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Volume 79, No. 119 ©SS 2020 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2020

FACES Harvey relishes show’s revival on Facebook Watch Page 15

MILITARY Audit: US Embassy in Kabul paid $8.4M for meals it didn’t need Page 4

NFLOffensive production off the charts in first 3 weeks of seasonBack page

F-35B crashes after colliding with refueler over California » Page 3

Former Vice President Joe Biden President Donald Trump

Chaos inCleveland

Associated Press

CLEVELAND — The first de-bate between President Donald Trump and Democratic chal-lenger Joe Biden deteriorated into bitter taunts and near chaos Tuesday night as Trump repeatedly interrupted his op-ponent with angry — and per-sonal — jabs that sometimes overshadowed the sharply dif-ferent visions each man has for a nation facing historic crises.

In the most tumultuous presi-dential debate in recent memo-ry, Trump refused to condemn white supremacists who have supported him, telling one such group known as Proud Boys to “stand back, stand by.” There were also heated clashes over the president’s handling of the pandemic, the integrity of the election results, deeply per-sonal attacks about Biden’s family and how the Supreme Court will shape the future of the nation’s health care.SEE DEBATE ON PAGE 7

Taunts overpower visions at first debate

BY JENNIFER H. SVAN

Stars and Stripes

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — The opening scenes of the new HBO com-ing-of-age series about military teenagers living on a U.S. base in Italy depict a very relatable government-sponsored move overseas.

The new base commander and her fam-

ily arrive after a trans-Atlantic flight to find some of their luggage has been lost. The 14-year-old son, Fraser Wilson, sulks on the ride to base while the friendly wife of the family’s sponsor makes an awkward attempt at small talk.

The eight-episode “We Are Who We Are,” co-written and directed by Italian Luca Guadagnino, has caught the attention

of many living on U.S. bases overseas, in-cluding a few former military dependents who now have kids of their own.

The show premiered in September on HBO Max in the U.S. and is set to debut Oct. 9 on Sky Atlantic in Europe.

“I think it gives us a piece to relate to, that there’s other people out there doing the same thing,” said Brandie Schaar, who spent time in Germany and England grow-

ing up when her dad was in the Air Force.She’s now an Air Force spouse and mom atRamstein.

Schaar said she’s excited to see the show with her daughter. Hopefully, the show willhelp her daughter “understand her world is so much bigger because of her experi-ences,” she said.

SEE DRAMA ON PAGE 5

AP photos

HBO series depicts life for military families on US base in Italy

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 2 F3HIJKLM

Military ratesEuro costs (Oct. 1) ................................ $1.14Dollar buys (Oct. 1) ...........................€0.8325British pound (Oct. 1) ..........................$1.25Japanese yen (Oct. 1) ........................103.00South Korean won (Oct. 1) ............1,141.00

Commercial ratesBahrain (Dinar) ....................................... 0.3770British pound ........................................ $1.2857Canada (Dollar) ....................................... 1.3379China (Yuan) ........................................... 6.8073Denmark (Krone) ................................... 6.3658Egypt (Pound)....................................... 15.7609Euro ............................................ $1.1697/0.8549Hong Kong (Dollar) ................................ 7.7502Hungary (Forint) ..................................... 311.92Israel (Shekel) ......................................... 3.4292Japan (Yen)............................................... 105.72Kuwait (Dinar) ........................................ 0.3064Norway (Krone) ..................................... 9.4602Philippines (Peso) ................................... 48.48Poland (Zloty) .............................................. 3.88Saudi Arabia (Riyal) .............................. 3.7511Singapore (Dollar)................................. 1.3680South Korea (Won) ............................ 1,168.07

Switzerland (Franc) .............................. 0.9238Thailand (Baht) ......................................... 31.65Turkey (New Lira) ................................... 7.7697(Military exchange rates are those available to customers at military banking facilities in the country of issuance for Japan, South Korea, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. For nonlocal currency exchange rates (i.e., purchasing British pounds in Germany), check with your local military banking facility. Commercial rates are interbank rates provided for reference when buying currency. All figures are foreign currencies to one dollar, except for the British pound, which is represented in dollars-to-pound, and the euro, which is dollars-to-euro.)

Thursday, October 1, 2020

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

T O D A YIN STRIPES

EXCHANGE RATES

INTEREST RATESPrime rate ................................................ 3.25Discount rate .......................................... 0.25Federal funds market rate ................... 0.093-month bill ............................................. 0.0930-year bond ........................................... 1.41

WEATHER OUTLOOK

Bahrain95/88

Baghdad100/68

Doha103/81

KuwaitCity

95/79

Riyadh98/70

Djibouti92/82

Kandahar79/40

Kabul75/54

THURSDAY IN THE MIDDLE EAST FRIDAY IN THE PACIFIC

Misawa66/55

Guam84/81

Tokyo73/64

Okinawa82/79

Sasebo74/64

Iwakuni73/67

Seoul73/58

Osan72/59 Busan

76/65

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

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

Mildenhall/Lakenheath

56/51

Ramstein59/48

Stuttgart62/47

Lajes,Azores69/66

Rota71/62

Morón81/61 Sigonella

77/64

Naples70/61

Aviano/Vicenza62/54

Pápa56/52

Souda Bay75/69

THURSDAY IN EUROPE

Brussels56/53

Zagan55/52

Drawsko Pomorskie

60/50

Associated Press

ORLANDO, Fla. — Squeezed by limits on attendance at its theme parks and other restric-tions due to the pandemic, The Walt Disney Co. said Tuesday it planned to lay off 28,000 workers in its parks division in California and Florida.

Two-thirds of the planned lay-offs involve part-time workers but they ranged from salaried em-ployees to hourly workers, Disney officials said.

Disney’s parks closed last spring as the pandemic started spreading in the U.S. The Florida parks reopened this summer, but the California parks have yet to re-open as the company awaits guid-ance from the state of California.

In a letter to employees, Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney Parks, Experience and Product, said California’s “unwillingness to lift restrictions that would allow Disneyland to reopen” exacerbat-ed the situation for the company.

D’Amaro said his management

team had cut expenses, suspended projects and modified operations but it wasn’t enough given limits on the number of people allowed into the park because of social distancing restrictions and other pandemic-related measures, he said.

Disney officials said the compa-ny would provide severance pack-ages for the employees, where appropriate, and also offer other services to help workers with job placement.

Disney to lay off 28K workers at Calif., Fla. parksBUSINESS/WEATHER

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 3Thursday, October 1, 2020

Stars and Stripes

An F-35B Lightning II stealth fighter crashed Tuesday af-ternoon after colliding with an aerial refueler in California, ac-cording to Marine Corps Air Sta-tion Yuma, Ariz.

The F-35B made contact with a KC-130J Super Hercules during

an air-to-air refueling operation, resulting in the fighter jet crash-ing at about 4 p.m., the air station announced in a news release.

The pilot of the F-35B safely ejected from the aircraft, which went down in Imperial County, according to the release.

The Desert Sun newspaper said it crashed in Salton City near a

state park, igniting fires upon im-pact. They were put out by local firefighters, the report said.

The aerial refueler landed safely in the vicinity of an airport in Thermal, Calif., and all crew members have been reported safe, according to the air station.

The Desert Sun report said it landed in a carrot field with eight

people onboard and was leaking fuel.

The accident’s cause is under investigation.

The incident comes nearly two years after a similar but fatal in-cident involving Marine aviators off the coast of Japan.

Five crew members of a KC-130J tanker and the pilot of an

F/A-18 Hornet died during thenighttime training mission on Dec. 6, 2018. The Hornet collidedwith the Super Hercules during arefueling operation.

The Hornet’s weapons officerwas the sole survivor. Both air-craft were based at Marine CorpsAir Station Iwakuni.news@stripes.com

BY CAITLIN M. KENNEY Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — Navy inves-tigators said they were unable to determine why a seaman shot three civilians at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in December before turning the gun on him-self despite the sailor displaying a number of risk factors leading up to the incident, according to a report released Tuesday.

“The evidence does not estab-lish with certainty why [Seaman Gabriel A.] Romero chose to shoot three civilians and kill him-self, but it does show that he had several stressors in his life in the months leading up to the shooting that, when taken together, likely led him to choose violence. No ef-fective formula exists to predict violent behavior with any level of accuracy,” the report states.

The Navy’s 190-page redacted report of the investigation ex-amined the shooting on Dec. 4, 2019, the mental health of the 22-year-old Romero, the mental health services at the base and the command climate of his ship. The investigation was completed in March and approved in July by Adm. Mike Gilday, the chief of naval operations.

Romero, a machinist’s mate auxiliary fireman, was assigned to the USS Columbia, a fast attack submarine that was in dry dock at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard for maintenance. On the day of the shooting, he was on a security patrol during which he carried an M-4 rifle and an M-9 pistol. The report states that once he was given his weapons, he told the other sailor standing watch, “I’ll be back,” before walking along the dry dock that surrounded the submarine.

Three civilians had left their workstations and were walking on the dry dock when Romero passed them, then turned around and ap-proached them from behind. He then shot them, according to the report. Two of the civilians would later die of their wounds.

After shooting the civilian

workers, Romero then used the pis-tol to shoot himself and died at the scene. Secu-rity forces responded to the scene within one minute and medical ser-

vices responded within six min-utes, according to the report.

“The shooting only lasted a few seconds from beginning to end,” the report states.

Romero was considered an “insider threat,” according to the report, and the investigators de-termined he had “long-developing problems that in aggregate should have raised concerns about his mental condition, and his matu-rity, stability and dependability.”

The report also concludes if the risk factors had been shared be-tween medical professionals and his chain of command, the shoot-ing might have been prevented.

Leading up to the shooting, Romero had received 10 counsel-ing papers — the second-most in the command — for poor work performance and being late to his duties, including a formal coun-seling for his tardiness the day before the shooting. At the coun-seling session, Romero became emotional and began to cry, the report states.

The report also states that nine days before the shooting, Romero found out he had not passed an exam to be promoted to the rank of E-4 or petty officer third class.

Romero had also shown signs of stress and isolation from his ship-mates in the months before the shooting. He had been referred to the base’s embedded mental health program and was diag-nosed with “phase of life prob-lems” and “unspecified problem related to unspecified psychoso-cial circumstances.”

Romero attended several in-dividual therapy sessions in the

three months before the shooting,but only with a behavioral healthtechnician and not the clinic’spsychologist. He never expressedthreats of violence or suicidalthoughts during his visits, ac-cording to the report.

“No one could not have reason-ably predicted Romero’s violentbehavior on Dec. 4, 2019, but hedid demonstrate potential risk indicators that should have beenreported to supervisors,” the re-port states.

Investigators concluded the mental health clinic had underdi-agnosed his mental health condi-tion, did not properly manage his mental health during his visits to the clinic and did not work with his command to let them knowabout his ability to do his job.

“Romero showed signs of anundiagnosed mental disorder thatlikely would have disqualified himfrom submarine duty,” the reportstates. “Romero’s care and the …data indicate a potential patternof underdiagnosis to maintain pa-tients on submarine duty.”

Another finding in the reportstates that Romero should have been rescreened to determineif he could work on patrol watchdue to several risk factors, includ-ing isolation, poor work perfor-mance, repeat counseling and hismental health.

The investigators found the command climate of Romero’s submarine was below average compared to other submarines.They also found his command’ssurveys and assessments showed “shortfalls with monitoring andaddressing the well-being, morale and stress levels of the crew.”

At the end of the report, an en-tire section titled “accountabil-ity” is redacted except for fourbullet points, using the citation for protecting personal privacy.The redacted report does not re-veal who could be held adminis-tratively responsible for misstepsleading up to the shooting and the response afterward . kenney.caitlin@stripes.comTwitter: @caitlinmkenney

BY WYATT OLSON

Stars and Stripes

The guided-missile destroyer USS Stout broke a U.S. Navy re-cord Saturday for remaining at sea for almost seven months, the Navy said.

The ship, commissioned in 1994, has been deployed in the 5th Fleet’s area of operations, which includes the Arabian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, Red Sea and parts of the Indian Ocean.

When Stout reached 208 con-secutive days at sea on Saturday, it surpassed the Navy’s known record previously held by the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group and USS San Ja-cinto, which had remained at sea this year as a result of the coro-navirus and operational require-ments, the Navy said in a news release Tuesday.

The strike group returned to its homeport in Norfolk, Va., in August, but the Stout remained in theater, the Navy said.

Stout is part of Destroyer Squadron 26 under the Eisen-hower Carrier Strike Group, the Navy said.

“USS Stout has been instru-mental in maintaining freedom

of navigation in the region,” Commodore Rob Bellfield, com-mander of Coalition Task Force Sentinel, said in the news release. “Its regular presence has helped to deter potential threats and pro-vide reassurance to the global merchant community.”

The Sentinel task force is the operational arm of the Interna-tional Maritime Security Con-struct, a consortium that includes the United Kingdom, Australia, Albania, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Lithuania, the United Arab Emir-ates and the United States.

Stout spent 139 days at sea in support of the task force, pro-viding overwatch for more than 550 vessels transiting maritime chokepoints, the Navy said.

The ship patrolled the Bab el Mandeb and Strait of Hormuz in support of the Eisenhower and Nimitz carrier strike groups, the Navy said.

“Stout also conducted the first-ever Mid-Deployment Voyage Repair period at sea and executed significant repairs, preservation and preventative maintenance,” the Navy said.olson.wyatt@stripes.comTwitter: @WyattWOlson

MILITARY

Pearl Harbor shooter showed prior signs of being a threat

Marine Corps F-35B crashes after colliding with refueler over Calif.

Destroyer Stout breaks Navy record after 208 consecutive days at sea

MARQUES FRANKLIN/U.S. Navy

Boatswain’s Mate 3rd Class Journey Rohmeyer signals a helicopter to land on the flight deck of the guided-missile destroyer USS Stout on May 21.

‘ Romero’s care and the … data indicate a potential pattern of underdiagnosis to maintain patients on submarine duty. ’

U.S. Navy report

Romero

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 4 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 1, 2020

MILITARY

IG: US paid $8.4M for unneeded meals at embassy

Japan’s defense ministry proposes $52B budget

Air Force tuition assistance will drop by $750 for 2021

BY J.P. LAWRENCE

Stars and Stripes

KABUL, Afghanistan — Poor oversight led the State Depart-ment to pay almost $8.4 million for unneeded meals at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and other fa-cilities in Afghanistan, a govern-ment watchdog agency said.

An audit by the State Depart-ment’s Office of Inspector Gen-eral released Tuesday found multiple deficiencies and insuf-ficient monitoring of a contract awarded to the McLean, Va.-based DynCorp International.

Because of poor record keep-ing, the U.S. can’t recover the $8.4 million paid for the meals and can’t be sure DynCorp fol-lowed the terms of its contract, the IG said.

The State Department has paid DynCorp about $353 mil-lion since 2015 to provide food, security, and medical and other

services. The contract required DynCorp to provide three meals a day, seven days a week, at a rate of about $21 each to cafeterias at the U.S. Embassy and other con-sular facilities, the audit said.

DynCorp receives a fixed amount to provide about 2.9 mil-lion meals each year. But the ac-tual number of meals served has dropped for several years as Em-bassy staff levels have steadily

decreased. A contracting officer last year

based meals on 2016 personnel figures, the IG said.

“The Department did not con-sider the declining number of personnel living and working at the embassy compound and out-lying U.S. Government facilities,” the report said.

In November, the State Depart-ment finally reduced the number of meals required, bringing down food costs by 29%. Had the change been made earlier, the Depart-ment could have saved $8.4 mil-lion in 2019, the report said.

The contracting officer told auditors that personnel numbers in Kabul are difficult to predict and that the current system is cheaper than when the Defense Department paid for meals at the embassy.

The audit also found the State Department’s contracting offi-cers and representatives could

not tell auditors how food quality standards were monitored, andsaid they lost their monthly over-sight checklists during a comput-er upgrade.

DynCorp also could not provide 27% of the required documentschecking sanitation, quality con-trol and proof that goods had beenreceived.

It also failed to develop a plan to reduce costs over time, as ithad said it would when it secured the contract, the audit said.

The State Department con-curred with the audit’s recom-mendations, including one that called for more staff to monitorcontracts.

An audit report released in 2018, which looked at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad found State Department staff had not heldfood service contractors there accountable.lawrence.jp@stripes.comTwitter: @jplawrence3

BY HANA KUSUMOTO

Stars and Stripes

TOKYO — Japan’s Ministry of Defense, under a new administration, on Wednes-day proposed the eighth consecutive hike and its largest defense budget, about $52 billion.

The budget request for fiscal year 2021, about 5.49 trillion yen, is a 3.3% increase over the 5.32 trillion yen, or about $50 bil-lion, approved for the current fiscal year. Japan’s fiscal years begin in April.

Japan is improving its defense capabili-ties as it approaches year three of a five-year defense acquisition plan dubbed the Medium-Term Defense Program. It aims to build effective defense capabilities to respond to threats from adversaries like China and North Korea.

“In order to realize cross-domain op-erations, the Self-Defense Forces will ac-quire and strengthen capabilities in new domains, which are space, cyberspace and electromagnetic spectrum by focusing re-sources and leveraging Japan’s superb sci-ence and technology,” the budget request states.

The budget request includes funding for setting up a specialized electronic warfare unit at Japan Ground Self-Defense Force

Camp Asaka and upgrading the Japan Air Self-Defense Force Space Operation Squadron, which works closely with U.S. Space Command. The squadron will be upgraded to a group by adding another 50 personnel, according to defense ministry officials.

It also requested $1.9 billion — $28.4 mil-lion more than the current budget — to pay for costs related to U.S. forces stationed in Japan. The money will go toward the sala-ries of Japanese workers employed by the U.S. military and maintenance of facilities provided to U.S. forces by the Japanese government.

The budget request does not specify how much the ministry will ask to cover ex-penses related to the realignment of U.S. forces, such as costs related to moving U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam.

The budget also did not specify the amount to be requested to deploy an alter-native to the Aegis Ashore anti-ballistic missile defense system.

The Japanese government scrapped plans to build Aegis Ashore in June due to the cost and a projected 10-year delay to ensure that interceptor missile boosters fell safely on unpopulated areas. The gov-ernment is expected to come up with an al-ternate plan by the end of the year, defense

officials said.The defense request included about $1.92

billion to purchase four F-35A Lightning II stealth fighters and $250 million for two F-35Bs, which are capable of short takeoffs and vertical landings. The ministry also requested $218 million to make improve-ments to the helicopter carrier JS Kaga so it can accommodate F-35Bs, the request

stated.This is the first budget requested under

the new administration. Prime MinisterYoshihide Suga in mid-September tookover premiership from Shinzo Abe, wholed Japan for nearly eight years.

kusumoto.hana@stripes.comTwitter: @HanaKusumoto

BY BRIAN FERGUSON Stars and Stripes

Air Force tuition assistance will drop by $750 during the new fiscal year starting on Thursday, service officials said.

The new $3,750 military tuition assistance cap for fiscal year 2021, down from $4,500, takes effect for college courses beginning on or after Thursday. The cut comes

as more airmen take advantage of the benefit, which the Air Force said could strain its budget.

“We need to make sure the ben-efit is accessible to as many of our service members as possible each year … we made hard decisions in order to keep this program viable and accessible to our force,” Lt. Gen. Brian T. Kelly, deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and services, said in a statement

Tuesday.The Air Force had 80,430 ser-

vice members use the benefit in 2020 as of last week, and expects a similar number in 2021, Air Force Times reported.

The tuition limit applies to both undergraduate and graduate classes. Waivers are available for unusual circumstances, such as a required lab class exceeding the limit by one semester hour or two

quarter hours, or for those work-ing on an unusual degree dead-line, the statement said.

Credit hour limits remain the same at $250 per semester hour and $166.66 per quarter hour.

Airmen may also research other funding opportunities, such as scholarships and grants, and consider standardized testing to help minimize expenses, the statement said.

Service members may apply for assistance up to 45 days beforetheir classes begin. If tuition as-sistance funds run out before theend of the year, those who didn’t get their applications approved intime will have to wait until 2022 for the benefit, the statement said.

ferguson.brian@stripes.comTwitter: @BrianFerg57

YOSHITAKA SUGAWARA, KYODO NEWS/AP

Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s helicopter carrier Kaga, right, and Izumo are seen in Yokohama in 2017 . Japan’s Defense Ministry is seeking a record-high budget of nearly $52 billion for fiscal 2021 .

S.K. VEMMER/U.S. State Department

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, paid $8.4 million for meals it didn’t need at the compound and other consular facilities according to an audit by the Office of Inspector General .

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 5Thursday, October 1, 2020

BY ERICA EARL

Stars and Stripes

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Flu vac-cines for children ages 6 months to 35 months are now available at the home of U.S. Forces Japan in western Tokyo, ac-cording to a Wednesday Facebook post by the 374th Medical Group.

Children in this age range may be vac-cinated immediately, the post said.

Yokota has not received vaccine ship-ments for any other age ranges, accord-ing to the medical group. It will announce when those shipments arrive and it’s ready to administer the inoculations.

For those with upcoming scheduled ap-pointments for their infants, the flu shot will be offered at that appointment.

The medical group advises parents with-out an appointment to visit the immuniza-tion clinic during regular business hours. It is open 7:30-11 a.m. and 12:30-3:30 p.m. Monday; and 7:30-11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.-4 p.m. Wednesday and Friday.

Service members in uniform will have priority, according to the medical group.

U.S. military installations in Japan ap-pear to be receiving shipments of influenza vaccines at different rates, according to the medical group and the U.S. Army Medical Department Activity Japan.

U.S. Army Garrison Japan will start dis-pensing flu shots at Camp Zama early next week for service members and two weeks later for civilians, including children, the commander of the U.S. Army Medical De-partment Activity Japan said Tuesday at a livestreamed town hall.

At Camp Zama, headquarters for U.S. Army Japan, flu shots for service mem-bers and “emergency essential” civilians will be available 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Oct. 8, according to the page.

Family members and Defense Depart-ment civilian employees will be vaccinated Oct. 17 at the Community Recreation Cen-ter and Oct. 24 at the School Age Center at Sagamihara Family Housing Area, ac-cording to the base. Times are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days.earl.erica@stripes.comTwitter: @ThisEarlGirl

FROM FRONT PAGE

The first episode shows the family getting ration cards, a base gas card and IDs.

Fraser, whose bleached-blond frizzy hair, yellow and black nail polish, and leopard print skater shorts make him stick out on the conservative U.S. Army base, balks at removing his dark sun-glasses for his ID photo. “Every-body’s obsessed with IDs here,” he remarks.

Plans to film the show on Caserma Ederle in Vicenza were changed after the Pentagon pulled support for the project due to concerns about the script’s content, Lt. Col. Robert Bockholt, a military spokesman, told Stars and Stripes last year.

Instead, a set was built in Padua, on a former Italian and NATO missile base.

“I didn’t feel like I was in Italy, it looks so American,” actor Jor-dan Kristine Seamon, who plays 14-year-old Caitlin Harper, said in a video about the set on HBO’s website.

The series focuses on Fraser and Caitlin, whose father is a ded-icated soldier and whose mother bakes cakes decorated with American flags for new families.

The show has received an 86% positive score on Rotten Toma-toes, which aggregates reviews across the internet. But it’s been harshly received by some critics such as the Harvard Crimson, who said the teen dialogue makes it come off “like a bad high school sitcom.”

Melissa Corkin, who spent time overseas growing up in a military family, and whose airman hus-band is a former dependent, said she hopes the series captures how resilient military kids need to be.

“You’re constantly moving,” the Ramstein resident said. “Your friends are always leaving (so) you have to be a little tougher.”

The show delves into finding one’s identity — a challenge for all teens but especially military kids without roots. When some-one asks Caitlin where she’s from, her response is: “From a lot of places.”

Schaar and Corkin can relate to that.

“An identity crisis is not the right word — I feel like there’s times where I want to connect to a place as home, but there is no home to connect to,” Schaar said.

Corkin’s family served two tours in England, and she said those 6½ years were the longest she has lived anywhere.

“I went back to London shortly after we got here, and that is prob-ably the only sense of home that I’ll ever have,” Corkin said. “For us, we really don’t want roots be-cause we’re not used to that. We start getting antsy after a couple years.”

Stars and Stripes reporter Nancy Montgomery contributed to this report. svan.jennifer@stripes.comTwitter: @stripesktown

Drama: HBO series looks at life on base for military dependents

Associated Press

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s foreign minis-ter on Wednesday said his country hopes the U.S. will “reconsider” its decision to close its diplomatic mission in Baghdad, as a group of ambassadors expressed their willingness to help Iraq tackle security challenges.

Fuad Hussein spoke at a press confer-ence amid a heated week, sparked by the U.S. warning that it was taking measures to close its embassy in Baghdad unless the Iraqi government took action to stop frequent rocket and improvised explosive device attacks by Iran-backed militias and rogue armed elements against the Ameri-can presence in the country.

Hussein called the threat to close the U.S. Embassy “dangerous” because “there is a possibility that the American withdrawal from Baghdad will lead to other (embassy) withdrawals.”

Rocket and mortar attacks have targeted the Green Zone, the seat of Iraq’s govern-ment and home to many foreign embassies, including the U.S. Embassy. These attacks have also targeted Baghdad’s internation-

al airport, and a recent rocket attack in-tended for the airport struck a residentialhome, killing six Iraqi civilians, all women and children.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeodelivered the embassy closure warning toIraq’s President Barham Saleh and Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in separate phone calls last week.

A U.S. official said the warning was notan imminent ultimatum. But some Iraqiofficials appear to be under the impressionit may coincide with the expiry of the latest Iran sanctions waiver in two months time.Iraq desperately needs the waivers to im-port Iranian energy. The U.S. official was not authorized to discuss the matter pub-licly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

In the press conference, Hussein said: “We hope that the U.S. government andAmerican administration will reconsider this decision. ... Because the decision is awrong one, it was taken at the wrong timeand the wrong place.“

He said it would also send a message to the armed groups and extremists perpetu-ating the attacks that they were effective in reaching their political aims.

Flu vaccines available at Yokota base for some kids

Iraq hopes US will ‘reconsider’ closing its embassy in Baghdad

MILITARY

YANNIS DRAKOULIDIS/HBO

Tom Mercier, left, and Chloe Sevigny in a scene from the first episode of the HBO series “We Are Who We Are,’’ a drama about life for military dependents and others on base at U.S. Army Garrison Italy in Vicenza.

ALESSIO BOLZONI/HBO

Jack Dylan Grazer, left, and Ben Taylor, center, play Fraser and Sam in the HBO series .

ALESSIO BOLZONI/HBO

Jordan Kristine Seamon plays Caitlin in “We Are Who We Are.”

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 6 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 1, 2020

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A bill to fund the federal government cleared a key Senate procedural hurdle Tuesday as lawmakers sought to accomplish the bare minimum before they depart Washington to campaign — pre-venting a shutdown for when the new fiscal year begins.

The measure to keep the gov-ernment running through Dec. 11 advanced by a tally of 82-6. A final vote on Wednesday would send the stopgap spending bill to President Donald Trump in time for his signature before the new budget year starts Thursday.

The funding measure advanced while House Speaker Nancy Pelo-si and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made a last-ditch effort to strike an agreement on a sepa-rate COVID-19 rescue bill that has eluded them for weeks. The two spoke Tuesday for almost an hour, Pelosi’s office said, and plan to meet face-to-face Wednesday.

“We’re going to give it one more serious try to get this done, and I think we’re hopeful that we can get something done,” Mnuchin said Wednesday morning on CNBC.

Wednesday afternoon’s meet-ing at the Capitol was supposed to feature a new Trump adminis-tration offer. Mnuchin told CNBC that he expected the proposal to resemble a plan released a couple of weeks ago by the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus that to-taled about $1.5 trillion — but was previously rejected by Pe-losi and other top Democrats as inadequate.

The two sides remain far apart on COVID relief, and neither side has publicly offered the kind of concessions that would generate

tangible momentum. Pelosi andMnuchin have worked effectivelytogether in the past and were key forces on an earlier $2 trillion aidpackage that passed in March, but the bipartisan spirit that drove that measure into law hasall but evaporated.

Republicans say they cannot stomach any agreement close tothe $2.2 trillion bill that Demo-crats are pushing, and Pelosi has not been willing to offer greaterconcessions without Republicansgiving more ground of their own.

If the talks between Pelosi andMnuchin fizzle out, the CaliforniaDemocrat appears likely to call a vote on the scaled-back relief bill in the House. Party moderateshave been pressing Pelosi to dem-onstrate greater flexibility andhave been itching for legislationthat actually becomes law ratherthan passing a partisan bill.

But Republicans immediately swung against Pelosi’s bill, sayingthe liberal speaker isn’t serious.And even if Pelosi and Mnuchin were able to reach a tentativeagreement on “top line” spending levels, dozens of smaller detailswould need to be worked out.

Pelosi has not budged an inchon a key demand of Senate Ma-jority Leader Mitch McConnell,R-Ky., who says he will not permita vote on any relief bill that doesnot provide a liability shield forbusinesses, schools and universi-ties that reopen as the pandemicrages on.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told reporters thathe and Mnuchin “had a couple ofconversations this morning. We also had a conversation with thepresident so hopefully we’ll make some progress and find a solutionfor the American people.”

Associated Press

NEW YORK — Mail-in voting has gotten off to a rocky start in New York City, where election officials sent out nearly 100,000 absentee ballots with the wrong names and addresses printed on the return envelopes.

The deluge of faulty ballots, sent to voters across Brooklyn, could result in ballots being void-ed if voters sign their own name on return envelopes bearing dif-ferent names.

The New York City Board of Elections blamed the problem on the company hired to print and mail the ballots.

The faulty ballots are limited to one print run of ballots sent out to Brooklyn voters, the board’s director Michael Ryan said at a board meeting Tuesday. He didn’t say during the meeting how many were printed. But Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top aide Melissa DeRosa later said the issue was contained to about 100,000 ballots.

All voters who got the bad bal-lots will receive new ones before the Nov. 3 election, with the ven-dor covering the cost, Ryan said. He said the move will “make cer-tain that absolutely no disenfran-chisement occurs in the borough of Brooklyn.”

It’s unclear exactly how the city will handle voters who had already mailed their complet-ed ballot back in the provided envelopes.

Ryan said elections workers will reach out to voters by social media and, if available, by tele-phone and email addresses. And he said the board will ensure all received ballots are “appropri-ately processed” and tallied votes are “properly credited.”

“It is essential that confidence be established on this process and

that we make certain we have all the voters who potentially have a problem have a full and fair op-portunity to remedy that prob-lem,” Ryan said.

The printer the city blamed for the error, Phoenix Graphics, didn’t return messages seeking comment.

The Rochester-based printing company, which was founded in 1985 and calls itself the state’s largest supplier of ballot materi-als, is urging those who call its offices about absentee ballot is-sues to contact their local board of election.

“Phoenix Graphics is working hard with your board of elections to ensure that everyone will have what they need to vote,” the com-pany’s voicemail message said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the city elections board was also dealing with con-fusion regarding another printing anomaly on absentee ballots.

Ordinarily, absentee ballots in the city are sent out with a head-ing identifying them as an “Offi-cial Absentee / Military Ballot.” This year, the slash between “ab-sentee” and “military” was left out, leading some voters to believe they had mistakenly been mailed a ballot for use only by members of the military.

The board tweeted that the bal-lot was still good for use by any registered voter.

The pair of mishaps took place despite intense scrutiny of mail-in voting nationwide. And it comes on the heels of a rocky spring pri-mary in New York in which elec-tion boards struggled to handle a record amount of voting by mail.

Marla Garfield, an editor who lives in Brooklyn, said she was among those who received a bal-lot envelope with another person’s name.

Garfield said she is “furious” about the errors and plants to vote in-person out of concern replace-ment ballots won’t arrive in time. She’s worried the confusion will fuel distrust in mail-in-voting.

“It’s a mess, it’s an absolute mess,” she said.

“The fact they don’t know how far reaching it is, is troubling,” she added. “And you have this moment where really, now this election, this is the one this is happening to?”

In Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay section, Victoria Edel, 28, said her family of four was excited to open up their ballots to vote by mail. They had requested them online Aug. 22.

Then, they discovered she had received her younger brother’s ballot envelope. Her younger brother had her mother’s. Her mother had the envelope of a woman who appears to live near-by. She said she’s worried about people who don’t watch the news and perhaps are still sending back ballots in wrong envelopes.

“It feels like it’s really easy for a lot of people to be disenfran-chised this way,” Edel said.

She’s hopeful she’ll get her cor-rect envelope eventually.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, more than 400,000 New York City residents voted by absentee ballot in during the pri-mary. That was 10 times the num-ber of absentee ballots cast in the 2016 primary.

Many voters complained that their absentee ballots didn’t ar-rive in time for the primary. And thousands of ballots cast by mail were later disqualified for minor technical errors, including voters forgetting to sign their name, or the U.S. Postal Service failing to put a postmark on the ballot indi-cating when it was sent.

Associated Press

DENTON, Texas — A Dallas salon owner who was sent to jail for defying coronavirus lockdown orders and became a symbol of conservative angst over COVID-19 restrictions advanced to a runoff for a Texas Senate seat on Tuesday night.

Republican Shelley Luther fin-ished in a virtual dead heat with four-term Republican state Rep. Drew Springer as both advanced. Luther had 31.7% of the vote in a special election to fill a vacat-ed seat in a heavily Republican North Texas district. Springer, a Muenster tax consultant, tallied 31.83% of the vote. Jacob Minter,

the lone Democrat in the six-can-didate race and an electrician heading up a quality control teamfor a union in Sherman, finishedthird with 21.06% of the vote.

The district reaches from Ste-phenville and the northern sub-urbs of Dallas and Fort Worth toWichita Falls and the Red River.

Luther’s springboard into poli-tics came in May when she spentabout two days in jail for refusingto shut down her salon despite Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’semergency orders. She received $500,000 in donations with thehelp of conservative activists at atime when protests over COVID-19 restrictions unfolded acrossthe country.

NATION

Ballots on the goA poll worker hangs on the ballot box Tuesday at a satellite election office at Temple University’s Liacouras Center in Philadelphia.

MATT SLOCUM/AP

Error leaves thousands in NYC with flawed absentee ballots

Senate moves bill funding government through December

Texas salon owner who defied lockdown in tight election race

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 7Thursday, October 1, 2020

FROM FRONT PAGE

But it was the belligerent tone that was persistent, somehow fit-ting for what has been an extraor-dinarily ugly campaign. The two men frequently talked over each other with Trump interrupting, nearly shouting, so often that Biden eventually snapped at him, “Will you shut up, man?

“The fact is that everything he’s saying so far is simply a lie,” Biden said. “I’m not here to call out his lies. Everybody knows he’s a liar.”

The presidential race has been remarkably stable for weeks, de-spite the historic crises that have battered the country this year, including a pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 Ameri-cans and a reckoning over race and police brutality. With just five weeks until Election Day and voting already underway in some key states, Biden has maintained a lead in national polls and in many battlegrounds.

It’s unclear whether the debate will do much to change those dynamics.

Over and over, Trump tried to control the conversation, inter-rupting Biden and repeatedly talking over the moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News. The presi-dent tried to deflect tough lines of questioning — whether on his taxes or the pandemic — to deliv-er broadsides against Biden.

The president drew a lecture from Wallace, who pleaded with both men to stop talking over each other. Biden tried to push back against Trump, sometimes looking right at the camera to directly address viewers rather than the president and snapping, “It’s hard to get a word in with this clown.”

Again refusing to commit to honoring the results of the elec-tion, Trump spread falsehoods about mail voting. Without evi-dence, he suggested that the process — surging in popularity during the pandemic — was ripe for fraud and incorrectly claimed impropriety at a Pennsylvania voting site.

But despite his efforts to domi-nate the discussion, Trump was frequently put on the defensive and tried to sidestep when he was asked if he was willing to con-demn white supremacists and paramilitary groups.

“What do you want to call them? Give me a name. Give me a name,” Trump said, before Biden mentioned the far right, violent group known as the Proud Boys. Trump then pointedly did not condemn the group, instead say-ing: “Proud Boys, stand back, stand by. But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem. This is a left-wing problem.”

Biden attacked Trump’s han-dling of the pandemic, saying that the president “waited and waited” to act when the virus reached America’s shores and “still doesn’t have a plan.” Biden told Trump to “get out of your bunker and get out of the sand trap” and go in his golf cart to the

Oval Office to come up with a bi-partisan plan to save people.

Trump snarled a response, declaring: “I’ll tell you Joe, you could never have done the job that we did. You don’t have it in your blood.”

“I know how to do the job,” was the solemn response from Biden, who served eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president.

The pandemic’s effects were in plain sight, with the candidates’ lecterns spaced far apart, all the guests in the small crowd tested and the traditional opening hand-shake scrapped. While neither candidate wore a mask to take the stage, their families did sport face coverings.

Trump struggled to define his ideas for replacing the Afford-able Care Act on health care in the debate’s early moments and defended his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, declaring, “I was not elected for three years, I’m elected for four years.

“We won the election. Elections have consequences. We have the Senate. We have the White House and we have a phenomenal nomi-nee, respected by all.”

Trump criticized Biden over the former vice president’s re-fusal to comment on whether he would try to expand the Supreme Court in retaliation if Barrett is confirmed to replace the late Jus-tice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That idea has gained momentum on the party’s left flank, but Biden tried to put distance between himself and the liberal wing, de-

clining to endorse the Green New Deal and rejecting the assertion that he was under the control of radicals by declaring “I am the Democratic Party now.”

The scattershot debate bounced from topic to topic, with Trump again refusing to embrace the science of climate change while Biden accused Trump of walking away from the American prom-ise of equity for all and making a race-based appeal.

“This is a president who has used everything as a dog whistle to try to generate racist hatred, racist division,” Biden said.

Recent months have seen major protests after the deaths of Black people at the hands of po-lice. Biden said the country faces a problem with systemic racism and that while the vast majority of police officers are “decent, hon-orable men and women,” there are “bad apples” and people have to be held accountable.

Trump in turn claimed that Biden’s work on a federal crime bill treated the African American population “about as bad as any-body in this country.” The presi-dent pivoted to his hardline focus on those protesting racial injus-tice and accused Biden of being afraid to use the words “law and order,” out of fear of alienating the left.

“Violence in response is never appropriate,” Biden said. “Never appropriate. Peaceful protest is.”

The attacks turned deeply per-sonal when Trump returned to a campaign attack line by declar-

ing that Biden’s son, Hunter, had inappropriately benefit ed from his father’s connections while working in Ukraine. Biden rarely looked at Trump during the night but turned to face the president when he defended his sons, in-cluding Beau, an Army veteran who died of cancer in 2015, after the commander in chief’s report-ed insults of those who served in the military.

A new report from two Repub-lican-led Senate committees al-leged that Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine at the same time his father was vice president raised conflict-of-interest concerns for the Obama administration, but the report did not link Joe Biden to any wrongdoing or misconduct. Trump was impeached for push-ing Kiev to investigate the Biden family.

The debate was arguably Trump’s best chance to try to re-frame the campaign as a choice between candidates and not a ref-erendum over his handling of the

virus that has killed more people in America than any other nation. Americans, according to polling,have soured on his leadership inthe crisis, and the president hasstruggled to land consistent at-tacks on Biden.

In the hours before the debate,Biden released his 2019 tax re-turns just days after the block-buster revelations about Trump’slong-hidden tax history, includingthat he paid only $750 a year in federal income taxes in 2016 and2017 and nothing in many other years. The returns showed that the Bidens paid nearly $300,000 in taxes in 2019.

Trump, in the debate, insisted he paid millions in taxes — butrefused to say how much he paidin federal income taxes — andinsisted he had taken advantageof legal tax incentives, anotherangry exchange that led to Bidendeclaring that Trump was the“worst president” the nation hasever had.

Debate: Voters watch Trump, Biden trade insults, jabsNATION

MORRY GASH/AP

President Donald Trump makes a point as former Vice President Joe Biden listens during the first presidential debate Tuesday at Case Western University and Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 8 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 1, 2020

NATION

BY MARY CLARE JALONICK AND LISA MASCARO

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Republi-can senators praised President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Tuesday as Judge Amy Coney Barrett held one-on-one meetings at the Capitol, but Democrats said her conservative views are out of step with Ameri-cans as they object to a fast-track confirmation before the Nov. 3 election.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he was “even more convinced” of Barrett after their brief meeting. Noting she is a working mother of seven chil-dren, he scoffed at Democratic objections that the judge would put Americans’ access to health care at risk or turn back the clock on women’s rights. “What a joke,” he said.

But the Republican leader de-clined to answer questions about whether Barrett should recuse herself if legal challenges in the election between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden land at the

high court. One key Republican, Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, said that’s “the entire reason” why the Senate should rush to fill the va-cant seat — “so that the Supreme Court can resolve any cases that arise in the wake of the election.”

Democrats are confronting the limits of their power as they fight against the nomination and some have said they won’t meet with Barrett, who is expected to be confirmed for the seat held by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by the end of October. Ginsburg died Aug. 18 at age 87 .

With Republicans holding a 53-47 Senate majority, and just two GOP senators opposing a quick vote, Barrett appears to have enough support for confirmation. At the Capitol, Vice President Mike Pence said Barrett “repre-sents the best of America.” The White House formally submitted the nomination Tuesday.

“She’s got a good chance of get-ting my vote,“ said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the former Judiciary Committee chairman who now helms the Finance Committee.

Ahead of one meeting, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the GOP whip, said the two were set “to talk about judicial philosophy and background and experience, and also whether or not she thinks ‘Hoosiers’ is the greatest movie ever.”

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lind-sey Graham, said that barring any unusual developments, “I’m going to vote for her.“

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer acknowledged Tuesday it will be an “uphill fight” to stop Trump’s nominee. But he said Americans are on Democrats’ side in preferring to wait until after the election so the winner can choose the next jus-

tice. He is among those refusing to meet with Barrett, calling the process “illegitimate,” and said her conservative views on health care, abortion and other issues are “far outside” the mainstream.

“It’s not over,” Schumer said on ABC’s “The View.”

Barrett made no public remarks at the start of what is expected to be days of meet-and-greet ses-sions with senators, a traditional part of the confirmation process. Hearings at the Senate Judiciary Committee are set to begin Oct. 12.

No justice has ever been con-firmed to the Supreme Court so close to a presidential election. According to a national poll by The New York Times and Siena

College that was released Sunday, a clear majority — 56% — of vot-ers believes the winner of the Nov.3 presidential election should fill Ginsburg’s seat, versus 41% whosaid Trump should as the current president.

Unable to block Trump’s pickon their own, Democrats are ar-guing to voters that Barrett’s nomination threatens the protec-tions of the Affordable Care Act— a focus that Biden has em-braced and many Democrats see as a winning message. The courtwill hear a case challenging theconstitutionality of President Barack Obama’s health care law just after the election, adding tothe urgency of the issue.

BY ERIC TUCKER

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Former special counsel Robert Mueller pushed back Tuesday against criticism from one of the top pros-ecutors on the Russia investiga-tion team that the team was not as aggressive as it should have been in probing connections between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.

The rare public statement from Mueller, his first since his July 2019 congressional testimony, follows a new book by Andrew Weissmann that contends the team did not aggressively pursue certain actions or lines of inqui-ry out of concern that President Trump could fire them and close down the operation. That includes issuing a subpoena to Trump to compel his testimony, something Mueller’s investigators opted not to do. They received written an-swers instead.

Mueller did not specifically mention the book in his state-ment, but the timing made clear that it was issued in response.

“It is not surprising that mem-bers of the Special Counsel’s Of-fice did not always agree, but it is

disappoint-ing to hear criticism of our team based on in-complete in-formation,“ Mueller said in the statement.

“The of-fice’s mis-sion was to

follow the facts and to act with integrity. That is what we did, knowing that our work would be scrutinized from all sides,” he added in the statement. “When important decisions had to be made, I made them. I did so as I have always done, without any interest in currying favor or fear of the consequences. I stand by those decisions and by the conclu-sions of our investigation.”

Weissmann’s book, “Where Law Ends: Inside The Mueller Investigation,” is the first insider account of the Mueller team’s investigation published by a for-mer prosecutor who was part of it. Weissmann was one of the prosecutors involved in the finan-cial crimes case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul

Manafort.Weissmann, who before join-

ing the Russia investigation wasa veteran Justice Departmentprosecutor with experience goingafter mobsters and corporate ex-ecutives, has lamented in a seriesof recent news media interviewsthat the Mueller team did not sub-poena the president for an inter-view or aggressively dig into hisfinances.

He also has been critical ofthe Mueller team’s final report,saying its conclusions were notworded clearly enough, particu-larly as it relates to what he sayswere Trump’s efforts to obstructthe investigation.

The Mueller team identified significant contacts betweenTrump associates and Russiansduring the 2016 campaign, butdid not allege a criminal con-spiracy between the two to tipthe election. The team’s reportalso revealed multiple episodesin which the president sought tostymie the probe, though Muellerdid not reach a conclusion about whether Trump had broken thelaw. Justice Department policy prohibits the indictment of a sit-ting president.

Associated Press

ARLINGTON, Va. — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Gins-burg was buried Tuesday in a private ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, laid to rest beside her husband and near some of her former colleagues on the court.

Washington last week honored Ginsburg, who died Sept. 18 at 87, with two days where the public could view her casket at the top of the Supreme Court’s steps and pay their respects. On Friday, the women’s rights trailblazer and second woman to join the high court lay in state at the U.S. Capi-tol, the first woman to do so.

Already the capital is looking ahead to confirmation hearings expected to begin Oct. 12 for Amy Coney Barrett, whom President Donald Trump announced Satur-day as his nominee for Ginsburg’s seat. Barrett was meeting with senators on Tuesday.

Arlington, just over the Po-tomac River from Washington, is best known as the resting place of approximately 400,000 ser-vice members, veterans and fam-ily members. But Ginsburg is the 14th justice to be buried at the cemetery.

Ginsburg’s husband, Martin

Ginsburg, was buried at Arling-ton in 2010 following his death from cancer. He had served in the Army as an artillery school instructor at Fort Sill, Okla., when the couple were newlyweds. The couple was married for 56 years and had two children. The justice had kept the framed, folded flag from her husband’s casket in her office at the court .

Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said in a statement that according to the justice’s family, Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt — who spoke at ceremonies last week for the justice at the Su-preme Court and the U.S. Capitol — officiated at Tuesday’s burial and offered traditional Jewish prayers. There were no formal remarks. Family, close friends, justices, and Ginsburg’s staff at-tended, Arberg said. Ginsburg was an opera lover, and the cere-mony concluded with recordings of two arias by Giacomo Puccini sung by Leontyne Price.

Ginsburg’s gravesite is just below the final resting place of former President John F. Ken-nedy. The Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument are in the distance. Nine other justices are buried in that section, including three that Ginsburg served with.

Mueller pushes back on criticism from lawyer on his Russia team

Justice Ginsburg interred at Arlington National Cemetery

GOP senators visit with, praise high court pick

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/AP

Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, meets with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Capitol Hill on Tuesday .

Mueller

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 9Thursday, October 1, 2020

BY JOCELYN NOVECK

Associated Press

Disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein may well spend the rest of his life in prison. But that doesn’t mean workers in Holly-wood have faith that other harass-ers and abusers will be similarly punished.

Instead, three years after the explosive Weinstein scandal launched the #MeToo move-

ment, a sur-vey by the Hollywood Commis-sion, chaired by Anita Hill, finds a strong belief in the in-dustry that sexual ha-rassers will not be held to account.

“Things have improved, but not nearly enough,” Hill said in an interview ahead of the survey’s Tuesday release. “People don’t believe their complaints will be taken seriously, they don’t be-lieve that something will happen to people who are found to be harassers. And they DO believe there will be retaliation — wheth-er you’re a victim or a bystander, there’s a belief you will be retali-ated against if you complain.”

The Hollywood Commission was formed in late 2017, shortly after the allegations against Wein-stein rocked the industry and forced a broader societal reckon-ing against sexual misconduct in the workplace. Hill, a prominent voice against sexual harassment ever since her 1991 accusations against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, was named its chair.

The commission says 9,360 people — women and men, in all

levels of entertainment industryjobs — responded to the survey,which was conducted online and anonymously over a three-monthperiod ending in February. T

In findings that Hill called“shocking but not surprising,” given the thousands of anecdotesthe commission received, 65% ofrespondents said they didn’t be-lieve someone in power, for exam-ple a producer or director, wouldbe held accountable for harassingsomeone with less authority.

And there was a gender gap:While 45% of men believed that person would be held accountable, only 28% of women did. Tradition-ally underrepresented groups had less confidence; among biracialwomen, for example, the number was 23%, Hill noted.

Other key findings:� Power inequities fuel the

perceived lack of accountability. Less than half of workers, 48%,saw progress in addressing power abuse since the #MeToo move-ment took hold.� Few people are reporting

sexual harassment or misconduct,because there is little confidencesomething will be done about it. Only 23% of workers said theyhad reported harassing behaviorto a supervisor, and only 9% tohuman resources departments and 4% to legal departments.� Fear of retaliation against

both victims and bystanders is strong, with 41% of respondentssaying they’d experienced retal-iatory behavior for reporting ha-rassment or other misconduct.

The commission, founded by Lucasfilm President KathleenKennedy and lawyer Nina Shaw,is now testing technology for a re-porting platform to launch earlynext year, specifically aimed atdetecting repeat offenders andtailored for the entertainment in-dustry. It is also piloting bystand-er intervention training.

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — Flames devoured swaths of brush and trees in Northern California on Wednes-day amid unseasonably hot and dry weather.

High winds that spread new fires this week in the Napa and Sonoma wine country and in a far north-ern area of the state were reduced to breezes, but vegetation remained ripe for burning in high tem-peratures amid very low humidity.

The National Weather Service said the weather conditions would last for several days due to high pressure centered over the state. Heat advisories were in effect or pending along about three-quar-ters of the California coast and many areas had poor air quality due to smoke.

Numerous studies in recent years have linked bigger wildfires in America to global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas, especially because climate change has made California much drier. A drier California means plants are more flammable.

About 70,000 people were under evacuation orders in the wine region north of San Francisco where the Glass Fire has incinerated dozens of homes along with winery installations and other buildings.

The Napa County Sheriff’s Office posted photos and video of a hellish scene of fires raging on for-ested hillsides at midnight close to a highway in the western part of the county.

About 150 miles to the north, there was no contain-ment reported for the Zogg Fire, which also erupted during Sunday’s high winds and grew quickly, kill-ing three people.

The Glass and Zogg fires are among nearly 30 wildfires burning in California. Fire-related deaths total 29.

Three fires, driven by gusty winds and high tem-peratures, merged into one Sunday, tearing into

vineyards and mountain areas, including part of the city of Santa Rosa. About 70,000 people were under evacuation orders, including the entire 5,000-plus population of Calistoga in Napa County.

Mike Christianson and his wife, Mluz Torres, who were at an evacuation center Tuesday, had watched the fire engulf their Napa County home.

“It was within five minutes, the entire side of the hill was on fire. All trees, all burning, all roaring like a jet,“ he said. “And at that moment, we realized that it was time to go. So we grabbed a few things, jumped in the car.”

Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick acknowl-edged “some significant fire fatigue” in the commu-nity during a news conference Tuesday.

“Many people are feeling the effects, many people are evacuating, and evacuated multiple times, and I just want everyone to know that we continue to sup-port you,” Essick said.

The blaze tore through many iconic wineries in Napa and Sonoma counties and the five-starred Meadowood Resort, home to a three-Michelin-starred restaurant.

Further to the north, in what has already been a historically devastating wildfire season for Califor-nia, a blaze in a heavily forested area of rural Shasta County has killed three people and destroyed nearly 150 buildings. The circumstances of their deaths are not known. More than 1,200 people were evacu-ated for the Zogg Fire, which has burned more than 72 square miles .

Zogg incident commander Sean Kavanaugh said winds from the north have subsided, giving fire-fighters an opportunity to get resources around the large fire.

“The weather has given us a break. We’re going to take the opportunity where we can, with the change in the weather, the calmness,” he said.

Associated Press

A federal judge on Tuesday said a revised Oct. 5 date the U.S. Commerce Department picked to end the 2020 census may violate an order she issued last week that cleared the way for the head count of every U.S. resident to continue through the end of October.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh suggested she would be open to is-suing a contempt finding against the federal government or mak-ing a ruling that her order had been violated.

Last week, the San Jose, Calif ., judge suspended the U.S. Census

Bureau’s deadline for ending the head count Wednesday, which au-tomatically reverted the deadline back to an older Census Bureau plan in which the timeline for ending field operations was Oct. 31. Her order also suspended a Dec. 31 deadline for the Census Bureau to turn in numbers used for apportionment, the process of deciding how many congressional seats each state gets.

In her decision, Koh sided with civil rights groups and local gov-ernments that had sued the Cen-sus Bureau and the Department of Commerce, which oversees the statistical agency, arguing that

minorities and others in hard-to-count communities would be missed if the counting ended at the end of September instead of the end of October.

The decision to end the 2020 census on Oct. 5, credited to Com-merce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Monday, was built on the idea of turning in the apportionment numbers by Dec. 31 which violates her injunction, the judge said.

August Flentje, an attorney for President Donald Trump’s ad-ministration, said the suggestion that the federal government was in contempt was “unfair.”

Trump administration attor-

neys were in courts on both coasts Tuesday, fighting over when the 2020 census would end and how the data would be used for decid-ing how many congressional seats each state gets.

In the nation’s capital, Trump administration attorneys asked a panel of three judges to dismiss a challenge to a memorandum from Trump seeking to exclude peo-ple in the country illegally from being counted in the apportion-ment process.

Tuesday’s virtual court argu-ments in the District of Columbia were part of the latest hearing over the legality of Trump’s July

memorandum. Arguments al-ready have been heard in federal cases in Maryland and New York, where a three-judge panel blocked the presidential order in Septem-ber, ruling it was unlawful.

The New York judges’ order prohibits Ross, whose agency oversees the U.S. Census Bureau, from excluding people in the coun-try illegally when handing in 2020 census figures used to calculate apportionment. The Trump ad-ministration has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and asked for the judges’ order to be suspended during that process. The judges on Tuesday denied that request.

Few in Hollywood believe harassers will be punished

Hot, dry conditions stoke wildfires

Federal judge says ending 2020 census Oct. 5 violates her order

NATION

Weinstein

TERRY CHEA/AP

Wildfire evacuees Mike Christianson and his wife, Mluz Torres, learned Monday their house in Deer Park in Napa Valley burned down.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 10 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 1, 2020

VIRUS OUTBREAK

BY CAITLIN M. KENNEY Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — Sgt. 1st Class Mike A. Markins served his country for more than two decades before he died Sept. 24 due to complications from the coronavirus, the Army Reserve announced Tuesday.

Markins, 48, from Vine Grove, Ky., began his 27 years of mili-tary service in the Air Force from 1990 to 1997 before joining the Army Reserve from 2000 until

his death, Lt. Col. Simon Flake, a spokesman for the Army Re-serve, said in a statement issued Tuesday.

Markins died at the Baptist Health Hardin Hospital in Eliza-bethtown, Ky., and is survived by his father.

The Army Reserve was not just weekends for Markins, it was also his full-time civilian career. As a soldier, Markins was a mechani-cal maintenance supervisor with the 100th Training Division. In

his civilian job, he worked for the Army Reserve as a heavy mobile equipment repairer with the 81st Readiness Division’s Equipment Concentration Site-63. Both jobs were located at Fort Knox, ac-cording to the statement.

His military awards included the Meritorious Service Medal with one oak leaf cluster, Army Commendation Medal with one oak leaf cluster, Army Achieve-ment Medal with one oak leaf cluster and the Air Force Achieve-

ment Medal.Markins was the eighth mili-

tary death related to the coro-navirus this year and was first reported only as an increase in the number of military deaths in the Pentagon’s coronavirus case chart, which was updated Mon-day afternoon.

Four other Army reservists have died from the coronavirus this year, as well as two Army National Guard members. An ac-tive-duty sailor assigned to the

aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt also died from thevirus. Chief Petty Officer Charles Robert Thacker Jr., 41, died April13 at a naval hospital on Guam. Hewas an aviation ordnanceman.

The military has had 45,246 cases of the coronavirus as of Monday, according to the Penta-gon’s cumulative case chart post-ed online. More than 600 servicemembers have been hospitalized and 30,450 have recovered.Kenney.Caitlin@stripes.com@caitlinmkenney

Army reservist dies from virus complications

Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea has reported 113 new cases of COVID-19, its first daily increase over 100 in five days, as the country entered a holiday break that officials fear would possibly worsen transmissions.

The numbers released by the Korea Dis-

ease Control and Prevention Agency on Wednesday brought the caseload to 23,812, including 413 deaths.

Eighty-one of the new cases came from the Seoul metropolitan area, where health workers have struggled to stem transmis-sions linked to various sources, including churches, medical facilities, restaurants, schools and workers. The newest cluster

of infections is a mental hospital in north-ern Seoul where at least 30 have been infected.

Twenty of the new cases were tied to in-ternational arrivals.

Officials have called for citizen vigilance ahead of the Chuseok harvest festival that began Wednesday and continues through the weekend.

While millions of South Koreans travel during Chuseok every year to visit rela-tives, officials have pleaded that peoplestay home to help stem transmissions.

Nightclubs, bars, buffet restaurants andother establishments deemed as “high-risk” will be shut in Seoul during the holi-day period to reduce gatherings.

South Korea reports jump in virus cases before holiday period

Associated Press

U.S. restaurants are moving warily into fall, hoping their slow recovery persists despite the new challenge of chilly weather and a pandemic that’s expected to claim even more lives.

New York was to open indoor dining on Wednesday, restricting capacity to 25%. San Francisco may do the same as early as this week. Chicago is raising its in-door capacity from 25% to 40% on Thursday, but says restaurants still can’t seat more than 50 peo-ple in one room.

It’s a dose of reality for an in-dustry that was able to stem at least some of its losses by pivot-ing to outdoor dining this sum-mer, setting up tables and chairs on sidewalks and parking lots and offering some semblance of normalcy.

But as temperatures start to slide in many parts of the country, restaurants will have to coax pa-trons to come back inside, and it’s anyone’s guess how many actu-ally will. That could spell trouble for an industry that has already lost nearly 100,000 U.S. restau-rants — or 1 in 6 — since the start of the pandemic, according to the National Restaurant Association. The future remains uncertain for thousands more.

“We’re all a little apprehensive, but that was the case when we started outdoor dining, too,” said Samantha DiStefano, owner of Mama Fox, a restaurant and bar in Brooklyn.

Mama Fox can only seat 18 people inside at 25% capacity, so

DiStefano will still rely heavily on her 14 outdoor tables. She thinks many New York restaurants won’t open indoor dining until the limit reaches 50% because they can’t cover their costs at 25%.

In the meantime, Mama Fox and others are trying to figure out how to extend the outdoor dining season using space heaters, tents, temporary igloos and even blan-kets. Heat lamps are already in short supply.

Restaurants are also pro-moting delivery and carryout. Nearly 70% of 3,500 restaurants surveyed in September by the National Restaurant Association said they added curbside takeout during the pandemic; 54% added delivery.

Philip Moseley, co-owner of Blue Oak BBQ in New Orleans, said carryout demand has risen from 10% of sales before the pan-demic to 50% now.

Blue Oak BBQ’s dining room is open at half capacity, or about 20 people. But a tent in the parking lot seats 80. That’s enough traf-fic that the restaurant was able to hire back all 50 employees.

“You do anything you have to do to make the food work, to make the experience work, to get butts in seats,” Moseley said.

Although fall in New Orleans is ideal for outdoor dining, tourists are scarce and the usual round of festivals won’t happen this year.

“Every day has a new set of struggles,” co-owner Ronnie Evans said.

Seventy percent of U.S. restau-rants are independent, but chains

are hurting too. NPC Internation-al, the largest franchisee of both Pizza Hut and Wendy’s, filed for bankruptcy protection in July.

Steve Nikolakakos closed one of his three Manhattan res-taurants because his landlord wouldn’t give him a break on the rent. Another, Gracie’s Diner, closed for two months in March after two employees died of the coronavirus.

Even with outdoor seating, the diner is only making 65% of what it did before the pandemic, he said. Still, that’s better than May, when he was doing only 30% of his usual business.

“This is the worst thing I have ever seen,” said Nikolakakos, a

40-year veteran of the industry.Il Carino, a tiny Italian restau-

rant in Manhattan, is reopening its dining room with just 12 seats. Outdoor seating has recaptured only about 30% of the restaurant’s business, and it has had to lay off 13 workers, said Giolio Alvarez, the restaurant’s manager.

Alvarez said customers are ask-ing for heat lamps, but the restau-rant doesn’t know if they’re worth the extra money. And increasing menu prices is off the table.

“How are we going to increase prices?” he said. “Everyone is broke.”

Monthly U.S. restaurant sales hit their lowest point in April, when they plunged to $30 billion,

according to the U.S. Census Bu-reau. That was less than half the amount restaurants made a year earlier. Sales steadily improvedas lockdowns ended, carryoutdemand picked up and states allowed to-go alcohol. U.S. res-taurant sales hit $55 billion inAugust, but that’s still $10 billionless than last year.

Some waiters and kitchen staff have gone back to work. Restau-rant employment rose by 3.6 mil-lion people over the four monthsending in August, according to government data. Still, there were2.5 million fewer U.S. restaurantworkers in August compared toFebruary.

Colder weather means new challenges for struggling restaurants

KATHY WILLENS/AP

Mama Fox bar and restaurant owner Samantha DiStefano, left, talks about indoor dining reopening plans with manager Akin Payne on Tuesday in New York, as they prepare to serve patrons indoors for the first time since March. New York opened indoor dining on Wednesday, restricting capacity to 25%.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 11Thursday, October 1, 2020

Associated Press

LAS VEGAS — Nevada is lift-ing a 50-person cap on public and private gatherings, in a step toward kick-starting conven-tions, concerts, sports events and trade shows that power the state’s economy, Gov. Steve Sisolak an-nounced Tuesday.

“This is not the end. This is the first step toward getting us where we need to get back to. We need to get some people back to work,” the Democratic governor told reporters. “I’m confident, under these circumstances we can get them back to work safely.”

Sisolak said written guidelines, dubbed “Nevada Guidance for Safe Gatherings — Celebrations, Ceremonies, and Events,” have been posted on a state coronavi-rus response website.

The removal of the 50-person cap with conditions including sub-mittal of safety plans, was to take effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday.

It represents the most signifi-cant loosening of state restrictions designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 restrictions since June 4, when Sisolak let casinos partially reopen after statewide closures imposed in mid-March prompted waves of hospitality in-dustry layoffs.

To return to larger events, busi-nesses will have to submit plans to local authorities to ensure so-cial distancing and other pan-demic directives. Venues that can accommodate more than 2,500 guests will be allowed to operate at 10% capacity. Smaller venues will be able to host up to 50% ca-pacity or 250 patrons — which-ever is less.

Only the state can approve large gatherings in stadiums, are-nas and convention halls, Sisolak said.

Arizona TUCSON — The University

of Arizona said a two-week shel-ter-in-place recommendation intended to limit the spread of COVID-19 expired Tuesday.

University officials Monday cited recent COVID-19 testing data that has shown numbers headed in the right direction.

Officials said the university’s daily positivity rate — a measure of the virus’s community spread — fell to 3.4% on Friday, below the targeted 5%.

“This is not a time to become complacent, however,” said uni-versity President Robert Rob-bins. “I continue to see groups of students around the university boulevard and elsewhere with-out face coverings, and I beg you to please listen and follow the guidelines.”

Robbins warned students that the recommendation could be reinstated if cases start to rise again, and Pima County health officials could take more restric-tive measures.

Dr. Richard Carmona, who is leading the re-entry task force, said the university would like to increase its testing but students are not getting tested because they do not want to quarantine.

“So it may be that we have to start considering mandatory testing for students who come on campus and make it a condition of being a student if this continues,” Carmona said.

The university has implement-ed mandatory random testing for students living on campus and is considering similar options for students living off-campus.

California SACRAMENTO — California

has relaxed coronavirus restric-tions in 40 of its 58 counties, in-cluding all but one in the San Francisco Bay Area where the illness first took hold in the state, even as signs emerge of a possible surge of new cases.

On Tuesday, state officials up-graded seven counties from its most restrictive rules, clearing the way for a return to indoor res-taurant dining, worship services, gym workouts and movies in the-aters — all with modifications to require face coverings and limit capacity to ensure physical distancing.

The state is moving more slow-ly than the reopening last spring that brought with it a dramatic spike in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. California leads the nation with 815,000 confirmed cases and its 5,730 deaths are the fourth-highest state total, accord-ing to data from Johns Hopkins University.

In the last two months hospi-talizations have fallen to their lowest level since early April and the statewide rate of new cases among those tested is a record-low 2.8% over the last two weeks.

Kentucky FRANKFORT — Kentucky’s

spike in coronavirus cases accel-erated Tuesday when 1,018 more cases were reported — the state’s second-highest daily total since the pandemic began.

The near-record number should be a “wake-up call,” Gov. Andy Beshear said as he kept urging people to wear masks in public and follow other health guidelines to contain the virus.

Having warned that Kentucky is at the start of a new escalation of cases, Beshear said: “We’re

certainly seeing that in today’s numbers. That means we’ve got to work harder.”

The spike in Kentucky cases comes as many children have re-turned to school across the state.

Beshear has warned Kentuck-ians not to become complacent in responding to the health crisis, which could lead to more cases and ultimately more deaths. To re-inforce his point, he said the state is on pace to exceed last week’s total number of virus cases, which was a weekly record.

Kentucky reported eight more virus-related deaths Tuesday, raising its death count to at least 1,170. The near-record daily case count increased the statewide total to more than 67,850 cases.

Michigan LANSING — Gov. Gretchen

Whitmer extended Michigan’s state of emergency Tuesday, con-tinuing a declaration that is the basis for various orders designed to fight the coronavirus.

While the emergency had been scheduled to expire Thursday, the governor had been expected to continue it. The declaration will now run through Oct. 27.

In her order, the Democratic governor said the health, eco-nomic and social harms of the COVID-19 pandemic remain “widespread and severe.” State emergency operations are neces-sary to bring the virus outbreak under control, she said.

New Mexico ALBUQUERQUE — Health of-

ficials said Tuesday that the num-ber of COVID-19 cases and the rate of transmission are on the rise in New Mexico, leaving the state trailing when it comes to two of its most important metrics.

Human Services Secretary

David Scrase acknowledged dur-ing an online briefing Tuesday that if things don’t change, the state will see the curve continue to rise. He said he would rather see New Mexicans following the health order already in place rather than the state imposing more mandates to limit spread.

“I would prefer not to continue on this roller coaster,” he said. “I’d prefer to allow folks to re-spond — to stay at home, to wear those masks, keep those distanc-es, stick within the public health guidelines. I think everything we need to do right now could be ac-complished if 100% of us followed the public health guidelines.”

The public health order man-dates face masks and social dis-tancing, limits indoor dining and the size of gatherings and calls for people to stay home whenever possible.

An additional 178 cases were reported Tuesday, pushing the total to more than 29,150 since the pandemic began. Another two deaths were reported, putting that overall count at 875 statewide.

North Dakota FARGO — North Dakota State

University athletic department officials said Tuesday they are limiting attendance at the football team’s only fall game to family members of players, reversing an earlier decision to allow fans dur-ing the coronavirus pandemic.

The school was planning for about 8,000 spectators at Sat-urday’s game against Central Arkansas at the 19,000-seat Far-godome. The school said in a re-lease the change was made “in the best interest of health and safety for the participating student-ath-letes, coaches and fans.”

There have been nearly 678 new virus cases per 100,000 people in North Dakota over the

past two weeks, which ranks first in the country for new cases percapita, according to The COVIDTracking Project.

Tennessee NASHVILLE — Businesses in

89 of Tennessee’s 95 counties willno longer have to adhere to socialdistancing guidelines, Gov. Bill Lee announced Tuesday, even though cases of COVID-19 in thestate have been persistently high.

The Republican governorsaid he would lift all virus-re-lated limits on businesses and social gatherings for most of the state. The action, which takes ef-fect Thursday, notably does notapply to Tennessee’s six populous counties with locally run health departments: Sullivan, Knox, Hamilton, Davidson, Madison and Shelby counties. They cancontinue implementing their ownrestrictions.

Shelby County, which includesMemphis, last week removed oc-cupancy restrictions for all busi-nesses, after limiting them to operating at 50% of capacity formonths. Social distancing guide-lines, such as keeping customers6 feet away from each other, still apply, officials said.

In Nashville, officials say thecity will soon allow certain eventsto have up to 500 people condi-tional on the health department’sapproval starting Oct. 3. Bars and restaurants may operate at 50% capacity but must close by 11 p.m. Retail stores can operate up to 75% capacity.

According to data kept by TheAssociated Press, there were about 287 new cases per 100,000 people in Tennessee over the pasttwo weeks, which ranks 13th in the country for new cases percapita. The state has seen at least2,389 virus-released deaths.

VIRUS OUTBREAK ROUNDUP

ERIC GAY/AP

Parents of Southside Independent School District students receive meals delivered via a school bus Tuesday in San Antonio. Using school buses equipped with ice cream music to alert students, the school’s nutrition department is providing 5,400 meals a day, seven days a week.

Nevada to loosen cap on private, public gatherings

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 12 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 1, 2020

NATION

Associated Press

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Ken-tucky’s attorney general is seek-ing to delay the release of secret grand jury proceedings in the Breonna Taylor case just as audio recordings were set to be released to the public.

Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s office filed a motion Wednesday morning asking for a week’s delay to enable the re-daction of names and personal information. A court in Louisville had been expected to release the audio recordings on Wednesday.

The filing said the delay is necessary “in the interest of pro-tection of witnesses, and in par-ticular private citizens named in the recordings.”

Cameron acknowledged this week that his recommendation to the grand jury was that only one of the officers be indicted, and only for the wanton endanger-ment of Taylor’s neighbors.

Cameron, a Republican pro-tege of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the state’s first African American attorney general, has been criticized since announcing the grand jury’s in-dictment for not seeking charges against the officers for killing Taylor. Cameron said the other two officers who fired their guns were justified because Taylor’s boyfriend had fired at them first.

Protesters took to the streets in

Louisville and around the country to demand more accountability in the case, as frustrations spilled over after months of waiting for Cameron’s announcement. Activ-ists and Taylor’s family called for the grand jury file to be released.

Cameron said the record will show that his team “presented a thorough and complete case to the grand jury.”

Taylor, a 26-year-old emergen-cy medical worker, was shot five times in her Louisville apartment on March 13 by officers carrying a narcotics warrant. Taylor and her boyfriend were watching a movie in her bedroom when po-

lice came to her door and eventu-ally knocked it down. The warrant was related to an investigation of a drug suspect who didn’t live with her, and police found no drugs at her apartment.

Former officer Brett Han-kison, who was fired from the force for his actions during the raid, pleaded not guilty to three counts of wanton endangerment on Monday. Officers Jonathan Mattingly, who was shot in the leg by Taylor’s boyfriend, and Myles Cosgrove, who Cameron said ap-peared to have fired the fatal shot at Taylor, according to ballistics tests, remain on the force.

Associated Press

BOSTON — Winds close to hurricane strength swept across parts of the Northeast on Wednes-day morning, toppling trees, downing power lines and leav-ing tens of thousands of residents without power.

The National Weather Service reported that winds gusted as high as 72 mph near Boston at around 7 a.m. before leveling off through the morning. Power lines were reported down across the region, with the worst damage re-ported in southern New England.

In Massachusetts, more than 65,000 utility customers had lost power by 9 a.m., according to the state’s Emergency Manage-ment Agency, but within an hour the figure had dropped to about 45,000.

Rhode Island and Connecticut each had more than 20,000 cus-tomers without power, leading some schools to move classes on-line or cancel them entirely.

Toppled trees snarled traffic in parts of Massachusetts, includ-ing in Boston, where a large tree blocked the exit ramp from busy Storrow Drive to Massachusetts General Hospital. State Police said on Twitter that the ramp would be closed for an “extended period of time” while a contractor was called in to remove the tree.

Fire officials in Plympton,Mass., said firefighters respond-ed to calls for trees and wiresdown or on fire. In one case, atree landed on a car with adultsand children in it, the fire depart-ment said on Twitter. No injuries were reported.

In Maine, gusts approaching 50 mph knocked out power for more than 40,000 homes and business-es, officials said.

The wind gusted around 40mph or higher in Bangor, Port-land and Bar Harbor on Wednes-day morning, with stronger gustson the way, the National WeatherService reported.

The weather service issued wind advisories for much of New England through Wednes-day morning, but the system was expected to pass through bymidafternoon.

Ky. prosecutor seeks a delay in releasing Taylor grand jury files

Winds cause power outages in Northeast

DARRON CUMMINGS/AP

A mural of Breonna Taylor is seen in Louisville, Ky.

Power lines were reported down across the region, with the worst damage reported in southern New England.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 13Thursday, October 1, 2020

Associated Press

DUBAI, United Arab Emir-ates — Kuwait’s Sheikh Nawaf Al Ahmad Al Sabah was sworn in Wednesday as the ruling emir of the tiny oil-rich country, pro-pelled to power by the death of his half-brother after a long career in the security services.

At age 83, Sheikh Nawaf is not expected to deviate from the dip-lomatic path charted by his pre-decessor, the late Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah. But his ac-cession touched off speculation about who will become the next crown prince in the country known for its lively elected parlia-ment and relative independence

in the neighborhood of Gulf Arabmonarchies.

The late Sheikh Sabah, 91,made his final journey to Kuwaitlater Wednesday, his coffin arriv-ing in Kuwait City from Roches-ter, Minn., home of the flagshipcampus of the Mayo Clinic wherehe had been receiving medicaltreatment after surgery.

Although his funeral wouldtypically draw tens of thousands of mourning Kuwaitis and scoresof foreign leaders and dignitaries,because of the coronavirus pan-demic the burial will be a private service restricted to relatives,said Kuwait’s state-run newsagency, KUNA.

Associated Press

TOKYO — A Japanese court on Wednesday found the gov-ernment and the operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant negligent for failing to take measures to prevent the 2011 nu-

clear disaster, ordering them to pay some $9.5 million in damages to thousands of residents for their lost livelihoods.

The Sendai High Court found fault with the government in the triple meltdowns, saying the reg-ulatory agency at the time could

have predicted a major tsunami way before the disaster, accord-ing to lawyers representing the more than 3,600 plaintiffs.

The ruling was a major victory for the plaintiffs and an initial high court decision that could set a precedent for other similar law-

suits pending across the country, according to the plaintiffs’ head lawyer, Izutaro Managi.

The court also ordered the gov-ernment and the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., to pay damages to the plaintiffs, doubling the amount that a lower

court had ordered only TEPCO topay in 2017.

The earlier ruling also saida tsunami risk was foreseeableand the disaster could have beenavoided if the government had or-dered TEPCO to take proper pre-ventive measures.

Associated Press

YEREVAN, Armenia — Heavy fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh continued for a fourth straight day on Wednesday, in the biggest escalation of a decades-old conflict in years that has killed dozens and left scores of others wounded.

Azerbaijan’s Defense Minis-try said Armenian forces started shelling the town of Tartar on Wednesday morning, damag-ing “civilian infrastructure” and wounding people, while Arme-nian military officials reported that Azerbaijani forces were bombing positions of the Nago-

rno-Karabakh army in the north of the war-torn region.

Armenian officials alleged that Turkish drones and F-16 fighter jets were being used. Turkey has denied supplying Azerbaijan with arms, and Azerbaijan said it didn’t have any F-16 jets.

The fighting in Nagorno-Kara-bakh erupted Sunday and has continued despite mounting calls for a cease-fire from around the globe.

Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by the Armenian government since 1994 at the end of a separatist war following the breakup of the Soviet Union three years earlier.

WORLD

Japan court orders government, TEPCO to pay in Fukushima disaster

Armenia, Azerbaijan fight for a 4th day over region

Sheikh Nawaf sworn in as Kuwait’s new ruling emir

JABER ABDULKHALEG/AP

The new Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Nawaf Al Ahmad Al Sabah, performs the constitutional oath at the Kuwaiti National Assembly in Kuwait on Wednesday.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 14 F3HIJKLM

Virus shrinks annual run honoring firefighter

NY NEW YORK — Thecoronavirus pandemic

forced the cancellation of anannual run honoring a fallenfirefighter, but the firefighter’sbrother joined a handful of peoplein walking through the Battery Tunnel last weekend to honorthe memory of those who died onSept. 11, 2001.

The Tunnel to Towers 5K Runand Walk retraces the footsteps ofFrank Siller’s firefighter brotherStephen, who was killed at the trade center on Sept. 11, 2001,after running through the tunnelbetween Brooklyn and Manhat-tan in full gear.

The run is hosted by the foun-dation Frank Siller created toraise money for wounded veter-ans and families of fallen firstresponders.

Planetarium plans first expansion in 125 years

VT ST. JOHNSBURY —The Fairbanks Museum

and Planetarium in St. Johnsburyis planning its first expansion in125 years.

The plans call for a three-story,6,000-square-foot addition ofglass and wood framing. The ad-dition would house space for mod-ern, hands-on exhibits focused on meteorology and astronomy, and an elevator to provide access to the museum’s balcony.

Museum Executive DirectorAdam Kane said current cost estimates range from $2.25 mil-lion to $2.5 million. The museumhas received $600,000 in fundingfor part of the project. It’s await-ing word on a $2 million grantapplication.

Grocery store closes after 37 years

MI ALPENA — A grocery store that served a

Michigan community for nearly40 years has closed.

Neiman’s Family Market in Al-pena, which opened in 1983, was a victim of competition, popula-tion loss and other factors in thenorthern Lower Peninsula, presi-dent Bryan Neiman said.

“The online shopping, the otherthings that affected us, really just all caught up with us during thepandemic,” he said .

Neiman’s has other storesthat remain open in Tawas City,Clarkston and St. Clair.

Thursday, October 1, 2020

From wire reports

AMERICAN ROUNDUP

1,825The weight in pounds of the first-place pumpkin at the 16th annual UGPGThanksgiving Point Weigh-off in Lehi, Utah. The gourd was grown by localfarmer Mohamed Sadiq. It was the sec-ond largest pumpkin ever grown in thestate, event organizers said. The UtahGiant Pumpkin Growers has recordedeight pumpkins this year weighing over1,000 pounds, setting a state record.

Tractor runs over, kills woman on beach

CA OCEANSIDE — A woman lying on a

Southern California beach was crushed to death by a tractor that was helping in a harbor dredging project, police said.

The woman may have been asleep when the Caterpillar trac-tor ran over her near a jetty at Oceanside Harbor, north of San Diego, police said.

The woman, who may have been homeless, was fully clothed rather than being in a swimsuit and didn’t have any identification, police spokesman Tom Bussey said.

The tractor driver felt a bump and at first thought he had hit a dip but then turned around and saw the woman in the sand, Bussey said.

The accident remains under investigation.

Police: Argument over shoes led to shooting

LA MONROE — A man was accused of fatally

shooting another person in Loui-siana following an argument with the victim over Nike sneakers.

An arrest warrant for Dexstavi-ous Deon James said the shooting happened in Monroe after James, 38, and his brother got into the dispute with the victim, Marshall L. Carter, the Monroe News-Star reported.

It is not clear what led to the argument, but the newspaper reports the brothers first fought with Carter while James’ brother held a gun in his hand.

The warrant from Monroe po-lice said James then took the gun from his brother and fatally shot Carter in the head.

Cops: Car rolls into lake as owner takes photos

UT SALT LAKE CITY — A car accidentally

rolled into a Utah reservoir while the owner of the vehicle got out of his car to take photos, authorities said.

Wasatch County Search and Rescue was asked to help recover the car from Deer Creek Reser-voir, KUTV-TV reported. The car was safely removed, and no inju-ries were reported.

Officials said the owner of the car was on a boat ramp at the state park taking pictures of the car in order to rent or sell it.

No one was inside the vehicle when it submerged.

Sheriff: 1 wounded in haunted house shooting

NC CHINA GROVE — One person was wounded in

a shooting at a Halloween haunted house attraction in North Caroli-na over the weekend, authorities said.

Investigators arrested five ju-veniles and seized three guns after responding to a report of shots fired at the Reaper’s Realm haunted house in China Grove, the Rowan County Sheriff’s Of-fice said in a news release.

The Charlotte Observer report-

THE CENSUS

ed that fights broke out among a crowd of about 1,000 people at the attraction, a scene that the sher-iff’s office described as “chaotic.”

One person was treated at a hospital for a gunshot wound on one of his feet, the sheriff’s of-fice said. The person has been released from the hospital.

Over 100 arrested at unauthorized car rally

MD OCEAN CITY — More than 100 people

were arrested on criminal and traffic offenses during an un-authorized car rally in a Mary-land city, where confrontations

between participants and police were captured on videos.

The Baltimore Sun reported that police from neighboring ju-risdictions helped Ocean City po-lice officers with crowd control at the H20i rally in the beach town.

Ocean City Police Chief Ross Buzzuro said in a statement that the rally participants came to the city “to disrupt, destroy and dis-respect our community and our law enforcement officers.”

“This is not a car show and the majority of these visitors are not car enthusiasts,” he said.

Ocean City Mayor Rick Mee-han has vowed to end the annual event.

Eight empty rail cars derail, 3 land in creek

OH CINCINNATI — CSX Transportation says

it’s trying to find out what caused eight empty rail cars to derail in Ohio, sending three of them into a creek.

CSX spokeswoman Cindy Schild said in an email that three of the cars ended up in Mill Creek and another three landed on the banks of the creek.

She said “there were no releas-es to the environment as the cars were empty.”

The cause of the derailment re-mains under investigation.

Really tall orderWorkers apply fresh paint to the flag on the side of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Monday . One of the largest buildings in the world by area, the VAB covers eight acres and is 525 feet tall.

JOHN RAOUX/AP

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 15Thursday, October 1, 2020

FACES

Associated Press

Helen Reddy, who shot to star-dom in the 1970s with her rousing feminist anthem “I Am Woman” and recorded a string of other hits, has died. She was 78. Red-dy’s children Traci and Jordan announced that the actor-singer died Tuesday in Los Angeles.

Reddy’s 1971 version of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” launched a decade-long string of Top 40 hits, three of which reached No. 1.

The Australian-born singer enjoyed a prolific career, appear-ing in “Airport 1975” as a singing nun and scoring several hits, in-cluding “Ain’t No Way To Treat a Lady,” “Delta Dawn,” “Angie Baby” and “You and Me Against the World.”

In 1973 she won the best female vocal pop performance Grammy Award for “I Am Woman.” The song would become her biggest hit, used in films and television series.

In a 2012 interview with The Associated Press, Reddy cited the gigantic success of “I Am Woman” as one of the reasons she stepped out of public life.

“That was one of the reasons that I stopped singing, was when I was shown a modern American history high-school textbook, and a whole chapter on feminism and my name and my lyrics (were) in the book,” she told the AP. “And I thought, ‘Well, I’m part of his-tory now. And how do I top that? I can’t top that.’ So, it was an easy withdrawal.”

Reddy retired from perform-ing in the 1990s and returned to Australia, getting her degree in clinical hypnotherapy.

Reddy’s death comes less than three weeks after the release of a biopic about her life called “I Am Woman.”

From wire reports

The Walt Disney Co. will make a fol-low-up to the 2019 live-action “The Lion King,” with Barry Jenkins, the director of the Oscar-winning “Moonlight” and the James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk,” set to direct.

Disney announced plans Tuesday for a kind of prequel to last year’s poorly re-viewed but highly popular photorealistic remake. The new “Lion King” grossed more than $1.6 billion worldwide, so a se-quel was perhaps always likely. Less ex-pected was a “Lion King” with Jenkins directing. The film, Disney said, will ex-plore the mythology of “The Lion King,” including Mufasa’s origin story.

“Helping my sister raise two young boys during the ’90s, I grew up with these char-acters,” Jenkins said. “Having the oppor-tunity to work with Disney on expanding this magnificent tale of friendship, love and legacy while furthering my work chroni-cling the lives and souls of folk within the African diaspora is a dream come true.”

Disney didn’t announce any further plot

details or casting . Jeff Nathanson, who wrote the 2019 movie, is returning to pen the follow-up.

‘Borat’ sequel to be released by Amazon before election

Sacha Baron Cohen has filmed a sequel to his 2006 film “Borat! Cultural Learn-ings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” that Amazon plans to release before the election.

The streaming giant confirmed Tuesday that it has acquired worldwide rights to the film. It’s reportedly titled: “Borat: Gift of Pornographic Monkey to Vice Premiere Mikhael Pence to Make Benefit Recently Diminished Nation of Kazakhstan.”

The project has been filmed in secret during the pandemic. In July, Rudy Giu-liani called the police after an interview in which Cohen emerged in character.

In June, Cohen appeared at a far-right rally in Olympia, Wash., posing as a spon-sor of the event. He led the crowd in a ra-cially charged singalong.

Reggaeton redemption: Balvin, Bunny top Latin Grammy nods

At last year’s Latin Grammy Awards, popular reggaeton and Latin trap musi-cians such as J Balvin, Bad Bunny and Ozuna were dismissed in the show’s top categories. This year, they dominate.

Balvin scored a whopping 13 nomina-tions for the 2020 Latin Grammys, includ-ing two nominations for album of the year and two for record of the year. The Latin Academy announced Tuesday that Bad Bunny and Ozuna are behind Balvin with nine and eight nominations, respectively.

Balvin has a chance to win his first album of the year prize — a category with 10 con-tenders — thanks to his fifth solo album “Colores” and “Oasis,” his collaborative project with Bad Bunny. Other nominees include Bad Bunny’s sophomore release “YHLQMDLG” as well as albums from Ricky Martin, Carlos Vives, Jesse & Joy, Kany Garcia, Natalia Lafourcade, Camilo and Fito Paez.

Other news� The Film Independent Spirit Awards,

which celebrates the best in indie cinema ,will add television categories and prizes to its 2021 program on April 24, the organi-zation announced Tuesday. The expansion includes five new categories that recog-nize scripted series, nonscripted or docu-mentary series and acting categories formale, female and ensemble performances, bringing the number of prizes to 20.

� Gabrielle Union and NBC said Tues-day that they have settled their differencesin their dispute over her firing as a judgeon “America’s Got Talent,” which she saidwas retaliation for her complaints that theshow tolerated racism on the set. Both sidesdeclined further comment.

� The publisher of Britain’s Mail onSunday newspaper can use the contentsof a recent behind-the scenes book aboutthe Duke and Duchess of Sussex, “Find-ing Freedom,” in its legal defense for an invasion of privacy lawsuit brought by the duchess, a judge ruled Tuesday.

BY JONATHAN LANDRUM JR. � Associated Press

Having his daytime talk show canceled by NBC last year hasn’t stopped Steve Harvey.

The comedian continued to make his presence regularly felt on TV as the host of “Family Feud” and as an emcee for multiple recurring jobs, including

the annual Miss Universe pageant.It didn’t take long for Harvey to seal a deal with Facebook Watch and launch the new talk show “Steve on Watch.” The first season debuted at the begin-ning of 2020 with strong numbers, and has already started streaming epi-sodes of the second season, which premiered this month.

The new season was taped from Harvey’s Atlanta home on a new set to adapt to the coronavirus pandemic. The production features about 50 audience members through Zoom as Harvey delves into human interest stories, viral sensations and interviews with celebrity guests including Gabrielle Union, Jack Black and Steph Curry.

Harvey talked to The Associated Press about his split with NBC and how Facebook has given him more creative control .

‘I Am Woman’ singer Reddy dies at age 78

Barry Jenkins to direct live-action ‘Lion King’ prequel

Steve Harvey, shown Sept. 17, is looking on the bright side. The comedian says his daytime talk show being canceled by NBC opened up new doors with Facebook Watch. “Steve on Watch” is now streaming on the platform. PAUL R. GIUNTA, INVISION/AP

Steve Harvey won’t stopComedian-TV host loses 1 talk show, gains another

AP: What were your initial thoughts after NBC canceled your show?Harvey: One of my buddies called me and said “Maybe you should do a

letter-writing campaign?” I said “No, I’m not going to do that.” People would say you should go up there and talk to them. I’m not doing none of that. I

move on. I was on a talk show for seven years ... Seven’s a good run. Do you have more creative control at Facebook?Absolutely. They understood. Let’s just take away all of the trimmings

and let’s get to what this guy really does. Let’s play to his strong suits. They come up with a format where I can do just that. These human-in-terest stories, I do well with everyday people. I talk to people on differ-ent levels.

According to Facebook, your first season had 22 million uniqueviewers. Did that give you confirmation about your show?

I never lost faith in the process of who I am as a talent or what I’mable to do with the right team around me. Facebook Watch did a reallysmart thing. They surrounded me with top-quality people. It was nothing

wrong when the show got canceled on NBC. Nothing wrong with it at all. What’s you biggest takeaway from the ordeal?I’m here to inspire people to never give up. When the door closes in

your face, quit standing there beating on the door. Some doors close for a reason. My time at NBC was what it was. It was a good time. I learned

a lot. It really opened the door to come to Facebook and do something thathadn’t been done before. ... to take a full-fledged talk show and put it on the digital form.

Thursday, October 1, 2020PAGE 16 F3HIJKLM • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •

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BY GARY ABERNATHY Special to The Washington Post

When political newcomer Donald Trump joined a stage full of other Republican candidates in August 2015 for the first

presidential primary debate of the 2016 cycle, it was widely predicted that while Trump had been an entertaining diversion, he was about to get his comeuppance.

Sure, his entry into the race had almost immediately catapulted him to the lead po-sition in the polls, but most pundits were convinced that the bloom would fall off the rose as soon as he was compared side-by-side with Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, John Kasich and other experienced professionals — people who knew policy and government and would quickly reduce Trump’s facade of bravado and bluster to ashes.

That particular Fox News faceoff drew 24 million viewers, a record for a primary debate — by comparison, the first Republi-can debate four years earlier drew 3.2 mil-lion viewers — and established Trump as more than a carnival sideshow. He swatted away tough questions, shrugged off biting criticisms of his most outrageous com-ments and displayed a surprising depth of knowledge about issues both foreign and domestic. The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson wrote that Trump, by avoiding coming off as a professional politician, “seemed to me the clear winner,” an opin-ion widely shared by other pundits.

Despite his political inexperience and numerous scandalous revelations — in-cluding some that emerged mere weeks before the general election — enough

voters in enough states decided to take a chance on the reality TV star and sent him to Washington while sending Hillary Clin-ton packing.

That first 2015 GOP debate took place in Cleveland, where Trump returned Tues-day to square off against 2020 Democratic nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden. Do voters have buyer’s remorse? After four years of disruption, scandals (some real, some overhyped) and daily doses of Trumpian reality-show-style lead-ership, is it possible that a professional pol-itician might seem like a better idea after all?

Trump started out rather subdued Tues-day, answering an opening question about the Supreme Court with a quiet, reason-able reply. That lasted about a minute. He was soon in full bluster, talking over Biden and moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News, quickly complaining to Wallace, “I guess I’m debating you, not him. That’s OK. I’m not surprised.”

Biden often seemed rattled, not quite sure whether to dignify Trump’s scattered accusations with a response, but simulta-neously failing to answer important ques-tions such as whether he would agree to “pack” the Supreme Court, as many other Democrats have suggested. His strategy of laughing while Trump was scoring points wasn’t particularly effective, including when Trump hit Biden over his criticism early this year that Trump was being xe-nophobic by closing travel from China in response to the spread of COVID-19.

When Trump returned again and again to attacking Hunter Biden, the candidate’s son, Biden at one point replied with an ef-

fective counterpunch, saying, “This is not about my family or his family. It’s aboutyour family.” Trump’s attacks went over the top, damaging his effort to raise ques-tions about the younger Biden’s overseasbusiness dealings.

Trump scored points with his com-ments about law and order, and by citingthe violence that has emerged from someprotests over the summer. Biden’s failureto more forcefully denounce rioters doeshim no favors, although his “law and order with justice” was a good line. His answer that “I don’t hold public office now” whenWallace asked whether he had called cityleaders to demand they stop the violencewas weak, as was “antifa’s an idea, not an organization.”

As for the president, the debate was acase of Trump being Trump. He is no lon-ger shocking or surprising or even novel,which might be to his detriment. Bidenseemed wearied by his opponent gener-ally and exasperated by the president’s interruptions — perhaps that was part ofTrump’s strategy. But the disrupter vs. theprofessional offered clear contrasts on is-sues ranging from the pandemic to crime to the economy.

All that was required of Biden on Tues-day night was a demonstration of focus,coherence and stamina for 90 minutes. Hewas shaky at times, but still standing at thewrap-up. When the dust settled, it was un-likely the landscape had changed much — which, if the polls are accurate, was goodfor Biden.Gary Abernathy, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, is a freelance writer and former newspaper editor based in Hillsboro, Ohio.

BY ALYSSA ROSENBERG The Washington Post

“They’re going to dominate you, Joe. You know that.”

It only took 15 minutes for the first presidential

debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden to de-volve into an incomprehensible mess. But in that quarter-hour, voters saw the only things they need to know about Trump: his drive to dominate, his inability to restrain himself and how difficult it’s going to be to wrest American public life back to normal when he’s gone.

I recapped “Game of Thrones” live for eight straight seasons, and the first clash between Trump and Biden was still one of the wildest things I’ve ever seen on televi-sion. As spectacle, it was a lot less fun to watch than dragons and ice zombies. As a source of information, the cross-talk and insults will be a challenge to transcribe, much less to mine for meaningful exchang-es. But as far as the future of the country goes, the disastrous style of the evening was as revealing as any single answer the candidates gave on policy.

First was that stunning jab at Biden. Specifically, Trump was suggesting that Biden wouldn’t have the guts to stand up to the left wing of his party, including law-makers such as Bernie Sanders and Eliza-beth Warren, who challenged Biden for the Democratic nomination. But “they’re going to dominate you” is a purer expression of Trump’s worldview and campaign strat-egy than “Make America Great Again” ever was.

That showed in his debating style, which married Trump’s instinct for domination with his total lack of self-control. Trump

talked over Biden. Trump talked over the moderator, Fox News’ Chris Wallace. Trump accused Biden of being dumb and tried to accuse him of cowardice for taking precautions to avoid catching or spreading the coronavirus, saying Biden “could be speaking 200 feet away and he shows up wearing the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.” And he repeatedly tried to throw Biden off by attacking his surviving son, Hunter, who has struggled with drug abuse.

Theoretically, order ought to be a calm-ing response to Trump’s pure chaos. And there were fleeting moments when Wal-lace was able to impose that order and Biden was able to project it. Biden’s stron-gest moment of the debate was when he ended an ugly exchange by looking direct-ly into the camera and reminding voters, “This is not about my family or his family, it’s about your family. ... He doesn’t want to talk about what you need.”

But Trump exerts a gravitational field so strong that it’s hard for even the most disciplined person to avoid being drawn in by it. Even if he’s defeated in Novem-ber, this debate demonstrated why it will take longer for the country to recover from Trump’s influence.

Take Wallace, who utterly failed at the job assigned to him, which was to make the president behave like a normal human for 90 minutes. Wallace tried appealing to his formal authority, telling the president, “I’m the moderator of this debate, and I would like you to let me ask my question.” He tried appeasement, assuring Trump, “You’ll be happy,” and “Mr. President, you’re going to be very happy” in an ef-fort to get the president to stay quiet long enough to allow him to get a question out.

In a sign of how tiring the evening was

to be, Wallace even tried world-weariness early on, saying, “COVID-19, which is anawfully serious subject, so let’s try to beserious about it.” Eventually, Wallace es-sentially acknowledged the futility of hisjob, telling Trump, “If you want to switchseats, we can do that.”

Respectable conservatives can restatetheir values and commitment to the rulesall they want, but, president or not, Trumphas been hugely influential on a generation of candidates and voters. Wallace’s flail-ing efforts to conduct a normal debate arejust a preview of how difficult it will be toreturn any semblance of normality to Re-publican politics.

If Wallace represented the limits of agenteel effort to reassert the rules, Biden’sresponse showed how difficult it is to resist playing Trump’s game.

Trump routinely says things so breath-taking that the experience of watching him debate is a little like having an asthma at-tack. Biden didn’t descend to Trumpianlevels: His personal elevator doesn’t gothat far. Still, it was unsettling to see Biden,who likes to quote Seamus Heaney, snap-ping, “Keep yapping, man,” or “It’s hardto get any word in with this clown. Excuse me, this person.” It’s hard not to feel a littlepoisoned just by exposure to Trump. Bidenmay have to be on stage with the man; therest of us have been made angrier andrawer even at a distance.

This debate, mercifully, ended at close toits scheduled time. But it was hard to feelmuch relief when it was over. “This is not going to end well,” Trump said of the forth-coming election. It may have been the tru-est thing he said all night. Alyssa Rosenberg blogs about pop culture for The Washington Post’s Opinions section.

Trump the disrupter has lost his novelty

I recapped ‘Game of Thrones.’ This debate was wilder.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 17Thursday, October 1, 2020

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 18 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 1, 2020

SCOREBOARD/SPORTS BRIEFS

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

Sports on AFN

College football

ScheduleFriday’s games

SOUTHCampbell (0-3) at Wake Forest (0-2)

FAR WESTLouisiana Tech (2-0) at BYU (2-0)

Saturday’s gamesEAST

Baylor (1-0) at West Virginia (1-1)NC State (1-1) at Pittsburgh (3-0)Abilene Christian (0-1) at Army (2-1)Rice at Marshall (2-0), ppd.North Carolina (1-0) at Boston College

(2-0)SOUTH

Missouri (0-1) at Tennessee (1-0)Arkansas St. (1-1) at Coastal Carolina

(2-0)South Carolina (0-1) at Florida (1-0)East Carolina (0-1) at Georgia St. (0-1)UTSA (3-0) at UAB (2-1)North Alabama at Liberty (2-0)Houston Baptist (0-3) at E. Kentucky (1-2)Texas A&M (1-0) at Alabama (1-0)Mississippi (0-1) at Kentucky (0-1)Jacksonville St. at Florida St. (0-2)Virginia Tech (1-0) at Duke (0-3)Charlotte (0-1) at FAUW. Kentucky (0-2) at Middle Tennes-

see (0-3)Georgia Southern (1-1) at Louisiana-

Monroe (0-3)LSU (0-1) at Vanderbilt (0-1)Tulsa (0-1) at UCF (2-0)Auburn (1-0) at Georgia (1-0)Arkansas (0-1) at Mississippi St. (1-0)Virginia (1-0) at Clemson (2-0)Troy (1-1) at South Alabama (1-2)

MIDWESTSouth Florida (1-1) at Cincinnati (2-0)Oklahoma St. (2-0) at Kansas (0-2)Cent. Arkansas (2-1) at N. Dakota St.Texas Tech (1-1) at Kansas St. (1-1)Oklahoma (1-1) at Iowa St. (1-1)

SOUTHWESTTCU (0-1) at Texas (2-0)Memphis (1-0) at SMU (3-0)West Texas A&M University at Stephen

F. Austin (0-3)Southern Miss. (0-3) at North Texas (1-1)

FAR WESTNavy (1-1) at Air Force

Pro football

NFLAMERICAN CONFERENCE

East W L T Pct PF PABuffalo 3 0 0 1.000 93 77New England 2 1 0 .667 87 66Miami 1 2 0 .333 70 65N.Y. Jets 0 3 0 .000 37 94

SouthTennessee 3 0 0 1.000 80 74Indianapolis 2 1 0 .667 84 45Jacksonville 1 2 0 .333 70 84Houston 0 3 0 .000 57 95

NorthPittsburgh 3 0 0 1.000 80 58Baltimore 2 1 0 .667 91 56Cleveland 2 1 0 .667 75 88Cincinnati 0 2 1 .000 66 74

WestKansas City 3 0 0 1.000 91 60Las Vegas 2 1 0 .667 88 90L.A. Chargers 1 2 0 .333 52 57Denver 0 3 0 .000 45 70

NATIONAL CONFERENCEEast

W L T Pct PF PADallas 1 2 0 .333 88 97Washington 1 2 0 .333 62 81Philadelphia 0 2 1 .000 59 87N.Y. Giants 0 3 0 .000 38 79

SouthTampa Bay 2 1 0 .667 82 61Carolina 1 2 0 .333 68 81New Orleans 1 2 0 .333 88 94Atlanta 0 3 0 .000 90 108

NorthChicago 3 0 0 1.000 74 62Green Bay 3 0 0 1.000 122 85Detroit 1 2 0 .333 70 92Minnesota 0 3 0 .000 75 102

WestSeattle 3 0 0 1.000 111 86Arizona 2 1 0 .667 77 61L.A. Rams 2 1 0 .667 89 71San Francisco 2 1 0 .667 87 46

Thursday, Sept. 24Miami 31, Jacksonville 13

Sunday, Sept. 27Pittsburgh 28, Houston 21Tennessee 31, Minnesota 30Cincinnati 23, Philadelphia 23, OTChicago 30, Atlanta 26Cleveland 34, Washington 20New England 36, Las Vegas 20Buffalo 35, L.A. Rams 32San Francisco 36, N.Y. Giants 9Indianapolis 36, N.Y. Jets 7Carolina 21, L.A. Chargers 16Tampa Bay 28, Denver 10Detroit 26, Arizona 23Seattle 38, Dallas 31Green Bay 37, New Orleans 30

Monday, Sept. 28Kansas City 34, Baltimore 20

Thursday’s gameDenver at N.Y. Jets

Sunday’s gamesL.A. Chargers at Tampa BayCleveland at DallasBaltimore at WashingtonPittsburgh at TennesseeArizona at CarolinaNew Orleans at DetroitJacksonville at CincinnatiMinnesota at HoustonSeattle at MiamiIndianapolis at ChicagoN.Y. Giants at L.A. RamsBuffalo at Las VegasNew England at Kansas CityPhiladelphia at San Francisco

Monday’s gameAtlanta at Green Bay

Deals

Tuesday’s transactionsBASEBALL

Major League BaseballAmerican League

CHICAGO WHITE SOX — Reassigned RF Blake Rutherford, CF Luis Gonzalez, SS Danny Mendick, Cs Seby Zavala and Yermin Mercedes, LHPs Gio Gonzalez and Bernardo Flores Jr., RHPs Jonathan Stiever, Reynaldo Lopez and Zack Burdi and OF Micker Adolfo to minor leagues. Designated RHP Alex McRae for assign-ment. Activated CF Leury Garcia from 60-day IL.

CLEVELAND INDIANS — Reassigned LHPs Sam Hentges, Scott Moss and Kyle Nelson, RHPs Adam Plutko and Jean Car-los Mejia, OFs Jake Bauers and Daniel Johnson and INF Bobby Bradley to the minor leagues.

HOUSTON ASTROS — Agreed to terms with 1B Yuli Gurriel on a one-year con-tract. Reassigned RHPs Barndon Bai-ley, Joe Biagini, Humberto Castellanos, Chase De Jong, Chris Devenski, Luis Gar-cia, Brad Peacock, Nivaldo Rodriguez, Carlos Sanabria and Justin Verlander, LHP Cionel Perez and INF Taylor Jones to the minor leagues. Selected the contract of OF Chas McCormick from alternate training site. Designated RHP Joe Biagini for assignment.

MINNESOTA TWINS — Designated RHP Sean Poppen for assignment. Reas-signed RHPs Dakota Chalmers and Johan Duran, LHPs Rich Hill, Devin Smeltzer and Lewis Thorpe, OFs Brent Rooker and Gilberto Celestino and INFs Travis Blan-kenhorn and Josh Donaldson to the mi-nor leagues.

NEW YORK YANKEES — Reassigned RHPs Albert Abreu, Luis Gil, Brooks Kriske and Luis Medina, OF Austin Mead-ows, CF Estevan Florial and INFs Thairo Estrada and Miguel Andujar to the minor leagues.

OAKLAND ATHLETICS — Reassigned INFs Austin Allen, Matt Chapman and Sheldon Neuse, OFs Luis Barrera, Skye Bolt, Seth Brown and Dustin Fowler and RHPs Paul Blackburn, Jordan Weems and Daulton Jefferies to the minor leagues.

TAMPA BAY RAYS — Selected the con-tract of LHP Shane McClanahan from alternate training site. Designated LHP Sean Gilmartin for assignment. Reas-signed LHPs Ryan Sherriff, Sean Gilmar-tin, Josh Fleming and Brendan McKay, RHPs Edgar Garcia, Brent Honeywell and Trevor Richards, INFs Vidal Brujan, Kevin Padlo, Brian O’Grady, Kevan Smith and Ronaldo Hernandez and OF Austin Mead-ows to the minor leagues.

TORONTO BLUE JAYS — Reassigned RHPs Elvis Luciano, Julian Merryweather, Patrick Murphy, Hector Perez, Sean Reid-Foley, Tanner Roark, Jordan Romano, Ja-cob Waguespack, Shun Yamaguchi and T.J. Zeuch and OF Derek Fisher to the minor leagues. Activated INF Santiago Espinal.

National LeaguePITTSBURGH PIRATES — Signed free

agent RHP Weslyn Toussaint to a minor league contract.

BASKETBALLNational Basketball Association

CHICAGO BULLS — Named Todd Camp-bell head athletic trainer.

FOOTBALLNational Football League

ARIZONA CARDINALS — Signed TE Evan Baylis to the practice squad.

ATLANTA FALCONS — Placed CB Dar-queze Dennard on the injured reserve. Signed DE Austin Edwards to the practice squad. Released LB Deone Bucannon and CB D.J. White from the practice squad.

CAROLINA PANTHERS — Activated S Natrell Jamerson from the practice squad reserve/COVID-19 list.

CHICAGO BEARS — Placed RB Tarik Co-hen on injured reserve. Signed DE Terry Beckner and LB Sharif Finch to the prac-tice squad. Activated RB Artavis Pierce from the practice squad.

CINCINNATI BENGALS — Waived G Shaq Calhoun.

CLEVELAND BROWNS — Signed S Jo-vante Moffatt from the practice squad. Placed WR Jolo Natson on injured re-serve. Waived LB Montrel Meander.

DALLAS COWBOYS — Signed OT Jor-dan Mills to the practice squad.

DENVER BRONCOS — Placed OT Elijah Wilkinson on injured reserve.

KANSAS CITY CHIEFS — Released WR Kalija Lipscomb from the practice squad.

JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS — Placed K Brandon Wright on injured reserve.

LOS ANGELES CHARGERS — Placed CB Chris Harris Jr. on injured reserve. Acti-vated S Jahleel Addae from the practice squad.

NEW YORK GIANTS — Released QB Cooper Rush and RB Rod Smith from the practice squad. Signed RB Alfred Mor-ris and QB Clayton Thorson to practice squad.

PHILADELPHIA EAGLES — Signed TE Jason Croom and CB Michael Jacquet to the practice squad. Released TE Jordan Franks and RB Michael Warren from the practice squad. Placed TE Dallas Goedert on injured reserve.

SAN DIEGO CHARGERS — Placed CB Chris Harris Jr. on injured reserve. Acti-vated S Jahleel Addae from the practice squad. Signed DL Joe Gaziano to the practice squad.

SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS — Released OT William Sweet from the practice squad.

SEATTLE SEAHAWKS — Waived LB Em-manuel Ellerbee (from injured reserve) and LB D’Andre Walker.

TENNESSEE TITANS — Placed DL DaQuan Jones, LS Beau Brinkley and TE Tommy Hudson on the COVID-19 list. Signed RB D’Onta Foreman and DB Mau-rice Smith to the practice squad.

WASHINGTON FOOTBALL TEAM —Placed DT Matt Ioannidis on injured re-serve. Signed DE Nate Orchard.

HOCKEYNational Hockey League

NASHVILLE PREDATORS — Signed G Devin Cooley to a two-year, entry-level contract.

NEW JERSEY DEVILS — Loaned F Mikhail Maltsev to SKA St. Petersburg (KHL).

Pro soccer

MLSEASTERN CONFERENCE

W L T Pts GF GAColumbus 9 2 3 30 23 8Philadelphia 8 2 4 28 24 11Toronto FC 8 2 4 28 24 15Orlando City 7 2 5 26 25 15New England 5 3 6 21 15 12New York 6 6 2 20 17 16New York City FC 6 6 2 20 14 10Nashville SC 4 5 4 16 11 14Montreal 5 8 1 16 20 27Chicago 4 7 3 15 18 22Atlanta 4 8 2 14 13 19Cincinnati 3 7 4 13 8 21D.C. United 2 7 5 11 11 20Inter Miami CF 3 9 2 11 12 22

WESTERN CONFERENCE W L T Pts GF GASeattle 7 3 3 24 29 12Portland 7 4 3 24 27 24Sporting KC 6 5 2 20 24 20FC Dallas 5 3 5 20 19 13Colorado 5 4 4 19 25 20Minnesota United 5 5 4 19 24 21Los Angeles FC 5 6 3 18 32 29Real Salt Lake 4 4 6 18 19 21Houston 3 4 7 16 21 24Vancouver 5 9 0 15 17 31LA Galaxy 4 6 3 15 17 22San Jose 3 6 5 14 19 39

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

Sunday, Sept. 27New York 4, Montreal 1New England 2, D.C. United 0Philadelphia 3, Miami 0Chicago 2, Atlanta 0Toronto FC 3, Columbus 1Real Salt Lake 0, Minnesota 0Orlando City 0, FC Dallas 0Sporting Kansas City at Colorado ppd.Portland 1, Vancouver 0

San Jose 2, Los Angeles FC 1Seattle 3, LA Galaxy 1

Saturday’s gamesNew York at Orlando CityAtlanta at D.C. UnitedChicago at MontrealNashville at New EnglandPhiladelphia at Toronto FCSporting Kansas City at HoustonNew York City FC at MiamiCincinnati at MinnesotaColumbus at FC DallasVancouver at SeattleLA Galaxy at San JoseColorado at Portland

Sunday’s gameLos Angeles FC at Real Salt Lake

NWSL W L T Pts GF GAChicago 1 1 1 4 6 4North Carolina 1 0 1 4 4 3Washington 1 1 1 4 4 4Portland 1 0 0 3 3 0Houston 1 1 0 3 6 5Sky Blue FC 1 1 0 3 3 5Reign FC 0 0 1 1 2 2Orlando 0 1 1 1 1 3Utah 0 1 1 1 2 5

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

Saturday, Sept. 26Washington 1, Chicago 1Reign FC 2, Utah 2Houston 3, Orlando 1

Wednesday’s gameReign FC at Portland

Saturday’s gamesWashington at Sky Blue FCPortland at Utah

Sunday’s gameNorth Carolina at Houston

AP sportlightOct. 1

1903 — The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Pilgrims 7-3 in the first World Series game. Jimmy Sebring hits the first Series homer, Deacon Phillippe is the winning pitcher and Cy Young the loser.

1961 — Roger Maris hits his 61st home run of the season, against Tracy Stallard of the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadi-um. The blow gives New York a 1-0 victo-ry and eclipses Babe Ruth’s 34-year-old single-season home run record.

Briefl y

Steelers-Titanspostponed after8 positive tests

Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Pittsburgh-Tennessee game orig-inally scheduled for Sunday will be played either Monday or Tues-day due to positive coronavirus tests among the Titans, the NFL announced Wednesday.

The NFL said a new date and time would be announced as soon as possible and that the postpone-ment would allow additional time for further testing.

On Tuesday, the NFL said three Titans players and five team personnel had tested posi-tive for COVID-19. The Titans have closed their facility at least through Friday and will not be able to practice in any fashion together until Saturday at the earliest.

Titans coach Mike Vrabel said soon after the announcement Wednesday: “Some of them are indeed experiencing flu-like symptoms, nothing I think out of the ordinary. We anticipate they will feel better shortly. Nothing of overly concern. But my concern is always with the health and safety of our players, our staff and their families.”

In other NFL news:� The NFL is threatening

teams with possible suspensions for sideline personnel, includ-ing coaches, who do not properly wear face coverings during the pandemic.

Forfeiting draft picks also could be among disciplinary measures for failing to comply with league/players’ union protocols.

In a memo obtained by The As-sociated Press, Troy Vincent, who oversees NFL football operations, told the 32 teams Wednesday that “accountability” is required on the sidelines.

The NFL has fined several coaches $100,000 for lack of com-pliance, including Sean Payton of New Orleans and Jon Gruden of Las Vegas, who both have said they contracted and recovered from the coronavirus.

� The NFL Players Associa-tion is asking that the 32 league teams change all field surfaces to natural grass because of injury concerns.

Union president JC Tretter said in a statement on Wednesday that artificial turf is significantly harder on the body than grass.

He cited the NFL’s injury data from 2012-18 that the contact injury rate for lower extremi-ties was higher during practices and games held on turf. And that NFL players experienced a much

higher rate of noncontact lowerextremity injuries on turf com-pared to natural surfaces.

Rangers buy out star goaltender Lundqvist

NEW YORK — The “King” of Madison Square Garden has beendeposed.

The New York Rangers havebought out the contract of star goaltender Henrik Lundqvist,parting ways with one of their greatest players in franchise his-tory after 15 mostly spectacularseasons.

In buying out the final yearof the 38-year old’s contact, the Rangers will save $3.7 million incap space for next season. Lun-dqvist is now a free agent.

The Rangers traded veterandefenseman Marc Staal and asecond-round draft choice to De-troit in the last week in another cap move.

Since joining the team in 2005-06, Lundqvist has won the VezinaTrophy (2011-12), led the Rangers to the Stanley Cup Final (2014),and been selected to the All-Star game five times. He also helpedSweden win gold at the 2006Turin Olympics.

Lundqvist played in 887 games,posting a 459-310-96 record with a 2.43 goals-against average. The man referred to as “The King”was limited to 30 games in thispast season and had a 10-12-3 record with a career-worst 3.16goals-against average.

USA Bobsled skipping some World Cup races

USA Bobsled and Skeleton is not sending sliders to Europe for at least the first half of the World Cup sliding season, part of a plan to keep its athletes and coaches assafe as possible during the coro-navirus pandemic.

At a minimum, the Americansare planning to miss four WorldCup weekends — two in Sigulda,Latvia, in November and two in Igls, Austria, in December. There are eight World Cup weekendson the schedule, plus the worldchampionships that were movedfrom the U.S. team’s home basein Lake Placid, N.Y., because ofthe pandemic and quarantiningconcerns.

“We are taking every precau-tion necessary to ensure the safe-ty of our athletes, coaches, andstaff members,” USABS CEOAron McGuire said.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 19Thursday, October 1, 2020

NHL/FRENCH OPEN

Lightning overcame longseason to lift Stanley Cup

BY JOHN WAWROW

Associated Press

Defenseman Ryan McDonagh was preparing to answer one last question regarding the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Stanley Cup championship when teammates Nikita Kucherov and Alex Kil-lorn crashed the room, putting an abrupt and celebratory end to the news conference.

“Who’s next? Next question,” Kucherov said, looking into the camera.

With McDonagh stopping in mid-sentence, Killorn stepped be-hind the podium and said, “We’re not staying here all night, man.”

The wait for the Lightning — and the NHL — was long enough after Tampa Bay clinched the Cup with a 2-0 win in Game 6 against Dallas on Monday night in Edmonton, Alberta.

Tampa Bay raised the Cup 363 days after the first puck was dropped on the 2019-20 season, and some 6 ½ months after hock-ey was put on pause due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“We knew what we were capa-ble of with our whole roster, and we were pretty thankful to get the opportunity to come back and play,” McDonagh said.

The Lightning’s title, their sec-ond after winning in 2004, was historic.

In becoming the first team to win the Cup after the month of June, Tampa Bay also became the first to win 18 playoff games, including two in a preliminary round seeding series, as opposed to the standard 16. And it did so

while spending 65 days in the NHL bubble, starting in Toronto before relocating to Edmonton for the conference finals.

“Obviously, we can go back and look at what’s going on in the world now,” said Maroon, who won the Cup last year with St. Louis. “I think a lot of us are going to sit back and talk about this one a lot, because this one was a special one, and a hard one to win.”

The Lightning returned home later Tuesday, greeted by family members and hundreds of fans on an airstrip near Tampa Interna-tional Airport.

The crowd cheered team mem-bers exiting the plane. Defense-man Victor Hedman, holding his Conn Smythe Trophy, and team captain Steven Stamkos, hoisting the Stanley Cup, were the last to leave the airplane.

“To finally be here and enjoy it, it’s awesome,” Killorn said. “It’s kind of surreal right now, to be honest.”

Once reunited with their fami-lies, the team members were taken to Amalie Arena for a pri-vate on-ice celebration that in-cluded their wives, girlfriends, children, arena staff workers and team sponsors.

Team owner Jeff Vinik said the Lightning have been one of the most successful teams in the NHL, but were missing one thing.

“Over the past six years we’ve been to four conference finals and played for the Stanley Cup,” Vinik said. “This time we won it.”

Stamkos thanked the families for their patience as the players spent more than two months in the NHL’s bubble in Toronto and Edmonton.

PHOTOS BY LUIS SANTANA, TAMPA BAY TIMES/AP

Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik, left, holds the Stanley Cup as team captain Steven Stamkos looks on after the team arrived Tuesday in Tampa, Fla. Tampa Bay won its second Cup Monday night.

The Lightning’s Blake Coleman places his 7-month-old daughter Charlie in the Stanley Cup as Coleman’s wife Jordan, back, looks on.

Serena withdrawsbecause of injury

BY HOWARD FENDRICHAND JEROME PUGMIRE

Associated Press

PARIS — Serena Williams laughed at her own jokes and sounded an upbeat tone — or one as positive, at least, as could be ex-pected from a player whose latest bid for a record-tying 24th Grand Slam title ended because of inju-ry, as did her season, probably.

Williams tried to warm up for her second-round match at Ro-land Garros on Wednesday but huddled afterward with her coach and determined that if walking on the Achilles tendon she hurt at the U.S. Open nearly three weeks ago was difficult, then trying to run and compete made little sense.

“If it was my knee, that would be more really devastating for me. But this is something that just happened, and it’s super acute. That’s totally different. I feel like my body is actually doing really, really well,” said Williams, who turned 39 on Saturday. “I just ran into, for lack of a better word, bad timing and bad luck, really, in New York.”

Williams withdrew about an hour before she would have played Tsvetana Pironkova at Court Philippe Chatrier, her ear-liest exit from a major tourna-

ment in six years and the most significant development in Parison Day 4, which also includeda straight-set loss by U.S. Openrunner-up Victoria Azarenka andstraightforward wins for RafaelNadal and Dominic Thiem over a couple of American men.

“That’s disappointing on many levels, of course,” said John Isner, the 21st-seeded man who was beaten in four sets by 20-year-old American qualifier SebastianKorda. “It’s disappointing per-sonally for Serena, but it’s disap-pointing for the tournament andfor tennis fans worldwide.”

Williams’ departure, and the10th-seeded Azarenka’s 6-2, 6-2dismissal by 161st-ranked AnnaKarolina Schmiedlova — some-one who lost 13 consecutiveGrand Slam matches until defeat-ing Williams’ older sister, Venus, earlier this week — meant zero of the four female semifinalistsat Flushing Meadows made it past the second round at RolandGarros.

Champion Naomi Osaka didn’t make the trip to France at all;No. 21 seed Jennifer Brady was upset in her opening match by a17-year-old qualifier.

The French Open’s start was postponed to September fromMay because of the pandemic .

French Open scores

WednesdayAt Stade Rolan Garros

ParisPurse: $18,209,040Surface: Red clay

Men’s SinglesSecond Round

Taylor Fritz (27), United States, def. Radu Albot, Moldova, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4.

Stan Wawrinka (16), Switzerland, def. Dominik Koepfer, Germany, 6-3, 6-2, 3-6, 6-1.

Sebastian Korda, United States, def. John Isner (21), United States, 6-4, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4.

Hugo Gaston, France, def. Yoshihito Nishioka, Japan, 6-4, 7-6 (4), 3-6, 6-2.

Diego Schwartzman (12), Argentina, def. Lorenzo Giustino, Italy, 6-1, 7-5, 6-0.

Rafael Nadal (2), Spain, def. Mackenzie McDonald, United States, 6-1, 6-0, 6-3.

Pedro Martinez, Spain, def. Mikhail Kukushkin, Kazakhstan, 6-3, 6-1, 6-0.

Dominic Thiem (3), Austria, def. Jack Sock, United States, 6-1, 6-3, 7-6 (6).

Norbert Gombos, Slovakia, def. Jurij Rodionov, Austria, 6-2, 2-6, 7-6 (4), 6-4.

Lorenzo Sonego, Italy, def. Alexander Bublik, Kazakhstan, 7-6 (8), 6-1, 7-5.

Casper Ruud (28), Norway, def. Tommy Paul, United States, 6-1, 1-6, 6-3, 1-6, 6-3.

Federico Coria, Argentina, def. Benoit Paire (23), France, 7-6 (3), 4-6, 6-3, 6-1.

Stefano Travaglia, Italy, def. Kei Nishi-kori, Japan, 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 (7), 4-6, 6-2.

Women’s SinglesSecond Round

Tsvetana Pironkova, Bulgaria, def. Serena Williams (6), United States, walk-over.

Elina Svitolina (3), Ukraine, def. Rena-ta Zarazua, Mexico, 6-3, 0-6, 6-2.

Ekaterina Alexandrova (27), Russia, def. Astra Sharma, Australia, 6-3, 6-3.

Anna-Karolina Schmiedlova, Slovakia, def. Victoria Azarenka (10), Belarus, 6-2, 6-2.

Nadia Podoroska, Argentina, def. Yulia Putintseva (23), Kazakhstan, 6-3, 1-6, 6-2.

Amanda Anisimova (25), United States, def. Bernarda Pera, United States, 6-2, 6-0.

Barbora Krejcikova, Czech Republic, def. Barbora Strycova (32), Czech Repub-lic, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3.

Kiki Bertens (5), Netherlands, def. Sara Errani, Italy, 7-6 (5), 3-6, 9-7.

Katerina Siniakova, Czech Republic, def. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Russia, 6-3, 6-4.

Eugenie Bouchard, Canada, def. Daria Gavrilova, Australia, 5-7, 6-4, 6-3.

Iga Swiatek, Poland, def. Hsieh Su-wei, Taiwan, 6-1, 6-4.

Maria Sakkari (20), Greece, def. Kamil-la Rakhimova, Russia, 7-6 (0), 6-2.

Elise Mertens (16), Belgium, def. Kaia

Kanepi, Estonia, 6-4, 7-5.Simona Halep (1), Romania, def. Irina-

Camelia Begu, Romania, 6-3, 6-4.Men’s Doubles

First RoundIvan Dodig, Croatia, and Filip Polasek

(5), Slovakia, def. Henri Kontinen, Fin-land, and Jan-Lennard Struff, Germany, 6-3, 6-1.

Jonny O Mara, Britain, and MarceloArevalo-Gonzalez, El Salvador, def. Al-bert Ramos-Vinolas, Spain, and Gianluca Mager, Italy, 6-1, 6-2.

Matt Reid and Alex de Minaur, Austra-lia, def. Dusan Lajovic and Nikola Cacic, Serbia, 6-4, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (5).

Robert Farah and Juan Sebastian Ca-bal (1), Colombia, def. Corentin Denollyand Kyrian Jacquet, France, 3-6, 6-2, 6-3.

Aljaz Bedene, Slovenia, and Dennis Novak, Austria, def. Ricardas Berankis,Lithuania, and Yoshihito Nishioka, Japan,6-4, 6-3.

Marcel Granollers, Spain, and HoracioZeballos (2), Argentina, def. Sam Quer-rey and Steve Johnson, United States, 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (4).

Women’s DoublesFirst Round

Jil Teichmann, Switzerland, and Nina Stojanovic, Serbia, def. Leylah Annie Fernandez, Canada, and Diane Parry, France, 6-2, 6-4.

Kristyna Pliskova, Czech Republic,and Viktoria Kuzmova (13), Slovakia, def. Laura-Ioana Paar, Romania, and JuliaWachaczyk, Germany, 6-2, 2-6, 6-0.

Jasmine Paolini, Italy, and VarvaraGracheva, Russia, def. Lyudmyla Kiche-nok and Nadiia Kichenok (15), Ukraine,6-3, 4-6, 6-4.

Gabriela Dabrowski, Canada, andJelena Ostapenko (5), Latvia, def. Arina Rodionova, Australia, and Zarina Diyas,Kazakhstan, 7-5, 6-3.

Cristina-Andreea Mitu and Patricia Maria Tig, Romania, def. Madison Bren-gle, United States, and Yana Sizikova,Russia, 7-6 (8), 6-4.

Magda Linette, Poland, and Kateryna Kozlova, Ukraine, def. Amandine Hesseand Harmony Tan, France, 6-0, 7-6 (2).

Arantxa Rus, Netherlands, and Marie Bouzkova, Czech Republic, def. Ana Bog-dan, Romania, and Rebecca Peterson,Sweden, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4.

Kveta Peschke, Czech Republic, and Demi Schuurs (6), Netherlands, def. Ma-koto Ninomiya and Nao Hibino, Japan, 7-6 (5), 5-7, 6-4.

Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Sofia Kenin (9), United States, def. Paula Ba-dosa, Spain, and Elena Rybakina, Ka-zakhstan, 6-4, 6-4.

Alison van Uytvanck and Greet Min-nen, Belgium, def. Heather Watson, Brit-ain, and Lara Arruabarrena, Spain, 6-3, 6-2.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 20 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 1, 2020

PlayoffsWILD CARD SERIES

(Best-of-three, x-if neccesary)American League

Tampa Bay 1, Toronto 0Tuesday: Tampa Bay 3, Toronto 1Wednesday: Game 2x-Thursday: Game 3, (Walker 4-3) at

Tampa Bay (Morton 2-2) Chicago White Sox 1, Oakland 0

Tuesday: Chicago White Sox 4, Oak-land 1

Wednesday: Game 2x-Thursday: Game 3 Chicago White

Sox (Dunning 2-0 or Cease 5-4) at Oak-land (TBD) ; AFN-Sports, 9 p.m. Thursday CET; 4 a.m. Friday JKT

Houston 1, Minnesota 0Tuesday: Houston 4, Minnesota 1Wednesday: Game 2x-Thursday: Game 3, Houston (TBD) at

Minnesota (Pineda 2-0) New York Yankees 1, Cleveland 0

Tuesday: N.Y. Yankees 12, Cleveland 3Wednesday: Game 2x-Thursday: Game 3, New York Yan-

kees (Happ 2-2) at Cleveland (Plesac 4-2); ; AFN-Sports, 1 a.m. Friday CET; 8 a.m. Friday JKT

National LeagueLos Angeles Dodgers vs. MilwaukeeWednesday: Game 1Thursday: Game 2, Milwaukee (Wood-

ruff 3-5) at Los Angeles Dodgers (Ker-shaw 6-2); AFN-Sports, 4 a.m. Friday CET;11 a.m. Friday JKT

x-Friday: Game 3 Atlanta vs. Cincinnati

Wednesday: Game 1Thursday: Game 2, Cincinnati (Cas-

tillo 4-6) at Atlanta (Anderson 3-2) ; AFN-Sports, 6 p.m. Thursday CET; 1 a.m. Friday JKT

x-Friday: Game 3 Chicago Cubs vs. Miami

Wednesday: Game 1Thursday: Game 2, Miami (TBD) at Chi-

cago Cubs (Darvish 8-3 or Hendricks 6-5) x-Friday: Game 3 ; AFN-Sports, 9 p.m.

Friday CET; 4 a.m. Saturday JKTSan Diego vs. St. Louis

Wednesday: Game 1Thursday: Game 2 , St. Louis (Wain-

wright 5-3) at San Diego (TBD) x-Friday: Game 3

Scoreboard

MLB PLAYOFFS

TuesdayYankees 12, Indians 3

New York Cleveland ab r h bi ab r h biLeMhu 2b-1b 5 1 2 1 Lindor ss 4 0 0 0Judge rf 5 1 1 2 Hrnndez 2b 4 0 1 0Hicks cf 3 2 0 0 Ramirez 3b 3 0 1 1Voit 1b 5 1 2 1 Santana 1b 4 0 0 0Wade 2b 0 0 0 0 Reyes dh 4 0 0 0Stanton dh 5 1 1 1 Naylor lf 4 2 4 1Urshela 3b 4 1 1 1 R.Perez c 3 0 0 0Torres ss 4 3 4 3 Leon c 1 0 0 0Gardner lf 5 2 3 3 Naquin rf 4 0 1 1Higshioka c 5 0 1 0 DeShlds cf 4 1 1 0Totals 41 12 15 12 Totals 35 3 8 3New York 201 220 401—12Cleveland 001 100 001— 3

LOB—New York 6, Cleveland 6. 2B—Voit(1), Gardner (1), Naylor 2 (2), Ramirez (1). HR—Judge (1), Torres (1), Gardner (1), Stanton (1), Naylor (1). SF—Urshela (1). IP H R ER BB SONew YorkCole W,1-0 7 6 2 2 0 13Cessa 2 2 1 1 1 1ClevelandBieber L,0-1 4C 9 7 7 2 7Maton 1B 0 0 0 0 1Cimber C 2 3 3 1 0Hill 2 3 2 2 0 2O.Perez B 1 0 0 0 0

Hill pitched to 4 batters in the 9th. WP—Cole. T—3:17.

Astros 4, Twins 1Houston Minnesota ab r h bi ab r h biSpringer cf 5 1 1 1 Arraez 2b 3 0 0 0Altuve 2b 3 0 0 1 Buxton cf 4 0 1 0Brantley dh 5 0 2 2 Kepler rf 2 1 0 0Bregman 3b 4 0 0 0 Cruz dh 3 0 1 1Tucker lf 4 0 1 0 Rosario lf 4 0 0 0Gurriel 1b 4 1 1 0 Sano 1b 4 0 1 0Correa ss 2 1 1 0 Polanco ss 4 0 1 0Reddick rf 4 1 1 0 Jeffers c 2 0 0 0Maldonado c 4 0 1 0 Garver ph 1 0 0 0 Avila c 0 0 0 0 Astdillo ph 1 0 0 0 Gnzalez 3b 2 0 0 0Totals 35 4 8 4 Totals 30 1 4 1Houston 000 000 103—4Minnesota 001 000 000—1

E—Polanco (1). DP—Houston 1, Min-nesota 0. LOB—Houston 9, Minnesota 7. 2B—Brantley (1), Cruz (1). SB—Buxton (1). IP H R ER BB SOHoustonGreinke 4 2 1 1 3 1Valdez W,1-0 5 2 0 0 2 5MinnesotaMaeda 5 2 0 0 3 5May H,1 1 0 0 0 0 0Duffey BS,0-1 1 3 1 1 1 1Rogers 1 0 0 0 0 1Romo L,0-1 C 2 3 0 1 0Thielbar B 1 0 0 0 0

Duffey pitched to 1 batter in the 8th. T—3:49.

Judge, Yankees hammer Bieber, Indians in opener

BY TOM WITHERS

Associated Press

CLEVELAND — On a night for debates, Aaron Judge, Gerrit Cole and the New York Yankees made quite an opening statement.

Shane Bieber had no rebuttal.Judge smashed a tone-setting,

two-run homer on Bieber’s fourth pitch, Cole struck out 13 in his New York playoff debut and the Yankees opened their AL wild-card series with a resounding 12-3 win over the Cleveland Indians on Tuesday.

Just a few miles from where President Donald Trump and campaign opponent Joe Biden made their cases to the nation in their presidential debate, the Yan-kees teed off against Bieber, who was baseball’s best pitcher during the condensed regular season but ineffective in his playoff debut.

Judge and the rest of New York’s hitters hadn’t faced Bieber in 2020, but they were well pre-pared and took some meaty cuts against the 25-year-old ace, who gave up season highs in runs (seven) and hits (nine) over 4 2⁄3

innings — his shortest stint since June 9 last season against the Yankees.

“The first inning didn’t go as planned,” Bieber said. “I wish I would have been with my off-speed stuff in the zone, and chal-lenged those guys a little more. I forced myself into some bad situ-ations and some bad counts on top of not having my best stuff and making mistakes.

“No excuses. It was not good.”The best-of-three series contin-

ues Wednesday night with Carlos Carrasco trying to save Cleve-land’s season against Masahiro Tanaka.

When Bieber’s final pitch clanged loudly off the empty left-field bleachers on a two-run homer by Gleyber Torres in the fifth, the Yankees were up 7-2 and had delivered a boisterous postseason message to the rest of baseball: Don’t forget us.

“We scored quite a few runs,“ said Brett Gardner, who hit a two-run homer in the seventh and drove in three. “I don’t think you ever expect that against a pitch-er the caliber of Shane Bieber. Hopefully that’s a sign of more good things to come.”

After giving up Torres’ homer, Bieber handed the ball to acting Indians manager Sandy Alomar Jr. and walked slowly toward

Cleveland’s dugout, seemingly carrying all of the city’s hopes for a long run with him. The Indians have lost seven straight playoff games.

Staked to an early lead on Judge’s homer, Cole showed why the Yankees shelled out $324 mil-lion for him in the offseason. The right-hander gave up two runs — including Josh Naylor’s homer — and six hits without a walk in seven innings.

Naylor, who came over in the

deadline trade from San Diego, went 4-for-4 and became the first player with three extra-base hits in his postseason debut.

Cole’s strikeouts were the sec-ond-most by a New York pitcher in postseason history. Roger Cle-mens fanned 15 in Game 4 of the 2000 ALCS. Cole also became the first pitcher to strike out at least 12 in three postseason games.

“We needed to set the tone for the series,” Cole said.

BY DAVE CAMPBELL

Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS — Tarnished by scandal at the start of the year and below average dur-ing this pandemic-abbreviated season, the Houston Astros showed up for the playoffs with their usual confidence and poise.

Just like that, they’ve got the edge on the Minnesota Twins in an elimination game.

Jose Altuve drew a walk to force in the go-ahead run in the ninth inning Tuesday after a two-out error by shortstop Jorge Polanco, and the Astros beat the Twins 4-1 to open their AL playoff series and stretch Minnesota’s all-time postseason record to 17 straight losses.

“These guys know how to battle. They know what it’s like,” said manager Dusty Baker, after the Astros became the first team in major league history to win a game after reaching the postseason with a losing record. “They know how to win, and they take pride in what they do.”

Game 2 in the best-of-three wild-card matchup is Wednesday at Target Field.

Michael Brantley tacked on a two-run sin-gle against Caleb Thielbar in the ninth after Sergio Romo issued the full-count walk to the 5-foot-6 Altuve, who batted 127 points lower (.219) this year than his 2017 AL MVP season.

“He laid off a close pitch. It didn’t go my way,” said Romo, who has three World Series rings with San Francisco and pitched in his 30th career postseason game. “Tough pill to swallow.”

Twins manager Rocco Baldelli called for Romo, the fifth of six pitchers, to start the ninth. The Astros started with two singles, but Romo was about to escape with the tie preserved until Polanco’s throw to second base after a straight-at-him grounder was low to blow the forceout.

“I’m the one to wear any of that. I do feel

that I put my teammates in a position they shouldn’t have been in,” said Romo, lament-ing the five shutout innings by starter Kenta Maeda that were spoiled.

Minnesota and Houston tied for the fewest errors in the majors with 20 during the 60-game season. The Astros were only 18th in walks, but this one counted the most.

“It’s the same thing as a base hit,” Altuve said.

Framber Valdez, who made 10 regular-sea-son starts, pitched five scoreless innings in re-lief of Zack Greinke for the victory to keep the bullpen fresh for the rest of the series. Valdez allowed his only two hits with one out in the ninth, but Willians Astudillo grounded into a double play to end the game.

Valdez became the first reliever with five shutout innings in a playoff game since Romo’s teammate, Madison Bumgarner, did so for the Giants in Game 7 of the 2014 World Series.

“Framber is oblivious to pressure,” said the 71-year-old Baker, who took his fifth different team to the postseason.

The Twins aren’t, even though nobody on this team has taken part in more than five losses during this streak that surpassed the record for consecutive postseason losses in major North American sports. Minnesota was tied with the Chicago Blackhawks, who dropped 16 straight games in the NHL play-offs from 1975-79.

Minnesota’s previous win in the playoffs was notched in New York on Oct. 5, 2004, in Game 1 of the AL division series.

Astros extend Twins’ playoff futility

DAVID DERNER/AP

The New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge runs after hitting a two-run homer off Cleveland Indians pitcher Shane Bieber in the first inning of Game 1 of an AL wild-card baseball series Tuesday in Cleveland.

JIM MONE/AP

Houston Astros pitcher Framber Valdez threw five innings of scoreless relief in his team’s 4-1 defeat of the Twins in an AL wild-card opener Tuesday in Minneapolis.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 21Thursday, October 1, 2020

White Sox 4, Athletics 1Chicago Oakland ab r h bi ab r h biAnderson ss 4 1 3 0 La Stella 2b 4 0 1 0Mncada 3b 4 0 0 0 Grossman lf 4 0 0 0Grandal dh 4 1 1 1 Semien ss 4 0 0 0Abreu 1b 4 1 2 2 Olson 1b 4 0 0 0McCann c 4 0 0 0 Canha rf 2 1 0 0Robert cf 4 0 1 0 Lamb 3b 3 0 1 0Engel rf 4 1 2 1 Lureano cf 3 0 0 1Garcia lf 4 0 0 0 Pinder dh 3 0 0 0Madrigal 2b 4 0 0 0 Murphy c 3 0 1 0Totals 36 4 9 4 Totals 30 1 3 1Chicago 012 000 010—4Oakland 000 000 010—1

LOB—Chicago 5, Oakland 3. 2B—Engel (1), Anderson (1). HR—Engel (1), Abreu (1), Grandal (1). IP H R ER BB SOChicagoGiolito W,1-0 7 2 1 1 1 8Marshall H,1 C 1 0 0 0 0Bummer H,1 B 0 0 0 0 0Colome S,1-1 1 0 0 0 0 1OaklandLuzardo L,0-1 3B 6 3 3 0 5Wendelken 2C 1 0 0 0 3Petit 1 1 0 0 0 1Soria 1 1 1 1 0 1Diekman 1 0 0 0 0 1

Giolito pitched to 2 batters in the 8th. T—2:53.

Rays 3, Blue Jays 1Toronto Tampa Bay ab r h bi ab r h biBiggio 3b 4 0 1 0 Tstsugo dh 2 0 0 0Bchtte ss 3 0 0 1 Rnfre ph-dh 1 0 0 0Grichuk cf 3 0 0 0 Choi ph-dh 1 0 0 0Grrero Jr. 1b 3 0 0 0 B.Lowe 2b 4 0 1 0Gurriel Jr. lf 4 0 2 0 Arzarena lf 4 1 1 0Hrnandez rf 3 0 0 0 Phillips lf 0 0 0 0Villar 2b 2 0 0 0 N.Lowe 1b 3 0 0 0Panik ph-2b 2 0 0 0 Adames ss 2 0 0 0Kirk dh 3 0 1 0 Wendle 3b 2 1 0 0Jansen c 2 0 0 0 Margot rf 3 1 2 2Tellez ph 1 1 1 0 Krmaier cf 3 0 0 0McGuire c 0 0 0 0 Zunino c 3 0 0 0Totals 30 1 5 1 Totals 28 3 4 2Toronto 000 000 010—1Tampa Bay 000 100 20x—3

DP—Toronto 0, Tampa Bay 1. LOB—To-ronto 6, Tampa Bay 3. 2B—Biggio (1), Gur-riel Jr. (1). 3B—Arozarena (1). HR—Margot (1). SB—Adames (1). SF—Bichette (1). IP H R ER BB SOTorontoShoemaker 3 2 0 0 0 2Ray L,0-1 3 1 1 1 1 5Cole B 1 2 2 1 1Borucki C 0 0 0 0 1Hatch 1 0 0 0 0 0Tampa BaySnell W,1-0 5C 1 0 0 2 9Castillo H,1 C 1 0 0 0 1N.Anderson H,1 1C 2 1 1 0 0Fairbanks S,1-1 1 1 0 0 0 2

HBP—Castillo (Guerrero Jr.). WP—Ray, Fairbanks. T—3:06.

Giolito, Abreu power White Sox past A’s in Game 1

BY JANIE MCCAULEY

Associated Press

OAKLAND, Calif. — Lucas Giolito released a brief yell of de-light and marched quickly back to the dugout, his work day going just brilliantly for the Chicago White Sox.

Giolito simply dazzled in his postseason debut, stymieing the Oakland Athletics through six perfect innings and sending the White Sox to a 4-1 victory in the opener of their best-of-three wild-card series Tuesday.

“Unreal. Unreal to watch. Un-real to be behind him,” shortstop Tim Anderson said. “He put the work in. When you set yourself apart to put the work in and want to be a superstar, you want to be that dominant. The work is show-ing. Happy for him and hopefully he can keep it up and continue to grow as a player and as a person. He’s our guy. I expect nothing but that from him.”

It also brought back memories of Giolito’s no-hitter against Pitts-burgh on Aug. 25.

“It was a different feel though because throwing a perfect game, no-hitter is a great per-sonal accomplishment, but we’re in the playoffs, the goal is to win the game,” Giolito said. “For me it was all about I’m going to give the team the best possible chance to come out on top after nine innings.”

On Tuesday, he didn’t allow a baserunner to the AL West cham-pions until Tommy La Stella’s single up the middle to start the seventh. Giolito gave up one run on two hits over seven innings, struck out eight and walked one before giving way to Evan Mar-shall after a stellar 100-pitch outing.

“Pretty cool,” manager Rick Renteria said. “It was neat to see.”

Giolito got plenty of support: Jose Abreu hit a two-run homer and Adam Engel also connected for Chicago. Yasmani Grandal homered in the eighth.

Alex Colome, the third reliever for the White Sox, worked the ninth for a save to close out the 2-hour, 53-minute game.

Before the single by La Stella, Jake Lamb’s line drive to center in the fifth was the hardest-hit ball against Giolito by the power-ful A’s, whose offense struggled down the stretch.

Now, Oakland must win Game 2 on Wednesday at home to avoid another early playoff exit.

The A’s are in the postseason for a third straight year. They lost in the AL wild-card game each of the past two seasons after 97 wins both times.

Oakland advanced just once

during 11 previous playoff trips since 2000, reaching the 2006AL Championship Series beforebeing swept by Detroit.

“We have no choice tomorrow.That’s the way we’ve been here fora while now. We wanted a series. We lost the first game of it. Now it’s time for us to respond tomor-row,” manager Bob Melvin said. “We’re going to have to do moreoffensively. We can’t score onerun and think that we’re going to win tomorrow and put that much pressure on the starter.”

Ramon Laureano’s groundoutin the eighth scored the Athletics’lone run.

Engel crushed an 0-2 fast-ball for a 1-0 lead in the second,and Abreu homered in the third against 22-year-old lefty JesusLuzardo.

Engel’s fourth-inning doublechased Luzardo, who took theloss.

BY FRED GOODALL

Associated Press

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Be-yond ace lefty Blake Snell, the small-market Tampa Bay Rays are light on household names.

On the postseason stage, the American League’s No. 1 seed showed just where all that domi-nance is coming from.

“Tonight was a pretty good representation of the Tampa Bay Rays — our players, how we go about winning games,” manager Kevin Cash said. “We found suc-cess being really good in tight games. Pitching, the defense, and timely hits are the reasons for it.”

With Snell taking a no-hitter into the sixth inning, shortstop Willy Adames making splashy de-fensive plays and Manuel Margot delivering a two-run homer, the AL East champions opened the playoffs Tuesday with a 3-1 vic-tory over the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Rays will try to advance in the best-of-three wild-card matchup in Game 2 at Tropicana Field, where the seats will be empty with the exceptions of fam-ily and friends from both teams.

“I think the biggest thing is not to press, not to really panic. That’s probably the worst thing we can do as a team,” Blue Jays third baseman Cavan Biggio said.

“It’s a bigger stage right now and not a lot of our guys have really played in the playoffs be-fore,” the son of Hall of Famer Craig Biggio added, “but I think we learned from this one today.”

Snell allowed just two baserun-ners until Alejandro Kirk singled leading off the sixth. The 27-year-old lefty retired the next two bat-ters, but Cash didn’t give him a chance to finish the inning.

Diego Castillo, Nick Ander-son and Pete Fairbanks followed

the starter, limiting Toronto to two singles, two doubles and Bo Bichette’s eighth-inning sacrifice fly the rest of the way.

Fairbanks closed for his first save of the season as Cash kept taking a fresh and innovative ap-proach to using his pitching staff.

Snell yielded one hit, walked two and struck out nine, tying a Tampa Bay postseason record.

“I’m getting into a groove. It usually takes me a little while to get going anyway,” Snell said. “It’s been two months but I usu-ally start slow. I’m starting to get the hang of it, starting to feel it. The playoff energy always gets me a lot more excited, for sure.”

Blue Jays reliever Robbie Ray took the loss, giving up one run and one hit in three innings. Margot hit his homer to left-cen-ter field off A.J. Cole to push the Rays’ lead to 3-0 in the seventh inning.

Toronto broke through in the eighth against Anderson, who didn’t allow a run in 18 of 19 regu-lar-season appearances.

Rowdy Tellez’s pinch-hit single gave the Blue Jays a spark. Biggio followed with a double before Bi-chette delivered his sacrifice fly to make it 3-1.

Anderson avoided further dam-age when Adames made a nice play to snare Randal Grichuk’s liner to end the inning.

Fairbanks worked a scoreless ninth to became the 13th different pitcher to earn a save for Tampa Bay this season.

The Rays back in the playoffs after beating Oakland in last year’s AL wild-card game and losing to Houston in the divisional round.

With a league-best 40-20 re-cord, they captured their first di-vision in 10 years. Tampa Bay also won six of 10 meetings against

Toronto despite being outscored 48-44 and outhomered 17-11 dur-ing the regular-season series.

Snell has only had modest suc-cess against the Blue Jays during his career, but the young divi-sion rivals had no answers for the lefty Tuesday until Kirk singled through the hole between first and second base with Castillo already warming up in the Rays bullpen.

The Tampa Bay starter walked Grichuk with two outs in the first before fanning Vladimir Guerre-ro Jr. Teoscar Hernandez drew a one-out walk before being erased on an inning-ending double play that got Snell through the fifth.

“The moment he was throwing all of his pitches for strikes, it was going to be tough for our hitters. He’s pretty good,” said Toronto manager Charlie Montoyo, who served on Cash’s staff with the Rays from 2015-18.

Stellar Snell, Margot’s HR lift Rays past Jays in opener

MLB PLAYOFFS

ERIC RISBERG/AP

Chicago White Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito held the Oakland Athleticsto two hits and a run over seven innings in a 4-1 win Tuesday in Game 1 of an AL wild-card series in Oakland, Calif.

CHRIS O’MEARA/AP

Tampa Bay’s Manuel Margot, right, celebrates his two-run home run off Toronto reliever A.J. Cole with Joey Wendle during Game 1 of a wild-card playoff series Tuesday in St. Petersburg, Fla.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 22 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 1, 2020

AFC individual leadersWeek 3

Quarterbacks Att Com Yds TD IntAllen, Buf 114 81 1038 10 1Mahomes, KC 121 82 898 9 0Burrow, Cin 141 91 821 5 1Tannehill, Ten 104 70 809 6 1Rivers, Ind 92 72 794 3 3Watson, Hou 95 64 792 4 3Minshew, Jac 107 79 787 6 3Carr, Las 100 74 784 6 0Roethlisberger, Pit 109 73 777 7 1Newton, NE 91 62 714 2 2

Rushers Att Yds Avg LG TDHenry, Ten 82 319 3.9 16 2Chubb, Cle 51 292 5.7 29 4Jacobs, Las 68 252 3.7 14 3Edwards-Helaire, KC 55 240 4.4 27t 1Ekeler, LAC 47 236 5.0 13 1Conner, Pit 40 224 5.6 59 2J.Robinson, Jac 43 210 4.9 39 3Hunt, Cle 39 204 5.2 33 1Jackson, Bal 32 182 5.7 30 0Taylor, Ind 48 182 3.8 16 2

Receivers No Yds Avg LG TDDiggs, Buf 20 288 14.4 47 2Allen, LAC 24 265 11.0 28 1Edelman, NE 15 259 17.3 49 0Boyd, Cin 21 230 11.0 25 1Beasley, Buf 15 228 15.2 29 0Kelce, KC 21 227 10.8 29 2Hill, KC 15 222 14.8 54t 3C.Davis, Ten 15 206 13.7 38 1Henry, LAC 16 206 12.9 33 0Fant, Den 14 184 13.1 31 2

Punters No Yds Lg AvgHuber, Cin 15 726 70 48.4Haack, Mia 12 578 63 48.2Kern, Ten 10 469 66 46.9Cooke, Jac 8 373 63 46.6Anger, Hou 12 554 58 46.2Townsend, KC 9 415 58 46.1Koch, Bal 8 366 53 45.8Martin, Den 14 639 56 45.6Gillan, Cle 9 409 59 45.4Long, LAC 11 494 63 44.9

Punt returners No Yds Avg Long TDProche, Bal 4 50 12.5 17 0Roberts, Buf 7 86 12.3 23 0Carter, Hou 4 45 11.3 19 0Erickson, Cin 6 66 11.0 22 0Hines, Ind 5 52 10.4 16 0Spencer, Den 4 31 7.8 9 0Johnson, Pit 5 38 7.6 18 0Grant, Mia 5 36 7.2 15 0Raymond, Ten 6 24 4.0 11 0

Kickoff returners No Yds Avg LG TDB.Wilson, Cin 4 156 39.0 45 0Duvernay, Bal 7 238 34.0 93t 1McCloud, Pit 5 144 28.8 49 0Reed, LAC 6 154 25.7 46 0Dulin, Ind 4 98 24.5 41 0Raymond, Ten 5 101 20.2 30 0Carter, Hou 7 140 20.0 27 0

ScoringTouchdowns

TD Rush Rec Ret PtsChubb, Cle 4 4 0 0 24Newton, NE 4 4 0 0 24Burkhead, NE 3 2 1 0 18Hill, KC 3 0 3 0 18J.Howard, Mia 3 3 0 0 18Hunt, Cle 3 1 2 0 18Jacobs, Las 3 3 0 0 18J.Robinson, Jac 3 3 0 0 18J.Smith, Ten 3 0 3 0 18Smith-Schuster, Pit 3 0 3 0 18

Kicking PAT FG LG PtsBlankenship, Ind 8/8 8/10 44 32Gostkowski, Ten 5/7 9/12 55 32Tucker, Bal 10/10 7/7 47 31Bullock, Cin 6/6 8/9 50 30Carlson, Las 10/10 6/7 54 28Butker, KC 8/10 5/6 58 23Badgley, LAC 4/4 6/7 43 22Boswell, Pit 7/8 5/5 41 22Bass, Buf 12/12 3/5 39 21Folk, NE 9/10 4/6 33 21

NFC individual leadersWeek 3

Quarterbacks Att Com Yds TD IntPrescott, Dal 143 96 1188 5 2Ryan, Atl 128 80 961 7 2Wilson, Sea 103 79 925 14 1Rodgers, GB 106 71 887 9 0Bridgewater, Car 104 77 871 2 2Goff, LAR 90 63 863 5 2Stafford, Det 106 66 811 5 2K.Murray, Ari 113 75 786 4 5Brees, NO 104 73 760 6 1Brady, TB 109 71 753 6 3

Rushers Att Yds Avg LG TDJones, GB 50 303 6.1 75t 4Cook, Min 48 294 6.1 39t 4Drake, Ari 54 219 4.1 16 1Elliott, Dal 58 219 3.8 14 3Peterson, Det 43 209 4.9 27 0Henderson, LAR 35 201 5.7 40 2Gurley, Atl 49 197 4.0 16 2Montgomery, Chi 43 191 4.4 23 0Sanders, Phi 38 190 5.0 19 1K.Murray, Ari 26 187 7.2 25 4

Receivers No Yds Avg LG TDHopkins, Ari 32 356 11.1 33 1Ridley, Atl 21 349 16.6 63 4Metcalf, Sea 12 297 24.8 62 3Kamara, NO 27 285 10.6 52t 3Anderson, Car 20 278 13.9 75t 1McLaurin, Was 16 269 16.8 33 1Cooper, Dal 25 267 10.7 58 0Lockett, Sea 24 259 10.8 43t 4Lazard, GB 13 254 19.5 72 2Gallup, Dal 11 246 22.4 52 1

Punters No Yds Lg AvgFox, Det 13 690 67 53.1Johnston, Phi 13 673 62 51.8Dickson, Sea 15 774 67 51.6Charlton, Car 8 410 60 51.3Lee, Ari 10 480 58 48.0Way, Was 16 760 60 47.5Wishnowsky, SF 8 377 59 47.1O’Donnell, Chi 12 562 64 46.8Dixon, NYG 9 421 62 46.8Pinion, TB 14 623 59 44.5

Punt returners No Yds Avg Long TDHarris, NO 5 73 14.6 18 0Peppers, NYG 4 50 12.5 20 0Lamb, Dal 5 55 11.0 20 0Powell, Atl 4 40 10.0 14 0Cooper, Car 5 36 7.2 19 0S.Sims, Was 10 56 5.6 19 0Mickens, TB 5 21 4.2 13 0

Kickoff returners No Yds Avg LG TDPatterson, Chi 9 284 31.6 45 0Cooper, Car 5 144 28.8 38 0Harris, NO 5 142 28.4 35 0Agnew, Det 5 141 28.2 35 0Osborn, Min 5 130 26.0 38 0Homer, Sea 6 149 24.8 44 0Edmonds, Ari 6 132 22.0 42 0

ScoringTouchdowns

TD Rush Rec Ret PtsKamara, NO 6 3 3 0 36Jones, GB 5 4 1 0 30Cook, Min 4 4 0 0 24Elliott, Dal 4 3 1 0 24Evans, TB 4 0 4 0 24Lockett, Sea 4 0 4 0 24McCaffrey, Car 4 4 0 0 24K.Murray, Ari 4 4 0 0 24Ridley, Atl 4 0 4 0 24

Kicking PAT FG LG PtsCrosby, GB 13/13 7/7 52 34Koo, Atl 6/8 8/9 49 30Slye, Car 3/5 9/9 47 30Lutz, NO 10/10 6/6 45 28Prater, Det 7/7 7/9 44 28Gould, SF 9/9 6/7 52 27Elliott, Phi 5/5 6/7 54 23Gonzalez, Ari 8/9 5/7 56 23Zuerlein, Dal 7/9 5/6 46 22Sloman, LAR 9/10 4/6 35 21

Weekly statistics

NFL

Explosion: After three weeks, NFC East has only one victory and a tieFROM BACK PAGE

this season. Washington, Dallas, Philadelphia and the Giants have combined for a 1-8-1 record out-side of the division with the Cow-boys’ Week 2 comeback at Atlanta and the Eagles’ Week 3 tie against Cincinnati the only non-losses.

The only divisions to have a worse record in nondivision games after three weeks since the start of the eight-division format in 2002 are the 2005 NFC North (1-6), 2002 AFC North (1-7) and 2013 NFC East (1-7).

Comeback kids: Three teams overcame double-digit deficits to win last week, with Chicago rallying from 16 points down to beat Atlanta, Pittsburgh coming back from 11 points down to beat Houston and Tennessee over-coming a 12-point deficit against

Minnesota.There have now been 10 teams

this season to win games they trailed in by at least 10 points, tied for the second-most double-digit comebacks through three weeks. There were 11 in 2011.

The Falcons have been a big reason why. They became the first team in NFL history to blow back-to-back games in which they led by at least 15 points in the fourth quarter with losses to Dallas and Chicago the past two weeks.

Just for kicks: After starting the season by missing three field goals and one extra point in the opener, Tennessee’s Stephen Gostkowski has turned into the NFL’s most clutch kicker. He is the first kicker since the merger to kick a game-winning field goal in the final two minutes of regulation in each of his

team’s first three games of a sea-son. He also hit three field goals ofat least 50 yards for the first time in his career in Sunday’s win overMinnesota, the first in the NFL todo that since Justin Tucker of Bal-timore on Nov. 27, 2016. Gostkows-ki’s field goals Sunday totaled 260yards, the seventh most in NFL history, according to Football Perspective.

Twos are wild: Tampa Bay’s Mike Evans had an efficient gameagainst Denver last week. His only two receptions came on 1-yard TDs from Tom Brady. Evansbecame the third player to postthe line of two catches for 2 yardsand two touchdowns. HowardCross did it for the Giants against Arizona in 1994, and Lee Folkins for Dallas against Washington in 1963.

Rypien named Broncos’starting QB against Jets

BY ARNIE STAPLETON

Associated Press

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Brett Rypien kept his head up when he went undrafted out of Boise State. He didn’t get discouraged when he twice got cut by the Denver Broncos.

He didn’t flinch when the Bron-cos valued Brandon Allen over him last year to serve as a back-up to Joe Flacco and then Drew Lock.

Rypien’s determination didn’t waver when the Broncos signed Jeff Driskel last offseason or Blake Bortles last week.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say dis-couraged, no,” Rypien said after being named the starter for the Broncos’ game against the New York Jets on Thursday night in a matchup of reeling 0-3 teams. “I’ve always just tried to take the mentality of get better every single day.”

Helping him with that perse-verance was his uncle, former Washington QB Mark Rypien.

“He sat his first two years on IR, so having some conversa-tions with him about (how) he overcame adversity throughout his first two years and then being able to win a Super Bowl and be a starter for a few years” helped him learn how to cope and bide his time, Rypien said. “So, I defi-nitely don’t think I ever lost hope or was discouraged. I just tried to get better.”

Coach Vic Fangio accidentally declared Rypien’s 57-year-old uncle the starter over Driskel on Tuesday.

“Yeah, we’re going to start Mark — I mean Brett — I keep-ing calling him Mark at times be-cause of his uncle,” Fangio said. “But we’re going to go with Brett; but we do have the ability to mix Jeff in there some in the game if

we feel like we need to.”Driskel played admirably after

replacing an injured Lock (shoul-der) in Denver’s 26-21 loss at Pitts-burgh two weeks ago, although he froze and took the sack on fourth down at the Steelers’ 15-yard line in the waning minutes.

Driskel started last week against the Buccaneers but was limited to 176 yards and was sacked five times and intercepted

once in Denver’s 28-10 loss.He was replaced by Rypien

on the Broncos’ final drive, and Rypien completed his first eight passes for 53 yards before throw-ing an interception in the end zone.

“Up until the last throw when he made a bad decision and a bad read, he played pretty good in there,” Fangio said. “So we want to see if that can continue.”

Rypien showed good enough recognition of defensive align-ments to change calls and pro-tections and he was quicker throwing the ball than Driskel, who was sacked 11 times in the last two weeks.

“I’ve seen a lot of defenses,” said Rypien, who started 49 games in college. “I think that’s probably my best quality is being able to understand defenses and think fast and get the ball out.”

Injury epidemic: Fangio con-firmed Tuesday that yet another starter was headed to injured re-serve. This time it’s right tackle Elijah Wilkinson (shin), a day after five-time Pro Bowl defen-sive lineman Jurrell Casey (bi-ceps) was lost for the season.

Wilkinson will be replaced by 12th-year veteran Demar Dotson.

“He’s obviously an experienced player. He’s played right tackle 10,000 snaps in this league, prob-ably, so we feel good about putting him in there,” Fangio said.

Other starters on IR are: line-backer Von Miller (ankle), wide receiver Courtland Sutton (knee), cornerback A.J. Bouye (shoul-der) and defensive end Dre’Mont Jones (knee). Backups on IR are: tight end Austin Fort (knee) and linebackers Justin Strnad (wrist) and Austin Calitro (hamstring).

The injured Broncos are mak-ing a combined $53.4 million this season .

Denver Broncos (0-3)at New York Jets (0-3)

AFN-Sports22:20 a.m. Friday CET9:20 a.m. Friday JKT

DAVID ZALUBOWSKI/AP

Brett Rypien was named Denver’s starting quarterback for Thursday’s game against the Jets in New York.

BRETT DUKE/AP

Green Bay Packers outside linebacker Za’Darius Smith, center, celebrates a fumble recovery against the Saints on Sunday in New Orleans. The Packers defense has allowed just 85 points so far.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 23

BY BRIAN MAHONEY

Associated Press

Last time the Los Angeles Lak-ers ruled the NBA, Rajon Rondo and Dwight Howard were trying to beat them.

Howard fell short with Orlando in the 2009 NBA Finals. Rondo lost with Boston in Game 7 in 2010.

They finally have another chance, this time trying to sup-port rather than stop the Lakers.

Both are key veterans on a team that will try to top Miami in a series that started Wednesday. Howard’s opportunity at Walt Disney World comes just down the road from where the Lakers celebrated their championship

victory 11 years ago.“It’s been the hardest road to

get back here and I’m very grate-ful,” Howard said. “One thing is I’ve never just given up on myself. I’ve always continued to work as hard as I can knowing that one day things will change.”

He was the NBA’s dominant center while in Orlando, when the Magic ended the Celtics’ title reign on their way to the finals. Rondo carried Boston right back to the championship round with some impressive play in 2010, but that turned out to be the Celtics’ last chance.

“I won at 21 years old and now being 34, it’s a completely differ-ent experience, and understand-ing that this doesn’t come often

or annually,” Rondo said. “Being back here over a decade later is a very humbling experience, and I’m letting my young guys know from all the rookies to the second- or third-year players like (Kyle Kuzma) that this opportunity doesn’t come often.”

It nearly didn’t come at all. Both Howard and Rondo weighed the decision about coming to the restart, with Howard one of the last Lakers to commit. Rondo thought his presence might have been needed more back home in Louisville, Ky.

Rondo wasn’t available when the playoffs started as he recov-ered from right thumb surgery and then later back spasms, but has since provided valuable

ballhandling and defense off the bench.

Howard barely played in the second round against Houston’s small lineup, but moved into the starting lineup during the West-ern Conference finals.

Thursday, October 1, 2020

NBA FINALS/WNBA FINALS

NBA scoreboard

PHOTOS BY MARK J. TERRILL/AP

The last time Rajon Rondo, left front, and Dwight Howard, right front, were in the NBA Finals, they were playing against the Lakers.

Rondo, Howard back for another NBA Finals shot, this time with Lakers

Couldn’t beat them, so joined them

Aces, Storm are familiar foes in WNBA Finals matchupBY DOUG FEINBERG

Associated Press

For the fourth time in five seasons, the best two teams in the WNBA will square off for the championship when the Seattle Storm and Las Vegas Aces play in the finals.

The best-of-five series begins Friday night.Las Vegas needed to beat Connecticut in a

decisive fifth game of the semifinals on Tues-day to reach the finals for the second time in franchise history. The Aces, who are the top seed in the playoffs, also made the champion-ship round in 2008, when the team was located in San Antonio. The Silver Stars were swept in three games by Bill Laimbeer’s Detroit Shock that season.

Seattle swept Minnesota in its semifinal to reach the championship round for the second time in three seasons.

“They are going to be rested and that can be

good and bad sometimes,” Laimbeer, the Las Vegas coach said. “Sometimes a bit of rust. We know them, they know us. We played each other twice. Eyeballed each other.”

The Storm had nine days off after the regu-lar season ended because they earned a dou-ble-bye. It was supposed to be a few days less, but three inconclusive COVID-19 tests forced the first game of their series with Minnesota to be postponed two days. Eventually all the tests came back negative

Seattle’s Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart were glad to have some rest again before the opener of the WNBA Finals.

“There’s a huge difference in 10 days and five days,” Stewart said. “We’re going to do what we can to make sure our bodies are ready.”

Both players missed the final meeting be-tween the Storm and Aces on the last day of

the regular season because of injury. Bird,who turns 40 on Oct. 16, also missed thefirst meeting because of a bone bruise in herknee.

“This is the finals. The two best teams in the league going at it,” said Las Vegas for-ward A’ja Wilson, who was the league’s MVP.“It was ugly, but we got a win. End of day, we’ll go back and watch film on ourselves andSeattle.”

History may be on the Aces’ side as the team that has had the league’s MVP has won the title every year since 2016.

The Storm were the preseason favorites towin the championship and ran through thefirst part of the season before Bird sufferedthe bone bruise. Stewart also missed the finalfew games of the regular season as the Storm(18-4) finished as the No. 2 seed behind Las Vegas.

Butler fits as a leader with Miami

NBA FinalsAt Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

(Best-of-seven; x-if necessary)L.A. Lakers vs. Miami

Wednesday: Game 1 Friday: Game 2 (AFN-Sports, 3 a.m.

Saturday CET; 10 a.m. Saturday JTK)Sunday: Game 3 (AFN-Sports, 1:30 a.m.

Saturday CET; 8:30 a.m. Saturday JTK)Tuesday, Oct. 6: Game 4x-Friday, Oct. 9: Game 5x-Sunday, Oct. 11: Game 6x-Tuesday, Oct. 13: Game 7

WNBA playoffsSeeding in parentheses

All games played at Bradenton, Fla. Semifinals

(Best-of-five)(1) Las Vegas 3, (7) Connecticut 2

Connecticut 87, Las Vegas 62Las Vegas, 83, Connecticut 75Connecticut 77, Las Vegas 68Las Vegas 84, Connecticut 75Tuesday: Las Vegas 66, Connecticut

63(2) Seattle 3, (4) Minnesota 0

Seattle vs. Minnesota ppd.Seattle 88, Minnesota 86Seattle 89, Minnesota 79Seattle 92, Minnesota 71

Finals(Best-of-five; x-if necessary)

(2) Seattle vs. Las VegasFriday: Game 1Sunday: Game 2Tuesday, Oct. 6: Game 3x-Thursday, Oct 8: Game 4x-Sunday, Oct. 11: Game 5

WNBA scoreboard

BY IRA WINDERMAN

Sun Sentinel

So much of this season forJimmy Butler has been about thepassing of a torch and an embraceof Miami Heat culture.

For the past 12 months, it had been about moving into the spacethat Dwyane Wade vacated withhis 2019 retirement. For these next two weeks, it sets up as anopportunity to fill the champion-ship mantle that LeBron Jamesabdicated with his 2014 movefrom the Heat back to the Cleve-land Cavaliers.

Tuesday, during media day atthe NBA Finals, Butler spoke onthe eve of Wednesday’s 9 p.m. opener against James and theLos Angeles Lakers of how just about everything in this first sea-son with the Heat has felt like theright team at the right time.

“I’m so comfortable with being myself more than I’ve ever been,” he said.

“These guys love me, love who Iam, and it’s reciprocated towards those guys.”

It hasn’t always been that wayfor Butler, after tumultuous tours with the Chicago Bulls, Minne-sota Timberwolves and Phila-delphia 76ers. But just as Jamesfound his NBA footing when he left the Cleveland Cavaliers tojoin the Heat in 2010 free agency, winning titles in 2012 and ’13,Butler said he now feels a senseof championship-level direction.

For that, just as James did later during Tuesday’s interview ses-sions, he credited Heat president Pat Riley.

“ He’s the individual outsideof basketball that everybody hassaid that he was, and definitelyabout winning and winning now. He’s definitely about that,” Butlersaid. “He’s been a huge part inour success of putting this teamtogether, expecting greatness out of each and every one of us,and putting us in a position to begreat.”

S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S Thursday, October 1, 2020 F3HIJKLM

SPORTSNFL

Inside:� Rypien named Broncos’ starter, Page 22

MLB playoffsYankees hammer Bieber,

Indians in Game 1 » Page 20

Serena withdraws with Achilles injury » French Open, Page 19

BY JOSH DUBOW

Associated Press

The NFL has never had a start to a sea-son like this one when it comes to offensive production.

Through three weeks, teams have combined for 51 points per game, 738.2 yards per game and a 96.3 passer rating, the most ever at this juncture of an NFL season.

Only the 1961 AFL, when teams combined to average 53.1 points per game, was more conducive to scoring.

The offensive explosion has come after a virtual offseason and no exhibition games because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which appears to have had a bigger im-pact on defenses than offenses.

One other factor leading to the high scoring is a lack of penalties on offense. Teams have been pe-nalized 283 times on offense so far this season, down from 443 at the same point last year.

There have also been some im-pressive performances with Se-attle’s Russell Wilson becoming the fifth player with back-to-back games with at least five TD pass-es while setting a record with 14 through three games.

Dallas’ Dak Prescott became the second quarterback with back-to-back games with at least 450 yards passing, and the Green Bay Packers have scored at least 35 points with no turnovers in each game. Only the Patriots have done that for a three-game stretch previously, accomplishing it in 2010 and ’12.

The Packers and Seahawks have started with three straight wins despite struggling to stop

anyone. Seattle has allowed 86points through three games andGreen Bay has given up 85. Onlythe 2000 Rams (94 points) and 2018 Chiefs (92 points) gave upmore while winning the firstthree games.

NFC Least: The teams in theNFC East have produced more Super Bowl titles than any otherdivision with 13 and it is the onlydivision in which all four teamshave won the Super Bowl. Thatsuccess has been lacking early

SEE EXPLOSION ON PAGE 22

ELAINE THOMPSON/AP

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson became the fifth player with back-to-back games with at least five touchdown passes and set a record with 14 through three games.

OffensiveexplosionProduction off the charts

51Number of points per game

teams have combinedto produce through

three weeks.

Inside the numbers

SOURCE: Associated Press

738.2Number of yards combined

through three weeks.

96.3Passer rating combinedthrough three weeks.