‘It’s a Matter of Professional Conduct’
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.
By THE STAR STAFF
uring a public Senate hearing Wednesday, Office of Government Ethics Executive Director Luis Pérez Vargas said the appointments of Verónica Ferraiouli Hornedo as secretary of state and her husband, La Fortaleza Chief of Staff Francisco Domenech, may raise “an inappropriate work issue” but do not pose a conflict of interest under current law.
Pérez Vargas noted that Section 4.4 of the Ethics in Government Act prohibits conflicts of interest involving relatives, but clarified that this does not apply in this case, as neither official is related to Gov. Jenniffer González Colón. He emphasized the need for proper restraint mechanisms to prevent situations that could benefit third parties.
“It’s not a legal prohibition. The law permits it,” Pérez Vargas during a committee of the whole evaluation of Ferraiouli’s appointment. “In Puerto Rico, perceptions often collide, and we are held to a higher standard. If you find yourself constantly having to explain your decisions, it may be time to reconsider. It could appear inappropriate,” Pérez Vargas stated.
Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz pressed Pérez Vargas for a specific stance on how the marriage situation might be perceived publicly.
“The law allows it … but in this context, it could look inappropriate,” Pérez Vargas ultimately responded after pressure from the veteran legislator. “It’s a matter of professional conduct.”
In response to questions from Sen. Gregorio Matías Rosario, Pérez Vargas reiterated that a direct conflict of interest would not occur as long as their positions are not used for personal gain. He further clarified that the Government Ethics Office does not have auditors on-site to monitor disqualification mechanisms and can only intervene if formal requests for investigations are made.
By THE STAR STAFF
Rep. Víctor Parés Otero, chairman of the Government Committee in the island House of Representatives, said Wednesday he would be sending a request for information to LUMA Energy LLC, the company in charge of Puerto Rico’s electricity transmission and distribution network, regarding the total blackout that occurred last week.
In a letter sent to the LUMA President and CEO Juan Saca, the San Juan District 4 lawmaker said “as part of the responsible and transparent oversight work carried out by the Government Committee [...] on the reconstruction and modernization of the energy transmission and distribution infrastructure, we are evaluating the chronology and failures in backup platforms, among others, associated with the total interruption of electrical service that occurred at 12:38 p.m. on April 16, 2025.”
Among the required documentation is the Vegetation Clearance Plan for the six regions that make up the transmission and distribution network, as well as the funds allocated by region and a detail of the disbursements related to those items, all original cost estimates submitted by LUMA Energy
to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as those approved by that federal agency for, but not limited to, the maintenance and replacement of substations, internal and external cabling, feeders, switches and telecommunications equipment, and all contracts awarded by LUMA Energy since 2021, by service regions, for the removal of vegetative material.
“It is imperative that this information be received by our Committee within the next 10 calendar days, without excuse,” Parés stated in the letter.
By THE STAR STAFF
Mayor Jorge Ramos welcomed Resident Commissioner Pablo José Hernández Rivera to Mayagüez city hall on Wednesday, where Puerto Rico’s non-voting member of Congress learned firsthand about the projects promoted with federal funds that, due to the cuts proposed by President Donald Trump, could be at risk.
“We welcomed Commissioner Hernández Rivera with the hope that, together, we can ensure the continuity of the initiatives we are leading for the well-being of our communities,” the mayor stated in a press release. “It is essential that the federal government recognize the positive impact of these programs and avoid cuts that would jeopardize the future of hundreds of Puerto Rican families.”
Economic development and the projects underway in the island’s main western city were a running theme of the meeting.
During a meeting with Resident Commissioner Pablo José Hernández Rivera, Mayagüez Mayor Jorge Ramos and his team outlined their greatest concerns, placing particular emphasis on the possible elimination of funding for the Head Start program.
“Visiting Mayagüez and hearing directly from Mayor Jorge Ramos and his team about the challenges they face confirms what we already know: federal funding is vital to the development of our communities,” Hernández Rivera said. “Programs like Head Start not only benefit our children, but also strengthen the social and economic fabric of the entire region. In Washington, I will spare no effort to defend these resources and ensure that Puerto Rico’s future does not fall victim to unjustified cuts.”
During the meeting, the mayor and his team outlined their greatest concerns, placing particular emphasis on the possible elimination of funding for the Head Start program. Currently, the municipal Head Start Program serves an enrollment of 526 children in 35 preschools located in Mayagüez, Añasco,
Las Marías and Maricao. The children depend on the nutrition, health and early stimulation services offered by Head Start to begin their educational life with the necessary tools.
“Head Start is not an expense: it’s an investment in Puerto Rico’s human capital,” Ramos said. “If this program is cut in our city, we would be depriving 526 children of the academic and emotional preparation they need to succeed.”
Ramos also emphasized that Mayagüez is in the final stages of construction of the largest Head Start Center in Puerto Rico, with an investment of more than $20 million.
“This center represents hope and development for our children,” he said. “Every dollar invested today translates into better-prepared citizens tomorrow. We cannot allow political decisions to halt this project, which symbolizes our commitment to the future of Puerto Rico.”
The mayor added that the resident commissioner’s “voice in Washington is key to protecting the resources our families so desperately need.”
“We will continue working hand in hand to defend every program that builds a future in our region,” Ramos said.
Island’s 8th femicide this year, followed by perpetrator’s suicide, reported in Hatillo
By THE STAR STAFF
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, a case of femicide followed by suicide was reported in a residence in Hatillo’s Vázquez sector, in the Buena Vista neighborhood, according to the Puerto Rico Police Bureau.
According to the authorities, the bodies of Eliset Torres Román, 51, and her partner Javier Soto Ruiz, 56, were found in a room of the residence. Torres Román had gunshot wounds, while Soto Ruiz took his life. A Taurus 9-millimeter caliber pistol was seized at the scene, for which Soto Ruiz had a license.
The case is being investigated by agent Obed Mercado, assigned to the Homicide Division of the Criminal Investigations Corps (CIC) of Arecibo, under the supervision of Lt. Francheska Barreto Ayende, and in coordination with prosecutors Ernesto Cabrera Lorenzo and Loures E. López Lugo.
Hatillo Mayor Carlos Román Román said “[t]he situation recorded this morning where a municipal employee of Public Works allegedly took his life and before did the same with his wife is an unfortunate and sad fact.”
“Hatillo is in mourning for what happened,” the mayor said. “I share the pain of both families and inform them that municipal personnel are taking steps to provide them with the
support and help they need to face the unfortunate event.”
Dr. Catherine Oliver Franco, who heads the Mental Health and Anti-Addiction Services Administration (ASSMCA), said she deeply regretted the crime. She noted that clinical personnel from the agency were activated to provide crisis intervention, trauma management and psychosocial support to family members, neighbors and people close to both the victim and the perpetrator.
The ASSMCA’s PAS Line is available 24/7 confidentially through 1-800-981-0023, 9-8-8, VRS service for the hearing-impaired at 787-615-4112 and online chat on lineapas. assmca.pr.gov.
By THE STAR STAFF
Women’s Advocate Astrid Piñeiro Vázquez revealed earlier this week that she was diagnosed with breast cancer and affirmed that her commitment to women is strengthened by this new stage in her life.
“Today I share a vulnerable part of my story, because I know I am not alone. I was diagnosed with breast cancer,” Piñeiro Vázquez said in a written statement. “And although fear knocks at the door, the strength of all the women who
fight and win sustains me.”
The official stated that, despite the diagnosis, her drive to continue comes from her daughter and her commitment to women facing similar situations.
“I don’t stop because seeing my daughter gives me more strength,” she said. “This new battle reaffirms my commitment to every woman who faces the unthinkable.”
The attorney general accompanied her remarks with a call for early detection and the importance of mammograms, using the hashtag “#HazteLaMamografía” as part of her message.
By ALAN FEUER
Afederal judge in Maryland blasted the Trump administration earlier this week for flouting her instructions to answer questions about what steps it had taken, and planned to take, in seeking the release of a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador last month.
The sharp rebuke by the judge, Paula Xinis, contained in an eight-page order, suggested she had lost her patience with the Justice Department’s pattern of stonewalling her in the case involving the deported man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
In her order, Xinis accused the department of “a willful and bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations.” She also dismissed as “specious” its attempts to evade providing information about how Abrego Garcia ended up in a Salvadoran prison by claiming that it amounted to privileged state secrets.
“For weeks, defendants have sought refuge behind vague and unsubstantiated assertions of privilege, using them as a shield to obstruct discovery and evade compliance with this court’s orders,” Xinis wrote, giving vent to her frustrations. “Defendants have known, at least since last week, that this court requires specific legal and factual showings to support any claim of privilege. Yet they have continued to rely on boilerplate assertions. That ends now.”
On Tuesday morning, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers wrote to Xinis, accusing the government of “producing nothing of substance” in response to a list of 15 questions and 15 requests for documents that they had given to the Justice Department in an effort to determine what, if anything, the White House had done to free Abrego Garcia from Salvadoran custody.
The lawyers asked the judge to hold a hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Maryland to decide how to proceed. But the judge, indicating that she had reached the
and bad faith’
for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was wrongly deported to a prison in the Central American country. (Daniele Volpe/The New York Times)
end of her rope, skipped past a courtroom conversation altogether and simply told the government what it had done wrong. She ordered the Justice Department to supply all the requested detail by 6 p.m. Wednesday or risk losing its claims of privilege.
The White House’s repeated resistance to court orders — not only in Abrego Garcia’s case, but in other legal proceedings as well — has edged the administration ever closer to an open showdown with the judicial branch in a way that could threaten the constitutional balance of power.
Trump officials have been threatened with criminal contempt proceedings in another deportation case in Washington involving scores of Venezuelan immigrants sent to El Salvador under the expansive powers of an 18th-century wartime statute called the Alien Enemies Act.
The administration is also facing judicial scrutiny into whether it violated a court order to pause mass firings at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Three courts — including the Supreme Court and the federal appeals court that sits over Xinis — have now told the Trump administration to “facilitate” the release of Abrego Garcia. They have also instructed the administration to devise a way of handling his case as it should
have been handled had the government not erroneously flown him to El Salvador on March 15 in violation of an earlier court order.
Remarkably, however, the Justice Department, in the court papers filed Tuesday morning, seemed not to understand those instructions — or perhaps was simply ignoring them. Several times, department lawyers said that they were refusing to answer questions about the case because they were “based on the false premise that the United States can or has been ordered to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador” — which is, of course, precisely what they had been told to do.
In her order, Xinis scoffed at what she called this “false premise objection,” chiding the Justice Department and the White House for having raised it in the first place.
“Defendants — and their counsel — well know that the falsehood lies not in any supposed ‘premise,’ but in their continued mischaracterization of the Supreme Court’s order,” she wrote.
President Donald Trump and several of his aides have accused Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old sheet metal worker who came to the United States illegally in 2012, of being a member of the violent street gang MS-13. The White House has often suggested that as an
alleged gang member, Abrego Garcia is not worthy of the typical protections of due process.
But Xinis called out the Justice Department for evading a question from Abrego Garcia’s lawyers asking it for proof about his membership in the gang and demanding that department lawyers provide it.
“Defendants cannot invoke the moniker of MS-13,” she wrote, “then object to follow-up interrogatories seeking the factual bases for the same.”
Xinis also took the department to task for summarily declaring that it would not discuss anything that happened in the case before April 4, when the judge issued an early order demanding that the White House do what it could to bring Abrego Garcia back.
That meant the lawyers were trying to place off limits any inquiry into who had authorized Abrego Garcia’s “initial placement” in a terrorism detention center known as CECOT or into the agreement the United States had reached with the Salvadoran government to house scores of other deported migrants at the facility.
Last week, after visiting Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said that Abrego Garcia had been moved from CECOT to a different prison. The Justice Department confirmed the move, giving no explanation for why it took place but noting, in a curious phrase, that Abrego Garcia was no longer in “a cell,” but rather in “a room of his own with a bed and furniture.”
Still, Xinis asserted that “information regarding Abrego Garcia’s removal, as well as placement and confinement in CECOT, cut to the heart of the inquiry.”
The judge also had stern words for the Justice Department’s argument that the Trump administration was powerless to free Abrego Garcia from Salvadoran custody because he was being held by a sovereign nation.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, she wrote, “are entitled to discover all relevant and probative evidence that undermines the defendants’ incomplete and evasive answer that Abrego Garcia is in the ‘sovereign, domestic custody’ of El Salvador.”
“Indeed,” she went on, “custody can be joint, and custodial status may be controlled by the defendants acting in concert with El Salvador.”
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers are scheduled to depose two Trump officials this week. Xinis has allowed them to ask for more depositions, if they want them, on Wednesday.
• Evaluaciones
• Quistes pilonidales
• Lipoma
• Hernias inguinales, umbilical y ventral
• Queloides
• Tumores gastrointestinales
• Laparoscopia de vesícula
• Tiroides y paratiroides
• Remoción de lesiones cutáneas
• Tumores musculares
• Catéteres para quimioterapia (Medport)
• Gastrostomía abierta y percutánea
• Amputaciones
By THE STAR STAFF
Boeing has entered into a definitive agreement to sell portions of its Digital Aviation Solutions business, including its Jeppesen, ForeFlight, AerData and OzRunways assets, to Thoma Bravo, a Chicago-based software investment firm, whose managing partner and founder is Orlando Bravo of Puerto Rico.
The all-cash transaction is valued at $10.55 billion, according to a company statement.
Boeing will retain core digital capabilities that harness both aircraft and fleet-specific data to provide commercial and defense customers with fleet maintenance, diagnostics and repair services. This digital expertise will continue to provide predictive and prognostic maintenance insights.
“This transaction is an important component of our strategy to focus on core businesses, supplement the balance sheet and prioritize the investment grade credit rating,” said Kelly Ortberg, Boeing president and chief executive officer.
“This enables all parts of the digital portfolio to focus on their strengths,” said Chris Raymond, president and chief executive officer of Boeing Global Services. “Our
commitment to meeting our customers’ needs is unwavering as we move forward with our core products and services to support their fleets.”
“We are proud to be investing in such an important technology platform in the broader aerospace and defense industry,” said Holden Spaht, a managing partner at Thoma Bravo. “With a heritage dating back to the 1930s, Jeppesen has been at the forefront of technological innovation for nearly a century. We are excited to build on this track record and power its next phase of growth.”
“The business has been through an impressive growth transformation in recent years and has strong momentum,” said Scott Crabill, also a managing partner at Thoma Bravo. “Thoma Bravo has a long track record of backing leading technology companies in partnership with existing management. We look forward to supporting the company’s standalone growth objectives through strategic investments, operational best practices and a shared commitment to innovation and long-term value creation.”
Some 3,900 employees around the globe work in Boeing’s Digital Aviation Solutions organization, which includes elements of the business remaining within Boeing and those included in the sale. Boeing is working with Thoma Bravo to help ensure as seamless a transition as possible for employees while continuing to meet the needs of customers in accordance with all obligations.
Aircraft at the Boeing facility in Renton, Wash., Sept. 13, 2024. Boeing announced on April 22, 2025 that it would sell a handful of navigation, flight planning and other businesses to the private equity firm Thoma Bravo for more than $10.5 billion as the company works to refocus on manufacturing planes and other aircraft. (Grant Hindsley/The New York Times)
The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year and is subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions.
Citi is acting as exclusive financial adviser to Boeing, and Mayer Brown LLP is acting as outside counsel. Kirkland & Ellis LLP is acting as legal counsel to Thoma Bravo.
What matters in U.S. and global markets today. A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets by Dhara Ranasinghe, Editor, Financial Markets EMEA.
The world’s financial markets have got used to the fact that a lot can change in less than 24 hours. And waking up on Wednesday provides yet another example of that.
U.S. President Donald Trump has backed away from his threats to fire Jerome Powell after days of criticising the Federal Reserve chief for not cutting interest rates. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, meanwhile, said he believes there will be a de-escalation in U.S.-China trade tensions.
The net-net effect, the sell-America trade is abating (for now). The beaten-up dollar is higher against major rivals, Treasury yields are lower and U.S. stock futures point to a decisively strong open on Wall Street.
Mike Dolan is enjoying some well-deserved time-off this week, but the Reuters markets team is here to provide you with all the information you need to start your day.
Today’s Market Minute
* Trump has backed off from threats to fire Fed Chair Powell after days of intensifying criticisms of the central bank chief for not cutting rates.
* Tesla CEO Elon Musk says he’ll cut back significantly the time he devotes to the Trump administration from next month and spend more time running his many companies.
* U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent believes there will be a de-escalation in U.S.-China trade tensions, but negotiations with Beijing have not yet started and would be a “slog,” according to a person who heard his closed-door presentation to investors at a JP Morgan conference.
* Hyundai Steel’s $6 billion US investment is drawing investor ire and testing Seoul’s tariff strategy.
* Worldwide economic output will slow in the months ahead as President Trump’s steep tariffs on virtually all trading partners begin to bite, the International Monetary Fund reckons, as global finance chiefs swarmed Washington seeking deals with Trump’s team to lower the levies.
A brighter day?
On the one hand, the rally in world markets and selloff in safe-havens is a natural correction of the past weeks of heavy selling, especially of U.S. assets.
On the other, it is the right response to signs of an easing in worries, whether that’s global trade tensions or central bank (read “Federal Reserve”) independence.
U.S. stock futures are trading up more than 1%, world stocks are up around 0.5%. while gold is down 2% and other safe havens such as Japan’s yen and the Swiss franc are softer too.
The key questions of course are: will it last? And could the positive undertones coming through across world markets be harbinger of better times after the relentless selling of the last few weeks?
Easy now, some of you might say - and with good reason. Even if markets find more stable footing, a high degree of uncertainty is likely to remain in place for some time and the damage inflicted by tariffs is already taking a toll.
Abodada-Notario
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Just take a look at the flash purchasing managers index data coming out of Europe this morning.
Euro zone business growth has stalled this month, the PMI survey showed, with activity in the bloc’s dominant services industry contracting and the prolonged downturn in manufacturing continuing.
And with tariffs on goods coming into the world’s No. 1 economy now at their highest in a century, the IMF said on Tuesday it projects global growth in 2025 will
slow to 2.8% - its slowest since the COVID-19 pandemic - from 3.3% in 2024.
Others note that the perception of U.S. as-
•PODERES
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and MARK LANDLER
Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday called on Ukraine to accept a U.S. peace proposal that closely aligns with long-standing Russian goals, including a “freeze” of territorial lines in the three-year war, acceptance of the annexation of Crimea by Russia and a prohibition on Ukraine becoming part of the NATO alliance.
It was the first time a U.S. official had publicly laid out a plan to end the war that favors Russia in such stark terms.
A peace plan that leaves Russian forces deep inside eastern Ukraine would be welcome news in Moscow. President Vladimir Putin has said for almost a year that he would accept a ceasefire in which Ukraine withdraws troops from the four regions that Russia has claimed as its own and drops its aspirations to join NATO.
The comments by the vice president appeared designed to increase pressure on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, who has long refused to accept Russian’s occupation of his country’s lands, including the seizure of Crimea in 2014 and territory taken by Russia after it invaded Ukraine in early 2022. In a second blow to Zelenskyy, President Donald Trump lashed out at the Ukrainian president Wednesday afternoon, writing on Truth Social, his social media site, that “he can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years.”
Vance, speaking during a trip to India, said the United States would “walk away” from the peace process if both Ukraine and Russia refused to accept the U.S. terms. But Zelenskyy was clearly the target.
“We’ve issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and it’s time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process,” Vance told reporters. “The only way to really
stop the killing is for the armies to both put down their weapons, to freeze this thing and to get on with the business of actually building a better Russia and a better Ukraine.”
The vice president’s comments came just hours after Zelenskyy said his country will never accept Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea as legal, adding that doing so would violate Ukraine’s constitution. He also said Ukraine could not accept any prohibition against becoming part of NATO.
“There is nothing to talk about. This violates our constitution. This is our territory, the territory of the people of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy told reporters at a news conference.
On Wednesday afternoon, Yulia Svyrydenko, the Ukrainian economy minister, also vowed that her country “will never recognize the occupation of Crimea.” Writing on the social platform X, she said “Ukraine is ready to negotiate — but not to surrender. There will be no agreement that hands Russia the stronger foundations it needs to regroup and return with greater violence.”
In his statement, Trump accused Zelenskyy of making “inflammatory” statements that he claimed would prolong the war.
“If he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?” Trump wrote. “The statement made by Zelenskyy today will do nothing but prolong the “killing field,” and nobody wants that!”
The threat by Vance to walk away from peace talks were similar to comments last week from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and from Trump, who said in the Oval Office that if the two sides don’t agree quickly to a deal, “we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people, and we’re going to just take a pass.’”
On Wednesday, Vance told reporters in India that under the U.S. proposal, “We’re going to freeze the territorial lines at some level close to where they are today.”
“The current lines, or somewhere close to them, is where you’re ultimately, I think, going to draw the new lines in the conflict,” he added. “Now, of course, that means the
U.S. Vice President JD Vance speaks with reporters in Agra, India after he and his family visited the Taj Mahal, on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. Vance demanded on Wednesday that Russia and Ukraine agree to an American peace proposal that would “freeze the territorial lines” in the three-year war, force Kyiv to accept the annexation of Crimea by Russia, and block Ukraine from becoming part of the NATO alliance. (Kenny Holston/The New York Times)
Ukrainians and the Russians are both going to have to give up some of the territory they currently own.”
The vice president did not say what territory Russia would have to give up.
Russia currently occupies 18.7% of Ukraine, according to DeepState, an online research group with ties to the Ukrainian army.
A freeze would essentially force Ukraine to surrender huge swaths of land to Russia and would violate the principles of self-determination and borders that has animated the United States and European nations to support Ukraine since Russia’s invasion.
A Kremlin spokesperson on Wednesday welcomed Vance’s remarks.
“The United States is continuing its mediation efforts, and we certainly welcome those efforts,” Dmitry Peskov, the spokesperson, said. “Our interactions are ongoing but, to be sure, there is a lot of nuances around the peace settlement that need to be discussed.”
The aggressive push for a deal by Trump’s administration is a blow to European leaders, who have spent weeks attempting to shore up Ukraine’s position by brokering peace talks with the United States. The first effort convened last week in Paris and another session was set to start Wednesday in London before Rubio announced he would no longer attend.
Rubio’s decision to cancel caught the British government off guard, according to a British official who said that David Lammy, the foreign secretary, had fully expected the secretary of state in London on Wednesday.
Lower-level diplomats from Britain, France, Germany, Ukraine, and the United States still gathered for technical talks. But the absence of Rubio or Steve Witkoff, Trump’s chief negotiator with Russia, renewed fears that Ukraine and Europe were being marginalized as the Trump administration seemed to be working primarily with Russia.
Witkoff is scheduled to be in Moscow later this week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.
Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, arrived in London on Wednesday morning for the scaled-back talks along with his country’s ministers of defense and foreign affairs.
“Despite everything,” he wrote on X after arriving, “we continue working for peace.”
Even before his comments Tuesday, Zelenskyy had expressed his opposition to the U.S. demands in a conversation with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, according to an official familiar with the conversation. Zelenskyy laid out his positions on Crimea and NATO, the official said, and Rutte later called Trump and conveyed Zelenskyy’s answer.
Instead of participating in a larger meeting, Lammy met one-on-one with the Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, while the British defense secretary, John Healey, met his Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov. Lammy also dropped in on a lunch that included senior national security advisers from Britain, France and Germany, as well as the Ukrainian delegation and Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine.
By JASON HOROWITZ
When Pope Francis convened Catholic bishops at the Vatican in 2019 to discuss the ordination of married men in remote parts of South America, the meeting raised expectations about the possibility of revolutionizing the celibate priesthood.
The bishops recommended he do it, and Francis himself had long said he wanted change in the church to come from the bottom up.
But Francis ultimately balked, deciding that the church wasn’t yet ready to lift a roughly 1,000-year-old restriction. Many of his supporters, who expected him to be a pope of radical change, felt let down.
It was a salient example of how Francis, who died Monday at 88, was a pope of great, often outsized, expectations. His revolutionary and freewheeling style led Catholics across the spectrum to invest him with their most ambitious — at times unrealistic — hopes and fears, sometimes independent of what he said or did.
Some liberal Catholics, forgetting Francis was the leader of a deeply conservative institution, expected him to make women priests, change teaching on birth control or throw his weight behind same sex unions and even marriage. Some conservatives, including a few who convinced themselves that the Argentine pope was a secret Communist, worried he would torch the church doctrine, even though he never touched it.
Transparency advocates appreciated the increased clarity he brought to the Vatican Bank, but wanted more financial reforms. Advocates for victims of clerical sex abuse appreciated new protection measures, but wanted universal zero tolerance measures.
“If you are a left-wing Catholic you may think the pope talked a great game but didn’t deliver as much change as you would like,” said John L. Allen Jr., a longtime Vatican analyst and the editor of Crux, a publication specializing in the Catholic Church. “For every one of those, there’s a conservative Catholic that thinks the pope went way too far.”
But Francis’ supporters, detractors and Vatican analysts agree that there was also a lot that Francis did do.
“He has fundamentally changed the culture of the church. Without really touching any doctrine,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese,
a prominent Vatican analyst who in 2005 was forced out by the future Benedict XVI as editor of a Catholic magazine because he had published articles critical of church positions.
Francis, he said, allowed an “openness for discussion and debate that freed theologians to once again talk and write about things, because he believed that this is the way theology grows, to figure out how to preach the gospel in the 21st century without just repeating 13th century formulas that nobody understands. So these are revolutionary changes.”
But there were concrete changes, too. Francis cracked the door open for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion by giving more latitude to local priests and bishops. But instead of changing church law, he encouraged people to engage in the process of praying over the issue with their priests.
He opened up major meetings of bishops — his preferred decision-making body — to laypeople and women, and he put women in big jobs within the powerful Roman bureaucracy that governed the church.
He suppressed the Latin Mass beloved by traditionalists who wanted to restore old ways, made liturgical changes intended to make the church’s prayers more accessible to people in local languages, and allowed
priests to bless same-sex couples. But he also allowed African priests who revolted against the blessings to essentially ignore the rule.
The cardinals who elected Francis in 2013 did so with a clear desire that he reform the Curia, and he introduced a new Vatican Constitution, streamlined its departments to avoid repetition and waste and introduced cultural changes.
Supporters of Francis in the church hierarchy and veteran Vatican analysts say Francis’ effect on the church was more complicated, and in some ways deeper, than policy changes or specific reforms. He sought to change the way the church saw itself, incessantly haranguing his hierarchy against acting like princes above their flock.
“Change of process is more important than the change of product. It’s deeper. It’s more important. It’s more long-lasting,” Cardinal Michael Czerny, who was a close aide to Francis, said of the meetings. “The topics are secondary.”
But he said that the more collegial, bottom-up process would ultimately be better to take on difficult topics, and make progressive decisions with sticking power. Concerns about the process being rolled back were misplaced, he said, because a new pope could decide to do anything.
“There is nothing that we have done
over 2,000 years that couldn’t be rolled back,” he said, but undoing such a deep change in process would be a radical, and difficult, reversal.
On the world stage, Francis’ changes may be equally lasting. He sought to bring the church out into the world. He appointed cardinals all around the globe, often passing over traditional centers of Catholicism for farflung places to increase the church’s global footprint.
After Benedict had inadvertently damaged relations with the Muslim world by delivering a speech that insulted Islam early in his pontificate, Francis set about improving the relationship, often in lands where Catholics lived in danger.
“He has pushed the boundaries,” said Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s foreign minister.
But perhaps his most consequential change for the church will be seen in coming weeks.
Francis appointed a large majority of the College of Cardinals that will now pick his successor. He often chose prelates who shared his priorities of being close to the poor, welcoming the marginalized and moving issues like climate change to the forefront.
For many, the question now is whether those cardinals will pick someone who will meet or dash the expectations of Catholics who supported Francis. But those who knew Francis best say that unrealistic expectations made for a reductive metric by which to judge his legacy.
“In many ways,” Gallagher said, Francis was “an old-fashioned conservative Jesuit. At the same time, somebody who’s very open to what certain other voices are saying in the church.”
Bringing those two things together, he said, was the story of his pontificate.
By BRET STEPHENS
Harold Macmillan, the midcentury British prime minister, supposedly said that what statesmen feared most were “events, dear boy, events.” Misfortunes happen: a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, a foreign crisis. Political leaders are judged by how adroitly or incompetently they handle the unexpected.
Luckily, the Trump administration hasn’t yet had such misfortunes. Its only misfortune — and therefore everyone else’s — is itself.
So much has been obvious again this week, thanks to two stories that are, at their core, the same. First, there was the revelation that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had shared sensitive details of the military strike on Yemen with his wife, brother and personal lawyer on yet another Signal group chat. That was followed by an essay in Politico from a former close aide to Hegseth, John Ullyot, describing a “full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon” — a meltdown that included the firing of three of the department’s top officials. Donald Trump Jr. responded by saying Ullyot is “officially exiled from our movement.”
Then there was a market rout and a dollar plunge, thanks to President Donald Trump’s unseemly and unhinged attacks on Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair. Powell’s sin was to have the audacity to describe the probable effects of the president’s tariffs: namely, that they’ll cause prices to go up and growth to slow down. This sent Trump into a rage, complete with White House threats to examine whether Powell can be fired — a potential assault on central
bank independence worthy of the worst economic days of Argentina.
Both cases are about adult supervision: the absence of it in the first instance, the presence of it in the other, and the president’s strong preference for the former. Why? Probably for the same reason that tin-pot dictators elevate incompetent toadies to top security posts: They are more dependent and less of a threat. The last thing Trump wants at the Pentagon is another Jim Mattis, secure enough in himself to be willing to resign on principle.
The same goes for other departments of government.
An adult secretary of state would never have allowed his department to be gutted in its first weeks by an unofficial official (Elon Musk) from a so-called department (DOGE) by unaccountable teenage employees with nicknames like Big Balls. But Marco Rubio has a moniker with a very different meaning, Little Marco. He’ll do as he’s told right until he’s fired, probably (like one of his predecessors, Rex Tillerson) via a social media post.
An adult attorney general would have quickly abided by a Supreme Court decision to “facilitate” the return from El Salvador of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported by the administration in March and wrongfully imprisoned in his native country. But Pam Bondi would rather serve her boss loyally but foolishly than intelligently and independently. Eventually she’ll have to choose between a humiliating acquiescence to a more forceful judicial order or a politically debilitating battle with the court.
An adult team of economic advisers would have dissuaded the president from repeatedly announcing and then pausing tariffs, if only to preserve the president’s political credibility, avoid business uncertainty and forestall the predictable revolt of the markets. And they would have been particularly keen to avoid an all-out trade war with Beijing, since China’s capacity both to absorb and impose economic pain vastly exceeds Washington’s. But not this team. Whether from cowardice or hubris, they prefer to risk global economic chaos than the displeasure of their boss.
As for Trump, his goal is to extract maximum loyalty and inspire maximum loathing, each feeding the other. It’s a method of control: The more reckless he gets, the more he forces his minions to abase themselves to defend him. The more they do so, the more Trump’s opponents become convinced that tyranny is aborning. Is he another Viktor Orban? Or Benito Mussolini? Each time a critic reaches for an overblown comparison (I’ve been guilty of it, too), it merely
dulls its own moral force and explanatory power. Trump is Trump. Let’s think of him on his own terms. When the president completed his extraordinary political comeback in November, he was at the summit of his political power. He has eroded it every day since. With Matt Gaetz as his first choice for attorney general. With the needlessly bruising confirmation fights over the absurd choices of Hegseth, Robert Kennedy Jr., Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard. With making an enemy of Canada. With JD Vance’s grotesque outreach to the German far right. With the Oval Office abuse of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. With the helter-skelter tariff regime. With threats of conquest that antagonize historic allies for no plausible benefit. With dubious arrests and lawless deportations that can make heroes of unsympathetic individuals. And now with threats to the basic economic order that sent gold soaring to a record high of $3,500 an ounce and the Dow on track to its worst April since the late Hoover administration. Democrats wondering how to oppose Trump most effectively might consider the following: Drop the dictator comparisons. Rehearse the above facts. Promise normality and offer plans to regain it. And remember that no matter how malignant he may be, there’s no better opponent than a face-plant president stumbling over his untied laces.
By DAVE ITZKOFF
What attracts two people to each other? Are they drawn together by a mutual need for companionship, affection and emotional support?
Or are they united by their individual yearnings to advance their own positions and consolidate power in a tyrannical empire that is building a moon-size superweapon?
In the Disney+ series “Andor,” the answer turns out to be a little from Column A and a little from Column B, at least in the case of one of the stranger — yet undeniably compelling — relationships to emerge in the “Star Wars” fantasy franchise: frustrated pencil pusher Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) and ruthless security officer Dedra Meero (Denise Gough).
Their pursuits are often nefarious — against their perceived enemies and also against each other. And although their give-and-take may have lacked the smoldering looks and snappy banter of, say, Princess Leia and Han Solo, Meero and Karn became a subject of fascination for viewers of Season 1, who watched the power dynamics ebb and flow in the characters’ often awkward relationship.
As their story continues to unfold in Season 2, the first three episodes of which debuted on Tuesday, the actors portraying them and the show’s creator, Tony Gilroy, are taking stock of the characters’ journeys — what it says about the underlying themes of the series, the nature of couplehood and the possibility that there might be someone out there in the universe for everyone.
“Somehow, Tony saw in he and I these two little weirdos who find each other,” Gough said of her and Soller’s characters.
When viewers first met Karn, he was a fastidious but hapless deputy inspector obsessed with capturing the show’s title character, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), a thief and spy who will rise to become a key member of the rebellion in the film “Rogue One.” Karn’s failures cost him his security job, and he crashlanded into a gig as a government flunky at the Imperial Bureau of Standards, a division of the sinister Galactic Empire whose tentacles have spread across the cosmos.
At his new post, Karn crossed paths with Meero, an ambitious supervisor in the Imperial Security Bureau whose assignments included torturing suspected rebels. The fumbling Karn was drawn to her as both a potential romantic partner and an embodiment of the Empire he worshipped. The calculating Meero saw Karn as both a means for her own advancement and a
bumbler undeserving of her attention.
Gilroy, who was a writer of “Rogue One” and reportedly oversaw reshoots and editing, said that Karn and Meero had emerged from his brainstorming process when he was first planning “Andor.”
Knowing that he wanted to start with Andor committing a murder, Gilroy (whose other films include “Michael Clayton”) said he felt it would have been “a crime against dramatic nature not to have a pursuer — the concept of a Javert, the concept of an Ahab.”
That pursuer eventually became Karn.
Gilroy’s son, Sam, meanwhile, had turned him onto the rancorous scenes of infighting among the Imperial officers in the earliest “Star Wars” movies. “Some of them are really cool,” Gilroy recalled thinking, though the sequences focused only on male characters.
“I thought, We should really have the distaff side of the story,” he said.
That led him to Meero.
Gilroy found his actors for both roles on the stages of London and New York: Soller, who is American, in the Matthew López play “The Inheritance,” which ran in both cities, and Gough, who is Irish, in the Duncan Macmillan play “People, Places & Things,” which did likewise.
Soller said that he appreciated how Gilroy’s earliest “Andor” scripts depicted the “soul-crushing nature of this massive corporate evil structure” that Karn was part of while giving the character “an interior life that I’d never seen before.” In the scenes that he was shown, “you get to see him having breakfast with his mom,” Soller said. “It was like a Pinter play being written out in the ‘Star Wars’ universe.”
He did historical research, likening Karn to any number of people from the World War II era, whom Soller described as “normal people — normal is in quotes — who got caught up
in fascism, who got swayed by fear and their own insecurities, their lack of understanding and lack of empathy.”
Gough said she saw Meero as focused, implacable and ambitious, and that she found her way to the character through written dialogue, physicality and instinct.
“It’s kind of weird, because I don’t really think a lot,” Gough said of past roles she has played. “These women arrive and they do whatever they do. With Dedra, she just showed up.”
Then during production, Gough said, she got a fateful note from Benjamin Caron, an “Andor” director. As she recalled, “He said, ‘Put your hands behind your back,’ and I did that. And I was like: Oh, great. Suddenly my face is doing things that I didn’t think about.”
Gilroy said that as the writing of “Andor” progressed, some sort of collision between Karn and Meero became inevitable, an illustration of two different kinds of people who would be drawn into an authoritarian system like the Empire.
“I think what I’m getting at with them, ultimately, is the conflict between the romantic vision of authoritarianism and a zealot’s version of it,” he said. Karn is the naive fantasist who sees Meero as his path to a better life — “he’s grown up in a box, why wouldn’t he fixate on her?” Gilroy said — while Meero is the hardened true believer who can’t decide if Karn is worth a womp rat.
In a scene from Season 1, a blindly devoted Karn waits for Meero outside her office, intending to pledge himself to her cause. She warns Karn that she could have him arrested, but rather than run off, he answers: “I want what you want. I sense it. I know it.
As Gilroy explained the scene, “There’s a little bit of daylight where she’s thinking, ‘Oh my God, no one ever talks to me like this — maybe I like this?’ He does ring her bell a little bit, and then he goes too far.”
Then, in the Season 1 finale, Karn saves Meero from the wrath of an angry street mob. Trembling, she says to him, “I should say thank you,” and he calmly answers, “You don’t have to.”
The characters were left at a critical juncture, and it was clear where at least some “Andor” fans wanted them to go next. As Gough recalled: “I went to a Comic-Con, and people had made patches of Kyle on one side and me on the other, inside of a broken heart. What is it the young people say? Shipping? I’m getting shipped.”
But behind the scenes, Gough said, she was wary of any story line in which Karn’s rescue of Meero led them to a conventional romance, and she expressed this to Gilroy: “I was like: ‘So, what, she just gets saved by a bloke? Is that what we’re going to do?’” she recalled. “He was like, ‘Seriously, you think that’s the story I’m going to tell?’”
Gilroy offered some words of warning about how much the story of Meero and Karn had to say about real-life, earthbound relationships, even as a cautionary tale. When he is plotting the course for a series like “Andor,” Gilroy said, he has no specific agenda other than to explore “what would be dramatic and what might be truthful behavior and what would be fun.”
It is only when he discusses these creative choices in retrospect, he added — a “purely forensic” exercise, as he had put it — that he is “forced to go a little bit more analytical about what might be happening.”
Scrutinizing his characters at this level can reveal only so much about romance: “It’s a bit like an autopsy,” he said.
SEC AUXILIR DEL TRIB I. LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA
CENTRO JUDICIAL DE ARECIBO SALA SUPERIOR DE CIALES
UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE RURAL DEVELOPMENT A/C/C LA ADMINISTRACION DE HOGARES DE AGRICULTORES
Demandante V. JUAN JOSE SANTIAGO SUAZO Y OTROS
Demandado(a)
Caso Núm.: CI2024CV00387. (Salón: 101 SALA SUPERIOR). Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO - ORDINARIO Y OTROS. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.
JUAN C. FORTUÑO FASJCFORTUNO@FORTUNO-LAW. COM. A: SUCESIÓN DE JUAN JOSÉ SANTIAGO SUAZO T/C/C JUAN J. SANTIAGO SUAZO COMPUESTA POR SU VIUDA AUREA AYALA SANTIAGO, POR SÍ; FULANO DE TAL Y SOTANA DE TAL COMO HEREDEROS
DESCONOCIDOS Y/O PARTES CON INTERÉS EN DICHA SUCESIÓN. (Nombre de las partes que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 14 de abril de 2025, 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 14 de abril de 2025. En Ciales, Puerto Rico, el 14 de abril de 2025.
VIVIAN Y. FRESSE GONZÁLEZ, SECRETARIA. BRUNILDA HERNÁNDEZ MÉNDEZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL.
LEGAL NOTICE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO
DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE UTUADO SALA SUPERIOR DE UTUADO
UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE RURAL DEVELOPMENT A/C/C LA ADMINISTRACION DE HOGARES DE AGRICULTORES
Demandante V. CHRISTIAN RIVERA RODRIGUEZ Y OTROS
Demandado(a)
Caso Núm.: UT2024CV00634. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO - ORDINARIO Y OTROS. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.
JUAN C. FORTUÑO FASJCFORTUNO@FORTUNO-LAW. COM.
A: CHRISTIAN RIVERA RODRIGUEZ; MARLINE SIOMARA SALGADO ROMAN RIVERASALGADO, SOC LEGAL GANAN.
(Nombre de las partes que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto)
EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 14 de abril de 2025, 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 14 de abril de 2025. En Utuado, Puerto Rico, el 14 de abril de 2025. DIANE ÁLVAREZ VILLANUEVA, SECRETARIA. GLORIA I. RIVERA FONSECA, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA
CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMÓN SALA SUPERIOR DE TOA ALTA CARIBE FEDERAL
CREDIT UNION
Demandante V. ALEKSEI MORALES DIAZ
Demandado(a)
Caso Núm.: TA2024CV01202. (Salón: 201B). Sobre: COBRO
DE DINERO - ORDINARIO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. ANDREA CAROLINA
CHAVES FIGUEROA - LCDA. CHAVESFIGUEROA@GMAIL.COM.
ALEKSEI MORALES DIAZ - URB.
MADELAINE Q5 CALLE RUBI TOA ALTA, PUERTO RICO 00953. A: ALEKSEI MORALES DIAZ.
(Nombre de las partes que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 15 de abril de 2025, 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 abril de 2025. En Toa Alta, Puerto Rico, el 15 de abril de 2025. ALICIA AYALA SANJURJO, SECRETARIA. MARITZA BONILLA HERNÁNDEZ, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE BAYAMÓN SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYAMÓN
EDMUNDO AMERICO CRUZ RODRÍGUEZ
Demandante V. SILVA GUZMÁN BÁEZ
Demandado(a)
Caso Núm.: BY2025RF00172. (Salón: 3005 RF). Sobre: DIVORCIO - RUPTURA IRREPARABLE. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. WENDOLYN TORRES RIVERALCDA.WENTORRES@GMAIL.COM. SILVIA GUZMÁN BÁEZ - BARRIO VALIENTE ADENTRO #4, AVE. LAS AMÉRICAS, SANTO DOMINGO, REPÚBLICA DOMINICANA, REPÚBLICA DOMINICANA, 00000.
A: LCDA. WENDOLYN TORRES RIVERA.
(Nombre de las partes que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto)
EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 14 de abril de 2025, 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 abril de 2025. En Bayamón, Puerto Rico, el 15 de abril de 2025. ALICIA AYALA SANJURJO, SECRETARIA.
KARLA PAMELA RIVERA ROMÁN, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL.
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE SAN JUAN SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN JUAN
U.S. SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Demandante V. FULANO Y FULANA DE TAL
Demandado(a)
Caso Núm.: SJ2024CV08185. (Salón: 905 CIVIL). Sobre: CANCELACIÓN O RESTITUCIÓN DE PAGARÉ EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. PEDRO J. LÓPEZ BERGOLLOPEDRO.LOPEZ-BERGOLLO@SBA. GOV.
A: FULANO Y FULANA DE TAL. (Nombre de las partes que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 16 de abril de 2025, 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 21 de abril de 2025. En San Juan, Puerto Rico, el 21 de abril de
2025. GRISELDA RODRÍGUEZ COLLADO, SECRETARIA. MARIBEL RIVERA RIVERA, SECRETARIA AUXILIAR DEL TRIBUNAL.
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO THE GUARANTEE COMPANY OF NORTH AMERICA
Plaintiff V. DAVID SCHMITT, ET AL Defendants Civ. No.: 24-1369. (SCC). SUMMONS BY PUBLICATION.
To: DAVID M. SCHMITT; EKATERINA SCHMITT; DMS-BKL DRYWALL & INTERIOR SYSTEMS, INC.; DMS-STL DRYWALL & INTERIOR SYSTEMS, INC.; DMS RETAIL INTERIORS, INC.; DMS MANAGEMENT GROUP, INC.
Pursuant to the Order for Service by Publication entered on April 15, 2025, you are hereby SUMMONED to appear, plead or answer the Amended Complaint filed by the Guarantee Company of North America, USA, against you, no later than thirty (30) days after the publication of this Summons by serving the original plea or answer in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, and serving a copy to counsel for Plaintiff, Paul T. DeVlieger, at 1518 Walnut St.14h Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19102, Telephone: (215) 735-9181, Email: pdevlieger@dvhlaw.com. This Summons sha ll be published by edict only once in a newspaper of general circulation in Puerto Rico. Within ten (10) days following publication of this Summons, a copy of this Summons and the Amended Complaint, shall be sent to David M. Schmitt, Ekaterina Schmitt, DMS-BKL Drywall & Interior Systems, Inc., DMS-STL Drywall & Interior Systems, Inc., DMS Retail Interiors, Inc. and DMS Management Group, Inc., by certified mail/return receipt requested, addressed to their last known address. Default will be entered against the defendant that fails to appear, plead or answer the Amended Complaint, as ordered and notified by this Summons and the Court may proceed to hear and adjudicate the claims advanced in the Amended Complaint accordingly. By ORDER of this Court, Summons is issued pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(e) and Puerto Rico Rule of Civil Procedure 4.6. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, this 16th day of April 2025. ADA I. GARCIA-RLVERA, ESQ., CLERK OF THE UNITED STATES, DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO. ANA DURAN, DEPUTY CLERK.
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA SALA SUPERIOR DE BAYAMON SHOREBREAK NPL TRUST
Demandante vs. AGUSTÍN LARACUENTE CAMACHO, ET ALS. Demandado CIVIL NÚM. BY2024CV06900 (401) SOBRE: EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA Y COBRO DE DINERO. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA. EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE.UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO. SS. A: AGUSTÍN LARACUENTE CAMACHO t/c/c AGUSTÍN CAMACHO; SU ESPOSA MINERVA COTTO ALICEA t/c/c MINERVA COTTO Y LA SOCIEDAD LEGAL DE GANANCIALES COMPUESTA ENTRE AMBOS
POR LA PRESENTE se le emplaza y requiere para que conteste la demanda dentro de los treinta (30) días siguientes a la publicación de este Edicto. Usted deberá radicar su alegación responsiva a través del Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC), al cual puede acceder utilizando la siguiente dirección electrónica: http://unired.ramajudicial.pr/sumac/, salvo que se presente por derecho propio, en cuyo caso deberá radicar el original de su contestación ante el Tribunal correspondiente y notifique con copia a los abogados de la parte demandante, Lcdo. Roberto C. Latimer Valentín, al PO BOX9022512, San Juan, P.R. 00902-2512; Teléfono: (787) 724-0230. En dicha demanda se tramita un procedimiento de ejecución de hipoteca bajo el número mencionado en el epígrafe. Se alega en dicho procedimiento que la parte Demandada incurrió en el incumplimiento del Contrato de Hipoteca, al no poder pagar las mensualidades vencidas correspondientes a los meses de junio de 2022, hasta el presente, más los cargos por demora correspondientes. Además, adeuda a la parte demandante las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado en que incurra el tenedor del pagaré en este litigio. De acuerdo con dicho Contrato de Garantía Hipotecaria la parte Demandante declaró vencida la totalidad de la deuda ascendente a la suma principal de $74,470.38, más intereses acumulados a razón del 4.75% anual, desde el 1 de mayo de 2022, hasta el presente, y los que se continúen acumulando a razón de su tasa de interés aplicable, hasta su total y completo
pago, así como todos aquellos créditos y sumas que surjan de la faz de la obligación hipotecaria y de la hipoteca que la garantiza, incluyendo una suma equivalente al 10% de la suma principal ($5,790.00), por concepto de costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado todo según pactado. La parte Demandante presentará para su inscripción en el Registro de la Propiedad correspondiente, un AVISO DE PLEITO PENDIENTE(“Lis Pendens”) sobre la propiedad objeto de esta acción cuya propiedad es la siguiente: URBANA: Solar radicado en la Urbanización Reparto Valencia, situada en el barrio Hato Tejas de Bayamón, Puerto Rico, marcada con el número treintiseis del bloque “AF” con un área de ciento setenta y cinco metros cuadrados, en lindes por el NORTE, en veinticinco metros con el solar treinta y cinco; por el SUR, en veinticinco metros con el solar treintisiete; por el ESTE, en siete metros con la calle quince; y por el OESTE, en siete metros con el solar diecisiete. En este solar enclava una casa de concreto para una familia. Consta inscrita al folio 186 del tomo 943 de Bayamón Sur, finca #42,382. Registro de la Propiedad de Puerto Rico, Sección I de Bayamón. SE LE APERCIBE que de no hacer sus alegaciones responsivas a la demanda dentro del término aquí dispuesto, se les anotará la rebeldía y se dictara sentencia, concediéndose el remedio solicitado en la Demanda, sin más citarle ni oírle. Expedido bajo mi firma y sello del Tribunal en Bayamón, Puerto Rico. A 20 de marzo de 2025. ALICIA AYALA SANJURJO, Secretaria. NÉLIDA OCASIO ORTEGA,Secretaria Auxiliar del Tribunal I.
LEGAL NOTICE
ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUNAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA CENTRO JUDICIAL DE MAYAGÜEZ SALA SUPERIOR ORIENTAL BANK Demandante Vs. DOMINGO VEGA RODRIGUEZ Y NITZA LEE PIÑEIRO LEBRON Demandados Civil Núm.: MZ2025CV00320. Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Y EJECUCIÓN DE HIPOTECA (VÍA ORDINARIA). EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA, EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO.
A) A LA PARTE CO-
DEMANDADA: NITZA LEE PIÑEIRO LEBRON; A LAS SIGUIENTES
DIRECCIONES: (A)
BARRIO RIO HONDO #454 CALLE HERMANOS
RODRIGUEZ, MAYAGUEZ, PR 00680; (B) URB.
ESTANCIAS DEL RIO B-4
MAYAGUEZ, PR 00680. Por la presente se le(s) notifica que se ha radicado en la Secretaría de este Tribunal una Demanda en Cobro de Dinero y Ejecución de Hipoteca en su contra, en la cual se alega entre otras cosas que la parte demandada adeuda a la parte demandante por concepto de hipoteca la suma de $51,352.72 por concepto de principal, desde el 1ro de octubre de 2024, más intereses al tipo pactado de 4.50% anual que continúan acumulándose hasta el pago total de la obligación. Además la parte demandada adeuda a la parte demandante los cargos por demora equivalentes a 4.00%de la suma de aquellos pagos con atrasos en exceso de 15 días calendarios de la fecha de vencimiento; los créditos accesorios y adelantos hechos en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca; y las costas, gastos y honorarios de abogado equivalentes a $7,140.70 y cualquiera otros adelantos que se hagan en virtud de la escritura de hipoteca número 223, otorgada en San Juan, Puerto Rico, el día 6 de julio de 2011, ante el notario Carlos A. Surillo Pumarada, de la finca número 44,200, la cual consta inscrita al Folio 150 del Tomo 1521 de Mayagüez, Registro de la Propiedad de Mayagüez. Por razón de dicho incumplimiento, y al amparo del derecho que le confiere el Pagaré, el demandante ha declarado tales sumas vencidas, líquidas y exigibles en su totalidad. 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. Por tratarse de una obligación hipotecaria y pudiendo usted tener interés en este caso o quedar afectando 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 secretaría del tribunal y notifique copia de la Contestación de la Demanda a las oficinas de CARDONA & MALDONADO LAW OFFICES, P.S.C. ATENCIÓN al Lcdo. Duncan Maldonado Ejarque, P.O. Box 366221, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936-6221; Tel (787) 622-7000, Fax (787) 625-7001, 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, concediéndose
Fill in the empty fields with the numbers from 1 through 9.
Sudoku Rules:
Every row must contain the numbers from 1 through 9
Every column must contain the numbers from 1 through 9
Every 3x3 square must contain the numbers from 1 through 9
By KEN ROSENTHAL / THE ATHLETIC
They all should have known better. Jarred Kelenic should have run hard. Brian Snitker should have benched him. And Ronald Acuña Jr. should have addressed the double standard internally rather than taking to the social platform X to say, “If it were me, they would take me out of the game.”
Acuña, who is not with the Atlanta Braves while recovering from a torn left ACL, later deleted his post. The problem for Snitker, a highly successful manager and a Braves lifer, is that his star right fielder essentially stated a fact.
Snitker removed Acuña from a game in August 2019 for the same offense Kelenic committed Saturday night — failing to run hard on a fly ball out of the batter’s box he thought would be a home run. Snitker also pulled Ender Inciarte for a lack of hustle in July 2018 and Marcell Ozuna for a similar misstep in June 2023.
All three of those players are Latin. Kelenic is white, as is Snitker, who is 69. Inevitably, some will view this matter solely through the lens of race. We can’t know for sure how much of a role that played. Within the game, Snitker is held in high esteem, in part because of his feel for players, as both Acuña and Ozuna can attest. Still, just as players make mistakes, so do managers. And Snitker hardly distinguished himself with his failure to bench Kelenic and his feeble responses to reporters’ questions about the incident.
Ronald Acuña Jr. of the Atlanta Braves scoring a run at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. in 2020 (Wikipedia/All-Pro Reels)
“He didn’t run. You’ve got to run. It’s not going to be acceptable here. As a teammate, you’re responsible for 24 other guys. That name on the front is a lot more important than the name on the back of that jersey.”
Instead, Snitker created an opening for the team’s franchise player to question him. The issue raised by Acuña is the kind that might expose a rift in a team that is almost one-third Latin.
Consider what Snitker said after benching Acuña, then the reigning National League rookie of the year, in 2019:
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Snitker should have taken the same stance with Kelenic, a struggling player who presented a much easier target than Acuña, a future MVP, did in 2019. Kelenic has been a subject of fan frustration. He very well could be the player sent to Triple-A when Acuña rejoins the Braves, possibly in early May.
Most teams, the Braves included, are remarkably successful at blending different cultures. Most teams also experience occasional tensions. Striking the proper balance over a six-month, 162-game season can challenge even the best-intentioned.
Snitker routinely draws praise for his even demeanor and stable leadership. Coming from the Bobby Cox school, he generally prefers to handle sensitive matters behind closed doors. This time, though, he looked out of touch.
spoken to Kelenic, replied, “Was I supposed to?” He said after Sunday’s game that he had not seen the play until that morning and talked about it with Kelenic then. Kelenic, interestingly enough, said he was the one who initiated the discussion, explaining, “It’s my action, so I don’t need him to call me in.”
“I’ve got to be on second base,” Kelenic said. “There’s no excuse for it.”
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As Snitker correctly pointed out Sunday, no two lack-of-hustle situations are the same. Though Snitker didn’t say it explicitly, some if not all of his previous benchings resulted from an accumulation of baserunning lapses.
What Kelenic did actually was not all that unusual. Virtually every night, players fail to run hard on batted balls. Singles that should be doubles do not always get noticed. When they are, teams often address the matter internally. The difference with Kelenic is that he got thrown out in a game that was tied in the sixth inning. Can’t happen.
Snitker, asked after the game if he had
Acuña, after his benching in 2019, made the same mistake two months later in Game 1 of the Braves’ division series against the St. Louis Cardinals, admiring a fly ball and failing to advance to second. Snitker did not dare pull him from a playoff game, one in which Acuña went 3 for 4 with a double, a two-run homer and a run-saving catch. But after the Braves fell, 7-6, Freddie Freeman, Ozzie Albies and Brian McCann were openly critical of their teammate. The Braves wound up losing the series, three games to two.
Acuña was 21 then. He is 27 now. The consensus around the Braves in recent seasons was that he has matured, in the way most young players do.
His post on X, like many reactions on social media, was made in the heat of the moment. But if there’s one thing players detest in managers, it’s inconsistency. Snitker was inconsistent with Kelenic. Acuña can be forgiven for lodging an objection.
Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 21
