Monday May 22, 2023

The San Juan Star

After 37 Years, Scorsese Returns to Cannes with ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

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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.

Joint raids conducted at San Juan establishments

By THE STAR STAFF

The Municipality of San Juan, along with commonwealth and federal authorities, carried out an operation Saturday night in which they seized 12 firearms, ammunition, what appeared to be marijuana and emptied out a nightclub for the safety of its customers. It was also reported that the municipal permit office alone issued $12,500 in tickets.

“In accordance with the initiatives discussed with Mayor Miguel Romero Lugo, we continue operations in businesses in different areas of San Juan,” San Juan Municipal Police Commissioner José Juan García Díaz said. “Last night 10 establishments were fined for not having the required regulations, 55 tickets were granted for violations of municipal ordinance No. 8 of the traffic code and 12 firearms, clips and ammunition of different calibers were seized.”

The raids were part of the work plan implemented by the Municipality of San Juan in conjunction with its Permits Office and Fire Department, the island Gaming Commission, federal marshals and the U.S. Department Homeland Security.

Col. García Díaz added that during a visit of the Fire Department to the Ocean Club on Ponce de León Avenue at Stop 18 in Santurce, instructions were given to vacate the

premises ahead of inspections, in which they found structural deficiencies that put the safety of customers at risk.

Meanwhile, a notification of non-compliance with a permit granted by the municipality was issued.

San Juan Mayor Miguel Romero Lugo, and the municipal police commissioner have announced that they will continue with the work plan in conjunction with federal and state agencies to guarantee the safety of visitors and so that businesses that comply with the law are not harmed by those who violate regulations.

Inspector general: Ex-Teachers Retirement System chief misused public resources

By THE STAR STAFF

Inspector General Ivelisse Torres Rivera has filed complaints against former Teachers Retirement System (SRM by its Spanish initials) Director Armando Rivera Díaz with the Department of Justice, the Government Ethics Office and the Office of the Election Comptroller for using public resources for political purposes.

“We identified situations where the former executive director of the SRM used the official computer and email for political purposes and personal gain,” Torres Rivera said.

The inspector general’s office found 58 incidents involving the former SRM director, who appeared to be using public equipment to promote his New Progressive Party primary candidacy for mayor of Fajardo in 2020.

Torres Rivera said “the former director could have used government resources for his political management, shared a government platform, and carried out official activities as

an SRM official for his political campaign.”

“This use of public resources for personal matters unrelated to government management represents conduct not authorized by law,” she said.

Among the violations identified, 24 were related to political acts and communications to employees using work resources or equipment during working hours. The remaining 34 infractions were personal communications and procedures unrelated to work during working hours.

The report details an email sent by the former director to his personal account in June 2019 with information about donors and a political donation collection activity. Those findings were sent to the Department of Justice, the Government Ethics Office and the Office of the Election Comptroller.

Torres Rivera said the full report was not released so as not to interfere with future investigations and to preserve due process for the identified employees. An executive summary, meanwhile, is available on the inspector general’s website.

San Juan Mayor Miguel Romero Lugo

Bills would make medical cannabis legal for 18-20-year-olds with parental consent

By THE STAR STAFF

Individuals ages 18-20 will be able to obtain a medical cannabis permit with parental authorization if legislation introduced by New Progressive Party Rep. Joel I. Franqui Atiles becomes law.

The lawmaker has introduced two bills that would amend Act 42-2017, the Medical Cannabis law, which allows the use of marijuana for medical reasons.

House Bill 1734 would grant a period of six months so that those who possess cannabis and do not comply with Act 42-2017 provisions can correct the non-compliance and obtain the status of a qualified patient, thus avoiding criminal prosecution under the Controlled Substances Act.

However, should the user fail to comply with the requirements within six months, he or she must face criminal prosecution.

House Bill 1735, meanwhile, would allow young people in Puerto Rico aged 18 to 20 to access a medical cannabis dispensary with a valid consumption authorization for a period of up to six months, as long as they have the consent of their parents or legal guardians duly registered in the database of the Medicinal Cannabis Regulatory Board.

The goal is to allow sick underage patients to benefit from the use of medical marijuana with the consent and supervision of their parents or legal guardians.

In Colorado and Washington, minor patients over 18 are allowed to receive treatment with medical cannabis with the prior authorization of their parents or legal guardians.

Both measures, introduced earlier this month, were referred to the Government Committee of the House of Representatives for evaluation.

Lawmakers propose renaming various island thoroughfares

By THE STAR STAFF

Several lawmakers in the island House of Representatives are proposing to change the names of a number of vital thoroughfares, including Juan Ponce de León Avenue in Santurce after the late actress Awilda Carbia Benítez and the Las Américas Expressway, the Rebekah Colberg Cabrera Expressway.

The lawmakers, Héctor Ferrer Santiago, Sol Higgins Cuadrado, Estrella Martínez Soto, Lydia Méndez Silva, Jocelyne Rodríguez Negrón and Deborah Soto Arroyo, all from the Popular Democratic Party, filed bills to rename Highway PR-874 in Carolina the Sylvia del Villard Moreno Road in honor of her artistic and cultural contributions.

They also proposed putting the name Ruth Fernández Cortada on Highway PR-177, known as Lomas Verdes Avenue, because of her cultural and political contributions.

Highway 125 would be renamed Petronila Vientos Gastón Avenue, and Highway PR-591 in Ponce would be named Marta Romero Avenue in honor of the late actress.

The lawmakers also proposed naming Highway PR10 in Utuado after the late Miss Universe Marisol Malaret and naming Highway PR-8109, known as Parana Avenue, after the late actress Carmen Belén Richardson.

The section of Juan Ponce de León Avenue that runs from Reverendo Gerardo Dávila Street to the intersection of PR-1 in San Juan would be renamed after the late educator and politician María Libertad Gómez.

Rep. Sol Higgins Cuadrado

Rep. Joel I. Franqui Atiles

Traders say appetite is high for restructured Puerto Rico bonds

By THE STAR STAFF

Prominent bond traders say the appetite for restructured Puerto Rico bonds is high even though local bonds have yet to regain an investment grade, stateside media reported over the weekend.

A Bond Buyer report said that through the Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority (AAFAF by its Spanish acronym), the Puerto Rico government brought in five traders to talk about the bonds at its PRNow conference in New York City last week.

“There’s an enormous demand for this product,” Bryce Pickering, head of trading at Barclays, told Bond Buyer.

Pickering’s remarks were made at a panel presentation during the PRNOW 2023 New York Forum late last week. The director of Municipal Products at RBS Capital Markets, Brian Olson; director and senior trading strategist at Bank of America Securities, Elliot Mutch; co-head of Municipal Sales, Trading and Research at Jefferies, Vic Kalaydijan; and Jared Fand, executive director of high yield municipal trading at JP Morgan, shared Pickering’s opinions at the panel moderated by Juan Carlos Batlle, senior managing director of turnaround and restructuring at Ankura.

The U.S. commonwealth ended its central government bankruptcy in March 2022, cutting $22 billion in debt to $7.4 billion.

The PRNOW 2023 New York Forum -- which brought together Puerto Rico and U.S. federal government officials, industry figures and market stakeholders for updated information on the local economy and fiscal recovery for institutional investors, investment banks, law firms and rating agencies -- drew to a close on Friday, with the participation of New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, to name a few.

The event kicked off its first day with a conversation between Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia and Gov. Hochul on the commonalities between the two jurisdictions, both in terms of the challenges they’ve faced over the years and the successful strategies they’ve implemented in overcoming fiscal and economic difficulties.

The Fiscal Matters panel, which took place immediately afterward, set the tone for the rest of the day regarding the concrete steps the Puerto Rico government has taken to exit bankruptcy and ensure future economic development and fiscal discipline.

Secretary of State and AAFAF Executive Director Omar Marrero Díaz moderated the discussion featuring Treasury Secretary Francisco Parés Alicea, Office of Management and Budget Director Juan Carlos Blanco Urrutia, and Labor & Human Resources Secretary Gabriel Maldonado González, who went into depth in their respective fields showing Puerto Rico’s progress in many metrics with up-to-date statistical data. Another one-on-one conversation followed, this time between Marrero Díaz and Ron Klain, former chief of staff under President Joe Biden. Klain shared his views about his experience overseeing the Biden administration’s agenda, which included the American Rescue Plan Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, laws that have significantly helped Puerto Rico in recent years. Pierluisi gave a keynote speech afterward, declaring that Puerto Rico is a magnet for investment after

his administration adopted innovation among its focal points, creating a fertile environment for entrepreneurship and moving forward on reconstruction projects. Pierluisi also stressed that his administration has increased transparency and stability to eventually return to the capital market “with a solid economic foundation.”

One of the event panels discussed disaster funding, providing a narrative about how federal agencies such as FEMA and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) helped Puerto Rico after Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, the 2019 earthquakes, and the COVID pandemic.

Central Office for Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency (COR3) Executive Director Manuel Laboy Rivera revealed the latest numbers regarding ongoing reconstruction projects, with the report for the first quarter showing more than 9,300 projects totaling $6.4 billion. Meanwhile, island Housing Secretary William Rodríguez Rodríguez highlighted the recent changes in eligibility for public housing or Section 8, allowing more people on the island to apply for such programs. Next, FEMA Associate Administrator Anne Bink and HUD Deputy Secretary Marion Mollegen McFadden gave their views on how their respective agencies have addressed challenges in Puerto Rico. In a short presentation, Madhu Beriwal, CEO and president of IEM, provided additional perspectives on recovery efforts on the island.

A panel on Puerto Rico’s attraction as an investment destination featured a presentation from Ella Woger, executive director of InvestPR, on how the organization has taken steps to keep Puerto Rico fresh in investors’ minds. Joining Woger was island Economic Development Secretary Manuel Cidre Miranda, Discover Puerto Rico CEO Brad Dean, and Chamber of Commerce president and the honorary consul of Japan in Puerto Rico, Cameron McKenzie.

Dean’s turn on stage proved to be among the most impactful, showing an almost 20% increase in air arrivals from pre-pandemic levels, while visitor spending in Puerto Rico during 2022 amounted to nearly $9 billion.

Two panels featured discussions on public-private partnerships (P3s), a model in which Puerto Rico has become a leader during the past decade. The first was a one-on-one conversation between Lisa Buglione, executive director of the Association for

the Improvement of American Infrastructure, and Fermín Fontanés Gómez, executive director of the P3 Authority. The second panel featured three executives whose companies partnered with the government under the P3 model with transformational results.

Jorge Hernandez, CEO of Aerostar Airport Holdings, Julián Fernández from Metropistas, and Jan Fomferra, CFO of Global Ports Holding, gave their perspectives on the success of their respective P3s in a discussion moderated by Fontanés Gómez.

The second day of the PRNOW 2023 New York Forum on Friday included a conversation between Marrero Díaz and the new executive director of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, Robert Mujica, which was moderated by Forculus Strategic Communications founder and CEO Francisco Cimadevilla.

Both officials adopted a conciliatory tone when asked about the few items left on Puerto Rico’s debt restructuring agenda, chief among them the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA).

Puerto Rico’s electrical utility was also among the subjects of the next panel, arguably among the most awaited in the entire PRNOW event. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Affairs Francisco Berríos Portela moderated a panel featuring Puerto Rico Energy Bureau Associate Commissioner Lillian Mateo Santos; Genera PR CEO and managing director of New Fortress Energy, Brannen McElmurray; the director of the Puerto Rico Grid Modernization and Recovery Team at the U.S. Department of Energy, Agustín Carbó; Quanta Services Senior Vice President B.J. Ducey, and Fontanés Gómez.

The second day’s keynote speech was by Richard Carrión, chairman of the board of directors and former CEO of Popular Inc., with an introduction by Natalia Zequeira Díaz, commissioner at the Office of Financial Institutions of Puerto Rico. Carrión used his banking experience to deliver a big-picture perspective on the island’s ongoing recovery.

“We feel comfortable that Puerto Rico’s economy will do well in the coming years,” Carrión said during his speech.

Vijay Srinivasan, senior vice president of U.S. South Operations at CGI, discussed data management and transparency issues, while New York Mayor Eric Adams spoke of his positive impressions of Puerto Rico and its momentum during his recent visits to the island. He also underscored the deep connection between New York City and Puerto Rico.

“Many people say Puerto Rico is the sixth borough of New York, but I say New York is the San Juan of America,” Adams said.

Former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain

FEMA assigns close to $80 million for mental health facilities

By THE STAR STAFF

The stressful situations experienced by Puerto Rico residents in recent years have disrupted their emotional health, regardless of their age or social status, the Mental Health and Anti-Addiction Services Administration (ASSMCA by its Spanish initials), Carlos Rodríguez Mateo, said when describing the effects of disasters and a global pandemic on the island.

Rodríguez Mateo also recognizes that strengthened mental health is important for the island’s recovery from Hurricane Maria, the earthquakes of early 2020 and other collective crises, as it will enable Puerto Rico residents to function effectively in all aspects of their lives.

In keeping with a vision that encompasses all aspects of a robust and resilient recoavery, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) allocated nearly $76 million to ASSMCA for several of its facilities around the island that sustained damages from Hurricane Maria, and nearly $4 million to address its recovery from the earthquakes that struck the southern part

of the island in 2020.

“This is one of the agencies whose demand for services

increased considerably after Hurricane Maria, and it has been proven that they require optimal facilities to be able to serve their clients with attention and care,” Federal Disaster Recovery Coordinator José G. Baquero said. “The agency’s funds will repair facilities in various regions; the goal is for ASSMCA’s staff to continue to be an instrument of support for all citizens.”

Part of the funding under disaster recovery from Hurricane Maria encompasses nearly $31 million for about 20 facilities, with which lead and asbestos problems have already been resolved. The structures include several recovery centers in Moca and Ponce; drug courts in Arecibo, Ponce and San Juan; the Mental Health Center in Mayagüez; and prevention centers in Bayamón and Ponce.

Among the work pending is replacement of roofs, an elevator and cameras, as well as fire and security alarm systems. About $15 million in mitigation funds under the allocation are earmarked for voltage surge protectors, commercial steel exterior doors, roof drains and roof sealing treatments, among other measures to mitigate damage from heavy rains and winds.

Health component completes prep for Puerto Rican Week event in New York

By THE STAR STAFF

The organizing committee of Puerto Rican Week 2023 in New York announced Sunday that everything is ready for the June 9 health services event as part of the week’s activities.

“For the first time, there will be a conversation with the leaders of the Puerto Rico health system, which ranges from the provision of outpatient medical services, hospitals, mental health services, ambulance service and analysis of prevention campaigns for drivers and pedestrians,” said Wilson Nazario, coordinator of the discussion and executive director of CROEM ALUMNI. “Likewise, the discussion includes the vision of the Legislature and the municipalities that are affected by the operation of the government’s health card. Finally, the private sector represented by the president of the Puerto Rico Chamber of Commerce will speak on the situation of employers in the face of the high cost of medical services in Puerto Rico.”

The event will bring together the assistant secretary for health affairs of the U.S. Department of Defense, Maj. Gen. Dr. Lester Martínez López; Puerto Rico Health Secretary Dr.

Carlos Mellado López; Physicians and Surgeons Association of Puerto Rico President Dr. Carlos Díaz Vélez; the head of the Mental Health and Anti-Addiction Services Administration, Dr. Carlos Rodríguez Mateo; Traffic Safety Commission Director Luis Rodríguez Díaz, the president of the Puerto Rico Chamber of Commerce President Cameron McKenzie; United Retailers Center of Puerto Rico board member Sheila D. Otero; Puerto Rico Senate President José Luis Dalmau Santiago and Speaker of the House of Representatives Rafael “Tatito” Hernández Montañez; Puerto Rico Mayors Association President Luis Javier Hernández Ortiz; and Asiris Rodríguez, the representative of the ambulance industry in Puerto Rico.

The event will be hosted by La Casa de la Herencia Cultural Puertorriqueña Inc., known as El Barrio’s Artspace PS 109 located at 215 East 99 Street, Suite 18 in New York.

“A group of political leaders and elected officials from New York have been invited to the event to represent the ‘Puerto Rican’ diaspora residents of that city,” Nazario said. “The New York team will be composed of municipal councilors Diana Ayala (NY District 8) and Rafael Salamanca Jr. (District 17),

along with state senators Luis R. Sepúlveda (District 32) and José Serrano Jr. (District 29), along with representation from the city of Paterson, New Jersey headed by the municipal councilor of the Fifth Ward, Luis Vélez.”

Manufacturers Association recognizes González Colón with award

By THE STAR STAFF

Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón was recognized over the weekend by the Puerto Rico Manufacturers Association (AIPR by its Spanish initials) with the Outstanding Woman of Puerto Rico award.

The recognition was presented to González Colón by

the AIPR President Eric Santiago Justiniano and Executive Vice President Yandia Pérez. The resident commissioner thanked the AIPR for the award and highlighted its support in their joint efforts to promote progress in Puerto Rico.

During the convention, González Colón also participated in a question and answer session in which she addressed issues on her agenda in health, energy, reconstruction and other priority issues for the island.

The resident commissioner emphasized the importance of the private sector in her legislative work and stressed that it is the government’s responsibility to create an enabling environment for private enterprise to play its role as an economic engine.

The convention, which took place at the Conquistador Hotel in Fajardo, was attended by representatives of various industries and companies in Puerto Rico.

Carlos Rodríguez Mateo, head of the Mental Health and Anti-Addiction Services Administration

Maj. Gen. Dr. Lester Martínez López, assistant secretary for health affairs at the U.S. Department of Defense

Biden voices optimism on debt talks despite sharp statements by both sides

By PETER BAKER

President Joe Biden on Saturday brushed off noisy statements issued by both sides in the debt and spending talks gripping Washington, dismissing them as little more than the posturing typical of any negotiation and expressing confidence that he will still be able to strike a deal with Republicans to raise the debt ceiling.

Speaking on the sidelines of a summit meeting in Hiroshima, Biden told reporters that he was not worried about the debt talks back home. “Not at all,” he said. He later added, “I still believe we’ll be able to avoid a default and get something decent done.”

But on Sunday morning in Japan, Biden’s aides were once again sounding alarms. They said Biden had directed his team to schedule a call with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Sunday, after Biden’s meetings with Group of 7 leaders.

Biden’s comments came after a tumultuous period of thrust and parry carried out across the oceans. McCarthy on Friday abruptly declared a “pause” in talks aimed at raising the debt ceiling to avoid a national default while adopting ways to reduce the deficit, only to send his negotiators back to the table later in the day. But that session broke up after only an hour, and the White House then released a blistering statement accusing Republicans of sticking to “extreme MAGA priorities.”

Republican leaders on Saturday continued to blame White House negotiators for what they called a deterioration in discussions. McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol that he did not believe the negotiations could “move forward” until Biden returned to the United States.

“The White House is moving backward in negotiations,” he wrote on Twitter. In a separate post, he blamed Biden for the impasse, claiming that the president did not “think there is a single dollar of savings to be found in the federal government’s budget.”

The president essentially called all of that just theater that no one should take too seriously. “It goes in stages,” he told reporters during a meeting with Australia’s prime minister. “And what happens is the first meetings weren’t all that progressive, the second ones were, the third one was, and then what happens is the carriers” — meaning the negotiators — “go back to the principals and say this is what we’re thinking about, and then people

put down new claims.”

Noting that he has been through many such negotiations in his half-century in Washington, he made clear that he believed such positioning was little more than for show — presumably including the statement his own staff had issued barely an hour earlier. Each side, he indicated, needs to take a firm stand in order to extract the best deal for itself. That, he added, did not mean they could not eventually get to a consensus.

Biden’s public confidence in the prospects for a deal has stirred discontent among some liberals who fear he will give away too much to McCarthy’s Republicans, including work requirements for recipients of aid to the indigent. As it is, the president has essentially dropped his insistence that he would not negotiate spending constraints as part of an agreement to raise the debt ceiling; the White House maintains that the spending talks now underway are theoretically separate from the issue of raising the debt ceiling, a characterization few others accept.

The two sides have found some agreement in talks in the past week, including on clawing back some unspent funds from previously approved COVID relief legislation. They have also agreed in broad terms to some sort of cap on discretionary federal spending for at least the next two years. But they are hung up on the details of those caps, inclu-

ding how much to spend overall next fiscal year on discretionary programs — and how to divide that spending between the military and other programs.

For days, Biden and aides traveling with him in Japan have expressed optimism that they could work out a deal by the time the president returned to Washington on Sunday or shortly thereafter, in plenty of time to raise the debt ceiling before the nation would otherwise reach a default as early as June 1. It was unclear when negotiators planned to meet again. The White House has essentially cleared the president’s schedule for next week, presumably to allow for further talks.

Biden’s comments to reporters Saturday left a mixed set of messages in just a matter of hours. The White House started the day in Japan with a briefing by press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who offered a more measured assessment of the talks than the positive tone of recent days, saying that a deal would depend on whether McCarthy “will negotiate in good faith” and that everyone should recognize that “you don’t get everything you want.”

She emphasized that “we need Republicans and Democrats,” alluding to the concern that congressional Democrats could bolt from an eventual deal if they perceive that the president has gone too far. But she denied that the White House was more pessimistic, using the word “optimistic” 14 times during her briefing.

Three hours later, after Biden spoke with his negotiators back in Washington, his communications director, Ben LaBolt, issued a much different statement that never used the word “optimistic.”

“Republicans are taking the economy hostage and pushing us to the brink of default, which could cost millions of jobs and tip the country into recession after two years of steady job and wage growth,” LaBolt said.

“Republicans,” he added, “are recycling a barely watered-down version of their extreme budget proposal” that would result in spending cuts on education, law enforcement and health care, while reversing plans to hire more IRS agents to target tax cheats and extending tax breaks passed under President Donald Trump. He added that any agreement should include tax increases on the wealthy and corporations, not just spending cuts.

“There remains a path forward to arrive at a reasonable bipartisan agreement if Republicans come back to the table to negotiate in good faith,” LaBolt said. “But President Biden will not accept a wish list of extreme MAGA priorities that would punish the middle class and neediest Americans and set our economic progress back.”

The federal government reached its $31.4 trillion debt ceiling set by law months ago. The Treasury Department has been employing a set of accounting maneuvers to avoid breaching it but has said it could run out of options as early as June 1, which would throw the nation into default for the first time as it failed to pay its obligations, unless Congress and the president came to an agreement.

Financial markets are still betting that Congress and the White House will strike a deal. But the uncertainty alone is having consequences.

The brutal past and uncertain future of Native adoptions

By GABRIELLE GLASER

Chris Stearns has two distinct memories from his childhood in the late 1960s. The first is somewhat hazy: a crowded New York City picnic for white families who had adopted Native American boys and girls, somewhere at a hilly park. Stearns had never seen so many people — he was an only child in a Colonial-style house that backed onto a golf course in South Jersey — and the event was overwhelming.

The other recollection is much sharper. One day, he was paid a visit by a man his parents called Chief Sunrise, who arrived at the front door wearing an eagle-feathered headdress and the white buckskin regalia of Plains Indians. His parents ushered Chief Sunrise into the family living room. Then he turned to the young Chris, perhaps 4 years old, and drew him near. He sang a song, offered a blessing and went on his way.

These events, however well-intentioned to honor Stearns’ Native American heritage, had another effect: They reinforced to the child that he didn’t fit in the all-white world of his parents. “That feeling of not belonging was a pretty common thread for a long time,” said Stearns, now 58. “I didn’t look like the other kids, and I couldn’t really identify with them, either. I was always just itching to be somewhere else.”

Stearns was among the last of the hundreds of thousands of Native children in the United States who had been systematically removed from their families and culture. In the 19th century, long after the first conquest of the tribes, federal officials routinely sent Native children to boarding schools to forcibly assimilate them. By the time Stearns was born, in 1964, those schools were being phased out, but the government continued to separate families by placing Native children in white adoptive and foster homes. After a decade of pressure from Native activists, Congress finally put an end to the removals with the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, a law that sought to keep Native children with their families, tribes, and Native communities.

The future of that law is now in doubt. A white Texas family hoping to adopt a Native child has challenged the statute, arguing that it requires social-service agencies to discriminate on the basis of race. Oral arguments before the Supreme Court late last year made national headlines in a legal confrontation that, among other things, pits the desires of non-Native parents against the rights of a people targeted for extinction by European settlers.

A ruling in the case is expected this spring, and could undo decades of efforts to keep Native children with Indigenous families.

The origins of the landmark law can be traced to dueling advocacy groups. Their offices were just blocks from each other near Midtown Manhattan.

Around the time that Chief Sunrise was offering blessings to a young Stearns, a politically active Queens College student named Bertram Hirsch had just taken a job as an assistant at the Association on American Indian Affairs, a nonprofit agency operating from an office at 28th and Park. It was 1968, and Hirsch was spending most of his workday researching the land claims of Alaska Natives at the New York Public Library.

But that year, an urgent civil rights case diverted the attention of the small staff. The tribal chairman of the Devils Lake Sioux in North Dakota had called about an alarming incident. White county welfare officials had tried to remove a Native toddler from the care of the tribal grandmother who had raised him since birth, with the aim of placing him with a white doctor and his wife.

“They barged in without any due process and tried to take the kid,” Hirsch recalled recently. “He was crying and hanging onto her and they still tried to take him because they said at 62, she was too old to be caring for a child. It was outrageous!” This injustice set Hirsch on a path that would define his career.

Such treatment of Native parents and caretakers by white social workers was not uncommon, but the Devils Lake Sioux were among the first to fight back publicly. Members of the tribe, which is now called the Spirit Lake Tribe, traveled to New York for a news conference at the Indian Affairs office arranged that summer.

A telegram alerting journalists to their arrival was clear about what they would report: “Child snatching from American Indian parents and coercion by starvation threat are charged against welfare agency by mothers delegation coming from a North Dakota reservation.” At the afternoon meeting before reporters, the Devils Lake group, mostly women, described the fear of tribal children, who hid in the woods or under their beds whenever they saw the approaching cars of county welfare officials.

“White social workers were using their standards to judge how a child should live,” said Hirsch, who is now 76. “Were there conditions of poverty on Indian reservations? Yes — we’re talking about poor parts of the United States. But was there abuse? Almost never. But because the

“For Native people, family is the most important thing — to be raised by your aunts and uncles along with your parents and grandparents, said Chris Stearns, now an attorney and a state representative in Washington state. “That kinship, that clan system, determine everything.”

social workers weren’t used to seeing extended families in the same household, or seeing a little kid run around barefoot, they’d categorically declare ‘neglect.’”

Over the next two years, Hirsch, who continued to work at the Indian Affairs agency once he entered New York University Law School, was asked to find out how widespread these removals were. By the end of 1969, his research revealed a stunning statistic: At that time, between 25% and 35% of all Native children had been removed from their families and communities.

“It wasn’t just this isolated case in North Dakota,” he said. “It was epidemic.”

Hundreds of those removed Native children, including Stearns, had been swept up in a government program that was being run just blocks away from Hirsch’s office. In 1958, the federal government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs had contracted with the Child Welfare League of America, based in Manhattan at the time, to administer what would become the Indian Adoption Project.

The project’s aim, according to internal documents at the time, was intended “to stimulate adoption of American Indian children by Caucasian families on a nationwide basis” and

to evaluate them in comparison to the adoptions of other minority children. Today, such an idea sounds profoundly misguided, but it served some powerful interests. In the postwar years, the number of middle-class, mostly white parents who wished to adopt outstripped the number of infants surrendered for adoption by a wide margin. Some white couples, frustrated by yearslong waits to adopt children who looked like them, became interested in adopting nonwhite children, and Native children proved especially appealing.

The program was immensely popular in New York, which was already the center of a robust and lucrative adoption marketplace. Of the 395 Native children the Indian Adoption Project placed in white homes, the largest number, 74, were in New York. Another 29 were in New Jersey, including a Navajo boy who was placed in the care of Dr. Thornton Stearns and his wife, Patricia Stearns.

Chris Stearns, now an attorney and Washington state representative in suburban Seattle, was born to an unmarried Navajo mother in Los Angeles who had little option but to surrender him at birth. After he spent two years in foster care, he was matched with the Stearns family of Riverton, New Jersey. Stearns recalled that his adoptive parents tried their best to give him a sense of his heritage. Still, what he was missing — his culture, language, and people who looked like him — hovered around him like a heavy fog. And the discussion of how or why his parents had adopted a Native American child was off limits. “It was never, ever, a topic of conversation,” Stearns said.

For Hirsch and scores of Native activists demanding self-determination for tribes, the issue of Indian child removal was very much front of mind. In 1972, Hirsch became counsel for the Association on American Indian Affairs, and the stark statistics his organization had gathered led to a galvanizing moment, especially for the Native women who were behind the grassroots movement.

“What was happening on Indian reservations was cultural chauvinism, pure and simple,” Hirsch said. “They weren’t doing the same thing to white poor folks.”

Hirsch set to work, helping draft what would become the Indian Child Welfare Act. It established federal standards for removing Native children from their homes, and it required that priority to place them be given to Native families in order to reinforce the child’s tribal identity. After years of lobbying by Native activists, the law was passed in 1978.

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Ugly tale of migrants displacing veterans makes waves and then dissolves

By COREY KILGANNON

The story seemed tailor-made for opponents of outsiders.

“VETS KICKED OUT FOR MIGRANTS,” blared the front page of The New York Post, one of many outlets that last week carried the tale of homeless military veterans’ being expelled from their temporary hotel rooms north of New York City so that people coming from the Mexican border could stay there.

The sensational story grew out of claims by a veterans advocacy group and was immediately seized upon by local Republican elected officials.

Rep. Mike Lawler called the ousting of the vets a “debacle.” A state assemblyman, Brian Maher, went on Fox News to denounce the action and announced a bill that would prohibit the displacement of veterans in response to the “migrant crisis that has pushed them out.”

Problem was, the story was a sham.

It began unraveling when reporters could not locate any displaced veterans. It fell apart further when managers of the Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh, New York, said they had no record of the veterans staying there.

And the story flopped for good Friday with an article in The Mid Hudson News that quoted a group of homeless men who said they had been recruited by the YIT Foundation, a veterans advocacy group, and its founder, Sharon Toney-Finch, who asked them to pose as the ousted veterans.

Their tale was a doozy. They told reporters from The Mid Hudson News and The Times Union of Albany that they had been approached at a homeless shelter in Poughkeepsie, New York, and then wined and dined before being propped up to the news media as ousted veterans. They added that they had been stiffed for the $200 payment they were promised for cooperating.

The Mid Hudson News’ work in debunking a highly charged nationwide tall tale drew praise for the importance of local

From page 8

“It is our right as Indian nations to raise our children,” said Sandy White Hawk, founder of the Minnesota-based First Nations Repatriation Institute, which serves Native people affected by adoption and foster care. Native communities, she said, have large

coverage and underscored the paper’s motto: “We’re the news source where other reporters get their news.”

Its interviews with several homeless men Thursday night described an odyssey that began in a Poughkeepsie shelter. Two people showed up with a strange offer: They needed 15 middle-aged men to meet an elected official for a discussion on homelessness.

Officials at Webster House, an emergency housing center in Poughkeepsie, said a man and a woman had appeared at the shelter’s entrance and announced that they were from the YIT Foundation, a local advocacy group for needy veterans that is formally known as the Yerik Israel Toney Foundation.

“They said, ‘We have work for anyone who is interested,’” said Christa Hines, CEO of Hudson River Housing, which runs Webster House.

The pair was offering money and bags of toiletries. Roughly 15 residents took them up on the offer, Hines said in an interview Friday with The New York Times.

Some of the men told The Mid Hudson News that they had been taken to the Daily Planet Diner in LaGrange, New York, and had been joined by a veterans advocate who said they could order anything they wanted, including drinks, the paper reported.

“We ate like kings,” one of the men told the paper.

After that, Toney-Finch told the men they were headed to a nearby veterans center where they would pose as veterans who had been kicked out of a local hotel, one of the shelter residents, William, 52, said in an interview Friday with The New York Times.

At the center, Heather Bell-Meyer, who heads the Orange County Chamber of Commerce, apparently believed the men were actual veterans and asked them to consider appearing before news cameras at a future date to speak about being displaced, said William, who said he would give only his first name because he feared reprisals from relatives who were military veterans.

Bell-Meyer did not respond to messa-

ges Friday.

“These folks are definitely struggling, unhoused and down on their luck; they were clearly preyed upon,” Hines said. “We were told that they were asked to go and offered money, but they were never paid.”

Republicans had used the concocted tale to denounce both the Biden administration and Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, who, facing limited space for hundreds of migrants arriving each day, has plans to send migrants to other towns.

Maher, the assemblyman, had even called for food donations for the chimerical veterans and encouraged local schoolchildren to write “thank you for your service” cards.

After the story fell apart, both Lawler, the congressperson, and Maher blamed Toney-Finch for inventing the false narrative. Lawler put out a statement denouncing it and Toney-Finch as “appalling.”

“Her decision to exploit our veterans — and the genuine admiration and love our

community has for them — could have turned an already tense situation into something much worse,” he said.

But Toney-Finch, in a phone interview with the Times on Friday, said she had not made anything up and had been surprised herself by the displaced veterans story.

She said she had taken a small group of legitimate military veterans to the diner and to the event at the veterans center and had been joined by a larger group of men whom she did not know. She said she had not known that the outing would result in the spreading of a displaced-veteran story. In fact, she said, she had no idea where her group of veterans had been staying at the time.

“We never hired anybody,” she said. “I was used as a pawn.”

On Friday, Gov. Kathy Hochul called the situation “deeply troubling.”

She said the hotel had a “legal contract” with the city to house migrants, “and if people want to fabricate stories to undermine the whole process, I think it’s reprehensible.”

extended families who work together to bring up children. “When a child is ripped from us, there is deep grief for everyone in our communities who has the responsibility to raise it.”

Stearns believes the Supreme Court’s

ruling on the Indian Child Welfare Act will reverberate across America’s tribal communities. It is no accident that the word “race” does not appear in the original law; the argument at its core is built around tribal sovereignty and the preservation of

Native communities. “For Native people, family is the most important thing — to be raised by your aunts and uncles along with your parents and grandparents,” he said. “That kinship, that clan system, determines everything.”

A bus that brought migrants to the Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh, N.Y. on May 11, 2023.

Even flirting with US default takes economic toll

By LYDIA DePILLIS and BEN CASSELMAN

As negotiations over the debt limit continue in Washington and the date on which the U.S. government could be forced to stop paying some bills draws closer, everyone involved has warned that such a default would have catastrophic consequences.

But it might not take a default to damage the U.S. economy.

Even if a deal is struck before the last minute, the long uncertainty could drive up borrowing costs and further destabilize already shaky financial markets. It could lead to a pullback in investment and hiring by businesses when the U.S. economy is already facing elevated risks of a recession and hamstring the financing of public works projects.

More broadly, the standoff could diminish long-term confidence in the stability of the U.S. financial system, with lasting repercussions.

Currently, investors are showing few signs of alarm. Although markets fell Friday after Republican leaders in Congress declared a “pause” on negotiations, the declines were modest, suggesting that traders are betting that the parties will come to an agreement in the end — as they always have before.

But investor sentiment could shift quickly as the so-called X-date, when the Treasury can no longer keep paying the government’s bills, approaches. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the date could arrive as early as June 1. One thing that’s already happening: As investors

fret that the federal government will default on Treasury bonds that are maturing soon, they have started to demand higher interest rates as compensation for greater risk.

If investors lose faith that leaders in Washington will resolve the standoff, they could panic, said Robert Almeida, a global investment strategist at MFS Investment Management.

“Now that the stimulus is fading, growth is slowing, you’re starting to see all these little mini-fires,” Almeida said. “It makes what is already a difficult situation more stressful. When the herd moves, it tends to move really fast and in a violent way.”

That’s what happened during a debt ceiling standoff in 2011. Analyses after that near-default showed that the plunging stock market vaporized $2.4 trillion in household wealth, which took time to rebuild, and cost taxpayers billions in higher interest payments. Today, credit is more expensive, the banking sector is already shaken, and an economic expansion is tailing off rather than beginning.

“2011 was a very different situation. We were in recovery mode from the global financial crisis,” said Randall S. Kroszner, a University of Chicago economist and former Federal Reserve official. “In the current situation, where there’s a lot of fragility in the banking system, you’re taking more of a risk. You’re piling up fragility on fragility.”

The mounting tension could cause problems through a number of channels.

Rising interest rates on federal bonds will filter into borrowing rates for auto loans, mortgages and credit cards. That inflicts pain on consumers, who have started to rack up more debt — and are taking longer to pay it back — as inflation has increased the cost of living. Increasingly urgent headlines might prompt consumers to pull back on their purchases, which power about 70% of the economy.

Although consumer sentiment is darkening, that could be attributed to a number of factors, including the recent failure of three regional banks. And so far, it doesn’t appear to be spilling over into spending, said Nancy Vanden Houten, a senior eco -

nomist for Oxford Economics.

“I think all this could change,” Vanden Houten said, “if we get too close to the X-date and there is real fear about missed payments for things like Social Security or interest on the debt.”

Suddenly higher interest rates would pose an even bigger problem for highly indebted companies. If they have to roll over loans that are coming due soon, doing so at 7% instead of 4% could throw off their profit projections, prompting a rush to sell stocks. A widespread decline in share prices would further erode consumer confidence.

Even if the markets remain calm, higher borrowing costs drain public resources. An analysis by the Government Accountability Office estimated that the 2011 debt limit standoff raised the Treasury’s borrowing costs by $1.3 billion in the 2011 fiscal year alone. Back then, the federal debt was about 95% of the nation’s gross domestic product. Now it’s 120%, which means servicing the debt could become a lot more expensive.

“It eventually will crowd out resources that can be spent on other high-priority government investments,” said Rachel Snyderman, a senior associate director of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank. “That’s where we see the costs of brinkmanship.”

Interrupting the smooth functioning of federal institutions has already created a headache for state and local governments. Many issue bonds using a U.S. Treasury mechanism known as the “Slugs window,” which closed May 2 and will not reopen until the debt limit is increased. Public entities that raise money frequently that way now have to wait, which could hold up large infrastructure projects if the process drags on longer.

There are also more subtle effects that could outlast the current confrontation. The United States has the lowest borrowing costs in the world because governments and other institutions prefer to hold their wealth in dollars and Treasury bonds, the one financial instrument thought to carry no risk of default. Over time, those reserves have started to shift into other currencies — which could eventually make

another country the favored harbor for large reserves of cash.

It isn’t clear exactly what would happen if the X-date passed with no deal. Most experts say the Treasury Department would continue to make interest payments on the debt and instead delay fulfilling other obligations — such as payments to government contractors, veterans or doctors who treat Medicaid patients.

That would prevent the government from immediately defaulting on the debt, but it could also shatter confidence, roiling financial markets and leading to a sharp pullback in hiring, investment and spending.

“Those are all defaults, just defaults to different groups,” said William G. Gale, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “If they can do that to veterans or Medicaid doctors, they can eventually do it to bondholders.”

The economic turbulence from the debt ceiling standoff comes as Federal Reserve policymakers are trying to tame inflation without causing a recession, a delicate task with little margin for error.

“The Fed is trying to thread a very fine needle,” said Kroszner. “At some point, you break the camel’s back. Would this be sufficient to do that? Probably not, but do you really want to take that risk?”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 22, 2023. Financial markets are still betting that Congress and the White House will strike a deal. But the uncertainty alone is having consequences.

Artificial intelligence gives real boost to US stock market

MOST The San Juan Daily Star Monday, May 22, 2023 11

Microsoft (MSFT.O), Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL.O), Nvidia (NVDA.O), Apple (AAPL.O) and Meta Platforms (META.O) - are responsible for the S&P 500’s entire year-to-date return, said Jessica Rabe, co-founder of DataTrek Research. About 25% to 50% of those gains are owed to “the buzz around artificial intelligence,” she noted.

A recent Societe Generale analysis zeroed in on 20 stocks widely owned by AI-related exchange-traded funds, whose overall assets under management have grown almost 40% this year.

Removing those stocks from the S&P 500 would reduce the index’s performance by roughly 10 percentage points, putting stocks in negative territory for the year, SocGen’s analysis showed.

“It’s the AI-driven stocks that are getting the strongest returns,” said Manish Kabra, head of US equity strategy at SocGen. “As a secular theme, for sure, it’s attractive.”

The rush of AI developments has analysts licking their lips at the profit potential stemming from new revenue opportunities and productivity improvements.

Goldman Sachs strategists estimate that generative AI could create productivity gains that result in S&P 500 companies expanding profit margins by about 4 percentage points in a decade following widespread adoption.

Indeed, optimism over AI is a key factor supporting a stock market facing numerous headwinds. Those include uncertainty over the U.S. Congress coming to agreement to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a default, and worries the economy may be on the verge of a downturn, as the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes filter through the economy.

“We are strongly of the view that AI will change the world,” Jim Reid, strategist at Deutsche Bank, said in a note titled, “Will ChatGPT prevent the US recession?”

The floor of the the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is seen after the close of trading in New York

The floor of the the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is seen after the close of trading in New York, U.S., March 18, 2020. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

The AI excitement has helped propel hefty gains for some stocks. For example, shares of Microsoft, the secondlargest U.S. company by market value, have climbed 32% this year. The software giant has grabbed headlines with its partnership with ChatGPT creator OpenAI and sprucing up its Bing search engine with AI.

Shares of Nvidia, the fifth-biggest U.S. company by market value whose chips are central in the AI excitement, have soared 110% this year.

The Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence ETF (BOTZ.O) has jumped nearly 30% this year.

Investors next week will be keeping an eye on developments regarding the U.S. debt ceiling, as well as inflation data and corporate earnings including results from Nvidia.

Other factors have supported megacap stocks. Those

include a decline in Treasury yields from last year’s highs that has soothed concerns over tech valuations and investors viewing megacaps as safety plays in an uncertain environment.

At the same time, even the shares of potentially transformative technologies are vulnerable to price bubbles, as history shows. A dotcom stock mania helped markets roar higher in the late 1990s, but a crash followed a few years

PUERTO RICO STOCKS

COMMODITIES

later, leaving only a handful of internet names standing.

A BofA Global Research report published Friday said AI stocks were in a “baby bubble” in comparison with far larger asset price moves seen in areas such as internet stocks and bitcoin over the last few decades.

Nonetheless, many investors say that AI is no fad.

King Lip, chief strategist at Baker Avenue Wealth Management in San Francisco, calls the developments in AI a “game changer.” His firm owns shares of Microsoft, Nvidia and Alphabet.

“It goes beyond the next shiny object,” Lip said. “The path is pretty clear on how generative AI can lead to earnings growth for these companies.”

What Russia’s claim to capture Bakhmut means for the Ukraine war

By ANDREW E. KRAMER

Russia’s claim of victory in Bakhmut suggests that the brutal urban combat that marked the deadliest battle of its war in Ukraine might be over. But what comes next is far from clear.

Although Russia is trumpeting a “Mission Accomplished” moment, Ukraine — even as it insists Bakhmut has not completely fallen — sees an opening to seize the initiative from the outskirts if Russian forces are no longer pressing forward inside the city limits.

Russia’s capture of Bakhmut would be a

powerful symbolic success for Russia, the first Ukrainian city it has seized since Lysychansk last summer, and a setback for Ukraine, which expended precious ammunition and sent some of its most capable forces to try to thwart Russia’s devastating monthslong assault.

But the city is in ruins, and controlling it would not necessarily help Russia toward its larger stated goal — conquering the entire eastern region of Donbas — now that Ukrainian troops have worn out Russian forces and broken through their defenses in some areas to the north and south of the city.

Those gains will allow Ukrainian troops

to continue raining artillery on Russian forces trying to hold Bakhmut, according to Ukrainian officials. And military analysts say that if Moscow continues to send reinforcements to defend the city, that could weaken Russian forces’ ability to hold off a broader counteroffensive that Ukraine says it is about to begin.

A British defense intelligence assessment on Saturday said Moscow had redeployed “up to several battalions to reinforce” Bakhmut, calling it “a notable commitment” for Russia’s heavily stretched combat forces in Ukraine.

Among the questions for Russia are the intentions of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary company that spearheaded the urban fighting, who on Saturday declared victory in Bakhmut and said his soldiers would withdraw from the city by Thursday. Military analysts said it was unclear whether Prigozhin could pull out so abruptly along a hotly contested front line without dire consequences for the Russians in the city.

It also was unclear whether Russian reinforcements deployed toward Bakhmut would rotate in for Wagner troops or bolster Russia’s faltering defenses on the city’s outskirts.

In recent days, Russian forces clawing their way westward through the city fought through a final neighborhood of high-rise apartment blocks, reaching an expanse of garages, farmhouses and open fields to the west. The Ukrainian military said Sunday it still holds several buildings in that area.

But even as Ukraine’s forces stepped back from the block-by-block fighting, they brought in reinforcements to shore up rear positions, se-

curing roads and supply lines west of Bakhmut. And they focused on attacking Russian positions to the north and south of the city. A battle on May 6 breached Russian lines south of the village of Ivanivske and forced Russian soldiers into a disorganized retreat.

Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, said Sunday that Ukrainian forces had recently recaptured high ground on the city’s outskirts, and that those advances would “really complicate the enemy’s presence in Bakhmut.”

If Ukrainian forces can continue their counterattack, it would put Russia on the defensive across nearly all of the front line, which stretches for hundreds of miles. For months, Bakhmut has been among the few places where Russia was gaining ground.

Ukrainian commanders say their goal all along in Bakhmut was to pin down the Russian army in a protracted fight, kill as many of its soldiers as possible and buy time for Ukraine to prepare and rearm — with Western weapons — for a wider counteroffensive.

A Russian capture of Bakhmut “will mean nothing, actually,” predicted Col. Serhiy Hrabsky, a commentator on the war for the Ukrainian news media. “The Russians have exhausted their offensive capabilities and that is why they so desperately declare they have captured Bakhmut.”

Speaking to reporters at the Group of 7 summit in Japan on Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy touched on the strategic meaning of the battle in wearing down the Russian army. All that remained in the ruined city, he said, was “a lot of dead Russians.”

Tropical Storm Mawar expected to strengthen as it moves toward Guam

By EDUARDO MEDINA

Tropical Storm Mawar rapidly strengthened in the Pacific and was expected to become a powerful typhoon, threatening to bring high winds and possible flooding to the Mariana Islands, including Guam, the National Weather Service said.

The storm, which formed early Sunday and was slowly moving northward, could hit Guam, a U.S. territory, as early as Tuesday, said Brandon Bukunt, a meteorologist with the weather service.

“We might have to put out typhoon warnings, in which typhoon conditions are expected,” Bukunt said. “But for right now, given the uncertainty, we have a typhoon watch, which means that typhoon conditions are possible within two days.”

Mawar had maximum sustained wind speeds of 60 mph as of 5 p.m. Sunday local time, when it was about 475 miles southeast of Guam, the weather service said.

For the storm to be classified as a typhoon, its wind speeds would have to be greater than 74 mph, Bukunt said. The

weather searvice said the storm was expected to reach typhoon conditions Sunday night.

As the storm approaches the islands, its winds are “going to pick up,” he said, and outer rain bands could bring heavy downpours, increasing the chances of flooding, including in Guam, which is home to Andersen Air Force Base.

Guam Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero and Rear Adm. Benjamin Nicholson placed the island and its military bases on alert Saturday for possible destructive winds, according to a

statement from the base.

The base added that “all military installations on Guam are currently securing facilities and housing residents are urged to commence heavy-weather preparedness efforts.”

Typhoons can form year-round but are most common from May to October.

Mawar, whose Malaysian name means rose, is the second named storm in the West Pacific this season. The first, Tropical Storm Sanvu, quickly weakened in less than two days.

A Ukrainian soldier from the 79th Brigade at an entrenched machine gun position 300 yards from Russian lines, near the town of Maryinka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on May 20, 2023.

Zelenskyy makes dramatic entrance at G-7, bringing a personal plea

By DAVID E. SANGER and PETER BAKER

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine landed in Japan on Saturday determined to urge the wealthiest democracies in the world to stick with him as Russia bets on the West growing fatigued by the cost and consequences of the war.

Zelenskyy made a dramatic entry into Hiroshima, landing in a French plane after days in which Ukrainian and Japanese officials insisted, presumably for security reasons, that he would join the leaders at the Group of 7 summit only virtually. He was dressed in his signature hoodie, standing out from the coat-and-tie diplomatic crowd of this annual summit meeting.

Hours after Zelenskyy arrived in Japan, the Russian government said its forces had occupied the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. The city had become an important symbol of Ukrainian defiance and Russian determination, and its fall would both bolster and complicate Zelenskyy’s appeal for help.

Zelenskyy, U.S. and British officials say, seems to sense that when he shows up in person, he can both break through U.S. resistance to sending more powerful weapons and pressure nations like India and Brazil that have stayed on the sidelines.

His presence could make it more difficult for them to maintain their stance as fence-sitters, several officials said. And even as Zelenskyy consulted with countries already in his corner, he sat down with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was there as an observer, to make his case for support, much as he had done earlier in the week in Saudi Arabia.

“I think this is a unique opportunity” for Zelenskyy to have “exchanges with a lot of countries from the south and express your situation, express a message and share a view,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said.

“I do believe it can be a game changer.”

Zelenskyy was expected to address the G-7 leaders Sunday as part of his continued efforts to marshal more military aid for his country. He is making his appeals in a city that serves as a sobering reminder of the devastation that arises when a bitter war leads to the use of a nuclear weapon.

Zelenskyy plans to go to the peace park that has been built on the island that was ground zero for the explosion in 1945 that ushered in the age of nuclear weapons — an

era that has returned amid episodic threats by Russian President Vladimir Putin to turn to his own arsenal.

Even before he landed, Zelenskyy had won a significant victory: On Friday night President Joe Biden told other leaders he would join the largely European effort to train Ukrainian pilots on how to fly the F-16 fighter jet. Reversing his previous stance, Biden said he would work with allies to begin providing the warplanes to Ukraine, weaning it from its dilapidated Soviet-era fighters.

Administration officials said they increasingly realized that sooner or later Ukraine would need the new fighters as part of a longterm program to deter Russia from invading anew, and decided they should get out ahead of the effort. But the planes would have little utility in the present stage of the war, where urban warfare rather than air warfare has dominated.

Zelenskyy arrived in Japan just as the head of the Wagner paramilitary group said his forces had captured the devastated city of Bakhmut on Saturday, suggesting that the monthslong struggle to control it was over. The Ukrainian military rejected the claim by the mercenary group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is prone to making bombastic remarks.

Much of the discussion in Hiroshima in the past two days has focused on cracking down on sanctions evasion, as countries seeking to play both sides of the war — including India and the United Arab Emirates — have done nothing to curtail a black market trade in semiconductors and materials needed by Russia to keep fighting the war.

Biden and Zelenskyy — and most of the core members of the G-7 — appear intent on maximizing Russia’s pain until it comes to the bargaining table and retreats from Ukrainian territory. While they deny a new Cold War is underway, the surge in sanctions announced over the past two days seems a modern version of the containment strategy that guided the West’s confrontation with the Soviet Union, which collapsed more than three decades ago.

This was the first time Zelenskyy has taken his diplomatic tour to Asia, and he landed late Satur-

day afternoon in the city known to the world for having resurrected itself, in a monumental reconstruction task akin to what many believe Ukraine will have to undertake.

Zelenskyy’s visit to Japan for the G-7 meeting followed the trip to Saudi Arabia, where he urged Arab leaders meeting there not to turn a “blind eye” to Russian atrocities in Ukraine.

His appearance was arranged after Zelenskyy expressed a “strong desire” to participate in the summit face-to-face, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The visit is the latest in a flurry of trips outside Ukraine to shore up support before an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The leaders — besides Biden, they include the heads of government from Japan, Canada, Britain, France, Germany and Italy; and a top European Union official — will be

talking over the weekend about all dimensions of Russia’s war in Ukraine. In addition to questions of when and how to provide Ukraine with the F-16 fighter jets, they may also discuss the possibility of negotiations over an armistice or peace treaty.

The G-7 leaders have already pledged at the summit to toughen punishments on Russia and redouble efforts to choke off funding for its war.

Biden has cut short his trip in order to return to Washington for debt and spending talks. The president had planned to fly from Japan to Papua New Guinea, before heading to Sydney for a meeting of the so-called Quad: the United States, Australia, India and Japan.

Instead, the leaders of the Quad countries came to Biden, meeting him in Hiroshima on Saturday night.

INC.

U.S. President Joe Biden participates in a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia on the second day of the 47th G7 Summit, in Hiroshima, Japan on May 20, 2023.

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12 dead in soccer stadium stampede in El Salvador

By EDUARDO MEDINA

Twelve people died and about 90 others were injured in a stampede at a soccer stadium in El Salvador on Saturday, authorities said, turning a highly anticipated match into a chaotic scene as fans rushed to save people suffocating under a mass of bodies.

Videos circulating on Twitter and published by local news media sites showed dozens of people clad in white appearing to rush toward an exit at the stadium, with some lying on the ground as more pile on top.

It was not immediately clear what

prompted the rush at Cuscatlán Stadium in San Salvador, El Salvador, where the firstleague soccer teams, Alianza Fútbol Club and Club Deportivo FAS, were playing the second leg of a quarterfinal.

At a news conference Saturday night, the director of the national police in El Salvador said authorities were investigating a possible cause: The large number of people attending the game may have caused the stadium’s Wi-Fi to malfunction, which in turn could have led to a problem with scanning QR codes on tickets. That ticketing problem, he said, may have led to hundreds of people being stuck at the southern gate of the stadium, trying to get in.

The police director, Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, said that some fans had also forced their way into the stadium through the southern gate, where those who buy cheaper tickets typically enter.

He added that they would also investigate tickets sales for the game. Local news organizations have raised questions about whether too many tickets had been sold for the match.

Soccer matches around the world have for decades been the scenes of deadly stadium disasters, sometimes set off by crowd violence and often made worse by inept police responses that result in spectators being crushed as they try to flee. In Malang, Indonesia, in October, at least 125 people died, many of them trampled, after police fired tear gas in an effort to disperse crowds.

Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, said in a statement that “everyone will be investigated: teams, managers, stadium, ticket office, league, federation, etc.”

“Whoever the culprits are,” he said, “they will not go unpunished.”

The tumult appears to have started about 20 minutes into the game, when the teams remained tied.

On a livestream of the match posted on YouTube, game commentators said they could see some type of commotion in the stands, noting that some people appeared to have lost consciousness. Fans eventually

stepped onto the field, and the game was suspended, the commentators said in the livestream.

Around 11 p.m. Eastern, authorities said that they were trying to make it easier to get ambulances in and out of the stadium.

The health minister of El Salvador, Francisco Alabi, said in a statement that the country’s hospitals were providing medical care to people injured in the episode, adding that workers were doing “everything humanly possible” to save their lives. He said of the about 90 people injured, most were stable.

Alabi shared photos on Twitter of the scene outside the stadium, with ambulances lined up in rows as fans stand beside the vehicles. Nine of the victims died at the stadium, and three died in hospitals, authorities said. Police did not immediately release their names.

A local radio station published video of fans waving their shirts near people on the ground in an effort to cool them off. Other photos showed people sweating and in tears.

The country’s soccer federation said in a statement on Twitter that it would “immediately request a report on what happened,” and that all games would be canceled Sunday.

The president of El Salvador’s national institute of sports, Yamil Bukele, said in a statement that he had called a meeting Sunday to look into what had occurred.

The scene after a deadly stampede at a soccer match on Saturday at Cuscatlán Stadium in San Salvador, El Salvador.

The decade that cannot be deleted

By PAMELA PAUL

It would seem impossible to forget or minimize the Cultural Revolution in China, which lasted from 1966 to 1976, resulted in an estimated 1.6 million to 2 million deaths and scarred a generation and its descendants. The movement, which under Mao Zedong’s leadership sought to purge Chinese society of all remaining non-Communist elements, upended nearly every hallowed institution and custom. Teachers and schools long held in esteem were denounced. Books were burned and banned, museums ransacked, private art collections destroyed. Intellectuals were tortured.

But in China, a country where information is often suppressed and history is constantly rewritten — witness recent government censorship of COVID-19 research and the obscuring of Hong Kong’s British colonial past in new school textbooks — the memory of the Cultural Revolution risks being forgotten, sanitized and abused, to the detriment of the nation’s future.

The Chinese government has never been particularly eager to preserve the memory of that sordid decade. When I spent six weeks traveling in China in 1994 — a slightly more open time in the country — I encountered few public acknowledgments of the Cultural Revolution. Museum placards and catalogs often simply skipped a decade in their timelines or provided brief references in the passive voice along the lines of “historical events that took place.”

But in her new book, “Red Memory: The Afterlives of

China’s Cultural Revolution,” journalist Tania Branigan notes that under Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, efforts to suppress this history have intensified — with troubling implications for the political health of the country at a time when it looms larger than ever on the world stage. “When you’ve had a collective trauma, you really need a collective response,” Branigan told me recently. “I can see why the Communist Party wants to avoid the rancor and bitterness, but when you don’t have that kind of acknowledgment, you can move on — but you can’t really recover.”

Although Xi himself was a victim of the Cultural Revolution — reportedly betrayed by his own mother, exiled into rural poverty — he “is more conscious of the uses and disadvantages of history than any leader before him, bar perhaps Mao himself,” Branigan writes in the book. In 2021, Xi warned the Communist Party against “historical nihilism” — any unflattering portrayal of the party’s past — an existential threat as great, in his estimation, as Western democracy.

High school textbooks in China now reduce the Cultural Revolution to just a few short paragraphs. The only national heritage spot devoted to it was closed to visitors when Branigan, who reported from Beijing for The Guardian from 2008 to 2015, tried to enter. Those who had lived through the Cultural Revolution were often reluctant to speak with her. Some of her excursions to research the movement were monitored, and relevant sites were closed off. “The party and those it rules have conspired in amnesia,” she writes. “A decade has disappeared.”

In the absence of real history, a small nostalgia industry has arisen in China around the Cultural Revolution, which includes themed restaurants, reenactments, costumes and associated kitsch that bear a distinct resemblance to our own country’s Civil War reenactments, Confederate statues and wedding-venue Southern plantations. The United States has in recent years reconsidered some but far from all of this disturbing nostalgia, as Clint Smith powerfully documented in his 2021 book, “How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America.”

But whether in China or in America, when a country avoids a full reckoning with its darkest periods, such nostalgic impulses tend to foster wishful thinking and facilitate propaganda. In China, many young people who never experienced the horrors of Maoism now yearn for its “idealism” and clarity; former Red Guards recall the unity and purpose missing in today’s materialist society. Such distortions can also lead to what Branigan refers to as “a tragic fatalism” — what the Chinese call “eating bitterness” — renouncing the power to enact personal, societal or political change.

Another term Branigan uses when accounting for the price of enforced forgetting is “the hum of shame.” Even those who were otherwise patriotic described their fellow Chinese to Branigan as “ethically hollow.” They lamented a kind of numb passivity, an absence of conscience, a “sickness of the soul.” According to Branigan, the Chinese consider “moral decline” to be the country’s most pressing threat, ahead of both

poverty and crime.

Such is the inevitable legacy of a political trauma as totalizing in scope as the Cultural Revolution. “No workplace remained untouched,” Branigan writes. “No household remained innocent. ‘Complicity’ is too small a word — comrade turned on comrade, friend upon friend, husband upon wife and child upon parent. You could build a career on such betrayals, until the currents shifted once more and the victims turned upon you. Such intimate treacheries and abrupt reversals rent the very fabric of China, Confucian ideals of family obedience and newer Communist pledges of fraternity.”

When the Cultural Revolution comes up in American conversation, it’s generally in debates over the rise of groupthink and mob mentalities, performative outrage on Twitter and on college campuses. Parallels certainly exist: Political leaders fomenting cultural wars, polarization reducing differences of opinion to signifiers of ally and heretic, and the media resorting to shouty sloganeering over considered debate.

But Branigan’s book offers an equally important cautionary lesson: the perils of ignoring or distorting history. What a country downplays in its historical record continues to reverberate, whether it’s the Cultural Revolution in China or the treatment of Native Americans and the legacy of slavery in the United States. And just as Xi can censor China’s recent COVID record, so can America attempt to whitewash events — attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — in its own recent past.

Near the end of Smith’s “How the Word Is Passed,” the author describes his grandparents’ experiences of segregation in the South, which took place just a decade before China’s Cultural Revolution. “Black-and-white photographs and film footage can convince us that these episodes transpired in a distant past,” he writes, “untouched by our contemporary world.” But as his grandmother tells him, “It was for real, and I had lived it.”

Para el 6 de junio presupuesto y cambios a leyes contributivas en la Cámara

POR CYBERNEWS

EL CAPITOLIO – El presidente de la Cámara de Representantes Rafael “Tatito” Hernández Montañez y el presidente de la Comisión de Hacienda y Presupuesto, Jesús Santa Rodríguez anunciaron que esperan para el 6 de junio culminar con el proceso del presupuesto para el año fiscal 2023-2024 y algunos cambios a las leyes contributivas.

“La Cámara de Representantes continuará buscando todas las alternativas, en comunicación con todos los sectores, para asegurarnos de que este presupuesto sea uno balanceado, que cumpla con las necesidades apremiantes, y que sea uno responsable”, afirmaron Hernández Montañez y Santa Rodríguez en declaraciones escritas.

Los cambios contributivos incluyen reducir

Urge mayor seguridad en Mayagüez

POR EL STAR STAFF

MAYAGÜEZ – En los pasados días la región oeste, específicamente en Mayagüez, ha sido escenario de diferentes sucesos de violencia que han empañado la calma y tranquilidad de los vecinos de “La Sultana del Oeste”.

La representante del Distrito 19, Jocelyne M. Rodríguez Negrón solicitó atención inmediata a este asunto, ya que existe una real preocupación entre la ciudadanía por los últimos acontecimientos. “Ya son varios los muertos y heridos que han sido víctimas de la ola criminal que afecta esta región. Tan reciente como el día de hoy, hubo intercambios de disparos a plena luz del día entre miembros de la uniformada y ciudadanos, situación que alteró la rutina de los mayagüezanos”, mencionó.

“Lamento profundamente las vidas que se han perdido a raíz de estos eventos de violencia que han vestido de

luto la ciudad de Mayagüez. Mi solidaridad y respeto a todos los familiares de las víctimas. He estado en comunicación directa con el Negociado de la Policía de Puerto Rico y la comandante de área Janice Rodríguez con el fin de darle seguimiento al plan de seguridad establecido para la ciudad de Mayagüez, y quien me indicó que continuará un plan de seguridad de forma indefinida y reforzado. Esto, con el propósito de garantizar la paz, vida y propiedad de nuestra gente”, expresó Rodríguez Negrón. Por otro lado, la Representante puntualizó la importancia de que se tome en cuenta la región oeste, específicamente Mayagüez, para reforzar la seguridad. “Para mí es bien importante que se le devuelva a nuestro pueblo de Mayagüez la paz y seguridad que todos merecemos. Mi compromiso es con la gente y sepan que en mí tendrán una aliada para continuar alzando la voz en beneficio de la seguridad de todos y todas”, concluyó la Representante.

las tasas de impuestos para individuos y pequeños negocios, eliminar la competencia desigual entre inversionistas extranjeros y locales y simplificar el proceso de obtención de licencias de Rentas Internas.

También esperan aprobar el proyecto de la Cámara 1602, que busca atraer y retener jóvenes médicos en Puerto Rico aumentando la edad para recibir una exención tributaria de los primeros 40 mil dólares generados de 26 a 35 años.

En términos del presupuesto, que ya ha sido aprobado por la Junta de Control Fiscal, se establecerán fondos para financiar programas en la UPR, servicios esenciales en los ayuntamientos, y para honrar el aumento al salario mínimo, entre otros. También se reservarán 11 millones de dólares para pagar a los trabajadores y jubilados del Departamento de la Familia que ganaron una demanda por ajustes salariales.

En prisión sujeto que supuestamente agredió con llave de perro a dos personas en Santurce

ló una fianza global de 600 mil dólares, la cual no prestó.

S

AN JUAN – Un hombre fue ingresado en prisión, luego de que no pudiera pagar la fianza impuesta por supuestamente golpear con una llave de perro a dos personas en la mañana del sábado, en la en la calle Monserrate, Parada 15, en Santurce.

Según el reporte de la Policía, Ernest Yadiel Cartagena, de 28 años supuestamente agredió a una mujer de 60 años y a otro hombre con la llave de perro.

Ambos fueron llevados al Doctor’s Center Hospital, en Santurce.

La jueza Marangely Colón Requejo, del Tribunal de San Juan, determinó causa para arresto y le seña-

Fue fichado e ingresado en el Complejo Correccional de Bayamón.

El agente Ángel Rodríguez Irizarry, del Cuerpo de Investigaciones Criminales de San Juan, estuvo a cargo de la investigación.

‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ premieres at Cannes: First reaction

By MANOHLA DARGIS

On Saturday, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Martin Scorsese’s harrowing epic about one of America’s favorite pastimes — mass murder — had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, screening out of competition. It’s Scorsese’s first movie at the event since his nightmarish screwball “After Hours” was presented in 1986, winning him best director. For this edition, he walked the red carpet with the two stars who have defined the contrasting halves of his career: Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Adapted from David Grann’s nonfiction bestseller of the same title — the screenplay was written by Scorsese and Eric Roth — the movie recounts the murders of multiple oil-rich members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma during the 1920s. Grann’s book is subtitled “The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,” while the movie primarily focuses on what was happening on the ground in Oklahoma. The name of the young bureau chief, J. Edgar Hoover, comes up but largely evokes the agency’s future, its authority, scandals and that time DiCaprio played a closeted leader in Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar” (2011).

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is shocking, at times crushingly sorrowful, a true-crime mystery that in its bonechilling details can make it feel closer to a horror movie. And while it focuses on a series of murders committed in the 1920s, Scorsese is, emphatically, also telling a larger story about power, Native Americans and the United States. A crucial part of that story took place in the 1870s, when the American government forced the Osage to leave Kansas and relocate in the Southwest. Another chapter was written several decades later when oil was discovered on Osage land in present-day Oklahoma.

When DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart arrives by train at the Osage boomtown of Fairfax, oil derricks crowd the bright green plains as far as the eye can see. Still wearing his dun-colored doughboy uniform from the recently ended war, Ernest has come to live with his uncle, William Hale (Robert DeNiro), along with a clutch

of other relatives, including his brother (Scott Shepherd). A cattleman with owlish glasses and a pinched smile, the real Hale had nurtured such close relations with the local Native American population that he was revered, Grann writes, “as King of the Osage Hills.”

With crisp efficiency, soaring cameras and just enough history to ground the narrative, Scorsese plunges you right into the region’s tumult, which is abuzz with new money that some are spending and others are trying to steal. The Osage owned the mineral rights to their land, which had some of the largest oil deposits in the country, and they leased it to prospectors. In the early 20th century, Grann writes, every person on the tribal roll began receiving payouts. The Osage became fantastically wealthy, and in 1923, he adds, “the tribe took in more than $30 million, the equivalent today of more than $400 million.”

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is organized around Ernest’s relationship with both Hale and a young Osage woman, Mollie (Lily Gladstone), whom he meets while taxiing townspeople around. Much like Fairfax, where luxury autos race down the dirt main road amid shrieking people and terrified horses, Ernest is soon hopped up, frenetic, all wild smiles and gushing enthusiasm. He keeps on jumping — it’s as if he’s gotten a contact high from the wealth — though his energy changes after he meets Mollie. They marry and have children, finding refuge with each other as the dead Osage start to pile up.

Gladstone and DiCaprio fit persuasively even if their characters have contrasting vibes, temperaments and physicalities. When she’s out and about, this pacific, reserved woman turns her face into an impassive mask and wraps a long traditional blanket around her, effectively cocooning her body with it. With her beauty, stillness and sly Mona Lisa smile, Mollie exerts a great gravitational force on Ernest and the viewer alike; you’re both quickly smitten. DiCaprio will earn most of the attention, but without Gladstone, the movie wouldn’t have the same slowbuilding, soul-heavy emotional impact.

Ernest is a fascinating, thorny character, especially in the age of Marvel

Manichaeism, and he’s rived by contradictions that he scarcely seems aware of. DiCaprio’s performance is initially characterized by Ernest’s eagerness to please Hale — there’s comedy and pathos in his mugging and flop sweat — but grows quieter, more interior and delicately complex as the mystery deepens. It’s instructive that Ernest is frowning the first time

you see him, an expression that takes on greater significance when you realize that DiCaprio is mirroring De Niro’s famed grimace, a choice that draws a visual line between the characters and the men who have been Scorsese’s twin cinematic lodestars.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” opens in American theaters on October.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” directed by Martin Scorsese.

Help! My tour got canceled but travel insurance won’t pay

By SETH KUGEL

Dear Tripped Up,

I had booked a 10-day, $4,424 tour to Cuba for last November, but Hurricane Ian hit the island in late September, knocking out the power grid and causing widespread destruction. The tour organizer canceled the trip, citing health and safety issues, and refunded our money. I had bought my airfare ($1,504) separately, so I assumed my GoReady Pandemic Plus insurance policy would cover it. But when I called the company, an agent told me that because the Havana airport was open, and the hotel I planned to stay in was habitable, it was not worth filing a claim that would surely be denied. If travel insurance doesn’t cover this, what does it cover? — Khatiba, Sebastopol, California

Dear Khatiba,

You are forgiven for thinking that the “trip cancellation” portion of your policy would cover, say, trip cancellation.

My inbox is flooded with messages from travelers whose similarly reasonable-sounding claims were denied either because of a policy’s fine print or because the documentation process became so mind-bendingly bureaucratic that they simply gave up.

After looking into your case and others, here’s a warning I think should accompany every travel insurance policy:

“Most travel insurance covers you against specific hazards listed in the policy’s fine print, excluding countless scenarios you’d never think of and that could ruin your trip through no fault of your own. If you are covered, you might have to persuade doctors, hospitals, airlines, cruise lines and others to provide documentation well beyond what you consider necessary or rational — all in the aftermath of a vacation gone terribly wrong.”

To be fair, most vacations go off without a hitch, most hitches are covered and most claims are paid out with minimal hassle. But there are plenty of exceptions, and their stories reveal that people often expect too much from their policies.

“Many travelers don’t read up on the insurance,” said Jason Schreier, CEO of GoReady, an online travel insurance retailer. “They believe that if anything happens on their trip that creates an unexpected expense, and it’s not their fault, that the travel insurance company will foot the bill.”

In your case, a conscientious tour operator canceled the trip and reimbursed everyone on it. Your plane tickets were thus rendered all but useless: Even if you had wanted to fly to Cuba for a solo trip in the wake of a hurricane, it is not clear you could have. The U.S. government still prohibits most tourism to Cuba that does not include a “full-time schedule” of “exchange activities.” It seems logical that you should be reimbursed.

But the fine print of the GoReady Pandemic Plus policy says otherwise. You were covered for natural disasters only if certain criteria were met: Airports had to be closed “for 48 consecutive hours,” for example, or your hotel rendered “uninhabitable.”

Even if either situation had been the case, you may not have been covered, at least not fully, since the airlines gave you a $425 credit, potentially invalidating that much of the claim. Insurers will not pay out claims if a travel provider offers a credit, although they may make an exception if there is little chance the traveler would ever use it, such as with a regional airline.

Although GoReady stands by the advice not to file, it has now offered you a choice between a partial refund of $220 or a credit for the full value of your insurance policy ($559).

Schreier noted that it isn’t in his company’s interest when claims are denied. GoReady, like many of its competitors, primarily sells the plans and provides customer service, while third parties evaluate claims, and underwriters — think Nationwide or Assurant — cover the payouts. “We’re motivated to have our clients’ claims paid,” Schreier said, “as we know that’s the most likely factor to influence repeat business.”

Still, your case is frustrating. We all understand why policies might exclude injuries suffered while, say, mountain climbing. But it is exasperating that just because a situation is not explicitly spelled out, it is excluded. That is one reason some people purchase more expensive Cancel for Any Rea-

son, or CFAR plans, but even then, read the fine print.

For example, CFAR only kicks in before your vacation starts. It wouldn’t have helped Mark from Los Angeles, who insured his Sierra Club Antarctic cruise through a company called World Nomads. About halfway into the 18-day voyage — and before reaching Antarctica — a fellow passenger fell and died. Following protocol, the ship turned around and sailed to the Falkland Islands, and eventually to Ushuaia, Argentina, for the group’s return flight.

In a letter meant for insurance providers, the Sierra Club estimated the value lost because of the trip interruption at $7,308 per person. But TripMate, which administers claims for World Nomads, rejected Mark’s claim and that of his travel companion.

The problem: Their trip was not technically “interrupted,” since they spent all 18 nights aboard. Several times in my conversations with insurance executives I heard the phrase “You’re not covered for loss of enjoyment,” but I imagined this applying to a week of rain at a Caribbean resort, not an Antarctic cruise that never makes it to Antarctica.

I also heard from a reader named Alan, of Vaughan, Ontario, about a nightmarish return from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Toronto during last Christmas season’s storms. After three WestJet flights were canceled and another delayed, all because of the weather, the next flight they were booked on was canceled because of a crew shortage, and he and his wife were stuck in Calgary, Alberta, overnight. Alan had paid for his trip with an HSBC credit card that offers travel insurance through Assurant.

The next day, with no word from WestJet on when they could fly, they called Assurant, which told them it would cover an Air Canada flight home. Alan filed claims for hotel expenses from WestJet and reimbursement for the flight from Assurant. WestJet rejected the hotel request, and the letter it provided Alan in order to file a claim with Assurant mischaracterized at least two of the cancellations and focused on the crew shortage of the final flight — a situation not covered by insurance.

A spokesperson for WestJet, Madison Kruger, said the airline had erroneously rejected the hotel claim and would pay. Linda Recupero, a spokesperson for Assurant, which administers the HSBC policy, said that she could not comment on the case, but that the company has been in touch with Alan to help with future steps.

Travel insurance is often necessary (for those whose medical insurance does not cover them abroad, for example) or prudent (say, if a traveler worries about canceling an expensive trip because of the failing health of a family member) and often just a good idea. But temper expectations, read the fine print and call the company before the trip with questions. If something happens along the way, document the heck out of it. And when you get home, warm up that scanner and prepare to create and upload more PDFs than you thought possible.

Destruction from Hurricane Ian led a tour operator to cancel a 10-day excursion to Cuba, leaving a woman with a useless $1,500 plane ticket.

With 62 newly discovered moons, Saturn knocks Jupiter off its pedestal

Buratti of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and the deputy project scientist on the upcoming Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter. “They have the fingerprints of events that took place in the early solar system.”

The growing number of moons also highlights potential debates over what constitutes a moon.

“The simple definition of a moon is that it’s an object that orbits a planet,” Sheppard said. An object’s size, for the moment, doesn’t matter.

The new moons were discovered by two groups, one led by Sheppard and the other more recently by Edward Ashton of the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Taiwan. Sheppard’s group, in the mid-2000s, used the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii to hunt for more moons around Saturn.

In March, Sheppard was also responsible for finding 12 new moons of Jupiter, which took it temporarily above Saturn in the scuffle to be the biggest hoarder of moons. That record was short-lived, it seems.

around these planets,” Sheppard said.

Those original moons may have been captured by Saturn “very early on in the solar system,” Ashton said, perhaps in the first few hundred million years after its formation 4.5 billion years ago. Not all orbit in these groups, however, with a few rogue moons orbiting in a retrograde direction — that is, opposite to the orbits of the other moons.

“We don’t know what’s happening with those retrograde moons,” Sheppard said. Ashton suspects they may be remnants of a more recent collision.

Learning more about the new moons is difficult owing to their small size and remote orbits. They appear to be a special class of object, different from asteroids that formed in the inner solar system and comets in the outer solar system. But not much more is known.

“These objects might be unique,” Sheppard said. “They might be the last remnants of what formed in the giant planet region, likely very icy-rich objects.”

By JONATHAN O’CALLAGHAN

In the red corner, Jupiter, the largest planet orbiting our sun, which shaped our solar system with its gravitational bulk.

In the blue corner, Saturn, the magnificent ringed world with bewildering hexagonal storms at its poles.

These two giant worlds are late in their bout for satellite-based supremacy. But now the fight over which planet has the most moons in its orbit has swung decisively in Saturn’s favor.

This month, the International Astronomical Union is set to recognize 62 additional moons of Saturn based on a batch of objects discovered by astronomers. The small objects will give Saturn 145 moons — eclipsing Jupiter’s total of 95.

“They both have many, many moons,” said Scott Sheppard, an astronomer from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. But Saturn “appears to have significantly more,” he said, for reasons that are not entirely understood.

The newly discovered moons of Saturn are nothing like the bright object in Earth’s night sky. They are irregularly shaped, like potatoes, and no more than 1 or 2 miles across. They orbit far from the planet too, between 6 million and 18 million miles, compared with larger moons, such as Titan, that mostly orbit within a million miles of Saturn. Yet these small irregular moons are fascinating in their own right. They are mostly clumped together in groups, and they may be remnants of larger moons that shattered while orbiting Saturn.

“These moons are pretty key to understanding some of the big questions about the solar system,” said Bonnie

Ashton’s group, from 2019 to 2021, used the Canada France Hawaii Telescope, a neighbor of the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea, to look for more of Saturn’s moons and to verify some of Sheppard’s discoveries. For a moon to be authenticated, it must be spotted multiple times to “be sure the observations are a satellite and not just an asteroid that happens to be near the planet,” said Mike Alexandersen, who is responsible for officially confirming moons at the International Astronomical Union.

Most of Saturn’s irregular moons orbit the planet in what astronomers call the Inuit, Norse and Gallic groups. Each group’s objects may be the remains of larger moons, up to 150 miles across, that once orbited Saturn but were destroyed by impacts from asteroids or comets, or collisions between two moons. “It shows there’s a big collision history

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft managed to observe about two dozen of the moons around Saturn up to its demise in 2017. While not close enough to study in detail, the data did allow scientists to “determine the rotation period,” of some of the moons, the spin axis and “even the shape,” said Tilmann Denk from the German Aerospace Center in Berlin, who led the observations. Cassini also found abundant ice on the surface of one of the larger irregular moons, Phoebe.

Closer observations of Saturn’s tiny moons could give scientists a window into a tumultuous time in the early solar system. During that period, collisions were more common and the planets jostled for position, with Jupiter thought to have migrated from nearer the sun farther out to its current orbit. “That gives you additional information on the formation of the solar system,” Denk said.

Yet the irregular moons we are seeing so far may only be the beginning. “We estimated that there are potentially thousands,” around Saturn and Jupiter, Ashton said. Uranus and Neptune, too, may have many such irregular moons, but their vast distance from the sun makes them difficult to discover.

Saturn, despite being smaller than Jupiter, appears to have many more irregular moons. It may have three times as many as Jupiter, down to about two miles in size. The reason is unclear, Ashton said.

Jupiter’s original moons may have tended to be larger, and less likely to shatter. Or Saturn may have captured more objects into its orbit than Jupiter. Or Saturn’s moons may have been on orbits that were more likely to overlap and collide, producing smaller, irregular moons.

Whatever the reason, the outcome is clear. Jupiter is on the ropes, and it is unlikely to recover its title as the planet with the most moons. As astronomers’ capabilities to find smaller and smaller satellites improve, “Saturn will win by miles,” Alexandersen said. “I don’t think it’s a contest any more.”

An image provided by NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute of Saturn’s tiny moon, Pan, taken from the Cassini spacecraft on March 7, 2017.

A natural-color image provided by NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute taken from the Cassini spacecraft on June 16, 2011, of Saturn’s large Titan and smaller Rhea, two of its more well-known moons.

Monday, May 22, 2023 20

CIVIL NUM. CCD2015-0190

LEGAL NOTICE

SERVICE BY PUBLICATION

IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF GWINNETT COUNTY. STATE OF GEORGIA

CIVIL ACTION FILE NO. 21-

AD-00113-1

IN RE: PETITION OF S.R.C.

For the adoption of a minor child to be known as

SEBASTIAN CARVAJAL REYNA

By Order for the service by Publication dated the 13th day of July, 2022, you are hereby notified that on the 3rd day of August, 2021, BOVIS, KYLE, BURCH & MEDLIN, L.L.C. filed a Stepparent Adoption in the Superior Court of Gwinnett County. Senei Perez desires to adopt his stepson Sebastian Carvajal Reyna. Respondent Sandi Eligio Carvajal Zorrilla and any interested or affected party has the right to appear and file objections and an answer to the Petition by filing with the Superior Court of Gwinnett County in the above referenced action within thirty (30) days of the date of this publication for Stepparent Adoption. WITNESS, the Honorable Georgie Hutchinson, III, Judge of this Superior Court. This 10th day of May, 2023.

-s-

D/Clerk of Superior Court, Gwinnett County

TIANA P. GARNER, CLERK

Attorney:

Lauren Larmer Barrett BOVIS, KYLE, BURCH & MEDLIN, L.L.C 200 Ashford Center North Suite 500 Atlanta, Ga 30338-2668

Telephone:770-391-9100

*

LEGAL NOTICE

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

WILMINGTON SAVINGS

FUND SOCIETY, FSB, NOT IN ITS INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY BUT SOLELY AS CERTIFICATE TRUSTEE OF BOSCO CREDIT II TRUST SERIES

2017-1, BY FRANKLIN CREDIT MANAGEMENT AS SERVICER

Plaintiff V.

LAURA MALDONADOCASILLAS A/K/A LAURA

EMMA MALDONADOCASILLAS

Defendant

Civil No.: 19-1400. IN REM. NOTICE OF SALE.

To: LAURA MALDONADOCASILLAS A/K/A LAURA EMMA MALDONALDOCASILLAS.

WHEREAS, Default Judgment was entered on August 22, 2022, published on November 3, 2022, in favor of Plaintiff the aggregated amount of $118,159.02, consisting of principal, interests which continues to accrue until full payment of the debt at $16.33 daily and other charges, plus the amount of $10,192.00 to cover costs, expenses and attorney fees as agreed in the Mortgage Note in the event judicial foreclosure and collection action. WHEREAS, pursuant to said judgment, the undersigned SPECIAL MASTER, Joel Ronda Feliciano, was ordered to sell at public auction for US currency in cash or certified check, without appraisal or right to redemption to the highest bidder, the sale will take place at: Federico Degetau Federal Building, Room 150, 150 Carlos Chardon Street, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico 00918; this sale is regarding the following property belonging to the Defendant, located at the following physical address: Condominio Medical Center Plaza, Apt. 812 San Juan, Puerto Rico 00912, and described in the Property Registry as follows: URBAN:

HORIZONTAL PROPERTY:

Apartment for residential use number eight hundred and twelve on the plot plan, which is part of the building called Condominium Medical Center Plaza, built on a plot of land of the Monacillos ward of the municipality of San Juan, Puerto Rico, whose apartment It is located on the ninth floor of the building, with access door to a corridor for circulation, which communicates with the exterior of the building. This apartment has a surface area of six hundred eightyfour-point ninety square feet, equivalent to sixty-three point sixty-five square meters and consists of the following facilities. Living room, balcony, kitchen with counter, room with its auxiliary closet and bathroom. It adjoins by the NORTH, with the corridor for circulation; by the south, with the front yard; by the EAST, with the apartment number eight hundred and eleven; by the WEST, with apartment number eight hundred thirteen. It corresponds to this apartment and therefore also marks number eight hundred and twelve the parking space for a car located in the parking area at the basement level. The linear measures are this apartment are the following; In front is

twenty-two ten inches, equivalent to six point seventy-four meters, in the background is thirty feet zero inches corresponds a share in the common elements equivalent to fifty-five percent point.” Property number 22169, recorded at page 281 of volume 696 of Monacillos, Registry of the Property of Puerto Rico, Section III of San Juan. The property is described in the Spanish language in Registry of the Property of Puerto Rico as follows: URBANA: Propiedad Horizontal. Apartamiento para uso residencial marcado número ochocientos doce en el plano, el cual forma parte del edificio denominado Condominio Medical Center Plaza, construido en una parcela de terreno del Barrio Monacillos del término municipal de San Juan, Puerto Rico, cuyo apartamiento está localizado en la novena planta del edificio, con puerta de acceso a un pasillo para la circulación, que lo comunica con el exterior del edificio. Este apartamiento tiene un área superficial de seiscientos ochenta y cuatro punto noventa pies cuadrados equivalentes a sesenta y tres punto sesenta y cinco metros cuadrados y consta de las siguientes facilidades.

Sala-comedor, balcón, cocina con mostrador, habitación con su closet, closet auxiliar y baño.

Colinda por el NORTE, con el pasillo para la circulación; por el SUR, con el patio delantero; por el ESTE, con el apartamiento número ochocientos once; y por el OESTE, con el apartamiento número ochocientos trece. Le corresponde a este apartamiento y por lo tanto también se marca número ochocientos doce, el espacio de estacionamiento para un automóvil localizado en el área de estacionamiento al nivel del sótano. Las medidas lineales de este apartamiento son las siguientes: de frente, veintidós pies diez pulgadas equivalentes a seis punto setenta y cuatro metros de fondo, treinta pies cero pulgadas equivalentes a nueve punto quince metros. Con un porcentaje en los elementos comunes de cero punto cincuenta y cinco por ciento. Potential bidders are advised to verify the extent of preferential liens with the holders thereof.

It shall be understood that the potential bidders acquire the property subject to any and all the senior liens that encumber the property. It shall be understood that each bidder accepts as sufficient the title that prior and preferential liens to the one being foreclosed upon, including but not limited to any property tax liens (express, ta-

cit, implied or legal), shall continue in effect, it being understood further that the successful bidder accepts them and is subrogated in the responsibility for the same and the bid price shall not be applied toward the cancellation of their cancellation. The present property will be acquired free and clear of all junior liens. WHEREFORE, the FIRST PUBLIC SALE will be held on JUNE 9, 2023 AT 9:30 AM and the minimum bidding amount that will be accepted is the sum of $101,920.00, pursuant to the “Deed of First Mortgage”, Deed Number 13 of November 30th 2007, before notary public Jorge Alberto Maisonet Rivera, duly recorded at Page 110, Volume 929 of Monacillos, 8th inscription, recording of the Registry of the Property of Puerto Rico, Section III of San Juan, securing a mortgage note payable to the Plaintiff, and no lower offers will be accepted. In the event said first auction does not produce a bidder and the property is not adjudicated, a SECOND PUBLIC AUCTION shall be held on JUNE 16, 2023 AT 9:30 AM and the minimum bidding amount that will be accepted will be two-thirds the amount of the minimum bid, the sum of $67,946.67. If said second auction does not result in the adjudication and sale of the property, a THIRD PUBLIC AUCTION shall be held on JUNE 23, 2023 AT 9:30 AM and the minimum bidding amount that will be accepted will be one-half of the minimum bid, the sum of $50,960.00. Upon confirmation of the sale, an order shall be issued canceling all junior liens. For further particulars, reference is made to the judgment entered by the Court in this case, which can be examined in the aforementioned office of the Clerk of the United States District Court. The files and all the documents corresponding to the procedure initiated will be shown at the court’s office during working hours.

San Juan, Puerto Rico, this 4 day of April 2023. JOEL RONDA FELICIANO, APPOINTED SPECIAL MASTER, E-mail: rondajoel@me.com, Tel: 787565-0415.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL

GENERAL DE JUSTICIA

TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE ARECIBO ORIENTAL BANK

Parte Demandante v. NAIDALISSE

LARACUENTE SANTIAGO

Parte Demandada

SOBRE: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA. EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R. SS. AVISO DE PÚBLICA SUBASTA. El que suscribe, Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Arecibo, hago saber a la parte demandada NAIDALISSE LARACUENTE SANTIAGO y al PÚBLICO EN GENERAL; que en cumplimiento del Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia expedido el 5 de abril de 2023, por la Secretaría del Tribunal, procederé a vender y venderé en pública subasta por el precio mínimo de $112,084.00 y al mejor postor, pagadero en efectivo, cheque de gerente o giro postal, a nombre del alguacil del tribunal, la propiedad que se describe a continuación: 832 MONTE DELGADO JARD MONTELLANO, MOROVIS, PR 00687, y que se describe de la siguiente manera: RUSTICA: Parcela de terreno localizada en el barrio Monte Llanos del término municipal de Morovis, Puerto Rico e identificado en el plano de inscripción del Proyecto Montebello con el #2-H, con una cabida superficial de 325.00 metros cuadrados. En lindes por el NORTE, en 13.00 metros con el lote #9 del mismo bloque H; por el SUR, en 13.00 metros con la calle D; por el ESTE, en 25.00 metros con el lote #3 del mismo bloque H; por el OESTE, en 25.00 metros con el lote #1 del mismo bloque H. Enclava una casa de hormigón armado y bloques de concreto de una sola planta diseñada para fines residenciales y construidos de acuerdo con los planos y especificaciones de la Administración Federal de Hogares para Agricultores y la Junta de Planificación de Puerto Rico. Finca 9364 inscrita al folio 160 del tomo 178 de Morovis, Registro de la Propiedad de Manatí. La finca antes descrita se encuentra afecta a los siguientes gravámenes:

(i) Condiciones Restrictivas de venta por el termino de 10 años impuestas por la Autoridad para el Financiamiento de la Vivienda de Puerto Rico, por el termino de 10 años por haber concedido la suma de $5,655.16 para sufragar gastos de cierre, según Esc.#49 en San Juan el 30 de junio de 2011 ante Lisadaira Serrano Martínez, inscrita al folio 165 del tomo 309 de Morovis, finca #9364 inscripción 9na. (ii) Hipoteca en garantía de un pagaré, a favor de Scotiabank de PR, o a su orden, por $112,084.00 al 4.50%,

vencedero el 1 de julio de 2041, según Esc. #50 en Vega Baja a 30 de junio de 2011 ante Lisadaira Serrano Martinez, inscrita al folio 165 del tomo 309 de Morovis, finca #9364, inscripción 10ma. (iii) Condiciones Restrictivas impuestas por la Autoridad para el Financiamiento de la Vivienda de P.R., (Programa Mi Nuevo Hogar), por el término de 10 años por haber concedido la suma de $5,655.16 para sufragar gastos de cierre según la Esc. #1, en Vega Baja, el 16 de enero de 2013, ante Humberto Lorenzo De Gaztañando, inscrita al folio 165 del tomo 309 de Morovis, finca #9364, inscripción 11 ma. (iv) Modificada la hipoteca de la inscripción 10ma., a $88,207.09, y vencedero el 1 de marzo de 2044, según Esc. #49, en San Juan, el 28 de febrero de 2014, ante Ana E. Gorbea Padró, inscrita al Sistema Karibe de Morovis, finca #9364, al margen de la inscripción 10ma. (v) Hipoteca constituida por Naidalisse Laracuente Santiago, soltera, en garantía de un pagare, aff. #380, a favor del Secretario del Departamento de Desarrollo Urbano y Vivienda de los Estados Unidos de América, o a su orden, por $33,082.77, sin intereses, vencedero el 1 de junio de 2041, según Esc. #50, en San Juan, el 28 de febrero de 2014, ante Ana E. Gorbea Padró, inscrita al Sistema Karibe de Morovis, finca #9364, inscripción 12da. y última. La hipoteca objeto de esta ejecución es la que ha quedado descrita en el inciso (ii). Será celebrada la subasta para con el importe de la misma satisfacer la sentencia dicta el 13 de febrero de 2017, mediante la cual se condenó a la parte demandada pagar a la parte demandante la suma de $87,739.85 de principal, más intereses acumulados hasta el paga completo de la deuda, más la suma de dinero para primas por seguro a contribuciones, inspecciones, más cargos por demora mensuales, más las cantidades debidas de contribuciones e impuestos, primas de seguro contra riesgo y seguro de hipoteca hasta su completo pago, más la cantidad de $11,208.40 estipulados para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados en caso de reclamación judicial, cantidades todas garantizadas par la hipoteca. La PRIMERA SUBASTA será celebrada el día 12 DE JUNIO DE 2023 A LAS 10:45 DE LA MAÑANA, en la oficina del Alguacil, sita en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Servirá de tipo mínimo para la misma la cantidad de $112,084.00, sin

admitirse oferta inferior. De no haber remate ni adjudicación, celebraré SEGUNDA SUBASTA el día 20 DE JUNIO DE 2023 A LAS 10:45 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo lugar, en la que servirá como tipo mínimo, dos terceras (2/3) partes del precio pactado para la primera subasta, o sea, $74,722.67. Si no hubiese remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta, celebraré TERCERA SUBASTA el día 27 DE JUNIO DE 2023 A LAS 10:45 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo lugar en la que regirá como tipo mínimo, la mitad del precio pactado para la primera subasta, o sea, $56,042.00. El Alguacil que suscribe hizo constar que toda licitación deberá hacerse para pagar su importe en moneda legal de los Estados Unidos de América, de acuerdo con la Ley y de acuerdo con lo anunciado en este Aviso de Subasta. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante horas laborables. Se entiende que todo licitador que comparezca a la subasta señalada en este caso acepta como bastante la titulación que da base a la misma. Se entiende que cualquier carga y/o gravamen anterior y/o preferente, si la hubiere al crédito que da base a esta ejecución continuará subsistente, entendiéndose, además, que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción cualquier parte del remanente del precio de licitación. La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. Por la presente se notifica a los acreedores que tengan inscritos o anotados sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante o acreedores de cargas o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca ejecutada y las personas interesadas en, o con derecho a exigir el cumplimiento de instrumentos negociables garantizados hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito ejecutado, para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les convenga o satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, costas y honorarios de abogados asegurados, quedando subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. Vendida o adjudicada la finca o derecho hipotecado y consignado el precio correspondiente, en esa misma fecha o fecha posterior, el alguacil que celebró la

subasta procederá a otorgar la correspondiente escritura pública de traspaso en representación del dueño o titular de los bienes hipotecados, ante el notario que elija el adjudicatario o comprador, quien deberá abonar el importe de tal escritura. El alguacil pondrá en posesión judicial al nuevo dueño, si así se lo solicita dentro del término de veinte (20) días a partir de la confirmación de la venta o adjudicación. Si transcurren los referidos veinte (20) días, el tribunal podrá ordenar, sin necesidad de ulterior procedimiento, que se lleve a efecto el desalojo o lanzamiento del ocupante u ocupantes de la finca o de todos los que por orden o tolerancia del deudor la ocupen.

Y PARA CONOCIMIENTO DE LOS LICITADORES Y DEL PUBLICO EN GENERAL y para su publicación de acuerdo con la Ley, expido el presente Edicto bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal. En Arecibo, Puerto Rico, hoy 4 de mayo de 2023. ANGEL DE JESÚS TORRES PÉREZ, ALGUACIL PLACA #770, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA DE ARECIBO.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

COOP. DE AHORRO Y CREDITO LA

PUERTORRIQUEÑA

Demandante Vs. LOUIS MARTINEZ DAVILA Demandado Civil Núm.: DCD2018-0094. (701). Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EDICTO DE SUBASTA. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EEUU, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PR.

A: LOUIS MARTINEZ

DAVILA: DIRECCIÓN

POSTAL: DORADO DEL MAR, #86 VILLAS DE GOLF ESTE, DORADO, P.R. 00646. AL PÚBLICO EN

GENERAL:

El Alguacil del Tribunal que suscribe anuncia y hace constar: A- Que en cumplimiento de un Mandamiento fechado 5 de marzo de 2019, librado por este Honorable Tribunal en el caso de epígrafe, procederé a vender en pública subasta, en el Cuarto Piso del edificio que ocupa el Centro Judicial de Bayamón, al mejor postor y por dinero en efectivo o cheque certificado, todo título, derecho y/o interés de la parte deman-

lo Pellot Pellot. Presentada al asiento 1238 del diario 853, el 1 de abril de 2013, Registro de la Propiedad de Aguadilla, finca número 3,313. Dirección Física: PR-110 Sur, Interior Km 0.7, Aguadilla, PR. La propiedad descrita anteriormente está afecta a los siguientes gravámenes: Afecta por su procedencia: Libre de Cargas. Por sí:

HIPOTECA: En garantía de un pagaré a favor de EUROBANK, o a su orden, por la suma de $1,300,000.00, con interés al ½%, bajo la tasa de interés preferencial fluctuante de tiempo en tiempo “prime rate” y vencimiento a la presentación, según consta de la escritura #9, otorgada en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, el día 25 de febrero de 2005, ante la Notario Público Myrta E. Nieves Blas, inscrita al folio 39 del tomo 611 de Aguadilla, inscripción 8ª. HIPOTECA: En garantía de un pagaré a favor de EUROBANK, o a su orden, por la suma de $335,000.00, con interés al 12%, y vencedero a la presentación, según consta de escritura #108, otorgada en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, el día 22 de agosto de 2008, ante el Notario Público Nelson W. González, inscrita al folio 39 del tomo 611 de Aguadilla, inscripción 9ª ASIENTO ABREVIADO. Al Asiento 59 del Diario 845 se presentó el 28 de marzo de 2011, Certificación de Embargo del 15 de marzo de 2011, expedida por el Departamento de Hacienda en contra de Juan Ruiz Valentín y su esposa Gumersinda Rivera Montalvo, por la cual se solicita se anote embargo sobre esta propiedad para responder por la suma de $573,820.43. Al Asiento 60 del Diario 845 se presentó el 28 de marzo de 2011, Certificación de Embargo del 25 de marzo del 2011 expedida por el Departamento de Hacienda en contra de Juan Ruiz Valentín y su esposa Gumersinda Rivera Montalvo, por la cual se solicita se anote embargo sobre esta propiedad para responder por la suma de $197,075.54. Al Asiento 1237 del Diario 853 se presentó el 1ero de abril del 2013, Certificación para Cancelar Anotación de Embargo, expedida del 26 de febrero de 2013, Departamento de Hacienda, por la cual se solicita la cancelación del embargo por la suma de $573,820.43. EMBARGO

ESTATAL sobre esta propiedad en contra de Juan Ruiz Valentín y/o Gumersinda Rivera, por la suma de $197,075.54, presentado e inscrito el 28 de marzo de 2011 e inscrito al folio 61, asiento #239 del Libro #25 de Embargos Estatales de Aguadilla. EMBARGO ESTATAL sobre esta propiedad en contra de Juan Ruiz Valentín y/o Gumersinda Rivera, por la suma de $573,820.43. Presentado e ins-

crito el 28 de marzo de 2011 e inscrito al folio 61, asiento 241 del Libro #5 de Aguadilla. Servirá como tipo mínimo para la primera subasta en ejecución de la primera hipoteca objeto de este caso que grava el inmueble antes descrito, la suma de $1,300,000.00, conforme a lo estipulado en la Escritura de Hipoteca número 9, otorgada en Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, el 25 de febrero de 2005 ante la Notario Público Myrta E. Nieves Blas. De no adjudicarse la propiedad en la primera subasta, se celebrará una SEGUNDA SUBASTA, en las oficinas del Alguacil del Tribunal de Aguadilla, Centro Judicial de Aguadilla, Segundo Piso, el día 8 DE JUNIO DE 2023, A LA(S) 9:30 DE LA MAÑANA. El tipo mínimo para la segunda subasta será dos terceras partes (2/3) del tipo mínimo de la primera subasta, o sea, $866,666.67. De no adjudicarse la propiedad en la segunda subasta, se celebrará una TERCERA SUBASTA en en las oficinas del Alguacil del Tribunal de Aguadilla, Centro Judicial de Aguadilla, Segundo Piso, el día 15 DE JUNIO DE 2023, A LA(S) 9:30 DE LA MAÑANA. El tipo mínimo para la tercera subasta será la mitad (1/2) del tipo mínimo que se pactara para la primera subasta, o sea, $650,000.00. Esta subasta se hará para satisfacer a la parte demandante, hasta donde alcance, las siguientes sumas adeudadas: Obligación

400009387. Principal:

$5,323,129.26. Intereses pactados acumulados al 18 de marzo 2011: 149,237.34. Honorarios de Abogado: 532,312.93.

Prepayment consideration:

159,993.88. Default Interest:

106,018.99. Gastos: 10,950.

Total: $6,281,642.40. La obligación devenga interés a razón de 4% a partir del 19 de marzo de 2011. Obligación

400009434. Principal:

$135,833.45. Intereses pactados acumulados al 28 de febrero de 2011: 1,886.25. Cargos por demoras: 1,397.16. Total:

$139,116.86. La obligación devenga intereses a razón de $150.09 diario. La venta en pública subasta de la propiedad descrita anteriormente se verificará libre de toda carga o gravamen posterior que afecte dicha propiedad. Se entiende que cualquier carga y/o gravamen anterior y/o preferente, si lo hubiera, al crédito que da base a esta ejecución, continuará subsistente, entendiéndose además, que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Que los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría de este Tribunal durante horas

laborables. El Alguacil procederá a otorgar la correspondiente escritura de venta judicial y se pondrá al comprador en posesión física del inmueble, de conformidad con las disposiciones de Ley. POR LA PRESENTE, se les notifica a los titulares de créditos y/o cargas registrales posteriores, si alguno, que se celebrará la SUBASTA en la fecha, hora y sitio anteriormente señalados, y se les invita a que concurran a dicha subasta, si les conviniere, o se les invita a satisfacer, antes del remate, el importe del crédito, sus intereses, otros cargos y las costas y honorarios de abogado asegurados, quedando entonces subrogados en los derechos del Acreedor ejecutante, siempre y cuando reúnan los requisitos y cualificaciones de Ley para que se pueda efectuar tal subrogación. Y PARA SU PUBLICACIÓN en el tablón de edictos de este Tribunal y en tres (3) lugares públicos del Municipio donde se celebrará la subasta señalada. Además, en un periódico de circulación general en dos (2) ocasiones y mediante correo certificado a la última dirección conocida de la parte demandada. EXPEDIDO el presente EDICTO DE SUBASTA en Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, a 10 de marzo de 2023.

CAROL CHALMERS SOTO, ALGUACIL REGIONAL #526, ALGUACIL DEL TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA DE AGUADILLA. ***

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA DE FAJARDO

DLJ MORTGAGE

CAPITAL, INC.

Parte Demandante Vs. RONALD CRUZ ROSA Y ANA LYDIA BERLANGA

ROSADO, TCC ANA M. BERLANGA ROSADO Y COMO ANA BERLANGA

ROSADO

Parte Demandada Civil Núm.: N3CI2014-00540.

Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA Y COBRO DE DINERO. ANUNCIO DE SUBASTA. El suscribiente, Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia de Puerto Rico, Sala de Fajardo, a los demandados de epígrafe y al público en general hace saber que los autos y documentos del caso de epígrafe estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante horas laborables y que venderá en pública subasta al mejor postor, en moneda de curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América en efectivo, cheque certificado, o giro postal a nombre del Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, el derecho

que tenga la parte demandada en el inmueble que se relaciona más adelante para pagar la SENTENCIA por $150,461.61 de balance principal, más intereses a razón de 6.50% anual, desde el primero de diciembre de 2010, hasta su completo pago, más el 5% computado sobre cada mensualidad de principal e interés por concepto de cargos por demora devengados desde el primero de enero de 2011, hasta su total y completo pago, más la suma estipulada para honorarios de abogado pactada en la escritura de hipoteca; y cuales quiera otras sumas que por cualesquiera concepto legal se devenguen hasta el día de la subasta. La propiedad a venderse en pública subasta se describe como sigue: URBANA: Solar marcado con el numero dos (2) del bloque A, Tercera Fase de la Urbanización Mansiones de Hacienda Jiménez, localizado en el Barrio Jiménez de la Municipalidad de Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, con una cabida superficial de quinientos setenta y siete punto cuatro mil ciento cincuenta y tres metros cuadrados (577.4153), de los cuales cuatrocientos sesenta y tres punto siete mil quinientos doce metros cuadrados (463.7512) se encuentran en superficie plana y ciento trece punto seis mil seiscientos cuarenta y un metros cuadrados (113.6641) se encuentran en superficie irregular (talud). En lindes por el Norte, en distancia de veinticuatro punto cincuenta metros lineales (24.50) con Dolly Lugo, por el Sur, en una distancia de veinticuatro punto cincuenta metros lineales (24.50) con la calle Eucalipto, por el Este, en distancia de veintitrés punto treinta y cuatro metros (23.34) con solar numero tres (3), y por el Oeste, en distancia de veintitrés punto noventa y nueve metros lineales (23.99) con el solar numero uno (1). Enclava una estructura de hormigón y bloques de hormigón tipo residencial diseñada para una sola familia. Inscrita al tomo Karibe, finca numero veintinueve mil novecientos seis (29906), Registro de Carolina III. Dirección Física: Urb. Mansiones de Hacienda Jimenez, Calle Eucalipto #2, Rio Grande, Puerto Rico 00745. La PRIMERA SUBASTA se llevará a cabo el día 7 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2023, A LAS 2:30 DE LA TARDE, y servirá de tipo mínimo para la misma la suma de $162,500.00 sin admitirse oferta inferior. En el caso de que el inmueble a ser subastado no fuera adjudicado en la primera subasta, se celebrará una SEGUNDA SUBASTA el día 14 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2023, A LAS 2:30 DE LA TARDE, y el precio mínimo para esta segunda subasta será el de dos terceras partes

del precio mínimo establecido para la primera subasta, o a sea la suma de $108,333.33.

Si tampoco hubiera remate ni adjudicación en la segunda subasta, se celebrará una TERCERA SUBASTA el día 21 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2023 A LAS 2:30 DE LA TARDE y el tipo mínimo para esta tercera subasta será la mitad del precio establecido para la primera subasta, o sea, la suma de $81,250.00. El mejor postor deberá pagar el importe de su oferta en efecto, cheque certificado o giro postal a nombre del Alguacil del Tribunal. Si se declarase desierta la tercera subasta, se dará por terminado el procedimiento, pudiendo adjudicarse el inmueble al acreedor hipotecario dentro de los diez días siguientes a la fecha de la última subasta, si así lo estimase conveniente, por la totalidad de la cantidad adeudada conforme a la sentencia, si ésta fuera igual o menor que el monto del tipo de la tercera subasta y abonándose dicho monto a la cantidad adeudada si ésta fuera mayor. Se avisa a cualquier licitador que la propiedad queda sujeta al gravamen del Estado Libre Asociado y CRIM sobre la propiedad inmueble por contribuciones adeudadas y que el pago de dichas contribuciones es la responsabilidad del licitador. Que se entenderá por todo licitador acepte como suficiente la titulación y que los cargos y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes en entendiéndose que el rematador los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse su extinción al precio rematante. Todos los nombres de los acreedores que tengan inscritos o anotados sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante, o de los acreedores de cargas o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca ejecutada y las personas interesadas en, o con derecho a exigir el cumplimiento de instrumentos negociables garantizados hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito ejecutado, siempre que surgen de la certificación registral, para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les convenga o satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, costas y honorarios de abogados asegurados, quedando entonces subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. Y para conocimiento de licitadores, del público en general y para su publicación en un periódico de circulación general diaria en Puerto Rico y en los sitios

públicos de acuerdo a las disposiciones de la Regla 51.7 de las de Procedimiento Civil, así como para la publicación en un periódico de circulación general diaria y en el Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, por espacio de dos semanas con antelación a la fecha de la primera subasta y por lo menos una vez por semana. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento indicado estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría del Tribunal durante las horas laborables. (Art. 102 (1) de la Ley núm. 210-2015). Expedido el presente en Fajardo, Puerto Rico, a 11 de mayo de 2023. SANDRALIZ MARTÍNEZ TORRES, ALGUACIL #737, ALGUACIL CONFIDENCIAL, ALGUACIL DEL TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA DE FAJARDO. JORGE A. ORTIZ ESTRADO, ALGUACIL REGIONAL INTERINO #622.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE MAYAGÜEZ GITSIT SOLUTIONS, LLC

Demandante V. SAMUEL RODRÍGUEZ

ÁLVAREZ; LA SUCESIÓN DE VIRGINIA VÉLEZ

VARGAS COMPUESTA POR ÁNGELA ÁLVAREZ VÉLEZ; NELSON ÁLVAREZ VÉLEZ; LA SUCESIÓN DE EMILIO ÁLVAREZ VÉLEZ COMPUESTA POR JONATHAN ALEXIS ÁLVAREZ RODRÍGUEZ; ALLAN EMILIO ÁLVAREZ RODRÍGUEZ; EMILY ANN ÁLVAREZ, TAMBIÉN CONOCIDA COMO EMILY ANN ÁLVAREZ RODRÍGUEZ; CENTRO DE RECAUDACIÓN DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES

(CRIM) Y ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA

Demandados Civil Núm.: MZ2022CV00858. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, S.S.

A: LA SUCESIÓN DE EMILIO ÁLVAREZ VÉLEZ COMPUESTA POR

JONATHAN ALEXIS ÁLVAREZ RODRÍGUEZ; ALLAN EMILIO ÁLVAREZ RODRÍGUEZ; EMILY ANN ÁLVAREZ, TAMBIÉN CONOCIDA COMO

EMILY ANN ÁLVAREZ RODRÍGUEZ.

Queden emplazados y notificados que en este Tribunal se ha radicado Demanda sobre Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca en su contra. Por la presente se le emplaza y notifica que debe contestar la demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación del presente edicto y deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), el cual podrá acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar Sentencia en Rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su discreción, lo entiende procedente. Los abogados de la parte demandante

son:

Lcdo. Andrés Sáez Marrero

T.S.P.R. Núm. 18074

TROMBERG, MORRIS & POULIN, LLC

1515 South Federal Highway, Suite 100 Boca Raton, FL 33432

Tel. 877-338-4101 / Fax: 561-338-4077 prservice@tmppllc.com / asaez@tmppllc.com

Expido este edicto bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, hoy 5 de mayo de 2023. LIC. NORMA G. SANTANA IRIZARRY, SECRETARIA REGIONAL II. NILDA TORRES ACEVEDO, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL I.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

MASSACHUSETTS

MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY

Demandante V LA SUCESIÓN DE ROSA

FANTAUZZI RODRÍGUEZ COMPUESTA POR

ÁNGEL LUIS TORRES

FANTAUZZI, TOMÁS

ENRIQUE TORRES

FANTAUZZI, FULANO DE TAL Y FULANA DE TAL COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS

DESECONOCIDOS

CON INTERÉS EN LA SUCESIÓN, CENTRO DE RECAUDACIÓN DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES (CRIM)

Demandados

Civil Núm.: TJ2023CV00042. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA POR LA VÍA ORDINARIA. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO, S.S. A: TOMAS ENRIQUE TORRES FANTAUZZI, FULANO DE TAL Y FULANA DE TAL COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS CON INTERÉS

EN LA SUCESIÓN.

Queden emplazados notificados que en este Tribunal se ha radicado Demanda sobre Ejecución de Hipoteca en su contra. Por la presente se le emplaza y notifica que debe contestar la demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación del presente edicto y deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), el cual podrá acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Si usted deja de presentar su alegación responsiva dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar Sentencia en Rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la Demanda o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su discreción, lo entiende procedente. Los abogados de la parte demandante son:

Lcdo. Andrés Sáez Marrero

T.S.P.R. Núm. 18074 TROMBERG, MORRIS & POULIN, LLC

1515 South Federal Highway, Suite 100

Boca Raton, FL 33432

Tel. 877-338-4101 / Fax: 561-338-4077 prservice@tmppllc.com / asaez@tmppllc.com

Expido este edicto bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, hoy 11 de mayo de 2023. KANELLY ZAYAS ROBLES, SECRETARIA GENERAL. LILLIAM ORTIZ NIEVES, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU-

NAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA

TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE GUAYAMA

to de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 15 de mayo de 2022. En Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, el 15 de mayo de 2023. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, SECRETARIA REGIONAL II. DIAMAR GONZÁLEZ BARRETO, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA

SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN

JAIME ALFREDO

VÁZQUEZ VELÁZQUEZ

Demandante Vs. YOSELIN SOTO GUZMÁN Demandada

Civil Núm.: SJ2023CV03295.

Sobre: LIQUIDACIÓN BIENES

GANANCIALES / COMUNIDAD POSGANANCIAL. EM-

PLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO.

ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: YOSELIN SOTO GUZMÁN.

URBANIZACIÓN SABANA

GARDENS, CALLE 26, BLOQUE 15, CASA #15, CAROLINA, PUERTO RICO.

POR LA PRESENTE se le notifica que ha sido presentada en este Tribunal por la parte demandante una acción de liquidación de bienes gananciales y/o comunidad posganancial por los hechos que se detallan en la misma, la cual puede ser examinada en la secretaría de este Tribunal. REPRESENTA al demandante el Lcdo. Víctor M. Rivera Torres) con dirección en Avenida Fernández Juncos #1420, Santurce, Puerto Rico 00909, teléfono (787) 727-5710, fax (787) 268-1835, e-mail: victor.rivera@rcrtrblaw. com. Se le advierte que este edicto se publicará en un periódico de circulación general una sola vez y que si no comparece en el término de treinta (30) días desde su publicación, los querellantes podrán solicitar que se dicte sentencia en rebeldía, declarándose con lugar la demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle. EXPEDIDO, bajo mi firma y el sello del Tribunal, hoy día 11 de mayo de 2023. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA. MICHELLE RIVERA RÍOS, SUB-SECRETARIA.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA

REGIÓN JUDICIAL DE AGUADILLA SALA DE SAN SEBASTIÁN

EX PARTE:

CARMEN M. ORTIZ DÍAZ

Peticionario DÁMASO CORREA RODRÍGUEZ

Causante

Civil Núm.: SS2022CV00653. SUMAC. Sobre: DECLARATORIA DE HEREDEROS. EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. UU., EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PR, SS.

A: LOS HEREDEROS APARENTES Y A TODOS

LOS FAMILIARES HASTA

EL SEXTO GRADO DE LÍNEA COLATERAL DEL SR. DÁMASO CORREA RODRÍGUEZ; O A

CUALQUIER PERSONA CON UN INTERÉS EN LA HERENCIA DEL FINADO.

Por la presente se notifica que la parte PETICIONARIA ha presentado una solicitud de Declaratoria de Herederos cuya naturaleza es en la materia de identificar os herederos de Don Dámaso Correa Rodríguez en el caso SS2022CV00653, para que así los interesados soliciten intervención en este proceso. El abogado de la parte peticionaria es el Lcdo. Nelson Esteban Vera Santiago, P.O. Box 810, Moca, Puerto Rico 00676. 787-877-3516. De ser una parte interesada, se le apercibe que deberá expresarse mediante moción dentro del periodo de 30 días de haberse publicado este edicto. Usted deberá presentar su solicitud de intervención a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired. ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su solicitud de intervención en la secretaría del tribunal. Se le advierte de los efectos de no expresarse, lo cual redundará en que se tornará una determinación judicial sin más citarle ni oírle. Este edicto será publicado en una (1) ocasión en un periódico de circulación general diaria, para que comparezcan si quieren a legar su derecho. Se identificará en letra negrillas tamaño 10 puntos toda primera mención de persona natural y/o jurídica que se menciona en el mismo, conforme a lo dispuesto en las Reglas de Procedimiento Civil, 2009. En San Sebastián, Puerto Rico, a 12 de mayo de 2023. SARAHÍ REYES PÉREZ, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. IVELISSE ROBLES MATHEWS, SUBSECRETARIA.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA

SALA SUPERIOR DE OROCOVIS JEANNETTE VÉLEZ

COLÓN T/C/C JANNETTE VÉLEZ COLÓN

Demandante V. POPULAR MORTGAGE, INC. Y OTROS

Demandados

Civil Núm.: OR2023CV00077.

Sobre: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. EDICTO. LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS E.E.U.U., EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE P.R., S.S.

A: JOHN DOE Y JANET DOE, demandados desconocidos cuya dirección se desconoce. Se les notifica por este medio que en el caso del epígrafe se solicita la cancelación del siguiente pagaré: Hipoteca por la suma principal de Cuarenta y un Mil Dólares ($41,000.00) en garantía de pagaré a favor de Popular Mortgage, Inc., o a su orden, constituida mediante escritura número seiscientos doce (612) otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico el día veinticuatro (24) de diciembre de dos mil trece (2003) ante el Tanyha

V. Rodríguez Vázquez, inscrito al folio 139 del tomo 218 de Orocovis, finca número 7983, inscripción tercera. Este Tribunal ha ordenado que se le(s) cite a usted(es) por edicto que se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general. Pudiendo usted tener interés en este caso o quedar afectado por el remedio solicitado, se le emplaza por este Edicto que se publicará una vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general de Puerto Rico. Usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajudicial. pr/sumac/, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaria de! tribunal y notifique copia de la Contestación de la Demanda a:

LCDO. EDUARDO SANCHEZ

JAUREGUI-JIMENEZ

366 CALLE ESCORIAL, CAPARRA HEIGHTS

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO 00920

Tel (787) 603-1178, email: edusjj@gmaiI.com

Abogado de la Parte Demandante, dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto, apercibiéndole que de no hacerlo así dentro del término indicado, el Tribunal podrá anotar su Rebeldía y dictar Sentencia, concediéndo-

se el remedio solicitado sin más citarle(s) ni oírle(s). EXPEDIDO bajo mi firma y con el Sello del Tribunal. DADA hoy 16 de mayo de 2023 en Orocovis, Puerto Rico. ELIZABETH GONZÁLEZ RIVERA, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. SONIA I. ORTIZ HERNÁNDEZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA

SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYAMÓN HR MORTGAGE CORPORATION

Demandante Vs. SECRETARIO DEL DEPARTAMENTO DE LA VIVIENDA Y DESARROLLO URBANO; JOHN DOE Y RICHARD ROE (POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO)

Demandados

Civil Núm.: BY2023CV02389.

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

A: JOHN DOE Y/O RICHARD ROE. Se notifica que se presentó en esta Secretaría la Demanda de epígrafe sobre Cancelación de Pagaré Extraviado Por la Vía Judicial. Se le emplaza y requiere que usted deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https:// unired.ramajudicial.pr, salvo que se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaría del tribunal. Deberá notificar con copia de la misma al LCDO. JESÚS

A. LEDESMA AMADOR, PO BOX 10338, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00922, dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este edicto. Si dejara de hacerlo, podrá dictarse sentencia en rebeldía, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle. El primer pagaré hipotecario objeto de esta demanda, fue emitido a favor de Urban Financial Group lnc., o a su orden, por $345,000.00, con intereses al 5.300% anual y con vencimiento 20 de abril del 2076, ante el Notario Público María G. Chévere Mouriño, inscrito al folio #8 del tomo #1902 de Bayamón Sur, finca #77504, inscripción 5ta. El segundo pa-

garé hipotecario objeto de esta demanda, fue emitido a favor de The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, o a su orden, por $345,000.00, con intereses al 5.300% anual y con vencimiento 20 de abril del 2076, ante el Notario Público María G. Chévere Mouriño. Dicha obligación quedó garantizada por una hipoteca voluntaria sobre el inmueble que más adelante se describe, según surge de la escritura de la escritura #300, otorgada en Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, el día 31 de marzo del 2011, inscrito al folio #8 del tomo #1902 de Bayamón Sur, finca #77504, inscripción 6ta: Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, Sección Primera. El pago de dichos pagarés se garantizó con hipotecas constituidas sobre el inmueble que se describe a continuación: RÚSTICA: Solar número uno (1) radicado en el Barrio Cerro Gordo del término municipal de Bayamón, con una cabida superficial de MIL CUARENTA Y DOS PUNTO SEISCIENTOS NOVENTA Y DOS METROS CUADRADOS, (1042.692 M.C.) equivalente a cero punto dos mil seiscientos cincuenta y tres cuerdas (0.2653 cdas.). En lindes por el NORTE, en dos alineaciones de catorce punto seiscientos veintiocho metros (14.628 m.) y diecinueve punto ochocientos setenta y seis (19.876 m) con remanente de la finca principal de la cual se segrega; por el SUR en distancia de treinta y cuatro punto doscientos sesenta y siete metros (34.267 m.) con Sucesión de Herminio Morales; por el ESTE, en dos alineaciones de siete punto ciento sesenta y nueve metros (7.169 m.) y veinticuatro punto ciento ochenta y nueve metros (24.189 m.) con Lorenza Goveo Reyes y Julio Calderón Díaz; y por el OESTE, en distancia de veintiocho punto novecientos veinte metros (28.920 m.) con Sucesión de Hermenegido Morales. Finca #77,504, inscrito al Sistema Karibe de Bayamón Sur, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón Sección Primera. EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y el Sello del Tribunal, hoy 8 de mayo de 2023. LCDA. LAURA I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. NÉLIDA OCASIO ORTEGA, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL I.

LEGAL NOTICE

GOBIERNO DE PUERTO RICO DEPARTAMENTO DE ESTADO. NOMBRE COMERCIAL PARA REGISTRAR. AVISO. A QUIEN PUEDA INTERESAR: De acuerdo con las disposiciones de la Ley Núm. 75 del 23 de septiembre de 1992, según enmendada, mejor conocida como la Ley de Nombres Comerciales del Estado Libre Asociado de

Puerto Rico y la Sección 24 del Reglamento promulgado bajo la ley citada anteriormente, el siguiente nombre comercial ha sido presentado en el Departamento de Estado de Puerto Rico para su archivo y registro EMPHATÍA

Número de Expediente: 247905-99-0. Propietario: EMPHATÍA NOTARY & LEGAL ADVISORS P.S.C. DIRECCIÓN: URB VILLA CRIOLLOS A6 CALLE CORAZÓN, CAGUAS, PR 00725-0000. Actividad Empresarial: IDENTIDAD COMERCIA (BRANDING) DE CORPORACIÓN DE SERVICIOS PROFESIONALES

DONDE SE BRINDAN VARIOS SERVICIOS: LEGAL, CONTABILIDAD, ADMINISTRACIÓN DE PYMES Y MERCADEO, ENTRE OTROS. Renuncia a elementos no registrables: NOTIFICACIÓN: Cualquier oposición a este registro deberá presentarse en el Departamento de Estado de Puerto Rico dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este aviso.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA

TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE MAYAGÜEZ

MILTON VELAZQUEZ MONTALVO

Demandante V. LUIS ANTONIO ORTIZ VALLEJO Y GLADYS VALLEJO MARTELL

Demandado(a)

Civil: MZ2018CV00406. Sala: 206. Sobre: DAÑOS Y PERJUICIOS. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: DAMIAN VELEZ Y EDGA JUSINO RODRIGUEZ Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES.

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto)

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 9 de mayo de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notifica-

ción, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 11 de mayo de 2023. En Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, el 11 de mayo de 2023. LCDA. NORMA G. SANTANA IRIZARRY, SECRETARIA JOSSIE BOBE RODRÍGUEZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA

SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYAMÓN MIDFIRST BANK

Demandante Vs. JAIME DE JESUS REYES, LA SUCESION DE MARGARITA IRIS

RODRIGUEZ MASSARI COMPUESTA POR SUS HEREDEROS ELIZABETH VICTORIA DE JESUS RODRIGUEZ, EVA LORRAINE DE JESUS RODRIGUEZ, IVONNE MARIE DE JESUS RODRIGUEZ, SANDRA RAMIREZ RODRIGUEZ, FULANO DE TAL y SUTANA DE TAL HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS, BLANCA I. DE JESUS MODLINGER y CENTRO DE RECAUDACIÓN DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES (CRIM)

Demandados

Civil Núm.: BY2020CV01101. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EDICTO DE SUBASTA. A: JAIME DE JESUS REYES, LA SUCESION DE MARGARITA IRIS

RODRIGUEZ MASSARI COMPUESTA POR SUS HEREDEROS

ELIZABETH VICTORIA DE JESUS RODRIGUEZ, EVA LORRAINE DE JESUS RODRIGUEZ, IVONNE MARIE DE JESUS RODRIGUEZ, SANDRA RAMIREZ

DE TAL

SUTANA DE TAL HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS, BLANCA I. DE JESUS MODLINGER y CENTRO DE RECAUDACIÓN DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES (CRIM).

El que suscribe, Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Bayamón, hago constar que en cumplimiento de la Sentencia dictada con fecha de 18 de septiembre de 2022 y por edicto el 26 de enero de 2023, de la Orden de Ejecución de Sentencia emitida el 26 de marzo de 2023 y el Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia expedido el 27 de marzo de 2023, procederé a vender y venderé en pública subasta y al mejor postor la propiedad que se describe a continuación: URBANA: Solar Número Mil Ciento Siete (1107) del Bloque “D” de la Urbanización Levittown, Barrio Sabana Seca de Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, compuesto de TRSCIENTOS TREINTA Y SEIS METROS CUADRADOS CON OCHO CENTIMETROS CUADRADOS (336.08 m.c.) En lindes por el NORTE, en una distancia de nueve punto treinta (9.30) metros y un arco de nueve punto ochenta y nueve (9.89) metros con paseo público; por el SUR, en una distancia de cuatro punto noventa (4.90) metros y un arco de cinco punto treinta y cuatro (5.34) con Paseo Deleite; por el ESTE, en una distancia de veintitrés (23.00) metros, con el solar número ciento seis (1106), y por el OESTE, en una distancia de veinticuatro punto once (24.11) metros, con el solar número mil ciento ocho (1108). Enclava edificación. Finca número: 4,335 inscrita al folio 16 del tomo 53 de Toa Baja, Registro de la Propiedad de Bayamón, sección II. Esta hipoteca consta inscrita al folio #11 del tomo #544 de Toa Baja, del Registro de la Propiedad, Bayamón II, finca #4335, inscripción 16ta. La dirección física de la propiedad es: Urbanización Levittown, D-1107 Calle Deleite, Toa Baja, Puerto Rico 00949. El producto de la subasta se destinará a satisfacer

Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company changed its legal name to Empower Annuity Insurance Company of America on August 1, 2022.

Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company cambió su nombre legal a Empower Annuity Insurance Company of America el 1 de agosto de 2022.

RODRIGUEZ, FULANO

y

al demandante hasta donde alcance, la suma de $67,905.74 que compone la deuda del principal, más el interés anual de 7.0% sobre el balance del principal calculado desde el 1 de agosto de 2019, hasta el pago de la deuda en su totalidad. Los intereses continuaran devengándose hasta el pago total y completo de la deuda. Adeudan además la cantidad de $9,672.90 para cubrir costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados relacionados con este procedimiento, cuyas sumas están vencidas y son líquidas y exigibles. La venta en pública subasta de la referida propiedad se verificará libre de toda carga o gravamen POSTERIOR que afecte la mencionada finca.

La PRIMERA SUBASTA se llevará a efecto el día 14 DE JUNIO DE 2023 A LAS 10:45 DE LA MAÑANA, en la sala del referido Alguacil, sita en el edificio que ocupa el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Bayamón. Que el precio mínimo fijado para la PRIMERA subasta es de $96,729.00. Que de ser necesaria la celebración de una SEGUNDA SUBASTA la misma se llevará a efecto el día

21 DE JUNIO DE 2023 A LAS

10:45 DE LA MAÑANA, en la oficina antes mencionada del Alguacil que suscribe. El precio mínimo para la SEGUNDA subasta será de $64,486.00 equivalente a dos terceras (2/3) partes del tipo mínimo estipulado para la PRIMERA subasta. Si no se produce remate ni adjudicación en le PRIMERA ni en la SEGUNDA subasta, se celebrará una TERCERA día

28 DE JUNIO DE 2023 A LAS

10:45 DE LA MAÑANA, en la oficina a antes mencionada del alguacil que suscribe. El precio mínimo fijado para esta TERCERA subasta es la mitad de la suma pactada para la PRIMERA subasta a saber $48,364.50. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titulación del inmueble y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistente. Entendiéndose que el rematante lo acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de estos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. No constan inscrito en el Registro de la Propiedad acreedores que tengan derechos o cargas sobre el bien hipotecado con anterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante. Se les advierte a los licitadores que la adjudicación se hará el mejor postor, quien deberá consignar el importe de su oferta en el acto mismo de la adjudicación, en moneda curso legal de los Estados Unidos de América, entiéndase en efectivo, cheque certificado o giro postal a nombre del Alguacil del Tribunal. Tome conocimien-

to la parte demandada y toda aquella persona o personas que tengan interés inscrito con posterioridad a la inscripción del gravamen que se está ejecutando; y para conocimiento de los licitadores y el público en general, se publicará dos (2) veces en un periódico de circulación diaria en la Isla de Puerto Rico y se fijará, además, en los lugares públicos correspondientes. Una vez efectuada la venta de dicha propiedad, el Alguacil procederá a poner al licitador victorioso en posesión física de la propiedad dentro del plazo de veinte (20) días contados a partir de la venta en pública Subasta. Además, el Alguacil procederá a darle posesión del material al adjudicatario, en los casos que fuere necesario, proceda el lanzamiento del demandado o terceras personas de la propiedad subastada y forzar puertas o ventanas, romper cerraduras, candados, cortar cadenas y tomar cualquier otra medida propia. De igual forma, el Alguacil sacará cualquier propiedad mueble o personal de los demandados o de terceras personas que se encuentren en la mencionada propiedad. Además, los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado estarán de manifiesto en la secretaría del tribunal durante las horas laborables. EXPIDO, el presente EDICTO, en Bayamón, Puerto Rico, a 26 de abril de 2023. MARIBEL LANZAR VELÁZQUEZ, ALGUACIL PLACA #735, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYAMÓN.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

ORIENTAL BANK

Demandante Vs. NELLY MERCEDES

APONTE MORALES

T/C/C NELLY M. APONTE MORALES

Demandada

Civil Núm.: SJ2019CV01836.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. EDICTO ANUNCIANDO

PRIMERA, SEGUNDA Y TERCERA SUBASTA. El Alguacil que suscribe, funcionario del Tribunal de San Juan , Puerto Rico, por la presente anuncia y hace saber al público en general que en cumplimiento con la Sentencia dictada en este caso con fecha de 12 de junio de 2019 y según Orden y Mandamiento del 18 de febrero de 2020 librado por este honorable Tribunal, procederé a vender en pública subasta al mejor postor, y por dinero en efectivo, cheque certificado o giro postal a nombre del Algua-

cil del Tribunal con todo título derecho y/o interés de la parte demandada sobre la propiedad que se describe a continuación:

URBANA: PROPIEDAD HORI-

ZONTAL: Apartamento Cuatro-

B: Apartamiento de tres dormitorios, localizado en la esquina Suroeste de la quinta planta del Edificio conocido como Condominio Granada, situado en el solar de una cabida de tres mil doscientos dieciséis punto ochentiún metros cuadrados, que a su vez está localizado en el Bloque “A” de la Urbanización Héctor A. Piñeiro, situada en los Barrios Martín Peña y Hato Rey del Municipio de San Juan, Puerto Rico. El apartamiento tiene un área total de mil trescientos cincuentiocho pies cuadrados, equivalentes a ciento veintiséis punto dieciséis metros cuadrados, colindando el mismo por el NORTE, con la parte Oeste del área central comunal del piso y el espacio abierto sobre el patio de recreo del Condominio; por el SUR, con el espacio abierto sobre el patio Sur del Condominio; por el ESTE, con el apartamiento Cuatro-A del mismo edificio; y por el OESTE, con el espacio abierto sobre el patio de recreo del Condominio, en el lado Suroeste del solar. El apartamiento tiene su puerta de entrada por su esquina Noroeste, por donde tiene salida al vestíbulo central del piso, que a su vez lo conecta con los elevadores y las escaleras del edificio, a través de los cuales el apartamiento tiene acceso a las demás plantas del Condominio y a sus patios y calles circundantes. Este apartamiento tiene las siguientes dependencias: cocina-laundry, sala-comedor, balcón, cinco closets, tres dormitorios y dos baños; también pertenece a cada apartamiento un espacio de estacionamiento para un automóvil, localizado y marcado sobre el patio del Condominio o dentro de los garajes de la primera planta en la letra y número de cada apartamiento. Correspondiéndole a este apartamiento un porcentaje de 1.628% en los elementos comunes generales.

FINCA NÚMERO: 29,416, inscrita al folio 281 del tomo 1031 de Río Piedras Norte, sección II de San Juan. Nota aclaratoria; En el Registro de la Propiedad, Sección II de San juan, la descripción registral consta tal y como fue transcrita anteriormente. En la Escritura número 113, otorgada el 27 de abril de 2012, consta lo siguiente; El apartamiento tiene un área total de cincuenta y ocho pies cuadrados, equivalentes a ciento veintiséis punto dieciséis metros cuadrados. DIRECCIÓN

FÍSICA: COND GRANADA (URB.HÉCTOR A. PIÑEIRO, BLQ A), APT 4-B ESQUINA SUROESTE, 5 PLANTA, SAN

JUAN, PR. 00917. Se anuncia por medio de este edicto que la PRIMERA SUBASTA habrá de celebrarse el día 15 DE JUNIO

DE 2023 A LAS 9:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en mi oficina sita en el edificio que ocupa el Tribunal Superior de Puerto Rico, Sala Superior de San Juan. Siendo ésta la primera subasta que se celebrará en este caso, será el precio mínimo aceptable como oferta en la Primera Subasta, eso es el tipo mínimo pactado en la Escritura de Hipoteca para la propiedad, la suma de $155,700.00. De no haber remanente o adjudicación en esta primera subasta por dicha suma mínima, se celebrará una SEGUNDA SUBASTA el día 26 DE JUNIO DE 2023 A LAS 9:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en el mismo lugar antes señalado en la cual el precio mínimo serán dos terceras (2/3) partes del tipo mínimo pactado en la escritura de hipoteca para la propiedad, la suma de $103,800.00. De no haber remanente o adjudicación en esta segunda subasta por el tipo mínimo indicado en el párrafo anterior, se celebrará una TERCERA SUBASTA en el mismo lugar antes señalado el día 05 DE JULIO DE 2023 A LAS 9:00 DE LA MAÑANA, en la cual el tipo mínimo aceptable como oferta será la mitad (1/2) del precio mínimo pactado en la escritura de hipoteca para la propiedad, la suma de $77,850.00. Si se declare desierta la tercera subasta se adjudicará la finca a favor del acreedor por la totalidad de la cantidad adeudada si ésta es igual o menor que el monto del tipo mínimo de la tercera subasta, si el tribunal lo estima conveniente. Se abonará dicho monto a la cantidad adeudada si ésta es mayor. Con el importe de esta venta se habrá de satisfacer el balance de la sentencia dictada en este caso el cual consiste en el pago de $138,308.64 de principal, más intereses convenidos al 4.6250% anual más recargos hasta su pago, más el pago de lo pactado en la sentencia para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogados. Se dispone que una vez celebrada la subasta y vendido el inmueble relacionado, el alguacil pondrá en posesión judicial a los nuevos dueños dentro del término de veinte (20) días a partir de la celebración de la Subasta. Si transcurren los referidos veinte (20) días, el tribunal podrá ordenar, sin necesidad de ulterior procedimiento, que se lleve a efecto el desalojo o lanzamiento del ocupante u ocupantes de la finca o de todos los que por orden o tolerancia del demandado/ deudor la ocupen. El Alguacil de este Tribunal efectuará el lanzamiento de los ocupantes de ser necesario. Por la presente también se notifica e in-

forma a Fulano de Tal y Sutano de Tal, personas desconocidas que puedan tener derechos en la propiedad o título objeto de este edicto. La Venta en Pública Subasta de la referida propiedad se verificará libre de toda carga y gravamen posterior que afecte la mencionada finca, a cuyo efecto se notifica y se hace saber la fecha, hora y sitio de la Primera, Segunda y Tercera Subasta, si eso fuera necesario, a los efectos de cualquier persona o personas con algún interés puedan comparecer a la celebración de dicha Subasta. Se entenderá que todo licitador acepta como bastante la titularidad y que las cargas y gravámenes anteriores y los preferentes, si los hubiere, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes. Se entenderá que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento del caso de epígrafe están disponibles en la Secretaría de este Tribunal durante horas laborables y para la concurrencia de los licitadores expido el presente Edicto que se publicará en un periódico de circulación diaria en toda la Isla de Puerto Rico por espacio dos (2) semanas y por lo menos una vez por semana y se fijará, además, en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Alcaldía y la Colecturía de Rentas Internas del Municipio donde se celebrará la Subasta y en la Colecturía más cercana del lugar de la residencia de la parte demandada. EN TESTIMONIO DE LO CUAL, expido el presente que firmo y sello, hoy día 12 de mayo de 2023. PEDRO HIEYE GONZÁLEZ, ALGUACIL, TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA, SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN.

LEGAL NOTICE

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

ELIZABETH RIVERA ROSA

Demandante V. ELIAS CINTRON GARCIA

Demandado(a)

Civil Núm.: TJ2023RF00024.

Sala: A. Sobre: DIVORCIO (RI). NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: ELIAS CINTRON GARCIA. (Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 12 de mayo de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debi-

damente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 16 de mayo de 2023. En CAROLINA, Puerto Rico, el 16 de mayo de 2023. LCDA. MARILYN APONTE RODRÍGUEZ, SECRETARIA. MYRNA L. PÉREZ HERRERA, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN SALA DE SESIONES 504.

ROBERT ANTHONY

DENTON GANDÍA

Demandante Vs. REVERSE MORTGAGE FUNDING, LLC, FULANO DE TAL Y MENGANO DE TAL, como posibles tenedores del pagaré extraviado

Codemandados

CIVIL NÚM. SJ2023CV03016. SALÓN 504. SOBRE: CANCELACIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS

UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS.

A: REVERSE MORTGAGE FUNDING, LLC

Quedan ustedes notificados que el demandante de epígrafe ha presentado en este Tribunal una Demanda contra ustedes como codemandados, en la que se solícita la cancelación judicial de un Pagaré Extraviado a favor de The Money House, Inc., o a su orden, por la suma principal de $600,000.00, con intereses al

2.981% anual y vencedero el 5 de octubre de 2097, suscrito el día 29 de diciembre de 2009, bajo el número de testimonio 16,720. La acreencia que garantiza el pagaré fue satisfecha y el documentO se encuentra extraviado. Para garantizar el referido Pagaré, el mismo día y ante el Notario Raúl Rivera

Burgos, se otorgó la Escritura #1,358, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, mediante la cual se constituyó Hipoteca sobre la siguiente propiedad: URBANA: PROPIEDAD HORIZONTAL: Apartamento Mirador número mil seiscientos uno (1601). Apartamento de forma irregular en la décima sexta y décimo séptima plantas del Condominio Teide, situado en la Calle Costa Rica, número ciento cincuenta y ocho (158) en el Barrio Hato Rey de! Municipio de San Juan, Puerto Rico. El apartamento tiene un área superficial aproximada de dos mil trescientos diez (2,310.00) pies cuadrados, equivalentes a doscientos catorce punto sesenta y ocho (214.68) metros cuadrados. En el primen nivel tiene un área de mil doscientos treinta y ocho punto catorce (1,238.14) pies cuadrados, equivalentes a ciento quince punto cero siete (115.07) metros cuadrados y colinda por el NORTE, con pared exterior del edificio y el patio Norte; por el SUR, con el número mil seiscientos cuatro (1604), las escaleras y el recibidor del piso; por el ESTE, con la pared exterior y el pario Este del edificio; y por el OESTE, con el número mil seiscientos dos (1602) y las escaleras del edificio. Consiste de recibidor, tres habitaciones con su guardarropa, dos baños, salón de estar, pasillo interior con su guardarropa y escalera interior de acceso al segundo nivel. La entrada de este primer nivel está localizada hacia el Sur y da al vestíbulo o pasillo de escaleras y ascensores del piso que conduce a los patios del edificio y a la vía pública. En el segundo nivel tiene un área aproximadamente de mil setenta y uno punto sesenta y nueve (1,071.69) pies cuadrados, equivalentes a noventa y nueve punto sesenta y un (99.61) metros cuadrados, y colinda por el NORTE, con la pared exterior del edificio y el patio Norte; SUR, con el número mil seiscientos cuatro 1604), las escaleras y el recibidor del piso; por el ESTE, con la terraza descubierta de uso común limitado a este apartamento; y por el OESTE, con el número mil seiscientos dos (1602) y las es-

caleras del edificio. Consta de recibidor, sala, salón familiar, comedor, cocina-lavandería, terraza cubierta, powder room”, “bar” y escalera interior al primer nivel. La entrada de este segundo nivel está localizada hacia al Sur y da al vestíbulo o pasillo de escaleras y ascensores del piso que conducen a los patios del edificio y a la vía pública. A este apartamento le corresponde como uso limitado los estacionamientos enumerados noventa y uno (91) y setenta y tres (73), así como las jardineras que le sirven exclusivamente para esos propósitos y una terraza al descubierto en segundo nivel, la cual incluye un dosel. Le corresponde además un derecho conjunto de copropiedad sobre los elementos comunes equivalentes a punto cero dos ocho siete por ciento (.0287%).” Consta inscrita al folio 111 del tomo 1,321 de Río Piedras Norte, fmca número 36,529), Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección Segunda (II) de San Juan. Se le emplaza y se le notifica que debe contestar la demanda dentro del término de treinta (30) días a partir de la publicación del presente edicto. Deberá presentar ía contestación a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: https://unired.ramajucial.pr/ sumac, salvo cp.ie se represente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentarla ante el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de San Juan, con copia a la abogada de la parte demandante a la siguiente dirección:

LCDA. MAGALY RODRÍGUEZ BATISTA

RUA #7821 PO Box 9024082 San Juan, PR 00902 4082

Tel: (787) 504-4801

Fax: 1 (888) 224-3201

Se le apercibe que, de no contestar la demanda en el término aquí establecido, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia concediendo el remedio solicitado, sin más citarle ni oírle. Expido este edicto bajo mi firma y sello de este Tribunal, hoy 11 de mayo de 2023. Griselda Rodriguez Collado, Secretaria Re-

Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company changed its legal name to Empower Annuity Insurance Company effective October 3, 2022.

Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company cambió su nombre legal a Empower Annuity Insurance Company a partir del 3 de octubre de 2022.

PIÑEIRO T/C/C MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES PLUGUEZ

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO

DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU-

NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA

SALA DE TOA BAJA

FINANCE OF AMERICA

REVERSE, LLC

Demandante Vs.

SUCESIÓN DE ÁNGEL

LUIS LOZADA RAMÍREZ

T/C/C ÁNGEL L. LOZADA

RAMÍREZ T/C/C ÁNGEL

LOZADA RAMÍREZ T/C/C

ANGEL LUIS LOZADA

T/C/C ÁNGEL L. LOZADA

T/C/C ÁNGEL LOZADA

COMPUESTA POR MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES

PLUGUES PIÑEIRO

T/C/C MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES PLUGUEZ

PIÑEIRO T/C/C MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES PLUGUEZ

PINERO T/C/C MARÍA

PLUGUEZ DELOZADA

T/C/C MARÍA PLUGUEZ DE LOZADA T/C/C MARÍA

PLUGUEZ T/C/C MARÍA A.

PLUGUEZ PINEIRO T/C/C MARÍA A. PLUGUEZ, JUAN CARLOS

LOZADA PLUGUES, MARÍA LOZADA, FULANO DE TAL Y

SUTANO DE TAL COMO

POSIBLES HEREDEROS DE NOMBRE DESCONOCIDO; MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES PLUGUES PIÑEIRO

T/C/C MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES PLUGUEZ

PIÑEIRO T/C/C MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES PLUGUEZ

PINERO T/C/C MARÍA

PLUGUEZ DELOZADA

T/C/C MARÍA PLUGUEZ DE LOZADA T/C/C MARÍA

PLUGUEZ T/C/C MARÍA

A. PLUGUEZ PINEIRO

T/C/C MARÍA A. PLUGUEZ

POR SÍ; CENTRO DE RECAUDACIÓN DE

INGRESOS MUNICIPALES

Y LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA

Demandados

Civil Núm.: TB2023CV00045.

Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA - IN REA (HIPOTECA REVERTIDA). EMPLA-

ZAMIENTO POR EDICTO.

ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.

A: MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES PLUGUES

PIÑEIRO T/C/C MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES PLUGUEZ

PINERO T/C/C MARÍA

PLUGUEZ DELOZADA

T/C/C MARÍA PLUGUEZ DE LOZADA T/C/C

MARÍA PLUGUEZ T/C/C

MARÍA A. PLUGUEZ

PINEIRO T/C/C MARÍA

A. PLUGUEZ, FULANO DE TAL Y SUTANO DE TAL COMO MIEMBROS DE NOMBRES

DESCONOCIDOS DE LA SUCESIÓN DE ÁNGEL

LUIS LOZADA RAMÍREZ

T/C/C ÁNGEL L. LOZADA

RAMÍREZ T/C/C ÁNGEL

LOZADA RAMÍREZ T/C/C

ANGEL LUIS LOZADA

T/C/C ÁNGEL L. LOZADA

T/C/C ÁNGEL LOZADA; Y MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES

PINGUES PIÑEIRO T/C/C

MARÍA DE LOS ANGELES

PLUGUEZ PIÑEIRO T/C/C

MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES

PLUGUEZ PINERO

T/C/C MARÍA PLUGUEZ

DELOZADA T/C/C MARÍA

PLUGUEZ DE LOZADA

T/C/C MARÍA PLUGUEZ

T/C/C MARÍA A. PLUGUEZ

PINEIRO T/C/C MARÍA A.

PLUGUEZ POR SÍ.

POR LA PRESENTE, se les emplaza y se les notifica que se ha presentado en la Secretaria de este Tribunal la Demanda del caso del epígrafe solicitando la ejecución de hipoteca y el cobro de dinero relacionado al pagaré suscrito a favor de The Money House, Inc., o a su orden, por la suma principal de $225,000.00, con intereses computados sobre la misma desde su fecha hasta su total y completo pago a razón de la tasa de interés de 5.560% anual, la cual será ajustada mensualmente, obligándose además al pago de costas, gastos y desembolsos del litigio, más honorarios de abogados en una suma de $22,500.00, equivalente al 10% de la suma principal original. Este pagaré fue suscrito bajo el affidávit número 5512 ante el notario Rosa E. Permuy Calderón Lo anterior surge de la hipoteca constituida mediante la escritura número 54 otorgada el 14 de marzo de 2014, ante la misma notario público, inscrita bajo la ley 216-2010, inscrita al folio 158 del tomo 730 de Toa Baja, finca número 8,414, inscripción 10ma. URBANA: Solar número siete del Bloque “CM” en el Barrio Sabana Seca de Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, con un área de trescientos diez metros cuadrados con cincuenta centímetros cuadrados, en lindes por el NORTE, en trece metros cincuenta centímetros, con el

solar número diez; por el SUR, en trece metros cincuenta centímetros, con la Calle Doctor Salvador Carbonell (según Plano Calle quinientos veinticinco); por el ESTE, en veintitrés metros, con el solar número seis; por el OESTE, en veintitrés metros, con el solar número ocho. Finca número 8,414, inscrita al folio 227 del tomo 137 de Toa Baja. Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección II de Bayamón. Se apercibe y advierte a ustedes como personas desconocidas, que deberá presentar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Administración y Manejo de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede accesar utilizando la siguiente dirección: https://unired.ramajuducial.pr, salvo que se represente por Derechos Propio, en cuyo caso deberá presentar su alegación responsiva en la secretaria del Tribunal De no contestar la demanda radicando el original de la contestación ante la secretaria del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de San Juan, y notificar copia de la contestación de esta a la parte demandante por conducto de su abogada, GLS LEGAL SERVICES, LLC, Atención:

Lcda. Yadira López González

Dirección: P.O. Box 367308, San Juan, P.R. 00936-7308, Teléfono: 787-758-6550, dentro de los próximos 60 días a partir de la publicación de este emplazamiento por edicto, que será publicado una sola vez en un periódico de circulación diaria general en la isla de Puerto Rico, se le anotará la rebeldía y se dictará sentencia, concediendo el remedio solicitando en la Demanda sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal hoy 16 de mayo de 2023. LCDA. LAURA

I. SANTA SÁNCHEZ, SECRETARIA REGIONAL. NEREIDA QUILES SANTANA, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA REGION JUDICIAL DE CAGUAS SALA DE SAN LORENZO.

Finance of America

Reverse, LLC

DEMANDANTE VS.

Sucesión de Carmen

Lydia Aponte Martínez, t/c/c Carmen Nidia Aponte

Martínez, t/c/c Carmen

Lidia Aponte Martínez, t/c/c Carmen Aponte, t/c/c

Carmen Aponte Martínez, t/c/c Carmen Lidia Aponte compuesta por Junior Vázquez; Carlos Vázquez; Caralina Vázquez; Caroline Vázquez, Fulano de Tal, Sutano de Tal;

Centro de Recaudación de Ingresos Municipales; y a los Estados Unidos de América

DEMANDADOS

CIVIL NÚM.: SL2022CV00152.

SOBRE: Ejecución de Hipoteca

In Rem. EDICTO DE SUBASTA.

Al: Público en General A: SUCESIÓN DE CARMEN LYDIA APONTE MARTÍNEZ, T/C/C CARMEN NIDIA APONTE MARTÍNEZ, T/C/C CARMEN LIDIA APONTE MARTÍNEZ, T/C/C CARMEN APONTE, T/C/C CARMEN APONTE MARTÍNEZ, T/C/C CARMEN LIDIA APONTE COMPUESTA POR JUNIOR VÁZQUEZ; CARLOS VÁZQUEZ; CARALINA VÁZQUEZ; CAROLINE VÁZQUEZ, FULANO DE TAL, SUTANO DE TAL; CENTRO DE RECAUDACIÓN DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES; Y A LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA

Yo, Alejandro Urbina Roque, Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala de Caguas, a los demandados, acreedores y al público en general con interés sobre la propiedad que más adelante se describe, y al público en general, por la presente CERTIFICO, ANUNCIO y HAGO CONSTAR: Que el día 20 de junio de 2023, a las 10:15 en mi oficina, sita en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Caguas, Caguas, Puerto Rico, procederé a vender en Pública Subasta, al mejor postor, la propiedad inmueble que más adelante se describe y cuya venta en pública subasta se ordenó por la vía ordinaria mediante Sentencia dictada en el caso de epígrafe, la cual se notificó y archivó en autos el día 27 de febrero de 2023. Los autos y todos los documentos correspondientes al procedimiento incoado, estarán de manifiesto en la Secretaría durante horas laborables. Que en caso de no producir remate ni adjudicación en la primera subasta a celebrarse, se celebrará una segunda subasta para la venta de la susodicha propiedad, el 27 de junio de 2023, a las 10:15; y en caso de no producir remate ni adjudicación, se celebrará una tercera subasta el día 6 de julio de 2023, a las 10:15 en mi oficina sita en el lugar antes indicado. Que en cumplimiento de un Mandamiento de Ejecución de Sentencia que ha sido liberado por la Secretaría del Tribunal de

Primera Instancia, Sala Superior de Caguas, en el caso de epígrafe con fecha de 15 de mayo de 2023, procederé a vender en pública subasta y al mejor postor, todo derecho, título e interés que tenga la parte demandada de epígrafe en el inmueble que se describe a continuación: RÚSTICA: Lote

A: Predio de terreno de una cabida de 1,056.8013 metros cuadrados, el cual radica en el Barrio Cerro Gordo de San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, en lindes por el NORTE, con el camino municipal, en una distancia de 49.86 metros; por el SUR, con la finca principal y Anastacio Calderón, en una distancia de 25.32 metros; por el ESTE, con Salomé Lai, en una distancia de 25.32 metros; y por el OESTE, con la finca principal, en una distancia de 47.69 metros. Finca Número 14,119, inscrita al folio 209 del tomo 278 de San Lorenzo. Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección II de Caguas. Dirección de la Propiedad: Lot A SR 916 Km 4.9 Cerro Gordo Ward, San lorenzo PR 00754. La subasta se llevará a cabo para satisfacer, hasta donde alcance, el importe de las cantidades adeudadas a la parte demandante conforme a la sentencia dictada a su favor, a saber: de $ de $86,446.01, de principal, más intereses acumulados al tipo de 3.156% anual, cual acumula a un total de $96,816.00 a la fecha de 27 de septiembre de 2021 y que continúan acumulándose hasta su total y completo pago, más la cantidad de $23,100.00 equivalente al 10% de la suma principal original pactada, estipulada para costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado; más recargos acumulados hasta la fecha en que se pague la deuda; más cualquiera suma de dinero por concepto de contribuciones, primas de seguro hipotecario y riesgo, así como cualesquiera otras sumas pactadas en la escritura de hipoteca, todas cuyas sumas están líquidas y exigibles. La hipoteca a ejecutarse en el caso de epígrafe fue constituida mediante la escritura número 29 otorgada el día 7 de marzo de 2014, Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, ante el Notario Público Jose Garcia Noya y consta inscrita al tomo Karibe de San Lorenzo, finca número 14,119, Registro de la Propiedad de San Lorenzo, Sección II de Caguas. Por la presente se notifica a los acreedores que tengan inscritos o anotados sus derechos sobre los bienes hipotecados con posterioridad a la inscripción del crédito del ejecutante o acreedores de cargos o derechos reales que los hubiesen pospuesto a la hipoteca del actor y a los dueños, poseedores, tenedores de o interesados en

títulos transmisibles por endoso o al portador garantizados hipotecariamente con posterioridad al crédito del actor que se celebrarán las subastas en las fechas, horas y sitios señalados para que puedan concurrir a la subasta si les conviniere o se les invita a satisfacer antes del remate el importe del crédito, de sus intereses, otros cargos y las costas y honorarios de abogado asegurados quedando subrogados en los derechos del acreedor ejecutante. Entiéndase: Hipoteca revertida en garantía de un pagaré a favor de The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, o a su orden, por la suma principal de $187,500.00, con intereses al 3.156% anual, vencedero el día 6 de diciembre de 2088, constituida mediante la escritura número 30, otorgada en Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, el día 7 de marzo de 2014, ante el notario José García Noya, e inscrita al tomo Karibe de San Lorenzo, finca número 14,119, inscripción 5ta. Que la cantidad mínima de licitación en la primera subasta del inmueble antes descrito será la suma de $187,500.00 según se establece en la escritura de hipoteca antes relacionada. En caso de que el inmueble a ser subastado no fuera adjudicado en su primera subasta se ordena la celebración de una segunda subasta de dicho inmueble, en la cual, la cantidad mínima será una equivalente a 2/3 parte de aquella, o sea la suma de $125,000.00; desierta también la segunda subasta de dicho inmueble, se ordena la celebración de una tercera subasta en la cual, la cantidad mínima será la mitad del precio pactado para la primera subasta, es decir la suma de $93,750.00. La propiedad se adjudicará al mejor postor, quien deberá satisfacer el importe de su oferta en moneda legal y corriente de los Estados Unidos de América en el momento de la adjudicación, entiéndase efectivo, giro postal o cheque certificado a nombre del Alguacil del Tribunal de Primera Instancia, y que las cargas y gravámenes preferentes, si los hubiese, al crédito del ejecutante continuarán subsistentes, entendiéndose que el rematante los acepta y queda subrogado en la responsabilidad de los mismos, sin destinarse a su extinción el precio del remate. La propiedad no está sujeta a gravámenes anteriores y/o preferentes según surge de las constancias del Registro de la Propiedad en un estudio de título efectuado a la finca antes descrita. Una vez efectuada la venta de dicha propiedad, el Alguacil procederá a otorgar la escritura de traspaso al licitador victorioso en subasta, quien podrá ser la par-

te demandante, cuya oferta podrá aplicarse a la extinción parcial o total de la obligación reconocida por la sentencia dictada en este caso. La propiedad a ser ejecutada se adquirirá libre de cargas y gravámenes posteriores. Si el producto de la venta fuere insuficiente para satisfacer la cantidad reclamada, se procederá a la ejecución de la sentencia en contra de la parte demandada por el remanente de las sumas no satisfechas, mediante embargo y venta en ejecución de cualesquiera otros bienes propiedad de la parte demandada en cantidad suficiente para dejar cubierta y totalmente satisfecha a la parte demandante cualquier deficiencia o parte insoluta de la sentencia dictada a su favor según dispuesto en la sentencia dictada en este caso. Se dispone, conforme con la sentencia dictada en este caso que, una vez efectuada la subasta y vendido el bien inmueble, los adjudicatarios sean puestos en posesión del mismo dentro del término de veinte (20) días por el Alguacil de este Honorable Tribunal y los actuales poseedores lanzados del referido inmueble. Y para la concurrencia de licitadores y para el público en general, se publicará este Edicto de acuerdo con la ley, mediante edicto, en un periódico de circulación general en el Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, una vez por semana, por espacio de dos (2) semanas consecutivas con un intervalo de por lo menos siete (7) días entre ambas publicaciones, y para su fijación en tres (3) lugares públicos del municipio en que ha de celebrarse la venta, tales como la Alcaldía, el Tribunal y la Colecturía, y se le notificará además a la parte demandada vía correo certificado con acuse de recibo a la última dirección conocida. EN TESTIMONIO DE LO CUAL, expido el presente Edicto de Subasta para conocimiento y comparecencia de los licitadores, bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal, en Caguas, Puerto Rico, a 18 de mayo de 2023.

Alejandro Urbina Roque, ALGUACIL, TRIBUNAL DE PRI-

MERA INSTANCIA SALA DE CAGUAS.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA

TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE CAROLINA

WILMINGTON SAVINGS FUND SOCIETY, FSB, NOT INDIVIDUALLY BUT SOLELY AS TRUSTEE FOR FINANCE OF AMERICA STRUCTURED SECURITIES

ACQUISITION TRUST 2019-HB1 Demandante V. SUCESIÓN IVETTE MARGARITA TORRES ESPINOSA T/C/C IVETTE TORRES ESPINOSA T/C/C IVETTE TORRES

T/C/C IVETTE M. TORRES ESPINOSA COMPUESTA POR IRMA AMARILYS BERMUDEZ TORRES, JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE COMO POSIBLES HEREDEROS DESCONOCIDOS, ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA, CENTRO DE RECAUDACION DE INGRESOS MUNICIPALES

Demandado(a)

Civil: CA2022CV00973. 401. Sobre: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. A: IVETTE MARGARITA TORRES ESPINOSA, IRMA AMARILYS BERMUDEZ TORRES, JOHN DOE Y JANE DOE COMO MIEMBROS DE LA SUCESIÓN IVETTE MARGARITA TORRES ESPINOSA T/C/C IVETTE TORRES ESPINOSA

T/C/C IVETTE TORRES T/C/C IVETTE M. TORRES ESPINOSA. (Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 15 de mayo de 2023, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 15 de mayo de 2023. En Carolina, Puerto Rico, el 15 de mayo de 2023. MARILYN APONTE RODRÍGUEZ, SECRETARIA. KEILA GARCÍA SOLÍS, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR.

gional. f/Linda-Levy Rodríguez, Secretaria de Servicios a Sala.

A Baffert horse wins the Preakness on the same day that another is fatally injured

By JOE DRAPE

Bob Baffert, the most accomplished and controversial horse trainer in America, returned to the Triple Crown trail Saturday and watched his colt National Treasure win the 148th running of the Preakness Stakes. The victory came after Baffert’s twoyear ban from the sport’s premier stage because of a doping violation, and hours after another one of his horses died competing in an undercard race at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore.

It was the kind of afternoon that makes many Americans wonder how long America’s oldest sport can continue to have its social license renewed.

Earlier in the afternoon, another of Baffert’s 3-year-old colts, Havnameltdown, buckled around the far turn in the $200,000 Chick Lang Stakes, tumbled to the ground and unseated his rider Luis Sáez.

In a grim scene that recalled the seven horses that died in the days leading to the Kentucky Derby, veterinarians swarmed to the distressed colt, erected a screen so the crowd on hand and television watchers could not look on, and euthanized him by injection.

About five hours later, a jubilant Baffert was fighting back tears as he talked about National Treasure, who edged out Blazing Sevens by a head. Kentucky Derby winner Mage, compromised by a slow pace, finished third.

The victory was Baffert’s eighth in the second leg of the Triple Crown, breaking a record by R. Wyndham Walden, a trainer of the late 19th century. It was the first Preakness win for Hall of Fame rider John Velázquez, a glaring hole in a résumé filled with marquee wins.

“This business is twists and turns, ups and downs,” Baffert said after National Treasure won. “Losing that horse today really hurt. I’m very happy for Johnny that he got the win. It’s been a very emotional day.”

National Treasure covered the 1 3/16 miles in 1 minute, 55.12 seconds and rewarded his backers with $7.80 on a $2 bet to win in the $1.65 million race.

“Gosh, it’s been awhile,” Velázquez said of his long-sought victory. “With all the blessings that I’ve had and all the success I’ve had in other races, not having won this one was definitely missing.”

Baffert, 70, trained Medina Spirit, who won the 2021 Kentucky Derby but failed a test for a prohibited drug, becoming only the sec-

ond horse in the Derby’s history to have his victory revoked because of a drug violation. The colt died suddenly the following December, possibly from a heart attack. A necropsy conducted by California state veterinarians was inconclusive.

Baffert, a two-time Triple Crown winner, has since served a suspension handed down by Kentucky regulators and a two-year ban from the Derby and its host, Churchill Downs. Last year, Baffert was serving his Kentucky suspension during the Triple Crown, so the racing commissions in Maryland and New York kept him from the Preakness and the Belmont.

His triumphant return to Pimlico was marred by the death of Havnameltdown. The horse was euthanized by veterinarians on the racetrack after being examined by a team led by Dr. Dionne Benson, chief veterinary officer for the company that owns Pimlico.

“During the subsequent evaluation, she observed a non-operable left fore fetlock injury,” the company, the Stronach Group, said in a statement, referring to a joint in the horse’s foreleg. “Due to the severity and prognosis of the injury, Dr. Benson and her counterparts made the difficult decision to humanely euthanize Havnameltdown.”

Sáez, Havnameltdown’s rider, was transported to Sinai Hospital in Baltimore after complaining of leg pain. He was in stable condition and conscious, according to the company.

Velázquez, the Hall of Famer who rode National Treasure, said he was rocked by the death on the racetrack.

“Truthfully, it felt like a knife to my heart when I saw it,” Velázquez said of the injuries to the horse and his counterpart, Sáez. “It’s devastating when you see it. It’s hard to stay focused and keep going.”

After the deaths at Churchill Downs before the Kentucky Derby, Preakness officials took a cautious approach to pre-race examinations. First Mission, the 5-2 second choice

in the morning line, was scratched from the race early Friday morning with an unspecified left hind-ankle injury.

The extra scrutiny was extended to every horse competing over the weekend. Officials required two veterinary authorizations before a horse was allowed to run — one from the trainer’s private vet, the other from the regulatory vet in the state where the horse was stabled before coming to Baltimore.

Stronach Group officials declined to comment about how Havnameltdown was cleared to run in the race despite the extra evaluation.

Baffert, too, had no explanation.

“It’s the worst feeling,” Baffert said Saturday. “And we grieve. We do grieve when these things happen. There’s nothing worse than coming back and the stall is empty.”

Animal rights activists blamed the sport’s owners and trainers for a lackadaisical effort to protect horses.

They pointed to the opposition of horsemen’s groups to the newly minted Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, created by Congress under the supervision of the Federal Trade Commission, which will become the ruling body of the sport today.

Kathy Guillermo, a senior vice president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said the drug violations and fatalities among horses in Baffert’s care demanded greater scrutiny.

“Pimlico should have followed Churchill Downs’ example and barred Bob Baffert from the track,” she said.

National Treasure, ridden by the jockey John Velázquez, kept a slim lead the whole race.

Jim Brown piled up yards, but never wavered an inch

By KEN BELSON and JENNY VRENTAS

Afew days before Super Bowl X in 1976, some of the NFL’s biggest stars mingled at a private party at a nightclub in Miami. Chuck Foreman, then a fearsome running back with the Minnesota Vikings, remembered rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest stars of the time at the position, including Walter Payton and O.J. Simpson.

Then he sat down with Jim Brown, the greatest running back of them all, who had left the Cleveland Browns a decade before. Foreman, who rolled over linebackers and cornerbacks for a living, recalled that he was intimidated. He grew up idolizing Brown not just for his prowess on the field, but for his willingness to fight for civil rights and to walk away from the game at the peak of his powers.

“When I was growing up, there was Jim Brown, Jim Brown and Jim Brown,” said Foreman, now 72. “He was bigger than most linemen and faster than most wide receivers. But he also left on his own terms, especially back in those days, being an outspoken Black man.”

Foreman, like many others, called him Mr. Brown. But as they talked, the younger running back’s fears dissolved. Brown complimented Foreman’s style of play and his success with the Vikings. Then he gave Foreman some advice that has stuck ever since.

“‘Know when to go down,’” Foreman said Brown told him. “‘Don’t jeopardize your career over 2 inches.’”

Brown, Foreman said, wasn’t just telling him to run smart, he was telling him to think about his future and not sacrifice his body needlessly.

Though he didn’t say it, Brown, who died Friday at 87, could have also

been talking about life outside of football. In a game with a 100% injury rate, few NFL players leave because they want to. Most wind up with injuries that never heal and are ushered out of the game once their utility to coaches is gone. Those who retire when they want to often do so because teams are not interested anymore.

Brown was the opposite. He left the NFL after the 1965 season, his ninth in the league and one of his best. He ran for 1,544 yards and 17 rushing touchdowns, and caught 34 passes, four of them for scores. He was voted the league’s MVP for the first time since his second season.

His rushing records — most notably his 12,312 yards on the ground — were eventually broken by Payton, Barry Sanders, Emmitt Smith and others. But Brown’s career lasted just nine years and he played in the era of 14game seasons, not 16 or 17, and when chop blocks and other dangerous tackles were allowed. His 104.3 rushing yards per game average still stands as a league record.

Then he walked away, opting to pursue a Hollywood career making

movies and more money than in Cleveland. His breaking point came when he was filming “The Dirty Dozen.” Brown told Art Modell, the team’s owner, that he would be late to training camp. Modell said he would fine Brown for every day he missed camp. Offended, Brown called a news conference to announce that he was leaving the NFL.

By that point, Brown had accomplished more in football than many do in much longer careers, including winning a league title in 1964, three MVP awards, and owning the NFL’s career rushing record. But only a handful went out on top. John Elway and Peyton Manning won Super Bowls in their last seasons, but both were no longer in their prime. Sanders retired from the Detroit Lions when he was just 30, but won just one playoff game.

Brown, on the other hand, was a kind of Mount Rushmore figure, a running back of stature who helped redefine the power an athlete could have on and off the field by demanding that owners and coaches treat players — particularly Black players — with respect.

“You can make a case that Wilt Chamberlain was his own man in bas-

ketball, but Jim Brown would have been the first pro football player in the modern era to have that kind of presence and sway,” said Michael MacCambridge, author of “America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation.” “It was clear that Jim Brown was a different generation of player with a different mindset.”

Players who came after him knew about that difference.

“There isn’t a man who played running back in the NFL who didn’t see Jim Brown as an iconic legend on and off the field,” Tony Dorsett, one of 10 running backs to surpass Brown’s total rushing yards, wrote on Twitter.

“You can’t underestimate the impact #JimBrown had on the @NFL,” Sanders also wrote on Twitter.

As exceptional as he was on the field, Brown was far from a perfect human being. He was arrested more than a half-dozen times, including for multiple accusations of violence against women. He was never convicted of a major crime.

But when it came to the sport that made him famous, Brown had few equals. Ernie Accorsi, the Browns general manager from 1985-92, was in high school when he saw Brown play in person against the Baltimore Colts in 1959. Brown ran for five touchdowns and 178 yards to beat the defending champions and, to Accorsi, it felt like watching Babe Ruth in his prime.

Years later, Accorsi worked in the Colts’ front office alongside Dick Szymanski, who had been Baltimore’s middle linebacker in that game in 1959.

Szymanski told Accorsi that Weeb Ewbank, the Colts’ head coach at the time, had advised that Brown was tipping his plays: When Brown lined up with his right hand in the dirt, he was running right, and vice versa.

Brown still ran all over Szymanski, and in the locker room after the game, Ewbank told Szymanski that he hated to think what Brown’s rushing totals would have been if he hadn’t given Szymanski the tips.

“Coach, I knew exactly where he was going, but I couldn’t catch him or tackle him,” Szymanski replied.

In Brown’s illustrious career, few could.

Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown (32) with the football in a game against the New York Giants at Yankee Stadium, in New York, Dec. 18, 1960. In the fraternity of NFL standouts, Brown was revered for his dominance on the field and for his willingness to walk away on his own terms.

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Aries (Mar 21-April 20)

Everyone needs to be loved, Aries, but it shouldn’t be your only objective in life. It isn’t the end of the world if your charms fall flat every once in a while. Today you may be tempted to be a little less charming and seductive with the people around you. Some may even say you aren’t acting like your usual self. Ignore them. A little selfindulgence now and then never hurt anyone.

Taurus (April 21-May 21)

There are days when a little humility can be good for you, Taurus, and this might be one of those days. It’s as if the planets are talking to you about sincerity and taking you far away from the trappings of superficiality and popularity. The things that are important to you today are much deeper concepts of humanity and compassion.

Gemini (May 22-June 21)

Your fiery willpower can help you move mountains, Gemini. But you already know that. When it’s combined with your legendary optimism, it’s a powerful tool you just can’t do without. Today you will reap the rewards for your hard work over the last month, in every aspect of your life. The fire that burns inside you and gives you your incredible determination has its limits. Don’t misuse it.

Cancer (June 22-July 23)

Today could discourage even the most ardent of passions, Cancer. Even if some people say you’re a bit cold, know that there’s a veritable volcano burning underneath all that ice. Today you may once again find yourself at a distance from your feelings, as if you were regaining control over your emotions. Be careful about being too cynical about things.

Leo (July 24-Aug 23)

Leo, you should try to be tolerant of other people’s social and political positions. You may have to deal with certain people whose personal plans are jeopardized by events beyond their control. Don’t judge them. Don’t immediately defend one viewpoint without thinking how the situation affects the other person’s life.

Virgo (Aug 24-Sep 23)

This is a day for doubts, for asking those hard questions that you need to answer. If you like to meditate, Virgo, think about spending a little more time at it today. You could learn a lot about yourself. You will see the whole palette of human emotion in other people, from joy to disappointment. Where do you fit in?

Libra (Sep 24-Oct 23)

It may seem that you’ve been accumulating a lot of excess nervous tension and stress, Libra. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to count on the people around you to make it any better. What your partner wants and what you want may not coincide. It could be time to think about reenergizing your relationship. How about planning a weekend away for just the two of you?

Scorpio (Oct 24-Nov 22)

You may feel physical and emotional tension today, Scorpio. Are you taking the time to care for your body? Has someone been putting a lot of pressure on you lately? Are you an emotionally satisfied person? The way you feel physically is a good indicator of your mental state. Try to go a little easier on yourself and you will see immediate benefits..

Sagittarius (Nov 23-Dec 21)

People love to be with you because you have such natural charm, Sagittarius. But today you may not feel especially charming or like talking to anyone. You may have a secret inside that’s screaming to get out. If someone confides in you today, do you think you could confide in him or her, too? You should get an answer to that question today.

Capricorn (Dec 22-Jan 20)

Your partner may be all over you today, Capricorn! Are you in the mood to listen? Are you interested in some love? Probably not. You may have had a hard day and just feel like some quiet time together. You aren’t up to the demands your partner may make on you. You don’t need to worry about it. It happens to everyone from time to time.

Aquarius (Jan 21-Feb 19)

You’re often moved by emotion, Aquarius. You like situations that make you feel alive. Today your love life may give you just that kind of adventurous feeling. If that’s the case, don’t get so far into your emotions that it becomes too much for you. There is such a concept as too much of a good thing!

Pisces (Feb 20-Mar 20)

You’re a helpful person, Pisces, yet in your relationships, you often seem to confuse helping with parenting. You tend to do a lot of self-sacrificing. Today you may learn how to say no when you feel your partner has gone beyond the limits of what you can give. If you do this, you may rediscover something essential you may have lost along the way - your ego.

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