Bad Bunny honors San Juan with new sneaker

In collaboration with Adidas, Bad Bunny officially released on Sunday the Adidas Gazelle “San Juan” sneaker.  According to Billboard, the shoe is designed to pay homage to Puerto Rico’s capital, with a color scheme that is reminiscent of the blue water and cobblestone of the city.  The shoe retails for $140.  Its June 23rd release date was meant to coincide with the annual Noche de San Juan celebration.  The 30-year-old artist, who has also collaborated with brands such as Gucci and Crocs, began his partnership with Adidas in 2021.

Critics cite recent blackouts as evidence of Luma Energy’s failure

Four years after management of Puerto Rico’s electric grid was put in the hands of a newly formed private company, critics of Luma Energy are pointing to recent widespread power outages as evidence that the arrangement has failed.  Earlier this month, a power outage in San Juan left 350,000 customers without electricity amid sweltering heat.  Some businesses were without power for nearly a week.  The company has even warned that it might charge customers more if they seek compensation for appliances damaged by outages and surges.  Meanwhile, Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) is calling for greater accountability from Luma Energy and compensation for people impacted by the outages.  She wrote to the U.S. Department of Energy urging that Puerto Rico be included in the Interruption Cost Estimate (ICE) Calculator, a statistical tool that enables governments and utilities to gauge the economic impact of power outages.  “Immediate compensation for these losses is essential,” Velazquez said, “and private operators must be held accountable for their failures.”

Deadline approaches for addressing impact of new GMT

Puerto Rican legislators concerned about the implementation of the Global Minimum Tax on the industrial sector face a critical deadline this week, El Nuevo Dia reports.  House Bill 1908 would establish certain alternative tax credits intended to mitigate the impact of the new tax that many of the world’s largest economies, including the U.S., advocate to be levied on multinational corporations.  The new minimum tax would be 15% on their income, up from 4%.  An estimated 93,000 employees in Puerto Rico would be impacted by the new GMT.  The bill was passed by Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives in October 2023.

Macaques’ newly tolerant behavior surprises scientists

Scientists have expressed genuine surprise over the behavior of a type of monkey that lives on Cayo Santiago, a small island off the southeastern coast of Puerto Rico. Prior to 2017, the island had been a lush jungle.  But, after Hurricane Maria struck, it lost most of its trees.  This created a major environmental challenge for the island’s approximately 1,000 macaques which, because of the extreme heat, rely on shade to keep cool and survive. “Rhesus macaques are known for being some of the most quarrelsome primates on the planet,” according to the New York Times. “So it would follow that a simian battle royale would break out over the island’s few remaining patches of shade.”  However, the opposite occurred: monkeys who learned to share the shade had better odds of survival.  Overall, the animals have become more tolerant of each other.  “Scientists have documented numerous cases of species responding to environmental pressure with physiological or morphological adaptations,” the Times reports. “But the new study is one of the first to suggest that animals can also respond with persistent changes to their social behavior.”