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Cellphones Now Banned in Island Public Schools Through 8th Grade

Rivera Schatz: 2026 Looks Bleak for Opposition

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2 January 2-4, 2026

The San Juan Daily Star

GOOD MORNING 3

January 2-4, 2026

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.

New law bans cellphones in public schools through 8th grade

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By THE STAR STAFF

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ov. Jenniffer González Colón has signed into law House Bill 185-2025, which prohibits students in Puerto Rico’s public schools from using personal electronic devices, such as cellphones, through eighth grade.

Rep. Jorge Navarro Suárez, the bill’s sponsor, thanked the governor for approving the measure, calling it a step toward improving education and student well-being.

“I deeply appreciate the Governor for recognizing the importance of this initiative and signing it into law,” Navarro Suárez said in a written statement. “Excessive Rep. Jorge Navarro Suárez cellphone use in schools has become a barrier to learning and socialization. With Law 185-2025, we restore focus on education in Puerto Rico all win.”

The governor previously vetoed an earlier version of education and protect the mental health and development the bill. The revised law includes exceptions negotiated of our students.”

The legislator emphasized that the law is not an arbi- with the executive branch. Under the law, devices may be trary ban but a tool to reclaim instructional time and foster used for educational purposes under direct supervision, in emergencies requiring communication with parents or healthier school environments.

“By eliminating digital distractions during these for- emergency services, and when reasonable accommodations mative years, we are investing in the academic future of are approved for health or disability reasons, supported by our youth,” he said. “Today, students, teachers, and public a licensed physician’s recommendation.

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Justice secretary clarifies status of key witness in Aibonito murder case

By THE STAR STAFF

J

ustice Secretary Lourdes Gómez Torres confirmed earlier this week that Miriathny Dialyan Avilés Rodríguez, a witness in the murder case of Gabriela Nicole Pratts Rosario, is not in state custody but has expressed no desire to return home.

Avilés Rodríguez’s mother, Sheila Rodríguez Torres, filed a habeas corpus petition on Tuesday seeking her daughter’s release after the young woman appeared at a police station in response to an Amber Alert issued following her disappearance on Sunday.

Avilés Rodríguez is the stepsister of Anthonieska Avilés Cabrera, who has been charged in connection with Pratts Rosario’s death. She reportedly will not be testifying in the case.

“Regarding the habeas corpus petition filed in a civil court concerning a minor, we report that, as of today, the respondent has not been properly notified in accordance with the law,” Gómez Torres stated in a written declaration Wednesday.

“However, given the public information circulating in the media, the Department of Justice feels compelled to clarify that the 18-year-old is not under the custody of the State or any of its agencies.”

The secretary noted that the young woman, following incidents within her family that threatened her well-being, has expressed reluctance to return home.

“In this context, and as a witness in a criminal proceeding, the Department of Justice is fulfilling its legal duty to provide any support she requests or requires, as established by law,” Gómez Torres added.

She concluded by rejecting claims that the commonwealth or its agencies are illegally detaining the young woman, calling such allegations “completely false and unfounded.”

Justice Secretary Lourdes Gómez Torres

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January 2-4, 2026

The San Juan Daily Star

Rivera Schatz says opposition faces bleak future in 2026

By THE STAR STAFF

S

enate President Thomas Rivera Schatz launched a sharp attack this week on Puerto Rico’s opposition parties, certain media outlets, and progressive groups, predicting that they face a difficult road as the 2026 elections approach.

In a social media post, Rivera Schatz dismissed the opposition as ineffective and devoid of ideas, singling out the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) and its leadership for failing to offer solutions to the island’s pressing challenges.

He argued that 2025 was “a terrible year for the opposition,” claiming it lacked traction and failed to present concrete proposals. The PDP had not provided a reaction to the remarks as of press time.

The Senate leader pointed to recent opinion pieces by Rafael Cox Alomar and Anabel Torres Colberg as evidence

Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz

of what he described as the structural weakness of opposition forces. He also accused segments of the press of being “biased, populist, and leftist,” alleging that they have tried -- and failed -- to create a narrative of internal division within the governing New Progressive Party (NPP).

While he has said publicly that the NPP is united and has blamed the press for trying to stir divisions, Rivera Schatz’s remarks came just one day after he publicly called for the resignation of La Fortaleza Chief of Staff Francisco Domenech Fernández, saying he had caused significant harm, and Energy Czar Josué Colón Ortiz, whom he criticized for failing to improve Puerto Rico’s energy system in a sharply worded message to the governor.

Rivera Schatz also asserted in his message that opposition leaders lack the capacity to solve the island’s problems and predicted that their struggles will continue into the next election cycle.

Agriculture Dept. signs agreement granting fishermen control of La Parguera Fishing Village

By THE STAR STAFF

T

he island Department of Agriculture has signed a five-year agreement granting the La Parguera Fishermen’s Association Inc. the administration and operation of the La Parguera Fishing Village in the southwestern municipality of Lajas.

The agency said the move underscores its commitment to listening to and addressing the concerns of the organized fishing sector.

Under the lease agreement, the association will assume custody, management and use of the facilities in accordance with Regulation 7626, which governs the administration of fishing villages. The contract recognizes the priority status of bona fide fishing organizations in managing such facilities.

Agriculture Secretary Irving Rodríguez Torres described the agreement as a concrete step toward resolving a long-standing issue that has hindered fishing activity in La Parguera.

“Our duty is to listen, evaluate, and act,” he said in a statement. “The fishermen of La Parguera have been clear in their demands, and today we respond with action. This agreement

restores their ability to manage their fishing village, revive economic activity, and strengthen a tradition that sustains many families.”

Rodríguez Torres emphasized that the agreement is part of a broader effort to review and address the needs of fishing villages across the island.

“We are working village by village, case by case, listening to fishermen and seeking fair, viable solutions,” he added. “Public policy is clear: these facilities should first serve those who live from fishing and understand the realities of the sea.”

The La Parguera Fishermen’s Association had publicly called for an agreement to operate the village, noting that the facility had been closed for years, limiting direct seafood sales and other economic activities tied to artisanal fishing.

Under the new arrangement, the association will manage, maintain and operate the fishing village, including the fish market and related areas, promoting the sale of locally caught fresh fish and seafood in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.

The Department of Agriculture reaffirmed its commitment to working closely with fishermen, municipalities, and other agricul-

The contract recognizes the priority status of bona fide fishing organizations in managing facilities such as La Parguera Fishing Village in Lajas. tural and fishing sectors as part of the efforts of the administration of Gov. Jenniffer González Colón to boost economic development and food security, and strengthen coastal communities.

PREB rebukes LUMA & PREPA over delays in clean energy projects

By THE STAR STAFF

T

he Puerto Rico Energy Bureau (PREB) has sharply criticized grid operator LUMA Energy and the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) for failing to advance renewable energy and storage projects, warning that continued delays threaten grid reliability and the ability to secure federal funding.

The PREB ordered PREPA in a resolution this week to submit a detailed update by Jan. 15, 2026 on all of its efforts to move projects forward. The filing must include the status of pending amendments to power purchase and operating agreements

and energy storage service agreements, copies of developers’ requests and draft amendments, updated project information, and comprehensive schedules in Gantt chart or similar format for all projects in Tranches 1, 2, and 4 tenders as well as legacy renewable initiatives. The PREB cautioned that failure to comply will result in fines under Section 6.36 of Act 57-2014.

The directive follows a June 12, 2025 resolution ordering LUMA and PREPA to prioritize shovel-ready renewable and storage projects from Tranches 1, 2, and 4, along with legacy projects that were most advanced in development. Those tranches were part of a tender to obtain more than 1,000 megawatts of

renewable energy that was divided into six phases or tranches, of which only three were done.

The PREB stressed the urgency of completing the projects to strengthen Puerto Rico’s electrical system and meet the requirements of Act 82-2010, which mandates energy diversification.

Despite those instructions, progress has been slow. The PREB noted that multiple projects remain stalled at various contractual and development stages, a situation it said is contrary to the public interest and undermines reliable service for PREPA customers. It also warned that delays could jeopardize a narrow window of opportunity to attract federal investment for renewable energy.

The San Juan Daily Star

January 2-4, 2026

5

Two high court justices object to how changes to reputation panel were implemented

By THE STAR STAFF

T

wo members of Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court have criticized the way the majority of the tribunal carried out recent changes to the Commission on Reputation for the Practice of Law, arguing that the process departed from long-standing traditions of transparency and collegial deliberation.

Chief Justice Maite Oronoz Rodríguez, joined by Associate Justice Ángel Colón Pérez, issued a dissenting opinion earlier this month after the court announced several new appointments to the commission, which evaluates the character, reputation and mental fitness of individuals seeking admission to the bar. The commission also reviews petitions for reinstatement.

Puerto Rico Supreme Court Chief Justice Maite Oronoz Rodríguez

Oronoz Rodríguez said the decision replaced “half of the associate members” without prior discussion among the full court, a practice she described as essential for ensuring continuity and stability.

“In the past, these matters were discussed openly within the Plenary,” the chief justice wrote. “Each member of the Court would usually submit a name for consideration, allowing us to evaluate performance and credentials before making changes that could disrupt the commission’s work.”

Oronoz Rodríguez lamented the removal of professors Belén Guerrero Calderón and Mayté N. Rivera Rodríguez, the latter a scholar in ethics and professional responsibility.

“Both are first-rate academics whose

input is invaluable for the proper functioning of the commission,” the dissent noted.

Despite the criticism, the court confirmed the appointments of Guillermo Arbona Lago as chair, along with Jocelyn López Vilanova, Miguel Candelario Piñeiro, Rafael G. Rocher Valera, Luis M. Barnecet Vélez, Yolanda Doitteau Ruiz and Luisa Colom García as members. Dr. Robert Stolberg and Bruno E. Cortés Trigo were also named to the body. Terms will range from four to five years, according to the resolution.

The Supreme Court expressed gratitude to the new appointees and those who previously served. The commission is authorized to hold hearings and conduct investigations as part of its mandate to safeguard the integrity of the legal profession.

Monostereo owner: Incident in which tourist was slain did not occur at his bar

By THE STAR STAFF

T

he owner of Monostereo cocktail bar, Gabriel Álvarez, alleged earlier this week that the incident that culminated in the death of a tourist in Old San Juan did not occur at his establishment, contrary to the information initially disseminated by the San Juan Municipal Police.

“The information widely disseminated by the authorities, which stated that the incident that culminated in the death of a tourist in Old San Juan began with a fight at the Monostereo business, is incorrect,” Álvarez said in a written statement issued Wednesday.

“We do not know where this information came from, but on the night of the incident, no fight was reported at our establishment,” he added.

The bar owner said he has already made himself available to the authorities, as part of the community of San Sebastián Street in Old San Juan, to clarify any doubts related to the investigation and to collaborate in clarifying what took place during the incident. Álvarez’s reaction came after the San Juan Municipal Police reported that the killing, which occurred at 12:45 a.m. on Tuesday, began with a fight at Monostereo, which is located on San Sebastián Street, according to

the preliminary report released by the agency.

According to the Municipal Police, the altercation spilled into the street, where one of those involved shot and killed 40-year-old Nathan Joel Castro, a resident of Florida.

Municipal officers arrested five suspects as they attempted to flee the scene. Álvarez noted that the business’s connection to the case has received widespread local and international media coverage, which has impacted the establishment’s reputation, and reiterated his willingness to cooperate with authorities as the probe continues under the direction of the Criminal Investigation Division.

Monostereo owner Gabriel Álvarez said his business’s reported connection to the case has sparked widespread local and international media coverage, which has impacted the establishment’s reputation.

PIP alleges municipal inaction amid crises on 3 fronts in Salinas

By THE STAR STAFF

V

íctor Alvarado Guzmán, the spokesperson for the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) in the southern coastal town of Salinas, raised alarms earlier this week over what he described as the municipality’s state of abandonment, citing a growing convergence of social, environmental and public safety crises.

Alvarado asserted that the issues underscore a lack of planning and decisive action by Mayor Karilyn Bonilla Colón.

One of the most pressing concerns for Salinas residents in 2025, Alvarado said, has been a surge in violent crime.

“Salinas faces an alarming and painful reality that can no longer be ignored by municipal and state authorities,” he said. “Our town ranks among the top ten municipalities for homicides in 2025, as reported in the media -- a figure that reflects the collapse of prevention, security, and social support policies.”

The PIP leader also pointed to findings from an August 2025 analysis by the nonprofit Taller Salud, which revealed that between June 2023 and February 2024, half of Salinas households reduced their daily meals due to food shortages, while 65% of women live below the poverty line.

“These numbers are not mere statistics; they represent the accelerated impoverishment of

our communities and the absence of effective municipal policies to address inequality and food insecurity,” Alvarado stressed.

He further denounced the growing problem of abandoned animals in Salinas, criticizing the lack of programs, resources and administrative will to tackle the issue.

“The proliferation of stray animals is yet another sign of institutional neglect and the municipality’s inability to fulfill its basic responsibilities,” Alvarado said. “The mayor acknowledges the problem but fails to take concrete steps toward solutions.”

The PIP spokesperson said his party has submitted multiple proposals to address the

aforementioned and other challenges, but efforts have been blocked by the president of the Municipal Assembly. He cited the poor management of the local recycling program as an example, which he says has led to setbacks in solid waste management and environmental deterioration.

“The Assembly president has refused to investigate the deficiencies in the recycling program, despite a formal request from PIP municipal legislator Emilio Nieves Torres,” Alvarado added.

“There is no interest in improving services for our people -- especially if those initiatives come from other political parties.”

Salinas had not answered requests for comments as of press time.

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The San Juan Daily Star

January 2-4, 2026

Justice Dept. leaders pushed to charge Abrego García, emails show

By ALAN FEUER

F

ederal prosecutors in Nashville, Tennessee, have insisted in the past few months that senior Justice Department officials had no involvement in their decision to file charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March and then brought back to the United States to face indictment.

But earlier this week, excerpts from several emails released by a federal judge overseeing Abrego Garcia’s criminal case appeared to directly contradict those assertions, suggesting that Justice Department leaders — including

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Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general — played a greater role in bringing the charges than prosecutors have acknowledged.

The emails, which were made public Tuesday as part of a newly unsealed judicial order, largely reflected communications about the case that Robert E. McGuire, the acting U.S. attorney in Nashville, had with members of his staff and with Aakash Singh, a top official in Blanche’s office. They raised serious questions about whether the Justice Department had misled Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr., who is overseeing the case, by telling him that local prosecutors had acted alone in charging Abrego Garcia.

“These documents show that McGuire did not act alone and to the extent McGuire had input on the decision to prosecute, he shared it with Singh and others,” Crenshaw wrote in the unsealed order. “Specifically, the government’s documents may contradict its prior representations that the decision to prosecute was made locally and that there were no outside influences.”

One of the emails, dated April 30, was written by Singh to McGuire and another prosecutor, Jacob Warren, as the government was building its criminal case against Abrego Garcia, who at the time was still in custody in El Salvador.

In it, Singh made clear that charging Abrego Garcia was “a top priority” for Blanche’s office. In response, McGuire wrote, “We want the high command looped in.”

A little more than two weeks later, McGuire wrote to his staff that while the ultimate decision about whether to bring charges was his own, he had heard that Blanche and his chief deputy at the time, Emil Bove, were pushing for charges to be filed. In the email, McGuire referred to Blanche as the “DAG” — or deputy attorney general — and to Bove as the “PDAG” — or principal deputy attorney general. He also mentioned the “ODAG” — or the office of the deputy attorney general.

“I have not received specific direction from ODAG other than I have heard anecdotally that the DAG and PDAG would like Garcia charged sooner rather than later,” McGuire wrote.

Crenshaw’s order was only the latest in an ever-growing series of rebukes dealt to the Justice Department as it has pursued parallel efforts to both prosecute Abrego Garcia and expel him from the country again.

Three weeks ago, a federal judge in

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March, speaks to supporters as he arrives for his immigration check-in, in Baltimore on Aug. 25, 2025. The release of several emails raised serious questions about whether the Justice Department had misled a judge in telling him that local prosecutors had acted alone in charging Abrego Garcia. (Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times)

Maryland released him from immigration custody in a scathing order that accused the Justice Department of egregious conduct that included stonewalling her, disobeying her direct instructions and even “affirmatively” misleading her about its plans to re-deport Abrego Garcia.

The judge in that case, Paula Xinis, has temporarily barred the Justice Department from taking Abrego Garcia back into custody. But on Tuesday evening, department lawyers said they would rearrest him if they were able to overcome her provisional order stopping them from doing so.

Crenshaw’s order containing the excerpted emails was originally issued under seal on Dec. 3, when he instructed prosecutors to hand over the full trove of materials to Abrego Garcia’s lawyers. The lawyers sought the communications in an effort to bolster their claims that the indictment against Abrego Garcia had been brought because the Trump administration was trying to vindictively punish him for contesting his initial deportation.

In October, Crenshaw issued a preliminary ruling finding that there was a “realistic likelihood” that the administration had in fact brought the case vindictively. That decision allowed Abrego Garcia’s legal team to seek internal documents from the government.

In his initial order, the judge singled out Blanche, saying that he had made “remarkable statements” about the criminal case. On the day in June that Abrego Garcia was brought back to face indictment, Blanche went on Fox News and declared that the government had started to investigate the case only after Xinis, in Maryland, had questioned the administration’s decision to deport Abrego Garcia and found that it “had no right.”

The newly released emails only pointed further at Blanche’s involvement in deciding to charge Abrego Garcia.

In one of the emails, written on May 16 as the Justice Department was nearing its decision to bring charges, Warren wrote to Singh, suggesting that Blanche was playing some sort of role in whether to seek an indictment quickly.

“If the DAG does want to move forward with the indictment on Wednesday,” Warren wrote, “we think it would be prudent to loop in the press office ASAP.” Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have issued subpoenas to Blanche and Singh in an effort to have them testify under oath about their roles in seeking criminal charges. The Justice Department has strenuously objected to the subpoenas in a series of court filings, some written by a top department official, Stanley E. Woodward Jr.

The San Juan Daily Star

January 2-4, 2026

7

Republicans who backed Afghan visas are mum as Trump halts them

By MEGAN MINEIRO and ADAM SELLA

B

ack in 2021, as Kabul fell to the Taliban following the chaotic U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, Republicans in Congress were among the loudest voices in Washington arguing that the United States had to throw open its doors to those Afghans who had assisted Americans during roughly two decades of war.

At the time and in the years since, GOP lawmakers have pressed for the expansion of a special visa program for Afghan allies, insisting in letters to the administration, in hearings and in news conferences staged outside the Capitol, that it be expanded.

Then Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan man who enlisted in a paramilitary force that worked with Americans and who was evacuated by the U.S. military in 2021, was charged with shooting two National Guard members in downtown Washington just before Thanksgiving, killing one and severely wounding the other.

President Donald Trump declared that the United States “must now reexamine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan” during the Biden administration.

And even though Lakanwal was not admitted under a Special Immigrant Visa, the administration halted that program, closing the last legal pathway for Afghans to enter the country.

Republicans who were some of the leading advocates for the United States to

provide refuge for Afghans have now gone quiet, apparently resigned to the demise of the Special Immigrant Visa program.

“Politically, I wouldn’t say it’s dead on arrival, but it’s severely damaged now,” Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said of the push to issue more visas. “It’s just hugely unfortunate, because they fought alongside our military.

They are veterans.”

Yet there has been no move by the Republican-led Congress to scrutinize the administration’s decision to suspend the visas, or to attempt to force the administration to resume issuing them.

Since 2021, the United States has allowed more than 190,000 Afghans to settle in the country, some on green cards as Special ImmigrantVisa recipients, and others who were permitted to enter the country temporarily while they applied for permanent residency or asylum.

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers had been pressing for an additional 20,000 visas to be issued, writing in a letter to senior appropriators in May that the program included “rigorous vetting” and was critical to providing “a lifesaving path to safety for Afghan nationals who face deadly retribution as a result of their work alongside U.S. troops, diplomats and contractors.”

But the shooting shattered the bipartisan consensus.

“What happened changed things,” said Rep. Lloyd K. Smucker, R-Pa., who was among

Afghan refugees arrivie at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington on Aug. 24, 2021.

The Trump administration has also taken steps to end programs that extend temporary protections to Afghan citizens. (Kenny Holston/The New York Times)

those calling for more visas in the spring. “I’ll defer to the president on what he thinks is the right thing to do.”

“After this,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., referring to the shooting, “we’re going to have to look at everything.”

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the Republican chair of the Appropriations Committee, said it was “evident” that more vetting was needed, but that “there were an awful lot of Afghans who were invaluable in assisting our troops and helping to keep them safe.”

Some Democrats were far more blunt.

Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, a Democrat who flew to Kabul in 2021 on an unauthorized trip to witness the evacuation of Americans and Afghans, said his Republican colleagues no longer appeared interested in collaborating on a solution for the visa program.

“They’re pretty much done having conversations,” he said. “They won’t do anything to go against Trump, and they don’t mind if our Afghan allies die in the process.”

Republicans widely condemned the Biden-era parole program that allowed tens of thousands of Afghans to stay in the country for two years while they applied for legal permanent residency. Lakanwal entered the country under that temporary legal status and was granted asylum in April.

Some immigration hard-liners in Congress have called for beefing up the vetting of such immigrants, including by rescreening and possibly deporting some Afghans.

But Republicans have argued that vetting for the special visa program — which required applicants to undergo background checks, biometric screenings and interviews, and to submit a written recommendation from a top military or diplomatic official — is meticulous.

McCaul said the shooting of the National Guard members was the latest example of the U.S. government failing to rehabilitate veterans of its wars, calling Lakanwal, who had shown signs of depression and erratic behavior as early as 2023, someone who “obviously needed some help, and there was no access.”

“We’ve had veterans in the past who have created horrific acts of violence, like Tim McVeigh, Lee Harvey Oswald,” said McCaul, who was the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee during the Afghanistan withdrawal. “But we don’t condemn the whole community. What it’s doing is it’s basically saying that all Afghans are terrorists.

And they’re not.”

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., who attempted to enter Afghanistan amid the evacuation, said the Biden administration had “dumped” Afghans with Special Immigrant Visas into the country with insufficient federal programs to assist them.

“We need to put a pause on until we get ahold of the people that came here through the SIV program, and we have touched base with them, know where they’re at and make sure they’re all in a good space,” Mullin said.

Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., who worked closely with Republicans in 2021 to push for a robust resettlement program for Afghan partners, said Republicans were too afraid of political backlash to challenge Trump’s pause on the visa program.

“There are Americans alive today who would not have come home had it not been for Afghans who stood and protected them,” Crow said. He said Republicans had lost sight of the role of Congress to “be a check on the presidency, regardless of whether the president in office is your party or not.”

8

The San Juan Daily Star

January 2-4, 2026

COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVES

Mobile photography: The art of the digital snapshot

By JOHN RIVAS Special to The STAR

P

eek-a-boo… what do we see? Ever since mobile photography carved out its space in the world of digital phones, our surroundings have become more vivid, more noticeable. Everyday life -- its events, its fleeting moments -- now finds its chroniclers in urban photojournalists armed not with bulky cameras, but with sleek smartphones. These modern devices, fortified with high-resolution lenses, color calibration tools, special effects, and instant internet access, have transformed the way we capture reality.

The old 35mm cameras? Their glory days are fading fast.

Photography and communication have migrated to a new visual universe -- one that fits in your pocket. Even space exploration relies on compact digital cameras, sending back breathtaking images from distant planets. These tiny lenses shrink the vastness of the cosmos into something we can hold in our hands, a testament to humanity’s visual conquest.

With a mobile camera, anyone can create clever, original,

and artistic photographs -- no need for a traditional 35mm setup.

What matters most is the eye behind the lens: that instinct for the perfect angle, the right moment. Today, countless works of art and historical snapshots displayed in museums were captured with nothing more than a smartphone.

This constant access to a camera has turned millions into artists. It has unveiled hidden talent, giving aspiring photographers the chance to explore their surroundings with fresh eyes. Suddenly, they notice details that were always there but never seen. I count myself among them -- an enthusiast who now sees the invisible objects hiding in plain sight.

Mobile photography keeps our creativity alive. To excel, “Mobile photography keeps our creativity alive,” UPR-Cayou don’t need the most expensive gear; you need a trained rolina professor John Rivas writes. (Freepik) photographic eye, capable of freezing in a frame what others overlook. As the saying goes: It’s not the arrow, it’s the archer.

Likewise, it’s not the lens -- it’s the vision behind it. instant film. The revolution is here -- and it fits in the palm of From Louis Daguerre’s daguerreotype in 1839, to Kodak’s your hand. birth in 1888, to the rise of iconic brands like Nikon, Canon and Polaroid, photography has evolved dramatically. And now, the Prof. John Rivas is an artist and head of the Graphic Design digital mobile camera has sealed the fate of the darkroom and Department at the University of Puerto Rico, Carolina Campus.

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

What happens when you send a girl to school

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

J

oyce Arthur was born in rural Ghana, the eldest daughter in a family of five children. Her family slept in a single room, and their daily income, earned by catching and selling fish, wasn’t enough for everyone to eat three meals a day. Like many girls in her community, she knew that she would probably be married off early or get pregnant as a teenager or both. Education would not be an option.

Arthur knew she wanted more from her life. “I saw a future that was beyond what my community and my family were showing me,” she said. “I knew the only way out was to go to school.”

One day, while she was cooking with her mother, she shared her dream of attending school. Her mother was initially incredulous — no girl in her family had ever gone to school — but agreed to let her attend elementary school and junior high, which were free. From there, Arthur resolved, she would find a way to pay for high school, college and beyond.

Arthur understood that she would have to excel to prove the value of educating a daughter. “I was very disciplined,” she said. “Even when I was hungry, I would still go to school on an empty stomach.” In the afternoon, she would return home and help her mother sell smoked fish. She sometimes woke up at 2 a.m. to begin studying.

One of Arthur’s teachers noticed her ambition and pulled her aside one day to tell her about the Campaign for Female Education, a nonprofit that pays for girls’ education in rural

Africa and supports them with mentorship. CAMFED’s help allowed her to attend high school, where she thrived, especially in her math courses. When she graduated, CAMFED sponsored her to attend college as well.

CAMFED has supported more than 650,000 girls with scholarships to attend high school, which typically costs money to attend in African nations. CAMFED’s alumni network has supported an additional 1.7 million students, with each graduate paying for the school costs of three children, on average. Arthur sponsors nine, plus her three younger sisters, who she said otherwise “would never have stepped in the classroom.”

Today Arthur is continuing her own education, working toward a master’s degree in international education policy.

She also runs Araba Foundation International, which provides menstrual health products, education and mentorship to girls in Ghana. Next, she said, she’ll earn a doctorate, expand her foundation and start businesses in Ghana. “I’m still putting the plans together,” she said.

“I am a living testimony,” Arthur said, to “the possibility of when you invest in a girl.”

A $220 donation to CAMFED funds a girl’s education in rural Africa for an entire year.

You can learn more about all of the beneficiary organizations and donate at nytcommunitiesfund.org. To donate by check, please make your check payable to The New York Times Communities Fund and send it to P.O. Box 5193, New York, NY 10087.

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The San Juan Daily Star January 2-4, 2026

9

Anuncian bono escolar de 400 dólares para menores participantes del programa de asistencia temporera POR CYBERNEWS

S

AN JUAN – La secretaria del Departamento de la Familia, Suzanne Roig Fuertes, anunció a principios de esta semana la emisión especial de un bono escolar de 400 dólares por menor para familias participantes del Programa de Asistencia Temporera para Familias Necesitadas, categoría C, de cara al inicio del semestre escolar de enero de 2026.

“Desde el Departamento de la Familia continuamos impulsando iniciativas que apoyen directamente a las familias participantes de nuestros programas, especialmente en etapas críticas como el inicio del semestre escolar”, dijo Roig Fuertes en declaraciones escritas.

Explicó que la ayuda económica será una aportación única de 400 dólares por cada menor entre 3 y 17 años y 11 meses, y estará disponible mediante depósito en la Tarjeta ÚNICA el viernes, 2 de enero de 2026, sin que las familias tengan que realizar trámites adicionales.

Mencionó que el beneficio podrá

utilizarse exclusivamente para compras escolares sin impuesto sobre ventas y uso los días 2 y 3 de enero de 2026. Los participantes deberán presentar los recibos de compra a su manejador de caso dentro de un término de 30 días.

Según informó, la inversión total asciende a 1,557,200 dólares en fondos del Programa de Asistencia Temporera para Familias Necesitadas que administra la Administración de Desarrollo Socioeconómico de la Familia.

El administrador de esa dependencia, Ramón Burgos Bermúdez, explicó que la medida busca facilitar el acceso a los materiales escolares necesarios para el inicio del semestre académico y apoyar a la niñez y juventud atendida mediante el programa de manejo de casos.

Para cualificar, los menores deben ser hijos de participantes con casos activos en la categoría C al mes de diciembre de 2025, estar debidamente identificados en el sistema de administración de casos y cumplir con los requisitos de edad, matrícula y asistencia escolar establecidos por el programa.

Identificación y registración digital serán válidas ante la Policía tras firma de resolución POR CYBERNEWS

S

AN JUAN – La gobernadora Jenniffer Aydin González Colón firmó una resolución conjunta que ordena a la Policía de Puerto Rico aceptar como válida la registración y la licencia de vehículo en formato digital durante las intervenciones en la vía pública.

La Resolución Conjunta de la Cámara 106 ordena al comisionado de la Policía, Joseph González, impartir instrucciones a todas las divisiones del cuerpo policiaco para que reconozcan como evidencia válida la información vehicular presentada a través de la aplicación CESCO Digital.

La medida busca uniformar el procedi-

miento a nivel de todo Puerto Rico, ante situaciones en las que conductores que cumplían con la ley enfrentaban dificultades al presentar documentación en formato electrónico durante intervenciones de tránsito.

Con la firma de la resolución, los agentes deberán aceptar como válida la registración o licencia reflejada de forma virtual, incluyendo el marbete digital disponible en la plataforma oficial del Departamento de Transportación y Obras Públicas.

La disposición ya se encuentra en vigor tras la firma de la gobernadora y aplica a cualquier intervención realizada por oficiales de la Policía de Puerto Rico en la isla.

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10 January 2-4, 2026

PRSO comes bearing gifts for Reyes

By PEGGY ANN BLISS Special to The STAR

I

t wouldn’t be Las Fiestas in Puerto Rico without the annual visit of The Three Kings. And it wouldn’t be Epiphany in Puerto Rico without Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra (PRSO) Emeritus Conductor Roselín Pabón’s Reyando, an annual concert of native talent and folk tributes to the Christ Child.

The annual tradition (which has already sold out) will be held Sunday at Luis A. Ferré Performing Arts Center in Santurce. The concert will begin at 5 p.m. in the Antonio Paoli Festival Hall.

Pabón, who will observe his 80th birthday in May, says he is just getting started. The Mayagüez native seems especially pleased that one of the participating groups is a chorus from his hometown.

Pabón, who started with the PRSO in 1979 as its assistant music director, is retired with the title emeritus, and has been especially admired for his holiday concerts for almost half a century. The orchestral music veteran, for whom conducting is “my favorite aerobic exercise,” has been scouring the island for fresh talent since September. The process involves auditioning budding fourto 18-year-old musicians whose talent “spans both classical and folk genres.”

A tradition of giving The Three Magi, Melchior, Gaspar and Baltazar, bearing the storied gold, frankincense and myrrh, represent royalty, divinity and suffering/death. On Epiphany, Jan. 6, Christians celebrate their following a star to a humble manger in Bethlehem. The dramatic procession

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The Three Magi, Melchior, Gaspar and Baltazar, bearing the storied gold, frankincense and myrrh, represent royalty, divinity and suffering/death. They also represent three ages of humanity and three distinct races, according to observers of the time. (Pinterest) sparked a tradition of post-Christmas gift giving throughout the Christian world, especially in Hispanic and Latin American countries, and in unexpected places such as Poland.

According to observers of the time, the Kings represent three ages of humanity and three distinct races.

This latter fact is reflected in the iconic sculpture of The Magi in the plaza of the southwestern town of Juana Díaz, where a Taíno, Spaniard and African make up the sacred tableau.

On Epiphany Eve, Puerto Rican children fill shoe boxes with freshly picked succulent grass for the horses, although in some countries, the hungry visitors are camels. Elsewhere, shoes are filled with the reward for the hard-working beasts.

The concert, whose traditional glue is the 67-yearold PRSO, will offer the Austrian classic “Silent Night” played by a four-year-old boy on the cuatro, as well as the hauntingly lyrical “Villancico Yaucano,” penned

by Amaury Veray in the western island town of Yauco.

Honoring this regal pageant revered over the centuries will be décima singers and operatic stars such as the Borinquen Tenors, who will offer some beloved Italian crooning. They will interpret the 19th-century Neapolitan classic “O Sole Mio,” immortalized by The Three Tenors, Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras. Eleven-year-old guitarist Milton Dávila Jr., from Cayey, will interpret the classic concert piece “Asturias”

by Isaac Albéniz.

In complete contrast, “a young lady from Culebra will offer the Brazilian traditional ‘Tico Tico’ on the steel drums,” Pabón said, referring to an instrument associated with the Caribbean island of Trinidad.

“Just as the Kings brought their gifts to the Child, our youth will bring their amazing talents to our people,”

The San Juan Daily Star said Pabón, a graduate of Peabody Institute of Music in Baltimore, who has taught at the Puerto Rico Music Conservatory since 1978 and directs its excellent orchestra.

Around the world It may be winter in some parts of the world, but el maestro has picked another seasonal favorite for La Rondalla de Humacao, powered by a small group of youngsters with conditions such as Down syndrome and autism. This handful of enthusiastic performers does more than justice to the 80-year-old “Autumn Leaves” falling from their native cuatros with aplomb, he promises.

Many of the present members of the PRSO have made their big-time debut in one of Pabón’s holiday specials, most notably assistant concert master Francisco Jiménez and another half-dozen musicians Pabón proudly credits himself with discovering. Many have also become cherished trovadores, the kind who can improvise at the drop of a hat.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for our youth,” Pabón says as he muses on his many encounters with unsung talents from every nook and cranny of Puerto Rico.

“People recommend them to me and I audition them,” he said. “I pick the best for [one of the holiday specials] and the others I tell to come back next year,” he said. “Many of them have greatly improved and are chosen to perform.”

“This is a showcase of the quality of our music and our musicians: classical, folk, country, instrumental,” Pabón added. “There is a high percentage of talent in every area for a small territory of 3 million people. It is our ‘mestizaje,’ or mixed blood; we have the DNA of the world.”

Conductor Roselín Pabón, who will observe his 80th birthday in May, is retired with the title emeritus. He has been especially admired for his holiday concerts for almost half a century. (Facebook via Roselín Pabón)

The San Juan Daily Star

January 2-4, 2026

11 Stocks

Wall Street slips as tech continues to weigh, but nears annual gains MOST ASSERTIVE STOCKS

⁠all three indexes to record highs this year.

Wall Street’s strong 2025 exemplifies a stellar comeback from April lows, when Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs sparked a meltdown in global markets, with trade-war jitters threatening growth and clouding the outlook for monetary policy in the world’s biggest economy.

Bellwether chipmaker Nvidia - up 40.6% so far this year has been one of the beneficiaries, becoming the first publicly traded company to hit a $5 trillion market capitalization.

Communication services index emerged as the top performer on the S&P 500 this year, powered by a 65.1% jump COMMODITIES in Alphabet, nearing its best yearly performance s​ ince 2009.

The company has seen numerous catalysts this year in the Abodada-Notario form of AI deals, Berkshire Hathaway’s $4.9 billion stake and an antitrust ruling win against breaking up the Google parent.

• HERENCIAS | QUIEBRA | DERECHO LABORAL • The Federal Reserve’s interest rate trajectory will set the Hogar Seguro Testamento Poderes tone for global markets heading into 2026, after mild economic data this month and expectations of a new dovish Fed 787-547-0520 jrclegalsolutions tuabogadapr@outlook.com chair prompted investors to price in further reductions.

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The economy showed remarkable strength by overcomCURRENCY ing higher inflation, a slowing labor market, fewer rate cuts than originally expected, and a sharp rise in the effective tariff rate,” said Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist for LPL Financial.

“Despite these challenges, growth remained steady without slipping into recession.”

Among stocks, Nike gained 1.8% after CEO Elliott Hill bought its stock for about $1 million.

Vanda Pharmaceuticals jumped 30.5% after the ​U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its drug for the prevention HOLDINGS SUMMARY of motion-induced vomiting.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 2.01-to-1 ratio on the NYSE, while by a 1.69-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P 500 posted no new 52-week highs and no new lows, while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 14 new highs and 94 new lows.

Trading volumes were thinner ​than usual in the holidayshortened week, with markets closed on Thursday for New Year’s Day.

PUERTO RICO STOCKS

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W

all Street’s major indexes slipped ‌in ​the final trading session of 2025, but ‌approached a positive end to a year dominated by President Donald Trump’s tariff uncertainties and a​ euphoria around AI-focused stocks.

The S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq were on course to log double-digit gains this year - their third consecutive year.

On the day, ‍tech stocks extended losses, slipping 0.2%.

Microsoft a​ nd Broadcom fell 0.3% and 1%, respectively.

At 10:06 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 120.36 points, or 0.25%, to 48,246.70, ​the S&P 500 ⁠lost

13.49 points, or 0.20%, to 6,882.75 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 43.35 points, or 0.18%, to 23,375.73.

Wall Street is on track for a fourth consecutive session in the red - an anomaly given expectations for a year-end “Santa Claus rally”, when the S&P 500 typically gains over the last five trading days of the year and the first two in January, according to the Stock Trader’s ‌Almanac.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 and the Dow are set to close their eighth month on the trot in the green, ​bolstered ‌by an insatiable appetite for artificial ‍intelligence stocks that pushed

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12 January 2-4, 2026

The San Juan Daily Star

The tiny Japanese island on the front lines of China’s feud

By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ and HISAKO UENO

A

s a lifelong resident of Yonaguni, a remote island that is Japan’s westernmost point, Himeyo Ukemasu remembers the distant days when life was measured by the bright stars, the tides and the ripening of mulberry trees.

Today, the stars have been obscured by radar towers, and Ukemasu, 70, a volunteer at a tourist site, has other concerns. Yonaguni, a Japanese military outpost about 70 miles east of Taiwan, sits along the “first island chain,” a strategic arc of islands used to hem in Chinese naval expansion. As China fumes over Japan’s recent expression of support for Taiwan, Ukemasu and the island’s roughly 1,600 other residents have found themselves on the front lines of a rapidly escalating dispute.

“I don’t want the people to be sacrificed,” she said. “I want to see the mulberries turn red and the lilies bloom. All I want is an ordinary life.”

For decades, Yonaguni, part of Okinawa prefecture, has been an enchanting oasis in the East China Sea with wild horses, hammerhead sharks and an offshore rock formation that some believe to be the ruins of a lost civilization. The island was perhaps best known in Japan as the backdrop for “Dr. Coto’s Clinic,” a 2000s medical drama about a Tokyo surgeon banished to a remote Okinawan office.

But over the past decade, the Japanese government has invested tens of millions of dollars to make Yonaguni a bulwark in its efforts to counter Chinese military aggression, with troops, radar towers and ammunition storage sites. Japanese and U.S. military assets there could prevent Chinese warships from getting into the open Pacific waters farther east if conflict were to break out. The island has three tiny settlements, a small airport and a garrison of about 230 soldiers.

China has led an all-out effort to punish Japan since early November, when Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, said her country could intervene militarily if China were to attack Taiwan, a self-governed democracy that Beijing claims is part of its territory. The Chinese government unleashed a wave of reprisals, discouraging tourism to Japan and ramping up air and sea patrols, including around Okinawa. China held live-fire military drills around Taiwan on Tuesday — a show of strength by its navy and air force — including

Takashi Tomitori, an amateur diver who is also an auto mechanic, at work on the island of Yonaguni, Japan, on Dec. 11, 2025. Tomitori says he is worried about stationing missiles on the island. (Ko Sasaki/The New York Times) some activities near Yonaguni.

Yonaguni is a reminder that Japan’s own security is linked to Taiwan’s. A Chinese attack on Taiwan could threaten Japan’s access to vital sea lanes and leave far-flung Okinawan islands vulnerable. (Chinese commentators have in recent years sought to raise doubts about Japan’s sovereignty over Okinawa.)

Japan’s defense minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, recently visited the island, where he detailed plans to station medium-range antiaircraft missiles there to deter an “armed attack on our country.” The move is part of broader effort by the Japanese military, known as the Self-Defense Forces, to fortify islands across Okinawa as a counterweight to China. Takaichi, a China hawk, has said she will accelerate Japan’s military spending to 2% of gross domestic product by next spring, two years ahead of schedule.

China has called the plan to put missiles on Yonaguni “extremely dangerous” and accused Japan of “provoking military confrontation.”

The Chinese military recently flew drones near the island to express its displeasure.

Residents said that they have tried to tune

out the tensions, though the subject sometimes arises at local izakayas, or pubs, after long days of work in the sugarcane fields or at the garrison. In interviews, some people were defiant, saying they would not evacuate the island even if there were a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

Many residents rejected the idea that a crisis is imminent, blaming the news media for stoking fears of conflict. But they acknowledged that island’s identity has changed since the garrison was established in 2016; at the time, there were 632 votes in favor of hosting the military, and 445 against. Now, apartment buildings have been built for the troops, and military families mingle with Yonaguni natives at restaurants and shrines.

The island’s mayor, Tsuneo Uechi, won election this year promising to take a more cautious approach to defense expansion. He has expressed concern about hosting the U.S. military on the island for joint drills with Japan.

The United States has deployed radar systems to Yonaguni and held medical visits there as part of training in recent years.

In an interview, Uechi said most residents were just trying to go about their lives. While he is wary of turning the island into a fortress, he acknowledged that some level of preparation is inevitable.

“It will be too late once something happens,” he said, “so we’re preparing for the worst.”

In recent years, Yonaguni’s proximity to Taiwan has placed it increasingly at the center of regional tensions. In 2022, after Nancy Pelosi, then the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, visited Taiwan, China fired at least 11 missiles in response, including one that landed about 50 miles northeast of Yonaguni.

China’s increasingly bold threats against Taiwan have raised new alarms. The Japanese government plans to build underground shelters across remote Okinawan islands over the next several years, including one on Yonaguni that can hold more than 200 people. And officials are holding evacuation drills and preparing residents for a possible influx of Taiwanese refugees.

Japan also plans to deploy about 30 troops to Yonaguni over the next year to form an electronic warfare unit.

Many residents are skeptical of the Japanese government’s intentions, saying the presence of more troops makes the island

even more of a target. A pacifist streak runs through Okinawa, in part because of a legacy of U.S. colonialism, World War II and the abundance of U.S. military bases in Japan.

Takashi Tomitori, 56, an amateur diver, moved to Yonaguni several years ago from Chiba prefecture near Tokyo, drawn by its stunning oceans. He said he felt the decision to station missiles there would make the island more dangerous.

“A war would seriously damage the island,” said Tomitori, who is also an auto mechanic. “Wouldn’t it be better not to have any missiles? Wouldn’t it be better not to retaliate?”

Still, more hawkish voices say the island needs to protect itself.

Shigenori Takenishi, chair of the Yonaguni fishery association, said he was increasingly concerned by China’s movements in the seas around Japan.

“We never know what China might do,” he said.

Beyond security, Takenishi said troops were helping keep Yonaguni vibrant, at a time when the local population is aging and declining. The island lacks a major port, a high school and a hospital. Many young people have left in recent years for Japanese cities in search of better opportunities.

“Yonaguni won’t survive without the military,” Takenishi said.

Then there is the stress of being caught between geopolitical rivals. Some people joke that life might be better if Yonaguni could be moved farther to the east, perhaps closer to Hawaii.

On a recent evening, a group of young fathers gathered in a garage to build floats for a Christmas Day light parade, a Yonaguni tradition. They spent hours hammering together set pieces and stringing lights as Christmas music blared in the background.

The aim was to give residents, especially children, something light and fun to think about for a change.

“Seeing their smiling faces is very rewarding,” said Takanobu Sugimoto, 37, a father of four children, as he measured a piece of plywood. “That’s what this parade is all about.”

With tensions flaring in the region yet again, Sugimoto said the people of Yonaguni had come to accept there was little they could do to change the situation.

“That’s the only way it can be,” he said.

“That’s the way we’ve become.”

The San Juan Daily Star

January 2-4, 2026

13

A dancing dictator and bankers in chains: The other Venezuela blockade

By SIMON ROMERO

A

blockade aimed at ravaging Venezuela’s economy. A fiery Venezuelan leader known for his unusual dance moves at times of distress. A U.S. government seeking to assert military supremacy in Latin America.

Yes, these descriptions refer to the crisis now engulfing Venezuela.

But they also apply to a military campaign against Venezuela at the dawn of the 20th century, which produced a sea change in U.S. relations with Latin America.

The Venezuela crisis of 1902-03 focused a global spotlight on Cipriano Castro, a hardpartying dictator known as the “Lion of the Andes.” His rule in Venezuela was marked by a persistent state of belligerence toward the great powers of the era.

When patience finally wore thin over Venezuela’s unpaid debts, Germany, Britain and Italy resorted to what was known then as gunboat diplomacy, using their naval power to exert pressure in a bid to make Venezuela honor its obligations.

“It’s the closest analogue in many ways to what is happening today,” said Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist at the University of Denver.

The similarities between the two blockades emphasize how features of the current standoff, like Nicolás Maduro’s anti-imperialist language and President Donald Trump’s drive to assert U.S. dominance over the Western Hemisphere, recall earlier times.

In the first Venezuela crisis, the blockade unleashed a wave of anti-German vitriol in the American press, based largely on fears about Germany’s rapid expansion of its naval fleet and the ambitions of Wilhelm II, the ill-tempered kaiser presiding over Germany.

Initially somewhat blasé over European ef-

forts to collect debts, President Theodore Roosevelt took note of this sentiment. The United States, fresh off its capture of Puerto Rico and the Philippines as spoils in the Spanish-American War, was on the rise.

“The United States had a sense that events were running in its favor, much like the Chinese see themselves today,” said Jack Thompson, a lecturer in American studies at the University of Amsterdam.

Roosevelt ordered the largest concentration of U.S. naval power ever seen in the Caribbean up to that point, signaling that the United States was prepared to fight to prevent Germany from gaining a foothold in the region.

Germany, along with Britain and Italy, then agreed to resolve the dispute with Venezuela through arbitration, effectively backing down in the face of ascendant U.S. military strength.

The next year, the American president turbocharged the Monroe Doctrine, which had warned European powers against further colonization in the Americas, by adding his own “Roosevelt Corollary” to that foreign policy cornerstone.

This, stating the United States had a right to exert “police power” in the Americas when it found cases of wrongdoing, led to decades of military interventions, coups and outright invasions of Latin American countries.

In November, Trump put forth his own “Trump Corollary.” It asserts that his administration should intervene in the Americas to prevent mass migration to the United States and ensure a hemisphere “free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets.”

Just as Roosevelt’s military buildup was a message to Germany, a rising power at the time, Trump’s blockade of sanctioned oil tankers in Venezuela targets China, which consumes 80% of Venezuela’s oil exports and has made huge economic inroads throughout Latin America.

Differences also abound between the two blockades; they are 122 years apart, after all.

One involves Venezuela’s economy. Civil wars and uprisings had ravaged Venezuela, but at the start of the 20th century the country was relatively closed to global trade and did not need imports to feed its population.

Now, Venezuela relies overwhelmingly on oil, which accounts for more than 90% of export income.

While experts say some of Venezuela’s oil revenues are lost to corruption, Maduro’s government needs the proceeds from this trade to keep the armed forces functioning and to import necessities like food.

Another obvious contrast involves the United States, which is no longer a middling power but a nuclear-armed colossus. And after decades in which the United States prioritized objectives in the Middle East and Asia, Trump is refocusing attention on the Western Hemisphere.

His intimidation campaign against Venezuela is just the start of this shift, the Trump administration has made clear, part of an effort to reassert U.S. supremacy in a region where leaders have long placed national sovereignty and nonintervention among their core values.

Still, other parallels between the two Venezuela blockades show history, if not quite repeating, then rhyming a bit.

Take Cipriano Castro, the Venezuelan leader at the heart of the 1903 crisis. Like Maduro today, he cast his presidency as both a line of defense against a new wave of colonialism and a repudiation of wealthy Venezuelan elites aligned with foreign interests.

Standing just 5 feet 5 inches tall, he often wore high-heeled boots and an extravagant plumed hat to appear taller, as well as oversized military uniforms bedecked with medals and enormous gold epaulets.

“He has the vanity of a peacock, the temper

An undated image from the Library of Congress of Cipriano Castro, center, who was known as the “Lion of the Andes” and ruled Venezuela from 1899 to 1908, with his cabinet in Caracas, Venezuela. (Library of Congress via The New York Times) of a tiger, and the habits of a satyr,” a British diplomat once wrote about Castro.

When bankers refused to roll over Venezuela’s debt after Castro seized power in 1899, he had them put in shackles and paraded through Caracas, the capital. The next day, they agreed to finance his government.

“It’s kind of tongue in cheek, but I call that the most successful debt restructuring in Venezuelan history,” said Rodríguez, the economist.

Maduro has been breaking into song and dance routines amid the current standoff with Washington, while Castro became known during the 1903 blockade for hosting balls lasting from sunset until the following morning, according to accounts from the time.

At one point, when British and German warships were seizing Venezuelan naval ships, he hosted a ball at Miraflores Palace, then the official presidential mansion in Caracas, quaffing Champagne and dancing for hours with a rotating cast of mistresses as generals waited in the halls with urgent cables.

Castro held on to power for a few years until his failing health (brought on by “debauchery,” U.S. diplomats claimed) led him to seek medical care in Europe in 1908.

14 January 2-4, 2026

The San Juan Daily Star

Why the AI boom is unlike the dot-com boom

By DAVID STREITFELD

administration’s big tech move in the 1990s was suing Microsoft.

Yet another factor pushing against a repeat of the dot-com he dot-com boom, a period of wild exuberance and extre- collapse: Worrying that things are getting out of hand is paradoxime hype that began in the mid-1990s, built the foundations cally a sign that things are not out of hand. At least, not yet. for the contemporary wired world. When the internet mania “We get bubbles when everybody believes the price canturned to bust in March 2000, it made a bit of a mess. not go down,” venture capitalist Ben Horowitz wrote in an email.

The trouble spread from Silicon Valley to the larger eco- “The clearest sign that we are not actually in a bubble is the fact nomy, which went into recession. More than $5 trillion in stock that everyone is talking about a bubble.”

The dot-com boom and the AI boom were both narrowly market value was destroyed. The unemployment rate rose to 6% from 4%. It was not the worst crash ever, but the hangover lasted focused. Eighty percent of venture investments in 2000 went to internet companies. This year, 64% went to AI startups. The techa few years.

Now Silicon Valley is in the middle of an artificial intelligen- nical term for this is “putting all your eggs in one basket.”

But the two booms have otherwise diverged in scale. The ce boom that bears some obvious resemblances to the dot-com boom. Much of the rhetoric about a glorious world to come is the three most highly valued companies of the dot-com era were Cissame. Fortunes are again being made, sometimes by the same co, Microsoft and Intel, all of which supplied the technology that tech people who made fortunes the first time around. Extravagant made internet startups possible. Each was valued around $500 valuations are being given to companies that didn’t exist yester- billion at its peak.

Today, Nvidia, the chipmaker that plays a similar role for day.

For all the similarities, however, there are many differences the AI boom, is valued at more than $4.5 trillion. It and other AI that could lead to a distinctly different outcome. The main one companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta and the privately held is that AI is being financed and controlled by multitrillion-dollar OpenAI are together worth more than the $17 trillion capitalizacompanies like Microsoft, Google and Meta that are in no danger tion of the entire stock market in 2000. of going kaput, unlike the dot-com startups that were little more That difference in scale is both alarming and — conversely than an idea and a bunch of engineers.

— a comfort. The wealth and power of these AI companies are Another difference between then and now: Relatively few partly why Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sees no cause regulatory barriers are standing in the way of AI. The Trump ad- for worry. These companies “actually have business models and ministration is doing all it can to enable an AI future. The Clinton profits and that kind of thing,” he said in October. “So it’s really a different thing” from the dot-com bubble.

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(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems. The two companies have denied the suit’s claims.)

Horowitz, a major AI investor, worked early in his career at Netscape, which popularized the web CAGUAS- URB. SAN ANTONIO CAGUAS- URB. VILLA BLANCA Residencia con 3 Habitaciones, browser in the 1990s. Netscape was the inescapable Residencia con 4 Habitaciones, 1 Baño, Sala, Cocina y Comedor. company at the center of the dot-com boom in the 2.5 Baños, Sala, Cocina, Comedor, $179,000. same way OpenAI is now in the AI boom. But the scaBalcón y Marquesina Extendida. les they were operating at were very different.

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Estacionamiento y Laundry. same time, the software to build internet services was $125,000.

Renta: $675.00 super immature and expensive, as was the correspon-

T

The skyline of San Francisco, May 7, 2025. Silicon Valley is again betting everything on a new technology.

But the mania is not a reboot of the late-1990s frenzy.

(Loren Elliott/The New York Times) ding hardware and the bandwidth.”

Evite, a company that did online greeting cards, had 290 engineers, he noted. As a result, many dot-com businesses did not work because the products were too expensive and the customers too few.

AI is very different, Horowitz contended. The internet is a network, and its value increases as more people are added, he said. Online retailers in 1996 could reach only a small fraction of the population. Amazon now reaches just about everyone.

A little-acknowledged worry with the AI boom is that impulses toward fraud will find fertile soil. That means the more unsavory aspects of the dot-com era may be the likeliest elements to make a comeback.

Dot-coms were under great pressure to rack up revenue and justify their extreme valuations. Some managed to do this legitimately. Others did not. Homestore.com, a real estate listings company worth $6 billion, paid inflated sums for services or products. The vendors used the money to buy advertising from two media companies, which in turn bought advertising from Homestore. Eleven Homestore executives were charged with fraud.

In recent months, the overlapping web of deals between top AI companies has become a prime topic. In an October research note, J.P. Morgan analysts said that “some caution is warranted” but argued that “today’s deals look different” from the dot-com era. “Capital is arguably chasing AI, not the other way around,” the note said.

Boom or bust, one thing is for sure: Silicon Valley will take care of itself.

“Not all AI products are magical or even work,” Horowitz said. “It’s not clear that they will work before the companies providing them run out of cash. So are some valuations in the private markets out of whack? Always. That’s how I stay in business.”

The San Juan Daily Star

January 2-4, 2026

15

What scientists found when a deep sea mining company invited them in

By SACHI KITAJIMA MULKEY

I

ndustrial mining of the seabed could reduce the abundance and diversity of tiny animals living in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, a new study found.

The study, published Dec. 5 in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, was funded by The Metals Co., which is vying to become the first company to conduct commercial mining on the ocean floor.

Researchers from the Natural History Museum in London analyzed samples from the seafloor before and after a mining test and found that the number of worms, minute crustaceans and other small animals in the path of the mining vehicle fell 37%. The variety of the creatures also declined by 32%.

The data came from the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an area in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico that is targeted for seabed mining because it is rich with potato-sized nodules that contain nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese. The metals are used in renewable-energy technologies and also have military applications.

The Metals Co. has spent some $250 million studying the environmental effects of seabed mining. The dozens of researchers involved had contracts that allowed them to independently analyze and publish their results. This emerging collection of work represents one of the largest and most comprehensive research efforts conducted in the Clarion-Clipper Zone to date.

More than a dozen countries, through state-owned entities or sponsored companies, hold United Nations permits to explore more than 1 million square kilometers of deep seafloor around the world. The agency’s International Seabed Authority has not yet approved commercial mining.

In April, President Donald Trump took a major step that would allow mining to begin by issuing an executive order to fast track commercial seabed mining. It instructed the U.S. government to issue mining permits in national and international waters. The actions drew criticisms for circumventing the U.N. process.

This month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that it was formally considering the first permit applications from the Metals Company for seabed mining exploration in international

waters and scheduled public hearings for late January.

The Trump administration has also recently proposed expanding the area open to mining around American Samoa from 18 million acres to 33 million acres, despite a moratorium from the territory’s Polynesian leadership.

Critics say not enough is known about the potential damage to the marine environment to allow industrial seabed mining.

Nearly 40 countries have called for a moratorium or ban on seabed mining.

Scientists once assumed that there was hardly any life in the deep sea, believing that the environment was too extreme and devoid of nutrients. But research from the past few decades has increasingly shown that life in the deep sea is surprisingly abundant and diverse.

The new study described 788 species of macrofauna, one subset of animals that live in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. “We’ve actually only sampled such a tiny proportion of the deep sea,” said Eva Stewart, a doctoral student and lead author of the new study. There could be thousands of species waiting to be discovered, she said. “We just haven’t seen them yet.”

Other research examining a 44-yearold deep sea mining test site found that the biodiversity losses from seabed mining can linger for decades.

About 30% of the small animals that live on the seabed are directly attached to the mineral-laden nodules that the mining operations would collect. Those creatures were not included in the new study, which surveyed macrofauna in the sediment around the nodules.

The Metals Co.’s mining vehicles leave about 10% of nodules behind, according to Michael Clarke, the company’s environmental manager. He said the 37% reduction found in the study was not concerning because it was lower than expected and the company expects these populations to recover over time.

Other research groups funded by the company have examined mining pollution, risks to marine food webs, and other longstanding questions about the nascent industry’s potential to harm ocean ecosystems.

“We used to think of deep sea ecology as a really stable system,” said Bryan O’Malley, a research scientist at Eckerd Col-

A photo provided by Bryan O’Malley shows a collage of foraminifera, a kind of single-celled organism, found in a potential mining zone and arranged by O’Malley, a lead researcher. An oceanmining company has funded some of the most comprehensive scientific studies to date, and peer-reviewed results have begun to emerge. (Bryan O’Malley via The New York Times) lege who is working on several studies funded by The Metals Co. Last month, he was lead author of one in Nature Communications that detailed a new method to monitor sediment plumes from commercial mining.

“What we found was actually that it’s quite dynamic.”

Understanding the natural variation of marine life in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is one of the biggest challenges to studying potential effects of mining. Several research groups that have examined animal life in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone discovered that the ecosystem undergoes large changes year-to-year, even without any influence from mining.

Animal communities on the seafloor can also differ over distances as short as 100 kilometers, while life in the water column also fluctuates more than expected. Without more data about background conditions, scientists won’t be able to properly evaluate the risks from mining, said Jeffrey Drazen, a professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii, who has published studies

on seabed mining funded by The Metals Co. Seabed mining involves reaching deep into the ocean with an autonomous vehicle to harvest nodules from the seabed floor and pump them up to a ship on the surface for processing. During a mining test that scientists studied in 2022, The Metals Co. brought up 3,000 tons of nodules from the seafloor, a fraction of the 1.5 million tons it plans to collect during its first year of commercial operation.

The process creates two kinds of plumes of sediment that can alter the ecosystem. One plume comes from disposing the excess sediment carried to the surface with the mineral nodules as they are transported up to a mining ship. The other involves the clouds kicked up on the seafloor as the vehicle rolls across the soft sediment.

During their test, The Metals Co. released the excess sediment 1,200 meters under the waves. Scientists from the University Hawaii funded by The Metals Co. found that releasing the sediment at this level dilutes the food supply of the zooplankton and small squid.

This could “potentially starve the food web,” said Michael Dowd, a doctoral student at the University of Hawaii who led the study, which was published last month in Nature Communications. “These animals also serve as a food source for deep diving top predators that are important in commercial fisheries, such as tuna.”

After receiving this data, Clarke of The Metals Co. said the company changed its commercial operating plans to release the unused material 800 meters deeper to avoid the zones where zooplankton are most abundant. The company also plans to expel less waste than it did during the test, because it discovered the slurry contains recoverable nodule fragments, he said.

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16 January 2-4, 2026

The San Juan Daily Star

A different type of dementia is changing what’s known about cognitive decline

By PAM BELLUCK

A

recently recognized form of dementia is changing the understanding of cognitive decline, improving the ability to diagnose patients and underscoring the need for a wider array of treatments.

Patients are increasingly being diagnosed with the condition, known as LATE, and guidelines advising doctors how to identify it were published this year. LATE is now estimated to affect about a third of people age 85 and older and 10% of those age 65 and older, according to those guidelines. Some patients who have been told they have Alzheimer’s may actually have LATE, dementia experts say.

“In about 1 out of every 5 people that come into our clinic, what previously was thought to maybe be Alzheimer’s disease actually appears to be LATE,” said Dr. Greg Jicha, a neurologist and an associate director of the University of Kentucky’s SandersBrown Center on Aging.

“It can look like Alzheimer’s clinically; they have a memory problem,” Jicha said. “It looks like a duck, walks like a duck, but then it doesn’t quack; it snorts instead.”

On its own, LATE, shorthand for Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, is usually less severe than Alzheimer’s and unfolds more slowly, said Dr. Pete Nelson, an associate director of the Sanders-Brown Center, who helped galvanize efforts to identify the disorder.

That can be reassuring to patients and their families. But there is no specific treatment for LATE. Also, many older people have more than one type of dementia pathology, and when LATE occurs in conjunction with Alzheimer’s, it exacerbates symptoms and speeds decline, he said.

“Pure Alzheimer’s disease is worse than pure LATE,” he said. “However, Alzheimer’s disease plus LATE is worse than either alone — more swift, more severe, a more brutal endpoint.”

About half of 85-year-olds with severe Alzheimer’s also have LATE, said Nelson, adding that with the combination, “you also tend to be more likely to have some of the hair-raising, horrible symptoms such as psychosis and urinary incontinence and other things.”

LATE usually emerges at an older age than Alzheimer’s, with

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symptoms generally limited to impaired memory and, sometimes, difficulty finding words or naming objects, said Dr. David Wolk, a neurologist who directs the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Alzheimer’s often also affects the ability to plan, organize and perform tasks, and it can cause mood and behavior changes, he said.

Doctors initially told Ray Hester that he was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s. Hester, 79, was having trouble recalling words, and his decision-making ability was declining.

A blood plasma test suggested that his brain had accumulated amyloid, a protein that forms plaques in Alzheimer’s, said Danica Coy, a clinical research coordinator at the Sanders-Brown Center.

But when Hester was evaluated further for an Alzheimer’s clinical trial at the center, a brain scan showed no amyloid buildup, Coy said. He did not have Alzheimer’s; he had LATE. “There’s a certain amount of relief knowing that it’s not Alzheimer’s,” his wife, Sandy Hester, said at their home in Versailles, Kentucky. Her mother and aunt had Alzheimer’s, and she had feared her husband’s trajectory from his current predementia phase of mild cognitive impairment would resemble theirs — “going to go downhill real, real fast,” she said.

But her husband’s decline doesn’t seem as rapid, she said, adding, “I’m very thankful for that.”

Neil Carey, 87, a retired social worker in Lexington, Kentucky, who had previously been told that Alzheimer’s was causing his mild cognitive impairment, learned after a PET scan that he didn’t have Alzheimer’s pathology. He and his wife, Lora Lee Clark, were somewhat relieved but also uncertain what LATE portended.

“I don’t care what they call what I have,” Carey said. “Giving it a name just isn’t going to change anything.”

He used to have a “wonderful vocabulary,” he said, “but now my field of words is far reduced.” He still reads books, exercises at a gym and socializes with friends, but he increasingly forgets names and details. He was particularly distressed when he immediately forgot the minister’s homily at church one Sunday, though he’d been listening avidly. “That’s really scary,” he said.

LATE began to be recognized after Nelson convened about 35 Alzheimer’s researchers from around the world in 2018 to explore designating a new non-Alzheimer’s diagnosis, evaluating data from brain autopsies and other research. “What sparked it for me was the fact that I didn’t have a diagnosis for 30% of my cases of dementia,” he said. “It means we’re missing something, Jack.”

In 2019, the group published a report naming a condition that researchers had long tried to categorize based on its biology and effects on the brain.

Biologically, Alzheimer’s involves plaques formed by amyloid, followed by another protein, tau, forming tangles. LATE involves abnormal accumulations of another protein, called TDP43.

The protein was identified in 2006 by other researchers, who noted its presence in other neurological disorders, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). It is in the nucleus of almost every type of cell in the body and is involved in genetic regulation of RNA and DNA, Wolk said. But in LATE and other neurodegenerative disorders, he said, the protein seeps out of the nucleus and forms clumps in the rest of the cell.

In LATE, the hippocampus, a brain area involved in me-

Ray Hester with his wife, Sandy Hester, at home in Versailles, Ky., in June 2025. On its own, LATE dementia is less severe than Alzheimer’s, but in combination, it makes Alzheimer’s symptoms worse, scientists say. (Morgan Hornsby/The New York Times) mory formation and learning, often shrinks more than it does in Alzheimer’s, said Dr. Reisa Sperling, a neurologist at Harvard University, who proposed the disorder’s name. So diagnosis typically involves brain imaging of the hippocampus, testing for Alzheimer’s pathology and evaluating whether cognitive symptoms seem more like those of LATE than Alzheimer’s.

Patients with pure LATE would be ineligible for the recently approved Alzheimer’s drugs because they don’t have the amyloid those drugs target. For people with both Alzheimer’s and LATE, the question is more complex, said Dr. Nupur Ghoshal, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

She said that for some patients with both dementias, evaluations indicate that LATE is the strongest factor in their condition. If “amyloid’s not driving the show, is it prudent to include those patients in amyloid treatments?” she asked. She said she would probably offer the drugs to such patients but would inform them that “you may have a modest benefit, but you will have all the risks.”

Sperling said she would “treat for amyloid if they had it” but emphasized the importance of finding therapies for LATE. Dementia experts said that since anti-amyloid drug trials occurred before widespread recognition of LATE, it’s possible that some participants had both Alzheimer’s and LATE and may have benefited less from the drugs. That could have contributed to the relatively modest overall success of the drugs in slowing cognitive decline in people with mild Alzheimer’s, experts said.

“Maybe people who are just pure Alzheimer’s actually really respond well to these drugs, and it’s really been brought down by cases that have a lot more of these other co-pathologies,” Wolk said.

The first clinical trial testing a treatment for LATE is underway at the University of Kentucky, with Ray Hester and Carey participating. It involves nicorandil, a drug approved in Europe and Asia to treat angina, chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart.

“It is a heart pill, but it seems to work on the genetic abnormalities that have been linked to LATE,” said Jicha, who leads the trial. Because nicorandil increases circulation in small blood vessels, he said, the hope is that it might help keep the hippocampus from shrinking and protect brain tissue.

The two-year trial, expected to end next year, involves 64 people with relatively mild memory problems, who take two heart-shaped pills daily, either a placebo or nicorandil.

The San Juan Daily Star

January 2-4, 2026

Sudoku

21

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 23

Wordsearch

GAMES

22 January 2-4, 2026

The San Juan Daily Star

La Makina Foundation envisions top-tier sports complex in Bayamón

By THE STAR STAFF

A

collaborative effort celebrating sports and community development materialized recently when Senate Vice President Carmelo Ríos Santiago and renowned Toronto Blue Jays pitcher José “La Makina” Berríos announced a strategic alliance to promote youth baseball in Bayamón.

The senator, who represents Bayamón, Cataño, Guaynabo, Toa Alta and Toa Baja, presented a $60,000 grant to the La Makina Foundation last week. The funds are intended to boost the development of young talent and provide them with the necessary tools to succeed both on the field and in their personal lives.

La Makina Foundation’s main mission is ambitious: to establish a top-tier sports complex in Puerto Rico. The facilities will not only serve as a vital space for training local prospects but will also offer a professional training area for Major League Baseball players during the off-

season.

“In this first year of this new term, our focus has been on baseball, and with this allocation, we aim to enable our children and young people to develop skills that will allow them to obtain college scholarships, fulfill their dream of playing in Major League Baseball, and, most importantly, become disciplined and socially responsible citizens,” Ríos said during the presentation ceremony.

José Orlando Berríos, a native of Bayamón, is a prominent figure in professional baseball. Known by his nickname “La Makina,” he has forged an impressive career in the majors. Beyond his statistics, Berríos is recognized for his dedication to his native Puerto Rico, using his foundation to give back to the community that watched him grow and develop as an athlete and a person.

The collaboration between Ríos and an elite sports star like Berríos marks a significant milestone in promoting sports as a vehicle for social change and personal development in the Bayamón District, the senator noted.

Toronto Blue Jays pitcher José “La Makina” Berríos is recognized for his dedication to his native Bayamón and Puerto Rico. (Instagram via rawlingscanada_official)

As youth sports professionalize, kids are burning out fast

By KEN BELSON

L

ike many mothers in Southern California, Paula Gartin put her twin son and daughter, Mikey and Maddy, into youth sports leagues as soon as they were old enough. For years, they loved playing soccer, baseball and other sports, getting exercise and making friends.

But by their early teens, the competition got stiffer, the coaches became more demanding, injuries intervened and their travel teams demanded that they focus on only one sport. Shuttling to weekend tournaments in Escondido and elsewhere turned into a chore. Sports became less enjoyable.

Maddy dropped soccer because she didn’t like the coach and took up volleyball. Mikey played club soccer and baseball as a youngster, then chose baseball before

he suffered a knee injury in his first football practice during the baseball offseason. By 15, he had stopped playing team sports. Both are now in college and more focused on academics.

“I feel like there is so much judgment around youth sports. If you’re not participating in sports, you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing as a kid,” Gartin said. “There’s this expectation you should be involved, that it’s something you should be doing. You feel you have to push your kids. There’s pressure on them.”

Youth sports can have a positive effect on children’s self-esteem and confidence and teach them discipline and social skills. But a growing body of recent research has shown how coaches and parents can heap pressure on children, how heavy workloads can lead to burnout and fractured relationships with family members and friends, and how overuse injuries can stem from playing

single sports.

A report published by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2024 showed how overuse injuries and overtraining can lead to burnout in young athletes. The report cited pressure by parents and coaches as additional risk factors. Another study, in the Journal of Sport & Social Issues, highlighted how giving priority to a winat-all-costs culture can stunt a young athlete’s personal development and well-being. Researchers at the University of Hawaii found that abusive and intrusive behavior by parents can add to stress on athletes.

Mental health is a vast topic, from clinical issues like depression and suicidal thoughts to anxiety and psychological abuse. There is now a broad movement to increase training for coaches so they can identify signs and symptoms of mental health conditions, said Vince Minjares, a program manager in the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program. Since 2020, seven states have begun requiring coaches to receive mental health training, he said.

Domineering coaches and parents have been around for generations. But their pressure has been amplified by the professionalization of youth sports. A growing number of sports leagues are being run as profit-driven businesses to meet demand from parents who urge their children to play at earlier ages to try to improve their chances of playing college or pro sports. According to a survey by the Aspen Institute, 11.4% of parents believe that their children can play professionally.

The San Juan Daily Star “There’s this push to specialize earlier and earlier,” said Meredith Whitley, a professor at Adelphi University who studies youth sports. “But at what cost? For those young people, you’re seeing burnout happen earlier because of injuries, overuse and mental fatigue.”

The additional stress is one reason more children are dropping out. The share of school-age children playing sports fell to 53.8% in 2022, from 58.4% in 2017, according to the National Survey of Children’s Health.

While more than 60 million adolescents play sports, up to 70% of them drop out by age 13.

While groups like the Aspen Institute focus on longstanding issues of access and cost in youth sports, combating mental health problems in young athletes is an emerging area. In recent years, professional athletes like Naomi Osaka and Michael Phelps have shined a light on the issue. But parents who want to teach their children the positive parts of playing sports are finding that some of the worst aspects of being a young athlete are hard to avoid.

That was apparent to the parents who took their sons to hear Travis Snider speak at Driveline Academy in Kent, Washington, one Sunday last spring. Snider was a baseball phenom growing up near Seattle and was taken by the Toronto Blue Jays in the first round of the 2006 MLB draft.

But he finished eight unremarkable seasons as an outfielder and played his last major league game at 27.

While attempting a comeback in the minor leagues, he worked with a life coach to help him make sense of why his early promise fizzled. He unearthed childhood traumas and unrealistic expectations on the field.

In a playoff game as an 11-year-old, he had had a panic attack on the mound and was removed from the game.

Though he reached the highest level of his sport, Snider felt as if distorted priorities turned baseball into a burden, something he wanted to help others avoid.

Last year, he started a company, 3A Athletics, to help children, parents and coaches develop healthier ap-

A player looks on from the dugout during a baseball game at Kentlake High School in Kent, Wash., on May 4, 2025. According to a survey by the Aspen Institute, 11.4% of parents believe their children can play professionally. (Grant Hindsley/ The New York Times)

January 2-4, 2026

23

proaches to sports that include separating professional Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword aspirations from the reality that most young athletes just on page 21 want to get some exercise and make friends.

“We as a culture really blended the two into the same experience, which is really toxic for kids as they’re going through the early stages of identity formation,” Snider said. “You have a lot of parents who are sports fans that want to watch youth sports the same way they watch pro sports without recognizing, ‘Hey, the thing I love the most is out there running around on the field.’”

He added, “We’ve got to take a step back and detach from what has become normalized and what kind of vortex we get sucked into.”

Driveline Academy, an elite training facility filled with batting cages, speed guns, sensors and framed jerseys of pro players, might be the kind of vortex Snider would want people to avoid. But Deven Morgan, director of youth baseball at Driveline, hired 3A Athletics to help parents and young athletes put their sport in context.

“It’s part of a stack of tools we can deploy to our families and kids to help them understand that there is a structural way that you can understand this stuff and relate to your kid,” he said.

“We are going to get more out of this entire endeavor if we approach this thing from a lens of positivity.”

During his one-hour seminar, Snider and his partner, Seth Taylor, told the six sets of parents and sons how to navigate the mental roadblocks that come from competitive sports. Snider showed the group a journal he kept during the 2014 season that helped him overcome some of his fears, and encouraged the ballplayers to do the same.

“It’s not just about writing the bad stuff,” he said.

“The whole goal is to start to open up about this stuff.”

Taylor took the group through a series of mental exercises, including visualization and relaxation techniques, to help players confront their fears and parents to understand their role as a support system.

His message seemed to get through to Amy WorrellKneller, who had brought her 14-year-old son, Wyatt, to the session.

“Generally, there’s always a few parents who are the ones who seem to be hanging on too tight, and the kids take that on,” she said. “At this age, they’re social creatures, but it starts with the parents.”

Coaches play a role, too. The Catholic Youth Organization in the Diocese of Cleveland has been trying to ratchet down the pressure on young athletes. At a training session in August, about 120 football, soccer, volleyball and cross-country coaches met for three hours to learn how to create “safe spaces” for children.

“Kids start to drop out by 12, 13 because it’s not fun and parents can make it not fun,” said Drew Vilinsky, the trainer. “Kids are tired and distracted before they get to practice, and have a limited amount of time, so don’t let it get stale.”

Coaches were told, among other things, to let children lead stretches and other tasks to promote confidence. Track coaches should use whistles, not starting guns, and withhold times from young runners during races.

“We’re trying not to overwhelm a kid with anxiety,” said Lisa Ryder, a track and cross-country coach for runners through eighth grade. “CYO is not going to get your kid to be LeBron.”

24 January 2-4, 2026

The San Juan Daily Star