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FACES Backstreet Boys’ McLane thinks experience gives him edge on ‘DWTS’Page 15

WAR ON TERRORISM US Embassy, NATO sewage dumpedinto Kabul RiverPage 7

MILITARY US military’s hotelin Germany closing amid virus outbreakPage 4

Sun Belt scores upsets, Big Ten ponders comeback » College football, Page 23

Volume 79, No. 106 ©SS 2020 MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2020

BY JOHN VANDIVER

Stars and Stripes

STUTTGART, Germany — Germany is violating an international treaty when it asks U.S. military personnel to pay taxes in the country, the U.S. Embassy in Berlin said as it jumped into a long-running fiscal dispute that has affected hundreds of U.S. troops and civilians.

The U.S. Embassy and military com-mands “are aware of this long-standing issue and working closely in concert to address what we believe to be a misinter-pretation of the NATO Status of Forces Agreement,” embassy spokesman Joseph Giordono-Scholz said in a statement last week.

“The Department of Defense and De-partment of State are engaged to try and

reach a resolution,” Giordono-Scholz said, giving the first indication that the issue is being tackled at a higher level than mili-tary commands in Germany, which have been unable to resolve it after years oftrying.

State and Defense Department lawyers are hashing out the details of a plan that

SEE DISPUTE ON PAGE 3

US calls in ‘big guns’ to resolve taxation dispute with GermanySIX-FIGURE FINESThe involvement of senior U.S. officials comes after Stars and Stripes earlier this year spotlighted how Germany has threatened to impose hefty tax penalties — some in six figures — on troops and civilians who it says have special ties to the country.

‘What’s next?’‘What’s next?’WILDFIRES

Tens of thousands displaced by infernosin Oregon, California and Washington Page 10

A group of inmate firefighters watch as a hillside burns near homes in Mountain Home Village, Calif., last week.

KYLE GRILLOT / The Washington Post

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 2 F3HIJKLM Monday, September 14, 2020

T O D A YIN STRIPES

American Roundup ..... 14Classified .................. 13Comics ...................... 16Crossword ................. 16Faces ........................ 15Opinion ..................... 17 Sports .................. 18-24

BUSINESS/WEATHER

US budget deficit hits record $3T in 11 months Military ratesEuro costs (Sept. 14) ............................ $1.16Dollar buys (Sept. 14) ....................... €0.8229British pound (Sept. 14) ......................$1.25Japanese yen (Sept. 14) ....................103.00South Korean won (Sept. 14) ........1,159.00

Commercial ratesBahrain (Dinar) ....................................0.3771British pound .....................................$1.2790Canada (Dollar) ................................... 1.3193China (Yuan) ........................................6.8344Denmark (Krone) ................................6.2884Egypt (Pound) ....................................15.7603Euro ........................................ $1.1831/0.8453Hong Kong (Dollar) ............................. 7.7503Hungary (Forint) ................................ 302.39Israel (Shekel) .....................................3.4593Japan (Yen) ........................................... 106.11Kuwait (Dinar) .....................................0.3060Norway (Krone) .................................. 9.0540Philippines (Peso).................................48.57Poland (Zloty) .......................................... 3.76Saudi Arabia (Riyal) ........................... 3.7510Singapore (Dollar) ..............................1.3684South Korea (Won) ........................... 1187.77

Switzerland (Franc)........................... 0.9096Thailand (Baht) ..................................... 31.25Turkey (Lira) ......................................... 7.4740(Military exchange rates are those available to customers at military banking facilities in the country of issuance for Japan, South Korea, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. For nonlocal currency exchange rates (i.e., purchasing British pounds in Germany), check with your local military banking facility. Commercial rates are interbank rates provided for reference when buying currency. All figures are foreign currencies to one dollar, except for the British pound, which is represented in dollars-to-pound, and the euro, which is dollars-to-euro.)

EXCHANGE RATES

INTEREST RATESPrime rate ................................................ 3.25Discount rate .......................................... 0.25Federal funds market rate ................... 0.083-month bill ............................................. 0.0930-year bond ........................................... 1.42

WEATHER OUTLOOK

Bahrain95/89

Baghdad115/82

Doha101/82

KuwaitCity

111/82

Riyadh105/77

Djibouti102/89

Kandahar94/59

Kabul90/57

MONDAY IN THE MIDDLE EAST TUESDAY IN THE PACIFIC

Misawa70/63

Guam84/81

Tokyo81/68

Okinawa86/77

Sasebo84/70

Iwakuni84/66

Seoul81/66

Osan76/66 Busan

78/69

The weather is provided by the American Forces Network Weather Center,

2nd Weather Squadron at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb.

Mildenhall/Lakenheath

82/57

Ramstein83/66

Stuttgart85/69

Lajes,Azores72/62

Rota83/67

Morón92/74 Sigonella

82/69

Naples86/76

Aviano/Vicenza87/62

Pápa86/65

Souda Bay84/69

MONDAY IN EUROPE

Brussels88/63

Zagan85/54

Drawsko Pomorskie

78/57

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The U.S. budget deficit hit an all-time high of $3 trillion for the first 11 months of this budget year, the Treasury Department said Friday.

The ocean of red ink is a prod-uct of the government’s massive spending to try to cushion the impact of a coronavirus-fueled recession that has cost millions of jobs.

The deficit from October through August is more than

double the previous 11-month re-cord of $1.37 trillion set in 2009. At that time the government was spending large sums to get out of the Great Recession triggered by the 2008 financial crisis.

With one month to go in the 2020 budget year, which ends Sept. 30, the deficit could go even higher. The Congressional Budget Office is forecasting the deficit this year will hit a record $3.3 trillion.

While the government has sometimes run surpluses in Sep-tember, Nancy Vanden Houten,

an economist at Oxford Econo-mist, predicted the September deficit would hit $200 billion, giv-ing the country a deficit for this budget year of $3.2 trillion.

That would be well above last year’s imbalance of $984 billion.

The CBO is forecasting that by the end of this year, the amount of government debt will equal 98% of the total economy and then next year it will exceed 100% of gross domestic product, the econ-omy’s total output of goods and services.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 3Monday, September 14, 2020

MILITARY

Marine leaves Philippines after pardon for slaying

Chinese military says US biggest threat to world peace

Dispute: Proof of intent to leave doesn’t always offer protection from German taxes

BY JIM GOMEZ

Associated Press

MANILA, Philippines — A U.S. Marine convicted of killing a Filipina transgender woman was deported Sunday after a presidential pardon cut short his detention in a case that renewed outrage over a pact governing American military presence in the Philippines.

Lance Cpl. Joseph Scott Pem-berton said in a farewell message that he was “extremely grateful” to President Rodrigo Duterte for pardoning him and expressed his “most sincere sympathy” to the family of Jennifer Laude, whom he was convicted of killing in 2014 after finding out that she was a transgender woman in a motel outside the former U.S. Subic Bay naval base west of Manila.

In his nearly six years of con-finement, Pemberton, 25, said he spent “much time contemplating the many errors” he committed the night Laude died. “He wishes he had the words to express the depth of his sorrow and regret,” according to Pemberton’s mes-sage, which was issued by his

lawyer, Rowena Garcia-Flores.Virginia Suarez, the Laude

family’s lawyer, said in a state-ment that she wishes Pemberton “peace of mind,” and hopes that he has learned “the value of life and dignity regardless of gender and nationality.”

Philippine immigration officers and American personnel escorted Pemberton, who was in handcuffs and wearing a face mask, from his cell in the main military camp in Manila to the airport, where he boarded a military aircraft. He was put on an immigration blacklist and will be banned from returning to the country, said im-migration spokesperson Dana Sandoval.

The U.S. Embassy said that “all legal proceedings in the case took place under Philippine juris-diction and law,” and that “Pem-berton fulfilled his sentence as ordered by Philippine courts.”

Last Monday, Duterte granted an “absolute and unconditional pardon” to Pemberton in a move that caught many by surprise. The Philippine leader has long been a vocal critic of U.S. secu-rity policies while reaching out to

China and Russia.Duterte’s pardon was con-

demned by left-wing and LGBTQ groups.

Debate has brewed over wheth-er the Marine, whose detention was arranged under the treaty al-lies’ Visiting Forces Agreement, or VFA, can be covered by a Phil-ippine law that grants shorter jail terms to ordinary prisoners for good conduct.

The Regional Trial Court in Olongapo city, which handled Pemberton’s case, ruled that the law covers Pemberton and ordered authorities Sept. 1 to release him early for good con-duct. But Laude’s family and the Department of Justice separately appealed, blocking his early re-lease from a maximum prison term of up to 10 years.

The court order rekindled perceptions that American mili-tary personnel who run afoul of Philippine laws can get special treatment under the VFA, which provides the legal terms for tem-porary visits by U.S. forces to the country for large-scale combat exercises.

Pemberton, an anti-tank mis-

sile operator from New Bedford, Mass ., was one of thousands of American and Philippine mili-tary personnel who participated in joint exercises in the Philip-pines in 2014.

He and a few other Marines were on leave after the exercises and met Laude and her friends at a bar in Olongapo, a city known for its nightlife .

Laude was later found dead, her head slumped in a toilet bowl in a

motel room, where witnesses saidshe and Pemberton had checkedin. A witness told investigatorsthat Pemberton said he chokedLaude after discovering she wastransgender.

In December 2015, a judge con-victed Pemberton of homicide, not the more serious charge of mur-der that Philippine prosecutorssought. The judge said at the timethat factors such as cruelty andtreachery had not been proven.

Associated Press

BEIJING — China’s Defense Ministry on Sunday blasted a critical U.S. report on the coun-try’s military ambitions, saying it is the U.S. instead that poses the biggest threat to the international order and world peace.

The statement follows the Sept. 2 release of the annual Defense Department report to Congress on Chinese military developments and goals that it said would have “serious implications for U.S. na-tional interests and the security of the international rules-based

order.”Defense Ministry spokesman

Col. Wu Qian called the report a “wanton distortion” of China’s aims and the relationship between the People’s Liberation Army and China’s 1.4 billion people.

“Many years of evidence shows that it is the U.S. that is the fo-menter of regional unrest, the violator of the international order and the destroyer of world peace,” he said.

U.S. actions in Iraq, Syria, Libya and other countries over the past two decades have resulted in the

deaths of more than 800,000 peo-ple and displacement of millions, Qian said.

“Rather than reflecting on it-self, the U.S. issued a so-called report that made false comments about China’s normal defense and military construction,” he said in the statement. “We call on the U.S. to view China’s national de-fense and military construction objectively and rationally, cease making false statements and re-lated reports, and take concrete actions to safeguard the healthy development of bilateral military

relations.” The Defense Department re-

port examined the PLA’s techni-cal capabilities, doctrines and the ultimate aims of China’s military buildup.

Much of the report was devoted to analyzing China’s strategy to-ward Taiwan, a U.S. ally which China considers a part of its ter-ritory to be annexed by force if necessary. China’s military capa-bilities dwarf those of the island of 23 million in numerical terms, although any invasion of Taiwan would be complex and would

carry major political risks, the re-port said.

It also looked at areas where the 2 million-member PLA, the world’s largest standing military, has overtaken the U.S., includ-ing in the size of its navy, now the world’s largest with approximate-ly 350 ships and submarines com-pared to around 293 for the U.S.

China has also built a consid-erable arsenal of land-based bal-listic and cruise missiles and has one of the world’s largest forces of advanced long-range surface-to-air systems, the report said.

FROM FRONT PAGE

will be turned over to the embassy for ac-tion in the weeks ahead, a State Depart-ment official told Stars and Stripes .

The involvement of senior U.S. officials comes after Stars and Stripes earlier this year spotlighted how Germany has threat-ened to impose hefty tax penalties — some in six figures — on troops and civilians who it says have special ties to the country. It’s aimed at getting the German federal government to issue guidance that would stop regional tax offices from levying taxes on Americans living in the country with SOFA protections, military officials have said.

The NATO Status of Forces Agreement is intended, among other things, to protect military personnel, who already pay taxes in the U.S., from having to also pay it in

Germany on their military pay. But some local fiscal offices in Germany

maintain they have a right to tax person-nel who aren’t in the country “solely” for their jobs.

They have argued that a service mem-ber or Defense Department civilian who extends their tour, marries a local person or does anything else that suggests special ties to Germany could be liable for taxes on all military pay they’ve received while in Germany, including back pay. Benefits such as housing allowance have been fac-tored into the tax bills, said tax experts and a German defense attorney who has taken on some military cases.

To avoid being taxed, service members and civilians must prove to German au-thorities a “willingness to return” to the U.S. But there is no established legal stan-dard that defines what constitutes a will-

ingness to return and German tax offices decide on a case-by-case basis if they will waive or impose taxes on someone.

The ultimate proof of intent to leave — actually returning to the U.S. — doesn’t necessarily offer protection from German regional finance offices, which have sought taxes dating back 10 years and pursued U.S. personnel after they have returned home.

U.S. Army Europe, which manages SOFA matters in Germany, has known about the severity of the problem since at least 2014, when an Army PowerPoint pre-sentation about host-nation relations noted that around 100 civilians and active-duty troops were in financial difficulty after re-ceiving tax bills from the Germans.

Today, nearly 500 people with military ties are under investigation in the Land-stuhl area, where thousands of Americans

who are assigned to Ramstein Air Baseand several Army bases live, the local tax office said in July. Military members inother regions, including Stuttgart and Wi-esbaden, also have been targeted.

In the 2014 document, USAREUR saidthe personal nature of the issue meant “theability of the command to influence the outcome is limited.”

It also said that, as a “last resort,” theU.S. Embassy in Berlin could be called in to organize “inter-governmental talks” onthe issue.

It’s unclear if the growing number ofAmericans with SOFA status who arebeing threatened with tax bills was the trigger for that last-resort solution, but sixyears later, the high-level talks seem to beon the brink of happening.vandiver.john@stripes.com Twitter: @john_vandiver

PHILIPPINES’ BUREAU OF IMMIGRATION/AP

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Joseph Scott Pemberton has his handcuffs taken off before leaving Camp Aguinaldo on his way to the airport in Quezon city, Philippines, on Sunday .

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 4 F3HIJKLM Monday, September 14, 2020

BY JOHN VANDIVER

Stars and Stripes

STUTTGART, Germany — The U.S. military’s hotel in the Bavarian resort town of Gar-misch-Partenkirschen was to close starting Monday after a coronavirus-infected American staying there sparked a wider outbreak following a night of bar hopping, German and U.S. mili-tary officials said.

The 26-year-old woman, who

had virus symptoms, visited multiple bars Tuesday, infecting numerous people and prompting Garmisch on Friday to shut down nightlife establishments, district officials told Germany’s Bild newspaper.

U.S. Army Garrison Bavaria on Friday confirmed that it has ex-perienced an outbreak inside the hotel, which will close for at least two weeks as a precaution.

“The facility is working with U.S. Army medical profession-

als and local medical officials to assess the situation and conduct contact tracing,” the garrison said in a statement.

Several staff members have tested positive for the virus, the garrison said.

Edelweiss said anyone who has visited the resort since Sept. 3 should self-monitor for any symp-toms and seek medical care if any develop.

The Army’s statement did not address the American accused

of being responsible for a wider outbreak in Garmisch. On Sat-urday, the garrison also declined to comment on the status of the American or whether she had tested positive before going out.

Bild reported that 33 people on Friday tested positive for the virus in Garmisch and that those infections were linked to con-tact with the one American. Bild also reported that there were an-other 23 infections connected to Edelweiss.

Beginning Saturday, Garmischimposed a one-week limit on gath-erings at restaurants, which must close by 10 p.m. No more than fiveguests can sit at a table and a nomore than five people can meetas a group in public places.

Edelweiss Lodge and Resort, about 50 miles from Munich, isa popular vacation destination for military personnel based inGermany.vandiver.john@stripes.comTwitter: @john_vandiver

BY JENNIFER H. SVAN

Stars and Stripes

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germa-ny — Army Col. Douglas Levien still gets emotional when talking about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, recalling the day when the Brook-lyn native lost five close friends in the World Trade Center and 10 high school classmates.

“It’s a very personal day, not only a personal day if you’re an American, but even more so if you’re a New Yorker because the hometown was struck,” he said, his voice quavering. “This day brings back a lot of memories.”

Levien spoke Friday at the 21st Theater Sustainment Command’s 9/11 remembrance ceremony, held on the Panzer parade field under a clear blue sky, much like the one over New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.

The 2,977 people who died in the attacks, most of them Ameri-cans, were honored with a 21-gun salute and 19 seconds of silence — one for each year since two planes crashed into the twin tow-ers in New York, one into the Pen-tagon in Virginia, and a fourth in a field in Pennsylvania, brought down when passengers fought the hijackers.

Levien, now the 21st TSC dep-uty commanding officer, wasn’t near home that day. He was a young Army captain stationed at Fort Stewart in Georgia, eating breakfast at the chow hall when

first one plane, then a second, crashed into the World Trade Center.

“When the second building hit, we knew it was a terrorist attack,”

he said, in an interview after the ceremony.

He remembers losing his ap-petite but forcing himself to eat, “knowing it’s going to be a long

da y.”“And it was a very long day for

many of us and lots of long days to follow ,” he said.

Levien’s remarks highlighted

some of the many heroes from 9/11, including first responderswho were “running up the stairs… with over 45 pounds of bunkergear while their fellow citizenswere coming down and jumpingout of buildings.”

He spoke of the solidarityshown in the aftermath of the at-tacks by U.S. allies such as Ger-many, who stood alongside U.S.soldiers to help guard the gates atU.S. bases.

Nineteen years ago, “our posts had no check points,” Leviensaid.

“It’s great that we’re doing this here today,” he said after the cer-emony, noting that everyone in uniform at the event had ties to9/11. Some joined the Army afterthe attacks, others continued toserve and many deployed to Af-ghanistan, Iraq and elsewherearound the world.

As the years tick by, Leviensaid it was important to honor the anniversary of 9/11, not onlyto make sure it doesn’t happen again but also to tap into the sameresiliency so many people dis-played in the days that followedthe attacks.

“We’re dealing with a pan-demic ; we’re dealing with lotsof racial inequality and unrestat the home front,” he said. “Butlife goes on … soldiering goes on. We have to continue to get up and move forward.”svan.jennifer@stripes.comTwitter: @stripesktown

BY CAITLIN DOORNBOS Stars and Stripes

Secretary of State Mike Pom-peo on Thursday urged the 10 countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to act against China for building up and militarizing islands in the South China Sea, according a report by The Associated Press.

Pompeo made his plea to the top diplomats of the ASEAN na-tions over a video call during the group’s annual conference, which was held virtually this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Don’t let the Chinese Com-munist Party walk over us and

our people,” he said in a recording of his speech. “… Don’t just speak up, but act.”

Beijing claims near-ly all of the South China Sea as its territorial

waters and believes it has a his-toric right to the region, building and militarizing 27 islands and reefs in the Spratly and Paracel island chains, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.

Four ASEAN countries — Bru-nei, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines — have overlapping claims to many of the islands, ac-cording to the initiative.

The United States does not rec-ognize any nation’s claims to the islands and considers the South China Sea international waters. Pompeo on July 13 announced the official U.S. stance rejecting China’s claims and actions there, calling them “completely unlaw-ful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them.”

During the virtual confer-ence, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called the U.S. “the big-gest driver of militarization” in the South China Sea, the South

China Morning Post reported Thursday.

The U.S. military regularly patrols the region, often send-ing warships and military air-craft on freedom-of-navigation operations near the Spratly and Paracel chains to challenge ter-ritorial claims, drawing the ire of Beijing.

“Peace and stability are China’s greatest strategic interest in the South China Sea,” Wang said at the conference, according to the Hong Kong-based newspaper.

Pompeo suggested ASEAN states “reconsider business deal-ing with the very state-owned companies that bully ASEAN coastal states in the South China

Sea,” according to the AP report. The U.S. Bureau of Industry

and Security on Aug. 27 sanc-tioned 24 Chinese companies “fortheir role in helping the Chinese military construct and milita-rize” South China Sea islands and “undermine the sovereign rightsof U.S. partners in the region,”according to a Commerce De-partment statement at the time.

“You should have confidence that America will be here infriendship to help you,” Pompeotold the ASEAN leaders in therecording.

doornbos.caitlin@stripes.comTwitter: @CaitlinDoornbos

MILITARY

Officer recalls ‘very personal day’ at 9/11 ceremony

Military resort in Germany to close amid outbreak

Pompeo to ASEAN: Don’t let Beijing ‘walk over us’ in South China Sea

MICHAEL ABRAMS/Stars and Stripes

Members of the U.S. Army Garrison Rheinland-Pfalz fire department take part in the 9/11 remembrance ceremony hosted by the 21st Theater Sustainment Command in Kaiserslautern, Germany, Friday.

Pompeo

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 5Monday, September 14, 2020

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 6 F3HIJKLM Monday, September 14, 2020

BY SETH ROBSON

Stars and Stripes

Airmen at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., have been whizzing around on two wheels since Sept. 2, when the facility became the first in the Air Force to offer elec-tric scooters for rent.

The San Francisco-based com-pany that provides them — Spin — hopes to roll out its service on other bases, including overseas and deployed locations, company director Ben Fong, 34, said in a telephone interview Friday.

“We are open to [providing scooters] wherever we can serve the service members,” he said, noting that Spin already has op-erations in a number of cities in Germany, where there’s a large U.S. military community.

Electric scooters are a trans-portation option for airmen who are new to a base or on temporary duty and don’t have a vehicle, said Fong, who learned about troops’ needs from liaison officers dur-ing a previous career as a foreign service officer at embassies in Mexico and India.

The launch of the scooter ser-vice at Edwards, which started with 17 scooters, was welcomed by 412th Test Wing Command Chief Master Sgt. Ian Eishen in a Sept. 3 Facebook post.

“If it was easy this would have happened a long time ago, but I am glad that we finally have this capability for our Airmen,” he

said. “If an Airman in the dorms runs into car trouble, please reach out to a First Sergeant and they can make sure you have scooter access free of charge.”

Others at Edwards can sign onto the Spin app and pay for their rides, he said.

The Edwards scooters are pow-ered by solar charging stations in line with Spin’s efforts to become carbon neutral by 2025, Fong said. The company charges a dol-lar to unlock the devices and 15 cents a minute after that.

Scooters there can be found in three locations, including the commissary, Eishen said in his Facebook post.

“We will start to expand to

more locations as we get feed-back,” he said.

Many of the rules for using the scooters at Edwards mirror those for bicycles, Eishen said. People must wear helmets, obey road rules and not ride while impaired.

The scooters on Edwards have a top speed of 15 mph and a bat-tery range of 38 miles, according to Spin.

E-scooter rollouts in cities around the world in recent years have not been without contro-

versy. Last week, pop singer Ri-hanna got a black eye after falling off a scooter, according to British tabloid The Sun.

When e-scooters first appeared in New Zealand in 2018, pedestri-ans complained about people rid-ing on sidewalks and labeled the devices a “menace,” local news website Stuff reported.

Spin has added screens to its app setting out the rules for on-base use, Fong said.

“So far there is very positive feedback from airmen,” he said.

“This is really an affordable so-lution helping those folks to get around the base. It is really help-ful for folks who have to coverlonger distances.”

However, the company’s elec-tric dreams might require modi-fications to policy at some AirForce bases. At Yokota Air Base,home of U.S. Forces Japan in western Tokyo, for example, alocal rule prohibits the opera-tion of e-scooters on the facility, according to 374th Airlift Wingspokeswoman Kaori Matsukasa.

BY SETH ROBSON

Stars and Stripes

Some of the United States’ largest warships, along with 100 aircraft and 11,000 service mem-bers, will practice finding, track-ing and engaging targets in the air, on land and in the sea around Guam this month.

Exercise Valiant Shield, which starts Monday and ends Sept. 25, will involve forces working on Guam and around the Mari-ana Islands Range Complex, the Pacific Fleet said in a statement Friday.

Participants include the air-

craft carrier USS Ronald Rea-gan, amphibious assault ship USS America, amphibious transport dock USS New Orleans and dock landing ship USS Germantown, according to the statement.

Joining them will be about 100 aircraft and 11,000 personnel from the Navy, Air Force, Army and Marine Corps.

“It is vitally important that we demonstrate to our allies and part-ners our strong commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the fleet director of maritime opera-tions, Rear Adm. Michael Boyle, said in the statement. “Exercises such as Valiant Shield allow U.S.

forces … to continuously improve joint lethality.”

This is the eighth Valiant Shield exercise since 2006, according to the statement. The last one took place in September 2018.

Participating forces will prac-tice providing maritime secu-rity, performing anti-submarine and air defense and conducting amphibious operations, the state-ment said.

Valiant Shield follows last month’s Rim of the Pacific exer-cise off Hawaii, which involved navies from 10 nations with 22 surface ships and one submarine.

RIMPAC, which typically in-

cludes plenty of action ashore, was held entirely at sea this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Valiant Shield planners have taken steps to protect troops, their families and local residents from the virus, according to the fleet.

As of Friday, Guam had record-ed 1,863 coronavirus infections, including 249 service members. That sum does not include ap-proximately 1,150 cases from the aircraft carrier USS Theo-dore Roosevelt, which diverted to Naval Base Guam in late March and spent about two months fight-ing an outbreak on board.

The U.S. territory has beenunder a government-mandated “Pandemic Condition of Readi-ness 1” since Aug. 15 that shutters nonessential businesses; forcesschools to use virtual instruction; prohibits most public gatherings; and closes parks and beaches to most visitors.

A stay-at-home order, in effectuntil at least Sept. 18, requires “all persons in Guam” to remainin their residences, except foressential activities such as foodshopping, visiting a doctor orcommuting to and from work.robson.seth@stripes.comTwitter: @SethRobson1

Associated Press

KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii — The U.S. Army has requested public input for an upcoming en-vironmental impact statement to retain a lease on Hawaii state land used for training.

The military’s 65-year lease at the Pohakuloa Training Area on Hawaii island is set to expire in 2029, West Hawaii Today report-

ed last week.The training area covers near-

ly 36 square miles about 20 miles west of Hilo.

The area is the largest contigu-ous live-fire range and maneu-ver training area in the state and is in an area called the Saddle, between the mountain peaks of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea.

The land has been used for mil-itary training since 1943, and the

property has been leased by the Army since 1964.

The military paid $1 for the 65-year lease.

Retaining the lease is neces-sary to continue operations to meet training requirements, the Army said.

The environmental impact statement will evaluate the po-tential effects of a range of al-ternatives, including a no-action

option, full lease retention, modi-fied lease retention and minimum lease retention and access, the Army said.

“Like any property lease, the negotiation for a new lease can begin at the will of the tenant, the U.S. Army in this case, and the first step is to conduct a thorough review of the environmental im-pacts, including natural and cul-tural,” Pohakuloa Training Area

Public Affairs Officer Michael Donnelly said.

The state Department of Landand Natural Resources, whichleases the land to the Army, said Friday it was reviewing the Ar-my’s notice of intent to preparethe environmental document.

The Army plans to hold a virtual meeting Sept. 23 to allow partici-pants to view online presentationsand call with comments.

MILITARY

Navy set to kick off large-scale exercise

Army to seek Hawaii state lease extension for training area

Airmen at Edwards get scooter service

Photos courtesy of Spin

A San Francisco-based company, Spin, has been offering electric scooter rentals to airm en at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., since Sept. 2 .

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 7Monday, September 14, 2020

BY J.P. LAWRENCE AND ZUBAIR BABAKARKHAIL

Stars and Stripes

KABUL, Afghanistan — Raw sewage pours into the fetid waters of Kabul River each day, includ-ing some of what comes from the U.S. Embassy and the military headquarters for Resolute Sup-port NATO.

The only public facility in Kabul for sewage treatment hasn’t worked for almost two years be-cause of poor maintenance, lead-ing to untreated wastewater being dumped into the river and endan-gering the health of thousands of families, Afghan officials said.

At least 21,000 gallons of raw sewage from portable toilets at the U.S. Embassy is unloaded each month at the aging Mak-royan Waste Water Treatment Plant, which pipes the untreated sewage into the river, according to Afghan officials and a repre-sentative for the contractor Oryx-Afghanistan, who handles waste for the compound.

About 12,000 gallons of sewage from U.S. and coalition troops also goes into the river each month, according to Malika and Refa Environmental Solutions, which services the U.S.-led NATO head-quarters in Kabul and Bagram Airfield.

These numbers are a small percentage of the untreated sew-age that comes to the Makroyan plant from homes and businesses throughout the city, Afghan of-ficials said. The plant is the only legal public dumping site in Kabul.

The plant was heavily damaged in a flash flood in March 2019, said Mohammad Eshaq Yadgari, vice president of the facility, lo-cated near Kabul’s airport and built in the 1970s by engineers from the Soviet Union.

Visits to the facility revealed dormant machinery and heavy damage to the pipes and canals used to transport wastewater.

“Since the wastewater treat-ment plant does not function and its canals are damaged, the sew-age from Makroyan dumping site directly goes into the Kabul River,” Yadgari said.

A statement by the U.S. Embas-sy said most of its wastewater is treated onsite, except for “a small amount of wastewater from our portable toilets” that is processed by local subcontractors.

That adds up to 21,000 gallons of sewage from the compound each month, said Shafiqullah Saify, waste operation manager for Oryx-Afghanistan, which shared its embassy contract with Stars and Stripes.

Sewage from U.S. and coali-tion troops is treated at a private wastewater treatment plant built by contractor Malika and Refa Environmental Solutions, or M&R, about 10 miles outside of Kabul.

Still, a small percentage of wastewater from Resolute Sup-port NATO headquarters in down-town Kabul winds up in the river, an M&R representative said.

About three M&R trucks a month carrying about 4,000 gal-lons of sewage each must dump at

the Makroyan plant due to road closures that prevent vehicles from leaving Kabul, said Omid Sadat, project manager for M&R’s treatment plant.

Officials with the Afghan Na-tional Environmental Protection Agency who visited the Makroy-an plant confirmed that untreat-ed sewage is going into the Kabul River. This wastewater seeps into underground aquifers that locals use for drinking water, said Ez-atullah Sediqi, deputy director general of NEPA.

“It is very clear it is creating health problems,” Sediqi said.

About 3,000 families live near Makroyan. Some told Stars and Stripes that they suffer from per-sistent gastrointestinal issues.

Kamal, a 7-year-old boy play-ing along the river with his father and brother, said he often suffers from diarrhea.

“It hurts my stomach,” he said of the water.

Qiyamuddin, 28, said he has recently suffered from typhoid, a disease linked to contaminated drinking water, and that three members of his immediate fam-ily have also fallen sick.

DynCorp International in McLean, Va., subcontracts sew-age services at the embassy to Oryx and another company, ACCL International. DynCorp said in a statement that both companies are acting in accordance with Af-ghan laws and regulations.

Oryx, M&R and the U.S. Em-bassy issued similar statements. The Resolute Support NATO press office declined to respond on the record to questions.

“The wastewater plant is the only option provided by the Af-ghanistan government to allow contractors to dispose of waste-water,” Suliman Khill, an Oryx representative, said in an email. “What happens after that is not in our control.”

He said the company was un-

aware the Makroyan plant was not working and called on the Af-ghan government, which receives fees each time contractors un-load trucks at the non-function-ing plant, to ensure the system works.

In the long term, the Afghani-stan Urban Water Supply and Sewerage Corp. is developing a plan to build wastewater treat-ment sites throughout Kabul. But these efforts are years from frui-tion, said Sayed Nawid Saeedi, spokesman for the city agency.

Repairs to the Makroyan facil-ity have been delayed due to land disputes and the difficulty of re-placing decades-old parts, said Yadgari, vice president of the plant.

Plans are being made to re-build the facility, at a cost of about $5 million, but a timeline has not been determined, Yadgari said, adding that “all the wastewater will go into the Kabul River until

a new treatment center is built.” Some contractors are finding

alternatives to Makroyan. A feware dumping waste directly intothe river, NEPA officials said.M&R built its own facility fouryears ago for about $150,000 as part of an effort to meet licensing requirements with NEPA, said Alex Momand, co-founder of the company.

While the international commu-nity is not solely responsible forsewage entering the Kabul River,they should hold contractors tohigher standards and demand they build their own facilities,even if that means higher costs,said Schah-Zaman Maiwandi, di-rector general of NEPA.

“We want these companies thatcan easily build treatment plants, and we want them to build thetreatment plants and manage thewaste properly,” Maiwandi said. lawrence.jp@stripes.com Twitter: @jplawrence3

US Embassy, NATO sewage dumped into Kabul River

WAR ON TERRORISM

PHOTOS BY J.P. LAWRENCE/Stars and Stripes

Two boys walk past a pipe last month where untreated sewage pours into the Kabul River near the Makroyan Waste Water Treatment Plant in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Abdul Wali, an engineer, has worked for 34 years at the Makroyan Waste Water Treatment Plant . Pumps used to treat sewage stood silent on Aug. 16 due to the decades-old machinery falling into disrepair, officials said.

Garbage and waste collect in the fetid water of the Kabul River July 22 near the treatment plant . Locals and officials say sewage is dumped into the river because the treatment plant doesn’t work, which is causing people to get sick.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 8 F3HIJKLM Monday, September 14, 2020

VIRUS OUTBREAK

Dakotas lead in growth as some protest mask use

Trump officials seek changes to CDC reports

Oxford and AstraZeneca resume vaccine trial

South Korea eases limits as numbers begin to dip

Associated Press

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Coro-navirus infections in the Dakotas are growing faster than anywhere else in the nation, fueling impas-sioned debates over masks and personal freedom after months in which the two states avoided the worst of the pandemic.

The argument over masks raged last week in Brookings, S .D ., as the city council consid-ered requiring face coverings in businesses. The city was forced to move its meeting to a local arena to accommodate intense inter-est, with many citizens speaking against it, before the mask re-quirement ultimately passed.

Amid the brute force of the pandemic, health experts warn that the infections must be con-tained before care systems are overwhelmed. North Dakota and South Dakota lead the coun-try in new cases per capita over the last two weeks, ranking first and second respectively, accord-ing to Johns Hopkins University researchers.

South Dakota has also posted some of the country’s highest pos-

itivity rates for COVID-19 tests in the last week — over 17%— an indication that there are more in-fections than tests are catching.

Infections have been spurred by schools and universities re-opening and mass gatherings like the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which drew hundreds of thou-sands of people from across the country.

“It is not a surprise that South Dakota has one of the highest (COVID-19) reproduction rates in the country,” Brookings City Council member Nick Wendell said as he commented on the many people who forgo masks in public.

The Republican governors of both states have eschewed mask requirements, tapping into a spir-it of independence hewn from en-during the winters and storms of the Great Plains.

The Dakotas were not always a hot spot. For months, the states appeared to avoid the worst of the pandemic, watching from afar as it raged through large cities. But spiking infection rates have fanned out across the nation, from

the East Coast to the Sun Belt and now into the Midwest, where states like Iowa and Kansas are also dealing with surges.

When the case count stayed low during the spring and early sum-mer, people grew weary of con-stantly taking precautions, said Dr. Benjamin Aaker, president of the South Dakota State Medical Association.

“People have a tendency to be-come complacent,” he said. “Then they start to relax the things that

they were doing properly, and that’s when the increase in cases starts to go up.”

North Dakota Gov. Doug Bur-gum and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem have resisted mask requirements. Burgum pro-motes personal choice but tried to encourage masks with a so-cial media campaign. Noem has discouraged mask requirements, saying she doubts a broad con-sensus in the medical community that they help prevent infections.

BY LENA H. SUN

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Servic-es have sought to change, delay and prevent the release of reports about the coronavirus by the Centers for Disease Control and Pre-vention because they were viewed as under-mining President Donald Trump’s message that the pandemic is under control.

Michael Caputo, the top HHS spokesman, said in an interview Saturday that he and one of his advisers have been seeking greater scru-tiny of the CDC’s weekly scientific dispatches,

known as the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, for the past 3½ months. The adviser, Paul Alexander, has sent repeated emails to the CDC seeking changes and demanding that the reports be halted until he could make edits.

The emails, first reported late Friday by Politico, describe the CDC documents, widely known as the MMWR, as being “hit pieces on the administration.” Caputo confirmed the authenticity of the emails.

The emails echo the sentiments from an earlier attack by Alexander, reported in The Washington Post in July, about an MMWR on the potential risk of the coronavirus to preg-nant women. In that email, Alexander also ac-

cused the CDC of undermining the president. The emails are the latest evidence of how the nation’s top public health agency is coming under intense pressure from Trump and his allies, who are playing down the dangers of the pandemic ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election.

“Most often, the MMWRs are [issued] for purely scientific reasons,” Caputo said Satur-day. “But in an election year, and in the time of COVID-19, it’s no longer unanimously sci-entific. There’s political content.”

Despite the changes to the MMWRs sought by HHS, the requests were “infrequently” ac-cepted by the CDC, Caputo said.

BY KIM GAMEL

Stars and Stripes

SEOUL, South Korea — SouthKorea will ease coronavirus re-strictions on restaurants andcoffee shops for two weeks begin-ning Monday to reward a declin-ing number of confirmed cases.

In August, restaurants in themetropolitan area had been or-dered to close for dining in at 9 p.m., while large coffee chains,bakeries and ice cream shops hadto offer takeout and delivery onlyas part of a push to curb a newoutbreak of COVID-19.

Health authorities said Sunday that the effort, dubbed social dis-tancing level 2.5, has succeeded in driving down the number ofinfections enough to lift the extrarestrictions.

However, officials cautionedthat the facilities must strictly maintain entry logs of customersand limit the number of custom-ers inside.

Other measures also remain, including city mask mandatesand calls to continue other stan-dard prevention measures suchas thoroughly washing hands andmaintaining safe distances from others.

South Korea reported 121 newcases Sunday, the 11th consecu-tive day the daily toll was below200.

Only 99 of those were locallytransmitted. The others were im-ported from abroad for a total of22,176 since the pandemic tookhold here in late February.

The death toll increased bythree to 365, according to theKorea Disease Control and Pre-vention Agency, or KDCA.

The newly formed agency, which has been given more au-tonomy, replaced the KoreaCenters for Disease Control andPrevention last week and will be led by the KCDC chief Jeong Eun-kyeong.

Health Minister Park Neung-hoo welcomed the declining num-bers but noted that it was taking longer to stop the latest outbreakcompared to an initial wave of infections that occurred in thespring.

“Thanks to our concerted ef-forts, the spread of COVID-19has been consistently decreasingin the greater Seoul area,” Parksaid during a daily briefing. “Butwe are still in a critical situation. The downward pace is slower than expected.”

Last month, U.S. Forces Koreaalso reimposed stricter condi-tions on the 58,000-strong mili-tary community in South Korea, including a ban on nonofficialtravel and most off-base recre-ational activities including din-ing at local restaurants or going to bars.gamel.kim@stripes.comTwitter: @kimgamel

BY PAN PYLAS

Associated Press

LONDON — Oxford Univer-sity announced Saturday it was resuming a trial for a coronavi-rus vaccine it is developing with pharmaceutical company Astra-Zeneca, a move that comes days after the study was suspended following a reported side-effect in a U.K. patient.

In a statement, the university confirmed the restart across all of its U.K. clinical trial sites after regulators gave the go-ahead fol-lowing the pause on Sunday.

“The independent review pro-cess has concluded and following the recommendations of both the independent safety review com-mittee and the U.K. regulator, the MHRA, the trials will recom-mence in the U.K.,” it said.

The vaccine being developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca is widely perceived to be one of the strongest contenders among the dozens of coronavirus vaccines in various stages of testing around the world.

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock welcomed the restart, saying in a tweet that it was “good

news for everyone” that the trial is “back up and running.”

The university said in large trials such as this “it is expected that some participants will be-come unwell and every case must be carefully evaluated to ensure careful assessment of safety.”

It said globally some 18,000 people have received its vaccine so far. Volunteers from some of the worst affected countries — Britain, Brazil, South Africa and the U.S. — are taking part in the trial.

Brazil’s health regulator An-visa on Saturday said it had ap-

proved the resumption of tests of the “Oxford vaccine” in the South American country after re-ceiving official information from AstraZeneca.

Although Oxford would not disclose information about the patient’s illness due to participant confidentiality, an AstraZeneca spokesman said early last week that a woman had developed se-vere neurological symptoms that prompted the pause. Specifically, the woman is said to have devel-oped symptoms consistent with transverse myelitis, a rare in-flammation of the spinal cord.

ERIN BORMETT, THE (SIOUX FALLS, S.D.) ARGUS LEADER/AP

Some people who are against a potential city-wide mask mandate wore red to a city council meeting Sept. 2, in Brookings, S.D.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 9Monday, September 14, 2020

From wire reports

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Peeps treats are going on hiatus for several months — another con-sequence of the coronavirus pandemic.

Just Born Quality Confections said it won’t be producing the popular marshmallow sweets for Halloween, Christmas or Val-entine’s Day as the Bethlehem -based company prepares for next Easter, PennLive.com reported.

Production of the holiday-shaped candies was suspended in the spring as the coronavirus spread across the state. Limited production resumed in mid-May with protocols in place to protect employees, Just Born said.

“This situation resulted in us having to make the difficult deci-sion to forego production of our seasonal candies for Halloween, Christmas and Valentine’s Day in order to focus on meeting the expected overwhelming demand for Peeps for next Easter season, as well as our everyday candies,” the company said.

Just Born, which has been in business since 1923, said its other seasonal confections are expect-ed to return to store shelves by Halloween 2021.

New Mexico New Mexico officials Sat-

urday reported 100 additional confirmed COVID-19 cases, including the second in a rural county that went months without any reported cases.

The cases reported Satur-day raised the statewide total to 26,661 . Three additional deaths raised the death toll to 821.

De Baca County, in the thinly populated cattle country of east-central New Mexico, last week lost its status as the only county in the state without a reported COVID-19 case.

As of Saturday, only two other counties, both in rural northeast-ern New Mexico, still had case to-tals in the single digits: Harding with two and Mora with seven.

Michigan DETROIT — A Detroit man

has pleaded guilty for his role in weaving a $590,000 coronavirus fraud scheme, according to a re-lease from the Department of Justice.

Darrell Baker, 56, pleaded guilty to counts of bank fraud and money laundering after intention-ally attempting to defraud a Penn-sylvania bank under the guise of a loan under the Payroll Protection Program, which was established to help small businesses weather the pandemic.

Baker was approved for a $590,000 loan for his company, “Motorcity Solar Energy, Inc.,” through Customers Bank in Pennsylvania. In his application documents, Baker claimed the business employed 68 workers

and had $2.8 million in wages, tips and other compensation in 2019, according to the release.

An investigation by the FBI and the Small Business Adminis-tration found that Motorcity Solar Energy was not an operational business and as such had no em-ployees or payroll expenses.

Arkansas LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas

health officials Saturday re-ported 631 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 11 more deaths from the illness caused by the virus.

The Arkansas Department of Health figures show the state’s cases since the pandemic began in March now total 68,542. The actual number of cases in Arkan-sas is likely higher because many people have not been tested, and studies suggest people can be in-fected and not feel sick.

The state’s fatalities from COVID-19 now total 964 .

Iowa DES MOINES — Health of-

ficials are reporting 793 new coronavirus cases and eight more deaths in Iowa.

KCCI-TV reports that the new positive cases that had been re-ported Saturday brought the total to 73,547 since the pandemic began. Among those case, 52,932 people have recovered and 1,216 have died.

Health officials are report-ing an 8.8% positivity rate over the last 14 days. But four Iowa counties report a positivity rate greater than 15% over the last 14 days. The high rate allows public schools in Sioux, Lyon, Bremer and Plymouth counties to apply for a waiver to provide 100% vir-tual learning. Sioux and Lyon counties report a positivity rate greater than 20%.

Kentucky FRANKFORT — A prominent

Kentucky infectious disease spe-cialist who was hailed by the gov-ernor as a “front line hero” has died after a nearly four-month battle against COVID-19.

Dr. Rebecca Shadowen, who tested positive for the virus on May 13, died Friday , Med Center Health in Bowling Green said. Gov. Andy Beshear tweeted Sat-urday that he was “heartbroken“ to hear of her death and urged people to follow her advice and “wear a mask in her honor.“

Connie Smith, president and CEO of Med Center Health, said Shadowen “will forever be re-membered as a nationally rec-ognized expert who provided the very best care for our patients and community. She was a dear friend to many.”

Also Saturday, Beshear report-ed 721 new coronavirus cases in Kentucky, including 81 people

who are 18 and younger. The state’s total number of cases sur-passed 56,410 since the start of the pandemic.

Arizona PHOENIX — Navajo Nation of-

ficials said they will participate in the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine trials amid a steady decline in coronavirus cases.

The American Indian territory once had the highest coronavirus infection rate in the country, but has since seen a substantial de-crease in community spread, the Arizona Republic reported. Na-vajo officials reported zero new confirmed cases Sept. 8 for the first time.

As of Friday, there have been 9,952 confirmed cases and 530 confirmed deaths from the coro-navirus in the Navajo Nation since the pandemic began, according to their Department of Health.

The vaccine trials will be con-ducted at health care centers across the Navajo Nation. Partici-pation is entirely voluntary.

New Hampshire NASHUA, N.H. — Students in

two New Hampshire school dis-tricts were subjected to pornog-raphy and other inappropriate behavior during remote classes last week, authorities said.

A teacher in Nashua reported a pornographic image being shown to the entire class during a re-mote lesson, Gregory Rodriguez, Nashua’s director of technology told WMUR-TV.

The teacher closed down the class right away, he said.

“We’re working with the Nash-ua Police Department, trying to figure out ways to investigate this,” Rodriguez said.

In Concord, there have been several reports of inappropri-ate behavior during remote high school lessons.

Two were pornographic, one was racial, and one involved a toy gun in the background behind a student, said Pam McLeod, the district’s IT director.

Virginia Dozens of workers at Reagan

National Airport may have been exposed to the novel coronavirus after attending services at an Al-exandria church last month.

The possible exposures took place at the Kidane Mehret Church in Alexandria between Aug. 14 and Aug. 17, but it wasn’t until a week later, on Aug. 21, that city health officials were notified of a confirmed case of the virus linked to the church.

The delay meant church mem-bers who work at the airport may have continued going to their jobs because they were unaware they’d been exposed — poten-tially exposing co-workers and airport customers.

Officials at the church, which serves the Ethiopian Orthodox community, did not respond to re-peated requests for comment.

Officials with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Author-ity (MWAA), which manages Na-tional and Dulles, said they were not aware of any positive cases among their employees affiliated with the church, nor were any MWAA employees self-quaran-

tining because they had been atthe church on those days.

Connecticut STORRS — University of Con-

necticut and local health officials have ordered about 700 studentsliving in an off-campus apart-ment complex to quarantine fortwo weeks after tracing severalCOVID-19 cases to homes there.

Students living in the TheOaks on the Square, which is lo-cated just off campus in Storrs, are being asked to remain insidetheir apartments except for “soli-tary activity” or to pick up food,according to the letter sent toOaks residents.

Non-students living in the com-plex are not subject to the quar-antine, which was agreed to byofficials from UConn, the East-ern Highlands Health Districtand the town of Mansfield.

“We believe it appropriate tocharacterize this as an outbreakwarranting increased medical in-tervention,” the groups wrote in ajoint statement .

The quarantined students willbe required to switch any in-per-son classes to online for an indefi-nite period of time.

As of Saturday, the school has reported 121 positive tests for thenew coronavirus on campus sinceabout 5,000 students returned in August and 92 cases among thoseliving off-campus.

The on-campus positivity ratewas reported at 0.72%, on Sat-urday. The off-campus rate was1.63%. The state’s positivity ratewas 1.1% on Friday.

VIRUS OUTBREAK ROUNDUP

Peeps production paused due to virus

RICK BOWMER/AP

People protest Utah Gov. Gary Herbert during an anti-mask rally outside of the Governor’s Mansion on Saturday in Salt Lake City.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 10 F3HIJKLM Monday, September 14, 2020

NATION

BY LINDSAY WHITEHURST AND ANDREW SELSKY

Associated Press

SALEM, Ore. — The path of devastation spans thousands of miles where flames have con-sumed people, homes and cars while leaving a barren, gray landscape.

But the massive wildfires aren’t done chewing through the West, shrouding the skies with choking smoke or driving residents from their homes.

It’s an ominous harbinger of fall for the region that was the first to be hit hard by the corona-virus and where the cries for so-cial justice have rung especially loud this summer with protests in Portland for more than 100 days.

“What’s next?” asked Danielle Oliver, who had to flee her home southeast of Portland ahead of the deadly flames. “You have the protests, coronavirus pandemic, now the wildfires. What else can go wrong?”

She’s one of tens of thousands of people displaced by wildfires in Oregon, California and Wash-ington state. Many more are liv-ing with air contamination levels at historic highs. The region’s death toll has topped 30 and could increase sharply, with Oregon of-ficials saying they are prepar-ing for a possible “mass casualty event” if more bodies are found in the ash.

Among the people killed was Millicent Catarancuic, who was found near her car on her 5-acre home in Berry Creek, Calif . At one point she was ready to evacu-

ate with her dogs and cats in the car. But she later changed her mind as the winds seemed to calm and the flames stayed away.

Then the fire changed direc-tion, rushing onto the property too quickly for her to leave. She died, along with her animals.

“I feel like, maybe when they passed, they had an army of cats and dogs with her to help her through it,” said her daughter, Holly Catarancuic.

George Coble lost everything just outside Mill City, Ore . — his fence-building business, five houses where his family lived and a collection of vintage cars, including a 1967 Mustang.

“We’ll just keep working and keep your head up and thank God everybody got out,” Coble said.

In a town nearby, Erik Tucker spent the day coated in ash and smudged with charcoal, hauling buckets of water through what remained of his neighborhood to douse hot spots.

“No power, debris everywhere, smoke, can’t breathe,” he said, his words sparce in the air thick with ash.

Fire-charred landscapes looked like bombed-out cities in Europe after World War II, with build-ings reduced to charred rubble piled atop blackened earth. Peo-ple caught in the wildfires died in an instant, overcome by flames or smoke as they desperately tried to escape.

California has borne the brunt of the death toll so far, as more than two dozen active major fires have burned thousands of square miles. President Donald

Trump plans to visit Monday for a briefing.

Some of the worst blazes were still burning in northeastern Washington and Oregon. The Democratic governors of all three states have said the fires are a consequence of global warming.

The dry, windy conditions that fed the flames were likely a once-in-a-generation event, said Greg Jones, a professor and research climatologist at Linfield Univer-sity in McMinnville, Ore . The warmer world can increase the likelihood of extreme events and contribute to their severity, he said.

There was some good news Saturday: The same smoke that painted California skies orange also helped crews corral the state’s deadliest blaze this year by blocking the sun, reducing tem-peratures and raising humidity.

Smoke created cooler condi-tions in Oregon as well. But it was also blamed for creating the dirti-est air in at least 35 years in some places, “literally off the charts,” said Laura Gleim, the state’s envi-ronmental quality spokesperson .

In Portland, smoke filled the air with an acrid metallic scent like dull pennies. It was so thick that Ashley Kreitzer could not see the road when she headed to work as a driver for a ride-hailing service.

“I couldn’t even see five feet ahead of me,” she said. “I was panicking, I didn’t even know if I wanted to go out.”

People stuffed towels under doorjambs to keep smoke out or wore N95 masks in their own homes.

MARK YLEN, ALBANY DEMOCRAT-HERALD/AP

Smoke fills the area around the Oak Park Motel on Friday in Gates, Ore. The motel, owned by Ron and Belinda Evans, was one of several business destroyed by the Beachie Creek Fire.

Smoke-filled air a blessing and curse for West Coast

Associated Press

MINDEN, Nev. — Kicking off a Western swing, President Donald Trump barreled into Nevada for the weekend, looking to expand his path to victory while unleash-ing a torrent of unsubstantiated claims that Democrats were try-ing to steal the election.

Trump defied local authori-ties by holding a Saturday night rally in tiny Minden after his ini-tial plan to hold one in Reno was stopped out of concern it would violate coronavirus health guide-lines. Unleashing 90-plus min-utes of grievances and attacks, Trump claimed the state’s Demo-cratic governor tried to block him and repeated his false claim that mail-in ballots would taint the election result.

“This is the guy we are entrust-ing with millions of ballots, unso-licited ballots, and we’re supposed to win these states. Who the hell is going to trust him?” Trump said of Gov. Steve Sisolak. “The only way the Democrats can win the election is if they rig it.”

As part of his ongoing crusade against mail-in voting, lawyers for the president’s reelection cam-paign are urging a federal judge in Las Vegas to block a state law and prevent mail-in ballots from going to all active Nevada voters less than eight weeks before the election.

Addressing a mostly mask-less crowd tightly packed together, Trump spoke in front of moun-tains draped in haze, the scent of smoke in the air from wildfires raging a state away in Califor-nia. The president expressed his condolences to the victims but, declaring that “I don’t have to be nice anymore,” focused on tear-

ing into his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden.

Trump also offered a fiercedefense of his handling of the pandemic, which has killed morethan 190,000 Americans andstill claims nearly 1,000 lives aday. And he blamed Democraticgovernors across the nation, in-cluding Sisolak, for deliberately slowing the pace of reopeningtheir states to hurt his election chances.

Privately, the Trump campaign welcomed the fight, believing ithighlighted a reelection theme:Trump’s insistence that the na-tion has turned the corner onthe pandemic, while Democrats, including Biden and governors, are hurting the nation’s economyand psyche with stringent re-strictions. It’s the kind of politicalfight that Trump’s team relishesand underscores the growing im-portance of Nevada in Trump’squest for 270 electoral votes asthe race looks tight in a numberof pivotal states.

The tightening race in a num-ber of the most contested states, including increasing concern onthe president’s team about Ari-zona, has led to a renewed effortfor Trump to expand his electoral map.

If Arizona slips away, Trumpcampaign officials privately ac-knowledge that it would compli-cate his path to 270 electoral votes.If he loses Arizona, winning Wis-consin — the most likely Midweststate for him to retain — wouldnot be enough even if he keeps Florida and North Carolina.

Nevada has become a particu-lar focus, with hopes of turningout huge numbers in rural areas,including Minden, population3,000.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is committing at least $100 million to help Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in the cru-cial battleground state of Florida.

Bloomberg’s late-stage infu-sion of cash reflects Democrats’ concerns about the tight race in a state that is a priority for Presi-dent Donald Trump. A victory for Biden in Florida, the largest of the perennial battleground states, would significantly complicate Trump’s path to reaching the 270 Electoral College votes needed to secure a second term.

Republicans, however, feel confident in their chances in the state, pointing to GOP wins in 2018 and stronger-than-expected turnout in 2016 as evidence the state is trending in their direc-tion. They’ve invested millions in Florida focused on Latino out-reach and boosting their field op-eration, and the state’s size and diversity makes campaigns there expensive.

The businessman has contrib-uted $500,000 to Voto Latino to help register Latino voters, $2million to the group Collective Future to help register AfricanAmerican voters, and $2 millionto Swing Left, a group focused on electing Democrats in swing dis-tricts. One of the groups he hasfounded and funds, Everytown for Gun Safety, has committedto spending $60 million on elec-tions this cycle, and Bloomberghimself has pledged another $60million to support Democrats inHouse races.

Bloomberg’s new spending is intended to boost Biden before the start of early voting in Flor-ida, which begins on Sept. 24. ABloomberg adviser said much of the money will go to televisionand digital advertising. Republi-cans are outspending Democrats by about $8 million in the state in future television ad reservations,according to a review of Kantar/CMAG data by The AssociatedPress.

Trump rallies for support in rural Nev.

Bloomberg pledges $100M to boost Biden in Florida

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 11Monday, September 14, 2020

BY NIKKI WENTLING Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — The long-awaited presidential memorial honoring Dwight D. Eisenhower will be dedicated and unveiled in Washington, D.C., on Thursday — more than 20 years after Con-gress commissioned it.

The memorial — dedicated to the life, military service and presidency of Eisenhower — sits on four acres along Indepen-dence Avenue, just off the Na-tional Mall. It was designed by architect Frank Gehry, now 91, and went through various stages of redesign because of criticism from Eisenhower’s family.

Tuesday evening, the site was blocked from view by a green pri-vacy fence. Inside were three stat-ues of America’s 34th president: one as a young boy in his home state of Kansas, one as a general addressing troops on D-Day, and one of Eisenhower as president, surrounded by advisers.

Carl Reddel, the executive di-rector of the Eisenhower Memo-rial Commission and a retired brigadier general, sat on one of the memorial’s many stone benches, wearing an “I like Ike” face mask. Reddel joined the commission in 2001. He led a study of Eisenhower’s legacy and saw the memorial through its lengthy site-selection, design and construction processes.

“Eisenhower is one of the best pieces of evidence that this Amer-ican experiment can work,” Red-del said. “He’s the real thing.”

Reddel pointed Tuesday night at the statue of Eisenhower as a boy. The statue, in the northwest corner of the memorial, faces the statues of Eisenhower as a gen-eral and president.

“The Eisenhower story starts over there with a young man,” Reddel said. “He has no idea that what he’s looking at from over there, at the general and the president down here, were part of his future. Can you imagine? No famous family name, no advan-tages of money and no particular assets in that regard.”

Eisenhower was born in Deni-son, Texas, but grew up with six brothers in Abilene, Kan. , as part of a poor family. The longest quo-tation at the memorial is from Eisenhower’s speech on June 22, 1945, at a homecoming celebra-tion in Kansas following World War II. In part, it reads, “… I come here, first, to thank you, to say the proudest thing I can claim is that I am from Abilene.”

Eisenhower won an appoint-ment to the U.S. Military Acad-emy at West Point. Later in his military career, he served as a military aide to Gen. John J. Per-shing, commander of the U.S. forces during World War I, and to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, U.S. Army chief of staff.

During World War II, Eisen-hower led an Allied invasion of North Africa. He was appointed supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in 1943 and tasked with leading the Allied in-vasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.

At the memorial, a quotation from Eisenhower’s address to troops on D-Day is inscribed on stone. It reads, “The tide has turned! The free men of the world are march-ing together to victory!”

Along one side of the memorial is a towering, 60-foot tall, 450-foot wide metal tapestry. During the day, the tapestry is nearly trans-parent. At night, however, it lights up to reveal a sketch of Pointe du Hoc, a D-Day landing site in Nor-mandy, at peacetime.

The D-Day invasion led to the liberation of Paris and turned the tide of the war in Europe. Follow-ing the war, Eisenhower became the Army chief of staff and later took command of the NATO forc-es in Europe. He ran for president and won in 1952.

The final quotation inscribed at the Eisenhower Memorial is from his second inaugural address in 1957: “We look upon this shaken earth, and we declare our firm and fixed purpose — the building

of a peace with justice in a world where moral law prevails.”

The quotations at the memorial, along with its location and other details, were chosen carefully.

The memorial is located south of the National Air and Space Mu-seum and surrounded on other sides by the Federal Aviation Ad-ministration and the Department of Education. The location is sym-bolic, Reddel said. Eisenhower called for the creation of NASA in 1958, signed the legislation that formed the FAA and created the Department of Health, Education and Welfare as a Cabinet-level agency in 1953.

Eisenhower is also celebrated for strengthening Social Security, forming the massive Interstate Highway System and working be-hind the scenes to discredit Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Reddel, who has spent 19 years working to establish the memori-al, said the former president “was worth all the time and effort.”

“In his own way, he trans-formed the country during his presidency and his time alive,” Reddel said.

A dedication ceremony will be held at the memorial Thurs-day evening . Fox News host Bret Baier will emcee the event, and Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., will de-liver an address. There will also be recorded remarks by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and performances by the 101st Airborne Honor Guard, the U.S. Marine Band and Voices of Service, a quartet of veterans and service members.

President Donald Trump and the Eisenhower family, as well as former and current members of Congress, Cabinet members and military leaders, were invited to the ceremony.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the event will be a scaled-down unveiling compared to original plans to dedicate the site on May 8, the 75th anniversa-

ry of Victory in Europe Day. TheEisenhower commission createdan online memorial that includesan audio tour, an interactive time-line of Eisenhower’s life and 18lesson plans for educators.

Over the past 19 years, Reddel learned a lot about Eisenhower,whom he described as complex,intelligent, fascinating and one ofthe most accessible and popularU.S. presidents.

“I think Eisenhower is a greatlesson in life itself and dealing with challenges and change in amanner that doesn’t hurt peopleand gives them hope for them-selves and their future,” Reddelsaid. “He was a lesson in beingpersonally committed to that pos-itive story about himself and his fellow Americans.”

The memorial will open to the public Friday.

wentling.nikki@stripes.com Twitter: @nikkiwentling

NATION

Eisenhower memorial to be unveiled in DC

PHOTOS BY CARLOS BONGIOANNI/Stars and Stripes

With the U.S. Capitol building seen in the distance, sculptures depicting the 34th president standing with military and civilian advisers are seen on a display at the new Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday .

Left: Executive director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Carl Reddel speaks behind an “I like Ike” face mask.

Right: At left, a display that features sculptures depicting the 34th president standing with military and civilian advisers faces a display with sculptures depicting Gen. Eisenhower standing with paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division before the Battle of Normandy.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 12 F3HIJKLM Monday, September 14, 2020

WORLD

Former British leaders slam PM over Brexit plan

Elevated experienceMusicians with alp horns perform on the roof of an apartment block for a concert featuring distant harmonies, at a time when cultural events have been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, in the Prohlis neighborhood in Dresden, Germany, on Saturday . About 33 musicians of the Dresden Sinfoniker perform a concert named the “Himmel ueber Prohlis,” The Sky above Prohlis, on the roof-tops of communist-era apartment blocs in the Dresden neighborhood Prohlis.

MARKUS SCHREIBER/AP

Bloomberg News

Eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar will allow the country’s oil ports to reopen after an eight-month blockade, the U.S. Embassy said in a statement.

Eastern forces, which imposed a blockade on most of the nation’s vast oil facilities in mid-January,

have “conveyed to the U.S. gov-ernment the personal commit-ment of General Haftar to allow the full reopening of the energy sector no later than Sept. 12.”

Libya, which holds Africa’s largest crude reserves, produced 1.2 million barrels a day last year. Output plummeted to about 90,000 barrels a day after supporters of

Haftar, who is trying to unseat the United Nations-backed govern-ment in Tripoli, halted operations under his control in January.

“The U.S. Embassy is encour-aged by an apparent sovereign Libyan agreement to enable the National Oil Corporation (NOC) to resume its vital and apoliticalwork,” the statement said.

BY PAN PYLAS

Associated Press

LONDON — Two former Brit-ish prime ministers who played crucial roles in bringing peace to Northern Ireland joined forces Sunday to urge lawmakers to re-ject government plans to override the Brexit deal with the Europe-an Union, arguing that it imper-ils that peace and damages the U.K.’s reputation.

In an article in The Sunday Times, John Major and Tony Blair slammed the current Brit-ish government for “shaming” the country with legislation that, in places, goes against the very deal it signed to allow for the U.K.’s smooth departure from the EU earlier this year.

Major, a Conservative prime minister from 1990 to 1997, and Blair, his Labour successor for a decade, said Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Internal Market Bill “questions the very integri-ty” of the U.K.

“This government’s action is shaming itself and embarrassing our nation,” they said.

The planned legislation, which will be debated by British law-makers this week, has led to a furious outcry within the EU as it would diminish the bloc’s pre-viously agreed oversight of trade between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland if a U.K.-EU trade agreement isn’t secured.

The British government has ad-mitted that the legislation would break international law but ar-gues that it’s an insurance policy in the event a trade deal with the EU is not secured by the end of this year. Johnson has said the legislation is needed to end EU threats to impose a “blockade” in the Irish Sea that the prime min-ister asserted could “carve up our country.” EU leaders have furi-ously rejected that charge.

Justice Secretary Robert Buck-land told the BBC on Sunday that the legislation was a “break the glass in emergency provision,” if needed, and that he would re-sign if he believed the rule of law was broken in an “unacceptable”

way.“I don’t believe we’re going to

get to that stage,” he said.With the British government

showing no sign of changing course, there are real concerns that the talks on a future trade deal between the U.K. and the EU could collapse within weeks. If that happens, tariffs and other impediments to trade will be im-posed by both sides at the start of 2021.

The U.K. left the EU on Jan. 31, but it is in a transition period that effectively sees it benefit from the bloc’s tariff-free trade until the end of the year while a future relationship is negotiated. Even before the latest standoff, discus-sions between the EU’s chief ne-gotiator, Michel Barnier, and his U.K. counterpart, David Frost, had made very little progress.

One major element of the Brexit withdrawal agreement is the sec-tion related to ensuring an open border on the island of Ireland to protect the peace process in Northern Ireland.

The issue proved thorny dur-ing the more than two years of discussions it took to get a Brexit deal done, as the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland is the only land link between the U.K. and the EU.

The EU wanted assurances the border would not be used as a back route for unlicensed goods arriving in Ireland from the rest of the U.K. — England, Scot-land and Wales. As a result, the two sides agreed there would be some kind of regulatory border between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland.

Major and Blair, who both vo-ciferously opposed Brexit, said the planned legislation puts the 1998 Good Friday agreement that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland at risk.

The pair said the bill “negates the predictability, political sta-bility and legal clarity that are integral to the delicate balance between the north and south of Ireland that is at the core of the peace process.”

Greece says about 1,200 homeless asylum seekers to be housed soon

Associated Press

LESBOS, Greece — Greek au-thorities said Sunday that some 12,000 migrants and asylum-seekers left without shelter after fires gutted an overcrowded refu-gee camp on the island of Lesbos will be moved to a new army-built tent city “in the coming days.”

Migration Minister Notis Mita-rakis said an estimated 1,000 for-ever residents of the Moria camp were expected to relocate to the

tent city by late Sunday and that getting everyone housed at the new site would take several days.

“At the moment, it’s happening on a voluntary basis in the initial stage,” Mitarakis told Greek tele-vision station Open TV.

Fires on Tuesday and Wednes-day nights decimated Moria, Greece’s largest refugee camp. Authorities have said residents protesting a lockdown imposed after a coronavirus outbreak de-

liberately set the blazes.Thousands of people have since

camped out on a stretch of high-way near Moria under police guard following more protestsagainst the Greek governmentrefusing to allow the homeless migrants to leave Lesbos for theGreek mainland.

Mitarakis said that those enter-ing the new camp would undergo rapid testing for the coronavirus and that five cases so far havebeen identified.

US Embassy: Libya chief to restart oil

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 13Monday, September 14, 2020

WORLD

Bloomberg News

Yoshihide Suga, the front-run-ner to become Japan’s next pre-mier, emphasized the importance of the nation’s alliance with the U.S. for the country’s foreign policy.

“With the U.S.-Japan alliance at the foundation, it is important for Japan to get along with other Asian nations,” Suga said in a de-bate in Tokyo on Saturday at the Japan National Press Club. While Japan faces difficulties in its rela-tions with China and South Korea, Suga said he would seek to pursue “strategic” relations with both na-tions through communication.

The debate was the last formal Liberal Democratic Party event where all three candidates share the stage to discuss their policy priorities before it holds a party vote Monday to replace Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as party leader. Abe said in late August he was stepping down for health reasons.

The LDP, which has ruled the country for 60 of the last 65

years, is expected to use its ma-jorities in parliament to install its new leader as prime minister on Wednesday. Then attention will be focused on the people he chooses for his Cabinet.

“Continuity is what’s important in diplomacy,” Suga said when asked how closely he would follow the Abe administration’s style of foreign policy.

He stressed that he’d been in the room for almost all of Abe’s many phone calls with President Donald Trump, and bristled at the suggestion that just sitting in on the call might not count as diplomatic experience. “When it comes to making decisions as a nation, I’ve been involved in all of it,” Suga said.

Likely Abe successor emphasizesties with US

CHARLY TRIBALLEAU /AP

Liberal Democratic Party’s leadership election candidate Yoshihide Suga attends a debate Saturday in Tokyo.

Hurricane approaches Bermuda astropical storm threatens Gulf Coast

Associated Press

MIAMI — Residents of Ber-muda were urged to prepare to protect life and property ahead of Hurricane Paulette, while Tropi-cal Storm Sally threatened to intensify into a hurricane as it ap-proached the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Paulette gained hurricane sta-tus late Saturday and was expect-ed to bring storm surge, coastal flooding and high winds to Ber-muda, according to a U.S. Nation-al Hurricane Center advisory.

Bermuda’s government an-nounced that L.F. Wade Interna-tional Airport would close Sunday evening, and government build-ings would be closed on Monday and Tuesday. It opened several shelters for evacuees.

Paulette had maximum sus-tained winds of 80 mph as the sys-tem moved along a curved course toward Bermuda, forecasters said. The biggest threats were strong winds, storm surge, up to 6 inches of rain and life-threaten-ing surf and rip currents.

The storm was 240 miles southeast of the territory Sunday

and was moving northwest at 14 mph. It’s the strongest in terms of winds of six disturbances the center was tracking in the Atlan-tic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.

New Orleans and surrounding areas, meanwhile, were in the crosshairs of Sally, which was ex-pected to become a hurricane on Monday and reach shore by early Tuesday — bringing hurricane conditions to a region stretching from Morgan City, La., to Ocean Springs, Miss. Tropical storm conditions were expected in the region by Monday.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Ed-wards declared a state of emer-gency Saturday, and officials in the New Orleans area issued a mandatory evacuation order for areas outside of levee protection.

The tropical storm had maxi-mum sustained winds of 60 mph with higher gusts, forecasters said.

Storm surge from Sally was forecast to reach dangerous lev-els, due in part to the tide. Up to 11 feet of water was predicted from the mouth of the Mississippi River to Ocean Springs, including

Lake Borgne.A slow moving storm, Sally

could produce rain totals up to 20inches by the middle of the week, forecasters said. The system wasmoving west-northwest at 13 mphearly Sunday. It was centered135 miles west of St. Petersburg, Fla. , and 280 miles east-southeastof the mouth of the MississippiRiver. Heavy rain was batteringthe southwest coast of Florida,the Hurricane Center said in its 11 a.m. advisory.

Once a tropical storm, Renewas forecast to become a rem-nant low Monday. Tropical De-pression Twenty was expected tostrengthen this week and becomea tropical storm by Tuesday, fore-casters said.

A low pressure system near the Cabo Verde Islands had ahigh chance of formation, whilea disturbance in the Gulf hada low chance of formation. The Hurricane Center also reported a tropical depression in the cen-tral Atlantic that did not appear to threaten land.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 14 F3HIJKLM Monday, September 14, 2020

of walking around the corner and seeing that car,” Franks’ brother-in-law, Chad Baus, told MLive.com.

“It’s going to be processed,” Sgt. Joseph Rowley said. “Hope-fully, that will unveil some sort of investigation lead for us.”

Teen honored for pulling family from burning car

CT WATERBURY — An 18-year-old Waterbury

man is being honored as a hero after pulling a family of four from a burning motor vehicle.

Justin Gavin told the Republi-can-American newspaper that he had just stepped off a bus when the SUV passed him with flames shooting from underneath.

The vehicle, which had lost its brakes, came to rest in a nearby parking lot, and Gavin ran to the scene and pulled a 1-year-old, a 4-year-old and a 9-year-old from the backseat.

He then helped the driver un-fasten her seat belt and escorted her away from the fiery vehicle as it burst into flames.

City restores juvenile curfew after crime spike

MS VICKSBURG — A re-cent spike in juvenile

crime has prompted a Mississippi city to reinstate a juvenile curfew effective immediately.

The City of Vicksburg moved to re-emphasize the curfew that has been in place as part of the city’s

shelter-in-place COVID-19 civil emergency, which is set to expire Oct. 5. The latest order will run from 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. daily and supersedes the city’s ongoing juvenile curfew on school nights, which runs from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., The Vicksburg Post reported.

Exceptions for youth 17 and under include those youth ac-companied by an adult and those youth participating in high school activities or organized youth sports.

The move comes just days after a number of juvenile-related crimes, including one murder, oc-curred within the city limits.

Deputy arrested in probe of home burglary

CA YORBA LINDA — A Southern California

sheriff’s deputy was arrested on suspicion of burglarizing a home after the resident died.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department said that Deputy Steve Hortz had responded to a July 20 call at the Yorba Linda

home when a man in his 70s died of natural causes.

An attorney representing the family estate reported items were missing from the home and pro-vided surveillance video showing Hortz entering the home at least three times and leaving with sto-len property, the department said in a statement.

Hortz, a 12-year veteran of the department, returned to the home in uniform July 27 and broke in through the rear. He returned twice in August in civilian clothes and at that time was seen remov-ing the items, the statement said.

12-year-old charged with taking 3 guns to school

FL CALLAHAN — A 12-year-old Florida boy

was arrested after bringing three handguns to school, officials said.

The boy was taken into custody at Lighthouse Christian School in Nassau County, the Florida Times-Union reported. He was charged with possession of a fire-arm on school property, and the

case was reported to the FloridaDepartment of Children andFamilies.

A teacher found two guns, a .38-caliber revolver and a smallsemi-automatic handgun, and twoboxes of ammunition in the boy’slunch box after noticing it ap-peared heavy, according to a Nas-sau County Sheriff’s Office arrestreport. A loaded semi-automaticwas found on the boy later afterhe was moved to another area, of-ficials said.

Nina Simone’s home gets permanent protection

NC TRYON — The child-hood home of iconic

musician and civil rights activistNina Simone will be indefinitelypreserved in North Carolina.

The National Trust for HistoricPreservation’s African AmericanCultural Heritage Action Fund, in partnership with World Monu-ments Fund and Preservation North Carolina, recently securedpermanent protection of the sing-er-songwriter’s childhood home in Tryon, the trust announced .

The legal agreement bindsall current and future owners to permanently protecting thebuilding’s “authentic character.” The house can be renovated, butit cannot be demolished.

Simone taught herself to playpiano in the wooden cottage as ayoung girl in the 1930s, The Na-tional Trust said.

AMERICAN ROUNDUPMissing exotic African cat found safe

NH MERRIMACK — An exotic African serval

cat that escaped from its New Hampshire home earlier was found safe and sound, police said.

A 40-pound creature named Spartacus “was trapped near its home and is in good health,” Mer-rimack police posted on Facebook . The animal has been returned to its owner, Dean King.

King adopted Spartacus from a Florida zoo four years ago. The family owns the cat legally and has a permit from the state’s de-partment of fish and game, po-lice said. The cat lives indoors, spending the days in an enclosure and roaming the family house at night.

Spartacus ran away after ap-parently getting spooked by the family dog, King said previously.

Porta-potty seen rolling down Route 66

NM ALBUQUERQUE — A portable toilet

in Albuquerque fell victim to an-other kind of whiff this week after strong winds gave it a trip along Route 66.

A virtual video showed the porta-potty rolling down a busy intersection of the Mother Road as curious motorists looked on.

Severe gusts appeared to have dislodged the mobile toilet and forced it down a journey through a road that once connected Chi-cago to Los Angeles.

Several motorists and passen-gers caught footage of the trav-eling portable toilet. Some social media users posted videos of the traveling porta-potty to the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas.

No injuries were reported and it was unclear if anyone was inside.

Woman hospitalized after alligator attack

FL NORTH FORT MYERS — A woman was at-

tacked by an alligator while trim-ming trees near a lake in Florida, officials said.

The 27-year-old woman had been working near the water in North Fort Myers when the 10-foot reptile ambushed her, ac-cording to a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commis-sion news release.

Rescue workers took the woman to a Fort Myers hospital, where she was treated for inju-ries to both legs, officials said.

Car of missing man found 9 years later

MI CLARE — A simple Carfax report has led

to the discovery of a car that be-longed to a man who has been missing from the Saginaw area since 2011.

Eric Franks’ family had fig-ured that the 2001 Chevy Malibu was destroyed or at the bottom of a lake. Instead, it was recently tracked to an owner in Clare , who said he bought the vehicle from someone who had acquired it at an estate sale.

“I can’t describe the emotions

Apple picking time

The number of eggs a 62-year-old ball python laid without male help at the St. Louis Zoo. Experts are trying to figure out how the ball python laid the eggs despite not being near a male python for at least two decades. Mark Wanner, manager of herpetology at the zoo, said it’s unusual, but not rare, for ball pythons to reproduce asexually.

The snakes also sometimes store sperm for delayed fertilization. The birth also is unusual because ball pythons usually stop laying eggs long before they reach their 60s, Wanner said. “She’d definitely be the oldest snake we know of in history,” to lay eggs, Wanner said .

THE CENSUS

7

KRISTOPHER RADDER, THE BRATTLEBORO (VT.) REFORMER/AP

From wire reports

Michael Johnson, a migrant worker from the island nation of Jamaica, uses a ladder to pick apples on a tree at the Scott Farm Orchard in Dummerston, Vt .

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 15Monday, September 14, 2020

BY KATHLEEN CHRISTIANSEN

Orlando Sentinel

Backstreet Boys member and Florida na-tive AJ McLean will compete for the Mirrorball Trophy during Season 29 of ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars,” which

premieres Monday stateside.McLean said nothing can prepare you for

“Dancing with the Stars,” but his time as a youth in Orlando and South Florida helped him under-stand the entertainment industry.

“That’s where everything really started for me as far as acting, theater, dancing and singing,” he said, noting his 30-plus years of dance experience includes ballet, jazz, tap, contemporary and, once he joined the Backstreet Boys in 1993, urban.

McLean surmises being a part of the group gives him an edge, but it also has its downsides.

“I think it’s like 60-40: 60 advantage, 40 disadvantage be-cause ... I’ve done a certain style for my entire life, so I have to reprogram my brain to a style of dance that I’ve never ever done,” the 42-year-old said. “The one upside that I am bringing to the table is I can retain things quickly.”

BY CHRIS HEWITT

Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

As we roll into back-to-school season, I compiled a list of favorite classroom movies and realized that almost all of them have fe-male protagonists.

The genre has not done as well by kids of color, as evidenced by a BET list of the best Black high school movies that resorts to in-cluding three “white savior” movies that have little to do with minority students. Fortunate-ly, documentaries such as “Hoop Dreams” and college films such as Spike Lee’s “School Daze” have filled in a few gaps.

One of the more exciting aspects of school-set movies is that they showcase young tal-ent. These projects tend to be made on tight budgets — they’re rarely expected to be huge hits . As a result, they often offer first looks at novice actors who’ll go on to long careers.

Think of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” an early vehicle for not only Jennifer Jason Leigh but also future best actor Oscar win-ners Nicolas Cage, Sean Penn and Forest Whitaker. It’s the gift that keeps on giving behind the camera, too, with director Amy Heckerling going on to make “Clueless” and writer Cameron Crowe making “Almost Fa-mous,” “Jerry Maguire” and others.

Similarly, “Dazed and Confused” offered an early glimpse of Oscar winners-in-wait-ing Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zell-weger. “Kids” boasts the debuts of Rosario Dawson, Harmony Korine and Chloe Sevi-gny. “10 Things I Hate About You,” “Can’t Hardly Wait” and others are reminders that you can trace many top actors’ beginnings to a high school film.

Even a dud such as the original “Endless Love” features, way down on the credits, the movie debut of Tom Cruise. Stick with the following school-themed movies, though; there isn’t a dud in the bunch.

‘Clueless’ (1995)Alicia Silverstone is incredible in this sweet/tart update of Jane Austen’s “Emma.” Emma is called Cher here, and it’s a really difficult role — she seems like a judgmental airhead although she’s actually smart and compas-sionate — but Silverstone nails it. It’s also a pitch-perfect portrait of high school life in the exact moment when “as if!” was the most withering thing a person could say.

‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ (1969)Maggie Smith won her first Oscar as a tragi-cally deluded Scottish teacher in a drama about the impact of charismatic mentors, for good and ill. Behind its stiff upper lip, the movie (available on YouTube) is almost a bloodless girls’ school equivalent of “Lord of the Flies,” with Smith’s fascinating lecturer unaware that the lessons she’s passing on to her smartest student will doom her to the same loneliness that Brodie endures.

‘Election’ (1999)Like Silverstone, Reese Witherspoon creates an indelible portrait of a high school upper-classwoman, albeit a much less likable one. On the surface, Witherspoon’s class-presi-dent candidate Tracy Flick seems like your basic do-gooding overachiever, but Alexan-der Payne and Jim Taylor’s clever script re-veals that her cheery surface rests on a fault line of anger and pain.

‘Heathers’ (1989)“My teen angst has a body count!” cries Ve-ronica (Winona Ryder) in an acidic satire that now requires a trigger warning for high school violence. Ryder and Christian Slater give career-best performances in a movie that launched dozens of copycats .

‘Elephant’ (2003)Gus Van Sant’s Columbine-inspired drama is undoubtedly the toughest watch on this list. A sickly suspense develops as we realize that a seemingly ordinary day at a high school is about to erupt in violence. But Van Sant’s observational approach and the naturalistic performances, mostly by nonprofessionals, provide a revealing glimpse of campus life.

‘Won’t Back Down’ (2012)T his inspiring drama shows education from corners we don’t often see depicted by Holly-wood: the parents (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and the teachers (Viola Davis) who are trying to make sure children get the start they need in order to succeed.

‘Sixteen Candles’ (1984) John Hughes’ high school comedies all have their merits and demerits (his rare non-white characters are not depicted with much sensitivity). “The Breakfast Club” is more concerned with high school hierarchy, but I prefer this coming-of-age charmer, with Molly Ringwald at her incandescent best as a girl whose family forgot her 16th birthday. John and Joan Cusack make appearances.

From wire reports

Following the less-than-stellartheatrical debut of ChristopherNolan’s “Tenet,” Warner Bros.is delaying its next big release, “Wonder Woman 1984,” to Christ-mas. The “Wonder Woman” se-quel had been scheduled to hit theaters Oct. 2.

Warner Bros.’ $200 million“Tenet” fared well in its inter-national-first release, but found ticket sales harder to come by in the United States. “Tenet”grossed about $20 million in itsNorth American rollout .

“Wonder Woman 1984,” one of many blockbusters originallyset for the summer, had been thenext big-budget release on the calendar. Now, that gap extendsto “Black Widow,” a Marvel re-lease slated for Nov. 6.

Other news� “Saturday Night Live” is re-

turning to its Rockefeller Center studio when it launches Season 46 on Oct. 3. The NBC sketch com-edy show, which filmed last sea-son’s final three episodes from its stars’ homes during COVID-19lockdowns .

� The cable network Starz an-nounced Sept. 10 it has greenlita half-hour dramedy series in-spired by the 2018 feature film “Blindspotting.” Daveed Diggsand Rafael Casal, who wrote, pro-duced and starred in the critical-ly acclaimed movie, will serve as writers and executive producers .

‘Wonder Woman’ release delayedBest back-to-school films

PARAMOUNT PICTURES/TNS

Alicia Silverstone and Stacey Dash star in “Clueless,” released in 1995.

FACES

Former Backstreet Boy AJ McLean brings a background in many forms of dance to “Dancing with the Stars” this season.FRANK OCKENFELS/ABC

Former BSB member McLean gets inside scoop on ‘DWTS’

Another benefit: He’s been able to reach out to his friend, fel-low BSB member and former ‘DWTS’ contestant Nick Carter for advice. Carter offered this tip: Go in with no expectations.

“That’s the key, I think, to going the distance in this competi-tion is to literally have zero expectations,” McLean said. “If you go in with a cockiness or you go in with too much confidence, I think that’s going to hinder you because then you think you’ve got it in the bag and that’s not how this works. ... From what (Carter) told me, this is a journey. It’s a marathon, it’s not a sprint, so pace yourself.”

While learning has been easy, it’s the foundation and specifics of ballroom dancing that have proven a challenge for McLean.

“Every little thing matters ... from the way your hand is posi-tioned to your shoulders being back to pointing your toes to how

far apart your legs are,” he said. “It’s crazy.”McLean has also struggled with learning to lead his partner. “I’m not comfortable yet (leading),” he said. “Right now, it’s just let’s just put the steps on me, then we’ll start being really meticulous with all the details, and hopefully by then, when I’m comfortable, is when I can finally take my partner and actually lead her.”

The celebrity-professional dancer pairings won’t be revealed until the season premiere .

Though he couldn’t divulge his partner’s name, McLean said they’re working well together.

“If you have a disconnect, you’re never going to make it far,” he said. “You really have to become one with your partner and have that synergy. So far, my partner and I are just really, really hitting it off.”

His friends and family — especially his wife, Ro-chelle, and dancer daughters 7-year-old Ava and 3-year-old Lyric — were excited to hear McLean

would compete in the upcoming season.“I’m doing this for my kids, and I’m doing this for

my family. And I’m doing this for myself,” McLean said. “I just want to set a good example. ... and I just want to show them that this is something that daddy’s never done before, but I’m just gonna leave it all on the dance floor. I’m gonna give 150% every single Monday night and leave it up to the fans to vote.”

Backstreet benefits

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 16 F3HIJKLM Monday, September 14, 2020

Monday, September 14, 2020 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 17

OPINIONMax D. Lederer Jr., Publisher

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BY RICK SCOTT

Special to The Washington Post

Fifty-six years ago, the Interna-tional Olympic Committee took a historic step: It stood up to the government of South Africa and

its racist apartheid system and banned the country from participation in the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games.

The country was similarly excluded from the 1968 Mexico City Games, and in 1970, the IOC indefinitely expelled South Africa from Olympic competition. Almost every other international sporting league, including FIFA, the International Cricket Council and the International Amateur Athletic Federation, echoed the ban until the South African government ended the apartheid system.

The IOC should take a similar step now, and move the 2022 Games out of Beijing. In a letter to IOC President Thomas Bach last October, I outlined the Chinese Com-munist Party’s numerous human rights abuses, including attacks on free speech, detention of international journalists, the imprisonment of more than 1 million Ui-ghurs (an ethnic and religious minority in Western China), the sinister surveillance of citizens and tyrannical actions against citizens of Hong Kong. Bach responded to

me by saying the IOC must remain “po-litically neutral.” Without referring spe-cifically to Beijing, he doubled down on his stance against boycotts in a speech in July, criticizing the “misuse of sport for political purposes.”

Since I first wrote to the IOC, the human rights situation in China has only worsened. The Communist Party and Chinese Presi-dent Xi Jinping have effectively eliminated the autonomy of Hong Kong, stripping the basic rights of free speech and free assem-bly from more than 7 million citizens. New reports confirm the Xi regime’s forced abortions and forced sterilizations of Ui-ghur women.

China was selected to host the 2022 Games in 2015, three years after Xi came to power. In addition to the genocide of Ui-ghurs and relentless crackdown on Hong Kong, Xi has led a campaign against any-one he feels threatens his power. Hundreds of human rights lawyers and activists have been jailed, including Liu Xiaobo, a win-ner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who died in state custody after criticizing Beijing’s atrocities. And foreign journalists have been expelled for writing articles Xi found offensive.

The IOC charter states, “The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of human-kind, with a view to promoting a peaceful

society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” And the “host city con-tract” the IOC adopted in 2017 requiresthat hosts “protect and respect humanrights.” Unfortunately (and not so coinci-dentally), the contract does not take effect until after the 2022 Beijing Games.

The South Africa ban is not the only timethe IOC has stood up for its values and forhuman rights around the globe. Germanyand Japan were banned from participat-ing in the 1948 Games for their roles in World War II. Afghanistan was banned in 2000 because of the Taliban’s discrimina-tion against women. And South Korea was pressured by the IOC to enact democraticreforms before it hosted the 1988 Games.

The IOC has a chance to once again dothe right thing by moving the 2022 Gamesout of Beijing. The actions of Xi and theChinese Communist Party fly in the face of Olympic values and universally held ide-als of basic human dignity.

For the hundreds of millions who will watch the Games, we must again lead byexample and refuse to give Communist China — a country that is running con-centration camps and eliminating humanrights for its people — a platform to white-wash its crimes.Rick Scott, a Republican, is a U.S. senator for Florida.

BY EMILY OSTER

Special To The Washington Post

If you have children, you probably talk a lot about Halloween. My 5-year-old has been discussing his costume since Nov. 1, 2019. (Current plan: Superhe-

ro Unicorn.) For many adults, too, Hallow-een has a special place. Walking through leaves, delighting in dress-up, gorging on candy — it’s a reminder of childhood, of tradition, of unadulterated joy.

As we look ahead to the fall, our country confronts many questions — most of them more important than whether to stock up on Snickers or Twix. But the variety packs of fun-size bars are already on grocery shelves, forcing us to confront Halloween’s immediate future. And the holiday is a big deal in the United States. Americans spend nearly $9 billion a year on Hallow-een, generating thousands of seasonal jobs. In a year when millions of Americans are unemployed, and our kids are losing out on a lot, many of us are wondering: Will Hal-loween 2020 have to be canceled?

The answer, happily, is no — if we adopt the right precautions and the right attitude.

Halloween as we know it presents one very big problem: hordes of children reaching into the same candy bins at the same time. Amid the crush, they’ll pull out a candy only to realize it is black licorice, then throw it back, spreading their germs as they fish for something better. Mean-while, they’re breathing on one another and the adult holding the candy bin. This could potentially contribute to viral spread.

The good news is that everything else about Halloween actually isn’t too fright-ening, at least from an epidemiological perspective. For the most part, people trick or treat outside. Mask-wearing is central to the celebration. Adults — a high-er-risk group — can walk with their chil-dren while maintaining social distance, especially if parents arrange for one adult to accompany a larger group of children. It may be challenging — read: impossible — to keep kids completely distanced. But if

they’re wearing masks and they’re outside, especially if they’re little, the data indi-cates the risk of their spreading COVID-19 is fairly low.

This suggests a relatively simple solu-tion: individual treats distributed in a so-cially distanced way. Instead of sitting on the porch with a communal pot of candy, adults can space goodies out on the front steps with a sign that says “Take ONE”; kids can wave and yell “Trick or Treat” and be on their merry way. It’s true that someone has to touch the candies to place them on the stoop, but we now know that the novel coronavirus doesn’t survive well on surfaces, especially outdoors. Anyone really nervous can plan a costume with gloves.

This set-up works well for traditional suburban house-to-house trick-or-treat-ing. More creativity will be required for large apartment buildings, say. But there are still good options. Neighbors can pick a time to celebrate in a nearby park, bring lawn chairs and hot beverages, and set out appropriately spaced individual candies. Kids can migrate from stash to stash col-lecting their loot. Adding a scavenger hunt dynamic with maps and checklists could make it even more fun. In other communi-ties, people practice “Trunk or Treat” in parking lots. Different residential situa-tions will require different variations, but the point is that many Americans will be able to find a way for their kids to celebrate

Halloween safely.There will be some things we cannot

do. The “Heaven and Hell” parties be-loved by college students and young adults will probably have to fall by the wayside.And lingering concerns about toilet-papershortages may affect “Mischief Night.” Butthe spirit of the holiday can endure.

Of course, Halloween this year will notlook exactly the same. Which gets to thecrux of what I think many parents are struggling with, emotionally and in otherways. We have expectations for how thingswill be — Halloween, sure, but also thefirst day of school, after-school activities,Christmas and so forth. We fondly remem-ber hay rides during fall apple-picking, and we are sad to hear that, even thoughour kids may still pick apples, the hay rides are canceled. If our kids are going back toschool, we cringe at the idea of their wear-ing masks all day. My son’s fall soccerprogram just announced that the season isback on, but we’re bummed about limited spectators and fewer games.

In some cases, these changes representreal losses. But there is also a danger ofadults overstating these losses, overlook-ing the good that we’re able to retain andprojecting our own disappointments onto our kids.

Kids are adaptable, and changes are not always terrible. Many parents worry, for instance, that masks will stunt children’s understanding of emotions. But on the flip side, there is some evidence that people inEast Asian countries, where mask-wearingis routine, grow up to be relatively moreresponsive to eye cues for emotions thanmouth cues.

In the case of Halloween, this year will be different — but that doesn’t mean itwon’t be fun. There is nothing that says theonly good Halloween requires jammingyour hand into a bucket of candy. We adultsare committed to a vision. Kids just want aButterfinger.Emily Oster, a professor of economics at Brown University, is the author of “Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool.” She is a co-founder of the website Covid-Explained.

The IOC should move the 2022 Games

COVID-19 doesn’t have to cancel HalloweenDifferent residential situations will require different variations, but the point is that many Americans will be able to find a way for their kids to celebrate Halloween safely.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 18 F3HIJKLM Monday, September 14, 2020

SCOREBOARD/NFL

Go to the American Forces Network website for the most up-to-date TV schedules.myafn.net

Sports on AFN

Pro soccerAuto racing

Deals

Golf

Pro football

Pro basketball

Saturday’s transactionsBASEBALL

Major League BaseballMAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL — Suspend-

ed Minnesota Twins RHP Sergio Romo one game for his actions on Sept. 11.

American LeagueBALTIMORE ORIOLES — Assigned INF

Dilson Herrera to alternate training site. Designated OF Mason Williams for as-signment.

BOSTON RED SOX — Activated RHP Na-than Eovaldi from the 10-day IL. Optioned LHP Matt Hall to alternate training site.

KANSAS CITY ROYALS — Traded OF Michael Gigliotti to Tampa Bay Rays to complete July 21 trade. Recalled OF Nick Heath from alternate training site. Acti-vated 3B Kevin Gutierrez from 60-day IL. Designated SS Matt Reynolds for assign-ment. Released RHP Ofreidy Gomez.

LOS ANGELES ANGELS — Activated INF David Fletcher from IL. Optioned LHP Jose Quijada to alternate training site.

OAKLAND ATHLETICS — Placed 3B Matt Chapman on the 10-day IL. Recalled OF Seth Brown and RHP Daulton Jeffries from alternate site.

NEW YORK YANKEES — Optioned RHP Brooks Kriske to alternate training site.

TEXAS RANGERS — Recalled RHP Luke Farrell and INF Sherton Apostel from al-ternate training site. Placed SS Elvis An-drus on 10-day IL.

TORONTO BLUE JAYS — Activated INF Bo Bichette from 10-day IL. Optioned RHP Jacob Waguespack to alternate training site.

National LeagueATLANTA BRAVES — Designated LHP

Robbie Erlin for assignment. Recalled LHP Sean Newcomb from alternate train-ing site.

COLORADO ROCKIES — Activated RHP Wade Davis from 10-day IL. Optioned RHP Ashton Goudeau to alternate train-ing site.

LOS ANGELES DODGERS — Activated RHP Pedro Baez from 10-day IL. Optioned RHP Dennis Santana to alternate train-ing site.

MIAMI MARLINS — Optioned RHP Rob-ert Dugger to alternate training site.

PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES — Optioned RHP Ramon Rosso to alternate training site.

FOOTBALLNational Football League

ARIZONA CARDINALS — Activated RB D.J. Foster from the practice squad.

CHICAGO BEARS — Activated K Cairo Santos from the practice squad.

CLEVELAND BROWNS — Signed CB Robert Jackson to the active roster from the practice squad.

GREEN BAY PACKERS — Activated LB Krys Barnes, LB Tipa Galeai and TE John Lovett from practice squad.

MINNESOTA VIKINGS — Signed DB Nate Meadors from practice squad. Ac-tivated LB Hardy Nickerson to the active roster from the practice squad. Signed RB Dalvin Cook to a multi-year contract extension.

NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS — Activated K Nick Folk and DL Xavier Williams from the practice squad. Placed WR Gunner Olszewski on injured reserve. Signed OL Caleb Benenoch to the practice squad.

COLLEGENOTRE DAME — Agreed to terms with

head football coach Brian Kelly on a four-year contract extension.

Safeway OpenPGA Tour Saturday

At Napa, Calif.Yardage: 7,166; Par: 72

Purse: $6.6 MillionThird Round

Brian Stuard 67-67-66—200 -16James Hahn 68-65-67—200 -16Cameron Percy 64-68-68—200 -16Kristoffer Ventura 69-66-66—201 -15Sam Burns 64-65-72—201 -15Harry Higgs 69-62-70—201 -15Emiliano Grillo 69-68-65—202 -14Stewart Cink 67-70-65—202 -14Doug Ghim 67-66-69—202 -14D.J. Trahan 67-65-70—202 -14Russell Knox 63-69-70—202 -14Sahith Theegala 71-68-64—203 -13Kevin Streelman 72-66-65—203 -13Ben Taylor 69-67-67—203 -13Xinjun Zhang 69-67-67—203 -13Tim Wilkinson 67-68-68—203 -13Pat Perez 65-69-69—203 -13

Sanford InternationalPGA Tour Champions

SaturdayAt Sioux Falls, S.D.

Yardage: 6,729; Par: 70Purse: $1.8 Million

Second RoundSteve Stricker 67-64—131 -9Miguel A. Jimenez 65-66—131 -9Darren Clarke 70-62—132 -8Fred Couples 68-64—132 -8Kevin Sutherland 68-64—132 -8Rod Pampling 70-63—133 -7Glen Day 69-64—133 -7Bernhard Langer 68-65—133 -7Woody Austin 68-65—133 -7David Toms 65-68—133 -7

ANA InspirationLPGA TourSaturday

At Rancho Mirage, CaliforniaPurse: $3.1 million

Yardage: 6,865; Par: 72a-amateur

Third RoundBrooke M. Henderson 68-71-65—204Nelly Korda 66-67-71—204Katherine Kirk 72-67-67—206Lexi Thompson 70-67-69—206Mirim Lee 70-65-71—206Carlota Ciganda 70-70-67—207Stacy Lewis 70-71-67—208Rose Zhang (a) 71-69-68—208Maria Fernanda Torres 70-69-69—208Mel Reid 69-70-69—208

Federated Auto Parts 400NASCAR Cup Series

SaturdayAt Richmond Raceway

Richmond, Va.Lap length: 0.75 miles

(Start position in parentheses)1. (9) Brad Keselowski, Ford, 400 laps,

57 points.2. (14) Martin Truex Jr, Toyota, 400, 47.3. (2) Joey Logano, Ford, 400, 49.4. (3) Austin Dillon, Chevrolet, 400, 51.5. (12) Chase Elliott, Chevrolet, 400, 41.6. (6) Kyle Busch, Toyota, 400, 36.7. (1) Kevin Harvick, Ford, 400, 37.8. (10) Aric Almirola, Ford, 400, 32.9. (4) Alex Bowman, Chevrolet, 400, 33.10. (11) Clint Bowyer, Ford, 400, 28.11. (22) Tyler Reddick, Chevrolet, 400,

26.12. (7) Denny Hamlin, Toyota, 399, 35.13. (8) Kurt Busch, Chevrolet, 399, 28.14. (13) Cole Custer, Ford, 399, 23.15. (26) Christopher Bell, Toyota, 399,

22.16. (19) Matt Kenseth, Chevrolet, 399,

23.17. (16) Matt DiBenedetto, Ford, 399, 20.18. (23) Ricky Stenhouse Jr, Chevrolet,

398, 21.19. (15) Ryan Blaney, Ford, 398, 18.20. (24) Ryan Preece, Chevrolet, 398, 17.21. (5) William Byron, Chevrolet, 398,

16.22. (17) Erik Jones, Toyota, 398, 15.23. (21) Ryan Newman, Ford, 397, 14.24. (25) Chris Buescher, Ford, 397, 13.25. (20) Michael McDowell, Ford, 397,

12.26. (30) Bubba Wallace, Chevrolet, 397,

11.27. (34) Corey Lajoie, Ford, 396, 10.28. (27) Ty Dillon, Chevrolet, 396, 9.29. (28) Daniel Suarez, Toyota, 396, 8.30. (31) John H. Nemechek, Ford, 396, 7.31. (18) Jimmie Johnson, Chevrolet, 395,

6.32. (33) Quin Houff, Chevrolet, 390, 5.33. (29) Brennan Poole, Chevrolet, 390,

4.34. (32) JJ Yeley, Chevrolet, 388, 0.35. (36) Joey Gase, Ford, 387, 0.36. (35) Reed Sorenson, Chevrolet, 387,

1.37. (38) James Davison, Ford, 385, 1.38. (37) Timmy Hill, Toyota, garage, 100,

0.Race Statistics

Average Speed of Race Winner: 101.862 mph.

Time of Race: 2 hours, 56 minutes, 42 seconds.

Margin of Victory: 1.568 seconds.Caution Flags: 3 for 21 laps.Lead Changes: 19 among 9 drivers.Lap Leaders: K.Harvick 0-20; A.Dillon

21-33; B.Poole 34; A.Dillon 35-38; D.Hamlin 39-83; A.Dillon 84; J.Logano 85-120; B.Keselowski 121-162; K.Harvick 163-181; A.Dillon 182-217; B.Keselowski 218-293; C.Elliott 294-295; Ku.Busch 296-307; J.Logano 308-316; B.Keselowski 317-342; Ky.Busch 343-346; K.Harvick 347-348; Ku.Busch 349-351; A.Dillon 352; B.Keselowski 353-400

Leaders Summary (Driver, Times Led, Laps Led): B.Keselowski, 4 times for 192 laps; A.Dillon, 5 times for 55 laps; J.Logano, 2 times for 45 laps; D.Hamlin, 1 time for 45 laps; K.Harvick, 3 times for 41 laps; Ku.Busch, 2 times for 15 laps; Ky.Busch, 1 time for 4 laps; C.Elliott, 1 time for 2 laps; B.Poole, 1 time for 1 lap.

Wins: K.Harvick, 8; D.Hamlin, 6; B.Keselowski, 4; J.Logano, 2; C.Elliott, 2; M.Truex, 1; A.Dillon, 1; A.Bowman, 1; W.Byron, 1; C.Custer, 1; R.Blaney, 1.

Top 16 in Points: 1. K.Harvick, 2143; 2. D.Hamlin, 2122; 3. B.Keselowski, 2112; 4. J.Logano, 2109; 5. M.Truex, 2096; 6. A.Dillon, 2094; 7. C.Elliott, 2086; 8. A.Bowman, 2085; 9. Ky.Busch, 2076; 10. A.Almirola, 2065; 11. Ku.Busch, 2065; 12. C.Bowyer, 2061; 13. W.Byron, 2058; 14. C.Custer, 2053; 15. M.DiBenedetto, 2036; 16. R.Blaney, 2034.

Honda Indy 200 at Mid-OhioRace 1

IndyCarSaturday

At Mid-Ohio Sports Car CourseLexington, Ohio

Lap length: 2.258 miles(Start position in parentheses)

1. (1) Will Power, Dallara-Chevrolet, 75 laps, Running.

2. (3) Josef Newgarden, Dallara-Chev-rolet, 75, Running.

3. (6) Alexander Rossi, Dallara-Honda, 75, Running.

4. (8) Graham Rahal, Dallara-Honda, 75, Running.

5. (2) Ryan Hunter-Reay, Dallara-Hon-da, 75, Running.

6. (7) Felix Rosenqvist, Dallara-Honda, 75, Running.

7. (5) Jack Harvey, Dallara-Honda, 75, Running.

8. (9) Rinus Veekay, Dallara-Chevrolet, 75, Running.

9. (13) Colton Herta, Dallara-Honda, 75, Running.

10. (17) Scott Dixon, Dallara-Honda, 75, Running.

11. (15) Pato O’Ward, Dallara-Chevro-let, 75, Running.

12. (20) Alex Palou, Dallara-Honda, 75, Running.

13. (4) Conor Daly, Dallara-Chevrolet, 75, Running.

14. (14) Santino Ferrucci, Dallara-Hon-da, 75, Running.

15. (21) Marcus Ericsson, Dallara-Hon-da, 75, Running.

16. (12) Max Chilton, Dallara-Chevro-let, 75, Running.

17. (18) Takuma Sato, Dallara-Honda, 75, Running.

18. (10) Simon Pagenaud, Dallara-Chevrolet, 75, Running.

19. (16) Oliver Askew, Dallara-Chevro-let, 75, Running.

20. (19) Zach Veach, Dallara-Honda, 74, Running.

21. (22) Charlie Kimball, Dallara-Chev-rolet, 74, Running.

22. (23) Dalton Kellett, Dallara-Chevro-let, 74, Running.

23. (11) Marco Andretti, Dallara-Hon-da, 74, Running.

Race StatisticsAverage Speed of Race Winner:

113.978 mph.Time of Race: 01:29:08.9095.Margin of Victory: 7.4523 seconds.Cautions: 0.Lead Changes: 4 among 3 drivers.Lap Leaders: Power 1-21, Rossi 22-26 ,

Power 27-47 , Herta 48-51 , Power 52.Points: Dixon 436, Newgarden 360,

O’Ward 316, Sato 287, Power 280, Herta 274, Rahal 268, Pagenaud 249, Rosenqvist 236, Ferrucci 232.

WNBAEASTERN CONFERENCE

W L Pct GBxx-Chicago 12 10 .545 —x-Connecticut 10 12 .455 2Washington 8 13 .381 3½Atlanta 7 14 .333 4½Indiana 6 16 .273 6New York 2 19 .095 9½

WESTERN CONFERENCE W L Pct GBx-Seattle 18 3 .857 —x-Las Vegas 17 4 .810 1x-Los Angeles 15 7 .682 3½x-Minnesota 14 8 .636 4½x-Phoenix 13 9 .591 5½Dallas 7 14 .333 11

x-clinched playoff spot Friday’s games

Atlanta 82, Connecticut 75Chicago 95, Dallas 88Seattle 83, Phoenix 60

Saturday’s gamesWashington 75, New York 58Las Vegas 84, Los Angeles 70Minnesota 98, Indiana 86

Sunday’s gamesDallas at New YorkLas Vegas at SeattleWashington at Atlanta

Monday’s gamesNo games scheduled

MLSEASTERN CONFERENCE

W L T Pts GF GAColumbus 7 1 3 24 18 4Philadelphia 6 2 3 21 17 10Toronto FC 6 2 3 21 18 12Orlando City 5 2 4 19 19 13New York City FC 5 5 1 16 10 9New England 3 3 5 14 10 11New York 4 5 2 14 9 13Montreal 4 4 1 13 12 11Nashville SC 3 4 3 12 9 11Atlanta 3 6 2 11 11 15D.C. United 2 5 4 10 9 15Chicago 2 6 3 9 11 18Cincinnati 2 6 3 9 7 17Inter Miami CF 2 7 2 8 9 14

WESTERN CONFERENCE W L T Pts GF GASeattle 5 2 3 18 23 10Minnesota United 5 3 2 17 21 16Sporting KC 5 3 2 17 20 15LA Galaxy 4 3 2 14 16 15Portland 4 3 2 14 16 18Houston 3 3 5 14 18 17Real Salt Lake 3 3 5 14 16 19FC Dallas 3 2 4 13 12 9Colorado 3 3 4 13 17 16Los Angeles FC 3 4 3 12 21 22Vancouver 3 6 0 9 10 18San Jose 2 4 3 9 15 26

Note: Three points for victory, one point for tie.

Saturday’s gamesColumbus 2, Chicago 2, tieNew York 2, D.C. United 0New York City FC 2, Cincinnati 1Philadelphia 2, New England 1Orlando City 2, Miami 1Nashville 4, Atlanta 2FC Dallas 2, Houston 1Colorado 5, Real Salt Lake 0

Sunday’s gamesMinnesota at Sporting Kansas CityMontreal at VancouverPortland at Los Angeles FCLA Galaxy at San Jose

Wednesday’s gamesColorado at FC DallasMontreal at VancouverPortland at San Jose

NWSL W L T Pts GF GANorth Carolina 1 0 0 3 4 3Sky Blue FC 1 0 0 3 2 1Washington 1 1 0 3 3 3Reign FC 0 0 0 0 0 0Orlando 0 0 0 0 0 0Portland 0 0 0 0 0 0Utah 0 0 0 0 0 0Houston 0 1 0 0 3 4Chicago 0 1 0 0 1 2

Note: Three points for victory, one point for tie.

Saturday’s gamesWashington 2, Chicago 1North Carolina 4, Houston 3

Tuesday’s gameReign FC at Portland

NFLAMERICAN CONFERENCE

East W L T Pct PF PABuffalo 0 0 0 .000 0 0Miami 0 0 0 .000 0 0N.Y. Jets 0 0 0 .000 0 0New England 0 0 0 .000 0 0

SouthIndianapolis 0 0 0 .000 0 0Jacksonville 0 0 0 .000 0 0Tennessee 0 0 0 .000 0 0Houston 0 1 0 .000 20 34

NorthBaltimore 0 0 0 .000 0 0Cincinnati 0 0 0 .000 0 0Cleveland 0 0 0 .000 0 0Pittsburgh 0 0 0 .000 0 0

WestKansas City 1 0 0 1.000 34 20Denver 0 0 0 .000 0 0L.A. Chargers 0 0 0 .000 0 0Las Vegas 0 0 0 .000 0 0

NATIONAL CONFERENCEEast

W L T Pct PF PADallas 0 0 0 .000 0 0N.Y. Giants 0 0 0 .000 0 0Philadelphia 0 0 0 .000 0 0Washington 0 0 0 .000 0 0

SouthAtlanta 0 0 0 .000 0 0Carolina 0 0 0 .000 0 0New Orleans 0 0 0 .000 0 0Tampa Bay 0 0 0 .000 0 0

NorthChicago 0 0 0 .000 0 0Detroit 0 0 0 .000 0 0Green Bay 0 0 0 .000 0 0Minnesota 0 0 0 .000 0 0

WestArizona 0 0 0 .000 0 0L.A. Rams 0 0 0 .000 0 0San Francisco 0 0 0 .000 0 0Seattle 0 0 0 .000 0 0

Thursday’s gameKansas City 34, Houston 20

Sunday’s gamesGreen Bay at MinnesotaIndianapolis at JacksonvilleLas Vegas at CarolinaN.Y. Jets at Buffalo.

Seattle at AtlantaPhiladelphia at WashingtonMiami at New EnglandCleveland at BaltimoreChicago at DetroitL.A. Chargers at CincinnatiArizona at San FranciscoTampa Bay at New OrleansDallas at L.A. Rams

Monday’s gamesPittsburgh at N.Y. GiantsTennessee at Denver

Thursday, Sept. 17Cincinnati at Cleveland

Sunday, Sept. 20Jacksonville at TennesseeN.Y. Giants at ChicagoDetroit at Green BayCarolina at Tampa BayBuffalo at MiamiSan Francisco at N.Y. JetsL.A. Rams at PhiladelphiaAtlanta at DallasDenver at PittsburghMinnesota at IndianapolisWashington at ArizonaBaltimore at HoustonKansas City at L.A. ChargersNew England at Seattle

MONDAYPITTSBURGH STEELERS at NEW YORK

GIANTS — STEELERS: DNP: G Dave DeCas-tro (knee). FULL: WR Diontae Johnson (foot). GIANTS: LIMITED: LB Tae Crowder (hamstring), WR Golden Tate (ham-string), TE Levine Toilolo (hamstring). FULL: DB Adrian Colbert (illness), LB Markus Golden (illness).

TENNESSEE TITANS at DENVER BRON-COS — TITANS: DNP: CB Adoree Jack-son (knee), LB Derick Roberson (knee). LIMITED: LB Vic Beasley (knee), G Jamil Douglas (hand), RB Darryton Evans (hamstring). FULL: WR Corey Davis (hamstring), T Dennis Kelly (not injury related), G Rodger Saffold (not injury related), S Kenny Vaccaro (not injury related). BRONCOS: DNP: LB Mark Bar-ron (hamstring), LB Von Miller (ankle), WR Courtland Sutton (shoulder). LIM-ITED: WR K.J. Hamler (hamstring). FULL: LB Bradley Chubb (knee), G Graham Glasgow (ankle), S Trey Marshall (wrist), TE Albert Okwuegbunam (ankle).

BY ARNIE STAPLETON

Associated Press

DENVER — Ever since theNFL released its schedule on May7, Jurrell Casey has been count-ing down the days to the DenverBroncos’ season opener against Tennessee.

The Titans traded Casey toDenver this offseason in a salarydump, clearing $11 million in capspace by sending the five-timePro Bowl defensive lineman toDenver for a seventh-round draft choice.

“It’s going to be a little bit morejuice,” Casey said as his Denverdebut approached.

The Broncos host the Titans on Monday night at an empty Em-power Field at Mile High.

Casey was a little bit moreanimated this spring when hecalled out the Titans, saying the way they traded him after nine seasons in Nashville was equiva-lent to throwing him away “like a piece of trash.”

“The part that is so crazy is thatyou give so much to them. Espe-cially when you come up on free agency and have opportunities togo somewhere else, especially the way it was going when we werethere, 2-14, 3-13,” Casey said on the Double Coverage podcast hosted by the New England Patri-ots’ Devin and Jason McCourty.

“Those were some rough times.When you’re a loyal guy and youfeel like things are going in the right direction and you’re thatcenterpiece, you got no choice but to fight it through. My mind-set was to stick it out and thingswould get better.”

They did.The Titans reached the AFC

championship game last seasonthanks to a second-half surgethat followed a shutout loss in Denver in which coach Mike Vra-bel benched Marcus Mariota for Ryan Tannehill.

The Titans went 9-4 the restof the way and jumped out to anearly double-digit lead at Kan-sas City before succumbing 35-24 to the soon-to-be Super Bowlchamps.

Two months later, Casey’sagent called to tell him the Titans were shopping him around, news he said he’d rather have gotten di-rectly from the team.

“It was a blow to the heart be-cause I would have thought thatone of them would have hit meup,” Casey said on the podcast.

For six months, Titans fans wondered if the Casey trade wasa big blunder but general manag-er Jon Robinson added an impactplayer this month in JadeveonClowney, who got Casey’s old No.99 jersey number.

Broncos coach Vic Fangio said he is sure glad he has Casey onhis side this time to help corral Derrick Henry and the rest ofTennessee’s precise offense.

Broncos’ openerpersonal for Casey

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 19Monday, September 14, 2020

BY STEPHEN WHYNO

Associated Press

EDMONTON, Alberta — Anton Khudobin gloved the puck out of the air on Shea Theodore’s shot at the most intense moment of the game like it was part of a leisurely morning practice.

“I just tried to find the puck and react to it,” Khudobin said with the same nonchalance. “I don’t know if it’s luck or whatever. Let’s call it luck.”

It’s not luck. It’s a goaltender so locked in that he has the Dallas Stars one victory away from the Stanley Cup Final.

Khudobin made three of his 32 saves on a crucial 5-on-3 penalty kill late, Joe Pavelski and Jamie Benn scored in the second period and the Stars locked down on the Vegas Golden Knights in the final minutes to win Game 4 of the Western Conference final 2-1 Sat-urday night.

The Stars won despite being out-shot 33-20 and don’t seem to mind that they trail Vegas 130 shots to 92 because Khudobin has stopped so many of them.

“He’s going to battle right till the end,” coach Rick Bowness said. “That’s why the guys love playing in front of him. When he was reading the play like he was tonight, he’s making a lot of tough saves look easy. But that’s what he is: He’s a battler, he’s a com-petitive guy and he’s keeping us in every game.”

Khudobin also is keeping him-self in the heads of the Golden Knights, who ran into the same sort of problem last round against Vancouver’s Thatcher Demko. Vegas could be dominating the West final, but instead there’s head-shaking at creating high-quality scoring chances and emerging with nothing to show for them.

“All we need is to finish,” Vegas caoch Peter DeBoer said. “I think the effort’s there. I think we’re cre-ating a lot of really good looks.”

Khudobin has turned aside a few of those good looks, like when he spun his body to prevent a goal

by William Karlsson in the second or dived to deny Brayden McNabb early in the third. The save on Theodore and two others during 1:10 of Vegas 5-on-3 power-play time provided the emotional lift the Stars needed while clinging to the lead.

“We put ourselves in a tough sit-uation there,” said Pavelski, whose tripping penalty set up the 5-on-3 with 6:44 left. “It’s a moment in the game that was huge for our killers to get the job done.”

On the penalty kill and at even strength, Dallas has also done a masterful job of copying the way the Canucks almost beat Vegas last round, by collapsing defen-sively and giving their goaltender the chance to see a vast majority of the shots from the outside.

“The way the guys are bat-tling, the way they’re blocking the shots, they have bruises and they have bumps and they still sacri-fice their bodies to go and block the shots,” Khudobin said. “Unbe-lievable team effort, I would say. I really appreciate that. It’s huge, huge, huge.”

Stanley Cup playoffs(Best-of-seven; x-if necessary)

(Seeding in parentheses)CONFERENCE FINALSAt Edmonton, Alberta

EASTERN CONFERENCE(2) Tampa Bay 2, (6) N.Y. Islanders 1

Tampa Bay 8, N.Y. Islanders 2Tampa Bay 2, N.Y. Islanders 1N.Y. Islanders 5, Tampa Bay 3Sunday: Game 4Tuesday, Sept. 15: Game 5x-Thursday, Sept. 17: Game 6x-Saturday, Sept. 19: Game 7

WESTERN CONFERENCE(3) Dallas 3, (1) Vegas 1

Dallas 1, Vegas 0Vegas 3, Dallas 0Dallas 3, Vegas 2, OTSaturday: Dallas 2, Vegas 1Monday, Sept. 14: Game 5x-Wednesday, Sept. 16: Game 6x-Friday, Sept. 18: Game 7

SaturdayStars 2, Golden Knights 1

Vegas 0 1 0—1Dallas 0 2 0—2

Second Period—1, Vegas, Martinez 2 (Stastny, Schmidt), 7:44 (pp). 2, Dallas, Pavelski 9 (Cogliano), 11:34. 3, Dallas, Benn 7 (Klingberg, Radulov), 19:01 (pp).

Shots on Goal—Vegas 13-11-9—33.Dallas 5-9-6—20.

Power-play opportunities—Vegas 1 of 5; Dallas 1 of 4.

Goalies—Vegas, Lehner 9-5-1 (20 shots-18 saves). Dallas, Khudobin 11-6-0 (33-32).

T—2:32.

NHL scoreboard

Racing roundup

AUTO RACING/NHL

Khudobin’s savesduring 5-on-3 putVegas in deep hole

Stars take 3-1 series leadKeselowski dominantin Cup playoff victory

JASON FRANSON, THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP

Stars goalie Anton Khudobin makes a save on the Golden Knights’ Paul Stastny during the first period on Saturday .

Associated Press

RICHMOND, Va. — Brad Keselowski entered NASCAR’s playoffs certain he has as good a chance at the Cup championship as favorites Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin.

He even predicted he’d win at Richmond Raceway.

His confidence was justified as Keselowski dominated Saturday night at Richmond Raceway, lead-ing 192 laps in the second playoff race and advancing into the next round.

On a night when the only cau-tion flags were scheduled by NASCAR, leading to plenty of green-flag pit stops that jumbled the leaderboard, Keselowski kept rising to the top.

“I tell you, it’s a chess game and I got blinders on,” Keselowski said. “I don’t know what everybody is doing and who is where and who is on what strategy, but (crew chief) Jeremy Bullins, the whole 2 team, excellent performance.”

Harvick, the title favorite, won last week’s opener to earn the automatic berth into the second round. Hamlin, derailed at his home track of Richmond by a speeding penalty, finished 12th but still advanced into the next round based on points.

Keselowski was the only driv-er able to run with Harvick and Hamlin when racing resumed in May following a pause for the pandemic. He won three earlier races, earned a contract exten-sion at Team Penske and stead-fastly maintained he should not be discounted in the title race.

He didn’t do a celebratory burnout after making good on his Richmond prediction because that specific No. 2 Ford has won twice in as many races this year and Keselowski wants it intact for the championship-deciding finale at Phoenix.

That doesn’t mean he thinks he’s already locked up a berth in the title race.

“We’ve got to get there,” he said. “The last two years I haven’t made it all the way, so we’ve got to get all the way there, but if we can get to Phoenix, we’re gonna be really good. ... I don’t want to

look too far ahead, the next round is going to be really difficult, but still I am really pumped about this performance.”

Keselowski also gave Team Penske a sweep of the day — Will Power won for the IndyCar arm of the organization earlier Saturday.

Harvick, Hamlin and Kesel-owski are the only drivers locked into the next round of the playoffs. Hamlin has six wins, but just ne in the last nine races, leading to frustration.

“It just seemed like once the track rubbered up, we just weren’t any good,” he said.

Headed into next Saturday night’s elimination race at Bristol Motor Speedway, William Byron, Cole Custer, Matt DiBenedetto and Ryan Blaney are below the cutoff line.

Martin Truex Jr. finished sec-ond at Richmond, followed by Keselowski teammate Joey Lo-gano and Austin Dillon, who has opened the playoffs with back-to-back top-five finishes for the first time in his career. Harvick fin-ished seventh.

Power earns first winof Indy Car season

LEXINGTON, Ohio — Will Power scored his first win of the season in a 1-2 finish for Team Penske on Saturday in the first race of a doubleheader at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.

Power beat teammate Josef Newgarden, the reigning Indy-Car champion, by more than 7 seconds in winning from the pole. Power earned his 60th career pole earlier Saturday and trails only Mario Andretti (67) for the IndyCar record.

“That’s probably the first race I reckon in about 10 years that I’ve just gone hard,” Power said. “Every other race I save fuel or we try to play a strategy game. Today, I said, ‘Let’s just go hard, man. Screw this, we don’t want to get caught by a yellow. Let’s just go hard and use my pace and see what happens.’ It was a great strategy.”

Alexander Rossi, stuck in a miserable season, finished third.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 20 F3HIJKLM Monday, September 14, 2020

American LeagueEast Division

W L Pct GBTampa Bay 30 16 .652 —Toronto 25 20 .556 4ANew York 25 21 .543 5Baltimore 20 25 .444 9ABoston 16 31 .340 14A

Central DivisionChicago 29 16 .644 —Minnesota 29 18 .617 1Cleveland 26 20 .565 3ADetroit 20 25 .444 9Kansas City 19 28 .404 11

West DivisionOakland 29 16 .644 —Houston 23 23 .500 6ASeattle 20 25 .444 9Los Angeles 19 28 .404 11Texas 16 30 .348 13A

National LeagueEast Division

W L Pct GBAtlanta 27 19 .587 —Philadelphia 23 20 .535 2AMiami 21 21 .500 4New York 21 25 .457 6Washington 17 27 .386 9

Central DivisionChicago 27 20 .574 —St. Louis 20 19 .513 3Milwaukee 20 23 .465 5Cincinnati 20 26 .435 7APittsburgh 14 29 .326 12A

West DivisionLos Angeles 32 14 .696 —San Diego 29 17 .630 3San Francisco 23 22 .511 8AColorado 21 24 .467 10AArizona 17 30 .362 15A

Saturday’s gamesN.Y. Yankees 2, Baltimore 1, 10 inningsTexas 5, Oakland 2, 7 innings, 1st

gameOakland 10, Texas 1, 7 innings, 2nd

game Tampa Bay 5, Boston 4Toronto 3, N.Y. Mets 2Kansas City 7, Pittsburgh 4Chicago White Sox 14, Detroit 0Seattle 7, Arizona 3Minnesota 8, Cleveland 4Houston 7, L.A. Dodgers 5L.A. Angels 5, Colorado 2, 11 inningsAtlanta 2, Washington 1Chicago Cubs 4, Milwaukee 2Philadelphia 12, Miami 6St. Louis 7, Cincinnati 1San Francisco at San Diego, ppd.

Sunday’s gamesBaltimore at N.Y. YankeesBoston at Tampa Bay Cleveland at Minnesota Detroit at Chicago White Sox Oakland at Texas Atlanta at Washington Philadelphia at Miami Philadelphia at Miami Pittsburgh at Kansas CityChicago Cubs at Milwaukee Cincinnati at St. Louis N.Y. Mets at Toronto L.A. Angels at Colorado San Francisco at San Diego Seattle at Arizona Houston at L.A. Dodgers

Monday’s gamesOakland (TBD) at Seattle (Gonzales

5-2)Atlanta (Toussaint 0-1) at Baltimore

(TBD)Minnesota (Berrios 4-3) at Chicago

White Sox (Cease 5-2)Oakland (TBD) at Seattle (TBD)Philadelphia (TBD) at Miami (Lopez

3-4)Pittsburgh (TBD) at Cincinnati (TBD)St. Louis (Ponce de Leon 0-3) at Mil-

waukee (TBD)Pittsburgh (TBD) at Cincinnati (TBD)St. Louis (TBD) at Milwaukee (TBD)L.A. Dodgers (TBD) at San Diego (Da-

vies 7-2)

SaturdayAngels 5, Rockies 2 (11)

Los Angeles Colorado ab r h bi ab r h biFletcher 2b 6 0 0 0 Tapia lf 4 0 1 0Walsh 1b 5 1 2 3 Story ss 5 0 2 0Trout cf 4 1 1 0 Blackmn rf 1 0 0 1Rendon 3b 5 1 1 0 Arenado 3b 5 0 0 0Pujols dh 5 0 2 1 Murphy dh 5 0 0 0Upton lf 5 0 2 0 Fuentes 1b 5 1 1 0Ward lf 0 0 0 0 Dahl cf 5 0 1 0Stassi c 3 0 0 1 McMhon 2b 4 0 1 1Ohtani pr 0 1 0 0 Wolters c 1 1 0 0Bemboom c 0 0 0 0 Hmpson ph 1 0 0 0Adell rf 5 0 0 0 Butera c 0 0 0 0Simmons ss 4 1 0 0 Pillar ph 1 0 0 0 E.Diaz c 0 0 0 0Totals 42 5 8 5 Totals 37 2 6 2Los Angeles 000 101 000 03—5Colorado 001 100 000 00—2

E—McMahon (6), Story (7). LOB—Los Angeles 12, Colorado 10. 2B—Pujols (8), Trout (7). HR—Walsh (5). SB—Story (14). SF—Stassi (3), Blackmon (3). S—Tapia (1). IP H R ER BB SOLos AngelesBarria 5B 5 2 2 2 2Milner 1B 0 0 0 0 2Pena B 1 0 0 0 0Mayers 2 0 0 0 0 2Buttrey W,2-3 1 0 0 0 1 1Andriese S,1-2 1 0 0 0 0 1ColoradoFreeland 6 4 2 2 2 4Almonte 1 1 0 0 0 0Estevez 1 1 0 0 0 2Bard 1 1 0 0 1 0Kinley L,0-2 1C 1 3 2 1 4J.Diaz B 0 0 0 0 0

HBP—Barria (Blackmon), Almonte (Walsh). WP—Pena. T—3:44.

Cardinals 7, Reds 1Cincinnati St. Louis ab r h bi ab r h biAkiyama lf 4 0 0 1 Wong 2b 5 0 1 0Cstllanos rf 4 0 0 0 Edmn rf-3b 5 0 2 0Votto 1b 4 0 1 0 Gldscdt 1b 5 1 1 1Suarez 3b 4 0 0 0 B.Miller dh 4 1 1 1Goodwin cf 3 0 0 0 DeJong ss 3 1 0 0Garcia ph 1 0 1 0 Crpnter 3b 4 1 2 1Galvis 2b 4 0 0 0 O’Neill lf 0 0 0 0Aquino dh 2 1 0 0 Dean lf-rf 1 1 1 0Barnhart c 0 0 0 0 Wieters c 2 1 0 1T.Stnsn ph-c 1 0 0 0 Bader cf 3 1 1 3Farmer ss 2 0 1 0 Totals 29 1 3 1 Totals 32 7 9 7Cincinnati 001 000 000—1St. Louis 000 205 00x—7

DP—Cincinnati 1, St. Louis 1. LOB—Cin-cinnati 5, St. Louis 8. 2B—Votto (6), Dean (1). HR—B.Miller (6), Carpenter (3), Bad-er (3), Goldschmidt (6). SB—Edman (2), Wong (3). IP H R ER BB SOCincinnatiAntone L,0-2 3 4 2 2 3 3Sims 2 1 3 3 2 2Garrett 1 3 2 2 0 1De Leon 2 1 0 0 1 2St. LouisHudson W,3-2 6 1 1 1 4 4Cabrera 0 0 0 0 0 0Webb 1B 1 0 0 0 2A.Miller C 0 0 0 0 1Kaminsky 1 1 0 0 0 1

Antone pitched to 4 batters in the 4th, Sims pitched to 3 batters in the 6th. HBP—Sims (Wieters). T—3:08.

Twins 8, Indians 4Cleveland Minnesota ab r h bi ab r h biLindor ss 5 0 1 0 Polanco ss 3 0 0 0Hrnndez 2b 4 0 1 0 Dnldson 3b 4 0 0 0Ramirez 3b 3 2 2 1 Cruz dh 3 1 0 0Santana 1b 3 2 1 0 Rosario lf 4 1 2 2Reyes dh 4 0 0 0 Sano 1b 4 1 1 1Luplow rf 2 0 1 1 Rooker rf 1 1 1 0Naquin ph-rf 0 0 0 0 Cave pr-rf 2 1 0 0Mercado lf 2 0 0 1 Buxton cf 3 1 1 2Naylor ph-lf 1 0 0 0 Gnzalez 2b 3 1 2 2R.Perez c 4 0 0 0 Astudillo c 3 1 1 1DeShields cf 4 0 0 0 Jeffers c 0 0 0 0Totals 32 4 6 3 Totals 30 8 8 8Cleveland 000 201 010—4Minnesota 030 200 03x—8

LOB—Cleveland 6, Minnesota 1. 2B—Santana (4), Hernandez (16), Rooker (2). 3B—Luplow (1). HR—Ramirez (11), Gon-zalez (4), Astudillo (1), Buxton (8), Ro-sario (10), Sano (11). SB—Ramirez (10). SF—Mercado (1). IP H R ER BB SOClevelandPlesac L,3-2 7 6 5 5 1 5Wittgren 1 2 3 3 1 2MinnesotaR.Hill W,2-1 5 4 2 2 2 7Wisler H,4 1B 1 1 1 1 2Clippard H,6 1 1 1 0 0 1Duffey H,10 C 0 0 0 1 1Rogers 1 0 0 0 0 1

Clippard pitched to 2 batters in the 8th. HBP—Plesac (Rooker). WP—Clip-pard. T—2:56.

Braves 2, Nationals 1Atlanta Washington ab r h bi ab r h biAcuna Jr. cf 4 1 1 0 Holt lf 4 0 0 0Freeman 1b 4 0 1 0 Turner ss 4 0 1 1Ozuna lf 4 0 1 1 Soto dh 3 0 0 0d’Arnaud dh 4 0 2 0 Cabrera 3b 4 0 2 0Swanson ss 4 0 0 0 Harrison pr 0 0 0 0Riley 3b 4 0 1 0 Thames 1b 3 0 1 0Duvall rf 4 1 1 0 Kiboom pr 0 0 0 0Flowers c 4 0 1 0 Gomes c 3 0 0 0Albies 2b 4 0 1 1 Garcia 2b 4 0 0 0 Taylor cf 2 0 0 0 Eaton ph-rf 1 1 1 0 Hernndz rf 3 0 0 0 Robles cf 1 0 0 0Totals 36 2 9 2 Totals 32 1 5 1Atlanta 100 100 000—2Washington 000 000 010—1

E—Turner (6). DP—Atlanta 0, Wash-ington 1. LOB—Atlanta 7, Washington 8. 2B—Duvall (7), Turner (13). SB—Acuna Jr. (6), Albies (3), Eaton (2). IP H R ER BB SOAtlantaAnderson W,3-0 7 1 0 0 3 9Greene H,7 C 2 1 1 0 2Smith H,3 B 0 0 0 0 0Melancon S,10-11 1 2 0 0 1 1WashingtonCorbin L,2-5 7 9 2 2 0 8McGowin 2 0 0 0 0 4

T—3:04.

Mariners 7, Diamondbacks 3Seattle Arizona ab r h bi ab r h biMoore 2b 5 0 1 0 Locastro cf 5 0 1 0France dh 4 1 3 1 Ahmed ss 4 1 2 0Lewis cf 4 0 0 0 Walker 1b 2 2 1 0Seager 3b 2 2 0 1 Escobar dh 4 0 1 0Mrmlejos lf 4 2 2 3 Peralta lf 4 0 0 1White 1b 3 1 0 0 Mthisen 3b 4 0 1 2Torrens c 4 0 2 2 VnMeter 2b 3 0 0 0Walton ss 4 0 0 0 Kelly c 3 0 0 0Ervin rf 4 1 2 0 P.Smith rf 4 0 1 0Totals 34 7 10 7 Totals 33 3 7 3Seattle 410 020 000—7Arizona 000 200 010—3

DP—Seattle 1, Arizona 3. LOB—Seattle 6, Arizona 7. 2B—Marmolejos (3), Torrens (2), Ervin (2), Walker (16). HR—France (2), Marmolejos (5). IP H R ER BB SOSeattleSheffield W,3-3 7 5 2 2 3 7Graveman 1 1 1 1 0 0Hirano 1 1 0 0 0 0ArizonaGallen L,1-2 5 7 7 7 5 6Lopez 2 1 0 0 0 2Mella 1 1 0 0 0 1Payamps 1 1 0 0 1 0

HBP—Sheffield (Walker). WP—Shef-field. T—2:45.

Rangers 5, Athletics 2 (7)First Game

Oakland Texas ab r h bi ab r h biLa Stella dh 2 1 0 0 Taveras cf 2 0 0 0Smien ss 3 0 0 0 Kner-Flf 3b 3 1 0 0Laureano cf 3 0 0 0 Solak lf 3 0 1 0Olson 1b 3 0 1 1 Gallo dh 2 1 0 0Grossman lf 3 0 0 0 Odor 2b 3 1 1 3Canha rf 3 0 0 0 Andrus ss 3 1 1 0Mchin 3b-2b 3 1 1 0 Guzman 1b 3 1 1 2Heim c 3 0 2 1 White rf 2 0 1 0Kemp 2b 1 0 0 0 Mathis c 2 0 0 0Pnder ph-3b 1 0 0 0 Totals 25 2 4 2 Totals 23 5 5 5Oakland 001 001 0—2Texas 500 000 x—5

LOB—Oakland 3, Texas 2. 2B—Machin (2), Olson (3). HR—Odor (5), Guzman (3). IP H R ER BB SOOaklandJefferies L,0-1 2 5 5 5 2 1Weems 3 0 0 0 0 5Trivino 1 0 0 0 0 0TexasGoody 1 0 0 0 0 1Benjamin W,1-0 4 3 2 2 1 4Hernandez 1 1 0 0 0 2Montero S,8-8 1 0 0 0 0 1

Benjamin pitched to 1 batter in the 6th. T—1:58.

Athletics 10, Rangers 1 (7)Second Game

Oakland Texas ab r h bi ab r h biSemien ss 5 2 2 4 Taveras cf 4 0 2 0Kemp 2b 0 0 0 0 Kner-Falf ss 3 0 2 0La Stll 2b-3b 5 1 2 1 Solak 2b 4 0 0 0Piscotty rf 5 0 1 0 Gallo rf 3 1 2 1Canha lf 2 0 0 0 Dietrich dh 2 0 1 0Olson 1b 3 1 1 1 Huff c 3 0 1 0Brown 1b 0 0 0 0 Guzman 1b 3 0 0 0Davis dh 1 1 0 1 Apostel 3b 3 0 1 0Laureano cf 4 1 1 1 White lf 3 0 1 0Murphy c 4 2 2 2 Mchin 3b-ss 2 2 0 0 Totals 31 10 9 10 Totals 28 1 10 1Oakland 070 030 0—10Texas 000 001 0— 1

E—Apostel (1), Guzman (1). DP—Oak-land 1, Texas 1. LOB—Oakland 8, Texas 8. 2B—White (2), Gallo (7). HR—Semien (6), Gallo (9). IP H R ER BB SOOaklandBassitt W,4-2 6 8 1 1 2 8Petit 1 2 0 0 0 2TexasAllard L,0-6 1 5 6 5 2 1Hearn 1 1 1 1 2 3Farrell 2 0 0 0 1 2King 1 3 3 3 1 0Garcia 1 0 0 0 1 0Martin 1 0 0 0 0 1

Allard pitched to 6 batters in the 2nd. HBP—King (Canha). T—2:59.

Royals 7, Pirates 4Pittsburgh Kansas City ab r h bi ab r h biGonzalez ss 4 1 1 0 Mrrifield rf 5 2 2 1Frazier lf 4 1 2 2 Mondesi ss 5 2 2 2Hayes 3b 4 0 1 0 Perez c 5 1 2 1Moran dh 4 0 0 0 Franco dh 5 0 1 0Bell 1b 4 1 2 1 Dozier 1b 4 1 1 0Polanco rf 4 0 1 0 Gordon lf 4 1 3 1Reynolds cf 3 1 1 1 Gtierrez 3b 2 0 1 0Newman 2b 3 0 0 0 Olivares cf 2 0 1 1Stallings c 3 0 0 0 Lopez 2b 3 0 0 1Totals 33 4 8 4 Totals 35 7 13 7Pittsburgh 021 000 010—4Kansas City 102 030 10x—7

E—Williams (2). DP—Pittsburgh 0, Kansas City 2. LOB—Pittsburgh 3, Kan-sas City 10. 2B—Gonzalez (11), Perez (8). HR—Bell (6), Reynolds (4), Frazier (5), Merrifield (9), Mondesi (4). SB—Mondesi (16), Gonzalez (1). SF—Olivares (1). IP H R ER BB SOPittsburghWilliams L,1-7 5 10 6 6 3 4Davis 1 0 0 0 0 1Crick C 2 1 1 2 1Howard B 0 0 0 0 0D.Holland 1 1 0 0 0 2Kansas CityHernandez 3 3 3 3 0 2Zimmer W,1-0 2B 1 0 0 1 1Hahn H,3 C 0 0 0 0 0Staumont H,8 1 2 0 0 0 0Barlow 1 2 1 1 0 1G.Holland S,5-5 1 0 0 0 0 1

WP—Barlow. T—3:06.

Blue Jays 3, Mets 2New York Toronto ab r h bi ab r h biMcNeil lf 4 0 0 0 Biggio rf-2b 4 0 1 0J.Davis 3b 4 0 0 1 Bichette ss 4 1 1 0Conforto rf 4 1 1 0 Shaw 3b 3 0 1 1Alonso dh 4 0 0 0 Grichuk cf 4 0 1 1Do.Smth 1b 4 0 1 0 Gerrero 1b 4 1 1 0Cano 2b 3 0 0 0 Gurriel lf 4 0 0 0Marisnick cf 2 0 1 1 Villar dh 4 0 2 1Nmmo ph-cf 1 0 0 0 Kirk c 3 1 1 0Ramos c 3 1 1 0 Panik 2b 3 0 2 0Rosario ss 4 0 3 0 Jo.Dvs pr-rf 0 0 0 0Totals 33 2 7 2 Totals 33 3 10 3New York 000 100 100—2Toronto 000 111 00x—3

E—Biggio (4). DP—New York 0, To-ronto 1. LOB—New York 7, Toronto 10. 2B—Marisnick (3), Rosario (3), Shaw (8), Guerrero Jr. (9). SB—Villar 2 (2), Jo.Davis (1). SF—Shaw (1). IP H R ER BB SONew YorkLugo, L, 2-3 5B 7 3 3 1 5Shreve B 2 0 0 1 1Castro 1B 0 0 0 0 3Familia 1 1 0 0 1 1TorontoRay, W, 1-0 5 4 1 1 2 5Merryweather, H, 1 2 3 1 1 0 1Bass, H, 3 1 0 0 0 0 2Dolis, S, 4-4 1 0 0 0 1 1

WP—Dolis. T—3:22.

Astros 7, Dodgers 5Houston Los Angeles ab r h bi ab r h biSpringer cf 5 1 2 1 Betts rf 3 1 1 0Bregman 3b 4 2 1 1 Seager ss 4 1 2 1Brantley lf 5 0 1 0 Pollock lf 3 0 0 1Gurriel 1b 3 0 2 3 Muncy 3b 4 0 0 0Tucker dh 5 0 0 0 Smith c 4 1 2 0Correa ss 3 1 1 0 Belinger 1b 4 0 1 0Diaz 2b 4 1 2 0 Taylor cf 4 1 2 2Grneau c 0 0 0 0 Hrnndez 2b 3 1 1 1Reddick rf 4 1 1 2 Pedrson ph 1 0 1 0Mldonado c 3 0 1 0 Lux dh 4 0 0 0Myfld pr-2b 0 1 0 0 Totals 36 7 11 7 Totals 34 5 10 5Houston 100 000 015—7Los Angeles 031 010 000—5

E—Muncy (3). DP—Houston 1, Los An-geles 1. LOB—Houston 7, Los Angeles 4. 2B—Springer (6), Diaz (2), Reddick (11), Smith (5), Pederson (4). 3B—Seager (1). HR—Taylor (4), Hernandez (5). SF—Gur-riel (5), Pollock (2). IP H R ER BB SOHoustonValdez 5 5 5 5 1 7Castellanos 1 2 0 0 0 3Perez C 1 0 0 0 2James W,1-0 1B 0 0 0 0 0Pressly S,9-12 1 2 0 0 0 1Los AngelesUrias 6 3 1 1 4 3Baez 1 1 0 0 0 1Treinen 1 2 1 1 0 1Jnsen L,3-1 BS,10-12 0 5 5 4 0 0Kolarek 1 0 0 0 0 1

Jansen pitched to 6 batters in the 9th. WP—Valdez. T—3:15.

Cubs 4, Brewers 2Chicago Milwaukee ab r h bi ab r h biHapp cf-lf 4 0 0 0 Garcia cf 4 0 2 0Bryant 1b 4 0 0 0 Yelich lf 4 0 0 0Contreras c 4 0 0 0 Hiura 2b 4 0 2 0Schwrber lf 3 0 1 0 Gyorko 1b 4 0 1 0Kimbrel p 0 0 0 0 Pterson pr 0 0 0 0Baez ss 4 1 2 0 Vgelbch dh 4 1 2 0Bote dh 2 0 0 0 Braun rf 3 1 1 2Crtini ph-dh 1 0 1 0 Taylor rf 0 0 0 0Rizzo ph 1 0 1 0 Gamel ph 1 0 0 0Hmiltn pr-cf 0 1 0 0 Arcia ss 4 0 0 0Heyward rf 4 1 1 3 Narvaez c 3 0 0 0Vrgas 2b-3b 4 1 1 1 Urias 3b 3 0 0 0Hoerner 3b 2 0 1 0 Kipnis ph-2b 2 0 0 0 Totals 35 4 8 4 Totals 34 2 8 2Chicago 000 000 004—4Milwaukee 000 200 000—2

DP—Chicago 1, Milwaukee 0. LOB—Chicago 6, Milwaukee 5. HR—Heyward (6), Vargas (1), Braun (4). IP H R ER BB SOChicagoHendricks 7C 6 2 2 0 7Adam W,1-1 B 0 0 0 0 1Kimbrel S,2-3 1 2 0 0 0 1MilwaukeeSuter 3 1 0 0 0 6Peralta 2 2 0 0 1 1Yardley H,1 1B 0 0 0 0 0Claudio H,1 C 1 0 0 0 1Williams H,7 1 0 0 0 1 2Hader L,1-2 BS,9-11 1 4 4 4 0 1

T—2:42.

Rays 5, Red Sox 4Boston Tampa Bay ab r h bi ab r h biVerdugo rf 4 0 1 0 Madows lf 4 1 1 1Devers 3b 4 0 1 0 B.Lowe 2b 4 1 1 1Bogaerts ss 3 1 0 0 Arzarena rf 4 0 0 0Martinez dh 4 0 0 0 Phillips rf 0 0 0 0Plawecki c 4 0 1 1 Choi dh 1 1 1 0Bradley Jr. cf 4 1 1 0 Ttsg ph-dh 2 0 0 0Munoz lf 4 0 1 0 Wendle 3b 3 0 1 0Chavis 1b 4 1 1 1 Adames ss 3 1 0 0Arroyo 2b 3 1 1 2 N.Lowe 1b 3 1 1 1 Margot cf 3 0 2 2 Perez c 3 0 0 0Totals 34 4 7 4 Totals 30 5 7 5Boston 001 100 200—4Tampa Bay 100 300 10x—5

DP—Boston 0, Tampa Bay 1. LOB—Bos-ton 4, Tampa Bay 4. 2B—Munoz (4), Choi (13), Margot (8). HR—Chavis (3), Arroyo (1), Meadows (4), B.Lowe (12). SB—Ver-dugo (4), Bogaerts 2 (5), Bradley Jr. 2 (3), Chavis (3), Wendle (6). IP H R ER BB SOBostonEovaldi 3 3 1 1 0 4Mazza 3 3 3 3 2 5Walden L,0-2 1 1 1 1 0 2Springs 1 0 0 0 0 2Tampa BayGlasnow W,3-1 7 6 4 4 1 7Anderson H,5 1 0 0 0 0 1Castillo S,4-5 1 1 0 0 0 2

HBP—Eovaldi (Wendle). WP—Maz-za(2), Glasnow(2). T—2:37.

Yankees 2, Orioles 1 (10)Baltimore New York ab r h bi ab r h biAlberto 2b 5 1 1 0 LeMhu 3b 5 2 1 0Iglesias dh 4 0 1 0 Voit 1b 4 0 0 1Muntcstle lf 3 0 2 1 Hicks cf 2 0 0 0Severino c 4 0 0 0 Frazier dh 3 0 1 1Nunez 1b 4 0 0 0 Torres ss 3 0 1 0Stewart rf 4 0 0 0 Gardner lf 4 0 1 0Valaika ss 4 0 0 0 Sanchez c 3 0 1 0Vlzquz pr-ss 0 0 0 0 Estrada 2b 2 0 0 0Ruiz 3b 4 0 0 0 Ford ph 0 0 0 0Mullins cf 4 0 0 0 Wade pr-2b 1 0 0 0 Tchman rf 4 0 0 0Totals 36 1 4 1 Totals 31 2 5 2Baltimore 000 001 000 0—1New York 100 000 000 1—2

E—Montgomery (2), Gardner (1), Le-Mahieu (4). LOB—Baltimore 7, New York9. 2B—Mountcastle (4), LeMahieu (4), Sanchez (2). 3B—Frazier (1), Gardner (1). SF—Frazier (1), Voit (1). IP H R ER BB SOBaltimoreKremer 5 4 1 1 3 7Tate C 0 0 0 0 0Scott B 0 0 0 1 0Valdez 3 1 0 0 0 1Harvey L,0-2 B 0 1 0 0 0New YorkMontgomery 5C 3 1 0 1 9Green 1B 0 0 0 0 1Britton 1 1 0 0 0 0Chapman 1 0 0 0 0 2Holder W,3-0 1 0 0 0 0 0

HBP—Tate (Torres). WP—Tate, Harvey.T—3:11. A—0 (47,309).

White Sox 14, Tigers 0Detroit Chicago ab r h bi ab r h biReyes cf 2 0 1 0 Andrson ss 5 2 4 1Hill ph-cf 2 0 0 0 Mendick ss 1 0 0 0Schoop 2b 3 0 0 0 Mncada 3b 6 1 1 0Paredes 3b 1 0 1 0 Grandal c 3 3 1 1Cabrera dh 3 0 0 0 Abreu 1b 4 5 4 7Dmeritte ph 1 0 1 0 E.Jmenez lf 4 1 3 1Cndlario 1b 3 0 0 0 Encrncn dh 5 0 1 1Castro ss 4 0 1 0 Robert cf 4 1 1 1Bonifacio lf 3 0 1 0 Mazara rf 3 0 1 2Cameron rf 3 0 0 0 Engel ph-rf 2 0 1 0Greiner c 3 0 0 0 Mdrigal 2b 5 1 2 0Alcantara 3b-2b 3 0 0 0 Totals 31 0 5 0 Totals 42 14 19 14Detroit 000 000 000— 0Chicago 302 341 10x—14

E—Castro (5), Candelario (4). DP—De-troit 2, Chicago 0. LOB—Detroit 5, Chi-cago 9. 2B—Bonifacio (3), E.Jimenez (11),Mazara (5). HR—Abreu 2 (15). SF—Robert(2). IP H R ER BB SODetroitFulmer L,0-2 2C 9 5 5 1 1Norris 1B 2 3 3 2 3Garcia 1 4 4 4 0 2Ramirez 2 3 2 2 1 2J.Jimenez 1 1 0 0 0 1ChicagoLopez W,1-2 5 3 0 0 1 2Cordero 1 0 0 0 0 0McRae 2 0 0 0 0 0Flores Jr. 1 2 0 0 0 1

T—3:02.

Phillies 12, Marlins 6Philadelphia Miami ab r h bi ab r h biMcCtchn dh 4 0 1 0 Dckersn lf 4 0 1 0Hoskins 1b 6 1 0 0 Marte cf 4 0 0 0Harper rf 4 3 3 1 Aguilar 1b 4 3 3 1Realmuto c 4 2 0 0 Joyce rf 1 1 0 0Knapp ph-c 1 0 0 0 Brnsn ph-rf 2 0 1 1Grgorius ss 4 2 2 4 Andrson 3b 4 1 2 3Segura 2b 5 2 2 1 Cooper dh 4 1 1 0Bohm 3b 5 1 2 1 Diaz 2b 4 0 0 0Haseley cf 3 1 2 1 Rojas ss 2 0 1 0Garlick lf 5 0 1 3 Chlm ph-ss 1 0 0 0 Alfaro c 4 0 1 0Totals 41 12 13 11 Totals 34 6 10 5Philadelphia 401 010 150—12Miami 000 301 110— 6

E—Realmuto (2), Anderson (8), Alfaro (3). DP—Philadelphia 3, Miami 0. LOB—Philadelphia 10, Miami 4. 2B—Harper (6), Bohm (8), Garlick (1), Aguilar (8), Brinson(4). HR—Gregorius (7), Harper (8), Ander-son (6), Aguilar (6). IP H R ER BB SOPhiladelphiaHoward 3C 2 3 3 2 5Hembree W,1-0 1B 1 0 0 0 0Romero H,3 1B 3 2 1 0 0Workman H,1 1 3 1 1 1 1Hunter C 0 0 0 0 1Morgan 1 1 0 0 0 1MiamiUrena L,0-1 4B 5 6 5 4 2Hoyt C 0 0 0 0 0Stanek 1 1 0 0 2 1Bleier B 3 1 1 0 0Smith 1C 4 5 5 2 2Quezada 1 0 0 0 0 0

Workman pitched to 3 batters in the 8th. WP—Urena, Hoyt. T—3:43.

Wild Card StandingsAMERICAN LEAGUE

W L Pct GBCleveland 26 20 .565 —New York 25 21 .543 1Baltimore 20 25 .444 5ADetroit 20 25 .444 5ASeattle 20 25 .444 5AKansas City 19 28 .404 7ALos Angeles 19 28 .404 7ATexas 16 30 .348 10Boston 16 31 .340 10A

NATIONAL LEAGUE W L Pct GBSan Francisco 23 22 .511 —Miami 21 21 .500 1AColorado 21 24 .467 2Milwaukee 20 23 .465 2New York 21 25 .457 2ACincinnati 20 26 .435 3AWashington 17 27 .386 5AArizona 17 30 .362 7Pittsburgh 14 29 .326 8

MLB SCOREBOARD

DAVID BANKS/AP

Tigers starter Michael Fulmer gave up nine runs in a 14-0 loss to the White Sox Saturday.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 21Monday, September 14, 2020

MLB

Astros rally in 9th to shock Dodgers

Walsh’s 3-run homer propels Angels past Rockies in 11th

Associated Press

DENVER — Rookie Jared Walsh homered for the fourth straight game, hitting a three-run drive with two outs in the 11th inning to lift the Los Angeles Angels to a 5-2 win over the Colorado Rockies on Saturday.

Walsh lined a slider from Tyler Kinley (0-2) over the wall in right-center.

Ty Buttrey (2-3) pitched out of a jam in the 10th to earn the win. Matt Andriese picked up the save by throwing an efficient 11th as the Angels improved to 3-5 in extra innings.

White Sox 14, Tigers 0: Jose Abreu hit two three-run homers and matched a career high with seven RBIs, and host Chicago roughed up the Detroit.

Abreu went 4-for-4 a day after his career-best 22-game hitting streak ended. It was the longest streak in the majors this season. Reynaldo Lopez (1-2) pitched five shutout innings for the AL Central-lead-ing White Sox, who have won seven of eight overall.

Cubs 4, Brewers 2: Jason Heyward hit a three-run homer off Josh Hader in the ninth inning, send-ing Chicago to a win at Milwaukee.

The NL Central-leading Cubs had gone score-less for 17 straight innings before breaking through against Hader (1-2), who hadn’t allowed a homer all season long.

Twins 8, Indians 4: Byron Buxton homered for the second straight night for host Minnesota, and Rich Hill got his first win since July.

The Twins won for the ninth time in 11 games since they closed August with a six-game slide. They remain a game back of the AL Central-leading White Sox.

Yankees 2, Orioles 1 (10): Luke Voit hit a game-ending sacrifice fly leading off the 10th inning, and host New York strengthened its hold on the Ameri-can League’s eighth and final playoff berth.

With DJ LeMahieu starting the inning as the automatic runner on second, Hunter Harvey (0-2) bounced a wild pitch that advanced LeMahieu. Bal-timore brought the field in.

Voit worked the count to 2-2, fouled off three pitch-es and hit a fly ball to center fielder Cedric Mullins for his 37th RBI.

Blue Jays 3, Mets 2: Bo Bichette singled and scored in a successful return to the Toronto lineup and Alejandro Kirk also got a hit and scored in his big league debut in a win over visiting New York.

Bichette, who missed 27 games with a right knee sprain, was activated from the injured list and ex-tended his hitting streak to 10 games. Kirk, a 21-year-old catcher who hadn’t played above Single-A, singled in the sixth inning.

Braves 2, Nationals 1: Rookie Ian Anderson pitched seven scoreless innings, and NL East-lead-ing Atlanta held on for the win at Washington after Mark Melancon escaped a bases-loaded jam in the ninth.

In his fourth career start, Anderson (3-0) allowed one hit, struck out nine and walked three. Melancon earned his 10th save, getting Victor Robles to pop out to right field with the bases loaded.

Rays 5, Red Sox 4: Brandon Lowe and Aus-tin Meadows homered, powering AL East-leading Tampa Bay to a win at home.

Lowe hit a solo drive off Marcus Walden (0-2) in the seventh for a 5-4 lead.

Rangers 5-1, Athletics 2-10: Marcus Semien drove in four runs, Chris Bassitt struck out eight over six innings and Oakland earned a doublehead-er split at Texas.

Bassitt (4-2) permitted one run and eight hits. Semien’s three-run homer made it 10-0 in the fifth inning in the second game.

In the opener, Rougned Odor and Ronald Guzman homered during the Rangers’ five-run first inning, and Texas spoiled Daulton Jefferies’ major league debut.

Phillies 12, Marlins 6: Bryce Harper homered, doubled and reached five times, leading Philadel-phia to the victory at Miami.

Harper, who snapped a 1-for-10 funk, also singled and walked twice as the Phillies evened their seven-game series with Miami at 2-2. Didi Gregorius hit his seventh career grand slam, and Kyle Garlick keyed a five-run eighth with a bases-clearing double.

Royals 7, Pirates 4: Kansas City’s Adalberto Mondesi homered and stole a base for the third con-secutive game, and Kyle Zimmer got his first career win.

Whit Merrifield also connected for the host Roy-als in their fifth straight victory.

Mariners 7, Diamondbacks 3: Ty France and Jose Marmolejos homered, Justus Sheffield pitched seven quality innings and Seattle snapped a three-game losing streak with a win at Arizona.

The Mariners jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first inning against Zac Gallen (1-2), who has been one of the best pitchers in the National League this season. France started the scoring with a solo homer, his second in two days.

Cardinals 7, Reds 1: Dakota Hudson allowed just one hit in six innings, and host St. Louis backed the right-hander with four home runs.

Harrison Bader hit a three-run homer and Matt Carpenter and Paul Goldschmidt added solo drives in the sixth as the Cardinals broke it open.

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — Alex Breg-man singled in the go-ahead run during a five-run ninth inning, and the Houston Astros rallied past the Los Angeles Dodgers 7-5 under smoky skies Saturday night in the Astros’ first visit to Los Angeles since the infamous 2017 World Series.

The Dodgers blew a three-run lead in the ninth when closer Kenley Jansen (3-1) got knocked around, giving up four consecu-tive hits without an out.

Carlos Correa and Aledmys Diaz singled, Josh Reddick hit a two-run double and Martin Mal-donado added another single. George Springer then grounded into a fielder’s choice to third baseman Max Muncy, who com-mitted an error while Reddick scored to tie the game at 5.

Bregman followed with a single to center that made it 6-5. Breg-man scored on Yuri Gurriel’s sacrifice fly to center off Adam Kolarek for a 7-5 lead.

Houston improved to 7-17 on the road after coming in with losses in eight of its previous nine games.

Josh James (1-0) got the victory with 1 1/3 innings of relief. Ryan Pressly earned his ninth save.

The game lacked the fiery emotion of the teams’ matchup on July 29. But there were mul-tiple reminders that Los Angeles fans haven’t forgotten the As-tros’ cheating scandal from their championship three years ago.

A plane towed a banner read-ing “Houston Cheats Bang Bang” over the stadium.

Fans aren’t allowed inside thisseason because of the coronavi-rus, but a group of Dodger sup-porters greeted the Astros’ busas it pulled in. They shook largeplastic and metal garbage cans in the air, a reference to the As-tros’ sign-stealing scheme thatinvolved signaling pitches bybanging on garbage cans.

“I loved it,” Los Angeles man-ager Dave Roberts said before the game. “They have every right todo whatever they feel to express their feelings. Just shows the pas-sion that Dodger fans have.”

Pitcher Joe Kelly honked in support as he drove his blackPorsche into the stadium.

The stadium organist got intothe act, too. Dieter Ruehle played“Lyin’ Eyes,” by the Eagles; “TheSign,” by Ace of Base; “Bangin’on a Trash Can (Think Big),” byDoug; and “Bang Your Head” byQuiet Riot.

The last time the teams met,Kelly was suspended for throw-ing pitches that nearly hit mul-tiple Houston batters before hetaunted Correa with a pouting expression while walking off thefield after the Astros’ sluggerstruck out.

Chris Taylor and Kike Hernan-dez slugged back-to-back homersfor Los Angeles.

Taylor blasted a two-run shotinto the right-field pavilion withtwo outs in the second, giving theDodgers Angeles a 2-1 lead. Her-nandez followed with a solo shotto nearly the same spot in right, the third time Los Angeles hom-ered back-to-back this season.

Roundup

DAVID ZALUBOWSKI/AP

Los Angeles Angels rookie Jared Walsh watches his game-winning three-run home run off Colorado Rockies relief pitcher Tyler Kinley during the 11th inning of his team’s 5-2 win Saturday in Denver.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 22 F3HIJKLM Monday, September 14, 2020

PlayoffsAll games in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

CONFERENCE SEMIFINALS(Best-of-seven; x-if necessary)

Eastern ConferenceMiami 4, Milwaukee 1

Miami 115, Milwaukee 104Miami 116, Milwaukee 114Miami 115, Milwaukee 100Milwaukee 118, Miami 115, OTMiami 103, Milwaukee 94

Boston 4, Toronto 3Boston 112, Toronto 94Boston 102, Toronto 99Toronto 104, Boston 103Toronto 100, Boston 93Boston 111, Toronto 89Toronto 125, Boston 122Boston 92, Toronto 87

Western ConferenceL.A. Lakers 4, Houston 1

Houston 112, L.A. Lakers 97L.A. Lakers 117, Houston 109L.A. Lakers 112, Houston 102L.A. Lakers 110, Houston 100Saturday: L.A. Lakers 119, Houston 96

L.A. Clippers 3, Denver 2L.A. Clippers 120, Denver 97Denver 110, L.A. Clippers 101L.A. Clippers 113, Denver 107L.A. Clippers 96, Denver 85Denver 111, L.A. Clippers 105Sunday: Game 6 x-Tuesday, Sept. 15: Game 7

CONFERENCE FINALS(Best-of-seven; x-if necessary)

Eastern ConferenceBoston vs. Miami

Tuesday: Game 1Thursday: Game 2Saturday, Sept. 19: Game 3Game 4, TBD: Game 4x-Game 5, TBD: Game 5x-Game 6, TBD: Game 6x-Game 7, TBD: Game 7

SaturdayLakers 119, Rockets 96

HOUSTON — Gordon 2-7 0-0 5, Tucker 3-10 0-0 8, Covington 2-7 0-0 5, Harden 12-20 4-4 30, Westbrook 4-13 2-6 10, Caboclo 0-1 0-0 0, J.Green 3-9 6-6 13, Clemons 2-5 1-2 7, Frazier 0-1 0-0 0, McLemore 3-9 0-0 9, Rivers 2-7 4-6 9. Totals 33-89 17-24 96.

L.A. LAKERS — Davis 4-9 5-6 13, James 9-18 8-10 29, Morris 6-7 0-0 16, Caldwell-Pope 4-5 0-0 10, D.Green 4-6 2-3 14, Dud-ley 0-1 0-0 0, Kuzma 5-9 4-4 17, McGee 0-1 0-0 0, Smith 0-1 0-0 0, Howard 0-0 3-6 3, Caruso 2-6 0-0 5, Horton-Tucker 4-7 0-0 9, Rondo 1-4 0-0 3. Totals 39-74 22-29 119.

Houston 20 31 18 27— 96L.A. Lakers 35 27 33 24—119Three-Point Goals—Houston 13-49

(McLemore 3-9, Clemons 2-5, Tucker 2-6,Harden 2-8, J.Green 1-3, Covington 1-4,Gordon 1-4, Rivers 1-5, Westbrook 0-3), L.A. Lakers 19-37 (Morris 4-4, D.Green 4-6, Kuzma 3-6, James 3-8, Caldwell-Pope 2-3, Horton-Tucker 1-2, Caruso 1-4). FouledOut—None. Rebounds—Houston 31 (Harden 6), L.A. Lakers 50 (Davis, James 11). Assists—Houston 18 (Westbrook 6), L.A. Lakers 25 (James 7). Total Fouls—Houston 26, L.A. Lakers 24.

TENNIS/NBA PLAYOFFS

Lakers, James advance by routing Rockets in Game 5

Osaka prevails for 2nd US Open titleAfter slow start, she rolls past Azarenka for her third Grand Slam championship

Associated Press

NEW YORK — After one er-rant forehand in the first set of the U.S. Open final, Naomi Osaka looked at her coach in the most-ly empty Arthur Ashe Stadium stands with palms up, as if to say, “What the heck is happening?”

In response to another way-ward forehand against Victoria Azarenka seconds later, Osaka chucked her racket. It spun a bit and rattled against the court.

Surprisingly off-kilter in the early going Saturday, Osaka kept missing shots and digging her-self a deficit. Until, suddenly, she lifted her game, and Azarenka couldn’t sustain her start. By the end, Osaka pulled away to a 1-6, 6-3, 6-3 victory for her second U.S. Open championship and third Grand Slam title overall.

“For me, I just thought,” said Osaka, who trailed by a set and a break, “it would be very embar-rassing to lose this in an under an hour.”

This, then, is what she told her-self with a white towel draped over her head at a changeover when things looked bleakest: “I just have to try as hard as I can and stop having a really bad attitude.”

It worked. A quarter-century had passed since a woman who lost the first set of a U.S. Open final wound up winning: In 1994, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario did it against Steffi Graf.

“I wasn’t really thinking about winning. I was just thinking about competing,” Osaka said. “Some-how, I ended up with the trophy.”

Osaka is a 22-year-old who was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and Haitian father; the family moved to the U.S. when she was 3.

Osaka, now based in California, arrived for the U.S. Open intent on claiming the championship, to be sure, but with another goal in mind, as well: continuing to be a voice for change by calling atten-tion to racial injustice.

She showed up for Saturday’s match wearing a mask with the name of Tamir Rice, a Black 12-year-old boy killed by police in Ohio in 2014. That was the sev-enth mask she’d used during the tournament, after honoring other Black victims of violence: Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Ar-bery, George Floyd and Philando Castile.

“The point,” Osaka explained, “is to make people start talking.”

Last month, Osaka refused to compete after the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, in Wisconsin — she said she would withdraw from her semifinal at the Western & Southern Open,

although decided to play after the tournament took a full day off in solidarity.

Osaka and her coach, Wim Fissette — who used to work with Azarenka — have said they think the off-court activism has helped her energy and mindset in matches.

“I wanted,” Osaka said, “more people to (see) more names.”

So perhaps it was no coinci-dence that this win over Azaren-ka, a 31-year-old from Belarus also seeking a third Grand Slam title but first in 7 ½ years, made Osaka 11-0 since tennis resumed after its hiatus because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Osaka added to her triumphs at the 2018 U.S. Open — earned with a brilliant performance in a memorably chaotic and con-troversial final against Serena Williams — and 2019 Australian Open.

Azarenka carried an 11-match winning streak of her own into Saturday, including a stirring three-set victory over Williams in the semifinals, stopping the American’s bid for a 24th Grand Slam title.

Azarenka won the 2012 and 2013 Australian Opens and lost to Williams in the U.S. Open finals each of those years.

“I thought the third time was the charm,” Azarenka said, “but I guess I’ll have to try again.”

Even after Osaka surged ahead 4-1 in the third set, the outcome was unclear. Azarenka drew to 4-3, then stood and stretched dur-ing the ensuing changeover.

“Had a little bit of a energy dip,” Azarenka said.

Osaka regained control, then laid down on the court when the final was over.

BY TANIA GANGULI

Los Angeles Times

Five minutes and 31 seconds remained in the game when LeB-ron James left the court to watch the rest of it from the bench.

His work was done — for now.Ten years after the last time

they did it, the Los Angeles Lak-ers are headed to the Western Conference finals.

The Lakers defeated the Hous-ton Rockets 119-96 on Saturday to win their second-round series four games to one. They did so dominating a team that beat them in Game 1 and challenged them at other points in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

“I understand the Laker faith-ful and what they felt or maybe were going through over ... the last decade of not being in the postseason, or not competing for championships,” James said. “I took that responsibility as well. I’m happy I’m able to do a little bit of a part of it and the rest of my ballclub and the coaching staff and everybody who’s (made) the sacrifice of trying to get us back, getting this franchise back to competing for a championship, which we’ve done all year.”

James finished with 29 points and 11 rebounds, while Kyle Kuzma was the Los Angeles’ sec-ond-leading scorer with 17 points, making five of nine shots and three three-pointers. Anthony Davis finished with 13 points and 11 rebounds and all five Lakers starters scored in double figures.

Houston star James Harden scored 30 points for the Rock-ets, making 12 of 20 shots two nights after making only two shots in Game 4. But he was the only Houston player to score more than 13 points and the team shot only 37.1% overall, 26.5% on three-pointers.

“James and Russ (Russell Westbrook), both MVP-caliber

players, great three-point shoot-ing support system and we really, really committed to the defensive end,” Los Angeles coach Frank Vogel said. “Even though they have a three-point attack, it was a paint-first mind-set. Our verti-cality and rim protection was just special tonight.”

The Lakers meanwhile shot better than 50% from the field and from three-point range, mak-ing 19 of 37 from beyond the arc .

At the start of Game 5, there ap-peared to be little Houston could do well. Los Angeles had a 13-2 lead at the first break, and it grew to 22 in the first quarter.

While the Rockets fought back and got to within seven, they couldn’t get much closer. Even though Anthony Davis had barely made his presence felt, the Lak-ers led by 11 heading into the break.

After halftime, Houston cut it to six points, but a 15-0 run by Los Angeles took any question out of the outcome. The Lakers led by as many as 30 points .

James has been to the confer-ence finals, though not the West-ern Conference finals until now. He has won championships in Miami and Cleveland.

Anything short of a champion-ship during his time in Los Ange-les would be considered a failure.

“I know what it comes with,” James said. “I know what my name, my stature, and what I’ve done in this league comes with whenever I decide to join a fran-chise. Either from starting with my first seven years with Cleve-land, my four years in Miami, going back to Cleveland four more years and then coming into this franchise. I know what my name comes with and it comes with winning. I take that respon-sibility to the utmost. Because I am a winner and I’ve always been a winner.”

MARK J. TERRILL/AP

Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James, right, had 29 points and 11 rebounds to lead his team to a 119-96 defeat of the Houston Rockets on Saturday. With the win, the Lakers advance to the conference finals.

Scoreboard

SETH WENIG/AP

Naomi Osaka, of Japan, celebrates after defeating Victoria Azarenka, of Belarus, in the women’s singles final of the US Open, Saturday in New York.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 23Monday, September 14, 2020

FROM BACK PAGE

Kentucky carrying American and Black Lives Matter flags, the latter featuring the school’s old English “L” in the middle. The Cardinals’ helmets also featured decals for BLM and DR 2 to honor recruit Dexter Rentz Jr., who was shot and killed by gunfire in Or-lando on April 26.

In Chapel Hill, N.C., six Syra-cuse players had “Equality” and one had “Black Lives Matter” displayed on the backs of their jerseys instead of their names for their game against the Tar Heels.

North Carolina wore a patch de-signed by linebacker Tomon Fox. The patch featured the raised clenched fist of the Black Lives Matter movement encircled by the words “Peace,” “Justice,” “Freedom,” “Equality” and “Say Their Names.”

“We’re more than just ath-letes,” Fox said. “We’re trying to help out with what’s going on in the real world. There are a lot of things bigger than football right now. We’re using our platform in order to help with those things.”

Iowa State wore patches hon-oring Jack Trice, the school’s first Black athlete, for their game against Louisiana-Lafayette in Ames, Iowa. Trice died of injuries sustained in a football game in 1923, and the Cyclones’ stadium is named in his honor.

Clemson players had decals on their helmets with a choice of four stickers and the Tigers’ op-ponent, Wake Forest, had “Black Lives Matter” on the back of play-ers’ helmets.

Texas players wore “We Are

One” jersey patches for their game against UTEP in Austin. The school song “The Eyes of Texas” received a warm recep-tion before the game after the school decided to stick with it de-spite calls to stop playing it due to connections to minstrel shows and actors in blackface decades ago.

Texas also required students to take rapid COVID-19 tests on Friday and 95 of 1,198 tested positive.

COVID-19 continued to be at the fore. Big 12 teams Baylor (vs. Louisiana Tech) and Oklahoma State (vs. Tulsa) had games post-poned, as did TCU (vs. SMU) on Friday.

Georgia Southern had 33 play-ers listed as inactive for its game against Campbell. Spokesman Bryan Johnston did not provide the number of players out because

of COVID-19. He said there were various reasons for the absences, including injuries, suspensions and coach’s discretion in addition to COVID-19.

At Iowa State, crowd noise was piped in and the band and cheer-leaders were spread out on the east side of the stadium. Families of players for both teams and im-mediate family of school officials were on the west side. Spokesman Mike Green said about 1,000 peo-ple were in the stadium.

Notre Dame announced its attendance at 10,097, about 12 percent of capacity. Most of the fans were students. Seats were assigned, and mask mandates ap-peared to be mostly followed. In the second half, a reminder was issued via the “Physical Distance Camera.”

Oklahoma limited capacity to 25% and had a sellout crowd of 22,700, smallest since 1945. The Sooner Schooner made an ap-pearance to add a degree of nor-malcy, but cardboard cutouts of fans filled in holes in the crowd.

To Syracuse defensive end Kingsley Jonathan, just play-ing a game — even in a mostly empty stadium with a smatter-ing of cardboard cutouts of fans — brought a sense of normalcy during what has been a difficult summer.

“Everything’s all crazy until I step on the field and then it’s like, it’s just football. That’s all it is,” Jonathan said. “Outside the field, it’s something else, (and) you have to do what you gotta do. But once you’re on the field it’s just football.”

Unity: Games bring sense of normalcy during difficult times

Associated Press

On the first Saturday of the col-lege football season with Power Five conference teams playing, the Sun Belt was the star and the Big Ten grabbed headlines with-out even playing.

What figures to be at best a weird season as teams try to nav-igate the coronavirus pandemic ramped up Saturday with 19 games, including a bunch involv-ing the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big 12.

The Power Five conferences all modified their schedules for this season to deal with the inevitable disruptions caused by COVID-19.

Good call. Three Big 12 teams had their openers this week-end postponed, including No. 15 Oklahoma State. In the ACC, four hours before the first confer-ence’s first game of the season, it was announced that next week’s Virginia-Virginia Tech game was being postponed.

Welcome to 2020, folks. When the games did get going, the Big 12 might have been rethinking those nonconference matchups.

No. 23 Iowa State scrambled to bring Louisiana-Lafayette to Ames after not one but two pre-viously scheduled games fell through.

The Ragin’ Cajuns from the Sun Belt are no pushovers. They won 11 games last year and coach Bill Napier is looking like a rising star. In a season with few noncon-ference games, Louisiana-Lafay-ette’s 31-14 victory has a chance to be the most impressive by a Group of Five team this season.

The Ragin’ Cajuns beat a ranked team for the first time since Jake Delhomme played quarterback in Lafayette and im-proved 2-32 all-time against Top 25 teams.

Meanwhile, Arkansas State

scored another upset for the SunBelt, knocking off Kansas State35-31 with a late touchdown catchby Jonathan Adams Jr., whoscored three times for the visitingRed Wolves. Arkansas State lostits opener at Memphis last week.

To top off the Sun Belt’s dayof dominance against the Big12, Coastal Carolina rolled intoLawrence and beat Les Miles andKansas 38-23.

Fun Belt, indeed. Big Ten comeback? One month

and a day after the Big Ten post-poned its football season, the con-ference took a step toward getting back in the game.

Things might move quicklynow. And if they do, the Big Tencould be up and running by mid-to late October. An Oct. 17 start would give the conference spacefor an eight-game season in nineweeks. With that schedule, the BigTen championship game could be played Dec. 19, which is the daybefore the playoff selection com-mittee sets the field.

Around the country: FloridaState lost an opening game for the fourth straight season. Thathasn’t happened since 1973-76. ... In between the first and secondquarters of Notre Dame’s vic-tory against Duke, the school an-nounced a contract extension for coach Brian Kelly that will runthrough 2024. Kelly has been un-able to deliver a national title, but has won 93 games in 11 seasonsand had five double-digit vic-tory seasons. Only Knute Rockne(105), Holtz (100) and Ara Par-seghian (95) have won more atNotre Dame. ... Trevor Law-rence’s Heisman campaign start-ed with a masterful performanceagainst Wake Forest. The Clem-son quarterback was 22-for-28 for 351 yards, with a touchdown passand two short TD runs.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Fun Belt upset;Big Ten return?

Saturday’s scoresEAST

Army 37, Louisiana-Monroe 7Pittsburgh 55, Austin Peay 0West Virginia 56, E. Kentucky 10

SOUTHAppalachian St. 35, Charlotte 20Clemson 37, Wake Forest 13Georgia Southern 27, Campbell 26Georgia Tech 16, Florida St. 13Louisville 35, W. Kentucky 21North Carolina 31, Syracuse 6South Florida 27, The Citadel 6Tulane 27, South Alabama 24

MIDWESTArkansas St. 35, Kansas St. 31Coastal Carolina 38, Kansas 23Louisiana-Lafayette 31, Iowa St. 14Notre Dame 27, Duke 13

SOUTHWESTOklahoma 48, Missouri St. 0Texas 59, UTEP 3Texas Tech 35, Houston Baptist 33UTSA 51, Texas State 48, 2OT

Scoreboard

WILLIAM WOTRING, THE DOMINION-POST/AP

Mountaineers wide receiver Sam James catches a pass for a touchdown against Eastern Kentucky during Saturday’s game in Morgantown, W.Va. The Mountaineers won 56-10.

Top 25 Takeaways

CHARLIE NEIBERGALL/AP

Louisiana-Lafayette running back Chris Smith returns a kickoff 95-yards for a touchdown during the first half of Saturday’s game against Iowa State, in Ames, Iowa. The Ragin’ Cajuns won 31-14.

SPORTSCOLLEGE FOOTBALL

Osaka prevails for 2nd US Open victory » Tennis, Page 22

S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S Monday, September 14, 2020 F3HIJKLM

Stadiums quiet but football, shows of unity go on BY ERIC OLSON

Associated Press

The first big weekend of college football was mostly stripped of the pageantry that is at the heart of the game.

The stands were empty, or attendance was limited, because of a pandemic that has disrupted the season.

That didn’t stop shows of support for the fight against racial injustice.

Players for Kansas State and Arkan-sas State locked arms on the sidelines with their teammates before the game

in Manhattan, Kan. Kansas State play-ers spoke in a video calling for unity and equality, and there were cheers and applause following a moment of reflection.

A similar scene played out in Mor-gantown, W.Va., before West Virginia’s game against Eastern Kentucky.

Notre Dame played a video promoting racial equality before its game against

Duke in South Bend, Ind.Several teams’ uniforms called atten-

tion to social injustice. Duke players not only wore the Black

Lives Matter logo on the back of their helmets, but the “D” logos on the sides of those helmets, traditionally white, were black. NBC reported the change was made in support of the BLM movement and that the Blue Devils intend to wear that design throughout the season.

Louisville players ran on the field before their game against Western

SEE UNITY ON PAGE 23

Above: In front of barren stands, North Carolina’s Michael Carter breaks away from Syracuse’s Geoff Cantin-Arku in the second quarter of Saturday’sgame in Chapel Hill, N.C. Six Syracuse players had “Equality” and one had “Black Lives Matter” displayed on the backs of their jerseys instead of

their names for the game against the Tar Heels, while North Carolina wore a Black Lives Matter patch designed by linebacker Tomon Fox.ROBERT WILLETT, THE NEWS & OBSERVER/AP

‘ There are a lot of things bigger than football right now. We’re using our platform in order

to help with those things. ’Tomon Fox

North Carolina linebacker, who designed the BLM patch worn by the Tar Heels Saturday

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