhouse, the White Sox sat, glumly, eating a postgame meal. After so many months of anticipation, what did it feel like to enter history?

Sheets, the first baseman, said the moment surprised him. After those three improbable home wins, he thought maybe it wouldn’t happen. But then that last ball hit the outfielder’s glove. “And then all of a sudden…” he said, adding, “You realize you’re part of the wrong side of history. And so it was a little more frustrating, and — hurt a little bit more than I expected it to.”

One of the strange things about history is that it happens in normal time, right in the middle of everything else. Over in their clubhouse, the Tigers doused each other with champagne. For most of the season, Detroit had been bad — until, six weeks ago, out of nowhere, they became the hottest team in baseball. Friday night’s win had clinched their spot in the playoffs. It was a heartbreaking juxtaposition. The White Sox were just collateral damage. A footnote in someone else’s story.

The San Juan Daily Star

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

Wordsearch

Aries (Mar 21-April 20)

You should be feeling especially confident today, Aries. You’ve been working especially hard lately, and the recognition you’ve received goes a long way toward reinforcing your feelings of self-worth. Your life goals suddenly seem more attainable and you’ll pursue them with renewed vigor. Your confidence is grounded in reality. You will surely succeed.

Taurus (April 21-May 21)

This is a day made for fun and frivolity, Taurus, not one in which you’re likely to get many of your chores done. Try as you might to focus on the task at hand, there are distractions everywhere you turn. Your email pals could be sending you jokes and notes, and your friends could be bugging you to join them for whatever type of outing is possible now. You may as well give in.

Gemini (May 22-June 21)

You’re a person of many talents, and today you’re likely to discover yet another one, Gemini. The delivery of a new piece of equipment makes you feel like you’ve been given a toy for your sole enjoyment. But once you get the computer or piece of machinery up and running, you need to share it with your co-workers! They will be very impressed with your technical abilities.

Cancer (June 22-July 23)

Don’t be surprised if a lot of people contact you today, each one anxious to confer with you. It seems that you’re the authority on all topics, Cancer. All the attention is flattering, but it makes it difficult to get any work done. Do what you can to help your co-workers, and then tell them that the help desk is closed for the day. You want to leave work early so you can be with your loved ones.

Leo (July 24-Aug 23)

Don’t let yourself be manipulated by needy friends, Leo. With today’s planetary energies, it’s a good time to think about setting clear boundaries. You know which friends are there for you and lift you up and which ones tend to drain all your time and energy with the constant need for your immediate attention. Try saying no. You can’t fix other people’s lives for them anyway. Think about it.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

This is a good day for sharing friendship with pals and co-workers, Virgo. People will be in a light, socializing mood and not much in a working frame of mind. There’s really no use fighting this energy. Enjoy yourself today and allow yourself to detach from work issues. You can all get back to the grindstone later. The work will still be there.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Your technical skills take a real leap forward today, Libra. It seems all that training you’ve done is finally paying off. Your new skills will greatly increase your efficiency and enhance your marketability. If you’ve been thinking about applying for a new position, get your resume ready to send out when you see an appealing ad. Any move you make will be for the better.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Don’t be surprised to see your co-workers acting a bit silly today, Scorpio. There is no getting around the high spirits that permeate the work environment. It’s almost impossible to get anything done with today’s planetary atmosphere. Rather than cracking the whip and trying to increase productivity, why not join in? Lighten up a little.

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Life’s been a real whirlwind lately, Sagittarius. You may feel a bit overwhelmed by everything that’s been going on. It’s fun to catch up with everyone, but a bit daunting to renew ties with old friends and try to remember things that are going on with new ones. Take a deep breath, Sagittarius, you’re doing just fine.

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

With all the conversations you’ve had lately, Capricorn, it’s likely that you’ve talked with some people in the healing professions. These doctors, nurses, and technicians could be useful to you later. Be sure to file their contact information away for future reference. On another front, expect to receive some good news concerning your finances.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

You may discover an untapped talent today, Aquarius. Perhaps there’s a new machine in the office and you’re the only one who can figure out how to use it. Maybe drafting a simple business proposal makes you realize how much you enjoy the writing process. This is a good day for any kind of creative endeavor, as well as for paperwork of all sorts. Get everything done so you can enjoy the evening.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

Expect some positive developments today that impact the whole family, Pisces. Perhaps you or your mate will receive word of a significant raise or great job opportunity. Perhaps you meet the one who is right for you, and you know it the instant you lock eyes. Whichever it is, don’t let the opportunity pass. If you don’t seize it, someone else surely will.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29