Military units track weapons using tech that could aid foes

MOVIES‘Venom’ sequeldoubles down

on mayhemPage 15

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When Parwana needed diapers for

her sons, she went to the Red

Cross station at Fort McCoy in

search of help.

But the 25-year-old Afghan evacuee, who ar-

rived days after a chaotic escape from Taliban-

controlled Afghanistan, couldn’t speak English.

She had to pantomime with her hands to ex-

plain what she needed.

These days, Parwana is taking English class-

es for two hours a day with other Afghan wom-

en at Fort McCoy.

“Now I can talk a little,” she said, adding that

her husband is taking classes as well.

Like many of the approximately 50,000 eva-

ZUBAIR BABAKARKHAIL/Stars and Stripes

Afghan women and children learn English words in a morning at class at Fort McCoy, Wis., on Tuesday.

Longing for a new lifeAfghan evacuees at Fort McCoy await their chance at the American dream

BY J.P. LAWRENCE

AND ZUBAIR BABAKARKHAIL

Stars and Stripes

SEE DREAM ON PAGE 9

“No worries if the wait is longer.

Comparing life now with those three

days I lived under the Taliban, it’s like

those three days were three years, and

these three weeks that I have been

here were like three hours.”

Mohammad Rahim

Afghan refugee

Determined to keep track of

their guns, some U.S. military

units have turned to a technology

that could let enemies detect

troops on the battlefield, The Asso-

ciated Press has found.

The rollout on Army and Air

Force bases continues even

though the Department of De-

fense itself describes putting the

technology in firearms as a “sig-

nificant” security risk.

The Marines have rejected ra-

dio frequency identification tech-

nology in weapons for that very

reason, and the Navy said this

week that it was halting its own

dalliance.

RFID, as the technology is

known, is infused throughout daily

civilian life. Thin RFID tags help

drivers zip through toll booths,

hospitals locate tools and super-

markets track their stock. Tags are

in some identity documents, air-

line baggage tags and even amuse-

ment park wristbands.

When embedded in military

guns, tags can trim hours off time-

intensive tasks, such as weapon

counts and distribution. Outside

SEE TRACK ON PAGE 9

Military unitstrack weaponsusing tech thatcould aid foes

BY JAMES LAPORTA,JUSTIN PRITCHARD

AND KRISTIN M. HALL

Associated Press

JAEL LABORN/AP

Weapons are stored at the LittleRock Air Force Base, Ark.

PAGE 2 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Friday, October 1, 2021

EUROPE GAS PRICES

Country Super E10 Super unleaded Super plus Diesel

Germany $3.435 $3.885 $4.136 $3.666

Change in price -0.9 cents -0.7 cents -0.7 cents +1.8 cents

Netherlands .. $4.387 $4.680 $4.356

Change in price .. -0.9 cents -0.9 cents +2.7 cents

U.K. .. $3.799 $4.050 $3.580

Change in price .. -0.7 cents -0.7 cents +2.1 cents

Azores .. .. $4.051 ..

Change in price .. .. -0.7 cents ..

Belgium .. $3.307 $3.663 $3.361

Change in price .. No change No change No change

Turkey .. .. $3.936 $4.252*

Change in price .. .. -0.7 cents No change

PACIFIC GAS PRICESCountry Super E10 Super unleaded Super plus Diesel

Japan .. $3.939 .. $3.469

Change in price .. -1.0 cents .. +2.0 cents

Okinawa $3.239 .. .. $3.469

Change in price -1.0 cents .. .. +2.0 cents

South Korea $3.249 .. $3.959 $3.489

Change in price -1.0 cents .. No change +3.0 cents

Guam $3.249 $3.699 $3.949 ..

Change in price -1.0 cents +1.0 cents -1.0 cents ..

*DieselEFD **Midgrade

For the week of Oct. 1-7

BUSINESS/WEATHER

Bahrain89/83

Baghdad98/67

Doha100/77

Kuwait City102/78

Riyadh100/72

Kandahar

Kabul

Djibouti95/84

FRIDAY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Mildenhall/Lakenheath

59/55

Ramstein64/45

Stuttgart68/42

Lajes,Azores70/67

Rota77/62

Morón86/60 Sigonella

72/66

Naples78/63

Aviano/Vicenza66/52

Pápa63/44

Souda Bay68/65

Brussels59/50

Zagan61/44

DrawskoPomorskie

59/45

FRIDAY IN EUROPE

Misawa69/60

Guam84/81

Tokyo79/61

Okinawa83/80

Sasebo79/68

Iwakuni76/68

Seoul75/66

Osan79/59

Busan77/69

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

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

SATURDAY IN THE PACIFIC

WEATHER OUTLOOK

Military rates

Euro costs (Oct. 1) $1.13Dollar buys (Oct. 1) 0.8412British pound (Oct. 1) $1.31Japanese yen (Oct. 1) 109.00South Korean won (Oct. 1) 1153.00

Commercial rates

Bahrain(Dinar) .3769Britain (Pound) 1.3480Canada (Dollar) 1.2731China(Yuan) 6.4535Denmark (Krone) 6.4186Egypt (Pound) 15.6948Euro .8632Hong Kong (Dollar) 7.7886Hungary (Forint) 310.32Israel (Shekel) 3.2299Japan (Yen) 111.98Kuwait(Dinar) .3017

Norway (Krone) 8.7471

Philippines (Peso) 51.02Poland (Zloty) 3.97Saudi Arabia (Riyal) 3.7503Singapore (Dollar) 1.3584

South Korea (Won) 1184.83Switzerland (Franc) .9352Thailand (Baht) 33.80Turkey (NewLira) 8.8810

(Military exchange rates are those availableto customers at military banking facilities in thecountry of issuance for Japan, South Korea, Ger-many, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.For nonlocal currency exchange rates (i.e., pur-chasing British pounds in Germany), check withyour local military banking facility. Commercialrates are interbank rates provided for referencewhen buying currency. All figures are foreigncurrencies to one dollar, except for the Britishpound, which is represented in dollars-to-pound, and the euro, which is dollars-to-euro.)

INTEREST RATES

Prime rate 3.25Interest Rates Discount rate 0.75Federal funds market rate 0.093-month bill 0.0430-year bond 2.08

EXCHANGE RATES

TODAYIN STRIPES

American Roundup ...... 10Classified .................... 46Comics ...................38-39Crossword ............. 38-39Faces .......................... 35Opinion ....................... 40Sports ................... 42-48

Friday, October 1, 2021 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 3

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the

Joint Chiefs of Staff on Wednesday admitted

the U.S. lost the war in Afghanistan but told

House lawmakers that keeping troops in the

country would not have led to a different out-

come.

Army Gen. Mark Milley called the war a

“strategic failure,” but he said it wasn’t be-

cause of the individual efforts by U.S. troops

— about 6,000 of whom helped evacuate

124,000 people from Afghanistan in the con-

flict’s final weeks.

“Strategically, the war is lost — the enemy

is in Kabul,” Milley told the House Armed

Services Committee, referring to the Tali-

ban’s Aug. 15 takeover of Afghanistan’s cap-

ital city. “So, you have strategic failure while

you simultaneously have an operational and

tactical success by the soldiers on the

ground.”

The House hearing Wednesday was the

second day of public testimony by Milley,

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Marine

Gen. Frank McKenzie, the top U.S. com-

mander in the Middle East region. All three

spoke before the Senate Armed Services

Committee on Tuesday and revealed they

initially wanted to keep at least 2,500 troops

in Afghanistan.

Though Milley originally had been

against the decision by former President

Donald Trump and President Joe Biden to

withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan,

he told the House committee that keeping a

small military force in the country would not

have prevented the Afghan government’s

collapse.

“If we held the 2,500, which I stated was

my position ... there would have been a clear

risk that the Taliban would have begun to at-

tack us after Aug. 31,” Milley said, referring

to the date Biden set as the withdrawal dead-

line.

Austin added more time would not have

been helpful and explained that extending

the war “beyond the end of August would

have greatly imperiled our people and our

mission.”

“The Taliban made clear that their coop-

eration would end the first of September,

and as you know we faced grave and grow-

ing threats from ISIS-K,” he said, referring

to the Islamic State group that killed 13

troops in a terrorist attack at the Kabul air-

port’s Abbey gate on Aug. 26.

Some House lawmakers expressed frus-

tration over how the final month of the war

played out. Images of chaos at the airport

with desperate Afghans clinging to the sides

of military aircraft and falling to their deaths

and Americans and allies turned away from

Taliban checkpoints in the city flooded the

airwaves and social media during the 17-day

evacuation mission at Hamid Karzai Inter-

national Airport.

“I think we can all agree that the with-

drawal was an unmitigated disaster,” said

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala. “Hundreds of

Americans were left behind, thousands of

Afghan allies stuck with little hope of es-

cape, potentially billions [of dollars] worth

of U.S.-provided military equipment now in

the hands of the Taliban [and] thousands of

al-Qaida and ISIS terrorists freed from pris-

ons.”

Though U.S. and coalition forces evacuat-

ed about 124,000 people from Afghanistan in

the final weeks of the withdrawal, some

House lawmakers argued more should have

been done to help Afghan allies and about

100 Americans left behind in the country.

“In briefings and hearing since April,

we’ve demanded to know a plan to safely

evacuate Americans and Afghans … The re-

sponse from the administration was, ‘We’re

working on it,’ ” said Rogers, who is the com-

mittee’s ranking Republican. “Now it’s clear

they never had a plan.”

Austin said evacuation efforts continue

without troops in Afghanistan. In the past 48

hours, the U.S. has helped get 63 Americans

and 189 legal permanent residents out of the

country, he said.

Still, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., called for

Austin and Milley to resign at the hearing.

“I believe you guys probably won’t resign

—you seem to be very happy failing up over

there,” he said. “But if we didn’t have a pres-

ident who was so addled, you all would be

fired because that is what you deserve. You

have let down the people who wear the uni-

form.”

Milley said the war was lost long before he

and Austin took the top jobs at the Defense

Department, adding he knew it was a stale-

mate about six years ago.

“This was a 20-year war and it wasn’t lost

in the last 20 days or even 20 months, for that

matter,” the general said. “This was the cu-

mulative effect of a series of decisions that

go way back.”

Milley rattled off several failures that he

said lost the war, including Osama bin La-

den’s 2001 escape from U.S. forces at Tora

Bora, the U.S. not effectively dealing with

Pakistan as a sanctuary for terrorists, and

removing U.S. advisers from Afghan forces.

The last decision “essentially blinded …

our ability to see the will, the morale, the

leadership and training” of Afghan forces,

he said.

“We accomplished our strategic task of

protecting America against al-Qaida, [but]

certainly the end state is a whole lot different

than what we wanted,” Milley said.

With the Taliban in control of Afghanis-

tan, Austin cautioned that al-Qaida, the ter-

rorist organization that planned the 9/11 at-

tacks from the country, could see a resur-

gence there.

“Al-Qaida has been degraded over time,”

he said. “Now, terrorist organizations seek

ungoverned spaces so that they can train

and equip and thrive and so there is clearly a

possibility that that can happen [in Afghan-

istan] going forward.”

The U.S. loss also served as a “morale

boost” for the Taliban, Milley said.

“It likely put a shot of adrenaline into their

arm,” he said. “Their grandfathers defeated

the Soviet Union in the war in Afghanistan

many, many years ago and they are … de-

claring [the U.S. war] a major victory.”

Milley cites ‘strategic failure’ in Afghanistan BY CAITLIN DOORNBOS

Stars and Stripes

[email protected] Twitter: @CaitlinDoornbos

ROD LAMKEY/AP

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testifies before the HouseArmed Services Committee on Wednesday on Capitol Hill in Washington.

nated.

“These data further indicate that

[coronavirus] vaccines offer better

protection than natural immunity

alone and that vaccines, even after

prior infection, help prevent rein-

fections,” according to the CDC.

The national Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention released

the results of a study in August that

found vaccination against corona-

virus offers higher protection than

a previous infection. The Ken-

tucky-based study found non-vac-

cinated coronavirus survivors

were twice as likely to be reinfect-

ed as those who were fully vacci-

Two service members filed a

class-action lawsuit against De-

fense Secretary Lloyd Austin to

halt a mandate that all troops re-

ceive the coronavirus vaccine and

create an exemption for those who

were previously infected with the

virus because they have “natural

immunity.”

Army Staff Sgt. Dan Robert, an

infantryman at Fort Bragg, N.C.,

and Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Hollie

Mulvihill, an air traffic controller

at Marine Corps Air Station New

River, N.C., filed the lawsuit Aug.

17 in the U.S. District Court of Col-

orado for themselves and on behalf

of all other similarly situated ser-

vice members, Defense Depart-

ment personnel and contractors

who are documented coronavirus

survivors ordered to get the vac-

cine.

The lawsuit named Austin as a

defendant alongside Health and

Human Services Secretary Xavier

Becerra and Janet Woodcock, act-

ing commissioner of the Food and

Drug Administration.

Not only did Robert and Mulvi-

hill state they have immunity from

a previous coronavirus infection,

they claimed “the DoD cannot

force them to take a [coronavirus]

vaccination under existing mili-

tary regulations, federal regula-

tions, federal law, and the U.S. Con-

stitution,” according to the lawsuit.

More than 1.2 million service

members are fully vaccinated, ac-

cording to the Defense Depart-

ment. Many of them began receiv-

ing the vaccine voluntarily, but the

number who have been vaccinated

has increased since Austin an-

nounced in August that the corona-

virus vaccine would be mandatory.

In September, the Pfizer vac-

cine, which requires two shots ad-

ministered three weeks apart, re-

ceived full FDA approval, and Aus-

tin called on the leaders of each

military service branch to layout

plans to fully vaccinate all service

members.

More than 372,000 cases of coro-

navirus have been reported among

Defense Department personnel,

including troops, civilians, de-

pendents and contractors, accord-

ing to the department. Of those

cases, 244,300 have been service

members and 58 troops died from

complications of the virus.

Service members file lawsuit overPentagon’s virus vaccine mandate

BY ROSE L. THAYER

Stars and Stripes

LUKE CUNNINGHAM/U.S. Navy

Two service members filed a federal lawsuit in August to stop a DODmandate that all troops receive the coronavirus vaccine.

[email protected] Twitter: @Rose_Lori

MILITARY


STUTTGART, Germany — A

$30 million U.S. Army command

and control headquarters in Po-

land is among the projects being

proposed to support the military’s

expansion in the country, which

has emerged as a focal point for

coordinating allied defense efforts

along NATO’s eastern flank.

The version of the National De-

fense Authorization Act passed by

the House last week says a de-

fense cooperation pact between

Washington and Warsaw means

the Pentagon can accept “in-kind

contributions” from Poland to de-

velop the $30 million command

hub, as well as a $7 million infor-

mation systems facility.

The projects will be developed

in the Polish city of Poznan, the

forward headquarters location of

the Army’s recently reestablished

V Corps, the NDAA said. The pro-

posed projects still need Senate

approval.

“The U.S.-Poland Enhanced

Defense Cooperation Agreement

signed in 2020 provides a mecha-

nism for the sharing of logistical

and infrastructure costs for U.S.

forces present in Poland,” Lt. Col.

Anton T. Semelroth, a Defense

Department spokesman, said in a

statement. “The projects pro-

posed … are in line with this

agreement.”

The arrival of V Corps is the lat-

est in a series of efforts to expand

operations in Poland, which also

hosts a rotational U.S. Army ar-

mored brigade and a U.S.-led mul-

tinational NATO battlegroup fo-

cused on security along Poland’s

border with the Russian military

exclave of Kaliningrad.

In 2020, the United States and

Poland ratified a deal that paved

the way for more troop rotations

and called for Poland to provide

infrastructure to support incom-

ing personnel.

The Army is also gearing up for

an influx of combat gear to be

stockpiled in the country. U.S. Ar-

my Europe and Africa said Thurs-

day that it expects work on a long-

planned $360 million warehouse

project, much of which is funded

by NATO, to be completed by

2022. The site, located in Powidz,

will be fully mission capable by

2024.

Once complete, about 85 tanks,

190 armored combat vehicles, 35

artillery and four armored vehicle

launched bridges will be housed at

Powidz, the Army said.

Over the last several years, the

Army has been setting up such

prepositioned weapons sites at lo-

cations across Europe so that

troops arriving from the U.S.

would have quick access to gear

should they be mobilized in a cri-

sis.

V Corps was activated in Febru-

ary 2020 to eventually take over

command oversight of Army op-

erations up and down NATO’s

eastern flank, where allies have

stepped up military activities

amid concerns about potential

Russian aggression. The head-

quarters, which was inactivated in

2013 as part of a long post-Cold

War drawdown in Europe, is ex-

pected to become fully operation-

al in a matter of weeks.

With a main headquarters in

Fort Knox, Ky., V Corps has about

200 soldiers rotating to Poznan to

support operations.

DELANCIE HORTON/U.S. Army

V Corps Forward marks its arrival in Poznan, Poland, with a ceremonyin July.

$30M Army hubplan would boostPoland presence

BY JOHN VANDIVER

Stars and Stripes

[email protected]: @john_vandiver

A medevac pilot stationed at

Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, cre-

ated an “optical black box” to im-

prove Army pilot training and won

the latest round of a Fort Bragg,

N.C.-based program to encourage

soldier-driven innovation within

the service.

First Lt. Mahdi Al-Husseini,

who flies HH-60 Black Hawk hel-

icopters with the 25th Infantry Di-

vision, used artificial intelligence

to invent Aura, a computer pro-

gram that provides pilots feed-

back on their flights to evaluate

performance and develop custom-

ized training plans. He pitched his

prototype Monday at Fort Bragg

for the fifth iteration of Dragon’s

Lair, an innovation program de-

signed based on the TV show

“Shark Tank.”

“This is incredibly well-de-

served recognition,” said Maj.

Gen. Joe Ryan, commander of the

25th Infantry Division. “The sys-

tem he designed and built, with its

implications to improve safety for

pilots and soldiers, is revolution-

ary.”

Seven soldiers presented ideas

to an 11-member panel of leaders

from the 18th Airborne Corps, the

highest headquarters at the base.

The panel also included past win-

ners and experts from the civilian

technology industry. Al-Husseini,

25, was the first soldier outside of

the 18th Airborne Corps to partici-

pate, bringing the entire Army in-

to a corps program that began in

October and has led to at least four

other innovations, including one

to modernize training range

scheduling and another to address

how the Army responds to sexual

assault and harassment.

“I do love this notion of the sol-

dier inventor,” Al-Husseini said.

“I think there’s something really

valuable and powerful about hav-

ing soldiers being able to kind of

improve their own mission sets

that they know better than any-

body else and providing them with

the tools and the resources to do

that.”

Instead of trying to integrate a

system into the aircraft itself, Al-

Husseini built a computer and

camera system that can be added

to any aircraft with glass screens.

It scans the instrumentation data

off the screens of the cockpit, ana-

lyzes it and determines what ma-

neuvers the pilot performed. The

data is then compared to the stan-

dards outlined in flight manuals to

inform the pilot if he or she met the

standards.

Aura can tell pilots how far off

they are on windspeed, altitude

and heading, among other metri-

cs. It can also show them by using

the data to create a visual of the

maneuver available to view

through a tablet application, Al-

Husseini said.

“The benefit of that is now you

can actually see exactly what

you’re doing, and you can review

and store that data for later use,”

he said. “If you’re practicing or

you’re training, all of a sudden you

now have very clear, objective, dy-

namic in-flight updates that allow

you to see how well you’re doing

and then adjust your perform-

ance, again in flight.”

This is especially valuable when

flying without an instructor pilot,

Al-Husseini said. He has taken the

system with him while flying a

Cessna 172 fixed-wing airplane to

see how it works. He learned

where he is struggling to perform

steep turns, and he said it has

helped him to begin improving.

“I’ve never particularly been

good at a steep turn,” he said, de-

scribing the maneuver that re-

sembles a figure-eight to someone

on the ground. “There’s very little

time in the maneuver for reflec-

tion.”

From Aura, Al-Husseini said he

could see where he lost altitude

and pinpoint a pattern in his flying

that he needed to correct.

The 18th Airborne Corps has be-

gun to implement the pilot’s pro-

gram throughout the unit, as part

of winning the Dragon’s Lair com-

petition, said Col. Joe Buccino, the

innovation officer for the corps.

From there, they’ll submit the pro-

gram to the Army for broader im-

plementation.

“Mahdi’s program has the po-

tential to revolutionize the way

our Army manages aviation prac-

tices and pilot and crew perform-

ance,” he said. “This was among

the most well-developed, vision-

ary concepts we’ve seen come into

Dragon’s Lair thus far.”

The innovations presented are

becoming more competitive, Buc-

cino said, with Al-Husseini’s pro-

gram narrowly beating out the

second-place winner, Lt. Col. Ja-

son Harlan, assigned to the 3rd In-

fantry Division. He created a self-

recovery system for M1 Abrams

tanks, which he developed in his

garage using his own resources.

Other ideas included a virtual

reality program to train mechan-

ics, an update to the weapons-is-

sue system, and a “go-bag” for

sexual assault response coordina-

tors. Some elements of each of the

seven ideas presented Monday

will be implemented in the corps,

Buccino said.

As Aura moves through imple-

mentation, Al-Husseini said he’s

not done looking for new ideas. He

said he’s working with three sol-

diers in Hawaii on different pro-

jects related to their jobs on a me-

devac flight crew.

“You don’t have to have a fancy

master’s degree or be an engineer

to come up with something that

makes difference in what you do

every day,” he said.

MARYGIAN BARNES/XVIII Airborne Corps Public Affairs

Army 1st Lt. Mahdi AlHusseini, who is assigned to the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, pitches his presentation on AI pilot performance feedback.

Medevac pilot uses AI for ‘revolutionary’training to improve Army aviators’ safety

BY ROSE L. THAYER

Stars and Stripes

[email protected]: @Rose_Lori

MILITARY


PACIFIC

A New Jersey congressman and

other advocates urged the State

Department to use the strongest

enforcement tools passed by Con-

gress in 2014 for bringing home

American children abducted by

one parent living overseas — par-

ticularly in Japan.

“Child abduction is child

abuse,” Republican Rep. Chris

Smith said during a hearing

Wednesday of the Tom Lantos Hu-

man Rights Commission. “These

young victims, like their left-be-

hind parents, are U.S. citizens who

need the help of their government

when normal legal processes are

unavailable or have failed.”

The hearing was intended to

look at ways the Sean and David

Goldman Child Abduction Pre-

vention and Return Act could be

better implemented.

Just over 10,800 American chil-

dren were victims of so-called in-

ternational parental child abduc-

tion from 2009 through 2019, ac-

cording to a 2020 report by the

Congressional Research Service.

About 4,800 children were return-

ed during that period, the report

said.

Smith, who chairs the bipartisan

House commission, called on the

State Department to begin using

sanctions “to promote adherence

to law and return Americans.”

The hearing focused on Japan,

where thousands of U.S. service

members and federal employees

are posted. During the session,

Smith said he is helping draft legis-

lation that would “compel” the

State Department to use the en-

forcement provisions set out in the

Goldman Act specifically in re-

gard to Japan.

More robust actions that the

State Department can take under

the Goldman Act for countries like

Japan with “a pattern of noncom-

pliance” are issuance of public

statements detailing unresolved

cases, public condemnation, delay

or cancellation of official or state

visits, suspension of American de-

velopment assistance and formal

extradition requests.

“Each county and each case, as

we all know, is unique, as are the

cultural values that are reflected

in the laws of each country,” Smith

said. “Why, for example, do we

face such challenges in Japan, a

country with which we otherwise

enjoy not just a good but excellent

relationship?”

Japan does not recognize the

concept of joint custody, and its

courts instead give custody to one

parent in what is called the “conti-

nuity principle,” he said.

“In other words, if the child is

settled in one household, one

shouldn’t disturb him or her,”

Smith said. “Time for that to

change, absolutely change. Not on-

ly does the law not punish a parent

who absconds with a child, it re-

wards the abducting parent.”

The State Department declined

the committee’s invitation to testi-

fy, which Smith described as

“deeply disappointing.”

Advocates for parents of abduct-

ed children also pleaded for

stepped-up enforcement from

Foggy Bottom.

“Japan is internationally known

as a black hole for child abduc-

tion,” Jeffery Morehouse, execu-

tive director of the nonprofit orga-

nization Bring Abducted Children

Home, said in written testimony

submitted to the committee.

Citing U.S. government figures,

Morehouse said more than 475

U.S. children have been kid-

napped and taken to Japan since

1994. He said Japan has persistent-

ly failed to aid in the reunification

and return of children.

“For seven years, the Goldman

Act has not been used to its poten-

tial by the State Department,” he

said. “It is overdue for an overhaul

to obligate State to be true to the in-

tent of the act — to return our kid-

napped children.”

Noelle Hunter, president and

cofounder of iStand Parent Net-

work Inc., another organization

devoted to the issue, also took the

State Department to task for lax

enforcement.

“As lecturer in international re-

lations, I would like to ask why the

State Department seems enchant-

ed with démarches — the tiny stick

with which they gently assail na-

tions with diplomatic wrist slaps

for patterns of noncompliance in

returning America’s Stolen Chil-

dren — when the Goldman Act is

replete with escalating, weighty

enforcement tools,” Hunter, a po-

litical scientist at the University of

Alabama-Huntsville, said in writ-

ten testimony.

Advocates call out Japan for abductions of US childrenBY WYATT OLSON

Stars and Stripes

[email protected] Twitter: @WyattWOlson

Pixabay

Just over 10,800 American children were victims of socalledinternational parental child abduction from 2009 through 2019,according to a 2020 report by the Congressional Research Service.


Two music-making sons in an

Army family in South Korea aim to

make the world a better place by

giving their violin and piano music

away to nursing homes and hospi-

tals.

Brothers David Lee, 17, a senior

at Osan Middle High School, and

Ralph Lee, 18, an Osan graduate,

started their music volunteerism

three years ago in Portland, Ore.,

after an elderly woman in a nurs-

ing home requested that David

perform at her funeral, he told

Stars and Stripes by email on Sept.

15.

The family moved to South Ko-

rea when their father, James Lee,

an Army Reserve warrant officer,

found a civilian job with the Air

Force at Osan Air Base.

“We had to come to South Korea

in 2019. Then COVID-19 hit, so I

couldn’t really travel to play for

her funeral,” David said. “Howev-

er, I really wanted to play for her

funeral, so I created Music Echoes

to send the violin audio and video to

her.”

That experience sparked a de-

sire to give more through their mu-

sic, so David and Ralph started

Music Echoes.

With David playing the violin

and Ralph on piano, the two set out

last year to record and produce

original tunes. They upload their

compositions to their Instagram

account, Music.Echoes.

The boys’ mission is simple, they

said: They want to deliver free mu-

sic to more than 100,000 hospitals

around the world, to help people

and to make a difference and bring

people together.

“We wish to be the global free

music provider for places in need

and be a music messenger to our

world,” David said.

Their parents fund their endeav-

or and David chips in his allowance

so they can record and produce

music at home. So far, they have

produced several songs and deliv-

ered them digitally to more than

1,000 hospitals, David said.

“Through music, we want our

organization to communicate with

the people in this world,” David

said. “I want the poor people, peo-

ple with disability, elders that have

hard time in their life and the for-

gotten people in our society to be

healed inside through our music.”

Osan Middle High School music

teacher Kristi Howell taught Da-

vid Lee at Osan, she told Stars and

Stripes in a recent email.

“David is a wonderful music stu-

dent and I’m honored to have been

his music teacher,” she said. “He is

one of the most talented violinists I

have ever seen, and I can’t wait to

see what his future holds.”

The reception to their work, thus

far, has been positive.

“David has sent us his pre-re-

corded performances, so often-

times folks here like to listen to it

on loop, because they really enjoy

his music,” Malisa Ratthasing, life

enrichment director at West Hills

Health & Rehabilitation in Por-

tland, Ore., told Stars and Stripes

by phone last week.

David hopes to grow the non-

profit and find more musicians to

join his global project to bring mu-

sic to hospitals, rehabilitation cen-

ters and clinics around the world.

Visit www.themusicechoes.com

for more information.

Army family in S. Korea shares gift of musicBY JONATHAN SNYDER

Stars and Stripes

Music Echoes

Brothers David Lee, right, a high school senior at Osan Air Base, South Korea, and Ralph Lee, an Osangraduate, are producing free music for hospital and nursing home patients during the pandemic.

[email protected] Twitter: @Jon_E_Snyder

measured far below the safety

standard. He said Okinawa pre-

fecture and the Okinawa Defense

Bureau, which represents Japan’s

Ministry of Defense on the island,

independently verified the same

low concentration prior to the re-

lease.

“We are aware of reports of high

levels of PFOS and PFOA mea-

sured in the wastewater system in

Ginowan, which have been widely

attributed to outflow from” the air

station, Hilton wrote. “At this time

we have been unable to identify an

on-base source which would ex-

plain the PFOS/PFOA results ob-

tained by Ginowan.”

Okinawa prefecture’s Environ-

mental Preservation Division isn’t

sure that any amount of PFOS or

PFOA is safe for the environment,

a division spokesman told Stars

and Stripes by phone Thursday.

“We do not know for certain how

(PFOS/PFOA) affects the environ-

ment,” the spokesman said.

“There is no environmental stan-

dard (in Japan). However, it is be-

lieved that even a small amount

can accumulate.”

All the prefecture can do is re-

quest that the wastewater be in-

cinerated, he said.

Spokesmen from Ginowan and

the defense bureau said they were

reviewing Hilton’s statement

Thursday afternoon and were not

prepared to comment.

Some government officials in

Japan customarily speak to the

media on condition of anonymity.

PFOS and PFOA are synthetic

compounds found in firefighting

foam, aircraft grease, water-re-

pellant materials and fluorine

chemicals. They have been known

to cause tumors, increases in body

and organ weight and death in ani-

mals.

The Marine Corps said it treated

the wastewater prior to the Aug. 26

release to a point its toxic levels

were 20 times below Japan’s pro-

visional threshold. Okinawa Gov.

Denny Tamaki at the time said he

was caught off guard by the re-

lease and demanded that it stop.

Tamaki called for an on-site in-

vestigation after Ginowan city’s

test results were released Sept. 10.

The government of Japan

agreed to dispose of approximate-

ly 95,000 gallons of untreated wa-

ter remaining in underground

tanks at MCAS Futenma at a cost

of over $800,000, public broad-

caster NHK reported Sept. 17.

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa —

The Marine Corps found low lev-

els of the contaminants PFOS and

PFOA in water flowing from an air

station on Okinawa, more than two

weeks after it flushed contaminat-

ed water into the public system.

The service tested the water

from Marine Corps Air Station Fu-

tenma where it flows into Ginowan

city’s wastewater system on Sept.

14 and found 0.015 micrograms

per liter of PFOS and 0.003 of

PFOA, Marine Corps Installations

Pacific spokesman Lt. Col. Mat-

thew Hilton wrote in a statement

Thursday, citing preliminary re-

sults.

Japan’s provisional safety

threshold for drinking water is

0.05 micrograms per liter.

“This sampling was conducted

where the wastewater sewer line

exits from within the air station

fence line to ensure the measure-

ment captured only wastewater

leaving [MCAS Futenma],” Hilton

wrote. “These levels are consis-

tent with those that can be found in

the public wastewater system.”

The samples were taken more

than two weeks after the Marines

released an undisclosed amount of

treated wastewater into the public

system on Aug. 26.

Ginowan city took samples two

hours after the release began and

reported combined levels of PFOS

and PFOA that were 13 times the

safety standard, 0.63 micrograms

per liter for PFOS and 0.67 micro-

grams per liter for the combined

concentration.

However, Hilton on Thursday

said the water released Aug. 26

Marine Corps finds low levels of toxins in Okinawa wastewater BY MATTHEW M. BURKE

AND MARI HIGA

Stars and Stripes

[email protected] Twitter: @MatthewMBurke1 [email protected] Twitter: @MariHiga21

Roughly 28,500 U.S. troops are

stationed in South Korea, the ma-

jority of them at Camp Hum-

phreys, the headquarters for 2nd

ID, Eighth Army and U.S. Forces

Korea. Casey, about 65 miles from

Humphreys, is near the Demilita-

rized Zone.

coaching and mentoring others

her top priority,” said Command

Sgt. Maj. Tiffany Montgomery, the

support battalion’s senior enlisted

leader. “She was well respected

and greatly admired by the entire

chain of command.”

Lott was posthumously awarded

the Army Commendation Medal.

She is survived by her parents and

siblings.

CAMP HUMPHREYS, South

Korea — A 2nd Infantry Division

soldier stationed near the border

with North Korea died at a local

hospital on Sept. 19, the command

said in a press release Wednesday.

Sgt. Damionia Lott served as a

supply sergeant with the 70th Bri-

gade Support Battalion, 210th

Field Artillery Brigade at Camp

Casey, according to the release.

The command said her death was

not attributed to a training incident

but declined to provide additional

information.

Lott, a Louisiana native, enlisted

in the Marine Corps in 2016 and

joined the Army four years later.

She arrived at the battalion in

South Korea in July. Her age was

not provided.

Lott’s unit, in a

statement, said it

was “deeply sad-

dened and

shocked by the

loss.”

“Sergeant Lott

was an excellent

non-commissioned officer who al-

ways set the example and made

US Army supply sergeant dies at off-base hospital in South KoreaBY DAVID CHOI

Stars and Stripes

Lott

[email protected] Twitter: @choibboy

PACIFIC


CAMP HUMPHREYS, South

Korea — The military command

responsible for U.S. troops in

South Korea has temporarily re-

stricted troops from traveling to 41

districts following a surge in CO-

VID-19 cases in the country.

The updated travel guidelines

announced by U.S. Forces Korea

on Wednesday reflect a recent in-

crease in coronavirus cases

around the country, according to a

post on the USFK official Face-

book page. The Korea Disease

Control and Prevention Agency on

Saturday reported 3,271 new

cases, a new daily record in the

country.

The surge comes days after

Chuseok, the nation’s harvest holi-

day. South Korean health officials

previously said they expected a

dramatic increase in cases and

warned residents to limit their

travel plans during the three-day

holiday Sept. 20 to 22. Nearly 33

million people traveled during the

holiday week, according to the

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure

and Transport.

USFK has divided the country

into roughly 230 districts to reflect

changing rates of coronavirus in-

fection. USFK service members,

civilian employees, family mem-

bers and contractors are prohibit-

ed from traveling to districts with

50 or more confirmed COVID-19

patients per 100,000 people over a

seven-day period. The command

updates its district guidelines ev-

ery week.

Almost half of the restricted dis-

tricts are in Seoul, which fre-

quently records higher case num-

bers than any other South Korean

city. Roughly 80% of metropolitan

Seoul is off-limits to U.S. person-

nel based on the updated guide-

lines. The capital city is under its

highest level of social-distancing

measures, and health officials are

expected this week to decide on

whether to extend the restrictions.

USFK personnel who already

live or work in “hotspot” districts

are allowed to travel freely within

their own district but are advised

to limit their activities in group

settings, according to the com-

mand’s policy.

Over 80% of USFK’s personnel

are vaccinated against COVID-19,

according to the command.

At Yokosuka Naval Base in Ja-

pan on Thursday, base command-

er Capt. Rich Jarrett dropped all

travel and liberty restrictions in-

side Japan for anyone affiliated

with the base.

Jarrett, speaking at a Facebook

online town hall, cited the Japa-

nese government’s decision to end

its state of emergency in 19 prefec-

tures, a significant decline in coro-

navirus cases and an increase in

the vaccination rate among Japa-

nese citizens.

Some measures, including a

mask mandate off-base and in-

doors in some places on the instal-

lation, remain in effect, he said.

The U.S. military in Japan an-

nounced seven new cases of CO-

VID-19 since Wednesday.

U.S. Army Japan reported that

six individuals tested positive

since Sept. 22: three as close con-

tacts of another infected person,

two in restricted movement after

arriving in Japan and one who fell

ill with symptoms of COVID-19,

according to a news release

Wednesday.

Marine Corps Air Station Iwa-

kuni reported that one person test-

ed positive while in restricted

movement, according to a Thurs-

day news release.

USFK broadens travel bans after COVID-19 surgeBY DAVID CHOI

Stars and Stripes

Stars and Stripes reporter Joseph Ditzler contrib-uted to this [email protected]: @choibboy

MILITARY

A sword-wielding man dressed

as a ninja attacked several special

operations soldiers who were

training at a California airport, re-

portedly forcing them to shelter in

a hangar and inflicting wounds

that required stitches.

The bizarre assault took place at

Inyokern Airport, an airfield in

the Mojave Desert about 100 miles

north of Los Angeles, sometime

after 1 a.m. on Sept. 18, according

to what appears to be a military in-

cident report shared onInstagram

and Reddit.

Records from the Ridgecrest

Police Department seem to con-

firm some details in the document

posted to social media in a photo

late Wednesday that said two sol-

diers had to receive stitches be-

fore returning to duty.

Their names were redacted in

the photo shared on social media,

but one was identified as a staff

sergeant and the other as a cap-

tain.

The details suggest that they are

members of the 160th Special Op-

erations Aviation Regiment, an

elite helicopter unit known as the

Night Stalkers.

The staff sergeant was sitting

outside the administration build-

ing at the airport hangar smoking

a cigarette when he was ap-

proached by “an unknown person

wearing full ninja garb,” the pho-

tographed document states.

It is unclear from the records

whether the man was an actual

practitioner of ninjutsu.

“Do you know who I am?” the

ninja asked, to which the soldier

replied no, according to the docu-

ment, which has not been inde-

pendently verified.

“Do you know where my family

is?” the black-clad man then

asked. The staff sergeant again

answered no.

“The person in ninja garb began

to slash at (the soldier), striking

his phone and his knee and leg,”

the record states.

The staff sergeant took off run-

ning across the parking lot to es-

cape the attacker, and then he

jumped a fence and entered the

administrative building, where he

and the captain locked doors and

called 911.

Meanwhile, the man dressed as

a ninja was “kicking and punching

doors and windows” before leav-

ing to grab a large block of asphalt,

which he heaved through the win-

dow of the administration build-

ing.

The captain was struck by the

chunk of asphalt, said the docu-

ment on social media.

The first assistance call was re-

corded about 1:20 a.m., the Ridge-

crest Police Department log

shows. A man “with a sword” was

in a parking lot, and there was at

least one victim, the log states.

About 30 minutes later came a

second call via 911: “26 spec op

military members doing training

at the airport,” the log states.

“Hunkered down in a hangar won-

dering where help is.”

The ninja fled and was arrested

elsewhere, according to the docu-

ment shared on social media.

It indicates that the soldiers

were with F Co., 2nd Battalion,

160th SOAR, which had been

tasked with support at Fort Irwin’s

National Training Center.

The incident report photo was

shared Wednesday on the Insta-

gram meme page Daddy SOAR-

bucks before appearing on Reddit.

The Daddy SOARbucks page

posted several more memes

mocking the company and the bat-

talion over the incident.

‘Ninja’ attacks special opstroops at California airport

BY CHAD GARLAND

Stars and Stripes

[email protected]


BEIJING — Defense officials

from China and the U.S. have held

two days of talks in a small sign of

progress amid a continuing sharp

downturn in relations.

The secure video conference

held Tuesday and Wednesday was

led by Maj. Gen. Huang Xueping,

deputy director of China’s Army

Office for International Military

Cooperation, and U.S. Deputy As-

sistant Secretary of Defense for

China Michael Chase.

Chinese Defense Ministry spo-

kesperson Wu Qian on Thursday

said the sides “exchanged in-

depth views on relations between

the two countries and the two mil-

itaries and issues of common con-

cern.”

However, he blamed “contin-

uous provocation and contain-

ment” of China by the U.S. for the

“considerable difficulties and

challenges” between the two mil-

itaries.

“China’s sovereignty, dignity

and core interests brook no viola-

tions,” Wu said at a monthly brief-

ing. “Regarding the relationship

between the two armed forces, we

welcome communication, wel-

come cooperation, face differenc-

es and oppose coercion.”

In a statement issued in Wash-

ington, Department of Defense

spokesperson Lt. Col. Martin

Meiners said the meeting was “an

important component of the Bi-

den-Harris administration’s on-

going effort to responsibly man-

age the competition between the

U.S. and the PRC by maintaining

open lines of communication with

the PRC.”

During the talks, he said the two

sides held “a frank, in-depth, and

open discussion on a range of is-

sues.”

“Both sides reaffirmed consen-

sus to keep communication chan-

nels open. The U.S. side also made

clear our commitment to uphold

shared principles with our allies

and partners in the Indo-Pacific

region,” he said.

Relations between China and

the U.S. are facing the worst strain

in decades over trade, technology,

human rights and Chinese mili-

tary activities in the South China

Sea, where Beijing has built air-

strips and other infrastructure

atop man-made islands.

Military-to-military ties have

been characterized by deep mis-

trust, with the U.S. accusing China

of a lack of transparency as it mas-

sively upgrades the capabilities of

the PLA, the military wing of the

ruling Communist Party.

China has been angered by the

Navy sending ships to sail close to

islands it controls in what Wash-

ington calls freedom of navigation

operations, along with U.S. sup-

port for Taiwan.

President Joe Biden has main-

tained a tough line on China, but

has sought better communication

with Beijing. The talks between

Huang and Chase are believed to

mark the first direct high-level

contact between defense officials

under the Biden administration.

Wu also reiterated China’s op-

position to a three-way strategic

defense alliance announced by

Australia, the U.K. and the U.S.

that includes building nuclear-

propelled submarines for Austra-

lia. Beijing views the arrangement

as firmly directed at containing its

development.

China, US in talks on military relationsAssociated Press

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany —

Flights carrying Afghan refugees from Ger-

many to the U.S. are expected to resume in

the coming days following a weekslong

pause imposed by U.S. health authorities af-

ter measles cases were detected among the

evacuees, a U.S. Air Force official said

Thursday.

“We expect outbound flights to resume

within the next 10 days, over the Columbus

Day weekend,” 86th Airlift Wing spokes-

man Lt. Col. Will Powell said in response to

a query from Stars and Stripes.

But the date that flights would resume

was not firm as “the exact length of time of

this short-term delay is still under review,”

he said.

Flights of Afghan evacuees from Germa-

ny to the U.S. were halted in mid-Septem-

ber after four measles cases were discov-

ered among Afghans who had arrived in the

U.S. from overseas bases.

On Sept. 17, U.S. military personnel in

Germany began giving measles, mumps

and rubella shots to nearly 9,000 evacuees

who are temporarily housed at Ramstein

and Rhine Ordnance Barracks in the Kai-

serslautern area.

After the three-day inoculation drive had

been completed, the U.S. Centers for Dis-

ease Control and Prevention said the eva-

cuees would have to quarantine for three

weeks before traveling to the U.S.

The German government originally

agreed to allow Afghans to remain on U.S.

military installations in Germany for up to

10 days. An official at Rhine Ordnance Bar-

racks said in August that evacuees were

staying there for up to five days.

Since the flights to the U.S. were halted,

American and German officials have been

working together to “coordinate our ef-

forts” and accommodate the Afghans in

Germany for longer than initially anticipat-

ed, State Department spokesman Andy Ha-

lus said.

Refugee flightsfrom Ramsteinto US to resume

BY KARIN ZEITVOGEL

Stars and Stripes

[email protected] Twitter: @StripesZeit

MILITARY

The use of shore-based weapons will fig-

ure prominently in an annual exercise in-

volving U.S., Philippine and Japanese

troops that kicked off in the Philippines this

week, according to U.S. officials.

The start of Kamandag — short for “Kaa-

gapay Ng Mga Mandirigma Ng Dagat,” or

“Cooperation of Warriors of the Sea” — was

announced by the U.S. Embassy in Manila in

a Facebook post Thursday.

The exercise, which began in 2017 as a re-

placement for the large-scale PHIBLEX

amphibious landing drill, was canceled last

year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

This year’s scaled-down event will “focus

on employing shore-based weapons, coun-

terterrorism strategies, internal security

operations, and humanitarian assistance

and disaster relief efforts,” the embassy said

in its message.

About 2,400 troops — 1,400 Americans,

900 Filipinos and 100 Japanese — were in-

volved in last year’s drills.

Maj. Gen. Ariel Caculitan, commandant

of the Philippine Marine Corps, said 242 Fil-

ipino marines will participate in this

month’s eight-day exercise with 12 U.S. Ma-

rines and 25 Japanese troops, the Manila

Bulletin reported Wednesday.

“We must be able to outmaneuver our

enemies in the same way that we shall be

able to maneuver this virus and still be able

to continue to train, because we have a very

big responsibility in terms of defense and se-

curity of our people,” Caculitan said during

Kamandag’s opening ceremony at Fort Bo-

nifacio in Taguig city, the newspaper report-

ed.

A dozen Marines from the Okinawa-

based 3rd Marine Division are on the island

of Luzon training with Philippine personnel

primarily focused on coastal defense and

counter-landing operations., Maj. Kurt

Stahl, a spokesman for the division, said in

an email Thursday.

Training involving about 400 Marines

that was scheduled for the Philippines was

relocated to Camp Fuji on mainland Japan

and Okinawa due to the coronavirus pan-

demic, Stahl said.

“This training focused on moving to key

maritime terrain, establishing coastal de-

fenses, and practicing counter-landing op-

erations,” he said.

One shore-based weapon the Philippines

plans to purchase is the BrahMos superson-

ic cruise missile, developed by Russia and

India. The country might also acquire Boe-

ing’s Harpoon anti-ship missile, according

to Ian Chong, an associate professor of polit-

ical science at the National University of

Singapore.

The BrahMos can be launched from air,

land, sea and underwater and can carry con-

ventional warheads weighing up to 660

pounds. It has a range of 180 miles and there

is no known weapons system that can inter-

cept it, according to BrahMos Aerospace.

“The Harpoon, first deployed in 1977, is

an all-weather, over-the-horizon, anti-ship

missile system,” Boeing states on its web-

site. “It has a low-level, sea-skimming cruise

trajectory with active radar guidance.”

The Harpoon weighs over 1,000 pounds

and can fly up to 77 miles, according to its

technical specifications.

Shore-based weapons may provide a

means for the Philippines to defend mari-

time territory despite the clear limitations of

the Philippine Air Force, Chong said in an

email Thursday.

“That said, actually using these systems,

especially with regard to gray-zone activ-

ities, could involve a degree of escalation

that the Philippine government and its part-

ners and allies wish to avoid,” he said.

Gray zone tactics are coercive activities

that fall short of warfare. China has employ-

ed them against the Philippines in recent

years. For example, it has illegally occupied

territory claimed by the Philippines and

sent a fleet of maritime militia to harass fish-

ermen who enter disputed waters.

Both the Marine Corps and the Japan

Ground Self-Defense Force have been ex-

ploring the use of ground troops to call in fire

on ships off-shore, Chong said.

U.S. Marines, armed with High Mobility

Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, and

M777 towed howitzers were in Australia this

summer honing sea denial and sea control

skills from small expeditionary bases.

Kamandagdrills kick offin Philippines

BY SETH ROBSON

Stars and Stripes

DONALD HOLBERT/U.S. Marine Corps

Philippine marines observe their U.S. counterparts conduct a fire mission at ColonelErnesto Ravina Air Base, Philippines, during exercise Kamandag in 2019.

[email protected]: @SethRobson1


MILITARY

the armory, however, the same si-

lent, invisible signals that help au-

tomate inventory checks could be-

come an unwanted tracking bea-

con.

The AP scrutinized how the U.S.

armed services use technology to

keep closer control of their fire-

arms as part of an investigation in-

to stolen and missing military guns

— some of which have been used

in street violence.

The examination included new

field tests that showed even low-

tech enemies could identify U.S.

troops at distances far greater

than what contractors who install

RFID systems say.

Which is why a spokesman for

the Department of Defense said its

policymakers oppose embedding

tags in firearms except in limited,

very specific cases, such as guns

that are used only at a firing range

— not in combat or to guard bases.

“It would pose a significant op-

erations security risk in the field,

allowing an adversary to easily

identify DOD personnel operating

locations and potentially even

their identity,” Pentagon spokes-

man Lt. Col. Uriah Orland told AP.

Spokespeople at the headquar-

ters of the Air Force and Army

said they did not know how many

units have converted their armo-

ries.

AP found five Air Force bases

that have operated at least one

RFID armory, and one more that

plans a retrofit.

A Florida-based Army Green

Berets unit, the 7th Special Forces

Group, confirmed it uses the tech-

nology in “a few” arms rooms.

Special forces soldiers can take

tagged weapons into the field, said

Maj. Dan Lessard, a special forces

spokesman. A separate pilot pro-

ject at Fort Bragg, the sprawling

Army base in North Carolina, was

suspended due to COVID-19.

The Navy told AP one armory on

a base up the coast from Los An-

geles was using RFID for invento-

ry. Then this week, after extended

questioning, spokesman Lt. Lewis

Aldridge abruptly said that the

technology “didn’t meet oper-

ational requirements” and

wouldn’t be used across the ser-

vice.

With unit commanders looking

to bolster armory security, de-

fense contractors have offered a

familiar technology — one with

origins in the development of ra-

dar during World War II.

In the U.S. military, RFID use

grew in the 1990s, after the first

Gulf War showed a need to untan-

gle vast supply chains of shipping

containers. Its use has migrated to

weapons management in more re-

cent years.

Conversions cost thousands of

dollars, and sometimes more. Con-

venience is a big selling point. In-

stead of hand-recording firearm

serial numbers on paper or scan-

ning barcodes one-by-one like a

cashier, an armorer can read tags

in multiple firearms with the wave

of a handheld reader — and with-

out having to see each weapon.

The tags tucked inside don’t even

need batteries.

Contractors that retrofit armo-

ries say tags can be read only with-

in a limited range, typically a few

dozen feet or less. But in field test-

ing for AP, two prominent cyber-

security experts showed that a tag

inside a rifle can be detected from

significantly farther, using inex-

pensive components that fit in a

backpack.

Because the hackers were fol-

lowing federal regulations that

limit the power of radio signals,

their RFID reader system lost the

tag at 210 feet. Enemies who would

not feel so restricted could detect

tags miles away, said Kristin Pa-

get, the “Hacker Princess” who

has worked at tech titans including

Apple and Tesla.

The RFID system Paget and her

hacking partner Marc Rogers cob-

bled together cost about $500.

They said a tinkerer with You-

Tube access could learn the need-

ed skills.

Executives at two companies

that have installed RFID armories

at Air Force bases said they had

never heard of a 210-foot reading.

One said he didn’t believe it. Er-

ic Collins, the CEO of Trackable

Solutions, said he’d heard con-

cerns about troop tracking for

years, but insisted it wasn’t a prob-

lem because — even with a stron-

ger power source — no reader

could find a tag more than several

dozen feet away.

RFID in weapons poses “abso-

lutely no risk at all,” Collins said.

He called the Pentagon’s security

concerns invalid: “The leadership

needs their staff to give them bet-

ter guidance.”

But a top weapons expert from

the Marine Corps said he wit-

nessed how tags can be read from

afar during training exercises in

the Southern California desert in

December 2018.

“RFID tags on tanks, weapons,

magazines, you can ping them and

find the disposition of where units

are,” said Wesley Turner, who was

a Marine chief warrant officer 5

when he spoke in a spring inter-

view. “If I can ping it, I can find it

and I can shoot you.”

The Corps has decided not to tag

guns because doing so would boost

troops’ digital signature on the bat-

tlefield, “increasing the security/

force protection risks,” according

to spokesman Capt. Andrew

Wood.

In written statements, spokes-

people for the Air Force and Army

said unit commanders can add

RFID systems as a further layer of

accountability, but no service-

wide requirement is planned.

Policy experts within the Office

of the Secretary of Defense ap-

peared unaware that the services

have been tagging firearms.

Asked why its branches can field a

technology that Pentagon plan-

ners consider so risky, Defense

Department spokesman Orland

first said that the services told the

Pentagon they are not tagging

guns due to security concerns.

Informed that AP found units

which acknowledge using the

technology, the Pentagon revised

its statement and said it allows ser-

vice branches to explore innova-

tive solutions. The Defense De-

partment “tries to balance pre-

emptive prohibitions due to cur-

rent security risks with flexibility

to adopt new technologies when

they mature and those risks de-

crease,” Orland said.

Track: Experts dispute claims that tags can only be read in limited rangeFROM PAGE 1 “If I can ping it, I can find it and I

can shoot you.”Wesley Turner

U.S. Marine Corps

crimes against a minor, and the

other with assaulting his wife, the

Justice Department said.

Fort McCoy also had one of the

six cases of measles among eva-

cuees, a Wisconsin Public Radio

report said Monday.

Some evacuees at the base said

they’ve had to wear the same

clothes every day for weeks, due to

their luggage getting lost on the

journey from their previous loca-

tion at a base in Germany to Amer-

ica.

Deliveries of lost luggage have

already begun, and the U.S. gov-

ernment set up a website to help

people find their bags, said Cheryl

Phillips, director of public affairs

at Task Force McCoy.

A large number of Afghan refu-

gees will soon leave Fort McCoy, a

cuees at eight bases across Amer-

ica, she does not know when she’ll

be allowed to start her new life. But

while Parwana is waiting, she has

been spending her time trying to

improve her prospects.

The women seem to be more in-

terested in learning English than

the men, said Sabira Madadi, an

evacuee who volunteered to trans-

late in class for the American

teacher.

“Here, in a refugee camp, the

women are trying to learn more,

raise their voice and be equal to the

men in this community,” she said.

Nilofar, who worked as a police

officer before fleeing Kabul, said

that so far she’s learned the names

of different foods as well as how to

greet people and how to introduce

herself.

“We should learn the language,

because I will be like a mute if I go

out of this base and don’t know how

to speak basic English,” she said in

Dari.

The slightly fewer than 13,000

evacuees now at Fort McCoy will

stay there until they complete a

long list of tasks, including getting

vaccinations and receiving paper-

work allowing them to work.

After completing their adminis-

trative tasks, evacuees are to be

matched with resettlement agen-

cies and sponsors to help them

transition to life in America.

Besides the opportunities to

learn English, refugees can avail

themselves of other ways to en-

dure the drawn-out wait at Fort

McCoy.

The vast base has plenty of room

for long walks, said Hashima Sha-

heer, who escaped with her sister.

Other Afghans at the base pass

the time playing soccer and cricket

and flying kites. Sometimes there

are movie nights, and a sewing

center is opening to allow eva-

cuees to make clothing, said Zach

Mott, a spokesman for Task Force

McCoy.

American soldiers at the base

sometimes play with the children,

giving them piggyback rides. And

there are internet hot spots where

people can contact their loved

ones.

While most Afghans described

overall positive experiences, there

have been problems. Two Afghan

men were recently arrested at the

base, with one charged with sex

federal official, Skye Justice, told

The Associated Press last week.

But some Afghans said they

were less certain. After three

weeks at the base, Mohammad Ra-

him said he hasn’t had any of the

interviews he needs.

Still, waiting at a safe base in

America is better than living un-

der fear of the Taliban, said Ra-

him, who said he worked with the

Americans for 11 years.

“No worries if the wait is long-

er,” Rahim said. “Comparing life

now with those three days I lived

under the Taliban, it’s like those

three days were three years, and

these three weeks that I have been

here were like three hours.”

Dream: Refugees keep busy while waiting to start new lifeFROM PAGE 1

[email protected]: @jplawrence3


AMERICAN ROUNDUP

Woman who sought beeraccused of pulling gun

NE MAYWOOD — A wom-

an was arrested over

the weekend in southwestern Ne-

braska after being accused of pull-

ing a gun after a store clerk re-

fused to sell her beer, authorities

there said.

The incident happened shortly

before noon Saturday, when a

business in the village of May-

wood called the Frontier County

Sheriff’s Office to report that a

woman who appeared to be high

on drugs pulled a gun when she

wasn’t allowed to buy beer, station

KRVN reported.

Deputies and the Nebraska

State Patrol later stopped a vehi-

cle on Highway 23 in which the

woman was believed to be riding.

Officers arrested Dixie Kaiser, 39,

of Wellfleet, on suspicion of mak-

ing terroristic threats.

Kaiser was being held in the Se-

ward County Jail on $15,000 bond.

Park ranger honored forsaving crash victim

NV BAKER — The head of

law enforcement at

Great Basin National Park is be-

ing recognized for his bravery and

credited with saving the life of a

visitor who was trapped in a burn-

ing vehicle.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland

awarded the Citation of Valor to

Joshua Vann, a U.S. Park Service

ranger at the national park in east-

ern Nevada near the Utah line.

The department says the park

visitor crashed in a parking area of

Lehman Caves Center last No-

vember. The vehicle caught fire as

Vann arrived on scene, entered

the vehicle and pulled the visitor

to safety just as it exploded.

The department’s statement

said that without Vann’s heroic ef-

forts, the crash victim likely would

have died.

RNC sues 2 cities fornoncitizen voting

VT MONTPELIER — The

Republican National

Committee is suing two Vermont

cities for allowing noncitizens to

vote on local issues in their com-

munities.

The similar, but separate law-

suits against the cities of Montpe-

lier and Winooski ask judges to de-

clare noncitizen voting unconsti-

tutional.

The suits, filed Tuesday in state

courts in Burlington and Montpe-

lier, were brought by the national

GOP, its Vermont counterpart and

a number of individuals.

Last November, voters in Wi-

nooski authorized noncitizens to

vote in local elections if they were

in the U.S. legally. In 2019, the city

of Montpelier passed a similar

measure.

Earlier this year the Vermont

Legislature approved changes to

the charters of the two communi-

ties allowing noncitizen voting.

The initial bills were vetoed by

Republican Gov. Phil Scott, but

both vetoes were overturned by

the Legislature.

Kurt Vonnegut museumnamed literary landmark

IN INDIANAPOLIS — An

Indianapolis museum

that documents the life and writ-

ings of novelist Kurt Vonnegut has

been named Indiana’s first-ever

Literary Landmark by a national

group.

The designation by the Literary

Landmarks Association puts the

Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Li-

brary in company with sites asso-

ciated with Edgar Allan Poe, Mark

Twain and other noted authors.

Vonnegut was born in Indiana-

polis. He died in 2007, at age 84.

His novels included “Cat’s Cra-

dle” and “Slaughterhouse-Five,”

which was inspired by his experi-

ences as a prisoner of war in Ger-

many during the Allied bombing

of Dresden, which killed thou-

sands of civilians near the end of

World War II.

Homeowners sue countyover sinkhole risks

SD BLACK HAWK —

More than 150 home-

owners in a development outside

Rapid City are suing Meade Coun-

ty over risks to their properties af-

ter a sinkhole exposed an aban-

doned gypsum mine.

The federal complaint filed

Monday by Hideaway Hills resi-

dents in Black Hawk seeks dam-

ages to be determined by a jury

and other relief “allowed by law or

equity.”

The sinkhole forced about 40

residents from 15 homes in April

2020. Geotechnical studies show

there could be water flowing

through the abandoned mine and

toward Interstate 90 and there is

the potential for future sinkholes,

the Rapid City Journal reported.

The complaint alleges several

violations of the state Constitution.

It says the decision to approve the

subdivision by the county Plan-

ning Commission and the Meade

County Commission put home-

owners at risk.

Five teens accused ofrobbing delivery driver

NC HIGH POINT — Five

North Carolina teenag-

ers are accused of robbing a pizza

delivery driver, stealing his car

and leading law enforcement offi-

cers on a chase, police said.

News outlets report the driver

told High Point police he made a

delivery on Sunday to a home

where the five forced him inside,

assaulted and robbed him. Ac-

cording to police, the driver suf-

fered minor injuries.

Police said the teenagers were

spotted in the stolen car by depu-

ties with the Davidson County

Sheriff’s Office. The car collided

with another vehicle along N.C.

109 in Thomasville, after which

the teenagers ran, police said.

Three of the teens were found

and arrested in the search, and a

fourth was captured when he tried

to get a ride with a passing motori-

st, police said. A fifth teen was ar-

rested hours later.

Teaching cursive wouldbe required under bill

WI MADISON — All Wis-

consin elementary

schools would be required to teach

cursive writing under a bill passed

Tuesday by the state Assembly.

The bill’s sponsors say teaching

cursive will stimulate different

parts of the brain and improve the

education of students. But oppo-

nents, including groups repre-

senting school boards, superin-

tendents and administrators, op-

pose the measure, saying it could

be a costly mandate and that in-

structional time would be better

spent teaching more modern

forms of communicating, like key-

boarding.

Teaching cursive is included in

state standards for education set

by the Wisconsin Department of

Public Instruction. However,

those are a model and not a re-

quirement.

The Assembly passed the Re-

publican-backed bill Tuesday on a

59-39 vote. It now heads to the

Senate.

It would have to pass the Senate

and be signed by Democratic Gov.

Tony Evers in order to become

law.

Goats get loose in tonyBuckhead neighborhood

GA ATLANTA — A herd of

goats brought in to

clear weeds got loose Monday,

briefly becoming a thorn in the

side of Atlanta’s tony Buckhead

neighborhood.

Atlanta police responded after a

driver called to report the goats

were wandering in the road, news

outlets reported.

They had been brought in to eat

weeds at a nearby Kroger super-

market but got free, according to

police.

Television news footage showed

them grazing outside a furniture

store along a busy thoroughfare.

They were eventually caught and

removed.

Police said no one was injured.

RANDY HOEFT, THE YUMA (ARIZ.) SUN/AP

Yuma’s Chris Jester paddles his way up the Colorado River at Centennial Beach in West Wetlands Park, in Yuma, Ariz., on Monday. Jester saidhe was headed as far upriver as Gateway Park before he planned to turn around. He said the workout was relaxing after just getting off a longwork shift in the Yuma Regional Medical Center Emergency Department, where he is a registered nurse.

Navigating his workout

THE CENSUS

4 The number of names added to the New Hampshire FallenFirefighters Memorial, marking the first time the state is recog-

nizing a death caused by occupational cancer. Newington Fire Chief Darin Sa-bine died of cancer in 2019. His name was one of four added to the memorial inConcord on Saturday. Sabine’s wife, Jennifer, told WMUR-TV that the honorwas a step in the right direction. Also honored were Dover Chief James Smith,who died in 1925 while investigating a gas leak; Dover Lt. Earnest Leblanc,who died while fighting a fire in 1959; and Goffstown Capt. Steve Tower, whodied in 2020 during a training test. The memorial now includes 95 names.

From The Associated Press


MILITARY

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.,

introduced legislation on Thurs-

day to create an apolitical com-

mission to study 20 years of Amer-

ican war in Afghanistan, an effort

she hopes would keep the United

States from repeating mistakes

made during years of conflict af-

ter the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The Afghanistan War Study

Commission would be charged

with taking a “deep dive” into ev-

ery aspect of the war, including

top level strategic decisions, com-

bat operations, efforts to train Af-

ghan forces, intelligence work,

diplomatic efforts, congressional

oversight and corruption in the

U.S.-backed Kabul government,

Duckworth said Wednesday. She

will offer the bill as an amendment

to the fiscal 2022 National Defense

Authorization Act, the must-pass

annual legislation that sets Penta-

gon funding and policy priorities.

“What we need to do is really

glean all the lessons learned,” said

Duckworth, an Army veteran.

“You know the war colleges are

going to be looking at this forever.

So, what I want to do is create this

commission that will not have any-

body leading it who was in a … de-

cision-making position [on Af-

ghanistan] during the 20 years.”

She said the commission would

be molded in the form of the inde-

pendent, bipartisan 9/11 Commis-

sion set up in 2002 to examine the

terrorist attacks that launched the

next two decades of war in Af-

ghanistan. The body would exam-

ine the entire war from the initial

U.S. invasion in the weeks after 9/

11 until the last soldiers left just be-

fore midnight on Aug. 31.

Commissioners would be “ex-

perienced policy professionals”

chosen by the chairpersons and

ranking members on the House

and Senate Armed Services, Intel-

ligence, and Foreign Affairs com-

mittees, according to the legisla-

tion. President Joe Biden would

also add one member to the panel.

Duckworth also noted the panel

would have to maintain a nonpolit-

ical nature, a lesson that she said

she learned from serving on the

Select Committee on Benghazi —

the congressional panel the spent

nearly two years probing the

deadly 2012 attacks on a U.S. facil-

ity in Benghazi, Libya. That com-

mittee, she said, became bogged

down in politics instead of a thor-

ough examination of the incident.

The Pentagon has said about

800,000 American troops served

in the war in Afghanistan. Among

them, 2,461 were killed in action

and more than 20,000 others were

wounded. Duckworth under-

stands those kinds of sacrifices.

The retired lieutenant colonel in

2004 was permanently crippled

when her Black Hawk helicopter

was struck by enemy fire in Iraq

and crashed.

The senator said there was sup-

port for her effort within the Dem-

ocratic caucus and she had begun

to reach out to Republican col-

leagues to pitch the idea.

There is at least some appetite

among House Republicans to

form a commission to study the

war. Reps. Elise Stefanik of New

York and Rob Wittman of Virginia

introduced legislation in August to

establish a 9/11-style commission

to probe the Afghanistan war.

The calls to study the efforts

come after the chaotic withdrawal

from Afghanistan, where the Tali-

ban took control of virtually the

entire country in a lightning offen-

sive in August, months after Biden

announced the withdrawal of all

U.S. troops by the end of that

month. The U.S. evacuated some

124,000 Americans and allies from

Kabul in a massive and dangerous

airlift operation in the final weeks,

as the Taliban returned to power

for the first time since American

troops ousted them in 2001.

In hearings this week before

Senate and House committees,

Pentagon leaders described the

outcome of the war in Afghanistan

as a “strategic failure,” but they

said American troops fought ad-

mirably throughout the effort, in-

cluding in its final days.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, the

chairman of the Joint Chiefs of

Staff, told members of the House

Armed Services Committee on

Wednesday that the war had been

stalemated at least six years be-

fore Biden decided to end U.S. in-

volvement in Afghanistan.

“Strategically, the war is lost —

the enemy is in Kabul,” Milley

said. “This was a 20-year war and

it wasn’t lost in the last 20 days or

even 20 months, for that matter.

This was the cumulative effect of a

series of decisions that go way

back.”

Duckworth’s commission

would study all of those failures,

from al-Qaida leader Osama bin

Laden’s 2001 escape from Ameri-

can troops at Tora Bora to the Aug.

26 bombing at Kabul’s airport by

Islamic State terrorists that killed

13 U.S. service members.

Duckworth calls for ‘nonpolitical’ probe into Afghan warBY COREY DICKSTEIN

Stars and Stripes


NEW YORK — Ferocious tan-

trums. Family gossip. Petty nick-

names.

Stephanie Grisham, once a

White House press secretary and

chief of staff to first lady Melania

Trump, is out with a book next

week that paints a deeply unflat-

tering picture of Donald Trump —

a man with a “terrifying” temper

who ogled a young aide and tried

to impress dictators while presi-

dent, she writes.

Grisham, who holds the distinc-

tion of having never held a press

briefing while serving as White

House press secretary, charts her

path from low-level press wran-

gler to the Trumps’ inner circles,

and her gradual disillusionment

with the family and eventual re-

signation following the Jan. 6 in-

surrection.

As have the many books critical

of Trump, Grisham’s “I’ll Take

Your Questions Now: What I Saw

at the Trump White House” has

drawn Trump’s ire. He bashed the

book and its author in deeply per-

sonal terms, saying in a statement

that Grisham was “paid by a rad-

ical left-leaning publisher to say

bad and untrue things.”

Highlights of the book include:

On Melania Trump: Grish-

am describes the former first lady

as a Marie Antoinette figure who

refused to condemn the violence

at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as

Trump’s supporters stormed the

building to try to halt certification

of the 2020 election results.

Grisham writes that she texted

Melania Trump as the scene un-

folded. “Do you want to tweet that

peaceful protests are the right of

every American, but there is no

place for lawlessness and vio-

lence?” she says she asked. She

writes that “literally one minute

later and while she was preparing

a photo shoot of a new rug she had

selected — yes, you read that right

— Melania Trump sent me back a

one-word response: ‘No.’”

On Trump: “His temper was

terrifying. And it could be direct-

ed at anyone, whether he or she

deserved it or not,” Grisham

writes. “He questioned people’s

confidence, their looks, their intel-

ligence — whatever he thought

would do the most damage to

someone’s psych.”

Trump had particular con-

tempt, she says, for the White

House lawyers. “He didn’t like

them telling him that things he

wanted to do were unethical or il-

legal.”

Staff, she recounts, often de-

ceived Trump to avoid his wrath,

and tried to temper his worst im-

pulses by stalling or distracting in

a White House “where everything

was like a clown car on fire run-

ning at full speed into a warehouse

full of fireworks.”

#Metoo: Grisham writes

that, while serving as press secre-

tary, she noticed Trump “taking

an unusual interest in a young,

highly attractive press wrangler”

on her team, asking where the

woman was, whether she would

be traveling with him on foreign

trips, and asking Grisham to bring

the aide to his office cabin on Air

Force One.

“Put her on TV. Keep her hap-

py, promote her,” she claims

Trump would tell her. “Let’s bring

her up here and look at her ass,”

she says she was told he had once

said.

Grisham also recalls uncom-

fortable encounters she had with

the president, including him not-

ing one day that she didn’t wear

pantyhose. On one occasion, she

writes, he asked her then-boy-

friend whether she was “good in

bed.”

An awkward call: Trump al-

legedly felt compelled to respond

to adult film star Stormy Daniels’

charges about the size of his gen-

italia. Grisham says she received

an awkward telephone call from

the president from aboard Air

Force One, who assured her that

“everything down there is fine.”

“Uh, yes, sir,” she says she re-

plied. “Not in two million years

had I ever thought I’d have a con-

versation with the president of the

United States about his penis.

Thankfully the call ended shortly

after that.”

Dictators: “He always

seemed to want dictators to re-

spect him,” Grisham writes, point-

ing in particular to Russian Presi-

dent Vladimir Putin, whom staff

suspected of arranging for an at-

tractive interpreter and coughing

to throw Trump off-guard.

She described one encounter at

the meeting of the Group of 20 na-

tions in Osaka in 2019 when

Trump seemed intent on placating

the Russian leader. “Okay, I’m go-

ing to act a little tougher with you

for a few minutes. But it’s for the

cameras, and after they leave

we’ll talk. You understand,” she

recounts Trump saying.

Ex-Trumpaide tellsof chaos innew book

BY JILL COLVIN

Associated Press

JABIN BOTSFORD/The Washington Post

Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham in the RoseGarden in 2019.

NATION

WASHINGTON — The num-

ber of Americans applying for

unemployment benefits rose for

the third straight week, a sign

that the highly contagious delta

variant may be slowing a recov-

ery in the job market.

Claims rose unexpectedly by

11,000 last week to 362,000, the

Labor Department said Thurs-

day, though economists had been

expecting claims to go in the op-

posite direction. The four-week

moving average of claims, which

smooths out week-to-week ups

and downs, rose for the first time

in seven weeks to 340,000.

Since topping 900,000 in early

January, applications had fallen

fairly steadily as the economy

bounced back from last year’s

shutdowns. But they’ve been ris-

ing along with coronavirus infec-

tions.

The applications, which are a

proxy for layoffs, remain elevat-

ed: Before the pandemic hit the

United States hard in March

2020, they were typically coming

in at around 220,000 a week.

America’s employers have

rapidly increased their hiring

since they slashed 22 million jobs

in March and April 2020 as the

coronavirus outbreak brought

economic activity to a near-

standstill. Since then, the econo-

my has recovered about 17 mil-

lion jobs as businesses open or

expand hours and Americans re-

turn to bars, restaurants and ho-

tels.

But hiring, which has averaged

more than 585,000 jobs a month

this year, slowed to just 235,000

in August as the delta variant dis-

rupted the recovery. Restaurants

and bars cut nearly 42,000 jobs

last month, the first drop this

year. Hiring is expected to pick

up to more than 560,000 this

month; the Labor Department is-

sues the September jobs report

next week.

In a research note, Contingent

Macro Advisors said that techni-

cal factors — seasonal adjust-

ments and processing backlogs in

California, where claims soared

by nearly 18,000 — were respon-

sible for last week’s increase in

filings. “Overall, the jump in

claims in the last three weeks

bears close watching but is not

yet alarming,’’ Contingent said.

Unemployment claims risethird straight week to 362K

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — With Presi-

dent Joe Biden’s government

overhaul at risk, Democrats

charged into high-stakes trouble

Thursday as a promised vote on

the first piece, a slimmer $1 tril-

lion public works bill, faltered

amid stalled talks on his more am-

bitious package.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as-

sembled her leadership team for a

morning meeting and emerged

determined to push ahead, strike a

deal with Biden over his bigger

$3.5 trillion effort and avoid what

would be a stunning setback if vot-

ing on the public works bill failed

or had to be scrapped.

Democrats are deeply at odds,

trust torn, as progressive lawmak-

ers threaten to withhold votes on

the roads-and-bridges infrastruc-

ture bill they view as insufficient

unless it is paired with Biden’s

broader vision. In the narrowly

controlled House, Pelosi has no

votes to spare.

All this on a day that should be a

win for Biden with Congress

poised to quickly usher through

legislation to keep government

running past Thursday’s fiscal

yearend deadline and avert a fed-

eral shutdown that had been

threatened by Republican block-

ades.

The risks are clear, but so is the

potential reward as Biden and his

party reach for a giant legislative

accomplishment — promising a

vast rewrite of the nation’s bal-

ance sheet with an ever-slim ma-

jority in Congress. His idea is to

essentially raise taxes on corpora-

tions and the wealthy and use that

money to expand government

health care, education and other

programs — an impact that would

be felt by countless Americans.

The public works bill is one

piece of that broader vision, a $1

trillion investment in routine

transportation, broadband, water

systems and other projects bol-

stered with extra funding. It has

won broad, bipartisan support in

the Senate but has now become

snared by the broader debate.

Biden plan at stake, Pelosi pushes aheadBY LISA MASCARO

Associated press


WEEKENDRubik’s Cube

goes high-techPage 14

Video games — 18 Travel & Food — 19-25 Music — 28-29 Health — 32 Crossword — 34

SONY PICTURES

LET THERE BE

CARNAGEOne of Marvel’s darkest characters

returns in ‘Venom’ sequel, which doubles down on the outlandish action

Profile, Page 15

Review, Page 16


WEEKEND: GADGETS & TECHNOLOGY

The iconic Rubik’s Cube drove me nuts

during the time I had one. Fast forward a

few decades, and now I have Heykube, the

new generation technology-driven version

of the Rubik’s Cube. Much more fun and

much less frustrating.

Heykube is different because it’s smart.

The programmable six-sided, 3-by-3

smart cube puzzle does not require an

app, but there is the Heykube companion

app available for sharing with others and

watching tutorials.

Unlike most gadgets I try out, this one

forced me to read the directions. The way

it works is, players solve scrambles with

hints and different levels of difficulty,

which include quick solve, learn to solve,

and 16 patterns instantly ready to be

solved.

Heykube allows users to create, share

and solve their own algorithms via Python.

With a Raspberry Pi (not included), users

can access the HeyKube’s Python library

for controlling the lights and sounds in the

cubed smart toy.

Inside the Bluetooth-enabled Heykube

is a microprocessor, a long-lasting internal

battery and an included micro USB cable

that connects to the proprietary charging

adapter. The cube teaches you how to

solve it, which gives you a nice modern

technology advantage over the famous

’80s cubed toy.

Using it is the same as with the origi-

nal: turn the pieces up, down and side-

ways to get the puzzle solved. The outside

pieces rotate around the center one, which

determines the color for that side. At first,

it’s not that easy, though the tutorials and

the LEDs lend a helping hand. There are

tricks to know and learn, but solving it

does happen, and then the fun is trying to

solve it over and over. Sometimes the

solution was quick, but other times it

brought me the same frustration and de-

termination to persevere as the older

cube.

The lights on the center-piece rotate,

telling you the rotating direction. When

the sound changes, the mode has changed.

The

hints

can be

turned on or

off, making it

programmable to

a different level of

difficulty.

After a short time, the Hey-

kube gets to be obsessive and time-

consuming. Solving it once isn’t good

enough, neither is just a few times.

Online: heykube.com; $79.99

GADGETS

Heykube is a smart updateto the Rubik’s Cube puzzle

BY GREGG ELLMAN

Tribune News Service

Heykube is aprogrammablesixsided, 3by3smart cube puzzle.

HEYKUBE/TNS

Your palm could soon be

your ticket into a con-

cert.

Amazon says it is

bringing its palm-recognition

technology to the Red Rocks

Amphitheatre in Denver and it

will be available at other venues

in the coming months. It’s the

first time the technology, called

Amazon One, will be used out-

side some of Amazon’s stores,

where shoppers can pay for gro-

ceries and snacks by swiping

their palms.

Starting Sept. 14, concertgoers

at Red Rocks can sign up to con-

nect their palm to a ticketing

account by hovering their hand

over a device. They only need to

sign up once and then can use

their palm to get into other shows

and events at the venue. An Ama-

zon account is not needed to use

it.

Amazon signed a deal with

entertainment company AEG to

bring the technology to Red

Rocks, which sells tickets on

AEG’s ticketing site, AXS.

Bryan Perez, CEO of AXS, said

other venues plan to add the

technology in the coming months

but he declined to say where or

how many. AEG partners with

more than 350 stadiums and

theaters around the world.

Concertgoers can get to their

seats faster with their palm than

holding up their phone to an

attendant to scan a bar code,

Perez said. Those who want to

scan their palms will have a

separate lane to enter.

“You don’t have to fumble

around with your phone,” said

Perez. “Your hand is always

attached to your body.”

Privacy experts have warned

against companies using bio-

metric data, such as face or palm

scans, because of the risk of it

being hacked and stolen. Amazon

said it keeps the palm images in a

secure part of its cloud and

doesn’t store the information on

the Amazon One device. Users

can also ask for their information

to be deleted at any time, Ama-

zon said.

A handier wayto gain accessAmazon brings palm-swiping techused in stores to concert facility

BY JOSEPH PISANI

Associated Press

ED ANDRIESKI/AP

Amazon says it is bringing its palmrecognition technology to Denver’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and it willsoon be available at other venues. It’s the first time the technology, called Amazon One, will be usedoutside of some of Amazon’s stores, where shoppers can pay for groceries by swiping their palms.


WEEKEND: MOVIES

If there was one broadly agreed takeaway from

2018’s “Venom,” it was that when you let Tom Har-

dy run loose, good things happen.

Not everything worked in the film, a darker,

slimier spinoff adjacent to Sony Pictures’ “Spider-verse”

Marvel world. But “Venom,” led by Hardy’s Jekyll and

Hyde act, managed to break free of some of the pre-

scribed rhythms of superhero movies.

In its most talked-about scene, journalist Eddie Brock

(Hardy) is overcome by the alien symbiote living inside

him: Venom, a slimy, sinister-looking alien hulk also

voiced by Hardy. Venom has a ravenous appetite, so in a

scene set at a seafood restaurant, Hardy improvised that

Brock would, under Venom’s control, leap into a lobster

tank. What was supposed to be background set dressing

was rebuilt to support Hardy, and thus spawned the de-

fining moment for a weird and warped comic-book fran-

chise.

“That tone was what everyone universally agreed was

the epicenter of this world,” says Andy Serkis, director of

the sequel “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.” “That is

precisely the touchstone moment for where we started off

with this.”

“Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” now finally in thea-

ters after a year’s delay due to the pandemic, extends

what may be the oddest superhero series around. The

dominant conflict is less about world saving and more

about a very odd couple cohabiting one body. And given

that the two lead parts are played by the same actor, it’s

the comic-book film most centered on an actor’s free-

wheeling performance.

“What’s thrilling is to be able to delve through the hu-

man psyche and the paradox of the human condition and

play them in a farcical, superhero action thriller,” says

Hardy, speaking by phone from London. “The masks of

Eddie Brock and Venom are larger than life, but they’re

ultimately two sides of the same coin.”

In the dependable realm of superhero movies, the first

“Venom” was somewhat of a risk. Venom is a relatively

marginal Marvel character; the movies, Serkis says, are

“swimming in the darker end of the Marvel pool.” But

even though reviews weren’t very good, the film was a hit,

grossing $856 million worldwide.

“When it came out, critics didn’t like it — which is fair

enough — and the audience did like it. It did rather well,

enough for Sony to make another one,” says Hardy. “We

had to have a debrief and a wash up and say: What

worked here? What didn’t work? What can we do better?”

For the sequel, Hardy took firmer control. On the first

“Venom,” the actor has said some 30 minutes of scenes

were left on the cutting-room floor. This time, he sought

out Serkis, the actor-director best known for his extensive

work in motion capture performance, to follow the origi-

nal’s director, Ruben Fleischer. Hardy also took a hand in

shaping the follow-up; he and Kelly Marcel (co-writer of

“Venom”) are credited with the film’s story. Hardy is also

a producer, a first for him on a feature film.

“Putting your hat in the ring is a logical step. We asked

Sony, Kelly and I, if we could have a shot at pitching the

second movie,” says Hardy. “And they said ‘Of course.’”

“Let There Be Carnage” takes a gothic turn, bringing

Brock into the orbit of a serial killer, Cletus Kasaday

(Woody Harrelson). Kasaday attracts his own symbiote,

Carnage, enabling his prison escape. The sequel is also

about Brock and Venom undergoing what Serkis calls

“the seven-year itch” in their relationship, as both yearn

for independence. In one scene set to Louis Prima, Ven-

om makes breakfast for Hardy to cheer him up.

On set, Hardy typically retreats to a corner to record

his Venom lines, which are enhanced with a pitch-mod-

ulator. Then, while Hardy performs as Brock, Venom’s

lines are played through an earpiece. Serkis calls Hardy’s

system “mesmeric” to watch. To Hardy, acting against

himself has become a familiar process.

“I’ve gotten used to seeing myself as a piece of meat

and observing myself from outside as: What do I want to

do with my vehicle? OK, Tom’s not working properly.

What’s not working?” says Hardy.

“It may seem schizophrenic, and I do appreciate that I

do look mad when I’m doing it,” adds Hardy. “Hopefully

you see it on screen as well — the frenetic, manic nature

of someone judging two personalities.”

For Serkis, who directed 2018’s “Mowgli: Legend of the

Jungle,” 2017’s “Breathe” and is prepping an adaptation

of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” for Netflix, it’s anoth-

er twist in a shape-shifting career. Serkis, who revolu-

tionized the use of motion capture in characters like Gol-

lum in “The Lord of the Rings” and Caesar in “Rise of the

Planet of the Apes,” has been increasingly drawn to the

nexus of filmmaking and technology.

“What I’m really interested in is the future of storytell-

ing, and how that is going to change over the next 10, 20,

30 years,” says Serkis. “At the moment, we’re standing at

a junction. We’ve had a pandemic, which has forced peo-

ple to watch things on a very small screen. But pretty

sure we’re going to go back to what was beginning to

burgeon before the pandemic.”

“Let There Be Carnage,” originally set for release last

October, will be one of the bigger releases to launch only

in theaters during the pandemic. After several delays,

Sony moved up its release by a few weeks. “Venom” will

effectively launch the fall movie season, with many care-

fully eyeing its performance.

“Now is definitely the time,” says Serkis. “There really

is a moment here, because there are some big films com-

ing out, and they’re daring to put their heads above the

parapets.”

Sony Pictures

Tom Hardy does double duty playing opposite himself as Eddie Brock and Venom in “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.”

A second chance at mayhemTom Hardy, director Andy Serkis unleash ‘Carnage’ on the world in ‘Venom’ sequel

BY JAKE COYLE

Associated Press

SONY PICTURES

Director Andy Serkis, left, and Tom Hardy confer on theset of “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.”


WEEKEND: MOVIE REVIEWS

Back in 2018, a delightful surprise was

smuggled inside what would otherwise

appear to be just another rote comic book

movie. It was Tom Hardy’s performance

in “Venom,” playing a San Francisco journalist,

Eddie Brock, who becomes the host body for an

alien symbiote affectionately known as Venom. As

the possessed Eddie and the voice of Venom, Har-

dy’s funny, freewheeling and frequently unhinged

performance felt like an alien parasite inside a

Marvel movie itself. As a result, “Venom” was that

much more entertaining, anarchic, and frankly

punk rock than any other comic book movie going.

Watching Hardy splash around in a lobster tanks,

ferociously chomping crustaceans, felt like we were

getting away with murder, because in a sea of

crushing sameness, Hardy dared to grab the wheel

and steer “Venom” straight into the land of weird.

It also seemed that “Venom” director Ruben

Fleischer was merely along for Hardy’s wild ride,

in the same way Eddie was shanghaied by his dark

passenger. The sequel, “Venom: Let There Be Car-

nage,” is directed by Andy Serkis, and now, host

and alien have achieved symbiosis. The person

quite obviously steering the ship is Hardy, who has

a “story by” credit on the film. The screenwriter,

Kelly Marcel, is his longtime friend and collab-

orator.

The sequel doesn’t have that sense of joyful dis-

covery and gleeful mischief that the first film did,

because it’s obviously now a comedy on purpose.

But with its Venom/Eddie dynamic, it remains the

best buddy action-comedy these days. Back in the

’80s, it was Mel Gibson and Danny Glover; now we

have Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy, and Tom Hardy

pulls it off and then some.

This time, there’s a lot more Venom, as the chee-

ky alien symbiote yearns to be free, eating as many

brains as he wants. A rebellious parasite would be

enough to deal with, but Eddie also wants to get his

journalism career back on track and move on from

his ex-fiancee Anne (Michelle Williams, the only

other actor as committed as Hardy to the gig, and

the wig). Living with Venom is like having a very

rambunctious, and hungry, roommate, with the

added complication of sharing one body.

The “Carnage” part of the title comes in the form

of Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson), a Bay Area

serial killer on death row. Harkening back to clas-

sic killers like Ed Kemper and the Zodiac, Cletus is

as hard and psychotic as they come, and he’s decid-

ed to tell his life story to Eddie alone. Cletus still

holds a torch for his teenage sweetheart, Frances

Barrison (Naomie Harris), who possesses a lethal

shriek. The two lovebirds were institutionalized

together before they were cruelly torn apart. Now,

all Cletus cares about is seeing his Frances again.

Opportunity arrives when a droplet of Eddie’s alien

blood curdles his own, transforming Cletus into a

many-limbed red alien, and Venom and Eddie will

need to learn to get along again in order to defeat

Carnage and save Anne.

The climax is predictably chaotic and cacoph-

onous, and while the action may be a mess, at least

it doesn’t overstay its welcome. “Venom: Let There

Be Carnage” dares to be a tight 90 minutes, unprec-

edented in these times. There’s some humor and

romance, a splash of comic book violence, refer-

ences to the lore and a story about friendship, all in

an hour and a half. Plus, the film allows Venom to

really shine. While he’s no longer novel, he’s still

just as outlandishly funny. Who knows if the joke

will have any staying power, but for the time being,

that alien remains as entertaining as ever.

SONY PICTURES/AP photos

Tom Hardy, left, and Michelle Williams are former lovers in “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.”

‘Carnage’ doubly crazyBuddy dynamic as funny, entertaining as ever in ‘Venom’ sequel

BY KATIE WALSH


“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” is rated PG-13 for intense sequences ofviolence and action, some strong language, disturbing material and suggesti-ve references. Running time: 90 minutes.

“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” contains doublethe crazy alien symbiotes of the original.

The 2019 animated feature

“The Addams Family” was a cute

refresh of the classic Addams

family characters for a new,

younger audience. Clocking in at

83 years young (Charles Addams’

cartoons debuted in The New

Yorker Magazine in 1938), it’s

amazing that the Addamses have

the staying power that they do.

The new films, shepherded by

directors Greg Tiernan and Con-

rad Vernon, stay true to the

Charles Addams aesthetic in

design and sensibility, and the

filmmakers have assembled a

talented voice cast to embody

this macabre and tight-knit fam-

ily and deliver the darkly punny

dialogue that is their hallmark.

The first film struck at the

heart of what makes the Addams

family unique: The way they

embrace being different is ac-

tually more inclusive and loving

than whatever usually passes for

“normal.” That sentiment is

repeated in the sequel, “The

Addams Family 2,” but the whole

endeavor unfortunately delivers

diminishing returns.

Lacking in narrative rigor,

“The Addams Family 2” is mere-

ly a series of loose vignettes knit

together by a family road trip

format. Patriarch Gomez (Oscar

Isaac) is inspired to take the

whole crew on a vacation in or-

der to encourage family bonding

after Wednesday (Chloe Grace

Moretz) starts to feel alienated

from the rest of the Addamses,

embarrassed by their overbear-

ing affections at her school sci-

ence fair. The suggestion, per-

petrated by a persistent lawyer

(Wallace Shawn) in hot pursuit,

that Wednesday may have been

switched at birth, has her ques-

tioning everything. Soon it comes

to light that this lawyer has been

hired by mysterious mogul Cyrus

Strange (Bill Hader), but his

conviction that Wednesday is his

true progeny could be hiding a

far more nefarious agenda.

While the family hits Niagara

Falls, Sleepy Hollow, Miami

Beach, the Alamo and the Grand

Canyon, it’s a chance for

Wednesday to consider what it

truly means to be an Addams.

But the plot structure just feels

like the opportunity for a series

of slapdash sketches with refer-

ences to other films like “Carrie,”

“Top Gun” and “Pee-Wee’s Big

Adventure,” plus, of course, lots

of random moments and montag-

es set to pop tunes. For example,

as Wednesday uses a voodoo doll

to marionette poor Pugsley (Ja-

von Walton) around to House of

Pain’s “Jump Around,” the open-

ing bars of the song will send any

elderly millennial or Gen-Xer

right back to a sticky beer-

soaked dive bar, and that nostal-

gia bait seems the only reason for

that sequence to exist.

“The Addams Family 2” feels

like it’s lost the spark of the first

one. The jokes that felt fresh in

the first film are stale here, the

story’s twists glaringly predict-

able. The film boasts five screen-

writers, and one can’t help but

wonder if this might be too many

cooks in the kitchen. The film

could be amusing for a very

young set, but alas, it’s not even

spooky enough to truly delight

the littlest horror hound.

METRO GOLDWYN MAYER PICTURES

Left to right: Oscar Isaac as the voice of Gomez Addams, Chloë GraceMoretz as the voice of Wednesday Addams, Nick Kroll as the voice ofUncle Fester, Charlize Theron as the voice of Morticia Addams,Conrad Vernon as the voice of Lurch, Javon Walton as the voice ofPugsley Addams, Bette Midler as the voice of Grandma and SnoopDogg as the voice of It in “The Addams Family 2.”

‘Addams Family 2’ deliverstrademark punny dialoguebut with diminishing returns

BY KATIE WALSH


“The Addams Family 2” is rated PG for macabreand rude humor, violence and language. Runningtime: 93 minutes.


WEEKEND: MOVIES

When “The Sopranos” is brought up

these days, it’s usually for the nebulous

way it ended: That now-famous cut-to-

black in a crowded diner while Journey’s

“Don’t Stop Believin’” plays. Whether

Tony Soprano lived or died is still hotly

debated.

The real death in 2013 of the great

James Gandolfini ended hopes of putting

that debate to bed, but David Chase, the

creator and showrunner of “The So-

pranos,” has intriguingly kept the show

alive with the new prequel film “The

Many Saints of Newark.”

It’s intriguing mainly because the film

conjures the greatest character ever cre-

ated for TV back to life, but doesn’t frame

him in the middle. Tony Soprano is a ca-

meo in his own origin film.

Instead, the guy in the center is Tony’s

so-called uncle, Dickie Moltisanti, played

with real verve by Alessandro Nivola.

Mafia boss Moltisanti is the guy young

Tony looks up to. But he’s riddled with the

same flaws Tony will soon share: posses-

siveness, quick to anger, methodical and

yet impulsive, prone to affairs and eager

to consume vast amounts of pork products.

In a stroke of genius, the older of two

young Tony Sopranos in the film is played

by Michael Gandolfini, the son of the late

actor who share his father’s wide, sad

expressive eyes and bearishness. He is

riveting.

All the old gang — now made young

with new actors, of course — are here:

Uncle June, Livia Soprano, Paulie Wal-

nuts, Silvio Dante, Pussy Bonpensiero,

Janice Soprano, Jackie Aprile, Carmela

and even Christopher Moltisanti, Dickie

Moltisanti’s son.

Michael Imperioli is back as the young-

er Moltisanti and he seems to have a bit of

a chip on his shoulder about his one-time

mentor, Tony Soprano, on account of the

older man choking him to death in 2007.

So he narrates unseen from the grave.

The danger here is that the new actors

have a template of what their characters

will look and sound like in the future. For

the most part, they avoid caricature — like

Vera Farmiga nailing Tony’s fearsome

mother and Corey Stoll brilliantly captur-

ing the petty, irritable Junior. But John

Magaro mugs a bit too much as Silvio,

Stevie Van Zandt’s consigliere.

One problem here is time, something

the film obviously plays with. “The Many

Saints of Newark” arrives 14 years after

“The Sopranos” ended, and that may be

too long for anyone but the most ardent

fans. The brain strains trying to connect

new faces with old ones.

The plot really is just a few slices of

years in and around Newark, N.J., in the

late 1960s and early ’70s. The DiMeo

crime family — of which the Sopranos are

a crew — is trying to stay afloat during

civil unrest that includes the deadly 1967

riots. But the film sags in many parts,

never achieving the focused tautness of

the series, and often seems aimless. If

you’re not a fan already, it might come

across as “Goodfellas” lite.

A terrific Leslie Odom Jr. plays Harold

McBrayer, a low-level debt collector who

will soon try to run his own crew. Ray

Liotta wonderfully plays not one but two

characters — Dickie’s dead-eyed father

and also Dickie’s philosophical, jailed

uncle. If you’re a fan of “The Sopranos,”

you’ll know that Dickie Moltisanti doesn’t

appear in the HBO series. You’ll learn

why.

But what about Tony Soprano? How

does he become the anxiety-prone mob-

ster and dad, caught in the old ways and

the new, as liable to brutally garrote an

informant as to break down and cry while

hearing The Chi-Lite’s “Oh Girl” on his

car radio?

We leave him on the cusp of manhood,

still teetering between criminality and

innocence.

Yes, he helps hijack a Mr. Softee truck,

but gives away all the ice cream. Yes, he

takes a pair of stolen speakers, but regrets

it.

“I try to be good,” he tells his uncle.

There’s a reveal of what will become his

hair-trigger temper, but also a willingness

to embrace mental health help, which will

one day lead to a psychiatrist couch. He’s

about 20 when the film ends, too soon to

see what really made him.

Credit “The Many Saints of Newark” —

screenplay by Chase and Lawrence Kon-

ner, and directed by series regular Alan

Taylor — for attempting to tackle gener-

ational violence and structural racism and

opening up a story to add more than just

Italian Americans shooting each other

while forking in plates of gabagool.

But it’s not enough. Tony is as myste-

rious at the end of “The Many Saints of

Newark” as he is at the sudden end of

“The Sopranos.” Perhaps that’s as it

should be. Perhaps there’s room for anoth-

er prequel.

‘Sopranos’ prequel too aimless for all but the most ardent fans BY MARK KENNEDY

The Associated Press

“The Many Saints of Newark” is rated R for strong violence,pervasive language, sexual content and some nudity. Runningtime: 120 minutes. Now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.

More than a decade

after “The So-

pranos” cut to black,

a prequel movie is

here to shed light on the New

Jersey crime family’s backstory.

Leslie Odom Jr. and Michael

Gandolfini are two of the power

players in “The Many Saints of

Newark,” which showcases the

mobsters who molded Tony So-

prano and explores the race riots

of 1967.

Gandolfini portrays a young

Tony, stepping into the iconic role

originated by his late father,

James Gandolfini, on HBO’s

seminal “Sopranos” series.

“I was so surprised that Tony

wasn’t a gun-wielding 8-year-

old,” Gandolfini, 22, told the Daily

News. “You think about it and you

go, ‘Well of course he wasn’t. Why

would he be? That’s not how that

works.’

“But you think that he would be

sort of this tough, cool mafioso

since the age of, like, 3, but that’s

not reality. The reality is that he’s

this nerdy, goofy, sensitive, kind

of meek kid who, throughout the

arc of the movie, becomes hard-

ened by his surroundings.”

The film, now out in theaters

and on HBO Max, adds new con-

text to “The Sopranos,” which

aired from 1999 to 2007 and cen-

tered on the mob boss Tony re-

counting his hardships in New

Jersey and New York during

therapy sessions.

Created by David Chase, the

series is considered among the

most influential ever made, cred-

ited for ushering in a wave of

prestige TV via its captivating

depiction of the complicated Tony

and his Italian-American family.

The stars of the new movie

appreciate the series’ legacy.

“Anti-hero is ... an accurate

term,” Odom said. “A hero was

about perfection at a certain

point. A hero was about honor and

there was a rigidity to that, and

Tony certainly doesn’t fit into any

of that. But in many ways we did

kind of revere him as a hero, or as

one of us.”

Odom, an original “Hamilton”

cast member, plays Harold

McBrayer, an associate of the

mob family at the center of the

film.

“Harold is one of about 6 mil-

lion Black people who was part of

the Great Migration,” Odom, 40,

explained. “They moved from the

Southern states to the North and

the West from about 1910 to 1970,

looking to divorce themselves

from a plantation economy, look-

ing for good factory jobs and

higher wages and a relief from a

certain kind of oppression.

“There was a different kind of

oppression waiting for us in the

North, of course, but millions and

millions made that trip, my

grandparents included among

them. It is adding that American

story to this other American story

of the mafia and the Sopranos

family and Moltisantis.”

Odom’s character works close-

ly with Dickie Moltisanti, who is

Tony’s uncle and role model.

Throughout the film, Dickie grap-

ples with how to balance his mob-

ster lifestyle with mentoring the

impressionable Tony.

Gandolfini said it was impor-

tant to convey Tony at a different

emotional stage of his life than

what audiences saw on “The

Sopranos.” It was key, the actor

said, to still capture the charac-

ter’s trademark mannerisms and

give viewers the Tony they know.

Playing the character made

famous by his father, who died in

2013, was an honor, Gandolfini

said.

“On so many different levels,

it’s incredible,” Gandolfini ex-

plained. “I never really thought

about it, doing it with my dad,

until I watched (the movie). Then

I watched it for the first time and I

was like, ‘Wow, this is really spe-

cial; me and him got to do it to-

gether as artists, as father and

son, as two actors.’”

And like the original series,

“The Many Saints of Newark”

gives New Jersey a starring role.

“Being born and raised in New

Jersey taught (Tony) many amaz-

ing and many possibly complicat-

ed lessons, so it’s completely

necessary,” Gandolfini said. “A

lot of the cast had spent (time) or

had been from Jersey. I grew up

in Jersey. My whole family lives

up there. It’s in your blood.”

MATT LICARI, INVISION/AP

Michael Gandolfini poses Sept. 23 for a portrait in New York topromote the film “The Many Saints of Newark.” In the film, Gandolfiniplays a younger Tony Soprano, the role originated by his late fatherJames on HBO’s “The Sopranos.”

‘The Many Saints of Newark’molds Tony into a mobster

Film stars share howthe ‘Sopranos’ prequelexpands series’ legacy

BY PETER SBLENDORIO

New York Daily News

WARNER BROS. PICTURES/New Line Cinema

Leslie Odom Jr. appears in ascene from “The Many Saints ofNewark” as mob associateHarold McBrayer.


WEEKEND: VIDEO GAMES

Agirl, some dice and a boardgame world — those seeminglyincidental images came togeth-er in a painting, and from that

image, the idea of Lost in Random sprout-ed. For creative director Olov Redmalm, adistinct vision grew out of that inkling, butwhat’s remarkable is how the team atZoink Games managed to focus their ideas

through the prismof that concept andcreate a captivatingadventure.

It’s a title thattransports playersto a surreal butsomehow logicaldark fairy taleworld. It beginswith two sisters —Odd and Even —who live in One-

croft, one of the lowest slums of the King-dom of Random. This is where the cam-paign begins as Even’s sibling turns 12and by the evil Queen’s law, Odd has toroll the one true dice to figure out wherein the six realms she would go. She endsup in Sixtopia with the Queen and iswhisked away.

A year later, Even still misses Odd andhas dreams about her. After a particularlystrange dream, she’s visited by a ghost,and while pursuing an apparition that shebelieves is connected to Odd, she embarkson a quest to see her sibling. That takesher to other locales in Random; each placehas its own culture and problems as theQueen has tyrannized the kingdom.

A kingdom with 6 realmsOnecroft is the lowest rung. Two-Town

is helmed by a mayor who leads a constit-uency full of split personalities. Threedomis in the middle of a three-sided civil war

among noble siblings, each of whom sus-pect the others of regicide. Fourburg wasonce the site of a chivalrous city, but theQueen has reduced it to rubble. Amid theruins, a Las Vegas-like destination hasemerged. Fivetropolis, with its soaringskyscrapers, used to be where artisansmade cards, but it has been turned into theQueen’s war machine. Lastly, Sixtopia isballyhooed as a paradise but few haveconfirmed anything about the realm.

Dice play a huge role in the iconographyof Random as more citizens used to have apartner die and these dice wielders usedto compete in epic contests of chance. InLost in Random, dice act as spell booksthat allow users to materialize weaponryor play tricks on adversaries. After theQueen took over, she eliminated all dice —save for her own — in the No Dice War.She rules with absolute power.

What makes Even so special is that shebefriends a die named Dicey, and togeth-er, they venture through the diverse lo-cales solving the dramas that plague them.Each destination is filled with a forebod-ing whimsy. Visually, Lost in Random hasmuch in common with “The NightmareBefore Christmas,” and the game wearsthat influence on its sleeve with its spindlycharacters and outlandish architecture.

The best part of the gameThe gameplay is the most impressive

aspect of Lost in Random. During combat,Even must power up Dicey by using herslingshot to knock crystals off enemies,and it allows her to draw up to five cardsfrom a deck. Players can toss Dicey at anytime, and doing so sends Even to the Dice-mension where time freezes for nearlyeveryone except for her.

From there, she can grab weapons, setup traps and add perks. There’s one ca-veat: The number she rolls with Dicey isthe energy she can use to spend on cards.Each card has a cost, with the more pow-

erful ones requiring more energy.With 15 cards in a deck, players may not

always draw what they need. If they’relow on health, they need to hope they cangrab an elixir card. If they don’t haveweapons to fight enemies, they’ll need tocome across a sword or bow in their draw.Keep in mind, these cards have values,and in the beginning, Dicey is missingseveral pips. As players advance througheach kingdom, they’re rewarded with newdots.

Early on, Lost in Random’s combatfocuses on weapons and healing. It’s limit-ed because Dicey can’t roll numbers high-er than a three, but as the campaign ad-vances, players discover more options.

Depth in deck buildingMore power in Lost in Random leads to

more choices and it lets players enjoy thedepth of the combat. Using concepts fromHearthstone and other collectible cardgames, players can craft decks to empha-size a certain style of play. If players likemelee combat, they can throw in weaponsand cards that enhance that. If they liketraps and ranged combat, they can build adeck emphasizing that.

The ability to store cards from draws ishelpful. Players can pin up to three, whichlets them hold on to valuable cards if theydon’t have a high enough roll to use them.It’s an ingenious concept, melding actionrole-playing and card games to create aninnovative avenue of play.

Unfortunately, Lost in Random isn’t aperfect indie project. For instance, Evencan’t move back and forth from realm torealm. The adventure is one way. Thatmeans if players miss a side quest, there’sno way to return to it.

The other flaw is that though Lost inRandom starts off strong, it meanders inthe middle and has difficulty balancingthe lore and its themes. Chance, misfor-tune and sisterhood are all key subjects,but the realm’s disparate dramas don’texplore and feed into these themes untilthe powerful finale. It makes the game feelscattered halfway through.

Still, Lost in Random is a strong jump-ing-off point for a new style of game thatholds intriguing potential.

Platforms: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4,Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC and Nin-tendo Switch

Online: ea.com/games/lost-in-random

Even, left, and Diceyexplore the realms of

Lost in Random.

EA/TNS PHOTOS

Lost in Random: a dicey situationZoink Games mixes action RPG and collectible card game elements to create a compelling adventure

Fivetropolis is one the realms that Even ventures through in Lost in Random.

BY GIESON CACHO



WEEKEND: TRAVEL

Applying to be one of the

first workers at Walt

Disney World, high

school graduate Ge-

orge Kalogridis made a split-

second decision that set the

course for his life: He picked a

room where prospective hotel

workers were being hired.

Chuck Milam got a tip about a

job opening from a transplanted

Disney executive whose new

house he was landscaping. Earli-

ene Anderson jumped at the

chance to take a job at the new

Disney theme park in Florida,

having fallen in love with the

beauty of Disneyland in Cali-

fornia during a trip two years

earlier.

At the time, the three were

among the 6,000 employees who

opened the Magic Kingdom at

Disney World to the public for

the first time on Oct. 1, 1971. Now,

they are among two dozen from

that first day still employed at

the theme park resort as it cele-

brates its 50th anniversary.

Over those decades, Disney

World added three more theme

parks, two dozen additional ho-

tels and grew to have a work-

force of 77,000 employees as it

helped Orlando become the most

visited place in the U.S. before

the pandemic.

What never changed was the

original employees’ devotion to

the pixie dust, the dream ma-

chine created by Walt Disney

and his Imagineers.

“Disney has been my love, and

it still is,” Anderson said recently

before starting her shift in mer-

chandising at a Magic Kingdom

hotel. “I love Disney.”

The employees who make up

the 50-year club say the theme

park resort has allowed them to

grow their careers and try on

new hats. Kalogridis worked his

way up to be president of Walt

Disney World and Disneyland in

California. Milam went from a

warehouse worker to a buyer of

spare parts for rides and shows.

Forrest Bahruth joined the

workforce at Disney World in

January 1971 as a show director,

responsible for staging and cho-

reographing parades and shows.

He was also given the opportuni-

ty to help open other Disney

theme parks around the world

over the past five decades.

“There are people all over the

world who get up to go work.

They’re unhappy about it. They

don’t really like their jobs,” Bah-

ruth said. “As you can tell from

us, there’s an enthusiasm. We are

privileged to be at a place where

we love what we do.”

There was no guarantee that

Disney World was going to be a

success 50 years ago. Walt Dis-

ney, the pioneering animator and

entrepreneur whose name graces

the Florida resort, had died in

1966, just a year after announc-

ing plans for “the East Coast

Disneyland.” The company had

quietly acquired 27,000 acres of

scrub land outside Orlando for

around $5 million.

The job of shepherding the

project to opening day fell to his

brother, Roy Disney, who with

other company officials con-

vinced the Florida Legislature to

create a quasi-governmental

agency that would allow Disney

to self-govern when it came to

matters of infrastructure and

planning. Roy died almost three

months after Disney World

opened.

Just weeks before opening,

construction at the Magic King-

dom was controlled chaos, and it

seemed impossible that it would

all come together in time.

“It was like an army of ants.

Everything was under construc-

tion. Interiors were still being put

in. Roofing was still being put on

top,” Bahruth said. “There was

painting, landscaping. Things

were arriving by the moment. ...

Trucks going everywhere.”

Bahruth rehearsed performers

through parade choreography

down Main Street, which cut

through the center of the Magic

Kingdom and resembled a turn-

of-the-century small town from

Walt Disney’s childhood. Even

though he was a busser, Kalogri-

dis was drafted into laying down

sod outside the hotel he was

working in, hours before Disney

World’s grand opening.

Two things have stuck in the

memories of the longtime em-

ployees from that opening day.

The first was the photo. It was an

image of thousands of Disney

World workers standing in front

of the iconic Cinderella’s Castle

with Mickey Mouse and other

costumed characters holding

hands in front. Two weeks later,

it was featured on the cover of

Life magazine.

The second was the parade. It

featured a 1,076-member march-

ing band conducted by Meredith

Wilson, the composer of the

Broadway show “The Music

Man.” There were 4,000 Disney

entertainers marching through

the theme park, a mass choir and

trumpeters from the United

States Army Band. Hundreds of

white doves were released into

the air, and less environmentally

friendly, so were thousands of

multicolored balloons.

“It was the biggest thing I had

ever seen,” Bahruth said.

Only around 10,000 visitors

showed up on that first day —

which at today’s much larger

Walt Disney World would repre-

sent about 90 minutes’ worth of

visitors entering. It wouldn’t be

until Thanksgiving 1971 when

Disney executives had an answer

about whether their new resort

would be a success; that’s when

cars trying to get into the Magic

Kingdom stretched for miles

down the interstate.

“It was very clear after that

first Thanksgiving, that the pub-

lic definitely liked what we were

doing,” Kalogridis said.

PHOTOS BY JOHN RAOUX/AP

Above, Walt Disney World employees — from left, Chuck Milam, Earliene Anderson and Forrest Bahruth —gather at the Magic Kingdom Aug. 30 in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., to celebrate their 50year anniversary ofworking at the park.

Top, the newly painted Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom is seen with the crest to celebrate the 50thanniversary of the theme park.

BY MIKE SCHNEIDER

The Associated Press

50 years of magicA few of the original Walt Disney World employees still working

at the theme park reminisce about its opening, their experiences


WEEKEND: TRAVEL

On the first morning of our vacation, I looked up

from my phone — and saw my wife on hers.

Before we set off 24 hours earlier, I vowed to

go on a tech diet. Since the start of the coro-

navirus pandemic, I’ve spent an increasing amount of

time with my phone, laptop and television. Vacation was

the chance to scale back and reconnect with the people

who matter to me, especially my wife, Sally.

But there we were in our Airbnb in Portland, Maine,

Googling away. I wanted to know how to turn on the fancy

countertop range. Sally was looking for instructions on

using the old-fashioned espresso maker. Google and You-

Tube had the answers. But did they have to be such a big

part of our vacation?

“Hey,” I said, “how about we promise to stay off Google

today?”

She looked at me, puzzled.

“Look at us: We’re engrossed in our phones, and we

haven’t even had breakfast,” I said. “Let’s just take a

vacation from Google for one day and see how it goes.”

Sally agreed. But if she hadn’t already figured out how

to brew her cup of coffee at that point, she probably

wouldn’t have.

We had left Arlington, Va., 24 hours earlier for our first

vacation since February 2020. Our goal was to relax and

leave our work behind. We stopped in Portland to explore

the city and the islands of Casco Bay on our bicycles be-

fore heading up the coast to visit friends for eating lobster

on docks, unwinding with meandering walks through the

Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, and sitting in deck

chairs overlooking the water.

For the drive, we had Google Maps open all day, watch-

ing our projected arrival time get progressively later as

we ran into traffic. At the start, our estimated trip time

was nine hours and change. All was going well until we

hit the Bronx. As traffic slowed, the friendly voice of

Google Maps announced that the app was redirecting us

because of a traffic jam on Interstate 95. It led us into

traffic jams on I-84 instead.

We pulled into our Airbnb 11 hours later, not knowing

whether Google’s artificial intelligence led us astray or

bailed us out. We still had enough time to eat gourmet hot

dogs and sample some Maine beers on the touristy strip

along Commercial Street. On the walk home, we struck

up a conversation with a jazz musician outside a club

where he had just finished a set. We’d missed his show,

but he invited us to a weekly session at a kombucha brew-

ery the following afternoon.

In the morning, we left the car behind and rode away

on our bicycles. We decided to bike along Casco Bay on

the Eastern Promenade and head inland to ride around

Back Cove. We had no set plans aside from making the

late-afternoon jazz session.

Without Google Maps to guide us, we took a copy of the

city’s free Discovery Map, which has illustrations of the

streets of downtown on one side and of the city’s outer

perimeter on the other. It identified several stores and

restaurants, and we decided to take a detour off the Back

Cove bike trail to get a snack at one of them, Rosemont

Market and Bakery.

Finding the Eastern Promenade was easy enough,

because we’d been exploring Commercial Street the night

before. But getting to the bakery itself almost derailed our

experiment.

Once we got to Back Cove, we stopped to plan our

route. I held the admittedly limited tourist map, and Sally

leaned over my shoulder to look. I noted that the bike

path didn’t connect to the road that headed directly to the

bakery. As I looked for alternate routes, Sally took out her

phone and opened Google Maps.

“I thought we agreed we wouldn’t be using Google

today,” I said.

“I thought we couldn’t figure this out without the Maps

app,” she replied.

When we compared notes, we discovered that Google

had recommended the same route I’d found on the map.

But without consulting Google further, we struggled to

get there: Although the paper map got us to the approxi-

mate area, it couldn’t give us step-by-step directions to

the front door. We would have asked for help, but there

weren’t any pedestrians on the busy road. We did finally

stumble upon Rosemont, only to find that it wasn’t a retail

outlet at all; it was where people baked the goods served

at its cafe locations throughout the city.

Turns out we’d also stumbled upon the key to going

without Google: Be flexible. Things won’t always work out

the way you expect them to.

Later, we were reminded that technology can fail, too.

After we made it back to town for lunch at Flatbread

Company, the hostess took my name and cell number and

said it would be a 30-minute wait. The restaurant texted

me a link I could use to download its app and monitor our

wait time. Rather than hopping on our phones while we

waited, we wandered down to the ferry terminal to look at

the schedules for the week. I took a picture of the sched-

ule on the video board so I wouldn’t have to Google it as

we planned the next day’s itinerary.

After 40 minutes, we still hadn’t gotten a text about our

table. I tried to download the app, but the network was

overloaded, so I gave up and walked back to the hostess

stand. They couldn’t find my cell number in the restau-

rant’s computer system. Fortunately, the lunch rush had

subsided, and an outdoor table overlooking the dock was

ready for us in five minutes.

As Sally and I ate, we discussed our experiment. Even

though we’d used our phones to take pictures and text our

family, we’d avoided getting lost in them. Once you start

Googling, it’s easy to go down a rabbit hole. Even a few

minutes of that distracts from the purpose of vacation:

having a shared experience.

The size of a cellphone is another barrier to shared

experience. When one person is using a phone to navi-

gate, it creates a power differential. But when Sally and I

looked at our map together, we both had a say in how to

go forward. We could each hold one side, and our fingers

touched when we pointed to the same spot. You won’t

have that kind of experience with a small screen.

I also appreciated that abstaining from Google had

helped me stay off my phone in the moment. We agreed

that the best way to use the Internet was for advance

planning, while we were at home and able to set aside

time to do research, make reservations and create itiner-

aries. If you have a specific question, Google is almost

always better than even the most informed local. Looking

for a vegan restaurant? Good luck finding someone on the

street to name one, give you directions and tell you

whether it’s open.

Sally observed that our experiment would not have

worked if we had been traveling with our adult sons, who

don’t appreciate our tendency to wander in search of

unexpected pleasures or have much tolerance for wrong

turns and dead ends — especially at mealtime.

When we stopped at the Sock Shack to buy a birthday

present for our niece, we asked the clerk for directions to

our final stop: the jazz session our chance acquaintance

had recommended. She told us everything she knew

about the venue, the Urban Farm Fermentory, adding

highlights about the local music scene. She also knew

founder Eli Cayer, who launched the socially conscious

fermentery that now produces kombucha, cider, beer,

gruit, mead, vinegar and jun with seasonal and locally

sourced ingredients. In asking for directions, we had

learned more about the city than a turn-by-turn course

from Google Maps could ever tell us.

We wound our way through Portland’s neighborhoods,

stopping a couple of times to consult our map, which

eventually became useless. Even without detailed direc-

tions, we knew we’d be close if we found a cluster of

breweries. We may not have taken the most efficient

route, as we passed buildings such as Portland High

School, a stately century-old brick building the length of a

city block.

At the corner of Gould and Anderson, we noticed sever-

al eateries with crowded patios to our left. We knew we

were close, and then we heard live music, faintly at first,

then more loudly as we moved toward it. We had arrived.

Ensconced at the fermentory, we settled in under the

patio tents and ordered samples of its kombuchas and

ciders. As we enjoyed the live music — something we’d

both missed during months of isolation — we reflected on

our day. The weather had been perfect. We’d met in-

teresting people. And despite our missteps, finding our

own way had been more satisfying than following direc-

tions from our phones.

Would we continue the experiment? Nah, but we’d

think twice before pulling out our phones to ask Google

for solutions.

Go yourown wayAbstaining from Google opens yourvacation to a variety of possibilities

BY DAVID J. HOFF

Special to The Washington Post

DISCOVERY MAP INTERNATIONAL

The Discovery Map for downtown Portland, Maine. The illustrated street maps also contain ads for local businessesand offer an alternative to Google maps for finding your way around many cities in the country.


WEEKEND: TRAVEL

Leaning back in my

lounge chair, I enjoy the

heat of the sun on my

skin. A vibrant sea

spreads out before me, but it’s a

sea of wildflowers. I’m not at the

beach — I’m on a farm, looking

out on Europe’s largest high

alpine meadow, manicured by

munching goats and cows. In the

distance, stark snow-dusted

peaks tower boldly against the

blue sky. These are Italy’s Alps,

the Dolomites.

My soundtrack is the happy

laughter of Italian children en-

joying a petting zoo filled with

alpine critters. A few yards away,

their parents sip wine on the

veranda of their chalet guest-

house — thoroughly enjoying

that dolce far niente (sweetness

of doing nothing) ... like me.

The sky-high meadow called

the Alpe di Siusi (or “Seiser Alm”

in German) seems to float high

above the city of Bolzano, sep-

arating two of the most famous

Dolomite ski-resort valleys, Val

di Fassa and Val Gardena. Mea-

suring three miles by seven

miles, and soaring 6,500 feet

high, Alpe di Siusi is dotted with

farm huts and happy hikers en-

joying gentle trails. These moun-

tains differ from the rest of the

Alps because of their dominant

rock type — limestone — which

forms sheer vertical walls of

white, gray and pale pink rising

abruptly from green valleys and

meadows.

At the head of the meadow, the

Sassolungo mountains provide a

storybook Dolomite backdrop.

And opposite, Mt.

Schlern — a long

flat ridge ending

in spooky crags —

boldly stands

gazing into the

haze of the Italian

peninsula.

As a nature

preserve, the al-

pine meadow

cradled by the peaks is virtually

car-free. A cable car whisks

visitors up to the park from the

valley below. Within the park,

buses shuttle hikers to and from

key points along the tiny road all

the way to the foot of the pictur-

esque Sasso peaks. Meadow

walks are ideal for wildflower

strolls, while chairlifts serve as

springboards for more dramatic

and demanding hikes. Mountain

bikes are easy to rent, welcome

on many lifts, and permitted on

the meadow’s country lanes.

The Alpe di Siusi is my favorite

stop in the Dolomites because of

its views, but also its easy acces-

sibility and the variety of walks

and hikes. There’s also the charm

of the neighboring village of

Castelrotto, which I use as my

home base. Castelrotto is a fun

dollop of Germanic culture in

Italy. The region has long faced

north, first as part of the Holy

Roman Empire and then firmly

in the Austrian Habsburg realm.

After Austria lost World War I,

its “Südtirol” (South Tirol) be-

came Italy’s “Alto Adige.” Mus-

solini did what he could to Ital-

ianize the region, including giv-

ing each town an Italian name.

This hard-fought history has

left this northeastern corner of

Italy bicultural as well as bi-

lingual. Most locals still speak

German first. While most have a

working knowledge of Italian,

they watch German-language

TV, read newspapers auf

Deutsch, and live in Tirolean-

looking villages.

I love coming home to Castel-

rotto after a hike in the meadow.

It was built for farmers rather

than skiers, so it has more char-

acter than any town around.

Popping into the church, I enjoy

the choir practicing. Then, step-

ping outside the church at 3 p.m.,

the bells peal as I witness the

happy parade of parents bringing

home their preschoolers. These

idyllic moments may seem like

cultural clichés, but they’re au-

thentic. It’s moments like these

that make it easy to enjoy this

high-altitude Germanic eddy in

the whirlpool of Italy.

The Italian Alps: Lounging in the Dolomites

RICK STEVES/Rick Steves’ Europe

The Dolomites, ideal for hiking ... or just resting in a meadow of alpine wildflowers, thinking about hiking.

RickSteves

Rick Steves (www.ricksteves.com) writes Europe-an guidebooks, hosts travel shows on public TVand radio, and organizes European tours. You canemail Rick at [email protected] and follow hisblog on Facebook.

An encounter with the sounds that move a nation is one

of the absolute joys of travel. From unexpectedly stum-

bling upon locals singing and dancing in a park to attend-

ing a highly anticipated concert by a well-known artist,

music is one of the few languages we all speak. Here are

just a few of Europe’s traditional styles of music.

Bosnia and HerzegovinaSevda or Sevdalinka is a genre of music likened to a

Bosnian version of the blues. The genre’s name derives

from an Arabic word to describe a melancholy state of

mind, and its lyrics speak of forbidden

love, love affairs gone wrong and other

forms of suffering. Originally accompanied

by a gentle, lute-like instrument known as

the saz, its role was gradually taken over

by the more boisterous accordion. Follow-

ing decades of decline, young artists are

now breathing new life into the genre.

The Sevdah Art House is a museum

dedicated to sevdalinka and the artists who

have performed it. In a renovated store-

house in Velike Daire, one can see instruments once

played by the great masters, along with old concert post-

ers, archived recordings and costumes the artists wore

while performing. Online: tinyurl.com/ne4ajxk6

CroatiaThe Klapa singing tradition traces its origins to south-

ern Dalmatia. Multi-part, a cappella songs led by a tenor

voice sing of life, love and an attachment to one’s natural

environment and native soil. Once a tradition for males

only, a handful of all-female groups now perform as well.

Famous Croatian pop stars will often collaborate with

klapa groups to add an element of tradition to their songs.

Since 1967, a festival of Dalmatian klapa groups has

taken place annually in the resort town of Omiš. Held

over four weeks in June and July, it attracts a cappella

choirs from around the world.

ItalyThe Canzone Napolitano is a generic term for a tradi-

tional form of music sung in the language of Naples.

Many songs reflect nostalgia for the Naples of old. Well-

known songs of the genre include O sole mio and Funicu-

lì, Funiculà, a song composed in 1880 to commemorate

the opening of the first funicular railway on Mount Vesu-

vius.

The Napulitanata concert hall in the Galleria Principe

di Napoli is dedicated to traditional Neapolitan folk mu-

sic. Shows run an average of an hour and are offered on

most days of the week. Online: napulitanata.com/en/show

PortugalThe melancholy sounds of fado can trace its roots back

to the 1820s. Lisbon’s fado was the music of fallen and

restless souls, from sailors to prostitutes, and reflects the

emotion of the Portuguese word “saudade,” one of loss

and longing for that which is not to be. Voice is accompa-

nied by one or a pair of guitars and violas, and occasional-

ly by a small bass.

A second fado tradition hails from the university city of

Coimbra. Exclusively male musicians perform in the

streets or squares of the pretty town once darkness has

fallen. In contrast to the fado of Lisbon’s working-class

appeal, the fado of Coimbra belongs to a more sophisti-

cated class of listener.

Lisbon’s fado is associated with its bars and restau-

rants, meaning it is not necessary to attend a festival in

order to catch a performance. The Tasco do Chico in

Bairro Alto is a popular venue; other neighborhoods fa-

vorable for fado include Alfama and Mouraria.

SpainThe musical traditions of Spain spring from its diverse

regions. The ancient Guanche culture shows itself in the

music of the Canary Islands, while the bagpipes in the

Galician tradition speak of Celtic ties.

Flamenco, Spain’s best known musical style, is much

more recent, tracing back to the early 19th century. This

passionate form of music and dance is attributed to Anda-

lucía’s persecuted gypsy culture and influenced by Moor-

ish and Jewish musical tradition. Its oldest and most

profound form, the cante jondo, is characterized by pro-

found emotion and deals with themes such as death, de-

spair or religious insecurity.

Cities that celebrate flamenco with vibrant festivals

include Jerez de la Frontera, Madrid and Murcia. The

Bienal de Flamenco in Seville is a spectacular music

festival that takes place every second year in September.

It is next scheduled to take place in 2022, although exact

dates have yet to be determined.

Traditional music styles reveal the soul of a nation

iStock

A fado band performs its traditional sounds on the squareof the Alfama neighborhood in Lisbon, Portugal.

KarenBradbury

Just a short ferry ride across the

Bay of Naples, the peaceful island

of Procida offers a relaxing way to

spend a day, tantalizing visitors

with its colorful homes, picturesque

streets and stunning beaches.

Considered a commune of Naples, Pro-

cida is in the northwestern portion of the

bay between Cape Miseno and the island

of Ischia. It’s a speck of land just over 1.5

square miles with a population of about

10,298, according to Citypopulation.de.

Visitors arrive via ferry from Naples or

Pozzuoli, disembarking onto Via Roma.

Arrive in the morning if you can, and walk

west toward the Chiesa di Santa Maria

della Pieta.

The church, one of several on the island,

offers a charming visual backdrop as you

fuel up on a coffee and a lingua di Procida,

a puff pastry with a cream filling flavored

with the island’s lemons and offered at a

nearby cafe.

You can explore the ornate church,

which is small by Naples’ standards, and

then head up the hill toward the Santuario

Santa Maria delle Grazie Incoronata.

Look inside the sanctuary and continue

up for a vista of the fishing village of Mari-

na Corricella. This is the place to get that

perfect selfie with the village and its

homes in the background.

According to lore, the houses are paint-

ed striking colors so fishermen returning

from sea can easily spot their home.

Depending on your preferences and the

time available, you can head to one or all

of Procida’s five beaches; visit Terra Mu-

rata, a medieval village overlooking the

sea; or see the city center, known as San-

t’Antonio, and its famed Piazza Olmo.

The small open space has many alleys

leading from it, allowing for exploration.

From here, visitors can walk to all points

on the island, with no destination more

than a mile away, according to Visitproci-

da.com.

Marina Corricella should not be over-

looked. Full of cafes, restaurants and

shops, it is ideal for a slow-paced stroll

and exploration.

While you’re there, have lunch or dinner

at one of the restaurants by the marina.

You can savor seafood or a tempting pasta

dish while watching the fishing boats

come and go.

Try the insalata di limone, a specialty of

the island. It consists of sweet lemon rinds

marinated in olive oil, seasoned with salt

and pepper and served with arugula. It’s

surprisingly tasty.

While Procida may lack the fame and

luster of its big siblings Capri and Ischia,

it more than makes up for it with a casual,

unhurried atmosphere, friendly residents

and old-world charm.

PHOTOS BY ALISON BATH/Stars and Stripes

Marina Corricella, the oldest village on the island of Procida, is ideal for dining, shopping and strolling. The island is off the coast of Naples in southern Italy.

Local color without crowds

Relax and enjoy old-world charm with aslow stroll through Italian island of Procida

On the QT

How to get there: Ferries depart fromNaples and Pozzuoli. Fares rangefrom about 8 to 11 euros one way peradult passenger, and the trip takesfrom 40 minutes to about an hour. AnItalian green pass or a U.S. vaccina-tion card is required to ride a plane,high-speed train, ferry or interregionalcoach. Ferries include Caremar,online at shop.caremar.it; and Med-mar, online at at medmargroup.it.What to wear: Comfortable shoes(there’s plenty of uphill walking).Don’t forget sunscreen and a hat. Food: Skip the pizza and opt forseafood or pasta. The island is fa-mous for its lemons, so indulge in agranita di limone, lingua di Procida orinsalata di limone.Pro tip: Visit on a weekday, whenthere are fewer people and the restau-rants, shops and beaches aren’t ascrowded. Online: visitprocida.com

Alison Bath

Fishing boats are moored at MarinaCorricella in Procida, Italy.

The streets of Procida are filled withcolorful buildings, which serve asresidences, shops and businesses.

The waterfront near where ferries drop offvisitors to Procida is filled with cafes andbars, including some with humorous signsto attract customers.

BY ALISON BATH

Stars and Stripes

[email protected] Twitter: @TMSWatchdog

Built in 1679, the Santuario Santa Mariadelle Grazie Incoronata is located near thePiazza dei Martiri in Procida, Italy.


WEEKEND: QUICK TRIPS


WEEKEND: FOOD & DINING

invested more than $230,000 to expand the

kiosk and build a playground. The expand-

ed facility opened last year.

People are welcome to bring their own

food and drinks to eat at the picnic tables.

On a recent evening, a children’s birthday

party was in full swing.

Those who wish to eat or drink on the

terrace next to the pond must order from

the kiosk, a sign says.

I highly recommend that option. One of

my favorites is the flammkuchen with

smoked salmon and green onions. I also

like the french fries, which come in a

paper cone and are crisp on the outside,

soft on the inside and salted just right.

Do take a few minutes to look at the

menu items before getting in line to order.

Food and drink staples, like currywurst,

goulash soup and the fish sandwich, are

listed on menus hung on either side of the

order and pickup windows.

There are also several displays with

handwritten menu selections. On an eve-

ning in late September, those items in-

cluded tomato and mozzarella paninis,

salad with tuna or chicken strips, brus-

chetta, and crepes with Nutella or ice

cream and raspberries.

A quick scroll through the Seewoogh-

utte’s Facebook page reveals some mouth-

watering specials, from meringue cup-

cakes on Mother’s Day last spring to

homemade gnocchi with ground beef.

The kiosk also offers a variety of Ger-

man beer, wine and cocktails, as well as

warm coffee drinks and seasonal drink

specials, such as strawberry champagne.

It’s also a good place to stop for a snack

with kids at the end of a bike ride or a

walk around the pond. Soft pretzels and

individually packaged ice cream treats are

also available. Be sure to have cash, as the

kiosk takes only euros.

If ever there was a perfect place to

dine during a pandemic, the See-

wooghutte is it.

Most of the seating at the kiosk is

outdoors, and it’s open year-round.

There’s a choice of picnic tables, terrace

seating overlooking a duck pond or bar-

stools under patio umbrellas. Elbow room

and fresh air are plentiful.

Adding to the rustic charm is a menu

that offers both typical German sausages

and fries as well as homemade dishes that

elevate this kiosk above the average local

street food.

The Seewooghutte has been around for

years, but it’s easy to miss for those not

familiar with the Seewoog recreation area,

a park with hiking and biking trails that

crisscross open fields and woods near

Ramstein Air Base.

The old kiosk was literally a hut with a

few picnic tables and limited indoor seat-

ing for colder months. But according to

Die Rheinpfalz, a local newspaper, the city

Fancy street food in a casual settingExpanded Seewooghutte in Ramstein has playground, homemade dishes that elevate it beyond mere snack shack

BY JENNIFER H. SVAN

Stars and Stripes

PHOTOS BY JENNIFER H. SVAN/Stars and Stripes

Flammkuchen with slices of smoked salmon and green onions is one of three varieties ofthe thin crust, pizzalike dish with creme fraiche available to order at the Seewooghutte,a kiosk with outdoor seating in RamsteinMiesenbach, Germany.

French fries at the Seewooghutte in RamsteinMiesenbach, Germany, come in a papercone. The kiosk is open throughout the year and offers snack food and meals.

Some of the outdoor seating at the Seewooghutte overlooks a duck pond. The kioskreopened with expanded seating and a bigger menu last year.

There’s plenty of outdoor seating at the Seewooghutte. The area also has a playground,and hiking and biking trails.

AFTERHOURS

GERMANY

Seewooghutte

Location: Waldstrasse, Ramstein-Miesenbach66877Hours: Monday to Friday, 11 a.m-10 p.m.; Sat-urday and Sunday, 10 a.m.-10 p.m.Prices: Sandwiches and snack food start at 2.70euros; flammkuchen and pizza cost 8 euros andsalads go for about 12 euros.English menu: No, but items are easy to identify.Information: Phone: +49 0178 363-5031;Facebook: search under “Seewooghutte.”

Jennifer Svan

[email protected] Twitter: @stripesktown

Fresh out of quarantine and eager to experience

new Japanese food, I came across an authentic

Japanese restaurant on Okinawa with no sign

that it accommodated English speakers.

Hayate Maru is a northern-style Japanese ramen res-

taurant. There are just three employees: two cooks and

one waiter. It is hidden within the maze of Colonial Amer-

ica-themed buildings known as American Village in Oki-

nawa’s Chatan area.

I walked in and

was immediately

greeted with hot and

cold sensations car-

rying the fragrances

of noodles, vegetable

and meat, a breeze

courtesy of the air conditioning pushing the aroma from

steaming ramen pots blown outward from the kitchen.

An employee quickly ushered me to my seat, one of

seven bar-style seats facing the kitchen. The outside patio

accommodates three round tops able to seat up to eight

people per table. It’s a small place.

I sat down to look at the menu while listening to a light

but steady soundtrack of kitchen clatter, mixed with Ja-

panese modern pop music. Together it created an ideal

background for a private conversation with friends, and

to disguise any slurping-up of broth.

I caught the waiter mid-stride, grasping two bowls of

piping hot ramen. “Sumimasen,” I said, practicing the

Japanese word for “excuse me.” “What type of ramen

restaurant is this, Okinawan?”

“Hokkaido,” he answered. “Arigato,” I replied.

Hokkaido is Japan’s northernmost main island. The

cold winters there demand a bold, heartier bowl of soup.

The menu opens to reveal seven customizable ramen

soups, two rice bowls and sides including gyoza, kimchi,

grilled chicken and mackerel. The menu is written in

Japanese but includes entrée photos with English names.

It was easy to order. I tried two ramen soups and one rice

bowl, consuming one, then ordering the next.

First, I tried the white miso ramen, then the red miso

ramen and finished with the roasted pork fillet bowl.

Each ramen bowl consisted of a blend of ingredients

steeped together in a meaty broth crowded with vegeta-

bles and noodles.

The white miso ramen for 810 yen (about $7.40) was my

favorite of the three. I’ve never tasted ramen with this

flavor of barbecued meat smoke.

The red miso ramen was a typically hearty, satisfying

bowl of delicious ramen, at 800 yen.

The waiter described the roasted pork fillet bowl, for

330 yen, as a “rice bowl.” It had chunks of smoked pork,

the staple ramen vegetables and shredded red ginger,

topped off with a slightly cooked, runny egg and resting

on a bed of white rice. It was also tasty.

These three entrees each were more than enough to fill

up one person.

The staff spoke “chotto Eigo,” or little English, but it

was easy to order using the menu.

This bold Japanese ramen is for the sodium-starved,

hearty meal-seeking type. Well worth it. Priced right.

Hayate Maru offers dine-in and pick-up. To order on-

line or to see the menu completely in English, scan the

menu code titled “Multi Language Menu” with your

smartphone. It will take you to a third-party site where

you can place an order.

Ramen torememberHayate Maru brings northernJapanese cuisine to Okinawa

BY FRANK ANDREWS

Stars and Stripes

AFTERHOURS

JAPAN

PHOTOS BY FRANK ANDREWS/Stars and Stripes

The roasted pork fillet bowl from Hayate Maru in Okinawa’s American Village. Hayate Maru brings the northernstylesoup, ideal for the cold winters in the Hokkaido prefecture, to the southernmost island.

Hayate Maru Ramen

Location: 9-8 Mihama, Chatan, Nakagami District, Okinawa904-0115Directions: You’ll find this eatery in American Village, on the firstfloor of Seaside Square. Hours: Open seven days a week, 11:30 a.m. to midnight, with lastorders at 11:45 p.m. Price: Yen and dollars are accepted, but not credit cards.Dress: Casual Information: Phone: 098-926-0027; Online: hayatemaru.com;Instagram: @ramen_hayatemaru

Frank Andrews

Hayate Maru is a Hokkaidostyle ramen restaurant hiddenwithin the maze of Okinawa’s American Village.

Indoor seating is barstyle and can seat seven. There arejust three employees: two cooks and one waiter.

White miso ramen from Hayate Maru.

Red miso ramen from Hayate Maru in [email protected] Twitter: @FrankAndrews





Mushroom DumplingsIngredients

One (13.25-ounce) can mush-

rooms pieces and stems, drained

and rinsed

One (8-ounce) can bamboo

shoots, drained and rinsed

2 tablespoons hoisin sauce

2 teaspoons chili-garlic sauce

20 round wonton wrappers

(from one 4.8-ounce package)

2 tablespoons vegetable oil or

another neutral oil, divided

½ cup water, divided

Soy sauce with a sprinkling of

sesame seeds or your favorite

dipping sauce, for serving

Directions

Squeeze as much water as

possible from the mushrooms

and bamboo shoots. Add to the

bowl of a food processor and

pulse until finely chopped. (If

you do not have a food processor,

finely chop the vegetables by

hand.) In a medium bowl, mix

together the chopped vegetables,

hoisin sauce and chili-garlic

sauce until evenly combined.

To form the dumplings, fill a

small bowl with water. Place a

dumpling wrapper on the coun-

tertop and spoon 1 tablespoon of

the mushroom mixture into the

center of the wrapper. Dab your

index finger in the water and

dampen the edges of the wrap-

per. Fold in half, creating a half-

moon. Gently press the two

halves together at the center of

the curved edge. Then, working

your way down one side from the

center, make 2 small pleats and

press the edges closed. Repeat on

the other side of the dumpling.

When you’re done, the dumpling

will be closed, with 4 pleats and a

slight curve. Repeat until you run

out of the mushroom mixture.

You should get about 20 dum-

plings.

(Alternatively, you can simply

seal the dumplings without pleat-

ing by pressing the edges of the

folded wrapper together and

gently crimping the sealed edge

4 times.)

In a medium, lidded nonstick

skillet over medium-high heat,

warm 1 tablespoon of oil until

shimmering. Add half of the

dumplings, seam side up and

evenly across the pan so they

aren’t touching, and fry until

golden on the bottom, 2 to 3 min-

utes.

With the lid in hand, quickly

pour ¼ cup of water into the

skillet, cover, and steam for 5

minutes, until the dumpling

wrappers are cooked through;

remove from the pan.

Repeat with the remaining

dumplings, then serve hot or

warm with the dipping sauce.

Serves 2 to 4 (makes about 20

dumplings.)

Grabbing a bag of dum-

plings from the freez-

er is a routine that

many people — our

staff included — turn to regularly

to feed ourselves in a pinch.

While their convenience is un-

paralleled, the almost meditative

process of filling and folding

homemade dumplings yourself

can be a much-needed respite at

the end of the day.

Typically, pork dumplings are

my go-to when it comes to fill-

ings, but this pantry-friendly

version featuring canned mush-

rooms, bamboo shoots, hoisin

sauce and chili-garlic sauce has

shown me that there are other,

meat-free paths to dumpling

deliciousness.

One of the things I love about

coming up with these pantry

recipes each month is that it

forces me to try out new-to-me

ingredients, such as the canned

mushrooms used here.

You can sometimes find differ-

ent varieties depending on where

you shop, but the most common

are button mushrooms sold as

either slices or a mixture of piec-

es and stems (either is fine for

this recipe since the contents are

getting thrown in a food proc-

essor). They have a wonderfully

chewy texture compared to fresh

that I find works particularly

well in this application.

If you’re not familiar with

hoisin, sometimes referred to as

Chinese barbecue sauce, it adds

lots of depth and umami with just

a couple of tablespoons. And

chili-garlic sauce brings some

bright heat to the mixture, but

you can reduce or omit it if you

don’t like spice.

Dumpling folding can be an art

form, but don’t worry if you take

a simpler approach or yours look

more like a kindergarten art

project.

While we may eat with our

eyes first, these mushroom dum-

plings will taste delicious regard-

less of how they look.

This recipe makes about 20

pieces, but you can easily scale it

up to feed a crowd.

If you do, enlist their help with

the folding to turn it into a group

activity and get dinner on the

table faster.

Then fry, steam and serve

them up with your favorite dip-

ping sauce.

A dinner that’s pantry-friendlyThese vegetariandumplings showhow good cannedmushrooms can be

BY AARON HUTCHERSON

The Washington Post

PHOTOS BY SCOTT SUCHMAN/The Washington Post

Mushroom Dumplings are a vegetarian alternative to the typically meatfilled dough pillows that are fried briefly, then steamed. Hoisin sauceadds depth to the flavor, and chiligarlic sauce, which can be adjusted to suit your taste, provides a kick of extra spice.

Dumpling folding can be an art form, but don’t worry if you take a simpler approach or if yours look morelike a kindergarten art project. These mushroom dumplings taste delicious no matter how they look.

HOW FREE SHOULD WE BE?

Have you ever had one of those

days — that turned into weeks

— when you had approximate-

ly 645 things to do and not a

minute for leisure time?

Like many of us, Cassie Mogilner

Holmes sometimes feels like she lives in

that state. She also — and this will prob-

ably sound familiar — has entertained the

idea of trading all those obligations for a

desert island.

Instead, Holmes, a professor of market-

ing and behavioral decision-making at

UCLA’s Anderson School of Management,

decided to research whether extra free

time would actually make her happier. It

turns out that reclining alone on a beach

all day might not be as ideal as it sounds.

“To that initial question, shall we quit

everything and go live on a desert island,

the answer is no,” Holmes says. “We

would not be any happier.”

According to study results published

last month in the Journal of Personality

and Social Psychology, an individual’s

well-being increases in correlation with

their free time — but only to a certain

point. While having too little free time isn’t

healthy, having too much also diminishes

well-being.

“What we found is that a moderate

amount of free time or discretionary time

is kind of the sweet spot that people are

happiest with,” says lead author Marissa

Sharif, an assistant professor of marketing

at the Wharton School at the University of

Pennsylvania who collaborated on the new

study with Holmes and Hal E. Hershfield.

“Having a moderate amount of dis-

cretionary time leads people to be happier

than having a small amount, because it

relieves that time stress,” Sharif says.

“But perhaps the more interesting part is

that a moderate amount of discretionary

time leads people to be better off or hap-

pier compared to having a large amount of

free time. And that’s because with a large

amount of free time, people feel this lack-

ing sense of productivity and purpose.”

As Holmes puts it, “We, as humans,

don’t like to be idle.”

The researchers did not assign exact

numbers to the optimal amount of free

time per day. In general, it hovered

around two to five hours, Sharif says.

Those who had less than two hours experi-

enced stress around their tight schedules.

Once one’s daily free time exceeded five

hours, their well-being began to decline.

There were, however, exceptions: When

people with large amounts of free time

spent that time with others or felt like they

were passing the hours in a meaningful

way, they didn’t experience that same

drop in well-being.

The research is based on several data

sets, including from the Bureau of Labor

Statistics’ American Time Use Survey and

the Society for Human Resource Manage-

ment’s National Study of the Changing

Workforce. The researchers also conduct-

ed experiments in which they asked more

than 6,000 Americans to imagine having a

certain amount of free time every day for

at least six months, and to estimate how

much they would enjoy that time.

Selin Malkoc, an associate professor of

marketing at Ohio State, noted that the

findings might vary in countries “where

leisure is valued differently.” Americans

tend to be more obsessed with work than

people in other nations, she says.

Based on the results of the study, here

are a few tips from experts on how to

optimize your free time to increase your

sense of well-being.

If you feel like you have too much lei-

sure time:

Choose your optional activities wise-

ly. According to the new study, people who

spent their free time in “productive” ways,

such as developing new hobbies, lifting

weights, bowling or biking, experienced

optimal well-being. So, if you’re newly

retired or unemployed, and unsure what

to do with your suddenly empty days,

consider hitting the trails or, say, master-

ing a new language.

Fritz emphasizes that “productive”

means worthwhile or fulfilling, rather

than contributing to the greater good. “For

some people, it might be sitting on the

beach watching the waves, and for others,

it’s volunteering or renovating the house.”

Seek out other people. You’re more

likely to be happy if you spend some free

time engaged in social activities, the re-

search suggests. Activities that participa-

nts enjoyed sharing with others included

sports or playing billiards. When people

spend their free time together socially, the

study authors wrote, “more [free time] is

better.” As Sharif put it: “If you’re lucky

enough to have the opportunity to spend

that time with other people, that’s a great

way to not experience the drop-off” in

happiness that typically accompanies

copious amounts of leisure time.

Flip your perspective. Recent re-

search co-authored by Malkoc found that

viewing leisure time as wasteful under-

mines how much you enjoy it. People who

believed that free time was fundamentally

a waste were also more likely to be

stressed and anxious, she says. To shake

that attitude, she suggests focusing on the

higher end-goal of enjoying discretionary

time: It will improve your life. That might

mean telling yourself, “It will actually

make me a better person, a better parent,

a better friend,” she says. “Remind your-

self that everything serves a purpose,

including putting your feet up and reading

a book or doing nothing.”

If you feel like you have too little leisure

time:

Evaluate what’s most important to

you and what you can cut from your

schedule. Most of us could benefit from

pruning our schedules — but cramming

them full is often a reflex. Building in

leisure time requires establishing good

boundaries and a strong sense of prior-

ities, experts say. Make a list of things that

demand your time on the average day and

note which tasks could be outsourced or

scrapped. Malkoc suggests asking your-

self: “What is the busy work that we can

eliminate and replace with better things?”

Malkoc’s biggest piece of advice is to be

mindful and introspective about how you

use your time. “We need to know what

makes us happy and take a moment to

take stock of our activities, what we

choose to do and what really does contrib-

ute to happiness in our lives.”

Put your calendar away. Scheduling

takes the fun out of free time, says Gabrie-

la Tonietto, an assistant professor of mar-

keting at Rutgers Business School. Ac-

cording to her previous research, pencil-

ing in a date and time for leisure can make

it feel like a chore. It also decreases antici-

pation of that time. “Scheduled leisure is

less enjoyable than more spontaneous or

impromptu leisure,” Tonietto says. “It

makes it feel more like work once it’s on

your calendar. People start saying, ‘Well,

this is an obligation,’ as opposed to some-

thing that you want to do.” While some

scheduling is inevitable, “rough sched-

uling” is often best: Make loose plans to

meet someone for lunch or for a jog on a

Friday, for example, but don’t assign a

time until shortly beforehand. That’s one

way to leave room for spontaneity.

Focus on finding two hours. It can

feel impossible to steal even five minutes a

day for yourself. But two hours a day, the

minimum amount of time the study found

that people needed to feel less stressed, “is

actually quite feasible” for some people,

Holmes says. It doesn’t all have to come at

the same time — coffee breaks, short

walks and reading or watching TV count

toward your free time. “You don’t have to

quit everything,” she says. “The important

thing is that you carve out a couple hours

in your day, and that you’re spending it in

ways you want — not on obligations.”

iStock

Why having too much discretionary time can be as bad for you as having too little

BY ANGELA HAUPT

The Washington Post


WEEKEND: LIFESTYLE


WEEKEND: BOOKS

Of all confrontations between man and

beast, there are few as unforgiving as the

encounter between a moose and a motori-

zed vehicle. Picture it: A stubborn, cranky

and frankly enormous creature wanders

out of the forest for which it has been

exquisitely adapted since the early Pleis-

tocene and into a distinctly new envi-

ronment, a road, along which a car-bound

human is hurtling at a speed surpassing

that of any other North American land

mammal. The run-in is unlikely to end

happily for cervid or hominid.

In 1986, a group of Swedish bioengineer-

ing students carried out an experimental

collision with a living moose with the aim

of developing a “moose crash test dum-

my,” Mary Roach writes in her book

“Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law.” As

there is no good way to truss up a pre-

euthanized moose for simulated impact,

the students put an ailing moose to death

and then immediately hit it with a car —

specifically a Volvo 240, since it “goes

from 0 to 50 quickly enough to reach a

moose in the fleeting moments between its

death and the crumpling of its legs.”

Details like these keep “Fuzz” moving

breezily through a selection of ongoing

conflicts between humans and the species

that happen to get in our way.

“Of course, these are not literal criminal

acts,” Roach writes, since “animals don’t

follow laws, they follow instincts.” These

natural urges bring certain animals (and

plants!) into friction with human systems,

with consequences ranging from the dead-

ly to the merely annoying.

The result is a quixotic and somewhat

meandering journey, but one powerfully

propelled by the force of Roach’s unflinch-

ing fascination with the weird, the gross

and the downright improbable.

This keen eye for quirk runs through

Roach’s career — that, and a penchant for

catchy, single-word titles: “Bonk,” “Gulp,”

“Stiff,” “Spook” (2010’s “Packing for

Mars” being a garrulous exception). Like

haiku, these monosyllabic titles are dense

with meaning, and “Fuzz” follows the

pattern in evoking both the furry elements

and their attempted enforcement.

Roach subtly reframes what counts as

“wildlife.” The problem with wildlife is

that it’s not very wild. Bears peel open

minivans and stroll through patio doors

because they are part of an increasingly

human ecosystem, where food chains

include restaurant trash bins and empty

summer homes. Birds and elephants raid

corn fields, mice nibble the insulation off

engine cables and gulls mob landfills for

the same reason: because we are a part of

their world, and vice versa.

This dynamic is perhaps most neatly

summed up in India, where Roach travels

to investigate the rhesus macaques terror-

izing residents of New Delhi. The mon-

keys have learned how to raid mansions

and kidnap cellphones for banana ransom.

No one can decide whether they constitute

a city problem or a country one. Roach

meets with the city’s head veterinarian,

who refers her to the chief wildlife war-

den; when she calls the wildlife warden,

he refers her back to the city vet. Well?

Are we dealing with nature or society? The

distinction is, at best, a fuzzy one.

Animals, humanscollide in ‘Fuzz’

BY AMELIA URRY


JEN SISKA

Science writer Mary Roach explores conflicts between humansand animals in her latest book, “Fuzz.”

In the 17th century, delinquent animals’ futures were decid-

ed in a court of law. Seriously.

Mary Roach’s new book, “Fuzz,” opens with a retelling of

what had to be the most interesting legal case of 1659: A

bunch of felonious caterpillars were ordered to appear in court

on account of trespassing and then plundering gardens and or-

chards. Copies of the summons were nailed onto nearby forest

trees. Though the caterpillars failed to appear on the day of the

hearing, a judge ruled that they would

be relocated to a different patch of land,

presumably pleasing the defendants

and prosecution.

The case is part of what inspired

Roach — a science writer whose previ-

ous books include “Stiff” and “Grunt”

— to explore the conflict between hu-

mans and animals, and what happens

when hungry bears or big cats commit

murder, are caught breaking and enter-

ing, vandalize someone’s home or sim-

ply jaywalk.

“It cemented my fascination,” Roach

says of the caterpillar litigation. “When

people and animals get up in each other’s world, what’s the best

thing to do about it? How can science help?”

In “Fuzz,” Roach provides dispatches from such spots as India,

the Vatican and Colorado, as she tags along with animal-attack

investigators, specialists in human-elephant conflicts and manag-

ers of bears. It’s an engrossing look at how humans and wildlife

coexist, and how we could perhaps do so more humanely. “Fuzz”

is classic Roach: always witty, and so packed with facts you won-

der how she contains them all in her head. Yet the book reads like

fiction and is ultra-accessible.

During a phone interview, Roach described the time she was

mugged by a macaque and what it’s like to investigate animal

incidents. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

The Washington Post: Did you have any exciting encounters

with the animals you were writing about?

Roach: I was always praying that there would be that encoun-

ter. In the case of the leopards, we were within — according to

the radio transceiver — 150 yards. It was close, but we didn’t see

them.

In Aspen, Colo., which is black bear country, I went out at 3

a.m. with one of the wildlife conflict researchers. As usual I was

hoping we would have some kind of encounter, but thinking, what

are the odds?

There’s an alley behind a lot of the restaurants in Aspen where

all the dumpsters are, and if you want to see a bear, you go out at

3 in the morning and often they’re there. And sure enough, we

saw this white garbage bag, kind of split open — it was the scene

of the crime. There was no bear around, but we pulled over and

waited. Within about 5 minutes, the bear came back, and I was

like, “Oh, my God!” Not scared, but excited.

Were there any moments when you actually did get scared?

Once, we were in the Middle Himalaya in India, where there’s

a problem with leopard attacks on people — sadly, often children

— and they tend to happen around dusk. Like an idiot, I said I

was going to go for a walk. I asked the researcher’s wife, who was

also a researcher, if she wanted to come with me. And she goes,

“No, are you okay alone?” I’m like, “Oh yeah.” (No, I’m not.) But I

did go for a walk. It’s getting dark, and it’s a paved road, but

there’s nothing around. And I was like, this is really stupid of me,

because the attacks are surprisingly common.

Looking back, what stands out to you the most about the

elephants in India?

I was surprised by the number of incidents where somebody is

injured with elephants. I don’t like to use the word attack, be-

cause attack suggests the animal initiated it. They’re often defen-

sive because what happens in India is there are herds of ele-

phants moving through the landscape, and sometimes they get

stuck in places where there’s not enough food for them. They go

into agricultural plots and villages — and even if they don’t eat

anything, a herd of elephants just walking through, like, “hello,”

can wipe out a season of work and the workers’ livelihood. So this

happens at night, and the people will come running, trying to

scare the animals away. The elephants panic, they disperse, they

break up and people get trampled. There are 500 deaths a year in

India from elephants.

What was the highlight of your time reporting on monkeys?

I was actually mugged by a macaque. I was asking for it. In the

hills around Bundi, there are a lot of monkeys — you can see

them up on the ridge where there’s fortresses, and I was like,

“I’m going to go up there.” And I’m carrying a bag of bananas,

just curious to see what would happen. Monkeys are an interest-

ing case because they get into a lot of mischief: They steal food,

but they’ve also figured out that if they take somebody’s sunglass-

es or their cellphone, the person will offer food to get the phone

back. So they do a kind of kidnapping. They’re very smart.

They’re often working in groups, like the monkeys that mugged

me — one of them came out onto the trail, and I was like, “Oh,

here we go.” Meanwhile, the monkey’s partner runs out from

behind me and grabs the bag.

I didn’t realize, before reading your book, that there are

forensic investigators for animal incidents. What does it take for

someone to excel in such a role?

What’s really heartbreaking about that job is they’re people

who, for the most part, got into this field because they love the

outdoors, and they love animals and want to work with animals.

But very often they’re the ones called to break up conflicts.

They’re the ones who have to destroy the animal. They get a lot of

abuse for that; people target them, and they get death threats.

The people I met were lovely, intelligent, caring people whose

jobs entailed really difficult things.

One of the things I love most about your books is learning new

words. What were some of the words or phrases that were new

to you that you most enjoyed?

Frass was a good one. I knew that one before — insect excreta.

I liked “flight initiation distance,” which I kept calling FID.

That’s the distance at which, if you’re walking down the street

and there’s a pigeon, how close can you get before that pigeon

takes off? And kronism: the eating of one’s own offspring. There’s

a need for that word.

Monkey thieves,caterpillar consMary Roach’s research for ‘Fuzz’ revealedmany interesting people-animal clashes

BY ANGELA HAUPT



WEEKEND: MUSIC REVIEW

The concept of “Spanish Model” is as

intriguing as its billing by Elvis Cos-

tello & The Attractions is at least

somewhat misleading. That seems par

for the course for an album as playful — and

playfully subversive — as “Spanish Model,”

whose release date was pushed back from last

year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 16-song album repurposes Costello and

the long-defunct Attractions’ 1978 debut re-

lease, the new wave-era rock classic “This

Year’s Model,” along with several other num-

bers recorded during the same period.

All the original instrumental tracks have been

remixed and all of Costello’s lead vocals have

been removed. His singing is replaced with new

vocals — all performed in Spanish — by Juanes,

Luis Fonsi, Oscar-winner Jorge Drexler, Menu-

do alum Draco Rosa, Jesse & Joy and other

artists from across the Latin-music world.

They hail from Argentina, Spain, the United

States and seven other countries in between.

Nearly all of them were born years, or even

decades, after “This Year’s Model” was re-

leased. But no matter.

Because all of the guest artists profess to be

No longer the “angry young man” of his earlyalbums, Elvis Costello, 66, has stepped backfor a fresh take on one of his greatest works.

Paul Moore

Elvis as a secondlanguageCostello reimagines 1978 classic ‘This Year’s Model’ in Spanish, with help fromJuanes, Luis Fonzi and more

BY GEORGE VARGA

The San Diego Union-Tribune

Various artists/

Elvis Costello & The AttractionsSpanish Model (UMe)

The original cover art for the UK version of“This Year’s Model.”

SEE ELVIS ON PAGE 29


WEEKEND: MUSIC REVIEWS

big fans of Costello, 66. His status as a true

musical renaissance man with an unusually

broad creative range has placed him in a

category all his own, as befits an artist whose

previous recording partners range from Burt

Bacharach, Loretta Lynn and Paul McCart-

ney to The Roots, Tony Bennett and Allen

Toussaint.

All of “Spanish Model’s” guest artists

jumped at the invitation from Costello and

producer Sebastian Krys — a 16-time Gram-

my and Latin Grammy Award-winner — to

be on the album. Some of the guests were not

remotely familiar with the original 43-year-

old album.

Each worked directly with Krys and Cos-

tello, who gave them carte blanche to in-

terpret these songs any way they wanted,

with just one caveat. They had to sing over

guitarist Costello and The Attractions’ fero-

cious original instrumental backing tracks.

Whether the resulting album earns him

and his former band a new coterie of fans in

Latin America, or here, remains to be deter-

mined. If not, it won’t be for a lack of effort,

including a six-part film documentary on the

making of “Spanish Model” that debuted last

month on YouTube.

Nearly all of the album’s guest artists have

solid track records. The lesser-known per-

formers, such as former Texas band Girl in a

Coma singer Nina Diaz, 33, and Chilean solo

artist Cami, 25, are accomplished vocalists.

Having Cami do “This Year’s Girl” —

whose acidic lyrics skewer vapid young wom-

en — provides an unexpected and compelling

twist. So does her decision to retitle the song

“La Chica De Hoy” (“Today’s Girl”) and to

make its subject more simpatico and multidi-

mensional than in the Costello original.

The similarly unkind to women “Little

Triggers” is performed here as “Detonantes”

by La Santa Cecilia band vocal powerhouse

Marisol “La Marisoul” Hernandez.

Her impassioned delivery and pinpoint

dynamic control elevate the song in a way its

creator surely could not have previously

imagined. And by seizing control of the song

and inverting its sexual politics through the

sheer power of her performance, Hernandez

sets off a whole new batch of triggers.

Equally potent, if far different in tone,

“Night Rally” is recast here by Jorge Drexler

as “La Turba.” One of Costello’s most power-

ful early political commentaries, it takes

direct aim at fascism and the fomentation of

hate.

Having the song performed by Drexler,

who grew up in Uruguay when that country

was ruled by a military dictatorship in the

1970s and ’80s, is a canny move. He infuses

the lyrics with a palpable depth of feeling —

born from firsthand experience — that adds

welcome new poignancy.

Costello does not speak Spanish, although

he surely could learn to if he wanted. This,

after all, is an artist who taught himself to

read and write music specifically so that he

could make an ambitious neo-chamber-music

album with a string quartet, 1993’s “The

Juliet Letters.”

To ensure that the lyrics from “This Year’s

Model” were adapted into Spanish as accu-

rately as possible, producer Krys brought in

such veteran songwriters as Ximena Munoz,

Elsten Torres, Luis Mitre, Andie Sandoval

and Mercedes Mígel “Vega” Carpio to hone

Costello’s famously crafty wordplay. Conspic-

uously missing is famed Puerto Rican tune-

smith and singer Elvis Crespo, whose ab-

sence robs “Spanish Model” of the opportuni-

ty to have one artist with the initials E.C.

salute another E.C.

For some listeners simply reading the

translated titles on “Spanish Model,” whether

literal or idiomatic, will inspire smiles. “(I

Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea” appears here

as “(Yo No Quiero Ir A) Chelsea.” “Running

Out of Angels” is now “Se Esta Perdiendo La

Inocencia” (which translates as “We Are

Losing Innocence”), while “Lip Service” is

recast as “Mentira” (literally, “Lies,” which

is close enough).

As for “Pump It Up,” which is given an

energetic reading by Juanes (with Costello

singing on the chorus), its title remains un-

changed on “Spanish Model.” That may be,

perhaps, because neither “Bombalero” nor

“Para Activario” quite fits the bill or the

cadence.

On the snarling, turbo-charged “Radio,

Radio,” Argentine rock hero Fito Paez, 58,

pokes fun at his and Costello’s senior musical

statesman status in an age of streaming and

bedroom TikTok sensations.

“I don’t know what music turns you on / I’ll

go back to Elvis Costello on my radio,” Paez

sings, before concluding: “I want to hear this

song on the (expletive) radio, man!”

What longtime Costello fans will hear for

the first time is then-Clash guitarist Mick

Jones’ guitar part at the conclusion of “Span-

ish Model’s” revamped version of “Pump It

Up.” Jones’ contribution was cut from the

1978 original by Costello and The Attractions.

Ultimately, “Spanish Model” will sound

foreign and familiar to non-Spanish and

Spanish speakers alike. It could also prove

strangely appealing to anyone who was put

off by Costello’s sneering, sometimes proudly

abrasive vocals when “This Year’s Model”

came out in 1978.

Then again, part of the charm of Costello’s

early work was how gleefully he embraced

the “angry young man” persona that was

used to market him and such kindred spirits

as Graham Parker and The Clash’s Joe

Strummer.

That bile-filled persona reflected the anger,

frustration and alienation of the young Cos-

tello, who — early in his career — told an

interviewer “the only motivation points for

me writing all these songs are revenge and

guilt. Those are the only emotions I know

about, that I know I can feel ...”

Some of those feelings sound pretty much

the same in Spanish. Others sound markedly

different, especially when sung by women

artists who reject and subvert the sometimes

bitter sexual jealousy of lyrics Costello wrote

when he was 23.

The pivotal difference here is the singers

much more than the songs, which — musi-

cally speaking — remain instantly recog-

nizable. That’s a tribute to the impressive

durability of Costello’s writing and the for-

midable instrumental skills of The Attrac-

tions, whose drummer, Pete Thomas, is also

featured on Juanes’ latest album, “Origen.”

What is lost, or gained, in translation on

“Spanish Model” ultimately comes down to

the talents of the guest artist on each song

and their ability to make it their own.

Beyond the change in language, “Despaci-

to” singer Luis Fonsi doesn’t bring anything

notably different to “Tu Eres Para Mi” (“You

Belong To Me”). That is, very likely, because

he is overly deferential to Costello’s original,

while adapting a more polite tone that doesn’t

really suit the hard-biting lyrics. Ditto Col-

ombian pop band Morat’s by-the-numbers

version of “Lipstick Vogue.”

An intriguing misfire comes from Peruvian

vocal star Gian Marco and his daughter,

Nicole Zignago. Their unison singing on

“Crawling to the U.S.A.” is so upbeat and

peppy it sounds like a TV jingle for a minty

breath freshener on a song that unabashedly

addresses issues of immigration and cultural

assimilation.

This may be precisely the kind of musical

subversion that Costello — and, perhaps, a

new generation of Spanish-speaking or bi-

lingual hipsters — will welcome.

If so, multilingualism could breathe addi-

tional new life into some of this 2003 Rock &

Roll Hall of Fame inductee’s recent and vin-

tage work alike.

(“Spanish Model” follows the March re-

lease of “La Face de Pendule a Coucou,” a

six-track EP of songs from Costello’s 2020

album, “Hey Clockface,” newly performed in

French.)

Next up (well, maybe): A Latin version of

his 1982 masterpiece with The Attractions,

“Imperial Bedroom,” snappily retitled “Im-

perialis Cubiculum.”

Elvis: For many of these Spanish remakes,something is gained – not lost – in translationFROM PAGE 28

AP photos

Chilean singer Cami offers a more simpatico,multidimensional take on Elvis Costello’s1978 song “This Year’s Girl,” whose lyricsskewer vapid young women. Its new title is“La Chica De Hoy” (“Today’s Girl”).

Jorge Drexler, who grew up in Uruguay whenthat country was ruled by a dictatorship,brings more depth and poignancy to the political commentary of “Night Rally.”

Lil Nas X

Montero (Columbia)

Anyone able to count had to

acknowledge months ago that Lil

Nas X was no longer at risk of

being remembered as a one-hit

wonder. Anyone, that is, except

for Lil Nas X.

Two years after “Old Town

Road” vaulted him to instant

superstardom — and nearly six

months after he topped Bill-

board’s Hot 100 for a second time

with “Montero (Call Me By Your

Name)” — the singer, rapper and

internet savant has finally re-

leased his long-awaited full-

length debut, “Montero,” which

is all but certain to end up one of

2021’s biggest commercial suc-

cesses (and which also stands to

pick up multiple Grammy nomi-

nations in the weeks ahead).

Yet here he is in “One of Me,”

a mournful pop-rap song that

arrives halfway through this

15-track LP, still hearing the

voices of those who’d assumed —

not unreasonably! — that “Old

Town Road” would be the last

we’d hear of Lil Nas X: “You’s a

meme, you’s a joke / Been a gim-

mick from the go,” he croons,

somehow capturing both his

haters’ scorn and the damage it

inflicted. “All the things that you

do just to get your face to show.”

Elsewhere on the album he

licks even older wounds, as in

“Dead Right Now,” where he

recounts being told by his father

that his chances of making it

were “one in a million.”

What’s remarkable about these

songs is that although they clear-

ly land as a flex — would a

flame-out be able to get Elton

John on the keys as Lil Nas X did

for “One of Me”? — they don’t

feel like the 22-year-old born

Montero Hill is inviting us to

apologize for doubting him. Even

now, his anxiety seems genuine,

which of course is precisely the

reason he outlived the viral phe-

nomenon that spent a record-

setting 19 weeks at No. 1.

He’s framed the steps in his

unlikely journey — as a Black kid

trying to break into country mu-

sic, as a gay man making hip-hop

— in richly emotional terms,

which means his audience shares

in his triumphs while his detrac-

tors come off like scolds.

“Montero” strikes an impres-

sive balance between craft and

heart. Produced by a team of

young studio wizards led by the

duo Take a Daytrip, the album

might be the year’s most beauti-

fully constructed, with crisp

beats, vivid textures and hooks

nestled inside hooks (nestled

inside hooks).

— Mikael Wood

Los Angeles Times


WEEKEND: TELEVISION

Big-screen talents such as Mi-

chael Keaton, Jeff Bridges,

Taika Waititi, Nicole Kidman

and Clive Owen can all be found

in various television projects this fall.

No one has yet cajoled Tom Cruise into

doing a TV series. But the way things are

going, it doesn’t seem like a mission im-

possible.

More and more movie stars are aban-

doning the notion that television is be-

neath them. Steve Martin has co-created

Hulu’s hilarious crime comedy “Only

Murders in the Building,” luring his

“Three Amigos” co-star Martin Short into

the high jinks. Kate Hudson is taking a

break from rom-coms to join Oscar-win-

ner Octavia Spencer for the second season

of Apple TV Plus’ “Truth Be Told.”

Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac, who

co-starred in “A Most Violent Year,” are

reuniting for a new adaptation of Ingmar

Bergman’s miniseries “Scenes from a

Marriage” for HBO.

And Kevin Hart, whose movies have

grossed more than $1 billion at the box

office, is starring in and developing Net-

flix’s “True Story,” his first dramatic TV

series.

“I did things for television here and

there, but not much. But it’s gotten so

much better over the past 10 years,” said

Michael Keaton, who stars in “Dopesick,”

an upcoming Hulu miniseries. “I don’t

think we’re ever going to go back to the

days where ‘I’m only a movie guy’ or ‘I’m

only a theater guy’ or ‘I’m only this kind of

guy.’ Forget all that.”

Keaton relied a lot on the small screen

in the late 1970s: A guest appearance on

“Maude,” sketch comedy with Mary Tyler

Moore, a forgettable sitcom with Jim Be-

lushi. But once he broke through as the

wisecracking morgue attendant in 1982’s

“Night Shift,” TV took a back seat.

At that time, actors who were popular

enough to wear the Batman suit consid-

ered TV a step down.

John Wayne famously rejected the lead

role in “Gunsmoke.” Jimmy Stewart

begged CBS to cancel his legal series,

“Hawkins,” after just one season. In his

upcoming autobiography, Ron Howard

recalls how Henry Fonda seemed down-

hearted when they co-starred in a short-

lived TV drama, “The Smith Family.”

Lucille Ball only committed to a sitcom

after she bombed at the box office.

But one show altered attitudes.

“I think people realized what TV could

be as soon as ‘The Sopranos’ came along,”

said writer/actor Sharon Horgan, who

appears in Starz’s upcoming series “Shin-

ing Vale” with Oscar-nominee Greg Kin-

near and Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino. “It

was a film in every single episode.”

Jeff Daniels also referenced that HBO

series, specifically its breakout star.

“The honest answer is that Jim Gan-

dolfini made it happen,” Daniels said.

“Back in the days of [Robert] Redford and

[Dustin] Hoffman and [Robert] De Niro,

you didn’t lower yourself. But ‘Sopranos’

changed television, as did HBO, Show-

time, Netflix, Amazon. All of a sudden,

you’ve got all these other places to go. And

as actors, you get to do more.”

Daniels had carved out a successful

career in theater and film, where he large-

ly played second banana to bigger names

in “Dumb and Dumber,” “Speed” and

“Something Wild.” But he didn’t become

one of the industry’s most celebrated ac-

tors until he committed to TV, a relation-

ship that started with HBO’s “The News-

room,” a series that earned him the first of

two Emmys in 2013.

He would go on to star in the miniseries

“The Looming Tower,” “Godless” and

“American Rust,” which premiered Sept.

12 on Showtime.

“I don’t know if I would get the roles I

get if it weren’t for places like Showtime

and others, because that’s where all the

writers went,” said Daniels. “I couldn’t be

happier, because it has kept me in this

business and allowed me to challenge

myself.”

Taika Waititi, who won an Oscar for

writing “Jojo Rabbit” and directed the

upcoming sure-to-be-blockbuster “Thor:

Love and Thunder,” remains involved in

television in large part because it allows

him to launch pet projects that wouldn’t

get made for the big screen. His latest,

Hulu’s “Reservation Dogs,” is a coming-

of-age comedy featuring Native Amer-

icans.

“The Hollywood things are fun, but this

is probably closer to my heart because this

means more to me,” said Waititi, who also

co-produces FX’s “What We Do in the

Shadows.”

Few writers have benefited more by the

migration of big stars to television than

Ryan Murphy. His various anthology

series have offered Jessica Lange, John

Travolta and Susan Sarandon some of the

richest roles in their long careers.

For “Impeachment: American Crime

Story,” which premiered last month on

FX, Murphy’s team was able to recruit

Clive Owen to play Bill Clinton.

For Owen, committing to a miniseries

probably wasn’t a big deal. European and

Australian actors have a long tradition of

bouncing between different media without

worrying about public perception.

“I see TV as an extension of film. It’s

just a longer version,” said Nicole Kid-

man, who got raves for her work in the

series “Big Little Lies” for HBO and “Nine

Perfect Strangers” for Hulu. “I did a cou-

ple of small films early on in my career,

but then I went straight into miniseries,

which is primarily how I became really

well known in Australia. So I’ve always

embraced it.”

Americans like Julia Roberts (“Home-

coming”) and Amy Adams (“Sharp Ob-

jects”) have been borrowing from that

playbook.

“I’m really glad that this moment is

happening where actors can move around

and not be penalized or pigeonholed for

it,” said Rosario Dawson, who co-stars in

“Dopesick” with Keaton. “It’s a huge,

huge sign of growth, and I hope it stays.”

Smaller screen, bigger opportunitiesImproved writing, fantastic roles drawing major movie stars to television projects

BY NEAL JUSTIN

Star Tribune

SHOWTIME/TNS

Jeff Daniels plays a police chief in a decaying small town in the rust belt in Showtime’s“American Rust.” He and other movie stars are expanding their horizons and havestarted to appreciate the challenges created by acting in a TV series.

“I don’t think we’re ever going to go back to the days where ‘I’m only a movie guy’ or ‘I’m only a theater guy’ or ‘I’m only this

kind of guy.’ Forget all that.”Michael Keaton

Star of “Dopesick”

HULU

Michael Keaton stars in the Hulu original series “Dopesick.” Keaton says conditionshave changed since 10 years ago, when television was looked down on by movie stars.


WEEKEND: TELEVISION

When you hit rock bottom, the

only way to go is up. In “La

Brea,” they take that litera-

lly.

The NBC drama, which premiered

stateside Tuesday, splits its time between

two worlds. The first: Los Angeles, where

a massive sinkhole opened up near the La

Brea Tar Pits, pulling parents, children,

teachers and co-workers into the sucking

void and leaving their loved ones behind.

The second: The bottom of said sink-

hole, a primeval land surrounded by

strangers with no idea what lies beyond

their grassy clearing.

“It’s ‘Lost’ meets ‘Stranger Things,’”

Jack Martin, who stars as Josh Harris, a

high school student pulled into the sink-

hole with his mother, Eve (Natalie Zea),

said.

“Lost,” at best, seems to be a guiding

light for “La Brea,” trying to re-create the

magic of ABC’s hit series about a crowd of

misfits whose plane crashes onto an ocean

in the South Pacific. But the showrunners

stressed that they want to focus more on

the characters than the sci-fi nature of

their new world.

“The story is about trying to get home

and trying to reconnect with their loved

ones,” creator David Appelbaum said.

“Who gets home and who reconnects?

That’s something the audience is really

going to want to know.”

While Josh and Eve are figuring out

their new reality down below, along with a

former Navy SEAL (Jon Seda), a psychol-

ogist (Chike Okonkwo) and dozens of

other stragglers, everyone above is trying

to cope with what just happened.

“I think when someone falls in a sink-

hole, they’re probably dead,” star Zyra

Gorecki, who plays Izzy Harris, Eve’s

daughter and Josh’s sister, joked.

The viewer knows that’s not true. Izzy’s

dad, Gavin (Eoin Macken), may know

that’s not true, too, thanks to what he and

doctors had written off as hallucinations

after he crashed his plane into the desert

years ago. Now, those same visions may be

the key to finding his son and estranged

wife, if only anyone would believe he’s not

just crazy.

“He’s trying to justify his craziness to

save his family,” Macken, 38, said. “The

possibility of something that has defined

you as being nuts and actually being sud-

denly a complete turnaround and being

able to use that to save your family ... is

such a huge concept to even consider.”

Okonkwo, the 39-year-old British actor

playing a psychologist trying to keep the

peace — or find it — inside the sinkhole,

paints a hopeful picture in the center of

chaos, one that doesn’t necessarily line up

with reality.

“There’s sometimes this ‘Lord of the

Flies’-esque idea that we would devolve

into wretched society, but when it comes

down to it, humans are really good to each

other when the chips are down, when

things get tough,” he said.

For some down below, that serves to be

true. For others, it won’t. And sometimes,

it depends on the situation.

“We’re seeing examples of the best and

the worst. People make choices,” show-

runner Bryan Wynbrandt said. “What do

you do when your family member is in-

jured and you have a choice between help-

ing them and someone else? That’s a moral

dilemma that’s really interesting to thrust

characters into. We do that. They don’t

always make the right decision. They

make choices that affect others negatively,

even if they’re doing it for the right rea-

son.”

Eve, introduced as a relatively boring

officer manager, has a few secrets up her

sleeve, Zea teased. But mostly, they sur-

vive because they have to.

“We’re able to watch these people take

what is arguably the worst day of their

lives and to build upon it, to make it some-

thing that’s livable and safe and sustain-

able,” she said.

Back in Los Angeles, Izzy and Gavin are

fighting to figure out what happened.

Down below, the survivors are fighting to

stay alive.

“This show strips everything away and

forces us to go to that square one envi-

ronment,” Martin said. “Who are you?

Who are we really? So often we get to

obfuscate that in real life. This situation

makes that impossible. We get to see peo-

ple as they really are. Who am I really?

What would I do in a situation like this? If

all of this was stripped away, who would I

be?”

NBC/TNS

In “La Brea,” Eve Harris (Natalie Zea) and her son Josh (Jack Martin) try to survive aftergetting pulled into a sinkhole while on the surface, her husband Gavin and daughter Izzyhave to cope with what happened.

Back to

basics‘La Brea’ star describesnew NBC thriller as ‘Lost’meets ‘Stranger Things’

BY KATE FELDMAN

New York Daily News

“This show stripseverything away andforces us to go tothat square oneenvironment. Whoare you? Who arewe really? So oftenwe get to obfuscatethat in real life. Thissituation makes thatimpossible. We getto see people asthey really are. Whoam I really? Whatwould I do in asituation like this? Ifall of this wasstripped away, whowould I be?”

Jack Martin

Josh Harris on “La Brea”

Former “Fuller House” star Lori Lough-

lin is returning to acting for the first time

since the 2019 college admissions scandal

torpedoed her career and sent her to fed-

eral prison.

Loughlin will reprise the role of Abigail

Stanton in “When Hope Calls: A Country

Christmas,” a spinoff to the popular Hall-

mark Channel series “When Calls the

Heart.” “When Hope Calls” is returning

for a second season on a new network,

GAC Family (formerly Great American

Country). Loughlin will guest star in the

two-part premiere set to air Dec. 18, the

network said Wednesday.

The actor was released from prison in

December after serving a two-month

sentence for her and husband Mossimo

Giannulli’s involvement in schemes to get

their children into the University of South-

ern California. She worked out a plea deal

to pay a $150,000 fine and perform 100

hours of community service and is serving

two years on probation.

Loughlin last appeared in Season 6 of

the Hallmark Channel series, but the

network severed ties with Loughlin in

March 2019 after she was arrested for her

participation in Operation Varsity Blues,

which revealed the elaborate scheme

aimed at getting students into elite colleg-

es.

The “Full House” veteran had been a

longtime regular for the Hallmark Chan-

nel’s programming, starring in a number

of original romantic holiday movies, in-

cluding “Homegrown Christmas” (2018),

“Every Christmas Has a Story” (2016) and

“Northpole: Open for Christmas” (2015),

as well as the romantic drama “A Soldier’s

Love Story” (2010).

Speculation that she could be returning

to work began last week after the Mercury

News reported that a Boston federal judge

gave her permission to travel to Canada

for about a week for “a filming production

project.”

FUTUREIMAGE, ZUMA PRESS/TNS

Lori Loughlin, right, with daughter OliviaJade Giannulli in 2018, returns to TV in“When Hope Calls: A Country Christmas,”a spinoff to a Hallmark Channel series.

Loughlin toreturn to TVfor 1st timesince scandal

BY NARDINE SAAD

Los Angeles Times


WEEKEND: HEALTH & FITNESS

In recent months, some European airlines have

banned the use of cloth face coverings to control the

spread of the coronavirus during air travel, instead

favoring surgical masks — sometimes referred to

as medical or disposable — and N95 respirators.

It’s another salvo in the debate over the effectiveness of

the ubiquitous cloth mask, which sprang into fashion

when surgical masks and N95s were harder to find in the

pandemic’s early days. The Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention still promotes cloth face coverings in its

guidance about masks.

And masks remain a critical mitigation tool because

people primarily become infected with SARS-CoV-2, the

virus that causes COVID-19, by inhaling small aerosol

particles that linger in the air or large respiratory drop-

lets produced in coughs and sneezes.

But the science is changing. Delta, currently the pri-

mary variant in the United States, is far more contagious

than the original coronavirus, so the density of virus in

the air is greater. Some experts have adjusted their ad-

vice proportionally.

“Given the delta variant that’s out there, you probably

need to upgrade your mask,” Dr. Ashish Jha, a leading

COVID-19 expert and dean of the Brown University

School of Public Health, said on “Fox News Sunday” last

month.

What type of mask should you wear?Don’t worry if you are confused. Mask guidance has

been mixed since the dawn of the pandemic, and new

research has altered conventional thinking. We decided

to dig in and sort out the latest developments.

First, people were told masking wasn’t necessary. Soon

after, this recommendation changed, but the public was

advised against purchasing surgical-style masks used by

health professionals because of dire shortages of such

protective gear. Americans instead were told to spring

for cloth masks or make do-it-yourself versions. Short-

ages do not appear to be as big a problem now, though

the CDC still advises against choosing N95 respirators.

As recently as late August, the nation’s top infectious-

disease doctor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, declined to recom-

mend higher-quality masks.

“Instead of worrying about what kind of mask, just

wear a mask,” he told “The Mehdi Hasan Show” on

MSNBC.

So, what gives? Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an expert on

infectious diseases at the University of California, San

Francisco, said Fauci was taking a harm-reduction ap-

proach.

“It probably is more important to wear something that

you feel comfortable with, and you can wear for long

periods of time if you’re going into a particular envi-

ronment ... rather than saying you need to wear the gold

standard thing at all times,” he said.

“A baseline should be a surgical mask,” added Chin-

Hong. “It’s easier to implement. It’s cheap, albeit not

always environmentally friendly.” Personally, he wears

only N95s when wildfires are blazing.

“Even in the hospital, I’m mainly wearing a surgical

mask,” he said.

While he thinks government and public health officials

should emphasize wearing surgical masks, Chin-Hong

said cloth masks can offer enough protection in certain

circumstances. A lot depends on the context, so he pro-

vided these questions to help the decision-making proc-

ess: If you are going indoors, will the building be especial-

ly crowded? How long will you be inside? Will everyone

most likely be masked? Are you and others around you

fully vaccinated? Are you immunocompromised?

The riskier the situation, the more likely that the high-

er-quality mask is the best option.

“Nothing is zero risk, so it’s just a matter of risk reduc-

tion,” Chin-Hong said.

“So definitely, masks need to be stepped up to fight

delta, but it does not mean those who cannot afford N95s

have no options,” said Raina MacIntyre, head of the bio-

security research program at the University of New South

Wales in Sydney, Australia, who has conducted many

studies on masks.

MacIntyre said it is “possible to design a high-perform-

ing cloth mask.” An experimental lab study she co-au-

thored found a layered cloth mask can effectively block

droplets. The study, published in May in the journal ACS

Biomaterials Science & Engineering, recommends using

a minimum of three layers — a combination of cotton/

linen and polyester/nylon — to resemble the droplet-

blocking performance of surgical masks.

Not only is layering important to improve filtration, but

so is fit. A CDC-recommended technique for improving

the fit of either a cloth or surgical mask is knotting the

straps and tucking the sides. A mask is generally a good

fit if you feel warm air coming through the front of the

mask as you inhale and exhale.

What does the research say?A large-scale, real-world study published last month

found surgical masks especially effective at reducing

symptomatic infections. These types of masks prevented 1

in 3 infections among people 60 and older.

Researchers from Yale, Stanford and the nonprofit

GreenVoice monitored more than 340,000 adults in rural

Bangladesh for at least eight weeks. Roughly half the

Bangladeshis received interventions like free mask distri-

bution and promotion. Villages that received interven-

tions saw mask use jump from 13% to 42%. The same

villages reported fewer confirmed COVID-19 infections

and a lower incidence of related symptoms.

Villages where cloth masks were given out reported an

8.5% reduction in symptoms, while villages that received

surgical masks reported a 13.6% reduction. When a third

of adults with symptoms commonly associated with CO-

VID-19 agreed to get their blood tested for the virus, re-

searchers discovered an 11% reduction among those who

wore surgical masks. Researchers observed a 5% reduc-

tion in infections among those who wore cloth masks.

This study was conducted before the delta variant was

circulating widely in the country. The study has not yet

undergone peer review, but some experts have already

heralded its methodology and results.

“When I saw those results, I threw away my cloth

mask,” said Stephen Luby, a co-author of the study and

professor of infectious diseases at Stanford University. “If

delta is circulating and if you’re going to wear a mask,

why don’t you wear one that the data tell you is good?”

“We find very strong evidence that surgical masks are

effective,” added Jason Abaluck, an economist at Yale

who helped lead the study. “My read of that is that cloth

masks are probably somewhat effective. They are prob-

ably better than nothing.”

Abaluck suspects his study offers mixed evidence for

cloth masks because only about a third of those who re-

ported symptoms consented to blood testing for CO-

VID-19. In other words, the sample size was too small to

observe anything significant.

“The most likely interpretation of this whole constella-

tion of results is that [cloth masks] actually do help. They

actually do make you less likely to get COVID. That’s why

we saw fewer symptoms,” he said. A second possibility is

that cloth masks prevent other respiratory diseases that

have similar symptoms, he said.

Multiple observational studies and trend analyses

found community masking, which includes the use of

cloth masks, reduces the spread of COVID-19. The re-

searchers of the Bangladesh study said those studies had

drawbacks, which is why they conducted a randomized

clinical trial. However, they agreed with those studies’

overall assessment: People who wear masks are less

likely to get infected than people who don’t.

“This is the nature of science. Science evolves,” Luby

said. “We had evidence that we get some protection from

cloth masks, and we now have newer evidence that we get

better protection from surgical masks.”

iStock

An about-face

in mask debateSome experts have adjusted their guidance on the efficacy of cloth

BY AMANDA MICHELLE GOMEZ

Kaiser Health News

Test that mask

If you decide to keep wearing your multi-layer homemade orcloth mask, experts advise washing them every day. But pro-ceed with caution.A study published in July 2020 found that respiratory dropletstraveled about 2.5 inches after passing through a homemadecloth mask, about 8 inches with a cone-style disposable maskand a little over a foot with a folded handkerchief in a labsetting. But with a bandanna, cough droplets traveled about 3feet 7 inches — the worst of them all aside from no mask —even though the material had the highest thread count com-pared to the other coverings. There are two tests that infectious disease specialist Dr. RoyChemaly of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas calls“flow and glow” to gauge the quality of your mask.One is to hold a lit match or candle about six inches in front ofyour face while wearing your mask and try to blow it out. If theflame goes out, you may need to upgrade your mask. Theother test is to hold your mask up to a bright light: If you seethrough it, your mask may not be thick enough to block respi-ratory droplets from other potentially sick people.



WEEKEND: FAMILY

“Have you ever heard of Columbine?” my 21-year-old

daughter asked my husband and me over stir fry last week.

She had watched a documentary about the incident on You-

Tube, and like the time she asked if I had ever heard the

Modern English song “I Melt With You,” she had no concept

of our lives before her birth. Of course we had heard of the

infamous school shooting, we told her, and we knew about

Dylan and Eric’s tragic plan to reenact the first-person shoo-

ter video game Doom.

Back then, I thought we could prevent our children from

being negatively affected by new digital technologies by

laying down clear rules and communicating frequently.

Surely our society, government and private companies

would study the Columbine shootings to prevent similar

tragedies from happening in the future. I felt comforted that

ratings systems, consumer protections and regulations

would be put in place to keep our children safe.

Or so I thought.

What I didn’t know was that there were emerging tech-

nologies that would negatively influence our children more

than video games ever could.

Friendster led to LinkedIn and MySpace in 2003. Face-

book started on Harvard University’s campus in 2004 and

became the largest social networking site in the world by

2009. Instagram launched in 2010, and was gobbled by Face-

book in 2012. WhatsApp was launched in 2009, and snatched

by Facebook in 2014. Today, Facebook is a trillion-dollar

conglomerate. Thirty-seven-year-old Mark Zuckerberg,

Facebook’s cofounder, CEO and controlling shareholder, has

a net worth of nearly $124 billion.

One would think that Zuckerberg would aim to use his

fortune to make the world a better place for his two young

daughters. But according to recent Wall Street Journal arti-

cles, Zuckerberg’s company has disregarded its own internal

studies showing that Instagram use makes body image issues

worse for one in three teenage girls, and more than 40% of

teenage users in the U.S. and U.K. began feeling “unattrac-

tive" while using Instagram. These findings were posted on

an internal Facebook message board in March 2020, but

rather than changing its policies, Facebook plowed ahead

with plans to release a new platform targeting children.

Zuckerberg watched a slide presentation on the findings,

but at congressional hearings a couple months later, he said

that Facebook researched the effects social media has on

children, and found that "Social apps ... have positive mental-

health benefits.” Fortunately, an unidentified whistleblower

has leaked damning internal documents to Congress, which

is holding hearings on the matter.

Having grown up in the ’70s and ’80s blissfully unaware of

the technology that would envelop my children one day, I

was at a disadvantage as a parent. My learning curve in

understanding technology was slower than its growth. In

other words, I didn’t learn fast enough to warn my kids be-

fore they were exposed to harm. We gave our three kids

smartphones when they were in high school, ironically be-

lieving that it would help us keep them physically safe. We

didn’t understand the dangers social media posed. Congress,

with a median age over 58, is also at a disadvantage.

However, it doesn’t take a tech expert to face these facts:

U.S. teens spend more than half of their waking hours on

screen media every day, not including screen time necessary

for school and homework. Research has proven that social

media has become a significant negative influence on the

mental development of our children. Parents prohibiting or

restricting social media use may be ineffective since the

technology is widely accessible on a variety of devices.

Greedy tech giants don’t care about our children.

And it’s time for Congress to take action to stop them.

Calling out tech giantsthat harm our children

Read more at themeatandpotatoesoflife.com, and in Lisa’s book, The Meat and Potatoes ofLife: My True Lit Com. Email: [email protected]

Spending time with a good friend feels easy and

uplifting: The conversation flows, hours pass

in a blink, and both parties walk away eu-

phoric, thanks to the release of feel-good hor-

mones that come with a few good laughs. However,

getting to this point of uncomplicated companionship

requires a significant time commitment. Research,

published in the Journal of Social and Personal Rela-

tionships, shows it takes more than 200 hours of time

spent with a person to consider them a close friend.

These hours shared over meals and meaningful con-

versations facilitate deeper connection.

The coronavirus pandemic has driven a significant

wedge in these friendships. Social distancing mea-

sures, ongoing child-care needs and varying levels of

personal risk have made it virtually impossible to

accrue the hours needed to develop a relationship. But

as friend groups were vaccinated this spring and

Americans began socializing with their confidants

again, many realized spending time with others wasn’t

as effortless as it once was — they were socially awk-

ward — and they were often left exhausted afterward.

As you emerge from months when you may have

lost touch with friends and are eager to reconnect, it’s

important to think strategically if you want to maintain

the level of effortlessness you had before. Here is

advice from friendship experts on how to optimize

these relationships.

Change your perspectiveWhile friendships are indeed high maintenance —

keeping in touch, scheduling time together — they

don’t need to be exhausting or scary. Instead of dread-

ing a happy hour meetup, think back on when you’ve

hung out with this pal pre-pandemic. Were they tiring?

Probably not. “Most of them have gone positive in the

past, so there’s no reason to expect that it’ll be any

different,” says William Chopik, an assistant professor

of psychology and director of the Close Relationships

Lab at Michigan State University.

However, if you’re still feeling drained after socializ-

ing, you are not broken, says Miriam Kirmayer, a

friendship researcher and clinical psychologist in

private practice in Montreal. Be compassionate with

yourself and friends if your hangouts don’t have the

same energy as before. You might need time to warm

up again in the social department. “We’re capable of

working through this,” Kirmayer says. “It’s not a sign

that anything’s inherently wrong with us or anything’s

changed as far as who we are in our friendships.”

Be choosyBecause the pandemic interrupted virtually every

relationship, you may feel the need to resume all of

them simultaneously. This can be overwhelming, both

to your schedule and your emotional bandwidth. In-

stead, be discerning about whom you spend time with

right now, Kirmayer advises. Maybe you’re not up for

a backyard bonfire with a handful of people, but a

one-on-one with the host would be okay. Make plans

according to your preferences. “Who do I feel like

connecting with right now? Who would it feel good to

speak with and connect with?” Kirmayer says. “Have

it come from a place of voluntary action as opposed to

... this feeling of it’s a necessity, it’s required.”

Voluntary hangouts can mean grabbing an im-

promptu lunch with a pal in the middle of a workday

or scheduling a call to catch up, says Jeffrey Hall, a

professor of communication studies at the University

of Kansas. So long as each person is choosing to invest

time in the other, you’re helping your relationship.

Build a routineAnother way to maintain friendships, according to

Hall, is to create a routine. Whether a monthly book

club or weekly workout class, knowing when and

where you’ll see a friend eliminates most of the leg-

work required in scheduling a get-together. “This

means things like old friendships tend to be actually

quite energy conservative,” Hall says, “because

they’re already people who we know; they’re already

people we know like us.”

The frequency of these routine hangouts should

depend on how much social interaction you get in your

day-to-day life, Hall says. If you live with a roommate

or have a partner and children, you don’t need to

schedule as many social events — maybe one per week

— he says, since you already regularly interact with

people. That one social interaction could be a long

phone call, a happy hour or a walk with a friend. Like-

wise, those with jobs in the service or retail industries

may not need as many friend hangouts. “If your rou-

tine involves children, or a romantic partner, or a job

that’s intensely social, chances are your social needs

are much lower,” Hall says, “but the importance of

having relationships doesn’t go away.”

Think outwardWhile the benefits of friendship are numerous —

they help you cope with stress, combat loneliness and

provide a sense of belonging — the ultimate goal of

these relationships is to enrich the lives of others, Hall

says. A key to maintaining our friendships is to think

externally: How can you support your friends today?

“Relationships are at their best when you know that

you’re valuable to other people and what you have to

share with them is worth sharing,” Hall says. “When

we give ourselves, your time or otherwise, that benefit

is what actually makes us feel good: the benefit it gives

to other people.”

iStock

Regularly scheduling time with those we want to stay close to can help ease social awkwardness.

Maintaining social bondsHere’s how to make time with friends feel more fun and less like effort

BY ALLIE VOLPE



WEEKEND: CROSSWORD AND COMICS

NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

NEW LOOK BY PETER GORDON / EDITED BY WILL SHORTZ

54 Body-shop fig.

55 Owing

56 Buddy of Buddy, maybe

58 What might whet an appetite

59 Taken down and put up elsewhere

63 Relative of cerulean

66 Scale for some judges

68 Possible reason for refusing to wear a tank top?

71 Worries about something

73 2018 crime biopic

74 ‘‘Potatoes done perfect’’ sloganeer

77 Shape of a doughnut

78 Shape of a canine ID tag, often

80 Fossil suffix

82 ‘‘Most miserable hour that ____ time saw’’: Lady Capulet

83 ‘‘Checkmate’’

85 Means of learning about Chiang Kai-shek?

91 Massachusetts’ College of Our Lady of the ____

92 Some post-pollution efforts

94 Become ticked off

95 Ready

96 Wielder of the hammer Mjölnir

98 Tools used by horologists

99 Inept dancers at Oktoberfest?

105 Express-line count

107 Mentor of 50 Cent

108 Valedictorian’s pride, in brief

109 Mag space seller

111 Smurf with a white beard

115 Dish at a traditional Bedouin wedding

116 New look provider . . . or a homophonic hint to this puzzle’s theme

119 Small hill

120 Poorly lit

121 Series of steps

122 Early R&B group for Missy Elliott

123 Stockpiles

124 Felt on the head?

DOWN

1 ‘‘2 Broke Girls’’ co-star Behrs

2 Bounce off the wall

3 Musk of SpaceX

4 Incendiary explosive

5 Big news to share in the biz world?

6 Company acquired by Allstate in 2011

7 Longtime first name in TV talk

8 Unpartitioned apartment

9 Clicking sounds?

10 Letter two after tau

11 ____ E (skin care brand)

12 Guacamole ingredient

13 Major exporter of nutmeg

14 ____ admin

15 ‘‘LOLOL’’

16 Big name in microwaves

17 Straight sides of sectors

18 Put up

19 Soccer superstar nicknamed ‘‘La Pulga’’ (‘‘The Flea’’)

24 Water (down)

29 The National Zoo’s Xiao Qi Ji, e.g.

31 Agitate

32 Hungarian herding breed

33 Figure on Italy’s 2,000-lira note before euros were introduced

34 Common viper

35 Free

36 People can’t lie under it

38 Actor who delivered the line ‘‘Nobody puts Baby in a corner’’

39 Word with power or brakes

42 GQ V.I.P.s

44 Best

45 ‘‘____: Vegas’’ (TV reboot of 2021)

46 Revolted

47 Treat for Mr. Owl

48 Seward Peninsula city

49 Verve

51 ‘‘There was no choice’’

53 Person with star power?

57 Triangular piece in a party bowlful

60 Rentals that might come with dolly carts

61 ‘‘Wrong!’’

62 Nickname for someone whose full name is a calendar month

64 Spur

65 Letter two before tau

67 Obie-winning playwright Will

69 Defamed, in a way

70 ‘‘Indeed’’

71 Reason to see an ophthalmologist

72 Pea-jacket material

75 Caterpillar competitor

76 Thomas Jefferson or John Tyler, by birth

79 Org. that bestows the Community Assist Award

81 Liberal-arts sch. major

84 Certain curtain

86 On the ____ (no longer friendly)

87 Overseas speed meas.

88 Go from here to there . . . like *that*

89 Quark’s place

90 ‘‘It’s my hunch . . .’’

93 Pithy saying

95 Dish whose yellow color comes from saffron

97 ‘‘Rude Boy’’ singer,

to fans

99 Divisions of bushels

100 Like the Mideast

exclave of Madha

101 Long rides?

102 Used a prayer rug,

say

103 Literally, ‘‘works’’

104 Pieces of work

106 Traditional rivals of

the N.C.A.A.’s ’Hoos

109 Church part

110 There are three of

them in a Morse ‘‘O’’

112 Passing through

D.C.?

113 USD : dollar :: MXN

: ____

114 Part of 79-Down:

Abbr.

116 Frequent C.D.C.

collaborator

117 ‘‘____ Way’’ (Kitty

Kelley biography of

Sinatra)

118 Opponent

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

221202

524232

92827262

33231303

04938373635343

948474645444342414

35251505

8575655545

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

079686

675747372717

281808978777

0998887868584838

49392919

89796959

60150140130120110100199

411311211111011901801701

811711611511

121021911

421321221

Peter Gordon is a puzzlemaker and editor from Great Neck, N.Y. He has been a puzzle editor for Games magazine, Sterling Publishing and the bygone New York Sun. Since 2010 he has edited Fireball Crosswords, a 45-times-a-year online-only super-challenger. One of Peter’s bugaboos as a constructor is partial phrases — multiword answers that would ordinarily require fill-in-the-blank clues (like ‘‘Getting ___ years’’ for ON IN). He hates them. You won’t find any of them here. — W.S.

ACROSS

1 Like the Rock vis-à-vis any of the Stones

8 Small doodles, perhaps

15 ____ pants

20 Surpass

21 Candy bar with an exclamation point in its name

22 To love, in Italian

23 Meticulous magical beings?

25 The land down under

26 Sharpen

27 Screams

28 Calendar column: Abbr.

29 Frenzied states

30 High-ranking figures, collectively

32 Like some cross-Caribbean flights?

34 Three-time Pro Bowl wide receiver in the New York Jets Ring of Honor

37 Biblical father of Eliphaz

40 CNN political correspondent Bash

41 Bushy-tailed rodents

43 Postseason tournament pick

46 ____ Reader (quarterly magazine)

50 Journals of a certain stunt performer?

52 Commuting arrangement

GUNSTON STREET

“Gunston Street” is drawn by Basil Zaviski. Email him at [email protected], and online at gunstonstreet.com.

RESULTS FOR ABOVE PUZZLE

BEEFIERLAPDOGSHAREM

ECLIPSEOHHENRYAMARE

THOROUGHFAIRIESHADES

HONERIOTSMONPANICS

BRASSPANAMAHAITI

ALTOONESAUDANA

DORMICEWILDCARDUTNE

DOUBLEDIARIESCARPOOL

ESTSHYFIDOAROMA

REHUNGAZUREONETOTEN

SHOULDERHAIRINESS

SWEATSITGOTTIOREIDA

TORUSBONEITEEER

YOULOSEBOOKSONTAIPEI

ELMSCLEANUPSGETSORE

PREPTHORLOUPES

POLKAIDIOTSITEMS

EMINEMGPAADREPPAPA

CAMELFRESHPAIROFEYES

KNOLLDARKISHPROCESS

SISTAAMASSESSTETSON


FACES

Kristen Bell and Kirby Howell-Baptiste

first met by chance on the set of Show-

time’s “House of Lies,” but the two actors

have made co-starring together a habit.

They’ve shared the screen in “The Good Place,” the

reboot of “Veronica Mars” and now, their first fea-

ture: “Queenpins,” available on Paramount+.

Loosely based on the real story of a $40 million cou-

poning scam, “Queenpins” features Bell as a de-

pressed suburban housewife who has struggled with

infertility and British actor Howell-Baptiste as a

small-time video blogger who devise a scheme to sell

counterfeit coupons. Filmed in the first fall of the

pandemic, the comedy also stars Vince Vaughn, Paul

Walter Hauser and Bebe Rexha. It was written and

directed by husband-and-wife team Aron Gaudet

and Gita Pullapilly.

Bell and Howell-Baptiste got together to talk about

the film and their friendship. Remarks have been ed-

ited for clarity and brevity.

AP: Kristen, you were on “Queenpins” first. Did

you give Kirby’s name to the filmmakers to consid

er?

Bell: I’ve texted Kirby about every project I’ve

done over the past five years and been like, “What

role do you want to play in this?” Kirby is one of the

most creative people and the most trustworthy safety

nets to have in an acting scene. I also just really enjoy

being around her on set. So selfishly, yes, I invite Kir-

by on everything, and I’m lucky when she says yes.

HowellBaptiste:But just so you know, how it came

around, it wasn’t like “I like Kirby; I’m going to call

my agent, have them call her agent, then we’ll pitch it

to Kirby.” It was a text at night that said, “Do you like

working with me, and can you do an American ac-

cent?” And that was the extent. And I said yes to both.

What was the draw?

Bell:The initial intrigue was that it was a husband-

and-wife directing team. I love working with my hus-

band, and I find I know exactly what that sort of rela-

tionship looks like. If it’s done well, it can be so, so

beautiful. It’s also very exciting to receive a script

that says “based on a true story” on the front ... I like

to do stories that I can relate to. And I do a lot of work

in the mom space and I have a very big spot in my

heart for what women who struggle with infertility

might be going through.

HowellBaptiste: I thought Jojo was hilarious. She

is an entrepreneur, and yet she also has, like, an over-

inflated sense of her entrepreneurship and that’s al-

ways really fun to me, to play a character that be-

lieves that absolutely anything is possible. She’s do-

ing her thing, but it’s just not enough.

When did you two realize you were real friends,

and not just colleagues who get along?

HowellBaptiste: We were on “The Good Place”

and we were, like, chatting, chatting and then we both

went off and were on our phones and had things to do.

It just felt comfortable. It wasn’t like, “Oh, can I use

my phone for a minute?” We were just sort of com-

fortable in each other’s presence. That, to me, is what

I consider a friendship.

Bell: I know Kirby has zero judgment in her entire

being. Like, if we make plans and one of us says at 11

a.m., “You know what? I’m not going to make it to

lunch. I’m just not feeling it.” That’s the end of the

conversation. We’re both like, “Cool, peace, next

week.” That’s just a real freedom and a real love.

There’s a theme of people underestimating your

characters in “Queenpins.” Could you relate to that?

HowellBaptiste: I was essentially told I couldn’t

be an actor. I think that what we’re trying to show in

this film and what I believe is true for myself, my

character and for other people is that, only you can

determine what you can or can’t do. You can’t buy

into someone else’s negativity or someone else’s inse-

curity about what they can or can’t do because people

are limited by their own imagination. So if someone is

telling you that you can’t do something, it’s often be-

cause they don’t see it’s possible for themselves.

Bell: The only person that’s really told me I

couldn’t or shouldn’t do something is my husband,

but it’s not in a bad way. Probably 10 years ago when I

was still hustling in so many different other ways be-

fore I found my lane and my joy and what I was good

at, I would be, like, desperate to get that gritty Mi-

chelle Williams indie. And he would look at me and

go, “Why are you doing this? Stop. That’s not you.

Like, I mean, you can try if you want to, but, like, you

have something different. Lean into your something

different.” He was like, you’re way quirkier than that.

Think about your quirks and how you could apply

them to entertainment. And then all of a sudden it

was, “Oh, I have a lane.” I didn’t even realize I had a

lane, and there is no traffic.

STX FILMS/AP

Frequent costars Kristen Bell, left, and Kirby HowellBaptiste are coupon scammers in “Queenpins.”

A working friendshipBell and Howell-Baptiste on ‘Queenpins,’ relationship off the set

BY LINDSEY BAHR

Associated Press

Q & A

Britney Spears has been freed

from her father. And she could be

freed entirely from court control

within weeks.

In a major victory for the pop

star, a judge on Wednesday sus-

pended the singer’s father from

the conservatorship that has con-

trolled her life and money for 13

years, saying the arrangement

“reflects a toxic environment.”

Los Angeles Superior Court

Judge Brenda Penny agreed with

a petition from Spears and her at-

torney that James Spears needs to

give up his role as conservator.

The decision comes months after

Spears pleaded for her father’s re-

moval in dramatic court hearings,

saying, “I want my life back.”

“The current situation is unten-

able,” the judge said after hearing

arguments from both sides. “It re-

flects a toxic environment, which

requires the suspension of James

Spears.”

And with no objections to end-

ing the conservatorship, Penny is

likely to terminate it at a Nov. 12

hearing, restoring the singer’s life

and money choices to her after

years of calls to #FreeBritney that

she eventually joined.

James Spears sought the con-

servatorship in 2008 and had been

its primary controller and biggest

champion. He reversed course in

recent weeks, asking the judge to

end the conservatorship immedi-

ately, arguing that would render

his removal

pointless.

The singer and

her attorney

agreed that the

conservatorship

should end, but

argued that

James Spears’

removal was an

essential first step.

The singer’s attorney, Mathew

Rosengart, said he planned to take

a “top-to-bottom look” at the ac-

tions of James Spears and his rep-

resentatives and suggested that

law enforcement should investi-

gate revelations in The New York

Times about a listening device

placed in his daughter’s bedroom.

The conservatorship was estab-

lished in 2008 when Britney

Spears began to have public men-

tal struggles as hordes of paparaz-

zi aggressively followed her ev-

erywhere and she lost custody of

her children.

Spears’ father removedfrom conservatorship

Associated Press

Spears

A judge dismissed a trademark

infringement lawsuit filed by Evel

Knievel’s son a year ago against

the Walt Disney Co. and movie

company Pixar over a “Toy Story

4” daredevil character named

Duke Caboom.

U.S. District Judge James Ma-

han in Las Vegas dismissed the

case against Walt Disney Studios

Motion Pictures on Sept. 23.

The judge wrote that while the

Caboom character was “reminis-

cent” of Knievel, “Disney’s use of

Evel Knievel’s likeness contains

significant transformative ele-

ments” and is not a literal depic-

tion.

The lawsuit filed in September

2020 accused Disney and Pixar of

intentionally modeling the “Toy

Story 4” character on Knievel,

whose stunts included motorcycle

jumps in 1967 over the Caesars

Palace fountain in Las Vegas and

in 1975 over a row of buses at

Wembley Stadium in London.

John Lennon interviewtape fetches $58,240

Acassette tape with a 33-minute

audio recording of John Lennon

being interviewed by four Danish

teenagers 51 years ago as well as

an apparently unpublished song

by the late Beatle fetched 370,000

kroner ($58,240) Tuesday at an

auction in Denmark.

The tape, recorded on Jan. 5,

1970, chiefly consists of Lennon

and his wife, Yoko Ono, speaking

about being in Denmark and

world peace. It also has the couple

singing two songs: 1969’s “Give

Peace a Chance” and “Radio

Peace,” which was made for a ra-

dio station in the Netherlands but

never released.

The cassette was put up for sale

by Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneer

in Copenhagen, together with 29

still photos and a copy of the

school newspaper for which the

teenagers had interviewed Len-

non and Ono.

The Danish teenagers did the

interview in northern Denmark at

the height of the Vietnam War and

the Cold War because Lennon and

Ono had “a message of peace, and

that was what was important to

us,” Karsten Hoejen, who made

the recording on a tape recorder

borrowed from the local hi-fi shop,

told The Associated Press.

Other newsTommy Kirk, a child star

who played in Disney films such

as “Old Yeller” and “The Shaggy

Dog,” has died. He was 79. Kirk’s

longtime friend and former child

star, Paul Petersen, said he was

found dead in his Las Vegas home

on Tuesday. The cause of death

has not been released.

Evel Knievel’s son loses DisneyDuke Caboom trademark case

From wire reports




ACROSS

1 Tours season

4 Admin. aide

8 Hawaiian coast

12 Prom rental

13 Rating unit

14 Done with

15 Dissertation

17 Took a bike,

say

18 Straighten

19 Born

21 Menlo Park

monogram

22 Some Emmy

winners

26 Fake drake

29 Wooden pin

30 Conceit

31 Piece of work

32 Wee bit

33 Gunk

34 Not ’neath

35 Web

address

36 Liberates

37 Period of

self-care

39 Winter ailment

40 — de deux

41 Holiday Inn rival

45 Low horn

48 Quivers

50 Eager

51 Ore deposit

52 Sweetie, slangily

53 Tatters

54 Seth’s son

55 Parseghian

of football

DOWN

1 Words to Brutus

2 Rotate

3 Corp. bigwig

4 Off-course

5 Subway entrance

6 Airline to Sweden

7 Was hot, on

Twitter

8 Seoul setting

9 Egg (Pref.)

10 Actor Beatty

11 Exist

16 Road runners

20 Work unit

23 Simple

24 Malaria symptom

25 Freshens lawns

26 Dire fate

27 Duel tool

28 Brusque

29 Chum

32 Bridge

support

33 Bread morsel

35 Ms. Thurman

36 Pilot lights

38 Apple tablets

39 A Corleone

brother

42 Goya’s

duchess

43 Beloved

44 On the

Baltic, say

45 Sailor

46 A.C.C. school

47 Huge

49 Director

Howard

Answer to Previous Puzzle

Eugene Sheffer CrosswordFra

zz

Dilbert

Pearls B

efo

re S

win

eN

on S

equitur

Candorv

ille

Beetle B

ailey

Biz

arr

oCarp

e D

iem


ACROSS

1 Man of morals?

6 Type of year

12 Big lizard

13 Actress Clarke

14 Place to get

a tattoo

15 Natural gift

16 — gin fizz

17 “Up and —!”

19 Noshed

20 City bond,

for short

22 — Juan

24 Chest muscle

27 Cavort

29 Sitarist’s music

32 Bedtime request

35 — Domini

36 Mystique

37 Fan’s shout

38 U.S. Army bases

40 Apprehends

42 Bedazzle

44 Curry and

Landers

46 Genesis

shepherd

50 Turn in

52 Do-nothings

54 Grid

55 Biblical hunter

56 Most crafty

57 Pesky insects

DOWN

1 “I’ve Got — in

Kalamazoo”

2 Modern money

3 Witch trial town

4 Music’s Yoko

5 Irrational

distrust

6 Lavish party

7 Mosque VIPs

8 Part of RSVP

9 Ecologist’s

concern

10 “If it — broke ...”

11 Overdue

12 URL addresses

18 “Project Runway”

mentor

21 Samovar

23 Deluge refuge

24 Links org.

25 Very long time

26 Festive sprinkling

28 Vocalist’s

concern

30 Fed. office

supplier

31 Bat wood

33 Speck

34 Indent key

39 Mumbai dresses

41 Hayek of “Frida”

42 Branches

43 Prosperity

45 On deck

47 Ernie’s pal

48 Love god

49 Leary’s drug

51 Rage

53 Cacophony

Answer to Previous Puzzle

Eugene Sheffer CrosswordFra

zz

Dilbert

Pearls B

efo

re S

win

eN

on S

equitur

Candorv

ille

Beetle B

ailey

Biz

arr

oCarp

e D

iem


Max D. Lederer Jr., Publisher

Lt. Col. Marci Hoffman, Europe commander

John Rodriguez, Europe chief of staff

Lt. Col. Michael Kerschbaum, Pacific commander

Michael Ryan, Pacific chief of staff

EDITORIAL

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+49(0)631.3615.9350; DSN (314)583.9350

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+81.42.552.2511 ext. 88380; DSN (315)227.7380

WashingtonJoseph Cacchioli, Washington Bureau [email protected]

(+1)(202)886-0033

Brian Bowers, Assistant Managing Editor, [email protected]

CIRCULATION

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EuropeKaren Lewis, Community Engagement [email protected]@stripes.com

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© Stars and Stripes 2021

stripes.com

OPINION

President Joe Biden reassured

Americans the day after the last

troops left Afghanistan: They didn’t

need to worry. “We have what’s

called over-the-horizon capabilities, which

means we can strike terrorists and targets

without American boots on the ground — or

very few, if needed,” he said.

“Over-the-horizon” was obscure military

jargon until the president and his top advisers

started routinely using the phrase this spring.

Biden boasted on Aug. 31 that recent drone

strikes against Islamic State-Khorasan tar-

gets had demonstrated this capacity. Too

soon. It turned out that one of the strikes,

hailed initially as successful, was based on

flawed intelligence and killed seven children

and a local employee of a U.S. aid organization

in Kabul.

That tragedy offers one of the starker illus-

trations of how Biden has exaggerated the

U.S. ability to influence events inside Afghan-

istan after the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Over-the-horizon has always sounded like an

over-optimistic catchphrase. By definition,

you cannot see something that is over the hori-

zon. Some inside the national security firma-

ment jokingly refer to these as “over-the-rain-

bow capabilities.”

Two days of congressional hearings this

week featured top generals candidly ac-

knowledging the limits of their capacity to col-

lect reliable intelligence and conduct quick

airstrikes from outside Afghanistan. These

constraints are partly why they recommend-

ed the United States maintain a residual force

of at least 2,500 troops inside the country —

and why Biden should have heeded their ad-

vice.

Landlocked Afghanistan, which is about

the size of Texas, borders China, Iran, Pakis-

tan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenis-

tan. The United States has no bases in any of

those six countries and depends on Pakistan’s

permission to send planes through its air-

space — which could be revoked anytime.

The Taliban, an ally of Pakistan, demanded

Tuesday that the United States stop operating

drones in Afghan airspace, which it called a

violation of its sovereignty.

The closest bases are in the Persian Gulf,

specifically in Qatar and the United Arab

Emirates. This requires a journey of more

than 1,000 miles, heightening the risk that the

target moves by the time the missile or drone

arrives. This explains why Gen. Mark Milley,

chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked his

Russian counterpart during a meeting last

week about whether Vladimir Putin was seri-

ous when he raised with Biden the possibility

of using their bases in Central Asia to respond

to emerging terrorism threats. Moscow was

noncommittal.

Biden’s defense secretary, Lloyd Austin,

described over-the-horizon operations as

“difficult” but “effective and fairly common.”

He said the United States conducted a strike

in Syria a few days ago that eliminated a se-

nior al-Qaida figure. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-

Neb., responded that Syria, as well as Yemen,

Libya and Somalia, all border an ocean or sea

that U.S. carriers can launch strikes from

without anyone’s permission. Moreover, the

United States had to send troops back into

Iraq in 2014, three years after pulling out, to

fight Islamic State because an over-the-hori-

zon approach didn’t work.

Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head

of U.S. Central Command, said maintaining a

U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan would

have allowed the CIA to collect better human

intelligence and make targeting more pre-

cise. “The war on terror is not over, and the

war in Afghanistan is not over either,” he said.

“We have very few levers in Afghanistan right

now because we’ve completely pulled out.”

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., worried the ad-

ministration will be reluctant to launch

strikes on terrorist targets in Afghanistan

without permission from the Taliban because

officials, understandably, don’t want any-

thing to happen to the Americans still trying to

get out.

Milley said the Afghan army fell more

quickly than Washington expected because

the United States pulled away advisers from

front-line units three years ago. “We can

count all the planes, trucks and automobiles

and cars and machine guns and everything

else,” he said. “But you can’t measure the hu-

man heart with a machine. You’ve got to be

there.”

Now the U.S. government has no presence

at all. The rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s gov-

ernment and military should humble U.S.

leaders about our ability to bend the world to

our will. The horizon will always be receding.

‘Over the horizon’ insufficient for AfghanistanBY JAMES HOHMANN

The Washington Post

James Hohmann is a Washington Post opinion columnist.

French President Emmanuel Ma-

cron was right when he said Tues-

day that Europe should stop being

naive and quit relying primarily on

the United States for its defense. Indeed, it’s in

the interests of both the United States and Eu-

rope to realize that.

In one sense, this is nothing new from Ma-

cron. He has previously called for Europe to

aspire to “strategic autonomy” and has long

argued for a “true European army.” Macron

evidently believes that Europe weakens itself

by relying on U.S. arms and military might for

its defense, and thus is unable to push for its

own interests even in its own neighborhood.

The recent announcement that Australia was

ripping up a deal with France to build new sub-

marines to pursue a new deal with Britain and

the U.S. was thus only the spark that lit the fire.

The kindling of fundamental strategic dis-

agreement was laid long ago.

Traditional American thinking would resist

Macron’s call. The U.S. has long sought to

make European defense forces mere adjuncts

to American power, even if it was never formal

U.S. policy. During the Cold War, Europe’s

militaries had the distinct and limited purpose

to assist the Americans in the defense of West-

ern Europe and were expected to do little else

without U.S. tacit approval. It’s no wonder,

then, that NATO’s first secretary-general,

Lord Hastings Ismay, said the alliance’s pur-

pose was “to keep the Soviet Union out, the

Americans in and the Germans down.”

That may have been true once. But the end

of the Cold War meant there was no longer a

Soviet Union to keep out, and the expansion of

NATO and the European Union to include

most of the former Soviet satellite states in

Eastern Europe means that Russian forces

are now hundreds of miles away from West-

ern Europe. NATO’s old purpose has largely

been met.

NATO has struggled ever since because

American and European interests and per-

ceptions are increasingly divergent. This first

became obvious during the Iraq War, when

Germany and France refused to join Presi-

dent George W. Bush’s “coalition of the will-

ing.” These strategic differences have ex-

panded only further, as the old allies in West-

ern Europe prefer to conciliate Iran rather

than unequivocally back Israel; prefer a softer

approach toward Russia; and openly seek a

neutral stance in the standoff between the U.S.

and China. Meanwhile, European militaries

had deteriorated to the point that France and

Britain needed to enlist American aid when

they sought to destabilize Moammar Gadha-

fi’s Libyan regime in 2011. They are not much

stronger today.

This is the backdrop for Macron’s remarks.

Europe’s naivete, in Macron’s view, lies in be-

lieving that the United States can be persuad-

ed to provide the military muscle behind a

broadly European worldview. This is where

the recent submarine deal has proved deci-

sive, as it clearly shows that the United States

is willing to disrupt its relations with Europe to

pursue an alliance against China that Europe

does not want to fully participate in. Hopes

that President Joe Biden would mark a turn-

around from President Donald Trump’s pen-

chant for global confrontation have been

dashed. Instead, Macron rightly sees that the

U.S. will pursue its own interests even at the

expense of its stated fidelity to old allies.

Given that, it is in America’s interest for Eu-

rope to become militarily strong enough to re-

sist Russian ambitions without significant

U.S. involvement. The United States cannot

meet its formal obligations to both European

and Asian allies without massive rearma-

ment. But there is no political will to increase

U.S. defense spending to the level needed —

roughly 5 to 6% of gross domestic product,

comparable to spending during the Cold War

— for that to happen. This means U.S. forces

will increasingly be deployed to meet China,

which in turn exposes a militarily supine Eu-

rope to Russian aggression. U.S. forces will al-

so need to increasingly pull back in the Middle

East and in the fight against Islamist militants

in Africa, as those troops are needed to bolster

defenses in Asia. We need a strong Europe to

defend itself against Russia and pick up the

slack in Africa.

The alternatives to this effective devolution

of responsibility are unattractive. The U.S.

could try to use economic and military power

to enforce its will more effectively on the Eu-

ropeans, but this would make a mockery of

their democracies and independence. Main-

taining the status quo is also increasingly

problematic. The U.S. would weaken its inter-

ests if it deployed troops in Europe and wa-

tered down its own initiatives to cajole Europe

into half-hearted participation in endeavors

against China. Keeping Europe down and the

Americans in, to update the old saw, would dis-

sipate U.S. power without advantage.

The U.S. and Europe would both benefit

from an alliance of true equals rather than the

current imbalance. We are both stronger to-

gether if we are both strong separately.

Macron is right that Europe should defend itselfBY HENRY OLSEN


Henry Olsen is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellowat the Ethics and Public Policy Center.


SCOREBOARD

ScheduleFriday’s games

EASTDartmouth (2-0) at Penn (1-1) Iowa (4-0) at Maryland (4-0)

SOUTHWESTHouston (3-1) at Tulsa (1-3)

FAR WESTBYU (4-0) at Utah St. (3-1)

Saturday’s gamesEAST

Stony Brook (1-3) at Rhode Island (3-0) W. Michigan (3-1) at Buffalo (2-2) Memphis (3-1) at Temple (2-2)St. Francis (Pa.) (1-3) at Morgan St. (0-3) Toledo (2-2) at Umass (0-4) Yale (1-1) at Lehigh (0-4) Sacred Heart (2-2) at Howard (0-4) Duquesne (2-1) at Merrimack (3-1) Columbia (2-0) at Princeton (2-0)Gardner-Webb (2-2) at Monmouth (NJ)

(2-2)Harvard (2-0) at Holy Cross (3-1)Colgate (1-3) at Georgetown (1-2)Albany (NY) (0-3) at Delaware (2-1)Ohio St. (3-1) at Rutgers (3-1)UCF (2-1) at Navy (0-3)

Texas Tech (3-1) at West Virginia (2-2) Cornell (0-2) at Bucknell (0-3)James Madison (3-0) at New Hampshire

(3-1)Fordham (1-3) at Lafayette (1-3)Brown (0-2) at Bryant (2-2)Delaware St. (1-3) at Wagner (0-4)Indiana (2-2) at Penn St. (4-0)

SOUTHDuke (3-1) at North Carolina (2-2) Arkansas (4-0) at Georgia (4-0) Pittsburgh (3-1) at Georgia Tech (2-2) Louisville (3-1) at Wake Forest (4-0) Robert Morris (1-1) at NC A&T (1-2) SE Louisiana (2-1) at McNeese St. (1-3) Davidson (2-1) at Stetson (2-1)Bethune-Cookman (0-4) at SC State (0-3) W. Carolina (0-4) at Chattanooga (1-2)Appalachian St. (3-1) at Georgia St. (1-3) Norfolk St. (2-2) at Hampton (2-1)VMI (3-1) at The Citadel (1-2) Dayton (2-1) at Morehead St. (1-2) Elon (1-3) at Richmond (2-2)Louisiana-Monroe (2-1) at Coastal Car-

olina (4-0) SE Missouri (1-3) at Tennessee Tech (0-4)Jacksonville St. (2-2) at Kennesaw St.

(2-1)

Alabama A&M (3-0) at Grambling St.(1-3)

Tarleton St. (2-2) at E. Kentucky (2-2)Wofford (1-2) at ETSU (4-0)FIU (1-3) at FAU (2-2) Mississippi (3-0) at Alabama (4-0)Tulane (1-3) at East Carolina (2-2) Troy (2-2) at South Carolina (2-2) Syracuse (3-1) at Florida St. (0-4)Houston Baptist (0-3) at Nicholls (1-2) Arkansas St. (1-3) at Georgia Southern

(1-3) NC Central (2-2) at MVSU (0-3)E. Illinois (1-4) at Murray St. (1-2) Alabama St. (2-1) at Florida A&M (1-2) Florida (3-1) at Kentucky (4-0) Louisiana Tech (2-2) at NC State (3-1)Samford (2-2) at Mercer (2-1)Incarnate Word (3-1) at Northwestern

St. (0-3)Marshall (2-2) at Middle Tennessee (1-3) Campbell (1-2) at North Alabama (0-4)Liberty (3-1) at UAB (3-1)Uconn (0-5) at Vanderbilt (1-3)Boston College (4-0) at Clemson (2-2)Louisiana-Lafayette (3-1) at South Ala-

bama (3-0)Tennessee St. (1-3) at Austin Peay (2-2)

Auburn (3-1) at LSU (3-1)MIDWEST

Minnesota (2-2) at Purdue (3-1) Charlotte (3-1) at Illinois (1-4) Michigan (4-0) at Wisconsin (1-2) Tennessee (2-2) at Missouri (2-2) Drake (1-3) at Butler (2-2) Marist (0-2) at Valparaiso (1-3) Missouri St. (2-1) at Illinois St. (2-2)E. Michigan (3-1) at N. Illinois (2-2) Cincinnati (3-0) at Notre Dame (4-0) N. Dakota St. (3-0) at North Dakota (2-1)Indiana St. (2-2) at South Dakota (2-2)Ohio (0-4) at Akron (1-3)Cent. Michigan (2-2) at Miami (Ohio) (1-3)Bowling Green (2-2) at Kent St. (1-3) Oklahoma (4-0) at Kansas St. (3-1)S. Illinois (3-1) at W. Illinois (1-3) Youngstown St. (1-2) at N. Iowa (2-1)Army (4-0) at Ball St. (1-3) Kansas (1-3) at Iowa St. (2-2)Dixie St. (0-3) at S. Dakota St. (3-0) Northwestern (2-2) at Nebraska (2-3)W. Kentucky (1-2) at Michigan St. (4-0)

SOUTHWESTTexas (3-1) at TCU (2-1) North American University (0-1) at Tex-

as Southern (0-3)

South Florida (1-3) at SMU (4-0) Sam Houston St. (3-0) vs. Stephen F. Aus-

tin (3-1) at Houston UNLV (0-4) at UTSA (4-0)Southern Miss. (1-3) at Rice (1-3) Baylor (4-0) at Oklahoma St. (4-0) Cent. Arkansas (1-3) at Abilene Christian

(3-1) Mississippi St. (2-2) at Texas A&M (3-1)Old Dominion (1-3) at UTEP (3-1)

FAR WESTSouthern Cal (2-2) at Colorado (1-3)N. Colorado (2-2) at Montana St. (3-1)Nevada (2-1) at Boise St. (2-2)Oregon (4-0) at Stanford (2-2)Idaho St. (0-3) at N. Arizona (1-3)St. Thomas (Minn.) (2-1) at San Diego

(0-4)Washington St. (1-3) at California (1-3)Air Force (3-1) at New Mexico (2-2)Portland St. (1-3) at S. Utah (1-3)Weber St. (1-3) at Cal Poly (1-3) Washington (2-2) at Oregon St. (3-1) Idaho (1-2) at UC Davis (4-0) Arizona St. (3-1) at UCLA (3-1) Montana (3-0) at E. Washington (4-0)New Mexico St. (1-4) at San Jose St. (2-2) Fresno St. (4-1) at Hawaii (2-3)

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

NFL

AMERICAN CONFERENCE

East

W L T Pct PF PA

Buffalo 2 1 0 .667 94 44

Miami 1 2 0 .333 45 82

New England 1 2 0 .333 54 51

N.Y. Jets 0 3 0 .000 20 70

South

W L T Pct PF PA

Tennessee 2 1 0 .667 71 84

Houston 1 2 0 .333 67 76

Indianapolis 0 3 0 .000 56 80

Jacksonville 0 3 0 .000 53 91

North

W L T Pct PF PA

Baltimore 2 1 0 .667 82 85

Cincinnati 2 1 0 .667 68 54

Cleveland 2 1 0 .667 86 60

Pittsburgh 1 2 0 .333 50 66

West

W L T Pct PF PA

Denver 3 0 0 1.000 76 26

Las Vegas 3 0 0 1.000 90 72

L.A. Chargers 2 1 0 .667 67 60

Kansas City 1 2 0 .333 92 95

NATIONAL CONFERENCE

East

W L T Pct PF PA

Dallas 2 1 0 .667 90 69

Philadelphia 1 2 0 .333 64 64

Washington 1 2 0 .333 67 92

N.Y. Giants 0 3 0 .000 56 74

South

W L T Pct PF PA

Carolina 3 0 0 1.000 69 30

New Orleans 2 1 0 .667 73 42

Tampa Bay 2 1 0 .667 103 88

Atlanta 1 2 0 .333 48 94

North

W L T Pct PF PA

Green Bay 2 1 0 .667 68 83

Chicago 1 2 0 .333 40 77

Minnesota 1 2 0 .333 87 78

Detroit 0 3 0 .000 67 95

West

W L T Pct PF PA

Arizona 3 0 0 1.000 103 65

L.A. Rams 3 0 0 1.000 95 62

San Francisco 2 1 0 .667 86 74

Seattle 1 2 0 .333 75 79

Thursday’s game

Jacksonville at Cincinnati

Sunday’s games

Carolina at Dallas Cleveland at Minnesota Detroit at Chicago Houston at Buffalo Indianapolis at Miami Kansas City at Philadelphia N.Y. Giants at New Orleans Tennessee at N.Y. Jets Washington at Atlanta Arizona at L.A. Rams Seattle at San Francisco Baltimore at Denver Pittsburgh at Green Bay Tampa Bay at New England

Monday’s game

Las Vegas at L.A. Chargers

NFL injury reportNEW YORK — The National Football

League injury report, as provided by theleague (DNP: did not practice; LIMITED:limited participation; FULL: Full participa-tion):

SUNDAYARIZONA CARDINALS at LOS ANGELES

RAMS — ARIZONA: DNP: OL Kelvin Bea-chum (ribs), WR DeAndre Hopkins (ribs),OL Rodney Hudson (not injury related-vet-eran resting), OLB Chandler Jones (not in-jury related-veteran resting), OL JustinMurray (back), DT Corey Peters (not injuryrelated-veteran resting), OL Justin Pugh(back). LIMITED: WR A.J. Green (not injuryrelated-veteran resting). LOS ANGELES:DNP: DB Robert Rochell (illness), WR TutuAtwell (illness), OL Andrew Whitworth(not injury related-veteran resting), DLAaron Donald (not injury related-veteranresting), OLB Leonard Floyd (ankle). LIM-ITED: RB Darrell Henderson (ribs).

BALTIMORE RAVENS at DENVER BRON-COS — BALTIMORE: DNP: S DeShon Elliot(quad), QB Lamar Jackson (back), T Ron-nie Stanley (ankle), T Alejandro Villanueva(not injury related-veteran rest), DE DerekWolfe (back/hip), CB Tavon Young (knee).DENVER: DNP: C Graham Glasgow (knee),G Dalton Risner (ankle). LIMITED: RB Mel-vin Gordon III (ribs), OLB Andre Mintze(hamstring), DL Mike Purcell (knee). FULL:DE Shelby Harris (wrist), OLB Malik Reed(ankle/thumb), ILB Justin Strnad (hand).

CAROLINA PANTHERS AT DALLAS COW-BOYS — CAROLINA: DNP: DT Phil Hoskins(not injury related - personal matter), RBChristian McCaffrey (hamstring). LIMIT-ED: DE Yetur Gross-Matos (ankle), G JohnMiller (shoulder). FULL: CB C.J. Henderson(groin), WR Terrace Marshall (thumb).DALLAS: DNP: DE Dorance Armstrong (an-kle), T Ty Nsekhe (illness), DE Carlos Wat-kins (knee), S Donovan Wilson (groin).

CLEVELAND BROWNS at MINNESOTAVIKINGS — CLEVELAND: DNP: CB GregNewsome (calf), C J.C. Tretter (knee), T Je-drick Wills (ankle). LIMITED: WR OdellBeckham (shoulder), T Jack Conklin(knee), T Christopher Hubbard (triceps),LB Sione Takitaki (hamstring). MINNESO-TA: DNP: CB Mackensie Alexander (not in-jury related - personal matter), TE TylerConklin (glute, elbow), T Rashod Hill (notinjury related - resting player), CB PatrickPeterson (not injury related - resting play-er), S Harrison Smith (not injury related -resting player), WR Ihmir Smith-Marsette(toe), WR Adam Thielen (not injury related- resting player). LIMITED: RB Dalvin Cook(ankle), CB Harrison Hand (hamstring), LBEric Kendricks (hip), S Xavier Woods(hamstring).

DETROIT LIONS at CHICAGO BEARS — DE-TROIT: DNP: LB Trey Flowers (shoulder,knee). LIMITED: DE Michael Brockers(shoulder), LB Romeo Okwara (shoulder),RB D’Andre Swift (groin). CHICAGO: DNP:DB Tashaun Gipson Sr. (hamstring), TEJimmy Graham (not injury related-restingveteran), LB Joel Iyiegbuniwe (hamstring),TE Jesse James (personal), LB Khalil Mack(foot). LIMITED: QB Andy Dalton (knee), DLEddie Goldman (knee), WR Darnell Moo-ney (groin). FULL: QB Justin Fields (rightthumb).

HOUSTON TEXANS AT BUFFALO BILLS —HOUSTON: DNP: WR Danny Amendola(thigh), CB Terrance Mitchell (concussion,illness), RB Scottie Phillips (illness), QBDeshaun Watson (not injury related - per-sonal matter). LIMITED: C Justin Britt(thigh), LB Kamu Grugier-Hill (knee), S Jus-tin Reid (knee). BUFFALO: DNP: DE MarioAddison (not injury related - resting play-er), WR Cole Beasley (not injury related -resting player), RB Taiwan Jones (not inju-ry related - resting player), S Jordan Poyer(ankle). LIMITED: G Jon Feliciano (illness),S Micah Hyde (quadricep), CB Taron John-son (groin).

INDIANAPOLIS COLTS at MIAMI DOL-PHINS — INDIANAPOLIS: DNP: TE JackDoyle (back), T Eric Fisher (not injury relat-ed - resting player), LB Darius Leonard (an-kle), G Quenton Nelson (ankle, knee), DEKwity Paye (hamstring), T Braden Smith(foot, thumb), S Khari Willis (ankle, groin),DT Antwaun Woods (back), CB Rock Ya-Sin (ankle). LIMITED: G Mark Glowinski(knee), RB Jonathan Taylor (knee), QB Car-

son Wentz (ankles). MIAMI: DNP: WR WillFuller (chest, elbow). LIMITED: LB JeromeBaker (hamstring), C Michael Deiter (foot,quadricep). FULL: CB Xavien Howard(shoulder), S Brandon Jones (ankle), WRDeVante Parker (shoulder).

KANSAS CITY CHIEFS at PHILADELPHIAEAGLES — KANSAS CITY: DNP: CB RashadFenton (concussion). LIMITED: T OrlandoBrown (groin), DE Frank Clark (hamstring),DT Chris Jones (wrist), CB CharvariusWard (quad). FULL: WR Mecole Hardman(hip), CB Chris Lammons (bicep), DT Der-rick Nnadi (elbow), WR Demarcus Robin-son (knee), CB L’Jarius Sneed (quad), WRTyreek Hill (rib). PHILADELPHIA: DNP: TJordan Mailata (knee). LIMITED: G LandonDickerson (hip), S Marcus Epps (shoul-der), T Lane Johnson (ankle), C Jason Kelce(foot, not injury related - resting player).FULL: S Rodney McLeod (knee), LB DavionTaylor (calf).

NEW YORK GIANTS at NEW ORLEANSSAINTS — NEW YORK GIANTS: DNP: G BenBredeson (hand), LB Blake Martinez(knee), WR Sterling Shepard (hamstring),WR Darius Slayton (hamstring). LIMITED:RB Saquon Barkley (knee), CB Keion Cross-en (elbow), S Nate Ebner (quadricep), RBCullen Gillaspia (ankle), WR Kenny Golla-day (hip), LS Casey Kreiter (knee), S LoganRyan (hamstring), TE Kaden Smith (knee).NEW ORLEANS: DNP: T Terron Armstead(elbow), C Erik McCoy (calf). FULL: CB Mar-shon Lattimore (hand), QB Jameis Win-ston (knee).

PITTSBURGH STEELERS at GREEN BAYPACKERS — PITTSBURGH: DNP: DT CarlosDavis (knee), T Chukwuma Okorafor (con-cussion), QB Ben Roethlisberger (pecto-ral), WR JuJu Smith-Schuster (ribs). LIMIT-ED: T Rashaad Coward (ankle), LB AlexHighsmith (groin), WR Diontae Johnson(knee), LB T.J. Watt (groin). GREEN BAY:DNP: LB Krys Barnes (concussion), G Elg-ton Jenkins (ankle), CB Kevin King (con-cussion). LIMITED: RB Aaron Jones (ankle).

SEATTLE SEAHAWKS at SAN FRANCISCO49ERS — SEATTLE: DNP: WR Dee Eskridge(concussion), G Gabe Jackson (not injuryrelated-resting veteran), RB Rashaad Pen-ny (calf), T Brandon Shell (ankle), DE KerryHyder Jr. (concussion), T Duane Brown(not injury related-resting veteran). LIM-ITED: WR Tyler Lockett (hip). FULL: T Ja-marco Jones (illness), SS Jamal Adams(ankle), DT Bryan Mone (elbow), CB D.J.Reed (calf), FS Marquise Blair (knee), DTPoona Ford (ankle), DE Rasheem Green(foot), LB Benson Mayowa (neck). SANFRANCISCO: DNP: DL Nick Bosa (not injuryrelated - resting player), DT Javon Kinlaw(knee), TE George Kittle (calf), CB JoshNorman (chest), CB K’Waun Williams(calf). LIMITED: RB Elijah Mitchell (shoul-der). FULL: DE Arik Armstead (adductor).

TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS at NEW EN-GLAND PATRIOTS — TAMPA BAY: DNP: RBGiovani Bernard (knee), TE Rob Gronkow-ski (ribs), LB Jason Pierre-Paul (shoulder).LIMITED: CB Jamel Dean (knee), WR Jay-don Mickens (abdomen). FULL: CB CarltonDavis (abdomen, ribs), WR Chris Godwin(thumb). NEW ENGLAND: DNP: RB JamesWhite (hip). LIMITED: DE Henry Anderson(ankle), LB Ja’Whaun Bentley (shoulder), TTrenton Brown (calf), K Nick Folk (leftknee), LB Josh Uche (back), LB Kyle VanNoy (groin), T Isaiah Wynn (knee).

TENNESSEE TITANS at NEW YORK JETS —TENNESSEE: DNP: WR A.J. Brown (hamstr-ing), LB Bud Dupree (knee), CB Caleb Far-ley (shoulder), WR Julio Jones (hamstr-ing), T Taylor Lewan (toe), DT Larrell Mur-chison (elbow). LIMITED: CB Kristian Ful-ton (ankle), P Brett Kern (right groin), GRodger Saffold (shoulder), DT Teair Tart(shoulder). FULL: LB Jayon Brown (hamstr-ing), TE Anthony Firkser (knee). NEW YORKJETS: DNP: S Marcus Maye (ankle), WR Eli-jah Moore (concussion), WR Jeff Smith(concussion). LIMITED: WR JamisonCrowder (groin), TE Tyler Kroft (rib).

WASHINGTON FOOTBALL TEAM at AT-LANTA FALCONS — WASHINGTON: DNP: TCharles Leno (not injury related - restingplayer), G Brandon Scherff (chest), CBBenjamin St-Juste (concussion). LIMITED:DT Matt Ioannidis (knee). ATLANTA: DNP:DT Marlon Davidson (ankle), WR RussellGage (ankle). LIMITED: WR Frank Darby(calf), G Colby Gossett (illness), S Erik Har-ris (back). FULL: CB A.J. Terrell (concus-sion).

PRO FOOTBALL

Wednesday’s transactionsBASEBALL

Major League BaseballMLB — Suspended Chicago White Sox

INF Tim Anderson for 3 games and an un-disclosed fine for making contact withumpire Tim Timmons during the on-fieldincident with the Detroit Tigers on Sept.27.

American LeagueBOSTON RED SOX — Sent LF Danny San-

tana and RHP Phillips Valdez to Worcester(Triple-A East) on rehab assignments.

HOUSTON ASTROS — Reinstated OF Mi-chael Brantley from the 10-day IL. Op-tioned RHP Josh James to Sugar Land (Tri-ple-A West).

KANSAS CITY ROYALS — Agreed toterms with CF Michael A. Taylor to a two-year extension.

LOS ANGELES ANGELS — Recalled OFTaylor Ward from Salt Lake (Triple-AWest). Optioned LHP Packy Naughton wasto Salt Lake retroactive to Sept. 28.

MINNESOTA TWINS — Reinstated RHPJoe Ryan from the family medical emer-gency/bereavement list. Optioned LHPCharlie Barnes to St. Paul (Triple-A East).

NEW YORK YANKEES — Optioned LHPAndrew Heaney to the Florida ComplexLeague. Reinstated RHP Jonathan Loaisi-ga from the 10-day IL.

TORONTO BLUE JAYS — Selected thecontract of RHP Jacob Barnes and signedhim to a major league contract and activa-ted him for tonight’s game. Optioned RHPAnthony Castro to Buffalo (Triple-A East).Announced INF Jake Lamb has cleared re-lease waivers and is now a free agent.

National LeagueCHICAGO CUBS — Placed INF Patrick

Wisdom on the 10-day IL. Selected the con-tract of INF Trent Giambrone from Iowa(Triple-A East).

LOS ANGELES DODGERS — Sent LF BillyMcKinney to Oklahoma City (Triple-AWest) on a rehab assignment. ReinstatedINF Albert Pujols from the 10-day IL. Op-tioned LHP Andrew Vasquez to OklahomaCity.

MIAMI MARLINS — Optioned LHP DanielCastano to Jacksonville (Triple-A East).

MILWAUKEE BREWERS — Placed RHPDevin Williams on the 10-day IL, retroac-tive to Sept. 27. Selected the contract ofRHP Colin Rea Nashville (Triple-A East).Designated INF/OF Tim Lopes for assign-ment. Sent 1B Rowdy Tellez sent to Nash-ville on rehab assignment.

NEW YORK METS — Placed C Tomas Nidoon the 10-Day IL. Recalled C Patrick Mazei-ka from Syracuse (Triple-A East).

PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES — Named Pres-ton Mattingly director of player develop-ment.

PITTSBURGH PIRATES — Recalled RHPRoansy Contreras from Indianapolis (Tri-ple-A East). Placed INF Ke’Bryan Hayes onthe 10-day IL, retroactive to Sept. 28.

BASKETBALLNational Basketball Association

DENVER NUGGETS — Re-signed F Mi-chael Porter Jr. to a rookie scale extension.

DETROIT PISTONS — Waived F DeividasSirvydis.

MILWAUKEE BUCKS — Signed G ElijahBryant and F Johnny O’Bryant.

FOOTBALLNational Football League

NFL — Announced Las Vegas Raider’s DTGerald McCoy suspended without pay forsix games for violating the NFL policy onperformance enhancing substances.

ARIZONA CARDINALS — Promoted CBAntonio Hamilton from the practice squad

to the active roster. Placed S CharlesWashington on injured reserve. ActivatedDLB Dennis Gardeck from injured reserve.Signed OLs Shaq Calhoun, Danny Isidora,Michal Menet and CB Quinton Dunbar tothe practice squad. Released CB MazziWilkins from the practice squad. SignedCB Antonio Hamilton. Placed DB CharlesWashington on injured reserve.

BALTIMORE RAVENS — Activated DLsBrandon Williams, Justin Madubuike andOLB Justin Houston from the reserve/CO-VID-19 list. Activated WRs Rashod Bate-man and Miles Boykin from injured re-serve.

CHICAGO BEARS — Designated LB DannyTrevathan to return from injured reserveto practice.

DENVER BRONCOS — Designated RBMike Boone to return from injured reserveto practice. Signed G/Cs Harry Crider andjavon Patterson to the practice squad.

INDIANAPOLIS COLTS — Designated QBSam Ehlinger to return from injured re-serve to practice. Placed CB T.J. Carrie oninjured reserve. Promoted CB AnthonyChesley from the practice squad to the ac-tive roster. Signed S Jordan Lucas to thepractice squad.

LOS ANGELES RAMS — Designated OLBOgbonnia Okoronkwo and OL TremayneAnchrum to return from injured reserve topractice.

MINNESOTA VIKINGS — Designated WRDan Chisena and RB Kene Nwangwu to re-turn from injured reserve to practice.

NEW YORK GIANTS — Placed LB BlakeMartinez on injured reserve. Released WRMatt Cole, T Foster Sarell and DT WillieHenry from the practice squad. Signed LBOmari Cobb and G Sam Jones to the prac-tice squad.

NEW YORK JETS — Designated Ss AshtynDavis and Sharrod Neasman to returnfrom injured reserve to practice.

PHILADELPHIA EAGLES — Signed DLCameron Malveaux and T Casey Tucker tothe practice squad. Promoted G Sua Opetafrom the practice squad to the active ros-ter.

PITTSBURGH STEELERS — DesignatedOT Zach Banner to return from injured re-serve to practice. Promoted LB JamirJones to the active roster from waivers.

SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS — Designated DTMaurice Hurst and CB Davontae Harris toreturn from injured reserve to practice.Signed CB Buster Skrine.

SEATTLE SEAHAWKS — Placed TE GeraldEverett on the reserve/COVID-19 list.Signed DT Robert Nkemdiche.

TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS — Placed WRScotty Miller on injured reserve. Designat-ed LB Cam Gill and G John Molchon to re-turn from injured reserve to practice.Signed DB Richard Sherman.

TENNESSEE TITANS — Signed DL Abdul-lah Anderson to the practice squad. Desig-nated S Brady Breeze and WR MarcusJohnson to return from injured reserve topractice.

WASHINGTON FOOTBALL TEAM —Signed WR Kelvin Harmon to the practicesquad.

HOCKEYNational Hockey League

EDMONTON OILERS — Released D SimonKubicek. Assigned D Max Wannere to Ju-nior Club Moose Jaw (WHL).

NEW YORK RANGERS — Assigned F Jus-tin Richards to Hartford (AHL).

SOCCERMajor League Soccer

NEW YORK RED BULLS — Signed D IssiarDrame for the remainder or the seasonwith an option for next season.

DEALS

WNBA playoffs(x-if necessary)

First RoundThursday, Sept. 23

No. 6 Chicago 81, No. 7 Dallas 64No. 5 Phoenix 83, No. 8 New York 82

Second RoundSunday, Sept 26

No. 5 Phoenix 85, No. 4 Seattle 80, OTNo. 6 Chicago 89, No. 3 Minnesota 76

Semifinals(Best-of-five)

No. 6 Chicago 1, No. 1 Connecticut 0Tuesday, Sept. 28: Chicago 101, Connec-

ticut 95, 2OTThursday, Sept. 30: at Connecticut

Sunday, Oct. 3: at Chicagox-Wednesday, Oct. 6: at Chicagox-Friday, Oct. 8: at Connecticut

No. 2 Las Vegas 1, No. 5 Phoenix 0Tuesday, Sept. 28: Las Vegas 96, Phoenix

90Thursday, Sept. 30: at Las VegasSunday, Oct. 3: at Phoenixx-Wednesday, Oct. 6: at Phoenixx-Friday, Oct. 8: at Las Vegas

Finals(Best-of-five)

Game 1: Sunday, Oct. 10Game 2: Wednesday, Oct. 13Game 3: Friday, Oct. 15x-Game 4: Sunday, Oct 17x-Game 5: Tuesday, Oct. 19

PRO BASKETBALL


COLLEGE FOOTBALL

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — As line-

backer Drew White ran into the

Wisconsin end zone with the second

Notre Dame pick-six in two min-

utes, the identity of Marcus Free-

man’s defense had never been

clearer.

On full display at Soldier Field

was the style and approach that has

garnered so much praise from

Freeman’s players since he was

hired in January, all of it based on

the premise of being able to rely on

instinct and play more freely.

The first two games of the season

raised eyebrows. But for the third

week in a row, the Irish defense im-

proved from the previous game —

this time, in the form of a smother-

ing attack that helped turn a close

contest into a 41-13 rout of the Badg-

ers.

The trajectory bodes well for No.

9 Notre Dame, which on Saturday

faces its toughest test of the young

season: A visit from No. 7 Cincinna-

ti, where Freeman spent the last

four seasons as defensive coordina-

tor.

While with the Bearcats, Free-

man worked alongside head coach

Luke Fickell, his college lineback-

ers coach at Ohio State. On Satur-

day, Freeman and his mentor will

be on opposing sidelines.

“That’s the nature of the busi-

ness,” Fickell said. “I think there’s

kind of those little storylines within

every game, obviously this one be-

ing a little bit different and unique

because it is Notre Dame.”

This week, those storylines don’t

stop at Freeman and Fickell. Irish

coach Brian Kelly spent three years

at Cincinnati before leaving for

Notre Dame after the 2009 season.

Former Bearcats player Mike

Mickens left the team — and Free-

man, his former high school team-

mate — last year but now the two

have been reunited, with Mickens

handling the Irish cornerbacks.

Toward the end of spring prac-

tice, Freeman explained his defen-

sive philosophy and said the success

of his unit would be based on traits

already instilled by his predecessor,

Clark Lea.

“The effort and attitude you’ve

got to play with, the ability to get off

blocks, the ability to tackle, and the

ability to disrupt the ball — those

four things are why we’ll have suc-

cess,” Freeman said.

Freeman’s players emphasize

those same tenets. They repeat

common keywords: physical and

aggressive; effort and attitude; ur-

gency and intensity. And they stress

how much they enjoy playing for

Freeman, who has been described

as a “player’s coach” who encour-

ages meaningful conversations and

forges strong relationships.

Freeman’s defense struggled in

its first two games, allowing a com-

bined 67 points in narrow wins over

Florida State and Toledo. The Irish

made significant strides against

Purdue in week three, holding the

Boilermakers to 13 points. After that

game, Drew White acknowledged

the adjustment period but said the

unit was “getting really close” to

showcasing its capabilities.

Then came the dominant five-

takeaway performance against

Wisconsin last week, when Notre

Dame held the Badgers to 78 rush-

ing yards. Cornerback Cam Hart

had two interceptions, and line-

backers White and Jack Kiser each

added a pick-six in the final min-

utes.

“I knew that we can play better

than what we’ve been playing, and

everyone on the team, everyone on

the defense, all the coaching staff

knew that,” Hart said.

MICHAEL CATERINA/AP

Notre Dame defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman watches during practice in South Bend, Ind. Freemanwas the defensive coordinator at Cincinnati last season, this week’s opponent for the Irish.

Bearcats coming: Freeman,Irish defense on the spotNotre Dame’s defense has improved in past 3 games

JEFF DEAN/AP

No. 7 Cincinnati, coached byLuke Fickell, appear to be No. 9Notre Dame’s toughest opponentso far this season.

BY CAROLINE PINEDA

Associated Press No. 7 Cincinnati (3-0)

at No. 9 Notre Dame (4-0)AFN-Sports2

9 a.m. Saturday CET4 a.m. Sunday JKT

College athletes who earn mil-

lions for their schools are employ-

ees, the National Labor Relations

Board’s top lawyer said in guidance

released Wednesday that would al-

low players at private universities

to unionize and negotiate over their

working conditions.

NLRB General Counsel Jennifer

Abruzzo also threatened action

against schools, conferences and

the NCAA if they continue to use

the term “student-athlete,” saying

that it was created to disguise the

employment relationship with col-

lege athletes and discourage them

from pursuing their rights.

“The freedom to engage in far-

reaching and lucrative business en-

terprises makes players at academ-

ic institutions much more similar to

professional athletes who are em-

ployed by a team to play a sport,”

Abruzzo wrote.

In a statement, the NCAA disput-

ed the characterization of its ath-

letes as employees and said that its

member schools and conferences

“continue to make great strides in

modernizing rules to benefit col-

lege athletes.”

“College athletes are students

who compete against other stu-

dents, not employees who compete

against other employees,” said the

nation’s largest college sports gov-

erning body, with oversight of some

450,000 athletes. “Like other stu-

dents on a college or university

campus who receive scholarships,

those who participate in college

sports are students. Both academ-

ics and athletics are part of a total

educational experience that is

unique to the United States and vi-

tal to the holistic development of all

who participate.”

Abruzzo’s memo does not imme-

diately alter the dynamic between

the schools and their athletes, who

can receive scholarships and limit-

ed cost of attendance funding in ex-

change for playing sports. Instead,

it is legal advice for the NLRB

should a case arise.

That could be triggered by an ef-

fort by a team to unionize, a claim of

an unfair labor practice or even by

a school continuing to refer to a

player as a “student-athlete,”

Abruzzo said.

“It just perpetuates this notion

that players at academic institu-

tions are not workers that have stat-

utory protection,” she said. “It is

chilling workers’ rights to engage

with one another to improve their

terms and conditions of employ-

ment.”

Gabe Feldman, the director of

the Tulane Sports Law Program,

said the memo is “yet another

threat” to the NCAA and its busi-

ness model, which relies on unpaid

athletes to reap billions in revenue

that is distributed to its 1,200 mem-

ber schools.

“All signs point to an increasing-

ly at-risk and fragile system of col-

lege athletics,” he said.

Although football in the five

largest conferences is college

sports’ biggest money-maker, the

memo would extend protections to

all athletes who meet the legal defi-

nition of an employee: someone

who performs services for an insti-

tution and is subject to its control.

The NLRB has authority only

over private schools; public univer-

sity athletes would have to look to

state legislatures or Congress for

workplace protections. But the

NCAA and the conferences could

be viewed as co-employers, Abruz-

zo told the AP.

“If they’re engaged in commerce

in the private sector, they are sub-

ject to that statute,” she said. “We

believe that not only the college but

also the conference itself directly

and immediately controls the

terms and conditions of employ-

ment.”

The NLRB’s new stance — which

reinstates an old opinion that had

been rescinded during President

Donald Trump’s administration —

is the latest test for the NCAA and

the infrastructure of U.S. college

sports.

JEFFREY PHELPS/AP

Northwestern football players gather during practice in 2015, theyear after the team threatened to unionize. The National LaborRelations Board said college football players are employees.

NLRB: College footballplayers are employees

BY JIMMY GOLEN

Associated Press

AP college football writer Ralph D. Russo contrib-uted to this report.


COLLEGE FOOTBALL

LOS ANGELES — There were

many games during Chip Kelly’s

first two seasons at UCLA where

the Bruins would allow at least 70

rushing yards by the end of the

first quarter.

Times have changed.

The 20th-ranked Bruins go into

Saturday’s game against Arizona

State with the nation’s sixth-

ranked run defense, yielding only

64 yards per contest.

“I think our performance now is

what we should have done these

past few years. It’s been a long

time coming but we’ve started to

get to where we want to be,” senior

defensive lineman Odua Isibor

said.

In last week’s 35-24 win over

Stanford, the Bruins held the Car-

dinal to 67 yards on the ground.

Quarterback Tanner McKee end-

ed up leading the team with 42

yards and had the longest gain of

the day with a 30-yard scramble

during the fourth quarter.

Safety Qwuantrezz Knight and

defensive lineman Mitchell

Agude, who are the team’s top two

tacklers, are also among the high-

est-rated run stoppers at their po-

sition, according to Pro Football

Focus. Knight is fourth among

safeties and Agude fifth among

edge rushers.

“I feel like we have a great

group of guys up front that’s not

just pass rushers. They are litera-

lly just going to run to the ball all

the time,” he said. “That’s what we

do. Even on the back end, the sec-

ondary, the linebackers, everybo-

dy on the team is just going to run

to the ball.”

The Bruins have also benefited

from not facing teams with strong

rushing attacks. Stanford had only

one scholarship player at running

back due to injuries. LSU, which

was held to 49 yards, was also mis-

sing three of its running backs.

UCLA (3-1, 1-0 Pac-12) will face

its biggest rushing test so far

against Arizona State, which is

25th nationally and second in the

Pac-12 at 211.5 yards per game.

The Sun Devils (3-1, 1-0) have 29

rushing touchdowns over their

last seven games dating back to

last season, which is the most na-

tionally. Dating back to 2019, they

have also gone over 200 yards in

six of the last 10 games.

Not only do the Bruins have to

prepare for dual-threat quarter-

back Jayden Daniels, but a deep

running back group that features

Rachaad White, Daniyel Ngata

and DeaMonte Trayanum.

Daniels rushed for 125 yards

earlier this season against UNLV,

while White has the most touches

in the conference by a running

back. The senior leads the Sun

Devils in rushing and receiving.

Kelly said the Sun Devils have

evolved into a more run-oriented

team the past couple of seasons

under Herm Edwards. Even

though Arizona State is deep, the

first priority will be to contain Da-

niels.

“We just wanna make sure that

we’re acknowledging his ability to

run the ball as well,” Isibor said.

“But everything’s the same, we’re

still working hard, we’re still run-

ning to the ball, all things like that.

We’re not treating it too different-

ly, we just put emphasis on his

running ability as well.”

No. 20 UCLA’s defenseimproving against run

BY JOE REEDY

Associated Press

Stanford running back Nathaniel Peat is stopped by UCLA defensive back Qwuantrezz Knight, left,linebacker Ale Kaho, back, and defensive back Kenny Churchwell III during the first half of last week’sgame in Stanford, Calif. UCLA’s defense held Stanford to 67 yards rushing.

Arizona State (3-1)at No. 20 UCLA (3-1)

AFN-Sports24:30 a.m. Sunday CET11:30 a.m. Sunday JKT

PHOTOS BY TONY AVELAR / AP

In his fourth season at UCLA,head coach Chip Kelly is 1322.

Matt Corral and Bryce Young

left Southern California as hotshot

prospects bound for Southeastern

Conference stardom.

The two quarterbacks convene

Saturday in Tuscaloosa, Ala., as the

early Heisman Trophy front-run-

ners.

Corral leads No. 12 Mississippi

and the nation’s top offense against

Young and No. 1 Alabama in an

SEC West clash that also has the

makings of a potential Heisman

showdown.

Not that the star passers are in-

terested in awards talk — not just

yet anyway.

“That’s cool, right? It’s awesome

that people are saying that, but it’s

not a point of focus,” Corral said.

“I’m not putting any energy into it

and the team shouldn’t either. And

they don’t. They don’t come up and

talk to me about it.”

A month into the season, Corral

is the +150 favorite for the Heis-

man according to FanDuel Sports-

Book. Young is next at +300, fol-

lowed distantly by No. 2 Georgia’s

JT Daniels (+1400), another SoCal-

to-SEC quarterback transplant.

“Being the top for some Heis-

man media talk now means noth-

ing,” Rebels coach Lane Kiffin

said. “It only matters if you win the

thing.”

For now, “the thing” is this game.

Both quarterbacks are coming

off huge performances against

lesser competition. Young com-

pleted 20 of 22 passes for 313 yards

and five touchdowns in a rout of

Southern Miss. He threw his first

interception of the season when the

ball bounced off the chest of Jame-

son Williams while his 15 touch-

down passes in four games is tied

for second nationally.

Corral became the first SEC

player to pass for three touch-

downs and run for four in a romp

over Tulane before an open date.

They’ve been the SEC’s two most

efficient passers and rank in the

Top 10 nationally. Corral has

passed for nine touchdowns with-

out an interception while running

for five scores through just three

games.

The two have crossed paths over

the years but this will be their first

game matchup as starters. Corral’s

Long Beach Poly team was clob-

bered by Daniels and Mater Dei

55-13 in 2017. Young transferred to

Mater Dei the following season,

succeeding Daniels.

Both ultimately headed South as

five-star prospects after initially

committing to USC. Young, the na-

tion’s top-rated quarterback two

years ago, said he wanted to “com-

pete against the best” in both prac-

tice and games.

Corral trumps Young, a first-

year starter, in experience. He be-

came the first SEC quarterback to

lead the nation in total offense last

season and has picked up where he

left off.

Corral had a huge game against

Alabama last season, going 21-

for-28 for 365 yards and two touch-

downs while also running for 40

yards.

Now, he’s thriving again in his

second year under Kiffin and of-

fensive coordinator Jeff Lebby,

putting up big numbers in three

nonconference games..”

Now, Kiffin talks about the intan-

gibles of leadership and says Cor-

ral regularly shows up at the foot-

ball building at 5:30 a.m. Then

there’s his on-field exploits.

“He shows plays every Saturday

that people don’t make,” Kiffin

said. “I’ve said it before: Ole Miss

fans need to appreciate this while

you have it. This is a generational

arm talent that your’e going to get

spoiled with, because not too many

people ever are going to make the

plays that he’s making.”

PHOTOS BY DANNY KARNIK, LEFT, AND VASHA HUNT, RIGHT/AP

Mississippi’s Matt Corral, left, and Alabama’s Bryce Young, right, aretwo quarterbacks who left Southern California as hotshot prospects tocompete in the Southeastern Conference.

SoCal QBs clashin SEC matchup

BY JOHN ZENOR

Associated Press


COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Oregon’s Bennett Williams said

there’s nothing better for the

Ducks’ secondary than a take-

away. It’s something of a competi-

tion among the defensive backs.

The No. 3 Ducks have nine in-

terceptions this season, tied with

Kent State and Notre Dame for

most in the FBS.

That total was padded consider-

ably Saturday when Oregon (4-0,

1-0 Pac-12) intercepted Arizona

quarterback Jordan McCloud five

times, twice in the red zone.

“I mean, as a defense that’s the

best feeling, you know, getting

those takeaways and that’s what

we pride ourselves on. You know

we want three every game. And so

five, it feels pretty good,” Wil-

liams said. “It’s so much fun and it

fuels the whole team, not just the

defense, right? The offense comes

out there and they feel good. So it’s

big and we’re gonna try to keep

that going.”

The winless Wildcats surpris-

ingly got within five points head-

ing into the fourth quarter, but the

Ducks responded with 17 unan-

swered points, including Wil-

liams’ 68-yard interception re-

turn for a touchdown to seal a 41-

19 victory.

Bennett had a pair of intercep-

tions in the game, as well as eight

tackles. His touchdown return

was the longest for Oregon since

2017. Additionally, the team’s five

interceptions were the most since

the Ducks had six against Cal in

1999.

Teammate Verone McKinley

III has four interceptions this sea-

son, tying him for most in the na-

tion. Williams has three.

“They understand the game so

well, and have such a positive im-

pact on others,” coach Mario Cris-

tobal said about the duo. “They

are ballhawks. On top of that, too,

they are physical and in a hurry.

They get guys on the ground and

make tackles. They are exactly

what you want back there in the

secondary of your football team.”

McKinley said there’s some

good-natured jostling for take-

aways among the defensive

backs.

“It’s definitely been huge, be-

cause Bennett got his first, he’s

the first one in Arizona and he was

like, ‘I’m tied with you.’ And I was

like, ‘Oh no, not for long,’ ”

McKinley told reporters this

week. “And so, that competition is

something you want in the defen-

sive back room. Everybody’s

pushing to beat each other and

that’s what makes it fun. To have

that competitive spirit in our

room makes it even more fun.”

The Ducks rank atop the NCAA

in turnover margin (plus-12), with

nine interceptions and four reco-

vered fumbles through four

games.

Oregon was also among the top

FBS teams for interceptions in

2019. But the Ducks are on pace to

top that team’s total of 20. In fact,

if they keep it up, they could break

the team’s record of 26, set in

2012. George Shaw holds Ore-

gon’s single-season record of 13

interceptions, set in 1951.

The secondary’s success has

come despite a lack of consistency

overall on defense. The Ducks

gave up 233 passing yards to Ari-

zona last week and a season-high

202 rushing yards.

But part of the problem has

been injuries. NFL prospect Kay-

von Thibodeaux was injured in

the opener and returned for limit-

ed plays against the Wildcats.

Cristobal said the defensive end

will be at full strength Saturday at

Stanford.

Outside linebacker Mase Funa

is back to 100% after missing

Week 3, but edge rusher Bradyn

Swinson remains sidelined.

Stanford is known for its tall re-

ceivers, so McKinley said the

Ducks need to be prepared.

“Identifying who is in the game

because they run so many differ-

ent personnel sets with so many

different fullbacks, tight ends, re-

ceivers — some of the receivers

are bigger guys that are blockers,

some are speed guys that can real-

ly take the top off the defense — so

just really identifying who is com-

ing in and out of the game, and

knowing the situation when we’re

out in the field, those are probably

the biggest keys,” McKinley said.

Oregon DBs playingtakeaway this year

ANDY NELSON/AP

Oregon safety Bennett Williamsintercepts a pass intended forArizona wide receiver StanleyBerryhill III during a Sept. 25game in Eugene, Ore. The Ducksare tied for the FBS lead thisseason with nine interceptions.

BY ANNE M. PETERSON

Associated Press

Alabama and Georgia, the top-

ranked teams in the country and

the favorites to win their South-

eastern Conference divisions, are

preparing to face the league’s big-

gest early season surprises.

No. 12 Mississippi is heading to

Alabama to take on the top-ranked

Crimson Tide while No. 8 Arkan-

sas plays at No. 2 Georgia.

The matchups Saturday weren’t

necessarily penciled in as quite

such high-profile games leading

up to the season.

Now there all kinds of intriguing

storylines: national and SEC

championship implications; es-

tablished powerhouses hosting

ambitious fast risers; former as-

sistants against their old bosses.

“We’ll have our hands full,” said

Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, a for-

mer Crimson Tide offensive coor-

dinator under Nick Saban, whose

current team is a two-touchdown

underdog.

“I’m sure that’s why we’re a

huge underdog.”

Ole Miss is sporting its highest

ranking since rising to No. 12 dur-

ing the 2016 season. Arkansas,

which started to emerge from the

program’s doldrums in coach Sam

Pittman’s first year, hasn’t been as

high as No. 8 since 2012.

Wins over Texas and then-No. 7

Texas A&M helped the Razor-

backs become one of September’s

biggest college football stories.

They and Ole Miss are trying to

show they’re ready to perhaps un-

seat Alabama in the SEC West.

Pittman, a former Georgia as-

sistant, said the extra attention

hasn’t affected him or his team,

though getting an appearance on

CMT “was awesome.” But going

from Texas A&M to Georgia to Ole

Miss to No. 22 Auburn is a good

ego check.

“It’s hard to get the big head be-

cause one of them are going to

knock you out if you’re not pre-

pared for them,” Pittman said.

“Our team understands that.”

But he noticed more interest

from recruits since that win over

Texas, and figures the Razorbacks

program is worthy of their atten-

tion.

“It’s certainly an exciting time

to be at the University of Arkan-

sas,” Pittman said. “It kind of so-

lidifies our belief in what we can

do because we’re the University of

damn Arkansas.”

Of course, Ole Miss and Arkan-

sas have a long way to go to ap-

proach the sustained success of

the universities of Alabama and

Georgia. Those programs have

become old hands at these big

games in the regular season and

beyond.

Georgia has already faced then-

No. 3 Clemson and Alabama sur-

vived a visit to No. 10 Florida. The

Tide have beaten a record 22

ranked teams by 25-plus points

under Saban.

Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart

doesn’t necessarily think that big-

game experience gives any edge

for his team.

“We haven’t really even thought

about that, because I look at it

they’ve had two massive games as

well,” Smart said. “There’s no kid

that is going to say, ‘Oh man, this

game is bigger than that game.’

They’re all big. I mean they are all

tremendously big games and they

only get bigger from here. So, I

don’t think anybody has an advan-

tage when it comes to that.”

Kiffin is well acquainted with

Saban’s famed “Process” having

been the Tide’s offensive coordi-

nator in 2014 and 2015 when the

Rebels pulled off back to back up-

sets of Alabama under Hugh

Freeze.

Then there was the 2016 game

when Ole Miss scored on a fumble

by Tide quarterback Jalen Hurts.

Alabama did rally for the win. Kif-

fin said it takes some breaks to

beat a No. 1 team, along with play-

ing and preparing very well.

“That’s why they rarely hap-

pen,” Kiffin said. “Maybe we can

get one of those passes where the

quarterback gets hit and they drop

it and it tips up to us and we go

score. Call Hugh and ask him what

that play is called.”

VASHA HUNT/AP

No. 1 Alabama and quarterback Bryce Young play host to No. 12 Mississippi this Saturday. The Rebels,coached by former Alabama assistant Lane Kiffin, have their highest ranking since 2016.

SEC’s leading teams hostleague’s big early surprisesNo. 1 Alabama plays No. 12 Mississippi, No. 2 Georgia faces No. 8 Arkansas

BY JOHN ZENOR

Associated Press No. 12 Mississippi (3-0)at No. 1 Alabama (4-0)

AFN-Sports9:30 p.m. Saturday CET4:30 a.m. Sunday JKT

No. 8 Arkansas (4-0)at No. 2 Georgia (4-0)

AFN-Sports

6 p.m. Saturday CET

1 a.m. Sunday JKT


MLB/NFL

ST. LOUIS — Milwaukee

Brewers reliever Devin Williams

fractured his throwing hand

when he punched a wall after his

team celebrated its NL Central ti-

tle, likely knocking him out for

the entire postseason.

Brewers president of baseball

operations David Stearns said be-

fore the Brewers’ Wednesday

night game with the St. Louis

Cardinals that Williams’ injury

likely will require surgery.

Stearns said there’s an “outside

chance” the 2020 NL rookie of the

year could be available for the

World Series if the Brewers get

that far.

Milwaukee clinched the divi-

sion crown Sunday by beating the

New York Mets 8-4 in its regular-

season home finale.

“After our celebration, I went

out to have a few drinks,” Wil-

liams said Wednesday. “On my

way home, I was a little frustrat-

ed and upset, and I punched a

wall. That’s how it happened.”

The injury leaves the Brewers

without their main setup man for

All-Star closer Josh Hader.

“I don’t think it’s going to be

one player who fills that role,”

manager Craig Counsell said. “I

think it’s going to be multiple

players that fill that role. And

when you say the role, don’t think

about the regular season is what I

guess I would say. It’s going to be

a pitcher. It’s not necessarily go-

ing to be a reliever. We have to

get 27 outs to win a playoff game.

That’s truly how we see it.”

Williams, a 27-year-old right-

hander, has an 8-2 record with a

2.50 ERA in 58 games this season.

He has struck out 87 batters in 54

innings. Opponents are batting

.186 against him.

AARON GASH/AP

The Brewers’ Devin Williamsfractured his throwing handSunday night when he punched awall after his team celebrated itsNL Central title, likely knockinghim out for the postseason.

Brewers relieverto missplayoffs

Associated Press

American LeagueEast Division

W L Pct GB

x-Tampa Bay 98 60 .620 _

New York 90 68 .570 8

Boston 89 69 .563 9

Toronto 88 70 .557 10

Baltimore 51 107 .323 47

Central Division

W L Pct GB

x-Chicago 91 68 .572 _

Cleveland 77 81 .487 13½

Detroit 75 83 .475 15½

Kansas City 73 85 .462 17½

Minnesota 71 87 .449 19½

West Division

W L Pct GB

Houston 92 66 .582 _

Seattle 89 70 .560 3½

Oakland 85 74 .535 7½

Los Angeles 75 83 .475 17

Texas 58 100 .367 34

National LeagueEast Division

W L Pct GB

Atlanta 85 72 .541 _

Philadelphia 81 77 .513 4½

New York 75 83 .475 10½

Miami 65 93 .411 20½

Washington 65 94 .409 21

Central Division

W L Pct GB

x-Milwaukee 95 63 .601 _

y-St. Louis 88 70 .557 7

Cincinnati 82 77 .516 13½

Chicago 68 90 .430 27

Pittsburgh 59 99 .373 36

West Division

W L Pct GB

z-San Francisco 104 54 .658 _

z-Los Angeles 102 56 .646 2

San Diego 78 80 .494 26

Colorado 73 85 .462 31

Arizona 50 108 .316 54

x-clinched division; y-clinched wild card;z-clinched playoff berth

Wednesday’s games

Toronto 6, N.Y. Yankees 5Boston 6, Baltimore 0Minnesota 5, Detroit 2Chicago White Sox 6, Cincinnati 1Tampa Bay 7, Houston 0L.A. Angels 7, Texas 2Kansas City 10, Cleveland 5Seattle 4, Oakland 2Colorado 10, Washington 5Miami 3, N.Y. Mets 2Chicago Cubs 3, Pittsburgh 2Atlanta 7, Philadelphia 2Milwaukee 4, St. Louis 0San Francisco 1, Arizona 0L.A. Dodgers 11, San Diego 9

Thursday’s games

L.A. Angels at TexasBoston at BaltimoreN.Y. Yankees at TorontoTampa Bay at HoustonDetroit at MinnesotaCleveland at Kansas CityMilwaukee at St. LouisChicago Cubs at PittsburghMiami at N.Y. MetsPhiladelphia at AtlantaArizona at San FranciscoSan Diego at L.A. Dodgers

Friday’s games

Boston (Rodríguez 11-8) at Washington(Rogers 2-1)

Tampa Bay (TBD) at N.Y. Yankees (Cortes Jr. 2-2)Baltimore (TBD) at Toronto (TBD)Cleveland (Morgan 4-7) at Texas (Howard 0-4)Detroit (Peralta 4-4) at Chicago White Sox

(Lynn 10-6)Minnesota (TBD) at Kansas City (TBD)Oakland (Manaea 10-10) at Houston (TBD)L.A. Angels (Suarez 7-8) at Seattle (Gon-

zales 10-5)Cincinnati (Castillo 8-16) at Pittsburgh

(Crowe 4-8)Philadelphia (Suárez 7-5) at Miami (Al-

cantara 9-14)N.Y. Mets (Hill 6-8) at Atlanta (TBD)Chicago Cubs (Davies 6-12) at St. Louis

(Hudson 1-0)Colorado (Gray 8-12) at Arizona (Castella-

nos 2-2)San Diego (TBD) at San Francisco (TBD)Milwaukee (TBD) at L.A. Dodgers (Ker-

shaw 10-8)

Saturday’s games

Tampa Bay at N.Y. YankeesBaltimore at TorontoBoston at WashingtonCleveland at TexasDetroit at Chicago White SoxMinnesota at Kansas CityOakland at HoustonL.A. Angels at SeattleSan Diego at San FranciscoPhiladelphia at MiamiCincinnati at PittsburghChicago Cubs at St. LouisN.Y. Mets at AtlantaColorado at ArizonaMilwaukee at L.A. Dodgers

Scoreboard

PHILADELPHIA — The Phila-

delphia Eagles set a franchise re-

cord Monday night that they are

not eager to celebrate.

They handed the ball to their

running backs only three times

among 53 snaps in a blowout loss

to the rival Dallas Cowboys.

Fans and other observers were

dumbfounded.

Miles Sanders, who got two of

those carries for 27 yards, said his

goal in speaking with reporters on

Wednesday afternoon was to “just

quiet all that down.”

Sanders had his work cut out for

him.

As the Eagles picked up the

pieces from their 41-21 loss at Dal-

las and began preparing for this

week’s visit from Kansas City,

questions about first-year head

coach Nick Sirianni’s play-calling

led a long list of pertinent topics

arising from that NFC East deba-

cle.

Since the Eagles drafted Sand-

ers in the second round, 53rd over-

all, in 2019, he has produced the

fourth-most scrimmage yards per

touch among NFL running backs

with at least 300 touches.

In addition to the career-low

two carries, Sanders caught three

passes for 28 yards. The Eagles

couldn’t get much going with one

of their most potent playmakers

on a night when they struggled to

move the ball consistently.

“He’s a pivotal part of this of-

fense, one of the top running backs

in the league, he’s gotta get his,”

second-year quarterback Jalen

Hurts said Wednesday, when

asked about Sanders.

Earlier in the day, Sirianni said

he didn’t want to specify a target

number of touches for Sanders,

then added: “Does he need more

than five touches? Of course. The

way the game went, he didn’t get

that. … There’s no doubt, we’ve

got to get our playmakers the ball.

He’s a playmaker. He’s shown

that he’s a playmaker.”

Sanders said he “didn’t dwell on

it too much,” Monday night. “It is

what it is. I can only control what I

can control. The game was pretty

much out of hand early, so I could

see why the game plan ... didn’t go

as planned. It’s kind of like a panic

in there throughout the whole

team, you know, just based on the

way that the game went.

“I didn’t question it, didn’t show

any type of emotion, just kept

playing the game. ... I’m not over

here saying what y’all really want

me to say, I’m just here to (dead-

en) all this. It’s on to the next

week.”

Sanders said Hurts reached out

to all the running backs after the

loss, emphasizing that there are a

lot of games left.

“We’re not down on anybody on

this team,” Sanders said. “I’m not

down on my teammates, not down

on (Sirianni).”

The loss was troubling, though,

as Sirianni and Hurts attempt to

establish themselves.

“It starts with me,” Hurts said

Wednesday. “I’ll be better for this

team.”

Sanders stood up for his QB.

“It’s one week, man. Second-

year quarterback. He’ll be all

right,” Sanders said. “We’re all go-

ing to be all right. We’re all behind

him. We ain’t doubting nobody.”

Later on, Sanders said that “I do

believe, to have a successful of-

fense, you have to run the ball,”

and added that “I can sit here and

tell you what I think we should do,

but I’m not a coach.”

Hurts’ mistakes in his seventh

NFL start were among the most

notable problems Monday night,

and Hurts said afterward that the

loss was on him.

Asked about that Wednesday,

Sirianni said: “I don’t think that’s

fair for him to, say, take the blame

for a loss.” He added that he liked

Hurts’ willingness to be held ac-

countable.

“I don’t think he played his best

game. I don’t think he played a bad

game,” Sirianni said. “We all need

to improve. When you lose like we

lost on Monday night, everybody

needs to improve. Everybody

needs to look in the mirror, start-

ing with myself.”

Hurts said better times will

come for the 1-2 team, which faces

a punishing run of games against

the Chiefs, Panthers, Bucs and

Raiders.

“This whole nucleus we have

here, we’re all growing, we’re all

together, we’re all finding each

other and creating an identity,”

Hurts said. “It’s coming.”

MICHAEL AINSWORTH/AP

Eagles running back Miles Sanders, center, looks for room on a run as Cowboys linebacker Jaylon Smithgives chase. Sanders ran the ball only two times in Monday’s game, which led to criticism of quarterbackJalen Hurts and coach Nick Sirianni.

Eagles expect more fromrunning game than 3 carries

BY LES BOWEN

Associated Press

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2-1)at New England Patriots (1-2)

AFN-Sports2:20 a.m. Monday CET9:20 a.m. Monday JKT

sport, and obviously, the greatest football player,”

said former Patriots tight end Jermaine Wiggins, a

member of New England’s first championship team.

“But for me I look at Bill, and what Bill has done for

this organization, it’s about drafting guys and bring-

ing guys in here and giving guys opportunities. And

he gave Brady that opportunity. Tom Brady, a lot of

the stuff he knows now and I think what you’re seeing

down in Tampa, Brady has taken everything that Bill

taught him and now implemented in Tampa — get-

ting those to buy in down there.”

So, Brady vs. Belichick depends on the question.

Who needed the other more? The best answer just

might be they needed each other.

“Well, I have 20 years of being there and, obviously

he’s a great mentor for me,” Brady said this week on

his SiriusXM podcast. “And, yes, there’s definitely

great lessons I’ve learned from him. He’s a great foot-

ball coach and he does a great job for his team. Any

player I think they would just hope that their coaches

give them everything they’ve got, and I’m sure every

great coach wants every player to give them every-

thing they’ve got. And I think that’s what makes a

great relationship.”

Who is more important to a team’s success? Brady

hoisted another Vince Lombardi Trophy and playful-

ly tossed it from one boat to another in his first season

after leaving New England. Belichick doesn’t even

have a winning record with all other QBs.

“Tom’s had an unbelievable career. There’s not

enough superlatives and adjectives to compliment

him on everything he’s achieved and continues to

achieve,” Belichick said. “It’s unbelievably impres-

sive. Nothing Tom does surprises me. He’s a great

player. Works hard. Takes care of himself. He’s

thought about playing until he’s 50 and if anyone can

do it, he probably can.”

Grudge: Brady-Belichick rivalrygoes far beyond just the numbersFROM PAGE 48

PHELAN EBENHACK/AP

Brady waves to fans as he celebrates the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’Super Bowl victory over the Kansas City Chiefs with a boat paradeFeb. 10 in Tampa, Fla. It was Brady’s seventh Super Bowl victory.

QB Tom Brady, left, standswith coach Bill Belichick,right, in 2018.


NFL


NFL

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — As the

Carolina Panthers were prepar-

ing to make their pick in the fourth

round of this past April’s draft,

coach Matt Rhule received an un-

expected text message from his

wife.

It read: “Please take Chuba

Hubbard!”

A few minutes later, Hubbard

was a member of the Panthers. Of

course, the Carolina scouting de-

partment had their eyes on Hub-

bard for a long time before Julie

Rhule’s endorsement, but it cer-

tainly made for a funny story —

one that team owner David Tep-

per shared with Hubbard when he

called to congratulate him on be-

coming a member of the Panthers.

“Julie, being a coach’s wife,

she’s sat through a lot of games

and seen a lot of people,” Rhule

said at the time. “It’s funny, I had

one former executive who texted

me and said, ‘It’s pretty simple.

When you play against guys and

you hate playing against them,

they’re people someday you want

to put on your team.’ ”

On Sunday, the Panthers (3-0)

will get an extended look at Hub-

bard as he’s expected to get his

first NFL start against the Dallas

Cowboys (2-1) with Christian

McCaffrey out for the next few

weeks with a hamstring injury.

Royce Freeman will also play

running back and the team could

promote Rodney Smith and/or

Spencer Brown from the practice

squad, too.

Quarterback Sam Darnold said

that while playing without McCaf-

frey is “not ideal,” he’s confident

the rookie will be productive if he

doesn’t try to do too much.

“He doesn’t have to do anything

special,” Darnold said. “He just

has to do his job every day. That is

what we ask of everyone. And we

aren’t going to ask him to do any-

thing more just because Christian

is out.”

Hubbard had significant play-

ing time last Thursday night after

McCaffrey pulled up while run-

ning a sweep play in the first quar-

ter of the team’s 24-9 win over the

Houston Texans.

Hubbard struggled initially, but

seemed to get his footing — litera-

lly — in the second half.

Rather than slipping and falling

as he had been doing in some of his

previous carries, Hubbard started

hitting holes hard and finished

with a respectable 52 yards on 17

carries. Freeman, who is consid-

ered a better pass-blocker, car-

ried five times for 17 yards.

But it was Darnold who ran for

two touchdowns while rookie

Tommy Tremble scored the other

on a tight end sweep.

“I told Chuba at halftime,

‘That’s why we drafted you,

man,’ ” Rhule said. “I thought

Chuba was outstanding. At the

end of the half, we didn’t give him

a ton of chances, but I thought he

got in there at the end and made

some key runs. When we can line

up in four-minute offense and run

and get the first down on two

plays, especially versus that stout

defense, that’s a credit to the of-

fensive line, credit to the tight

ends and fullbacks.”

Rhule said it would be unfair to

Darnold and the offensive line to

dramatically change the game

plan just because McCaffrey is

out.

Sure, there will be different for-

mations and Carolina may skip

some plays that McCaffrey runs

well. But for the most part Rhule

has told players they’ll continue to

do what they normally do against

the Cowboys.

Hubbard has shown the ability

to put up some big games while

playing at Oklahoma State, includ-

ing a 171-yard, two-touchdown

performance against the Rhule-

coached Baylor Bears in 2019.

That was the one that caught his

wife’s eye.

MATT PATTERSON/AP

Carolina Panthers running back Chuba Hubbard picks up yardage during last week’s game against theTexans in Houston. Hubbard finished with 52 yards on 17 carries while filling in for Christian McCaffrey.

Panthers’ Hubbard stepsin for injured McCaffrey

BY STEVE REED

Associated Press Carolina Panthers (3-0)at Dallas Cowboys (2-1)

AFN-Sports7 p.m. Sunday CET2 a.m. Monday JKT

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The

solution for the San Francisco

49ers’ slow starts on offense won’t

be a quick change at quarterback.

After watching his offense sput-

ter for most of the first half the

past two weeks, coach Kyle Sha-

nahan said Wednesday that get-

ting rookie Trey Lance in for more

plays in place of starter Jimmy

Garoppolo won’t help change that.

“When the whole offense is

struggling, usually the quarter-

back does and I think we have in

the first half the last two games,”

Shanahan said. “I think the whole

offense did a lot better in the sec-

ond half and usually the quarter-

back does when that happens.”

The Niners have scored just

once in the opening quarter all

season on a pass from Lance to

Trent Sherfield in the opener

against Detroit.

San Francisco has been out-

gained by more than 100 yards in

the first quarter of each of the past

two games and ranks 31st in yards

(98) and 28th in yards per play

(3.92) in the opening 15 minutes.

Garoppolo’s 67.5 passer rating

in the first quarter ranks 28th but

he improves to 11th at 106.6 the

rest of the game.

“It really comes down to getting

the play run the right way,” Ga-

roppolo said. “I think just little de-

tails with it. Even if they show us

something that we haven’t really

planned for as an offense, we still

have to be able to execute it.”

While Lance threw the early TD

pass in the opener, he hasn’t got-

ten much playing time so far this

season despite hints that he could

be mixed in more extensively.

Lance has played just seven

snaps in three games, also running

for a TD last week against the

Packers.

Garoppolo has been fairly effi-

cient after the slow starts but

hasn’t delivered the big plays as

he has only one deep completion

and ranks third lowest on his aver-

age depth of target.

“There’s not a quarterback bat-

tle right now,” Shanahan said.

“We’re going with our starting

quarterback who I think is playing

very well. I’m happy that he is, so

Trey is not thrown into any situa-

tions he has to do too early. If he

ever is thrown into that, then I

know Trey will deal with that and

he’ll get better as it goes, but we

have a luxury where we don’t have

to do that yet to Trey or to our

team. So, hopefully we won’t have

to.”

The Niners did add a corner-

back on Wednesday, signing 10-

year veteran Buster Skrine to pro-

vide depth outside and in the slot.

Skrine has played 151 games in his

career, spending last season in

Chicago. He could need a little

time to get up to speed.

San Francisco has issues at cor-

nerback with Jason Verrett out for

the season with a knee injury, slot

cornerback K’Waun Williams

sidelined for at least this week

with a calf injury and Josh Nor-

man’s status undetermined after

he left Sunday’s game with a

bruised lung that sent him to the

hospital.

Norman didn’t practice

Wednesday and will need to pass

additional tests before being

cleared to play.

Despite those absences, the

Niners weren’t able to bring back

Richard Sherman, who signed

with Tampa Bay on Wednesday

after spending the past three sea-

sons in San Francisco. The 49ers

had been in contact with Sherman

but wanted to wait before making

a move.

“We were hoping he was going

to be there for a while so when it

made sense for both of us, we

could do it,” Shanahan said. “But

we lost that opportunity because

Tampa came through and it just

wasn’t the right timing for us.”

TONY AVELAR/AP

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo has a 67.5passer rating in the first quarter, which ranks 28th, but he improvesto 11th at 106.6 the rest of the game.

49ers won’t changeQBs after slow starts

BY JOSH DUBOW

Associated Press Seattle Seahawks (1-2)

at San Francisco 49ers (2-1)AFN-Atlantic

10 p.m. Sunday CET5 a.m. Monday JKT

Out of the postseasonBrewers reliever sidelined after

breaking throwing hand ›› MLB, Page 45


SPORTS

Irish ‘D’ faces tough test in Bearcats ›› College football, Page 42

Without Bill Belichick, Tom Brady won his sev-

enth Super Bowl and is on pace to throw a ca-

reer-high 53 touchdown passes at age 44.

Without Brady under center, Belichick is

63-75 over his career, including 8-11 since the future Hall

of Fame quarterback left New England for Tampa Bay.

Brady vs. Belichick? The numbers don’t lie, but it’s not

that simple.

The ultimate NFL grudge

match takes center stage

Sunday night when Brady

returns to face the Patriots

(1-2) for the first time with

the Buccaneers (2-1).

For many, the Brady vs.

Belichick debate ended

when No. 12 led the Bucca-

neers to a convincing 31-9

victory over the Kansas

City Chiefs and earned his

fifth Super Bowl MVP award last February. Brady’s suc-

cess in Tampa and Belichick’s struggles since the GOAT

left Patriot Place proves the quarterback was more valua-

ble than the coach. It’s clear the Patriots wouldn’t have

won six Super Bowl titles without Brady.

Former Patriots cornerback Asante Samuel said

Belichick is “just another coach” without Brady.

However, it’s fair to say Brady wouldn’t have

earned six rings in New England without Belich-

ick. He drafted Brady in the sixth round with

the 199th overall pick and built a dynasty

around him led by a tenacious defense that

helped them tremendously during their

two decades together.

“What Brady has been able to do in

his career I’ll never take anything

away from him. Greatest athlete

in my opinion to ever play any

Buccaneers quarterbackTom Brady and Patriots

head coach Bill Belichickwon six Super Bowls

together in New England.

AP PHOTOSGrudgematchBuccaneers QB Brady has numbersedge in comparisons with Belichick

BY ROB MAADDI

Associated Press

SEE GRUDGE ON PAGE 46

NFL

8-11Patriots coach Bill Belichick’srecord since quarterback TomBrady left New England to playfor the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.Brady returns to face thePatriots (1-2) for the first timewith the Bucs (2-1).

SOURCE: Associated Press

INSIDE

Slow starts won’tlead to quick changeat quarterback for 49ersPage 47

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