Tuesday Sep 8, 2020

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

San Juan The

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Study: Artificial Sweeteners May Affect Your Metabolism P23

Photo Pedro Correa Henry

High-Cost Moves Tourism Company Fusion With DDEC Could Leave Gambling Division ‘on a Limbo’ Gov’t Might Lose Millions

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Cohen’s Book: Protests on Labor Day: Trump Held ‘Low Opinions ‘Help the of All Black Folks’ Jobless, Now!’ P5 P7 NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

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24 EDITORIAL SEMANA, Tuesday, September 8,INC 2020• Jueves, 3 de septiembre de 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

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September 8, 2020

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

U.S. Dept. of Justice on Appeals Court ruling: Decision of not to extend SSI to PR, other territories would have consequences

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n asking the U.S. Supreme Court last week to overturn a U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that Congress’ decision not to extend the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program to Puerto Rico violates the equal-protection clause, the Justice Department argued that it would have significant consequences not only for Puerto Rico but for other U.S. territories.

The Appeals Court ruling may cost billions of dollars to the U.S. government, may cause an economic disruption and open up a pandora box as it could lead to challenges to laws that treat U.S. territories differently than the states for purposes of federal funding, the U.S. government said.

“The court of appeals’ decision concerns Puerto Rico, but Congress has also excluded other territories, apart from the Northern Mariana Islands, from the SSI program. One court has already held, in reliance on the court of appeals’ decision in this case, that Congress’s decision not to include Guam in the SSI program violates the Fifth Amendment,” the Justice’s appeal reads.

The U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals in April affirmed a lower court ruling that “the categorical exclusion of otherwise eligible Puerto Rico residents from SSI is not rationally related to a legitimate government interest.”

The decision in the case of United States vs Jose Vaello involved a Social Security Income disability recipient who continued to receive the payments after he moved back to Puerto Rico from New York in 2013. The U.S. government sought to claw back the $28,081 payments he received over a three-year period after he returned to Puerto Rico arguing he was no longer entitled to the benefits after moving to the commonwealth.

In February 2019, U.S. District Court Judge Gustavo Gelpí had ruled Jose Luis Vaello Madero did not have to return the money after finding that Congress “cannot demean and brand said United States citizen while in Puerto Rico with a stigma of inferior citizenship to that of his brethren nationwide.” The United States then appealed the ruling.

SSI benefits are given to help the elderly, blind or disabled people that make less than $750 a month. The benefit is available in the 50 states, Washington DC and the Northern Mariana Islands, but Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands are excluded. American Samoa is not eligible. Puerto Rico has a similar program to SSI, but recipients have to make $65 or less a month.

The U.S. government in its appeal to the Supreme Court said that while some provisions of the Constitution do require geographic uniformity—for instance, “all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform 11 throughout the United States,” the Equal Protection Clause simply is not among them. Indeed, the Constitution itself distinguishes between states and territories for a variety of purposes, including representation in Congress, participation in presidential elections, delegation of legislative power,

appointments of officers and double jeopardy.

“Put simply, a Territory differs from a State, and the Constitution allows Congress to recognize that difference,” the U.S. government said.

Another reason for treating Puerto Rico differently is that individuals who reside in Puerto Rico generally owe no federal income tax on income derived from sources in Puerto Rico, corporations in Puerto Rico generally owe no federal corporate income tax on income connected with Puerto Rico and residents of Puerto Rico generally owe no federal estate and gift taxes on transfers of property in Puerto Rico.

The cost of including Puerto Rico in the SSI would be extremely great. An estimate prepared by actuaries at the Social Security Administration, that cost now would be between $1.8 billion and $2.4 billion per year over the next ten years, the U.S. government said.

Extending the benefit could also cause an economic disruption. “For example, labor economists have assembled empirical evidence showing that benefit programs can “depress work effort” by “discourag[ing] employment” and “slow[ing] the accumulation of work experience and skill.” They have also assembled evidence indicating that, in light of wage levels and other economic conditions in Puerto Rico, benefit payments could be “relatively more attractive to a larger percentage of [the] Puerto Rican workforce,” and that “the negative effects” on the “labor supply” could thus be “larger” in Puerto Rico than in the States,” the U.S. government said.

The Social Security Administration estimates that extending the SSI program to other territories beyond Puerto Rico would cost a further $700 million over the next ten years.

However, many of the arguments presented to the Supreme Court were dismissed by the Boston middle court. For instance, the Appeals Court justices noted that residents of Puerto Rico not only make substantial contributions to the federal treasury, but in fact have consistently made them in higher amounts than taxpayers in at least six states, as well as the territory of the Northern Mariana Islands. “From 1998 up until 2006, when Puerto Rico was hit by its present economic recession, Puerto Rico consistently contributed more than $4 billion annually in federal taxes and impositions into the national fisc,” the judges said.

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Tuesday, September 8, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

PRTC Gambling Div. employees still wait health insurance negotiations as it might cost double Elimination ofTourism Company, and fusion with DDEC, may cause another issues, expensive ones

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

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round 30 management employees from the Puerto Rico Tourism Company’s (PRTC) Gambling Division have been neglected for six months by the Puerto Rico Gaming Commission (PRGC) to negotiate for a fair healthcare plan, as they might have to spend double the money on their new insurance and get less coverage if they end up separated from the agency, said the division’s Inspector Supervisor Andy Viera on Monday.

Viera said that the employees from the Gambling Division are “on a limbo due to bad legislations through Law 81, lack of communication and lack of transparency” as the division has tried to communicate with the company’s executive branch four times, including PRTC Executive Director Carla Campos, PRGC Executive Director José Maymó Azize and PRGC Human Resources Director Vanessa Ortiz, yet they haven’t received any response. According to Viera, their new healthcare plan, which is with health insurer Triple S, would cost up to $400 a month and offers less benefits than their former plan, which cost

around $170-$200 per month and had “spectacular benefits.”

“I summon Mr. Maymó to sit down, once and for all, with the management employees of the Gambling Division, the ones who work on the field, it’s important that this has to happen and, also, that he addresses the casino industry’s claims as they are agonizing, the casino industry is on a ventilator,” Viera said.

Likewise, Viera raised these concerns as their healthcare insurance’s due date is on September 30th. Furthermore, as to which employees from the PRTC’s Gambling Division might get affected by this change if there weren’t any negotiations, he said that the only employees who haven’t been able to negotiate their healthcare insurance are the management employees.

“When it comes to our medical plan, this is where it gets interesting, inside the PRTC’s Gambling Division, there are two groups belonging to unions: Collection Employees and Gambling Inspectors. These colleagues were able to negotiate their insurance through a broker. I made a petition to our Human Resources Director, Mrs. [Vanessa] Ortiz, so management employees from the Gambling Division would get the same opportunity to sit down and negotiate with a broker, to this day, we still wait for an answer,” said Viera while he demanded for Maymó Azize to be more open with them.

On the other hand, Popular Democratic Party (PDP) Delegate Spokesman for the Tourism Committee, Representative Angel Matos García, called for Governor Wanda Vázquez

Garced to not eliminate the company and fuse it with the Department of Economic Development and Commerce (DDEC for its Spanish acronym) as it would destabilize Puerto Rico’s public economy and the salaries from the agency’s employees.

“Due to defectuous legislations through Law 81, which created the recent Puerto Rico Gaming Commission, it has colleagues from this workshop in a legal limbo, where their rights get lost, stolen and abused. The Gambling Division is the heart that pumps the casino activities in Puerto Rico and had custody of millions of dollars that go to the PRTC, the island’s General Funds and our University of Puerto Rico,” Matos García said.

Meanwhile, PRTC’s Management Employees Association President Iraida Vega said that they are not asking for a raise or more benefits, they are asking to get back their autonomy.

Vega said that as PRTC’s budget was $115 million, which provided $4.5 million yearly to the DDEC, there is no reason to fuse both entities as DDEC “lacks the structure to absorb the company’s workforce.”

“There’s a mistake here, there’s something that happened hastily, there was no time to reflect what was going to happen with PRTC and which interests were behind this that has harmed terribly not only to Puerto Ricans, but to the entire island as they don’t have an agency that could represent them fairly in the exterior,” Vega said.

PDP House candidates to NPP Rep. Parés: ‘Stop politicizing with the LUMA-PREPA deal’

By THE STAR STAFF

S

everal Popular Democratic Party (PDP) House candidates urged House Economic Development Committee Chairman Víctor Parés to stop politicizing with the controversial contract awarded to LUMA Energy to operate and manage the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s (PREPA) transmission and distribution system.

PDP Rep. Luis Raúl Torres Cruz, along with House candidates Manuel Calderón Cerame and Robert Zayas, Parés, a New Progressive Party lawmaker, summoned LUMA Energy to the hearing slated for Thursday to ascertain the plans of PREPA’s executive director Efran Paredes.

“Representative Parés wasted too much time before investigating the details of the process that led to PREPA’s awarding of the contract to LUMA Energy, and now, just two months before the general elections, he wants to resume this investigation without including firm officials among those he cited for the hearing. We do not want to think that the legislator is using this issue as part of a last-minute political strategy, ” Calderón Cerame said.

The LUMA Energy contract was signed in June by the administration of Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced. This company will be in charge of operating, managing, maintaining, repairing and restoring the electricity grid of the public corporation for a period of 15 years.

“As indicated, LUMA Energy will receive annual com-

pensation starting at $70 million. Then, this amount would go up to $90 million and $100 million, the second and third year respectively, to be completed with a payment of $105 million for the rest of the term of this contract, which represents a high cost for the country,” Torres Cruz said.

PREPA asked the US District Court as part of its bankruptcy process to give payment priority status to the fees that the utility will pay to LUMA Energy, a request opposed by several creditors, including PREPA’s workers’ union, the Electric Industry and Irrigation Workers Union (UTIER in its Spanish acronym).

Torres Cruz mentioned that “although it was always said that LUMA would only be in charge of the transmission and distribution of energy, it turns out that it will also be in charge of system operations, including customer service and billing, which raises too many questions.”

Meanwhile, Zayas noted that UTIER asked the Court of Appeals of Puerto Rico to review the Energy Bureau’s approval of the contract and to suspend the contract’s transition process to avoid spending public funds, while the legal procedures are completed.

The Court of Appeal is reviewing whether it was proper for Energy Bureau Chairman Edison Aviles to participate in the selection of LUMA Energy and approve the contract.

“At that time, the Governor undertook to investigate the legal proposals of the UTIER, however, this has come to nothing, so we demand that this investigation be responsibly

resumed and that the acquired rights of the PREPA employees be respected,” Zayas said.

On the other hand, Torres questioned what will happen with the adjustment to the electricity rates promised by the NPP Administration, since there are no guarantees to honor it, once LUMA takes possession of PREPA. “Puerto Ricans do not have to pay the consequences of the bad decisions of this government. The country cannot bear more taxes, nor more increases in the rates of the most basic services to live, ” he said.

PDP House candidates to NPP Rep. Parés: ‘Stop politicizing with the LUMA-PREPA deal’

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

5

Socialist Workers Movement demand Labor Dept. to ‘pay for unemployment now!’

MST protest via convoy to La Fortaleza to demand for more than 60,000 claimants to receive financial aid from DTRH amid the COVID-19 pandemic

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

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pokespersons from the Socialist Workers Movement (MST by its Spanish initials) called for citizens Monday to join their convoy protest that began at the front of the Department of Labor and Human Resource (DTRH by its Spanish initials) headquarters and ended in La Fortaleza to demand that more 60,000 claimants receive unemployment financial aid as they have not obtained any since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March.

MST Spokeswoman Isabel Berrios said that yesterday, as it was Labor Day, should be renamed Unemployment Day as “job opportunities have been slumping for more than a decade.” She said that due to the coronavirus disease, unemployment rates have reached historical levels, as more than 20% of Puerto Rico’s population is jobless.

“We have a labor department that has been incapable of addressing every claim that has occurred due to unemployment. There are more than 60,000 claims that remain unattended and hundreds of thousands more that have

controversial points which the DTRH has taken no action,” Berrios said.

“That represents thousands of Puerto Rican families that have no income or enough to survive. They are facing precarious conditions due to this criminal negligence and the government’s total incapacity to attend the working class’ needs at the midst of the pandemic.”

Meanwhile, Berrios calls for DTRH Secretary Carlos Rivera Santiago to disburse every fund for the unemployment insurance and guarantee its payment immediately “to provide relief to the thousands of families that have suffered as for this negligence.”

“We also take this space to denounce the rampant corruption on our legislature, because while thousands of hardworking families in Puerto Rico suffer as we have an eden of contracts inside our legislature, ghost employees, nepotism and people getting the ‘good life’ at the expense of the Puerto Rican people,” she said as she called for citizens to get out of their homes, occupy the streets and demand for a better outcome.

On the other hand, MST Spokesman Ricardo Santos Ortiz said the DTRH has failed to oversight the working conditions on hospitals as six nurses have passed away due to COVID-19.

“The DTRH should have intervened at hospitals as they are not putting the correct safety protocols in action and haven’t provided the sanitary resources to our nurses so they can work without

putting their lives at risk day by day,” Ortiz Santos said. “6 working women, 6 nurses have passed away because of the attitude that hospitals have taken and the DTRH’s negligence to not take action as they should have. The only thing the government has done is to allocate financial incentives towards hospitals that don’t care for their workers and have laid off hundreds of them at the moment when we need a robust healthcare system.”

Santos Ortiz also said that in this “Unemployment Day that working citizens should not forget about those who

have passed away due to the coronavirus disease as they carried “the weight of this sanitary crisis on their shoulders,” while calling for others to “not have their arms crossed and join other workers for better welfare.

Moreover, as The Star asked Santos Ortiz if this was the first time to protest, Santos Ortiz said that this is their tenth year demanding DTRH for better labor welfare.

“The only difference now is that, this year, we are demanding this in the middle of a pandemic,” he said.

New SEC president appointed

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

T

he State Elections Commission (SEC) will be chaired by judge Francisco Rosado Colomer, who was appointed on Monday after a selection process by five party electoral commissioners.

In addition, Judge Jessica Padilla was chosen as the alternate president of the SEC..

According to reports Eric Ronda del Toro, Oscar González Rivera, Francisco Rosado Colomer and Juan Carlos Negrón Rodríguez were also evaluated for the position..

Those names were submitted by the electoral commissioner of the New Progressive Party (NPP), Héctor Joaquín Sánchez.

Former President Juan Ernesto Dávila Rivera resigned last Thursday under fire over the primary process of August 9 which required a second round of voting August 16.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Health professionals want COVID-19 restrictions to stay the same

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

T

he president of the College of Medical Surgeons of Puerto Rico, Víctor Ramos, and the epidemiologist Juan Carlos Reyes, support continuing with the restrictions regarding public activities that are established in the executive order by Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced to avoid contagion with COVID-19.

In a radio interview Monday morning, both Ramos and Reyes expressed concerns that relaxing restrictions on activities will end with a rebound in cases.

“The cases dropped, but they are still double that of March,” said Ramos.

“I think that on behalf of the Health Department the order should stay the same.

Because openings had been considered, but certainly the weekend has shown that open-air activities are going to make what happened on the weekend happen again,” said Ramos, referring to an event in Morovis that brought together dozens of people, without maintaining physical distance or wearing masks to prevent the contagion with COVID-19.

Ramos hinted that it may be necessary to restrict activities even more than the current executive order requires.

“It would be enough if everyone did what they have to do. Because the reality is that the Governor can put whatever she wants in the executive order, but if there is no compliance with the executive order of the businesses and the people individually… there cannot be a policeman on

every corner, ” said Ramos.

“There is talk of wanting to open cinemas and gyms again,” said Dr. Reyes, member of the medical work group that advises the Governor.

“But the places that are closed with air conditioning, it is very difficult to think about reopening them. In many places, things are being reinvented to make cinema outdoors, gyms outside,” Reyes explained The epidemiologist anticipated that after this long weekend there will be a rebound in COVID-19 cases. “In seven to 10 days,” Reyes said.

“Thinking about opening spaces that have been identified in the literature as having a high risk (of contagion) seems to me a bit dangerous. They should not be opened.”

Resident Commissioner announces approval $42.6 million in federal funds

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

R

esident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón announced on Monday the approval of several items of federal funds totaling $42.6 million for education, energy, debris removal, housing, domestic violence programs and to mitigate the emergency of the COVID-19, among other issues.

The allocations come from the Federal Department of Energy, the Economic Development Administration (EDA), the Department of Housing (HUD), the federal Department of Justice, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Science Foundation, for the federal Department of Education; and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Federal Education allocated $7.1 million to various educational institutions as part of FY2020 grants from the Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program; Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) .

Within this program, the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico Metropolitan Campus will receive $599,955; the School of Plastic Arts and Design of Puerto Rico will receive $599,963; the Polytechnic University will receive $599,987; the University College of San Juan will receive $600,000; Atlantic University College will receive $600,000; the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico, Aguadilla campus, will receive $599,952; American University of Puerto Rico will receive $599,933; the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus will receive $600,000; the University of Puerto Rico Cayey Campus will receive $600,000; the University of Puerto Rico

Carolina Campus will receive $600,000 and the University of Puerto Rico Aguadilla Campus will receive $518,890.

On the other hand, the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) under the program to reduce domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and harassment on campus allocated $299,962 to the University of the Sacred Heart.

The program offers a unique opportunity for higher education institutions to establish multidisciplinary approaches including activities to combat sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence and bullying on campus.

In addition, Taller Salud will receive $225,000 to improve services for victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence and a stalking program.

The Puerto Rico Public Housing Administration will receive $475,728 from the federal Department of Housing (HUD) for the Housing Choice Voucher program, known as Section 8.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) allocated $150,000 to the Ocean Foundation to search for and collect lost fishing items and garbage abandoned in southeastern Puerto Rico and marine reserve areas.

The University Center of the University of Puerto Rico will receive $116,667 from the Economic Development Administration to fund the final year of a five-year University Center Economic Development Program at the University of Puerto Rico.

This program provides technical assistance and research and development tools to increase productivity, stimulate innovation, and promote entrepreneurship to help increase long-term regional competitiveness and economic diversification.

The EDA University Center program is a partnership based on competitiveness between EDA and academic institutions that makes various university resources available to the professional community for economic development.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) allocated $3.2 million to the University of Puerto Rico for the Louis Stokes STEM Pathways and Research Alliance program: Puerto Rico-LSAMP - Expanding Opportunities for Underrepresented College Students (2020-2025) under the direction of the President of the University, Jorge Haddock.

This program is intended to attract, recruit, and retain students in the STEM field for undergraduate and graduate studies.

The alliance is made up of the Puerto Rico University System: two graduate campuses: Río Piedras and Mayagüez and six 4-year campuses: Aguadilla, Arecibo, Bayamón, Cayey, Humacao and Ponce; the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico; and the Ana G. Méndez University System : Metropolitan University, University of the East and University of Turabo.

In addition, the Federal Department of Energy allocated $4 million to the Ana G. Méndez University System for a resilient energy system, The federal Department of Commerce allocated $578,755 to Puerto Rico Manufacturing Extension, Inc. (PRiMEX), to help manufacturers on the island put themselves in a position to develop new products and customers, expand into global markets, adopt new technologies, among other services.

The resident commissioner announced that the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded a total of $414,088 through the project-based rent

assistance program Moderate Rehabilitation (Mod Rehab) under the federal economic stimulus law to manage the coronavirus emergency, (CARES Act), for public housing agencies on the island (PHAs) that provide housing assistance to low-income residents.

From these funds, the municipality of San Juan will receive $249,375; Ponce, $21,590; Bayamón, $18,470; Trujillo Alto, $6,579; Arroyo, $52,400 and the Puerto Rico Housing Finance Corporation, $65,674.

Other recently approved and announced funds include $26 million for improvements to the island’s airport infrastructure by the federal Department of Transportation (DOT) through the Federal Aviation Administration.

“As a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of the federal House of Representatives, it is a priority for me that Puerto Rico have the necessary resources. We have already secured a federal investment of $89 million for Puerto Rico’s airports, which is essential to expand our passenger and cargo offer, ” said the resident commissioner.

As of September 2, 2020, ten airports on the Island have received $89.9 million in federal funds; $51.7 million under the CARES Act and $38.2 million in recurring funds.

Puerto Rico has received close to $10.3 billion in federal funds to meet the challenges of the pandemic. The resident commissioner has advocated and managed federal funds and resources to mitigate the effect of the coronavirus in the different industries and sectors on the Island, and also in the communities. These funds do not include those awarded under temporary unemployment benefit programs.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

7

Michael Cohen’s book says Trump held ‘low opinions of all black folks’

President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Latrobe, Pa., on Thursday evening, Sept. 3, 2020. The president’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, describes him as a mob boss figure who made racist insults, was driven by hatred for President Barack Obama and engaged in underhanded tactics against opponents.

By MAGGIE HABBERMAN

P

resident DonaldTrump routinely referred to Black leaders of foreign nations with racist insults. He had an abiding admiration for President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to treat Russia like a personal business. And he was consumed with hatred for President Barack Obama.

Those are the descriptions that Michael Cohen, a former personal lawyer and self-described fixer for Trump, lays out in his book, “Disloyal: A Memoir,” which paints the president as a sordid, moblike figure willing to engage in underhanded tactics against anyone opposing him.

“As a rule, Trump expressed low opinions of all Black folks, from music to culture and politics,” Cohen writes in the book, to be released Tuesday. He describes Trump calling Nelson Mandela, who led the emancipation of South Africa from white minority rule, “no leader.”

“Tell me one country run by a Black person that isn’t a shithole,” Cohen quotes Trump as saying. He also alleges that Trump called Kwame Jackson, a Black contestant on his realityTV show “The Apprentice,” a homophobic slur, and that he had deep disgust with Black leaders in addition to celebrities and sports figures.

He also was obsessed with Obama, Cohen writes. The book describes Trump hiring “a Faux-Bama, or fake Obama, to record a video whereTrump ritualistically belittled the first Black president and then fired him, a kind of fantasy fulfillment that it was hard to imagine any adult would spend serious money living out — until he

did the functional equivalent in the real world.”

The video Cohen describes appears to be a recording that was supposed to be shown the first night of the Republican National Convention in 2012, when Trump had endorsed the party’s presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, and insisted on having time during the programming.

Among the revelations from Cohen, who worked for Trump for more than a decade, are descriptions of the negotiations during the 2016 campaign with a key official at the Trump Organization about how to pay off an adult-film actress who said she had had an affair with Trump. Cohen also explains in detail how The National Enquirer became a weapon working in tandem withTrump to damage the businessman’s opponents in the 2016 Republican primary.

Asked about the many claims in the book, which The New York Times obtained an advance copy of, the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, was dismissive.

“Michael Cohen is a disgraced felon and disbarred lawyer who lied to Congress,” she said in a statement. “He has lost all credibility, and it’s unsurprising to see his latest attempt to profit off of lies.” A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization did not respond to an email seeking comment.

In Cohen’s telling, his lies were on behalf of Trump, whether it was in investigations or in trying to win him good headlines. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to a handful of financial crimes and a campaign finance violation related to the payments to the former adult-film actress,

Stephanie Clifford, who went by the stage name Stormy Daniels.

Cohen is defiant about those actions in the book, maintaining that he is innocent of some of the crimes he pleaded guilty to and that he was a victim of “the conviction machine” of the U.S. government, which also threatened his wife. He writes in detail about how he was released from a minimum security prison in Otisville, New York, to serve the rest of his sentence at home, only to be thrown back in prison because he would not initially sign a document prohibiting him from publishing the book. A judge later ruled that the move by the government was retaliatory, and Cohen was released to home confinement for the remainder of his sentence.

He sheds little new light on what he shared with Robert Mueller, the former special counsel investigating possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, and maintains that Trump’s soft spot for Putin is mostly about possible business deals and a general admiration for authoritarian power, as well as a shared hatred

of Hillary Clinton.

Trump loved Putin for his audacity “to take over an entire nation and run it like it was his personal company — like the Trump Organization, in fact,” Cohen writes.

The possibility of a Trump Tower project in Moscow was enticing to his boss, Cohen writes, saying that the businessman’s children did not favor Felix Sater, a felon and consultant with deep ties to Russia who had brought in the project. So Cohen handled it, he writes. That project became something that was examined

by Mueller.

Cohen describes the Trump Organization as loosely reminiscent of the mafia, with Trump as the would-be family don.

“As I’ve been saying since the beginning, Trump was a mobster, plain and simple,” Cohen writes when describing how he helped coordinate a softball interview between Megyn Kelly, then of Fox News, and Trump after the candidate had spent days attacking her and creating a security risk for her.

Emergencias Dentales

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

More than ever, Trump casts himself as the defender of white America

By PETER BAKER

A

fter a summer when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets protesting racial injustice against Black Americans, President Donald Trump has made it clear over the last few days that, in his view, the country’s real race problem is bias against white Americans.

Just days after returning from Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he staunchly backed law enforcement and did not mention the name of Jacob Blake, the Black man shot seven times in the back by police, Trump issued an order Friday to purge the federal government of racial sensitivity training that his White House called “divisive, anti-American propaganda.”

The president then spent much of the weekend tweeting about his action, presenting himself as a warrior against identity politics. “This is a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue,” he wrote of such programs. “Please report any sightings so we can quickly extinguish!” He reposted a tweet from a conservative outlet hailing his order: “Sorry liberals! How to be Anti-White 101 is permanently cancelled!”

Not in generations has a sitting president so overtly declared himself the candidate of white America. WhileTrump’s campaign sought to temper the culture war messaging at the Republican National Convention last month by showcasing Black and Hispanic supporters who denied that he is a racist, the president himself has increasingly made appeals to the grievances of white supporters a centerpiece of his campaign to win a second term.

The message appears designed to galvanize supporters who have cheered what they see as a defiant stand against political correctness since

the days when he kicked off his last presidential campaign in 2015 by denouncing, without evidence, Mexicans crossing the border as “rapists.”

While he initially voiced concern over the killing of George Floyd under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis this spring, which touched off nationwide protests, he has focused since then almost entirely on defending the police and condemning demonstrations during which there have been outbreaks of looting and violence.

He has described American cities as hotbeds of chaos, played to “suburban housewives” he casts as fearful of low-income people moving into their neighborhoods, sought to block a move — backed by the Pentagon and Republican lawmakers — to rename Army bases named for Confederate generals, criticized NASCAR for banning the Confederate flag, called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate” and vowed to strip funding from cities that do not take what he deems tough enough action against protesters.

In effect, he is reaching out to a subset of white voters who think that the news media and political elites see Trump supporters as inherently racist. Trump has repeatedly rejected the notion that America has a problem with systemic racial bias, dismissing instances of police brutality against Black Americans as the work of a few “bad apples,” in his words.

“Trump is the most extreme, and he has done something that is beyond the bounds of anything we have seen,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “Playing with racism is a dangerous game.

It’s not that you can do it a little bit or do it slyly or do it with a dog whistle. It’s all dangerous, and it’s all potentially violent.”

President Donald Trump greets law enforcement officers in Kenosha, Wis., Sept. 1, 2020.

Aides said Trump’s actions were aimed at eliminating pernicious views that actually exacerbate prejudice. “President Trump believes that all men and women are created equal, and he will stand against anti-American philosophies of all kinds that promote racial division,” Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, said Sunday.

Public views of Trump flow through a racial prism. A poll by CBS News last week found that 66% of registered voters believed Trump favored white people, versus 4% who said he worked against their interests. By contrast, 20% thought he favored Black people and 50% said he worked against Black people. Among Black voters, 81% said he worked against their interests.

In the poll, Trump led formerVice President Joe Biden, his Democratic challenger, among white voters by 51% to 43%, but trailed among Black voters with just 9% support, compared with 85% for Biden. Among Hispanic voters, Biden led by 63% to 25%.

The president’s approach in recent days seems to belie the Republican convention programming that sought to soften his image on race by featuring validators like Herschel Walker, the onetime football star, and Vernon Jones, a Black Democratic state legislator from Georgia, who testified to Trump’s friendship and his support for people of all races.

The president often makes the unfounded assertion that he has done more for Black Americans than any president other perhaps than Abraham Lincoln. He cites his support for funding for historically Black colleges and universities, his signature on legislation overhauling criminal justice sentencing and an unemployment rate for Black people that dropped to record lows on his watch, continuing a trend that had begun under his predecessor, until it rose again with the

pandemic-related economic slowdown.

But analysts said the convention had been aimed at making it easier for white voters uncomfortable with Trump’s history on race to support him and that it might have appealed to nonwhite voters who bristle at the so-called cancel culture that has become a favorite target of the right.

Like other policies put forth with little advance notice, Trump’s focus on diversity training seems to have originated with something he saw on Fox News. On Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson interviewed Christopher F. Rufo, a conservative scholar at the Discovery Institute who criticized what he called the “cult indoctrination” of “critical race theory” programs in the government.

“It’s absolutely astonishing how critical race theory has pervaded every institution in the federal government, and what I’ve discovered is that critical race theory has become in essence the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people,” Rufo said on the program.

On his website, Rufo identified six agencies that had conducted training sessions that he said asserted that America is inherently racist and promoted concepts like unconscious bias, white privilege and white fragility. At the Treasury Department, for instance, he said that employees had been told that “virtually all white people contribute to racism” and that white staff members should “struggle to own their racism.”

Trump’s memo Friday adopted much of this language, attributing it to “press reports.” The memo, signed by Russell T. Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said “this divisive, false, and demeaning propaganda of the critical race theory movement is contrary to all we stand for as Americans and should have no place in the Federal government.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

9

Tax the ultrarich? Cuomo resists, even with a $14 billion budget gap

By LUIS FERRÉ-SADURNI and JESSE McKINLEY

F

or years, progressive Democrats in Albany have been pushing a three-word solution to many of New York’s problems: Tax the rich.

Yet year after year, proposals to make the wealthy pay more were blocked by Republicans.

Now, however, their most staunch opponent may well be the state’s third-term governor, Andrew Cuomo, a socially progressive Democrat who often boasts of his history of tax cuts.

That approach appeals to most taxpayers, and is easier to understand during a decade of financial growth. But as the coronavirus pandemic has transformed New York’s financial problems from merely troubling to catastrophic, a growing contingent of Democrats in the allblue Legislature is pushing the governor to reconsider his stance.

They say the state must increase taxes on the wealthy to safeguard services for New York’s neediest, which could be decimated if the state were forced to make broad cuts because of the looming deficit.

“We are playing with fire: These are people’s lives,” said state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, a Democrat representing parts of the Bronx and Westchester County who is cosponsoring a bill to tax the ultrawealthy. “It is not OK to not act.”

The fiscal hole is daunting: The state faces a $14.5 billion budget gap this fiscal year, according to budget officials.

Cuomo, however, says the potential benefit of new revenue from taxing the rich would be far outstripped by the negative impact on the state’s highest earners, who already shoulder the bulk of the state’s taxes.

“I don’t care what you increase taxes to, you couldn’t make up that deficit,” Cuomo said last week upon releasing a letter asking congressional leaders for a whopping $59 billion to cover two years of projected state deficits and more.

“There is no combination of savings, efficiencies, tax increases that could ever come near covering the deficit,” he added. “We need the federal government to assist in doing that.”

But supporters have framed the tax increases as an alternative to the steep cuts to local governments and schools that Cuomo has threatened to implement if Congress fails to approve a federal stimulus package to cover the shortfall.

Raising taxes on the wealthy has long had the backing of the Assembly and its speaker,

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has said that there is “no combination of savings, efficiencies, tax increases that could ever come near covering the deficit.”

Carl E. Heastie, and it recently gained the endorsement of the Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, bestowing the effort renewed political momentum.

In late July, Stewart-Cousins cited the coronavirus crisis in throwing her support behind taxing “multimillionaires and billionaires to help our state shoulder this extraordinary burden.”

Her statement was an encouraging sign for the left-wing activists, unions and more than 100 Democratic lawmakers who have indicated they support raising taxes on the wealthy to lessen the blow of budget cuts.

“At some point, the waiting game with Washington will run its course,” said Michael N. Gianaris, a state senator from Queens and the deputy majority leader. “And I think we’re just about there.”

While Cuomo and others have been pleading for help, it seems unlikely that any deal in Washington will make the state completely whole.

The negotiations between Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, and his Democratic counterpart, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, have been slowmoving, with most expecting only a slimmeddown version of an aid package to pass.

State officials have withheld about $1.9 billion in payments to localities, school districts and nonprofits, affecting providers of

mental health and substance abuse services and creating financial uncertainty for schools on the brink of reopening.

Robert Mujica, the governor’s budget director, said officials were still deciphering how much money they would withhold from a large $3 billion payment to schools in September, noting officials would be careful not to disproportionately cut funding from poorer school districts.

But he warned that the withheld payments — allowed under extraordinary emergency powers the Legislature granted the governor earlier this year — could become permanent cuts if federal aid does not come through.

In total, budget officials said they’re on track to cut up to $8 billion in local aid.

Fearful of the cuts becoming permanent, progressive lawmakers and advocates are pushing for a slew of revenue-raising bills — from increasing the tax rate on millionaires to a tax on pieds-à-terre — that could lead to a bitter standoff between Cuomo and his party if the Legislature moves to vote on the measures.

“We could be generating billions and billions of dollars to prevent many of these cuts that are being proposed and are happening right now,” Ron Deutsch, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said during a news conference last week.

“The governor should be talking more about shared sacrifice right now than just talking

about protecting the wealthiest among us.”

One Democratic proposal meant to raise revenue for education would increase the tax rate on millionaires to 9.62% for those who make up to $5 million, and up to 11.85% for those who earn more than $100 million. The current tax rate for people earning more than $1 million a year is 8.82%.

But among the most ambitious and contentious proposals is a so-called billionaire’s tax, which would tax the unrealized capital gains of New York’s nearly 120 billionaires and redirect the proceeds to workers not eligible for unemployment insurance or the federal stimulus.

The tax would be the first of its kind in the nation, although the idea has been floated in Congress and California. It’s common to tax the profit, or realized capital gain, a person makes when they sell off an asset, such as a stock. But it’s almost unheard-of to tax the unrealized capital gains, or the appreciation of assets not yet sold.

Emmanuel Saez, an economist whose research on income inequality has helped fuel support for a wealth tax among the left flank of the Democratic Party, estimated the tax could raise more than $5 billion a year, on average, and about $23 billion the first year it goes into effect.

Saez, who helped New York lawmakers draft the proposal, said billionaires would find it hard to avoid the tax because it would go into effect immediately, leaving them with no time to move out.

“If that bill was to pass tomorrow, even if you’re a billionaire and you decide ‘I’m leaving,’ you would still be liable on all your unrealized gains because you would still be a 2020 New York resident,” said Saez, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.

But the tax could prove highly complex to administer and potentially unconstitutional, according to its critics, including Mujica.

Edmund J. McMahon, a senior fellow and founder of the conservative-leaning Empire Center, dismissed the proposal as “a political totem,” and questioned the wisdom of creating a new tax after many New York homeowners lost a tax write-off when President Donald Trump instituted a so-called SALT cap that limited the deduction that could be claimed.

“Is it practical to think you can do that without harming your tax base at a time when a large number of those people are reconsidering their presence in New York and they don’t have a tax deduction anymore?” he said.

10

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Helicopters rescue about 200 trapped in California wildfire

Campers stranded by the Creek Fire congregated on the shore of the Mammoth Pool Reservoir on Saturday.

By NEIL VIGDOR, CHRISTINA MORALES and BRYAN PIETSCH

I

t should have been an idyllic Labor Day weekend, the serenity of the High Sierra region of California providing a welcome respite from protests and a pandemic.

But about 200 people — many of them unaware that a rapidly growing wildfire was closing in on a popular campground area in the Sierra National Forest — found themselves suddenly trapped while trying to flee Saturday night into Sunday morning.

The very forest where they had come for a holiday escape now provided kindling that helped create a firestorm, one that prompted Gov. Gavin Newsom of California to declare a state of emergency.

It took a treacherous rescue operation by military helicopters to evacuate them from the Mammoth Pool Reservoir area, authorities said. Others posted videos on social media showing themselves escaping by driving through a labyrinth of fire and ash.

“We had to splash water on our hair because our hair was catching on fire,” Rylee Zukovsky said Sunday. “I was shoveling so much water into my face that I was almost drowning myself.”

Zukovsky, 16, said she was rescued in a Chinook helicopter after taking refuge at the reservoir with her boyfriend, her mother

and her mother’s boyfriend.

Her mother lives near the campground, which she helps run along with a nearby store. The store’s owner frantically tried to rescue her three dogs, said Zukovsky, who recalled diving into the reservoir when embers started to hit her.

There was little to no cellphone service, she said, explaining that it had taken 12 hours before she was rescued.

“Nobody knew helicopters were coming,” she said. “The Chinook just flew out of the smoke.”

Dozens of evacuees were packed into the helicopters. Two UH-60 Black Hawks and a CH-47 Chinook transported them to Fresno Yosemite International Airport, said Brad Alexander, a spokesman for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

About 20 people were injured, he said, and some were taken to hospitals. Two people remained in very serious condition from burns, Daniel Lynch, director of emergency medical services for Fresno County, said Sunday.

One of the burn patients, he said, was a 14-year-old girl being treated at the Valley Children’s Hospital in Madera, California.

The others hurt were adults, who had injuries that included broken bones, lacerations and abrasions, he said.

The helicopters made three trips during the evacuation effort, with rescuers trying to shepherd as many people as they could because the conditions were getting worse, authorities said.

Two people stayed behind, refusing to be evacuated, the Madera County Sheriff’s Office said on Twitter on Sunday. The sheriff said that 20 people were still waiting to be rescued as of Sunday night.

In neighboring Fresno County, evacuation efforts were also underway Sunday night, according to the sheriff’s office. It was not immediately clear how many people were affected by evacuation warnings there.

The blaze, known as the Creek Fire, had consumed more than 45,000 acres and was 0% contained as of Sunday afternoon, according to Cal Fire. It was one of three significant fires in California cited by Newsom in an emergency declaration Sunday night in five counties.

In San Bernardino County east of Los Angeles, the El Dorado Fire had burned more than 7,000 acres and was 5% contained as of Sunday night, according to Cal Fire. The blaze was caused by a smoke generating pyrotechnic device used during a gender reveal party, in a park in the city of Yucaipa, the authorities said.

The emergency declaration by Newsom came as much of California was grappling with a heat wave that further strained the state’s power supply. It also came less than three weeks after Newsom declared a similar fire-related emergency in four counties in Northern and Central California.

The measures empowered the governor to mobilize the California National Guard and to direct resources to the affected counties. It also gave state agencies clearance to sign contracts for supplies without having to follow the state’s procurement rules.

The Sierra National Forest covers more than 1.3 million acres at elevations ranging from 900 to 13,986 feet, according to the U.S. Forest Service. It is tucked between Yosemite National Park to the north and Kings Canyon National Park to the south. The rugged terrain and poor visibility challenged the rescue operation, authorities said.

“We’re all in awe of the California National Guard pilots who were able to land and evacuate citizens during a firestorm like

that,” Tyson Pogue, the sheriff of Madera County, said.

Pogue said the fire was unlike anything he had ever seen.

“It’s almost hellish conditions,” he said. “We almost have fire and ash raining from the sky in some areas.”

The Mammoth Pool Reservoir, which is about 90 miles northeast of Fresno, is accessible by one two-lane road that was cut off during the fire, authorities said.

Juliana Park was with four friends on a backpacking excursion near the Isberg Trail on Saturday when they noticed the fire and realized they had to turn back, two hours uphill, to their car.

A forest ranger helped guide them out of harm’s way, she said.

“Don’t stop — just drive through it,” Park recalled the ranger saying. “Just drive.”

Park said that the evacuation had been hampered by the lack of cellphone service, so the group used a paper map and directions from the forest ranger that were jotted into the notes app on an iPhone.

It felt like the fire was going to “come and grab the car,” she said.

The wildfire started Friday near the communities of Big Creek and Huntington Lake and prompted several evacuations, the Forest Service said Sunday. The cause was under investigation.

Teddy Forscher, a camper, said he and a group of friends had abandoned two cars and their equipment Saturday before moving on in one vehicle.

“It just didn’t seem worth it,” he said of returning to the campsite.

California is still reeling from a heat wave last month that exacerbated a series of devastating wildfires, including the secondand third-largest fires in the state’s history.

Forecasters predicted brutally hot and dry weather across much of the Western United States, including California, over the Labor Day weekend.

Carrie Lightfoot, a resident of Bass Lake, which is a few miles west of the Mammoth Pool area, was preparing to evacuate Sunday morning.

“It looks like it’s 8:30 at night,” Lightfoot said of the darkness from the fire.

“You can taste the smoke,” she said.

“You can see red coming up the mountain.

It just looks like the end of the world.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

11

Xi’s post-virus economic strategy for China looks inward

By CHRIS BUCKLEY

H

e inspected fields of corn amid jitters about food supplies. He visited steel works trying to overcome a slump in profits. He toured an innovation center at a time when President Donald Trump has raised barriers against China’s technological takeoff.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has used his recent trips to highlight a warning: The country must retool its economy to be more self-sustaining in a post-pandemic world of uncertainty, weakened demand and hostility.

China needs its people to spend more and its manufacturers to be more innovative, Xi has said, to ease dependence on fickle foreign economies. Most pressing, official media comments on Xi’s strategy have said, China must be ready for sustained acrimony with the United States that could put at risk its access to American consumers, investors and know-how.

“The world has entered a period of turbulence and transformation,” Xi told an audience of prominent Chinese economists brought to the Communist Party’s headquarters in central Beijing late last month. “We face an external environment with even more headwinds and countercurrents.”

China must “make breakthroughs in core technologies as quickly as possible,” Xi said.

Xi has called his new initiative a “dual circulation” strategy. The grandly technocratic name, which he first used in May, means China should rely on a robust cycle of domestic demand and innovation as the main driver of the economy while maintaining foreign markets and investors as a second engine of growth.

To some, Xi’s latest initiative looks like a glossy reboot of long-standing efforts to overhaul the Chinese economy. Chinese leaders have promised since at least 2006 to make domestic consumer spending a bigger share of economic activity, reducing reliance on exports and infrastructure building — with mixed success.

But Xi’s new strategy demands to be taken seriously, even if its implications are still hazy. He has cast it as a security imperative to keep China growing in an era of global turbulence, and that new geopolitical urgency will raise pressure on officials to show results.

“This policy has a lot to do with China’s

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has said that China needs its people to spend more and its manufacturers to be more innovative. changing international environment, particularly the deterioration of Sino-American relations,” Yao Yang, dean of the National School of Development at Peking University, said in an emailed response to questions.

“China needs to prepare for the worst-case scenario, in which the U.S. seals off China in certain tech areas.”

Chinese officials and experts have already been rushing out rival proposals to flesh out Xi’s strategy. Some have urged the government to ramp up support for Chinese technology companies. Others have called for reducing barriers to foreign investors, to help ensure that China keeps its friends and is not cut off.

China’s formula for growth has been evolving, though in the view of some economists, too slowly. Exports contribute notably less to economic growth than they did a decade ago, but the shift to domestic consumption has been incremental. And China depends on imports of technology, crops and energy, adding to the government’s worries about external vulnerability.

“Frankly, a succession of policies from the Trump administration have made us see the importance of this more clearly,” Yu Yongding, an economist in Beijing who previously advised China’s central bank, said in a telephone interview, referring to Xi’s new emphasis on domestic consumption. “We may step up the pace of our adjustment.”

Xi has said that dual circulation will shape China’s next five-year development

plan, which will be largely finalized later this year and rolled out next year. A Communist Party leaders meeting in October is likely to reveal more of what Xi has in mind for that plan and beyond.

The leaders will be sorting through competing proposals on how to meet Xi’s goals as they hammer together the five-year plan. Central to their deliberations is how China should handle restrictions by the U.S. and other advanced economies that have become increasingly frustrated by and wary of China.

In the end, Xi’s preference for state dominance is likely to determine what proposals become policy.

“I do think that China is preparing for an even further degree of decoupling,” Zhu Ning, a deputy dean at the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance, said in an interview.

“In most of the propaganda, the domestic consumption cycle receives far more attention than the foreign cycle.”

Xi’s program is likely to bring more measures to support domestic service industries, such as tourism, and more support for new energy sources to displace imports, Wang Wen, executive dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, a think tank in Beijing, said in an interview. He said that the new strategy implied a more ambitious agenda than just expanding consumer spending.

To increase domestic consumption, the Chinese government would have to markedly reduce inequality by shifting wealth

to ordinary households. Poorer people are unlikely to spend freely when they lack disposable income and tend to save money for emergencies.

That could require difficult social and economic changes that have met official resistance. Xi’s new edict has also revived decadeslong calls for breaking down bureaucratic barriers that make it difficult for rural residents working in cities to get medical care or send their children to schools.

“Any efforts to reduce inequality would, in theory at least, translate into higher domestic consumption,” Jane Golley, an economist at the Australian National University in Canberra, said by telephone. “The failings that they’ve had there is part of the reason that they’ve struggled to see a significant boost in the share of consumption.”

Xi’s dual circulation initiative may have a more immediate impact by redoubling efforts to build homegrown technology and reduce China’s need for foreign-made microchips and other key components in smartphones, computers and other equipment.

Many Chinese officials and analysts say that American enmity has compelled Beijing to spend more on creating its own crucial technologies. In the latest blow, the Trump administration announced in August that it was restricting the ability of Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications equipment giant, to buy chips made or designed with American equipment and software.

The new strategy does not mean that Beijing is closing the door on foreign investors and markets, Chinese officials assert, and experts say that a rupture with the U.S. would be economically devastating for both sides.

Xi often orchestrates policy drives by first issuing sweeping commands, leaving subordinates to hammer out detailed proposals. In 2015, he launched “supply-side structural reform” to cut bloated industrial capacity, and it evolved from a catchphrase to a campaign that bore results.

“The leadership doesn’t issue slogans like these because they think things will be easy. They issue them to force focus, mobilization and prioritization,” Julian Gewirtz, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies Chinese politics, said by email. “Dual circulation has a lot of mileage left to go before it’s towed off to the junkyard of discarded slogans.”

12

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

With some schools moving outdoors, retailers follow

By MIKE SEELY

A

my Jackson, an early-education instructor at the Center School in Greenfield, Massachusetts, remembers one rainy day a few years ago when she was outside with her students.

They thought they were prepared. Everyone was wearing rain gear, and ropes and tarps were used to erect a makeshift shelter.

But soon the children were “cold, wet, droopy,” and heading back inside became inevitable.

“The only child in good spirits was the one wearing the Oaki one-piece rainsuit,” Jackson said, referring to the company that makes outdoor apparel for children.

The Center School has committed to an all-outdoor curriculum this fall to guard against the spread of the coronavirus among its students and staff. Tents and outdoor desks have been procured to create al fresco classrooms.

The school has also recommended that parents buy their children Oaki rainsuits, priced at $60 to $70.

They are not the only ones.

With a number of U.S. schools opting for outdoor education over the potentially germier confines of their traditional indoor spaces, demand for Oaki’s rainsuits and related gear “has been overwhelming,” said Sam Taylor, chief executive of the company, which is based near Salt Lake City. It is a sentiment echoed by other outdoor-oriented companies, some of which

Amy Jackson teaches a group of children outside at Center School in Greenfield, Mass., Sept. 2, 2020. are launching new product lines or repurposing existing ones to capitalize on how the pandemic has changed the education experience.

Taylor said demand for Oaki products has increased 60% this year, a challenge because the company is experiencing pandemicrelated delays with its manufacturers in India and Mexico. As a result, Taylor has “prioritized individual schools or parents” over warehouse and retail orders. He has also rushed to market a line of fleece and wool socks that don’t need to be washed every day, in response to a request from a Vermont school.

“There’s been a ton of research that’s shown how productive being outside is,” Taylor said. “There’s no reason a little moisture or rain should stop that. If anything, that should be a positive if you’ve got the right gear.”

Those searching for weatherproof

supplies have also turned to Rite in the Rain, a century-old company based in Tacoma, Washington, that sells waterproof products including notebooks and printer paper.

“We start with a wet-strength, virgingrain paper, then we coat it using a proprietary machine and process and formula,” said Ryan McDonald, its director of marketing. “The process allows for water to bead up on the paper but still allow for writing.”

Fifty percent of Rite in the Rain’s business comes from the government, mostly the military. But aside from “pretty decent business with college bookstores,” McDonald said, it hadn’t focused much on students until recently, with an increase in orders from elementary and high schools.

Bienenstock Natural Playgrounds has also shifted its focus. Bienenstock, a Canadian business that has an office in the Denver area, designs and builds school playgrounds, but when the pandemic shut schools in March, “that was the end to that side of the business,” said Adam Bienenstock, the company’s founder and principal designer.

But Adam Bienenstock was prepared because of an “ace in the hole”: his father, mucosal immunologist Dr. John Bienenstock.

“We started our conversation around Christmas, about how our immune systems were going to react to this; how this was ‘the one,’” Bienenstock said.

So Bienenstock began creating log-ba-

sed outdoor classrooms, called OutClass, that schools can set up in less than a day. He said year-over-year inquiries for his products from school administrators are up about 600%.

“Normally in August, you can’t get a hold of anyone, but we’ve actually had superintendents calling us, which is freakish,” he said.

While several major metro public school districts have expressed interest, Bienenstock said many “have been frozen” by the pandemic.

“The decision-making is cumbersome,” he said. “This thing is moving too fast.”

Bienenstock designed OutClass so the classrooms can be converted into play structures whenever schools return to traditional indoor instruction.

“I’d prefer to be doing the play-based stuff and not have to deal with any of this,” he said.

“But if this gets people to realize that teaching outside is a great thing and we should have been doing more of this before the pandemic, then I’ll take it.”

Some parents are also trying to add an outdoor component to the remote learning experience.

Household clients “almost doubled compared to the same period last year,” said Jonathan Degenhardt, managing director of Deuter USA, whose backpacks are popular with parents and teachers alike. “Because they’re spending more time outdoors, either due to formal or informal learning, we’re seeing increased spending on outdoor products.”

Amazon bans sale of foreign seeds in the U.S.

By ALLISON WALLER

A

mazon has banned the sale of foreign seeds to its customers in the United States, a move that comes after thousands of U.S. residents received unsolicited packages of seeds over the summer, most of them postmarked from China.

The company updated its policy Wednesday, advising its foreign sellers that it “would no longer allow the import into the U.S. of plant or seed products.” Amazon prohibits the sale of products the U.S. Department of Agriculture labels “noxious” and those that are subject to government quarantine or can be fatal when touched or consumed.

“Moving forward, we are only permitting the sale of seeds by sellers who are based in the U.S.,” an Amazon spokeswoman said in a statement.

Sellers who do not follow the guidelines risk the loss of their accounts, the company said.

For sellers who use Amazon to fulfill orders and store items in the company’s warehouses, the updated policy will go into effect Sept. 30.

The company did not say how long sellers not based in the United States had been allowed to sell plant and seed products on its platform.

The update to Amazon’s policy, which was reported by The Wall Street Journal, comes a little over a month after mysterious seed packets bearing Chinese characters started arriving in mailboxes across the United States in July, prompting all 50 states to issue safety warnings.

The U.S. Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service disclosed an uptick in reports of unsolicited packages of seeds starting in late July.

“USDA is also working with e-commerce

companies to remove online sellers that are illegally importing or facilitating the illegal import of propagative materials, including seeds,” the agency said in a statement on its website.

“We have also intensified our engagement with e-commerce companies to ensure they and the sellers who use their platforms are complying with USDA regulations.”

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said the unsolicited packages appeared to be a part of a “brushing scam,” in which an online seller ships an inexpensive product to an unwitting receiver and then submits positive reviews on the recipient’s behalf with a goal of boosting the seller’s ratings and visibility online.

The agency said there was no reason to suspect agroterrorism, in which biological agents are used to harm the nation’s food supply.

As of Aug. 31, the inspection service had collected more than 8,500 packages of seeds

and had examined more than 2,400 individual seed packets. It said it had identified more than 300 seed species, including cabbage, hibiscus, lavender, mint, morning glory, mustard, rose, rosemary and sage.

The seeds pose no known health risks, the inspection service said. The main concern is that the seeds could negatively affect U.S. agriculture by introducing seed-borne viruses and other diseases.

Many of the seed packets came in white or yellow envelopes that were labeled to indicate they contained jewelry. State agriculture officials released photographs of white pouches bearing the words “China Post” and Chinese characters noting the contents as “ring.” The inspection service asked those who received unsolicited packages of seeds to fill out an online form and mail in the seeds or contact their state plant health director for no-contact pickup.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

13 Stocks

Euro dips as traders look towards ECB meeting

T

he euro fell on Monday as traders that have pushed the single currency to multi-year highs took a breather and prepared for the European Central Bank meeting on Thursday to see if policymakers will introduce yet more stimulus.

The dollar has tumbled to more than two-year lows against the euro in recent weeks as investors bet U.S. interest rates would stay low for longer just as European policymakers agreed a significant recovery fund to boost the economy in Europe.

But the greenback has steadied in recent sessions, especially after the euro’s brief flirtation with the $1.20 level was followed by selling of the single currency.

In thin trading with U.S. financial markets closed for a public holiday, the euro dropped 0.1% to $1.1822 EUR=EBS while the dollar index =USD, which measures the United States currency against a basket of rivals, gained 0.1% to 93.024.

Kit Juckes, FX strategist at Societe Generale, said that while investors’ euro long positions were not growing “they’re huge and rate/yield differentials aren’t moving in a supportive direction any more either”.

He added that the “‘Europe’s doing better than the U.S.’ story is tired”, leaving euro-dollar range-bound for now.

U.S. jobs data on Friday also helped the dollar. The U.S. Labour Department report showed that U.S. employment growth slowed and permanent job losses increased as government funding started running out.

The jobless rate fell to 8.4% from 10.2% in July but Juckes said the numbers showed a productivity surge as employment growth lagged rebounding U.S. economic growth.

Attention is turning to Thursday’s ECB meeting, where investors are not expecting any major policy changes but will listen closely for anything said about the euro after a blistering rally that has likely unnerved some policymakers.

“Jawboning by ECB officials worried about the euro’s rise has helped calm fevered USD bearishness,” said Alvin Tan, an FX Strategist at RBC Capital Markets.

Elsewhere, the big mover was sterling, which slid more than 1% after Britain reportedly threatened to override its European Union divorce deal. The currency weakened to as low as $1.3139 GBP=D3, its lowest since Aug. 26, while against the euro it dropped nearly 1% to 89.94 pence EURGBP=D3.

Against the Japanese yen JPY=EBS, the dollar traded at 106.26, unchanged on the day.

The Chinese offshore yuan CNH=EBS was little changed and last fetched 6.8343 per dollar after customs data on Monday indicated that the country’s exports marked the strongest gain since March 2019 while imports slumped.

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14

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

For aging Belarus rockers, a late shot at stardom

By ANTON TROIANOVSKI

P

it Pawlaw, guitar in hand, bobbed before the line of riot police guarding the presidential palace, belting out the chorus of his band’s biggest hit even as a siren blared. The protesters joined in behind him: “Hey, la-la-la-lai, don’t wait, don’t wait.”

Police stayed silent during this recent protest. But, Pawlaw said, “I felt like, in terms of their body language, they were singing along.”

Thirty years ago, when the Soviet Union fell, rock music was Eastern Europe’s sound of change and freedom. In Russia, some of the rockers whose anthems bid farewell to communism rose to stardom, wealth and mainstream acclaim. But in neighboring Belarus, where President Alexander Lukashenko soon reestablished authoritarian rule, many were forced back underground — and they have stayed there ever since.

Now, it is as if Belarusian rockers — grizzled, jaded, tired of playing cover gigs and giving guitar lessons — are emerging from as much as a quarter-century of cryogenic sleep. Their renewed relevance sheds light on the breadth of the revolution sweeping Belarus, one that has yet to unseat Lukashenko but is already reshaping society and national identity in what was long Europe’s most tightly controlled authoritarian state.

Protesters on Sunday once again flooded into the capital of Belarus and towns across the country, signaling the depth of public anger at Lukashenko.

The crowd in Minsk, the capital, appeared to be as large as those on three previous Sundays, when more than 100,000 people gathered to protest what they believe was a blatantly rigged presidential election on Aug. 9 and to demand that Lukashenko cede power.

“One might say that we’ve been preparing for this for a long time,” says Zmicer Wajciushkevich, a Belarusian bard who lives in the woods in a sort of self-imposed exile. “In principle, that would be correct.”

Wajciushkevich, 49, sings in Belarusian, as do Pawlaw, 53, and many of their peers who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s amid that era’s burst of national consciousness across Eastern Europe. Belarusian is one of Belarus’ official languages, but it is far less widely spoken than Russian. Singing in it has been seen as an act of resistance to Lukashenko, who has ruled since 1994 and aligned the country with Moscow.

In 2010, a presidential election year, Wajciushkevich publicly backed a challenger to Lukashenko, Vladimir Neklyayev, a poet. He set some of his patriotic and protest music to Neklyayev’s Belarusian-language verse. Neklyayev was jailed, and Wajciushkevich’s songs were taken off the airwaves and his concerts banned.

“I got so used to this sort of people’s love that, afterward, it was rather difficult,” Wajciushkevich said.

He retreated to a farmstead he owned in the woods a twohour drive from Minsk. He built a second house on the property to stay sane, he says, in his sudden artistic isolation, and started a small tourism business. He put on an outdoor poetry festival timed to coincide with the song of nightingales.

After his morning walks, he wrote music. In 2011, he re-

Palina Satsevich plays during an antigovernment demonstration, Aug. 30, 2020. corded a Polish protest song, “Walls,” in Belarusian. His recording attracted little attention until this year, he said, when the song became an anthem of the opposition movement.

Recent years represented a bit of a thaw for Belarusian musicians, but amid the protests, Lukashenko has again cracked down. At a state-sanctioned outdoor gathering before the August presidential election widely seen as falsified by Lukashenko, two defiant DJs played the 1980s song “Changes” by Viktor Tsoi, the Soviet star who helped establish rock as the soundtrack of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. The DJs were jailed for 10 days.

Belarusian rockers expect things to get much worse if the protests fail to oust Lukashenko. But should he leave, Belarusian music could be in for a new golden age, they say.

The uncertainty is such that several groups have delayed releasing their new albums. Yury Stylski, a punk rocker in the city of Brest on the Polish border, is struggling with what to do about the title track of his 22-year-old band’s coming release, “The Cops Will Teach You a Lesson.”

He recorded it this year as an upbeat song poking fun at the police. Given the widespread beatings and torture of protesters last month, its lightness no longer feels appropriate.

“It’s in this suspended state right now,” Stylski, 45, said in a telephone interview. “It’s either going to be a hit, or not, I don’t understand anymore.”

Stylski, who was himself jailed for several days last month after taking part in protests, said he is considering rerecording the song in minor key and renaming the album “Long Live Belarus!”

Ihar Varashkevich, frontman of the Belarusian band Krama, said he has been surviving in a sort of vacuum since 1996, when Lukashenko’s authorities first started taking his songs off the air and banning his concerts. Getting approval for a performance required having the lyrics and posters cleared by government censors. He got by with the help of wealthy supporters and playing rock ‘n’ roll covers. But the band is now finishing a new album that, if the political system changes, he thinks could redeem his decades of isolation.

“If there were a concert now, with good equipment, for the people out there, then this entire weight of almost the last 30 years would evaporate instantly,” Varashkevich, 60, said. “Once you understand that this is what you’ve been living for and that

you did everything right, then everything will immediately be different.”

That is also the dream of Pawlaw, the musician who confronted the riot police. In his Soviet-built one-bedroom apartment recently on the capital’s outskirts, his dark bluejeans hung drying over the bathtub, which, as in many basic Minsk apartments, shares a swiveling faucet with the grimy bathroom sink. He is a rock star, he is quick to remind you, but this is Belarus; he makes a living with guitar lessons, and when his car headlight broke, he had to go get it fixed himself.

“I won’t earn tens of millions of dollars,” if Lukashenko departs, he said, “because I’m not so young anymore. But I would probably earn one, which would be enough.”

Pawlaw fell out a decade ago with Lavon Volski, the original leader of his band, N.R.M., which has roots in the early 1980s.

This summer, the two of them released a video in which they reunited to play their best-known song, “Try carapachi” — “Three Turtles,” described as pulling the earth — the same tune that Pawlaw played for the riot police.

In the huge demonstration in Minsk last Sunday, as afternoon storm clouds gathered on the muggy final weekend of August, some of the protesters headed away from the police line in front of Lukashenko’s Independence Palace. They moved back toward the city center, walking along the pavement of the broad Avenue of Victors.

In the receding daylight, the protesters lifted up their shining smartphone flashlights, as at a rock concert. In the middle of the walking crowd, a woman with a ukulele, Palina Satsevich, led a rousing rendition of “Three Turtles.” A neighbor from her apartment building accompanied her on a melodica.

“To love our Belarus, our dear mother/ You have to have been to different spots!/ You will understand then: under your feet/ Three elephants stand without moving.”

Satsevich, 20, studies at the conservatory in Moscow but had come home to Minsk because of the pandemic. Like others in the city, she protested the Aug. 9 election results by driving around with her car windows down and loudly playing a Belarusian-language cover of Tsoi’s “Changes” on loop. She later augmented her playlist with songs by Volski, Wajciushkevich and others.

“They lived on and did not lose their enthusiasm or their creative energy,” Satsevich said of the musicians. “There should be a monument put up to each of them for surviving this pressure.”

Musician Pit Pawlaw in his apartment in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 28, 2020.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

15

Hong Kong police block protests over delayed election

By AUSTIN RAMZY and TIFFANY MAY

T

housands of police officers in riot gear filled the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday, stifling efforts to protest the postponement of legislative elections and China’s imposition of a national security law that gives authorities sweeping new powers to pursue critics.

A large police presence was seen across the Kowloon Peninsula, where some activists had called for a march on the day the elections were initially scheduled to take place. Protesters gathered despite the risk of arrests and fines under social distancing rules that prohibit mass gatherings. Occasional prodemocracy chants broke out as small groups wound through side streets, but the number of demonstrators remained small compared with the huge crowds that gathered last year.

Officers stopped and searched several people and arrested 289 who were suspected of unlawful assembly and other charges, according to police statements. One person was arrested under the National Security Law after chanting a pro-independence slogan, police said.

Activists Figo Chan, Leung Kwok-hung and Raphael Wong of the League of Social Democrats, a leftist pro-democracy group, were among those arrested, according to a post on Chan’s Facebook page. A photographer for a digital news outlet was taken away in a police vehicle, according to his employer, Truth Media Hong Kong.

Video footage captured by reporters showed riot police officers grabbing a girl and pinning her on the ground when she attempted to run away. Police said that officers had used minimum force while chasing the 12-year-old girl and that she was issued a ticket for social distancing violations.

A bus driver who honked while driving past police officers was arrested on suspicion of dangerous driving, according to an officer filming livestream footage for the police Facebook account. Other videos showed plainclothes officers deploying pepper spray at close range and dragging a man across asphalt and sidewalks before putting him in handcuffs.

Police Sunday also arrested an activist accused of “uttering seditious words,” under a little-used, colonial-era sedition law. The activist, Tam Tak-chi, a leading figure in the political group People Power, had organized street booths at which he handed out face masks and delivered criticisms of the government through a loudspeaker.

“Most of the time, the words he uses are stirring up hatred and contempt for the government and also raising the societal discontent among the Hong Kong people,” said Li Kwai-wah, a senior police superintendent.

He said that Tam had set up street booths on 29 occasions between June and August, framing them as “anti-epidemic health talks.”

Tam’s supporters said his arrest was a sign of shrinking freedom of speech in Hong Kong and of the government’s increasing targeting of dissent. James To, a pro-democracy lawmaker, said that Tam’s arrest was a violation of his right to free speech.

“The government’s violations of civil rights, including the aforementioned arrest, is the reason for the people’s discontent and even hatred,” To wrote in a statement, adding that the government was imitating the methods of authoritarian governments when cracking down on critics and watchdogs.

Li, who heads the national security department within the police force, said that the force had initially considered arresting Tam under a sweeping security law but in consultations with the Department of Justice decided that a colonial-era law against “seditious intent” was more appropriate. Li added that officers within the national security branch could use laws other than the new security law when making arrests.

He added that the unapproved gathering of protesters Sunday afternoon would heighten the risk for transmissions of the coronavirus.

“Why all of a sudden do so many people have to gather and increase the risk for others?” he said.

“The crowds are there. Our police officers are there.

Our reporters are there. So out of the blue, there will be a lot of people and our social distance will shrink.”

“If you organize, incite or participate in such gatherings, you are breaking the law and will be arrested,” he added.

The legislative election was postponed for one year because of the coronavirus pandemic, but many in the pro-democracy camp accused the government of stalling to avoid the defeat of establishment candidates.

While Hong Kong has seen an increase in coronavirus cases over the past month, that wave has largely been brought under control. The city announced 21 new cases Sunday, after more than a week of daily totals in the single or low double digits.

The Hong Kong government, with the aid of a team from mainland China, began a universal testing program last week that it said was necessary to break hidden chains of virus transmission. Some activists and health care workers urged residents to boycott the plan, calling it a waste of resources motivated by a political desire to burnish the image of China’s central government.

Health officials said Thursday that six positive cases had been found in the first batch of 128,000 tested in the program, including four people with previously confirmed cases who were treated in hospitals.

Five more cases detected through the program were announced Sunday. About 1 million people in the city of 7.5 million have registered for tests.

Police detain protesters after they called for a rally against the postponement of legislative elections and China’s imposition of a national security law in Hong Kong on Sunday, Sept. 6, 2020.

16

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Rwanda hints it tricked ‘Hotel Rwanda’ dissident into coming home

By ABDI LATIF DAHIR

B

reaking his silence on the dramatic arrest of a prominent dissident, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda insisted Sunday that his government had not forced Paul Rusesabagina, who is famed for his portrayal in the movie “Hotel Rwanda,” to return from exile to face charges of terrorism and murder.

Instead, Kagame hinted, he had been tricked into coming back.

“There was no kidnap,” Kagame said during a live television call-in on state television. “He got here on the basis of what he believed and wanted to do.”

Rusesabagina, best known for the story of how he saved 1,268 people during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, vanished from Dubai soon after he arrived there last week on a flight from Chicago. Days later he reemerged, wearing handcuffs, in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, where he faces a raft of charges, including terrorism, arson and murder.

Rusesabagina’s family, which insists he would never have voluntarily returned to Rwanda, has accused the Kagame government of kidnapping him from Dubai, and demanded to know more about the circumstances of his transfer.

Until Sunday, Rwandan officials would say only that Rusesabagina had voluntarily departed the United Arab Emirates on a private jet. Kagame, in the in-

Paul Rusesabagina faces a raft of criminal charges, including terrorism, arson and murder.

terview, remained coy about how Rusesabagina had been persuaded to board the plane, but suggested he had fallen for an unspecified ruse and had only himself to blame.

“It was actually flawless,” Kagame said. “It’s like if you fed somebody with a false story that fits well in his narrative of what he wants to be and he follows it and then finds himself in a place like that.”

Kagame’s government has been trying for at least a decade to apprehend Rusesabagina, 66, who was catapulted to fame by the 2004 movie, in which he was played by actor Don Cheadle.

The movie tells how Rusesabagina, an Oscar Schindler-type hotel manager, sheltered and saved 1,268 people at the luxurious Milles Collines hotel in Kigali during the 1994 genocide, which killed as many as 1 million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Lauded globally for his bravery, Rusesabagina received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2005.

The Rwandan government, though, calls him a dangerous subversive who has frequently denied the truth about the genocide. Rusesabagina’s supporters say that Kagame, who brooks virtually no dissent inside his country, is seeking to sideline a potential political rival.

Kitty Kurth, a family spokeswoman, said Kagame’s comments were “shocking” and amounted to a breach of international law.

Since 2010, Rwanda has appealed to American and Belgian authorities for help in capturing Rusesabagina, without success.

The charges he now faces center on his leadership of the Rwanda Movement for Democratic Change, an opposition coalition whose armed wing, the National Liberation Front, has been accused of carrying out attacks in Rwanda.

An arrest warrant seen by The New York Times details episodes in June and July 2018 along Rwanda’s border with Burundi in which at least three people were killed and property was looted or burned.

Rusesabagina’s family insists he does not support violence and says it believes he was kidnapped and taken against his will to Rwanda.

Kurth, the spokeswoman, said a family-appoint-

ed lawyer had twice been denied permission to visit Rusesabagina, who is a Belgian citizen and an American permanent resident. He has not been granted any consular visits, she added.

On Sunday, Kagame redoubled his assault on Rusesabagina’s reputation, saying that other survivors from the Hotel Milles Collines dispute his depiction as a hero. Previously, Rwandan officials have dismissed “Hotel Rwanda” as “pure fiction” and accused Rusesabagina of “propagating lies and misinformation” about the genocide.

Kagame also pointed to Rusesabagina’s involvement with opposition groups, claiming there were records showing him “bragging” about committing violence. Kagame was possibly pointing to a 2018 video circulating on social media in which Rusesabagina called for armed resistance against the government.

The Rwanda Investigation Bureau, which is holding Rusesabagina, said he had chosen two lawyers. In an interview, David Rugaza, one of the lawyers, said his client was doing well and had been given access to a doctor. He was not aware that the family had appointed another lawyer to represent Rusesabagina.

Rusesabagina has long been one of Kagame’s most trenchant critics, writing in a 2006 autobiography, “An Ordinary Man,” that he “exhibited many characteristics of the classic African strongman.”

Numerous critics of Kagame have disappeared or been killed in recent years, including in 2013, when Patrick Karegeya, a former Rwandan spy chief, was found dead in a hotel room in South Africa.

Kurth said that Rusesabagina had been in danger for at least 15 years, and that he knew “if he went to Kigali he would end up dead, disappeared or in prison.”

His arrest has drawn international concern and calls for his release. Tibor Nagy, the State Department’s top official for Africa, and Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia have called on Rwanda to ensure he receives a fair trial.

On Sunday, Kagame said there was no cause for concern, insisting the trial would be conducted fairly and in the open.

“We want to also get things right,” he added.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

17

Venezuela’s opposition splits over taking part in coming elections

By MARIANA MARTINEZ and ANATOLY KURMANAEV

S

ince joining forces last year, Venezuela’s fractious opposition has tried protests and strikes, and encouraged international sanctions, amnesty offers and a coup.

It even considered a mercenary invasion to try to unseat President Nicolás Maduro.

All have failed, leaving opponents of the increasingly repressive Maduro hounded and demoralized, and the oncewealthy oil nation sinking further into ruin.

Now, two Venezuelan opposition leaders are sacrificing their parties’ hard-won unity to try to break the political deadlock and salvage their movement from oblivion. At stake is the survival of the last vestiges of democracy in a country sliding toward militarized, one-party rule.

Henrique Capriles, a former presidential candidate, and Iván Stalin González, a prominent opposition lawmaker, publicly broke last week with an opposition boycott of the coming congressional elections, fracturing an already strained alliance.

The news immediately provoked a flood of thinly veiled accusations of treachery from boycott supporters and their U.S. allies, and soul-searching among the vast majority of Venezuelans who oppose Maduro.

Capriles and González said the opposition’s focus on encouraging foreign sanctions on Venezuela has failed and must be adjusted. Despite the huge odds against them, they said the opposition must campaign for elections in order to reconnect with the daily problems suffered by Venezuelans in a devastating economic collapse.

“We’re looking for a political event that mobilizes this country,” Capriles, a charismatic former governor who narrowly lost to Maduro in 2014, said in a video address broadcast on social media Wednesday. “When a person slides into poverty, the only thing he has left is the vote, this expression against this hunger-spreading regime.”

His call to shift strategy has been echoed by Venezuela’s Catholic Church and the nation’s biggest business association, the two most powerful civic societies opposing the government, underlining the depth of the discontent in the opposition alliance.

Less than a third of Venezuelans believe the main opposition parties should call for a boycott of the December elections, according to separate surveys by Venezuela’s two most prominent polling companies, Datanálisis and Delphos, conducted in July.

Capriles’ supporters claim his strategy is already producing some results, however short-lived they may be.

On Monday, Maduro freed 50 political prisoners and lifted criminal cases against 60 more dissidents, as part of negotiations with Capriles.

But those talks met with scathing criticism from the current head of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, whose call for a boycott of the Dec. 6 congressional vote is supported by 27 opposition parties.

“At a time when Venezuela is going through a dictatorship, the unity is essential,” Guaidó said in a video meeting with the U.S. envoy to Venezuela on Thursday. “Venezuelans

Juan Guaido, Venezuela’s opposition leader, addresses a crowd that gathered in support of the National Assembly, in Caracas on Jan. 11, 2020. don’t want to see their leaders fighting. They want to see them fighting for them.”

The biggest winner from the split in the opposition has been Maduro, who is aiming to wrest control of the National Assembly from Guaidó in December. Participation from prominent opposition leaders would help Maduro portray the vote as democratic and let him lobby the international community to relax economic sanctions.

Capriles’ move is also threatening to fracture the opposition’s biggest remaining weapon against the government — an alliance of about 60 democratic nations who recognize Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader, claiming Maduro’s last presidential victory was fraudulent.

The United States has unequivocally sided with Guaidó and criticized Capriles for weakening the boycott.

“An unfair and unfree parliamentary election will only deepen Venezuela’s crisis,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a Twitter post Friday. “All those who seek to deprive Venezuelans of a democratic future should consider themselves on notice.”

Meanwhile, the European Union has cautiously encouraged Capriles’ negotiations, and is considering sending an electoral mission to monitor the vote, if it is postponed to a later date. Capriles’ bid is also supported by Maduro allies Turkey and Russia, which want to relax Western sanctions against Venezuela to boost their commercial activity in the country.

Capriles, a wiry 48-year-old known for sporty outfits and folksy speech, now has to navigate complex geopolitical

alliances as he tries to negotiate better electoral conditions and put together a coalition to confront Maduro’s Socialist party in December. He is facing a government-stacked electoral council and Supreme Court, a national lockdown, a demoralized electorate and deepening repression by security forces against government dissenters.

His campaign is hobbled by the fact that Capriles himself is banned from running for office by Maduro because of unproven corruption charges, a paradox not lost on boycott supporters.

Opposition strategists and people close to Capriles acknowledge privately that the opposition is unlikely to retain a congressional majority even in relatively clean elections because of Maduro’s tight grip on the country. More than 5 million Venezuelans, or 1 in 6 citizens, have left the country since the last congressional elections in 2014, depriving the opposition of its most committed voters and financial backers.

Supporters of elections argue it is worth participating even in a fraudulent vote to highlight government abuses.

They point to recent events in Belarus, where an unpopular authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, was accused of rigging August elections and is now struggling to hold on to power amid widespread protests and defections.

“What matters is not how many seats you have in parliament, but whether you’re able to mobilize a suffering population around the reality of daily struggle,” said Geoff Ramsey, an expert on Venezuelan politics at the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank. “Maduro has won the battle. He certainly hasn’t won the war.”

18

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

The Coronavirus may change college admissions forever

By FRANK BRUNI

I

n the context of a pandemic that has killed about 190,000 Americans and economically devastated many millions more, getting into the college of your dreams is a boutique concern.

But for many teenagers who have organized their school years around that goal, it’s everything.

And it’s going to be different this admission season. It may well be different forevermore.

That was what I concluded after a recent series of conversations with Jeffrey Selingo, whose widely anticipated new book, “Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions,” will be published on Sept. 15.

Selingo was given extraordinary access to the selection process and the selectors at Emory University, Davidson College and the University of Washington. He uses it in his book to present one of the most nuanced, coolheaded examinations of the admission process that I’ve read. He explodes certain myths — for example, that SAT and ACT scores are absolutely pivotal — and confirms other suspicions, such as the ridiculous advantage conferred on middling students who play arcane sports.

But his knowledge and insights also put him in an excellent position to speculate on matters beyond the book’s bounds: specifically, the little, big, temporary and permanent ways in which the coronavirus pandemic, which dawned after his research was done, will change the way colleges evaluate students and vice versa.

“College admissions is never going to be the same,” he told me.

He was focusing on selective schools, which educate a

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“A pandemic returns the focus to what matters: education,” writes New York Times opinion columnist Frank Bruni. small minority of Americans in college but loom monstrously large in the psyches of many high school students, who intricately game out how to breach these exclusive sanctums. Well, the rules of that game just changed.

Selingo predicts that many schools that allow “early decision” applications, with which a student sets his or her sights on one preferred institution and commits to attending it if accepted, will fill more of their slots that way than ever, meaning that these applications will have better odds of success than ones submitted later. Schools leaned extra hard on early decision in the shadow of the Great Recession, he said, and now face the same economic anxiety, the same motivation to figure out as soon as possible which new students will be arriving and how much financial aid they’ll need.

But a more broadly consequential change involves standardized tests. Because the pandemic prevented students last spring from gathering to take the SAT and ACT exams, many selective schools are not requiring them for the time being. That will force them to focus more than ever on the toughness of the high school courses that students took and the grades they got.

Which students will benefit from that? It’s complicated. On one hand, affluent students who are coached for these exams and usually take them repeatedly won’t get to flaunt their high scores. On the other hand, less privileged students from high schools whose academic rigor is a question mark in screeners’ minds won’t have impressive scores to prove their mettle.

While these exams have been blamed for perpetuating inequality, they in some cases play the opposite role. In fact, a special committee of educators in the University of California system produced an exhaustively detailed report this year that determined that the use of SATs in admissions had not lessened diversity and that SAT scores were useful predictors of college success.

(University leaders elected to switch to test-optional admissions for a few years anyway.)

The SAT’s downgrade won’t be fleeting, Selingo said.

“We’re going to have a whole admissions year with scores of places going test-optional,” he said. “Once their world doesn’t come crashing down and they still recruit a class, those colleges are not going to flock back to the test. I think it’s been knocked off the pedestal permanently.”

He makes the same guess about what he calls “application bloat,” referring to the flamboyant multiplicity of clubs, causes, hobbies and other materials that applicants assemble and showcase. The pandemic put many of those activities on hold, creating a pause in which he believes that some schools and some students will recognize the lunacy of this overkill.

“It’s going to be difficult for students to fill in 10 spaces for extracurricular activities, flag down teachers for recommendations or take six AP courses and exams,” he said. “Admissions officers are going to have to focus on what matters. That means in the future they can pare back the application and reduce our collective anxiety about what it takes to get into college.”

Apart from the increased early-decision emphasis, which can favor in-the-know kids from in-clover families, the changes that Selingo predicts represent a back-to-basics streamlining of the process. It may have been born of terrible circumstances, but it’s also sensible and overdue.

That streamlining extends to how students will choose schools during the coming admission cycle. For epidemiological and economic reasons, many of them will forgo all the campus tours and all the assessments of how comfy the dormitories seem, how tasty the food is, how high the spires rise and how lushly the trees grow. They’ll perhaps look more closely at the course catalog, the roster of professors.

Selingo noted that many colleges based a big part of their sales pitch on their physical setting and even on lifestyle and social perks that are less relevant than ever, given pandemic-related restrictions. “That’s forcing parents and students to ask, ‘What are we really paying for?’” he said.

The answer is, or should be, an education, and students may come to realize that excellent ones can be obtained at colleges that are less expensive than others in their sights and closer to home. The lure of going far away to college may diminish.

What I suspect will happen, at least in the short term, is that students’ thinking about colleges will be less emotional and more practical. The pandemic has soured the romance.

Colleges had previously presented themselves to students as nurturing homes away from home, then had to send those students packing when the virus spread. Colleges were endless parties, then the partying stopped. They touted the intimacies of classroom instruction, then had to defend the tuition-worthy effectiveness of remote learning. How can students not feel some skepticism in the wake of all that?

“This morning I listened to a Planet Money podcast called ‘The Old Rules Were Dumb Anyway,’” Selingo said. “It talked about the rules that went out the window because of the pandemic and which changes might be here to stay: alcohol takeout from restaurants, telemedicine, using nursing credentials across state lines.”

“It got me to thinking about the old rules that were dumb in admissions,” he added. And it got him to wondering how many were gone for good.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

19

“Charlie” Delgado crea comité para evaluar contrato de Luma Energy Por THE STAR

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l candidato a la gobernación por el Partido Popular Democrático (PPD), Carlos “Charlie” Delgado Altieri, anunció el lunes, la creación de un comité para evaluar formalmente el contrato otorgado por esta administración a la compañía Luma Energy para administrar la Autoridad de Energía Eléctrica (AEE).

Según informó Delgado Altieri, el comité estará compuesto por el ingeniero Guillermo Rivera, la licenciada Ivelisse Sánchez, el ex director de la AEE, Héctor Rosario, el líder sindical Pedro Irene Maymí y el ex secretario del Departamento del Trabajo, Frank Zorrilla.

“La encomienda a este comité es que evalúe el contrato en todas sus áreas para asegurarnos de que el mismo no favorezca a solo una de las partes, y que sea justo para el pueblo de Puerto Rico. Mi intención es combatir esa práctica que se ha llevado a cabo durante años de otorgar contratos leoninos que tanto daño le han hecho al país”, sostuvo Delgado Altieri en comunicación escrita.

Añadió que una de las encomiendas del comité de trabajo es evaluar cuál podría ser el curso a seguir en caso de que se llegue a la conclusión de que el contrato otorgado (a Luma Energy) no sea razonable. “Aquí lo más importante es que, en ninguna circunstancia, ese contrato represente un golpe al bolsillo de los puertorriqueños. El país está cansado de que, por malas decisiones y malos contratos, la soga parte por lo más finito y sean los consumidores los que tengan que sentir el golpe en su bolsillo. No podemos permitir que los consumidores paguen la energía eléctrica a sobreprecio por malas decisiones de otros. Por esa razón, al momento en que confeccioné este equipo de trabajo, uno de los planteamientos principales que realicé fue que se haga el cálculo para saber si este contrato no traerá aumentos en la tarifa de la luz”, subrayó.

Asimismo, manifestó que se realizará un análisis basado en el impacto que tendría el contrato en cuanto al Sistema de Retiro de la AEE. “Estoy solicitando además que se evalúe de qué forma el sistema de retiro de dicha corporación se vería afectado. En momentos como los que

vivimos, lo menos que queremos es que este tipo de decisión cree inestabilidad laboral para los empleados de la Autoridad”, sostuvo.

ASSMCA lanza campaña de prevención de suicidio “Vivir Siempre es Mejor” ante la pandemia del COVID-19 Por THE STAR

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a administradora de la Administración de Servicios de Salud Mental y Contra la Adicción (ASSMCA), Suzanne Roig Fuertes, anunció el lunes el lanzamiento de la campaña educativa y de concienciación “Vivir Siempre es Mejor” dirigida a reforzar el mensaje del valor a la vida y la importancia buscar ayuda en la Línea PAS. “Puerto Rico, al igual que otros países del mundo, está viviendo momentos difíciles y estresantes debido a la emergencia del Coronavirus COVID-19. Existen personas en la Isla que han dado positivo a esta enfermedad contagiosa y otras, lamentablemente han fallecido. Esta situación, que ha ido incrementándose, ha generado en la mayoría de las personas emociones negativas como ansiedad, miedo, angustia, coraje, desasosiego, preocupación e irritabilidad, entre otras. Ciertamente, todo este cúmulo de situaciones podría afectar la salud emocional del individuo e incluso, llevarlo a pensar en el suicidio como alternativa para escapar de este momento de tempestad que ha trastocado la vida de muchos. Ante esta realidad, actualmente ASSMCA se encuentra implementando un plan de trabajo continuo a nivel de prevención a tono con el compromiso de la gobernadora Wanda Vázquez Garced. Como parte de ese plan, lanzamos la campaña Vivir Siempre es Mejor”, explicó Roig en comunicación escrita.

La campaña recoge situaciones cotidianas que pasan en el día a día, que a veces no se le encuentran alter-

nativas y terminan causando muchos estresores. “Ahora hasta ponernos una mascarilla puede ser un estresor. Así que en este proceso de adaptación a nuevos estilos de vida la campaña va dirigida a ver cuáles son esos elementos, esas situaciones que nos enfrentamos todos los días que pueden ser un detonante”, afirmó la administradora.

De acuerdo con la funcionaria, la referida campaña cuenta con diferentes videos grabados por artistas y otras personalidades en el que transmiten mensajes positivos que reafirmen el valor de la vida, así como el hecho de que a pesar de las circunstancias que surjan, la vida no tiene que ser perfecta para ser maravillosa. “De igual forma, se exhorta a la ciudadanía a buscar ayuda profesional en la Línea PAS para cuidar su salud emocional”, sostuvo la titular.

Acto seguido, Roig Fuertes agregó que entre las otras

iniciativas que componen el plan que se está implementando, también incluye una serie de talleres virtuales.

“Son grupos de apoyo para distintas poblaciones donde las personas tienen la oportunidad de adquirir destrezas para cuidar su salud emocional en medio de la pandemia mediante variedad de estrategias y dinámicas.

A través de estos esfuerzos, ASSMCA busca seguir transmitiendo el mensaje a nuestra gente sobre la importancia de reconocer las emociones que experimentamos producto de las circunstancias, aceptarlas y, sobre todo, aprender a canalizarlas adecuadamente. Asimismo, minimizar el impacto emocional en las personas reduciendo los niveles de ansiedad, coraje, estrés y miedo en la ciudadanía”.

Cabe señalar, que esta primera fase de la Campaña se publicará a través de las redes sociales de la Agencia @ ASSMCAonline en Facebook, Twitter e Instagram. “Eventualmente, contaremos con apoyo de algunos medios de comunicación, quienes utilizarán sus talentos para grabar cápsulas con mensajes dirigidos a reforzar el mensaje de que Vivir Siempre es Mejor”.

Finalmente, la administradora de ASSMCA le recordó a la ciudadanía que existen dos maneras de contactar a los profesionales de la Línea PAS, “la primera es llamando al 1-800-981-0023 como tradicionalmente se hace y la segunda, descargando la nueva aplicación móvil en la cual las personas tendrán la oportunidad de chatear en vivo. La referida aplicación está disponible desde Google Play y Apple Store”.

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Tuesday, September 8, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Jenna Bush Hager, a book industry insider with a new title of her own

By ELISABETH EGAN

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et’s get this out of the way early: Jenna Bush Hager’s new book, “Everything Beautiful in Its Time,” will not be a Read With Jenna selection.

That, said the former first daughter, first granddaughter and current co-host of the “Today” show, “might be one step too far.”

Hager started the book club in March 2019, and its selections, which are featured on “Today,” tend to get purchased faster than Al Roker can say, “Here’s what’s happening in your neck of the woods.” Fourteen of her 19 picks have become New York Times bestsellers. She has anointed debut novelists, including Abi Daré, author of “The Girl With the Louding Voice,” and Megha Majumdar, author of “A Burning,” as well as veterans such as Ann Patchett, Kevin Wilson, Jean Kwok and J. Courtney Sullivan.

She has given the nod to titles issued by the biggest publishing houses but also nonprofit indie presses like Milkweed Editions, which published “Late Migrations,” her December selection. This month she named her September pick: “Transcendent Kingdom,” by Yaa Gyasi.

Hager was born into a political dynasty but has never shown any indication of wanting to join the family business. Instead she has become a force in publishing, where she now finds herself in a position of influence on par with Reese Witherspoon and Oprah Winfrey.

In a phone interview that was briefly interrupted by former President George W. Bush attempting to FaceTime (“He keeps calling! This is the third time!”), Hager said she reads around 10 books a month and is currently looking at ones that are coming out in February and March.

“The little nerd in me — that couldn’t wait to get the next installment in the Baby-Sitters Club series — loves that I get to read everything early,” she said. “Going to places in these novels that I’ve never gone to, witnessing characters’ struggles and triumphs, having relationships with writers who are so unbelievably talented — honestly, and I’m not just saying this, some of these books have changed my life.”

The appreciation is mutual: Authors feel as if they’ve won the golden ticket

“I probably read 10 books per month,” says Jenna Bush Hager, left, with Savannah Guthrie, one of her co-hosts on “Today.” when their book is chosen. “It’s like Ed McMahon showing up at your door with a check, but instead of money it’s a future and an audience for your writing,” said R. Eric Thomas, whose debut essay collection, “Here for It,” was a Read With Jenna pick in August.

Until Thomas received Hager’s endorsement, he thought the pinnacle of his book’s success was its inclusion on his high school’s summer reading list. “Friends of mine reached out and said, ‘Did you know that your book was on the “Today” show?’ ” he said. “Yes, I was aware. It’s such a gift.”

Hager was 7 when her grandfather George H.W. Bush became president, and in college when her parents moved into the White House. She had a reputation for partying and famously stuck her tongue out at reporters when her father was campaigning for reelection. After graduating from the University of Texas, she interned with UNICEF in Latin America and taught at schools in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. In 2008, she married Henry Chase Hager, the son of a former Virginia lieutenant governor, and they now have three children: Mila, Poppy and Hal. Although Hager generally avoids talking about politics, she noted that her two sets of grandparents, while admiring each other, were on opposite sides of the

aisle. Her maternal grandparents, Harold and Jenna Welch, she said, “were liberal, were Democrats, and in fact in a picture from my parents’ wedding, there’s a sign that said ‘Welches to the left.’ They were very different, but I think what they cared about, what really mattered to them, was their family.”

So what happens when the leader of an influential book club writes a book of her own? Hager is about to find out. On Tuesday, William Morrow will publish “Everything Beautiful in Its Time,” a collection of essays about her family and the triple punch of losing three grandparents in one year.

It won’t be the first time Hager sees her name on a spine: She has written two children’s books with her mother, Laura Bush; a memoir, “Sisters First,” with her twin sister, Barbara (also published in a children’s edition); and “Ana’s Story,” the account of a 17-year-old mother with HIV. But “Everything Beautiful in Its Time” will be her first publishing experience as an industry insider.

Cassie Jones, an executive editor at William Morrow/HarperCollins who worked with Hager on the book, called it “a celebration of the complicated, messy and often hilarious moments of life.” In addition to her writing on motherhood

and family life, Hager describes watching the 2016 election returns, then seeing her daughter’s teacher, who is Muslim, the next morning: “I thought I saw worry in her expressive eyes.” She includes a letter she and her sister wrote to Sasha and Malia Obama before they moved into the White House, which said, “It isn’t always easy being a member of the club you are about to join.”

“Everything Beautiful in Its Time” grew out of journal entries Hager started writing in April 2018 after the death of her paternal grandmother, former first lady Barbara Bush.

She had listened to pundits talk about her loved ones before, but she was unprepared for the disconnect she felt while grieving. “I was alone, watching television.

When you’re so raw — when you’ve just gotten a call that your grandmother has died — and somebody says something like, ‘Oh, well, we all knew she would die before her husband,’ that was the last thing we thought,” Hager said. “I started writing my grandmother a letter, and it was a comfort, because my grandparents were always writers.”

She recalled Barbara “Ganny” Bush drinking coffee and writing diary entries and letters to friends on summer mornings in Maine. Her maternal grandmother and namesake, Jenna Welch, also sought connection through the written word.

“She wasn’t formally educated, but she continued to learn throughout her life,” Hager said. “She loved to read and study other cultures. Barbara (her sister) and I were always fascinated looking at her National Geographic collection. Really, she just wanted to know about all the places she would never get to travel to.”

Welch shared her passion for books with her daughter, Laura Bush, who later became a librarian. In a phone interview, Laura Bush talked about how her mother read the “Little House” books aloud; of course, sharing a name with the author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, was a perk.

When Jenna and Barbara were young, story time was a cherished, if occasionally chaotic, tradition, their mother added.

“I have a very funny old photograph of George lying on the floor with Barbara and Jenna jumping on him as I read Dr. Seuss’ ‘Hop on Pop.’ ”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

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Why ‘Rent,’ the movie, was my gateway musical

By MAYA PHILLIPS

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o think: There was a point in my life when I didn’t know all the words to “Seasons of Love” — or hadn’t even heard of it at all.

In 2005, the movie adaptation of the Broadway smash “Rent” gave me my introduction to what would become — and still remains — my favorite musical, though my understanding of it has evolved from the time I was a teenager obsessed with maverick life in New York City.

Though I’d seen some glitzy Broadway productions like “The Lion King” and “Aida” as a kid, I was totally unaware of what the world of theater had to offer, even as renowned shows like “Rent” were enjoying runs just a Long Island Rail Road ride away. I discovered my favorite musical in a way theater die-hards might find gauche — via the widely panned film adaptation of “Rent,” a flop. But that movie eventually led me to the real deal onstage.

When I was 15, “Rent” appeared, unceremoniously, on our kitchen counter, in a cheap paper envelope. The art on the disc inside was fuzzily reproduced, with blurry lines and sloppy color bleeds, clearly from a home printer. It was a bootleg copy, among a handful of other bootlegs my father had picked up in his travels, and I popped it into the DVD player dispassionately, thinking I was in for some cheesy, B-list drama.

But then there was the opening: silence, the black screen and the lone notes of the piano, before the lights go up on a stage and the cast sings “Seasons of Love” — “525,600 minutes” — and Jesse L. Martin and Tracie Thoms uplift the ensemble number with triumphant, soaring solos.

If that hadn’t caught my interest, the break into the raucous fury of the title song would have done the trick. The show’s songs share the DNA of the music I already loved: lively rock, both a bit pop and punk in its sensibility, and the song “Rent,” set against the frenzy of Lower Manhattan, made a fierce statement.

Based loosely on the Puccini opera “La Bohème,” about a group of artist friends and lovers in 19th-century Paris, whose Mimi has tuberculosis, “Rent” takes these bohemians and places them in New York during the HIV and AIDS crisis.

Directed by Chris Columbus (“Mrs. Doubtfire,” the first two “Harry Potter” films), the movie, which includes moody

lighting and shots showcasing the highs and lows of the city — the artists perched up on the fire escapes, the homeless squatting on the sidewalks — creating an electric sense of city life, where ignited eviction notices can rain down on the street of the Lower East Side on a regular Sunday night.

For a kid who loved making art and felt stifled by her comfortable but dull and conservative upbringing in the suburbs of Long Island, this vision of artist life in New York was seductive and endlessly captivating. Roger (Adam Pascal), a morose HIVpositive musician with writer’s block, was my favorite from the first moment he appeared on-screen, pouty and leather-jacketed and solemnly strumming his guitar in the dark, cold apartment loft. I found a new score to my teen existential angst in Roger’s brooding yet anthemic “One Song Glory.” I would belt it out to the walls of my house, in love with my own fatalistic notion of my art. (I decided at 15 that I, too, would leave something of worth behind, in case I died suddenly and tragically.)

I rallied behind the headstrong exclamations of “La Vie Boheme,” a ballad for outsiders and nonconformists that toasted “to going against the grain/going insane,” and “hating convention, hating pretension.” Having failed to pursue the typical avenues of adolescent rebellion (yelling, slammed doors, broken curfews), I sought out a rebellion more subtle, one tied to an aesthetic, an attitude, an understanding of the primacy of individualism, art and culture above the staid and stilted institutions of the world.

Who brings their mother to a rebellion? I did, apparently. “Rent” grabbed me by my wrist and led me into a new world of theater, and I tugged my mother along with me. It wasn’t the most obvious juncture of our interests. A lover of comfort and luxury, she didn’t share my fantasy of bohemian life, and a hater of Manhattan, with its noise and messiness and crowds, she didn’t pick apart every frame to catch the street signs and subway stations like I did. But she also fell for the music, singing “Seasons of Love” with me every time we watched it together. And we watched it countless times, her calling to me across the house to let me know it was on cable.

We went to the Nederlander Theater to see the live show twice — three? — times, and she encouraged me to take my pick of the souvenirs. Even today, though

It was a flop, but the film adaptation of the Broadway smash “Rent” turned the writer Maya Phillips on to theater, and those starving artists made them want to make art too.

I’m in Brooklyn and she’s still out on Long Island, she’ll text me two words — “Rent’s on” — and a beaming-faced emoji, because at some point “Seasons of Love” and “La Vie Boheme” became part of our dialect; “Rent” was the language we spoke to each other.

The film also led us into new moviemusical territory. After “Rent,” there was “The Phantom of the Opera.” “Chicago.”

“Les Misérables.” I knew from the critics I read and from friends who’d seen live performances that the movie versions were less than what had been on the stage, but my mother and I watched each one, hungry for theater in any form. Broadway had always been an occasional treat — tickets were expensive and my parents hated the trip — but suddenly my mother and I began actively planning what we would see next. I imagined a job writing about what these shows meant to me, what worked, what I would change, and that too became my “Rent”-inspired vision of my adult life: living in the city, making art, reviewing art.

My understanding of the show, however, was conveniently myopic. I admired la vie boheme but didn’t think too hard about the characters’ struggles to make a living, their addictions and the specter of the AIDS crisis — both in the narrative of

the show and the reality that our country faced in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The movie applied a cinematic sheen to the scenes of this seedier New York. The issue of class was simplified in the film, which cut “Christmas Bells,” a chorus of homeless people singing an ironic Christmas carol about trying to manage a living in a New York winter. And the film’s take on class was cut down to two extremes: Benny (Taye Diggs), the arch yuppie capitalist turncoat, and the coterie of artists whose poverty grants them the moral high ground.

As I think of what “Rent” means to me today, it is the art that comes out of community. Mine isn’t the community of the queer, HIV-positive artists of “Rent,” but even in the musical’s sometimes simplified and superficial rendering of marginalized people and a harrowing moment in the history of New York, it is also somehow inclusive enough to let a girl from the suburbs see a future making and thinking about art in the greatest city on Earth. And 15 years later, here I am, doing just that, in my New York, as the city struggles with new crises.

The message of “Rent” isn’t just a glib carpe diem but a resounding declaration of “stand with your community despite” and “make art despite.” Now I know: It’s a song that means we will push to survive.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Researchers identify five types of cat owner

By ROD MINCHIN

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study.

at owners fall into five categories in terms of attitudes to their pets’ roaming and hunting, according to a new

Researchers surveyed UK cat owners and found they ranged from “conscientious caretakers” concerned about cats’ impact on wildlife and who feel some responsibility, to “freedom defenders” who opposed restrictions on cat behaviour altogether.

“Concerned protectors” focused on cat safety, “tolerant guardians” disliked their cats hunting but tended to accept it, and “laissezfaire landlords” were largely unaware of any issues around cats roaming and hunting.

Conservation organisations have long been concerned about the numbers of animals caught by the UK’s large population of domestic cats.

Most pet cats kill very few wild animals, if any, but with a population of around 10 million cats, the numbers of birds, small

mammals and reptiles taken can accumulate.

Apart from their role as “mousers”, most owners find the dead animals brought home an unpleasant reminder of their pet’s wilder side.

Addressing this problem has been difficult because of disagreements between people prioritising cat welfare and those focusing on wildlife conservation.

Researchers at the University of Exeter are using the “Cats, Cat Owners and Wildlife” project to find a conservation win-win, by identifying ways of owners managing their cats that benefit the felines as well as reducing wildlife killing.

The study included 56 cat owners, some from rural parts of the UK, including the south-west of England, and some from Bristol and Manchester.

This research is a step towards understanding how cat owners view their cats and how best to manage them.

They say their findings demonstrate the need for diverse management strategies that

reflect the differing perspectives of cat owners.

“Although we found a range of views, most UK cat owners valued outdoor access for their cats and opposed the idea of keeping them inside to prevent hunting,” said lead author Dr Sarah Crowley.

“Cat confinement policies are therefore unlikely to find support among owners in the UK. “However, only one of the owner types viewed hunting as a positive, suggesting the rest might be interested in reducing it by some means.

“To be most effective, efforts to reduce hunting must be compatible with owners’ diverse circumstances.”

Suggested measures to reduce hunting success include fitting cats with brightly coloured “BirdsBeSafe” collar covers and many owners also fit their cats with bells.

Tiger King’s Carole Baskin criticises ‘lurid’ Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion video for glamorising big cat ownership

Tiger King’s Carole Baskin criticises ‘lurid’ Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion video for glamorising big cat ownership The research team are now examining the effectiveness of these and other new measures and how owners feel about them, with a view to offering different solutions.

“This latest research we have funded reveals the incredibly diverse perspectives amongst cat owners in regard to their pets’ hunting behaviour,” said Tom Streeter, chairman of bird charity SongBird Survival.

“If nature is to ‘win’ and endangered species thrive, a pragmatic approach is needed whereby cat owners’ views are considered as part of wider conservation strategies.

“The study highlights the urgent need for cat owners and conservationists to work together to find tailored solutions that are cheap, easy to implement, and have a positive effect on wildlife and bird populations across the UK.” The paper is published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

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Can artificial sweeteners keep us from gaining weight?

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

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rtificial sweeteners hold the promise of satisfying your sweet tooth without the downside of excess calories, and they are increasingly used in products ranging from diet sodas and powdered drink mixes to yogurt and baked goods. But whether using them can prevent weight gain — a problem many people are struggling with during the coronavirus lockdowns — has long been an open question.

Now some studies are providing answers.

Researchers have found that artificial sweeteners can be useful as a tool to help people kick their sugar habits, and that for some people, replacing sugar with nonnutritive sweeteners can indeed help stave off weight gain. But they can also have effects on hormones, blood sugar and other aspects of metabolism that some experts say are concerning, and they caution against consuming them routinely for long periods of time.

“The idea we need to get rid of is that because they have zero calories they have zero metabolic effects,” said Marta Yanina Pepino, an assistant professor in the department of food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Our data suggests that they are metabolically active, and depending on how frequently you use them, some people can see more effects than others.”

Purchases of foods and beverages containing sugar substitutes have risen as healthconscious consumers cut back on sugar. Diet beverages account for the largest source of these sweeteners in the American diet. Among the most popular sugar substitutes are sucralose, also known as Splenda, and aspartame, which is found in Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi and thousands of other foods. Stevia, a zero-calorie plant extract that is marketed as natural, is also widely used in many products as a sugar substitute.

In a report published recently in The Journal of the American Heart Association, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital studied what happened when soda drinkers switched to drinking water or beverages that were artificially sweetened. The researchers recruited 203 adults who consumed at least one sugary beverage daily; only some of them were overweight.

The researchers split them into three groups. One group received deliveries of artificially sweetened beverages, such as Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, and was told to substitute them for their usual soft drinks. Another group received shipments of plain and sparkling water.

A third group, serving as the control, continued

Sugar substitutes may help stave off weight gain, but they have metabolic effects that some experts find concerning. their normal pattern of drinking sugary beverages.

After following the groups for a year, the researchers did not find any overall differences in weight gain or in other markers of metabolic health, such as changes in cholesterol or triglyceride levels. But when they looked specifically at the people who had high levels of abdominal obesity, the results were striking.

People who carried the most fat around their midsections — a major risk factor for metabolic disease — had significantly less weight gain when they switched from sugary drinks to diet beverages or water. Among this group, those who drank diet beverages gained about a pound during the study, while those who switched to water lost roughly half a pound.

But the people with high levels of belly fat who continued drinking sugary beverages gained an average of 10 pounds.

“That’s a big effect, it’s significant,” said Dr. David Ludwig, an author of the study and co-director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Ludwig theorized that people who carry a lot of abdominal fat might benefit the most from replacing sugary beverages with diet beverages or water because they secrete more in-

sulin, a hormone that promotes fat storage, in response to sugar. “Someone who is lean may not be as sensitive to sugar,” he said.

Debate over the effect of artificial sweeteners on health and body weight has raged for decades. Some of the earliest concerns were sparked by animal research in the 1970s that suggested that artificial sweeteners could cause cancer. But later studies in humans disputed those claims, and the American Cancer Society, which reviewed the evidence in 2016, among other groups, contend that there is no clear evidence of a link between low-calorie sweeteners and cancer in humans.

The impact of artificial sweeteners on body weight has also been controversial. Over the years, some observational studies have found that people who consume a lot of diet beverages have a higher obesity risk, suggesting that artificial sweeteners might fuel — rather than prevent — weight gain. But observational studies can show only correlations, not cause and effect. Reverse causality may be a factor, since people who are more likely to use the sweeteners may gain weight for a variety of reasons, such as other dietary factors and lack of exercise.

Randomized clinical trials, which are more reliable, have generally shown that diet

sweeteners help prevent weight gain. One published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that when children who consumed sugary beverages were assigned to drink artificially sweetened beverages, they had less weight gain and fat accumulation after 18 months than children who continued drinking sugary beverages.

Another clinical trial led by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that overweight and obese adults who were instructed to give up sugary beverages for water or low-calorie sweetened beverages for six months lost an average of 2% to 2.5% of their body weight. But the group that switched to water showed significant improvements in their blood sugar levels, a risk factor for diabetes, while the group that used low-calorie sweeteners did not.

The latest study by Ludwig and his colleagues is among the most rigorous on the subject to date. Its findings support advice issued by groups like the American Heart Association, which in 2018 published a science advisory stating that using low-calorie sweetened beverages could be an effective strategy for weight loss, especially for habitual consumers of sugary beverages, which are the largest source of added sugars in the American diet.

But the heart group also cautioned that there was a “dearth of evidence on the potential adverse effects” of the sweeteners. Despite decades of widespread use, it’s still unclear whether consuming them heavily for many years can have unintended adverse health effects. And they are not all the same. Last year, scientists at Purdue University published the results of a clinical trial that compared the effects of sugar and four different low-calorie sweeteners on weight gain in overweight and obese adults.

The groups that drank beverages containing sucralose, aspartame or Reb-A, a derivative of stevia, saw little change in their weight. But people who consumed beverages sweetened with sugar or saccharin, which is marketed as Sweet’N Low, experienced “significantly increased body weight” after three months.

It’s unclear why saccharin had such a pronounced effect on weight gain. But nonnutritive sweeteners, which may be many hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, appear to do more than just activate taste receptors. Some studies have found that they can spur deleterious changes in the gut microbiota, disrupt blood sugar control and influence insulin levels. There is also evidence that they can promote a preference for intensely sweet foods.

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Tuesday, September 8, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Singing dogs re-emerge from extinction for another tune

By JAMES GORMAN

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he New Guinea Singing Dog, a dingolike animal with a unique howling style, was considered extinct in the wild. But scientists reported Monday that the dogs live on, based on DNA collected by an intrepid and indefatigable field researcher.

Their analysis, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the dogs are not simply common village dogs that decided to try their chances in the wild. The findings not only solve a persistent, though obscure, puzzle, they may shed light on the complicated and still emerging picture of dog domestication in Asia and Oceania.

Claudio Sillero, a conservation biologist at Oxford University and the chair of the canid specialist group at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature said that the study confirms the close relatedness between Australian and New Guinea dogs, “the most ancient ‘domestic’ dogs on earth.”

James McIntyre, president of the New Guinea Highland Wild Dog Foundation and the researcher whose forays in the field were central to the discovery, first searched for New Guinea Singing Dogs in the forbiddingly rugged high-

lands of the island, which is split between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, in 1996. He was taking a break from studying intersex pigs in Vanuatu, but that’s another story.

McIntyre has degrees in zoology and education, and has worked at the Bronx Zoo and other zoos, private conservation organizations and as a high school biology teacher.

There are highly inbred populations of the dogs in zoos, and some are kept as exotic pets. But for more than a half-century they remained elusive in the wild until 2012 when an ecotourism guide snapped a photo of a wild dog in the highlands of Indonesia’s Papua province. It was the first seen since the 1950s, and McIntyre set to work. He received some funding from a mining company, PT Freeport Indonesia. The company, which has a history of conflict with the local population over environmental and safety issues and murky connections to the Indonesian military, operates a gold mine in the highlands near the wild dog sightings. In 2016 he spent about a month searching and captured 149 photos of 15 individual dogs.

“The locals called them the Highland wild dog,” he said. “The New Guinea Singing Dog was the name developed by Caucasians. Because I didn’t know what they were, I just called them the Highland wild dogs.”

But whether they were really the wild singing dogs

In an undated photo provided by Anang Dianto, New Guinea singing dogs, also known as New Guinea highland wild dogs.

that had been considered extinct was the big question. Even the singing dogs kept in captivity were a conundrum to scientists who couldn’t decide whether they were a breed, a species or a subspecies. Were these wild dogs the same as the captive population? Or were they village dogs gone feral recently?

In 2018, McIntyre went back to Papua and managed to get DNA from two trapped wild dogs, quickly released after biological samples were taken, as well as one other dog that was found dead. He brought the DNA to researchers who concluded that the highland dogs McIntyre found are not village dogs, but appear to belong to the ancestral line from which the singing dogs descended.

“For decades we’ve thought that the New Guinea singing dog is extinct in the wild,” said Heidi G. Parker of the National Institutes of Health, who worked with Suriani Surbakti and other researchers from Indonesia and other countries on analyzing the DNA samples that McIntyre returned.

“They are not extinct,” Parker said, “They actually do still exist in the wild.”

The highland dogs had about 72% of their genes in common with their captive singing cousins. The highland dogs had much more genetic variation, which would be expected for a wild population. The captive dogs in conservation centers all descend from seven or eight wild ancestors.

The 28% difference between the wild and captive varieties may come from some interbreeding with village dogs or from the common ancestor of all the dogs brought to Oceania. The captive, inbred dogs may simply have lost a lot of the variation that the wild dogs have.

Their genes could help reinvigorate the captive population of a few hundred animals in conservation centers, which are very inbred.

Elaine A. Ostrander of the NIH, a co-author of the report, says the finding is also significant for understanding more about dog domestication. The New Guinea Singing Dogs are closely related to Australian dingoes and are also related to the Asian dogs that migrated with humans to Oceania 3,500 years ago or more. It may be that the singing dogs split off around then from a common ancestor that later gave rise to breeds like the Akita and Shiba Inu. “They provide this missing piece that we didn’t really have before,” Ostrander said.

Laurent Frantz, an evolutionary geneticist at Queen Mary University of London who studies the domestication and evolution of dogs and was not involved in the research, said, the paper makes clear “that these populations have been continuous for a long time.”

But exactly when and where the dogs became feral and “what is wild, what is domestic” are still thorny questions, which the new data will help to address.

McIntyre did finish his work on the intersex pigs of Vanuatu, by the way, and you can find out more at the website of the Southwest Pacific Research Project. They are bred on purpose because they are highly valued by islanders.

The San Juan Daily Star tado o repudiando la herencia de AURORA APONTE LOPEZ ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO T/C/C AURORA RODRIGUEZ. DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- Se les apercibe que de no exNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA presar su intención de aceptar SALA SUPERIOR DE CARO- o repudiar la herencia dentro LINA. del término que se le fijó, la REVERSE MORTGAGE herencia se tendrá por aceptada. Los abogados de la parte FUNDING LLC. demandante son: GREENSDemandante Vs. POON MABDER, LLP, TRADE CARMELO ENRIQUE CENTRE SOUTH, SUITE 700, RODRIGUEZ PABON 100 WEST CYPRESS CREEK T/C/C CARMELO ROAD, FORT LAUDERDALE, FL 33309, Tel. (954) 343 6273, RODRIGUEZ PABON Fax. (954) 343 6982. Expido T/C/C CARMELO este edicto bajo mi firma y sello RODRIGUEZ T/C/C de este Tribunal, hoy 2 de sepCARMELO HENRY tiembre de 2020. Lcda. Marilyn Aponte Rodriguez, Secretaria RODRIGUEZ POR Regional. Rosa M. Viera VelazsI Y EN CUANTO A quez, Secretario Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

LA CUOTA VIUDAL USUFRUCTUARIA; LEGAL NOTICE SUCESION AURORA Estado Libre Asociado de PuerAPONTE LOPEZ T/C/C to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL AURORA RODRIGUEZ DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de PriCOMPUESTA POR mera Instancia Sala Superior REINALDO RODRIGUEZ de SAN JUAN. COOPERATIVA DE PABON; JOHN DOE AHORRO Y CREDITO DR Y JANE DOE COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS MANUEL ZENO GANDIA Demandante V. DESCONOCIDOS; ROSALINA CIRINO MARTI ESTADOS UNIDOS DE Demandado(a) AMERICA; CENTRO DE CivilNüm. SJ2019CV12300.

RECAUDACIONES DE Sala: 505. Sobre: COBRO DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES DINERO, REGLA 60. NOTIFICACION DE SENTENCIA POR “CRIM”

Demandados CIVIL NUM. CA2020CV00640.

SOBRE: EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA. MANDNIENTO DE INTERPELACIÔN POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: CABMELO ENRIQUE RODRIGUEZ PABON T/C/C CABMELO RODRIGUEZ PABON T/C/c CARMELO RODRIGUEZ T/c/C CARMELO HENRY RODRIGUEZ, REINALDO RODRIGUEZ PABON, JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE

El Artículo 959 del Código Civil de P.R., 31 LPRA § 2787, dispone: “Instando, en juicio, un tercer interesado para que el heredero acepte o repudie, deberá el Tribunal Superior señalar a éste un término, que no pase de treinta (30) días, para que haga su declaración; apercibido de que, si no la hace, se tendrá la herencia por aceptada.” For la presente el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, conforme al Art. 959, supra, y el caso Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria vs. Latinoamericana de Exportación, Inc., 164 DPP. 689 (2005), les ordena que el término de treinta (30) días, hagan declaración acep-

@

EDICTO.

A: ROSALINA CIRINO MARTI

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican Ia sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 28 de agosto de 2020 este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de Ia misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en Ia Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de Ia Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de Ia cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de Ia publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en Ia fecha de Ia publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 3 de septiembre de 2020. En SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, el 3 de septiembre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRIGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria Regional. F/MARTHA ALMODOVAR

Tuesday, September 8, 2020 CABRERA, Secretaria Auxiliar.

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

MARIA DEL CARMEN BURGOS CARRION Demandante V.

MANUEL MAYOR GARCIA

Demandado(a) CivilNüm.

FA2020RF00015.

Sobre: PATRIA POTESTAD PRIVACION, SUSPENSION 0 RESTRICCION ALIMENTOS DE MENOR DE EDAD. NOTIFICACION DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: MANUEL MAYOR GARCIA

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican Ia sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 25 de agosto de 2020 este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de Ia misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en Ia Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de Ia Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de Ia cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de Ia publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en Ia fecha de Ia publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 25 de agosto de 2020. En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 01 de septiembre de 2020. LCDA. MARILYN APONTE RODRIGUEZ, Secretaria.

TAMARA FRANCO RINCON, Secretaria Auxiliar.

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

COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CRÉDITO DR. MANUEL ZENO GANDÍA VS

MILANGELY RODRÍGUEZ CHEVRES

CIVIL NUM. SJ2019CV11220 (602). SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO POR SUMAC

A: MILANGELY

staredictos@thesanjuandailystar.com

RODRÍGUEZ CHEVRES

EL SECRETARIO (A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 2 de SEPTIEMBRE de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de esta.

Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los diez (10) días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 3 de septiembre de 2020. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 3 de septiembre de 2020. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, Secretaria Regional. f/ DENISE M. AMARO MACHUCA, Secretario (a) Auxiliar.

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

DOROTHY FERRER DE VALLE Demandante V.

EDUARDO ALVERIO

Demandado(a) CIVIL: GB2020CV00051. SALA 201. Sobre: DESAHUCIO Y COBRO DE DINERO. NOTIFICACION DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: EDUARDO ALVERIO

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican Ia sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 2 de septiembre de 2020 este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de Ia misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en Ia Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de Ia Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de Ia cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del

(787) 743-3346

25 término de 30 días contados a partir de Ia publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en Ia fecha de Ia publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 3 de septiembre de 2020. En GUAYNABO, Puerto Rico, el 3 de septiembre de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria. F/MAIRENI TRINTA MALDONADO, Secretaria Auxiliar.

10-1750. Tel. [787] 274-1414.

DADA en Carolina, Puerto Rico, a 24 de agosto de 2020. Lcda.

Marilyn Aponte Rodriguez, Sec Regional. Lourdes Diaz Medina, Sec Aux del Tribunal I.

LEGAL NOT ICE

DANIEL MORALES MANJARREZ, SU ESPOSA FULANA DE TAL Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE CAROLINA.

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante

REBECA MANGUAL PÉREZ; JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE

Demandados CIVIL NÚM. CA2020CV01425.

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

A: REBECA MANGUAL PÉREZ 8103 Apartment (H 103), Portales de Parque Escorial, Carolina, PR 00979; 32 BLVD Media Luna Apt. 8103, Carolina, PR 00987. Teléfono 787550-0505; 787-762-4595.

POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza para que presente al tribunal su alegación responsiva dentro de los 30 días de haber sido diligenciado este emplazamiento, excluyéndose el día del diligenciamiento. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente. Representa a la parte demandante el Lcdo.

Javier Montalvo Cintrón, Delgado & Fernández, LLC, PO Box 11750, Fernández Juncos Station, San Juan, Puerto Rico 009

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

AMERICAS LEADING FINANCE, LLC Demandante, v.

Demandados CIVIL NÚM.: TA2020CV00359.

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA Y EJECUCIÓN DE GRAVAMEN MOBILIARIO (REPOSESIÓN DE VEHÍCULO). EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. DE AMERICA EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO SS.

A: DANIEL MORALES MANJARREZ, SU ESPOSA FULANA DE TAL, Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR AMBOS

que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará Sentencia concediendo el remedio así solicitado sin más citarles ni oírles. El abogado de la parte demandante es el Lcdo. Gerardo M. Ortiz Torres, cuya dirección física y postal es: Cond. El Centro I, Suite 801, 500 Muñoz Rivera Ave., San Juan, Puerto Rico 00918; cuyo número de teléfono es (787) 946-5268, el facsímile (787) 946-0062 y su correo electrónico es: gerardo@bellverlaw. com. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, en Toa Alta, Puerto Rico, hoy día 27 de agosto de 2020. Lcda Laura I Santa Sanchez, Secretaria Regional. Liriam Hernandez, Secretaria.

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

AUTO ACCESORIOS DE PUERTO RICO, INC. Demandante vs.

solución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 26 de AGOSTO de 2020. En CAGUAS, Puerto Rico, el 26 de agosto de 2020.

CARMEN ANA PEREIRA ORTIZ, Secretaria. SANDRA J. TRINIDAD CAÑUELAS, Secretaria Auxiliar.

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

E.M.I. EQUITY MORTGAGE INC. Demandante V.

ANTHONY LUIS NIEVES LASALLE, ET ALS.

Demandado(a) Civil Nüm. QU2019CV00185.

Sobre: EJECUCION DE HIPOTECA “IN REM” (VIA ORDINARIA). NOTIFICACION DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

MASTER DISTRIBUTORS A: ANTHONY LUIS CARIBBEAN CORP., NIEVES LASALLE EDWIN ORTIZ, EN SU YAHAIRA JIMENEZ CAPACIDA PERSONAL SOLER NIEVES-JIMENEZ, Y COMO DUEÑO, SOC LEGAL GANAN PRESIDENTE DE de las partes a las que se MASTER DISTRIBUTORS le(Nombre notifican Ia sentencia por edicto)

Demandado(a) Civil: CD2019CV00273. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR Quedan emplazados y notificaEDICTO. dos que en este Tribunal se ha A: MASTER radicado Demanda sobre cobro de dinero por la vía ordinaria DISTRIBUTORS en la que se alega que los deCARIBBEAN CORP., mandados DANIEL MORALES EDWIN ORTIZ, EN MANJARREZ, SU ESPOSA SU CAPACIDAD FULANA DE TAL, Y LA SOPERSONAL Y COMO CIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA POR DUEÑO, PRESIDENTE AMBOS, le adeudan solidaria- Y REPRESENTANTE DE mente al Americas Leading FiMASTER DISTRIBUTORS nance, LLC la suma de principal CARIBBEAN CORP. de $31,768.62, más los intereses que continúen acumulando, (Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) las costas, gastos y honorarios EL SECRETARIO(A) que susde abogado según pactados. cribe le notifica a usted 22 de Además, solicitamos de este AGOSTO de 2020 , este TriHonorable Tribunal que autoribunal ha dictado Sentencia, ce la reposesión y/o embargo Sentencia Parcial o Resolución del Vehículo. Se les advierte en este caso, que ha sido debique este edicto se publicará en damente registrada y archivada un periódico de circulación geen autos donde podrá usted enneral una sola vez y que, si no terarse detalladamente de los comparecen a contestar dicha términos de la misma. Esta noDemanda dentro del término de tificación se publicará una sola treinta (30) días a partir de la vez en un periódico de circulapublicación del Edicto, a través ción general en la Isla de Puerdel Sistema Unificado de Mato Rico, dentro de los 10 días nejo y Administración de Casos siguientes a su notificación. Y, (SUMAC), al cual puede accesiendo o representando usted der utilizando la siguiente direcuna parte en el procedimiento ción electrónica: https://unired. sujeta a los términos de la Senramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo tencia, Sentencia Parcial o Re-

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 1 de septiembre de 2020 este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de Ia misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en Ia Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de Ia Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de Ia cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de Ia publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en Ia fecha de Ia publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 2 de septiembre de 2020. En CAMUY, Puerto Rico, el 2 de septiembre de 2020. VIVIAN Y FRESSE GONZALEZ, Secretaria. SUHAIL SERRANO MOYA, Secretaria Auxiliar.

26

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Lakers’ ‘others’ lend James a hand

By SCOTT CACCIOLA

P

lenty of players have had bumpy experiences at the NBA’s restart at Walt Disney World. Rajon Rondo and Markieff Morris, two key reserves for the Los Angeles Lakers, would count themselves among that group.

Rondo, the team’s backup point guard, broke his right thumb during a practice July 12 and left the league’s bubble so he could have surgery and recover. Morris, a forward who signed with the Lakers in February, shortly before the season was suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic, has been laboring to unearth his rhythm.

The Lakers have championship hopes in the form of LeBron James and Anthony Davis, their twin stars. But if they want to advance in the postseason, their supporting cast needs to start producing with consistency.

Depth is an issue — one underscored by the absence of Avery Bradley, their top perimeter defender, who opted not to participate in the restart.

For one game, at least, James and Davis got the help they needed. In the Lakers’ 117-109 victory over the Houston Rockets on Sunday night in the Western Conference semifinals, Morris, 31, stretched the floor with his outside shooting while Rondo, 34, was a whirl of activity. The win evened the best-of-seven series at one game apiece before Game 3 on Tuesday night.

“That’s what the playoffs are about,” the Lakers’ Danny Green said.

“Your superstars are going to play well.

It’s what your others do.”

The others he referenced, the team’s supporting cast, have always been a concern with these Lakers, who have endured no small amount of turmoil this season. In that sense, their loss to the Rockets in Game 1 on Friday was true to form. The Rockets used their small lineup to space the floor and create oodles of open shots.

Rondo, who had four turnovers in that game, struggled, though perhaps for good reason: He had not played in a game since March 10.

“So you have to forgive a little bit

Rajon Rondo posted 10 points, 9 assists and 5 steals in 29 minutes in the Lakers’ Game 2 win. When he was on the court, the Lakers outscored the Rockets by 28 points. of rust,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said. “His impact on our team is measured in swag and just the confidence that he brings to our group.”

On Sunday, Rondo had 10 points, 9 assists and 5 steals in 29 minutes.

When he was on the court, the Lakers outscored the Rockets by 28 points.

Rondo, who did not address the news media after the game, also appeared to form some immediate chemistry with Morris, who came off the bench in the first quarter to hit four 3-pointers in a span of 2 minutes, 46 seconds. Rondo assisted on all four of them.

“Rondo’s not hard to play with,” said Morris, who added: “It’s about time I started making some shots.”

Entering the game, Morris had shot 3-of-13 from 3-point range in the playoffs. On Sunday, he shot 6-of-8 from the field and finished with 16 points.

“Last game, I felt like I didn’t affect the game at all,” he said. “And it’s

not even just making shots. I just felt like I didn’t do anything. I didn’t bring no energy. I didn’t bring no toughness.

I didn’t rebound the ball. I had zero stats across the board, so I felt like I have to be a little more aggressive.

This is the best series for me to play a lot of minutes.”

That had everything to do with matchups and the unique style of play that the Rockets, with their center-less rotation, brought to the bubble.

After Game 1, James spoke highly of the Rockets’ speed. He compared them to the NFL’s St. Louis Rams, circa the early 2000s, a team that seemed to run on rocket fuel.

“The greatest show on turf,” James said. “People always said how you could scout ’em, scout ’em, scout ’em — until you got on the field.”

There was no way opposing defenses could simulate the Rams’ speed, said James, who suggested that the Rockets are much the same. His

hope was that the Lakers would make the necessary adjustments after getting punished in transition in Game 1.

They made enough.

Vogel went smaller in Game 2, effectively benching his centers. JaVale McGee played just eight minutes before he left because of an ankle injury.

(Vogel said after the game that McGee was undergoing an MRI.) And while Vogel said he had intended to play Dwight Howard, his backup center, Morris was too good and Vogel decided to stick with him. Howard remained on the bench for the duration.

At the same time, the Lakers played swarming defense on James Harden, who had to work for his 27 points, and Russell Westbrook, who shot 4-of-15 from the field for 10 points while committing seven turnovers. Even by Westbrook-ian standards, he was chaotic.

“It’s on me,” Westbrook said. “I don’t point fingers at anybody else.

I own my mistakes. I own what I do, and that’s that.”

The Lakers did not exactly assemble a complete game. After leading by as many as 21 points in the second quarter, they found themselves trailing by 5 points in the third quarter after the Rockets caught fire from the outside.

But James opened the fourth quarter with a driving dunk, part of another postseason tour de force for him: 28 points, 11 rebounds and 9 assists. Davis was terrific, too, finishing with 34 points and 10 rebounds.

But two reserves helped put them in position to seal the win — two experienced players, Davis said, “who aren’t afraid of anything.” They showed up just in time.

JOSÉ BURGOS Técnico Generadores Gas Propano

787•607•3343

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

27

Novak Djokovic out of U.S. Open after accidental hit of line judge

By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY

N

ovak Djokovic, the top men’s player in a sport with its share of meltdowns and misbehavior, became the first No. 1 disqualified from a Grand Slam singles tournament after he inadvertently struck a line judge with a ball hit in frustration at the U.S. Open on Sunday.

Djokovic’s sudden ouster from the country’s premier tennis tournament immediately made a bizarre U.S. Open even more strange. It has been staged during the coronavirus pandemic, with players sparring with local health officials over contact tracing and the top women’s doubles team abruptly disqualified Saturday. This was also the latest misadventure for Djokovic in 2020, a year in which he has expressed personal hesitation about vaccines, organized an exhibition tournament that led to coronavirus cases, including his own, and sowed division in the tennis world by forming a potential breakaway players’ organization.

Djokovic lost his cool when trailing 5-6 in the first set in the fourth round against Pablo Carreño Busta, having lost several recent points. He had just lost a point while serving after being treated for pain in his left shoulder earlier in the game, giving Carreño Busta the upper hand.

After losing the final point of the game, he pulled a ball from his pocket and smacked it with his racket toward the back of the court. It hit a line judge, standing about 40 feet away, in her throat. She cried out and crumpled to the ground, and Djokovic rushed to her side to check on her condition.

She later walked off the court, still visibly in distress, and was treated by a tournament physician. But after a lengthy discussion with tournament referee Soeren Friemel at the net, Djokovic was defaulted, as disqualifications are known in the sport.

“This whole situation has left me really sad and empty,” Djokovic said in an Instagram post in the early evening. “I checked on the linesperson and the tournament told me that thank God she is feeling ok. I’m extremely sorry to have caused her such stress. So unintended. So wrong.”

Djokovic continued: “I need to go back and work on my disappointment and turn this all into a lesson for my growth and evolution as a player and human being.

I apologize to the U.S. Open tournament and everyone associated for my behavior.”

Djokovic’s exit delivered an immediate blow to the tournament, which was considered unlikely to take place when New York was one of the epicenters of the coronavirus. The tournament is being held without spectators for the first time and with players and their teams tested daily and restricted to their lodging and the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.

Djokovic was the only member of the “Big Three” in men’s tennis to play the event this year, with Roger Federer out for the season after two knee surgeries and reigning champion Rafael Nadal choosing to remain in Spain and prepare for the rescheduled French Open and other clay-court tournaments.

Novak Djokovic immediately tried to comfort the line judge after hitting a ball toward her without looking.

Djokovic decided to come to New York last month only after lengthy negotiations with tournament officials over quarantine rules. But his default deprives the men’s event of the only player remaining who has won a Grand Slam singles title.

Djokovic has won 17 major singles titles. Men’s tour officials have been eager for a new champion to emerge to challenge the dominance of the Big Three, but this was certainly not the way anyone expected it would happen.

Some television viewers expressed puzzlement online at how a mere gesture of frustration, without intent to harm anyone, could lead to a disqualification when so many of the tournament’s historic losses of composure, like one involving Serena Williams in the 2018 U.S. Open final, carried penalties that were less severe.

Williams received a series of conduct violations — for coaching, for racket abuse and for verbal abuse of the chair umpire — and was docked a point and then a game but not defaulted.

The Grand Slam rules bar players from the abuse of balls as well as unsportsmanlike conduct and tournament officials have the authority to disqualify a player immediately if they deem a case sufficiently serious.

Players can be defaulted for “hitting a ball or throwing a racket without intent to harm” if someone is injured on the court, said Gayle David Bradshaw, a retired ATP Tour vice president for rules and competition. “In this case, there was no intent, but there was harm, and the officials had no choice but to do what they did,” he said.

Officials have some latitude in deciding how serious an offense might be, but Friemel said Sunday’s ruling was clear-cut.

“Based on the fact that it was angrily, recklessly hit, and the line umpire was hurt clearly and in pain, he had to be defaulted.” Friemel said. “We all agree he didn’t do it on purpose, but he hit her, and she was hurt.”

Friemel said the discussion was lengthy with Djokovic because of the significance of the decision.

“Defaulting a player at a Grand Slam is a very important, very tough decision,” Friemel said. “You need to get it right.”

During a warm-up tournament for the U.S. Open that was staged at the same site, Aljaz Bedene, a Slovenian player, inadvertently hit a cameraman with a ball that he tapped in frustration and received a warning but was not defaulted because the cameraman immediately made it clear that he had suffered no injury.

Carreño Busta, who is the 20th seed and from Spain, advanced to the quarterfinals with the default. Djokovic left the stadium without speaking to news reporters.

“If it would have landed anywhere else, we’re talking about a few inches, he would have been fine,” said Alexander Zverev, a German player who was watching inside Arthur Ashe Stadium.

In a statement, the U.S. Tennis Association said that because of the default, Djokovic would be fined the prize money he would have earned in addition to any fines that will be levied because of the incident. He faces a fine of up to $20,000 for skipping his mandatory post-match news conference.

Djokovic, 33, has won five of the past seven Grand Slam singles titles and had dropped just one set in his first three matches at the U.S. Open. But the first set against Carreño Busta was a tight affair, and Djokovic was testy. At one stage earlier in the set, he smashed a ball in frustration toward the side of the court, hitting no one.

He failed to convert three set points on Carreño Busta’s serve in the 10th game, but when serving at 5-5, Djokovic fell hard on the second point while shifting direction and got up wincing and grabbing at his left shoulder. He received treatment in his chair, returned to the court trailing by 2 points and then lost the game, still looking uncomfortable with his two-handed backhand and resorting to a one-handed drop shot on two occasions.

Miffed, he smacked another ball in frustration, then extended his left arm in apology toward the line judge as soon as he saw she had been struck. Goran Ivanisevic, Djokovic’s coach, slumped in his seat in the players box in the cavernous, nearly empty stadium, seemingly aware of the implications.

Andreas Egli, a Grand Slam supervisor, and Friemel soon arrived on court to investigate the situation and discuss the incident with Djokovic and the on-court officials, including chair umpire Aurélie Tourte.

“I know it’s tough for you whatever call you make,” Djokovic said to Friemel as they talked at the net.

“Well, the rules are the rules,” said Carreño Busta, who had lost his three previous matches with Djokovic.

“The referee and the supervisor did the right thing but it’s not easy to do it, no?”

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Lou Brock, baseball Hall of Famer known for stealing bases, dies at 81

Lou Brock in 1977, after he broke Ty Cobb’s record of 892 stolen bases. In 1964, he helped take St. Louis to the World Series championship.

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

L

ou Brock, the St. Louis Cardinals’ Hall of Fame outfielder who became the greatest base-stealer the major leagues had ever known when he eclipsed the single-season and career records for steals in a career spanning two decades, died Sunday.

He was 81.

Dick Zitzmann, Brock’s agent, confirmed his death to The Associated Press, but did not provide any details. In 2017, Brock began receiving treatment for multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer. His left leg was amputated in 2015 as a result of a diabetes-related infection.

On June 15, 1964, a floundering Cardinals team traded one of the National League’s leading pitchers for an outfielder who had failed to live up to his promise. That deal, sending the right-hander Ernie Broglio to the Chicago Cubs for Brock as the centerpiece of a six-player swap, became one of the most one-sided trades in baseball history, but hardly in the way that many envisioned.

Broglio won only seven games for the

Cubs over the next 2-1/2 seasons, then retired. Brock, sought by Cardinals manager Johnny Keane for his largely untapped speed, helped take St. Louis to the 1964 World Series championship and went on to turn around games year after year with his feet and his bat.

Brock’s 118 stolen bases in 1974 eclipsed Maury Wills’ single-season record of 104, set in 1962, and his 938 career steals broke Ty Cobb’s mark of 892.

He led the National League in steals eight times. Although Rickey Henderson broke Brock’s stolen-base records, Brock’s luster remained undimmed. A left-handed batter, he had 3,023 hits and he hit .300 eight times. He helped propel the Cardinals to three pennants and two World Series championships and he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1985.

Louis Clark Brock was born on June 18, 1939, in El Dorado, Arkansas, and grew up in Collinston, Louisiana, in a family of sharecroppers who picked cotton. He attended a one-room schoolhouse, but at the age of 9 he was inspired by possibilities beyond the poverty and segregation of the rural South.

He was listening one night to a feed from radio station KMOX in St. Louis. Harry Caray was broadcasting a game between the Cardinals and Jackie Robinson’s Brooklyn Dodgers, the summer after Robinson broke the major leagues’ color barrier, a time when, as Brock put it, “Jim Crow was king.”

“I was searching the dial of an old Philco radio,” Brock recalled. When he heard about Robinson, “I felt pride in being alive.

The baseball field was my fantasy of what life offered.”

As a boy, Brock never played organized baseball. Instead of a ball and bat, he swatted rocks with tree branches. But he received an academic scholarship to Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and played baseball there, catching the attention of Buck O’Neil, the longtime Negro leagues player and manager who was scouting for the Cubs.

The Cubs’ organization signed Brock in August 1960, and he made his major league debut late in the ’61 season. But two summers later, he was batting only .251 and struggling with the Wrigley Field sun as the Cubs’ right fielder. He was considered perhaps the fastest man in the league, but the Cubs were reluctant to turn him loose on the base paths.

At the 1964 trade deadline, the Cardinals gambled by trading for Brock, hoping that his speed would provide the missing element in an impressive lineup featuring Ken Boyer, Bill White, Curt Flood, Dick Groat and Tim McCarver.

“I thought it was a dumb trade,” the Cardinals’ future Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson was quoted by The St. Louis PostDispatch as saying. “I didn’t know how good Lou would be. No one knew. I didn’t even remember facing him. I heard it and thought, ‘For who? How could you trade Broglio for that?’”

Keane told Brock he wanted him to steal bases, but Brock regarded himself as primarily a power hitter and had his doubts.

Keane’s confidence in him nonetheless inspired Brock, who was put in left field, replacing the retired Stan Musial, one of baseball’s greatest hitters.

Playing in 103 games for the ’64 Cardinals, Brock hit .348, stole 33 bases and scored 81 runs. The Cardinals overtook the Philadelphia Phillies in the season’s final

week to win the pennant, then defeated the New York Yankees in a seven-game World Series.

Brock’s Cardinals defeated the Boston Red Sox in the 1967 World Series and won another pennant in ’68, losing to the Detroit Tigers in the Series.

For Brock, base stealing required a certain bravado.

“You know before you steal a base that you’ve got nine guys out there in different uniforms,” he once said. “You’re alone in a sea of enemies. The only way you can hold your own is by arrogance, the ability to stand before the crowd. Every time you get thrown out, you’ve got to believe that somebody owes you four or five steals.”

Brock retired following the 1979 season with a career batting average of .293 to complement his base-stealing superlatives. He hit 149 home runs and scored 1,610 runs. He later pursued business ventures in St. Louis and worked as an instructor in the Cardinals’ organization. The team retired his No. 20 and a statue honoring him stands outside Busch Stadium.

Brock’s survivors include his third wife, Jacqueline, a special-education teacher whom he married in 1996; his son, Lou Jr., and his daughter, Wanda, from his first marriage, to Katie Hay; three stepchildren and two granddaughters, according to St. Louis Public Radio. His first two marriages ended in divorce.

For all his natural speed, Brock was also a student of baseball and an innovator in pursuing the art of base-stealing, using technology to “synchronize your movement with the pitcher’s movement.” Late in the ’64 season, he obtained a movie camera and began filming pitchers as they took their set position, threw to first base and threw to the plate, hoping to discover tendencies that might give him an edge.

Brock’s ingenuity wasn’t appreciated by at least one pitcher, as David Halberstam related in his book “October 1964”: “One day he was filming Don Drysdale, as tough a pitcher as existed in the league. ‘“What the hell are you doing with that camera, Brock.’ ‘“Just taking home movies,’ said Brock. ‘“I don’t want to be in your goddamn movies, Brock,’ Drysdale said, and threw at him the next time he was up.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

29

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

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

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

(Mar 21-April 20)

It isn’t convenient for you to drop everything because someone is expecting you to take charge of a difficult situation. It comes naturally for you to take on a leadership role but you aren’t easily fooled. Someone is expecting you to step in while making various excuses as to why they can’t make a similar commitment.

You aren’t convinced.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

One way or another you will find a way to break free from normality. You just want to have fun. No matter where you might be, you will be the life and soul of the party even while socially distancing. If anyone is looking at the possibility of experimenting with new means or methods, you will be first to support their ideas.

Gemini

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

(May 22-June 21)

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

You long for a change and if this means taking a slight risk or striking into unfamiliar territory, it won’t matter. Your restless spirit nudges you in new directions. You’ve needed to break out of a comfortable rut for some time now and now is as good a time as any to set the ball in motion.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

You and a close friend have been spending a lot of time together. You could do with some time apart. This is not because this relationship is coming to an end. You just need a change of company. It’s some time since you’ve had a holiday and you could do with a change of scenery. You’re thinking of a staycation.

Nothing will get finished if you put jobs aside to start on something new. The idea of getting new projects going stimulates and excites you. Do you have the staying power to see anything through to its conclusion? This is your chance to show you can finish what you start.

Stick with what you are doing until it is complete.

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Cancer

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

(June 22-July 23)

News regarding a money matter makes it hard for you to know where you stand, financially. You may have to wait a little longer to have a loan application confirmed. A grant you had been expecting may be delayed though someone will promise it is on its way. Wait until it is in your hands before you believe them.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

No matter how you feel, there is no getting away from the need to turn your attention to financial and business concerns. An agreement is being made and you will pledge your cooperation in all sincerity. One way to let others know you mean what you are saying is to put your new resolve into action immediately.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

A partner’s stubborn stance to a matter you need to decide on jointly is not Making it easy for either of you. Obviously, you aren’t going to reach a conclusion to some matters as quickly as you had been hoping for. If they refuse to budge, you might put your nervous energy to use by doing something meaningful on your own.

Someone who moved away from your area will contact you via a social networking site.

You will be interested in some information they send your way. At home there may be contention regarding someone who is very set in their ways. Arguments will have a way of occurring over the most trivial of issues.

A younger relative will promise to make more effort in a direction in which they’ve recently been lacking. Housemates are pulling together to agree on ways to make life easier. An illness may stop you from joining in with plans your friends are making. It isn’t being selfish to turn down an invitation. You need to rest, relax and rejuvenate.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

A friend owes you money and they’re showing no signs of intending to pay it back. They may have genuinely forgotten they borrowed from you or they could be hoping you are the one who has forgotten about it. Either way you may have to use some tact to bring up the subject. Financial worries need to be addressed.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

No matter how keen you are to strike out in a new direction, try to keep a common-sense approach to all that you do. If your goals might take you down an unfamiliar path accept the guidance of a friend who has already been through similar experiences. Be cautious where cash is concerned.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

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Ziggy

32

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

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